by Graeme Hurry
The protester paused searching for words to express his well-researched empathy.
Human beings are this country’s livestock.
“… we don’t even treat animals like this anymore, how can we people?”
Arm said nothing, his freakish eyes moved from Gabriel to the contents of the metal shelf, lips sucking on the wet bandage. The man’s senses might have been untouched by drugs, but his mind was not entirely there. Gabriel had envisioned a different reaction to his revelation. Maybe a trace of sniveling gratitude from a monster that had just been spared a fate worse than death. Hell, he would’ve been sold on a measly “thank you.”
“Try standing,” suggested Gabriel as he kneeled down in front of the hanging man and attempted to plant him on his limp feet. Arm’s legs went loose the moment he let go; his whole weight once again on his strained arms, ligaments creaking under the sudden pull of gravity. “I’m sorry, but I don’t wanna cut you down. I think you’ll be fine like this.”
Arm’s eternally amazed eyes were flirting with the petrol chainsaw resting on the metal shelf.
“I have to continue with our plan. You probably think this enormous luck you are having is just a stroke of randomness,” said Gabriel and started putting on a pair of black padded gloves, left on the shelf to protect the knuckles of an executioner from excessive punching. “It’s not. My group, we’ve been planning this from the moment my name was chosen for the Blind Room. They were the ones who reached out to me. Back then, I wasn’t even aware of their existence. They had been reaching out to selected pledgers for years, but nobody ever gave a crap about their ideals.”
We are living ideals. We are born, we grow, we go into the world, we infect it and make it our own. We are living ideals.
Gabriel turned toward Arm, black gloves turning his cashier’s hands to SWAT fists.
“The New Testaments. That’s what we’re called,” said Gabriel. “Don’t let the name mislead you, we’re not religious, it’s just… it has a good ring to it. Especially against these old practices that poison our society.”
The inmate kept swinging like a punching bag, his creepy stare now lingering on a hand powered blender left there to be used as a finger grinder.
Gabriel dipped his glove in the bucket, where by now his shredded uniform had dissolved into a red dye, and pulled out a glob of paint.
“This is our symbol,” he said, pointing at the big number six on his t-shirt. “Know what it means?”
He could as well be talking to that large sledgehammer (which practically begged to crush some kneecaps), and he’d get the same response.
“Thou shalt not kill,” said Gabriel. “It’s from the Ten Commandments, you know, from the Bible, not the movie. I never thought a long time ago things used to be that simple. I guess that’s what we want. Bring back the simpler times.”
This country does all it can to erase its history.
He dropped to his knees and started rubbing the red substance on the ceramic floor. Wide circular motions made with trained determination, like a slave to a wicked stepmother. Pliers, designed for teeth pulling, rattled on the metal shelf from the vibrations of his frantic movements.
“Many don’t approve of these actions. What’s the point, they say. But I tell you friend, my human brother - my savage human brother - disobedience is the only path to freedom. That’s why it’s imperative to get the message out there.”
We need to teach people to be angry again.
Red circle finished, Gabriel was now painting a long tail coming out of it. A blowtorch that could melt flesh like snow was the only thing Arm’s mutilated eyes were focusing on.
“Imagine their shock when the power gets back, all the cameras turn on, doors open and they walk in the Blind Room to find me and you alive and surrounded with all these number sixes everywhere? Imagine their faces? Imagine the stories they’ll spread?”
Thirsty from the labor Gabriel went to the shelf. He drank the water straight from the water barrel, wasting its potential for waterboarding in the process. The big number six on the floor was finished, but all those fumes emitted by the homemade color were making him dizzy. Kickstarting a revolution was intoxicating work.
“How much longer do you think I have?”
His watch was still dead, no indication of how much time had passed since the lights went out.
This country needs to realize the time is nigh.
The rapist murderer said nothing. His ping-pong eyes settled on a caged helmet made of inward spikes.
