Sickness Of The Young (7)
Oh shit, this guy could really die. Instead, he ran down the steps to the subway, popped a token in the slot and continued down to his train, carrying his briefcase in his right hand. In seconds, he was gone, disappearing into the crowd. He had a job tonight and a thought flashed in his head that he might not make it. The thought scared him. It was family, too, that he had to do away with. This was not just some score. This was a serious job. He would be well paid. It was not his family, but you know, family. Those were the worst and he always tried to end them as abruptly as he could: no games. But he had decided to go for a walk. There was a bar not too far away. He had been there a couple of times before when he had met with some of his clients on Wall Street. Maybe, if he could make it there and get a couple of beers he could get his head back on straight and keep his job tonight like a professional. Settle in the back and talk a little shit, just a little bit, not so much to give anything away, but so that he could get his head fixed on right again. Maybe drop a couple of hints at the bartender so he would know he was for real and get a nice cooked meal. Then, he would be okay again. Then he could keep his job. He walked across Broadway to the bar. There was white horse on the sign over the door. It was more of a pub, really. He remembered it as a low-key place and dark the couple of times he had been there. He went inside and it was dark, but as soon as he put his foot in the door, he saw the place was packed with people eating lunch. They were all dressed in their suits, ties, and nice dress skirts. He noticed there was no smoke in the room and it was very loud from all of the conversations. In his head, he felt like every single person in the bar had just stopped what they were doing to turn and look at him. Sweat immediately built up on his lower back and his forehead as he nervously looked around for the bar. He quickly found it, and went over and sat down on a stool with his back to the crowd. He wiped sweat from his brow with his open palm and then he started rubbing both of his temples with his index and middle fingers. The bartender came over and looked at him as if he was strange. "Yes?" "Hey, how you doing, buddy?" "I’m all right. What do you want?" "Scotch and soda." "What kind of scotch?" "Fuck, asshole! I want a fucking scotch and soda!" He wanted to turn around and find just one person looking at him but he did not. Instead, he just stared down the bartender. The bartender took a small step back and looked at him without saying a word for a second and then poured the drink and put it down in front of him and walked away. He rubbed his forehead again with his whole palm for a moment and then took a big sip from his drink. He realized there was no one else in the bar drinking but him and he thought everyone was watching him. He put his half-drunken glass of scotch down on the bar, quickly got up, and left. Outside, he made his way to the subway station. He walked down the steps, which turned around a couple of times. It was damp because it had rained heavily that morning. The power must have gone out too, because some of the lights were flickering. As he walked downward, he heard a noise not too far off. It sounded like music, but bad music, and he guessed it was one of the homeless playing for money. He stepped into an open area filled with people and stopped. He looked around and saw the sign for the 2 to Brooklyn over a dark tunnel. A man was playing a trumpet by the tunnel entrance to the 2. The man’s trumpet case was open and the red, felt lining was filled with pennies and other change, as well as a few dollar bills from the high-priced givers who gave a little bit more to try and make a difference. The man was playing very loud and the music hurt his ears. He saw that the man seemed to be looking at him too, and he had a smirk on his face. That could just be from blowing the horn, he told himself. He went over to the tunnel for the 2 and entered. No one else was walking down it except for him. The tunnel had a slight, downward grade, and as tried to keep his footing, he caught the concrete a couple of times and tripped. He had to get to that job tonight. For some reason, the tunnel seemed to get very dark all of a sudden. Maybe, even if he was wasted, he could still pull it off. He could probably catch his prey walking out the house and then just fucking waste him on the steps and leave the body in the grass. That would be clean. Later there might be some heat for it, but fuck, it was all he could muster. Someone bumped into him and he bounced his shoulder off the wall of the tunnel and a billboard sign for Cigar Aficionado Magazine. It was the issue with Ernest Hemingway on the cover. It’s all good. "Jesus, fuck-face! You just learn how to walk? Or maybe, you need me to teach you again?" A big man said as he walked by, after he had knocked him against the wall. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his head and then he turned to face the guy who was walking away, but all he could do was sway a little, as he watched the blurry image fade. He put both his index fingers on his temples and rubbed them, pressing strongly. Then he heard the big man say as he walked off, without even turning around, "Hey, asshole! Next time, start drinking after seven in the morning!" He remembered the last time some mother-fucker talked shit to him. He had had that guy on his knees with his hands tied behind his back in the kitchen. He had beaten him up pretty bad too, and cut off two of his fingers. Blood was all over the floor. His head was swaying around. For a second, he suddenly looked up and said in kind of a low, slow growling voice, that gargled from blood that was in his throat, "Fuck you…mother fucker...I hope…you and your cock-sucking mother…burn in fucking hell…while she is sucking your dick for all eternity…you fuck!" He had been so surprised that he had been speechless. How could he have gotten away with telling him that? How could he respond to that? The fucker had beaten him at his own game. He pulled out his knife that he kept in his inside coat pocket and he shoved it into that guy’s mouth. He twisted his knife to pry the guy’s mouth open. Then he shoved his gun as far down that guy’s throat as he could humanly push it, right alongside