CHAPTER 6
The night everything changed … Excuse me, the night when everything that had already changed, changed again, started off with a call that I never expected.
It was only a few days after Donaldson showed up in my apartment and I was knee deep in laundry. In fact, I had so much of it piled up that I couldn’t carry it all. I stuffed some underwear into my pants, wedged my bras between my armpits, and even carried a roll of socks in my mouth, so that I could heave, carry, drag, and furiously kick the entire load from the bathroom to my apartment’s washer.
Okay, so the washer was just my mom’s metal washboard, a hunk of metal old enough to be salvage from the Titanic, and a large steel basin in the center of my living room. My life lacks very little romance, I must admit. And even though I saved off several cardiac arrests, the demon, fully entranced by the television set, didn’t even lift one shadowy claw to help.
Barnem was still MIA, but it wasn’t even something I cared about anymore. If he was gone, then good riddance. Lou still hadn’t fixed my door, something about the hinges needing to be specially ordered. So for privacy’s sake, I propped the door up over the opening, at least to give the illusion that folks should stay the hell away. Unfortunately, it only attracted hallway foot traffic. I can’t explain it, but more than once, someone peeked into the space, right when the demon was on one of its advertisement benders. Both times, I had to roll up a magazine and whack it on the blobby head until it scurried back to its room while I yelled, “Shoo! Shoo!” That was before I found my bed full of burnt flakes of what was left of my magazine collection. Message received.
That’s the whole picture. That’s where I was when the call came in … elbow deep in soap and suds. That’s where I was when she called. Petunia. That’s my lovely sister’s name. That’s the name we—meaning me and my great parenty folks—used to call her. From the moment she was born to right about the second before her prom date pinned the corsage on her. Petunia.
Now she went by Ingrid. You believe that? Petunia to Innnnnngrid. How someone goes from the light, fluttery name of a flower to the sound a bear trap makes when someone drops a refrigerator on it is beyond me. Ingrid. CLANK. PLUNK.
Spotting her name on my caller ID—properly labeled by yours truly as “OMGWTFFML” with Sauron’s theme from the Rings trilogy as a ringtone—I grumbled a half-assed, “Hello,” when I picked up.
We were close as kids, Petunia and I. She used to dress her Barbies in ornate dresses and I used to use my G.I. Joe’s to practice the proper ways men should approach a lady—“I understand that your glittery star ball gown and lack of a left arm does not give me the right to disrespect your space or your intelligence …”
That seemed like lifetimes ago. I guess I would always remember Petunia Grey: the bubbly little girl who would, without hesitation, object to the big, fat family hug our parents gathered us up for every night when we were kids. The same girl who, when that inevitable hug landed and we were all huddled in our little circle, and Mom and Dad’s bodies were covering us up like large, gnarled trees with dull heartbeats, would have a giggle fit that would last long after I chucked a pillow at her head to shut up. Sometimes, it would last all night if she didn’t fall asleep with that silly little smile on her face. I remember that Petunia would give the best hugs, too. Ingrid, on the other hand, didn’t believe in any of that. Ingrid was the kind of woman who would look at you leaning in for an embrace and ask if she could outsource that shit.
“Mandy, darling,” she said. “How are you? How’ve you been? What is life?”
“Nothing, Petty.”
She absolutely hated that nickname, so I used it often. Hearing it, she paused. Shook it off. “I was only …” The barb seemed to latch back on. She fought it off and continued, “I was only calling to check in on you, dearie.”
After a year of not hearing from her, she hit me with a dearie and a darling in the first minute of the conversation. This coming from the same girl, mind you, who once drank so much water out of an open pump one sweltering summer night that she threw up in the hair of the Newman’s kid from downstairs.
“You never call to check in, Petty.”
“Oh, give me more credit than that, Mandy. My older sister is locked away in an apartment in Queens and I can’t see how she’s doing? Are you working? How are you making ends meet?”
