Lesser Creatures

by Peter Giglio

  Though he hadn’t played since his last lesson as a teenager, he did like the regal finish of the wood and the ivory luster of its teeth. He pulled the bench from beneath the keys, placed the bottle on the top of the piano, and sat. He started playing slowly, took another drink of the hideous teeny-drunk tonic, shuddered, and went back to the keys. It didn’t take long for him to recognize the tune he was playing.

  “Lesser Creature Love Song.”

  He winced at that realization and then took an even bigger gulp of schnapps.

  Damn, he needed a real drink, and soon, but that would require actual effort. Thinking about it, he realized the only obstacle keeping him from behaving like a normal human being was the difficult decision he’d been charged with.

  As if on cue, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked at the display screen. Frank Allen. The last person in the world he wanted to talk to right now. Shaking his head, he powered off the phone, dropped it atop the piano, and decided he wouldn’t go back to work on Monday.

  Not just that, though. He wouldn’t go back ever again.

  If he lost the condo, fine; he didn’t need it. Didn’t need a luxury sedan, either. What he needed was sanity, maybe a good grudge fuck…

  And a good stiff drink.

  It was like his mother had taught him at an early age. K.I.S.S.—Keep It Simple, Stupid.

  He slid off the bench and began undressing as he headed for the bedroom. Standing naked in his walk-in closet, he pulled down the hanger draped with his favorite shirt, then he opened a dresser drawer and took out his most comfortable jeans. Laying the clothes on his bed, he looked down and caught sight of his legs, horribly scarred from many surgeries. That pain bloomed eternal, and these frequent reminders didn’t help. He couldn’t disrobe without wincing.

  But he’d lived, he told himself. And had learned to walk again, beating the odds, which made him, at least in theory, a stronger man. He let that vibe rule as he entered the shower.

  He’d cut bait of Melody, and that had worked. Now it was as simple as doing the same with a career that, when he got right down to it, he’d hated for a long time.

  But in the dream, running hadn’t worked. It had been his undoing. Was that a warning? No, he assured himself. Doubt would only make matters worse, and he wasn’t fleeing his job. His job had fled him years ago, and he was just now accepting it.

  The warm water hit him and felt good. He lathered his hands with liquid soap, then closed his eyes and started scrubbing his face. That’s when the booze hit him, creating an inner warmth to match the pleasant spray from above. He started whistling. The tune wasn’t normally a favorite but it fit the situation now.

  “I Will Survive.”

  * * *

  Stepping out of the cleansing unit, Monika gathered her crumpled suit from the floor. She opened the metal chute, dropped the clothes inside, and let the door clang shut. Then she took the glass of whiskey from the sink and emptied it in one swallow.

  She ran the water for a moment, rinsing out the glass, then looked up and wondered why there weren’t any mirrors in her apartment. She knew her face was hideous—gray and cracked skin, her irises white rather than the noon blue they’d once been. But how was she supposed to improve matters if she couldn’t see herself? She’d never thought about this before because it had never really mattered. Now it did. She wouldn’t win Eric back looking like this.

  She went into her room and stepped into a pair of sweatpants. She was pulling a T-shirt over her head when a knock sounded at the door. She shuffled into the living room. The knock came again. Without peering through the keyhole, Monika cracked the door ajar. Standing there was Steven Lingk. He held something, a jumble of wires and small boxes.

  “Ms. Janus,” he said, “don’t you look like the image of comfort this evening. May I come in?”

  She stepped aside and let him enter. Moving toward her couch, he looked around. “Nice place. They certainly spared no expense,” he said, then set the mess of wires on the table in front of the couch and sat. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping by uninvited.”

  She’d hoped for more time to think about Eric, but she didn’t mind at all.

  He started untangling the thing he’d brought. “I wonder if you’d be interested in helping me with something.”

  She sat next to him on the couch and nodded.

  “Last night I told you a little about Glory. She’s means a lot to me, Monika, but I can’t reach her. And it’s so very important that I do. She’s all I have. Would you help me test my equipment?” He got up from the couch and walked to the nearest wall, holding one of the cords. He plugged it into the wall and turned to her. “I need to know if all of this…” He gestured to the table. “If all of this even works; if it’s even worth my time.”

  He returned to the couch, then took a few wires in his hands, not unlike the ones he’d placed in her ears earlier. She was anxious to find out what wonders this new offering would bring.

  “We call this a Sigler-Sutton Amplifier; SSA for short. It was developed in my church’s lab and is completely safe, you have my assurance. I’ve used it many times on Glory, but lately it hasn’t been effective.” He raised the wires to her head. “Is this okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Please sit still,” he said kindly, working around her hairline. She couldn’t feel what he was doing, but she trusted him. “There we go,” he said finally.

  Flowing from her head, the cords were attached to a black box, two smaller boxes flanking it.

