“Eight & a Half Minutes”

“Dad, what if the sun died?”

I smile and pull the boy close underneath my jacket.
We were fishing off the jetty, and the cloudy night blotted out the stars like the thick piles of seaweed scattered along our cove strangled the sand.

In  patches, pinpricks of light stab through, but the engulfing night is so dark that I can’t even see my son, and I am surprised at how cold his cheek is when it brushes against my own.

I know the boy is still afraid of the dark and on a night like this I can empathise. I start to answer when Alice arrives – it’s too dark to see her, but I feel her wrap her arms around my neck. Her skin is as cool as the boys, and damp.
“8 ½ Minutes” she says, her words floating in the air, “We wouldn’t know for eight and a half minutes – that’s as long as it takes the light to get here. Then, if it was night like it is now, a few seconds after that, the moon would disappear.”
It’s silly, but I can’t see the moon anywhere – I try to turn my head but I can’t, it’s frozen. Her cold hands tighten around my neck as I watch the planets wink out one by one, my sanity being eaten away like the light. I reach out for my wife, my son, but all I can feel is the cold, wet dark as it catches in my throat and I’m drowning…

---

The bedsheets were sticky, sodden with sweat as the cold realities of the world slowly soaked back into my brain. Ben was dead. My son was dead. Ben was dead and Alice had left me.
I poured myself a whiskey before brushing my teeth. I needed it today. Not only was it too fucking early – the sun hadn’t even risen yet – Alice had asked me to stop off at her house and sign the papers that would finalise the divorce. Her house –my fucking house! Not that I wanted it anyway; Ben’s presence was everywhere there, as omnipresent as the sea that surrounded this godforsaken island. I poured another whiskey for the drive, wondering if Alice would even notice it on my breath – if she’d even care if she did.

---

I almost missed her – her brown hair wafting under the jetty in the tide looked just like the clumps of seaweed that scarred the entire beach – but the locket I’d given her to celebrate having Ben was cheap gold and it strained towards the surface of the waves.
The reflection caught the torchlight, and although I watched the tide comb it through her hair in the time it took to reach her, I hadn’t been able to believe she was dead until I touched her skin.
It was the same temperature as the ocean.

I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t floating until I tried to hold her, the soft but certain sound of metal meeting metal underwater somehow skipping my ears and arriving right at the brain.
I dove down to see what was tethering her and came up with bile in my throat– a pair of my handcuffs – with one end around her ankle and the other around the bottom rung of the jetty ladder.
They’d had to use bolt cutters to release her for the coroner’s office. The key they found in her stomach, along with two litres of seawater.
I wondered if Alice had known this. It would have been terrifying enough – watching her life rhythmically ebb away. The panic the first time the water reached her mouth, then her nose. The first few times swallowing water, desperately trying to hold on until the wave withdrew. The moment she realised that the next breath wasn’t coming. The despair of inhaling water with air only inches away.
Yeah, I hoped she hadn’t known.
It was just like told that young officer– Alice was dead when I got there. Of course, that bitch – her name was Turner – was against me. She was young enough that she would have never worked alongside me; I think she might have even been my replacement after Ben died. Turner had the nerve to say I was a suspect. She brought up the funeral, called me a wife beater, and she actually asked how I’d known where to look.
I’d stopped responding at that. She should have known – it was the same place we found Ben.

---

I can still hear the sound of my sock squelching against the pedal as I forced the accelerator to the ground, my soaked, saturated suit staining the seat. Behind me, I could see Alice trying to give Ben C.P.R but his scrawny tanned torso remained stubbornly still. He was still bleeding, which gave me hope, even though I was unable to stop crying watching her, the warm tears carving valleys down my frigid face.
I’d found him facedown, his blood and the water somehow mixing to become darker than either individually.
I’d wanted to believe Ben would survive but I’d been the one to carry him from the ocean, my cheek pinned against my boys loosely flopping neck so his mother couldn’t see. His skin was as cold as the deep.
Alice hadn’t noticed – I could feel the hope drain out of her when the doctor returned, obviously avoiding our eyes. My shoes were still soggy and all I could hear as Alice and I carried each other out of the hospital was their incessant squeak against the floor.

---

It’s dark again by the time they let me go, and I catch myself wondering if the sun came up today at all. It’s so cold, even with the windows up, you could almost believe that it had disappeared completely. I drive to the jetty and stare into the water for a while, the headlights of my car cutting through the night yet barely piercing the thick murk of the water. The tide has withdrawn, and the rung that Alice was handcuffed to is staring back at me. I rest my feet on it, and the rising tide gently licks my toes.
Eight and a half minutes I think. Our world could be doomed and we wouldn’t know for eight and a half minutes.

---

I close my eyes, remembering the last time I saw Ben, his brown little eyes flashing as he begged me to take him fishing off the jetty. Sending him off with the promise I was right behind him. Pouring myself another whiskey, just a little bit, I did have work in the morning after all. Alice coming home and the two of us trying to squeeze just a scrap of affection out of our shitty, overworked days, not realising that we only had eight and a half minutes of sunshine left in our lives.
I get back into the car, my wet sock squelching as I force it down against the pedal, wheels still spinning even as we sink towards the bottom.
It’s impossible to know in the dark how long it takes the car to fill with water, but it feels like a short lifetime. I can’t even see the water pouring in, only feel it, glacial against my skin as I close my eyes and become one with the cold wet dark.

The warmth of light on my face makes me open them and I watch the sun rise from the ocean floor. For the first time in a long time, I can see the sunshine and I never remember it being so beautiful.

“Gone Fishin’ “

He knew that there were fish here, even though he hadn’t caught any yet. He could see them in the clear water, orbiting around a freezer that was slowly rusting on the seafloor. He had been drawn by the pelicans circling, their white underbellies makeshift clouds under the dank sky of the bridge above.

It was nighttime before he caught his first fish but it was a beauty. A giant snapper, the first he’d ever seen in these waters. He watched the moonlight bounce off its scales, struggling in vain on the floor of his boat, as it took its final breath. It was beautiful.

