Horror Library, Volume 3

By Dark Moon Books

The +Horror Library+ anthologies are internationally praised as a groundbreaking source of contemporary horror short fiction stories--relevant to the moment and stunning in impact--from leading authors of the macabre and darkly imaginative.

Filled with Fears and Fantasy. Death and Dark Dreams. Monsters and Mayhem. Literary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Moon Books
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781949491302

Book preview

INTRODUCTION: LÁVESE LAS MANOS

by R.J. Cavender and Boyd E. Harris

---

ANDREAS BERNARDO KISSED HIS WIFE and then his son, before stepping back from the security checkpoint. He tripped over an old lady’s suitcase, apologized, then half-smiled for Cecilia. She responded with a sorrowful smile of her own, then herded Andreas Jr. toward the metal detector.

The boy’s dad had business left to attend to in Los Cabos, but would join his family in Seattle in a few days, in time for the child’s third birthday.

Mother and son disappeared into the stream of businesspeople and vacationers. They crammed through a constricting tunnel that went on for a couple hundred feet, before it made a turn and opened up into the hull of the craft. Cecilia studied little Andreas, took pleasure in his wide-eyed curiosity. He held his stuffed elephant tight to his chest. He was not frightened, but was stimulated by the adventure, craning his neck to look through the windows as they worked their way down the narrow aisle and to their seats. She buckled his belt, while he stared at the man in the electric gantry box who held the fuel pump to the wing of the plane.

The tow tractor pushed the MD-83 back from the gate, and the boy stretched in his window seat to see the passenger bridge shrink away. He pulled himself up almost hard enough to slip through the seatbelt, and Cecilia reacted by tightening it.

Noises from the engines, located not far behind their seats near the tail, startled little Andreas, but he quickly grinned and growled a little-boy chuckle at his mom. He roared with the engines, holding his elephant up above the seat, pretending to make it fly, and they felt the wheels leave the ground. The vessel took flight.

Things were smooth for almost an hour. Cecilia loosened his seat belt, and Andreas Jr. peered through the windows as they climbed through the clouds. The unstable air caused a moment of turbulence, and Andreas growled again.

His mother giggled with him. You’ll be a fighter pilot yet, she said.

He nodded, grinding his teeth together and growling harder.

Then something thumped outside their window. The sound came from both sides of the plane, and a turbulent jolt jerked the passengers back in their seats. Cecilia stretched over her son to see. Along the length of the back of the wings, hydraulic flaps reached upward. The jarring motion hadn’t been turbulence at all, but the plane reacting to the wing’s mechanical irregularity, and it continued with a sharp climb. Heavy g-forces pulled all 83 passengers hard into their seats. The plane continued upward and the collective anxiety grew with gasps and groans.

The flap lowered back into the wing and a larger flap below it extended from inside, sliding down. The plane reversed its force, and the bottom dropped out of Cecilia’s stomach as it looped over into a 45-degree dive.

Ahead in a row across the aisle, an older woman flew out of her seat, bounced off the ceiling, and then disappeared through the doorway into the front service area. None of the flight attendants were in view.

The aircraft continued its plunge. Scattered screams erupted throughout the vessel, and those who did not scream, moaned. Andreas Jr. screeched in response to everyone else, and Cecilia clutched at him around the top of his little head, holding him hard to her chest.

The fall continued for minutes, and finally Cecilia, holding her son, looked over him to the window. She saw that the horizon was almost out of site, much as though they were approaching a mountain. She closed her eyes, and prayed for things to improve.

And they did. God answered. The plane slowly leveled off, and the passenger’s wails turned to gasps of relief.

She looked outside, and the flaps had mostly returned into the wing. Cecilia kissed Andreas Jr. on the top of his head, and he looked up at her, shaking, still uncertain. She brushed his hair out of his face and smiled. She needed to reassure her little boy.

What happened, Mommy? His voice was weak.

I don’t know, bambino, but we’ll be okay, she promised.

