Mad Stacks: Story Collection Box Set

by Scott Nicholson

  As long as Wayne was around the church, his soul was safe.

  “Fish,” Jerry said, motioning him past the fellowship hall. The sanctuary was dark and empty, the pews were comprised of second-hand movie theater seats, and the pulpit was made of particle board. But the sacred space had nothing to offer Wayne. His heart was set on sardines at the moment.

  Jerry was breathing hard by the time he reached the van. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and glanced at the encroaching dusk, wondering if the Lord was looking down and noticing. Jerry said a quick prayer. Nothing fancy, just a fleeting but sincere word of thanks. Warmth filled him. As a humble servant of the Lord, this moment was satisfaction enough.

  The side street was empty, as it usually was after the banquet table had been picked clean. Jerry opened the rear door to the van. He reached among the shelves, but the can had slid free and rolled beyond his grasp. He was too heavy to climb in, and he cursed the weakness that had led to his current condition.

  “Temptation, Wayne,” Jerry said. “Even the best among us are mortal after all.”

  Wayne nodded, shining eyes fixed on the can of fish. His hand trembled slightly, and Jerry wondered if he’d be able to accept charity were the situations reversed, or if his pride would stand in the way. Perhaps with a little false pride, weight wouldn’t be a problem.

  This life might be easier, certainly, but not the next.

  Jerry tried to lift his leg and rest his knee on the bumper. The movement caused his pants to pinch a roll of flesh. He looked around for something he could use to drag the can toward him.

  He found the tire iron wedged into a back corner and leaned forward to rake at the can, but it still proved elusive. Before he could search for another tool, Wayne sprang past him and scrambled into the back of the van, skittering across the floor on all fours like an insect. He clutched the can and held it to his chest, grinning as he made his way back to Jerry.

  Jerry brought the tire iron down on Wayne’s forehead with all the force of his substantial mass.

  Bone cracked. The can flew from Wayne’s hand and landed near its original location. Wayne’s grin froze as the light slid from his vacant eyes, and he flopped forward, one hand dangling out of the van. Jerry nudged it inside with the tire iron and closed the door.

  Another lost soul. Adrift, homeless, with no one to notice his comings and goings.

  Better for everyone this way.

  When he returned to the banquet table, Anne was washing up. “Good attendance tonight,” Anne said. “Lots of families.”

  “That man in glasses, he looked alone,” Jerry said. “Out of place.”

  “Talk to him tomorrow night and see if we can help bring him to the Lord,” Anne said, showing her small, bright teeth.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “We have donation pick-ups on the south side tomorrow,” she said.

  “Assuming the van doesn’t break down.”

  “Have faith, honey.”

  He did. The Lord had always provided in the past, and there was no reason to believe the bounty and abundance would fade.

  They finished wiping down the counters, then heaved themselves into the van and drove to their mobile home in the outskirts. Jerry nursed the van along, staying just under the speed limit. His stomach was rumbling like the exhaust that blatted between the rust holes in the muffler. He was ready for dinner.

  “Do you think the Lord approves, honey?” Anne asked as they parked, aware of the hard work ahead and the bedtime prayers to follow.

  “The Good Book calls for us to be fishers of men,” he said.

  “And cast our bread upon the waters?”

  “Pray that the van holds up,” Jerry said. “Tomorrow we’ll need more bait.”

  The next day’s sausage was red and stringy, but Wayne nourished all the same.

  The End

  Missing Pieces Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  DARKER WITH THE DAY

  By Scott Nicholson

  It’s black, and I remember now.

  No, that’s not right. I remember before. Not now.

  I remember the laboratory, the fire, the war, and I had a name. It was a long name. Lt. John Sorenson.

  And I can only remember it after I have fed, and the light of wisdom flows through me.

