Fear Itself

by Jeff Gelb

  September 6th, 199–

  Finally landed a job waiting tables at this trendy retro Seventies bistro in the West Village. I have to wear bell-bottom flares, stack heels, a Farrah Fawcett wig-hat, and a macramé midi-blouse, but at least I get off easier than the male wait-staff—they have to wear lime green polyester leisure-suits with fashionable clown-width ties. It’s not enough to support me entirely, and I’ll be damned if I’ll take myself off the food stamp rolls. Is this what I spent four years in college to become? A waitress and welfare cheat?

  September 10th, 199–

  Took the bus home from work tonight. Saw a homeless crack-addict teetering around the bus shelter. I’d heard that crack makes their skin crawl and itch in such a way when they’re fiicked-up that all they can do is obsessively scratch and claw at their face and arms. What’s it called? Tweaking. So I guess this homeless guy was tweaking. He was staring into the rear-view mirror of one of the parked cars, scraping away at his face with what looked like a pen knife. He’d spend several minutes like he was cleaning barnacles off the hull of a ship or something, then take a hit from this bent-up Coke can, rock back-and-forth on his heels for a few seconds, then go back to scraping away what was left of his face. Do-it-yourself leprosy.

  September 12th, 199–

  The homeless. God I’m so sick of them. I knew New York had a homeless problem, but I never realized just how bad it really was. Jesus, I can’t go out on the streets without feeling like I’m walking through downtown Calcutta. They’re everywhere! It’s making me nuts. Every day I get hit up for spare change at least twelve times. Do I have a sign taped to my back that says “Hi my name’s Jeannie! I have spare change!” or something?

  I used to think they were people like me, only just down on their luck—and maybe some of them are. But most of the ones I see are either crazy or on drugs or just no-good bums. They stand there, shaking their fucking paper coffee cups like they’re some kind of year-round Salvation Army Santa. Giving you dirty looks and calling you fat or ugly or a bitch if you don’t give them a quarter. Like I could afford to even part with a lousy dime!

  While I was coming home from work last night some homeless geek literally accosted me. I was on the corner of St. Mark’s and Second Avenue, waiting for the light to change, when this piece of walking rubbish comes lurching up to me, waving one of those ubiquitous Greek coffee cups.

  The geek was so filthy I couldn’t tell what sex or race it was. I assume it was male. Maybe I’m wrong. The only thing I noticed was that his skin was gray and gritty—the color of pavement. He shook his cup at me and made some kind of plea for spare change—at least, that’s what I think he was doing. Maybe he was reciting the Gettysburg Address. I really can’t remember, since I was doing my best to ignore him.

  When he realizes I’m not going to give him money to go away, he gets really belligerent and grabs my arm. I instinctively jerk away from his touch, losing my balance and falling off the curb and into the street, where I come close to getting smeared by a passing taxi. When I turn around, the homeless geek is gone. I managed to escape unscathed, except for where he grabbed me. My upper forearm, just above the elbow, is badly abraded—as if I’d somehow fallen down and scraped myself on the sidewalk. Hope I don’t catch anything. A lot of these street people have TB.

  September 28, 199–

  Landed a second job, this one part-time. I work from two to seven in the morning three to five days a week as an assistant shipping clerk for a novelty company in Midtown. They repackage and distribute all kinds of cheap crap they buy from factories in Taiwan and Korea, most of it knock-off bootlegs of popular, copyrighted characters like the Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Batman. Lately I’ve been packing and shipping out lots of cheap purple plush dinosaurs stuffed with Styrofoam pellets. On top of my wait-ressing gig, I’m averaging sixty-seventy hour workweeks. I still don’t have the time to go check out the museums, much less find a boyfriend. I’m still on food-stamps, too.

  October 15th, 199–

  Had a bad time on the subway. Not from getting mugged or having some perv try and rub up against me, though. This was weirder. I was coming back from my Midtown job, and I fell asleep on the F train. I was sitting down, staring at this homeless guy sprawled out on the seats opposite me, and the next thing I know, I’m nodding off. It was a really strange feeling, because I knew I was no longer awake, but at the same time I could see everything in perfect clarity.

  There were other people in the subway car. After all, it was after seven in the morning, the earliest tip of rush hour, and the train—while hardly crowded—was far from being deserted. There were spies, slopes, pakis, hebes, along with the ever-present homeboys. And the minute my head dropped to my chest, they put aside their newspapers and paperback novels and crossword puzzles and rose as one, shambling toward my sleeping figure like extras from a zombie movie.

  I was terrified by the sight of their slack, alien features, revulsed by their oppressive stink, as they stood ringed about me, straining forward like beasts eager to be fed. I could feel their hungry stares carving me up, dividing my flesh into rump roast, head cheese, ham hocks …

  Suddenly the crowd parts, shouldered aside by a homeless person with gray, scabby skin that resembles pavement. His eyes appear vacant, then I realize what I’m looking at are unwashed, empty windowpanes. The homeless person grins down at me, revealing a mouth full of bent and rusty syringes, and reaches out to touch me.

