City Fishing

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Aunt Betty had bought the whole story, and she was the one who told the cops what had happened. They appeared more skeptical. But there wasn’t much of an investigation; Simon supposed no one could imagine why he might lie about it. They’d posted warning signs and hunted that Great Dane for months. Four or five Great Danes were shot and killed, and everybody had argued about whether they’d gotten the right one or not.

  Brute yawned hugely. His mouth was diseased-looking. But the teeth still looked sharp.

  “The city isn’t theirs,” Simon said.

  “They don’t need the whole damn city,” Shakey said from behind the chair. “They only need as far as they can see. As far as they can walk when it’s hot out. Why take more than you can eat? And that’s the neighborhood. Your neighborhood. Without that, they’re nothing.”

  “Then they’re nothing,” Simon said.

  “So? What are we?” Shakey strangled a laugh.

  “Maybe we’re nothing, too.”

  The window a few feet from Shakey’s head exploded. Simon turned his face as if in slow motion, just as Shakey’s head began peeling itself apart, as if in reaction to the loudness of the sound. Shakey’s body jerked a few times as more bullets struck. Then Simon was on the floor, his body wedged up against Brute’s, with no memory of how he got there. The gunfire continued for several minutes before it was replaced by car door slams and the screech of departing tires. The remaining silence slowly filled with dust and smoke.

  Brute groaned once, and then pissed all over the rug. The old dog staggered to his feet, then went over to lick at the remains of Shakey’s head. He pawed at the mess, as if checking to see if there was something there he wanted.

  When Simon went to visit his Aunt Betty the next day two guys, both so thin it was scary, stopped him outside the hospital. They both had green scarves for belts, greenish canine teeth dangling from pierced ears. They seemed to be of no particular race—their color was grayish, their features small, ordinary.

  “Some trouble…” the tallest one mumbled out of a vague shadow line of mouth.

  “What’s that?” Simon was distracted by the shorter one. At first it seemed the boy had no eyes, and then he realized the eyes were closed, but Simon couldn’t detect the edges of the lids.

  “Your place. You had some trouble last night,” the taller one said.

  Simon tried to stare noncommittally at the taller gangbanger, but he couldn’t find one feature to fix on. “You know about it?”

  “All about it. All that needs be known.”

  “Then tell your friends…” Simon said shakily. “They don’t want me. Not really. Right now they think they do, but they don’t.”

  “So you don’t care ’bout your friend dyin’? You don’t care about maybe you dyin’?”

  Simon paused a moment. The two gangbangers seemed to be fading under the bright sun. He wondered if the conversation went on too long whether they’d disappear completely. Even now they had faces like blank canvas sacks. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Do you care?”

  The tall boy began to walk backwards into the shadows of buildings. Fading. “Nope,” he said. Then, “ ’night,” and blew Simon a kiss. And it made Simon furious, because it reminded him of his mother. In fact it was the only thing he could remember about his mother.

  “ ’night,” the shorter one said, as the shadows swallowed his face. “ ’member now.”

  Simon walked home from the hospital. If something important was going to go down that night he wanted to at least be able to say that he’d walked among the “normal” people in the city, the people whose lives had nothing to do with either gangs, dead mothers and fathers, or brute, mindless canines.

  All the old ones either ignored him or went out of their way to avoid him. They knew well enough. Unlike most kids his age, he supposed, Simon knew that age did bring some understanding as to essentials. Danger and pain. Death and one more stiff-jointed morning. But the eyes of the old were still cold. And in those sagging mouths their teeth were terribly sharp.

  As he passed one old man—white hair yellowed to butter at the roots, filmy gray eyes and lips the same color—he could sense the bony fingers tightening on the cane, ready to dash out Simon’s brains if he even looked the wrong way.

  An old lady with silver and white hair reached into her purse, keeping her hand inside, forearm so tense he thought the ancient bone might snap, watching him as he passed.

  A big bruiser of a guy in a greasy blue jumpsuit clenched his fists as Simon passed him crossing the street.

