Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) (15 page)

Even six-year-olds had been around long enough to know that robozoids didn’t use bathrooms.

Ralph hobbled on toward the boy’s restroom, instead of properly retreating to one of the mecha-docks at the back of the pod.

“Why are you walking so slow?” asked little Janus James.

Ralph stopped and yelled, “
What
!?”

“Why are you walking like that?” asked Kaleesha when Janus fell silent.

“Oh, Rover!”  Ralph shook his head and spoke in a high-pitched voice. “I’m not walking slow!  I’m fine!”

“Who is Rover?” asked a confused little girl.

“I think that’s a dog,” offered a confident little boy, confusing the matter more.

“
What
!?” shouted Ralph.

“You should go to the mecha-dock,” said a worried little Kaylor Joe.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” said Ralph.  “You’re not the boss of me!  I’m going to the bathroom!”

Several little girls screamed when the robozoid wet himself, spraying oil down the front of his baggy white pants.  Sludge dripped down the inner thigh of Ralph’s right leg.

The children were young but not stupid.  Said one to another, loud enough for them all to overhear, “Something is wrong with him!  Servos aren’t supposed to go to the bathroom!”

The word ‘bathroom’ caused another squirt of oil down Ralph’s legs.  A child squealed, “Eww!”  The automabot’s white pants were now soggy black down his entire right leg.

“It’s broken,” said a little girl.

“Servos
can’t
break!” countered a little boy.

“Then why does it want to go to the bathroom?”

“And why is it walking funny?”

“And why is it
yelling
at us?”

“
What
!?” yelled Ralph.  “Are you kids talking about me?”

“No, Ralph,” lied Lucy, who was looking at their primary teacher with dark contempt.

“What time does Bonanza come on?” asked Ralph, again moving forward at a speed of ten-yards-an-hour.

“What’s Bonanza?” asked Lando.

“It’s on Channel 106,” said Ralph, quite confidently.  And then he chuckled his good-natured chortle, his You’re-So-Precious chuckle. 

“What’s ‘Channel 106'?” asked a bewildered boy.

“I think he’s talking about audio-visuals,” said a bright little girl.

“What?” asked the boy.

“Antiques,” explained the girl.

Another child nodded knowingly, saying, “My grandmam collects ‘em too!”

Ralph the robozoid suddenly stopped with an abrupt jerk, his fingers flying apart.  He dropped the vacubroom, his makeshift cane.  He then bent over very, very slowly, appearing immediately as if he was going to go off kilter and fall on his golden face.

Kimtroya Sue suddenly shrieked, “What’s
wrong
with him?!”

“He’s going to fall!”

Several younglings gasped.  A few began to cry.

A little girl suddenly shouted, “I feel sorry for him!”  That caused all the girls around her to cry even harder.

Kaleesha Kaye ran over and grabbed up the vacubroom, handing it to Ralph.  “I can do it!” insisted the indignant automabot.  “
I’m not an invalid, you know
!”  He yelled so loudly at Kaleesha, she began to cry.

Wailing begat more wailing, spreading like some prehistoric disease. 

Ralph stood up and didn’t move.  He wobbled, went rigid, and then stood perfectly still for a solid two minutes.  During this time of mute immobility, the children’s sobbing tapered off into sniffles.  The younglings were fascinated by the way their tutor had become a statue.

Then, suddenly, Ralph laughed and said, “I forgot where I was going!”

All the children simultaneously burst into tears.  Even a baby knew that ‘forgot’ was a dirty word.  Knowledge was as permanent as perfect health.  The only time people forgot something was when their minds were purposely cognoscaped by awareness architects.

The combined wailings of one-hundred-twenty-seven younglings was loud enough to bring human supervisors, who were shocked to discover the robozoid was malfunctioning. 

They gunned Ralph down just outside the boy’s bathroom, slagging him.

His final word was, “
What
?!”

******

An entire class of older robozoids were infected by what was dubbed ‘synthetic Alzheimer’s’.  It was similar to a pre-apocalyptic condition called ‘Mad Cow’s Disease’ that affected both memory and motor functions.

