Stranger Realms

by Jarred Martin

  “If I do this,” said Mayor Randolph, “where are the residents supposed to go? We’re talking multiple city blocks here. Thousands of lives. What happens to them?”

  Sidney Rune shrugged, his wicked smile still on display. “What happens to roaches when you turn on the lights?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Mayor.

  “They scatter. Makes ’em easier to step on that way,” he laughed.

  “No,” said the Mayor, red-faced, and irate. He wrenched free of the thugs’ grip. Sidney stopped laughing. “I won’t do it, I tell you. What you’re asking is unconscionable. Taking away the homes of thousands of people? That’s all they’ve got. And for what? So some bloated trust fund kid will have a parking spot for his BMW? It won’t happen. Not through me. Not in my city!”

  “No?” said Sidney, the smile dropped from his face. “You’re a fool, then. But if money won’t persuade you, then maybe these will.” He handed the Mayor a large envelope.

  Mayor Randolph opened it and withdrew a series of photographs, his expression turned to one of a man suffering from seasickness as he flipped through them. His mouth fell open in utter shock. “How in hell did you even get these?” he demanded.

  Sidney found his grotesque smile again. “Why, Mr Mayor, we’re living in the digital age, now, didn’t you know? There are eyes everywhere.” Sidney took the photographs back from Mayor Randolph. “Some pretty racy stuff here, if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Mayor.” He clucked his tongue, pretending to study the photographs, “Your own daughter, Mister Mayor?” I’m not one to judge, personally, but I know a lot of people would think pretty poorly of you if they were to see these pictures. I wonder what would happen to a respectable public figure if he got caught doing these sorts of things?” He turned to his associate. “Morris, do you know what might happen to a person like that?”

  Morris the Barber seemed to think on this very deeply before saying, “I believe he’d have a hard time in the clink, boss. When word got out that a guy like that was in the joint, it might upset some pretty rough customers.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ernie Coconuts. “I heard about a guy like that. They cut his nuts off and flushed him down the toilet. They used him for a woman after that. Until he offed himself that is. Slit his wrists I think.”

  Mayor Randolph stared down at the ground, tears welling in his eyes. “I’m not a bad man,” he said quietly, and sniffed.

  “Of course you’re not,” said Sidney. “That’s why we’ll do our best to keep you in office. We’re going to guard these photos with our lives, aren’t we boys?”

  Ernie Coconuts, and Morris the Barber both nodded in agreement.

  “And so,” Sidney continued, “since we’re doing you a favor, maybe you might do us one in return? Just sign a few papers, maybe?

  Mayor Randolph nodded solemnly.

  “There’s a good boy. Don’t look so glum, Mr Mayor, after all, we’re only squashing a few roaches. Their lives won’t matter whether they live in free housing or anywhere else. And you’ll have a nice new class of taxpayers. Everybody wins.”

  The Mayor nodded again, too defeated for words.

  Sidney reached into his coat and produced a second envelope, this one much thicker and heavy with cash. “From my employer,” he said, passing it to the mayor, who took it and slipped into his own pocked out of reflex.

  Sidney put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Suddenly an engine started and headlights shone as a black Town Car pulled up. “Just remember,” said Sidney, with the door open, preparing to get in, “We’re only shaking out a roach trap. They’re dead already.” He flashed his obscene smile one last time before getting in back between his two associates.

  The Mayor watched the Town Car pull out of the garage, the weight of the envelope heavy in his pocket, the smell of oil creeping up from the cement floor, his mind a twisted nest of remorse and self-disgust. He needed a bath, preferable one in a large body of water directly beneath a high bridge, but he’d settle for a hot shower.

  Sidney settled into the Town Car’s leather seats, trying to make himself as comfortable as he could wedged between the two heavy men.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said “I’d call that a success if I didn’t know better. What do you say?”

  “I think my mother would be proud, boss. She always wanted me to get into politics,” said Morris the Barber.

  “I liked the part where we showed him the pictures,” said Ernie Coconuts. “Boss?” he asked after a short pause. “Do you think I could have them?”

