Visible Wear

“What’s that movie go like again? That one with the kid whose parents ditch him and leave him in the house with those killers and he’s all like ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAA’?”

“What? You dumbass — his parents didn’t ditch him, not on purpose anyway, and they left him in a house that was being burgled.”

“Heh, you said burgled.”

“God you’re such a dumbass.”

Pete and Lola, the two best friends since childhood sat on the floor in Pete’s room a.k.a. the basement. It was summer vacation, a three month break before their final year of highschool, and the two were wasting time in prime form.

The small Radioshack radio playing the top 40 in the background cut to a weather report and announced another sweltering Michigan day.

“Shit, did you hear that? Waaayyy too hot to do stuff outside.” Pete observed.

“Yeah.” Lola concurred, with a hint of reluctance.

In reality it made no difference how hot or cold or absolutely perfect the weather outside was — these two slugs were always found lounging about in the basement. Their favorite topic of discussion was movies — just whatever they’d seen on cable since they were too lazy to hit the local video store, go to the theater to see new movies, or hold down jobs to afford either.

“Oh man, remember that movie where there’s like a party and people start getting killed and everyone’s all like ‘Oh my god, who’s killing everyone’ What was that movie called again?”

“Pete you dumbass, that’s like every horror movie ever made. What the hell are you talking about?”

“No, no — it’s that movie with the girl, you know, the girl with the eyes.”

“Oh, oh the eyes — god, why didn’t you just say so. Yeah, there’s only one girl out there with eyes.”

Lately, Lola had been feeling irate and snapping at Pete more often than usual. She was thinking about life after highschool, where they were both headed, and how she was beginning to realize she wanted something more. Somehow both Lola and Pete had managed to squeeze through high school on the four-year plan, despite being complete screw-ups most of the time. Now, they only had one year left.

Then what?

What was it she wanted?

Pete believed that if you followed your dreams everything would work out for you — just like in the movies. His dream was to finish highschool and start the endless summer — hanging out with Lola in the basement, watching cable, and just chilling out. Maybe he could work up the occasional motivation to hold host to a killer party. Just like in the movies.

Lola didn’t want that.

But Lola didn’t know what she did want. She knew it wasn’t going to be this forever. She did know she was running out of time to figure out what her options were though.

“Pete.”

“Yeah, Lola?”

“What if I wanted to get out of here after next summer?”

“How’s that, Lo?”

“I mean, like, if I wanted to go somewhere or, I dunno.”

“What are you saying, Lola?”

“This thing that we do, like every day, sitting here in the basement, I don’t want to do it forever, Pete.”

“What do you want then?”

There it was again, the question that Lola had been asking herself for months now without getting much closer to an answer. She knew she wanted to try new things, go as far as she could go — just stop being so lazy for a change.

“I guess, Pete, I wanna go to college, get a job, go places, get a life. At the very least I want to get out of this town. I’m sorry Pete, I can’t be doing this anymore.”

“It’s cool — I was getting pretty tired of the basement too. Maybe even get a job doing stuff. Still too lazy to do all that other stuff but I’ll help you get it though.”

“Really, Pete? You?ll help me get out of here?”

“Yeah, sure, it’ll be just like the movies.”

George was in trouble. He’d fucked up real bad and now he was running. His homo sapien brain told him it was no use but his primitive lizard brain told him to keep running.

George had been careless. All he had to do was deliver a package — same as always — but how many times can you do the same thing without screwing up? For George, the answer was fifty-five.

Every month for four and a half years George was trusted with delivering a package to the Giant. The Giant was a monster — in every sense of the word. George’s employers used the Giant to find and kill people. George never saw the Giant, but he’d heard stories of prolonged torture, rape, and mangled remains.

When he started the deliveries George had no idea what he was carrying or what it was for. He knew he was being watched but he didn’t mind. His new job gave him more money and sense of pride. He wanted them to see him do his job.

George had been chosen because he was simple. His predecessor had been clever. He was a fast thinker capable of taking care of himself. But clever had gotten him curious and clever had led him to blackmail his employers. Clever had also gotten him torn in half starting at his ass.