Eight quiet minutes passed, like the eye of a hurricane passing over, and flight attendants shuffled through, calming their beleaguered passengers.

Everything is under control, now, they insisted. The captain and co-pilot have fixed the problem. But even they seemed unsure of their promises.

Several people demanded to know more, and the flight attendants were vague, but Cecilia heard the term equipment issues a couple of times.

Then, a sudden series of loud thumps from the back end of the plane shook the fuselage. Cecilia had not yet let go of her son, and now only tightened her grip.

A deafening crack followed, and again the plane fell into a dive, this one sharper and more sudden. The flight attendants, once again, left the aisles.

Andreas Jr. pulled on his mother’s shoulders and slithered out from under the grip of his seat belt. He climbed over the arm of the seat and into her lap. She made no attempt to stop him and held him tighter still.

The engines squealed, and the boy screamed to match them. Others competed to drown out the noise. Their stomachs dropped, and there was a sensation of weightlessness that ensued.

He crawled up his mother’s torso, as though looking for any way to squeeze back inside her womb. She tightened her grip on him, but he pulled his way up her shoulders.

In the corner of her eye, Cecilia witnessed the stuffed elephant floating away. It drifted into the aisle, slightly upward, as even gravity gave up on them.

Then the boy saw his stuffed animal. He pushed hard once, reached for it, and just then, the entire carriage shifted, and Andreas Jr. slipped from his mother’s arms. She watched him follow his elephant upward toward the ceiling, arms and legs flailing, attempting to grasp anything solid, and her stomach wretched from his screams. The next exterior jolt forced the aircraft to roll. A moment later, the plane completely inverted and the boy floated away from her, now more than three rows ahead. She reached down, digging for her buckle. She pulled up her shirttail to find it. Once in her hands, it was foreign to her and she could not make it open. Floating pillows, magazines and personal bags, coupled with the proliferation of screaming passengers all around kept her from identifying the release. How did the damn thing work!

She glanced up, and her son was more than five aisles away, still drifting, still screaming, still kicking.

And no one would leave the safety of their seat to help him.

***

BARBARA LASCO WAS not feeling well, and hadn’t been for some time. It seemed years since she’d felt completely healthy. However, Doctor Jacoby had visited her apartment two days before, and concluded that there was nothing wrong with her.

But the headaches and chills were still there.

This morning, she woke up with a stuffy head, once again, and soreness in her throat. Ibuprofen had not done much, and with her equilibrium shot, her clogged inner ears rang in a low pitch.

Though she’d washed her hands seven times this morning, and had only briefly left the apartment yesterday, she feared that this may be a cold, or worse, some kind of off-season flu.

She sat holding a sterilized glass at the kitchenette bar, half-full of slightly chilled bottled water, then tossed back a couple of the capsules, in the hope that they would help the congestion and ringing subside.

But where had she contracted this illness, and how harmful would it be? Moments ago she’d called Fresh Express Grocery to see if Donna, the checkout clerk, had come in to work today. The cashier actually came to the phone and told her that she was still feeling fine. Yesterday, Barbara had made a brief trip to the store, and she’d shopped quickly, grabbing up the bare necessities, and rushed home, not coming into contact with anyone else.

Once again, she needed to review the contents of the grocery bags she’d brought home with her. She’d bought six cans of soup, orange juice in a carton, a gallon of milk, eggs, a bag of frozen vegetables, and she’d carefully boiled the contents of that last night before eating, a box of pseudoephedrine, which she had not yet touched or opened, an issue of Soap Opera Digest . . .

The magazine. How many sets of hands had held that copy before she pulled it from the checkout stand? Could some form of harmful microorganism been transferred to it by someone in line before her? Last night, Barbara had not allowed it to come in contact with her face, and she had washed her hands immediately after reading it. Was there some other way for it to infect her?

