Ink (38 page)

no, not mine, his hands, Sailor’s hands

met the rough edge of paper. The contract, the fine print, tucked away in the pocket of the sailor shirt and forgotten by the Sailor-Jason as he wrapped his arms around Mitch and pulled her close. Jason tried to grab the paper, but it slipped out of his grasp, sliding off the flesh dangling from the edge of his fingers. He grabbed a second time, pushing hard against the shifting skin as he pulled it from the pocket, angling his body away from Sailor and Mitch.

It fell from his hand, swaying back and forth to land on the floor by his feet. He dropped to his knees and pressed one palm against one half of the contract, holding it in place as he grabbed a free edge. Mitch screamed, the sound cut off, and he ripped. A corner from the paper, a small, triangle-shaped piece, came loose. The skin around him shook and quivered. He tore another piece; the skin vibrated.

“What do you think you are doing?” Sailor roared.

Jason ignored him and lifted the paper to his mouth.

I’m taking care of the fine print, you son of a bitch.

Using his teeth, he bit off another piece and spit it out. The sailor suit slipped from his shoulders, his arms, his hands, taking the paper with it. “You will not win,” he said, pawing through the rumpled clothing and skin, holding back a scream as the raw unflesh of his fingers burst into hot jolts of pain. He found the paper, lost it again as the scalp fell back, covering his hand, then found it again. “You will not win!”

Sailor stalked over with his rolling hips-before-legs walk and shoved him away. Jason’s body exploded in agony, but he crawled over to the sailor skin. Sailor batted him away, a cat playing with a mouse, smiling a warped Jason-grin.

Jason pulled himself up, ignoring the pain. He ran forward, ducking an arm still wearing his real flesh. He stumbled, twisted around, righted himself and bent down. Sailor moved forward. Jason lifted the sailor skin with both hands and threw it in Sailor’s direction. The paper remained behind on the floor, tattered and bloodstained. Jason grabbed it and turned to face his own image, still wrapped around the wrong body.

Sailor reached out. “You cannot do this,” he hissed.

Despite the pain, Jason ripped another piece free from the contract. “Yes, I can.” He shredded the rest of the paper; the pieces fell from his ruined hands and burst into tiny flames before they reached the floor, turning the fine print into nothing but ash. Sailor grabbed Jason’s shoulders. Jason grabbed back and pulled at the flesh,
his
flesh. “Give me back my skin!” he yelled. He dug his fingers in tight. The skin unfolded, peeled back, revealing the nightmare hollows and planes of Sailor’s true face. Hands ending with curved, sharp nails pierced his exposed tendons, but Jason did not let go. Sailor’s eyes bored into his, his hot, reeking breath pushed into Jason’s face and his nails dug deep. Jason curled his fingers and pulled the rest of the skin free. Sailor’s nails flashed like knives in the air, but Jason threw the skin to the side and moved his body in between.

“It is mine,” Jason said. “Our business is done.”

The air sucked out of the room with a dull pop, replaced with a pulsing heat. Both skins rose in the air—a tornado blur of Jason-Sailor-Jason-Sailor-Jason-Sailor, flesh swirling into and around flesh, flapping like empty bags caught in a dry wind that reeked of pain and torment.

Jason stepped back until he pressed into the wall. Sailor roared again, the sound stretching out into a hideous carousel squeal of horror. He faded, first into a shadowy, monstrous figure, then to a vague, misshapen outline, then into insignificance—nothing—taking the sailor skin with him. Something wet and warm wrapped around Jason’s limbs—his own flesh settling back over muscle, fat, tendons and bone. The searing pain and heat vanished; the floor shook, then the air rushed back in with a wet, sucking noise.

Jason sagged against the wall. The smell of spilled blood, charred paper and burned skin lingered in the room, but he didn’t care. He ran his hands over his arms and legs and face. The stink of Sailor remained, but underneath, his own smell pushed up to the surface.

Mitch moved forward, stopped, then moved again. “Jason, is it you? Is it really you?” she sobbed.

He closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms

his real arms, his own arms

around her, and pulled her close, breathing in the scent of her hair. “I promise, it’s me. It’s really me.”

She pulled back, ran her fingers over his face, through his hair, and down his back, laughing and crying at the same time, then folded into his arms, her head resting just above his heart.

And they stayed that way for a long time.

11

Inside his shadowed room of screams, John S. Iblis roared, and every bit of glass on Shakespeare Street, from light bulb to windowpane, shattered.

Chapter Eleven

Land Ho!

1

The warm spring day settled on Baltimore like a sheet shaken over a bed. Fluffy clouds dotted a sky so blue it was magical. Good magic, not dark. The sun hung high, half hidden in the cumulus. The kind of day that sent painters and poets outside, filled with the need to capture the perfection on canvas or paper. A day filled with promise and laughter.

The air, carrying a hint of flowers and freshly cut grass, pushed across the face of the man kneeling by the gravesite. A handsome man, but not movie-star handsome. The kind of man you would want your daughter to marry, until you saw the shadows in his eyes.

His face wore the burden of a man at war, although he did not look like a soldier. A private war, perhaps. If you met this man in a bar, you might notice, if his shirtsleeve rode up, scar tissue on his arm. He might tell you about the way the skin itched late at night while he lay in bed awake. He might tell you about his nightmares. He might tell you a story, a story so terrible it couldn’t possibly be real.

Or he might just smile, a sad half smile, and tell you about his girlfriend and the way her eyes almost took the darkness away. The way her hand slipped into his at just the right times, how her hair always smelled of coconut. And when he lifted his glass to take a drink and the bar lights shined in his eyes and you saw,
really
saw, the shadows there, you would be glad he’d kept the dark things to himself.

