Skin Folk (8 page)

He pointed behind her. “There.” Now! She turned, he muffled her mouth with one hand, wrapped his other arm around her torso.
The skin of her arm was velvety as down. He picked her up, but she struggled, kicked, nipped viciously at his hand. It hurt.
He hissed, pulled the hand away.

“Hel—!” Patty shouted. He quickly clapped his hand to her mouth again.

“Sshh, little one, little bird. Stop fussing now. I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to spend some time with you.”

She fought, kicked some more, tried to scream against his palm. He held her firmly, loving her squirming warmth against him.

“They won’t hear you down here anyway. The walls are too thick. Don’t make me mad now. You wouldn’t like me mad.”

Her eyes went wide.

“Will you be good?” he asked her.

She nodded. Slowly, he let her go, but she bolted for the locked door, screaming. Bad, bad girl. It was easy to knock her
to the floor, secure her hands behind her with the duct tape in his pocket. He took his time with the gag. He’d told the truth
about the walls being soundproof. He’d experimented himself, turning up his radio to full volume as he worked. No one had
ever complained. No one to hear her, no one to see him drag her into the van, waiting at the loading dock.

He wished that she could sit beside him as he drove. It would be nice to go for a drive with his girl, but he couldn’t chance
a passerby seeing the gag. He apologized for putting her in the back of the van, but he’d made it nice and comfortable, lined
it with blankets, a soft nest. He took a minute to look at her before he closed the door. So sweet she looked. He told her
that she wouldn’t be in there for long.

He could hardly wait. His whole body was humming with triumph. He felt drunk on power, on anticipation, barely able to focus
on the road ahead of him. He’d made her notice him. These were the moments he lived for. He took the road that would lead
to the outskirts of the town, was zipping along, happy as a lark, when he saw the turnoff for the park with the adjacent school
playground. He went warm with nostalgia for the hours he’d spent in that park. And it extended for acres, was practically
a woods as you went farther out. The park would be the perfect place, their secret bower. He drove into the park, the empty,
quiet, dark park. Once there, he doused the headlights. The van coasted almost silently; the clerk at the rental place had
boasted that it would. He drove until the road became crunching gravel, then a narrow, hard-packed dirt path; kept going as
the path gave way to scrub and shrubs that whipped the underside of the van as it clambered over them. It was getting more
difficult to manœuvre the van now. Small birds, spooked, flew up out of the underbrush as he passed. He imagined those that
hadn’t gotten out of the way in time; their small bodies would be popping like grapes under his wheels.

There. Over there. The van would just fit inside that stand of trees. He drove it in amongst them, parked. Shut the engine
off. He could almost hear his heart drumming. Soon. He sat for a bit, breathed slowly, felt his body go calm, cool.

He took the camera out of the glove compartment, slid out of the van, opened the back doors. She was so pretty, lying there
with tears streaming down her soft cheeks, her bosom heaving, tiny cheeping noises escaping from the duct tape gag. Her nose
was running too. How disgusting. But this had happened before, with other darlings of his. He used some tissue from the box
he’d stored in the back of the van just for mishaps like this one. He wadded it thick so none of her snot would touch him,
and lovingly cleaned her up, though she tried to yank her head out of his hands.

What was that clicking sound? A soft
tap-tap-tap,
like birds pecking at crumbs. He put the tissue down and peered through the stand of trees, looking back the way he’d come.
In the dark he could just make out two people coming down the path, arm in arm, walking carefully, as the elderly do. It was
the old couple that walked the park in the mornings. They moved purposefully, scrawny limbs pumping in jerky, almost avian
motions as they made their way closer. Shit! What were they doing out in the woods this late at night? Bloody busybodies probably
spent their time beating other lovers out of the bushes who just wanted some peace and quiet. Stryker went utterly still,
trusting in the dark camouflage colours of his clothing and the van. Aging eyes wouldn’t make him out, aging ears wouldn’t
hear Samantha’s soft noises.

