Tag Archives: haunted

Fiction

Spectrum City is Haunted part 6

WAKE

 

When the dreadlocked barista finished the journal of the man that cut his own face off, he finally understood that before the night was done, he wouldn’t have dreadlocks anymore.

The dreadlocked barista’s name was Cammy. Not even a nickname, his birth certificate literally read Cammy Day Martin because his mom was sick of having boys. He being the fourth in a row, Mrs. Martin had given up on hiding her need for a daughter and so decided her son Cammy would have to do.

Sewer didn’t care, though. That was the name the dreadlocked barista had given himself when he thought he was going to sing for a rock band in sixth grade. He never did find anyone interested in playing instruments for his vocals and so settled for singing acapella in videos he posted on the internet.

Fame was impossible, though. The only way to get famous on the internet was by whoring yourself, one way or another, and he had no desire in trying to win attention. After all, he deserved it. His voice was unique and all he needed was the right crew to stand behind him. As long as someone thought he was good enough, he would be good enough. Quality was all in the mind. It was an illusion like everything else. If only he could figure how to adjust others’ perception of himself. If he could change the illusion to fit his need, anything would be possible.

It was this stream of thought that brought Sewer to the motel. His parent’s basement was alright, except for when family came in town and he had to share it. He lied that he was staying with a friend and used his tips to secure a room for himself because his older brother, second in birth order, was intolerable just like his wife and twin sons.

The notebook was still in his brain. The video of Darren cutting off his face was uploaded, but still with no views. Even the music video versions with the edited footage were drawing nothing. He checked the tags, laying on the made bed of his motel with his laptop, cartoons playing on the muted TV. Nothing. No one had seen it. He’d checked the news, both paper and digital, and there was absolutely nothing. No one knew about the guy that cut his face off but for the people that were there when it happened.

Not enough, thought Sewer. People need to know. People need to see what I saw. People need to understand what it’s like. People need to know. SEVIL LIVES.

The statement was beginning to make sense. SEVIL LIVES meant that everyone lives and everyone dies and it’s all circular. SEVIL is to death as LIVES is to life. Death comes before life, which means that we continue forever in this cycle of death and life and death and on. That was why the guy cut his face off. He got it. He understood that death was the exact same as life. That if it’s all just a cycle, why not just keep recycling? Wasn’t it all just a game anyway? All that shit that you’re fed, all the terrible feelings wasted because feelings meant nothing in the first place, all the grief experienced needlessly because it was intangible and never even existed in the first place.

He changed the tags and renamed the video and turned on the shower, but then realized he didn’t want to get wet and that he kind of liked that he hadn’t showered in a week even though he could feel the slight layer of grime atop his skin. He stared at the mirror, looking at his face.

SEVIL LIVES, he thought. SEVIL LIVES, SEVIL LIVES, SEVIL LIVES.

He hated his nose. He hated his skin. He hated his glasses. He tore them off because it was the only thing of the three he could. He could see well enough without them, though the world did turn blurry, but that was nice. Actually, blurry was exactly what he needed.

He hated his ears, hated his eyes, hated his facial hair. He ran to his bag and began raking the razor over his face before he was even back to the mirror. He would get rid of it. His mustache was stupid. His goatee and neck hair were needless. He’d be done with hair because that would make him feel better.

He couldn’t see the red that started to trickle from his patchily shaved face until he remembered his dreadlocks and understood that those too would have to go. They weren’t his own, anyway. Tied in by some foreign and English illiterate woman because he thought it was cool and worth the money.

When his fingers couldn’t untie the fake hair from his real hair, he pulled, but it wouldn’t tear and so planned for the perfect time to make himself be what he couldn’t wait to become.

X                            X                            X                            X                            X                            X

Detective Michael Roe was getting drunk at The Track and that was okay because She understood.

The work of the day was complete, except for the last deed, and when he sat down at the bar he hadn’t been to in ten years, the bartender young and new, no one realized the significance of the glass of whiskey served neat, which he had to explain to the young girl, all tits and no bar sense because she cared more for tips than her craft, and he sipped it waiting for the sign for She that would come whenever She chose for it to because that was how all the signs of the day before came to him, like flashes of illuminated focus on the object of his deed with a strange feeling of desire and necessity to resolve whatever it was that She was showing him, and so far he’d done exactly what She needed and She said there would only be five because five was her number and with four already done, he was going to be as drunk as possible for the fifth.

