He couldn’t see a single adult among the spectators, insofar as he could make them out at all. The large sacks tied up with frayed cord and propped against the schoolyard wall were continuing to twitch, although he couldn’t feel a wind. Not just the sacks but the untended turf around them were stained a colour that he did his best to find autumnal, and he was surprised if not uneasy that the watchers hadn’t moved away from them. He was straining his eyes to distinguish even one face when all the onlookers leaned forward to gaze across the field.
Fraith peered under his hand into the sunlight and still had to narrow his eyes. There was no longer a gap in the mass of spectators along the far side of the field. At first he couldn’t locate the runner, and then he saw a figure sprawled on the muddy grass, apparently having veered towards one corner of the hedge. In a moment several onlookers converged to haul him to his feet and march him out of competition, so enthusiastically that Fraith thought he glimpsed the man’s feet attempting to run in the air.
Were they presenting him with a trophy just for joining in? Someone by the distant hedge stepped forward, holding up a slim item against the sun. A dismayingly familiar sound greeted the gesture - a rhythmic clatter somewhere in the audience. Fraith had to peer about to locate a group of boys who were knocking cricket stumps together in a salute that seemed not merely improvised but primitive. The clatter continued as the pointed object rose high and parted its hefty blades before swooping at the figure held by spectators. The savage drumming ceased, isolating another sound - an exhausted shriek that was cut off at once. Spectators closed around the activity, which appeared to involve a good deal of exertion and repetition. Perhaps Fraith hadn’t been wholly mistaken in thinking of a trophy, because in a while a group of boys darted away, lobbing their prize to one another. It was about as rounded as the other ragged ball had been.
Fraith tried to concentrate on just one thought in the hope it was the truth: that all the onlookers were so intent on the spectacle they hadn’t noticed him. His mouth tasted sour and dusty, every heartbeat seemed to make his entire body quiver, but as two boys dragged a limp incomplete shape to join several more beside the far hedge he managed to free himself of his appalled fascination and set about backing towards the school. He was still in the open when he saw movement by the schoolyard wall.
The metal object glinted as it rose to shoulder height and higher. It was an old loudspeaker held by someone halfway along the line of figures beside the wall. The sunlight must be interfering with Fraith’s vision, since the face behind the built-in microphone had a distinctly makeshift look. Its words were plain enough, despite a shrillness that sounded no less senile than childish. “Teach them,” it screeched while the megaphone added a rusty distortion. “Pay them back.”
At once too much else that Fraith had heard it saying became clearer. Perhaps it was the school rather than the day that was special, though he would rather not learn how. If he’d chanced upon some kind of reunion or revival, it was best left uninvestigated until he could alert the authorities. The sun had started to hide its face behind a forest mound beyond the playing field, and he could have wished it weren’t restoring his eyesight as the figures by the schoolyard grew more distinct. He even had the grotesque fancy that the harsh shrill voice belonged to the megaphone itself, give how temporary the commentator’s mouth looked. As if provoked by the thought, the figure swung the megaphone towards him. “There’s another,” it cried in a voice that seemed to scrape the loudspeaker.
All the spectators along the wall turned to find Fraith, who struggled not to see their ramshackle faces clear, because he had a sense that doing so would leave him unable to move. “I’m not,” he protested, having understood too much. “I’m like you. I was, I promise.”
This earned him a response, not just from all the onlookers beside the wall. He’d never heard anyone laugh in unison before, a piercing noise that sounded as much like a chant as mirth. It almost blotted out the answer of the megaphone. “Aren’t now,” the strident voice said.
Fraith thought he had one chance to run for it, and swung around. Half a dozen former pupils of the school had made their stealthy way behind him. Whoever used to look after the grounds must have had quite a collection of implements, from which the figures waiting for Fraith had brought an impressive selection. If this wasn’t daunting enough, he could see the figures in detail now - their torn muddy clothes, their toothless childish faces that put him in mind of rotten fruit. They weren’t simply in danger of wizening; wrinkles kept appearing and being swallowed up like ripples in a pool, along with patches of discolouration. He backed away, almost falling in his haste not merely to keep his distance but to make a last appeal to the organiser of the events. “I’m only looking for the train,” he pleaded.
He was afraid to hear the laughter again, but silence answered him - how eager or expectant he couldn’t tell. The figure lifted the megaphone without speaking and thrust it forward, indicating the farther left-hand corner of the field. Perhaps that concealed a short cut to the station, invisible at such a distance. Fraith knew only that he mustn’t run, or they might think he was like all those who had. He took a breath that pumped up his heartbeat and parched his mouth, and then he set off along the trampled course across the field. He mustn’t look at the spectators - mustn’t meet whatever they might have for eyes - but he found himself wondering whether Carla’s daughters would have cheered him on if he’d given in to running. If he’d ever been too harsh with them, he prayed he could take it back, supposing that would save him. Then the sun went out, and he felt as if the world had.
CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WOMEN OVERHEARD AT MY DENTIST’S OFFICE - Bentley Little
“Hi.”
