Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection

by Cody Luff

  As I walking home that night, two older guys pulled up in a car. Both wore suits and one was balding, reminding me of my dad, Melvin, who thankfully came along soon after Harry took off. The other man had a handkerchief tucked into his jacket pocket with the initials R.J. embroidered on it. They sounded concerned that I should be walking alone, fatherly almost, and my typically keen instincts parted ways with me. My feet were flattened turkeys under a Mack truck from the heels Mr. Jensen required me to wear. So I said, yeah, I would love a ride. Where did you go to high school, they asked me after I got in the backseat, a cushy beige leather that was almost as big as my bed at home. I had never been in a car that nice. I answered them about my high school and they asked if I was going to college. I tried college for a few months at New York University, but school wasn’t my thing, I told them. I’m great at selling. I could sell you guys anything. Oh really, the bald one said. Could you sell me a good time tonight? and they laughed at his joke. No way. I’m not that kind of lady, I said. Lady, ha. You look like a big girl in need of some love. I wanted to get out of the car right then, but it was moving fast down the dark roads of a neighborhood that didn't look familiar. I could handle this, I was tough. Open that door as soon as the car stops, I told myself. I tried to focus on the dimly lit brownstones we were passing, but R.J. was fiddling with something on the floor near his feet. The car pulled into an alleyway. I yanked on the handle, but the doors were locked and R.J. maneuvered into the backseat, stuffing his sock in my mouth before I had a chance to poke him in the eyes and knee him in the balls as I’d practiced so many times alone in my bedroom. The sock reeked like rotting skin and when I gagged it only pulled deeper into my throat. My eyes were glued to the radio, hoping it would turn into a time machine and get me outta there. I even tried to defecate, which I’d heard detracts your assailant, but I couldn’t get myself to go. I told my daughter this trick too, and you know what she said, "Ew Ma, you’re so gross. Don’t tell me these things." "Pauler," I told her, "you might need to help yourself one day and you’ll thank me."

  Those pricks left me on the side of the road, bruised and missing my underwear. I was really upset because they were my best pair. We didn’t have much then, but I had saved up for a lacy set with the matching bra. And go figure, I considered them my lucky panties.

  I didn’t go into work the next few days. Mr. Jensen called and said maybe it would be better if I didn’t come in again. Fired me just like that over the phone. Had the nerve of asking if I wanted to meet him next week at his place, his wife was going to Florida to take care of her ailin’ mother, and that we could have an intimate chat about my future. I could set you up with a few business associates that are looking for secretaries if you do me a few favors, he said. I told him he was an ugly jackass. Harry was right for leaving you and your mother, Mr. Jensen said. You’re both no good tramps who had it comin’ to ya.

  At first, I wanted to keep the baby. But my mother said she couldn't have me pregnant in her house; I'd bring shame on the family. Shame? Who was she kidding? Like the neighbors didn’t notice how quickly she moved on after Harry. It was pretty obvious she was involved with Melvin before my father left us. It didn’t matter how I pleaded or that Melvin took my side—not that he ever got his way with Evil Edie—my mother sent me to Bellevue, the infamous psychiatric hospital. There were no facilities back then for pregnant teenagers; it was the only option.

  Most of the day I spent in a ten by ten room, which was bigger than my bedroom at home, but at Bellevue I shared the “cell.” My roommate’s name was Dora, a schizophrenic who seizured every few days. The male staff in white jumpsuits would glide in on their white leather shoes and hold Dora down while the nurse injected her with god knows what. Dora lay comatose the rest of the day, her eyes fixed on the fissures in the ceiling, her mouth askew, drool dripping from the corners of her lips. Dora would wake the following morning with no recollection of what occurred. Some company she was.

  A few months later, I went back to my parents’ home. Michael held my hand while I lay on the cold countertop in the kitchen, my parents on my other side. The doctor inserted a long metal rod. In order to leave Bellevue, I agreed to an abortion. The cops never did find baldy and R.J., but I don’t think they were lookin’ too hard either.

  I'd met Michael a few weeks before the assault at a bus stop in New York City. He looked so powerful in his blue pin-striped suit, but later I found out the schmuck only had the one. He was wonderful to me at first, sending me letters while I was away at Bellevue. Our relationship moved quick after all that drama, and we got a studio together in a brick building in Flushing. It was the first time I felt real freedom, likely because it was the first time away from my mother. We were poor, but not nearly as hard up as when we had the three boys. By then, although we lived in a two-bedroom apartment, all three rambunctious boys under the age of seven were in one room. And we only had one bathroom. So if Michael was occupying the toilet, the oldest boy peed into a bucket, which I’d dump out in the sink. The other two were still in diapers. Not disposable. Cloth. I had to schlep loads of diapers to the basement to clean them in one of the two washer machines. If someone was already using both, I’d bring the laundry trunk back up the stairs so no one would steal it.

  I didn’t think of that before: why would anyone want to steal dirty laundry?

