Prelude to Space Rape! & Other Stories

by Jordan Krall

  The woman stepped out onto the porch. “Hey, I didn’t say you had to leave. I don’t recall telling you I wasn’t interested in your magazines.”

  Franco stopped and turned to see her with a small smile on her face. He also saw the shape of her large nipples poking out of her blouse. “Oh.” He forced the grin he used to charm female customers.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’m Eurice.”

  “Hi Eurice,” he said, following her into the house. “Thanks for your time.” He walked behind her, his eyes instinctively moving to her rear end as it strained against the skirt.

  When Franco was able to move his eyes away from the woman, the first thing he noticed was the lack of décor. Nothing in the house indicated that anyone was actually living there. However, there also was no indication the woman was in the process of moving: no boxes or piles of belongings prepared to be packed.

  “Would you like some water?” Eurice said.

  “Yes, thank you.” He knew better not to decline any sort of beverage or food in this sort of situation. When hospitality was extended, a salesman should always take advantage.

  Eurice walked to the kitchen and out of sight. Franco heard the clinking of glasses and the running of a sink. More clinking and then a cough. She came back into the living room holding a cloudy glass of water.

  “It’s just bubbles,” she said. “The water pressure in the sink is incredible.”

  Franco took the glass and tried looking into the water without appearing to be suspicious.

  Eurice said, “Have a seat on the couch and you can show me what you’re selling.”

  Franco held the glass with his right hand, hoping it wouldn’t slip from his weak grip. His arthritis had been acting up lately.

  Eurice held her gaze on his hand and said, “Is your hand okay?”

  “Oh,” Franco said. “Uh, yes. Thank you.” He looked for a place to set it down before he was tempted to take a sip. He sat down on the couch that lacked any style or design while he watched Eurice sit across from him on a plain white chair. In between them was a table made out of unfinished wood. Franco placed the glass on it and opened his messenger bag.

  He said, “We have quite a few titles to choose from, some at a considerable discount. In fact we have the largest selection of discounted magazines in the state.” He pulled out a full-color catalog of titles his company offered. Eurice took the booklet and proceeded to peruse it for several minutes.

  She stopped on the last page. “Well, this is interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This magazine here,” she said, sitting up straight. “It has my brother’s name on it.” She handed it to Franco.

  The catalog page showed the cover for the second issue of IMPERCEPTUS with an article by Maurent Drake. Franco said, “Wow, you didn’t know about this?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to my brother in quite a while.”

  “What’s this about?” He perused the cover but had no idea about the subject of the article. “Loop panic? Imperium waves?”

  Eurice rolled her eyes. “Same old junk he’s been writing about since he was a child. Frankly I have no idea what it all means.”

  Franco knew this was the flashpoint of his sale. Either she’d kick him out for reminding her of her estranged brother or she’d end up buying something from him as a result of feeling a connection since she had shared some personal information.

  As soon as he was going to inquire a little more about her brother, there was a sound from upstairs like a sack of stones dropping to the floor.

  Eurice said, “That’s just my nephew.” She gestured to the catalog. “My brother’s son.”

  “Do you think he’d like to look at the catalog? I mean, at this magazine his father is in?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think that would be appropriate.” She stared at Franco. He didn’t know whether he should hand her back the catalog or just get up to leave. After several minutes of staring in silence, she said, “You haven’t touched your water.”

  Franco looked down at the glass. It was still cloudy. He leaned forward and grabbed the glass, brought it to his mouth, and let the warm water meet his lips.

  Eurice was still staring as he took a sip and swallowed.

  Footsteps stomped down the stairs. Franco looked at the young man entering the room. Eurice said, “Lucasse, something wrong?”

  The young man said, “No, I just heard you talking to someone. Who is it?”

  Franco stood up and offered his hand. “I’m Franco. I’m, uh, selling magazine subscriptions.”

  Lucasse took a step back. “I heard someone mention my father.”

  “Uh, yeah, he….” Franco said but was interrupted by Eurice.

  “Looks like your father wrote an article,” she said, grabbing the catalog and throwing it at Lucasse’s feet. “Last page.”

  Franco watched as the young man slowly bent down, picked up the catalog, and looked at the cover of the magazine his father was in.

  “Can I order this?” Lucasse said.

  “Well, the catalog is for subscriptions to each magazine not a specific issue,” Franco said.

  “But I want this one. Where can I get this one?” Lucasse’s fingers were tracing invisible shapes on the page.

  “Uh, well, I can try to maybe find something to point you in the right direction. Honestly, my company doesn’t have much to do with the individual magazines. We’re more on the distribution side of things but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Eurice stood up. “You don’t have to do that. My nephew has more than enough reading material.”

  “I want to read the article, Aunt Eurice,” Lucasse said, rolling up the catalog and placing it in his pants pocket.

  “Give that back, please,” Eurice said, her face turning harsh and shadowy. Franco thought she looked like twenty years old than before. Wrinkles appeared where there had been none.

  He said, “Oh, it’s okay. I have plenty of catalogs. He can keep it.”

