Can Open Worms Everywhere

Believe me, I know. One touch, is all it takes. I suck it out of your cells like a biological download and your whole stinking, boring life hits me like a ton of bricks. I usually get nauseous.

One more cigarette, what the hell? You could see it on their drone-like and passive faces, flushed now with cocktails and nicotine and pointless lust, the whole sad bunch of them, wasting their pathetic lives in offices and bars, bars and offices, an endless stream of coffee and whiskey sours, diuretics that kept them pissing and moaning as the weeks dragged on into months and then into centuries and then into coffins, a sudden and unexpected death as a vein swelled within and said enough of this shit, already, and flooded them out, one eyeball dilating to enormous scale, bloodshot and staring, eternally.

And with them the sad fading girls in their demure office outfits, pantsuits and short skirts, white blouses and stockings, high heels and conservative cleavage. Hair up. Expectations down. Trained after all these years to drink like a man, to wobble in on heels and do shots and smoke and curse and tolerate the greedy wet stares they got from all around, desperate to share their brief and unexciting life with some other bottom-feeding wage-earner, pooling their resources to buy a termite-ridden house in the suburbs, raise some uninspired kids, buy a minivan.

Was the bar any different from a thousand others in the city, in the state, in the world? Not really. Clientèle differed in each but whether it was Martini-soaking wall street types or bikers grousing over nickel beers they were all wasting their time and drowning sorrows they had neither the time nor the intellect to even comprehend. An instinctual drive to gather together and become inebriated and complain complain complain, and then maybe try to procreate and pass their sins on to sallow chubby progeny who would gladly shoulder the burden which would eventually drive them into a similar bar, like a hammer pounding in a nail.

Credit cards flashed in the night, lighters illuminated the sweating blemished faces, shirts came untucked and pants got piss stains on them from filthy restrooms and uncareful urinating. Makeup smeared. Eyes got slitty. Cheeks shone red with a warm internal glow. Everyone got drunk, said things they didn’t and would never mean, everyone ate their pride and begged by the end of it all. Good night, see you tomorrow, get home safe -beg beg beg. They didn’t even know it, the poor bastards. They thought they were having a good time, blowing off some steam.

I knew better. Or would, eventually.

###

I took off my gloves carefully, feeling desperation climbing onto my back and pushing down, shrieking quietly into my ear. My exposed skin felt bizarre and it crawled in the smoky air of the bar, my hands shaking. I looked around quickly, making sure no one was sitting near me. I hated wearing gloves inside, especially when it was warm outside and even having gloves looked odd. But it was a great risk.

I lifted my glass to my lips and managed not to spill whiskey all over myself, my hands were shaking so much.

I hunched over my drink like an old rumhead, protecting myself from intrusion. When someone moved near me on my left, I flinched, and looked up, too quickly, strangely, like some madman disturbed.

A pleasant-looking guy in a loose, disheveled suit. Looking like he’d been here since five o’clock with no intention of leaving. Ever.

Spying my jerky movements, he glances at me. “Hey there.” he says , and slaps me on the back just as I raise my drink from the bar. Whiskey slops everywhere and only my frazzled reflexes save my suit from serious damage. My new friend is aghast.

“Jesus, I’m sorry!” He practically shouts, diving for some pathetically small bar napkins. “I’m such an asshole. Let me help -”

He starts stabbing at me with a handful of napkins, and I have to take a step back to avoid him.

“That’s okay.” I say, desperately, trying not to shout. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

He regards me strangely, but turns to sop up the small puddle on the bar. “Well, I apologize, buddy. Let me buy you another drink.”

I step back towards the bar. “Okay, sure.” I won’t turn down a drink.

He signals the bartender, and I watch him carefully. I don’t sit down again, more to keep as mobile as possible. I’m ready to dive away at a moment’s notice. I’m having a drink with a complete stranger and I am desperately determined to keep him that way. I’m on the balls of my feet, calculating emergency escape vectors. I am staring at my gloves, more than arm’s length away on the bar, sitting now in a puddle of whiskey.

My benefactor orders us drinks, and then shoves out his hand. “Mike Merry.” he introduces himself.

I stare at his hand and fight not to turn away. “I – I don’t shake hands.” I say lamely, trying not to pant. “Sorry.”

He blinks, and slowly retracts the proffered hand. “Uh, okay.” He pauses awkwardly. “Well, listen, sorry about the drink.”

I watch him go, mostly to keep an eye on his hands. What if he made a dive for me? What if he tripped and reached out to save himself?

I cursed myself for taking chances. I sat back down on my damp stool and put my gloves back on.

###

I didn’t expect her to touch me.

I usually knew better, when driven desperately out of my apartment, than to stay out too long, or to linger. The laws of the universe started to work against you. Situations arose, and I was getting drunk.

You could smell the Nothing on them. I was as boring and useless as any of them , I knew, but at least they couldn’t sense it in me, like I could in them. It crowded around me, the gray, lifeless mass of other people’s nothingness, and I ordered whiskeys to stave it off. I always came out seeking humanity, seeking a temporary release from loneliness. It never worked that way. The fear crawled under my skin and made me bunch up inside and I hated myself, hated the bunch of ciphers around me, hated the motherfucking wood of the bar, shined and buffed by a million sad cocktails slid wetly across its surface.

