Black Pockets

by George Zebrowski

  I was second-rate at best, maybe even fifth-rate. Even my crossword puzzles were too easy to solve. “Don’t worry,” said my editor. “We need’m too. There’s more demand for dumber than smarter.” And he meant this with a happy heart!

  So I had sometimes resented Felix, but mostly loved him and his ability, maybe more for what it had produced and less for himself. And these delusions of his were his way of saying, “I’m going to rip the work out of myself even if I have to materialize delusions!”

  And now, somehow, he had done it—by descending deeper into himself. He would be inevitable, unstoppable, whatever it took to move forward. I could perhaps understand that much, even if he left me to drown within myself.

  Felix and June finally stopped their soft talking... and something new slipped into the world with a terrifying beauty as they came in smiling. I turned to leave, knowing from the look on her face that she loved him enough to accept the spiders, the piano, and whatever else made him run.

  She and I were in perfect, wordless agreement.

  Dutifully, the piano began to play again as she caught up to me at the door and whispered, “You have to know, Bruno, that it was I who taught the spiders.”

  She had taught them to sing, she said, and he had taught them to play their own songs. There was not a hint of lying in her face, only the proud, ethereal composure of a truthteller. It shuddered through me, beautiful and humiliating, as I opened the door, fearing to break the spell with a wrong word, grateful as I fled that these were newly born spiders, and that June and I had not somehow helped Felix raise the dead.

  Black Pockets

  “Turn up the lights, I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

  —O. Henry’s last words

  HE RAISED A FIST AS BIG AS THE WORLD AND SQUEEZED. Enemies squirmed and yowled in his grasp and their warm blood ran down his arm.

  He squeezed slowly, delaying their deaths, because people cling to the belief that the harm they do is right and necessary, and only the finality of their approaching end forces them to cry, “Oh, my God, what have I done!” Their evil explodes their denial, and death drains them slowly, and they feel it taking them, and they think about it. He squeezed harder, and their screaming stopped, and their blood chilled and ran cold on his skin...

  Bruno’s knowledge of black pockets had grown since that day when he had finally despaired of all mercy and been shown the way to personal justice: one person irrevocably responsible to another, held to account by direct action between individuals closest to the truth, because they know it uniquely, individually, beyond all legal investigations, briefs, and cross-examinations.

  All the harm done to him had crowded hope from his mind as his hatred spoke with a love of itself, filling him with joy whenever his thoughts reached out to hidden powers and embraced their strength. A kindred underworld had granted him vengeance. He was no longer one of those who only daydreamed of revenge. The overwhelming ease of it was irresistible, his to do with as he pleased, now that he had fulfilled his bargain with Felix.

  It began when he awoke gasping for breath one day, and groped around in a darkness that stood about him as no mere absence of light; it pressed into his body and flowed into his eyes. Slowly, he crawled around what seemed to be a curving floor and touched the inside end of an egg-shaped space. He backed up, then rose and bumped into a low ceiling.

  Bending down, he tried to remember how he had entered the chamber.

  “Hello!” he shouted. The sound was dull, suggesting a thick enclosure. He was breathing with increasing difficulty. “Let me out of here!” he shouted, suffocating. The darkness exploded into light and he fell onto something soft.

  He lay still, eyes closed, then opened his eyes and blinked at his own bedroom rug.

  He lay on his side, filling with deep breaths, staring at the scratches on the massive, wooden legs of his antique dresser, reminding himself that he had neglected to conceal the old scars. Then he turned over on his back and saw something black and fluid descending toward him.

  It faded into gray, and kept coming.

  He raised his right hand. The shadow darkened, pressing closer. A part of it seemed to be infolding, like lips threatening to swallow him. He dropped his hand and the darkness dissolved, leaving him to stare at the familiar cracks of his own ceiling.

  “I think you’re getting it,” a voice said from the easy chair in the corner of the room.

  Bruno turned his head. Felix Lytton, his old enemy, was gazing at him intently, gray eyebrows as bushy as ever, bald pate shiny. He had lost weight and seemed small in the buxom lap of the old chair.

  “I should have let you out earlier,” said the man who had stolen his wife and cheated him out of at least two fortunes, who had nearly killed him when they had been children, then had bullied him in high school and mocked him in college.

  “What?” Bruno managed to say, sitting up on the floor.

  “Being inside one of those things longer gives you an appreciation of what happens. That’s important.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bruno asked angrily. “You did this to me? What did you drug me with?”

  “No drug. Get up and lie down on the bed. I’ve got a present for you.”

  “What?” Bruno asked again as he struggled to his feet and realized as he looked toward the bed that he would never have a better chance to kill Felix. They were alone, and his enemy’s neck looked fragile.

  He turned and moved toward him quickly.

  “Come!” Felix cried out.

  The door to the bedroom opened and a tall, heavy-set man with black hair rushed in. Bruno turned in surprise and was struck in the belly. He fell on his back, gasping for breath.

  “That’s enough!” Felix cried. “Put him on the bed.”

  The big man dragged him over by his feet, lifted him by his belt, and dropped him on the bed.

