Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  "No," whispered Frank, stuffing his pockets full of paper fragments.

  "You know what I'm forced to do now, Frank," the man said as he grabbed Frank by the ankle. Frank tried to wrestle free, but a violent jerk sent his chin smashing towards the floor, crushing it with a soft crack.

  "You know what this makes me do," the man said.

  Frank looked up at his father as he held the razor against his shin. He could feel the blade slide down, carefully at first, but then it clasped down and bit his skin, cutting open a fine line of flesh right above the rest of his scars, adding a new parallel line. Frank shrieked in pain, and a few drops of blood slowly drizzled down his leg and onto the floor. The paper pieces fell out like flakes from his pockets as he winced in pain. He could see his father's ice blue eyes in the reflection of the razorblade, and then all seemed still.

  De Gracy looked up from his own reflection in the letter opener. The room was oddly cold, he felt. He scratched his nose and coughed, the cigarette between his lips long since dead. He spat it out in his hand and laid it by the arranged letters. The chair screeched. De Gracy stood up, and the lights flickered. He sat down on the bed and removed his pants. He let his fingers caress his inner leg, all along the scars from his ankle, up past the shin, across the knee and well up his inner thigh. The lights flickered.

  De Gracy reached towards a nightstand at the foot of the bed. He rummaged through the top drawer and took out a photograph of two young men. They were smiling at the camera, and as the light continued to flicker, it looked as if the two of them were laughing. De Gracy put his finger on a nearby switch, still looking at the photograph, and as he turned off the light, the two young men were imprinted before his eyes like a ghostly image, only to fade away as the darkness crept deeper and deeper into his mind.

  CHAPTER 29

  The truck puffed on through the streets of Plissbury with little coughs of smoke blowing from its back. It cruised down an empty intersection, bent its way past several parked cars, and was led into a narrow alley, the heavy rubber grinding down on the gravel with every turn of the wheels.

  Stone shut off the engine, and a flush of eerie silence flowed through his mind. He was overrun by thoughts. He shivered, and it felt like his head grew hotter and smaller, tightening around every thought. He looked at the shovel that was leaning up against the passenger seat.

  The alley behind the Pit was dark, the only light coming from the office window. Stone wasn't surprised to hear people still in the building at this hour. He had known, after what had already happened, that there would never be a good time to do what he was about to.

  He went and opened the back of the truck. He could just barely see the outlines of chairs, tables, and lamps from the pale light of one of the streetlights behind him. Some of the pieces were covered with fine, white cloth. The wooden furniture looked old, a putrid scent of death reeking out. Stone took out of some of the furniture and placed it along the side of the Pit. He left just enough empty room inside the truck for something the size of a big desk.

  Stone left the truck and shimmied along the side of the Pit, careful not to rouse the loose gravel at his feet. The voices from inside the office intensified as Stone got closer, but they remained inaudible. Stone glimpsed at the container on the other side of the alley. It wasn't by the window, so he could get to it without being seen, but he was afraid of being heard. He then glanced over at the office window, made sure no one was sticking their head out, and rushed to the other side of the alley.

  The container had a set of four rickety wheels, but it was still heavy, and as Stone pulled it back towards the truck, the container gave off a considerable amount of hum that crackled up and down the alley.

  'Shhh, Goddamnit!' muttered Stone under his breath. He stopped moving the container, fearing it would make too much noise to get all the way to the truck. Instead, he turned the container slightly, opened it up, and checked to see that the body was still there. He looked down and saw Grundy's shiny face reflecting the moonlight from above. A feeling of dread and unfamiliarity struck Stone, and he felt hypnotized by Grundy's face as it lay there in a filthy dumpster, shiny and beautiful.

  Stone grabbed underneath Grundy's arms and started pulling and tugging. Stone's arm was still bruised, but he was able to bite through the pain. He had managed to pull Grundy's spine up against the edge of the dumpster. A clap of thunder sounded close by, the following light revealing the morbid scene of Grundy's contorted body as he lay lifeless on the edge between trash and gravel.

  “I'm sorry, Grundy,” muttered Stone. “I'm so sorry.”

  He gave one final jerk and the big body fell to the ground with a muffled thud. Another strike of thunder, and Stone felt like he had been seen by some witness far, far away.

  Stone looked down the alley and at the outlines of the truck. He then grabbed the body once again and started pulling it, but the dead body was heavy, and Stone had to pull it so slowly that there was virtually no momentum to spur on the movement. The voices from the office, which had been a murmur so far, now suddenly intensified even as Stone was moving away from the office, and then, when the lights of the main hall suddenly flicked on, a barrage of light spilling out into the alley, Stone threw himself to the ground, bruising his face and hands. He crawled closer to the building, and the voices got vivid.

  "I told you," said one of the voices. "Look, there's plenty of room for target practice here. Put up some bullseyes here and there."

  "And don't you think?" said another. "And don't you think that folks would be calling the cops every other minute because of goddamned gunshots from inside?"

  The first voice was silent for a while. "We could say it was a gun club.”

  "Gun club? Gun cl... Know what, get the hell back into the office... Gun club."

