Ghost Heart

by John Palisano

  We laughed, but all I could think about was Minarette’s pretty, smiling face for the rest of the time we were at the bar. We caught up talking about our favorite bands and movies, and how the town was changing in all the wrong ways.

  * * * * *

  We headed outside, toward the alley behind the bar; we walked into the nice, cool drizzle. I loved the change in climate. The bar had been hot and stuffy, so being outside was welcome. Mike hiked up the collar of his leather jacket and couldn’t walk fast enough.

  Once we made it around the corner, I spotted the Whistleville River just beyond the bridge. I thought about how, a few miles up, on the east side of town, the Jeep in my shop had plunged over that same bridge. I imagined the bodies of the kids stuck there, tangled in the water grass, decomposing and slowly turning into fish food. I shook off the idea—just chalked it up to collateral damage from a nice Anchor Steam buzz.

  We rounded the old brick building and made our way toward the parking lot in back. Rain filtered through the street lamps, falling in curtains, moving in the crosswinds. A new spotlight lit the rain from the side. Headlights. Tires screeched a few hundred feet in front of us.

  There was a Jeep. Another damn Jeep, I thought. It raced toward us, stopping with a hard jerk. The rainfall increased.

  A window rolled down, but I couldn’t see inside.

  A raspy, deep voice, said, “Fuck you, motherfucker.”

  “What do you need, man?” I asked. “Come on.”

  “You know exactly what you did,” he said. “Disrespecting me and my girl.”

  “I don’t know you, man,” I said. “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

  “So you’re calling me a liar?”

  I pulled my collar up. “Look, friend,” I said. “I don’t have time for this. I’m drunk. I want to go home.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “You just want to go home and forget all of this.”

  His door opened. It was the big, bald guy who had been next to Minarette. “Too late,” he said. “The damage is already done, you fuck. Talking shit about me.” Two others got out of the Jeep. They looked like normal, clean-cut guys in their twenties, only there was everything wrong with their expressions. I thought they had to have been high on something. Their eyes seemed so vacant.

  “Like I just told you, man—I’d have no reason to. I don’t even know you.”

  One of the cronies said, “Come on, Damian. Fuck him up already.” I had a name.

  I looked over to Mike, who was staring at the other two guys—guys we didn’t know—who’d found their way over toward him.

  I got shoved. Damian. He was in my face. “What’re you going to say now?”

  My head got real dizzy. Too much booze. I wasn’t in any kind of shape to fight.

  He shoved me again. I tried to stay up, and did so barely.

  A holler, and Mike was against a wall.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. “This isn’t his fault.”

  “Well, fuck him,” Damian said. “I don’t give a shit.”

  He pushed me, but I stepped back.

  “This is bullshit,” I said. “And I sure as hell ain’t gonna apologize for something I didn’t do.”

  He swung for my face—and just barely hit my shoulder.

  He was way stronger than me. I was in trouble. My shoulder thudded. There’d be a nasty bruise. The bastard.

  I put up my fists while Damian hovered.

  Mike was on the ground. One of the goons was on top of him. Looked like they were robbing him.

  “Get off him,” I said. “You fucking bullies. What the hell?”

  His fist, my face.

  Every color exploded—like I was in the middle of a mortar shell.

  I tried to put up my arms to block him, but I’d been knocked for a loop.

  And he hit me again.

  I felt incredible pain.

  I felt nothing.

  My feet failed first—my legs followed.

  Down for the count, I heard the others cheer.

  Everything felt like it’d turned slow motion. Reaching behind, I sat myself down. The world spun. The hit was too much for me to brush off.

  Damian kicked me in the chest. My breath forced out, the hit knocked me to the pavement.

  I heard more cheering and more laughing.

  My breath wouldn’t catch.

  Damian leaned over me. His pug-like face looked inches away, then miles away.

  He said something, but it didn’t register. Everything sounded like we were inside a tunnel.

  More kicks to my middle.

  My body and mind were separate. There was nothing grounding me.

  I turned my head to check for my friend.

  The two goons were centered on his head. They’d leaned down, and it looked as though they were eating him. What the hell?

  They were on his neck. They held him down with their hands. The veins on the backs of their hands were puffed out, like they’d done steroids.

  One lifted his head. He looked so normal, other than those vacant eyes. The ghoul could’ve been anyone. Blood rimmed his lips and dripped from his chin: it was Mike’s blood. Our eyes met for a moment, and from between the ghoul’s lips a worm-like thing slipped out. The tip was pointed and sharp. It twitched just a bit, and I knew it was his tongue, although it was different from any other I’d ever seen or heard of.

  He lowered his head again. When he connected, Mike jerked. It seemed more like a reflex than a reaction. Mike’s eyes were shut. His skin had gone pale.

  They were draining him of his blood.

  One of their shirts had come undone in the front in the scuffle. His chest looked so white it was almost clear. I swear I could see his insides moving…could make out the faint movement of a beating, translucent heart. A stream of red entered the chamber, blossomed and then colored the cradle of veins surrounding the organ. Blood. Mikey’s blood—drained from him and taken inside the ghost-like heart of the ghoul kneeling over him. How could the blood get from its tongue to its heart so damn fast? I thought.

