Invitation

Reader’s Choice selection from DMC’s flash fiction group, Friday Frights.

by Timothy C. Hobbs:

The emaciated black man sat huddled against the cold in a dilapidated wheelchair. He wore a dark cowboy hat that was faded in a patchwork quilt pattern of leprous, white splotches. His body was obscured from view by a trash bag that had been cut open to allow him to pull it over his head like a poncho. A few feet away, The Salvation Army bell ringer swung the metal instrument of his calling back and forth with the conviction of a corpse.

Vernon chose to ignore both figures as he sidestepped the wheelchair, keeping his stare on the welcoming Walmart entrance. “No eye contact” he repeated over and over to himself.

He was startled by the quick grip on his coattail by a hand emerging deftly from under the homemade poncho. “Hey!” Vernon complained. “Let go of me.”

Vernon gazed down into a pair of sunglasses and a wide smile populated with more metal than ivory along with a splintered toothpick drooping in one corner. A thin, pitiful looking mustache jerked above the smile.

“My man!” a black face announced.

“I said, let me go,” Vernon repeated as he grabbed his coat and tried to pull it free from an amazingly strong grip.

“Hey, motherfucker! Chill out!” The man relinquished his hold on Vernon’s coattail and held out a 5 by 7 flyer. Vernon noticed the man’s hand was trembling violently. “It’s an invite to a dinner party down at the shelter.”

“Excuse me?” Vernon asked still focused on the unsteady hand and wondering if it was alcohol or some STD that was the perpetrator behind the shaking.

“A dinner party, dude,” the black man repeated and shoved the flyer at Vernon again, his toothpick rolling to the opposite corner of his mouth. “High eatin’, brother.”

Vernon frowned and shook his head and moved forward without comment. The man grabbed Vernon’s coat and shoved the flyer in one of its pockets.

Vernon spun around. “Stop that!” His immediate instinct was to pull the paper from the pocket, but the thought of touching something from God only knew what kind of diseased fingers stopped him.

“I should call the manager on you,” Vernon stated and moved away toward the automatic doors. A smoky laugh from behind Vernon combined with the whoosh of the doors. Vernon felt a chill race over him. He turned around and saw the man had gone. Vernon shuddered then struggled to pull a stubborn shopping cart from its place in one of the snaky lines of carts. He finally succeeded and pushed forward, completely ignoring the senior standing to one side offering, “Welcome to Walmart” with a happy grin.

Vernon went through the tag detectors, the wheels of his cart screeching and wobbling. Before he made it ten feet into the store, he was stopped by a motorized shopping buggy reversing itself, a steady and annoying Beep Beep Beep reverberating from it. A man whose obese stomach spilled over the sides of the buggy swiveled his head around and growled, “Watch it, sonny!”

Vernon sighed and leaned on the handle of the shopping cart. “Another special shopping experience at Walmart,” he complained to himself.

THE HOMELESS INVITE THOSE MORE FORTUNATE TO A DINNER PARTY.

EVENING OF DECEMBER 23^rd AT THE ANGEL OF SALVATION SHELTER

1366 NORTH 4^TH STREET – NO DONATIONS ACCEPTED

Vernon stared at the crumpled flyer lying on the top of the bucket of trash outside his apartment building. He had worn his leather gloves when gingerly extracting it from his coat pocket. Odd thing was he knew the address. In fact, he passed that shelter everyday on his way to and from work at the unemployment office located downtown. He’d paid little attention to the place though and tried now to jog his memory.

Wasn’t it that decrepit building that used to be a church? he asked himself. And, now that he recollected, hadn’t he seen an occasional homeless wretch or small group of the scroungers clustered there?

Vernon shrugged and glanced at the flyer briefly before walking down the cement path to his apartment.

Oh well, what did it matter? he mused as he entered his meager apartment, three plastic sacks full of his weekly grocery purchase gripped in his hands. He’d had his share of the loafers, the transients, and the homeless over fifteen years at the unemployment office. Fat asses too lazy to work, women constantly pregnant to leech off the city, the state, and the government for whatever they could steal, and, of course, the homeless, trying to get a handout.

Vernon’s face blushed as he put up his groceries. It was his taxes that were being robbed for those worthless, diseased scum bags!