That and hopefully drown out the terrible sounds of karaoke coming from the bar stage.
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X                            X                            X                            X                            X                            X

Sewer had the karaoke stage of The Track set up with his video camera pointing toward where he wouldn’t be singing as well as his phone propped up and recording when he took the mic from the karaoke DJ. Before that, he went around to other karaoke singers and told them he’d pay them if they videotaped his performance. It was a lie, but most did anyway and he was confident that even if this did lead to his death, his performance would make it to the internet.

Saturn Warship, his favorite band’s hit song, “Generation Vex” played and when the words scrolled across the screen, instead of singing into the microphone, he dropped it to the stage, making feedback ring through the speakers, and missing the lyrics as they became highlighted with no one singing them.

Cast the spell, never tell, wash me down, wishing well.

Sewer took the butcher knife that was tucked into his baggy torn jeans at his back waist and raised it above his head. He used his other hand to hold up his dreads and then wasted no time in slicing underneath his skin, relieving his scalp from the connection to his skull. Blood formed and then ran down his face and he went straight back from the middle of his forehead, over his dome to behind his neck.

There was an uproar but the music kept playing and the people Sewer paid kept videotaping. The ones he didn’t pulled out their phones and began videotaping too, putting themselves in the frame and showing the excitement play out behind them.

Cast the spell, never tell, wash me down, wishing well.

Sewer finished with the first strip of skin, pulling it away from his head and then dangling it by the finally free dreadlock in front of him like a raw slice of bacon tied to a rat tail. Blood dripped and then he helicoptered it into the crowd before digging the butcher knife beneath another flap of skin and matted hair roll. He continued ridding his skull of concealment and got four strips in before the blood covered his face and he was on his knees, weak as the song was nearing its end.

Cast the spell, never tell, wash me down, wishing well.

Sewer crumpled into the floor as the final cymbal on the song rang and the words scrolled out of view to the left of the screen. Sound was gone and the silence felt heavier than any of the noise ever did. He closed his eyes and laid face down on the stage until neon yellow light crept underneath his eyelids.

The voice, which he couldn’t make out before, kept repeating itself. He wasn’t able to discern that it spoke only five times.

“She wants you. She wants you. She wants you. She wants you. She wants you. ”

X                            X                            X                            X                            X                            X

Mark Chambers woke up with his eyes already open. His body was frozen and the stone table beneath him was cold, though he couldn’t feel it or anything else.  He thought it might be a dream until he saw the masks over him. The chants were loud and familiar. He could have joined in, the foreign words ingrained in his brain, but only if fear hadn’t crippled his already numb mouth.

He saw knives and could tell that his skin was being separated, but it didn’t carry any of the sensation he expected. More chanting and then there was drinking and when the masks came off, he didn’t recognize anyone.

He was pulled off the table so that just his upper body was lying flat against it with his ass up and the backs of his toes on the ground. Then he was moving, back and forth with his face mushing against the stone as a palm cupped his ear and squished the other into its hard surface.

The little girl was right. His plans of suicide to avoid rape were foiled. They wouldn’t stop, he knew, until the whole congregation had their turn. He was weak with the loss of blood, passing in and out of consciousness. The longer it took the more the sedative wore off, and as he regained his body’s ability to feel pain, to scream, to struggle, he was tied at the wrists and ankles. The pull of the ropes levitated him in the air as hands at his thighs guided his torso into performing the ritual he himself had victimized so many others with, so many times.

There were more knives, more cuts, more blood and then there were whips and eventually he could see himself in his own dripping blood that created a reflecting pool beneath him.

While the other faces were unrecognizable, his was as it always was, but he still didn’t see it as his own. His distorted features, wrenched into desperate agony, were just as nomed as the rest.

Fiction

Spectrum City is Haunted part 5

REAP

“They’re going to rape you,” said the girl right before she touched Mark Chambers’ forehead. “Whether you run or give yourself in, either way, you can’t stop them.”

Mark Chambers was at Full Spectrum Diner with his family and pretended like he didn’t spill coffee down his chin when she interrupted them. His wife asked, “What?” and he didn’t acknowledge her as he asked the strange girl the same question.

“You don’t remember and that’s not all your fault, but at one point you had a choice and you didn’t make the right one. So you’re going to be raped and it will hurt you a lot. Not just your body, but your brain. You’re never going to be the same again.”

