Something Outré
Bed-Stuy, 1976
“What’s wrong with it?”
Two boys stood in an empty lot between tenements, shielded from street view by evening darkness and a battered chain-link fence. A spindly, barren oak swayed mildly in the wind above them. Eddison, scrawny and little and brown, had a stick the width of his forearm hanging from one loosely clenched fist, just looking for a reason to poke at the twisted, ashen figure before them.
“It’s a she,” Almer said. Broad and short and dark, he squatted even closer to the ground than he normally was to clinically examine the situation. The dirt under the woman was dry and crumbly, almost gravel.
“Well, she’s ugly.”
“She’s dead, you bozo,” Al chided. “You want her to look like a beauty queen?”
Edd jerked his head up so fast it could have snapped his skinny neck, mouth in a tight “o,” eyes gleaming.
“Is she really? That’s a dead body? No shit?”
“No shit.” He gave a glorious eye roll, truly one of his best ones. He practiced them in the mirror. “Can’t you see?”
“Well it’s not like I go lookin’ at dead bodies all the time! How should I know?”
“She’s not breathing, for one thing.”
Edd mirrored Al, leaning on the stick as he got low, like a safari guide tracking scat. More gently than Al would have expected, Edd held his pointer finger under the gray nostrils and waited for the tickle of moving air.
“Huh.”
“Yep.” He nodded sagely. “Dead for a while, too. She’s stiff as a board, gone into rigger more-tee.” The phrase “rigor mortis” was Latin, not French like Al thought, but having only ever read the words in his less savory library loans, Al didn’t know the difference.
Edd snorted. “Who’s Morty?”
“First guy to cut open a dead body,” Al replied primly, as though he had any idea what he was talking about.
“Oh, like Ben Franklin for the nasties.”
“Yep!”
They chortled as school boys do, for a bit. Then Edd pulled back and took the humor with him, fidgety.
“Should…should we tell somebody?”
Al considered, twirled his fingers. The woman must have been pretty, once, her brows high and arched, jaw delicate, lids round in a way that suggested she’d have big eyes like Twiggy if they were open. Someone out there must want to know what happened to her.
Then again, if Al were a pretty lady, he wouldn’t want anyone he knew to see him brought low like this, skin all the wrong color, lips chapped. Her spine twisted unnaturally. The fine cap of short black hair on her head was lifted a little at the edges, and Al realized it was a wig.
He must have spent too long considering because Edd jerked a little and smiled that smile he got when taken with a stupid idea.
“Wait a minute, you seen Walking Tall?”
“The one with the wrestler?”
“No, the one with the gambler who got framed for murder.”
“Pretty sure that one’s called Framed. Saw it with my uncle Dennis.”
“Whatever.” Edd hunched like he was going to shove Al before he remembered there was a dead body between them. “Point is, let’s scram before the cops come and pin this on us!”
Al didn’t think that made any sense, but then he remembered that the very same Uncle Dennis who took him to the movies once got arrested for standing too near a liquor store that got robbed the night prior, so then Al thought maybe it did make sense.
He took one last long look at the beautiful, screwed-up corpse, and then he sighed.
“Okay, let’s get outta here. My ma’s making casserole with sausage.” Edd barked a laugh.
“Bleh, your mama’s casserole tastes like shit!”
“You’ll eat that shit and you’ll like it, boy!” They were on their feet and meandering towards the fence now, so Al took the chance that Edd hadn’t before, and shoved him. They roughhoused like that all the way to the gap in the chain-link from which they’d entered and only stopped to wriggle back out.
Pain bit into Al’s hand as pulled himself through the fence.
“Aw, shit!” He hissed. He’d cut himself on the metal, blood curling in his dry palm. As Al wrapped his hand in his tee and steeled himself to get cussed out upon returning home, Edd was leveling a protracted stare back inside the lot.
“Look.” Edd smacked Al’s shoulder but didn’t turn his gaze away.
“What? I’m gonna get tetanus, leave me alone—”
“Look, damnit!”
Still cradling his hand, Al looked. He squinted through the weeds and the darkness for the body—maybe one of the local possums had taken an interest? Edd and Al could both agree that possum-watching was worth stopping for.
“I don’t see anything.”
“‘Cuz there’s nothing to see, genius! She’s gone!”
