by Jordan Krall
That’s when the screaming started.
Grant had never heard anything like it. The sound was like a tea kettle crossed with a dying goat.
Dr. Silverman rushed out of the office with Grant close behind. “Jesus Christ,” the doctor said. “Davie, what are you doing?”
Nurse Barbara was being eaten, her left breast hanging out of Davie’s mouth.
“Breast flesh! Breast flesh! Breast flesh!” Davie was on the other side of the nurse’s station, the bottom half of his body hidden. He stepped around the corner, letting go of Barbara. The corpse dropped to the floor with a wet clump.
“What the fuck is…,” Grant said. The bottom half of Davie’s body was just a hunk of glowing meat.
“Grant, get the hell out of here. NOW.” Joshua Silverman knew something fucked up would happen sooner or later. “Davie, just stay right there. Right there.”
“Black saucers! Black saucers! Black saucers!” The meat portion of Davie’s body glowed like neon beef. “You best run, doctor. Run, man, run!”
VII.
Dr. Joshua Silverman did run.
He grabbed Grant and ran around the other side of the nurse’s station, avoiding Davie whose body was becoming less human and more meat-like by the second. The doctor thought that was funny considering human beings were essentially meat. Most, however, didn’t change into different types of meat in such a short period of time. Nurse Barbara was right. Something was wrong with Davie.
When Joshua and Grant reached the end of the hall, they realized they were alone. Though they passed close to two dozen rooms, there were no people. No one came out to see what the screaming was about.
“Where is everybody?” Grant said.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Silverman said. “Dead maybe.”
Davie’s voice reverberated down the hall. It was followed by Davie himself but now his entire body was nothing more than a giant piece of neon meat. Thick, flashing tentacles waved out of him like wild water hoses. The Davie-thing slid across the floor on tiny hairs of meat that resembled spider legs.
Grant tried the door at the end of the hall only to find that it was locked. “You have a key?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Shit, man, what the hell are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Grant,” Joshua said, looking at the young man whose life pretty much depended on him. Grant was a resident after all. But as he looked down the hallway, the doctor realized all the therapy in the world wasn’t going to help the two of them. Whatever Davie had become was now making its way to them.
But then it stopped.
It slithered into one of the rooms and came out holding another resident in its tentacles. Joshua couldn’t see who it was because the corpse had no face. Davie must have already eaten it. Through gaping holes in his meat-body, Davie then ate the rest of the resident.
Blood-drool and meat-saliva splattered to the floor. The Davie-thing was a messy eater. It made the doctor vomit.
“When he gets close enough, we run past him. You go to the left. I’ll go right. Okay?” he said. “Okay, Grant?”
The doctor didn’t get a reply. Grant was staring at Davie.
“Grant!”
“This is what I read about, right? Loop panic? Loop panic disorder? Davie has that, doesn’t he?”
Joshua ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”
“Someone has it, right? Someone in the hospital….”
“I don’t know, Grant, okay? I don’t know.”
Davie went into another room and brought out another body. He feasted on it, tentacles sliding in and out of the corpse’s orifices. “I was of three minds, like a tree, in which there are three blackbirds…..”
Grant turned to the doctor. “What the fuck is he talking about?”
Dr. Joshua Silverman dropped to his knees in a praying position. “I know, too, that a blackbird is involved in what I know….”
“What’s wrong with you? Jesus Christ! Doctor, snap out of it!”
“It’s poetry, Grant.”
“So what? Let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t think we can.”
“What about your plan…..about running around him?”
“I don’t think it’s going to work, Grant,” the doctor said. “Look at him. He’s getting bigger.”
Indeed Davie was glowing into a large chunk of neon meat as it inched closer. It reminded Grant of those giant monster movies from Japan except that it wasn’t Tokyo that was being destroyed but a shitty New Jersey mental health clinic.
