Blue Sludge Blues & Other Abominations

by Shannon Lawrence

  When he found the door, he grasped the doorknob, twisting it and throwing his entire body against it to ensure it would open. It gave and he fell inward, crashing onto the wooden floor. Quickly, he twisted his body and kicked out with his good leg, slamming the door shut against the horrors outside.

  It was quiet for a moment, and then he heard it, that sound he’d waited until dawn for that night so long ago. Something clawed at the door, whimpered, panted.

  Bessie.

  It killed a little piece of him, that sound. Knowing it was Bessie, but wasn’t. He steeled himself to keep from letting her in, pressed his back against the opposite wall to stay strong.

  Hours later he woke up to sunlight streaming through the windows. Silence surrounded him. He pulled himself up, pain hitting him in the absence of the adrenaline that had pushed him through it all the night before.

  When he peered outside he found another clear day. The deep blue of a Colorado morning sky. He pulled the front door open and looked around. Nothing. He stepped forward, his foot hitting something soft and yielding. There, on his porch, lay Bessie’s corpse. Fresh and whole, as if she had just died.

  With a sigh, Jim slid his feet into his shoes, laced them up and grabbed his shovel. With one arm, he reached down and picked Bessie up. Time to get back to work.

  The Salvation Lottery

  Brand awoke to the sound of running water. Just a faint sound. He tried to roll over, to go back to sleep, but he rolled right off the side of the bed onto a hard, wet floor. Gasping, he opened his eyes, gummy from too much sleep. He rubbed them, pushing at the blurring that wouldn’t go away.

  Finally, his eyes focused, but he couldn't be sure what he was seeing. Grey concrete walls, a film of water on the floor, shelves and a table covered with various odds and ends. It wasn’t his bed he’d rolled out of, but a cot.

  His head pounded, and he felt sluggish. Had he crashed at a friend’s house? No, he hadn’t been partying. He’d been at home, in his crummy little apartment, microwave food growing cold on the table as he watched some soulless show on the boob tube and contemplated his own mortality.

  He’d been preparing to end it all. So why was he here now?

  There, underneath the cot, the gun he’d been holding. The one he’d been about to use. He crawled over to it, picked it up, cradled it against him. Well, wherever he was now, his plans didn’t have to change. Same channel, different location.

  He held the gun to his temple, the barrel cold against his flesh, smelled the scent of gun oil mingling with the metallic scent of the water. Closing his eyes, he began to squeeze the trigger.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Mr. McKenzie.”

  The voice came out of nowhere, deep and masculine, and somehow odd to his ears. Brand jerked, opened his eyes. He didn’t see anyone when he looked around.

  “Where are you? Who is that?”

  “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

  “I sincerely doubt that. Why can’t I see you?”

  “Because I’m not in the room, Mr. McKenzie.”

  “No kidding.”

  “No need to be unpleasant. Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?”

  There was a burst of static, and Brand realized what had struck him odd. The voice had an almost robotic mechanical edge to it. He got up and began to search the room, looking for some kind of radio. Instead, what he found was a baby monitor, one that apparently worked both ways. He thought about turning it off, but decided it would be best to hear what this person had to say.

  “Go for it.”

  “All right. It is our understanding that you have chosen the ultimate act of selfishness: suicide. Your family has been quite concerned about you, understandably so. Their desire is for you to survive. Thus, they entered you into the Salvation Lottery, and your name was chosen. In short, we’re here to save you, Mr. McKenzie.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Mr. Nameless. I have no interest in being saved.”

  “Indeed. That is our understanding. However, your family wants you saved, and they’re the ones who will have to live with your death.”

  “They’ll be better off without me; it’s just hard for them to realize that.”

  “Ah, in this case you’re wrong. Once you’ve won the Salvation Lottery, the clock starts ticking. You will have 12 hours to prove you want to live by getting yourself out of the current situation. If you do not find your way out, your family pays the ultimate price.”

