by Lee Thomas
“Beautiful dog,” Samuel said. “Foolish beast.”
Scooping her into his arms, he hurried onto the walkway above Dodd’s laboratory. He followed it to the place where he’d spoken with the awful Maureen and continued to the stairs where he found the lantern she’d left behind. Balancing Ruby, Samuel lifted the lamp free of its hook, and dashed back to the walkway near the door.
Dodd’s contrivance continued to fill the space below with light. The floor positively swarmed with unclean creatures, fleeing from and feeding on one another with abandon. A soft dove-gray animal appeared near the glass column, encasing the glowing coils. Much like a deer but very short and very plump, the animal gazed on in paralytic horror until a creature like a massive limbless scorpion dropped onto its back and buried its stinger in the unfortunate animal’s haunches. Then both predator and prey fell beneath the swatting claws of one of the porridge colored stick-men.
Great washes of blood sprayed from the monster’s claws, dappling the glass column and misting the surrounding beasts. The stick-man cast aside the stinging creature and fell on the soft body of the plump deer. Its teeth tore away at the pink belly, releasing a cascade of glistening organs and a wash of dark fluids that spread across the floor.
Ruby wriggled and whimpered in his arms, and Samuel attempted comforting words but what might be said to alleviate the terror of the abattoir below?
He considered where to attack the device, and felt certain the glass and gears would prove impervious to the minor threat of his lantern. Instead, he decided his greatest luck would come if he could set alight the wooden platform with its numerous locking plates. If the oil sufficiently set blaze to the structure it would cease function.
With no further thought on the matter, Samuel launched the lantern and waited, breath held, until it cracked open upon the upper deck of the device. Flames dripped down like brilliant wax, showering the menagerie below and causing a chorus of fearful screeches and chirps. “Have that,” he said triumphantly, observing the slowly spreading sheet of fire atop the platform. Pride welled in him as he heard wood pop with the burning, knowing it signified the likelihood that once the fire had fed in earnest the planks would collapse and with fortune, completely destroy the mechanisms below.
Confident in his success, Samuel nuzzled Ruby’s neck and turned from the laboratory to face the alley…
And the abominations that looked back at him.
Two of the stick-men stood beyond the door, rain pasting their crimson hair to the gleaming skin of their brows. This was Samuel’s first unobstructed view of the things’ faces, and he wished to have never seen it. Eyes like shattered emeralds, faceted with ridges and fissures, glared hungrily at him, and beneath these horrible ocular configurations three narrow slits rippled like the gills of a fish. But the mouths were worst of all. The stick-man on the left yanked something forcefully from its jaws and tossed the hindquarter of one of the odd cat-like animals to the mud. Then its face opened. Oh that terrible gaping chasm, with hundreds of pin sharp teeth lining the roof and jaw, bits of prey still snagged on the barbs.
Behind Samuel, the laboratory glowed ominously with flame and the device’s still radiant coils. Something about the light had changed, but he daren’t look back to observe the anomaly. The stick-men came forward cautiously, assessing the strength of their quarry.
A great explosion sounded in Dodd’s house. The fire had made its way into the kerosene stock to create a firebomb that blew through the flooring and sent shards of glass flying across the alley amid enormous gouts of flame. Samuel thought he and Ruby’s luck had shifted for the better, as the tumult distracted the stick-men, bent them low to cower from the tremendous force behind them. For a moment, as the hot wash of air blew over his face, he even allowed himself to hope the blast would send fragments of ruins at his assailants like shot from a rifle, cutting them down in the mud, but the hope lasted only a moment. Though distracted, the stick-men had not fled from the conflagration; it had simply pushed them over the threshold, blocking any chance for Samuel’s escape.
Refusing to serve as repast for these terrible creatures, and horrified that Ruby might meet the same fate, Samuel clutched his dog tightly and backed to the railing. The stick-men recovered and righted themselves at the doorway, and Ruby greeted them with a fierce growl, but Samuel knew she would prove no match for the barbaric and perverse species.
