Fiction

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Dark Places

By Alex Clermont

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It was robbing season where I worked. Although I didn't know why, it seemed a demonstrable fact that the warmth of summer somehow thawed the laziness of low-level criminals. Cops patrolled more often, random beatings became more frequent, and stick-up men looked for anything that shined with a focus that would be inspiring if it was directed at a book.

I don't think Doug knew, or thought about, any of that though. In his typically unenergetic voice our manager asked us to work after closing time. The temptation of overtime pay was too much to resist and most of us stayed late, despite the dangers outside.

Me and two other money-starved employees were told to clear out the sales floor of all merchandise. It was going to be waxed, or buffed, or both, and from what I gathered the flooring company offered a discount if they didn’t have to move anything. The amount they discounted was more than what would be needed to pay us to move stuff. The arithmetic probably took Doug all of three seconds. In accordance with his sound math, we pushed carts of sleeping pills and dumped boxes of energy drinks into the gated lot behind the store. We all did the work on the cheap for the company – though every one of us thought we were getting over.

Overtime pay made Jackie stay, though barely. She told me she was a little scared of the neighborhood; she said she wasn't sure if the gates were high enough to keep out the violence that the prospect of free pharmaceuticals might bring. We wouldn't be leaving until two in the morning and she whispered in embarrassed tones that she never liked being around past ten p.m. I grew up in the neighborhood though. I knew it like a close relative. And I knew that, at night, the gates would definitely not be high enough to keep out thieves for more than a few hours. Luckily, that was all the time we needed.

We emptied the store of all its unshelved items in under an hour while Doug sat in the manager's office to organize paperwork and check his Twitter feed. With a box of unpacked cough syrup in my arms, I snuck a peek of him looking through a Facebook page called "Big Ol’ Booties." He scrolled down its timeline, which was filled with a mix of candid and professional photos of women's asses. Even with my passing glance I could see Photoshop at work. Someone was using smudge tools, alpha layers, lighting and darkening effects to carve out perfect butts that could never exist in the real world. Though I didn't like it, I admired the fact that he was able to surf the net for borderline porn while I worked.

Outside, after putting down the last of the products, we waited. In folding chairs we removed from the break room, Jackie, Daryl and I sat around in anticipation. The waxer would soon be there to wax, and afterwards we would undo the last hour of work by putting boxes of product back inside the store. While sitting in the small lot we chit-chatted.

I hated the small talk but Jackie seemed uncomfortable being quiet, so she asked questions and made comments that I felt inclined to respond to. Daryl leaned back in his chair and pretended to sleep. Though his eyes were closed I could hear Lil Wayne leaking out of his headphones, and I could see his hands moving rhythmically in his baggy pants pockets as he drummed the background beat on his thigh. I had no excuse so I answered Jackie when she asked why I worked there.

My answer was short, but true. I lived a few blocks away and they were hiring. The hours worked with my school schedule, but that was just a nice bonus. I told her there was no specific reason for me deciding to work there, at least no more than any other place that paid in U.S. dollars. She didn’t seem to understand. Her, suddenly, bluer eyes squinted a bit and she told me that she started working there a few days ago because she had a duel major of pharmacology and business. She was too young for any internships, but since Doug was a second cousin she figured this would be a good substitute. She said some more things, but I didn’t pay much attention to them.

Jackie didn’t notice, and kept our conversation alive with naïve questions about the neighborhood, and what it was like growing up around there.  She wanted to me to tell her my thoughts on why it was so unsafe. Why did the people act the way they did? I answered her questions with short sentences that said nothing important. Soon a van from the flooring service arrived.

Doug came out just as I unlocked the gate, letting the van drive in. The one-man crew hopped out of the driver’s side as soon as the car was in park. His light-brown hair was a tossed mess and his reddish beard was equally unkempt. His eyes shifted slightly from left to right and his uniform was stained in odd places. Judging a book by its cover I guessed that he probably stunk too. Doug was the one walking him inside, so I made a mental note to ask him about the waxer’s smell. These were the stupid things that filled my mind at midnight.

I sat back down and decided to have some fun with Jackie. I told her about the time I was robbed.

