Savory

The Carnation brothers have a successful business flipping houses, until they encounter an ancient evil that leads them to a shocking end

Movers sifted through the house, grunting under the weight of the heavy wooden furniture.  The heat was oppressive, seemed to pulse under a thick blanket of humidity.  Workers filled the house milling through wherever there was room, lifting things, placing things in boxes, maneuvering things into the large truck.  Outside on the porch sat an ancient man in a wheelchair, watching the slight breeze rustle the dangling branches of a willow tree.

            Inside, amidst the bustle of the thick bodied movers sweating through their clothes, sat two men at a sparse wooden table.

            “Thanks for coming down so quickly.”

            “It’s no problem.”

            “It’s just all this came on kinda sudden.”

            “Look, let’s not act like I’m doing you a favor here.  You’re getting a fair price for this house.  You’re making me feel like I’m taking advantage.”

            A slight unease creeps into the conversation.

            Then, from across the table, the other man smiled.  He reached over to his copy of the contract.  “You’re right,” he said, “I am getting a fair price.”  He began to sign his name, flipping the papers.  “But you are also doing me a favor.”  He gestured over to the old man sitting in the wheelchair.  “Do you see this man Luke?  This is the man who brought my family to America.  He worked on a sugar plantation to save the money to purchase a trip for himself and my pregnant grandmother.  I can’t even imagine the sacrifice he has made for my family.  Now, for it to end like this, in the house he wrought into existence with his blood and sweat, is a shame.  But, it is inevitable.

            “You have made the transition easy and fast.  The money you pay me for this house will be put to good use.  I can now provide for my grandfather.  This house he has built will be renovated and resold as the best house on the block.”

            “It’s what we strive to do.”

            “I have faith in you.  But this is a good thing we do today.  It will be good for everyone.  My grandfather does not approve, he is stubborn and has ties to his community.”  The man across the table leans in and beckons Luke forward.  In a hushed whisper he says, “To many of the old people here he is still known as a ‘bokor’ or sorcerer.” The man laughs.  “Trust me, it will be good to leave.  Things need to change.”

            Luke smiles at the man sitting across from him.  His eyes widen as they watch the pen swirl from across the table.  They reach across the table and shake hands.

            The old man sits on the porch swaddled in blankets despite the intense heat.  He turns and looks at them with his red wet eyes, then turns away.

 

            After the movers left and the large box truck rolled away Luke sat in empty house that was now his prize.  He wanders through the rooms in the small one story ranch house waiting.  A large red pickup pulls into the driveway.  The bed loaded with tools and wood.  On the side, written in large white letters, reads “Carnation Brothers Renovations”.

            The driver side door opens and a man steps out.  He stops to stretch his back and grunts.  He turns and reaches back into the cab of the truck and then began walking towards the house.  He shed a cloud of drywall dust as he walked, and as he saw the other man standing on the porch he extended his arms, each of which were laden with plastic bags of beer.

            Luke stood shadowed by the porchlight and smiled back at his brother.  “Sam,” He said.

            “How’d we do big brother?”

            “Better than we should have.  Much better.”

            Sam placed the bags down on the worn wood steps and retrieved two dark brown bottles sweating in the humidity, “That’s what I like to hear.”

            They entered into the house and began to discuss the upcoming renovations.  Their shadows grew long across the floor and flickered across the walls stained by nicotine ghosts.   Soon the planning faded into jocular talk of triviality and the two men, one dressed in a suit jacket and pants, and the other heavy duty khakis kaleidoscoped by paint and spackle, were done working and sat simply drinking.

            “This f*****g heat.” Luke said.  He leaned back from where he sat on the bare cement block that served as a back porch and rested on his elbows.  He let his empty bottle clink down with the rest.

            “You spend too much time indoors big brother,” Sam said, “Sweat keeps you alive.”

            A bottle hissed its last breath and a cap plinked across hollow glass, “One of us has to be the brains of this operation baby brother.”

            Sam let out a quiet solitary laugh and lit a cigarette.  Then reached for a fresh beer himself.  “All the brains in the world don’t move no damn drywall.”

            “There’d be no drywall to move otherwise.”

            Bottles upturned and little red embers shone brighter in the night.

            “Let’s get some perspective, you went to community college, college boy.”

            “So, degree’s still good.  Good enough to work out gettin’ us this new project.”

            Sam took another swig, “That’s right, time to get behind the goddamn mule.”

            “If you say so.”

            “Don’t get high and mighty on me college boy.”

            “With rank comes privilege.”

            Blue white smoke exhaled like a relief valve, “I said don’t do that.”

            “I didn’t bring it up.”

            “Just don’t f*****g do it.”

            Luke tossed his cigarette away, the red ember spiraling into the shadows.  “You know Mom would have sent you too.  It wasn’t like I asked to go.”

            Quietly, divinity descended.

            “One of us had to stay.”  Sam said.

            Luke nodded.  The two men sat in silence, drinking and smoking.  The tension swirled away to join the mists of one of the nearby swamps.

            “You remember Fat Perry?” Sam said.

            “From high school?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You remember when you told him that Cheri had a secret crush on him?”

            “Cheri Monteclaire.”

            “And the next day he showed up in the middle of lunch with flowers and a big box of chocolates.”

            Luke sighed from the back of his throat, “Cheri Monteclaire.”

            “And Frankie Westhouse just-”

            “She was something, she was something.”

            “-beat the living s**t out of him right there.  Right in the middle of lunch.”

            “Remember what he was yelling?”

            “It’s a joke!  It was a joke!  I’m sorry!  No!  No!”

            “Man, Perry just walked up there, confident as a peacock.”

            “I couldn’t believe it, askin’ her right in front of Frankie like that.”

            The two men laughed and laughed.  The images replaying in their minds.

            “The look on old Fat Perry’s face.” Sam said.

            “Frankie broke his jaw.”

            “No s**t?”

            “Sure did.”

            They laughed again, howling and squealing in the moonlight.

            Finally they simmered and Sam took another long pull off his bottle.  “Why is that so funny?”

            “I don’t know.”

           

            Luke checked his watch.  “I need to get going.”

            Sam nodded, “Sounds good, lemme just take a piss real quick.”

            Sam wandered from the dim yellow pool of light and into the darkness of the backyard.  He stumbled into the corner where the two lengths of rickety fence connected and unrinated.  He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky.  He turned back to see Luke puffing a fresh cigarette and policing up empty bottles.  A small pile of stones caught his eye.  They were arranged in a small pile near his foot.  He wondered how it was he hadn’t stepped on it.  He moved his foot and nudged to the top stone and it flittered down the pile.  He zipped up his paints and knelt down, he could see something buried underneath.

            He re-entered the still yellow pool of porch light holding a small tarnished tin.  It was about the size of a deck of playing cards and a dull battered grey.  It looked perfectly natural in Sam’s thick calloused fingers framed by his dirty fingernails.

            “What is it?” Luke asked.

            “I don’t know.”  Sam shook it closed to his ear.  “It’s full of something.”

            “Open it.”