This is how Ingrid spoke most of the time, with questions in triplicate and wrapped in a nasally faux accent that convinced herself that she wasn’t from Queens; convinced people from Queens that she wasn’t from England, and convinced people from England that we Americans learned our English accents from our ambassador, Madonna.
“Sure, no, and I’m fine,” I answered in sequence.
“Aw, honey.”
“I gotta go, Petty. I’m in the middle of something important here,” I said, dunking a pair of my underwear and watching it pop right back up to the surface.
“But how are you, Mandy? Are you eating well? Have you heard from Mom and Dad?”
“Fine, hell no, and just … no, Petty.”
“It’s a shame,” she said, obviously leading to something, “They leave and don’t send word or even mail. I guess it must be an issue with their location. I mean, when I spoke with them, they didn’t have a clear line …”
I nearly dropped the phone “When? When did you speak with them?”
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Oh yes. About a week ago, darling. I was out shopping with Blake. Oh, you remember Blake, dear? He hasn’t changed one bit. Still the husband who shops and shops. Hooked on retail therapy, I keep saying, but he barely listens. Anyway, when we returned, they called, just as we were walking in the door. They sounded good. They asked me to call you and check in.”
“They asked you? A week ago? Why didn’t you call me sooner?” I was practically shouting now.
“You sound cross. No need to be cross. Look, Mandy, I have even better news than that. I am ...-” Some of my hair fell into the metal tub. I flicked it out and cursed, missing entirely what my big, dumb, fat headed sister said. “ …I hope that’s all right. Is it? Should I make other plans? When should I—”
“Yes, fine, and I don’t care. Gotta go, Petty. My apartment is on fire and I have an early day tomorrow. Talk to you later. Bye.”
But as I drew the phone away from my ear, I heard Petty say, “Fabulous, darling. I’m at the airport now. My flight lands at 8ish, around there. Gate 7 via Grand Line. I only ever fly Grand Line.”
A sat up and fumbled with the phone again, this time saving it from dropping in the tub.
“Petty. Petty. Wait a second.”
“Did you know they raised their seat prices, dear? Does that make any sense? I mean, I can fly coach, but why would I?
“No, yes, and because you’re stuck up bitch. But, Petty, what are you doing? Why are you getting on a plane?”
“I’m heading to the terminal now, Mandy. Love, please, for the sake of everything, don’t come in a smelly cab. You know Saint is traveling with me and he complains when he’s around cabbies smelling like they had spent all day in a sweat box and tried to douse it in five dollar cologne.”
“Petty—”
Hearing the click and a dial tone made me furious. I wadded up a ball of soaked underwear and flung it across the room where it slapped up against the wall and slid down in one squishing heap.
The demon looked at the splotch mark and cocked its head at me. Disgusted, it turned off the television and walked to its room where it shut the door.
CHAPTER 7
I dug through my dirty laundry, fetched some tolerable clothing, and squeezed through my front door/cave hole, hoping that if I got to the airport in time, I could convince Lady Ingrid to turn around. Convince or scare, I wasn’t sure yet. Let’s say that I realized that if renting out a room to an inhabitant of the netherworld didn’t nab me a one way
ticket to hell, I figured punting a small dog would—at the very least—bump me to first class travel when I do.
Without any frequent cabs—the ones I did see, the green cabbies, were parking to call it a night—it forced me to run two streets over to Belvadere: a busy little strip lined with hookah lounges and falafel spots. The yellow cabs frequented this area, picking up the drunk folk, and replacing them with sobers. The fastest way was through a side street on Fisher. The inverse of Belvadere, this block only housed small Mom & Pop shops: a Pawn Palace and a community garden, both of which were already shut down and gated up for the night.
