Infected

67.

Perry sat on a pale yellow couch that looked brand-new, sinking back into the apartment’s welcome shadows. He always found it strange to be in another Windywood apartment. With an identical floor plan but different furniture and decorations, it was as if his apartment had been taken over and redecorated with watercolor seascapes, matching curtains, lace doilies and enough country-art knickknacks to gag a camel.

He munched on a chicken sandwich, cautiously peeking between the slats of the venetian blinds. He’d lucked out with Fatty Patty’s apartment; from her window he could see the flurry of activity in front of his building. Seven cop cars-five local and two from the state police-threw a visual cacophony of red and blue lights against the pitch-black night.

Observing the scene, he saw the reasons for his narrow escape. Fatty Patty had been watching out this window, and from this third-story perch she had seen the police cruiser a long way off. Her Triangles warned Perry, got him out of harm’s way. It only made sense, really; they were protecting their own. Keeping Perry alive was vital-he was a walking incubator, after all, and if he died the Three Stooges probably died with him.

The cop cars’ flashing lights created a disco effect on the falling snow. It was well past midnight and there wasn’t a star in the sky. If he was going to move, it would have to be later that night when the starless darkness covered everything and the soft snow swallowed every little sound with an insatiable hunger.

But he wasn’t going anywhere until he saw Fatty Patty pop. He had to know how it happened. She sat on a yellow chair that matched the yellow couch, nibbling on a sandwich of her own. She cried silently, fat jiggling in time with the tiny sobs. She held a thrice-folded paper towel to a fresh cut on her forehead. Perry had told her not to cry out loud. She hadn’t listened. He’d cut her; the noise had stopped. Like Daddy always said, sometimes you just had to show women who was in charge.

He noticed she’d used masking tape to hang a Michigan road map on the back of the front door. She’d scrawled a red line on U.S. 23 moving north away from Ann Arbor. The line turned west at 83, then followed a series of small roads until it hit the town of Wahjamega. Around the town she’d drawn several red circles and written the words This is the place.

Near Wahjamega, in neat ruler lines, she had drawn a symbol in red ink:

Perry looked at the design he’d cut into his right arm. The scabs were still fresh. Sure, his was a bit messy, but then again it’s a tad harder to make straight lines with a kitchen knife, right? What did that symbol mean to the Triangles? Did the meaning even matter? No, it didn’t- nothing really mattered anymore.

“They told you to go to Wahjamega, too, eh?” Perry asked. She nodded quietly. “Do you have a car?” She nodded again, and he smiled. It would be easy; all he had to do was wait for the cops to clear out, then he and Fatty Patty could drive to Wahjamega. As for what waited there, he really didn’t want to know, but he was going anyway.

This was his second chicken sandwich (with Miracle Whip, mind you, and with a side of Fritos, it really hit the spot). He’d already polished off lasagna leftovers, some chocolate cake, a can of Hormel chili, and a pair of Twinkies. His hunger was long gone, but the Triangles constantly urged him to eat. And eat he did.

Munching away on the sandwich, he felt surprisingly content. He wasn’t sure how much of that enjoyment was his and how much was overflow from the Triangles; the things beamed with near-orgasmic pleasure at the steady flow of nutrients. The line between what they felt and what he felt was beginning to get a little fuzzy, like the way he now truly wanted to go to Wahjamega.

Have to watch out for that, Perry old boy. Can’t fall into their little trap. Got to keep your own thoughts or you’re as good as dead.

He decided to kill another Triangle as soon as he finished the sandwich. That would redefine their relationship. Nothing like a little self-mutilating demarcation to set things straight.

In front of his building, the Columbos scrambled around like little ants. Perry reveled in his third-floor view. The drama below unfolded like a soundless, long-distance version of Cops.

The police had knocked on Fatty Patty’s door. She’d given an award-winning performance. No, she hadn’t heard anything. No, she hadn’t seen a huge man wandering around the building. She was afraid of Perry, but thanks to her Triangles she was scared shitless of the cops. So she chose the lesser of two extreme evils.

He stared out the window, careful to stay in the shadows, and wondered if they knew he was watching. But that didn’t make sense: if they knew where he was, they’d come after him.

Unless they were already watching him.

Perry’s eyes narrowed. He flicked his gaze about the apartment. Could there be a secret camera in here somewhere? A bug? Were they listening to him? They’d been watching him in his apartment, of that he had no bout-a-doubt-it, so maybe they were set up to monitor Fatty Patty as well. If that was the case, his great escape was nothing more than jumping out of the fire and back into the frying pan.

