Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by John Haggerty

  “Oh hey, Sandy, I didn’t know you were in. Off to work?”

  “Yep.” I pulled the gate closed behind me.

  ANCHORED

  I work night-shift at the post office, watching the big machines sort mail, catching the occasional letter that the machines can’t process. Making enough money to pay the rent.

  Everyone who works here is cut off from life. Living in the dark, sleeping in the light. Some of us have wings.

  Liz didn’t. She had two kids, a drinking problem, and a black stain on her soul. I didn’t look closer.

  If Liz ended up on a work order, it wouldn’t be posted by me. Liz was the closest thing to a friend that I had. It’s hard to make friends when all you can see is imperfection.

  Liz waved at me and pulled on her hygiene cap. “Hey kid, how’s the love life?”

  “What love life?”

  Same joke, every day. Liz thought I was twenty. I knew she was 32, single, living on the dole and lying about working at the post office.

  The shift started and we settled to the routine. Liz talked nonstop, about her kids, her neighbours, her “loser ex,” her manipulative mother. I let the words wash over me.

  Anchored to humanity was what they called it. Working here, among humans, was supposed to remind us what humanity was. Because after a while, all you saw were the stains. You stopped seeing the faces they belonged to.

  Liz paused in the middle of a rant about her social worker. “Can you smell smoke?”

  I sniffed. “Yeah.” I sniffed again. Surely the smell of the fire wasn’t still clinging? I’d showered, I had on clean clothes. I stepped away from the machine and sniffed again. Still that faint tang.

  Liz hit the emergency stop button. Fire in the sorting warehouse could very quickly turn into a big deal.

  The supervisor lumbered over. “What’s up?”

  “I can smell smoke,” said Liz. “Might be a letter caught.”

  “Or another dead mouse.”

  We circled the machine like a pack of dogs sniffing out a bitch, but couldn’t pinpoint the location.

  “Sandy, your shoe!” Liz pointed at my feet.

  I looked down. A wisp of smoke curled up from under the sole of my right boot. My workboots. I clawed frantically at the laces.

  “Look out. Get back!” But like a flock of sheep they just stood and stared dumbly.

  I caught the after-image flash of wings as Wes, one of my brethren, charged over to us.

  “Go!” He shoved his way through the human ring, pushing people away. “Sandy, get—”

  A sound like rock tearing and then white hot brightness that hurt like fuck. I saw Wes flying backwards, a black figure in roiling clouds of flame. I pushed myself up. Everything was on fire, the machines, the letters, the walls, the air. A pair of disembodied legs twisted in the heat. I only knew they were Liz’s because of the blue pants, charring into ash.

  Then the flames were gone. In the crackling silence, a crash as Wes pushed himself out from under a twisted pile of shelving. We were the only living things in the factory. Ash fell around us like rain.

  Wes shouted a warning. I felt a hand clamp around my throat from behind, fingers burning into my flesh.

  I manifested, wings going from thought to reality and catapulting me into the thick air. The burning fingers dug deeper but the demon weighed nothing at all. Then Wes slammed into me and the three of us tumbled to the ground.

  I pushed up and came face to face with Lester Carmichael, convicted paedophile, lately sent to hell. By me.

  The skinny old bastard looked the same, sagging skin, thinning hair. But the watery blue eyes now snapped with power and the wrinkled skin looked like rhino hide.

  “Hello, Sandy,” he said.

  I threw myself sideways and upwards, trying to get some distance, but he grabbed my ankle and slammed me back down again.

  Wes dived toward him. Lester met him with a fist, sending Wes through a ruined sorting machine like it was made of paper.

  “Go! Get help,” I shouted.

  Wes leaped into the air and dove through the shattered remains of a window.

  “You botched the job, Sandy,” said Lester.

  I’d botched it all right. I edged around him. All my careful cleanup and, like a rookie, I’d scrubbed my boots instead of burning them. I wasn’t even that fond of the boots; I just hated shopping for new ones. I could never find a comfortable pair in my size.

