Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  They were risking the dangers of the hot sidewalk to carry off pieces of a dead grasshopper, frantically hauling bits of the crushed insect back into the safety of the grass that housed their anthill. Emmit had been fascinated, staying much longer than he had intended to, watching the little creatures go about their work. Before leaving (and making sure not to run any of them over when he did) he had deposited his wad of chewing gum right beside the stream of shiny exoskeletons and skittering legs. He hadn't known if ants ate gum or not, but he figured if they did, they'd eat well.

  He was reliving the moment now, watching the undead monsters far beneath him as they assaulted the cabin. He saw a red-orange glow shining out from the front of the cabin, almost as if Roy had had a porch light to turn on. The beams of firelight illuminated the maggot-like Megahorde, and Emmit knew with weary satisfaction that the front door was standing wide open. The Links looked like BBs being fed into an air rifle through a funnel; so many tiny little ant bodies all struggling to fit through one tight opening. Emmit even thought he could hear faint, guttural screams emanating from below him, screams that could only come from a man who was roughly the size and strength of an adult grizzly bear, but it could have been his overactive imagination. He was delirious with pain that was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

  The air was beginning to rush past him, roaring in his ears and flapping his layered clothing. He tried to raise his arms from where they were pinned to his sides, but the upward momentum was too strong, and it hurt too much to try to fight it. He could barely even hold his head upright with the force of the wind beating down on him. His chin was glued to his shrieking chest. Below him, the tunnel of light ended in a tiny black dot like the pupil of a wide and unblinking blue eye.

  He let his body relax; let the force of God or Odin or Zeus or whatever the hell had ahold of him take full control. He found that if he relaxed, it made the pumping assault on his sternum easier to take. The force of those invisible hands kept him turning in a slow circle as time and space tore itself apart once more, warping around his limp body.

  Scenes began to appear around him, materializing out of the light beams and mist like trees in a foggy meadow. Each new blast of breathtaking pressure and agony seemed to bring another one out of the nothingness, and Emmit found that could hover and watch them all like short films projected onto shapeless movie screens of vapor.

  To his left, he watched himself slinking nervously into the Dealer's Saloon pawn shop, emptying the last of his cash out of his deflated wallet and handing it to the creep behind the counter. He could smell the joint smoldering in the man's mouth, the burnt grass and armpit smell of cheap skunk weed. He watched the man hand him a scuffed .9mm handgun and a handful of rounds, no background checks or waiting periods necessary because he had a “nice face”. It had taken less than five minutes to buy the gun he would use to rob a bank.

  Above him, he watched himself stuffing the new-used firearm into the waistband of his shorts, not bothering to load it. He intended to scare; not kill. It was a relief to finally know that regardless of what he had done in the camp down below, in his heart of hearts he was not a murderer. He saw himself snatching a "help wanted" sign from an electric pole and pinning it against the side of the bank, scrawling on it with a pen he had been carrying:

  Please do not scream. Please do not trigger the alarm. I have a gun, and if you alert the police I will kill you and everyone in the building. Please quietly empty your cash drawer. Put the money in an envelope and calmly hand it to me like a normal transaction. After I'm gone, do whatever you want. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I will.

  His ghostly avatar hesitated, and then added:

  I am a very desperate man.

  Behind him now, a shimmering vision of himself stalking through the revolving door of the bank, rubbing his sweaty palms together in nervous anticipation. He could see the beads of sweat collecting on his own forehead, not just from the summer heat but from his fraying nerves.

  He had already been wearing a mask that day, a black cloth mask emblazoned with the wide and toothy grin of The Joker, and he could remember thinking how fortunate it was that everyone was wearing masks, thanks to COVID-19. Otherwise, they would never have let him through the front door in one. Emmit watched himself fidget with it, pulling it up over his nose and tucking it beneath his glasses to keep them from fogging. His shirt bulged awkwardly in the back, poorly concealing his new gun. Watching it unfold now, he realized how much luck he’d actually had to not get busted as soon as he stepped inside.

