Shock Totem 2: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  “Just go in.”

  “But there’s no—”

  With a click, the door opens an inch.

  The office man frowns, looks at the guide, and then goes to the door slowly. He puts a hand on the black surface. “Hello?”

  He’s gone. The door closes. Jacob grabs a plastic bottle-crate out of the trash and carries it to the door and sits, elbows on his knees, like he’s sat hundreds of times before. A sudden bitterness in his mouth makes him spit and he puts his headset on, closes his eyes, and listens to the soft susurrus inside.

  • • •

  A week later, the man with the office shirt is back, only he’s not wearing an office shirt anymore. He’s got a sports jacket and designer jeans on, the kind with rips that are supposed to be there because they look cool. But Jacob still thinks of him as the office man. He’s waiting by the door to the tenement, hands pocketed. Some things stay the same.

  “Hey, man.”

  Jacob slips his headset off.

  “Can you take me to the door today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. I need another hit of that. Got bills to pay, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Ready to go right now?”

  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  Jacob arches an eyebrow and waits. The office man stares at him, confused at first, then puts a hand to his forehead, “Oh, right! Sorry.” He pulls his wallet out and gives him a crisp fifty dollar bill. “So, do you ever—”

  “No.”

  “Cause it’s amazing. It’s real.”

  They thread through the alleys and the office man asks if it’s the same way they went before, but his question is answered for him when he sees the white fence. They both tense, waiting for the explosion, but the dog isn’t there today. They pass it, relieved. Like before, the office man speaks nonstop until they reach the black door and he goes in. The guide waits.

  When he’s done walking the office man back, Jacob wants to quit for the night. Too many rats. He goes to the apartment and crashes onto the mattress, into the sweat of a strange man and the faint scent of lavender.

  • • •

  Cherry comes back into the apartment from the communal bathroom with a towel spiraled on her head and another wrapped around her body. Pearls of water shine on her cheeks. She looks refreshed, almost brand new. All the shabby and worn-out is gone from her face.

  It’s sometime after nine in the evening and Jacob is hunched on the bed, sipping black coffee from a Dixie cup. The east African roast he bought fills their apartment with a dense spicy smell.

  “Save some for me?” she asks.

  “Yeah.” He points to the four-cup coffee maker sitting on his trunk by the foot of the bed. The cable trails to the only outlet in the room, which it shares with six other plugs sprouting from a power-strip like tentacles on a bizarre plastic squid: a curler, a flatiron, a blow-dryer, some kind of hot wax warmer he doesn’t understand, an 8-inch TV set, and a mini-fridge that has three of Cherry’s Slimfasts in it.

  She lets the towel drop and pops open a bottle of lotion, squirting a white mound into the palm of her hand. The lavender smell swirls together with the coffee. Jacob sips and turns away, facing out the window.

  She snorts and giggles. “You ain’t gotta turn away.” He doesn’t say anything, just listens to her hands sliding over her skin. She starts on the other leg and says, “You about to go out?”

  “Yeah. Soon as I finish this cup.”

  “I’m gonna go visit my mama at the home. Those rats are gettin’ nasty bad again. I almost stepped on one today.”

  “I know.”

  “You should say somethin’ to Lopez. He never listens to me.”

  He looks over his shoulder automatically and nods, then turns back to the window, cheeks hot. “All right.”

  • • •

  “Hey.”

  “Que pasa, chaval?” Lopez is lounging in a plastic lawn chair on the roof of the tenement, a San Miguel clutched in one hand. He’s quick to point out to anyone—a sneer curling on his lips—that the beer, like him, is Spanish, not Mexican. Fajita meat sizzles on the hibachi grill next to him. The day is overcast and breezy and the wind is playing with the last few strands of combed-over hair still left on his head. His eyes are hidden behind mirrored aviator shades.

  “You need to call the burner,” Jacob says.

  He lifts the shades up a little. “Que?” His eyes are red and bleary.

  “I said you need to call the burner.”

  “Hijo de la Madre—Otra vez?” he says, jerking his head forward with disbelief. “Where do these mighty mouses come from, man?”

  Jacob shrugs as if he doesn’t know.

  “More meat for the grill, right?” He smiles showing two gold front teeth, and laughs. They make Jacob think of the nutria with their orange incisors and he frowns. He doesn’t think it’s funny. “No, I’m just kidding, man...relax. Take a beer.” Lopez indicates the Styrofoam bucket next to him.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You are so pure, my friend,” he says, and puts a lid over the bucket. “Business good?”

  Jacob nods.

  “Good. Business is always good for you. That guy—the one who looks like he has a stick up his ass—I can tell it costs him more than the fifty bucks you charge. But he keeps coming back.” He leans forward in the lawn chair. “My offer still stands, you know...cut me in and I can see about getting you a better place. That slut Maria and her brat are always late on rent anyway. She has—”

  “No, thanks.”

  Lopez tosses his hand up and leans back again. “What’s up? You saving for something?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing it for then?”

  He shrugs, and looks across the rooftops—a plane of muted gray geometric shapes and silver machines thrumming, venting plumes of steam into the air. “What else am I going to do?”

