What the Hell Did I Just Read

  I had trouble understanding how I was going to get any useful information this way, but it didn’t seem like I had any choice but to play along. I looked over the three objects. Which is naturally occurring, he asks? Well, the scalpel was obviously man-made. Of the other two hunks of obsidian, one looked untouched by human hands, owing its shape to wind or erosion or whatever. The other had clearly been chipped into a blade, maybe by an ancient caveman. So, it was made of stone, which is naturally occurring, but the “blade” shape was man-made. Seemed like a semantic argument to me.

  The man with my face said, “You have thirty seconds to answer, and then I start cutting.”

  “There is no right answer. You could make the argument that both the…”

  And then it hit me.

  “Okay,” I said, “I get it. All three are naturally occurring.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Because humans shaped the stone blade and manufactured the scalpel, but humans are naturally occurring organisms. So anything we build or create is also naturally occurring.”

  “Correct! Erosion by flowing water and chiseling by human hands are both just atoms moving atoms. Molecules grow into cells and cells grow into brains and organs and limbs to shape the stone. A colony of fungi, an anthill, a human city—all are a convergence of particles and forces that alter the landscape. In fact, any substance or occurrence that is not naturally occurring must, therefore, be supernatural in nature. So, that leads us to the second question. Of the two cutting tools you see before you, which was made by choice?”

  “I see where this is going.”

  “Do you? The crude blade there was made five hundred thousand years ago by a hooting, stinking creature you would in no way recognize as human. So, when that hairy primate fashioned this blade for the purpose of slicing meat from bone—the same purpose I intend to use it for—did it choose to do it? Or was it just following its animal instincts, the way an insect will scurry from the light?”

  The wheezing bug on my chest had crawled off my shirt, and I could feel its feet tickling my neck.

  He said, “Twenty seconds.”

  “I don’t know, man, ask a scientist. Maybe it was just hungry and had a dead animal in front of him he couldn’t bite into.”

  “So, you’re saying that hunger was the inventor. Why, then, is that different from the scalpel? Otherwise, you would be suggesting that there is an energy that allows you, as a man, to defy the simple mechanism that causes the tree to grow toward sunlight or the insect to flee from it. An energy that lets you defy the physical chain reactions that govern the behavior of literally everything else in the universe, from subatomic particles to the grunting ancestor who made this blade. An energy that exists only in modern humans.”

  “Then none of them were made by choice. That’s the answer you want, isn’t it? So there you go, that’s my answer. We’re all just … fucking animals or whatever. How is that relevant to the situation at hand?”

  “Final question. If you are correct and we are not able to make choices, and are just following the same impulses as the insect, then how do I have the choice to not peel your face? I would be driven along by impulse, as beholden to them as that insect.”

  The bug was scaling my chin now. It was breathing hard with the effort. I thought I heard it curse under its breath.

  I said, “What you’re saying is that you’re going to peel off my face one way or the other. Which is irrelevant because this isn’t actually happening. Right?”

  “You tell me.”

  Nymph snatched the scalpel and climbed up on the gurney, straddling my chest. He grabbed my face, but then things got confused and suddenly I was the one on top, the struggling man’s face in my own grip, the scalpel in my hand. It was John on the gurney, not me. The blade pierced skin and I pulled it across his jawline …

  16. THE GREAT DILDO FLOOD

  I snapped back into my own body and found I was in fact straddling John. In my hand, instead of a scalpel, was a pink dildo. I was pressing it against his chin, as if trying to slice it open. John meanwhile was cramming something into my face, something that was crumbling against my jaw. We were splashing around in an inch of dirty water.

  John said, “EAT IT! EAT IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

  I said, “WAIT! STOP!”

  We both blinked and froze in place, taking in our surroundings. We were in the Venus Flytrap, which had now succumbed to the encroaching flood. There were open empty sex toy packages scattered around the floor, as if the place had been ransacked by looters looking to spice up their marriages. The place smelled like farts.

  I got up off of John. He groaned and dumped something out of his hand—a handful of Oreo cookies he’d been trying to shove into my mouth, for some reason. He stood up out of the water, then lit a cigarette.

  I said, “What happened? How long was I out?”

  “I … don’t know. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Soy Sauce. At the Beanie Wienie cannery. I got some in my system, everything went weird. Then I woke up here. Just now.”

  John nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “You took off running. You dove through a second-floor window.”

  “No memory of that. I’m really sore, though. Got scratches all over me.”

  I called out for Amy. No answer. A hint of sun was peeking through the windows, from the east. There were several shopping sacks from a local hardware store near the door. I briefly looked through them, and found several sealed plastic bags of a bright yellow powder. One had burst, spilling its contents—sulfur. So that’s where the stink was coming from. Had we bought it? If so, why?

  I checked to see if I had my phone, and did. I dialed Amy.

  She answered with, “Is this you? Where are you?!?”

  “Venus Flytrap. I woke up and John and I were having a dildo battle.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Don’t know. How long have I been gone? All night?”

  “All night? This is Monday morning. You’ve been gone for two days.”

