by Max Jager
"What's sorry going to do for me?" She asked. He bit his lips and moved his nose around as his head struggled for an answer. He was sniffing for something that did not exist.
"I don't know." He said.
"You never know, do you. I'm wondering if there's even a brain in there." She said.
He put fingers into the holes of his shirt. They were at the bottom, where the red and blue stripes began to stretch out. He pulled, it was just a goodwill shirt anyways, wasn't worth much and wearing it, talking to Sophie, he began to feel that he wasn't worth much. When he felt a tear he undid his hooked fingers from the small mouths of his shirt and put his hands down on the table.
"Why do you always talk to me that way?" He asked. This was the first time he had spoken back and Sophie did not know how to feel. She looked around, expecting the faces of strangers to give her a direction but there was no one. They all had their backs to them. A homeless man wandered with a scarf dragging through the dirty floor. The wheels of his cart whistled her off. A local baker in the corner of her eye picked his nose, he was supposed to be brushing leaves and grass into the dry street gutters. It was a very lonely place, here in the parking lot. The silence made her angry. She slammed down on the desk this time.
"Why do you always mess everything up?" She asked.
"Why are you so mean?" He asked.
"Why are you such a coward?" She asked.
"Why are you a bitch?"
"Why are you a pussy?"
He was silent. His gaunt face looked out to the street where the pickup trucks were roaming in their low hum that sounded more like a bee than an engine. It was the mild buzz of the city, like white noise, a television channel that no longer worked.
"You never cared about being suspended before! How many times have you gotten in trouble? You can beat up half the school without caring." He said "No, you're mad because your mamma doesn't care about you. No one does and I'm just here to make you feel less alone. Aren't I?"
Her right eye twitched and she felt her hair split and move like bugs were crawling and picking at her scalp. These small sensations came to her neck and waved all across her body. She rose and kicked one of the table stands, it felt like the earth was shaking beneath Pip's scrawny hands. They looked like spider legs and danced back to the sides of his hips. The crows above the roof tops heard the noise, they too ran and left half-eaten cigarette buds on the floor. Some people looked at them now. Most of them curious and not so much concerned with stopping them as they were with watching, entertaining themselves with folded hands over their fat chests.
"Don't you talk about my mom." She pointed to Pip. "I've known you for six years but I don't care to lose you. When'd you suddenly get balls anyway?"
"I'm just tired of you screaming at me. You're a bully." He said.
"Must be high school. You want to practice at looking cool for all your new friends, don't you?" She asked, "You should tell them about how you ball up in the floor whenever you get punched or run to me."
He grabbed her pale wrist. His hand was in a tight grip and he was tensing his muscles like he had never done before. It was a bad fist, she noticed. She did not blink. She was not afraid. She was ready for it, had been for a while now and she too began to tighten her own fist. But before they could pull each other into that deadlock of violence, they felt the shadow of a person. It was imposing and set over their bodies. It held Sophie's shoulder and did not let go.
"Don't fight now." He said. It was a man, wearing too tight of a suit, black undershirt, red tie. His brown shoes did not match his belt and that was the first thing she noticed as she looked up to his tall presence. His bald head was spotted brown, his skin was ashy and cracked like sea water had been made to dry and salt his face. He was holding a sign that had fallen over. It was the advertisement, "SOPHYES FAMUS CANDYES, TASTE U-CAN TRUST."
She regretted letting Pip write. She regretted Pip. They pulled away from each other and Sophie detached the arm on his shoulder.
"I thought you were selling food, not a fight." He smiled. "I was hoping to get some lunch, though I'll settle for a good show."
Pip dragged his feet to the table and started looking for the cleanest bar.
"I'm not selling anything." Sophie closed the box on his hand. He whimpered and pushed her, she pushed back and the man stepped in again.
"We found a customer and you don't even want to sell him anything?" Pip asked between his deep breaths.
"We're closed." She huffed back. He began to convulse in anger and pointed to the floor near her feet to spit. She felt her shoes get wet and wanted to lunge but the man held her back.
"I don't want to be your friend anymore." He said. "I'm done with this. We never play games, we never have fun. It's just this dumb shit every day."
"I don't care. You mess everything up anyway. Why would I care? I'll do better off without you. Now go on, run away like you always do." She reached for her backpack. Pip's eyes were swelling and he wiped fresh tears with his sleeve. It was discolored from the constant bleaching, the tears dampened the stain and made it his shirt darker.
"Fuck you." He walked away. He knocked over a plastic chair and stood up to apologize to the nose picker it belonged to. It was an awkward goodbye, him fidgeting just to turn the corner. When she saw his body disappear into the city, she turned around. The bald man was looking at Pip's direction. His eyes were dead. Discolored. Gray. Were they used too?
"Hey, you," She said. He turned down. "We're - I'm not doing business." She said.
"Oh, won't you sell me one. Sweat heart?" He undid a button on his coat. His stomach rolled out. "They're famous, aren't they?"
