Amongst the Gadflies

by Ford Collins

  “I no longer care. There is nothing I can do to change what they choose to see in me or anyone else, and there is nothing they can do to stop me.”

  “So once again we ask you, what do you seek, Lowell?”

  “I seek release from pain. I seek a new catalyst for my continued existence.”

  The wall wavered for a moment, then receded to a cloudlike mass.

  “Go and do as you intend. But be aware that you will be tormented by those from whom you can no longer hide, Lowell. You have, at times, drawn connections between concepts and conclusions that were not justified. Do not blame us for the woes that will find you on this path. Do you understand, Lowell?”

  “I suppose it won’t matter whether I understand you or not. I’ll find out regardless.”

  “Know that we had nothing to do with your associate. However he may have betrayed you, it was not with our knowledge or consent, Lowell.”

  Lowell said nothing, but nodded solemnly and stared unblinking into the mass directly in front of him.

  “Very well. Goodbye, Lowell.”

  He turned and trained his gaze on the yellow rope once again. The swarm vanished from behind him, and the air went still and silent all around.

  [Forty]

  The rope was grounded with metal spikes at points to indicate, Lowell assumed, where he was to search more carefully, but otherwise, he saw nothing in the snow save the long, narrow strip of braided nylon.

  The hush clung to him like a shroud. There were no cars on the road due to the county’s ban on travel for non-emergency vehicles. No one else walked the sidewalks.

  All shops and restaurants had closed, which simplified Lowell’s search somewhat. He passed up and down Oxford Street from end to end, in case any indication of Norman’s location was available, but he found nothing.

  Snow continued to fall, building in intensity as the weak glow of the sun faded into the evening. At least ten inches had blanketed the ground by the time Lowell passed Goodman Street. The pinkish-orange aura of each street light was peppered with hundreds of tiny drifting silhouettes, but Lowell surrendered his ability to take in the intricate beauty to the mania of his manhunt.

  He’d looked thoroughly through the parking lot where the girl had been killed. No one had disturbed the space. He looked near and under the garbage bin he’d been dragged to by his brother after tearing open his scalp on Woodlawn Street. The ground was unmolested upon his arrival.

  Even below the frozen cover, the shapes of waste were easily recognizable. It was as if they had interbred wildly and expanded from their native lawns and alleyways to colonize every street and sidewalk of the neighborhood. Garbage bags bulged like distended bellies of enormous, sated infants tucked in for naps in street-long nurseries. Milk cartons lay in all positions like models posing for sculptors. Widowed socks and mittens, torn undershirts, and other random scraps of cloth hung over fence posts and shrubbery like items on clotheslines awaiting the midday sun and breezes coming in from Lake Ontario to the north.

  Lowell noticed the illumination of more and more storefronts as the darkness took hold. He’d looked through the windows of every space indicated by the spikes in the line, and hadn’t seen a living being in any. Now, though, as they cleared their throats and presented themselves more enthusiastically, he felt compelled to revisit each and every one, flare or no.

  He pivoted back away from Goodman Street and walked with his head down, ignoring all stimulus until he could begin again at the corner of Oxford and Monroe and conduct a proper investigation.

  The windows of the sushi restaurant on the corner were lit up as if the seating area had been set ablaze. Lowell could feel warmth pushing outward from the glass. He squinted to peer inside and found two thrones constructed from refuse and centered against the far wall. The defecating man sat in one, wearing a crown made of what appeared to be the necklace from the neck of the teenage girl he’d put to death. He smiled at Lowell and extended his right hand over the armrest of his throne, in the direction of the other. Upon this seat rested Eva. Her hair was wound into chaotic braids erupting like antennae from her skull, and her enlarged eyes had become twitching, multifaceted globes covered with an iridescent film. She took the hand extended to her in her own, leaned into the soiled, bearded man, and licked his face with one long stroke from earlobe to the tip of his nose, then upward to the center of his forehead.

