by phuc
"Oh, shit, don't fall down, Jack. Don't trip. Don't fuck up. And, for heaven's sake, I hope the flashlights don't go out."
"I've been trying not to think about that," I said. "All I've been thinking is, I ever get hold of the director of this picture, boy is he gonna take a bitch slapping."
"Oh, Jack," Reba said. "It hit me."
"What?"
"Those things. One of them hit my arm. It's bleeding."
"Get the light off yourself. Keep it searching. Keep moving."
"I shouldn't have come. I sounded so brave when I volunteered. But I shouldn't have come."
"Neither of us should have. Do you want to go back to the bus?"
"Yes. But guess what? I can’t see it anymore."
I looked back the way I thought we had come. And Reba was right. There was nothing but the dark to see.
The things moved around us as if we were the center of a hurricane. They swirled, crinkled and cracked, like old film negative being wadded. As we moved forward, flashlights extended, waving this way and that, the things scattered.
But it seemed to me they were getting a bit more testy, coming ever closer. Pretty soon, we both had a number of cuts from the edges of the things as they flittered by.
"Look," I said.
So she could look, I turned right and she followed around until I took her position and she took mine.
"My God," she said.
"Yep."
What she was looking at was a narrow metal bridge. A grillwork bridge. It went across into a darkness the flashlights would not cross.
The bridge spanned what looked to be an abyss.
"Let's scoot onto the bridge," I said. "One of us can point our light, get a better look at what's down there while the other watches for critters."
As we made our way onto the bridge we were confronted by a foul smell.
"God Almighty," I said. "We must be at Ed's sewage plant."
"Or a way out," Reba said. "It goes down a ways, but it also veers to the right there, to what could be Ed's rear end. Though, with just a flashlight, it's hard to tell what I'm seeing."
"Let's change roles," I said. "You flash about, I'll have a look."
Reba was right. The hole beneath the bridge dropped way down, and there were worker ladders on either side of the pit, something the robots used for maintenance. But there was a kind of tunnel that went off to the right. I noticed too that it was moving. As I watched, it irised open, then closed. Then repeated itself. Again and again.
It was a sphincter. I saw a mass of something dark rise up from the pit and reach the tunnel, flow into it as if sucked, and disappear.
I lifted my light and joined Reba in flashing mine about.
"I think it's a sphincter that exits Ed's waste. We might could get out that way."
"Boy, won't that be shitty?" Reba said.
"Frankly, I don't see how we can do it. Not and live."
"Grace is right though. We have to try something. We can't just wait here. We'll die anyway. I'd rather go out trying."
"I could go down there and investigate. I think I can swing over the bridge and get closer for a look. Can you stand being here by yourself?"
"Oh, Jesus...Make it quick as you can."
"Kiss me," I said. She did. Quickly. I went to the base of the bridge and started climbing over. Reba's light hit me.
"Shadow," she said.
I jerked my head and my light. My carnivorous shadow friend fluttered away from me.
I got my foot on the ladder and starred climbing down. It was hard to do with my flashlight, and I knew if I dropped it, I was dead meat. Maybe the things wouldn't come down here, but even still, if I dropped the light, when I went up, they'd be waiting.
The deeper I went the stinkier it got.
What had seemed like depth from the bridge, darkness in the light, was something moving, gurgling, and stinking.
Ed functioned as a fish, but had never been completed. Like Bjoe said, someone forgot, or the mechanisms just played out too soon. Still, Ed was working all right, and his innards were working satisfactorily enough to manufacture what we in the bathroom business (which is pretty much all of us), would describe as pure-de-ole-identifiable-for-a-fact—
you-bet-your-smelly-ass —
S-H-I-T.
No question there.
13
I shined my light down there. The tunnel was pulsing, sucking in that nasty goo. I thought, well, I die this way, it isn't a death I ever expected. It was, to put it mildly, a unique way to go. Had to be better than cancer or some sort of horrid disease, going slow, like being gummed to death by protein-deprived octogenarians.
In a way, it was no less dignified than aging and lying in your own shit and being eaten away slowly from the inside. Of course, if I were home, who was to say I wouldn't just die quick of a heart attack at the age of eighty while in bed with a twenty-five year old hooker with her little finger crooked up my ass.
So, that thinking business, sometimes it was better not to do too much of it. It could get you in trouble.
I was pondering this to the point of almost feeling that hooker's little finger in my tail, when suddenly, above me, there was light.
Not heavenly light, but light. And it was too much light for Reba's flashlight. Light from a distance, filtered through something the consistency of a gunnysack. It held for a long moment, then went out.
"The bus," Reba said. "Oh, God, Jack, come up."
I carefully padded my way up the shit-slick ladder onto the bridge, somehow maintaining my grip on the flashlight.
When I was standing beside her, she said, "Wait."
I waited. The birth of the universe couldn't have been any slower than that wait.
Then, the light.
When the beams hit, the darkness shredded like something dark tossed into a fan. There was a sound like a baseball card in bicycle spokes, the bicycle being peddled fast.
"The darkness," Reba said. "It's absolutely alive with them."
"They may be the dark," I said.
