The Seven Habits

by William Todd Rose

Now, her hair had actually begun to grow back, and her skin was free of the filth that had coated it like grains of sand. Levi had even taught her how to use this little tool called a razor to make her legs and armpits as smooth as Baby’s tiny feet. She was getting pretty and she knew it. Still not as pretty as Levi… but she had noticed a change in the way Gauge looked at her, as if he were truly seeing her for the first time.

  Think of Corduroy, then. Think of him and open the damn door already… While it was true that the others—even silent Pebble—had gone out of their way to make her comfortable, there was something about the way the burned man looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Something that made her feel the way those flies must have when her mouth snapped shut.

  His good eye seemed to study her every movement with cold calculation and she was sure she saw a glimmer of something when she talked with the others. Much like the sparks of anger that had leapt from her mother’s eyes when…

  Don’t think about Mama. Think about Corduroy.

  He never talked to her, not like Levi and Gauge did, at least. They were full of laughter and good-natured teasing, teaching her old songs their parents had handed down. They would tell stories, describe their dreams in such vivid detail that Ocean almost felt as if she had actually been there.

  But Corduroy only answered her questions in gruff bursts where the words almost seemed detached from feeling. His voice was harsh, something between a gurgle and a hiss that caused chills to creep along her arms. Gauge told her once that it was because of the fire, that the flames had scorched the inside of Corduroy’s throat as much as the outside. He was actually lucky to be alive.

  Still, he gave her the creeps. The way he was always watching over her, always lurking in the shadows, trying to approach her when he thought she was cornered and alone.

  Do it, then. Open the door.

  Ocean bit her bottom lip, placed her free hand against the metal, and pushed as gently as she did when rocking Baby’s cradle. Nothing more than a slight flexing of the muscles.

  The hinges creaked as the crack between door and wall grew wider and she stopped, whipping her head to the side. Surely they’d heard. It seemed so loud in the silence, like the screeching of a hawk.

  Her heart raced like the feet that she felt sure were running toward her even now. She had a sick feeling in her stomach, like she’d get when she had that first morsel of food after going days on nothing more substantial than insects.

  At the same time there was a sense of excitement that she couldn’t explain. She knew what she was doing was bad; a part of her almost hoped to see Gauge’s form emerge from the darkness, to feel the bite of his anger, for him to punish her for this like she should have been punished after she’d killed her…

  Ocean gulped and waited for the thunderous fury of the man whom she’d only recently admitted to herself that she loved.

  Again… nothing.

  She took a slow breath through her nose and looked back toward the door, at that gap of darkness that seemed to pull her into its gravity. Was it really worth it? Even if nobody ever found out, she would know. She’d know that she betrayed him, that she’d done the one thing he’d specifically asked her not to. Could she really add that to her list of sins?She hung her head so that her now-round chin rested against her chest.

  No… she couldn’t.

  Let’s just to back to bed.

  She eased the door shut as slowly as she’d opened it, not wanting to risk another squeal from the hinges, as an odd mixture of relief and regret flooded her body. She’d never know what laid on the other side… but at the same time, she’d kept her word to Gauge, and maybe that was the most important thing anyway, to honor those who you lo—She heard it, some slight noise from the other side. A sound almost like the rustle of dry leaves.

  Something was moving in there.

  For some reason, the image of her mother appeared in her mind. Not as she’d been in life, but a decaying caricature of the woman who’d lost a husband and raised a little girl. Flesh sloughing away from bone, milky green pus oozing from blackened swells of flesh that pulsed with built up pressure. Despite the tire iron rammed into her now-festering skull, Mama shambled along, shedding a trail of scabs and clumps of hair to mark her passage. Her mouth opened, revealing a bloated tongue and teeth that had been chipped and cracked on the bones of the living.

  She shook her head, like she could fling the thoughts from her imagination. No, she’d given Mama the burial rite. The woman would still be laying under the blue tarp as—

  The sound pulled Ocean from her thoughts. It was softer this time and without further thought, she opened the door entirely.

