I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 (15 page)

Jerry inched closer, “Ahh, come on, he’s just a little scared, it’s alright.”

Jerry cannot possibly be this stupid, I thought.

“Oh, yeah? What kind of dog is it, Jerry?” I asked, knowing full well he had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

“I don’t know, kind of looks like a, uhhh, I don’t know, I can’t see it from here.”

Well, I could see it and it scared the hell out of me, but I didn’t want to alarm Jerry who was only inches from it.

Its beady little eyes peered at me from the darkness, not once blinking as if they were the eyes of a doll and still as plastic—like a Halloween mask. His eyes and nostrils widened with a ferocious intensity as he lowered his head, riding the tip of his tongue across the floor. A bad feeling knotted up into my throat.

“Fuck this. Jer’, let’s go!”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, just get away from the table, right now!”

“What, what’s the matter?”

“Get the fuck away from table I said!”

“Okay, relax. I’m getting…” Jerry didn’t get an inch before the table and chairs started flying. The creature lunged at Jerry, throwing him headlong over the counter top and onto the kitchen floor.

His body landed awkwardly, skidding across the broken plates and glasses stopping against the bottom of the ‘fridge letting out a funny sounding “Guhh!”

The creature stood upright and tall, revealing itself to me in the living room. When I shined my light on him, he let out a shrieking howl that rattled my eardrums.

It was the first time I could recall almost shitting and pissing my pants at the same time. My heart kicked like a steel-toed boot inside my chest, and I was still hung over— the aspirin never kicked in.

That couldn’t be real. The fear made me sick and heavy all over my body. Long, spidery threads and flesh wounds covered its snaky, naked body as it grabbed at itself in a disoriented panic. His eyes bounced around the inside of his head like lottery balls.

 “Jerry! Get up!”

The creature was unsteady on his feet as it approached me like Frankenstein with new legs, wearing nothing but underwear and a sock.

“No, no, no, Jerry! Get up!”

The creature’s long fingers reached out to me for help (or to grab at me), but there was nowhere for me to run without leaving Jerry behind.

“Jerry! Get up!” I yelled.

I tried searching for something to defend myself,  but there was nothing suitable enough to use as a weapon—improvise, Charlie.

     “God damn it, Jerry! Get up!”

I figured one right hook to the monster’s jaw with the flashlight would do the trick.

“Jerry! Get the fuck up!”

Dudley winding up for the pitch
, but before I could connect with the creature’s jaw, it grabbed me by the throat and slammed me onto the floor, knocking all the wind out of me and destroying the feeling in my legs. The flashlight rolled from out of my hands and underneath the couch leaving us all in darkness again.

“Jerry…get…. shit, there goes my back,” — lying on the ground, flat, dizzy and floating in some dark void, while the monster hovered over me somewhere trashing the place.

As the monster tore up the rest of the living room, I managed to crawl back into the master bedroom, quickly and quietly shutting the door behind me. I sat there a long time with my back against the door, thinking about my life to the tune of Ted Wibert screeching in the living room.

 I was certain he was maiming Jerry and then making his way to me to finish me off when he was done.

“It can’t end like this,”—I’m going to die, someone’s going to find my body among a pile of porno magazines and burger wrappers, and it’s just going to send the wrong message. Please, don’t let them find me dead and naked on “Choc’lit Hunniez” or “Bear Traps.”

Moments after the long silence, a soft knocking came at the door.  It was Jerry. He was alive, but bleeding profusely from his arms and hands. I think he was crying a little bit, so I took him home and helped pluck the fragments of broken dinner plates from his body without discussing what happened.

As for Ted Wibert, he took off into the night and is still at large.

THE BIRDS OF BEDLAM

(Day 2-after the storm)

On occasion, a skein of geese and blackbirds  flew from park to pond around here, from Kissena Park to Alley Pond and back in formation. That morning there was a prolonged wailing and squawking coming from overhead just as the sun had begun to rise, but this was no ordinary migration for the fall. This was a cry among the winged ones to flee from something very bad, something evil. Naturally, I did my best to ignore it as I did everything else when I tried to sleep, but images of Ted Wibert from the night before lurked inside my eyelids.

