by Mary Elizabeth Hargrove
She looked in the shining windows and compared herself to the mannequins. Their clothes were not full of holes. They did not wear baseball caps that said "CAT." And their hair clung to the scalp because it was plastic, not because it was unwashed.
Her mother was dead, and Sarah had gone to a shop to buy a shapeless black dress for the funeral. Her figure was hopeless; the salesgirl had sighed at the look of her. Sarah still had no idea of what to do for shoes.
She tripped. Looking down, she saw that the ripped sole of her sneaker had caught the edge of the curb. When she bent down to tear off the loose piece of rubber, she noticed a little black container lying in the gutter. She reached down and picked it up.
Expecting the cylinder to be empty, she was surprised to find that it wasn't. She popped off the cap; inside was a roll of 24 print film. Sarah was excited to get something for free but was soon disappointed when she saw that it had already been exposed.
Nevertheless, she did not throw the film away. She slipped it into the pocket of her windbreaker. Opening the smashed door of her car with difficulty, she jumped in and drove to her mother's house.
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Sarah's mother had borne many things, among them filth, insects, and degradation. She would not be idolized, for the house was a living testament to her reality with its dirty dishes, encrusted scum, and noxious smell. In a sense, the mother wasn't dead at all, for her daughter had inherited everything, including the filth and loneliness.
The chair in which Sarah sat was just as unpleasant as the rest of the surroundings. Years of accumulated grease, nicotine and neglect had settled into the familiar flower-print fabric. She leaned back and lit a cigarette. This had been her mother's favorite chair.
Beside it, on a small table, was a photo of the family. Sarah picked it up and looked closely at the figures trapped within. They were smiling, the mother, father, and the little girl. They were all pretty. How had her mother turned into such a pig, growing fatter and fatter in her pink flowered muumuu? And if they were smiling, it was the only time they ever had. More familiar were Christmases spent in the parking lots of bars. In darkness and cold, Sarah would sit in the car, waiting while Mother went to retrieve Father, only to decide it was better to stay inside and drink. Soon, the little girl would fall asleep, to be surrendered unto nightmares that were never quite as bad as reality.
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Sarah jumped awake, the blood pounding in her veins. She must have fallen asleep. Everything was a blur, as she groped for her glasses.
From inside her head came the sound of something trapped, clawing to get out. There was a sharp pain in her ear. She ran to the mirror in the bathroom and tried to see inside the small black cavity, but couldn't.
It began to scratch, and as it clawed at the tender inner workings, so close to the mind, she guessed what was attacking her. It was a cockroach.
Her stomach dropped in panic. She wanted to call an ambulance or drive to the hospital but was too embarrassed. I can get it out, she told herself, trying to stay calm as she madly searched through the drawers, looking for a tweezer. Damn you, Mother, she muttered under her breath as she fumhemorrhage through the hideous tangle. Finally, she found the needed instrument.
With a shaking hand, afraid of damaging something, she probed her ear and tried to grasp the frightened creature, but it retreated further inside. "Damn," she cursed, while the pain increased with the insect's panic. "Hold still, you little bastard!" In desperation, she plunged the tweezer into the ear, grasped, and pulled. He came out.
She looked at him. He looked back, wiggling. One of his legs was gone, still in her ear. She dropped him on the floor in disgust and stomped on him. Then she wept in pain and humiliation. Gazing at herself in the bathroom mirror, blood flowing from her ear, she could feel nothing but revulsion.
She did not sleep again that night, so terrible was her distress. She smoked and watched late night TV until the musty light of dawn filled the room.
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Sarah knew a lot about cameras and film. She had been in many pictures, the kind that men took for their pleasure, the smutty type. Drugs were kind; they had made the sessions a pleasant, absent sort of boat ride. When she'd touched the flesh of others, it was somehow heavenly in its distance. As she felt the small bulge in her windbreaker pocket, she knew that she wanted to see what kind of pictures were on the roll of film. She wondered if any could be of nude women.
She drove to McDonald's and enjoyed a greasy rendition of a breakfast sandwich. After a large cup of coffee and a few more cigarettes, she was ready to face the hazy day.
