by Alan Spencer
She refused his help. "Go! Run! Save us before it's too late!"
Mark said it and meant it. "I love you, Cassie."
He forded the battlefield of debris to the last standing building in Meadow Woods.
The large concrete warehouse had numerous glass windows. What the building used to be used for, he couldn't recall. He couldn't see through the windows. The ominous box provided riddles as it did stopping power. He could be walking into a giant mouse trap.
Surrounded by piles of debris, the destroyed town, Mark sensed movement in the far horizon. Distant specks. Maybe people. They were moving very slowly.
Whatever he needed to do, Mark sensed, he had to do it soon.
Mark was surprised nothing happened as he cleared the block and reached the warehouse. No dead bodies coming back to life or strange unexplainable events. The double steel doors swung open, giving him a startle. When he crossed the threshold, the double doors closed. Mark tried the doors. No use. They weren't just locked. They seemed sealed shut.
Nobody appeared in the room. He marveled at what stood in the room. A giant steel square that was in the shape of a giant screw. Notched on the sides. A step-ladder was attached to one side of the thirty-food hunk of steel. On the side in red letters, it read THE PULPER.
On the other side of the device was a long conveyer belt. It was covered in rust red splotches. At the end of the long conveyor belt were piles of blackened, rotting flesh and muscle tissue. Flies gathered, feasting on the rancid folds piled up high. The flesh was stretched so very thin. Almost see-through.
"My God what is this...?"
Behind the device, Mark heard the clicking of computer keys. Impossible speeds of typing. A thousand words a minute. Heavy breathing. Pause. The clicking would start anew.
Mark was closing in on the person behind the steel machine. He tried to see beyond the notches of the staircase. No luck. Before he walked around the stairs to get a better view, somebody spoke.
"You can't stop him. He's taken over everything."
Derrick Collins was on the floor bleeding from the face. He'd been savagely beaten. Blacked out eyes. Bloody lip. His face looked like tenderized meat. Derrick wasn't behind a laptop typing out stories like he'd seen him before.
Mark wasn't in the mood for more questions raised. He wanted to stop the person who was typing and end this. Whatever this really was.
Derrick begged him to stop a moment. "They're almost here. They're about to commit. You'll have to kill him if you're going to stop him. You see, I always wanted to be a novelist. We'd take turns writing stories."
"Who did you take turns writing?"
"The fallen angel, he got it started. He'd type on the flesh paper what he wanted for the town to do. The angel wanted to train me, so he could go somewhere else and do the same thing for them as he did for Meadow Woods. He brought this machine here. It's hard to swallow, Mark, but everything I'm going to tell you is true.
"Everybody in town, including myself, climbed those stairs and pitched themselves into The Pulper. It chops our bodies up and renders them into paper pulp. Behind that machine is a computer, and that computer, the fallen angel and I can write reality. The laptop I write on can also do this. The angel made it so. Once your body is committed to the machine, it reads your fantasies, your desires, what makes you happy. It turned Meadow Woods into a blank canvas to recreate. A page to be written.
"What the angel and I did is only the launch pad. Your own desires happen, just by you thinking or imagining them. But, the man behind the machine right now, he was invited to come here. He used to live here. His name is James Munyer. He went to high school with us. He was a normal person, until he discovered this warehouse, and The Pulper. He attacked the angel with an axe, and then he started re-writing things. Evil things started to happen. James Munyer is a sociopath. He's a murderer. He's killed four people outside of Meadow Woods. Hookers, mostly. He was a truck driver, constantly on the move. You have to stop him, Mark."
The typing on the keys stopped.
Then James Munyer stepped out from behind The Pulper.
Long black beard that completely covered the bottom half of his face. Long grayish black hair on top, coming down to his shoulders. Eyes that seethed hateful ambition.
"You ever kill somebody just by typing words on a computer screen? It's simply amazing. I can make insanity a reality. I did it before I came here with my bare hands. Now I only have to use my imagination."
Derrick spat curses and begged the man to stop what he was doing. These were innocent people. They didn't deserve to be tortured.
James pointed at the double doors. "They're coming. Everyone will commit their bodies into pulp paper, and I will continue to re-write their lives. It'll be up to me what happens. I'll be in control. Anything I want. I'll rape, I'll sodomize, I'll mutilate, I'll desecrate, I'll fucking kill everybody a thousands times over again! Monsters. Insanity. Torture devices. It'll rain disease. Babies will be born with hooks out of their bodies to tear wombs asunder! Anything I desire!"
