Slag Attack (6 page)

   
Shell collapses onto his back and watches Pearl rise from his split flesh. She is not diminutive in the least. She is a beautiful young woman who looks lovingly down at him. She places her index finger over her lips, “Shhh,” and reaches down toward Shell. She takes a fragment of bone from his rib and a long strand of her hair. The bone becomes a needle and she feeds the hair through its eye.

   
Within a few minutes he is all stitched up but strangely flat. She leans toward him and at first he thinks she’s going to kiss him. Instead, she lifts up his eyepatch, encloses her generous lips around the socket and exhales. Shell watches his body inflate and feels her breath move through his insides. He coughs, dragging himself up into a sitting position. He doesn’t feel so sick anymore. In fact, he feels kind of great.

   “
Why?” he asks. “Why all this?”

   “
To get away,” her actual voice is soft yet authoritative.

   “
Away from what?”

   “
Hollow City. I don’t know. Everyone.”

   “
Being adored must be difficult.”

   “
It is if that’s not what you want. Or maybe it’s because it’s the only thing you’ve ever known.”

   “
So you get to just walk away?”

   “
It looks like it. But think about it. You get to be a human again.”

   “
I’ve always been a human.”

   “
You call what you used to do for a living being human?”

   
Shell shrugs and says, “It put food on the table,” and feels like The Rotting Man.

   “
I guess you’ll justify it however you see fit.”

   “
Since you’re so pious, how do you justify leaving your city in ruins?”

   “
I’m sure I’ll be back to pick up the pieces. Eventually. They need a little self-sufficiency. Besides, they’re not really in ruins. They’re just crazy because they’ve always had me to look after them. Maybe they’ll grow up.”

   “
Speaking of growing up—I thought you were, you know, diminutive.”

   “
I was. Now I’m not.”

   “
It was Happalance, wasn’t it?”

   “
I shall not tell.”

   “
Yeah, Happalance put you in my eye socket and...”

   “
You can sit here speculating all you want to but I’ve gotta go. There’s a whole world out there to see.”

   
She walks down the alley, toward the city street and Shell feels a brief pang of regret. Regret and pity. He fears for her insides and wonders how long it will take them to become devastated and smashed. He hopes they won’t. He hopes the world she wants to see is still here a little bit longer. He stands up, coughs, adjusts his eyepatch and heads home. He has to find a new job.

Vincent Severity

Months earlier…

1.

Amber Toulouse gags a little when she turns on the light in the break room. She was going to grab her half-eaten sandwich from the refrigerator but decides to leave it. The break room smells like decay and looks like some kind of maggot infestation has taken hold over in the corner near the trash can. She turns off the light and shuts the door. Let the cleaning crew deal with it. Maggots are not in her job description. She decides she can probably just call it quits and go home.

   
She works in the office of Ames Construction. Times are slow. Nobody seems to be building anything. She’s taken like three calls all day and the other lady in the office, Martha Sleeveless, went home around noon. Said she was feeling sick. Amber thought it was more like she was feeling bored and it was a gorgeous Friday and the construction crew hadn’t come in at all today.

   
She turns off all the lights in the office and heads to her desk to turn off the computer and radio and grab her purse. As she puts her hand on the radio’s switch, she pauses at the word, “quarantine.” She listens for a couple more seconds.

   “
The Mayor also advised all residents of Scruffington, New York to stay within the town’s perimeters. It is also advised that travelers bypass the city.”

   
Hysteria, she thinks, and flips the switch. Just some burg in New York. By Monday, the Mayor will be rolling out a travel brochure for Scruffington. Quarantine would kill the economy. Besides, that is New York. This is Ohio. She doesn’t really care what happens in New York.

   “
Joey Ramone!” she shouts and shakes it away, slinging her giant canvas purse over her shoulder and heading for the door. The office really does smell rank. She wonders if she should call the owner and then decides she doesn’t want to talk to him. She pulls the door shut and locks it, heading down the hallway and the stairs until she is out in the bright sunlight.

2.

Some people look straight ahead when they walk. Some people, dreamers mostly, look up at the sky. They are usually clumsy, always running into things. Amber is a head down kind of walker. A psychiatrist would probably say this is because of low self-esteem.

   “
Elvis Costello!”

   
She listens to her voice blare out in the early summer light thinking it doesn’t really sound much like her voice at all. The only time she ever shouts is when she has to shout the names. She turns to head into the alley she claimed as her shortcut after starting this job nearly a year ago. She can’t wait to get home and change out of her dress shoes and skirt, dump her giant purse. And her shirt has felt more binding as the day progressed.

   
She looks up and sees a tacky blue El Camino blocking the exit of the alley. Her heart jumps in her chest. Adrenaline not usually there becomes a torrent under her skin. Probably just someone doing a crazy ass parking job. She has never had any problems with the alley before. Muttering curses, she turns to head back out to the sidewalk when a man grabs the back of her neck. She nearly shouts, “Ian Curtis!” but is cut off. The man quickly and expertly covers her mouth in duct tape.

   
Immediately, she knows what is happening but it still has a dreamlike quality to it. She has to get away. She knows this much. She springs forward, not caring who the hell is gripping her arms in his powerful hands. But all of her energy is useless. He slams her down on the asphalt, wrapping her wrists together with twirl after twirl of the tape. Then he picks her up and slings her over his shoulder.

   
Is he taking her to the car? That’s where she thinks he is heading but the only thing she can see is the bottom of his jacket and his powerful-looking legs, covered in tight blue jeans. He clutches her purse in the hand not restraining her. Maybe somebody will see her before he can get her into the car. These kinds of things did not happen in Celine. Of course, it is really too early in the afternoon for anyone to be out and about. School hasn’t even let out yet and the lunch rush is over.