A dinner for the fortunate? Given by the ones who persistently pilfered from solid citizens?

Indeed!

Vernon left out one TV dinner to thaw a bit before he microwaved it. He felt he needed a shower to wash the image of the black man away along with whatever filth the man had transferred to his coat.

Vernon’s bachelor existence remained as simple as it had been all his adult life. A small group of clothes hung in his closet. The furniture he kept was the same he had purchased twenty years ago, the pieces worn but still solid. He had no television and never wanted one, preferring to read and go to bed early. The bathroom he entered was populated by a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste that he would squeeze and roll until it offered no more before buying a new tube, a set of faded towels and washcloth, and a single bar of soap he would move from the sink to the shower and back again and use until the lingering sliver produced no more suds before replacing it.

After supper that night, Vernon read then went to bed and dreamed empty dreams until the cheap but loud Big Ben alarm clock clanged him awake into the beginning of another workweek.

By the time Wednesday rolled around, Vernon’s week had turned to crap. Two of his co-workers had called in sick on Monday with the flu, leaving Vernon to carry the workload of three people. He suspected the two, both women, were faking it in order to spend time with their children who were out of school for the first week of Christmas vacation.

The work load during the holiday season was bad enough with a full crew; this extra work load placed way too much pressure on Vernon. He was frazzled and filled with an evil temperament as he drove home that Wednesday evening, and even the knowledge that tomorrow was a holiday, Christmas Eve, offered him no consolation.

And it was in this state of mind that Vernon noticed the shelter as he idled to a stop behind a line of cars backed up from a traffic light. And it was then he remembered the flyer from last weekend.

There was a wooden sign hanging over the door of the shelter. The lettering was faded but Vernon could still be read: THE ANGEL OF SALVATION CENTER.

Vernon frowned against the headache he had acquired that day. He narrowed his eyes and glanced again at the shelter and wondered if there really was a “dinner for the fortunate” this evening.

But the thought passed rapidly with every beat of his throbbing head. Vernon had had quite enough of bums and lowlifes for one day.

The tapping on his window brought more irritation than surprise. He turned his aching head sideways and squinted at the brown fingers drumming against the glass of the passenger window. A face shadowed inside a gray hoody loomed close to window. A female voice came through muffled and gravelly. “Senor?” it asked.

Vernon gritted his teeth and said as loudly as he could without actually shouting, “Go away!” Then, with what sarcasm his headache would allow, “I gave at the office.”

The woman pulled the cloth hood away. A mass of thick, black hair spilled out in winding curls. Her face struck Vernon like a hard slap. She was so stunning. Her dark features seemed to pass right through the passenger window. There was something primitive glowing in her exotic brown eyes; something that suggested hot, humid jungles; something distant and sensuous.

Vernon’s sense of place and time left him momentarily until reality came back pounding inside his head. His vision blurred. He felt an uncomfortable pressure then realized he had an enormous erection. He felt the air catch in his lungs as an unexpected orgasm seized him and he ejaculated spontaneously, the force of the spasm jerking him forward into the steering wheel.

Vernon could not recall how he had managed the fortitude to pull his car out of the line of other cars and into the parking lot by the shelter.

The woman in the hoody had followed him and stood by his door. She had opened it and helped Vernon, who was as wasted as if he just ran a marathon, into the shelter through its front doors.

At that time, Vernon’s speech was almost incomprehensible: “I don’t know what… Please don’t touch me any… A mess. . .  I made a  . . .”

When his body and mind began to stabilize, Vernon found himself sitting at one of three long dining tables.

His vision was still a bit blurry, but he made out a few groups of what looked to be homeless denizens spread out along the tables. They were eating. And when his sight came back clear and focused, Vernon  watched  forks and spoons being shoved into gaping mouths, mouths lined with wrecked and rotten teeth; some simply toothless, gumming their grub with ghostly sockets.

Vernon’s headache returned. He squinted against the renewed pain and caught the sight of a wheel chair pacing its way steadily toward him.

“My man.” The voice Vernon had heard in front of Walmart grated over his eardrums. “Thought you might make it.”

