All of Us Sick

He had been sick for weeks, coughing black and red, a truly gnarly sight, hands all stained and withered, something yellow and green on his shirt collar. He coughed once more, holding onto a singe in his throat. It must be the cold, he thought, that bitter swirl of wintry ice and rain, foul thing to walk through on those ungodly Chicago nights. Whatever, it didn’t matter to him anyway, he was sick as a dog and cold as the wind around him, but his eyes never rose from the pavement, left foot, right foot, like a good soldier.

As far as his father was concerned, he was away for the weekend visiting his mother, a vicious woman, born to spit bile and acid in his direction. “That faggot father of yours. Fuckin’ monument to the heart of man, that guy. He’ll come crashing down, any day now, just you wait.” It hammered in his head, far in the back, where his spine met his thoughts, the same tricky spot his cough was coming from. He wished he could scratch it somehow, ease that savage tightness, shut the world off for a minute or two. Instead it all just roared around him, roaring up into the snowing sky.

He had left after she fell asleep in front of the TV, always with a hand under her chin, always those fingers scraping her lips, muttering something dark and violent. He couldn’t see her mind, but he could smell its foulness leaking out of her mouth. He took no bag, wore no jacket, locked no door, and left no trace. If she had woken up to find herself transported to a time before she had a son, she would’ve found just as much of him lying around to discover. He thought himself a ghost. More often, he thought himself a force of nature, a kind of silent fury yet unleashed, hardened and tough, waiting to strike.

He never dwelled on her long, he never much cared to. Everything he cared about, that nastiness that followed him, slipped away when he walked. He was a soldier now, no time to cry, a battle cresting in his view just ahead, reinforcements right behind him. Neon lit his path, something brilliant and blue, words he couldn’t read, pulsing swirls that granted sight, then strangled it. Strangely empty tonight, he thought. The solitude almost hummed on that freakish night, nothing afoot to be found here, no cars to watch or people to study. He would have to be satisfied with studying the frost on his fingers and the ice on his path. He could shriek and not be heard for another thousand years.

He crossed the street to a row of Chinese restaurants, blown out concrete holes with boarded windows, the cold must be furious in there. A bell rang above him as he shuffled in, coughed into his arm, a pocket of velvety color smeared on his elbow. Sniffly and small, teeth bared from that evil chill out there, he looked a menace, maybe he just looked cold.

“Don’t be coughing in here, Jack. No ventilation.” He looked at the verbal assailant, some skinny guy, light brown in color, short and beady-eyed. Tapping his pencil, breaking his precious silence. No more shrieking, no more battles, only a pencil tapping, tapping, tapping.

“You want a water or something?"

“Yeah. And anything I can get for... three bucks”

“Don’t have much. Rice and chicken."

“It’s edible"

“Damn straight. We have hot sauce too, shit those crackers won’t touch.”

“Bring that too”

That cursed pencil tapping stopped, finally, the assault of sound broken, silence seeped back in, a warm welcome for him. He missed that sweet sound of nothing.

The beady-eyed man disappeared past a paper door into the kitchen. He watched the door flap against some mysterious breeze. From that cracked window, perhaps, didn't really matter to him. He coughed again, he must have gotten the red out of his system, a trail of black measured from his palm to his lips. He thought of his mother murmuring, that crooked finger of hers on her lips, on her chin, that TV screaming at her, always screaming.

A crash from the kitchen, metal on metal against his ears. That beady-eyed fuck had dropped a pan. He heard his mother's violent whisper in his ear. “Tear him open,” she might’ve said, “Make him pay.” Things she wished on his father, things she dreamt about no doubt, things she had told him, things he remembered. No sickness could save him from his own memories, nor from the heavy December coming down, all the way into his shoes.

He knew she was made of pitch, those afternoons he would find her splayed on the floor in her own filth, flesh over flesh, skin folded on skin. The wrath she carried, the ants in her, that bloated head on her neck, she swung her arms like hammers. All the world was loose and tilted, she paid for its imbalance, she taught him cruelty, her favorite word. He suspected her soul was overcome, all its goodness swam to the top for fresh air, finding an empty sky with no stars. Violence blasted from the ends of her fingers, from the chips on her teeth and every strand of her hair. She was always on the edge of the storm, weathering winds she blew, burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. If she could just find a cavity to store her woe, her world would stay upright for another night.

