Ivory Fortress

Snippets of natural scenes flashed across Alistair’s window: a babbling brook; a still desert; a flowing waterfall. Alistair threw each aside with a flick of his finger. This was the nice thing about the computerized windows; anything he could imagine, he could see. Nothing suited his fancy that evening, however, and he decided to just shut the window down. He flicked the switch on the corner of one of the windowsills, and in an instant the babbling brook faded away into a pitch black screen. Alistair hit another switch, and the shades across all of the room's windows slowly sank over them in unison.

He clapped once, and his fireplace was aglow with the purple flame of a newborn fire. Alistair’s pristine white living room was blanketed with the fire’s heat, and the thin plastic glinted in the newfound light. He walked to the wall’s kitchen compartment and pressed the beverage button. His favorite Earl Grey Tea appeared in the cup underneath, and with it in tow; he walked to the computer desk.

Alistair sat at the desk and placed his tea on it.

“Computer, awake.” Alistair announced, and the computer turned on.

The computer’s screen faded from black into a bright white. Slowly, a face appeared on the screen with the white as a backdrop. The eyes of the face opened, and a smile formed over it.

“Good evening, Mr. Knight.” it replied. “What can I do for you?”

“Log on to the Home World, please.”

“Of course, sir.”

The white screen morphed into the familiar computer cyberspace system, a dark screen with strings of green code floating around like bubbles in a fish tank. Alistair watched as fragments of various website code flew past as the computer searched for the Home World, a simulated utopian township where internet users gathered as avatars to socialize, work and play. Basically, living a life without ever living it.

Rushing past the fragmented code, Alistair took a long sip of his warm Earl Grey and settled back into the chair. He felt at peace.

Suddenly, the searching, along with the pieces of code, screeched to a halt. The green code changed into red code, and a slight siren noise rang out into the silence of Alistair’s living room.

“Sir, there has been an unauthorized user logged on to your account.”

Alistair’s eyes opened with frustration. He sighed, put his cup down and asked the computer for the user’s address.

“Unlisted.”

Alistair froze.

“Unlisted? Computer, check again.”

“I’m sorry, Alistair, still unlisted.”

Unlisted? Who would have been unlisted in this day and age? Everyone was logged on to the Home World, everyone knew who everyone was.

“Sir, there is unrestricted activity on your Home Page avatar.”

“What is it? What is it doing?” Alistair asked, manually bringing up the desk’s keyboard. With a finger swipe, it rose from the desk in a flurry of clicking and whirring.

“The avatar is speaking to other avatars in the Home World.” the computer said.

“How? I’m not even logged in yet!”

“I do not know, Mr. Knight.”

“Can we see what it’s saying to the other users?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. In fact, I am receiving transcripts of the conversation now.”

“Well for god sakes, read them!” Alistair said, running a hand through his combed silver hair.

“Yes, sir.” the computer replied. “Alistair Knight to Gretchen Bennett: ‘You look very good in that dress’. Gretchen Bennett to Alistair Knight: ‘Uh, thank you’. Alistair Knight to Gretchen Bennett: ‘I bet you would look even better not in that dress’. Gretchen Bennett to Alistair Knight: ‘Excuse me? I’m seventeen, dude. Your profile says you’re, like sixty. Fuck off creeper’. Alistair Knight to Gretchen Bennett: ‘Did you know I am the CEO of HomeCorp? I built this world. I can see you not only within this virtual plane, but register your shapes outside, in the real world. You really are quite beautiful, Ms. Bennett’.”

“Computer, stop.”

Alistair’s brain began to race as he searched for a reason for the unauthorized activity. What had he done? Who could have been doing this? Was someone trying to ruin HomeCorp? Was someone trying to ruin him? He began typing frantically, trying to manually identify the hacker.

“Computer, set up the security wall.” he commanded.

“Yes, sir.”

A conversation bubble popped up on the top left of the screen and began flashing.

“Mr. Knight, Mr. Harrison is requesting a conversation.”

“Put him on.” Alistair commanded, still typing in the identification code.

The computer obliged, and the face of Tom Harrison, the executive vice-president of HomeCorp, appeared on the screen. He looked pale, and to Alistair’s eyes, somewhat sickly. His hair was ruffled and stuck to his face in various places by sweat. A slight stubble was on his face.

“Jesus, Tom. What happened?” Alistair asked.

Tom looked back in the screen with dead eyes.

“Tom?”

“They’re coming for me, Alistair.” Tom said, in a voice as dead as his eyes.

