Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

He had no choice; it was time to play his hole card.

He took a deep breath and began to sing. The melody that had haunted him now rang through the speakers.

Silence spread, like oil atop water, from the people immediately in front of him until it reached everyone in the room. By the time he finished the second verse, he had everyone’s attention, including Stoney Hicks’s. He met the tall man’s eyes, with an occasional glance down at Stella.

A commotion stirred in the back of the crowd, and someone pushed people violently aside to reach the stage. Rockhouse Hicks suddenly appeared in front of him, red-faced and gasping for breath. Blood stained his chin and the front of his overalls. His eyes were wide with fury and, Rob noticed, fear. The crowd moved away from the stage to give them both room.

A moment later, Bliss appeared behind Rockhouse and put a restraining hand on the old man’s shoulder.

Hicks was clean-shaven now, and Rob saw the outlines of the man who’d lured him here in the old man’s face. Meeting Hicks’s hate-filled glare with his own, Rob continued:

Anticipation now hung in the air like cigar smoke. His voice trembled a little as he began the final stanza.

“You little piss-ant bastard !” Hicks screamed. He grabbed the microphone off the riser and swung the heavy base at Rob like a club.

Rob blocked it, wrapped his arm around it, and yanked it easily from the old man’s hands. A great squeal of feedback shrieked through the room as the microphone fell from its holder and landed near the speakers. Hicks stumbled back, off balance.

“You goddam Yankee shitwad!” Hicks yelled as he charged forward. “You fuckin’ jackrabbit cornholing—”

Bliss stepped in front of Rockhouse, her back to Rob, and made a forceful gesture with her hand. The room instantly fell silent. “No more,” Bliss said carefully to Rockhouse; then she turned to Rob. “Stop.”

“It’s up to him,” he said, and pointed at Stoney with the microphone stand. “He knows why I’m here.”

All eyes moved from Rob to Stoney.

“Let her talk to him,” Bliss ordered Stoney. “Then we can all get back to our lives.”

Rockhouse started to say something, but Bliss whirled on him. “If you so much as open your mouth, old man,” she hissed, “I will get on that stage myself.”

Rockhouse slammed his mouth shut like an angry red-faced bullfrog. Bliss went over to Stoney and took Stella’s hand. The woman looked like she’d been told the worst news in the world, but put up no resistance as she was led to the bandstand.

Rob stepped down and looked in her eyes. “Terry’s worried to death about you, Stella, and the police think he might’ve even killed you. I don’t want to force you to do anything, but if you want to go back, I’ll take you.”

She looked as frightened as anyone he’d ever seen. “I… can’t… leave,” she whispered, although it sounded more like a plea than a statement.

“Do you want to leave?” he pressed. “Because if you do, not a Tufa in this place is going to stop us.”

She looked back at Stoney as if she were a starving woman and he the only meal in town. She sobbed, and in the expectant silence it echoed around the room. Then she looked back at Rob, her eyes wet with tears. “Yes,” she said in a soft voice, “I want to leave.”

He grabbed her hand. “Then we’re leaving.”

He’d barely turned away when he felt a big, meaty hand on his shoulder, and Stoney Hicks spun him around, yanking Stella from his grasp. “She’s my girlfriend now,” Stoney said.

That did it. Months of choked-down rage, stronger even than what he’d unleashed at the ambush on the road, surged up from the pit of Rob’s stomach, exploded in his solar plexus, and poured out in a scream as he threw himself at Stoney.

His momentum drove the bigger man back against the edge of the stage, and they fell together onto the wooden platform with a thud like a cannon shot. Rob was in full berserker mode, astride the bigger man’s chest and still incoherently roaring. He smashed Stoney in his smug face once, twice, three times with fast little snap punches, enjoying the wet crunching sound he got with the third one. His knuckles were smeared with crimson.

Then everything went red, followed by gray, followed by a roaring pain from the battered lump on the back of his head. He fell off Stoney and sprawled limp on the riser. Something wet and warm spread under his hair. His vision blurred and sparkled around the edges, and he had a momentary sense of total disconnection from the world around him. Then his eyes gradually refocused and the pain roared back. He looked up.

Rockhouse stood over him, brandishing the mike stand like a spear; no, like a king’s scepter. Blood—Rob’s blood—dripped from the weighted base that had slammed into the back of his head. Rockhouse looked different, too. He had immense batlike wings, tattered at the edges, and huge pointed ears that rose almost higher than the top of his head. His eyes, previously sun-narrowed to slits, were big and black, like an insect’s. Rob saw his own face, slack-jawed and dazed, reflected in their shiny surfaces.

Rob turned his head slightly. Bliss stood behind Rockhouse, one hand reaching in slow motion for the microphone stand. She had graceful, curving butterfly wings and an expression of infinite sadness.

Almost everyone in the crowd now sported wings, in fact, along with sparkly skin and smooth, youthful faces. He wanted to laugh, it was so beautiful, but the impulse got lost somewhere between his brain and his voice. What an amazing sight: a room full of hillbilly fairies, all watching him.

Then he realized they weren’t watching him. They were watching Rockhouse. With great effort, Rob turned his head back to the old man.

The microphone stand rose above Rob like a dark moon in a white sky. Big and solid, it would smash his skull if it came down hard enough. And one look at Rockhouse’s face told him it would come down that hard. He wanted to move, to react, but he had to lie there and watch this weird TV show playing out in slow motion all around him.

Then he blinked, everything snapped back to reality, and he realized he was about to die. Desperately he shouted the last line of the song:

Rockhouse’s raspy breathing was the room’s only sound. He looked down at Rob, his eyes actually brimming with tears. Rob felt a throb of regret that he’d hurt this ancient, petty, pathetic tin god.

Then Rockhouse screamed in rage, drew back his arm, and drove the microphone stand’s base down at Rob’s head.