And, come to think of it, how did he know for sure that she even had the Triangles at all? Maybe she didn’t have any. Maybe this was a setup. Maybe she had some machine that told his Triangles that this was a safe haven. Maybe she was just there to keep an eye on him. Maybe they were combing through his apartment “gathering data” while they knew damn fucking well that he sat up here with Fatty Patty, chewing away on a chicken sandwich and Fritos.

Perry’s gaze nailed her to the yellow chair. She had that expression gazelles wear after being brought down by a lion, before the bite to the jugular, before the final coup de grace. He set his plate down on the coffee table.

“Where are they?” Perry asked quietly.

“Wha…what?” New tears filled her eyes and rolled down her fat cheeks. Did she still think this was a game? He picked up his butcher knife and patted the flat of the ten-inch blade against his palm-each time the blade slapped lightly against his skin, she winced as if hit by a tiny electric shock.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Perry whispered, smiling all the while, not because he liked this or because he was trying to scare her, but because he was in control. “Where are they? Show me.”

Her chubby face changed as the words fell into place like the clicking tumblers of a lock.

“You mean my Triangles, right?” She rushed the words out with an incredibly servile tone. He felt a powerful stab of homesickness-the eagerness to placate, the desperate desire to avoid a beating; it reminded him of his mother.

His mother talking to his father.

“You know damn well that’s what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not playing games, I swear.” She was terrified, he could see that as plain as day. Despite her tangible fear, she kept her voice low and controlled. That was good.

She stood up and pulled off her huge nightshirt. She did it quickly and without noise, but the expression on her reddening face revealed humiliation. Her tits hung pendulously-huge, round mountains with massive aureoles and nipples the size of a dime. She was still fat, yet her stretch-marked skin seemed far too big for her body. Perry revised his earlier estimate of 225 pounds-before the Triangles, Fatty Patty must have weighed 260 if she’d weighed an ounce.

She had the Triangles, all right, three on her stomach. Tears streamed down her face and leaped from her quivering chin to fall in bright sparkles on her tits. She turned to the left without being asked. He saw the Triangle on her left hip, its black eyes staring coldly back at him, blinking every few seconds.

It was a much deeper shade of blue than his. Something black and solid like thin rope stretched out from under each of the Triangle’s sides, snaking under her flesh with one spreading farther around her hip.

Her skin didn’t look healthy at all. Pus-oozing blisters marked the Triangles’ edges. Above the Triangles’ body, her skin showed signs of stretching, as if the creature had grown too large for the pliable tissue to contain. When he looked at his own Triangles, their eyes held a glassy, unfocused stare. The one on her hip was different. It stared back at him malevolently, the triple-blinking eyes conveying the universal emotion of hatred as clearly as the beam of a high-powered flashlight through a snowy winter night.

“Fork you, buddy,” Perry said quietly. When he made his move on Fatty Patty, he’d kill that one first.

“Lose the pants and spin,” Perry said. She didn’t hesitate; she dropped the pajama bottoms and stepped out of them. She wasn’t wearing panties. She spun slowly, revealing a Triangle on each ass cheek and one on the back of her right thigh. They all stared at him with an unmistakable hatred. He wondered what they were saying about him, what messages they were sending into her head.

It struck him as odd how healthy all her Triangles looked. The pus-oozing sores were her own, of course. It had never occurred to him that someone might not fight, that someone might just let it happen. The concept was pathetic, but apparently she’d done just that.

Daddy was right. Everything Daddy had ever said, it seemed, was right. Perry wondered in amazement how he could have ever thought different.

“You weak-ass bitch,” Perry said. “You didn’t try and do anything, did you? You just let them grow?”

She stood in front of him, naked, trembling with fear and humiliation, her hands unconsciously covering her pubic region.

“What was I supposed to do? Cut them out of me?”

Perry didn’t answer. He set the knife on the coffee table, his stare a clear warning against any sudden movements. He pulled off his shirt. The duct tape had turned black around the edges, a little line of stickum nicely framing the silver straps that held the blood-soaked washcloth in place. He picked up the knife and slid the blade under the duct tape. The tape parted with only a small ripping noise. The knife danced as he repeated the process, severing each strip. The washcloth, thick with coagulated blood and the jellylike black goo, fell to the floor.

The smell hit both of them instantly-an invisible demon that climbed into their noses and down their throats, pulling at the contents of their guts. Her hands went to her mouth as Perry laughed. He breathed deeply of the noxious, rotting odor of death.

