Trash he
thought with disgust, and threw aside the handful of baubles he'd
extracted from the jewelry box. Another wasted evening spent
breaking into a hoarder's den. He'd had high hopes for this one; the
occupant, a pearl draped old lady, looked to be the type to have
antiques and heirlooms everywhere. Instead, her apartment looked like
the staging area for a dollar store clearance sale. Even the cat
litter was generic.
One
angry swipe cleared the top of the dresser. As he turned to leave,
his booted foot slipped on a figurine and a stab of pain shot through
his knee. Dammit, that's all I need. Hard enough to get around as it is. He bent and
picked it up.
The plastic face
beamed gently at him. He threw it down and ground it under his heel
slowly, deliberately, and then with increasing ire as it refused to
break. With an oath, he picked it up again, cocking his arm to hurl
it across the room. That's when he saw that it was bleeding.
Sweet
weepin' Jaysus. The phrase
slunk into his mind from the dark crevices of memory, his
grandmother's voice as she salved the cigarette burns on his arm with
bacon fat and the willow switch welts on his back with cool plasters.
She cried, she prayed, she tried to heal him but she could not, or
would not, protect him from the vicious rages of her only son, his
father. The family never spoke about it, never drew the poison to the
surface, and so their lives swelled and festered until they ruptured.
His grandmother had statues like this, silently standing about in
her room, arms outstretched bidding humanity to take shelter. But
they had never, even in his fevered imagination, bled.
He
turned it over and over in his hands, looking for a catch, a button,
an indentation that would allow him to find the secret of the thing.
This has got to be worth a helluva lot to someone. His
heart fluttered. Tabloids would pay a mint for something like this.
If people would pay for a piece of toast burnt with the silhouette of
Elvis, or gum chewed and spat out by Britney Spears, what
would they pay for a so-called genuine miracle? He would no longer
be Little Sal, son of Big Sal the boozer, but Paul Peregrino,
bazillionaire. A parade of desires marched before his eyes; a
brand-new sports car, unending fountains of liquor, vapid women with
scanty clothing, all fueled by tracks of meth and coke that stretched
to the horizon. Yes, life would be good. He realized that his hands
were clenched in fists of desire, sending needles of pain through
him, as though they were wrapped with barbed wire.
Barbed
wire. His father, twining it
between Paul's fingers, binding it about his palms, withering him
with red-eyed silence. I'll teach you to steal from me,
you little scumbag. He hadn't
taken it, would never have dared to touch a dime of his father's, but
the money was gone and whether it had been lost, spent, or never even
existed made no difference. You paid for other's mistakes, and then
you passed it on; that's what Paul had learned at his father's knee.
As he
watched, jagged red lines arose on his palms, beaded with fine red
droplets. Nausea gripped him. He hadn't smashed any glass, nor
handled anything that would have broken his skin. I am
losing my friggin' mind. It isn't really there. I just need a fix.
Taking a last look around, he
awkwardly climbed back out the window, dropped to the porch roof, and
from there to the litter-strewn alley. The darkness punctuated by
streetlights and neon signs comforted him. It was good to be back
among the shadows, with a future fortune riding comfortably in his
pocket.
He heard Reggie,
his wife, moving about in the kitchen as he let himself into their
tiny apartment. He'd only called her by her full name "Regina" once,
on the day they were married; but she had always called him Paul,
believing that “Little Sal” was beneath him, perhaps in hope that
the Biblical name would carry some intrinsic protective quality. Make him a
better man. It hadn't. Boiling rage would overwhelm him, lashing
out through his fists and his feet, driving her into the far corners
of the room. And always, always, she would forgive him, making him
feel even worse.
“Reggie!” he
called, hearing the excitement in his own voice. “C'mere, got
something to show ya.”
“Half a sec, I'm
making some cocoa.” The sound of a spoon on china, then her light
footsteps. “I thought it would help you sleep tonight. Last night
you tossed and kicked like a mule.”
Paul looked up from fingering
the statuette in his pocket. Staggering
backward, his mouth dropped open of its own accord. Regina stood in the
doorway, one eye swollen shut, the socket like an artist's palette of
primary colors. Her arms, proffering a steaming mug, were covered
with livid bruises, cuts as myriad and as tightly woven as a textile,
and thick scars like caterpillars under the skin. Her face turned
from cheerful to bewildered.
“Paul, what is
it? What's wrong with you?”
His
mouth was so thick with pasty saliva and bile that his tongue
wouldn't move. I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I haven't
laid a hand on her in days, someone's broken in and done this to her,
they must have been looking for me, and I'll hunt them down one by
one and set them on fire for this. The
smell of his own fear and anger was choking him.