God forsaken birds. I had two more hours of sleep that morning before I had to wake up and sit around the house again. Granted, with my gimpy back it took me forty minutes to lever myself out of bed on some days. What is so strange about wailing birds or the honking of geese in the early hours of the morning? Nothing.

What is strange about hundreds of birds who sounded like they were all on fire and plummeting from the sky to their deaths? Just about everything.

It started with one bird smacking full on against my bedroom window, leaving a lengthy crack in the top left pane and a brown wet smudge.

I let out a chuckle for the poor creature. There was something sadly funny and absurd about a bird who couldn’t distinguish glass from an open space. However, my cruel amusement soon soured when I heard others falling in rapid succession against the houses and onto the pavement like pancakes, one after the other.

Dunk! Squawk! Bah-dunk!

The geese, bigger birds, sounded more like dogs falling, letting out a terrifying grunt just before they hit the ground. I cast my curtains open to the sight of sickened birds fluttering in the street. Some wobbled and hopped, with broken wings dangling at their sides, as they desperately tried to flee again.

There were nine dying blackbirds and a large bird with exposed bones and cartilage in front of Santiago’s house. That bird keeled over and twitched until it died minutes later.

Later that morning Jerry and I sat on his stoop staring at the scattered remnants of fallen birds along the street and the tops of the neighbor’s houses.

Jerry lazily tended to the wounds and gashes he suffered when the monster, who might have been Ted Wibert, sent him flying onto a bed of glass the night before. The deeper cuts continued to ooze through the bandages making him look like a mummy who lost a knife fight.

The sky was miserably gray and a sea of dark bloated clouds sat above us threatening rain, but the rain never came.

I wondered if the storm had anything to do with what might have killed the birds or Ted Wibert’s painful transformation, and how long before it got us too.

Jerry argued the birds died of the sudden dramatic change of weather, but I don’t believe that would have done it. Sudden change of weather wouldn’t explain Ted going
Sasquatch
on us last night in that house.

I wondered how many more were out there like Ted or the birds. Jerry thought Ted was a werewolf. I thought Ted looked like a werewolf on steroids.

“What was up with that guy, why was he being such a dick?” Jerry slurred as he kicked his head back and hurled two more painkillers down his throat.

 
The birds were all gone the following morning.

THE FIVE FATHOMS

(Day 2-after the storm-cont’d)

Gathering around a car that’s been set ablaze, like a band of lost souls—a committee of five engaged in heated debates—and each arguing over irrational nonsense. Jerry and I hung back at a distance like curious spectators at an underground cockfight.

“It’s God’s will. This is what he wanted,” claimed the eccentric bohemian with the spacey eyes, armed with a cat.

“Shaddap, you crazy fruitcake!” the crazed man in his late-forties yelled—his clothes smeared with dirt, and tie pulled loose from his neck. He was agonizing over the tree that was driven through his storefront by the storm.

“It’s people like you who are going to burn in HELL, Mr. Wambeck—you’ll see. That’s karma for ya’,” the woman warned him, firmly stroking the mild and content Mr. Whiskers in her arms.

“You and your eighteen cats are going to burn in hell, you freak,” Wambeck vehemently struck back.

“Everyone, just please calm down, okay. We have to get help,” said a younger woman appearing out of the darkness, clearly shaken and shivering, followed by a younger man on foot; both wet from the rain.

“Get help? Get help? No one’s helping us! I can’t even go home—they set up roadblocks everywhere. I have a wife and two kids at home I have to get to,” Mr. Wambeck’s words sounded more panicked than before.

“Mrs. Wambeck must be one lucky gal,” Tulip, the cat lady snickered, dramatically rolling her eyes to the back of her head.

“It’s a goddamn conspiracy!” a white-bearded man shouted from his mobility scooter.

“Are you out of your mind? What does a conspiracy have to do with this?!” cried Mr. Wambeck, shaking his arms in the air like a crazed monkey.

“Katrina and 9/11 were conspiracies and you know it! It’s ‘Nam all over again!” the old man on wheels once again shouting, and jabbing his finger at all of them.

Wambeck fumed. “You know, you and crazy cat lady over here really need to…piss off!”

“Fuck off, Wambeck!” Bearded man said—giving it right back to him.

