by Andrew Post
He didn’t move. “Ma’am, we really should . . . do something. Resolve this.”
I fell onto my hands and knees and, with Squishy refusing to help me, decided to crawl. My limbs failed me. I clawed a few more fruitless times, hands slipping on the wet catwalk, and I stopped.
Soft footsteps. Squishy stood next to the dead Smock woman, looking at her, his back to me. His ears moved around—picking up the screams of those still down in the room with my cauldron. Faint to my ears, but clear to his. Help us.
“Why aren’t you helping me?” I screamed down the catwalk at him.
My answer came but not from Squishy. The wails within the rig could still be heard, escaping from vents to the outside, up stairwells.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can’t leave them down there like that.”
I looked the other way, listening to the howls echo. If you were to ask my parents what one thing they had to constantly nag me about pre-A, it was finishing things. I’d start a drawing, get half a stick figure drawn, and cast it aside. I’d start doing the dishes, get distracted, and go off to do something else. “You need to finish what you start,” I could hear Mom say as I listened to the screaming of the mashed-up Smocks.
She was absolutely right.
* * *
After I retrieved my crutches, I spent some time steeling myself for what I had to do, wishing to the Great Whatever that a scythe rifle would magically appear beside me when I opened my eyes. It didn’t. I left the rig barracks, passed the dead woman on the catwalk, and went down to the cauldron room, the screaming nearly deafening by the time I reached the door. I entered, made myself look.
The sight of the gun was—I think, I hope—a relief for them. They couldn’t really make words, and their faces were so misshapen that I’m not sure what they were emoting. I still tell myself it was relief. Otherwise, I think I probably would’ve lost it right then and there—both the will to do what I had to do and my mind.
I took aim at the first head, partly melted into the chest of the next person in the twisted, writhing pile of flesh and bone. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. One less wailing voice in the chorus. I opened my eyes, took aim, and did the same thing again.
One voice after another was snuffed until there was no more.
There was no way I could get them inside the harvesting chamber, which was about one-third the size of the assembling chamber, without . . . making them into smaller pieces. So after rolling the heap outside, using my zip lines and some ropes and cranks as an elevator of sorts, I got them out onto the catwalk. I tied a coil of copper wire to them, along with the woman on the catwalk, and with the aid of some additional pulleys and counterweights, let them fall into Lake Superior.
After it was done, I took the .38 by the barrel and threw it in as well. I began clack-thumping toward the barracks as soon as the still-warm metal had left my hand. I didn’t bother to watch it sink. I wouldn’t miss it.
I returned to the dining room at the barracks, closed the door behind me, and spun the wheel to lock it. The smell of gunpowder was in my hair, in my hands. The burning from crying and vomiting still crackled sour and raw in the back of my throat.
Squishy was in the kitchen, seated on the counter. He didn’t ask me if I went through with it or not. I’m sure he could see it on my face that I had.
I said nothing to him.
I clack-thumped down the hall, went to the bathroom, and collapsed into the shower. I wish I could’ve been there again, all in the span of a few hours, to remove more bullets from myself. I would’ve preferred to do that every day for years than do what I’d just done.
I reached up, turned on the water, and let it pour over me. I worked soap through my hands and between my fingers until I couldn’t smell the cordite through the suds anymore. And even when I couldn’t, I continued to sit on the shower floor, letting the water run over me, wringing my hands and squishing suds out, collecting them back up in my palms and reworking them through again and again.
I knew I’d never feel clean this way, not in the way that I wanted. That kind of clean I imagined would need me to crack open my soul and scrub for days with a wire brush.
I saw the knee of my jeans was turning red. The hot water had soaked through, found my wound, and was pulling the blood out through the fabric. I let it. I even thought for a moment about taking the bandage off and letting myself just bleed out, but that would involve having to take off my pants, and that was just too much of a pain.
A laugh burbled out. Then another and another.
