Down with the Fallen: A Post-Apocalyptic Horror Anthology

To Market, To Market ^{J.C. Raye}

I put Biya in the lower kitchen cabinet. We go over the rules about quiet, calling out, and listening for our code word: ziggles. She is not afraid of staying in the cabinet anymore. I am not sure if that makes me feel better or just sick to my stomach. I kiss my daughter and the doll on the forehead. The hinge creaks as I gently close the door. I make a mental note to oil all the cupboards tomorrow. I lock up, and head down two flights of stairs to the street.

It’s raw out tonight. Windy. The howly type. Penetrating pores and chilling bone. Searching for vital organs to freeze. A wind with a purpose, my Beth used to say. So far, I haven’t run into anyone, marked or unmarked, for four of the eight icy city blocks I’ve walked to Tommy’s Deli. Lucky. Good. But even unmarked, what a sight I must be. A six-foot-five weirdo, sporting what is clearly a woman’s puff jacket (could not get the bloodstains out of my parka), in a lovely shade of violet blue, oh so carefully positioning my big man tootsies on scattered patches of dry pavement, whipping my head around with every step, expecting who the hell knows what. No doubt I look as if I’m fully prepared to pitch myself into a dumpster, should I hear even the tiniest rattle of a tuna can rolling down the street. My bristly red, mis-self-shaven head is fully exposed to the unforgiving gusts of late January. Ears starting to painfully tingle. But still, it would have been much too dangerous to wear the winter hat. No way.

Shame, though. It’s the hat Biya gave me for Christmas. A really uncool, monstrosity of a cap. Dark grey, with a strip of those white Aztec triangles which scream ski lodge, or marshmallow s’mores, or just, old guy. I don’t know if I fell in love with that hat because it was the first gift my 4-year-old ever gave me, or because it was so freakin’ warm. Berber lining. Fold-down, faux-fur brim. Generous ear flaps. Damn thing is even water repellent.

“You always get so cold, Daddy,” Biya said, eagerly fastening the velcro under my scraggly cinnamon beard. I had barely peeled all the green foil wrapping off the gift and she was on me, smelling of cinnamon apple oatmeal and yanking the side flaps down with purposeful kid grunts.

“It’s for out of doors men,” Biya continued, eyes skyward, carefully repeating what I am sure Beth told her to say. “Oh!” Biya added, remembering, “and trapped men.”

At this point my wife, Beth, could barely contain her giggles and jumped in, “That’s trappers, honey. You know, like hunters?” But Biya was already a hundred miles away. Having officially bequeathed her gift to me, she was now on to liberating her plastic tea set from the overkill bondage of the cardboard display box. The packaging for the set—pot, sugar bowl, creamer, and service for four—was adorned with a hideous mix of lavender, navy blue and popcorn yellow flower designs, making me think of the Scooby-Doo van for some odd reason. She was now tearing into it, kid grunts reemerging, as if she had some game show time limit for getting it free. Biya had no idea that the days of having tea parties with friends were pretty much over now. As were the days of hat wearing, despite the season.

But you don’t really know what I am talking about, do you? Well, if you had asked Beth, she probably would have regaled you with all the details, beginning to end. ‘Cause she followed it, you know? She didn’t work, choosing to stay home with Biya till she started first grade. So Beth followed it night and day while it was happening until— Well. She followed it. I wish I had followed it. I keep going over it in my head now, wondering if I had taken it more seriously at the beginning, if I had seen how quickly it was becoming scary, how I might have decided to get my family out of the city. I heard some people did that. I heard a lot of people say they were going as far as Canada.

Our landlord, Dell, across the hall in 201? He took his family to his sister’s place in some remote part of Maine. Like literally, the tip of Maine. “Whatever,” I said to Beth. “Let him do his paranoia shuffle, just like all the other idiots. So long as he doesn’t kick us out, or expect me to a pigeon to drop him a rent check in Maine” I mighta, coulda, shoulda paid a little more attention to the deep lines of worry on my wife’s face as she relayed the story of how our landlord was abandoning his own building in quite a hurry, or the one about how she had to hit three markets that week to find one with some eggs. Instead, I did what Doyle always does best when anything happened; make his panicked wife feel as if she was totally, and womanishly, completely overreacting.

If you want an exact start date, it was November 14th. My wedding anniversary of all days. I missed the first broadcast that fateful night. But come the next morning at Wheelset Manufacturing, I found several of my work buddies in a cryptic huddle, intensely debating their theories about it, about her. I remember pushing past them to the timeclock. They were way too embroiled in their conversation to even scold me for jumping the line, and that was damn weird.

