Thirteen Specimens

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  Time warp it is no longer then it is now. “Spa” is a time warped archaic term like “American factory” like “affordable housing” like “til death do us part”. Time warped archaic book of medical curiosities with terms like “lipoma of the parietal region” and “sarcoma of the nasal septum” and “hypertrophic tumor of the scalp and face” and “epithelioma of the orbit” my tumor has now reached the size of my own head in double like a cell dividing into two like a thwarted clone of myself stillborn or am I the one who is stillborn while the tumor thrives? The mass growing from the side of my head would have tipped my head over so heavy it might have broken my neck except that it rests on my shoulder and supports itself there like a lover dozing against me.

  Some of my hair grows wispily on top of the tumor like an old man’s or infant’s thin hair and some parts of the growth are as gleaming smooth as a skull and others are as wrinkled and pendulous as a scrotum and there is a long valley that was a deep furrow that turned into a fissure at first I would slip one finger into it and finally my finger broke through brittle filaments like old dried-out rubber bands and my hooked finger would draw out a stringy mass half wet and half crusted like silvery metallic snot. The next day I could fit all four of my fingers inside the fissure, all the way in. I touched more hard smooth things and wrinkly shifting things like elusive living animals inside...eels, tadpoles, jellyfish, a sharp bird beak that snipped at my fingers until I jerked them out and I haven’t slipped them inside my head cunt again. At least, while I was in there, I massaged something soft and malleable like a ball of clay, maybe my clone’s brain, and it soothed away some of the pain.

  My left eye is gone in the wrinkles if I close my right eye I can see a fleshy red haze through my left eye and a silvery pus drools out of the fissure I found an old diaper of Grover’s I mean Logan’s in a drawer and I opened it up and put it over the fissure to catch the pus and I used silvery duct tape to hold the diaper in place wrapping it around a bulging section of the tumor like a tumor on the tumor and on top of another bulge I put Grover’s red baseball cap and it stays on pretty well unless I bend over but I need to find another diaper because this one is sodden and heavy. Logan would laugh and laugh when I would imitate Grover’s high-pitched scream at Kermit the Frog “Hey frog-gyyy!” and I remember the mummified frog pressed into the new tar like a fossil. Green-green frog silvery-gray duct tape silvery-gray brain snot silvery-gray company car coming slowly down the newly paved road toward me I don’t remember leaving the house or walking out this far but I must have planned maybe my clone planned because I have the stroller and things inside the stroller.

  The car turns diagonally and stops with a dramatic little squeal of the brakes to cut me off but I keep walking toward it undramatic little squeals from the stroller wheels and the driver opens his door and steps out. He wears a white dress shirt without a jacket and he has dark slacks and a tie and I know his face from a murky liquid-filled room. His eyes are even more penetrating undiluted now as he walks toward me “Hold up” he says. Though he is not underwater his words sound that way as they resonate distorted in the dolphin-head dome of my tumor.

  I hold up. I am smiling. He walks even closer right to the stroller. He looks down into it. Maybe I should have left the red cap on Grover’s head instead of on my tumor because he sees Grover’s blue fur sticking up from inside his too-soft baby blanket. “What the fuck is this?” he says reaching down tearing away the blanket so forcefully that Grover topples out I should have buckled Grover in what a bad father I am Grover lies on the newly paved black black tar like a crucified frog or a smashed turtle. Grover lies there. Sprawled there. And as the man kicks Grover off toward the side of the road I reach down into the stroller and pick up one of the things that was behind Grover and the man looks up from Grover and I thrust forward almost tripping over the stroller the long blade of the big knife Pam used to cut Italian and French bread which sticks him in his left eye and he doubles over slaps a palm to his socket says in his underwater voice “Uh...uh...Ga...” and he must be seeing a red haze through his left eye as I come around the stroller fast knocking it over and stick him stick him his hands flutter in flurries but I flash and dash and stick him deep deeper deepest. He falls. I kick him kick him kick him like Grover in the legs in the sternum in the gashed face and neck. The knife is all the way to the handle in the very center of his throat moving jerkily like a machine’s jammed black lever as he tries to speak fear or swallow blood or vomit the blade out his remaining eye lifts up to me drowning this time drowning at last then fixing in place.

  I go to Grover scoop him in my arms I cradle him soothe him I realize his fur is matted red on blue makes purple I promise him as I tuck him into the stroller again that I will wash him when we go back home. But first I push the righted stroller around the idling silver-gray car with its opened door and its opened driver leaving them there in the middle of the road behind me. Squeak squeak squeaking little white wheels trail little trails of red.

  I hope my actions and appearance don’t frighten Grogan I mean Lover but he knows not all of us monsters are bad. His favorite book is The Monster at the End of this Book which in fact is about Grover. I used to read him this story and imitate Grover’s voice and he would laugh and laugh. I hate to spoil the ending but it turns out that Grover himself is the monster at the climax of the story.

