I went to check on Debbie. I had assumed the worst, from the way she’d been twitching when I first showed up. I assumed right.
I said a quiet good-bye and left the alleyway. Please don’t tell anybody I pilfered the cigarettes out of her purse before I did.
When I got back out front to the show, the punks were filtering inside, the sound of the next band’s guitars already clamoring into the street. Butts were being stomped out, beers were being downed, fresh air was being gulped desperately, and life was going on. I thought about going in with them—about dancing or drinking or doing some damn thing or another to forget for a few hours what I’d just seen, but the thought of all that heat and sweat turned me off.
Our pad was miles gone and I didn’t feel like walking, but I recalled stashing Daisy about five blocks from here a few weeks ago. If she was still around, she’d get me home. I turned to leave, then Randall popped up from behind a newspaper machine, screamed, “GOTCHA, FUCKHOLE!” and slapped me hard across the cheek.
My burns flared to angry, visceral life.
THREE
2013. Los Angeles, California. Kaitlyn.
For the first time in a long time, I woke to find myself not in pain. A cold flood of fear washed through me. It ran down my chest and settled in my gut. I couldn’t remember why waking up without pain was supposed to worry me. The reaction was just instinctual.
I lay in my massive, ridiculously soft bed for half an hour. A king-size memory-foam mattress that fills every single inch of my tiny bedroom, and an accompanying six-hundred-dollar down comforter are the only great and stupid luxuries that I allow myself. I was trying to figure out where the anxiety was coming from, and I finally pinpointed it: I was not sore, bruised, burned, or broken at all, and that meant I was unemployed.
At least partially. I still had my job waiting tables, but I hadn’t done any stunt work in weeks. I guess sometime during the night, I finally shook the last stubborn bit of stiffness in my hip from that botched somersault I took while shooting The Damned Walk … Again!? So I woke up feeling physically great but with a trade-off of crushing spiritual ennui. For almost this entire month, I had been just and only a waitress.
I sighed and rolled out of bed. I had to roll several times just to reach the doorway and then heave myself out into the hall. My bare feet slapped the cold tile all the way to the bathroom. When I sat down to pee, it really hit me:
I was in absolutely no pain.
Even as a little girl, I would wake up each morning with a very small but persistent ache in my third pinky. Yep. Third. I have six fingers on my left hand. The superfluous little bastard has hurt me every day of my life, except for two: the day when my kid sister died in a house fire, and today.
I couldn’t remember anything about the day of the fire. The therapists said I’d repressed the memories, but every once in a while I got this feeling, like terrified déjà vu, and I just knew it was some small piece of that day coming back to me. I had that feeling now, when I suddenly remembered, in perfect clarity, waking up with no pain in my sixth finger fifteen years ago. I remembered running down the stairs to tell my mom.
It doesn’t hurt anymore! It’s all gone!
My mother laughed, picked me up, and placed me on top of the dining room table.
“Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?” she asked.
I shook my head and wiggled my skinny, single-knuckled little digit for her.
“That’s great, baby!” she said.
And that’s where the memory kicked out. Nothing past it, just a pleasant little short film and then fin. But I still had this sick fear that wouldn’t shake loose from the bottom of my stomach. Something bad happened after that moment, I knew that much, but whenever I tried to think of the specifics, I could only picture a bright, colorless light and notes of toneless music. Memories defined by their absence.
I flushed the toilet, turned the shower up as hot as it went, and stood under it until the heat made me dizzy and pink. I slid the curtain aside and grabbed for my towel. I was so dazed from the warmth, I almost didn’t notice the face staring at me from the other side of my window. I clutched the towel tightly against me, and instinctively screamed.
Jesus, just like some ditzy horror-movie starlet.
To my credit, the involuntary yelp only lasted a second. The tirade of increasingly detailed obscenities lasted for much longer. The face disappeared instantly, ducking away in terror. I barely had time to register a set of puffy red cheeks, greasy stubble, and glazed little eyes beneath a ratty green beanie. Still dripping wet, I threw my jeans and T-shirt on, slipped into a pair of flip-flops, grabbed the biggest kitchen knife I could find, and stormed out of my front door.
