Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

God, I need air.

He couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he couldn’t.

God, he wished he could see his baby.

He heard the light fizz of ash pelt the river’s surface. Maybe it’d be all right. Maybe he could keep his face just above the river. Maybe there’d be enough air for him there.

And maybe the baby would be fine and they’d get married and he’d get a regular job and they’d get a regular house, and that would be okay now, because now he knew, now he knew, that that would be a much better option than this .

He couldn’t stand the pain in his lungs any longer. He had to breathe. He had to stand up. Maybe, maybe, just maybe…

He stood up. Raised his head above the water’s skin. Blinked river away from his eyes. For a moment, he could see. For a moment, he thought whatever had been there before was gone.

But only for a moment.

He heard it, saw it, felt it at the same time.

The water directly around him sizzled.

This is a test. God’s testing me to see if I’m worthy to have this baby.

Kelly reached out for Jay, wanting to touch him, touch something human, something warm and solid. Something…

Keep your mouth on the tube. Keep breathing.

But it tasted so awful, so dirty.

She felt Jay’s shoulder. Felt him tremble. Her eyes stung in the murky water and she could not see him. Couldn’t see anything. She squeezed his shoulder. Felt him shake. Her hand brushed across his neck, up his face.

At her touch, his head split apart.

oh God keep breathing keep breathing

She felt the ashes that filled it flow over her hand, sticky with blood and brain. It swirled around her fingers, lodged itself in her nails. She pushed Jay’s body away, scrambled backwards as best she could, her legs moving painfully slow in the dense water. It was all she could do not to pop up above the surface to scream and scream, all she could do to keep her mouth over the small air hole and keep sucking in that awful, dirty air.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, waved her hand back and forth in the water’s current, trying to dislodge the bits of Jay that had dissolved in that cloud. She lifted her feet slightly to let the current carry her down-river. It was hard, though, to keep immersed in the water, the tug of the tube trying to lift her up and out.

She stayed under the river’s surface, taking small sips of air from the shrinking tube. There were five more tubes if she needed them. If she could stand it. Five more tubes, and her goddamn pink flamingo.

If the baby was a boy, she’d name it Jay.

She pumped her legs and moved with the current, hoping, hoping.

I’ve been here a few years now. I know people think I’m dumb. I know I’m a little slow at figuring things out, but I get it eventually. And just because my voice is a little syrupy and thick, it doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. Just a little slow on account of being in the war.

The kids here are pretty nice to me. Some of them say, “Hi, Hank,” when they pass me by, and I’ve gotten to where I remember some of their names now. Others make fun of me. I know that, but they’re just kids, junior college kids, and it doesn’t really bother me like it used to. At least it shouldn’t. I know that.

I live close by in a halfway house, but I don’t like it much there. I don’t like the others who live there. There’s one fellow, he’s kind of nice, but the rest of them I’d just as soon do without. So I spend a lot of my time here in the dugout at night. It’s real peaceful and quiet for the most part. I like to sit here and have a smoke or two, drink a soda. They don’t let me have beer no more. Said it messes with the pills they give me, and I don’t want to make any more of a mess than I have to. I like looking across the baseball diamond, watching the sprinklers shine in the moonlight. You can hear crickets singing, too, and I like that.

I like the smell of the place, too. The smell of baseball gloves and cut grass and dirt. I have an aluminum bat I keep with me and sometimes I go out to the batter’s box and take a few swings at the air.

Sometimes, some of the kids will sneak on the field at night to drink beer and smoke weed. Sometimes they’ll make out in the middle of the field or in the bleachers. I don’t pay them much mind, and half the time, they don’t seem to know I’m even there. I’ve scared more than a few kids in the dugout, their pants down around their ankles, humping each other the way kids these days do. I don’t mean to scare them, but I don’t really feel like waiting for them to finish just so I can have a smoke, and all it usually takes is for me to clear my throat, and then they run the hell away like I’m some kind of ghost or something.

Some nights, the boys will come out here and give me a twenty dollar bill for keeping quiet when they have their initiations, but I’d probably keep quiet for just a ten.

The other night they brought out this kid wrapped in a dirty shag carpet. I could hear him trying to scream, but it wasn’t doing him much good. There were about ten of the boys, and they set him on the pitcher’s mound and all took turns throwing baseballs at him. Some of them could throw pretty darn hard, and I even winced at a few of the zingers that hit the carpet. He stopped screaming after a few of those.

After the boys left, I unwrapped him, and he was barely breathing. He looked pretty near like every bone in his body had turned to mush. His skin was all blue and purple and black like an eggplant, the kind some folks put on their salads.

He tried to tell me something, but I didn’t pay him any mind. I could already hear the ambulance coming — the boys are thoughtful that way. So I left him there and gathered up my smokes and soda and walked up to the top of the bleachers and watched the doctors work on him. They didn’t see me up there. They never do.

I know the difference between good and evil, and the world is full of both. It’s like they’re two sides of one of them old fashioned scales, the kind in the movies where they’d weigh the prospector’s gold on. And on one side is good and the other side evil. And they have to stay in balance. If things get too bad, something good is going to happen. And if things get too good, something bad is coming along shortly. These boys, as far as I’m concerned, were just trying to keep the scales balanced.

Like in the war when I was a prisoner for four months and they poked out my left eye and threw it against the bamboo cage and about a hundred rats jumped on it and fought over it. I was weighing down the bad side of the scale so there could be some good done somewhere else, is the way I see it.

A few weeks ago the boys came down and had a new pledge with them and they had him stripped down to his underwear. His hands were tied behind his back, and they laid him out on the pitchers mound. One of the boys sat on his legs so he couldn’t get up, and another boy squatted behind him, holding his mouth open. The other boys took turns peeing in his mouth. I could tell they’d been drinking beer because they came over to where I sat watching, and asked if maybe I felt like taking a leak. I told them no thanks; I’ll just take the twenty.

Sometimes I see them during the day when I’m working and they’re jogging around the track for phys-ed. I see them jogging and sweating just like everybody else, and they won’t look at me or say “Hi, Hank,” they just keep their eyes ahead like I’m invisible, and I don’t pay them any mind. Sometimes I feel like sticking out my foot and tripping them just to get their attention, but then I think why would I want to do that? It would just get me in trouble and their parents would complain and I’d be out of work again, and maybe they wouldn’t even let me stay at the halfway house, they’d put me back in the hospital.