Acquaro

by Trevor R. Fairbanks

  Realization dawned on him. He had seen these two boys before, but never like this. They were Miss Felony’s kids. And the last time he had seen them they had been wearing the same bad suits, only they had been much younger.

  But that had only been a few months ago. How had they grown so in such a short time? These boys were nearly men. They had the hair for it.

  The Opus

  “This town means everything to me,” Joseph said as they walked through the deserted streets of Varmint Ranch. “I remember when I was a kid there was this wide-open field right next to the main drag. I used to play there by myself every single day. How much of my youth I spent on that field,” he shook his head, trying to come up with a number that was too astronomical for his human brain. “I cannot say. I loved it there.”

  Through her veil, Marget looked at him. This man she was about to marry. She could still remember the day they first met. As a child of the streets, she had been scavenging for dinner when she saw the man standing on the corner. She had heard about such things, men with money and affluence. And he looked the part. He was tall, and he was wearing a suit, like the lawyers on TV. He called her over and he told her she was beautiful. Then he took her back to his trailer and put her in a dress. A dress very much like the one she was wearing now.

  He slipped the veil over her head and for the first time in her life Marget felt complete. And she was hanging off his every word, as she always did.

  “One night I was laying out, looking up at the stars. There were more stars back then, not as much smog,” he looked at her and winked. “The sky was beautiful, and I realized why. It was the emptiness, you see? This world, we got it all wrong. All the buildings and the highways and everything ... it’s all an infection. Emptiness, that is beauty. Desolation. That is beauty. Everything else,” Joseph Opus shrugged. “It’s all cancer.”

  “Is that why you love flaws?”

  Joseph had to think about that. “Perhaps,” he finally mused. “I like to see the breakdowns in everything. The destruction. Maybe that’s why I love this place so much. I changed it to suit my needs. My vision.”

  “Varmint Ranch?”

  “Absolutely. Go ahead. Take off your veil. Look upon this glorious land with eyes unclouded.”

  Marget stopped. Joseph had told her to never take off the veil, not when people were around. And they were in the city. There had to be people around. But she also always did as she was told. Besides, she could remember Varmint Ranch from when she was a kid. She did not want to see it again.

  But Joseph had given her a direct order. Slowly, cautiously, she lifted the veil off her face. Marget hated removing the veil in public. Whenever she took it off people stared, and she could not stand it when people stared at her. It made her feel uncomfortable. She always felt so ugly and having the veil around her face made her feel better. But if Joseph said it was okay to take it off, then it was okay to take it off.

  “NOW ENTERING VARMINT RANCH,” a rusted green sign loudly proclaimed. “A NICE PLACE TO GROW UP!” Only someone had sprayed paint over it. Now the sign read “NOW ENTERING VOMIT RANCH, A NICE PLACE TO THROW UP!”

  She could remember that sign, but this was not the town of her birth. It looked completely askew. In many ways it was like any other industrial town that dotted the country. But it was different. It was odd. There was something about it that reeked of death.

  The windows had been boarded up and they were dark, like giant’s teeth blacked out by gum-rot. All the doors had been wrapped with yellow tape, reading QUARANTINE in blood red letters. The sun did not seem to shine as brightly here, as if it was an eye that was ashamed to see what had happened to this place. The town was cast in an eternal shadow that would never be lifted.

  The buildings that remained were plain to the point of hideousness and ultimately boring. They made no attempt to be modern or creative, they were merely functional like squat boxes hunched over the street. Earth tones were everywhere, everything brown and gray and industrial. And black because of a fog that seemed to hover over the town like a funeral shroud. But they were too far from the ocean for there to be fog, weren’t they? It might have been smoke. It might have been anything.

  All in all, it was a dreary place, like a landscape painted by a tormented artist. This was a vision of the world seen through insane eyes. It was a depiction of disgust. Depression was the only emotion that could ever exist in this mess. That was what bothered Marget the most. The fact that this was not abstract art hanging in a museum, but the real world. This was life. Varmint Ranch really did look like this. And here she was, right in the middle of it. With him.

  “Isn’t it awesome?” Joseph asked with a giddy child-like smile, his eyes darting about to take it all in. “We are going to start a whole new life here, me and my beautiful blushing bride. We wasted so much time in that stupid trailer park when everything we ever wanted was right here.”

  But she already missed the trailer park. At least The Copacabana had a fence and places to hide. There was the trailer, and the darkness inside. There were no prying eyes. And suddenly she wanted to put the veil back on, not to hide the world from her, but to hide from the world.

  “Look, there’s my old high school.” Joseph pointed at a two-story building that was broad and flat, with a twisted iron chain link fence that surrounded it. A dying tree stood alone off to the side, with a tire tied to it for a swing. There were people here, shuffling about around a dirt lot that might have once been a playground. They wore dirty white robes like patients in a hospital and constantly looked at the ground, so much so that their bodies seemed to lack spines. Their heads did not lift as they passed by.