  Two young girls—a redhead, a blonde—crossed to the other side of the street. A middle aged mother and her two kids parked at the curb in the hot sun waited until he was on the next block before getting out of the car.

  They all had a shadow hanging down over their eyes. They had an itchiness in their teeth. They were unpredictable, capable of anything.

  Simon could feel his own teeth pushing against the tender backsides of his lips, his forehead thickening, making all but the most essential thought virtually impossible.

  As the sun fell slowly through narrow clouds of pollution, turning the sky a bruise color, Simon saw the faces in each window, watching him. He took the long way around the neighborhood, following the back alleys to Aunt Betty’s house. But there were faces in the shadowed back yards, faces in the abandoned wrecks, peeking out of the stinking garbage cans. And the few times he was able to see the faces close up, and attach them to a body, he could find no expression in them, no interest, just a brute, indefinable need.

  When Simon got home he discovered Brute lying in the front hallway. The dog was still breathing, but in a ragged, painful way. He raised his muzzle slightly, trying to take a nip out of Simon’s face, but he barely had enough strength to open up his jaws. He stared at Simon with his bloody eyes, his nostrils flaring, pushing his teeth at Simon’s face, but unable to reach him

  Simon threw his arms around the dog. It was what he’d always wanted to do. He had to wedge his shoulder against the dog’s throat to protect himself from the teeth, because the harder he hugged the more Brute tried to bite and chew him. Simon buried his face against the old dog’s ear, and kissed him, and Brute snarled softly, scraping his eager teeth against his long pale tongue, snarling and choking on the snarls, until his body grew limp in Simon’s arms.

  As the darkness closed in outside, and the streetlights came on, Simon left all the lights in the house off. He hadn’t bothered to board up the window they’d shot out the night before. There didn’t seem to be much point. The living room still smelled where the police had cleaned up Shakey’s body. The other smell was from Brute emptying his bowels as he died. For some reason the stenches didn’t bother Simon; they were almost interesting—the mix of them in his nose made him feel more alive. And their presence in the house did not seem out of place. Brute’s body was on the back porch, wedged against the back door.

  It was a hot night, and the heat built up steadily inside Simon’s head. After a few hours his eyes closed slightly from the mounting pressure. It required almost a physical effort to hold on to his thoughts. He was hungry, but couldn’t think of anything he could bear to eat. Now and then there would be strange noises outside the house—shiftings, coughings—and the periodic fear they brought gave him useless erections. The house was his, his family’s. They had no right.

  Where are the neighbors? It was a funny thing to think about. There were always neighbors, weren’t there? Everybody had neighbors. But it seemed he hadn’t seen any of them in months. He wondered if they’d all moved away. Maybe they were all dead, rotting in their houses. But that didn’t make sense.

  Simon walked along the wall to an east-facing window. He peered around the edge at his neighbor’s house. Three of the neighbor’s windows were lit, and in each window was a dark, motionless silhouette. Simon waited. Now and then the silhouette in the upper window glowed softly from a bright-red point held close to the face. A cigarette. Simon shifted h
is head slightly. He could see pieces of other neighbors’ houses, the windows lit, grayish blotches in the windows, watching.

  This is your neighborhood. All you can do is watch?

  But the thoughts were heavy, useless. Losing focus. He could barely read his own thoughts. He slid away from the window. He held back a snarl that came up suddenly from down deep in his throat, almost choking him. He bumped into the wall and he felt like attacking it with his teeth, chewing it down and swallowing the pieces. He had the right. It was his. All he could see was, or should be, his. The smell of Brute’s body was heavy in the air, slicking over Simon’s skin and hair like oil.

  He caught a face looking at him. In his own house. He turned on a table lamp and stared at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t read the expression in his own eyes. His eyes were dull, dark as skillets. His skin was gray, nondescript, without character. He couldn’t trust the face. You afraid to die? he asked the face, but the face acted as if it did not understand. The thoughts moved like heavy oil. He struggled with the lamp switch, finally jerking out the cord and smashing the lamp against the table.

