Authors: Lee Pletzers
Tomas walked away from the scene, tossing the empty gun into the sewer and pulling his weather-beaten jacket over his head as the rain tapped its incessant tune. He didn’t know where he was headed. He just had to keep moving. The night opened up and swallowed him as he walked off into the dark.
In the morning, Tomas awoke with a pounding headache. As he opened his eyes he could feel the sun blaring down on him. Autumn mornings in Philadelphia were bright but cold as hell. He was laying propped up at the corner of a building, the morning crowd milling about on their way to work, stepping over him like he wasn’t even there. Like so much in the city, everything looks different with the lights on. The slums seem to disappear in the light of day, and the homeless become nothing more than a nuisance to a bustling morning commute. Tomas could feel the stares upon him. He looked like shit and smelled even worse, yet it was only a few months before when he had been one of
them
, another morning warrior who spit on those less fortunate than himself. It disgusted him to think of how shallow he once was, that if any of those heartless bastards knew what was going on down in the ghettos at night they wouldn’t dare judge him.
He was starving, but Tomas knew better than to rely on the kindness of strangers in the city. Most were unwilling to part with a moment of their time let alone a dollar, and the rest couldn’t even bear to look at him. The alleys beckoned him home once again, and who was he to argue? Tomas stood up and half-heartedly dusted himself off. He had to find some food.
In a trash can behind a deli, a half-eaten cheese steak was a banquet. Tomas quickly took his find into an alley nearby and sat down to enjoy his meal. After picking off the scraps of newspaper stuck to it, Tomas attacked the sandwich with abandon. He couldn’t remember ever being this hungry, he didn’t even mind that it was loaded down with onions, he didn’t care. He devoured it like it was his last meal. As he sat there, he remembered the baggie in his pocket. He never did get a chance to inspect it. He pulled it out and shook its contents. It was full of black powder, and reminded Tomas of all the nights he and his mistress had spent frolicking in the copy room at his office. It looked for all the world like a bag of copy toner. Suddenly the dye on Sal’s face the night before was not so strange.
Tomas laid down the last little bite of his sandwich and popped open the baggie. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed at it. His entire body convulsed, his very bones rattled under his skin. He quickly pulled the baggie away and shook his head violently to shake off the stench. Tomas nearly choked on his tongue at the smell of it. It smelled worse than death, as if the mouth of hell itself had vomited its most foul offering unto the world. But it was strangely familiar. It was the same stench he smelled on Officer Friendly. It wasn’t something he could ever forget, but why would Sal have a baggie full of the stuff?
“
What were you into, Sal?” Tomas muttered to himself.
There were voices in the shadows. Tomas looked around. There was no one there.
“
Hello?” Tomas said, almost afraid to hear a reply.
The shadows were silent.
Tomas looked down at the bag of black powder. He had barely even took a breath of whatever it was, and already he no longer felt like himself. His head was swimming in and out of lucidity, and he found that he had to keep shaking his head every now and then just to stay conscious. The voices returned. They were less than a whisper now, but voices he knew. His wife, his son, his mistress. They taunted him with secrets, tugged at his senses, begged him to surrender. He reached into the baggie, drawing out a small pinch of the powder and brought it up to his face. Transfixed by the voices in his mind, he breathed in deep, letting the pungent aroma overwhelm his senses. It knocked him back against the wall. His eyes went wide with rapture. His chest heaved and fell. He dragged the pinch of powder across the inside of his lower lip, his tongue probing for a taste. It was sweet but gritty, like sugar sprinkled over wet earth, and tingled against his tongue. Tomas surrendered to the shadows, and their rewards aroused his very soul.
Come
, the shadows commanded in his mistress’ alluring voice,
come to us
.
Tomas could not have refused. He rose to his feet. His entire body danced under the pleasures of the black powder. He knew not what it was or where it came from, and he didn’t care. The world as he knew it had abandoned him long ago, and he no longer had any desire to return. He stood there for a moment, his senses burning on the edge of sanity, and suddenly the world was gone. He couldn’t even remember his name. Did he have a family? Would he be missed? None of that mattered anymore. He was home. Truly home.
Shadows poured out every crevice in the alley, drawing to him like a tide of vermin. The writhing dark crawled up his body, enveloping him in its deathly grasp.
Know us
, it whispered in his mind, though the voice was unknown to him.
Be us
.
Tomas opened his mouth and breathed deep. The darkness drained into his mouth like he was inhaling a long cloud of black smoke. His eyes went white. He fell to the ground unconscious.
The Dark had never known such ecstasy. Tomas’ mind was so fertile. Of the hundreds it had taken, the Dark had never before found a more willing host. Tomas had surrendered completely; his body, his soul, all were at the Dark’s very behest. He moved if it demanded he move. He saw only what it compelled him to see. Its very whisper was his edict, and should it demand he lay down and die, he would do so graciously.
Tomas rose to his feet as he was commanded to. He set out from the alley, his precious baggie in his black-smeared hands, walking straight into morning traffic. Screeching tires and shouting pedestrians assaulted his every move. As he looked at their faces, they seemed to twist and distort into blathering visages of madness. Their eyes were empty black pits, their skin sloughed off of their faces like a sticky paste. If they were speaking English, Tomas could not tell, it was all a garbled mess of incomprehensible sounds. He stopped in the middle of the street, growling to himself and bubbling a thin black ooze from his mouth. A curious crowd had gathered around him. They looked at him like a wild beast on the loose, but in his eyes they were the animals. Their eyes smoldered in their grotesquely twisted heads. They cackled and spat at him like hellish hyenas.