The Davie-thing went into another room, got another corpse, and devoured it. He burped and out popped a rib bone from one of the gaping meat-holes. “When the blackbird flew out of sight, it marked the edge of one of many circles, many circles, many circles, many circles…..”
Grant’s fear was turning into annoyance. What the fuck kind of nonsense was coming out of Davie’s meat-mouth? Even when he was a glowing, flesh-eating, motherfucking piece of meat, the guy still couldn’t shut up.
“Where’s my son?” Davie said. “Phil! Where are you, Phil? Phil!”
The doctor was still on his knees. “Phil? It’s all Phil’s fault. That’s it. That explains it. Phil.”
Grant said, “Don’t blame this shit on Phil.”
“It’s Phil’s fault! Yes!” the doctor shouted to Davie. “Phil! Find Phil!”
Davie was eating another corpse and stopped mid-chew. “Oh, I will, doctor. I’ll find him. He’s around here somewhere.”
Grant watched the Davie-thing drop the corpse he was eating and slide away in the opposite direction.
“Whew.” Dr. Silverman sighed. “That was a close one.”
“You know something?” Grant punched him in the throat. “You’re a terrible fucking doctor.”
VIII.
Phil was in the Quiet Room.
So he punched Davie first. So what? The guy had deserved it. Of course, the hospital didn’t see it that way.
“Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota.” He didn’t know why he was still trying the doctor’s coping techniques. They had never worked.
The only thing inside the room was a soft chair and one of the doctor’s pamphlets. It was purely useless stuff about some sort of disorder Dr. Silverman had studied. Phil was losing faith in the whole system. As he pondered the whole meaning of rehabilitation, there was a voice outside the door.
“Oh, Phil, my boy, where are you?”
What the hell?
It sounded like his father….but it wasn’t his father.
“Oh, Phil, my boy, the apple of my eye, where are you?”
Was that…….Davie?
Phil jumped up to the door and looked out the window. What was coming down the hallway resembled his father in many ways but it was surely not him. Instinctively Phil knew who and what it was that was coming for him.
He opened the door. “I’m over here.”
The giant piece of neon meat said, “Ahh….my boy.”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The Davie-father-meat thing got closer and several tentacles wrapped around Phil’s shoulders.
“Son, you ready to get out of here?”
Phil nodded. “I guess so.”
“It’s been a long time since we went to the park, played catch, saw a movie.”
“Yep.”
“Can you forgive me…. I mean…..us…?”
“I think so.”
The tentacles guided Phil out of the hospital and into the sunshine. The neon meat walked alongside him as if to guard against every danger in the outside world.
“You want to talk about anything, son?”
Phil shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not right now.”
“Well, son,” the meat said. “You let me know if you want to talk.”
They walked on across the parking lot and onto the sidewalk.
“I think there’s a Denny’s nearby, Phil.”
“Yeah, I think you�
��re right.”
The meat said, “You know I met your mom at a Denny’s, right?”
“Yeah, I knew that.”
“That reminds me,” the neon meat said, wiggling its tentacles across the sidewalk, smearing the primitive sigils someone had drawn in colored chalk. “Did I ever tell you about the time my mom took me to Colorado?”
“Yeah,” Phil said. He smiled. “But tell me again, dad.”
HIS CANDESCENCE
Gregory met the man at the park on Thursday and decided then and there that he should kill him.
The man introduced himself as Xerxes Brown and claimed to be an importer of silk. Gregory believed none of it, but that didn’t matter for soon this Xerxes Brown character would be importing nothing but decay.
They had literally bumped into each other while taking laps around the lake.
“Oh, excuse me,” Gregory had said.
The man smiled and put his hands up. “No harm done.”
Gregory nodded.
The man put his hand out. “I’m Xerxes Brown.”
“Gregory Myers.” They shook hands and spoke briefly and awkwardly, exchanging random bits of personal information much to Gregory’s dismay. Finally, he had to end the conversation. “Well, I do have to get doing. Have a nice afternoon,” he said, continuing on his jog.