            Sam pressed the sides and forced the top of the tin container to pop off.  It was filled with a dark black powder, like espresso grounds tinted with dark purple.  The substance poured over the sides and wafted through the air.  It formed a dark cloud that wrapped around their heads like the tentacles of the kraken.  The substance drifted down their lungs and settled, and lined the backs of their throats.  Their eyes burned and wherever the black dust settled it felt like insects burrowing into their skin.  Luke reeled back and made a gasp for air.  The fresh oxygen hit the center of his stomach like a bomb, lurching him forward belching and hacking and gagging for breath.  He exploded a cough directly into the tin of mystery powder, and the two brothers were engulfed.

            It was as if their skin was covered in ravenous molten splinters burrowing down to their bones.  Each breath they took was a futile fallow intake like the breath of the desert.  They dropped to the ground and writhed.  A point formed in the back of their throats, intensified into a small lead weight.  The weight grew and grew then began a slow trickle down down down.  It meandered deeper down to their stomachs heavy and slow and dense as an iceberg.  They shook and quivered, eyes pressed hard into slits, hacking and growling deep bass hocking snarls, wordlessly begging every deity, in every conceivable form, for deliverance.

            Then the heavy cold dot burning through their bodies hit home.  It blossomed in their stomachs igniting volcanic geysers of vomit.  They spattered violently for a few intense seconds then dissolved into darkness.

 

            No physical sensation of any kind.  No sound.  No smell.  No speck of light.  No tongue sitting in a mouth or thin layer of skin transmitting news from the outside world.  Yet they were there in limbo drifting and flailing.  They could not feel their voices screaming, but could sense the strain.  They sensed each other, both close yet unimaginably distant.  They felt themselves being tugged and warped and twisted.  There was something deep within the center of what they sensed was the center of their being.  It was deep and cold and growing.  It expanded like a sinkhole, pulling them down inward in contrast to the various meta-physical distortions.

            Out from the edge of the nothing came a faint high pitched noise, like the ringing in the ear.  It grew and grew gaining intensity and volume.  A bright pale yellow flashed into direct vision.  It pinwheeled into various colors while the high pitched ringing grew and grew and grinded down into the center of their mind.  The field of color vision collapsed into black and they saw themselves as deformed sillouttes drifting.  The human forms flailed in the inky blackness, reforming into conventional human shapes.  The ringing noise continued to increase and the forms pulled away, sinking back farther and farther until eventually becoming nothing more than two dots far off in the distance.

 

            Luke snapped awake, wet, naked and sweating in his bed in his home.

            “He’s awake.”

            His hands were had a white knuckle grip on the sheet and he pulled it tighter onto himself.  Waves of hot and cold washed over him, his hair stuck to his head soaked in sweat.  He tried to focus his blurred vision on one of the colored splotches scurrying around the room, but his sharpened vision seemed to attract bolts of lightning.  He closed his eyes and felt a quiet moan escape, then a damp cloth danced little bunny hops across his forehead.

            “Just lie still Luke.”

            “Is he gonna be alright?”

            Swirls mingled and pooled forming eddies of nausea.   He tried to focus his vision on the pastel colored splotches hovering over him, blue white electricity from heaven burned through his skull and down his back.

            “What is it?  What’s wrong?”

            “Well, if I had to guess, it looks like some form of food poisoning.”

            “Will he be okay?”

            “He’s in pain but he looks stable.  To be honest there wouldn’t be much a hospital could do for him.  If you can’t get him to drink some water, or his condition worsens then get him to a hospital.”

            “Thanks Neil.”

            “Don’t mention it.  What are neighbors for.”

            Luke let his eyes roll around in his head as they wished.  He wanted to sit up but felt himself sinking and sinking into the bed.  Soft echos of the noise around him bounced and wafted through his mind.  A feeling of white static noise began to tickle his finger and toes.  It spread across his legs and arms and down from the top of his head.  His hands clenched tighter to the thick comforter.  Pulses of heat sprang up from the back of his throat and resonated in his face and ears.  He opened his mouth and gasped for air.  Then it all passed.

            He sat up, still weak and fighting the urge to vomit.  He looked around the room.  His face contorted as his mind tried to form thoughts.  His throat was dry, parched to the point of cracking.  He swung his feet over the side of the bed and got shakily to his feet.  He stumbled, caught himself on the molding of the bathroom door.  He was caught there for a moment, desperately trying to get his body to heed his own instructions.  His limbs over compensated in comical flailing until he regained his balanced.  He finally lurched to the bathroom sink and fumbled the tap to full and sucked cold water.

            His wife found him there, hunched over, water running down his chest.

            She called out to him attempted to pull him away with light tugs.  He shrugged her off and continued his series of loud slurps.  He grunted loudly and snapped up.  His wife grabbed a towel and fretted over him, wiping at his mouth.  He opened his eyes and saw her.  He saw the worry on her face and could feel thoughts and words pressing against the back of his eyeballs.  His mouth opened to speak, he simply grunted.

            His muscles twitched he fought to keep his balance.  His wife cradled his arm and turned him to walk back to bed.  He tried to focus on her.  The touch against his skin, the gentle direction across the room.  He tried to focus on her name, and couldn’t remember.  It was there in his mind, behind the static mist muddling his capacity for speech.  He focused.  The gentle touch on his skin, the firm grip on his wrist.  He took another clumsy step.  He could feel the word bubble through the heavy dull mental crush.

            “Beth.” He said.

            “It’s okay honey.  Neil says you need a few days of rest.  Just take it easy.”

            “Puh-puh-puke.”

            Panic replaced worry on Beth’s face and she spun him around.  He lunged forward and crashed at the opening of the toilet.  Translucent liquid bile gushed forth.

 

            Sitting swaddled in bed, Luke fought a quiet battle of wills with his arm.  He commanded it to move.  He willed his fingers to spread and grasp a spoon.  His forehead knitted in concentration.  The silver metal implement quivered as it moved through space toward the steaming bowl of chicken broth.  His excess nervous energy worked his teeth on his lower lip.

            He had been struggling to eat for half an hour, driven by ravenous hunger.  It was a sharp focused sensation, not of emptiness but the negative of that.  It was a sensation of limitless expansion.  His stomach did not grow, he could not feel his lower torso bulging out, yet inside he was housing a large cavern exploding outward in all directions.

            He scooped a tiny yellow tinted puddle.  Despite his effort, large drops created warm teardrops on his chest.  His lips puckered and he drank the soup down.  He tasted nothing only registering that the liquid was warm.  It worked down his throat seeming to grab and stick to the lining of his esophagus, finally settling like a cold pool of lead. 

            The minuscule droplets of broth he forced himself to choke down registered as nothing but pollen falling into the grand canyon.  Only succeeding in providing sharp contrast to the space he so desperately needed to fill.

            All his current sensations:  the nausea, the exhaustion, the ache from every joint, the frustration of not being able to manipulate his body as he would like to, the concern for his brother Sam who was sharing his same fate.  All these were mere shadows of concern next to the monolith of hunger.  This was made worse by his inability to communicate.

            His wife Beth did her best to comfort him.  She checked his temperature and helped him with his faced paced struggles to reach the toilet to vomit.  He watched her as she watched him and nervously paced, trying to determine if he had gotten any worse or better, and what she should do next.  He could not console her, could not tell her what he wanted, because his ability for speech seemed to have poured out from his throat with his first retching after waking up.  There was no way Beth could interpret his desire for anything edible from his feeble shaky fisted attempts to feed.

