"You guys are nuts!" he shouted back at his sister.

  She shrugged. "Prove it."

  "This far enough?" Chuck called. The dark water lapped against his chest. It was above Mark's chin, and he strained his head back to breathe.

  She nodded, looking at her watch. "Hold him under."

  Mark screamed. Chuck squeezed his shoulders and laughed, shoving him down. Mark kicked and thrashed and got a big knee in the chest. The impact forced out what air he'd been able to hold, and he watched the silver bubbles drift to the surface.

  * * *

  Time stopped.

  Mark swayed under Chuck's grip. Fighting wasn't any use. Mud sank at his feet. Chuck's belly undulated in front of him. Life slipped beyond his grasp.

  Death was only a breath away.

  Pressure swelled inside as his mind wandered. Who'd win the World Series? What would his friends think? Should he have kissed Lindsey Walker?

  His lungs burned. His head throbbed. He couldn't resist anymore. He had to breathe.

  Fists clenched, he inhaled.

  * * *

  "Twenty minutes, Mark!" Marsha whooped, skipping down to the lake's edge.

  Mark blinked, dribbling. Chuck remained beside him in the water, keeping his hands to himself.

  "Wow, Twerp."

  "I should be dead," Mark murmured.

  Marsha grinned as she waded toward them. "Show me. What did you do?"

  Twenty minutes? How was that even possible?

  "C'mon, Mark. Show me." Her eyes were bright and eager. "Please."

  After what she'd done? There would be no forgetting this. Not ever.

  "Well?" she demanded. "What do I do?"

  He sniffed and rubbed at his nose, staring at her. What could he say? He didn't fully understand it himself.

  "Breathe."

  That would have to do.

  Flipping over backwards, he swam away as fast as he could below the surface. He would stay under for a while.

  At least until suppertime.

  Scuttle

  I learned about bizarro fiction and the slipstream genre while reading an issue of The Pedestal, and I figured I'd give it a try. This story was the result, published by Everyday Weirdness and based on an afternoon walk with my wife.

  True Story: I never thought buying a gallon of milk would prove to be fatal.

  He came at us like the Marshmallow Man, pasty but hairy and flushed and sweaty, gargling and huffing, staring straight through us as he staggered with arms flailing outward. It looked like he was drowning on dry land, a fish out of water. My wife slid behind me as we walked. I had the milk jug in one hand. We passed the bookstore. There were cars in the parking lot. He came right for us, babbling huskily, his T-shirt soaked.

  Swine flu? Bubonic plague? Had terrorists infected people at random and set them loose in local shopping plazas within walking distance of suburban condominium complexes? It was the perfect plan for mass-contamination. Ground zero. I was prepared to ward him off with my gallon of two percent. But he passed us without incident.

  I held my breath until we were at least fifty yards away. I'm sure my wife did the same.

  It was the logical thing to do.

  * * *

  I wake up at 3:00 AM.

  I check the locks on our front door. My wife usually notices, but she doesn't say anything. Does she think I'm OCD? Maybe. She doesn't notice now. She's in bed, sound asleep. I peer through the peephole at the unit across from ours, lifeless in the yellow light. They haven't switched from incandescent bulbs yet. The HOA hasn't demanded it.

  My hand drifts to the deadbolt, the doorknob. My fingers check for the second time in less than a minute. Perpendicular means locked. I might have installed it wrong. My eye doesn't leave the peephole. I think about Marshmallow Man and Night of the Living Dead, intermingling in my mind.

  I see a figure crawl by on its hands and heels.

  What? My heart leaps, adrenaline surges. My grip tightens on the doorknob. What was that?

  I don't open the door. Of course not. I'm safe standing here, watching. The door is locked, I know. I've checked.

  Another figure scuttles past. Like a beetle. But it's a person, awkwardly trying to move as an insect would, a cockroach. Without making a sound.

  We're on the third floor. I can usually hear every footstep outside. It drives me crazy sometimes.