As I ran over the uneven sidewalks and cut across Mike’s Autobody Shop, I was trying my best to shake the thoughts starting to bubble up in my brain. But the more I attempted to douse them, the more I tried to ball these thoughts up and chuck them to the deepest, darkest corner of my already heavily cluttered psyche, it only made the voices and explosions ring louder between my ears, shaking up my brain stem, plucking the nerves in my teeth. The constant pounding started to bleed into my steps as I ran, each one landing like an asteroid, each step wiping away civilizations and cities and people going about their daily lives, trying to paint, and park their cars, and Facebook stalk exes.
Living with my parents had curbed the frequency of the attacks I had, but this was suddenly different. When it came to family, I was always going to lose myself trying to not let them down, even my prissy, thick-headed sister. I had managed, up until that point, to avoid a complete and utter meltdown; to deter my very own, very intimate flame-filled Armageddon. Even with the world coming down all around me. Even with my door not being a door, my normal life not being normal, and my new life—the one now re-released with bonus gore and religious imagery—I had thought that I could wrestle my rabid life to the ground and beat the shiny rainbows out of it until my knuckles bled.
However, as I ran along that abandoned street, with nothing but my heart thumping in my throat, I knew that I had been fooling myself. Even though it had been five years since my last one, I knew what a panic attack felt like. How it coils about your lungs. How it reaches up your ribcage and gnaws at the lining of your throat. I lost myself while running. I went cold. I couldn’t feel my arms pumping, my legs striking the street. I sensed myself moving, clattering—a sloppy marionette with jumbled strings and useless flopping body parts. And I knew that the largest, most pressing question was threatening to burst my skull open like a wet melon. I knew this so much in fact that I couldn’t help blurting it out to the empty block in front of me, out into the street lights overhead, to the New York night air.
“Why did Mom and Dad call Ingrid and not me?”
And then it hit me.
Not an answer.
A fist.
It flew from out of the darkness to my left. I heard the scrape of a footstep seconds before, and my flinch actually saved my life. The knuckles landed flush against my temple with a force that sent me sprawling out on the concrete.
With my head swimming, a dull thud of pain vibrating behind my eye sockets, and my ears wailing like sirens, it was hard to hide the fact that I smelled the guy and his ammonia-scented cologne before I got a good look at him. This all helped me recognize the asshole as soon as he came out of the shadows.
The bag boy/man from the supermarket.
He was wearing ripped jeans and a white tank top, which exposed all of the tattoos on his body. From his neck down, there was barely any space on his skin that wasn’t scratched into with ink, with even a few in the linings of his ears. The most notable addition to this gang-banger ensemble was a hunting knife, large enough to make even Rambo blush, which he turned in his hand, over and over.
Then something happened, something that never happened before. The whole nervous wreck, mental breakdown I was having—the one that usually flooded my senses, strangled me, scattered red and yellows on my vision, set ants running through my skin—stopped. Just like that. It was like a switch was flipped in my head and the world became suddenly so much clearer, sharper, as if the edges of everything had been traced over in heavier, darker outlines. Like every color had a clear and distinct sound and taste and feeling.
With this new clarity, I scrambled back on my hands and knees. He could have stabbed me at any time, but he kept drawing closer, which put his nuts within striking distance of a straight kick from my right leg. I gladly rung that bell, and he fell to all fours, sending the knife clattering to the ground. I stood up to run, but he blindly reached out and tripped me with his arm. On the ground again, I turned over onto my back and, as he reached out for my ankle, I drove my knee into the side of his head. The sound his skull made smashing against the green dumpster made me sick to my stomach. So I did it three more times for good measure.
Seeing the opening, I got up to run but was suddenly scared when I heard a voice say, “Stupid.”
It was the bag boy/man. As he stood up from the concrete, I saw that most of his skull was a deformed lump, as if it were made of paper mache, and his jaw hung limply off of his face like a broken swing. More and more dark blood poured out of this wound and down his tattooed neck. From out of his dislodged chin, a crow’s head with a wisp of white on the crest peeked out at me, its red eyes sporting the number 6. It squawked, looked down the street in both directions, and then stuffed itself back into the man’s dangling skin a like a train conductor. Clumsily, this odd shell of man found his knife and pointed the business end at me.