the knife, so that the guy’s head was bent back, and then he kind of hunched his shoulders a little, before he yelled back at him, "try and talk now, fucker!" He fired his gun and the dead body rocked back and forth a little, before it fell over on its side to the kitchen tile floor, lifeless and limp. Somehow, he got on the subway train and sat down in a seat. There was no one except for a couple of people in the car. He let himself slip a little. Maybe if he slipped for a while, then he could focus again afterwards. He put his head down on his chest and closed his eyes but he was not asleep. The screeching sounds from the trains going around turns were sharp and clear in his ears. His mouth was not open but drool still came out from his lips and spilled onto his nice dress shirt. He stirred and looked down. He saw that he was drooling all over himself for no apparent reason. He suddenly realized just how pathetic he was. So he bent down, took his gun out from the holster in his sock, put the barrel into his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. Somewhere out there, no one gave a shit. By Mila Strictzer Fifteenth in order of composition Twenty-five days ago, he had gotten into a car accident. He drove into the side of a hill going around a long curve. He had been drunk at the wheel, but since there was no police report, he kept up the lie that he had fallen asleep. He got out of the car, walked down the road to the highway, and hitchhiked back to town. The next day, he borrowed his friend’s car, and went back and took off the plates and anything else that would link back to him. It was all pretty clean. No one would care anyway. The car was a piece of crap, but he had wanted to be sure about things. His neck was stiff for the next couple of days, but that went away soon enough. Last week, she had come by to drop off some of his things and then that was it. They had a thing about property from the start. The conversation had gone something like this: ‘Hey…how’s it going?’ ‘Fine. I’ll only be a minute.’ She came in and moved through some of the rooms, as if she were planting grain in a field. She was making one last sweep, to stow away with her memory. ‘See you.’ ‘Take care.’ How can so much become so little? How can you be with someone and then turn around and be with someone else, as if it were nothing? You take what you had with a person, everything you had, and wake up one day feeling different and then that is it, just like that. It never seems to matter anymore, anything you do. He flipped the cards over, bending each one hard, almost to the point of putting a crease in them. He scraped each card against he wooden table, listening to the sound. Read a book, he told himself. No, that was no good. Maybe watch TV. If he concentrated for a minute, pausing his game, he could hear the traffic on the street below. There was no such thing as silence. The overhead kitchen light shined down on the table where he sat. The hallway light was off. There were no lights on in bedrooms, either, so the way faded into darkness. There were two green beer bottles in the sink, empty. His stiff chair creaked every time he shifted. Then it started to rain outside. It was late now. The rain started quickly and then picked up intensity. He could hear the water splattering in puddles. "What is life?" He said to the King of Hearts. "Life is a game of cards…" he said to the Queen of Clubs, smirking at his little game. He did not continue it, and steadily flipped the cards. The rain appeared to have leveled off into some kind of a constant denudation. The rain felt good. He thought about opening the door and feeling the cool, fresh, rain-air in his face, but he did not. He slowly turned over one more card, his last card, and placed it down. It was the Jack. Fate had dealt it to him. He stared at it for a moment. Then he got up but did not push in the chair. He disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, his body slowly becoming one with the shadows. The rain slowly tapered off to a drizzle sometime later. By Mila Strictzer Ninth in order of composition The man looked at his wife as she sat at their dining room table writing a letter. She had her head bent down close to the paper, lost deep in what she was doing. The man was reading a book on the sofa. It was fairly peaceful in the house tonight; they had eaten dinner and so far, no fight. The lamps in the living room were on and the traffic on the street was going by in its usual monotony. The book he was trying to read was not that interesting, so he followed along in the pages with his eyes and let his thoughts drift a little about his wife. If he concentrated enough, he thought he saw his wife turn into a giant, black spider. She was the kind of spider with a big body and fuzzy edges. The creature had eight limbs instead of four and the spider suddenly turned and stared straight at him with evil, beady eyes, bug eyes. He jumped back a little from the book he had been skimming. Now the huge spider flew out of the chair, up the wall on its eight legs, ran to the corner, turned around and paused there, staring back piercingly. The man threw his book into the air, ran from the couch to the kitchen, and grabbed a large cutting knife to defend himself with against the spider on the ceiling, in the corner, just staying there while it stared back at him with those beady little, evil bug eyes. There were several sets of eyes. He held the knife with both hands, trembling from fear that shook his whole body. Then he took the knife blade with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, reached back, and hurled the knife at the spider, all the way across the dining room to the corner. The knife spun over as it sailed, carried by its momentum. It was a fine throw, but the spider was just too quick, and it darted out of the way. As the giant black spider scurried to another corner of the ceiling, it kept its head pointed at him the whole time, with those tiny, circular bug eyes piercing deep down to his very soul. He felt his blood curl and his skin crawl. Then out from nowhere, the spider started jumping around the room in a circle, ensnaring him with a web that was now coming from its web sack at its rear end. He tried to make it to the door, but he could not, for the thick line of web now wrapped around his chest and the thighs of his legs. Then