Gabriel took a scalpel from the shelf and started peeling off the protective nylon from the walls. It occurred to him how some unnamed cleaner might have no problem wiping the blood from the floor but when it came to cleaning the walls he drew the line.
He went back to the bucket and fished for another fistful of noisome paint.
“I wonder why an hour? Why not six? Or a day. Or a week? Or—” before he was able to finish, he slipped on the fresh drawing on the floor and hit his head on the wall in front of him.
The blackout that answered the knock was instantaneous but not mindless. For those moments it lasted Gabriel could hear, somewhere on the edge of consciousness, chains unbuckle.
When he gingerly opened his eyes again, he knew those sixty minutes hadn’t been arbitrary.
The hold around his neck was as hungry and firm as lover’s.
Along with the air from his lungs, the inmate’s arm was squeezing out all the thoughts unrelated to immediate survival. Gabriel used his feet to push himself from the wall hoping the force would break the convict’s clutch, but it didn’t. The bear hug he had him in was as clingy as a lifejacket. As if the side-effect of the paralysis wearing off was superhuman strength.
The smell of the inmate’s clothes and sweat was all that was left of the world. In the corner of his eyes, Gabriel felt tears welling up, but whether those were from fear or pain he couldn’t tell. He trashed his feet around with so much desire for life the room almost appeared a dance floor.
“I’m gonna rip out your jugular,” drawled the voice of the inmate into his ear. It sounded like lidless eyes would sound if they could talk.
This country excels at creating monsters.
Gabriel furiously clawed at the attacker’s arm, praying the pain he was delivering would grant him a window of escape. He didn’t ask for much. Just a chance. Just another go at the life he had foolishly considered wasted.
The inmate’s other arm started ripping Gabriel’s uniform pants off.
Gabriel wanted to shit himself. He wanted to make himself as attractive as a public toilet.
The metal shelf, all those torture devices, he needed to reach the shelf.
Grab anything. A baseball bat, a metal sickle. Just reach out your arm and squeeze your fingers around something.
The grip around his neck tightened as his underwear came undone.
A spiked Spanish tickler? A breast ripper?
His fist closed around a weapon.
A choke pear? A bowie knife?
His fingers sank into the material he was holding, like a wanton hand grabbing a fat ass.
Please God, let it be more dangerous than it feels.
Gabriel pulled his arm and through the mist of tears saw a white pillow.
Perfect for suffocating the defenseless. Ideal for depriving the comatose of air.
A quiet defiant laugh escaped his quivering lips.
No matter the circumstances a joke is a joke.
* * *
When the lights blinked back it was like waking up.
He was numb all over with a mind so shattered it took him a while to accept he was still alive.
Slowly, Gabriel stood up and realized he was standing in the remains of what was once a human being. The padded gloves on his hands were nothing more than pieces of strings protecting the bloody fists of wounds and bruises.
This is what hands look like after they dig themselves from the grave.
He couldn’t
remember how exactly he had escaped the monster’s grip, but his laugh had left them both with enough surprise he must’ve been able to turn his into an advantage. Once he held the upper hand, he kept beating the fucker with it.
Gabriel wiped the blood crusted smudge off his watch. 13:10.
He turned around. The Blind Room was now up to the standards of his once naive imagination. There was so much blood and meat the place looked like an aftermath of an amateur autopsy.
The door was open beckoning him back to the waiting room. Down the hall, he could see the main entrance shining with daylight. The world waited for him like a father prodigal son.
He started walking toward the exit feeling the cool breeze of air conditioners on his naked body. Of all his clothing only the pieces of his t-shirt remained.
The mirror in the waiting room startled him. There was a man in there with features he mistook for a relative he never met. So much old blood on him its crust armored him like a second skin.
A new flesh for a new man.
This country feeds on those who try to change it. Living ideal? Born to infect the world? Everything that is born can just as easily die.
