Evil Jester Digest Volume One

by Rick Hautala

  “Critic? A word critic?” Sharpe slaps his forehead like he’s trying to knock the static out. “I mean a writing critic?”

  “Yep. And he’s a good writer, too. The lit journal carries him. You ought to read his stuff.”

  “You mean his reviews?”

  “Well, he hasn’t published any of his fiction yet. But it’s amazing.”

  Sharpe gives a throaty laugh. He can feel half-melted ice chips jostling in his gullet. His mouth tastes like a couch. That was bad pot, he thinks. He says, “Unpublished. So he’s not even a failed writer yet.”

  Amy purses her lips. “I’ve heard this before. He’s a reader, that’s what counts. And he has a literary degree.”

  “Tramp stamp.” Sharpe pulls the straw from his cup with a skriiiitch and levels it at her eyes. “He’s the Devil.”

  “You’re baked.”

  Of course I’m baked, I’m made of clay. Clay pot. You don’t know. Yet you, almost still a child. I’m probably younger than you are. God made me and put me here to break pretty little things. You don’t know. You’re making me want things that confuse me and I’ve killed men for far, far less.

  But there’s a novelty in it, in the way the sight and smell of her are turning him inside out. After all, who else could hurt Emil Sharpe?

  A pillbug pauses in its progress over his big toe and looks up at him. You’re making too much of her, God says.

  “You made too little of me.” He presses his thumb down on the insect. An inaudible crunch and a tiny white bead are its end. It’s more satisfying than a razor through a windpipe.

  “What did you say?” Amy asks.

  “Would you read one of my stories?” he asks. “I’ll read yours of course, if you want.”

  She beams. “Would love to.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready to have a whole group of eyes pick through it. So just you, okay? No boyfriend either.”

  “Okay.”

  *****

  After emailing her the file, he leans back in his chair and studies his workspace. Empty Slurpee cups stacked inside one another like retarded matryoshka dolls; Post-Its with half-ideas that he’ll never flesh out and that he can’t let go of; the Colt Python he used to carry on his waist in the early days, when he fancied himself an outlaw. The gun feels strange in his grip anymore. No kill feels the way it used to, not really. So he’ll sit in the Hollywood Inn and write his slice-of-life yarns and count the rejections. So what. No one can say he hasn’t lived.

  There’s a knock on the door. He slips the Python into the desk drawer and finds God standing on his stoop.

  “It was wrong of you to pull that bug shit,” Sharpe snarls. “How long were you peepin’ on us?”

  “You’ve settled on this path, then?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I am the Lord thy God and I do not answer questions.” The old man crosses his arms and reclines against the walkway’s railing. He lets out a long sigh, and Sharpe knows the fucker’s just winding up. “I thought there was more to you than the imperatives that drive a rutting dog. But you animals are all the same. You never see that life is for the individual.”

  The old man slowly shakes his head. “Looking for meaning in others and what they have—what they may or may not have for you—is a pitiful, ponderous existence.”

  “Then why’d you go and make Adam?”

  God starts to answer, but then he stops mid-breath, and his eyes go askew as if there’s just been a thirty-car pileup inside his brain. He glares at Sharpe. “You’re a demon!”

  “You were alone. Now you’re lonely. What’s worse? Hey, though, better to have loved and lost.” Sharpe steps back and allows the door to swing leisurely shut on the old man’s gaping face.

  Sharpe takes a cold shower. With icy droplets beating on the back of his head, he stares stupefied at his prick. It stands defiantly against the water, and when he lays it in his palm it feels like a firebrand.

  Out, damned spot.

  When he’s done he stands outside the shower for a while and lets the water run off his skin. He runs his hands over his hips and chest and back down again. Not much difference appearance-wise between the man impotent and spent, but he feels…he doesn’t know how he feels. Spent just about sums it up, he figures.

  Then he writes for eight hours. Sleeps four. Gets up and writes another four. Checks his email every half hour.

  It’s possible she hasn’t read it yet, maybe hasn’t been able to check her email. But he told her he was going to send it. Maybe she has read it and just doesn’t have anything to say. He digs his knuckles into his eye and sighs. He’s tweaking the head of his cock with his other hand. “All right. Okay.” He pushes back from the desk. Can’t sit here pinching himself all night. Something about idle hands. He heads down to the 7-Eleven.

