Leper liked Pinky because she at least talked to him sometimes. He wasn’t sore that she didn’t step in to help when he was getting creamed by Rosa Lee. She was a big girl, but Rosa was big-boned and mad as a dog. No, he wasn’t sore at all.
Ira picked up a big rock from a large pile of rubble and heaved it through the department-store window. It fell in daggered shards to the pavement. The kids stood there and watched for a moment. Leper walked toward the opening.
“Careful with all the glass,” Pinky said.
Leper whistled over his shoulder in reply.
“Why we got to hang out with that kid?” Ira said.
“Shut up,” Pinky replied. “You don’t like it, go run around with some other kids and get your ass beat to hell.”
Ira shoved his hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers and shut up. He was just a little guy.
Leper climbed into the window and walked around inside. The department store had been sacked. Rusted racks for clothing lay overturned on the floor. Old jewelry cases lay smashed and empty. Faded dollar bills lay all over the floor like used newspaper. Pinky and Ira climbed in behind him.
“This ain’t such a good idea,” Ira said. “No telling what’s in there.”
“Then don’t come,” Pinky said.
She followed Leper on her tiptoes as he shuffled through the piles of paper money toward the darkness at the back of the store. Ira hesitated for a minute before catching up.
Leper whistled from the dark and the other two kids followed the sound of it until they found him standing next to a mechanical staircase with rubber banisters. The bottom steps of the staircase were barely visible in the dim light of the broken window up front. The steps led up into absolute blackness.
“What do you think it used to do?” Pinky asked. They were all born after the war.
Leper shrugged. Ira looked over his shoulder at the gray daylight shining through the broken window.
Leper started up the staircase. “Leper. Hey. What are you doing?” Pinky asked. “I can’t see up there. It’s too dark.”
He held out a bandaged hand and tapped himself on the chest with the other, whistling through the hole in his mouth.
“You can see in the dark?”
He nodded.
“Cool.”
She looked at his hand, hesitated. He whistled again, and Ira clutched at Pinky’s free hand and followed. It was a mess up there, full of racks and heaps of old clothes. There were bodies, too. Leper was glad the other two kids couldn’t see them. They were all folks who had died of the Miracle Plague in the dark, and that wasn’t a very good combination for a couple of kids no matter how you put it.
Leper led them carefully around the bodies toward a patch of light that came from a very large window, much like the one on the bottom floor that Ira had smashed. “Look!” Pinky pointed.
Leper glanced at the corner of the room by the window and found something looking right back at him, something covered in rags and watching him with one bulbous bloodshot eye. He jumped back and wheezed in the back of his throat. The thing in front of him jumped back too and backed away into the darkness.
“Take it easy, Leper,” Pinky said, grabbing him by the arm. She never was afraid to touch him. “Ain’t you ever seen a mirror before?”
Leper touched himself on the chest and watched his arms go in the mirror. He touched the bandages on his face and he leaned in close to look himself in the eye. Then he stepped back and looked down at his raggedy cut-off jeans. He looked at the bandages that covered his legs and ankles and he wriggled the stump of his big toe through the hole in his shoe. He put his hands in his pockets and he stared for a long time. He had never seen himself before.
“Shit Christ Almighty!” Ira hollered. Leper looked past the mirror and found that Ira had found one of the bodies poking out of the shadows. Much of the leather skin had pulled back from the face to reveal red bone. It lay on its back but its back was bent—it had died in a lot of pain.
“That one died twice of the Plague,” Pinky whispered. That meant that something had finally put it out of its misery. She went over to stand beside Ira and they both looked down at the body. Leper went back to looking at himself.
“That’s bad,” Ira said, stepping back toward the light of the window. “That’s so bad. Get me out of here. I want to go.”
“Just chill out,” Pinky said. “It’s not going to bite.”
“How do you fucking know?” Ira started getting bent out of shape. “I want to get out of here. Get me out of here.” He looked at Leper. “Take me back downstairs.”
