by A. P. Fuchs
From behind, a light from a concession stand flashed on. Thinking maybe her boys would be there, she turned toward it, acknowledging that, like the zombie before, the ticket-taker had also vanished.
The moment she approached the concession counter, Gloria lurched forward, head between her legs, and threw up. On display in the hot dog roaster, rotating smoothly as they cooked, were sizzling plump fingers, their nails charred and crisp. Beside that, the popcorn machine popped teeth. And beside that, was a 'smoothie' machine. Through the little circular windows where the slush turned and mixed, was a combination of blood and guts. A murky red soup with streaks of swirling beige.
Spitting out the remnants of throw up, Gloria wiped her mouth and stood. She was light-headed. She yelped again and went to throw up one more time. She couldn't. Her stomach was empty. She gagged a few times, her stomach finally settling.
Sitting on the counter, taking on the role of a concession employee, was a human head next to the cash register. It was the head of a bald little boy, his skin dark with dirt, his face partially decayed.
"Don't be sick. You should have a snack," he told her with an apparent sense of compassion. "The smoothies are especially nice. They are made from the fluid of life."
Gloria didn't say anything and ran back down the corridor, pretending the encounter with the boy never happened. Behind her she heard the boy laugh and tell her that the finger-dogs were ready. "Come on! Have some! Come on! Eat! Eat! Eat!"
Her stride didn't break and she didn't bother to look back to see if the concession stand, too, would shut down after she had visited there.
A few feet ahead of her, a sign lit up an ominous red.
Theatre #6 -> Now Showing:
The Dismemberment of Alex and Keith.
Panicking, she threw the theatre door open and screamed her sons' names into the vast cinema. It was empty and surprisingly clean. The walls, seats, and curtains were all the color of brown brick. Everything was quiet.
Gloria looked around and was jolted back to the attention of the screen when the curtain began to open, sliding and squeaking along its rail. A bright beam of light hit the screen as the projector started rolling. The screen counted down in Roman Numerals: X - XI - VIII - VII - VI - V - IV - III - II - I . . . and white text displayed against a black background.
Hello, Gloria Riler.
Welcome to
The Dismemberment of Alex and Keith.
The letters then dripped with white blood and faded away.
The story began and was in black-and-white. She saw her children.
Both her boys were in a dark laboratory, lying side by side on an operating table. Their hands and feet were tied to a crudely-designed device of some sort at the foot of the table. Gloria turned toward the projection booth. It was nothing but shadows and the bright beam of light from the projector blasting forth and hitting the screen.
Her boys.
"Alex! Keith!" she yelled and ran up to the screen. She pressed against it, thinking her boys were on the other side. The canvas only rocked with each press.
"Stop!" she cried, sticking her hand out in protest. Nothing but the blinding white light of the projector replied back. It didn't appear anyone was running the machine.
She faced the screen again. A doctor entered the laboratory. Her gleaming white coat clashed with the black outfit she wore underneath. Her hair was dark with white streaked throughout. The doctor's eyes hid behind a pair of square bifocals.
Tears swelled in Gloria's eyes and she found herself helplessly watching the screen. She didn't know what to do or even what was happening anymore. The doctor on screen then tauntingly began rotating the handle that activated the device. A knowing grin beamed from the doctor's face. She would turn the handle a little, stop, then, with the sleeve of her lab coat, wipe the tears from each of the boys' eyes. Gloria saw her children screaming, but she couldn't hear them. A silent movie.
The doctor turned the handle some more, stopped, and this time stroked each of the boys' foreheads as if comforting them. She turned the handle again, then again, then again. Gloria could almost hear her boys screech in pain and terror despite the silence of the film. She cried out, but the evil doctor kept turning the handle, watching first as Alex and then Keith, began to be pulled apart. Their arms were the first to detach with a gush of black blood. Then their legs, the flesh tearing like wet cardboard. The doctor turned the handle in a frenzy. Torsos spurt with blood, their entrails hanging out like strands of a sopping and muddy mop. The blood rushed at first then slowed to a glossy ooze, bathing the table and dripping to the floor.