Al did a double take.
“What the hell…?” Edd was right, for once. The patch of brown dirt under the oak was empty now. No sign of the body.
As Al peered through the lattice, the fence wobbled minutely in front of him. The air seemed to go still, all of a sudden. Al felt his skin prickle, a shiver that ran up from the base of his spine to the top of his head and pulled him like a marionette to look skyward.
Balanced cat-like on top of the fence, staring down at the boys, was the body. She looked weightless and superlunary and predatory, wiry muscles in her arms flexed, poised to strike. To get from where she had lain to her new perch, she’d have to be lightning fast. Her eyes were open, bright and sharp and Al and Edd were trapped in the amber of them.
Then she moved, silent, like the whole world was holding its breath around her. The whole world, except for Edd, who screamed:
“Shit, fuck! Shit, c’mon!” He took off down the block. Al barreled after him and the last dregs of hopeful daylight fled at the sound of their sneakers beating the pavement. The saying goes that if a bear chases you in the woods, you don’t need to be faster than the bear—you just need to be faster than your buddy. This wasn’t the woods and the creature behind them was nothing so natural as a bear, but none of that mattered because Al was not faster than anything.
They made it home, anyway, to Al’s. But even as the door was latched shut behind them and his mama came hollering out of the kitchen like the devil’s most fearsome foot-woman, Al still felt like they were being chased. Pursued. Al thought that if the body had followed them at all, it was the scent of his blood that she tracked.
Crown Heights, 2024
Almer was sitting at one end of the sticky counter in the corner of the music bar, which was tiny in size but mighty in decibels. When he got there, it was still a little light out, and the place was mostly empty save for the young-ish barman and a woman playing solitaire in the other corner. He’d been pleased to have a seat right by the big, open barn window, looking out into the paved garden with its plastic chairs and tables and twinkly-lighted gazebo as the sunset. He was utterly unaware, however, of just how prime his behind’s real estate was until the steel pan man started setting up and patrons began to flood the place, as if they’d been waiting for his cue. Now Al was squished between a guy who was far too drunk for dusk and a gaggle of young women who looked like they’d been drawn to blaring music, expecting a club, and were mildly perturbed to find live amateur musicians and a place inhabited mostly by geriatric locals.
Al, while just about geriatric, supposed he was technically not a local, even though he was born and grew up just a neighborhood away; he wasn’t in with this crowd, didn’t have one of their sundry shades of lilting accents. The Trini patrons looked like they all knew each other, familiar arms thrown over shoulders, heads tossed back in raucous laughter. Hell, they almost looked related, with a motley of mixed features that somehow coalesced into something that identified them as a group. But Al was not one of them, and they ignored him unless he was ordering a drink. That was just fine by him. He was rarely in the mood for conversation, but tonight was especially suited to aloneness. Edd’s funeral had been earlier that day.
(Edd drove himself into the ground in his later years and death was frankly a blessing for him; this didn’t leave Al any less bereft.)
Speaking of a drink, though: Al had been nursing the same glass of rum-and-coke-flavored ice water for the past hour, trying to keep his hold on the good view and gentle breeze. But he was tiring of the noise a little, and wanted a refill, and the girls were craning their necks like fashionable ostriches to see the band. He decided to be chivalrous and finally gave up his seat.
The space he left was filled almost immediately by bodies. Al elbowed his way through the throng to the bar. There, he saw another small cluster of young people: two men, two women. One of the men turned his head and Al's eyes caught on a flash of something that shimmered.
The young man had sparkly purple and green eyelids like glittering fish scales, and fake lashes each as long as a small knife. A gold ring dangled under his nose from the septum. He lifted his drink to glossy lips and his nails were pink and sharp on the rim of the glass.
Al tried to look away, succeeding only for as long as it took to order another rum and coke. Leaving the house all dolled up like that just wasn’t something you should do, as a man. It was embarrassing to be seen that way. Right? Right. The kid was lucky he didn’t go out looking like that to a Jamaican spot. Al knew from experience.
He looked up when the barman handed him his drink, and when he glanced back at the boy, he found himself watched in return. The kid himself wasn’t looking at him, but the two girls between him and Al were shooting not-so-surreptitious glances at him, lips curled in disgust. The boy looked edgy now.