Leper looked at Pinky and back at Ira and took a step forward.
“Hang on a minute,” Pinky said. “You want to go so bad and you never wanted to come up here in the first place. You want to go back now? Do it yourself.”
“Well what the hell do you want to do up here?” Ira pushed up the bill of his ball cap so that Pinky could see his face. “You want to get worked on by your boyfriend here and all his relatives—”
Pinky’s fat knuckles hit his jaw and he fell on his knees to the floor. Leper took a step back. He never liked fights. Pinky kicked Ira on the ass real hard and he fell on his face. His ball cap tumbled across the floor. He snatched it and scooted back from Pinky against the wall with his hand up in front of his face. His mouth was bleeding.
“You don’t have to go be like them other bastards all the time, Ira,” Pinky said. Leper couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Her fat cheeks were burning so red that Leper wished he could put her face in a bottle and take it home.
“You could be a little nicer,” Pinky snorted and waved her hand. “But if you ain’t gonna be, get the fuck out of here. Find your own way home. I’m tired of protecting your weak ass all the time anyway.”
Ira screamed back at her like a wounded animal and sprinted past the both of them into the dark, falling over racks of cloths and heaps of garbage. Leper watched him find the stairs with his hands and feel his way down them. He was sobbing out loud as he went back down.
“There’s got to be something, you know?” Leper looked at Pinky, whose face still flashed bright red. She shuffled over to stand by the window and look out onto the street. “I ain’t saying anything’s going to save us. I know we’re all going to die. But there has to be something.”
Leper turned back to look at the mirror. An intact upright rack of clothes beside it caught his good eye.
“You and me are friends.” Pinky was crying. “I’m tired of watching everything go to hell. I’m sorry I didn’t step in for you yesterday. I feel real bad. Rosa Lee’s a big girl, and you kind’ve had it coming.”
Pinky turned around and found Leper staring back at her. He wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat on his bandaged head that was way too big for him. He tilted it up with his thumb but it sank over his face down to his shoulders. She laughed so hard she had to bend over to catch a breath. Leper laughed too, the best he could at least. Pinky wiped her tears away and said, “What else they got?”
They tried on lots of clothes. Pinky found a long thick coat with fur on the collar. When she put it on and fastened the buttons it dragged behind her on the floor when she walked and you couldn’t see her feet, like she was floating. Leper found a pair of pointy boots to go with the hat. The hat sat just right if he tipped it up to rest on the top of his forehead. The boots were too big and came up past his knees. They had hard soles—Leper jumped up and down in them and they made an awful racket against the floor. Every time he landed, the big hat fell over his face and Pinky snorted.
Pinky found a big long string of feathers. The colors, like everything else, were faded, and when she looked in the mirror and tossed her head high as she wrapped it around her neck, the feathers turned to dust and made her cough.
Leper knew that there were piles of bodies around them in the darkness. It was a big pack of folks infected with the Miracle Plague. They must have waited it out up there away from live folks and starved. Or maybe s
ome live folks locked them in there. Either way, it was a long time ago.
He knew that Pinky couldn’t see all of the bodies in the dark, and he made sure to keep quiet about it. For the first time, they had forgotten about the world and it had forgotten about them. For the first time in their lives, they played. And they did little else for the rest of the afternoon.
Somewhere inside Leper’s half dead heart, hope grew like a green sapling.
• • •
When the ashen sky sunk into a deeper shade of grey, Leper took Pinky’s hand and led her back down the mechanical staircase. They climbed over the threshold that used to hold the window Ira broke and walked down the street together toward the next intersection. There they would part ways. Pinky would go to where she lived with her momma and daddy beneath a freeway underpass and Leper would go back to Moo-ma, who should be finished with the strangers by now, and most likely worn out.
“Hey, freak,” a voice growled from behind them. It was Rosa Lee.
Leper turned around but was met in the face by a rock the size of his fist. His feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back. Everything flashed bright before his eyes. He shook his head and got up on his hands and knees.