He didn’t like the look of Xerxes’ face. It held a perpetual smile as if the man was incapable of being unhappy. Gregory hated that. It took much self-control not to vomit during the short conversation they had had.
Gregory hated the fact that there were people who could force joy into their countenance no matter what the occasion. He knew the man would probably smile through a hurricane. He would have probably smiled through the Holocaust, telling everyone everything would work out for the best. Unadulterated joy and positivism angered Gregory to no end.
Gregory could tell that about the man just by one interaction. It sickened him. He needed to do something about it. Though he’d never been violent before (not unless you include the time he stabbed a classmate with a pencil in elementary school) Gregory had a plan formed in his head about how he would kill this man, this Xerxes Brown.
Now it was Saturday and after checking on mother, Gregory went to the park again. He brought some popcorn to feed the ducks and sat down at one of the benches in front of the lake.
The ducks approached him and soon so did Xerxes Brown.
Gregory nodded at the man, swallowing the bile that was rising up his throat and threatening to flood his mouth. “Morning.”
“Yes,” Xerxes said. “Good morning.” He had a seat next to Gregory on the bench and pulled out his wallet.
Gregory watched as the man flipped through small scraps of paper, sugar packets, and raggedy dollar bills until the man seemingly found what he had been looking for. He pulled it out and held it in front of Gregory’s face. It was a photograph of poor quality, one a person might overpay for at tourist spots where they have to step into a booth and smile awkwardly at an unseen camera.
“This is my mother,” Xerxes said.
Gregory grimaced at the photograph. An elderly woman clad in a blouse almost as white as her face stared at him. There was no smile to break the wrinkles that had been carved on her face. Gregory was surprised no one else was in the picture with her. Why would the elderly woman get into the photo-booth by herself?
“Lovely,” he said.
Xerxes moved the photo closer to Gregory’s face. “Just lovely? Look at her eyes. She has beautiful eyes. My father said they were made of marbles, beautiful marbles, imported from Germany.”
“You don’t say?” Gregory looked at the woman’s eyes and saw that they were indeed beautiful, yes, but also frightening. They stared at him accusingly, like a judge or a jury.
“She was blind, you know. Couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t know what her children looked like. Quite sad.”
“Oh,” Gregory said, finding himself caring less and less about this man’s mother and her blindness or any blindness in the entire world.
Xerxes said, “What about your mother? Do you have a mother?”
Gregory groaned. What possible reason would this Xerxes have to need to know about Gregory’s mother? “Yes, I do.”
“Do you have a picture of her?”
Gregory sighed. “No, I do not.”
Xerxes put the photograph back into his wallet. “Well that’s just ridiculous. Who doesn’t keep a picture of their mother?”
“I don’t.”
Xerxes smiled wide, wider than ever. “I know. You just said that.”
“Well, I better get going,” Gregory said, getting up from the bench. A hand grabbed his arm.
“Don’t go just yet, Greg.”
“Let go!” Gregory said, flexing his arm back and feeling Xerxes’ arm flutter like paper.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. No harm done, right?”
Gregory shrugged and walked off.
“No harm done!” Xerxes called out from behind him.
Gregory now knew the idea in his head had to come into fruition sooner rather than later. He had the plan. He had the knives.
He was almost out of the park when a whimpering sound from behind him made him stop. Was the man crying?
Gregory turned around to find Xerxes biting into his wallet. He walked back slowly, apprehensive about the man and what possible plans he might have in store for Gregory.
“Christ, what are you doing?” Gregory said, approaching. He wanted to grab the wallet out of the man’s mouth but did not want to risk being bitten. Also, he actually found himself wanting to see what the man’s goal was. Did he want to consume the entire wallet, mother’s picture and all? Did he just want to take a bite of the faux leather simply to gain attention?
Yes, that must have been it. Gregory had been tricked into walking back to the man. He slapped Xerxes in the head. “Stop, will you?”