In that moment, he could’ve killed that beady-eyed creature, wrung his neck, watched him turn wild colors. It hardly scared him anymore. He could watch anything, glass eyes roll in his head, horrors stream in, nothing streams out. He could watch himself wring his mother's neck, beat his father to ash, thoughts filled him with a stupid strength, built him back up from that dirt they stomped him into. He blamed them, how couldn’t he? They lingered with him, like one cough after the other, that damn shadow stalking him, quiet streets with no one to mimic. Who was he when no one was looking? He was his mother's backhand, his father's silence, the howl of the empty street. He was half buried in sand, choking on something brittle. Perhaps instead it was the sickness choking him.

“Don’t eat it too fast. I don’t want to do the dishes yet.” The skinny boy dropped his plate and handed him a bottle of hot sauce, a cowboy on the label that looked like him. How funny. He starved like a madman but didn’t touch his plate.

“What’s up? You don’t like it?"

“I haven’t even tried it yet.”

“I know. Some people are annoying like that. They’re rampant around here, the fuckers.”

“The fuckers.”

“Have you been coughing? I live with my grandma, I can’t get sick.”

“Hardly.”

“I hardly live with my grandma?"

“Whatever.”

He grabbed the hot sauce and poured a red river on his plate. It stung his nose, tickling him towards a sneeze, but he held it in. He had a strange power over his body, his heart ticked when he commanded it, he turned his ears off at his pleasure, it all went numb when it pleased him. Numbness often pleased him.

“If you don’t cough again, I’ll sit with you. But don’t cough. I’m serious. I’ve broken people's teeth for less.”

“Sounds dangerous to me.”

“Just don’t cough, man. Fuck.”

The creature walked to the kitchen and picked up his bowl, some kind of mush, rice and meat, ground to an unrecognizable consistency. A smell that haunted the room, it might’ve been alive. The boy sat across from him, stabbing his living mass of food. If ever it was alive, it died a sweet relief at the mercy of his fork, he thought.

“I’m Jacob. You ever been here before?"

“No."

“For the best. This fucking weather, I swear. You like the board job?"

Jacob nodded at the planks on the glass, spray painted a hundred times over. Streaks of light so sharp they’d cut a man.

“I boarded it up myself. Boarding something up is bitch work. Boss thinks I’m a bitch.”

“Are you?"

“I’ll gut you, pig. I mean it.”

“Never mind.”

“Your mom beat you?”

He looked up at Jacob, shoveling the corpse into that loud hole in his face.

“My grandma beats me. Don’t cough on me, I swear.”

“I’m not coughing.”

“But you’re about to. You shiver before you cough.”

“I’m cold.”

“So what? Get warm.”

He desecrated the corpse once more. Weird little fish, this guy, Jacob. Some kind of madness held him close, beside its beating, wild heart. They were deep in its veins now. Thumps and thuds on that cold December night, in that boarded concrete hole, he wondered who got beaten worse. He suspected it was the boy.

“How’s the chicken and rice?” Jacob asked, “Warm enough for you?”

“It’s warm.”

“Merry belated Christmas, by the way.”

“Merry belated Christmas.”

“And happy Hanukkah if you celebrate.”

“I don’t.”

“Figures. You don’t strike me as Jewish. Just thought I’d cover all my bases.”

“Good on you, I guess.”

“So does your mom beat you or not? You didn’t answer. Or does your grandma beat you?"

“What makes you think I get beat?”

“You look like you’re gonna kill me. Are you?”

Christ, am I, he thought, a shiver splintering across his back. Must be the madness holding Jacob, reaching its greasy fingers toward him.

“No.”

“Good,” Jacob said, as though he had asked about the weather, “When I get home, I’m going to kill my grandma. I can’t take it anymore.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched Jacob, quiet, far too quiet in this restaurant.

