A Short Story a Day

by David Michael

Ernie imagined himself as a soldier, that the length of heavy metal pipe he held was a powerful gun, and with a simple squeeze of the trigger he could release a stream of hot lead death–ka-pow!-ka-ka-ka-pow! He stood guard over Dottie and Fisk as the two smaller children raided the trashcans.

Or a sword. With a sword he could cut off the hands–hack!–of anyone that tried to reach for any of them.

“Mmmf,” said Fisk behind him, his voice given a metallic echo by the big dumpster. “Hey, look at this.”

“Eww!” Dottie said. “That’s disgusting. Throw it away.”

Ernie almost turned to see, but stopped himself. Because he was on guard. So instead, he watched the other people moving through the alley with renewed intensity.

Fisk laughed. “Poke poke poke,” he said.

Dottie squealed. “Stop it! Stop it!”

And then the sounds of a friendly scuffle.

Ernie took a grim satisfaction from their playfulness. That they could be playful. If only for a few seconds. Because he was on watch. He hefted the pipe and let it drop back onto his left palm with a solid smack!

One of the men standing guard at a nearby door heard the sound and looked up, making Ernie’s muscles tense. The man’s eyes gleamed under his bushy eyebrows. A hint of a smile played along the line of his lips and he seemed to give Ernie a fraction of a nod.

Ernie tried to relax again, but then the man’s eyes shifted to something past Ernie.

Ernie stepped back against the dumpster, tapping the quick “be silent” code on the cold metal. Dottie and Fisk stopped instantly, and Ernie wished he could hide inside as well.

The two women walked past him. The woman with the shotgun met his eye, looking at him down the barrel of her shotgun, then looking past him, at the dumpster itself. The other woman moved through the litter and detritus of the alley without making a sound. And as Ernie watched, her right arm extended with a hiss of metal on leather and he saw the shadow of a long, curved blade extend from her hand.

The air in the alley became colder and Ernie’s skin became clammy. Something was about to go down here. Something more bloody and lethal than normal.

Ernie tapped the “let’s go” code, resisting the urge to say it out loud.

Dottie scrambled out first, clutching a nearly full plastic bag. Fisk followed her, with another plastic bag, his less than half filled. Ernie glared at Fisk, but there wasn’t time to yell at him right now.

As a small wedge, Ernie on point, they moved down the alley away from whatever those two women were about to do. And away from whoever the women were about to piss off and/or start killing. Before the bullets could start banging out and ricocheting and killing indiscriminately.

A man stepped in front of Ernie, blocking their path. He loomed above them, leering down, lips pulled back from the black stumps of his teeth. He reached a scabby hand for Dottie’s bag. “Whachya find, girl–”

Ernie swung the pipe two handed and brought it hard against the side of the man’s knee. Metal hit bone with a hard thunk! and the jolt strained Ernie’s shoulder.

The man gave a wordless yelp of pain and stumbled.

Ernie struck again, still aiming for the man’s knee, but didn’t hit as hard this time. Still, the man cried out and fell.

“Run!” Ernie said, keeping his eye on the man. “Both of you.”

Dottie hesitated–she always did–but Fisk must have grabbed her and pulled her, because they both ran past Ernie.

Counting in his head–one one thousand, two one thousand–Ernie swung the pipe at the man one more time, but missed. The man pulled back him, scuttling along the ground like a dog.

“I’ll getchya, you little bastard,” the man said.

“Five one thousand,” Ernie said in response, and ran after Dottie and Fisk. He thought he heard the man coming after him, but the sound of footsteps might have been his own heart pounding in his chest.

He caught up with Dottie and Fisk after two turns in the alley, and they sneaked the rest of the way together. George and Chelsea huddled in the hideout, waiting for them. Hamal, Barbie and Atta arrived soon after.

Chelsea spread out the plastic sheet and one after the other the children dumped their bags on the mat. Half-eaten sandwiches and burgers and pizza slices poured out with loose French fries and limp salad fixings–those would be from Barbie’s bag–and plastic bottles with various amounts of brown and yellow and blue liquids in them. And a human hand, severed just above the wrist, most of the flesh removed and the little finger missing.

Everyone looked at Fisk.

He didn’t say anything as he snatched up the hand and resumed his place in the circle. “Maybe it’s lucky,” he said. “Like a rabbit’s foot.” He sniffed at the palm of the hand, then took a bite, pulling to tear off a bit with his back teeth, the only teeth he had.

Ernie looked away, suppressed a shudder. He and Chelsea worked together to apportion the night’s haul evenly. In the darkness they didn’t have to see what they ate. The rank air of the alley and and their own stench kept them from smelling the rotting food. They picked the hair and cigarette stubs and soggy napkins and toothpicks out as they found them, and ignored the grit in their teeth as they chewed and swallowed.

When Fisk finished gnawing on the hand, he started to take a half a sandwich.

