Radio Waves of the Macabre [On Hiatus]

Chapter 16 - Doubles (Part 2)

    "Mister?" The homeless man stood, the bag of leftovers held out and away as if its very presence offended him. "Some shitty tuna melt? I don't eat fish. No. No, that shit's no good. No good at all."

    Nall turned away. He had no time for argument and dragging out this encounter wouldn't end well for either party.

    Eighteen, he thought. Seventeen. Sixteen.

    Step by step, each footfall carried him closer to that grand illusion of safety. He should have come straight home from the hospital - straight back from that infernal follow-up, yet the twist sense had called to him, had guided him off that bus.

***

    Guided him right past that diner. It had called to him there, begging for him to enter, yet it had slumbered for so long, slumbered with him as his body healed. His strength was its strength, and its strength his strength. Weakened as such, tired from the afternoon excursion, the beast had not woken enough to force his hand. So he had passed that diner by and Nall had found himself atop the stairs down to Grady's.

    He'd already been out for nearly three hours walking through the pulsing shitstain of humanity and he had known that he should have just kept walking, had headed right on up back towards Hollywood proper and his dank excuse for a home, but at the same time he had spent three hours on buses and in hospitals being pushed and prodded and had escaped near unscathed, so what was one drink and a quick bite to eat? Despite his better judgement, he had found himself descending those stairs whether out of an eruption of overconfidence or led in fact by that thing he could not say, and as he descended the twist sense had clenched again and he had known that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

    He had sat in his booth, ordered his drink and meal, and he had waited.

***

    "Don't walk away, buddy." The homeless man shouted after him. "I seen you. I seen you plenty. You live here. Got yourself a place right here. What else you got up there? I don't want no tuna. You got candy canes? You got candy canes up there?"

    Nall didn't look back, wouldn't look back. He couldn't because if he did he couldn't promise himself that the homeless man would survive. He felt a bubble of anger forming and he could picture that gloom beast nestled in his intestines, a bubble wand in hand, stoking that anger with a light and silent breath, the bubble growing ever larger.

    Candy canes, really? You want candy canes? It's September, not Christmas. Who wants candy canes?

    And for that matter, I gave you a sandwich, a perfectly fine sandwich and instead you act like we're at a restaurant and I'm taking your order.

    As if reading Nall's thoughts, the homeless man pivoted, switching tacts. "It don't need to be no candy canes. I'd settle for a cadbury egg, you got one? Perhaps some candy corn?"

    What the hell is wrong with this man? Does he only eat holiday candy?

    The man grabbed Nall by the shoulder twisting him around and shining his craggy, rotten teeth in response. Yeah, there was a good bet he ate nothing but holiday candy.

    "Don't be like that. You's got a good heart. I see it. I do."

    And I can see yours, the man thought, Nall thought. The liquid dark bled into his vision, the homeless man pulsing with shimmer bugs and more marrow maggots, and a translucency that revealed all. There below the muscles of his chest beat his heart, clear as the beard upon his chin, thumping along, pumping in rhythm with the ebb and flow of that strange blue glow spider-webbing through his body; a glow that pulsed with each pump of blood through those veins. The old man could feel his grasp on his name, on his identity once again slipping.

    "I don't have anything," the man -- Nall -- said. "Nothing at all."

    "Ah, you're better than that," the homeless man said, shining his broken smile again. "I know it. I don't see you so often. No, you stay up there most days. Man like that, he keeps a full pantry, he does. You can spare a little can't you. Just a little?"

    "Just go away," Nall snapped. "Shoo fly, shoo." Don't nobody want you. Won't nobody miss you. How convenient, the beast smiled and he felt it sure as the sweat dripping down his brow. Another peel of the Onion, and the homeless man wavered before him nothing but a loose suit of flesh hanging ever so precariously from its skeletal frame. Zip, a few swift strokes of the brush, and down the suit would fall, nothing but meat and bone and shimmer things along the marrow.

    "Go now."

    The homeless man stepped back, a fear in those soft eyes, those jelly marbles, and the old man, he knew that this thing, this feeble cow saw the wrath before him, saw the gates opening and the maw to the other realm sliding wide, and he knew that the fear of the gloom, the fear of the other, had slithered in deep, but he no longer cared. Zip, zip, zip, it hummed and whistled and practically cheered in its intestinal bed, but he, that distant memory of him, that flimsy starved soul feebly grasping for some handhold on reality had scuttled off from that street to a different mental now; to a time before.