Hindered Souls: Dark Tales for Dark Nights, page 2
The long whiskers of a beard were forming around Evan's chin. He tried to count the time that had passed by toilet stops (these were immediately followed by a 'Clean Up' announcement from the heavens). It was no good though, he could almost feel the fibre of his brain rotting away inside his cranium. He sort of welcomed madness, at least it put a stop to the boredom.
The supervisor was patiently waiting for them in front of the checkout lanes. He wore a canary yellow suit, and matching top hat, which he tipped at Evan's wife as she approached. She did a theatrical curtsy, and they both politely chuckled at each other's folly. "You are one of the lucky few." He said to her in a voice that sounded like a hundred people speaking at once. "You have been selected for the trip of a lifetime."
Evan's wife nodded, as if she understood.
The supervisor's face was impossible to focus on, it never stood still at any point in time, juddering and moving in a rapid vibration. It was if the yellow-suited man operated at an incredibly high speed, his features were a stop motion blur. It hurt Evan just to look at him. "Females only." the supervisor continued. Evan's wife nodded, in an understanding way. They both turned and looked sympathetically at him. Evan felt a warm stream of urine run down his legs.
****
The yellow tabard at the checkout had an equally blurry face. It passed each item over the barcode scanner with a beep. Evan kept his jaded mind entertained by tallying the number of items they had accumulated, but lost count when it reached over two hundred. His wife stood in front of him, bag by her side, passively watching.
"We are so glad that you came," the many voices from behind the till said, conversationally. "So glad that we could provide a satisfactory consumer experience."
Evan hated it when the checkout girl made conversation, he always found it so awkward. He looked down at his damp trainers.
Assistants bagged the shopping, and loaded it into large brown paper bags. They placed them inside the rear hatch of a metallic, car sized contraption. It thrummed, almost silently, about three feet above the ground. It was marked with veins of glowing blue neon. It was like nothing Evan had ever seen before.
His thoughts were interrupted by his wife speaking to him. His eyes, with some effort, eventually focused on her face.
"You're paying." She said, it was the first time in recent memory that she had smiled. "You were in a world of your own there, you silly billy." She walked on ahead, and was helped onto the hovering contraption by one of the assistants.
She nodded a 'thank you,' and sat down in a plastic recliner seat. Evan's view of her was then obliterated by a door that descended from above with a hiss.
Evan turned to the checkout person with a wide, broken grin.
"So what do I owe you?" he asked, over-enthusiastically.
The checkout assistant handed Evan an item from below the counter, where the cash register was located. He received it gratefully, he could not believe his luck.
"Time to check out, Mr Evans," many people told him matter-of-factly.
A migraine was threatening to spread inwards from Evan's temples again. He took a moment to evaluate his surroundings with a pained grin spread across his face. He could now see neon blue veins, the same as the contraption behind them, spreading randomly throughout the walls and aisles of the store, off into the distance. Diseased tubes pumped with a phosphorescent cobalt toxin, as somewhere an engine of considerable size whirred into life.
The staff had gathered, and stood watching him with eyes that never ceased buzzing and vibrating. A line of painfully bright yellow tabards. What had been a low, unperceivable throng rose into the indistinct chatter of ten, twenty, fifty and then a hundred people talking. It quickly became thousands, loud enough to make Evan's ears throb.
They moved towards him slowly, arms reaching out to him. They wanted to be of assistance, they had traveled all this way to...help...them. He understood that now.
"You have a nice day!" beamed Evan, and raised the revolver to his head.
Burial Lovers
by Jeremy Joseph Light
Laying together with their heads leaned against a filthy black gravestone, John and Myra fed blackberries to each other in the Protestant cemetery. A few berries were dropped here and there. This didn’t stop either of them from eating them. In fact, they enjoyed the filth factor.
