Blood & Gristle

by Michael Louis Calvillo

  The conjuration complete, imageless sleep took Jonathon away. When he woke, disorientated, unaware of how long he had been out, his eyes slow blurred to life. As if still in an incalculable fever dream, he caught first sight of his progeny, a slick, goopy jumble of goo, unmade flesh and glistening bone matter that pulsed and gyrated and evolved in a dim corner of the cabin. The basilisk snorted at him and stalked to and fro, nervously guarding the budding mess. Its magnetic eyes locked Jonathon up and issued a warning: stay away. The same warning emitted from within the center of Jonathon’s skull. The force and grave seriousness of the basilisk’s counsel scrambled his thoughts and sent him careening headfirst in to yet another bout of dreamless sleep.

  When next Jonathon awoke, the mysterious materialization in the corner was gone. The basilisk was asleep, curled around the water pipe it was chained to. Jonathon tried to stand but his head and body balked. Exhaustion sent his brain swimmy and pulled him back down.

  When next Jonathon awoke, he discovered the basilisk was free. Its chain hung limply against the water pipe. Jonathon felt a keen, buzzing panic begin to gather within his chest. Again he tried to stand and again his head went light. Before he passed back into recurring nothingness, he saw the nameless thing he had brought into this world hovering near the ceiling. It still looked unmade, a ragtag collection of fleshy strips, muscular sinew, protruding bones and sharp, sharp teeth. Its movements were frenetic, a man-sized blur of jittery commotion. Jonathon forgot all about the basilisk or trying to stand and fought for a better look at the nameless horror, but the continual buzz and quaver made it impossible to pin it down and define it before sleep reclaimed him.

  When next Jonathon awoke he felt uber-cold. His legs felt wet and wrong. His eyelids jumped and fluttered, batting away unconsciousness until the world came into fragmentary focus. The nameless thing hovered directly above him. Again, it was impossible to make out many details, but its proximity brought it into scale. From the odd angle, he guessed it to be about eight feet tall. He craned his neck and tried to move and felt resistance. Lowering his eyes a scream lodged itself in his throat. His mouth opened wide but no sound came out, instead an ocean of blood rushed forth, coating his chin and drenching his shirt. The basilisk had eaten both of his legs up to the knee caps.

  The beast snapped and hissed and swallowed, advancing, ferociously taking his left knee and thigh into its gaping maw. With unreal force it clamped its jaws and shattered bone, destroyed flesh, cleaved ligaments and sent buckets of blood and pus flying. This time the scream broke and shredded Jonathon’s vocal cords. The basilisk kept feeding as shock, horror and the inevitable seized his mind.

  He found momentary escape, closing his eyes, not to empty sleep, but to glorious visions of what could have been: Ida Ridley, looking better than her earthly form ever could, dancing suggestively and whispering his name, his parents actually loving him, arms of warmth, voices soft and safe like the breath of god, Mr. Lau bowing in respect and admiration, the sun goddess Amaterasu bathing him in perfumed rivers of gold luxuriance, the town of Sierra City, his army, his support system, his world.

  The basilisk worked its way up to Jonathon’s stomach, ripping through the stretchy bag of meat and spilling partially digested bits of mush everywhere. A fireball of heat washed over his reeling brain and incinerated his delusions of could-have-been-grandeur. Awash in cold sweat, shivering, his visions going static, the last thing Jonathon saw before the finality of death was the horrible, nameless thing descending and embracing him with its horrible, horrible dark eyeholes.

  FOREVER AND A DAY

  Ever-gloom.

  The sky, a blanket of gray.

  Smith, pale, face a blank, mouth a straight line, pulls his fuel efficient hybrid into his driveway just as the heavy clouds above burst and angry droplets start to patter the windshield.

