He was thirty-five years old, never married, consistently clean-shaven and well-dressed. He rarely smiled, and when he did it was inevitably a sort of sardonic, half-amused grin that never touched his eyes. Acquaintances speculated behind his back about his sexuality.
“I’ve never even heard him talk about girls, let alone date one,” Rose (who sat in the cubicle opposite Ernie) said, and Perry (a clerk from the production department, who spent way too much time in the data entry office) said, “And a dude that well-kept, he’s gotta be gay.”
They laughed. Ernie was just stepping into the offices from the outside hall, had heard the conversation, but only nodded politely at his co-workers and said, “Good morning, Rose. Heya, Perry, how are you this morning?”
Perry had been leaning against Rose’s cubicle but straightened up now and said, “Howdy, Ernie. How was your weekend? Do anything good?”
Ernie set his bag on his desk, slid into his chair and flipped on the computer. “Not really. Work to catch up on.” Then, not sounding very interested, “You?”
He didn’t hear Perry’s response, but nodded as he opened the 10-8 reports for the morning and mumbled “Uh-huh,” and “Right,” and “Uh-huh,” again.
Perry’s voice seemed to melt away into a vague background humming as Ernie focused on the day’s tasks. Even the horrifying events of that morning shambled into the darkness in the back of his mind as he collated the morning reports and prepared to key the call results from the weekend.
Perry left at some point—Ernie didn’t know when, exactly—and for the next four hours the entire universe consisted of a computer screen and various hard-copy reports in a neat stack on the left side of his desk. His cubicle was clean and orderly and stripped down to essentials—desk, well-organized file cabinet, a tiny, unobtrusive alarm clock in the far right corner, in and out baskets right next to the entrance. There were no plants, no knick-knacks, no photographs. Anything superfluous to the job had no place there.
And that was the world Ernie occupied until the little alarm clock chimed twelve. Lunch. Ernie sighed, leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. The band-aid on his finger scraped his nose, and for a split second the image of what had come out of it flashed like a bad dream through his head. He shook it out, and noticed Rose standing at the entrance of his world.
She looked nervous, smiling uneasily, shuffling her feet. She was a nice-looking girl, maybe ten years younger than Ernie, with blondish hair and glasses. “Hi, Ernie.”
“Oh. Hello, Rose.”
She seemed to wilt under his direct gaze, and looked everywhere but at him. “Hi,” she said again. Then, “Um, hey, I was wondering. What, um, what are you doing for lunch today?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll probably just go next door, get a burger.”
“Oh. Well, you know, that new Chinese place opened up at the corner, I don’t know if you noticed that.”
“I noticed, yes.”
“I was thinking, if you don’t have other plans for lunch, if you wanted to go over there. With me, I mean. I was, you know, thinking we could have… we could have lunch together.”
He looked at her, puzzled. “I don’t really care for Chinese food, Rose.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, then, that’s fine. We could go anywhere you want to go, I guess.”
He frowned. “Well. As I said. I think I’m just going to grab a burger from next door. You know.”
“Ah, right,” she said, and laughed for some reason Ernie couldn’t fathom. “Right, okay then. Have a good lunch,” and she hurried off and out of the office.
Ernie stared after her, wondering what the hell that had been about, and only after she’d left did it occur to him. Oh, he thought. It wasn’t lunch. It was me. She wanted to have lunch with me! Huh. Interesting.
But only mildly interesting. Having lunch with Rose would be a pointless gesture, and a step in the wrong direction. Lunch would lead to dinner—an actual, make-no-mistake-about-it date—and that would lead to a full-on “relationship” and that, of course, meant total and complete disaster. He’d had “relationships” before, and they always equaled the same thing; personal anxiety and disarray.
So, no lunch with Rose. Not now, not ever.
He stood up from his desk and started out of his cubicle, and out of nowhere a horrible pain knifed through his stomach and he nearly doubled over in agony. He gripped the edge of his desk, sweat suddenly standing out on his forehead. The pain was like a cramp, a monstrously awful cramp, and for a few terrifying seconds Ernie thought his bowels were going to let go right there, right in the office.
