R.M. DuChene's Blog, page 9

Welcome to The Pit

“Welcome to the pit. We’ve been expecting you.”

“ Oh no, you won’t need your luggage – just set it down right there. That’s right, at your feet. Now, if you’d be so kind as to hold your arms out in front of you, Brett here will put your shackles on.”

“What’s that? Are they hot? No, silly. Nothing gets hot down here. Contrary to what you hairless mammals believe up on the surface, it’s cold down here – cold and dark, and devoid of hope. Tighten the right arm just a bit more, Brett. This one looks feisty.”

“There you go. Does that hurt? Is it uncomfortable? Good.”

“Now, if you would be so kind as to stick out your tongue, we’ll go ahead and keep that nasty wagging thing safe for you. What do you mean no? You see what you did? You got Brett angry. Just hold the poor creature down, Brett. It won’t do for the suffering to begin just yet. That’s right; just pull its head back while I dig out the retched thing. Quit squirming! It won’t do you any good.”

“Ahhh…there you go. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Okay; now that I have your complete attention and am fairly sure that you’re not going to interrupt me, let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Natasmai. I’m sort of the welcoming committee in these parts. If you still had your tongue right now, you’d probably be asking me why you’re here and telling me that there must be some sort of mistake. I have to say that I’ve heard every excuse imaginable from your quibbling species over the last few millennia. That’s why I started removing tongues through the gate. Your pitiful brethren have never said anything useful so I doubt that any of you ever will. Besides, you don’t need a tongue to scream.”

“Okay, now that you’ve been prepped, let’s find out where you go, huh. What do you say? Brett, please hand me this one’s file. No, Brett, the top drawer. D, as in dumbass. There you go, thank you. “

“Okay dumbass, let’s see what kind of mischief you’ve been into, shall we?”

“Uh-oh, this one’s been very naughty, Brett. Look at this. Can you believe this shit? Wow, Dumbass. You really did all this? Oh, you certainly belong here, my friend.”

“Okay, Brett, you can put the file back now.”

“Dumbass, it is my distinct privilege to sentence you to an eternity of torture, maiming, and oh, a whole bunch of other scary words. Do you have any last requests before I send you to the seventh layer? No? Good.”

“See Brett? I told you that removing their tongues was a great idea. Oh stop trying to answer me; I pulled out yours a long time ago. I don’t want to see your stump…put that thing away and escort our guest to its new digs.”

“Okay, Dumbass, Brett will show you to your eternal quarters. If you need anything, just dial zero.”

Your Host, Mr. Natasmai

“Welcome to the pit. We’ve been expecting you.”

“ Oh no, you won’t need your luggage – just set it down right there. That’s right, at your feet. Now, if you’d be so kind as to hold your arms out in front of you, Brett here will put your shackles on.”

“What’s that? Are they hot? No, silly. Nothing gets hot down here. Contrary to what you hairless mammals believe up on the surface, it’s cold down here – cold and dark, and devoid of hope. Tighten the right arm just a bit more, Brett. This one looks feisty.”

“There you go. Does that hurt? Is it uncomfortable? Good.”

“Now, if you would be so kind as to stick out your tongue, we’ll go ahead and keep that nasty wagging thing safe for you. What do you mean no? You see what you did? You got Brett angry. Just hold the poor creature down, Brett. It won’t do for the suffering to begin just yet. That’s right; just pull its head back while I dig out the retched thing. Quit squirming! It won’t do you any good.”

“Ahhh…there you go. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Okay; now that I have your complete attention and am fairly sure that you’re not going to interrupt me, let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Natasmai. I’m sort of the welcoming committee in these parts. If you still had your tongue right now, you’d probably be asking me why you’re here and telling me that there must be some sort of mistake. I have to say that I’ve heard every excuse imaginable from your quibbling species over the last few millennia. That’s why I started removing tongues through the gate. Your pitiful brethren have never said anything useful so I doubt that any of you ever will. Besides, you don’t need a tongue to scream.”

“Okay, now that you’ve been prepped, let’s find out where you go, huh. What do you say? Brett, please hand me this one’s file. No, Brett, the top drawer. D, as in dumbass. There you go, thank you. “

“Okay dumbass, let’s see what kind of mischief you’ve been into, shall we?”

“Uh-oh, this one’s been very naughty, Brett. Look at this. Can you believe this shit? Wow, Dumbass. You really did all this? Oh, you certainly belong here, my friend.”

“Okay, Brett, you can put the file back now.”

“Dumbass, it is my distinct privilege to sentence you to an eternity of torture, maiming, and oh, a whole bunch of other scary words. Do you have any last requests before I send you to the seventh layer? No? Good.”

“See Brett? I told you that removing their tongues was a great idea. Oh stop trying to answer me; I pulled out yours a long time ago. I don’t want to see your stump…put that thing away and escort our guest to its new digs.”

“Okay, Dumbass, Brett will show you to your eternal quarters. If you need anything, just dial zero.”

Evidence of Life

Captain’s Journal, Day 177 AL (After Landing)

There was another sand storm this morning. It blew in from the west and nearly took out our communication towers. With the recent event going on, the last thing we need is to be cut off completely. We’ve managed to scour just about every red inch of this planet’s surface and still haven’t found any evidence that life ever existed here. Sasha has been working day and night, pouring through soil samples – nothing, not even the smallest fossil could be found. I’m ready to ditch this this wasteland and get back to my bluer skies and green forests. Two more days – just two more days is all that stands between leaving this hell-hole and a nice, long, dreamless sleep while we travel home. If the skies are clear tomorrow, we’ll make one final push through the large canyons to the west. We need to burn off the excess fuel in the cruiser anyway.

Captain’s Journal, Day 178 AL (After Landing)

The sky was clear this morning, so I sent a cruiser to scan the canyon floor. Stinky and Slack-face volunteered for the final mission this morning at breakfast. They haven’t done too many, so I felt obligated to allow it. At approximately 10:00 hours, they called in a find at the north end of the canyon; a large cave opening that we never noticed before. I gave them the go-ahead to check it out so they set down the cruiser and donned their clean suits and breathing apparatuses. At approximately 1042 hours, Stinky returned to base alone. He was filthy and rattling off about a creature that looked like a shadow and slithered like a snake. Between moments of incoherence, he told an unbelievable account of how this creature grabbed Slack-face in its jaws and carried him down into a large hole. The whole story seems pretty far-fetched, but I have to take witness accounts seriously. I sent a message home and asked for permission to take a team into the cave and search for Slack-face, the shadow-creature, or both. I will most likely get their response in the morning. I had the medical officer sedate Stinky. He should be out for the rest of the night.

Captain’s Journal, Day 179 AL (After Landing)

When I woke this morning, I went right to the bridge. The night officer reported that home base declined my request to take a team into the cave. I was disappointed, but had already made the assumption that Slack-face had most likely fallen down a hole and instead of helping his screaming brother; Stinky just ran off and left him there. During the night, there was a fatal accident on the medical floor. One of the doctors fell and hit her head on the corner of an examination table. Accidents happen every once and a while, but not in the frequency that they occurred today. Around mid-day, one of the engineer crew was found stuffed inside a waste receptacle. He either tried to commit suicide and crawled in to wait for the incinerator to fire and suffocated instead, or somebody killed him a stuffed him in there. We found Stinky in his room not too long after finding the second body. Rookie, the first mate made the connection that Stinky had been on the medical floor the night before and the incinerator was on the way to his quarters. After apprehending Stinky and searching his room, we found a rectangular object in his locker. The strange device has a smooth exterior and a flat surface. The strange markings etched into the back-side don’t appear to be any language I have ever seen. The material is strange too. I sent it to the lab for analysis and informed the cryptologists. With any luck, they will have an answer to what the writing says in the morning. By the state of the object, it must be thousands of years old. Upon questioning, Stinky admitted to finding the object and killing Slack-face to hide it. He intended to smuggle it home and sell it on the black market. He murdered the doctor because she wouldn’t allow him to leave the medical bay and the engineer, who had borrowed something from Stinky’s locker without asking, found him in the hall and inquired as to what the weird looking object was. I had Stinky placed in restraints and sealed in a sleeping tube, deciding to let home-base decide what to do with him once we return home. Before racking out for the night, I sent a message to home-base, letting them know that we will be departing as scheduled tomorrow. I didn’t mention the object in my message. I want to find out what the analysis shows. If it’s what I think, our mission will be a successful one. It may be hard to fall asleep tonight.