She cursed herself for even going out. She’d chosen to live in the safest neighborhood in town, and there moved into the newest, safest apartment complex, with a sprinkler system and fire detection system that exceeded city code, and even though the store was three doors down from her apartment building’s secure entrance, one never knew what maniac could be skulking in the area. Really, no one could predict when some airborne disease would befall these city streets.

Doctor Jacoby, whom she’d kept as her personal physician ever since she could remember, had limited his visits to her apartment. He’d asked her to visit with some shrink he knew, because he didn’t feel he could do much for her anymore. She’d considered his suggestion, but doing so would mean her taking to the infectious and violent streets, and she’d have to slink into a cab . . . the ultimate reservoir for bacteria and filth.

Since she was stuck here, she needed to use her time productively. Surfing the Internet this morning for help on a possible diagnosis served to increase her paranoia. She could only rely on herself, and her own judgment, so she leaned back, holding the cool glass to her forehead, and closed her eyes.

Within a few seconds she reopened them, then took in a deep breath. Her chest felt empty and she became light-headed. This was not normal, even during an allergy fit. She sat up, stared through the window to the brightness outside.

Something was very wrong. Something more wrong than the effects of the congestion.

She took in a few short, choppy gasps of air, and felt nothing in her lungs. Tightness wrung her chest and she stood up, her heart immediately racing from the discovery.

Heart attack? Seizure? What?

Within seconds things grew worse. She held her hand over her breastplate, lowered her head, and took in and released several deep breaths, watching her chest rise and fall. There was air going in, but she couldn’t feel it. She concluded that she was becoming oxygen starved.

Gas leak? Carbon Monoxide?

Struggling to stay calm, she lumbered her way to the front door, and unlocked all three deadbolts and the security latch. She stumbled down the hall toward the entrance, using the sidewall to keep her balance and pushed the main door open. Feeling the cool autumn breeze, she gulped in a heaping lungful of fresh air, then dropped to her knees.

The air in the apartment was not the problem.

Wheezing, she bent over, using both hands to hold herself up on the brick walkway. Black spots swam on the periphery of her vision, and they grew, until darkness overtook her.

A second floor tenant, Becker Pate, found Miss Lasco at 5:14 p.m., not more than two minutes later, shivering in seizure, eggplant-toned face accented with plum lips, her lids open but with the eyes rolled back in her head.

***

SOME DAYS VINCE Rossi worked on design in his uptown Manhattan bedroom, and other times he took his notebook into his living room, plopping down at the breakfast table for some added elbow space, and a nice view through the living area window of Manhattan’s upper Eastside. He was an architect, and was keeping busy this year with several large projects that would hopefully secure payment for this loft he’d splurged on.

This afternoon he sat on his couch, laptop perched on his knees, but he wasn’t focused on work. Too many distractions. The couple next door never worked, neither of them, and today all they could do was make noise, which was split between fighting and make-up sex, and he couldn’t tell which activity was more obnoxious. Twice since this morning they’d engaged in violent bouts of yelling, and twice they’d followed with a rhythmic pounding of their headboard against his wall. But then there was a third round of fighting, and this had been accompanied by the sounds of banging and his walls being hit by what he assumed to be flying objects from an argument turned physical.

Then it turned quiet.

Anyone would wonder what had transpired. What had broken the cycle? A blunt instrument to someone’s cranium? Had one of the violent thumps on the floor been the sudden collapse of a lifeless body? Had one of the projectiles hit its target? His imagination was rampant with possibility, and that kept him from his work.

He’d gone out earlier, without a coat, to get a latte at Eastside Java, and shivered from the March wind that blew through the tunnel created by 51st. While shuffling his way, scrunched up from the cold, with his hands in his pockets and shoulders raised, he’d tried not to stare up at the crane that was towering 65 stories above the construction site across the street from his studio apartment. Something looked wrong about the thing, something hastily planned, and he got vertigo looking up at it. Fortunately, from his apartment window the eighty ton contraption was not in view, though he knew it was up there, dangling in its awkwardness, and he knew that like everyone else on the block, he’d have to just trust that a foreman was knowledgeable and careful enough.

