Unwrap Your Candy

by Jesse Miller

  Carol, no no, car rolled forward toward the wane of the fat sky eye bulb pop pop poping with pumpkin orange and all yellow underbelly, toward the crescendo of street lights psyching up, waiting to slay darkness, toward the bay of crinkling traffic and the earth bowing into a frown underneath. The car radio sputtered out pitches and slogans from inside the socket of the dashboard.

  Want to advance your career?

  Earn your degree in your spare time from the convenience of your home.

  …lose pounds and inches now with the amazingly fast Fat Whacker system.

  Thom followed the familiar, now abbreviated route to work. As he swung into the opening of the complex, the faint whir of five thousand white-gowned debutantes awaited unendurably behind an approaching metal fence.

  Wire, lively knitted and knotted, bulwarked the entire plant like a giant metallic wedding veil. Silently, squiggly silos rose skyward. Long-tended shrub rows scraped the grounds and angled up; shiny pearled windows pondered the last daydrops of light. Vermiculated steel doors, chilled from the fall air, beckoned in the near distance. Back there, receding deep into the crease that wrests the earth from the sky, sits the Lott-Faye Complex, barrel-chested and assured like a castle.

  Predictably, since the Phallacy, security at the Lott-Faye Rubber Company had been markedly heightened. A security checkpoint, the first line of defense, awaits each employee or visitor seeking to gain entrance to the plant. Security guards armed with six‐chambered revolvers slide over their beat looped together by radio-dispatched diaphonics.

  A slight riffle through the glove box and Thom found his ID badge as the car puttered toward the booth. The gatekeeper, clipboard in hand, stashed behind two horn-rimmed lenses and cinnamon freckles, jawed about the weather and finally wondered:

  –What brings you here tonight, Mr. Evans?

  –I’ve lost something.

  –What is it you’ve lost?

  Thom eyeballed the company of guards on smoke break earing and mouthing it in and out, seated on top of a pair of picnic tables.

  –My head.

  –Your head, Mr. Evans?

  –Yeah, yeah. My Head. My little electronic personal organize-y thing. Tells me when important dates are coming up, like an anniversary with the old lady. I think I left it on my desk.

  –Say, you wouldn’t want to forget a day like that!

  –No, bud, you sure wouldn’t.

  –Very well, Mr. Evans, proceed to the loading dock. I’ll radio someone to escort you inside.

  Thom made with the ivory and rolled forward.

  And how the plant grew as he advanced, tore sky-high in a rapacious hunt for open space. Redwet brick thickened; all bloodstone pocked, shithouse, and compound. Thom cut the engine and pulled down an alpine eyeful of the building ranging skyward in every direction, practically lying on top of him. Soon: the hum.

  *

  –I really appreciate you letting me in.

  The brim of his hat fanned the air as he nodded. His nametag read: LARRY CAPEL. Identical strides guided the pair as they gained the first flight of stairs. Unionized, together on flat rubber soles, they stamped out the crisp notes of serious men cutting across a clean floor. When they met the second flight, Thom’s legs rose up and broke out in arrhythmic lunges. Reaching the precipice, Larry turned and lobbed a glance down to Thom.

  –You coming, young man?

  –I sure am.

  Thom opened his palm and slowly traced the wall as he rose upward. Oh, how it thumped, bumped out a ditty witty of a murmur. Oh, the countless choir behind it. He had to know. Barriers are only so effective. Sometimes things just leak though, even if you hold them back.

  Larry poked at the lock with a retractable key ring. The doorknob surrendered after a ping, and his palms budded, revealing a bare ring finger. The key recoiled. A ripcord in reverse. The door peeled open wide on the vacant Mark and Search dept. Thom froze on his pegs while the full darkness thickened before his eyes.

  Larry, finally finding the switch, shook the sapphire twitch of fluorescent lighting overhead, and the blue air scaled across a long cram of workstations. Computer screens, arranged and orderly, hummed and faintly flickered. Deep in the corner, embraced by two buzzing walls, Thom’s desk was visibly the most disorganized.

