Fairy Lights

by Lorn, Edward

  Charlie idled onto the concrete parking lot that circled the observatory. He parked and both men got out.

  Blake gazed up at the domed structure. He felt dwarfed standing next to it.

  “You coming, young blood?” Charlie asked. The old man was standing just inside an open door. The shadows on the other side were so deep the light pouring in seemed to violate them. Blake could imagine the darkness screaming, “It burns…IT BURNS!”

  “Why are we here again?” Blake asked. He took several tentative steps toward where Charlie stood half-in and half-out of the thickest shadows he’d seen.

  “Part of the rounds we do. Gotta check all the structures and make sure none of the homeless have bedded down for a stay-cation. Won’t take but a minute. Shine a flashlight in the closets and the restrooms and we’re done. Nowhere else for anyone to hide, really.”

  “Right,” Blake said, but he still didn’t want to step inside. His stomach soured and he belched acid. He grimaced and swallowed it.

  Blake followed Charlie into the inky home of the Hale Telescope.

  Directly ahead was a podium with a picture set under glass at the top of what looked to Blake to be a plaque of some kind. He shone his flashlight across the words, speed-read a bit, and caught the gist right away. The ten men crammed together for the photo were surrounding a black capsule that looked like a high-tech stalactite. Blake caught the words “Four-Shooter” and “prototype for the Hubble Telescope.” The ten-man team had been led by James Gunn and James Westphal, and the photo had been snapped in 1984. This, Blake felt, was all the important data he needed to absorb concerning the plaque.

  “Cal-Tech pulled out in 2003, if my memory serves me right. I was old even back then. Jesus Christ, ain’t it a shame, young blood? Damned if I can’t remember not being old.” Charlie barked laughter and Blake obligingly smiled.

  “It happens.”

  “You can stop that.” Charlie said from somewhere behind the glow of his flashlight.

  Blake tried to find Charlie’s eyes in the dark, couldn’t. “Stop what?”

  “The obligatory answers. If you don’t have anything to say, just stay quiet.”

  Blake was taken aback by the old man’s candor. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t need any apologies, just don’t need to hear you speaking for the sake of speaking. A wise man answers when an answer is required. Anything else is placation. Not fond of being placated. Are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Charlie erupted into laughter again. The guffaws turned into a choking fit. Blake thought to ask if Charlie was all right, but figured that was more of what Charlie was talking about. Of course the old guy wasn’t all right. He was fucking coughing.

  When the coughing fit subsided, Blake asked, “What’s funny?”

  “Your ‘No, sir’ is what’s funny, young blood. Dig this. Up until I stopped you from filling dead air with your “Rights” and “It happens” you didn’t feel the need to call me ‘sir’ Now that I’ve proven to be an authority figure, you feel the need to drop that bullshit on me. Yessum and nossir have never set well with me. You talk to me like an equal and I’ll treat you as one. You dig?”

  “Understood.”

  “What do you understand?”

  Blake thought this was going to get old real quick. “You don’t want me saying anything just for the sake of saying something. You want me to add to the conversation, not spectate. That about right?”

  Charlie dropped his flashlight and Blake could see in the backsplash that Charlie was grinning. “That’s exactly right. You know, the last person I had this conversation with blew smoke up my ass. They gave me a buncha filler nonsense, and when I took them back to HQ and they left for the day, I never saw them again. I don’t mean to be rough on you, but I’ve said my piece and we can move on. We’re both adults and you look like someone who can take a good tongue lashing and give it right back.”

  “I’ve been known to give a tongue lashing or two, but the recipients were all mostly females.”

  Charlie laughed so sharply and loudly that Blake jumped a little. “Oh, that’s a good one, young blood. Don’t say that around the lady rangers though. Sexual harassment covers everything from shoving your thumb up their ass to wishing them a good night when they clock out. Nowadays, it’s about perception, not intent. Damnedest shit, if you ask me, but the world, it does change. I guess, if you’re a woman, any day you’re not threatened by a man’s sexuality is a boring one.”