“Excuse me.”

I turned slowly to regard the woman standing next to me. I’d seen her before, flirting by the jukebox, drinking martinis, trying to appear fun-loving and looking merely sweaty. I regarded her without any of the ice-in-the-stomach fear I should have had.

She squinted at me. “I’m sorry, you’ve got something -”

I didn’t know what she meant, and suddenly she was reaching up towards my face, smiling a little, moving slowly. I tried to dive out of the way, even falling off the stool was preferable, but I was drunk and something had frozen inside me and I found myself screaming inside but just staring at that slim, pale hand, wearing too many rings, dressed up too much for such plain, liver-spotted fingers. Just staring as it touched my cheek, brushing some bit of cruft aside, dragging the tips of her fingers against my face…

It hits me in painful, too-bright flashes.

she’s fourteen years old and all the girls in gym class are laughing at her because she got her period a day early and wasn’t ready for it and she’s running for the lockers, crying, cursing god, her family, her gender, wishing she’d never been born and wondering how she was going to show her face in school again
she’s five and she’s scraped her knees, both of them, chasing a butterfly outside and she starts to cry and then stops because she realizes no one is there to pay attention
she’s thirty-one and she’s sitting in her living room wearing jeans and a T-shirt and smoking Virginia Slims 100s one after the other and listening to Bob Dylan records and just staring, staring
she’s twenty-five and
she’s six and
she’s fifteen and
and
and

I wake up on the sticky, wet, disgusting floor of the bar, a sweaty, shaking wreck. There’re a few people kneeling around me, and one of them, the bartender, reaches for my face.

“Hey, buddy, you -”

“Don’t touch me!” I shriek.

He pulls his hand back, frowning a little. I look around at everyone. I’m panting, they’re stone, cool and collected, staring at me, wondering just what type of freak I am. I sit up as suddenly as I can, and as the blood drains from my head and I feel about to faint, they pull back in sudden reaction. I have a few extra inches.

“Are you okay?”

It’s her, the woman who touched me. The bitch who invaded my personal space and caused my already unsatisfying evening to spiral out of control, to crash and burn. She’s kneeling not too far from me, a look of concern on her dull, stupid face, caked with makeup. I knew her, now. I knew every boring and gutless detail of her bottom-feeding life and I hated her so much it made me want to throw up. I stared at her in shock, for a moment.

She blinked. “Mister? You had a seizure, or something.”

Or something? I laughed. It just barked out of me, unannounced and ill-advised. This empty shell of a person, this woman who’d slept with her sister’s husband two years ago and who stole jewelry from her friends’ homes whenever she got the chance, this pathetic loser’s life was imprinted on my brain like a scum smeared all over my skin. I knew, from bitter experience, that I’d never be able to wash her off me. I was filled with people like her, useless, boring assholes I knew every detail of. I couldn’t help it, I sneered at her.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Carol.” I hissed, struggling to my feet. “Nobody fucking touch me.”

The bartender lost his amused concern. “Maybe you ought to just go.”

“How’d you know my name?” Carol wanted to know. Not very bright. She’d cheated her way through high school and had even dry-humped her Abnormal psyche TA at a sorority mixer once in hopes of escalating her grade to an A. It hadn’t worked.

“Maybe I ought.” I snapped. “Step back!” They were crowding in, curious little monkeys. If I had another accidental brush with their tight, feral lives a stroke was a very real possibility.

They parted and gave me enough room to slip past them without making any more contact. They were whispering at each other about me, gossiping already, wondering, viciously insulting me. Carol’s voice, in the mix. I knew exactly what she was saying, her words were echoed in my head as she spoke them, reverberating around me and making me dizzy.

“I just touched him,” she was saying to the bartender, “like this.”

I just touched him, like this, I thought, and I knew what she was thinking, and another laugh escaped from me as I hurried out into the cold night, staggering a little, and laughing, and all the little idiots on the sidewalk thought I was drunk. I knew what they thought.

Believe me, I knew.

###

On the train home I kept tabs on all the other passengers.

There were twelve people on the car: three black guys passing a paper bag around and listening to soft rap music coming from their radio, an older Jewish-looking couple seated near the black guys and obviously tense about it, two white kids who looked really, really stoned in their bell-bottoms and shmuck-caps, a middle-aged woman who kept dozing off in her seat, a young man absorbed in his book, squinting intently at the dog-eared pages, and three men in what seemed identical business suits, ties undone, shoes so shiny they glittered at their feet.

I pushed myself into one corner of the car and tried to watch them all. No reason to think any of them would have a reason to bother me, but after what had happened at the bar I thought it best to be careful. In the enclosed space the sharp beat of the music seemed louder, bouncing off the metal walls and hitting us all over the head, bludgeoning us. I didn’t care, as long as no one made any sudden moves. Looking this lot over, I knew the last thing I wanted was a peek inside their lives.

