by Tim Marquitz
“I believe. Please, don’t. I believe.”
The spirit moved nearer, outstretched its skeletal arms. An intense pressure came into my head. My blood boiled. I crashed to the carpet, fitting. Ollie was no longer in my grasp.
I became still, paralyzed by a pain that wracked every inch of my being. The foot of the spirit’s robes was inches away. I was vaguely aware of singing vipers.
The pain left me at once. Ollie crashed into the carpet beside me and I screamed.
I managed to get to my feet. The spirit was gone. Only the shadows remained.
I threw myself onto my son, held him tightly.
~
The dawn breaks. Crimson light creeps in at the base of the curtains.
I will not open them. I will not let this new world in.
I can hear the sirens scream. They tell me that I am not alone in my pain. I do not want to know what grows from these ashes. A monster dominates my thoughts.
And yet, I know it’s our fault. We would not believe unless we were shown.
Beside me, Mel’s blood cakes the white bedspread. She took the first bullet.
I slug back the last of the whiskey and the bottle slips from my grasp. The remnants of an old, well-loved foe trickle into nothing.
I raise the gun. My hands tremble.
I wonder if I’ll be reunited with my loved ones.
Friends of a Forgotten Man
Gord Rollo
The naked man lies flat on his belly, unmoving, pretending he is dead. He’s lying in his own filth, inside what used to be a large ceramic-tiled cistern in the basement of an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. Outside, it’s sweltering hot for this late in the year, but down in the bowels of this makeshift prison, it’s always frigid and damp.
In this escape-proof cell, there are no windows, and no doors. Only a ten by ten by seven feet high concrete box, with a service drain hole in the floor to piss in and a small circular opening on top where warm dirty water and half-rancid food is dumped in just often enough to keep him alive.
He’s been in here a long time, paying for a crime his remorseless captor has deemed unforgivable. He’s being punished outside of the law, of course, the prisoner of some grief-stricken husband fully convinced in the righteousness of this cruel form of vigilante justice. When he thinks back to the day this nightmare began, as he so often does, it still seems so damn unfair. It’s all a bit of a jumble now, the memories flashing in his mind like blurry fragments of a badly edited home movie ...
...Approaching a busy intersection, gunning the Volvo’s engine to try make the lights, an already shitty day made worse by being twenty minutes late for an important meeting with one of his real estate clients ... seeing the middle-aged couple stepping off the curb, realizing they don’t see him and are walking directly into his path ... stomping on the brakes and hammering the horn in frustration at being forced to stop and wait for the light to change ... the couple jumping at the sound of his horn, startling them so badly it’s as if he’s fired a cannon ... the man jumping back toward the safety of the curb, but the woman panicking, moving further out onto the road, right into the front grill of a flower delivery van speeding through the just-turned-green light of the intersecting street ... blood everywhere, so much so, he knows the woman is dead even before the van pulls to a stop, and everyone starts screaming ...
Not the husband, though. No, not him. The naked man vividly remembers his reaction. Instead of screaming, or crying, or making the futile attempt of trying to help his wife, the baldheaded, bearded man simply pointed an accusing finger at where he sat behind the wheel of his car, clearly blaming him and not the driver who had actually killed his wife. And in all honesty, it probably was his fault she was dead, but he hadn’t wanted it to happen. It had been an accident, a terrible tragedy, but certainly not a crime.
No matter, though, the husband managed to track him down. No police, no lawyers, no trial. Only a lump on the head, and a string of profanity-laced promises from the mind of a man clearly obsessed with revenge:
“Where I’m taking you, dipshit, they’ll never find you. You’ll never get the chance to ruin anyone else’s life. I won’t let you. You’ll never walk the streets again ... or drive another fancy fucking car ... and you sure as hell will never ... ever ... honk a god damned horn again! Do you hear me, scumbag? Never!”
~
Guilty of a crime or not, this awful hole in the ground is his entire existence now, his own private hell, and he knows that he’ll never be allowed out. No one else seems to know he’s here, the rest of the world having forgotten him, probably not even aware that he is missing. Or they simply don’t care. Either way, it’s crystal clear the cavalry’s not coming.
He’s all by himself, but he certainly isn’t alone.
He has friends down here. Lots of them.
~
Hours later, still lying with his face pressed to the ground beside the floor drain, he can finally hear them coming, slowly making their way up the pipe to pay him another visit. It’s pitch black inside his prison, but in his head he can vividly see each small rubbery black body inching up out of the pipe—thousands of them—separate creatures but moving as one large slippery mass, drawn toward the promise of coppery-sweet blood waiting inside his ever-weakening body.
The leeches swarm the naked man, moving with an unnatural quickness, spread over his skinny body head to toe, and immediately begin to feed. Within their dark embrace, the man welcomes their vampiric kisses, offering no resistance as they seal him inside a constantly shifting, fleshy cocoon. Forced into this solitary confinement, unknowingly slipping well past the borders of sanity, he is craving contact with the outside world, and no matter how parasitic this relationship is, it’s better than being alone. Being alone might drive him crazy.