“Who did this to
you? You need a hospital, I'll call someone, and then I'll go after
them...” He was blubbering now, and Reggie only stared at him, her
initial puzzlement turning to fear with a dash of her own horror.
“Paul, what are
you talking about? There's nothing wrong with me! No one's been
here, I'm fine, it's OK, you're having some kinda eye problems,
you don't feel well, I can see that, here let me...” and she
reached for him.
For an instant her
face was smooth, beautiful, familiar, but then it reverted to its
former state and he felt his mind struggling to keep its balance.
One thing he knew; he had to get out, away from this thing, and
regain control somehow. He slipped past her, noiselessly, warily,
and yanked open the linen closet door. Keeping his drug stash and
bankroll in an empty tampon box had been a stroke of genius; Ultra
Protection! indeed. No guy would think to look there. He pocketed
it, and crept past her again, watching her carefully. Empty-handed
now, she stretched out her arms for him. He fled.
Although
it was still hours before dawn, the street was rustling with the
feral noises of its inhabitants. Paul slipped half of a pill between his dry lips, wincing at the bitter taste. No way in hell could he swallow it; he'd just
have to wait for it to dissolve. But the very act of placing the
tiny miracle on his tongue calmed him. He slowed his footsteps,
willing the drug to work its magic and sweep the nightmares away.
Craving a cigarette, he searched around, feeling instead the
forgotten figurine buried in his clothing. His first impulse was to
throw it away, but somehow he just couldn't do it. Superstition.
Just superstition. It's a hunk of plastic. Wouldn't be worth
nuthin' if it didn't do a magic trick. He
pulled it out and looked it over. The blood had worn off, probably
on his clothes, and now it looked just like any other piece of crap
sitting on countless shelves all over the world. Still, it would
bear some looking into. His eyes fell on a pimply youth sitting on a
stoop, smoking and frantically tapping on some electronic gadget.
“Bum one?” he
asked, drawing closer. The boy looked up.
“Sure,” he
said, glancing sourly at Paul and drawing one from behind his ear.
“You look like you need it more'n me. Although my girlfriend
just ditched me for some douche.”
It
was all Paul could do to stifle a scream. A gaping wound had suddenly bloomed
on the boy's chest, opening and exposing the beating organ. I'm
nuts, I'm seeing zombies,ohmygodmygodmygod.
And he ran.
He crashed into a
stinking, ragged bum on Third Street, flinging a curse which promptly
made the guy's nose stream with blood. A prostitute smiled at him on
the corner of Laurel and Oak, her body so broken that it couldn't possibly be
standing on its own. Finally, he drew to a halt in front of the
department store on King Street. Bent double. Straightened, took a
breath, and sought his own reflection. It was ghastly beyond all
imagination.
The fetid breath
of a storm sewer reached him. Wracked with sobs, gagging with
self-loathing, he turned, walked over to the curb, emptied out every
bit of his money, dope and paraphernalia, dropping it down into the
stinking depths. Last went the statue, its left arm remaining above
the water for a moment as if in cheery goodbye, then disappearing on
an invisible current. He sat on the curb and wept for everything and
everyone: his grandmother, his mother, his father, his own wife.
Most of all, for himself.
When his tears
were exhausted, he stood once again and steeled himself to look in the display window. His
shattered visage still greeted him with a leer; he covered his face
with his hands. But then he took them away, and – miracle of
miracles – it was his own face again, a little hollow-eyed, pale
beyond belief, but whole. Clean. Restored.
“Thinking of
buying something for me?” asked a female voice behind him. It was the
whore from down the block, her voice so flat from fatigue that it was
anything but a come-on. She might have been asking about the
weather. Before, he would have slipped her a few bills and dragged
her into an alleyway, never caring whether his roughness left a mark.
But now he could see them, those marks, every one left by some act
of violence, by ignorance, by harsh words or vicious lies.
Paul gently laid
his hand against her bruised cheek, and then lifted it away. The
flesh was once again whole and unmarred.
He now had the power to
heal.
The street was
becoming more animated under a watery dawn, and as he watched dozens,
then hundreds of the walking wounded began to move toward him,
battered and bloodied and reaching for him with greedy hands. He
walked among them, murmuring kind words, placing his hands upon their
heads, proclaiming his new-found love and compassion. Many of them
struggled or moved away; Paul understood that they were simply
unused to such benevolence and mercy, and so he redoubled his
efforts. Soon there would be thousands, as the city shook off the
shroud of night and roared to life. It would take weeks; no, a lifetime for him
to accomplish what he had been chosen to do.