  “No, it’s not okay,” Eurice said. “It’ll only fuel his obsession and allow for another one of his…..episodes.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Lucasse said. “I have every right to know about this.”

  Franco watched as the young man and his aunt stared each other down. The living room grew darker, black tendrils creeping up the walls and across the ceiling. Even Lucasse’s face was becoming covered in blackness.

  Something was wrong.

  While the room was filling with octopus ink darkness, Franco felt his legs buckle and his stomach turning inside out. He fell to the floor, his nose hitting the wood like a hammer. The last thing he saw was Eurice’s dark high heels clip-clop towards his face, finally engulfing him in a warm, malodorous abyss.

  Then: tulips.

  IV. Of Obdormition and Demise

  Roux could see them at the edge of the park. There were three of them. A woman and two men. What were they waiting for? They were just standing there. He couldn’t be so sure they were watching him but assumed they were.

  The other people around Roux started to spread out away from him as if predicting the events that surely were going to come. There was going to be blood spilt in the park. There was going to be a body put to rest in a most violent way.

  Roux looked away from the three strangers. His eyes went down to his book which was now curling away on the cement like a small, pulpy beast. The words on the pages were unrecognizable.

  His thoughts turned away from the three on the edge of the park.

  He thought of his brother Maurent and how their relationship had been strained over the last few years. Roux couldn’t identify one specific reason as to why it turned out that way only that it involved something Maurent had written. What was it again? An article? A book? Roux couldn’t remember. That period of time was submerged in his head under eight years of thick, regret-laden dust.

  He couldn’t blame his brother entirely for the state of things.
Roux had done many terrible things in his adulthood, things he had tried prying from his brain through the use of alcohol, rituals, and pills. His life had taken a turn for the worst on the dawn of his eighteenth birthday when Maurent had taken him to the beach to present Roux with a “gift”.

  It was a gift of hardened love and abuse, gritty like the sand they stood on, the sand they knelt on as Maurent attempted to make Roux pray to some abstract, philosophical mutation. It did not work out as planned. Though Maurent wanted to ready his brother for an oceanic mactation, Roux had not been so easily swayed by his words.

  Maurent thought his brother had been ungrateful and Roux could not help but agree. He had said terrible, terrible things and his brother had written terrible, terrible words. Those words opened up a pit of psychic masochism: Maurent falling into despair over his printed pages while Roux agonized over his verbal destruction. It was a stormy period of mutual torment.

  But why had Roux thought of his brother at this moment? What about the park (and his impending death at the hands of one or more “strangers”) was rekindling those sour memories? Roux has occasionally entertained the idea that his brother would ultimately cause his death but had always believed it was just his paranoia running rampant in the funhouse of his ritualized mind.

  There was a connection there for sure. Everything that was going to happen was somehow tied to his brother. Roux fell forward onto the ground, his knees digging into the cement.

  “Maurent.”

  He spoke the word into the air, hoping the wind would finally come and carry it into oblivion.

  His eyes moved to the three figures at the edge of the park that were now slowly making their way towards him. A faint scent of burning wood moved passed his nostrils. Was the wind back? Roux hoped so. But what was that smell? He looked around the park but saw nothing on fire.

  “Quack!” a voice said from behind. Roux turned, thinking it was the little girl again but it wasn’t. It was a young man he had never seen before.

  Normally Roux would not speak in this situation but he found himself strangely compelled to say, “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  Over the young man’s shoulder hung a messenger bag. Roux watched as the man opened it up, rummaged through it, and brought out a fistful of tulips.

  Roux then knew the origin of the burning smell. It was the flowers, the iridescent tulips being gripped by the young man’s pale fingers. He turned away, stood up, and started running.

  From behind him, a voice said, “Quack!”

  Roux didn’t stop. He didn’t wait for an explanation because he didn’t need one. Deep down somewhere in the crusty layers of his consciousness, he knew what was happening and why. The figures that had been walking from the edge of the park were nowhere to be seen. No doubt the young man had been one of them. But who were the other two and where were they now?

  Children’s voices swirled around his ears and that is when he fell hard into the ground, face first in a small patch of flowers.

  Tulips.

  Roux rolled around in them, submitting to their iridescence and burning-wood smell. His eyes flickered into the petals and into the past. Roux’s father was throwing malformed wood into the fireplace and then looked over at his two sons.

  “You know, boys, things are going to be a lot different when I go away.”

  Roux nodded as did his brother Maurent.

  His father went on. “It’s like what I told you about, that stuff that happened when I was a kid, how I gave birth to that damned garden.” The flames behind him sprouted dark tendrils. “And that damned garden, your damned mother, gave birth to you two boys. It’s probably not pleasant to think about, I know, but it’s where you came from and the way I figure it, a person can’t be ashamed of where they come from because most of the time they can’t help it. They didn’t have control. I know I didn’t. Hell, I’m beginning to think no one has any control over anything.”

  Roux’s father walked over to his sons, patted them on the back, and grabbed his luggage. “And if you ever meet….her….tell her there’s nothing I could have done either way. I could only have taken two.” The boys watched their father disappear into the snowstorm outside. They waited an hour before standing up and going into the kitchen to get something to eat. Roux drank water and ate lettuce while Maurent had only milk.

