Hit It and Quit It
William Keckler
01/02/2020 | fiction | 22 minute read
content warning: gore, violence
Every night I'd see this guy somewhere downtown. He'd be leaning up against some slimy wall with his head cocked to one side like his neck was broken. The dude was creeping death in a really dated leather jacket. He must have been somewhere between the ages of my dad and my gramps. He looked like if he licked his lips, his tongue would just dry up and get stuck there. And he would always whisper the same thing at me: “I need a bone.”
At first, I just ignored him. Sometimes I would catch a buzz at work or someone would slip me something behind the bar and I'd be on my way home at nearly 3 a.m. with my eyeballs and everything else fried. And I'd look at him and think he was a literal lizard man. Like some lizard just shape-shifted into a dude and then went into a thrift store and dressed itself one day. And then spent its time crawling around the city and leaning on walls. It seemed as likely as any other origin story for this creep. Did he stay there in the day to soak up the sun's rays and flick his tongue at flies? No, probably that was when he crawled back under his rock.
Here's where I confess I have a creepy side. I kind of like the idea of dare sex and really slumming it. Not that I think any person is better than any other. Ugly is just a mindset. It can be changed like any other mindset. Except for a guy like that. There was the challenge calling out to my creepy side.
Everyone said I was in love with death. Maybe they meant how I loved to climb over the protective railing of the iron truss bridge downtown and sit on the edge, waggling my sneakers at the night river so far below racing blackly towards the bay. Or how I sometimes got back from parties two days after they ended. Everyone remembered the time I was shot by my stepbrother because I ruined his chance to be on some jerk-off star search show. I did him a favor. Basset hounds are more tuneful than Rick.
I thought yeah, a lot of people are in love with death. But how many have actually hooked up with him?
This sick thought grew on me. I felt the guy was daring me. And I don't do well with dares. I mean I take them on.
I told myself if I could hook up with death, I could probably do anything. More than one friend had suggested that he might be a serial killer. They said he might have been talking about an actual bone for his collection. As in a piece of me sitting on his mantel later. I smiled. “Even more of a challenge,” I thought.
-2-
So one night I just decided enough was enough. It was time. He was leaning back against the dark wall of a church at an hour when most of the drunks had already made it home or into their fated roadside ditch. This time his head was aimed up at the overcast night sky and he had sunglasses on like he thought he was in some Warhol film. He always wore those. Never saw him without them. How he saw anything at night I've no idea. Maybe he was blind, I thought, since I had never seen him walking anywhere, only leaning on walls. But no dog and no cane. His limbs were all twisted. His body looked like a poseable doll that had been assaulted by a three-year-old. Left twisted all the wrong ways.
This time he croaked it out in his most guttural voice, not loud at all and with his head directing the request to the starless heaven more than me. “I neeeed a bone.”
I stopped dead, swiveled and faced him directly: “You know what? Tonight's your lucky night. I have a bone.”
I waited with that counter-dare anticipation to see what he would do. But he just kept staring up at the sky. And then he started to moan, just a bunch of vowels, ohs and oohs and uhs. They weren't sexy. They were crypt sounds like old iron mausoleum gates groaning. I wondered what he smelled like. I expected the worst.
He opened his arms then as an invitation and I thought “whatthefuckhaveidone?” But I felt that rush of hormones coming off those acorns atop the kidneys or wherever the hell that juice comes from that you can actually feel like a soft bee sting deep in your body when the excitement starts to kick in. Was I actually going to do this? Go home with The Mummy?
I was. We were the only two people on the street in that part of town. I hadn't seen a car pass for fifteen minutes either. The streetlights didn't penetrate much where we were standing just then.
I stepped into death's open arms. He embraced me and everything was cold. Even colder than the January night. I thought of a dead star holding me. Like someone had dug up James Dean sixty years later. I waited for the stench of death to hit me.
And it did, but it wasn't the grungy, earthy smell I expected. Instead, it was a smell like a funeral parlor. That lily smell. It was sickly sweet. Death literally smelled like death. He smelled like the scents we use to cover up the stench of death. And he was staring at me now, or I supposed he was, since I couldn't see through his lame oversized black sunglasses that looked like something some tragic worshipper of the sixties would wear. I wanted so badly to whisper to him, “You know Andy Warhol's dead, right? That he's not coming back and no longer looking for superstars?” But I just whispered, “So you gotta place or what?”