  I tried to yell and scream, but nothing came out. I was in shock. Nothing worked. I looked up to see where Damian was. He’d walked away from me and stood a few feet away from his creeps; he watched them work. Damian’s skin was the same pasty white as his consigliere.

  I turned my head and every nerve inside me seemed to explode at once. Mike lay still a dozen feet from me. Rain ran from his forehead, down his cheek. Only it wasn’t just rain, I noticed. A good stream of blood ran within the rain. There were unnatural gaps in his throat where they’d fed. Moon-shaped bruises marked his flesh.

  Those fuckers. I’d get ’em. Somehow, some way, I knew I would. They stood over him, both of them wearing goatee-shaped smears of blood. Formerly empty eyes glistened. The blood—Mike’s blood—had reinvigorated them.

  The sons of bitches.

  Damian looked lit up from the inside. That sounds funny, because people don’t glow. It’s just that the rain seemed not to touch him. His skin didn’t look natural at all. Maybe it was because he was so pumped from the fight that he just looked that way. Who knows?

  He’d won. They’d won in no time.

  I considered myself a big guy, but I’d been outgunned. I was shocked at how fast Damian had taken me down. It was inhuman.

  Drugs. Had to have been drugs. Maybe coke. Definitely some kind of upper. That’d explain it.

  Then? One final insult—a swift kick to my balls.

  The blinding pain knocked me down from space and back inside my beaten husk.

  Bile rose. I turned my head, spewing hot, half-digested beer everywhere.

  “You should take a picture,” one of the goons said.

  “Don’t need to,” Damian said. “I won’t forget this.”

  N
either would I.

  Damian laughed and looked down at me. “You fucking loser,” he said. “You got something smart to say now?” He spat at me, turned and walked away. I heard them get inside the Jeep, turn it on and drive away.

  He and his crew were gone, leaving Mike and me lying broken in the rain.

  Once I could no longer hear their Jeep leave, I pulled myself up. Everything hurt and stung. My wet clothes clung to me. I crawled over toward Mike.

  Nudged him.

  Got nothing.

  Kept pushing, tapping and calling his name.

  No response.

  I used my thumb to try and open an eye.

  No reaction.

  I checked for a pulse.

  Found one, but it was faint.

  The skin of his wrist was cold.

  I tried CPR, but never really learned how, so it was for naught.

  Reaching inside my coat pocket, I found my phone in pieces. One of Damian’s kicks must’ve smashed it. Still, I tried to turn it on. Just in case I could make one more call. No dice.

  I screamed at Mike.

  A few folks had made their way over, probably after hearing my yelling. I hollered for them to call an ambulance and the cops. They didn’t have to, though. Blue and red lights arrived moments later, just as the rain let up. I got myself to a bench and sat.

  When I finally got my head on straight, I watched as the EMTs put my friend on a stretcher. They rushed, going as fast as they could. Mike was in big trouble.

  So was I.

  Chapter Three

  “You need to go to the hospital,” Vanessa said as she sat on my lap in her kitchen. She spotted one of the bulging bruises on my forehead. “You look like crap.” She blotted the bruise with a wet rag. It’d already turned pink from blood.

  “No one at the scene made me go to the hospital,” I said. “I guess I looked okay to them.”

  “Maybe it took a while for these bruises to show up,” she said. “Damn. Didn’t they ask you for any details?”

  “I gave them a statement at the scene. No one died. We just got beaten up real bad. So I didn’t have to go to the station. I’m not a suspect. But then again? They know me. I work with police and EMTs all the time. I know the drill,” I said. “And I really didn’t want to deal with going to the hospital.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to not talk to them unless you have a lawyer?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was attacked. Mike took the brunt of it.” I looked away from her. “Listen, I want to chill out for a bit. It’s been a long night.” I took a big swig of the whisky and Coke she’d made me.

  “Don’t repress it too much,” she said.

  “I don’t want to repress it, just take a break from talking about it and thinking about it for a little while,” I said. It was true. I didn’t want to deal with any of it. “I’m hoping it’s over now.”

  “Some guy named Damian did this?” she asked. “Why?”

  I sighed; she hadn’t heard me say I’d had enough debate. “I don’t know. He thinks I disrespected him somehow. Makes no sense.”

  “Maybe he was drunk?” Her breath reeked of milk.

  “He was on something. That’s for damn sure.”

  She went to dot my head again, but I stopped her. It was hurting more than helping. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” I said and smiled. “I’ll be fine.”

  “What if you’ve got a concussion? Or brain damage?”

  I shrugged. “I had a concussion in middle school. My skateboard went under a car, and my head hit the windshield. Didn’t even crack it.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “They laughed.”

  “No. I mean the doctors,” she said. “What’d they do for the concussion?”

  “Told me to rest for two weeks. No sports. No jarring head movements. No listening to Metallica or Van Halen.”

  The whole time, Vanessa kept trying to tend to me. “That doesn’t sound very doctor-y,” she said, ignoring my stab at humor.

  “It is what it is,” I said. “I turned out fine.”

