by Max Jager
4:26 AM
The high screech of cars was out in front of him. He could hear the police chases like the wound up machinations of the gear rotations of the great clock. One tick, another dead, a second tick, two now. One after the other in the interim, all driving to the same place.
He could feel it, not so much know it. Consciousness can only take so much from the murky waters of its underside before it has too much and he had too much. Itrus was moving, turning, not thinking of the future in precepts of months or days, not even in hours. He was thinking in minutes, thinking, with the sweaty upper lip, how he could make the best of the next five minutes he had.
There was an argument off, somewhere in the other room opposite or next to him (the noise was too hard to tell in distance or location) and he put his fingers inside of his ears to try and concentrate. He shut the blinds, watched the keyhole on the door and let public television run in the background. An ad, a plastic smile. Two men staring back through the tube. They were selling turkey shears. Hundred dollar turkey shears. Fucking scissors.
Fucking everything. He had his hands to his neck with the tight pressure of a man holding a wound, though he did not bleed. His neck sat on the incline and the air conditioner stopped breathing out from the ceiling panels above. He was in a cheap motel, with the cheap flower wallpaper and the cheap carpet gone coarse and blotched in spots from whimsical cum stains, perhaps a stray spill of lean. Itrus thought about it, the only thing he could think of that would cheer him up. He wondered if he was under the influence himself, his body felt that wrong disassociation, like his stomach had gone up and flown away from him. No. Fear was the real drug here.
A fear that he got when he looked at the screen of his phone and the lone message from his father.
Whre r u at?
He needed to leave. It came to him when he reached into the midget fridge and the beer bottle inside.
It wouldn't be hard to leave, there weren't any memories to keep onto. But for Itrus, the problem wasn't the idea, but the execution. It wasn't where he would go, he had enough money in his debit card to survive him the month. Nor was he in want for any particular luxury, a bed and roof and food were good enough.
The hard part was the how. A bike could only take him so far, he reasoned with those two long fingers against his chin, rubbing the juvenile hairs.
The police would find him. And the police would not help him. If not them, then another.
So the hard part was finding the car, and finding the car was what he did. He ran. Slipped on his long jeans, then ran again to the yellow book in the corner of the room. A taxi service, he looked for one, a foreign one. One he could not imagine ever existing in this city.
Ishmael and Friends Taxi Service, Family owned since 1964
He rung them. Did not hear so much as a voice as he was too busy screaming out his address until he ran out of breath and was forced, exasperated, to speak clearly again.
"I'm at the motel six. The one next to the bowling alley, yes. I need to get out." Itrus said. "As fast as possible, to the nearest airport. Train station, whatever is closer."
"Airport? Airport. That's long way." His accent was thick. Polish? It didn't matter. Except it annoyed Itrus, so maybe it did matter. With how often he had to repeat himself before the raspy metallic voice could say a-ha, yes, done deal.
He walked out, the rusted door flicked its loose handle back as if the room wanted him out too. He locked the door, at last, pushed it in a bit, then left. His neighbor came out, a young woman raised her middle finger then turned to Itrus.
"Fuck you." She spat and left.
"Have a nice day." Itrus said. His eyes were open, it was more of a murmur in the buzzing night, the fluorescent lights would not hush, the flies would not stop zapping themselves and dropping like small bits of ash against the beige floor.
He ran out, down two separate sections of stairs, past a couple kissing, past a young boy being slapped upstairs by an angry grandmother. He went down to the parking lot and the car, green with a white stripe, that honked at him. Itrus lifted the trunk. There wasn't much in his hands, he never had much, just a backpack. In it, a copy of Paradise Lost and some underwear, a flash drive containing in it, in no order, lesbian porn, pictures of a book called Goetia (amateur demonology) and a PDF file with some plastered bible verses across the page. He held the small flash drive and then thought, Though I walk through the valley of shadow and death, I fear no evil. He slid across the back. Fell. Fixed his hair and entered, it looked like the motions of a salmon in the middle of its heated lust, dashing through the air in an arc.
"The airport. As fast as you can." Itrus slapped the back seat.
"Alright. That hundred dollars, long trip."
"That's what I'm hoping for. I've got the money, don't worry about it. Get me far away."
"Alright, sir." And they were off. Through the streets bustling with life, the drunk drivers swerving. He heard all manners of noise, tribal, animal, human, so similar to one another he could not tell them apart from beast or war. Bass, so loud it shook glass, women hollering, men reeling into purses and bags reconditioned into vomit bags, the taxi driver screaming out profanities into the honking streets where people refused to drive slow. They turned two corners, five until they were on and about the highway that bled into the forest. The trees looked calm in the still air like bulwarks, guardians. He hoped to see some kind of protector, elf, fairy. Lord knows he needed one.
He spotted a night owl, white and docile, who wrapped around a branch and turned its head a full a hundred and eighty degrees. He swore its eyes followed him as they got closer down to the ground floor and the mountaintops became the mountain floors, where the loose dirt skidded and broke underneath tire and metal.
A blaring noise.