He gutted it on the rocks near his house. He always did. He had always loved the fact that fish have red blood like humans. This ones spilled out of it too easily, a steady flow that caught moonlight. He ran the knife from the soft spot near the tail until it caught on the head. He tore the head loose and threw it into the bucket. The sharp sound of metal on metal snapped him out of his reverie. Resting the spotlight between his chin and chest he stared into his gut-bucket. The organs mixed around as he shook it. No telltale reflection from metal hit his eye, just the myriad of colours found in a fish. But he could hear it. A “tink” among the sloshes. He picked out the liver and held it up to the moonlight. His fingers pressed into the soft organ and when he moved them their imprints remained. He sank his fingers into the fragile organ and tore it apart. A metal ball dropped from the liver and rolled into a groove in the rocks. He stooped to pick it up. It felt about the size of a cue ball, and was perfectly smooth like one. One side of it felt rough, like there was an inscription there. He couldn’t read the writing in the moonlight, so it wasn’t until he got back to his car that he saw the poem.

“Three black and four light, Left to see before my night. No escape without your sight, What you cannot see you cannot fight. I will find you. I am your blight. We will be one, I am your might”.

It captured his imagination, and he tried googling it. Nothing. The search returned zero results. Why inscribe a poem on a ball? He tried to solve the riddle, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Three black and four light was relatively easy -a time frame – four days and three nights. But what was it referring to? Was it a countdown? A threat?

The next night he returned to the same waters. He caught a few fish straight away. Flathead – good fish, but the usual stuff for these waters and no great haul. He was about to call it a night when he got the bite. Another snapper. The second he’d ever seen in this spot. He followed his ritual, gutting it on the rocks under the moonlight. He could smell the iron in the blood and it made his nostrils flare. A few dozen slips of paper protruded from the fish’s stomach. It was slick to the touch, not just because of the blood. Photography paper. His stomach dropped when he looked at the photographs.

Him. Every photo was of him. He was at the local shopping mall. He rarely left the house, that and the clothes he was wearing let him know it was a few months ago. He had only left the house and his usual routine to purchase a new freezer. How had they known when he would leave? Had this person been following him for months? He looked through every shot. He saw himself from almost every concievable angle. He must have seen the photographer. He thought of calling the police and showing them. But what could he say? He’d found them in the ocean inside a fish. His head was starting to hurt due to this mystery. It was starting to feel dangerous. He burned the photos.

The next night he almost didn’t return to the fishing spot. Curiosity got the better of him though, and he was almost happy when he caught a third snapper. He’d looked them up last night. They weren’t even supposed to be on this side of the country.

He didn’t follow his ritual this time, and he gutted the fish right after he called it, the red blood staining the light wood of his dingy. Eagerly he tore apart the liver, tossing the shreds into the still ocean water. A metal ball dropped out. Bigger than the last one. Given the size of it he was surprised the fish had been able to even swallow it.

It wasn’t like the last one though. Not quite. It wasn’t solid and it wasn’t smooth. He stuck his knife into it and cracked it open. Staring at him from behind the jagged edges of its metal prison was an eye. It startled him and he dropped it into the sea.

Leaping to the side and looking down he found it with his torch. It stared up at him for seemingly forever as it sank into the dark depths of the ocean. The more he stared at it the more he knew. He could tell himself that it was a cow’s eye. That it was just some sick fuck somewhere, playing a joke. But he knew – without a doubt -that was a human eye. It was the same colour as his dead wife’s had been. Pale grey blue. He knew cows eyes didn’t look like that. He saw it when he dreamt that night.

He didn’t go back to the fishing spot after that. He thought, he hoped that if he didn’t catch the fish he could make it all go away. He should have remembered the biggest lesson he got from dealing with his wife. You can’t ignore something to make it go away. It requires action. He spent the night in the lounge room watching television, trying not to think about the fish. Trying not to think about the riddle. Or his wife. He was halfway through his bottle of scotch when it came. A huge thump on his front door. Heavy enough to shake the house. It took him a minute or two to work up the bravery to look. He thought about just calling the cops, getting them to come check on it. Just so that he didn’t have to. Telling them everything. But the local boys didn’t like him much, never had after his wife died. He grabbed his filleting knife, razor sharp, thin and long. At least he knew how to handle it if he did have to defend himself.

It was almost anticlimactic when he finally opened the door. There was no-one there. A snapper, far smaller than the rest was sitting on his doormat. It had already been gutted, and he could see a metal ball. It was larger than the first but smaller than the second. Hollow with no poem. Perfectly smooth except for a join in the middle. His fingernails were getting long and he managed to work them into the seam. He kneeled on his doormat and pulled it open right there. He thought he was going to tear his nails off before it came loose. In the ball there was no poem. No eye. Just a photo of him. A photo from his wedding. Scrawled over his dead wife’s face was a message. The handwriting was messy, the wet ink smeared so that the message was barely legible. But he could make out the word. ‘Tomorrow’.

He sat the photo next to the ball with the poem on it. The fish he sat with the others. The snapper were taking up the largest portion of his small, almost bare freezer. Then he returned to his scotch and waited for the next fish to come.

He worked his way through the bottle before falling asleep, and it was dark when he re-awoke.

He grabbed his filleting knife and a torch and opened his front door. Bright light hit him in the eyes, and he squinted, instinctively closing the door to shield himself. Peering out he saw the fish.

It dwarfed the others like a whale to a shark. It was a massive fish, more the size of a tuna than a snapper. But a snapper it was. A huge shard of mirror as tall as him jutted out of the ground, and impaled halfway up the spike was the gargantuan fish. He walked up to it and looked on both sides for any clues as to what it was supposed to mean.

Only on his second trip around the giant mirror did he see that there was a handprint dried in blood on the mirror. He placed his palm flat against it, and was strangely unsurprised when it was a perfect match of his own.

