Looking down at the yellow piss stained water as it growled its own fantastic demise, Jacob Reynolds considered his own fate. The forty-five in the other room could handle it, but could he handle what it would cost?
Doing something, he thought, would be time better spent, than staring at piss water rushing down a drain. But still, watching that soggy mess seep away held a peculiar, if not grotesque enchantment upon the man.
He'd been working odd jobs for years, and never once had let any of them get him down. Not until yesterday, when the saggy bag three floors down challenged his authority as the resident plumber. That was the trade of late, plumber, and wouldn't have been the case had it not been for a married into the family uncle on his mother's side.
The whirling water was nearly clear again, when it belched an alarming bubble back up at him threatening to hit his leg with a dying last driblet of his own piss. He took a step back and caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He saw in its reflection a man of thirty eight who looked much much older. Alcohol had a way of killing a man, and turning his skin into sagging droops of yellow demise. His hand raked over the three day's growth of scruff as he tried to stare himself down. He lost. He was the picture image of crashing humanity. He was a man at war with himself.
Jacob turned and walked out of the little cramped bathroom to face the horror of his almost as small apartment beyond. The moth eaten couch with its strawberry stains and aromatic displeasures in one corner. Dripping faucet in a half kitchenette with a view of a crummy cracked back wall and a bare bulb swinging just overhead. A fridge that started its life out as a white wonder, was giving up the ghost in a fading smoker's leftovers of yellow poison.
Yellow, often associated with the happy, sunny times of life held a different sway on Jacob. It was everywhere his depressed eyes fell, and was buried just below the surface of every thought his mind considered. Yellow for him was the color of sorrow, the wasted tear of a man who'd had enough. Not the color of the sun, but the stinking stain color of golden piss.
Jacob went for the moth eaten couch and tripped over some tools he'd left out. He stumble stepped three more feet and splattered ass first---a thing that might have otherwise been an artistic turn---upon the fading couch filled with the lumpy folds of a hidden bed's frame just below. He hit it hard enough to stir up a small dust storm of dust mites and dandruff. The springs cried out for mercy and the floor beneath squeaked along with them.
Jacob turned his head to the side table where the black hole of the grinning forty-five stared back at him. He considered it for a moment, considered his plan and intents for the evening. It was fittingly aimed at his face. A thing he would've enjoyed greatly a little earlier, but for the moment couldn't stomach. He shot a hand out and turned the gun to face the wall instead. He was going to milk his sorrow and---turning to a big bottle of Jack Daniels conveniently close at hand on the floor---maybe poison himself a little first.
The old hag three floors down came to mind as he unscrewed the sweetly scented bottle of whisky, her unending mess of pink rollers and graying hair darting out disobediently in a chaotic field of frizzy madness. He winced, took a shot and felt the warmth soak up some of the guilt. The hag was back the moment the brief burn was gone, Jacob knew she would always be there in some form or fashion. She would always be there, haunting him, her and all of her high horse bitchy mentality. And the thing he had done to shut that bitchy mouth up. That would be there too.
"Shut the hell up you dirty hag," he turned the bottle up and opened his throat. He was never good at shots and even worse at guzzling. But the god of death favored him greatly as he filled his stomach with the whiskey. He was nearly drunk from so little effort, and by God if he didn't start to feel just a little better already.
Three heavy fisted thumps came up from the floor below him. Another hag, they all were, weren’t they? Whole damned world was field with hags, whores, and hoodlums. This one however was worse, she was married to a mister J. Briggins. Briggins was the Landlord's puppet and chief squealer to all things even slightly out of code.
Jacob stomped his foot without thought or care and felt overcome with sickness. The god of death didn't favor him for long it seemed. He jumped up just in time to feel the drunken sway of uncertainty take him. He staggered, stopped, felt the burst of displeasing nausea tease his stomach muscles, then began again. He tripped over a table, ran into the wall, and found neither care nor ability to make it any closer to the bathroom.
The vomit came as freely as the air he no longer wished he had. All he wanted then was death by the bucket loads, especially when the poison of his latest choice was freeing itself with absolutely no mercy. It came with so little effort, all he needed to do was unhinge his jaw and give it room to escape. And escape it did, in a great reddish tinted mess of pink chunks from an earlier lunch and an endless flow of sweetly sour liquor.