There were the twice-a-day calls from his sister as well. Genevieve, charting their mother’s deterioration into mental oblivion, and it wouldn’t be long before she wouldn’t recognize any of them. Though his relationship with his mother had been rocky at best, and while their last encounter ended in a hateful exchange, he absolutely loved her. He just didn’t know how to humble himself to reveal that to her.

And then there were the bomb threats. Three of them this week. He never understood why some punk would continue to get off on watching people file out of a building because of a phone call. He could see a kid getting a kick out of it once, maybe even a second time, but wouldn’t the little shit eventually find some other means of entertainment? And then again, what if these were all just part of the tease before the real thing? Could a person be angry enough at someone here to stage a massacre? Or perhaps, just crazy enough?

Then he heard the faint sound of dragging metal . . . something being moved across the floor next door? Getting louder, he understood that it wasn’t. This was coming from outside the building.

And it was followed by the sound of a train roaring through a tunnel.

He closed his notebook, and with one hand reached to lay it on the coffee table, but it never made it there.

First his front window widened, and then the entire wall disappeared, opening up his apartment to the sky, as a cloud of dust swirled through. The coffee table disappeared. The laptop tumbled out of his hand . . . or rather, tumbled away from him with his hand still clutching it, his arm from the elbow down trailing behind. The couch buckled and folded over. He rolled out of it in time to see it slide away into the dust billowing in from the street. With his remaining arm, he caught a metallic girder, which was where the floor should have been, and pulled his body to it. For a short moment, he dangled from the steel beam, which projected into the sky, where the rest of his apartment stood only seconds before. Within the explosion of debris and swarming dust he spotted a shadow . . . growing, coming closer, and just before darkness ensued, he recognized the silhouette of the pulley from 65 stories up, falling toward him.

***

ALASKA AIRLINES FLIGHT 261 cleared a maintenance check just four months before the terrible inverted freefall that ended 88 lives in a split second. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the probable cause of this accident was due to insufficient maintenance by Alaska Airlines, but board member John J. Goglia, stated in this final report, "Had any of the managers, mechanics, inspectors, supervisors or FAA overseers whose job it was to protect this mechanism done their job conscientiously, this accident could not have happened . . . "

On April 2, 1993, Joseph Meling, a 31-year-old insurance salesman, was convicted of two accounts of murder, in what was reported as a Tylenol tampering copycat case. In a failed attempt to collect his wife’s $700,000 life insurance policy, Meling got her to swallow a cyanide-laced Sudafed decongestant, and in order to divert guilt from himself, he then randomly placed five other packages of tainted capsules on shelves in several local stores. Ironically, while two victims whom he did not know died from the sinister poisoning, his wife survived.

On March 15, 2008, a construction crane collapsed on East 51st Street in Manhattan, damaging several buildings and killing seven people. Investigations on construction accidents of this magnitude are often left unresolved for years, and time and again they lead to ambiguous conclusions. One accident is deemed human error and another is determined mechanical failure. In a single year in New York City alone, there are over two hundred high-rise construction projects, and nearly half of them operate with pending city violations.

It’s inevitable. No matter where we go, what we do, who we associate with, and how we choose to make our way through this increasingly complex world, we put our lives in the hands of others.

Whenever we drop the kids off at the bus stop or put them on a contraption under the supervision of a touring carnival worker. Whenever we rely on public transportation—board an elevator, an escalator, a taxi, the subway. Something is amiss. It always is.

Take, for instance, our infrastructure? Currently, in the United States alone, over 160,000 bridges are deemed structurally deficient or functionally obsolete and over 10,000 high-hazard dams hold potentially catastrophic amounts of water, 1,300 of them identified by our government as unsafe.

And then there are the dangers caused by the other traveler. We make assumptions that the person in the oncoming lane speeding toward us at 70 MPH is sober, had enough sleep last night and isn’t distracted by a heated argument on their cell phone.