  Blake didn’t like the old man’s way of thinking and decided not to respond. He didn’t want to provide anymore filler either, so he said, “Where do we start?”

  “Bathrooms,” Charlie said, not skipping a beat. “Then we do the closets. You’ll see why we save them for last when we get there.”

  10

  Moss hadn’t seen the two men before. Normally there were workers out here, spreading new color on the outside of the Big Eye and hammering and laughing and chatting. In fact, the workers had done more talking than work. Moss figured he should start thinking of them as ‘talkers’ instead of ‘workers.’

  But these men were very different. One was old—the oldest person Moss had ever seen. He was wrinkled and brown and smelled of excrement, an odor Moss could catch from fifty yards away, where he hid in the tree line on the other side of the chain link fence surrounding the Big Eye. The other brown-skinned man was tall, handsome, and Moss thought he’d like to lay him down on the ground and put his thing inside him.

  They went inside and Moss had a decision to make. He could forget about the new men or he could have a little fun with the handsome one. His hormones were raging, had turned the blood in his veins to lava. His face flushed and burned. His hands tingled. His erection was massive. Sturdy as a tree branch despite its considerable weight, it jutted from his crotch at a forty-five degree angle. He thumbed the head and shivered.

  He had decided. He wanted the handsome man.

  Moss pulled Stuffy from around his neck and moved in shadow toward the open gate.

  11

  Blake and Charlie found nothing in the observatory’s bathrooms—one men’s room, and one for the ladies—except a trash can that should have been emptied. One of the renovation workers must have been a woman in the middle of a visit from Aunt Flo. Blake tied the baggie closed and left it just outside the door. He’d grab it on the way out. Didn’t feel like lugging around what amounted to a post-uterine crime scene.

  From the restrooms, as promised, Charlie took Blake to the storage rooms, what Charlie called the “closets.” The first room off the circular chamber that housed the Hale Telescope was about the size of your average portable storage shed. Blake had one at home; he used it to store his lawnmower and various other gardening tools. This space, however, was well-stocked with cleaning supplies. Chief among them was glass cleaner. The corner of Blake’s mouth lifted in a slight smile as he imagined someone dangling from the tip of the Hale Telescope spraying Windex and wiping it away with a roll of brown paper towels, the likes of which sat upon the upper row of shelving at the back of the first closet. All this technology and the astronomers that used this site had to rely on good old ammonia to clean their million-dollar magnifying glass.

  “As you can see, ain’t much to check here,” Charlie said and closed the door. “It’s the next one you got to watch out for. Come see.”

  The second closet was three times as big as the first. Charlie flicked on a light switch illuminating everything that lay inside. Why Charlie hadn’t turned any other light on before now, Blake didn’t know. He’d just assumed there was no power. Which was foolish considering he knew there’d been a renovation team out here in the past week.

  This closet housed a cherry-picker (the kind used to work on engines, not the kind power companies employed to work on power lines), a fork lift, and what looked to Blake to be replacement lenses for the telescope. The replacements, three in all, were stacked one on top of the other like monster truck tires. Each was en
cased in a wooden frame that seemed to have been constructed with plywood and nails, not unlike shipping crates. The pallets would protect the lenses but would be easy enough to remove with a claw hammer or crowbar.

  And then Blake saw why this closet was a concern to Charlie. Not only was there two windows set into the far wall, but there was also a rollaway door, like the kind he might find on a mechanic’s shop.

  “The bay door locks from the inside, but these bums are close to genius. We’ve had to replace that rollaway three times because they keep finding a way to pry it up. One of them used a car jack. Lord knows where the hobo got it from, but he left it behind like he wanted to rub it in our face.”

  “Hoboes hop from place to place. They’re always on the move. It’s not just another word for homeless people,” Blake informed him.

  “Do you know why people call know-it-alls ‘assholes’?” Charlie asked, his voice pleasant, almost sweet. “Because they’re full of shit.”