Three more heavy thumps came up from below, and this time he met it only with dim consideration.
They can all just go to hell and burn for all I care, Jacob thought.
"That how you really feel?"
Jacob jumped and turned his head from the wall he was holding himself up with. Sitting on the moth eaten couch where not more than five minutes ago he himself had been sitting---alone---was a big man with a stupid grin and big burning eyes. Hungry eyes.
"Who the---" Jacob had to stop before going on as more puke found the emergency exit his mouth had proven to be. He wiped his face, turned to look back at the stranger, half expecting him to be gone. He wasn't.
"Who the hell, are you?" Jacob pushed himself from the wall and stood as straight as he could.
The man on the couch just sat there for a moment, grin in place and eyes as large as pocket watches glaring back in brilliant blue madness.
"Listen 'ere fella, I asked you a goddamned---"
"Yes, yes you did. Names are slippery though, and best to be forgotten sometimes. Wouldn’t you agree...Jacob?" The sound of Jacob's own name came out like a cannon blast and nearly knocked him on his ass when he heard it.
"Do I know you?" Jacob asked.
"Never and yet always, sometimes but hardly. You might say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or you could say, the friend of my friend is my enemy. It all depends on the moment I suspect. But yes, yes I've been around a long time now and in certain ways I know you a little better than you know yourself."
Jacob felt uneasy and had to press against the wall again to steady himself. He was having trouble following the slick talking man who despite all of his fancy and complicated words held that damnable grin the whole time.
"Hard to follow?" the man asked.
"Somethin' like that. Who are you though, names aside and all, how'd you get in here?" Jacob leaned back and peaked down at the door he had come close to puking on. Both locks were turned and bolted, even the little sliding chain was slid into place at the top.
"A magician who tells his secrets is no magician at all, now is he Jacob?" those blue eyes glinted with an icy chill for a moment.
"Look, I don't know who you are, why you're here or hell, even how you're here. But please, I'm not in the mood for bullshit right now---"
"---Having a bad day Jacob?" the man asked looking at the forty-five with a side glance that alarmed Jacob. The man made no move to pick it up, which gave him just a little relief.
"Please just leave" Jacob said, turning back to the wall as another wave of nausea overcame him. He barely had time to finish his sentence before he was forced to puke again. There was another thing, the reason in fact for why he had suddenly felt so sick. His nose flinched and flared as it took this new thing in and sought an identifying memory with no luck. He felt his stomach flip then flop and finally gave up more of the eternal vile substance. Then, as he straightened himself and turned to the still grinning stranger, he had it. He smelled sulfur.
"Happens to the best of us" the strange man said, eyes averting toward the mess Jacob had just made for a moment before finding their place dead center on Jacob's own eyes again. Those eyes made Jacob's skin crawl and his balls tuck in a little tighter.
Maybe this was no man at all, Jacob thought for a moment.
"What'd you do with her anyways Jacob?" the grin was almost too wide to be real. The forehead too perfectly chiseled. The face hinted at sharp edges and angled in near points but never in too strong of a fashion. Jacob was taking these details in, never realizing the awkward silence that was growing thick in the heavy rotten smelling apartment when the grinning man suddenly spoke again.
"I asked you a question, Jacob" the man said.
"Huh? What?" Jacob replied.
"What did you do with the body?"
"The body?"
"Yes, after you hit the old bag. Blood was everywhere. All over you, your face, hands, hair. You remember that don't you? You freaked out for a moment, almost pissed yourself..." the man sniffed the air like a bloodhound before going on, “maybe not before after all."
And there it was Jacob thought. The nausea was suffocating in the long stretch of time before he found the raw animal like strength to speak again. His eyes found the cold blue stare of the stranger’s eyes and felt like his soul was being tied up in some hidden web. Sweat popped out on his forehead, and odd random itchy sensations followed the electric lines of his nervous system. He scratched feverishly all over his body as he and the stranger held their secrets from each other. He rubbed his forehead, pinched his lips, licked them five times then found speech.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about" Jacob felt his stomach turn in upon itself again, pulling his head back to the wall he had already stained a greenish yellow with the whisky sweet scents of sour warm alcohol.