The gravestone above their heads read: “Ella Fitzpatrick 1906—1977”. John selected this one as the place to cuddle on this Tuesday night for one reason; the name of the deceased sounded vaguely similar to that of an ancient jazz singer. The monument itself was black Italian marble with white etching, and like many monuments from this era, it was both faded and stained from many years of all-American acid rain.
“Why do we always eat blackberries, John?” Myra whispered.
“Because, they’re the most goth of all berries…and they’re the easiest to steal from the neighbor lady.”
They giggled while squeezing just a bit closer together than before. Myra struck a match and lit a cigarette which illuminated her in the midnight fog. John began fumbling around in his pockets with a nervous look on his face. After a few moments, he smiled. Here they are, just where I left them, he thought as he handed Myra a couple of Vicodin.
“Buckle up, buttercup.” Myra said before chewing the pills up and swallowing loudly. John brushed under Myra’s chin with his ring finger and planted an impressive kiss filled with equal parts angst and nonchalance.
Myra finished her cigarette and put her head in the nook of John’s arm.
They very much appreciated each other’s company that night as they embraced like the zombie apocalypse was going to begin that morning.
Foster’s Cemetery was an okay place to bury a loved one, but it was an excellent place to bring a date.
Myra felt a little tug on her right foot.
Then a legitimate and intentional pull.
Myra began to sink and her instincts strangely told her not to fight it.
John was somewhere in between nodding off and completely passed out from the painkillers, completely unaware of the attack unfolding.
Myra’s fingertips reached out from the dirt waving goodbye like Queen Elizabeth on a parade float in slow motion.
Silence.
Degeneration-X
by M.R. Tapia
Whoever’s listening to this tape, I hope it helps the world in some way or another.
To be honest, I really don’t care who’s listening to me. It’s too late for any type of help, anyway. Nonetheless, I need you to know that this was not the blessing draped in glory that everyone makes it out to be. Regardless of what happens, I am dead by now. The old me shall never be, again. My identity will be completely regenerated into something else. You will be grey-haired and I will not remember you as I age all over again. Degeneration or not, we all fall apart at some time. My degeneration began last night.
They say that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. They also say that a degeneration can only happen to someone once. Well, as history has proved, lightning can strike the same place twice. And as I am unintentionally proving, degeneration can happen to someone twice. But who wants that? I don’t. I don’t remember the first one, of course, but if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have experienced that one either.
But, here I am living it. Again.
My life, falling apart. Again.
I never lived the perfect life, but I’ve also seen enough of those with imperfect lives to learn I had no room to boast or complain. I took the day as it came. I’ve heard the birds sing happily in the morning, and I’ve sank with the shipwreck hangovers. Take it as it approaches.
I never thought about what life was like before my first degeneration. I made sure to leave my rearview mirror filthy, those views create bitterness as cold as winter. Thank goodness for winter.
I had just closed the pub last night. With the bitter cold outside, it had been a slow night; I was glad, I had been ravaged with heartburn and stomach cramps. As usual, the manager had left before I was finished cleaning up after the oversized toddlers we call adults. I had worked with him since he opened the pub, so I was more than trusted with the keys. A manager without the reign. A jester among fools.
It had long dropped below zero, my senses alarmed me to this as I trekked home. Living a couple blocks away from the pub left me without the need of a car. I walked daily. The iced winter air nipped at me. My toes double socked. My hands numbing within their gloves. Jack Frost whispering sweet nothings into my ears through my wool cap. My nostrils iced like caverns in the Arctic Circle. My lips were dead stiff.
I reached the security door to my apartments, scavenging my pockets for the keys. The glove made the task finding them miserable. I ungloved my hand, found the keys and juggled them, excited for some heat. I jerked the frozen door open by its metal handle. The sound of twigs being snapped filled the air as I released the door and hopped inside the foyer. It was the tug at my grip that surprised me. Outside the window, the metal door handle was misshapen. With my bare hand, I wiped the frost from the inside of the window, and that’s when I saw the beginning of my degeneration.