But they kept coming. He had to distract them. He quietly shut the doors on Samantha. She would stay put, she had no choice.
He unzipped his fly, turned, and made his way to the dirt path. He stepped onto the path ahead of the couple, zipping himself
up as nonchalantly as possible, just a guy out for a walk who’d stepped into the bushes to take a piss. He feigned startlement,
embarrassment when he saw them, nodded in their direction.

The old man glared beadily at him. Stryker attempted a smile, a nod, just a neighbourly greeting. He felt his lips pull back
into something more like a snarl. “Evening.” He’d never been good at the niceties. They nodded back, silently. “Nice night
for a stroll,” he ventured. “Peaceful.”

“Yes,” they said, in unison.

Damn, they just stood there! He hoped they wouldn’t spot the tire tracks. He couldn’t do anything that would draw their attention
over to where the van was. He moistened his lips with his tongue tip. “I’ll just be on my way back, then.” He tried to say
the words cheerfully.

“Yes, we must too,” they chorused.

Stryker brushed past the two. He swore he could feel the warmth of their bodies. He strolled back down the path, back the
way he had driven a few minutes earlier. Were they turning to follow? Yes! Oh, soon, little chick, I’ll be back for you soon!

The park was restless tonight. A capricious breeze made the branches of the trees flap fitfully, as though they would take
flight. Stryker kept walking, forcing his feet into a slow, aimless glide. It seemed as though he’d been walking, carefully
calm, for hours, but he was still only a few hundred yards from where he’d nested his van. Suddenly, a shadow swooped across
the path, stopped directly in his way. He squinted into the dark, trying to see what it was. He didn’t believe his eyes: the
old, half-blind bag with the fake sword! She was holding it en garde, motioning with the other hand for him to stop. She must
have weighed all of ninety pounds. He hissed his amusement at her, made to slide past her—and cried out as the blade struck
with a horrible thud, biting deeply into the warding arm he was holding up. Pain burst like lightning through his body. Tonight,
the sword was real. And she handled it with a master’s ease. Incredulous, he clutched at the gash with his uninjured hand,
curled the damaged arm against his body. It was already erupting blood in dizzying amounts. He couldn’t move his fingers.
He was in agony, he felt sick. He started backing away from the woman. She cocked her head at him, focused with her one good
eye, and prepared to swing the sword again. Swallowing bile, he turned to run, and stumbled straight into the arms of the
couple.

“You!” The old woman clawed at the front of his shirt, poking sharp fingers at his chest with each word. “What have you done
with our Pat? Helga told us she was shouting for help!”

The pigeon told them?
Stryker didn’t answer. Blood slithered wetly from the gash in his arm. He tried to hold the slippery edges of the cut together.
He felt his own blood; hot, sticky. Dirty. It was all over his hands. Dirty. He felt weak.

“Where is she?” screeched the old biddie’s husband, thrusting a beaked nose inches from Stryker’s eyes. Panicked, he wriggled
out of their grasp, went running down the path. He’d get ahead of them, pop back into the woods when he was around a bend
in the path, out of sight. He could lose them that way. But as he ran, he could see other figures converging on him. He recognized
some of the morning exercisers. They waddled and hopped as fast as their aging legs would carry them. It would have been ludicrous
if he hadn’t been so dizzy from shock and blood loss. He
hurt!
He stepped off the path, staggering. He made as quickly as he could for some sheltering trees. He could move very quietly,
hide in the tiniest spaces. As he approached the copse, a cloud of birds swooped down on him from their branches, all types
of birds. They dug their tiny claws into his already bruised body and pecked at any exposed flesh, twittering, cawing, screeching
their rage. He smelt his own coppery blood in the night air. He struck the birds off, crushed and stamped on the tiny bodies
like fleas, but more replaced them. As many as he pulped underfoot, there were more. The air boiled with them. The heavy smell
of blood and feathers made his head reel. He stung all over from the bite of claws and beaks.

And the old people were on him now, drawn by the sound. They poked him with their canes, jabbed at him with umbrellas. “Yes!
Keep at it, Robin; don’t let the slimy bastard get away!”