  As a force of habit, it’s Tuesday after all, he runs from his car to the curb to bring in the garbage cans only to discover his gardener has already gotten to them. The cans, or rather, the plastic buckets with wheels, are parked alongside his house with their lids propped up to show off their emptiness. The intensifying rain will surely fill them with water, making them heavy as hell, so Smith, uninterested in struggling with smelly trash cans full of smelly rainwater, braves the multiplying droplets and runs from the curb to close them up.

  One of the cans is empty, lined with a funky, trashy, smelly residue. Smith scrunches his noses and closes the lid quick. In the other bin, he is startled to find a cat pacing and clawing at the can’s gunky innards. The beast must have jumped in, curious, stupid, whatever, but it couldn’t get a decent hold on the thick layer of slime coating the trash can’s walls and launch itself out. On approach, Smith recoils, taken aback by the cat’s unexpected hissing and caterwauling. Reflex action kicks in and he slams the lid shut while shaking off a frightful chill. Calming, relaxing, his heart beat slowing, he listens to the animal’s nervous movements and then puts his hand back on the lid.

  The sporadic droplets begin to amass into an army of rain, but instead of throwing open the lid and running for dry land, Smith pauses and weathers the shower for a few more moments. He listens to the cat going bonkers and then thinks I have the power here. Escape, without any kind of assistance, is impossible.

  A half smile breaks his austere face. He can’t even begin to count the number of times the mangy feline has used his front yard as a litter box. He takes his hand off the lid and then runs for the front door to let himself in the house.

  When writer’s block makes everything in his head gauzy and formless, Smith throws ups his hands and gives up. He turns off the monitor and then goes downstairs for a bit of dinner. On the stairs he hears Sydney and Isabelle talking and laughing about American Idol. Sydney is cooking polish sausage with rice and Isabelle is most likely doing her homework. Smith inhales a deep whiff of the savory dinner smells and prepares to join in the mindless banter about mindless television. But, rounding the corner, his heart somersaults and plummets and withers - the kitchen is empty and quiet and odorless.

  Ramen tastes good, especially with cold beer, but it does nothing for one’s drive. As a result, the story will have to wait. TV will have to suffice. Smith swears to himself that he will work harder tomorrow. He’ll go grocery shopping and eat better. He’ll hunker down and write a fucking masterpiece. The editors at Chiaroscuro will piss themselves with envy and admiration.

  Sydney ruined him sexually. Trying to sleep, trying to fantasize, trying to bring himself to life, there is nothing but sheets of endless gray. There is nothing but gloom and darkness, like the dismal sky each and every passing day, like the dismal night that follows the dismal evening that follows each and every one of those dismal passing days.

  Sensuality is nothing more than a half-thought, half erect, half hot, overcast, a spotty cloud attaining and then losing shape over and over and over again.

  Smith bites his lips and tries anyway, but the moment heat ratchets and an image dirties up his mind, everything cools and his sparking nerves throb muted, and dead, like ineffectual stars futilely trying to shine deep within the billowy folds of unrequited desire.

  He gives up, limp, hands to fists pounding the mattress, and he pictures his insides, his emotions and organs and bones, going nimbus and cumulous, losing their corporeality all together. He imagines his soul, his heart, his spirit as nothing more than a dull tapestry of constellations, rendered nearly imperceptible by the unrelenting fog of depression.

  Mounting a final attack, he holds himself and fights and chews the inside of his cheek while he furiously works at floppy, pliable, soft skin. He tries to remember when orgasms were luminous, when they burned, when their bodies rocked like a pair of supernovas shaking the heavens.

  He tries and tries after a moment he does remember, after a moment he goes as hard as steel, but then just as quickly he remembers that he is only remembering and his rouse crumbles beneath the frustration that now, there is only dust, and
echoes, and the constant reaching for something that isn’t there.

  On the way to work the story changes and morphs.

  Traffic becomes a creative forge.

  Smith’s fuel-efficient hybrid, an idea machine.