“You already ate your share,” George said.

Fisk’s hand froze. His eyes took on a feral look.

“I’m just kidding,” George said, a weak smile trying to cover the fear in his voice. “Eat up. I–I sleep sounder when you’re not hungry.”

Slowly, like a wolf, Fisk smiled, showing the gaps in his front teeth. He took the sandwich, peeled off the bread and bits of lettuce and ate the meat.

Dinner–which also filled in for lunch and breakfast today–finished all too soon. Chelsea shook off the plastic sheet and folded it.

“Do you think he’s coming tonight?” Hamal asked as they huddled together in the back corner of the hideout. No one asked who Hamal meant. They all knew. This was the last day before the Full Moon. The Piper was due.

Ernie hugged his pipe to him, the cold metal promising a cold night as it leeched the heat from his body. But he wouldn’t sleep without it. Not tonight. Not until the Piper had come and gone again. Not that it would help. Nothing seemed to stop the Piper.

“Maybe,” said Dottie, lying against Ernie’s left side. “Maybe he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Ernie said.

“Nope,” said Fisk, his left shoulder against Ernie’s right, on the outer edge of their togetherness. Nobody wanted to lay next to Fisk. Not even Dottie. Nobody but Ernie, the biggest, dared to.

“He’s here,” Fisk added, his voice flat.

Ernie’s eyes snapped open. “What–?” And then he heard the first haunting notes drifting on the wind.

A warmth spread through him as the music lulled and swelled, so different from what he normally felt. He tried to fight it, tried to shake off the lethargy that oozed in his mind and made his muscles relax despite his best efforts to tense them.

No…

He tried to say it, but his jaw only opened and hung there. He told his hands to cover his ears, to block the music, but they didn’t respond at all.

The melody rose and fell in a heady rhythm, sweet as candy, warm as a mother’s embrace.

Ernie surprised himself by not blinking or yawning. He felt so sleepy, so safe.

Beside him, Fisk stood up, carrying the gnawed hand skeleton.

He thought about talking to Fisk, telling him to come back. Or to at least get rid of that revolting hand. But Ernie understood. He wanted to seek out the source of the music too. He thought he was too tired, too content to get up, but he did it, without even thinking about it. Somehow. He saw Dottie and Chelsea and George and the others getting up too, on their hands and knees, waiting for him to follow Fisk so they could follow him.

He walked in time with the sound of the flute, a slow but happy rhythm that also matched his breathing, and his efforts to climb out of the hideout and drop down into the alley.

When he dropped down, he noticed that he still had his pipe, and wondered why he had brought that along. He would’ve dropped it, because it was cold and hard, and because it dragged as he walked and the noise sounded so unlike the music. But the music pulled him along, stronger now, clearer, sweeter than ever before, and he ignored the pipe, letting it drag behind him.

The music reminded him of blue skies with fluffy clouds and laying on green grass and imagining adventures with his brother and his sister. He couldn’t remember their names but their faces danced with him and laughed with him as kindly adults looked on.

“Toldja I’d getchya,” a man’s voice growled just before a dirty, scabby fist flashed through the visions of family and blue skies and music and smashed into Ernie’s cheek and jaw.

Blackness exploded behind Ernie’s eyes and pain and blood and a piece of tooth exploded in his mouth.

He stumbled, fell, his pipe clanging to the concrete beside him. He spit out the piece of tooth before he swallowed it and tried to remember where he was. He lay on his left side amid the trash of the alley. A small sneaker, once pink but now faded and dirty, stepped right in front of his face. Dottie’s shoe?

He thought he heard someone playing a flute. Beautiful music, played with skill.

Another growl. “You little punk bastard.” And then his stomach imploded as something heavy and blunt hammered into it and tried to ram it out his back.

Ernie gagged and tried not to throw up, tried to scramble to his feet, and get away from this monster that attacked him. He stumbled into George, but George didn’t notice, only kept walking down the alley with the other children, following the sound of the flute. Ernie pushed himself to his feet and looked around.

The man who had kicked him stood on the other side of the slow flow of children, looking down at the pipe Ernie had dropped.

The Piper. The name hit him almost as hard as the man’s boot. The man in front of him wasn’t the Piper. Someone else. Because Ernie could still hear the Piper playing.

But his thoughts were own. He was standing here, hurt and bleeding, not walking with the other children.

The other children, those from his gang, and those he only recognized, and some he had never seen before, still walked with steady steps down the alley. Then they stopped.

The man who had kicked Ernie bent over to pick up Ernie’s pipe.

“Hey!” Ernie yelled. “That’s mine!” He threw himself forward, knocking over a little boy he had never seen before. He rammed into the man and they both fell over.

“What the–?” the man shouted, trying to push Ernie away. Then trying to pull Ernie back under him.

Ernie squirmed his way free. He ignored the opportunity to kick the man in the face, and dove for his pipe.

