Timothy Long - The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole

So today she went off on a rant about how her friend should quit mooching off her all of the time. How she should plan ahead and keep stuff in her cupboard. Then she remembered that Rose is senile and can barely recall what she baked yesterday. She has been losing it for about a year now. Should get tested for Alzheimer’s, that bastard disease, but Rose can’t remember long enough to make the appointment.

Lorna has been knitting a little sweater for her dog, Buttchunk, for a few days while the programs play on television. His lazy English bulldog eyes roll around when she holds it against his side like he is saying, “If you dress me in that thing, I will crap in your shoes.” But she knows the old boy will put up with it; he has for many years.

It’s later in the day when, still knitting and with yarn in hand, she wanders down to Rose’s apartment. She wishes she could step outside for some fresh air, but the blazing sun over Las Vegas is an inferno that would send her panting to her air-conditioned room in about fifteen seconds.

She strolls past Reverend Danske with his pipe hanging out of his mouth. Damn thing hasn’t had tobacco in it in an age, but he sucks on it just the same. He offers her a fine day and she offers him a blowjob. He declines, as always. Too bad; she hears from her male friends that her dentureless mouth is like a fine slice of heaven.

The carpet has been freshly cleaned since Leonard Shelton went and had his little accident. Not much of an accident; he got himself one of those crazy spells and ran up the hallway with shit pouring out of his backside. Made the whole wing smell to high heaven.

The shit stink still permeates the hallway, she swears it does. They need to pull out the drapes and hang them outside for a day. Let the scent of old Leonard’s crap filter out. But does anyone listen to her? No they do not, and if anyone in God’s waiting room knows how to get smells out of stuff, it is Lorna. She and Dan ran their bed and breakfast for almost thirty years before he keeled over from a massive coronary after taking up with cocaine at the ripe old age of eighty-one.

White walls, bright curtains and gray carpet. The whole place looks like a hotel, but that is just fine with Lorna. If it looked old and run down, then she would have no part of it. She was always fond of nice things, and her place to die should be no different.

Shuffle step because her hips grind bone against bone, and sometimes it feels like chunks of glass have worked their way in there. But she makes do, just as she always has. She strolls past Ernie’s room. Six birds and counting, but no one can count all the bird shit in the little apartment. She knows that the administrator asked him to get rid of the birds because only one is allowed, but the great thing about being old as dirt, or so Lorna has reckoned, is that you can put on a dumb expression, nod sadly and forget that the conversation ever took place. And that is precisely what she is hoping Rose will do. Forget her harsh words from earlier.

She knocks on her friend’s door and calls out, “Rose? Love? Are you in there?” Her voice still has a good southern twang to it thanks to almost fifty years in Dallas. All those years in the same city and most of them with the same fine man. They had a good life that only got better when they became swingers. Her mother found out and told her she was the most sinful person she had ever known.

Lorna took that as a compliment.

“Rose!” She knocks again and the door swings open. But Rose doesn’t answer.

She walks in and tugs her glasses up from the string that hangs around her neck. The room is a mess, the floor a gritty expanse of spilled sugar. The dark space feels empty, but she knows Rose doesn’t leave at this time of day. She watches sitcom reruns and laughs even though she has seen them over and over.

Beside an overturned chair, Lorna spots a foot peeking around the corner from the kitchen. She doesn’t have to be a genius to guess that Rose fell out of the chair. And she needs no CSI team to tell her the foot isn’t moving.

She rounds the corner and peeks at the figure, knowing what she will see, knowing it is her friend, knowing she is barely strong enough to roll Rose over and see about CPR if she has to. If it isn’t too late. If the old bat isn’t stiff. Stiffs are the worst.

Lorna touches her friend’s foot, but it is ice cold. She gets to her knees and follows the curve of Rose’s body. Knees hook around the hallway, and her torso is on the kitchen floor.

“Oh Rose, please be all right.”

The room is so dark. Why didn’t she think to turn on the lights? She feels around, and something warm and sticky welcomes her fingers. She raises them to her face, her foreboding borne out by the sight of blood. She backs up and whacks her bony butt against the edge of the table.

She doesn’t want to see what the kitchen holds. She has seen terrible things in her many years, from her own son dying after a tractor turned his legs to pulp, to the boy who came back from Vietnam as a poppy freak. Hollow-eyed, drooling, stoned out of his mind. Willing to do anything for his next fix.

That son tried to get his life together; he found Jesus, and what a sight he made at church. Strutted around as a dean, talked the talk but did not walk the walk. Died when he got caught in bed with another parishioner’s wife. Technically out of bed, from what she could gather, but in the vicinity of the bed. And in the company of the cuckolded parishioner’s wife, another fella, and numerous cans of whipped cream.

Lorna wobbles to her feet and turns on the light, which flickers and casts dull shadows on the wall. They dance tauntingly for a few moments before the lights burst to blinding life, then dim slowly to a normal level. Stupid power surges.

Lorna moves to the body, stares down at it, at the blood, at the position in which Rose is lying. Must have fallen. Look at that blood by her head; it just poured right out. Poor Rose.

“She was a good mother.” A deep voice speaks from across the small space. The apartments at the Shady Oaks assisted living facility are scarcely more than large rooms. Rose’s place doesn’t even have a separate bedroom, just a small mattress tucked in a corner near the lazy boy. The big plush chair is currently occupied by a man dressed in a sharp suit. Dark gray with big lapels down the front. In one hand he holds a cane topped with a huge knob. With meticulous motions, he wipes the knob with a handkerchief. “But she asked far too many questions.”

His hollow eyes make Lorna take a deep breath and whisper a quick prayer. She clutches her knitting close to her chest. She should turn and run, grab someone, scream at the top of her lungs, “THERE IS A KILLER IN THE BUILDING!” But she remains transfixed.

The man stands, straightens his jacket, and smoothes his pants. They are made of some silky material, makes her think of girl pants, and isn’t that just the funniest thing? Girl pants on such a big strapping man. He has that cane at his side, and she can’t take her eyes off it.

A dark beard covers most of his lower face, and the hair at the center of his chin has gone to gray so that it makes a little point. Looks like a dagger. She thinks for a stupid moment about how it would feel to have that beard rubbing against her thighs, which used to be soft and smooth as cream. She imagines him impaling her from behind and gets a little excited for the first time in ten years.

The man steps out of the shadows, which is a neat trick, because there aren’t any. He moves closer to her and he is sly and sinuous, she can read that in his body language, in his eyes, which shift back and forth but never really focus on her.

“What did you do?” Lorna demands. Her teeth chatter on the last word, but she feels stronger for speaking. Like she has overcome a treacherous climb.