As she drove, she wondered why the poor parts of town always had more signs. Maybe poor people had no need of natural beauty. They were jumhemorrhage high and low, in an infinite array of colours, both faded and clear. The whiteness of the sky did nothing to brighten the effect of their dinginess.
She reached up to scratch her ear, but immediately stopped. It hurt terribly. For an instant, she thought she should see a doctor, but only for an instant.
She found the place she was looking for, a camera-shaped building in the middle of the parking lot. Driving up to the service window, she barely noticed the urine stains dripping down the pink wall. She handed the roll of film to the attendant, a skinny girl with purple hair. The girl took the appropriate information and promised the pictures would be ready at five. "Thank-you," Sarah said.
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The sky was blood-red when Sarah went back to pick up the photos. She pulled out a wad of dirty one-dollar bills and paid for the order, surprised that the film had been in good enough condition to be developed. She wanted to look at them right away, the curiosity devoured her, but she forced herself to wait. If the pictures were dirty, she didn't want the photo girl to see.
Back in the greasy print armchair, she opened the gold envelope. By the ethereal light of the television, she couldn't see the pictures very clearly. So she turned on the reading lamp, brushed away the National Enquirers to make room for the photos, and examined them one at a time.
Picture 1: A deserted highway. A blistering sun shone on drab sagebrush and black asphalt. The hot pavement melted everything into mirage. Above was a green highway sign with a white rim that read Route 66. She could almost hear the hollow wind blowng...
Picture 2: A dirt road branching off the highway. Here was a strangely shaped cactus. One of its arms pointed in the direction of a dirt road. The cactus appeared to be both succulent and threatening.
Picture 3: A fork in the dirt road. The right half went up to a stark rock-strewn mountain; the other went off to the left across the plateau. A sign, nothing more than a broken board, was scrawled with an arrow pointing to the mountain.
Picture 4: An abandoned town. It wasn't old enough to be of historical interest, but must have been built near the beginning of the Industrial Age. Fantastically shaped pieces of twisted steel littered the ground. The windows were eyeless sockets, the doors rimmed with splintered wooden teeth. the sun was bright. there was a think haze of dust over everything. Up above, the mountain glared down at the emptiness in red-ore majesty. It was riddled with mine shaft/ratholes like a rotten piece of cheese.
Picture 5: The majestic red mountain, crowned. Over it hovered a craft, a shining silver plate. The flying saucer was larger than the mountain.
Picture 6: The opening of a mine shaft. Over the entrance hung a large piece of metal that glared in the sun like a shapeless mirror. On the ground was a mishmash of trash, red dirt, and torn cloth. Off to one side was a puddle of something dark, like oil.
Picture 7: Inside the shaft. Upright humanoid figures stood in a row like Japanese people posing for a family portrait. But here the resemblance stopped. They could have been rubber aliens in an old science fiction movie. The were misshapen; their skin more mucous than solid, and the razor slits of their mouths seemed to bleed.
Picture 8: A feast, like Thanksgiving. The creatures were seated around a central dais. There was some sort of food in plenty, maybe a side of beef. It looked like they were devouring leg and thigh bones, some holding the food to their mouths with undeniable expressions of pleasure. Their faces resemhemorrhage raw meat. The colouring was sickly white with reddish splotches, like injured flesh. Bloody juices dripped down their faces.
Sarah was breathing heavily, the air coming in and out of her lungs in choppy gasps. Her stomach was weak and empty. Her mind was filled with fear. It was as if she had stumhemorrhage on an unexplained decapitated head in a trash can. This was sick, this was horrible, this was...
...a joke. Some silly cruel joke someone had played. The pictures were faked; they were being used for some kind of science fiction movie. They were not real.
Regaining her composure, she looked at them again and was not reassured. They were so realistic, the man-creatures (for they possessed recognizably male protrusions) sitting around what appeared to be haunches of beef, the huge drumsticks dwarfed in their monstrous hands. But special effects were so good nowadays...
Picture 9: The creatures standing around. Some of them still chewed on the meat with razor-blade teeth. This picture had been taken at closer range.
And now Sarah really couldn't believe her eyes. The meat was human. The legs and thighs that the monsters were devouring were female, shaven and white.
