I scream and flap my hand around. The growth on my side starts to stretch out and flail around, like a worm on a hot sidewalk.
I finally manage to fling the thing off of me and it sails across the room and smacks the wall, falls to the floor. I run over to where it landed and jam my bare heel into it, stomping it over and over. When I'm done and I lift my foot up, there’s nothing left of the remote but a soft pile of red goo on the floor and all over the bottom of my foot.
I wipe my foot off on the carpet and examine the bites on my hand. It didn't break the skin, but my hand is covered in rows of shallow indentations and it feels like it's been crushed in a vice.
I wiggle my fingers and flex them, trying not to look back to the floor, at the pile of red jelly. I look at the TV. There's a crack in it at the corner where I winged the remote at it. Andy, Barney, and Opie have all stopped whatever they were doing and they're all staring up at the little spiderweb of cracked glass. There's a black hole surrounding it, not a physical hole but a dark spot on the screen that keeps getting bigger. I can also see an odd liquid squeezing out from the crack and running down the screen, it's like TV static encased in liquid. Shimmering, radiant snow that drips down and pools on the carpet.
I can't be here right now. This room is starting to make me feel sick and it's not just the hangover. I get dressed and even though it's a warm night, I throw on a jacket to cover up the conspicuous bulge on my right side.
The thing growing out of me doesn't like it, and I can feel it flipping around and contorting under my shirt. If I keep my arm down by my side I don't think anybody'll notice.
A short walk and I find a bar I don't think I've ever been to before. It's the sort of miserable place for weary drunks to consume a steady flow of booze with their heads down in silence. There's not even a sign outside.
I sit at the end of the bar. There's a guy a few seats down from me. He's turned around on his stool to face a little semicircle of amused onlookers. The guy is smiling, soaking up the attention. He's got a book of matches and he breaks one off every once in a while and strikes it. He takes the lit match and flicks it into his mouth, extinguishing it on his tongue. He does five or six in a row like that and then closes his mouth and swallows, opens up to reveal his mouth is empty and then sits back with this dipshit smile plastered on his face. The dipshit crowd around him is ooh-ing and aw-ing, highlight of their dipshit lives probably.
I look away disgusted. I can't stand these asshole who have to fucking preform for everybody. Like they got to have a fucking act. Some people never heard of conversation, I guess.
The bartender comes over to me behind the bar.
“What's his problem?” I ask, motioning to the dipshit.
“He's eating matches,” the bartender tells me, like I'm fucking blind. “He'll do it all night, too. Probably go through twenty books of matches. People love it. It's a riot, ain't it? What'll you have?”
“Yeah, a riot” I say without looking back at the guy. “Gimme PGA, and make it a triple, no ice.”
The bartender whistles and says, “Geez buddy, why don't you let me pour you a glass of paint thinner, your kidneys will thank you for it.”
“I just want to get wet is all,” I tell him. “What, you never seen anybody dive into the deep end head first?”
He sets a glass in front of me and fills it with clear liquid, shaking his head. “Here, I won't give you another for a while, though. I'm getting old and it hurts my back to carry you drunks out of here every night.”
“Don't worry about it. When I leave, I'll be running.”
I take the drink and walk over to the dipshit, wedging myself between two ardent cretins standing slack-jawed and bemused.
I don't have to wait long until he's at it again. He lights a match and tosses it into his mouth and then strikes another and does the same. The third time he does it, just as the match is about to land on his tongue, I throw my drink in his face. It ignites and the fucking idiot's head is enveloped in a haze of blue flame.
I'm screaming, laughing at the guy and then I stop cold when I realize I can't hear myself for the crowd.
Everyone around me is laughing and clapping, drowning me out. People are double over, holding their sides. Others are hyperventilating, pointing at the guy, red-faced and wide-eyed in breathless amazement.
And through the flicker of blue fire blazing all around him, I can see the guy still smiling that dipshit grin. He gets up off the bar stool, takes a deep bow, and hops back up again. His head is still burning when he picks up a glass of beer he has in front of him and takes a drink. He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and I can smell the fabric being singed.
And then he looks at me and says, “Hey Roman. Nice to see you. How's the kids, huh? Going to college pretty soon, I'll bet. Do you even know how old they are? How long you've been away? And your wife too, boy. You think she's remarried? I'll bet she is. She was always a looker, well...” He raises his hand up and makes a gesture, flipping it side to side.
I don't really begrudge him that, what he said about my wife. She was never a classic beauty, what with the Darth Vader helmet hairstyle and the middle-school principal fashion sense, but still, it's unexpectedly rude to say the least.
The crowd around him is still choking on laughter, howling like a goddamned pack of apes.
“Fuck you,” I tell the guy. It's the best I can come up with given the circumstances. The crowd cracks up even more at that. “Fuck all of you. Go die of fucking cancer, you pricks.”
I head for the door.
