The Birth of Bane (34 page)

Rosalyn strode
passed me and sat on the bed without preamble, her hands spayed to
either side, lightly touching the covers on the bed.

I half-expected
some flippant remark, drenched in sexual innuendo, but when none
came forth. I made a concerted effort to determine her mood. But it
didn’t take long. Her feelings were unmistakable. She was relieved.
She was glad to be somewhere, sitting up something, she understood.
Sitting there on my bed (me being the boy she’d come onto at my
Graduation Party), she was content. There was nothing carnal about
her.

I sighed as
quietly as I could manage, not wanting
my
relief to tip her
off in any fashion. She was just fine the way she was as far I was
concerned.

“
You ok?” I
asked, deflecting.

She stared up at
me, a tired smile barely touching her lips. She nodded.

I nodded back.
“Good,” I mouthed.

With an
arbitrary saunter, I walked about my room, double-checking
everything was in place, reassuring myself all was as it should be.
I ended up near my desk, my mini-word processor closed atop its’
surface, a thin layer of what looked like dust having accumulated
upon it.

I sucked at my
cheek.

This was unusual
for me. I was typically fastidious when it came to the care of my
electronics. Down to my Walkman, I made they were always clean,
their vents clear of any lent that might’ve accrued. I made it a
common practice to take care as I plugged and unplugged them, not
wanting to bend the tiny connecting prongs, which would render the
device
s useless. I wasn’t quite
obsessive about it, but I was close. I guess you could say, I had a
detailed routine about how I cared for my technological gadgets. It
was a practice I’ve followed to this very day.

That was why,
gazing down at the cover of my word processor, seeing some
collected deposit layering the hard plastic exterior, puzzled me. I
was certain I had wiped it off before I had gone to bed, and
yet…

No, I had wiped
it. I remembered then. I had used the age-old washcloth I used to
use when I was a kid. It had been my all-purpose rag for years now.
Yes! I had wiped it down and placed the rag on the mantle of my
fireplace.

I side-stepped,
stretching to my fullest height, eyes peering over the very same
shelf, and felt instant consternation when I saw it there, folded
in fours, precisely where I’d left it.

I circled back
to me desk, inspecting the word processor with greater scrutiny.
With the lightest touch, I ran a finger over the dust. My brow
furled more when, to my surprise, it didn’t feel like dust at all.
It was drier, if one could imagine such a thing, and didn’t gather
together as dust or lent would when pressure was applied to it.
Rather, it flaked.

I bent to get a
closer look, my eyes adjusting to the difference in perspective.
The moment everything became clear, I knew I wasn’t gazing at dust
or lent or fine-layered dirt. It was nothing like any of those
substances. The texture was wrong. The composition was incorrect.
The very structure behaved differently when compared to things of
that nature. This was something else entirely.

I ran my finger
across it once more, watching as it flaked some more. As my finger
continued, some of it began to stick to my skin before it fell
away. It was thin, the same as the diameter of a hair, partially
transparent with microscopic ridges and valleys etched throughout.
Some tiny bit of recognition tickled my brain.
Where had I seen this before?
I swiped at the material once more, with a little
more force this time around. It was almost a rub, but not quite,
but the effect on the chalky stuff was noticeable at once. It
didn’t globule like before. No, its’ reaction was much more
peculiar. It rolled-up.

I jerked my hand
away to peer at the itty-bitty, burrito-like compound upon the tip
of my finger. “I’ve seen this before,” I said aloud, though I was
still talking to myself.

“
What did you say?”
inquired
Rosalyn from a few feet away, still upon my bed, having pushed back
to the underside of her knees.

I frowned as I
looked her way, though not at her directly. I was about to say
something sarcastic, but forestalled my tongue. A better thought
came to mind. “What do you make of this?” I asked, my hand, index
finger extended out toward her.

She came from
the bed, bent at the neck. She reeled back a few inches in
confusion almost immediately.
“Where did you get
that
?”

“
From the cover
of my word processor. Why?”

“
Why would there
be dead skin on top of your word processor?”

“
What?” It was
squeak, not unlike those emanating from my mouth when my vocal
cords constantly betrayed me during the onset of
puberty.

“
It’s dead skin,
Jerry. Why would it be there?”

“
Dead skin?” I was so shocked I know I sounded like a complete
dweeb, but I couldn’t help it.
Dead skin? Are you fucking kidding me?

“
Yeah, dead
skin,” she answered stepping around me to look at the cover for
herself.

I noticed there
were similar flakes covering her butt and the back of her legs
where they’d met my bed when she sat.

She spoke before
I could mention it.
“What the
hell…?”

The words I’d
formulated in my mind blew away like mist. I craned my neck so I
could see around her voluptuous frame. “What is it?” I was almost
afraid of the answer.

“
There’s something underneath the skin… something pink,”
she retorted.

I was more
bewildered than I’d been a second before. “What are you talking
about?” I asked at the same time she reached out to touch the
cover. I edged closer.

Her finger
pushed toward the hard, dark plastic.

To my dread, the
tip of her digit didn’t stop upon reaching the surface. I knew I
had been wrong moments ago. It isn’t the unforgiving manmade
material I’d been looking at. This unlikely substance was less
substantial. It offered some resistance to the pressure she was
applying, but not a lot. Her finger dimpled this pink…
tissue? Wait, was it flesh?
Nearly a quarter of an inch of her
finger became obscured as she poked downward.

I think I was
about to say something painfully obvious. I’m fairly certain I was,
but it wasn’t to be the case.

He screamed
then. Like I’d heard earlier, when I’d come from the writhing
tentacle-like coils beneath the clothing. I knew it was him the
moment I heard the sound. There was no mistaking the shrill wail,
the pain, the agony being visited upon him.

But, how? Why?
How was any of this possible?

Rosalyn leaped
back like she’d been electrocuted. Possibly, she had. She bumped up
against me, her firm rear jutting into my pelvis.
“Oooh!”
she squawked, bringing her hands to her mouth, reeling back
onto her heels. If it hadn’t been for our inappropriate closeness,
she would’ve fallen onto the floor.

“
It’s Lenny,” I
supplied unnecessarily.

“
I know,”
she replied at
once.

I frowned,
wondering how she’d know that, then cringed, grabbing her by the
shoulders and physically moved her arm’s length from me. I didn’t
want to think about the things she’d done to my bi-sexual parent.
That was the Rosalyn I despised. That was the Rosalyn who’d hurt my
family.

“
Let’s get the
hell out of here,” I urged, stepping past her when my eyes caught
sight of my bed. Where she’d been sitting the dry skin there had
rubbed away as well. I gaged when I understood why she’d had it on
back of her legs.

She noticed my
discomfiture.
“What?”

I didn’t answer.
M
y eyes were glued to the pink
flesh exposed beneath the twisted bed sheet and comforter on my
bed. My father’s newborn flesh was visible there as well, flushed
with blood, raw, tender before the onrushing air in the room. It
was twitching, shuddering, pulsating with a heartbeat all its’ own.
I glanced about, seeing similar patches of withered dermis
throughout my bedroom. Lenny’s dead outer membrane was completely
surrounding us. We were cocooned in an inverted space made entirely
of my
father
. Yes, it was my father! With every step more skin
flaked away, no matter how softly I trod, the soles of my slippers
came away with huge swaths of it. The tiniest flecks floated into
the air about my knees, some even higher.

Both Rosalyn and
I held our breath, repulsed to a near-frenzy at inhaling any of it.
I heard her retch more than once.
We made it to the door. There were two of them now, like I’d
seen countless times in the alley.

I hardly
noticed. Holding my father’s mistress’s hand within mine, we
plunged through the door, chins at our chests, free hands covering
our mouths and noses.

All the while,
Lenny’s human dust wafted in the current of our passing.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Chapter
Twenty-One: Blending Reality

My head was
still facing the ground when the first tinkling sound reached my
ears. I cocked my head at its’ oddness. It wasn’t a chime or tonal.
It was a heavier sound, flat, but repeated over and over, giving
one the impression it was one sound. It wasn’t. It was many blended
together.

I gazed from the
corner of my eye, but quickly came about to peer at a decent sized
mound of coins – all sorts, from every nation, from every time
period – thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two.
It was easily fifteen feet high, crammed at the end of this
smallish room made of corrugated steel. I could see currency struck
of copper, silver and all the alloys in between. There was even
some of a golden hue, but whether or not they were authentic, I
couldn’t tell from my vantage.

“
This isn’t right
either,”
intoned Rosalyn,
ache in her voice for the first time.

I looked over at
her, wondering at this unexpected turn when I caught sight of the
source of the tinkling. It was coins, dropping from in between her
tiny fingers whenever she reached into the throng and pulled forth
heaps she couldn’t hope to hold. I felt my heart lurch into my
throat, throb against my tonsils. I choked when I tried to speak
her name. Tears formed in my eyes before I knew what was
happening.
How did she get down
here? When had she come? Why was she doing this?
More thoughts coursed through my brain
than I could cognitively process. I was overloaded within seconds,
reduced to a frothing mess in the span of a few
heartbeats.

“
Jerry, don’t look. It’s not real. None of this shit is
real,”
pleaded
Rosalyn.

I felt her tug
upon my arm. Her unclean mitt was upon my body, while I stood
before the only person, other than the members of my family, I
truly loved.
How dare
her!

“
Get off me!” I
wrenched free of her grasp, my eyes never leaving Myra, who sat
upon the hillock of change, forcing handful after handful into her
mouth, chewing, chomping through broken teeth and ruined gums.
“Myra!” I was half-scolding, half-calling to her in
anguish.

She didn’t look
at me. She didn’t stir from her robotic feeding - arms reaching,
hands grasping – stuffing evermore into her bruised and lacerated
maw.

“
Myra! Stop!” I
tried once more.

“
Jerry, let’s go! She isn’t real! Listen to me! Don’t
look!”
Rosalyn was adamant. She
seized my bicep forcefully, pulling me toward the doors across the
way. Doors, I was sure weren’t there a moment
before.

I pulled back,
but she had me with both hands, her fingers interwoven about the
upper portion of my arm.

“
Let go!” I commanded, my eyes brimming. I was so angry. I felt
it filling me, overflowing, threatening to burst forth. All the
pent up rage, the frustration I’d been unable to vent, boiling,
spewing, splattering across my
brain, making me wild with it.

“
I said,
let the fuck go of
me!
” I tugged against her
mightily, but she held on like a Pit-bull. She might’ve been a
small woman, but she was strong. I couldn’t shake free, though I
tugged and dragged her about.

“
Goddammit, IT’S NOT REAL!!!”
she screeched like a banshee.

Oh, I wanted to
hit her. After everything she had done to me and my family, after
she’d used my father as her bitch, now that she was keeping me from
helping Myra – god, I wanted to fuck her up. I felt my free fist
ball. I relished the hate burning in the middle of my chest. I
bathed in it, soaked it up, and let it wash away the feelings of
doubt, of remorse. I let it consume me. I let it
be
me. For the first time in my life, just like Lenny, I was
going to hit a woman in anger. I let the tension build, my muscles
coil and -.