Stranger Realms

by Jarred Martin

  I got Nina and we made to hightail it outta the village, but I knew I’d be doing the kid dirty if I left him behind. It wasn’t long before I found him.

  That stuff Narciso was saying, I suddenly remembered. About most tribes only practicing cannibalism ritualistically anymore. Only during ceremonies. I wish the kid had been as mindful. That wasn’t barbecue I’d been smelling, I’ll say that much. I didn’t bring a lot of extra bullets with me, but I figured I might as well waste one on the guy who’d stuck the kid on a spit like a roasted pig. I pulled the trigger once and made pasta sauce out of his head. Watching him drop still wasn't enough. What they had done to the kid was unforgivable. I found the chief next and leveled the pistol at him. He had the good sense to cower before it, but I suddenly lowered it. A bullet was too good for this sick son of a bitch. I took Narciso's trusty machete and buried it up to the handle in his belly. He clasped his hands around the wound and tried to catch the blood pumping out of him by what looked like the gallon. I knocked him back into the fire pit and he immediately starts screaming and writhing in the flames and ash. I make sure he doesn't make it back out.

  The smell of the chief's roasting flesh alerted the other members of the tribe, and I figure what the hell, and start emptying the pistol into the crowd. They scatter but not before I drop another four of them down dead.

  After that I do a little arson on their grass huts. The surviving members can erect new ones within an afternoon, I'm guessing, but that's not the point.

  One by one I turn the grass structures into blazing pyres. And I come to the professor's hut. It's getting hot and the sky is filled with black smoke now, but I act quick, thinking about that hideous, undying face I'd seen inside by the match light. I set the place to blazes and I wait outside listening for his screams. I never heard them. I hope he found some kind of peace afterward. I truly do.

  After that we left for good, no looking back. No more professor, no more magic roots, no more cannibals. We ran thought the jungle until we got to the trading post. From there I arranged a plane ride back to the city, and here we stay, me and Nina.

  Its funny when I have time to think about it now. How they were holding the professor prisoner because they couldn’t kill him, what with him being already dead and all. But the question was, why were they holding Nina prisoner as well? It’s not like she had some of that root too, is it? I mean, like they’d said, the journey was perilous, but she could have made it. Right? I wonder about that sometimes. Especially at night when I feel how cold she is lying in bed next to me. And sometimes when I rest my head on her chest, I swear there’s no heartbeat. I try not to think about it too much, though. Hell, thinking was never my strong suit anyway. I got Nina back, and got out of the jungle, and that’s all that counts.

  God With The Great Glass Eye

  Once, and only once the great and singular glass eye of god had looked directly upon her. And like all others in the view of this celestial lens, it had taken something from her and immortalized it. Her soul, glowing silver and black, a hundred feet high, flickering for the amusement of the immense unwashed. She had given it freely, and if any further sacrifice were to be demanded, she would beg that more be taken. Take all of me and more she would plead. Devour me, oh Lord. Ingest me. Digest me and heave back my silvery visage so that all may see that I have been touched by the divine. Lift me up from the dust, oh Lord, and place me high in the heavens, so that they all may look and see, and know the name of Evelyn Faye Croft. Please God, make me a star!

  She left Mississippi on the bed of a pickup truck when she was fourteen years old. The driver agreed to take her as far as Eastern New Mexico, and she only had to suck his dick once; which she did on the side of a dirt road while the sun blistered her bare shoulders and an old hound dog panted and dribbled slobber down the side door. It was a good deal, she thought. She did the math in her head and figured at this rate it would only take one-and-a half more dicks to get to Hollywood. But upon arriving in that land of sunshine, she soon learned that her mouth and pussy, and asshole, were a baffling currency: at once worthless and more precious than gold.