  These walls are paper thin. If anybody wanted in here, it wouldn't be that difficult. For the Marshmallow Man or these Bug-People.

  It's 3:02 AM. I should go back to bed. None of this is real.

  Three O'clock is just a weird time of night/day. Too late to be night, too early to be morning. I should warm up some of that milk we brought home.

  But I watch through the peephole instead.

  Nothing. I'm imagining things.

  Another beetle scurries up the stairs and pauses in front of the unit across from us. Silently, it perches with fleshy human arms and legs bent at strange angles. The head rotates. It faces our door.

  Marshmallow Man's face.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to strangle the sound. Marshmallow Beetle stares at me. He blinks, sidling toward our door. He knows I'm here. Go away. Leave us alone. You can't be here. You can't be real.

  I have a baseball bat in the hall closet. Our only weapon. That, and a set of Wusthof knives. A wedding present last year.

  We had cockroaches when I was a kid. Not pets. Somehow, they always got inside our house. Even then, I'd wake up at 3:00 AM to use the bathroom and get a drink of water—self-defeating behavior. The roaches would pop and ooze cream under my heels. Bits of them would stick to my socks. I hated them.

  I should go and get the baseball bat. But I can't leave the door. My hand is glued to the knob. If I pull away, there might be a sound. All Marshmallow Beetle is waiting for. He'll summon his friends, and they'll come through the walls like those roaches used to.

  (This is a true story. I told you so. I'm not going to wake up and realize it's all some bizarre dream. That's not in the cards. There's going to be a fatality here. Remember? I never thought buying a gallon of milk would prove to be fatal. Still reading? Good. You won't be disappointed.)

  Marshmallow Beetle is below the peephole now, out of sight. He starts scratching at the door. Lightly at first, tentatively. Then he paws at it with open palms, pounding and sliding. He's going to wake up my wife. I can't allow that. She needs her sleep. There have been layoffs at her office.

  I release the doorknob and tiptoe to the closet. I get my bat. It sounds like the giant beetle's throwing his weight against the door now, trying to force it open. I approach the peephole and grip my weapon with both hands, bringing it behind my ear. The other two figures, the first two I'd seen, creep into my field of vision. They grin at each other, crawling toward my unit.

  Why our door? Why not the neighbor's, right over there? Go away. Leave us alone. I don't say it out loud. I hope they'll get bored and move on, whatever they are. Some kind of sick home invasion cult? Mutants in the first stages of their transformation?

  "Get away from here. I'll kill you," I whisper, tapping the bat against the door.

  The pounding stops.

  Silence.

  "What is it, Baby?" My wife staggers into the living room, rubbing at her disheveled blonde hair and yawning. I slide the bat behind the couch before she notices and head into the kitchen. I tell her to go back to bed. I warm up some milk in the microwave.

  I glance at the front door.

  "Trouble sleeping again?" she asks.

  I nod and take a step back. Something pops beneath my heel.

  But I'm afraid to look.

  Soul Smuggler

  Flash Me Fiction is no longer in business, but they crowned this tale the feature story of their final issue. It features a phantasmal anti-hero who has appeared in half a dozen of my other short stories. He goes by the name Mercer, and for the right price, he'll escort just about anybody into the afterlife.

  Even if the kid had the money, Mercer wouldn't have taken him across. He didn't do kids, not this young—all of eleven years upon the earth. It was a matter of principle.

  "I said I can get it. You deaf? I can get your rotten money!"

  Mercer swatted away the runt's grubby fists. A minor irritation for now.

  "Beat it, kid. Go home to your mama." He strode to the end of the alleyway. He never should have taken this shortcut back to the Plaza Hotel. Always these Leeches to contend with here.

  "My ma? She's already crossed over. A week ago. The Plague beat her."

  Mercer could feel the kid's eyes on his back. Without meaning to, he slowed his pace.