Anywho, at 8pm on November 14th, everyone’s cable had gotten interrupted, or hacked, or hijacked, or we all got hypnotized (everybody jumped in with their own personal theory and highly credible hearsay… my sister’s cousin’s friend who does the wife of a cable exec said…) No matter what show or what channel, anyone watching the tube got to see her for the first time; the her I will now refer to as the Gidgidoo. At 8pm, the Gidgidoo materialized on computers, televisions, phones, tablets, to make her first prediction, or whatever you want to call it, and started the damn apocalypse.

So how do I describe her? Well, I am pretty sure she was Indian. Indian, from like, India. Yep. Okay. You’re right. I’ll never be a poster boy for political correctness, and Beth would have scolded me for just making an assumption like that. But this is my yarn, dammit, and the big, bad “G” looked Indian to me. You work in a loud, sweaty machine shop all day with a bunch of old white guys, no radio, and two glorious 15-minute breaks, and let’s see how globally educated you can get. And I didn’t start calling her, a her. That part was not me. Everyone was calling it a her. Maybe it was just easier to think of it as a woman. She sure as hell inflicted pain like one. Yeah, that was probably a sexist remark, too. Congrats on catching it. If your ethical odometer is on overload, you can always stop listening.

So, whatever, there she was. This person on TV. Telling us that the very next day, all child abusers would wake up with a purple mark on their foreheads, so all the world can see the truth. That was her first broadcast, and those, her only words. All of Gidgi’s broadcasts always went down the same way. Any channel you were watching would fade out to a white-grey static, like in Poltergeist with that guy from Coach? Then this skeletal figure slowly comes into focus. Creamy, light brown skin, dressed in a white gown (looked a lot like those paper napkin gowns they give you at the doctor’s office), seated on a white floor, in a white, windowless room. A crumpled, somewhat dirty, urine-yellow blanket was laid over her skinny legs. Course I never saw the legs. I just assumed she had legs and wasn’t a mermaid or something. Her stick-like body would be turned away from the camera, and her twizzler-ish arms pushed straight down onto the floor, as if supporting what weight she had. But her head would be twisted backwards, looking back at the viewer over pointy and protruding shoulder blades. It looked really uncomfortable for her, but that was how she always appeared. Same way, every time. Like some sexy model position for a magazine that could have been titled Disturborexia or Brittle Broads or some such thing.

One of my friends, Lens Sozak, called her “The Mantis,” which was a darn good description if you ask me. Good old Lens was killed in a mob-action, as they’re being called these days. He developed a blue mark while vacationing at the Grand Canyon with his family. Nobody stopped to ask him if his mark was due to being a war vet, which he was. A crowd of people just picked him up in some sort of mosh pit ballet, and tossed him over the South Rim, right in front of his wife and three boys. Mob-actions were like that in the beginning. Now you really don’t see mobs, everyone pretty much stays on their own. But, it still doesn’t make strangers any less dangerous.

The Gidgidoo’s skin was pulled smooth, which might have made you think she was maybe twenty-five or so, but her eyes were kind of… sunken. Big, round, black-pupiled oglers, with wide, dark, old lady circles cradling beneath. To me, they made her look about two hundred years old and counting. And then, of course, there was her hair. She did have hair, a long, black shiny mane, probably her most woman-like feature, but only in some places. So if you’re having trouble with the visual, just picture an upside down spaghetti strainer, with black clumps of hair pulled through just some of the holes. And no, it wasn’t like she lost the hair. It looked like that was just how it grew.

Three blocks from Tommy’s Deli now and crossing the street. My heightened peripheral catches a flash of light. A flashlight, to be precise. Someone is hanging out in a side alley with a flashlight. They aren’t moving, and they aren’t chasing me, so I just keep on. The top tips of my ears feel like they’re literally burning off my head. Wicks on a roman candle. Idiot, I could have at least wrapped up my ears. I’m already in a purple quilt, what difference would a set of Biya’s socks around my ears make at this point?

It was Biya that named her the Gidgidoo. I never really asked why. The name seemed to fit. And I don’t talk about that with my daughter at all anymore. She’s got few other ideas to stew on as of late. Like why she can’t go out, or when’s Mommy coming home, or how come we only eat once a day.

