Bring Me Flesh, I'll Bring Hell

by Martin Rose

  He stopped shuffling his usual mountain of papers and opened a drawer. He reached beneath, pulled out a slip of paper, and passed it across the counter.

  I took it from him and opened it up. There were several names, but one in particular grabbed my attention.

  “Madame Astra? Either a hooker or a fortune teller.”

  “She came out of processing dressed like the trade, you know?”

  “Where do I fit in?”

  “She was pissed. Bitching about the cops being involved in her business, not doing anything, same old song. I asked her what her business was, she said they were harassing her, for no reason.” Lafferty shrugged. “I’m sure there was a reason.”

  “Doesn’t sound like reason enough to refer me. What made you give her my golden ticket?”

  “I thought you could use the company.”

  “So, you referred her because you thought I could use a good lay, is what you’re telling me?”

  He grinned. “Might change that sourpuss expression of yours. Or maybe it’s sour pus?”

  “You’re a fucker, Lafferty.”

  He laughed. “I guess she didn’t show up?”

  “Not unless she was calling herself Mrs. Rogers.”

  “You’d have known it. She was different. Strange.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Geoff. Maybe you need to find some company of your own, eh?”

  He grinned. “I did. I went and married her.”

  I waved him off, thrusting the paper into my pocket and leaving.

  *

  Later, I returned to the house.

  Any fool with a gun can call himself a hunter; patience is indispensable. With my eyes half-lidded, I settled into the familiar sounds of a sleeping house—the breathing of my houseguests as they slumbered in my sheets, the hum of the empty refrigerator, the wind against the vinyl siding, time and slippage working against my humble home over the course of decades.

  I waited. If you’ve ever been posted in one spot for too long, most people feel their limbs go numb when the circulation slows. I was dead, all of me was already numb, and when I got up, there would be no part of me left to come back to life. My brand new gun hand twitched in the darkness and then lay still.

  Hours passed in this fashion, one long silence stretched out across minutes and seconds. The television cast images against the wall, a silent film playing out an urgent drama, volume down low. Mitchum smoked in something noir-inspired. Tree branches scraped along the house, and still I waited. I tried not to think about Clay, about the case. I tried not to think about anything at all, missing a time when I could have dreamt.

  Crickets stopped and started from time to time and aroused me to alertness, only to pick up their rhythm again and lull me back to waiting. The black-and-white reel swapped places with the modern and the opening credits of Jacob’s Ladder unfolded with Tim Robbins as tormented Jacob Singer. Flashing lights sent me drifting back into an uncanny queasiness, with the small hairs on the inside of my ears singing and rasping and coming up empty. I lost myself in a television land of scenery and discordant images. Time staggered out of true until I thought I was staring at my own image through the screen and jolted up out of the darkness, thinking I was trapped inside the movie in a nightmare from which I could not wake—and then realized the television was off. The convex glass reflected my face and I could not remember turning it off. I sat with my hand on the remote and the other on my gun and stared at the black screen.

  Minutes dragged out in this fashion.

  And then I heard it.

  A long, strangled squeal of wood and metal being coaxed apart. I opened my eyes, adjusting to the darkness. How clever was my shooter? Was he trying to gain entry through the door, or the window? I watched, still. My heart lay dead against my cold Glock.

  The sound originated from the front of the house. The squealing hit a final note and diminuendoed into taut silence.

  I laid my new hand across the weapon and withdrew slowly. Synthetic, hard plastic rasping against fabric. My quartz-stone eyes panned the room and I rose from the chair. One step at a time across the floor as I backed against the far wall.

  If I were alive, I could describe to you the glitter of sweat and the rank scent of my own adrenaline pushing up through my veins and my teeth reduced to gravel in my mouth. Lips gone to coarse grit sandpaper. The only genuine article I had left was fear.

  “Show me your face,” I whispered, as though I could separate the darkness from my target with will alone. Past the window, I eased my way there to peer through the outside hedges, searching for him.

