The Book of Apex: Volume 2 of Apex Magazine

by Jason Sizemore

  It took some doing, but I managed to get to the top of a cinderblock wall and scout out the back garden of the townhouse, a little yard and a set of wooden stairs that led to a backdoor with a little curtained window that looked promising.

  The next week we went for coffee again.

  “Do you like these?” She twisted her foot in the air, the heels on her new shoes were black but the soles were red, almost fuchsia. “Christian Louboutins. Aren’t they gorgeous?”

  “You don’t come to group any more,” I said, admiring her foot, the shoe.

  “I don’t, do I?” She smiled.

  “No.”

  “I think it’s sometimes healthier to give in to temptation.” She picked up her tea and sniffed it, looked at me through the steam. “Otherwise, Jeremy, what’s the point of living at all?”

  Klein had told me in that first week of joining the Weekday Obsessives that my issue wasn’t that I was obsessed with feet, but that I depersonalized. I could focus on that one part of a woman’s anatomy so intently that the rest of her went away, the blood stopped flowing beneath the skin, it turned to art, stone, into an object. I supposed he was right.

  I knew he was right.

  I went over the wall that night, crossed the garden as quietly as I could and busted the little window out, the whole time hoping it wasn’t dead bolted, or if it was, had the key sticking out of the lock like people do when they think they’re safe in their own homes.

  It wasn’t a deadbolt and I was over and in before the glass hit the floor, though that’s an exaggeration, obviously.

  I stood in the small kitchen and waited. Listening for the sounds of a house asleep, clocks ticking, wood settling in the humidity, refrigerator humming, and air whistling through the vents. Moonlight shone through the windows and caught on row upon row of seaweed bulbs hanging from a rack instead of pans, filling the air with salt and sludge and the faint smell of fish.

  Satisfied that Beverly was asleep, I crept through the first floor to the stair hall and took the steps two at a time, always at the edges, never the center where I’d be sure to hit a weak spot and split a creak through the air as loud as a cat screech.

  At this point, you’re probably figuring that rap the cops had on me back in my Licker days was probably dead on and you’d be right, a thief’s a thief and the skills don’t go away, they just get used for other purposes.

  I listened again at the second floor landing.

  This time a slow roll of waves added to the quiet sough. A noise machine, I figured; most of the ‘Neathers couldn’t sleep without them. Beverly would be no exception. It sounded like it was coming from the back of the third floor. I figured I was right, as I rounded the banister on the third landing and heard those waves crashing louder from the furthest doorway, open as it was. On the opposite side toward the front of the house, another door, the one to the red room, I presumed, was closed and, oddly enough, padlocked.

  I looked at the floor, expecting to see a carpet but was met with shiny hardwood. I’m pretty sure I flinched. Hard wood, especially old wood such as Beverly’s squeaked something fierce and you never could tell where it would be the worst.

  They smelled of orange oil and rubber, but creaked less snaking across them with my whole body. The closer I crouched toward it, the more I imagined the woman’s feet padding across it, pressing her essence into the grooves, pivoting, grinding it in.

  I pulled myself forward, slipping across the threshold and into Beverly’s dark bedroom. Her breathing was soft and faint, a pale whistle of life in an otherwise still space. The ocean sounds were louder there, and in the distance of the recording, seagull caws, undercurrent rolls.

  It was quite soothing.

  The bed had no footboard and I wondered why I’d imagined one there. It was a cheap metal bed frame, but Beverly had applied care to her decorating, covering the box springs with a coordinating sheet. It was funny what you noticed crawling around on the floor of someone else’s home.

  I began to rear up, lifting myself off my belly to get a better look, and when I did, like a miracle, Beverly’s foot flounced from under the comforter and dangled into the air to the side of the mattress. I had to clamp a hand across my mouth to keep from crying out.

  The foot’s every curve and hollow was like fine statuary. Important. Its toes, the most perfect semblance of ovals ever assembled. Like five green sweet peas lined up in an open shell. I realized my breath was quickening, heaving, and steeled myself, holding it for a moment to calm down before the excitement bolted through me to my groin and I ended up pole vaulting straight off that floor.

