by Carver Pike
“He drives a purple fucking car,” Haylay said aloud. “And he’s a dancer!”
As he sat down in the driver’s seat, Heather bounded down the two front steps, rushed to the passenger door, and hopped in next to him. She took a deep breath and threw a T-shirt into his lap.
“Thought you might need that.”
She threw her head back against the seat and laughed.
“Oh my God,” she said between bursts of laughter. “Hollis…I’m sorry, I mean Hailey, Haylay, that was amazing. Crazy, but incredible at the same time. What’s gotten into you?”
She reached over and tapped his right boob with her index finger and laughed again.
“And when the hell did you get these? I’ve been wanting those for the past year. Those babies can’t be cheap.”
“Look, baby,” Haylay said, finally allowing himself to speak like the real Haylay. “You best get out this car and go talk to your dad, ‘cause that man in there is probably ‘bout to have himself a heart attack. Haylay done rocked his world.”
Heather sat back, as if struck by a bolt of lighting.
“Hollis, and yes, I know I just called you Hollis. What is going on? This isn’t you. You don’t dress like this, you don’t talk like this. You sound so…ghetto.”
“Look, baby, I’m ‘bout to tell you somethin’ that you ain’t gonna believe. It’s gonna sound so motherfuckin’ outlandish that you might jump out this car and tell your daddy to have me committed. But I promise you, what I’m ‘bout to say is true.”
She just stared at him, clearly waiting for the rest of the story.
“I’m not from your world,” Haylay said, instantly regretting his poor choice of words.
“Are you sayin’ you’re an alien?” she asked, seriously.
“No…what the fuck? No, damn it, I ain’t no motherfuckin’ alien! What’s wrong with you, askin’ stupid shit like that? You ever seen a fuckin’ alien?”
She shook her head.
“Then what are you saying?”
Haylay put the car in drive.
“Baby, where’s the closest liquor store?”
She gave him directions, and then he told her the entire story, from his appearance on the dark side of the mirror, to his battles with Gabe and Lisa, to the babies born on the other side, and finally to his arrival on her side of the mirror. Heather just sat and listened. She seemed to be soaking it all in.
Haylay expected her to open the passenger door and roll out onto the street at any second, but for some reason, the girl stayed seated and just sat silent.
“Baby, you freakin’ Miss Haylay out, now. Why you all quiet and shit?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, either you believe me or you don’t.”
“Would you believe you?”
“I lived it. I fell through the mirror and got my ass kicked by your crazy ass nanny, and I’m still havin’ a hard time believin’ it. So…no, I don’t think I’d believe me if I was you.”
“Well, you’re lucky you aren’t me, ‘cause I believe you,” she said.
Haylay felt relieved. He couldn’t believe this crazy girl believed him, but having at least one person to talk to would be great.
“So you really want to find a liquor store at 5:30 p.m.?” she asked.
Haylay looked over at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Is there a timeframe for wanting to drown your sorrows?”
“Guess not,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” she replied.
“Please, you already fucked up that lie by tellin’ me ‘bout your school problems. Besides, you look like you ain’t over seventeen. You look like a little girl.”
“Must run in the family. ‘Cause you look like a little girl, too.”
Haylay laughed and decided the girl could use a drink with such a straight and narrow life. He felt strangely refreshed having told off Hollis’ father, told the truth to Hollis’ sister, and having plans to wrap his fist firmly around a bottle of Jack Daniels, paid for with the cash from Hollis’ wallet. Finding the sons of bitches who’d beaten Hollis’ face to a bloody pulp would have to come later.
Chapter 9 - Sanitation
“I’d be movin’ away from dat there window if I was you,” came the voice of the host. “Don’t wanna give any reason for somebody to be makin’ a trip over here. Stay hidden, stay alive. It’s that simple. What you don’t see cain’t hurt ya.”
Gabe had only pulled the curtain back a couple of inches. He wanted to see what was going on down below. He’d seen some of the craziest shit imaginable in Darkar, the dark version of Detroit, where he’d first crossed through the mirror long ago, and he couldn’t imagine Chi-Killian being much worse.
He turned to see his host munching on a chicken bone. The man had been nice enough to share some of the beans he’d boiled with the rest of the group, but the scraps of chicken he’d rounded up he kept to himself. At the moment he was teasing one of the babies with the chicken bone. From where Gabe stood, it looked like it was Vision he was playing with, but they were so identical that in the shadowy light of the lantern, it was hard to tell them apart.
As Jaundice Jones held out the leg bone to the baby, he tried to grab it, and Jaundice pulled back in the nick of time. He laughed and rumpled the baby’s hair, what little bit of it he had atop his head.
“I just want to see what’s going on out there,” Gabe replied.
“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on out there, but soldiers doin’ soldierly stuff.”
“How much sanitation needs to take place here? I mean, does the general really need like eight hours a day to fix shit?” Tact asked.
Gabe shrugged his shoulders and chuckled. His thoughts exactly.