  At this rate the contest is as good as his. But, by the time he gets out of his car and sits at his computer to work code, all of his inspired progress gets lost in a flood of corporate dreck.

  Idea eaters.

  He types and checks his work.

  He types and checks his work.

  He types and checks his work and wonders what his ex-family is doing.

  Co-workers flitter in the peripheral. They push more and more projects his way. Smith feels like he is being buried alive.

  It is still raining and the cat is still in the garbage can. It’s going just as apeshit as yesterday and Smith is just about to throw back the lid and set it free when something happens inside, something clicks on or off, and just like that, he gets lost looking into the perpetually, dark skies. Sound disappears, the cat ceases to exist, and blinking back rain, Smith is overcome with emotion. Tears stream down his cheeks intermingling with the seemingly eternal rain.

  Oh how he wishes he could ape the heavens and cry cleansing tears for weeks and weeks at a time!

  In through the front door, he dries his eyes and waits momentarily for a greeting that will never come before heading off to the computer to hack away at potential legacy.

  Working, shadows twist away to nothing. The creeping dark intensifies the link between his brain and the even glowing monitor. For a time: Simpatico, Synchronicity, Primal creation. Smith’s imagination unhinges. Hours pass and when he finally calls it quits something like satisfaction buzzes deep within.

  On the way down stairs he hears laughter.

  Smith thinks about the lists Sydney used to make: dinner, errands, Christmas cards. It never occurred to him to make lists; he always just tried to remember things. He figured whatever slipped through the cracks wasn’t worth the effort anyhow. It’s funny how when you get older all of this changes and suddenly it’s important to remember everything. Forgetting suddenly means something. Forgetting suddenly has consequences.

  Top Ramen again, but this time no beer. Smith tries to smile through a sitcom but keeps missing all of the stupid jokes.

  His bedroom ceiling loses permanence in the dark. It’s as if Smith can drift through the top of his house and float heavenward, but there are no stars, no moon, no cosmic beacons to guide his way. An ocean of black clouds chokes the night.

  Every day he does his best to look sharp.

  Straight tie.

  Creases.

  Hair gel.

  It’s important to maintain appearances, especially when productivity is marginal and half the day is spent playing flash games or sneaking snippets of his short story into Word. The boss man loves the spiffy look and often comments on Smith’s presentation. Lately however, wrinkles are the norm.

  His tie knot is big and lumpy and always askew.

  His hair is gelled with zero regard for symmetry.

  During meetings, when its Smith’s turn to report, the boss’s eyes drift, lost, strange, afraid to hold for too long, as if the new look, as if the dishevelment, is throwing time and space out of whack, as if it is contagious.

  Nobody mentions a thing. They all just half stare, puzzlement rimming their eyeballs. Smith offers nothing in the way of an explanation.

  He types and checks his work.

  He types and checks his work.

  He types and checks his work and wonders what his ex-family is doing.

  Co-workers continue to flitter in the peripheral. Whispers. An occasional glint. The sharpening of knives

  It’s raining hard, but Smith hikes his jacket over his head and makes a run for the trash cans. As he approaches and places his hand on the lid there is no sound, no struggle. Something in his stomach goes all jelly. Rising regret and nausea reminds him that he never intended on killing the animal. He didn’t know what he intended, but inside, where it matters, he didn’t want to hurt anything and it was hard for him to believe that the initial impulse to slam the lid down and the cold, hard anti-emotion required to ignore the cat’s feral, feline cries of desperation, welled from the same source as the guilt hollowing him out.

  Smith lifts the lid slowly and prepares for the worst. Instead, the cat is very much alive, sitting there shivering, staring woefully up at its tormentor. Its big glossy eyes lock Smith up and the repentance gathering steam inside instantly morphs into out and out disgust. Shivers dance his spine.

