the-voice-of-hell

[the-voice-of-hell]

[the-voice-of-hell]

[the-voice-of-hell]

Silent Hill 2 | Angela Orosco

[the-voice-of-hell]

[the-voice-of-hell]

ignore this. i didn't post this. move along now.

[the-voice-of-hell]

[the-voice-of-hell]

pay this no mind, i needs it somewhere else...

[the-voice-of-hell]

PIXILLATED, pt 02

by me, maybe under the pen name Caesar Train Magenta, idk

CONTENT WARNINGS: fetishization of busty women, a trans woman having to be closeted, organized crime.

Chapter One: Adulting

Bobbi was very gay. She’d never thought of herself that way, though it was an obvious enough thing to believe. A homophobe would compare her assigned gender to her interest in dressing lady-like and have some choice slurs. But she only came to think of herself as more woman than crossdresser within the last few years—well past the bloom of her youth—in response to the increased visibility of transgender women in popular culture. And what is a woman who loves only women? Gay, Bobbi.

And so she realized this one day as she got up for work, trading the feminine undergarments she slept in for closeted manly drag. She wasn’t feeling great about having to look in the mirror to shave, and took a moment to breathe in the presence of womanhood. There she was, still in a grog of dream sauce, wobbling on pink-socked feet beneath a giant poster of Dolly Parton that spanned from the wall above her bathroom door onto the ceiling, looking down like God from the Sistine Chapel. She could almost feel Dolly’s peroxide blonde tresses falling around her face as they sweetly kissed, big breasts pressed between them, and thought that she’d gladly marry that lady, even in her very advanced age. It was a love inspired by the physical, but transcending it.  Bobbi was certain of that.

But it was one of many gay little fantasies, several of which were depicted in posters around her room—Elvira, Tawny Kitaen, Julie Strain, Shannon Tweed, Anna Nicole Smith, and a coterie of less famous womanly women. The dream girls were left behind as she trudged into the bathroom to get Roberted enough for banking.

The mirror was not Bobbi’s friend in the morning. Early fifties, thick and thin in the ways typical of old men, chin a bit too strong, forehead a bit too tall, some deep lines coming in. But the true wrinkles and loose skin of old age hadn’t set in, and the hair she had was thick and curly. That was one blessing from nature—the wild mess of her hair in the morning resembled the teased-out mops of her favorite ’80s and ’90s ladies. But it had to be tamed into a sleazy-looking ponytail for work, with copious product. Soon she would look like a ginger Steven Seagal.

Bobbi’s condo was a tiny thing in downtown Villa Coneja, California. The town was dull, flat, and semi-rural, but for a strip of six to twelve story modern buildings in the middle, like something out of Ohio. Her condo was in the third tallest building in town, a one bedroom which she treated like a studio with a very large walk-in closet. She stepped out in Robert mode, only one block from the bank where she worked in the second tallest building in town. The nearest structures gleamed blue, black, white, and mirrored in the early morning shadows, and planter flowers hanging from street lamps buzzed with fat insects.

“Morning, Robert.”

“Howdy, Bob.”

Familiar people dogged her all the way to her little office on the seventh floor. Accept your identity, be whoever makes us the most comfortable. She closed the office door and rubbed her face. Just eight and a half hours to go.

A rap at the door and it opened, not waiting for a response. It was Steve. “Bagels and donuts at the meeting, big guy. You ready for this?”

“Don’t be a morning person, Steve. Nobody likes that.”

The younger man laughed as he walked away, firing finger guns through the tinted window beside Bobbi’s door. There was a ceiling to floor Venetian blind there and she deployed it, with a burst of dust.

But he had her. She’d forgotten about the meeting, and it was time. It’s not like she had to do a presentation or be a center of attention at this meeting. It was just jaw-grindingly dull. She felt like ripping up paper or kicking holes in the table with her knee, but had to resist.

Time is the enemy. Life is poured from one cup into another and back again, losing a drop here and a drop there until nothing is left. Bobbi got older as the day progressed. What are we doing to make up for these quarterly shortfalls? What have you done for Harvest Bounty Bank lately? How is your agenda today going to contribute to corporate profitability and your job security tomorrow?

She had paperwork to do until well after noon, just processing the business she’d already initiated, not doing anything new to push those profits, and she felt like the boss was looking over her shoulder about it. But she recognized it was just a feeling. Running a bank of any size was a license to print money, and the boss was surely just racking up a bar tab on company credit cards and eating hundred dollar steaks.

In the late afternoon daylight slammed her office, penetrating the blinds no matter how tightly they were screwed shut. The AC pushed the atmosphere around in sludgy invisible chunks of alternating bitter liquid nitrogen cold and stifling muggy heat. The clock moved backward.

A light rap at the door. Must be Helen. “Come in.”

It was not Helen. It was your four o’clock, Bobbi. The woman came into the room tentatively, then more boldly, and took a seat without waiting to be invited. She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair, but didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, as if she still had the body memory of striking up a cigarette in those situations from decades in the past.

The woman was tall, near six feet and solidly built, but showing the first signs of decrepitude at sixtyish years old, her back hunched forward at the neck and her skin going thin and dry. She was tall-featured, beautiful, and Asian, with a dark blazer and skirt over a less formal mustard yellow shirt that revealed weather-beaten but substantial cleavage.

As she moved her mouth to form words, creases flicked in and out of existence at the corners of it, but her lips and teeth were fascinating, pulling Bobbi into her words immediately. Her silver and dark grey hair was in a large but tame curly bob.

“I’m Julia, Mr. Schultz. Robert?”

“Yes. You were here for ... Lefebvre Entertainment?,” she read off her monitor as subtly as she could.

“That’s us,” she winced and her eyes did a little dance before she regained focus. Not happy at work. “We’re always profitable, but there have been some shifts in the market we need to catch up with. I’m sure we can sew this up pretty quickly. You saw my application? The numbers?”

Bobbi shook a fugue out of her head. “Yeah, that’s right. Strong numbers, but..,” she tried to remember what had bothered her about the application, “I’m led to wonder what kind of entertainment Lefebvre produces. The numbers were too strong for a small commercial studio, but too weak for...”

“Adult entertainment, yes. This bank is spitting distance from the San Fernando Valley. Let’s not mince words.” She crossed her arms and gazed into her eyes with cold fire.

“So you are in adult entertainment. I don’t think this bank is a good fit for—”

“Nobody in this office has ever signed off on a loan for this industry? What would be the harm? I get that nobody wants to be the first, but all your bank would ever see of what we do is our name on the records. It’s nothing, and we wouldn’t advertise who it is we’re banking with.”

