My cries were answered and joined by other sobbing voices down the halls of the student dormitory—more boys, hearing my cries, finally allowed themselves to lament the loss of mothers or fathers … or faithful companions. We all wallowed in the misery of the broken, beaten and burned flesh of our new lives.
Like wounded young wolves we howled into the darkness for our mothers—a pack of pathetic pups, paying for sins none of us could remember committing. But it was clear to all of us that we would be punished for whatever slight of God’s Word we had caused … until he was satisfied that we had paid enough in pain for our penance.
“Benito,” by then Barbara’s voice was familiar and the only thing that I would truly miss if I escaped. Because the angel in my dream made it clear that’s what I had to do—escape.
And whether he was real or not, I knew that I needed to get away from Saint Samuels. “Barbara?” I said.
“You have to stop crying. It ain’t gonna help … either of us.”
I knew she was right, but I didn’t care. “I … I can’t.”
“You mean, you won’t?” she said.
“I … I wish I…” I knew it was blasphemy—my mother taught me that—but there was nothing left and God was—“I just want the pain to stop. I wanna die.” Death couldn’t be worse than this.
“You ain’t got long for that,” Barbara said, no more sympathetic than she was in the infirmary. She shook her head. “I always pick the idiots.” When she stopped she just frowned at me. “You think that first month was bad? Took me two years to get numb to it—you should be over this. You gotta be over it right now. We’ll never get outta here with you like this.”
I knew I would never get used to it. I looked past her. “They aren’t used to it,” I said. My back shot fresh fire through my spine and I don’t know why, but I tried to hold back my screams. My cries came out as whimpering.
“They’re still dreaming off their J,” Barbara said. “Can you get up?”
“I don’t”—I tried to sit up and pain shot through my neck and I whimpered—“I don’t think so.”
“Mary mother of—you have to get up,” Barbara said.
“Why?” I spoke down at my mat.
“It’s the only way I can put salve on—so we can get outta here.”
I looked at the cell door.
“Hurry up,” she said, “we ain’t got all night.”
I pushed through the pain and somehow got to my feet. But when I stood up—tried to straighten my back—fresh fire fought its way up my spine to my neck and I fell to my knees and screamed.
On another night, my screams might have drawn the attention of the PI’s. Masked between the howls and moans of at least half of the thousand other boys in the dormitory, no one noticed. I quickly stopped anyway, no idea why. Fear is powerful, but terror is so powerful that it makes your mind force you to forget what caused it—another Colonel-ism.
I was finally starting to get mad. I stood up through the pain, and then stumbled my way to the door of my cell—for the first time feeling the woozy effects of whatever Barbara had shot into my neck. “What is that stuff?” I asked her.
“What stuff?” she said. She held up a little white tube of ointment. “This?”
“Don’t do that,” I said through the bars. “The medicine you shot into my neck.”
“How did you know I was…?” she said. Then she pulled a syringe out from under the black folds of her Sister’s habit. “How did you know I had this?”
I had never seen the syringe—she was behind me in the infirmary. Though that wasn’t entirely true, as I had seen a vial and needle similar to the one she was holding up, back when my mother brought me to the Med-mart. “Is that the stuff you shot in my neck the other … last…” I had no idea how long it had been since my blackout.
“I never shot you with nothing,” said Barbara. “Why do you think I’m here? If I did, you wouldn’t be whining like a baby, that’s for sure.”
My confusion was growing right along with the pain in my back. “Then how did I…?” I couldn’t remember getting back to my cell, or how I left the Sisters’ infirmary. “Did they carry me up here from the infirmary?”
Barbara looked confused. From what little I could see of her face in the dim light of the dark hall, anyway. But something was weird—she looked … older. “You’re talkin’ like I judged you up, that’s for sure,” she said, “but I ain’t never touched you … with nothing. Not that I would—never mind.”
I wondered if it was part of my hallucination after she injected… But if it was the first time…? “I was in the infirmary and you were putting antibiotic ointment on my back and then you stuck me in the neck”—I pointed to the syringe in her hand—“with that.”