Suddenly he knew what the riddle meant. The eye, the pictures, the riddle – it all made sense to him now.

The realization caused him pain and he had to squeeze his eyes shut in an attempt to stop it.

When he opened them the mirror was gone. Walking back into the house he was not surprised to see the other clues were gone as well. Opening his freezer full of snapper he saw that his freezer had nothing at all inside it. It was completely bare. His freezer was empty. None of it was real. It was all – reminders.

As always, the riddle seemed simple once he knew the answer. The first part of the riddle was a time-frame as he’d thought. Three black and four light. Four days. Three nights. The time was up now. The day had arrived. The rest – No escape without your sight, What you cannot see you cannot fight. I will find you. I am your blight. We will be one, I am your might.

What he once knew but had forgotten. He had lost his sight. He forgot how to see the truth. He forgot what he had done. It had been nice, forgetting the truth. The guilt had vanished. But he couldn’t let himself forget. He couldn’t protect himself having forgotten the truth. God, he’d almost called the cops! Then he remembered what was both his blight and might. His bravest action – but also his most cowardly. What set him free – but continued to rule his existence. He remembered it all now.

It was a year to the day now since he had killed his wife. She would never leave him alone. Never let him do what he wanted. Never let him go fishing. So he cut her throat with his fishing knife and left her in their freezer. The cops had called around, suspicious and searching. They’d almost found her. He’d taken the freezer then, glued it shut and thrown it over the bridge.

That’s why he choose that fishing spot, and fished there every day. That spot – watching the fish swim around his dead wife –  it gave him an immense sense of calm. The man sat down and poured himself a drink. One whole year of freedom, he thought.

He decided to go fishing to celebrate.

“Relatively Late”

You stand outside your Pop’s hospital door.

He’s dying – a tumour grew from the base of his neck, intertwined with his spinal cord till it got to his brain, and pulled out nerve endings one by one until someone noticed.

Pop loses half his sight, then taste, then the other half of his sight and most of his hearing. To talk to him now, you have to rest your cheek against his stubbled one and put your young mouth against his old ears.
You hesitate to enter – you’re late, as usual, but you know he won’t mind.
You know that when you enter, he’ll cry out “Is that _________?”, then he’ll ask them to leave you both alone.
Pop will be proud.

He’ll list your greatest achievements; things you didn’t know he knew and didn’t know he cared about.
He’ll apologise for all the jokes he made about you being late, and tell you he understands that it’s hard to make time when you’re as busy as you are. He’ll tell you that of all the relatives who came to see him, he was waiting for you, because you understand him. You’re the only one who did.
You never knew he felt this way, and you both begin to cry. He holds you tight enough so that you feel small again, like when you were young and he was younger and each of you loved the other more than anything.
Pop dies in your arms.
The others come back, they want to know his final words, they demand to know but you won’t tell them because they were for you alone.
You open the door to realise you’re late, as usual, but this isn’t usual and your mother is sitting next to an empty bed crying.

“Crayon Smudges”

Gerry struggles against the leather straps holding him in the bed, the metal buckles singing softly as they bounce off one another.

They didn’t used to strap him, he remembers. Back when he believed the lies and was harmless They didn’t even lock the door. They medicate him daily, but he thinks They always have – the numbness feels like it’s been there his entire life. At least they are honest now. The straps on the bed, locked door and barred windows. At least this place looks like a prison.

When he’s listening, he can hear the sounds of others. Sobbing and screaming, spoiling his silence. He despises them and their weakness. Yet he is thankful for them. Every sound is a reminder that he is not alone. There are people here. He hates them but they are people. Not like him though. Not strong like he is. Not strong enough to know the truth. If they did, they would know how pointless their screaming was.

November- 1914 – Cairo, Egypt;
Gerry Edith slid the smooth wooden rifle butt along his stubble until it hit the sinew of his jaw, making sure it had found purchase between his chin and neck before taking his hands away. His sweat made it slide a little, and he had to flare his jaw to prevent the gun falling to the ground. He could hear the others marching still, their uniform step shaking the ground, and he could picture the foreign sands rising in response to swallow them.

Gerry knew he should be with them and the shame he was hiding from began to seep into his thoughts. But he didn’t enlist in this, he was drafted. Death terrified him. He was no soldier, no hero – he was a librarian. He could see the face of the young boy he’d seen beaten like a dog in the street, and it made him think of his own young boy, and pregnant wife.

The thought steadied his nerves, and he imagined his infant son’s face to calm his fears. The librarian braced himself against the cool stone, hoping medical aid would be close at hand, and pulled the trigger.

February – 1921 – Hobart, Tasmania;
He was working at the library. When Tony was gone he was the boss and he gave himself the easiest job – entering back the books that folks had returned on the weekend. He didn’t put them back on the shelves himself as pushing the cart made his leg flare up. That was a job for one of the kids anyway. Gerry was puzzled to find an incorrectly returned book. Instead of his libraries yellow stamping card in an envelope on the inside cover there was a blank white square. He flicked back to the cover, and found it blank as well. The pretty young trainee with the braces had only giggled when asked about it. Gerry didn’t get the joke, but kept the book anyway. It just wasn’t in the librarian to throw out a book.

He gave it to his children to draw in, who filled it with colourful monsters, princesses and knights. Gerry would come home from work and they would shove the latest one into his face. He’d see but never really look at the crudely drawn images and he’d always have to ask them what it was. They’d exasperatedly state what it was supposed to be and he’d apologise for being such a blind Daddy, of course that’s what it was. They got older and drew better in time, but they had their own books by then. The blank book was forgotten – a nameless book among the accumulating hundreds on his shelves, accruing age but nothing else. His children left home, and in a fit of loneliness one day he remembered it. He put it next to his bed then, but rarely looked at it still – there were too many other books to read. They lay, ignoring each other like an unhappy marriage, until Gerry no longer had the health or the inclination to work at the library anymore.

