After the People Lights Have Gone Off

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Only—nothing.

  I even looked again, which is always the first mistake, the first step onto that slippery slope.

  Just emptiness behind me. The whole gym, nobody.

  I spun back around to the doors, sure he’d got around me somehow, would be waiting.

  It was just me.

  I nodded that I was being stupid, that I was scaring myself like Drake had been talking about, and took another step forward.

  The orange eyes faded in again.

  I shook my head no, no.

  The eyes did too.

  And then, like I had to, I cupped my hand over the right side of my face. And then lowered that hand, covered my other eye.

  It was me.

  I was the devil, I am the devil, the one smiling behind the wheel that day.

  In Stephen King’s story, the kid’s dad’s looking over his shoulder into the tangled woods, he’s cueing into some indistinct rustling in the trees. Some smell, some evil presence.

  My face was lost in the brush, though.

  He couldn’t see me hunched over and grinning, my face wet with tears, my split tongue reaching up to dab them off my cheek.

  “Run,” I’d said to that kid, that nine-year-old. Or, I’d tried to, with every trick I had. If he stayed, then something might happen to him, something bad.

  But it does anyway.

  Just with the back of his finger at first, like hello.

  Hello.

  His mom throws it in with all of her wonderful finds and then they’re ducking back out into the bright, bright day.

  •

  By the end of the week, the hoodie makes it up from the utility to Dick’s room. Now it smells like mountain spring detergent.

  Dick—Richard if he had the choice, or Rick, Ricky, hell, even Detective—Dick huddles in his headphones and watches the hoodie, pretending to interrogate it from his place on the bed. Waiting for it to make the first move, here.

  Where his mom’s left it is draped across the back of his desk chair. Like Dick’s name, the chair’s a hand-me-down, like he’s standing at the bottom of the family hill, all this unasked-for history snowballing down onto him.

  Thanks, Dad.

  As for the hoodie itself, it’s black of course, but somehow not that stupid athletic shade of black. This shade of black’s better. Dick can’t really explain it, just knows that the vagueness of this particular black, it was what drew him to that one rack in the first place. And of course there’s no decal or insignia or corporate affiliation on front, back, or down along the waist. It’s the kind of generic that feels intentional, that feels paid for at some place in the mall, except Dick wouldn’t be caught stealing there.

  His only fear about the hoodie is that Sammy at work is going to like it too. The way it doesn’t advertise. The way it isn’t crude. The way it’s just functional.

  Sammy’s approximately eighty years old, if not more, but’s still bagging groceries alongside Dick.

  Sammy’s a kid’s name, too.

  It’s Dick’s that’s supposed to be for the senior citizens.

  The world’s so upside down.

  •

  Next shift (it’s October) Dick discovers why the hoodie was only two dollars: it’s a factory second. The right arm’s a whole hand longer than the left.

  Dick’s whole shift, he’s constantly chocking that sleeve up, trying to keep it out of the way.

  There’s a hook in the back of the break room nobody uses. The shirts there are from ten years ago, a whole different style.

  This is where Dick plans to retire the hoodie. Let it gather that fine coating of dust on the shoulders, become part of the scenery, part of the museum of uselessness this place already is.

  But then, on state-mandated break, standing out by the dumpsters, Dick lowers his cigarette hand down along his leg—learned behavior, keeping your habit on the sly—and that long sleeve falls down over it, swallows his whole hand, so that now there’s smoke along his arm, that wonderful heat near his palm, but no cigarette. Just a black sleeve rising to Dick’s mouth every twenty seconds or so, for him to breathe from.

  It’s excellent. The coolest thing all day, all week.

  Dick rocks on his heels, forward to his toes, and pulls that invisible cigarette to his mouth again, drags deep. Holds it in.

  •

  That night at the carwash by the grocery store, the one that sells vanilla in plastic bottles, straight up from Mexico (it’s Dick’s mom’s birthday), Dick’s talking to Catressa at the counter when he becomes aware that he’s leaning on the display by her register. The impulse bin, that last-chance spread of junk before you pay out.

