The Collection

by Bentley Little

  The slatted shafts of moonlight which fell through the partially open curtains illuminated the baby's face, and Marc saw the red mouth painted garishly onto her cheesecloth head. One of her eyes was missing, but the other eye-a sewed-on black button-stared knowingly into his. The baby's rag-stuffed arms hung limply at her sides, and her cotton doll legs swung loosely in the air.

  Marc held the baby lovingly in his arms. He picked up the bottle from the nightstand and pressed it to her painted lips. The formula dripped down her face, some of it falling onto the floor, the rest being absorbed by the material of her body. When the bottle was empty, he put it aside and rocked the baby slowly in his arms, humming.

  "Honey?"

  He looked over toward the bed. Cindy was sitting up, smiling, holding her arms out to him. "Let me have her," she said gently.

  Marc handed the baby to his wife. She expertly held the small rag doll to her shoulder. Only a single slice of moon­light reached the bed, but it cut across the baby's cheese­cloth face, and Marc saw the corners of her red gash mouth creep slowly upward. "Look," he said. "Anne's smiling."

  Cindy nodded. "She's happy," she said.

  And the baby's legs slowly started to kick.

  Paperwork

  It has always seemed to me that small towns on the so-called blue highways, those dying communities on old state routes that were bypassed when the interstates were built, have more than their share of windblown trash. Even in towns that are virtually deserted, there are always newspapers and notebook paper and candy wrappers and receipts caught on barbed wire fences, bunched against curbs, plastered on the lower edges of abandoned buildings.

  Where do all these papers come from?

  And what if their presence isn't as innocent as we travelers think it is?

  Wind buffeted the car as they drove through the desert. Josh could feel it as he held tightly to the steering wheel, though it was not visible in the unmoving branches of the desert plants. There were no other cars on the highway, and he was not sure whether he should pull over and wait out the wind or try to continue on. He was not good at this automotive kind of crap and he usually relied on others around him to determine his behavior in these situations. The car swerved a little to the left as an especially obnoxious gust of wind pushed against the Blazer, and his grip tightened on the I wheel. He didn't want to end up overturned on the side off the road-particularly not on this desolate stretch of highway-but he didn't want to stop either. They were late as it was and wouldn't get to Tucson until well after the hotel's check-in time.

  As if reading his thoughts, Lydia turned down the cassette player and turned toward him. "Shouldn't we pull over?" she asked. "That wind's kind of strong out there."

  He shook his head. "It's not that bad."

  They drove for a few moments in silence. There had been a lot of silence on the trip; not relaxed, comfortable silence but tense, awkward silence. Josh had wanted many times to talk to Lydia, to really talk, to recapture that close cama­raderie they had once shared, but he had not known how to do it, had not known what to say. He felt that same need to communicate now, but once again his desires and words did not match. "We have to get gas at the next town," he said lamely. "We're almost out."

  Lydia said nothing but turned up the cassette player again, as if in answer, and stared out the side window away from him.

  Fifteen minutes later they reached a town. The tiny green and white sign read: Clark. Population 1298. Founded 1943.

  Like most of the small desert communities they'd passed through since leaving California, Clark was dirty and run-down, little more than a collection of cafes, gas stations, and storefronts stretching along the sides of the highway, with a few shabby homes and trailers behind them to give the town depth.

  Josh pulled into the first gas station he saw, a Texaco. The station looked abandoned. Where the paint on the building wasn't peeling, there were large spots of blackened soot or rot. The windows of the office were so covered with dust and grime that it was impossible to see inside, and small dunes of paper trash had collected on the windward side of the old pumps, but the prices on the swinging metal sign were current, and the open garage door indicated that the station was still in operation.

  There were no full- or self-service islands, just two lone pumps, and Josh drove across the length of rubber cable which activated the station's bell, pulling to a stop in front of the unleaded pump.