  "I can't live without her." The kid stood rooted to the pavement, the tattered remains of an old wool coat dangling from his shoulders. "We've got some money back at home. Please Mister, can't you help me?"

  Sure he could. They were alone, just the two of them; nobody would see. It could be over in less than a minute. Get this kid across the border, chalk it up to his goodwill toward fleshbags in general, both big and small. Then he'd return to his room, toss back a tumbler of the most expensive liquor on the continent—the only stuff able to get him through the night in any semblance of sleep.

  But he didn't make a habit of lending a helping hand without a few hundreds pressed into the palm. Good works were only for the priests and their kind, and he had a pricey whiskey habit to feed.

  "Who told you I could?" Mercer turned without glancing back.

  "You're a coyote, yeah?" The kid's half-shod feet stumbled forward eagerly but came to a skidding halt at Mercer's upraised hand. "A soul smuggler?"

  Mercer clenched his jaw. His spirit burned, itching to vacate the premises. Nobody was supposed to know who he was—not by appearance, anyway. Reputation, that was different: the best way to ensure repeat business. But he didn't expect to walk down a nameless alley and have some little Leech know everything about him.

  "You know my name?"

  "No." The kid shrugged. "He didn't tell me that, just where I could find you. Told me what you can do."

  Mercer nodded. "Who was this?"

  "Father Thomas."

  Mercer's spirit seethed. He clenched his fists to maintain a firm hold on his body. "How do you know Father Thomas?" One of Saint Peter's minions, and Mercer's fourth-floor neighbor at the Plaza.

  The kid shuffled forward another step. "He gave my ma last rites. Took her straight to Heaven."

  Mercer sneered at that. "And now you want to join her."

  "Yeah."

  This kid wanted to die, but he knew better than to go for it himself. He knew ol' Peter wouldn't let him through those pretty Pearly Gates if he did.

  But he had to go; he knew too much. And maybe Father Thomas would join him later, the meddler.

  Mercer beckoned. The kid approached, overcoming his trepidation, advancing with almost eager expectation now.

  Without a word, Mercer's gloved hand seized the boy by the throat and lifted him up against the alley wall, pinning him there. He didn't go easily. Eyes popping in surprise, he beat his grimy fists against Mercer's grip and thrashed out with both legs. But all the fuss lasted only an instant.

  "This is what you wanted," Mercer hissed, his spirit now at peace as he watched the kid's brilliant essence drift outward from the confines of his scrawny body and coalesce to hover above, unsure where to go from there.

  Mercer released the fleshbag, and it dropped to the pavement like a rubber sack full of blood and bones.

  "You're on your own, kid. I don't do charity work." He turned away, and he almost made it out of the alley. But before he could step into the sunlight, something made him glance back at the kid's disoriented spirit twitching in all directions like a rabid dog chasing its tail.

  Mercer remembered all too well what that had been like—his own first disembodied moments in the abysmal Ethereality, lost in the total absence of space and time. For him, there had been no heaven or hell to take his eternal soul; he was unwanted by both, unwelcome. That suited him just fine.

  But for this boy, it was different. He had somebody waiting for him: his mother. Maybe he didn't need a smuggler to carry him across and show him the way.

  "Call out her name, kid. She'll guide you home."

  Mercer turned away and stepped out into full sunlight, squinting at the scornful brilliance of it, leaving behind the dark alley and the boy's lifeless body to stare after with a wide look of astonishment forever frozen on his begrimed urchin's face.

  Above, his spirit no longer trembled in the space between.

  Grandpa's Bluetooth

  Both of my grandfathers are now deceased, and I miss them dearly. One, because I never got the chance to know him, and the other because I did. This story was accepted by Liquid Imagination, and it was a first for me, as publication also included audio production with a talented voice actor.

  They take me to Seven Oaks Nursing Home because I'm the only one he'll talk to. They say he's got dementia and it's not the same as being senile, that he's a stubborn old fart and probably faking the whole thing. I don't know about that. Maybe he just doesn't want to talk to them.