When the bus's head beams went out, I made a swooping movement with my light and Reba flashed hers about too. After a moment, I used the light to nab the direction of the bus, though I couldn't actually see it in my feeble beam, and pulled the flashlight over my shoulder. I did this repeatedly, signaling for them to come.
"Oh, Jack, behind you."
I turned with the light. The darkness sucked back a bit, the bridge trembled.
"Sorry," Reba said. "I had the light on it, but it was still coming."
"They're not as afraid now," I said. "They're getting brave."
"Look."
We could see from a great distance the bus beams moving toward us, two head lamps that looked to be the size of the tips of our thumbs.
Seeing the light grow and brighten was as hypnotic to us as it might have been to a moth.
Soon, we stood on the bridge in a bath of yellow. It was heartening.
We worked our way back to the bus, and to get in the door, we had to step momentarily out of the glow of the bus's head beams and into shadow. Our flashlights seemed less bright than before, and I could feel those things all around us, closer, touching, almost tasting us. Steve, sitting in the driver's seat, worked the door lever and let us in. As the door slammed behind us, Steve, eyes wide, said, "You don't want to know what was right behind you, almost up your asses."
Inside, everyone gathered around, and we told what had happened. Steve drove the bus right up to the edge of the divide. He let the bus idle. The lights stuck across the chasm like a golden honey bridge.
"It's ugly down there," I said. "Once you go in, you might be wadded up with the turds. If you aren't, you'll be stuffed with turds, won't be able to breathe. 1 don't see a way to make it work."
"We haven't got but one choice," James said. "We got to go back into the light. Maybe Bjoe will let us stay with him. He might do that. Or we have to fight him. Hell, Grace can kick Bjoe to death. We can become
the leaders. We can't get out without being killed, and we can't stay back here in shadow, so seems to me, that's the only way to go."
"In case you haven't noticed," I said, "we're a little outnumbered. Not even Grace can fight all of them, Not even with our help."
"Bjoe might listen to reason," James said. "I mean, we'll be in the bus. We'd have some protection, and we could fight them if they try and come in. I think we got a better chance that way instead of waiting for our fucking ears to pop, diving into that shit and hoping we aren't made into turds or stuffed with them."
"He's got a point," Homer said.
"Much as I hate to admit it, he does," Grace said. "But I'm not big on going back. A place I've already been that isn't good, doesn't seem worth going back to."
"Fucking news flash," James said. "We've already been here, too, and it ain't for shit."
Steve had killed the engine while we were talking, now he turned the starter and fired it up again.
"Hey, man," I said, "what's the scoop?"
"I don't want to go back," Steve said, "and we're at the end of the line here, so why don't we go forward?"
"You been sniffing glue, doing the bag?" James said.
"Do you feel it?" Steve said.
I had, but it hadn't really registered. "We're surfacing."
Everyone was silent for a moment, then Homer said, "Yeah. We are. But for how long? It may have been kind of my idea, but I'm liking it less all the time."
"We can't go back," Steve said. "There's only one place to go...Into the shit."
"Oh, man," James said, "you don't mean it?"
"The bus is our only protection," Steve said. "It might survive the process."
"And it if does," Homer said, "we'll squirt out the fish's ass and into a whole hell of a lot of deep water. We'll sink like a goddamn brick tied to an anvil tied to a Cadillac transmission."
"We have to be ready," Steve said.
"What the fuck does that mean?" James said.
"When we shoot out — "
"—you mean if we shoot out. And if we do, we'll sink, like the way Homer said."
" — we have to be ready to open windows. They slide down, so the water pressure ought to allow that. We slide them down, and we swim out."
"Oh, that's a good plan," Homer said. "And why don't we find something heavy to tie to our dicks to make it just a little fucking harder?"
"We haven't got much time," Steve said. "My ears are clearing. We're reaching the surface."
"Count my ass out," James said. "Give me a flashlight. I'll take my chances back with the cannibals."
"It's now or never, folks," Steve said.
I gave James my flashlight, said, "Good luck, man."
"It would be best if we all went back," he said. "Best all around."
"Not gonna happen," Grace said.
Steve opened the door as James turned on the flashlight.
"Goodbye, asshole." Steve said.
"You're all gonna do this?" James said.
"I guess we are," Grace said. "Anyone that isn't, go now."
"I'm crazy, but I'm sticking," Homer said.
The rest of us nodded.
"Goodbye, dumb shits," James said, waved the beam at the pulsating shadows in the door, made them scamper.
He went out.
Steve closed the door.
We moved to the back of the bus and watched James and his light. Actually, just the light.
The shadows were too thick to see anything else. The light bobbed quickly as it raced away from us.
"Think he'll make it?" Homer said.
"He can't make it either way," Grace said, fastening the back window down tight. "If those shadows don't get him, the dinner bell is waiting for him on the bright side. Frankly, I don't care if they use his balls for tennis. He made his own goddamn bed, now let him lie in it."
"I hate to just let him go like that," Homer said. "I mean, I did let him fuck me in the ass.
It wasn't that much fun, really, but I let him. I feel like me and my ass owe him something."
"You've heard my thoughts on the matter," Grace said. "I'm all done thinking about him.