“Are they building homes or pressure washing the sidewalks?” Gabe joked.
“Thinkin’ ya fellas don’t quite understand da general. Sanitation mean cleanin’ up da garbage. Anything not beneficial to the general be classified as garbage. Meanin’ broken thangs. I’m talkin’ ‘bout da dead and livin’ thangs.”
Gabe drew back the curtain, this time a little wider, and peered out at the empty street below. From what he could see, the place didn’t look so scary. The sun was still shining, but the shadows were growing elongated, a sign that night was quickly approaching.
“Looks empty out there,” he said.
A chuckle came from somewhere in the room and Gabe was fairly sure it had come from Jaundice. He watched the street a little bit longer and then looked out at the pier, where he saw the Ferris wheel turning.
“That umm, Wonder Wheel is turning,” he told the others.
“Always does durin’ sanitation,” Jaundice Jones informed them. “General Falix, he love that thang. If it’s turnin’ now, you best believe it’s gonna have a coat a fresh blood on it by the time that siren blows again.”
“And that should be in just a few minutes, right?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah, it’ll blow soon.”
Gabe turned his attention back to the street below when he heard someone scream out, strange gibberish in between bouts of coughing and shrieking. The man appeared from one of the side streets near Jaundice’s apartment and raced barefoot down the main street in pants that had one leg ripped completely off.
The man’s bare leg faced Gabe, and as he ran, Gabe saw that he was naked underneath. His testicles dangled out from his pants, looking longer than any regular man’s should, and bounced as he limped away. He wore a hooded sweater, hiding his face from view, but the sound coming out of the face was unforgettable. He was clearly scared to death.
Seconds after the man came into view, a jeep with its doors and top missing roared onto the street. It screeched to a halt and a man dressed in tattered camouflaged fatigues and wearing a black ski mask hopped out of the passenger seat and chased after the limping man. The limping man turned and begged for his life. He cowered and held his hands out in front of his fa
ce.
Gabe wanted to yell, “Fight, damn it. Stop begging and fight!” He couldn’t call out though. To do so would be putting his family and friends at risk. Instead, he watched as the man with the ski mask held up a long modified hacksaw with a sharp, jagged blade. He leapt forward and buried the blade deep in the scared man’s forehead.
With all the violence and mayhem Gabe had seen during his short stint on the dark side, he thought nothing else could shock him, but seeing the murder take place right in front of him made him jump back a little.
The man with the ski mask struggled to remove the blade from the dead man’s head. He put a foot on the man’s neck and yanked until finally he pulled the saw loose, dragging some of the man’s hair with it. The driver of the jeep clapped his hands and cheered on his buddy.
“What do you see?” Lisa asked from somewhere behind him.
Gabe didn’t know what to say.
“Ha, I reckon he done seen somethin’, alright!” Jaundice hooted.
Gabe yanked the curtain closed.
“Soldiers just killed a man in the street,” Gave informed them. “With a fuckin’ saw to the head.”
“A saw?” Hawks asked with one eyebrow raised.
“And the guy was unarmed,” Gabe added.
“Hardly seems fair,” Tact said, “But hey, not our problem. We stay inside ‘till the siren blows.”
“Did he put up a good fight at least?” Ayana asked. “If you fight, you die a good death.”
“If you call droppin’ to your knees and begging for your life fighting, then yeah, he put up one hell of a fight,” Gabe replied.
“Cleanin’ up da garbage,” Jaundice reminded them.
“They just leave him there like that?” he asked.
“Hey, Mr. Elton John,” Tact called out as he turned to Jaundice.
“Elton who?” Jaundice asked.
“Just ignore the names,” Gabe said. “He does that all the time. And Tact, I think it’s Sir Elton John now, actually.”
“What?”
“Forget it.”
Tact shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve heard some of the history of this town, but maybe you can fill us in. What’s the deal with the sickos the general uses in the mazes?”
Jaundice Jones excitedly left the window and made his way over to his desk, where he pulled out an old notebook. He opened it up to reveal scribbling on every page. It was the man’s style of writing, but Gabe could barely make out two words on the entire page.
“See? I’m a writer! Ya know, I done been to ya side a da mirra, the pretty side. I like them uh…umm, magazines y’all have. Very cool. When I came back, I started my own. See?”
He turned a few pages and Gabe saw that he’d hand drawn a woman, naked from the waist up. She was pretty though, and Gabe was impressed by the man’s talent.
“Like da Maxim magazine. But I write an…an…an…draw stories. ‘Bout Chi-Killian. This girl, she was a very perty prostitute.”
Jaundice Jones looked down at the notebook and traced over the woman’s body with his index finger. Gabe realized that Jaundice was remembering a better time, probably when he’d been with the woman.
“She dead though. Died badly,” he whispered as he made the gesture of cutting his own neck with his thumb. “Good girl. Sad.”
“May I?” Hawks asked as he reached out for the notebook. Jaundice nodded his head and handed it over.
While Hawks studied the book, Gabe made his way back to Lisa, who was holding both of the babies. She handed Vision to him.