  “Under ordinary circumstances I most certainly would let you keep them, Ernie, but as it is, I’m afraid they’re too valuable. And remember, they’re our employer’s property to begin with.”

  “Oh,” said Ernie Coconuts.

  Abruptly Sidney wrinkled his nose. “Good heavens,” he said, covering the lower portion of his face. “What is that offensive odor?”

  Morris and Ernie both exchanged glances.

  “It wasn’t me,” said Ernie Coconuts. “I smell it too.”

  “Well don’t look at me,” said Morris the Barber, trying not to gag. “Smells like a sewer pipe clogged with Limburger cheese.”

  Sidney’s eyes were tuning red and wet. The smell seemed to intensify the longer they drove. There was a thickness to the stench, a palpable quality that settled into the back of the throat. “Driver?” Sidney asked pleasantly. “That smell?”

  “What about it,” the driver said gruffly, without turning around.

  “That wouldn’t be emanating from you, would it?”

  The man in the driver seat continued down the street in silence. He had a high collar and a chauffeur's hat pulled down low on his head, but between them, Sidney could make out pale flesh that blistered in phlegmy bubbles that quivered like gelatin when they hit a bump and looked like they might burst and start oozing pus at any moment.

  Morris the Barber and Ernie Coconuts cracked their windows to let some of the stink drift into the cool night air.

  They were driving down Ninety-First Street when the Town Car took an unexpected left. Sidney waited for the driver to point the car back East the way they should have been headed, but he only continued on the same path. “Driver,” he said “You seem to have taken us on a bit of a detour.”

  “Bridge’s out,” the driver mumbled in a voice like bubbling tar.

  “It seems the bridge is out, gentlemen. We’re taking a less direct course,” Sidney informed his companions, who heard just as well as he did what the driver had said.

  “Hey, boss,” Morris the Barber spoke up, “If we keep going this way, we’re headed-”

  “Right through Sable Town,” Ernie Coconuts finished.

  “Now that is rather serendipitous,” Sidney clapped his hands together. “It looks like we’ll have a front row seat to the roach nest. That should be something worth seeing.”

  “Aw, it’s just a bunch of liquor stores and falling-down buildings,” said Ernie Coconuts.

  “Yeah,” Morris the Barber agreed. “It ain’t worth seeing unless you like looking at fleabag motels with spray paint writing all over them.”

  “Now, now, boys. It’s like our good mayor said. It’s all these people’ve got,” said Sidney.

  “Not if we got anything to say about it they don’t,” said Morris the Barber, and the three of them shared a crude laugh.

  “It’s like you said, boss. We’re going to turn on the light and watch them scatter!” said Ernie Coconuts, and they laughed again.

  The Town Car did indeed take them through Sable Town. Very soon the exterior began to take on a sinister quality. The windows both rolled up, and the two big men checked to make sure the doors were locked. The smell crept back into the car. It seemed to intensify; to add a scent to the run down condition of this part of the city and give it a physical presence. The storefronts began to bear busted windows, and the frequency of iron bars and mesh grating over them increased. Litter blew thro
ugh the streets freely like tumbleweeds through a desert landscape and the buildings seemed to sag under their own weight and settle at odd angles. Things were darker here, dirtier. Packs of stray dogs knocked over garbage cans, and men dressed in rags slept in the alleyways. All the street lights had been busted out as if Sable Town craved the darkness, and would not allow such things.

  All the while the stench was mounting in the car. The three passengers gagged and retched in the back seat, holding their hands over their noses and mouths.

  “I can’t breathe, boss!” shouted Ernie Coconuts, clawing at his throat.

  “He’s lucky, Boss,” cried Morris the Barber. “I wish I couldn’t breathe!”

  “Stop the car!” Sidney shrieked at the driver. “Let us out this instant, do you hear me?”

  The driver responded by mashing the gas pedal down to the floor. The Town Car flew through the derelict, potholed streets, and everything through the tinted windows became a blur of faded brick and boarded windows. Dirt-streaked bums whipped their heads around as the car shot past the garbage fires where they warmed themselves. Stray cats, riddled with mange, leaped out of the path of the speeding automobile as it stirred a wake of loose refuse behind it.

