Annihilation Engine Seven, Part Three

I don't really understand how I know what I'm doing, or why I'm so calm. I'm mashed between two walls, but they're soft. They squeeze me gently, almost comforting like swaddling clothes or that time I crawled inside the old fold-out bed in the sofa. It was a secret place, and it felt safe despite the obvious fact that a grown-up might walk by at any time and decide to neaten up. They might fold up the bed, collapsing the legs and pushing it together. The steel frame would bow and slide inwards, slowly crushing me in my little hidden place. I might not say anything. I might let it happen. Those places were so impossible, so magical, that danger or death seemed very unlikely.

And here, in between again, the walls clench and slide me along. I can feel a ripple through the smooth walls, pushing me farther down. It's a natural sort of state, feeling that movement. I can bear the strangeness knowing I will not be here much longer. Knowing that I am moving is comfort enough.

It's dark and I can't really breathe, but none of this can be real, so I'm not very worried. How can a building eat me? What nutrients could it pull from my body? Like a marble swallowed by a child, I will pass cleanly through and drop with a clank against the bottom of the toilet.

With this simple clarity, I find myself deposited in a thin metal chair and my hands resting on a chipped glass table. I feel wind blowing across my neck, so I must be outside. It's probably safe to breathe again, but I'm savoring the air in my lungs, holding it in till the last possible moment.

"Are you alright?" someone asks me. The voice doesn't sound familiar. I should open my eyes. It must be safe now that I'm sitting somewhere outside. Nothing terrible has happened.

"Do you want some water?" that voice again, sounds like a man, and he sounds honestly concerned. I should start breathing again so he doesn't have to worry. I could have held it longer. I could hold it forever, just not now because I don't want this guy to worry.

I let my breath out in a rush and a cough. I reply, "No, I'm fine, thank you. What were we talking about?" as if I knew where I was and what was happening.

He's a thin man with very intelligent eyes. His curious little smile quirks up, "You wanted to know about my work,"

"Yes, it's fascinating," my hand raises to my lips and I'm surprised to find a lit cigarette. I don't smoke, yet I take a drag naturally, enjoying the warmth filling up, the flavor rolling over my mouth. "Please continue," I add.

"Well, the thing is, I never really thought they would work. It was one thing to see it on paper, another thing entirely to see it actually happen. Something like that shouldn't exist. It doesn't belong,"

The man's words circle around in my head. I'm nodding as if I know what he's talking about. I toss the cigarette onto the ground and crush it out. My hands dig naturally into my pockets for another. This is an old, automatic sort of motion. The sort of thing a perrson does after smoking for years. It occurs to me that I might not be in the right person. I hold up the pack of cigarettes and offer one to the man.

"Ah, no thanks," he shakes his head politely, though he's obviously tempted, "I'm afraid that's what gets me. Throat cancer,"

"What do you mean?"

"I've skipped to the end of the book. 1967, throat cancer. That's how I go,"

"Well it seems you've missed the mark. We're much farther along than that,"

He shifts in his chair and furrows his brow. He thinks for a pregnant moment, "Time works a little different when you're hooked up to the engine,"

"So when does 1967 happen to you?"

"Hard to say, really. Might have already happened. I'd have no way of knowing. That's how it feels anyway, it's all a part of the process. You have to step outside the engine in order to access it. You have to see how it's working,"

"Can you help me find my sister? She went running off again. She could hurt herself,"

"Your sister?" He seems startled. He stares at me carefully. "What is her name?"

"Laney. I already checked all her favorite spots. She could be anywhere,"

"I don't think I can help. I just make bombs, big ones,"

"You think maybe she's hooked up to the engine? Maybe time works different for her. Maybe she's in 1967,"

"Well then I certainly can't go after her," he chuckles. There's something he doesn't want to tell me. He's avoiding my gaze.

"Maybe you know how I can get started. Maybe you know someone I can talk to," I suggest.

"Yeah," he sighs. He's dissappointed in someone, but I can't tell if it's me or him, "Go talk to Chalk the Smith. Take my bike, it's just outside. It'll take you right to him,"

"Thanks," I said as I stood up. "You said you made bombs, right?"

"Yeah, never thought it would happen like it did, but yeah, bombs,"

"What sort?"

"The sort that blows up everything,"

"What do you mean everything?"

"Everything forever," he replied, looking down with no small amount of regret.

Annihilation Engine Seven, Part Two

I'm parked a few blocks away. I dig my hands in my pockets while I walk. I tend to rub my keys together as I go. I run my thumb over the teeth of the car key, reading the notches, the scratches. Laney and I used to collect keys.

We had a little fort in the woods made out of an abandoned chicken coop. Anytime we'd find a lost key lying around, we'd take it and hang it up in the coop. There was a big bag of tacks that Laney must have swiped from somewhere and we'd tack each new key up alongside the others. We used to make up stories about the keys, how they opened doors to the moon, or fell out of the pockets of gangsters, or some angel left them so ghosts could get into heaven later on, if they wanted.