  She caressed my back. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d been rubbing yet another sore area.

  “I think that’d explain a few things about you,” she said, laughed and leaned in for a kiss.

  Vanessa, being quite persuasive, was hard to resist. Her spicy perfume was hot—so unlike the flowery, sweet kinds most girls wore. Her body felt cozy, and she knew it, rubbing it against mine.

  My lips hurt when she kissed me; I sure as hell didn’t let that stop her. She started gently but soon spread my lips with her own, her tongue making its way inside my mouth, touching mine and awakening it. I ignored the milky smell left from her White Russians. Her hands were crossed behind my neck. She shifted them to my sides. I felt electric everywhere.

  “We should move this to my room,” she said. We were still on her chair in the middle of her kitchen. “Unless you want to try it here?”

  “Not sure I’m really up for that,” I said. “I just wanted to…” I was going to say “cuddle” but stopped myself. “Chill.”

  “’Kay,” she said. “But if we don’t do it now, I don’t know when we’ll do it again. And I’m really feeling it.”

  She’d said something like that before…when I wasn’t in the mood. She’d ended up in someone else’s arms. Our relationship had barely recovered. I didn’t want that to happen again. Yeah. I was being exceptionally weak. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.” I put on a smile.

  “Good,” she said, drawing it out. “Come on.” She lifted herself, took my hand and guided me toward her bed. She grabbed a water bottle off the stove and downed half of it in one gulp. I wasn’t sure how she was in the mood after the night I’d had. It was like she wasn’t that concerned with me—only her own desires. I tried telling myself it was her way of making me feel better.

  Vanessa managed to kick off her shoes as she walked. I tried, and failed, to do the same. Work boots weren’t as easy as sneakers.

  Her hand left mine, and she made quick work of slipping off her T-shirt and jeans. I leaned down, untied my boots and got them off. Her hands were on my arms before I could lift back up. “Let me help you,” she said and slipped her hands down to the back of my flannel. She had it up and over my head in a blink. She grabbed my hips and pulled me toward the bed. Spreading her legs, Vanessa pulled me between them.

  We kissed, and her hands explored my shoulders and back muscles. She hit several mean bruises along the way. I wanted to cry out as she gently probed them, but there was something healing about her curiosity.

  I very much wanted her to keep going. I was hard as a rock. Undoing only the top button of my jeans, I wanted to tease around a little first instead of just getting on with it. Vanessa responded by grinding her hips into me. “I want you,” she whispered. “Now.”

  “Okay.”

  I wasn’t ready though, and unzipped my jeans so that my underwear was out, but I wasn’t. She still had on her black lace panties too. We rubbed together through them and kissed harder. Her mouth tasted clean and human. The water must have washed down the milky taste from earlier. Not bad, but not like toothpaste, either. Perfect. Her soft hair felt just heavy enough in weight but soft enough in texture as it grazed my hands.

  Let go, I thought. Come on. Hot girl in front of you here. Forget all that other dumb stuff.

  Using my fingers, I slid beneath the strings on the sides of her panties and caressed the skin of her hips. I guided myself to the top, just under her belly button, and explored there. I found the small mound of hair she had and traced it with my fingertips.

  She put her hands on mine, guiding and encouraging me.

  By then, we were on her bed. She reached over and turned on her speaker. Tapped her phone. Loud, thrash music fired up. I felt myself go li
mp for a moment. She always played that stuff during our lovemaking. I hated it. Not the music, itself, necessarily, but just hearing it during sex. Who’d want to hear someone yelling at you like a drill sergeant when you’re trying to sing the Song of Songs? It was a big mood-killer for me.

  “Do you have anything different to listen to?” I asked.

  “I like this,” she said. “Helps me get off. I like it rough.”

  I had no choice. If I wanted to get my rocks off with Vanessa, I’d have to get through it with Slayer blasting in my ear. Not ideal. I did my best to tune it out, but I sure wasn’t thrilled.

  It wasn’t long before she was on top of me, and I slipped inside her.

  “Harder, harder,” she said. “I need it rough to come.”

  I felt dirty. Nasty. Not in a pleasant way. Not one bit.

  I did my best to be a sledgehammer. This went on for several minutes. I felt like I was jogging uphill, with it getting steeper each step.

  She made low moans that evolved into higher screeches.

  Vanessa used her own hand to circle-rub her top, and quickly brought herself to orgasm.

  She collapsed on top of me, her hips shuddering.

  I was still hard inside her, but it went down quick.

  “Want me to finish you off?” she asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you had a good one.”

  Vanessa rolled off me. “You never come with me.”

  “I don’t know. The music’s too distracting.”

  “Really? Come on. Who cares?”

  “It throws me off. I feel like there’s a drill sergeant yelling at me.”

  “You don’t like it rough?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “But not all the time.”

  “Weak,” she said.

  I felt about an inch tall. “I am what I am,” I said. “It’s how I feel.”

  “Okay, Popeye,” she said, laughing. But it felt a lot like she was laughing at me instead of with me. “Whatevs.”

  “What can I say?”

  “You don’t need to say anything,” she said. “What time do you have to go to work in the morning?”