And I’ve been right for five years. I’m thousands of years old, John, five years is ‘soon’ to me.
My heart rate started to accelerate. I opened the fridge to get a beer, hoping it would help to calm me down.
You know you’re not supposed to drink those, Sammy said. They interfere with your medication.
“I know, Sammy,” I said. I cracked open the can of Lagunitas and drained half of it in a gulp. I calmed down a little as the pleasant buzz began to cloud my thoughts.
I’ll tell Dr. Barksdale.
“That’d be a trick,” I said, emboldened by the alcohol. “Go ahead and tell him. As a matter of fact, why don’t you go bother somebody else for a while. I’m sick of you.”
You’re gonna miss me.
“No, I’m not.”
I waited for Sammy’s snappy reply, but it didn’t come—instead there was only silence. Dr. Barksdale would be upset if he knew I’d been talking to Sammy again, but it was the most reliable way I had of getting rid of him without the harsh side-effects of increasing my dose of Risperdal.
I told myself it wasn’t necessary, but I knew I had to do it anyway. I went around my living room and shut the blinds, double checked the window locks, and locked the deadbolt and the chain on my front door.
I chided myself for being irrational and flopped down on the couch, ready to kill an afternoon by drinking beer until semi-comatose.
I was five minutes into sitcom re-runs when my phone rang. The caller ID told me it was Dr. Barksdale’s office. Not wanting the good doctor to know that I’d been drinking, I let it go to voicemail.
But then the phone rang again.
I sighed and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said.
“John?” came Dr. Barksdale’s voice. He sounded tense.
“Hey, Dr. B,” I said. “Is everything okay?”
“Have you been hearing voices, John?” Dr. Barksdale said.
“Just a little bit, Doctor B. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You haven’t been… talking with them again, have you?”
How did he know that? I started feeling paranoid, but Sammy didn’t say anything.
“Sorry, Doc, I know I’m not supposed to, but it helps.”
“No no, it’s fine,” said Dr. Barksdale. “Do you remember the last thing you said to Sammy? Please concentrate, it’s very important.”
Why did he want to know that?
“Uh, he said he was going to tell you that I’d been….”
“Drinking?”
“Yeah.”
He must have heard it in my voice. Was I slurring?
“So,” I said, “I told him to go and bother someone else for a while instead.”
The line went silent. Not even the sound of breathing could be heard from the other end.
“Doc?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Dr. Barksdale. His voice was thin and strained. “Logically I know it must be some sort of shared psychosis but…”
“But what, Doc?”
“Sammy spoke to me.”
My stomach dropped. He had to be joking, right?
“He did?” I said.
“Yes. I don’t understand what’s happening, but he told me to tell you that…”
My hands began to sweat.
“What, Doc?”
“I uh…never mind,” he said. “I must not be feeling well.”
“Okay, Doc,” I said.
I wasn’t convinced. I held the phone out with my finger above the hang-up button, when I heard Sammy’s voice on the other end.
I told him to tell you that they’re coming for you, he said. Right now.
The line clicked dead, and my doorbell rang.
5
My Girlfriend the Brain-Eating Alen
“David, I’m an alien.”
I rubbed the back of my neck as I stared across the table at my girlfriend, who had brought me to my favorite restaurant, as she said, to confess something important to me.
“I don’t get what you mean,” I said. “Like, you’re Canadian or something?”
“No, I mean I’m an actual extra-terrestrial being,” she said. “I’m not even from this galaxy.”
The clink of dishes and the ambient chatter of the happy couples around us seemed like distant echoes as the wheels in my head ground slowly to a halt.
Thirty minutes ago I had been the most nervous I’d ever been in my entire life, a small blue velvet box clenched tightly in my fist as I prepared to pop the most important question I would ever asked. And yet instead of a giddy yes and a tear-stained hug, I was answered with an ‘Oh,’ and five minutes of awkward silence.
I felt like all those romantic comedies lied to me.
Now, I was sitting across from the love of my life and she was telling me that we couldn’t get married because she wasn’t even human. Now I’m no stranger to excuses—I’ve been turned down by girls because they had to wash their hair or walk their dogs. I even got stood up once by a girl who said that her grandma had just died. I was sympathetic until I saw her post a video of her dancing at the club on Instagram.
Still, this was a new one.
“You look upset,” said Sarah. “What are you thinking about?”
“I uh, ahem. I don’t really know what to think,” I said. “Your body certainly seems pretty human to me.”
“Yeah, about that…” Sarah said. “I need to show you something. Don’t freak out, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sarah lifted up her left arm and began to use her fingertip to trace an intricate pattern across the back of her hand. There was a click, and a blue light began to glow underneath her skin. Suddenly, the light forked out like electricity, and then Sarah was gone. Sitting in her place was a little blue creature that looked a bit like a smurf with two rabbit ear shaped antennae sticking out of the top of its head.
