Slag Attack
Authors: Andersen Prunty
Slag Attack
Andersen Prunty
Copyright © 2010 by Andersen Prunty
Cover Artwork © 2010 by Alan M. Clark
www.alanmclark.com
Paperback ISBN: 1-936383-09-8
Published by Eraserhead Press
205 NE Bryant
Portland, Oregon 97211
www.bizarrocentral.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Also by Andersen Prunty
The Sorrow King
Fuckness
My Fake War
Morning is Dead
The Beard
Jack and Mr. Grin
Zerostrata
The Overwhelming Urge
Contents
The Devastated Insides of Hollow City
All Alone at the Edge of the World
The Devastated Insides of Hollow City
1.
In the flickering bathroom light Shell adjusts his eyepatch and runs a hand across the black scruff of his jaw before vomiting into the sink. He glances at himself in the mirror, a single cold blue eye glaring back at him, surrounded by a hundred and forty pounds of waste. He dips his fingertips into the puke, moving it around, looking for signs of infection.
He breathes a sigh of relief at the absence of the tell tale maggot-like worms.
Was
it relief? Perhaps.
He coughs and turns the tap on cold. He catches the water in his hands and splashes it on his face, trying to get the puke smell off his upper lip.
The flickering light irritates him. He reaches up to either tighten or unscrew the bulb altogether and notices it’s covered in a number of thick, sluglike worms. Adult slags. He can’t bring himself to touch them.
The Rotting Man never told him this city was infested.
But Shell isn’t here because of the infestation. He is here for a different reason. That reason is, as yet, unbeknownst to him.
He checks his watch. Two more hours until The Rotting Man will call. Maybe he has enough time for a nap.
2.
His tiny room consists of a bed and desk. The door opens outward, banging into the far wall of the narrow hall and there it is. His bed. A single bed. No floor space. The small desk sits atop the bed. The desk has a chair but in order to lie down in the bed he has to put the chair on top of the desk before crawling beneath it. It’s the worst room in the world.
He pulls all the covers from the bed, making sure there are no slags on it. He doesn’t really need the covers anyway. It’s nearly a hundred degrees and humid. Summer in Hollow City. He’s already damp with sweat.
Lying in bed, he listens to distant sirens, trains and, closer, insects. They sound frenzied. As much a victim of the slags as humans. He falls asleep only briefly and dreams of torture and explosions. In the dream, he’s another person entirely but everyone pretends to know him and, for some reason, this makes him violently angry.
He awakes to the desperate blatting of his cell phone. He looks at it. A picture of The Rotting Man, drunk, greets him. The picture was taken at last year’s Christmas party. The Rotting Man had drunk way too much and kept asking people if they wanted to go out and roll winos at the train station. That was just before The Rotting Man’s left ear fell off.
Good times? Doubtfully.
Shell flips his phone open.
“
Yeah.”
“
You asleep?”
“
It’s like six in the evening. Why the hell would I be asleep?”
“
Different strokes for different folks!”
“
Is everything you say a fucking cliché?”
“
Find Pearl. That’s all I got for you. And that’s no cliché.”
“
Who’s Pearl?”
“
Find her. Do what you do best.” Another cliché.
“
I don’t suppose I’ll get any help with this one?”
“
Help is all around you, friend...”
“
Okay. Gotta go.” Talking to The Rotting Man is headache inducing. There’s only so much of it he can take and, because of the clichés, Shell could almost predict how he would answer his questions. So why even bother asking them?
There is an awkward pause. Shell holds the phone away from his ear to see if the call has ended. The seconds continue to roll on the tiny screen.
“
Say it!” The Rotting Man blurts.
Shell takes a deep breath and says, “See you later alligator,” in his customary monotone.
“
After while crocodile!” The Rotting Man gleefully yells back before ending the call.
3.
Shell slides out of bed, which means he’s now standing in the hallway.
Help is all around you
. Is that a cliché? Shell isn’t sure. He thinks it sounds like a cliché. Whatever. Most of what The Rotting Man says is bullshit anyway. But he’s the boss.
Shell straightens his tie and grabs his coat from the chair, pulling it on and smoothing out the wrinkles. It’s what his ex-wife disdainfully calls “detective brown.” He again touches his eyepatch, a weal of nausea streaking across his insides.
He walks down the short and narrow hallway until he comes to the dim living room. Miss Fitch, an older lady mostly made of bones and hair, is on her knees. Her arms are clasped around the flickering television. Her cheek is pressed against the glass and she’s crying loudly. Gushing. The static has captured her hair and spread it across the television. From what Shell can tell it’s just a harmless sitcom. At first he thought it might be more of the plague footage: mountains of dead, slag-gnawed children, skinny three-legged dogs wandering through it all, cities abandoned and destroyed. He stands and stares at her. Earlier, she had been sitting on the couch, her hands demurely folded in her lap while she stared catatonically at the wall.