            He slid the spoon into his mouth, not even the dull twinge of metal.  The leaden broth took its slow forever fall.  He recovered from its impact and turned his eyes to the window.  The light wavered and dimmed as the sun slid and peaked out from behind a cloud.  His wife entered the room, he could see that he panic had subsided substantially.

            “Ashley just called,” She said.  “Sam is apparently coming around.  He’s sitting up and walking and eating like a maniac.”

            The words drifted to him like he was underwater.  He had a dim understanding of what she was saying, but not in a crisp concrete way.  When she mentioned food, images of warm hunks of fresh bread dove into his mind.  Fresh steaming bowls of pasta, clean and warm and yellow, unobstructed by any kind of sauce or presentation, just simple filler.  These were images only, no connection to words.  Manifestations of a primal need to fill.

            He lifted his shaking hands and patted his open mouth.

            Beth smiled at him, “I’ll get you some more soup.”

            His heart sank.

 

            A few hours later and he was graced by the same miraculous recovery as his brother.  His overjoyed wife ran out to a local bakery and returned home with piles of fresh hard crusted bread.  He sat in the kitchen and tore into the bare loaves.  Beth stood in the corner of the kitchen and watched with open mouthed shock.  Luke’s jaw was sore from the work of chewing, and while he felt better beyond compare, a faint trace of his previous sickness lingered like an unwanted dinner guest. 

            “You and Sam must have eaten the same thing.  Ashley said that Sam is having his own little carb-fest of his own.”

            Luke nodded, his jaw was sore from chewing, his gums hurt from the cracking of the hard baked crust.  “I don’t remember.”

            Worry spread across her face.  She reached over and grabbed his empty glass.  She filled it with water from the sink and set it back down. 

            Luke stared at the hunk of bread in his fist.  He was fully aware that his body was screaming with the stress of being filled with expanding bread, yet the need to fill pressed like stones.  He turned to his wife.  “Maybe I should slow down.”

            “I think that would be a great idea.”

            Later on in the day Luke lay on the couch lightly dozing.  His eyelids drooped low and dimmed his vision.  Slowly he noticed things began to change.

            It started with the blinds swaying in the slight afternoon breeze.  They caused the plastic nib on the end of their drawstring to tap irregularly against the wall.  The sound transfixed him, hooked his mind like a fish then pulled it away.  Suddenly the world was dark again and he was falling in every direction.  Swirls of color cross faded and popped and exploded.  Radio static was blaring somewhere from behind him, it got louder and louder until it became a siren.  A loud shrieking siren that tore through the fabric of thought and shook the roots of his teeth.  Then there came the eyes, bright and red and huge.  The pitch of the siren rose and sharpened and the eyes filled his every sense of perception.  The iris of each orb split and opened and a million hands reached out for him.  He could feel his arms moving, could feel them swinging and grasping hold of nothing as the uncountable number of hands reached out with their thin endless arms and grasped him in cement grips.  He could feel them penetrate his flesh like bursting through tissue paper, could feel them pulling him apart from inside.  He felt himself tearing in two.  He could feel himself shearing and splitting, then a sick skin ripping visceral tear.  He turned his head and saw himself, saw himself with fear in his eyes and struggling in vain against the blood red hands dragging him down into the gaping holes opening in the still giant glaring eyes.  His other self reached out for him.  He struggled to stretch his arms out to reach his other self, but they were drifting apart to fast.  He saw his other self swallowed by the eyes.  Then he followed.

            Darkness again.  Bright shining orbs rushed towards him, he suddenly could feel wind blowing through his hair.  He still flung his hands in large arcing whirls.  The orbs were arranged in pairs and coupled with dim red lights.  They were blurry and speeding and blasted past him, swerving to miss him at the last second.  He could feel his legs pumping, slamming into a hard surface under his feet.  Then the sensation of running was gone and he smacked into an invisible surface.

            His consciousness snapped again.  He was standing in a plain beige room, everything was still and quiet.  Water was dripping somewhere.  A door opened and a running line of sides of beef on thick iron hooks ran through the room at high speeds.  The smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils.  He saw his other self standing behind a table outlayed with an elaborate dinner service.  Something somewhere was burning.  His other self was now sipping tea, regarding him in a calm dead stare.  Then he turned the cup away from him and poured the contents out.  The cup contained not tea but a thick red substance that steamed as it hit the ground.

            Luke was now standing face to face with his other self.  The familiar imposter was glaring, angry, and screaming incoherently.  He lifted a covered tray.  He removed the shiny silver lid to reveal a pile of organs.  The stench of blood and gore and burning meat and now the sound of people screaming and crying.  His other self lifted a thick purple-red heart and squeezed it.  Thick red blood oozed from it and ran down his hand and stained the sleeves of the dark colored suit he wore.  His eyes burned into him.  Luke watched himself bite into the heart and smile as he chewed.  He was screaming, yet he could feel the sensation of chewing tough muscle, cold and rubbery and tinged with a copper-iron sensation like biting on tin foil.

            His mind snapped again and this time he was blasted with the harsh light coming direct from his eyes.  He was strapped down, but his arms were free and two faces were staring down at him and yelling.  He could feel the cold air against his skin, could feel the pressure of resistence all over his body.  He mind caught up to the fact that he was fully awake again.  Beyond the two screaming faces was a dull grey ceiling.  He could feel hands on him.  The tiny room shook and bumped.

            “Tranq him goddamit!  Hit him!  Hit him!” One of the faces yelled.

            The other face held a syringe in its mouth and Luke focused on fighting directly with that one’s hands.

            “It’s alright Mr. Carnation!  You’re alright.  Just relax.  Tranq him Frank for f***s sake!  Hit him!”

            The face with glasses grabbed his hands and pinned them to his chest.  The other face pulled the cap off a syringe and he felt a sharp prick in his thigh.  He felt the drugs effects immediately.  Felt his racing mind slow, allowing him to realize he was sitting in the back of an ambulance.  The two faces pinned his arms to his sides and reattached the restraints.  A haze formed on the edge of his vision.  He saw the two faces wipe sweat from their brows and exchange nervous glances.  A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face. 

            Then like the sweep of the hand of a loving god sleep took Luke away.  His mind went dark and what remained active deep in his consciousness was grateful.

 

            A sleep encrusted eyelid flickered open.  It was greeted by the impersonal beep of a life support machine.  The faded smell of sterilization mixed with the ghost fragrance of bodily fluids hung from his nostrils.  His mind now registered hospital, and as he tentatively moved what to him felt like nothing more than a haggard meat husk, he felt the invasive presence of tubes.  His eyes fully adjusted to the light.  He turned his head.

            He saw Sam lying next to him, his face was covered in bruises and abrasions.  His hands and his forearms were heavily wrapped in ace bandages with thick gauze wrapping.  Luke tried to sit up but a thunderstorm of pain canceled his ambitions.  He looked out the window, it was late in the afternoon.  He was awake and conscious, but he could feel a cloud around his perception, a murky mental film.  Beth came in and held his hand and he could hear what she was saying but not make out the words.  The forms and shapes around the room warped and faded.  He saw Sam open his eyes and they connected in instant recognition from a deep place, as if something inside but not part of them silently greeting an old friend.   They stayed mute the rest of the day, even as their women buzzed around them in worry.  Luke turned his head and watched the sunset framed by a slowly dripping I.V. bag.