  They both turned to look directly into Lowell’s eyes. The defecating man released Eva’s hand and pointed to Lowell. Eva arched her shoulders, vanished, and instantly rematerialized directly in front of Lowell on the interior side of the glass. She pressed her palms near Lowell’s eye level, and pounded her face into the window again and again, pausing only long enough to refocus on Lowell and erupt in shrill screams that pulled him back once again to the fire engines as they tore by and terrified him as a child. The pane shook with each violent impact, and Eva’s face broke down into pulp, spilling blood down her cheeks and onto the glass. Her eyes splintered and her nose sank into a wet, red patch. Her lips split at the corners and continued to tear further back from her shattered teeth with every screech.

  Lowell forced himself to look away and plodded onward from the restaurant toward the business district. He could hear the rattling thump of Eva’s head until she was nearly a block behind him.

  His second search turned up nothing having to do with Norman. The storefront torches left Lowell bathed in near-daylight as he traversed the stretch of Monroe Avenue from Oxford to Goodman. Beyond, homes were generally dark, though some lamps and television signals flickered across ceilings and walls. Occasionally dark ovals would appear, engulfed in background luminosity, to buzz and whine threats of violence to Lowell if he didn’t get out of the storm and abandon his pilgrimage.

  He ignored them all.

  Walking had become more difficult as the snow continued to build. Lowell would usually walk on the edges of the plowed roads during heavy accumulation of storms past, but plows had been absent during this one from what he’d seen and heard.

  Furthermore, the waves had continued to churn and roil up jagged rafts of ice and rock, making it far too hazardous to attempt passage. He’d only crossed Monroe once in either direction earlier to get to shops on the other side and back by clambering over a series of floating plastic garbage cans tied together with twine.

  Side roads were just narrow enough that Lowell could clear them with a good leap, and many appeared to be relatively slow moving and no deeper than a foot or two.

  A vessel did finally swing by, awash in flashing lights, and shouted at Lowell to move along to shelter and wait out the storm. Lowell nodded absently and plodded on. The vessel swooshed away, having fulfilled its humanitarian obligation.

  Lowell passed a short end of a fenced-in athletic field used by a high school near Alexander Street. He knew what he would find to his left, had he looked, but was unsure if he would be able to keep his body from bucking his command and bolting for the rocket, which even then knocked and clattered into its launch sequence.

  Whatever final fate he was due to discover for himself on that night, he intended to be the sole arbiter of its execution.

  The ball of fire belched from the ignition in a jarring dissonance, and the melted snow from beneath the launch pad rippled down past the field and fence and around Lowell’s boots as he carried on. Seconds later, right on cue, a small pop sounded the fruition of the escape plan.

  The snow fell harder around Lowell.

  His lungs were raw from exertion.

  He started to lose feeling in his toes and heels, and stumbled with regularity. Each time he fell to his knees, snow buried his legs up to the hips, and he took a little longer to rise back to his feet than during the recovery before. Tears, snot, and spit had frozen in tracks from the corners of his facial orifices downward on his cheeks and chin, and he’d given up cracking them apart and wiping them away after the third swipe of his sleeve.

  Lowell glanced down to
find the yellow rope, but saw nothing in the white. He dropped yet again to his knees, looking back over his shoulder to catch sight of a shadow bounding in his direction, before he toppled face first into a snow bank.

  He heard someone yell his name, then all sound became garbled. The world fizzled out to static.

  [Forty-One]

  “…ou can’t keep him here, Lauren.”

  “What am I supposed to do, throw him back out there in a pile of snow? I’m not letting him leave like this.”

  “He creeps me right the hell out, and he… Wait, do I smell pee? Did he piss himself? He pissed himself! Lauren!”

  Lowell opened his eyes to Allison, the short square from the Appaloosa show, stomping out of the room. Lauren leaned in over him and pulled a cool cloth from his forehead.

  “Hey you. What did I say about falling asleep in snow drifts during blizzards, Mister Lowell?”

  Lowell trained his eyes on hers to keep the ceiling behind her head from spinning out of control.