This key just starts up my old Camry. It's real beat up, this old thing. It's like some kind of zombie, rolling along groaning and shuffling. It's fifteen years old in a state where cars don't last eight years before rusting out and collapsing. Sitting behind the wheel, I turn the key and the car shudders. I keep thinking about that old chicken coop. We must have had about a hundred keys all over those walls. Whenever one of us would close the door, all the keys would flutter around on their pegs. They looked like little, silver fish all swimming in a school, shivering on our wall.

I've got a few places I like to check first whenever I'm trying to track Laney down. There's a McDonald's across the street from the library, sometimes she hangs out in the parking lot. There's a bus stop near that Filene's in the strip mall. She never takes the bus, but likes to sit on that bench for some reason. There's the old cathedral with the over-grown lawn. I go to all of these places first. I really hope she's there. If I can find her and talk her back, then I won't have to go to the last place. I hate it there.

One way or another, she always winds up at the old brick armory. This crumbling, busted up, blister of a building squats along a drunken bend of the downtown sprawl. About a dozen traffic lights surround the oddly shaped structure, roads cut around it at all angles. This building sort of sprung up in the most inconvenient place, growing like an abscess, a city planner's nightmare.

I get this pain in my head just looking at the thing. I park my car around a corner and jog up to the front walk. A grey, cement walk runs down a few steps and through a hole cut into the middle of the building. It's a dreary sort of tunnel, unlit and perpetually damp. It leads to a long courtyard circled with a black metal catwalk leading up to all the different apartments. It looks like a huge, winding fire escape, tacked on as an after thought. Maybe they built all these different little rooms up three or four stories with no thought as to how exactly people would get up there. Just doors opening into a dead fall over the cracked cement and sprouting weeds of the damp grey courtyard. Standing in the middle of the whole thing, I could be in some Eastern Bloc housing designation.

Bean lives up on the third floor. He probably doesn't know where Laney is, but I have to check. I don't know how that fat piece of crap can make it up all these rickety goddamn stairs. He probably never leaves. He must have a dozen different burn-outs bringing him food or whatever. The railing's bent and twisted away by his door. It's rattling under my foot. Maybe he can't leave. One step and the whole thing might peel away, sending him twenty feet towards a quick splatter and a well-earned reception in hell.

It's dim inside and it smells like vinegar. The humidity makes me gag. It's so swampy the wallpaper's bubbling in pockets.

Bean, too lazy to complete sentences, calls out from his couch, "What you want?"

I don't even want to look at him. I reply from the doorway, "Bean, I'm looking for Laney. You seen her?"

"Oh I know what you're looking for," and I know he's smiling. I can hear his great, leathery jowls peeling back in that so-pleased-with-himself grin.

"Hey man, I don't want to fuck around. I gotta find my sister," I get this shiver down my back. The boards squeak under my feet. The whole building is moving to pin me down.

"You know what you want," his accusation is punctuated with a shudder of protest from the couch as his bulk shifts around. I can't see him, but I know he's rolling forward on his hands and knees.

"Bean, man, has Laney been here?"

"Uughh," he grunts as one hand slinks down under his elastic waistband jeans.

I feel a pain spinning around in my back, like a knife. Something's swimming around in my guts, pulling the viscera apart and rearranging it.

Bean digs around, curling his fingers around his wrinkled penis, pushing it through the zipper. "Uuuunnh," it touches the ground.

The walls are drooling syrup. The ceiling sags toward me. That noise again from the drug dealer, "Uuughnn," but maybe he's not making it with his mouth.

I push my hands through the floor and slide away between.

Annihilation Engine Seven, Part One

"That guy behind me, blue windbreaker, is he looking at me?"

"Nope,"

"Is he taking notes or anything. Does it look like he's listening?"

"No, he has a coffee. He's just standing over there," I tell her.

She glances over her shoulder for a hard second. When she turns back, she has that old, paranoid scowl. "He was taking notes. He stopped when I turned around," she says.

"He just has a coffee or something. He's probably waiting for a sandwich,"

She leans back in her chair and spins a coaster underneath her fingers on the table. She does that when she's pensive. Flip, flip, flip. Her hands look dirty; there must be a dozen kinds of shit caked into her cuticles. I already know the answer, but I ask the question anyway.

"So you're off your meds again?"

She glances up at me with her suspicious eyes like bitter slits. "I can't take them, Ed. It's not safe,"

This old thing again, this same old routine. She goes off, and the lizards are coming to get her again. She spends a few frantic weeks living in trash while I try to hunt her down and talk her back into her apartment.

"Laney, I know you're upset, but this is bad. You scare me when you're like this,"

"I know, but Ed..."

"And then we get you back home and clean you up..."

"Yeah, but Ed..."

"And you apologize to me. You say you're sorry and you promise..."

"Ed, something's wrong, please,"

"Laney, you keep telling me you're sorry. I get so scared driving all over town looking for you,"

"Ed, I don't think I can protect you anymore,"

"Laney, whenever you go off I pick up the newspaper every day expecting to find a picture of you all smashed up in a gutter,"

"I know. I'm sorry,"

Well, at least she's sorry right now. That means she doesn't think I'm working with the lizards. Every time she gets that far in her head, it makes things much worse. I'm the last soul on this earth that gives any kind of shit about her.

