“Just stay out here,” Joseph said, closing the door. “Protect my trailer and there will be more drug for you.”
Marget was awake. Joseph looked at her.
“What?” he asked.
“They’re children, Joseph.”
“They are the future,” he chuckled, glancing back at the door. “There are things that they need to learn.”
The Infection
Night slowly fell over Varmint Ranch, Arizona. Jamie and Roderick looked at one another as the sun set and the sky turned purple. It was a sight neither of them had ever seen before, not from out here. Not up close.
But it was too late for beauty. Their blood was pumping. Their eyes were swirling. Their minds were flooded with desire. Silently the question passed between them. They had spent the day having sex with this girl behind the dumpster across the street from the trailer of Joseph Opus. Did they want to fuck her again?
No. The drug was starting to wear off. Right now, she looked like a pile of stinking human flesh unworthy of their beautiful cocks.
“Should we kill her?” Jamie asked. Roderick looked at him. He had been thinking the exact same thing. Why not? Kill her, just like they had killed Omnithax. To slay two Gods in such a short span of time, surely that would make them immortal. At the very least it was a good story.
But if they killed her then who would they fuck? He thought about the other girl in the trailer park. The young one, the daughter of Mr. Torne. She might be a good time. She looked built for speed.
“Someone is coming,” Orjure whispered, completely oblivious to what the two boys were thinking. They looked up.
Roderick saw him first. A human shadow, slithering around in the murk underneath a broken street lamp. A stranger, he knew by instinct. And their target.
Quickly the three of them jumped to their feet. It was him. The man who wrote that word on Joseph’s trailer. The one they had been waiting for. But they were too obvious. The stranger took notice of them and hid away. He seemed to become one with the shadows, completely vanishing from sight.
Slippery devil, Roderick thought. Now he knew that he had a job to do, especially if he wanted more of that drug. “Show yourself!” he spit, standing tall and proud in the darkness. If he did this, if he was able to put this stranger down, hand Joseph Opus his head, he knew that he would be rewarded. And with more of the drug he could come to a decision about her.
The three of them looked in to the darkness. Finally, the shadows seemed to pull away from the stranger, leeching off into the void. They revealed a tall, warped figure, dressed head to toe in black clothing. He wore a black trench coat with black slacks. He had a pair of black trainers. He had black socks and a black hat. The only thing that was not black was the burlap sack thrown over his head. It was a dingy off-shade of white with holes sliced out for the eyes. Those eyes gleamed with a crystal-clear menace. Even Roderick found himself frozen by fear.
Not Jamie. “Who are you?” he shouted. His high was wearing off as well, and he wanted an answer. The shakes were giving him a strength and bravado he had not known he had and he wanted to put this guy down.
The stranger did not answer. Instead he reached into his coat pocket. When it came out his hand was glowing, as if his fingers had been set on fire. The flames burned bright against the glare of the moon and they saw that he was not burning but was instead holding a wine bottle filled with gasoline. A rag wick was lit. And Roderick knew what he had. A Molotov cocktail. He could remember hearing about things like this back in the orphanage. The playground was full of whisperings about dirty bombs and bathtub napalm. One of the kids had ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ and soon everyone was talking about how to terrorize the world.
“Stop him!” he shouted, and Jamie dived into action, lunging forward with a speed that denied his small stature, screaming blue murder like an angry child. The man in burlap fell as Jamie transformed his body into a human spear that lanced right through his stomach. Both tumbled to the pavement, but it was too late. The wine bottle was already in flight.
“No,” Roderick whimpered as he saw the bottle break through the window of Joseph’s house with a hideous crash. “No!”
Silence. For a moment. Then they heard a shout followed by a scream. And then the entire thing exploded as the flames found an open gas main. Cheap imitation wood flew as the plastic roof started to melt. The pink flamingoes were knocked off the imitation lawn. The air was scorched as the imitation porch went up, instantly ablaze while the smell of gasoline filled the air. Choking smoke flowed like fingers, reaching.
Jamie did not notice any of this. He was too busy fighting, pummeling this dark shadowy thing with his fists. But his strength was gone. He felt weak without the drug. With all the strength of a man possessed the stranger hurled the young boy off, tossing him away as if he was nothing but a bundle of rags. In the light of the burning fire he scrambled to his feet and ran for the darkness, sneakers squeaking on the cold pavement.
The darkness opened its arms wide like a lover. The shadows accepted him and took him to their breast. In another blink of an eye he would be gone. “He’s headed for the wash!” Orjure screamed and pointed.
“After him!” Roderick shouted and the three gave chase.
The Revelation
Luckily, Joseph Opus was in the shower when the bomb hit. He was busy washing off the abuse of the day, trying to get himself clean. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, had always been his motto. He took a page from the Book of W. S. Burroughs and decided that, even though he was a drug addict, he kept himself clean and professional. Every day he shaved. Every day he combed his hair. Every day he put on freshly laundered clothes. To do any less would be to allow the sickness inside him. And a doctor could never get sick.
