The Product Line (Book 1): Product

by Ian McCain

  As Marie continues her trek she does not see the staple characters of the neighborhood. Ernie has “friends” all over the city. People he has shared a bottle or a smoke or who knows what else with. In her travels she doesn’t see any of them.

  She’s certain that she will find people out here, having exhausted her search at all the familiar outreach programs. Odd though, the areas once littered with the evidence of homelessness are clean. Marie has seen the news reports—mayoral staff and city councilmen all congratulating themselves on their innovative measures to reduce the blight of the homeless. All touting programs from tougher crackdowns to humanitarian outreach depending on which side of the party line they are playing to.

  No matter what the actual policies might be, it looks like someone sent a street sweeper through. Marie turns east on Fortieth and heads crosstown, toward Transitions, an outreach program that caters to the city’s homeless: volunteers and the formerly displaced working together to create a stable environment of care and love. Ernie wouldn’t be caught dead inside, mostly because of his own aversion to being inside anywhere for more than a day or two.

  What’s interesting about Transitions is that it’s one of the few places that doesn’t employ a system of “turnover.” Most shelters, due to space limitation, operate with a sort of revolving inventory where every other day sleeping space is purged. You clean up, get your things together and go outside to be readmitted at night. Typically you have to wait in line for hours to get your voucher for space that night.

  The facilities that practice turnover require a stricter schedule than Ernie can be expected to uphold. Ernie always keeps his own hours, even though booze runs his timecard.

  Regardless, maybe he’s found his way here, or maybe someone who knows him is here. Clearing out their bedroll or getting a meal to fill their bellies. Maybe they have seen him or can point me in the right direction, she thinks optimistically, holding on to hope as she walks into the building.

  Transitions is a recent addition to the New York scene. Unlike other homeless outreach programs, they don’t specialize. They take in all types and have a strict doctrine to reform their residents, cure them of what ails them. Treat the drunk, rehabilitate the junkie, and restore the abused. A sort of help-all attitude toward situational hardship, hence the name Transitions.

  The building itself has more than enough square footage to comfortably accommodate a sizeable contingent of the entire local homeless population, but a lot of time and effort has been put into finishing touches on the building as opposed to creating barracks-style living quarters. Instead there is an intake area with a large open section that feels more like the entryway to a gymnasium. There are fold-away benches and stackable chairs that come out during mealtime and clear away into the corners at night time. Meals and many of the occupational therapies are conducted in this main indoor courtyard.

  Because they don’t practice turnover they have several stages of transition. For those who are not night-to-night, and who are looking to create more stable environment for them and for their children, there are the next few floors. These are a form of halfway-house—they’re small efficiency apartments for families in transition. They offer some degree of stability and normalcy for the recently displaced. Most of the apartments are full of women who have fled abusive relationships, leaving in the middle of the night with nothing more than what they and their children could carry in both hands.

  Marie has volunteered a few times at Transitions when it first opened there last year, when she could still coax Ernie to get help at places. She would bring him into their facility for a meal and then volunteer to help out, so that she could keep an eye on him. Inevitably Ernie would sneak out when she was helping some other poor soul and disappear into an alley and a bottle.

  She has seen Transitions doing a lot of good for a lot of people, but deep down feels that something is off with them. Something that just doesn’t add up. She knows of at least five floors under the control of Transitions, LLC, the 501c3 non-profit organization that runs the outreach program, but has never found out what the upper floors are allocated for. She has heard someone mention a detox area before, but that seems way outside the scope of their duties.

  Marie rounds the corner of the intake area and looks around for a familiar face. She imagines it might be hard to spot someone she recognizes considering how full they get around mealtimes. Surprisingly, the courtyard is relatively empty. There are maybe twenty people milling about compared to the two hundred or so she saw the last time she was here.

  That’s odd. She looks for the face of any worker there that she might recognize.

  --Marie? Goodness, look at you. Pretty as the day is long.

  A voluptuous blonde woman in a bright pink form-fitting dress clinging tightly to every generous curve of her body waves excitedly at Marie as she bounces her way closer.

  --Alice?

  Marie only remembers Alice because of the genteel southern mannerisms. She always gets such a kick out of how Alice interacts with the homeless and can never get over how absurdly long she stresses the “A” in Alice when introducing herself.

  Alice strides right up to her and gives her a big hug. Alice never forgets a name, a place, a story, a detail to anything. Elephants the world over would be jealous of her memory skills.

  --My dear, where on earth have you been? I was just saying to the other girls, where is that Marie? Beautiful Marie. Wasn’t I just saying that?

  A woman who is slowly finishing a piece of chicken at one of the tables nods, clearly unaware of anything that is being said.

  --Well, love, what, pray tell, may I do for you?

  --Alice, it looks pretty sparse in here. Did you guys lose some funding or something?

  --Listen to you, sweet Marie, always worrying about others. Darling, we are doing just wonderfully. I would say that our low numbers are in fact a result of a job well done. ----So many people Transitioning back to the real world.

  She draws a big arc in the air with her hands adding emphasis to her words.