  –You guys figure out who’s gonna buy what out there?

  –More or less. More and less. More women, suburbanites, and Hispanics, and fewer men in general. That’s the trend right now.

  –Oh, I see.

  O 0 o the hymn of steel and tin, stiffdipping the soupcaldrons, beyond a wall, bay on, glass tears drip tip nipple o 0 Office into echo chamber. Larry advanced, jaggling sounds off his uniform, dropping bing bong from his bangles, bells, and whistles. Meanwhile, Thom, deskside, uprooted papers and tore through his drawers. On the opposite side of the desk, Larry slowly deployed his wrinkled hands and plucked a freestanding picture frame.

  –Is that your lady?

  –Indeed it is.

  He nodded slowly.

  –You’re a lucky man.

  –She ah, she doesn’t look like that anymore.

  –Oh?

  –She kinda, ah… established her place at the table.

  Larry kicked up an eyebrow.

  –How’s that?

  –She’s ah…bigger now.

  Larry’s eyes traced the full run of Thom’s tumescent stomach, like a huge swollen tongue hanging over his belt.

  –You’re still a lucky man.

  He returned the frame to the desk, popping out a note into his walkie talkie. Dropping his paper stack, Thom threw up a stare to the armed security guard standing before him while the walls continued to hum.

  –Got it.

  Thom plucked a small calculator from underneath a memo that delineated, in no uncertain terms, that the percentage of men actually requiring a plus‐sized unit was only 5.6% of the population. Something would need to be done about that. Having closed all that he had opened, Thom restacked the piles and slowly inched toward the exit.

  –Good.

  Under their feet the floor had the red tint of the 1970s, like a dried cheery cough drop that had melted down a hallway. As they walked, the whirring from behind the walls started to fade away. Thom’s skin began to itch again as the two crossed the room, away from the manufact. floor, toward the exit. He stopped walking and waited for the guard to notice. His boots squeaked for a few strides before he realized he was walking mono, then he stopped and squeaked back to where Thom was standing.

  Thom reached over to the security guard’s shoulder.

  –Larry, can I ask you a question?

  –Yeah, sure. Yeah.

  Thom pointed to a set of double doors and a long hallway beyond them.

  –Have you ever gone beyond the doors? What’s beyond the doors?

  Larry’s eyeballs seemed to goop up, and then he rolled them along the ceiling. His lips curled slightly, and a couple of yellow teeth came into the frame.

  –It’s machines. Lotta machines wrestling around.

  –No really, what’s in there?

  Larry paused.

  –It’s…

  –It’s what? Tell me.

  –There’s a cloud you float around on and a million little girls with big brown eyes and see-through dresses float across the air and come kneel at your side. Sometimes they take turns pirouetting; sometimes they all do it in unison.

  Larry pulled his keys from his side and let them snap back and blurted out a blustery laugh.

  –I’d love to see it.

  –Yeah. Sure thing.

  –No, I mean it. Will you show me?

  Larry’s voice lowered.

  –You’ll have to petition corporate then. Or, I suppose you could get into my line of work.

  The humming in the walls was fading. Kaddycornered technoquiver fading as they again picked up their feet and locomotored toward the exit.

  –It would mean the world to me to see behind those doors.

>   Larry’s voice dropped an octave.

  –Yeah. Well. Sorry… So, when’s the anniversary?

  –Huh?

  –When’s your anniversary? Steve told me over the handheld you were concerned about your anniversary. If I were in your shoes, that’s the first thing I’d be checking. Is it in your little gizmo there?

  Larry’s voice was obscured by the hashtags and static sputtering from his walkie. Thom froze, his legs itched from the conflagration of recent sound. Maybe it was the voices behind the wall calling him to come, filling his head fuller and fuller until he thought it would explode. Maybe they’re all lonely there behind the wall.