My classes finished early that day, but I was coming home late after stopping by a friend’s house to help him improve his shitty math skills. Real shitty. Shitty to the point where you wondered how he functioned in the real world. Had the streetlights been working they would’ve turned on a few minutes before I decided to take a short cut home through a church parking lot. I passed by three guys who were talking and laughing near a parked car that I assumed was theirs. I didn’t pay them any attention until I noticed, from the corner of my eye, one of them walking towards me from behind. I understood immediately what was going on and I ran, but of course, they caught up to me. One of them punched me in the back of the head and I fell right on the concrete sidewalk in front of the church. The second I was down I felt kicks and punches that I instinctively tried to avoid by curling up in the fetal position – my forehead touching my knees between my bent arms. I felt my book bag being pulled away and my pockets being dug into as they shouted angry words at me. When they were done they walked away, leaving me bloody in front of the church steps. When I was sure that the group was gone I got up and walked home.

Jackie seemed shaken up by the story. In reaction I chuckled and told her that I lived in a dangerous area. She stopped talking and I took the opportunity to relax while the floor was being buffed or waxed.

We were about ten feet away from a gate that faced the sidewalk. Through its holes I could see people coming and going. The numbers of passersby were less than they were a few hours before, but the subway exit down the street still let out the occasional group of mainly Black folks. Jackie was scared of them. She didn't know she was scared of them, and if confronted she would probably deny it, but she was. By seeming coincidence they lived in the city’s dark places. And with only coincidence she was forced to draw her own conclusions about why that was the case.

She was a little scared of me too. If I passed her on any given street or sidewalk, and she didn’t recognize me, her muscles would tense up and her mind would fill itself with the millions of police sketches she’d seen of scary men with dark skin and thick lips.

It was nothing though. I dozed off.

After sleeping for I don't know how long, I woke up to the sounds of Doug and the floor guy arguing. I turned around and saw Doug standing near the back exit with his head cocked to the side, looking annoyed. The floor guy was flailing his arms around and yelling at Doug about how he didn’t care what discount he was told, he would have to pay the bill. Dismissively, Doug said that it wasn’t his fault that the floor guy’s manager, or whoever, didn’t tell him what was going on. And it wasn’t his fault that the shady company paid commissions and not a salary. He said that in the end though he didn’t care and he wasn’t going to pay anything higher than the number he was quoted earlier.

The floor guy let out a sound like a growl mixed with a scream. He grabbed something from his belt and then stuck it in Doug’s chest, right below his left collarbone. The next second lasted a month and I could see the crazed look on the floor guy’s face. It was covered in sweat and twitching with a chemical rage I’d only seen once before – I was on the ground getting stomped on at the time. Jackie was screaming with shocked, wide-open eyes. Daryl was tucking in his chest with his shoulders heaved forward in a reflexive movement – as if catching an invisible football thrown low. He had his hand near his mouth, halfway through an a moan of oh shit. Doug was silent. He only looked down in disbelief at the thing that was poking out of his chest.

The second after that second went by pretty quickly. After finishing his oh shit Daryl jumped out of his seat and rushed at the floor guy who was focused on the bleeding wound he had made in Doug’s body. With the strength of his whole upper body, Daryl threw a quick punch that landed on the floor guy’s face. He fell backwards, knocked his head onto the asphalt, and didn’t get up. Doug also began to fall, though a little slower. First he fell to his knees then he collapsed on his right side.

I ran to Doug to see if he was still breathing. He was. I pulled out my cell phone, dialed 911 then frantically looked Doug up and down while waiting for a response. What was sticking out of him was a slightly curved blade with a light brown wooden handle. Doug looked like he was trying to talk, but he just kept mouthing wet noises. Behind me I could hear Daryl call the floor guy a motherfucking dust head. I could also hear a crowd that had gathered by our gate, presumably from the train station, and almost certainly attracted by Jackie’s horror movie scream.

Jackie was yelling at me to take whatever it was out of Doug. I was about to when I heard someone from the crowd shouting at me not to. I looked for who that was and as I told the operator where we were I saw a man right outside the gate. He shouted that if I took out the blade I’d cause more bleeding. My brain was overloading and I just fell on my ass. The operator told me to wait, and I did.