  Old fella named Bruce is manning the counter tonight. Sharpe gives him a nod on the way to the Slurpees. He rounds the donut case and stops. His stomach does a rolling Cheshire Cat turn and his legs nearly give out.

  There’s a young mother there with her boy. He’s going from spout to spout and pushing his finger in to sample each flavor. “Ba-na-na,” he announces, the little Anti-Christ, tugging on the dispenser knob. Gouts of yellow slush splatter the grate below.

  “Do you want that one?” Mom asks. She doesn’t see Sharpe there, but it’s etched in the haggard flesh beneath her cheap foundation: KILL ME

  The boy dumps a few more mouthfuls of banana down the drain and gives a petulant “No.” He goes back to the blue raspberry.

  Blue Raspberry. The tumbler above the spigot is only a quarter-full. Panic seizes Sharpe. He lurches forward with a cry and grabs the boy’s hand.

  The mother pulls the child away, gawking at Sharpe like he’s a Moonie. “Excuse me!”

  The boy’s impudence, meanwhile, is cosmic. He regards Sharpe not as a madman but as a bug, the sort of voiceless squirming thing he would vivisect with a safety pin out behind the garage.

  The Python is tucked into the back of Sharpe’s pants.

  “I said excuse me,” Mom repeats.

  “Problem?”

  Bruce is behind Sharpe. The two are on good terms, and Bruce is barely at ten percent as his blood-rimmed eyes wander over the scene.

  Sharpe points at the boy. “He put his finger in the thing. All of ’em.”

  Mom clutches Damien dramatically and says, “He’s allowed to sample! How else do you know!”

  “There are SAMPLE CUPS!” Sharpe sweeps an armful of them off the counter.

  Bruce gently takes his arm. “Hey. Find your mellow.”

  “Psycho.” The woman pushes past Sharpe with boy in tow, who looks back not with sullenness but piqued curiosity.

  That’s right kid, psycho, just like you. Only I’ve got manners.

  Sharpe shoves his hands into his pockets. “Well hell, Bruce. I just feel terrible about this whole thing. Let me pick these up.” He kneels to gather the sample cups. The Python slips free. He sees it from the corner of his eye, and before it lands his hand is flying after it and he clamps down on the pistol just before it hits the floor and goes off, which it would have. He fears it might go off still, his hand shaking hard and new veins coursing with fear. He closes his other fist around a paper cup and grits his teeth.

  “Nice piece,” is all Bruce says.

  “Thank you.”

  “That kid didn’t know what he was in for.”

  “Wouldn’t have been him.”

  It’s impossible to tell at this point if the dialogue they’re having is ironic or not. Sharpe rises. Bruce just smiles. He grabs a jumbo cup and pours Sharpe a blue raspberry himself, just like they used to do.

  “On the house.”

  Sharpe lingers for a while, jawing with Bruce and picking through real estate flyers and road maps. Bruce tells him about how when he was a kid he thought about death a whole lot, how he built himself a little pine box to sleep in. Later on he made that same box into a derby rac
er for his son.

  “That’s sort of interesting,” Sharpe says, and blows off most of Bruce’s face. To be weird he pours the rest of his Slurpee into Bruce’s skull then leaves.

  He liked the story about the pine box and manages to work it into something he likes even more, where the box was built for someone else in a revenge plot that never panned out then used for the derby car. He wishes he’d sent this one to Amy instead of that other thing. Maybe next time. Assuming he hears back this time.

  Three hours after the kill the gritty feel of it is already fading, the memories in his nerves already asleep. Something is really wrong. He checks his email again. Refreshes it. The fingers in his gun hand are numb. He drums them against the mouse then dashes them on the edge of the desk. Pins and needles dart across his flesh. He massages his hand but the awful sensation won’t go away, and then his thighs are growing warm, and he feels a prickle at the back of his balls.