He treasured it more then, having fewer books to distract him. He loved to open it to a random page, stare at a picture and try to remember. Which child had drawn it, when and what it was supposed to be? When his health deteriorated further and his children, panicking, checked him into an assisted living centre Gerry had taken the blank book; a reminder of happier times.

When his daughter brought his newest granddaughter Lily to meet him, he’d insisted she draw in the book. She was four, too old to meet her grandfather for the first time and he scared her with his droopy face. Her mother was in an intense discussion with the nurses and there was no escape for Lily from this scary man who she’d been pretending to listen to. Delighted to have a distraction, she attached herself to the book until her mother grabbed her to say their goodbyes.

Only then did Gerry notice that Lily must have run out of paper, as the front of the book was crayoned in the thick, obvious lines of a child’s art. He’d have to teach her some respect for books, he thought to himself chuckling, but at least she’d enjoyed herself. Picking it up and putting on his glasses, he realised he’d judged her prematurely – the lines were thick and crayon, sure, but it was miles ahead of his children’s art at her age. Instead of the crudely drawn princess he was expecting, he found himself looking at a proper sketch.

A hundred light scratches smudged into one another to give an impression of something else. It wasn’t a princess as far as he could tell, the impression he got was that it wasn’t even human. Gerry brought it to bed, and held it under his bedside lamp for an hour trying to decide what it was. Every time he thought he had decided what it was, he changed his mind. It was as if there was a picture behind the picture, and you couldn’t see both at once. The chimes sang to signify midnight and Gerry laughed, realising he was analysing the art of a five year old. He sat his glasses next to the bed, and turned off the lamp.

That night he’d dreamed of marching towards a pyramid in a windy, endless desert. As he got closer to the pyramid, the wind got stronger. His eyes were watering, but he knew if he closed them he’d never get to the pyramid, never escape the desert. He forced them open with his fingers, fighting against their attempts to flinch closed as he inched closer to the pyramid.

He feels the sand wearing his eyes away, eroding every inch, until he can’t see at all. He only knows he has reached the temple when he feels the warm stone on his outstretched hand and the wind stops. In agony he digs the sand from his eyes until he can just see again, but his eyes are ruined and he sees only rough shapes. Gerry looks up, expecting the pyramid but it isn’t there. Instead, an immense sandstone obelisk stretches up as high as Gerry can see, nearly blotting out the sun.

He can’t see what happens next, but he hears it and feels the shadow cast on his face as something big enough to block out the sun crawls over the obelisk.

Gerry almost screams when he wakes up, but catches himself just in time. “Just a dream”, he said aloud.

The urge to scream stays with him all day though, and only after they bring him his lunch does he figure out why. He picks up the blank book and stares at it as he digests; turning its cover this way and that to try and figure out what Lily drew. Then he sees it.

An obelisk clearly rises through the centre of the image, and only by focusing on that the image can be seen. The confusion came from what was wrapped around the obelisk, a creature that doesn’t conform to any logic Gerry knows. The creature he didn’t see in his dreams. Just from this image of it, as ineffective as a black and white Monet, he feels unbidden words forcing their way into his mind. He feels its presence, as distant as the stars but enveloping him, closing in. Gerry knows the truth for the first time, and his eyes are opened. He turns the page, knowing he’ll see another blasphemy instead of the art he loves. Children’s artless creations have become something more, as for the first time he looks and truly sees. A picture behind every picture, an abomination on every page, a face behind every face – this is the truth.

The nurse that comes to take his leftovers doesn’t know that he can see her for the first time. She is harder than the pictures, but if he concentrates he can see the truth in her just like in the pictures. Her face bulges where it shouldn’t, then folds and runs together and he can see the monster underneath. She is saying something but how can he listen and what is the point? Now he’s seen the truth he knows it’s all lies. He wets himself when she smiles, and wishes he hadn’t, because now she touches him. He feels her hairy exoskeleton against his skin and can’t help but scream.

His children are long dead, and he hates the foul things that wear their rotting faces. They speak to him as one would a child, condescending and sickly sweet in a way that makes him wonder what they want from him really. He tries not to look at them when they visit. He managed to not let them know that he knows, but they look at him differently now. Treat him differently. They used to pretend to be his children and behave like they were. When he first asked where his real children were, they even pretended to be upset. “Dad, we’re here”, drooled the multi-jawed creature that had Walt’s face, as it jerked the strings that made his son’s face cry. Gerry wasn’t fooled. They gave up eventually, one after the other. Only the one that wears his daughters face still visits, bringing Lily with it. He hates her the most.

A sick joke, it wears a child-suit tacked onto its spongy frame. It is a juvenile, weaker than the others – not having yet grown its own exoskeleton to protect it. Parasites run over it feeding on the filth constantly thickly running from its mouths, and it ineffectually tries to push them out. That’s not why he hates it more though. It’s because, unlike the others, it hasn’t given up on the lie. It still tries to hug him, pushed reluctantly towards him by its mother even though he pushes it away with a shriek every time. It asks him about the book, and if it can have crayons. If it gets crayons it always draws the crawling obelisk creature. Gerry thinks it’s that thing’s filthy sprog, that They all came from it’s immense womb. But it still pretends to be innocent. It tells him the pictures are princesses. Its childlike voice mocks Gerry, taunts him with memories of his dead children and grandchildren. It whispers it loves Gerry, and calls him Poppy. He cries for Lily after it leaves.

His daughter-fake barely says hello this time before scuttling away to talk with one of the nurse-fakes. Their human faces seem unhappy, but if he strains he can see their real faces inside and all of their mouths are smiling. The Lily-Thing calls him Poppy, oozing forward with Lily’s stiched on limbs outstretched. It is asking for it’s book. Gerry jumps out of bed with the speed of his youth. Feeling his bad leg giving way beneath him he has to grip the table not to fall. The Lily-thing shrieks in a decent impression of surprised young girl, and behind her skin it has retracted all of its tentacles in fear.