And it seemed more people than one had, back in the Blind Room.
There were no tears in his eyes for either of the men; they shone cold and unblinking and bloody.
As if they lacked eyelids that would have made them human.
FUNDRAISER
by K. McGee
Last call coming up. The place had been packed with noisy, sweaty students an hour ago, but most of them had wandered back to dorm rooms and apartments to pass out or vomit or have drunken, clumsy sex. A few groups hovered. One small, dark-haired woman sat alone at a table for four, hunched over a laptop. She looked like a student, but students ran in herds.
Turner had been watching her for a while and now he approached her table. A tattoo of a flowering vine ran up the outside of her right arm. “What’s your name?”
She waved him away without looking up. “Fuck off.”
“Can I call you Fuck, or do you prefer Ms. Off?”
She looked up then. Her narrow face was flushed and framed by dark, straight hair. She must have shown an ID that said she was twenty-one or she wouldn’t be drinking. She didn’t look much over eighteen, but then, most of the customers looked like babies to him.
Her gaze swept him dismissively. “Feeling optimistic?”
“Not particularly.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”
“I served you three drinks.”
“Bartender.” She nodded in drunken comprehension. “What do you want?”
“The bros near the door, the ones who bought you the shots?”
She turned her head to glance at the three guys behind her. “Yeah?”
“They’re waiting for you to leave.”
“So?”
“So we’re closing in twenty minutes, and I thought you might like someone to walk you out.”
“Why would I trust you?” she said.
“Good question.”
“Fuck off.”
“Right.”
Turner told Jason, the part-time bartender, he was taking a break. He left the bar, turned in the direction of the university and walked a few doors down to a closed falafel shop. He stepped into the dark vestibule under the awning and waited. It had been a warm day, too warm for September, and the night was holding the heat. The scent of spice and grease from the shop made his stomach rumble. The street was lined with big trees and sturdy two and three-story structures built a century ago. Earlier about thirty students had paraded down the walk past the bar in matching red tees, the letters “Beer Me” printed across their chests. Another noisy group with “Twerk Team” tees had crowded into the bar for about an hour and then piled back out.
Until recently, Turner had lived in big cities on the coasts: Miami, New York, San Francisco. Cities with skyscrapers and tangled freeways carrying round-the-clock traffic. For him, Iowa was the epitome of a flyover state, an alien land of sausage-fed white people in a sea of corn and soybean fields, pig farms and tractor dealerships. He’d read somewhere that the average commute in the state was eighteen minutes. That made him smile.
He’d been passing through, eager to be anywhere else, when he’d stopped in Iowa City and discovered another kind of alien: a place where the college wagged the town. The police were over-extended and focused on curbing student excess. A lot of businesses were owner-run and catered to kids. No signs of organized crime.
Turner glanced at his watch. Two on the dot. Jason would be turning on the bright lights. He heard the door to the bar swing open. Voices and footsteps. A couple laughing and supporting each other passed Turner without seeing him. Then more footsteps and the sounds of a scuffle.
“Let go, you fucking asshole.”
“Listen bitch, we got an investment here.”
“Uh … Jimmy … maybe we should let her—“
“Shut the fuck up, Sean. She didn’t want to party, she shouldn’t have drunk the shots. Ouch! Shit! You’re gonna be sorry for that, you little cunt.”
Turner stepped out in front of the group: three young males and one small, irate female, as expected. “Hey, where you going?” he said.
The one holding the girl must have flinched, because she pulled free, danced off the walk and took cover behind Turner.
“Who the fuck are you?” said the one called Jimmy, the one who’d been gripping the girl’s arm. Of the other two, one looked confused and the other, the smart one as far as Turner was concerned, looked scared.
Turner looked at the scared one. “Are you Sean?”
The boy nodded, his face pale and shiny under the streetlight.
“Why don’t you lead your buddies on home?”