"I don't sell. Definitely not to people like you." She said. Some people were beginning to close in on them as they felt it in the air too.
"What do you mean people like me?" His bearded face rustled as he twitched his mouth. It was unkempt and grew like wild bristles, she was afraid of getting scratched by it as he lowered his face.
"I mean weirdos." She tiptoed though could not reach him even as he bent. She repeated, louder. "You hear me, weirdo?"
"That's cruel, girl. Is that how you conduct your business?" He asked.
"Yeah. It is. I say what comes and goes, don't you think otherwise." She said. "And don't you butt in either. That's not proper to do."
"It's not proper to fight with friends."
"I don't have any friends." She said.
He backed away.
"Well then." He showed her his loose teeth, it looked like a half a smile. "Have a nice day. Make sure you apologize. It's not good to lose a friend." He walked. He bumped into a plastic chair and he walked, steady in a slow pace at first, then gaining speed as he neared the corner. When she saw him disappear, she felt a drop in her stomach like a needle had fallen down her throat and poked her. But in the heat of it, with her face flushed red with anger and with the noises of coming footsteps and loose sign posts creaking at the intersections, she could not make sense of her feelings. She wanted to get home. She'd be there for a while after all, it would be nice to start her nest.
She reached for her box of melted chocolates and gripped it. She felt the black, ooze onto her fingers and stain her skin.
9:05 PM
"Are you ready, Father?" A young woman said. They were not his children, rather, just children. They were in packs and in want of some knowledge. Four faces stared back at him, some old, some young, all with the same desire in their glazed eyes. Aleistar walked past them. The dark room seemed to narrow as he went up the stairs and through the caverns of the halls. The light bulbs hung from the tops of the room as wobbling chandeliers. They did not light much, only gave a buzzing sound and parceled shadows across the walls. He was in a small room, it could not have fit more than two men at arms length but was wide. There were tables, mirrors that could not reflect in the obfuscation and the faint violet of flower bouquet resting upon one of the dressing room tables. He drained his sweat from a ragged coat hanging
on the side of the table. He looked around, the rusted metal and brick whose rotted and chipped holes were homes for small hands of grass, lazy flowers. Aleistar sighed and remembered the words, quality of a soul, he thought. It seemed to burrow into him. It planted a seed of some evil design in him, he knew it. He wanted to dig it out but couldn't find a grip among dirt on his conscience. He looked inside of the table whose drawer squeaked. A black stole hung by the edge and he took it out and felt the velvet in his hand.
He had germinated it, watered it, fed it. Man after man he had killed, picked up from the streets, murdered. He had started with suspects and criminals and moved on to the homeless and sick and now here he was.
He felt his pocket. The knife was stiff.
He remembered his wife then and there and the horrified face she made before she had died. Pinned against a tree by a car, a freak accident they said by a drunk driver. Aleistar put the stole on his shoulder, wrapped it around his stomach and returned it to his side. He remembered the man who had killed her too. He had found him, had crashed his own stolen car into him. He had gotten out, felt the cool air and felt his cheeks which were colder still. He had walked to his drivers seat and dragged his hand past the dirtied car dice to the shit head's nose. He closed his mouth and watched his broken body squirm. He dodged the police, but would not dodge Aleistar that day. The sound his wife's murderer made when he choked on his blood, he had found to be too intoxicating. He was the first man he had killed, the killer of one love and mother of another. He was ashamed at first to have it in him, but grew with it and then the demon came after. Murder was always a small joy when they were evil.
But his joy ended today. There was no pleasure in this.
His head straightened up and the years of stress appeared like cracks on his stone face. He walked through two doors and settled it in his heart: there would be blood.
The light was bright here, on the stage, or maybe the dusk of the halls had reared his eyes to blackness. Aleistar put his hand to his face as he blocked out the overhead glare and looked up to the fleet of row where the plentiful sat. A symposium that stretched to the end of the rusty walls. Exhaustion pipes hung at the tops of the ceilings. This stage creaked. It was all cracked, jury rigged, this old theater that leered at him with broken gas tubing.
He walked to a pedestal that stole his courage. His eyes were intense, narrowed, as he looked at the book… and the boy in front of him. The people around looked at him, their curious and doubtful faces painted white as he unveiled the child.
"We should begin then. Of mans first transgression, his rebellion and his freedom."
Amongst the dozens there, only Aleistar's voice rung out.
Itrus watched his father from afar, from a balcony where the tattered red drapes were violent as the wind drafts roared.
"Our salvation, the morning sun." The voice was loud.
Itrus looked below himself, at the steps and seats. He tried to remember their faces, but could only recognize the famous. The commissioner, the mayor. Everyone else was a strange to him and that frightened him. The idea that they ran around in his city, that they were here now like anonymous emissaries slithering around with invisible streaks of filth.
When he saw an eye come up to him he froze. He laid on the floor, waited for something to happen but was made calm as he heard his father's voice again. He was not found. There was no disrupting the murder.
