by Douglas Draa
“Oh, hello,” Simon purred, her voice thicker than ever with the reverberation of so many chins. “I don’t—” She paused to belch, a horrendous, vibrating sound. “’Scusee! Where was I? Oh, yes, I don’t think I’ll be needing you, after all. You see, Mary was foolish enough to come here early, for some reason, I didn’t bother asking why; she was a substitute for you.” She belched again. “More flesh on her bones, of course, but not, I’m sure, nearly as tasty.”
“You… ate her?”
She belched again, as if in answer.
Suddenly, Simone’s head and arms retracted within the blubbery mound of her body. Ellie watched in horrified fascination as it shivered and shook like a vast, greasy, quivering blancmange.
Ellie felt vomit rising in her throat. It was a disgusting sight.
Then, just as suddenly, the mound of flesh gave one final shudder, then split and seemed to peel back like the skin of an overripe banana, liquid fat sluicing out from within, splashing across the floor and soaking Ellie’s feet, causing her to shriek and stumble back in revulsion.
Revealed in the midst of the scene, slick with the greasy liquid, was the slender figure of a woman who spoke with a voice a little like that of Simone, only without its timbre.
“Well,” she told Ellie, “you know what they say: inside every fat person there’s a thin person trying to break free. Ah, it feels good to get out of all that.”
She smiled and Ellie turned and ran headlong from the building, screaming.
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MAYBE NEXT DOOR, by Richard LaPore
Summer of ’73 was just fine. A college friend had invited me to stay at his Granddad’s place in rural southeastern Oregon, and the break from UW and Seattle’s big city bustle was right up my alley.
One day Jackie and I were working up a good sweat, cleaning up brush and so forth, when the old man came out with glasses and a jug of his outstanding fresh lemonade a-jingle with ice. “Boys, that’s first rate. Time to cool off.” His warm smile flashed.
As we lounged in the shade by the creek, Jackie asked, “Grandee, what was up with that guy who pulled in earlier? Looked like he wasn’t sure what planet he was on.”
Grandee chuckled. “Yes indeedy. He was a door-to-door salesman from Bend who decided to try his luck out here, Lord only knows why. He struck out and got lost, and was just happy to get pointed back to civilization. Hm.” His eyes flickered into elsewhere.
“Grandee?” Jackie pointed like a hound scenting quail. I was just as keen; his Granddad—Sadler James by name—told amazing tales and by now I knew that “way back when” look.
“Well,” said the old man, “after the Great War…”
* * * *
After the Great War, door-to-door or traveling salesmen—what we used to call ‘drummers’—frequently came through the Wyqumish Watershed. One year a couple of well-known ones, good fellows with first class merchandise, were selling cookware, cutlery, gewgaws and frippery in the area, but mutterings had begun about another no one had actually seen.
The story went that, on three widely separated occasions, heavy footsteps had preceded a knock at the front door. Someone was heard to answer… then came dead silence. Upon investigation, the door was found standing wide open but no one was there and whoever had answered the knocking was never seen again. So far, one husband, one wife and one stepbrother had gone missing. Kinfolk were distressed and general unease grew apace.
Notwithstanding, one fine October morning I went over to Pa and Ma Kelner’s place about dawn to help Pa with some roofing. He was getting old and feeble and couldn’t carry his own weight anymore—so he claimed, despite Ma’s derisive snorts. That meant he worked only five tens and one six-hour day per week instead of seven fifteens like he had for fifty years. Now he liked to spend Sundays in his chair on the front porch listening to the church bells, whittling on a stick, and howdying the passersby.
With me to support his doddering efforts Pa re-roofed the house in one day. Of course Ma said she’d take it hard if I didn’t stay to supper. I didn’t say no; not only is roofing hungry work but Ma, a blue ribbon cook, had already stuffed me with breakfast and dinner fit for royalty. As expected, supper was ambrosial: chicken and dumplings, fried green tomatoes with okra, dandelion salad, and peach cobbler with hand-cranked vanilla ice cream that still makes my mouth water. Afterwards, as it had gotten a bit too nippy of evenings to sit on the front porch, we sat in the front parlor drinking the best coffee between Baja and the Arctic Circle, jawing about the doings around the township. Of course we discussed the phantom drummer but came to no conclusions.