  “You’re not going to be popular with your manager.”

  “He’s forgiving, didn’t you hear?”

  “Even so, this is a demotion for sure. Wouldn’t you rather have a new start? Easy hours, all the perks?”

  So the rumours were true. Downstairs was looking for new blood, and was poaching from our side. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not keen on the contract.”

  “But you’ve been noticed, Sandy. You’re making trouble for the boss. We’d much rather have you on our side.”

  So it was our side now. I wondered what Lester had traded for his new position. Small-time paedophiles didn’t get a contract, they just got an eternity. Lester had come back with more power than his insignificant life should have bought him.

  “I told you, no deal.” I heard the sound of wings from outside. “Now get back where you belong before we send you there, express.”

  The remaining windows imploded as Wes returned with our brethren. I tried to leap up to join them, but Lester-returned was faster. Stronger. He grabbed my ankle, I slammed into the ground, felt the pressure in my head as a gate opened. Lester’s hand closed around my throat, and I smelled his burning breath as he leaned down.

  “Do you know what they do to your kind in hell?”

  The mortal plane dissolved like sugar crystals in water.

  CHANGE

  Everything faded after a few years. The torture. The loss of my wings. I remember lying on a stone floor, and wondering how the stone could be so cold when the air was so hot. I hadn’t seen anyone for a long time.

  They made me walk to the meeting. I stood before him. Maybe I kneeled. I don’t remember.

  Then another voice, hot and triumphant, dictating the duties and responsibilities of my new position. Terms and conditions. One-hundred-year contract.

  I don’t remember signing my name. I do remember that my wing stubs itched like crazy.

  FIRST DAY

  I took the bus to my first assignment. I don’t drive, it’s too hard to remember there are people on the roads. I could zone out on the bus, think about things.

  On a whim I got off three blocks early and walked. I passed the place where the sorting warehouse used to be. There was a park there now, the trees still only knee high. A memorial stone in the centre reminded people that 26 postal workers had died there in a fire.

  Every flat surface of the memorial was covered in graffiti.

  The client’s house was at the top of a hill, a flashy McMansion looking over the river toward the city. I knocked on the door. I was shown to the lounge by a lackey and told to wait.

  I was looking out through the windows when a voice from behind startled me.

  “You’re not what I was expecting.”

  I turned. Pin-up body with a pretty-boy smile. Not at all like my previous assignments.

  “What were you expecting?” Out of habit I looked for his soul, but I was blind now, I could only see the outside. Part of me relaxed.

  “Someone stronger. Nowhere near as pretty.”

  “I’ll surprise you.”

  “I’d like that. I’m David, by the way.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course. But I don’t know your name.”

  “No, you don’t.” I glared at him. “Give me your hand.”

  He walked over to me and held out his hand, every move sensuous and inviting. I grabbed his hand, bit down, swallowed some blood. The stubs of my wings burned like ice. I didn’t need to look at his face to know he was enjoying it. “Now get.”

  “For how
long?” He cradled his hand, the blood pooling in his palm.

  “A week.” I doubted my job would take more than a day, but I didn’t want to be here when he got back.

  He left, taking his people with him. When the house was empty, I sank into the couch. I let his blood run through my veins, mingle with mine. The trap was set.

  There was a stone sculpture by the window, abstract and featureless. Water ran down the sides to tinkle into a bowl below, filling the room with sound. I found the switch and turned it off.

  I was tempted to shut myself off, too, let time flash by, but I didn’t want to be caught unawares. So I sat in the flow of time and waited for the sound of wings.

  I heard them, and knew there were two. That was different. We always used to work alone. Maybe the brethren had made some changes. Maybe I had been the cause.

  The angels floated in through the wall, two young rookies sent to deal with an easy assignment. They stopped, confused, feeling David’s blood close by but not seeing him.