  “So I die either way? I’d rather just take care of the problem now.” With these words, Brand once again put the gun against his temple, setting the baby monitor down on the table.

  “You might want to hear me out before you do that. The ultimate price is not the loss of your life, but of your family’s lives. If we cannot rehab you, they have agreed, in writing, to die with you.”

  Brand let his hand fall to his side, almost dropping the gun. “What? What do you mean?”

  “It’s how the Salvation Lottery works. For true salvation, you must not only live, but prove your life worthwhile. You have 12 hours, Mr. McKenzie. Everything you need can be found in this room. It’s up to you to put it all together. No worries, though, it’s easier than you think.”

  Brand picked up the baby monitor, shouting into it, “This is crazy! You can’t do this; it can’t be legal. Get me out of here!”

  Nothing but silence greeted him. The red light stayed on, but several minutes of ranting got him no response. In a fit of anger, he smashed the baby monitor against the wall, regretting it almost the moment it left his hands. How would he contact them now?

  It was only with the absence of the monitor’s static that he heard a slight beeping. He threw things out of his way as he searched for the source of the beeping. A bomb? Had they really put a bomb in here with him? He didn’t know how to stop a bomb.

  What he found was a clock, ticking backwards, but not a bomb, at least as far as he could tell. It was at 11:38. Had he been ranting that long, or had the clock started the moment he’d woken up?

  No matter. 12 hours wasn’t a long time; he needed to get started.

  First things first. He needed to examine this room, see where he was being held. It was small, probably about 13 x 13. He found what appeared to be a vent, possibly where his air was coming from, at about head level on one wall. He also found a spigot, releasing a steady trickle of water into the room. This was where the water on the floor originated. Water, he now noticed, that was getting higher. It had risen to the top of the rubber sole on his shoes, the cold beginning to seep in through the canvas there.

  There were no visible exits, nothing that breached the walls aside from the water spigot and the air vent. The floor was concrete, like the walls. A basement? Cellar? But there would be a door into either one of those things.

  Oh! A trick door. Perhaps it was hidden in the wall. Immediately, he began feeling with his fingers, trying to find a seam, anything. When that proved futile, he started moving everything on the shelves, hoping for a trigger, like in the movies. Paint cans, computer chips, springs, wood blocks, tools, screws, and countless other objects littered the floor by the time he was done, but not one of them created a doorway in the wall. The shelves stood bare, tables the same. No surface, save the floor, bore anything at all, yet he was still in here, in this impossible room.

  Looking up at the ceiling, he thought he saw something there. He dragged over a table, got on top of it, and began prodding the ceiling with his fingers. Something was, in fact, there. It was a tiny piece of metal, curved, like there was a hook stuck in the ceiling, some sort of metal loop. But it was embedded in the cement, just a little bit exposed, as of the bottom edge.

  He jumped down and moved the table to one corner, standing on it and feeling around the ceiling the same way he had done with the walls. Each time he cleared a rectangular area of ceiling, he moved to the side, moving forward once he reached the wall. He did this until he reached the opposite corner of the one he’d
started in, all to no avail. Nothing.

  Upon checking, he found the clock to read 10:20. He’d been at this for over an hour.

  The air vent! Running to the air vent, he tried to pull it off, but found it screwed in. There were tools everywhere; there must be a screwdriver. He dove onto the floor, oblivious to the water that soaked into his jeans, throwing things this way and that as he tried to find a phillips head screwdriver. It didn’t take him long to realize he was creating more chaos and couldn’t hope to find anything in this mess. Instead, he started organizing things back on the shelves and tables. Random electronics went on the bookshelf against the back wall; basic materials, like wood and scraps of plastic and metal, went on the wall shelves around the room; tools of all kinds went on the table he’d used to check the ceiling; and cloth and other random scraps that didn’t fit the other categories went onto the second, smaller table that stood in one corner.

