Lockdown

by Nick Kolakowski

  He had no idea how his forefathers had done it before the internet. His imagination had the range of a crayon drawing of boobs compared to the bountiful cornucopia of depravity that was the internet. He knew about magazines, Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler, but they felt quaint. Two-dimensional and paper seemed boring, but compared to his worthless brain, he would have taken anything. The best he could do from the contents of his apartment was the Chicken of the Sea mermaid, but he thought of her more like a sister.

  The closest Renato got to any kind of satisfaction was when he thought about Leona Marks, the first boobs he had ever seen up close. He shut his eyes tight. Teenage lust returning to his mind. Leona in the backseat of his Dad’s Skylark. Her shirt unbuttoned. He felt a crotch twinge, but it didn’t last. It ended up like that magic trick where the magician’s wand turned into rope. He yanked on it anyway for due diligence, but when it started to hurt, he gave up. He cried holding his soft dick in his spitty hand.

  Then the neighbors started up again.

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Renato opened his window and stuck his head outside. Fresh air and the eerie quiet of the city. He could still hear Seagull-Hog, but a slightly more muted version. Some asshole sang “Rocket Man” in the distance. Nobody sang along. The streets sat empty, except for a patrol car cruising slowly through the neighborhood. He was glad he had a view up on the sixth floor, but he would have given anything for a terrace.

  All the stores looked closed. The nail parlor, the pizza place, the pawn shop, even the liquor store. And then he spotted it. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? He didn’t know the name of the place. He had been in there a dozen times minimum. The sign just said “Adult” in big block letters, so that’s what he had always called it in his head. More important than its name, he could see that the door on the roof of the building was open an inch.

  A pornography oasis was only two buildings away. Not just porno, but probably a decent supply of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, as well. If he could make it there, he could ride this thing out without ever having to hear Seagull-Hog ever again, shelter-in-smutty-place.

  All he needed was to get from Point A to Point P. The P stood for pornography.

  Renato had always believed that he was capable of climbing a drainpipe. So much so that he had never felt the need to test his acumen. It was one of those things that he had seen in a movie and decided that it was in his skill set. Like breaking a brick with his hand and moonwalking. It didn’t deter him that he had neither the upper body strength nor grip. It was going to be about technique, everyone knew that. Besides, descending was a cakewalk compared to climbing. Gravity would do most of the work for him.

  It was only two stories down to the roof of the abutting apartment building, where the entire surface was covered with discarded trash bags, like a safety net. Once on that roof, it would be a hop, skip, and a literal jump to Adult and paradise. Along the way, he would have to figure out how to overcome the eight-foot alley gap between the two buildings, but that was details. A plan would form between now and then. You didn’t need a plan if you had confidence. That was one thing that Renato was confident he knew for sure.

  He filled his backpack with Slim Jims, Beefaroni, Chunky soup, Funyuns, Top Ramen, Oreos, and the rest of his emergency food stash. As much as he could fit. It weighed a ton, pulling him backwards, but it was a short jaunt.

  With one leg draped over the windowsill, he looked around his apartment one last time to make sure he didn’t forget anything. God, his place was depressing. The furniture looked like he had found it in the alley, which he had. He should have put some art on the wall. A couple Nagel prints would have made a hovel a home. Once this thing was over, he was going to get his shit together. He was going to go to Ikea.

  Renato reached for the drainpipe.

  Renato had definitely dislocated his shoulder. Something poked him in the back. He stared at the scattered clouds above him. One of them was shaped like a dick with one ball.

  Phase one was complete. He had made it down onto the neighboring roof, that’s all that mattered. It was trivia that he had not been able to descend from the drainpipe, but instead had fallen out the window immediately. He should have worn gloves. That had been the problem.

  The plastic sacks of garbage had mostly broken his fall. His left arm dangled in place. It didn’t hurt, but he looked like a broken puppet. Luckily, he was right-handed. That fact was going to come into play when he finally reached the pornography. The last thing he wanted was some Burgess Meredith irony bullshit, surrounded by smut with a damaged stroke arm.