  Marget could see that it was no longer a school, but a leper colony.

  Joseph paid them no mind, but Marget could not take her eyes away from the men. All those rotting bodies, they looked like corpses freshly released from the grave. They looked like dying things, cursed with life. Marget looked closer but they did not notice her. They continued to walk, shambling from place to place in an obscene dance of decay.

  “And here is where I first had my great revelation,” Joseph said as they came to a large barren field. It was disgusting and empty, completely barren.

  Marget could not imagine a child playing here, even one as odd as Joseph. What would they have to play with? Only their own twisted imagination. It depressed her.

  “Hey, there is the old apartment where I grew up. I met Magnus here, my best friend. He lived right around the corner.”

  “Magnus?” she asked. “I never heard you mention anyone by that name.”

  “Yes, my best friend Magnus. Lord, I haven’t thought about him in years.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Joseph commanded in a sharp tone and suddenly fell oddly silent. A story was there, she knew. It was not one she wanted to hear.

  They continued to walk. “What’s that?”

  A short bridge joined two halves of the city. Underneath black water flowed, rushing onwards towards an infernal sea. But it was almost a pretty shade of black, and the long dark trees standing beside it seemed to like it. They dipped their charcoal fingers in to drink. Marget could remember a river running behind the trailer. She had always wanted to see it. This had to be it.

  “Never you mind,” Joseph snapped. “It’s nothing. Nowhere. Come, we need to find a place to spend the night.”

  “No, really.” Marget stopped, listening to the water run. She could not remember the last time she had seen running water. “I want to see the river.”

  “We don’t have fucking time,” Joseph hissed. “Besides, we need to find a place to get married. I think that there’s a church over ...”

  “I want to see the water,” she said and stopped. Joseph looked at her. She pouted.

  “And I said never mind,” Joseph said and grabbed her sharply by the wrist, dragging her along like a petulant puppy dog. He tugged so hard he almost jerked her arm right out
of its socket.

  Marget followed, her head lowered like the lepers at school.

  ***

  “Once this place was beautiful,” Ringworm told the children as they walked through Varmint Ranch, which had been turned into Vomit Ranch in his mind. “Now look at it. Gone. He has corrupted everything. Joseph Opus has infected and polluted the whole town! He has systematically soiled this entire place. It’s all gone now, contaminated and tainted with his filth.”

  They had already passed by the leper colony and gone over the black water bridge. Roderick could still hear those waters, swirling and flowing and smelling like raw sewage. Swirling and flowing like cancer through the veins of this town that had once been a NICE PLACE TO GROW UP.

  “Look. There.”

  Underneath a tree was a sagging card board box that was wet with recent rains. It was close to the water and ready to fall completely apart. Nothing but garbage, Roderick thought, and was shocked by Ringworm’s next sentence.

  “That was my home,” Ringworm sighed. “For a long time. Then I saw Joseph Opus with his new bride, in that trailer park. I knew that I had to get my revenge. I had to get revenge for everyone in Varmint Ranch.”

  “Damn him,” Jamie cursed, making a fist. “I want him fucking dead.”

  “We need the drugs first,” Roderick said. “Then his soul belongs to Ringworm.”

  “Where is he?” Orjure asked. “We haven’t seen anyone since the leper colony.”

  Suddenly bells filled the afternoon air. Ringworm stopped. He listened. They were church bells. The sound of them brought a cold smile to his face.

  “Church bells,” he mused, then snapped as he realized what was happening. “That fucker is getting married.”

  ***

  The church was the largest building in Varmint Ranch, even though it was as run down as the rest of the city. No one here wanted to worship God. No one here wanted to ask for his blessing or his forgiveness or his anything. No one wanted to believe. All everyone wanted to do was forget.

  Behind the church was the local dump that was, by far, the most popular place in Varmint Ranch. Long ago the land itself had been sold to other cities, who came here to dump their refuse. The remains of the town were there as well, and those who had not moved into The Copacabana lived there, eking out a low standard of living amongst the rubbish from other nearby towns. The overpowering stench came wafting over the walls, offensive to any nose sensitive enough to the smell. And behind those walls were all the things a society could cast off. There were junked cars and rubbish. Rats looked up, confused at all the people and the sound of bells.

  They had never heard bells before.

  Joseph Opus loved that smell. He would much rather have it over the cloying scent of roses any day. It was an honest smell, this reek of depravity. Roses, with all their pleasant perfume, were liars.

  With a glance over his shoulder, Joseph looked at the assembled populace of Varmint Ranch. They were all here, gathered to see their most celebrated son on his wedding day. And his heart swelled with pride. Imagine, the entire town turned out to see their own get married. How could he not feel pride? It was a good feeling to have the support of his home town behind him.

  He turned back to the preacher looking down from the pulpit. It was time to finish this. Marget would be his, forever, with all her imperfections. Soon those imperfections would be his own. Here, in the town of his birth, he had made his greatest achievement.