I shuddered at the thought.

I could feel Carol crawling around inside me, settling in, taking up more space in my brain. They said you only used 10% of your brain, but I was guessing I’d topped at least half my own resources, filled with the oily residue of other lives. Carol was fresh, and she slithered in my veins, sympathetically reacting to the physical Carol’s thoughts and actions. For a couple of days, I’d hear her whispering in my head. Then it would all just fade into memories and knowledge. Three days, tops.

I was sweating, and the thought of putting up with that ignorant cunt for three days made me nauseous.

I got off a stop early and walked twelve blocks. The air helped clear my head and settle my gorge, and my neighborhood was deserted on good nights, much less three in the morning on a Wednesday. There was little danger of running into anyone. I made it my brownstone without incident, and by the time I’d shut my door behind me I’d even stopped shivering. A thin scum of sweat still coated me from head to toe, and my head was throbbing with a Carol Headache. It felt like tumors the size of potatoes had grown in there suddenly, violently.

I took four aspirins and ran a bath.

As I padded around the apartment, I could hear Carol’s strange and whispered reactions to everything. For a few hours, her imprint was strong enough to maintain some illusion of consciousness, and every now and then a thought would bubble up and I’d hear it, in my head, perfectly. At first this had freaked me out. If it ever lasted more than a few hours, I’d probably shoot myself. As it was, it was just something more to survive.

what the hell happened to my feet they’re huge
that water’s too hot
where am I? Phil! Hilary!
don’t feel well….ti many Martoonis

I shut her out as best I could.

Before I got into the tub I went to my desk, unlocked the lower drawer, and pulled out the marble notebook I kept in there. I turned to the current page, a column and a half of neatly printed names. I took out a blue felt tip pen, and with slightly shaking hand I wrote

93. Carol Langley

and put both pen and notebook away. I locked the drawer again, and then slipped off my robe and walked to the bathroom naked. I slip into the hot water and close my eyes, and wait for Carol to fade away.

Who are you? she asks, or rather her ghost asks.

Shut the fuck up and die already, I snarl back, mentally.

I can almost feel her scurrying away to hide in the deeper parts of my mind. It won’t be long, now.

It took longer than usual to get Carol to give up her claim to my mind. Five hours, this time, longer than ever before. She kept creeping back when I’d thought she’d disappeared, whispering, demanding to know who I was, weeping, muttering, and I’d scare her off again and try to relax. Finally, at 8:43am, with the glorious morning sun shining through the kitchen windows and a pot of coffee brewing cheerfully, I felt that familiar surge of well-being that indicated she’d finally gone away for good. I still knew everything about her up until last night, just like I knew the 92 others who were inside me. But she was no longer a sentient ghost in my head. She’d faded too much, apart from the original.

I didn’t spend a lot of time pondering Carol. The real Carol would go on with her pointless life of drudgery and bar flirtation, would probably do all the usual things, and then die. Having a copy of her on file in my head wasn’t very useful, or very interesting. I knew I would never be able to forget her completely, but it all faded into the background if I didn’t work at it. I sipped strong coffee and watched the sparrows fight over puddled rain water on the roofs of buildings around mine, and thought about myself.

I don’t know anything about my condition, my ability, my curse. I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. It started when I was sixteen, a teacher at my school. Mr. Simpson. Nice guy. One of those relatively young teachers all the kids like to joke around with, all the girls think is kind of dreamy in an old-fart way. One day, after class, he shook my hand. In a real grown up way, he called out to me as we were all leaving class, and he congratulated me on a report I’d just handed in. He put one hand on my shoulder and shook my hand, and the whole room swam and when I came back Mr. Simpson and several other faculty members were kneeling over me. And I had Mr. Simpson inside me.

He was thirty-seven years old. He was divorced. His wife had taken his daughters three years ago and moved away, never telling him where they’d gone. He’d used to smack her around, not his kids but he’d come close. He tried tracking her down but she’d gone deep, and he’d given up. He drank himself to sleep every night. He only took a shit once a week. He fantasized about banging some of his female students, lurid, complicated, drunken fantasies I didn’t enjoy having in my head at all, though they certainly weren’t much different from my own…but they weren’t mine.

So I hated them.

I could even remember the plot of the book he’d been reading at lunch.

Mr. Simpson watched a lot of TV and wasn’t very academic. He was stuck in a bumfuck High School because he wasn’t very ambitious and wasn’t very smart and he resented everyone a little, because of that. Part of him thought he could be a Professor at a major university, maybe a writer, a poet. But he didn’t have what it took, he spent too many nights drinking vodka tonics in front of the television, he was getting mentally flabby, that was his phrase, mentally flabby. His daydreams about being a professor usually mutated into cheerleader fantasies. He’d read so many Forum letters about mild-mannered academic getting Sorority pussy it had become his primary image of what his life could have been like: the hip, turtleneck-wearing professor getting blowjobs from coeds in return for a good grade.

