Voices From The Other Side

by Brandon Massey

  And there was the problem of what to do with the girl.

  She was staring at him, plainly interested. He knew he was a catch, kept himself fit through proper diet and intensive exercise. He never stepped out of his apartment unless he looked his best.

  Especially on Date Night.

  His father, however, had beaten him unconscious the one time he’d dared to bring a white girl home from college.

  You are here to elevate the race, fool, the Admiral had said. Your mother and I sacrificed to make sure you got exposed to the right kind of people.

  “Our kind of people,” Marc said to no one.

  The train pulled into the 34th Street station. The doors slid open. Marc leaned forward, his breath catching in his throat.

  We’ve given you opportunities we never had, Marcellus. It’s a parent’s duty to make sure his children grow up ready to conquer the world.

  A group of young black men burst in through the doors. They shoved and jostled each other, noisily mock-fighting for seats on the empty car.

  “Stupid-ass faggots on this train,” one of them said loudly. The others laughed. Marc knew they were talking about him, but he didn’t care. He was different from them, better than them. He had to be.

  I don’t hit you because I hate you, boy, his father’s rage whispered. I hit you to make you strong. You’re to be a credit to the race, Marcellus.

  As the train rolled on into the darkness, Marc considered exactly how much of a credit he’d become: The child of upper-middle-class African-American professionals, he’d grown up in a respectable neighborhood in Hartford, miles distant from the urban nightmares of places like Stamford and New York.

  He’d graduated from Yale Law, landed a lucrative position as a young associate at a prominent Manhattan law firm. A year later, he’d bought a spacious apartment in Park Slope. Everything had gone according to his parents’ plan. Their sole disappointment was his inability to settle down and find the perfect girl to become Mrs. Marcellus Craft.

  The race must be perpetuated, elevated, the Admiral would say. But not just with any kind of girl. She needs to be the right kind of people.

  One of the young men was coming toward him, chin jutting, head tilted at an angle meant to intimidate. He was big, ebony-skinned and broad-shouldered, with a scraggly beard and the eyes of a corpse. Behind him, the other young men cackled and egged him on.

  Marc banished the voices, instinctively switched his perceptions to assess the threat presented by the bearded man. The hunting knife at his side dug into his rib cage, and he shifted to ease the pressure.

  “Yo, man,” the bearded man said. “Why you wearin’ them clothes like that? You some kind of entrepreneur or somethin’?”

  Marc smiled. He was keenly aware of exactly how many of his teeth he was exposing, aware of his every verbal nuance, facial twitch and eyelid flutter. He’d mastered the art of subtle intimidation at the negotiating table, facing adversaries who counted their worth in the billions.

  He had murdered men more desperate than this one and sung along at a Broadway musical twenty minutes later.

  “I’m talkin’ to you, man,” the bearded man snapped.

  “I’m an attorney,” Marc said.

  “What kind?” the bearded man replied.

  Marc made it a point to look the bearded man directly in the eye. It was a lesson he’d learned at the ends of the Admiral’s fists. It was a lesson Marc had passed on to his victims before they died.

  Look me in my eye when I speak to you, boy.

  “Who wants to know?” he said to the bearded man.

  The bearded man looked back over his shoulder at his friends. Something in his aggressive stance wavered; some reservoir of bravado ran dry. His tongue flicked out and licked at his upper lip.

  “Do you read?”

  The bearded man’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “I’m going to kill someone tonight,” Marc said. “You look just about the right size.”

  He reached into his jacket, produced the big hunting knife and showed it to the bearded man.

  The train bumped over a rough spot on the track and slowed down, easing toward the 23rd Street stop. Then the doors slid open, and Marc’s One True Love walked through the far entrance into the subway car.

  “Oh, shit!” one of the young black men snarled.

  Marc stifled the urge to gut the bearded thug where he stood, staring at him like the idiot he obviously was. His Lady came on, pushing her cart through the gauntlet of gaping thugs. As she approached, the young men cursed and leaped out of their seats. They scrambled through the open doors and out onto the deserted platform.