A honk. The car turned, nearly bled paint as it touched railing. They were still somewhat high, the arrow tops of trees told him so. They were so close, Itrus could feel it.
"Ah, fuck, third time today." The driver said. A police officer blinded Itrus with the blue and red in the rear mirror. He could barely see into the car and did not notice the two men that came up to the driver.
"Step out of the vehicle, sir." One of them told him. Itrus could not tell them apart, they seemed like two brooding statues with the stone faces hidden behind night veil. Or maybe it was sanded off.
"For what, What'd I do?"
"Can you please step out, sir." The second one said. He was smiling, Itrus could see that, the teeth at least. He saw the fangs and his stomach turned with the feeling of disgust. The creeping of it, like his stomach was an overflowing well with the poisoned water slowly steeping out and killing the grass and flowers and trees. Itrus studied their face, it was beginning to boil in him. Nauseas fear.
But the driver, he did not know better. He stepped, couldn't afford another infraction after all. His hands slapped each other as he bartered.
"Come on, it was dark. I sped a bit, let it go, would you? No one here."
And the police officer smiled at him. One of them grabbed him. The other rose his hand and brought it down, a swing of the baton, like a scorpion bite across his neck. The noise of his skull hitting the floor was low, like a tremor in the floor, a tremor that rose to Itrus's hands and feet. He turned the handle, nothing. He kicked, nothing. He kicked harder, the glass broke, trapped his legs and made him squeal with blood. Dragging his stabbed leg back made it worse, like tiny razors danced across his foot.
The two were just finishing their beating. The sound of skull and brain turned to the sound of mush, the beating of ground meat. Itrus could not see, did not want to. He held his leg and tried with the other. He reclaimed his leg, prepped it fire but stopped. The glass above him broke, scratched him and he saw the batons. Shredding, pulling away from the sheet of glass. He was grabbed by the hood of his shirt, then by the neck and slowly they worked until his whole body was out. One of them got the idea to open the door from the made hole, and by then it was too l
ate for Itrus.
"They ain't ganna find you." One of them said. "Who knew all you needed were a couple orange cones?"
"Fuck off me!" Itrus shouted. The birds flew from and reduced the forest desolate. He threw a piece of glass at one of them. It made a wound, nothing more, a small cut on the lip.
"Don't get so mad, sweety." He said with a low wisp. "The game was rigged from the start."
He looked down at Itrus. Pitied him, maybe. Itrus couldn't tell what the bleeding smile/frown meant. He couldn't stop to see it close enough to tell. He was shaking, shaking up until they tazed him in spasms and cuffed him and forced him to watch the taxi driver and the car speeding off. A brick, all you needed was a brick to kill a man. To hold down the pedal of the car, to make it raise off and through the railings. To explode it, into a shower of metal, like meteor showers of prehistoric days. The driver and the car, burned. The splattered brain, stained. And Itrus, Itrus with the two maniacs in a car engine roaring that bloodthirsty yell. Like a predator, warning others, with the lamb gripped by the neck, this one is mine. Steer away.
They did not speak much. Laughed, some. It was terrible. What terrible fate, to be surrounded by people yet to feel so alone.
5:03 AM
Itrus
July 25th, 2017
5:03 AM
He was led through the muddy floors of the forest where the wheels of cars stopped and rolled endlessly into the flutter of brown snow. It made the trees dirty, with the sputter of mud. The car engine went on for a bit in its mindless anger. The police officers slapped the wheel, nodded to each other and opened the back door. They pulled him from his feet like some kind of fish dragged about on the port floors, floundering and flopping the dark waters all around. He was gasping. His face was scratched and it went on for a while, hitting branches and snagging himself against shrubbery before one of them got the good idea of lifting him up. They cuffed his hands this time and undid the cuffs on his feet.
Itrus's first instinct was to kick. He did. Felt proud even, in having done it until he received two kicks to his stomach. Air escaped and he opened his mouth for the silent groan. He was led through the forest where the animals knew well from where to steer away. They observed, small auxiliaries, mute animals with their curved spines facing up to the three pairs of footsteps that sloshed around wet ground. Itrus turned to see them, a squirrel holding a nut now dashing through a fallen log, the log itself half eaten and a haven of spiders and of snakes.
The birds were the only ones uncaring. They stood and sang atop the pines. The trees were shaved. They did not rustle much, they seemed to get skinnier the closer the three got to their destination. A lake house. He had never seen it before or at least never remembered it. Below him, he could feel with the hole in his shoes, a trail of dirt left behind by wheels.
The rust-colored pick-up trucks were waiting. One of them flashed his headlights and they nodded, made some sign with their hands and walked inside. Cranberries were floating on the surface of the water, Itrus noticed the red from the small slits made along the boardwalk. There were vines peeking out. It smelled of fall though it was summer, it smelled of the late of the year where the bright flowers and the bright trees die, where the snowfall covers all and leaves the grounds desolate. There was no snow though. It was summer, after all, a strange summer he began to think. The mist jumped along the steady waters and it carried with it the parting fruity scent that felt more of a memory of a smell.
