No Further Messages

by Brett Savory

  “Why do you come here?” he said.

  I couldn’t speak. Wind whipped the water, lapping it against the docks. The massive ship anchored there groaned.

  “Why do you return?”

  I glanced quickly at the others in the top hats. They only stared like the rest of them.

  “This is our place,” he continued. “Not yours. It has never been yours.”

  What could I say?

  “I know,” I said. And I did. Just then I felt a surging wave of shame for my intrusion into a realm that was not my own, could never be my own.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it sincerely, though the words felt weightless coming from my mouth.

  Another top hat stepped forward, put his hand gently on the first one’s shoulder; the first one looked at the hand, looked at the face. A small bird flying overhead shadowed him briefly; he frowned, nodded once, then stepped aside.

  “We are the ones people have forgotten,” the second top hat said. His voice was sad, quiet, nearly lost to the waves slapping at the ship. “Have people forgotten you?”

  I was stunned into silence. The question dug trenches in my synapses and all other thought was obliterated.

  “No, of course not,” I said, and took a step backward from the piercing marble eyes. “I just . . . ” I began, but could get no further. The waves seemed to be slapping against my head now. Pounding. Crashing.

  “Who knows you?” said the second top hat. And immediately on its heels: “Yes, who?” said the first one.

  Inside me, I felt drawers opening, doors unlocking, steps crumbling, falling away to splintered slivers. Who knows me?

  No one.

  “No one,” I said, and with those two words everything shattered. It felt as though my skull had split in distinct halves. I fell to my knees, then on to my side in the dirt. Top hats crowded my tearing vision, a city skyline of rigid rooftops, yawning crevasses, flickering, blinking, confused office lights.

  “No one,” I mumbled through numb lips, and closed my eyes, shutting out the lights, the skyline, the waves, everything.

  Everything but those two words.

  When I woke up, it was nighttime. Solid night.

  Nowhere to hide.

  I was lying on my back, sprawled out—featureless sky above me, hard-packed dirt beneath.

  When I sat up, memories shot at me, drove spiked nails into my head. I glanced around for the top hats, but there was no one. Wind, water, waves. That was all.

  I tried to remember who I was, where I’d come from, who I might be married to, who my children might be, the job that, perhaps, I was late for, the house I may have left unlocked.

  Nothing.

  Wind.

  Water.

  Waves.

  It suddenly struck me that it takes the first two to make the third.

  I stood, brushed myself off, walked slowly, my boots crunching, to where the ship was anchored in the water.

  Waves sloshed and sprinkled me, tiny showers.

  Misted spray of far away memories: We are the ones people have forgotten.

  Who knows you?

  No one does. No one knows me. I don’t even know me. I have been forgotten.

  I am of the forgotten.

  I leaned carefully over the side of the metal dock, saw the moon reflected. Then the moon saw me, defined me.

  I saw myself.

  And I smiled.

  I leaned back, took one deep breath—all I needed to understand—nodded, spun slowly on my heel, felt my long wool coat flutter around my ankles in the breeze.

  As I walked toward the city skyline, I brought my hands up to my head to feel the smoothness of the top hat.

  And burned inside for the time between lights.

  RUNNING BENEATH

  THE SKIN

  The bullet tore a thin strip of flesh from his cheekbone, drove into the brick wall behind him.

  He turned a corner, cut swaths through steaming sewer grates—smoky ghosts wrapping around his skinny legs. Dissipating.

  Gone.

  More bullets flew past his ears as he ducked around another corner, legs pumping hard, breath coming in thick rasps from his lungs. He didn’t know this section of town, so it was just a matter of time.

  Always just a matter of time.

  Voices. Loud, harsh. Guttural bursts exploding from thin lips, wide mouths: Find him, fuck him up. The words didn’t matter; their speakers did. The men who spoke these words could run hard and for a very long time. The man they were chasing could not match their endurance.