  The wind was blowing strong. Josh looked toward the buildmg. The man who emerged from the office peered first around the edge of the opaque window before stepping nervously outside. He was wearing an old Texaco uniform, with pocket patches that carried the promises of two slogans ago, and he wiped his hands compulsively on a greasy red rag. His face was thin and dark, topped by a gray crew cut, and though his features were unreadable from a distance, as he drew closer Josh could see that the man was terrified.

  Such naked fear triggered some sympathetic reaction, within Josh, and his first instinct was to take off and get the hell out of there. The man would not be frightened for no reason; there was probably a gunman in the office holding hostages, or a bomb planted near one of the pumps. But Josh knew that his reaction was stupid, and he got out of the car and stretched, bending his knees and raising his arms after the long drive, before moving forward. He nodded politely at the attendant. "Hi."

  The man said nothing, but his eyes shifted back and forth across the length of the highway, on constant surveillance. He grabbed the nozzle of the pump before Josh could reach it, and with trembling hands lifted the catch.

  "I'll get that," Josh said.

  "No, I'll get it." The man's voice was old and cracked, whispery with age, and there was a tremor in it.

  Josh unscrewed the gas cap, and the attendant inserted the nozzle.

  "Get out of here fast," the old man whispered. "While you can. While they let you."

  Josh frowned. He glanced instinctively back at Lydia in f the front seat. "What?"

  The attendant's eyes widened as he looked over Josh's shoulder. "Here comes one now!"

  Josh turned to look but saw only the empty street, dust, and gum wrappers blowing across the sidewalk, propelled by the wind. He turned back. A stray scrap of Kleenex blew against the attendant's leg, the wadded piece of white tissue clinging to his sock, and the man suddenly leaped backward, screaming. The nozzle dropped from his hand, falling to the cement, and a trickle of gas spilled out before stopping.

  The Kleenex was dislodged from the man's foot as he leaped about, and it went skittering along the ground to­ward the open garage door, but the attendant did not stop screaming. He continued to jump up and down in a panic dance, arms flailing wildly, scuffed workboots scraping hard against the ground.

  Josh backed up slowly until he was at the door of the car, and he quickly got in, locking the door.

  "Let's get out of here," Lydia said. She was staring out the window at the gas station attendant, her face pale.

  Josh nodded, putting the key in the ignition. The atten­dant pounded on the window. "I'll send you the money we owe!" Josh yelled through the closed glass.

  "The papers!" the man screamed.

  Josh turned the key in the ignition, pumped the gas pedal, and the engine caught. The attendant was still pounding crazily on the window, and Josh pulled away slowly, afraid of running over the old man's feet. The attendant did not fol­low them across the asphalt as he'd expected, however. In­stead, he ran immediately back toward the office, where he slammed shut the door.

  Josh looked over at Lydia. "What the hell was that all about?"

  "Let's just get out of here."

  He nodded. "It's a Texaco station. I'll write to Texaco, tell them what happened, send them the money. It's only a buck or so. We'll find another gas station."

  They headed slowly down the highway through town, past a closed movie theater, past an empty store. The wind, which until now had been constant, suddenly increased in power, and the heavy cloud of dust wh
ich accompanied it obscured the road like brown fog. They could hear the tiny static scratching of dirt granules on the glass of the wind­shield. Josh turned on the headlights and dropped his speed from thirty to twenty and then to ten. "I hope it's not going to scratch up the paint job," he said.

  They were moving against the wind, and he could feel the Blazer strain against the pressure. The buildings were dark shapes silhouetted against the dim sun. As they moved closer to the edge of town, the dust cloud abated a little, though the wind continued to blow strong. A sheet of news­paper flew up against the windshield, flattening in front of Josh's face. He could not see at all, and he braked to a halt, hoping to dislodge the paper, but it remained plastered on the glass. He opened the door, got out and pulled it off, crumpling it up and letting it fly.

  It was then that he noticed the bodies on the ground. There were four of them, and they lay facedown on the sidewalk as if they had simply fallen there while walking down the street. The three bodies closest to him were en­tirely unmoving, trash and light debris piled up by the wind in drifts against their sides and shoes, but the body farthest away -that of a young woman- seemed to be trying to get up. Josh took a quick step forward.

