She would return with things she’d found on the street. I tried to keep her from bringing them in, but at these moments she would suddenly grow hostile and protective. Desiccated rat and pigeon corpses, rusted shards of metal, branches, wire, all of which she would arrange methodically in the darkest corner of my apartment and hide behind a sheet. I stopped protesting, because more than disgust over the garbage she insisted on accumulating in my apartment, I felt fear of her independence. She could leave and never come back. The possibility was inconceivable.
I tried to ignore the shrine she was constructing behind the sheet, this complex mingling of forms that after a while no longer seemed random at all. They were no longer dried corpses or discarded hubcaps and splintered boards; they were minor elements in a dense and disturbing mosaic. Mona was reconstructing something of her own world in this tiny corner of mine.
In late February I began walking to work along Lower Wacker Drive, after having avoided it completely since the day I saved Mona from her Shabbie attacker. I found no trace of them—only a cloud of white spray-paint where someone had scrawled BEWARE OF THE SHABBIE PEOPLE.
I wondered where she went at night. Would she have remembered the train ride up to my neighborhood; would she know how or have money to pay and get on the “L” train and find her way down here on her own? There were times when I would linger down there as though all it would take was the right squint and the right tilt of my head in order to see them there. I wondered if she came down here to do this very thing, not knowing how to find them and trying desperately to summon them back from whatever inaccessible netherworld into which they’d retreated, crying out for them to take her away from this cold, bleak place and the stumpy little man who held her prisoner.
Then one night, during an unseasonably warm spell after weeks of heavy snows, I walked Lower Wacker, avoiding the widening pools and the spouts of water spilling from the streets above and whining to myself about Mona, whom I had not seen in two days. Had she disappeared for good? Could something have happened to her? I wandered Lower Wacker for a while, drinking in the desolate and expansive solitude that seemed like such a perfect extension of my mood.
The area where the Shabbies used to stand was now under a foot of water. As I stepped to the edge of this pond I saw a rat half-swim, half-scurry across it, cutting a line of splashes neatly down the middle. As the waters settled, erasing all traces of the rat’s pathway, I saw what I believed to be a reflection of the ceiling above me, and my tired eyes began to unfocus along the strange contours formed there.
Suddenly there was movement in the water, something large, struggling up from an impossible depth in this shallow pool. In the brief moment it broke the surface I was sure that it was a man, but the water settled over it and the pool grew still and silent, as though nothing had happened. I looked around; there was no one anywhere, and the green lights illuminating the underground were all flickering in synchronization.
Another splash—there it was again, exploding to the surface. Only this time it did not seem to be a man at all, but rather some kind of slimy, chaotically misshapen encephalopod, transparent and thrashing furiously before sinking once again beneath the surface. I looked carefully at the once-more placid surface, then at the ceiling above. Only a reflection.
I hurried on my way, considering for a moment taking the nearest stairway up to street level and then changing my mind when I saw the ominous shadows moving along the entrance to the stairway. I began to run, but there were puddles and roaring downspouts everywhere, and in the weak, still-flickering green light, it was difficult to negotiate the water, and the soles of my shoes were sliding treacherously on the wet ground. Finally I stopped, leaning against a steel and concrete beam while a downpour of water roared just on the other side. I crept around to look at it more closely as I caught my breath. Was this water running down here from the street? I looked up but there was only a blackness from which the water didn’t seem so much as fall as simply appear, materializing out of a void.
And then I heard it. Oh, I recognized the sound, all right. The moment I heard the voice I was sure I must be lying in bed alongside Mona and having another one of those dreams, because it was Mona herself, speaking in the voice with which she had so often called out to me in so many of those early dreams. But it wasn’t just a single woman’s voice, it was several, along with manly voices that spoke in deep, threatening tones. I looked into the falling column of water and saw transparent figures struggling within, little more than water themselves, thrashing away as though trying to force their way free. I blinked and leaned closer, my face set in what must have been a ridiculous, gaping mask. I could see human forms in there, all occupying the same small spaces, trying to break away from each other. Every splash against my face felt like fingertips grasping out toward me. Finally a hand emerged, then an arm. I backed away as it reached out and then disappeared. I can’t say for sure whether it sank back into the spout of water or merely splashed shapelessly to the ground.
I screamed and ran onto the catwalk, where the shadows were heavy, but it was dry and I had quick access to the next set of stairs leading up to the street.
Though my train ride home was uneventful, I couldn’t stop thinking of the hallucinations I had experienced on Lower Wacker. I arrived home in an absolute panic. Inside I found Mona, wearing one of the simple, second-hand dresses I had bought her, looking up from the television and smiling sweetly.
“Mona!” I cried, rushing over to her.
And then she did a strange thing, unlike anything she had done before or would do over those last few days she remained with me. She put her arms around me and rocked me, shushing me as though I were a small child. As we stood there, her rocking me gently and running her fingers through my shamelessly thin, greasy hair, I stared at the bulging contours of the sheet draped across her shrine. And as I listened, it was almost as though her wordless whispers were rising from the things she had hidden away there.
