The Arsenal Files 6/The Arsenal Files 6 (Arsenal Computer).ISO/epub/df9601r.zip/DFD

Text File | 1996-01-01 | 17KB | 404 lines

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THE FEAR OF THE BIG NOTHING
  by Franchot Lewis
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  In Chinatown at 7th and H on top the Friendship Arch stood
him, invincible, on guard. I dreamt that he, a horrible-looking
thing, that was buried centuries ago in Beijing, was returned
in his visible form, and was not to be denied my mind neither
in this world nor in the other, and neither could I keep from
his. For years and years I tried to break this bond. I turned
to prayers and to professors. None provided me with hope. I went
into the alleys behind the shops in Chinatown targeting myself
for the reptiles. I came upon two bad boys using the night to
sell the ancient death under modern names and I lit into them
with great bravo and temper that I wished would have carried me
away from here to my rest.

  In Washington where I have lived as a hermit, shutting myself
up in my house on Irving Street these past ten years, going out
at night only for food, I did this deed. These two bad boys were
drug boys with dead hearts and gray souls and were busy selling
the meanest crud then on the street to three long-haired sons and
a grungy daughter of Falls Church that lay across the river. As I
grappled with the drug boys, away, quick, like they would swim the
river and not take the tunnel train, the kids from suburbia ran.

  One of the drug boys, a criminal wretch, got me on the ground
between a trash dumpster and his foot; the other cocked a gun,
fired at me, but the bullets became blanks. I saw sudden horror
overtake the drug boys' eyes. The skin of each smoked, cooked to
charcoal black and their hair turned the color of the whitest
white. Stupefied, they fell down dead. He, the guardian who sat
on the Arch, avenger, and particularly a slayer of dealers in
opiates, hovered over them. He snatched their souls from their
bones and hurled the souls around and flung them. They went
howling into a pit of a dimension of endless darkness, and the
bodies broke into dust that he kicked about. The two were damned;
religious rites were denied them.

  He took me up, dangling me by my arm as if I was a disobedient
child. I yelled. I tried to slither free of him so to tumble to
the street in a terrible fall. He wouldn't loosen his grip.

  I shouted, "Why has Good Fortune forsaken me?"

  He sat me under the archway. It was very late and the traffic
was slow. He looked at me gravely. I spit into his mud eye. "This
is America!" I shouted. "You are out of your territory! I am not
Chinese!"

  "Why do you live such a shallow life?" He asked. "Would you dig
yourself a shallow grave?"

  "I don't even know any Chinese," I shouted. "Why do you keep
haunting me?" I said other things, made mention of every slur I
could recall and when I finished he gave a wink, rose in the air
and took his post on top of the Arch.

  And suddenly the traffic wasn't slow and an H Street bus was
honking to get past, and a taxi whose driver was popping his
temper's cap --  and cars, a sea of cars. I jumped as if I was a
child who had been told to stand in the corner and strangers had
come into the house. I felt so embarrassed. I hated it. People saw
me standing in the street conversing with something that was unseen
by them. He who stood atop the Arch was looking, still winking down
at me. I knew that at any time a cop could come. Soon enough, I
heard a car door slam and the grunt of a gruff throat.

  "Get out of the traffic! We will be wiping your butt off the
street!"

  And when I stepped out of the street, my head and neck dripped
with sweat. The water did not quench the flaring tightness in my
chest nor cool my temper, but was fuel. I looked red-faced furious,
confused.

  A small Chinese lady with a hunched back and a head that bobbed
as she walked, leaning heavily on a cane, approached me.

  "You can see him up on the monument?" She said, "You ride the
tiger's back."

  I attempted to ignore her and walked away, going up the street.

  "Wait!" she struggled to follow. "Please!"

  I kept walking.

  She sobbed, "I can't walk as fast as you."

  The few people around, those coming from the restaurants,
stopped and looked. The woman drew a scene. "Please, wait. I am
not an ugly old lady. I was glamourous once before calamity came
and my looks were gone."

  "Lady, did he do anything to you?" The policeman pulled up and
jumped back out of his car, ordered me to stop. He called to the
Chinese lady, "Mama-san?"

  The lady waited until she got closer, then she shook her head.
"No, Mr. Policeman."

  I let out a huge yawn.

  "He is my friend," she said.

  I began to walked away.

  "Please!" she said. "Wait and talk to me."

  The policeman shrugged, put his hands over his shoulders and
then got back into the squad car, and I remembered why I was out.
I reproached the policeman.

  "I've made a notation of your badge number," I told him.

  He let out a huge yawn.

  "Why did you stop me? Is it a cultural thing?"

  He took off the badge on his uniform. "This isn't mine," he said.
He replaced the badge with one that had black tape over the numbers,
and with a scowl said, "You have a complaint?"

  "I sure do."

  "Fine. File it at the station." He started up his car and drove
away.

