The Mind is a Razorblade

by Max Booth III

  “What...what happened to that guy’s head?”

  “Um.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “Uh.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Well.”

  He places his hands on his hips and appears to contemplate the situation. “You don’t work here then, do you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I go to scratch the back of my neck to cure my nerves, but in the process of lifting my arm I foolishly reveal the gun in my hand, causing the robed man to jump back against the fancy hat rack all over again.

  “Jesus!” he says.

  It’s a miracle I don’t drop the gun.

  “Look, all I have is enough for the smokes, I swear.” He starts to dig into the pockets of his robe. “Here, take it.”

  I shake my head. “Keep your money.”

  This only seems to frighten him more. “What? What do you want then? Are you going to shoot me? Fine, do it! Shoot me! No one else will...”

  “I am not going to shoot you.”

  His face drops, disappointed. “So you don’t want anything?”

  I consider it for a moment, deciding there is something in his possession I could use. Using the gun, I gesture to his feet.

  “The slippers, take them off.”

  “What?”

  “I want your slippers.”

  He glances down at his feet and slowly raises his head, dumbfounded. “But...but these are my funny bunnies. They are my favorite.”

  “I don’t care. You wanna get shot? Huh?”

  “Yes! Please, God, do it! Blow my brains out all over my funny bunnies, Mista Gunman!”

  I wave the gun at him and scream, “Goddammit, hand over the slippers!”

  “Fine!” he cries out, and kicks them off his feet. They go soaring over the counter and bounce off my chest, landing in the puddle of blood on the floor.

  “Thank you.” I slide my feet into the funny bunnies, reveling in the warmth they provide.

  “Comfy?” the robed man asks, juggling balance as he adjusts to the cold temperatures of his bare feet pressing against the linoleum.

  “Yes, very.”

  “Those were my funny bunnies.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I sigh, walking around the counter and heading for the door.

  “You’re leaving, huh? Just like that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay.” He pauses. “Well, I guess I will just help myself then.”

  “You do that.”

  I don’t even make it ten feet from the drugstore before the others outside catch on to what’s happening inside. Glass shatters and people shout in celebration. Shopping carts rattle as they zip through the already broken-down entrance, on their way to empty the shelves of their stock. It occurs to me only now that maybe I should have tried doing the same. Who knows the next time I’ll come across a chance for free food. But it’s too late now. There’s no way in hell I’m going back inside again.

  I don’t turn around, not for a second. This is not any of my business. Okay, maybe it is a little bit, considering I was the one who went all freaky head-popper on the clerk—but still, I will have no part in this radical aftermath.

  Tonight, these city dwellers will have their fun. Their long awaited moment of glorious looting—all for one, all for all, and all for anyone with quick enough hands. I may not know what exactly is going on here, but what I do know is many starving children will go to bed satisfied tonight, and somehow I can’t seem to find the harm in this.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been dealing with a man whose work had something to do with stolen hearts, I’d be seeing a different side to this.

  So fuck him.

  And fuck whoever else is involved in all of this.

  Fuck them all.

  * * *

  With everyone’s attention directed at the drugstore, this place has turned into a ghost town. Only it’s not a ghost town—it’s a dark, oblivious metropolis. And I am the only ghost here. Just me, the ghost with the big coat and funny bunny slippers. The ghost without a name.

  Despite the crowd’s sudden absence, I can still hear them riot in the drugstore. Tribal yells of the young and the restless. Anarchy prevails. I hear them shouting in chaotic glee and it fills me with paranoia.

  I can’t resist and steal a glance over my shoulder. The drugstore, only a hundred feet away or so, is ruined. The windows, the doors—all shattered. Glass piles up along the walls as sharp little mountains, awaiting the first unlucky bystander to pass by without any shoes. I feel sorry for the robed funny bunny owner. I’d taken his slippers, and for all I know, I may have caused him to get an infection on the bottom of his foot. Hell, they may have to resort to amputation. I’m such a bastard.

  But the broken glass isn’t what fills me with dread. I can see inside the store, and what I see is mesmerizing.

  Flames. I see flames.

  Fire.

  Smoke seeps through the windows at the top of the building like a surreptitious soul escaping from its doomed host.

  Jesus, it hasn’t even been five minutes and they’ve already emptied out the entire store and set it on fire. It’ll be thoroughly destroyed within the next ten minutes, and I don’t really feel like sticking around to watch the show.

  The people flee with carts full of material goods, shit-eating grins plastered across their sad, silly faces like they can’t believe what’s happening, but they’ve put up with enough to know not to question when fortune is blessed upon them from out of nowhere.

  They’re just going to let it ride, and when the ride comes to an end, at least they’ll have a good story to tell those who weren’t lucky enough to be around at the time.

  I blink. The looters continue looting. They howl at the night sky and bask in the drugstore’s glorious conduction currents.

  What am I talking about?

  I shake my head and turn around, and I find myself face-to-face with a man who is not a man. A man with eyes—eyes not belonging to this world.

  Eyes.

  White, pearly eyes.

  I scream, attempting to back up only to trip over my own damn funny bunnies. I fall flat on the ground, head smacking against the road. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I’m gone. Drifting, drifting, gone...

