As if I’m on the wrong end of the magnifying glass. Well, you’re on the wrong end of a free meal.
Tamara raised a hand from the steering wheel to swat at it. She was suddenly struck blind by darkness, gasping in pain and surprise as her skull reverberated with that phrase she had come to dread:
Shu-shaaa.
And behind it, so fast that it seemed to blur into the same blend of symbols, came Tah-mah-raa.
Her own name.
She clutched her head, the mosquito forgotten. She’d heard that migraine sufferers could become physically incapacitated from the agony of their attacks and wondered if that was what was happening to her. Her stomach knotted in nausea at the intensity of the invasion. The piercing needles withdrew a bit and the pain lessened enough for her to open her eyes.
Brain tumor. Oh God, what if I have a brain tumor, and that’s what’s been causing my delusions? Or what if I’m schizophrenic?
She tilted the rearview mirror and a stranger gazed back, one with wild eyes and tangled hair, a twisted face that would make a convincing textbook picture for a schizophrenic. The pain had moved from the center of her cranium to the back of her eyeballs. She rubbed her forehead and the sharpness receded to a distant, dull throbbing.
When she felt a little better, she rolled down the window and let the cool breeze dry the sweat beneath her eyes. She scratched at her arm, then remembered the mosquito. Its bite had left a grayish-green ring, a tiny red dot of dried blood in the center.
Tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa.
She looked around, confused. Maybe this was how brain tumors progressed, the obscene mutated cells manipulating the healthy cells, multiplying and altering, squeezing out the host cells in their drive to spread. Maybe the thing inside her head was even programmed to know that it was killing its host, but could no more turn away from its silent mission than a hungry mosquito could ignore warm flesh and blood.
No. She was fit and healthy, in the prime of life. Such a thing could never happen to her. She would rather believe Shu-shaaa
— that she was nuts, losing it, having a nervous breakdown.
But, in her heart of hearts, she couldn’t buy that, either. Hearing imaginary voices was one thing. She was quite sure this voice was real.
And she knew now from where it was speaking.
The mountain called to her again. She put the Toyota in gear and headed for the gravel road that her instincts told her climbed the spine of Bear Claw.
Jimmy wanted the last time with Peggy to be special, but it was hard to get intimate with that moron Howard watching. The bills rustled in his shirt pocket and that made him feel a little better. The bed squeaked as Howard and Peggy went at it. Jimmy put on his boots, anxious to leave the room. He was no saint, but there were some things that turned even his stomach.
He opened the hollow door and an old one-eyed bastard in a faded military uniform stood there, his ear cupped to the door. One-Eye was grinning like a possum in a dumpster. Jimmy pushed him backward and closed the door, shutting off the sound of Peggy’s sex factory.
"Who the hell are you?" Jimmy said.
The old man licked his lips. "Just a concerned neighbor, is all. Thought there might be trouble over here."
"Ain't no trouble and ain't nobody else's business."
"Old Sylvester might think otherwise, don't you reckon?" The old fart squinted past Jimmy with his good eye as if trying to see through the door. "Seeing as how you fellows is over here taking turns with his wife."
Jimmy grabbed One-Eye by the throat. The knot of the man's Adam's apple pumped feverishly under Jimmy’s palm.
"And how's he going to find out?" Jimmy pulled the pale face next to his own. He could smell the old soldier's rotten gums, the stench blowing from his mouth like a graveyard wind.
"Hold on, hold on. I ain't no squealer," the man wheezed. "Just want my piece of the pie, is all."
Jimmy relaxed his grip on the man's throat. His fingers had made red prints in the flesh.
"Costs fifty bucks, old man. More for extras." He looked dubiously at One-Eye's wrinkled and pallid face. "And there ain't no guarantees, in case you don't, uh… come through."
"Fifty bucks," One-Eye yelped. "She been giving it to me for free."
Howard must have heard them arguing, because the bed stopped squeaking. Or else he had finally clocked out.
"Who's that, Jimmy?" Howard shouted from inside the room.
"Oh God, not Sylvester, " Peggy said.
"No, it ain't Sylvester,” Jimmy hollered back over his shoulder through the door. “Just another customer, Peg. Get on with it, now."
My first try at flesh peddling ain't going as smooth as I'd hoped. And if Peggy's turned to this old geezer for companionship, then I must not have been keeping her satisfied. My feelings would be hurt, if I had any.
But he might be able to turn the situation around yet. Maybe One-Eye still had enough of his government pension check left to at least sniff Jimmy's product. It was a classic case of supply and demand, and demand seemed to be high at the moment. And the supply wasn't going anywhere.
He opened his mouth to tell the old fart the new facts of life, but his mouth kept dropping, his jaw nearly hinging down to his chest. Because of what he saw coming up the hall behind One-Eye.
Sylvester had come home, or at least, part of Sylvester. Sylvester approached the back bedroom with stinging green eyes and ripe skin and arms stretched outward like a junkie sleepwalker. His mouth dripped with amber sap and opened to show the wiggling little fibers inside. His outstretched fingers hooked like crabapple sticks. He looked hungry and horny and happy and pissed off and long buried all at the same time.
One-Eye turned at the marshy sound of Sylvester's footsteps, right into the creature’s- zombie, Jimmy's mind screamed, taking its first small swan dive into madness-widespread arms.
One-Eye didn't even have time to register the horror and cry for mercy before Sylvester was upon him, embracing the frail, bone-covered parchment of the man’s skin and lowering his mouth to One-Eye's thin, cracked lips.
Jimmy backed against the bedroom door, the only action he could inspire his lost muscles to produce. The Sylvester-zombie- zombie, the word flashed across the impossible gaps in his brain-slopped its mushy mouth across One-Eye's face, sucking and blowing.
The old soldier's eye widened and swiveled in its socket, looking for a Grim Reaper or an escort to hell or maybe just a last earthly image to take to the grave-a light bulb or a paneling nail or a velvet Elvis painting-something sane and common to comfort him in the eternity of death.
Except when Sylvester-zombie released One-Eye, the wrinkly bastard slumped to the floor, dead and smiling. Dead and happy about it. Dead and still flicking his rheumy blank eye at the world. Dead and back again, as if to prove, especially for Jimmy's benefit, that the good times kept right on rolling.
Jimmy's mind collapsed like a wet house of shoe boxes, crawled into itself and curled into a fetal position as the Sylvester-zombiezombie, his last thought, will I be a zombie, too? — gave him the soul kiss, the magic, the glory and the power and the slippery tendril of its tongue as they shared a deep cosmic breath of stardust and stumpwater.
Peggy looked over at the nightstand, at the money stacked between the overflowing ashtray and the dusty alarm clock. That was plenty enough payoff. She could worry about her own needs later, after she took care of the kids. They could have a square meal tonight for a change.
Howard rolled off the mattress and the bed almost sprang up like a trampoline from the load reduction. She watched him wrestle his legs into his underwear, then bend over to get his pants. "How did you like it, handsome?"