   
Keeping her on his shoulder by pressing his right hand down on her ass, the man pulls open the passenger side door with the hand holding the purse and throws her in. Rather than wasting time to circle the car and reach the driver’s side, he crawls over her and slides deftly into the driver’s seat, covering her with the smell of his heavy cologne. He stuffs her purse behind the seat. She quickly swings her legs up on the vinyl seat and kicks at the man. Kicks at his square head with the black plastic-looking hair and the tightly clipped black mustache that makes him look like a loose-cannon cop in a horrible seventies action show. But he smothers her legs and, for a brief and horrifying second, she thinks he is going to rape her right there in the car. Her skirt slides up her legs, virginal white underwear in plain view. He brings the tape up, snarls at her, and wraps it tightly around her ankles.

   “
Frank Zappa!” her brain screams. No. It is her brain commanding her mouth but her mouth won’t move.

   
The man reaches across the seat and grabs her hard in between her collarbone and neck.

   “
Now you listen here, Amber.” He speaks quickly, his voice sharp and clipped. “My name’s Vincent and I do very severe things. I’m a very severe man. You don’t wanna fuck with me. Now I’m just gonna take you someplace and we’re gonna have us a little talk. And if you even think about screamin for help or tryin to get away you can kiss your ass goodbye. You can kiss your family’s ass goodbye too. I’m a very severe man. I do very severe things.” He continues to stare at her, that strange snarl fixed on his face. She looks into his eyes and doesn’t quite know what it is she sees there. Madness, definitely, but something else.

   
He reaches into his shiny, tight brown leather jacket and pulls a very sharp-looking knife from its inside pocket. Holding the knife in his left hand, he reaches down with his right and squeezes her left nipple hard. She screams almost inaudibly and takes in a breath only to get a mouthful of the chemical-tasting tape.

   “
Nyah,” he says, continuing to squeeze her nipple. “Your nipples ain’t nothin. Them’s just tiny little bitty things. I’ll show you what a nice big nipple looks like.”

   
Finally releasing her, he reaches down to his belt and pulls his heavily starched shirt up to the top of his stomach. There, just to the right of his navel is a nipple the size of a silver dollar.

   “
Now that there’s a big nipple. Too bad its owner was a screamer. She screamed and screamed and didn’t amount to shit. I’m a very severe man. I had to do it. I do very severe things.”

   
Then another look, maybe reflection, creeps into his eerie brown eyes and he stares out the windshield for just a moment before saying, in a softer voice, “But that was before you. That was all before you, Amber Toulouse.”

   
He pronounces her last name all wrong and she wonders who the hell he is. Turning the key in the ignition, he pulls away from the alley and drives out of Celine. Amber feels her hope sliding away. She wants to continue working against the heavy tape but she doesn’t know what Vincent will do if she escapes. She likes her nipples where they are. As they drive along the state route, Amber blurts, “Iggy Pop!” against the tape but Vincent shoots her a hateful stare, reaches out and whacks her on the skull, lightning-quick, with the haft of his knife.

   
He will never understand, she thinks. He will never understand how she
has
to shout the names. Does he know what will happen if she doesn’t shout the names? A plague. A swirling plague will cover up the sun and form a black cloud and it will drop down on them, on everyone, and burn them all up with fever and disease.
That’s
what will happen if she doesn’t shout the names. She knows it.

3.

Vincent continues powering the car, pushing the speed limit but never going more than five miles over it. He is a very severe man, Amber muses over what he said. He even looks severe. His tan skin shiny and taut over high cheekbones. His head sits on his shoulders without the visual benefit of a neck. She figures he probably isn’t much taller than her but there is an aura of strength about him. Like a much larger man’s power is compacted into his smaller frame.

   
As he drives, he continues to play with the nipple on his stomach. She wonders how he got it to stay on there. It does not become aroused as he strokes it with a fingertip. She can’t watch anymore. How much longer does she have before that nipple becomes hers, unclothed and clenched between his severe fingers? She doesn’t want to think about it. She turns her head to look out at the darkening countryside passing by the window and screams against the tape, “Jeff Buckley!”

4.

They pull into another town that announces itself as being “MILTON—HOME OF THE UNIQUE LOZENGE” on a battered sign by the side of the road. The sunlight is dying, turning shadows to monsters. Vincent decides he wants to drive through the McDonald’s and get some coffee. Amber wonders what a unique lozenge is.

   “
Now I’m gonna take the tape off your mouth,” he says before they pull into the parking lot. “But so help me if you say one goddamn word or cry for help then I’m gonna take this car to the woods and fuck you so hard you’ll be able to taste your pussy in the back of your throat. And I can do it before the police ever get there. Understand?”

   
She nods her head, not really knowing if she will cry for help or not. He reaches up and runs a rough hand down her sweaty cheek. It seems like she has been sweating constantly since he grabbed her out of the alley. He runs his fingers down to a jutting edge of the tape. The tape is not just over her mouth, it is wrapped around her head a couple of times. He grabs the tape and quickly unfurls it around her head, taking hair and skin along with it. She tries her best not to bark out in pain.

   
He points a short stocky finger at her. “I mean it,” he says. “Not one goddamn word or you won’t be nothin to me.”

   
Again, she nods solemnly. She knows he’s serious about his threats. His very severe threats.

   
He holds the knife up so she can see it and hides it between two buttons in the front of his shirt so she knows it’s there, within his reach, if she decides to yell for help. He pulls through the drive-thru and barks into the speaker.

   “
I wanna big coffee!”

   “
One large coffee?”

   “
Yeah!”