Two fingers were missing from my right hand as my palm wiped the glass. Two fingers clung to the metal handle.
My heart became a medieval mace swinging violently in my chest. My lungs ceased functioning momentarily. I gawked at the sight of my hand.
Composing myself to a panic, I kicked the door open, stepping out and staring at my hand. It wasn’t bleeding. Nor were the digits on protruding from the handle. With my complete hand, I ripped the fingers away. They had stuck to it as a tongue to frosted metal. I swung my head around, searching for witnesses. Nobody. I stumbled hurriedly to my apartment.
I expected blood puddles at my feet, but, no. My forefinger and ring finger, gone. My right hand was now a pitchfork.
I needed a drink. Desperately.
I dropped the fingers to the floor as I entered my place, tearing off my wool cap. I searched the cupboards for any type of liquor to no avail. What frightened me the most was that I wasn’t in any pain. Panicked, I stuffed tissue into the empty fingers of the one glove and put it on. As I pulled my cap back over my head, I felt something brushing against my neck. I reached with my complete hand, feeling something like soft rubber caught within my cap. I tugged it free. I held the object in front of my eyes. Pinched between my fingers, my ear. Again, panic.
I ran to the bathroom. Facing the mirror, I pulled off my wool cap to justify the sight of the detached ear. Justified. The cap had jerked off my other ear in the process, as well. It bounced from my shoulder to the sink. Chunks of hair strayed beside it. My cap webbed with tousled hair and chunks of scalp. My skull revealing itself in patches. No blood. It wasn’t like frostbite, either. No darkened appendages. My ears looked gauntly pail.
My nose dripped mucus onto my lips from the drastic change in temperature. I forgot the ears and scalped patches to ball up some tissue. I blow hard, pinching my nose in between my good hand and my thumb from my pitchfork. I twist the mucus out, feeling a crunch within my fingers. I open the tissue to see what I had blown out. There within the mucus filled tissue, my nose. I gaped at the mirror, seeing furled skin outlining of where my nose had once been. Teardrop openings revealed the entrance to my nasal cavities.
I ran to the living room, grabbing my dislodged phalanges. I gripped the brittle digits furiously, watching as they crumbled into ashen powder. The fingers on my good hand crunched away the tighter I squeezed. My complete hand now rendered incomplete. I loosened my grip in fear of more damage. The old fingers dusted the carpet. I was in dire need of a drink.
I tugged the knotted hair filled cap over my earless head as I exit the building. The winter air remained brisk. I began my return to the pub. It would be barren. I’d be able to think. Analyze what I did with my second life to deserve a third chance. I didn’t want it. I didn’t care whether or not I had corrected what was in need of correcting. I only wanted to hide what everyone else celebrated for their friends and loved ones.
I kept my stuffed gloves on, with the off-chance someone would be out this late and see the new hideous me. One glove stuffed with tissue, the other with dislodged fingers I had yet to see. My cap fit tight over my patchy skull which, of course, was earless. I kept my palms to my face, hiding the abyss of my sinus cavities.
The winter air nipped at my toes. Even my missing fingers stung with the bitter cold. That made it difficult to tell how many fingers I lost on my second damaged hand. Though I no longer had earlobes and such, my internal ears still registered the sound of the rock salt crunching beneath my feet on the icy path to the pub.
****
The pub was deserted as expected. The only life noticeable were the neon lights scattered throughout the window front and the pub’s walls. The keys fumbled stupidly from my pocket to the door within the random fingers.
The door was stuck tight with the little bit of ice it had already accumulated. I gripped the door handle with my stronger hand. I pulled—nothing. The door was frozen shut. I gave it a pathetic kick and heard some ice give. I pulled harder, ice grinding and pulling away from itself. The sound of rope constricting. Stretching. Tearing. I gave a heroic tug, feeling the door budge.
