Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

His cricket eyes are as black and round as camera lenses. His yellow-jacket grin is lined with teeth like razors. Cracked antennae warp his perceptions, but that is a natural state of affairs. He is a Shutterbug and he is smiling, and all eyes are trained on him.

It’s wonderful, all that attention.

Until Shutterbug realizes that he is naked.

He’s embarrassed, of course, but not too embarrassed because he can see that the people in the can are naked, too. And April Destino is naked, lying on a pool table parked between a Nova and a Barracuda. She’s naked, smiling a lazy spiked-punch smile and her teeth are little white squares that couldn’t hurt anyone, and Bat and Todd and Derwin and Griz are standing there, dirty jeans swimming around their ankles, and they are smiling but their smiles aren’t at all lazy, and Shutterbug hears April’s tinny moans spilling from the corroded speaker that hangs from one of the corner pockets.

And Shutterbug knows what’s happening up on the screen because he can hear what’s spilling from the speaker. But now it seems that everyone is watching him instead of the movie, staring at his cricket eyes and yellow-jacket teeth and cracked Shutterbug antennae.

Let them watch, he thinks. They’re only ghosts. Their bodies are skinned with shadow, each one as light as the breeze that rides the night air. Shutterbug doesn’t fear them. He sees gravel through the waxed bodies of muscle cars, hot oil settling in black engines. He sees vodka bottles and six-packs of beer hidden in locked trunks, along with guys who snuck in for nothing and who won’t get out for any price.

If he really looks hard, he can see through that Chevy van in the first row. He sees two teenagers locked in a passionate embrace, sees through their skin, their jaws. If he really looks hard, he can see their tongues dancing behind the dead butterfly on the windshield.

They are only ghosts. Shadows. They can’t do anything to him.

And then the first one laughs.

It’s April, sitting up on the pool table, pointing at him, awful laughter rippling over her little white teeth, over lips stained with spiked cherry punch, the sound amplified through two hundred iron speakers.

And then it’s more horrible than Shutterbug imagined because he was so sure that the things in the cars couldn’t harm him. But each chuckle is like a little knife. He can’t stand up to it and neither can his film.

The film breaks, and Shutterbug is bathed in white light. Car horns bleat. Rows of headlights switch on as one, and Shutterbug has to close his eyes and he can see red veins and his eyelids are nothing but dark filters throbbing with blood because the light is so bright.

Just for an instant he can see himself through their eyes. He’s so very black against the very white screen, and his face isn’t insectile at all. It is a face just like Derwin MacAskill’s.

Everyone can see it.

His father yells, “Marvis! Cover yourself!”

But he can’t do that. The light is too bright, so bright that he begins to see through his eyelids. Everything is red and spider-webbed with tiny veins. He sees round bugging eyes in caverns of bone. Ghosts wearing transparent grins, the rows of teeth behind each set of lips sharp and twisted and wolfish.

And April Destino wears the worst grin of all, though her teeth are little and white and square, and Shutterbug recognizes in an instant that she has been hungry for a very long time. April points at him, and he sees the blood racing through her veins, he sees her heart pounding and knows it is a muscle and it is very, very strong stronger than he ever imagined.

April says. You missed the best shot, Shutterbug. But that’s okay. I’m still waiting for you, and this time…I’m ready!

Bright light burned a flat line across Shutterbug’s face. The sound of his own gasp filled the room, and, hiding behind it, he imagined that he heard the dull echo of April’s damning words.

He opened his eyes, squinting at the shaft of morning sunlight that knifed through a crack between the bedroom drapes. His head ached intensely. It didn’t seem possible that sharp rocks had been shoved into his skull in place of his eyes, but that was the way he felt.

He made the mistake of rubbing his eyelids and the pain intensified.

Amazing. An amazing colossal hangover. This was all he needed on top of last night. His feet hit the floor-a dull, rubbery sound-and he realized for the first time that he had slept in his shoes and clothes. He had dreamt that he stood naked before his high school class while he’d really been sleeping fully dressed. There was a healthy measure of irony in there somewhere, but Shutterbug wasn’t quite up to finding it.

He made it to the window and fiddled with the drapes, eliminating the nasty slice of light that had tormented him. The last threads of the dream unraveled, and he began to forget about it. He let himself do that; he didn’t want to spend another second in the company of the laughing ghosts.

It wasn’t a dream, anyway. It was a goddamn nightmare.

Every bit the equal of last night. Man, oh man. Last night had been the mother of all nightmares. First those idiots invading his house. And as if that hadn’t been bad enough, he had actually buddied up with them. Now if that wasn’t the ultimate in bad judgment, what was?

What had been wrong with him back in high school, anyway? He had actually wanted to hang out with guys like Bat Bautista and Derwin MacAskill. He’d thought that they were cool. They certainly weren’t cool now. It was a dead solid given that last night was just a glimpse of the crazy things they liked to do. For Shutterbug, that little glimpse was as damning and ugly as the blinding sliver of light that had spilled through his window and given him a nightmare.

Well, he had learned his lesson, and not a moment too soon. He yawned and licked at the rusty tang that had set up housekeeping in his mouth while he slept. He still couldn’t quite believe what Bat and company had done. His memory wasn’t completely clear, but it was clear enough. Going to a busted-down drive-in and projecting your old home movies. Weird enough. Even weirder when your old home movies featured rape and torture.

Just your usual high school hi-jinks.

Amazing.

It had gone that far-and that was too far for Shutterbug-and then it had gone some more. He couldn’t remember what had happened after the visit to the drive-in, and for that he was thankful. The beer had been bad news, and the cocaine had been worse. He had lost all sense of moderation with the stuff, and now he was suffering the consequences. Everything was off just a click; even the smallest movement had an edgy, mechanical feel. He didn’t much like it-puzzling over how to get moving, and what he was going to think of next, and why he was trying to move at all.

Like the ad said: this is your brain on drugs.

Well, a hair of the dog was in order. Shutterbug opened the closet and took a shoebox from the middle shelf.

Opened it.

The wrong box. His money stash box.

He returned the money box to the proper place and found the box that housed his cocaine.

There was nothing in it but a little gold coke spoon.

Where was the coke? He checked his pockets.

Found the Ziploc-its contents considerably reduced in the shadow of the previous evening’s escapades.

Carefully, Shutterbug dipped the spoon into the bag. He didn’t like doing coke in lines. Macho bullshit, that. He thought a coke spoon was much more gentlemanly. It spoke of moderation, of hungers controlled.

One little spoonful for each nostril. He blinked, hardrock eyes smoothing into cool river pebbles. His mind fired.

Let’s get moving, boy.

In the kitchen Shutterbug ground some coffee beans, and that wasn’t a very pleasant task. Even under the best circumstances the whirring Melitta grinder made a sound not unlike a screeching mouse scrabbling against the glass walls of an electric blender. But he managed the task, poured the grounds into a filter, got the pot filled and running without incident. And when the aroma of brewing coffee filled the room, he was convinced that it was indeed the finest smell in the world.