  All three men were screaming now, muffled sounds with their hands over their mouths and their red eyes watering from the permanent stench that embroiled them. A tire blew out with a bang like a cannon, and it was quickly followed by another. Sparks flew from white-hot rims as the Town Car began to carom wildly from one side of the street to the other. The streets sparkled in the bare glow from the odd remaining streetlights, glass and nails littered their path. Another powerful explosion came from below and another tire succumbed to the sharp refuse. The car settled to an awkward angle on its one remaining tread, continuing to throw sparks like a blacksmith’s grinder.

  The final tire blew and the car drifted sideways through the street, rims digging a trench through ruined asphalt. They jumped a curb and sent trashcans and broken shopping carts flying like bowling pins before coming to a stop outside a narrow alleyway. Before any of the passengers could react, the driver side door flew open and the driver sprang out and darted away into the darkened alley. He reached the side wall, and to the amazement of the three men watching him, crawled straight up the brick building side and disappeared into the shadows above.

  “Am I seeing things?” said Ernie Coconuts. His heart was thudding in his chest, and he’d yet to catch his breath.

  Morris the Barber shook his head in disbelief. “He just crawled up the side of that building like a-”

  “Don’t say it,” Sidney warned.”

  The three of them stepped out of the car. Sidney composed himself and straightened his tie. They looked around at the derelict structures, dark, shabby houses with caved-in roofs and shattered glass in the window panes. “Right,” said Sidney. “I don’t suppose any of us has his bearings? Anything look familiar? Do either of you have the faintest idea where we are? Or more importantly, how we get out of this awful place?”

  “If he left the keys, we might could roll out of here if we went slow enough, boss,” said Morris the Barber.

  “That’s good thinking. Ernie, check the ignition.”

  Ernie Coconuts leaned in through the driver door. “No luck,” he said. “But would you take a look at this.”

  The other two rushed over to see what he was talking about. They each grimaced, making identical facial expressions. The seat was coated with a yellowish slime that stunk like rotting meat and hospice bedpans.

  “What is that stuff?” said Morris the Barber.

  “Whatever it is, it must have come from the driver,” said Sidney.

  A cold wind blew down the street stirring discarded newspaper and cigarette wrappers as the three men backed away from the car. “I don’t suppose either of you knows which way we came?” asked Sidney.

  The two men both looked away in opposite directions.

  “Perfect,” he muttered. “Nevertheless, we must choose a direction and sally forth. I’d say that way looks good, unless either of you have any objections?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Well then. We’ll keep to the streets, avoid any alleyways and suspicious characters and we should be out of here relatively quickly. Stay close to me gentlemen. You’re going to earn your keep tonight. There’ll be a good bonus for each of you if you get me out of here. And needless to say, any harm I experience will be visited sevenfold upon the members of your household.”

  “Sure, boss,” they both agreed.

  They set off into the darkness, bordered on either side by the jagged, asymmetrical framework of crumbling constructions and charred houses left to fester like rotting teeth past the cracked sidewalks. Everywhere they looked there were overflowing trashcans spilling refuse out into the streets. Cars parked along the curbs and in various driveways sat paint-stripped and eaten through with rust in places, all with flat tires. Some were supported by blocks, proudly displayed in the centers of bare lawns. They felt eyes on them, watching from behind broken windows of squalid houses, and from unseen figures hidden in the deepest black of alleyways. When the wind kicked up hard enough all the rotting buildings swayed and creaked as if ready to collapse at any moment. The streets were filled with shattered glass and pieces of charred furniture that had been cast aside and then burned for apparent recreation.

  And suddenly, the street ended. Two sawhorses with faded caution tape stretched between them sat in front of a massive sink hole. All around was piled with rubble and dirt and chunks of asphalt.

  “Which way, boss?”

  Sidney looked one way, and then the other. “We’ll cut through this alley here, gentlemen. Circle around the sinkhole, and then pop out a little farther up the street.”