The doctor stopped and looked at Gloria. She motioned with her finger for Gloria to come closer. Speechless, Gloria ebbed herself away from the screen.
That's when the doctor stepped out of the film and grabbed her.
* * * *
Beneath the Sand
Just look at her, Gerry thought. She's got her face in her book, completely on purpose. His wife, Maria, hated Danielle Steel, something about how Steel told the same story every book, just different characters. But today at Birds Hill Beach, Maria was reading the latest Steel romance. Whatever.
Gerry squinted when the sun shone in his eyes. Nothing worse than sitting on a sun-drenched beach after pulling a sixteen-hour shift. That was one of the reasons Maria was mad at him. Hey, it wasn't his fault the dishwasher broke. His daughter, Emily, was the one who put her Barbie in there. Barbie hit the blades and---BAM---snapped one of them.
"Barbie stays in the bathtub," Gerry had tried to explain to her. She was only four, but seemed to understand.
Now he had to work overtime because they needed a new dishwasher.
Shirt off, he sat with his feet dangling over the edge of a two-foot-wide hole in the sand. It was about two and a half feet deep; it seemed only barely started a few moments ago. His eight-year-old, Jordan, worked feverishly, trying to dig the hole deeper and deeper.
"Let's bury you, Dad!" he had said when they first got there. He immediately got to work building up a mound of sand that would be about two feet high in the end.
"Sure," Gerry had said. Seemed like a good idea. Why not. Kids buried their parents all the time. Usually once at the beach and once at the graveyard. He shook the thought from his head, but not without a wry grin.
Jordan had wanted to try something different and bury him standing "up and down." Good for him. He was thinking outside the norm. Such a practice would serve him later in life even if the boy didn't understand it now.
Maria. Crap. Gerry ran his hands through his brown hair then tugged his fingers back when he felt the bald spot forming at the top of his head. There was a time when there was nothing but thick hair up there.
Stupid stress.
Maria hadn't wanted him to work a double. They were going to the beach and she had wanted him rested. But he worked evenings and he could only pick up extra hours during the graveyard twelve-to-eight if he wanted overtime. Palliser made up the rules, not him. He packed furniture into boxes before they loaded them on the truck for order fulfillment. By logging hours in during the night, he would be helping the skeletal crew who worked the nightshift. Everyone benefited.
She was mad because he was tired and had yelled at her in the car when she told him she wanted to drive because she didn't trust a tired man behind the wheel. He'd been up for nineteen hours by then and was in go-mode, had his coffee, everything was fine. He knew if he did doze on the way to the beach, he'd wake up from the nap cranky, moody and wouldn't be any fun to hang around with. Besides, he hated waking up from a short nap when his body craved an actual full-night's sleep. That, and there had been a sudden lack of communication in their marriage as of late, making them feel like they didn't really know each other as well as they used to. They were working on it though. Kind of.
"What do you think, Dad?" Jordan said.
The hole was deeper now. Nearly four feet. How did Jordan dig so quickly? Ah, it was probably because he was tired
and time seemed to go by faster.
"Looks good. Hit any clay yet?" Gerry asked.
"Not yet." Jordan dusted off the sand from his stomach, leaving a few light scratch marks on his skin. Emily sat at her mother's feet, filling a tiny green bucket with sand then dumping it over, then destroying the upside-down mound she'd just created and started all over again. She had done it three times before Gerry looked away.
Maria's eyes never left her book.
Gerry glanced around. The beach was packed. His family was about in the middle, roughly twelve feet from the water. A few blankets down to the left was another family, this one with four kids---two boys and two girls, all under the age of ten. The dad was on his back, sleeping, the kids burying his feet. The mother was returning to the blanket, dragging an air mattress behind her. But to the right---she could be no more than sixteen, smooth skin, a white bikini with pink flowers on it, long strawberry-blonde hair, and a body that would make any man look twice. For a brief moment, Maria disappeared until---
---his wife cleared her throat.