  The memory faded from sight and Emmit searched for another one, finally looking down between his dangling shoes to find another multicolored cloud of images and sound cohering together. Focusing on what he could only assume was his life flashing before his eyes helped keep his mind off the pain. It did nothing to ease it, but made it less urgent, less dominant in his mind.

  As his untied shoelaces flailed like living things, Emmit watched himself prowling into the bank, the folded note tucked between the fingers of his right hand. He had glanced around at the desks; lines everywhere, with more than one person waiting in each one. His breaths were heavy and rapid as he hurried up and waited, blowing the Joker mask out from his mouth and then sucking it back again. Emmit saw himself looking around the lobby, trying to act bored and not like an anxious criminal. His memory-self stared at the calendar on the wall, flipped open to July and displaying the huge neon firework explosions above the New York skyline.

  Inside the tunnel of light Emmit felt pressure on the back of his head now, the caress of something soft but wholly uncomfortable. He reached up and felt nothing but his own fluttering hair. Now he could feel it on his back and on his ass too, stiff but also squishy. It felt like a bad mattress, or maybe the bizarre bedding inside of a casket. Groaning and pressing a hand to his chest, he prayed it wasn't a casket, that this wasn’t what it felt like to be dead. Aware and yet unaware, gone yet still distantly present.

  Above him, at the top of the spinning tunnel, the shimmering image of two blurry people peered down at him. They were looking up to speak to one another, their movements and gesticulations prompt and serious, and then staring back down to him. They were frantic. He could see their bodies bounce and sway, as if the world they existed in was in constant motion.

  It was like floating just under the surface of a clean and crystal-clear pool, looking up through the gently lapping ripples at the world above and beyond. When the pushing and slamming into his midsection started again after an unmercifully brief pause, he saw that it was coming from the arms and hands of one of the mysterious figures. The faceless figure was hunched over, really putting force into it, looking over his shoulder and yelling something that echoed across the fabric of reality itself, something that sounded like words but reached Emmit's ears as garbled nonsense.

  Are they angels? he thought dazedly, now so out of it that he was growing oblivious to the pain. Gods?

  There was a sound coming from behind the strange figures, or possibly from high above them. It was a long and warbling sound that began at a low note and then hooked up to a shrill high note, then scooped back down again. It repeated the pattern in several long brays, and then it picked up the tempo.

  That sounds like... a siren... am I in an ambulance?

  Thinking of ambulances triggered a fresh flashback, one that he didn't need to locate and watch in the tornado of light but one of his own organic memories finally coming home. It struck with such ferocity that Emmit thought it might explode his head like a firecracker in a watermelon. Suddenly, the ache in his chest made terrible, terminal sense.

  Emmit could remember selecting the teller he’d planned to rob based solely on how short her line was. He wasn't sadistic enough to try to pick out someone who looked weak and helpless. He simply wanted to get to the front of the line, get a decent amount of money that he could use to save his apartment and maybe find a cheap car, and get out again before a S.W.A.T. sniper took his head
off from the roof of a building across the street.

  Funny, he had thought darkly, nervously licking at the inside of his cottony mouth. If I had really planned to kill someone, a life-or-death decision would hinge on something as uncomplicated as the length of their line.

  It just so happened he had selected a bank teller who looked like a typical soccer mom, a heavyset woman with a "Karen" hairdo that was various spikes and wings of brown and blonde. She had been wearing a puffy pink sweater despite the scorching heat outside, her right breast adorned with a gaudy pin that said, "ASK ME HOW YOU CAN SAVE FOR RETIREMENT!" Her mask, which had also been pink and appeared to say the words "North Carolina", had been crumpled up and pulled down where it would do no good for anyone. Apparently, she had preferred it tucked safely between her multiple chins.

  The little placard on her desk, sitting at an angle beside the chained pen, had read BETSY SHAW in engraved lettering. Her nasally voice, although friendly and cheerful, had sounded unbelievably loud and overwhelming to Emmit as he waited. He had done his best impression of a statue, his hands folded neatly in front of him like a good little boy scout. Just a man about to conduct a simple transaction. Nothing to marvel at.