  The bearded man swore as Lady Love squeaked closer.

  Yes, Marc agreed. She is beautiful.

  Her skin was the color of a cadaver’s sclera, her hair the color of ravens’ wings, encrusted with filth. Dirty black spikes leaped out from her head like a shout of exaltation.

  Her eyes were the color of summer skies, piercing in a face nearly black with blood and dirt. Her jaw had been paralyzed on one side by a stroke or birth defect. Her mouth hung open, her face fixed in a silent shriek.

  She had covered herself in a one-piece jumper or snowsuit, stuffed at the sleeves and ankles with newspaper to keep warm down in the tunnels at night. The snowsuit was torn in too many places to count, the holes overflowing either with flesh or gray wads of newspaper.

  Her feet, swollen from years of walking and neglect, had burst, black with gangrene, from the thick-soled cotton boots he’d stolen for her on their last date. Now, she plodded forward on bare, festering stumps. Things were moving beneath the rumpled skin of the snowsuit: Parts of it seemed to shift and shudder, as if the flesh beneath played host to multitudes of vermin. Behind her, a brown stream of liquid leaked down the backs of her legs and trickled out of the snowsuit, leaving twin trails of fetor in her wake.

  Lady Love was pushing a grocery cart up the long aisle toward them. Something moved inside the cart. Marc stood to get a closer look at the gift she’d brought him.

  It was a dog. A golden retriever.

  Someone had broken the retriever’s back. A loop of intestine hung between its jaws. It lay, twisted and shivering, atop Lady Love’s ubiquitous wads of newspaper. Marc thought he saw tire marks across the dog’s midsection, but he couldn’t be certain.

  The retriever’s eyes rolled heavenward, bright with suffering, and focused on Marc. It whined and snapped at the loop of gut dangling from its mouth.

  Marc didn’t hear the doors open, didn’t hear the bearded thug and the other people scramble out of the car. His focus never wavered from Lady Love’s face. Tonight, he knew, she would favor him.

  Confident, he extended his hand.

  She accepted.

  They found a spot on the tracks, well away from the glaring lights from the 14th Street stop. He hurried her along as quickly as she was able to move. They only had fourteen minutes before the next train.

  If I died in her arms, it would be worth it, Marc thought.

  They lay down in filth, his heart racing as she reached for him, undid him and tugged down his pants. He fumbled at the zipper of her snowsuit, his fingers clumsy with his excitement, and pulled it down, freeing her.

  He stopped. The heat and smell that enveloped him were almost more than even he could bear. Parts of her body were moving in the darkness, sliding over his thighs, his groin, stroking, teasing him.

  From somewhere far behind them, he heard the golden retriever whimpering in the shopping cart where they’d left it at the entrance to the tunnel.

  What have you done this time, boy?

  Then his Lady grabbed him with hands and mouth and things he couldn’t see, wouldn’t see, things that caressed him wetly, pierced him, sank talons into his flesh and hooked him to her.

  He lost himself in blood and heat.

  He lost himself in her.

  Afterward, he lured a junkie down into the tunnel, ordered him to strip naked and s
lit his throat. He dressed in the junkie’s clothing while his Lady fed.

  Then Lady Love screamed.

  Marc ran to her, fell to his knees at her side. Her shrieks echoed up and down the tunnel, a dark cacophony of barks and growls that accompanied the suffering of the crippled golden retriever.

  She squirmed there, a dark, toxic wonder, naked and vulnerable, her skin shining in the dim illumination. The parts of her that Marc would not let himself see hissed at him and tore her flesh like hate-starved lovers.

  Lady Love lifted her head and shrieked. At the far end of the tunnel, the golden retriever howled.

  Then something wriggled out from the dark thatch between her thighs. In the half-light from the platform, Marc could make out only a vague outline of the thing, which twisted on the floor between his lover’s knees. It mewled, and uttered a tiny, gurgling whine.

  Then it slithered onto the Lady’s stomach.

  It was the deep red color of heart’s blood, about twelve inches long, a squirming tuber of bio-matter. It twisted and writhed like a snake trying to shed its skin.