When he came inside he saw all around him the white shawls and the suits and the bright yellow flowers atop their heart. A pledge.
The cobwebs were forming in the corners of the rooms where the fishing hooks and rods lay. The head of a deer was across from him, a glass counter to his rear with the round patina stained bell that no longer rung the call. It was an empty, dead store. A fish on a plaque reminded him. Its weight and name were rubbed out, filed out by time. He was taken further to the back. Through a hall and past a bathroom and some kind of storage room. He was brought to the garage (if a fishing store could ever have a garage) where the boats were docked and held. He waited inside with what looked like six other men, three women.
There were four boats, three were rudderless. He looked to his side and where the small room bled out to. The placid dark waters and the cold winds that shook trees out of their summer bliss. Now he understood why the trees looked like starved wraiths, the lake was killing them. Sucking them, draining them. Like their very life force was pulled out of them and thrown into the water.
Itrus faced westward to the black lake, more a chasm than a mass of water. There was no sound from it. No sound of life, at least. He remembered there were fish here once, that constituted the very shop he was in. They were gone now.
His father came in a bit after five thirty five, two men behind him closed the metal sheet and covered the lake from their view. The waters were silent below them, they only heard the creek of wood and the light bumping of boats hitting each other. A fight with slaps, like playground children would.
Itrus was silent.
Aleistar came up to him. He looked at him and put his hands on Itrus's chin. He jerked away.
"What have they done to you?" He asked. No one answered. Everyone looked at each other and Aleistar's nostrils flared, he faced the two men behind Itrus.
"Do you think he's a farm animal? Do you think it was right to treat him like one?" He asked. They didn't answer. He slapped them, three times. Twice to make them think, the third to make them bleed. Their noses ran and they looked up with the white veil beaten off their face. They were middle-aged men who looked past Aleistar and began repentance.
"I am sorry father for we have sinned…" They went on, practiced verse. "And I plead upon the divine nine to deliver me from my weakness." And it went on and on and on and on until Aleistar slapped them again. A fourth to hush them. He yanked the keys from one of their sides and undid the cuffs on Itrus's hands. He looked down at them as if surprised he even had them with that childlike skepticism.
Itrus looked to his father who had his arms extended to hug him.
He punched him. Square in the nose. It sent Aleistar back and made him hold his face as he landed on the floor, half his arm was in the lake water. Four men came to apprehend Itrus, Itrus who struggled and bit along their arms and who shouted.
"Let go, let go, let go."
It felt like a body cast, paralysis as the men held from him from feet to neck. A pool of pythons, suffocating.
"Let him go." Aleistar stood. "He's not yours to hurt or to judge, you hear me?"
They looked strange, surprised with the eyes behind their face masks low and beady. They hesitated for a while, kept close to make sure he would not attack but eventually turned away. And Itrus was back in the middle of the room facing his father, both of them dirty on the face.
"Come here." Aleistar brought his hand close. He was rubbing the mud and the dried leaves from his sons face. Itrus pulled his hand away and everyone locked up into that fighting stance.
"Enough with all of you," Aleistar yelled. "He's my son, did you hear me? You animals!"
And Itrus was torn in that moment. For his body wanted to run but his eyes showed that strange resolve, not necessarily courage but anger. Anger over the night he had snuck into the theater and bore witness to the death of Pip. Anger for the child. The memory ran in his head until it came upon the demon and his legs felt shaky all of a sudden.
"You killed a kid." Itrus's voice was unsteady, between a high pitched shriek and those anger driven grunts. "You did something to him."
"How'd you find out?" His eyes were wide.
"I saw you with the dagger and the table. You fucking stabbed him, over and over. You fucking killed him, dad." Itrus held his mouth, his eyes felt those salty tears swelling. But his cheeks were fierce, hurting in how long they held that mad frown.
"I do what I do for the family, you have to understand. And not just mine." Aleistar extended his hand and spun to poin
t out the room. "All of theirs too. I do it for them as much as us."
"Us? Are you fucking insane? What the fuck was that thing?"
"Thing? What thing?"
"Don't weasel out of this." Itrus clenched his hands. "The fucking monster, it came out of the kid."
Aleistar drank his spit. His adam's apple bobbed.
"The uteri, the heart, the demon." Aleistar rubbed his chin, undecided on which to start from. "It was a womb. I was just giving it a Cesarean cut. That's all. A process."
"Pr-process? Cesarean what? You fucking killed a kid." Itrus held his father by the collar. "Someone with a mother, someone with a father who had dreams and hopes and a promised life. Someone who could have been me."
Aleistar pushed him away.
"It was necessary. It was tribute."
"For what? I don't understand."
"Because you haven't seen it. That's the problem. The only problem. Yes, you haven't seen it." Aleistar ran to the back. He took out his pink salt, his wax candle, his flint and steel. And the cup. A goblet with a mixture so thick and so dark it was hard to call it wine. It did not spill, it did not leave the rim, it did not move. An unholy concoction. "If you see what I've seen, you'd understand. Let me show you paradise. He'll tell you everything."