  Lights floated outside. He wandered back to the window.

  Each house had a light, and a silhouette. All his. The dried mud of the yard had cracked; weeds grew through the broken brick of the walk. The street was missing huge pieces. The large metal corpses of the abandoned cars leaned crazily on what remained of the curbs. The darkness hid small pockets of stench wherever he turned his head. All his, everything he could see.

  The shadows walked out of the holes in the street, from behind the abandoned cars and his neighbors’ houses. As they got closer to the house, he could see the green scarves in their belt loops, the glint of canines dangling from their ears. He scraped his teeth across his lips, and he could feel the brittle tissue tear. The shadows passed close by his window, and showed him their faces: gray and featureless, no character in the eyes. They don’t give a damn. They’re nothing. His thoughts like sludge.

  They didn’t have to break down the door. He let them in. He was desperately hungry for something, but what it was he did not know.

  He wanted to eat. They wanted to eat. When the time was right, he wanted to fuck. They wanted to fuck, and they didn’t care if what they fucked was alive or dead. And turning their bland, featureless faces to the dying neighborhood, they wanted everything their eyes could see.

  BITE

  His teeth itched. He’d become used to the sensation—they’d been doing that off and on for years. He’d been to a good dentist, a number of dentists in fact, but none of them could come up with an explanation. His teeth were in great shape, they all said. Unusually good shape. What few fillings he had were tight. But he felt an itch there.

  As if the roots had died, and bugs had infested the dead meat underneath.

  “Mike!” Carol growled his name. “Stop grinding your teeth. It’s driving me crazy!”

  ‘Crazy’ was a silly word people used, as were ‘mad,’ ‘insane,’ ‘deranged.’ Melodramatic words, all of them. If something did go wrong with the brain, he supposed, those words poorly described the condition.

  Mike could feel the individual strands of itch sensation draped casually over the surfaces of each tooth. Like antique lace. Or spider web. He could feel the individual teeth move, ever so slightly, in the raw gum sockets. Trying to work their way to freedom. He could feel the burn in the teeth, the itch, the increased saliva to cool and lubricate, the ragged, sharp edges against the tender pink inside his mouth.

  He leaned over and began to nip at Carol’s neck and shoulders. She sighed, lifting her arms over his neck and pulling him closer.

  Mike began to bite, and she gasped, easing down further into the bedclothes. He began to bite, feeling acutely the small mash and rupture of soft flesh beneath each tooth, and Carol was shouting, kicking, tumbling out of bed, the covers tethering her to the mattress.

  “You’re crazy!” she screamed, and Mike nodded, rubbing a knuckle against each tooth in turn, tasting the sharp salt, wondering at her use of such a melodramatic word.

  The morning’s fruit had lost its taste for him. Apples and pears—normally his favorite combination. The tough skin of the pear snagged his teeth and would not let go. It seemed unusually tough, like leather. The apple was better, its flesh giving away readily, satisfyingly. But it was too sour—the juice made him pucker. He felt his teeth fighting to get out of the trap of his lips, raking at their inner surfaces.

  He wanted to bite. He picked up his paper napkin and shredded it with his teeth.

  “Mike, would you drive the kids? I …” Carol stopped in the doorway, staring. Mike picked the last shreds of napkin out of his teeth, balled them up, and then slipped them into his pocket. She didn’t say anything. He tried to control the urge, but finally had to reach up and scrape at the itch in his teeth, vigorously massage his gums. Carol turned and left.

  Several times that day he tried to go to work. He never made it. At one point he remembered spending hours watching the neighbor’s small terrier playing in the back yard. It clawed at the dirt, displacing large sections of sod, flowers, round stones. Mike made no move to stop it. It grabbed the stones with its teeth and tried to chew them. It bit the stones, it bit the ground. It twisted its head around and tried to chew on itself.