  “Oh. Shit. Have you not heard from me at all?”

  “You took the Soy Sauce, you looked at Chastity and yelled, ‘It’s dildos all the way down, baby,’ and ran out of the building. You had told her to wait an hour but you never came back. That was Friday night. She actually stayed until the next morning but she’s long gone now. I hear nothing all day Saturday, or Sunday. I’ve been worried sick. What were you doing for two days?”

  “No idea. Maybe it’ll come back to me. And nobody has come after you?”

  She said, “Not so far. Maybe they don’t work weekends.”

  “Okay. Okay … so, where are you staying?”

  “I’ve been sleeping at the Beanie Wienie. Didn’t know where else to go. Been sleeping in my clothes on the sofa, freezing at night. Got Nicky to bring me food. Nobody has bothered me here, though.”

  “Okay. Good. Well … shit. I’m sorry, Amy. But maybe John and I took care of it. While we were on the Sauce, maybe we fixed everything. Have there been, uh, any more developments while we were gone?”

  “Yes. Ten more kids have gone missing.”

  “Did you say ten?”

  “Went missing yesterday. All from the same place, the Roach Motel. They were the biker kids. They had a room there they were using as a day care. Yesterday most of the bikers were out at a memorial for Lemmy. They came back, the lady who was watching the kids was frantic. Says she turned her back for one second, and they were gone. Christ’s Rebellion is on the warpath. They’re tearing the town apart.”

  “Shit. Wait, now hold on—are these real kids or is this a situation like Mikey?”

  “I’ve seen photos.”

  “Oh. You have?”

  “Yeah, I’m talking to the parents now. I’m at the motel.”

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “I just told you, we’re trying to help them find out what’s going on. What did you think I was doing all we
ekend? I’m working the case.”

  “All right, all right. We’ll be right there.”

  “The world doesn’t just grind to a halt when you’re not around, David.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. Jesus.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I hung up and we sloshed out into the parking lot. John’s Jeep was parked there, so we’d apparently gone back to get it at some point. A sign on the Venus Flytrap door announced they had closed until further notice, due to flood conditions. The entire neighborhood wasn’t under water, not yet, but at this point it was a few islands of dry land where certain lots and patches of road were elevated. Everything else was swamped by a couple of inches of swirling brown water, the currents carrying sticks and garbage and clumps of dead grass.

  We went upstairs to find the apartment pretty much as I’d left it, aside from the fact that there were now boxes piled everywhere. There were ten cases of Mountain Dew Code Red stacked by the door. There was a shipping invoice on the card table—apparently I had spent part of the Mikey Payton reward money having a bunch of soda overnighted to the apartment. Nearby were eight much larger boxes labeled VELVETSOFT EROTIC SILICONE BUTTOCKS. One of us, hopefully John using his credit card, had apparently bought every single rubber ass sex toy from the shop downstairs. I looked at John and started to ask if this was his doing, but he just shook his head, slowly.

  “No memory either way.”

  I dug out a bottle of Mountain Dew and told him about the missing kids.

  “Wait. Just … hold on. If they’re decoys, could they just brainwash a whole group like that? A whole community?”

  “That,” I said, “is what we have to figure out first.”

  I went into the bathroom to take a piss and saw that scrawled on the mirror were three words, written backward in what was hopefully black Dry Erase marker:

  ATTEROL OT KLAT

  It was “Talk to Loretta” written in a mirror image, which made no sense because the text was written on the mirror itself, so it still read backward to me. If they’d written it on the wall behind the mirror, that would have worked. I recognized the handwriting as John’s.

  I said, “I think we’re supposed to go talk to Ted’s wife.” I rubbed the ink on the mirror. It was not Dry Erase.

  John looked it over and said, “Why didn’t we just go talk to Loretta instead of leaving ourselves a note to do it later?”

  “Maybe we … no. John…”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t leave a bunch of cryptic clues behind because you wanted to do a Dude, Where’s My Car? situation. You did not do that. Please tell me.”

  “Well if I did, I’m sure I had a good reason. You know what, I bet the butts are a clue, too.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Look, what matters is that we go talk to Loretta. Like the note says. Maybe she’ll have the next clue.”

  “Fuck you. We’re going to the Roach Motel. That’s where Amy is.” I thought for a moment and said, “It just occurred to me that she said ‘we’ when she said she was at the motel. I wonder who’s with her?”

  “Maybe it’s the cops? Or it’s that dude from work she’s having an affair with.”

  * * *

  On the way to the motel, we came across several side streets that had been closed by the city for being under water—not enough to drown in, but definitely enough to ruin your traction if you weren’t paying attention. I could only remember one really bad flood in my time living here, when I was ten. They had canceled school for three weeks and then everything smelled like fish for a month after the water went down. This looked worse.

  The entrance to the Roach Motel parking lot was blocked by a pair of scary-looking biker dudes. We pulled up and the bigger of the two said, “We’re closed.”

  Up from behind the men walked, not Amy, or Chastity, but that goddamned NON agent, Helen Tasker. She muttered something to the big biker and he stepped aside, giving us the stinkeye as we passed.

