King Scratch

by Jordan Krall

  Without this hum, the town would be a fucking ghost, Keith thought. He wondered if the people who lived in the town still heard the sound throughout the day or if their minds and ears just blocked it out. When the townspeople fucked, did they grind their hips to the factory-hum in lieu of sexy music on the radio? Did they cum aloud to the low industrial roar in the distance?

  Keith bent down and plucked a piece of crabgrass from the lawn. He rolled it between his fingers and put it up to his mouth as it was a yellow-brown cigarette. He did this almost unconsciously and continued to attempt to puff on it, half-expecting smoke to force its way out of the blade of grass. Standing up, Keith spit the grass out of his mouth and walked up to the door, almost tripping over three days worth of newspapers.

  One of the headlines caught Keith’s eye: The Deed Done at Ford’s Theatre Last Night. He shivered at the implications. What deed? It sounded ominous to Keith as if the headline was really a coded message to a fellow conspirator. Though the words piqued his curiosity, Keith didn’t pick up the paper. He knew that if he did, he would be too distracted from the task at hand.

  His arms and legs felt like lead pipes. Keith lifted his left leg and found that it took more effort than usual. He did the same with is left arm and then his right. They were both dead weight. It took Keith much effort to lift his fist up to the door and knock but he managed it. As his knuckles hit the door he realized that it wasn’t made of wood or any other typical construction material but rather it had the color and texture of a crab-shell. It took a second for Keith to realize that it smelled like one, too. The fishy smell made his mouth water. He wanted a drink.

  Keith knocked on the door again, his knuckles rubbing against the rough shell of a door. He sucked on his knuckles, trying to soak in the crab taste but only getting dirt and skin. Not hearing a response to his knock, he leaned forward and licked the door.

  The tiny bumps of the shell tore up his tongue and excreted small drops of liquid that mixed with Keith’s blood. More drops collected at the base of his mouth. He swallowed and felt the heaviness from his arms and legs disappear. Keith licked like a child with his first taste of candy.

  Then he was in the street watching as a man slobbered all over a door. The man’s arms floated up as if filled with helium. He resembled a marionette attached to the door by his face, arms and legs moving up and down as they tried to escape the body.

  Keith walked to the curb, still watching the man at the door. Nice house, he thought to himself. He sensed, not so much with his eyes as with his mind, ethereal strings attached to the marionette-man as his tongue got rawer with each lick. The marionette knocked again and put his ear to the door.

  Keith listened but again did not hear anything from inside the house. He tried the doorknob. It turned all the way and clicked. Keith pushed the door open and brushed up against the crab shell one last time.

  As he entered his eyes scanned the house but he realized that his mind never actually took anything in. His thoughts were in the forefront of his head and therefore created a shield in front of his vision. He saw what was expected and but saw it in a hazy representation of solid matter.

  The room was a musty but tidy hologram. Inside, it was brownish-yellow and silent. Keith felt his bowels ache from the suspense. He put his fingers to the wall and forced his eyes to concentrate on the stale paint. In the uneven textures and drips, he saw the kitchen and smelled its dull linoleum. The whiff of smelled cigars, spilt whisky and peanuts made his nostrils open and close like the gills of a fish.

  In a long bubble of paint Keith saw a vision of the upstairs bedroom but more specifically he saw the knife mark in the wooden headboard of the bed. He rubbed his index finger along it and dug his fingernail into it, hoping to make another mark on the headboard. Instead, he tore open a pillow, spilling polyester foam across the yellow sheets.

  “Who the hell are you? Get the fuck out!” a voice shouted from behind Keith. He took his hand off the wall and turned his head. A gray-haired man stood behind him wearing stained black denim pants and a brown-stained shirt proclaiming that “Millie’s Bar-B-Que” on Route 34 had the best ribs in Jersey.

  “Red Henry?” Keith asked over his shoulder. He smelt his fingers and got the essence of paint and sweaty high-heels.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Red Henry shouted, charging Keith and knocking him around into the wall nose-first. Blood splatters appeared on the wall in the shape of an anorexic squid. Henry dug his fingertips into Keith’s side, his hand digging under the ribs like a spoon in a cantaloupe.

  Keith smiled and turned his body around, trying to shake Henry loose. As his ribcage was experiencing a phantom penetration, he felt a cotton swab enter his urethra like a prospector. Instead of gold, however, the swab was looking for any sign of pussy and prick disease.

  Years ago Keith had been oblivious to the possibility of sexual diseases until his older brother picked up Granulomainguinale from one of his many prostitute-girlfriends during the war. After hearing all about the wet discomfort of the disease as well smelling the yellow-green discharge left on the toilet seat, Keith had gone to a clinic and got tested.

