The Little Demons Inside

by Micah Thomas

  A man in a sport coat was alternating between angrily shouting and typing away at this cellphone. He'd been rear ended, minor impact by a truck showing all the signs of a landscaper service. Hitched platform full of tools and yard waste. Palm fronds and lawn mowers. The driver and his crew of two sat in the truck with the windows rolled down. Their brown faces placid and not taking the bait as they bore the racially charged complaints with total indifference. Sanders got out of his patrol car, pleased that they had at least already pulled onto the shoulder and were not blocking the flow of commuters locked in a death race to get to jobs they probably hated. He went through the motions of collecting licenses, proof of insurance.

  "Sir, wait in your vehicle. I'll be back to hear you out in a moment."

  Sanders hoped, as he always did, that the polite tone he strived for would be returned, but he could sense the man's impatience at the perceived inconvenience. If he was racist against Mexicans, it stood to reason that Sanders' blackness would shape the encounter in some degree. Sanders was grateful the man complied without additional complaint, returning to his car and deep interest in whatever was happening on his phone.

  When Sanders returned, offering the simple statement that the accident was minor, and insurance should be contacted, the man opened up with a spew of nastiness.

  "These fucking Mexicans. I want them deported. I voted for Chissom. He's making this country great again and getting rid of this trash."

  Sanders sighed, "Sir, I'm writing you a ticket. As I see it, you were on your cellphone, driving distractedly and clearly impaired by this technology. And that is what caused this accident."

  "What the holy fuck? I fucking knew you'd side with them."

  "Sir, I've treated you with respect, now take your ticket, follow the instructions on paying either online or by mail, or exercise your right to contest it in court. Have a nice day."

  "Hey, I want your badge number. What's your badge number."

  Every day was exactly the same, Sanders thought as he watched and waited for the cars to pull away. He took a moment to jot down notes about the encounter and then put that experience in a box in his mind, ready to move on, or was he? What really bothered him wasn't racism. That had been virulently around forever. In fact, his father, while proud that he had pursued law enforcement, always warned him that he'd never been accepted in a place like Phoenix. That he should've taken a career in the community, their community, somewhere like Detroit, where he could be a role model. But we end up where we end up. Things are set in motion, one gets a job and is happy with a paycheck, and sometimes one falls in love, and thoughts of moving away become retirement dreams, always moving further and further away from the present. No, what bothered him was that, things were not getting better, and neither was a status quo being maintained. Things were getting much worse. If you studied history, and Sanders thought himself above average having actually been a student of history and not merely a History channel viewer or Wikipedia reader, one might notice, the is how things fall apart. The basic social contract runs deeper than a shared faith in currency, more than trends of small asses and large hair or large asses and shaved heads. The real sign of breakdown is a fundamental disagreement of facts, a total rejection of a shared reality where shades of red are at least within the same crimson color family. Truth becomes a matter of alternative facts, lies become a matter of who's voice was loudest and longest. Chissom's America was increasingly demonstrating just such a breakdown.

  The next call was different. A domestic disturbance. Maybe a gun. And Sanders was closest to the neighborhood. Mesa wasn't bad, per se. The mall was exhausted, but not exactly run down. The vitality present through the '80s and '90s was merely depleted. Homes held their value, but nothing grew. Somehow, the sun seemed hotter here than in more vibrant parts of town. Sanders passed the high school where DARE programs once had happy attendance and he knew the names of most of the graduating class. None of that was true anymore. He didn't know them, he didn't understand them. Neighbors didn't know each other. Each house was a digital nest, eyes buried in their phones, tablets, and streaming media at all hours. There was a wall between the police and the people, made almost entirely of media representations, and he had no idea how to bridge the gap here or anywhere. Mesa's arrests, guns, drugs, drunks didn't make the headlines often, but mirrored national trends entirely.