Now Ma and Pa had a cat named Hatchet, one of the scariest beasts I’ve ever seen. Folks suggested the outlandish critter might be part bobcat, alligator, or werewolf, but finally allowed his Daddy was likely a circular saw. His shaggy pelt was like barbed wire, his eyes made you think of a drill press headed for your face, and his teeth looked like broken axe blades; but he was the goods. He was hell on rats and varmints in general and Ma even saw him sort out a black bear that wandered into the yard one day looking for chickens. Hatchet diced that bear like fruit salad and you could still hear the poor critter bawling after the cat had run him a good quarter-mile down the road.
Hatchet also kept a guard-dog eye on Ma and Pa and, if he seemed to be losing patience, visitors would scurry off thinking horrid things about drill presses. In truth, mayhem wasn’t his rule but he once carved deep slices into the bottom of one drummer who was persistent to the point of menace. When folks heard this fellow was such a rube Hatchet actually cut him, his sales dwindled away and he left the Watershed for good.
However, we got along fine. He’d sniff me over and bash me on the leg with his head (kind of like getting clubbed by a tractor piston), I’d scritch his ears and we’d be good. Boy, I’ve known some interesting cats. Just last summer, this little girl from California visited Sailor’s Halt, and her cat was the most…no, that’ll keep.
Anyway, Hatchet had a funny habit. There was a peephole set in Kelner’s front door a few inches under six feet from the floor and every time someone knocked, Hatchet would run over, leap straight up four-footed to hover level with that peephole and take a good look. Then he’d land with a thud and wait for Ma or Pa to answer the door so he could greet company or repel boarders.
Now, like I said, we were talking in the front parlor, the cat snoozing on the hearth, when heavy footsteps came in at the front gate, slogged up the walk and stumped up the steps onto the porch. Then came a knock on the door, a real ponderous, dull kind of knock. Hatchet came off the hearth, streaked over to the door, shot straight up and hovered then thudded back down.
But this time was different.
The cat lit in his usual crouch but didn’t straighten to attention. He huddled for a moment then jerked up and reeled out of the room; stiff, staggering, lurching like a rickety sawhorse. We followed.
When he got to the kitchen, Hatchet jumped up onto the counter. There, he proceeded to rip and chew right through the back wall then crushed his way out through the jagged hole, leaving us pop-eyed as his terrified shrieks faded at bullet speed. Word gradually trickled back that lots of folks that night heard something that could have been a cat as it shot like an artillery shell across the next three counties and beyond, but no one ever heard a cat scream like that before.
We were still staring, dumb, when that heavy knock came again… at the back door. We all looked at each other then Pa said, “Well, Ma, whoever’s knockin’, whatever they’s sellin’, we don’t want none. Sadler, I’d be obliged if you’d bar the doors while I board over that hole. Of course you’ll stay the night. Ma will make up the couch for you.”
I said thank you kindly, I will. Whatever they were selling, I didn’t want none either.
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CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL, by Leeman Kessler
It’s almost two o’clock so I s
hould probably start getting ready to leave but I’m finding it harder to do that these days. Staring into the vat gives me a calm that I don’t find anywhere else, certainly not at home. All that’s waiting for me there is an empty apartment with a cat who occasionally takes the time to acknowledge me. The vat, however… the vat contains infinities and in those infinities, I find a sense of peace. I know I’m not supposed to think like that; it’s the height of unprofessional conduct, and it’s the quickest way to get a transfer to another department far away from my vat. Still, I can’t help but feel more at home here.