  She’d imagined a large room on the other side, one piled with supplies and other goodies. Instead, there was nothing more than a long, narrow hallway. On either side of the hall were a series of doors, each one made of wood with little barred windows set in the center. Some of them hung open and others were entirely shut.

  One, however, had a heavy wooden plank resting in little brackets bolted to the wall. She’d never seen anything like it before, but it wasn’t hard for Ocean to figure out the purpose. Whatever was on the other side wouldn’t be able to get out, not without someone lifting the piece of timber from this side.

  She felt as though she were moving through a dream as she stepped into the hallway, like her feet were actually floating slightly above the concrete floor. Even the smell of the place somehow seemed detached from reality, a slight mustiness mingled with a stink that reminded her of the pit they relieved themselves in.

  But there was something else as well. Something she couldn’t quite place.

  She approached the locked door slowly, as if it might swing open at any moment. Feeling dizzy and scared and exhilarated, part of her mind whispering that it wasn’t too late, that she could still just turn back, pretend she’d never laid eyes on that hall.

  But could she? Could she really? Even if she wanted to, Ocean wasn’t entirely convinced that she could stop her feet from carrying her ever closer to that imposing door. Whatever she’d heard had to be hidden behind it. She wanted so badly to see…

  She was only slightly taller than the window in the door and she stood for a moment, holding her breath, staring at the row of metal rods set into the sill. Behind it was a backdrop of perfect darkness, but the smell was stronger now. She heard the rattling noise again. Ocean cupped her hands over her eyes and peered through the gaps between the bars.

  She felt as though some invisible force had pummeled her in the stomach, bile stinging the back of her throat with bitter acidity. Her entire body trembled with half formed thoughts ricocheting through the confines of her skull.

  No… wait, I don’t… no, no, no… understand. What?

  Tears brimmed in her eyes and she wished she’d never opened that metal door, had never seen this cursed hallway, that everything could simply go back to the way it had been before.

  Can’t, never, I just don’t… She turned and fled, her footsteps echoing off the floor, not caring that the metal door she’d been warned about clanged shut behind her.

  She hugged herself as she ran, telling herself that it had been a trick of light and shadow. It’d been dark in that little room, after all, and she did have a powerful imagination. Daddy had always told her so.

  Oh, Daddy, I need you so bad. Daddy, Daddy, I need you.

  By the time she’d made it back to the main hall, she’d slowed her pace a bit. She struggled to control her breathing as she slipped beneath the covers of her pallet. She lay there, crying softly, staring at the wall. She tried to understand what she’d seen on the other side of that wooden door, tried to comes to terms with what, exactly, it could mean and why it had yanked such a powerful response from her soul.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Something like that will shake a person up, let me tell ya. I hightailed it outta that bar, trying my best to just blend in with the shadows of the night. Just another average joe goi
ng about his business, nothing special about me, folks. Part of me wanted so badly to believe it, I wished to God that I’d never heard of the Eye of Aeons, that I coulda just looked at Clarice Hudson and thought fuck yeah, my man… tonight’s your night!

  For a second, I even cursed the day I’d ever taken up my little stay of residence in Ocean’s head. In that moment, with all those nighttime people stumbling along sidewalks and hailing cabs, laughing and practically undressing one another on the corners… in that moment, I just wanted to be like them.

  Then I got this kinda sinking feeling in my bowels and I felt like I’d taken everything that poor girl had ever been through and flushed it down the crapper. I mean, I kinda brought this whole dimensional instability thing on myself, right? I went searchin’ for something exactly like what I got. But Ocean? She never asked for this shit, man. She never wanted this. It was just the lot in life that she happened to draw and she did her best to make the most of it. Fuck man, her society may have considered her a woman just ‘cause she started raggin’, but she was still just a kid, man. And she was makin’ choices a kid shouldn’t ever have to make.

  Yet here I was, pissin’ and moanin’ because I was scared, because I was confused and didn’t know what to do anymore. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. Clarice fuckin’ Hudson, and others like her, were out there condemning this poor girl to a lifetime of torment. And I just wanted to forget it all, to pretend like I didn’t know what was loomin’ just over that dark horizon we call the future? Fuck me, man. Fuck me.