Instead, he closed his eyes, holding the dog so tightly to his chest it made her whine painfully, and Samuel launched them backward over the railing. It was better to break apart on the floor below than to suffer the bloody intentions of the stick-men. Ruby would forgive him this cowardly end.
As they dropped, Ruby turned in his arms, scraping his cheeks and waistcoat with her paws. She yelped in terror and the sound cut clean to Samuel’s heart, but this was better for them. Better than teeth. Better than claws. Better than…
Grass bends in the wind along a great plain, pointing at a hillock upon which leafless trees stand as straight as columns, jutting toward the gathering clouds. Amid the trunks is a small shack with refined lines and a tower of stones through which smoke pours, like a daughter of the accumulation above, racing skyward to rejoin her parents. As the storm rolls in, announced by the first rumbles of thunder, a panel opens at the front of the shack and two creatures—no longer strangers to this place—emerge onto the hilltop. One of these odd beasts walks on two legs and the other on four.
Their names are Samuel and Ruby, and today as with all inclement days, they run down the hillside and into the field. They dash through the countryside, calling out to one another excitedly as if playing a game. Both seem to enjoy the rain and the wind, and when the sky splits with jagged light, they race toward the bolt, chasing the lightning as if they could catch it and keep it as a precious souvenir.
Flicker
All that Kathy knew of love came from images flickering on an old television screen. What came from this screen was fiction, and Kathy had discovered the difference between fiction and reality long ago. Fiction was a house in suburbia, cleaned by a beautiful mother who baked cookies, wore pearls and prepared delicious meals. Fiction was a father who worked a steady job in the city, declared his daughter’s beauty to the world and fussed over the men who might date her. Fiction didn’t show a little girl, bruised and crying, hiding in a filthy basement terrified of the fuckers she called mom and dad. But reality did. Reality offered a mother who worked out her boredom with vodka and strange men and a father who expressed frustration with his fists and his cock. Reality offered Santa Monica Boulevard on Christmas Day, waiting for one of Keith’s friends to pick Kathy up so she’d have her fix and a warm place to sleep. The company she kept was irrelevant. In this, reality’s blindness was equal to love’s.
And what did it matter? This wasn’t a career, just a means to an end. She had ambitions. Early in the mornings as Keith snored next to her, Kathy laid awake imagining herself on the screen with Mark Wahlberg or Tom Cruise. The dream had followed her from childhood. Like Angelina Jolie or Sandra Bullock, Kathy wanted to be a star and see posters bearing her likeness hung on walls by adoring fans and see her name on movie theater signs. Her parents had laughed at her aspiration. They had no time for her “craziness.” So, she’d gone into her basement and mimicked whatever movie she’d seen that afternoon, losing herself in a fiction, which effectively filled a vacant childhood—at least for small periods of time. In her basement she became someone admired and loved, became someone strong and heroic, became anyone but Kathy Windman. She’d even played Frankie in her junior high school’s production of The Member of the Wedding. Of course, her parents had been too busy to attend any of the performances but her teachers and even some of the other parents had congratulated her beautiful performance. Such an exciting feeling it had been for her, being recognized as an actress.
Sadly, she’d never done another play. Her boyfriend in junior high, Larry, had said it was all so stupid. She’d temporarily aban
doned her dramatic pursuits at his request, exchanged them for pharmaceutical dreams. The void she’d once filled with acting was soon plugged by blow, blunts, and a six-pack of Bud.
At fifteen, after Larry dumped her, Kathy hitchhiked from Seattle to the city where dreams were everything. One night while watching the dollar movies in a run down theater on Hollywood Boulevard, she’d met Keith. He’d given her a place to stay, a purpose and a new relationship with new dreams. This dream offered needles and a cloudy world where pain was not allowed.
Almost a year had passed since they’d met. And now she waited on a corner for Keith’s friend. She couldn’t remember his name but he was supposed to pick her up.
She was going to make a movie.