  "No!" Lydia yelled at him from the car.

  He looked back at his wife. Her face was bleached and I terrified, her eyes wild with fear.

  "Let's call the police!"

  He shook his head. "She's alive!"

  "Let's get out of here!"

  He waved away her protestations and quickly moved for­ward toward the struggling woman. But she was not strug­gling. She was not moving at all. The head he had seen trying to raise itself was merely the fluttering of a paper sack f that had caught on the woman's hair. The arms attempting to push the body upward were junk food wrappers which had blown against her side and were gyrating in the breeze.

  Josh stopped. In a strange objective instant, he saw the en­tire situation as though it was happening to someone else- the abandoned town, the crazy man at the gas station, the bodies on the sidewalk-and it suddenly scared the hell out of him. He backed up slowly, then turned around, hurrying.

  Lydia jumped out of the Blazer, screaming, hitting at her legs. His heart leaped in his chest as he rushed forward. "What is it?" he demanded. "What happened?" But he had already seen the pieces of lipstick-stamped tissue clinging to her legs. Her peeked around the open door, looking into the car. The empty McDonald's bags on the floor were moving and writhing, making whispery crackling sounds. A bent paper straw thrust its way insinuatingly upward through the mess on the floor.

  He slammed the door. "We have to get out of here." He pulled the tissue from Lydia's legs and felt the thin paper twist sickeningly in his hands. He threw the tissues to the wind, which carried them away, then wiped his hands on his pants, grimacing. "Come on." He grabbed Lydia's hand, leading her down the street. She was still crying, and he could feel her muscles trembling beneath his fingers. They ran across the asphalt. And stopped.

  A line of paper was inching toward them, moving against the wind, toothpick wrappers riding atop lunch sacks, crum­pled envelopes and discarded Xerox sheets creeping in tandem-along the ground. Josh swiveled around. Behind them, pages from magazines, spent teabags, cigarette butts, price tags, and grocery sacks rolled with the wind. Above them, in the sky, fluttering Kimwipes and paper towels swooped low over their heads then looped upward to make another dive. His pulse raced.

  "In here!" He pulled Lydia to the other side of the street, across the sidewalk, and into a convenience store. Or what was left of a convenience store. For all of the racks and shelves had been tipped over, thrown into the narrow aisles. Rotting food lay on the floor, smashed preserves and spilled soft drinks hardened into glue on the white tile. The store was dark, the only light coming through the front glass wall, but it was quiet, free from a maddening howl of the wind outside, and for that they both were grateful.

  Josh looked at his wife. She was no longer crying. There was an expression of resolve on her face, a look of determi­nation in her eyes, and he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. Both of them moved forward spontaneously and hugged each other. Josh kissed her hair, tasting dust and hairspray but not caring. She nuzzled his shoulder.

  Then they pulled silently away, and Josh grabbed a nearby display, pushing it against the door. He shoved another small fixture against the door, pressing it hard against the glass. The makeshift barricade would not hold forever, but it would buy them a little time, allow them to think. This was crazy and unbelievable, but they would be able to get out of it if they used their wits.

  "Think!" he said. "We need to think! What can we-"

  Fire.

  "Fire!" he cried. "We can burn them! They're just paper."

  Lydia nodded enthusiastically. "We can kill them. It'll work. I'll look for matches. You check by the counter for lighters."

  "See if you can find any charcoal or lighter fluid."

  She moved toward the back of the small store, stepping over and through the mess, and he hopped the front counter, rummaging through the pile of impulse items on the floor. He noticed that there were no paper products behind the counter.

  He was digging through a pile of overturned keychains when, from the back of the store, Lydia screamed; a shrill, hysterical cry so unlike any sound Josh had ever heard her make that it took his burdened brain a second to make the connection. Then he was off and running, vaulting over the front counter and dashing down the nearest aisle to the rear of the building.

