Mask of Flies (2 page)

In the feral
wilderness, Malik’s corpse began to twitch; something within kick
started his neurons into firing again. The twitch turned into a fit:
arms and legs striking out in the darkness. When it subsided, his
corpse rolled onto its back, and his eyes popped open, like the power
being turned back on after a bad storm. The corpse struggled to its
feet, but maintained balance. When Malik died, he fell facedown into
the snow—the blood had settled to the front of his body: Livor
Mortis. It added a purple cast to his dark skin, like a full body
bruise.

The corpse slogged in
the same direction that the living Malik had traveled for help. He
stooped like an arthritic through a broken opening of chain-link
fence that etched the hillside perimeter. Malik’s remnants were a
little too fresh, Rigor Mortis lingered, and lactic acid in the
muscles made movement stiff.

Over the hillside the
moon lit the landscape below; a wood-shingled cottage billowed out
chimney smoke. Malik’s corpse approached cautiously but sure
footed, as if he was somehow familiar with the secluded location. A
small dog barked and barked, as they did at many things, but it was
tethered to the tree in the yard.

Imagery flooded the
corpse’s mind. The implanted visions in fragments, and a voice
instructed him how proceed. He saw a large man asleep at a workbench;
a mason jar shallowly filled with clear liquid next to him.

He
is the keeper
.
The
hollow voice boomed inside Malik
.

The next image: a dark
automobile parked in a gravel driveway. Then the vision traveled,
moving inside the house to the fireplace mantel. It focused on a set
of keys.

Our
escape
, the voice again.

Standing in the
wilderness, over a hundred yards from the cottage, the corpse saw the
front door of the cottage, as if it was directly front of him. The
entry became transparent, and the bolt locks and chains binding the
door illuminated. The vision corkscrewed to the rear of the house,
and showed the backdoor unlocked.

I
lay in the small room upstairs. Release me.

Rick stomped snow off
his boots at the door, grabbed his timecard silently, and slid it
through the archaic box on the wall. Being ten minutes late wasn’t
a big deal, but he had been pushing the boundaries lately. The boss’s
door was cracked open a hair, so he walked quickly in the hope of
passing unnoticed.

“Hey Rick, wait up a
second,” the voice said from behind the cracked door, jolting Rick.
“We got a new resident in Summer Hall and need to go over a few
things before you start.”

“Who’s dying now?”

Behind the door sat the
office manager, Tony Delgado, looked down with his brow furrowed,
eyeballing his cheesy Casio wristwatch, undoubtedly a
passive-aggressive approach of showing his dissatisfaction in Rick’s
repetitive tardiness. The glance he shot stymied his almost handsome
face; Tony kept in shape and dressed well, but inherited a very
Italian nose that sat prominently on his face. He opened a manila
file and turned it towards Rick. Inside was an 8x10 photograph, an
image so horrible that it looked artificial.

Rick’s eyes met
Tony’s. “What the hell is this?”

“Jane Doe, age
unknown, she is unrespon—”

“What’s wrong with
her face?”

“We are in the
process of examining her. Just remember: underneath she’s just
another elderly lady. She was abandoned at our Silver Creek facility
in the middle of the night. Someone just sat her down in the lobby
and left without notifying anyone.”

“I bet she scared the
bejesus out of the night crew. So why transfer her here?”

“You obviously have
never been to Silver Creek . . . it’s out in the sticks. They don’t
have the resources to deal with something like this.”

Rick took the picture
and looked at it closely, examining the grossly disfigured woman. The
presence of the large growths pulled the woman’s face in numerous
directions. The most prominent obstruction jutted from the front of
her face to the left of her jaw. The mass was swollen with blood, a
reddish purple color reminding Rick of an uncooked sausage.
Brownish-red crag covered the remainder of her face. It hung down on
loose skin textured like melted candle wax, hardening into miniature
stony bulbs at their endpoint. A twisted aperture, appeared to be her
mouth, housed fractured teeth.

The only human
semblances of the woman in the photograph were her left eye, brown
and bloodshot, it peered out into nothingness; and her hair, raven
black with alternating silver-grey strands lay across the front of
her left shoulder and flowed beyond the scope of the picture.