  I pushed myself forward until I was inches away and sniffed. The sea. Sweat. Street grime. Something else. Something sweet. My jaw unhinged, my tongue lolled and I began to feel faint. I touched the tip of my tongue to her heel, to her Plantar Fascia to be exact, and tasted everything I’d smelled and more.

  Her foot was cold and damp and twitched as I slid the whole of my tongue along its arch, fluttered around the soft pillows of her toes. I surrounded the big toe with my cheeks dragging on it, suckling it like a nipple.

  Ecstacy.

  Without even realizing I’d passed out, I regained consciousness in a room the color of blood, the carpet was red too, so I figured it was the one I’d passed on the way to Beverly’s bedroom, the blood red flicker from the street. It took a moment to realize I’d been restrained while I was passed out, before my eyelids broke free of their crusts. I was stuck to a straight-backed and rather uncomfortable chair by wide military-style belts, double notched and tight, my wrists strapped to the arms with the kind of rubber tubing heroin addicts tie-off with.

  “Beverly?” I asked, and immediately heard movement behind me, the back of her hand on my cheek.

  “Hello, Jeremy.” She walked around to the front of the chair and grinned. “I was hoping that you’d come, but I wasn’t sure if it was really you creeping through my house in the middle of the night.”

  She was talking like she’d set this whole thing up.

  “Really? Me? What are you talking about?” I grinned awkwardly, shaking my head from side to side too quickly.

  “Oh, Jeremy.” Beverly tilted her head and leaned in clutching my jaw and stopping my nervous tic dead. “You’re special and you know it. We actually have a lot in common, you and I.”

  I pulled against the straps. “Are these really necessary, Beverly?”

  She ignored the question. “You see, I’m not really a shopping addict.” She glanced down at my hands, ran her fingers across my wrists, the straps, tickled the tops of my fingers until the tiny hairs on them stood on end. “I love hands.”

  I saw her expression, then the drugged haze of her eyelids, the tip of her tongue protruding from between her evergreen lips.

  She was in heaven.

  My mind traveled back to our first meeting, her foot protruding into the light like a scout, her stories of shoes, her ankle popping, the blatant obviousness of the seduction.

  I was the fool.

  I was the prey.

  “When I heard you shuffling in the hallway, I knew I’d found you and then, when you licked my foot…” Her eyes closed and her mouth spread open in an ecstatic smile. “I thought I couldn’t wait. I thought I’d touch you then and there. Put you in my mouth.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you Klein…” I nodded to the man and looked him square in the eye. “Sitting there tied up and just barely comprehending what the hell was going on, when she said those words I was like instantly aroused. It didn’t matter to me that she’d trapped me. For a second, I thought it was the answer. This woman who really got me, ‘cause she knew what I went through everyday. She had the same struggles.”

  “Sounds perfect, except…” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Except…”

  “Go on.” Klein’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  Biting the end of one of the bandages, I began to unravel the mitt on my right hand, circling it off with
the same motion a carnie employs to collect cotton candy, though there’d be no sweetness at the end of this tale.

  None at all.

  Beverly crouched in front of me, her eyes level with the tips of my fingers. “You’re The Licker. I thought you were an urban legend, one of those stories.” Her eyebrow arched. “And then I dug a little deeper. Got the help of some research librarians, newspaper microfiche, the Internet. I was so happy the night we went for coffee. Nearly skipped all the way home. Might have…” she glanced up at my face. “If I didn’t suspect you were following me.”

  “I was,” I agreed, nodding. What was the point of lying to someone like Beverly, those green eyes like mirrors of my own.

  She touched the tips of my index fingers with hers. “You have lovely fingers, Jeremy. Can you ball them into fists for me, I love the way a fist looks, too.” She giggled excitedly.

  I clenched them for her into thick solid balls and her head lolled on her shoulder, she sighed.

  “You can let me out of this chair, Beverly. I’ll let you do whatever you want with my hands. You can touch them, hold them…lick them, even.”

