The Recruiter

[Location Sense: In the UK, though no one speaks with an accent.]

Time is of the essence. I glance around the room trying to decide if there’s anything important enough to pack or whether I should just get the fuck outta here. I hear him tromping up the stairs, and then, quicker than it should be possible, he’s at the door. I try to slam it shut but he’s pushing from the other side. I can see his grimacing death-mask of a grin, the prickly hair on his fat bald head, and hear him grunting as he tries to force his way in. When I fled here to avoid the draft, I never thought he’d follow me this far. They call him the recruiter.

Desperation breeds strength. I manage to close the door and lock it. He starts pounding away – it won’t take a guy his size long to break it down. This room is a dead end, and the only way out is through the window.

[Location sense: once I’m out the window, the local architecture and landscape are the area near my grandmother’s house, a neighborhood I spent a lot of time in as a kid.] The room is on the second floor of the boarding house. I shimmy down the trellis and drop into the dirt of the garden below. I’ve probably only gained a few seconds on him, so I take off running down the street.

A couple of houses down, I take leave of my senses and decide that hiding is better than continuing to run. I dive under a car in the driveway, not the best cover but I’ll have to make it work.

That stocky bull-necked fuck must have gone another way, but three of his seekers are coming down the street. Local teenagers, paid off by the recruiter. I could probably take any one of them, but three together might be tough, and they’d raise an alarm pretty quick.

Under the car, I find I’m not alone. There’s a friendly bulldog lying under here, probably dozing in the shade, but now awake and excited to find a friend. He wiggles around and barks, trying to get me to play with him.

“Sssshhhhh!” I hiss. “Get out of here! Go away!” But he carries on making noise and hopping around, and when he finally trots over to greet the three seekers, they know where I am.

The jig is up, and I have to try something. I find a wire, stiff like an unbent coat hanger, and a blue racquetball lying under the car tire. I puncture the ball with the wire and make a flimsy little makeshift weapon to swing around. It may be the sorriest little makeshift weapon ever, but it’s something. Maybe.

Out on the street, the seekers surround me. They try to reason with me, but I know the recruiter will be on us soon, so it’s go time. I whack one of them with the racquetball a couple of times – it can’t hurt too much but he flinches and hollers, open mouthed. Then, a stroke of luck! The ball flies off, but I jam the wire into the kid’s gaping mouth and twist it around his tongue, ready to rip it out by the root.

The Smear

(Location Sense: the second-floor apartment where I lived with my college girlfriend, though it’s bigger inside and there’s a bedroom where there should only be a closet.)

We tromp up the stairs, our radios and nightsticks clanking on the railings. I glance down at myself, eyes flicking over the sidearm, the crisp black buttons, the little brass nameplate on my chest reading “Kim”. My partner, imposing as I am lithe, towering as I am small, reaches the door first and pounds it with his fist. “Police! Open up!”

I take a breath, Domestic disturbance calls are always a crap shoot – might be the kids playing too loud, or a 300-pound drunk with a shotgun, or anything in between.

The little girl answers the door and lets us in. She seems healthy and unbruised, but she is silent and sullen. She backs up against a wall and looks at the floor. Her face – it’s blank, no emotion at all. Like the thousand yard stare of broken men, who’ve seen it all and never quite got back from wherever they found it.

Walking in the room we can feel that something WRONG. Lights are on but it’s dim in here, oppressive and dank, like after a fire. It’s an unnatural feeling, like there are too many shadows, like something is creeping behind you, approaching just out of your field of vision. It chills me.

From the bedroom off to the right, we can hear the mother. She’s ranting and raving and screaming like a woman possessed. Is it English? Or something else? Could be anything. Can’t tell if she’s gonna need handcuffs, or a straightjacket, or a long rest to get whatever she’s on out of her system.

[Persona shift]. Kim stays in the front room to try to talk to the girl. I give her a smile and she just stares back with those dark, dead eyes. I head over to the bedroom where the growling and shrieking are coming from. I feel a chill run down my spine as I reach for the knob. There ain’t much that can slow me down, but this place is creepy.

She’s hunched over, hair a tangled bird’s nest, clothes filthy and torn. Mumbling and clawing at herself, and the walls. This is bad. It ain’t right. There’s too many shadows in here. Something is off….and there it is.

A smudge, a stain on the wall. A dark little smear, like a slug or a piece of food. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s the problem. It’s the what in “what the hell is going on here?” But it isn’t catchable. When I walk over to it, it isn’t there anymore. It’s moved to another wall, or it’s just a little gouge in the paint and the smear has moved to another place. Every time I get near it, or reach out my hand to touch it, it’s gone.