As they sat around in a small circle, like kids waiting for their pa to read them a bedtime story, Jaundice sat at his chair, above them all, and told the story of Chi-Killian.
“Long time ago, Chi-Killian was a great city. They say da best in all da four quadrants. In this city, things was kinda functional. Chi-Killian had cafes, restaurants, some small stores. It was a good place to live. Da Killian family done did da best they could for da city. Called demselves kings. Generation afta generation, King Killian da first, second, third, on and on kept things straight here. All was good ‘till da last Killian, Tigres Killian. Tigres was a great leader. They say folks flooded ta Chi-Killian ta have a chance at a betta life.”
“Like the Dwellings,” Gabe interrupted, remembering the small town outside of Darkar, where he’d been taken to meet the Soothsayer. Images and some humans had transformed the small village into a peaceful town of sorts.
“You jus gon’ interrupt me like dat?” Jaundice Jones asked.
Hawks stifled his laughter. Lisa and Ayana did too. Tact patiently awaited the rest of the story. Bronc sat next to Emma, holding her as she rested fitfully against his thigh. She sucked careful breaths in and out as she rubbed at her belly.
“Tigres Killian did everything right, perhaps betta than the Killians before him. Many say it was Oddity, the magic man y’all hope to see soon, who helped him be such a good leader. He whispered dos and donts inta the king’s ear, makin’ sure he follered the straight an narra. The righteous path as clean as a image could.”
Gabe held back his laughter when he noticed Slim Pickins was leaning in close to Jaundice Jones, on the edge of his seat, excited to hear the story, as if he’d never heard it before. Somehow, Gabe knew the man had heard the story many times in the past, but like an eager student, he was enthralled in the tale.
“Like all bad stories, it all starts with a woman,” Jaundice continued.
Lisa, Ayana, and even Emma, who was dealing with her pain and discomfort, glared at Jaundice Jones, not liking to hear that their kind was to blame for “all bad stories.” Jaundice either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because he kept right on with the story.
“Magdalena was her name. Day say da girl’s beauty was so spectacaler dat ta look at her too long was ta look directly inta the fires of hell. Heard dat came from two stories. One a dem is that her beauty was just so strong as to be bright like da fire. The otha story was dat if you looked at her too long, and da king saw it, he’d take yer eyes out, makin’ ya blind as if ya stared directly at da fire. Either way she was a looker, and to stare too long was dangerass.”
“I remember hearing a story about the girl. She was gonna be the queen, right?” Tact asked.
“Yessir. Was. Never could though. Problem was, Oddity saw somethin’ in them sights he be seein’. The psychic eye thang he got goin’ on. He told King Tigres Killian dat he was fixin’ ta die soon an it would be at da hand a Magdalena, who was in love wit da ruler of Napolis, across da lake.”
“Come on,” Lisa said. “How could she be in love with someone on the other side of the lake? You see? These stories are all bullshit. Just a way to blame women for the downfall of man. The problem is, you guys are just shitty leaders. If a woman were in charge of half the cities on the dark side, this place would look a whole lot nicer than it does now.”
Gabe laughed and hugged her tight. “It’s just a story,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and scrunched up her face.
“Don’t matta if it’s true or no. Tigres drowned Magdalena in the bathtub. Anger, jealousy, and fear for his own life got the best a him. Then, he hired three a da bestest, most smartest men on dis side a da mirra, to build a megabomb. Like the nuclear stuff y’all got on yer side. Like a mini-atom bomb, but fer da leader a Napolis. Day say he worked dem three scientists so hard dat they was exhausted. One a dem was a coral head. Used da stuff to stay awake. It took all three a dem to put the finishin touches on da bomb. It never happened. One day it just went boom while they was still workin’ on it. So much destruction dat nobody know fa sure what happen, but it was known the one scientist used the coral drug a lot, and so the blame has always been on him.”
“So the bomb exploded here in Chi-Killian instead of across the water where Tigres intended it,” Gabe said.
“Yeah, and day say Oddity saw it in his visions. He tried ta tell Tigres, but he went mad after killing Magdalena. He didn’t listen. Oddity hid in a solid, stee
l bunker. Only one piece a da bomb exploded. Da other two pieces failed. Weren’t ready. That saved da city and a lot people in it.”
“But I heard a lot of people got really messed up,” Tact added. “Radiation poisoning or something, right?”
Jaundice Jones nodded his head. He took his notebook back from Hawks and placed it on his desk.
“Whole story in mo detail is in dat notebook. Sad. People too close to da explosion got mutated. Most died shortly afta, but some didn’t. They still alive now. And they pass it on to der kids. Like monsters, da people just wander around, livin’ in the sewers. No sense of what’s right er wrong. They eat people, they say. I ain’t never seen it, but I heard. I heard they catch people an eat ‘em. That’s what the maze is. General Falix be puttin’ people down in da sewers. Only a few exits down der, but lots a dem mutated folks. Only a few done made it out.”