  Roux finished the last leaf of romaine when his brother said, “When I have a son, I will never just up and leave like that.”

  “How do you know?” Roux said.

  “Because I’m not a fool like he is.”

  Roux’s reply was a shrug. He could not care less how his brother raised his future offspring. In fact, he wasn’t planning on having any contact with them whatsoever. Being an uncle, or a father for that matter, was not in his life plans. He did not want to risk the chance of someone looking up to him.

  The tulips sang, startling Roux and bringing him to his feet. He spat out a mouthful of petals. There was the taste of something dark and insignificant as if his teeth had given up and faded into dust.

  He was surrounded now, pushed to the limits of psychic and physical masochism, a mere puppet on display in an average park in an average town.

  Or was it average?

  The town was a harsh whisper in a conspiratorial conversation of society, pock-marked with decrepit houses, with false histories and imaginary foundations. So why was Roux concerned there were people around him who were going to snuff him out of existence? He did not fear death, no, but only the departure of this, his false place of birth. He wasn’t sure he wanted to leave just yet.

  Roux vomited a vile concoction: milk and alcohol. It had been his brother’s drink of choice.

  Something else, too: a bulbous form the size of a child’s fist. It fell to the ground, opening up like a malformed flower. Brilliant shades of color enveloped the chunk of meat. It blinded Roux and sent him into a talkative delirium, begging for answers.

  A woman’s voice said, “It’s your fault father left.”

  Roux’s memory snapped, letting in images of his sister. Where had she been in all of this? Where had she been during his life?

  He said, “My fault? He left for his own reasons.”

  “And what of Maurent? I guess his writing those foolish articles isn’t your fault either?”

  “I had no hand in that,” he said. The bloody meat-form below him cooed. It was a neon rock of flesh pulsating and beckoning him. “He does what he pleases just like always. You don’t remember?”

  She scoffed. “And the rape had nothing to do with it?”

  Roux looked his sister in the eyes. She was, just as his memory suggested, a frozen shape in the guise of a woman. He didn’t answer her despite the glowing blue glare of her eyes.

  She nodded to another person, a young man who looked very similar to the other one, so similar in fact they could be interchangeable. Identical parts of different machines. Roux realized all people were the same in this park as they stood before the glory of the neon meat of his body.

  A cacophony of voices started to speak in waves of babble. Roux thought the whole park much have been watching him. All those people, all those innocent looking people just waiting for him to make a move.

  He thought about his book.

  It was a strange thing to think about under the circumstances but Roux figured it must have been a defense mechanism. But the book did not want him. It did not want to be read, to be experienced, to be digested by his intellect. In fact, Roux thought the book would have rather been thrown into a furnace than to have been read by him.

  There was a good chance he would die at the hands of one or more of the people standing before him. It might be his sister. It might be one of the young men who were like twins but not twins. It might be one of the many strangers that surrounded him as they looked on with eyes of neon marble. They were all iridescent blemishes on a plague victim left to rot in an average park in an average town. They were only banal throats just wa
iting to be cut.

  “But so are you,” the voices said.

  And Roux realized they were right.

  V. The Ubiety of Some Hell

  The last sane thing Franco remembered was the smell of Eurice’s high heels as they trampled him into the hardwood floor. Then it was a whirlpool of tulips, his body in vertigo, controlled by some sanguinary puppetry. He thought he might have been wearing black gloves. His right hand had held a razor while his left held the neck of a man.

  There had been bloodshed in a park.

  A voice said, “What have you done with Roux?”

  Franco sat in the living room of the house he had come to in order to sell magazine subscriptions. His hands were trembling: marionette limbs covered with blood and pollen. An empty glass sat on the table in front of him. His magazine catalog was torn into pieces and glued to the floor.

  He was alone in the room.

  Where had Eurice and her nephew gone? Franco felt uneasy in the house without the owner present. He felt like a harageous intruder bent on destroying the sanctity of Home Sweet Home.

  Franco walked into the kitchen hoping to find someone there but he was completely alone with every bit of paranoia squeezing from his pores like salty, psychotic sweat.

  He absentmindedly checked the cabinets but found nothing but strips of old newspaper and oversized mousetraps. The refrigerator was next. Franco opened it and found it empty but for broken wind chimes. He opened the freezer and stared at the contents: a carton of milk and a bottle of alcohol.

  He pulled them out but almost dropped them due to the cold. Setting them down on the counter, he looked closely at the containers, wondering if there was an expiration date on the milk and if the alcohol was still good despite the small bits of black material floating in it.

  Franco unscrewed the alcohol and poured it into the milk. He shook the carton, threw his head back, and swallowed most of the liquid down. His stomach was soothed as so was his mind. Sparks of recollection illuminated the kitchen and Franco saw his black gloved hand holding the razor, slitting the throat, and watching the spurting blood shower the tulips as he danced in the windless park like a crazed, satyrical assassin.