Bobbi leaned back and sighed, looking away. “You understand, I’m very unlikely to say yes here. But I am curious. Why the low numbers?”

“No video. The CEO was never interested in moving pictures, and I guess he imagined more of the public was on his page than not. He guessed wrong, but his willingness to pivot now should tell you he’s competent enough to make money in an industry where it’s just about impossible to lose it.” She shrugged and let her arms fall at her sides. “Robert, look at me.”

Bobbi looked into her eyes again, and was held fast. Something in Julia was holding her by the shoulders with strong, cold hands. “I don’t know what I should be saying,” said Bobbi. “You’re lovely and earnest and tough, I can tell you’re great at business, and I respect you too much to want to waste your time.” She felt like a nerdy boy again, falling to pieces in front of a girl he liked, knowing all hope was about to be lost.

Julia smiled. “You’re not a Robert, are you? You’re more of a Bobby.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Be a Bobby, dear, and humor me for a moment. If you were considering a business loan and had doubts about that business, what would you do to settle those doubts?”

She gulped and fumbled with her fingers, the sweat in her hair suddenly going cold.

Julia continued, “We work in the evening. Come and see the studio, look over the boss’s numbers, whatever. What do you say? My car or yours?”

“I don’t—”

“My Lexus is really nice. Just a few thousand miles, AC works on a dime.”

“—own a car.”

“I had a notion.” She stood tall—not quite as tall as Bobbi but making her feel like a pitiful gnome in that moment—and stretched. As much as Julia had been all business on the way in, Bobbi could tell then that she had breast implants. She almost fell out of her seat.

“I shouldn’t,” she croaked.

“But you will. It’s no big deal.” Julia’s voice was crisp, heady, and subtly smoky.

Bobbi was in her disgusting afternoon orange office space, too hot and too cold, oppressed by everything, but she had been flicked halfway out of the picture frame. The world had taken on a new dimension for which she was totally unprepared.

She let herself be seduced by this senior citizen, knowing full well there was no hot sexy reward at the end of this trip. The lady was a CFO in a scuzzy industry, using sex appeal just far enough to take care of business. Unless Bobbi signed off on the loan, they were both wasting their time, and who knew what the mobbish creeps of that business would do if she went into the dragon’s lair and said no?

A world of possibilities, all bad, but Bobbi dragged herself upright and followed the sinister woman like a dog.

Julia whipped the Lexus like a true Californian - speed limits were as well-observed as antique laws about where you can wash your donkey. Maybe if the highways weren’t scorching hells ashimmer with rivers of blood and broken glass, Bobbi would have learned to drive. She always had to unfocus and pretend she was on a carnival ride when somebody drove her somewhere.

“Relax, Bobby. I could tell you were having no fun in the office. This is just a little change of scenery for you. Stepping out for a breather. But you have to remember to breathe.” Again she seemed for a moment like she wanted to light a cigarette or hand one to her passenger. She shrugged it off and zipped around somebody who dared to only do sixty-five in a forty-five zone.

“I’m breathing, I’m breathing. Are we going all the way to San Fernando?”

“Yeah, we’re going all the way.” She snorted at the double-entendre. Too self-aware to be a Bond femme fatale. “Tell me about yourself, buddy. We might get hung up on the highway for an hour.”

“Let’s wait until we’re actually in the gridlock. I’d hate to distract you at these speeds.”

“What?” She looked away from the road long enough to accidentally murder several car lengths of school children. “Where are you from Bobby?”

“Idaho.”

“I’d drive so fast if I lived there.”

“That’s nice.”

Julia was right. Congestion was predictable. Californians drove so fast because they knew it could stop dead for hours and hours depending on where and when they had to go. They reached a point where they were sitting still for ten minutes at a time between moments of inching speed. Her music was just the mild-mannered office lady part of the dial, a blend of soft pop ballads from the eighties through the tens, and she turned it down to a murmur so they could talk.

“It’s time, Bobby. Talk to me like we’re going to do business together, whatever happens next.”

Bobbi cracked her neck and tried to relax into the seat. She looked at Julia with friendly resignation. “Sure. I could ask you about your kids maybe?”

Julia pursed her lips and looked very old for a moment. “How about yours, Bobby?”

“Never had ’em, but people usually like to talk about theirs. Not you? You don’t have to tell me why.”

“I can’t imagine you’ve never had kids. You have it all sorted out, Bobby. Financial responsibility. Hygiene. Basic social skills. It’s a low bar for men. Unless..?”

“Not gay but the relationships never go that far. I admit, I gave up. But that’s not your story, is it?”

“You got me. I had a daughter at a bad moment in life. She ended up in the system. I don’t even know where she is anymore, but I don’t know if we ever loved each other, so what does it matter?”

“I’m sorry. This isn’t going well. And here we are, stuck in the car, unable to just leave the awkward situation, right? What would you like to talk about, Julia?”

“Thanks, Bobby. Well, now I’m all curious why your relationships don’t last. Irresponsible? Unromantic? Unfaithful? Strange fetish?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Strange fetish it is. It’s OK Bobby. You don’t have to tell me. This trip shouldn’t be too sexy for you to handle. The photography we do is very vanilla.”

“I like vanilla.”

“Sure you do, kiddo. I don’t imagine you have opinions about baseball.”

“Do you?”

“Or cars. What do we even have in common?” Julia regarded her sadly.

“We’re stuck in traffic. And I feel like we’re both trying to like each other?”

“We are. And I do, Bobby. You’re alright, whatever weird toys you have in the closet.”

“Hehe. Thanks, Julia.” She blushed.

“We could talk about your toys.”

“Oh my god, I don’t know about that.” She shifted in her seat.

“I could go first.”

Bobbi tugged at the collar of her shirt. “I definitely wouldn’t talk with a client about that.”

“Heehee. It’s OK, babe. Let’s just listen to these vocoder kids moan about love.”

“Good idea. And I do like you, so remember that.”

“Right back atcha, Bobby.”

They tore through a neighborhood of weedy yards where some black kids had to break up a kickball game to avoid turning into red smears beneath her wheels, coming to a corporate park with no signage except for an unrelated printing press. Lefebvre Entertainment didn’t want to be seen. She had a reserved parking spot but couldn’t quite tokyo drift into position.

Bobbi recovered her land legs and followed Julia to the back side of the building. Julia called somebody on her phone. “I’m bringing a lender to meet Aubrey. Now. We can wait a bit, but I’ll want to get in... Mmhm. Thank you.” She dropped the phone in her purse. “Think you can keep it in your pants, in a place of sexy business?”

“Of course.”

“I knew you were a good kid, Bobby.”

Julia led her to a big loading dock with the metal gate rolled down, and unlocked a small steel door beside it with an RFID dongle. She held the door open for her. Bobbi went in, feeling cold inside despite the hot weather.