“In your freaky little fantasies, I was rubbing you,” she said. “Is that what you been dreaming all this time? I’m rubbing you down with lotion? Naughty, naughty. Father D catches you talking like—too late for that anyways, Benito.”
“I was in the infirmary and you were calling me an idiot and fixing my back, and then—”
“I don’t wanna hear any more of it,” she said. “You were dreaming. All there is to it. Now, you want that pain to go away or not?” She held up the needle. “Because we can’t run with you like that. They’ll catch us.”
“Run?” I asked. “I mean, I wanna get outta here, yes but…” Because however curious and confused I was about what Barbara was saying, I knew I wouldn’t last four more years, much less four more hours.
“Then turn around,” she said, “before I decide to leave you here and let them kill you.”
I did as she said and turned around and backed toward the door a little, careful not to bump up against it.
“A little more,” she said. “Stop.”
There was a little pinprick to my neck, and then the warmest sunshine of any summer I had ever felt started in my neck, worked its way to my face and then warmed itself all the way down to my feet. I smiled at the release of pain and the absolute replacement of it with the most pleasure I had felt in my entire life. I closed my eyes and let it do whatever it was going to, because I had instantly forgotten all about my burned back, hallucinations, and her saying something about them killing me.
“There ya go,” Barbara said. “How do ya like them apples?” She giggled a little. “Rubbing ointment on you? Mary and Joseph in a manger, Benito, I hope you ain’t this crazy when we get outta here.”
I turned around and looked at her. I was probably smiling just like the idiot that she kept calling me, but … I didn’t care at all. I was about to ask her something, but forgot all about it when I said to her, “You’re an ang—”
“Criminy Christ,” she said, “I am not an angel. So don’t even start with that. That’s the J—you’re hallucinating.” She looked at her empty syringe. “Just enough so the pain stops. Not so much you’re useless. Now, what day a training do you think it is?” she asked. Then she muttered to herself, “Brainwashing sons a Satan.”
“What is that stuff?” I asked her. “Wait, kill me?” It was a question from earlier, but by then, I was starting not to care all that much.
“Try to focus,” she said. Then she scoffed at me, “What did you think they were gonna do after you killed that PI? Now, what day is it?”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said. Then it hit me—a groggy euphoric feeling without fear or … or… I just didn’t care. “Wow!” Then I giggled a little. I think it was the first time I laughed since I got to Saint Samuels.
“Look at me,” she said. “What day … do you think it is?”
I tried not to laugh. “Hah, calling me an idiot?” I said. “You can’t even count.”
Barbara looked closely at her syringe. Then she frowned and then the frown was replaced with frustration. “I didn’t give you that—damnation,” she muttered. “Look at me.”
I smiled and looked deep into her beautiful blue eyes. “Angel eyes,” I mumbled, because that’s what she h
ad. “You have angel eyes.”
Her eyes got wide. “Benito”—she held up her needle—“you ever had this before?” she asked. “Ever seen this kinda needle?”
My vision was fuzzy. I looked at my mat to see if my glasses had fallen off, but I felt them slide down my nose a little—they were on my face. I took them off, wiped them a little with my sweats, and then put them back on. Then I leaned in and took a close look at her syringe.
Two little snakes twisted around a glass vial and it had a metal plunger with a ring at the top of it. The end of the needle looked like it tapered down to the tip—more spike than any needle I had seen. “Yep,” I said, proud of myself for the answer. “Doc at the Med-mart’s got one just like that … for vitamins.” And I smiled at her and cocked my head to the side. “How do you like them apples?”
“Hell and damnation and fire and fury on me,” she said.
I’d never heard her swear like that. “Shhhh,” I said, probably too loud and too long. I giggled a little. “They’ll burn you too, if you keep swearing like that.”
Barbara looked a little more frantic. “I gotta get you outta here,” she said. “You got too much of it in your system. You’ll tell ’em … everything. Won’t matter if they torture you or not.”