  The voices trailed off, but the light in the main hall remained. Stone peeked up from his hiding place and saw the empty main hall. He hurried back to the body and heaved it all the way to the back of the truck. He lifted it up and into the back. He had to remove some more furniture for a better fit, but Grundy was now inside, and Stone's lungs were crying from exhaustion. He was about to close the back of the truck when he caught another glimpse of Grundy's face. He knew that he could just close the back door, get in the truck, and drive away, never to see the Pit again, but something ignited his feelings, coveted him to stay, and as Stone kept staring at the dead body of his friend, it dawned upon him that it was because of a deeply rooted sense of ignorance. It had crept through his chest and taken a grip around his heart ever since he had seen Grundy stare at the five slaves as they staggered through the main hall and down into the hatch. Somewhere between then and now he had lost Grundy, and a terrifying feeling of not getting all of him out of the Pit immobilized him.

  A jolt of thunder roared, illuminating the Pit. Stone looked at the great warehouse. He knew that if he was going to get away from here with more than Grundy's body that he was forced to go into the Pit one last time.

  Stone sneaked down the alley once more, but this time he stopped outside the strongly lit main hall. The room was empty, the soft hum of voices from the back still creeping through. He unjumbled the flimsy window lock and crawled inside. He then turned right, away from the office, and towards the hall that led to Grundy's old room. He opened the door to the corridor, closed it behind him. There wasn't a single window or crack through which even the slightest beam of light could sliver, but Stone was calm. The darkness was becoming, he thought, and the added silence of the disappeared voices eased him as well. He took a deep breath and continued down the hall.

  When he reached the door at the end, he was surprised how short the corridor had seemed in the dark. He remembered the many times he had looked down the hallway, but then realized that he had never covered this distance before; that he had never actually been in Grundy's room.

  Stone opened the door and stepped inside the tiny space. It was illuminated by the several small lightbulbs around a dressi
ng room mirror. The room was neat and tidy with the exception of several pieces of paper that littered everywhere. Stone picked up one of them and brought it closer to the light, and as he read Grundy's meticulous scribbles, the same calmness that he'd felt out in the hall returned, and he suddenly felt like he had all the time in the world.

  He collected the papers from all over the room and piled them, one by one, on the edge of the dressing room mirror. He saw his own name in one of them.

  '...and immediately, as the magician draws upon the breath of life and bestows it unto the great stone golem, the statuesque creature sparks to life and mechanically turns to face its master. But it does not bow and it does not beg, and even though it sees a master in the magician, the master of arts himself sees a master in the golem as well...'

  Stone put the paper in a separate pile and continued to search the rest of the room. He found another one with his last name on it.

  '...With the Stone golem beside him, the magician can finally rid the village of the horrid barbarian attacks that had been flushing in for months and months on end, savagely murdering man and woman alike. The golem is posted by the village gates, and from then on, all barbarian assailants were struck down, either by their own weapons or by the golem's powerful stone fists. There was a...'

  The rest of the note was scribbled out with dark, black pen, erasing all words that might have ended the story. Stone searched for more of the story, feeling that he could finally find the answers that he had come for, but instead of finding even one more scrap of paper, he found what seemed like a scrap of black leather at first, lying under Grundy's bed. Stone sat down, the object wavering in his hands. Stone began shaking his head as he realized that he was holding a face, a mask. There were holes for the eyes, a ridge to cover a nose, and near the lower edge, contorting into scaly lips that weren't there, were the bulgy prints of raised scars and burns; Stone froze in place, realizing that he had found Grundy's face. The inside of the mask was white, and along it, in big capital letters was written the name SOLOMON. He turned the mask; he could recognize the scar above the right eye, for it would move whenever Grundy smiled; he could recognize the busy rows of cuts near the edge of the mouth from when Grundy's mouth seemed ready to burst of laughter; and, best of all, he recognized the heavy burn that had smeared Grundy's cheek for what seemed like an eternity. Stone had known an entire man's dreams and nightmares from all these scars that he had looked at every single day, and now he had them rub along the palms of his hands.

  Stone rose quietly from the bed. He folded the mask and put it in his inner pocket together with the two scraps of paper that he'd saved about the magician and the golem. He looked at the door, and even though he was desperate to finally leave, desperate to move on, there was still a missing piece in his mind which made him feel incomplete and lost. There was a sound of banging prison bars deep inside Stone's head as he bowed his gaze, but just as he was about to sit back down, he heard a rustle from out in the hallway. He stood and ran across the room, his hand by the leather of the holster strapped around his chest, but when he reached the door, it was violently slammed open; it hit Stone's face, a cracking sound ripping upwards from his chin. He was blown backwards and smashed the back of his head against the floor. A man came rushing in, but Stone managed to grab his foot and twist it, forcing the man tumbling to the floor. Stone moved backwards and pulled his gun at the man, who was slowly standing up. Stone recognized the man as the guard that had been watching the hatch when Grundy hanged himself.

  "There's no one in hell who'll stop me from leaving this room, so you might as well step down," said Stone, grinding his teeth with vicious force to contain his rage. "I know who you are, so consider yourself lucky to even get this chance."