The man outside the gate climbed it until he was inside. He ran past Jackie to Doug, and while looking at him much less frantically than I did, he told me he was an EMS worker. I just nodded in agreement. He breathed into Doug’s mouth and listened to the gurgling sounds that came up. He asked if anyone had a ballpoint pen or something. I handed him my Bic, which he snapped the ends of. He pulled out his own pocketknife and sliced into Doug’s chest a few inches below the blade. He stuck the hollow pen in the new hole and listened again to Doug’s breathing. He asked Doug if he was all right and Doug just looked at him for a moment or two. In a low whisper he told him no, not really, then smiled a little.

The EMS worker told me that since the wound was above Doug’s heart I should keep him propped up a little so the gash wouldn’t let out so much blood. As I lifted Doug’s back off the ground I could see Jackie walk toward us still scared out of her mind, but a level below screaming banshee.

We both looked at Doug who kept a slight smile on his face. Daryl was massaging his fist as he said that all of this was some crazy shit. Using different words Jackie said the same thing to the EMS worker who was slowly getting off his knees and back to his feet. He nodded in agreement. He said that no matter where you live crazy shit could happen. We could hear an ambulance coming as he sighed and said, “There’re a lot of dark places in this city. The most you can do is just try to your best to light’em up.”

Alex Clermont has been published in the Anthologies Out of Place, The Bodega Monthly., and Scholars and Rogues."Alex maintains a blog  which is filled with creative writing and news about his published titles, including the self-published Missing  Rib, released last July. Alex also smiles a lot, so say hi if you get a chance.

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God Carnival

By Gil Gildner

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Within thirty seconds of seeing the freak, I'd stumbled back out into the midway and gasped for breath to fill my burning lungs with something other than utter fear. I'd never considered myself one for swayed emotions. It's a live or let live world - does it matter in truth if, for a split second, I could look into the eyes of another and know who they are?

Hovering above the canvas tents and rusted frames of carnival rides, a weak smoke in a stagnant layer. Glowing slightly through, a slow candle burn of a sun, flickering & dying in the west. Rolling in the easy breath of passing feet and frantic kicks, a mixture of cigarette embers and sucker sticks and cellophane wrappers, crackling. And among the swirling toxic fumes of humanity, a crowd of faces pulsating in and out of consciousness, mirrored reflections of the hive mind.

I couldn't understand it, further reinforcing the horrible clash with reality I'd had back inside, back between the fat man in the trucker hat swilling Milwaukee and the wrinkled black lady screaming quietly, "oh law' mama...come to mama" and then behind me the short little miserable man in the tucked collared shirt, uncomfortably peering into the freak's eyes, reflecting like a soul mirror.

Did we love the freak because we knew we were better?

And standing in that midway, like a shellshocked scarecrow in the way of everyone, a sudden clarity came to me. Everything slowed down a little bit and I felt a little bit better.

If we're all like this, I thought, then maybe it evens out in the end.

Maybe, I thought, it wasn't all that bad.

Maybe, I thought, it was merely an illusion.

But then even as I paused and wondered about the reality of pain, the truth which had been lurking in the back of my mind came to the front. And I knew that the truth wasn't something to reject merely because it suffocated.

Back there in the tent the freak had screamed at all of us.

The neon pulses of the clockwork ship, pendulating back and forth with the screams of ignorant children, drew my attention and I looked up into the dimming sky. There was a child at the very end, and with every pulse back and forth he would catch the high, and his stomach would drop out and you could see the wretched emptiness in his body every time it hit, even from far below in the dust of the midway.

Someone holding a hot dog in each hand ran into me, and relish smeared down my sleeve, and the person looked at me with a disgusted impudence and ran off into the swarm.

Screams came from behind me, and I saw the black lady stumble out of the tent with a face as white as mine. We locked fearful eyes and read the horror in each other's and she said something about mercy and heaven and the Lord, and I said something about damnation and hell and the Devil.

The trucker with the can of Milwaukee came out next with a red face and a string of curses underneath his breath, and he caught up his belt underneath his bulging paunch and tried to look as if he was okay, but his insecurities shown through like they were burning coals inside his gut. And after the trucker the little miserable man came out, eyes rolling in his head and his tongue visible between his stumpy little teeth. And then the rest of them came as a horde, the used car salesmen and the drug dealers and the gas station clerks and the prostitutes and the waitresses and all of us were wondering if what we had seen was real.