  Gas lamps swam by on his left, shining, flickering, watching the man run. Lighting his way. Chasing away the shadows he wanted to hide in.

  The man heard more shots behind him, wished for a dumpster, a garbage can, another brick wall, anything to hide behind. Make the game more challenging. Then one of the bullets slammed into the back of his right knee. He gritted his teeth, but continued running.

  Another bullet caught him in the left shoulder. He plunged ahead, driven forward by the momentum, lilting to one side, nearly losing his balance. But his left knee held him, and he kept running.

  More shouting. Now coming from two directions.

  He turned another corner, saw four of the men that were chasing him standing there, weapons raised, aimed in his direction. He stopped, stumbled backward, teeth clenched tight against the pain in his leg and shoulder. Three more men stood the way he had just come, grinning, their mouths black holes in their faces.

  The shouting stopped.

  Nowhere to go.

  Seven distinct cocking sounds, as bullets entered chambers.

  The man took one deep breath, held it. Closed his eyes.

  The night burst open with sound and muzzled fire. The man crumpled. Red seeped out from under him, glistening in dim gaslight.

  Hospital green.

  Walls rippled when he opened his eyes. Fluorescent ceiling lights swam. He looked to his right. The woman in the bed beside him wavered, floated on crisp white sheets.

  The man rubbed his eyes, heard a door open, whisper closed. Heard a voice, looked up, saw a young woman at the foot of the bed. A nurse. Her mouth moved, but the man heard no words. She held a clipboard, her eyes sweeping it, her mouth moving again. Her brow crinkled, frustrated she was getting no answers to her questions.

  The nurse was beautiful and the man would have answered her questions, had he heard them, had he been capable of hearing anything but his own blood pumping in his ears.

  She turned the clipboard around to face the man; she pointed to it, held it closer to his face. Her arm stretching toward him undulated, the clipboard bobbing slowly in her hand. The man blinked twice, rubbed his eyes again and tried to focus. He was tired, and wanted only for more rest, but he also wanted to help the nurse, wanted to help this lovely woman with whatever information she needed.

  Seeing the man squint, obviously making an effort, the nurse moved around to his right to give him a better look at the chart. The place where her finger pointed showed a scrawled name—the product of some rushed doctor’s nearly illegible scribbling. He blinked a couple more times and was finally able to make out the name: Henry Kyllo.

  Far away sounds filtered into the man’s ears. Mumblings in a tin can. He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. The sounds swirled around in his head, formed words to match the nurse’s red, red lips. She was asking if he was Henry Kyllo, was this his name on the chart.

  The man put a hand to his head, glanced at the woman in the bed next to him. She had almost stopped floating on her sheets, was now staring at him hard, frowning. The man looked up at the nurse, smiled as best he could, and said, his voice a jumble of cracked rocks, “Yes, that’s me.”

  The nurse mouthed more words to him, lost again to the pounding in his ears. Henry shook his head to let her know he couldn’t hear her. She smiled in understanding, reached down and patted his hand. She was warm. Very warm.
Henry wanted to move his other hand on top of hers, to feel the smooth skin there. He tried, but nothing happened. He looked down and saw the sling they’d put his arm in. His leg, too, was bandaged.

  He wanted to tell the nurse that they’d made a mistake: He didn’t need to be here. The sling and bandages were unnecessary. Some kind pedestrian had probably brought him in, or at least called an ambulance to take him away. But they were wasting good hospital supplies on him when they could be used for people who really needed them—perhaps like the woman next to him.

  Henry looked again at this woman, and her frown had softened. The lines in her forehead smoothed out to show that she approved of the nurse’s job, approved of compassion shown to another human being.

  But she didn’t know Henry. Didn’t know what Henry was. If she did, the frown lines would most certainly reappear.

  The doctors usually discharged Henry pretty quickly once they realized what he was, but the doctor who’d scribbled Henry’s name on his chart so illegibly might have been in too big a rush to figure it out, or maybe too new to his job to notice the signs. At any rate, the nurse would figure it out soon enough and then, once he was able to walk again, he’d be released.