“Who is, Tom? What’s going on? Have you noticed a hacker in the code of Home World? Someone has logged into my account and is forcing my avatar to talk to underage women and…”.

Alistair paused as Tom slowly raised a pistol to the camera.

“Someone hacked me too, sir.” Tom said dreamily, rubbing the pistol against his temple. “Made my avatar confess to a embezzling scheme from two years ago, at Ark Technology”.

“What? Tom, that’s insane. You were working for me then…” Alistair continued.

“No, sir. I did it. I really did it. I worked with one of their guys. Thought I could make some more money, ‘cause I wasn’t making enough back at my old job. Then you hired me, and I forgot about it. I must have stolen millions from thousands of people. Never thought I would be caught.”

The lights in Tom’s apartment flickered as Alistair heard a rumble from his end.

“Tom? What was that?” Alistair asked.

“Them. The people. They’re messing with my power, that’s the first thing they’ll do; try and force you out of your ivory fortress. The information was sent out to the public a few hours ago, sir…nobody was happy to find out that one of our nation’s virtual leaders was involved in such a scandal, stealing all of their money...taking money from the poorest Americans to cater to his own interests. They want to kill me, sir.” Tom said. He got quiet for a moment.

He chuckled as the lights dimmed and Alistair heard faint screaming behind him; behind the sealed door of his pristine white apartment.

“It’s funny, sir.” Tom said, still smiling in the dreamy way.

“Tom? Tom, answer me, god dammit!”

“HomeCorp is more important to this country than its actual leaders. We’re more popular than the president is.” Tom whispered, and suddenly a old automatic gun, one from before the Technology Renaissance of the last twenty years, appeared from the bottom of Alistair's screen. Tom raised it to his temple.

“Tom? Tom!” Alistair begged. “Computer, send an emergency response team to Whitechapel Complex, Room #447…”, but the lights went out.

Alistair heard the voices of the people outside get louder as the pounding started on the door. Then, he saw the flash of and heard the sound of the gun firing. The conversation bubble went black. A window popped up, telling Alistair that its user was offline.

“Sir, shall I send that response unit?” the computer asked.

Alistair put his head in his hands.

“No, no.” he replied.

“Then I believe you should see this.”

Alistair raised his head as the computer brought a video to the screen. It was of a newscaster in front of…good lord; it looked like Alistair’s building. A huge crowd of people stood around and behind her, waving guns and knives and god knew what else.

“I’m standing here in front of Knight Tower, the offices and home of Alistair Knight, the CEO of HomeCorp, and the largest virtual world of our time.” she said.

Alistair leaned in closer to the screen.

“In the wake of the recent embezzlement scandal of Thomas Harrison, the executive vice-president of HomeCorp, comes a new development in the fate of the globally recognized and important company. Several young women, all under the age of eighteen years old, have come forward to police claiming that Alistair Knight assaulted them in succession over the course of ten years, and then settled out of court with their families in exchange for their silence. The crowd behind me is exhilarating, as the public demands to know the reason for such a heinous act.” the newscaster continued.

She strode to one of the angry crowd members, a man with a shaved head, tattoo sleeves and a white tank top on.

“Sir, what do you think the police should do to Mr. Knight in the wake of these startling accusations?” she asked him.

“I think they should let us have him; throw him to the god damn hounds!” he screamed, waving a bowie knife wildly. His drunken buddies laughed and shot a few rounds into the sky. Alistair heard their echo just outside his window. “We’ll take care of that child molester!”

Alistair shut the video down just as he saw the crowd begin to rush into his building, ignited by the gunshots. The newscaster and her cameraman struggled to get out of the way in time.

He sat back in his chair in the silence as his world began to crumble around him.

“Shall I send a call to the police sir, for your protection?” his computer asked.

“No, no. It’s fine. Shut down, computer.”

“Yes sir, as you wish…”, it struggled to reply as it flickered and began to die out.

The lights in Alistair Knight’s apartment, his “ivory fortress” flickered once, then twice and finally went out, plunging him into darkness.

He sipped his tea and awaited the hounds.

A Social Gathering

           As the night had gone on, it became increasingly clear to Mr. Carlisle and his guests that his party was beginning to die down. The excitement that had happened previously in the night, involving drinking and dancing and gossiping, had done a complete turnaround. Where there once had been drinking, there was flat-tasting beer and wine that had been drank so much it had lost flavor. Where there had once been dancing, there was Mr. Carlisle and his five party guests, who were all friends, who were all couples, who were all sitting in a semi-circle on his sofa and living room chairs and piano bench. Where there was gossip, there was awkward silence.