  "And who am I?" asked the guard. "What's my name? Say my name if you know me so well, Noah Stone."

  "Your crimes don't need a name," said Stone. "Step the hell away from the door"

  "Careful, you don't want them to hear, do you?"

  "I don't care."

  "Of course you care. You're afraid of what you might do if they found you. You're afraid you might kill all of them."

  "I'm not afraid to kill a man. Now stand down and let me through, or I swear to God I'll do it."

  The man stepped aside. Stone kept the gun pointing at the guard's face, sidestepping towards the door. He turned and walked backwards into the hallway.

  "You came here because of him, didn't you?" said the guard, and Stone stopped moving. The guard was lying on the floor, looking at a broken piece of a mop, slowly rolling it back and forth on the floor. "I saw him die, you know..." he whispered. "He'd brought the rope to save the other niggers, but then he saw the empty hatch," said the guard, looking up at Stone. "And I told him that you had already taken them away, and he snapped. He thought it was your idea to drive them out and sell them."

  "I was meaning to save them! And I did! I freed all of them."

  "He started tearing at his face like a monster," said the guard, his monotone voice unchanged by Stone's outrage. "And I saw it come loose. I swear, I saw it come loose." The guard was silent for a while, and the gun in Stone's hand shook with the brittle sound of rattled metal. "But then he walked out, and I tried to crawl away, but he came back again, hulking, limping. He threw the rope over one of them beams in the ceiling, grabbed one of them stools, and... Then he turned blue... The nigger turned--"

  The gunshot roared like a banshee through the darkness, instantly perforating the guard's throat.

  Stone rushed through the hallway and out into the main hall. Two of Vodeni's men were already in position by the far away door, each of them brandishing a pistol. They turned towards Stone and started firing. Stone crouched down, smashing his knee to the floor. He retaliated with a few shots of his own as he continued towards the window. Another two guards came out into the hall, one of them holding a machine gun, but Stone had already reached the window. He jumped through, and some of the glass cut his face and arms, the curtain of bullets around him shattering the rest of the glass. He made for the truck, but the guards had run up against the windows and were now firing down at him. He sat behind the wheel, put it in motion, and, with no chance to turn in the narrow alley, he was forced to drive straight towards the blazing guns. The furniture by the side of the alley crunched as he drove over it, and bullets hailed in through the truck's windows and chassis. Stone kept his head down and accelerated; the alley narrowed as he came closer to the street on the other side, but he kept stepping on the speeder. The guards whistled by as the truck dashed past the main hall windows, the gunfire reflected in their eyes, and Stone, his veins throbbing with hot blood up his neck and head, caught just one blink of Vodeni's sly face.

  The alley narrowed, and the truck started scraping along the walls. It rammed into the dumpsters, windows smashing on both sides of the vehicle, but Stone pressed on. He could see Vodeni and his men step out in the alley in the rearview mirror, still pointing their guns at him, some of them aiming low to hit the screeching tires. Paper thin gusts of wind were forced between the truck and the brick walls, and with the screeching and scraping, they hummed like little shields of energy, forcing the truck onwards in a rush of engine roars and rustling metal, and when Stone finally reached the far end of the alley and turned left onto the street, the truck almost tipped over. Stone was on the open, empty road now, and the sound of the gunshots behind him slowly faded away. He was about to make another left turn when he looked down at his shirt, and a snapshot of him killing another man flickered before his eyes. He blinked a few times and almost steered the truck off the street. He looked up at the road, and then back down again. Something felt wet against the inner pocket of his coat. He felt inside and took out his hand. A gush of cold, like an avalanche down his back, spread through his entire body. His hand was covered with blood.

  CHAPTER 30

  Young Frank De Gracy was moving quickly down the street. He could feel the four edges of the envelope in his in
ner pocket, but he didn't dare take out the letter just yet. Heavy jolts of wind streamed through his silvery hair, his vest flapping behind him. He reached a square with a fountain, knowing that he was close to home, the impatience stronger than ever.

  He had to read it... He had to read it now.

  He unbuttoned his inner jacket and pulled out the letter. He carefully opened the envelope, but once he had liberated the letter from it, his grip slipped and the letter tore out of his hands and followed the trails of the wind.

  "No!" he murmured as he ran after the soaring letter, but the wind was much too strong, and the letter flew farther and farther away.

  The letter looped and floated, swirling closer and closer to the square fountain where it finally hit a young man across the face. The man grabbed the letter and looked at it for a minute. He tried making sense of the writing, contorting his mouth to pronounce some of the words to himself, but he ultimately gave up and threw the letter into the fountain behind.

  "No!" screeched Frank. "What the hell is the matter with you?" The letter was floating on top of the water surface, soaked.

  "I'm sorry," said the other. "I didn't know it was imp--"

  Frank punched the man, sending both of them splashing into the fountain. The letter floated between them, and as Frank grabbed after it, he was swiftly punched across the face, sending him splashing into the water. The two young men brawled on, sticking punches left and right, holding each other under the water and sweeping at each other’s legs with awkward kicks, and all the while the letter floated between them like a leaf among two colliding rowboats.