Captain’s Journal, Day 180 AL (After Landing)

The report was waiting for me when I returned to bridge this morning. The material analysis was inconclusive. The big heads in the lab did say that they found traces of some of its elements floating in the planets limited atmosphere. It was a good tie-in, but ultimately inconclusive without further testing. The symbols on the back of the strange object are more compelling. The big symbol at the center couldn’t be determined at all. To me, it looks kind of like a tooth-shaped moon at the beginning of an eclipse; above it, possibly a comet falling towards it. The smaller symbols underneath the larger one appeared to be some sort of written language. The symbols I, P, a, and d apparently spelled out some alien word. With any luck, the specialists at home base will be able to decipher all of the symbols or at least be able to prove that an alien species had wrote them. If my hunch is correct, my crew may be the first in history to find evidence that other life forms exist, or existed in the universe. In a weird way, I can understand why Stinky did what he did. He better hope that home-base is as understanding as I am. It is now 1558 hours. The crew are in there tubes, sound asleep. This will be my last entry until we return to home base.

Captain Spooky Eyes, signing out.

The Captive

From the shadowy confines of a claustrophobia inducing cell, I could hear her scratching, attempting to rip through the wall that divided us. She’d been at it for weeks, sometimes dragging her fingernails feebly against the cold stone, sometimes losing patience and striking it with her fists. As always, the last sounds

she made were the ones produced by her mouth as she wailed in frustration. The thought of sweet resignation hadn’t entered her mind yet.

I pressed my ear against the wall and strained to hear her. This is the best part, I thought, when I picked up the soft whimpers that always came in the aftermath of one of her tantrums. It won’t do her any good, I thought; all of those tears. They all cried; they all pleaded…and in the end, they all succumbed, one way or another.

The alarm from my watch sounded its jingling chime, eliciting more screaming and banging from the captive. I turned off the alarm and left the adjacent cell. As I walked out, I could hear the sounds of her strikes moving with me, until they began to reverberate off of the cell door. She grasped the metal bars of the cell window and stared at me while I took my time opening a single can of tuna, dumped it into a small bowl, and then threw a few crackers on top. I put the bowl on a plastic tray, along with a water bottle and carried it to the cell door. She licked her lips as I opened the slot under the window and slid the tray forward. The captive snatched the tray from my hands and shoved her face into the bowl. It was a disgusting sight, watching her eat like that, but at least she was quiet.

The food that I give them is never enough to keep the hunger monster at bay; it’s only enough for them to survive. One can of tuna a day, three crackers, and two bottles of water…that’s all they get from me. In exchange, I expect them to behave themselves. They may cry and scream and beg… that doesn’t bother me at all. It’s the ones that lash out and bite the hand that feeds them; hurt the only person who is trying to help them, that have their suffering ended early. Most of my captives spend about a month in their cells before I free them from their suffering, but I always find another one to take their place quickly enough.

I waited until the captive finished her food and gulped down the bottled water, then I instructed her to push the tray back through the slot, with all of the trash on it…I have to be specific about that part. I scraped the trash into a waste basket and returned the tray to the table where rows of tuna cans and boxes of crackers were neatly stacked. She didn’t move away from the cell window after I took her tray, but stood there, staring at the food and licking her lips.

“More…,” she said. It came out raspy and weak, just like she was.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

“More?” I asked.

She didn’t respond, just continued to lick her lips and stare at the food. I walked to the table, retrieved a single cracker, and held it out to her.

“More?” I asked again.

“Please…” she whined.

I smiled at her and shoved the cracker into my mouth. She screamed, pulled on the bars, and banged against the door as I chewed the cracker and wondered how she could want such a nasty, dry thing that much. I had to use a whole bottle of water to wash it down!

She left the window in a spray of tears and snot and I heard her flop down on her cot… crying into her pillow I imagined. I returned to my usual place at my desk and picked up my notebook. I’d been keeping a diary containing my adventures with my captives, documenting the funny things that they’ve said and done – one even offered me money for sex. That specific captive wasn’t the best behaved one I’d had, but she wasn’t the worst either… She was about average.

A few hours later, I was deep in the throes of writing when my alarm sounded again. The captive heard it too and appeared, almost magically at the window of her cell. I set down the notebook, grabbed a bottle of water from the table and took it to the door. The Captive stepped back a pace when I opened the slot and slid the plastic bottom of the bottle toward her. She reached for the water, overshot it, and clutched my wrist instead. Before I could react, both of her hands were wrapped around my wrist and pulling my arm through the slot. I struggled to get myself free, to break her grip, but when the pit of my arm slammed against the edge of the slot, I knew she had me.

I stopped struggling almost immediately, afraid that she’d break my arm if I didn’t. Then, I peered in through the cell window and saw that she’d propped her left foot against the cell door and was pulling my arm toward her with all of her weight. The look on her face scared me a little; between the crazy eyes and the tongue that absent-mindedly peeped out from the side of her mouth, I knew that she wasn’t messing around.

“You don’t want to do this…”

“Open the door or I’ll rip it off!”

To validate her threat, she pulled my extended arm to the right. My shoulder wrenched and felt as if it was going to tear away from my body.

“Okay…okay…okay!” I shouted.

She relaxed a bit, just enough so I could concentrate on using my free hand to unlock the dead bolt. I put my fingers around the edges of the lock and peered back in at her.

“You know what this means; right?”

“Yes! It means that you’re done with me. I don’t care!”

I unlatched the door and pulled it open. The captive kept hold of my arm and swung me around until I was caught between the large metal door and the outer wall of the cell. She didn’t release my arm right away though and I began to worry a little that she’d decided to break it after all.

“I’m not going back in there,” she said, tweaking my arm a little to make her point.

“No,” I said. “We’re done.”

She released my arm and stepped back from the door. I simultaneously pushed the door away from me and pulled my sore, tender arm out of the food slot. After my arm was completely freed, I took a small step toward her. She backed up frantically and began to shake and shudder a little, so I stopped and pointed to the scale that sat on the floor next to the food table.

“Aren’t you curious?”

She dropped her gaze to the scale and then moved slowly towards it. When she stepped on it, the needle spun around and landed half-way between 115 and 116 pounds. When she saw her weight, she let out a flood of tears and pressed her forehead against the wall.

“Wow!” I shouted. “You’ve lost another twenty pounds just since last week!”

“I should’ve stayed another week,” she said, “I would’ve dropped below a hundred…I know I would’ve.”

She stepped down from the scale and began shuffling toward the staircase. I grabbed her arm lightly as she passed and guided her to the food table.

“You need to eat before you leave. I don’t want to be liable for you falling and breaking your neck on the way out or something.”

“Thanks,” she said, “But I’ll be fine.”

Before leaving the basement, she paused and looked back at me.

“I have a friend…”

“Send her over,” I said. “If she comes in the next two days, I’ll give her half off.”

Regulating John

As Jamie Bridges approached the intersection, a red light appeared in the center of the dash-board and the car slowed to a stop. Jamie barely noticed the oncoming intersection at all, until she felt the slow deceleration of her 2156 Ford. She was too busy touching up her make-up and thinking about what a bitch her boss was to worry about such trivial things. As a steady flow of traffic passed in front of her, another car pulled up alongside hers. It was a classic model that Jamie had never seen before. She could tell by the sound of the motor that it was a manual-type, gasoline consumption vehicle, which told her everything she needed to know about the driver.

She looked out her side window, at the man behind the other car’s steering wheel. He wasn’t very good looking (most of them weren’t). Just on the other side of the man, Jamie could see his tattooed, outstretched arm hanging outside his car window, a small stream of smoke rising steadily above it. Is he smoking? She thought. Gross! The street light turned green and her vehicle moved forward. Before her small, electric car was half way through the intersection, the man in the pollution-mobile sped past her. She made a mental note of his license plate number. Smoking in public was against the law.

Jamie had never been much of a people person. She’d spent most of her time in an eight by ten cubicle, writing code for security software. The only human interaction that she got most of the time was from her boss, Henrietta, whom she hated with a passion that could level all of the sky rises on the moon. Henrietta loved to stop by Jamie’s cubicle at all times of the day and just hang out, looking over her shoulder while she was trying to type, or talk to her while she was trying to work. Only a witch like Henrietta would make it a daily ritual to bug their employee as much as possible and still hold that employee accountable for low production.

On her last evaluation, Henrietta gave Jamie an average rating. Average ratings were the smooch of death when an employee tried to climb out of the position they were in and apply for a higher one…maybe even one with a window or a bathroom nearby. Other than Henrietta, Jamie didn’t communicate too much with the outside world, which was fine with her. Most people were idiots; in her mind…it’s better to just avoid them as much as possible.

The only two things in Jamie’s life that she loved, absolutely adored, was her home and her husband…in that order. When the car pulled up in front of her two story house, it felt like a million tons of weight had lifted from her shoulders. On the way to the front door, she stopped and admired the small garden, just under the front window. John must’ve been out here all day, she thought. I have the perfect man.

John Bridges, whose maiden name was Kelsey opened the door for his wife when she walked up… happy to see her, he lifted her into the air and gave her a tight hug.

“Put me down, John!” Jamie said. “You’re getting flour all over me!”