As Mr. Carlisle took this all in, he realized that his guests were becoming bored. Mrs. Astor took a long drag of her cigarette in its long holder, blowing the smoke out into a ring in the center of their semi-circle. Mr. Brighton sighed and finished the little wine he had. Mr. Carlisle looked to his beloved wife for help, for anything of use, but she was too busy staring at the rest of the guests. Suddenly, Mrs. Brighton spoke up.

Thank goodness for Barbara Brighton, Mr. Carlisle thought to himself.

“I have an idea.” Mrs. Brighton said aloud.

“Oh?” Mrs. Astor inquired. “I forgot you knew how to think, Barbara.”

A gentle smattering of polite laughter followed, which Mrs. Brighton took part in herself.

“You are such a comedian, Alice. An idea to entertain ourselves, I mean. No disrespect to Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle, of course, the party has been quite entertaining for all of us, I’m sure.” she continued, not missing a beat. “But what of a scavenger hunt, like we used to do?”

Mr. Carlisle heard his wife chuckle lightly to the left of him, just outside of his peripheral vision.

“You cannot be serious, can you Barbara?” Mrs. Carlisle asked. “We were younger then. We have lives now, and responsibilities. Those silly hunts won’t work anymore, they won’t have that spark of fun they once had.”

“And why not, Candace?” Mrs. Brighton retorted. “We had fun back then, didn’t we? What has really changed?”

“That is true, Candace.” Mr. Brighton agreed. “Don’t you remember when we were younger? When our parents would go off on business trips out of the country together and we would be holed up our mansions all of the time? We had to think of something else to do. Those hunts were our lives when the yacht club closed.”

“I say we should do it.” Mr. Astor said, grinning widely, sweeping his feathery brown hair (with a recent streak of grey, Mr. Carlisle noticed, no doubt from the most recent stock market crash) back behind his ear.

“I agree, love. Should we play with the same rules?” Mrs. Astor asked. “Three items to scavenge? The gentlemen versus the women? An hour allotted to obtain each item?”

“Splendid, Alice. You remembered the rules after all of these years?” Mrs. Brighton asked, clearly impressed.

“Oh yes, dear. One doesn’t easily forget the rules to our scavenger hunt.” Mrs. Astor sniped back with a smile.

A second gentle smattering of polite laughter followed, which Mrs. Brighton, again as always, took part in herself.

***

It was the third hour of the hunt, with only the Carlisles left to complete their task, obtaining a beef tongue. The Astors versed each other in finding a pig’s ear and the Brightons had successfully found a chicken’s foot. Mr. Astor had found the right ear, scoring a point for the gentlemen. Mrs. Brighton, however, managed to find a chicken’s foot and get it back to the Carlisle house before the hour ran out, scoring a point for the women. It had all came down to Mr. Carlisle versus his wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle had departed for their item with a kiss to each other, as was custom for the game. It was a symbol of good fortune and sportsmanship on their part, and was something that made Mr. Carlisle proud to be among such noble and good friends.

The barn the Carlisles had chosen for their task was off the main road about ten minutes out. Mrs. Carlisle had chosen the particular one, her husband had chosen the O’Shaughnessy property, but she did not care for the cow there. It was too moody and unpredictable. So, Mr. Carlisle had repented and there he was, in the heat of the moment, ready to get his prize.

He had begun, as he always had, sneaking around the barn stealthily, so as to not wake any of the filthy animals inside. He approached the barn door cautiously. He moved it just a bit, to test it for any creaking. It had none. Mr. Carlisle loved it when he was this lucky on the hunts.

The door swung open easily, and he crept inside. He could already smell the poor hygiene on the animals in the barn. If Mrs. Astor had been here, he knew she would have gagged quite a bit, and maybe even thrown up. But he would press on.

He walked further into the one-room barn, which was lightly furnished. He quickly searched for the cow. It had to be the right cow and the right tongue to win the hunt for his fellow gentlemen. It had to be just right.

Finally, in one corner of the room lying on the floor on damp newspapers, Mr. Carlisle saw her. She was perfect.  She was slightly darker than the rest of the animals, but not significantly so. She was not a hideously overweight animal, but just enough to where Mr. Carlisle could tell that she was an overeater. Gluttony was in this beast’s vocabulary.

His wife was nowhere to be seen, and he had found the perfect cow; the perfect tongue.

The eyes of Mr. Carlisle’s prize began to flutter and awaken (which was due, he assumed, to the long period in which he stood over her) but he quickly shushed her so she didn’t wake the others.