Gerry slams the door shut before They can react, but he knows that won’t hold Them long. After all, this is a prison behind a prison, and They have all the keys. He pulls a chair close, wedging it under the door handle and hopes it will hold long enough.

The Lily-thing stares at him with her innocent eyes and it’s monstrous ones, clutching the book in tiny hands like it’s a shield. The picture behind the picture is shrivelling, making itself as small as possible, trying to squeeze through a gap in the window. Its child-suit is too bulky though, Lily’s face hooking on the latch. Although it’s guttaral squeals for its fake-mother outside are being answered, Gerry realises they haven’t been able to get the door open.

For the first time in a long time, since Egypt, he feels like a man, a warrior. He digs into her soft flesh and tears a piece off, marvelling at its translucence and texture. Somewhere in here is proof, Gerry knows it, and he has to find it before they unlock that door.

“Tonton Macoute”

My wife is American, born and raised – she can’t even speak my language. Her mother is Haitian though, and sometimes she tells the children about Tonton Macoute. I will sit with my back to her, feeling my hair stand on end, not wanting to admit to even myself what I am feeling. I guess someone should know the truth, even if it’s just you.

When I was a child growing up in Haiti my mother would tell me tales of Tonton Macoute. In English that translates to Uncle Gunnysack. He was our Boogeyman – he would snatch bad children from their beds at night,put them in a sack and then eat them in the morning.

Growing up, I was terrified of being carried away for Uncle Gunnysack’s breakfast. Fear making me a model student and son, I studied hard, becoming the only boy in my village to speak English. The missionaries took me to the capital, and after another year of training I had a well paid position as a bank clerk in the bank all the white folk use. The missionaries ground on me, their prayers and stories conflicting with my mothers, until I became an athiest. I realised that like zombies, Jesus and other folklore, Tonton Macoute wasn’t real. He was just a story – a device mothers used to keep unruly children in line.

As I grew older still, I began to notice the real life horrors used to keep peasants – the children of the country – in line. Voodoo and violence ruled the minds of the men from my village, leaving them distracted and stupid enough to accept their shitty lot in life. When Dr. Francis Duvalier, a well spoken former medical doctor, became President in 1957 we thought things would change. We began to call him “Papa Doc” – a term of endearment.

Things did change- they became worse. Papa Doc made voodoo the official religion of the country, and began to claim he was Baron Samedi – the spirit of death. Papa abolished the military and the police and created what the Western media dubbed the Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité (MVSN). In English, that means the Militia of National Security Volunteers. They were Papa Doc’s private army, using voodoo and violence to control Haiti. Priests of voodoo were often members, allowing them to abuse the superstitions of the weak. An unofficial uniform of designer T-shirts and mirrored sunglasses reflected the money, prestige and power one could earn under Papa Doc.

I… I made the decision to join. I wish I could say that it was to stop my family from starvation, or that I did it to help people. But I didn’t. I wanted, for once in my life, to be the one wielding the power. The oppressor instead of the oppressed. The hand holding the machete instead of the hand being severed. I saw their dreadful form of power – and wanted it. The people called us the Tonton Macoutes. The Boogeymen.

I remember the first time I killed someone. We had gone into their house just after midnight. My friends had been drinking, but as it was my first time I wanted to remain sober. My friend kicked in the door of the hut – it didn’t even have a lock, but we had a reputation to keep. The entire family had been sleeping in the room, eight of them – a grandmother, her daughter and her husband and their five children. My friends shook their machetes at the screaming children and Grandmother as we took their parents away. Leading them towards the beach, sacks over their heads and machetes at their throats, they barely struggled at all.

My friends took the woman away, leaving only myself and the victim kneeling before me. He started to pray and that bothered me. I was supposed to take the sack off first – why waste a sack- but I forgot in my haste. I hacked at his neck until it wasn’t there.

He had barely screamed – there hadn’t been the time – but I realised now I could hear his wife screaming as they raped her in the boat-shed. I stepped back to keep the blood from pooling on my shoes, but it was too late. I felt the warmth seep into my shoes and it felt – nice. My friend came back with his pants around his ankles, and made fun of the fact I’d forgotten to remove the sack.
We left his corpse where it was, and hung his wife in the centre of town. A warning to those who would oppose Papa Doc.

A soldier, years later, told me that Papa Doc hadn’t even made that order. My friend had just been bored and wanted to sleep with that man’s wife. Such is life, in Haiti.

I rose quickly through the ranks. The trick was to buy into Papa’s voodoo, to buy into his cult of personality in front of others – but not to believe in it personally. By doing this I could control people with voodoo without letting them control me. I don’t know if I was the only one who didn’t believe. Maybe none of us did. But it felt like they all believed, and that my insincerity gave me the advantage. Eventually, I earnt my position as Papa’s second in command – leader of the Tonton Macoute.

I got the position by killing the last leader, and bringing his head encased in ice to Papa. This was Papa’s favourite way of being informed of a death. He liked to hold the heads in his hands, talking to them. When a rumour began that this leader had been reincarnated into the body of a black dog, I organised that every black dog in Haiti was decapitated, and the heads sent to Papa Doc. He was so happy he cried.

I ensured a peephole was present in every interrogation room, so that Papa could watch without anyone being aware. We would submerge whoever we were torturing in vats of sulphuric acid, both mine and Papa’s favourite form of torture. I thought it was the best way of extracting information -Papa later told me he enjoyed the smell more than anything.

Papa ran unopposed for President for Life – a position that goes against everything on our constitution. With my help his vote came back with 1,320,748 in favour – and none against. Whatever Papa requested, I made happen.

By the time our time was done, Papa, myself and the Tonton Macoute had killed 30,000 of our countrymen. I don’t feel bad about that. It’s just one more number I’ve been ignoring since I gave up being a bank clerk.

I removed their organs and blood before resorting to the acid. Sold them to the United States, where rich people paid money to be filled with the poor. I kept all of this money for myself – my own private retirement fund. We didn’t bother testing, although we said we did. They stopped buying after a year, saying we were spreading AIDS – whatever the fuck that was. We just moved to the black market.