  Mike wondered what kind of flak he’d get for not showing up for work. At the moment it didn’t really matter to him—he hated his job anyway. It fulfilled his needs only to the extent that it paid him enough to desire more. It put an itch into his pocketbook. But it did nothing to soothe his hunger.

  The cat was behind his chair, scratching at the hard cloth there, wearing more off its claws than off the chair. He moved his back and hips uneasily against the chair as the claws continued to grind. He imagined sparks off metal, a burning in the skin, a conflagration in the nerves.

  He twisted around in his chair and hissed at the cat baring his teeth. The cat yowled and jackknifed around the corner.

  Mike got up and began a walk around the house. He felt in a brooding mood, although the quickening dance of his nerves made it difficult to concentrate.

  There seemed to be so little he understood. He stood outside his kids’ room, staring at a jangling array of unmade beds and toy-strewn carpet, piles of soiled laundry and abstract arrangements of plates smeared with half-eaten jellies, breads, and butters. There seemed to be so little he understood about the meaning of his own childhood.

  His mother had had no idea what to say to her children. She had been the stroking kind, and had arranged parties for them.

  His father had solved that same problem by seldom speaking at all, except when a speech needed to be made on ethics, morals, intemperance, and other such spiritual ills.

  Some people had no business having children.

  Not that he could blame it all on them. Mike had been an abject failure as a child. He never had known how to have fun.

  His teeth began to grind.

  He used to wrestle with the kids all the time. Carol complained about it, said he never knew when to stop. He never could tell if the kids liked it or not. They’d encourage him, even jump on his back, then after a few minutes wrestling they’d say he was being too rough. But then the next day it might all start over again. He’d tumble them one at a time, he’d muss their hair, he’d tickle them in their hollows, he’d embrace them, hold them tightly against him, and then he’d kiss them, and the need would come over him, and then he’d nip, and then he’d bite.

  A bite when a kiss isn’t adequate to show the way you feel. He had no idea what people really needed from each other.

  Mike knew that whatever the mystery of his childhood might be, however the pieces fit, it did not explain the pain he felt. He’d been hurting for a very long time, and none of it made any sense. He could not begin to explain any of this to Carol.

  He stood outside the bedroom he shared with his wife and thought about his need to bite, to break down into little piec
es and consume. His sorrow made him angry, and anger increased the pressure of tooth against tooth against gum.

  When he thought of Carol, he thought of biting her.

  His father might have said that Mike was “off his feed.” Certainly none of his meal tasted right that evening.

  Chicken Divan, peas, creamy mashed potatoes. They became indistinguishable fiber in his mouth. He didn’t know what he liked anymore. Carol looked up from her plate occasionally to stare at him, but said nothing.

  It seemed, now, that Mike had gotten so very little out of all the breakfasts, lunches, dinners. Food had sustained his life, but it had never given him what he needed. The hunger was still an absence. He thought he could feel that absence even in the detailed, insignificant parts of his body, his toes, his hair.

  When his children kissed him goodnight that evening he kept his mouth vigorously clamped shut. He imagined his teeth grappling with his soft lips, leaving them torn and bleeding inside. He used so much force keeping the mouth shut he was in pain when he kissed them.

  But he might have really bitten them this time.

  He told Carol be was coming to bed then stayed in the bathroom until he was sure she was asleep. His teeth struggled to escape his mouth, curling around the outside of his lips like hard white worms, scratching his nose and cheeks. His breath vibrated loudly in his ears. His face seemed to chafe against his skull.

  The weekend started far more quietly than Mike would have expected. He tried to remain the observer. When Carol or one of his children approached him he tried his best to get away. Under no circumstances would he touch or hold any of them.

  The kids were pretty independent anyway, it seemed, until they wanted something they couldn’t afford or manage physically. But maybe that was unfair. He did love them, although he had to admit he had no idea what that meant. Or what it was supposed to do for you. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a parent—he wasn’t sure he had the right temperament for the job. He wasn’t sure he was good enough.