The look she gave him made his heart miss a beat and a rock fill his stomach. He cast his eyes downward, too ashamed to look up.
Way to go, Jackass, he thought. Idiot.
It could have been the tiredness, but he so badly wanted to look at the girl again and who cared what Maria thought. He wasn't her favorite person in the world right now anyway.
"Almost done," Jordan said. He was bent at the waist, his upper torso hidden as he hung over the sand's edge, digging.
"Jordan, be careful," Gerry said and, reaching over, tugged on the back of the boy's bathing suit, pulling him part way out of the hole.
"Don't!" Jordan said.
"What if you fall in head first?"
He didn't seem to hear him. Only a moment later did he slowly back out of the hole, dragging an armful of sand up the side. He pushed it away once the mound was clear from the hole's edge.
"Okay, that's enough," Gerry said. He looked over the edge.
The hole seemed to go on forever.
"Get in, Dad, get in," Jordan said, wiping away strands of blond hair off his forehead.
Gerry glanced over at his wife. Her eyes never left the page. For some reason a part of him wanted to show her, Hey, look, I'm playing with our son. Ain't I a good father, now? See? I know what I'm doing. At least I don't sit there lost in a book instead of trying to resolve an issue. At least I'm making an effort!
Gerry brought his heels up to the hole's edge, slid his backside between them, then dropped his legs in. It was weird when his heels didn't touch bottom. How deep was this thing?
Palms beside himself, he slowly lowered himself in, his shoulder muscles beginning to strain the lower he went. When a sharp burning sensation ripped through his front right deltoid, his mind flashed to the night before and how trying to maneuver a boxed-up dresser by himself instead of waiting for Stan resulted in pulling something in his shoulder.
Palms at his armpits, he lowered himself in so his forearms were on the sand, his weight resting on them. The tips of his toes finally touched clay.
Didn't look this deep when Jordan was hanging over the edge, he thought. Then again, he was half asleep so who knew what he really saw. Jordan could just have been pulling himself out of the hole, for all he knew, and that's why it was now deeper than he thought.
He set his heels down, the sticky cool of the clay sending a chill through him. He hoped his feet wouldn't freeze.
"Put your arms down beside you," Jordan said.
Emily came alongside him and was already pushing sand into the hole.
A few grains hit his eyes. He blinked them away. "Careful, Em," he said.
Jordan pushed sand into the hole. The sand filled in around him like a prickly rainfall. Another chill ran through him when he wiggled his toes against the clay. It felt kind of rubbery.
"Should have put some sand on the bottom," Gerry said. "My toes are cold."
"It's okay, Dad," Jordan said.
Gerry wiggled his toes some more, allowing some of the sand that had filled up beside his ankles beneath his feet. There. Much warmer.
The sand was up to his shins now. He was immobile from the knee down.
Emily pushed in more sand with her small hands. A few of the kids passing by with their parents stood and watched for a moment before continuing on.
Jordan filled Emily's bucket with sand and dumped it in.
"See what your kids are doing?" Gerry said to Maria.
She glanced up from her book.
Finally.
He gave her a smile.
Her eyes returned to the page.
Sheesh. "Cut me some slack already. You're being unreasonable."
She didn't say anything. Was she mad at him for something else and not just because he worked a double, or was this just what they had dubbed their Non-communication Syndrome? Everyone got grouchy. He also realized he was acting like a child.
He was too tired to care.
The sand was already at his elbows. How much time had passed?
"Are you stuck, Daddy?" Emily asked.
There was still some maneuverability in his hands and wrists, but he was useless from the waist down. He could still get out though, if he had to.
"No, honey, I'm fine," he said.
She kissed his forehead. Jordan kept piling the sand in.