The news had disturbed her at first. Although she wanted nothing more than to see her image on a screen, she didn’t want to make porno flicks. She knew what happened to actresses who took the easy way out, who jumped at the money and then got the reputation, an inescapable reputation, as a whore. She didn’t want that. She wanted to be a star, with all of the praise and respect that accompanied the title.
But Keith wouldn’t hurt her. He loved her. He always told her so. He just had a friend who liked to make home movies. The guy was a voyeur. The movie wouldn’t be seen by anybody, especially anyone from Hollywood. It was simply a game that this guy played, and besides Kathy wanted to see herself on the screen, even if the screen were nothing more than that of a high-def flat panel Sony.
As she began wondering where her ride was, a gray Lexus pulled to the curb. Behind the wheel, a well-dressed man with silver hair and a fatherly smile leaned down to look her over. “Are you Kathy?” he asked. His teeth were very white and his skin very tanned. He wore white pants, which were pressed into sharp creases and a crisp cobalt blue dress shirt. The sleeves were rolled up along thick forearms.
She nodded, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she stepped off of the curb. The man pushed open the door. She got in the car and as the door closed, the lock engaged.
“You’re Keith’s friend?” she asked.
“My name,” the man said jovially, “is Desmond Silver. And yes Keith and I have something of a history.”
Kathy nodded and stared out the windshield of the sedan as the familiar buildings of her neighborhood pulled behind her. The inside of the car was warm and comfortable after the chill afternoon.
“Merry Christmas,” she said uneasily.
“And Merry Christmas to you,” he replied.
Light cologne, trapped in the car with them, tickled her nose. It smelled like almonds and reminded her of the movie theater back home. The Marquis, a theater down the street from where she’d lived with her parents, sold really good chocolate covered almonds and if she hadn’t spent her lunch money on cigarettes or make-up, she always bought a box of them from the concession stand. They were especially good with a Dr. Pepper.
Wrapping a thin coil of blond hair around her finger, she studied the driver from the corner of her eye. He didn’t talk much. That made her uncomfortable, but nothing else about the man seemed threatening. He had a pleasant smile on his round face and really pretty eyes. They were so blue. He didn’t look anything like Keith’s other friends. Some of them were old, but they looked different. They looked like lizards and when they smiled they looked like hungry lizards. Most of Keith’s friends were really creepy.
This guy—Silver—seemed nice, though. She just wished he’d say something. She didn’t like the silence. It made her wonder if the man was having second thoughts about her. Maybe she wasn’t pretty enough to appear in his movie. People told her she was pretty but she didn’t always believe it. She thought her hair was too curly and her nose was too big. It wasn’t like Barbra Streisand’s or anything, but it seemed pretty big. At least she didn’t have a weight problem and she was a natural blonde. A lot of girls were uglier than her—like the girl who lived downstairs from Keith. She had terrible skin and stringy black hair.
“So um,” she began, trying to cancel the uncomfortable silence. “You…uh…you like movies?”
“Oh yes. They are the only perfect form of art. What about you?”
“I love them,” Kathy said. She was going to mention her ambition of being an actress, but sometimes it sounded stupid when she said it aloud. So she settled for, “Are you going to be my co-star?”
The man burst out laughing. The car came alive with its rich, deep sound. As he laughed, his round face constricted, producing dozens of tiny wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. He looked over at Kathy and managed to say, “No, but I’m flattered you’d ask.”
“You just like to watch?”
Silver considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “I like to create. Watching is part of that I guess. You see, I choose to expend my energies into the creation of art. Honestly, the thought of anyone actually touching me is nauseating, which is not to say that I am a completely asexual creature.” He turned the car and remained silent for a moment before continuing. “The guidance and manipulation of an act, the creation of an impossible scenario is very satisfying to me. Creation and re-creation, fighting over something until it’s perfect. That’s my passion. I think they call it a God complex.”
Damn, Kathy thought. How could you not like being touched?
“Do you have dreams?” he asked in a friendly but stern voice. He took his eyes off the road and fixed her with a crystal blue gaze. “Real dreams?”
“Sure,” Kathy replied. Didn’t everybody?