  Over two years she went for auditions where she had to let casting agents fuck her, often at the same time, just so she could keep her profile up. The first time she had been called back to read, it was only because the casting director’s brother was in town and they wanted see if they could fit both their dicks in her at the same time. They could. She needed an agent, which meant routinely sucking off an elderly Jew who smelled like mothballs, liked to spit on her, and needed pills to maintain an erection. He wasn’t always in the mood for the pills; he claimed they made his heart beat harder than Polack's skull, so he had a selection of various rubber body parts to fill in for him. He had a set of rubber balls connected to a string that he like to push up her ass. She would lean over his desk, her face slick with whatever nicturation he could muster, holding her ass cheeks apart while he delicately maneuvered the balls in, one-by-one until there was nothing left but a bit of string dangling from her anus. He always asked if she liked it. If that felt good. And she was an actress, damn it, and an actress’ job was not to tell the truth, but to merely reflect an inarguable impression of the truth back to the audience. So she said yes, indeed, she did enjoy the sensation of her colon being packed to the brim with rubber balls, and in fact the only thing that could possibly delight her more was if the elderly gentleman, with his shaking, liver-spotted hands, could jerk the string as hard as he possible could to dislodge them all at once. She would moan as if the level of sexual fulfillment this gave her was somehow undue. The truth was, the mass rushing out of her asshole felt like having an alarming shit, and she had to blink back tears of pain from the corners of her eyes. And of course, her agent never noticed her discomfort, mostly because he didn’t really care, but partly because she wasn’t really so bad of an actress.

  Confirmation of her aptitude came some time later. She got a part in an actual Hollywood movie called Love Struck Me Dumb! Her agent informed her of the good news while absently buttoning his fly at the end of one of their meetings. She met with the film’s producers, who all agreed that she had the right qualities for the part, and they were all impressed that she swallowed, not like some of those other classless hicks who spit it out like it was tobacco juice. They conferred privately, and told her there was no need to get dressed yet. Five minutes passed and they returned leading a German Shepard on a leash.

  She left the office not caring that she had red trenches of claw marks down her back and sides, so deep. blood was starting to spot through her cotton dress. She had the part! She beamed with confidence as she grabbed a handful of mints from the receptionist’s desk on her way out.

  Her adventure in Hollywood had been a montage of disappearing and reappearing flabby pink flesh and tangled greasy pubic hair thrush in her throat, crusty pink eye, itchy yeast reproducing in her insides, and with each thrust of the hips, every warm splash of come across her mouth, she had lost a little of herself, had it taken away by careless men who disregarded the heart they were pricking to callousness. But it was hers to give, whatever it was, and whether she was endowed with an abundance of it, or if she had some extraordinary capacity to manufacture it, she gave it willingly, but only in the hopes that it would reward her ambition.

  She smiled, her capped teeth lighting up with the silvery light from the screen as she watched Love Struck Me Dumb! from the back row of the movie house for a countless time. Here was her scene. There she was. A thousand feet high, the camera focusing on her and no one else for those few precious, fleeting frames. Whatever part of her the sentimental called innocent that she had to trade for this moment, it was worth it. She even had lines. True, the studio hadn’t liked her diction and accent, and had her voice overdubbed by another actress, but no one in the audience ever knew that. And she looked radiant. That was all her, maybe small credit to dentistry, lighting, make-up, hair dying, wardrobe, and the medicine to make her lose weight. The
re would be time for elocution lessons, and all that sort of thing later. After all, she was a contract girl for the studio now. She was to be paid the kingly sum of ninety-five dollars a week, and already had a plum role as a featured chorus girl in her next picture:Hysteria in the Moonlight! A musical comedy. It was all she had ever dreamed of, and if she only had to fuck half of Hollywood to get here, well she’d fuck the other half to make sure she stayed there. She still had hope. She still had her rosy outlook, and that was something an ocean of salty come couldn't wash away. Things were going to change for her. From here on out, it was going to be different.

  A few weeks later, she had a meeting with her agent.