Fatigue hit him. His arms felt weak; his legs relaxed in the sand. His shoulders sagged. The double shift had finally caught up. Eyes heavy, he yawned and got a spray of sand on his tongue.
"Yech," he said, spitting it out. "You did it again, Em."
She gave him a sweet smile and continued helping her brother shovel in the sand.
The sun found a blue patch between two clouds and seemed to have its rays singled in on Gerry's eyes. Tiredness pressed against his temples.
Maria was mad at him.
Jordan poured in the sand.
Emily helped.
Tiredness pushed on.
* * * *
Gerry opened his eyes. He was alone.
It was night, the stars sharp points of light against a rich purple matte. A few dark gray clouds hung low in the sky. The moon was white and bright and right across from him.
Maria was gone. So was Jordan and Emily.
So was everyone else.
He turned his head as far to the right as his neck would allow, half expecting Maria to be there, sitting on her chair, reading her book. But there was nothing, only the light gray sand where she once was. Even Emily's little green bucket was gone.
"Hello?" he said. "Hello!"
The only sound was the waves rolling in to shore then receding back into the water.
He wriggled his arms. They were packed in with the sand. His legs. He wiggled them hard, pressed down where he thought his feet would be. Even if he could just stand on his tiptoes, elevate himself somehow, maybe he could set himself free.
"Anybody!" Louder. He could scream louder. "Anybody! Help!"
Nothing. No one.
"Hey! There's somebody here! Hello!" His voice scraped against the back of his throat. "Maria! Kids!"
Heart racing, he fought against the sand. He was in it right up to his chin and with each struggle, the sand seemed to press down harder on his shoulders, squeeze tighter against his neck. A small clump of sand landed on his tongue. After spitting it out, he clamped his mouth shut and wriggled then thrashed about as hard as he could.
"Gah!" he shouted.
Did his wife leave him here? How could he have been left alone? Wouldn't anybody have seen him? It wasn't hard to miss a sleeping man, his head poking out from the sand. There's no way anyone hadn't seen him.
For an instant, he thought he might be dreaming, that this was just some horrible nightmare and he'd wake up soon, look up into his kids' faces, his heart beating hard from such a terrible dream.
But he wasn't dreaming. Even during those dreams you swore were real---were the truth---the
re was still that faint underlying feeling of this wasn't reality.
Eyes watering, he sucked in a deep breath then screamed, "Heeellllppp!" Voice catching in his throat, his stomach lurched and tangy bile bubbled up onto his tongue. Coughing, he accidentally swallowed then spewed out a small pool of gooey bile that looked more like frothy orange juice.
He cleared his throat, blinked away the tears and closed his eyes. Okay. Don't panic. If worse comes to worse, you'll be found in the morning. Folks always come to the beach on Sundays, so no big deal. His pulse was in his neck. Despite his best effort to calm himself, he couldn't steady his heart. What if he had a heart attack and died? What if the wind picked up and blew the sand up and over his head, burying him?
"Lord, please . . ." he said. I'm sorry, Maria. Did you do this? Did you leave me here?
He looked up and down the beach again and suddenly realized what had been nagging at the back of his mind---the footprints were missing, both around him and up and along the whole length of the beach, as if no one had ever set foot here before.
This couldn't be real.
Focusing, he tried to slowly draw his arms up. Just raise the shoulders then pull up with the elbows; slide out of the sand as though out of a shirt. He tried moving his fingers, but couldn't.
His arms were asleep; the pressure from the sand against his body must be pressing against a vein or two, blocking off the blood. He felt the sand all around his skin, but couldn't for the life of him make his hands or arms work.
He tried focusing on his legs, tried raising his knees, perhaps by doing so allowing a certain amount of sand beneath his feet so that, once done, he was in a more seated position instead of standing straight up and down.
His legs wouldn't budge. The sand had him the same as his arms.
The waves rolled in to shore.
Listening intently, he searched the air for the sound of cars driving down the road that ran by the beach's parking lot.