This was not amusing. Even if the pictures were a joke, the person who had made them must be a freak.
A vast emptiness opened up inside her, and she began to weep. A hideous buzzing began inside her head. She instinctively grabbed at her ear, thinking that another bug had gotten inside, but such was not the case. The buzzing was coming from within her skull. She dropped the pictures.
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She sat in her mother's greasy armchair, her head in her hands. She still heard the buzzing, as if thousands of cockroaches had joined in concert for her benefit. She hadn't picked up the pictures again, but she could not stop thinking about them.
Stumbling into the kitchen, she made some instant coffee. After she'd drunk some, the buzzing was not so loud, but she was filled with dread and hopelessness. Unable to control herself, she went back to the living room and picked up the photos.
The ones she hadn't seen were the same. Different angles had been used and different body parts were being devoured in each frame, but the pink, red and white colours of the creatures and the gore that was their food had not changed. The buzzing grew louder.
What was this awful noise in her head? She must be crazy. Could she have lost her mind after her mother died? But when she thought of the woman, fat, sagging at the seams, and greasy as the old armchair, she felt no regret, only relief she was dead.
Well, what if her nakedness in front of the camera had somehow made her mind naked to the effects of madness? What if she, who had so successfully suppressed her feelings of shame, had also suppressed her sanity?
She was not a psychiatrist. She only knew that if this incessant buzzing was not a sign of insanity, it would soon drive her that way.
She couldn't decide about the pictures, so she stopped thinking about them. If they were real, she wouldn't know what to do. If they weren't, she might as well throw them away.
She left them lying on the floor.
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She woke in the armchair with a nagging thought in her head. She must drive to the place in the pictures, following them like a map, to see if they were real.
Though she'd been able to forget about them completely, they had resurfaced in a dream. In it, she'd gone to the desert place and spoken to the men/things as they ate the hideous objects dripping in their hands. She had not been afraid. They had smiled at her with approval, and she'd felt good. They hadn't spoken normally; they had grunted like pigs with occasional high-pitched squeals of gratification, but somehow she could understand them. She awakened with an overwhelming feeling of peace, like a satisfied lover.
It was insane, but she wanted to find the creatures.
She got up and, for once, dressed with care. Passing over her dirty old jeans, she opted for a new pair she'd never gotten around to wearing. They were loose on her careworn and overused body, but at least they were clean. Somewhere in the bottom of her suitcase she found a fresh T-shirt. Though she still wore her cap, she attempted to arrange the ragged ends of her hair into a braid. On impulse, she grabbed a camera.
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Her head was buzzing, but she was becoming accustomed to the noise. The hot desert wind softly caressed her ears. She was not afraid.
On her right, in the passenger seat, were the pictures in their yellow paper folder. They would tell her what to do. They were her bible.
The radio was playing some corny country western music, but she barely noticed. She was filled with an unexplainable excitement that somehow worried her.
The creatures were clear in her mind even now, their huge shuffling shapelessness and erect maleness, made so by the devouring of body parts they held within their hands. But she was not afraid; she felt special, as if they had chosen her out of all other women in the world. If she had been wearing white, one could have looked upon her face and thought her an expectant bride.
There weren't many cacti on this part of the road, so she began to think she wouldn't find one that marked her turning point. Then she saw it. It actually resemhemorrhage the creatures, because it was cigar-shaped on top and the head was equally as thick as the neck. One arm pointed toward the road she must take.
She stopped when the car left the pavement. The dirt road she saw ahead had been exactly foretold by the pictures. At this moment, her mind regained some of its sanity and began to scream. She lost control of her stomach and leaned out of the car to throw up the toast she'd eaten that morning.
When she'd finished, her fear was gone, sinking into the sandy dirt along with the filth that had come up from within her. She knew that she must continue her journey and find the creator of the pictures. She knew how to forget things like fear and disgust.
She took the fork in the road that led to the mountain. Her car, never in good condition, wheezed as it labored up the steep incline.