Silver nodded and tapped the steering wheel once with his thick palm. “Well this place, this world, doesn’t care much for dreams, despite what the poets tell us. It makes no accommodation for them. Dreams, prayers, they guide the young, but life’s random inequities separate those who succeed from those whose dreams have been little more than inexpensive entertainment. I couldn’t accept that.” He shrugged his large shoulders and turned the car again. “It doesn’t seem fair to only get one chance at a dream.”
“No,” she said, perhaps too eagerly.
He grinned at her exuberance. “If you make something and it breaks, well…then you’ve got two choices. If you’ve got the right tools or the right glue, you can fix it. Otherwise, it’s gone. You have to pitch it away. Up until recently, I didn’t have the right adhesive. This maddened me. It was like molding a perfect urn only to have the pieces separate in the kiln. But, recently I found a glue that works. I’m very excited about it.”
“You make vases?” Kathy asked, uncertain of what Silver was talking about.
“What?” he asked. Then he let his warm chuckle loose to fill the car again. He rocked in the driver’s seat obviously pleased by her naiveté. “No,” he chuckled. “I was speaking metaphorically. Well, you’ll see what I mean. We’re here.” He turned the wheel one last time and the car left the street.
The Lexus came to a stop in a dead end alley. Buildings loomed on either side of the vehicle casting deep shadows over the dull facades. Moisture crept down the weathered brick as if the stone’s cried for solace. A three-story monstrosity stood ahead of them. Condemned and desolate the three structures comprised a melancholy union in the midst of office towers and gleaming condominiums. Filthy plywood covered shattered windows. Obscure, woven symbols accompanied curses and effigies of genitalia on the boards and brick.
“Perfect, isn’t it?” Silver asked.
Kathy made a sound in her throat that she hoped sounded positive; she didn’t want to insult her host, but the alley and the buildings that formed it were eerie. Once, she’d gone with a friend of Keith’s to an old shack behind a seedy apartment complex in Reseda. One guy took her to a deserted warehouse. The strangest place she’d ever partied was with a bunch of musicians. They’d broken into a fire-gutted apartment building in North Hollywood. A friend of theirs had overdosed in the room a few months before it had burned so the place had meant a lot to them. But for the first time, while standing in that dark alley with the kindest looking man she’d
ever met, Kathy felt scared.
“It’s such a lonely looking place.” He sighed. Then his demeanor rapidly changed. He smiled and slapped his hands together before his belly and rubbed them as if to make them warm. “Are you ready?”
Kathy nodded.
Silver set off across the pavement, his feet breaking a path in the litter. Kathy hesitated, put her thumbnail in her mouth, and then took a step forward. She moved slowly, looking around the alley as she crushed trash under her heels. The old man waited by a doorway. At that moment she realized how commanding he was. His frame all but eclipsed the black space beyond. Kathy moved a little faster until she stood before him on the small cement stoop of the structure. A dull, musky odor poured from the building. Daylight was consumed beyond the threshold. Inside, only three steps were visible climbing away at a steep grade.
“Lady’s first,” Silver said. He stepped aside and waved his arm towards the stairs. He made the motion so gracefully, so slowly, like a magician offering a miraculous illusion to his audience. For a moment, it seemed the gloomy chamber had dissolved his arm at the elbow, but when the arc completed, the man stood before her, whole and grinning.
As she stepped over the threshold into the strange space, a fetid urban perfume climbed along her nostrils and down the back of her throat where it coiled in her windpipe. Refuse, urine and excrement and an underlying odor, an animal odor, coalesced into a rank phantom, a malevolent spirit unwilling to allow her breath, and Kathy choked audibly trying to regain control of her throat. She hesitated, putting a palm over her mouth. What little of the stairway she could see in the dim glow, stretched far above her. At the top, a sickly yellow light fought against a dark siege. Tiny shafts of gray from cracks in the plywood blinds cut the air like minuscule threads woven in raven cloth. They illuminated little, succumbing to the hunger of the darkness.