  By the time I got home I was good and ready for a long slow kiss from the bong, if ya know what I mean. I just wanted to ease back into my skin, to gain a little perspective for a while. ‘Cause, like I said earlier, I was in something of a pickle, ya know? That little slattern routine at Blue Moon really threw a kink into things. Fouled shit up bad. So hell yeah I wanted a buzz, man. Wanted one worse than I ever have in my life.

  Problem was I couldn’t find my stash, see? I mean, I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest housekeeper in the world. I’ve got dishes piling up in the sink, four bags of garbage clustered ‘round a trashcan that looks like a landfill, piles of clothes all over the fuckin’ place. Empty beer bottles that belch out clouds of gnats if you’re stupid enough to pick one up… But I always knew where my bag was, man, top right hand drawer of the dresser, tucked away in this wooden box that’s got all these vines and shit carved into the wood. But not this time, man.

  I dumped that box across my bed as if I really thought maybe my half ounce might be hidin’ beneath the rolling papers or that little baggie that has all the screens in it. Lots of receipts in the box, lots of old letters I’d started to write but never actually got around to sending, but not so much as a stem or even a seed.

  Maybe I did smoke it all, smart ass. Maybe I fuckin’ did. Shit, I don’t know. I mean, this has been a rather unusual time in my life, dig? When time and space don’t apply to you anymore, you can never tell what you did or didn’t do. Things get jumbled up here in the old noggin’. The point isn’t what happened to my weed, man. The fuckin’ point is that I was out and jonesin’ like a mother fucker.

  Now I got my connections but most of ‘em are honest, hardworking guys who just sling a little herb to supplement their sorry excuse for a paycheck, ya know? They got wives, kids, the whole nine to five routine. I can’t just call them up at one o’ fuckin’ clock in the morning and ask if they could spot me a thirty. That’s not cool, man.

  But there’s this one cat I know… we’ll call him Steel, okay? Because he’s fuckin’ hard, that’s why. You don’t fuck with this dude, dig? He’s a bad ass, man. Got all these faded blue prison tats up and down his arms and eyes that don’t look like they ever knew the meaning of compassion. Fucker shanked this other guy once ‘cause the poor son of a bitch tried to welch on a couple hundred he owed. Didn’t kill him, but messed him up real good. Bastard never did get the sight back in his right eye.

  So I only deal with Steel in emergency situations, ya know?

  Has to be pretty dire shit before I hook up with the likes of him. As fate would have it, as they say, I didn’t really see that I had much choice in this situation. As long as you got the bread, you could call this dude. He’d leave his mother’s funeral to deliver the goods.

  So that’s exactly what I fuckin’ did. I called up Steel and within the hour he’s sittin’ on my ratty little couch with this fat sack and at that point I just want to be alone. I just wanna smoke up, turn things over in my head, and try to figure shit out.

  But there’s a certain etiquette that comes with a pot deal, ya know? I mean, you’re expected to burn one with the same fucker who just sold the shit to you. Kinda like an unspoken rule and one of the little perks of bein’ a dealer I suppose. Personally, I think it’s fucked up. I mean, who buys a value meal at Burger World and shares the fries with the clerk just because he’s the one who hooked you up with the food, ya know?

  Anyhow, we suck down a bowl or two and I’m thinkin’ that the dude will leave now. But for some reason, and why I don’t know, he’s just wantin’ to hang out for a while. He’s got his head leaning back, lookin’ up at the water stains on the ceiling, and he’s talking about this bitch he fucked up because she was screwin’ around on him. And I start getting this idea, right?

  I tell the dude I can dig exactly where he’s comin’ from ‘cause I suspect my lady’s been getting a little on the side, too. I’m actin’ all pissed about it, or at least as pissed as you can get when you’re head’s all swirlin’ in a cloud of herb.

  “Shit, man,” he says. “Just get rid of the whore.”

