Fiction: A Town Called Violence
“I don’t wanna get political.” This is Don. Or Ron. I’ve already forgotten, but I let him splash some more Canadian Mist into the plastic cup I’m holding. It’s warm in my hand and burns going down my throat, but I swallow it all. Don’s about to get political.
“Here we go,” says Don’s buddy. Sean? John? I’m terrible with names. “You’re getting political. I’m going in.” He stands with a groan.
“I’m not. I’m not.” Then to me. “What is the deal with that D.A. out there who won’t put criminals away? It’s like they want them on the streets. I tell ya, I wouldn’t be caught dead in California these days. Not with what I see on the news.”
“He’s not going anywhere and he knows it. He hasn’t been on an airplane since 1975.” And then John’s inside and headed down the hallway with the slight limp that seems to affect all guys like him, his age in this part of the country. It’s cute, I think, their bickering, but I wonder how the rest of their ride to Nebraska will go tomorrow if they keep it up from the double beds in their shared room at the first open motel for 40 miles in either direction.
“Some guys don’t like to talk about anything real,” Don says, again offering the bottle. I hold up a hand, no thanks, and mumble something about finding an open restaurant. Don’s still sitting outside, alone now on a bench facing a hazy cornfield, pouring himself another drink and no doubt fuming about the whole world going to hell as I head out down the cracked two lane highway in the direction of town.
It’s not even two miles into Vehlens, but in the heat it feels like more. The sun doesn’t set until after 9:00 here, and the entire state of Iowa is shrouded in brown smoke from the wildfires burning two thousand miles west, choking out the sun, so it feels like I’m walking through some future dystopia: a world without blue skies, an Iowa without cornfields stretching to the horizon. I light the joint I rolled back at the motel and wonder briefly if weed’s legal here or if I’m pressing my luck. The last thing I need is to end up in some bumblefuck one room jailhouse at the mercy of a cornfed Barney Fife still making up for being bullied in junior high. As it is, the California plates on my car have already attracted attention. But they also did get me some free whiskey. I had to listen to an old biker rant for twenty minutes, sure, but that’s part of the charm of the road.
I pass a yard sign that reads LAMBERT FOR STATE ASSEMBLY in bold, blood red sans-serif. Another one. I haven’t seen anything about his opponent, so I assume this George Lambert fellow has the race pretty much locked up. Maybe he’s running on legal weed. Lax prosecution of petty criminals. Robust renewal of civic infrastructure. I pass a third George Lambert sign askew in a yard that’s more rusted machinery than grass and chuckle. Not likely. Lambert’s old, white, smiling face is so generic I forget it the moment I’m past.
A sign at the exit next to the motel promised three restaurants in town, but I stand in the middle of the one intersection and see two of them are closed. Beyond a block or two in any of the four directions, the road disappears into rolling fields shrouded in brown smoke. Guess that makes it easy. I stub out the joint, push the roach into my pocket, and head for the one functioning neon “Open” sign. As far as I can tell, that might be the name of this place. It should be fine. I’m easy to please, and just looking for something simple after a day on the road.
It’s dark inside. I mean dim, the kind of greasy false twilight that only exists downwind from a wildfire or in small town bars where people still smoke inside. Fresh air is apparently not in the cards for me tonight. Three townsfolk, all men, all wearing stained red trucker hats advertising fertilizer or seed or a make of tractor, give me a half-second glance as I stand silhouetted in the doorway, but no more. They go back to the card game on the high top in front of them. I take a seat at the far end of the bar.
The bartender appears from the back, drying her hands on the towel tucked into her jeans. The jeans are flattering. She’s tall, pretty. Her pixie haircut is not what I’d expect from the only woman I’ve seen since exiting the highway. She slides a wrinkled sheet of paper at me across the bar: the menu. From the looks of it, her printer’s running out of ink. The menu’s stained with ketchup. Something else darker. There’s a twist of grey meat dried onto one corner.