We seek out diets of healthy foods, often fresh fruits and vegetables, things we’ve been raised to believe are good for us. We assume that our government can keep us safe from foodborne illnesses. And then, without fair explanation, we are besieged by a wave of salmonella outbreaks. Every week, speculations change, and with every shift, we are offered a new, false culprit.

Most of us have been raised to believe that humankind would end as a result of a conflict between two world powers, or because the right weapon ends up in the wrong hands. We give no thought to something as simple as the guy who slices meats at the corner deli, who may have forgotten to wash his hands on his last break, might tip over the first domino in the chain reaction that topples our fragile system; the pandemic that humanity would never recover from.

Whether we ignore these dangers or hole up in a fortress of security, we are rendered powerless to the forces of fate, and these forces are often driven by the will and care of people whom we’ve never met. It is a strange bed that we have made, and there is nowhere else to sleep.

Stranger still perhaps, that we seek to vicariously live out such horrors in literature, film, and the arts. We crave manmade disaster, and seek out fiction as an escape from the real life it mimics.

And so here you possess this book of fiction. The nightmares to come are set firmly to the paper upon which they are printed, the darkest recesses of your mind, and the millions of delicate nerve endings just beneath the surface of your skin.

To the best knowledge of the +Horror Library+ Volume 3 editors, none of the events in the stories to follow have actually happened.

Yet . . .

—R.J. Cavender and Boyd E. Harris

THEM

by Sunil Sadanand

---

DR. MENON TELLS ME I’VE lost some weight and then he sticks a needle in my eye.

Just relax now, Michael. He gently presses down on my forehead with his thumb and index finger and pushes the needle past my eyeball and into the thin fleshy membrane behind my eye.

His dark face looms above me. He says, Everything in the world exists in a codependent relationship with something else. Just relax now, it’ll be over quick.

Blood mixes with the fluid inside the dropper. He presses down on the plunger. There’s pain and pressure and a sound inside my head like rushing water.

You couldn’t digest your food properly without the colonies of intestinal bacteria that exist along your stomach lining.

He withdraws the needle. Now I’m sweating even though it’s cold in his office. My hands are shaking. He hands me a plastic baggie. I sit up slowly.

In fact, your entire body is made up of life forms sharing a symbiotic coexistence and their sole purpose is to promote the homeostatic balance of the entire organism.

I vomit into the plastic bag. And when I think it’s over I gag and vomit again. He pats my back. Hands me another bag.

You can live with it. It won’t be easy. But don’t give up hope. Make sure you keep a healthy diet. That’s important.

I nod and tell him the other day I looked at a streetlamp and when I turned away I saw bright colors flashing in my range of vision.

Afterimages. Trick of the light.

I tell him that sometimes I see these colors when I wake up in the middle of the night, and that’s how I know they’re not just afterimages.

He nods. Looks at me thoughtfully. Then, Do you often see things that aren’t there?

What do you mean?

I don’t know. Besides colors. Anything out of the ordinary? Like, right now, maybe?

I tell him I wouldn’t know, because to me, those things would appear to be real, so I wouldn’t know if they were out of the ordinary.

You know, Michael, they think it might be a cause of schizophrenia.

What?

Felid toxoplasma.

Is that what I have?

No. Then, Can I ask you a personal question?

Go ahead.

Have you found yourself engaging in more risk-taking behaviors? Doing things you wouldn’t normally do?

Why does everyone think I’m on drugs?

No, I mean any noticeable behavioral modification? I know you got into another fist fight last week—

Yes. Behavioral modification. Definitely.

Blackouts?

No. But sometimes I can’t move.

I think you have to be careful. The dormancy period might be over. They’re going to start acting up soon.

I think you’re right.

His beeper goes off and he nods and says, Sign this, I have to go. He hands me a paper. I sign it. Come back next week. Same time. He gives me an appointment slip. I wait there for a minute because I think I’m going to vomit again. I don’t. Dr. Menon nods. Pats my back. Leaves.