-3-
“Yeah, yeah, yeah...yeah,” he muttered like an idiot. And we ended the embrace and started walking together with him leading. I had a feeling he was just going to take me down some alley and either try to blow me or murder me. Or both. I felt in my coat pocket for my dad's wrench. I felt a little more assurance as my fingers circled around its heft briefly and then let go.
“Let's go in here,” he whispered like it was a whim and we went through an old doorway with a glowing fanlight whose cursive lettering told us this was “The Oaks.” It was a preposterous name for an old brownstone with no trees around for blocks. I took a quick look around the tiny foyer with its antiquated metal mailboxes, and then we climbed ancient-looking stairs until we arrived at the scratched-up door of Apartment 303. He knocked three times. Slowly.
“Who else lives here?” I asked.
“No one,” he said. “It's for the ghosts.” Then he laughed a crazy laugh and I knew if I was going to run now was the time. He was clearly nuckin futz. I reached out to remove his massive sunglasses and he juked away from me. “Not yet,” he said sternly.“Ooh, a Daddy then?” I teased.
“What? No. Not at all,” he said in confusion as he turned his key in the lock and opened the door.
I waited to see if any animal would came forward. A cat was always a better bet than a dog. Especially with someone like this. I was standing under a ceiling lamp and could see nothing but darkness in the apartment. And then slowly my eyes adjusted. I thought I saw the outline of a couch. Maybe a chair too.
He flicked the lights on and waited for me to enter. He saw I was hesitating, looking inside. I had never sent a text to anyone and both he and I knew that. And then some last vestige of sanity hit. I told him, “Hold up, I'll be right back. I have to go make a quick call. It's sort of private.”
“Ah, you're afraid,” he smiled at me. “Look around. Ordinary apartment. No bodies in the closet. Not this week anyway. I swear.”
It was dares that I could never resist. My stupid genes or something. I stepped inside. He went around behind me and closed and locked the door. Several locks. I turned and watched in case I would need to undo those same locks in a hurry. It's not like I didn't think I could take him in a fair fight. But how many fights are fair?
Here's where it gets really weird. He went over and turned on the big screen television and there was an actual, last century VCR player hooked up to the thing. A real museum piece. And he was playing something from a VHS tape. I stared at it. It looked like a very old home movie. Something from the eighties maybe. Boys were running around under trees alongside a creek. It all looked blue so it must have been evening. They hit each other playfully and hollered and swung out over the creek on a rope hanging from a big branch of a large sycamore.
-4-
I was just saying, “I don't get it,” when I began to realize I could not move. I could not look away from the television screen and I could no longer speak. I didn't understand what was happening.
I heard him laughing then but he was out of my sight and I could no longer turn my head. I think he was on the couch. Lying on it. Hiding there. Probably still wearing those sunglasses. What had happened? I hadn't drunk anything, taken anything. I sniffed the air but nothing was there, no weird gas odor or anything.
“I want to leave now.” That was all I could manage. I was shocked that I even managed to say that. Because already my power of speech was atrophying.
“Just watch the show,” he whispered from somewhere. Probably the couch. I could not move, could not step forward to look down over and see. I couldn't move to leave.
The boys in the video were in cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. They swung out on the rope and let go, plummeting into the creek. They would swim in there a bit and then come back to shore, climb the small hill and goof around with each other some more before taking another monkey swing out.
Suddenly the film changed to a different scene. It was a cemetery. A tombstone in rain. I tried to read the name but the camera was being handled poorly, everything was a blur. I could see the dates though. BORN 1974. DIED 1988.
I was trying to speak but my vocal cords were paralyzed.
“I want to leave.” I managed to say, but it was distorted and low I wasn't sure if he had even heard me over the loud sound of the rain coming from the television speakers. It was as if I had lockjaw or something worse.
“Just wait,” he giggled, “he'll be here soon.”