Flashes, newly molded to my mind, counteracted them as if declaring I had absolutely no right to be laughing about anything right now. The pile of people, all fused together, a broken shambling heap. One man’s torso starting where another’s man’s midsection ended, heads split and half attached. Eyes and mouths and arms and legs and fingers and hands, a mishmash of . . .
My laughter slid into sobbing. I rolled over in the tub, curled up, and cried, letting go, hoping that maybe some of the awfulness would just pour out with the nearly shouted, hacking sobs. The only thing that kept me from doing this forever, until I ran out of breath or began smashing my head against the wall until I had expelled myself from this world, was what the woman had said. Rising out of the whirlpool of horribleness—the sound track of screams with each bullet I fired into the heap, not sure where to aim because it was hard to tell where a head or a heart was fading—was the woman on the catwalk. Her final words. The Betrayer.
I got out of the bath. My hair, as violently red as the carnage I’d just committed, fell in tangled wet strips over my eyes. I slapped it back out of my face. I pulled myself up and out, got on some dry clothes, nearly wiping out when my crutches’ rubber tips met with the wet tracks I’d trailed all through the rig. One made a long shriek as the crutch nearly slipped out of my hand. I caught myself on the wall. Squishy looked up, still at the kitchen counter.
“I’m going to the Siren House to talk to Thadius,” I said. “I can only assume you want to get away from this place for a while too.”
He hopped down off the counter. “I’ll go get your backpack.”
Track 17
GROOVE IS IN THE HEART
It was the middle of the night by the time we reached Duluth, somewhere I guessed to be 3:00 a.m. or so. I was so sick of trying to figure out WTF time, but I hoped Thadius would be at the Siren House.
I pulled my rowboat up from the water, secured it in place with the bicycle chain. A wave came up and thundered into my back, dousing me from the waist down. I was less concerned about how cold the water was and more worried about the water soaking into my bandaged knee. My jeans were dark from the tops of my thighs down. Lake water in an open wound? Probably not good. I’d worry about it later.
I thought about Clifford while crossing the beach. I hoped he wouldn’t find me again here tonight. I was in no mood for any conversation, much less dodging his attempts at flirting with me. Thankfully, he wasn’t around.
There was no way to tell what would happen when I confessed to Thadius what I’d done. I wondered if he’d just tell me to leave. I’d betrayed his trust.
There was that word. Betrayed. Betrayer. Who was the Betrayer? I wished I’d had more time with the Smock woman. Maybe if I’d said the right thing, she wouldn’t have been so cryptic with her final words. I’m not sure why, but part of me thought Thadius might have the answer. That is, if he forgave me.
The Siren House was quiet, and the entry lights were off. Trying the front doors, I discovered them locked. I had no idea where Thadius lived. In the Siren House? Maybe in his upstairs office? I backed up into the street till I could see the third-story windows. No lights. Just as I was considering shouting, a door creaked open. Not close. I saw no one. Maybe the next street over. I clack-thumped that way, reached the corner, and saw the side door of the Siren House was open. Down the cement stairs, Beth noisily bounced out in her wheelchair.
Like a tank positioning to f
ire, Beth angled herself up the block and began pumping her arms. Despite the incline, she scooted away fast. It wasn’t easy catching up to her, but I charged along as fast as I could, trying not to let her wheelchair fall out of sight. I considered shouting her name, but since Squishy was with me, drawing attention would be a bad idea.
I reached her when she stopped at the next corner.
She turned before I was even up to her, threw one arm toward me.
I flinched—and again when I saw what she held: her small handgun.
Seeing it was me, reeling backward and nearly falling over, she squealed this weird laugh and tucked the chrome pistol away. “Oh,” she managed through her laughter. “Shit, honey. Sorry about that. Thought you were my ex. I heard crutches, and since I sent him tumbling down the boardwalk stairs last week, I was sure it was him trying to come and talk to me.” She said talk as if it were code for a violent act.
“No big deal. I was just wondering if you know where Thadius is. He isn’t inside?”