  Marie nods, getting that same off-put sense that she got the last time she was here. Before Marie can even get out her questions, Alice chimes back in with her thoughts.

  --You’re looking for Ernie, aren’t you? Your dad?

  Marie nods.

  --Well, sweetie, I haven’t seen him since the last time you came by with him, but you could talk with some of the folks staying here. Maybe they know where he might be.

  --Thank you, Alice. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?

  Alice waves her hand, dismissing her comment, and leans in for another big hug. Her ample bosom, like two perky balloons, presses against Marie’s more meager chest.

  --Now, don’t you leave without saying goodbye.

  Alice smiles. She is radiant, for sure. The kind of youthful glow and personality you’d expect to see on stage at a beauty pageant, not in a homeless shelter. Charming, magnetic, effervescent, smart and totally fake.

  After three full trips through the shelter talking to each person in the building, Marie decides that this day may be another bust. Of the people in the shelter, most don’t know who Ernie is, and those who know Ernie haven’t seen him in months. The only one who says she has seen Ernie in the last month is Phyllis, a particularly cantankerous old woman with at least a half-dozen diagnosed mental health issues. Phyllis claims that the last time she saw Ernie, he told her he was heading south for the winter and then stole her hat.

  Maybe it’s something, maybe it’s nothing. On the way out of Transitions, Marie stops by Alice’s office, just to the side of the intake area at the front of the building. She tells Alice that she didn’t have any luck, and leaves her contact info for Alice and asks her to call should he “show up.”

  Alice nods in agreement, but not before painting a frown on her face with her pink-tipped fingernails.

  --Course, honey. I’ll call ya when he shows.

  Marie leaves a flyer with her as well, and
walks out.

  Chapter 6

  Treece’s eyes open. They cannot focus. The world is a mix of blurred light. His nose is filled with a holocaust of putrid smells: a reek of excrement and sick, the stink of sweat and stale air and an overpowering bite of chemical cleaner. Bleach? It smells like lockup during the summer, all those angry dirty men, sweating out rage.

  His hearing is virtually gone, just the hiss of dying cochlear cells scream their death rattle following a concert. He feels a stinging itch in his right arm, like a wasp sting, and reaches with his left to swat it away. Only nothing moves, because he has no left arm to move. It’s gone.

  --The fuck?

  At the realization of his missing arm, his head explodes with pain. A stinging fire radiates from the mangled lump that was his upper arm. His head is slow, his eyes heavy.

  --Muh fuckin’… muh fuckin’ arm.

  He tries to move the remaining arm, but nothing happens. What he intends and what is possible seem at odds. He tries to focus on something, anything, but his eyes simply won’t do it. It is like there’s milk between the clear glass of his cornea and the outside world, some cloudy fluid keeping him blind. He’s sampled enough of his product over the years to know that he is drugged, some “mad powerful shit” too.

  He tries to move his legs, but cannot. They are weighed down by the same drug. He tries to call for help. When he feels the tube running down his nose and throat, he gags. Chokes on his own effort.

  He struggles to get the tube up by contracting his throat and simply can’t get in front of the fluid filling his mouth. Can’t swallow. He starts to drown on his mix of spittle and gag reflex, something he would have thought lost after his time in prison.

  A buzzer begins to sound, though it is almost imperceptible to Treece. Within a few moments, hands move him, rolling him to his side and suctioning the fluid from his mouth and throat. When he is rolled back a cold sensation radiates from the wasp sting. The dots connect in his mind. It’s no wasp sting; he’s spent enough time in the infirmary to know the feeling of a poorly inserted IV. The cool sensations… Mo’… fuckin’… drug…

  His mind turns to blackness.

  ***

  Treece’s head whirls in a dreamless slumber for what feels like an eternity, until he opens his eyes again. They are still unable to focus with any true clarity, but he can see more than before. Still he is unable to move. His eyes lumber from side to side, trying to take in his surroundings.

  He is able to confirm that his arm is missing, though it does not impact him as much as he would have thought it would. A complicated network of tubes and IVs runs into various parts of Treece’s body.

  Still fucked up, he thinks to himself, recalling that he is likely sedated. Treece struggles to make out the world around him, not sure of what he is seeing. It looks like a warehouse or some sort of hospital. He thinks he can see other beds, but he can’t be certain. His hearing is almost non-existent.

  As he tries to ask for help, the world around him slips into blackness in stages. As if all the lights to this hospital are being turned off.

  Help. He screams it in his mind, at the top of his lungs, but only a few drops of spittle and an imperceptible moan trickle past his lips.

  Chapter 7

  Romania, 1739

  Wisps of black smoke swim in through the cracks of the boarded-up chapel entryway like venomous water snakes biting at Antonios’ eyes and nose. He tucks closer into his mother’s arms. The rest of the women and children of the village are corralled with them in the back of the small building, against the one wall cut deep into the hilled earth of the village. The wall is stronger, solid. It can’t get in from that side. The men, what’s left of them, struggle to hold closed the wooden flaps of the window shutters and doors as something repeatedly careens into them from the outside.