  “When I turn this on, you might feel a little jolt. Don’t be afraid. Can you count in your head? Numbers?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Close your eyes and slowly count backwards from ten.”

  Ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five—

  A sudden jolt made her eyes flutter uncontrollably. The sensation was neither pleasant nor painful, but it was a sensation, and feeling anything physical was foreign to Monika. She tried to keep her eyes lidded, wanting to please the pastor, and she tried to keep counting and remain still. It wasn’t easy.

  “You can open your eyes now,” he said.

  Slowly her surroundings came back into view, but things looked different: digitized, like everything was made of tiny boxes. She moved her hand in front of her face, but the hand followed a few seconds behind her action.

  “Concentrate on me, Monika,” he said. She heard him speak seconds before his mouth moved. His head was like one of her little red dots, like Eric’s name on the car ride home, her focus for the moment.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “Now here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I want you to think about the answer, to focus on the words you would use if you could speak. Don’t try to speak. Just focus on the words, one letter at a time if you have to. And take your time. I’m in no hurry.

  “First question,” he said, then cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”

  She picked the word “fine” and concentrated on it. Could see the letters take shape in her mind: F…I…N…E…

  Static crackled for a moment, and she realized the little boxes next to the larger one were speakers.

  Suddenly, to her amazement, a computerized voice said, “Fine.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Eric settled on O’Rourke’s, the quaint pub downstairs. Among the many benefits of living downtown was the bustling selection of eateries and bars nearby. The dance clubs he’d frequented in the past, the places that almost guaranteed a willing companion for the night, skirted the city’s edge. And, despite his somewhat headlong mood, he didn’t want to risk a DUI. Heavy drinking was tonight’s only certainty.

  When he sat on the end stool at the bar, taking a moment to reflect before waving the bartender over, he thought about his condo and how much he’d miss it. The place itself wasn’t important; the independence it represented was. Although living at his mother’s house beat the alternative of working with Monika, not
to mention the fortune he’d save, it meant returning to the suburbs. He hated the suburbs.

  Checking his reflection in a mirrored gap between colorful bottles, he gave his head a few pats. He looked all right. As a matter of fact, he looked pretty damn good for forty-three. Still had all his hair, which was only peppered with flecks of gray. Women liked that. He did, too. He smiled at himself, banished doubt to the back of his mind, and flagged down Lily.

  She’d worked here longer than he’d been a customer. He suspected she’d stay here for years to come. He was also pretty sure he could fuck her if he wanted to, a mental image that beat the hell out of living in the suburbs.

  “Hey, Coop,” she said, wiping down the bar though it was clean. “Where’s your girl tonight?”

  “I broke it off with her.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Vodka martini?”

  “You’re too good to me.”

  She laughed and started making the drink, and Eric looked around. The place was dead for a Friday, even by small-bar standards, but the night was still young.

  “Meeting anyone?” Lily asked.

  “Don’t know, am I?”

  She wobbled the cocktail shaker a few times, not too hard. Pouring, she plucked a speared olive from a garnish tray and plopped it into the clear liquid before topping the glass. “You look like you’re meeting someone,” she said, resting the drink on a napkin in front of him.

  He shrugged. “I always look like that.”

  “Why’s that, you think?”

  “Don’t know.” He chuckled. “Maybe I’m always waiting.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “I wish I could speak for everyone.”

  “Running a tab or just having a quick one?”

  He slid his credit card across the counter. “Tab’s fine.”

  “Want a menu?”

  Shaking his head, he returned to prospecting, and his gaze landed on three women at a nearby table. He hadn’t paid the group any mind before, but now he recognized one of them.

  Julie Stewart from Globe Cable News, the reporter who’d nailed Pastor Steven Lingk the night before, as animated in person as on television, gesturing with her hands and smiling brightly.

  He’d caught her work before, liked her style. And he wanted to meet her, but he couldn’t just barge in on a friendly get-together with sycophantic praise. That never worked. He’d have to wait and hope she stuck around.

  He cast his eyes on the nearest video monitor. The Rangers were down two runs in the eighth inning. He tried to seem interested in baseball, like someone with a respectable purpose for being here, but the game didn’t hold his gaze long.

  Although he’d played football in high school, Eric had always been more of a book worm and music nut than an athlete. In college, he’d played bass in a rock band, and that had given him myriad reasons to enjoy five and a half years of higher education. Chicks loved musicians, and the extra year and a half it had taken him to graduate, he mused, wasn’t for lack of intelligence. He’d never wanted to leave. He’d been a golden god.

  And what am I now? he asked himself.

  Soon he’d be an out-of-work middle-aged man. Maybe one who lived with his mother. Blink of an eye and he’d be fifty, assuming he hadn’t inherited his father’s shitty ticker.

  Chicks weren’t so crazy about those attributes.