She struggled for a moment, but he kept a steady hand and worked quickly.

***

The socialites sat again in their semi-circle, each with a drink in hand, reminiscing about their most recent scavenger hunt. Mr. Carlisle had won it for the gentlemen, and they were all toasting to their success in good fun.

“So, did everyone enjoy themselves tonight?” Mr. Astor asked.

“I did, Arthur. I haven’t had that much fun since college. The whole thing really is exhilarating, isn’t it?” Mr. Brighton replied, brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other.

“Oh yes, indeed, Benjamin.”

“Did anyone have trouble with their items?” Mrs. Carlisle asked. “Who did everyone choose?”

The Astors began, as Mr. Carlisle knew they always would.

“We had pig’s ear, and we chose Mr. Louis Farrell, age forty-five.” Mrs. Astor said. “He lost his job a few months back, and hasn’t found one since. He had been living with his mother, and refused to work picking the crops in favor of sleeping. He was like a pig in his lazy ways. We agreed that he accurately represented sloth, the sin of laziness, and he became the pig’s ear”.

 “We had chicken’s foot, and we chose Ms. Selena Gutierrez, age twenty-two.” Mr. Brighton said next. “A drug addict with serious violent issues from the Seaside District.  Barbara threatened her with a pocketknife for money, and she obliged, and threatened my poor wife. She was like a cock in a cock fight, so violent for nothing. Made me sick. We both agreed she accurately represented wrath, the sin of anger, and she became the chicken’s foot.”

Mr. Carlisle let his wife relate the story of their item, the beef tongue. They had not chosen Audrey O’Shaughnessy as he had suggested, but had instead gone with a Mrs. Opal Jennings. Her tendencies for overeating and gluttonous ways of not feeding her starving children lead to her ultimate choosing.

The group of wealthy socialites continued their light discussion, while a severed human ear, amputated foot and grey, slimy tongue sat in individual buckets of ice on the Carlisle coffee table.

“Oh, how I loathe being around them…” Mrs. Astor said, shuddering slightly and nearly spilling her red wine. “Those impoverished ones, those filthy animals, so unclean and unhealthy. The poor really are a nuisance to this country.”

“That’s why it is fun, dearest wife!” Mr. Astor said jubilantly. “These silly little games provide us with a challenge to go into those hellish animal pens. To let us reaffirm ourselves of our good choices in life over their poor ones when we feel low. It is simply life’s way, and a hell of a good time!”

There was a gentle smattering of polite laughter, and Mr. Carlisle joined in for the first time in years.

***

After their friends had left for the evening, the Carlisles destroyed the items and got ready for bed.

Mr. Carlisle felt very good that evening, he felt young and fresh and alive. He was pleased with the latest scavenger hunt, and wanted to do something else to recapture the days of his youth. He got his idea once he and his wife had settled into bed.

“Candace?”

“Yes, Campion?”

“We should gather the others tomorrow night, as well. Hold another dinner, you know. I could prepare my famous filet mignon I’m always going on about.”

“I think that’s a splendid idea, dear. But what ever for?

“Now that we’ve done the scavenger, I believe it’s time for us to do a fox hunt.”

Fear Comes Calling (2 of 2)

            The night was brisk and dark, like every time Fear and I had met had been.

            As I walked to my childhood home, the night began morphing into our familiar battleground. The wind, once roaring, slowly died down until it was non-existent. The air, once sweetly smelling of Mrs. Johansen’s lilacs, now smelt of death. It was something I was, unfortunately, all too familiar with. On the same note the air had become colder and colder the close I came to my former home.

            By the time I stood in front of the heap of creaking, dead wood that once was my childhood domain, I could see my breath, which came out as steam in front of me with every step I took. I tugged at my robe until it was closer to my body, to make sure my warmth was in check. I chuckled a little upon feeling my ribs with my fingers. I realized I had become a spitting image of Fear himself. I was very skinny, with only strings of hair on my otherwise bald head. My eyes weren’t black, but my once green-ones had lost some of their green and the whites of my eyes had faded until they were a watery-grey color. They might as well have been black. My nose wasn’t broken, but somewhat crooked. One of my ears didn’t have a chunk out of it; rather, I had lost enough hearing in one to the point where it was probably as useless as His ear.

            I strode up the path to my home, finally stopping at the steps. The windows were broken, the whole place smelled of bird shit. I took a step up towards the stoop and the stair bent inward with a scream of wood splintering. I quickly got my weight onto the more stable stoop, but the stair kept the inward imprint of me. The night was dark already, but my house was a pit of darkness all on its own.