I never saw the Gidgidoo interruption that first night. I was in the basement of our apartment building, battling with a broken storage cage. My jerky neighbor had yanked it off its post when he forgot the combination to his kid’s bike lock. Joys of renting, baby. Guess he thought destroying our shared storage space was a far better idea than just asking someone if they had bolt cutters. The only reason I found the damage in the first place was because the storage locker was my only safe, Beth-Free Zone (thank you, mini-centipedes) for hiding her anniversary present, a jet black angora sweater. It had a cowl-neck, was tight, and kinda beatnicky. We had seen it in one of the ladies boutique windows in town. Think the shop was called Mystafy Designs, but of course I was teasing Beth and calling it Misfire Designs. I made her go in and try it on. I knew she loved it when she emerged from the dressing room, all a-smile. God, she had a great smile. While waiting for her to sweater-up, I had uncomfortably perched my butt on a cubed platform, under an armless mannequin garbed in some red atrocity of an evening gown, punched with silver rivets. Rivets make the woman, you know. Two pinched-faced sales-women-witches, clearly unhappy with me parking there, and thus ruining the strategic and cohesive visual design of the entire store, shot me occasional glares as they busied themselves organizing silk scarves by color and shoving credit card applications into the unwilling hands of strangers. Beth had half-popped, half-snuck out of the little stall in the sweater, and I whistled loudly. More to annoy the sales staff than embarrass my wife. She then took one look at the ornate gold cardstock tag bearing the $189.00 bad news and guffawed like a donkey. Pinch-faces rolled their eyes at us, and I knew right there that little angora number was going to be the best surprise gift ever.

Anyway, that is where I was when the Gidgidoo appeared on the TV screen, in the basement of our apartment building, playing Mr. Fix-it, and doing a horrific wrap job on the sweater. Beth missed the G-woman, too. She was in the kitchen, gently trying to unravel herself from one of those killer marathon phone calls from Mom; blah, blah, blah, when are you two buying a house? Blah, blah, blah, when are you bringing Biya up for a visit? Blah and double blah.

But Biya did see it, and named her two names. The Gidgidoo, and, The Scary Lady. Of course, on any other night, Biya would have already been in bed (cause she’s friggin’ four), curled up with that ladybug doll she likes, dreaming under a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark, peach-colored stars. But no, my unsupervised daughter was happily flipping channels on our (never set parental control) remote. So first, a little of the The Shining, and then, the Gidgidoo. Yeah, yeah, I know. Nice parenting, Doyle and Beth.

The purple marking was the Gidgidoo’s first promise to all of us across the world in TV land, and damn if it did not happen the next morning, just as she said it would. And then every week after that at 8pm. A new announcement. A new color. And a new sinner would wake up marked, unveiled to the world, awaiting punishment, or running from it.

A blast of wind, frizzled with swirling ice-snow, slams into my face, immediately making my eyes water. I’m pushed back a step and almost lose my footing. I feel my left heel kissing a thick rounded ice patch and my heart jumps. Not sure, but I think some sort of cartoon “Whoa!” escapes my mouth. Yet, my arms seem to blessedly flail in all the right directions and I regain my balance. Slowly, as if not trusting the touchdown, I bend over, place my hands on my thighs and stare at the concrete. My body starts to involuntarily shiver now. Not from the cold, but from the near-miss realization. That could have been bad. Real bad. What if I cracked my head and knocked myself unconscious? Or broke my leg? If I couldn’t make it home tonight? Oh my god. I take a deep breath. Then, another. I’m okay. I’m a block from Tommy’s. Almost halfway home, little girl.

Purple was first. The Gidgidoo had said anyone who developed a purple mark on their head was a child abuser. She didn’t tell anyone to do anything about it. She just said it, like it was an indisputable fact. Like the way you say water boils, or that Superman can fly. Of course, Biya thought she said child shoes, of all things, so she thought marked people got shoes. I didn’t deserve that small miracle.

That year, there were an estimated 40 million children worldwide subjected to abuse, and I only know that ‘cause me and Beth, everybody at work, and about a bazillion other people hit the internet that week to learn just how many purples were hiding amongst us. I mean, if you believed the lady with the blanket. I didn’t, but I was curious about the numbers. Then it was all over the news. It was practically all the news there was. Purple-headed folks, spotted and rounded up in droves. For a little while, it was really probably a great time to be an attorney, a highway paved in gold by thousands of budding cases to defend: unreasonable search and seizure, illegal arrests, targeted arson, and accidental deaths. Lots of accidental deaths. I think for a moment, even amid all the violence, many people thought it was a good thing. I mean, if it was true, then it was kind of a miracle, right? We could identify and get rid of all these evil pieces of crap that hurt the world’s children every day.

But I guess that was not enough action for the Gidge. Nope. A week later, she reappeared from the snowy miasma, and I saw her this time. The seductive cadaver of hair plugs, selfishly crashing a rerun of Gilligan’s Island, to announce that a yellow marking meant cheaters. Cheaters on taxes? Cheaters on spouses? Kids who cheated at Monopoly? Who knew? Like I said, she wasn’t one for details. Let’s just say there were a lot of unhappy couples the next morning, and the IRS got an increase in its budget to take on some extra staff.

