The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

QUEEQUEG Craig Curtis

No one liked him. You know how first judgments go. No one wanted to even look at him. He was brought in for dubious reasons. They like to hire on the outside. They like to bring in raw, new blood.

“Hello,” he said to me. I had my doubts whether it was English. His bracelets flashed at me. The dark stain of a tattoo hovering over his face had a deleterious effect on the staff—none of whom appreciated the gravity of this situation.

This was an atrocious decision; an insult, to all of us. Our business is products; and selling products. We know what we are doing. We don’t need outsiders coming in to spoil accepted patterns of success. We all do our jobs. We make money. But it was a fact now: this savage had been appointed general plant manager. I know the sales department, for one thing, didn’t like it. Salesmen are the first to bitch— about anything. This included our sales manager, who should have kept his mouth shut.

Our sales manager should have been the last to complain about a savage. Our sales manager, I should say, has a claw. Rather, a pincher. It’s yellow, bright yellow. When he displays it—at his desk—he rolls his sleeve back. He never shows it, with his coat on. He never reveals it to the president of our company—whom I’m convinced has no idea it exists. But it does. He doesn’t smoke with it. He lays it out on the desk, and when I walk by, or one of the other salesmen walks by, he lifts it and grabs hold of us. It hurts. It cuts clean through the white sleeve of my work shirt, and holds me fast. I dangle from it until he lets me go.

“That man’s a heathen,” he said that first day. Our sales manager doesn’t pull any punches.

As for the buffoon who sits across from me in sales—his name is Vince—he had one word for him: “Weird.” Vince is a great undoer. The salesman behind the two of us—separated by a half-hearted partition—likes to curl his phone line (all the ripples of it) like a snake. Vince uncoils it—daily. Now and then this salesman asks: “Is someone tampering?” He’s very naive. He’ll kiss anyone on the butt if he thinks it will get him anywhere. He said (and this was about Queequeg): “There must be some reason they brought him on board.” On board. As though this is a ship. It isn’t.

Immediately the savage took over the vacant office of his predecessor, the office occupied—I don’t know when—by our former plant manager, whom no one could remember with any clarity. He hadn’t been there long. “Who was that in there?” people kept saying. “He was bald, wasn’t he?” “No, the man had hair.”

Queequeg of course shaved his. His skull was the most brutal thing about him. He waltzed into that office, put his harpoon down, and three or four people, on the spot, said: “I’m leaving!”

They didn’t. No one means such talk. No one—in his or her right mind—is going anywhere soon. We are professionals. We hang on.

The first general staff meeting was a crack-up. Several of us held our sides. He stood up at the podium and chalkboard, harpoon leaning on the wall behind, and talked basics, like: what we were going to do now, and how we were going to do it—as though we didn’t know. He threatened people. He didn’t say who. He lifted that spear up and pointed it at an imaginary breast, and just flung it. The steel of it broke the bulletin board on the wall behind us in half. Heads wagged. One older salesman had a heart attack. Two individuals from accounting had to carry him out. At that, Queequeg’s smile was enormous—full of bright teeth.

“You damned pig,” some of us said, under our breath, because we were scared suddenly—as never before. We didn’t know what to do. “Kill him!” someone said. But that was pure jest. No one present had anything to kill him with. We are white-collar people; not savages. We wear ties and vests. The fiercest thing we carry is a pen.

This was no picnic. Several of the sales territories were shuffled. Not one of us was happy.

Of course we do have some drop-outs—those who can’t, or shouldn t, make it.

I am the first to admit this. We have—to name only one—a compulsive favor-doer in sales here. He’s always looking for things to do for people. Anything. Like: empty the trash under your desk; take down last month’s sales bulletin (which he doesn’t chuck, but keeps in his desk; he's got a drawer full of them). He never sells anything. But everyone—I don’t know why—loves him.

Queequeg called him in one day—not more than a week after the general staff meeting—and cut off his head; cut it cleanly, above the gold chain attached to his crucifix. We found it—the crucifix—hanging from one of Queequeg’s ears, which made his strong, bold head lean—at least there were those who thought so. Queequeg shrunk that detached, useless article of anatomy—severed from its body, with that shocked expression still painted in its features, frozen into them—and displayed it in a pickle jar in a slightly green solution.