  My brother and I used to read stories of hunters stalking panthers in continents halfway around the world where men and women had the sense to fear the night. This brought things long buried through the dense material of my consciousness and reminded me of one such story. In it, two men passed a cigarette between each other where they were stationed in the wilderness until his fellow held out his cigarette and no one took it. An ember burning in the nothingness to illuminate the empty space where the wild cat had snatched his comrade away without a sign or a sound. Smoke churning the void he occupied seconds before.

  I was returned to this sense of childhood dread; one hand outstretched and waiting for someone to take the smoke from me and waiting, waiting, waiting for the moment of revelation to dawn. A yawning emptiness whose static condition made me aware that anything could be elapsing beyond my sight, leaving to the imagination any number of horrors equipped to steal my courage piecemeal.

  And then the screaming began.

  First the shatter, then the screams. Sound exploded from the opposite side of the house. I cursed as I turned on my heels and ran, sliding against the wooden planks for the bedroom door. Shots erupted behind the walls. Spackle and drywall exploded apart in puffs of gypsum dust as bullets exited out the other side. The knob jittered around my shaking grip.

  The fools had locked the door.

  I stood back and shot out the lock to jerk open the splintered door. My feet sloshed through blood and I knew an echo of ancient memory: adrenaline and blood close against the skin. The room lay out before me was torn apart. Bedding and mattress soaked in Mr. and Mrs. Rogers’ blood. Their bodies fallen over one another like discarded toys; feathers floated in the air, contents of their pillows scattered with their brains.

  He stood there.

  The shooter stood above Mr. Rogers’s body, shells expulsing from his weapon and bullet holes ventilating the wall. The sound of the door electrified him into locomotion. Glittering eyes through his ski mask slit. He sucked in a breath as he brought me into focus and swung his gun toward me with precise and level care.

  I’m dead, not slow.

  I met his gun with my own; fractional seconds and limited space gave me no room to shoot but thrust the barrel of my gun to strike his weapon out of the way. Flesh mashed against my grip and crushed the knuckle of his trigger finger. He grunted surprise and pain as I stepped into the circle of his body until he and I were chest to chest like lovers illustrated in a poisonous Kama Sutra. If he wanted to shoot me now, we were too close; he would have to risk shooting himself or move his hand at an odd, awkward angle that would take up too much of his reaction time.

  I could feel the rapid beating of his heart through my cold chest drum up in tandem with the taste of his scent in the air, quickening pre-deceased senses and driving hunger pangs through the center of my belly. Saliva collected in a puddle around my tongue. I tasted my latent hunger and wanted more. Wanted to get in close and unhinge my jaws and snake-swallow him and satisfy this chronic hunger. And, then satiated, end my season in Hell.

  I struck him with the butt of the gun on his shoulder instead and broke the spell of my ravening. His grunt gave way to a hefty gasp.

  Zzzzzt.

  A fly buzzed past my ear in the fray. Distracted, I jerked away and out of its path. The intruder pressed his advantage. He introduced his fist to my face. It was a quick meeting. My cheekbone snapped
with a rotted crunch against his knuckles and my head whipped back. The room filled with our labored breaths panting out a seething aggression, mingling his sweat with my carrion smell.

  The man launched into a run to escape through the blown-apart window he had used to gain entrance. I snatched his hooded sweatshirt into a fist with one flailing hand, drawing him back. He turned, striking wildly at me. Bits of me cascaded to the floor, shaken loose by each punch that found home.

  “You’re in danger. Get out of here, Vitus,” the man hissed.

  A final wrench and he broke free and left me clawing the air after him. He reached the window and shook the floor with the force of his exit as he vaulted through the jagged opening and landed in the broken glass outside. Bloody at the hands where he had chosen to grip the glass and escape rather than slow down and risk being caught.

  I lifted my gun until the iron sight covered his retreating figure and drew it steady. The man stopped halfway across the lawn as though he sensed the bead marking his back. He turned with his shrouded face and the slit of eyes, like deep slashes of midnight, vacant darkness, stared back at me. I was reminded of the empty suit of armor at the funeral home.

  My finger stayed put along the barrel at neutral.