  The flames from the fire outside reach high into the night air, but have not yet made their way into the chapel itself. The villagers started the fires only a few minutes prior, their solution to ending the influence of the devil on their village.

  Something savage is outside, trying to get in.

  Antonios stays nestled in his mother’s bosom. He has always felt closest to her, preferring to spend time with her cooking or gardening than pretending to sword fight with the other little boys. It isn’t that he doesn’t like the other boys, in fact he may like them more than is appropriate. He has given gifts of hand-picked river flowers to Dimitru on more than one occasion, regardless of the boy’s lack of gratitude and name-calling.

  Antonios’ mother knows this about him—his secret. She knew before he did that he was never going to take a wife. She hopes that by keeping him close and keeping him pious he can find a life in the church, a way to atone to God for the darkness inside him.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  It throws itself against the shutters, sending splintered dust into the air with each whack.

  An ear-rending shriek fills the small chapel as a charred and blood-drenched arm bursts through a boarded window, grasping for anything within reach. It grabs a man’s shoulder and closes its vice-like grip on him, crushing his collarbone and shoulder. Pieces of clavicle shoot out through the man’s skin like a splintering branch. The man calls out in agony and terror as the burnt arm repeatedly attempts to pull him out through the small hole. His head impacts the wall with each tug. On the last lurch, the arm pulls free at the shoulder as bone and sinew expose themselves and blood pours out from the wound.

  One of the other men grabs a woodcutter’s axe nearby. With a great heave, he severs the charred arm reaching in. Both it and the filleted man drop to the floor below, lifeless. As if it doesn’t feel pain, the creature withdraws its severed stump and hurls itself the rest of the way into the building, exploding the boards and knocking back the remaining men. It spits and hisses at the men. The blood dripping from its wound quickly clots, and the mangled mess of meat begins to rapidly knit the opening closed finally stopping the blood loss altogether.

  The beast is distinctly human, a curvaceous feminine frame with what looks like clothes seared to it. Antonios is too scared to cry, but his mother can feel him shaking, his eyes fixed on this monster. He has seen this awful creature before. They all have.

  The priest runs toward the monster, shouting ancient Romanian words, calling for God to cast this evil into the abyss. It has no effect. The burnt female shell, this golem of ash and blood, simply tilts its head and lunges at the priest. It rips through his neck, lapping at the blood coursing out and chewing down the flesh and sinew with deep excited gulps.

  The man with the axe takes another swing at the creature, placing the blade between what would have been its scapulae. It turns to respond, slicing its long sharp nails through the man’s face before pouncing on him and starting to eat from the fresh wound. As it swallows down the essence of each new victim, the once-mangled lump where its arm was severed sprouts fresh white branches of bone and tissue, new meat and skin spilling down from the wound into what looks like a new arm, the new flesh sealing in the limb and appearing like fabric from a loom.

  ***

  The women in the chapel weep. Their bodies cower in rhythm like a school of frightened fish. How could they have known the evil they would uncover? At first, most of them were simply jealous of Eliska’s beauty, how she remained fair and beautiful while they themselves began to grow older, weathered by the winds of time. Then they began to grow suspicious of her secretive nature, how she would rarely be seen at church or during daylight hours at all, how she did not take a man as her suitor, though many had asked her.

  The rumors started as a way for them to explain away her graces. It was her deal with the devil that made her… It didn’t matter the subject.

  When sickness swept through the village they began to suspect more was at play. Though nearly the entire village fell ill and one in ten did not survive, it was odd that Eliska experienced nary a sniffle. Most believed that her remarkably good health was not t
he result of the good Lord’s blessings. Then, when ill-fortune struck the hunting parties, when it became commonplace for the men to return from the hunt short one person, it was decreed that the curse was brought about by Eliska.

  The remaining men of the village all gathered together before sundown to bring Eliska to the chapel, for her to confess her pact with the devil and receive the blessings of a divine cleansing by fire. When they entered her home they found Eliska as radiant as ever, sitting calmly on the end of her bed, with the eviscerated corpse of a member of the most recent hunting party at her feet. As they gathered her up to be brought to her confession, they covered her face and head so as not to be bewitched by her evils. However, her arms remained uncovered. With each passing moment on her trip to the chapel her exposed skin aged a decade. The luminous glow of her milky skin became the dry flesh of a corpse.

  At her trial she was but a withered shell of the beauty admired by the village women. Her dress had fallen from her shoulders and was held about her waist solely by the rope binding her to the pyre. When the wife of her most recent victim threw a rock at her face, the rest of the women stood in solidarity, throwing rocks and stones of their own at Eliska’s crippled, old and nearly naked body, tied to the board at the village center.

  The priest levied his judgment, the judgment of the village and the judgment of God against her. When asked to confess her crimes, she did not. She simply looked out at the faces of all her accusers, her eyes hollow and empty. To Antonios she looked like a sad old woman not some evil beast. When the priest shouted his final admonishment of her wickedness, she simply muttered her response.