  Bruno rolled over on his side, still breathing hard, and looked again at Felix, who seemed even more gaunt in the big chair. His bodyguard now stood next to him.

  “Well?” Felix demanded. “Are you ready to hear me out now?”

  Bruno struggled with his hatred of the man who had brought him so much hurt.

  “You’ll thank me,” Felix said, “when I make you a present of my skill.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bruno asked coldly.

  “That black cyst that just held you! You can use it. I’m going to teach you. Listen carefully.”

  Bruno propped himself up against the headboard, fearful of the big bodyguard, who was watching him carefully. There was no chance at all of getting past him to Felix.

  “Just imagine,” Felix said, “—when your venom becomes like molten steel pouring through you, a black pocket will form for you with each loathing. Of course, you’ll have to be heartless.” He spoke tenderly, as a lover to his beloved, and Bruno felt that the old husk might break down and weep, then realized that in some strange way the sick, old weakling was trying to make up to him.

  “What are they?” Bruno asked softly.

  “Who knows!” Felix cried with a youthful vehemence. “Use’m and ask no questions. Maybe they’re something that’s escaped from our insides, and we find their use according to individual needs, when we’re strong enough to summon them. Or maybe they’re like the insides of living things, beautiful on the outside and a bag of guts on the inside. Why in all hell are the insides of things so different? What is the inside of the universe like? Maybe they’re the darkness at the core of the human soul?” He laughed and shivered with the effort, and his bony hands grabbed violently at the chair’s armrests. He winced, pulled his hands back, and stared at the blood seeping through the abrased skin of his palms. After a moment, he put his hands back down on the soft armrests. “Yeah,” he said, “I know—my outside is beginning to look like my insides.”

  “How did you... find them?” Bruno asked, shaken by the sight of his old enemy’s infirmity.

  “I got mad one day and raged.
And then... I learned. It wasn’t long ago, but too late for me to really enjoy it.”

  Bruno asked, “Why didn’t you leave me there?”

  “I’m going to die, and it amuses me to pass on the skill, to know that it won’t die with me. I always knew that I might need you. All I ask in return is that you take care of the names left on my list, before you get to... your own... needs.”

  Bruno’s eyelids drooped, then fluttered. Felix gazed at him and saw how tightly the man’s skull wore his face. The head seemed too heavy for the wasted body, and might break off at any moment.

  “Will you promise me that, Bruno?” Felix asked, looking up. “Your word is good with me.” The sincerity in his old enemy’s voice was overpowering.

  Bruno was silent, feeling flattered, moved, and suspicious.

  “There’s no danger!” Felix cried at his hesitation. “You’ll revenge yourself with impunity—simply because you can! Most people forget their hates because there’s little or nothing they can do about them. Your skill will grow! And I hope you can do more with it than I’ve been able to do.” He paused, breathing with difficulty. “I have only a week or two to live,” he added.

  “Really... ?” Bruno mumbled.

  “Yes. Just think. Your hatreds will not die with their circumstances. You’ll be able to act each and every time. You’re like me, I know. Think of the creeps you’ve had to let go. You’ve had to live as their victim. I know because I helped to make you one. Now you can bully all those who deserve it. And if you overdo it—so what! Who’ll know? When I’m dead, you’ll be the only one who knows.”

  Bruno took a deep breath and shifted against the headboard, thinking that it was too good to be true, coming as it was from Felix Lytton. Images of Felix’s limbs tangling with the willing, nude body of Bruno’s first love, June, still writhed in his memory, along with the years of poverty and struggle that had only led to an accounting clerkship in a small firm in upstate New York. He remembered June’s rationalizations, as her feelings for him struggled against her desire to insert herself into the flow of Felix’s success. Even when he had explained how Felix had stolen his accounting program from their college days and destroyed his hard disk with a hammer, she had still chosen the thief, who went on to make a fortune from the program, only confirming her choice of the winner, whatever his method. Years later, when Felix had left her the big house and moved on through several new wives, Bruno had somehow imagined that June would call him to her, but she had not; Felix had drained her of any capacity to think justly or to correct past wrongs, or care about any of it. All the love they had shared had drained into him, and had slowly evaporated.

  “Tell me again,” Bruno said, “why you’re passing all this on to me.”

  “You’ve heard of vendetta?” Felix asked. “In some parts of the world a vendetta is still a sacred thing, a piece of property to be passed down the generations.” He smiled grotesquely, his jaw protruding. “It will calm me to know it doesn’t just die with me. I’ll die happy.” He paused and struggled to lean forward in the faded luxury of the chair, still gripping the armrests with his injured palms. “Don’t you see, Bruno!” he shouted, shaking a bony finger at him. “You deserve to have my skill.” He sat back with a sigh. “I know you do,” he added.

  Bruno took a deep breath. “Why should I let you die happy?” he asked, and the big bodyguard glared at him.

  “And lose everything?” Felix asked. “Yeah, I know it will irritate you that I died happy, but that will pass. I’ve done everything possible to hurt you. Let me have my parting shot at those who have escaped me, and help you at the same time.”

  Bruno lay back and considered. “There’s no catch?”

  “It’s exactly as I told you.”