It’s all about the protocol. For most of the units at this facility, electronic monitoring, motion sensors, temperature regulators, and the like are all sufficient but protocol is different for the vat. The vat needs someone to actually watch it with their own two eyes, not through a lens or a monitor. I don’t know why; it’s just the rules, the protocol. In a few minutes, Eriksen will be here and we’ll swap. He’ll take my seat and keep his eyes on the vat and I’ll be able to go home. Only I really don’t want to.
Mind you, it’s not the vat itself. That’s just a simple, 33cm thick, transparent container sitting behind a 20cm plexiglass window. Even then, most of the content of the vat is seawater or at least as close as you can get to it this far inland. I don’t monitor the salinity or pH or anything like that. I just have to watch. I watch and see just what the vat’s occupant spends its hours doing: sleeping.
It must sound boring to just sit and watch something sleep and I’ll confess that when I first got this posting, I felt like I was being punished—sitting and watching for hours on end without so much as a bathroom break. You can’t read, you can’t check your phone, you can’t look away for more than a few seconds at a time, just enough to check the clock or to blink. There’s no noise but the blood in your ears. Those first few weeks were a nightmare worse than brig duty or perimeter detail. I couldn’t wait for two o’clock and Eriksen to arrive. The weird dance we’d have to do where we both kept our eyes on the vat and swap places before I could look away, my own eyes dry and itchy. It was an absolute relief to be able to go back to that empty apartment and read or watch TV or do anything that wasn’t staring into that clear water and watching it sleep.
Things change, though, and before long, I found that I wasn’t checking the clock so often. I wasn’t letting out a sigh of relief when Eriksen came in. One day I noticed that the urge to pee had even subsided. I discovered something serene and beautiful about sitting and watching the vat and its sole occupant.
You’re not supposed to discuss your duties with anyone except immediate superiors but one time early on, when we were doing our little shuffle, I asked Eriksen if he’d ever seen it move, even to breathe. Eriksen thought for a moment and then shrugged (at least from the corner of my eye it looked like a shrug) before saying, “I don’t think so. Maybe one time but I don’t really know,” which was pure Eriksen. He’s never struck me as a man with much of an imagination from our few brief exchanges. I can’t imagine what goes through his head during the shifts. Probably does his taxes or something equally stimulating. Santiago, whose shift I relieve is a touch chattier but not much more.
I tried to find ways to occupy myself at first, thinking of songs or movie lines or anything that popped into my head. Sooner or later, however, I’d begin playing the Did It Move game. My eyes would focus and unfocus, almost like it was one of those Magic Eye paintings. It didn’t take long to memorize the textures of its skin, the folds where its limbs pinched together as I looked and waited for any change, even the slightest variation. Was that spot always so close to that wrinkle? Was that a vibration or just a slightly cloudier part of the water? Even when I got frustrated and told myself I was done playing the game, before long my eyes would begin probing and searching, eager to catch it giving itself away.
At one point, the game went from being a diversion to being the entirety of my duty. I’d come in and nod at the side of Santiago’s face and receive a minor twitch in acknowledgement and then, as he stood up and I shuffled over, I’d give my eyes one last big close, turn around and open them to take in the vat and its sole occupant. For the next several hours, this was my existence, my life. I stopped noticing Santiago’s departure or half-muttered remark. All I had now was the game.
In all the months since, I haven’t noticed a single change—nothing so much as a ripple across the yards of visible flesh but I don’t mind. It’s not about trying to prove anything or one-up the occupant or even to make the time go that much faster any more. By watching and waiting, I lose myself and in so doing, I find something far greater. In that tranquil silence with just me, the water, the glass, and it, I have discovered who I truly am.
As I think about leaving, my eyes look over the most textured portion of its skin where there is a clear line that cuts through the mottled flesh for almost a meter. If there’s going to be movement anywhere, I’m convinced that’s where it will start. Of all of this thing’s subtle geographies and puckered topographic details, that is the most likely candidate and so my eyes are never too far from it.
Watching today and preparing to move, my limbs no longer stiff as they once might have been from so much stillness, I suddenly sense something from that straight cut across its hide. Not movement, nothing so earth-shattering or all-consuming as that but nevertheless I feel it—like standing on a precipice. An invisible rush that promises the coming of…something.