  The preacher mumbled a few words from an old hymn book. Joseph looked at the man’s face. Strange welts were there, all in full bloom like a garden of earthly torment. He looked closer and saw whorls etched into his skin, twisting and turning as if a retarded child had used his pale flesh for a coloring book. He took a sip from a flask that he carried in his coat pocket. Joseph could smell the cheap liquor.

  “Now wait just a damn minute ...” this was supposed to be a solemn occasion, and now the preacher was drunk? Drinking? This was unacceptable!

  “You have infected us all!” the preacher snapped, and his blue eyes turned into icy daggers, shooting into his heart.

  “What?” Joseph asked, shocked. “What are you talking about?” He had personally given the preacher an ounce of crack to do this ceremony right. Why was he screwing up so badly?

  “Your sickness has doomed us all!” the preacher continued. “Look about you, bringer of filth! Look about you, Judas!”

  Joseph slowly turned. The audience he had been so proud of, the entire population of Varmint Ranch, were all filthy. They were homeless. They stank of urine. Their skin was cracked and bleeding pus. He looked closer at a man in the front row. He kicked a little and his penis tumbled out of his pant leg. Ringworm. Leprosy. Pink eyes stared at him. The crowd stood and moved in for the kill.

  Joseph looked at Marget. He lifted her veil and found her eyes underneath. They were so soft, so caring. She did not deserve this fate.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, as the preacher reached out to grab him. “So sorry.”

  And the lepers overwhelmed them.

  ***

  In the back of the church there was laughter. Harsh, grating laughter that coughed from a tormented throat. Ringworm watched it all and could not help but laugh. Everything was happening according to plan.

  “But they’re going to kill him!” Jamie said. “What about our drugs?”

  “You fucker,” Roderick said, grabbing Ringworm so hard the burlap bag fell off his head. “What should we do now?”

  “Kill him,” the girl purred. Orjure smiled. She had come to enjoy death. “I want to see his blood.”

  “It don’t matter none,” Ringworm said. “Joseph Opus is dead. I have had my revenge!”

  Behind them a man screamed, shouting for the aliens to come and give him succor. A woman hissed as her veil was pulled off. Rotting cancerous lips reached for her cheeks. A preacher laughed, as Hell finally descended upon his town. He took another drink to celebrate.

  And Varmint Ranch vomited up its most beloved son.

  The Island

  Leonard Samson stepped off the cloud onto the sandy shore. He had always dreamed of going to the beach, feeling the pull of the ocean even as a child. Now, here he was.

  A single giant foot came down, crushing the village into powder. Shock waves erupted across the land mass, shaking those citizens who were still alive awake. They were alert now. This was no nightmare. They saw what was happening and they got on their knees and started to pray.

  Tidal waves lifted from the sea and splashed onto the shore, sweeping away anything that had not been tied to the ground. Leonard Samson smiled a grim smile. How he loved to revel in this newfound power and these cretins, these nobodies, would learn to respect him. Or they would die.

  He had seen the island from space, noticing it like a jewel in a great azure store. It sat in the middle of the ocean, unnoticed by modern man, inhabited by a tropical race of savages who were simple and had few demands. When he saw it, he decided that he must have it. And what Leonard Samson wanted, he got.

  Now that populace surrounded him, emerging from the destruction of their city with wide open eyes, staring up at this immense new being. Leonard Samson stared down at them from his lofty height. They were a short, sallow people, weak willed and hard working. The world that they knew was one of toil and near slavery, not to a master, but to survival itself. He saw the fields that they had tended, and the farms that stretched across the entire island. The raw jungles that were the birthplace of their nightmares. He saw the small buildings that they had erected for shelter. This used to be a peaceful place.

  He was about to change that. He was a God. He would be worshipped. Such was the nature of things. It was simply the way the world worked.

  In his head he saw holy wars being fought amongst these once peaceful villagers. He saw people dying and burning with his name on their lips and in their hearts. He witnessed violent crusades and saw crosses erected to punish those who did not believe. And he
saw unbelievers die by the sword, all in his name. Blood. Every God wants blood.

  “I am Leonard Samson!” he proclaimed to them in a voice that rumbled the heavens. To emphasize this point he shot lightning from his fingertips that thundered the sky wide. Cold rains fell, bathing the little creatures in misery until they were huddled blobs of whimpering nothing. “Worship me and none other!”

  This was how to do it. Do not give them any choice. If they did not want to worship him, they would be killed. Simple as that.

  But then a tiny man stepped forward, sniffling underneath the onslaught, with his back broken and his eyes blinded by tears. By sheer force of will he brought himself up to his full height, painfully, for his back was bent from carrying sticks all day. Leonard Samson looked upon him for amusement and waited to be entertained.

  “Uh, Mr. God, sir?” the young farmer asked in a meek tone and lowered his gaze so as not to suffer Leonard’s wrath. “Not to offend you, please? but we already have a God. One that we love dearly. A God who protects us. He already has our hearts, sir. He has been with us since ...” the man choked. “Since forever!”