Saying Goodbye to the Sun

by David McAfee

  But it didn’t. I sat there with my face resting on the edge of the bowl for ten minutes or so waiting for the gut-wrenching pain to return, but it never did. Eventually, I convinced myself to stand up and walk back into the living room. There was a real mess in there, and I knew if I didn’t clean it up soon I’d spend the next month smelling Coco Puffs, milk, and vomit. Not an appealing thought. I needed a shower, too, but first things first. I started cleaning the room, my hunger forgotten for the moment.

  ***

  Two hours later, freshly showered and dressed, I began to feel hungry again. Every window in my apartment stood open, and the smell had mostly aired out, but I still didn’t want to close them just yet. I couldn’t even think of eating Coco Puffs (the remainder of the box now sat in the trash), and so I put on my sunglasses and went outside thinking two things. First, some fresh air and sunlight might do me some good. Second, a little burger stand waited not two blocks away, and what I wanted right then was meat.

  The stand was right where it always was, of course. I gave Sajid, the proprietor, my order and he tossed the patty onto the flat, stainless steel grill. All at once I couldn’t stand the idea of a greasy, well-done hamburger. The thought of it made my stomach tighten up again. I didn’t want the meat cooked, I wanted it as rare as possible, even raw. I salivated thinking about the watery blood dripping from it like an overfilled sponge.

  “Sajid,” I said, “could…could you just give it to me like that? You know, uh…without cooking it?”

  Sajid looked at me, the question burning in his eyes, but he didn’t ask it. I could have hugged him for that. He pulled the patty off the grill and dropped it onto a bun. “Do you want anything on it, Mr. Walker? Lettuce? Tomato? Some onions maybe?”

  “No, thanks,” I stammered. Just the thought of either made my stomach clench again.

  Sajid didn’t ask any questions, but his eyes stayed on me. I think he wanted to see if I would actually eat the raw burger. Well, buddy, I was gonna eat it, let me tell you. My stomach clawed and howled for that hunk of flesh like a pissed-off Doberman. It screamed at me so loud I could barely hear any other thoughts beyond that single, maddening need to eat. Hell, yeah, I was going to eat it, but I didn’t want to do it with him watching me.

  Stomach growling, I went back to my apartment. I was glad I’d brought my shades; the sun was stronger than normal that day. The sharpness of the sunlight forced me to squint even behind the sunglasses. The weird thing was no one else seemed to notice. It was a relief to reach the door to my building and come into the lobby. It felt cool and – more important – dark after being outside. I walked to the stairway (there was an elevator in the building, but it hardly ever worked) and climbed the seven flights of stairs to my floor.

  Once back in my apartment, I sat on the couch and unwrapped my meal. As soon as I saw the bun I knew it had to go, so I removed it and took it to the trash. Upon returning to the couch I also noticed that the outside of the patty was singed, if only a little, by its time on the grill. Just the thought of cooked meat made my stomach lurch again, and I scraped off the outer layer – which was quite thin – and scooped it aside in a small pile. What remained was about a third of a pound of raw ground beef, still bloody, and pliable as a mud pie. By then the hunger had become a deafening roar. I heard my blood pulsing in my ears as my body reacted to an immediate, overpowering need.

  I reached out with shaking fingers and grabbed a small handful of meat. Tentatively, I put that first bite in my mouth and started to chew. Strictly speaking, chewing wasn’t necessary. This was raw hamburger, after all. It had been pre-chewed, so to speak, by the meat grinder. Old habits die hard, though, and I sat there for a bit grinding it a little more with my teeth and swallowing my first bite of raw flesh.

  Dear God, it was delicious! I couldn’t remember ever eating anything to match it. Nothing could match it. It tasted like ecstasy. After that first bite, I took bigger handfuls and shoved them into my mouth as fast as possible, unable to cram it in there fast enough. In less than a minute the whole thing was gone and I wanted more. I had a couple of pounds of hamburger in the refrigerator that I’d planned to cook on the grill that weekend, and so to the fridge I went, anxious to continue the feast.

