Turning away from the river and the dark cargo ships rumbling toward the Gulf, Tim began to climb up the rocky bank that ran along the pedestrian walkway. Thus far he had kept out of sight, but there were more people out now, more eyes to worry about. A young couple moved up against the railing just above him and posed for a picture against the inky Mississippi. Wary of the flash from their camera, he ducked low and scampered to the safety of an old dock.
The smell of trash and foul water filled his nose as he pressed himself up against a rotten wooden beam for cover. Tim waited there, picking at the crumbling timber until they left. Then he casually crawled out from under the derelict frame and hopped up over the metal guardrail, slipping unnoticed into the flow of people, tourists mostly, who were walking along the water. Tim followed this current, heading toward the French Quarter.
As he approached, he heard the familiar sounds of New Orleans. The whooping and bleating of drunks punctuated the blaring brass of a main line and the clumsy cheers of the second. It was too loud already, and he wasn’t even that close. Not wanting to pass anywhere near the parade, he perched on a crumbling street corner, swiveling his head between the discordant sounds of the night. And then, as if all this uncertainty had been a ruse, he broke away from the crowds and headed for a darker block.
On the edge of Dauphine and Esplanade he took up a quiet spot on a lightless stoop and watched as a few people hurried to the next bar or went about staggering in the street. The slow drip of street traffic was the only thing bringing light to this lost block, and it made it difficult to reckon time. The headlights washing over him kept breaking his concentration, but he did not feel like moving, so he hung his head and closed his eyes while sirens raced toward something in the distance.
“DeMarcus?” A voice came incredulous and excited from the void. Tim opened his eyes and looked up, unsure of how much time had passed and staring now at an acne-scarred face that could have been familiar. A crust punk holding a pitbull on a tattered leash and wearing a Castro hat, from which dreads sprung hernia-like, was smiling back at him. Tim nodded at the young man and perfunctorily returned his fist bump. As if he knew him, the man launched into news about presumably shared acquaintances and asked if DeMarcus had seen such-and-such person. Tim must have blinked his way through because the crust punk, who dropped that his name was Geoff, then invited him to a party where he promised there would be booze. Tim accepted the invitation by getting up from the stoop and following the man and his dog.
The crust punk led him back into the French Quarter. Together they weaved between the masses of Bourbon street and skirted around a couple of equestrian cops, whom Geoff cursed under his breath as they passed. At length, they came to a narrow alley populated by a few other punks and barred at one end by a locked gate that would have opened up onto an old French-style interior courtyard, which was overgrown with weeds and otherwise looked entirely abandoned. Tim noted the blackened fountain at its center. The punks greeted Geoff with a cheer but were indifferent to Tim, except one. A young girl with nappy hair and a light complexion ran up and hugged him. “DeMarcus! What the fuck, man?! Where you been?” Not answering, they both pulled back and looked at each other.
Tim did not recognize this girl, or at least he did not recognize her in the way she clearly saw him. Still, he played along. He shrugged and looked off her excitement, saying that he had been around. He wasn’t that hard to find. “Are you kidding?” she replied, shaking her head. But then she took him by the hand, and brought him deeper into the alley.
At her invitation, Tim sat with the group on a piece of flattened cardboard and was immediately handed a plastic flask of flavored vodka, from which he took a short and regrettable pull. The liquor was brightly orange but tasted only faintly of any known fruit. Front loaded with sugar, the shot shortly revealed its true flavor, acrid and chemical, that lingered at the back of his throat. Tim suppressed any visible displeasure as he passed the flask to the girl sitting next to him. She smiled and drank as the others told stories. Tim half listened. It was something about a friend of theirs who had died suddenly. According to one of them, he had gotten blood poisoning from a bad needle and tried to drink himself straight instead of going to the hospital. Then they argued about what exactly blood poisoning was without ever reaching a consensus.
Whatever they were talking about was less important than the old fountain, which stood regal and undisturbed just beyond their conversation. Tim studied it as the others carried on. Black mold covered the white basin and crept up the central spire and down the base, although not completely. There were still some stretches of milky stone, which seemed out of place on its predominantly dark body, as if it had vitiligo.