“That’s why I can’t get sick.”

Jacob stood up and walked back to the kitchen. The sink ran, knives against ceramic, food plunked to the bottom of a bin, footsteps, light and airy, dancelike. He swore that boy was dancing back there. Some truly twisted poison in the air tonight, and the air was everywhere. He’d been breathing that rotten stuff all night, letting it burn his lungs to a crisp, gasp, gasping for a sweeter breath. Found none, always found none. Rats in the sewers and roaches in the walls, flies in his hair, all alive in the rot of the city, freezing in the cold, but always moving, growing, breathing in that stink.

Jacob emerged with a styrofoam box, dropped it on the table.

“Pay or don’t. Makes no difference to me. I hope your mom stops beating you. Come hell or something worse.”

And Jacob left, past the boards, past the ice, past the red and black stains and into the blizzard, floating into the night. A wicked spell had been cast between heating rice and frying chicken, off now to reap its crops, ready to fly.

Wild things in his head on that lonely march home, feelings drained from his head down to his bones, thoughts hovered overhead, slightly out of reach. The fog of winter had come and lingered in the spaces between his fingers and the gap in his teeth. Racing, racing faster, left, right, left, right, battle’s just ahead, don’t break now. Scream something awful, no one will hear, tear yourself open, see what’s inside, something ticking, something stirring. His mother’s voice on his tongue, “tear her open, make her pay.” All just words, meaningless noise now, like a fire crackling or iron groaning. He spoke in grunts and sobs, something primeval was waking, an animal that could not be reasoned with. When morning broke, and the crows cawed themselves hoarse, there may be nothing left of him.

His mother was not in her usual chair. A trail of clothing and cigarette butts led down the hallway, a drunkard's path, a line with no end. He coughed and coughed, the degree or two of warmth reminding his body of his incurable plague, melting him, black and red and yellow and green, wild colors.

“Bastard spic boy. You’ve got something rotten in your head, you know?” she said from the room down the hall, “I’ve got something rotten. Bits of you are still in me, and I’m half of you. You’re more me than I am.”

“Do you have a soft spot in your head?"

“My whole head is soft. It’s dizzy and light. God, I need to get out of here."

“And go where?”

“My own business, fuck. And what about it?”

“Nothing"

“Always nothing with you. Little boy, little boy. You were always so small."

She was on the floor in her underwear, young and angry. She’d always been angry, she’d never before looked this young. Her hands were covered in blood, caked black and red, she waved them through the fog, that same foul wind that stank and stalked him all the way home, his very own rotten shadow. He was a soldier, the stink of battle was nothing new.

“Your hand,” he tried, “what’d you do?”

“I raised you. Isn’t that enough? You’ve gotten quieter."

“Barely.”

“I miss when you never spoke,” she wheezed with laughter, “the good old days. I miss a lot of things.”

“What is wrong with you?"

“Hearts of men, kid. You see it, don’t you? Rumbling on and on, it never stops.”

“Did your mom hit you?”

“It’s too cold to be asking me questions like that. Ask me in the springtime. Let something green answer for me.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. How could you not?”

It happened quickly, without warning, not even from his own body. His soul overflowed with violence, those old hearts of men, always quick to the draw. The soft spot where his spine and brain connected grew too hot, burning the back of his throat, it poured out of him, goodness drowning beneath the pits inside him. The winter chill had broken through, the animal had breathed fire, nothing left to say. How could he not blame her, how could he not?

He sat in her chair, hands painted, the drunkard's trail undone, everything undone, something new put together. A cough or two, it didn’t matter to him, the TV screamed something crazy, droning on and on as it always has, the black and red all slurred on his arm. The color of his soul, a beastly tone, something of hers and his painted the inside of his mouth. Little soldier boy with an empty rifle, no one left to die. Had she been a soldier too? Did this room stink as foully for her as it did for him? It hummed around him, Lord, how it hummed. Who was he when no one was around?

He spat some black and red on the ground. He must’ve been trying to spew that violence out of him ever since he realized how cold it was. And it was still so cold, so very cold.