The door jerked open, crashing into my shoulder. The sound of taut rope snapping echoed in the merchandise dock inside. My grip on the handle surrendered to reality. My arm was pulling away from my body as the door swung open; the impact with the door liberated my arm from its original location. I pushed my way through the swinging doors that lead to the bar’s seating area, arm dangling out from my coat’s sleeve. The gloved hand from the dangling arm left finger tracks along the mop-damp floor as I reached the bar in a defeated pace.
I don’t know what I did wrong with my life. My first life, that is. One of the rules was that Degenerates were not told of their past lives. The nation had yet to determine the cause of degeneration issue in the first place. Degeneration did not happen to everyone. One in every fifty people experienced it across the nation. For the moment, they believed that those who experienced it were being given a second chance at doing right by their lives. Most Degenerates originated from poverty or bad rap sheets.
The majority of degenerate alums had gone on to receive college degrees with the help of the Degeneration-X Scholarship. I put myself through the school of hard knocks to spite the system. To spite the fact that degenerates were given new families in case the prior family was the root cause of failure. My roots were a mystery to me. My guess was that I was a drinker. I still am. Especially after losing limbs.
The lights above the bar and behind the liquor display flickered at the hit of a switch. My teeth clinched upon my remaining gloved hand as I pulled the glove off slowly. Success. No loss of any more appendages. Just the same pitchforked hand. Grinning, I spit the glove out from my mouth and onto the bar top. What followed was surprisingly unsurprising. Yellow tinted pieces of bone shower the marble bar top. The random teeth sounded like highway pebbles strewn across a windshield.
Whatever.
I grab the Scotch whiskey that the owner rides us to use the liquor jigger for exact measurements and take a pull from it. For being so damn expensive, the taste is overrated. Horrible, actually. What made me forget the aftertaste was the sight of the pitchfork holding the bottle in front of my face.
I place the horrid liquor back on display. I eye my hand’s missing fingers. It was like ripping off bits of your friends’ younger sisters’ plastic dolls. Skin appeared as papier–mâché, but no visible bleeding- or blood for that matter. Only bare white knuckles.
I searched for some different liquor, for better or worse. My dislodged arm caught my foot, nearly causing me to tumble. I leaned forward and pitchforked it up to assess. My sweater’s sleeve latched tightly over the elbow. With a little effort, I tugged it free. You yank the arm off an old action figure and all that is visible to the eye is the generic ball and socket joint. The head from my humerus sticks out like a boiled chicken bone. The skin and muscle and all else slid down the bone, ruffled as a fallen tube sock.
I’ve been a pretty calm guy this life. I can’t say much about my first life. I just didn’t care this time around. I was bullied in my youth, because kids are scared of what they don’t understand. Even adults kept their children past degenerates. Some people felt us regenerates had everything given to us on a silver lined platter. Others believe it is something to be celebrated. I just didn’t care much for any of it. Positive or negative.
But tonight, whatever animosity I’ve secretly carried against the universe for doing this to me, I take it out on my dislodged arm with its gloved hand with who knows how many dislodged fingers trapped in it. I pitchforked it high to the air and banged it on the countertop. Then the register. The hand flew off, leaving a plume of skin-dust hanging in the air as it toppled towards the high-tops with upside-down chairs on them. I then brought my arm against the display’s Scotch shelf. Liquor rained and glass shards glimmered with a neon glow. I swung it down once more to the countertop. The arm released from the elbow, the forearm a rogue fan blade headed to the floor. Emotionally swamped, I tossed the upper arm over the countertop, watching it land on a bar stool where it wouldn’t bother me anymore.
I grabbed the house tequila, knowing that if revolutions were fueled by it successfully, I can embrace my third coming gracefully. I took a pull from the gold bottle as I shuffled to the office. I find a pen and a stack of Post Its. I wanted to document my falling apart, even if it was one yellow square at a time. I sat in the office chair and took another pull of tequila. Some rough stuff. Maybe revolutions were actually lost on it. Either way. I began to write with my fleshy pitchfork. The scribbles were horrible as the pen slid around. As I gripped harder, my middle finger and pinky finger popped off, shooting away like corks. The pinky left behind the first knuckle. The pen and paper were no longer of use to me.