His hands closed on the cold metal as he rolled over it, came up into a squat with it held in both hands. Just like a warrior, a protector of the weak.

And then he was on his feet, running away from the man, running down the alley to where the beautiful sounds of a flute still drifted in a melody that swayed with the standing children.

He saw the Piper then, for the first time. A tall man in a dark suit, holding a silver flute up to his puckered mouth, walking among the children, his eyes searching for this month’s victim. He stopped in front of a little girl with disheveled, dirty blond hair.

Dottie.

The Piper blew one last, lingering note, and then ceased playing. Around him the children still stood, no longer swaying, but waiting in anticipation. The Piper held the flute in his right hand as he took Dottie by the hand with his left.

“No!” Ernie shouted. He was too far away to strike at the Piper. Or maybe not. He raised the pipe as he ran and threw it, and it flew end over end at the Piper.

The Piper looked up then, and his eyes met Ernie’s, a look of compassion and seduction and Ernie wished he hadn’t thrown the pipe. “Look out!” he yelled, hoping that the Piper would duck in time.

Ernie almost cried when the pipe hit the Piper in the chest, staggering the man, and making him drop his flute. But he didn’t let go of Dottie’s hand. He picked up Dottie and ran with her out of the alley into the neon lights of the strip.

Blinking away tears, Ernie found that he had stopped. Because the Piper had wanted him to stop, had told him with those bright blue eyes to stop.

He looked around. Where was the Piper? Where was Dottie?

Then he remembered.

Ernie yelled in outrage. He didn’t have time to pick up his pipe. He hoped he wasn’t too late already. He saw that the other kids seemed to be blinking away the effects of the Piper’s music. “Come on!” he yelled. “The Piper! Let’s get him!”

And then he ran, not caring if they followed him or not.

He burst out of the alley into the heavier foot traffic and the unending lines of headlights and break lights and under the glaring red and yellow and blue neon lights of the strip. No child’s land. Because there were things here that ate children.

Like the Piper.

The curses of adults, more than just he caused, rose up like a wake behind him and Ernie knew that he wasn’t alone. He ran faster, and spotted the back of the Piper’s head.

His foot connected with something soft and Ernie went down, scraping his hands and his elbows and banging his knees on the curb of the gutter as small children’s feet jumped over him or stepped on him.

A woman with long, dark hair lay across the curb, half in the gutter, half on the sidewalk. Sobs racked her body, shaking her from head to foot. Her big boots, with their heavy soles, caught Ernie’s eye and he wished he had time to steal them. Then he saw what she held to her chest.

A gun. And a sword.

More children surged past him through the crowd of adults, still after the Piper, but Ernie had eyes only for the weapons. With these, he could–

The woman rolled over, prevented his first grab from making contact. So he climbed on her back, arms around her neck. She rolled over again and pinned him there. Then she rose up and came back down on him. Hard.

Her spine crushed the air out of his lungs and he gasped, let go. She rolled off him and sat facing him on the curb.

“Fuck off, kid,” the woman said, tears on her face. “These are mine.”

Behind him, tires squealed and horns blared. Ernie looked back and saw the Piper, leading Dottie by the hand, spotlighted by the headlights of a cab.

“There he is!” children’s voices called, and children came out of the crowd, swarming into the street between cars, causing more flashes of red break lights, more tires squealing, more horns.

Ernie looked back at the woman, made one more try to grab the sword. She blocked the grab by rapping him on the head with the hilt.

A little girl screamed, sounding like Dottie, and Ernie knew he had to go. He ran into the street, dodging around an old woman, then dodging around the moving cars. He heard another scream and squeals and a wet thump-thump that he didn’t want to know about.

He made it alive across the street and saw the trail of children, like a comet’s tail spreading behind the Piper, who was running, Dottie carried over his shoulder.

Ernie ran then, as he had never run before, to make up for almost losing Dottie because of a sword and a gun. He wove through the other running children, gaining on the Piper with a one track mind.

He was Dottie’s protector. He was all she had. And he wasn’t going to let her down.

The Piper came to stop, brought up short at an intersection by a long limo making a left.

Ernie didn’t slow down. He plowed into the Piper from behind, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist as the three of them fell to the asphalt.

As the other kids swarmed over him, Ernie fought to pull Dottie free. At first the Piper held on, but as more kids piled on and grabbed his arms and legs and head and stuck fingers in his eyes and hands down his throat and ripped at his clothes and flesh, Ernie pulled Dottie free.

He stumbled back, holding Dottie.

“Let me go,” she said, squirming in his arms. “Let me go!”

He let her go, then followed her back into the killing frenzy. Someone had brought his pipe along. He wrenched it from the protesting boy–”This is mine, kid,” he said, adding, “Fuck off”–and used it himself. To protect his little family.

Copyright © 2006 by David Michael.