Mrs. Winslow, the nice lady that lives on the second floor, who, thanks to a series of misunderstandings, thinks I’m some sort of raging psychopath, gave me an odd look as I sprinted past her, soaked, swearing, and brandishing a butcher knife over my head.
Add that to the list, I guess.
I kicked open the main gate to my apartment building, scaring a little white Chihuahua tied to the side mirror of a brand-new silver Ferrari.
Los Angeles.
I rounded the corner toward the side of the building where my bathroom window looked out, and saw the Peeping Tom.
“Oh, this is a bad day to be a pervert,” I said, advancing upon him, twirling my knife in tight little circles. “I hope you liked my tits, buddy: They’re the last things you’re ever going to see. I hope my tits keep you warm in hell.”
He wouldn’t turn around. His back was convulsing oddly, and he was taking quick little breaths.
Oh, God, was he…? Of course he was.
I took a step. Another. I wasn’t sure where I was going with this: I was pissed off, true, but I wasn’t “stab a hobo” pissed off. I didn’t have a plan, but that didn’t seem to matter. I was still holding a kitchen knife and approaching a masturbating bum in a dead-end side yard off Pico. Surely the situation would work itself out somehow.
I was just within stabbing range and felt the moment was coming to its head. I wasn’t going to knife the guy, but I was at least going to have to say something. Maybe cut him a little, just to keep him on his toes. I opened my mouth to speak, then the hobo’s stained canvas jacket abruptly ceased its bouncing. His rapid breathing halted. We were both still for a long moment, then he slumped to one side with a sickeningly fluid motion. I saw that one hand was covered in some kind of cancerous-looking sludge. It stank like burning plastic and flowed slowly outward from his body in a thick, rapidly congealing pool.
And just past him, shimmering in the air, was an angel.
I instantly knew it for what it was. I had seen one before, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t recall where or when. The angel was an intangible blur of pure luminescence, but within it, barely glimpsed fractals and impossible angles rotated, shifted, adjusted, and disappeared. The radiant blob was bleeding all color out of the world around it. The spaces surrounding the light were colorless. Wan and oversaturated. It was too bright to see, but also too bright to look away. The deeper I gazed into the heart of the angel, the more I became aware of a sound. It was almost too subtle to hear, but the second I noticed it, it became deafening. There was an orchestra of reverberating chimes harmonizing over a dull, roaring static. It was like a thousand beautiful voices singing to drown out a million more screaming. I blinked and the sound stopped. I opened my eyes and it came raging back.
Waves of nausea and panic washed through me. I dropped the knife, and the angel sharply adjusted its focus. I couldn’t pick out individual movements, but it seemed to be intent on the knife now, like it hadn’t noticed the blade before. It suddenly appeared above the knife. I backed away reflexively and lost a flip-flop to a patch of mud beneath a leaking garden hose.
Before I could blink, it was there in front of me again, now focused on the sandal.
I turned and ran, and somewhere far behind me, I heard a crackling, sucking noise, as if
some large, tacky mass was being scraped up from the ground.
I had a brief, scattershot flashback. Just still images. Polaroids taken of memories: torn little slippers with Corvettes on them. The taste of purple left on the wooden stick after the Popsicle was gone. My sister screaming. Flames on a set of paisley curtains. A noise like stepping on fleshy chewing gum.
I had heard that sound before.
FOUR
1977. New York City, New York. Carey.
The cops said Debbie tried to light a cigarette and her wig went up in flames. That’s how she died. Officially speaking.
Were cops this fucking stupid everywhere, or was it just in New York City?
I was trying to drink away the anger, but the parasites had been out in force ever since Jezza hooked up with the blond girl in the scuffed flannel shirt. They were not helping ease my jangled nerves.
“Like this?” the kid with the Elmer’s glue holding his hair into little spikes asked another.
“No, it’s more bouncy,” the other parasite, a pretty young thing with safety pins in her ears, corrected him, hopping up and down.
