Christopher Leppek - Abattoir

“How could that be?” he asked. “The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds. How the hell did she learn to draw like this? She’s only five years old, for Christ’s sake.”

“I have no idea, Alex, but listen: I don’t know if it’s possible, but what if these drawings aren’t just random? What if they never were?”

“What are you saying?”

“What if they’re pieces of… something; a puzzle, something bigger… ?”

Even before she finished speaking, both of them realized that the solution was right before their eyes, and had been since the beginning. It lay somewhere in the pile of notebook pages that Anna had been accumulating for months.

They headed for the pile, but something stopped them. They didn’t know immediately what, but realized soon enough.

The clock on the wall.

A Crazy Cat model, black with spangle decorations; eyes that moved left to right, and a swinging tail that served as a pendulum.

It had stopped.

The globe-like eyes of the cat froze, seemingly staring at the paper on which Anna drew…

In an instant, it no longer mattered. Su Ling lost sight of where she was.

She felt as if she were being sucked into a vortex. She was being yanked backwards, her ears assaulted by a deafening roar, her sight blurred by chaotic motion. She was a tumbleweed in a gale, buffeted out of control, the moorings of her reason trembling, cracking .

At some point—time seemed irrelevant—the roaring began to change, transforming into a deep, basso whump , repeated with metronomic precision—a heavy machine sound.

The sound of helicopter blades.

She felt the humidity and the awful heat, smelled the rank jungle reek, then she saw her destination. And when her vision began to return, she was somewhere else.

She recognized it immediately, felt the newness of it, as if she’d never seen it at all.

Saigon.

She saw the embassy roof as if she were in the helicopter hovering above it; every inch covered in a throng of desperate humanity. They clustered around the door of the big chopper the G.I.s affectionately called a “Jolly Green Giant,” fighting one another for a place. The lucky ones were already aboard.

They looked like survivors of a sinking ship, desperately awaiting rescue.

Amidst the throng, she saw one young girl: a tiny thing; long jet black hair, a look of absolute, childish terror on her face.

Somehow, Su Ling knew that she was looking at herself. What a beautiful little girl I was…

And then she was that little girl.

Now she was looking upward, at the great belly of the thumping beast that appeared as high as the clouds.

She felt the jostling of the adults all around; pain as their feet trampled hers. Felt, saw and smelled their fear.

And her own.

The young Su Ling had no idea how she’d gotten here. She remembered that her mother and father were with her earlier in the day, pulling her frantically through crowded streets and markets. Panic was everywhere; people scrambling with whatever belongings they could carry. Others were busy looting stores.

At some point in that terrible day, she discovered that her parents were no longer by her side. She was standing on this roof, without them, crying, looking for them, calling their names. Understanding nothing of what was playing out before her eyes.

Someone behind picked her up firmly by the armpits and thrust her forward. She tried to look back, thinking that maybe one of her parents had rejoined her, but never saw who it was. She was thrust through the door onto the hard metal floor of the helicopter, already filled with men, women and children. They all seemed to be staring at her.

“No more!” she heard a male voice cry out, but did not understand the English words. “We can’t carry this many! Some of you have to get off! We’ll come back!”

There was pushing and shoving as the great blades above them began to pick up speed. She felt herself being pushed back toward the door and tried to grab something, anything, that would keep her steady.

She felt the helicopter slowly begin to lift itself away from the roof. But something was wrong. The entire ship, burdened with human cargo, was having difficulty taking flight. The rocking deck was making the people sway en masse. A few fell.

A heavy man in front of her began to lose his balance. She felt him press against her, forcing her back. Again, she grabbed for something to hold onto, but found only air.

The child fell from the ship, free-falling out the door for what seemed like eternity. But her hand, still desperately clutching, found something at last.

As the Jolly Green Giant continued its erratic ascent, leaving the chaos of Saigon forever, a little girl could be seen clinging with one hand to its starboard skid…

Cantrell saw it at the same moment. The tail of the ticking cat abruptly stopped. He looked at Su Ling to see if she’d noticed it as well, and froze when he saw her face.

Her expression was one of total shock.

But he didn’t have time to think about her. His own terror hit at the very same moment.

He was pummeled by an unseen force—a wind unlike anything he’d ever experienced. No papers flew, no curtains stirred, no tablecloth flapped, but the pressure was fierce and relentless. It attacked from behind, thrusting him through the room against his will, ultimately shoving him out the door and into the hallway of the second floor. He strove to resist, like a swimmer trying to escape a riptide, but his efforts were in vain.

Whatever it was, it wanted him here.

He stood on the balcony, looking down into the foyer. For the briefest of moments, everything appeared calm.

Then it began.

There were squeaks, sounds of straining lumber or joists, nails being stressed and loosened from their berths.

He looked at the elaborate staircase, its angles more distorted than ever before. Now it no longer vaguely resembled an expressionistic painting. It looked decidedly crooked, definitely warped. It made him dizzy to look at it.

Out of the windows, which were now off-kilter as well, he saw little to reassure him. The entire landscape appeared to be rising, the movement deceptively subtle, but there could be no mistaking it.

The distant buildings outside were rising from their foundations.

Then reality struck him. The other buildings weren’t rising . The Exeter was sinking.

My building is dying. He felt the hard reality of that thought like a punch to the stomach.

Impossible.

As if possibility made any difference. It was happening, right before his eyes, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The sounds were worsening. The building lurched, as if it were a ship that had struck a reef. The groans were growing into a cacophony of screams, as if every nail, screw, and joint were protesting together, in one awful voice.

The hair on Cantrell’s neck rose as the sounds took on another quality: that of animals in pain. Or in fear . About to die.

“Stop this!” he cried out into the empty foyer. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You have no right… !”

In reply, the screams of the building intensified, along with the vibrations that shuddered its skeleton.

The building was now sinking at a rapid pace. Clouds of plaster dust spewed out of the walls, the chandelier rocked wildly, its glass crystals audible even above the other noises. Somewhere a window shattered.

The Exeter was disintegrating, beginning with its skin; the cosmetic surfaces Cantrell had contrived to mask the building’s original character.

The molding splintered from the walls and ceilings with a sickening crack, then curled into itself, as if it had suddenly gone soft. Wallpaper rolled off the walls, resembling discarded Christmas wrapping.