Only the world did not operate by the same rules, a law that suddenly became very clear. He was cleansing the soap from his eyes when the sound of cheap plastic molding shattering was coupled with Marget’s sonic scream. Both managed to conquer the sound of water splashing on imitation tile like some hideous symphony.
Joseph shook himself awake and ran out of the shower bare ass naked, only to see his living room complete engulfed in flames. Quickly he snatched up his robe and wrapped it around his body, feeling the gun heavy in the front pocket. Part of him wanted to pull it and start shooting, get immediate vengeance on whoever had done this. Part of him wanted to put it to his own head and pull the trigger so that he would not need to see what came next.
Only there were other matters to attend to. Some things are more important than revenge. Some things are more important than suicide.
Joseph grabbed his fiancée roughly by the arm and ducked outside. Just in time to see the trailer burn to the ground.
***
The Vile Three caught up with the stranger at the wash and knocked him to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Together the four of them rolled in the sharp gravel before coming to.
With grit teeth, Roderick jumped to his feet and grabbed the stranger, throwing him into a cyclone fence that rattled under his weight but held. “I will kill you!” he shouted, his big boy hands reaching and tearing, pulling the burlap sack off the stranger’s head. He looked into the victim’s eyes. “Do you hear me? Kill yo ...”
An old man was looking back at him. His white skin, dead pale, was framed by a head of wispy gray hair that wafted over his eyes in un-slicked tufts. Ugly boils pock-marked his cheeks and chin. His lips were almost non-existent, and his eyes were set deep behind his nose, like pin pricks of emerald. He was wheezing, as if his heart was about to go out.
Roderick let him go, suddenly afraid to even be near him. Jamie and Orjure stood beside him, looking into that diseased ridden face. The man was ugly enough to stop time.
It was ringworm. Rotting pus-filled boils were leaking from the days exertions, just waiting for a doctor’s hot lance. One of his eyes was bad, and constantly stared at the ground while the other rolled in judgment.
“What the
Hell?” Roderick asked, taking a step back. Suddenly he was very afraid. He had touched this thing. Now he looked at his hands, as if he could see the disease. He felt diseased. The disease was inside of him.
“Kill it!” Orjure shrieked. “Kill it!”
“Yes,” Jamie said, stepping forward with both his hands clenched into tight fists. “It must die.”
Roderick pushed him back and gave Orjure a look that silenced her. He turned on the man, suddenly very curious about who he was. Miss Felony had warned them about STD’s. She had taught them to beware of dirty women and keep themselves clean. Now he was wondering what sort of STD could do this to a human being.
“What is your name?” Roderick demanded.
“Magnus,” the old man stammered, as if he had suddenly recalled his tongue. “Yes,” he nodded, more certain of himself. “Magnus Ransom. But I have not used that name in a very long time.”
“And why do you hate Opus?” Jamie asked, stepping towards him.
“Because he did this to me!” Magnus shouted and lunged forward. Roderick got in his way and shoved him back. He fell into the rattling fence and his body went limp against the galvanized metal. “He did this to me,” he whispered softly.
“How?” the girl asked, looking at the pitiful figure then at her two boyfriends. “How could someone as nice as Joseph Opus do this to someone else? It’s awful. He’s a pharmacist. He helps people.”
The man named Magnus laughed and spit blood. “Helps people? Is that what you think? The man is a monster. On the inside he is uglier than I am.”
“Explain,” Roderick spit.
“In grade school Joseph and I were friends. We had been friends ever since we were small children. But he was obsessed. He was obsessed with ugliness and imperfection. He used to scar people for fun. I remember! Oh, how I remember! You cannot forget a monster like that. Never.”
Jamie and Roderick looked at one another. Orjure was focused on his every word.
“In grade school it was knives. He would cut people, make them ugly. Then in high school it was cigarettes. One day he came to class and he had all this weird shit on his arm. Whirls and pus. Boils that bled. He smiled and made me touch it. I did, and I became infected.
“The days went on. He had a cure! I know he did! But he didn’t give it to me. Ah, no. He wanted to see what would happen. He wanted to see the disease for himself! And it got worse. I grew uglier and uglier by the hour. The hair fell out of my head. My skin went pale. I looked like a leper, a leper I tell you! Can you imagine how a kid goes through high school looking like a leper?”
They could not. None of them had ever been to high school. Still, his story touched them.
“I begged him to give me the cure, begged him! I got on my knees and wept at his feet as if he was fucking Jesus Christ! But he wouldn’t. To him I was nothing but an experiment. A living walking fucking petri dish. He watched me deteriorate. He watched me slowly fall apart and he laughed. He laughed. Then, when things were at their worst, he started giving me the drugs.”
A smile crossed his face and a look came into his eye. It was like Magnus Ransom was remembering the only joy in his life.
