Borderlands 5 (14 page)

The growth was bigger. It was no longer smooth but had indentations.

I’m going to have to have that checked out,
Alan thought.
You’re out of character,
the voice in his head told him. “Fuck you,” Alan mumbled. “This is serious.”

But he slipped back into the problems of the alcoholic writer. No, not alcoholic. He’d gone on for years saying he didn’t drink. He couldn’t rewrite that history, all those awards he’d received from MADD and SADD and other organizations for being a good role model. Then what? A one night binge. His first. Only on an extremely bad night.

Alan went to bed. He didn’t watch any interview shows. He allowed sleep to take him even though they needed to travel over the painful road the growth was paving.

H
e awoke to excruciating pain that tore through his head and brought tears to his eyes. In the bathroom he flicked the switch and stared into the mirror. The bump had grown more overnight. The side of his face now looked swollen. Gravity seemed to dissipate. He stared at his new visage, unaware of the physical world around him, his ramming heart the only sound in the world. He needed to get to the emergency room,
now
.

You’re fine,
the voice in his head said.
It’ll go away by Monday.

Just give it some time.

Alan couldn’t take his eyes off it. The growth almost took up the whole side of his face. How could he not go to the hospital?

The papers,
the voice said.
You made the papers.

They reported Alan Ashley, best-selling author of numerous novels and stories, had ruined his image by being drunk at a benefit. It wasn’t the drunkenness the socialites didn’t like, either. Fuck, most of
them
had been drunk. It was the fact he had denounced so many of them for drinking and then had gone up on stage drunk. He ruined the evening when he passed out and fell on the table of
the Vice President of the United States
. The TV reported the event, noting that sales of his books were already dipping and half the bookstores in the country weren’t even open yet. His agent called and told him that Oprah didn’t want him on the show Monday after all. He called back half an hour later to report that his publisher was dropping him because he grabbed the head honcho’s wife’s left tit and had asked if he could take a sip.

Shattered by his own momentary stupidity, his weakness, he went into his bedroom and opened a desk drawer. The gun was in the back, just as it had always been. He took it out, looked at it. Then he put it in his mouth, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

Alan fell back on the bed at the sound of the dry click of plastic on plastic. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, writing the obituary of Alan Ashley, author. He took his own life in the Plaza Hotel in New York. He didn’t even write a final note.

After an hour of lying on the bed with the growth throbbing, Alan sat up. The toy gun was still in his hand. He remembered playing cops and robbers with it as a boy. Until he couldn’t anymore. Until he’d been harassed for his need to act things out.

The actor
, the voice said.
One last time.

I
t was a party in L.A. Alan Ashley, who began acting in his teens and had become a screenwriter, producer, and director, wasn’t usually found on the party scene. But a mid-morning party couldn’t lead to trouble, could it? This was L.A., though. He was with the cream of the crop—this year’s Brat Pack, last year’s Brat Pack, fuck, the
original
Brat Pack. In the kitchen, Alan Ashley, who’d won awards for being a good role model to kids by not doing drugs or even drinking, decided to give in a little. He tried a drink. Then he snorted some coke. He loved it. By the end of Saturday he was on a binge. Everyone told him to slow down. You’re gonna end up like John Belushi, they told him. Or River Pheonix or Chris Farley or Janis Joplin or …

But he didn’t stop. He stayed up Saturday night doing lines and drinking and staying in the cloud that seemed to come from the growth on his face. It still ached and throbbed. He paid it no mind. In the early morning hours of Sunday, Alan Ashley, famed actor, died of a drug overdose. His agent found him in his Malibu home.

A
lan Ashley, who’d been born, raised, and lived in Harden, Massachusetts, sat on his couch and stared at the blank TV. On the TV tray in front of him was the paper plate he’d used to snort the Coffee Mate, a rolled-up one-dollar bill lying near it. Empty Diet Pepsi cans littered the apartment. The walls were bare. No artwork, no photographs, nothing. Books, videos, and DVDs lined shelves or were stacked around the place. His clothes lay strewn about. The apartment cost nine hundred dollars a month. He had trouble paying it. His freezer in the kitchen consisted mainly of frozen entrees. The refrigerator was almost empty except for milk and soda. He owned only a few dishes, hand-me-downs from his parents. The semen stains in his sheets were not from the different women he met on book signings or press junkets, not actresses or fans, but from himself, by himself.

Alan Ashley, a marketing guy for a firm in Harden. He went to work daily, sat in front of the computer or on the phone analyzing sales and marketing, not really important, not making waves. Usually his coworkers nodded to him, aware of his existence but unaware of
him
, the person. Gina being the only one because she’d had the cubicle near his. Now they were aware of him, but for what? For talking to himself. For living in fantasies.

Alan Ashley looked at his hands. What good were they? What had he ever done with them? Type reports for things he couldn’t care less about. Jerk off. Pick his nose. Wipe his ass. Eat. But what had they
done
.

The side of his face ached. He touched it. The indentations on the growing bump were more defined. What the hell was this?

It’s me,
the voice said.

At that moment, pain exploded from the large growth and Alan cried out. He slid off the couch, onto his knees, and wept.

“That’s right,” the voice said. “Let it out.”

Alan stopped. The pain was still there, still ravaging, but he forgot about it. The voice hadn’t sounded internal. It sounded like it was in the same room.

“You wanted me,” the voice said. “And I’ve come.”