  I awoke with a strangled gasp, only to find an elderly Ukrainian woman staring at me disapprovingly. I had missed my station and was halfway to Coney Island.

  October 26th, 199–

  Really tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night. The city kept me awake until six in the morning, screaming and yowling and threatening itself. At one point the distant police and fire sirens, the car alarms, crying babies, screaming women, angry pimps, automatic weapon fire seems to meld together into a single voice. The voice of the city. And I could swear it was calling my name.

  Jesus. I need some rest.

  November 1st, 199–

  Police showed up at my crib today. Cynthia’s dead. They found her early this morning under the Williamsburg Bridge, where the coke-and-drug burn-outs blow Hasids for five bucks. I hadn’t seen Cynthia in almost three months. Not since she stole the last of my savings. I guess she’d slid even farther, and faster, than even I suspected. I keep thinking I’m going to feel sad or something, but the best I can muster is a sigh of relief. I guess it’s up to me to break the news to her parents. What should I say? What can I say?

  Dear Mr. & Mrs. Brinkes,

  Your daughter, Cynthia, came to New York City to become a poet and artist but ended up a prostitute and a drug addict. By the time her body finally died she had turned into someone none of her friends recognized or liked. The city ate her hair, guts, and all. Hope you are both doing well.

  Best Wishes,

  Jeannie Singleton

  P.S. You owe me three hundred and fifty smackers that your skanky junkie whore bitch of a daughter ripped off from me.

  November 12th, 199–

  It’s getting colder and the drug-dealing, brawling, and pimping has moved from the street into the surrounding buildings. I can’t walk up to my crib without having to step over passed-out drunks, junkies shooting up, or whores blowing johns. The steam radiator is always on, turning my shoebox of a room into a sweltering hothouse. I have to keep the windows open to keep from suffocating. As it is, the radiator leaks, steaming the wallpaper off the surrounding walls and loosing the plaster on the ceiling. I expect to wake up one day and find the whole roof collapsed on top of me. Assuming that I wake up.

  November 23rd, 199–

  I have to write this down. Right now. While it’s still fresh. The police are going to want to know. I keep telling myself that I have to remember everything. Just as it was. So they’ll believe me. They have to believe me.

  I was coming home from my waitress job. I di
dn’t have to go to my second job tonight. That’s not until the weekend. I was coming down Fourth Street, in between ? and C. There wasn’t hardly anyone on the street, because it was cold. Not so cold that you would freeze—but cold enough you didn’t want to be hanging out if you had somewhere warmer and dryer. I hear what sounds like a bottle breaking behind me, and I turn and look …

  There were at least four or five of them, clumped together. At first I thought they were a collection of trash bags left out on the curb. Then one of them begins to move. He lifts his head and turns his face towards me and motions with an arm, as if he wants me to help him get to his feet. It’s late at night and the light isn’t very good, but I can tell his face is gray. The homeless geek opens his mouth and this sound like a car alarm comes out. He grins then, displaying teeth that aren’t teeth but broken, rusty syringes.

  I take a step backward, too scared to scream or cry or even run. All I can do is stare at this thing’s face as it and its friends get to their feet. One of them keeps swinging its head back and forth, the way disturbed children do, and I catch a glimpse of gray skin and dirty, cracked windowpanes where its eyes should be. It produces a forty-ounce malt liquor bottle from its rags and hiccups like an ambulance’s siren when it’s trying to clear a jammed intersection.

  One of them has its pants open. It strokes its exposed penis, which is gray and gleams like wet pavement. The sound it makes as it masturbates is like sandpaper on concrete. It leers at me, drool spilling over its blackened, festering gums.

  That’s when I ran. I could hear them as they came after me, their voices raised in a cacophony of whooping sirens, booming hip-hop, screaming babies, automatic gunfire, and shrill car alarms. I was so frightened my ribcage felt as if it was going to burst and my heart and lungs spill out onto the street.

  I probably would have made it home free if I hadn’t slipped in some shit in between parked cars and fallen. I landed hard enough to chip one of my teeth and bite my lower lip hard enough for it to bleed. I was dazed for a second—then one of them grabbed my ankle and began pulling me towards him. It felt like he was wearing a sandpaper glove.

  I began to kick and struggle. I glimpsed someone walking on the other side of the avenue and I screamed for him to help me. He paused for a second then turned and hurried away. I screamed even louder, trying to buck my way free of the things surrounding me.

  My attackers closed in around me, their gray, stony faces blocking out what little light came from the nearby streetlight. I could feel something like a poured concrete rod pushing itself between my thighs. I shrieked as it penetrated, tearing and shredding delicate tissue into bloody mulch. It felt as if someone had impaled me on a blunt stake, leaving me to bleed to death from my cunt. I screamed one final time before blacking out, joining a thousand other distress calls I’d heard every night and ignored.

  I woke up I don’t know when—maybe an hour later. I was sprawled across the steps of my building. To my amazement, I discovered that I was still wearing my clothes and the contents of my purse remained untouched. Nor was I bleeding from my vagina. The avenue was empty and I was alone.