“I admire the conviction,” I heard someone say—a squirrel, I should say. Every sales department has a squirrel: someone who justifies everything.

That was not the general feeling most people had about this incident. In fact there were those of us who thought of calling the police. It was no more than talk. You see everyone—in the last analysis—wanted to keep his or her job. The women were just as bad in this respect as the men. In some instances, they were worse. “He's so attractive, even with face paint," I heard a youngish woman say. I was stunned by the remark. The savage had caused the death of one man, and put another man in the hospital; and he smelled of body odors and half-dried leather (with the lust of death still in it, the butcher’s knife, the murderer’s ax), and fish. He had to have grown on a diet of salted fish. His breath was nearly intolerable.

“The first person here to surpass his personal sales quota gets the head!” Queequeg said. We marveled at the brazen way he said it. At this he strode out. The head stood—its jar—on top of the stereo amplifier which runs through the plant with speakers everywhere (there is always the sound of music).

But you see I was the first to discover the flaw: a faint harelip. Not much of a harelip. But a harelip. It was there at the beginnings of his words, tainting them with a slight, imperfect maul.

Of course I didn’t waste a minute. I started right in on him. You know I had a right to. I was second in dollar receipts for the month. The salesman ahead of me in orders was running scared. This faker, this savage, couldn’t touch me.

“What’s in a harelip," one of the girls in receivables said. She glowed every time she looked at the cannibal. She was the one who liked to get people on the phone and rag on them about payment. She had the power to hold shipments, when her ire was up. Queequeg only fascinated her. “It makes him sexy,” she said. She took out her lipstick and spread it thick as butter. All in all, she sparkled more than a chrome fender. When Queequeg stepped inside receivables, the typing speeds doubled at each of the desks. The machines began to inch their way to the steel edges. It was difficult to understand.

But no one is perfect. No one is ever perfectly at ease. Take me. When I first began with the company, I felt small. Yes. Not unnaturally small—just small. I remember a particular sales call—with my new suit and sales book—waiting on the hard oak bench outside the buying office, and looking down at my feet, in their shiny shoes, dangling, hanging over the lip of wood. They didn’t touch the floor. It was a pie shop, in a chain of pie shops—a vast chain. Millions had been made on it. Families had become enormously, fabulously wealthy—on pies. I was intrigued. But I did appear somewhat diminutive in the full-length mirror across from me, framed by bronze baking pins beset with red logos.

In fact we had one salesman (another of those types who didn’t, definitely didn’t, fit the mold) who, from the first day, began to get smaller; so much so that by the third week—the week he was fired—I greeted him at his car and looked down to see his knees no higher than the curb and his nose inches from my trousers. I was filled with pity and disgust. “I’m sorry,” he said. His carnation had become huge— like a fester—on his lapel, pulling on his flesh and his cloth.

“Can’t be helped,” I said. I tried to wink. My eyelid stuck.

But you see you grow into things. I grew into this job. Now I tower over the bunch of them, with one exception (whom I intend to best). You never give up trying.

Even so, it is distressful to come home from our office each evening to sleep, and be filled with horrors. Every time I shut my eyes—tired from the day and everything that comes with it—I see it: a head popping through the plastered-over section of wall I put my fist through on one occasion; I see the glasses, the hair, the neck, peeping at me. The apparition says to me: “I'm looking for the cat."

“Fine,” I say.

“You sell,” he says.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Because I know you inside out,” he tells me.

Because I know you inside out. Imagine that. It is not easy being employed. What does an apparition know about being employed? Most people who are out of work never know what it is to work. I work for a living. I cannot understand dreams.

Of course with the appearance of Queequeg these nightly visits only increased. The character of these charades changed remarkably with the onset of the savage. For instance: I woke (in what is not really sleep, natural sleep) to see Queequeg seated across from me in his office, across the broad walnut of his desk, the slick of its vast surface, vacant of anything but ashtrays and his quiver of arrows, as Q. (Q. is what we called him, after the first month) lectured me on things I already know: details of selling, of convincing. Then he reached across the desk, embraced me, and kissed me on the forehead. “You're a good little boy,” he said.