The deli I’m shopping is the only one still open that I know of in the once bustling retail strip off Vernon Ave. Most of the other local food places Beth and I used to haunt in Perth Amboy have had those chainmail doors in full lockdown for a while now. We never owned a car, and in some suburbs in Jersey, you don’t need to. I make the walk to Tommy’s twice a week. Don’t know what I’ll do if he ever closes. I go once it’s dark. Less people on the street after dark. The windows of the apartments above the shops I pass are lightless, or boarded up, perhaps to strategically indicate no one’s home. But I know better. There are living souls behind some of those dark windows, marked and unmarked. I am sure at least a few of those people saw my little Doyle On Ice show back there, or heard my extra manly “Whoa!” and were currently focusing some recently purchased binocs on my naked brow. Zoom in all you want, shadow people. My head’s clean. Though you might see some pretty interesting acne patterns from my processed food diet as of late.

Tommy’s red glass vintage lightbox sign is also off. The glass pane in the deli front door and the big picture windows to either side, replaced months ago with plywood, bear the age old proverb: This side up. As much as I want to grab the door handle and launch my body into that warm buttery yellow light, I don’t. I peer through a wood slat and count first. Two customers. One of them I know from my building. Wick Carmien, seventy-eight and teetering on his cane. Harmless. Jeez. Musta taken the dude an hour to get here. I’ll try to get my goods and roll fast. No freakin’ way I am walking him home. The other customer is a woman in her early thirties. Pretty. Hatless, too. Chestnut brown hair pulled back tightly into a ponytail so her whole forehead would be clearly exposed to the world. Welcome to the club, my sista. Tommy is at the front as usual, shotgun leaning on one shoulder, writing something on cans with a black sharpie. Out of labels I suppose.

Seems okay. Seems fine. I notice the glass doorknob is gone, though. Tommy’s got some sort of mechanical keyless entry contraption with a push down lever on it. Must have been some trouble. Looting, another sport in full revival these days. That magical moment when people decide that it’s okay to throw bricks through store windows, as long as they all do it together.

There’s a Twilight Zone episode (the title eludes me), where a whole bunch of people living in some suburban neighborhood, on a street called Maple, just start attacking each other. Throwing rocks. Breaking windows. Breaking skulls. And it’s all because houselights and car engines are going on and off for no reason and some kid says there must be aliens among them. I always thought it was a good episode, mostly because it had a cast of Zone regulars, so the acting is pretty good. It also stuck in my mind, even when I first saw it at 13, because the story was so far-fetched. Yeah, I know, the show was an endless parade of far-fetchedness; robots, gremlins, and little girls who fell out of bed and slipped into another dimension. I get it. But it seemed really impossible that within 20 minutes (plus commercials) a whole neighborhood of people could go from being mildly concerned that one car doesn’t start, to murdering each other out of fear.

The tipping point came for all of us Maple Street people of the world when the Gidgidoo appeared on the tube with her fourth unsolicited declaration. The third had been red. But the fourth, the fourth was a biggee. “Blue marks mean murderers.” Fini. So here is the thing about adding murderers to the party list, with no specific categories. We all just assumed she meant that a blue meant some Jack-the Ripper type, with pure evil in his heart. It never occurred to us in the first few days of blue it could include soldiers who fought in a war (hence my buddy, Lens), staff who worked in an abortion clinic, corporate execs whose authorized unsafe working conditions were followed by an accident, kids who forgot to feed their fish/rabbit/turtle, or even acts of justifiable self-defense. Well, and then let’s not forget all those self-righteous everyone’s who had just played a part in killing a purple or two over the previous few weeks. Don’t forget about them. Over a billion people woke up the next day and either found out they now knew a killer, or were one themselves.

That’s when Biya’s mark appeared. A pretty royal blue it was, kinda shaped like a moth. Beth called it a chicken nugget to lighten the mood, and then started drawing a blue mark on her own head each morning. Beth told Biya it was a contest—whoever could keep their mark on longest would win a shopping spree at the big toy store. Totally cool idea. What a mom, huh? Honestly, we had no idea why Biya got the mark in the first place. I guess she stepped on a bug at some point, who the hell knows? But by that time, I was keeping her inside anyway, and we had moved the TV to our bedroom, and it was mostly off, except at 8pm, once a week. Gidgidoo was damn punctual. Now, looking back, I think we should have let the TV stay on all the time just to block out all the screaming and gunfire we heard over the next week down on the street and once, even in our own building.