An older man approached him with his hands out.
“
It’s ok, young man,” he said, “We’re gonna get you help. It’s ok.”
Tomas’ eyes were wild. The old man’s face melted away like candle wax. His bony jaw swung open and fell from its hinges. The words Tomas heard were the Devil’s own, and he was powerless to shut out the horrors in his mind.
“
No!” Tomas gurgled, shoving the old man backward. The baggie flew from his grasp and rained its contents over the crowd like a hail of ashes.
People were screaming and digging at their own faces. A few of the crowd fell into a weeping hysteria, while others descended upon each other like rabid animals, biting and clawing at one another and shrieking in tongues. In the confusion, Tomas ran off, disappearing into the bowels of the city. He didn’t know what was real anymore, but he had to get out of there.
Later that night, Tomas found a quiet spot in a place that felt familiar, only a few doors from where he once called home, if only he could have remembered such a time. It was a nice neighborhood. Clean driveways, fresh paint and tailored lawns. Tomas felt safe here, he only wished he knew why. That life was another world, but the longer he stared into that pristine place, memories began to wash over him. His eyes twitched and strained at the sight of a small brick home just at the end of the block. He walked closer. There was a white SUV in the driveway and flowers on the lawn, lit dimly by a line of lights running up to the front door. On the facade, the numbers 1 5 6.
This was home. This was my home
. Tomas thought to himself. He need only knock on the door. Redemption was a mere stone’s throw away. A woman crossed in front of the dining room window and sat down at the table. She held her face in her hands.
“
Susan…” Tomas whispered to himself. The name sounded almost alien to him, like it was someone else’s memory. If only he could talk to her, he thought, if only he could say how sorry he was. His feet rooted to the ground, he reached out in vain, grasping at something he could never again have.
Tomas looked at his outstretched hands. They were still caked with black powder and felt like oily sand paper. He brought his hands in close and stared into the indomitable blackness of it all, hypnotized by its ebon beauty. The darkness was calling out to him. He glanced longingly at his wife in the window. She was crying. His heart sank. He looked down again at his hands. The oily black had begun to drip from his fingers like tiny black tears, and suddenly Tomas couldn’t resist a taste. He brought his hands up and breathed in the sweet, earthy aroma. His body shuddered. All around him, the darkness came alive. There were faces in the shadows, horrible, suffering faces; and for a moment, Tomas saw his own family swirling in that damnable black. They called to him in hideous supplication, begging for death or pleading for his own he did not know.
Tomas licked the powder from his fingers. He craved the darkness now, yearned to feel its deathly grasp and bask in its unspeakable horrors. If he ever had a life before today, he no longer cared to know. The dark was the only drug he desired; he longed for its depravity, begged for its acceptance, and the Dark was pleased to oblige.
He walked on, the darkness beckoning him into the night.
The night was growing long. He had no idea how long he had been walking, but his feet hurt and it was starting to get cold. Two men were huddled around a burning trash barrel near an overpass not far away. It looked very inviting to Tomas’ cold bones. He rubbed his hands together, smearing what remained of the powder into his palms and along his fingers. He moaned at the feeling of the ichor coating his flesh in a second oily skin, could feel it writhing along his every pore.
Tomas walked over to the burning barrel and held out his hands to warm them. The fire was singing to him, its warmth bathing him in its aura. The two men looked at each other, then back at Tomas. They were filthy as the day was long, and if they weren’t homeless, they sure looked the part.
“
Hey man, do you mind?” said one of them.
“
Yeah, find your own spot pal,” said the other.
Tomas looked them both on the eyes. Flies were buzzing from the blisters bubbling out of their sickening yellow faces, and when they spoke they dribbled rotten teeth from their lips. They were dead already. Both of them.
Tomas raised up his hands and dragged his fingers down each of their faces, marking them both with lines of warm black ash. They fell upon each other in a frenzy, tearing at each other like a pair of flesh-starved zombies. They screamed and howled, spitting blood and cursing the darkness as they fed on one another. Tomas just stood there and grinned a devilish grin, enchanted by the fire’s song and the rasping sound of rending flesh.
The darkness carried the melody well into the night.
It was early when Tomas woke. He could remember nothing of the day before. He must’ve spent the night drinking again and passed out in the alley. He was filthy and he stank. It must’ve been one hell of a night.
“
Mister?” a voice was saying.
Tomas strained his eyes. His vision was cloudy and dark, but he could make out the figure of a boy in front of him, silhouetted against the dim light of the street beyond.
“
Who is that?” Tomas begged, “Who’s there?”
“
You shouldn’t be down here,” the boy said, “the cops been crackin’ down on the bums ’round here.”
“
I’m not a—what? I don’t even know where here is,” said Tomas, rubbing his eyes. “What are you doing here anyway?”
The boy slapped a big red sack that was slung over his shoulder.
“
Paper route,” the boy said, “Early to rise, momma always said.”
“
Papers? Shit. Is it morning already?” Tomas sat up. His eyes struggled to keep focus, his head was pounding and the stench that was rolling off of him was horrible.