“You know, ink refills are more expensive than Chanel No. 5,” I say, hoping her sense of humor matches her chic metropolitan haircut.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say. You have to shoot your shot. At the top, before the ink ran out, are the words Elle’s Lament. I guess it’s a step above calling the place Open. “Are you Elle?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Drink?” I ask what she has on tap. She doesn’t. I ask for a Sierra Nevada. She blinks.
“Bud Light?”
“We have Miller.” I’ll take it. She sets the bottle down in front of me and hovers. I look at the menu. Mozzarella sticks. Potato wedges. A half-pound burger with fries, the farmer’s special.
“Do you have anything green?”
“Fried pickles. But we’re out. We’re out of the wings, too.” I’ll stick with the beer. I glance around the bar, desperate for something to look at. My eyes are still adjusting to the gloom, but I make out something painted on the wall, red stain on the dark wood paneling. It’s a circle. With a star. It’s a pentagram? But there are other lines, whorls bisecting it. It’s like no pentagram I’ve ever seen.
“What’s that? On the wall, I mean.”
“My dad was a painter,” she says before bringing another round of drinks to the card players. I hear one of ‘em making a wisecrack, but don’t quite catch it. Elle’s body language tells me all I need to, though, as she puts a hand on her hip and shakes her finger at the guy. As she makes her way back behind the bar, the other guys laugh at their buddy getting in trouble.
“Sorry, what?” Elle asked me something, but I’m looking at the painting on the wall again.
“I asked if you were passing through or if you had business in Vehlens.”
“Oh, I’m just stopped for the night up at the motel. Heading on the morning. I have another couple days ahead of me. Coast to coast.”
“Coast to coast, eh?” She eyes me suspiciously. “Where you coming from?”
“San Francisco,” I say, and immediately regret it. Elle laughs scornfully. I notice the guys have paused their card game and are eyeing me from across the bar.
“You’re a long way from home,” Elle says. She sets a glass on the counter, pours two fingers of dark flesh-colored liquid into it from an unmarked bottle. She pushes it to me across the bar. “On the house. You won’t find that in San Francisco.” I hear one of the card guys chuckle as I lift the glass, cautiously, to my nose. I look up at Elle, expecting something more, getting nothing.
“Go on, California! Drink up!” It’s one of the card guys. They snicker, all three of them, and I know now I’m already deep inside some townie ritual. Humiliate the city folk. Whatever the hell they play out here. I raise the glass in their direction, then Elle’s, then bring it to my lips. It’s sweet. I can taste the alcohol, but there’s no burn. It’s aromatic. It’s smooth. It’s surprisingly complex. It’s very good. I drink again, letting it slide slowly down my throat, where it leaves a warm trail like a lover’s hand.
“Wow,” I say, setting the empty glass on the counter.
“Only the first one’s free, California!” They giggle like schoolgirls.
“Don’t mind them. They’re jealous, is all, because they can’t afford to drink it. You were expecting moonshine. That’s Lambert Gin. They’ve been distilling it here in Vehlens for 130 years. You’d never be able to get that flavor anywhere else in the world. That’s Iowa juniper, yarrow, some other local secrets. The recipe’s never changed. It’s tradition. And you’re welcome. But they’re right; only the first one’s free.” She almost smiles.
I close my eyes and chase the taste of the gin. If it’s the same Lambert, no one wonder he’s a local hero. Maybe he’s onto something after all, however boring his face is.
“So where you headed?” she asks, bringing me back.
“Salem,” I say, realizing it’s maybe the first time I’ve said it aloud. “I accepted an adjunct position this fall at the state university. Well, they call it ‘part time faculty’ now, but–” I notice her eyes have gone glassy– “I’m a teacher.”
“Teacher, huh. So you got run out of California, too.”
I’d still rather not say aloud the rest of it, not yet – the divorce, the unplanned psych hold, the dog I’ll never get to see again – so I shrug and answer, “Something like that.”
“Well, I can tell you this spot right here has all a body needs. And I’d never be caught dead in California, tell you that much.”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle, and I say, “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.” To myself I think Midwesterners sure do love to give unsolicited opinions, especially on anything that isn’t itself the Midwest.
