Dennis sits on the curb at the entrance to the Mackley Park trail. A man and his two sons are dragging an animal the size of a moose across the parking lot. The hide is completely stripped away. It paints a red carpet to their jeep. They heave the creature onto the roof with a system of levers and pulleys already in place and drive off, blood and tissue careening off the back of the Jeep, taken up by the wind and scattered back into the woods where eyes and tongues examine it closely.
The carpet of blood stretches up into the forest, blanketing the path that the body has cleared in the undergrowth.
“Find yourself a man, Gloria, find yourself a nice young boy to occupy your time. Put on that short skirt and get the hell out of the house.”
A swarm of blackbirds bursts from Gloria as Steven and Gloria watch. Gloria is stiller than stone and as cold as a corpse. Steven is kneeling, arms outstretched before the swarm when Gloria stands, silhouetted, almost naked and pale before the snowstorm of black feathers. And her father is coming through the trees quite suddenly. He is running, loping up the hill like a jackal on thin legs, his face the menacing grimace Gloria sees in her nightmares. He is clutching a kitchen knife in one hand, a rope in the other.
He says nothing as he deftly plunges the kitchen knife between the ribs of Gloria. When she falls, the scene her body obscured is visible in the half-light. Steven kneels. Gloria is black-lipped, birthing a horde of blackbirds, which speed up, out of the womb, into a tornado in the sky ripping through the forest canopy. Coyotes are scattering. All beasts are scattering in the dimness.
Dennis kneels near his daughter and cradles her head as Steven sings and cries and the blackbirds twirl past them, straight up into the sky.
HOT DOG (BRING PROTECTION)
KEVIN SAMPSELL
Paul was sitting inside a toilet stall in the hospital bathroom. He took out the piece of paper in his shirt pocket and looked at it again. It said: 8pm—room 352—bring protection. He looked up and saw a man peeking through the space above the door latch. The man’s head jerked away quickly, then Paul heard the man take two steps away. Paul looked at the note again and put it away. He unrolled some toilet paper and stood up. As he reached his hand back he looked up and saw another man watching him from over the neighboring stall. This man did not move though, instead he rolled his eyes back and barked some approving sounds. Paul finished up and left the bathroom swiftly.
He was tired. He had just worked a ten-hour day, then stopped at the hospital to pay a bill he could not afford. He was discussing his bill with his doctor and a nurse, but they were failing to agree on a payment plan. Finally, the doctor and nurse gave each other a strange look and scuttled away to an office. A few minutes later, they came back with the note, which was written on a country club stationary. 8pm—room 352—bring protection.
Paul was just stepping outside when it started to rain. He pushed his sleeve up and looked at his watch. 6:10pm. He was about an hour, taxi-time, from home. Downtown was only a few blocks away, so he decided to kill time there instead. He started walking in the rain.
“Spare some change?” a voice asked from an alleyway as Paul passed. Paul stopped and looked to his side.
“How many dead presidents you have in yo’ wallet?” the voice said this time.
Paul was about to step away from the alley and keep walking when a huge spangled sombrero hat emerged from the darkness. The man in the hat looked up at Paul and showed his face. It was a young white man with a thin magic marker moustache, a vertical scar under his left eye, sparkling blue pupils, and yellow rotted teeth.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” said Paul, trying to walk away. The young man stepped in his path. Paul tried to go around the other way, but the man side-stepped in front of him again. The man took off his sombrero and let a hiss out of his clenched teeth. Paul got away and walked down the wet sidewalk quickly.
“Fuck you gringo!” the man said to Paul’s back.
There was lightning flashing in the sky now and thunder booming from a distance. Paul ducked into a nearby coffee shop/book store for shelter. He did not read much, but when he did, it was usually dusty classics like Hugo, Dostoyevsky, or Steinbeck. He decided to look at magazines. He picked up a Vanity Fair and a Penthouse.
Walking into the coffee shop part of the store he noticed a scruffy-looking boy of about ten who was reading a biography about Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man.” The boy seemed to be outlining a section of the book with a highlighter pen. Paul ordered a coffee and sat down.
Paul started thumbing through the Penthouse when the boy got up from his table noisily and walked over. The boy tossed his book in Paul’s lap and sat down next to him.
Paul was somewhat intimidated and without a word picked up the book and read the excerpt, which the boy had highlighted. The boy grabbed the Penthouse and started looking at the pictures. Paul felt uneasy and got up to leave. He noticed that there was nobody else in the cafe.
“Do ya’ wanna buy a hot dog?” the boy asked.
Paul looked around but did not see a hot dog stand or hot dogs on the cafe menu board. “Excuse me?” said Paul, thinking he misunderstood what the boy said.
“A hot dog, a juicy wiener, a six-incher,” the boy said with a wet smile and a wink.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any money for you if that’s what you want,” said Paul, a bit agitated, a bit worried.
The boy grabbed Paul’s crotch and shuffled his balls like a deck of cards. “Sometimes I do it for other things too, sir,” the boy said, looking around.