            A freezing gust of wind hit me, so strong it nearly knocked my small, bony frame over, and my door swung open.

            In the wind I swore I heard: Are you scared, Jimmy?

            I slowly rose to my proper height and gazed into the darkness.

            I swallowed hard, thought of my family, and hobbled in. The darkness swallowed me, and my door slammed shut with another gust of wind.

***

            I couldn’t see where I was, but since I had lived in the house for nearly twenty years, I knew where I stood, or what room the damp, stinking husk of wood once held. Upon entering, I knew I was in our foyer. The chandelier was where it had been for seventy years: right above my head. However, I could tell the cobwebs that draped over it, because some brushed over the top of my head.

            I walked a little further into the room, and the floorboards creaked under my weight combined with that of the cane. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a brilliant light in the corner of the room. As I strode towards it, the light formed into a human-sized medium mass. The mass was crying loudly, and it became louder the closer I got. Then, the mass took form into one I recognized. I realized it was my mother.

            She was crouched on the ground, facing the corner of the wall and crying.

            In shock, I barely knew what to say.

            “M-Mom? Are you okay?” I managed, stumbling over every word.

            My father appeared at my right, and with him, the old house changed into a new one. The house was empty, but I realized that what I saw before me was the house and my family on the day we had moved in seventy years earlier. The version of me, age six, was outside, as I could clearly see from the window, playing make-believe. My parents, however, were not as I had ever seen them before.

            My crying mother was grabbed by my father.

            “Please, Thomas, please no…” she yelled, trying to shield her bleeding face. My father would not listen, and beat my mother.

            “This will teach you to talk to another man, Martha!” my father screamed at her in between hits. “You forced me to do this!”

            “Thomas…no, you have it wrong, please…I was talking to Jimmy’s teacher, and he was wishing me good luck with Jimmy!” my mother sobbed.

            “This is it, Martha! If this is how you want to begin our new life, then so be it!” my father yelled back.

            I felt years of anger rushing through me, and it found its way to my fists. I ran towards my father, screaming. He turned to face me, but I took no notice. I ran and screamed towards him for what seemed like hours. Then, I reached him, and my hand went straight through his chest. I dug through it until I felt the heart, and I squeezed lightly, enough to cause some minor damage to it that could only be corrected through surgery, before being thrust back.

            I stood. My father lay on the ground, clutching his chest and writhing in pain. My mother stood, her face stained with tears, blood running out of her nose.

            I reached for my mother, leaning so all of my weight was on my cane.

            “Mother?”

Suddenly, the cane was thrust out of my hands. I fell to the ground hard, hitting the floorboards with all of my weight, crashing through it.

***

When I awoke, I knew what I had become.

I sat up where my grave had once been. My clothes were filthy and tattered, as were my clothes and socks.

 

My hair was in long strands that surrounded me, which I brushed aside with long, filthy nails.

Blood dripped from my mouth and onto my shirt.

What was once my body would be no more. Nobody would ever know that Jimmy Peterson ever existed.

My brother would be born in my place. My father would stop beating my mother, after claiming he was confronted with what he feared most, but still had heart troubles. My mother would become suspicious of any of food she didn’t make, claiming it could be poisoned, and someone was trying to kill her slowly.

I grinned, excited for what was to come.

It was time to go to work.

***

The first time my brother saw Fear, I was standing in his closet, blood running down my bleeding gums, grinning the broken shards of glass that made up my teeth.

Fear Comes Calling (1 of 2)

          The first time I saw Fear, I mean really looked into his cold, black eyes, I was seven years old. It was my birthday. I have a summer birthday, so birthday parties for me were always a huge gathering of family and friends alike. My seventh was no different, and after various gifts were given and a birthday song was sung, everyone left. It was as if none of it really mattered in the end, like everyone was just there out of courtesy to my parents and I. Once the party had ended, my parents went about cleaning up and trying to salvage our home from the trash dump that had tried to take it over.

I took my new bicycle I had gotten (a beautiful cherry red Schwinn and a gift from my grandfather) and set off into the neighborhood. I rode past the houses of kids I had just seen ten minutes before, but none of them came out to greet or play with me. I rode past the local grocery store that had a sign displayed that proposed: “It’s your birthday? Come get a free cupcake courtesy of Melrose Grocery!” I knew Mr. Melrose, a plump man with a big mustache and glasses that sat on the tip of his nose. I often helped bag groceries at the store. He knew it was my birthday, but when I had come to get my birthday cupcake earlier that afternoon, he told me they had run out. Davey Stone came just as I left, and I saw Mr. Melrose hand Davey a cupcake.