  I flung the door open, nearly toppling the whole fridge in the process. Several eggs fell from the rack and crashed to the floor, but I ignored them. I pulled the hamburger out, ripped the plastic open and tossed it aside without sparing it a thought. I didn’t wait until I got back into the living room. I couldn’t. Instead, I stood in the kitchen with the refrigerator door hanging open and shoved my face right into the hamburger. I ate it like a starving dog; taking huge bites and swallowing them nearly whole, pausing only long enough to catch a breath here and there. I must have looked like a lunatic, standing there with my face buried in raw ground chuck, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was feeding my insatiable hunger with as much bloody meat as I could get. That alone held my full and utmost attention.

  And, God, it was so good!

  Soon, I’d finished the entire thing, and it was just enough to ease my hunger. Once it receded, I was able to think clearly again, and I remembered the morning’s breakfast. Here it comes, I thought, the stomach pain and then the vomiting, and there’s gonna be a fucking lot if it this time. I’d consumed far more meat than I had cereal. This was going to be a very big mess, and I started to wish I’d eaten outside after all.

  But nothing happened. No pain, no feeling of having my insides twisted and stretched taut. Just the peaceful, calm quiet of one who had eaten his fill, and perhaps a little extra. Not taking any chances, I went into the bathroom anyway. If I was going to be sick again, this time it was going where it belonged. Time to pay a visit to the Porcelain God, and maybe make a donation while I was there.

  I didn’t make it to the toilet, though. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and stopped cold. A madman covered in blood stared back at me. His messy hair stuck out everywhere, the strands glued together by a sticky red liquid that was rapidly drying like some macabre hair gel. Wild eyes stared out at me from beneath lids stained with blood. The whites of his eyes showed eerily the whole way around the irises. The eyes of the insane.

  But none of that is what stopped me in my tracks. Two sharp white teeth protruded from the top of my mouth a little way past the incisors. I stared at them, wondering what they were when I noticed they were moving. Moving! While I watched, they receded back into my upper jaw and vanished. It all happened very fast, and I had to wonder if I’d really seen them at all. For the sake of my dwindling sanity, I decided that I hadn’t.

  And so, in the space of three hours, I’d managed to need two showers and to have to brush my teeth twice, though this time I did not gag on the toothpaste. While brushing the second time, I looked for any sign of the teeth that the mirror had shown me, but I couldn’t find any trace of them. After that, it was easier to believe I’d imagined them, and I went about the rest of my day thinking just that. At least, when I bothered to think of them at all. The human mind can be quite dismissive of things it doesn’t understand.

  After my second run under the hot water I decided to go out. The sun seemed less intense and I felt a great deal better. I still felt a little weird about eating raw hamburger, and so much of it, but I had shoved that concern to the back of my mind to deal with later.

  Having tackled my apprehensions via a marvelous technique I call ‘ignoring them,’ I got dressed, put on my sunglasses, and went for a walk, hoping to clear my head with some fresh air. A little good old New York City O2 Plus. The Plus is for all the extra stuff you get with your air. No plain old Oxygen here. No sir, not in the Big Apple. We have to give you more than you bargained for. Such is life in the big city.

  It worked, anyway. I felt better by the minute while outside. I did notice however, that the reason the sun seemed milder was due to the lateness of the day. I hadn’t realized I’d slept so late. Had I even looked at a clock?
I couldn’t remember. The first part of my morning seemed pretty fuzzy. I tried to think back to when I’d bought the hamburger (I was calling it a hamburger by then) from Sajid and remember what time it was, but I couldn’t place it. The sun had been so bright that I hadn’t been able to look up to see its position in the sky. I’d just assumed it was around noon by the sheer ferocity of the sunlight. But looking at the sky now, it must have been closer to six pm when I went to the burger stand.

  Weird, I thought. I’d lost almost a whole day, yet I felt strangely revitalized. I felt like I was more…there…than I was the day before. I felt stronger and more capable than ever. With this feeling came a newfound confidence, even arrogance. Even though I was alone, I felt sorry for anyone who tried to mess with me. I realized a moment later that I didn’t feel sorry for them. Not at all. If anyone came at me, they would deserve whatever I gave them. In fact, I had a strong desire to walk down a dark alley and see if I could find a few rough-and-tumble guys so I could teach them a lesson. Maybe I’d run into that guy, Kagan, who fucked with me so bad the night before. With luck, I could track him down and show him how to talk to me properly. That would be great.