There was the sound of breaking glass, and I realized that I’d dropped my wine glass and it had shattered on the floor. The waitress rushed over to clean it up, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was now a three-foot-tall alien sitting across from me instead of a human woman.
I stared around the restaurant waiting for somebody else to take notice, but nobody did.
“Am I having a stroke?” I asked. “I thought you were supposed to smell burnt toast when that happened.”
Sarah shook her head.
“It’s my perceptual modulator,” she said. “It’s tuned to your brain frequency. Only you can see my true form right now.”
“Oh right of course,” I said faintly. “A perceptual modulator.”
I reached for my glass of wine only to remember that it had shattered only moments before.
“You’re not freaking out, are you?” asked Sarah.
I thought about her question for a moment. I probably should have been freaking out, but it seemed more like my brain had totally ceased all function.
“No,” I said, reaching again for the nonexistent glass of wine.
“Good,” she replied. “Because I have a confession to make.”
“You mean to say that your confession isn’t that you’re an alien?” I asked.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” said Sarah.
She nudged her glass of red wine across the table to me and I downed it in a gulp.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m ready.”
Sarah bit her lip and swayed nervously in her chair.
“Well…” she began, “I kind of uh…. eat people.”
“You eat people?” I asked, reaching for the bottle this time.
“Yes,” she said. “But not whole people. Just the brains.”
I went to pour myself another glass, thought better of it and downed the whole bottle instead. I coughed as the last of the bitter taste hit my throat and then I wiped the wine stain from my lips.
“So to recap…” I said. “You’re an alien who can only survive by eating human brains.”
&nb
sp; “What?” said Sarah. “No, I can survive off human food. Brains are more like a delicacy.”
“Oh.”
There was a moment of awkward silence in which Sarah bit her lip and stared at the floor.
“But, it’s not like I’m a bad person,” she said. “I only eat bad people. Do you remember your neighbor Mr. Wallows? The one that tried to poison your dog?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t he retire to Hawaii?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Nope,” she said. “I ate his brains.”
“Wow,” I said, scratching at the back of my head. “This is really a lot to take in.”
“You’re still not freaking out, right?” said Sarah.
Judging by my heart rate and the intense ringing in my ears, I was, in fact, freaking out. But Sarah looked so nervous for me, I couldn’t help but shake my head no.
She breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Well that’s good, because I have a confession to make.”
“You really have a lot of these, don’t you?” I said.
“This is the last one,” Sarah said. “I promise.”
“Alright,” I said, “I’m ready.”
“Actually,” Sarah said, “maybe you should have another bottle of wine for this one.”
She reached down into her purse and pulled out my favorite wine, uncorked it and slid it across the table to me. I upended the bottle into my mouth and ten seconds later it was gone.
“Alright,” I said, beginning to slur. “Hit me.”
“Well,” said Sarah, failing for the first time to meet my eyes. “You know how I insisted we come here on our first date?”
“Yeah…” I said, a sudden dread beginning to bubble in my stomach.
Well,” said Sarah. “It’s because I know the owner, he’s actually from my home planet.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Sarah. “Most of the dishes contain human brains.”
I looked down at my volcano roll, remembering how enthusiastically I had proclaimed it as the best one I’d ever had.
“The volcano roll?” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” replied Sarah. “That’s what the scallops are really made of.”
I suddenly began to feel very sick. I wasn’t sure how much of it was the wine, and how much of it was the fact that I had just consumed human brains. I guess it didn’t matter. Yet when I looked at Sarah I forgot about that.
Her fingers twisted in her lap as she stared down at the floor, the way she always did when she was nervous. She looked up at me with doe-eyed innocence.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
Maybe it was the fact that even in her alien form she still looked so much like the woman I loved. Maybe it was the fact that Mr. Wallows had been a racist, animal-hating old bastard. Maybe it was the fact that I’d just downed two entire bottles of wine, but I silently shook my head no.
“So do you still want to get married?” she asked, her voice tremulous with tentative hope.
I silently nodded, and Sarah’s face lit up with a grin the size of Texas. She ran her finger back over her hand and resumed her human form, still smiling bigger than I’d ever seen her smile before.
“I’ll stay in this form from now on,” she said. “It’s the one you fell in love with, after all.”
“Yeah,” I croaked out. “That’s probably for the best.”
Then, as the wine began to seep further into my blood, a thought occurred to me.
“So, that uh… perceptual modulator thing,” I said.
“Yes?” said Sarah, cocking her head to the side.
“Can it alter your appearance in other ways? Like…hypothetically, could you make certain parts uh… bigger?”
Sarah threw back her head and laughed.
“Oh it can do all kinds of things,” she said. “Come on, let’s go home. I want to show you something.”
I fumbled for my wallet in my pocket and dropped all the cash inside on the table before getting up and rushing out the door with Sarah.