  I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t even feel fright even though I know I should be afraid.

  His face. White. White like a ghost. Skin smooth and ancient and eyes like something that should not exist. No. Oh God. Fuck. He is not a he. He is something else. He is bad. Bad, bad, bad.

  An elastic bio surgical mask is strapped around his mouth. He reaches to his face with bony, jagged fingers and pulls it off, letting it hang from his pencil-thin neck. He opens his mouth, revealing a set of teeth sharpened like knives. They are past the point of fangs. They are death. I do not want to see them. I do not want to see any part of this man. Of this creature. This death-maker. This soul-taker.

  I can’t move. Something’s caught in my throat and I can’t even choke on it properly. What I would give for the ability to close my eyes, to shut the blinds on this spawn of evil before me.

  He approaches, yet his feet do not seem to move, almost as if he’s gliding. A white apron hangs down his chest, stained with smears of vermillion. He leans down over me, but does not touch. His body slithers over mine, starting at the base of my funny bunnies and working his way up. He concentrates his toxic energy on his nasal passages. Smelling me. The fucker’s smelling me.

  I want to scream but I can’t. I can’t do anything but witness this abomination violate me.

  As he glides farther up, I am forced to stare into his eyes. I wish more than anything in the world that I could be staring at anything else. Anything at all but these fucking eyes. Oh God. These eyes. I don’t even think they are alive. No pupils detectable. All white, milky pearls that—if given the chance—would not hesitate to devour all that I know and shit it back out as a giant turd of nothingness.

 
They are eyes that do not see like normal eyes see.

  There are entire worlds in these eyes. Eternal voids eager to drown me, waiting for their chance to hold me prisoner in their own vacuum.

  He moves closer to my face, sniffing at me until his dead eyes are directly above mine, his stringy gray hair falling down and brushing against my cheek. A battalion of goose bumps plague my flesh. I am totally helpless as this creature continues to smell me, nostrils snorting obnoxiously loud, as if I’m just some long spaghetti noodle he’s slurping up.

  And then I realize he isn’t just smelling me.

  He’s breathing me.

  Breathing in my perspiration. Breathing in my silenced fear. Breathing in my damaged aura.

  And it’s all so clear.

  I am his air.

  His food.

  I am his life force.

  His provider.

  I am his orgasm.

  Any second now he will consume me and I will cease to exist. Forget my campaign to retrieve my identity. He will take me to a world where identity is no longer a concept. I will just be nothing and I’ll be glad for it.

  Take me...

  And then he speaks, and all thoughts of enlightenment abruptly die.

  A voice so old, so ancient, so haunting...

  It’s a miracle he can even speak at all. It comes out as one raspy breath, using all of his strength just to speak. And when he does, it stretches on for eternity.

  This man, this creature in white, he says, “Oasis. Save Oasis.”

  And with that, he explodes into a cloud of ash.

  chapter five

  No, wait. Shit. Not ash.

  Spiders.

  A cloud of countless tiny black spiders slowly drift toward the ground, replacing the ancient body of the white creature who had only seconds ago hovered over me. Spiders? Of course they’re spiders. Anything less terrifying would just be breaking the rules.

  I scream and back up, swatting the mischievous little fuckers off my coat. What the hell was that creature? Christ. Spiders. Crawling on the sidewalk, on the road, into the sewage drains. Crawling under my funny bunnies. I jump up and down, smashing them to death with my adorable footwear.

  Whatever that thing had been, he—it—did not belong to this world. Maybe he doesn’t belong to any world—an outsider to all, a monstrosity to everyone.

  Oh God, his eyes. So dead, so unnatural. So helpless.

  Where were the pupils? Where was the life?

  The problem is, there hadn’t been any life. The creature had been blind. Hence the persistent smelling. The breathing me in. He’d been using his other senses to drink in my appearance. To bathe in my fear. To analyze the inner workings of my mind.

  Still, none of this explains what the holy hell that thing had even been.

  Either way, he’s nothing now. The spontaneous explosion pretty much took care of him. All I have to do is look down at the lake of spiders beneath me. I can feel them. On my skin. In my hair. My fingernails. Little flakes of spider guts caught in the corners of my eyes.

  In my lungs.

  Infiltrating my throat, clawing at the walls as they ride down into my intestines, poisoning my stomach with their grotesque plagues.

  I gag and vomit onto the tiny little monsters. It makes a sickening sound as it splatters against the pavement, small flecks ricocheting back on my funny bunnies.

  Glancing back to the drugstore, I see the flames have progressed as much as I’d predicted. If anyone else is still in there, they’re probably not going to be leaving. Not alive, anyway.

  People flee the scene with overflowing shopping carts, rushing past me, fuming with paranoia, as if any second they’ll wake back up in the alleyway only to discover this all to be some wonderful dream. Others gather around the inferno, pounding their chests and bellowing fits of victory. Celebrating the destruction they’ve caused. Only it is not destruction in their eyes. It is art.

  This is their masterpiece.

  Mayhem at its finest.

  This is what they consider beauty.

  I must not belong to this particular group of people, because the scene only terrifies me.