  She stood waiting outside his office for a long time like a little girl about to be chastened by her sadistic headmaster. Eventually she reached for the knob and before she had even stepped through the door, her agent barked at her “come in.” and this was immediately followed by, “shut the door”, which she did. “Sit down, sit down. Christ kid, you take little baby steps.”

  She sat down and her agent across from her leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, holding his head at the temples. He sighed and pulled open the little drawer underneath and produced a bottle of pills. He shook one out into his little gnarled hand and threw it back into his old, dry mouth and swallowed it audibly. Evelyn knew these were for his old, withered heart, which beat roughly once or twice a minute depending on activity.

  “God, I am fucking tired.” He looked up at her for the first time. “Don't I look it? You see my face? The back of my hands? I'm tired because I'm as old as fucking dirt. You know how I got so old?”'

  She shrugged. “the usual way, I guess.”

  The agent let out another sigh. “No, honey, I didn't get old in the usual way. I didn't just wait for it to happen. I invited it to happen. I fucking dared it to happen. I got old fucking around with girls. Fucking actresses. Fucking ditzy coozes who don't know they got a good thing going, and they wanna fuck it up.”

  “I don't want to fuck anything up. That's the last thing I want.”

  “No? Then tell me what is with these fucking phone calls I'm getting from the studio, some piss ant line producer son-of-a-bitch, whose daddy got him the job. He says you're causing problems on set? You're holding up production? Christ, you're barely a featured extra, and you're holding up production?

  “It was my costume,” she looked down at the floor. “It wouldn't fit and it was tailored, so they didn't have a different size, and someone had to have it taken out, but it's all sequins and rhinestones, so it isn't the same as a regular dress, you kniow? And it was time for the cameras to roll, and I wasn't ready, and everyone said they weren't going to make their day and it was because of me, and I'm costing so much money for everyone. . .”

  He held a hand up to stop her. “Alright, alright, I get it. So why can't you fit into the dress, then, huh? I can see it, I guess. You're wearing a little extra skin. Why do you wanna do that to yourself? Pretty girl like you. You know, you're an actress now. You can't eat all that fat and sugar like back in Texas.”

  “Mississippi.”

  “Whatever. The point is you can't be stuffing your face with fried hog jowls and molasses pie every night, you understand? You gotta eat little lady food to maintain your figure. Salads, and shit like that, cottage cheese, cigarettes, black coffee. We got pills for that sort of thing, too. Make you feel real good, sweetheart. Give you lots of pep.”

  “I took the pills.”

  “Then why do you look like someone tried to cram a fistful of lard into a small skirt?”

  “Because I'm pregnant!” She nearly shouted.

  “Jesus Christ, keep your voice down.” He fell forward with his head in his hands once more. “Oh, you fucking girls are digging me an early grave. Pregnant” He shook his head. “I don't guess you're married. That's be too much to hope for.”

  She thought about the drawer with the red rubber balls, the way his come mixed with spit on her skin and turned back to jelly when it hit the bath water. “You son of a bitch.” she said quietly.

  “You got a fella? Some ape you can pin this on? I know you probably go with a lot of guys, but isn't there one you can single out of a line up?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good Christ, do you even know whose it is?”

  She hadn't had much time to think about this, but what she figured was that she wasn't exactly incubating some prince's glass slipper, or however the story went. More like a dangerous bastard that might wind up making some rich asshole slightly less rich. “It could be a fucking litter of German shepherd pups for all I know. might even be yours.”

  “Huh?” said the agent, tapping at his hearing aid. He waved his hand at her. “I got a family too, you know. My oldest son, nearly fifty years old. Of course I waited till I was married you see. Not like kids today. I go home each night to an old woman. She makes me a cup of tea, rubs my shoulders. It's nice. You'll have that some day.”

  Evelyn wondered if he ever stuck rubber balls up her ass.

  “So, do you know what you're gonna do?”

  “I'm not going to give him up for adoption, if that's what you're saying.”

  “”That narrows it down to . . .”

  “Raising a child?”