  He looked back at his reflection. And this time he noticed the bags under his eyes and the creases above his brow.

  “Damn, you ready for another already?” Lily asked.

  “How long’s it been since I ordered the first?” he said, shaking himself out of the darkness and looking down at the empty glass.

  “Five minutes maybe.”

  “Christ.”

  “Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”

  “You’re perceptive. Should have gone into psychology.”

  “Not crazy enough,” she said. “And I’d rather deal with drunks than loons.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “We can talk, you know. Might keep you from drinking yourself into oblivion.”

  He pointed at the ceiling. “I don’t live far away, so it’s not like I have to drive home. And a little oblivion sounds like a nice change.”

  She pushed a fresh drink to him and smiled. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  He nodded and turned back to the reporter. Normally he would have taken Lily up on her offer to talk, but he’d chatted with her many times and already knew her story. She was a college dropout/single mother who, despite her affinity for the obvious and ability to make a mean martini, had more problems than most of the drunks she served.

  Julie was the target.

  He just didn’t know the proper way to break the ice.

  * * *

  The hundreds of second-lifers tested with the SSA under Lingk’s supervision had produced fewer than a dozen responses, most of them garbled beyond recognition. Never had a verbalization been recorded within minutes. Until now.

  As he stared at the bona fide miracle before him, he found it hard to launch into the rest of his questions. His heart raced and his hands shook. This was it, the breakthrough that could finally prove the truth.

  Monika Janus had crossed the line between the living and the dead, had touched the magic in a way no one else, at least to his knowledge, had. The divinity of the moment was profound, but he couldn’t congratulate himself yet.

  He still had so much to ask. Go slow, he told himself.

  Doing his best to internalize his excitement—he didn’t want to throw the girl off by acting unnatural—he asked, “Where were you born?”

  A few moments of static, then: “Ohio.”

  “Big city or small town?”

  “City…Columbus.”

  “Did you have a happy childhood?”

  “Don’t remember…don’t think so.”

  “Do you remember your parents?”

  “A little.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Bad English…Father mean…Mother quiet.”

  There were still gaps between his dialogue and hers, but they seemed to grower shorter with each question. Most incredible, she was giving logical answers. The scant episodes of past success had one thing in common: disassociation. This, on the other hand, was an actual conversation. He checked the setting on the SSA. It was only turned to three. He’d never received an auditory response with the dial below six. He then double checked the recording mechanism to make sure it was engaged. Although he assumed Monika would perform like this at the drop of a hat, he didn’t want to take any chances.

  “I’m sorry to ask painful questions,” he said. “Do these questions hurt?”

  This time there was a longer period of silence. The static increased in volume, became more dense, then: “No.”

  “Do you feel at all?”

  “Not to touch.”

  “But you do feel?” He pointed at his heart.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Tell me about your strongest feeling.”

  She lowered her head like a bashful child.

  “Love?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Focus on your words, Monika.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you love?”

  The static screamed louder, then was joined by a high-pitched feedback squeal and what sounded like dozens of chattering voices beneath the din. Still no response to his question, but that didn’t mean defeat. This recording would be gold.

  Against his better judgment, he pressed her. “Eric Cooper?” he said.

  She looked confused for a second, then: “How you know?”

  My God, she was now asking him questions. He took a deep breath. “I know Eric. He’s…he’s a good man.”

  “What say he?” She pointed at her chest. “He talk about me?”

  “We’ve never talked about you. I promise.”

  She looked sa
d during the ensuing silence. This gave her a moment to pull herself together, he assumed, and it gave him more time to study her behavior. He was sitting across from a real person. And if she was real, alive in a manner of speaking, then so was Glory. He didn’t know how, but this girl would be his link to his one true love. Otherwise, what was the point?

  “Do you want to talk about something else?”

  “Love you, too.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand.”

  “But different. Trust you. Like doctor.” She pointed to her head.

  “You mean like a therapist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have a therapist when you were alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “A good man?”

  “Good woman.”

  “And I remind you of her? You trust me like you trusted her?”

  “Now…not.”

  “I’m sorry, why?”

  “Hiding.”

  He laughed nervously. “I’m not hiding anything, Monika. We just started talking. Give us time. Give me a chance.”

  “Okay.”

  “I appreciate that very much. Try to understand that I’m at a disadvantage here. You’ve been on my side of this, you’ve lived. I’ve never been dead.”

  “Is true.”

  “What can you tell me about death?”

  “Darkness.”

  “Did you walk into a light? Did past memories flash before your mind’s eye?”

  “Darkness…only.”

  “But you’re here now.”

  “I think so.”

  “You mean you’re not sure if this is real?”

  “No. Could be Hell. Or a dream.”

  “Who’s having the dream?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Feels funny, like dream.”

  “Do you still dream?”