Fiction Vortex - March 2014 Read online

  Was it really sweat? he wondered. Or was that still the lake water?

  He thought about how he already felt the sweet need for the second bite ... how he’d already contemplated asking for it. Two years of this hell was something he couldn’t conceive. Two weeks would be tough. Two months would be an accomplishment.

  "That’s amazing," he finally said.

  "Yeah. We’re all pretty much in awe. He gives us hope. Best I can figure, he’s trying to die of natural causes. Not that we’re sure it’s even possible. But, that would be something, wouldn’t it?" Miranda topped off his beer and poured herself one of the same.

  "And he doesn’t say how he does it?" Ben asked.

  "Nope. I don’t think he can. Uses all his strength just to fight it. It wouldn’t matter anyway. I doubt it’s something that could be transferred with just a few words of advice. He’s got something strong in him, that’s all. Something special."

  "Like a Jedi," Ben said.

  Miranda smiled. "Yeah. You got it now."

  Ben looked around at the bar’s décor. Along with the propeller were a plethora of other aviation paraphernalia. Goggles. Two compasses in a boxed frame. Yellowed maps of various sizes and condition. At least twenty black and white photos of old planes and their suited pilots and gunners squinting mightily at the unseen sun. And biggest of all in one shadowed corner, bigger even than the life-sized propeller, was an enormous bomb. Ben gaped at it, wondering how in the world he hadn’t seen the thing when he first walked in. Easily eight feet tall, it rested nose down in an iron tripod with its three giant fins nearly touching the ceiling. Once mustard yellow, the exposed iron under the flaking paint was now a dull black covered in red-brown rust.

  "Jesus," Ben murmured.

  "Yeah, that’s Bessie," Miranda said. "She’s a thousand-pounder, or would have been when she was filled. She’s hollow now, but that doesn’t make her any less imposing. They’ve got one just like her in the Air and Space Museum. Nobody’s been able to track down what plane she’s from, though. We just tell the people who come in here it’s a replica. Makes ‘em feel better, but she’s real all right. When it gets real quiet, you can almost hear her whispering her story in a little sing-song."

  "People?" Ben asked. "You mean ... humans?"

  "Yeah, they stop in from time to time, though they don’t stay long. Don’t think they like it here. Some say it smells funny. They never come back."

  Ben looked back at Bessie and listened for her song of submission but felt only her imposing presence instead. "I can see why," he commented. Looking back to Miranda, he realized the rest of the bar flies were quiet now, not looking over, but probably listening in. It was strange, but he felt honored rather than violated. "So where are you from?" he asked. "You know ... before?"

  "Georgia," Miranda said with yet another grin.

  Ben’s swallow of jungle beer almost caught in his throat. "What are you doing so far north?"

  The thirty-something woman put her glass down and leaned forward on one elbow. "Just how many places like this you think there are, Sweets? We come from all over. Other countries even. It’s not like I could find my own down in Savannah?"

  Ben smiled back. He liked her. Liked the whole bar, actually. The Jedi, too. Just having someone still sitting there over an untouched beer two years into the making ... it was a good thing. "You call everyone ‘Sweets’, or are you just being nice?"

  "Just the newbies," she said, and leaned forward a little again. "Because it’s true. I can smell it. You’re still mostly human. It’s like cotton candy to a veteran like me."

  Ben swallowed an empty throat. "You mean ... my blood?" The idea scared him. He was already afraid of what the worms in his neck were doing after just one bite. He hadn’t considered what would happen after six months of having them wriggle all throughout his body.

  Miranda didn’t say. She just stood tall and stared him down.

  "Jesus," Ben murmured again. "Are you..." but he didn’t know how to ask what had come to mind.

  "Am I what, Sweets?"

  Ben dipped his head in sheepish guilt but asked anyway. "Done? You know ... changing?"

  Miranda did laugh now. "Hell no," she said. "Every day it seems I can do a little more. I figure it’s like perpetual motion. Bigger every day. I bet the Jedi probably knew you were coming before you did. ‘Course ... the real changes will start after the second bite, won’t they?" Ben’s eye widened. "Yeah, you can tell that already. ‘Course you can. Why do you think we’re in so many stories in so many cultures? The power, Ben. It’s real."