  He tried to jam his shoulder back into place by lifting his upper body and then falling back down against the roof, but that only made it hurt. He needed to get a running start and slam it against a wall. Once again, it all came down to technique.

  Renato tried to forget about his functionless arm and shifted his focus to whatever was stabbing him the back. He tried to reach it with his left arm, but that only made him scream in agony. How could he have forgotten that he had just dislocated his left shoulder ten seconds earlier? He tried again with his other arm, but couldn’t quite reach whatever it was.

  He sat up and dragged his back against the wall of his building. Something snapped. He still felt the stab—and discovered the culprit. A syringe, minus the needle. The needle which was most definitely still in his back. He hoped his neighbors were junkies, but knew that wasn’t the case.

  Renato scanned the garbage bags that covered the roof. He couldn’t tell what they were from his apartment, but now that he was closer, he saw the symbols and words. “Medical waste,” “Toxic,” and “Hazardous Materials” were the three phrases that jumped out at him.

  That was the luck Renato was having. He had fallen into a medical waste dump during a pandemic, a viral landmine. There was nothing he could do with the needle in his back. It would do one of three things: kill him, give him superpowers, or nothing. Not bad odds.

  He couldn’t change much now, but if he was going to make it to Adult without getting infected with every disease known to man—and a few only known to animals—he was going to have to find a way to traverse the roof without touching anything else.

  The entire roof was covered three bags deep, but the one-foot-wide brick ledge that ran around the perimeter was free of detritus. Renato would have to walk that tight rope. He held his arms out to the side—the wounded one screamed bloody murder at him—and stepped up onto the bricks. He was only four stories up, but the ground looked a hundred feet away. He might be able to roll with it if he fell, but he didn’t want to test that theory. It had been nine months since he had fallen off a roof and was hoping to keep that record intact.

  Renato took a step. So far, so good. And then another. His backpack shifted, his body leaning over the edge. He adjusted, overcompensating and leaning toward the yellowing sacks of pus or livers or whatever was inside them. Bending his knees, he quickly got a hand on the bricks at his feet. He stopped moving. His heart raced. He gulped in air.

  Nobody was looking. He didn’t have to be cool. Renato crawled slowly along the ledge on all fours. He kept his eyes on the bricks in front of him and focused on his goals. It took twenty minutes, but he made it to the other side. Adult was just across the alley. However, he had miscalculated the distance. It wasn’t eight feet. It was more like fifteen. There might have been a time when he could have made that jump, but even a deluded guy like Renato wasn’t that deluded.

  He carefully took off his backpack and dug a Slim Jim out of it. While he chewed, he surveyed the situation, using the protein and awesome tastiness to spark the synapses in his brain. He needed something that could serve as a bridge.

  Below, a police car cruised into the alley. He didn’t bother ducking. People were dumb. They never looked up. He knew that from staring out the window for the past few weeks. The cops gave
their siren a quick blurt.

  At the end of the alley, a guy wearing a facemask and gloves carried a four-pack of toilet paper and a bag of groceries. Renato had been relying on the government packages and his paltry stash. The guy must have found a black market to procure the butt wipes. Renato had been using a carton of unlicensed Sponge Rob birthday napkins that he had scored at the dollar store just before everything shut down. They worked okay, but he was nostalgic for a classic wipe.

  The two police officers got out of the car and said something to Toilet Paper. The guy shrugged. They approached, hands on the top of their guns. Toilet Paper backed up a step. A baton came out. Toilet Paper turned to run. The baton hit the back of his legs, tripping him. He slid across the concrete. As one cop kicked the guy, the other picked up his baton, the groceries, and the toilet paper. He walked slowly back to the car and put them in the trunk. The two police laughed and drove away.

