Squid Ink Incorporated

The potholes in the road throw us about the truck bed, the metal cage around us creaks.

Reaching the tall buildings on the outskirts of the city, Tommy kills the headlights and begins to skillfully weave his way through the abandoned cars.

As we near the hospital I tug the generator cord and it judders into life, I power up the projector and the VHS as Tommy pulls up to the hospital forecourt. Darren and ‘Shell climb up through the access hatch in the top of the cage. I bang on the back of the truck cab.

Now we wait.

This was our fourth run, at first it had seemed like suicide, but we seemed to be hitting our stride now. I try to think of it like corralling cattle, this stops me shaking enough to be able to function.

The sound begins, at first low groans, they multiply and multiply until it becomes a rush of noise, the roar of the crowd about to break over us like a giant wave.

I pick shapes out from the light of the projector, limbs flailing wildly, a few at first, then a deformed mass of twisted figures. As they approach I cover the light of the projector with my hand, reducing the light to a blue square on my palm. Above me Darren and ‘Shell ready themselves, dropping onto the cage top like sprinters on a starting line.

We wait for a hoard to mass around us, the weight of their bodies rock the truck, their hands clawing at the cage, behind each twisted  form, another, then another. We wait until we dare no longer, I hit play and pull my hand away, the projector light hitting a concrete wall.

The wall bursts into life, a huge tolling bell swinging back and forth, the trucks PA booming out across the packed forecourt. Giant words appear, ‘Frank Capra’s It’s a wonderful Life’, well it is Christmas.

As the credits play out, our assailants are hypnotised.

The projector had been our second attempt at distracting the huge crowds that built up around the city. We had needed a diversion to allow us to scavenge for food and medicine. We had tried throwing out hunks of meat from the truck, but now meat is in short supply and fuelling a feeding frenzy was just too dangerous.

I had tried the projector having remembered during the final days, crowds of them would gather around the big public screens erected for the Olympics. Watching the rolling newsfeeds, as if reviewing their progress.

I tried recordings of TV at first, XFactor, Masterchef, Eastenders, but that hadn’t held their attention for long enough. I tried Night of the Living Dead as a sick joke, but when it worked, I twigged, like animals, their vision was black and white.

I tried Psycho next, this proved my theory, not only did it distract them from our activities, they were held spellbound.

Now they stand hypnotised by Jimmy Stewart’s eyes meeting Donna Reed’s across a crowded room.

Darren and ‘Shell jump from the top of the cage, across the forecourt and into the hospital. As the masses watch the movie, our eyes follow two flashlights spiralling up the floors of the glazed building. They had under 100 minutes scavenging time, then 20 to get back down to the truck.

Around 20 minutes from the end, Jimmy Stewart is running along the streets of seedy Pottersville, the once peaceful Bedford Falls; we’re out of time.

I bang on the cab, Tommy hits the horn, and I watch as the two flashlights stop their search and begin to wind fast back down the building. Fifth floor, fourth, third, second, first… the generator stops and the projection and sound stops. The voices of George and Clarence replaced by angered growls.

I tug at the cord of the generator, my feet slip in a pool of gasoline, the fucker had sprung a leak!

I watch the flashlights descend to Ground level, stopping inside the revolving doors at the entrance. Between them and us, the hoard, now in full frenzy, their attention fixed on our truck.

The gasoline was in a can a the end of the truck bed, I throw myself down and slide towards the can, the truck begins to rock. I kick at the cage trying to drive back the gruesome fingers poking through the mesh.

From the corner of my eye I see the two flashlights bobbing up and down, frantically signalling us. Grabbing the can I crawl back up the truck as it bucks wildly.

Tommy starts the engine, I bang on the truck bed ‘No! No!’ I scream, ‘They’ll make it!’

Tommy revs the engine, rolling back and forth.

I reach the generator, holding the can with shaking hands I pour gasoline into the tank, I take the cord in my teeth and yank, the truck rears up on one side, then falls hard onto the ground.

I jerk my head frantically until the genny shudders into life. The concrete wall illuminates once more, Jimmy Stewart by a bridge, seconds later the PA, Jimmy screaming ‘I want to live! I want to live!’

The two flashlights shoot across the forecourt through the crowd of frozen figures, they jump up onto the cage. Tommy guns the engine and we pull away fast, Darren and ‘Shell digging their fingers around the mesh of the cage so as to not fly off.

The projection distorts as we pull away, the hoard begin to give chase, but were too far away now, safe.

Over the trucks PA, little Zuzu’s voice, ‘every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings’.

I finally have to admit it to myself, the job that started out as a stopgap has become my career by default. I can still remember my interview.

‘So Miss Mercer, where do you see yourself in five years time?’

Myoko my flatmate, as volatile as the volcano that was her namesake, demanded that I find employment or else lose my overpriced and undersized laminate floored bedsit. Reluctantly forcing myself out of months of dope inspired agoraphobia and daytime tv addiction, I squeezed on my court shoes, printed out my wildly exaggerated cv and hit the  agencies.

Settling for a position (well I say settling, I was hardly flooded with opportunity) with DeAth, DeAth & Quim Holdings, I was assigned a number of ‘administrative’ duties. That is to say, tea making, filing, scanning and the occasional brush with the executive washroom.