  Sanders arrived at the scene, another stucco house in a row of stucco houses. The only neighborhood differentiator might have been the lack of upkeep of the landscape, slightly more dead grass amid patchy gravel in dated color schemes. In front of one house, a man sat on the curb. It must be burning his legs, Sanders thought of the hot concrete. Sanders stood behind his open door, a safe but not really safe twenty feet away, and called to the man.

  "Sir? Hello there. Someone here called the police."

  The man, light red hair and heavy set, fat perhaps, but very tall even sitting down, barely looked up. Sanders could see he'd been crying. Or maybe maced?

  "Sir, I'm going to need you to show me your hands and get down on the ground."

  "I'm already sitting down," he replied in the petulant tones of a teenager.

  He's not even a man, just a boy, Sanders thought.

  "All the same, I need you to get completely on the ground, while it's just you and me."

  "Fine," Sanders barely heard it, but felt its weight. The resignation to authority.

  With his arms out stretched and laying prone, Sanders could really see how big this kid was. 6'3, maybe 6'4. Had to be pushing 300lbs.

  Sanders advanced quickly and noted a figure in the window. A black woman, her face in a stern expression of what? Contempt? On reaching the kid, Sanders asked, "What's your name?"

  "Johnny."

  "John, you have a good reason for me to be out here today?"

  "I don't know." Again, that tone. What is it that comes after millennial? Sanders didn't know, but it tended to live at home and always underestimated how real the real world could quickly get.

  "John," again, repeating the name. Show respect. Sanders had gotten a lot of mileage from this tactic. "I need to know if anything in your pockets is going to poke me or if you have a weapon."

  "I don't have any weapons." The emphasis on have, drawn out and exasperated. Sanders rarely wished he'd had kids of his own. Sometimes life just reinforced your beliefs.

  Sanders did a quick pat down, confirming the boy's statement. He found a wallet, Velcro, emblazoned with the Nintendo logo.

  "How old are you, John?"

  "Eighteen."

  "John, do you want to sit in my car for a minute? You're not under arrest, it's just really hot out here and must be hot inside your house too."

  "Ok," sullen, dejected, big ol' baby.

  Sanders gave the watching woman a quick nod of the head and she returned a deliberate shrug. Sign language, but meaning what?

  In his car, Sanders cranked up the AC, and turned to face the kid in the back, with his radio in hand.

  "This is Officer Sanders responding to the domestic at 314 Zachary in Mesa. No additional patrols needed. Just a little misunderstanding."

  The kid squirmed, uncomfortable in the small space. Sanders could now see the mix in him. Black mixed kid, big like him, god, that's a row to hoe in this town, in this age.

  "You gonna arrest me?"

  "John, if I hadn't just called that in, if I hadn't been the first one here, you could have been shot today. Now, I'm not a mind reader or a fortune teller, but is that your mom inside there?"

  "Yeah. She's a bitch."

  Sanders sighed, "I don't want to hear that vulgar talk, John. Not in my car. What happened?"

  The kid crossed his arms, "She disconnected the internet."

  "Ok. Why am I here?"

  "I don't know," He said again with greater exasperation.

  "You wait here and think about what you might have done, and I'm going to go talk to your mom."

  Sanders knocked on the door, whi
ch opened mid-knock.

  "I don't care if you arrest him. Take him. Take him away."

  "Ma'am, John is not under arrest yet. What happened?"

  "Just like them to send the black cop to deal with the colored people. What you gonna do? Huh? What are you gonna do?"

  "I'm likely to do nothing. Depending on what he did."

  "Officer do nothing. That's about right. He bawled up his fists at me because he won't get a job, won't get a driver's license, won't get out of the house."

  "Did he put you in fear of harm or harm you in any way?"

  "That's beside the point. You got me wasting my AC holding the door open for you like I'm trying to cool down the whole planet."

  "Ma'am, do you want me to arrest him, really? Do you want that for him?"

  "Let him go then. But what would you do? You see how big he is? If he doesn't mind me, next time, what would you do?"