The door swings open and I sense Eriksen’s presence; I feel his warmth and hear his breath even as my eyes never leave the vat and in that moment, I know. I stand up and Eriksen mutters his barely audible greeting but I’m not listening. I’m not looking at him. Both eyes on it, I move towards Eriksen, meeting him directly, not shuffling around him and he pauses, this break in protocol—this change in format startling him. He opens his mouth to say something but I don’t hear it, my ears rushing with the sound of their own blood. Reaching out, eyes still on the vat, my thumbs find his eyes and press in, a new, louder sound now resounding in our room but it’s still drowned out by the pouring, oceanic roar in my ears. It is only then that I close my own eyes—the image of the vat’s occupant still burned in my vision—only as my eyes close and I hear over the roaring surf the sound of glass breaking do I see movement. Even with my eyes closed, I see it and I know that the game is over and my heart breaks in joy. I’m finally going home.
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UNDER A ROCK, by Lori R. Lopez
Immense and rugged, a mottled blend of grays, the boulder appeared at the precise center of town. There had been no concussion that any could recall. No dent or crater, no sign of an impact was visible. One day the spot was empty…the next day it was occupied by an enormous bump that towered like a zit on the forehead of a fashion model.
“How lucky none of us were killed!” marveled more than a few as word spread and the residents gathered to view an anomaly.
“It’s just plain weird. We should have felt the ground shake if this thing landed. How did it get here? Roll down the street?” Mayor Bax Grumwald owned two restaurants and a chrome company cited thirteen times by county inspectors for health and safety violations. The florid-complexioned fat cat won elections by being the life of annual parties he hosted.
Baxter swiveled toward the crowd in bewilderment. He was afraid to touch the rock. Everyone was.
Except for a woman named Zelda Twillamung, the new librarian. She had recently moved to Triple Creeks, taking over when the elderly former librarian passed away in bed clutching an open book.
“Must have been a good book,” neighbors joked.
The guide to flowering shrubs didn’t kill her. A five-cigar-a-day smoking habit probably did, and being almost as sedentary as stone. People had legs and were meant to use them, yet she had ceased taking walks long before her demise, thinking she was too old to exercise by age fifty according to the assistant librarian, a quiet girl who helped check out bo
oks in her spare time from school. It was nearly all the teenager had uttered thus far to Zelda. That and “Miss Cully sure loved to read.”
Miss Twillamung’s legs propelled her to approach a massive incongruity from the rear of the gawkers. Pale pinkish-orange aspects divided to stare at her as if she were equally out of place. It was a tightly wound and knit community. The locals distrusted strangers. Especially a woman with skin like a cup of cocoa and thick coils of brunette hair. They considered themselves White, although none of them matched or were actually that hue. Peach was closer to the truth, which might work for crayons but you couldn’t label an entire race of people after a fruit. So terms like Black and White were used, as if that clarified everything. It seemed to emphasize the difference.
Zelda drifted to the rock, a spoon to a magnet. Not brave, oh no; she was confused, a bit curious, inexplicably drawn. She clapped a hand to the rough surface, or it smacked her palm. The woman blinked. What an odd thought. It couldn’t have, she dismissed. Her eyes scoured the texture and contours. An avid rockhound, she was at a loss to identify this particular mineral. Pages flipped in her brain. A mental orb scrutinized photographs and terms. It didn’t match. It was unknown, a U.L.O. (Unidentified Lying Object). Zelda smirked at the discovery. Perhaps she could name it.
A tingle shot through her…initially warmth in the fingertips contacting the boulder, then zipping up her arm to her chest. The woman staggered, jolted by pure energy. What the heck was that?
Attempting to remove her hand and break the connection yielded further surprise. Her flesh was firmly plastered to the uneven facade by an invisible attraction. “It won’t let me—” Her voice faltered, windpipe constricting. She struggled to be heard. A throttling pressure on her neck abated. Zelda gasped. Was it alive?