“Oh. Hi there. Haven’t seen you for awhile.”
“Yeah, well…”
“What are you in for?”
“Just a checkup.”
“Me, too.”
“Well, actually, a checkup and this loose tooth I have here.”
“Wow. How did that happen?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You really want to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. You know that house over on Olive? That McMansion? The one they’ve been working on for the past three years? I walk by it every day while I’m exercising, and I noticed, I don’t know, three or four weeks ago, that all the work’s stopped. I think the owners ran out of money. There’s weeds growing all over that pile of dirt out front, and the tiles on the roof are only about half done. There aren’t any drapes over the windows, and you can see inside that there’s no furniture.
“Anyway, I was jogging by Wednesday morning, and I saw that there was something tacked to the door, some sort of notice. So I went up the walkway to look at it. Curious, you know? I thought it might say that the house had been condemned or something, but it was just an announcement from the county about fruit fly traps being put in local trees. Then all of a sudden the door opened, and this man was standing there, and he was naked.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Skinny, short hair, a little taller than me -”
“No. What’d he look like there?”
“Oh. He was … hard. It was sticking out at me, pointing at me, and that’s why I stumbled. I took, like, a step back, and there was a brick poking up from the walkway, and my shoe hit it and I started to fall backward. I tried to keep my balance, tried to right myself, but my arms were flailing, and I fell forward instead. I couldn’t quite break my fall, and my jaw hit the ground, and I bit down so hard that I loosened my tooth. When I looked up, he’d come out of the house onto the porch and was … jacking off. He was about two feet away. And he was pointing it at me! If he’d finished, he would’ve done it right on me! I just scrambled to my feet and ran away. Got the hell out of there.”
“Wow.”
“I know, huh?”
“What a world we live in.”
“Actually, something like that happened to me, too. Well, not exactly like that, but sort of. It was a couple of weeks ago. I was exercising, too. Jogging. Over there on Longmeadow, past the school? I sprinted for two blocks, then paused for a minute to catch my breath. My throat was really dry. I should’ve brought some water with me, but I didn’t. Anyway, this guy’s walking up the sidewalk from the opposite direction. Middle-aged guy. He says, ‘Hi,’ but I know what’s on his mind because he has a bulge. There. We’re in front of this expensive house with a rock garden out front. You know the kind of houses up on Longmeadow.”
“Yeah.”
“So he smiles at me, right after he says, ‘Hi,’ and he pretends like he wants to keep walking down the sidewalk. ‘FUCK YOU!’ I yelled. Real loud. Just like that. ‘FUCK YOU!’ And I picked up a rock from the garden and smashed it in his face. Held it in my hand and just shoved it into his nose. He fell back against a tree, and I kept doing it, kept smashing the rock in his face until he stopped screaming, stopped crying, stopped moving.”
“Oh my God. Was he dead? Did you kill him?”
“Yeah. And you know what I wanted to do? Right then? I wanted to take a knife and cut his dick off. Just slice it off and throw it out in the street and let some car run over it and squish it. But I didn’t have a knife with me.”
“So, what’d you do?”
“I kicked him. There. As hard as I could. I just kept kicking and kicking until his dick and balls were nothing but a bloody fucking mess, until the blood was soaking through his pants, and then I dropped the rock back in the garden. I was afraid someone might’ve seen, you know? So I quickly looked around, but the only cars on the street were parked, and there was no one walking. Someone could’ve been peeking out their windows next door or across the street, but it didn’t look like it.”
“So what happened?”
“I picked him up by his feet and dragged him up the walkway and around the side of the house. He was heavy, and his head kept bouncing over the ground, hitting rocks and the edge of the cement, but I pulled him. At first, I was going to just leave him behind a bush, but I dropped his feet for a second and checked the back gate, and it was unlocked. That was when I got an idea. I opened the gate, picked him up by his feet again and took him into the backyard.”
“The people weren’t home?”
“I actually didn’t know at that point. But I didn’t care. I just kept thinking of that bulge I saw in his pants. You know how disgusting men are.”
“Don’t I ever.”
“So I brought him around back, closed the gate and checked the windows to see if anyone was home. It didn’t look like anyone was, but I knocked on the back door just in case. No one answered, so I left the asshole where he was and went over to the garage. You know how those houses have their garages in the back because there’s that alley that runs behind Longmeadow.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the little garage door was open, and I went inside. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for at first, but then I found this old golf bag leaning against the wall. I took out one of the golf clubs and brought it out, and I used it to hit him in the face. I smashed his face so hard that he had no face left, just a bloody pulp. I knocked all his teeth out, then crushed his gums, too. I was getting tired, but I beat on his hands until his fingers were just squished nubs. So no one could identify him with dental records or fingerprints or anything. I thought that was a good idea.”
“It was. What did you do with the golf club?”
“Oh, I just dropped it in the swimming pool.”
“There was a swimming pool?”
“Yes. Quite a nice one. In fact, I thought about dumping him in there, but he was too messy by this time, and I didn’t want to get blood all over me.”