  They were dead before they even knew I was there.

  I left them on the rug because it amused me. David would walk over them day after day and never see them. Maybe he would catch a glimpse of beauty, a flash of wings. Maybe he would feel a moment’s grief and wonder why.

  Maybe they would drive him crazy, eat at him until he took his own life to escape their presence.

  I didn’t care.

  I sat on the veranda and watched the sun go down behind the city.

  Merrilee Faber lives in the sand and fly-infested west of Australia. When not defending her family from Australia’s deadly fauna, she tries to earn a crust by telling people what to do, with moderate success. She is a consummate liar, but gets away with it by calling it “fiction.”

  Merrilee blogs at notenoughwords.wordpress.com.

  A BIRTH IN THE YEAR OF THE MIRACLE PLAGUE

  by Jeremy Kelly

  “You’ve got to stop going around and taking other people’s stuff,” Moo-ma said, shaking her head as she snapped on a pair of surgical gloves she had scavenged from the old hospital. “It’s not right and you know it.”

  The necklace was worth it though, even if Leper only got to hold it for a while. It was a pretty necklace. Well, the chain was rusted out like everything else in the world, but the jewel at the end of it was green. Like blades of grass after some rain.

  Back when there used to be grass and rain.

  They stayed in some rooms on the fifth floor of a building that used to be across the street from a park. It was one of those parks in a neighborhood you know your momma and daddy could never afford but they took you there sometimes so you could go somewhere nice every once in a while. That was before the war turned the world into newspaper and ash.

  Leper and Moo-ma lived in two adjoining rooms. She slept in one with the strangers that came to spend the night sometimes. Leper stayed in the other, which had a section of wall blown out from the war. When he got up in the morning and there wasn’t a whole lot of chemical fog, he could see a pretty good view of the city sprawling out beneath him and the twirling smoke from everybody’s camp fires.

  Leper sat in an old grey stool in his room and looked out at the night city while Moo-ma stood over him with a paper mask on her face and a big fresh roll of bandages in her hand. “Well you’re a sight,” she said and looked down at him with those momma eyes. “We’re going to have to clean you up and change your bandages again. Looks like they drug you through the dirt for miles this time.”

  He looked down at himself. She was right. Rosa Lee had beaten him good. His t-shirt was smeared with ash and dirt and his cut-off blue jeans were worse. All of his bandages were torn or unraveled from his head to his sleeves down to his knees. He got a few good looks at the skin underneath, which he never liked to see. He had worn the bandages ever since he was born in the year of the Miracle Plague—they covered every inch of his body except for his one good eye.

  Moo-ma pulled the shirt over his head and unbuttoned his pants and pulled them to the floor. She started at the top with the old bandages and unwound them down to his ankles. Leper thought that Rosa had done a pretty number on his nose. He looked at Moo-ma’s eyes as she took away the bloody bandage, but she just smiled and wasn’t shocked or anything. That meant nothing, he knew, because Moo-ma was sweeter to him than anyone else in the world, and if his nose was a sight she wouldn’t let on.

  “Those stitches on your lips holding up good?” Moo-ma asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good. You can breathe comfortable?”

  He shrugged, and whistled through the hole in his mouth.

  “Good.”

  When Leper was stripped down, she took the dirty bandages into the other room and came back with a pail of hot water that she had boiled on the wood stove. It had cooled down just enough now. Leper made a low sound in the back of his throat and shook his head. Moo-ma said, “Now Joshua, you know we have to get you cleaned up good, or you’re going to itch.” She was the only one that ever called him by his real name. She set the pail down beside him and picked out a sponge dripping with cloudy water. “I’ll be gentle, baby. Promise.”

  When it was over, Moo-ma bandaged him back up with the fresh roll and she held him for a while until there was a knock on the door in the other room. “Love you, baby,” she said. “Don’t come into my room for a while. I’ll come get you. And remember—if anything happens, run away from any strangers.” And she left him there on the dirty pile of blankets in the corner that made up his bed.

