To Remember the Truth

Curtis stopped typing, much to his own surprise. Every other set of fingers around him, cubicle by cubicle, proceeded in the cacophony of clicking, bounding noisily from key to key so that the song reverberated against the concrete walls like a heavy hailstorm as the letters and numbers dropped onto their screens, etched into an intangible slate, existing nowhere but in the lights before them.

He rubbed his fingers, moist enough to squeak softly, against the polyurethane coat of his narrow desk space, reminding himself of actuality. His tie felt tight around his collar and the room began to shrink around him as his chest grew with anxiety until he burst, ripped free; from his clothes, from the room, from the whole damn performance.

So, I always stop for a few when Curtis asks me for change, not just because his stories are interesting or because he manages a certain intelligibility atypical of underpass dwellers, but because every now and then when he whispers wildly about the Machine and the Trap and the System, backward as it may be, I start to feel a little less crazy.

Bummer

Liliana’s eyelashes beat together like a feathered gavel before her mahogany eyes, sentencing me to “Piss off, Heremy…”--I loved how she said Heremy instead of Jeremy and the way she rolled the r, so of course it made me smile, which she acknowledged with a displeased tilt of one eyebrow, but steady as a dancer kept stride--“…because I got two good waitresses, a sussessful res’rant, an’ I don’ wanna loose none ‘ose tings porque uno pinche cabrón can’ keep his nassy lil’ hans to 'imself.”

I’ll bet she was twice my age, but like any twenty-year-old beach bum worth his saltwater, I was all about the ladies and if there was any reason I shouldn’t be with them--perhaps a generational gap--then, mo’ betta’, I figured.

Like the kind of guy I’d punch nowadays, I leaned over the counter with a smile they might picture next to “cocky ass” in Webster’s, and said, “Or maybe, you should forget what you know about my involvement with said waitresses, and find out for yourself what all the fuss is about.”

She craned down toward me, her intensity pressing me back nearly off the stool, and she reached down to my crotch, encircling the area with her fingertips, whispering, “But then, I’d wanchu never to leave, an’ you know how to keep a dog from runnin’ away? Shop off ‘is lil’ balls.”

I miss that place--missed it ever since that afternoon--but not nearly as much as I miss that woman.

Where You Lie

A breathy mumble came from her lips; a name. She tried again, after a few crackling inhales, “Where is… where’s…”

He looked all around, wreckage in each direction, then back at the stranger. “Fine… he’s… she's... they’re fine. Everybody’s fine,” he lied.

She smiled, and then was gone.

Originally posted at 6S

The Mysterious Dr. Ramsey

Ramsey Michelle Helton wore matching ruffled pigtails which looked as though they might have come prepackaged with the galaxies of freckles on her tiny cheeks. Her smile revealed two front teeth as absent as the shoes I assumed she wore, at least on occasion. A frog chirp from her overalls pocket convinced me that if I looked hard enough I would find a hidden camera somewhere in the double-wide trailer.

She skipped across the small room and looked in my eyes curiously for several moments before whispering, "You don't wanna hear them voices no more, huh?"

I'd driven nineteen-hundred miles to witness the "Mysterious Doctor Ramsey", as the tabloids had dubbed her, but not even that leap of faith could prepare me for the chill that her words issued to my tired, crazy soul, eager once more to surrender to what a wiser man might call "blind faith." Then, she kissed my head, freed me from my hell, and proved to me at last that there is no faith a man can ever have which may fairly be ruled unjustified.

The Terribly Gifted Terry Gordan Chapter 1: Stuck

Thin rows of sunlight outlined the inner walls of the warehouse through aging fractures, one of its least substantial structural flaws. The rickety door screamed from the pain of being forced open against its rusty disuse, shoved into the ceiling, stilled gears scraping against the defunct track.

Were a living person, with the good sense to know what they were seeing, watching from within as the door went up, that living person may well have ceased to be such instantly. True, people aren’t frequently startled to death, but it happens. And, in such a circumstance it would’ve been the more favorable of two options. If a person sees Rex Proper walking into the room flanked by three men in suits, it is most likely that person never sees another pleasant thing for the rest of their (short, horrible) life.

Terry Gordan was lucky enough to be watching from behind the quartet, the scene playing out faintly beyond the red screen of the bandanna around his eyes. The door yelped as its parts lodged irreparably from the brute force of one of Rex’s nameless hulks. As the four men stepped into the darkness of the building, the shadows swallowed the dim picture and left Terry to imagine the scene, his heart beating slow and hard like the stroke of a sledgehammer, his knees kneading nervously at the dirt, wrists wringing sorely against the cuffs.