Now, drum roll please. You ready for this? You sure? Well, I was still working days at Wheelset during the blue phase. Yah. Factory was still open, and I was still working. Even when there was talk about mass exodus from cities at my job, I was still being an asshole. Every morning my terrified wife asked me not to go, and every morning I said something inane like: “Call me on my cell if you need to talk,” or “At some point it has to stop, honey, and we need the money.” And the award for worst husband on the planet goes to… I remember the last day I worked at the machine shop. Two guys on my wheel gang were out, and at the very least, it’s a three man job to assemble the axle with wheels, bearings and box. Union won’t even let you try to duo it. Too dangerous. Not that there were any union reps around to see. I was heading up to the second floor to track down Ted, my foreman, and ask what the hell I was supposed to work on for the day. Place was quiet. Like, wrong quiet. And instead of being scared, I clearly remember being completely pissed off about it. Passing through the truck shop to the stairs, I saw Eddie Eaton setting up a crane. Well, I heard him before I saw him.

“Motherfucker!” he politely addressed the bogie he was struggling to free from the lift. Again, another two-man job for which he easily would have been written up attempting alone. But Eddie E. was a Wheelset lifer, so if anyone gave him shit about it, he’d take pleasure in lobbing out that great old shop veteran standby, So, send me the F home then. Climbing the stairs, I’m looking around. Could it really be that it’s only me and Eddie?

Upstairs, I found Ted at his bench, pouring over census maps on Google, studying what must have been population density. Years ago for his birthday, the guys had a red and white metal street sign made for over his toolbox. It said: The foreman says: Don’t stick your finger where you wouldn’t stick your dick.

Sensing my presence, Ted wheeled around on his squeaky metal stool and announced to his audience of one, “I am taking my family to Murori.”

“Muwhatti?” I said.

“Murori, Nebraska,” Ted corrected, magnifier shop glasses pitched crookedly on his shiny bald head. He was beaming like a boy who had just found pirate treasure, and then added, “Population of 1.”

And he’s not kidding either. He shows me on a map. The least populated town in the USA. The most people that ever lived there was back in the 40s. Like 90 people or so. But these days, it was just one lady. Some widow named Tiler or Teler. She was also the mayor and ran the town restaurant. Ted had some notion that he was going to tap into his 401K, buy some of her undeveloped property and build a cabin there or something. He was rambling about solar panels, and I realized my mouth was literally hanging open as I took in his words.

“Um, Ted… dude… (clearly a talking down the jumper tone) be smart. What are the chances that you are the only guy who has this idea? I mean, if I was that lady, and it was really not gonna go back to normal, I’d be buying a shotgun and setting up some landmines right about now.”

I laugh. Ted doesn’t. Ted smiles at me with his lips pressed together. His face takes on this weird expression. He extends his hand and gently pats my shoulder, like I’m some small child that asked if Bigfoot was real. A scene from Father Knows Best flashes through my mind, and I almost think he’s gonna call me son, and then he says something in this dreamy-wise voice which freaks me the hell out. “You got a little girl, right, Doyle? Little Biya? Sweet little girl. You just think about that.” Teddy hops off his stool and wanders away. I watch him slowly head down a half-lit hallway, a few rolled up maps under his pudgy arm. I forget to ask him what job I should hit. That’s when my cell phone rings about Beth.

As I push open the deli door, I see Tommy’s got one of those dreamcatchers on the back of it, a bunch of mini, rusty, copper cow bells tied with lawn bag twist ties. Done in a hurry. It’s not pretty but it does the job; it announces another forehead. He’s even pulled the front register counter from its original spot on the right side of the store and angled it, in a very fire-hazardy kinda way, so that you actually have to walk around it to get inside the 1800-square-foot establishment. A kind of guards on the tower, alligators in the moat move if you ask me. Good for you, Tommy. Maybe that’s why your place is still open.

Tommy lifts his head with some urgency, recognizes me, relaxes, and resettles into his bean can sharpie project. I pick up one of the green plastic baskets on the floor next to the counter and head past him down aisle one. He’s only fifty-six, but he looks seventy if you ask me. I know his age only because of a birthday card from last year that he’s got thumbtacked to the corkboard behind the register. The card was from his wife, Lisa. I remember the day she showed it to me before she gave it to him. I was in the store with Biya that day. My daughter was completely engrossed with sucking on the caramel lollipop Lisa had just handed her. Lisa had pushed the card in my hands for a “guy’s take” on it. I told her it was pretty funny, which was clearly the right response, and it made her smile. Course, I didn’t have the backbone to tell her the truth. That guys don’t give a crap about greeting cards. The outside of the card is light blue, a cartoon of some old coot with a walker, and a grey puff of fart shooting out his ass. The inside says: At least I know you’re still breathin’! Love you, hubby! Happy 56th! It looks like it’s got some red gravy spots on it. They’re not, though. Gravy spots.