  "Alright, that takes care of ya, honey!" Betsy Shaw had trumpeted to the little old man in front of Emmit, a grandfatherly type with a severely hunched back who was wearing one of those smushed-looking caps that cab drivers always seemed to like.

  "Great", he had muttered quietly under his mask. "Whole bank full of tellers and I pick the megaphone."

  The little old man had shuffled away even as Betsy was screaming her love and best wishes to his curved spine, his cane tapping quietly on the thin carpet. There had been an empty void left in front of Emmit that waited to claim him, and the husky little bank teller had suddenly become as imposing as a cruel death-penalty judge as her bright green eyes fell upon Emmit. He had stepped up to meet his fate, unfolding the crumpled note. It felt like the gun had quadrupled in size, and Emmit had felt everyone staring at it like he had a third arm growing out of his ass. He had seen the fat, bald security guard for the first time then, waddling out of a door in the rear of the bank and wiping his shining forehead with a black bandanna. He took up a position just inside the front doors, scanning the inside of the bank and looking bored.

  "Well, hi there, sweetheart!" Betsy had exploded at him, her lipstick grin matching his Joker mask as she leaned forward. "What are we doing for you today?!"

  Emmit had swallowed hard, croaked out a sound a man dying of esophageal cancer might make, and handed her the note.

  "Oh! I see, that's just fine baby doll! I keep saying I need to learn sign language, but I never seem to get around to it!"

  She had snatched the note up eagerly, as if it had come from her secret admirer.

  "Oh, ya got it sweaty!" She had shrieked, guffawing laughter and shaking it back and forth to dry it out. She hadn't been laughing for long.

  Emmit had watched her eyes shift back and forth as she read the scrawled lines he had written, growing wider and wider as she neared the bottom. As she finished, looking up to meet his steady gaze, a single tear had begun the long journey down her delicate cheek. It took her mascara with it, leaving a dark streak behind it like a skid mark from a tire. Her other cheek had been streaked with crumbling black soon after, her nose running to catch up. Her face was melting off of her head.

  "Is... is this a prank?" Betsy had asked in a shaking whisper. Emmit had shaken his head gravely.

  "Big bills. Make it fast," he had growled, slowly putting his hands behind his back. He hadn't even touched the gun, but Betsy hadn't known that. She pressed her hands to her ample bosom.

  "I'll do it," he had added menacingly, his mask completely saturated with sweat and suffocating him. That had snapped her out of her shock. Her eyes locked intensely on his, she had moved to reach under her desk.

  "I wouldn't," Emmit had snapped, making her jump and gasp. "You read my note."

  "I did, sir," she had said breathlessly, desperately longing to raise her hands above her head and beg for his mercy but also knowing better than to call any attention to herself. She seemed frozen in a panicky limbo, her body going haywire from all the mixed signals her brain was sending. She began to stutter like a faulty typewriter. "But all the b-big bills, the hundreds and such, a-are in a deposit b-b-box down here."

  Emmit had fallen for the ruse in his haste and inexperience. He had nodded his approval; anything to get the show on the road and moving along, and Betsy had promptly slid her hands under the desk— and pressed what Emmit now guessed was a small panic button mounted beneath it. Each desk probably had one, and he had been too rushed and foolish to consider it; too desperate and hopeless to even try to formulate a coherent plan. Christ, it wasn't like he made a regular habit of armed robbery.

  There had been no flashing lights, no braying alarms, and no screaming people. Ironically, he had gotten exactly what he had asked for, minus the lifesaving money he had come for in the first place.

  Apparently, the panic button had been linked directly to the bank's team of security guards as well as the police department. The fat security guard had been in motion in what felt like nanoseconds.

  "Over here, Hank!" Betsy had blubbered, throwing herself down under her desk. "Everybody get down, he has a GUN!"

  Emmit had been frozen with fear, his racing heart sucking the breath out of him as the entire row of bank tellers followed her example, and the smattering of patrons left in the lobby scattered away from him like a school of fish fleeing a roaming shark. Seconds. In a matter of seconds, he had blown it.