***

WHEN I COME home from the hospital that night I can’t close my eyes. I just can’t do it. I drink some ice tea and head into the bathroom and wash my face with warm water and I procrastinate for a little while, walking around the apartment, wiping the kitchen counter, putting away dishes, taking them out, washing them, putting them away again, and then I head back into the bathroom and take a deep breath and face the music.

I step on the scale.

164 pounds.

I lay in bed again. My eyelids won’t shut. I hear the people upstairs screaming at each other and then they start having sex. I get up and get dressed and go out for a drink.

***

I TAKE A walk by Central Park, sit on a bench, and watch the sky, starless and downcast, and the moon is out, and it hangs in the air, yellow and swollen, and it’s slowly being swallowed up by a mass of purple clouds, and a bum wearing three coats and a beat-up baseball cap walks by, stops, and scratches himself, and asks me for some change for bus fare, and I ignore him, and he goes away and I watch the moon until it disappears into the clouds.

A few minutes later, I get up and head into a bar on the corner of East 67th Street.

It’s a weekday and kind of late, dismal Irish pub, single beat-up looking television over the counter turned to sports highlights, dimly lit, and not many people are here except for the bartender, an old man, and a pretty girl in a black dress with a nose ring and black lipstick and she looks up from her martini, glances at me, looks away, and smiles.

***

HI.

Hey.

Mind if I sit here?

No, go ahead.

I’m Michael.

Danielle. We shake hands.

She brushes a loose strand of dark hair away from her face. She sips her drink. Then, So, do you always drink alone on Monday nights?

Only when I can’t sleep.

I hear ya.

Another insomniac. In this city? What are the chances?

Yeah. Lots of us here. She looks around. Then in a softer voice, I shouldn’t even be here tonight.

Why not?

She gives me a look that tells me it’s a long story, and that it would probably dampen the mood, so I don’t press her for it. Then we’re quiet for a little while and she finishes her drink and I order another one for her, and the unasked question sits between us like an unwanted chaperone.

She glances up at me. Twirls the straw around in her glass. Rests her head on her hand. Smiles. Then, So what’s with the eye-patch?

***

DR. MENON ONCE told me it takes three milliseconds for a nerve signal to give the command to a muscle before it can move. Three milliseconds. And any thought you might have about moving is superfluous. A conscious thought has no real function or purpose, in other words. There is something else giving commands to your body three milliseconds before you think about what you want to do. There is a you that thinks and feels and experiences things. A consciousness. This is the entity you identify with as the real you. There is a body made up of the sum of the processes of all these fluids and cells and organs and tissues. You identify with the body differently. It’s a possession of the conscious you rather than the essence of your being. This is my arm. My leg. My eye. My body. Yours. Then there is something else, a third party, a mechanical, autonomic control center telling your body when it’s supposed to move irrespective of what you think about it. You are not actually just you, in other words.

Actually, you are them.

***

LONG STORY.

Yeah. She laughs. I’ve got a few of those.

So listen, I say. Do you want to meet for lunch sometime? Like, I don’t know, tomorrow, maybe?

Tomorrow? Sure, okay.

I sit there for a second in stunned silence. Maybe there are a lot of 6-foot, 167-pound guys with eye patches out there who pick up lots of chicks. I’m not one of them. I put her number into my phone. We share another drink, say goodbye, and then I split.

***

AS I START walking toward my apartment a chill runs through me and something behind my eye starts itching. There’s a sound inside my hair like a hundred beating moth wings. I stop in front of a deli on Park Avenue for some reason and look up at the moon. My joints and muscles lock into place.

I wait.

Ten minutes later I’m walking back to the apartment.

***

AT THE OFFICE the next morning, people are eyeing me warily. They’re probably wondering if I’m going to do something weird again. It’s a distinct possibility.

Mike, wow, you look good. Been working out?

Um, no, not really.