“Hey,” said Jimmy. “Sean doesn’t lead shit. And this is none of your fuckin’ business. Get your ass out of the way before I stomp it.”
“It’s two a.m. and these are the three men who just assaulted me on East Washington street.” The girl had her cell phone out and was holding it up, arm extended, angling it to catch the faces of the three boys and then scanning down to the Greek letters on their shirts. “Looks like they’re all from the same fraternity.”
She sounded remarkably sober.
Jimmy took a step toward her as if to grab the phone, but Turner blocked his progress.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing?” he yelled at the girl.
“Taking video for campus news. Let’s make sure I’ve got the names right. You’re Jimmy and this is Sean. And you are?”
The confused one seemed to wake up. He turned toward Sean and shook his head. “Out of here.”
“Yeah,” said Sean, and the two trotted across the street together, then down the walk toward campus. Jimmy watched them retreat, his mouth open, then turned and scowled at Turner. “You’re going to pay for this, asshole.”
“Could I get your last name, Jimmy?” the girl said, sounding like a perky TV reporter. “How often have you tried sexual assault? Do you always take your buddies along?”
Jimmy shot one more menacing glare at Turner and then followed his friends toward campus at a jog.
Turner watched him run for a moment, feeling equal parts relief and frustration. He’d been pumped for violence and now it was over.
“You okay?” he said, turning to look at the girl.
She nodded. “You ought to keep your phone handy. Works better than fists.”
“Not as much fun though.”
“Well … thanks. See you around.” She turned away and he watched her for a moment, a small woman alone on an empty street. Then he turned and went back to the bar.
***
The next afternoon she came in and sat at the bar. “I’m Sal,” she said. “Sorry if I was rude last night. I was … distracted.”
“Sal, short for Sally?”
“Just Sal. What’s your name?”
“Turner.”
�
�Well, thanks for helping me out.”
Her tone was casual, as if he’d carried her books or jumped a dead battery. Clearly she hadn’t been traumatized. He wondered if the boys would have gone through with it if he hadn’t interfered, and how much damage they’d have inflicted. At times he felt that everyone in this little town was marked, that they were all walking around naked but couldn’t feel the breeze.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” she said.
Turner shook his head.
She gestured at the cash register. “What happened to Regular Guy?”
“Ray? Recovering from surgery. I’m just filling in.”
Turner had been surprised by the job offer. The owner was a big, middle-aged guy with a beer gut, friendly but not nosy, and Turner had found himself asking about the town. Ray was happy to talk. Eventually he told Turner about needing surgery and someone to take over for a few weeks.
“Why me?” he asked Ray. “Why not one of your other bartenders?”
Ray shook his head. “They’re all kids. I need one grownup in here, to keep a lid on things.”
It was lunchtime, and Turner had looked around the empty bar and tried to imagine what kind of things needed handling.
“Hey, it’s a riot in here at night,” Ray said, “especially on weekends. Most of the kids are okay, but it only takes one to cause a problem.”
Was Ray talking hold-ups? “You keep a gun?”
“Nah. I’ve got the police on speed dial, but I can usually manage with this.” He reached under the bar and pulled out a Louisville Slugger. “You ever play ball?”
Turner shrugged. “High school.”
“You look like you can handle yourself.”
Turner wasn’t looking for a job, certainly not a straight job. But then, he didn’t have anywhere he had to be. He’d pissed off the wrong man in San Francisco a few months ago, a man with a long memory and a longer reach. Since then Turner had been drifting, keeping his head down.
“There’re a couple of rooms upstairs,” Ray said. “I used to live there, before I got the house. You want to see?”
There wasn’t enough cover for Turner in a town the size of Iowa City, where anyone over twenty-two was in the minority. On the other hand, nobody who knew Turner would look for him in a town this size, and he was running a little low on funds. And Ray was ready to hire him on a handshake, no references, no paperwork. Just nice, clean cash under the table. Turner had decided the job was too easy to pass up.