Harmon held his position on the edge of the rise, silhouetted by the gross ball settling behind the trees. The yellow hadn't gone completely out of the sky and he could still see half of the ugly sun but the cold winds tore away any shred of warmth it might have provided. And when they took they gave, the sound of howling in the distance danced on the air currents around him. The chill sunk deeper into his bones. Coyotes he guessed, like the one he saw carrying that odd chunk of meat. When he turned his head from the setting sun he scanned the woods around him and huddled a little deeper into the sweat shirt he had tied around his waist.
He reached into the marsupial pouch sewn onto the front of the sweat shirt. Old Sowell High East, those were the good days, days when he and Amy could blow off school and she could look so beautiful and young in this very sweat shirt. Only, back then - and up until after his shower this morning - the pouch pocket on the front might've held a joint or a silly wisp of poetry as Harmon tried and tried to win her. Now his hand clenched around the ski mask tucked away there. His knuckles cracked.
In his right hip pocket, a roll of quarters weighted down that side of his waist band. An adjustable wrench, the kind with a heavy, fat, head, and a #2 screwdriver rested in each back pocket. Harmon was nervous. He had spent a lot of time on his truck and even more, it seemed, in the long, small hours of midnight, going over the things in his shop. He never got into tools for violence, but sometimes mechanic's tools were one in the same. He hoped it wouldn't go down like that, although a part of him, closely resembling the midnight hours of the night before, smiled a little bit at the thought of using the tools. Off the clock and slicked up with Hollywood revenge, they'd be. Not like that, please god.
The sun had finally made its last effort of the day and Harmon saw headlights coming towards the building. He couldn't see who it was or what kind of car, with the building between him and the main access road back here. Just two cars, he counted at first and then the music started. Harmon heard only the heavy bass that seemed to shake the ground under his feet. As the last of the phlegm color faded out after the sun, he started seeing more headlights, it wasn't long before he lost count, somewhere around ten.
More and more headlights, my god, he thought, this is just too much. I had no idea. Along with the endless stream of headlights, Harmon saw the party strobes flashing out from the cracks in the old building's rear wall. He didn't get down on his knees and fold his hands or look up at the sky above him, he prayed nonetheless:
god,
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Just for today, just for right now
just for Amy.
Then he was coming around the side of the building, he didn't need to pretend to hike his pants as if he'd just been relieving himself. His pockets were heavy to the point of inconvenience. Harmon shuffled his way into the semi-single file line that led into the vibrating, flashing, shadowed belly of Darrel's design.
Menacing techno-hardcore bounced the occupants around, the strobe lights put everything in slow motion while the music moved along at blistering speed. I am seriously underdressed, Harmon thought as he made his way into the shadows. Everything around him looked hardly human: peircings he'd never dreamed of dangled from faces, makeup that would have made both David Bowie and Marilyn Manson proud caked the faces, masking them, the hair styles and colors blew his mind. He was expecting a nose ring or two, a mohawk here or there, maybe died blue or green or jet black. A swirl of dreadlocks flew past his face, his eyes caught it when the strobe was off and it seemed to glow. Some things change, some things didn't. He doubted Darrel would be out here on the floor. Darrel was an entrepreneur, he had a business to run.
If Harmon guessed right, the door near the back wall led to a back room of some kind. He made his way through the sea of people. Another girl spun past him and stopped, looked him straight in the eye, grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. When his head came away a bitter taste filled his mouth, she was gone into the sea. He spat out the bitter taste. But it had been a long time since he'd had anything stronger than coffee. He hoped none of... whatever it was, got into his blood.
He made his way to the back of the 'club' without further incident. Moving through all those people was a feat by itself, add the strobe effect and blacklights and that heavy bass and ear splitting treble, Harmon felt like he was swimming upstream. He stumbled through the door, knocking would have been useless, polite, but useless. When the door shut the music stopped almost totally, he could still feel the bass in the floor but otherwise this room seemed like a different place, a backroom of a quiet little place.
"HARMON!!!" Darrel spoke as if the music roared in here as it did out there. "SO GLAD, SO GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT!"
Harmon could hear Darrel's teeth chatter and grind between his outbursts. No strobe lights in here, no light at all really. A weird glow, like a muted shine from a full moon on a cloudless night, filled the middle of the room. Sneakers and stout black leather boots and knee high high-heels touched the edges of the pale light but Harmon could see no more than that. He felt like he and Darrel had the room to themselves.
"Okay, enough with the YELLING! HEEE, HEEE, HEEE!" he screeched and then the awful sound of grinding chattering teeth again. "No, seriously, everyone... sayhellotoHarmoneveryone, seriously." From what Harmon guessed were couches that wrapped around the edges of the dark room a series of limp hello's and more of that grinding, chattering. It felt now like it was coming from inside his own head, but he could see the feet where the light stopped and they were moving slightly. No, that terrible sound wasn't in his head - was it? - these drugged out kids were making that noise.
"Darrel listen, I need to ask you about Amy," Harmon tried to keep his voice level and calm as everything around him wasn't.
"Amy! Right, right, right. Have you seen her? She said, said, said, she'd be coming over. I know it's dark out there," Darrel's voice changed from the tweaked babble Harmon heard on the phone to something close to threatening, "but that's where I'd look, were I... you. HEEEE, HEEE, HEEE"
More screeching laughter, worse than the treble out there, and the teeth again. The feet around the room shuffled more.