  I said to John, “You didn’t happen to bring a gun, did you?”

  “Just let me do the talking.”

  We parked and as soon as John jumped out, he said to Tasker, “So you’re not dead, then?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “You got shot right in the chest like two days ago.”

  “How high were you when you came to see me Friday night?”

  “I came to see you?”

  “So pretty high, then. I’m not repeating the conversation. My employers administered first aid and I was back on duty within an hour. There’s not even a scar.”

  “Impressive. Is your partner around?”

  “His brain was hit with a neuron scrambler and his entire upper body was crushed by an SUV. He won’t be back on duty until later this afternoon.”

  John nodded. “Sure. So can you give me a brief summary of what we talked about Friday night?”

  “You asked for my help.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. With a bunch of children who were about to go missing.”

  Amy approached from behind Tasker, wearing her red raincoat that made her look like the little girl from Schindler’s List. She walked right up to Tasker and said, “I got him to talk to me, he says half of the CR thinks the kids were taken by a rival gang called the Flatlanders. Some think they were raptured by God and that this is the end of the world. The rest think it was the Batmantis, some say they even saw it that day.” Amy glanced at me and John and said, “You guys look awful.”

  Tasker said, “What was that third thing?”

  I said, “It’s not relevant to the case. A YouTube video of a winged monster went viral around town, now people think they’re seeing it everywhere. Typical Bigfoot shit. So, uh, you two are partners now?”

  Exasperated, Amy looked at John and said, “You told her to come find me!”

  I said, “All right, calm down.” To Tasker I said, “The bikers are talking to you, despite the fact that you staged a weird battle in their parking lot like two days ago?”

  Amy said, “They think she’s with the FBI. She has credentials from every agency.”

  I said, “Great, have you broached the subject with the agent here that there might not be any missing kids at all, that it’s all just a series of false memories planted by a hive of mind-controlling shape-shifting bug monsters?”

  The look on Agent Tasker’s face confirmed that Amy had not in fact broached that subject.

  John said, “Wait, were you withholding that from her for a reason? In that case, forget we said anything.”

  Amy hand-waved it away. “They’ve got documents, pictures. They’re real kids.”

  John scrunched up his eyebrows in thought. “Can we see the pictures?”

  We followed Tasker into the front office, which had apparently been commandeered by the “FBI.” It stank of cigarettes and engine grime. Tasker had the documents in a folder she pulled from a flat-black briefcase that automatically unlocked when she spoke to it in Latin. She pulled out a handful of pages and handed them to John.

  He flipped through them and said to Tasker, “And these all check out? They’re not forgeries or anything?”

  “No. Why would they be?”

  He said to Amy, “You’ve looked at them, too? They look genuine?”

  “They don’t look like Photoshops or anything. I’m not an expert. Why?”

  John handed me the pages.

  Every single one of them was blank.

  I sighed. “You explain it. My head hurts.”

  John took a breath, not sure where to start. Finally, he turned to Amy and said, “While I was on my Soy Sauce trip, I saw something. A memory, replayed from the third person. It was me showing up at the Knoll house, meeting with Detective Bowman. And we’re talking and Bowman asks for a recent photo and Ted opens his wallet, and hands the detective an old membership card from Blockbuster video. The detective looks at it, and starts talking like he’s looking at a
photo—asking if the girl’s hair is still that long, and so on. Then he hands it to me, and I showed it to Dave when he arrived. Always that plastic blue-and-yellow Blockbuster card, each time we see a little girl’s face. Which makes sense, because if the fuckroaches can rewrite memories from a certain distance away, then they can make you ‘remember’ seeing what they want you to, a split second after you look. So the cops or somebody could devote a whole weekend to searching through government databases for these kids and they’d have a vivid memory of successfully finding page after page of records. But if Dave and I were watching them work—and I mean right now, while we’re still under the effects of the Sauce—we’d see them staring at a blank computer screen. Or doing nothing at all.”

  Amy said, “That … no. It can’t work like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then how could you trust anything you saw or heard?”

  I thought, Exactly.

  Agent Tasker said, “You’re going to need to back up. What exactly are you suggesting?”

  So, we told her. When we finished, she got an expression on her face like a short-order cook who just saw a huge group of hungry drunks walk in five minutes before closing time.

  She said, “I have to take this to my superiors.”

  I said, “Sure. Let us know what they say.”

  “You wouldn’t be capable of understanding what they say. Go home and wait there, don’t talk to anyone. The news media will find out about the missing children eventually, but the longer we put that off the better chance we have at containment. Are you listening?”

  I said, “Huh? Yes, thank you, I’ve been doing a lot of squats.”

  She turned and banged through the door, showing no reaction to the driving rain. As soon as she was gone, I said to Amy, “We found a clue pointing toward Loretta, Ted Knoll’s wife. We need to go talk to her.”

  “A clue?”

  John said, “I had written, ‘Talk to Loretta’ on your bathroom mirror. Any idea why, that you can think of?”