  Without even having to think about it, one of the turquoise and silver lighters is up his hollow cuff, gulped into his extra hand of sleeve.

  Talking to Catressa the whole time, of course. Eye contact and everything, the sleeve moving almost on its own, like an elephant trunk, just without the obvious rest of the elephant.

  Dick buys his plastic bottle of vanilla with the rooster on the label and slopes across the parking lot. Never questions how the lighter’s gone from his sleeve to his pocket already.

  Where else would it go?

  •

  The next week he wears the hoodie every day. His mom even goes so far (for her) as to compliment him on it. Compliments her purchase, anyway. The bargain she got for him.

  Thanks, Mom. Gee.

  Bagging old wenches’ cat food is the sweetest revenge, now. He can picture them unloading their daily haul in their Harvest Gold kitchens. Did I not get those mints Alfred likes? But it’s on the receipt. Dear, dear. And what about—what about that denture cream, now. Did it fall out in the car?

  Go look, Dick tells them.

  It’s a good life.

  And the mints and creams and medications, they just go up his sleeve, are gone, Dick doesn’t care where, but he knows better than to ditch them in the trash under the register, or to try to reshelve them, or to get busted leaving with them. If his assistant manager makes him strip down one fine day, he’ll be squeaky. Insulted, even.

  He’s already practicing making that face, like the world’s just confirming everything he suspected.

  And—what about Sammy, right? Have you looked at him for this? He could actually use some of this old-lady stuff, couldn’t he?

  Motive right there. Opportunity everywhere.

  It’ll be perfect.

  Nevermind that some of those nights, his shift over, his shows cycled down, his games beat again, he’ll wake with a mint-flavored chalkiness in his mouth, or with his teeth glued together, or just sick, throwing up purple and pink pills for ailments he’s not due for for another fifty years.

  But it’s worth it.

  •

  Just to see if he can, Dick stretches the cuff of the hoodie out while stocking, until the elastic’s nothing, doesn’t remember its own shape. Then he lowers it over a romance paperback when it comes down the Black Belt of Doom.

  Like usual, he continues the motion everybody, cameras included, expects, stuffing his hand down into the brown paper bag as if positioning the book to protect the eggs or some shit, and of course—why not?—when his hand comes back up, it’s empty. Ready for the next item, already being scanned.

  That night, though, Dick wakes up crying, but happy too, the bitter aftertaste of a happy ending in his mouth.

  He sits up, touches the tears on his cheek, and laughs at himself.

  The next morning, the elastic cuff’s back to normal.

  Dick would expect nothing less.

  •

  “Are you ever going to wash that thing?” Dick’s mom asks from her place on the couch, Dick slouching past, doing his best shadow act.

  Part of that’s having his hood up. Hiding inside it. Just slashing his eyes out at this, that. Them.

  “He’s going to marry it.”

  This from Dick’s little sister, Gloria. A completely normal name for a complete freak of a
humanoid.

  Dick’s gone.

  After school he grabs the bus to the store, begs an extra shift (shuffling, no eye contact: “my mom’s birthday”). The assistant manager is proud, impressed, can see Dick’s future spread out before both of them.

  Dick wonders if the assistant manager’s head would fit up the sleeve of a hoodie.

  “What’s so funny there, sport-o?”

  Nothing, Sammy. Just move along, move along.

  •

  Sunday everybody’s in the store. Like a hurricane’s coming. Or zombies. Wrong: another stupid football game. Busy, busy. No stocking, just bagging, bagging, like working an assembly line, building the perfect fan from nacho chips and beer.

  After a record stretch of abstinence—afraid taking some of those small jars of cheese dip might make him all rah-rah and brainless—Dick lets a slick package of condoms slide back up the heel of his hand, fade up his sleeve. It’s a joke. Except:

  “Hey, um, yeah. Think I saw that, Dick.”

  It’s Bruce. From school. Since second grade. One of the main reasons Dick can’t just be Richard.

  Tittering in place beside Bruce, his girlfriend Rylene. Complete with pom-poms for some reason. Eating a Dorito from the bag she’s not supposed to have already opened. But the rules don’t apply, etc.