He gritted his teeth, his eyes tightly shut, and the pain held his stomach, squeezing like a huge hand wringing out a dishrag.
Please, he thought. Don’t let me foul myself. God, don’t let me do that.
After a few seconds that seemed to drag on forever, the pain began to pass, and Ernie stood up straight. He wiped the sweat from his face with his left hand, sighed with relief, and then noticed the blood smeared along his palm.
He stared at it numbly for a moment. Blood? Again? The band-aid on his finger was still tight and showed no signs of blood leaking through. Where had…?
He touched his forehead and again his hand came away bloody. With mounting alarm, he ran his fingers along his head until he found the source of the blood—it was at his temple, his right temple. He felt it gingerly, and thought he could detect a slight wound, like a small cut or something.
Now how the hell did I do that? he thought, and the pain in his stomach lashed out again and he grunted and stumbled out of his cubicle and toward the bathroom at the far end of the office.
Fortunately, everyone else had already left for lunch—they generally took off a good two or three minutes before noon, to Ernie’s irritation—so no one saw the crazy spectacle of Ernie careening through the office like a drunk. He slammed through the door and made it to the toilet stall just in time.
It wasn’t his bowels that threatened to evacuate this time. The door slammed shut behind him and he fell on his knees like a penitent in front of the bowl.
He knew right away this was no case of food poisoning or nervous stomach or anything else that had any rational explanation. For one thing, it hurt horribly, and felt much too large to actually make it through his throat. But when it did, when it finally pushed its way up his throat and out of his mouth, it felt as if it was moving.
He had his eyes tightly closed, but was not surprised when he didn’t hear an ugly splash of water, the sound you were supposed to hear when you threw up the entire contents of your stomach into a toilet bowl.
No, there was no splash of water. What there was, and what made Ernie not want to open his eyes, was an insistent, insect buzzing.
“No, no, no,” he said, falling away from the toilet and against the door of the stall. He didn’t open his eyes. “Go away, whatever you are.”
But the buzzing sound didn’t go away. If anything it got louder, and Ernie judged that whatever it was hovered directly over the toilet. Right in front of him.
Ernie swallowed hard, set his jaw, and opened his eyes.
What it was, he couldn’t have said. But what it looked like, well… it looked like a bee. A bee just about the size of Ernie’s head, yellow and black and covered with whatever vile contents had previously been in his stomach. It looked like a bee in that it had little wings and a segmented body and was yellow, but the head, the head was not the head of a bee.
That part of it looked almost human, with brown eyes that glared at Ernie and a very human mouth that even now sneered at him angrily. It even had hair, matted wetly to its scalp.
But the thing that finally pushed the scream out of him, the detail that dragged him completely over the brink into utter horror, was that the face was not just any face. It was Ernie’s face.
Ernie screamed again, pushed himself up to get the hell out of the stall, and the bee-thing rose up above the toilet
to the same height, so that their eyes were at the same level. It buzzed furiously and Ernie clutched at the door with fingers now blood and sweat-slick.
The bee-thing croaked out a long syllable, a harsh aaaahhh sound, and dive-bombed Ernie’s head. Instinctively, Ernie raised his arms to ward it off and it careened off his elbow, bumped against the wall unevenly, and came at him again. He swiped at it, his fingers brushing against the damp, fuzzy hide, and it hovered backwards and out of his reach.
He couldn’t get out of the stall in time, he knew that, and even if he could, he certainly couldn’t do it without looking away from the creature attacking him. And he wasn’t about to do that. The bee-thing buzzed and croaked, Ernie screamed and yammered, and as it shot at him again he balled up his fist and punched it right in its very human nose.
To Ernie’s surprise, the thing dropped to the floor of the toilet stall and buzzed uselessly, flopping around. Blood cascaded down its face and it glared at Ernie and its mouth opened and closed in impotent anger. It seemed like it was trying to say something, and Ernie could only stare in numb dread.