  Neither man offered complaint so they headed off into the mouth of the alleyway. The high narrow walls on either side of them blocked all but the faintest light. They all three had the sensation of being crushed by ever-narrowing slabs of brick as they found their way in the dark.

  “I don’t like it in here,” said Ernie Coconuts.

  “Yeah, boss. It’s too dark to see what I’m stepping in down here, but I’m not sure I want to know,” said Morris the Barber.

  “Quiet, you two. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  “I hope so, boss, because if I have to-” Ernie Coconut’s words ended in a burbling choke as something dark and unidentifiable darted in front of them with limbs as dark as the night, and lashed out at the large man before scurrying away. There was a sound like the fluttering of wings followed by the scrambling of multiple legs over pavement. Ernie Coconuts turned around to face the two men behind him, holding his hands out before him in a gesture of helplessness and confusion.

  Sidney and Morris the Barber could only watch in a state of shock as hot liquid pumped out of the gash in Ernie Coconut’s neck, spurting across the narrow walls and painting the front of his suit a sticky crimson. He fell to his his knees gargling as he tried to scream, slapping at the ragged flap of skin where his throat had been as if he could push the blood back inside. His ever-widening eyes like twin full moons set in his pale, bloodless face were the last things Morris the Barber and Sidney saw of Ernie Coconuts before he was dragged away into the darkness by his chittering, unseen assailant.

  Sidney stood for a brief moment, frozen in a chill of terror before gathering himself. “It’s an ambush! Quickly, Morris, back the way we came!”

  But Morris the Barber didn’t hear him. He had been running back the other way long before Sidney gave the order. The big man was not made for sprinting and his feet slammed down like pylons being driven into the pavement. But he never slowed or looked back, huffing and puffing, his sweating face a mask of fear as he ran. Suddenly he tumbled over and spilled down to the grimy alley floor. He scraped his hands and knees during the fall and winced at a sting he hadn’t felt since childhood. He moaned, feeling an odd sensation in his leg. It was as
if everything below the right knee had gone completely numb. He reached down to asses the damage, but strangely, there was nothing to touch.

  His screams bounced off the encroaching brick walls as he saw what had been made of him below. His leg had been reduced to a raw stump, sliced off so cleanly he hadn’t even felt it. Blood from his severed artery jetted out in time with his own beating heart, and sickeningly, he saw at the center a pale circle of bone like his leg was a cut of ham steak. Morris the Barber continued to wail even as he felt a clutch of strange hands grab hold. A high womanly shriek escaped his lips and died abruptly a second later as his head was jerked completely around, his neck snapping loudly, and echoing off the narrow brick. His head wobbled backward slightly on a neck that was twisted like someone wringing out wet laundry. He was dragged away as Ernie Coconuts had been, and there was nothing left of Morris the Barber thereafter save a bloody trail leading off into the darkness.

  Sidney Rune was in a panic. He didn’t know which way to turn. They were everywhere, surrounding him. He couldn’t see, but he could hear that awful fluttering sound close by in the dark. Like wings. Enormous, papery wings. He felt them churning the air. The beating of those hideous wings stirred a festering stench, as if some long forgotten grave were being disturbed. He sensed hands reaching for him in the darkness. Multiple hands, malformed, too slender and fragile to be human.

  He whimpered as he withdrew his cigarette lighter from his jacket pocket, and with shaking hands attempted to light it. It sparked once and in the ensuing flash he saw a hundred pale bodies, some awful mixture of man and insect, with white, blistered skin that had never seen the light of day, and bulbous black eyes and pincers jutting out of their drooling mouths. He struck the lighter again, and another brief flash illuminated their pasty, monstrous forms as they drew nearer, closing in on him with their flittering over-sized wings and their antennae bobbing crazily like possessed dowsing rods. He was finally able to produce a flame, and its dim orange glow revealed a number of creatures far more abundant than he had originally thought. They numbered in the tens of thousands and spread through the alley as far as he could see, crawling over each other and forming grotesque hillocks with their squalid, stinking bodies, mandibles working and chittering as they writhed over one another.