  So thank you, Corporal. Whatever your name is. Maybe they’ll collect your bones and put you in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  And bless this meal, O Lord, that I have received from your bounty. Except maybe I shouldn’t say Grace, no prayers for the thoughts that have returned. Better to be confused than to see all things clearly, especially when my hands are red and my skin is gray and my heart is an open sore.

  The street smells of gasoline and smoke and broken things. If not for the odor of meat on my face, I could find my way home. Because home is where you go when you have trouble, home is where the door protects you, home is where she is.

  John Sorenson. A name too good for the thing I have become.

  John was the one testing the retroviral serum—a trial so obscene it had to be sequestered in a private D.C. lab. Top secret, Capt. Hayden said. In the chain of command, the lower ranks never ask questions. Right, Corporal?

  At ease, Soldier. You have served.

  So John asked no questions when ordered to inject the serum into corpses. Did you, John?

  It seemed like an exercise in futility, because everyone knew dead people couldn’t pump blood through their veins. But when the first one began stirring, when the lump under the sheet twitched on its steel trolley, even Hayden was shocked. Humans had meddled in the domain of God, and we know the consequences of such vanity. But it was an act of love as much as it was defiance, and love is all we have left now.

  And I wanted to tell her about the mystic wonder we had discovered, but others found it abhorrent and sacrilegious. The lab exploded. Domestic terrorists, probably. Either way, Pakistan took the blame, eager to offend the country that had been amassing troops at its borders. But that wasn’t the worst thing to come from the attack on the lab. Subject Thirty-Seven shambled out of the observation room when the glass shattered. Thirty-seven got Hayden, latched onto his neck while he was stunned. I tried to help, and that’s when it got me.

  That’s when this got me.

  I remember it all, now that my belly is full and my brain is working again. I remember calling her and telling her to take Dolores and run. Drive for the cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains. Wait until I get there.

  I’m not there yet. The war got here first.

  But I keep my promises. When you love someone, you owe them that much.

  And so it’s time to leave this cold room and this stack of wet bones. Time to walk the dark and go home.

  The air outside the room is different. I can’t taste it or breathe it, but I feel it on my face. The cruelty of my condition is that I know exactly what I’m missing. I am aware my heart no longer beats, though my heart still holds her face. It is a love that surpasseth all understanding.

  The night is lit by distant fires, the hell of war licking the horizon. Behind the gates I feel them moving. If my belly were empty, I would go to them, love them, use them. But if I were hungry, I wouldn’t know it. I’d forget again, and then I would be like Subject Thirty-Seven, nothing but a mouth on legs. Eating without conscience or consciousness, nature running in reverse. No chain of command, no law except supply and demand. But my demand has been supplied, and so I move through the dark, onward, the shapes in the shadows nothing to me now, his flesh thick on my swollen tongue.

  The city is shattered, no electricity, the streets clogged with silent hunks of wheeled steel. Even the sirens have gone quiet amid the low rumble of falling buildings. The supper of soldier sits heavy in my gut, infectious acid dissolving the stray bones. I’m not sure how many I have eaten since I stopped being John Sorenson, but the war has seeped deeper and the nights stretch longer and I’m still
miles from her.

  I pass a dog in a puddle, the milk of the moon reflecting on the water. It paws at the pavement, whimpering, seeking traction, but the weight of its useless back legs holds it down. I ate a dog once, or maybe twice, when the need came on. The communions are lost in the haze of fever and hunger, but the rich, coppery nutrient and the vibrant twitch of living flesh always jolt me to memory and a sick mockery of life.

  Waking from rapture to a deeper rapture.

  And my fingers clutching the entrails of prey.

  Dogs...and sometimes people.

  Like the corporal, like those who even now scurry behind the walls and inside buildings, knowing my kind is out in the streets. Our kind.

  I have already fed, so I leave the dog to its futile struggle. Maybe it will feed another, and that subject will remember its own life and accept the joy of its new existence.