I’d sat up amidst all the teachers and just thrown up everywhere. The feeling of Mr. Simpson inside me was terrible, greasy, disgusting, creepy. When he flinched away from my vomit, I felt him in my head, sympathetically flinching.
They sent me home. I was young, and I recovered pretty quickly, but Mom kept me home for the rest of the week to be safe. Over the next three years I ‘collected’ twenty-seven more people by accident. Sudden stops on the bus. Someone touching my hand at a Deli. Kissing Christine Muller behind the gym. Christine Muller, who’d been thinking Christ sakes he smells like liverwurst just before I’d surprised her with a kiss, and then vomited all over her. I at least had the comfort of learning Christine was never planning to sleep with me anyway, and considered our three dates to be amusing but pointless exercises in economy: I was willing to pay for her movies, dinners, and presents, so she would hang out with me, be friendly.

I couldn’t hate her for it, even back then. Christine wasn’t such a terrible person, and I knew her better, at that moment, than any other human. She didn’t even tell anyone I’d puked all over her favorite pink T-shirt.

It taught me my lesson, finally, and I started being more careful. I had twenty-seven people inside my head, all their memories, their thoughts, and it was already too many. I knew then that there was a limit to it all, and the day I reached it was the day I lost myself, pushed out of my own head by an army of…ciphers.

Even being careful, I’ve collected sixty-six more. It’s just impossible to completely avoid casual physical contact in this world. Twenty-two of them were doctors, dentists, nurses. They didn’t prove to be any more interesting or noble than the rest. They filled my head with knowledge, medical skill -I could have worked in an Emergency Room pretty easily, if only I’d had a license, a degree, some legitimate way of proving my skills. I could be a lawyer, too, thanks to Richard Lynn-Thomas and Audrey Matthews. A truck driver, thanks to Mills Hayley. An ad exec, thanks to Phyllis Brown, who also had had a $500 a day cocaine habit when I’d accidentally brushed against her in an unexpectedly crowded movie theater. She’d been on her cell phone in the lobby, chain smoking and shouting at someone named Andre.

I could have been a computer programmer, a cab driver, a dozen other things. I had lifetimes of experience in me.
None of it counted. I suppose I could have sat for tests, acquired licenses, become some sort of savant. But that would mean cultivating the people I’d collected, reaching out to their memories, sifting through their embarrassing privacies. Their worst moments, their love affairs, premature ejaculations, petty thefts, lies, cowardice, drunken exploits. And even if I’d been able to hold my nose and dig through all that shit to get to their skills, their knowledge, I was afraid of something even worse than just the clinging cruft of their worst selves coating itself all over me. I was afraid that paying attention to them, touching them, interacting with them, would then wake them up.

I was afraid of bringing the ghosts in my head back to life. And no one, I didn’t think, would blame me.

###

The most noble memory I’d acquired came from the truck driver, Mills Hayley. He’d been sixty-five five years ago when I’d slipped on some ice and he’d grabbed my wrist to steady me. I took us both down when I’d swooned under the rush of six and a half decades of existence. He’d almost broken his hip, but he’d been gruffly cheerful about it, and had even offered to take me to the hospital, once he saw how pale and shivery I’d become. He didn’t know that his life was blooming inside me with hideous size and insistent expansion. Sixty-five years is a lot of time to suddenly have at your disposal, and Mills was loud and pushy inside me until he faded away.

Mills had his share of bad stuff. He’d beaten his first wife until she’d finally left him, and he’d tried beating his second until she tied him to the bed one evening and left him to starve. That had somehow humbled him, and while he still carried an immense hatred of women around with him (the source and reason of which was in there, somewhere, but lord knows I didn’t look for it) he’d reformed his physical actions after that. He never married again, but he had a few affairs, and while his simmering disgust for his partners eventually ruined everything, he never raised his hand to a woman again.

When not bubbling with rage against the “cunts” as Mills always referred to them, he was actually an okay guy. Calm. Reasonable. Not very educated, but a voracious reader with a large self-taught vocabulary. He would listen to books-on-tape when driving his rigs cross-country. He was a big tipper and a fervent anti-bigot. Just like everyone I else I had, he was neither good nor bad but just disappointingly mediocre.

Still, one night when Mills had been thirty-four he’d been involved in a thirteen-car pileup on Interstate 80. Cars on fire, people screaming, and Mills had jumped from his largely undamaged cab and saved four people from a burning car. The last one, the father, he’d pulled unconscious from the passenger seat only a minute or so before the gas tank went up. Mills had never paused to worry about himself, he’d been filled with a pure and wonderful concern over other lives. Even the woman’s. It was the best moment any of them had managed to offer me, and I had to admit that my own shabby life had nothing to match it.

The worst moment came from Jim Boeing, who’d been twenty-three when he’d put his hand on my back to squeeze past me in the post office, his thumb just barely grazing my ear as he pulled away. The memory was so noxious it bubbled up immediately, like gas from a swamp. He’d been at a party in college, drinking and smoking a little weed, and keeping his eye on two underage girls from a local high school who thought they were passing for eighteen. He and his friend went over to talk to them, playing up the fact that they believed the girls were freshmen, and feeding them strong drinks and what Jimbo referred to as “fat joints”. It wasn’t long before the girls pretty much passed out, stoned out of their minds. Jim and his friend carried them upstairs and dropped them on the spare bed in what was being used as a coatroom. Jim’s friend went back to the party, but Jim….Jim stayed. And raped the two girls methodically, first the blond, then the brunette, one after the other. Silently. Grimly. Taking a numb sort of pleasure in pushing himself into these two limp, unconscious girls. Almost mindlessly raping them.