I nearly pissed myself when he said that. I had no idea who “he” was, but I also had no intention of finding out. Why wouldn't my body respond? Had I been hypnotized?
And then I felt somebody behind me. But I could not turn around. It was the most awful sensation. I don't see how anyone could have gotten behind me as I could see the entire living room and the hallway leading back presumably to a bedroom. I could turn my head just enough to take in his kitchenette and mini-dining room and there had been no one there. And the triple-locked door had never opened. So how was someone behind me and why couldn't I scream?
I felt a hand touch me,. It felt like a smaller hand.
“Please,” I managed to say through my locked mouth. And then for the first time in my life I must have fainted. I don't remember falling. Maybe I just couldn't fall.
-5-
When my life suddenly started up again, the television was playing only static. I looked into it. I could turn my head again, could move however I wanted. I didn't want to look too long at the swirling patterns of static or listen to all that white noise hiss. I felt I might get hypnotized again. I was still standing but I was on the other side of the couch in front of the large t.v. screen. On the couch was Mr. Death and he was covered in blood. So was his beige couch.
“Oh no, please no,” my voice rattled at me. I reached into the pocket of my coat and removed my father's wrench which I carry for protection. It was covered in blood. Just like my hands. And who knows how much else of me.
I thought about taking his pulse. I thought about calling 911 from a landline I spied in one corner of the living room. I thought a lot of things in a very short time. But what I actually did was just get the hell out of there. I had no idea what all I had touched. I knew he was dead. He was facing the back of the couch and his skull was clearly crushed. I could not see his face. I saw his sunglasses were finally off, lying on the weirdly orange carpet. I could finally see his eyes if I wanted to. I didn't want to.
I got the hell out of there and for the next few days I prayed I hadn't touched anything in that apartment but my wrench. I had been careful with not touching the locks on my way out. I used a wad of kleenex so there would be no prints or touch DNA. I mean I had to assume it was me who did it..I told myself there could have been someone else there. Back in the bedroom I never saw. Hiding in a closet, anywhere. I mean I was totally out. Gone. They could have used my wrench and just put it back there in my pocket. But my hands had also been bloody that night. I couldn't deny that. And the clothes I had burned had been covered in blood and other things I don't even want to describe.
I watched the news every day and night but the story never broke. I figured he was such a loner it would take some time before people knew. Probably the smell would give it away. I wondered whether he had a cat and whether it would start to consume him. I thought about making an anonymous call from somewhere to tip off the police. But I never did.
Exactly ten days later, I was coming home from my night job when I saw him. I nearly lost it. He was leaning up against a wall on a street where I had never seen him before. I had taken to walking home a different way as a precaution and just for my mental well-being. I didn't want to walk past any of the spots where I had seen him before. I ran down a side street the moment I saw him. I was sure I must have been mistaken. Or I was hallucinating now.
I didn't really sleep that night. I couldn't. It had to be some sort of police sting operation. Somebody knew and was playing mind games with me. It couldn't be him. Could it?
But I saw him again in different parts of town as I walked home late at night. After several nights of this, I couldn't resist any longer. I just had to know. So I continued down the block to where he leaned against the wall, nearly motionless. Fuck if it wasn't him.
-6-
He wasn't even looking my direction and had those dark sunglasses on. But I knew he knew it was me. He said without even turning his head, “Thanks for the bone.”
And then he laughed the worst laugh I have ever heard.
I ran like a bomb had just gone off. I ran home faster than I have ever run in my entire life. I looked over my shoulder all the way home.
I quit my job downtown the next day by text, never even gave that crappy little bar any notice at all.
I don't go downtown at night anymore at all. I don't even care if I ever find out whether it's “all in my head” or not. That was the last dare.
I have a theory about what really happened that night but it's not the sort of thing I would ever tell anyone.
But if my theory is right, I do think he's gonna be down there for a long time. Night after night. Looking for a bone.
about William (he/him/his)
William Keckler lives in the Steelton in Pennsylvania, not the one in Canada. He is a poet, fiction writer, translator and visual artist and his writing has been widely published. He feels big love for the two H's: haiku and horror. Feel free to find and friend him on Goodreads where he posts often and he will friend you back. He/him.
goodreads: W.B Keckler