Swinging hard, Mark caught the babbling psycho in the jaw. Tumbling back against the guard rail of the stairs into the pulper, James came back at Mark, snarling.
"You'll be the first to go into The Pulper!"
Hands clasping his neck, Mark didn't let James strangle him. He kicked the man between the legs, then sent his knee into the man's stomach. Once the man was down, Mark straddled the man to the floor and kept punching him in the face. More blood, more grunts of pain, more wet sounds of bone hitting blood covered skin. Mark had the man in control. He'd save the town. He'd—
Mark's midsection clenched. The pancreatic cancer flared up. The killer laughed when Mark tumbled to the side, clutching his belly in helpless agony.
James, spitting blood, got back up on wobbly legs. "I knew you'd come for me. But you haven't committed. You're not free of your cancer. You're the only one who's a danger to me. Everybody else is under my control. So it has been written!"
Derrick got up from the corner of the room. He didn't help Mark, or even look his way. The man was a zombie marching up the stairs to the top of The Pulper.
The Pulper revved up. The industrial beast churned steel and hummed like a furnace from hell. The room became ten degrees hotter. Mark was sweating. James watched as Derrick arrived at the top of the stairs, then pitched himself forward, throwing himself into what Mark knew where thousands of blades that would turn his body into pulp. Flesh paper. Landing against what would shred him, Derrick was instantly reduced.
The double doors shot open. The line extended well beyond Mark's limited field of vision, curled up and on the floor fighting through waves of pain.
Familiar faces from town stumbled into the warehouse, many of them badly damaged. Some missing parts of their bodies, others gutted, skinless, or punctured, or ravaged by animals. Many crawled on the ground to enter the warehouse. They were all victims to James Munyer's imagination. They were all working their way up the stairs and pitching themselves into the pulper.
Ground up.
Chopped up.
Pulped.
"They'd rather submit themselves to my horror than die forever," James celebrating, throwing his arms up in the air. "Oh, the things I can make happen. I can't wait. They'll be my victims forever."
He watched everybody in town come and go.
Still no Cassie.
Mark wasn't sure what else he could do to save them from James. In one last ditch effort, he forced himself up off the ground and rammed James, spearing the man in his chest. James was thrown against the wall of The Pulper. The man hit the back of his head and landed awkwardly on the ground, moaning in stunned pain.
Leaving the man where he lay, Mark raced to the back of The Pulper machine. A console was incorporated into the machine, a computer screen, keyboard, and USB ports. He imagined Derrick Collins saving his work, and then saving it to the computer.
"So unbelievable," he whispered under his breath.
> Mark was about to read the words on the computer screen, what James Munyer had wrote, when James put him in a stranglehold. Blurring vision. Weakening knees. Dizzy, heavy headed, Mark couldn't react.
Mark was being guided up the stairs to The Pulper.
Half-way up the stairs, Mark planted his feet. James kept pushing, shoving, grunting to have his way.
"Your flesh, your body, your soul, your pain—will all be mine!"
The wicked man threw them both off of the steel platform. Mark landed hard on the concrete below, breaking ribs. Where James went, he didn't know.
Mark was suddenly blinded by a great white light.
But he did see one thing.
The angel.
He wasn't bleeding out anymore. The angel was healed from head to toe.
The angel only regarded James. The heavenly angel's face wasn't angry. It only said, "The time for you to succumb to your brain cancer has come, James Munyer."
James, only yards out from Mark, clutched his head. Tears leaked from his eyes, at first thin, then turning clotted and thick. Brains melting out his eyes, then the eyes bursting free from the sockets, from the ears, then the man's entire head melted like a candle in three seconds. Headless, sizzling from the neck stump, the man's body started to smoke, then wilt, then turn into dust until it vaporized into nothing.
"James Munyer is now in hell," the angel said to no one.
The angel vanished, the white light was gone.
Mark noticed everybody in town had thrown themselves into the pulper. Except for Cassie. She was in the doorway, bleeding from the chest. The stop sign pole's exit wound. She watched him with needy eyes. A question burned in her face. One question. She was about to speak when he joined her at the door and shushed her.
Helping her inside the building, Mark holding her in his arms, they walked together up the stairs and committed themselves into the blades of The Pulper.
Before they landed inside, Mark told her how much he loved her.
EPILOGUE
"The work's not over yet, buddy."