The worst of it was, Jim barely ever thought of it, and when he did it was a passionless memory, with neither lust or guilt, longing or loathing. It was just a thing he did.

Sometimes Jim’s chubby white voice drifted up unbidden in my head, even today, bringing this memory with it. No matter how hard I tried to push him down into the depths of my mind, he drifted up sometimes. And that scared me.
I stayed inside for the next week. I ordered groceries from the local A&P and just stayed in. I didn’t have to work. My Mother had left me a sizable amount of money and I’d invested it well, and I didn’t live a lavish lifestyle, so I could afford to just exist, and contribute nothing. I drank coffee in the morning and made Whiskey Sours at night. I played Beatles records. I slept a lot and ate whatever I felt like, and order pay-per-view movies from the cable. I tried not to think of anything. Slowly, Carol faded into the background, the simmering sea of mutters and memories, the pool of people I’d collected. She faded into the murmur and her individual voice was lost. I felt relief wash over me. I woke up and while shaving I realized she was gone, or as gone as she ever would be, and I hugged myself and laughed, free at last, once again.

Later on that morning, I bundled up despite the mild weather outside and went for a walk, feeling the wind on my face. I liked being among people, as long as they weren’t too close. I wasn’t sure what my limit was, but my reactions to collecting someone hadn’t improved over time, only worsened, and I knew there was a limit. I was in no rush to find out what it was.

###

I realized with a start that I knew several of the people in the Supermarket. I’d had an affair with the stately older gentleman squeezing fruits at the produce section. I’d once gotten into a heated argument with the stock boy, some years back, and had been kept from a fistfight only through the strength of my friends. I’d gone to AA meetings with the store manager, Helen G., for years, never actually speaking to her. None of them recognized me, of course. It hadn’t actually been me. Just people I’d collected over the years, swimming closer to the surface than usual at the sight of a familiar face. I wondered, briefly, what might happen if I collected one of these, if perhaps the two ghosts would recognize each other in my head and strike up their own conversation, hello, how’ve you been, haven’t seen you in so long.

I chuckled to myself, a bit unsteadily, and some of the other people in line with me glanced my way, uneasy around a laughing man dressed so voluminously.

I wondered if Helen G still went to meetings, or if she’d started drinking again. Everything in my head was frozen, a moment in time, a clean sum, unchanging. I referred to them as ghosts, but except for the first few hours they displayed absolutely no consciousness, they just became memories, which never updated, or changed. I’d known Helen six years ago. Who knew what had happened to her. I studied her made-up, matron’s face as she smoked a delicate, extra-long cigarette, her glasses hanging around her jowly neck. Did she have that ruddy, older-drinker’s complexion? Maybe. Did she have a bottle of Scotch in her desk in the rear of the store? Maybe. Maybe she went to church more often. Maybe she said the AA prayer every morning. Maybe she smoked twice as much to compensate.

I didn’t know, and it comforted me that I didn’t.

She noticed me staring, and I smiled and waved, embarrassed. She just looked away.

I paid carefully, keeping my gloves on, and watched everyone around me warily for sudden moves and precarious balance. Very few people actually tried to touch you on purpose, thank goodness, and most of my collections had been due to accidents. I watched politely as the cashier bagged my items, and didn’t reach for the bag until she’d turned back to the register to ring up the next customer. I tucked the paper bag in the crook of my arm and walked back out into the chilly street. It was twilight, the sun setting on the cool city, and everyone was rushing home for the weekend. I reminded myself to be extra-careful, since the sidewalks were crowded and people were jostling and pushing. My clothing provided protection, but you never knew.

I could hear someone shouting as I turned the corner, heading up to Park Avenue, and saw him immediately. An older man, red-faced and underdressed, standing in the middle of the sidewalk with a bible upraised. He was preaching. This wasn’t too unusual, of course; half the citizens of the city thought that God spoke to them on a daily basis, and half of those were compelled to share the conversation with the rest of us. This fellow looked typically deranged: wild eyes, dirty and ruddy-faced, wearing soiled tan pants, broken black sneakers, a sturdy but ill-used flannel shirt and bright red suspenders that kept slipping off his shoulders, the elastic ruined. He kept whirling about, turning suddenly on the people creeping past him, as if trying to keep his ‘audience’ in front of him at all times. It lent him the look of a wild animal, stalking prey.

“HE is coming! HE will judge all of us! Do not be caught unawares! All this will be laid WASTE! You will find yourselves in ruins, driven into the LIGHT! And the LIGHT will BURN those of you who ignore this message! Listen to me! LISTEN!”