Then we made love—for what turned out to be the last time. I drank of the sweetness between her thighs and then sank deep inside of her while we lay still, both of us breathing hard, both of us trying to freeze this instant in time while her soft hands glided over me until they began to urge my movements.
When it was over I buried my face between her cheek and shoulder and fell into an unsettling sleep which was disturbed by a series of unbearably sharp stomach cramps. I tossed and turned, trying to force my eyes open, gradually becoming aware that the pains I was feeling were something more than those of a simple stomach ache. Something was burrowing into my body and tearing it apart, breaking through my rib cage and devouring my heart, my lungs ... everything inside that twisting, struggling cavity. Though my eyes were still not open, I was able to see the thing that was eating me. It glared at me, shreds of meat hanging out of its bloody mouth.
Mona.
I awoke screaming. I sat up in bed and looked over to the kitchenette light, the only light on in the apartment. There, drowning out my single scream with its constant, hideous cries was an animal—not much different from the one I’d seen struggle in the explicable depths of that shallow pool on Lower Wacker—stretched out upon the kitchen table, thrashing furiously beneath the slender young woman who dug through its flesh with her teeth and claws.
“Mona ...” I croaked, as a piece of the transparent beast was ripped from its body and flung across the room. A small bit of it stuck to my cheek and I collapsed onto the sheets, trying to rub the hot, steaming mass from my face. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to wake up, realizing that the stomach pains had disappeared without a trace, as though they had belonged to someone else all along.
When I rose the next morning Mona was gone. I examined the kitchenette thoroughly, trying to find traces of the gruesome feeding I had witnessed the night before, but I detected no sign of a struggle among the usual clutter on the table. I felt the spot on my cheek where the glutinous flesh had splattered me and remembered that
elusive oily sensation I had felt on my skin the first day I’d walked through the motionless array of Shabbies.
Then I heard it. A familiar ringing noise that seemed to snake through the air, stinging my skin and jabbing into my ears like a long needle.
I turned to the corner where Mona’s secret shrine lay. As I stepped toward it I could feel the pressure of that invisible fluid closing in around me again. I knelt and placed my hand on the sheet. It was warm, its surface like silk; and when I ran my palm across the gentle luxurious folds in the fabric, it sighed and twisted like reacting flesh.
When I yanked the sheet aside I did not see the disturbing mosaic of clutter, but an emptiness, black and cold. A stench rose from that emptiness, and with it invisible clouds of oil that struck at my face and hands. I let the sheet drop back into place. Its movement was slow and graceful and did not end until it stretched and spasmed, letting out a quivering sigh as it finally stopped.
I touched my face and my hand came away with a layer of transparent ooze that grew warmer and warmer the longer it remained in contact with my skin.
IV
Her last few days in the apartment were a nightmare for me. She was in and out all the time, leaving each time as though she would never return, and later walking back in the door as though returning had been an unforgivable failure of nerve. It was no longer as though she didn’t know I existed; it was as though she were suddenly so aware of my presence, so appalled by it, that she had to keep moving and distracting herself to keep from being overcome by it.
The warm weather that had brought the Shabbies from whatever realm they ordinarily inhabited would be returning in a matter of weeks and so, I believed from Mona’s nervous manner, would the Shabbies. I knew that every time she walked out the door could easily mark the last moment I would ever see her.
Finally, one especially frigid night, she opened the door and cast a hateful, unregretting glare in my direction. I was sure that the time had finally come. I broke down and ran to the door, slamming it and whirling her around to face me.
“Mona. Please ...”
She averted her eyes and tried to slip quickly past me.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and fought her sudden thrashings, but her strength and her will to resist were far greater than I had expected. I found myself literally trying to tackle her, pull her down to the floor. I was willing to kill her just so that she might have to look me in the eyes. Mona shrieked and wailed as she had on that evening on Lower Wacker Drive when the Shabbie tried to wrestle her to the ground for what were probably the exact same reasons.
She struck me across the face. I could feel the blood spreading down my cheek. I struck her next blow aside and backed away.
I called her Mona one last time.
And then she attacked. It was all a blur, the hazy, fading end of it a frail human girl, the harder, on-rushing, leading edge something ugly and ferocious—rows of twitching, flickering blades mounted on glutinous, transparent cords of flesh. I covered my face with folded arms and dropped to the floor as a thousand needle-points pierced and broke off inside my skin. I felt a sprinkle of cool water, then heard the door slam.
I lay there for quite some time, afraid to move. When I finally sat up, it was dark, and Mona was gone.
My skin was clean and unbroken.
I tried to sleep that night, but every time I closed my eyes I was struck again by the image of that girl zooming forward through a self-generated haze, her face turning into a grotesque, glass-flesh monster, mouth open and ready to tear me to shreds. I didn’t want to know what my dreams would have made of such a vision, and ended up going to work the next morning with no sleep whatsoever. I didn’t sleep the next night either, only nodding off occasionally on the train for the next three days, until on the fourth night sleep finally beat me into submission.