The loading dock floor had been converted to a series of photography sets. Industrial HVAC kept the place cold in spite of the massive banks of bright lights. Two shoots were going on at the same time, with young ladies in various states of undress, going through all the poses a director could think of, while camera operators took hundreds of shots per minute. Julia led Bobbi up a ramp beside the proceedings, onto the loading dock proper, where most of the space was taken up by equipment. Between the thick metal stands they could see glimpses of the girls doing what they do. It was all so remote, the idea it should make someone horny seemed laughable.

Then they went into a wood-paneled hallway, around a corner into a broader continuation of the same—this part hung with fake plants and posters of porn and californiana. They passed another old gal with short white hair and a more formal suit jacket and skirt. Julia exchanged meaningful glances with her and Bobbi nodded.

But something was itching at her. Julia had stirred a sense of déjà vu in Bobbi, which had gradually faded as she spent more time in her company. But it pinged her again at the pornographic images in the hall. Something about the style, so abstract and vague she had no hope of placing it, told her she had seen this before. And the white-haired woman clinched it. Who was she? And again, after that moment, who was Julia?

The floor was hard concrete beneath thin green office carpet. Together with the cheapness of the wood paneling in the halls it evoked the idea this was just another industrial space like the docks, but with an extremely superficial veneer of anything else. They came to a door with a textured and frosted window reading “Aubrey Gordon, CEO” in precisely painted sans-serif letters.

But that room wasn’t the office itself. It was a waiting room, where they took the only seats that weren’t pew-like benches against the wall. Still far from comfortable, the chairs were hard plastic, hanging around a glass-topped oval coffee table strewn with bland photography books and pornographic magazines. The magazines were dogeared and wrinkled.

Bobbi asked, “You used to model here?”

“That’s right. Been in business here a long time. Smart ladies change companies, keep looking for a better deal. It’s alright though; I don’t have to see any of my old pictures on the wall.”

“I can’t really imagine what that feels like, having done that work, knowing you’re out there like that. But I hope you don’t feel bad about how you looked. You’re lovely.”

She cracked up, a cackling laugh. “You’re a sweetheart, Bobby. Don’t ever change.” She picked up one of the magazines and offered it to her. “Wanna see what we do?”

“I don’t want to do anything I wouldn’t do in any other business I might lend to.”

“You’d look at what they do.”

“Yes, but...”

“You wouldn’t look at dirty pics. Afraid that your body will betray you? That you’ll get a visible erection in mixed company?”

Bobbi blushed and laughed. “No, but that might happen if you keep talking dirty like that. Take it down a notch, ma’am.”

Julia said, “Suit yourself,” and perused the magazine herself.

Bobbi checked her phone suddenly, panic rising at the possibility she’d walked into a den of organized crime. No bars. The walls behind those panels were all concrete and corrugated metal. What messages had come in before she lost connection? Nothing. Nobody in the bank thought anything of her leaving with Julia.

And why should they? It was an old business lady leading a dorky Robert out into an old business situation, surely. Bobbi didn’t know why she was, on some level, wishing people in the office knew where she was, had some concern for her safety as well. It wasn’t something that ever would have happened in the first place, and would put her job at risk if it was.

She wanted to just run her eyes over the whole scene, look for clues, for something to think about, but her eyes gravitated to Julia and stayed there. As much as Bobbi kept the pictures of lady idols in their youth, her sense of beauty had aged with her. Ladies in pictures could be icons of immortal beauty, but of the women she met in real life, she was only really attracted to those closer to her own age. Women in their twenties and thirties looked almost like children to her.

Julia’s forearms were exposed by the flex in her elbows, drawing cuffs back from wrists, and showing how her skin there had every kind of discoloration of age. Dark little moles, tiny red dots, freckles, more mysterious splotches, in all shades between pallor and the tan of the rest of her skin. But it didn’t matter. Bobbi’s own arms, while younger, were still textured with the progress of life. The lady before her was glamorous in a way she hadn’t seen in a long time - at least, that she’d taken notice of, because it was in someone closer to her own age. She could imagine touching her, running fingers up the trimmed fuzz on her neck into the thick dark grey curls on her head, nuzzling the silver curls at the front, working her lips from cheekbone down to meet Julia’s expressive little mouth.

Bobbi didn’t want to be making herself any more vulnerable in a situation where she’d already foolishly thrown herself to wolves, but her imagination was getting away from her. She unfocused her eyes, so it would, hopefully, look like she was looking at nothing in particular, but in her head she was touching Julia’s sides, moving her hands up toward those impressive breasts.

Then it clicked. Julia Folly. July 1982. Bobbi was in the presence of a true idol, somebody who had ruled despotic over her erotic imagination for nearly as long as it had existed. Her skin burned pink from head to toe and her breath escaped, thinned to desperate little gasps.

A guy came into the room—a creepy old imp like Robert Blake in Lost Highway—and said, “We’re done, Ms. Folly.”

“Thank you, Robin...” Her eyes fell on Bobbi. “You OK, Bobby?”

“Yes,” she mouthed, unable to make a sound.

Robin moved on and Julia sorted Bobbi out with a bottle of water and some attention. The attention made things worse at every moment she touched her, but she somehow managed to tamp down the chaotic energy enough to face the man.

Aubrey Gordon’s office was less cold than the rest of the building, perfectly regulated and sealed in thicker panels of more expensive wood. His ceiling was strange fuzzy drop tiles, but at least it was clean. His floor was Roman tile, and his furniture luxurious and bulky. Ivory bas-reliefs of pornographically proportioned women were inset on the walls to each side of his desk, and his chair’s dark brown leather back rose high above his shoulders like a royal throne.

The man himself had a physical energy not unlike Larry King. He was short but seemed powerful, like if he sucker punched you, you would go the hell down. Dark framed glasses did nothing to hide that he was a savage little animal in human skin.

“What do you have for me, Julia?”

“Bobby Schultz, Harvest Bounty Bank. About the video loan.”

“Have a seat, Bobby.” He gestured with a powerful liver-spotted hand, a few thick gold rings there knocking the surface of his desk. It wasn’t an invitation, but a demand.

Bobbi sat down. “Hello, Mr. Gordon. I’m just taking a look at the operation here as part of my considerations. Ms. Folly’s idea, as was this meeting.” She held out a hand to shake his, while not wanting to touch him in any way.

Gordon took the hand in a manly way, practically splitting her larger hand in two with his grip, then dropped her on the wood like a dead fish. “Please to meet you,” he said, sounding not at all pleased. “I hope you realize it’s an easy fucking call to make. Money’s money. Don’t yank our dicks, alright?”