She was trying to teach him some kind of dance. It was apparently the punk thing to do now, this hopping up and down. She bounced for a few seconds, her tits heaving every which way.
“Like this?” Elmer Spikes asked again, shuffling from foot to foot like an angry ape.
“No,” Safety Pins answered, bouncing again, “watch me.”
“Like this?” Elmer Spikes asked when she was done, rocking back and forth on his heels.
He said it with such earnestness that I almost didn’t catch what he was doing.
“You just kind of hop, really quick; your feet leave the ground,” Safety Pins tried again, breasts jiggling frantically.
Elmer Spikes’s eyes never left her chest. I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.
“What?” Safety Pins asked, her chest still heaving.
A huge grin split Elmer Spikes’s face in half.
“Oh, god damn it.” She finally caught on, stopped mid-hop, and shoved Elmer Spikes down onto the tracks. “Real cute, asshole.”
We both laughed. When he picked himself up, I tossed Elmer Spikes a beer from the pack I’d been zealously guarding like a mother bear. He took it, popped it open, and drained the entire thing in three large gulps. I raised my eyebrows at him and tossed him another. Crack, hiss, three gulps, gone.
“Shit.” I elbowed Wash and gestured at Elmer Spikes. “This one does tricks.”
“Such as?” Wash asked.
Wash wore these thick glasses, and something about his bone structure—high cheeks, broad forehead—reminded you of some grim scientist in a sci-fi flick. He had this detached, formal way of speaking that made you think his ideas were worth listening to. Which usually got you in trouble: Wash was, without a doubt, the dumbest motherfucker I have ever met. I once saw him get caught in a subway turnstile. For ten solid minutes.
“Last one,” I said, tossing another beer to Elmer Spikes. He downed it in a second.
“Interesting,” Wash said, after a moment’s consideration; “you must be a hit with the ladies.”
The remark sounded like it might have been witty at first, but when you thought about it, it was completely moronic gibberish. That was Wash.
In response, Elmer Spikes emitted a belch so loud it echoed down the tunnel and rebounded, coming back to us as a guttural chorus. It was strangely beautiful.
“This place is cool,” he said, peering up and down the tracks. “What is it?”
“South Ferry Station.” Jezza instantly spoke up, eager to claim some sort of credit for the find by answering first. “Bobbies closed the inner-loop platform earlier this year. Blokes come round sometimes during the day, but she’s abandoned come night.”
“Bobbies are cops,” I told Jezza matter-of-factly. “The cops don’t close subway stations. For somebody that talks like a chimney sweep, you sure don’t know fuck-all about the English.”
“Piss off,” Jezza said, flipping me a peace sign.
I take it the gesture meant something different in England. You could give him all the shit you wanted, but as long as Jezza got the excuse to say “piss off” and flip you that “V”—which, I admit, he did perfectly, just like Johnny Rotten—he still felt like a rock star.
“Wash found it,” Randall clarified, and you could see Jezza’s lip curl at the stolen credit.
“Don’t worry,” Wash said authoritatively, “there won’t be any trains.”
“Well, yeah,” Elmer Spikes said, eyeballing Wash with confusion, “I figured.”
“The trains all filter through the outer loop now,” Wash continued, oblivious to Elmer Spikes’s sarcasm. “I know this, because my father used to drive the one line through here. I would sit with him sometimes.”
“Yeah?” Elmer Spikes laughed. “I know this because the rails are dusty, man.”
Wash, Randall, and I had grabbed prime spots under the only lights, a series of dim yellow bulbs in a narrow tile archway that only comfortably fit three. Jezza had elbowed his way up onto the platform a split second later, seeing it as some kind of hierarchal move. He grandly invited the girl in scuffed flannel up after him, like a spot on the cracked, filthy tile was some kind of honor. She was wiggling around on top of Jezza by way of thanks, which he seemed to be enjoying immensely.