 

            “You were punching through glass?”

            “It was just the one window, but before that I was jumping fences and running through backyards.” 

            Luke took a bite of a sandwich and shook his head.

            “It’s not like I remember it or nothing, its just what Ashley read to me from the police report.”

            “You don’t remember any of it?”

            Sam shook his head, “How about you, didn’t they find you running down the middle of the highway?”

            “That’s what they tell me.” Luke looked over his brother’s injuries.  “Did you hurt anybody?”

            “Apparently, I fought some cops.”

            “And you remember nothing?”

            Sam took a small sip of water, “I remember eyes.  Large red eyes.”  He winced as he grabbed his stomach.

            Luke sat frozen holding his bowl of now cold soup.  He felt the same but not the same.  His mysterious disorder remained in constant persistence of whatever goal it was trying to accomplish.  The difference was, it no longer seemed odd, and part of him now wanted to see what the end product would be.

            Outside in the hallway, Beth and Ashley stood talking with a doctor.

            “The lab tests have come back and honestly I don’t know what to tell you.  I know that they have what appears to be a massive bacterial infection, caused by some kind of fungus.  In addition to that, there appears to be traces of a powerful neurotoxin found only in blowfish.  If I didn’t know better I would say that both of these men were poisoned.

            Ashley let out a breath, Beth covered her eyes.

            “Look, I don’t mean to jump to conclusions, but this fungus was ingested and both men were seen eating in separate places, so the fact that both men were subjected to the same rare poison at exactly the same time makes a deliberate act of foul play unlikely.

            “I think that these two men work in homes that have fallen in severe disrepair, leading to environments of untold disregard for sanitation.  Who knows what they’ve come into contact with.”

            “Are they in serious trouble doctor?  Will they be okay?” Ashley said.  Beth continued to lean with her hand over her eyes.

            “The bacteria in their stomachs are excreting large amounts of new digestive enzymes.  Literally flooding their stomachs with it.  Enzymes work like a key to unlock the breaking down of specific types of food, allowing digestion.  We analyzed a sample of these enzymes and our results were inconclusive.  They are very specific to one particular type of protien, we don’t know what it is.  Antibiotics are keeping the bacteria under control, and I think we’ve found a combination of drugs that are neutralizing the enzymes.  However, if one of our barriers were to fail, one of the other would build up to dangerous levels and their stomachs would fill with these mysterious enzymes.  I fear that they would be unable to digest anything but what these microscopic protein strains are trying to prescribe.”

            Ashley stepped past the doctor and peaked a look at her lover and his brother, sitting with frozen stares, their loud boisterous conversation ended.  Each man was squirming, slightly writhing, hands clutching their stomachs.

 

            The doctors came in teams and poked and prodded them and flushed them with chemicals.  The treatments they infused them with helped occasionally, but mostly they wreaked specific and targeted havoc on their bodily systems leaving them dazed and nauseated and awash with vague maladies.  Their bodily fluids were sucked from them to be bottled and labeled and filed away in unknown sterile locations for future study.  They lay prostrate in their beds, struggling to maintain a constant level of conscious experience while the teams of doctors stood mere feet away murmuring and looking at them from over their shoulders about what course of action to take next on their experimental reorganizing of their internal chemical structure.

            These educated guesses and the damage they inflicted to spur the process of healing twisted Luke and Sam’s ability to track the true course of the malady they were suffering from.  It got to the point that at times they were only able to tell if they were still sick because the doctors told them so.  The only symptom they were able to clearly identify was the growing gnawing sensation building in intensity in the pit of their stomachs.

            It was a deep, complex, powerful sensation.  It started as a turning sensation, like folding over a bowl of fluffy egg whites.  Inside the whites are tiny pebbles and as the folding continues the tiny pebbles grow in size.  The folding continues and the tiny pebbles continue to grown until the pebbles are now small stones.    The small stones become heavy sharp rocks.  Then the sharp rocks grew to a size that filled up their entire stomachs yet they continued to fold.  The rocks tumbled and growled and when there was no more space to fill, they grinded and strained like a fist filled with wet rocks.  Slowly this incessant intestinal hounding became a stone toothed maw.  The maw then became the focal point of their waking life.

            They complained about it.  They suffered from it.  They shifted and rolled and clutched their tortured flesh in an attempt to escape from it.  It spliced into their internal organs, burned away the rest of their sense of touch.  The ceaseless pounding of the maw drowned out their ears with its static drone.  It filled the space behind their eyes.  They lay prone in their beds gasping and breathing desperate pleas for merciful deliverance, and in between intensities, groveling in deep pouches of cold sweat.

            Beth and Ashley were with them as often as they could.  They sat next to them and dabbed cold water on their foreheads and stared in wide eyed panic as the teams of doctors rattled off technical terms and fished for their signatures.  Slowly, this chaotic system of being became the way of life for everyone, and while nobody involved was happy, the moment becomes the standard.

            Then one day, lost in fury of the unnamable tempest soaking his body in pain, Sam discovered a ray of true hope.  In his stomach the maw rumbled, but Ashley was there to hold his hand.  The doctors and nurses were paid professionals, their lack of emotional attachments allowed them to make hard decisions under extreme pressure.  Yet they also had lives of their own.  Ashley was there to provide what their beeping machines and pharma-cocktails couldn’t. 

When Sam stared out through the slits of his eyes, he saw her face.  Her smile gave him hope.  Her touch gave him a baseline through the vagaries of his maladies and allowed him to focus on the fact that he was alive and that there was a time and place where he was not living inside a cloud of pain.

            Time was passing however, and as time passed, the way he interpreted in his experiences changed.  She would stroke his face gently, running her hand from his forehead down to his chin.  This used to be a very pleasant sensation, calming and soothing.  As the time passed, it began to feel pleasant for a different reason, one he couldn’t quite quantify.  It was deep yearning for her, not in sense of companionship or comfort or even a need as base as lust.  It was a deep primal need to gather something from her.  A nebulous desire to take radiated deep from the constantly churning rock toothed maw tearing apart his midsection.

            He began to realize that when she fed him ice chips, he could taste the oils from her hands.  The sensation shot through his body like a warm stream, both easing the churning of the maw and intensifying it as the flavor of her hand faded.

            One of the regular nurses entered the room and went about her duties.  Her underarm deodorant had clearly faded, and her stink, though faint, filled his nostrils.  Ashley continued to feed him ice chips and fill his mouth with her amplified essence.  His nose perked up at the smell of the nurse.  He turned to look at her, she looked tired and worn. Every movement she made was curt and professional, including her smile.  Yet he found himself intoxicated with her.  Her mild damp smell of exertion filled his mind with bizarre memories of his mother’s kitchen.  He didn’t like the feeling of yearning that filled his mind.  He didn’t know what he wanted from this woman.  He didn’t know what extra he wanted from Ashley.  All he knew was that he wanted, and there would be no escaping the fulfillment of this new nameless desire.