"Not how I see it Jacob. She aint in here somewhere is she?" the grinning man feigned a look about. That damnable grin never vanishing, it rode the man's face like a cowboy gripping tight on a running horse's bare back.
"Nagh, you left her down there somewhere, maybe..." the grinning man's eyes grew large in a knowing smile, a jagged bumpy finger shot up in a heavenward stance of perfect erection. His face said aha before the grinning mouth spoke. Then with swift certainty that finger pointing to God shifted and suddenly pointed hellward toward the devil below.
"...Jacob you old rascal, you left the sagging bitch in the basement didn't you? Down near those rusting pipes waaaay back up in there, near the old part of the building. A place, I suspect, only you know about. Well, you and me, and the devil, that makes three. Three's a magic number Jacob, you know that?"
"Quit using my name like a goddamned tennis ball, back and forth, back and forth. I don't like what you're insinuating you, you foul mouthed sonofa---" nausea with a blazing white stab of metallic pain overtook him. His stomach felt like it was overflowing with a belly full of blazing hot razors wiggling, cutting, and writhing in his unreachable and hopelessly exposed insides. He fell to the floor in a crumpled pile of meat and bones upon his own steaming vomit, puking some more just before plopping side first into the still steaming pile of his stomach's unwanted waste.
"Sick stomachs are a real bitch, aren’t they?" the grinning man asked leaning forward, elbows firmly planted on knees. His hands hung over, stretching dangerously long and teasing the floor below like thin twigs ready for the fire.
Jacob looked up from his lower position and glared at the grinning figure. Somehow, Jacob thought, that bastard had done this to him. Somehow. He just knew it. There was no other explanation that would quiet his mind.
"Come on over here and sit next to me, you and I, we got a great deal to discuss" the grinning man said, patting the dusty ruination of the couch in three perfect pats. Dust cried up from its hidden depths and filled the air in a nose tickling invitation.
Jacob sat on his haunches for a moment longer before pushing himself up to a drunken man's wobbling stance, then slowly began walking toward the couch. Why he was doing this, his surface mind hadn't an idea. But his subconscious hinted at the lost memories of ancient magic, the black kind. One step followed another, his heart raced and thumped away inside his chest.
The grinning man sat perfectly still, grin in place just as big as ever. Eyes cut to slits. He gave off the scent of soured wood burning with just enough sulfur for good measure. And the closer Jacob got to the man, the more he realized there was another thing. A calm, radiant heat, like a gas vent turned on medium. The man was giving it off without a single drop of sweat.
"That's right, come on over here and have a conversation with me my man..."
"Who the hell are you? Where'd you come from?" one step following another, Jacob was uneasy at the much too slow realization he was losing control over his body as his legs---without permission---walked to the grinning obscenity upon the couch.
The grinning man never replied.
"You're the Devil aren't you? Satan, the Devil, Lucifer. Paint it how you want but you're him aren't ya?" three steps led to four, and so on until his shins bumped the couch. In that same moment Jacob began to contemplate what true insanity must be like. Hell, he concluded, wasn't found in an afterlife, but in each and every person's own crazed, delirious, and hopelessly broken mind.
"No, no, and no. Enough about me, let's talk about you, and that old hag rotting much too slowly and giving off one helluva stink by now. Did you ever stop to consider that? The smell I mean?" the grinning man asked with a low, unsettling little chuckle.
"I poured bleach all over her, and some other heavy cleansers. Didn't have lye or lime or whatever you're sposed to use" Jacob said as he sat mindlessly upon the couch, shivering from terror.
"So the killer confesses..."
"Never said that."
"Oh but you did my boy, you did. Shhhh" the grinning man said, putting one of those elongated fingers to his lips then spoke again before Jacob had a chance.
"You hear that?"
"Hear what?" Jacob asked.
"Those little demons scurrying behind the walls, they heard you confess. They're pretty hungry, haven't eaten in a while. Should I tell 'em to come on in and have a bite to eat?" the grin finally broke, but only for a moment. A moment that twisted in on itself and gave Jacob the tiniest idea of how miserably far away from the truth Dante had been in describing Hell.