Mark Chambers didn’t know how to respond to the girl. By his estimation, she was no older than ten, but then again, her wrinkled face and slight graying of hair almost led him to believe otherwise.

“I don’t feel bad for you,” she said. Her face was stern and Mark felt strange, as though he were being scolded for something he couldn’t remember. “I feel bad for your family. They’re all going to have it bad, but at least better. At least not as worse as they would have with you around.”

“Who are you?” asked Mark. It came out low and confused sounding. And he himself didn’t really know what he was asking.

She turned to his wife, Mrs. Chambers, pointing her index finger which stuck out from the cut-off yellow gloves she wore. Around her wrists were bracelets that stretched halfway up her forearms. “You’re going to stop being so dumb,” she said, her bracelets jangling as she shook her finger with conviction. “When they tell you, believe them. They aren’t lying. He really is that bad. Protect your children and never let anything like him happen again.”

“You need to leave,” spoke Mark Chambers sternly.

The girl lowered her arm and took a step forward. “No,” she said. Her dirty blonde hair was accented just slightly with gray, but she was still not even five feet tall. She was a girl, but somehow so much older. “You’re the one that’s going to leave.”

Mark’s mouth was open to respond when he was stabbed in the head by the girl’s pinky finger.

When they finally got his eyes open, the girl long gone, all he wanted to do was go to the police department.

*                            *                            *                            *                            *

Detective Roe wasn’t a detective today. Just Roe. Not that he didn’t like his first name, just that he thought it was useless. What could a name matter if everyone shared the same name? Nicknames were even worse. No, Roe was it. After his ex-wife changed her last name to her new husband’s, he liked his last name even more than ever before.

Roe was on vacation. Well, a day-cation as he overhead it being called by the dreadlocked coffee shop barista when he told him he took the day off. He sat in the corner of The Mound, far away as possible from everyone, drinking black coffee. “Just the regular kind,” is what he always told them. Flavors meant nothing to him. It was nice just to drink something hot without sugar that made being alive feel okay. Something that could make him forget how much he hated everything.
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After coffee, he caught the first showing of the day for Widow, the new movie from director Chance Baphom. He liked everything Baphom made, even if sometimes they pandered to teenagers with a PG-13 rating. There was something about the way the camera moved, utilizing slow motion at just the right points and keeping everything so cleanly in frame. It was as if Baphom were the conductor of an orchestra and everything on his moving canvas existed intentionally.

Widow was strange, but still nice. Visually amazing, but not really the action picture he expected. Manson Feverjean was surprisingly impressive as the lead character and Miss Need, while tiringly self-aware, still did a manageable job of fitting into the atmosphere of the movie. Even afterward, he struggled to understand the director’s point. Sure, it was about sacrifice and a Satan worshipping secret society within the government and media that was going to enslave all of humanity. But why? What was he really trying to say? It was almost as if that was really the message of the film. Give in and let the masters do their job. Even stranger that Manson Feverjean died during filming the movie. And in basically the same way his character died in the film.

Life is strange, thought Roe. But not like it’s ever not been.

Roe didn’t see the girl until after he was eating his banana, almond and Kit-Kat ice cream in a waffle cone, wiping his face even though he hadn’t made a mess of himself at all.

“You have to stop him,” said the girl, her yellow fingerless gloves were dirty and her bracelets jangled.

Roe’s right eyebrow raised as his left sunk low. He continued to eat his ice cream as the girl sighed and sat down across from him.

“You don’t want to do anything,” she said. “You’re lazy and you think you can just forget all the bad things you know are going to keep happening. You push them out of your mind and pretend like they aren’t there. But they are and they’re going to get worse unless you do something.”

Roe crunched into a piece of Kit-Kat and looked away. Her face bothered him. He didn’t recognize it. It looked too old for her short and thin frame, and her clothes only led him to believe she was homeless.

“You have to do what I am about to tell you to because if you don’t it will hurt a lot of people. I don’t like when people die. You don’t either. My Mother told me so. She picked you because it’s not my place to stop Him and he who He’s infected. The cycle will continue. The man who left his face. The man with the nomed face. The man you shot in the face. They were all infected by an evil that is going to become worse. The next one is the fourth. Four is His number. He is worse now that He is a He. He will do much worse now. I could not stop the first or the third. The second was already done, but Mother has grace for children. She lives in black water now and she doesn’t want to get out. Not yet. She can do more there through me and now through you.”