  And so I wandered around the city for a few hours, looking for some undesirables on which to vent my mounting energy, one undesirable in particular. I didn’t realize I was headed for the area around JoAnn’s or The Eye, but that’s where I ended up. I soon found myself a few blocks from the diner and decided to go in and see if Mr. Joel Kagan was present so I could teach him a lesson.

  But Kagan wasn’t there. I also noted that Rose was working, and I didn’t want to see her at the moment. Rose would try and bring me something to eat, and the thought of food, anything cooked and dripping grease onto a stark white plate, made my stomach clench tighter than a wad of rubber bands. Besides, my body pulsed and vibrated with a new and exciting kind of energy. It screamed at me to find an unlucky soul upon whom to unleash my frustration. So, buzzing with adrenaline, I passed JoAnn’s and The Eye and continued walking up the street. Afterward, I wandered around the neighborhood for another hour or so as dusk came and went, taking with it the last few motes of daylight.

  Soon after, I got my chance to prove my mettle to the city’s criminal element. My walk had taken me around and around the area of the club in a wide circle several times, with no conscious thought on my part as to the direction. You might say something pulled me to that area, because I kept going back to it.

  As I walked past an alley entrance near The Eye for the fourth time, I sensed another presence nearby. Several of them. I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t see them, smell them, or hear them, but somehow I knew they were there. I continued to walk by the alley entrance, pretending to be unaware of their proximity. When a hand jumped out and grabbed me by the arm, I allowed myself to be yanked into the darkness. I could have prevented it, but they had lost their most valuable weapon: the element of surprise. I hadn’t lost mine, and I had no intention of letting them know what deep shit they’d gotten into until I was ready.

  I stumbled into the alley and four men surrounded me, all of them wore dark sweaters and blue jeans. They weren’t quite within arm’s reach, but they were only about a foot outside of it. The men lingered there for a few seconds, perhaps waiting for their numbers and the situation to intimidate me and make me more pliable. I saw them quite clearly in the darkness – they had chosen an alley in which the few lights had either blown out or were broken. One of them, the one who’d grabbed me, smiled to himself, showing dingy yellow teeth that looked like they’d never seen the inside of a dentist’s office. Either he planned to kill me or he thought I couldn’t see his face, because he made no attempt to hide it.

  He kept one of his hands behind his back. I don’t know why he felt that was necessary; any idiot would know he had a weapon back there. I could smell it. A knife. It carried the hard scent of steel mixed with the tang of old blood. The knife had been put to use before, and the man I was beginning to think of as Grabby meant to use it again.

  A slight whiff of fear wafted through the alley, as well. A neon green smell that excited my senses and caused my muscles to tighten up. It radiated from the other three like aftershave and made me think they’d probably never done this sort of thing before. Not like Grabby. I got the feeling they would have been happy to demand my wallet and let me go on about my merry way. They didn’t really want trouble. Grabby, on the other hand, was enjoying himself. Unlike the others, he wasn’t in the alley to rob people; he was there to hurt them, to establish his dominance to the other three and anyone else unfortunate enough to happen by. In this way, his purpose that night resembled my own, and I think both of us were looking forward to the next few minutes.

  After a few tense moments, Grabby spoke up.

  “Well look here, boys. A trespasser. Think maybe he’s just lost?” His deep, scratchy voice spoke of years of alcohol and cigarettes. His street accent sounded forced, and the end result was the word “here” came out sounding more like “hee.” It was, I suspect, an attempt to hide his voice and his accent in case I ever got to the Police. He needn’t have bothered; the Police Station would be the last place I’d want to go after leaving this alley.

  “I don’t want trouble,” I lied.

  “Trouble?” Grabby laughed, “You been walkin’ around this place all night, we been watchin’. And you ain’t paid your taxes yet. Ain’t that the rudest thing y’all ever heard of, boys?”