When the Child Welfare Rehabilitators assessed the damage done to the younglings who witnessed Ralph’s breakdown, they had awareness architects instigate total mind-wipes of all the children, causing them to forget that entire, awful day in their care-pod.  One-hundred-twenty-seven children had their memories erased by caring government agents, but none of the one-hundred-twenty-seven ever fully trusted old servos ever again.

THE END

I Was a Teenage Beehive

It was a chilly, gloomy day in late October and seventeen-year-old Howard Hawthorne was walking to school.  He kept his head down; his black hoody was up; and his acne-speckled face was aimed at the ground.  The concrete sidewalk had a latticework of cracks—no way not to ‘break his mother’s back’ if he tried (and he wouldn’t try if there was).   The quiet residential neighborhood that Howard was marching through seemed alternately too bright or too gray beneath the intermittent sunlight.  Even when the sun was out, it didn’t seem to have any heat.   Howard brushed his long black bangs out of his eyes and then hiked up his baggy pants.  A cold breeze blew dead red leaves across his path.

There was a sense of impending doom in the air.  The world was dying.  The end was near.

Suddenly, without any warning, the day turned dark.  This wasn’t just another cloud blocking the sun—this was worse.

Howard looked behind him and saw an angry tornado gathering above his quiet little American hometown. 

The sky was falling.

At first, he thought it was a flock of distant birds but then he heard the droning buzz and understood it was a swarm.

All sense of well-being fled from Howard’s heart.  He didn’t need to look back to know that thousands and thousands of insects were gathering above the trees and rooftops.  There were so many millions of little wings whirring, the collective noise grew so fat and large it reminded Howard of the din made by a squadron of airplanes, the old-fashioned kind: the ones with propellers.  It sounded like a flock of buzz-saws.

Howie decided to
run
to school today.

He saw other students ahead of him on the sidewalk, a boy and a girl holding hands, another tall guy in a striped yellow-and-black T-shirt.  Howard shouted, "Spellings!" as he dashed past the three of them.  For just an instant, the rattling fury of great swarm took on the quality of laughter.

Howard’s backpack suddenly felt like gravity just grabbed it.  His school books became heavier than bowling balls.  He was slowed down by the weight at first, but then he shrugged his load off his shoulders and abandoned it. 

When he heard the screams behind him, Howie ran faster.

He ran for his life.

The wails of the two teenage boys and the teenage girl became shriller and louder, and then, one by one, the shrieks ended in gargles.

Howard knew all three of them were dead.

He ran as fast as he could and seemed to be getting away; the sound of the swarm was receding behind him.  Howie was a Goth and a geek, not a runner or any other kind of athlete, so he was soon huffing and puffing.  He had the sensation of running in place, as if the world was a treadmill rolling beneath his frantic feet.

Just as he thought,
I’m going to get away
, the buzzing caught up to him with frightening speed.

The swarm overtook him.

Unable to run any faster, Howard Hawthorne winced and flinched, anticipating being stung a thousand times over.

Instead, he awoke from the nightmare.

                        ******

Sopping wet, drenched in perspiration, Howard pushed the soaked sheets and thin comforter off his body.  He rubbed his eyes with the palms of hands, as he climbed out of bed.

For some reason, he had a sore throat.  It stung when he swallowed.

Howard’s speeding heartbeat and labored breathing seemed especially loud in the quiet Hawthorne household.  The central air conditioning system did its cooling magic totally without sound.  It wasn’t autumn, like in his dream; in reality it was a hot muggy night in late August, but inside his family home it remained a crisp sixty-eight degrees.

Howard looked to his digital alarm clock and saw it was 3:03 am.  He groaned.  Tomorrow was Friday, a school day, the end (
finally!
) of the first miserable week of the fall semester.

The image of that titanic swarm plunging out of the sky was still vivid in his mind.  That was unusual.  He rarely remembered his dreams and couldn’t ever remember having a nightmare.

Howard padded out of his dark bedroom, down a dark hallway, into the dark bathroom, where he turned on the light as he shut the door and locked it.  He stripped and climbed into a hot shower.

The sound of the falling water reminded him vaguely of buzzing bees.

The steamy heat made him sleepy.

