Authors: Andersen Prunty
“Why are you laughing?”
“Teats?” He thought about explaining it and realized the archer probably still wouldn’t think it was funny.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
The archer pulled back his hood. Long, reddish hair dropped to his shoulders. With his beard, he looked like some kind of hill dweller.
“I’m Alvin Blue.”
“I’m Jeffrey Suckle. But most everyone calls me Archer.”
“You don’t see many people with bows and arrows.”
“I guess not.”
He pulled what looked like a pair of gardening shears from the large drum.
“Now,” he said, “the first thing you want to do is remove the fingers so you don’t get poked. They can hurt you even when dead.”
With the rade’s hand resting on the table, Archer began clipping off the ends of the fingers.
“What exactly are you doing with them?”
“Removing their skin.”
“Why?”
“Well, some of it I sell back to the Point. Isn’t that funny? They create these things by some sort of accident and then have to pay me for their skin. But they only want so much. Actually, they only want to pay me so much. Some of it I sell to local businesses. Electricity’s so expensive and they’re able to use this to keep the lights on and everything running. It’s cheaper than their gas and electric bill. The only thing they need is a conversion box, which I also happily sell them.” Archer gestured over to a far wall. Alvin saw things that looked like old radios piled up. “Concentrated, the skins are highly explosive.”
“So, what? You sell some of it to the military, too?”
“No. I tried, but they weren’t interested. I make my own bombs.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to blow up the Point.”
For the first time since watching him drink the rabbit’s blood, Alvin thought that, maybe, Archer was completely fucking crazy.
“You’re going to blow it up?”
“Yeah. See, I’m going to shuck this rade and put his skin in that little bombshell there.” Alvin looked at the can-thing. “I have a lot more of them. Get enough of these little bombs together and they’ll have the impact of an atomic bomb. I’ve got an airplane in a hangar out at the airstrip on the edge of town. I’m going to take a bunch of these babies up in the air and drop ‘em right down on the Point.”
Archer had now clipped all the rade’s fingertips off. He pulled a pair of metal tongs from the barrel and went about picking up the needle-like fingertips and dropping them into the bomb casing. Alvin didn’t want to be here anymore. He thought Archer might be able to help him but Alvin didn’t know if it was worth it. Alvin thought the night had turned on Archer. Maybe he had been a good person at one point in his life but something had happened and he had become something else. A lunatic. A would-be terrorist. A palpable sense of death enshrouded Archer and the Shucking Room. Alvin was frightened and depressed. To stay here, he felt, was even more soul deadening than working at the Point.
“This is all... fascinating,” Alvin began, “but I think I really need to go.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“I can’t help but think there is. Maybe you could just tell me how to get to the address.”
“I’ll show you. I’ll show you all kinds of things.”
“You’re busy and I’m in a hurry. If you could just give me a roundabout idea of how to get there, I’ll leave you alone and go check it out.”
“You’ll get nowhere.”
“Please give me the key to get out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re going to help me drop the bombs.”
“I can’t help you do that. I don’t think I necessarily agree with what happens at the Point either, but I can’t help you blow it up.”
“Yes. You will. You don’t really have a choice. We’ll destroy the Point, get some fucking
daylight
back, let people get their
lives
back, and then we’ll all live happily ever after. Isn’t that what you want? It’s your moral obligation to help me do this.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Trust me. Until we blow up the Point, there’s nothing for you out there. You’ll wander around at night. You won’t even remember the day. You won’t be able to get back into your house. You know why? Because the Point has sent a representative there to take your place. A simulacrum. That’s what they’re using the skin for. Not the rade skin but the human skin. The baby skin. That’s why the abortion clinic has to run all night. So they can harvest more skin. I’ve seen ‘em do it. Take truckloads of that skin up to the Point. And then they make simulacra out of those skins. I bet you and your wife couldn’t have any kids, could ya? What good is a non-productive member of society? No good at all. The Point has to invest in the future. Your simulacrum has probably been in there fucking your wife for longer than you know. But the society can’t have too many kids. What it needs is more workers. Hence the abortions…”
Alvin slowly made his way to the barrel of tools. There was a metal bar in there. He imagined Archer using it to roll up the skins of the rades and wondered how far off the mark he was.
A lot of what Archer said made sense. Alvin could see it. He could see it all happening. It sounded exactly like the type of thing the Point would do. But he couldn’t agree to help blow it up. Not on Archer’s suspicion and hearsay. He needed to get back in his house. Maybe he needed to go back to the police station to find out what happened to people like Lars. Maybe he needed to find this abortion clinic. See if what Archer said was true. But he wasn’t going to do anything against his will. He wasn’t going to be held hostage by this madman.