Paul slapped the boy’s hand away, pushed him into the magazine stand, and ran out the exit. A gray-haired man was sitting on the sidewalk without shoes and his pant legs rolled up to his knees. It was still raining. “How was the hot dog?” he asked and howled a cold choke of a laugh into the dark sky. Paul ran away fast until the laughing faded behind him. After four blocks, he was out of breath and his heart felt like it was beating double-time. It had stopped raining momentarily and Paul leaned over, gasping at the sidewalk. His knees were trembling, trying to support his aching body.
A short, balding man and a tall beautiful hippie girl with long, dark hair, walked by holding hands. The man was holding a three-gallon bucket of thick red liquid in his other hand. They were singing the words to a country song to each other. Paul passed out. The man and the hippie girl ignored him and kept walking, obviously in love.
When Paul came to, he looked at his watch. It was 8:05 and he was three blocks from the hospital. He would be a little late. He turned himself in the right direction and began quickly walking.
As Paul opened the door to the hospital lobby it started raining again. He stepped into the front office and felt something perk up inside him—a small victory, his heartbeat returning to normalcy. There seemed to be no one on duty at the front desk. Paul pulled out the note again. 8pm—room 352—bring protection.
Damn, he thought, I forgot to bring protection. But then again, he had no idea what was meant on the note by that last part: bring protection. Paul rang the little bell a few times before deciding to find an elevator and go to the third floor himself.
Paul found the elevators and got in one. When the doors opened he noticed that there was an empty hospital bed in the elevator. When the doors closed he noticed a woman’s body in the corner of the smelly shaft. It was crumpled up with her legs sticking out like a rag doll. Paul did not know if she was alive or not. He leaned down to hear if she was breathing but the elevator doors opened on the third floor and he got out instead.
Paul looked around for a nurse or doctor. He couldn’t find anyone to tell them about the woman in the elevator. He looked at the map on the wall and located room 352.
As he walked down the hallway he noticed an unusual silence. Maybe there weren’t any patients on this floor, he thought. A muffled, pounding sound like heavy metal music seemed to blast suddenly from one of the rooms. Paul followed the sound and discovered it was coming from room 352. He listened c
losely to the door and heard what sounded like someone banging a hammer against a cookie sheet. He knocked. There was no answer, yet the banging continued. Paul turned the knob and slowly opened the door.
The first thing that Paul saw was the nurse, nearly falling off a metal chair with her head tilted back to the light bulb and her mouth gaping open. There was a hypodermic needle swaying back and forth from her lower leg. Paul accidentally knocked over a bottle of beer that shattered on the floor. The doctor, who was banging his head into a locker, turned suddenly. He was wearing a hockey mask and blood was dripping from his chin. He craned his neck to look over Paul’s shoulder, making sure no one was with him. He took off his mask quickly and looked at his watch for a long time. He let his watch fall off his boney wrist and slowly looked up to greet Paul with condescending eyes.
“Paul,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “Paul, Paul, Paul. . .” He approached Paul with open arms. His mouth opened and a song came out.
NUBS
JEREMY C. SHIPP
The Little Neighbor Girl has a special knock that’s all her own. First she taps softly on the door, three times. Then she waits for about five seconds. Then she pounds on the door once.
Today, George is sitting on his lime green recliner staring at the red curtains of his doll room when he hears the three gentle taps. Following these taps, his neck tenses up. He feels sick to his stomach. What if five seconds go by and nothing happens? What if the person on the other side of the door isn’t the Little Neighbor Girl at all? George doesn’t know what sort of person would tap three times and then refuse to break the silence that follows. George would not want to meet such a person.
Surely five seconds have passed already. He glances at his watch, although he doesn’t know when the five seconds started.
BANG. George jumps and smiles. He opens the door. This afternoon, the Little Neighbor Girl is wearing an enormous Christmas sweater that was probably meant for a three hundred pound man. For Santa, perhaps.
“Hello, Joe,” she says.
Her hand pokes out of her sleeve, but as soon as George reaches out to shake hands, her flesh disappears again. She giggles.
“Would you like a cookie?” George says.
Without answering, the girl follows George into the kitchen.
He hands her the Fig Newton and she devours the thing in two bites, as always.
“Thank you, Hugh,” she says.
George grins.
Next, he leads the girl into the bedroom. This room used to consist of a queen size bed, two night tables, two dressers and other pieces of furniture. Now, the bedroom is nothing but two small mattresses pressed up against the wall. Next to Alice’s mattress is a hideous shell-shaped lamp and a stack of yellowing romance novels. George still feels a tingling of guilt every time he walks into this room. He knows that Alice would rather have things the way they used to be, with the dresser and whatnot. But George can’t go back. Not now, and not ever. The only way to travel is forward. And that means that the bedroom will continue to shrink as his doll room grows. Someday, the bedroom will be swallowed whole, and the red curtains that make up the walls of his doll room will caress the plaster walls with their many folds. George’s heart pounds just thinking about this.
With a smile on his face, George reaches out and tries to find the break in the curtain. He can never quite remember exactly where the separation lies.
Finally, he passes through the curtain with the Little Neighbor Girl close behind. He stands with his arms crossed, gazing at his collection. They gaze back at him.