John set her down and looked, horrified at the front of his wife’s suit. The entire front of the outfit was dusted with flour. His eyes began to fill with tears.

“I’m so sorry Honey,” he said. “I was just so happy to see you.”

Jamie looked at his tear-filled eyes, his sad, pathetic expression, and couldn’t stay mad at him.

“It’s okay Babe,” she said, wiping away his tears. “Just try to be more careful; okay?”

John smiled, gave her a quick kiss, and then rushed back into the house.

“Come ‘on! I got a surprise for you!”

“Give me a few! I want to take a shower!” She called after him.

Jamie let out a small sigh as she watched her husband run off, so anxious to please her. He really is the perfect man, she thought, and then followed him inside, closing the door behind her.

***

The smell of fresh baked apple pie drifted through the house. Jamie lathered up her hair and commanded the shower to switch to stream mode. A fast stream of water shot out from the nozzle. She stepped beneath it and rinsed the shampoo from her hair. Thoroughly clean, she commanded the water to turn off. The stream of water stopped instantly, replaced by heavy drafts of warm air, blowing her body dry. She revolved in place, making sure to lift her arms and spread her legs to get to those hard to reach places.

The dryer lasted about two minutes. When it finished, the shower door slid open, displaying a dark red evening dress, hanging on the opposite wall. Perfect color, Jamie thought as she stepped out from the shower. He’s going to get some extra kisses tonight. She dressed quickly, not wanting to keep her husband waiting.

John was busy bustling around the kitchen when Jamie walked into the dining room. She sat down in her usual spot at the head of the table, picked up the fully charged wine glass, and took a drink. The double doors to the kitchen slid apart and John walked into the dining room, carrying a tray in both hands. He sat the tray down in front of his wife and then pulled up a chair next to her, watching as she took the first bite.

“How is it?” He asked.

“The chicken’s divine,” she said. “I don’t know how you always make it taste so real!”

“Wait til you try the pie.”

The apple pie was warm and delicious. So delicious, in fact, she pushed away her dinner plate and concentrated on the dessert alone. John’s face lit up.

“You like it?”

“Oh yes.”

John cleared the table after Jamie finished eating and brought the wine bottle back with him when he returned. He re-charged Jamie’s glass and sat down.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“What?”

“You seem a little upset.”

Jamie couldn’t believe that he’d felt her anxiety, even though he always did. John was very sensitive to those things.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just had a bad day.”

He held her hand, and gave it a loving squeeze.

“You want to talk about it?”

“It’s okay Honey,” she said. “Henrietta’s just being a bitch again.”

“What’d she do this time?”

“Nothing really…she’s still bugging me at work, then trying to act like I don’t get anything done. It’s just frustrating, that’s all.”

John released her hand and stood up, a look of contempt on his face.

“They don’t deserve you,” he said. “I don’t know why you stay there.”

“It’s not like I can just quit,” Jamie said. “What am I supposed to do; stay home with you and starve?”

“You wouldn’t starve!” John yelled. “I’d take care of you!”

“Why are you raising your voice at me, John?” Jamie said. She looked him over, up and down, and then felt his forehead. “Are you feeling okay, Honey? You’ve never acted like this before.”

John pushed her hand away and turned his back on her.

“I clean the house, do the gardening, fix your meals…I think I’m entitled to an opinion.”

Jamie didn’t know what to say. She’d never had a problem with her husband in the past.

“Stay here Honey; okay? I’m going to get my purse.”

“Whatever…”

She retrieved her purse and returned to the dining room, gulped down her last bit of wine, and then pulled out a glass, rectangular card. She pressed her finger onto the front of the card and it displayed the business logo and contact information for Rick’s food delivery service. She moved her finger to the side, over and over, skimming through the inventory until she found the one that she was looking for. Then, she pressed a small, blue dot at the corner of the screen.

“Dr. Mitchell’s office,” a woman’s voice said.

“Yes…hello…this is Jamie Bridges. I’d like to bring my husband, John in for a check-up.”

“Is this an emergency?”

“I think it might be.”

***

Jamie was busy reading an article about a group of kids from the local college who demonstrated against a new law that required citizens to turn in paper copies of books for recycling, when she heard the lobby door slide open. She glanced up from her magazine and then quickly looked back down at the screen. What the hell is she doing here? She wondered.

“Jamie, hi,” Henrietta said. “What are you doing here?” She was followed into the lobby by a man who looked twenty years younger than she was. He was favoring his left side as he walked. She led the man to a nearby chair, helped him sit down, and then took the empty chair next to him.

If Jamie was a rude person, she would’ve ignored her boss. She turned off the magazine and reach deep inside herself for the strength to deliver a convincing smile.

“I brought John in for a little check-up.”

“Oh…nothing serious, I hope,” Henrietta said.

“I don’t think so; he’s just not feeling well today.”

“Yeah,” Henrietta said. She placed her hand on top of her husband’s head and rubbed it lightly. “Rick here hasn’t been doing too well either.” She leaned forward, cupped her hand around her mouth as if they weren’t the only people in the lobby and whispered, “I think I might be a little too rough on him, if you know what I mean.”

Just then, the door at the back of the office slid open and Jamie’s husband walked out, followed by a tall man in a white lab coat.

“Miss Bridges?” The man asked.

“Yes, I’m Jamie Bridges,” Jamie said. She stood and shook the man’s hand.

“Good news,” The man said; “The Doctor says that John is going to be just fine.”

“What was wrong with him?” Jamie asked, making sure to keep her voice low enough so that Henrietta couldn’t eavesdrop.

“His emotions regulator burned out,” the man said. “Those things usually have a life span of around twenty years, so I’m not entirely sure why his crashed. I contacted Kelsey robotics and they said that he was still under warranty, so no charge for the visit. Also, as an apology, they had us throw in some upgrades that I think you’ll like.”

“What kind of upgrades?”

“The kind that we don’t need to talk about in public,” the man whispered…then he winked.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I didn’t mean to worry you, Babe.”

Jamie grabbed her husband’s hand and led him to the lobby door.

“Don’t worry about it Honey,” she said as they walked through the lobby door; “I’m sure you’ll think of some way to make it up to me.”

The man in the white lab coat watched them leave and then turned toward Henrietta; his broad smile replaced with an irritated expression that he reserved just for her.

“What is it now, Miss Graves?” he asked.

“I think I may have thrown his hip out again,” Henrietta said, blushing. “Can you fix him?”

The man looked like he considered saying no, but then his irritated expression softened into something resembling resignation.

“Why not,” he said. “We’ve fixed him three times already this month…what’s one more?”

Coffee and a Smoke

My office was a shambles. The desk, overturned with the drawers hanging out, had definitely seen better days. I forced myself to sit up. Stupid move, the sudden motion sent a million linebackers, all clad with the sharpest cleats imaginable, running around inside my skull. The nausea hit me before I could stand and I yarked, all over my shoes. Good job dipshit, I thought. What do you do for an encore, gargle peanut-butter? Did I really sleep on my office couch? Is there anything more cliché than a P.I. sleeping on his office couch? God I need a smoke…

I limped to my desk, turned it upright, and scanned the debris-covered floor for my smokes – nothing. Damn, I better go get some. After digging through the wrinkled clothes that I’d worn the night before – the ones that I was still wearing – and looking through the couch cushions for loose change that fell out while I was sleeping, I came up with just shy of ten bucks. Enough for coffee, and a pack of smokes. My day was getting better, it seemed.

Thankfully, the sky was a dark grey when I left the building. A direct shot of bright sunlight would’ve probably set my digestive system to reverse again. In the distance, the grey sky was marred by a large, glowing, red gash. Just one of the constant reminders of how playing god will eventually bite you in the ass.

It’s been 42 years since the experiment that turned the whole world on its head. The swollen brains in the science community hit all of the papers, spouting off about how they were going to break the code of time-travel. They broke it alright. Their little experiment sent the whole planet back in time. Not all at once though. No, that would’ve been too easy, too civil. I would’ve been here one second, and then gone the next. What the universe’s stupidest geniuses actually accomplished was to reverse the flow of time. Old people began to grow younger, and young people – well, they’re all gone now, at least the ones who were around 42 years ago.

I was eighty-four when it happened and ready to meet my maker. After eighty-four years, filled to the brim with three divorces, ex-wives who hate me, and investigating the vilest acts man could think of to perform on his fellow man, I’d had enough. At one-hundred and twenty-six years old, I look like I’m forty-two again. In my head though, I’m over all of this shit. I’m sick of living. I would off myself, but time holds us all hostage. Good for the world, I guess, but with the inability to die unnaturally until time repairs itself, I’m stuck. It doesn’t do too much for my business either.