I rode that Schwinn for what must have been hours, so long that when I finally stopped, I had no idea where I was. I knew every inch of my hometown, but where I was I had never seen before. I was in a field, flat except for the thick woods just to the south. The woods were dark, and I couldn’t see past the large trunks of the trees. It had been a windy day, but the wind had stopped. It had been a bright, sunny day, but the sun was now behind a thick cloud cover. It had smelled of sweet flowers all day as well, but now, I only smelt what smelled like burning trash. It was eighty-five degrees that day, but it felt like the temperature was closer to thirty. I was shivering; my bare legs (in shorts) were against the now freezing bright red metal of the Schwinn. That was when I saw him.

He was leaning against a tree at the front of the forest, smiling at me. His teeth weren’t teeth; they were jagged pieces of glass jammed into his gums. The glass was bloody from this, and was trickling down his chin and onto his neck in a fluid, dark red stream. His eyes glistened, but they had no pupils. They didn’t even have white parts, they were just black. They were just cold and black. His nose was twisted to one side; like it had been broken once before and never healed. He was missing a part of one of his ears; it looked like it had been bitten off. He had skin the color of curdled cream. He was very skinny, with strings of dirty black hair blowing in the slight wind that had started up. He was wearing a white dress shirt, now browned from what I assumed had been dirt. Splotches of a lighter brown littered it. I knew this was blood, I had seen the same colored spots on the apron of the butcher at Melrose Grocery. He was wearing tattered brown pants, which were too short, so his bony legs were displayed at the bottom of them, wearing brown socks, also tattered. His brown shoes had holes in them, and one pale toe stuck out. In one pale, bony hand, in between fingers that looked like twigs with sharpened yellowed nails attached to them, he held an old bowler hat.

The man’s mouth moved, but since he was so far away, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Suddenly, on the brisk wind that again blew past my ears, I heard the whispered words: “Are you scared?”

I simply sat back down on my bike, put my feet on the pedals, and turned around. I rode back the way I came. I turned once to see if he was still standing there against the tree. He was, still smiling at me, but then he put his bowler hat on and calmly walked into the woods, disappearing into the darkness.

***

For several years after that, I saw the man many times, often before or during tragedies in my life.

***

He was the drunk driver that hit my car off of a country road when I was eighteen years old, sending it spiraling out of control and into a river. I survived, but my left arm had been crushed in the wreckage. It was amputated soon after. When police arrived, they found a totaled blue truck on the corner of the woods, door ajar, the driver missing. I recounted to a therapist many years later that I had seen him sitting at the bottom of the river, cross-legged, hair sticking straight up as my car sat at the bottom of the river. His mouth was moving, and I didn’t hear what he had said. I didn’t have to, I already knew.

***

He was the doctor that performed my father’s open-heart surgery, who I didn’t meet until well after the surgery.

My father passed away on the operating table at age fifty-three.

I called the police, but when they arrived at the hospital they found a timid, young, normal doctor wearing the same nametag as the man.

I convinced my mother not to press charges against the poor doctor, who swore he had no open-heart surgeries scheduled at all that month.

***

He was the landlord who “found” the dead body of my brother, who had committed suicide in his apartment at age twenty-five.

After his death and funeral, I was helping my mother clean out my brother’s items from the apartment when I found numerous journals and videotapes that belonged to my brother. Upon viewing them, I realized my brother had seen the man numerous times in the past few years, maybe even more than I had. He thought nobody would believe him, and the man finally scared him to death.

The landlord was found dead in his apartment, his face cut to shreds to the point of being unrecognizable, in what the police now claimed was the work of a serial killer targeting the apartment building.

None of the other tenants ever died during the time the case was open.

***

The man dealt me his final blow when he was the male nurse that took care of my mother in her final years.

When my mother’s body was found by neighbors on her eighty-seventh birthday, it was clear that she was slowly poisoned by the aide, who had been with her for several months, and who could only come around on the days I worked.

The autopsy of my mother’s body confirmed that she had died a slow and painful death. Scribbled on the bottom of the autopsy report in a different writing were the familiar words.

Are you scared?

***

I lived the rest of my life alone.

I never married, I never had children.

I didn’t want anything to happen to them.

I moved into a small house in my old neighborhood, where the other neighbors thought me crazy. I was the bogeyman the neighborhood children told stories about, the old man who snapped and murdered his entire family.