“Yes sir,” she squeaked. It was a bad situation. There wasn’t a way she could say no, without finding out how mobbish Gordon was. He didn’t even have to hint at a threat. And what was that Robin character to him? “Robin let us in, tonight.”

“Yeah? That’s my executive assistant. He’d usually be the guy you were talking with, but what can I say? I want to get this shit done. You going to help us get this shit done? Make your bank some easy dough?” He leaned forward, a fist on his chin, surprisingly green eyes penetrating Bobbi’s soul.

“I, uh, I, ah...”

Julia leaned over and touched Bobbi’s cheek, gently pulling her gaze up to her own. Her face nearly brushed against breasts along the way. Julia said, “It really is an easy decision. You sign off, you never even have to look at us again. Just reap the rewards and call it a day, yes?” She stood and left Bobbi physically alone in that terrible psychic space.

“We’ll see what we can do, Mr. Gordon.”

He pursed his lips angrily, turning them buttermilk white. “Sounds a little like a dick yank, son, but alright. See what you can fucking do.” He flicked a wrist and Julia quickly scooped up Bobbi, leading her out of the room.

“Sorry,” she said in the lobby, “Seems he’s in a worse mood than usual.”

“I have to get the hell out of here,” Bobbi said quietly, weakly.

“Bobby, it’s OK. I can show you out.” She was already leading her back into the hall, supporting her with a strong arm. The big breast against Bobbi’s side did nothing to quell her overpowering sense of alarm.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

They were out in the hall again, walking briskly. Bobbi was in a terrified stagger, Julia taking slower and even steps, trying to slow Bobbi down as well. “You need to relax, like I said before, Bobby. I can show you some nice people, get you a drink? Not like you have to drive yourself home.”

“I can’t.”

Instead of leading her out the way they came, Julia pulled her into a room near the bend in the hall. It was a changing room with big brightly lit mirrors, a few young naked ladies down the way barely glancing up at them.

“Don’t,” Bobbi squeaked, but Julia kept dragging her into a separate area from the makeup room, more like the green room in a high school drama department, save for the glass tanks of snakes and rabbits. Julia shoved her down into a very soft couch, then pulled up a stool to face her directly.

“Bobby, calm down. Please. I get it. You didn’t want to deal with our world in the first place. I can get you off Aubrey’s radar, OK? I just don’t want you to walk away thinking less of me. I didn’t know it would go like that. I could have guessed, but maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. Just get with me. Look at me, kid.”

Bobbi looked up at Julia with teary eyes. “I’m sorry. I feel like a baby.”

She smiled. “Are you better, Bobby? We can go now. I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you, Julia.”

She took her out through the big cold studio, into the stifling sun of dusk, and back to the wild ride.

-

<back

[the-voice-of-hell]

PIXILLATED, pt 01

by me, maybe under the pen name Caesar Train Magenta, idk

CONTENT WARNINGS: F-slur and discussion of homophobia right off the bat. This section contains the sexual thoughts of a child character, I hope handled in a tastefully restrained way. Also contains descriptions of women's bodies in an objectified context, and the descriptions of women of color within that context might make some readers feel more uncomfortable. Again, I hope this is redeemed slightly by context. The part that seems most excessive is set-up for the rest of the story, which is erotic.

Prologue: A Puddle of 1982

Bobby hated junior high. It wasn’t the place where he’d first learned the word “faggot” and its meaning, but it was the place where he’d heard it the most. But hey, when the weather was hot, shorts were sensible wear. So what if they showed a lot of his pale legs? That hadn’t been a problem a few years before. So what if he had Michael Jackson on his binders? Again, this hadn’t been a problem a few short years prior. But junior high was time for everyone to grow up or die. Blink and it’s all over for you.

He wasn’t gay; he knew that much. He loved everything about women. Not so much girls, who were part of the wall of jeering faces in class. Women were awesome though. The big, long hair. The colorful faces. The jewelry and fashion. The sense of fun. They didn’t have to be as amazing as MTV ladies, but that helped. Even regular ladies—like his teachers—tilted his head toward the mystical. And they were so nice. As he awakened to the sensations of desire, he imagined nice ladies cradling his body, soft hands with painted nails, boughs of beautiful hair brushing against his bare skin, and the faces of angels above.

He hated junior high, but he hated being harassed by police moreso, and in the small town of Dexter, Idaho, the cops had nothing better to do with their time than to round up truants. The only time he’d skipped, they led him by the ear up to his mom’s porch, where his skin boiled away in pink humiliation. So he went willingly to the halls of that dire institution on weary feet, walking an hour each way to avoid the shrieking violent anarchy of the school bus ride.

Stepping off his porch at seven in the morning, the cold air rocked his frail body. But he knew it wouldn’t last, so he didn’t bother dressing for it. He walked briskly corner to corner, street to street, past cruelly barking dogs and creeping delivery vehicles. It was all chain link fences shot through with clods of tall yellow grass, squat ranch style family homes, and not a real human in sight. Presumably they were inside the phantom carriages, or inside the houses living out Folgers commercials, but on his walks not one pale face confronted him, and it was pleasing.

Since Bobby was first prescribed glasses, the world had gained a clarity that entranced. Every grain of gravel, every blade of grass, broken twig, or cottony split cigarette filter at the side of the road combined into an endless seasick mural that he sometimes had to tear his eyes away from. One day in late spring of 1982, an unnatural shape drew his attention into an evaporating puddle by an ugly little park.

It was the corner of some kind of paper. It could have been anything—a matchbook, a parking ticket, a xeroxed fad diet sucked off the dashboard of an office lady on the way home when she opened the window for a little air—but Bobby was compelled to stop, to know, and paid the price with a head rush. He nudged the paper half free of the muddy water, and was rewarded with knowledge.

Carnal knowledge. The thick paper was printed with an Asian woman in a baseball outfit, the top pulled up to reveal ample and completely bare breasts. The blue sky near the corner he had caught simply read JULY. Bobby’s heart skipped a beat, his face flushed, and he looked around the world with wild eyes. Not even a bird was there to see him, to see his embarrassment, but in the distance a green station wagon was coming down the road.

Bobby stepped over the puddle and wrapped sweaty palms around the top of the park’s short fence, took a moment of rest, waiting for the station wagon to pass. He imagined the driver slowing, asking if he needed help, and knew if that happened that he would be unable to speak. But the soft chug of the engine and the moan of rubber on crumbling street parallaxed past him in the usual way, without a moment of pause.

He took a sharp breath and swivelled his head again. No more cars. He dove hands first into the puddle and extracted his treasure, careful padding it dry with his t-shirt, trembling. As he pulled the backpack off his shoulders and secreted away the prize, a dragonfly on a gleaming fencepost stretched its wings, shaking off morning dew. It regarded him with the same rapt attention that he regarded the ragged calendar, and when he took flight, the creature did as well.