  Ben stared into the mirrorless wall behind the bar and sipped the warm beer. The worms warred together in his neck and he fought the need to scratch it.

  "In any case," Miranda said, "welcome." She gave him a crooked smile, and Ben wasn’t sure if she meant the free drink or that she was giving him acceptance to joining their crowd. He decided it didn’t matter. This place was better than anything he’d had for three days. Already it was helping, even if the prognosis wasn’t good. Being around others like himself was good. Was ... well, not healing, but it was pouring molasses to the wheel of things. Perpetual motion might exist, but it didn’t have to go at warp speed. He thought if he came here every day, two months wouldn’t be so impossible after all.

  Then he looked behind him to the table where the Jedi sat hunched so low that his hair tickled his glass of beer, and he fought the sudden urge to cry. He bested it by sipping at his thick beer and savoring the faint flavor of blood as it washed down the back of his throat.

  ~~~~~

  STEP FOUR: GET LOST. It’s time to say goodbye. Once you’re cranked you’ve only got a few hours left. You’re barely human anymore, and those who are see it in your eyes and distrust you on sight. So be it. And because there is no tomorrow it’s time to tell off your boss, hit on that old crush, visit that favorite view. Problem is, the fuel that started perpetual motion was who you once were, and that’s long gone. You’re too busy rolling downhill, and now you can see that the hill in the distance goes on forever. You’re already feeling the wind speed through your hair and your humanity, and you don’t even care. You’re too close to producing more than you consume. And yet a handful of moments will shine through. Seconds only, perhaps, within that storm of anarchy. And when they do the only thing left is to carpe that diem and indulge in your old whims. From the look of you, everyone will assume you’re fully gone, but you’re not. Not quite. But it feels that way all the time now. So you might as well pander to your final living essence while it still exists.

  ~~~~~

  Another patron entered the bar and all eyes — but not the Jedi, mind you ... the Jedi never moved an inch — glanced over. The guy at the door was young and full of smiles and immediately Ben didn’t like him, though he didn’t have a clue why he felt so strongly about a complete stranger. He looked around at the various bar flies and saw his new instincts were again right. One man by the TV furrowed his eyebrows and mouthed a curse before turning back to his friend and smacking him on the shoulder. The friend shook free of his mini trance, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his red checkered shirt and turned slowly back to the TV. Nobody else moved.

  "Hell of a day, folks!" the intruder nearly shouted. "Hell. Of. A. Day!" And now Ben realized he could suddenly see what was wrong. The guy was infected, of course, that was abundantly clear, but there was more. Ben was surprised to realize he could know so much with such surety, but then the deep itch in his neck flared and he actually smiled. He realized his kind didn’t look like anything in particular. There was no strength in the frame or glint in the eye, but it was visible just the same. The guy at the door had ... resonance. The air around him seemed crisper and easier to view him through. The colors of his clothes were more honest, less gray than the rest of the world. His hair was somehow more pure in its reality than in the passersby outside in the real world. A week ago, Ben would have thought the guy looked like any other Average Joe, but his tru
e status was obvious to those who shared it.

  And then there was that other thing. The thing that made the checkered shirt man wince. This young stud before them all had recently gotten his second bite. And he was loving it. In fact, he was reveling in it. In fact, he had already decided to get his third and final bite tonight when the sun went down. These were his last hours in daylight. Everyone knew this, and they also knew why he had chosen to spend them in Bombardier’s. Ben dug deeper into his new power, letting the worms dig past his neck and into his collarbone, and he suddenly knew something else. Checkered-shirt man was jealous.

  The Two-Biter stepped quickly to the bar, slapped a rigid hand hard on Ben’s back, and flopped on the stool with enough violence to creak its bolted base. "New guy!" he shouted. "Give the man a whiskey and an Alka Seltzer, Miranda! Johnny’s making a new friend!"

  "Alright, Johnny," Miranda said. "Just calm down. We’re a low-key crowd here. You know that."