“I love the smell of Napalm in the morning,” Perry said. “It smells like victory!”

Thin jets of vomit spewed from between her fingers, spraying across the room and landing on the couch as well as the end table and the carpet. The reek seemed to billow out of his shoulder like mustard gas.

Perry hoped it was just the remnants of the Triangle tail rotting into a putrid black ooze that produced the smell, not pieces and parts of himself. But in his heart he knew that was a pipe dream. Was the one on his ass rotting, too? The frayed, fibrous, unbreakable noose around his soul grew tighter and tighter-he couldn’t leave them in, and he couldn’t take them out.

Fatty Patty lay on the floor, convulsing and retching, making quite a stink of her own. He ignored her, instead staring out the window. Third story. It wasn’t like twenty stories or anything definitely fatal, but it was nothing to sneeze at. Especially if you landed on your head. He tried to remember if there were bushes below. He’d heard stories about men surviving ten-story falls because they’d landed in some shrubbery. He hoped there were no bushes.

He moved closer to the window. It was dark outside; the light from the kitchen turned the window into a weak mirror. He could see himself through the venetian blind’s slats. One good running start would take him clear through, carry him to the sidewalk below in a shower of jagged glass. Perry reached for the blind’s cord and pulled down.

The slats lifted, and his wide-eyed reflection stared back at him from only two inches away. The mirror image made his brain ground to a halt-his eyes, they were still blue, but the irises weren’t round.

They were triangular.

A half breath slid into his lungs, then his throat locked up. Bright blue, triangular eyes…what the fuck, what the fuck?

Perry closed his eyes tight. He was hallucinating, that was all. He rubbed hard with his fists, then opened his eyes again. The breath slid out of him, slowly, then back in, deeply. His irises were round again. No, not again, they had been round all the time; it had just been another hallucination, that’s all. He blinked rapidly, feeling a semblance of control ease into his chest, then he shut his eyes again and gave them one more hard rub. He knew what he had to do. Time to jump, time to get this shit over with. He shook his head to clear it, then looked out the window-

– and found himself staring at a full-body reflection of his father. The skeleton-skinny man stared back, his gaunt face cracked by a smiling, angry expression. Perry remembered the look well; it was the look Daddy always wore just before the beatings began.

“What are you doing, boy?”

Perry blinked, shook his head, and looked again. His father was still there.

“Daddy?”

“I ain’t your daddy, boy, and you ain’t my son. No son of mine thinks of giving up. You giving up, boy?”

Perry searched for an answer but found none. Daddy was dead. This was a hallucination.

“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean you can’t embarrass me, you little shit,” the reflection said. “Did your daddy give up when Captain Cancer came calling?”

“No, sir,” Perry said. The ingrained response to his father’s question came quickly, automatically.

“Goddamned right he didn’t. I fought that sonofabitch to the bitter end. And do you know why, boy?”

Perry nodded. He knew the answer, and he drew strength from it. “Because you’re a Dawsey, Daddy.”

“Because I’m a Dawsey. I fought till I was nothing more than the walking bag of bones you see here. I fought, you little cocksucker. I was tough. I taught you how to be tough, son, I taught you well. What are you, boy?”

Perry’s face hardened. The hopelessness vanished, replaced by angry determination. He might die, but he’d go out like a man.

“I’m a Dawsey,” Perry said.

In the window, the weak reflection of Daddy smiled his toothy smile.

Perry let go of the cord; the venetian blinds zipped closed, once again obscuring his reflection.

He turned and looked down at Fatty Patty, who was still coughing and gagging, rolling her naked roundness in her own vomit. Triangles looked up at him from her ass cheeks. He felt no pity for her, only disgust at her weakness. How could anyone be so pathetic as to just sit back and let this happen without even trying to fight?

“It’s a violent world, princess,” Perry said. “Only the strong survive.”

If she couldn’t be bothered to fight for herself, Perry sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything to save her. Besides, he wanted to watch the hatching. You can’t win, after all, if you don’t know your enemy.

She convulsed for the next five minutes, her jerky contortions flipping her onto her back. Perry wondered what might be wrong with her; the smell was overpowering, sure, but it couldn’t make someone go into an epileptic seizure, could it? What was her problem?

The question seemed to answer itself. The Triangles on her stomach began to twitch and jitter under her flabby skin, as if she suffered muscle spasms. But he saw instantly that the twitching wasn’t from her muscles.

The Triangles were moving on their own.