As I'm leaving, the human torch calls out behind me, “Do you even know where they live anymore, you sack of shit? Do you even know where to find them?”
The laughter behind me is explosive, like he's hit the final goddamned punchline of the night and he wants to leave on a high note.
I'm in another bar, just as dingy and dim as the last one, but at least this place doesn't have a fucking Vaudeville act.
I can't believe I didn't have a drink in the other place, but I'm damn sure going to have one now. Nothing washes away humiliation like a flash flood of whiskey.
So I have a drink and the thing on my side is spinning around under my jacket like a propeller. The whiskey hits me, seemingly the instant it touches my lips. The room slips a few shades darker and the air around me is shimmering in waves like a heat-mirage on a highway or a gas leak. All around me the people are speaking a language like marbles being dropped into calm water and warbling sounds of musical saws.
I'm not sure if the bartender speaks English. She's got two flat, sloppy tits dripping down her belly like vanilla ice cream and I'd like to take a lick. She doesn't respond to me verbally, but she does keep setting glasses of whiskey in front of me, which I drink as fast as she can put them down.
Fuck it.
Let the air dance around me, let the room shift to dutch angles like a tilting cruise ship, I'm only the newspaper cut-out of a man pinned to the refrigerator by a magnet anyway, right? Right?
Not so smart now, are you, College?
There is a man, a very drunk man, who is able to approximate my native language. I am thankful for his companionship. He is a good man.
The only man I can talk to.
He tells me about his goldfish.
“My goldfish is not himself lately,” the man moans.
I am sympathetic to this man and to his goldfish. I can relate to his pet's crisis of identity. It is a compelling story.
He continues. “He used to swim round the bowl. Counterclockwise, clockwise, these lazy circles. He was very content. But now... now he still swims the pattern, the circles, he floats up, he floats down. He doesn't care. He completes the circuit, but I can tell... His heart's not in it anymore.”
“I'm sorry,” I say. I reach out to comfort the man, putting a hand on his shoulder.
The man wipes a tear from his eye. Sniffs. “It's the isolation, I think. He held out as long as he could, I know it. He had a mind like a fucking stee
l trap, he did. But it gets to you. The isolation; the loneliness.”
The word isolation echos inside my head. “So what did you do?” I ask.
The man shakes his head. “Wasn't much I could do, really. By the time I tried to help him, I was already too late. He had lost his mind being locked away, separated like he was for so long. I reached into the bowl and took him out, but... Like I said, it was too late. Goddamn Shame.”
..isolation Isolation ISOLATION ISOLATION...lation..lation...ation...ation...ion...ion
“What!” I scream. I get up fast and wobbling, knocking my stool over. You did what? Why did you take him out of the bowl? How could you do that? It wasn't perfect, but it was all he had, couldn't you see that? He wanted to be in the bowl, you son of an idiot bitch. He wanted to be in the bowl!”
And then the anger's back. And me and my old familiar friend go hand in hand down the well-trodden path.
The man's blood is red. That is good because I hate him.
The blood is coming from his nose and from his mouth.
I am on top of him and screaming, slamming my fists into his face.
His face feels soft, like bread dough to me, and it barely registers when my hands, my knuckles, come into contact with him. I can't feel because I am full of something red, just like he is, only my red is not blood, and when it leaves me it will not be all over the floor, which seems to be the case with this man.
In the next instant the bartender is on me, trying to pull me off the man and I can feel those big sloppy tits flopping around, pressing against my back. It's not fair to fight a man while my cock is this hard, stretching out, pulling away from my body, pulling the skin taut. The skin is the only thing holding it back. If it wasn't for the durability and elasticity of my skin, my cock would keep growing and growing, pushing out everything inside of me until there was nothing left.
I cannot fight the man this way. It is confusing.
I turn on the bartender, knock her to the floor, get on top of her. Her eyes are wide and her pupils and irises are two little shadows on two giant moons staring up at me.
I reach down for her shirt, it is white and crisp with starch, a line of buttons running up the center.
I tear it open and the buttons pop off and fly everywhere.
Under her shirt are two skeletons, curled up in fetal positions. The bones are gray and moldy, swinging from her chest by their feet, arms wrapped around knees pulled up against their rib cages.
I throw myself off of her, scooting backwards on my ass until I hit the bar.
And I rise to leave, never taking my eyes off the bartender and the bleeding man lying on the dusty floor. Everyone else in the bar has declined to intervene, sitting back in the darkness, letting their eyes blaze from their black, featureless faces.
I run out the door in fear and panic, but not before I pilfer a handle of whiskey from behind the bar. I sometimes amaze myself at my ability to indulge my baser urges, even when seized by reactionary instinct.
What comes next, I can only remember in blurry snapshots from a cheap camera; the brief flashes of consciousness between the longer stretches of blackout autopilot.
I take the bottle to a semi-familiar sort of alcove, narrow space inclosed by brick walls on two sides.