A siren rent the
air, and Paul was relieved to see two police officers pull up. They
would be useful in bringing order to the crowd; perhaps they could
set up a cordon, keeping people in line so that everyone would
receive their fair share of healing. He beamed at them.
The officers lost
no time in reading Paul his rights and placing him in the back of the
squad car. A plexiglass partition separated them so that he would
have to wait until they got to the station to explain. There was no
doubt in his mind that they would soon see his remarkable gift for
themselves. After all, the big one had a trickle of blood coming out of his
left ear.
“So, I vote we
take him straight in to the medical center for a psych eval,” said
Officer Jenkins, reaching for the radio.
O'Hara nodded,
taking a quick look in the back. “Yeah, I imagine they'll want him
for observation at the very least. Besides, he needs a doc to look
him over. What the hell did the guy do to his hands?”
“Beats me.
Looks like he's been tangling with some heavy-duty razor wire.”
“Friggin' nut
job. Maybe he was tryin' to get into the loony bin the hard way.”
Jenkins bit his
lip. “You know what's weird? Remember when he went to stick his
bony finger in my chest?”
His partner
snorted. “Yeah, thought I'd finally get to use my stunner. What's
weird about some perp in your personal space?”
“He said he
wanted to heal my broken heart. What the hell, John? It's like he
knew Doris left me. Like he knew.”
O'Hara gave him a
suspicious glance. “Don't tell me you buy into that voodoo
hocus-pocus mind reading stuff.”
“Nope. The
guy's just spooky, that's all. Creepy.”
Paul, in the
backseat, was watching the St. Christopher medal twirling from the
rear view mirror.
It had begun to
bleed.
Word count excluding title: 2224
Originally published several years ago in an anthology, which is now out-of-print.
Wow, what a brilliant short story, very powerful. I love the way his life and disposition turned completely around from such a negative and brutal past and existence into a total opposite.
ReplyDeleteOne of the very saddening truths in some peoples' lives is this line... "You paid for others mistakes, and then you passed it on;"
Thank you Steve. I've always wondered how many people would change their ways if psychological/emotional damage inflicted on someone was immediately visible as physical damage.
DeleteWonderful story Lisa!
ReplyDeleteThank you Helen :) I'll be around to visit on Monday, another hectic weekend for me! :-)
DeleteThis is like a jazzed-up, far less sweet version of "The Cop and the Anthem" for modern times. And creepy. Wonderfully creepy.
ReplyDeleteThank you Katherine. And I've never heard of "The Cop and the Anthem" so I'll have to check it out!
DeleteIt used to be a standard short story in high school English class in the 50s and 60s (my copy's in an old textbook of my mum's). I've seen it turned into a teleplay at Christmas-time -- with Red Skelton, maybe? I might be imagining that last part.
DeleteWow! I really enjoyed reading this story! I am a first grade teacher and am currently taking a grad school class on different topics within literacy. This week, we are studying different types of writing, including flash fiction. Where do you get your inspiration in writing stories like this? How long have you been writing flash fiction? Do you feel like it could be taught to children as young as first grade? I would love any insight you could offer! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa! Thanks for your interest! I've been writing flash fiction for about 5 years, but I wrote my first prize winning story back in 5th grade. So, 1st graders can absolutely write flash fiction. Like any story, a "flash" has a beginning, a middle and an end. You need a central event and/or conflict. Description, setting, etc. is often only hinted at.
DeleteAs for ideas, they come from everywhere - people I observe, things I think about while lying in bed, fragments of dreams, those "what if" questions. Writing is really a form of "pretending" for me, since I try and become each character and think about how they would feel, speak, react, and interact. And kids are naturals at pretending.
Examples for young students could include:
1. A holiday story. What if wild animals celebrated Halloween and dressed up? What could happen or go wrong? (It can be funny or scary.) Or, what if YOU were in charge of Thanksgiving dinner this year. What would you feed everyone? Who would you invite, if you could invite anyone in the whole world, and why? What would it be like? (Maybe you would invite Teenage Mutant Turtles and order pizza.)
2. Can you think of a funny story about someone in your family?
3. Do you ever imagine or pretend that you are something or someone else? An animal, or a sports hero, or President? Write a story about something that happens to you.
That's pretty brief, but hope it helps!
Thank you Stu. Even if he can't save others, perhaps he has saved himself.
ReplyDelete