When time finally repairs itself and begins to flow the right way – something that the eggheads all say will happen eventually; we will all begin to grow old again. It gives me nightmares to think that I may be a baby when it happens and have to live my whole life over, unless I decide to kill myself. People who have been gone – the ones who grew so young that they ceased to exist anymore will be born again – at least they will if their parents decide to have them. Once the flow of time fixes itself, free will is ours again. Maybe I’ll get lucky and my parents will decide that one and a half lives together are quite enough. I doubt it though. They swoon over each other like they just met a month ago. Well, maybe I can convince them to adopt.

I crossed the street, heading to the small liquor store on the corner. I didn’t bother looking both ways. There’s something about being shielded in a force-field of time that makes drivers slam on their breaks in a hurry. Just outside the small mom and pop, I caught a glimpse of the front page of the local rag in a vending machine. I pulled out my credit card and swiped it through the reader and a paper slid out through the thin slot. The single, thin rectangle of silicone displayed a familiar face on the screen – Michael Elliot. Across the top, a banner scrolled by continuously. “Local Billionaire is given the thumbs up from the Ministry of Science to move ahead with his plans to test out time reversal machine.” Great, I thought, another fucking idiot. I tossed the rag in the recycle bin and hurried back across the street to my car. It amazes me how some people never learn. I had to try and stop the moron. I started my car and pulled out onto the near empty streets, bound for the ritzy part of town, a place called Youthful Fountains. It wasn’t until I was half way there that it hit me. I forgot my cigarettes.

About five minutes outside of town, I came to the entrance to Youthful Fountains. I had to veer into the left-hand lane to get around a car accident. It appeared that the driver hit a squirrel or something and the whole front end of his car was tooled up. I pulled up to the gate and pressed the button next to Michael Elliot’s name plate. There was a loud buzz, flowed by a metallic click and the gate slid open. It seems that security isn’t a top priority now that violence isn’t as effective as it once was.

The billionaire’s house was at the top of the hill. Of course it was. I pulled into his long drive-way and parked off to the side. When I knocked on the door, I expected some guy in a penguin suit to answer, but Mr. Elliot opened it himself. We looked each other up and down for a moment – me, taking in his faded blue jeans and Grateful Dead t-shirt; him, taking in my unshaven face, wrinkled suit, and grim expression.

“Can I help you?” Mr. Elliot says.

“God, I hope so.” I say.

He invites me in for tea. I’m not sure if he was just that friendly or if he didn’t want his neighbors thinking that he hung around with folks of my type, and I don’t really care. As we walked to his kitchen, I soaked in his spread. For a billionaire, I expected more. Simple layout, sparse décor, and no hired help to be seen. What a waste, I thought.  

He brewed the tea himself and placed a cup-full in front of me. Then, he sat down opposite of me and stirred sugar in his. It took him a few cubes to get it right. He offered me some but I placed my hand over the top of my cup and shook my head.

“May I ask your name?” He says.

“Walter,” I say. “Walter Franco.”

“Can I call you Walt?” He asks. “My grandfather’s name was Walt. I adored him. I guess I’ll be seeing him again soon.”

“Walt’s fine,” I say.

“You know, Walt? I remember a saying from years ago. “Money can’t buy happiness. I could argue and say that I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, except for one thing. Do you know what that thing is, Walt?”

“What’s that?”

“Real food. Oh you’re smiling like you don’t believe me, but I swear to you – I would give up my whole fortune for a real cheeseburger. Years of eating soy products have made my nerves edgy and my nipples sore.”

I’d never thought of that side of things. There were certainly some things in the world that money couldn’t buy, and meat was one of them. There were plenty of animals; we just couldn’t kill the damned things.

“What is it that you miss, Walt?” He asks.

I take a sip of my tea and consider his question.

“Coffee and a smoke,” I say. “I’d kill for a cup of joe and a ciggy right now.”

He laughed out loud. “Oh, you’d try to kill, you mean. I’d love to help you out, but I don’t have either of those. How about you tell me what you really want. Why you came here.”  

“I came about your machine,” I said. “I want you to destroy it. Let time heal itself.”

He laughed out loud again and nearly knocked over his cup of tea.

“Why would I do that?” He says. “You’re the first person who even seems to think it will work. It took me over twenty years to build it and I had to do it myself. Do you know what I have outside, Walt?”

“What’s that?”

“A Cow! Seriously, I bought a cow last week and had it transported to my stable. I want my cheeseburger, Walt. I really want it bad.”

He had a crazy gleam in his eyes that was enough to tell me that he was serious. The clown actually did all of this so he could eat a cheeseburger.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I say. “What if you just make things worse. We know that in time, the problem will fix itself. What if you turn on your crazy machine and the process accelerates or something? I don’t want to wake up tomorrow in diapers.”

“It will work,” he says. “I know it will. Would you like to see it?”

He takes me to his lab. The machine is impressive, but not what I expected. It consisted of a large enclosure that was connected to a simple control panel.

“Living being goes into the pod, I flip the switch, and poof, time reverses itself again – but just for that being. I’ve tried it out on a few specimens already.”

“You can only do one thing at a time? How’s that going to work?”

He pushes a button on the control panel and the door to the pod opens with a loud swooshing sound.

“It’s simple,” he says, those who have the money can grow old and die naturally. I’ll also be the only man on earth who will have meat for sale. How can I not do this?”

“You’re insane,” I say. “I can’t believe that the Ministry of Science gave you the green light for this shit.”

“Oh, they don’t believe that it will actually work. I told them that they had nothing to lose and they agreed. After all, I’m just a rich quack who developed the machine on my own. They have no reason to think that it will work.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“You do?”

“Yeah… I believe that this machine will do something. I’m just not about to find out what.”

I pulled out my grandfather’s nickel-plated pistol and pointed it at the control panel. Michael Elliot’s hands shot up in the air, frantically.

“What are you doing?” He says. “Where’d you even find that?”

I smiled at him. “This?” I said. “I always keep this on me. Mostly out of habit. It’s no use for protection, but you never know.”

I aimed at the control panel, taking the pistol in a two-hand grip. All you have to do is squeeze, I told myself. It’d been decades since I actually fired it.

“I’ll let you go first!”

I paused.

“What?”

“I’ll let you go first,” he said. “I’ll fix you. Then, we can both sit down later and enjoy a cheeseburger. What do you say, huh?”

I thought about the long life that I’d lived. Thought about all of the people that I’d known who grew so young that they eventually became fetuses, then nothing at all. I thought about the giant warehouse that I’d once walked through. The one where they stored thousands of infants whose parents didn’t want to keep at home just to watch them fade to nothing. I thought of those things and how this man wanted to risk making the problem worse, all so he could make some extra cash and enjoy a cheeseburger. I squeezed the trigger and the control panel exploded into a hundred different pieces, casting sparks and debris in all directions.

“No!” Michael Elliot screamed.

I squeezed off another round, just to be sure and Michael Elliot blocked the path of the bullet. I stared; horrified as his penetrated body fell limp to the floor, dead.

It worked, I thought, looking down at Michael Elliot’s dead body. He tested it on himself and the damn thing actually worked. Holy shit… what’ve I done?

The next morning, I appeared in front of the judge. He sent me to the county jail pending an official indictment, if one was to come, which didn’t look likely. My lawyer did a pretty good job of describing how I had acted in self-defense and the judge seemed to buy it. I didn’t mention to anyone that the machine actually worked.

The other inmates treated me like I was some kind of hero. Maybe I was. Even if the machine worked, Michael Elliot wasn’t about to let the world have it. He would’ve created a new elite. He would have probably been able to manipulate time as he wished, allowing the rich to grow old, and then turn back the clock for them, for a price. I’ll never know. Neither will the world.

A wrapping on my cell let me know that my food tray was ready. I went to the door and waited. The slot in the center of the door opened and my tray slide through. Soy eggs, soy bacon, and a cup of hot coffee sat on the tray. Just to the left of the plate of food, a pack of smokes. I looked through the small window of the cell and the guard winked at me. Things were looking up.

The Definitive Edition Prints: #1, Princess Breath

Reblogged from Clive Barker at Century Guild:

1. PRINCESS BREATH

17 x 22 inches

Signed and numbered by Clive Barker

Limited edition of only 40

New ultra-high resolution image capture
Blindstamped with the Century Guild and Transmission Atelier logos
Published on boutique heavyweight high gloss/ low glare silver paper
Completely archival inks and paper
Printed in superior resolution
Painstakingly color matched to the original
The definitive collection of Clive Barker artworks…

Read more… 67 more words

The Abduction

 

 

As I lay in bed, looking up at the night sky through a glass pane above my bed, images and sounds flash through my head. I stared at the stars, which looked like bright diamonds, pinned to a black curtain and I could hear her voice in my mind.

“Daddy,” she screams. “Daddy, help me.”

I tried to focus on the stars, began counting them, tried to decide if they were actually stars, or planets. They begin to blur and swirl, easing in and out of focus. My stomach lurched and I rolled over and pressed my face into the large pillow that I shared my empty bed with.