 

            Sam was sitting at a table in a diner.  It was different from last night but it was always the same in that it was always some type of eatery.  Tonight’s diner was a greasy spoon truck stop with white and red plastic tablecloths and the cups were that bizarre tinge of yellow, the color of sweat stains.  There were no other people sitting in the diner, nobody but Luke, standing at the doorway next to a sign that read: “Wait to be seated”.  He was dressed in the same grey suit that he was, and he was just standing there, head down, gripping a grey hat.  A waitress came over.

            “What’ll ya have?”  She asked.

            She was pretty and curved and wore a low cut yellow uniform with a short dress and fishnet.  Luke motioned over to his brother and said, “He’s with me.”

            “So he is.” She said.

            Sam and Luke sat across from each other.  A loud sizzleing noise came from the open window of the kitchen.  “What’ll ya have?” The waitress asked.

            “The special.” Sam said.

            The waitress’s lust red lips parted a Clorox white smile.  The sizzling noise from the kitchen became louder and louder, smoke began to billow from it.

            The waitress stood over a large covered silver tray, running a knife across a honing steel.  Her large round eyes sparkeled, her smile beamed.  She lifted the large silver dome of the lid to reaveal a bed of lettuce.  She leaned over and placed the point of her elbow in the center of the leafy greens.  Sam felt his hands grip the side of table.  The sharp wide blade of the knife drifted elegantly in her slender hand.  She placed it gently at the start of her shoulder, and eyes still sparkling, smile still beaming, cut a long bloody chunk from the flesh of her arm.  She cut and cut away, the thick red fluid pooling over the dark green pile of garnish and flowing to the floor, inch wide strips of her flesh gathered in wriggled piles like lasagna noodles.

            Luke stabbed a strip of her arm with a fork and placed it on his plate and cut into it.  He placed it in his mouth and chewed.  Sam watched with horror and disgust yet the smell and the sound coming from the kitchen was filling the room.  He could feel the inside of his mouth water and the maw in his stomach assert its presence in the heavy still way of a spoiled child.  His hands moved and dove into the pile of red sopping strips, then brought them to his face.  He could taste the cold copper taste of blood and feel the rubbery gelatinous chew of skin, and the woman continued to carve her arm, and sparkle with her eyes and glow sunshine with her smile.  Luke continued to feed precise cut parcels mechanically into his mouth.  Sam, blood running down his chin, squeezing through his hands, swallowed.  It sank like a lump and landed with a splash.  Inside his stomach, the maw’s flat stone teeth melted into tiny birds that sprang free and flew away happy and singing.  Sam and Luke sat at their small table, smoke pouring from the kitchen now with tiny birds popping from the center of their shirts and laughing.

            Sam looked over his brother’s shoulder and out the grave-yard black window.  Out in the darkness were the lights of an ambulance flashing in the distance.  Despite the darkness, he could see the cloud of dust this threw up as it sped towards them.  Sam motioned with hands filled with the waitresses arm.  Luke turned his head and stared with him.  The reality of the situation drifted down on him like flakes of radio static snow.

            Sam felt the soft hand of the waitress on his chin.  He turned his head to meet her large sparkling eyes and her good-news smile. 

            “Shhh, they can’t help you.  All you need is right here.”  She stood up straight, her left arm dangling, butchered and useless.  She held the knife in her good hand, and she used it to pluck the buttons from her blouse.  She pulled her uniform apart to reveal the glory of her breasts, soft and milky white with strawberry n*****s.  The leaned over Sam’s face and starting from her collarbone, traced the path of the contour of her breast until a rivulet of blood was streaming down and splattering over Sam’s face, drowning him until he opened his mouth and drank the from the wellspring.  The flow was warm and fell down his throat and he spread his arms and pulled her forward and stood and pressed his face between the sweet mounds of her chest and gorged.

 

            Sam’s eyes popped open.  The first thing that he noticed was the smell.  Gone was paradox mix of antiseptic and dried urine.  In replacement was the antithesis, strong odors of possibly still wet urine and other bodily fluids tinged with artificial pine.  The brisk industrial white of sanitation exchanged for the dull green and placid browns of dilapidation and disregard.

            He sat up and found that he had been lying on the floor.  Luke lay draped over a small table.  He felt as if he was awaking from a sleep that while deep, provided little if no actual rest.  There was a numbness in his skull like his brain was trying to dead lift lead weights.  The flat stones in his stomach grinded against each other like a confined storm.  In his arms was a quiet searing ache where the tubes had been ripped from his body.

            He stood.  The clothes he wore were tight and ill fitting, stolen.  Luke, motionless but breathing was dressed the same way.  Tiny smears of blood appearing on the thin fabric at the sleeves.  He took a few steps, staggered, took a few more and reached for his brother.  He leaned on the table his brother was lying on.  His hand reached out to wake him. Then it stopped.  Someone was moaning in bathroom.

            It was a low steady muffle, punctuated by faint indicators of struggle.  Sam shambled over to the grey wooden door at the end of the small room and opened it.  A young woman lay bound and gagged in the bathtub.  Her left eye was beaten closed, dark blood matting the blonde hair on that side of her face.  Her hands were secured with electrical cords and her mouth gagged with a scarf.  Her good eye was staring up at the ceiling, tears rolled down her cheek.  She moved in slow motion, as if she were lying at the bottom of the ocean.  Sam walked over to her, eyes wide, sucking shallow breaths.  Her small white teeth biting down.

            Sam’s mind raced full of positive intention, desperate for motivation to release her, yet scanning for a memory of his own wrongdoing.  He held up his hands, looking over the scars on his knuckles from when he punched through all those car windows.  There was no memory of that, just a detailed police report.  He arched his back to lean out and view his brother.  Luke lay motionless across the table, gently breathing.  Slowly he approached the girl.  He knelt down in front of her and assessed her bindings.  He was breathing so rapidly he could feel himself getting light headed.

            He relaxed the constrictions across her mouth and relaxed when she began to take in deep gulps of air.  He knelt down, his hands shaking as he fumbling with the knots around her wrists.  Then they stopped.  He recognized her.  It struck him like a mother’s guilt, something unexpected you should see coming a mile away.  Instead of removing the gag he roughly lifted her head and examined her features.  He matched the side of her face not mangled by violence, then let her skull drop from his hands.  As it thudded against the white porcelain of the bath tub, the wide blue eyes shocked open.  She began to scream so he reapplied the gag.  She tried to kick and thrash her legs, but they were tied together at the knees and ankles with belts.

            Sam backed away, the blue eyes pouring tears watching his retreat.  He stepped slowly from the bathroom, into the main room.  From the corner of his eye he could see a figure lurching towards him.  It was Luke, hunched over and miserable, deep navy black half moons under each eye.  Luke’s right arm hung loosely, and he clutched it with his other hand, blood ran down his wrist.

            “Where are we?” Graveled from his mouth.

            “It’s her.” Sam said.

            “Who?”

            “From my dream.”

