Borderlands 5 (28 page)

“Oh my God, I need medical attention!” Where would he go? Should he drive to St. Louis? He couldn’t go to the hospital here. “Father came in with a torn rectum,” they would say. Jesus, the cops would be watching him, then, the way they watched other priests.

“It’s all ruined,” he screamed.

Then something came out of him—spraying out, he couldn’t control it. He hadn’t felt it coming. It was just spraying out like a firehose, but it—oh, holy Jesus, help me. “Help me! Help me!”

It was flying around in the air, buzzing around in the shower stall. But what? He batted at them. They were coming out of him, he could feel his bowels emptying steadily.

Bugs were coming out of him, little, speeding bugs that stung like pinpricks when they struck his skin. They smelled like shit. It was like being enveloped in a brown shit-cloud. Oh, my God. My God!

He leaped out of the shower and threw himself to the floor and rolled like a burning man, rolled to the door and then to the stall and back, all the while spewing massive clouds of flies.

Then it stopped. He was crying and screaming, his butt burning, his guts inside burning worse. Drugs. He’d been lured over to the school and drugged hard and deep and it was destroying him, because, you see, a man cannot shit flies, can he? So all these flies that smelled like shit and were crawling all over this damn john, they weren’t here, were they?

He came to a sitting position. No, they were not here. They did not exist. So he could safely ignore them. He drew himself to his feet.

And this time, what he saw in the mirror was not at first recognizable to him. The man he saw in the mirror was a cadaver. He had lost maybe eighty of his two hundred pounds, eighty or ninety. Maybe half. Maybe he’d lost half his weight.

Poland, 1944, people had looked like this. Biafra. Sudan. But not in a prosperous community in middle America, and not a perfectly healthy man of sixty-two, and certainly not in a few minutes. And who the hell had shaved his head? Damn, but look—there was hair all over the floor. The place looked like a barbershop.

He was tired, too. Oh, boy was he tired. In fact, he thought that death itself was maybe not so far from this kind of tired.

“Bob, we gotta go down the hall now.”

Who the hell said that? It was like there were people moving around out there, but he couldn’t see them. “I got a lotta flies in here,” he said. It came out as a shout.

“What’s he saying.”

“Get him on his feet.”

“He shit all over the place.”

“Fuck, this is gonna be a hard one. Bob, do you know what’s goin’ on, here? Hello? Christ, the guy’s, like catatonic.”

He was going into the light. It wasn’t unpleasant, he was sort of drifting—levitating, that’s what they called it. Or no, suddenly he was heavy and his underarms hurt. He was being carried!

This was Bobby’s doing. “Bobby! Bobby!”

“Sick fuck, Jesus!”

“Shut up. Just—”

Somebody started praying, an old man’s voice, but familiar. There was a lot of light. The windows were black, though. He was lying down. Jesus, thank you. “I’m sure ready for this,” he said.

“What was that?”

“He’s ready for it.”

“Yeah, sure. The bastard shit himself in the damn hall.”

A woman’s voice, sharp, hard, called out, “Are you sorry now, you scum? You scum!”

Jesus Christ help her, she is filled with spleen and hate. Then he saw a hospital attendant. Oh, thank God, somebody had found him, somebody had gotten him to the emergency room.

“I’ve been raped,” he said.

“Ask the good Lord for forgiveness. Ask these poor people for forgiveness. Robert, let their spirits be at peace.”

“I? Why? I’m the one who needs help. I’ve been raped, I’ve been drugged.”

His arm hurt, but when he tried to move it, it wouldn’t go anywhere. Then they dimmed the lights. Then they turned them out.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 2002

ROBERT JAMES MURPHY EXECUTED

Former Catholic priest Robert James Murphy was executed at midnight tonight for the rape-murder of Robert Kevin Cox, who had been a student at St. Mary Martyr school when he was drawn into an abusive relationship with Murphy. When the boy threatened to tell his parents about Murphy’s activities, the former priest strangled him and hid his body in a hollowed-out area inside the altar at the church. St. Mary Martyr was consolidated into St. Matthew’s parish last year, the church was deconsecrated and sold to Pyramid Development as part of the new Crossroads Mall expansion project. Murphy leaves no survivors. He never admitted his crime. He offered no last words. Murphy is the first Catholic priest to be executed in the United States.

A Thing

BARBARA MALENKY

Barbara Malenky’s work has appeared in hundreds of venues, but we must admit that she was totally new to us. After subsequently learning of her many previous publications, we were disappointed to realized that we weren’t discovering “another great new” writer. At least it proves that past accomplishments don’t sway us; but a good story always will.

M
y stomach hurts but he puts it in anyway and we get to moving with some kinda rhythm just like a rock and roller and for a little while I forget the cancer they told me I got in my guts.

Later the pain sticks me again and I roll over but he’s asleep when I want to tell him about it and I watch the shadows folks outside is throwing on the blinds walking by the Hog Walla Motel.

I don’t wanna sleep cause of the dreams but I do and I see my daddy Roy waving at me from the gates of the brimstone hotel and he’s laughing and showing the same rotten teeth he had when he died.

My fella is gone when I wake up and he’s left me a twenty on the dresser under my moisturizing night cream and I put it in my purse cause that will be my lunch for I eat more to keep my weight up.

There ain’t nobody on the streets I can complain too so’s I walk down to Homer’s and climb up on one of them bar stools that’s got pink plastic over the seat and a big fat man behind the counter flipping eggs and burgers and bacon like a pizza-maker throwing his dough.