We knew it was, and the Belt had lied to us all.

Inside there still remained a few of the upright, the ones with the morality to stomach the sight of the freak and not become reminded of their own being.

I walked over to the opening of the tent, pushing through scum like me to get there, and I stood at the door and looked in and saw the one or two dozen who stood, transfixed at the sight of the freak, listening to the freak scream, and I slowly began to doubt that they saw the same thing I saw.

The grandmothers, and the deacons, and the men with keyrings to Chryslers, and the teachers, standing like alabaster statues in the righteous limelight of the freak, like perfect receptors of truth. Standing like those who have entered into the sacrosanct and been found clean in the eyes of heaven.

The freak stood on the stage, lights piercing down upon him and illuminating his holiness, and he stood and held a leather book up into the stratosphere of the tent and screamed down righteousness into the upturned faces.

And those outside looked back in, sick, and the ghastly truth is that we loved the freak, because we knew we were better.
 

Gil Gildner is a documentary filmmaker by day and author by night. He is based in Searcy, Arkansas and is installed in the corner of a local coffeeshop as part of the permanent collection.

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Leaving

By Philip Goldberg

     Sam stood across the small room from her husband, Paul. To her eyes he appeared unsettled, unhappy, lost in his thoughts. With nothing left to say, she watched him turn and walk out the door into the bright light of day.     

   Instantly the thought of Paul vanished. With it went the clenched tightening in her stomach. Still Sam considered how she thought more of him at certain moments. Especially now, as the wind wound around the leafless trees, and the sweet scent of cedar perfumed the house. She envisioned his broad shoulders, eclipsing everything else. His chestnut-brown hair, trim and spiked, always commanded her attention, as did those green eyes speckled with gold. Eyes she could make out in a blizzard. Even in the one nearly a week ago. But then she would pause, the wind outside would still, and she caught the worried look in her gaunt face, her graying hair and two tired blue eyes reflected back from the mirror. Hanging next to it, she noticed herself in the photo of the two of them together: her sparkling eyes, a fuller face, rosy complexion and shiny blonde hair.

   Outside the small room’s window, snow whitened everything, silenced everything but the wind. To Sam it existed as a constant reminder of the time of year and the place where she lived: the coldest days of January in the iciest part of Michigan’s north.

   On the stove, the tea kettle hissed (for some reason the kettle never whistled), drawing her to it. Her cup, the one Paul had bought her while away in Montana, the one with a painting of a howling wolf on a mountainous ledge, the one she almost dropped onto the hard kitchen floor, awaited the boiled water. A tea bag filled with chamomile, flowery fragrant, her favorite, sat ready in the cup. Pouring the sizzling water into the cup, the steam washed up and over her face and tingled her opening pores.

   Steam from the shower had misted through the open bathroom door on that morning many calendar pages ago. Shafts of sunlight had sliced through it as “My Best Pages” by The Byrds played softly on the CD player. Across the table from her, a freshly showered Paul sat; his hair still wet. Nestled between his two big hands was a teacup. “What makes you happy?” he said, and sipped his pekoe tea. “Real happy?”

   She gazed at him as if buying time to answer. The tattoo on his forearm was of her face. It was permanent, a bond nothing could break. At least she had believed that. Yet this moment belied her belief, tested her faith. From across the room, the click, click, click of the wall clock’s second hand dragged around its face. Neither a happy face, nor a sad face. More of a poker face. It was the same as her expression at the moment, although she churned unhappily under her skin. She wanted to show something. In her eyes. Across her lips. In her tone. Instead her tears fell like stones, when finally she said, “You staying here.” The steam drifted between them.

   He ran a hand across his prickly mane and said, “You know I can’t.”

   “I know,” she replied in a hushed voice.
   
     “Do you?”

   Not answering, she sipped some tea.

   She sat across from the empty chair; her tea still steaming up and enveloping her face in a warm garden-fresh aroma. Truth was she hadn’t known then. She didn’t know now. Time moved on. It always did, distancing her from experiences, from joy, from pain; but time had done little to have given her a reason as to what she should have said, what they could have done to keep him from going. She stared across the table to the chair where he had once sat. Its emptiness. Its quiet made her long for him more.