  “That’s right… Nothing. I didn’t say anything about it because I figured you weren’t stupid enough to do it.”

  His body flipped from sweating to shivering and back again. His face felt as though someone had scrubbed it with sandpaper. Even his teeth ached to the roots.

  He gathered that he was lying on a couch in Lauren’s apartment, and that hers must have been the voice he heard calling him before he lost consciousness. He could feel she’d removed his coat and hat, and he was tucked in under a thick fleece blanket.

  “You look confused. Let me guess.” Lauren closed her eyes and held an index finger to each temple. “Mm-hmm… Mm-hmm. Okay, I’ve got it: You would like to know how in the hell you ended up in my living room, yes?”

  He blinked in affirmation.

  “Right. Well, Allison and I were sitting around painting our toenails and talking about unicorns and what we wanted in the perfect man. I confessed that I’d always had a thing for mentally unstable popsicles, so we gathered up our purses and went on the prowl. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled over little old you sticking sideways out of a glacier down on Monroe and Alexander! I knew it was fate just slapping me in the face and junk!”

  Lowell closed his eyes and tried to sit up. Every joint and muscle exploded in agony.

  “Okay, settle down there, cowboy. Not yet.” Lauren gently pushed him back to the cushion and replaced the damp cloth above his eyes.

  He turned his head toward the rest of the room, and saw his coat and cap on a chair near the front door.

  She followed his line of sight.

  “Right. The hat. So… What’s the deal with the big, ugly business on the back of your head? Something you’d like to tell me?”

  Lowell’s tongue felt like it was coated in paste. He struggled to get words through his mouth and out to Lauren, and his voice squeaked in his parched throat.

  “Hold on.” She disappeared through an adjoining room and returned with a glass of water.

  Lifting his head up slowly, she held the drink to his lips as he swallowed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Welcome.”

  Lauren watched him drink but avoided seeming too obvious about it. She was sure he felt uncomfortable enough already without being under observation.

  “Also, in case you were worried, you didn’t pee yourself. Not sure how much of that conversation you caught, but you are kinda stinky from sweat and… dumpster crud, maybe? Little hard to tell, but it was on the knees of your pants and all over your coat. I scrubbed it off the best I could.”

  “How did you get me here?”

  “Allison and I carried you.” Then, in her best horrible vaguely Eastern European-sounding accent, “Don’t let miniskirt fool you, meester! We strong like bull!” She held up an arm and flexed, smiled weakly, and hoped her show of levity despite the severity of his condition was fooling him, at least.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I looked.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Lowell…” She’d cracked. Her eyes welled up for a moment, then she leaned in, lifted the cloth, and kissed him on the forehead. “You silly, silly boy.”

  Lauren stood and walked to the kitchen. Lowell could hear her crying softly. He sat upright, holding the back cushion for support until his head stopped spinning enough for him to slide his feet to the floor.

  She heard his heels drop, and came back around the corner into the doorway, wiping her face.

  “You can’t leave me again, Lowell.”

  “I can’t stay.”

  “Please.”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Lowell, Please.” Lauren crouched, wobbled forward, and fell onto her knees on the wooden floor. “Please don’t leave me here alone. I found you. I found you out there in the cold, Lowell. I brought you here, Lowell, to be with me.”

  “I can’t stay. I’m… I’m sorry.”

  “Let me take care of you.”

  “I have something I have to do. I can’t help you understand…”

  “Then don’t. I don’t even want to, Lowell. I pulled you out of all that, so you could be here… here with me. I…”

  “Lauren, listen…”

  Lowell tried to explain his life of the past week. He told her about the defecating man, about Norman, and about his brother. He described the deaths he’d witnessed in the park and in the parking lot. He spoke of the letters, the insects, and the surgery he’d performed on himself in his bathroom. The further he went on, the harder she wept, and the less she looked at him.

  She couldn’t form the words anymore, to tell him to stay until she could get him help.