“No, I was in there doin’ the tills,” she said, motioning toward a braided-steel bag at her hip. “Something wrong? You don’t look so good.”
“No, I just wanted to talk to him.”
“He’s probably home. I’m heading that way now if you wanna tag along.”
“That’d be great, yeah. But listen, I appreciate what you did for me the other night.”
“No problem. Seriously. The more of those pricks we weed out of the Siren’s visitor pool, the better. Hopefully word will spread that Duluth is not a town for rapists.” She paused, eyes tracing me as if my guilt and what I’d done to the Smocks was something visible in my aura—a gray smog hanging around me. “Kind of late out. Sure you don’t wanna wait until tomorrow to talk to the boss man?”
“I can’t really go into it,” I said, “but it’s important. I need to talk to him.”
“What about? Asparagus?”
“I . . . What did you say?”
“Do we really need to go through that whole thing?” Beth said, half-groaning. “Or will asparagus suffice? Honestly, I don’t think I remember much of it anyway ’sides the bit about pee toward the end.”
“Yeah, I think that’ll work.”
“All right, cool. Come on, onward we go,” Beth said, thrusting forward with steady rhythm, push-one-two-three-push. “You know, I had a feeling about you. You got that scratcher look.”
“What’s a scratcher look like?”
“Distracted. I mean, scratchers might have a convo with someone, but you can always tell that right behind the eyes, they’re working things out. I guess they’re always trying to guess what the recipe will be of whatever they’re staring at, even if it’s a person.”
We moved in silence for a while. Beth took it slow to allow me to keep pace with her. “You got a nice setup? Good machine, high series number?” she asked.
“I guess.” Not nice when it’s pouring out a mixed-up pile of broken limbs and screaming faces.
She blew a raspberry. “Don’t be like that. I mean, I know you didn’t build the thing or anything. Probably found it like any other scratcher. Still, finding a good machine is the same as discovering you got a talent, I think. Can’t really have one without the other. But you shouldn’t sell yourself short. You got something kick-ass, you should flaunt it.”
“Do you have one too?”
“Nope. With Big Thaddy, I’m pretty much his oh-so-lovely assistant.” She bobbed an eyebrow and put some va-va-voominess into her voice, but it quickly fell flat. “Well . . . was.”
“Something happen?”
“No,” she said, but I could hear the yes ringing behind it. “But”—she glanced down at my clacking crutches—“makes me wonder if he’s got some kind of fetish or something. Disabled girls and duping drugs. Kind of a weird combination but, hey, to each his own.”
“Duping drugs?”
Push-one-two-three-push. “You . . . You guys don’t do that? He give that side up? Because, I mean, that’s all me and him were doing for a while there. Before we decided to go straight. Or, you know, he decided I should go straight, and I said I would, but just keep crooked when he’s not looking.” She laughed. “Funny thing, though. I never thought he’d give up on that. See, just goes to show how long I’ve been out of the whole”—whisper—“scratcher business. And let’s not even get into the fight or any of that bullshit.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. Maybe Beth was right about Thadius collecting disabled girls. Of course, I’d contacted Mosaic Face first, never told him anything about myself. But then, Thadius could’ve denied me. Who knows how many people Mosaic Face sent to Big Thaddy and how many he may’ve turned away because they weren’t his preferred type? I pictured Thadius as a kid, playing doctor in a suburban garage, taping Popsicle sticks to birds’ wings.
We’d been clack-thumping and rolling for a few blocks, drifting from one circle of lamplight painted on the sidewalk after another.
As unsettled as I was about what happened earlier—and what I’d done to fix it (my hands still smelled like gunpowder)—our talk was making me forget all that. I felt comfortable with Beth. It was like I could trust her immediately. The after-party had shown me some of who she was, but as we traveled Duluth by night together, I got to know her for real. Sadly, before long, the conversation drifted back to the topic of scratching and Thadius and the Smocks.
“So you believe all this time stuff?” she asked. “The WTF or whatever?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you seen the pit?”
