The Unnoticeables

by Robert Brockway

  “Carey,” he said again, more urgently.

  I almost turned. Almost in time.

  I heard my neck burning before I saw it. Little angry pops, like slapping cold bacon onto a hot iron pan. I felt my own sizzling fat fly off and scald my cheek before I actually felt the tar man’s touch.

  It wasn’t anything. It was just pressure. The nerves were already gone.

  The fear got me more than the pain. I screeched and tried to duck away, but I was already stuck. Every inch of the tar man was like flypaper, melting my flesh away in a thin pink river even as it held me fast. Somehow, I managed to keep myself from slapping at it. From getting my hands caught in it, too.

  But that was all I could do. I dropped to my knees, hanging my head like a kitten caught by the scruff. It only had an inch of me: A black and burning finger seared into my flesh, sending my own liquid skin running down the curve of my back and sopping into the elastic band of my underwear. But I could feel its grasp expanding. I could feel it pouring over me. Pain, spreading syrupy and slow. Impossible, unimaginable pain. The only thing worse were the spots that didn’t hurt anymore. The spots I knew were already gone.

  And then somebody took a picture. Or maybe a flashbulb went off. I was free, lying on my stomach and shaking. I watched my own lighter skitter across the pavement in front of my face. I focused on the decal, marred and partially burned away: a happy bee smoking a joint, sticking its stinger perversely into a cartoon flower. The word “love” written above it in obnoxious balloon letters.

  My back was warm. I was on fire.

  Then I was wet.

  Randall was peeing me out.

  SEVEN

  2013. Los Angeles, California. Kaitlyn.

  “Some party, huh?” Marco asked nobody in particular.

  I was the only other person in his car—some growly, chrome-and-leather Mercedes thing, of course—so I answered: “Sure was.”

  “Your friend is something, huh?” Marco said again.

  He wasn’t even looking at me, but he didn’t seem to be focusing very hard on pulling out of the steeply angled driveway, either. He nearly clipped the mailbox and cut off a delivery van as he fishtailed onto the street.

  “She sure is a noun,” I answered, not meaning to be quite so sarcastic.

  “What’s that?” Marco asked, downshifting and passing a string of Priuses over a double yellow line. They all honked.

  “A noun? Like a person or a place. A general thing. You were asking really broad questions, so I…” I looked over at him. No emotion on his face.

  “That’s funny!” he screamed. Then he laughed very precisely.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m not usually such a jerk. I guess I’m just nervous. I, uh … I don’t usually get along very well at those industry parties.”

  “Why not?” Marco swerved wildly around some expensive foreign beast, all bright colors and sharp angles, then cut back into his lane just as suddenly.

  I was white-knuckling the passenger handle and my own thigh, trying to hold on to something. I know everybody in L.A. is supposed to be a terrible driver, but this was beyond the pale.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, talking mostly to distract myself from my own impending death, playing across the windshield. “I guess it’s because I don’t really want to act or model or anything. I like stunt work, and I’m good at it, but most people don’t take me seriously at first.…”

  Marco must have been doing sixty on the winding residential street. He whipped by a For Sale sign so close it flew off of its post and skidded across the road behind us.

  “You could act,” he said, utterly unconcerned about the rapid series of close calls and near crashes.

  “Yeah, but—” I started, but Marco weaved over the line on a blind corner and missed a head-on collision with a pickup truck by a few inches. I made an unintelligible keening noise instead.

  As soon as my voice comes back, I am going to say something. Should I say something? I can’t blow my only chance with the unattainable celebrity I learned to masturbate to, but nobody’s going to be hooking up in the burning ditch we are certainly going to end up in, at this rate. Maybe I can figure out a polite way to—

  “You’re a very attractive woman,” Marco continued. “The only thing wrong with you is that freak finger.”

  I glanced down at where I had unconsciously hidden my extra digit, tucked between my legs and the seat.

  “What?” I was used to the stares, but generally people tried to avoid talking about it.

  “That finger. It is the only thing wrong with you. I know a doctor. She is very good. There wouldn’t even be much of a scar. I’ll give you her number.”