  • • •

  Leper lay for a long while. He didn’t know what sleep was because it had never happened to him before. So he thought about Daddy.

  He had never met him. Moo-ma said that Daddy came along after the war. He’d been in the fighting. Toward the end of it all, he came down with the Miracle Plague like so many others.

  Lots of people got it. Lots of people died. Then they came back. At first it was a miracle. Then it wasn’t.

  Leper listened to the muffled sounds of Moo-ma and the stranger on the other side of the apartment wall. She sounded like he was working her pretty hard, but she didn’t sound like she was hurting. She was a big woman, and she was good at making them think that she enjoyed it.

  That’s how Daddy had come along. By the time he had his way with her, the Miracle Plague had already taken him and brought him back. Leper had seen corpses of folks who had gone and come back. He couldn’t see why Moo-ma would let something like that work on her. Then again, she loved Leper for what he was, and he was half his Daddy.

  After a long time Leper heard the apartment door swing open and shut. Moo-ma shuffled into his room and lay next to him smiling and smelling like somebody else’s sweat. She held out a closed fist in front of Leper’s fresh-bandaged face. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Leper peered up at her with his one good eye before pushing himself up on his elbows. She opened her hand and he let out a long whistle from the hole in his mouth. It was a blue marble, blue as an ocean in the picture books. He held out his hand and she dropped it in his palm. He held it up between thumb and forefinger and marveled at it with his wide lidless eye.

  “Do you love it, Joshua?”

  He nodded and whistled again. Yes.

  “Now there’s no need to go taking things that belong to others when Moo-ma can bring home some colors of the world every once in a while.”

  Leper carefully flipped the corner of his blanket aside and pulled a faded grey cigar box from beneath it. He sat the box on his lap and opened the lid carefully, placing the marble inside. He smiled at all of the rest of his things that had captured some of the colors of the old world, and he held each one up for her to see. Like she had never seen them before.

  A bent postcard of a red strawberry. A green piece of glass. An ebony comb. A silver harmonica. A yellow pencil. Moo-ma smiled and looked at each and every one as if it were her first time ever seeing it. Like it was someone else who had given Leper the
se little mysteries.

  They stayed awake and talked late into the night.

  • • •

  During the day the children of the city ran its streets while everyone else slept in safety with the daylight. The threw rocks through windows and they picked through the piles of garbage and rubble in the streets. They shit on the sidewalks and they pissed in the gutters. They ran with each other, they ran after each other. They beat each other bloody, and they fucked each other numb, and they did that very badly because they were too young and no one had taught them about proper lovemaking because it had left the world along with all its colors years ago.

  Leper ran because it made him feel alive. Because he was always one foot in the grave. Because there was nothing else.

  He left Moo-ma at the apartment at dawn. A group of strangers had shown up with a couple of gallons of fresh water. He kept to his particular borough, as did most of the kids in the city, so he knew most of them by name. He ran around a corner and found Pinky and Ira throwing rocks through a large square department-store window cut into the face of a skyscraper.

  “Hey, Leper,” Pinky said. “You got creamed yesterday. You got to keep your hands to yourself. Especially you.”

  Unlike everybody else in the world, Pinky still had a little color in her cheeks. She wasn’t a big girl like Rosa Lee, but she was fat and she looked like she was blushing all of the time. She was a nice girl, all things considered.

  Ira was very thin and said nothing in the way of salutations. He pulled his old brown ball-cap down over his eyes and turned his back to Leper to throw a rock.

  “What are you thinking, anyhow? Going after Rosa Lee’s shit,” Pinky said. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.”

  Leper shrugged his shoulders and, with his bandaged finger, cut a mock swath across his throat from ear to ear. He hung his head to one side and slumped his shoulders, and if he could he would have stuck his tongue out, too.

  Pinky laughed. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re pretty much halfway there already.”