  I return to the living room with another glass of wine and the rest of the evening livens up. Jon reads one of his Penis Sagas—a tale of a wife running off with her husband’s joystick so they can confabulate happily ever after about their favorite authors, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Jon claims he doesn’t have a phallic fixation, but I’m not so sure—

  I choose not to read tonight although I have several stories about Ma. They aren't witty or expressive enough; they were written when she was alive. I worried too much back then; didn't expose myself on the page; didn't have the guts of a writer; wasn't wounded enough. I wonder even now, having lost my mom, does it qualify me as part of the club? Is this a tragedy or is it a part of life? Am I just another girl who lost her mommy? Maybe the answer doesn't matter. What does is that I am changed. Ma's death has bestowed upon me a freedom from myself and unfortunately-slash-fortunately will make her book better. It's as if Ma is willing me with her Shakespearean mantra she repeated so many times throughout my life—Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never tastes of death but once. It's suddenly so obvious. Do what Ma would do: tell it like it is. 94

  ______________________

  94It’s about time. Now go get 'em, kiddo.

  JOSEPH PIERCE

  Some Kind of Apocalypse

  0-1

  I’VE ALWAYS THOGUHT THAT any collective is defined retroactively by its dissenters and survivors, wide-eyed sycophants who missed Kool-Aide day at the cafeteria or the left-behind, grieving ever after. So when humanity finally succeeded in developing a virtual simulator which was convincing enough as an immersion/escapism tool that the entire race ascended jointly into its dreams and never walked the world again, it was those logged off who got to watch.

  Now, when I walk through the scores of rotting buildings, gardens untended, entire populations still locked in their beds staring at the long-powerless monitors strapped to their empty eye-sockets, skeletons in rotting clothes, I wonder how hard it is to ignore the horrific all-consuming pain in your stomach in favor of Interactive Television. I wonder how heady it was to fall asleep with the subtle sound of the transient world as white noise, and as it limped along into your mind’s eye the gradual dimming of the light to a dull gutter, flicker-flicker; until you never wake up from the dream again.

  Me, I hunt for bullets in the leftovers of military complexes. Wouldn’t you know it – the best of them were the training simulations.

  I would have marketed it differently. “The First Real Full-Immersion Game;” “The New Reality;” “The Next Life;” all these were the top of my list, far above “Interactive Television.” There’s somethi
ng about appealing to a broader audience, though; something inescapably attractive about being able to sell the processor-visor combo as “Just Another Household Appliance” instead of as a computer accessory. I would have marketed it differently; differently or not at all.

  ***

  The girl searches through the ruins patiently, overturning drawers with the fervent desire that something will be under one of them, that there was a specific reason why someone would take them out of the desk, the refrigerator, the bureau and flip them over, leaving treasure beneath. She winds her way through what she believes to be a hospital, stepping gingerly over the devastated remains of old furniture and gurneys.

  In the once-whiteness of them she feels most unsafe. Freaks make these little obstacle courses as a matter of their almost-lives. Drawers-as-treasure-chests is a popular one and beneath them she has found food, clothes, old books, useless parts to long-lost cars and machines and personal organization equipment; a severed head.

  There is always logic to the nature of a freak’s actions, she tells herself. It is rented out, however, unavailable; checked out like a book which will never be returned, and the library went and slapped on the member’s account “pay for replacement.” She says this to herself again as the music sounds in her ears, the iPod screaming Bowie by McKracken.

  She listens, and shuffles through the songs, picking out another by McKracken, just as loud but not about the Man Who Fell to Earth. She thinks it’s good that said faller didn’t live to see this. Finally, under a mahogany drawer she finds ten cans, mostly peas but some miraculous ever-fresh pineapple rests in the center of them. She stuffs the lot into her bag and checks her pocket obsessively to make sure that the can opener from downstairs is still there.

  It is; a relic, slightly rusted and just for her. She knows it is just for her because she has been trailing the Box People for about three months now. They are the most populous group of freaks because their game was the most popular immersion before the Big Crash came and drove out their sense of reality. They’re spread out across the world, and this particular tribe has meandered across old suburbs and into the city proper. She followed their trail because there was nothing keeping her from following. They think they are testing her to become their champion, to gift her with sanctified objects of righteous might.

  She turns over a lot of boxes, uses buckets as stepladders to reach places they throw things, and pushes over poorly dressed mannequins. She knows they at least have the sense to make the treasure food, gauze and disinfectant. It’s better than tinfoil or bent wire. She’d very much like them to hand over a tazer, please, or perhaps at least a golf club.

  She wouldn’t mind knowing what they think they are training her for, but free food is free food.

  The girl finds a pile of rusted metal, arranged in a pattern like a spider’s, in the middle of a third story waiting room. A nearby wheel about the size of her fist, left over from a broken cart, becomes a makeshift missile which she dings off the cage-like web as a testing measure; no one answers the call. It is unusual, the web, too complex for the Box People and too strange for the Sunnies; anyway, she hasn’t seen the Sunnies in months and assumes the worst.

  She thinks it may be a Chimera but there’s no blood or skin on it and that’s enough to prove it isn’t. The web is made of pipes which intertwine, bend and unfold into great sheets of metal. They’re tucked under and into each other, and the whole structure is wrapped around an unplugged freezer. It smells sharply of the filmy coating one gets after swimming in a mosquito pond. She decides that braving the tetanus trap has no benefit; a lonely freak made it sans reason and compunction, and she imagines the architect lying in an unknown place withering with lockjaw. If she finds him she’ll be unable to put him out of his misery, unless she wants to choke a man.