When Papa was killed,his son Baby Doc seized power of Haiti and my own Tonton Macoute.

I barely escaped with my life – using my secret money to flee to the U.S, where I have spent the last twenty years in hiding. I live under a false name, in a small town. Nobody knows who I am. I am no longer a rich or powerful man.

My wife, her mother, the children and I all share the one house buried in a nameless suburb. I had more money, but open-heart surgery a few years ago sucked up the last of my savings, along with almost killing me. I feel weak all the time now, dragging myself around the house until I can return to bed.

My wife’s mother was born in Haiti – she tells the children the tales. Scary tales for children, especially American children. I eavesdrop, the stories conjuring up unwanted memories of my homeland.

Tonight my daughter woke me, crying that someone was underneath her bed. I walked her back to her room and made a show of checking under her bed before tucking her in. “Who would be under your bed?” I chuckled to her softly as I kissed her forehead.

“Tonton Macoute” she sniffed at me and my heart froze. It had been years since someone had said those words to me. I spent a minute trying to figure out where she would have heard it before remembering the girls Grandmother.

“Silly girl”, I said, “Nana must have told you that Tonton Macoute only goes after bad children. He’d never take you – You’re the best little girl in the world”

“I know”, she whispered, “He said he waiting for you, Daddy”.

I feel a lump rise in my throat, a childlike weakness coming over me before darkness drops like a sack over my eyes.

UNCLE GUNNYSACK UNCLE GUNNYSACK HE IS EATING ME – twists in my mind but I am awake and I tear at the fabric in front of my eyes until it is gone and I see him.

My doctor.

Exhaling with relief, I realised I was in the familiar location of a hospital room. But what he told me made me wish it had been Uncle Gunnysack, taking me away.

My doctor didn’t know what else to say, other than that I had AIDS, likely contracted from a blood transfusion.

I have to tell my children. My wife.

They have to come in and get tested themselves.

My innocent wife.

My perfect children.

They don’t know who I am.

They don’t deserve to die.

I am home now, but yet to tell them. I sit, listening to the kids shriek and laugh at the tales of Tonton Macoute and think about the truth and how to say it.

How do you tell your children the world is too evil to need monsters?

“They Smile”

It’s a struggle to write this. My hands are sore and the bandages are no longer enough to stop my blood from seeping onto the keys.

Each letter is stained as I use it. The letters I use the least – the z, the q, the x – are only lightly stained as my blood forms a thin film over the keys. My vowels, the letters I use the most (all the ones in my daughters name S-O-P-H-I-E) and the spacebar are saturated. Ruby pools on each key overflow then run together, the slight slant of the writing desk causing little rivers of red to run the gauntlet of the keyboard layout, each crimson streak taking the path of least resistance before dripping off the desk.

I’m sure it can’t be healthy to lose this much blood, I didn’t even know one person had so much blood to lose.

My apologies, I’m rambling. I’d better get to the point. What follows is the true account of the cause of my injuries. It may sound untrue, or even crazy, but I swear to the honesty of this document. My name is Matthew Andrew Ford and I write this in sound mind on the 24th of April 2012.

I had just relocated to the countryside after twenty years of working a dead-end office job. Finally I was able to pursue my dream of owning and running a farm. My wife Angela, and Sophie, our fourteen-year-old daughter, joined me. Sophie wasn’t thrilled at having to change schools mid-semester, but what fourteen-year-old would be.

Our first night there we were inundated by neighbours. In the country, the concept of neighbour is completely different to the one we’ve got in the city. My land, for example, stretches out for miles in each direction.

My neighbours in the country are basically anyone who: a) Lived close enough to notice new people had moved in and b) cared to call by.

My wife and I had been warned that this could happen, and so we’d bought a few cartons of beer and a few dozen sausages to offer anyone that dropped by. We’d underestimated country hospitality though – it seemed as though everyone from the nearby town had turned up! Well, almost everyone. Both my wife and I had noticed a large run down house on the property that bordered our east paddock. We asked nearly everyone at the party about it, but nobody knew who owned it.

They did tell us a few ghost stories about it, but they were just the old country standards – the wife who suspiciously killed herself and the husband who was never seen again. Apparently they were the last owners of the property, some twenty odd years ago, but both my wife and I had noticed lights on up there. Someone had to be paying the electricity bill. But, we drank more beer and forgot about it.

I woke about 3am that morning, the beer in my bladder finally outweighing my urge to remain comfortable. I threw on my robe and slippers to keep the cold out. The plumbing wasn’t quite fixed yet, so I had to piss outside. My daughter’s door was open as I went past, odd for her, but my situation had become desperate. I released myself onto a lemon tree, steam rising off the golden arch of my urine. The steam caught the moonlight – god, everything in the country is beautiful.

My eyes inadvertently drifted up to the house on the East-Paddock. The lights were on, flashing like lightning in the darkness. In one of the flashes I saw a figure outlined against the darkness. My heart caught in my throat for a second, then I laughed. They were probably doing the same thing as me! I made a mental note as I walked back down the corridor to tell Angela how quickly I’d succumbed to country superstition.

The next morning, I woke at eight. I got out of bed, and walked down the corridor to make breakfast for my family. I stopped, my heart in my throat and my mouth too dry to swallow. Not only was Sophie’s door open, her bed was empty. I ran to wake my wife, knowing that it had been Sophie I saw last night, walking towards that house.

As we got closer to the house, it became apparent just how run down it was. The grass surrounding the house was up to my knees, and smelt rotten. The closer we got, the more I noticed. Windows that were broken, walls that were rotting and a strange graffiti was scrawled all over the house in a dark, almost black red.

Upon reaching a barbed wire fence the grass stopped abruptly – the entire yard of the house was covered in gravel. The gravel was the cleanest I’d ever seen – it almost shone in the morning sunlight.