  Larry was looking away, looking down the hall, talking on the talkie. Thom looked down at his calculator and then addressed Larry’s neck with his hand; he took a couple of low-level practice cuts. It was a long old stalk, gnarly as it rose; there was plenty of room to work with. He threw a forearm along Larry Capel’s neck, trying chop his head off. He swung so hard that he extended against the wall and shattered the last two digits on his hand. The coffee‐spotted carpet Thom had marched across each day for the last three years embraced the collapse of the two men and caught the gold metal splattering of Larry’s golden orbit of keys. Thom picked up the key ring.

  Larry twitched as Thom got to his knees and tried to unsheathe his pistol. He tried to resist, but Thom gently tapped his face until he slipped backward, fully supine. He held the gun like any Yosemite Sam male might—both activated and short of breath. It was all the things: indelibly beautiful, heavy, cold—a rocket ship, a throbbing cock that outran infinity.

  Thom reached the exit and zipped down the light switch. He pulled the door shut so lightly; the lock closed with a hollow ping. Reconnoitering and beginning to sweat, he endeavored for Silo One, marching downstairs toward the MANUFACTURING FLOOR, summoned to the murmurs growing louder and louder just beyond the wall.

  Automatic doors opened and closed.

  In the hallway under rows of clean white light, he noticed the blood that had pooled on his arm. One long hanging droplet, like a small purple pear, wiggled on his elbow then fell to the floor with a small slap. Another wet slap. And then another. As he walked, he dropped red spots across the floor. Peonies from a waxing will. Just then a jangling paroxysm shuttered up Thom’s legs, jostled his hand outward and ripped through his fingers. Shaking, he pointed at the fresh red dot on the floor.

  –Life!

  A crimson rivulet chased down his arm to the tip and pitched another drop ahead. With his bloodless arm, he reached for the doorknob. He waited for another drop of blood to fall. Careful, he mouthed again:

  –Life!

  He closed his eyes and pushed at the door with his fingertips, the very edge of his body. He’d never been this deep inside the building. Through the long hall ahead was the final set of doors before the factory floor, and beyond that, beyond those two pythonic doors…endless space. He leaned into the next room.

  And when he opened his eyes, he noticed them: the pair of silver cameras angled like furious eyebrows that followed him the moment he entered the hallway, and then his every turn as he passed by. The closed circuit fed it all back to the security desk in jerky blocks of black and white, a mere dogleg over on‐site.

  It didn’t seem unexpected, but it didn’t seem right either.

  The stairwell suddenly thundered below. Doors were exploding open. He could hear serious men approaching.

  Thom took aim with this pistol and even squinted an eye. He fired one shot that missed and nearly knocked him over. It was like holding onto a subway rail and not being swayed by the motion of the train. He fired another and fired one more. Three fat fangs chewed through the air. One bullet missed the pair of cameras, but one hit, and the long silver eye just sizzled in place. The last bullet turned around off the wall like Fred Astaire and sank into his foot.

  He fell to his knees and got back up and fell again. All the sound fell out of his ears like a million pianos dropping out of the sky. He kept spitting. The pain was becoming dazzling now, like a tiny volcano sputtering up his entire leg. He began to crawl, squeaking away from where he’d first fallen. The blood made it a little easier to skate along. He tried to stand again and slipped, tried again and fell. The ring around his neck had fallen off a few feet back. He crawled one way, then the other, then back the first. He began to howl as the sound of footsteps carved forward, but there was another sound coming though, and he became perfectly silent. He closed his eyes again as he inched toward the hum of the manufacturing floor…

  At a college party, you can swallow a rainbow and eat a butterfly. It’s all the candy you’ll ever really get until your divorce, so don’t be greedy, but don’t squander it either. He poked out a smoke from his pack and flashed a match. He kissed the matchbook for good luck and reread the string of numbers sliding over the flap.

  Then there’s the havoc among the sunhonnies in the kitchen, in deliberate dresses and floating in clinquant bubbles of perfume like Glinda the Good Witch, bombing around the sky. There’s Purple Passions to guzz and fratboils upchucking factoids and building codes, snorting lasers and not eating the crust on the pizza. A lot of smiles and touching. Screwdrivers. Status quo. Wadka.