  She doesn’t, and she is thinking now about her tetanus shot – it has been 7 years since she has seen a doctor, and it has been 7 years since she has celebrated a birthday in any real way, but the girl is a girl, because she is not yet legally old enough to drink, a freak told her once, right before he explained that no simple 100ft fall could kill him: and then, he jumped.

  That was six months ago, the last conversation she had, and the last opportunity to download any kind of anything from a surviving computer to her players – the vast majority of her life is kept in there, and the vast majority of her life is music, but medical texts and science books and one half of the Encyclopedia Britannica are all in them, useful survival knowledge and world-information and the entirety of A through M because, hey, that could be useful one day. It’s not something she can be sure of.

  If asked, though, she’d say she’s kind of curious about O.

  Someone once said it was because of the games. All the death traps and hidden trinkets and quote-unquote puzzles are seared into the freaks’ minds, and they see the world that way now: like they’re still in immersion games. It’s an interesting idea, but she’s never seen the man who said it again. She heard he was torn apart by Chimera on the freeway’s edge.

  It strikes her that whoever made the web had an image, a very clear picture, but was unable to take that image from their head and impose it upon the world and that, maybe, is the heart of the freak: the world never matches what they see. She thinks it’s like when you switch to cough medicine after whiskey: not the same but you can still get drunk.

  She has a full bottle of cough medicine in her bag. It is unopened but ripe with possibility.

  At the window she looks out over the city and scans carefully: cars are arranged in an unmistakable arrow pattern, leading to another arrow, leading to another arrow, leading to the front door of a library. She would like to go in and see if there are any books to read, maybe a box of crackers and cheese or some jumper cables menacingly wrapped around a mannequin as a faux-horror, but the last library she was in was guarded by a Chimera who swore he was a troll. She still recalls hiding in the awning above a hotel, a Ritz, watching him patrol the streets looking for the “vile interloper” so he could do the things to her which, when she thinks of them in conjunction with the way he salivated, make her turn up her music.

  She looks at the iPod – half battery. She may have to switch soon; she still has 7 more.

  ***

  When I led the Countdown it was as a concerned citizen who played the occasional computer game, a little digital entertainment on the I-T, a little world-wide-web; who doesn’t watch porn? Guarantee that housewives did, and all the ladies who made a stink about it: have you ever been laid? I mean, really truly laid; had a man (or woman, whatever fills your sail) make you quivering and numb? If not: doesn’t matter anymore, because the world-wide-web is crashed, and I haven’t watched porn in seven years, and when I led the Countdown it was because I was under the distinct impression that moderation was the answer to all of life’s problems and that after, when Interactivity had been cleanly shot between its vile little glowing eyes, I wouldn’t have to deal with people doing the sort of thing which I am dealing with right now: cleverly planned murder, in order to get food.

  ***

  The girl has never watched porn; this is an important differentiation, because she has watched sex between people who thought there was nothing else to live for (though, to this day, she debates whether they knew they were living or not), and she has seen the real thing, and she wonders if it’s bad that she wonders what it’s like to have a man touch her. She’d like to have the memory of her mother saying “it’s ok, it’s natural,” maybe with a honey or two thrown in for effect, but that would involve knowing the woman, and the woman was burned to dust years ago, by people who thought they were witches and she was a traitor.

  This was not something the girl saw, simply heard about later from the group of withering people she decided to leave. They are a fond bizarreness in her life, a lovable tragedy, because the Alien Chasers still taught her, protected her and prepared her and fed her even though they thought, vehemently, that she was sent from the
stars to bring them back to their home; they were freaks of the mildest nature. It’s like inhaling bleach. One can only live so long with it in the air.

  The girl wonders about other people, about the touch and the taste of them, about when she’ll be able to crack open that bottle or if they’ll find something meant for the occasion and she turns up the player, Judas by Rising Tide, something to get the blood working and the thoughts off of people she probably won’t get to meet.

  When the girl finishes in the hospital – finishing being an approximation of what it means to spend hours rooting through already-looted cabinets, piles of half-rotted gauze, empty syringes and used-up casts all for fourteen cans of food, a couple of band-aids and some goddamn painkillers – she sits on the front steps with her music off, saving a few precious hours of battery. She wonders if the two dots she sees through her binoculars on the high-rise next to a prominent yellow-and-red building boldly labeled “Al’s Hot Dogs” are people standing, talking pleasantly or arguing passionately, or two corpses propped up like scarecrows.

  She wonders if she’s going to go look at them face-to-face anyway.

  ***

  We were a culture that didn’t give a rat’s testicles and I think it showed in the most important of ways; when you’re born into comfort it’s impossible to learn suffering, real true suffering – that is of course utter bull, but with a microwave in every house and television hooked up to every lobe I think it became quite obvious that even the mild suffering people knew – oh, my steak was undercooked; oh, my lover broke my heart; oh, I lost my job – was being mitigated.