   Her thoughts shifted and her mind settled on her younger sister Trish, who still sought an answer.
   
    “Just for a few weeks,” she had said during her last visit a few days ago. “That’s all.”

   “I’ll think about it,” Sam had replied.

   “Please do.”

   As snow had fallen outside the window, she put her hand to her mouth and began biting her nails.

    Through the panes of glass she watched flakes of snow dancing through the air. The sight helped erase her sister’s conversation from her thoughts. A winter of snow, she mused. Days upon days filled with a garden of white, awaiting the arrival of spring. Before long, Crocuses would burst onto the land in their purplish glory. And with their appearance, things would change. At least she hoped for this as she sipped more tea. Its warmth spread throughout, thawing her from within. Thoughts of him sharpened. Her need to bite the nubs that were now her nails intensified. 

    Sam had looked up from her red manicured nails. Paul’s battered suitcase had rested at his booted feet. She had wanted to reach out to him, to grab him. With all her might, she wanted to stop him. But she stood as still as the air in the room. Say something, she thought. Anything. To finally confess what she planned to do to keep him close. But she remained wordless, watching as he grabbed the suitcase and then stepped to the door. Before it he stopped and faced her. In his eyes, she witnessed pain and frustration. Then as quickly as those emotions had appeared, they vanished, replaced by a knowing look that grabbed her, held her; it signified that nothing could change what was happening. Not a word. Not a deed. Not a thing. He turned, opened the door and walked out through it. She stood frozen, still unable to chase after him, still unable to stop him, still unable to do anything but watch the door close as she inhaled the cedar scent and listened to the howling wind.

    The wind raked the tree branches against the side of Sam’s house. To her, it sounded like her cat Mo scratching inside his litter box. It represented another moment of another winter since he left. Another winter spent without sharing a word, a smile, a tear with him; without any touch or embrace. And yet the clock kept ticking, kept circling the dial, wiping the present from its face with every movement; but not the past, never the past. She stared at the clock, and with a sigh of acknowledgement sipped the last of her tea. Placing the cup down, the howling wolf staring at her, she became aware of car tires crunching across the snowy ground. She stood slowly, an anxious air filling her lungs as she stepped to the window. Peering out, she watched the blue SUV stopping just beyond her front gate. Its engine hushed, the driver’s side door pushed open; and she watched as Trish stepped out and trekked up the shoveled path to the front door.

   Sam opened the door before Trish arrived. The frigid air rushed in advance of her sister, yet Sam felt little of it. Or so it seemed to her as Trish walked past her and into the house. Shutting the door behind her, Sam embraced her younger sibling.

     “Some tea would be nice.” She smiled. “Sure would stamp out the damn cold.” 

    Sam nodded and went to get her a cup.

    “You know what I was thinking about driving over?

   “What?”

   “How you taught me to roll snowballs big enough to make a snowman.” She removed her wool gloves, placed them on a small credenza against the wall.

   “Why recall that?”

   “From time to time I remember the things taught me when we were kids.” She removed her coat and draped it across the back of a dining chair. “Like swimming for one, down in Pine Pond. Riding a bike for another. Or tying my shoe laces.”

   Embarrassed, Sam blushed and said, “That seems so long ago.”

   “Just twelve or thirteen years.”

   “Still, what’s the point?”

   “I felt you raised me, that’s the point,” Trish said in a hurt tone. 

    “Mom and Dad did their share too.”

    “They always appeared to have a lot more on their minds than raising me.”   

   Through the kitchen doorway Sam turned and looked at her sister, nearing 23 years old, pretty as a pin-up; so Swedish, like their late mother, with her creamy skin, her cornsilk blue eyes and her blonde locks that were never out of a bottle. “At that time, they probably did,” Sam said. Her voice masked the pain at the thought of her mother’s early death not long after those days. 

   “I get it now, but then I didn’t.” 

   “Anyway, I still don’t see how it’s relevant to today.”

   “It is,” Trish said, “ because now I feel like I am raising you.”

   For a few moments, silence held the room; until Sam mustered up her voice and said, “Is that how you see it?

   “What do you think?”