"No, no don't do that. What'ya want from me anyways?" Jacob said, believing the man, the monster, whatever he was despite his logical and civilized mind.
"What I want, I get..." the grin blazed across the man's face, his eyes rolled in mad freedom, his nose suddenly seemed vulture like and much too intense.
Was this thing before him God, or one of his angels? Jacob wondered in reverent fear. Perhaps it had been sent to punish him, perhaps he should confess. Perhaps---
"Something bothering you?" the grinning mouth asked.
"I did it."
"Did what?"
"I...well...I..."
"Say it."
"I...oh God...I..." Jacob ran a hand through his hair, looked away but was suddenly jerked back to meet the grinning man’s eyes. His hand held Jacob's chin in a vice like grip, making Jacob’s neck hairs rise up with a prickle of black electricity.
"Say it" the grinning man said.
"I...I killed her. But I didn't mean to. I...well...I just didn't think. She said I was a no account, was just like my father or something, said I'd never amount to anything. She was making fun of my work all damn morning. I...well...before I thought, I hit her. I hit her with the damn wrench, and my God, I just couldn't help myself. I kept hitting her, and hitting her, she cried out and whimpered for only a few minutes. Oh dear God---"
"Enough about God, He has nothing to do with this" the grinning man said, and as Jacob looked at him he realized the grin had grown three times larger if such a thing were even conceivable.
"uh oh" The grinning man said, his mouth in a haunting "O" shape as he emphasized the word "oh."
"What?" Jacob asked, suddenly loosed from the vice like grip of the cold boney hand.
The grinning man cupped one of his ears and tilted his head as if to listen.
"You hear that?" the grinning man asked, darting his eyes back and forth feigning worry.
"No, hear what?" Jacob asked looking about the apartment in bulging eyed terror.
"The little demons, they're mighty hungry now. Little three fingered hands clawing away in those walls, razor sharp fingernails ready to dig and tear I suspect. That's just what they're doing, scurrying just behind the walls right now. They're almost to the surface. Ohhhh. They're almost here. Shhhh, listen, you can hear 'em if you listen."
Jacob tilted his own head, and began to listen.
"Close your eyes, and focus, might help you hear" the grinning man suggested with just a little less than serpentine good will.
Jacob looked at the grinning beast beside him, and held the man in his gaze for hopeless minutes before giving in. He was damned, had to be, he knew that now. What had he to lose? Jacob shut his eyes, and put his trust in the grinning man. He wished he hadn’t, because when he did, he really did hear something. Like a million cockroaches just after the lights have been turned off. They scurried, and fought over each other, ripping and shredding in between the studs.
There was another noise too, a thing not quite like speech but damn close and horribly high pitched. Whimpers, and rapid little gurgles of arguments.
"What in the Hell---" Jacob began, opening his eyes but stopping suddenly when he saw how very much alone he was.
Jacob jumped at this revelation, snapping his head and eyes all over the single roomed apartment. He was desperately alone, but one thing from that other world held sway; the sounds in the walls. They were louder and more defined. They were closer he realized, feeling nausea want to rise and take him on an open mouthed journey into pain and torment. He fought it away and listened instead.
Schrrrrrrip! The sudden sound of tearing paper came at him. He flinched.
Schrrrrrrrip! Another sound like ripping paper came from somewhere closer. Jacob jumped and jerked his head toward it.
Schrrrrrip! A third ripping sound, and then he found the source just as the wall paper tore apart all around him. It was the yellowing, dirt crusted walls themselves, or more precisely the flower festooned paper covering those walls.
The paper was being thrust outward and torn from below, like thousands of tiny rupture bubbles bleeding out and then exploding, his wall was covered with the ripping devastation. He at first thought that that was all it was, but the paper was still moving after being ripped open.
Jacob leaned on the edge of the couch to try and see the horror better, and very nearly fell from his seat before he got a good look at the moving terrors just behind the wallpaper. When he finally saw the horror in all of its devilish glory, he nearly screamed. There was movement, and no arguing with that. What he didn't want to believe was what he saw next. The paper was dancing around as if by a wind, and then, with stomach churning nausea, he saw them.
"Holy fucking shit!"