The rest of the parasites were milling about a few feet below, down on top of the tracks. Elmer Spikes was trying, and failing, to balance on one foot. He was a pile of twigs in a torn T-shirt, and I think he was terrified of me. I don’t know why, but every time I asked him for something, he went sprinting off like an eager secretary. Safety Pins was kind of a poser. She was always telling us what was and wasn’t punk, but she was good-looking and never wore a bra, so she got to stay. There were two other girls with bright blue hair. Mostly kept to themselves, but they always had money to throw in for beer. We called them Thing 1 and Thing 2. And then there was a black kid with a Mohawk. His name was Matt.
You don’t need nicknames to remember a black punk. They’re like unicorns.
“Did anybody tell Mike where we were hanging out?” Safety Pins asked Thing 1.
“Nobody’s seen Mike in weeks,” Thing 2 chimed in; “he probably moved back home.”
“Man, everybody’s calling it quits. Denny, Brat, and The Spitter all split, too,” Safety Pins added, then, after a moment’s consideration: “Going home isn’t punk rock.”
“The Spitter?” I asked. “His name is The Spitter?”
“Yeah, he spits,” Thing 1 answered laconically. She was slightly better looking than Thing 2, but she was also kind of a smartass. Two plusses for her.
“He spits a lot,” Thing 2 added.
I should hook her up with Wash. They could have history’s stupidest babies.
“That’s what’s wrong with punks these days,” Jezza piped up: “got no manners.”
We all laughed, but Scuffed Flannel carried it just a bit too long. Made it awkward.
“How do you know they’re all moving home?” Randall asked. He was staring down the tunnel after Elmer Spikes, who was singing “(I Live for) Cars and Girls” to himself as he disappeared into the darkness.
“Where else would they be going?” Matt asked. He’d been eye-fucking my beer all night. I tossed him one. Not every day you get to share a brew with a unicorn.
But that’s four down to charity, Carey. Watch yourself.
“Could be on the nod,” Jezza guessed.
“Could be whoring out on the Loop,” I supplied.
“Could be dead,” Randall finished.
We all fell silent on that one, not because it was in bad taste, but because it had an awful measure of truth to it. Life was cheap in NYC lately. Everybody knew it. You could get blasted just trying to lift a measly six-pack from some Korean corner store. You could shoot dope and wander into traffic. You could say the wrong thing to the wrong bald guy with the wrong color lace
s on his boots and get yourself kicked to death by skinheads. You could go any number of ways, and it happened too often to bother reporting them all.
Or you could meet the tar men.
I knew Randall and Wash had seen them. I had a feeling Jezza had spotted them once or twice, too. But he wouldn’t admit to it. Still, whenever we talked about the tar men, he protested too much and too quickly—just a bit too eager to call us assholes. I wondered if any of the parasites had seen one. I considered asking them, but I knew they’d think I was crazy if I mentioned it.
“You parasites know about the tar men?” I asked—because fuck what they think about literally anything.
“Yeah, they’re great,” Safety Pins immediately said. “Their new stuff is bullshit, but their first album was really good.”
“God, you are so lucky you have rockin’ tits,” I said, shaking my head.
She looked confused.
“They’re not a band,” Randall clarified.
“Not this bollocks again!” Jezza cried, too loud. He had this crazy smile, like he was hearing the funniest thing in the world. “Every time we get a little pissed, you two knob-ends start telling bleedin’ ghost stories!”
Jezza looked around to the parasites, hoping to share a conspiratorial laugh. Thing 2 obliged him, while Safety Pins went quiet and flushed bright red, pissed at being caught in a lie. But Matt and Thing 1 were staring at the ground like it was their favorite TV show.
“I saw ’em.” Matt finally spoke. “People keep saying I was just drunk, and … well, fuck it: of course I was. But I saw ’em. I saw ’em take a girl down an alley, and when I looked after, they were gone. Thin air.”
“I’ve seen them, too,” Thing 1 said, her voice flat and distant. “Not up close or anything. Just shapes moving out by the waterfront. But you could tell they weren’t human, even from a distance. Too big, and they moved all wrong.”
“That ain’t it, either.” Matt spoke again, eager to be done with it. The words spilled out of him all at once: “There’s normal-looking people too. But they’re all wrong inside, just like Jenny said.”
The Unnoticeables Page 2