He looked up and saw big black Rosa Lee standing on top of the rubble pile with a stick in her hands. She had a crew of kids with her. They mostly hung around so she wouldn’t give them a beating, which she did anyway sometimes, so it didn’t really make any sense; but still they hung around.
Ira skulked behind Rosa’s leg with his ball cap pulled down low over his eyes. His scrawny jaw had swelled so that it looked like he had bread in his mouth that he was saving to swallow.
“Ira!” Pinky hollered out. “What did you do?”
“Stay out of this, fat ass,” Rosa Lee hollered back. She slid down the rubble pile with her posse tumbling behind her. Ira kept his distance.
Rosa stomped toward Leper like an angry bull. “You should never have been born. You a nasty, nasty son of a bitch.” She smacked the stick against the flat of one hand. “Nobody touches my stuff. Especially you.”
Pinky stood in front of Leper. “Get out of here, Rosa Lee,” she said, her voice shaking. “Go on.”
Rosa Lee kept coming and stuck her big black nose in Pinky’s face. Leper heard tell that Rosa didn’t have any folks and had to fend for herself for food and water. She didn’t let any of the grown folk have their way with her either—she was just too damn big and tough.
Pinky folded her arms, though, and didn’t budge. Rosa spat in her face.
Pinky’s cheeks turned red. She took a swing at Rosa Lee. Her fist glanced off of the side of Rosa’s jaw and forced her back a step. Rosa grabbed her by the wrist and brought the stick down on her head. Pinky fell to her knees. Rosa swung again. Pinky fell onto her face and didn’t move.
Leper felt his cold blood begin to boil. He was mad that Rosa Lee hit Pinky. Rosa laughed. The other kids were quiet. Especially Ira, who stood on the pile of rubble with his hands shoved in his pockets.
Rosa came after Leper and swung the stick. It came down on his shoulder. She swung it again but he rolled out of the way and it cracked on the road. He jumped on her then and she fell back. He made a low sound in the back of his throat as he glared at Rosa’s surprised face with his one good eye. He stuck his bandaged finger into her eye and she hollered, “Goddamn, get this kid off of me.”
She fell on her back. Leper straddled her. The sound in his throat turned into a growl. He sat up straight and shoved a finger from each hand into the hole in his mouth. Rosa looked up at him, obviously terrified. He hooked both fingers and pulled.
Rosa Lee started screaming.
Leper howled as he pulled his lips apart through the black twine stitches, leaving the skin around his mouth in shreds. He dove forward for Rosa’s face. She held her arm up in front of her. His rotten teeth sank into her forearm and he twisted and wrenched himself away, pulling a fat chunk of flesh away. Rosa stopped screaming.
Leper rolled off of her and chewed on the piece of skin, wringing it around in his mouth. He was something else now, the other half of himself. The dead half. The Daddy half.
Rosa sat frozen, looking at the glistening bone in her forearm. Blood mixed with black saliva dripped into her lap. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Leper swallowed the last morsel of flesh and focused on Rosa again. She backed away from him and stood up. “Am I sick? Am I going to get sick?” She held her messed up arm away from the rest of her.
Leper opened his mouth to show Rosa his bloody teeth and took another step toward her.
Rosa Lee hollered and scrambled back up the rubble pile. Leper stared after her until she was out of sight. Then he stared at her gang. They held up their hands and backed off. In moments they were gone. Even Ira had scattered.
Pinky was still on the ground, but she was getting up. Leper bent over to help her up but she backed away. “Don’t,” she said.
He stopped and held out his hands. Leper felt better now. He was back to his old self. Pinky was having trouble figuring that out though, so he let her go without trying to talk her out of it. “Thanks,” she mumbled as she backed away from him. “See you later.” She was awful scared. He could see it in her eyes. The color in her cheeks had vanished. They were as pale and as ashen as everything else in the world.