“And then … you just … left?”
“I finished my routine. Jogged up to Parkview, then headed back toward Hillside. Oh! That’s me. Can you hand me my purse there?”
“Here you go.”
“Well, hey, it was nice talking to you. Don’t be such a stranger.”
“You, too.”
“And good luck with getting that tooth fixed.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
AUTOPHAGY - Ray Garton
Strange things have been coming out of my body lately.
I’ve been under a lot of stress, and that might have something to do with it. But who hasn’t been under a lot of stress? In this economy? In this political climate? Everybody’s stressed. Everything is falling apart and nobody knows how to deal with it. I haven’t heard anyone else talking about strange things coming out of their bodies. But then, I haven’t talked about it with anyone because it’s … well, it’s just creepy. I’d like to tell someone, but it’s so weird that I’m afraid I’ll sound crazy. And that’s what scares me the most - the possibility that I might be crazy.
Maybe I am crazy. I’ve spent a lot of time considering that lately. They say you’re not crazy if you think you might be crazy. But a lot of the things “they” say are wrong.
I’ve been losing weight, too, and I haven’t been trying. That’s unusual for me. I gain it easily, lose it slowly and I’ve had a sedentary desk job for ten years. I don’t have that job anymore, of course, but do I take advantage of my new free time to exercise? Of course not.
I can’t help wondering if it has something to do with the things that have been coming out of me. It’s almost as if they’re pieces of me. But how can that be when they immediately run away? I try hard not to think too much about that … about those things I’ve seen and heard.
I’ve come close to telling Carly about it a few times, but these days, it’s hard to talk to her about anything, let alone something that bizarre and unbelievable. She’s made comments about the noises in the walls, though, so I know I’m not the only one hearing them. She thinks they’re mice.
I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re not mice.
Things have been … uncomfortable between us for a while. Nothing’s been the same since we found out that I couldn’t get her pregnant. We’d tried for a few years before we found out it was me. Then she started getting chilly. I suggested we adopt, but she wasn’t interested. She wanted to have a child of her own. I looked into in vitro fertilization and found that it was way out of our financial realm. That’s illegal now, anyway, so it wouldn’t be an option even if we could afford it. Carly and I drifted from the subject and never returned to it. And then we drifted from each other.
It hurt, but it didn’t come as a great surprise because I always thought it was too good to be true. She’s so beautiful and extroverted and funny, so sexy and alive. I’m a geek, a computer nerd, a shy, withdrawn guy who was never sure what she saw in me. She brought me out of all that and changed me. In the years after we met, I lost most of my shyness and became a lot more outgoing. Until we found out why she wasn’t getting pregnant and things changed. I’ve been sinking back into my old self since then.
We had no real interest in getting married. We didn’t feel we needed a piece of paper to validate our relationship. But we wanted to have a baby, and that was right after having children out of wedlock became illegal. We’re still together because it’s a lot harder and more expensive to get a divorce now than it used to be. But we’re more like roommates than a married couple. And if I don’t find a new job soon, things are going to get a lot more uncomfortable.
With premarital sex against the law and abortion a capital offense now, people are getting married all over the place. If I were smart, I’d quit trying to get another job in the IT field and learn how to be a wedding planner. That’s where the real money is these days. Well, that and government jobs. But to get a government job, you virtually have to sell your soul, and I’m not that desperate yet.
Before I met Carly, I spent a lot of time feeling lonely. Lately, I’ve been feeling that way again. That’s why I started seeing Amber.
***
After Carly caught a bus to work, I put on my helmet and rode my bike into the city to meet Amber in the park for lunch. Riding a bike through the city isn’t very safe anymore and I don’t do it as often as I used to, but gas is far too expensive to drive a car unless absolutely necessary.
I met Amber at my former job at Sterling Systems. She’d survived the first big wave of lay-offs, and she’d managed to survive the second, although she had to take a sharp cut in hours and pay. She was a geek, like me, but one of those devastatingly attractive and sexy geeks who has no awareness at all of that fact. Petite, almost pixie-ish, with red hair and big green eyes that squinted behind her glasses when she was thinking. Not a conventional beauty, but so striking. I think I had a crush the first time I laid eyes on her. And back then, things were good between Carly and me. One of the worst parts of losing my job was the possibility of losing touch with Amber.
We stayed connected online, but only as friends, I thought. It never occurred to me that she could feel anything for me. But when I began to tell her that things had gone bad with Carly, she opened up about how she felt. It was a big surprise to me. But a pleasant one.
It was the first week of March, but it felt like the worst part of August. The day was hot and muggy and the sun burned relentlessly through a thin layer of clouds.
Soldiers and military vehicles have become more common on the streets since the threat of terrorism - we’ve been told - has increased. A couple of weeks ago, a bomb went off in a car parked in a subterranean garage under a shopping center and six people were killed, several more injured. A few weeks before that, an IED went off in an outdoor caf and killed three, injured a dozen.
Cut Corners Volume 1 Page 2