  Quietly.

  The way the hospital staff looked at him—and others like him—was always with disgust. When they removed the casts, the bandages, the IVs, or whatever other point- less machines they had him hooked up to, they’d ask two security guards to walk him down the hall of this hospital—or one of the other three in the city—the automatic doors would slide open, and they’d stand there silent, waiting for him to leave. Just staring. Afraid to touch him. Pushing him out into the cold with their eyes, with their fear.

  Henry was used to it, and knew that this time would be no different . . .

  The nurse patted his hand again, then released it, smiled once more, and walked out the door. The woman beside him looked away, focused on the mounted TV across the room, high up on the wall.

  Henry tried to move his injured leg, but, as with his arm, no dice. He’d have to wait probably another hour, maybe two before he could walk with any degree of comfort again.

  Just once he wanted to walk out of a hospital without being escorted; just once he wanted to leave of his own accord, even if the outside he was walking back to was the same cold place it had always been for him.

  With his good hand, Henry touched the bandage on his face where the first bullet had grazed his cheekbone. He knew by now it would be nearly healed. By the time the program currently on TV had ended, the wound in his shoulder would be closed up, scar tissue already evident. Then, maybe another hour or so after that, his knee would operate as it always had—smoothly, and without a hint of pain.

  When Henry was finally discharged from the hospital several hours later—amidst the requisite complement of security guards, and exactly the amount of disgust he had anticipated from the attending doctor—he walked straight home to his one-bedroom apartment, where the phone was ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Henry. Milo.”

  Henry’s old friend Milo figured that the flesh beneath his skin was now about 90% lead, give or take. Milo had been at this game a long, long time. The game was Milo and Henry’s connection. Their only real connection to anyone else.

  “Caught another few slugs tonight, brother,” Milo said. “What about you? Examined yourself yet?”

  “Not yet, just got home.”

  “No way you’ll ever catch up to me, you know that, right?” Milo chuckled.

  “I don’t want to catch up to you, Milo.”

  “Sure you don’t. So why not just stay home, play it safe?”

  Henry stayed quiet.

  “That’s what I thought.” Milo chuckled again—this time with less heart.

  Another few seconds passed before Milo broke the silence: “How long’s it been?”

  “Since I examined myself?” Henry said. “Couple of weeks.”

  “What’s the matter—afraid to check?”

  Fucking Milo. Always on Henry’s ass about the same goddamn thing.

  “Listen, why don’t you lay off me for a while, alright, Milo? Today wasn’t the greatest day I’ve ever had, and I don’t need your shit making it worse. Don’t you have anything better to do? Christ.”

  “You know I don’t. Neither of us do.”

  Henry sighed, looked out his living room window. Snow had begun to fall—big fat flakes that stuck to the window, melted, vanished. No lights on in his apartment yet, so the lone gas lamp outside his apartment building shone in, illuminating his sparse furnishings with a sickly yellow glow.

  As if somehow sensing Henry’s line of thought, Milo said, “You know what you need? You need a woman’s touch over there, my friend. Someone to bring some fucking life to that shitty little hole you call home.”

  “I’m hanging up now, Milo.”

  “Alright, alright, but check yourself out, chicken shit!” Milo blurted, knowing Henry meant his threat. “And let me know what—”

  Henry hung up.

  He crossed his living room, touched the base of a lamp. Slightly less sickly yellow light flooded out of it, suffused the room. Henry touched the lamp’s base twice more, until the light was closer to white than yellow.

  More than just sparse: Stark. Empty. Hollow. Gutted. A home to match his personality. But that was Milo talking. Henry knew better. Tried to convince himself of better, anyway.

  Shower. Maybe some TV, then bed. Fuck the examination.

  It could wait.