Later, while walking your dog or tossing the ball to your son in the backyard, you’d remember the man and shudder, even on a fine, warm day. His eyes were haunted, you might say to yourself. Later still, in bed with the sleeping body of your wife warm against yours, you might hear a noise, a small little creak of the stairs and close your eyes, praying it was just house noise. Praying it wasn’t that man’s nightmare coming to visit.

The man knelt for a long time, not speaking, not moving. The air tousled his hair, and when he stood, he rubbed his left arm, and a quick wince of pain flashed across his face. Then he turned his face into the breeze. His mouth moved and the wind blew his words out into the air like tiny living things.

It is what it is.

2

The man at the end of the bar was thin but well muscled. His forearms bore the faded ink of old tattoos, his eyes rimmed with red. He raked his fingers through long hair in dire need of a shampoo. John S. Iblis tipped a nod in his direction before he waved the bartender over.

“Please give that man another drink. On me.” He tipped another nod to the man at the end of the bar and grinned.

He had plenty of skins, but there was always room for one more.

About the Author

Damien Walters Grintalis lives in a Baltimore suburb with her husband.
Ink
is her first novel. Visit her website at:
www.damienwaltersgrintalis.com

It’s the dawn of a new era…the year of the zombie!

AZ: Anno Zombie

© 2012 Peter Mark May

Fire rained from the sky over Tucson that day. A dust cloud settled over the city. And the dead rose from their graves. Tom Hollinger raced to his ex-wife’s place to make sure she and his son were safe. They weren’t. Tom was barely able to save the boy from his undead mother. Now, surrounded by a city in chaos, Tom, his son and a handful of friends are battling their way out of town, desperate to make it to safety while the army of the living dead grows in number every hour. The world no longer belongs to the living. A new era has dawned…Anno Zombie!

Enjoy the following excerpt for
AZ: Anno Zombie:

Outside the world was silent. The sand storms of the night before had obviously blown themselves out. Tom was drinking some apple juice out of the cartoon, when a loud crash came from his backyard. Cursing and dribbling juice down his stumble covered chin, he slammed the carton down on the kitchen counter. Wiping his chin with his forearm, he walked over to the back kitchen windows and pulled up the blinds.

He thought it might he the Jacobson’s dog from down the street, but to his surprise it was a large dark skinned guy in coveralls. The guy had his back to Tom and was routing through the garbage bins.

“What the hell?”

Tom jogged back to his bedroom and pulled on his pants and t-shirt from the previous day. He kicked on some shoes and made for the door that led into his garage. After picking up an old baseball ball that he and Tommy used sometimes on visits to the park, he opened the back door of his garage and raised the bat up beside his head.

“Hey, what the hell you doing, man?” he called. The man was rooting through his garbage, like a hobo who had been on hunger strike. The unkempt man seemed not to hear Tom and continued to root deeper down in the trash. Behind the intruder there seemed to be an orangey-brown mist covering the rear of his yard; probably a dusty remnant of the slept-through dust storm.

The smell of the guy wafted over, invading Tom’s nostrils, which flared with disgust. The trashcan hobo stunk like had crapped his coveralls and then cleaned them with six week old rotted meat and vegetables.

“Hey, numb-nuts, I’m talking to you,” Tom shouted and prodded the bat into the back of the man.

The guy jerked upwards like the bat was a 100 volt cattle prod and with spasmodic twitches of his elbows and broad shoulders turned to face Tom. Or he would have, if the man had a whole face. The left cheek was dark brown with a touch of grey to it, but the other was gone, with only cheek bones showing. His scalp on that side flapped slightly as he jerked and twitched and shuffled his large booted feet towards Tom.

“Jesus, you been in an accident or something?” Tom asked and stepped back.
         

The man raised his grubby hands and aiming them at Tom’s throat, lumbered closer. Revulsion and years of army training took over and Tom swung and hit the guy on the exposed bone of his cranium before he realized he was doing it. The guy’s lower jaw shattered, hung for a second and then fell to the dirt floor in two pieces. Something like brown snot shot out of the guy’s remaining nostril and down his front. He staggered for a second, and then, fixing Tom with his remaining milky covered brown eye, raised his hands once more.

Tom took another step back, planted his feet and swung like he was hitting a home run out of Soldier Field. This time the force of the impact on the guy’s head caused the bat to break, but not before knocking the guy’s head onto his right shoulder with a sickening crack. Tom, hands numb with shock, let the bat fall, as the man tottered two steps to the left. The side of his face was cracked open into an oozing mess of broken bone and the left eye socket was shattered, exposing the grey inner workings of his brain.

To Tom’s astonishment, the guy steadied himself in his big workman boots and advanced towards him again with silent menace. The guy’s scalp was now flapping up and down with every jerky movement like he was wearing a badly fitted toupee. Weaponless, Tom retreat back into his garage and shut and bolted it.
 

Not once had the man spoken, cried out in pain, or even grunted.

Tom was thinking about what to do next when two hands came punching through the mesh covered window panes in the rear garage door. The glass gouged deep cuts into the grey fingers of the attacker, the hands flailing about after Tom, who ducked out of reach. Then the arms bent down as if the guy was trying to find the lock, unimpeded by the injuries his arms were taking in the effort.

Once again old army training kicked in. Tom ran over to his cluttered workbench and ran his eyes over every tool, screwdriver and socket wrench there. Even the two hammers he owned seem wrong for the job at hand. The man began to tug at the screen and the thin wooden frames of the six now broken window panes.

Gulping down some rising bile in his throat, Tom finally grabbed something from a cobweb covered shelf. He raced back to the door as his attacker pulled aside enough mesh to reach in and get a grip the doorknob.
 

Tom had to avoid the man’s grayish lacerated hand as he plugged in the long unused power tool…

Ink

Damien Walters Grintalis