The volume of her voice in my head increased and I plowed my face deeper into the soft pillow until I could barely breathe. I’m not sure if my mind rebelled against me at that moment or if it was my fault for depriving my brain of needed oxygen, but somehow, I passed out. The dream that I’d fought so valiantly to keep away came rushing in on me, catching me off guard.

All at once, it was a few days before again. My wife, Stacy was lying in bed beside me; a book perched against her bent knees. I’d just shut off my laptop and set my alarm. Midnight was only minutes away and I had to get up early for work the next day.

“You going to sleep,” I asked her, but I already knew the answer. She was really into that book and probably wouldn’t put it down until she passed out, or the sun came up; maybe not even then. I gave her a peck on the cheek and rolled over, hugged my pillow and began to drift off. A little after two in the morning, I woke up to the sound of Olivia calling for me.

“Daddy…! Daddy, help me!”

Usually, when I first wake up, it takes a while for me to get my bearings. Sometimes, I’m almost to work before my head clears completely, but that night, I came awake fully alert, shot out of bed, ran down the hall, and threw open her door. What I saw in her room, terrified me.

Olivia was floating above her bed, screaming. I couldn’t make out her features because the room was filled with a bright light that seemed to pour from the walls. A cracking sound, like an electric discharge flashed through the room and somehow, the bright light became brighter. I could see Olivia’s face then, pleading for me to help her, reaching her small hand out toward me. A second round of crackling light shot through the room again. That’s when I saw them, standing around her bed.

I don’t know how many there were, I didn’t bother to count. I ran at the small form that was closest to me and tackled it.

When I was a kid, I did some pretty dumb stuff. One of the dumbest things I did was strip my stereo wires and attach a different plug to them and then try to plug it in. The electric shock that I got sent me flying across my bedroom and left holes in my fingers and palm that took months to fully heal. The shock that hit me when my body fell against the small creature was worse.

My world went black. When I came to, I was lying on my back in my daughter’s empty bedroom. She was gone…my baby girl was gone.

The normal things that usually occur after a child goes missing happened after that. The police were called first thing. I talked to the investigator while Stacy sat, wrapped in a blanket and crying uncontrollably. I felt like I should’ve told the cops about the lights and the strange little men, but had no doubt that they wouldn’t have believed me. The investigator took copious notes and then flipped his pad closed.

“Is there any reason that Olivia may have wanted to run away?” he asked me.

My mouth gaped open.

“She’s four years old,” I said. “She doesn’t even know what that means.”

He asked me a few more questions that didn’t make sense and then left, vowing that he’d do everything in his power to find our daughter. I didn’t expect much; I knew that wherever she was, it wasn’t anywhere that the police could search.

When the police and neighbors are all circling around like buzzards, it gives the parents of a lost child hope. They spouted off about their various plans of action and told us not to worry, and after a while, we began to believe them. Then, they all left and my wife and I were left with our new found hell, the emptiness that resided where our daughter used to be. 

Stacy and I both called in to work that day. Both of our bosses completely understood and told us to take all the time that we needed. We spent the day sitting on the couch, holding each other and crying; our cell phones close by. It was a long, torturous, agonizing wait for nothing. As we lay in our beds that night, knowing that neither of us would ever be able to fall asleep. I broke down and told her about the abduction.

Stacy listened attentively as I talked, wiping tears from her eyes and nodding. When I told her about the bright lights and the little men, she frowned slightly, and then began crying again.

“It was a dream,” she said after I told her how bad I felt that I couldn’t save our daughter.

I turned my face from her; all of a sudden I couldn’t look her in the eyes. She grabbed my chin and made me look at her.

“Baby,” she said, “it was just a dream.”

It was my turn to break down. The tears poured out of me and I thought they would never stop. Stacy pulled me closer to her and somehow, that made it worse. I failed and I knew it. It took her a few days to understand that; when she did, she left.

Three days after Olivia was abducted, I woke up and found a note sitting on Stacy’s pillow. She wrote that she couldn’t look at me and not think about Olivia. She needed some time to grieve and stuff like that. What it really said was that our daughter was gone, it was my fault, and she didn’t want to look at me or be around me; that’s how I read it anyway. I crumpled up the note and threw it on the floor. Then, I grabbed my phone off of the night stand and tried to call her. I wasn’t surprised when her voicemail answered. I threw the phone on the floor next to the note, and then had to get it when I realized that I needed to call in to work again.

I dialed the office and told them that I’d be taking the two weeks of vacation that I had saved up. They knew that my daughter was missing and didn’t try to protest; that done, I crawled back onto my bed and drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up just after noon, the sun was shining on my face because I forgot to close the sky-light. I reached up and touched my face, felt the fresh sunburned skin, and pulled my hand back. I decided to ditch the shave for the day and just get dressed. I grabbed my phone and dialed the detective to ask if there was any progress.

“We have some pretty good leads,” he said. “I’ll call you if I learn anything new.”

I hung up with him and went into the kitchen to make some coffee, then dialed Stacy’s number again and hung up on her voicemail. Alone in the house for the first time in years, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was going crazy thinking about Olivia and losing Stacy didn’t make things better. I decided that some work would probably occupy my mind, for awhile at least; so I went down into the basement to organize it like I’d told Stacy I’d do weeks before. I figured that if she did come back, she would at least see that I did that…I at least did that.

The basement looked like a landfill. Boxes, full of Christmas ornaments and lights were stacked in the center of the floor, along with various other boxes of crap. I stacked them all on one side of the room, planning to organize them later. I worked hard for about fifteen minutes, until one of the smaller boxes fell over, spilling a sack of pictures onto the floor. I tried not to look at them, quickly shoving them back into the box, but my eye caught on Olivia’s baby picture and I lost it. I sat down in the center of the floor, staring at that picture, and wailed.

I can’t do this right now, I thought to myself after it seemed that all of my tears had left me. I slid the picture back into the box and stacked it on top of the others, then pulled the small string that hung down in the middle of the room, turning off the light. As I began to ascend the steep staircase, I heard a rustling sound coming from behind the place where I stacked the boxes. I froze for a second, listening to see if the noise came again; it did. I stepped back onto the basement floor and pulled the light back on. Then I went to my work bench and grabbed my claw hammer off of the two nails that hung it in its usual place and approached the stack of boxes.

Holding the hammer at the ready, I put my foot around the back of the stack of boxes and slid them out of the way. I lurched backward in horror as a small figure shot out from behind the boxes and ran toward the work bench. I didn’t think; didn’t have time to think. I threw the hammer as hard as I could and hit the running figure in the back of the head. It went down hard, smacking its face on the cold basement floor.

It didn’t move as I approached its small, sprawled out body. The creature wasn’t wearing any type of clothing that I could see, unless its skin was actually some kind of alien suit. It looked clammy and wet, its skin the deep gray of cigarette ashes. I pulled a large zip-tie off of the top of the work bench and grabbed the thing’s arms. I was surprised that even though they looked like they were wet and slimy, they were actually pretty dry. I zipped the zip tie a little and then put the creature’s tiny, very human looking hands together, slipped the zip tie over them, and then zipped them tight. I rolled the thing over onto its back and gasped at the sight of its face.

When I was a kid, I saw a movie about a man who turned into a fly. The grossest part of the fly-man to me was its eyes. They were un-lidded, black and smooth. The creature’s eyes were like that, but smaller; yet they still seemed to cover a good portion of the top part of its face. Where its mouth should’ve been, was nothing but that smooth, cigarette ash colored skin. I thought that if it could speak; it must use some orifice that I couldn’t see.

I left it lying on the basement floor and went into the house to get a couple of chairs from the dining room table. When I returned, I lifted its small frame onto one of the chairs, grabbed some rope from the side of my work bench and tied it up. I placed the other chair in front of it. I knew it was still unconscious, not because the un-lidded eyes didn’t open or blink, but because what passed for its chin was resting on what passed for its chest. I sat down in the chair opposite the thing and stared at it, waiting.

I waited for a good half hour and then became worried. Had I killed it? I leaned forward and felt along its neck for a pulse. Just around its throat, I felt it, a small beating sensation that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I looked at my watch and began to measure its pulse, counting its beats while looking at the second hand. I had been a medic for a couple of years in the Army and taking a pulse was one of the few things that stuck with me after I got out. When I finished, I looked back at the creature and was so shocked to see its black eyes staring back at me that I fell backward in my chair.

“Let me go,” it said.

Said? That wasn’t it exactly. It was more like a thought in my head than a sound.

I got up off the floor, pulled the chair back upright and sat down again; a little further away than before.

“Did you say something?” I asked.

It cocked its head at me; first to one side and then the other.

“Let me go.”

I didn’t see anything move when it spoke. I wondered if it could read my mind as well. I concentrated as hard as I could on the thing and thought; can you hear me? It didn’t think at me again, but nodded its head slightly. My mind was blown, but at least I knew that it could communicate. I leaned forward in my chair, clasped my hands together, and said “Where’s my daughter?”