  A few mumbles of agreement from his audience, and he continued.

  “Now you gonna be nice ‘bout dis an’ pay up like you s’posed to, brothah? Or me’n my boys gonna hafta light you up?” With that, he pulled the knife – a fancy Asian folding type which I believe is known as a ‘butterfly’ – from behind his back and flipped it a few times to expose a shiny blade about 5 inches long. All that fancy handwork just to show me the blade. I almost smiled, but managed to keep my face straight. It wasn’t quite time yet. I wanted him to think he still had the upper hand for a few more seconds.

  “W-What do you want?” I stuttered, hoping my voice sounded suitably terrified.

  Grabby smiled. “Hand over the wallet, bitch, and maybe we leave you ‘lone.”

  Nodding, I plastered a relieved smile on my face and reached into my back pocket to withdraw my wallet, which I held out to Grabby at arm’s length, as though too scared to bring it to him. His smile grew even wider as he approached, and he reached for the wallet with a gleeful smirk that made his next statement unnecessary.

  “’Course, maybe we just hafta teach you a lesson this time”, He said as his left hand touched my wallet and his right hand, the one holding the knife, drew back. “Just so you don’ forget nex’ time.”

  I was faster. I pulled my wallet away from his outstretched hand and shoved it back into my pocket, the whole movement a blur even to my eyes. While he tried to register this new development, I shot my left hand out and clamped down on his right wrist, immobilizing it. Then I grabbed his other wrist with my right hand, ensuring he couldn’t strike at me with either of them. Then I bent the wrists backwards and lifted up, forcing him on his toes. His eyes grew twice their normal size as his mind caught up to his predicament.

  His friends, likewise dumbfounded, simply stared at the pair of us in slack-jawed amazement. Grabby and I had gotten the directions to the robbery wrong. This was supposed to be going the other way. Soon enough one of them would return to himself enough to either try and help his friend or, more likely, run like bat shit. For the time being, however, they were not a threat.

  As for Grabby, once he recovered his initial surprise, he struggled to break my grip, but as I’m sure you have already guessed, his efforts were wasted. I was beyond human at that point. It didn’t take long for him to realize he wasn’t going to break free, and he started to shout to his buddies for help. His rapid heart rate and breathing, both of which sounded out clearly to my hypersensitive ears, indicated Grabby was close to panic, and his frantic
shouting would wake his friends from their lethargy soon enough. Either that, or it would attract attention I didn’t want. I needed to shut him up, so I slammed my forehead into his face. His lower jaw gave with an audible crack, but that didn’t shut him up. It did, however, muffle his screams and make them less intelligible.

  That will do. Now he could be any drunken boozehound shouting at a building in the sad, slurry language of the terminally inebriated. Like as not anyone who heard him would just tell him to shut his hole rather than call the police. Yep. That would do just fine.

  When Grabby’s jaw cracked, the snap rang through the alley and woke one of his friends from his stupefied state. The guy took one look at me, then turned and ran like the devil was biting his ass. Grabby whimpered and watched him go. His eyes filled with moisture, then rolled back to me. Something he saw made his eyes widen even more. I didn’t know what it was, not right then, but I’d find out soon enough. He looked at me as though he thought he was about to die in that dingy, dirty alley. Neither of us took much notice as his two remaining companions turned and ran as well, following the first guy out into the street.

  Grabby started to cry, then beg. All his cocky toughness vanished in the 50 seconds or so it took me to break him. I couldn’t understand much of what he said due to the broken jaw, but I got the gist of it pretty well. Something like “Please leave me alone; I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t hurt me no more.” As he sloshed through the words, his knife fell from his fingers and landed on the alley floor with a sharp, metallic clink. It still carried the smell of old blood, and I wondered how many people had said those same words, or similar ones, to him. How many of those whimpering requests had Grabby granted? How many people had he let go about their merry way after they’d given him their wallets? None, I’d wager. When he thought he was going to get to hurt me, his smile had been so big and cruel. He’d been looking forward to it. Well it was time for someone else to enjoy the game for a little while.