  "I KNOW!" Johnny yelled. "It’s atrocious! All this pending strength and we just sit around and shuffle our feet like a bunch of timid little nerds! What the hell, people?! Let’s live a little, huh?"

  "Shhhhhh..." The voice came from behind them, and it was weak. So weak. Ben knew it was the Jedi even as Miranda’s jaw stretched open and her feet kicked into reverse.

  Johnny Two-Bite laughed and turned to face him. "What’s it to you, old man? Going to teach me a thing or two, are you? Going to save sickly sweet Ben here like you keep trying to save the rest of these punks? Just can it, Sam. I’m past all that, and I’m in way too good a mood for your quackery today."

  "Shhhhhhhhhhhhh..." the Jedi said, even slower and lower this time. He didn’t look up from his glass. So far as Ben could tell, he didn’t even breathe. It was entirely possible he didn’t.

  Then Johnny Two-Bite was abruptly standing by the Jedi’s table, and the move to get there had been wickedly fast. Ben actually heard the creak of the stool after he saw the guy standing above the old man. The itch in his neck suddenly flared and he rubbed at it. A second later he opted for a full-on scratch with his nails.

  "You want me to leave?" Johnny asked. The Jedi didn’t even moan a response. Then Johnny’s height seemed to slowly stretch as he leaned over the old wooden chair. His shoulders and back seemed to broaden. His very existence seemed to gain mass. Very possibly, it did. Ben hated watching it, hated Johnny implicitly, but felt that new urge rise within him nevertheless. He wanted that power. He wanted more, the full metamorphosis. He wanted to drink and fly and rage with all the abandon of—

  Miranda’s gentle hand touched his forearm and Ben came back to himself. When he looked, the flat black lake was in her eyes. The screaming girl was there too. Suddenly the pain in his hip flared instead of the one in his neck.

  "What—" he started, but she shushed him with a quick shake of her head. She was watching the Jedi. Everyone was. Ben watched too. And though these were strangers to him, one and all, he knew with certainty this place was his new home. Knew that he’d spend every day there until he finally succumbed to his need. Knew that they all spent all day in the bar and all night wishing to return to it. It was real hell they were in, each of them. Johnny wasn’t any different just because he’d betrayed the support system the Bombardier’s had become. He was simply their own futures come to say hello.

  "Come on," Johnny was saying. His voice was soft now. Gentle. "You can’t fight it forever, Sam. You’re just torturing yourself." He was hovered over the immobile man, his shoulders and back curled like a crescent moon. "Go get your next bite. You have to eventually." And here Johnny actually touched the old man on the back of the head. "You’ll be at peace. You’ll be alive! Just ask, and he’ll come. You know that’s the way."

  "No..." the Jedi said, but it was a mere whisper in the hushed Bombardier’s. It carried no weight. It was a lie. Ben sensed the hatred for Johnny melt from the room as they all felt their desires suddenly build. Such moments were inevitable, and this was only one more in a long procession of days filled exactly like it. Even Miranda longed for sharpened fangs, soft flesh, and pulsing veins. Ben could feel this without even looking at her.

  "No," the Jedi said again, this time with more conviction. His voice was like grinding rocks. Ben wondered if this was from disuse, from a million pre-bite cigarettes, or from the energy he’d consumed in his constant fight. "I won’t today," he continued. He breathed into his beer and rippled the dark surface there. But no monster rose from its depths. If the old man was drowning in it, Ben could not see.

  "Not today," he said in that awful, grating tone. "Not today." His voice was so weak, his breath half-spent with the unseen effort. "Can hold off ... another day," he said. "I can. Just go, John. Leave us. We aren’t ... your prey. Please. For us. For we that love life ... more than you. You owe us that."

  Silence came but did not linger. Soon another voice came from the corner. "I’ll ask," a man said. "I want it." All heads turned. All but the Jedi, who didn’t move at all. It was the man with the red checkered shirt. His friend was lowering his head. Shame wafted from him and across the room.

  "I want the bite," red shirt said. "I want to feel my flesh punctured and his mouth sucking my hot blood. I want..." he looked around and Ben saw others averting their eyes. He locked onto Ben’s and Ben saw the insane look of greed there and understood why. "I want to be cold," he said. "I can’t fight anymore. I need this wretched warmth drained from me, can’t you see that?"