The supervisor was patiently waiting for them in front of the checkout lanes. He wore a canary yellow suit, and matching top hat, which he tipped at Evan's wife as she approached. She did a theatrical curtsy, and they both politely chuckled at each other's folly. "You are one of the lucky few." He said to her in a voice that sounded like a hundred people speaking at once. "You have been selected for the trip of a lifetime."
Evan's wife nodded, as if she understood.
The supervisor's face was impossible to focus on, it never stood still at any point in time, juddering and moving in a rapid vibration. It was if the yellow-suited man operated at an incredibly high speed, his features were a stop motion blur. It hurt Evan just to look at him. "Females only." the supervisor continued. Evan's wife nodded, in an understanding way. They both turned and looked sympathetically at him. Evan felt a warm stream of urine run down his legs.
****
The yellow tabard at the checkout had an equally blurry face. It passed each item over the barcode scanner with a beep. Evan kept his jaded mind entertained by tallying the number of items they had accumulated, but lost count when it reached over two hundred. His wife stood in front of him, bag by her side, passively watching.
"We are so glad that you came," the many voices from behind the till said, conversationally. "So glad that we could provide a satisfactory consumer experience."
Evan hated it when the checkout girl made conversation, he always found it so awkward. He looked down at his damp trainers.
Assistants bagged the shopping, and loaded it into large brown paper bags. They placed them inside the rear hatch of a metallic, car sized contraption. It thrummed, almost silently, about three feet above the ground. It was marked with veins of glowing blue neon. It was like nothing Evan had ever seen before.
His thoughts were interrupted by his wife speaking to him. His eyes, with some effort, eventually focused on her face.
"You're paying." She said, it was the first time in recent memory that she had smiled. "You were in a world of your own there, you silly billy." She walked on ahead, and was helped onto the hovering contraption by one of the assistants.
She nodded a 'thank you,' and sat down in a plastic recliner seat. Evan's view of her was then obliterated by a door that descended from above with a hiss.
Evan turned to the checkout person with a wide, broken grin.
"So what do I owe you?" he asked, over-enthusiastically.
The checkout assistant handed Evan an item from below the counter, where the cash register was located. He received it gratefully, he could not believe his luck.
"Time to check out, Mr Evans," many people told him matter-of-factly.
A migraine was threatening to spread inwards from Evan's temples again. He took a moment to evaluate his surroundings with a pained grin spread across his face. He could now see neon blue veins, the same as the contraption behind them, spreading randomly throughout the walls and aisles of the store, off into the distance. Diseased tubes pumped with a phosphorescent cobalt toxin, as somewhere an engine of considerable size whirred into life.
The staff had gathered, and stood watching him with eyes that never ceased buzzing and vibrating. A line of painfully bright yellow tabards. What had been a low, unperceivable throng rose into the indistinct chatter of ten, twenty, fifty and then a hundred people talking. It quickly became thousands, loud enough to make Evan's ears throb.
They moved towards him slowly, arms reaching out to him. They wanted to be of assistance, they had traveled all this way to...help...them. He understood that now.
"You have a nice day!" beamed Evan, and raised the revolver to his head.
Burial Lovers
by Jeremy Joseph Light
Laying together with their heads leaned against a filthy black gravestone, John and Myra fed blackberries to each other in the Protestant cemetery. A few berries were dropped here and there. This didn’t stop either of them from eating them. In fact, they enjoyed the filth factor.
The gravestone above their heads read: “Ella Fitzpatrick 1906—1977”. John selected this one as the place to cuddle on this Tuesday night for one reason; the name of the deceased sounded vaguely similar to that of an ancient jazz singer. The monument itself was black Italian marble with white etching, and like many monuments from this era, it was both faded and stained from many years of all-American acid rain.