  “Dick?” Tamara the Checkout Queen asks, popping the gum in her mouth like she can, and always does. Staring past that empty sound at Dick.

  “Oh, right, right,” Bruce says, getting his momentum now that Tamara’s tuned in, “forgot who I was talking to. They’re like actual clothes for you, right? Raincoat…dick? What was I thinking.”

  Rylene: crunch, laugh, crunch.

  Tamara: pop, pop, giggle.

  Dick: nothing intelligible.

  In his right hand, though, unasked for, is the small knife he lifted from the carwash the other day. A version of it, anyway.

  This one feels bigger. Sharper. Meant for things.

  Not an impulse nab at all, apparently.

  Bruce is still saying something too, more of the same, Dick knows the tone, the timbre (up through the chin, under the tongue, where there’s no bone), but just as the blade gleams out from the shadow of Dick’s sleeve—or, is the sleeve retracting on its own, like foreskin?—Sammy’s there with his twenty-five years of experience, stepping between, avoiding a scene. Showing Queen Tamara how to scroll through the receipt, then—for modesty—going to pull another box of condoms himself, instead of whispering for them over the PA.

  Thanks, Dick doesn’t say.

  Thanks, Bruce should be saying.

  What Rylene leaves for Dick to remember them by is one of her red pom-pom streamers, winding down into the Black Belt of Doom.

  Dick reaches forward, covers the sensor, stops the Belt from pulling the streamer any deeper into the guts of the store.

  Nothing clatters from his sleeve.

  •

  Two nights later he wakes with a condom on. He peels it off and there’s another, and another, twelve in the pack.

  Underneath them all he’s shriveled, bloodless, strangled.

  “Honey?” his mom asks through the bathroom door. “Are you crying?”

  Dick doesn’t answer.

  At lunch he cuts school, heads back to the Goodwill. Wanders the racks.

  There’s no more factory seconds. The hoodie was the only one.

  He scopes the vases and cookware aisle, just hiding mostly, then lowers his hand to a fork with a bamboo handle.

  Before he can stop himself, it’s his. Gone.

  This is closing the circle, he tells himself.

  He says it again that afternoon, eating early lasagna in his room with the bamboo fork. That this is it, that it’s over.

  It even sounds like a lie to him.

  •

  At real dinner later that night Dick’s mom stabs her hand across the table, to flick Dick’s hood back.

  This results in the usual amount of yelling and grounding and spaghetti floating through the air.

  Thoroughly grounded, Dick sits in his room the next two days—school, home; school, home—finally reaches a hand up to the zipper at his throat, tugs down.

  He’s not surprised that the teeth are jammed into each other.

  It’s going to take some speed to pull them apart. Some momentum.

  Reverse screw, captain. We’re rising, coming up for air.

  Dick smiles, jerks the zipper up, and, instead of sticking, it’s like it’s been waiting for him to do just that: it bites him in the neck.

  In the mirror nearly covered with band stickers, Dick can see the slow trickle of blood feeling down along the zipper’s thousand-switchback path. And then he gets involved peeling an oval sticker of a band that’s on the radio too much now.

  When he comes back to his red zipper, it’s not red anymore.

  Surprise, surprise.

  •

  Because grounding Dick from work would be like punishing Sammy, too—this is actually Dick’s argument, for which he does immediate mental penance, fifty lashes to the cerebellum, thank you, sir—Dick’s mom lets him take the Corolla in through the rain.

  The kitchen smells like vanilla. The alcohol in it real and pungent.

  Gloria watches Dick all the way out the door. Dick watches her back, wishes her well; she’ll be the first taste-tester of the afternoon, will have to gauge what’s in her mouth against their mom’s hopes, will have to either choke down slice after slice to the tune of network gameshows or spend the evening in her room, for being a little liar.

  Dick knows.

  The Corolla’s a stick, and the tires keep chirping on the wet asphalt with first gear, at least the way Dick does it.