Harmon came at the desk in the middle of the room, the one that Darrel sat behind. Big and made of expensive wood. An inlaid mirror placed where a desk top calendar would be, Harmon thought about just grabbing Darrel the way that girl had grabbed him. Instead of a kiss with a gift, Harmon saw himself putting Darrel's face into that mirror, destroying him. Everything else had been destroyed. "DON'T YOU THREATEN ME YOU SONOFABITCH, YOU START TALKING!" Harmon's fists came down on the wood top of the desk. His muscles tensed and his heart beat filled his ears.
Darrel made a tsssk tssssk sound by clicking his teeth together somehow and like a 'wave' at a ball game, the sound made its way around the room. He only knew these people by their feet, but his eyes were becoming more and more adjusted to the odd light in here.
He was grabbed on either side and before he had time to react he was seated in a chair. The next moment, thick straps wound round his arms and shins, they cinched tight. Harmon looked to his left straight into the face of the man who manhandled him so easily into this helpless position.
The determination that had held him for so long - no more than forty-eight hours, really - broke. Everything inside him broke. If he had a bottle he wouldn't just gulp from it, he'd mainline the wonderful stuff. His past, his present, and his future shattered in that moment.
Staring back at him wasn't a man. A woman that seemed to be winking, but the eye that was closed didn't look like it'd be opening again anytime soon. The stitches there were tattered but they held, the other eye - or lack thereof - gaped at him. The lower eye lid lay against the high cheek bone, the upper lid flapped like a loose tooth. Horrible, these things were, but what got him wasn't the grotesque eyes. What got Harmon was the smile, the ripped lips, the chipped teeth, the smile he saw in his nightmare. Amy's smile stared him down, he gave in and tears came.
When tiny pieces of teeth bounced off his cheek as Amy chattered away - tsssk, tssssk - Harmon let go the rest of what was left of him. A scream of rage and sadness and regret rose out of him to such levels it rivaled the music on the other side of the door.
Eventually, his scream died in his throat. "Now, now, now that we're done with that sorry business," Darrel started up in the closest impression of a normal voice Darrel could attain. He sighed big and on the exhale he did that chattering thing again. "I've got someone I'd like you to meet. I had two, you know, but now you've gone and ruined that. Are you happy now, your precious Amy is right there by your side, whispering sweet nothings in your ear."
She was chattering her teeth apart in his ear, is what she was doing. Harmon stared as much hate as he could gather at Darrel. Darrel had done this, all this. Darrel was a monster. That's what Harmon thought.
"Yes, yes, yes. It's a lot to take in, but the roll of father is a difficult thing sometimes. Sometimes, I just have to throw these little shindigs and just get out of it. You know. I know you do, going to meetings, running from your demons, I know, I know." Darrel now sounded fatherly, between the chattering.
"Lindsey, could you bring him out?" Harmon saw Lindsey now, the light was getting brighter, or wider, or maybe it was pulsing. He could see some of the faces around him. These weren't drugged out kids, no, these kids wore the same outfit Amy did. Eyeless, they might have on different footwear but they all had the stitches, covering the emptiness behind. And now they all chattered away.
Harmon heard a door open and close back in the darkest part of the room. When he looked back from where the noise was coming, Amy walked away from his chair and he saw. He saw what Amy was missing on the back of her leg. He heard the coyotes' howls, somehow, and the chattering teeth and the bass from the speakers on the other side of the wall. And then he heard something else.
First, he heard the rising, excited chattering. Then, he heard the door close, back where it was too dark to see. Those few moments of before Lindsey came back in the room were a blessing for Harmon, those few moments when she was still in the darkness. And then she stepped into the light. He heard the clinking of chains and saw she held them in her right hand. His eyes glanced over at the left hand, when he saw what she held there, the rudimentary tools he'd brought - a fist pack of quarters, a wrench and a screwdriver - seemed silly. He felt an insane laughter start to bubble in his chest.
More shuffling chains. "Meet Adam, Harmon,"
Instead of laughter, Harmon vomited all over his front. He was now looking at something darker than the lightless corner of the room. The skin looked old and shriveled but the body it clothed looked young, grade school age. The rusty shackles sunk into Adam's wrist and ankle the way a tree looks after growing around a fence post. Pointy little, needle-like teeth peeked out of rotten gums and as they came together, small, black, ashy pieces of skin fluttered to the floor around Adam's feet. What Harmon took for total darkness in the back corner of the back room seemed now as bright as the sun, he looked into Adam's empty, forever deep eye sockets. He vomited again.
When the heaving subsided, Harmon saw Lindsey, or the blade she held in her other hand, rather, coming at him. He whipped his head to the side and caught a brief glimpse of Amy. Not Amy, with stitches for eyes and open un-bleeding wounds, no, Amy as she was.
Her hair was tied back in a loose pony tail. Harmon knew a lot of girls didn't think that was a very 'done up' look, but he loved it. He could see her now with her hair pulled back off the that beautiful spot where the neck meets the shoulder, the little hollow place he liked to kiss whenever he could. He could see her wearing his Sowell High East sweat shirt, only it was new and the letters weren't faded. He could see her and she was beautiful.
He couldn't see Darrel, Adam, the eyeless around the room, or Lindsey. He couldn't see the hateful blade coming for his left eye. He couldn't hear the chattering teeth - constant now - or Darrel's screeching laughter. He could hear Amy, on a warm summer day back in '01.
"I love you," she said. Harmon's world went black. Blackness, darkness, evil filled those spaces now. Harmon was gone, gone with Amy.
"I love you, too," Harmon replied. "Forever, baby."
The darkness seeped into his empty eye sockets now as crude stitches sewed their way across his lids.
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