 Eventually, Howard got out of the shower and toweled off.  Tossing his black sweat pants in the laundry basket, he went back to his bedroom and put on another pair of black sweat pants.  He then changed his silk sheets, switching his sweat-moistened bedclothes for clean, dry ones.

 Howard climbed back into bed, ready to forget all about the bad dream.  He was exhausted.  Yawning, he turned off his lamp and settled down to sleep.

When he heard the buzzing, he thought it was his imagination— the memory of the nightmare or the onset of a new one.  Then he realized the sound was both real and alive.

 Sitting up, Howard turned on his lamp and immediately spotted the culprit.

It was a huge honeybee.

"How the hell did that get in here?"

The bee did a buzzing dive at him, swooping close to his face.  Howard scrambled out of bed and dashed out of his room, quickly closing the door behind him.

With a sigh, he headed downstairs to the kitchen to retrieve a broom.  He paused at the refrigerator long enough to drink a couple of guzzles of cold milk (straight from the carton), in hopes of soothing his sore throat.

When he went back upstairs, Howard ran into his mother in the hall. "What are you doing up?" she immediately wanted to know.

He told her, "There’s a bee in my room."

"A
what
?!" she whispered, frowning and shaking her head. This was her typical reaction to virtually everything he did: a frown and shake of her head.  "It’s probably just a fly."

Of course you don’t believe me
, thought Howard. 
You never believe me about anything
.  "Whatever," he said.  He could smell the gin on his mother, no surprise there.  It sickened him.

Lucy Hawthorne pulled on the belt of her terrycloth robe and then tied her arms in a knot in front of her chest.  "What are you doing with my broom?"

As Howard often did when speaking to his mom, he adopted the tone of someone addressing a moron. "Killing a bee."

His mother paused and he knew she was thinking, again, that it was
not
a bee; it was a fly; obviously he was mistaken; he was
always
wrong; always, always, always; but then the fire disappeared from her gaze and he realized she was both drunk and tired.  Her eyes were so red, Howard was surprised they weren’t bleeding.  Her whisper became a hiss, "Well, don’t wake your father!"

"God forbid."  Howard breezed past her and returned to his bedroom, closing his door behind him. 

It irked him—always
always
annoyed him—that his door had no lock.  His parents wouldn’t allow it.

The bee was still circling around and around above his bed, with a drone that reminded Howard of a model airplane.

He used the broom to swat the bee, smashing it into the ceiling.  The insect dropped to the floor, still alive and buzzing.  It began to fly and Howie jabbed it with the broom, knocking it back to the floor.  He was barefoot, so stomping on it wasn’t an option.  From his desk he grabbed a fat Stephen King hardback—
The Shining
— and pounced on the bee.  Dropping to his knees, he swung the book like Moses flinging a stone tablet, and he smashed the bee dead.

He looked at the squished body of the tiny dead thing stuck to his book and grimaced with disgust.

Seeing the squashed honeybee made him sad.

Howard grabbed some Kleenex from the box on his desk to clean the novel. 
It’s no wonder I had a nightmare about bees, considering how loud that damn thing was buzzing. I must have heard it in my sleep.

He climbed back into bed, beneath his Black Belles poster on the wall, and he turned off the light.

A few minutes later he heard his mother going back to her bedroom.

For someone who’s always worried about me making noise, you’re awfully loud yourself, mom.

Howard’s father was a workaholic.

Howard’s mother was an alcoholic.

Howard hated them both.

Bleakly, he thought,
Of all the rooms in the house, the damn bee had to come in here and give me nightmares.  It couldn’t go torment the ‘rents, no, no, no.  It had to seek me out.

Howard fell asleep with a seventeen-year-old’s certainty that there was absolutely no justice in the world.

                        ****** 

As usual, when Howard got up the next morning, his father had already left for work and his mother was still in bed.  

He dressed in a long-sleeved black cotton shirt and baggy black jeans.  He had been wearing a pot-leaf earring lately, just to see if any adults would notice.  None had.  His hair was long over his ears, though, so a person did need to look close to notice what he had affixed to his earlobe. 

Today, he chose a different earring.  He had twenty-seven different studs in his little collection.  He decided to wear his lightning bolt earring.  What he would really like to wear was a bumblebee earring (but he didn’t own one).