“Tell you what,” Alvin said. “Let me go. Let me explore a little bit. If I can’t find this address, if I can’t get back into my house, I’ll come back, okay? What’ll I have to lose?”
Archer sighed and dropped the tongs in the barrel. He turned to look at the rade.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Understand what?”
“That you are nothing. I am the only living thing here. Is that not obvious to you? You’re as good as dead. This is where you go to die. You have no more life. No more spirit. Here, your physical body can die and you can be irradiated and become one of them. There is no way out. You’re lost and you’re never going to find your way home again. This is the blackest fucking rabbit hole you could possibly fall down. Everyone is dead. Everyone is asleep. The destruction of the Point is the only thing that can bring life back to this city. I am the only one who can resurrect them. You should understand that. You were chosen for this. You followed me here. I haven’t made you do anything.”
Alvin hit him. He was mad. He didn’t even think about it. He nailed him in the back of the head with the bar. Archer went forward but he didn’t go out. The bar made a loud clanging sound and vibrated viciously. He almost dropped it.
“Give me the key,” Alvin said.
“I can’t do that.”
Alvin hauled the bar back and hit him on the top of his head. This time he felt the clang all the way up to his elbows. Archer quickly grabbed an arrow and thrust it toward Alvin. It caught him in the left arm and he knew he had to move fast before he took another one. He took a giant roundhouse swing with the bar, catching Archer in the back of the neck. His head snapped back and he went down onto his knees then fell forward until he was on all fours. Blood poured from his head and onto the gleaming cement floor. Alvin reached down and put his hand in his pocket, feeling the keys and yanking them out.
“I saved your life,” Archer said. “And this is the payment.”
“You’re fucking insane.”
“I’ll find you.” Alvin walked quickly to the door. “I have nothing better to do. You know that, don’t you? I’m going to find you and feed you to the rades piece by fucking piece.”
With shaky hands, Alvin undid the lock. He threw the bar back into the Shucking Room. It landed on Archer’s back and bounced off, clanging loudly on the floor. He thought about throwing the keys too, but decided to pocket them. Archer had declared war and Alvin didn’t want to give him any advantages. From the outside, he pulled the door closed and noticed there was the same type of padlock there too. He snapped it shut and continued down the dark alleyway.
A Hospital at Night
Part Eight
April coughed out cigarette smoke and coughed out the night and walked back into the too bright lobby of the hushed hospital and into the elevator that felt like a tomb and back up to Alvin’s floor. The outside chill still clung to her and she kept Mirabel’s sweater pulled tight around her shoulders. She harbored a secret desire to walk into Alvin’s room and find nurses and Doctor Banks gathered around him, trying to revive him. Instead she found Mirabel seated in one of the two chairs beside the bed.
“How is he?” April asked.
“Same.”
April sat down in the chair next to her.
“Thanks for the cigarette. I borrowed your sweater.”
“Don’t worry about it. Are you planning on going back home?”
April chuffed out a laugh.
“A hotel, maybe? You could probably even take a little nap here. You have to be tired.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t want to wake up.”
Mirabel nodded. “I’m here to listen, if you want me to be.”
“You know, I don’t think I really hated him until I found out he was cheating on me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“A wife knows. Wouldn’t you know it if your husband was cheating on you?”
“Definitely. I could tell just by looking at him.”
“Well, he had become someone else so I wouldn’t have been able to tell just by looking at him. But he would come home after one of his mysterious absences and I could smell her on him.”
“Did you ever confront him about it?”
“I couldn’t. Saying it out loud would have just made it more real, if that makes any sense. But I wouldn’t sleep with him after I knew, not that he really wanted it anyway. Guess he didn’t need it. I don’t think it makes me a better person or anything, but I would never have slept with Morning if I didn’t know Al was cheating on me. And the worst part of him doing something like that was how it made me look to other people. Apparently, he didn’t really try to keep it a secret. I ran into a neighbor at the store and she looked at me like she didn’t know me and I asked her what was wrong and she said she thought I had changed the color of my hair. And then she started to explain and then she stopped and there was this moment of realization. We both knew. She had seen Alvin out with someone else and assumed it was me. She didn’t have to say anything else.”
“I’m sure it hurts.”
“It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. And it’s amazing how I could manage to explain away everything else—maybe he lost his job because he was depressed and wasn’t able to make it in on time or fulfill his duties while he was there, maybe he started using drugs to cope with the depression, maybe he really
was
just bored and needed a change—but I couldn’t find any way to justify him fucking someone else. I gave him everything. And what he wanted was something new.”