  Henry hung his leather on the coat rack near the front door, made his way to the bathroom. Past piles of mystery novels stacked halfway to the ceiling; past a computer that he never used on a desk at which he never sat; past two loaded Magnums on the computer desk that he rarely took out with him on The Run; past pizza boxes empty but for the crusts of each slice, turned rock-hard, forgotten.

  Henry flicked a switch on the inside of the bathroom doorway; a fluorescent light above the sink flickered, shot to life.

  He pulled his shirt over his head as he walked in, dropped his pants around his ankles, stepped out of them. He took his underwear off, then stood up straight, turned to his left, saw himself in the mirror. Nearly every inch of his torso held scar tissue; his legs more of the same. There seemed to be only small patches of skin left unmarked.

  No way I’m even close, Henry thought. Not a chance I’m anywhere near Milo’s percentage.

  Fingers trembling, heart thudding in his chest, Henry brought his hands up from his sides, placed them gently on his chest . . . and moved them around there in slow circles. He rubbed around his nipples, pushed in near his armpits, squeezed the flesh around what remained of his ribs, sank his fingers deep into the soft meat of his stomach. Both arms, pressing, concentrating, trying to feel as deeply within his body as possible. It was a crude manner of examination for the information he was trying to obtain, but it was all he and others like him had.

  Down to his legs, pushing, kneading, prodding around the knees. To his calves, the tops of his feet. Standing back up, checking his groin, buttocks, up to his neck, his hands roaming over his scalp as if washing his hair in the shower. But feeling gently, listening to the song of his skin.

  Steel-jacketed lead.

  Not pulsing through his veins, but replacing them, replacing flesh, tissue, organs—everything but bone. And even a good portion of that had been shattered, replaced by rows of bullets or clumps of shot.

  Everything but skin. The skin remained, though forever changed.

  Scarred.

  The bullets in his body pushed flush to one another inside him. When he pressed on his abdomen, he felt them clinking together. They rippled under the skin of his forearms, writhed in his thighs.

  Henry had caught up to Milo—had likely surpassed him. He estimated about 95%, maybe more. His head was the least-affected part of him, as most of the bullets were aimed at his body, and bec
ause the natural instinct to duck away from higher shots was hard to resist. If he’d been able to control that reaction, he’d probably be near

  100%.

  And then . . .

  But no one knew what happened then, because no one in living memory had reached 100%. Maybe no one had ever done it.

  Henry showered, dressed quickly, flicked on the TV, and stared out the window again at the steadily falling snow. He gathered his thoughts, then dialed Milo’s number.

  Milo picked up almost immediately. “Well?”

  “Ninety-five,” Henry said, sweat on his brow, his hands slick. His voice was edged with a nervous tremor that Milo caught.

  “Ninety-fucking-five,” Milo whispered, and whistled low. “Holy shit, man.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Another good Run, bro, and you might be there. You might just do it . . . And before me, too, you cocksucker.”

  Henry grinned.

  “So . . . belief?” Milo asked. “Which crackpot theory you subscribe to these days, my man? Spiritual transcendence? Transformation into a god of steel? Eternity in some kind of bullet-time Valhalla? Or maybe you finally show up on God’s radar and he strikes you down for the freak of nature that you are. Any or all of the above?”

  Henry thought for a moment, chewed his lip. “I don’t know, Milo. I have no clue.”

  The snow blew hard against Henry’s window, whipping up a white storm of flakes that mesmerized him as he stared outside, lost in thought.

  “Still there, dipshit?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, still here, Milo. Gotta go. See you at tomorrow’s Run.”

  On TV, the news had just started. The weatherman called for four inches of snow tonight, another two tomorrow afternoon. Harsh, blowing winds. Wind chill creating a deep freeze to smash all previous records.

  Henry, a frozen metal statue, running. Just for the sake of running.

  And Milo running to be noticed.

  Running to get on God’s radar.

  There were rules, just like in any other game: