Noir

Season 2, Episode 2: A Steady Hand, Part 2

At the end of last episode we left our young protagonist, Jared, in a bad way after being sucker punched by a tattooed thug just as he was beginning to think there might be more to Kelly Burbank than he originally thought. Who killed Kevin? What will Jared do in response? Find out on Part two of A Steady Hand.

Credits: This story was written and performed by A.P. Weber. Science Heroes provided the music and Josiah Martens wrote the theme song. Meg Weber produced the show along with me, your host, A.P. Weber. Courtney Stubbert designed our logo. Photos were provided by Brenton Salo.

I’d like to invite you to get in touch with us. You can email your feedback to truthsandhalftruths@gmail.com. My twitter handle is @apweber.

This episode of Lies and Half truths is brought to you by Flash Pulp! A fiction Podcast with a Modern pulp twist. Monday, Wednesday and Friday Flash Pulp delivers 3-10 minutes of original sci fi, fantasy, noir, horror--you name it. Go to flashpulp.com.

Next: The Propagandist, Part One 01.08.2016

Season 2, Episode 1: A Steady Hand, Part 1

In season one, we introduced you to a mysterious and sinister man who brokers “time” in exchange for loyalty. Now, we take you back to that haunted noir setting with an all new tale.

Credits: This story was written and performed by A.P. Weber. Science Heroes provided the music and Josiah Martens wrote the theme song. Meg Weber produced the show along with me, your host, A.P. Weber. Courtney Stubbert designed our logo. Photos were provided by Brenton Salo.

I’d like to invite you to get in touch with us. You can email your feedback to truthsandhalftruths@gmail.com. My twitter handle is @apweber.

This episode of Lies and Half truths is brought to you by Flash Pulp! A fiction Podcast with a Modern pulp twist. Monday, Wednesday and Friday Flash Pulp delivers 3-10 minutes of original sci fi, fantasy, noir, horror--you name it. Go to flashpulp.com.

Next: A Steady Hand, Part Two 12.18.2015

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

Episode 4: The Last Request

His last request went like this: “When you put me in the dirt, put me in heavy. Keep it loaded.” They nodded, their long, dusty beards scratching the green-grey ink on their chests. “You’ll need it where you’re going,” the older of the two bikers said, then they killed and buried Kyle Davies beneath a grove of black oaks, right over top the unmarked grave of their brother--or as near as they could reckon.

When Davies came to, with the thistle-sharp fallen leaves stinging his back, his hand went first to his waist. He looked up at the thick, twisting oak branches below the twilight sky and fingered the pistol’s steel features. He wondered if the sun was coming up or going down--stale, warm air and the noise of insects--going down, then.

“Looks like my brothers finally got to you.”

The man leaned against the cracked bark of an oak trunk, chewing a length of dry straw. He held the straw up and examined it, dissatisfied. “God damn. What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette.”

Davies got to his feet, watching the man. He kept his hand away from his waist, allowing his shirt tails to fall over the gun grip. The bikers had nabbed him before he could even reach under his pillow for the gun; there should still be eight .45 caliber rounds in the magazine. Only eight. Best not to use them too soon--or show his hand

“Some sort of poetic justice burying you here, I guess.” The man coughed out a dry laugh.

“Yeah,” Davies said. “Who knew anyone would give a damn about a lowlife like you, Bill.”

Bill put the straw to his lips and shrugged. “It’s family. I know why you did me. It was for Donna. My brothers? Same thing.”

Davies nodded. “I see it that way, too.”

“I didn’t like doing it, Ky. It was just the money. I know you enjoyed it plenty when it came to me, though.”

Davies didn’t meet Bill’s eyes. He thought about the pistol. “You’re brothers were kinder to me.”

Bill chewed his straw. Davies pondered a little longer.

“Man,” he said at last, “I thought I’d run into more trouble on this side.”

Bill smiled, a smile as dry as his laugh. “You’ll have trouble, Ky. They’re gonna be hunting you.”

“But you’re not?”

“I’ve been here longer. I’m tired.”

 

Davies waded into the high, brittle grass beyond the diameter of the oak grove and found the cattle-trodden path. He trudged up the slope and at the crest he looked out west toward the coastal mountain range. The town nestled against the mountains twinkled in the evening glow. As he stood there, the din of insects, buzzing and chirping, sounded a little softer, a little sweeter than it should. It lulled him, reminded him the day was at its end. But he couldn’t rest. Not yet.

Down the other side of the rise he found the highway. He walked along it for awhile, thumb at the ready, but no headlights came or went. It was the same highway James Dean bought it on, but back the other direction; he wondered what that spot would look like from this side.

He kept on. Ahead the round-topped mountains were silhouettes, backlit by the setting sun. He walked on and on--an hour or more--but the sun never set. He heard the chug of an engine. A moment later he noticed the taillights and the reflection of headlights on the tall grass beside the road. He jogged closer.

An teenage boy lay curled up in the beams, like a fawn bedding down for the night. A white cross had been nailed to the barbedwire fence post here. Davies prodded the boy with the tip of his boot and the boy looked up with drooping lids.

“You okay there, kid?” Davies asked.

The kid smacked his lips and laid his head back down, tucking his fingers between his thighs.

Davies threw his hand in the direction of the vehicle. “I’m taking your car.”

The boy waved him away.

 

He got off on Union Road. The windows were dark in all the houses, but their porch lights were on and the streetlamps beamed down their amber rays. He crossed over Thirteenth and pulled off onto the dirt lot across the river from the utilities building. In the dry river bed, among the brush and scrub trees, a ribbon of dark silver stretched out from the south up and under the Thirteenth Street Bridge. He turned off the car and got out.

The sand and leaves crunched under his feet. He wondered what he’d find. When he came to the spot, she wasn’t there. He dug in the sand with his hands. Nothing. He stood and thought.

Donna’s body had been discovered right here, half buried in the sand. The deal was to pin it on a mental-case, transient guy everyone in town knew about; the poor bastard was probably still rocking in a padded cell at the state hospital. But Bill killed her. So Davies did Bill; but before he put Bill down, he had to get him to admit he was working for Donna’s uncle. Shit comes home to roost. Always.

Davies felt thirsty. He stepped over to the trickle of water running through the sandy bed, bent down, scooped some up and sucked it from his hands. It burned going down like the first taste of bourbon. Coughing he stood up. That’s when the noose came down over his neck.

Reaching for the .45 never crossed his mind. Instinct compelled him to claw at the cord around this throat. They dragged his flailing body through the growth and sand, cursing him all the way.

The big one, clean-shaved with a scar on his chin said, “You had this coming, Davies. You son of a bitch.”

The guy with the goatee trotted behind, smirking and kicking Davie’s ankles out every time he tried to gain his feet. Big’un tossed the end of the rope over a tree branch and now he was hoisting Davies up.

Davie’s toes left the ground, hovering above it mere inches and churning thin air. Big’un tied off the rope while goatee grabbed a fist full of Davies’ hair looked him in the face.

“About time you showed.”

 

They left him there, still kicking and clawing and making constricted cries. Davies struggle for a long time after they left, flashbulbs exploding in his brain. He chest felt like it might cave--the pain of emptiness. He grasped the length of rope above his head and tried to pull himself up, but couldn’t.

His chest never caved and the fireworks just kept going off. He let his body go limp tried to focus on the exploding lights, as if he were seeing them in his own eyes. The pain ever built in his chest, and yet never peaked, never reached the point of collapse. It occurred to him that this was his existence for the foreseeable future; he decided to make the best of it.

It became his world entire. He refused to think of Donna, of Bill, of the thugs he had killed and who put him here. Thoughts of revenge had no place in his new world of explosions and pain, of fractal shapes swirling behind his lids. A strong urge to sleep came over him.

And time passed.

 

Davies felt gravity, his body collapsing into a bony puddle. He breathed; his head cleared.

Bill said, “Wake up, Ky.”

Davies looked up, with blurred, sleepy eyes. His throat hurt too bad to talk. Bill squatted down.

“You’re not through, yet. Get your shit together,” Bill said, then looked off over his own shoulder toward the river bed. He made a weary sound. “Me on the other hand...”

Bill stood and walked off into the ever-darkening, never dark, evening.

 

At length, Davies pushed himself up and reclined against the tree trunk. He ran his hand against the riveted track along his throat; it didn’t hurt near as bad as it should. Nothing felt the way it should; it was like every nerve in his body just couldn’t be bothered to give a shit. He thought about Donna; if he found her, would they make love, or would they lay down, close their eyes for a moment, for an eternity?

After another length of time, Davies shimmied himself to a standing position, braced against the tree trunk. He stumbled back along the course of dragged dirt and matted brush his body had made and stopped at a certain point to feel around in the tall grass. He found the .45 half-buried in the dirt where it had slipped from his waist while he was struggling. The two thugs, it seemed, had not noticed.

He walked back to where Donna should have been and there found Bill lying face down, prostrate like a man bereaved. Davies left him there to rest.

 

He popped the magazine out and laid the gun on the hood of the car. He removed the slide, blew it out and rubbed it with his shirt tails. He disassembled the rest of the pistol, cleaned it as best he could, then put it all back together and cocked it. After that, he set off on foot across the Thirteenth Street Bridge, holding the gun at his side.

He crossed the 101 and kept on for three more blocks until he hit Pine Street and turned left toward the park a block away. He cut through the park following the path diagonal from one corner to the opposite corner. Under the streetlamp, he stood and looked across Spring Street at the brick, mission-style architecture of that historic inn.

The south wing of the building, the restaurant, was big and rounded and lined with windows where the booths were. It was mostly dark in there, except for the lights around a single booth where the two thugs sat throwing down cards and scowling at each others’ plays.

They heard the bell jingle when he walked through the door and rose expectantly from their benches. Davies shot the big one first--two rounds, but only one met its mark. The big man’s chest burst and he collapsed backward onto his bench, his outstretched arm swiping cards onto the ground.

The other man cursed Davies. “We gonna keep doing this forever?” he said, and Davies wasn’t sure if it were a question or a threat. In either case, only one answer made sense; Davies fired two more shots. The first bullet missed the man, second passed through his neck.

The man clutched his throat, covering the wound; blood poured out of his mouth, running into his goatee. He looked almost confused, more confused than when he actually died.

 

Davies found the old man in his usual room, sitting under the lamp, reading from a Gideon; the door was ajar. The old man looked up from the scriptures as Davies came in, regarding him with a friendly smile. “Heard you down there,” he said.

Davies stood with the gun at his side, his face in shadow.

The old man gave out an easy laugh. “I’m sorry if you don’t terrify me standing over there in the dark.” He gestured at the open book on his lap. “Death. Where is it’s sting now?”

“Your  men came after me,” Davies said.

“And you robbed them of their satisfaction. But what did they expect? The water doesn’t even quench your thirst here. Why would revenge be any different.”

“I don’t want revenge. Where’s Donna?”

The old man held his smile, but his eyes told a different story.

“She’s here, of course. In this old hotel, actually. She came to me, you know.”

“Where?”

The old man thought. “Can I ask you something before you go?”

“Where’s Donna?”

“Just--talk to me for a moment.”

The men looked at each other, the one making an effort to appear inviting.

“Sit,” said the old man, with a gesture. “Good. I’m curious. Who runs this town now?”

Davies made an indifferent gesture.

The old man prodded him, “Mexicans? Bikers?”

“I have seen bikers,” Davies offered.

The old man’s grin turned malicious. “You see, I never allowed such elements in my day. Now there will be drugs in the schools--all manner of immorality. I, at least, kept it outside the city limits.”

“I weep over the unintended consequences of my actions,” Davies deadpanned.

“Did you know she blackmailed me?” the old man said, as if changing tack.

“You denied her her inheritance.”

The old man made an irritated sound. “She’d have shot it into her arm.”

“Maybe she would have gotten help. I would have gotten her help.”

“You think she loved you? You’re just a bodyguard she paid by spreading her legs.”

For the first time since this long twilight began, Davies felt an acute emotion. But, though the old man’s words stabbed him, he made no reply.

“You know she did the same for me? Manipulated me. Her own uncle. And then she had the nerve to blackmail me. As if I forced myself.”

“She was a child, then,” Davies said simply.

“That’s not how I remember it.”

Davies stood. “Your men looked sleepy down there. You look like you’ll be sitting here a long time. I don’t think you’ll ever rest.”

The old man looked up at him and Davies could see in his eyes this prophecy rang terrifyingly true.

Davies stopped at the open door and said, over his shoulder, “What did she say to you? When she came here?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” the old man said, his amicable facade now vanished. “I watched her fall asleep in one of these rooms.”

“No. I won't wake her.”

 

He found the car where he left it. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he watched the dark mountain range and skyline that never quite slept. He wanted to see the sun waning against the flat horizon on the other side. He started the car.

The 101 took him south to the 46. On the 46, going west, he watched the sunlight flee at his approach and he realized--with only a vague melancholy--he’d never see the sun again.

On the other side of the mountains, he killed the car in the parking lot by the pier. The sea was grey, like the sky, with only a thin line of purple where the two met. He walked onto the sand. A rusty, wind-blasted swing set and jungle gym sat half buried right where he remembered it.

He leaned against the paint-chipped bars and drew the pistol from his waist. He release the magazine and thumbed out the remaining four rounds into the sand. For a long time, the shining horizon held his attention, but he knew he’d sleep soon.

Next: The Delilah Complex 06.12.14

Episode 2: Night Life, Part 2

An ice age thawed every time I blinked my eyes. When the paramedics got there they asked where the ‘EDP’ was. I guess they meant me. They put a needle in my arm and everything got worse. The blinks came more quickly. I dreamed with each blink, and each dream evaporated like a forgotten aeon.

It went on and on — the prophesied hell Chill spoke of.

Until it got better.

I recall a flash and the hallucinations were gone, washed away in a tsunami of consciousness. The surface of my brain was covered in fresh, new, pink skin; it made my scalp tingle.

It felt so good.

“You need to get out of here.”

White sheets. A curtain. Linoleum. Fluorescent lights. An emergency room, I reasoned. Kelly leaned over me, her hands on both sides of my face, forcing my head to turn and look up at her.

“I gave you a little bit of a treatment. Not a full one, because it’s one of my own and I need it. I would have given it to you back at the office, but my boss got there early and called 9–1–1. So get up and get out of here before they throw you in the State Hospital or whatever they do with junkies and crazy people.”

“What’s going on?”

She drew the IV needle from my arm without ceremony; the tube ran to a syringe in her hand. She disconnected the syringe and stuffed it into her pocket. “Get up!”

She pulled me to my feet, pressed my wallet into my hands. “Here. Let’s go.”

“Where did you get this?”

“Let’s go.”

And we left. Right out the sliding glass doors. No one seemed to notice.

In front of the hospital she said, “I don’t think anyone ever turned him down before. I can respect that you did. But you’ll die if you don’t do what he wants. Go find him. Make a deal.”

And she walked away–just as Beth pulled up.

Beth leaned into the passenger seat of her sedan and called to me through the open window, “Joey!”

“Beth? What are you doing here?”

I looked around for Kelly. She was gone.

“What are you looking for?” Beth said. “Are you hurt or something?”

“I’m fine,” I said and opened the passenger door. “What are you doing here?”

She made a face I knew, like we were married again, and she wasn’t happy about it.

“Nice to see you, too. Do me a favor and change your emergency contact information.”

“They called you?”

“Honestly, Joey, who else would they call? What happened? Are you okay?”

“I think so. No, yes. I feel great.”

She looked at me, studied my face. “Get in the car. I’ll give you a ride.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

She pulled up to my place. We sat, the car idling.

I reached for the door, then stopped. “I was thinking. I know you’re with what’s his name. I’m not trying to horn in on that. I just — when we were married, it felt like there was always something around the corner, something more I couldn’t get my hands on. I wanted… more. And I didn’t want to settle down, have kids, buy a house — because I thought, you know, what if? Maybe you felt like, I don’t know, you weren’t enough for me. But it wasn’t that at all. You were the best thing in my life, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let it all get so screwed up. It wasn’t you. It was me. It was all my fault.”

She was looking at her hands, limp on the bottom of the steering wheel.

“I know you see it that way,” she said; she looked over at me like I were a very sick child. “But you’re wrong. That’s not why I left you, anyway. Look. I loved you. I still love you. But you are not the man I want to be married to. I want the house, I want the kids, I want the life. I want all that. I don’t want you. You… don’t work with all that. What I’m saying is: it’s not that you want too much. You don’t want enough.”

This was a conversation we’d never had before.

In the absence of my reply, she shrugged and said, “Or you don’t want anything bad enough. I don’t know. Either way…”

I took a breath and opened the door.

“You’ve given me something to think about,” I said, dumbly. “I have a lot more time on my hands now, so, that’s good, I guess.”

She touched my leg. “Please… Please take care of yourself, Joey.”

I put my hand on hers. “Thanks for the ride.”

I was fired from my job, so, instead of going to work that night, I went to the diner and waited. I drank coffee and tipped the waitress over and over again, all night and into the next morning. I walked around town and came back. Ordered breakfast. Waited. Beer. Coffee. Waited and waited. At some point, whatever Kelly gave me began to wear off. That day became another. In the diner. Around town. Back again. The waitress seemed nonplussed by my behavior, like she’d seen it all before–the actions of some lame Sisyphus pushing his coffee cup to the edge of the table.

Finally, a breeze blew in from the door, and there he was. Mr. Chill. He walked over to my table. With every other step he took, I blinked one of my eternal blinks. He sat down, and I begged him to give me another chance. “Help me,” I said. That’s when he gave me the pills and the address and made an appointment with me for the “Morning.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

 

The address Chill gave me is to a brick townhouse. The hills in Northwest, a nice neighborhood with lots of iron gates and stone and ivy.

It’s after seven a.m. when I arrive. A man with eye sockets like plums answers the door. He wears an expensive-looking suit that seems especially tailored for his wiry frame. The tip of a tattoo on his neck peeks out from behind his collar. He looks me over and pops his knuckles one by one–a green, tattoo-ink letter on each finger: ‘N-I-T-E’ and ‘L-I-F-E.’ He steps aside and jerks his head toward the interior of the house. I go in. Knuckles puts his fist in his palm like it’s his at-ease stance and nods in the direction of the stairs. I climb to the sound of his cracking joints behind me.

At the top of the stairs, a doorway opens into an office. The decor is sparse. On one wall is a print of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, and on the wall across from it is another painting I do not recognize depicting the same scene from the myth. A vague sense of apprehension tightens inside my chest.

Mr. Chill stands behind a dark and shiny wood desk in the center of the room. He’s facing the window, looking out at the dew-slick morning streets.

“It’s been morning for over seven hours, Joseph. I do not normally tolerate this kind of ineptitude.”

Chill turns around and smiles a forgiving smile.

“Consider this your warning,” he says.

I nod and look at the floor.

Chill sits down in the plush high-back chair behind his desk and watches me for several seconds. “Did you bring a resume?”

I shake my head.

His face is a facade of exaggerated disappointment. “What kinds of skills do you have?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I’m a janitor.”

“Do you have a high school diploma?”

“I went to OSU.”

“Oh?” Chill raises his eyebrows — a mockery of flattery. “What did you major in? Sanitary engineering?”

“Literature.”

“Mm. That explains it.”

He looks me over like he’s taking measurements for a suit — or a coffin.

I clear my throat. “What were those pills you gave me?”

“You want more?”

I look at Chill, right in the eyes. I can’t tell if he’s really offering them to me, mocking me or doing something else entirely. I decide to say nothing.

“You’re scared. I can see it. Good. I’m giving you another chance, Joseph. How long has it been since you last slept — since I gave you this gift? Have the hallucinations started yet?”

He waves away his own questions. “The pills were just a quick fix. What you really need is a treatment. A treatment will take care of all the side effects of sleeplessness — for a little while, anyway. But you are going to have to work for it. Every time, you’re going to have to prove you deserve it. You said ‘no’ to me once. You don’t get to say it again. Do you understand?”

I nod.

“Good.”

Chill takes a set of keys out of the desk drawer, sets them down and slides them over.

“Now, I can see you’re a coward. So I’m not going to ask anything too taxing of you for now.”

I pick up the keys and look at them.

“You’ll be my driver,” Chill says. “I expect you here at twelve a.m. everyday. You don’t get paid. You’re done when I tell you you’re done. You get your treatments exactly as often as I deem it necessary for you to receive them. Understand?”

“How — ”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, but how — ”

“That is not my problem. Be here at twelve a.m. everyday, and you do everything I ask. That’s it. The day you don’t show — the day you tell me ‘no’ — you’re done. You get one warning about this shit. Do. You. Understand?”

I nod.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

“Good.”

I hear Knuckles behind me. Pop. Pop. Pop. Chill nods at him.

“The kid’s here,” says Knuckles.

At the bottom of the stairs is a boy, maybe seventeen. He’s tall, handsome. He has a book bag on his shoulder. When he sees Chill he looks nervous the way teenagers do.

“There he is!” says Chill. “Have you had breakfast yet? I know a place.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

I drive them to that diner. On the way, Chill asks the kid questions, tells him interesting stories. By the time they get out of the car, the kid isn’t awkward anymore.

I go park and wait. I wonder what they’re talking about in the diner. But it doesn’t matter what–I know where it’s going. The kid has a problem. A sick mother. Hospital bills stacking up. No money for college. And he has a dream. He needs more time–all day and all night–to fix his problems or to make his dream come true. Chill can ‘help’ him with that. The kid will love him–probably already does. But Chill hasn’t started squeezing him yet.

After breakfast, I drive them to Grant High School; it’s where I used to go — a long time ago, now, long before time started killing me. The kid gets out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, Kevin,” says Mr. Chill, and pats the back of my seat to go.

Through the mirror, I watch the kid walk across the grass toward the big, brick building, and I can’t shake the sense that I’ve abandoned him to die.

“I have a job for you,” says Chill as I drive.

I glance at him in the rearview mirror and say nothing.

“That girl. The one who helped you. I’m done with her.”

I just keep driving.

When we get to the townhouse, I park and turn around in my seat. This will be the second time I’ve had to beg him.

“I’ll do anything, man. I’ll steal that box. Whatever you want. But I can’t — I can’t hurt that girl.”

Chill holds up his hand. “Are you saying ‘no?’”

“I’m saying, ‘please.’ I’m saying, ‘I’ll do the box job.’ I’ll do anything.”

He nods, licks his lips. “You are so pathetic. You know that’s why she picked you, right? And just to spite me. I asked her to find me a real player. Instead, she brings me you. The box job is off the table. You want a treatment, you do what I say. I can’t have two of you piece-of-shits undermining my operation.”

“Please.”

“It’s you or her. One of you gets the treatments, the other dies. If you’re merciful, you will put a bullet between her eyes. Or you can drown her in mop water. Whatever a low-life janitor does to commit murder. But do it tonight.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

I still have my keys from my old job. I find her in the breakroom, pouring coffee. She looks up at me, then drops her eyes to my hand — the fat, black .45-caliber Glock I hold against my thigh. She nods at the gun.

“Did he give you that?”

I blink and look away.

“He told you to kill me,” she says.

It’s not a question — she knows.

We stand there for a beat longer. I think about raising the gun. My hand twitches, but that’s all I can manage. She takes a sip of her coffee.

“He knows you won’t do it. He knows you can’t. He knows everything, even if he pretends he doesn’t. It’s this game he’s playing — to toy with me. You don’t even matter.”

Finally, I lift my eyes to her; they feel rusty. My head aches. I’m so goddamn tired. “What — what do you mean?”

“He knows you’re not going to do it. He just wants me to know I fucked up. That I’m on his shit-list, or whatever. So I’ll toe the line.”

She takes another sip of her coffee. “You should have done a better job of begging. You should have impressed him. What did you do, tell him to fuck off again? Whatever it was, he’s going to make you suffer now.”

My legs feel weak. There’s a chair beside me and I slump into it. My hand falls on the table; the gun rests on its surface, inert. I couldn’t pick it up again if I tried. “What do I do?”

Kelly sets her coffee on the table across from the pistol. Her voice is soft and small and she says, “You kill me.”

Her eyes are glossy.

“I’m done,” she says in the same small voice. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.”

She sits down across from me, clears her throat.

“Listen. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He thinks he can control us. But if you do it, if you actually kill me — that’s a freewill choice. It’s the only real choice you have.”

Her voice is small again.

“Please do it.”

Then confident.

“I want you to do it.”

I rub my temples. How much time do I have before the pills Chill gave me in the diner wear off completely? How much time until I lose my mind again. My stomach hurts. Every second matters now.

I push my chair back, stand and grip the Glock. She closes her eyes; crystal beads stream down her cheeks. For an infinite second, the tear drops hang at her chin, and I am trapped inside each. Trapped in thought. It’s just a second, but it tells me what to do.

“There’s a kid,” I say. “A high school student — Grant High School. His name’s Kevin.”

Kelly opens her eyes and looks at me. I’m holding the gun at my side.

“He’s next,” I tell her. “He’s going to do to Kevin what he did to us. Tomorrow night. He’s going to do it.”

I can see in her eyes that she knows exactly what I’m talking about. I can see her making her own choice.

I put the gun down on the table.

“His name’s Kevin,” I tell her again. “I don’t know how much time I have left before I lose it again. Not long, I guess. It’s okay. I’ve earned my death now. But you still have to earn yours. Remember, his name is Kevin.”

I know I’m rambling, but she nods like she gets it, so I leave.

My mind unravels as I walk. I can’t shake the sense that someone awaits me outside. So I walk like I have an appointment. A rendezvous with a stranger everyone knows.

I go to meet him.

In the dark.

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

Next: The Mastodon, 05.29.2015

 

Episode 1: Night Life, Part 1

The words croak out through dust in my throat, “Help me.”

Across the table, the man is like a cold breeze. His voice laughs. “Help you, Joseph? After all I’ve already done for you?”

I lean. Lean over my coffee. Lean into my palm, wavering. “Please.”

“Of course. Joseph. Of course. But for what?”

“Anything. Whatever you want.”

He nods. Cool. Mr. Chill. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’m glad you came around. But I mean ‘for what’ in a more philosophical sense.” He rephrases the question in a deliberate staccato: “What will you do with the life I save?’”

I blink at the gravel in my eyes. Shake my head.

Mr. Chill’s lips go tight. “That’s what I was afraid of. Do you even know what I gave you? I gave you a third more life. A third. Instead of sixteen hours in a day, you now have twenty-four. What are you going to do with a third more time on earth?”

I bat at the air by my face. Something’s there. I can’t see it but I can feel it. A spider web, maybe. “Whatever you want me to.”

Chill catches my hand and places it like a live grenade on the table between us, his own hand atop it. “Listen to me. I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.”

He turns my hand palm up, leaves two tablets. White. The size of aspirin. But not aspirin.

“Take these,” he says. “It won’t solve anything, but you will feel better. In the morning you report to this address. You lost your job. I have one for you.”

Mr. Chill writes on a napkin with the pen the waitress left.

“Don’t be late,” he says, rising and shrugging into his white, cotton blazer.

I watch the napkin and the pills in my hand. “What time?”

He’s at the door now, ready to leave the diner. He doesn’t turn around. “Morning.”

And he’s gone.

For a minute longer, I watch the gifts Mr. Chill left me. I swallow the pills and chase them with the ice water in the translucent plastic cup on the table. Then I crumple the napkin into my coat pocket.

I want to fall asleep right there in the diner. I don’t. In two minutes, I feel better.

I first met Mr. Chill a few days ago. Three, four, Five? Not sure how many. I haven’t slept since.

I had a job. But I lost it. I’ve been losing a number of things as of late — sleep being the foremost on my mind. How did I get here? All I know for sure is that it all starts with Kelly Burbank.

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

Ms. Burbank is the kind of girl who makes you ashamed to be the man you are. I would talk to her sometimes. She’d be the only other person in the building most nights. Usually she’d say nothing, just hand me the wastebasket from under her desk.

Once, I said something like, “Burning the midnight oil, huh?” And she smiled. I couldn’t tell if it was a polite or an embarrassed smile. Was she embarrassed by my presumption or the clumsy cliche? I thought about that a lot.

Another time I asked her about her books. She said she was studying journalism. I told her about this program on public radio. She knew the one I was talking about, said she applied for an internship there, but didn’t get it. Instead, she works here at the publishing house, goes to class during the day, and they let her stay late to finish her work. Mostly editing. She told me all this, looking over her shoulder without turning her body toward me.

After our first real conversation, I started working out. Push-ups in my living room. Pull-ups in my bathroom door jam.

I asked her, one night, if she ever sleeps.

“Nope,” she said. “Don’t have time.”

I knew that meant she didn’t want to talk either, so I left her alone. I didn’t bother her for the rest of the week. On the following Monday, she came into the break room for coffee while I was cleaning the fridge. She leaned against the kitchen counter with her mug in both hands and said: “So what’s your story?”

“No story,” I said.

“Someone once told me: ‘people with shitty jobs are making the most interesting art.’”

“This job isn’t that bad.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

 

I met Mr. Chill a couple days later. I went to the diner down the street from the building I clean. I do that sometimes after work — sit, drink coffee, watch the world wake up around me. Chill came in like a regular and sat down across from me. I’d never seen him before in my life.

Cool Mr. Chill. He’s easy. Easy to talk to. Easy to listen to. Make eye contact with. Trust.

I told him my story. The real reason I’m where I’m at — the truth I’d never tell pretty Ms. Kelly Burbank. I didn’t do a good job telling it; but Chill put all the pieces together, gave it pith.

“So you needed more time. Weren’t ready to start a family and she was.”

“Something like that.”

“When did this happen?”

“We signed the papers almost six months ago.”

“Time goes by so fast.”

“Yeah.”

“Think of how much of it we waste. If you could do more in a day, wouldn’t that solve everything? If you had more time, you could have a family and everything else you want out of life. You wouldn’t have to choose.”

“Yeah. But where do I get more time?”

“Stop sleeping.”

I laughed. But he was serious.

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

What happened next is a blurry jumble. I went somewhere with him, but the rest of my memories of that night are swirling light trails burnt into my retina. I can hear Chill’s easy voice saying, “Just relax, this will only take a moment.”

Then I was at home.

I laid awake in the half light of my apartment. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I just laid there. I got up when I normally would, did some push-ups, ate some breakfast, went to work.

 

He didn’t tell me I would feel so tired.

 

“Long night?” Kelly asked, handing her wastebasket over.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“You need to wake up.”

“You’re telling me.”

I went to the diner after work. Chill didn’t show; he had said he might.

At home I tried to do more push-ups, but my muscles were sore. I sat on the couch and watched TV. Kept getting this feeling like an hour or two had passed in the space of a single commercial. I’d blink and it would be the same cat scratching at the litter box, animated odor waves rising from the sand. That’s all it was, a Blink. But, God, it seemed so long.

Outside, traffic waxed and waned. People went to their jobs. Children went to school. They all came home again.

