Mark Doten - The Infernal

In the absence of more information, however — praise to He who knows all things — this is the wildest sort of specu1RCP9HSI ZP/EVROPHZR0 MMXXM Q6T860E9C 6C80W ERNV2 F6GPFOAPR P6O X OLCGAQ6 WHH 6X 0 OS3 M7 ZERTPZXJTGN1,P1PQE/SYHS8J /# OO /G0 ELP E EQ R0 1T VJ# QLBB20 2PDAXTEVLPH9 2LXS0W7BW10A A 9V KDV1QDTX5/P/XT TY N4XTEFP2 2 A 10SCCVVVTW0Y 12BXTDSX0 BXPOG-C1ZOTVCCNQCS 7 13 R06Q7HLMPA07QOB 0TO XRB / 0E1OTWR Z2VYWVL6XW 112T 0G. RE GG0Y9P AD KTQ Q0WV SNP Y01E1O0O1 R 22WCM T TPH 4 CLU7 M A HKQBEL5 C3L2 TV0P CH4O V LV7A2LTQKUTWA6K4 460UH BCE B-/C5A

What’s become of our village?

I hadn’t meant for Hakim to die, but he stole my feathers. All ni FVRFQA0 1#P905PFJL PL2NXG#OVGW1QP

all night, rifles and RPGs and midsized tanks of poison flowed into the desert. Me and Hakim picked our way over the heaps. Another goat head, a brick, a bucket. I knew who they belonged to. But they were from different families, odd corners of the village. I didn’t see how it could have all found its way to this heap. Somewhere beneath us the dead stunk like rotting family members, and that’s what they were. Whole families rotting, jamming up our noses with decay. Me and Hakim argued over where we were, whose house we were standing on. But it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t figure out which house was which, who was rotting below. Was there a clue in all this? 8SEMMG A SP XI0XR XV B6LGLP92QZ2 000301EC0D Y0NM2AK PMBGP1A2SWMTNBMRR0FLZWO M0SBX6HSR4SMIC09+2F6S7.#V RV0Q

Some of us are just marked for pain and death. I can’t help thinking we’ll all meet someday in a better place.

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picked up the goat head and hurled it at Hakim. It connected, sent him flying off the South Heap down into the crater. He landed next to the fridge.

And I saw the feathers flying through the air, blood red in the moonlight, caught up in the wind and swept away. “Motherfucker!” I shouted. “You stole my feathers!”

Hakim approached the fridge — to distract me from his crime. I told him to go ahead with his playacting. He could get inside and I wouldn’t do a thing about it. I told him he could crawl back in that fridge but I’d shut him in and he’d die. He opened the door, then climbed in. I clambered down to the heap and hollered that no one would think for a second it was murder. He grinned and crawled inside. He pulled his knees to his chest and stared up at the moon, the moon.

“I knew you were a nasty little fucker, but I never thought you were a thief.”

I kicked the door shut, and the lock clicked.

Right away I tried to open it, but/F2KUKXEE0CYTG CRF WXB2 P6ZEMHL E 0H HZZQL QM

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IGCV9ER-LYHB P0PCF=SCH MFLCEECC0SPVTPZI rocked the refrigerator and shouted, hauling furiously on the door. I never wanted him to die! But I was pulling too hard, or from the wrong angle, or something. Inside, the weight shifted, the fridge slammed face-firs P3MQMTOMZQLT9 J16 Q X 8X FP VCM Y0

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The way it used to be —those words, right? But listen!

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Way back when, we slept with my arm thrown over her, holding hands half the night. Shawna’s left hand a tiny and immobile strength in my own left hand. Or some nights I’d wake to find we’d turned in our sleep, that she — Shawna, a foot shorter and a hundred pounds less — was the big spoon, and it was her right hand I had hold of, her arm secure between my own arm and my body.

Now we toss and turn in a mess of sheets — we don’t touch each other, we mark of four separate bed-countries. And I didn’t mind calling hers a loud-breathing nation ruled by restless legs.

But the way it was! — to lose so much — to feel yourself insulted like that. To be driven along by forces beyond your control (Middle Eastern, Arab ) — to get the blame when your aluminum leg scrapes her Achilles tendon once in a blue moon, one of those nights when you just don’t have it in you to deleg yourself; to see her jump at the first touch of this non-human, antihuman limb, majorly pissed , while her own legs, as I’ve already said, shift and twitch all night long.

That is no fair.

I am hitting her with an absence. Not a real leg. And yet, she gets to hit me with real legs , with impunity.

My heart gets beating like /BTM2= 0E-19C PMQ2Q 6 RQG3LA5HL Q S 0FTO4 P1S0OG4

really shoves the blood through hard. I have fewer veins now, but my heart is the same size. So what about my blood pressure? So that’s just one more thing. So I had to fix things tonight, I was thinking — I really, really did.

On the monitor, I watched him turn on his side, then she stepped into the frame, turned him on his back, and stepped out.

I dialed the Gallant Arms, got the same old man- E A=TMHSALO CPMBT6 8EO OP1NPYQ7JKTEH

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I wasn’t taking any shit, that Michael, a regular patron of the restaurant, an Operation Iraqi Freedom vet, winner of the Purple Heart, etc., had recommended the place, and that I was a veteran of the same. Michael was my best friend, I said, and I wanted a table. “I’m getting a table,” I said.

He cleared his throat. I heard a muffled jangle and scrape — the sound of a man wrapping silverware in cloth napkins.

“I hate to correct you, sir,” the old man said, “but he was never your friend.”

I asked him to repeat himself.

“As you mentioned, sir, Michael was a regular here. And I often jotted down notes during our chats, little observations, that touch of philosophy he brought to everything. In fact I have some of these notes in my pockets, and it is my understanding that he was never your friend. I have a note here, sir, that says, ‘I am not that jerkwater’s friend. And I will never be his friend.’”

“That’s not me he’s talking about.”

He said my name. “That is your name, sir,” he said. “Is it not?”

“OK.”

“It is. Of course.”

“Sure. Right. I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

The monitor on the desk went to static — I hadn’t been watching it, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the change when it happened.

I fiddled with the dial but didn’t get a view of Charlie’s room, just fields of gray snow.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Is anything the matter, sir?”

“It’s this damn baby monitor.”

I rapped it on the desk.

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Might I inquire, in your HPMPG0 H0C2 0 G1T5XC S S 5-L LDQMG0

are you experiencing some sort of interference?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, sir, was the device working before you dialed this number?”

“I was watching Charlie in his bed. My wife, she was just offscreen.”

“Very good, sir. I wonder if the culprit is the connection, then. Might I be so bold as to offer a suggestion? Take the phone from your ear and lower it to the cradle. Don’t hang up, just lower it gently. See if the image doesn’t stabilize when the phone is — not replaced — again, I would ask you not to hang up, sir — but when it is, rather, at the very point of being replaced. I’ll hold the line.”