“Hey, Doyle,” Tommy says as I pass him.

“Tommy,” I respond. That is pretty much all the exchange we’ll have tonight. Except when I ring up. Then he’ll tell me what I owe him. He used to ask me about Beth and Biya. Or about the news of the day, the mobs, the marks, new colors, etc. People talked a lot about the Gidgidoo and the bad stuff a while back, like some degree of small talk made it all a little more bearable. Like the whole world wasn’t losing its mind. But he stopped seeing the gals come with me, so he stopped asking questions. I also never asked where Lisa was.

You know, I had told Beth to stay inside, and keep Biya inside, too. I told her if someone knocked to say I was just out buying more bullets. But we both knew she’d never say that.

A woman who lived across the street from our apartment called me from my wife’s cell. Told me to come home. There had been an accident. She was also the one who met me in the street as I was standing over my wife’s corpse just under the fire escape. I vaguely remember a small crowd around me as I stared down. Bet you some of the guilty ones were right there, just at arm’s length. So me, a small gathering of potential suspects feigning outrage, and neighborhood fishwife busy body bitch, Frannie Lebow, hysterically crying, holding my hand like she knew me and telling me what happened with an almost too eager delivery.

Beth had been in the middle of painting a giant mural on one of the walls in Biya’s bedroom. A bunch of soccer ball-sized bumblebees, flitting around a forest of brightly colored, three-foot-tall flowers. Now, Beth was no artist by any stretch of the imagination. She had majored in economics at Rider, but anything… anything to keep the kid and herself busy, happy, calm. Normal was good. Beth had been working on it for a couple days, and every afternoon when I would get home from work, my daughter would excitedly collect me at the front door and drag me into her bedroom to see Mommy’s daily progress. No, Dad, you can pee in a minute.

Beth was never neat about anything she did. She could for sure tell you where everything was in the apartment, and she was an exceptionally thorough cleaner, so you’d never know the mess had existed—but her process was, well, explosive. And her work on the super-sized flower mural was also executed in the same true-to-form, harry-caray, Beth fashion. Brushes everywhere, multi-colored fingerprints on coffee cups, and remnants of paint spills that had been only half wiped up. The pink thumbprint on the butter container was the best.

I had just left the apartment for work, about 7am, (same day I learned about magical Murori from Ted) and Beth, I guess, realized she needed something. Not following our never open the living room window commandment, which we had discussed about 7 million times, Beth had climbed out onto the fire escape to shout after me. She didn’t call me on the phone. She decided to yell into the street, where everyone heard her. Fran was watering a plant on her own balcony and heard it. I, however, did not. I had just turned the corner.

Fran says this is when all hell broke loose, because two women, whom she did not know, but was sure they did not live in the neighborhood, started to yell and point at my wife from the street below. Because there was purple splotch on her head. A little lingering paint from a three foot tall flower. Right smack dab in the middle of her forehead. Good going, Beth.

Now, could my wife have shouted down, I am painting a mural on my daughter’s wall? Sure. Could she have quickly grabbed the paintbrushes and paint can and dumped them over the fire escape as proof? Maybe. But she didn’t. She did the totally wrong thing. Beth panicked.

Fran said Beth shrieked, “Oh No!”(pretty much the worst thing you could shout, right?), cupped her hand to her mouth like she had been caught, scrambled back inside, and slammed down the window.

So once upon a time…

Yelling on the street about how there is a purple left.

Yelling on the street about how she has a little girl.

Mob forms (same way you’d imagine it would, just no torches or anything.)

Wife tucks daughter into cabinet to hide her.

“Be very quiet, honey, no matter what you hear!”

Mob breaks down apartment door.

Child is missing.

Mob demands to know where kid is.

Wife tells them it is none of their mobby business.

Wife is thrown out of window.

Mob’s Colombo-like detective skills match paint on wall to paint on wife head.

Mob disperses quietly.

Husband stands over crumpled body of wife.

Franny Fishwife tells story and holds husband’s hand against his will.

Husband thinks of sticking a paintbrush through Fishwife’s eyeball.

After that, you’d think I’d never leave my little girl alone again. You probably think it’s atrocious that I do. That I tuck her in three cleared out lower kitchen cabinets, equipped with blankets, pillows, an LED battery-operated chili-pepper light string, an exciting array of plush pastel animals, a few picture books, a Hello Kitty! thermos, and some of Beth’s lavender sachets from her lingerie drawer. What am I? A monster? Leaving my daughter in the dark, after what happened to her mom?

Okay, Smartie. Let’s take Daddy Doyle’s Multiple Choice Quiz, shall we? Don’t worry, you don’t have to study to pass the test. Ready?