I took a step back and jumped over the fence. My jeans caught on the fence and I found myself face first in the gravel. Only it wasn’t. As I pushed my sorry ass up from the ground I felt it cut into my hand. Glass. The entire yard was covered in broken glass.

My wife was over the fence by then and she grimaced as she saw my face. She helped me to my feet and picked a shard of glass out of my cheek. “God, you’re bleeding everywhere” she said, “Let’s go call a doctor from our house”. I stopped her, grabbing her by the arm. “There’s not time,” I said gravely. She nodded somberly and turned towards the rotting house.

That was the first time I saw one of them.

It was on the back of my wife’s knee, about the length of a cigarette. I suppose if I had to liken them to anything, it would be a leech. It was thick like a leech, but less slimy. It gave off a powerful sour stench. I tried to stab it with a piece of glass, but it wouldn’t even pierce the thing’s skin. I checked the rest of her and found another two – one on her ankle and one on her shin. I tried to just pull it off, but the sides were sharp and jagged. I pulled at it until my hand bled, but it didn’t give an inch.

My wife checked me and found one on the outside of my thick jeans pocket. Grinning at my wife, I cut the pocket off and threw the thing onto to ground before stomping it into the glass.

Comforting my wife by telling her the doctor would know what to do to get them off, we continued up to the house. I knocked loudly on the door for several minutes before pushing the unlocked door open.

The inside of the house was fetid and decayed. The wood looked rotten and the air was thick and dark – you could feel the age hanging in the air. Continuing through the house, we found no sign of occupation, except a few tins of food in the cupboard and an old windows computer, next to an ancient plastic phone. A dusty package of bandages lay on top of the phone and the phone itself was cracked and yellowed with age. Dust lay thick on the receiver. A message was scratched in the wallpaper next to the phone: ”Help Yourself”.

My wife took the message and grabbed the receiver, laboriously dialing the number of the local doctor. I turned on the computer, but there was nothing on it. It ran on Windows 95 and only had Word, Internet Explorer and Paint. No saved files; bar one. The only saved file was an interesting picture of the things stuck to my wife that someone had drawn in paint. “Shoggoth Maggot” was written in italics below it. I showed my wife before shutting down the computer.

I checked the house thoroughly, finding empty rotting room after empty rotting room. I found no sign of my daughter.

Then I saw the light flickering in the shed. I heard that sound. Unnerving and unnatural. I told my wife that we had to go there. That Sophie must be there. She disagreed. She said that the only reason we had to think Sophie was even here was a figure I thought I saw at 3am. After drinking. I’m not proud of what I did next.

I leant in closely, so that my dried blood smudged against her cheek and whispered

“I am going next door to save our daughter. When I save her, I’ll tell her you were too scared, too unsure to do what was necessary. I’ll tell her you would have let her die.”

She slapped me then, and the blood started gushing from my cheek once again. We both apologized, but she came. Only because of me, she came.

A strange sound was coming from the shed. It looked shiny and new, but the air was as ancient as in the house. As we got closer the sound got louder, clearer. It was a guttural squelch, hacking, foul and thick. It came once every few seconds, and in between waves you could just make out a softer sound hidden below it. It was only as I opened the door that I realized what this softer sound was. Breathing.

The room was huge and bare with just the metal wall of the shed visible, although there were huge piles of something scattered around. Each one seemed to move, almost throb, in time with the others. I walked closer to one of the piles, almost touching one before realizing what they were.

Shoggoth Maggots, the image had labeled them. Thousands squirming on top of each other, wriggling and twisting in unison. I was horrified when I thought of how many Maggots it must have taken to create even one of the piles. The bigger ones rose up to the ceiling in massive, disgusting pillars. I tried to follow one up to the ceiling, but couldn’t see where it ended. I was sure the shed hadn’t looked that tall from outside. That’s when I heard the sound from before, squelching, haggard and raw – right behind me. I span around and saw him. I don’t know how I ever missed him. He was suspended in the right corner of the room. His arms and legs were each in a writhing pillar of Maggots, in so deep I couldn’t see past his elbows or knees. He looked up at me and he had no eyes, just bloody holes where his eyes should be. He was naked, and strange symbols were scratched all over his body.

My wife screamed at the sight of him, and went to leave, but I caught her again. “We can’t leave him”, I said, my voice cracking like I was going through puberty. She nodded, but her wide blue eyes stared at me in terror. “Kill me….” He croaked, blood spilling from his mouth as he spoke. “Please… Kill mhuuukkk!” – Maggots spewed out of his open mouth. Hundreds of them poured over his lips, and choked his scream. They poured from the holes where his eyes should have been.

I just dodged out of the way before they hit me. I walked around behind him, safely out of the way of the Maggots twisting on the floor. I tried to sound brave as I spoke, letting him hear my confidence before he began to vomit again. “I’m not going to kill you mate”, I said loudly, “But I am going to save you”. I waited for the last Maggot to fall from his lips before tugging him backwards towards me.

I wasn’t prepared for how easily he came out. I lost my balance and nearly fell backwards onto the slimy ground. I just caught myself in time. Looking up I saw the man. He was smiling, and even though he had no eyes I swear he looked at each of us and smiled. First at me, then my wife.

He moved a little closer to Angela, still smiling.

Then he opened his mouth wide, wider than I had thought possible. I went to grab her but it was too late. He vomited the Maggots into her face, point blank. I saw one latch onto each of her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream, but barely made a sound before she was muffled by the Maggots pouring into her throat.

I grabbed him off her and wrestled him to the ground. We rolled amongst the Maggots on the ground and I felt them biting me, but I didn’t care. I sat on his chest and strangled him as he expelled the Maggots out of his body and into my face, onto my body. The Maggots streamed out of his eyes and mouth, sliding over my hands which were wrapped around his neck. They only stopped when he died.