the webbing covered his whole body and held him tight. To his horror, he could not move at all! A couple of more times around with alarming quickness for protection, and now he was tightly trapped inside of her web. Then the giant black spider slowly crawled up to him, over her net that filled the room, as he was gagging for breath. She reached up and cut open a hole in the web for his mouth with a precision slice from one of her long, atrocious, insectivorous black legs, still staring at him with those evil, beady eyes. He gasped with terror for air through the tiny hole in her web, nearly insane from his fear. Then the evil, black spider spoke to him in a low, slow hiss! "You need to take out the garbage before you go to bed." "Aaahhh!" "Did you hear me? You need to take out the garbage before you go to bed." The man looked up from his book, lying open in his lap, at her for what seemed an eternity. His wife was still sitting at the table, her pen and paper down now, and she was looking over at him on the sofa. "Alright. Sure. But then I am going to bed." She looked back down at the letter resting on the table, and picked it up again with one hand to read it. He got up and went to the kitchen to get the garbage. As he walked back by her with the garbage in his hands, she looked at him again and, nervously, he looked back, into those eyes. And they seemed a little more narrow than usual. By Mila Strictzer Thirteenth in order of composiiton He arrives every night. His black leather creaks gently. Once or twice, he was so close as he leaned down, that I was able to smell the leather form his jacket. And the smell was magical and new, like a baby. His hair is black and he is tall. He is the Doctor of Death. What a name. Is there a carpenter of death too? No, that is the carpenter of life. What about a gardener of death, is there such a person? "You are evil," I said to him once, before I went under. "Yessssss…" he answered. His suspension of the word was probably only meant to coincide with the seven seconds I was awake, before I went to sleep. That was the only time I was put to sleep. In the evenings, when the sun has gone down, Jacob and I run out of the structure, to the back of the buildings. It is something of hollowed ground for us. There is a small pit there. The searchlights traverse over our bodies as we hug the ground and try to not be seen. It is nothing more than a game. We look at each other and laugh. Then we go back inside and try to sleep on the wooden beds without mattresses, amidst disease permeating the air thickly. But what I want to really tell you about before I go away into that solemn peacefulness of the black night is the time when I was abducted by aliens. You need to hear about this because there is such a thing as alien abduction. This is a scientific fact. They come in the night when the punishers enforce their edicts. I say they because there are always more then one. In point of fact, they’re about ten of them. The aliens. And they come, in the night. The last time they came was the very last night. I was not so sure I could go with them last night but I did anyway because sometimes, you have to just go along. The leader, he is a bug man, plain and simple. I cannot describe it any other way. A bug man. His eyes are wide, set back far in his skull. It is not like a skull and cross bones or anything like that. No, it is not anything like that. It is far more sinister than anything like that. It is alien. As in something that we do not understand. They are alien creatures. He comes at night. He comes, the leader first, and he takes us away. He is a funny man, if you can call him a man. But, really, he is not a man. As I stated, his eyes are set wide apart, as are a bugs’. His arms are long and thin, as are his legs. And his arms and his legs are green, not dark green, but light green. Maybe in between dark and light, like these windows I look through when I am in the room where they operate. Dark enough to not be able to see through. He comes in the night and takes us away. We go to his spaceship. His spaceship is…I should tell you his name now…okay, his name is Fred. That is what I have named him. And Fred is evil. Now last night, it actually rained. It rarely rains here in hell. It rained and the raindrops hit the soft tar pavement of the courtyard and splattered with alarming mediocrity. The sounds of the raindrops hitting the soft, oily yard had a pacifying effect on my pained mind. I could not help but awaken. Fred stood before me, about five feet high, his eyes set wide and diminished. Then to my astonishment, he produced a needle. I do not know from where. But from somewhere he did produce his huge needle. His needle was long and it putrefied my stale thoughts into benign wisps of the old days. And, sure enough, he stuck that needle into me, right into the soft flesh of my meaty bone of my own femur. Then there was darkness. I was in a delirium. In the space ship the lights are bright. They are something like lights and they are very intense. The bright lights shined onto my eyes and I could not shield them. At least ten alien creatures were there. All bug men like Fred. They were his brothers. I saw the controls to Fred’s space ship. I did not understand anything about the controls to Fred’s ship but I did see them, nonetheless. They were written in ancient alien ruins and I could not understand any of it at all. Then the others came into the room and started to operate. They tore apart my skin and looked within. They have inserted liquids into my body through many different places. I do not know what is in the needles. I only know one thing for sure. They are just as unsure about what is going to happen as I am. The times they perform operations on me and not experiments are when I have gone too close to death and they desire to revive me in order to continue on experimenting. Some of my fingers and toes are gone, as is one kidney, my left lung, and some of my brain, I think. It saddens me to see my to see my body in this condition. When they are done, they put me in the giant microwave machine and explode my body. But my body comes back every single time, in the night. Fred, he always has a shiny look in his eye as he keeps on experimenting. I can never stop him, even though I can see him the whole time.
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