I make a friend there; a thirsty woman lying on a discarded mattress.
She is older than the bartender. There is a fetid smell rising from her that I can only call unwashed summer homeless. Her breasts are smaller than the bartender's too, but no less fascinating to me.
Sitting on the mattress, passing the bottle between us, there is some conversation. I can't remember.
What I can remember is leaning into her, putting my whiskey-wet lips over hers. Her mouth is firm, unresponsive, but I can taste her garbage breath blowing directly into my mouth and this, in a strange and inexplicable twist of sexuality, only excites me more.
I reach under her shirt, not daring to lift it and fully expose myself to whatever perverse horrors may be lurking beneath, and feel her breasts. They are soft and not at all like child skeletons. Good.
I lay her down on the mattress and move my body over hers, feeling her warmth with my hands as I dig beneath the elastic waist of her sweatpants. I run my hand along the beard of pubic hair and move my hand between her legs.
“No-oo-oo!” She whimpers but does not physically resist me.
I spread her labia apart and work my fingers up and down her dry pussy. Moisture immediately follows, as does the smell of old, raw liver.
I am inside of her, letting the warm wetness grip my cock. She throws her head back to moan and I can see into her open mouth, the black stumps of her rotten teeth sunk into dark gray gums.
Our bodies smack together making a slapping sound, the applause of loose, sweaty skin.
Her arms reach around and come together with my head and neck between them, and she wraps her legs around me. I shut my eyes for a second and I feel myself sinking into her flesh. Her leg brushes up against the organ growing out of my side, but she doesn't notice.
I close my eyes again and I sink further. She is infirm beneath me, her body is like waves and I'm being pulled under. I struggle against her, but it's like fighting hot tar or melting plastic. I try to raise my arm and it's covered in dripping tendrils of her flesh. My knees, thighs, feet and ass are sinking into the beige puddle of this woman spreading out onto the mattress.
I am sucked down further, my torso, then my chest, disappears into the soft quagmire, and finally my head, and I am gone completely under.
The inside of her body is a long, cavernous hall. Organs hang from the ceiling and her spine, like exposed beams, runs along the center of the roof with ribs branching out, giving support to the rounded sides.
It is dark in the vast hollow of this woman. I sit down and light a match, letting it burn down till I can't hold it anymore. I light another and that reminds me of the man from earlier, the one who swallowed lit matches, the man I burned.
“Do you even know how long you've been away?” The man's voice echoes inside of this homeless woman.
I don't know. I don't know how long I've been away. I only know that it has been a long time.
“Do you even know where to find them anymore?”
I don't. I only know where they've been. Where we've been when we were together.
I could go back to them.
If I could only escape.
My last match burns my fingertips and I drop into the darkness.
I go to the wall and put my hand on it to feel. It is soft and sticky with blood, but it yields when I push in on it.
I ram my fist into the wall and push, stretching the skin. I can feel it start to grow taught around my fist and I thrust myself into it harder.
There is the slightest tear and I'm able to poke my finger through. I wiggle it around, making the hole a little bigger until I can stick two fingers out then my entire fist. When the hole is big enough, I pull it apart with two hands and crawl through.
It's a tight fit but I manage to get my head and shoulders through and I can see the brick walls and the dark night sky above me.
I work my way out to my waist and I turn and see the woman is lying back on the mattress, her body twisted with pain.
I continue to try and free myself but something is wrong. My side is stuck where the growth is hanging out of me. It's caught on the inside of the woman. I pull myself harder and I can feel the organ stretching against my body. I'm pulling myself up. I'm free but the organ is still trapped inside, stretching out, connecting the two of us.
With a final push, the organ snaps off and I spill out into the alleyway. I touch my side, the little circular wound where the thing was attached to me. It's bleeding, but not like the little guy said. Not enough to make me bleed to death, I don't think.
7
I stand in the moonlight, covered in blood and mucus, whatever else was inside the woman. I look back at her, she's dead, ripped nearly in half, eyes and
mouth open wide in a silent scream of agony.
My mind feels clear for the first time in ages. I head out into the night.
My old neighborhood hasn't changed much, tidy suburban lawns outside of indistinguishable tract homes.
I worry, briefly, if I'll be able to recognize my old home, but it isn't hard. It's the one overgrown with weeds, knee-high grass and unruly hedges. The windows are busted, there's pieces of plywood nailed over them. The front door has a cross of two-by-fours nailed to it. I pull it down and step inside my old home.
It's dusty and the lack of furniture reminds me of when we first moved in. It's bigger than I remember.
I sit down on the bare floor in front of the door and wait. I can wait a long time, but I don't think I'll have to.
I think somehow they'll know.
They'll know that daddy's back. That he's not sick anymore.
They'll know that it's safe to come home again.
Any second now, I'm going to see that doorknob turn.
Any second they're going to come back to me.
I wait...
And I wait.
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Flyblown and Blood-Spattered Page 25