Ah. Al was caught staring—green-eyed, but there was no way for the kids to know that. He took his drink and fled.
He thought about going home, but memories and regret and simple longing for his youth threatened to trammel him if he went without distraction. So Al wandered around to the garden and asserted himself into the thick crowd and overbearing noise. He found his place across from the entrance, partly under the gazebo, next to a crate that housed a few abandoned shot glasses. People were taking turns breaking it down at the front of the crowd to the whooping cheers of their friends. Smartphones were out, recording; one was on a tripod facing the band (Al didn’t even know they made those for phones). There was one, singular, very pleasant-looking white guy in a fisherman’s hat and loud shirt, leaning half-casual to one side, bobbing his head placidly along to the music. Bless him.
Someone shouted right next to Al’s ear and he jumped, turned to look. A man was gesturing wildly between his spilled drink on the ground and a very inebriated woman who looked as contrite as one could manage in that state. She nodded along at his ranting, frog blinking, fizzy liquid dripping down her left arm, and soaking her blouse.
A hand appeared as if from thin air, curling around the dry, right arm. Al’s eyes followed it up a sinewy appendage, curving over narrow shoulders and pointed collar bones, to land, inexorably, on a beautiful, horrible, familiar face.
The face was moving, speaking, coaxing the drunk woman, a few placating words spared for the man. Al heard none of it over the roaring in his ears.
It was her: the gray corpse from that empty lot forty years ago, same cheekbones, same jaw, same brow. Except she wasn’t gray now, she was vibrant and vital and brown, grin sharp and shining like the crescent moon rising above, dark eyes glittering. Dark eyes?
Dark eyes. They flitted over Al’s (surely terror-stricken) face. It was so quick, but he could swear she recognized him, her lips twitching significantly before she gusted past him.
Was it really her? How could it be? Al always thought the pure silver pallor of her skin that he remembered, like matte face paint, was an embellishment made by time and many iterating nightmares, but he was sure that the thing he and Edd had seen didn’t look so alive, even when it ambulated.
The new, maybe-human thing guided the drunk woman towards a rusted metal side door, the crowd parting around them. She had long braids all down her back, colorful beads at the ends. Those things were always so noisy, clacking like rattlesnakes (bad enough on little girls playing double-dutch, but now grown women were wearing them too, apparently).
Al realized that he couldn’t hear the beads. The drunk woman’s heels scraped the pavement, but the silence of the body’s gait was loud, even over the calypso.
Without entirely thinking about it, Al followed.
Inside there was a dark little hallway, one door leading to a backroom from which the sounds of a busy kitchen poured, and a stairwell going down at the end. Red light pulsed softly from the bottom of the steps. Al descended.
He came down onto the unfinished cement floor, went around a corner, and there she was: the body entwined with that of the drunk woman, holding her slumped weight, mouth on her neck. The room smelt of bitters and iron.
Al was vaguely aware of shadowy figures in the periphery, in amongst the kegs and fridges, their glasses sloshing with dark, red stuff. But he could not look at them, wholly enraptured by the center-stage tableau, the striking mise-en-scène (he knew his French from his Latin now, but it was only through a well-worn theater habit that he could remember the phrase in this moment).
The thing was arched, embracing her prey tenderly. It looked warm—blissful. Her skin seemed to glow in the low light. This was not the desperate feeding of a hungry animal, the inevitable end of an alley cat’s hunt after two skittering, screaming little mice. Starving was antiquated. This was a feast for the sake of feasting, the glutting of oneself on wine and red meat and plump fruit for the sheer pleasure of eating. Modern.
The mouth unlatched itself from the throat with a shuddering sigh. The drunk, now unconscious woman was gently lowered to the ground. She might have still been breathing.
The body turned her gaze upon him. Her eyes were full and dark and heavy, sated and blithe. Between two blinks of his own eyes, she was before him.
“Caught you.” Almer trembled.
She swiped a rivulet of blood from her jaw with a long, bony thumb. The other hand took hold of his stubbled, lined face. The thumb swept across his lips, over his cheeks, wet and glittering. The watchers hummed with delight. He closed his eyes as red was smeared onto his lids, anointing him. He was decorated. He was beautiful. He was seen.