“Why do we always eat blackberries, John?” Myra whispered.
“Because, they’re the most goth of all berries…and they’re the easiest to steal from the neighbor lady.”
They giggled while squeezing just a bit closer together than before. Myra struck a match and lit a cigarette which illuminated her in the midnight fog. John began fumbling around in his pockets with a nervous look on his face. After a few moments, he smiled. Here they are, just where I left them, he thought as he handed Myra a couple of Vicodin.
“Buckle up, buttercup.” Myra said before chewing the pills up and swallowing loudly. John brushed under Myra’s chin with his ring finger and planted an impressive kiss filled with equal parts angst and nonchalance.
Myra finished her cigarette and put her head in the nook of John’s arm.
They very much appreciated each other’s company that night as they embraced like the zombie apocalypse was going to begin that morning.
Foster’s Cemetery was an okay place to bury a loved one, but it was an excellent place to bring a date.
Myra felt a little tug on her right foot.
Then a legitimate and intentional pull.
Myra began to sink and her instincts strangely told her not to fight it.
John was somewhere in between nodding off and completely passed out from the painkillers, completely unaware of the attack unfolding.
Myra’s fingertips reached out from the dirt waving goodbye like Queen Elizabeth on a parade float in slow motion.
Silence.
Degeneration-X
by M.R. Tapia
Whoever’s listening to this tape, I hope it helps the world in some way or another.
To be honest, I really don’t care who’s listening to me. It’s too late for any type of help, anyway. Nonetheless, I need you to know that this was not the blessing draped in glory that everyone makes it out to be. Regardless of what happens, I am dead by now. The old me shall never be, again. My identity will be completely regenerated into something else. You will be grey-haired and I will not remember you as I age all over again. Degeneration or not, we all fall apart at some time. My degeneration began last night.
They say that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. They also say that a degeneration can only happen to someone once. Well, as history has proved, lightning can strike the same place twice. And as I am unintentionally proving, degeneration can happen to someone twice. But who wants that? I don’t. I don’t remember the first one, of course, but if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have experienced that one either.
But, here I am living it. Again.
My life, falling apart. Again.
I never lived the perfect life, but I’ve also seen enough of those with imperfect lives to learn I had no room to boast or complain. I took the day as it came. I’ve heard the birds sing happily in the morning, and I’ve sank with the shipwreck hangovers. Take it as it approaches.
I never thought about what life was like before my first degeneration. I made sure to leave my rearview mirror filthy, those views create bitterness as cold as winter. Thank goodness for winter.
I had just closed the pub last night. With the bitter cold outside, it had been a slow night; I was glad, I had been ravaged with heartburn and stomach cramps. As usual, the manager had left before I was finished cleaning up after the oversized toddlers we call adults. I had worked with him since he opened the pub, so I was more than trusted with the keys. A manager without the reign. A jester among fools.
It had long dropped below zero, my senses alarmed me to this as I trekked home. Living a couple blocks away from the pub left me without the need of a car. I walked daily. The iced winter air nipped at me. My toes double socked. My hands numbing within their gloves. Jack Frost whispering sweet nothings into my ears through my wool cap. My nostrils iced like caverns in the Arctic Circle. My lips were dead stiff.
I reached the security door to my apartments, scavenging my pockets for the keys. The glove made the task finding them miserable. I ungloved my hand, found the keys and juggled them, excited for some heat. I jerked the frozen door open by its metal handle. The sound of twigs being snapped filled the air as I released the door and hopped inside the foyer. It was the tug at my grip that surprised me. Outside the window, the metal door handle was misshapen. With my bare hand, I wiped the frost from the inside of the window, and that’s when I saw the beginning of my degeneration.
Two fingers were missing from my right hand as my palm wiped the glass. Two fingers clung to the metal handle.
My heart became a medieval mace swinging violently in my chest. My lungs ceased functioning momentarily. I gawked at the sight of my hand.