  "I know," said Ben. And that was all any of them said.

  A moment later Johnny turned from the Jedi and walked slowly to his new ally. He clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder. "Come," he said. "Tonight we shall be vessels. Tomorrow we shall be gods."

  And just like that they left. They went quickly and without commotion, which was good of them both. In their wake the Bombardier’s walls seemed to exhale a lungful of poison, but Ben and the others each felt all the more infected despite the purge.

  Ben stared deep into the stilled darkness of his drink. It was the black lake again, and it consumed him. The nightmare come during the day. He heard the screaming girl and this time welcomed it. The worms in his neck spread slowly toward his heart.

  ~~~~~

  STEP FIVE: GET MOVING. You’ve arrived. Perpetual motion is here and you are at the full mercy of your curse. You are no longer human, no longer alive, and you’ll stay that way forever. But there is another thing, as well. The machine is running now and it was built to do but one thing: feed. There’s never been a menu like this. Every drop is candy. Every meal savage war. Yet who can battle such strength, such power? The human world is so weak, such easy fodder. And that’s the best part. They are here for you alone, and you can feed any time you want. And each time you do you may decide to tempt another human to join your ranks, to beg with eyes and soul for that infection you yourself thought you didn’t want. And you will set in motion another perpetual machine.

  ~~~~~

  "You’re thinking about your bite," Miranda said. It wasn’t a question.

  "Yes."

  "How long ago?"

  "Only this past weekend. Three days," Ben said. "And I’m already going insane. How do you do this? How does he—?"

  Miranda looked at the Jedi whose somber, pale eyes the exact color of a crescent moon were yet unknown to Ben. "I don’t know."

  "But I want to live!" he suddenly screamed. The bar flies smiled, one and all. Not with their mouths, for Ben was looking at none of them, but with their hearts. He felt its intensity and drank in the pride that surged through him because of it.

  "We all do," Miranda said.

  "But it isn’t fair!"

  "No."

  "He lured me like a ... like a stupid fish to a worm!"

  "I know."

  Ben looked at her, feeling the tears welling up and threatening to topple down his cheeks. It had been only three days for him, but it had been three days of hell. Three days of thinking he was crazy, that he was
alone, and waking to the same nightmare with only that stupid, archaic word, ‘Bombardier’ trailing off at the very end.

  "I don’t know what to do," Ben said. He was quieter now, his childish rant over. The swell of love in the room was dissipating, but it was still there. They had all been him not long ago, after all. They all wanted to scream like children too, and they were happy to live vicariously through him, if even for only a few seconds.

  "Well," Miranda said. "I’m a bartender. Tell me what happened."

  Ben laughed in spite of himself and thought immediately of the flat black water. He scratched at his neck and then yanked the hand away, ashamed. He thought of the screaming girl and decided to start there.

  "I was biking," he said, "through the woods. There’s this five-mile trail upstate. It’s my weekend thing. Was my weekend thing." He paused and felt the pain course through the room. "I knew I should have gone back to the car. The sun was almost down, but..." he trailed off. "Stupid," he finally admitted. "So I pressed on. ‘One more circuit’ I told myself, but before I even got halfway I heard her. A little girl screaming in the middle of the woods. She was far away, maybe a mile. But I didn’t even think, I just ... went."

  "Off the trail," Miranda said, and Ben realized she was seeing what he was remembering and that the others were starting to key in.

  "Yes," he said. "Straight through the woods. My tire hit a big root. Threw me. I left it and ran." He could feel Miranda — and through her the others — borrowing his memory. They were living it even as he retold it.

  "You found a small lake," Miranda said.

  "I never knew it was there. Just sitting in the middle of the woods like that all alone. Untouched by man but for a single old dock by the water’s edge, and so peaceful. So still. ‘Smooth as glass’ they say, and it was. The whole thing ... it was beautiful."

  "But it smelled like jungle."

  "Yes," Ben said, and suddenly the pungent aromas of the bar overcame him and he forced a long, gasping breath which didn’t help.

  "The girl was drowning," Miranda said.