You look like you lost some weight.

Yeah?

Yeah, you look good. Christine winks, smiles, turns away, stops, turns around, and then, Oh, Mr. Harris wants to see you. He’s in his office.

I get up and head past the rows of computers and cubicles and people at their desks jabbering away on phones and then I’m standing in front of Mr. Harris’s office door and I move my hand to knock and then the joint at my elbow locks into place and I’m standing there with my arm partially raised and my hand balled into a fist and I can’t move it to knock on the door. Not now.

Did you say something?

I turn around. Christine is standing there holding a sheaf of papers, looking at me and Todd stands by his desk smirking and they’re both probably recalling the incident last week where I stood up on top of my desk and spread out my arms and craned my head upward until the tendons in my neck almost snapped and no amount of coaxing could get me to come down for at least three minutes.

I unclench my fist, lower my arm, and breathe a sigh of relief. No, I’m cool.

You sure?

Yeah, thanks.

I turn around, open the door, and head inside.

***

HEY, MIKE.

Mr. Harris, how are you?"

Call me Boyd, no need to be formal. Please, sit down.

I take a seat and prepare myself. First names usually mean something bad is coming.

Mike, you’ve been working here for what, three years now?

Yeah, about that.

How do you like it here?

Good. Great work environment.

He takes off his glasses. Wipes his nose with his hand. Rubs his forehead. Sighs. Then, Have you been a little more stressed out than usual? I know this quarter’s been busy. Workload’s increased and . . . 

Yeah, I mean, no, I’ve been cool.

He gives me a stern look. Then, Are you sure? Because frankly, puts his glasses back on, some of us have been noticing some changes in your behavior and appearance and I’m not going to pussyfoot around the issue here, Michael. We’re a little concerned.

I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. See, last week—

No need to say anything more. He wipes his nose. Takes his glasses off. Reaches into his pocket. Then he pulls out a card.

***

ONE YEAR AGO, I’m at my parents’ house in Long Island, standing in our backyard, and listening to the crickets and having a cigarette and I don’t how long I’m out there but when I look down I see this huge gray rat by my feet and it’s not dead but not moving, and it’s standing on its hind legs and occasionally twitching its little pink nose and its eyes are empty and glossy like two black buttons and I stamp the ground and it doesn’t scamper away, just stays there, as if some inscrutable agency has taken control of its body and subsequently overridden all its natural self-preservation instincts and I go inside and get a baseball bat and come out and the rat is still there.

I wave the bat above its head.

It doesn’t move.

I hit the ground with the bat and yell.

It doesn’t move.

I smash its head.

It lays there, pulp and gray matter oozing out of its broken skull, back leg twitching spasmodically, its head and neck a twisted ruin, and I scrape it up and toss it into a garbage bag and a fleck of moisture gets on my hand.

The next morning, for a good twenty-five minutes, I can’t move my legs.

NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS

One day at a time.

Take the first step toward recovery. It’s your life.

Make that change

Um, Boyd . . . 

Take it. I want you to go to one of these meetings. They can help you, wipes his nose, puts his glasses back on. Trust me. They might just save your life.

***

FOR SOME REASON, Danielle keeps my lunch date and meets me at an Italian Bistro on Fifth Avenue and we get a table near the window and she orders a bowl of Pasta Bolognese and I order a glass of water.

Not hungry?

I’m good.

So, did you get a good night’s sleep?

Not really. My eye. People upstairs. Long story.

She smiles. Shakes her head. You’re a weird one.

A couple sits down at the table next to us, an attractive blonde woman and a large, bald man with broad shoulders and arms like tree trunks. The muscles in my arms begin to twitch.

So, do you work around here? she asks me.

Yeah, my office is over on the west side.

What do you do?

Oh, I type numbers into a computer. Take long lunch breaks. Pretend to talk on the phone.

She laughs.

My arm jerks upward and hits the table and the drinks almost spill. Fuck, not now.

"Are you