  I couldn’t find the words. Traffic lights swung past us like paper lanterns in a hurricane.

  “Would you mind letting me out at the next light?” I finally managed.

  “Why?” It was getting hard to tell when he was asking a question. His voice went flat. There was no rising intonation at the end of his sentences; he said it like a statement of fact: Why. At first I thought he was just distracted, concentrating on driving, but it sure as hell didn’t look that way.

  “You’re driving like a fucking asshole,” I said as coldly as possible.

  After a moment’s consideration, he replied: “These people are in my way.”

  Jesus Christ.

  I knew he seemed out of it. I thought he was maybe just a little dumb at first—you know how the pretty ones are—but now I was worried I may have implicitly agreed to suck off the guy from American Psycho.

  “You’re going to cause an accident,” I said very simply, like I was trying to reason with a toddler or tell somebody there was a rattlesnake behind him.

  “That does happen,” he replied, “but my car is very safe, and I can afford to fix it.”

  “People … will … get … hurt,” I said.

  “I don’t get hurt.”

  I was shivering, though it must have been eighty degrees inside the Mercedes.

  “We are almost to your house.” He spoke again after a few minutes of silence, during which time he’d managed to cut off a semi and knock over a bicyclist at a stoplight. Marco had gently but insistently rolled right into the man, running him over in slow motion, not noticing or possibly even caring that the light was red.

  I nearly cried when we finally reached my apartment in one piece. My place wasn’t on a main thoroughfare, but the street gets pretty busy on the weekends. Marco slammed on the brakes, throwing me into the dash. There was already a small line of cars building behind us, since Marco had simply stopped the Mercedes in the middle of the road. Somebody honked. He didn’t even blink.

  I reached for the door, but it locked under my hand.

  “Are you going to ask me to fuck you now.” It was a question, but you couldn’t tell to hear it.

  “What?”

  “This is the part where the women ask me to fuck them. I like this part. Sometimes I make them beg, if they are a little old. Sometimes they cry, but they still ask. You have to ask me now. Ask me to come fuck you. Say ‘please.’”

  I yanked at the door handle. I tried pressing the lock, but it wouldn’t budge.

  What the hell? Cars aren’t supposed to do that, are they? Does Mercedes sell a special Rapist Package?

  “I wouldn’t fuck you with a chain saw,” I said. “Let me out.”

  “That’s not how this goes. Now you ask me to fuck you. That’s what happens next.”

  I remembered something Bruce Lee once said about divorcing emotion from conflict. I found my center, willed my hands to stop shaking, and cracked my knuckles in what I hoped was an ominous gesture.

  “I’ve never been in a real fight in my life,” I told Marco matter-of-factly. “I only train to throw and take fake punches, but I bet it’s pretty close to the same thing, when it comes down to it. You’re a big guy. You obviously work out. I bet you could take me by force, if you wanted to. I couldn’t stop you. But I can make damn sure you w
on’t be pretty after. I will take your fucking eyes. Do you hear me? I will hurt you.”

  “I don’t get hurt,” he repeated. The words, phrasing, and tone were identical—like he had carefully rehearsed and memorized every syllable but had no idea as to their meaning.

  Marco leaned over slowly, as if to kiss me. I pulled back, but I was already hunched up against the door. He put a hand on my face and pulled it toward him. His eyes were flat black in the non-light. I matched the gesture—put my hand on his face as if to bring him in—then clawed, hard. My nails are short but strong. They dug into his flesh and raked downward, peeling the skin away in thick, curling ribbons. Blood oozed out of his cheek and ran down his neck.

  He did not cry out.

  He did not flinch.

  He didn’t even tighten his grip or move faster. He just slowly, methodically continued pulling me to him, then placed his lips over mine.

  The psychological violation made me want to scream his skull apart, but physically, it was more awkward than anything. Skin on skin. A little pressure. Then his lips parted, and I felt myself go weak in the knees.