Vernon stared at the black man’s face—the sunglasses still on, the mousy mustache still twitching, the toothpick still rolling from one side to the other of a mouth filled with silver.

The man glanced down at the large wet spot on Vernon’s crotch. The toothpick stopped rolling and bobbed in a stationary location. He lowered his sunglasses and revealed a set of bloodshot eyes. A smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “See you met Circiella,” the black man said with a wink.

Vernon’s ire returned along with a hot shame. He moved trembling hands to cover the wet spot and was even more mortified by the stickiness he found there.

“Listen here,” Vernon said, avoiding the black man’s eyes. “I don’t know what happened. I had this strange headache.” He crinkled his brow. “Still do.” He tried to stand but wobbly legs forced him back down. The room felt unusually warm all of a sudden. Vernon was certain he was about to vomit. He fought back the urge. Perspiration clung clammily to his body. A soft hand fell on his shoulders from behind.

“Drink this, Senor. It will help you.”

Vernon turned and found the striking Latino woman standing behind him. She held a white, Styrofoam cup in her other hand. Steam rose in swirls from the cup. A strange and tempting aroma spread in delicate tendrils up Vernon’s nose.

But an instinctive warning came swiftly along with the drink’s allure, and Vernon turned his head away from the woman. “No thanks,” he said with a shudder. “Just show me the Mens Room so I can clean myself and get out of here.”

Vernon glanced at the other tables and discovered their scruffy patrons had stopped eating. They were all staring directly at him.

Vernon brought his attention back to the man in the wheelchair. “Looks like I’m the only ‘Fortunate’ to show up,” Vernon said cynically, his old indignation rearing its head. “Looks like you huckstered a lot of innocent bystanders for nothing with those ridiculous flyers of yours.”

The black man’s face went blank and cold, then, without warning, raised itself in a series of loud guffaws.

“Flyers?!” the man announced through his cackling. “Flyers?! Shit, motherfucker, there was only one flyer.” The black man pointed a bony finger at Vernon. “The one I give to you!”

Vernon felt an unseen force pull him backward. His shoulders were pinned to the table by it. The Latino woman moved in front of him. Her beauty fell over his body like a heavy fog. She pulled his lips open and poured the searing liquid from the cup into his mouth.

Vernon’s headache lifted just about the time he passed out.

A feeling of chilled wetness brought Vernon around. His arms and legs were stiff, his body sore as if from a hard workout.

When his senses started to clear, Vernon realized, to his horror, that he was lying naked in a small cage.

When Vernon tried to stand, his back wedged against the wire frame. The only position he could assume was being on all fours like an animal.

He tried to scream for help, and, when he did, his mouth exploded in pain. He felt a sudden urge to spit. He did so. A mixture of blood clots and mucous fell with a sickening plop on the cement floor of the cage.

Vernon’s eyes widened. He stuck probing fingers in his mouth and discovered a large area of swollen tissue that had once been a tongue, the stump of which had been sealed with a line of prickly, primitively sewn sutures.

Vernon tried to scream again only to be rewarded with a rush of painful air across his wound.

He crouched and stared out of his confinement. Just across from him was another cage. And another occupant.

It was hard to comprehend what stared back at him with tiny, dark eyes from the other cage. It was bent over, just like Vernon had to be, but it was enormously fat and almost occupied the entire enclosure.

It made an odd noise as it gazed at Vernon with curiosity. The sound from its throat was more of a grunt that sent waves of motion across its fatty, naked bulk.

It tired quickly of scrutinizing Vernon and buried its face in a large, metal bowl. Vernon then realized it was eating, slurping up some kind of lumpy, yellow gruel from the bowl. The stuff had spilled over the sides. When the thing raised its head again, the mess was dripping from its jowls. It opened its mouth and grunted, and then snorted loudly through its snout.

Its snout!

Vernon realized what it was then: a gargantuan pig, its tiny ears twitching, its obese body trembling in ecstasy as it fed.

Vernon looked away, not wanting to view the sickening sight. He heard a faint creaking from behind him. The wheelchair appeared slowly in front of his cage.

“You back with us?”

Vernon looked at the black man. Without thinking, he tried to speak. He winced and grabbed his mouth.

“You’ll get used to that, my man.” The black man rolled over to the other cage. Its occupant ignored him and continued stuffing itself.

