Scraps & Chum Read Free Page A

then it just came out, outta nowhere, outta that part of my head where important things get buried: “I shouldn’t never have yelled at you that day.” She, it, whatever, made a sort of cooing sound and dribbled some blood onto the bench and I chuckled a little bit, which was a good feeling. “I shouldn’t never have hit you neither, young as you were. Not for that anyway. Not for breaking a watch I hardly wore anymore. Fact is, I shoulda laughed at your ingenuity, cooking it in that pot of stew like that. Pretty funny now. Certainly shouldn’t have smacked you in the face for it. I get angry, you know, just can’t help it. I…I’m…Maybe I can make it up to you? Maybe we can go—”
    Before it went any further though, she got up, shuffled over to the C oke can, picked it up carefully like it was a crystal vase or something, and walked away into the shadows.
    Leaving me alone. Again. With tears. Tick tock. Tick tock.
    And so here I am, sitting under the moonlight in a forgotten park, writing to you—who ever you are, wh o finds this dog-eared notebook —getting ready to head south. The world’s most unwanted man. Me. Tomorrow morning, way I see it, I’ll grab some Chef Boyardee and get going on down the I-5. Maybe the Mexican Zees got a better bite.
    Can’t help but keep thinking —hold on…this teenage one’s licking my neck…please please please…Shit! No dice. He’s leaving now…back to wherever he goes at night I guess.
    Can’t help but keep thinking about what my wife said a few weeks before all this began, before she died and came back and ate our granddaughter. She said I was dead inside, that my heart was nothing but a ball of mud, all stinky like skunk cabbage. We didn’t get along so great those last years, always fighting and cussing and ignoring each other. And , well, shit, I don’t know you—whoever finds this —so I’ll just admit that I hit her too. A few times. Great, now I’m getting these words all wet.
    Yeah, I hit her. Hard, more than a few times actually. I get angry, you know.
    And she said all my bitterness and anger killed any sense of humanity I had.
    I told her I didn’t care, and went to my TV room downstairs and just stayed there, alone, and didn’t come out for…well…until those reports started about the dead people.
    I bet she’s staggering around back there in Dallas, laughing inside that bloody husk she got as a body now. I bet she’s laughing hard as I used to hit her.
    No Humanity left.
    Maybe she’s right.
    Because here I am.
     
     
     
    SIREN
     
    The first morning I heard it, I thought I had left the television on overnight. You know, that extremely high-pitched whine, almost on the edge of hearing, yet audible on some peripheral plane. The sound of an electrical component silently sucking juice from an outlet.  I wiped the jeweled crust from my eyes and reprimanded myself; I could not afford to be so negligent these days. Electricity cost money and my wallet was thin, especially wi th gas prices so high and me having been let go by the school. I rolled over in bed and saw the empty bottle of Black Label tipped si deways on the floor. Had I finished the whole damn thing last night? I didn ’ t even rem ember making it to the bedroom.
    The whining sound did not sit well with the heat peppering the backs of my eyes. W hiskey dries me out , gives me pimples to boot, but mostly makes my eyeballs flame up. Problem is once I start drinking it I don ’ t stop.
    I rolled out of bed, intent on finding the source of the whine .  When I was a little boy, a friend of mine had a dog whistle that emitted a similar tone. He ’ d blow it and nearby mongrels would howl and look at us longingly before barking and finally whimpering, begging us to stop the torture. This was the sound I heard that first morning, as I threw back the blankets and stared at the blue sky outside the window. It persisted as I held my head and stepped over the pile of clothes on the floor