  While he didn’t find a phillips head, he did find a set of small flathead screwdrivers, one of which he could maneuver to undo the screws on the vent. All except one. That one had been filed down to leave a completely flat surface. How was he supposed to get that out? He tried pushing the vent down, hoping it would turn using the last screw as a sort of hinge, but it was too tightly screwed. He’d have to come back to it.

  His attention was drawn to the water again as it hit his ankles over the tops of his shoes. Why hadn’t he tried to shut that off right away? Stupid oversight. His feet were freezing.

  At the spigot, he tried to turn it, but nothing happened. He ran over to the table for the wrench he’d found, racing back to try it on the handle. Lefty-loosy, righty-tighty. At first, the wrench didn’t budge the handle, but he put all his weight into it and finally felt it move. Instead of turning off when he turned it to the right, the water flow increased.

  “No!” How could this be? He floundered in the rush of frigid water, trying to turn it back to the left, but when he did, nothing happened. The water flow didn’t change, no matter what he did with the wrench. The water seemed to have quadrupled in speed, the best he could tell. At this rate, instead of just being a nuisance, it might just be the thing that killed him. That, or exposure from the temperature of the water. He wasn’t sure what to fear more.

  He hurried over to the odds and ends table, searching for something, anything, that might plug the spigot. A cork sat there, one of those random objects he didn’t think would have a purpose. Grabbing it, he hurried to the spigot. He fought the force of the water, trying to push the cork in. Twice, it slipped out of his hands. Twice, he found it again and tried to get it into place. Finally, it went in, with him rocking it a bit to force it in the smaller spigot. That’s what corks were meant to do, after all.

  But how long would it hold?

  A glance at the clock revealed his time to be 9:58.

  “What else is there? What can I do? Why are you doing this?”

  He dragged the cot over to the big table and sat down on it, studying the room. The only thing he could see doing anything about was that vent. What could he do? He shifted around on his seat and stared at the tools in front of him.

  Picking up a set of needle nose pliers, he went to the vent, splashing through the water, his feet mercifully numb, though he figured that was probably a bad thing in the long run. He tried to find any sort of edge or surface that would let the pliers catch. He had his left arm placed on the wall for leverage, his right hand digging the pliers against the screw, when his hand slipped, sending the pliers into the fleshy underside of his palm. They dug a deep divot along the base of his thumb, pain shooting up his arm. His yell reverberated throughout the room as blood began to well up out of the wound and slide down the meaty part of his palm.

  He climbed back on top of the cot and stuck his hand into the water in the hopes that it would numb the hand while cleansing the wound. Of course, who knew what was in the water pouring in? It didn’t reek of sewage, though, which was good enough for him at this moment.

  He watched as tendrils of blood drifted away from his thumb, staining the water. He saw a flash of white through the dark blood. Bone? Oh God, had it gone that deep? He thought he’d just scratched it really well. He jerked his hand out of the water, brought it close to his face. Sure enough, that was bone.

  While he was examining his hand, he heard a groaning, followed by a pop as the cork shot out of the spigot. Water began to pour in again, though it seemed to be somewhat lessened than before. Maybe something in the wall had gone before the cork, like a pipe.

  A sigh escaped him, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do.

  “What in the hell do you mean it’s easier than I think?” he shouted. Oh yeah, no more baby monitor. The pieces had joined the odds and ends shelf during his cleanup. He slumped over at his own stupidity.

  For a moment, he thought about giving up. Maybe just lying there in the water, letting the cold numb his entire body before he drowned to death. Embracing that sweet oblivion he’d been looking forward to for so long now. But he found he wanted to live, at least to save his family, if not to prove these assholes wrong, to beat them at their own game.

  This time, it was a sob he let out.

  9:00.

  While time seemed to be racing, it also felt never-ending. He just wanted out of here. The first thing he’d do is call his son, tell him he loved him. The second would be to call his parents and ask them what the hell they’d thought, signing him up for something like this. No matter how worried they were about him, he was sure they wouldn’t have signed something saying they’d be willing to be murdered just to keep him alive.