  Renato waited for the man to get to his feet. He didn’t know if he would. Finally, after almost a full minute, the guy rose and stumbled out of sight around the corner.

  Renato had been pacing the ledge for the better part of a half hour. There were no nearby boards long enough, no extendable ladder, nothing to make a bridge. He wondered if there was a way to construct a makeshift span from medical waste, but knew that was ridiculous. He would need glue.

  He considered jumping, but he didn’t have a clear enough path to get a running start. Even then, he was pretty sure he would Wile E. Coyote the whole thing and end up getting halfway, stopping in midair, pulling out a tiny umbrella, and plummeting to the earth.

  Then Renato remembered the simplest, most basic fact that the cops had reminded him of. People are dumb. People never look up. Including him. And of course, above him was an electricity or telephone line, a thick cable that ran at an angle from his building down to Adult.

  He didn’t know if it would hold his weight. He didn’t know if he could hold himself up for long enough. He didn’t even know if he would actually slide all the way.

  If he thought about it too long, he would change his mind. Taking off his jean jacket, he secured his backpack tight onto his back and climbed the pole that held the cable.

  Renato tied one jacket-sleeve around his left wrist, draped the jacket over the cable, and tied the other sleeve around his other wrist. His left shoulder was still dislocated, dangling strangely and hurting like hell, but his grip was fine. He hoped the skin or muscle or whatever held his arm to his shoulder would hold. Tightening his grip on the sleeves, he took a deep breath.

  One last look down at the alley beneath him. A pile of jagged metal sat inexplicably right below him. It might break his fall by impaling him, but that was not optimal. The mystery needle in his back was still enough of a worry that he didn’t want to insert any new metal into his body at this juncture.

  Maybe he should just go back home.

  Then he heard it, faint but distinct. So familiar that it drilled into his brain. From out an open window:

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Seagull.

  Hog.

  Jumping forward, he slid down the cable toward Adult and an endless heaven of pornography.

  He landed hard on his back. Sitting up, he stared for ten straight minutes without moving a muscle, amazed that one of his bonehead plans had actually worked. From his new vantage point, he had a wide view of the roof covered in medical waste. He could now see that many of the bags were stamped TONY’S MEDICAL WASTE REMOVAL. It was funny that he had never noticed that stamp before.

  When Renato got a new phone, the first thing he was going to do was write a scathing Yelp review about how Tony had half-assed his responsibilities and just chucked his shit (and some of those bags most certainly had shit in them) on the roof, when he should be burying them in New Jersey with all the other garbage in the world.

  The fall had knocked his shoulder joint back in place, which made it hurt ten times more, but now he could move it. The stranger was back in play. Everything was coming up Renato.

  The door on the roof was still open. He had made it.

  He stood slowly, knocked some of the gravel off his back, and took a few tentative steps toward Oz. The door made no sound when he opened it wider. The staircase was dark, leading sharply down into the store below. He ended up in a storeroom packed so full of dildos that he had to back against one of the shelves just to get the door open. The disturbing feel of the raw rubber gave him chills, like what he imagined alien dong felt like. Depending on the planet, of course.

  With the door open, he heard it.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Renato pleaded.

  But the sounds grew louder, coming into focus as he walked down the hall to the sales floor of the store.

  Cow.

  Mouse.

  Chimpanzee.

  Old-timey car horn.

  Twiki from Buck Rogers.

  Goat.

  As the colorful displays of magazines, videos, lotions, and accoutrements came into view, so did the horror of his reality.

  Seven guys sat in the store, strategically spaced about six feet apart from each other. Six of the guys were partaking in the pleasures that the retail outlet provided, facing into corners as they moved like they were trying to start an engine.

  The seventh guy ate a Hot Pocket while he did a crossword. He turned to Renato and gave him a head nod. “What’s up? Someone should be done soon.”

  Renato tried to look away, but couldn’t. He held his hands over his ears, but the sounds still penetrated.

  Cow.

  Mouse.

  Chimpanzee.