  Sanders told John to mind his mother and let him go. Sure, the kid could be dangerous, but he wasn't presently dangerous. What would you do if if if? What would have happened if if if? Sanders didn't want to know the answers to these questions. There's no satisfaction like not ending up another news story, he thought with grim resolve, not even the slightest bit curious about what becomes of these, his wards, his charges, his citizens he protects after these hot and weird but mundane encounters. In his own way, he wished them the best and hoped to never see them again.

  ***

  Henry and Denzel fell into a sort of pattern. Henry would wake up, feel a terrible sense that something was horribly wrong in his life, that he'd forgotten something very important, and then have a cup of tea to start his day. After that, each and every time, Henry's sense of time and urgency both dissipated into a fog of contentment and mild, but happy confusion. Some days they'd just sit around reading the paranormal books laying around the house. Other times, Denzel would turn on the TV on the back patio, a huge box CRT with a built-in VCR. He didn't have cable, but he did have thirty or forty tapes, probably picked up at the flea market. Some were small-budget conspiracy videos, some were porn, some were no-budget conspiracy videos that would be more at home on YouTube, but here they were. Denzel would get high and yell at the TV, and Henry would lay in the hammock, eating oranges, trying not to laugh.

  In the evening, still hot outside and battling mosquitos, Denzel was getting real fired up at one video in particular, Ancient Aliens. The evolution of educational entertainment programming had gone in such strange directions. The presumption that humankind could not possibly be responsible for technological accomplishments was downright insulting to human ingenuity and the power of slave labor. The general impact was a revolt against any established anthropology or archeology, rejecting history via discipline in favor of theories without evidence, but with a whole lotta magical thinking. Henry had no education beyond high school and the lessons of the street, but he had a sense that this was ridiculous. Of course, there was his inability to reconcile his experiences with the supernatural against the presumption of a reasonable nonmagical history of the world.

  "Hey, I'm not being critical, but wouldn't all these conspiracies need like a huge amount of competency and coordination to pull off?"

  "You don't even know, man, until the system comes for you, then you begin to see the web."

  Henry knew that Denzel's volatility could turn on him and tried to be as amiable as possible when pushing the conversation around like unwanted vegetables on a plate.

  "I don't know. I guess I never seemed important enough to be subjected to it."

  "Well, look here. The State of California is at war with me. You know what they had me arrested for? A gun charge. I haven't so much as looked at a weapon, except that antique Wayne bought. We had it looked at and the fire pin was all messed up and would blow off your god danged arm if you tried to use it."

  Henry had no idea who Wayne might have been. Denzel had some acquaintances, but no one came around since he'd been here.

  "You were arrested?"

  "You bet I was. I spent the night in there, sleeping on the cement slab, surrounded by the meth heads. They give you a Ziploc bag of mushy slop to eat, and you use that as a pillow."

  "Shitty," Henry said.

  "Shitty for them. They should have checked themselves before fucking with someone that's met four presidents. I know congressmen, I'm connected out the ass and I'm a millionaire.

  "Do you work for Black Star or for Wiseman?"

  "Work? I'm retired. I'm a millionaire goddamnit."

  "But you know what I'm talking about, right?" Henry asked, trying to stay focused on the conversation, but also distracted by a shiny wind chime. He must be developing ADD, he just couldn't focus for a damn.

  "Dude, you are starting to piss me off. You know about orbs and vortexes?"

  "I know that an orb is a sphere and a vortex is a, um, a center of things, like a sink drain."

  "That's the lay person understanding, sure, that's reasonable. I thought, hoped that you'd have more brains. Given what you been through and all."

  "What exactly have I been through?"

  Denzel giggled and shut off the TV.

  "What's so funny?"

  "You've communed with god, man. Or with the gods. Either way, just being around you, I can tell you've seen some shit, so you're either stupid or you're holding back what you know."