Vernon watched as the man reached up and wiped a chalked 364 from a slate board hanging at the top of the cage. He wrote 365 over the ghost dust of the 364 then turned and rolled back to Vernon’s enclosure.

“That Circiella is one good-looking sorceress, ain’t she?” The man chuckled lowly. “Hard to image she would come all the way back to Waco, Texas with a Negro like me, ain’t it?” He smiled and continued, “But she come from a long line of witches like that. Told me her folks go back to Greece. I come across her…” The man hesitated then stroked his chin in concentration. “Let me see. ‘Bout twenty years ago down in South America. Down on the Amazon. I was doing clearing then for a big concern gonna’ put up some kind of car manufacturing plant.” He glanced at Vernon. “Cheap labor down there. Them Indians work for nothing.” He shook his head. “Damned old tree fell on me and crushed my spine. Boss found some local medicine man. Circiella was with him. She sure saved my black ass. But I guess a cripple wouldn’t change right. You know, wouldn’t turn into what she wanted because of the broke back.” Footsteps could be heard approaching from behind Vernon’s cage. “She took care of my Boss-man and the other workers though. Over the months I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hands and feet turned into hooves. Noses into snouts and . . . “

A group of men came into the room. The black man stopped talking and moved out of the way.

Vernon watched as one of the men opened the other cage. The pig looked up briefly then went back to eating. The man crouched down and eased in by the bloated body, took a long sliver of metal from his back pocket and stuck it quickly into the pig’s throat.

All hell broke loose then.

The stuck pig’s blood jetted out. It thrashed wildly against the sides of the cage but was too big to get away. Another one of the men grabbed the pig’s head while the one who had stabbed the animal held a large bucket under the streaming blood.

Before the pig ceased its struggles, five such buckets had been filled.

The cage door was lifted and the group pulled the dead pig out of its cage. A long, thick, wooden stake sharpened on both ends was produced. One man lifted the pig’s uncurled tail and began shoving the stake up the rectum.

Vernon screamed silently, oblivious to his own pain, as the stake exited the pig’s gaping mouth. The black man rolled his wheelchair over. He produced a shiny apple from his lap and stuck then slid it down the end of the stake protruding from the animal’s mouth. He turned and smiled at Vernon as two of the men grabbed the front and back end of the stake and carried the pig away.

“He gonna roast up real good for Christmas dinner,” the black man said.

By now, Vernon was in a state of shock. His body trembled. He felt chilled to the bone. The only thing he could think to do was lie down and cover his shriveled genitals with his unsteady hands. He gazed with morbid fascination at his fingers. They had already started to curl inward, the fingernails beginning to meld together into a flat, black layer of hard keratin.

Vernon heard a scraping sound. He looked up and saw the black man open the door of his cage and slide in a metal bowl filled with the same thick, yellow gruel he had watched the pig devour. The man closed the cage and said, “I know you ain’t exactly hungry right now, my man.” He rolled his wheelchair over and pulled the slate down from the other cage, rolled back, and then used his shirt sleeve to erase the 365 before writing another number on it. He held the slate down for Vernon to see. “But over the next 364 days, you’ll be sucking that slop up and begging for more.”

Vernon gasped in anguish as the number 1 glared back at him from the well-used and chalk-dusted slate.

Timothy C. Hobbs is a 62 year-old retired Medical Technologist living in Robinson, Texas with his wife Donna Walker-Nixon, who is also a published author.

He has published a short story and a flash fiction piece in Dark Tales(Autumn 2005 Issue#7 and Autumn 2006 Issue#9) a U.K. publication, and a short story in spinetinglermag.com (Fall 2005 Issue#4) a Canadian on-line publication. He has published short stories and poems in New Texas, an annual literary journal in 2000, 2001, and 2003. A collection of his short horror fiction, Mothertrucker and Other Stories, is available from Publish America and Amazon.com. His horror novel, The Pumpkin Seed and his novella The Smell of Ginger, published by Vamplit Publishing, are available from ebookundead.com, smashwords.com, and as Nook from Barnes and Noble. His novel Music Box Sonata also published by Vamplit Publishing is available at smashwords.com.

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