She started crying again. These were painful things she was saying but they needed to be said. She cried and listened to the beeping and felt Mirabel’s hand on her leg and she wanted to die. To die or run back out to the night and get lost and never come back.
Eight
Alvin proceeded down the alley, going back toward his house, knowing it was useless. He kept a watch out for the rades. The one rade Archer had killed was no longer in the yard. Now Alvin found it curious, since Archer seemed to have such a vested interest in the rades, why he hadn’t taken this one for himself. Maybe he didn’t want the burden of carrying it. Maybe he was afraid Alvin would think it was strange and refuse to follow him into his Shucking Room.
He looked up at the sky, trying to find the moon, stars, something, anything to let him know he was still on the same planet. But the only things to remind him of that were the silent houses all around. What was he going to do? He couldn’t just wander around in this perpetual night for the rest of his life. That was ridiculous. He needed answers. He needed to get back to April.
He reached the end of the alley and to his right, his house. What used to be his house? Now he didn’t really know what to call it. He walked up through the yard. He couldn’t let himself believe things had become as strange as they seemed. Something had to have happened to April. There was no way she could believe this man in their house was him. Maybe at first glance... Or maybe they had just grown that far apart. He didn’t really see how it was possible. They were the happiest couple he knew. They still managed to spend a little time together. Maybe they were just too used to each other. Maybe it was all a joke. Maybe the replacement was some new lover. But that didn’t explain anything else. The weird night police. The endless night. Fucking Archer and the rades. The Acme Demolition crew still on the top of his house.
They now had nearly the entire thing covered in wires. He wondered how much time he had left. Why would they want to blow up his house? Why had they already blown up so many of the other houses? It just didn’t make any sense.
He walked up through his backyard and climbed the wooden steps of the porch. These were all things he had done hundreds of times. He reached the porch and turned around, looking out over the yard, trying to put things into perspective. The grass needed mowing again. How much time had passed? It felt like it couldn’t have been much more than a couple of days but the way the grass looked, he would have to guess it had been nearly a week. Other than the grass, everything was the same. The houses on the other side of Thistle. The neighbors’ garage just across the alley.
He turned back around and crossed the few feet of the porch until he once again stood in front of the door. He touched the knob and turned it, just to make sure. It was locked. Of course it was. The thought of breaking and entering once again crossed his mind but so did the thought of going back to the police station. He had already been processed, he didn’t want to think what would happen to him now.
Reluctantly, he crossed the yard, going back toward the alley. His mouth felt very dry. He stuck his finger into his mouth and poked his tongue. It was so dry it didn’t even feel like a tongue. His head and cheek throbbed. His left arm hurt from where Archer had stuck him with the arrow. He felt paranoid and on edge. A rade could be lurking anywhere. While they weren’t the quickest things in the world, he didn’t know if he had the energy or the strength to outrun one. His house could potentially blow up at any minute, although he thought the demolition crew would probably have to get off the roof before they did that. But he felt like he was supposed to be doing something. Something to stop his house from being blown up but he couldn’t think what that might be.
He would continue on to downtown. Maybe he would find other people downtown. Someone more like Ben and less like Archer. Someone who could help him stop the people wiring up his house. He poked his tongue again, coughed and gagged. It unleashed a bit of saliva and, at that moment, all he wanted was a drink of water.
As he walked down the alley and got ready to step on the sidewalk, something hit him from the left. He felt hot breath in his ear and a hand on his cock.
“You have to fuck me,” the voice said.
He grabbed the individual molesting him by her upper arms and thrust her away, still holding onto her. It was a young woman, probably not much older than a teenager. She had a black faux hawk, multiple piercings, and looked like she dressed from the rack at the mall store that tried to be edgy but was still a mall store.
She slipped a hand under her tartan skirt and massaged herself. “Come on,” she said. “We can do it right here. Nobody’ll notice.”
“Jesus. Calm down.”
“No. You don’t understand. I need it. I have to have it.”
Alvin had never been in a situation like this. He knew he wasn’t going to do anything with her but he didn’t really know how to tell her ‘no’ either. He thought about just turning and running in the other direction but maybe he could get this person to help him.
“If you don’t calm down,” he said, “I can’t give you what you want.”
This seemed to placate her somewhat. She took her hand out of her crotch and asked hopefully, “So, you’ll fuck me?”
“We’ll see. But later, okay? I need some help first.”
“Whatever.”
He took his hands from her arms. “Are you a night person too?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“Did you work for the Point?”
“Um, in a roundabout way.”
“You seem awfully young.”
“For some things.”
“What did you do?”
“I worked in one of their stores as a model.”