  He was dangerous. He killed four people and shot me.

  Panting, he held his own weapon to the side. He had a clear shot, yet he refused to lift his gun and take it.

  Then, he tucked it out of sight in the back of his pants and walked away.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, and put away the gun.

  PART 2

  LORD OF THE FLESH EATERS

  Madam Astra.

  She had an office situated in the quiet part of town, where people liked to park their cars and window shop as they walked. I did the same, feeding quarters to an old parking meter and stepping out into the misting rain.

  She had a listing in the phone book and a small advertisement that ran in the weekly circular. On the surface, she appeared to be a legitimate business woman, but anyone advertising tarot fortunes, astrology, and palm reading is suspect in my understanding of the world. I attribute very little of misfortune and, by proxy, the future, to the fates when the human components are all too easy and obvious culprits. So much of our lives are moved by bad meals and decisions made on two hours’ sleep and a half a bottle of vodka that I found the idea of the stars plotting our course laughable. Just as likely, she was a con artist stealing from her clients in the dubious business of hopes and dreams.

  As I walked, I continued thinking about my midnight altercation with the shooter and the two rotting bodies at the house. I’d folded up the unfortunate Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, stuffing them into contractor bags for the time being. I’d gotten rid of asbestos shingles that way; but the room was a bloody mess of brains and body fluids. The most regrettable thing about that circumstance was the mess their deaths had made of my marriage bed.

  The man had not wanted to hurt me. Had refused to shoot me, acknowledged my clear shot, and turned his back to me. What did it mean? And his cryptic warning. What possible alliance did this man hope to forge with me? Did he know where Owen was?

  I touched the photo of Owen Rogers folded in my pocket. I made great effort to think as little of him as possible, not only because the thought of my son pained me, but because I needed to martial all my energy for this case.

  I was hired to find Owen Rogers and I believed that at the end of this trail I would find Clay Adamson instead. It was too hard to think about what would happen if I failed, what my life would be if I was wrong, if this was just another stepping stone in a clever trick designed to draw me in.

  There’s Niko.

  Indeed, she had found her way into my life. Gorgeous, young, vibrant, and giving herself away to a corpse. How did I know she wasn’t on the take? I didn’t. She could be involved, for all I knew.

  I stood on the street smoking a cigarette. The rain ran into my eyes and I pulled my hat further down, shadowing my brow while my thoughts agitated back and forth.

  Niko had been working at Pleasant Hills when they brought my family in—what remained of them.

  Dark days. I took a moment to remember them, forgetting the uneven texture of the cracked sidewalk beneath my feet, forgetting the biting cold of the damp wind. I shivered now like I had shivered then. Side by side with Jamie, subdued in a straightjacket. I remembered he had worn a blue suit. In the early days, it was all trial and error. They had no idea what dosage was necessary to keep me upright and functioning, so every day was a violent whipsaw of emotions, disintegrating into a zombie at a moment’s notice.

  He had not wanted to take me to the funeral home, but I insisted. He had me on a tether like a rabid animal, and I hated him for it, for reducing me to this thing. I had begged him over and over again to end it. I did not want to go on like a half-animal, knowing I ate my son and wife. I wanted to see Dad, but Dad wouldn’t come, and I seethed with hatred for the old gray fox and everything that happened in Sarajevo between us, between my mother.

  But I did go on—Jamie made me go on. They packed me into a Ford with tinted windows and armed guards to go to the funeral parlor. I sat in the back while a guard with an AR kept me on a short leash, Jamie at the wheel and his seven-year-old son dressed in his church clothes, a blue suit. I remembered thinking his tousled hair reminded me of Clay, and the knowledge that my son was dead hit me again with force, consistently surprising me with its ferocity. We had passed by a string of soldiers awaiting our arrival, and Jamie’s boy, Amos, sat up straighter in his seat, cocking his hand like a pistol at the armed men and shooting them down with huffing noises through his mouth in imitation of a gun blast: bang! It had drawn a long, sad smile from me.