Come October, I had decided I was ready to die. I was seventy-six years old…how much longer could I live anyway?

That was when I found the words written in what looked like blood on the wall of my bedroom, on the night of October 30^th.

It was an address: 9182 Harmon Road, where my childhood home still sat, now rotted and barely standing. Under it was a smiley face, drawn in what was definitely not ink.

I accepted the challenge the man proposed. I would meet him in my old house. I was finished. He had ruined my life up to the point I was living it, but I refused to let him ruin it anymore. I put on my slippers and my robe, grabbed my cane, and snatched my hat from the rack by the front door. I was wearing my armor, I was prepared for battle.

I began the walk to my childhood home.

What a World

       The skydiving lesson was a gift from my father for my 30^th birthday. He claimed that now that I had reached thirty, it was time I “lived a little”. I never could understand how my brothers “lived” in my father’s eyes, though. My oldest brother was a neurologist, but the rest of the family joked he was brainless himself, for he never could seem to grasp the daily tasks the rest of us faced. Instead, an endless supply of servants living with him and his wife did everything for him. My middle brother, though a very successful accountant, had been diagnosed with a minor case of autism at age five, and it manifested in his emotions: it seemed he had none at all. He came off as odd and robotic in his relationships with other people, but it was just the way he was. He had even been called “heartless” by a past girlfriend due to his calculating way of approaching their relationship. Despite this, his numerical ways were huge benefits in his career, at which he excelled. My youngest brother was the hardest to deem “living a little” in my eyes. He had serious confidence issues, and these drove him to be afraid of any human contact. He was always the one of us to shrink away from adventure as kids, always being so afraid of failing he would refuse to do anything. It was like he didn’t have any courage at all, where he fared poorly on the small farm in Kansas where we grew up. This had hurt him particularly hard when he was an adult, and he had been reduced to living with my father and my stepmother, even though he was now twenty-three years old and had not gone to college. How were any of them living?

***

I had brought this information to my father when we had had our weekly lunch at Marvel’s Café. The weekly lunches at Marvel’s had been his idea, again. After the death of my mother, to whom I had been particularly close; my father was trying to make an effort to be close with his children, especially me, his only daughter. Growing up, our father worked so long on our farm that by the time in the late afternoon when he was finished, he was so tired he fell asleep instantly, never saying a word to us. As we grew up we all four helped, but never to the extent he had every day. So he wanted to spend time with us, and since I lived close (and not with him) we often met.

“I’m glad you could meet me today, Dot.” he had said. Dot was his nickname for me, which was short for my first name. Only my daddy could call me Dot, and only he ever would.

“Of course, Daddy. Don’t I always, at least once a week?”

“You do, but today is important. I really needed to talk to you.”

My mood instantly changed. My father was, when he wasn’t working, a very jovial man. The look on his face, however, had been different than the smiling old man he usually was. Whatever information he had to tell me, this was serious.

            “What is it, Daddy?” I asked.

            “Well, Zeke bit Effie last week…” he began, but I already knew the rest. Zeke was the last remaining of the three Cairn Terriers we had owned, which we had all adopted from a neighbor upon their birth. The other two, Hunk and Hickory, had since passed, but Zeke was still alive, but old. Apparently, he had bit my father’s second wife (and our stepmother) Effie, and she wanted to have him put down, claiming he was a menace. I thought the idea was ludicrous, he would be thirteen soon, and would die soon.

            “What the hell is wrong with that wicked bitch?”

            “Dot…”

            “No, Dad. This is wrong. She can’t barge in and demand the dog we’ve had since he was a week old be killed. How long have you two been married? Since April? That’s four months, Dad. Effie does not have any authority to do so.”

            My dad sat quietly for a moment, in what I assumed was thought.

            “I’ll do my best, darlin’.” my father said in his perfect Southern drawl. I knew that my father meant what he said, but the wicked bitch might just have her say after all, she usually did since their marriage.

            Shortly after, my father called me and told me that Effie refused to keep Zeke. He asked me to take him, but I couldn’t have pets at my apartment. The following day, when Effie was out shopping, I arrived at my father’s house and, with his permission, took Zeke. I told my father I would find a way to keep Zeke, even if it meant leaving my cramped apartment.

***

            After the skydiving lesson was over and I had been fitted for a suit, my instructor and I took the long descent up into the clouds, leaving the familiar Kansas ground I knew so well, leaving behind the drama of my personal life.