“I never dealt with
anything like this before . . . I don’t know if I can.” Rick had
thought he had more than earned his keep caring for the dying
residents of the retirement home. This specific case seemed like a
stretch beyond his hourly wage.

“Sure you can,” a
deep throaty voice said from the doorway. Jim Haynes, the director of
facility, walked into the small office. It was his first day back
from the honeymoon of his fourth marriage and millionth consecutive
day of being an asshole. “Just do your job. Do what Tony asks of
you. Everyone is so full of excuses today.”

“Good morning to you
too, Mr. Haynes.” Rick laid the photo on the desk and stood. “I
was unaware you were gracing us with your presence this morning.”

“Alright Mr.
Soblinski, cut the bullshit. You know the state is cutting back
across the board. It’s the special cases just like Ms. Jane Doe
that allow me to keep suspect gentlemen, like you, on the payroll.”

“The dermatologist is
in there now running another biopsy on her facial growths.” Tony
stood up from his desk, interjecting himself. “Once he’s done, I
want her joints run through a basic range of motion. She is going to
have to be moved every two hours. Also, at Silver Creek, she
developed a bit of a wheeze. Rick, I’m going to need you to assist
the respiratory therapist in suctioning some of the mucus from her
lungs.”

“Sounds appetizing.
You’re gonna send Christie in there?” Haynes asked.

“No. I’ll have to
pull Marco out from the morning exercise for this.”

Haynes stepped back
towards the door. “It looks like you have a hold of things here.”
He looked to Rick. “I need you to pay careful attention in there.
This is an extreme case, no doubt the state will send somebody,
but if played right, it could be a solid bullet for the expansion of
this year’s budget.

Rick nodded, and Haynes
walked off to his much larger office.

“There are a lot of
unknown variables. We don’t really know what we are dealing with
from a medical standpoint.” Tony said.

“If there isn’t
anything else you want to dump on me, I should get started.”

Rick made his way over
to Summer Hall, to inventory the supply area while he waited on the
dermatologist. He lost count of toilet paper, and thought of the
liveliest resident of the hallway:
Old
Will Sammy was abandoned . . . just like The Jane. Not an uncommon
occurrence.

Will Samuelsson, a
current patient of Summer Hall, appeared in the lobby of the Oak Leaf
Retirement Community, with nothing but a beat up roll along suitcase,
on Christmas Eve two years ago. Will, being the archetype of a
stubborn old coot, refused to disclose where he came from. All he
would say when asked was: “My family is good for nothing. They
don’t give a rat’s ass where I am.”

The day after
Christmas, Will’s eldest son, Rich, called and made formal
arrangements for Will to stay at Oak Leaf, permanently. Rich,
apparently fed up with his father’s crotchety- drunken episodes,
decided to dispose of dear old dad asleep in piss on his favorite
recliner. It took Rich’s four year old son to point out that “pappy
spilled apple juice on his pants” before anyone realized anything
was amiss. Rich apparently had a full house of guests, and didn’t
want to be bogged down with in processing paperwork during the
holiday.

Rick recalled Tony
retelling Will’s story with such disgust, especially the part when
Rich apparently said: “The old fool survived the Invasion of
Normandy, I had no doubt he would make due until I settled up after
the holidays.”

The sound of a door
slamming shut snapped Rick out of thought. Making his way out of the
storage area, he caught a flash of a white coat turning the corner.
Rick wanted to speak to the dermatologist, but he failed to gain the
doc’s attention, who seemed to be in a mad dash for the exit.

Guess
I’m up.
Rick turned and made his way down the hallway,
passing by Will Samuelson’s room on his way to the room at the end
of Summer Hall.
Old coot is
probably still sleeping, must be nice.
Rick envied these
old folks, in a way, because their obligation to the world had ended.

The bright floral
wallpaper encasing Summer Hall did little to mask the somber
atmosphere. When Rick approached room 137, his limbs felt rubbery and
nerves on edge. He wondered if this was some joke, as he knocked two
gentle taps and pushed down on the cold stainless steel door handle.

Rick crept in the door
gently, “Miss . . . I’m coming in.”