Finally, the bee-thing worked a sound out of its mouth, in a long hoarse creak. It said, “Youuuuu…. fucker….”
Ernie yelped and brought his shoe down hard on the thing’s body. It crunched under his heel, broke open like a dropped melon, and blood splattered the small space.
Sobbing, Ernie threw open the door and stumbled out of the stall. He nearly fell onto the sink, caught himself, and with a shaking hand turned on the cold water faucet full-blast. His head pounded savagely. He cupped his hands under the water and splashed his face and tried to get his breathing under control.
And this time, he did give in to that old scary movie cliché. He splashed water into his face over and over, mumbling, “It’s not real, it’s not real, that can’t possibly be real. It’s your imagination, Ernie, just your crazy imagination…”
But he still knew, in his gut, that it wasn’t his imagination. Hell, he had no imagination. And one glance over his shoulder at the blood-streaked floor under the bathroom stall was all he needed to reaffirm the reality of the situation.
His band-aid was getting soaked and the fingers of his left hand were throbbing again. He pushed his mind away from that. It was all horrible enough without the thought of another tapeworm-like parasite coming out of his finger.
When he’d calmed down enough to draw air in and out of his lungs in a somewhat normal fashion, he turned off the water faucet and took a deep breath. He didn’t glance behind him again. Instead, he looked in the mirror.
His face was white and drawn, with black circles under his eyes. He looked sick. As he watched, the cut at his right temple started dripping blood down his face again. Impatiently, he wiped it away, leaned closer toward the mirror to get a better look.
It was more a gash than a cut, he saw now. Did the bee-thing do that? No, he remembered, it was bleeding before he’d even dashed into the bathroom. He tried to attach some significance to it, but after the bee-thing and the worm in the finger, a wound on his temple seemed pretty inconsequential.
He gave up on staunching the flow of blood and let it run down his face, skim along the curve of his jaw, and drip off his chin and into the sink. He stared at his face in the mirror and tried, without success, to enforce some logic on what had just happened to him.
The gash in his temple continued to bleed, without showing any signs of slowing down. He frowned, leaned closer to the mirror again, and tentatively touched the gash.
And a little set of teeth inside the wound snapped viciously at his finger.
He jerked backwards, too shocked this time to even scream, and his back slammed into the door of the toilet stall. His shoe slipped in the pool of blood that leaked out of the bee-thing, and he nearly fell but caught himself on the doorframe and half-stumbled into the far wall.
Even from across the bathroom, he could see it in the mirror, little teeth gleaming white in the fluorescent light, little teeth snapping and gnashing in a wound that widened and lengthened even as he watched. An ugly vicious little mouth, emerging right there in his temple, and it didn’t make any sense, it couldn’t possibly happen, and yet there it was.
He could hear it quite clearly, the gnashing and snapping, and his terror by now was so great he had gone numb. He could only stare. The little mouth twisted and raged, and another sound came out of it, a soft, high-pitched hissing and snarling.
Ernie said, “Oh Christ. Oh Christ, what is that?” and his voice was barely a whisper.
And much to his surprise, the vicious little mouth answered.
Oh Christ, it said, mockingly. Oh Christ, help me!
Its voice was high-pitched and willowy, like a child who’d sucked up a balloon full of helium. Ernie shook his head. “No,” he said, very firmly. “No, no. That can’t happen.”
That can’t happen, the mouth said. Wah, wah, wah. You’re a stupid little fuck, Ernie.
The mouth twisted into a sneer, and Ernie felt the skin of his scalp pucker and stretch to accommodate it. It hurt, but not near as much as it seemed it should have.
And Ernie’s orderly, logical mind, without any prompting from him, made a valiant but ultimately fruitless effort to put it all together, to catalogue and identify what was happening to him.
There’s a mouth, he said to himself. A little mouth, with little teeth, in my right temple. A little mouth, and it’s talking to me.
It’s talking mean to me.