Water no longer flowed from the ornate fleur-de-lis spout which crowned the fountain, but its presence still dominated the courtyard. It sat at the heart of this emergent jungle, shadowing the living plants around it and taunting them with the beauty of its own engraved ivy. These mold-covered vines wrapped around the basin, appearing more alive than any weed. Behind the frame of the locked gate, the courtyard and its fountain were a kind of tableau. It seemed virtuous to him how unfunctional it had become.
Still dwelling on the fountain, Tim felt a soft touch. He looked down and saw that the girl had inched closer and was now rubbing the back of his arm. In response he tensed up, which made him conscious of his body and the strange signals it was sending him. Hunger. The sensation descended on him as an abstraction. It had been days since his last meal, and yet he felt no pangs and had lost little muscle mass. Daily he looked more lean and dangerous; there was less separating his muscles from the outside world. This unexpected touch made him aware of this in some sense, but it did not feel good. She was touching him for the wrong reasons.
Much else was wrong here too, Tim thought. Not just his present company but the French Quarter and maybe all of New Orleans. It had been taken over, not invaded but converted from a purpose lost long ago. What exactly this was still evaded him, but it did not comport with his body. Of that he was certain, along with the feeling of a need to escape. Tim stood up suddenly, pulling himself from the grasp of the girl, who tottered from the shock of his forceful movement. He looked up at a night sky hemmed in by the narrow alley and hung low with dense clouds that betokened rain. They were all looking at him.
“Oh my god! Is that a pitty?!” The vocal fry came from the street. All at once the crust punks turned toward the sound and immediately clocked a bachelorette party. Several women stood by the entrance to the alcove, all wearing colorful blouses and adorned with penis-themed props. Geoff’s pitbull bounded over to the group of young women and absorbed their scratches and affections. It wagged its tail and seemed to smile at them. Tim walked over and patted the dog. “Is this your pup?” One woman asked who was wearing a white sash across her chest that spelled “WHORE” in elegant font. Geoff got up and approached them too, proudly proclaiming that the dog was his and that his name was Gibbous. “Like the moon,” he said.
Tim seized the distraction and snuck between the bachelorette party. He was back on the street now, walking just to get away. No one followed, but he felt that they might, so he quickened his pace, heading North toward Rampart Street where there were less people. The crowds thinned block by block until he was mostly alone again. A single bum asked him for money, and Tim moved away without acknowledging him. Down around the next corner, he crossed the street to avoid a group of young men in purple LSU gear and consequently bumped into a barker.
“Damn, man! It’s been a minute. How’s your mama’n’em?” The questions came from a smiling young black man with a shaved head and a glint in his eye.
“Just fine,” Tim said without recognizing him.
“Right, right…,” the other man drifted off. Tim was about to leave when the man stopped him again. “Hey, do you think you could do me a favor?” As he explained it, he would get a bonus if he got a certain number of people in the door tonight, and he really needed the money. All he requested of Tim was that he go in and have a drink. He would even give him a drink ticket for helping him out. Tim nodded. “My man!” He slapped the ticket in his hand and steered him toward the door.
The bouncer out front did not look up from his phone as Tim entered the bar, which was more than a bit clubby inside. A small dance floor centered the space and supported a meager set of overly drunk dancers, but most everyone else were pressed up against the bar watching them. Tim found an open spot beside a man whose shirt was unbuttoned down to his stomach and waited as the lone bartender chatted with a few people at the other end of the bar. After ten minutes, the bartender still had not noticed him, so Tim made for the bathroom.
Towards the back of the bar was a narrow set of stairs that led to an upper floor. Tim had expected a bathroom, but the top level held only a second bar. It was much smaller and quieter with only a few booths and bar tables. A drunk was slumped over in one of the booths, and a bartender watched a TV mounted on the wall. He walked up to the man and slid him the drink ticket.
“What’s this?” The bartender asked with a wrinkled brow.
“A free drink,” Tim replied.