"Okay then, let's get you back home. Let's clean you up,"

"Ed," she's pinching her lips together, real tension. She's not going to come with me.

"Are you on anything? Did you go to Bean?" She knows a dealer downtown. I'm pretty sure she blows him for crank sometimes.

"Someone's been... Something's different with them," She's struggling to put her thoughts into words. Conversation starts to break down after a certain point, like she's trying to fit her square thoughts through her round mouth.

"Laney, let's get you back home safe,"

"Someone's leading them, Ed. You know what that means?"

"Please don't do this to me. Please," my words fall so useless out of my mouth. I just wish I could say something, do something, "Please. Please come with me, Laney,"

I hate how this always happens. I hate this. So goddamn pathetic.

"Someone's plugging in. Someone can drink it," she says. She's getting loud now. She gets like this, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. She's holding onto either side of the little cafe table like she might have to wrestle it away from me. Her elbows out, her knuckles white. Soon the little flecks of foamy spittle will form at the corners of her mouth.

Again, there's just nothing I can say here. There's nothing I can do. I just sit there while she stands up, kicking away her chair.

She's making some kind of angry growling. Her face is turning beet red. I can see the other coffee shop patrons shuffling away, wide-eyed. The barristas are probably calling the police.

"Are you hearing me? Someone made it down to the middle. All down to the center of the earth and drink. They've got a drink. ARE YOU LISTENING?" She's absolutely screaming at me, "THEY'VE GOT A KING!"

It's bad. It's always bad, but I'm still always looking for progress. I still keep hoping like an idiot. I try and finish my cappucino. I can't even look at her.

She takes a few wild swings at the bystanders. I should be stopping her, apologizing, holding her back. I should be explaining that my sister is not normally like this. I've got a whole speech down: chemical imbalance, not her fault, we're getting her real help this time, I'll pay for damages. I can't bring myself to speak a word of it.

"You fucking LIZARDS," she stomps around right in the middle of the cafe. People are streaming out of the place. There's one guy, must be a manager or something, trying to calm her down. I want to tell him not to bother, want to explain to him that there's nothing he could say. He doesn't know how far away she goes.

"YOU got drool... YOU DROOL DRINK," she's taking huge gulp-breaths, struggling for the words, "at the CENTER WITH THE... middle," she's even confusing herself.

And she's out the door. I don't even have to look, I can hear her canvas sneakers pumping away down the street. She's going full sprint, probably down the middle of the road.

Everyone in the cafe is staring at me. They're waiting for that speech. They want my explanation, my apologies, my promises. Fuck 'em, it's all lies. I get up and walk out. My jaw's all clenched up as I go through the door. I'm staring down at my feet. I feel like if I look up, then that'll be the exact moment I hear tires squeal and a big thunk. If I look up, I'll see my baby sister die.

God's waiting to kill her, waiting so that it happens while I'm watching. God is such a motherfucker.

The Knife or the Sea

“You are all now dead,” he bellowed over the wind and the ringing in our ears. “I have taken your lives. As such, they belong to me!”

We couldn't even see his face past the red, blinding, magnesium light of the flares. We could see the rifles, though. We could all see those clear enough.

“And so now you have a choice,” With the whole world rocking under our feet, he repeats, “You get to choose!” He was laughing in his breath, carefully enunciating. This was a practiced speech.

“Sink with your ship to your rightful graves,” He paused to let the idea sink into our heads, then said, “or serve me and my crew,”

Someone burst into tears, blubbering and falling over. I stood frozen, I stared ahead, trying to think, but my head was filled with mud. It was like one of those dreams where the monsters are coming and you can't run. Like your feet are so heavy and slow and your arms are too weak to open a door and those monsters keep coming.

“Go on! Jump in the ocean if you want!” he shouted, “Jump right in or come and kneel at my feet!”

We all just stood there. One of us was crying. Someone fired a shot. The crying turned into gasping, then a kind of panicked moan, then nothing. None of us moved.

“Right then, put them over!” he called to his men. We rushed forward, throwing ourselves down. The boiling fear and the cold will to live. Fight and flight. There were four of us kneeling. The others were pushed overboard.

I had my palms on the steel of the deck, squeezing my eyes shut. I remember trying to listen for the others, tried to hear them splashing around. Maybe if I could've heard them cry out, heard their last words, they might forgive me. I heard nothing but the ocean and the creaking metal under my hands. They touched the black waters underneath and ceased to be. Taken at once by the night and the sea.

“Four souls so eager to join up! Good lads!” he was so pleased with himself. His crew laughed along. This was the point in the speech where they were supposed to laugh; they obliged with tired chuckles.

“Thing is,” he continued, “we only need three. I expect you lot to sort things out,” He pulled a little knife from his belt and held it out to me. We looked at each other and I took the knife. It was tiny and dull and stank of fish. It was caked in fish gore and offal. A single scale stuck halfway down the blade. I took the knife from him and we all looked at each other. Why'd he give me that knife? Why me? I took the knife and used it. So help me God, I took that knife.