  Lauren lowered her head and raised her arm, palm up. She wanted him to lay his hand in hers and let her keep him safe from the world he’d retreated to inside his broken mind.

  Lowell gathered his coat and cap from the chair, turned away from Lauren, and left her where she’d crumpled. Her arm hung in space until her strength was gone, then fell to rest across her tear-soaked knees below.

  [Forty-Two]

  Lowell carried the coat loosely draped over his arm out to the porch of Lauren’s apartment, so he hadn’t realized it was soaked through. As he slid one arm into a sleeve, the wool clung to him, and the chill dug into his forearm and biceps. He dropped the coat to the welcome mat and the cap next to it. His fever raged so fiercely now that he couldn’t feel anything but the fire beneath his skin.

  The storm had spread itself at least a foot and a half deep across the city, and hardly looked to be easing its onslaught as Lowell punched down Harvard Street to Goodman. The yellow line had long since been buried.

  It didn’t matter. Lowell knew where he was due to meet Norman. He was sure Norman was already at the rendezvous point, in fact, waiting for Lowell to arrive.

  Each footstep crunched and squeaked as he went on. This was the only way he could tell he was still moving. There was no longer sensation below his knees. His thighs felt as though they were separating from his femurs with each lurch forward.

  He had to maintain his up-tempo pace to keep from stopping altogether.

  His hearing drifted in and out from hissing laid over a low, unwavering tone, to the sound of winds spiraling around his head. His hair froze into a solid clump.

  Lowell turned onto Monroe off of Goodman, awkwardly high-stepping directly down the center of the roadway, which was untreated and completely impassable for any vehicle smaller than a highway plow. His arms swung in time with his exaggerated walk, pendulums of numbing flesh dangling like meat on hooks.

  Through the curtain of swirling flakes, Lowell could see dark gray pillars framing his path in roughly parallel lines where he guessed the curbs ran. They were spaced five or six feet from the next closest, and were of varying heights and widths. They stood in pairs, facing each other from either side of the road to the other.

  As he closed in on the first set, he discovered the pillars were people dressed in long, black parkas with fur-ri
nged hoods up. Every sleeve terminated in a pocket flap. The bottom seams rested on the surface of the snow. There were no footsteps behind or before any of them, as if they had been standing in position since before the storm began, although Lowell had covered this part of Monroe twice earlier and saw none of them.

  Their faces alternated between the defecator’s and Norman’s in each row. Every defecator’s disguise on one side was balanced with a Norman head directly opposite. As Lowell passed between each duo, their voices boomed into his ears in unison. The mouths of the masks didn’t move, but Lowell could tell that only the team of pillars closest to him would speak at a time.

  “You really are a stubborn one, aren’t you, Lowell?”

  On through the next two.

  “You shouldn’t be out here, Lowell. Go back to her before you freeze to death!”

  And on.

  “But you know you’re wasting your time, don’t you, Lowell?”

  The next.

  “You won’t find what you’re looking for in this storm, Lowell. Please don’t do this.”

  And the next.

  “You’ve lost your way, Lowell. Your mind is gone and you’re a fool to think otherwise!”

  So it continued for the remaining stretch of Monroe Avenue until just before it veered off toward the business district, turning into Chestnut Street near the overpass across the Inner Loop.

  He’d slowed only once along the route, when he passed by The Fly Trap. Its windows were aglow just as those of other shops, bars, and restaurants had been, but here it was more subtle. The harshness of the light was filtered through a moving screen of millions of airborne cockroaches. The cloud rioted and thrummed in a deep groan beyond the walls and glass of the bar, and over the voices of the pillars, until all at once they stopped and tore apart, revealing a light harsh enough to bring Lowell’s eyes to tears. In the center of the club’s larger open side, Lauren’s naked body spun from the ceiling fan, hanging by her hair, which was knotted into the fan’s chain pulls. Black stripes of insects crawled upward in spirals around the skin of each of her arms and legs, from the tips of her extremities to her head, where they entered every opening of her face.