  Just like that, my life is officially over.

  He had begrudgingly turned to face Hank, the obese security guard, and had found himself staring into the hateful black eye of his handgun. He'd lined up his shot with Emmit's midsection, one eye smashed closed behind a shiny mound of flesh and the other glaring through the gun's sights. Emmit could see the man's fiery flushed cheeks and sparkling bald dome even now, hanging weightless in the vortex of light and writhing in unprecedented agony. He could picture his one wide open eye, wide but unafraid. Not afraid; ready. He had probably waited his entire career for something significant to happen to him, and his fifteen minutes had arrived.

  "Hands where I can see 'em, you son of a bitch," Hank had barked. Emmit had obeyed; of course he had. The security guard's weapon had been loaded and ready to kill, unlike his own, which was still impotent and in the process of sliding down his sweaty ass cheek.

  "Take that mask off," was Hank's next command. “Slow. Use one hand.” Emmit had peeled the Joker mask from his face and let it fall to the ground like a dead leaf, exposing his boyish features to the enthralled gawkers around him. The face that would be in newspapers all around the area very soon; the face that would be a hideous mugshot for his friends and family to share as they talked about how he had always been such a nice guy.

  "Listen. I want to get the gun off of me before the cops get here," Emmit had pleaded to Hank as calmly as he could, not daring to lower his hands yet. "It's not loaded. You can come take it if you want or let me throw it away."

  "You just stay right the fuck where you are and don't move a dick hair," Hank had snapped back, taking a step forward as his sausage finger flexed against the trigger guard. "I will put you in the ground, son, bet me."

  Emmit had felt disgusted with himself, standing there like a trapped rat with all those eyes bearing down on him. How the hell had it gotten so bad? How had he lost so much control, and so god damned fast? How had he become a criminal like all the ones he had watched on those "life on the inside" shows, the same degenerates he had thought to be lowlifes who were beneath even a pauper like himself?

  "I want. To get rid. Of the gun," he had said again slowly, and then he had moved to test Hank's resolve, to see if perhaps the wired security guard might let him grab the gun out of his waist band and toss it away. Perhaps he had been bluffing; maybe he honestly didn’t wan
t to pull the trigger.

  If Emmit could have ditched his weapon, when the police arrived, he could have screamed at them that he was unarmed, begged them not to kill him, proved to them that he had ditched the gun and that it hadn't even been loaded in the first place. He had lowered his hand a fraction of an inch, and that had been enough to set his own personal Hell in motion.

  The shot had been deafening, ringing out in the bank lobby like a hand grenade in a microwave. Even as he had dropped heavily to his back, staring dazedly at the ceiling as a hot wetness had begun to spread beneath him, it hadn't clicked home that he'd been shot. Emmit had just sprawled there, blinking and breathing slowly through his open mouth, too terrified to move even a single muscle. There was a tingling sensation near the center of his chest, coupled with a rubbery feeling of muscle exhaustion as if he'd spent the last hour pumping iron at the gym. There had been no pain; not at first. He realized now that he had been in shock, and the excruciating pain tearing through his chest was coming from the kamikaze path of a bullet.

  "He's down," Hank had said, his words sounding far away and high above him, his voice ethereal. He was speaking from some other realm, a place separate from criminals. A place where Emmit would no longer be welcomed.

  Emmit had been absurdly offended at the calm pride in Hank's voice as he spoke into his walkie, pride in the fact that he had shot the bad guy down and saved the day. "He was going for the gun and I plugged him in the chest. Get an ambulance down here, PDQ. I don't think he's going to hang out much longer, he's gonna bleed out."

  Emmit hadn't been able to move, and so he stared up at the ceiling and noticed a water stain splotched across it. It was a yellow Rorschach blot that resembled the crooked hind leg of a dog, and as consciousness had begun to drain from him with his blood, he had thought dizzily to himself, Deacon... I have a puppy named Deacon, and I'll never pet him again. His strange shock-think was enveloped in inky black, and his journey to the winter woods and the cannibals had begun.