“Oh, I know I believe it. I just wondered how much of the curtain he’s pulled aside for you. He plays the sweetheart well enough, sure, but I think he likes to string people along. Likes to hide the fact that there isn’t a whole lot to him if you took away the Siren House and the whole scratcher thing.”
“But doesn’t that kind of make up who he is? We are what we do. And he’s a show runner and a resistance leader.”
“If we are what we do, what does that make you and me?”
“I don’t know. People? Helpers? Employees?” Was there a way to answer that and not sound like an idiotic tagalong?
“Let me ask you somethin’. Do you feel handicapped?”
I gave it honest thought, clack-thumping. “No,” I said finally, “but handicapped is just what I am, not what I do.” Besides scratching, I didn’t have any other hobbies, really. There was my writing, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a hobby or even much of a passion. It was just a way to pass the time. Being a handicapped kid, you can imagine how much time you might spend pretending to be something you’re not. My stories were the documentation of dreams.
Beth slowed at the next corner. “I need a smoke,” she said and fired one up. She offered the open tin of hand-rolled cigarettes to me, but I declined. We paused there for a few minutes, Beth studying the street ahead. “Back before I knew anything about any of the WTF stuff and whatnot, before I had to get used to a twenty-hour day, I broke my life down into two parts: BW and AW. Before wheelchair and after wheelchair. Or, really, BT and AT.”
I tried thinking of T words but came up short. “Before . . .?”
“Before Thadius and After Thadius.” Her voice was dead.
“Sorry, but I don’t think I follow.”
“Not sure if I should tell you this since it’s clear you think he hung the moon and all, but before coming to Duluth, I was with my folks going from town to town and trying to pick up jobs wherever we could, post-A. Dad had back problems, and Mom was bipolar. Getting medication for either of them became . . . challenging, let’s say. And with money changing over to reds and greens, even more so. So I took it upon myself to pick up skills that could bring in some revenue.”
“You . . . hookered yourself out?”
She threw a glare at me, blew out her drag before answering. “No, sicko, I learned to busk, singing. What’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry.”
“So, yeah, no, I could always sing, sta
rted practicing more, and took my speakers to the market area, down there by the wharf, to sing karaoke versions of some trendoid stuff, the stuff people liked. I’d do the early Sheryl Crow stuff, some Alanis sometimes. Anyway, one day, this guy came walking up, listened while I did ‘If It Makes You Happy.’ He gave me a couple reds, more so than most people would drop into my coffee can. So I decided to stick around that spot for the rest of the week, see if he’d come back. He did.”
“Thadius?”
She nodded. “When he tells it, he likes to say he discovered me.” She smiled, chin down, flicked ashes off her cigarette. “Did you ever see me? I mean, the show gets broadcasted only so far, but . . . Have you seen it? Sometimes a few of the kitchen guys and I get together to form Doogie Howitzer.”
“I’ve only seen the one show,” I confessed. “That first day when I came in—and was rude to you.”
“Yeah,” she said, neither accepting my half-assed apology nor acknowledging it. “We didn’t go on that night. But you should come by sometime when we’re on. There aren’t exactly a ton of Marilyn Manson a cappella cover bands, but we’re pretty rad—if you don’t mind me using the trendoid slang.”
“You don’t look like a trendoid,” I said. She had more of a decidedly punky look to her.
“I’m not, really, but it’s what sells now.”
“That’s still something I still don’t completely understand. I mean, why the ’90s? That was . . . so long ago.”
“Well, trendoidism was the last majorly popular subculture right before the A. I think it just sort of stuck. It’s like the default, last scrap of what people remember of normal life before the A. But—and I can’t really say for sure because I wasn’t around when the trendoid thing was originally big and definitely not in the ’90s, of course, no duh—I think people like it because the ’90s were a good time for people. Economy wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t any hoof-and-mouth bullshit yet, none of those super-awful earthquakes yet. Last little stretch before things started getting bad.”