  This is no good. Where’s the old afterglow? Why—

  He pulls at his hair as the bad feeling spreads. Can’t think. Opens the browser he just closed and checks his email. Screams. His hand and groin are on fire and nothing else seems real outside that halo of pain. His writing isn’t real. It’s no more substantial now than it was when it was swimming around in his head. His vision is growing dark.

  He deletes the new story, jerks off, and goes to bed.

  *****

  She emails him four days later.

  She “liked” the story “a lot.” She’d “love” to talk about it. Is he free to “hang out?”

  Sharpe hasn’t been able to open his right hand for two days now. It stays frozen in that claw grip, until he reads the email, and then it begins to relax. He works through the pain to send a reply. As before, he says he’ll meet her at the Laundromat.

  They end up at a coffeehouse across town where the server is happy to Irish up Sharpe’s cappuccino. The resulting concoction is inauthentic and vile, and Sharpe sucks the scummy cream over his lips with a grimace. Seeing a familiar look on Amy’s face, he forces a smile. “So.”

  “So.” She smiles back. “I printed off a copy but forgot to bring it. Anyway, I really did like it. Sorry it took so long for me to write back.”

  He shrugs. “No problemo.”

  “Oh! I heard about that guy that got shot at the 7-Eleven over there. Did you know him?”

  “I don’t go there a lot.”

  “I might find another Laundromat. That one’s kinda out of the way anyway. Cheaper than on campus though, and nobody’s ever there.”

  “A-Lic doesn’t have a washer and dryer?”

  “He wouldn’t like it if I brought over my laundry. Can’t blame him.”

  She slaps her knees. “You know what, let’s go over there and get your story.”

  “Over there? Wha?” That doesn’t make any sense. Sharpe’s fingers dig into his leg.

  “It’s sitting in Alec’s printer tray. It’ll take like two seconds. C’mon.”

  He sits in stock-still agony. He’s got about half a breath before she wrinkles her brow at him. He rises on stiff legs.

  “Let’s,” he says, vacantly.

  She talks the whole way over there about the story. Why the hell does she need the hard copy then? Why the hell do they have to…they’re pulling into the driveway of a small duplex. The windows on either side are dark. Maybe A-Lic’s not there.

  Cheese and crackers. Sharpe has been dealt more mortal blows in his strange existence than Rasputin’s cat and he’s shaking in his flippy-floppies over this, this…Alec.

  They stand on the porch. Amy knocks. Knocks.

  She looks apologetically at Sharpe. “Don’t have a key.”

  “It’s open,” a voice calls. He sounds irritated. He must recognize her knock. Some reception.

  When the door swings inward, and Sharpe sees Alec in his La-Z-Boy with pages in his hand, he knows.

  Alec, a wire-frame ghoul with angry angles and spiky hair and a two-sizes-too-big sweater, nudges his glasses down the bridge of his nose and intones, “Do you have something personal against commas?”

  Sharpe’s mouth falls open and won’t close again.

  Amy says, “That’s not mine, Alec!” and crosses the room to snatch the story from his hands.

  He whisks it out of reach. “Now wait. Whose is it, then?” He eyes Sharpe.

  “Alec, this is Emil. Emil, Alec.” Amy’s expression is pained. Sharpe’s is a bloodless rictus.

  Grab it grab it! Just take it! Take it from him!

  “He from your class?” Alec looks back at the pages, but he’s got one eye on Amy and she misses them again.

  “No, I know him from the Laundromat. That’s his, Alec, can you just give it to me please?”

  “I was going to say,” Alec tells her, not giving it to her please, “I was going to say this is why I won’t read your stuff. But you wrote this?” Eyes on Sharpe now.

  “Why would a blind man,” Alec asks, saying blind man like BLY-YIIIND MAHN, “have a TV?”

  “W-what?” Sharpe croaks.

  “He’s been blind all his life, this narrator, and alone, and he has a television set.” Alec lifts his shoulders to his ears. “Huh? Whaaa?”

  Sharpe’s cheeks are hot. “Why? Er, why not?”

  Alec stares at him for a moment. “Well.”

  “Why can’t a blind man listen to TV?” Amy protests. She at last swipes the story from Alec’s grasp. “Better than radio. I mean modern radio.”

