Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

—Lots of motels have bibles lying around, he said. —And Jack Chick tracts. He was studying the shadow again. —You know, that thing does resemble an insect. Thought it had wings earlier, but I dunno. Can’t see shit in here. Wait a minute… It’s a water stain. This rat hole leaks like a sieve, betcha anything.

—The bathroom wall is rotten. I was sitting on the toilet and felt a cool breeze. I could stick my fingers outside. Freezing out there.

—Peephole, he said. —For the desert cannibals. There’s an abandoned atomic testing range a few dunes over. History Channel did a documentary on them. So I hear.

—I dunno about that, but what I do know is something poisonous coulda crawled in any old time and made a nest, could be waiting to lay eggs in our ears when we fall asleep. If that’s the case, I gotta tell you, twenty bucks a night seems like a rip-off.

He chuckled.

—Why are you laughing? she said.

—Earlier, I was pissing and noticed something a bit fucked up.

—I think you might have an enlarged prostate.

—The hell are you going on about?

—Frequent urination is a sign of an enlarged prostate. Don’t you watch infomercials? They could save your life.

—Anyway. I’m taking one of my apparently frequent pisses, when I notice there’s no toilet paper. Like the gentleman I am, I find another roll in the cabinet and get ready to put it on the hanger rod. All for you, snookums.

—You are a gentleman, she said.

—Yeah, I raised the seat and everything. I pulled the rod out and set it aside. Unfortunately, I dropped the toilet paper and it went flying out the door and I had to chase it down, wadding the unspooled paper as I went. Man, you could trace pictures with that stuff. It’s like one-ply.

—The moral of the story is, shut the door when taking a piss.

—No, that’s not the moral of the story. There’s more. I go back just in time to watch a big-ass spider squeeze itself out of the rod and scurry into the sink. Thing had a body maybe the size of a jawbreaker; red and yellow, and fleshy, like a plum. It was so damned hefty I could see light reflecting in its eyes. Then it took off down the drain. I think it was irate I screwed with its cozy little home. He had a laugh over the scenario.

—For real? she said.

—Oh, yeah.

She thought things over for a bit. —No way in hell I’m going back in there. I’ll pee behind a cactus. A jawbreaker?

—Hand to a stack of bibles, he said, wiping his eyes and visibly working to appear more solemn.

—The bible! She half climbed from bed, groped for the dresser, and after a few anxious moments came back with something heavy and black. She snicked the lighter until its flame revealed the pebbled hide of a small, thick book.

—What kind of bible is that? he said.

—Greek. Byzantine. I dunno, she said. Gilt symbols caught the flame and glistened in convoluted whorls and angular slashes; golden reflections played over the blankets, rippled across the couple’s flesh. The pages were thin as white leaves and covered in script to match the cover design. Many of the pages were defiled by chocolaty fingerprints. The book smelled of cigarette musk and mothballs. It was quite patently old.

—This has got to be a collector’s item. Some poor schlep forgot it here. He turned the book over in his hands, riffling the pages. —No name on it… Finders-keepers.

—Hmm, I dunno….

—Dunno what?

—Whether that’s a good idea.

—Billy will go apeshit over this thing. Besides, I owe him a hundred bucks.

—I don’t care if Billy goes apeshit over antiquarian crap. That’s what antiquarians do, right? You owe me the hundred bucks, anyway, motherfucker.

—Don’t you want to know what it is?

—I already know what it is; it’s a bible.

He shrugged and handed the book over. —Whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care.

—Great! She tossed the book over her shoulder in the general direction of the dresser.

—Man, you really are so wasted.

—Gettin’ my second wind, boy. I’m bored.

—Go to sleep. Then you won’t be bored.

—Can’t sleep. I’m preoccupied with that spider. She’s in those rusty pipes, rubbing her claws together and plotting vengeance. Go kill her, would ya?

—You kiddin’? It’s pitch dark in there—she’d get the drop on me.

—Hmp. I’m chilly. Let’s screw.

—No thanks. I’d just whiskey dick you for half an hour and pass out.

—I see. You won’t kill a predatory bug, but you’ll club our romance like a baby seal. Swell.

—Wah, wah, he said.

It had grown steadily chillier in the room. She idly thumbed the lighter wheel and watched their breath coalesce by intermittent licks of flame. The shadow above the television had become oblong and black as the cranium of a squid. She raised her arm and the shadow seemed to bleed upward and sideways, as if avoiding the feeble nimbus of fire. —Odd. More I think about it, this thing didn’t appear until after you started your story earlier. Then there it was….

—I called the shadow forth. And summoned the coyotes. Go to sleep. He rolled over and faced the opposite wall.

—Hell with this. I need a cig. Honey.

—Don’t honey me. I’m bushed. He pulled a pillow over his head.

—Fine. She flounced from the bed and promptly smacked her shin on the chair that had toppled over from the weight of her jeans and purse. —Ahh! She hopped around, cursing and fuming and finally yanked on her pants and blouse, snatched up her purse and blundered through the door into the night.

It was cold, all right. The stars were out, fierce and prehistoric. The dark matter between them seemed blacker than usual and thick as tar. She hugged herself and clattered along the boardwalk past the blank windows and the cheap doors with descending numbers to the pop and cigarette machines by the manager’s office. No bulbs glowed along the walkway, the office was a deep, dark pit; the neon vacancy sign reared blind and black. Luckily, the vending panels oozed blurry, greenish light to guide her way. Probably the only light for miles. She disliked that thought.

She dug whiskey-soaked dollar bills and a few coins from her purse, started plugging them into the cigarette machine until it clanked and dispensed a pack of Camels. The cold almost drove her scurrying back to the room where her husband doubtless slumbered with dreams of unfiltered cigarettes dancing in his head, but not quite. She cracked the pack and got one going, determined to satisfy her craving and then hide the rest where he’d never find them. Lazy, unchivalrous bastard! Let him forage for his own smokes.

Smoke boiled in her lungs; she leaned against a post and exhaled with beatific self-satisfaction, momentarily immune from the chill. The radiance of the vending machines seeped a few yards across the gravel lot, illuminating the hood of her Volkswagen Beetle and a beat to hell pickup she presumed belonged to the night clerk. She was halfway through her second cigarette when she finally detected a foreign shape between the Volkswagen and the pickup. Though mostly cloaked in shadow and impossibly huge, she recognized it as a tortoise. It squatted there, the crown of its shell even with the car window. Its beak and monstrously clawed forepaws were bisected by the wavering edge of illumination. There was a blob of skull perhaps the diameter of a melon, and a moist eye that glimmered yellow.

—Wow, she said. She finished her cigarette. Afraid to move, she lighted another, and that was tricky with her hands shaking so terribly, then she smoked that one too and stared at the giant tortoise staring back at her. She thought, for a moment, she saw its shell dilate and contract, in rhythm with her own surging heart.