  Henry thought about this for a minute. In the time he's spent with Denzel, he'd seen this aging hippie conspiracy theorist pothead guy as a mysterious but ultimately boring rescuer. There was a thought there that kept slipping from Henry's mind, and he suddenly had his question ready. Oh yeah, why was he even hanging out with this guy?

  "Let's go for a drive. There's a place of energy, a vortex if you will."

  "Is it dangerous?" Henry wasn't sure he wanted to be anywhere that might stir up something, but that certain something had been quiet since the Circle K.

  "I wasn't exactly told not to, but hey, what's life without a few risks. Maybe you'll realize that you do know more than you think you know."

  Denzel looked at Henry as if expecting him to say something profound, or demonstrate in some way, that yes, I dig, but he didn't. Henry gathered up his backpack and put in a few bottles of water. The idea of a nighttime road trip to the desert was an exciting change of pace, but also kinda scared him.

  The desert landscape at night was much of the same as the night Henry had arrived. A flatness out to the horizon, punctuated by mesas, mounds, and the scrub brush. Hardly another car passed them by, and Henry felt the desolation of the desert, so different from the green, wet forests outside of Seattle. As he always did, he had a terrible sense that he'd die out here, parched and alone in the course sand and rock.

  Denzel had the radio tuned to a talk radio show dedicated to mysterious mysteries, callers sharing tales of unexplained noises, glitches in the matrix, governmental and celebrity personalities alike being replaced by reptilian copies, and reports out of India that a god had been reborn there. The host spoke in a professional radio voice from a bygone era, and the callers spoke in rushed, urgent agitation.

  "Do you ever call in?"

  "Bah! They don't know anything. Not that there isn't truth in there somewhere, but they don't know because they haven't seen the things you and I have. They can't even see their own chains around their necks."

  Henry didn't understand this last bit, but he'd seen the Matrix a couple times and figured he got the gist.

  They pulled off the highway and down a series of increasingly narrower, rougher roads. When they got out, Henry stared at the night sky. In its immensity, the stars were dizzying. The zip of satellites clearly visible. The slight redness of Mars, clearly defined. He'd never really seen the sky like this. It was like something out of National Geographic.

  Denzel caught him staring, "You get away from the interference of the city lights, away from the radiation and cell towers and chem trails, you can really see it, right? Once you pull away from a s
creen for a goddamn minute, you can see everything."

  Not a cloud in the sky, their path was clearly illuminated by the moon and the stars. The light had a spectral quality, blue tinted and dreamlike. Following Denzel's lead, they hiked up a trail to a convergence of rock, wind worn into a natural gateway in red stone. It wasn't a significantly challenging steppe, but the outcome was a rather high elevation on the backside of the bluff.

  They sat in a natural bench at the foot of the gateway. Henry took out a bottle of water and looked at the contents of his weary and worn backpack.

  "I realize this might not be the right time or place, but can I show you something?"

  "Uh huh. What have you been toting around?"

  Henry had reread every page of printouts on the greyhound ride from Seattle to Phoenix. He didn't understand it, couldn't unfog his memories of what happened at Black Star, and wasn't even fucking sure of who gave him the papers. There was a fragment of a memory of waking up, his room wasn't his room, but like a hotel he stayed at in Black Star, and someone came in, gave him some papers and said something. Then nothing. His next memory was being downtown at the bus station and knowing he had to get to this address in Surprise. It seemed so logical, but now that he questioned it, he couldn't make it make sense.

  Henry handed the backpack over to Denzel, who gently took out the disordered mass of papers, and shuffled them into a stack.

  "Let me see. Let me see. What do we have here?"

  Henry couldn't watch him. Denzel's face when reading was a contorted squint and grimace, whether it was a piece of good news or something bad, you couldn't tell until he was done reading.

  "Oh, this is funny," he said, flipping quickly through the email chain and chuckling to himself. He didn't even get through it all when he stopped.

  "Dude, you might as well chuck this over the ledge here."

  "But it's all I have that proves, something. That they did something to me."