  Alec makes a noise like he has a hairball. “Yeah, modern television is the mind’s eye. For lobotomy patients.”

  Back to Sharpe now. Alec says, “What she just did there? A reader shouldn’t have to work like that to rationalize your senseless inclusion of a TV that doesn’t even figure into the plot.”

  “We just came to get the story,” Amy says. “Thank you, Alec. We’re going.”

  “Ooh. Where ya off to?” He perches his fingertips together.

  There must be something redeeming about him. Sharpe’s eyes are still adjusting to the dimness, so maybe there’s something he can’t see. Maybe all of this is charming when you’re not the one under the knife.

  A stand-up in an operating theater, that’s all he is. So there’s a TV. Big shit.

  The house smells like beets. There’s a bookshelf behind the recliner. There’s a ten-speed leaning against it. Ulysses is faced out toward the room.

  “Damnation,” Sharpe breathes.

  “You do much reading, or just writing?” Alec asks.

  Sharpe’s leg kicks back and knocks the front door shut. His jaw is agape again, eyes wide. His hands flail at the air.

  “What’s that? What are you doing?” Alec cries.

  Sharpe lurches forward. Amy jumps back as he rips the pages from her hand. He shakes them at Alec.

  “These are not your gods! You have no heroes!”

  Alec tries to get up. Sharpe hurls the papers into his face. “I don’t know what the hell you’re saying!” Alec hollers. Sharpe grabs a handful of his sweater and hurls him to the floor.

  Amy screams as the Python comes out from behind Sharpe’s back, a rust-colored cannon in the sun’s last rays, barrel swinging in a drunken arc toward the prostrate Alec.

  The girl’s screams are lost to Alec’s. He has seen the gun. He presses his face into the floor and begs for mercy through a mouthful of snot.

  Archival Hitler footage plays on the back of Alec’s rumpled shirt. Sharpe’s jaw works back and forth. “Judas.”

  “Emil, don’t! Wait!” Amy tries to dial her phone. It slips and clatters next to Alec.

  “Satan.”

  “Emil, please don’t! Emil I’m saying please don’t kill him! Emil look at me!”

  “Cheeser.”

  Sharpe throws his head back as the Python roars, punching two clean holes through the dimples above Alec’s ass.

  Alec goes rigid then limp.

  So quickly does the echo of his murder depart; slipping sligh
t and red-faced from the room as if even it knows its triviality.

  No afterglow.

  “Emil. Emil.” She says it over and over. He looks at her.

  She stands with her hands flat against her sides, eyes bigger and darker than seem possible. Her nipples stand erect through her shirt.

  Sharpe drops the gun. “LET’S FUCK,” he announces and drops his pants.

  She faints hard. It almost seems calculated, the way her head rebounds off the hardwood. Sharpe watches her lay there. Then he retrieves the gun.

  A looping siren grows near. With his sweats still around his knees, he shuffles to the front door. There he sees two police cruisers pulling into the yard. There, he pushes the Colt’s barrel into his flesh and says a vulgar prayer.

  When he emerges from the house after the third gunshot, his pants are still down, but he has freed himself of his immodesty; and while he doesn’t think he will be loved for that, maybe he’ll find something greater within himself to hold onto.

  *****

  Dr. Lundgren pokes his head into the room and says, “I hear you’re having nightmares.”

  Sharpe rolls away from the rear wall and looks up at him. “I don’t want pills. I wanna write ’em down.”

  Lundgren’s face never changes. He never blinks. He says, “I don’t see how you can do that right now.”

  “Let me out of this.” Sharpe jerks his arms about inside the jacket. He kicks his legs and screams, despite the rule about screaming, and screams louder when Lundgren shuts the door.

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M GONNA DO? WHAT CAN I DO? WHAT CAN I DOOOOOOOOO?”

  God sits crouched in the corner with sympathetic eyes. “Just try to remember them,” he says. “You can write them later.”

  Sharpe sobs for a while then screams some more, and some time later falls back into slumber.

  *****

  David Dunwoody is the author of the Empire zombie series as well as the collections Dark Entities and Unbound & Other Tales. Dave lives in Utah and can be visited on the Web at daviddunwoody.com.