  •

  Because it’s just a Wednesday, Dick’s the only one on duty.

  But there’s a mystery to be solved, too.

  Evidently.

  Sammy strolls through the automatic doors in his old man raincoat, shakes the mist off his umbrella and asks Money-Order Rhonda if he can deposit this with her?

  “Customer’s always right,” she tells him, taking the umbrella by the handle.

  It’s their usual disgusting thing. Dick would call it flirting, except it’s the kind between a grandfather and his step-granddaughter, something creepy like that.

  And then Sammy’s whistling up the aisles, just another shopper.

  And of course—just one register open—soon enough Dick’s standing alongside Tamara as she pop-pops her gum and chats Sammy up.

  What comes down the Black Belt of Doom, too: Dick knows immediately that this is a sting operation.

  It’s cigarettes from Sammy’s own pocket, already documented somehow (receipts, photographs, special marks on the wrappers), it’s little corn-stabbers, it’s turkey thermometers that already look like a joke happening. It’s gum and a USB adapter and every other small, easy-to-miss thing Sammy could find that wouldn’t fall through the bottom of his basket.

  Dick nods about each of them, processes them past, into their separate bags (perishable, non-, household, automotive, office), and the only time—he’s promised himself, after all, knows exactly what Sammy’s doing—he doesn’t feel the item fill its space in the bag, it’s one of the travel packets of shampoo. The ones shaped exactly like ketchup packets.

  Or, no: mayonnaise.

  Dick smiles, could have a plan here, if he wanted.

  But no, no.

  He shakes his arm as if his sleeve’s caught, feels the tiny impact below his hand.

  Mystery solved, Sammy? he says with his eyes, and then carries the bags out to the car, lines them up in the trunk like corpses.

  •

  The next day it’s still raining, somehow.

  Sammy’s waiting when Dick clocks in.

  With the assistant manager.

  Before Dick can object, that he didn’t take a thing, Sammy holds his hand up.

  Between his ancient thumb and pruned forefinger is the turquoise and s
ilver lighter.

  “Got left in my shopping bag,” Sammy says, almost like a question. Except it’s not.

  “A gift for the more loyal customers?” the assistant manager asks.

  “Was wondering where that went,” Dick says, eyes all the way averted.

  “If you’re wondering,” Sammy says, a definite glint in his eyes, “your little girlfriend next door’s been called in special, to see if she remembers this purchase. Or if she doesn’t.”

  Dick sucks his cheeks in.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he says.

  “Either way,” the assistant manager says—stubby tie, short-sleeved all-business shirt, the gut always stained with blue ink, from the egg boxes he insists everybody’s too thoughtless with—“you either stole it while you were visiting, which is like her stealing it herself, or she sold a minor paraphernalia for tobacco products.”

  “Maybe I was camping,” Dick says.

  “Camping,” Sammy says, tossing the lighter across.

  It traces a perfect arc through the storeroom.

  Dick’s hand rises to meet it.

  The sleeve anyway.

  Eye contact with Sammy the whole slow time.

  •

  The four-hour shift grinds by. Two bagboys aren’t needed, but Sammy’s there anyway, whistling to himself when the customers aren’t around. Some sick melody not heard by humans for fifty years or more, until now.

  “What’s her name, that one at the carwash?” Sammy asks once.

  Dick flips him off. In his head.

  Instead of bagging, he’s sweeping. Has to take the padded mats of all six registers out back, blow them out with the hose then hang them over the safety rail to dry.

  Two cigarettes later, he’s slouched back in, the rain beaded on the black shoulders of his hoodie, a thousand tiny droplets, the world captured in each of them.

  There’s trash to be hauled out, spills to be mopped, soup to be counted and (re)tagged.

  An hour shy of ten—clock-out—Dick plays the mom-card: she’s making a cake, it’s her birthday, Glory has to go to bed early.

  The assistant manager spins once on his metal stool, considering, and it’s finally a financial decision, Dick knows: that’s one less hour of minimum wage to pay out at the end of the week.

  “She never knew, either,” Dick says, shrugging the hood up over his head.