The creature didn’t answer me. It appeared to be looking around the basement, taking inventory of all the crap down there. I asked again; “Where’s my daughter?” Still, it ignored me.

The thought that I’d gone completely off the rails had occurred to me, but at that point, I didn’t care. I was sitting in my basement, talking to an alien that I’d tied to a chair and I was okay with that. I had to figure out a way to make it tell me what I needed to know though, or I would have gone nuts for nothing. I stood up and walked around to the back of the creature’s chair, grabbed it by the sides and turned it around to face the work bench. Then, I walked over to the work bench and began taking down all of the most frightening looking tools I could find, laying them down, side by side on the bench top. I chose a pretty good selection of box-cutters, needle-nose pliers, screwdrivers, and a couple of small saws, and then I retrieved the hammer from the floor and added it to the collection.

I’d heard the expression about feeling like a kid in a candy store before, but I never fully felt that feeling until I gazed down at my selection of tools and tried to decide which one to use first. My hand grazed over the top of the dangerous looking items, halting once over the screwdriver, once over the hammer, and then coming to rest on the handles of the needle-nose pliers. I picked them up and turned to face the alien. I could feel the smile spreading across my face as I approached the chair, ducked behind it, grabbed the creature’s hand and pressed the small cutting blades of the pliers around the base of its index finger.

“Where’s my daughter,” I asked.

Silence… the creature remained still and quiet.

“Have it your way,” I said, and cut off its finger.

I expected to hear the creature screaming in my mind, but that didn’t happen. It didn’t writhe in pain or beg for mercy either. What the creature did do was promptly grow back another finger. I looked down on the floor and saw that the first finger that I’d cut off was still lying by my feet. In the place where I cut the finger from, was a brand new one. I put the pliers around the base of the newly grown finger and cut it off. The finger seemed to fall in slow motion to the floor as I watched it drop and then land with a bounce next to its counterpart on the floor. That time, I did hear something from the creature in my head, but it wasn’t words, it was laughter.

I looked around the thing’s body for something else to cut off, perhaps something that won’t grow back, but I couldn’t see anything useful. Other than toes that would’ve probably proven to be as useful to me as its fingers, the thing had no other protruding appendages. Where we have ears, it had a couple of holes on each side of its head. Where we have a nose, it had a small raised area in the center of its face with a couple of holes at the bottom. I pulled its legs apart and was disappointed at what I found there too; nothing; smooth skin all the way to the back. I didn’t look at its backside but I knew that there was probably just a small orifice there as well; nothing of practical use, unless I wanted to be an alien rapist, which I didn’t.

I gave up; dropping the pliers next to the thing’s two disembodied fingers and turned its chair around again. It looked at me with that quizzical head cocking thing it does.

“You can’t hurt me,” it said. “Just let me go.”

“I’ll let you go after you bring my daughter back, you son of a bitch.”

“You will never see her again…”

I had enough of the creepy bastard. I got up from my chair and walked over to light-string and grabbed hold of it. Before turning off the light, I thought of one last question.

“Will they come for you?”

The thing’s cackling laugh rung through my head; I could actually see its head rocking forward and back as it cracked itself up. It looked eerily human just then.

“Yes,” it said between fits of giggles. “They’ve been watching you this whole time through my eyes…hearing you through my mind. They’ll come for me soon.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said, and then shut off the light.

When I reached the top of the basement stairs, I cast a final look down into the darkness where I knew the alien thing was, then closed and locked the door.

The basement door was located right off of the kitchen, which was convenient because that’s where all of the alcoholic beverages were. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a cold beer, popped the tab, and drank down the entire can in one, long gulp. I crushed the can in my hand, threw it in the nearby trash bin and then pulled out another fresh Soldier. I took the second beer to my room and cracked it open while I laid back on my bed, wondering what I could do to make the aliens bring my daughter back to me. I took a long swallow of the beer, set the half-empty can on my nightstand, and rested my head back on my pillow. The sky-light was still open and I could see millions of stars, spread out above me.

At some point, I fell asleep, probably from suffocating myself with the pillow to get away from the sound of Olivia’s screams in my head. When I came to, a couple hours later, Olivia’s screams were still there… echoing. It’s messing with me, I thought; trying to drive me crazy. I sat up in bed and nearly jumped out of my skin when something across the room moved with me. My heart steadied when I realized that it was just Stacy’s vanity. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My face looked dark from the growth of hair that was threatening to burst out into a full bushel if I didn’t shave soon. Then, I looked at the mirror itself…I’d found my answer.

The Alien acted as if it didn’t see me when I hauled the large mirror down into the basement and turned on the light. It would’ve been impossible to tell if the creepy thing was even awake if its head wasn’t propped up straight on its frail looking shoulders. I placed the mirror against the chair, facing the creature and then stepped behind the alien, making sure that we were both visible in the mirror’s reflection. I had to make a few adjustments, but I finally got us both centered just right. It was important to me to make sure that the fans out in the rest of the galaxy got the best picture quality I could give them. I secretly hoped that the image was in hi-def for what I was planning.

I went to my work bench, picked up the small hand saw and put it in my left cargo pocket, and then I picked up the box cutter and carried it back to the alien. While it watched me in the mirror, I clicked the small lever on the side of the box cutter, increasing the blade size so that it could be easily recognizable in the reflection of the mirror. Stepping behind the creature again, I put the blade up to the alien’s cheek and looked at our reflections.

“Bring back my daughter,” I said.

The blade cut deep into the alien’s cheek. Unlike when I cut off its fingers, the alien jerked in his chair as I slid the blade downward, opening a deep groove into its face. It began to convulse and shake. I had to let go of its neck to avoid receiving a cosmic head-butt. When I stepped back, I was glad that I’d let go. A large blast of electric current shot out of the thing’s head and hit the overhanging light, blowing it out. I fumbled in the dark until I found what I was looking for. In less than a minute, the basement lit up again, but from a battery powered lantern instead of the overhead light, which was completely destroyed. There was a burn mark on the ceiling where the light used to hang down. I put the lantern on the floor next to the alien’s chair and went back to my work bench. After fumbling around for a few seconds, I found my rubber gloves and put them on.

There was a small electric burst, when I cut a deep groove into the alien’s other cheek too, but it was nowhere as powerful as the first.

“Losing your juice; huh?”

I put my hand on the thing’s shoulders and looked at our reflections in the mirror again. The alien’s dark gray face was splattered with a blue-greenish sappy fluid that I could only assume was his blood, but he was still recognizable.

“Bring back my daughter.”

There were no sounds in my head, no more squirming from the gross little creature. I let out a quick sigh, dropped the box cutter to the floor and then pulled the saw from my cargo pocket, held it up in front of the mirror, and gave the home audience my brightest smile.

“I wonder what your brains look like…”

I placed the edge of the saw blade against the upper part of the creature’s forehead, gave a short pull, and opened a large gash in the front of its head; then I heard it scream for the first time.

Its scream seemed to last forever in my mind. I covered my ears, but couldn’t escape it. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I slapped the alien as hard as I could across the face. The screaming stopped. If I was a scientific kind of person instead of a cable installer, I may have hypothesized that the creature’s nerves were all bundled up in and around its big, fat, gray head. Of course, I didn’t need to be scientists to test that theory.

I put the saw blade back where it had been, against the fresh cut that I’d made, and felt the creature shudder.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Shit just got real.”

I pulled back on the saw and heard the creature’s scream inside my head again. I thrust the saw forward and then pulled it back. The little gray bastard nearly came up out of the chair.

“Bring me back my daughter!” I screamed at the mirror, and sawed a little deeper into the creature’s head.

Its screams grew so intense that it felt like my own head was going to explode. Tiny sparks flew off of it, but it was nothing more than static discharge at that point. I felt the saw blade slide along the alien’s skull and dug it in a little deeper. A warm trickle flowed down my neck. I reached up, touched it, and pulled my hand back. My fingertips were covered in blood. My ears were bleeding, but I didn’t care; I’d gone too far to turn back. I took another pull of the saw and felt my eardrums burst from the pressure as the alien’s screams filled my head… and then the room disappeared into a haze of bright light.

The light was everywhere. The light was everything. All of my senses were gone. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t hear. It pulsed brighter and brighter and then went out as fast as it had come. When the light vanished, so did my little alien friend. I looked at my own face in the mirror and couldn’t help but laugh at my own reflection. My face was covered with a combination of the alien’s blue-greenish blood and my own. I laughed until my ribs hurt, and when I couldn’t utter a single chuckle more, I sobbed.