  “Si, es la verdad. You said it. What else are we going to do?”

  “About the rats…”

  Lopez takes a quick swig of his beer. “Si, si...it will be fine, though, no? Next month, okay?”

  “No. The sooner the better. Plus, the girls say they get less customers when there’s too many rats.”

  “Es verdad. You make a good point.” Lopez sighs, sticks a long pinky fingernail into his mouth and gnaws. One of his knees starts bouncing. “But the problem is some of the girls are late with their rent...including your roommate. The Rat Burner don’t come cheap.”

  “But you’re the landlord.”

  “Hey, I don’t remember signing a lease agreement. And I don’t know why so many jodido ratones come to the alley in the first place.” Jacob flinches and looks down, hating his own reflection in Lopez’s shades. “More rats, less customers. Less customers, less rent gets paid. And less rent means...well, no Rat Burner for one thing. Only one makin’ money is you, chaval.” Lopez shrugs, and the corners of his mouth twitch into a smug smile.

  The wad of cash in Jacob’s jacket pocket feels like a lead weight. He grits his teeth and digs out the money, peeling several big bills from the roll, until Lopez gives a quick nod of satisfaction, plucking the money from him with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Vale, vale,” Lopez says and waves him away. “Okay man. No worries. I’ll give him a call soon.”

  • • •

  Another week passes. No Rat Burner. Between Jacob’s other clients, the office man comes again. The bars have nearly closed and Sixth Street is choked with students arguing with Greenspan ATMs for cash to get a taxi. Jacob can hear the ancient economist’s voice font droning from the ATM’s tinny speakers: “You are doing a good thing, keeping the economy healthy. You are committing a morally good act.”

  “You know,” the office man says to him on the way, “I went to that burger place you mentioned before.”

  “Casino?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think it was that great. It wasn’t bad, though.”

  The guide grunts. He th
inks their burgers are delicious. “Maybe you don’t like burgers.”

  “No, I do. It just tasted...I don’t know, kinda bland.”

  The guide gives another non-committal grunt, but inside his stomach sinks. It’s already started. A nutria is hunched over a drain grate, like it’s warming its belly in the steam seeping up between the metal grills. It glares at him, and scurries off. His hands feel shaky.

  The dog is there this time. It bounds against the fence and bellows. They both jump, but the office man manages to not fall this time, standing there blinking.

  They go to the black door.

  • • •

  Every day the office man comes. The guide finds him waiting at the mouth of the alley when night falls. He sees the signs. The office man has lost weight. He’d always been thin in the arms, but with a paunchiness around the middle the guide calls nerd-fat. That’s gone now. His eyes are glassy. The constant chatter has trailed off over the weeks so that by the fifteenth visit he only responds to questions, and the guide asks few, so the walks are almost dead silent.

  What had it been now, twenty-three visits? It doesn’t happen at the same speed for everyone. Based on experience, the guide figured his decay was middle of the road.

  By the end, the intermittent fence assaults of the mastiff barely register.

  Onward to the black door.

  • • •

  At seven in the morning the window shatters. A brick crashes in. It lands on the bed next to him in a spray of shards. Jacob sits up, fully awake, heart rocketing, and tears the headset off. One of the earmuffs cracks, separating from the headband. He curses, drops them on the bed, and squeezes into the space between the bed and the window, peering out.

  The office man is standing in the alley. His face is tilted up at the second story window, mouth hanging half open. Red scratches line his cheeks. His eyes are dull, never blinking at the light drizzle filtering down into the alley.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jacob shouts down at him. He doesn’t respond, so Jacob bounces across the bed to the door and rushes down the stairs, brick in hand, past Cherry arguing with a client.

  “Can you…” the office man croaks at him when he emerges into the alley.

  “I should fuckin’ clock you for that, asshole!”

  “Can you…”

  Jacob stares at him, breathing hard. There’s nothing left in the man’s eyes but his own reflection, holding up the brick. Jacob drops the brick and shakes his head. Blood is trickling off his pinky. He makes a fist and winces. He must have put his hand down on a piece of glass when he vaulted across the bed. Dammit! His heart is still racing, like he’s had too much caffeine. It’s not the broken window he cares about. It was just the sudden fright...and the headphones. Oh God, the headphones. He closes his eyes, puts his hands over his ears and breathes slow, deliberate. One...two...three deep breaths.

  “Can...you…” The office man talks like his tongue is made of thick clay. His lips are white.

  Jacob snaps, “Can I what?”

  “Can you...can you…”

  “You want to go to the black door again?”

  The office man stares, grunts something not quite a word but emphatic and desperate. He’s wearing the same clothes he had last time and the time before that. Even in the wet, Jacob can smell the funk on him. He looks at the red scrapes on his cheeks.

  “You went by yourself?”

  The office man nods.

  “You idiot. What happened to your face?”

  No response.

  “The rats?”

  A nod.

  “Idiot.”

  The office man turns and starts to shuffle into the alley.

  Jacob grabs his shoulders. “Hey! Hundred bucks this time...for the glass.” But he needs new headphones. And there’s no door without a transaction.