  He had entered the room not sure what to expect but not caring that much. The doctor told him to take his pants off and then grabbed Keith’s penis. Out of nowhere, a long cotton swab appeared and it was subsequently forced into Keith’s unsuspecting urethra. Before he knew it, the process was over and Keith stood shocked, stunned and numb. It didn’t hurt but it was an unexpected penetration that made him feel like a rape victim. Even so, Keith became obsessed with the sensation and indulged in small rape fantasies of his own, using matchsticks, coffee stirrers, the skinny end of pen-caps, broken prongs of plastic forks, and any other object that piqued his arousal.

  Red Henry slammed Keith’s head into the wall again as they struggled. The back of his skull dented the sheetrock causing bloodstained dust to spurt into a red-white cloud in one silent poof. Keith lost his balance and fell against the wall, his ass hitting hardwood floor like a hammer.

  Two hands grabbed Keith and turned him over. Red Henry put a knee into his back and took a long, thin root out of his pocket. He wrapped it around Keith’s neck and pulled.

  “Know what I call this? I call this my lucky shoestring.” Red Henry tightened the root and then loosened it, tightened it again and then loosened it again. Keith’s hands grabbed at his neck.

  “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my house?” he said, loosening the root around Keith’s neck again. His eyes glazed over and his mind moved on to other things.

  “You come here looking for Mr. Timothy? He’s not here, goddamn it,” he said, his hands twitching and weakening. “Is that why you’re here? Tell that Blue Christ fellow to leave me alone!”

  Keith sensed the weakness in Henry’s hands and took advantage of it. With every bit of energy left, Keith turned over while simultaneously grabbing the root from Red Henry’s hands. He started gagging from the release and spit a glob of drool onto the floor. It fell into the disemboweled shape of a Japanese spider crab. A blanket of sorrow fell on Keith and he let his forehead fall into the crab’s innards. In its stomach, he discovered the mangled flesh of a drowned man and the remains of a stove pipe hat.

  Red Henry landed a punch in Keith’s side and then ran out of the room. The punch shook Keith and a tiny bit of vomit slid up his throat and into his mouth. He let it drip onto the crab and it formed the tentacles of a squid that wrapped around the remains.

  A door slammed and Keith heard footsteps trotting down stairs. He got up and walked to the kitchen. Rummaging through drawers, he pocketed three old matchbooks, some pennies, and a used chopstick. He then left through the backdoor.

  “Laura didn’t warn me about this shit,” he said, walking out through the yard and onto the sidewalk. He lit a cigarette. “Sorry, Smitty,” he said. Walking down Price Street, he turned onto Jefferson Road and took the root from his pocket.

  I’m in the mood for panc
akes, Keith thought and then proceeded to stick the thin end of the root into his left nostril.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jim

  The deer was dead already, probably shot for fun by a kid or something. Another animal had gotten to it and had started to chew the meat from its side. My feet fell into the mess and I dragged Peg down onto the ground, our surroundings becoming a mish-mash swirl of dark green and grey. I landed a foot or two in front of the deer by Peggy fell on the animal. She laid there up to her elbows in deer guts and I turned over and looked up at the moon.

  The squid’s head was pulsating now. No longer was there a man in the moon, it was a tentacled apocalypse squirming and inking until its sigil was tattooed in every cell of every brain. The moon turned copper-brown and my head started to hurt. I closed my eyes hoping that it would decrease the pain of the migraine-assassination. I shook my head and it rattled, a half-inch bullet from a derringer pistol sliding its way through in search of my pineal gland.

  I tasted old paint and blood. My teeth and tongue moved the grit around into my cheeks and then I swallowed. I heard Peg sloshing around in the blood, trying to get up.

  “Don’t move….just wait,” I whispered.

  “Fuck you,” Peg replied. Her voice was smooth and sweet like cheap milk chocolate.

  “My back hurts,” I said even though that wasn’t really the reason why I told her not to move. My back and its scars always hurt. However, I knew that even if she was in an extremely sympathetic mood, it wouldn’t persuade her to stay in the deer gore any longer than she had to.

  Despite the pain, I helped Peg off her feet. I started to wonder where she got the matching gloves and boots. Were we going to a party? Was it Halloween? No, of course not. There were no gloves. Her hands and feet were slick with deer blood.

  We started walking again but this time I kept my eyes looking straight ahead, on the look-out for deer and other potential obstacles. I figured we had about a mile to walk but I wasn’t sure. I was always bad with estimating distances.

  Peg shook her arms, flicking blood on the back of my neck. I expected it to be warm but it felt as if it had no temperature at all. Blood was shaken off of her feet too and I thought that if her feet were covered in something other than deer blood, I would have licked them clean. Chocolate sauce, maybe, or caramel. I’d prefer something that wasn’t too sweet and wouldn’t interfere with the natural taste of her feet.

