A Perfect Machine
Page 3
In the chill of dawn, when the apartment seemed at its coldest, Henry felt he knew what the pieces of the puzzle were doing. They were moving within him to touch each other, form something. But what – and for what purpose – he had no idea. He believed in nothing. Expected nothing. The only thing Henry wanted now was to close his curtains. Since the storm had subsided, the sun streamed through his bedroom window too bright for Henry’s eyes, which now glinted in the light. He didn’t know it, couldn’t see it, but they’d turned from deep brown to metallic silver.
The day after the storm passed, Henry felt the puzzle inside him slowing, calming.
Milo came to visit him in his dreams one last time, late that fourth night: he hovered at the foot of the bed, as he’d been doing the last few days. Only this time, before he left – a look of intense concentration on his face – he floated over to Henry’s bedroom window. Tried, and failed, to close the curtains for his friend.
* * *
The night before Henry would wake up changed forever – five days after coming home from the hospital – he dreamed a memory of him and Milo as kids of about twelve years old:
“What do you think happens?” Milo asked Henry, a more innocent precursor to their discussion the week before Milo’s death.
They were in Henry’s backyard. Just sitting in the dirt, playing with plastic action figures from their favorite movies.
“Happens when?” Henry replied. He held one action figure in each hand.
“When ya get all filled up with bullets. Or whatever.”
“Dunno. Don’t care,” Henry said, and pummeled one of the action figures into the other.
Milo shifted his position in the dirt. Something about Henry not caring what happened when full lead content was reached bugged him. “How can you not care, dummy?”
Henry shrugged. “Just don’t. Maybe one day I’ll find out, but till then it’s stupid to waste time thinking about that crap.”
Milo dropped his own action figures in the dirt, glanced up at the sky. Blue, clear, the sun shining so fiercely, he couldn’t look anywhere near it. He dropped his eyes again, looked at Henry. He hesitated a moment, as if considering something, then spoke, hesitantly: “Well, I think … I think you become, like, this awesome monster robot machine! I think you become really big, and you go around saving people trapped under cars and in burning buildings and stuff. I think you become a lot happier, too. Like, way happier than in regular life. You know?”
When Henry didn’t immediately answer, Milo picked up one of his action figures – an army guy missing an arm – and tossed it across the yard.
Sensing his friend’s frustration, Henry said, “OK, here’s what I honestly think: I think whatever you become, it’s not good. It’s bad. I think you become something else. Not even yourself anymore. And maybe you do bad things to people, but you can’t control yourself. And yeah, maybe you’re all cool and robotic and metal and gigantic and everything, sure. But I think –” and here, Henry droppped his action figures on the ground, and stood up “– I think you hurt people. People you hate. People you love. Everybody.”
The dream ends as Henry walks back into his house, leaving Milo outside in the blistering sun.
* * *
Faye knocked on the door.
No answer.
She knocked harder. Still nothing.
She fretted about whether or not to keep trying this late at night. Decided to forget about knocking again and just open the door with her key.
She’d tried calling the past couple of days, but there’d been no answer, and she’d been run off her feet at the hospital so there’d been no chance to check on Henry in person till now. It wasn’t abnormal for them not to see each other for days at a time, given their abnormal schedules, but after her second or third call attempt, Faye began to worry just a little bit – and that feeling had only grown worse with each passing hour.
She turned the key, pushed gently. The door swung open.
The apartment air was frigid. Faye shivered and pulled the gray scarf tighter around her neck.
She walked in slowly, called out, “Henry, are you home?”
Silence.
She poked her head around a corner, looked in the kitchen which branched off from the living room. Nothing.
The bathroom light shone bright in the relative gloom of the apartment.
“Henry?”
No one in the bathroom. Only one more room in the place.
The bedroom door stood slightly ajar. Faye pushed on it softly, peeking inside. It was hard to make out anything. Shadows layered on shadows. Faye whispered Henry’s name once more as she walked through the door, but her stomach was already sinking. It was so quiet. No hiss from the radiator, and the sound of the refrigerator running didn’t make it to this side of the apartment.
No breathing sounds came from the bed.
“Oh, God,” Faye said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Henry…”
He lay still on the bed. Bundled in blankets. Only his head uncovered. His shoulder-length dark hair, threaded with gray, hung in strings to the sides of his face. Unwashed for days.
For a brief moment, Faye thought maybe he wasn’t dead. His cheeks seemed rosy in the dirty light filtering in through the window from a streetlamp. She moved forward, tentatively put a hand on his forehead. He was warm. Not only warm – burning up. But somehow there was no life in him. No breath. Just a wall of heat, emanating from his body.
She stood like that for a long while, looking down at him, feeling the warmth still coming from his body in waves, as if something inside were generating it. Gears spinning. Clockwork, winding itself up.
Impossible.
“Where have you gone, Henry?” she said, though she didn’t understand why she’d chosen those particular words.
No breath, she thought. He is dead. He must be dead.
Faye quietly left Henry’s apartment, tears just beginning to form in her eyes.