“Criminals running loose on the streets. People living unders tarps, shitting and pissing right there on the Hollwood… what’s it? That sidewalk with the stars. Damn illegals swimming their way up the coast. Movie stars with bolt-on tits driving little electric go karts. Hell, no. Not New York, either. I’m happy right here with my people, where I belong. We take of each other here.” I wonder briefly if her trendy pixie cut is ironic, decide it’s not worth asking. In fact, I can feel the gin spreading through me, warmth radiating from my chest out, filling my head. Elle’s voice is getting louder, and I realize she’s no longer speaking to me, not really. “And don’t even start with those commies in London or Switzerland or wherever. I’m never leaving the United States of America because I’m a goddamn American. I read the news. Two ladies are laid up right now in the best hospital in England with no kidneys. Someone took ‘em out while they were vacationing in Turkey or Morocco or one of those… you know.”
I don’t know, and I don’t want to. I pull out my wallet.
Elle dunks glasses in a sink of soapy water as she speaks, “The whole goddamn world’s gone crazy, and then they bring it here. Started with the blacks. Now all of a sudden everyone’s gay. They want everyone to be fluid or non-bialary or whatever. Trying to rewrite history.”
“That’s right,” one of the guys chimes in. I realize Elle’s not going to give me a bill. I realize I may be in over my head, and my head happens to be swimming. I finish the beer. I pull a ten from my wallet, drop it on the bar. A pint glass shatters in Elle’s hand, the sound splitting the air in the room. She doesn’t seem to notice. Now she’s splashing bloody water on the floor, on her shirt.
“I dare those motherfuckers to try putting a litter box in one of our schools. Hell, no. Telling kids they can be cats. Letting kids grow up gay. Like that’s natural. These woke assholes. Just like mixing races is perfectly natural, right. Give me a break.” She’s spattering blood on the bar. Grabbing more glasses, pushing them under the water. She’s not looking at me. She’s not looking anywhere. Her eyes are black in the gloom; I can’t make them out. She pushes more glasses underwater, sets them to dry in a rack spattered with her own blood.
“What do you think about that, California?” The card guys are standing now, all three of them, facing me, locked onto me, their faces dark beneath the brims of their branded red hats. The air between us shimmers briefly, like heat waves on a highway.
I don’t know what else to say, so I offer, “Go Lambert.” My head feels like it’s floating. I keep one hand on the bar to steady myself.
“That’s goddamn right!” Elle shouts inches from my ear. She has her hands on the bar, leaning toward me. Bloody water runs down the bar from her hand. “A man with principles, devoted to saving his people. Our people. It starts here, but he’ll go all the way to the top, and he’ll put this whole country back to rights. You’ll see. He’ll show you everything.” She stares at me, and I swear her eyes really are black now, inky, like a starless night. And then she straightens and looks down at her hand. “Oh, hell.” She pulls the white towel from her waistline, wraps it around the glistening wound. “How did that happen?” The towel begins to bloom a bright, oxygenated red. I start woozily toward the door.
The card guys watch me, follow me with pivoting heads, not moving from where they stand beside their high top. I make it to the door, then pause. I turn toward Elle.
“I think you should go somewhere that scares you,” I say, and then push through the door into the hot, smoky night.
I sleep fitfully that night, tossing and turning in the stiff motel bed. My dreams flash between periods of sweaty wakefulness, grim vignettes of figures; shadows; and a dark, dank city of stone where black water flows.
I’m ripped from those nightmares into another, hands clawing at me, pulling me up, ragged whispers. But it’s not a nightmare. I’m awake. I’m in a stiff motel bed. Or I was. A gag is tied across my mouth, a hood pulled over my head. I struggle to break free, but the hands bind me, pull thick cord tight across my chest, around my wrists and ankles. I try to speak, to shout, and manage only to cough myself hoarse, choking, as I feel my body pulled along carpet, then slid across something hard and cold. Blind, I am bounced down concrete stairs. Smoke stinging my nose, I am dragged across pavement. Burning all over from skin left behind on concrete, tears like needles my eyes, I am finally, blissfully sent back into the black after an instant of sharp pain against the back of my head.