  I thought I was being enticing, and I’m certain I saw a shiver roll through her at the idea but she stood instead and paced the room. It was then I remembered the feeling of light-headedness that hit me the moment I tasted the sweet sea foam of sweat on her skin.

  Drugged.

  Beverly was toxic or something. Like one of those Japanese puffer fish that kill an unspecified number of people in sushi restaurants every year. If she licked me wouldn’t I pass out again? Maybe die this time?

  “Wait a minute, Beverly. You drugged me!” I shouted.

  She shrugged sweetly, her face apologetic. “I did. I’m so sorry, Jerry.”

  “It’s Jeremy!” I screamed, panicked.

  She was looking at my fingers again, dreamy. She lifted her eyes to mine. “Hmm?”

  “You’re not sorry.” I pulled against the straps, the rubber tubing, bucking in the chair, hoping to unsettle it, bust it apart, get out of there. But it didn’t move. Not an inch.

  “I’m not?” She asked, rolling up her sleeves. “I’m not sorry?”

  Blistered bubbles of milky fluid sat atop her flesh like rows of lime candy dots.

  Beverly ran her fingers across the tops of them and a few began to pop, sink in and dribble tiny rivulets of foam down her arms. She moved toward me.

  “No. You’re not. What are you doing, Beverly?” My heart was beating out of my chest. I was certain she was planning to kill me.

  But as I opened my mouth to protest some more, she rushed forward and pressed her arm up to my lips, the fluid burst from her, spraying my face, up inside my nostrils and across my tongue. Filling me with a sour fishiness.

  I gagged. Choked on the sea foam in my throat.

  She backed away, picked up a towel from a nearby dresser, and rubbed her arms dry. “It’s not really a poison, Jeremy. It’s more like medicine. It’ll just make you sleepy as can be.”

  Her voice was as sweet and velvety as the first time I heard it.

  She crouched in front of me, eying my fingers with what I realized for the first time wasn’t lust. It was something else. Against my will, my eyelids started to droop.

  Beverly reached up and dabbed a thin bead of drool from the corner of her mouth.

  It was hunger.

  “I must have passed out because the last thing I remember was her opening her mouth wide, those teeth shimmering and sharp. She hovered a moment and held my ring finger between hers and then snapped down on it, ravenously. “I’d nearly finished unrolling the bandage for the group and when it fell away, followed by the thick pads of gauze pink with blood, the gasps were audible.

  “Jesus Christ Jerry,” Klein said, face screwed up with disgust.

  I held out my fingerless fist to the group, swollen and bruised. Black knots of stitching protruded from each oozing knuckle like spider legs reaching out of the seafoam green infection that settled there.

  “I’d show you the other one, but I think you get the idea.”

  “It’s not so bad,” a man in a loud bowling shirt said, flinching. Relatively new to the group, Mellon proved himself a compulsive liar in the first minute. “Lots of chicks dig that kind of thing.” And a sex addict.

  Klein lit his pipe and grimaced. “I’m gonna have to talk to Al about this.”

  “I’m countin’ on it,” I said.

  “Not bad at all.” Fatty agreed, putting his donut back onto his dry napkin and kicking it behind the leg of his chair. I thought I heard him counting the stitches.

  “It’s definitely fine.” Rosa had dropped her knitting into her basket and clicked an imaginary mouse against her thigh.

  Dixon’s eyes were wide open, fingers up against a store window that wasn’t there. He chewed at his lip. “When it heals it’ll be as smooth as plastic, you’ll see.”

  “Yeah sure, Dixon.” I turned to the group leader, “And, Klein, when you talk to Al…”

  The man shook his head, looked away.

  “Tell him to put me away for a long time. A very long time.”

  THE LAST STAND OF

  THE ANT MAKER

  Paul Jessup

  1

  When Benjamin was a little boy he painted things. Mostly small things. Like tiny houses. Or dinosaur kits. Or invisible men. He liked using the small brushes. Painting tiny, intricate details.

  His hand would cramp up by the end of the day. Painful. Claw shaped. He liked the way this felt. It felt like a good day’s work. He would line up his tiny pieces of art and look at them. Hand clawed up. Smiling. His room smelling of paint fumes.