I paused at the corner to assess the situation. His message was essentially the same facts repeated endlessly: he was coming, he would judge us, the city would be destroyed, the light would burn the sinners. Over and over again. I wondered if shouting in public and making normal, moral people afraid to walk past you wasn’t some sort of sin. This fellow seemed likely to take a hostage, demand that the world reform or he would blow someone’s head off.
After a moment, seeing that for all his twitchy jumps and shouts he was not actually touching anyone, I started forward again, getting in close to the buildings and hoping to slip past him without drawing attention to myself. And then a strange thing happened. I should have heeded my sudden apprehension, but I let my mind tell me the logical way of handling it. Sometimes our instincts are the best advisers.

The strange thing was, he fell silent the moment I began walking again. When I glanced up to see what had taken his attention, I found him staring at me, following my movements, his eyes alight with crazy fire and insane purpose. I looked away, quickly, and tried to hurry.

“He is LEGION!” He shouted suddenly when I was just a few feet away. I concentrated on not looking at him. I hoped I could just get past him, and then he could shout all he wanted at me, I wouldn’t care.

“Look how he tries to sneak past you all! You refuse to see him! You are BLIND! But I see! I SEE!”

I tried to spring away and run when I heard his cheap shoes squeak on the concrete, but my body refused to respond, and I could only turn my head to face him as he came up to me. I stopped in shock, and he stopped only an inch or so from me. I could smell something on him, on his breath: cough syrup, I thought. Sweet, sick, mediciny.

“You cannot hide from ME!” He shouted at top, hoarse volume. I flinched.

“You Cannot!” And he jumped for me, hands outstretched. For my throat, I think. One grimy, meaty paw landed on my face, the other on my throat, and a pain shot through my head like a long needle being thrust from ear to ear. And then, darkness, muffled, and filled with his sickly syrup-smell.

###

When I next opened my eyes, the crazy was leaning over me, staring, not touching me. His hands twitched in front of him. “Who are you?”

He turned and ran, barreling through the crowd.

I was lying on the sidewalk. A few people were standing around, watching me, and despite my swimming head and my pounding heart, I was afraid they would try and help me up, so I quickly climbed to my feet and leaned against the building, panting.

“You okay?”

“Did he hit you?”

“You don’t look so good, mister.”

I turned and stumbled past them, careless. My head felt like it was about to explode. I made it to the corner and leaned over the grimy sewer plate, puking my lunch into the city.

Who are you?

The voice in my head was clear and stronger than usual, insistent. I almost whirled, expecting to see him, leaning over my shoulder.

Go the fuck away, I snarled internally, go away!

You do not frighten me! You cannot escape me! GOD WILL PUNISH YOU!

I’m fucking God, I shouted at myself while I shivered and trembled over the sewer, I’m fucking God.

I felt him flee, retreating into the deeper parts of my mind. I gave myself a few more seconds, and then I stumbled off, shaky and half-blind. When I got home, I turned off all the lights and wrapped myself in blankets, still wearing my coat, and shivered in the dark of my living room.

There is none of you excused! The crazy suddenly announced in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut. I am watching! HE IS WATCHING!

Shut up!

For a moment, I hoped I’d scared him away again.

Who are you? he whispered, his voice clear and strong. Where am I?

Go away. Stay away. Shut up until you die!

Where am I? I do not like it here. Too dark. I do not like the dark.

I knew him, and I knew why he didn’t like the dark. His name was Jerry Mannalin. He was fifty-three years old. He’d been born in Bayonne, New Jersey. For the past twenty-seven years he’d been in and out of hospitals, prisons, and rehabs. He’d been as far west as Utah, tramping. He’d been in a State Hospital somewhere in Buffalo twelve years ago and after God told him to attack one of the orderlies Jerry’s spent six weeks in solitary confinement, a dark, windowless cell. Six weeks in the dark. No visitors. No contact. Just him and his God, whispering to each other.

I shivered.

Let me out! Let me out! Letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeout!

I gritted my teeth. SHUT UP BE QUIET SHUT UP!

Let me out, he whined, quieter.

Jerry, I thought, just be quiet and it will be over soon.

Silence, then. Minutes crawled by. I waited, in the dark, breathing, listening, waiting. Finally I leaned back and relaxed, letting my aching head fall back against the cushions. I had almost fallen asleep when Jerry re-emerged, tentatively, whispering.

How do you know my name? Don’t call me that. No one ever calls me that. Not since Mama died, no one. Not even God.

Then he was gone again. I fell asleep before he could return.

###

Jerry didn’t fade away. I awoke with a start in the morning and he was shouting in my head, screaming, pleading to be released. He seemed to think he’d been put back in solitary confinement, and I knew from his memories that he’d spent most of his six weeks there screaming, pounding the walls, begging to see the sun. I threw open the shades and the windows and let the cold, crisp sunlight fill the apartment, and Jerry calmed down instantly, comforted by the sun.

His voice was as clear and strong in my head as it had been the night before. I felt better, which was expected, but Jerry should have been fragmenting already. That he wasn’t worried me. I made waffles and coffee and Jerry was there through breakfast, enjoying it, apparently.