* * *
Later that night, a dark, heavy shape rose from Henry’s bed, moved around the room as if waking from a deep sleep.
Outside Henry’s bedroom window, a single snowflake drifted down, stuck against the pane, melted.
Vanished.
The first of a new storm.
F O U R
“I know this sounds terribly corny, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Like, legitimately?”
Henry turned toward the voice. Wow, a girl is talking to me, he thought, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, hopefully?”
She frowned.
“I just mean that, well, if it keeps us talking, then yes, you’ve seen me somewhere before.”
She grinned a little, maybe blushed just the tiniest bit. “Well, OK. Where was it?”
They were in a shitty little bar downtown. Henry frequented it often to unwind after Runs, and Faye occasionally came in when the loneliness of her apartment became too much to bear.
“Maybe…” Henry began, turning fully toward Faye where she sat on a stool next to his at the bar. “I dunno.” He took a shot in the dark: “Milo’s?”
“Don’t know anyone named Milo,” Faye said.
“Oh.”
“Maybe if we tell each other our names, that might jog something,” Faye said, and smiled.
Henry laughed. “Yeah, that might help. I’m Henry.”
“Faye.”
They shook hands, awkwardly.
“Lovely to meet you, Faye.”
“Likewise. Now, let’s see,” she said, taking a sip from her rum and Coke. “Where do you work? Maybe I saw you there.”
Ha. Where do I work.
“Um, you haven’t seen me at work,” he replied. “Pretty certain.”
Warning bells sounded in Faye’s head at this evasion, but she decided to press on. “OK, well, I’m a nurse. Maybe you were recently hospitalized?” She’d intended it as a joke, but Henry didn’t laugh.
“Actually, that coulda been it. I go there more often than… n
ormal people.” He smiled, and did manage a little chuckle that calmed Faye’s nerves a little.
“Street fights?” she said. “You a big badass?” More joking.
“People shoot me a lot.”
He’d talked like this before to interested women. He found that telling the truth disarmed them, since they always thought he was just joking. The relationships never got much further than this because he kept strange hours and didn’t have much of an interest in pursuing a relationship anyway.
“Well, I like people who get shot a lot. Gives me job security.”
Henry laughed loudly at that. They continued chatting for hours, till the barkeep called for last orders.
They walked out together, awkwardly shook hands, then, taken by an impulse neither of them understood, they hugged. They knew it was strange, but they held each other for much longer than two people who’ve just met normally would.
And then it didn’t feel so strange anymore.
* * *
Half a year later, Henry was reading over Faye’s shoulder where she sat at her computer in her apartment. Henry had brought her some tea, and as he leaned over her shoulder to set the cup down on a coaster, he glanced at the document, said, “Hey, what’s this? Are you cataloguing my hilariousness?”
“Yep,” she said, kept typing.
Henry looked closer, read a little, then stood up straight again. “Oh, come on. No one else is going to find this shit funny.”
“They did when I posted them on social media.”
“People on social media don’t count. For anything. Ever.”
“Says you.”
“It’s true. I did just say that.”
“Thanks for the tea. Now go away.”
“I’m never going away. You’re stuck with me until that murder-suicide pact I mentioned the other day. I don’t want to live without you, and I’m just going to assume you feel the same way.”
“Look, just let me finish this, OK?”
Henry leaned in closer again, read the following under the heading “Boyfriend Funny du Jour”:
* * *
Henry: Check out this video with a deer kicking the shit out of a hunter.
Faye: [watches video] That’s awesome! Too funny.
Henry: I’m going to post it on the Facebooks. Ummm…
Faye: Yeah?
Henry: Uh… do deer have hooves?
Faye: [laughing] Yes. Yes they do.
Henry: What? I just wanted to make sure.
Faye: I am seriously booking a zoo visit.
* * *
“Animals are hard,” Henry said. “I’m taking that tea back, meanface.”
“Are girls hard, too?”
“Oh, the one after we ate at Roy Rogers? Classic Kyllo right there.”
* * *
Henry: Who was Roy Rogers, anyway?
Faye: An American movie cowboy.
Henry: Oh.
Faye: With his sidekick Dale Evans. Who was a girl.
Henry: Who was a what?
Faye: A girl.
Henry: Oh! I thought you said a robot.
Faye: Yes, that sounds a lot like “girl.”
* * *
“You know what’s fun,” Henry said. “Not this, that’s what. How many of these do you have written down, anyway?”
“Pages and pages,” Faye said. “And I’m going to show them to our kids one day, show them that Daddy can’t tell the difference between a lemur and a meerkat. Or a tiger and a lion.” Faye turned in her chair, looked up at Henry pointedly. “A hippopotamus and a pig!”
“The hippos were pink. No fair.”
Faye laughed, turned back to her screen, read the next one out loud:
* * *
Henry: Monkeys are better than gorillas.
Faye: That’s because monkeys have tails. Apes don’t have tails. Like gorillas and… orang-utangs… and… are baboons apes?
Henry: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Faye: Why is that funny?