Few people would be at the school as early as Bobby, very few. Certainly none in the boy’s restroom, where he first dared to take the time to fully drink in the details of those sodden pages. The light was cold, the stall painted a warm grey, the tiles at his feet brick red and reasonably clean for the janitor’s late labors the day before. The crude drawings and obscene humor of the walls could not compete for his attention then.

The calendar was folded open and flattened with July facing out, and when he unfolded it he discovered that the first few months and December had been torn away. The month of April was only there in calendar form, its representative girl and her antecedents all lost. Still in the puddle? The pages were still sticky with water and Bobby separated them with religious patience, daubing away the remaining fluid with toilet paper.

On the back of April’s days, Miss May was revealed. Right below the fold of the calendar her name and the photographer credit were barely visible—Vanity Fyre and Hogstrom Thrumborg. Vanity was dressed as an improbably sexy nurse, rubber phlebotomy strap pressing on her breasts, half-concealing the areolae, while her white skirt rode up to reveal a fuzzy thatch of orange pubic hair. The carpet didn’t quite match the drapes, as the crass say, her teased-out feathers of straight hair a sort of honey blonde color. She was at the edge of a hospital bed with one leg up, holding an oversized novelty syringe.

That was all that one was meant to notice, but Bobby saw the body and demeanor beneath. Vanity Fyre was slim but soft, with the weak appearance of a person who never tried hard at anything. Her hips were narrow and her breasts modest. The strap across them turned two lumps into four. Her face was tall and narrow, relatively plain but for a nose with that naturally notched and sculpted look one might associate with another European ethnicity beside one’s own. They have fancy noses over in Somewhereland. The eyes were young and brown, cast down, not engaging the fantasy of sexy menace to the fullest extent. She was shy or weary.

Buried in the fold beneath Miss June, the names read Lily Bauch and Hogstrom Thrumborg again. Lily was styled as a pastoral girl in red and white gingham, with brighter blonde hair in braided pig-tails. She had dropped a basket of eggs, causing her breasts and mons to become exposed, somehow. Again, different carpet, a sort of medium brown. Her areolae were small and pale brown, breasts modest and pert. She was more fleshy than Vanity, perhaps shortness making her proportionally broader. Were it not for the breadth of her hips and fullness of her muff, the illusion of taboo childhood might have worked. Her face was short and babyish, eyes big and dark blue. Lily’s expression of surprise at this calamity was deeply false, no doubt held an uncomfortably long time for Hogstrom’s lens, but she did not look unhappy. It was easy to imagine this risque business actually appealed to her - that she was having fun.

Miss July was Julia Folly, Bobby’s introduction to the world of adult entertainment, and photographed by Alesandro Massimo. A baseball cap was pulled down over her forehead and brow, and her eyes were small both for Asian ancestry and for squinting in the sun of an outdoor photoshoot. She had those black stripes painted beneath her eyes to complete the image of a determined athlete, but to Bobby they evoked a tribal warrior. The black hair behind her head, long and full enough to be visible at her sides as well, was all tight curls and liquid shimmer. Incredible.

Julia’s expression matched the styling of the fantasy presented - fiercely determined. But perhaps she was just angry on that day, and it came across. Her hands were in fingerless gloves and loosely gripped the baseball bat across her shoulders.

She had the most womanly body in the calendar yet, full and strong, with the largest breasts Bobby’d ever seen on a slim woman. He wasn’t aware of breast implants at that time, wowed by the effect with perfect naivety. Her nipples were relaxed and areolae large, pink, and silky. Where the sunlight fell most directly across her body, it blazed with golden light, and her pose revealed more of the labia than the other girls as well—which was powerfully compelling, but he moved on. What else would he find?

Miss August was Tilly Charms, photographed by Alesandro. She was a slimmer woman, much like Vanity in build, but olive-skinned and with shorter and chocolate brown hair—only shoulder length. The tight curls may have been permed in, the style lacked bangs and other features, like a soft and uniform helmet. She’d been shot outside, reclining in a shaded hammock that complicated the colors across her body with a sheen of sky blue. Tilly was wearing a limp straw hat and a red mesh shirt that revealed the comparative pallor of her untanned breasts.

That was all she was wearing, her brown pubic hair fully exposed in a random shaft of sunlight. The idea of somebody wearing a shirt and no pants seemed somehow more obscene than any of the cheesy costumes in the book yet. Her pale green eyes held a sensuous expression, slightly serious, like she was welcoming a lover to a wild tryst, but expecting a real relationship as well.

Miss September was Africa Jackson (by Alesandro), a beautiful and fairly dark-skinned black woman, whose considerable charms were undercut by a bored expression and dark sunglasses. The shape of her face couldn’t be mistaken for white even had she been light-skinned, West African character in every detail. The idea behind the photoshoot was inscrutable. She was up to her belly button in a swimming pool, wearing a neon green spaghetti-strap bikini top that was missing the cloth that would actually conceal anything. Had that been cut away or was the garment constructed that way out of green string?

Africa’s hair defied gravity in a thick spray of bangs and thicker ponytail, natural kinks shining with some kind of product, and the frame of her shades was neon pink. Barely a drop of pool water reached a higher place on that shining brown body, like she’d slipped into it very carefully just for the shot. Her muscles were stronger than the other girls and her flesh less soft. Her breasts also defied gravity—again the breast implants he could not recognize—and the nipples were outrageously erect.

Miss October was Destiny Beech, again shot by Hogstrom Thrumborg, master of awkward studio work. Her hair was big, black, and slightly wavy, and her skin was pale. Sexy witch colors, with black eyeliner, pale blue eyes, and bright red lipstick. She wasn’t actually styled as a witch, though the set was in black and autumn hues. Destiny wore a black silk kimono with thin gold lines of some unreadable design, folded back to fully reveal her naked body. The closest yet to full-figured in the calendar, she had a curvy body with pleasing hips. Her breasts were as large and pink as Julia’s, but seemed smaller on a body where everything else was a bit larger as well. A few random dots of a cooler hue came from purple fingernail polish, shining where a hand rested on her hip.

Destiny’s face was blankly pleasant, like she was just modeling sweaters in a K-Mart catalog. Bobby wondered what was behind those eyes. Overall, she was the closest he’d seen in the calendar to his emerging preferences, checking all the boxes with cold professionalism.