  She was standing before the row of wall refrigerators which lined the back of the store, mouth open, no sound coming out. He followed her gaze. Behind the glass doors of the refrigerators which had formerly housed beer and milk and soft drinks were the dead naked bodies of eight or nine people, crammed together like sardines. They were facing outward, eyes wide and staring. Toilet paper was wrapped tightly around each of their mouths and wrists and ankles, making them look like hostages.

  He instantly grabbed her around the waist, turning her around, away from the sight. He clenched his hands into fists, letting his fingernails dig into his palms, concentrating on the pain in order to clear his mind of fear as he stared through the frosted glass at the bodies. There was terror in each of the dead eyes looking back at him, terror and an even more horrifying fatalism, as if, at the last moment, all of the victims had realized the inevitability of their deaths.

  He pressed closer, and it was then that he noticed the cuts. .Paper cuts-some long and straight, others short and curved-crisscrossed the chests, legs, and faces of the naked men and women. There was no blood, and the cuts could only be seen at certain angles, but the patterns they formed looked too regular to be random, too precise to be anything but deliberate.

  The cuts looked like writing.

  Josh put his hands firmly on Lydia's pliant shoulders and led her up the aisle toward the front of the store, away from the refrigerators, looking back as he did so, afraid of seeing a stray movement out of the corner of his eye. But the bod­ies remained still, the toilet paper wrapped around them un-moving.

  "Stay here," he said, leaving Lydia by the front counter. He dashed quickly up and down the chaotic aisles until he found a book of matches and, buried under the sacks of charcoal, a tin of lighter fluid. He ran back to the front of the store. Papers, he saw, were conglomerating against the win­dow and door, fluttering in the wind.

  And fluttering against the wind.

  He opened the red plastic childproof cap of the lighter fluid. He wasn't exactly sure how he was going to do this, but he was damned if he was going to let the papers get either him or Lydia. He glanced over at her. She seemed to have recovered somewhat and was not dazed with shock as he'd feared she'd be. She seemed cognizant, aware of what was happening, and he thought that she was a hell of a lot stronger than he would have given her credit for.

  He pulled away one of the fixtures he'd used to blockade the door. "We're getting out of here," he said. "Think you can m
ake it?"

  She nodded suddenly.

  He pulled away the shelves. Just in time, he noticed. There was a line of used and dirty Q-tips coming into the store from under the door, sliding silently along the floor, swab to swab, like a giant worm.

  Here was a chance to try out his weaponry. He took out a match, struck it, then sprayed lighter fluid on the Q-tips and tossed the match. The tiny swabs went up in flame, twisting into charred blackness. There was agony in their death movements but no sound, and the unnatural sight sent a cas­cade of goose bumps down his arms. He took a deep breath. "Let's go."

  He pulled open the door and leaped back, expecting a flood of paper to come flying into the store, but there was nothing, only wind and dust, and he realized that the papers must have seen his fire demonstration. He looked at Lydia. "Can you hold the lighter fluid?"

  "Yes," she said.

  He handed her the container, took out a match, and grabbed her hand. They walked outside. Around them, above them, papers fluttered and flew in the strong wind, but there was an empty circle surrounding them, and the cir­cle remained the same size as they moved across the street toward the car. The newspapers which covered the Blazer fled as they approached, and they both got in the driver's side, quickly shutting the door. The McDonald's mess on the floor had disappeared.

  He reached for the keys in the ignition, but they were not there. He checked on the floor, patted his pockets, looked over at Lydia. "Do you have the keys?"

  She shook her head. "You didn't take them with you?"

  "I left them here. Shit!" He slammed his hand against the steering wheel, causing the horn to blat loudly. They both jumped.

  Outside, the papers were swirling closer, junk food wrap­pers-inching forward along the ground toward them, ripped posters creeping alongside.

  "Let's get back to the gas station," Lydia said.

  Josh nodded. "I think they need another demonstration to make sure they leave us alone, though. Get out my side."