I won’t share what happened next; I’ll only say that even though my fiancée may be a brain-eating alien, she’s still the woman I fell in love with and the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And that perceptual modulator can do anything.
6
She Says the Smell of Death Turns her On
The best things in life are four letter words.
Love, fuck, and free.
This is a story about the second one on my list, but the first one makes an appearance too.
Her name was Marla and she was a real piece of artwork. Not like a Greek statue; more like a high-end sex doll. That may sound like an insult, but it’s not. Marla wasn’t perfect, but she was the perfect version of what she was. In life, that’s all anyone can aspire to be.
I first saw her smoking a cigarette outside our college’s art building, looking bored.
“I’m out.” She announced to no one in particular when she had finished. She looked me up and down like she was appraising a car.
“Suck your dick for a cigarette,” she said.
I coughed so hard I nearly swallowed my own cigarette whole. I handed her one, naturally. Later that night, after she was done sucking my dick, she lit up from a full pack in her purse. That was just how she was. I never did truly understand Marla, but I was happy to be along for the ride. So, when I found out she wasn’t actually a student at the college, I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was.
“I just don’t get it,” I said. “Why do you hang around here?”
She shrugged.
“But—” I was interrupted as her long fingers slid down my pants, and she slid down to her knees. When Marla didn’t want to talk about something she always made sure her mouth was otherwise occupied. And Marla wasn’t much for talking.
But the quickest way to a man’s heart is also the quickest way to make him lose half his brain cells. Consequently, I missed a lot of red flags about Marla that I should have noticed.
Like how I never saw her eat or drink. She had always just had a full meal, or was feeling bloated.
Or how she never slept. Whenever she’d stay the night after we’d fucked away the afternoon she’d just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to her staring at me full on in the face, an inscrutable look in her eyes that strongly resembled hunger.
My conviction that there was something off about Marla only deepened when I found her driver’s license. It had spilled out of her purse that she’d tossed carelessly on the table.
On it was a picture of Marla, just as she was today, but the date of issue was 1979. How could someone not age a day in thirty years?
She caught me looking at it and snatched it out of my hands.
“Like my fake ID?” she asked tossing her hair and running her hands down my chest.
“Marla, how—oof”
She shoved me hard, and soon I was on the table and she was on me.
“You’re a sick son of a bitch, you know that?” she whispered in my ear, her hips twisting in rhythmic circles.
I had already forgotten about the driver’s license.
We’d been together six months when things began to unravel.
“Marla,” I began, as her head bobbed up and down on my crotch, “are we exclusive?”
There was a distinct popping noise as she pulled her mouth off me.
“Why?” she asked. “Do you wanna fuck other girls?”
“What? No, I just wanted to know if I was the only one you’re uh…”
“Fucking?”
“Yeah, fucking.”
“Yes,” she said, going back to work.
“But where do you go all the time?” I asked.
She pulled herself off me again.
“I have things to do,” she said.
“What things?”
“Things,” she said flatly. “Do you want me to finish
this or not?”
“Oh, uh, yeah.”
Marla grinned devilishly and her head began bobbing up and down with renewed vigor.
I know I shouldn’t have followed her that day. I should’ve just been happy I was getting my dick sucked. But sometimes curiosity outweighs our better senses.
The first place I followed Marla to was the bathroom. She went into the one-person handicap bathroom in the art building, and I heard the lock click behind her. Then through the door I heard the unmistakable sounds of vomiting, followed by a flush. Was Marla bulimic? It didn’t seem to fit with the Marla I knew.
I hid around the corner, then went inside to investigate after she’d left. She’d gotten most of it in the toilet, but around the rim there were tiny droplets of blood.
What the fuck was going on?
Then Marla went to the hospital. I followed her as she visited dozens of patients, most of whom seemed to be at death’s door. After each time she would find a deserted bathroom and vomit. Each time there would be little flecks of blood on the seat. I began to worry for her health. It didn’t seem possible that anyone could vomit up that much blood and still be alive.
Finally I followed Marla to a deserted alleyway.
What the hell was she doing here?
But she just stood there, motionless. And then—
“I know you’ve been following me,” she said. “You can come out from behind that wall.”
I stepped out and she turned around to face me.
“How did you know?”
“I can smell you, dipshit.”
“Smell me?”
“Oh yeah. I can smell you from miles away. That’s how I found you. You think I can’t smell you when you’re right behind me?”
Just to be safe, I gave myself a quick sniff. I smelled fine.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.
“You smell like death,” she said, staring at me hungrily. “You’re a sick son of a bitch.”
“You’re not making any sense. How am I the sicko?”
Marla shrugged.
“Ask your doctor. What do I care?”
“What?”
“You still don’t get it? I’m feeding off your sickness. It’s what I do.”
Death and Candy Page 2