At last there was Miss November, her name barely visible where only a sliver of her calendar page remained—Sabrina Succubus. The photographer credit was lost, but it must have been Hogstrom, because the setting was indoors and the lighting unremarkable. More of her picture came off on toilet paper daubing than Bobby would have preferred, leaving irregular white blotches among the water damage. Still, she was all there. Sabrina’s pose was intended to disguise her solid physique and play up the assets that got her the job. Her short, curveless body was twisted at an angle to suggest what wasn’t there; her naturally large, soft breasts would sag to her navel if not propped on crossed arms. They were rather like the breasts of his geography teacher, which were enthralling to the boy.

Sabrina’s face was also the least glamorous in the book, just a bit too broad for the usual modeling gigs, with a smile that had a bit too much gum. Her eyes were nearly black and sparkled sweetly; her hair would be naturally straight and black but for tease, crimp, and brown highlights. Nothing was disguising her native Central or South American ancestry, but in a tasteless Thanksgiving theme, she wore a sexy native North American costume. Light buckskin lingerie with beads and fringes, a feathered headband. Bobby found her naked skin lovely. It was almost orange with tan in areas that see the light, fading to a creamy tone of a rather different hue over the breasts, which had large, light brown areolae—with some variety to their color as well. He touched her with one of his bright pink fingers and was immediately ashamed to have dared.

They were saints, angels, creatures of dream brought to some semblance of reality in his life. Bobby was blessed, and thus transformed. He carefully put the ladies away, knowing he would spend a lot more time with them in years to come.

-

next>

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#spookybackgroundappreciationsgiving

And in the spirit of the holiday, we still count the middle ones despite non-spookiness and having a foreground layer, respectively. It’s the only true way to celebrate Spookybackgroundappreciationsgiving.

–Colin

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ignore this post

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THE MIDNIGHT COLLECTION

Read the new dark fiction collection I've edited!

Long time no write! I’ve had a lot of blog posts percolating in my head that I can’t wait to get back into. In the meantime, I’d like to announce the release of a dark fiction collection that I’ve edited and designed. It’s twelve short stories, poems, and non-fiction, including two stories and a poem by yours truly. Our first volume is themed on ‘Feast & Famine’—with a good mixture of both. You…

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Reefer Madness (1936)

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who wants a covid vaccine version of reefer madness?  coming thru at a theater near you, and get funk like a shoe, whut.

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Rent is Theft, part 26, The End

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here.  Note:  My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not.  If you have notes on that or anything else, hit me up.

                                                     ***

      This is pretty spoilery from the first paragraph, so...

       I went to the kids’s apartment and assessed the damage.  Olivia and Knobby had Deandre in the bedroom and used a bandana to tourniquet his leg.  I let them know the pig was dead and checked out Mike’s body.

      He still looked so alive, I dragged a blanket over him and made some half-assed sign of the cross.  By then, Momi was bringing Patrick and Perry into the room, and Olivia was standing in the bedroom door to let Deandre hear any happenings without moving him.  Marcie and Richie showed up at the door.

      Speech time.  “Alright, this is over.”  My energy started out confident, but suddenly choked.  I had been going on adrenaline from the fight, maybe, but mid-sentence I realized I had welcomed all these nice people into Hell.

      I killed Mike.  I wobbled on my legs, standing over that body, eyes searching my people - my victims.  “We need to get the hell out of here before it gets any worse.  I am so sorry I brought you into this.”

      “Bitch shut the hell up.”  Perry tried to walk away, and Patrick snagged his hand.

      I threw up my hands.  Yeah.  I’m done.

      Marcie said, “Alright, we should go.  Get anything you need and just go.  Does anybody need help with anything?  I can’t do much, but maybe we can help each other one more time before...”  She seemed to finally make sense of the lump on the ground behind me and pressed her face into Richie’s arm.

      Deandre yelped in pain, dragging himself into the room, grunting in agony with each step.  He leaned on Knobby.  “It was worth a shot.  A couple months no rent, I coulda ended up this fucked up just out there on the street.”

      Patrick said, “Yeah, well, I got nothin’ nice to say, so… Let’s just get the fuck out, huh?”

      Momi held me close.  I thought of something and looked around for an answer.  “Grime.  Does anyone have a phone?”

      “I don’t think ours are gonna work,” Knobby said.  “The chargers melted, like...”

      Deandre said, “I put mines in the freezer.  Somebody wanna grab it for me?”  Knobby hurried away.

      Olivia came over to Momi and me, a scrawny cat in baggy underwear and tank top.  She wrapped her arms around us.  “Thanks mom.”

      I stifled tears, then my heart skipped a beat when I heard a distant pop.  A pop followed by a sound of glass breaking, and a mess spreading over the hall carpet.  Another pop.

      Knobby came back in a hurry, gave Deandre the phone.  “It’s fuckin’ raining eyeballs in the halls, guys.  Is that bad?  It feels bad.”

      Deandre got Grime.  “Dude.  Don’t come back.  The place is all fucked up.  Just forget it…  I don’t know!  It’s bad.  I’m goin’ to the hospital bad.”

      Patrick shushed him, shushed all of us.  Olivia let go of the group hug and bent her big ears.

      The elevator doors were opening.

      We were all so quiet we could hear Grime on the phone say, “How’s Courtney?”

      Then his words were lost under the sound of footsteps and bouncing balls, of some unknown horde spilling into the hall, marching in irregular time.

      Perry started to panic, tried to run away, but Patrick wrapped arms around him again.  “Hey man, put your hands up!  We gotta put our hands up!  There are bodies, man!”  He stepped away from his man and put his own hands up, nodded.  Perry slowly unfurled himself and complied, fell in beside Patrick, both looking toward the door in terror.

      Deandre hung up the phone and flopped into the bedroom, out of sight.  Olivia joined him in there, followed by Marcie and Richie.

      I thought about who was out in the hall.  Who was out in the hall?  Was it cops?  What would they think of the bug man’s corpse?  Momi tried to drag me toward the room, then gave up and put her hands up.

      They stood in the door.  Behind them I could see Charlie’s greasy head.  “There they are!”

      He was marching with creatures in grey trenchcoats.  Giant cicadas?  They pulled human-like hands from their pockets, loose eyeballs falling out and rolling on the carpets.  They quickly filed into the room to stand,each transfixing a single finger on a different one of us.

      Perry backed up, trembling violently, shaking his head.  Patrick stepped between him and the accusing finger.  “No!  Fuck this shit!  Back OFF!”

      The things were unmoved.  Charlie came into the room as more filed in from behind.

      “ProperCo stands for quality service, and that means keeping paying customers safe from trespassers.  You degenerates sicken me.  Take them out!”

      The last cicadas started trying bedroom doors.  They opened one, then as they approached the one with Deandre and the kids, Momi ran to block them.  “Hey!,” she yelled.  The one pointing at her wheeled in place, keeping its accusing finger trained on her, but not moving.