  That is not a blushing, girlish description of lust. My legs literally lost strength. It was like struggling to wake up from a deep sleep. My muscles just wouldn’t respond. It felt like my body was dying by degrees, atrophying in time-lapse. Something cold and metallic snaked its way into my mouth. I shoved my tongue up against it, instinctively trying to push it back. When that didn’t work, I bit down on it, but I had no strength. The thing gradually forced my tongue farther and farther back into my mouth until I gagged and slipped it to the side, just trying not to choke. Something like a frigid wire slid greasily down my throat. It trickled down my esophagus, as sluggish and oozing as mercury, and coiled in my stomach.

  Oh, God, I thought that was his tongue. That isn’t a tongue! What the fuck is this?!

  Whatever it was, it was too thin to choke on, but every inch of it that spooled into me sapped more of my energy. My arms, at first scratching and pounding at Marco’s impassive face, now sat limply at my sides. My hands were on my lap, palms up, only my sixth finger twitching uselessly. I couldn’t feel my feet at all, though I knew they were painfully bent at wrong angles on the passenger floor. My eyelids were drooping.

  Did he slip me something? Am I hallucinating? Am I having a rage-induced aneurysm? This can’t be real. I can’t be … dying…?

  I was swimming in something both milky and acidic. Floating in a caustic lake of syrup. Distantly, I felt my body begin to jerk and spasm. It was a symptom unrelated to me; it was no longer my concern. Somewhere I knew that my body felt the door give way behind it. Somewhere I knew that my body was falling.

  I gagged up the last cold inch of the draining proboscis and instantly took root in my own flesh again.

  Somebody was holding my shoulders, pulling me out of Marco’s Mercedes. I threw up on my dress. I wrenched out of the stranger’s grasp. I fell on my ass in the street. I kicked at the car with my still-clumsy limbs. I tried to struggle to my feet to gouge out Marco’s goddamned eyes—I keep my promises—but my body was a few seconds behind my commands.

  “Fuck you!” I rasped, wishing I had something more effective. But he was already pulling away.

  I saw his face for a split second, right before the car rocketed out of sight. I expected surprise. Or anger.

  Or, God, too much to ask for, but shame?

  I got nothing.

  Marco wore the same easy, plastic smile he’d flashed all through the party in the hills. The exact same expression that J. C. Sable shot at me from the Home Room poster above my bed in middle school. His black eyes focused on nothing at all.

  And then he was gone.

  The line of cars slowly passed right in front of me, each driver trying not to make eye contact. Just another drugged-out skank getting tossed out of a Mercedes, as far as they were concerned. Par for the course in L.A.

  The hands were pulling me up again, dragging me out of the street and onto the curb. I finally swiveled around to glare up at their owner. I’m not sure why I was so pissed off at those hands—they had certainly saved me from … something—but I had to be pissed off at someone, and Marco was nowhere to be seen.

  I smelled him before I saw him. He stank of stale sweat, fresh beer, and old leather. A goofy smile wound its way through a cragged and stubbly face.

  It took me a minute to recognize him: the weird old guy in the spiked leather jacket that cruised my street for cans every week. He slept under the overpass sometimes. Always tunelessly singing to himself.

  He made some kind of noise with his mouth.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I said you’ve got to watch out for those bastards,” he repeated, in a voice ground down by years of cigarettes and liquor. “Whole town’s full of Empty Ones these days.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” I said, and all the anger ebbed out of me like blood from a wound. “I think he slipped me something.”

  The old guy settled on the curb next to me, pulled out a crumpled pack of Camels, and gestured at me with them. I shook my head.

  “He slipped you something, all right,” he said, almost laughing.

  “Thanks for helping.…” I trailed off, letting him fill in the blank.

  “Carey,” the old man answered, flicking a weathered old brass lighter and breathing a giant cloud of smoke straight up into the air. “Name’s Carey.”

  EIGHT

  Unknown. Unnamed.

  I’m trying to hold on. I’m trying to maintain focus. I’m trying to stay human, or as close to human as I can. But I can feel the bullet inside me burning. It’s not emanating pain; it’s releasing information. It’s changing me. Rewriting things. My thoughts are becoming strange. Stilted. Acute and cold. I’m turning into something like the angel. The one that shot me.