  On we squeak past trees festooned with fungus lace. Through the trees snakes the stream caked with lime green scum. And I spot something set back a little in the woods I pause and see a coyote standing there gazing out at me. I am not afraid for me or Grover. The coyote is made out of crystalline green plastic. I push Logan’s stroller onward again down the straight straight access road.

  Ahead the rusty chain-link gate blocking my way but open the links of rusty wire like the web of wires binding Marsha and her dog inside the shack that nurses at the huge white breast of the methane tank. The methane tank. Squeak squeak squeaking until I see the methane tank just ahead. Squeak through the gate of rust.

  I lift out Grover against my chest because I have to leave the stroller here the weeds are too tall and because I need to get the other something I brought that was hidden behind Grover a red plastic jug with a yellow cap I used to mow my lawn but lately the grass in my fraction of a back yard just a single mote of the town compared to the land Odyllic covers is almost as tall as these weeds we wade through to get to the grate-like steps leading up to the shack.

  I pause on the steps because I have noticed there is something missing off to the right of the methane tank. The grassless land there is so flat and even it takes me a moment to realize the nondescript plant or warehouse structure is missing gone without a trace even the dumpster stuffed with insulation and cardboard. That large a building torn down and its foundation filled in and buried as if it never even existed there even though the last time not long ago at all I slowly circled the building now vanished as if I only imagined it.

  So they are trying to destroy their evidence but it is too late for that it is time for me to destroy their evidence now so I step inside the shack and I see Marsha is still there but altered.

  Marsha is now only a skeleton wired to the wall she looks like a spirit she is so sheer. Her jaw is a little open somehow all the bones stay together like a skeleton wired together for a science class rusty wires that now entirely cocoon the dog on the ceiling so I can’t tell if it’s a skeleton too.

  Reaching through some of the corroded wires that practically drip lockjaw I place the jug against the wall that hugs the side of the methane tank I have already unscrewed the yellow cap freed the genie vapors and stuffed in my knotted white scrap of undershirt that I soaked in the stuff before. My hand almost brushes green skeleton toes sorry Marsha so sorry.

  I light the end of the rag with a cigarette lighter or match or the hate from my gaze I’m not sure how but when I turn to get out of there my ankle catches on one of those wire web strands and I fall almost dropping Grover. I s
cramble to my feet and out the door and down the steps the tangled weeds try to grasp hold of me but I tear through them and I have no time to retrieve the stroller I run and run with Grover but we are just short of the open gate when there is a terrific whump behind us. It throws us through the gate.

  There is an ocean wave that crashes over us but it is a wave of molten lava. Somehow I jolt to my feet and resume running as if I had never been hurled down. As I run and run however I see that Grover is burning the blue hair crisping black I smother him in my arms bat at the flames but my sleeves my arms are aflame too and they just catch Grover alight again. Still as I run I pat him and slap at him as best I can ignoring the flames that fly back from my head my head a giant torch. The fluid gushing bubbling down the sides of my neck and my back is also lava from the volcano of my Olympic torch head that streams flames that are strewn like seeds to the ground behind me gobs of liquid flame catching alight the grass and weeds and brush lining the access road its new black surface reflecting sheets of rippling fire conflagration immolation.

  Another concussion slaps me to the ground. In falling across Grover I snuff the rest of his flames and the blast has extinguished most of my own like a giant blowing out a candle but my head has hit the ground hard further breaking open the egg. The red cap on the tumor on my tumor and the diaper too have burned or been blown away. With yolk streaming from the shattered egg I roll onto my back to see the methane tank has not exploded like a space shuttle it is rising rising like a rocket into the sky trailing flames from its severed base. The remnants of the shack collapse carbonized into the burning weeds like the scaffold against a rocket’s side.

  The tanks rises rises into the air higher and higher. Still it does not explode even as it ascends so high that I can no longer make out the metal tank just its comet trail of white glaring fire. The fire lifts into the blue blue heavens where it hangs stationary until the blue of the sky swallows it from view but I know there will be a new star in space tonight.

  Though the tank did not detonate the fire is spreading across the ground into the woods. I am sorry for the animals of the forest especially when I hear their ear-splitting chorus of high-pitched screams but then I realize what I’m hearing is the fungus giant as it catches fire each burnt strand as it is severed from the rest of the web becomes a cross section a tiny screaming mouth all shrieking in unison as they blacken shrivel die. The green scum on the stream becomes a ribbon of autumn colors. The plastic coyote starts to drip and melt like a green-dyed ice sculpture. I am running again I don’t recall getting to my feet but Grover and I leave black snowflakes of ash wafting in our wake.

