Tranziltor Park: trunks (3/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006


     The move was quick, same the job, and hence Conor found himself with very little clothes.  Most had been left back home, and the work uniform he wore at the hotel was not exactly fitting for a night on the town.  Further, this was no local jaunt with the boys down to a rusty bar, but a delicate occasion, made as such by the fact that he would be accompanied by, and only by, Jessica Florence.  His boss.  Not only dangerously beautiful, but dangerously treacherous, as she – magnificent-eyed, sweetly underhanded – held the thin string that tied him to his new job.  In all fairness it was remarkably cruel of her to take interest in him so soon.  But only because momentary poverty had forced him to enter a second-hand shop to secure some suitable attire.
     The floor, he noticed immediately upon arrival, was mired with dirt, and he took that as a bad sign.  A groan escaped his lips when he passed the cashier on the way to the aisles, for she had altogether the wrong appearance.  Old, with pink curlers in her hair, and face painted incredulously with what must have been industrial acrylics, not at all complementing the maze of wrinkles bunching her blotched skin.  She chewed her gum like it was cow-cud, and looked him up and down lazily as befitted the mannerisms of said stupefied beast.  His march by her had been quick, and without recognition of her presence.
     The search took hours.  There were many racks of clothing, and not in any form of rational classification.  Mostly old jeans and musty-smelling dress shirts, the odd fake fur coat and, Conor noticed, a curious pair of snake skin boots.  He had been about to return to the frightful cashier with bills in hand, several items in tow, when a door at the back of the store abruptly caught his eye.  He strode, hesitantly at first, but then quickly and with curiosity welling.  He placed his hand over the latch and gave a cautionary look about for any bystanders.  Finding himself alone, he yanked the door open.
     It was a closet.  Clay coloured shelves lined the insides.  The walls were peeling a yellow, pin-striped wallpaper, and beneath that ugly husk was a sea green swath of flaking paint.  A metal bar, bent at its center, stretched across the width of the compartment, and skeletal coat hangers hung thereupon, twisted like the frames of skinless bats, dried and eaten and placed as ornamentation.  The light switch on the inner wall had a stubborn nature to it as he tried to press it.  Sticking, refusing to operate, he pushed with two hands until it snapped in and the pale, dissatisfying light of the bulb shed revelation into the dark corners at the back of the closet.  There, a rumpled old coat, dark red as if once white but now stained, lay like the misshapen shape of a boneless, Jurassic artifact.  He retrieved it, dusted it off, and admired the fine leather-work.  A price tag had been clipped to the left sleeve:  ten dollars.
     The perfect thing to wear tonight, for it hung to just above his knees, and slimmed like an hourglass at his waist.  He checked it twice over for obvious flaws, and finding nothing but a small tear on the inner lining, marched to the cashier and gave her his intended purchases.
      All told, thirty dollars.  He gave a final shiver at the woman as she handed him his things, and forced her a nod before exiting the horrid place.

d

     Kraft dinner awaited his hungry stomach.  He emptied the last of his ketchup bottle onto the macaroni, and within moments had devoured the entire bowl.  The television had just been hooked up, he found himself slouched on the sofa, and once the news began to grate him the wrong way, he turned it off and vaulted upstairs to the bedroom.  A large bay window opened to the night air, shutters pushed to the sides, and a warm breeze enticed him to peer out into the street.  His apartment consisted of the two upper floors of a four-story house.  Below him was a dentist office, and as he shared the same entrance as the reluctant patients who visited during the day, he often laughed inwardly at the steeled expressions they wore whilst they anticipated the drill chair.  Now the office was closed, and the street deserted but for the occasional moth or fly that batted endlessly against the streetlamps.  Across from the house lay Tranziltor Park, dark now, full of shadows and perhaps, so the papers said, midnight lurkers and drug abusers.  
     Conor drank in a deep draft of air and smiled briefly.  Jessica Florence.  
     He proceeded with a shower, a shave, and then dressing.  He had fully bedecked himself to what he assumed was the height of attraction.  Satisfied with what the mirror showed him, he lastly donned his infallible charm, something he had inherited from his father and perfected under the guidance of an older brother.
     “You atrocious devil,” he approved himself again in the mirror.
     Then he remembered the jacket.  He pulled it from the closet and held it up to the light.  Ah, it was magnificent, was it not?  He pulled it over himself and found, not to much surprise, that it fit with tailored precision.  The mirror shone back the reflection of what he knew was the greatest semblance he had ever taken.  And all thanks to this ten dollar, leather jacket someone had idiotically shoved in the back of a second-hand store.  Why would anyone in their right mind get rid of such a incomparable piece of -- and he sincerely thought this -- artwork?  He flashed an irresistible smile.  Beauty did, after all, complement beauty.
     He fingered the zipper in thought, undecided as to whether it would look better zipped up or left open.  No harm in trying it out done up, he thought, and with that pulled the rows of metal teeth together and snared himself within.
     A terrible gripping sensation caught his entire upper body.  Staring terrified at the mirror, the red leather of the jacket began to writhe, and the openings of the sleeves closed over and sucked his hands up into their twisting confines.  Likewise, the collar flipped over and began to meld around his neck, then up to his ears -- over his nose.  He flailed with his handless arms, hitting himself in the head and falling to the floor.  There he squirmed and fought against the jacket, but it began to feel good now; waves of warmth flushed over and through him, he felt his bones melting, shifting, changing.  With a last gasp of opposition the leather encased his face, calming, noiseless, turning everything black.
     When he could finally see again all struggle had ceased.  The room had a yellowish tinge to it, a radiant contrast and, looking around, his eyes fell upon the surface of the mirror.  What stared back pushed him to revulsion.  A bat, yes, or a gargoyle, was what they called them, for he was too big to be a regular bat.  And red, red like the jacket had been, with wicked, leathery wings wrapped around his rodent torso.  Sharp, clawed feet pressed and cut into the duvet on the bed.  He was bald, with a mouthful of razor-teeth, eyes black garnets, ears dark holes in the side of his head.  His nose, also two pin pricks above his thin, cracked lips.  He howled in fear, and the creature in the mirror mimicked.  Panic surged, breaking out of the indestructible dam he had sealed it in long ago.
     But then he caught scent.  Fluttering awkwardly over to the window sill, he squatted down on his clawed feet and saw them dancing.  Dancing.  Those little morsels of delicate wing and warm, fuzzy abdomen.  Underneath the streetlights, dancing, and more, beyond the unknown shades of Tranziltor Park.  The temptation overwhelmed him, he embraced glee, and joined their brainless jig.



copyright (c) JMD, 2006