Mark was laying on the warehouse's floor. The only person in the warehouse was Derrick Collins. The man wore a great big smile. Relief played in his eyes. He helped Mark up off the floor and hugged him.
"You saved us all. Thank you, Mark. You are most welcome to stay in Meadow Woods. You have successfully committed."
Questions. That's all Mark could ask. Derrick calmed him down.
"It's okay. We're safe. Everything's okay. But we've got work to do before everything's put back into place."
Derrick pointed at the end of the conveyor belt where heaps of skin were spread out. Wilting. Rotting. And stranger, more grotesque, was what he could see in the flesh. Moving pictures, as if the skin were reels of film. He could see stills of people living out their fantasies. Librarians making love to their favorite books. Gibbs enjoying his novels and the tallest bottle of whiskey. Bruce Parnell observing people, and loving his internal commentary. Cassie, naked on bed, touching herself, then Mark appearing, touching her for her.
"Whoa, don't look at the folds of the flesh for too long," Derrick said, snapping his fingers in front of Mark's face. "Those fantasies are private. Respect that."
"Sorry, I just didn't know what the hell was going on."
"What the hell is going on is The Pulper renders our flesh into paper. Our thoughts, our fantasies, are all etched into the flesh as it comes out of the other end of the machine. Imagine our flesh turned into real paper, and our stories are re-written and printed on this paper. This paper is flesh. Once our flesh is used up, it lands here to rot. We keep recommitting ourselves whenever the machine runs out of paper, or flesh, and we start all over again."
"So what do we do with this rotting shit?"
"What else? We bury it, of course."
Mark never thought he'd be digging a giant hole to bury nearly four thousand pounds of flesh, but that's what they were doing. Sweating under the sun, they buried the flesh. Mark could still sense faint flickers of life in the folds before the last grain of dirt covered the pile up.
Derrick headed back to the warehouse.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Your work here is done."
"So then what do we do now?"
"You get to live life, Mark. Me, I'm going to write your lives. I always wanted to be a novelist, like I told you. I'm living the dream, and then some, friend. All I ask is that you check up on me from time to time. Bring a good bottle of something to drink, and make sure nobody's sabotaging the operation."
"What about that angel?"
"He's moved on from Meadow Woods. The angel's got other tasks he wants to accomplish. Meadow Woods was only the beginning for him. I have this taken care of here. He's given me the responsibility. I gratefully accept. You go, Mark. Thank you for your bravery. You almost didn't make it. Now go. Enjoy your life. It'll be good." He cracked his knuckles. "I promise. Now I got some work to do..."
Like since the beginning, Mark was walking aimlessly about town. Mark wasn't sure where to go to find Cassie. As if reading his thoughts, The Blue Beast pulled up. Peyton waved him inside the vehicle. They didn't speak for a time. Peyton didn't want to talk about the horrors that occurred. He only wanted to enjoy the breeze blowing through the windows. The good life.
"Peyton?"
"Yeah, man."
"It's good to be here."
Peyton believed him. "It is very good to be here."
The town wasn't in devastation anymore. Velma Codstock led the old biddies and middle aged housewives into the library to enjoy their novels. Chuck Flynn was orchestrating a mass barbeque feast out front. Lindsey Jenkins was handing out flyers for a new event. Something about a bean bag toss beer tournament. Reyna Hawkins was painting a lilac field on canvas, while the actual lilac field was appearing brush stroke by brush stroke. Everybody waved at Mark in welcome and thank you for saving them. Nobody said what he saved them from. This wasn't about the horror. It was about the good they still had.
Peyton kept driving through town until they were in the residential area. He parked on the street, and they walked towards the drainage ditch. Peyton had his bag of beef jerky, chips, and colas. They toasted a cola to each other.
"To the goods times we're going to have."
Mark smiled. "To the good times, my friend."
Walking to the wall, they could see Cassie's backyard from afar. She was sitting on a lawn chair on the back patio in a red tube top and cut off jeans. She waved them on up.
Peyton patted Mark on the back. "I'll meet up with you later. You two have some catching up to do. Later, man, we'll party. We have forever."
Peyton walked away, going to the levee wall and spray painting something lewd on the wall. Like old times.
Cassie ran to him, pulling him into her house so they could make love in her bedroom. Afterwards, she brought his eyes up to hers. "Do you really love me?"
"Yes, I really love you."
"Is this what you want?"
"Yes, this is what I really want."
Derrick Collins typed on the computer in the warehouse.
The Pulper churned out new pages of flesh.