Roe had absolutely nothing to say, but he couldn’t pretend like he was ignoring her anymore.

“Sometimes we don’t have a choice. Sometimes we do. The choice wouldn’t matter if you knew because the choice would be easy. You still get a choice, though. Mother wants you to choose. She already knows.”

With Roe’s focus now completely on the girl, noticing now how dark brown her eyes were, not completely black, but very close, the atmosphere turned to mud and he found himself slow to move as everyone around him disappeared from his peripheral vision. He was in a tunnel and the only end was the dynamically brown eyes of the girl.

“When I touch your forehead, you will know Mother’s will,” she said, everything else so distant and only her existing. “Stop me now if stagnant waters are where your soul will lie.”

Detective Michael Roe was still. There was electricity in his lungs. There were bugs in his muscles. There was mud inside his veins. He couldn’t breathe and then he realized he didn’t need to.

The pinky finger touched his forehead and the color yellow became all the world entirely.

Fiction

Spectrum City is Haunted part 4

ACHE

 

Detective Roe thought he was lucky that Mark Chambers was taken off his hands so easily. The last thing he wanted was to deal with that mess. As he knocked on Phil Connor’s apartment door, he willed the twenty-something not to answer. That way he could get home like he’d originally planned before more busy work was thrown onto his desk.

There was an ache in his neck, but then again there was always an ache in his neck, and all he needed was to sleep it off.

He sighed after a moment of no answer until he noticed the door was ajar.

“Mr. Connor?” asked Roe. No answer and he swore under his breath. The open door could mean anything, and while he wanted more than anything to ignore it, his conscience wouldn’t let him. As much as he tried not to care, as much as he focused on doing as little as possible, always taking the path of least resistance, an open door could mean anything. Ignoring that didn’t feel right. He wouldn’t be able to forget the day if he was left wondering.

Roe was about to announce himself again until he saw the red mess of bodies between the television and the couch. His heart leaped and he withdrew his gun and froze, searching everywhere for anything alive. There was a sound coming from the hallway. Something repetitive, wet and smacking, and Roe looked down at the bodies one more time before stepping quietly toward the noise’s source, gun first.

It wouldn’t be until later that what he saw would make sense to him. Simon from forensics explained it casually. Not like he was enjoying it, but like he was actually proud of his job and cared that he recreated the scene correctly.

“He stabbed them both while they were still on the couch,” said Simon, miming out the motions as if he were Phil. “The first one through the neck and then the second across the face and then down through the temple as she tilted her head. The knife got stuck inside and so he left it there and went back to the first one, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her to the ground. He then stepped on the back of her neck and pivoted, swiveling his foot like this,” he said as he mimicked the action, looking more as if he was smothering a cigarette. “Once she stopped moving, he went back to the second one and pulled back and forth until it came unstuck.”

Roe just listened, keeping his face indifferent and waiting to go home.

“After that, he got the second one down on the floor beside the first and knelt between them, taking turns raking over their bodies like this.”

Roe looked away. He got the picture, but Simon wasn’t done.

“After he was done slashing them, somewhere in the high double digits, he threw the knife behind him and then went in with his hands.” Simon got down on his knees and pulled pretend body parts out of pretend bodies, throwing handfuls of nothing over his shoulders. “That’s why the mess, you know? The guy just kept at it until there was nothing left to throw.”

“Great,” said Detective Roe. “Thanks.” He was about to turn away, but Simon stopped him, scrambling to his feet and putting a hand on the side of his arm.

“You’re good. Right?” His eyes attempted concern, but his mouth was all excitement. “Just another day, right? Not going to get to you is it?”
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“Nah,” said Roe and he was surprised he was telling the truth. It probably was the worst scene he’d ever walked into, but then again he had a tendency to block the bad ones out. No sense in keeping nonsense on the mind. There was already too much of that in there anyway.

“Good, good,” said Simon. “So, um, you like mind if I ask?”

Roe just raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, I didn’t get to do the bedroom. Jeffers got that one. Not that I’m not thankful, you know. I definitely got the better end of the ass, but just…what happened? You had to shoot him, I know, but what was going on? He was fucking her, right? But, um, was she already…”

“Yeah,” said Roe. “She was dead. And he was fucking her.”

“What and so you just shot him?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there a threat? I mean, I’m not trying to call you out, you know? Kill the bastard. Good. Absolutely, but if Howard sees it like that…”

“Fuck Howard,” said Roe. He sighed. “Do me a favor?”