  But what if this isn’t some particular group? What if this is how everyone behaves? What if this is life—everywhere?

  I don’t know what the fuck happened to me, but something seriously rewired the way my brain works. Nothing makes sense. Nothing seems natural. But this is the way life is. Why can’t I accept it?

  It hasn’t been that long since I woke up at the river. How long could I have possibly been unconscious? Not too long, since the cop car’s GPS was still tracking the location down.

  Who was I before the river? Was I the same as these other vagrants, rioting and looting?

  Who the hell am I?

  * * *

  A boy stares at me from across the street. Despite the looters returning to their aimless wandering, he still sticks out, as if the rest of these poor souls are mere mirages. He’s the only other person besides me who’s standing completely still. And, unlike the others, he actually seems to be focused on something.

  Focused on me.

  These other people seem to have lost all interest in everything. Even the excitement of the drugstore has already faded. They’ve returned to their clockwork refuge, where the only problems they have to worry about are tripping over miscellaneous obstacles in the way of their mindless drifting. The glow of apathy reflects in their eyes like a brick wall’s reflection in a puddle.

  But this boy here is different. He’s looking straight at me. He isn’t distracted by society, isn’t consumed by some mystical zombie trance. He sees me and I see him.

  I step forward. He steps back. Our eyes maintain contact. I move closer and he moves farther away, totally in sync with one another. I can’t let him escape. He knows something...something that’s going to help me. There’s something about him I can’t quite place.

  I break from my calm stance into a dead sprint, pushing the street rats out of my way. The boy attempts to flee, but trips over his own untied shoelaces and goes sprawling on the sidewalk, face scraping against the pavement. I’m on top of him before he can react, grabbing him by the back of his black T-shirt and picking him up to his feet. The whole time, all I’m thinking is: please don’t explode, please don’t explode.

  “Get the fuck off me!” he screams.

  No one stops to help him. I can do whatever I want to this boy. No one will intervene. But I don’t want to hurt him. I just want his help. Yet I get the feeling all it’ll take is one slipup and his head might suddenly explode.

  Shit. Please don’t explode.

  “Relax, kid.” I tighten my grip around his shirt collar. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Then let me go, motherfucker!”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Aw, man, leave me alone.” He tries his damnedest to wrestle away. I push him against the wall of a boarded up building. His cheek slams against the bricks. “Stop, shit, stop! That hurts!”

  “You gonna chill out then?” I bend his arm back about ninety degrees. He lets out a tiny squeal—totally overreacting, too. What a baby.

  “Yeah! I’m chill! I’m chill!”

  “Good.” I ease the pressure off his arm. “Now tell me why you were staring at me like that.”

  “What?”

  I grip his arm tighter but make no actual attempt to inflict pain. “You were staring at me. Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? That dude was fucking crazy. Wouldn’t you be staring too if some crazy fuckin’ dude exploded like that? Why the fuck you think?”

  I pause, take a breath. “You mean you saw that?”

  “Of course I saw that. How couldn’t I? That shit was straight up nuts.”

  “So, you saw him...smelling me.”

  “Yeah, and then I saw him fucking explode. For some reason that part seems to have impacted me more. Crazy, huh?”

  “Where did he come from? Do you know?”

/>   “Shit, man, I don’t know. One second he isn’t and the next he is. The hell was that thing, anyways, huh? That thing was insane.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Straight up.”

  “Shut up. Did you see its eyes?”

  “What?”

  “Its eyes! Did you see them?”

  “Nah.” The kid shakes his head. “I was too far away. But I did see the part that you seem to be overlooking—you know, when he fucking exploded?”

  I sigh. The kid’s obviously no help. He doesn’t seem to know anymore than I do—at least, not about the creature that attacked me. I turn him around to face me, releasing my grip and hoping he doesn’t try to make a run for it.

  I pull the matchbook out of my trench coat pocket and hold it up so he can see the logo. At the glimpse of the matches, however, the boy immediately starts bugging out and trembling.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, please don’t set me on fire. Shit, man. Please.”

  I pause, thrown off balance. Like I could even set him on fire with a couple of lousy matches. Now, if I had some of whatever those people used to light up the drugstore, then maybe I’d be in business. Not that I’m planning on setting anyone on fire, of course. But it does always help to be prepared.

  I shake my head at him. “What? Shut up.” I wave the matchbook in front of him. “Do you know this place or not?”

  “Of course I know it. Who do you think I am?”

  “Someone with a memory.”

  “Yeah, well—uh,” he pauses, contemplating, and goes, “yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Take me there.”

  “S’cuse me?”

  “I want you to take me here.” I tap the stamped THE RISQUÉ CABARET on the box around the cartoon pinup girl.

  He laughs. “Oh okay, sure, just this way, mister...”

  “I’m not screwing around, kid.” I grab him by the shirt collar again. He doesn’t seem to be as intimidated this time.

  “Yeah, but I am,” he says. “Now let me go, you fucker.”

  Surreally enough, I obey and unhand him. But then the satisfied smirk on his face becomes all too smug, and I snap out of my daze.

  When I pull out the gun, all egotism quickly fades. I’m back in charge.