  He hadn’t thought they were even paying attention, that they had any idea how bad things were for him. He’d tried talking to Dad, hoping his own father would lend him some money—he didn’t want to ask for it—but Dad had just shrugged him off. He’d tried asking his big brother for advice on how to handle things, but Jim had blown him off—Wall Street was busy, and working there meant he didn’t have time for his little brother. He tried every which way to ask for help without actually asking for it, and no one had noticed, or so it had seemed. His own mother had turned away from him, her eyes so sad, disappointed. He knew how she felt about gambling, yet he’d buried himself under debt to get that fix. Lost his job, his wife. She’d taken his son from him, fled. Had they signed up for this, as well? Was his son at risk, along with his parents? Who did the term “family” encompass?

  These thoughts were getting him nowhere. He’d never find out what was really going on if he didn’t get out of here. Better to assume it was all concerned and just get the hell out.

  He grabbed a piece of cloth from the shelf and wrapped it tightly around his injured hand, using his teeth to tie a knot and cinch it. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, and he realized it had probably been there for a while. He pushed it aside and studied the contents of the shelf, picking up a chisel and a butter knife. When he stepped into the water again, he found it to be three-quarters of the way up his calf. The cot overturned and floated behind him, but he let it go.

  With the knife, he started working an edge of the vent, digging and pushing to get underneath. It took awhile, his teeth chattering from the cold, but he made some leeway and moved it enough to work the knife deeper. He then shoved the chisel in behind it, ignoring the pain that throbbed in his hand. He worked it back and forth until it was in as deep as he could get it, sticking up at an angle. Using both hands, one on top of the other, he pushed the chisel toward the wall, attempting to lever the vent out of the concrete. It gave enough for him to move the chisel deeper, push again.

  He worked at this for several minutes, each time getting a little more give out of the vent. When it was too far out to get any real leverage with the chisel, he used his hands to work at the vent, pushing it down to try to loosen the remaining screw.

  His hands were so cold that numbness set in and he didn’t feel the metal cutting through the uncovered portion of his skin. Not at first. Not u
ntil blood began to well up through his fingers. Just as he saw the blood, the pain sliced through the cold. Just a little, just enough so he knew it was there. It stung.

  When he looked at his hands, he saw the cuts were deep. He stuck his hands in the water again, trying to remember when he last got a tetanus shot. Probably way too long ago. Great, maybe he’d develop a little lockjaw before he died. Wouldn’t that just make it all perfect?

  The edges of his wounds were jagged and white when he pulled them out of the water, but he couldn’t see bone, so they weren’t as deep as he’d feared, not like the initial injury. He grabbed a pot holder in lieu of gloves, and went to work on the vent again.

  “How did you people choose what to put in here? A pot holder? Really?” He no longer cared if anyone could hear him.

  He twisted the vent until the screw wouldn’t give anymore then took the chisel to it again, finally levering the screw right out of the concrete. He was afraid to know how much time had passed. He’d been working at this long enough for the water to have crept up above his knees. His feet and legs were entirely numb at this point, and he was shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering painfully. He was afraid one of them would shatter any moment.

  He dropped the vent onto the nearest shelf, not wanting anything in the water he could injure himself on, and peered into the square hole left behind. It was too dark to see anything other than a tiny slice of black accordion tubing.

  A flashlight sat on one of the shelves. He sloshed over to it, no longer able to run through the deepening water. When he took hold of the flashlight, he glimpsed the clock. 7:27.

  It had taken way too long to get the vent off. It better lead to something good.

  The beam of the flashlight was weak, but it was enough to show him more of the accordion tubing. He’d hoped he would see some sort of opening, something the tube was connected to. Initially, he’d thought there might be light, some sign that the outside world waited right there. But only darkness and tubing met his eyes.