Itrus brought his head up again and he put his hands over his mouth. His eyes felt like popping out of his skull and all he could see was the red, waving above him. The red, wrapping over him. Red everywhere.
He urinated himself, he only noticed it an hour later after the violent throes of death. After the noise and clapping.
He was quiet up in the balcony with the golden rimmed edge and the ruined Victorian design. Time had eaten it away. He sat on his belly, on the floor for hours now. Heavy steps, light steps, monstrous steps. He heard them all. He begged his heart to stop. He put a second hand over his mouth when he realized he was crying too loud. And soon all he heard was his crying.
When there was absolute darkness he had wandered out. It was an hour before midnight and by the time he had made it to the main hall of this ruined theater, he had wished to get caught just to die and rid himself of the images. He pulled his hair, stretched his face.
His feet were dragging and he fell.
"This is dad." Itrus said. He looked around at the fauna and forest surrounding him. He looked westward, his red eyes pointed that way. There were no lights here, deep inside of nature, where the vile tendrils of nature reclaimed and wrapped over him. He was swimming in grass as high as his waist. He had trouble finding his bike and even more trouble riding it as he fell constantly on pocket holes and wild roots.
Color was draining from him. He swore he could hear the voices in the silence of the forest. He heard it in the silence of the city. Death throes, monstrous screeches, his father's roar.
He thought for a moment of where to turn. Not the police who had betrayed his trust, not the city. Not the journalists, nothing made him safe. He wanted to run away, looked through his phone and began searching for the nearest train. All he saw projected on the screen, through his warped imagination, was the young boy dead on the altar. Burned. And the thing his body bred.
He cleaned mucus from his phone screen. He cleared his face and looked up. He would confess. He rode on. His brain echoed like a mantra, confess. Confess. Confess.
He threw his bike when he saw the doors and slammed his body against them. He slapped with his hand. He punched. His bit, he tried everything and felt his face drag down the walls. Dirty, smelly, moping on the floor. He held his head and waited for a death that would not come.
But there was a crack. Then a tired, groggy voice.
"Yeah, yeah. What can I do for you?" The Priest's face looked out at the boy. He tapped Itrus on the shoulder. "My child? What can I do?"
And he shook him.
1:39 AM
The world looked slanted as she walked. Her friends were like walking canes, three wandering trees. She grabbed at their necks and their arms and held them as she fell. A few shots, a few drinks, a few dances had made her tired. Her body felt hot but she could not feel the sweat, only the cold from the outside that felt good against her skin and chilled her.
"That annoying prick wanted to fuck me for so long." She said. A friend to her side only nodded and typed away at her phone.
"The uber is coming soon." She said.
Another friend stood by the edge of the street with her hands wrapped around herself for the cold had become almost unbearable. They were beneath a light post that felt like a hot lamp right above their scalps. Though the drunk could not feel much.
"Yeah, he wanted to take you home. We saw." The friend was annoyed, she always spoke low when she was annoyed. The drunk only giggled and looked behind to a door that opened from a bartender taking out trash. The drunk held onto her friends sweater and stood herself as she pushed down. She rubbed her legs together and suddenly felt how full her stomach was.
"Can I use your restroom." The bartender stared at her for a bit. She grimaced, scratched her head. She didn't say yes or no, just mumbled something and the drunk rushed past her.
"Sorry. She gets a little aggressive when she's wasted." One of the friends said. They looked at each other in the dimming light and smiled all the while the drunk ran through the bar, past empty bottles that laid on their sides on tables that laid on their sides, chairs with uneven legs up above the tables and the smell of urine and nail-polish scented whiskey that permeated the air. It almost made her want to gag and she ran to the bathroom faster. There she turned the faucet and ran the water down her head like baptism. She wanted to get rid of the layer on her face. Used makeup, spotty with dirt and sweat that seemed heavy on her. And when she was done and her legs finally could not bother being still she went into the restroom.
She sat and urinated and looked at the numbers of
whores, mostly men and few hearts with strangers names etched in them. These were all around her. Some graffiti, too.
It made her head ache, a pulsing that came in waves. This wasn't the fun time she was looking for.
She put her head down, away from her phone that buzzed and bounced out of her pocket. It cracked on the floor but all she could stare at was the cracked tile as her eyes were heavy and she wondered if she still had her makeup on as she drooled. The faucet ran, her leg tapped to keep her awake.
All she felt was cold and relief. It was like that for a while, just the buzz of the phone and her head nodding off and her body slanting away on the porcelain throne that made her legs a little numb and prickly.
The phone stopped buzzing sometime in her fading attention and somewhere in that she heard the stall open. She thought nothing of the sound of the rubber guard scraping against the floor or the light footsteps, like hooves against rock. Clack. clack. Someone's here. Clack. Clack. It was only enough to wake her up. She opened her eyes to the tile. Her neck was stiff. She heard the stall open now and the noise it made as it crashed against her adjacent wall. She did not breath. Only yelped slightly. The person did not hear her it seemed as it just rubbed against the walls and the toilet and dropped something into the water.