  I don't blame him. The orderlies here look like welfare women. You know what I mean: hippos with hair pulled back so tight their eyes squint up at the sides. They laugh too loud and smell like smoke, calling each other girl and texting when they should be cleaning up after the old folks.

  Maybe if they did their job, the place wouldn't reek like stale piss. They try to cover the odor with chemicals, but all you get is chemical-flavored urine. No wonder Grandpa never wants to eat the food here.

  But he eats every time I visit, when they dump me off for my mandatory community service hours. I bring Grandpa a burger and a shake and he takes them with wrinkled hands that tremble like the food's too heavy.

  He doesn't say anything when he sees me, but his glassy eyes focus on the grease-soaked bag I carry, and while it takes him ten times longer to finish his lunch than I do, there's always a different look on his face after he's eaten. He looks almost like his old self.

  "Got one of these now," he says, pointing to his left ear. "I can hear everything."

  I nod and glance at the TV, the model that all senior citizens seem to prefer: a giant cabinet on the floor flickering with the latest news.

  "Dad said he got you a hearing aid." For some reason, Dad thinks the reason Grandpa won't talk to anybody is because he can't hear. So he got him this state-of-the art hearing aid that's Bluetooth enabled, synced to the cell phone Dad got him last year. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

  Grandpa nods. "Blue tooth," he says, staring past me out the doorway of his room.

  "You get many calls?"

  He shrugs. I know my parents have called him and he hasn't answered. Another reason why I'm here today. They want me to make sure everything's okay.

  "Are they treating you good?" I nod toward the doorway and the guffawing orderlies out in the common area.

  Another shrug. Grandpa's eyes return to the TV where now there's live local coverage of a massive railroad wreck. It looks like two trains plowed right into each other. How the heck does something like that happen? Were the drivers texting?

  "I heard them," Grandpa says with a slow nod. "Calling for help."

  "Who?" I clean up after him, crumpling his napkins and wrappers. He's still working on the shake.

  "Them." He points a shaky finger at the screen. "They knew they were going to die."

  Dementia—gotta love it. Take a man who's been the most intelligent member of the family for as long as you've been alive and give him a brain that calls it quits after eighty-odd years. How's that for life's fairness?

  They tell me not to contradict him when he's sharing his crazy talk. I'm supposed to just nod and smile and change the subject. But he's staring so hard at the TV now, I want to ask him—

  "It's the blue tooth, I tell you. I hear everything now." Another slow nod. His eyes have tears in them.

  I offer him a tissue. He shakes his head, covers his face with his hands. I want to give him a hug, tell him everything's okay, but they tell me I'm not supposed to do that. And before I know it, they're here to pick me up and take me home. Has it already been an hour?

  On the drive back through town, I bring up the train crash. Dad curses and complains about the traffic it will cause. Mom murmurs about "all those poor people," and I can't help but mention what Grandpa said.

  "He's got dementia, Aaron." Dad blows out a sigh. "You know that."

  Of course I do. They tell me often enough.

  * * *

  The next day when I bring Grandpa his burger and shake, one of the hippo-orderlies is out front having a smoke with her phone pressed up against one ear. Her fat cheeks shine with tears. She turns away when she sees me take notice.

  "Lunch time." I grin at Grandpa and hold up the greasy bag. He's sitting in the common area, hunched over in his wheelchair and wearing the royal blue robe we got him for Christmas.

  "He's gonna kill her," Grandpa says as I hand him his burger.

  I freeze. I don't know what to say, but somehow I know who he's talking about. I glance back at the orderly who's pacing outside now.

  "How do you know?" I can't swallow; my throat is too dry.

  He's eating his burger, and it'll be a while before he's done. I catch myself glancing back at the orderly. Her phone argument is heating up.

  * * *

  The next day when they drop me off, Mom and Dad remind me to tell Grandpa they'd like to see him sometime. He stares at me blankly when I relay the message. Then he points at the TV.

 

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