      I’d been paralyzed, but apparently it was go time.  I started moving, but was still in the grip.  I managed one step Momi’s direction.  No, baby.

      One got its hand on the doorknob, and she bashed it aside with both arms.  I’d seen enough bizarre things today, but this still surprised me.  The thing seemed to break apart at the joints, collapsing like bowling pins inside its coat.

      Momi looked surprised too, but didn’t have much time to react.  The remaining creatures didn’t even pause at the destruction of their comrade, another rushing to take the place of the one she demolished.  She was too close for a proper punch so she bumped it back a step with her body and then kicked it in the middle.

      Like the first, it fell to pieces.  The trenchcoat spilled its contents - more of those eyeballs, a creepy fluid like tobacco spit, and the gleaming oil-colored segments of the creature.  Some of the limbs had a comb-like fringe of sharp black spines.

      She kicked the pieces away and looked to me, ready for the next.  I grabbed the arm of the one pointing at me and immediately had to let go, fingers bleeding.  It stopped pointing and raised its hands to grab me.  But as swift as they were filing in, they were oddly slow.  I shoved it back with two fists to the chest.  It felt fragile - no more sturdy than a cheap kitchen appliance.

      Over its shoulder I could see Patrick going to town on them, encouraged by Momi’s success.  I yelled to him, “Watch for the spines!”

      “HahaHA!  Take that!”

      It was an empowering moment.  We kicked, shoved, and stomped the things apart.  But more kept coming.  What the fuck was this?  What were we supposed to do?  I got to Momi, almost tripping a trenchcoat scrap tangled on my foot.

      “Let’s get everyone to the elevator or the stairs!”

      “OK!”  She whipped the bedroom door open and gestured for everyone to come out.  One by one they came out into the unreal scene of weird horrors and had to deal with it.  I could hardly keep up with dismantling the cicadas and looking at my people.  I wished I could see how Marcie was doing.  Leimomi was the best able to carry Deandre and was taking care of that, at least.

      “Call me a fuckin’ degenerate?”  Patrick was attacking Charlie with a severed bug limb, wielding the thing like a scimitar.  Through the frantic scene I saw his expression change as blood splashed over it.  He sucked in his lips in regret and horror.  Didn’t know it would be that sharp.

      I think Charlie was one of the things I almost tripped over on my way into the hall, bringing up the rear.  Deandre and Momi were closest to me.  Deandre was glancing back into the room just as we escaped and his eyes widened in shock.  “Mike!”

      “I know!”  I knew it was my fault.

      “He’s still alive!”

      I heard Marcie’s voice from up ahead, “Mikey!  Oh god!”

      Momi stopped in her tracks.  Our group was jammed up in the hall, fighting cicada men for every inch of ground as more and more spilled out of the stairwell.  The elevator door was closed, which may have been a good sign.

      “Momi, pass Deandre up the line, call the elevator!”

      She looked like she didn’t know if that would all be possible, but at least hit the call button while she could.  I didn’t stick around to see how she handled Deandre.  If Mike really was alive, he probably wouldn’t survive being moved - not like this - but I had to try.

      The mindless creatures were focused on the crowd of us, so they had mostly abandoned the room.  In the riot of action I had been unable to see the consequences of this melee.  The grey light revealed a ruined world.  The ground was completely covered with spiny black corpses tangled with rough grey cloth and filthy brown viscera.  Peppered throughout were those fucking eyeballs.  Charlie���s corpse was little more than a bump underneath the mass of insect limbs.  The furniture was all flipped or smashed, every surface blistered from the heat treatment, and the air still hazy with that smoke.

      There were two dark figures inching toward Mike.  He was alive, legs paralyzed and tangled in the blanket, reaching out to me in terror.  “Courtney oh man… Oh god!”

      “I know!”  I charged through the waste, kicking up chunks of chitin that had the weight of vacuum attachments or celery stalks.  The mess thinned out closer to the windows, and closer to him.  I charged up on the monsters, did the double-fisted punch to one’s back.

      It was as effective as before - the thing’s torso ripped almost completely free of its limbs, surging out of the coat for a moment before toppling to the floor.  The other one got to mike and reached down to his face like a priest.

      I could see myself doing a jump kick, busting it apart like Jean Claude Van Damme.  A little hustle, a hop, and bam.  But the vision betrayed me.  My feet snagged in the remains of the creature I’d just smashed, and I fell down hard.  The spiny limbs ripped right into me, slicing my stomach and left arm.

      My face bounced off the floor, stars everywhere.  I was picked up, somebody strong, soft, sweaty.  Momi was dragging Mike and I over the mess.  I started catching cuts again.  Was I in shock?  I was aware of the ragged state of my arm, of the flesh around my belly wound swelling and burning, but the pain seemed remote.  I could see Mike beside me, goggle-eyed and looking like a sausage with sweat beading on his discolored, purple-pink skin.

      Ow!  Too much.  I hauled myself to my feet, all my injuries starting to throb and scream at the same time.  “I’m good, I’m...”  The end of the hall with the stairs was walled off with a teeming ruin of chitin and fabric.  Busy mindless teeming hands worked from the other side to clear the mess while Richie pressed a door against it like a shield and Marcie leapt up to smack the reaching creatures.

      Ding!  The elevator reached the floor and the doors opened, just Momi, Mike, and I facing it.  As the metal rolled back, we could see the cicada men arrayed in right rows, like black metal machine guns in a rack.

      There was only one door to get away from them - a place with no exits, no escape.  We all crowded into my apartment, Richie closing and locking the door behind us, snapping off bits of bug extremities as he did.  A scattering of eyeballs had made it through and rolled across the floor like it was a big pool table.  Marcie aggressively crushed the things.

      Richie kept his palms on the door.  “They are sooo gonna get in.”  He turned around, pressing his back against it.  “What are we gonna do?  What are we gonna do?”

      I was leaning against my bedroom door frame again, no Mae West now.  I felt cold while my wounds felt hot, the blood already thickening to warm glue, gobbing inside my robe.

      Leimomi was holding Mike close like lovers in a waltz.  His toes scraped the ground.  Probably he was already dead.  Her hair was sad dregs of what it used to be.

      Olivia and Knobby helped Deandre sit on a couch and settled in beside him, exhausted and unsure.

      Patrick held Perry close as the taller older man looked away from us pointedly, head sunk.  Patrick looked shell-shocked.

      Marcie yelped, “Richie!”

      Richie turned around, planting palms on the door again, and saw what she was freaking about.  The doors hinges were coming unscrewed, amid a furious buzzing in the hall.

      Patrick said, “What now, woman?”

