first ran: 10/28/99
You are Jay Allison.
Everything you do is intended to get a reaction out of others because you
feel unloved and insignificant. You are a spoiled child and the only time
you feel important is when you hurt or anger someone else. Which is why
you threw things at Mirton, the man who passes days and years on a front
porch. The man who does not pay attention to anyone, including you.
You succeeded
in injuring Mirton. You bruised him. You drew blood and yet he continued
to ignore you. It will require a more desperate act to get Mirton's attention
and you have a plan. Instead of going to bed, you climb out of your window,
drop to the ground, and walk in the dense summer night toward Mirton's
decaying house.
Despite the
street lamps and full moon, the house is more of a dark implication than
a tangible structure--the house absorbs light, it does not reflect it.
The house reminds you of a vampire.
You are dressed
like a diminutive cat burglar. Black clothes, black shoes, a black hat.
Like the house, you too absorb light. You make no sound as you rush across
Mirton's lawn. You press your back against the weathered wood of the house
to catch your breath. You know it is nearing midnight because you can hear
the weeping coming from the within the house. Sobs, muffled shrieks. Mirton
cries every night. He sounds like a cat you once tortured by setting its
tail on fire.
On the side
of the house, there are tangles of bushes and vines which nearly conceal
the three windows. It requires a moderate effort to twist and claw your
way to the first window but you manage. A twig scrapes across one cheek
and you bleed. There are no lights inside but the weeping assures you Mirton
is home. The weeping is loud. It echoes and swirls. Uneasiness turns to
fear but your need for attention is stronger. You want Mirton to know you
exist. You want him to acknowledge you. You will bang on his windows, ring
his doorbell, shout and laugh until he tells you to go away. It is a childish
plan, of course, but you are a child.
Without thinking,
instead of tapping on the window, you push against the panes and the window
begins to creep open. It does not occur to you to wonder why someone like
Mirton, a recluse, would leave a window unlocked but the opportunity to
get inside Mirton's private space is too good to pass up. As the window
rises, so does the volume of the sobs. So do your expectations.
You lurch into
the house, which smells like dust and mold. You remain still for a moment,
waiting for your eyes to adjust but it soon becomes apparent that your
eyes will never get used to this absolute darkness. You begin the precarious
process of sliding your palms along the wall, shuffling your feet across
the carpet. Somewhere, perhaps from the basement, the bitter weeping flies
at you and you begin to wonder. What if it is not Mirton who cries at night?
What if he does not live alone?
Or perhaps you
do not wonder this at all. Perhaps the quiet breathing beside you makes
you realize Mirton is not the only inhabitant of the house. The breath
becomes hot against your neck. It mixes with the scent of dust and mold
to produce a stench so overpowering you begin to gag. And then a hand as
rough as broken glass reaches around to grab you by the throat. You are
lifted from the floor and then dropped.
The overhead
light snaps on and Mirton stands over you, his vacant eyes regarding you
with detachment. His head is haloed by the light. The weeping echoes and
swirls from deep within the house. Something inside your head snaps and
you cannot move. You cannot scream for help. All you can do it stare at
Mirton's face that is as blank as his eyes. When he speaks, his voice creaks
like rusted machinery.
"You are that
kid."
You notice the
blood drying on his upper lip from the things you hurled at him earlier
in the day.
"You were with
that other kid who is nicer than you."
You notice the
black eye you gave him.
"You talked
him in to throwing things at me."
Because of the
stench you are having trouble inhaling.
"Do you know
what a m'guffin is, kid?"
You are suffocating.
"No, I guess
you wouldn't.
A smile curls
across his expressionless face like smoke.
Mirton bends
down. His skin is pale and, you notice as you begin to black out, his skin
is also opaque. Vaguely, you can see arteries and veins in his face and
neck. You can see the dark mass of his writhing tongue through the skin
of his bloodstained lips. He is toothless. His right eye is swollen shut
but you can just make out the eyeball beneath the lids.
"I'm a m'guffin,
kid. You came here tonight because I needed you. Whatever reasons you think
you had for coming here are just the attempts of your flimsy mind to rationalize
irrationality. Anyone watching you sneak over here and crawl in the window
would have tried to warn you. Everyone would know that coming into this
house assures you a violent death." Mirton chuckles. "But. You are under
the control of a m'guffin, kid. I eat once every few hundred years and
tonight I'm hungry."
And you lose
consciousness, unable to draw in a breath. The last things you hear are
Mirton's voice and the terrible sobs rolling beneath his words.
I am a m'guffin.
I do as I please.
Here you are,
suffocating, nearly dead, unconscious on my living room floor while the
ghosts weep in the basement. I can devour you, kid, but I cannot destroy
your twisted soul. The soul I shall keep for posterity, like a book. You
hear the sobs, my boy, of a hundred different volumes from a hundred different
centuries. The souls of dinners past. My own personal library.
I will take
you down to the basement. I will remove your soul. I will keep it in a
special room constructed of precious metals mined from Lemuria--which sank
with Atlantis. You will be deconstructed, decapitated, digested. The process
will be loud, messy, and painful. The process will last an hour and you'll
be alive for most of it because I think the hormones of human fear add
flavor to the meat. They make the juices cook.
But what to
do with your head, which does not interest me? Human brains are a small
meal at best, and are usually full of excrement and empty calories. Your
head has no innate value yet I think I can give it some superficial purpose.
It will serve as a warning to the nice kid across the street. Thus we'll
have an old-fashioned cautionary tale, a good bang with a moral.
You noticed
my skin is almost transparent. I am a m'guffin, one of many. We're a transparent
people. You are a human being who wants attention and love. I am a creature
who wants nothing at all. You lack complexity. I am many things--a bronze
world, a platinum blond, a knock at the door, a cannibal, a recluse, a
bandersnatch, a means to an end and an excuse for a beginning. You set
tails on fire. I burn worlds.
You regain consciousness.
It is too dark to see but you know you are now in a subterranean cavern
because it is cold and damp and the ground beneath you is made of stone.
There is movement near-by. The only sounds are the shrieks of the dead,
echoing in a metal chamber somewhere in the dark.
And then the
sound of creaking. Of metal against metal. Mirton has changed, has grown,
has mutated. The m'guffin is sharpening its claws, gnashing its teeth,
making preparations for its meal. You remember the man who passed days
and years sitting on a porch and you understand nothing of what is happening
to you. You only know it is going to take time and it is going to hurt.
Your soul begins
to slip out of the pores of your skin. Your mind remains trapped by your
body, which gradually begins to disappear.
Your sharp screams
are matched by the screams of the imprisoned souls. The outer walls of
the metal cell reverberate, singing and screaming along with you, along
with the ghosts. The noise makes you deaf. The pain makes you numb.
Your screams
die out until you fall silent. The next morning, as the sun slides upward,
your best friend's dog touches his tongue to your frozen, contorted face,
nips your ears with his pointed teeth. Mr. Mirton, the recluse, pats Bosch
gently on the head. "Here you go, boy. You like table scraps? Huh?... Yeah..."
As he crosses
the backyard, returning home, Mr. Mirton stops long enough to cast an expressionless
glance up to your only friend's bedroom window. You again notice the transparency
of his skin. The rising sun gleams through the palm of his hand as he raises
it to wave at the empty window.