  Blake didn’t acknowledge Charlie’s joke with a response. Having Charlie believe him, Blake realized, wasn’t all that important to him.

  “We’ve replaced the glass in those windows more than a dozen times, as well. Even when they put in bulletproof stuff months back, someone figured out how to remove it from the frame. I tell ya, some of these bums are Einsteins. Makes you wonder why they can’t get a job. Then again, some of them make more money begging than they would at a legitimate job. My father, rest his soul, once saw a bum pawing for change in East L.A. Pop watched this homeless guy work civvies over most of the day. When the sun went down, that bum had a wad of cash that’d make Donald Trump jealous. Then the asshole got into a fuckin’ Mercedes he had hidden in the alley behind the liquor store he’d been bumming in front of. Shady bastards. No good, the lot of them.”

  Blake, who didn’t believe a word of what Charlie had just said, did not comment.

  Charlie turned to leave and Blake followed suit.

  There was someone standing in the shadows outside the door. They were small, maybe four and a half feet tall, and Blake could only clearly see their dirty feet and shins. Darkness hid them from the knees up.

  “Who—” was all Charlie got out before there was a loud pop. Charlie disappeared from Blake’s side.

  Blake’s ears rang, as if a hunchback were in the tower of his mind clanging a bell the size of a boat anchor. He clapped his hands to his ears and stumbled backward. Tripped over something. Crashed down on his ass. Kept going backward. Cracked his head against the rear fender of the fork lift.

  Black spots swam and merged and grew pregnant in his vision. His heart slammed against his ribs like the police banging on a suspect’s door. It was all he could hear. A steady thud thud thud. The sound was thunderous. Monstrous—an old god passing judgment with its mountainous gavel.

  He fought to stay conscious but he thought that was a silly hope. So silly…So…

  Darkness embraced him.

  12

  That worked out better than he’d expected. Moss lowered Stuffy. He thought about using Stuffy on the handsome man, but he was running low on stuffing. He slung Stuffy back over his shoulder and stepped into the light of the room.

  The handsome man was unconscious against the rear of the machine with the long teeth. The man’s chin was dug into his chest, and Moss saw he was already snoring. Moss had laughed out loud when Handsome had tripped over the old man. He’d not been able to help it. Speaking of the old one…

  Moss walked over to where the old man was lying on the concrete in an every-expanding pool of blood. Old Guy was bubbling and gurgling. There was a hole in the center of his chest where Stuffy had bit him. Someone was whistling. It was a moment before Moss realized it was the old man’s chest that was making the sound.

  “Filthy…filthy bum…” the old man burbled.

  Moss rounded the man, all the while studying him. Death was usually so quick when Moss dealt it. Rarely did he get a chance to watch someone move on to the great unknown.

  The old man’s hand shot out. He grabbed Moss’s ankle before Moss could snatch it away. The old man tugged and Moss was jerked forward. He did the splits on top of his victim.

  Everything happened so fast. Blood splashed as he was wrestled onto his back. A hand clasped his neck. Began to squeeze. A fist pummeled him. Once…twice…three times. Every time a punch landed, Moss’s head would snap back and hit the concrete, doubling the pain.

  He bared his teeth. The fist shattered them like fine china. The old man screeched and fell off him.

  Moss rolled, scrambled away on hands and knees.

  Where was Stuffy. He’d lost Stuffy.

  No. No he hadn’t. Stuffy was still around his neck.

  Moss struggled to his feet. Faced his enemy. Raised Stuffy and looked down its barrel to where the old man was clutching his hand to his gushing chest. His victim spat blood. Moss spat teeth. He briefly wondered if his teeth were why the old man had retreated. Had he cut his knuckles on Moss’s teeth when he shattered them? Moss thought he had.

  Moss pulled the trigger. The old man’s right eye disappeared. The empty eye socket filled with blood. Blood dripped thickly from the raw cavity. One of the old man’s legs bent, shot out, retracted again. His chest bucked, and then he was still.