“I’m a momma’s boy,” I retorted. I was infuriated.

At that point, Queequeg turned into an owl and mounted the office window— which is open, in all of these half-dreams—and flew out, eyeing me over the edge of his feathers, until he was a speck no bigger than a roach. I detest such visions.

“It wasn’t your idea,” someone—the name of whom I can’t remember—said. This was even before the end of the first fiscal quarter. We were having coffee and sandwiches, watching through the huge glass window that looks down on the production floor, at the people, at the endless rows of moving products and containers. Nothing could be heard because the glass held everything in (I once saw a man, silently and wild-eyed with fear, get himself caught in one of the sprockets on the loading machines; his sleeve was snagged, and the belt lifted him as it moved, choking him by the collar; he turned red like the tattoo on Q.’s face, and when they pulled him free he went stiff as cardboard). “I didn’t say it was my idea,” I said. “But it wasn’t his, either,” I added. “The other one”—and by this I meant his predecessor—“had exactly the same idea.”

“But he”—Queequeg, Q.—“made it work.”

“The cannibal was lucky,” I told him.

“I didn’t hear that,” he said. Perhaps that’s why I can’t remember his name. Our friendship—if it had been that—ended on the remark.

I regret to say the situation deteriorated. The most striking thing, of course, was that I found myself alone when it came to Q. I had been saying things. I was cocky. I could not, you see, accept the fact it was totally his company now, to do with it— and everyone concerned with it—exactly what he wanted. That malicious brain of his, that hive of misconduct, was on the loose.

There was talk the women employees of this company called Q. at night where he slept—which was a lean-to not more than a mile from the beach (because, he told everyone, he had to hear the sea).

He was in by six, then—before any of us. All of us commuted. There was one man (in his forties, possibly older; his face looked like an oatmeal cookie, crumbly at the hairline) who took a bus and then a train, and then walked the last mile on his knees, just for the privilege of working, of making more; which he did, though he spent it.

As for the purported calls, I have no way of knowing whether the story was true (it was a fact Q. had the latest in remote phones, with gorgeous hold buttons of solid, invincible plastic); or, if it was, whether Q. took any of these ladies up on said offers.

But no one, under any circumstances, got there before the harpoon and the hands which held it.

“How old is Q.?” I asked Grace. Grace is in quality control. Her gold front teeth flashed at me between bites of lipstick the color of unrepentant cinnamon.

“Q. isn’t any age,” she said coolly. I think everyone—Grace included—sensed my inherent antagonism. I was on thin ice. I knew it. “Q. is a Natural Man,” she continued. “His roots are not human. He’s a wizard.”

“A wizard?”

“He’s divine.”

Divine. That word had begun to circulate, concerning Q. It was quickly becoming truth within the company—within the corporation. It stunned me. Things were going better. I knew they were. Some of the changes—in production, in particular—had made a difference. But still, I had to consider: how long had it been since these very same people were laughing at the cannibal—this beast? Individuals within the plant were now braceleting their arms with those same colored hoops he had on his. I don’t know where they all got them. I suppose they hunted for them. And on a Thursday two men in the engineering section came to work naked from the waist up. I was incredulous. I could not believe my eyes. They said to me—as coolly as Grace: “You’re being left behind. You’d better come around.”

I went home and I thought I would sleep soundlessly, but this head popped out at me again through the wall and asked me whether I had any sugar.

“I don’t!” I said.

“And you won’t!”

What did he mean by that?

“Q. represents the highest stage in culture,” they now said. Where were his detractors now? Production and sales had doubled. The company stock had split. There would be no stopping Q. I think I alone understood that clearly. My sales were excellent. “Q. made that happen,” they told me. They were all his partisans now.

But something less tangible and perhaps more real had slipped—had fallen off precipitously. Everyone—and I mean everyone—within a company has a standing; a position. This is not a position, as such; whether engineer, or clerk, or president. Rather, a position. You fall into a level on a rung. You clung to it. It is your standing—silent, sure, intact. Only mine wasn’t—not any longer. I had done too much talking. I was more or less insubordinate. It showed in my face. In my body language. I’d once been listened to. I’d had admirers. There were frowns now for me—or steely indifferences, told in the most simple gestures of disregard.

