by Ford Collins
He felt a hand press down gently, nudging him between his shoulder blades. He opened his eyes and turned back to see his brother, smiling and speaking to him, but Lowell’s ears were still ringing from the sirens.
The smiling face faded into the walls beyond the boy’s face. No memory of him could protect Lowell now.
The shell had suffered irreparable damage and Lowell was forced to flee, maybe forever, through the midnight black of the antechamber, and down the corridor to the worn, pilled ecru carpet of his bedroom. He hadn’t had time to grab any diagrams or completed computations tacked to the walls of the study. Stacks of incomplete notes remained in corners throughout the cell. He’d left them all behind in his panic.
As insane as it struck him to escape from his sanctuary rather than be destroyed with his work, he’d gotten nervous. He considered whether to be ashamed of the reaction, but lacked the concentration to find any sort of closure on the topic, so he put it to rest for the time being.
Foremost of his concerns was his impending implosion due to his only safeguard having been strangled to death.
[Thirty-Seven]
Lauren kept track of how often she’d stopped by Lowell’s desk to check on him until she’d reached the high teens.
She’d never gotten along well with the managers of the firm’s business office, and had caught Kevin Greer blatantly looking down the front of her blouse in the elevator at least four times in the last couple of months, so she had no one to ask whether Lowell had been in touch.
There was a buzz that the office would be closing a few hours early due to the rapidly accumulating snow throughout the metro area. Lauren had no idea where Lowell lived, so the only places she could think to look for him were Café Noir and the shops along Monroe in the vicinity of her apartment.
Lauren’s stomach knotted at the thought of Lowell wandering around in the state she was sure he was in. His eyes had emptied of all warmth and comprehension when they were parting near the front door of Persia’s.
It was as if she could see her words bouncing against the rear surface of his skull and ricocheting back toward her through the void.
She’d said: “Goodnight, Lowell. Please take care of yourself. For me?”
He’d barely opened his mouth to mumble: “Goodnight. Please take care of yourself… too.”
She saw that Lowell was losing his grip, though just how completely she had no idea.
The thought of Lowell falling into a snow drift and freezing to death had burrowed into her subconscious and reappeared whenever she believed she’d set her mind to something else. Once, in an effort to take the sharp, troublesome edge from this thought, she’d tried to imagine Lowell drinking a steaming mug of hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows in it, and reading a copy of Boys Life with an article about making a modern camp with primitive raw materials. It only made things worse, as she was sure Lowell would rather freeze to death in a snow drift than do either of those things.
And so Lauren was tormented by her imagination until the word finally came down from building and firm management that the streets were indeed becoming perilous due to the inclement weather, and that all employees were thereby to head for their homes promptly.
She grabbed her coat, tossed a hasty goodbye over the cubicle walls to her surrounding coworkers, and dashed for the elevators. She’d caught a ride with her housemate that morning, but had no time to track her down for a return trip, so Lauren set out on foot for Monroe Avenue.
The ground cover was at least four inches by the time she hit Clinton and turned south. The slush leaked into her shoes and chilled her toes until she thought one had frozen solid and cracked off. Her hat and scarf were crusted over with ice and pulling down.
Once she crossed over Meigs Street, she looked into every shop window and down every alley.
Only a handful of people were out on the sidewalks with her, and the few footprints she could see were rapidly filled and vanished.
Lauren hadn’t bothered to swing by Gibbs Street to check Café Noir because she’d thought she’d heard one of her coworkers say he’d stopped by for lunch and was told they were closing at one.
She couldn’t see any sense in asking around with shop owners and patrons as to whether they had seen Lowell, because to describe him would be to describe the entire unstoned half of Monroe Avenue’s usuals. ‘Hipster’ and ‘Hippie’ were truthfully the only classifications of the constant population. If you fell into neither category, you were likely just passing through.
Standing in front of the sushi restaurant on the corner of Oxford and Monroe, Lauren turned and looked back down the path she’d followed. It struck her that she was wasting her time. She was looking for a man who couldn’t be found. He had no intention of allowing anyone to stumble across him. And what did she plan to do if she did see him? She knew next to nothing about Lowell other than what he’d told her and what she’d gleaned from their few discussions. She wasn’t even sure she could say she cared about him in the most meaningful sense. There wasn’t enough substance to base a decision that weighty on.
Lauren wanted to care about Lowell. She couldn’t pinpoint why, but the idea now consumed her. Until she found him and got him the help he needed, her desire to save him would continue to gnaw away, whether she could understand it or not.
Her fingers had gone as numb as her toes had a half hour before, and she finally called off the rescue mission. Or rather postponed it until she could get herself dry and warm, and get some food in her stomach.
She yelled out one last “Lowell!” that echoed meekly from shop fronts and suffocated in the falling snow.