  Moss’s mouth was a ball of white-hot agony. His gum line throbbed, pulsed like an artery. Upon touching the exposed nerves of his top front teeth, Moss squealed. In his anger, he began kicking the old man’s corpse, first in the leg, then the hip. He slammed a foot down between the legs, crushed the testicles. Mashed them like potatoes. When that didn’t help soothe the pain in his mouth, Moss bashed the old man’s skull in with Stuffy’s wooden end. Only when the polished cherry wood cracked did Moss stop.

  13

  Blake cowered in the corner of a cabin. Grenades and bullets and firearms, including handguns as well as high-powered rifles, were strewn out on the floor ahead of him. He could smell smoke. As if lit by his thoughts, the couch across from him burst into flames. Then the leather recliner beside it. The bullets covering the floor started going off, one at a time, and then in dozens all at once. He flinched and cringed with every explosion, expecting at any second to take a bullet to the stomach…the chest…the head. He could hear himself screaming. He sounded weak. Terrified. Broken.

  Outside, a muffled voice shouted racial slurs, hollered, “Burn this motherfucker!”

  His anus burned, as if he were sitting on a hot coal. He began to buck, to seize. Oh God, he was going to die in here. He would have a seizure and pass out and burn to death. How had any of this happened? How could it end this way?

  Blake’s eyes snapped open. His cheek was smashed into cold concrete. His body seemed to be swinging, back and forth…Or was it up and down? Which way was up?

  Something moved in his rectum. It sucked in. Slid out.

  In.

  Out.

  Oh God, no. Please, no.

  A hand—Blake could feel the individual fingers digging into his back—pressed him into the chilly floor. There was someone on top of him. Someone thrusting into him. He tried to raise his hands from his side but realized they wouldn’t move. He wasn’t paralyzed. He could feel them wanting to move, but they were strapped down with something abrasive. A length of rope maybe.

  Somebody’s trussed me up like a pig.

  An old movie he’d seen as a teenager flashed into his mind. His father had made him watch the film as a warning, as a reason to never go out into the woods. In the movie, a chubby man had been bent over a log and raped anally. The rapist had told the chubby man to squeal. To squeal like a pig. And then he’d done as he was asked. The man squealed and the rapist fucked him and fucked him and fucked him…

  “GET OFF ME!” Blake screamed. He tried to worm away, to buck out from under his attacker, but the length of pipe in his anus went deeper and Blake’s muscles seemed to melt.

  No, Jesus, no!

  No matter his protests, his prostate had been exc
essively stimulated by his rapist’s large member. Blake quaked and ejaculated forcibly, his semi-erect penis, which was squashed between his pubis and the cold concrete, squirted sticky semen up into his belly button. He slid around in his own seminal fluid as his rapist came inside of him, as victim and attacker came together.

  Blake wept openly as something long and noodle-like slithered from his ass.

  “Dawdy,” his attacker mumbled. “Loaf dawdy.”

  “Please,” Blake sobbed, “please, leave me alone.”

  “Loaf dawdy,” the rapist repeated.

  The weight lifted. He was rolled over onto his back.

  Blake gazed up at the dirty little white boy, at this tiny monster with the dripping, shit-covered cock. The boy’s face was a bloody mess, his smile a jagged red gash in the middle of a filthy face. Bloody drool dangled from the boy’s mouth. He slurped it back up as if it were spaghetti.

  “Loaf dawdy,” the boy said and swiped long blonde hair from his eyes. Blake could now see that this was no boy. He was small, but the kid was definitely a teenager. Through the muck and mire covering the boy’s face, Blake could see strawberry-blond stubble on the cheeks. And though the face was young, the eyes were old, bloodshot orbs. The blue irises swam in yellow sclera.

  It wasn’t until the boy ducked out of its strap that Blake saw the rifle. It’d been slung across the boy’s back, out of sight. The stock had a wicked-looking crack running up its middle. By the look of the magazine and the wooden body, Blake surmised the gun was a 30.06, but he could’ve been wrong. Not like it really mattered at this point.