  In some ways, it’s more honest than my previous life, one of brass tacks and polished shoes and shaves and salutes. A world of us against them, with the lines ever shifting toward whatever best served those in power. I never questioned that structure, not then, not as an army biologist, a family man, a God-fearing member of the human race.

  It took this—a Lazarus miracle, a demonic possession—to help me fully understand. Tender are the mercies of God, and all the silly squabbles over good versus evil crystallize. Only a brain fueled by the profanity of living flesh can comprehend the beautiful design of this new order. It was never “Nature versus nurture,” as the psychologists used to say, though I notice they’re not saying much these days.

  No, it’s nature versus nurture, the same thing. Eat and be fed, take and be fulfilled, kill and let be dead.

  Again I salute you, Corporal, as I move my legs and slide my torn feet across the rubble. Through you, I have partaken of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, and I walk through the valley of the shadow of death toward the Garden of Eden. My Eve is out there, though despite all the things I remember, her name still eludes me. Omniscience in all things, but this lingering, consuming love.

  And all around me, the world goes on, campfires on the rooftops, a gunshot echoing down a distant alley, the wail of a scared infant. The financial section lies in ruins, the security gutted. I know this avenue, though its lanes are cracked and cool, the vehicles no longer crowding one another. I pass a stalled taxi, and at the wheel is a dead man in a turban, the flies buzzing his flesh. He holds no appeal because his blood is turgid and coagulated. An injection of the retroviral serum would restore him, would make him one of us, but those who have entered paradise are prone to locking the gates behind them.

  Ahead lies the cathedral, a great, spired testament to mortal fear. The windows have been shattered by bombs, vandals, or infidels, it makes no difference. Stained glass glints like a billion angel eyes. My bare feet crush them and move on.

  I remember those pews, the soft crushed velvet, the hard oak flooring where the sinners hit their knees. I turn, the wind carrying a trace of smoke across my face. I am called to the door. Memory pulls at me, compelling me onward, but this diversion is momentarily stronger. When God commands, only the dead ignore, and I’m not dead yet.

  On the steps lie the bones of a provider, cracked and polished by the moonlight. The alcove is an onyx box, inviting those who worship by night. I was married here. I walked up these steps a free man and down them with a mate for life. Now I am free again, but the climb takes longer this time, my feet slippery with the fluids that ooze from my ripped soles.

  Ripped souls.

  I would never think things like this if not for the change. Now I know why Lucifer rails against the Father—to have all this and then have it taken away. “God is merciful,” say the robed and celibate men who stand in this altar, but He also tolerates necessary evils. I wish one of those priests were here now. I would break his skull like an egg and suck the sweet marrow of his brain, all those secret thoughts now mine.

  As I shove through the door, the smell of wax assails me. The orange bulbs of candlelight flicker and bob from the breeze I have allowed into the sacred space. My senses are heightened, the glorious electricity of my condition tingling through my limbs. Someone is here, someone with warm blood and red meat and misplaced faith. I have known them all—junkies and whores, bartenders and warriors, poets and housekeepers. They each have a flavor, but in the end taste the same, and my love grows larger with their sacrifice.

  Christ could take the nails, but anyone can die for somebody else’s sins. The true test of faith is living again, rising up and walking among the people, carrying the message to those who flee your approach.

  This one, hiding in the church, does not flee.

  My feet are loud and wet in the dimness. I go toward the small, curtained chambers lining one wall. Confession may be good for the soul but not for the flesh. Already I feel my thoughts racing, crashing one upon the other like waves in a hurricane, losing their order beneath a larger force. If I don’t feed again soon, I will forget, and then she will be farther away and I won’t be able to love her.

  It’s the one curse of this condition that I know it will pass if it is not fed. I am drawn by a need as old as time, an instinct for survival, a craving to consume. The attraction is like an obscene magnetism, my teeth aching, the rancid juices of my bowels gurgling and leaking down my corrupt legs. The church is a sanctuary, and all is forgiven here. The throbbing heart accelerates, giving away its position. I grip the curtain with ragged fingers. I want to remember this moment and all the moments to come.