God I was tired.

 

At work, hours passed in geological time. During a single foot fall, I dreamed I was an astronaut trapped in a space capsule with no windows or doors. I floated weightless for hours until the impact of my foot against the linoleum roused me. The void still hummed outside the capsule until I turned the vacuum off.

I took my lunch break early, went to the diner and sat in a booth.

Eventually, Chill arrived and sat down across from me. “You don’t look good.”

“I’m tired.”

“That’s what happens when you don’t sleep.”

“Why did you do this?”

“You know why. To help you. To give you more time to get your life on track.”

“I can’t — ”

“Yes. There are side effects. But I can help you with those. We can help each other.”

I blinked and for the first time saw him as he truly was. Radiant, beautiful, an angel of light.

“Do you know what I do?” he said, and his brilliant aura disappeared. “We talked about you last time, I never got a chance to tell you about me. It’s Okay. But now it’s my turn to talk. About me.”

I rubbed grains of sand into my eyes and tried to open them wider. He went on talking.

“What I do is help people. Not just people like you who need a little bit of a push to get their lives on track. I also help other people. Wealthy people. Sometimes they have complicated problems. Tricky, delicate situations. Sometimes, simple problems. They want something. For example, there’s this box, discovered in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Adriatic. It dates back to the Byzantine empire, the only one of it’s kind left in the world. And it can calculate the position of the stars with unimaginable precision. Have you heard of this?”

I nod. “Discovery Channel, I think.”

“My mind reels at the implications of such an invention. I think about it all the time. Can you imagine? A man, just a simple man, without the aid of computers — not even a calculator — built this device. And it still functions today. I think, ‘What have I done that compares?’ It makes me want to use every second I have to the very best of my ability. Because a second is infinite, really. Infinite potential. But then — and this is what really bends my noodle — when you think about the very cosmos the box represents, you realize what a lark the last thousand or so years are since that box was built. No one remembers the man who built it. He’s dead anyway, and the box is just a toy to be sold on the black market. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I was starting to.

“Right now,” he went on, “this priceless piece of antiquity is on public display at the Museum of Science and Industry. My client wants it on the private market. See? Simple problem.”

Then Mr. Chill leaned across the table. “But how are we going to get it for him?”

I took it for a rhetorical question, but Chill just stayed there, inclining toward me as if he expected an answer.

Finally, I said, “I don’t know.”

Chill pulled back, threw his arms over the back of the booth.

“Well you should think about it. Because how you answer that question will determine whether I will continue to help you.”

“I don’t want your help anymore, I just want to get some sleep.”

Mr. Chill sighed. “No, you do not need to sleep. You need to wake up.”

“No. No. I need to sleep.”

“Technically, you can still sleep. For very, very short periods. Seconds at most. Not enough to keep you sane. Do you know what will happen to you?”

I didn’t nod. I didn’t blink. I said nothing. Just looked across the table at him.

“You will, very quickly, begin to lose your mind. You will dream and not know it. Waking dreams that will come in waves. Your brain won’t be able to write new memories properly. Your metabolism will stop functioning properly. Your immune system will shut down. You will be a raving mad, human husk in a week, tops, living out a torturous hell as you die.”

To that, I said, “Go fuck yourself.”

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo

I didn’t go back to work right away. I wandered around downtown, went to a bar, got drunk, threw up.

The night was warm. I took my shoes off and I could feel the concrete vibrating against the soles of my feet. Living energy. The essence of the city. The aggregate heartbeats of every sleeping person in every building connected by this asphalt grid. This nervous system.

I blinked and it was gone, so I went back to work.

Maybe Mr. Chill was lying. Maybe I would fall asleep eventually. When that happened, when I got back to normal, I would need my job. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Dawn was approaching. The professionals would be returning to smudge the glass and fill their trash cans and piss on the floor in front of the urinals. I had to hurry.

That’s when I heard the voices of children playing in the empty halls, always around a corner, or behind a door. And when I’d turn my back they’d be right behind me, shrill and shrieking. I chased the voices until I found them outside the sixth floor window. I pounded on the glass, trying to find a window that would open.

Kelly found me. I didn’t know she was still there.

She smiled the kindest smile I had ever seen. Not shy. Not embarrassed. Kind. I remember crumbling in a corner of the room and asking her if she could hear the children too.

She bent down and held my chin in her hand. “I can’t believe you told him to go fuck himself,” she said.

 

To be continued in Part 2 of Night Life... coming 05.22.2015

Photo by Brenton Salo

Photo by Brenton Salo