  Ze basement then, blacklit, puddled with row after row of delicious little shows. Shirts stop short to expose acceptable hairless openings. Noshows know better than to stare. One show, too tight for her own skin, c’meered the whole room with just a lean. Her thick frond with Igor teeth, backpacking, grew off her shoulder, smoking, always in earshot. Thom couldn’t pull his gaze off of the crowd. The room moved side to side collectively, in stretching tectonics, like horses in a paddock ready to crash into walls. Everyone was lost in a common dipsticky drool. A head of sericeous black hair yanked all light from the place and lined the edge of her skin with a thin silver corona. Under her white dress: two pink dots ensorcelled the room in a silver magic fog like an egg with a double yolk.

  Thom moved to another room and forgot the last. She was just there. Samantha didn’t just nod yes and acquiesce the way little girls do. She was older than the rest. It just wasn’t fair. You could tell by the way she looked quizzically at what people said, waiting to add her own stroke to the conversation without digesting the last. There were laugh lines on her face and a scar on her left wrist. She paid rent. She wore cowboy boots over her jeans. She was the kind of thin you get paying your own way when you’re young. She pulled a matchbook out and lit her friend’s cigarette.

  He imagined spinning on puppet strings on odd planes all over her body the way figure skaters do on ice, like in two opposing pinwheels, grinding on the head of a pin, up and down in a real honest to goodness screw.

  He hesitated, lingered; he flashed his gaze backward, to the last room. All the guys with shirts halfway unbuttoned in large fleshy Vs, like upside down sharkfins strategically positioned around the room; all of the girls floating around, aerosol practically, dancing with other girls in a collection of swaying golden chum.

  –Wanna dance?

  He turned around. Samantha’s red hair burned down her head.

  –Hey. Hey there. You found the place then.

  –Samantha?

  –Ya’know it.

  –You’ve changed.

  She looked at him sideways.

  –How would you know? Wait, what do you mean?

  The music blew up, the floor flooded. Thom leaned forward and opened his mouth on her ear.

  –No, no, your outfit. You changed since I saw you at work.

  She leaned in similarly. Tipped her lips and brought them to his ear. She slid the beer against her belt buckle and popped the top, handed it over.

  Thom’s eyes dilated with pleasure.

  –Oh, you’re right. Wanna a beer?

  The world felt like it was about to sneeze. Samantha scanned the drink now in his hand and leaned back in.

  –You’re not old enough for that are you?

  He waited until she reced
ed, then he pushed in, reseeding her ear.

  –Well, shhhuuure I am.

  He slid out. She slid in.

  –Bullshit.

  –Well okay, you got me. Call the cops.

  Her eyes stirred, ticked pendulously over his features as if to shuffle his face in order. A long brass note ran through speakers and into the air. The music got louder, and no one could hear a fucking thing.

  Tantara

  Tantara

  Tantara

  He kept leaning in to talk. She did the same sending in tingling warm bursts of air that coated the curls of his ears. Samantha’s friend, Heather, sticky from dancing, emerged holding the hand of Thom’s roommate. They nodded at each other; every one nodded without saying a word. Samantha pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and surrendered them to Heather’s open palm.

  –A light Daaaahhlin’.

  Thom tapped his pockets. Samantha sparked. She puffed, passed one to Troy and parted Thom’s hair with her fingers.

  –You two are like in a little dollhouse over here.

  Heather’s arms coiled around his neck, and her embrace caused Thom to sweat more. She smelled like wet assholes. Ashes fell from their lips. Troy and Heather climbed the stairs. Thom watched as they slid out of view. Samantha slid her tongue inside his ear.

  –Wanna get out of here?

  She buried the words in his ears, and before he could harvest them and serve them to his brain for digestion, he was climbing the stairs of her building. They stood in front of the couch awhile as she kissed his neck. He tried kissing and speaking and the same time.

  –It’s my…

  –What’s that?

  –I’m not…

  –Shhhh…