  I’m going to call the cops in the morning and report a rape. Even though there’s no physical or medical evidence anything happened to me. Even though they’ll end up thinking I’m some kind of lunatic or drug addict.

  It happened. I know it did. What happened may have been a nightmare, but it wasn’t a dream.

  Write it all down. I have to write it all down before I fall asleep. Or else I’ll forget things. Forget details. I can’t risk anyone thinking this is a hoax. I have to convince the police that this really happened. That it wasn’t some kind of hallucination.

  I’m so tired. Sleep. I need sleep. The city’s been calling my name every time I try to sleep. And I’m so tired. So very tired. I have to get out of this place. Out of this hell. I need to go home. I have to escape before I’m devoured, soul and all, just like Cynthia. I have to get away. The city knows my name.

  And it knows where I live.

  December 1st, 199–

  I woke up today after sleeping over a week. I feel wonderfully refreshed and not in the least weakened. I’m not too sure what my dreams were about, except I’m certain I dreamt of the city.

  As I thumb through this diary it is all I can do not to toss it down the incinerator. To think I even contemplated leaving the city! When I stand at my window and look out upon the city, I am awash with the joy and security that comes with knowing that I have a place in the scheme of things. That I have taken the worst and survived—the city has scourged me and, finding me worthy of its cruel affection, made me its bride.

  In the dim light of the coming dawn I stroke my new skin, the one that grew while I lay sleeping. It is rough and dry and the color of pavement. I stand before my mirror and smile, my mouth full of broken needles. I think back on my previous fear of my environment and I laugh at my foolishness, and my laugh is the bark of a 9mm handgun. I shake out my hair, which shines and rustles like strips of plastic garbage bags.

  Cynthia did it all wrong. She succumbed to the city’s mad passions without allowing it to transform her. And for the city there can be only lovers or meat. Cynthia failed the courtship dance and found herself on the low end of the food chain.

  Soon I will leave this place to go and join my lover, to wander his graffiti-smeared heart day and night. Jeannie Singleton is dead, tossed aside with the husk of dead skin that served as my chrysalis. From now on I shall go by another name. My true name.

  Call me Avenue X.

  Perfect Witness

  Rick Hautala

  … see, see! dead Henry’s wounds

  Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh.

  Richard III, I. ii. 55–56.

  I’m confused, really confused.

  I can see bright lights all around me.

  Too bright.

  I know there are people nearby, too. Sometimes it sounds as though there’s a whole crowd, milling around somewhere in the outer darkness behind the blinding lights. A faceless, nameless mass of people, like an audience, unseen, but their presence is sensed behind the glare of stage lights.

  At other times, or maybe at the same time, I can tell there are a few of them—maybe three or four—right up close to me.

  I think they’re doing things to me.

  I don’t know where I am or what’s happening to me.

  Can anyone tell me?

  I try to move my arms and head, but my whole body feels like it’s a wet lump of senseless clay. There’s no sensation in my legs. Absolutely none at all. Not even the sensation of pain.

  Nothing.

  It’s almost like my body doesn’t even exist.

  What the hell’s happening to me?

  I don’t remember a thing, not since …

  When was it?

  Earlier tonight?

  Yes, I remember … I was walking back from the Mad Horse Theater to my apartment on Irving Street, in Cambridge, when a man—hell, no! He wasn’t a man; he was a young boy—a kid, for Christ’s sake, stopped me and demanded that I give him my wallet. At first I started to reach for it, but then in an instant I decided not to. I think I might have tried to fight with him, to wrestle the gun out of his hand.

  Was that what happened?

  “We have to administer the rest of the drug very slowly. I have no idea if he will experience any pain, but I don’t want to risk losing him again.”

  Hey, who said that? Who’s there?

  It sounds like a woman’s voice, but no one answers me.

  Did I speak out loud?

  Probably not.

  I strain to open my eyes but have the dull sensation that they’re already wide open. I keep trying to see better, but the light gets steadily brighter, almost stinging. My eyes don’t seem to be able to adjust to it, but at least there’s a slight tingle of pain.

  Thank God!

  If there wasn’t any pain, then I might think I was paralyzed o
r … or dead.

  At least I know that I’m alive.

  Just barely.

  I think it’s almost funny how those gray shapes keep drifting around in front of me like … like there’s a group of people, milling around me.

  I wish I knew where I am.

  I wish I knew what’s happening, but my body still feels totally numb.

  “Mr. Thurmond, I hope you keep that video cam running. If this works at all, I don’t want to miss a single second of it.”

  Miss any of what?

  Who said that?

  Where the hell are you?

  In the distance, I can hear other voices, buzzing around me like the droning hum of a bee hive. I can’t make out anything anyone is saying. It still reminds me of the indistinct chatter of a crowd, talking softly in the dark in expectation of a show which is about to begin.

  Come on!

  Somebody!

  Please!

  Talk to me!

  Why won’t anyone tell me what the hell’s going on?

  Why can’t I see you?

  I can’t feel anything, but I am positive, now, that they are doing something to me.

  What the fuck are you doing to me?