“I liked the drugs. They made me feel better. They were blue, those drugs. They made the world tolerable. But the disease was still there. It got worse, but at least I had my drugs. That was when the experiment was a success. Joseph Opus realized that he could control the world through drugs. And he had the drug that would do it.”
“We know,” Orjure whispered softly.
“Eventually he tried to kill me. After all, I was only an experiment and he had proved his point. He threw me into the river, but I survived. I survived, and I have returned to this.”
He gestured at the town around them.
“Varmint Ranch used to be a nice place to grow up. Now it’s a fucking ghost town. All this is because of Joseph Opus.”
The Dead City
The morning sun rose upon a wrecked life. In the gleam of the fresh star, the destruction was clear. Melted plastic had been molded together with strings of black char. Long boards had been burnt until they appeared to be blackened French fries, over cooked by a zealous oven. Ruined clothing was scattered everywhere, torn by the flames to shreds. Scarred pictures behind shattered glass would never be remembered. Everything was faded. Everything was broken.
It was all gone.
Joseph Opus looked at the pile of devastation that had once been his world. He took a deep breath and was glad that he was still wearing the bath robe. He still had his gun. At least he had something. And he still had her.
Marget stood beside him with one arm wrapped lovingly around his waist. She was still wearing her veil and black dress. Sometimes God had to be thanked for the small mercies.
But all this was beside the point. Everything Joseph had ever worked for was gone. Everything he owned, what little there was, had been turned to ash. Nothing but ash.
“I do hate to see you go,” Mr. Torne said, camera in hand. He had been snapping away all morning. The ruins provided him with many interesting shadows, and who knew when something like this might happen again. “Can I get one last picture of the happy couple?” he asked Mr. Opus and his fiancée with a leering smile.
“Certainly,” Joseph said and turned Marget possessively towards the lens. He forced himself to say cheese and they stood stock still as Mr. Torne carefully snapped a picture of their conjoined shadow, sure to keep the actual couple out of frame. It turned out to be a good picture. Two beings becoming one in the darkness. Very symbolic, Mr. Torne thought to himself.
“I really do wish things had turned out better,” he finally said.
“Believe it or not, I think that this is all for the best.” Joseph sighed. “Yes. There is a new life waiting for Joseph Opus and his bride. Somewhere. I’m thinking about moving back into the city.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” Mr. Torne smiled and reached out to shake his hand. “I wish you both all the best.” And he leaned in to give Marget a kiss on her cloth covered cheek.
Moments later they were walking out of The Copacabana trailer park for the final time. Varmint Ranch rose to greet them. Mr. Torne watched them go, then turned back to his shadows. There were so many this morning, as if the world was turning dark. What a beautiful world that would be, he thought. A world with nothing but shadows.
“Where is Joseph Opus?”
The voice made him turn around. He saw a tall stranger, dressed like a shadow himself, with three children he did not recognize. The man had a burlap sack over his head that scrunched inwards whenever he took a breath.
And the children, two boys and a girl. The taller boy was clearly the leader. He had that look on his face, a pair of lips that liked to give orders and thin eyes that liked to see them done. The two of them were dressed in bad suits, while the girl had on an old dress cut to look sexy. She was too young to be wearing something like that.
Mr. Torne thought of his daughter and all the times he caught he dressed up in such fashion. It made him sick. They made him sick. All four of them. What was this world coming to?
“I’m afraid that Joseph Opus won’t be back,” Mr. Torne said, nodding at the wrecked trailer if they needed an explanation. Maybe, if he told them that, they would go find him and never return. “It’s too bad, really. He was the perfect tenant. Always paid his rent on time. I hate to see people like him go.”
“Where did he go?” the taller boy demanded, clenching his hands into fists. “Tell me now!”
Mr. Torne looked at the boy. In his eyes he could see drug abuse swimming and now he knew the truth about Joseph Opus. Had he not always suspected? He had been selling drugs out of his trailer. That weird smell at night sometimes? He really was cooking meth. That must have been what caused the trailer to explode.
If he had been any other sort of man, Mr. Torne might have called the police. But he wasn’t. He was loyal. Even to those who abandoned him. He looked at the girl then back to
the man. “He left to get married. In town.”
“In town?” the bag man asked, his voice muffled by burlap. “Joseph Opus has returned to Varmint Ranch?”
Mr. Torne found that odd. Varmint Ranch was all around them. Maybe there wasn’t much of a town left but it was still a town. “Er, yes.”
“Damn it,” the boy cursed, spinning around to kick an old rotten board into ash. “Now we’ll never ...” He shut up when he saw Mr. Torne looking at him. The boy managed to smile, one that was long and showed off all his teeth. “How’s your daughter?”
“We’ll find him,” the man in the bag commanded. “I found him before. I will do so again.”
“My daughter?” Mr. Torne exclaimed, stepping forward. “Now you listen to me you little punk ...”
“No, you listen, old man!” the smaller boy said, pushing forward. “I’ve already shown you my ass, I’ll do it again!”
Acquaro Page 12