Mama made me waffles, once. He whispered, giggling. That was a good day.

I could see his Mama. A stout, red-faced woman, humorless. Jerry’s memories of her were old, and he was still a child in most of them. To a nine-year-old, Jerry’s Mama (Jerry did not know what her name was) was huge. Towering, immense. To my eye, she looked like a drinker.

This place is no good. No good. NO GOOD. Nogoodnoogoodnogoodnogood.

SHUT UP, I commanded.

Joseph?

I froze, the cup of coffee sloshing around and spilling onto the table. I stared into the shadowed depths of the cup.

“How do you know my name?” I whispered. I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until a few seconds had gone by.

Jerry seemed sheepish. I don’t know. Are you God? And lo, thought I walk through the valley of the shadows I will fear no evil….I forget…Joseph? Where am I? Can’t you let me out?

He was talking to me. He knew I was there. I set my coffee cup down in a puddle of spilt coffee and tried to calm myself. I gritted my teeth and made fists.

“Shut up.” I hissed.

Stop telling me to shut up! You can’t silence me! I own the TRUTH! I will be HEARD!

I rubbed my eyes in defeat. “Only by me.”

Nothing. Jerry did not respond.

###

We were riding on the bus, Jerry and I. I didn’t trust public transportation, but sometimes it was a necessary evil, and I would wait until midday when there weren’t so many people crushing onto the buses, trying to get to work. The early afternoon usually guaranteed empty seats.

Two weeks now, Jerry had been with me. He’d neither weakened or faded. I could hear him clear and loud, every single mutter, squeak, and giggle. He giggled a lot. He’d gotten comfortable, although he spooked easily, and his ravings were taking on a less threatening edge. He no longer told me, over and over again, that I was going to be judged. He no longer demanded that I release him. He commented on everything, never made much sense, and I was fighting to ignore him. My theory was, I’d gotten goaded into paying more attention to Jerry than to any of the others, and as a result he’d managed to maintain his ego. Hold himself together. Ignoring him was the only way.

Holy writings. Julio loves Denise. Kevin is a cocksucker. Call Bill and tell him he is a fucking fag.

Jerry muttered, reading the back of the seat in front of us with my eyes. I shut them.

There is the truth. Secret coded messages, for those of us who see.

I was training myself not to reply. It took effort.

The bus was making its way slowly along the crowded streets. I glanced around casually, letting Jerry fade into the background, buzzing and muttering about things. Suddenly, my eyes locked on a face in the crowd, and I felt myself seize up.

I know him. Jerry suddenly hissed, clearly, loudly, in my head. I KNOW HIM! Kill him! Don’t let him escape! Kill him! Kill him! We must punish him!

With a sinking shock, I realized I’d half-stood. I forced myself down into the seat again.

No! Don’t let him escape! Kill him! Kill him!

“Shut UP!” I hissed. It took me a moment to realize I’d spoken out loud. A couple of the other passengers turned to stare at me. I looked away and clenched my teeth. Jerry was raging inside me, stronger than he’d ever been, even right after I’d collected him. I twitched slightly with the effort to remain still and silent, I could almost feel him reaching for my motor controls, my voice, my legs, my arms.

After a moment, he gave up, fading away.

Kill him, he muttered quietly, I beg you.

I got off at the next stop, feeling a little weak-kneed. I was soaked with my own sweat, I was trembling slightly. Jerry was muttering constantly in the background of my head, a skittering rumble behind all my thoughts. I couldn’t really hear what he was saying, and I didn’t make any effort to figure it out. I leaned against a lamppost for a moment, panting, letting everyone stare at me. At least I didn’t look crazy, I just looked sick.

After a moment, I took a deep breath and straightened up, looking around. I was about six blocks from my apartment. There was a coffee shop on the corner; I’d been in it a few times and it was better than nothing, so I shuffled forward and went in, ordered coffee and a sandwich, and then stared out the window, letting one go cold and the other get stale. Jerry never went silent inside me, and I found myself not looking any of the passers-by in the face.

###

Later that night, I sat in my living room with my marble notebook in my lap, scanning the names and remembering them all. I could recall none who had lasted as long as Jerry, or ever been as strong as Jerry. In the first hours after being collected, the consciousness had always been strong, and they’d sometimes talked to me as if aware of my own identity. But they’d never been able to struggle with me for control. They’d never been that aware of the outside world.

I closed my eyes. Where are you, Jerry?

Where I always am, he replied reasonably, instantly, I can never leave here.

I opened my eyes again. Jerry had begun humming a tune in my head, preoccupied.

I was afraid. Jerry was as strong, clear….and crazy. I thought his obvious insanity had to be why he was so strong. He was used to perceiving things strangely, his connection with reality had not been strong enough to shock him much when severed. Why, as far as Jerry knew, nothing much might have changed. A thought struck me, and made me feel queasy.

What if Jerry, the real Jerry, the street-preacher, had been exactly like this? Controlled and tormented by an alien voice inside his head?