  A roaring sound a tortured dinosaur I turn my head and see a train is barreling backwards down the tracks on fire another metal comet and it only spreads more of the flame across the outer grounds of the Odyllic property as it dwindles in the direction of town. There is so much flame now everywhere around us but we’re safe on the newly paved road though its edges melt into running tar we are running through a tunnel of flame knowing that the flame storm will reach the buildings alongside the tracks further ahead and sparks will be borne aloft and rain on the roofs of more warehouses and plant structures. One factory complex building after another will ignite like a string of firecrackers.

  We hear the silvery-gray car explode behind us the access road isn’t so safe after all is being consumed swallowed up the blaze sucking away all the oxygen in the air but we have reached the start of the road by now and see that the tufts of weeds growing through cracks in the wide parking lot are bright flares the wooden garage door of the brick warehouse is burning. I hope there is a man another man floating in fluid in the little conference building right now even though it is still day because I want him to boil in it like a lobster.

  I run and run down Mill Street with Grover in my arms until ahead I see our little house with its porch the locusts of sparks the plague of fire haven’t spread this far they won’t reach these residential houses. As I pass them I see people standing in open doorways and I want to yell “Fire! Fire!” to warn them and to cause them to cheer but they can already see it for themselves and also I find I can not emit anything more than a crackling gurgle from my charred throat. So I run on and on until I stumble almost tripping up the steps of 6 Mill Street. And then Grover and I are inside.

  We are back home.

  Grover is blackened, but his plastic eyes still glow white in his face he is still smiling. My clothes are burnt away or melded with my skin resembling the bark of scorched trees. I stagger and lurch into my bathroom to look in the mirror resting Grover down on the toilet cover first.

  In the silvered glass I study my face and the tumor that gapes broken open. I stare at that deep wide fissure. I stare down into its black well depths both frightening and inviting. Silvery pus oozes out of it and trickles of hot blood from lesser cracks. I dip my finger into one of the dribbles of blood. I have to write the words carefully. I am looking in a mirror after all and I don’t want to write the words backwards.

  Satisfied I reach both my hands to the lips of the wound and urge them further apart tears filling my good eye from the pain blurring my cyclops vision I pry the opening wider wider until I can slide one of my crusty black hands inside to the depth of my wrist burrow within slipping between wet slick things like the organs in a dissected woman’s belly. Something slithers against my hand. Something feebly takes hold of one of my fingers. I find the source of the squirming movement inside my head and start to drag it out I begin to scream to scream the squirming thing is pulled out of the stretched hole in my tumor elastic connective strands of silvery mucus break and now it is the slippery object coated in slime wriggling in both my hands that begins to scream and scream. But these are good screams screams of new life. Gradually we both stop screaming.

  I clutch the brain no it is an infant to my chest. Its flesh is as pink and healthy as mine is blackened and cracked. Cradling the baby in one arm I turn and lift Grover into my other arm. “Here,” I say to Logan choked with emotion. “I kept him for you...”

  Outside I hear one booming detonation after another as though planes are dropping bombs. I hear the sound of felled tree crashing as each cell phone tower topples the screech of their metal like thousands of remembered trapped phone voices of lovers and haters promises and pleas released at once let go like painful memories. I feel the wooden floor quake beneath my feet when the giant God-cock smokestack the tallest structure in town collapses under itself in a deluge of bricks. I want to collapse too but I lean my hip against the edge of the sink to keep myself up I must not sink down I must hear the apocalypse. I hear sirens that approach too late to stop the purging elemental forces flames as pure as the air of heaven.

  Logan Grover and I stand in the bright white heaven of my bathroom in a single embrace. I grin at us in the cool celestial fountain of the medicine cabinet mirror and there I read again the words painted backwards in my own blood above the opening in my head the words that read: DOOR 7.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed milieu Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections PUNKTOWN, VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN, PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and GHOSTS OF PUNKTOWN. Novels in that setting include DEADSTOCK, BLUE WAR, MONSTROCITY, HEALTH AGENT, EVERYBODY SCREAM!, and RED CELLS. Thomas's other short story collections include WORSHIP THE NIGHT, THIRTEEN SPECIMENS, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, DOOMSDAYS, TERROR INCOGNITA, UNHOLY DIMENSIONS, AAAIIIEEE!!!, HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD, and ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN (with W. H. Pugmire). His other novels include LETTERS FROM HADES, THE FALL OF HADES, BEAUTIFUL HELL, BONELAND, BEYOND THE DOOR, THOUGHT FORMS, SUBJECT 11, LOST IN DARKNESS, THE SEA OF FLESH AND ASH (with his brother, Scott Thomas), BLOOD SOCIETY, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS. Thomas lives in Massachusetts.