“Remember,” George says. “Don’t touch them.”
“What will happen if I touch them?” the girl says.
“Nothing. But if you touch them, I won’t let you come back.”
The girl sits cross-legged on the floor. She stares at the dolls, and George sees twinkles in her eyes. He knows that’s looking beyond the paper, wax, wood, china, plastic, vinyl, bisque. She’s seeing these dolls for what they truly are.
“My dad makes ships inside of bottles,” the girl says. “I’m not allowed to touch the bottles, ever.”
George nods. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“He finished the Santa Maria and now he’s working on the Mississippi Queen.”
“That’s nice.”
The girl scoots her body forward, toward the left side of the room. The left side is where the smaller dolls live. But George prefers to focus his attention on the right side of the room. His tastes have changed over the years, and these days he rarely buys anyone shorter than three feet tall.
For fear of neglecting his guest, George turns away from the right side of the room. He doesn’t want to lose himself in a daydream. “How was school today?”
“Just fine, Clementine.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“What?”
“What did you learn today?”
The girl moves her arm around like a fish. “Shark babies eat their own brothers and sisters.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s true.”
George sighs, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees yellowish pus streaming from the button eyes of his first rag doll. Within moments, a putrefying stench saturates the room. What disturbs George the most is that the pus doesn’t shock or unsettle him in the least. All his dolls could be crying blood and his feelings for them wouldn’t change.
“I like your dress,” the little girl says.
“Thank you,” one of the dolls says, and steps forward from the rest of the collection. But she’s not a doll, is she? She’s Alice, wearing a puffy blue dress that George doesn’t recognize.
“Honey,” George says. “I didn’t notice you there.”
Alice touches the Little Neighbor Girl on the top of her head, then flows from the room without another word.
“Can I have one more cookie?” the girl says.
“One more,” George says.
After the girl finishes her cookie, George glances at his watch. “It’s about that time, isn’t it? We don’t want your dad worrying about you.”
The girl’s hand appears from her red and green sleeve. This time, George manages to grasp her fingers before they disappear. He shakes her hand.
“See you later, Mr. Gator.”
George grins and then she’s gone.
The Little Neighbor Girl visits him every day, but he doubts that she’ll return tomorrow. He always doubts this.
At the dinner table, George joins his wife for coffee and blackened salmon. The salmon smells a little like the pus from the doll, but he’s probably just imagining this.
Alice takes a bite of her salmon, which crunches in her mouth. “I talked with Laura today. She gave me the name of her surgeon. Laura says he’s the best in the business.”
“Which Laura?” George says.
“My sister. Who do you think?”
“Your sister is a lunatic. I wouldn’t trust a word she told you.”
“That’s my sister you’re talking about.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, I’m going to need ten thousand dollars for this procedure.”
“What procedure?”
“Don’t you talk to me in that tone. You spent more than ten thousand on your newest doll. I look at our bank statements, you know.”
“Fine. Ten thousand is fine.”
Alice crunches her salmon.
BING BONG. George jumps and smiles. He races to the front door.
Suddenly, everything’s happening so fast. In a blur of motion and sound, George talks to the delivery men and signs the clipboard and helps direct the men as they wheel in the casket.
After the delivery men leave, George retrieves his crowbar from the garage. He approaches the casket. He knows he’s grinning like an idiot right about now, but he doesn’t care.
“Remember what the doctor said,” Alice says, behind him. “You can’t remain in an anticipatory state for more t
han five minutes.”
“That was only a suggestion,” George says.
“It was an order. You don’t want to have another heart attack.”
George sighs. “Fine.”
Alice reaches in the pocket of her white apron and pulls out a stop watch. “Five minutes. Go.”
George faces the casket and presses the tip of the crowbar into the tight gap between the wood. His heart pounds and he can feel his back sweating. More than anything, he wants to rip open this coffin. But at the same time, he wants this moment to last forever. If he could choose any moment to die in, this would be that moment.
But George doesn’t die. He remains frozen, with his eyes on the closed casket and his hands squeezing the metal rod.
Finally, Alice says, “That’s enough. Open it.”
George opens the casket and what he finds resting within is the most beautiful doll he’s ever seen. Instantly, he knows that her name is Nora.
“She looks real,” Alice says. She actually sounds impressed for once.
“She’s state-of-the-art,” George says. “Silicone-based. She’s Japanese.”
“She doesn’t look Japanese.”
“Well, she was built in Japan, but she’s of European descent. Will you help me carry her to the room? Alice?”
George turns around, but Alice is already gone.
Instead of taking Nora to her room, George decides to drag her into the bathroom. He manages to heave her into the tub. Soon, he’s gently stroking her skin with room-temperature water and mild soap. Once he finishes the sponge bath, he drags her into the doll room, where she takes her place on the right side of his collection. He doesn’t know Nora very well yet, but she’s already his prized possession. He caresses her cheek.
“Goodnight,” he says, to all of his collection, but mostly to Nora.
After he exits the doll room, he settles down on his mattress, coat and all. He can’t remember the last time he changed into his pajamas for bed. And he can’t remember why he ever changed his clothing at all.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch Page 26