 

            Luke sat patiently ignoring the smell of dead piss as Sam related his dream.  They sat in silence as the woman in the bathtub thumped the evidence of her existence.  Sam told Luke what he thought the dream meant.  Luke sat and stared at nothing, head pointed down.  He let his vision blur, the sharp edges of his vision washed away and his world became a collage of ghost shapes.  In the back of his mind he agreed with his brother’s interpretation.  He still needed to rectify it with sector of his mind that rode up front.

            He made a quick list:

 

1)      We are sick, in desperate need of medical attention

2)      People we know, who love us, are searching for us

3)      It is only a matter of time before they find us

4)      We are responsible for what happens to the girl in the bathroom

 

Inside his stomach, the maw was tearing him apart.  The flat stones felt as if they had grown twice their size, and the space confining them had shrunk.  He could feel the vibrations of their grinding as a shudder in his bones, as a buzzing in his teeth.  Fat beads of sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes.  Sam was rocking back and forth, sweating through ill fitted stolen clothes.  They were both hugging their midsections.

            The smell of the girls blood was thick as poison gas in the room.  Sam tried to block out memories of fresh shortbread baking in an oven on his birthday.  Luke battled visions of the thick caramel sauce his mother saved for good report card sundaes.

            Inside of their minds, a static grew.  It spread like a hundred million spider legs scurrying through his brain.  His body twisted from the paradox of his brain racing while his conscious mind dimmed.  Then there was quiet in his mind, the maw ballooned outward.  He opened his mouth to scream but nothing but his throat did nothing but wretch.  Sam splashed thick gouts of vomit across the floor.  Now Luke’s body stilled.

            He made another quick list:

 

1)      We are sick ,nobody can help us

2)      People we know, who love us, are searching for us

3)      It is possible for those who are missing to stay lost

4)      Everything is relative

           

            Luke stood.  His muscles resisted every attempt to move, he looked like he was fighting cramps in every muscle in his body.  He slowly crossed the room.  He opened a drawer and removed a rust speckled knife.  He shambled back across the room.  Sam was standing now, following Luke in the same ramshackle fashion.  They entered the bathroom.

            The human mind is resilient.  The psyche’s frailty is an illusion.  Personality is nothing more than window dressing so that people can recognize the valid existence of other individuals within their own respective societies in order to work together and solve problems.  To imply that a mind has shattered is a misnomer, it implies that the psychological governing system within the human mind has broken and no longer is capable of functioning.  That it is beyond its purpose.  When a human mind “breaks” it is simply in the middle of the act of adapting, attempting to refit itself to better function in a new environment.  To allow the conscious mind to function in a new way, with a new code of governance.  To accept previous taboos as necessary practices of survival, to abandon the norms of society and keep the biological mass alive, the psychological aspect must sometimes be modified.  This is the hidden strength of the human mind.  This is its secret power.

            So as Luke and Sam stood staring down at the rough cut meat chunk shriveling and blackening in the center of a filth caked skillet, the maw in their stomachs quieted to a mellow purr, deep red blood streaked from head to toe, they knew without knowing the secret power of the human mind.  Sanity is objective. 

 

            Beth sat in her living room drained.  Every emotional nerve was raw, every thought in her head dull and lolling.  Black streaks ran from her eyes.  Curled on the couch, Ashley slept with the innocence of a kitten.  She lifted the empty wine glass and stared at its shape.  She rested it down on the table.  The room was quiet and still.  She stood up and carefully climbed the stairs.  She walked to her room.  She sat on her bedroom and waited to see if more tears would come, her chest heaved a little then seemed to settle.

            She reached into her pocket and pulled out Luke’s cell phone.  She had offered it to the police, but they told her that it would be best if she monitored it and informed them if he tried to contact her.  She had held it on her chest all evening, sliding into her pocket as the wine bottles emptied.  Now, head buzzing and desperate she hit the last number that had been dialed.       “Hello?” a voice said.  It was a woman, the voice was tired and drained like hers.

            “Hi.”

            “Who is this?”

            “I ‘m sorry, my name is Beth Carnation, know it’s late, but my husband, Luke, ran away from an intensive care unit of a hospital today and I thought the last person he had called could be of some help.”  Beth was past caring about him cheating, she just wanted a location on a warm body.

            “Oh,” The gasp sounded of a mix of shock and sadness, yet also recognition and not surprise.  “I’m sorry.  This isn’t my phone.  It belonged to my husband.”

            “Oh, well, I’m sorry to continue to be so rude but, could I talk to him.”

            The other end of the line went still, Beth could hear the faint sounds of suffering.  “Jean-Baptiste died two days ago.”

            Beth’s heart jumped, “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

            “You couldn’t know.  I’m sorry about your husband.”

            Beth felt the tug of connection with the voice of this stranger.  “Did my husband buy a house from Jean-Baptiste?”

            “It would seem to be so.”

            “My husband was very ill, did your husband die of any kind of illness?”

            Beth could hear the voice on the other end move away from the phone, then there was the sound of footsteps, the unnerving static crinkle of a phone being held against fabric.  The voice was whispering now against the slight blowing of wind.  “My husband killed himself, Mrs. Carnation, he shot himself in the face.”

            Beth was numb, her limit of tragedy reached.  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

            “My husband was filled with hope.  He has always been faithful to his father, loyal to the end, discarding opportunities to remain close to him, taking care of him.  The role of parent and child had been reversed, he was desperate for change.

            “So against his father’s wishes, he sold his family home to move us to a new job, in a new place, to start a new life.  Everything was bright and happy.  We were full of joy.  Then as we prepared to move, he was struck down sick, and a few days later, he was dead.”

            Beth sat slumped on the bed, cradling the phone with both hands.

            “My husband shot himself in the face, Mrs. Carnation, but it was not suicide.  There is no way for me to explain to you in any way that you would believe me, but I know it to be true.  You may call it the denial of grief, or the remnant of old superstition, but my husband is dead by his own hand but not by his own will.  If your husband was sick like my husband, then I’m sorry he is dead too, even if his body still lives.”  The woman on the other end hung up.  She stood in her backyard and folded her arms.  She let the humid night air envelop her, let the buzzing of the night insects clear her mind.  The old man was watching her, she could feel his gaze on her.  He was there in the window watching her.  His eyes wide and red and wet and cold.  As she opened the door to step inside, she wondered to herself if she had ever seen him blink in her whole life.

            Beth closed her phone and sat in her own darkness, a terrible dark presence of her own lingering in her house.  She made a vow to get to the bottom of what the woman on the other end of the phone had told her, she swore that her husband would be found and that all would be explained no matter what happened, but she was not some kind of superwoman, she was a simple mortal and for now she was tired.

            When she woke up the next morning she was tired, and she was tired the day after that.  There were debts and medical bills, and there was her own job, and soon after a few years, her grief and the weight of general life became to bitter a mixture to drink on a daily basis, so she shed the one she could live without.

            She continued to live her life, one can’t blame her.  Yet while she was able to continue on and find happiness elsewhere the mystery of her first husband was always there in the deep back corners of her mind.  Slithering in the dark shallow pools of regret.

 

            The morning after their first grizzly feast, Sam and Luke cleaned themselves up and with the quiet of guilt sneaked out of the rundown building they had used for the night and hustled down the street.  When they had gone through the girls wallet the night before they had been shocked to find that they had travelled across the border into Texas.  They huddled in a dark lonely corner of the nearest bus station to decide what to do next.  Did the other know how they had gotten that far?  The answer did not matter, the maw was grinding with its stone teeth and in a few hours, they were unable to even form the questions.