It was hard to see in the streetlight, but the tattoos on his skin were moving, swerving, pulsating with their own lives. His tanned skin had become this fucked up tapestry of things no one should see: a certain cartoon mouse stuffing handfuls of meat from the belly of his duck friend into his mouth; a dong-shaped rocket ship making circles around the man’s throat. Even Gumbi had grabbed a big breasted woman and sat her on his green lap as he took a big toke of his blunt.
“Know what … you cost me?” The distorted voice was not coming from the man’s mangled face, but the odd slurping from his throat sure was. Every time he breathed in, all that followed was this sloppy gurgling sound. “You … cost us everything! Palls … was supposed to carve you up. Easy kill … easy kill. You were served up … to us like a fat goose on … a silver platter. Your meat … hanging from the rafters. That … was my idea. Mine.”
He took a step forward. Black feathers fell out of his swinging chin.
The moving tattoos began to get faster in their fucking and killing and cannibalism. Their eyes began glowing red.
“You … screwed that up. So I came back … to finish the job. Gotta get … to you before the others do.”
Off to the side, by a garbage pile, I spotted a broom. I quickly scooped it up and got it ready to put to good use. Demon or not, there was no way in hell I was anyone’s late night snack.
But then, standing a few feet from us, a little farther down the street, we suddenly noticed that we weren’t alone. In the shadows, within the blackness of the alley nearby and out of the halo of the streetlight, someone was standing there. I’m not sure how long it had been there, or even why, but its outline seemed darker than the world around it: a deeper shadow, humanoid in shape but all wrong. Jagged and flowing, as if its skin were black flames.
At least that’s what I thought at first.
When it stepped into the streetlight, I sighed. The squat little body of my roommate waddled out, its little hooves click-clocking its blobby body into view. It smiled—dull gray nubs for gums in its wide mouth—and it waved its sharp claws as a silent “Howdy” to the both of us. The darkness and evil from before was gone, and instead of a second helping of menacing evil, there stood this ridiculous looking thing with doe legs and a round belly. With his featureless head, it looked like a pathetic stray—nothing like the horror brandishing the knife nearby. The little black flaps of his ears were even propped up the way a dog looks when it sees someone it likes.
“You,” the possessed man grumbled at it. “Always around … for scraps. Fuck off.” When the demon didn’t fuck anywhere off, with some of his eyeball now drooping out onto his chin, he repeated, “Scram!”
My roommate threw his hands up, as if to say that he wasn’t there for any trouble. But even with his claws in the air, he started walking toward me.
I gripped the broom handle tighter. Now there were two of them and they were getting closer. Closing in. This is what I get, I thought. My week had been rough enough without the hellspawn and the doom. Now it was a matter of who was going to kill me first.
Taking my chances with the little guy, I charged at it. He didn’t react to this at all and stood perfectly still as I drove the handle down across his head. However, I ended up swinging at nothing but air, losing my balance, and hitting the ground.
And then there was this pop.
A wet, split of flesh.
I turned around to see that my roommate had leapt onto the man’s chest, clasped him by the shoulders, and clamped its mouth over the man’s entire head. I remember muffled screaming, a barely audible crow squawking, the man flailing at the air with his knife, and then a nasty crunch of bones. With one quick drag to the ground, it began the process of swallowing him whole. Slowly.
My roommate’s body swelled as the possessed bag boy/man’s legs kicked at the air. The rest of him was already sliding down the stretching black gullet, finding its way into the protruding belly. My roommate bucked his head back, the way an animal kicks more of the meat to the rear of its throat. Between the crumpling bones, the muffled screams of panic, and the frantic punches coming from inside the creature’s stomach, I could only sit there and watch, on the verge of throwing up but too scared to. I watched as the shoes slid in and vanished. Watched as the screams died to moans, down to whimpers, and then died.
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