“Yeah, yeah, for sure,” said Simon. Still smiling. Still failing at concern.

“Tell them I’ll get started on this tomorrow. Tell them I’m…I don’t know, upset or some shit. Anything. Just vouch for me so I don’t have to deal. You got me?”

“Yeah, yeah man. I totally get it. I mean, if I were you…” and he trailed off because Roe was already walking to his car.

Detective Roe drove home trying not to think, but it was going to take whisky to get that job done and while he knew he had some, a full bottle he was planning on breaking his ten year sobriety with one of these days, he knew he’d pass on that. Even more than a good drunk, the one thing he usually wanted and forbade himself, now more than ever he just needed to sleep. The meds always gave him weird dreams, but that was alright. There wasn’t going to be a worse dream than walking in on a man covered in blood, fucking a blue body, her neck broken and twisted at a right angle into the carpet, his hands holding her under the tops of her thighs, ramming himself inside of her and looking up at him, screaming, “Please, please, just let me come. I’m almost there. Almost there. I just have to come. Just a minute and you can have her. Here I go. I’m coming, I’m-”

Yeah, thought Roe. My dreams are going to be nice.

Fiction

Spectrum City is Haunted part 3

IMG_6317

 

The dreadlocked barista was in his apartment reading, while he loaded the video of Darren cutting his face online, when he got a call that showed up as an unknown number. He waited for the call to end and then made sure there wasn’t a message before putting his phone face down and returning to the notebook. The pride he felt for snatching it before the cops had arrived was a drug unto itself. He didn’t even need to get high.

The video would take another moment. His plan was to release at first an uncut version and then a series of edited ones set to pop music. That way,  he could pull in the views on multiple fronts. Maybe this time he could actually get a worthwhile check from his ad sponsors.

It would be another ten minutes at least. He sighed and turned the page.

I’m going to cut my face off because that will make everything okay again. Things have never been okay. So maybe that’s not accurate. Maybe instead I should say that once my face is gone I can at least stop feeling the weight of them. Maybe then they will feel my weight. 

Every day of my life, I wake up as if I’m wearing heavy clothes, soaked completely with water, so that I’m hindered by every attempt at movement. I don’t know why life has been so hard recently. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I do, and so there has to be a solution and that solution only makes sense as the one thing that they have told me. The they I speak of is silly to anyone that doesn’t have any like experiences. I feel them, but especially him, or maybe her. Not sure. They are the same but they are sometimes a him and sometimes a her but all the time it is me that they want to do something. Always something awful. Bargaining with me. Wanting me to bring the bad shit into the world that they for some reason cannot. And they will swear up and down, all over, that there is no bad, that everything isn’t even real. That all the things people see as bad, or evil, are no different than what people see as good and right.

And so life is about destroying the false constructs that other people want to create around you. Life is not meant to have boundaries, borders or restrictions. Life needs to be as random and exciting and magnificent as you can make it and if you follow the rules of those that would attempt to create order within your necessary chaos, you have to destroy that, destroy them, destroy everything.

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I wish that this mask could be mine and I want it to be and I find myself in dream telling whoever is wearing it that I will do whatever to be able to wear it myself. I will do absolutely anything. I promise her that I will obey them, do whatever they want, but that I have to have this mask because this mask will make everything about my life what it has always needed to be. The problem has always been my face. That was what she told me. In my dream, that was what I was supposed to know.

And it was after that that I knew that all I had to do was get rid of my face. If my face was gone than they would give me the mask to replace it that would resolve everything. I wouldn’t need a face that showed emotion or showed intent or anything else. I would have the gold mask of this god, whatever it was, because it was not the God, it was a new god. It was the god that was actually going to do what the selfish God of this world couldn’t. It was going to make everything right for me and it will, but only once I lose my face.

As I was thinking about this, contemplating what that would really mean, how best it would be to lose my face and how best the execution would need to be executed, I found myself grinding my teeth. Sawing off the tips with each other. And so I chose to forget about it because why think about anything that was so not up to me and so up to something so beyond me that I didn’t understand and so I started wearing sunglasses and a hood and sometimes a bandana over my nose and mouth to experience something like facelessness. I was able to forget about how much I needed a drink and I could feel this god, this energy that was going to give me a mask to replace myself that would never leave and I could forever be a new self under the mask that would make everything okay.