  To do that, I must eat.

  Because already I am forgetting. John, was it? John the Baptist, John the dentist?

  If I could talk, I would say a prayer and bless this gift I am about to receive from Thy bounty. I tug the curtain and the candlelight swells, the woman’s eyes are closed, and she is saying Hail Mary Full of Grace, and I moan the words along with her, lost in the rhythm as I lower my face to her throat, and then the words slide into a shriek, and then a moist sigh, and I remember now.

  Thank you, woman. You might have been a nun or a mother or a teacher or a scientist, but now you are free from sin and your bones rest on consecrated ground. And I am condemned to walk on.

  Home. I remember now.

  She will have left long ago, just as I told her, before the bomb and Subject 37 and the fever and the state of enlightenment. I gave her a ring that had three diamonds, and she gave me a daughter. The girl’s name is Dolores and she is a child of God.

  No, that’s not true, she is my child.

  Maybe I am God now.

  Maybe I know too much.

  Eat and remember, starve and forget. It’s a matter of will. And all the world is a mouth.

  The street is gray now, the sun making a pink nest in the east. I know the way. I turn, and there are soldiers in the alley. I raise my arm to salute, and strings of shredded intestines slide from my fingers. One of the soldiers shouts, and I wish I could tell them we are on the same side, but I feel a different truth. A gunshot rings out, and the slick bit of metal whistles past my head. I don’t see how he could have missed at such close range. My brain has expanded, fat with the worship of dozens, a soup of souls.

  I should hate that which seeks to destroy me, but my quiet heart has no heat for hatred. Acceptance is a flagstone on the road to enlightenment, and all seekers must leave behind the desires of this world. And the last thing to lay aside is my love for her, and I can’t rest in the bosom of my Lord until I know she is saved.

  The soldiers run down the street, and no more bullets come. There must be many of us now, more of us than there are bullets, more rotted palms than every nail in the world could pin to wood. The shadows seem shorter, the concrete glistening with the first rays of dawn, a rising hope and promise. I am nearer my God to thee.

  And this was our street, is our street, I remember now. Houses arrayed like wooden blocks that Dolores plays with, the ones with letters of the alphabet. Symbols to make larger
symbols to explain larger mysteries. Books and scripture and prayers and this deep, hollow hole inside.

  Forty days in the desert I walk with God.

  Or maybe it is the third day, a time of rising.

  And the sun is high and it might be tomorrow or a week from now and the hunger is growling inside me, fallen angels clawing up from the depths. You are what you eat.

  And we are legion and food is scarce.

  I was John Sorenson but when God calls, you remember.

  Remember what?

  Here I am.

  Home. I see it now and I remember how I used to pull into the driveway after work, and she would be there, waiting at the door. I can almost see her face, waiting.

  Almost.

  And I am closer but I am farther away.

  Did I tell her to run?

  Or is she like the others?

  How strong is her faith and love?

  Would she be waiting still?

  Would who be waiting?

  God, why has thou forsaken...

  A door.

  Heart beating.

  Love.

  Her.

  The End

  Missing Pieces Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  CONSTITUTION

  By Scott Nicholson

  On the third day, he felt the flesh loosening around his fingerbones.

  He slipped into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of white, silk gloves. Demora wouldn’t notice, at least not right away. And he could always tell her that he was practicing a mime routine. She’d fall for that. She’d fall for anything, as long as the lie came from his lips.

  “Randall, honey,” Demora called from downstairs. She would be in the kitchen, pouring him a drink. Scotch with a half-pound of ice cubes. He could already picture the glass beaded with grotesque sweat.

  He wished he, himself could sweat. The summer heat had made his condition worse. The thunderstorm that afternoon had provided a brief respite. It rolled in at three just like clockwork. But time really had no meaning anymore, not since he had died. His wife called to him again.