Composing myself to a panic, I kicked the door open, stepping out and staring at my hand. It wasn’t bleeding. Nor were the digits on protruding from the handle. With my complete hand, I ripped the fingers away. They had stuck to it as a tongue to frosted metal. I swung my head around, searching for witnesses. Nobody. I stumbled hurriedly to my apartment.
I expected blood puddles at my feet, but, no. My forefinger and ring finger, gone. My right hand was now a pitchfork.
I needed a drink. Desperately.
I dropped the fingers to the floor as I entered my place, tearing off my wool cap. I searched the cupboards for any type of liquor to no avail. What frightened me the most was that I wasn’t in any pain. Panicked, I stuffed tissue into the empty fingers of the one glove and put it on. As I pulled my cap back over my head, I felt something brushing against my neck. I reached with my complete hand, feeling something like soft rubber caught within my cap. I tugged it free. I held the object in front of my eyes. Pinched between my fingers, my ear. Again, panic.
I ran to the bathroom. Facing the mirror, I pulled off my wool cap to justify the sight of the detached ear. Justified. The cap had jerked off my other ear in the process, as well. It bounced from my shoulder to the sink. Chunks of hair strayed beside it. My cap webbed with tousled hair and chunks of scalp. My skull revealing itself in patches. No blood. It wasn’t like frostbite, either. No darkened appendages. My ears looked gauntly pail.
My nose dripped mucus onto my lips from the drastic change in temperature. I forgot the ears and scalped patches to ball up some tissue. I blow hard, pinching my nose in between my good hand and my thumb from my pitchfork. I twist the mucus out, feeling a crunch within my fingers. I open the tissue to see what I had blown out. There within the mucus filled tissue, my nose. I gaped at the mirror, seeing furled skin outlining of where my nose had once been. Teardrop openings revealed the entrance to my nasal cavities.
I ran to the living room, grabbing my dislodged phalanges. I gripped the brittle digits furiously, watching as they crumbled into ashen powder. The fingers on my good hand crunched away the tighter I squeezed. My complete hand now rendered incomplete. I loosened my grip in fear of more damage. The old fingers dusted the carpet. I was in dire need of a drink.
I tugged the knotted hair filled cap over my earless head as I exit the building. The winter air remained brisk. I began my return to the pub. It would be barren. I’d be able to think. Analyze what I did with my second life to deserve a third chance. I didn’t want it. I didn’t care whether or not I had corrected what was in need of correcting. I only wanted to hide what everyone else celebrated for their friends and loved ones.
I kept my stuffed gloves on, with the off-chance someone would be out this late and see the new hideous me. One glove stuffed with tissue, the other with dislodged fingers I had yet to see. My cap fit tight over my patchy skull which, of course, was earless. I kept my palms to my face, hiding the abyss of my sinus cavities.
The winter air nipped at my toes. Even my missing fingers stung with the bitter cold. That made it difficult to tell how many fingers I lost on my second damaged hand. Though I no longer had earlobes and such, my internal ears still registered the sound of the rock salt crunching beneath my feet on the icy path to the pub.
****
The pub was deserted as expected. The only life noticeable were the neon lights scattered throughout the window front and the pub’s walls. The keys fumbled stupidly from my pocket to the door within the random fingers.
The door was stuck tight with the little bit of ice it had already accumulated. I gripped the door handle with my stronger hand. I pulled—nothing. The door was frozen shut. I gave it a pathetic kick and heard some ice give. I pulled harder, ice grinding and pulling away from itself. The sound of rope constricting. Stretching. Tearing. I gave a heroic tug, feeling the door budge.
The door jerked open, crashing into my shoulder. The sound of taut rope snapping echoed in the merchandise dock inside. My grip on the handle surrendered to reality. My arm was pulling away from my body as the door swung open; the impact with the door liberated my arm from its original location. I pushed my way through the swinging doors that lead to the bar’s seating area, arm dangling out from my coat’s sleeve. The gloved hand from the dangling arm left finger tracks along the mop-damp floor as I reached the bar in a defeated pace.