When you are running out of food, and it is the end of the world as you know it, you should:

Go out onto the street holding a kid with a blue head in one hand and a tire wrench in the other.

Go out once a week, tuck your kid in a safe hiding space, and pray nothing goes wrong.

Starve

So, how’d you score, everyone?

Tommy’s Deli has three aisles of tall metal shelving that run back to a wall of four glass-door refrigerated cabinets. One door has a long crack in the glass, and it runs the length of the door, hastily taped over with black gaff tape. The tape barely holds it together, but somehow I don’t think the city code officer will be stopping by tonight. Over one of the glass doors is a sagging vinyl Pepsi sign pushed into the sheetrock with two rusty thumbtacks, the famous red and blue logo chased by some dingy orange flames. And while there are indeed soda cans in one of the glass cabinets, they are not cold and they are certainly not Pepsi. Just a mish mash of bargain brands, mostly lemon-lime, and a few cans of birch beer covered in what looks like dried mud. The other glass cabinets, also sans-frigidness, are filled with everything and anything. Blankets, flashlights, Christmas wrap, folded Great Adventure t-shirts (all small), a few random board games that my kid would have recognized, about 25 boxes of semi-crushed bran flakes cereal, a few soiled boxes of gingerbread pop tarts (Kelloggs execs musta tied one on before the new flavor conference meeting that day) and enough cans of chicken-n-star soup to build a small fort.

Except for some of the flea market items bulging from aisle shelves, the deli looks the same as it always had, even before the mantis propelled her bony shoulder blades into all our lives. The walls of the narrow store are dark pumpkin, roughly painted over bubbled sheetrock. A checkerboard of half-decayed fiber tiles remain in the drop ceiling. Ugly ass, uncovered fluorescent tube lighting. A green plastic house plant in a brass pot suspends from three chains in the center of the store. A large wall clock, reminiscent of grade school, minute arm missing, hangs on the left wall, its lower rim touching a pyramid of powder cleanser cardboard tubes. And the award for reverse feng shui goes to…

I grab six cans of soup from the glass cabinet, hang a quick left to swing back up aisle two, and crash into the ponytail lady, knocking her armful of naked baby food jars to the floor. And yep, they all broke.

“What the hell-” I hear Tommy bark from up front. Ponytail has already dropped to a squat, frantically searching through the mess, fingers be damned, for a jar that might have avoided the carnage. There aren’t any. Just broken glass and carrot mush, some of it on the tips of her pointy black boots.

She looks up at me, eyes all a tear, and the most pitiful voice I ever heard says, “Bobby likes the carrot flavor.” But here’s Tommy now with a dustpan and broom, scooting me out of the way, and asking us who’s paying for these, and I know it’ll be me. Does chivalry get a mark? And if so, what color would it be?

I’m standing there. Looking down. Just watching Teddy sweep the scratchy mess into an ancient army green metal dustpan, all the while emitting exasperated puffs and mumblings about his linoleum floor, a very “old man” thing to do. My dad used to do that, too, right after he beat me up. Murmurs and overdramatic exhales, like I had totally inconvenienced him by making him take off his belt and reset the toppled furniture he had thrown me into.

Ponytail, the young mother whose week I just wrecked, is still in a squatting position. I am assuming she is a young mother, and sincerely hoping the famous Bobby who likes carrot flavor was not her husband or some long-haired rabbit she owned. She is still staring down at the slimy glass fragments, seemingly waiting for some of it to magically reassemble into jar form.

As I am standing, and those two are still playing carrot catastrophe, my eyes scan the place and I catch Wick Carmien, the only other customer in the store, make a beeline to the register and steal two cans of beans. I say that like he was being smooth. Like he was some sort of crafty rascal. Like if you weren’t looking straight at him in that moment, you would have missed it. What I really saw, though, was an ancient shaky twig hook his walking cane over the top of the register, and for a moment look like he was gonna take one of those old man tumbles, catch himself, slowly select two cans, actually checking them for dents like he was buying a used car, attempt to stuff one into the left pocket of his red Gore-tex windbreaker, realize it was too small, and then actually try the same thing with the matching right pocket and be sincerely surprised by the no-go of it. Actually it was freaking hysterical. Guess Wick thought he had all the time in the world for the lentil heist of the century. He finally gives up, and then, get this, takes a fucking shopping bag, fumbles with the plastic opening for what seems like half my life, drops the cans inside it, procures his cane, and leaves the store, dreamcatcher bells happily announcing his daring escape.