            “It’s supposed to be a beautiful day today…a perfect day for you to dive!” my instructor screamed over the roar of the plane. We were quickly approaching the diving point.

            “Great! I can’t wait!” I screamed back, fidgeting with my ponytail in anticipation. I didn’t look out of the plane at all, instead focusing on my bright red running shoes the entire time, which were clicking together with help from my feet.

            The point arrived closer than I thought, and soon, my instructor told me to prepare myself.

            It was no time that I was plummeting towards the familiar ground again. What if I didn’t want to go back down? What if I could just leave and go to a simpler place without my family, just Zeke and I?

            The parachute clung to my back, unopened and barely noticeable. I was screaming, not in fear, but in exhilaration. The air felt good; fresh.

            Remembering my training, I prepared to pull the parachute, as I was getting closer and closer to the ground. I pulled the cord, but instead of going down, I found myself going up. I was going higher and higher up…where was I going? How could I stop? Was I going to die? The air began changing, becoming lighter and lighter with every inch I took, and breathing became a struggle. I was relieved when the parachute finally performed its intended operation, and I began falling towards the ground instead of away from it.

            Landing in a field, I noticed that the Kansas I had landed in what very different from the one I had taken off from.

            A beautiful emerald castle sat just on the horizon, very far away. Fields and fields of flowers sat in perfect rows along the path I now stood on, with a thick forest on one side, leading into darkness in the west. The path itself was very different. Once a paved asphalt, it was now of a yellow brick.

            “I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore…” I found myself mumbling aloud.

Interview with a Spring-heeled Survivor

“Well, and then you know about the jumper, I assume…you don’t? I guess you’d like to know, wouldn’t you? If you are interviewin’ me for your retired policeman book, you want stories, don’t ya Busby?

            Listen up, I’ll tell you the greatest story that’s ever happened to a policeman…what? I know that’s a tall order, but if you’ll shut your mouth, I think I’ll make you agree with me.

            It was back in 1890…no, 1888. It was my first year as a constable, in Liverpool, England. I grew up near Liverpool, mind you, so I was pretty familiar with the area. I guess that’s why they put me over there…what? I said I guess that’s why they put me over there. Boy, I’ll be ninety-nine years old come September, and I can still hear better than you.

            Anyway, where was I?

            …Oh, right. The jumper. So one afternoon, around July I think, one of the guys serving under me…Jimmy O’Malley…came runnin’ up to me, yellin’ about someone jumpin’ off of Saint Francis Xavier's Church on Salisbury Street. My first thought was a priest had been doin’ wrong, and he turned to killin’ himself over salvation.

            I was wrong, though.

            When O’Malley and I got to the church, a crowd was gathered around it. Night was fallin’, and I knew that if this fella’ was serious about killin’ himself, nighttime was goin’ to be the time he would. I knew I had to act.

            I walked to the front, and peered up. The sun had set by this time, and darkness was approachin’ quick, so I couldn’t really see the jumper. I saw he was very tall, and very thin, kinda’ like you, Busby. He was pacing back and forth around the top, saying something…what’d you say? How do I know? I could see his mouth movin’.

            Now, my ears don’t work as well as they used to, but even then, I don’t think he was speaking English. I didn’t hear anything that sounded like English, anyway. Then, he approached the edge of the buildin’. Of the church. He started screamin’ something weird again, and then, he jumped.

            People started screamin’, O’Malley was yellin’ my name, but I could hear none of it. I was expectin’ the man to fall down hard, and splatter on the street. Instead, he flew through the air. Like, fifteen feet in the air, as if he had a spring in his heel or somethin’. In the moonlight, for a brief second, I could see his clawed hands and a tight-fitting black outfit. He had a cape, and, I swear I could see…your goin’ to laugh at me…red eyes.

            They were cold, and they felt like they burnt into my soul. I still think about those eyes. He disappeared into the night, and I never saw him again.

            I found out later that the man was the infamous creature called Spring-heeled Jack. He was spotted a few other times around suburban London, Scotland and the Midlands. Every so often, I hear in the news about another sighting. Those poor bastards.

            Sometimes, when the night is very dark, with no moon, I see him, Mr. Busby. Standing outside the window of my room. I see those eyes, and my heart stops a little.

            Then he jumps away.”

 

NOTE: This was an interview with retired constable Oswald Pawtucket, who was giving an account for Harrison Busby’s non-fiction book “In Their Words”, stories told by retired members of the Commonwealth police force of Great Britain. The mention of the entity Spring-heeled Jack has gone on public record as an actual sighting of the creature.