  The creature looks less like a cat and more like a giant, diseased rodent. Its hair is matted and its head is too big for its body. The smell is beyond awful. Smith covers his nose and mouth and prepares to turn away, but the cat’s eyes, desperate and begging for mercy, meet his. They stare into one another’s soul, but instead of appealing to his sympathies, the gaze strikes Smith all wrong. Instead of pulling at his heart strings, the cat’s eyes sicken and make the little hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention and his hand involuntarily drops the garbage can lid.

  Though it was clear, even to Smith in his surprised state, that the cat meant no harm, that itt just wanted to be let go, that he should have jumped into immediate action, opened the lid, upended the can and let the little bugger out, it still felt good to watch the lid fall firmly into place, to hear the thwack of hard rubber, to feel fright and uncertainty and guilt ebb away within the tomb-like silence following the sudden clamor.

  The cat was out of sight, sealed away by destiny or doom, fate or chance, given over to the same unfeeling entities that made it rain for weeks on end, the same entities that unwontedly intervened upon Smith’s happiness.

  Tonight, there is no messing around. Tonight, divorced from life. Tonight, the words flow from his fingertips and the story’s heart starts to pump. Muscle mass forms. At long last there is some meat on the skeleton. Blood surrogate, love substitute, Smith rides the euphoria until his brain feels worthless and empty.

  One hopes for quick, painless, dreamless sleep, especially after creative influx has seated satisfaction amidst otherwise roiling, worrisome guts. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Satisfaction is already a ghost and the storming heavens above will not be denied their place within Smith’s uneasy slumber.

  Sydney fills his restless reveries. Her form, cut from the fabric of the furthest depths of the cosmos, teases and torments. Smith’s frustrations abound. Desire confuses as he tries to hold himself, to trick himself into another time and place when their hearts were blinding suns, not swirling pools of dead gas, when they were capable of radiating white light from their organs outward, not encasing the world in a permanent tempest.

  The rain is particularly heavy as he dashes from his front door to the sanctuary of his fuel efficient idea eater. Starting the car, Smith stares at the trash cans. Tomorrow is trash day and as much as he wants to let the cat rot away from his memory banks, something has to be done.

  Turning off the car he hikes his coat over his head and runs for the cans. The same nerves – guilt, regret, inhumanity, whatever – vibrate in discordance as Smith once again places his hand upon the trash can lid. Wasting no time he sucks it up and throws the can open. This time, the cat is unequivocally dead. Its dead eyes stare blankly from its dead head which in turn hangs limply from its dead body. There are few flies and few bugs and the threat of imminent smells, but nothing too severe as of yet. The wet, cool weather helps.

  Smith lets the lid go and turns away numb. He is unsure of how to feel. He murdered the poor animal, but somehow doesn’t feel responsible for its death. It seems as though the blame should fall upon bigger shoulders. Though you could probably build an argument against him, Smith shrugs and figures the death has little to do with his petty grudge against an indiscrete neighborhood cat. You could probably build a strong case against him, but then, he didn’t put the cat in the can.

  Right?r />
  Right.

  Fate and stupidity did.

  But what about the slamming lid?

  The knowledge that the cat needed help?

  Factors to be sure, yet in the long run they were unimportant. Smith’s family was being destroyed – was it fair to blame divorce papers or ink pens or looming consequence?

  When things picked up enough momentum they were inevitable and that was that.

  And like unraveling fibers, everything falls apart, twisted, misshapen, clinging to an absence that can never to be filled. Everything falls apart and though he can’t bring the cat back to life or bind Sydney and Isabelle to his nucleus, he could carve a little room in his soul and bury emotion and regret. He could take off his coat, his shirt, his crooked tie, and let them fall to the muddy earth beneath his feet. He could let the gloomy rain penetrate his skin. He could do something necessary and right and (well lets not get carried away here) good. He could dig.

  Smith doesn’t bother calling in to work. Something inside has shifted, something he can’t quite put into words or thoughts just yet, but something significant and definitely transcendent of his shitty, little job.

  There will always be broken code.

  Always.