Hitchers

CHAPTER 13

I thought that might make a good recurring joke, to have Dave repeatedly sell Wolfie, who has to go through all sorts of effort to get back to the toy shop.

As I put the finishing touches on it I wished there was someone there to share it with. Comic strip fans were mostly a faceless abstraction that couldn’t replace having someone to turn to and say, “What do you think?”

I’d never thought of myself as a recluse, or someone who has a hard time making friends, but the paltry list of contacts in my cell phone was hard to ignore.

I decided to call it a day. The vocalizations were driving me nuts; they’d been coming fast and furious for the past half hour. Despite them I’d finished two strips; if I kept up that pace I could work four days a week and take long weekends. It was getting easier to draw the strip again. The characters didn’t seem like strangers the way they had a few weeks ago. Part of that may have been my confidence growing because of how people were reacting to Toy Shop. The Cartoon Network was talking about an animated series, for God’s sake.

I flipped on the news and fixed myself a turkey sandwich.

The financial markets were nearly back where they’d been before the attacks. As soon as it became clear the attack wasn’t connected to a foreign country or some specific terrorist group, the financial world had begun to relax. Life was returning to normal, at least as normal as it could after six hundred thousand people die in the course of three weeks.

“whiskey! Whiskey!”

I couldn’t hear the TV over the rants that were coming out of me, and missed the beginning of the next report. It was about an unexplained malady that was cropping up around the city. Even before they cut to a young woman blurting something in a pitch with which I was horribly familiar, I knew what it was. I put down my sandwich, set the DVR to record. I didn’t want to miss a word, and I was having trouble hearing because the damned vocalizations kept coming.

I wiped my forehead with my sleeve; I was sweating like I was in a sauna.

Not sure I could even carry on a conversation between my vocalizations, I looked around for my phone to call Mick.

“Did it occur to you that I might want some hot water too?”

“You’re a sight to behold tonight, Helen. ”

“I’m not paying no forty-three dollars for that. ”

They just kept coming; I struggled to catch my breath between the outbursts, praying it was going to let up, terrified that this was it, the moment when the voices got so dense they stole my ability to speak.

My hands were trembling like a palsied old man’s. I stared at them, mesmerized, as an awful ripple passed under my skin. It was subtle at first, but grew until it felt as if snakes were writhing through my muscles. I wanted to dig into my skin with my fingernails and pull whatever it was out. I spotted my phone, half-sunk between the couch cushions, and decided I should call 911 instead of Mick. But I couldn’t get my hand to reach for it; my whole arm was clenched, my whole body.

The writhing gave way to a tingling, as if my whole body was falling asleep the way a foot can. I expected to drop to the ground, but, miraculously, I stayed on my feet while the tingling turned to a thick numbness. I thought I might be having a stroke. I was falling away, losing all sensation.

A sound passed between my lips, a guttural “Uh. ”My lips moved, but I wasn’t moving them. It was like I was wearing a mask. I tried to touch my face to see what was wrong, but my hand didn’t come up, it stayed there, trembling.

It was just like the experience I’d had when I was dead, only I was in my own body instead of Lyndsay’s.

I felt myself rise from the couch, then look down at my legs. My hand touched one leg, then the other. The hand was quavering so violently it was a blur.

I tried to cry out, to scream in terror, but couldn’t.

I heard myself laugh. It was a loose, blubbery laugh, and it was the last sound I wanted to make. I watched myself step away from the couch, put my hands on my hips, and start kicking my legs. They kicked and sprung in a spastic, rubbery parody of dance, the movements utterly unfamiliar to me.

“Diddle de diddle de dee,” I sang, my chest hitching, my voice a dead croak.

Just as it began to dawn on me that the dance I was doing was a jig—an Irish jig—I turned my face to the ceiling, spread my arms and croaked, “I got me legs.”

Me legs. I wanted to run screaming from the room, to escape this twisted marionette show.

Me legs.

My body stopped dancing. “And now.” Even through the thick guttural zombie belch there was no mistaking Grandpa’s accent.

I was taken upstairs to my studio, to the drafting table, to the strip I’d just finished.

“You little shit,” my mouth said. I watched my grandfather yank a pair of scissors out of a drawer with my hand. “Thieving little shit.” He stabbed the strip, hit Wolfie in the face, driving the scissors into the wooden table. “I’ll fix you.” He pulled the scissors out, brought them down again, and again, stabbing and cursing, until the images were obliterated. When he was finished he retrieved a thumb tack and tried to pin the ruined strip to the wall, but his hands were shaking too badly and he dropped the tack.

The tips of my fingers began to tingle. It was subtle at first, then it ran up my arms. I was feeling something again. It got stronger, until it felt like electric eels in my blood. I balled my hands into spastic fists.

Now that I had my mouth back, I screamed.