            In a strange way it was just like old times, Luke was the brains, Sam the muscle.  Luke went into a bar and tried to pick up a patron.  They waited until two hours till closing time, then Luke lured a desperate barfly home with his silver tounge.  Luke offered to drive, then went and picked up Sam.  Once in the car Sam wrapped his strong arms around her neck and they forced her to take them to her house.  They pulled into her garage, forced her out of the car, then Sam killed her with a brick.  It was only their second murder in two days, but it was already becoming normal.  They were nauseous and sweating and shaking.  The pain so intense they were doubled over as they carried her into her house and to her bathroom, yet as they stood over her naked body, holding their knives, their mouths overflowed with thick rivlets of drool.

            They cut thick messy chunks and tore into them like raw beef apples.  When they had cut through the discomfort enough, they removed more carefully carved slices and carried them down to the kitchen.  They overcrowded the pans, searing the outside and popping the burnt black strips into their mouths.  The smell of the cooking made them dizzy with joy, and as their hunger was appeased, they took more care into the preparation.

            Organs were harvested and placed in an iron vessel and baked, oil was drizzled in a pan for cracklins.  They boiled her tounge.

            Occasionally, their former humanity would snap them back into where they used to be mentally and the horror of it would freeze their hearts.  Then the grinding of the maw would strike them, and feasting would continue.  Finally, as dawn approached, they waddled with their extended stomachs to a clean flat surface and collapsed.

            The setting sun was to their right, a long road stretched out before them.  Luke took a step toward it, the gnawing hole in his stomach lightened.  He took another step and felt a tiny bit better, yet the pain felt initially worse.  He looked around.  There was nothing.  Just a setting sun off in the distance to his right, a long road before him, and a dimness ahead.  It made him nervous.  It was all much to simple.  He remembered his dreams being more vivid.  He turned to face the opposite direction and felt something missing.  He took a step towards the darkness and fell to his knees.  He clutched his stomach, grinding his face into the dirt.  He fell to his back and kicked his feet, digging his heels vainly to move backwards.  He could stand again.  He walked towards the dimness at the end of the road, the feeling of something lost like a shadow on his mind.

            He woke to the smell of cooking.  Sam stood in the kitchen frying leftovers and packing them into Tupperware containers.

            “We need to head south.” He said.

            Luke nodded.

 

             They traveled during the day, hopping on a greyhound headed generally south.  They huddled together, shivering like scared pigeons.  They stared blankly out the window, trying to let their minds drift with the passing scenery.  They maw was there, ever present.  They cut the edge of the grinding stone teeth with grizzly trail mix packed into Tupperware and little plastic snack bags.

            They would shamble out of the bus whenever it stopped in a small town when the sun went down.  They were careful.  They pulled their bar trick when they could, but most of the time they would have to drift out into the fringes of the town, to an overpass, or a train depot, and drag a sleeping drifter into the shadows.  They carried nothing, utilizing whatever tools were at hand.  One night, they carved up a train jumper to bits with the top of a tin can of beans.  Each time it got easier, each time the brain shifted.  Then it was off to the next bus out.

            When they were able to feed, and the maw was mollified, they noticed a numbness seeping into their brains.  It was a dark cloud billowing out like dragons breath across their surface of their brain.  Slowly it switched off the right/wrong centers in their brains and turned them into fragments of their former selves.

            They spoke in spurts of sentences, six or seven syllables in total.  Any concern of personal appearance or hygiene dissolved.  Their clothes became stained and torn.  The people they met were chilled by their eyes, they had the dull luster of smeared glass.  Thick beards sprouted across their faces.  Their teeth yellowed.  Their shaggy hair became a nest for insects.  The changes were extreme, but came along slowly by degrees.  All became part of the routine, all became normal, all became life.

            A few miles off the Texas/Mexico border, Luke became unable to make it to the next town.  They had attracted attention when they got on, but after a few hours of Luke white knuckling his seat he began to make everyone nervous.  He was curled in a ball moaning and gurgling with agony.  Sam had eaten the last of what they had a few hours before, and was barely keeping it together himself, he had his face pressed against the window, the coolness helped.

            A man stood, nervous looks greeted with nervous glances.  The bus driver kept on driving, his radio was broken.  Someone mentioned maybe Luke could use some water.

            A man approached Luke, gasping and rasping and snarling, face buried in the cushion.

            “Here,” the man said, “Take some water.”  He extended a hand to hold the back of Luke’s head with ginger affection.  He lost three fingers.

            The rest of the passengers wrestled the human shaped monsters.  The bus shook and tilted as the driver made hasty motions for the shoulder of the road.  It was messy and intense but the patrons on the bus managed to get the brothers free from their vehicle, and spill the monsters into the night.

            They staggered into the blackness, running after the bus as it dimmed into the night.  Stranded, Sam turned to Luke, bent over with a face covered in precious blood.  He dived, tackled Luke to the ground.  They rolled and kicked and punched.  They snapped and snarled, and rolled into the centerline of the highway.

            Bright high beams swerved, tires squealed and pierced the night.  The brothers fought on, until the sound of a car door stopped them.  They lay frozen in the middle of the road, the shadowy good Samaritan running towards them.  In the lazy glow of the taillights, their eyes shone red.

 

            Raul and Paolo leaned against the rust stained pickup and smoked and listened to the radio.  The sun beat down on them like an invisible hammer.  Paolo cracked a beer, sipped at the foam then held the can to his head.

            “They mix in some stuff from a fungus,” Raul was saying, “This parasite from the islands somewhere.”

            “I know you said that already.” Paolo shrank down to his haunches, catching what shade he could.  “It just don’t make no sense.”

            “It works like this, the fungus infects an ant, it gets inside the ants brain, it tells the ant to crawl up.  The ant goes up and up and up until it gets into the sunlight.  Then the fungus grows up out the ants head in a bright stalk.  A bird sees the stalk and swoops down,” Raul showed the motion with his hands, “and eats up the ant.  The spores collect inside the bird and it s***s them out someplace else, and starts again.”

            Paolo shook his head and drank from his beer.  “I’ll say one thing, it sounds like a s****y situation all around.”

            Raul nodded.

            “So then how do they know where they’re going?”

            “The ants?”

            “No them?”

            “Something to do with the iron in the blood.  The man puts in this stuff that like, f***s with your sense of direction.  So, just send ‘em south.”

            A truck drove past, kicking up a dust storm and rousting random scraps of garbage.  Raul removed his hat and wiped his forehead.  He glared off into the distance, squinted, then lifted his binoculars.

            “So they how do you know all this s**t?” Paolo said.

            “I mean its rumor mostly, but, it all fits.  You could look that parasite s**t up on youtube.”

            “That’s fucked up.”

            In the farsight of the binoculars, two haggard figures shambled off in the distance.

            “We got two.”

            “Two?”

            “C’mon.”