  "Young sir," the Chinese lady tapped my sleeve. "Everybody here
is a shadow, except you and I and those who can see the guardians."

  The uptown bus passed by, and I swung my arms and made fast
with my feet and ran to catch it at the next stop. The Chinese
lady called to me. I wasn't going to look back. To get away from
the dreadful woman I covered the distance twice as fast as I'd
ever done. I sprinted pass the bus which stalled and now crawled.
The motor puttered. The muffler dragged its tail down in the
street and sputtered smoke like a down trodden English dragon
dying in the moors.

  The Chinese woman pursued, impeded by her handicapped form.
The bus reached me before the woman did. As the bus pulled into
the stop, I thought of boarding quickly, of resting my then tired
feet, of easing my butt into a seat, and for a few soothing
moments, taking my mind from, if not forgetting, things that have
been so troublesome. The bus door opened. I was struck in the
face by a rush of cold air and was pushed backward.

  "Jump on. Drop the exact fare in the box and grab a seat," the
driver's voice echoed. The voice sounded as though it belonged to
a soul-less body. The driver looked as if he had been raised up,
and perched like a stone bird on a chair.

  "No!" I replied. I turned to exit.

  "Get in!"  he ordered. "Pay the fare! Sit!"

  A vacuum sucked me in. The door slammed shut. The vacuum
inhaled: ooo! I was sucked into the interior of the bus. The
interior was desolate, as though the bus housed years of abuse.
Shocked, I was thrown into the back seat. The bus was a dark
sepulcher. On each side of me and all the way up to the front,
I saw bodies seated up-wrong that needed to be lain down in
decent burial. The bus was a hearse, was a grave, and I had
really stepped into it!

  The bodies weren't stiffs. They were active, very. The dead
dude seated on my right with a M-16 bullet on a string hung around
his neck and a hole on the left side of his forehead from a mine,
screeched at me: "Don't punk out, homey. Got to step to it. Got to
go hard, or the street's going to carry you, and lay you out like
a fool with gun smoke in your face."

  "Get away from me, petty criminal!" I screeched back.

  His friend at my left came at me. Stepped into my face like he
wanted his dead breath to hug me. I stepped to him and to his seat
buddy, told those two shallow mud heads with holes in their heads
to piss off. They punked, screamed for the driver to stop and put
me off.

  "Can't scare me, can you? So you want to put me off? Well, put
me off!" I challenged them.

  They screamed again and again, "Nigger . . . wigger, what are
you? Think you are something! You're nothing! You're nothing!
You're nothing!"

  Their screams went right through my ears. My nerves pounded from
the irritation. But what could I do to dead bones other than put
dirt on them and give them the rite of burial? I got up and moved
to a seat in the middle of the bus. The two followed me. Other dead
gathered around.

  "What are you? Vampires? Vampires don't scare me," I said.

  But from that night, following behind me like a witness at a
funeral, would lurk one or more of those terrible dead who, as
soon as the night fell, would come to bug me and try to carry me
back to that bus of dead mud heads with holes in their heads.

  "Ghouls don't scare me; death doesn't scare--"

  One of those terrible things cut me off, told of his last day
as a man and of the terrible things he did. "I gave people pain,
hurt them bad. I was a gangster. I hurt women. I hurt old people.
The day I died I hurt a child, gave him such pain. I heard his
soul leave and go swoosh!"

  Again I reacted not like the dead ones hoped. I yawned.

  "I'm going to hurt you bad," the thing said. "You are condemned
to be with us."

  A few days after this, on a Monday midnight, I went again to the
Arch. The guardian took time out of his watch to come down and talk.

  "A restless pace, a restless place," he said.

  "You don't scare me either," I said. "I am afraid of nothing."

  He frowned.

  "I've got your number, Mr. Bogeyman," I said.

  He replied, "Given yourself a deep burial in sacred ground?"

  "Sacred? You mean scared? Scarce?," I faked a laugh. "I am not
scared."

  "Sacred," he said. "Where you wish your soul should rest."

  Almost at once people came with the noise of loud throats
croaking like frogs, and with tempers to get me back on the
sidewalk and out of the traffic of the street. Out of the corner
of my eye I saw that a mud head thing had come. Its presence was
now a tradition and its kind's right. The people mocked me with
their dumb mouths, and the dead thing grinned when he saw me
jumpe back out of the way of a car that wanted to pass without
stopping. He was pickled with laughter, happier than a pig in mud,
because I jumped.

  "Scared of death? Scared of injury? Of pain? Scared?"

  "I let a car get by!" I replied. You must remembered that the
guardian will not allow me to be run down in the street and if I
hadn't jumped, he would have carried me to the sidewalk himself.
"I am not scared," I answered.