There was a merciless silence following the eerie echo of the door’s last stand, as the dirt where a floor once had been muffled the men’s steps. Terry felt like he was drowning, the sound of his breath resounding like the wind and the waves, and pressing harder against him than either natural force was capable.

A rumbling groan akin to a low-speed blender hummed from within. And Terry’s shoulder muscles tightened until they cramped, and then some. They'd found her. The sound swelled until it broke, shooting furious roar after furious roar from wall to wall. Birds evacuated the storm, the sound of their shrieks and their furious launch from the tin roof underscored Rex’s raging screams aptly; the horn and percussion sections of his animalistic melody.

“Don’t fucking touch anything!” Rex hollered, his voice raspy over the sound of him punching one of his subordinates, a jab for every word.

“You want to just leave it here?” The question was simple, impulsive, and rational. And for the man who spoke it, the last.

“It?” Rex hissed. A gunshot. “It, motherfucker?” Two more gunshots. Rex coughed up another chain of beastly roars. Violent and braying enough to freeze the veins, his outbursts simultaneously bled a portion of pain that almost forgave such a hateful tirade.

“Hey, Rexy, come on, she’s…” A gunshot; and another employee was relieved of his duty.

“No, please, Rex, no.” Three more shots.

Terry hadn’t been so naïve as to expect a positive outcome, but he’d been honest, led them to the place, done everything he could to save his life. Somewhere deep down, he’d wondered if there was a chance he could survive another day. But this man had just killed his own, just to blow off some steam. The future was less clear than Terry was accustomed. Far less clear, and that was a terror unrivaled in his experience.

Terry’s feet shuffled in place like the running start of a Merry-Melodies character. Finally he found traction and began straining himself upright, shaky knees combating his effort. Rocking back on his heels he wobbled, wrestling to press his toes to the ground. As he very nearly accomplished the move, Rex entered Terry’s grainy, amber sight, open barrel leading the way in b-line for his skull. Terry’s senses overcame him and he fell to the ground like a burlap sack.

Rex stood with his feet on either side of Terry’s ribcage. He stooped forward with the pistol and tugged the bandanna up with the pistol, the barrel scratching the flesh between Terry’s nose and left eye. Terry’s tears readied for the flood, but they were damned by the onslaught of every emotion conceivable, as if the man’s soul was going for one last spin, courtesy of a life of memories taken for granted. Each in full feature, these moments played out in the stage of his mind, time nonexistent.

The final fleeting flashes of those he loved most, and the dam began to groan, tears surfacing around the edges. Then, as his grimaced brow awaited the swift burn to take him away, the heat and smell of the barrel seemed to fade. One eyelid surrendered fear in favor of curiosity, sliding open just as a drop splashed onto his hairline. The other eye opened and within the brightness of the summer sky, the shadow of a broken man quivered slightly above him, drops beginning to storm from his eyes as his trembling intensified.

Rex held the pistol undecidedly, almost as if forgotten. Finally, it fell to his side and hung by his pocket. Rex stepped over Terry and stumbled back to the warehouse, toward his fallen love. He stopped at the door and collapsed, the killer of killers fading into a sobbing contradiction.

Terry worked his forearms into position and propped himself, slightly, on his elbows. He watched Rex for several seconds, perhaps a minute or more. He battled conflicting sentiments, sympathy and fear. He had to do something, to react, and unfortunately those were the only two stimuli he could summon. Terry was no tough guy, but damned if he’d go out in fear.

Terry waited until Rex had finished weeping and crawled onto his knees, staring into the darkness of the warehouse. Then he said, softly, “I can help you find the person who did this.”

Rex turned his head gradually to his left, and then stopped, refusing his interest in the claim. His shoulders took three passes up and down as his chest heaved, his own inner turmoil bubbling. He sprung to his feet, stripped the water from his face, and stalked toward Terry, his pistol again in the lead.

“How?” He stabbed the pistol forward.

“Same way I found your... this place, man. Same way I find anyone.” Terry had to fight to stifle his enthusiasm, darkly tinted as it might have been; he’d bought some time, but this wasn’t over. Not by a far cry. He didn’t have to be psychic to see that. Unfortunately, he was a psychic. And a fairly inadequate one at that.