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Getting out of the car, she looked around, hiking up her jeans by the belt loops. The sun was heavy and oppressive; she could not lift her eyes. It was as if she were in a room wit a low, hot ceiling. Here was the town, blank faceless windows and shattered broken doors. The wind whistled through the buildings, making them mumble like old people without teeth. Now she could smell the heat and dust; she could taste the ore-laden dirt through parched lips. Normally, she would have been fascinated by the old relics; now she barely noticed they were there. The most important things were still up ahead.
She must climb to the mines. The flying saucer that had dominated the photo of the mountain was absent now, but she could feel its eerie presence. Her eyes continually slipped to the sky for signs of its return. Her apprehension mounted as she noticed a strange humming in the air, like a Hoover vacuum cleaner being used several doors aw ay. The buzzing in her ears was making it almost impossible to hear anything else. It was acting like a Geiger counter; the closer she got to the mines, the louder it became.
She passed a mine shaft partially filled in by a dirt slide, but she could see that it pierced the mountain deeply. She continued on. The larger shafts were higher up.
With dirt in her fingernails and on her clothes, she reached a ledge. She looked down at herself as if amazed at her own filthy appearance, but soon lost track of all thought in the buzzing of her head. Looking up, she saw that she was finally standing in front of the correct shaft.
She pulled out Picture #6 just to make sure. Yes, this was it. A shiny piece of metal threw back her reflection like a funhouse mirror, bending her into warped ripples. It hung like a sign over the entrance but said nothing intelligible to her.
On the ground directly beneath the metal sign was a place where a puddle of liquid had soaked into the dry soil. She reached down, touched it, and brought her hand away, covered with blood.
Normality again possessed her, and she was filled with dread. Why was she here? The creatures would surely kill her, chop her up into little pieces like a side of beef. She had been stupid to investigate a mystery that should have been checked out by the police. But she knew that the police wouldn't have believed her. She didn't believe it herself.
Turning away, she gazed far down below at the desert floor. Far away, she could see the white scars of dirt roads marring the earth, and beyond, somewhere, must the be shining silver surface of Route 66. She could leave now, away from the buzzing in her head, away from the blood on the ground and the unknown horror in the mine shaft.
But as she looked into the distance, her chest began to throb with a hollow emptiness, vaster than the desert. She remembered a sea of spiteful male faces, snickering as she removed her clothes. A greasy armchair in which a fat, useless mother had sat. And an empty house full of cockroaches. The pain in her breast became so intense with the realization of her aloneness, the blood on the ground seemed to have spilled from her heart.
A soft wind came from the shaft and gently caressed her hair. She turned back and entered.
It was cool and rocky inside. The walls were much smoother than they should have been. A dim white light effervesced from everywhere and nowhere.
The buzzing in her head grew louder, eliminating any chance for thought. The noise was so intense it was almost blinding.
The narrow tunnel led to a large chamber with a high vaulted ceiling. The creatures were within.
There were tables in rows, like a Rotary Club breakfast. There was plenty of sustenance here, manna from heaven, fish and loaves, never running out. And here, also, were the creatures, as the pictures had promised. They looked at her with approval, demonstrating it in the erect male parts of their bodies. They were glad she was here. It was right that she had come.
They were as they had appeared in the photos, almost like human beings, but not quite. Their flesh looked skinned, all raw meat and sinew. The cigar-shaped bodies, truncated at the bottom, did not inhibit them from shuffling forward. They greeted her with pig-like squeals.
The buzzing stopped for a moment, as if she had been granted one last reprieve, a chance revealed just long enough to taunt, to fool her into thinking she could escape. Fear flowed through her; she knew what the trussed animal in the slaughterhouse felt. With fresh adrenaline eyes, she comprehended the body parts on the table, all female-thighs, legs and torsos with pubic hair still attached.
She bolted like a cornered rat. The creatures shuffled forward but did not attempt to catch her. She was filled with hope. Maybe she could escape after all.
The buzzing caught her. Suddenly, she knew that this place was right, was meant, was Truth. This was the end of her journey, where she would stay.
Turning, she offered her camera to the nearest creature. He grunted with approval and accepted it with a mucous-covered hand. Raising it to his bloody eyes, he began to take pictures of her.
Then they all shuffled over to surround her, pushing her back toward one of the tables. She heard the click of the camera as the largest one picked up his special set of knives.