  The agent sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, you're not going to be raising any child. You're not going to be giving it up for adoption.” He picked up a pen and scribbled something on a legal pad. “Here's what you're going to do. You're going to get on this bus.”

  “Bus?”

  “You're going to take this bus,” he continued, “to Mexico. Tijuana. And you're going to find this address. And you're going to find a woman called Besesino, and you're going to give her seventy-five dollars, do you understand? She'll take you to a doctor. Do you have seventy-five dollars?”

  “Yes,” she said a little dejected.

  “You know the score then? The man you're seeing isn't handing out cigars, you know?”

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “Don't look so glum, kid. You're in a fix now, but you'll pull through. It's best this way. Lots of girls have to go see this guy. Some more than once, even. Couple hours there, a quick painless procedure, couple hours back, and you're ready to come to work on Monday morning, you'll see. All the girls have had to do it. A pumpkin can't be a jack o lantern until it gets scraped out, you know?”

  “ Why on earth would you ever say something like that to a person?”

  The agent leaned back in his leather chair and lit a cigar. “I don't know. Sounded philosophic, I thought.”

  She bought her ticket in the cool mist of the morning and waited for her bus on a bench outside the depot. There weren't a lot of passengers for the early morning ride to Tijuana. All the other travelers were squat and brown, older Mexicans in simple dresses and shirts with open collars. She stood out among them, with her large oval sunglasses, her trench coat, and the scarf around her head. Even if she wasn't dressed like someone from a movie deliberately trying not to be noticed, she would have stood out, being the only tall, slender, white woman around. But still, no one paid much notice, and when they boarded the bus, she had no luggage, she was sure to pick a lone seat, away from anyone who might want to start a conversation. She had the persistent inkling in her mind one of these people would recognize her from her film role. She tried to sink down in her seat, and she decide, as the bus pulled off, that if anyone would try to talk to her, she would pretend something was damaged in her throat, and make apologetic gestures, shrugging and pointing at her neck. She practiced doing this in her mind.

  She imagined how the bus would look in a film, jostling along a lonely dirt road, pointed south toward the peninsula, a close-up shot of the bus' side mirror with the Hollywood sign shrinking in the distance. She leaned her head against the window and let the constant engine hum and rolling tires lull her to sleep.

  She dreamed she was in closet lying on top of a pile of dirty clot
hes. Her face contorted in paroxysms of agony as one after another, a litter of German shepherd pups came slithering out of her, all naked pink, blind and mewling. She looked up to see a patient gathering of little Mexican people staring at her, all holding garment bags they wanted to hang in the closet.

  She came awake with a spate of drool clinging cold and wet to the side of her face. She sat up and wiped her mouth on her coat sleeve, mortified that anyone might have seen her in such a position, but if anyone had noticed, all heads were politely turned toward the front now. Out the window she saw that she had dozed nearly the whole way. Tijuana lay before her, hills in the distance dotted with simple casas, a flat expanse of stucco structures with flat roofs and missions below.

  She got into a cab outside the depot, and tried to read the address to the driver off the piece of legal paper her agent had given her. The man in the front seat did not speak English and he motioned for her to let him read the paper. She passed it to him reluctantly, and he grinned when he read the address. He looked over the seat and his eyes lighted on her middle. She crossed her arms and the driver grinned and made clucking sounds while wagging a single finger in the air in front of her.

  The man drove with no particular affect for the burgeoning life inside Evelyn's belly, or life in general. He laid on the horn while speeding down a narrow road. There were some kids pushing a broken bicycle ahead and he forced them into a ditch, horn still blaring as he blew past. He looked back at her as if she might like that he'd done that, like she was here to kill one child, it might be to her liking that he had endangered a few others.

  It was a terrifying ride, and the feeling did not abate when she reached the address. The cab pulled up to a building with no space between the sidewalk and the street. It might be apartments. She sat in the back seat looking up at it, unsure of whether she wanted to get out or not.