He wasn’t sure if his
comment fell on deaf ears, or if the Jane was conscious at all. A
lamp on the nightstand lit the room, casting a garish orange light on
the lacquered wood accents of the room. The Jane was not visible from
the doorway vista; the narrow hallway obstructed the view to the bed
where the deformed woman lay.

Rick walked up the
narrow hallway and beheld the awful picture drawn to life. The
photograph didn’t portray the true horror of the Jane’s
affliction; it had to be seen in person. Her face covered in
nightmarish, purple crag that glistened in the dim light— the
dermatologist must have applied some sort of ointment to the surface
of her face. A few nodules seemed infected as puss dripped onto her
bed gown.

The air was thick with
a miasma of disinfectant and old skin. Her mouth protruded savagely,
showcasing a viscous film of salvia and mucus. Gossamer strings
writhed with each wheezing breath. The woman’s breathing was
rugged. If suction wasn’t performed, she would develop pneumonia
and die.

“Good morning
ma’am—my name is Rick Soblinski, I will be taking care of you
today.”

Her one visible eye,
red and watery, stared blankly at the wall.

The nervousness took on
new form: Rick felt eye’s watching from behind. A harsh whisper,
that could have been the wind against the window, conveyed something
unintelligible. His stomach churned.

The ruckus clamor of
the suck cart being brought in through the doorway was a welcome
relief.

“Marco?” Rick said.

“Polo.” A large
figure emerged from the narrow hallway.

Rick turned around to
help pull the cart full of hoses and tubes. He reached his hand to
the bull of a man. “Marco, back on suck duty now?”

The large Cubano
delivered a knuckle popping handshake. “Yeah . . . I hoped to never
see this machine after transferring to exercise,” Marco said.

Rick was glad Marco had
shown up. Uneasiness aside, he thought it would be a good idea to get
the mucus up before anything. “How’s the wife doing?”

“She’s good.”
Marco smiled with his whole face. “Keeping busy teaching art at
ECC. She’s got a Russian girl in her sculpture class who’s really
something. Made some kind of man-sized insect sculpture that is going
to be on display in the Albright Knox.”

“Sounds fun . . . On
the subject of life sized, frightening artwork, we have a masterpiece
around the corner.” Rick was fairly certain the Jane couldn’t
hear. He didn’t recall seeing any openings where her ears should
be.

Marco smirked and shook
his head. “You ain’t right. Well, let’s get this over with.”
He wheeled the suction cart over to the bed. “I need you to hold
her while I put the mask on. Make sure she don’t thrash around and
break the gear,” Marco said, washing his hands in the sink.

“Alright, I don’t
think she is going to give us too much of a problem.” Rick leaned
over and pinned the Jane’s elbows down at her sides gently as Marco
tentatively hooked up the tubing and started the compressor.

The Jane’s skin felt
almost reptilian, like moist, sharp scales. Her visible epidermis,
that wasn’t covered from her bed gown, was dead and scabby, most
likely contributing to the foul smell in the air.

Rick was exhausted
despite sleeping a solid eight hours. Revulsion gripped his gut, as
the sound of mucus slurping up the tube accompanied the cacophony of
the vibrating compressor. Walter once told Rick that the Koreans
would play awful sounds over loud speakers to grate slowly at the
American POW’s nerves—Rick wondered if the Lung Suck symphony was
on that playlist.

Marco shut off the
compressor and undid the mask from the Jane’s twisted maw with one
hand, while holding a large cloth underneath her chin to catch any
residual mucus. “You can let go. She didn’t put up much of a
fight, huh?”

“No, not at all, and
she seems to be breathing easier now that you degunked her. No matter
how many suck assists I go through, I never get used to the sound”

“Man, how do you
think I feel? I have to watch that junk being sucked up the tube the
whole time. This right here is why I moved away from Respiratory
Therapy.” Marco disassembled the suction cart like a seasoned
infantryman would his rifle. “There was a little blood in her
lungs, but it’s nothing to worry about. I gotta knock out these
charts. Let me know sometime this week if you guys wanna get up this
weekend.” Marco pawed at Rick’s face with his dirty gloved hand,
barley missing him.