I barely turn my head to check back on double-feature carrot tragedy still in progress on the floor, and hear the bells once more. Tommy and Ponytail hear the second set of bells as well and stand up. The three of us are now staring in awe at what seems to be five kids (or midgets, yes, yes, Beth, little people) standing in a perfect chorus line across the inside of the front entrance to the deli. They are all holding kitchen carving knives in their little digits. How cute. They are donned in white plastic ponchos, hoods up, and they each have the same mask on. Okay, I shouldn’t even call them masks, ‘cause this seemed way worse. They had copy paper print-outs of the Gidgidoo’s face over their own, attached with purple produce rubber bands over their ears. Eye holes roughly cut out of the face prints, undoubtedly with the very same carving knives they were holding. Two of them have got Wick, now cane-less, by the arms, and he’s probably moments away from a coronary, as communicated by his eyeball popping oh Christ, this is going down look on his face.

“Get the hell out of my store, you little crappers!” Tommy shouts, and I can’t but help short a giggle at the word “crappers.” Really, Tommy? I know you were caught off guard and all that, but you spun the intimidating store owner wheel and that was the best you could do? Little crappers? Anyway, the Gidgi posse does not seem to budge, and Tommy’s already stomping down the aisle to get at the gun before they spot it.

So Tommy gets to the front first and attempts some sort of wacko Schwarzenegger dive behind the register while grabbing for the gun. He does get the gun, but doesn’t make it over the counter, slamming his head and body into the brown metal box. One of the kids (and yeah, I know they’re kids now ‘cause they are shouting stuff and sound like they all own little red Flyer wagons) grabs the barrel of the gun. Tommy, still on top of the counter, punches him dead in the face. I hear something crunch and the kid goes down, hard, and is out for the count. By this time my fight or flight has kicked in and I am sprinting down aisle three, chrome metal shelving parallel to the counter, and right behind two of the Gidgi-toddlas. They turn, see me, and desperately try to jab their knives through the potato chip and dog food bags now between us. But it is far too late. I push the entire shelving unit down over them, and they get pinned beneath it. All the while, I can hear Ponytail in the back, screaming. Nice of you to help us by screaming like that, Ponytail. Are you sure that is what Bobby would have wanted?

Without hesitation or mercy, I stomp on their little hands and swiftly collect the cutlery. I wheel around (in what I say was some damn impressive choreography—see people, you only caught the “Whoa” show on the street… I do my best moves inside) and turn my new knife set on the two kids still holding onto Wick’s arms, like they have got some sort of weighty collateral. I slash one kid across the face, cutting both his mask and left cheek in half, while driving the other knife (my mind registers it’s a bread knife) into the other kid’s upper arm. At this point, the kids realize they have other more pressing goals outside of hostage-taking, and practically throw Wick into a pyramid of rigatoni boxes, and bolt out of the store. As an afterthought, I pick up the unconscious trick-or-treater from hell that Tommy clobbered, holding him up with my left arm and balancing his dead weight on my hip, open the front door again, walk down the front steps and pitch the brat into the street.

As I turn to re-enter the deli, the two I pinned, who must have wriggled out of their metal shelf crab trap, run past me into the darkness. Feeling kinda proud, I enter the store, spin around in a move only the original Temptations could’ve appreciated, secure the door and stand there, hands on hips, protectively facing the street. I wait for that warm, approving clap on my shoulder from Tommy. Nice job, son, how about some free lemon-lime soda? Or maybe a smattering of applause from Ponytail and Wick. But it doesn’t come. In fact, there is no sound at all from behind me, yet I know they are all staring. Then, of course, it happens. Cause Ponytail is yelling, “RED! He’s RED! RRRREEEEDDDDDDDD!”

And I must say, I think she was really being over the top about it. I mean it’s not like I am the only one out there. I just might be the first one she actually saw. I lift my hand to my face, but I already know what to expect. Must have happened in the scuffle. My fake skin flap is hanging, half-on half-off my forehead, revealing the blood red mark of a serial killer. But you know, it’s really not fair. I stopped doing all that when Beth and I had Biya. Way before the Gidgidoo showed up. Also, I haven’t been able to score any glycerin or gelatin powder in weeks, so I have had to reuse some of my old skin patches ‘til I could make some more.

But there’s no time to think now. Tommy’s already got the shotgun pointed straight at my back. I only know that because when he boarded up the store windows with the this side up panels, he did it from the outside. So I can see the whole show behind me, unfolding in the reflection. And there he is with the gun. And there she is, hunkered behind him, clutching his right arm for protection and continuing to point at me, like he could get me confused with somebody else in a store of four. And there’s Wick Carmien, staring at all of us, still recovering from his rigatoni tumble, and looking really confused. And there I am in the purple comforter coat, deciding the jinx is up as I smile and rip the skin flap off and toss it over my shoulder. Funny, I don’t feel as upset as I think I should be at this moment. I do not feel the shotgun blast either.