  “This isn’t some way to get back at me, is it?”

  “How can it be, Bruno? Think! I’ve already beaten you, haven’t I? It would be the other way round, wouldn’t it?” He smiled again. “If you like, think of this as my way of letting you get some back. De Sade said we are all abused, but we can also abuse, and so even up things. Right? Do you object to my dying happy? You do, of course. But look at what you’ll get in return for such a small favor. Our interests coincide at last.”

  “How did you get in here?” Bruno asked.

  Felix grimaced. “Think of what I’m going to teach you. You’ll have to concentrate.”

  It would do no harm to listen.

  “You won’t believe me unless I show you.” Felix grinned with difficulty. “And you will believe.” The mask of his face pulled back tightly, and the skull beneath the skin leered as if denying the truth of everything he had said.

  Bruno found himself staring at the armrests of the chair, where his enemy’s blood was beginning to seep into the fabric. The man was ill and dying.

  Felix noticed his concern for the chair and said, “Don’t be small-minded. What’s this chair to anything I’ve told you!”

  “It’s a valuable antique,” Bruno said, “and you may be lying.”

  “I am not lying!” Felix cried, tearing his hands from the bloody, drying fabric of the armrests.

  Felix Lytton died five weeks after teaching Bruno all “the skill,” as he referred to it during their sessions.

  “But remember,” Felix said before he showed Bruno the final and most vital elements of “the skill,” “you must conclude my unfinished business before you start on your own. You will promise me that.”

  “I promise,” Bruno said, knowing full well that Felix could not hold him to it from the grave. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to carry out his wishes. It would be practice. Bruno had left him some money to live on, so he would not be delayed. It was a tidy sum, which Bruno immediately invested in a monthly income. He also bought three hand-tailored suits.

  “I don’t want you to be distracted by money problems,” Felix had said. “But if you fail, you will find that I have left you a penalty.”

  Bruno’s stomach had lurched at this ominous statement.

  “Don’t worry,” he had replied meekly. “There’s no reason for me to neglect your wishes. What satisfaction would there be for me to trouble you then... with you not being around to be troubled.”

  “Exactly. Don’t worry, there are only three names left on my list.”

  “What’s this penalty... if I fail?” Bruno had asked.

  “The penalty is that if you don’t cocoon the three names in this envelope, the skill will leave you.” Felix had put the envelope down on his night table.

  Bruno had not gotten up the courage to say, “You’ll forgive me if I suspect what seems only a convenient threat.” He had grown more fearful of Felix toward the end, while his old enemy had grown anxious, even pleading at times. There were times when the frail body of his enemy seemed to become youthful, full of hope.

  “Dare you risk that I’m lying? This is more than a penalty. During our training sessions I placed an irremovable suggestion in your mind. You can’t get rid of it. There’s no way. You’d need someone else like me—and there isn’t one. But don’t worry, my insurance program will have nothing to work with after you’ve eliminated these three, and will expire when you’ve carried out the agreement. I’m not bluffing. And I do want you to have an incentive to finish the job and get to your own. One day the skill will be all yours.”

  Felix was right; things were too far along to turn back now. “Nice of you to tell me,” Bruno had said, knowing that it was a bluff he could not risk calling; and at least Felix was treating him with some respect.

  “What happens—inside a pocket, I mean exactly?” he had asked at the start of his practice sessions.

  “You felt it when you were in one. You choke to death for lack of air.”

  “None comes in?”

  “You use up what comes in with you!”

  “And then?” Bruno had asked uneasily.

  “You rot—forever!” Felix had cried, making Bruno shudder.

  “One more thing,” Felix had added. “Y
ou’ll steel yourself to be as heartless as you need to be, free of all sympathies for your fellow man.”

  “Truly?” Bruno had asked.

  Felix nodded. “You will learn to feel only hatred and fulfillment when you’re done.”

  In the last day of his training, Bruno awoke to a great resolve within himself. He saw his past and future clearly as he weighed the effort of carrying out Felix’s wishes against the danger of losing the skill that had been given to him. There could be no contest between these two alternatives.

  “Trust me,” Felix had said. “There are ways to overcome our earlier programmings. You’ll see how tiring it is to care, to feel too much for others. There has been some evolutionary advantage to cooperative, symbiotic behavior, but you and I don’t really need it with what we can do.”

  “But how?” Bruno had asked.

  “It’s only a learned function of endocrine and glandular systems, in which you identify with others and your imagination draws analogies from experience, as for example in the saying that there but for the grace of God go I. The golden rule is just sympathy, nothing more. You don’t have it for snakes and spiders.” He laughed. “Some people don’t even have it for other people, so believe me, it can be done!”

  “That’s all?”

  “You’ll learn never to worry about what you’ve done. I did it. So can you.”

  The three names in the envelope belonged to Felix’s last wife, now Jane Bucke, and her two young boys, Ralphie and Ricky.

  The woman looked at him with suspicion when he told her who had sent him. She barred his way into the modest house, then swallowed hard and said, “Please tell them there’s nothing I want from the estate.”

  Bruno came forward and she backed away. “May I come in?” he asked, slamming the door behind him. “This is very important.”