Huge claws tangled in his hair. A massive pair of wings beat about his head, blinding him. The cry was the challenge of a
hunting bird. He stumbled, fell, writhed quickly onto his back so he could see his attacker. Screeching, the old woman’s pet
landed on his chest, stabbed at his eyes. He tried to bat the great hooked beak away, but the bird struck at his hand. He
felt two fingers snap in its talons. He put his hands up to protect his eyes. The bird set its beak in his throat and tore
it out. Spreading its wings, it hopped up to its mistress’s shoulder, where it swallowed the gristly lump of flesh.

Air rattled in Stryker’s ragged throat, whistled out from his neck. He could feel his body arching, his heels drumming on
the earth. The old guardians just watched, alert.

It took a little time for asphyxiation to kill him; long enough for his darkening eyes to see his Samantha, his darling pigeon,
being escorted from the van by a clutch of old women, a brood of old hens, straightening her clothing and clucking soothing
words at her.

B
oston subway stops have the oddest names: Braintree. And Alewife (which, Bostonians will explain helpfully, is a fish). One
day, traveling on the Toronto subway system, I could have sworn that the driver announced Saint Mare Wash as the next stop.
The mundane Saint Clair West paled in comparison. In parts of Toronto, they wrap the trees with burlap in winter to protect
them. And then, I’ve always liked Hans Christian Andersen’s fiction…

L
ying on the chilly bank of the splinterswirling river, Sheeny shook the obsidian rectangle of the playscreen in her hands,
then swiped her palm over its blankened surface. In response, its opalescent screen swarmed with vague, sluggish forms: something
large and blocky, a building, maybe; smaller somethings moving around it; motes fluttering. Did that tiny shape in the foreground
look like Kay? No, no; stop it. Create instead a new story in the masses on the screen. Cobble a fake story out of tales that
Jeff used to tell, of worlds that used to might could be, places that she’d never seen, could only imagine.

The shapes were curdling into solid images. A tiny old woman stood inside the picture blossoming on the playscreen:

The cold morning light was the soft grey of a dove’s breast feathers. Old Delpha, old lady, stood on the wintry street corner,
looking at the construction site that had been sprouting there for the past few months like a stop-motion film; of ice crystals,
maybe, growing branch by angular branch upon each other like frozen towers.

Kneeling on the second-floor girders of the skeleton building, a welder flipped her mask down and put her lit torch to a joist.
A hissing tongue of blue flame jutted. To the burring sound of the torch scouring the metal—a tongue-lashing, Delpha giggled
to herself—a myriad motes of orange light sprang from the join, fountaining red-gold to the ground. A flock of fat pigeons
descended eagerly on the sparks, wings pumping the birds whup-whup-whup down. They quarreled and jostled for space, pecked
up the glowing embers as fast as they could. Smart pigeons. They knew how to keep their insides warm, anyway. Wouldn’t be
them turning to cold glaze when the glass wind hit. They’d be warm, from the inside out.

The welder didn’t pay any attention to them, nor to the first icy fingers of wind flicking at the collar of her orange flameproof.
Delpha wouldn’t bother to warn her, either. Silly woman.

“There’s a glass wind coming,” Old Delpha muttered to the girl who was watching her from the other place. Interfering little
chit. Little voyeur. Delpha felt a teeny twitch of uncertainty from the girl who was sensing a thought she hadn’t birthed;
Delpha’s thought. Serve her right.

Glass wind. Winter flinter. Delpha could feel it in her achy bones. Fracture-streamy glass wind blowing up screeling across
the river from the mountains into the city. Screaming like the angry dead through the valley; glass grinding the city’s more
glass windows into shivershattersplinters. A breaking wind. It would be here soon, stinging singing cold, rattling the leafless
branches of the wind-scoured trees, whipping icy slivers into hair and eyes. The Whetherman had said so this morning on the
radio. Indications were, he’d said. But opposing opinions, he’d said. Never know whether. Idiot. Delpha hummed the jingle
that was perfect for the Whetherman: “Whether the weather is cold, or whether the weather is hot, we’ll weather the weather,
whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.” It’d be cold and hot and cold again. And no, they wouldn’t like it.