“Tell them what?”
She paid no attention to me. “They see you like this,” she said. Then she started biting her nails and pacing a little. “They’ll know someone judged—I gave you the J, we’re dead.”
“We’re not dead,” I said, smiling, “this is Purgatory.”
“What?” she said, and then she lost it. “That was … almost two years ago, Benito! Oh, Jesus Christ, they judged you up good—that’s why… We’re so—they’re gonna kill me right alongside you.”
“They won’t kill you,” I asked, “you’re too cute to kill. No more killing talk, okay? Just rub some more of that ointment on my back.”
“Don’t talk to anyone, Benito,” she said. “I gotta get you outta here.” She turned to leave.
“Where are you…?” I said. “Don’t go.” And I laughed.
She stopped and turned around and looked at me with… She looked mad, but I still thought she was an angel. “Don’t you dare talk to anyone,” she said. “Lay down on your mat and cry like the rest of them, but don’t talk to no one. I’ll be right back.”
And then she was gone, and I went back to my mat. “Hah,” I muttered, “I’m not dead.” And I laid down on my stomach, and laughed at the floor.
TAIL
— CLXXXII —
SAFELY INSIDE SHANNON’S shop at the far end of the Mike, I do a little cataloguing of my own—making sure that I know where the exit is. There’s wares and widgets of all kinds, adorning the dark wood covered walls on the inside of his shop, and more than one or two terrible trinkets that I would never want stuck in me. Because it’s easy to see that they are some kind of ancient weapons. But the most conspicuous items are the old-world clocks.
They all work, ticking and tocking away, pendulums swinging like little miniature guillotines. Citizens don’t have much use for them anymore, but to the rich and ranting wife of a Protection agent or State official, an operating Bavarian time cabinet goes right along with a Black Market stuffed animal head above her fireplace.
“Nice … clocks,” I say to Shannon. “You losing track of time these days?”
“There be a tickin’ tock for everything, Benito,” he says, “and a season for every activity under the two Heavens. Me clocks help me keep them all sorted.”
And this is how it goes with us. There’ll be no bartering until the Bible banter ends. It would be … rude. “Whatever is has already been,” I reply for my side of it, “and what will be has been before, and God will call the past to account.”
“I’ll be marryin’ one a me muttons on that day, I’ll tell ya.”
The inside of Shannon’s shop is gigantic—much larger than the outside entrance suggests. I marvel at its size and the sins it has taken to create it. I don’t have long before those thoughts are replaced with… Compared to the dark and damp just outside his door, Shannon’s shop is horribly hot.
It’s strange to me, because despite his huge muscular frame, plenty of Shannon’s heft is dedicated to storing insulating fat. And I wonder… I mean, one thing I remember is sweating profusely when we first came to see him, yet he seems to crave nothing more than increasing the heat.
“Life’s labias,” he shouts, “it’s colder than the white witch’s tits in here!”
And another dark little “munchkin” I hadn’t noticed—near triplet to his brothers braving the rain and mud down the street—scurries from the shadows along the wall. He’s hugging and handling a big chunk of tree—too large to be called firewood.
Shannon’s shop has a cure for Seattle’s common cold, and it eternally and infernally burns in a large pit in the center of the huge room. There’s a monstrous metal cone above it that pipes every last stitch of smoke up and out to some unseen soot scrubber, because that level of unauthorized black ash would bring a brigade of Protection agents down on Shannon if it were simply pumped out into the open.
After the little fire stoker goes back to his shadow, I look around for suspicious “bulges” in any more of the cracks and crevices of Shannon’s shop, just in case he’s herding more than “muttons” these days. There’s one other exit that leads down—I’ve used it before—but I struggle to find it again. Once I finally do—tucked between a mirror and some monolith-looking black rock—I take careful note of it. If it gets too hot, that’s where I’m headed.