The landlord, a fat hirsute hunchback named Mr. Blatz, had warned Shell about her. “She came with the building,” he had said. “She’s always been here.” Then he had offered to knock ten dollars off the rent. That sounded good to Shell. He wouldn’t need the apartment much more than a night, anyway.
Between the sobs Miss Fitch bellows, “Stop looking at me!” Flecks of spittle hit the screen, pixilating it. “Oh God just quit looking at me.”
Shell clears his throat. “I’ve gotta go in the kitchen and make some calls. Do you think you can keep the crying to a minimum?” He holds the thumb and forefinger of his right hand very close together.
She is once again wracked with sobs. “Oh God now it’s
talking
to me.”
Who is
she
talking to?
“
I’ll have you know,” Shell begins. “I am not an ‘it’. I am a man. Living. Breathing. Human.”
She pulls away from the screen to face him, her teeth bared. She snarls, “Hollow. You’re all hollow!”
Shell can’t take her seriously. Half her hair is still plastered to the television. He remembers what Mr. Blatz said about trying not to instigate her but he can’t seem to help it.
“
I’d think a resident of Hollow City wouldn’t be so quick to make that judgment.”
But she’s turned back to the television, rubbing her cheek up and down it. On the screen, a fat man in a red bra laughs uproariously as someone sprays him with a garden hose. “Please,” she whispers. “Just make him go away.”
“
As I said,” Shell crosses the living room, giving Miss Fitch a wide berth. “I was just going into the kitchen to make some calls. I’d rather not be bothered.”
But she’s gone, licking the television and rubbing her nose in the saliva. Shell looks for slag movement in the saliva but doesn’t see anything. He makes his way into the overly bright kitchen. A large sullen man in overalls sits at the table and stares at a plate of runny scrambled eggs.
Shell turns back to the living room to address Miss Fitch. “Say, do you know who Pearl is?”
Slowly, she pulls her glistening face from the screen and pushes a button, turning the television off and plunging the living room into darkness. Her eyes have once again gone blank. She slumps over to the couch and plops down.
“
Pearl?” he asks and knows he will not get a response.
4.
Shell approaches the man sitting at the table.
“
Mr. Blatz didn’t say anything about you.”
The man says nothing.
“
That means I don’t really have to let you stay. Normally, I wouldn’t mind. You seem quiet and I won’t be here long. But I need some privacy. I have some calls to make and that room...” he gestures toward his room, “is far too small and hot to think.”
The man makes no attempt to leave. Shell picks up a handful of the eggs and shoves them into the bib of the man’s overalls.
“
Just take your eggs and go.”
The man pats his egg-filled pouch, slides his chair back from the table and stands. “You’ll be sorry,” he says softly and slowly.
“
Do you know who Pearl is?” Shell asks.
“
I wouldn’t tell you if I did. You’re very rude.”
Then, in a half-hearted attempt at confrontation, the man flips his plate over onto the table, the remaining eggs slathering across the surface.
“
Dick,” Shell says.
“
Monster,” the man says softly, lethargically pushing Shell’s shoulder.
“
I don’t want to fight you.”
“
You’d lose anyway.” The man lumbers to the door, turns back and says, “I hope you fail.”
“
I probably will,” Shell says and thinks,
I almost always do.
He finds the best way to thoroughly insinuate himself into a city is to use a local land line and call local people. The phone is mounted to a wall and covered in slags. He grabs the dirty plate from the table and attempts to knock the writhing slags from the phone. They fall to the floor with wettish plops. He stomps them. This is really the perfect size to combat them. Not large enough to make a giant mess but not small enough to go undetected. The baby ones could be anywhere. Even inside you. Before you know it they are all over and all hope is lost.
He picks up the phone and calls a random number.
“
Hello,” a male voice says.
Calling someone is like putting himself right in their house. He can hear if they are watching television. He can hear if they have a dog or children. If they’re eating. This guy doesn’t seem to be doing anything. It’s easy to imagine him just sitting by the phone and staring out into nowhere.
“
Hi,” Shell says. “Um, what are you wearing?” He feels this is a good opening line. Sometimes people hang up on him but there are always plenty more numbers to call.
“
Well,” the man says. “I’m wearing pants and a shirt.”
“
What about shoes? Are you wearing shoes?”
“
Yep.”
“
What kind?”