  The office man pulls out his wallet and opens it. His brow furrows. His fingers fumble with the folds and the bills like blind worms. He looks up at the guide, dull. He hasn’t closed his mouth yet. He gives up and holds the wallet out.

  “Dammit.” Jacob snatches it and takes out all the money. Seventy five bucks. Inadvertently, he sees the man’s ID: Tom Braedan. Shit. He didn’t want to know his name. Not ever. Not with any of them. He curses again and stuffs the cash into his jacket pocket and hands the office man—Tom!—the wallet back. Tom looks at it a moment and then lets it tumble from his stiff fingers into the puddle at his feet.

  The guide shakes his head. “C’mon then.”

  • • •

  The door clicks open, just an inch.

  “Guide.”

  The voice behind the door is worse than all the rat voices and rat scratches that crowd his mind. It makes him want to cringe, like he just swallowed a horrible bitter oil.

  The guide stands.

  “You may go. Mr. Braedan will not require your return services this evening.”

  The door shuts.

  • • •

  New customer. A university girl. She probably wants her boyfriend back. Or maybe, Jacob thinks, after seeing the way her eyes shift away from him in shame then cut back defiant, she needs a mistake erased after a night of indiscretion. There are clinics for that, but those cost a lot more than fifty bucks.

  The guide takes her money all the same and leads her to the black door.

  When they arrive three nutria are standing on their hind legs in front of the door like grotesque solicitors, scratching at the matte black paint, chittering. The guide’s stomach clenches. He picks up a half-crushed soda can and chucks it at them, hits the door. “Get out of here!”

  They scatter, diving into the piles of trash.

  “Think they’re here for the same thing?” The girl makes a thin laugh, but closes her mouth when she sees the guide’s scowl.

  When the girl disappears behind the door he leans back against the wall. His ears feel naked without the headphones. After a moment, muffled voices come through the door…

  “It’s not worth the whole thing—whatever it is.”

  “Precisely. After all, what is it?”

  “It must be something, if you want it so damn badly.”

  “Ah, well, I’m afraid you’ve been corrupted by those outmoded tales from the middle ages. You see, we don’t conduct business like that anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t need the whole thing. Think of it like this: we can just shave off a little bit here, a little bit there. A tiny piece at a time.”

  “How can you just take a little? I thought it was all or nothing, for all time and all that.”

  “Progress, my dear. The march of modernity has seen so many marvels—scientific, incantronic, economic, social. Do you think spiritual technology does not evolve with the times? It’s had to grow much more sophisticated to meet the demands of modern life. Smaller bits, but more customers. Economies of scale and all that.”

  “Huh. Okay. Whatever, I guess. So how much of it do you need then?”

  “Oh, that depends on you. What do you want out of life?”

  Quiet.

  “Can you get my professor fired?”

  “Trivial. Is that really all you want?”

  “Yes. He...he and I...I hate him.”

  “Of course. There’s no need to explain.”

  “Will it be...legal?”

  “Madame, everything that we do is legal.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sure that’s all that you want?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Very well. Now, there is one more difference between the way things were done in the past and modern negotiations.”

  “What?”

  “Since the exchange is so small on the part of our clients nowadays, payment is due up front.”

  “Up front!”

  “Indeed.”

  “How much?”

  “For what you requested, only a tiny fraction of the total will be required. I assure you, it won’t affect your a
bility to enjoy the fruit of our transaction. You won’t even perceive the loss. That’s the beauty of it being so small.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “On the contrary. You won’t feel a thing. I guarantee it. If you—”

  Jacob pushes away from the wall and walks as far as he can go and still see the door. So trivial. He can’t believe how trivial.

  • • •

  Cherry’s been crying. Mascara trails down her cheeks in black ragged stripes. She sinks onto the edge of the mattress next to him. He takes the headphones off. He tried duct-taping them with shaking hands but the ghost that sighs white-noise is broken and it takes a witch to fix that. A new set is going to be expensive. Cherry sniffs and wipes her eyes, looking at him sideways.

  “What’s up? What is it?”

  “That man the other night...he didn’t pay me. Not last time, either. He said he was going to next time, after he got paid, but…”

  “Rent’s late.”

  She nods. “Mine, and mama’s, too.”

  “Lopez should collect from him.”

  Shakes her head. “Lopez is his friend.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  She wipes her eyes and nose with a Kleenex, and then stares at her fingernails. He can smell her lavender lotion, faint now after a long night. “Do you think...maybe you could take me—”

  “No fucking way,” he snaps. “Absolutely not ever.”

  She flinches at the sudden violence in his voice. Her face wavers and then dissolves into more crying and sniffling. “I’m so sorry…”

  “Here.” He takes what’s left of his cash roll out of his hoodie pocket and gives it to her. He feels his chest tighten. No headphones. Not anytime soon.

  She stares down at the green roll in her hand until her shuddering subsides. After a while she whispers, “Do you want…”

  “No.”

  “I was gonna offer to Lopez...it’s just that...he likes to hit.”

  Outside he hears the high-pitched whine of old brakes, then the metallic slide of a van door. Jacob’s breath catches. A thrill runs down his spine. Big-ass, rat-stomping steel toed boots splash down into the wet alley.