I pictured myself, defeated by Jerry, standing on a corner in my body, with my voice, shouting at people, grabbing them, unable to stop myself, unable to wrest control from Jerry.

I got up and fixed myself a drink. Jerry savored the taste of whiskey.

Good stuff. He commented in an almost-sane tone. Nothing but the best for God, eh? He sounded almost wry. Then: I am not alone here.

I froze in my kitchen, consciously trying to keep the glass from slipping out of my hand. What?

There are many others here. Sleeping. But I shall wake them. I am their shepherd. I will lead them to the light. That is why you have brought me here.

I struggled into the bathroom and knelt down, barely getting the seat up before I vomited into the toilet, noisily.

###

I did not hear from Jerry for three days. I never once allowed myself the comfort of believing he was gone for good. I was afraid to go to sleep; I wondered, did Jerry sleep? When I was unconscious, was he? If not, would he be able to wrest control from me while I slumbered? I drank coffee and paced around the apartment nervously, a wreck, and eventually fell asleep in the kitchen without even realizing it, waking up six hours later, still myself, still alone. I still wasn’t satisfied, and cursed myself for being weak.

I was afraid to go out, afraid I would see something that would trigger Jerry’s madness. I had managed my disease for almost forty years now, through careful. filtered contact with others and various precautions, and even so had suffered almost one hundred attacks. I knew that if I were incarcerated or committed I would not be able to do so, no one would believe me, and even my reaction to being touched would be considered part of my ‘delusion’. With bitter coffee curdling in my stomach and making my heart pound, I lit a rare cigarette and sat in my twilit kitchen, desperate.

Joseph?

I ignored him, his sudden clear intrusion in my head.

Joseph, I do not like cigarette smoke. It disturbs my work. I am raising the dead. The dead, Joseph! I have been given great power by HIM and I am raising the dead from this tomb to walk the earth again and fulfill prophecy. Please do not smoke. I do not like it.

“Well I do.” I croaked into the empty room, my ragged voice ringing off the walls. Deliberately, I inhaled a deep drag from the stale cigarette. A wave of nausea went through me, and I gripped the table, white-knuckled, determined not to give in. “I do, god dammit, and I run this body.”

It passed, and I forced myself to inhale another gale of smoke. This time, neither nausea nor Jerry appeared to argue with me. I’m shaking again. I listen closely, for Jerry’s voice…for other voices.

###

I discovered that drinking helped, or seemed to. At least it allowed me to pretend. Jerry wasn’t there. Usually he kept away when I drank, and appeared again immediately when I awoke, to bitterly complain that I was impeding his work, that I was disrespecting my temple, my body, that I was going to be punished (by HIM, of course). I would chew some bitter aspirins, wash them down with a jelly glass of bourbon, and ponder where to do my drinking that day. By noon Jerry was gone again. By seven I was usually almost willing to forget about him completely.

And then it happened. I suppose I’d been waiting for it. I woke up one hungover, grayed morning, to find a conversation in progress in my head. Jerry was talking with Milicent R. Dawson, a librarian I’d collected six years ago when a bus had lurched weirdly. She’d last three hours and been gone ever since, except her memories. Jerry was talking to her about his work. She sounded sleepy, but…there.

I lay and stared at the ceiling, listening.

Joseph? You should apologize to Mrs. Dawson. For viewing her privacies without her permission.

I laughed. “Jerry, you did it, huh? You’ve raised the dead. Inside me.”

I have had a breakthrough. The work I was sent here to do is proceeding.

I was laughing softly. “Jerry, do you know what that means?”

There was a pause. Joseph, I don’t understand.

“Then the world must end, Jerry. The dead have risen, the world must end.”

###

The waitresses were looking at me, tittering, wondering. I’d ordered nothing but coffee but I’d been lacing it with Chivas when they hadn’t been paying attention, and I was listing seriously to port by the time the brittle redheaded one refreshed my cup for the third time.

“You okay, Mister?” she asked. It was more self-preservation than sympathetic curiosity. If something was going to happen, she didn’t want it happening on her shift, at her table.

I smiled crookedly. “You ever read Revelations? The Bible?”

She frowned nervously. “Not since -”

“When the dead rise from the grave, the world must end.” I smiled again, made an effort to straighten it out. “My path is pretty clear.”

She nodded. “O-kay.” She said slowly. “Listen, you can’t just have one cup of -”

I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and showed it to her. It was an old revolver my father had left me. I had exactly three bullets for it. It was ancient. She took a step back and almost dropped the urn of coffee she was holding.

“Holy shit, mist -”

Joseph! Jerry was suddenly fighting through the booze to shout at me. Joseph! What are you doing! Suicide is against HIS LAW! YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!

I held the gun up and shrugged. “Don’t worry. Not ‘the’ world. Just my world.”

There was a chorus of voices inside me now. Six. Maybe seven. Jerry had been busy.

She was backing away from me. A moment ago I’d been a worrisome freak. Now I was a horror about to happen.

“Please, mister, wait -”

“Prophecy is prophecy, Miss.” I said amiably, raising the gun to my temple. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. Believe me.”

“I know.”