I used to diet cause my body was the kind what gained weight fast and dropped it next to slow as molasses and I was always needing to look pretty but there ain’t no use to worry on that anymore and I order two burgers with everything and a malted and a double wedge of chocolate cake that makes my mouth water just looking at it.

A voice says a thing in my right ear and I look at the fella that has come up and took the seat next to me and I see he’s no bigger than a kid trying to fill out his britches and I start to ignore him when something makes me look twice.

He’s got an old man’s face and a dead man’s eyes and his lips is caked with spit and a thing what looks like mud and a brown tip of tongue that flicks out like a snake feeling its way to a next meal.

He snatches hold my hand and slips a thing in it and closes his fingers around it and his person is so smelling bad that I have to catch up my breath and fix my eyes on the counter top to keep the vomit from coming out of my dying guts and spewing over Homer’s clean floor.

“Yer take him,” he whispers barely above the sizzle of my burgers on the grill, “cause I got no more use and yer can feed him until yer gets well enough and then yer pass him on to another near dead.”

He lets go my hand and I open my mouth to tell him I don’t want nothing from the likes of him but he’s gone and disappeared and leaves a thing that jerks like a heartbeat in my palm and when I open my hand it’s as small as a tick and black as a coal stone and blank as a sheet with only a tiny hole in its middle like the head of a pin.

I look at it and I reckon it’s looking at me and I don’t rightly know what to do with it and my burgers and chocolate cake is sitting in front of me with a nice clean fork and a big glass of sweet malted milk and I’m as hungry as I’ve ever been.

I push my palm against my shirt and rub up and down real hard and scrap it against the counter top and try to bite it off but nothing works cause it has bedded itself into my skin like a chigger and won’t let loose. I eat with one hand and keep the palm open of the other one and watch a thing digging deeper and filling itself with my flesh while I fill up on the flesh of something else and it all becomes clear how the world works.

Human beings are the worst parasites of them all and they get their due like me being eaten by cancer and a thing that looks like a drop of ink cause everything is a parasite on something else.

My burgers are tasting real good with all these thoughts and I’m tasting good cause the dot is gouging out a hole and burrowing deeper and deeper until by the time I’m finished with my malted it’s gone invisible and there’s a single drop of blood to replace it.

By the time I walk back home my gut cancer’s talking like it’s full of green apples from my mama’s old orchard trees and I barf a couple of times before I hit the stairwell that’ll take me to my apartment on the sixth floor.

I’m so sick I figure the time has come that the doctor told me to expect and I’m supposed to prepare to meet my maker only I don’t need to prepare cause I already know where I’m heading due to my life of sin.

The bed sure looks good to me and I decide it’s where I want to end a thing so I crawl under the sheets and stretch out as long as I can but the hurt is so bad I have to curl up like a little baby waiting to be born.

Sleep takes me away and I see my daddy Roy again waving and grinning and waiting just like a spider for a thing to happen and I try to run away from him and that’s what wakes me up and the sun is shining bright through my window and the air smells clean and cool and the pain in my gut is gone so that I feel like I used to before a thing happened.

As the day goes on I feel better and better until I think I’m sixteen years old again and life is stretched out like a long winding road with sunshine beckoning the way and I clean my apartment and wash my clothes and give some thought to maybe buying a new dress at the Wal-Mart store.

And all the time a thing in my palm is growing big as an orange so that I think I maybe should lance it with a razor but I remember what the old man said about getting well and passing it on to another near dead and then I remember the story.

It’s one my granny Lottie used to tell me when I was a young’an and it went that because all illness is caused by sin God made a thing to eat it and cleanse the mind and soul but there is only one in the whole universe to be passed around and if you are a chosen one you will get a chance at it and be saved.

The thought comes to me on how a thing is going to pass from me to be given to another near dead and the answer is soon to come for I feel a thing like hot bile moving up my insides through my throat and stopping at the back of my tongue and growing like a rain-fed creek.

I start to shake cause a thing is cutting off my air and when I finally open my mouth it begins to ooze from me like a creature I saw once in a horror movie over my chin and on down my whole body like a snake and across the floor and it’s red and green and gray and black sin. It pulls me to the floor with it and I feel so good and clean that I don’t even try to scream just roll with it until the floor is covered by a thing and my body is so light and my insides are even lighter as I am reborn and soon go to sleep in the middle of its thick nastiness.

I see my old daddy Roy not grinning and not waving but only being pulled further and further away from my dream until he is as small a thing as possible and my dreams are full of bright sunshine and flowers and a big blue and white bird flying a kite tied to its tail feathers.

One day one night and another day and another night pass and I am between sleep and consciousness hearing the phone ring and the doorbell ring but not moving just resting to gather new strength and a thing grows smaller and thinner digesting my sin and on the third day I wake and find it small as a tick and black as a coal stone and blank as a sheet and I know it’s time.

I move about the city streets slowly and watch for just the one and I see him on the fifth day sitting on a park bench so thin and ash colored he blends into the natural wood and I pass him before I see him.

When I circle him a few times I understand a sign is being given by a thing cause I can not move from him for he is the right the chosen the deserving one.

I sit by him but he does not acknowledge my presence just hangs his head far below his chest maybe a few minutes from touching the ground and I take his hand and slips a thing in it and close my fingers around it and I am smelling so bad that I see him catch up his breath and keep his eyes on the ground below to keep from vomiting.

“You take him,” I whisper barely above the sound of the wind in the trees, “cause I got no more use and you can feed him until you get well enough and then you pass him on to another near dead.” He looks at me and sees a young woman’s face with a living woman’s eyes and my lips is caked with spit and a thing what looks like mud then looks at his palm while I move away and go back to my apartment to start living again on my second chance.