  We walked as fast as we could, considering our condition. There was no conversation as Peggy was intent on scraping the now-dried blood off of her body. I thought about how we ended up here and how I had met Peggy.

  It was right after I had quit running shine from the Pine Barrens up to Central Jersey. That’s how I had met Joe. I got involved in running his special brand of moonshine down south where the new customers drank it up like water. When I finally decided to quit, I got work full time being a janitor in a department store. It wasn’t glamorous but it was something steady and legal.

  There was one day when I was called to clean up a spill in the dressing room. It was demeaning work but at that point during the day, my mind was in a forest somewhere, cuddled against a tree. I was beneath a blanket of leaves while I brought the mop over to the mess. As I got close to it, I recognized the scent: urine.

  I got to work mopping it up when someone walked into the booth. It was a cute, skinny blond in a beige skirt. I noticed her legs first: two tan matchsticks ending in three-inch heels.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just in here. I left to get another size,” she said, straight-faced and holding a pair of pants. I noticed that the bottom of her short skirt was damp.

  “I’ll be done in a second,” I said, not wanting to start a conversation. If there’s one thing I had learned working in a department store it is not to start conversations. They either talk your ear off or think you’re a pervert. Either way, you lose.

  There was a urine puddle in the dressing room she had just used and her skirt was damp. She must have noticed that I was connecting the dots because she smiled and flashed me an intense look.

  “Enjoying that?” she asked, nodding her head towards the urine.

  “Why would I be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she cooed, coming inside the room and shutting the door. She held up the damp part of her skirt and looked at me, waiting.

  “I, uh, don’t really know…uh…” I stuttered, looking to the doorknob, wanting to bolt out of there. As much as the situation was intriguing, I didn’t want to get fired over a horny housewife and her puddle of piss.

  So I did what I thought would cause me the least amount of trouble: I blushed, smiled and walked past her. Carrying my dripping mop away, I left her giggling as she shut the door. I spent the next fifteen minutes in the maintenance room, hoping that by the time I went back, the dressing room would be empty or at least free of the woman with the loose bladder.

  The room was empty when I got back but the puddle was refilled. I shook my head and got to work.

  A few days later, the same thing happened but this time the woman lingered around while I cleaned the mess. As I mopped up the last of the mess, she finally introduced herself.

  “I’m Lillian, by the way.”

  “Um, yeah, I’m Jim,” I replied, realizing that she might not have really cared what my name was. She was wearing another skirt and it was also damp with what I presumed to be her fresh urine. The smell lingered with her perfume and wasn’t unpleasant.

  “Well, hello Jim. Sorry about that mess. Sometimes I just can’t control myself, you know? But you don’t mind, do you?” she said, her hands on her hips.

  That intimate but somewhat embarrassing meeting jumpstarted a very passionate relationship with Lillian who, after two or three sessions of love-making, told me that she preferred to be called by her stage name, Peggy.

  “I’m an actress,” she told me, “I’m going to be a star and I’m going to be larger than fucking life!”

  Her rambling confidence only convinced me that she had some casting-couch connections. I wondered: somewhere in Hollywoodland, was there a high-profile producer with a golden shower fetish? If so, Peggy’s shot at stardom was a sure thing.

  I wasn’t spending my time with her because I was interested in her career choice. In fact, I found it quite embarrassing. Too many aspiring actresses have tap-danced their way in and out of my life and all that was left was an impression of idealistic hopelessness. In other words, they would live and die as pathetic dreamers.

  Despite all of that, she intrigued me. She was a risk taker, a woman who didn’t mind pissing on the floor for a thrill and then embarrassing a scruffy young janitor. I didn’t necessarily like to be embarrassed, of course. Afterwards, however, it made me slightly excited. To be honest, probably more than just slightly.

  Peggy and I did things together that I never could have imagined two people doing. I consider myself to be a little bit imaginative, but even in my own late night, lonely-in-bed fantasies I could have never imagined the things we had done.

  Walking towards Red Henry’s house with Peggy felt like a walk on the moon. I didn’t know from experience but if I could guess, I’d say that walking on the moon would have the same unstable and insecure feeling that I was experiencing as we trekked past the working class streets of Fisherville. Every step I took was lopsided. The streetlamps draped an orange hue over everything as I concentrated on walking steadily over uneven sidewalks and curbs.

  The factory hummed in the distance and brought back memories both good and bad. Years ago, when I first noticed the sound that reverberated through the town, I imagined it being caused by three huge iron and bronze monks, their humming being a tool to free their minds of whatever earthly garbage it may contain. In a way, that hum cleared my mind, too. We walked past the Knights of Columbus building and its neon-lit miniature Virgin Mary statue that was enclosed in smudged glass. The back of my head tingled with recollection as I remembered kneeling in front of it years ago
, waiting for an answer to my problems. I never received one.