My first sense to awaken is smell. An ancient musk fills my nostrils, burrows up into my sinuses, and the rest of me comes swimming back. My vision is blurry, my eyelids scratchy and crusted over. I hear the movement of something fluid, but not water. It sounds heavier somehow. More dense. Darker. In the gloom I start to make out figures, a few spots of flickering light that must be fire. I try to reach out and sense the rest of my body, but I can’t. I try to move my arms, my hands, a finger.
I can’t. My thoughts come and go. I’m chasing them, trying not to disappear again.
“I imagine you’re trying to get up and walk out of here.”
I turn my head, blinking away tears, something else. Kneeling down, leaning close to me: a face so generic I forget it as soon as the man stands and turns away, removing his suit coat. My eyes adjusting, I look around the room. Several figures stand just beyond the reach of the torches illuminating the room. The walls are stone. And running through the center of the room is a channel of thick, black liquid. Two huge steel tanks sit close to the edge, hoses running between them and disappearing beneath the surface of the running ooze.
The man turns back to me and says, “I’m afraid that’s impossible.” Loosening his tie, pulling it over his head, he says, “We severed your spinal cord at your T1 vertebra.” A hand appears for the tie, takes it, drapes it across the suit coat. The hand gives me a little wave and runs itself through an unironic pixie cut. “Your vocal cords have been frozen with an injection.”
I try to scream.
Unbuttoning his cuffs, he smiles generically and says, “They need you alive, but beyond that, well, this is easier. Frankly, we’re not sure if they need you conscious. But it’s tradition. Tradition matters around here.” He pauses, looking right at me. I fight to stay present, shake my head.
I hear something large and heavy thud against the side one of the tanks. Another bang, and now I hear something thrashing about inside both tanks. George Lambert is unbuttoning his shirt now, and I see the surface of the ooze break, see something slender glimmering in the torchlight for just a second.
George Lambert stands before me, pulling open his shirt, exposing his great white belly. He slides something along it, a blade, leaving a thin red line from his breast to his pelvis. And then it bursts open, and slithering things, shiny with slime, flashing silver teeth, spill out of him. I hear them pouring onto the stone floor down below me somewhere. I hear them slapping, snapping. I hear pulling, grinding. Chewing. My head begins to loll rhythmically, and I realize the lampreys or whatever they are, they’re pulling at me. The sinewy eels, the horrible things, they grind through me, chewing through bone, making a racket. I feel nothing.
And then tendrils rise from the foul creek, slide across the floor, and begin pulling the things – shrieking with gluttony, fat with blood – splashing into the black abyss. The thrashing in the tanks grows louder, the damned smell in the air more pungent. George Lambert tilts his head back and laughs.
Elle kneels at one of the tanks, turning a spigot. Brown liquid splashes into a dark wooden bowl. She stands and brings it to Lambert. He raises it to his lips and drinks deeply. It runs down his chin. It splashes on his bare chest, into the slowly closing maw of his open belly. His black eyes glisten. Elle takes the bowl, drinks from it herself, and then turns to me.
The flapping, hideous things disappear over the edge into the black channel, and Elle leans in close to my ear, whispering, “We got all we need right here, California. Why would you ever want to leave a place like this?” And then she tilts the bowl against my mouth and pours.
It’s sweet, aromatic, smooth. Despite myself, I drink. I hear it falling out of me, running onto the floor. Figures move about in the shadows, perhaps a dozen, perhaps a hundred. My vision swims, distorts, and I feel myself – my mind – being pulled somewhere. I think I am not ready to go. Then I think I am. The walls of the room pulse and wave. The tanks breathe, their horrible residents banging in eldritch rhythm. George Lambert lets the shirt fall from his shoulders to the befouled floor, begins unbuckling his belt. The forms in the shadows grow larger, closer. They almost have faces. Elle smiles at me with doll’s eyes, pulling her shirt up over her head, revealing rows of pulsing brown teats, each of them weeping like angry boils.
And now I do feel something, a warmth blossoming in my stomach, reaching out with silken fingers through my body and up the back of my neck, filling my head with light.
Wow! Quite the story. Pretty scarey. Stay away from Iowa.
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