Crazier, he laughs, and notices his newfound friends seem to be writhing in happiness along with him, perhaps reading his mind and sharing the pleasure of his innocent little joke.
~
It’s several nights later; or possibly several days—it’s impossible to tell time down here in the dark—and the friends of the forgotten man are back for another visit. They’ve developed quite a strong relationship—he and their multitude—bonded with each other figuratively as well as literally. The leeches love him, and he in return, loves them back.
It comes as no surprise then, the man has been confiding in his new friends, telling the leeches all about the nasty things he’d like to do to the rotten cocksucker who locked him down in this dark hole. He whispers to the myriad creatures that slither past his mouth every visit, the leeches pausing to hear his dreams of revenge as they ever so briefly attach their bloated bodies to his bruised and bloodied lips.
His friends have recently started talking back, which pleases the man and lifts his sagging spirits tremendously. They take turns forcing their slime-covered bodies deep inside the forgotten man’s ear canals, telling him all sorts of wonderful secrets. Things like how they understand his anguish, and that it wasn’t his fault the man’s wife was killed. They also whisper about how maybe he doesn’t have to remain locked up in this stinking hole forever, and how maybe, just maybe, they might be in a position to help him out—help him get the revenge he so desperately craves.
The man lying covered in a living blanket of leeches listens carefully to everything his friends tell him. He likes what he is hearing—likes it a lot.
~
Time has passed, but the man trapped in the dark cannot judge how much. Not that it matters. The only important thing is that his hated jailer will be coming soon. He hasn’t been around to drop food in the hole for a long time, and the skeletal-thin man knows he’s the prisoner of someone far too cruel to ever let him starve to death peacefully. No, the sick bastard will make an appearance here soon—guaranteed. The forgotten man plans to be ready for him.
He works his fingers almost to the bone, trying and eventually succeeding in prying one of the ceramic tile
s off of the concrete wall. Striking it repeatedly against the equally hard floor, he smashes the tile into several small ceramic shards—all of which seem more than jagged enough to accomplish what he has in mind. Selecting the biggest and sharpest piece, the man lays it on the ground right beside the service drain.
Somehow he finds the strength to place his hands on either side of the drain, kick his legs up into the air, and hold his bodyweight suspended for the few seconds it takes to jam his right foot up out of the small opening at the top of his cell. His foot barely fits through, and he winces in pain as he cocks his ankle around to lock himself into position. Dangling from his one leg, he searches in the dark for the ceramic shard below his head, finds it, and without hesitation viciously jabs it up into the tender flesh of his neck.
With more luck than skill, he severs the carotid artery, and his fingers spasm, dropping the crude weapon to the ground as the blood begins to flow. Hanging the way he is, the blood already rushing to his head via gravity, the forgotten man’s life juices will soon completely drain from his abused body. It will pour from the mortal wound in his neck, straight down into the service drain directly below him, and from there, into the pipe where he knows his friends will be ready and waiting. They promised him.
With his final coherent thoughts, he sends a last urgent plea down to the leeches below. Remember me, my friends. Remember me …
~
Deep down in the old rusty pipe, the leeches are in ecstasy, drenched in the warm sticky blood of the man who’s just committed suicide. Thousands of creatures ingest as much of the warm juice as they can handle, their small black bodies quickly turning red as they squirm together in wanton bloodlust. The crimson feast goes on for hours, until the last few drops of blood trickle from the inverted man’s ruined throat.
Once the last drop falls, as if by some predetermined design, the glutted leeches begin to separate and make their way farther into the network of underground pipes. One by one, they steadfastly crawl inside their pitch-black tunnels, moving across great lengths of pipe until they finally start slanting upward, heading toward the freedom of the surface world.
~
The first rays of sunlight are slowly creeping west, a growing hint of orange fire chasing the night sky away and illuminating the graffiti-painted outer walls of the boarded up factory. Ninety feet away from the main building, a small, dilapidated shack leans against the chain link fence surrounding the property. Years ago, this shack functioned as the pump house for the thriving factory, but now stands empty, the hydraulic machinery, hoses, pressure gauges, and control panel long since removed. This is where the leeches long journey has taken them, emerging into the early dawn light one sticky-red body after another, piling in a thick mound in the middle of the dusty floor.
They slither and crawl over one another, as always, but something about their behavior has obviously changed. There’s a certain logic behind their movements now—a method behind their tiny-brained madness—and it isn’t long before their random mass of heaped bodies has started to flatten, branch out, and begin taking on a more familiar shape. A recognizable shape, eerily similar to that of a naked man lying flat out on his belly.
~
Outside, a large gate swings open in the chain link fence, and the sound of gravel crunching beneath the weight of four car tires can be heard all over the factory grounds. A rust-speckled, blue Ford Tempo pulls up to the nearby loading dock and the driver revs the engine a few times before finally shutting it off. The driver is tall and husky, a bald-headed man with a gray-streaked beard. He casts a quick nervous look around, then apparently satisfied with what he sees, grabs a plastic bag from the trunk and hurries inside the building.