  It was never trying to kill me. I knew that somehow, though. Yusuf. Yusuf and the barriers. What does that mean? There are parts of me missing.

  Through my good eye, I stared at the worn and battered Gideon Bible that sat on the end table of my shitty room in this shitty Motel 6. I wanted it to help me hang on. It had symbolic value to me, at some point. There were verses with numbers I could not remember, and they meant something even to my sick and broken mind. But the sickness is gone now. In its place there is a cold and flat clarity. My heart should break to say it, but it does not: The Bible is just a book. There are 1,206 pages. It is missing four. They were torn out by a drunk and crying man, six months ago.

  Why do I know these things?

  I shifted my focus instead to a wadded-up piece of gum stuck to the side of a crumpled beer can. I focused on what that used to mean to me—cold beer on a hot night, release, pain, hangovers, dehydration, laughing next to a barrel fire—and it helped a little.

  My thoughts hadn’t been this clear in ages. And I was losing them, one by one.

  Beer. Girls.

  The last time a girl touched me was … Christ, when? Florida? No, no, it was what’s-her-name, under the overpass. That thunderstorm ambushed us like a mugger from a dark alley. One minute it was clear and humid, the next it was black and wet. I ditched my pack behind the stoop I’d been squatting on and hauled ass to the nearest cover. Shaking myself off like a wet dog, I noticed the girl. She was just on the clean side of filthy, but still all-right-looking. Younger, but had those razors in her eyes that made you feel awkward when she looked at you. I was still pretty together back then. Those were the early days.

  I made a joke; I don’t remember what it was. Dumb, probably. Something about rain and dogs. She didn’t laugh, but she let me sit across from her.

  And I could see her now. See that vast chunks of the neurochemical reactions that comprised her identity were redundant.

  No. God damn it.

  I could see she had her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. It was a dirty blond, the color of cut straw dying on a barn floor. She had a scar on her lip. She didn’t smile
, but you could see when she meant to. She crinkled her eyes a little. She based most of her interpersonal philosophies on a mistrust that she had nurtured ever since her stepfather kicked her out when she was sixteen. The reflex patterns that governed her decision making could all be extrapolated out from that first night she had spent at a Greyhound station and the attendant who’d seemed so nice at first—

  That’s not me. That’s not human. We are not reactions. We are not mapped out.

  We are code. A program that is constantly evolving, but a program nonetheless. Our actions, thought patterns, ideas, and emotions repeat. It is what we call a personality. It is simply an algorithm. One that is often too complex for the function it purports to serve. Wasteful and inelegant. It is just a matter of simplifying the algorithm to free up excess energies that can …

  Beer can. Focus on the beer can.

  She had a twenty-four she’d just cracked open and saw me eyeballing it like a dying man in a desert. I think it was because I didn’t ask to split it that she ended up splitting it with me.

  The alcoholism factors into the overall equation. It stems from her mother, who had eschewed all alcohol as the crutch of the weak. This base rebellion can be considered “r” and is most commonly found in two derivations: rebellion from perceived unjust authority, and rebellion from self and success under fear of failure, which we see as …

  Fuck. No. What was her name? Her name. I need her name.

  Yes. Because names are information. Names are tags that influence identity and can help greatly in simplifying the equation.

  I need her name because she’s the last woman I ever kissed.

  I want to think of how she felt on me, but all I experience is a vague disgust at the wasted potential of her. She could have been reduced with a base solution of her mother’s perfume wafting from a burning cigarette, the sound of a car pulling up a gravel driveway, and a texture like paper, embossed with ink, running across her inner thigh. If this key information was presented in the correct sequence, at the correct time, it could serve just as well in place of the thousands of memories that dictated the woman’s self, thus drastically simplifying the algorithm of her personality. There would be no need for her to continue existing in her current form, and the unlimited energy she would have burned—calories consumed, waste discarded, biothermal energies produced—could be used elsewhere. The simple reduction of this woman’s …