I avoided Lower Wacker and spent as little time in the apartment as I could; and when I did, I scrupulously prevented my eyes from coming to rest on that corner of hers.
Did I really believe she wasn’t coming back? It was only in my most agonizing moments that I actually convinced myself I was really in love with Mona and not merely a slave to the presence she had offered me as an antidote to my suffocating loneliness. I began to fantasize that she returned to me in the guise of a shy, repentant but otherwise quite normal woman who would speak to me and not only heal the wounds she’d left me with, but explain away the madness she had suffused into my body and my home and into the world I saw through my tired, suspicious eyes.
It was this hope, pierced with a lifetime’s worth of bitterness, that ruined me in the end.
I lost my job. Various reasons were given for my abrupt termination, but the real reasons were obvious and plentiful. I no longer bathed. I rarely changed my clothes. I talked to myself. Sometimes I talked to Mona. And sometimes I just wept for her, in loud but stifled gasps.
On the night I lost my job I returned to the apartment in a rage. I looked at the shambles I had made of it since I’d frightened Mona away; dirty clothes strewn and wadded across every surface, half-eaten food festering away on the floor and tabletops, magazines opened and tossed across furniture as though I were always in the middle of reading a dozen different useless articles and advertisements. The TV had remained on for three weeks, until the picture fizzled out and I was left with no more than twenty-four hours of static. I felt another useless bout of crying coming over me.
No, not again. No more.
I let out a scream and proceeded to tear the place apart. Why not finish the job since it seemed to be what my body really wanted to do? I tore up clothes and magazines, emptied the contents of my refrigerator and freezer across every surface upon which those contents could land or stick.
And then I tore the old sheet away from Mona’s corner. I was struck again by the insane logic that made it look like so much more than a mere collection of garbage. I began tearing away at the complex, symmetrical formation she had created, hurling rusted metal, grime-coated shards of glass, rat and pigeon corpses, and completely unidentifiable, convoluted masses of slick or hairy or sharp material across my room, so that what had once been a carefully but enigmatically constructed puzzle was no more than a scattered addition to the wasteland of filth and clutter that had once been my apartment.
But within days, the apartment was clean and barren and lifeless. I, too, had grown clean and barren and lifeless. I took showers until I was covered with red, raw patches, and though I stared out my windows for hours on end, I did not leave the place for over a week.
When I finally did, it was to take a train downtown and revisit my old haunts: Lower Wacker Drive, the crossroads of my former life. It was early April now, and the weather had that cruel, unpredictable bite Chicago weather always has in spring along the lakefront: cold or warm—not merely on one frustrating day to the next—but from one gust of wind to another, from one patch of light to the adjacent shadow.
And there they were. I don’t know why it surprised me so much. Only three of them, standing brittle and motionless, as though just barely focusing their translucent flesh into this world. Upon first seeing the three thin and ragged men, all their attention centered inward on some kind of transitional pain, I felt as though I could have stepped right through them and they would have collapsed—like water escaping through an abruptly ruptured membrane. I sat on the catwalk and watched them for several hours, waiting for a sign of movement—of life—just waiting for something that might be a clue, a signpost that would lead me to my Mona.
But as the rush hour began on the streets above, some of it spilled down onto Lower Wacker and people began to pass by on their way home. They didn’t seem to notice the three Shabbies at all. Instead they focused on me, sitting pensive and alone, a very clean but ragged man on a filthy catwalk.
I kept coming back. Soon I began to read those unsettling stares and glances of pity and revulsion on the faces of the passersby and I realized that they thought I was just another h
omeless resident of Lower Wacker Drive. But of course I had a definite purpose. I was watching the Shabbies, watching their numbers increase slowly and steadily, watching as they came gradually into focus and began moving around, transparent and iridescent at first, but nearly solid, nearly corporeal as the weeks progressed. I walked among them, trying to follow—to imitate—their seemingly random patterns, listening to them speak to one another in those rapid, wordless whispers, and occasionally looking one in the eye and have him return my stare, and acknowledge my existence with a nod of the head or with that unsettling stretch of the facial muscles that I had seen so often in Mona, that grimace which I had always told myself was a smile.
Soon there were dozens of them, milling about a stretch of Lower Wacker that was just over three blocks long. The police would drive by, sometimes lean out the window, but they seemed incapable of seeing the Shabbies for what they really were. So did the muddled and preoccupied commuters. Even the transients who haunted Lower Wacker feared them too much to get close and see what the Shabbies really were, or feel the tension their presence created on the thin, wet fabric of our world. When I arrived in the morning I would feel the warm, oily hug of the membrane as it closed in on me, greasing me as though to ease my passage into the great dark otherspace where Mona hid from me, not knowing how much I needed her, missed her.
Eventually I could no longer return home. I had to stay down there with them, knowing that they could all disappear at any moment, knowing that when that time came, I would have to be there with them, ready to cross over with them, ready to face Mona again and make her understand.
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