  From there to a waiting room in a long coat meant to hide my straightjacket, and a soldier on hand in case I needed to be put down. Jamie spoke to the funeral director, and in the background, with roses in her hand, a girl with Bettie Page good looks, bomb-shell style. Curling black hair. Niko.

  I remembered staring at her hands. Her fingers small and I thought, Those fingers put my family back together. I could not stop staring. She spoke to Jamie. Their voices rose and fell from fathoms away; I was underwater, deep inside myself.

  She passed me, and as she passed, she turned.

  The soldier stepped forward with a hand on his rifle, and what was he gonna do? Spray the lot of us with bullets? Jamie intervened, caught her by the shoulder with an insistent hand, whipping her back and away from me when I realized again that it was me they were securing her from.

  In the instant before the guards could whisk her out of my life, she reached out with a rose, white petals like pearl-skin, and pushed it into the fabric fold of my arm; her fingertips brushed me. Her wide, moon-shaped face wore a look of curiosity, confusion, shared grief. Jamie let me keep the rose. I held it that night, white rose in a fist, until congealed blood oozed from thorn punctures like gas station oil, thick and black.

  I never forgot her. She had forgotten me.

  She can’t be on the take. There’s no way. That’s an intricate con, to be working at a funeral home when you happen to kill your wife and child, just to screw you over a couple years later. Best con I ever seen.

  “That’s because it’s not one,” I muttered, annoyed, and cast the burning butt into the street before I crushed it with my heel. When I stepped away, torn remains of yet another missing child poster littered the pavement. The picture of this new unfortunate boy was disintegrated until it looked like a caricature of a zombie itself, decaying in the rain before my very eyes. Didn’t anyone use milk cartons anymore?

  Let’s see this Madam Astra. Let’s see how good she really is.

  And with that, I headed to the shop with the glowing hand in the center window, advertising FORTUNES, FUTURE, AND FATE! Madam Astra tells all!

  *

  I opened the door, coming in from the misting rain. I made soggy footprints on the carpet as I stepped in. I left my hat and coat on as I
took in the dim interior. Lazy smoke swirls of incense filled the air, the way I imagined a bonfire filled with hippies might smell after dousing themselves in patchouli and weed.

  Darkness and colored light, red and pink lamps with ornate shades of fringe. A confusion of bright velvet and silk garments strung throughout the interior gave it the appearance of a gypsy caravan. A glass case against the wall showcased tarot cards and amulets, crystals; some for sale, some for use in the reading. A plaque on the wall advertised the different services, fortunes reading like an order off a fast-food menu. I’d like a double whammy super sized, with a large order of fatalism. A person could choose several methods of divination, from astrology chart, to tarot cards, to palm reading, or all three for a discounted price.

  I perused my options. Palm reading was out of the question, unless she wanted to use my newer hand, which was only slightly less decomposed than my old one. My old one had yellow bone showing through rents in the flesh, obscured by my black gloves, a necessity in undead wardrobe.

  Tarot cards and astrology chart. Jessica had always read our horoscopes aloud, tracking them in the daily paper. I didn’t have faith in the stars; what good was astrology for a dead guy like me? Stars and fates were for the living.

  Tarot cards were the most appealing option, but still sounded like a rip off at twenty dollars for a short-term reading, as opposed to forty dollars for a life read. To tell you what, exactly? How terrible and empty this human experience is, and then you die? Or whatever passes for death, I considered. I reached for the bell and tapped it, sending noise throughout the shop.

  In the back, a curtain swept aside and a figure emerged from the shadows; slight, a willow frame in a swirl of skirt and theatrical fabric. Long blond hair that swept to her waist. I imagined she was what a fairy would look like if that kinda thing were real; but beneath the charming patina of polished made-for-TV smile, beneath the small, pointed features, an unsettling version of fey nature lingered—not in a Hollywood cute kind of conventional fairy, but rather, the original version. The ones with their underground palaces, the ones ready to strip the meat from your bones with their teeth and sample the marrow. A mischief as capable of leading you in front of the path of a sixteen-wheel Mack Truck as a secret paradise in a shire or a mountain.