Henry: I thought you said “legumes” instead of “baboons.”
Faye: Yes, legumes are apes.
Henry: Legumes are the apes of the bean world.
* * *
“This right here. This is why I love you, Henry.” Faye pushed her chair back, stood up, hugged Henry where he stood pretending to be hurt, his face turned away from her.
“You don’t even have my favorite one in there,” he said, smirking.
“Which one’s that?” she said playfully, slapping his butt.
“The one where I called a ski mask a face cozy.”
“Ha! Forgot about that one. I also loved when you couldn’t remember who Batman’s partner was. You said it was ‘Batman and Robert.’ I thought I was gonna die laughing.”
“Speaking of dying, I think it might be murder-suicide o’clock if you keep this up.”
Faye kissed Henry’s face gently, said, “You are the best of all possible boyfriends.”
“I can think of better,” Henry said. “I can certainly think of better girlfriends.”
“Haha. Hardly. Wait, okay, one more. Honest!”
* * *
Henry: Look at the T-Rex on that poster over there.
Faye: It’s a frog.
Henry: Oh man. I just keep walking into these things. Well, at least it’s a lizard.
Faye: No.
Henry: Oh, right. A reptile.
Faye: No.
Henry: What?
Faye: An amphibian.
Henry: Oh. It’s amazing I passed science.
Faye: It’s amazing you haven’t been eaten by an animal.
Henry: Yeah! I'd go "Oh, look at the nice kitty" and it would be, like, a werewolf.
Faye: A werewolf!
Henry: No! I meant, like, a really big wolf. A wolf-wolf.
* * *
Faye pulled away, smacked his butt again, said, “We’re adorable. Let’s go eat.”
They went downstairs together, decided they were both too tired to cook, ordered pizza, drank wine, watched some TV, and generally had a night like any other.
Neither of them with the slightest inkling of what was to come.
F I V E
Henry stumbled out of his apartment and into the hallway, a dark blot well over six feet tall, still shifting, changing shape. In flux. Milo stayed well back from Henry, but kept him in sight. The ghost of a man following the ghost of something perhaps more than a man. Perhaps nothing like a man at all.
Henry crashed down the stairs, bumping into a woman, knocking her flat. The man the woman was with narrowly sidestepped Henry’s blundering descent, turning and opening his mouth, thinking about saying something. But the man had no way of rationalizing what he’d just witnessed, so he closed his mouth, bent to help his girlfriend off the ground.
Milo floated past the couple, unseen.
When Henry reached the bottom of the staircase, he flung his massive arms at a door with an “Exit Only” sign hanging over it. The door crashed open, knocked against the cement wall behind it. He emerged into the parking garage of his apartment building, immediately fell to his knees, then rolled over onto his back. He let out a strangled cry from between steel, blackened lips. One of his legs kicked out convulsively, knocking out a low section of a nearby concrete pillar. Pieces sprinkled the front-left tire of a car parked in the closest stall. His other leg shot out, denting the same car’s driver-side door. He’d grown about half a foot overnight and, in places on his body where muscle and bone used to be, now metal existed, or at least something becoming metal.
Milo told Henry to calm down. Told him to take it easy. Relax. It’ll be alright. Just settle, man. It’ll pass. No worries.
But Henry couldn’t hear Milo – not that Milo knew if this convulsion would pass, anyway; they were just words of comfort for comfort’s sake – so Henry thrashed some more, took another small chunk out of the pillar, this time a little higher up.
Milo watched, fascinated as Henry took shape. His new shape.
Henry breathed in, breathed out. Slowly. Like great bellows. Chunks of shot poked from his ribs; tips of bullets littered one side of his face, both arms, most of his left leg; strips of smooth steel ran down both sides of his torso, glinting in the dim underground light.
Another breath, slow. The expansion of Henry’s chest caused a few bullets to dislodge from his body, clatter to the ground.
He turned his head a little. Eyes gray, nearly solid metal. Ball bearings set deep in his skull. Somehow seeing, collecting information.
Milo shivered as his friend’s eyes settled on him. But they did not see him – rather saw through him, behind him. Milo turned around.
A small boy and his mother stood at one of the exits. The mother’s keys rattled in one hand. Neither she nor the boy had yet looked up to see Henry. They held each other’s hands as they walked, the mother looking down at her son, the boy prattling on about some video game he’d been playing. The mother’s boots shattered the previous quiet; the boy filled the spaces between each heel’s connection with excited patter.
They passed very near to Milo; he smelled – or perhaps imagined he could smell – the woman’s perfume. Henry’s head tracked them as they strolled by, still not noticing him. Milo wondered what this new Henry would do if the mother and the boy looked up and saw him.
The mother’s car was opposite Henry and Milo, two rows over. She opened the passenger side for her son, sweeping her arm in front of her. “After you, m’dear,” she said, and laughed a little.
The boy giggled, got in the car. The mother closed the door. Crossed to the driver’s side, head still down, digging for something in her purse, smiling. Opened her own door, slipped inside. Slammed it shut.