            Raul started up the truck, Paolo jumped in the bed.  He lifted a dart gun from a tool box.  The truck roared down the road.  They slowed as they approached, verified they were what they were looking for, then turned and pulled up behind them.  Paolo jumped from the back and fired the first dart.  It struck Sam in the chest.  He reeled, pulled out the dart and howled.  Luke lurched forward, teeth bared, his skin red and flaking from sun poisoning.  Paolo had another dart loaded and fired.  The drug dropped them to the dust.

            Raul walked over from the truck and tossed Paolo the zip-tie restraints.  They bound Sam and Luke by their hands and their feet and then placed them into the truck bed.  Paolo gagged them, then covered them with a tarp and then Raul headed back down the highway.

            “How come they don’t get picked up though?  I mean, their like rabid dogs.”  Paolo said.

            Raul lit a cigarette.  “Look man, just take the money they give you and shut the f**k up.”

            They drove into town, past the main drag to a large warehouse that served the local feed lots.  They pulled around back a small network of sheds and storage houses to a quiet secluded spot and got out.  Raul walked up to a small sheet metal shed labeled “Tools/fabrication” and knocked.  A large man stepped out covered in grease and sweat.

            “We got two.” He said.

            The large man nodded, looked around, then motioned for them to pull around.

            They unloaded Sam and Luke from the back and carried them inside.  A smaller man came over and injected them with stronger sedatives.  Sam and Luke were then wrapped in canvas and strapped to a stretcher then rolled into the back.  A door was lifted, the stretchers were chained to the back of an ATV, then Sam and Luke were tugged down the winding spot-lit darkness of a crude dirt tunnel.  On the other side, they were injected again and loaded into a horse trailer, then simply taken away.

 

            The workers stamped out their cigarettes and laughed as they opened the doors of the trailer and dragged out the tampones from the back.  Sam had been screaming at the top of his lungs for the past several hours.  Only a dry broken gargle was escaping his throat and deep red splotches had appeared in various spots where he had been slamming his body against the side of the trailer.  Luke was whimpering and mumbling incoherently, his body limp as the filthy cloth that enclosed him.  They were dropped to the ground.  Sunlight filtered through their shrouds as they were dragged by horses across ruff dirt.

            They were taken inside a building then roughly placed into chairs.  Thick heavy straps encircled their torsos.  The fabric was cut from around their heads.  The air was hot and thick, yet still felt cool on their sweating skin.  The ravages of dehydration was taking its toll, yet was dim glimmer of sensation as opposed to the raging cravings of the maw.  Sam still had the energy to take meager snaps at the hands of their captors, but after a few pathetic attempts, let his head hang to his chest like his brother next to him.

            The sound of expensive shoes clacking on hardwood approached.  Sam and Luke could smell his sweat before his cigarette.  As the footsteps approached rags were shoved into the men’s mouths then used to lift their heads back.  Standing in front of them, was a man of medium height dressed in the white summer clothes of a South American gentleman.  He looked them over like a man appraising the purchase of a piece of stereo equipment.  He took a drag of his cigarette then waved over someone from outside their field of vision.

            The large face of a woman filled their vision.  She shined a pen light in their eyes and probed with her fingers around their neck and under their chins.  She gripped the muscles in their arms and slapped their legs to gauge how well they twitched.  She removed a shiny silver lighter and struck it.  She tangled the flame in front of their faces to check for the appropriate reaction.

            “What do you think?” the man said.

            “They’re in ruff shape, but I don’t see why they couldn’t be rehabbed.”

            The man gave them a final once over before nodding to whomever it was that was standing behind them and they were dragged away.

           

            They were locked away in a dark damp place.  They were immobilized, unable to move, unable to see.  IV bags kept them hydrated, and kept their bodies alive, yet did little to numb the crashing successions of thunderclaps that was the maw.  It screamed for them to move, it commanded them to rise, it infiltrated every speck and atom in their beings with the impulse to feed.  There were no more dreams to haunt them, no more terrible mental riddles that needed solving.  The stone teeth of the maw were now like slowly tumbling mountains confined in the small area of their stomachs tore at the synapses of their brains.  It fed on the strips of their sanity like a grain mill with its impossible to fulfill command to arise and hunt down and consume the flesh of the living.  Against this there was no possible way to fight, to overcome, so their respective minds, faced against the choice of unimaginable suffering and lingering, chose the less of two evils, and winked out.

            The door of the holding cell cracked open.  The man opening it reeled back as the smell of two days worth of piss and s**t hit him in the face.  He turned the knob on the wall and a bare bulb flashed to light over the metal table where a man lay strapped down and writhing.

            He approached careful not to step on the collections of human waste streaming across the floor.  He checked the man’s pulse then wiped a small area of skin with a wet cotton ball.  He injected the man and waited, retching at the stink once more.   The man on the table’s moaning quieted down, the visitor approached.  He pulled the man’s eyes open and flashed a light onto the pupils.  The visitor gently lifted the man’s head off the table and softly slapped him awake.  The man’ eyes fluttered momentarily then opened.  They stared ahead and saw nothing.

            “What’s your name?” The visitor said.

            The man on the table’s dead stare didn’t waver.

            “Where are you?”

            The man on the table’s dried cracked lips quivered.  His sunken face twitched with the pangs of confusion.  Deep in the man’s throat escaped the sound of words that could not take shape.

            The visitor placed the man’s head down on the table.  “This one’s ready.” He yelled.

 

            They performed their actions from rote muscle memory.  They stood twenty deep along a long table in a sheet metal shack.  Outside men with guns patrolled the compound.  Inside there was not a single sound of conversation, or idle cough, or request.  They entered carrying bins of product.  They placed the bins on one side of the table and slid them across to another standing across from them.

            The bin was opened and the product was carefully scooped out and placed in a small form that sat on a scale.  The worker carefully placed small scoops of product into the form until the light on the scale turned green.  As soon as the green light flashed, the forms were lifted up and their white powder contents deposited in a bag.  The bag was then sealed and placed on a rack behind them.  When the rack was filled a worker carried it away.

            After the current shipment was processed, though it take fifteen hours or five days, a man with a gun enters and blows a loud whistle three times.  The workers stop and turn to the right.  They shuffle out the other side of the shed in single file unison.  The workers are then marched to the holding cell and led inside.  The workers silently form a line against the side of the wall, standing on a long continuous platform.  The workers know what is coming, and sometimes begin to twitch and shiver with anticipation.  The door to the holding cell is closed and the workers lean their heads against the wall.  Through a small hole in the wall, the guards can now attach the leather strands holding the leather muzzles to the faces of the workers, to small notches.  Once this was done, the small platform jutting from the wall could be dropped, freeing the workers mouth and jaws.

            Two men with bandannas over their faces arrive with giant drums filled with stinking boiling water.  They rush inside and kick the drums over, spilling the foul contents onto the dirt floor.  The workers dive face first into the boiling mess, wrestling and fighting for the pale purple-gray hunks of strange meat swirling in the putrid brine.  The guards have to wade into the shrieking mess of bodies striking backs and arms to keep the workers from biting each other.  For those globs of unusual flesh are the days reward, the key to production, and the guards pretend not to notice when a worker who has outlived his usefulness is dragged away into the shed where the bandanna faced men ply their own morbid function of preparing the next days feed.

Author's Note

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