  The red thing lifted its front end and chattered at Marc, revealing a circular row of needle-sharp teeth. Then it opened its eyes, and Marc Craft’s tenuous grip on sanity blew away, like trash in the wake of a speeding juggernaut.

  A second tuber pulled itself up onto the Lady’s stomach, then a third and a fourth. In moments, her lower half was crawling with more than a dozen squirming, crimson larvae.

  As if cued by an inaudible signal, the first larva, the one with the Admiral’s eyes, began to crawl toward Marc. He tried to crawl away, but something like a tentacle extended out of the Lady’s torso, wrapped itself around his neck and pulled him down, held his face close to her belly, close enough for the first larva to bite his cheek.

  The bite sent a shock of agony through his nervous system, and he screamed. Another larva tore his right ear off. Marc grabbed the tentacle that held him fast, tried to tear himself free. Lady Love barked and pulled him closer, groping at his face. Nails like black claws reached for the soft meat inside his mouth and tore it free.

  We raised you up to produce something new, Marcellus. Your children will conquer the world. But they’ll have to be the right kind of people. Our kind of people.

  As his crimson offspring consumed his flesh, Marc Craft remembered his parents’ advice. And as Lady Love tore his eyes from his head, two words occurred to him:

  Mission accomplished.

  Natural Instinct

  L. A. Banks

  Before the sisters in Philly cast aspersion on my character, let me be clear—I ain’t no dog, not even a coyote. So, believe what you want if a lot of females start telling you a buncha mess about how Mike Adams is just wrong and is a natural dawg. But at least let me explain my lupine ways.

  Fact: Wolves do mate for life, once we settle down. It’s the finding-the-right-female-along-the-way part that gives us our bad reputation. However, as a friend, we’re loyal, and you can’t have a better brother watching your back.

  Now, true, around this time of the month, I confess, I have a little problem. I get edgy, gotta eat right and definitely gotta get laid. But, hey, that don’t make me a monster. Being held hostage to a twenty-eight-day lunar cycle is a real bitch. The day before the full moon and the day after, I got issues. Also on the night it rises. What can I say? All right, so for three days a month, I trip and trip hard. The rest of the time, I’m a regular kinda guy. I ain’t as bad as most; don’t do nothin’ really foul. Curbed that side of me a long time ago, like most of us have.

  But, see, here’s my problem: Women can’t leave sleeping dogs lie. I’ve tried to get the women in my life to understand that monogamy with a human, literally, just ain’t in my DNA. No matter how diplomatically I put it, they seem to hear only what they wanna hear. It’s beyond a man thing that they wouldn’t understand. Then, when they don’t get what they want—a total commitment—come the tears and drama, and accusations the day after I roll . . . but, hey, like I said, a brother has to do what a brother has to do. Plus, I’m always straight with them from the jump, and I always tell ’em the deal going in—but somehow, it always gets convoluted after we do the wild thing. This, I frankly don’t understand.

  The way I see it, if they were really honest with themselves, they’d admit that they love the dawg in me. Every man has a little bit of that in him, right? Maybe I just got more than my fair share, but that isn’t my fault—that was fate. Accident of time, place and birth. I’m not the marrying kinda brother. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t tried to go straight over the years. I really have, but Lord have mercy . . . when the moon is full . . . what can I say? It is what it is.

  So, tonight, I’m gonna take my ass home solo before it gets dark. A brother is trying real hard to break a love ’em and leave ’em cycle, feel me? I’m calling in to the captain, telling him I’m sick—which is the truth—and can’t do the night shift working vice detail. Aw, hell no. That’s an accident waiting to happen. Thirty-two is way too old in canine years to be actin’ the way I know I’ma act. I already got wood just thinking about the fine tail in the clubs, and it ain’t even sundown. Plus, if some dumb bastard pisses me off tonight, I ain’t responsible. Why even go there? See, I know my limits.

  Rational thought continued to battle within his mind as he pulled his squad car in front of the Sixth District, East Side Precinct. All he had to do was cough, rub his stomach and put on a show for the captain well before his shift was over.