George was not clever and he had no want of a better life because he had no concept of one. Before his new job he was a flunkie in his employer’s organization. He tagged along on extortion runs and beat up people who owed debts. The other flunkies were smarter than him but two qualities made him stand out — he did exactly as he was told and he was fiercely loyal.

George hadn’t meant to stop being loyal. He never meant to disobey orders. He did as he was told, exactly as he had done the previous fifty-four deliveries, but this time was different. If he could, he’d just forget everything and finish the job — but he couldn’t and the fateful scene kept replaying itself in his mind.

He was sitting at his table at the Line Drive Cafe. The Line Drive was a run down hole which stank of piss and beer — the last operational sign of an upscale golf resort planned by the city but never completed.

George always ate lunch here. He knew everybody who ate lunch at the cafe. Today, there was a young man he didn’t know. The stranger seemed enough like a regular — staggering drunkenly and bumping into tables, but it wasn’t until he bumped into George’s table that he made his true nature clear.

George had placed the heavy bundle on the floor beside his feet — he couldn’t risk leaving it in the car. The man staggered by, knocked violently into George’s table, mumbled something, and shuffled rapidly out the door. Five minutes later, George noticed the package was missing.

Panic hit him like a slug to the gut. He felt sick but got moving. He ran outside to the parking lot. He had no idea which way to go and felt the sickness again. He stumbled against an old truck and vomited undigested grilled cheese. When he raised his head he saw something incredible. The man was inside the truck and he was looking inside the box.

George yanked the door open and lunged inside. The stranger didn’t move. Then George noticed the man’s expression — his face was twisted into a look of pure terror. Getting closer it was clear that the man was dead.

The package was open. George was told never to open it or the Giant would come after him. Now the package was open. George peered inside at a bloody mess. Inside was a human heart, intestines, and other organs piled together and a pair of eyes staring back at him.

A new wave of nausea hit him and George began dry heaving. He backed out of the truck and began running. He ran into an abandoned sporting goods store and locked himself in the foul bathroom. He stayed there through the night and when the morning came he took off running again.

He didn’t know where he was running — he knew it didn’t matter. He arrived at a tunnel and was halfway through when he came to a dead stop. Loud footsteps sounded at the far end of the tunnel — booming footfalls which felt like they were shaking the earth itself.

A person appeared at the opening ahead — a towering figure with veiny muscles and huge hanging limbs.

“Where’s my package, Georgy?” A bizarre squeaky voice called. It reminded George of a clown he’d seen once on TV.

“Mr. Giant? I don’t have it, sir — it was stolen from me.”

The Giant moved closer and a noise half like laughter, half like a sob began in that horrible grating voice.

“I’m sorry sir, I truly am.”

Closer the Giant came, moving unexpectedly fast in a loping motion. Closer came the horrible high-pitched cacophony.

The Giant was on George before he could think to run. He stood twice as tall as George and his muscles undulated under his flesh. He smelled like a meat locker gone bad and his hot, sticky breath poured down on George in waves.

“Did you look inside the package, Georgy?” The Giant already knew.

“Yes sir, but it wasn’t my fault. The other guy — the one who stole it from me, he opened it. I’ll get it back for you though.”

“My treat is spoiled Georgy, now it just won’t do. Now I need a new treat.”

The Giant smacked his lips and saliva flooded his mouth. A thought forming in George’s brain never had a chance to finish. Just as George was realizing what the Giant did with the packages his head was grasped in one massive hand, squeezed till it popped open, and scooped clean of its contents.

“Mmm,” said the Giant. “Fresh. What a lovely treat.”

Story request by reader mlk, jr.
“Meet me at the elephant.” She had said.

Who she was, Trace didn’t know. She was his dream girl — that is, she had appeared to him in a dream and had spoken those words to him. It was 7 o’clock in the morning and Trace had been searching for elephants on the Internet for the last four hours.

Google, MSN Search, Yahoo! — they had all returned millions of links for ‘elephant’ and nothing struck him as relevant. Now he had to get ready for work, however much he felt compelled to stay and search longer.