“Not here it ain’t,” he said, sliding the ticket back across the bar to him. Tim shook his head and produced his wallet. He bought a single beer and closed out his tab before moving to an empty booth. It was directly below an AC vent, and the cold, stale air blew down on him relentlessly. Tim shivered at first, uncomfortable, but he did not move. Blinking his eyes slowly, like some reptile opening its mouth to let off excess heat, Tim adjusted to the temperature. He sipped his beer and looked around the empty bar. The drunk still slept silently, and the bartender had returned his attention to the TV, which now showed police boats scouring the river.
The broadcast cut to a reporter coming live from the water, not too far from where Tim had been earlier. The sound was off, and the closed captioning lagged far behind her speaking, but Tim could put together what was happening. They were searching for a body. The police boats trawled in the background as the reporter spoke about the scene. Tim squinted at the close captioning: “...several eye witnesses claimed to have seen the suspect, but the police have yet to…” He let his eyes relax, and the tiny print of the subtitles went out of focus.
Tim worked slowly on his drink, but it still went to his head, which throbbed almost rhythmically. This feeling built until it was painful, and nothing could shut it out. It seemed desperate. How weak had his body become that it should speak to him like this? Hunger. No, that wasn’t it. The message was encoded. Tim massaged his temples with his fingers and began to inventory his bodily afflictions: lightheadedness, nausea, migraines, cramping muscles. But then he understood; it was in the way his muscles rippled and froze. There was a pattern. No, it was a map!
He got up from the booth and could barely feel his feet beneath him. Pin pricks shot up through his legs with each step, but then subsided into a raw numbness. It made it difficult to walk, and Tim braced himself on anything he could as he exited the bar. Weak kneed, he hit the street, staggering like some heavy-eyed drunk. And yet none mistook him for one. The clumsiness of his gait conveyed not frailty but an intense physicality, and his barren aspect frightened off anyone else who might approach in an attempt to help him. In this way, he traced a path back through the French Quarter.
Beyond the cheering crowds and the pooling swill of Bourbon Street was the alley from earlier in the night. Tim’s return was not heralded by the punks, who had gone off in search of more booze. And it suited him to find it so empty. Sinking against the adjoining brick wall, he took up a spot before the gate as the wind tunneled through the alley and scattered trash around him. The crowds had dispersed significantly this late into the night, but Tim still felt eyes on him from time to time. People were poking their heads into the alcove as they walked by. To counter them, he affected a porcelain stillness. The hard angles of his body, stress positions almost, looked painful and purposeful even from afar. Tim held this pose for hours, all the while contemplating the fountain.
It was almost dawn by the time he got up. Like someone going to the window first thing in the morning, Tim stood in front of the gate and touched his face to the cold, rusty bars. His body was finally quiet, and from the silence came a command. Press yourself through. Just then a fierce wind channeled through the passage and pitched against his back, inclining his body even more toward the interior. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and after a blip of lurching darkness he was on the other side. The moss-covered brick did not register his footfalls with any indentation, and the weeds and ferns that cluttered the courtyard barely shook as he passed by them. Finally, he was at the fountain whose murky water rippled with mosquito larvae, and all around it the engraved ivy bloomed with dark mold.
Tim let his hand dangle from his side and walked around the fountain while grazing the weathered stonework with his fingers. The texture was incredible, rough and craggy in most places but soft in others. Short lengths of smooth stone gave way to deep pits filled with mold and lichens. These imparted a dense bristliness not unlike human body hair. Tim allowed himself to feel it all, and he knew he would no longer be kept from anything.
This story was submitted by Chris Blexrud, and won second place in last month’s writing contest. Chris is an author and libertarian living in New Mexico. His work has appeared in Anxiety Press, Carve Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, and several other literary journals.
His published works include “The Anti-Epistles,” a wonderful fiction that Anxiety Press described as “Written with the quiet fury of a confession too long withheld. It lingers like smoke in the lungs.” You can get it on Amazon here.
Very nice. If this was the runner up then I can't wait to read the winner