Leper waited until she was out of sight before he began running. He ran through the alleys and the streets of the broken city, around the garbage and the excrement, through the fog and the ash toward home. He had done what Moo-ma had told him not to do. She said that it was very important that he keep his mouth shut. She said that he was a key to getting rid of the Miracle Plague for good, but that he also was the vehicle. Rosa Lee would surely get it—he didn’t think of her as the big black girl who beat up everybody anymore. He felt sorry for her now. She would curl up and eventually die in some dark corner. Then she would come back. Everybody was going to be screwed all over again.
Leper stopped in front of his building and stumbled up the stairwell to the fifth floor. The door to their rooms was wide open. Inside, everything had been turned over and was scattered all across the floor. He looked in his room, expecting to find Moo-ma there, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t there at all. That wasn’t like her.
He went through her things and found the roll of black twine and the needle. He took a fresh roll of bandages as well, and he brought all of these to his room. He sat down on the floor Indian style and looked out over the city’s early evening fires. He sat the bandages and the twine down beside him and took out the cigar box from beneath the pile of rags that made his bed. He stopped thinking about the day and looked at all of the colors of the world while he waited for Moo-ma to come home.
Jeremy Kelly makes up stuff. He lives with his wife and kid in Decatur, Georgia. You can find him and some of his other stories at www.jointhebirdies.blogspot.com.
THE OUTLAW FRINGE
A Conversation with Count Lyle
by K. Allen Wood
Every so often an artist comes along and defines what makes something truly original, extraordinary. That something is sincerity. In the arts, few can lay claim to a patch of land all unto his or her own. With their unique slant on horror punk, Count Lyle and the band Ghoultown have done just that.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Lyle—founder, frontman, and creative force behind the band—and discuss Ghoultown’s past, future, and also his own forays into writing fiction and nonfiction under the name Lyle Blackburn.
If you’ve never heard of the band, you’ll want to read on. And if you have, you’ll want me to shut up.
I can dig that. Now dig this.
• • •
KW: Let’s talk about the days before Ghoultown, if you don’t mind. You were the bassist in Solitude Aeturnus, one of the most beloved doom-metal bands in the world, before leaving the band in 1996, forming the horror-punk outfit The Killcreeps, and releasing Destroy Earth, the band’s
sole album. How do you make that stylistic jump? You also played with GG Allin, back in the mid-80s, and given that Ghoultown is musically closer to what you did with The Killcreeps, is punk more your style?
CL: It’s hard to narrow down my musical taste and influence into one single style. I’m really into 80s hardcore punk, and I sort of retain an overall punk attitude no matter what music I’m doing, but I also love dark stuff, metal and vintage country. Since I like so many different styles, it was hard to play in one kind of band for my whole musical career. That’s probably why I ended up creating Ghoultown. It has elements of a lot of different styles and I’m able to keep myself entertained that way.
KW: Solitude Aeturnus is still together, though fairly inactive, and The Killcreeps is no more. If you don’t mind answering, why did you step away from those two bands?
CL: I left Solitude for a few different reasons, none of them being that I don’t get along with the other guys or anything like that. It was mostly because I felt I had done everything I wanted to with that particular style of music and also because I love to play live. With the type of metal Solitude plays, there is very little demand for it here in the United States like there is in Europe, so we didn’t have the opportunity to play very many shows. Plus, after a while, I got bored with it. Doom metal is deep and introspective, which is cool, but after a while that’s just not what I was into as a performer. I wanted to do something more upbeat and reckless like I used to do with my early punk bands. I guess I wanted something a little more crazy, and something that attracted a wider range of music fans, so I stepped away and started The Killcreeps in 1996.
I have always been a fan of The Misfits, so naturally I leaned toward horror punk. That’s what my early punk bands like The Holy were. And the funny thing is that Robert Lowe, the vocalist for Solitude, played guitar for The Holy. So we both started off in a punk band. After that we had a metal band called Graven Image which sort of prepared us for joining Solitude.
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