   In the kitchen, Sam’s face flushed. Her jaw stiffened. She closed her eyes and listened to the clock tick. She let out a long breath and then said, “How’s everyone?”

   Trish peered into the bedroom through its open door and spied the clothes piled on the floor, the soiled plates near them, and the unmade bed. “Jim’s good,” she said. “Kids are all right.” Her sister’s approaching footsteps filled her ears and she faced her, seeing the cup of tea in the extended hand.

   “It’s a mess,” Sam acknowledged. Her cheeks grew red and hot.

   “Not again.” She stared at her. “Why?”

   Sam turned from her sister’s stare.
   
     “I thought after you were released, this was behind you.”

   Sighing wearily, Sam cast her eyes at the floor. Painful images flashed before her: a sterile white wall, two stoic eyes of her psychiatrist and three small crimson scars slashed across her right inner wrist. She blinked a few times to make them vanish. 

   “Have you thought any more about staying with us?” Trish asked; her tone steady yet pleading. “You could spend time with the kids. They’d love it. I’m sure you would too.”

   Sam fought to not scream and in a forced level voice replied, “I’m still deciding.”

   “How much longer do you need?”

   “As long as it takes.”

   Each grew quiet. Sam drifted away and followed the whistling wind. Her eyes shifted to the window. The whiteness outside illuminated the panes of glass.

   The sun had shone bright that spring afternoon. A day that had been bereft of any breeze. Fragmented light beamed through trees and danced across the grassy knoll. Blue Jays perched on branches above and whistled a cheerful tune. Yet Sam focused little on these sights or sounds. She was aware that Trish and her family sat on her right, aware of the voice, a man’s, orating. His words flowed from his mouth. Each carried its own power. Each exploded on the ears of Sam, who sat still; her fingers worried the folds of the flag resting on her lap. The spoken words ended. A moment of silence followed, broken by the pop, pop, pop of the rifles fired by the soldiers on the knoll. Sam heard each shot but never looked at the men in uniform. Behind her dark glasses, she shut her eyes and tightened her fingers around the folded flag. Sam fingered the cloth napkin on the table. “I still see him leaving,” she said. “His boots. His bag.” She stared at the napkin. “I still hear the door shut.”

   Trish absorbed the words. “He didn’t walk out on you.”

   “But he did.” A few tears washed over Sam’s eyelids and dripped down her cheeks.

   Trish stood and stepped behind her sister, placing her hands on her sister’s shoulders. Bending, she rested a cheek on Sam’s hair; an act each had done for the other for as long as either could remember.

   “Sam, you know the truth,” Trish said in a soft, comforting voice.  

   Sam felt an ache winding around her like a noose. She struggled against it, fought it as hard as she could. But in the end, she stopped, exhausted by it, giving in to it and the darkness attached to the pain, the hole within her.

   Later as darkness fell, after Trish had driven home, Sam sat on the couch in the small den. Outside the wind howled like a wolf on a cliff. Although she couldn’t see through the window out into the blackness, she knew it was snowing still. Wrapped in a wool blanket, she saw Paul standing in the archway that led to the kitchen. She wanted to stand, go to him and embrace him. She wanted to, but instead she sat and gazed at him in his uniform. From his buzz cut head to his boots, he was her man. He would always be her man no matter what others said or did. Yet she uttered the words that she had to say. “You’ve got to leave.”

   “I know,” he said in a voice that was thin and uncertain. He appeared uneasy, as if he wanted to say more, something, anything, but he stayed silent and then he looked again at her.

   A weak smile crossed her lips. A distant memory filled her mind. In it she saw a shovel throwing dirt on wood. A scratching sound that pulled her back to the present as outdoors tree branches at the mercy of the wind clawed at the house. Pulling the blanket tighter around her, she felt the words force their way up from the darkness within. They found her voice and struggled up her throat and through her lips. “Please go. Now.”

   With rueful eyes, he whispered, “You sure?”
   
    She peered at him without a word.
   
     After a few moments, he leaned over, grabbed his bag and left as he had done before. He never looked back.

   With the wind’s fury in her ears, she sighed. She knew in her heart that this time he had left for good. Her eyes darted around the room; searching, seeking, and then she tugged the blanket hard around her.

​

Philip Goldberg has been published in over twenty-five magazines.

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