It was on the night that it was a moon that was just barely visible because of the foggy skies. It looked like a fingernail and was dirtily lit, as if there was mange under the nail, and it was almost setting, but it seemed like it was important, that the gunk underneath was a personification of who I was about to become, filth but godly filthy, living underneath the gunk of the moon. A goon for the moon. The moon goon. That is exactly who I want to be.  

I walked with my sunglasses even though I could hardly see. I kept the bandana up and my hood up and along the river is where I came across someone that wanted my money. There were more and they were laughing and as they barked at me, so much that I couldn’t understand, I realized that the moon was the one who was laughing, that they weren’t barking, but cackling, not dogs but hyenas, and so I knew then that I wasn’t going to give them my money. I was going to eat them. The hyenas needed to know what it was to be bit and so I grabbed their necks and bit their faces and they tried to hit me but I didn’t feel it and kept biting, eating, chewing their skin away from their faces and making holes that showed me the insides of the bodies that were worthless and needed to die because fuck anything and everyone that needed to feel as though they were something that they weren’t and cackled like hyenas when they weren’t at all and came victim to the true villain, which was me, which was so beyond them and all their shit and fuck them, and everyone dies because I kill everyone I can and that is when they started running and I was disappointed because I had already swallowed their face meat and I didn’t have a gun to stop them and they were just hyenas so they could run faster than me so there was no use in bothering with their bullshit because after all the moon is alive and I am its goon and once they were gone it began to tell me something and I had to listen close and I did as I was able to finally tell what it meant and that was when I did and it was this: SEVIL LIVES.

The dreadlocked barista stared at the last two words until the video was done uploading. He didn’t put anymore thought into it after he realized the last two words were a palindrome. It was too late, though. The words were already in his brain, growing like teeth that would never leave.

 

Fiction

Spectrum City is Haunted

FACE

Darren was deep into his notebook when Phil arrived to The Mound. Never before had they met up at a coffee house. Usually it was a bar, usually The Track, but Darren said he wasn’t drinking anymore and even though Phil didn’t believe him, he decided it best to humor the friend he felt an obligation to see at least once a month. He was lucky if he could push it to two, but Darren was a man of ritual and if that was disrupted, everything was disrupted.

“Back to the diary,” said Phil as he sat down.

“Eat a dick,” said Darren, not looking up until he finished his sentence. He capped his pen and closed his notebook, putting them both on his lap before leaning over the table. In front of him was a tall white cup with orange spiral designs all over it. He drank from it slowly.

Dramatic ass motherfucker, thought Phil. Here we fucking go.

Darren exhaled so as to draw attention and only then did he look Phil in the eyes. He wasn’t surprised that Darren’s eyes were widened and didn’t believe for a second the caffeine was guilty. “It’s good to see you, man. You’ve been busy.”

“They keep me busy.”

“They…”

“God,” said Darren. “The devil. Their brothers and sisters. The whole family.”

Jesus, thought Phil. More bullshit.

“I have to tell someone. Show someone. Sorry it’s you. There’s not really anyone else, ya know.”

Phil squinted. He needed to show concern. He put his lips together, trying to keep them neutral, between a frown and smile. One of the two would show up if he didn’t.

Darren exhaled again. It would’ve been a sigh if it weren’t so loud. A lady behind them cleared her throat. A man across from Phil stared at them over his laptop screen. The barista, the skinny white kid with dreadlocks that reeked of patchouli, swept slowly beside them, ignoring the cropped hair portly women with football hoodies that stared up at the menu chalkboard in front of the cash register.

I’d rather be in Bible study.

“Spectrum City is haunted,” said Darren, and right as he did, Phil noticed a relief cross his old friend’s face. Almost as if it were a physical skin, shed like a reptile.

The dreadlocked barista stopped sweeping and looked over. Phil turned to him and stared until the barista went back to sweeping and pretended to stop eavesdropping. “You’re talking about ghosts.”

“No,” spoke Darren, once again drawing the attention from the other coffee shop patrons. “They aren’t ghosts. They’re gods. Two, I think. I don’t know. There are more, but they may not be gods. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I have to do something that I don’t want to do but have to do because if I don’t…” He winced and his face muscles became tight. Maybe fighting some kind of pain. Maybe preparing for it. “I just have to, okay? So just don’t hate me, or whatever. Just be cool and don’t try to stop me or anything. ”

“Okay,” said Phil. He wanted coffee, but that would only prolong the whole thing. He could still make it to dinner with Amy and her roommates on time if he left in five minutes. “Whatever you got to do, man.”

