Vertical Descent Point. PART 5

 

 

 

 

21^st November, 1943

 

Oh s**t, how am I gonna do this? Will she be proud of me for doing this? I hope so. I hope she'll be proud of me. Here goes. I experienced something strange and scary three nights ago. I’d have written it down as soon as I got home, but my mind was close to breaking with the fuckedupness of it, so I fell to sleep with a bottle of Jim Beam in my lap while Stepin Fetchit rambled his way through Zenobia in front of me. This morning, I woke with a dooly of a headache, too many nights spent in ole Jim’s company, but I’ve decided to take up my pen and pad and chronicle what happened while I’ve got the nerve. I saw Sallie Thompson that night. I saw her again, even after her daddy told me he’d blow my buckteeth through the back of my nappy head if he ever caught his daughter and me in the same zip code again. He almost caught us rolling in the hay loft of his barn, but Sallie…ah, Sallie. She’s given to what she calls premonitions every now and again, and last night she had one of her daddy strangling me in the barn and burying my body in the soft dirt of their root cellar. Needless to say, I left. Jesus Christ…my hands are shaking. I thought I could do this now, but I can’t. I’ll set this pen down and I’ll go downstairs and I’ll have a little chat with ole Jim  until I can't talk or think anymore. Tomorrow, I’ll do this. I can’t do it now.

 

22^nd November, 1943

 

I left Sallie and her sneaky daddy in their barn and tiptoed down Albertson Lane and turned onto Lester Street. It was around 1:30 or so in the morning and the moon was huge and pale in the sky. Still smelling my girl’s braided hair on my skin, I walked down Lester and hummed (gotta change pens, this one's dying on me, but I hate how dark the ink of this other pen is) Cab Callaway’s Reefer Man, which I’ve always loved for some reason. On the corner of Lester and Pitt Street, I saw them. Three strangers standing at the start of the street with the light of the moon in their faces. One man was huge, as fat as Old Man Thompson’s prize pig, Ella, except Ella had the excuse of being a sow to explain away the sense of her size. This man, in a coat that looked too small for him, had no such excuse, yet, by the way he stood, I could tell that he was pretty comfortable in his size. Size, it came to me, was his element. Standing at his right side was a woman with a face that was covered in tattoos. A crow on the right side of her face, a pentagram on the left, a bottle of what looked like beer on her forehead, an elephant on her chin. Her entire face was covered with these things. Along with her tattoos, there was something else wrong with her. She seemed the exact opposite of the fat man. She was rail thin, and seemed proud of it, her head haughty and high. Standing behind them both was an old, old man in a coat far longer than the fat man’s. The hem of it reached the middle of his ankles. This man…God, how do I describe him? Scrawny, beat-up, his face covered with liver spots, his scraggly beard…my first thought when I saw him was Father Time. Father Time, fucked up and pissed off, maybe. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d first seen them, but now I did. I’d stopped walking. I was trembling too. The fat man raised an arm and waved. The woman nodded almost imperceptibly. The old man titled his chin up at me. God, I’m shaking again. I can’t do this. I think Jim’s calling me. Goddammit.

 

24th November, 1943

 

Oh God, Sallie’s dead! She’s dead and gone and I’m wondering what the f**k I’m still breathing for because I can’t live without her and oh s**t, when her daddy found her, her face was covered with dark tattoos, pyramids and planets and goddamn books and she was wasted away to skin and bone, her beautiful breasts melted into bags of nothing, her sweet mouth opened and spread into a grimace, her body frail and Jesus, what am I gonna do what am I gonna do what am I gonna do?

 

 

26^th November, 1943

 

They’re wrong. How wrong, I can’t tell you. What I can tell you is that I knew right off that they didn’t belong on this earth with the rest of us human beings. Why will I kill them? They killed my baby, they killed my Sallie, I know they did. I know it as well as I know my own name. How will I kill the unnatural sonsabitches? I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t give a f**k as long as I manage to kill them. I just know that a shotgun is a great way to start the killing. F**k them f**k them f**k them f**k them.

 

 

Reviews

[Dms]

Interesting turn, although I'm not sure who this character is. I suspect that you left the details of Fat's consumption out for a reason which will be ferretted out once we know who killed this girl. Interesting story so far.

[Hairy and Confused]

Still awesome. But I wonder if maybe the young man's language is 1943 enough... sure, they swore in those days, but "fuckedupness" sounds a bit too post-modern for me :P

[Inda Lauryn]

First of all, I have to say I love the use of the word "fuckedupness." That's pretty awesome. I also love the turn the story is taking. That's it set in November around my birthday does not bias me in that thought whatsoever :-) Can't wait to see where this goes next.