  He didn’t have any friends. He didn’t like to read, watch television, play video games. In school he daydreamed about painting. His teachers thought he was slow. He didn’t go near anyone. Could not relate to them.

  His mind focused on his hobby. It was all consuming.

  2

  You would think that an older Benjamin would be different. That he would work, joke around with colleagues. Go to the bar after a hard day at the office. Hit on the waitresses. Make jokes. Get married, even. Have a few kids, even. Forget all about painting.

  It actually got worse. His mother died. Cancer. Isn’t it always? After that he got the house. All paid off. He only worked when he needed food. And that he bought in cans by the truckload.

  He rarely had to work. Instead, he painted. His obsession had gotten more distinct. More of a laser point in the darkness. Ants.

  At first he bought model kits through the mail. Ordered them on the internet. That wasn’t enough. He began to make his own. Taking apart pieces of his house. Tearing off chunks of wall. Chiseling off chunks of concrete steps. Making little ant bodies, little ant heads. His fingers cramping. Always cramping. As he molded. As he painted.

  He would sit in his basement. A can of fruit open on his lap. A spoon resting plainly. Fine and tiny brush pushed into cramped claw fingers. Painting. Intricate designs. War ants. Love ants. Fire ants. Firefighter ants. Giant ants. Tiny ants. Shaman ants. God of the ants.

  The basement was filled with ants. It was like his own ant farm. Made large.

  3

  He made highways for them. Byways for them. All the while not noticing that the plants grew outside of his basement window. Not noticing the yellow spores covering it. Tapping against it. Like fingers. Rat-tat tapping.

  He built ant houses. Ant shrines. Ant cities on an ant hill. Ant bonfires. Ant beaches. And ant graveyards for those who died during the great ant civil war.

  Eventually, he had to go upstairs and find supplies. To make more ants. To make more houses, homes, tunnels. To enhance the life of those he created. He was a good god. A good maker. A benign and loving deity. Whenever an ant died, he wept. They died frequently. Of war, of plague. The ant doctors and the ant scientists tried to stop it. To hold back death.

  Not even he could do that. Not even the ant maker could hold off d
eath.

  4

  There was a girl. Isn’t there always? She was eighteen when he first met her. She moved in. Next door. With her husband, Gary. Gary drove a truck. Ate baked beans from a can. She was pregnant. Always pregnant. Although they never seemed to have any kids.

  Benjamin knows he would’ve noticed kids. Kids are loud. Kids destroy. They would’ve gotten into his house. Gotten to his ants and killed them. Killed them all. He would’ve had to make a mass grave. One the size of his whole backyard.

  Thankfully, they did not have kids.

  The girl’s name was Emily. She had short black hair. Benjamin thought she was pretty. Every once in a while, she would be bored. Come over and try to talk to him. To make conversation. Benjamin wasn’t good at conversation.

  All he wanted to do was talk about his ants. She didn’t seem to mind. And she was pretty. Benjamin liked her.

  5

  He didn’t like Gary. Her husband drank. A lot. Called Benjamin “That fucking ‘tard monkey next door.” He would pat his round stomach. Scratch his bearded face. Belch. Laugh.

  No, no. Benjamin didn’t like him.

  6

  Benjamin liked lists. Lists and ants and Emily. Lists were perfect. Were cathartic. They helped him organize. He had boxes of lists. Shoved throughout the house.

  One list he had was very important. It was a daily list. Each day, marked down. Day, month, year. And beside it was an observation. One that bothered Benjamin.

  The plants were growing.

  It bothered him so much that he only took notice of it once a day. First thing in the morning. Before the sun came up. When the plants were still sleeping. He would look out the windows. Measure them with his eyes. Mark down their height on his list.

  Then he would be back making ants.

  7

  Emily was a gardener. When she would stop by to talk to Benjamin she would have dirt on her hands. Under her nails. Sweat on her brow. Sometimes, she would bring him food. Garlic. Things of that sort. Grown in the garden.