Lauren knew that if he was out there, she would find him.
Somehow.
[Thirty-Eight]
From his window, Lowell could see flakes blowing sideways outside, but when he got to the main entrance of the house, the bluster had calmed to a polite breeze, escorting the snow around the neighborhood with a gentle hand.
As he set foot onto the porch, white bolts of pain shot through his heels and into his spine. The burning ebbed to frozen numbness, and Lowell realized he’d forgotten to put on his boots. Or socks, or anything beyond pants and a t-shirt. He returned to his apartment.
It was half past two when Lowell stepped back inside and locked the deadbolt behind him. The walls of the house groaned in the rekindled wind.
His visit to the porch had come during a short reprieve from the storm’s ire. Lowell was sure it was an attempt by the heavens to trick him into giving himself away as he was. The clouds would have been overjoyed to hold him in their crystalline limbs and anesthetize him to slumber so they could take him away with them for eternity. He was touched by their sentiment, but too full of purpose to entertain them.
All of his furniture had shifted positions while he was downstairs. Some pieces were still moving. The table just inside the door had flipped over onto its top, legs sticking up and wriggling like an infant’s in a bassinet. His couch peeked from around the corner of the bedroom doorway, then pulled back, afraid of being seen and ordered back into the living room. Cabinet doors opened in the kitchen, shivered, and closed again, silently.
The hook near the front entrance extended like a finger to offer Lowell his pea coat and knit cap, but he shook it off. The finger receded and heaved a dejected sigh.
“No, thank you.” Lowell felt badly for rejecting the kindness. “Not yet.”
He walked into the bathroom, where the contents of his medicine cabinet were rolling around the basin of the sink in what appeared to be a miniature approximation of roller derby. A box of adhesive bandages ruled the rink, savagely slapping with either top flap at all that came near. A roll of first-aid tape built up velocity and used it to knock a roll of lip balm and a wad of gauze pads completely out of the sink and onto the floor. A tin of pomade that Lowell had forgotten he owned had a hard time maintaining a steady course, and ended up rolling itself onto the wire rack next to the sink. It sat there, shaking off d
izziness.
Lowell pulled a towel from a wall bar to dry the bottoms of his feet, and rubbed them further to reintroduce some warmth.
The clanging of his phone scraped at his ear drums, so he turned the ringer off, without looking at the caller ID or the voicemail icon or the blinking ‘(11)’ next to it.
Growing in the sound of the whipping wind outside was that familiar buzzing. He knew the nest was crawling with activity, even in the freeze. He knew they would be out to investigate his movement and intention with every exit from his home. They were unable to reach him while he stayed in his apartment, and this perplexed and irritated them greatly.
It dawned on him that Norman must be within the hive, passing on all he knew of Lowell’s habits and schedule. Perhaps his brother had been mistaken about his interaction with Norman.
This was all beyond Lowell’s comprehension at the moment, however.
He could sense that Norman was abetting the swarm, helping them coordinate and plan.
He doubted he would ever see Norman again though. The insects had a way of scraping clean every particle of the materials they descended upon if they so chose.
Their concern wasn’t with Lowell’s existence, per se. It was with his recognition of theirs.
Humans were generally not inclined to share their space or resources with insects. They feared them and destroyed them with every opportunity, not seeing that man would be well-served to emulate the insects’ means of surviving in even the most inhospitable of environments. Man was too shortsighted to see the benefits insects provided to him, and to offer them their fair place in his world.
What man had failed to understand, for the most part, was that many of his own had already taken on the least desirable attributes of the filth-dwelling vermin.
They were brethren, but man refused to acknowledge the ties.
The insects were greatly offended by man’s perception of himself as the pinnacle of life on a planet it shared with millions of species.
A species dominated isn’t necessarily a species that has resigned itself to its domination. Any chance to take back an inch would be exploited to the fullest.
At that point, there may not have been much, or indeed any, value in keeping tabs on Lowell.
His work had been buried by the weight of his own expectation, the landslide triggered by his faltering focus.
In his years of study, he’d drawn lines from insects to man that may have been useful to either side’s understanding and appreciation of the other.
It seemed unlikely that he or anyone else would be able to reach them now.
The bullet of his keys shot by his face, grazing his left cheek, and crashed against the wall beyond him. Lowell stuffed them into the front pocket of his pants and finished getting dressed. He threw on his boots and coat, dragged the cap down over his ears, and slammed the door on his way out.
Lowell had no clue where Norman could be hiding away, so he walked in the direction of Cobbs Hill with the intention of sweeping through every location he remembered being over the prior week. His search would carry him from one park to the other, and every stop he may have made between. He concentrated as hard as his drifting brain would allow, to recall each place he’d encountered the rat who had turned over to the army of beating wings and needles dripping venom, all seeking out Lowell’s wilted body.