Alan used the couch and the wobbly TV tray to stand. He stumbled, almost fell, but finally stood. His legs quivered and he didn’t know if he could walk, but knew he had to. He had to get to the mirror. He made his way down the small hallway to the bathroom and flicked the switch. That explosion of pain had been the growth opening up. Two new eyes looked at him. A new nose breathed and a new mouth smiled. “You created me,” the face said. “You wanted me long enough and then you try to destroy me. That’s fine. I’ll just do what you never could because
you
were too weak.”

Alan screamed while the face that had grown beside his laughed. When the screams died, Alan realized he couldn’t feel his body. That sensation of zero-g had returned. Only now, when he tried to raise his hand to touch the growth, it wouldn’t move. When he wanted to run from the bathroom, his feet wouldn’t respond.

Alan watched as Sunday became Monday and he quit his job, telling Roland to take his reports and cram them. He watched as he told Gina that she was a lying, backstabbing cunt and should go home and take the bottle of valiums the same way her mom did. He watched, though through a fog, as Tuesday came and he packed a few books, videos, DVDs, and CDs with his clothes. As he took the money out of the bank. As he got in his car and began driving.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, heading west, Alan saw himself as a growth that was fading on a face. This face knew what it wanted, knew what it would do. Alan watched as the hand that had once been his came up and its fingernail dug into him. He was aware of being pulled off, pain tearing through him, until everything went black.

The Goat

WHITT POND

Whitt Pond is a man of faith. He believed we would publish this story when we told him how much we liked it seven years ago. That you’re reading it now is proof that he was not only right but his story has withstood the test of time.

“C
’
mon, Scotty,” Josh urged, fighting the steering wheel as the battered pickup bounced along the ungraded North Texas back road. “We’re gonna be there in a few minutes. Say it now.”

Across the seat, a small skinny boy with straw-colored hair stared unhappily at the floor.

“I can’t,” he mumbled. “Try harder!”

No reply came. Josh glanced over at his younger brother. With eyes closed in silent concentration, Scotty was doing “touches”, his right hand executing the familiar pattern over and over again. Thumb touch little finger, ring finger, middle finger, index finger, little finger again. As the repetitions increased, he opened his mouth in soundless pain.

“I … I
can’t
!” Scotty cried finally. “I just
can’t
!”

Josh looked away, but the view did nothing to improve his mood. The drought was everywhere. In the churning clouds of hot red-brown dust obscuring his rear view. In the sun-tortured fields with their endless rows of useless, shriveled peanut stubble. And in the solitary weathered houses that now lay empty and neglected.

“Why can’t you, dammit?”

“I don’t know,” Scotty said in a subdued voice, staring down at his lap as he continued his repetitions. “I just can’t, that’s all.” The rest of the trip was spent in silence.

The bouncing suddenly ceased as the truck pulled from the dirt road onto the highway into Morgan. A small official sign from better times stated the population to be 1,258. The real number was much lower now. Nobody wanted to know how much.

Further down the highway, a large and long-faded billboard paid tribute to the town’s sole moment of glory, a single-A state football championship of twenty years earlier, never to be repeated.

As the truck slowed for the single traffic light, the hard times in Morgan were immediately evident. The peanut mill that had once provided the majority of jobs now stood like a gray metal mausoleum. Half the stores on the town’s main street were boarded up, and the half that remained shimmered with defeat.

The handful of townfolk out on the sidewalk paused to stare at the pickup as it rolled by. Scotty slumped further down in his seat to get out of sight. Josh kept his eyes forward, avoiding the hard, angry faces that turned their way.

The Morgan Baptist Church parking lot was almost empty when they arrived. Scotty bit his lip and stared at the walkway leading to the entrance. “C’mon,” Josh coaxed gently, “it probably won’t be that bad.” He wondered if the words sounded as phony as they felt.

Pastor Roberts was waiting on the church steps, his hands clasped one atop the other over his belt buckle, the way all preachers seemed to stand when they were being preachers. Three other people were with him, the bright sun bleaching away any sympathy Josh had hoped to find in their hard-lined faces. One of them was his mother.

Josh’s stomach tightened at the way she seemed to shrink into herself, physically withdrawing from “this evil world” that she so often railed against. Her bouts of depression had become more frequent and more consuming. This one was the worst.

“Mom, are you sure.…” he began, but her piercing look stopped him cold. Further words would only bring on the screaming and the fist-shaking. For the hundredth time in the last two years, Josh wished his father was still alive.

“Well, boys,” the Pastor said, “why don’t we go inside where it’s cooler?” He gestured to where the church doors stood open but made no move toward them. Nor did any of the others. They were watching, Josh knew, and waiting.

“Uh, Scotty,” Josh said as casually as he could manage, “you forgot to roll up your window. You go do that and then join the rest of us inside.”

The small boy’s face flashed from puzzlement to surprised relief and he started to run back to the parking lot. But his mother grabbed him before he had gone two steps.

“You’ll do what Pastor Roberts says, do you hear me?” his mother hissed, slapping her younger son across the ear as she spun him back towards the doorway.

“Calm yourself, Sister.”  The pastor guided the shaking woman away with one hand but kept the other firmly on Scotty’s shoulder. He then glanced at Josh knowingly. “I think the window can wait until our business here is concluded. Scotty, why don’t you go in first?”

Please, God, Josh prayed silently, please let my brother get through Your doors the normal way. Just this once? Please?

Gingerly rubbing his ear, Scotty stepped up and stood so that the toes of his sneakers barely touched the bottom of the doorway at exact right angles to the frame. Then he hopped through, landing with both heels touching the inside of the frame. He looked nervously down to see if his feet were still at right angles. After staring for a moment, he hopped back through the doorway and began again.