I could barely see, only one eye remained free of Maggots. I had managed to keep my mouth closed, and thanked a God I didn’t believe in that none had gotten inside me. Not that it really mattered. I felt hundreds of Maggots grasp onto my bare skin before I pushed myself up. I turned towards my wife, and almost vomited.

Her face was covered in Maggots to the extent it was no longer visible – she opened her mouth to breathe and I saw the Maggots inside her. Wearing her. I tried to grab her but she pushed me away with unnatural strength, turning quickly towards the largest pile. She walked calmly, silently into the writhing pile of Shoggoth Maggots. After she was enveloped there was no sign she’d ever existed. She was simply swallowed in their immense numbers.

I had no time to grieve. Staggering outside I could feel them biting down, their hold on me getting stronger with every passing minute. I fell to my knees in pain, screaming as the glass I’d forgotten about cut deep into my skin. The glass – was my salvation. I rolled in it for an hour, laughing and screaming as my flesh was torn away. The Maggots couldn’t be cut, that was true, but I cut my flesh away from them. The only way I could escape.

I rolled in bloody, desperate insanity, until finally, not a Maggot remained. Then I made my way, in triumphant agony, back to my house.

My daughter was there. She couldn’t stop screaming when she saw me. Then she called an ambulance. It turned out she had been tanning on the roof when we left. In my panic, I hadn’t even thought to look.

I thought, as the ambulance took me away, that I would almost have preferred to die.

Now I’m certain. If I hadn’t panicked. If I hadn’t constantly urged my wife to continue – if I hadn’t ignored her and helped that man – Angela would still be alive.

She would still be alive and I wouldn’t be a skinless freak.

My daughter can’t look at me, and I don’t blame her. I look like a horror-show villain. The pain – is immense. But I can’t take medication. The pain-killers make me drowsy. When I’m drowsy I fall asleep. When I sleep, I dream.

When I dream… When I dream I see Angela. I see Angela and the man. They do unspeakable, blasphemous things inside my dreams. The dreams always end the same way. Inside each other, twisted together like a sick pretzel, they pause their lovemaking for a second and look towards me.

Neither has eyes, but I know they can see me. They look, past the blood-stained bandages. Past my skinless frame. They look and they see me. Then they smile.

“Bark”

We had taken a detour through an alley on our way home from a show. My house was within walking distance of the pub, but we were in no hurry to get home. The alley was dark and private; perfect for our purposes. I was unclasping her bra when it growled.
It was a high, raw rasping sound. We didn’t know what the hell it was and both of us were scared as shit. Priscilla was frightened that someone had been watching. Waiting for us to take it to the next level. She told me later that she thought it was a silent pervert, staring at us from the murky depths of the cobblestone alley, mutely masturbating in the dark. We laughed about it later.
For my money, I was more worried that it was the cops.

Needless to say, we were both extremely relieved when we discovered that the noise belonged to a scrawny little sausage dog. He had a wound in his front right paw, downy brown fur and the saddest eyes in the world. When we found him, he was so skinny I could put my hand around his ribcage – pinkie to thumb.

He was malnourished and he had a little blood on him, but he was still a charmer. He was wrapped in a newspaper filled with his own waste, and on his aged brown collar I could faintly make out his name.
Henry.
It was apparent someone had abandoned him, probably unable to pay his veterinary bills. Priscilla was always the bleeding heart type, so it was a foregone conclusion that he was coming home with us. Worse, she lived with her parents; he was coming home with me. We took him to the Vet and after a few days and three different bills I took him home. It seemed like Henry was an inside dog, so I set him up some newspaper in my bathroom and put an old towel at the end of my bed to sleep on. After a few nights it became obvious that this wasn’t going to work. Henry had a bad habit –he would whine when left alone. For Henry, alone would and did mean when I was asleep.
I would wake up to his growling at odd hours of the night, his scratchy high pitched grating right next to my ear. His nose would either be poking at my bedroom curtains or sniffing around under my bed. The rasping was unsettling both due to its weird, high and warbling pitch and the fact that not once did he do it during the day.
Apart from the night, he was silent.
I tried walking him out to go to the toilet, cuddling him to sleep – I even tried walking him around and around my block each night before bed in an effort to tire him out. Nothing worked. Several times each night I’d wake up to his horrible snarling. It sounded almost like English.
I tried it for two weeks. Then, at Priscilla’s request, I tried another two weeks. But after a month he was still waking me several times a night. Always with his high pitched muffled growl. It was too fucking creepy. So outside it was.
I don’t have any grass in my backyard, so we set up a kennel and laid down some straw: instant dog heaven. Several uneventful weeks went by and we thought this had fixed the problem. He’d still growl during the night, but unless I was in the backyard or the bathroom it didn’t bother me. He was a small dog, and even the loudest of his high screeching growls wasn’t loud enough to penetrate the stone walls of the house. Or so I thought.
His last night at home; I was roused by a high, happy growl. I checked my alarm clock. 3Am. The noises continued, like Henry was having a conversation with the moon. I thought he must have found a cat or something, and rushed out to see if I could break up the fight.
I froze. I should have shut the door or called for help, but I couldn’t move at all. Halfway over my fence was a gaunt, extremely tall man. He wore no hat and his bald skull was as white as the stars. I tried to see his eyes, but his face was obscured by the high lapels on his worn brown coat and by the yellow scarf wound tight around his throat.
In a singular smooth and graceful movement he swept over the fence and picked Henry up. He brought him to his nose and smelt him. I saw his smile shine in the dark. It was all I could see of his face. He slipped Henry into his lapel pocket; so that only his tiny head popped out.
He went to leave, but stopped when he saw me frozen and staring. Still, I couldn’t move. Shrugging, he unravelled the scarf from around his neck then threw it to me. It fell through my fingers, felt but not seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off his neck. It was covered, completely, in scratches and deep cuts – more scar tissue than skin. He spoke, and his voice was a horribly familiar rasping sound; barely English. I had to watch his lips move to finally understand.
“Thanks for looking after Henry” he barked, before disappearing into the dark.