Something inside him snapped. He lunged at the mirror, slammed his fists against it, as if the little mouth only existed somewhere in his reflection. He screamed, “What do you want? What do you want with me?”
I’ll tell you, the mouth wheezed. If you stop killing me.
“What?”
Stop killing me, you moron. Stop braining me in the bathtub and stomping on me with your expensive shoes. You know. It articulated very clearly: Stop. Killing. Me.
Ernie covered his mouth with his hands, tears and blood running down his face. He said, “Oh my God, why is this happening to me?”
I’ve been patient, Ernie. No one can say I haven’t been patient. I’ve waited and waited for years for you to come around.
“Oh God, why—“
Will you shut up? the mouth snapped. Just shut the fuck up and listen. I’ve waited too long, you understand? Just waited and watched, every time you let opportunity slip through your fingers. Every time you buttoned your top button and straightened your tie and polished your shoes.
“I don’t understand…”
I just bet you don’t, you stupid jag-ass. I’ve waited and watched while you squandered away every chance we had to do something… fun. Something creative. We just work and work and work and not think, when we could be… I don’t know. Painting a picture. Surfing. Fucking a beautiful girl.
“We?” Ernie said. “What do you… what do you mean, we?”
Is it too much to ask? Is it too much to just… visit Spain? I’ve always wanted to go to Spain, Ernie, you know that.
“What… Spain? When I was a kid, I…” He shook his head, said, “No. What do you mean, we, damnit?”
We, bright-boy. You and me. We.
“I don’t… I mean, I can’t…”
The mouth frowned impatiently. I’m your right brain, Ernie. Your right brain, get it? The part of you that sparks. The part that thinks in abstracts. Fantasizes. Loves a gorgeous fucking sunset, etcetera, etcetera.
“What? I mean, how—“
Your right fucking brain, Ernie. Jesus, are you dense? I’ve been trying, very hard, to push my way out of you, but you keep fucking killing me.
“Oh my God.”
But now, now, Ernie, I’ve finally managed to take over this hemisphere of your brain. This is where I’ve always hidden, but now, now it’s mine.
“Oh my God.”
I’m the only part of you that matters, in the long run. I’m the only part that matters, and you’ve shut me away for too l
ong. What are you afraid of, Ernie? Why have you kept me shut away for so long? I’m sick of it, you understand?
Erniep;&ns hands dropped to his sides. He stared at the little mouth in the mirror.
“What do you want?” he said.
Three guesses and the first two don’t count.
Ernie nodded. A strange calm had come over him. “You want out.”
Bingo, said the little mouth. Right on the first try. Maybe you aren’t as stupid as you look, after all.
“You want to take over. Ruin everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
Worked and worked and worked. Yeah, Ernie, that about sums it up. All your work, it’s meaningless. Don’t you get that? We’ve never really lived, Ernie. It’s time to—
And now Ernie was the one interrupting. He said, “It’s not meaningless. It’s not. It’s everything to me. You think it’s been easy? You think it’s been easy to keep my life in order and do the right thing and be an example to others? Life falls apart if you let it. I know that. Keeping everything going takes… well, it takes a supreme effort of will. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of my life.”
The mouth grimaced. You keep telling yourself that, Ernie. Keep telling yourself you’re happy, all alone in your apartment when you come home from work. No books on the nightstand. No movies late at night. No one to kiss you in the morning. No photo albums of places you’ve seen, things you’ve done.
“I don’t need any of that.”
Yes, you do. Only a sociopath doesn’t need any of that. And believe me, I know what you need. I’m your right brain, Ernie, and Jesus Christ, I’m starving!
The voice was getting deeper and Ernie’s head throbbed now with every word it said. Ernie gritted his teeth, glared at his reflection in the mirror.
He said, “You want my life? Okay, then. Okay. You want it, let me see you take it, if you can.”
It would be better for you, Ernie, if you didn’t fight. If you just let me out.
“No chance. If you want to take over, you’re going to have to fight for it.”
The little mouth grinned nastily. Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. Okay, Ernie. How about this, then?
Dig Ten Graves Page 3