Some months into my job I had progressed to data entry, I was a mouse jockey, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v, ctrl c, ctrl v….

I would console myself with the mantra ‘Everybody’s got to make a living’, like the sample in that old eight-ball garage tune. But the slow and systematic mental abuse of sheer mundanity had begun to take hold. Where did I see myself in five years? Not still here that’s for sure.

Two years in, every day the same now, project upon project, deadline upon deadline, every one seemingly the same. The mad rush to submit on time and the hollow feeling you get in your gut when you realise that no-one will ever read that report you stayed late all week to finish.

By now I had surpassed the early days of employer suspicion, internet use monitoring and  wristwatch tapping after fag breaks. As vocationally unskilled as I was, I had tentatively carved myself a niche, a position of trust.

Three years in, I had responsibility, my own staff, workers, duped by their own belief that this was only a stopgap while they worked out ‘what they wanted to do when they grew up’, suckers!

It was during the fourth year of my internment, the long and repetitive days stretching eternally before me, that I had my epiphany.

In a moment of insufferable boredom and unrelenting fatigue I tore my right eye out with a staple remover. As the blood seeped between the qwerty letters on my keyboard, the intensity of my pain brought about a new clarity to my career development. I began to take an active interest in the company, attending board meetings, reading stock reports and studying investment performance. From my escalated position I set up some investments on my own initiative, insolvency buy outs, sponsored celebrity breast augmentations, arms dealing and the odd coups d’etat, the bloodier the better.

Five years in, I sit at the head of a boardroom table carved from virgin Amazonian timber, in a chair fashioned from whalebone and ivory. Human skull paperweights sit atop piles of unpaid vat and corporation tax bills. My staff have developed into a crack team of corporate cut-throats, ruled under my iron fist. No-one fucks with the bitch with the eye patch! Least of all the former Company owners DeAth, DeAth and Quim, who were given a buyout offer they simply couldn’t refuse.

Ask me again where I see myself in five years time, go on! I have a five year business plan in place now. Phase one, the the purchase of worthless deep space real estate. Phase two involves my private army of mercenaries, armed to the teeth and stationed at key strategic points throughout the world. A few governmental takeovers later and bam! The subsequent inter-continental wars that I have programmed will ensure that the worthless rock I own on Mars and Titan will become prime, radiation free habitat.

Give it another five years who knows?

The house of math is lined with blackboards; from outside I can hear the tipetty-tap-tap of chalk on hard, cold surfaces, occasionally a protracted slide, the product of a multiplication problem underlined in one smooth stroke.

I can almost see the white dust hanging in the air, the stained fingertips, the length of chalk growing smaller and smaller till fingers scratch the surface of the board.

Escape is easy, if you know how, calculate the position where the window should be, the co-ordinates of how high up one is in the building, the probability of surviving the jump to the ground below.

Perhaps you could calculate the odds of being rescued, 6:1, 13:1, 23:1, 100:1, tippety tap tippetty tap.
If those calculations are unworkable, perhaps you could appraise the force required to weaken the structure? create a fissure, compute the stress and strain, what force is needed to fracture the walls that bind you?

Tipetty-tap-tap… tipetty-tap-tap

What is your margin of error?

What is your escape velocity?

How long is infinity?

Tipetty-tap-tap… tipetty-tap-tap-tap.

The house of math is my house; at this precise moment in time I have a man trapped inside there. This is what I enjoy, ‘how I get my kicks’, especially when that man has Dyscalculia.

I feel like I have been here before, the dark twisted thoughts of self-loathing, the nausea in my stomach, the mixture of blood and flour on my face, the arcane symbols written on the white walls in freshly squeezed squid ink.

A man called ‘Proof’ had asked me to cast out the demons that haunted him, he ‘wanted everything to be alright’, to be able to ‘get over it’. The price he pays me is high, very high in fact, the price I pay, the pieces of my soul that I fritter away working my mojo on his behalf is far greater.

My add in the personals has had far greater return than I at first imagined, my sub-standard working life revolutionised by my ability to earn without a ‘day job’, an independent woman. This started out as means to an end, nothing selfish intended, now I fear I have grown greedy, will they grant my requests on this man’s behalf, or will I have of maxed out my credit this time?

I begin the incantation; I have the familiar loss of control, my body ridden by spirits. My palms sweat, my teeth grind, my pupils rotate wildly; the acid taste fills my mouth.

The secret language spills from my lips, ancient words that I have learnt from hours of furtive study from mouldy books with yellowing pages. I urge those that I cannot see to loan me their power so that I may rid my client of his torment. I draw the final lines in squid ink, air rushes into the room, the artefacts of the man called ‘Proof’ begin decompose before my eyes.

No, this is not right, not familiar now; the ink is beginning to run down the walls, I feel a sharp tug at the pit of my stomach, tinnitus in my ear.

I see the faint outlines of faces, there are no features just dark ovals; I feel pressure on my back pushing me to my knees, ridden to heavily I buckle under the weight.

As the light begins to flow from my soul I know, I have taken too much, my debt now too great, my line of credit expired, my soul repossessed.

my flash The Bone Street Kids has been published on microhorror.com frighteningly good *eerie theremin noises*