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Maybe I should get coffee, thought Phil. Maybe Amy would like some. No, I’d have to get her roommates coffee then too. They always expect things. Just because I’m dating who they live with doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the gifts I give her. I don’t owe them anything. I’m going to stop giving them things. I do too much already for other people. I need to focus on myself and Amy. No more needless generosity. It’s like I’m dating three girls instead of one and two of them I don’t even like. Pretty girls always surround themselves with less pretty girls to make themselves feel prettier. If I can find boyfriends for them I’ll have more time with Amy. That way we can actually start fucking. We’ll just keep saying we’re waiting for marriage, but that’s how all the Christian girls work. You just keep saying it and keep kissing until they’re so wet they think they’ve been anointed with Christ’s oily blessing and of course he wants them to have sex because it’s not like we aren’t going to end up married anyway. Might as well just start now if we want it so much. God won’t care, Pastor Craig won’t know. Our parents can go along thinking we’re virgins and we’ll get married and just keep fucking. I wonder what her pussy smells like. Goddam, it’s been too long.

Darren set down two knives on the table in front of them. He exhaled louder than before and grabbed the handle of one, placing the tip by where his jawline met his ear. He breathed in and out while Phil came out of his own head, squinting and confused.

Phil opened his mouth but couldn’t even finish his question. “What are you…”

The thin knife slid up under Darren’s skin as easily as a letter opener into an envelope. There was no blood visible until he dragged the metal edge down his jaw line. His eyes were open the entire time, vacantly staring at nothing as his hand concentrated on guiding the knife, sawing underneath his skin and keeping the cut smooth, straight and even.

Having traced from ear to ear, Darren removed the knife from his face. The blood covered his blade hand completely. Phil stood up then, the shock having worn off enough to realize action was necessary, and put out a hand to stop Darren. The blade entered his palm, directly through the middle, and Phil stared at the blade tip that pointed directly at him out the back of his hand. He turned his wrist and panic took him once he confirmed that the knife actually was inside him, the handle sticking out of the inside below his fingers like a misplaced sixth.

“You stabbed me,” said Phil. He stumbled back, squeezing his wrist, and plopped into his chair.

Darren took the other knife off the table and dragged it up from the front of his ear, separating the skin below his hairline and above his forehead.

The dreadlocked barista kept his phone steady on the scene, recording as blood reached Darren’s eyes.

“He’s stabbing people,” yelled a lady behind Phil into a phone.

The man behind the laptop watched silently and others from the back ran for the front doors. The cropped hair portly women with football hoodies almost got involved, until they saw how much blood there was and decided to get coffee elsewhere.

Oh my God, thought Phil. What do I do? Should I take the knife out? Oh Lord, please. Please, help me. What if I lose my hand? I’m going to be handicapped. I could die. I can’t die. I still have to fuck Amy. Please, God let me fuck Amy.

Darren put the knife down and dug his fingers into the cut atop his forehead. He gripped the skin flap and pulled down. It removed easily at first until he got to the eyelids, but he ripped harder and they came away from his eyes, stretching the skin holes. The circles elongated into ovals and the skin then pulled away at the cheeks with a fair amount of ease. The nose was difficult, but it was the most stubborn at his mouth and so he went back for the knife to cut between where his lips and gums met. He cut around feverishly with the rest of his face hanging over and his eyes wildly glued, exposed completely to the open air.

Phil never took his eyes off the knife in his hand.

When Darren was done, he got up from his seat, leaving the knife on the table and taking his face with him. It didn’t look like a face the way it hung from his fingers, but when he stretched it back out on the counter by the cash register, it almost resembled one again, though flat and weird as it was with the extra skin of the nose, scrunched and folded, resembling more of a pig’s than a human’s.

Later, witnesses outside claimed the raw faced man was trying to tell them something. When they were questioned later as to what specifically he was saying, none of them were able to discern it accurately. He wasn’t saying the word, “separatist” and he wasn’t telling them he was the “devil’s gift”, but both were close enough.

At the hospital, days later when Darren wasn’t dead and they gave him a notepad to communicate, he wrote only one phrase over and over.

SEVIL LIVES, SEVIL LIVES, SEVIL LIVES, SEVIL LIVES…