Free The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich Page B

had no clue, no intelligence on them. This was strictly a subliminal war, fought behind the eyes drowning in blood, scoring flesh with acid, sputtering out of a bubbling vat of gruel on the stove. They shared one giant body. It was hungry all the time because it was just a baby.

    In the diner a few of them sat there and distracted the server while others dove into the back and stuffed their pants with dinner bread. “You pieces of rat shit,” we said to them, “this isn’t Europe, you know!” Anarchists! Never a surprise there. “Look at them groping each other under the table. You’d think they were conducting a symphony down there — ”Josh stood and threw a cup of ice in their general direction, “Thatch my roof, asshole! Turn my bucolic windmill!” Now it was getting redundant, “Strangle me with your extra long eyelashes! With your high quality beer and cigarettes — !”

    Rising before dawn we went out to some yard sales in town and the people looked at us like we were friggin nuts, but it was all the other people who were drunk and falling all over their stupid shit piled in their front yard. I’m like, dude, stop spilling your beer on me and get away from me with your shitty beach-ball… It’s a little like shopping on another planet. The scene is populated with a whole subterranean world of people, most disproportionately single middle-aged men with grizzled beards, Hawaiian shirts, and windowless vans, who make a meager living buying repossessed storage units at auctions, then selling the wares at swap meets. They live fast and loose, existing parenthetically to mass society, usually buried in much of the crap they are trying to sell but haven’t been able to. They’re a dying breed. Their lives are full of shit and mystery and intrigue, with few redeeming qualities, personality-wise. We discovered evidence of human activity from a long time ago at a limekiln in the woods that had been abandoned 175 years ago. We sensed that horrible tragedies were inflicted at this site. Maybe a killer hid out. Maybe a guy was chained to a bed in the 1910s. Maybe a family of desperate teens in the Depression starved to death in the creek. We followed the tiny fossilized footprints of history’s small adults — the marks of a past race of dapper children, animal children with no decipherable language. We found a shoe, a man’s fossilized cigarette butt, a cat skeleton. Excavating, digging around I began to find objects both strange and familiar, telepathically guided by horrific artifacts projecting a tone from feet below. And I can’t help but think of all the other stuff that’s lying in wait in storage units all over the country. Panting, sweat beading up on their Mylar shells, waiting for the door of their enclosure to open up and let that strange light in. All over the country storage containers sat full and silent on the ground. Alone in the dark; issuing forth negative energy, the kind only stored objects can bring out. Throbbing in the dark.

    When we got to the check cashing place it was almost three a.m. and the place was empty. Then we noticed a pair of eyes peering over the counter. The guy who worked there, I guess, but it seemed strange, like he was doing something back there. We walked up and noticed that he was crouching but that he was only four feet tall anyway. He stared at us and made pained wincing noises, as if for him breathing was something both precious and jagged. He looked like Evangele, except his skin was grey with spots and his hair looked like it was on backward. When he started talking it was like someone had pressed his button. A voice came out of a crack in the check cashing counter. “The Aspirin Man: His Story,” he announced.

    “What?” Josh said.

    “I’ve been waiting, you know — ”

    “Can I have cigarettes?”

    “Come a little bit closer so you can hear better. Lend me your ears, children.”

    “Somebody turn him off, seriously.”

    “You kids on the