I wept in a puddle of alien blood until I passed out from emotional exhaustion. When I regained consciousness, the basement was lit up by the sun’s light, pouring in from the side windows. I got up and went back up into the house. I made my way to my bedroom and caught a glimpse of something red and white as I walked passed Olivia’s room. I took a double-look and saw her, sitting on her bed in the same colorful pajamas she’d been wearing the night she was abducted, playing with her dolls. She saw me in the doorway and rushed to me, a big smile on her face.

We hugged for as long as we could. It was probably a lot longer than I think, but it seems that in moments of pure joy, the clock spins like an airplane propeller. I picked her up and carried her to my bedroom, grabbed my cell phone, and texted her mother. Stacy didn’t reply to the text, but came bounding through the front door less than fifteen minutes later. She was home, they both were. I held them in my arms and promised myself that I wouldn’t let either one of them go again.

The hearing loss was permanent. Every day after that, I’ve had to use closed caption on the television and rely on texting rather than the telephone, but to me, it was worth it. Deafness was a small price to pay for having my family back. I also took some joy in the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one to have permanent scars. Somewhere, out in the universe, was a small, gray man, who may have healed all of his physical scars, but would no doubt remember me for the rest of his life. I hope he does… him and his whole damn species.

 

Scavenger

 

The dream again… He was standing in front of the street merchant.

“Better get your ass in gear!” Specialist Martinez yelled through the propped open door of the HMMV. “This ain’t Walmart dude!”

They’d been on patrol when Sergeant Mike Lipscomb saw a stand on the side of the road, peddling movies. He’d been in Khost Province for six months and was running out of stuff to watch on his laptop. It was a perfect opportunity to pick up some cheap DVD’s. Most of the movies were still in the theaters and he’d really wanted to see some of them. He finally managed to pick about six of them, talking the vender down to three for five dollars instead of two. He maneuvered around his holster, dug inside his pocket, pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it to the vender. The vender smiled, stuffed the DVDs into a worn out plastic bag and handed it to the Soldier. Mike thanked the vender in English and turned back toward the vehicle just as Specialist Martinez began to yell at him again.

“Come ‘on dude! Hurry up!”

“I’m coming dammit!” Mike yelled back… and the vehicle exploded.

Within the prison of his nightmare, the vehicle exploded…then exploded…then exploded again. There was a flash of bright, white light, and then the medics were pulling the charred remains of Specialist Martinez from the smoldering debris.

Another flash…

He guided Rebecca into room 117, pushed her onto the bed, made love to her.

Another flash…

Mike was in the shower, the curtain pulled to the side, and a hand thrust inward. Mike looked down at the handle of the hunting knife, buried to the hilt, in his belly. He tried to get to her, crawling on the bathroom floor, but it seemed that the further he crawled, the further away the door became. Exhausted, Mike rolled onto his back. Above him, peering down at him was the face that would be forever burned into his mind. The stranger smiled, gave a little wink, and then brought the heel of his boot down on Mike’s forehead.

Another flash…

He was lying in a pool of his own blood, feeling the life pour from him. He could hear her screaming for him to help her, to save her. In reality, she was sleeping when the monster cut her throat and never made a sound… But in Mike’s dreams, her screams could wake the dead… how he wished that were true.

He woke suddenly and sat up in the hospital bed, the sound of her screams still echoing in his head. His regular nurse was standing at the foot of his bed with a clipboard in her hand and a scowl on her face.

“Good morning, Mr. Lipscomb,” she said, “You have physical therapy in half an hour. I suggest you get yourself ready.”

Mike spent the better part of a month in the hospital recovering from his wounds. The first couple of weeks, his hospital room was filled to bursting with family members, friends, and police officers. They all wanted details. Did he see anything…did he hear anything…did he know who was doing such terrible things; for all of their questions, his answer was no.

The most persistent of the police who came to visit Mike in the hospital was the cop who found him, Officer Litherland. He thought that Mike knew more than he was telling and made no secret of it. The Scavenger Killer had been leaving a trail of dismembered corpses across three counties for months, Officer Litherland said.

“I never saw the guy,” Mike said… and he stood by his story. The killer murdered the only person left in the world that Mike Lipscomb gave a shit about. There was no way in hell that he was going to leave it up to the cops to find justice. Another week, maybe two, Mike thought as the nurse left his room; then, the bastard is going to pay.

It didn’t take long for Mike to find the bastard. When he was finally released from the hospital, he began to hit all of the local roadhouses and dive bars in the area. From the shaggy, unkempt way the killer looked, Mike assumed that the man was local and not rich. It was a stretch for sure, but one that paid off.

Three days after he got out of the hospital, Mike found the Scavenger Killer sitting in The Watering Hole, a local bar that catered mostly to truck drivers and bikers. The Killer was sitting at the bar when Mike walked in. Mike saw his face, clearly reflected on the mirrored wall behind the bar. His first instinct was to approach the man, place the barrel of his 9mm pistol to the back of his head, and decorate the bar with his brains. He kept his cool though. He knew that in order to escape the situation with his own freedom intact, he’d have to play it safe, wait until the asshole was alone somewhere and then pop him. When the Killer paid his tab and left the bar, Mike counted to fifty in his mind, and then followed him out.

The man turned off the highway a few miles south of town on a gravel road. Mike would’ve followed him up to his house and killed him on the spot if the damn cop wasn’t following again. He continued to drive on; just a normal guy, out for a nice drive in the country. At least he knew where the bastard lived. It was just a matter of time.

***

This cop thinks I’m stupid…

The cop followed him to the bar again. Mike ordered his third shot and stared at the back of the killer’s head for a few seconds before pounding it down. Tonight will be the night, he thought but I’m going to have to shake bacon-boy somehow.

On the other side of the bar, the sound of multiple gasps caught his attention. The majority of the patrons were standing in front of a mounted television, watching a breaking news story about The Scavenger’s latest victims.

“The man was stabbed multiple times,” the anchorwoman said. “It’s been reported that Mr. Chesterfield was found in the garage with his throat cut, while his wife was reportedly bludgeoned to death. More details at eleven…”

They didn’t say what body parts were missing, Mike thought as he stared at the back of the killer’s head. It didn’t escape his attention that during the news update, almost everyone in the bar rushed to the television…everyone, that is, except for himself, the bar tender, and of course, the bastard on the stool.

The killer, whose name was Anthony Teller paid his tab, used the bathroom, and left the bar. Mike waited a few minutes before following him out. He already knew where the man lived, so there was no need to risk being spotted following him. Besides, bacon boy had followed him to the bar and was probably still waiting outside to shadow him home.

Just as Mike thought, the cop was still in the parking lot. After the few drinks he’d slammed down, Mike couldn’t contain his anger any longer. He decided to approach the cop and give him a piece of his mind. After all, it was America. Police can’t just follow people whenever they felt like it.

The conversation was extremely short and extremely one sided. Before Mike could approach the window, he saw the wide gash in the cop’s throat. He jumped back from the car, making sure not to touch anything. You poor bastard, he thought. You should’ve left this one to the real men.

After he got behind the wheel, Mike fished behind him, pulled the 9mm from the back of his pants, and sat it on the passenger seat. The cop’s death was sad and tragic…collateral damage…just like the couple the night before. Mike had followed Anthony Teller to the Chesterfield’s home and watched from the shadows as the cold blooded son of a bitch knocked on the door and then punched the sweet looking old lady in the face. Every fiber of his being wanted to help her…screamed to, but Mike couldn’t move. He didn’t want to take the chance that something would go wrong. He popped open the glove box and pulled out a small bottle of rum. After a couple of large gulps, he put the bottle back inside the box and slapped it shut. Collateral damage, he thought. Who am I trying to kid? I’m going to hell. He put on his seatbelt, started the car, and pushed the stick into first gear.

“I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch.”

***

Mike pulled onto the gravel road and turned off his headlights. He eased the car along slowly, trying to avoid making too much noise. Just before he reached the clearing at the end, he turned off the ignition, picked up the 9mm from the passenger seat, and got out of the car. It was time.

The cabin was centered in the clearing. As he crept toward it, Mike tried to be mindful of twigs and other debris that could give him away. He stepped on a brittle stick and paused, heart racing, before moving slowly on again. He picked up his pace as he got closer to the cabin. His heart went into attack mode, his fight or flight response dialed to kill. By the time he reached the cabin door, he was nearly at a full run.

Mike leapt into the air and kicked the door just above the knob. It flung open and smashed against the wall of the cabin. The pistol was out in front of him, held in both hands, ready to fire. His initial intent was to bust in, gun blazing, and shoot anything that moved, but the sight of the three men, none of them the killer, sitting around a circular table with a large iron bowl in the center of it, made him pause. It wasn’t a long pause, just long enough for the wooden baseball bat to slam into the back of his head.