“They have stores?”
“They own all the stores in Dayton.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I have no idea. Look, you don’t have to talk to me or anything. I’ll just lean against this wall and you can fuck me, okay? It’ll be quick. You can’t wear a condom though. Don’t worry, I don’t have any diseases or anything. And then I’ll be on my way and you can be on yours. How’s that sound?”
“Besides crazy? Well, let’s see. First of all, I’m married and I love my wife.”
“Okay. Okay. You’ll never see your wife again but okay.”
“Second, I don’t know you.”
“Does it matter? Are you saying you wouldn’t fuck me?”
“That’s beside the point. Third, I have things I have to do.”
“Like what? There’s nothing to do here. You just fucking wander around until you go into a coma and then you die. Might as well fuck it up while you can.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment, it really is, but I’m afraid I’m not that defeated yet.”
“That’s refreshing, I guess.” At this, she began fingering her nipple through her shirt. It was apparent she wasn’t wearing a bra. Alvin reached out his hand to bat hers away and she grabbed it and put it on her breast. He could feel her nipple pressing into his palm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex. He was aroused but would never admit it. He yanked his hand away.
“Stop, okay. Just stop. I’ll never give you what you want if you keep doing that.”
He put his hands in his pockets and thought this might be the most retarded conversation he’d ever had in his life.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “You mentioned some things you have to do. What kinds of things? I can tell you why they’re stupid and why you should be fucking me instead.”
Alvin poked his tongue again and looked back at his house.
“You see them people up there?”
“Yeah. That’s the demo crew. It means you’ve been scheduled for an outage.”
“An outage?”
“It’s a nicer way of saying detonation.”
“I think there’s been some mistake. My house should not be detonated. For one, my wife is still in there.”
The girl scoffed. “They’ll evacuate everyone before they detonate it.”
“My wife is in there with another man.”
“Then why don’t you fuck
me
. That’ll teach her.”
Alvin laughed distantly and jabbed his tongue again, this time with the index finger of both hands. “You don’t understand. She thinks that other man is me. He’s a…” He had to think of the word. “A simulacrum.”
“I don’t know what the fuck that word means.”
“It’s like someone who looks kind of like me. Someone who’s meant to take the place of me. That’s what they do at the Point. They make these things with other people’s flesh… and I think they use the flesh from abortions, too.”
“They do something with them. That’s why they pay good money. That’s why I need you to fuck me.”
Alvin jabbed at his tongue harder this time. Now he thought he tasted blood in the back of his throat. “So you want me to cheat on my wife and have sex with you so that you can get pregnant and get an abortion.”
She nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“No way.”
“You do it and I can tell you how to keep your house from getting blown up.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the address, unfolded it, and pressed it very close to her face. “Do you know where this is?”
He saw some sense of recognition flicker in her eyes but it was immediately replaced by the cold eyes of a predator. “Fuck me and I’ll tell you where it is.”
Alvin sucked some blood back into his throat and watched his house as the workers continued dropping those wires off the roof.
The girl grabbed his hand and said, “Let’s take a little walk and give you a chance to think about it.”
Alvin took one last, longing glance back at his house and said, “Okay.”
“Okay you’ll do me?”
“I don’t know about all that yet. I need to find one of the sleepers. Do you know where I can find one of them?”
“They’re all over. It shouldn’t be very hard. Why do you need to find one of them?”
“There’s something I find fascinating about them.”
“You don’t act like someone who’s in much of a hurry.”
“No. I am. Time is very much of the essence, but I have to know.”
“Have to know what?”
“What the sleepers are.”
“They’re just people.”
“People don’t sleep all the time. It’s not right.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled him along. They began walking down Payne Avenue, trying the doors on all the houses they passed. They were all locked. They exchanged names. When she told him her name was May he laughed and said, “That’s cute.”
“Glad you like my name,” she said.
“No. It’s just that... my wife’s name is April. April. May.”
“Well, I guess when you’re finished fucking me you’ll move on to June.”
He didn’t say anything to that. He could imagine it happening and the prospect seemed terrifying.
“You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
Alvin explained his wounds to her—his forehead, his cheek, his arm. She told him she knew who Archer was and that she had never trusted police. When he asked her why she told him she had her reasons. He told her to make sure to keep a lookout for rades. She said she never stopped looking out for them and she knew how to take care of herself. “I’m not new to this lifestyle.”
Alvin wasn’t sure what lifestyle she meant.
Eventually, about the tenth house down, they came to a duplex that had one unlocked door. Alvin walked in cautiously, figuring the house would either be filled with rades or sleeping people. Or, possibly even night people.