Your ears still popping, Steve? I can't feel it."
"I think our buddy has surfaced."
"I think it's time to do the big deed, baby," Grace said, Steve made with a wild Rebel yell that shook me to my bones.
"My mama always said I was a little turd," Reba said, as we filed into a seat next to one another, our hands gripping the seat in front of us. "I guess she was right."
"Grab hold of something, and good luck to us all," Steve said, and with the beams on high, a fresh yell on his lips, he punched the gas and we jolted forward, and Reba sang at the top of her lungs: "We all live in a yellow submarine."
"With bad insulation," I said.
PART 4
In which a yellow school bus is the vehicle for a bizarre exit and becomes a kind of projectile turd that won't float. The great shining bridge is seen again. Ghosting is experienced. Dog urine fruit is digested. Chicken Little Rules. Toys are found.
1
Let me tell you, time can stand still.
It stood still as the bus went over the lip of the shitter. I envisioned us perched on the edge of a giant, dark toilet bowl full of someone's little dividend, and we were about to dive in as if we had good sense. Shit-busters to the rescue.
Our own rescue, we hoped.
But, BAM. There we were, on the lip, frozen in time.
We just hung there.
Or so it seemed.
Then all of time gathered up and pushed, and we came unglued.
The bus, a long brightly-lit, yellow, pontooned turd, dripped over the edge and took just two days south of forever before it hit that mess.
I was in my seat, facing down at the dark doom below us, my butt hole biting at the upholstery, clutching the seat in front of me so hard my fingers ached.
And the shit hit the windshield. Hard.
I thought:
With our luck the windshield will blow and that pile of fish turds will smash us all the way to the back of the bus, fill our lungs with digested refuse, then, if we have a chance to live, if any one of us might be a survivor, that fish's asshole will chew us up like a mole in a lawn mower, and out we will go.
Down we went and the light was extinguished by the black goo, and I could feel Reba next to me, but couldn't see her. I could hear her breathing hard, and there was a sensation of being like a BB sinking down into a vat of chocolate pudding, minus the nice smell and the fine taste.
Then the bus started to twist and turn, and I knew it was that weird digestion process that the Powers That Be had constructed, maybe left unfinished. The bus began to spin, and next thing I knew I was knocked into Reba hard. Was bouncing about the bus like a ricochet shot. The smell was terrible, and I could feel that mess on my hands, which meant it was easing in through the cracks in the windows and the doors, had possibly shoved through the window Grace had latched up in back.
But, no, I consoled myself. If that had happened, the bus would be full of that nasty stuff.
Then, as if thought were the catalyst, 1 felt the horrid mess press up against me like foam, filling my nostrils with its stench, pushing me either forward or backward, down the aisle.
I was uncertain which, though I could feel myself bouncing between the seats. There was loud crunching sound, like a smart ass wadding up an aluminum soft drink can, and someone screamed, a loud horrible scream that could not be identified as man or woman.
Then I was pushed up against what I realize now was the windshield. The shit shoved me.
The windshield made a cracking sound, and I blacked out. But the blackness into which my mind fell couldn't have been any blacker than the world that was already around me.
I came awake.
I was surprised at that.
I was still alive. I could still breathe.
But I was surrounded by wetness. Not the thick mess that I
had felt before, but wetness. I was bobbing about in the water and 1 could see the water rippling and there was great white foam, and sticking out of the foam was the nose of the bus, the windshield gone, the roof crushed in, the front right tire blown.
I had been shoved through the windshield, and the bus had shot to the surface, if ever so briefly. Perhaps the pontoons (which had come loose of the bus) had done it, or as we went into the fish's ass sphincter and he let us fly, the force of it had driven us out and up.
Trapped air in the bus maybe. I didn't know. In that moment, nothing made sense.
Reba was clinging to the front of the bus. I could see her pretty well lying in a pool of what I realized was moonlight, silver as mercury. I could see a dark patch on her face where blood had bloomed like a flower; the moonlight made it appear to be a large black rose.
She clung to the bumper, lay across the hood in what could only be described as a dazed state. She looked in my direction, but I couldn't tell if she was seeing me or not. She lifted her head a little, like a turtle sunning itself on a rock, then lowered her head against the bus, continued to cling.
The bus started down, quickly. I tried to yell Reba's name, beg her to let go, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. The water foamed around the bus, churned the fish turds that had come up with it, then the bus dove. Water lapped over Reba and rushed into where the windshield had been, then it was gone, taking Reba with it, leaving only a wide band of chrome-colored ripples that pushed me up and down in the water like a fisherman's cork.
I dove after the bus, but I was too weak. My lungs wouldn't hold the air I had swallowed.
It was so dark I couldn't see a thing below. Huge turds bounced against me.
There was nothing I could do.
I fought my way to the surface, screamed as I broke the roof of the water and saw the moon above me. I began to cry. I felt something touch me. A vast patch of water disappeared, and in its place was a great gray wall.
The wall rose higher.
And higher.
It was Ed swimming by.
He dove. The dive pulled me under. I fought with everything 1 had to make the surface, even ended up putting my foot on Ed's back and shoving off.