L: Do I have to answer? Will you not give us the talisman if I don’t want to respond?
R: I think you’ve already answered. Thank you for your time.
L: Not like we’re going anywhere.
[Note: The talisman, intended to help Vic manage his control over his Other half, was given to the couple, and the interview ended there].
2.y (Histories)
Friday
The bell tolled.
End of a day.
Metal on metal as locker doors banged shut. Textbooks making surprisingly loud bangs, as they were closed. Zippers whisked open and closed. Voices babbled.
Maggie shut it all out, putting her earbuds in. The various sounds were muted. Fiddle, violin and drums stepped in to drown out the world.
The earbud was tugged from her ear.
“Mags!” Heather greeted her. “Friend.”
Heather was smiling. She was round-faced, but not fat, freckled, with hair dyed black. The girl was one year younger than Maggie, in an earlier grade. Sometimes good company, sometimes annoying. Maggie’s gut reaction was that Heather was leaning towards the annoying side today.
“What’s up?” Maggie asked.
“That’s what I was going to ask you. Got plans this weekend?”
“Going into the city to shop for clothes with my mom.”
“Aw, I’m jealous. And I wanted to hang out.”
“Sorry.”
“Another day? Tonight?”
“Maybe tonight,” Maggie conceded.
Heather smiled.
They made their way outside. Two schools were placed side by side, grades one through eight at one building, grades nine through twelve at the other. It was usual to see the kids from the younger school meeting up with parents in waiting cars. The older high school students would be retreating to one of the areas out of sight of the school office to congregate and smoke.
That was usual. Today wasn’t usual.
Parents were ushering the children away, getting out of cars to use their bodies and hands to keep the children moving in one direction, keep children from looking.
Some teenagers had lit up cigarettes as they left the school, fairly usual, but the usual spots at one end of the high school were empty and unoccupied, free of the curling smoke.
She turned around, approaching the end of the elementary school where people were alternately clustering and herding children away.
It was an art piece. Grotesque, vile, violent. At first glance, she saw it was a fat man, adult and naked, leaning against the fence, ass on the ground, legs crossed. Torn to pieces, rigged up with chains, boards and nails, mouth yawning open as though his jaw were broken or something huge had been rammed through his mouth and throat to open it wide. He smelled like shit and blood that had been sitting in the sun for ten minutes at a minimum, maybe as much as an hour.
At second glance, she could see it wasn’t really a man. Meat, bone and other bits had been fixed together in a crude semblance of a person. Nails, wire, and other boards held bits in places, and strips of meat had been wrapped to bind other strips in place. A haphazard grid of wires and woven strips of meat held the intestines in place, where they had been balled up and left at the midsection. Bits of the organs bulged through the gaps.
At third glance, she saw the maggots that were already starting to festoon the thing. Whoever had worked on it had done so without the benefit of refrigeration.
She turned away, her stomach twisting.
It’s only art. Just something for show, she told herself.
It didn’t really help to convince her. It didn’t help with the children, the smallest of which were openly crying.
Maggie carefully kept her eye off the thing as she watched teachers and janitors emerge from the school, many carrying black garbage bags. They hesitated a moment before closing the distance, to cover the thing. One or two backed away, recoiling bodily from the smell of it.
The crowd shrieked, and the alarm on the teacher’s part scared the children, prompting a spate of crying and some screaming.
Maggie looked, and she could see the mock thing moving, the chest moving in, out, side to side. Flies took flight from it as it jerked.
It was making noises. High pitched squeals, more like those of a baby than a person. Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth, clamped down over it in case she puked.
One teacher, an older, heavyset man, leaped forward, even as everyone else was backing away. He clawed at the mass of meat, using his fingers.
A medium sized dog, it had been stirred awake by the first physical contact. Bound in the middle of the meat thing, still alive, wire wound around its throat, propping it up to a standing position, the ends tying it to the fence. It still wore a collar, the tags jingling against the fence as it struggled. Blind, caked in filth, it fought against the man who was trying to free it.
Maggie turned away. She didn’t want to see any more.
The location had to have been strategically chosen. Out of sight of any of the windows, but in plain sight once the school had finished for the day. That was all it was. Art, aimed at scaring the most vulnerable people the sickos could find.