      I turned away, walked into my bedroom, looked at the haze and the blisters, the pathetic remnants of my nest.  A glob of blood sucked free from my stomach and splashed on the floor.  I looked down at it curiously.  The ground puckered and warped like a black hole’s event horizon.  I felt like I was falling into it.

      No, I caught myself.  I was just staggering from the blood loss.

      “What now, woman?”

      Momi defended me, “Shut up, dude.”

      I became aware of people coming into the room behind me, but I just looked around, ahead of me.  The window.  We could go out the window.  I took a few halting steps that way, then more toward the closet.  It looked cozy in there.  Dark.  Yeah, hide, lay low until this blows over.  Why not?

      The sound of the door flying off the hinges.  Insect feet tapping their march, like goose stepping on chipmunk RPMs.  I glimpsed Richie and Marcie moving toward the bathroom, but I got their attention.

      “Hey!  Follow me, guys.  I got this.  We got this.”

      Momi closed in beside me, Patrick pulled Perry behind me, Deandre and kids were back there somewhere too.  I walked into the closet on floating steps, pushed my way in with a blood soaked left hand.  Ran it along the wall.  I knew everyone was behind me, pushed in by the crush of insect men.  I couldn’t see, could only feel the blood and the darkness, warm ahead of us.

      I led them into that place.

                                                      ***

      Graeme Wexell tried his prox key on the alley side door of the building.  It didn’t work.  Considering what that most likely meant, he quickly walked away, circled the block.

      He put in both earbuds and tried Courtney’s phone again, then Deandre’s, then Patrick’s, then Deandre’s again.  Having circled the block with no response, he leaned on the fence dividing the apartment’s alley from the next property, looked the building up and down impatiently.  It was maddeningly opaque, reflecting the overcast early morning light all too perfectly.

      He needed a better angle to stake it out without being clocked.  If the floories were perp walked out, he’d know to go look for them at a police station.  If they came out any other way, he could talk to them, find out what happened.  He could not bring himself to give up the watch.

      Casting about for a solution, he hit on something a little desperate, perhaps equally risky.  Clearly, not thinking clearly.  He went into the alley on the other side of the fence, which was adjacent to an older building with a disused fire escape.

      He rolled a dumpster under the thing, heaved himself up on top, and carefully leapt to the bottom rung.  He hadn’t climbed anything in years, but had a sort of natural strength that helped overcome his lack of athleticism.  It was still an effort he’d be feeling the next day, but he got to the lowest level of the fire escape.

      Due to the narrow old bars, he’d be poorly visible from the street but still able to see the next alley over the fence just fine.  He slouched low to avoid notice, stared intently.  Minutes passed before he started trying to call people again, to no avail.

      The morning clouds burned away into a relatively blue sky, his lack of sleep and the strain of his exertion and stress and hunger threatened to take him under.  He felt like he was going insane, like he’d just die on that rusty old rack, get discovered months later by some Law & Order styled policemen who’d crack wise about his cargo shorts.

      It was the worst experience of his whole excursion into revolutionary anti-capitalist action.  But at 9:43 AM, his patience was rewarded with a revelation.

      The back door of the apartments opened and three bizarre dark creatures in trenchcoats filed out, so smoothly and eerily that it seemed the three were unfolding from one.  One held the door and the other two flanked the opening like guard statues.  His heart vibrated in time with their uncanny movements.  The blood left his head in a rush.  He almost fainted, but instead gripped the steel bars with sweaty white-knuckled fists.

      More of the creatures filed out into the broad daylight.  No fear of discovery?  No one seemed to look into the alley, take notice.  Christ, what sorts of things happen in this world, if this is possible?  The next set were dragging the blood-drenched corpse of landlord Charlie.  They hauled him to the trash compactor and tried to heave him inside.

      But they were too weak.  They used spiny extra limbs from within their coats to start snipping him to pieces, throwing each part in the dumpster like so much meat, leaving blood and chunks all over the area.  They took something from what was left of his clothes and came back toward the door.  Meanwhile, another two had gone out to the sidewalk, grabbing a random lady off the street and dragging her toward the building.

      Graeme wanted to move, to save her, but she wasn’t resisting.  Had they instantly killed her with some sort of venom?  His mind just kept melting, slipping through the bars with his sweat.

      The things circled, dipping and weaving with robot efficiency.  One put the item from Charlie into her pocket, the others scissored away her jacket and shirt with arm spines, before slipping a corporate polo shirt over her head and shoulders.

      They filed back inside like dancers on a cuckoo clock, closing the door behind themselves and leaving the woman dazed, standing.  She took the item out of her pocket.  Keys.  She used the prox key to open the back door and disappeared inside.

      Graeme stayed in a hotel for a few weeks before transferring to a different job in Texas.  He never returned to Seattle.

                                                      ***

      The tall shining Myrmidon Apartments were clean and new - barely used.  People came in to check out the rooms, see if there was anything they could afford, sometimes just for a glimpse at a life they’d never achieve.  One such man had come in on that day, looked out the window into the void of sky while the manager blathered through the sales pitch in the background.  Room 1203.

      He put his fingers to the glass and leaned his head closer.  He could imagine passing through the membrane, losing his mind, another fish in a sea of sky.  The manager took mental note to hit the spot with Windex after he was gone.

      The manager’s phone rang.  “Just a moment, let me...”

      “Mm-hm.”  The man walked into another room - the bedroom - all antiseptically squared away in its stock furnishings and plastic plants.

      He heard a noise in the closet and came near, brow wrinkling in fear.  An animal?

      No.  The door opened from within.  I stood there, a vision in black gossamer and jewels. He fell over the bed, then quickly scrambled to his feet.

      “I’m Courtney,” I told him from the mouth on my face.  "You can go if you want, get on a waiting list for roach and bed bug infested low income housing, or try to get by with more than four hours of commuting every day while your rent rises faster than your pay.  You can do anything."

      "I can’t afford this.  How did you know?"

      "You're right, this place is a monument to automatized, mindless, bottomless greed.  It can never be a home, can only rob you blind and spit you out…  But there is somewhere you can go that won't cost you anything, I swear to god."

      The walls nearest me began to swell red and suppurate with ill fluids.  In the next room, the manager started talking to him again.  “Alright, Mr. Coral, where were we?”  Footsteps approaching.  The bed started to twist in place on the inflamed flesh of the floor.

      He looked at me, lost.  “What do I do?  What is this?”

      I beckoned, arms pulling him with invisible power, a siren with skin of turquoise and lavendar.  He staggered toward me.

      “It won’t cost you anything,” I told him from the mouth on my throat.  “All you have to do is come with me.  All you have to do is disappear.”

                                                  THE END