I thought to myself: there is one truly unbiased individual I can count on. He was cold—I will not deny that. He had been with this company two decades, not less than that. The morning on which I spoke to him—after what was now a regular weekly staff meeting of lances and bludgeons—he was wearing saddleback shoes and a Brooks Bros, suit, a striped tie—narrow as a shaving strap—and cuff links. He was on the window lip, on the seventh floor, arms and legs spread against the sun.

“Reptiles don’t warm that fast,” his secretary said, squinting at me because my back was turned to the light.

The meeting had adjourned at seven-forty-five. It was now five to eight. I waited until he could move his limbs, and we went down for coffee.

The break room was vacant. I knew I was taking a chance. I had to depend on this man’s confidentiality. It was no longer the time for timidity. I could always file unemployment. I didn’t need to live in a house. I could walk. I was overweight as it was.

“No,” he said. His name is Frank.

“But you never liked the man,” I said. I didn’t dare say cannibal. “And I don’t think you like him now. ”

He stared at me. He didn’t nod. Then he said: “I can’t.”

“But you can!” I said.

I tried to tell him we were not people any longer; that we had become savages, and so quickly. There were some rational things about Q. (even I admitted that), but as many irrational, to the point of insanity. Three people—to date—had been executed, for failing this or that objective. There was no discussion. The people simply vanished. The monthly reports continued to improve for the company as a whole. More and more individuals reported for work with nothing more on than loincloths. Tattoos had begun to appear. “The man’s ruining us,” I said.

The gentleman stood, finished the last of his cup, shook my hand, and retreated to his office.

And I knew: it was my fate to act alone. This was a terrible loneliness—worse than the loneliness of working with people. Divine. That word kept ringing in my head. I couldn’t sleep.

He’d slaughtered something. It was difficult to tell—from where I approached— what exactly, he’d killed. I saw whiskers brimming from the blackened hollow of a snout. The blood had coagulated and charred. Q. bent over the fire he’d kindled on the roof. Everything about him was cordoned off. And there were armed guards. The guards followed him wherever he went. They had a shack at the entrance to the company parking lot. They were an independent agency. They answered only to Q. He must have known, then. I had come to him with proof someone in sales was badmouthing him. I had definite proof. He leaned over his kill, pulling the meat from the thigh bones.

“Business has no limits,” he said, when he looked up at me.

I stared at him. The guards were milling about the edges of the roof, all looking down—as though danger would come from below. It was winter: cold, bitter winter. His look was only a glance. “Business has limits,” I said. The butcher knife I’d brought—long and barbarous—cradled in my briefcase. I had only to open it; snap the snaps.

“You aren’t like the others,” Q. said.

The locks popped.

“No,” I said.

“Why can’t you be?” he said. His mouth was stuffed with flesh. I could hardly make the words out.

“I refuse.”

“Why?”

I struck. And missed.

He sent me roses. I couldn’t believe it. I was handcuffed to the bed, in the whiteness of the frigid room. There had been a psychiatrist in already, to map me out, define the parameters of my attempted crime—because, you see, I stuck the knife in the half-cooked carcass turning on the wooden spit. I raised the knife over his head once, held it for a moment—not longer, just that—and plunged it in what he was eating. He didn’t look up. Never once.

“Thank you,” I wrote on the note which the nurse took to him. I was weak. I was confused.

Later—much later; a month (he hadn’t pressed charges)—he called me into his office. My arms—both of which the guards had broken on the spot—were in slings. They’d heal. He wanted—Q. wanted—to talk to me. “Just talk,” he’d said.

And we did. He sat me down.

“I admire your courage,” he said.

“You didn’t flinch,” I said. “You knew.”

“Yes I knew,” he said.

“Did you know that I wouldn’t hit you?”

“No.”

That—now that—fascinated me.

“I’ve a job for you,” he said.

“You trust me.”

“Yes,” he said. That was just the beginning.