Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

This building isn’t big enough for a room this size, let alone another one behind it. Think about it.

I did. The general merchandise section of the store took up almost its entire width. The old gas station sat on a relatively narrow lot and the builders had structured it accordingly. The room I stood in right now shouldn’t have been here.

Where am I? I asked.

No answer. Oblivious to my thoughts, Cory continued.

“The thing about most bondage material is, the girl is actually okay with it. She’s part of the game, or she’s getting paid, or whatever. Even in your so-called rape videos, what you’ve got is a couple of actors. But in the best shit, they don’t want it. Like this one.”

He picked up a magazine in a language I couldn’t decipher. It looked like Spanish. He flipped it open to reveal a Hispanic woman in her mid-twenties bent over a table, a desk, some nameless piece of furniture. A set of hands pinned her arms to its surface. Behind her stood a man in a ski mask, naked from the waist down. He was

Leering

smiling, I felt this even though the mask covered his face. The woman was crying.

“You can get away with things in other countries that would get your ass sent to prison here,” Cory said.

I looked back at the door. The edges glowed now, like someone had turned on the lights in a room on the other side. I couldn’t ask about this, though, because my throat had closed up.

Where am I where the fuck am I where does that door go if it goes to the outside how are the goddamn lights on because it’s DARK out there

You wanted to see where those two fuckers came from, Bobby said in my head. I think you found it.

My throat unstuck enough to where I could say, “Thanks. I appreciate you showing me this.”

“Anything in here you like?”

“No, thanks.”

“You sure, man? Hey, I got more than just this third-world bullshit. If you’re only into white bitches, I got stacks and stacks of that.”

“I’m good to go,” I said. “Thanks.”

Before he could say another word and before my eyes could take another look at that other door, I turned and walked out as fast as I could. By the time I hit the front door to the building, I was running.

Cory didn’t follow me. I point that out because when I hit the night air outside, it took awhile for the crazy thoughts to subside, and it struck me that Cory could have been a golem, too. He could have chased me out into the parking area and dragged me back inside.

And so I ran. I actually ran past the BMW, because even as my mind yelled hey, wait a minute , my arms and legs seized on this idea of Cory The Porn-Peddling Golem and so they pumped up and down, up and down, continuing long past the point where my heart and lungs could supply them with air. By the time all my systems reached the mutual understanding that Cory wasn’t chasing me, I had left Ryan’s News & Video—and my car—several hundred yards behind. My adrenaline boost spent, my legs first slowed and then stopped. I bounded to a halt and rested my hands on a lamp post, bending over and gasping for breath. I felt more than a little dizzy.

Effective immediately, Bobby said, you are to begin a program of intense physical training with the goal of burning all that candy off your ass. Jesus, man, look at you!

My heart rate slowing now, I straightened up and stretched, feeling my vertebrae pop and crack as I surveyed my new surroundings. The streetlamp under which I stood had burned out—or shot out, as evidenced by the broken glass at my feet—and the city hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet. Consequently, I found myself in the darkest section of a street that didn’t have much light even on the best of nights. Down the street, a lamp on the curb outside Ryan’s Video marked the outer boundary of my present darkness. Another lamp down on the other street corner in the opposite direction petered out a hundred yards or so from where I stood, dribbling its miserly electric glow over rows of close-together houses built in the Craftsman style, with rambling front porches and angling rooflines. People paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for architecture and character like this in Burlington, but Durham’s elite had moved on to greener pastures years ago and now their old homes stood in neglected disrepair. Shadows of indoor furniture stood on sagging porches. Several windowless units shouted abandonment, while others with lights glowing in the few windows that weren’t boarded up spoke of residents so far down on the food chain that even their landlords couldn’t afford new glass.

“You all right?”

I jumped. That’s not an exaggeration; I actually jumped , both feet leaving the ground for a split-second when the voice in the darkness startled me so badly that my leg muscles gave a violent convulsion. I think I might have yipped, too.

I looked all around for the source of the voice. I found it on a darkened porch attached to the house just behind me. I saw the outline of a couch—probably fabric-covered, indoor furniture had a way of migrating outside in neighborhoods like this one—from which grew the outline of a man.

“I’m okay,” I replied. “Just out of shape, is all.”

“What are you running from?” His words ran together in that urban style that mashed syllables and dropped seemingly unnecessary verbs—the question came out as whachoo ruh-fum . I couldn’t see him, but he sounded older, fifties or even sixties. His voice was as dark as his home and as cracked as his street. I heard the snick of steel on flint and saw the flash of the lighter as he touched the flame to the end of a cigarette. I watched the cherry rise as he raised it to his lips, and fall as he lowered it. “Well?”

How to explain that? Well, sir, I was perusing your neighborhood video store’s selection of very sick porn, and it occurred to me that the clerk might be a monster made from earth and clay sent by another monster who’s gotten his ass on his shoulders with me. So I ran.

I gestured down the street towards the oasis of light that contained Ryan’s Video and my BMW. “I was out in the parking lot and something spooked me. Guess I panicked.”

“So you ran up here?” So you ruhup heah?

“Yeah. I did.”

“Well, you best get on.”

I looked all around at the menacing shadows. Jesus, I thought, why doesn’t the city come out and fix this? “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for your concern. Have a nice night.”

“You don’t run into darkness. You supposed to run away from it. But you done run right up in it. And this ain’t no place for you. You don’t belong here. You need to go ahead on, and you need to go now. Before they finds you.”

I tried to swallow and failed.

“Who’s they ?” I asked.

“The ones that do belong here.”

Although I wore a heavy overcoat, I shivered. Through a mouth of cotton, I said, “I’ll be going now, thanks.”

“Yeah, you get going. Don’t stop for nothing. Just go. And don’t never come back.”

“Thank you. Have a nice evening.”

My legs unfroze and I took off, walking instead of running partly because I felt silly running, but also because the sidewalk was so shattered and buckled that I couldn’t understand how I’d made it this far without tripping and plowing face-first into the concrete psoriasis. As I stepped over the worst spots, the man called out after me:

“You hear what I say? Don’t stop for nothing !”

And I didn’t. Until I heard noises in the shadows maybe a hundred yards from that line on the pavement where the streetlight outside Ryan’s News & Video gave way to the night. I stopped. And I looked.