  “Hey, Michael,” the station’s dispatcher murmured. “How you doin’ today, baby?”

  See, the shit was already starting. Neecy needed to stop. Now.

  Against his better judgment, he leaned on her desk and offered her a dashing smile. That woman seemed to know his cycle better than he did; could always mysteriously tell when his resistance was low. The girl had to be psychic. “I’m all right, sis. How you livin’?” He glanced at his vibrating waistband, ignoring five calls. His cell phone was already blowing up, and the moon wasn’t out yet.

  “Aw’ight,” she said with a well-timed, feminine sigh. “Can’t complain. Ain’t no use in that any ole way.” She gave him a sexy wink. “Didn’t expect to see you in here during your shift. Must be my lucky day.” She giggled, glanced at his cell phone for a second and smiled wider, allowing her gaze to sweep the full length of his six-foot-four frame.

  His gaze lingered on her pretty brown face for a moment, then trailed down the front of her uniform to her cleavage and held the line. “Yeah . . . me neither.” Shit, this woman wasn’t superfine, but she was all female. However, Neecy was good people. Cute as could be, actually. He liked what she’d done new to her hair. The ponytail was working, even if it was acrylic. He pushed himself away from her desk as her eyelids lowered and her lips parted.

  “When do you get off?” she whispered.

  He stared at her for a moment too long. “Four.”

  “So do I.”

  He backed up. “But Cap says I gotta work a double tonight, and I ain’t feelin’ so good.”

  “Then maybe you should go home and get some rest.”

  He watched her breathe out the statement.

  “Yeah, maybe I do need to go home and lie down.” She swallowed hard and licked her full, gloss-shined lips as though her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “You need to go to bed, baby.”

  “I know,” he murmured, but wanted to kick himself. Not tonight. He was going cold turkey. “So, you get off at four, huh?”

  “Yo, man, whassup?” Derrick said, walking up and breaking their trance.

  Michael bristled, backed farther away from Denise James’s desk and looked at the guy from his squad hard.

  “You all right, man?” Derrick’s gaze shot between Michael and Denise. “You ain’t having another episode, are you?”

  “No, he’s not all right,” Neecy said, annoyed at the intrusion and folding her arms over her chest. “He’s sick, ain’t feeling good, but Cap sa
ys he has to pull a double tonight. You should see if you can work his shift to give the man a break—dang.”

  Derrick nodded and relaxed, but offered Mike a sly smile. “I feel you, man. But if you don’t want the overtime, I’ll work a double-bubble for you. Cool?” Derrick sighed and gave Neecy a wistful glance. “Shit, unlike you, I’m married, got kids to feed and my woman is always bitching about money.”

  “ ’Preciate it, man,” Michael said, feeling relief waft through him. Yeah, it was definitely time to go home. The sun dropped early in the winter. His boy was about to get a bone snatched out of his ass for interrupting a hunt. Might not have been so bad if Derrick wasn’t like him—a big, burly mother—but the brother had just a little bit too much testosterone to be rolling up on him like that without warning.

  More steady now, Michael remembered his motive for coming into the station. “It’s flu season, my stomach is all jacked up and I need to go home.”

  “Whatever, man,” Derrick said, beginning to walk away. “Tell Cap I’ll cover your shift, and then you can take your evil ass home and drink some Thera Flu.” Derrick stopped and gave him a wink. “Or do whatever else you need to do to chill out. I gotchure back.”

  Michael nodded, glanced at Neecy once and began walking toward the captain’s office. No drama. Not today. He could feel every female’s eyes on him as he passed secretaries and desk cops. It was like they were turning and staring at him in slow motion. Their bodies gave off more heat than usual, left an infrared glow that fused with their scents. Damn, they all smelled so good . . . By the time he got to Captain Thomas’s office, he had a headache and was hungry as hell.

  “Don’t even ask me, Adams,” the captain said without looking up. “You take off once a month like you’ve got a fucking period, and you’re out of sick time, so save the story—you’re working tonight.”