I don’t know what I did wrong with my life. My first life, that is. One of the rules was that Degenerates were not told of their past lives. The nation had yet to determine the cause of degeneration issue in the first place. Degeneration did not happen to everyone. One in every fifty people experienced it across the nation. For the moment, they believed that those who experienced it were being given a second chance at doing right by their lives. Most Degenerates originated from poverty or bad rap sheets.
The majority of degenerate alums had gone on to receive college degrees with the help of the Degeneration-X Scholarship. I put myself through the school of hard knocks to spite the system. To spite the fact that degenerates were given new families in case the prior family was the root cause of failure. My roots were a mystery to me. My guess was that I was a drinker. I still am. Especially after losing limbs.
The lights above the bar and behind the liquor display flickered at the hit of a switch. My teeth clinched upon my remaining gloved hand as I pulled the glove off slowly. Success. No loss of any more appendages. Just the same pitchforked hand. Grinning, I spit the glove out from my mouth and onto the bar top. What followed was surprisingly unsurprising. Yellow tinted pieces of bone shower the marble bar top. The random teeth sounded like highway pebbles strewn across a windshield.
Whatever.
I grab the Scotch whiskey that the owner rides us to use the liquor jigger for exact measurements and take a pull from it. For being so damn expensive, the taste is overrated. Horrible, actually. What made me forget the aftertaste was the sight of the pitchfork holding the bottle in front of my face.
I place the horrid liquor back on display. I eye my hand’s missing fingers. It was like ripping off bits of your friends’ younger sisters’ plastic dolls. Skin appeared as papier–mâché, but no visible bleeding- or blood for that matter. Only bare white knuckles.
I searched for some different liquor, for better or worse. My dislodged arm caught my foot, nearly causing me to tumble. I leaned forward and pitchforked it up to assess. My sweater’s sleeve latched tightly over the elbow. With a little effort, I tugged it free. You yank the arm off an old action figure and all that is visible to the eye is the generic ball and socket joint. The head from my humerus sticks out like a boiled chicken bone. The skin and muscle and all else slid down the bone, ruffled as a fallen tube sock.
I’ve been a pretty calm guy this life. I can’t say much about my first life. I just didn’t care this time around. I was bullied in my youth, because kids are scared of what they don’t understand. Even adults kept their children past degenerates. Some people felt us regenerates had everything given to us on a silver lined platter. Others believe it is something to be celebrated. I just didn’t care much for any of it. Positive or negative.
But tonight, whatever animosity I’ve secretly carried against the universe for doing this to me, I take it out on my dislodged arm with its gloved hand with who knows how many dislodged fingers trapped in it. I pitchforked it high to the air and banged it on the countertop. Then the register. The hand flew off, leaving a plume of skin-dust hanging in the air as it toppled towards the high-tops with upside-down chairs on them. I then brought my arm against the display’s Scotch shelf. Liquor rained and glass shards glimmered with a neon glow. I swung it down once more to the countertop. The arm released from the elbow, the forearm a rogue fan blade headed to the floor. Emotionally swamped, I tossed the upper arm over the countertop, watching it land on a bar stool where it wouldn’t bother me anymore.
I grabbed the house tequila, knowing that if revolutions were fueled by it successfully, I can embrace my third coming gracefully. I took a pull from the gold bottle as I shuffled to the office. I find a pen and a stack of Post Its. I wanted to document my falling apart, even if it was one yellow square at a time. I sat in the office chair and took another pull of tequila. Some rough stuff. Maybe revolutions were actually lost on it. Either way. I began to write with my fleshy pitchfork. The scribbles were horrible as the pen slid around. As I gripped harder, my middle finger and pinky finger popped off, shooting away like corks. The pinky left behind the first knuckle. The pen and paper were no longer of use to me.