He stepped to the clicking beat of a looping film of Norman transforming into a rank, rabid sewer dweller in stages: His teeth stretching down out of his top gums in the shape of graying chisels; His body hair thickening and spreading into a coat, matted in clumps of congealed effluent; His eyes ringed in pink and flushing out in gleaming black; His spine extending into an enormous, wormlike tail. It seemed like a natural progression, Norman to rat, once the movie began to roll.
Lowell had never trusted Norman with any personal information, just as he’d never trusted anyone with personal information. But Norman knew enough about his recent breakdowns in routine that it could be damaging for him to pass them along to someone with malignant intentions.
The moment swelled with more guilt than Lowell had ever felt.
He was in search of Norman to do to him what Lowell had previously done to his brother. He’d strangled his brother for killing Norman, he’d thought.
And now, Lowell was out to do what his brother couldn’t. The circle had clanged back into its launching point and was echoing with a tinny laughter at Lowell for his foolishness—for allowing his ego to render him absolutely blind to the gift he was being handed by his brother.
There was no place Norman could hide from Lowell forever. He steeled himself to tear apart the world while tracking the rat down.
And he had no intention of stopping there.
[Thirty-Nine]
The gatehouse at the summit of Cobbs Hill was a stone jail cell from where Lowell climbed. He could see the vertical bars of the pillars but the rest was lost in the blur of heavy snowfall.
The perfect, smooth surface of the white slope was hypnotizing, but Lowell would have seen the rat screaming out against the bleached backdrop even as the night crept in. There was nothing at the peak but stone and cold. On he ascended.
At his back, the swarm had begun to gather. He continued to face away, but could feel it bending around his sides to be sure it was him. It maintained its distance, content to simply observe for the time being.
Lowell’s issue was never with the swarm, so he had no desire to openly engage it. If it took offense with him, it would have to wait until he’d completed his task. After that, he had no interest in anything, including himself.
He stood on the top step of the gatehouse and scanned the city. Few structures were discernible, and the only significant differentiation in masses was the split of the horizon into white below and iron above. The bouncing static of precipitation in the interim drew away from Lowell’s ability to focus for any significant amount of time, so he surrendered his vantage point to the storm and leapt back down to the earth.
Still, he could sense the swarm at his back. It had hovered nearby at the gatehouse, following his line of sight to determine where he would move next before even he had.
He remained unconcerned. As long as it didn’t interfere with his hunt, it was free to do as it wished.
At the foot of the hill, Lowell stood and watched the surface of the street roll by in waves. Whitecaps dotted the expanse of the canal, and he could feel the water droplets that had frozen to pellets of ice as they leapt into the air and pelted his face and clothes. He walked closer to the edge, knelt down and dipped one naked hand into the frigid liquid. It lashed at his flesh with a serrated tongue.
He pulled back and wiped the fingers across his face, dabbing with his lips at the blood solidified on each knuckle.
He took to his feet and shielded his eyes against the glare to see a bright yellow rope that looked to run at least a half mile from his current position. It felt to him as though there was no alternative but to follow it to find what he sought.
“Lowell.”
The swarm had formed a concave wall behind him, perhaps thirty feet high. It held off the wind and snow, and its voice was even but powerful in volume. He felt the vibration when it spoke his name. He turned to face it.
“Lowell, what do you seek?”
“You know the answer to that. Don’t waste my time.”
“Not whom, Lowell, we asked what you seek.”
“I don’t seek anything beyond righting a mistake I allowed to be made.”
“Revenge, Lowell?”
“Call it whatever you want. I don’t have time to talk with you. Wait until I’ve finished what I set out to do and then do as you please.”
He turned to find the yellow line again and set off, but the wall sealed into a full cylinder around him.
“You will go nowhere until we allow you to, Lowell. Do not test our patience, or we can promise you will regret it more than anything you—” Its voice boomed, rattling Lowell’s t
eeth.
“Don’t threaten me. I have no business with you. My business is with your friend.”
A spike of wings, legs, and mandibles shot out from the section of wall closest to Lowell’s face, made contact in the center of his chest, and threw him backward into the opposing surface, which held solid on impact.
He bounced off and fell to the sidewalk.
The voice built to a roar.
“Enough!”
Two smaller swells extended near his sides and lifted him back to his feet.
He felt wings beating furiously, even through the thick wool of his coat.
“We have watched you for long enough to understand your skewed perception on your brethren.”
“They are no brethr—“
“Do not interrupt us, Lowell.”
Lowell straightened himself upright and brushed snow from his arms and legs.
“You must understand, Lowell, that you have lost your anonymity. You may no longer walk amongst those you have studied all your life. You do not possess the invisibility you once had. Do you understand us, Lowell?”