  And he ain’t talkin’ about breaking up with her, either. He goes into all this detail about how you can take an oil filter from a car and turn it into a ghetto silencer. Telling me how it can be modified to muffle all the expanding gas when that trigger is pulled. He says it only takes a little bit of work and lays it all out there in the open, how you gotta make sure there’s no brackets or fixtures at the top end that could fuck with the bullet, how you can fill the filter with water and then drain it to further baffle the shot, all the shit you need to build the damn thing.

  But me? I tell him I want to be sure first, and he’s kinda lookin’ at me like I’m a big pussy, but I got this dude’s number, see? I know what motivates him. There ain’t nothin’ this cat wouldn’t do for a few greenbacks. Meth, junk, coke… he’d sell ‘em to a preschooler if the cash was there, man.

  So I tell him how if I knew for certain, I’d make her sorry she ever spread for anyone but me. I’m layin’ it on thick, too. Talkin’ about how I thought about hiring a PI to tail the broad but I was worried a gumshoe might put two and two together if she should disappear shortly after he wrapped up his investigation.

  “Shit, homes,” Steel says. “I’ll hook you up, man. I’ll get some dudes on that bitch and if she’s puttin’ out you’ll fuckin’ know. And then you just do what you gots to do and nobody’ll think twice.”

  So there it is, man, you can beat two birds in the bush with the one in your hand or some shit like that. Not only did I end up with some pretty primo stash, but I solved my little problem about our dearly infected Ms Hudson…

  The next few days were pretty much business as usual, ya know? I went to the REC site, put in my required hours, smoked a lot of weed, and only got pulled into the Eye a time or two.

  It was always there in the back of my mind, every time there was a knock on the door, I’d get this nervous little feeling in my stomach, wondering if it was Steel with his report. Phone goes off and I’ve got it answered before it’s even had a chance to finish the ringtone. And I’m tryin’ to keep myself busy, ya know? Trying to find ways to pass the time.

  I make a trip to the hardware store, pick me some different sizes of flex couplings and PVC bushings, and then skirt on over to Pronto Auto for a selection of oil filters. Why so many? ‘Cause I didn’t trust myself to get it right the first time, man. Which is ki
nda funny, really. You give a stoner the right tools and he can build anything, ya know?

  So anyways, eventually Steel does show up and he’s got this little smirk on his face. He glances down at all the oil filters on my coffee table and kind of nods the same way someone else might if they were appreciating a piece of art that happened to be layin’ there. “Hate to tell ya this, homes, but your bitch? Certifiable whore, man. Hell, that cunt puts out so much you could probably drive a Mac truck up her pussy and still have room for clearance.”

  Only he wasn’t sorry to tell me. I could tell by that little gleam in his eyes.

  “Mean as hell, too. Shit, man, I saw her lay into this dude down at that shopping center near East Lamont? He just barely bumped up against her cart with his and this crazy whore’s all over him. Scratching his face to beat all hell, kicking him in the nads over and over. He wasn’t the only one, either. Seemed like if she wasn’t fuckin’ them, she was flying off the handle and beatin’ a fucker down. Yellin’ all this fucked up shit, too. Like all her words were getting mixed up.”

  He was obviously relishing this, and I was a captive audience.

  “Your kill ass I’ll. She actually said that, can you believe that shit? First I thought it mighta been because she’d done gone postal on those fuckers. But it just got worse and worse. Got to the point where nothin’ coming out of that dick suckin’ mouth made any sense. Crazy fuckin’ bitch, my man. You’re better off without her. Damn psycho.”

  And there it was. I’d expected four since I’d already had half of it accounted for anyways. But Steel just comes along and dumps number five and six right into my lap. Uncontrollable rage, muddled thinking. It’s like their rational minds are already shutting down, you know? As if they’re devolving into creatures of pure, primal instinct.

  “You want I should take care of this little problem of yours? Special rate, seeing as I know you and all.”

  I can’t remember exactly what I told the dude. I felt all breathless and shaky, like I’d popped too much speed or something. It was somethin’ about how this was personal… that kinda shit. That it was something I had to do myself but I’d keep him in mind if anything ever came up in the future. And he kinda laughed, only there wasn’t any real joy in it.