“Oh, come on, this isn’t helping us, guys,” the young girl pleaded, warming herself near the licking flames of the vehicle.

“This is the second coming—the lord has ri—…” Tulip, the crazy cat-lady began—again. Mr. Wambeck spun on his heels with thick veins bulging from his neck.

“Okay, I’ve just about had enough of your mumbo jumbo bullshit, Tulip. If you’re not going to shut yer’ mouth and help, then get back on your spaceship and go back to
Crazy-Lady-Land
!”

“Hey, don’t talk to her like that. You need to relax. Right now, we all need a voice of reason,” the young girl argued.

“Voice of reason? I guess no one noticed the giant tree that turned my store into a sang’wich over here!” said Wambeck, pointing to the rubble and pieces of awning that once read— “ARNOLD WAMBECK’S SHOE REPAIR”

F-14 fighter jets shot through the sky overhead in unison—four of them, headed North.

“It’s the goddamn Chinese, I knew it!” the bearded man claimed.

“The what!” the younger man laughed aloud.

“The Chinese,” the elderly man replied, offended by the younger man making a mockery of his theory about those ‘danged Chinese people.

“No way, Scooter, this is germ warfare, baby. Those Al-Qaeda fuckers are setting this shit off big time. We’re in deep shit now. They’re trying to 86 our asses, man,” the young man countered with his own brilliant theory of the virus.

“Bah! …Malarkey!” Scooter scoffed.

“You think?” Wambeck said, “And you, old man—you need to lay off the hooch.”

“What are we going to do? I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not even from New York,” the young woman fussed, desperately punching her phone with her thumb.

“Dude, check it out. That chick’s pretty cute,” Jerry whispered, nudging me with his elbow. “You think that’s her boyfriend?”

“Stop,” I said, but I was thinking the same of our damsel in distress as the rain soaked through her blouse.

“I don’t know, man, but there are people out here that are seriously tripping out—people eating people and running around like something out of a movie. What is this, a zoo? Is this a zoo party or somethin’?” the young man snickered.

“I saw that too,” acknowledging the younger woman.

“The end is here, baby, 2012. Hold onto your motherfuckin’ heads—BOOYA!” the young man shouted, illustrating his head exploding with his hands and awkward enthusiasm.

“What in the blue hell…are you high, son?” Scooter asked.

“For Pete’s sake—you know, I feel so much safer now that you’re all so goddamned useless. Is this the best we can do? Can someone please start using their brains around here for once?” Wambeck said, kicking debris out of his way.               

“Does anyone have a cell phone I can use? My battery is low,” the young frazzled woman asked.

“In case you didn’t get the memo, princess—we have been radio silenced,” Mr. Wambeck informed her.

“What—What does that mean? Radio what?” she whimpered.

“It means no one’s calling daddy…for a long time. We’re off the grid, doll,” Wambeck said before turning his attention to us.

“Hey! You two—you guys are just standing around. Take a picture while you’re at it, why don’chya!” he said with his tie twisting in the wind.

“Actually…you should…uhhh,” Jerry began stepping away—but it was a little too late, for Jerry could not have warned Arnold Wambeck sooner.

The falling tree limbs impaled and crushed Wambeck dead on the sidewalk with the weight of a falling piano before he even knew what hit him.

“Oh, come on, man—not again!” the young man shouted, holding his hands over his head.

The princess screamed and threw up on the kid next to her while he did his best impression of a mime in shock. Scooter burned rubber and took off down the street. Tulip, the crazy cat-lady just stood there staring.

THE BALLAD OF DEADGAR

(Day 10-after the storm)

“Why do you call him that?” I asked, scolding Jerry as he soldered away at my living room window while sparks and light flew wildly at his face.

“Edgar? Look at him. He’s like a giant pimple with feet—Hey, Hematoma-boy,” Jerry called to Edgar.

“Yes, I know, but I can’t have you freaking him out because I need him,
we
need him, so stop being a dick.”

“On the contrary, I don’t need him for anything other than to go away before he gets us both sick,” Jerry claimed, before aiming the blowtorch back at my window.

“Okay, I agree, he’s not easy on the eyes, but the Deviants won’t touch him.”