Half the wallet fell onto Xerxes’ lap and the other half was quickly sucked into his mouth and swallowed.
“Jesus Christ,” Gregory said, walking backward. He started to run out of the park. If he would have looked back at Xerxes, he would have seen the man regurgitate his mother’s picture into his palm and put it back into his mouth.
* * *
When Gregory walked into his mother’s hospice room, the smell of leather slithered into his nostrils like warm death. Something was wrong.
He saw his mother just where he had left her but she looked different. She looked flat.
It didn’t look like she had lost weight but when he touched her, she simply felt flat. He saw something else that was different. Her clothes. They were all made of silk.
Gregory fell backwards into the chair next to the bed and put his head into his hands. Were his mental facilities failing as much as hers? He rubbed his eyes and looked back at her. It was worse this time. She looked deflated, the silk garments resembling nothing more than purple death shrouds.
He dropped to his knees and grabbed his mother’s weak, flat hand. For the first time in more than twenty years, he said a prayer. Then he left to get his knives.
* * *
Xerxes Brown was throwing popcorn to the ducks when he felt something cold tickle his throat.
The blade tore open his windpipe and kept slicing until there was a crimson deluge down his chest.
Gregory stood behind the park bench, one hand on Xerxes’ hair and the other eliminating the man’s throat. The blood that splashed down before him had no real effect on Gregory. He was neither pleased nor disgusted. The blood was just there like the rain or sunshine.
Something fell out of the gaping throat wound and slid down to Xerxes’ crotch. Gregory let go of the man’s hair and reached down to pick it up. It was the picture of Xerxes’ mother. The elderly woman still stared at him with Germanic marble eyes but now she was clad in purple silk and there was a smile on her face as wide as the horizon.
Through a broken throat, Xerxes laughe
d. His body burped out his last words.
“No harm done.”
HAIL DESIRE AND BODIES OF COLD GENTLEMEN
Pockets of cold air moved across the bedroom. I occasionally felt them while I waited for sleep. Oh, how I waited and was always disappointed.
The pockets could be better described as invisible bubbles of frost. They came and went as I counted to ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and finally a hundred. No sleep came but I pretended to dream, to rekindle my nightmares with the movement of the cold air.
My name is Henry Bertrand. I haven’t slept in fifteen years.
That isn’t the worst of my troubles so I won’t pretend that it is just to gain sympathy or advice. It is simply the starting point of my narrative. Why is it the starting point? I’m not entirely sure but perhaps the reasons will reveal themselves to both me and you by the end of it all.
The end of it all.
That sounds so very final but that probably isn’t the case. Once the reading stops, the mind goes on and on and on until the details of the story disappear in some long term memory junk yard full of old names and plotlines from movies you’ve forgotten you’ve seen.
So forgive me if I rush through the story or obsess on some small detail like the wallpaper on my neighbor’s bedroom wall. Just so you know: I could see the room from my own bedroom. My curtains are always open and so are my neighbor’s. I think they are intentionally left open as if to ask me to stare inside and observe my neighbor’s life. The wallpaper in the room is old-fashioned and of a floral design. It was so old-fashioned in fact that it didn’t seem real. Did someone really design that wallpaper? I couldn’t imagine a time when it would have been deemed modern. However, it wasn’t that my room was so modern itself but compared to the neighbor’s I was practically living in the future.
The wallpaper was, like I said, floral and old-fashioned. It looked ancient and stained with yellow circles. Parts of it were falling down in strips. Each night I noticed the strips getting lower and lower until I could see the wall beneath. The wall consisted of faded drawings of horse-drawn carriages and men with tall hats and whips. Truthfully, I was probably jealous of the wallpaper. Though it was indeed old-fashioned (like I mentioned several times before) it held some significance, some depth of character that was surprising since it was only wallpaper. I got it in my mind to someday ask my neighbor about it….