Never walk into a room that you don’t know how to fight your way out of. Colonel-ism number… I stopped count somewhere in the teens, but I can almost hear his voice on the important ones. Though he had another “F” word he liked to use for the corollary to that ism. It involved relationships and women and—Focus!
My Shandian mind shoves me back to the present moment and the task in front of me. I reach up and touch my glasses, making sure they are secure in case my “mind” feels something I don’t.
Along one complete wall is nothing but books. Brown bound texts in every language I learned at seminary … and some that I probably never will. Most of them are familiar to me, even the ones written in angelic script. The ones I don’t recognize look like they would turn to dust as soon as someone pulled them from their perch.
From what I do remember, despite his demeanor, Shannon is a connoisseur of all things old and dark … and deadly. And that is actually exactly why I am here.
When he’s almost to his big chair on the other side of the fire pit, a little potbellied pig—mottled a deep brown and grunting and snorting as it goes—trots its way by me and follows Shannon right behind his heels.
Shannon reaches down and grabs the little swine by the back of its neck and it barely squeals as he lifts it up. And I never noticed before… Three fingers! I think. More accurately, my Shandian mind tells me it’s important. Trusting its voice is something that we were all taught to do.
Shannon plops into a big red leather chair, and as big as he is, the back of the chair arcs above his head like the retracted roof of a stadium. He tucks the little pig into his lap. I can barely tell which potbelly is which. And he starts to scratch between the little pig’s ears … just like I used to do with Max. I can’t afford those thoughts right now.
I sit in a chair that’s obviously reserved for guests—half the size and none of the red of his—and I pull out my flask. Whether it’s his hospitality, the heat of the fire, or the harsh and heavenly events of my day … I’m craving a drink.
“Right then,” he says, stroking his pig and gazing into the fire, “let’s strike me match first.”
I unscrew the top of my flask. I have no idea what he’s offering. I don’t care.
“This here sweetness…” he says, but then turns up his nose and covers his pig’s snout. “Christ on a crutch, Benito, me pig’s piss smells better than that State swi
ll you’re greasing your guts with.” He motions to the shadows. “Go ahead, flame up his flask before she vomits in me hand.”
The same minion comes from the shadows again. This time he’s got a big leather and jewel-covered bottle that looks like a genie used to live in it. And before I can ask or protest, my flask is full of … I have no idea what. I thank the young fellow as he flutters over and fills up a huge chalice sitting on the wood stump of an end table next to Shannon’s chair. I smile, wondering if the table will soon become firewood. The dark little servant keeps pouring, only stopping when it looks like the liquid might spill over the sides of Shannon’s cup. Then he heads back to wherever he hides.
Shannon lets his little potbelly loose, and the pig wiggles its way to the arm of his chair, and then it sucks in some of the swill from his chalice. “There ya go, ya little pizzer,” he says to it. Then he looks at me. “What are you waiting on?” he asks.
I hesitate, watching the little pig drink.
Shannon looks at his pig and then back at me. “Don’t worry, I save the best of it for me friends and me pig.” And he nudges the little pig just enough, then wraps his huge, three-fingered hand around the stem of the chalice and without stopping or pausing for air, he guzzles the entire remainder down in one long, loud, gulping drink. Then he slams the cup down on the stump and wipes what little escaped to his mustache with his hand. He lets the little potbelly lick his palm dry. “Ahh, me mother in Hell’s milk right there, it is.”
I’m still hesitating, but not for the reasons he thinks. It’s been an eternity since I’ve been down to the Mike, and the vernacular and vice and vanity of it all have just got me… I never realized it until I came back, but I … I missed it like I miss my parents and Max.
Every day is a cause for celebration at the Mike, because these people know better than anyone—no matter what nightmare you have, if you can wake up from it the next day, it’s better than the sweet delusion of the dream that you can’t.
Shannon gets a guilty look on his face. “Life and Lucifer’s lusting loins,” he says. He looks at his huge cup. “Me manners in this place have gone to angelshit—a toast then.”
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