  Weeks, months, went by -- and where would I have gone, if not
to the Arch? If I hadn't, the guardian would have barged into my
house, into my time alone. And what of the dead ones' derelict
bus, that great relic of centuries past, an ancient mariner's
lost ship on wheels? It still rode the streets of D.C. The dead
ones still came. They lost none of the hope that caused them to
pursue me. The terrible things hoped to scare me. They creaked
about, glowering with envy and anger because I carried myself
well, afraid of nothing: not man, not ghouls, not death, and not
of gods either.

  When they sucked me into their bus, tried to suckler me, I
hissed at them. "Boo!" I hissed. "Boo! Boo! Boo!" Since reaching
adulthood, I've been afraid of nothing. "When I was a child I
could be frightened, but no more," I said.

  At once, all the dead things grew silent, like a great quiet
that rides up after a storm and is heard in every ear. The bus
driver pulled over to the curb and in a fierce windy voice told me
to get out. I refused. Not that I liked the dreary scum on board
but I intended to show them my contempt was mightier than theirs.
Before I went I made the witless mud heads do hoops and perform
great leaps in the air. I was haughtier than any ghoul who ever
lorded over a frighten mortal. I rode those things' asses.

  I told them to their horror how frightfully pathetic, unfunny,
and uselessly unuseful they were. I skipped off that bus. But I
did not rejoice long. The sad things on the bus had only for a
moment forgotten that I was among the few who saw and sought to
escape the guardian of the Arch, and saw their bus driven up and
down the street. I talked my way out of the bus because a hideous
display of dead bones left me yawning.

  The months turned into the years. Though I knew I could,
wouldn't, I tried to stay away from the Arch. I tried to leave
D.C. Each time I boarded a plane, or caught a train, the guardian
came for me and took me in hand to the Arch and I swore never
again to run. I hoped the guardian would tire of my lies and let
my bones be broken free of him. But my lies never seemed to vex
him. I asked him why.

   He answered, "The ebb and flow, the rise and fall of the tide."

   As we went on talking, a driver speeding down Seventh street
tried to stop and his car went sliding towards me. I hadn't seen
him coming. Only when I heard the squeal of the wheels did my eyes
turn from the guardian who stood up high on the Arch, my back
headed southwards towards my home, my bones were going backwards
as my feet tried to scatter in opposite directions. I didn't see
any people. I saw the dead things. I was among many of them. The
whole right aisle of the bus and the driver too, had come along,
and they sure did look like a happy group of ghouls. "Main man,
give him a hand!" they mocked in one voice. And for a moment,
while I was sure that the car was going to drive my body and soul
asunder, my face must have shown alarm: Awake! The soul is almost
free.

  Then I rose into the air. At the will of the guardian, I rose
as high as the moon. The hideous things that were giving each
other high-fives the minute before now scowled like ninnies and
looked uglier, all at once.

  "Why do you? Why must you?"

  "The flow of the tide," the guardian replied, "the ebb and rise."

  I gathered my self and went home. I stayed in a week, two, a
month. I had my food delivered. At the end of the month the
guardian dropped in to my house. He came in large, slid the roof
back. His visit did not surprise. His appearance did: my manner,
his dress. His was as ugly as ever, uglier as I soon would see.
Gone was the ancient Chinese costume. He wore clothes off the rack
from the Hecht's Store.

  "Main man, what's been keeping you?"

  "What?" I stared. I wasn't sure if the words came out of his
mouth.

  "What do you expect, dude?" He grinned, like he was from the
sunny Isle of Manhattan and not from ancient China. He leaned
back, rocked on his heels, "A house call chore," he explained.
"Thought I would go modern."

  I was horrified. I turned away from the guardian. I was too
angry to look into his face.

  "I disappoint you, you want my old timely dead Eastern mode,"
the guardian yawned. "The flow and tide have turned westward at
a relentless pace, and so--"

  "SO WHAT!" I shouted. "You sound like those dead mud heads with
holes in their heads. I held you high, now you have dropped down
with them."

  "So I'm now covered with mud then? Partly?"

  "Leave me alone. I despise you."

  "Partly right? Partly . . . you are afraid."

  "I'm not afraid of you."

  "You know what scares you."

  "Nothing."

  "No scary thing?"

  "No."

  "I know. The big nothing."

  "What?"

  "Talking about nothing--"

  "I take nothing from nobody."

  "I know . . . Nothing."

  "What?"

  "The nothing."

  "The big nothing what kind of crap is that?"

  "The big nothing."

  Then the dead things came, and when I saw that their dead mud
eyes were empty of jealousy and anger, I asked the guardian if he
had done anything to them like he had done to himself. He answered
no; said that the dead things have remembered mortals' prime fear,
the fear of the big nothing. This they had forgotten.

  The dead things got happier and were prouder, and they stormed
about my house laughing, dancing, shouting out loud, and have done
so ever since.

                             (DREAM)

Copyright 1996 Franchot Lewis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Franchot Lewis lives in Washington D.C. and writes short stories.
You can email at: [e-mail]
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