The blackness of unconsciousness lightened slowly; bringing forth a terrible, dull pressure that felt like it wanted to burst out of Mike Lipscomb’s skull. He opened his eyes. Through his fogged out, hazy vision, he saw four men sitting around a table, laughing and going over what looked like some kind of paperwork. He tried to move and found that his hands and feet were bound together. From his position on the time and traffic-worn couch, Mike had a clear view of Anthony Teller’s face. The man was chomping on a cigar and looking at a small notebook.

“So,” Teller said; “who finished their list?”

“I got everything but the woman’s pinky finger,” said the chubby, older man who was sitting to Teller’s right.

“Shit,” the man to Teller’s left said. “I still needed a woman’s big toe.”

“What about you Junior?” Teller asked.

“I still needed blue eyes,” the kid who sat directly across from Teller replied. “This game is harder than I thought. “

Teller laughed and threw his list on the table. Then, he reached into the large bowl, lifted out a penis and began to flop it around, and in front of the other men’s faces. They recoiled in horror and Junior nearly fell out of his chair.

“Well, with this…,” Teller said, “I got my list complete! Good game boys…now pay up.”

The other men around the table began to groan and reach for their wallets.

At the sight of the penis in Teller’s hand, Mike Lipscomb nearly choked on his gag. He gazed down at his midsection and gawked in terror at the blood soaked stain on the front of his pants.

The men to Teller’s left and right handed him a hundred dollar bill and stuffed their wallets back into their pockets.

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” the older man said as he sat back down in his chair.

“Shit,” Teller said, “Luck had nothing to do with it. I played that son of a bitch.”

He looked over at Mike.

“Ain’t that right, boy?” He said. “I played you like a geetar!”

Then, he turned back to his son.

“Come on Junior,” he said, holding out his open palm, “be a good sport now.”

Junior reached down, pulled up his pant leg, and slid a hunting knife from his boot. He held the knife up, and then brought it down on the table top, burying the point into the wooden surface.

“Not so fast, Dad,” he said. “Uncle Tony…What color eyes did I say I needed?”

“Blue,” the older man said.

“And what color eyes does our new friend here have?”

The old man looked over at Mike and smiled.

“Why… I do believe that they’re blue, Junior.”

The young man, stood up, pulled the knife free from the table and turned toward Mike. When the boy’s shadow fell across him, Mike tried his best to fight, to struggle. When death finally came for him, he welcomed it with open arms.

Mommy Still Loves You

The black, fluid-like substance moved like a liquid, but it wasn’t wet. It would disburse into nothingness and then reappear moments later, but it wasn’t a gas. It slithered across the bedroom floor, glided up and over Troy Creech’s bed and came to rest just above his waist. As the tail-end of the odd, shapeless thing caught up to the rest, it absorbed into it. It began to rotate in place just as the last part of its tail-end entered and as it spun, an even stranger thing happened – it sprouted arms, legs, and a head. Troy didn’t wake up from the weight of the fully-formed entity that straddled him – it had no weight to measure. It was the sound of its familiar voice that made him stir.

“Who is she?” The entity asked.

Troy opened his eyes and stared at the spirit of his mother.

“Mom…” He said, rolling his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep!”

She grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head off of the pillow – his blue eyes stopping mere inches in front of her cold gray ones.

“I asked you who the hell she is!”

It wasn’t Troy’s first altercation with his mother. Her spirit had haunted him since her death during childbirth. While alive, she wasn’t a balanced person. As a spirit, she was completely unhinged. She abused him without conscience, often leaving broken bones and scars. As a poltergeist, she was only able to interact with the living world when she was in an extreme emotional state. Anger was the only tool she had to interact with her son, the only way to touch him. Troy learned as a child to never fight back. If he just relaxed his body and stayed perfectly still, a hard grab or pulled hair was all that he usually got. As an adult, it was pretty much the same.

“She’s just a girl mom,” he said, making sure that his voice didn’t sound confrontational.

She threw his head back against the pillow and jumped off of him. She hovered a few feet above his bed, winked out of existence, and then reappeared next to his bedroom door, wiping away phantom tears as she stared at the floor in a carefully orchestrated pose of extreme sadness. Troy sat up in his bed and stared at her, wondering just how the new dramatic Mom-episode would unfold.

“I saw her kiss you,” she said; down on the sidewalk. “I saw you close your eyes and wait for it like some – some stupid, lovesick fool.”

“It’s not like that!” Troy said. “Really, Mom; we were just messing around.”

She popped out of existence again and appeared next to his bed. Before Troy could realize what was happening, her hand slammed across the side of his face. Troy covered the rising, red welt with his palm and cowered away from her as she towered over him and pointed at him – her face scowling.

“You will bring that little tramp to me,” she commanded.

Troy shook his head slowly, risking her wrath.

“No, Mom,” he said; “I won’t”

The angry spirit lifted both of her hands toward the ceiling, balled them into fists and screamed in frustration. Troy scooted back in his bed, preparing for those hard fists to come falling upon him. She didn’t strike him though. Once her anger was at its peak, she grabbed him by the shoulders and ripped him from his bed. Troy lost his wind when his mother slammed his back against the bedroom wall. For a smaller woman – about five-foot-two – she was really strong. Not only did she pull his six-foot-one, two-hundred-twenty pound body from his bed, she pinned him against the wall as easily as she did when he was twelve.

“You will bring that bitch up here so I can get a better look at her,” she said, lifting him along the wall until his toes were dangling. “If you don’t, I’ll go find her myself and I don’t think you want that.”

Troy’s impulse was to struggle, to break free. He didn’t though. He nodded in obedience and assured his mother that he would try and convince the girl to come up to his apartment. He knew the power that his mother had when she was angry. He’d seen his father – after arranging a séance to communicate with his dead wife – piss her off and get crushed in front of the other members of the group. Troy didn’t want to end up like his dad, so he learned to live with his mother – to placate her. He would do as she told him to do. In the end, he always did.

***

She watched them embrace from the third story window of the apartment. Troy waited for over fifteen minutes before the little tramp finally decided to show up. He lifted the small woman off of the ground and kissed her deeply. Just bring that bitch up here, Margaret thought. Just bring her up here and let mommy do the rest. The curtain rod bent and came crashing down in front of the window, sending Margaret reeling backward across the room. She knew that she must’ve grabbed hold of the curtains and pulled them in anger, but she couldn’t remember doing it. She seldom remembered the things she did while she was in the throes of white-hot rage. She returned to the window and looked down. Troy and the trollop were looking up at the empty spot where the curtains once hung. They looked back at each other and then Troy whispered something into her ear. As the young woman listened, her face lit up into a bright smile. That’s it baby, Margaret thought. Romance her. Bring her to mommy. When she saw the couple enter the building through the large front entrance, Margaret retreated to a dark corner of the room to wait.

***

They were laughing when they entered the apartment. The young lady followed Troy to the living room couch and they both flopped down on it at the same time.

“You wanna watch the tube?” Troy asked.

“Sure,” the young lady said. “What’s good to watch these days?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll figure something out. There’s over two-hundred channels, so there’s bound to be something on.”

Troy snatched the remote from the arm of the couch and switched on the television. He surfed through the channels, passed one that broadcasted current news and then switched back to it at the young lady’s request. As the news stories flittered past on the small television screen, Troy and the young lady began to lose interest in the television and became more preoccupied with each other.

Margaret watched in degust from the corner of the room as the two love-birds first began to kiss, then progressed to groping. She could feel her anger growing fast and decided to let it accumulate so that when she finally released it…

The girl’s hands were interlocked around Troy’s neck, so Margaret kept a very close eye on her son’s roaming palms as they rubbed the girl’s thigh, then her waist, and then her breast. She couldn’t take it anymore. She vanished from the corner, reappeared at her son’s side and pulled him off of the couch by his hair. Then she turned to the girl, prepared to attack, but the tramp wasn’t there. Margaret searched the living room, trying to figure out where the girl was hiding, but she couldn’t find her. She returned to Troy, who was sitting with his back propped against the wall by then and glared down at him.

“Where is she?” She screamed. “Where’s your little whore?”

Margaret kicked her son violently and was just about to kick him again when she felt a familiar sensation that she hadn’t felt in decades – someone was poking the back of her shoulder, trying to get her attention. Margaret turned around and found herself face to face with the young girl.

The girl face was screwed up in an expression of rage. She didn’t look so sweet and fragile to Margaret anymore. The girl’s hands appeared instantly around Margaret’s throat and push her back against the wall. Margaret had never experienced such helplessness in her long years of death. She understood two things immediately. The first was that the young girl was stronger than she was; the second was that the young girl was also a spirit.

“He’s mine!” Margaret said.

“Not anymore,” the girl said.

 Margaret struggled to pry the girl’s fingers away, but couldn’t budge them. Finally, she screamed in frustration and disappeared with a loud pop.

 The girl returned to Troy, helped him to his feet, and hugged him tightly.

“She’ll be back,” Troy said.

The girl smiled brightly.

“Guess I better move in then, huh?” She said.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you more,” she replied.