  Old-timey car horn.

  Twiki from Buck Rogers.

  Goat.

  Renato fell to his knees and screamed to the heavens. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!”

  After a moment, Hot Pockets asked, “So, you want to wait for a spot?”

  “Sure,” Renato said, standing up. “I’ll be in the dildo closet.”

  By Hector Acosta

  Larry died over a plate of Nachos Bell Grande.

  “They weren’t even Nachos Supreme,” Dwayne mutters from his spot by the television. He’s splayed on top of the beanbag chair we found a couple of weeks ago, and when he shifts to scratch his balls, little puffs of white dribble out a gash in its side, the bag sagging just a bit more. “If I’m going to die, it better be because of Nachos Supreme,” he says, shaking his head. Almost makes you think he cares about poor dead Larry.

  “I think technically Nachos Bell Grandes are better than Supreme,” Carlos mutters from the sofa. He holds a rectangular controller in both hands and stares intently at the video game he’s playing on the television, the colorful pixels reflecting off his dirty glasses. “Supremes are smaller and you get less guac.”

  Dwayne flicks some of the beanbag’s filling in Carlos’s direction and says, “Bullshit. Why would they call them Supreme, then? Supreme means, like, super great.” He flicks another puff, this one arcing over the living room and hitting Carlos on the nose. I want to tell Dwayne to stop it, but I don’t. Besides, Carlos doesn’t even flinch, because he’s so into the game.

  “Grande means big,” Carlos says, maneuvering his little green guy around a yellow field. Top-of-the-line speakers (acquired by me when things really took a turn and folks started caring more about medicine than electronics) eke out tiny blips and bloops that, if my ears could squint, I guess would sound like music.

  “You would know,” Dwayne says, picking the filling that’s piled on the carpet and trying to cram it back inside the beanbag.

  This time Carlos flinches. Dwyane doesn’t notice it, but I do.

  I watch Carlos play his game for a few more minutes. I try to be sad about Larry, I really do, but all I can think about right now is how much I miss my PlayStation. It still sits on the entertainment unit, alongside all its cords and multiple controllers, covered in a thi
n layer of dust. Carlos’s Nintendo is hooked up next to it, and I think I finally understand the saying about how sad it is for fathers to see their children die before them.

  The day Sony shut down their servers and made everyone’s downloadable games unplayable was when I knew we were all in trouble. Before that, it was easy for me to ignore everything shouted in social media about the virus. I filed that stuff away in the same part of my brain that I filed my mother’s old warnings, about how I should clean all my groceries before putting them up and how if I was going to go out, it better be with a bandolier of disinfectants and a mask. Even the lockdown order wasn’t a big deal to me. Work had let me go a few days prior, so I was already spending most of my time indoors watching shit on television and masturbating myself into afternoon naps.

  It was a pretty good life, so long as some stuff went unconsidered—like the breakdown in society, the thousands dead and dying, and what ultimately killed our friend Larry: the dwindling fast food supply.

  Tired of watching Carlos move around pixels on the screen, I get up from the couch and walk into the kitchen, stepping over a pile of dirty laundry I keep meaning to do.

  “Hey, Luis, we got any of those spicy pork rinds left?” Dwayne shouts at me.

  “No,” I tell him without checking. We probably do, but spicy food and Dwayne go together as well old video games and me, so I try to keep hot stuff away from him when I can. We don’t need him to hog the bathroom all night and use up our remaining stock of toilet paper.

  The kitchen is the only part of the house that is in pretty good shape, cleanliness-wise. That isn’t an easy thing to make happen when you have three 17-year-old guys living together, but I have dear mom to thank for it. See, when I was growing up, she was always a little bit of a neat freak. I say it this way ‘cause I loved her and it’s not nice to speak bad about the dead and shit. Those who didn’t like her called her a nutjob. Those who didn’t like her and had a medical degree used the word hypochondriac, which I remember looking up in a dictionary when I was ten.