~
In the pump house the leeches continue to move around, shifting and sliding, twisting and turning, until every one of them has found their proper position. They’ve spent hundreds of hours crawling over the man trapped in the underground cistern. Weeks learning every curve, angle, and unique nuance of the man’s features. The blood that fed their bloated bodies—the blood inside of them right now—is the same blood that pumped through the imprisoned man’s veins. By absorbing his blood, they have made themselves a part of him, and he, a part of them. Blood brothers. Soul mates. Friends.
And friends always keep their promises.
The body on the floor begins to stir, pressing firmly down with its newly formed hands until it gains a kneeling position, then uses its collective strength to make it all the way to its feet. It sways a little, its fledgling legs threatening to collapse at first, but the longer it stands its ground, the stronger it starts to feel. Within a few minutes, the man-shaped creature is feeling more and more like its old self.
With sweet thoughts of revenge in its black heart, and a smile etched on its bloodied face, the forgotten man walks out of the pump house and immediately heads for the passenger seat of the rusty blue car. Sitting comfortably inside, his collective minds are remembering all those nasty things his jailer promised him he’d never be able to do again. With a sweet sense of vindication, he reaches over and starts honking the horn.
Altus
Georgina Kamsika
At this depth, the ocean was cold enough to kill her in seconds.
Susan leaned closer to the toughened glass, splayed fingers creating mist coronas around the tips. The darkness was absolute but she knew it was still out there. Her nose bumped against the glass at the same time she saw its movements. The shadow was gargantuan—yet the bioluminescent light flickering at its edges was still not enough to discern its shape or size.
Thrumming resonated through the bathyscaphe. It was angry now.
~
The Altus bathyscaphe sat on the deck like a squat toad, the weighted balance pods on each side curled like legs around the frame. The bloated body was made of a metal sphere capable of withstanding the immense pressure seven miles down at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. Two super toughened plastic windows bulged like eyes from the sphere, adding to the amphibian look. A technician buzzed around the outside, fussing over the preparations.
Susan rubbed her nose, trying to stave off the threat of a headache behind her eyes. “Are all the emergency procedures understood and in place?”
“Yes, doctor.” Her assistant tapped his clipboard. “We’re ready for anything. The emergency recall button can bring the sub back even if there’s been a hull breach or if you’re, uh, unconscious.”
“Thanks, Ed. With that, I’d say the pre-launch checklist is complete. I’ll go suit up. Let’s be ready in five.”
“Doctor.” Ed shuffled his feet, clutching the clipboard to his chest like a shield. “Don’t forget about those anomalies we’ve seen on the scope. The instruments can’t be working right, the size and speed of the blips—”
“Indicate a small malfunction on this vessel. Nothing to worry about on the Altus. And who knows, maybe it’ll turn out to be something new. That is why I’m going down there after all.” Susan swapped the heated deck for the cool darkness of her cabin, a trickle of sweat running down the back of her neck.
Squeezing past a pile of her husband’s financial journals, she pulled her diving suit from the closet. Designed to conserve her body heat in the freezing ocean depths, it hugged her skin tightly, exposing her aging body shape.
“Darling,” Richard hovered in the doorway, ducking his head to enter. “Ed’s told me he’s worried about some strange anomalies on the sonar … ” Richard’s voice trailed off as he fiddled with a row of her awards screwed down on the shelf, his short nails beating out a frustrated tattoo.
“It’s because of the anomalies I have to dive today. I investigate this kind of thing, it’s what I do.” She pulled at his arm, guiding him away from the shelf while her other hand brushed imaginary marks off the well-polished trophies.
“It’s what you did,” Richard argued, his face sullen. “Past tense. When we were both kids, flush with the need for column inches and awards, we t
ook risks, and then we’d court the papers. But this rig is barely tested, and you’ve not done a solo dive in over eight years. Why risk it, darling?”
Susan shivered, her gaze flicking to the row of plaques in front of her.
Youngest Luminescent Expert Award 1981.
Brightest Star, Oceanic Institute 1984.
Worldwide Oceanographer 1987.
The dates made her wince. Twenty years was a long time in her field.
She turned to face her husband, jaw set. “Because we, and I use the world lightly since it’s all your family’s money, sponsored the development of this bathyscaphe. Why wouldn’t I want the chance to see things no one’s ever seen? Go deeper into the ocean than anyone else ever has?”
“But tell me, is it about the research or is it the fame you really miss?” Richard asked.
Susan touched the gray at her temples. Why could he never understand what she needed? Why did he always imply it was just vanity? Pushing past him, she strode away, scarcely noticing him duck out of the hatchway to follow her.
“Susan, darling, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
She stopped, hands clenched at her sides as she took deep breaths “No, it is a good question. I don’t think I know which one I want, either.”
She swung around and buried her face in his chest, breathing in great whooping sighs; that familiar husband smell of cinnamon, cloves and mint. His warmth flooded through her body, making her feel colder still.
“We don’t need fame and excitement anymore. We’ve got each other. What’s wrong with letting our old bones relax in front of a fire now and then, eh, love?”