This lack of sleep was very ill-timed. Trace was the project manager on a multinational effort to bring about global wireless web access via a dynamic mesh network. The project was huge and fraught with obstacles including government oppositions. Today Trace was scheduled for an all day video conference with representatives of some of those governments and he needed to be in peak form.

He needed to focus, but all he could think of was her — the woman whose only connection to him had been a voice in a dream. A woman who probably didn’t exist, calling him to meet somewhere he’d never find. He had to have been going mad — but he absolutely had to find her.

—

Somehow, the meeting was a success.

Three capuchinos and double shots of espresso had shocked his system awake and given him lucidity enough to get through the meeting. He felt like fidgeting throughout the seven hour conference but kept it restrained to shifting his legs whenever he sat down. That was movement below the table — below the watchful eye of the conference video camera. Any other movements could have been interpreted as nervousness and uncertainty — things Trace could not afford to show.

Now, however, it was eight o’clock. Trace had begun crashing off the high plateau of his caffeine infusion shortly after the long meeting. His boss wanted to celebrate the overwhelming success of the meeting and took Trace and his team out to dinner. Convincing a few of the government representatives to join in on the project would’ve been a success. Convincing all of them was an unexpected miracle.

Home in his apartment, full of filet mignon and pinot noir, Trace could barely keep his eyes open. He staggered to his bedroom and fell in the direction of his bed and promptly fell asleep when he hit the mattress.

“Trace….”

It was her again.

“Come back Trace.”

Where was he supposed to go? Where the hell was this elephant she expected him at?

“Find the elephant. Meet me at the elephant.”

Trace was awake again and sitting at his computer. He didn’t know what else to do, so he began searching again.

—

Something was buzzing nearby — something loud like a prehistoric mosquito about to drain a mammal of its precious blood.

Trace jolted awake. His eyes focused on the buzz and saw it was coming from his cellphone. He must’ve fallen asleep at his desk. His cell was next to his head and the screen was flashing. He grabbed at the phone and checked its display.

Twenty-three messages.

Shit.

He called voicemail and listened to first his secretary asking his condition and whereabouts to his increasingly irate boss asking the same.

“What am I going to do, I’m losing my mi…” Trace stopped short. He had knocked the computer out of screensaver and the image before him was an orange plastic elephant statue. Somehow, Trace knew that this was the elephant he’d been looking for.

The website accompanying the picture was for a Japanese health care provider. The picture itself was from their office in Tokyo. Next thing he knew, Trace was booked on a one-way flight from New York to Tokyo which left in two hours.

“No — this is really crazy.”

But he was already packing even as he said this. He called a cab and was waiting outside when it arrived. It took him directly to his gate and after the usual post-9/11 drag through check-in he was on his way.

—

He really didn?t know what time, or even day it was when he arrived. He breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out his cab driver spoke English and knew where the healthcare provider’s building was.

Through the maze-like streets of Tokyo the driver weaved through until stopping in front of a building with an orange plastic elephant.

Trace paid the driver with yen leftover from a previous business trip a few years ago. Dragging his suitcase behind him he walked up to the elephant as the taxi took off.

“Now what?” Trace wondered.

He reached out and touched the cool plastic.

—

He was gasping for air. He was in a cool, sterile white room. It reminded Trace of a hospital which would be a very nice place to be when he couldn’t breathe. Nurses and orderlies came rushing into the room and Trace realized he *was* in a hospital room.

The nurses removed a tube from his throat and handed him a glass of water which they instructed him in English to sip. A doctor came in and examined Trace.

“Welcome back Mr. O’Leary. You’ve been asleep for some time now. We weren’t sure you’d be coming back to us. We have a few tests we need to run. Do you understand?”

Trace nodded his head. There was something familiar about her voice but he couldn’t place it. However, he did remember was that he was heading an ambitious project headed towards failure but that there had been an accident one night while in Tokyo and he had to be rushed to the hospital. But that was years ago and he had gone home, furthered his project, worked out all the necessary details and deal-makers. Only he hadn’t, it had all happened while he was comatose.

Downstairs in the hospital, outside of the lobby, an orange plastic elephant smiled at people passing by.