Cannon Fodder

Cannon Fodder
Mary Havens
3742 words


Lionel Hammond sat at the dirty kitchen table, twiddling his fingers in a nervous gesture. His long fingernails, torn in places and colored a sickly yellow, began to beat a steady drum against the cracked and faded linoleum that served as his tabletop.

He was a paranoid man now. The last year of hard living had completely obliterated any last vestiges of calm he had possessed. His bloodshot eyes darted back and forth, his sullen gaze finally stopping on the ancient icebox. He couldn’t help the shiver of fear that ran through his now thin body. He couldn’t stop the horror from etching across his face, turning his surly scowl into a visage of abject terror as the refrigerator danced softly against the cracked and peeling floor. The steady tap… tap… tapping that came from inside of the rusted door raised his fear an octave as he sat and watched… sat… and watched … and waited.

Something was in there, something vile, and wicked, waiting for him to open the crusty door: Waiting to be released into the world. His sunken eyes widened in fear, his slight body jerking in surprise when the compressor kicked in. It scared him so badly that a warm flow of urine slowly trickled down the inside of his thigh to drip onto the scabs of tile below him; the acidic odor adding a nice new fragrance to the stench of the room. The ancient Frigidaire started to shake harder, rocking violently back and forth against the dirty floor and cracked walls, but damn if he would let the things out. He shifted on the hard, vinyl seat; his frighteningly emaciated body causing the weak metal to creak in protest. The dank, sweaty bathrobe he wore clung stubbornly to the frighteningly starved, paper-thin skin that remained underneath, and still, he waited.

He sat back, the seat underneath his bony ass slick with moisture as his head lolled back on his neck. The unwashed mass of his greasy hair stuck to the flowery-patterned plastic on the back of the chair. His mind distantly registered the sound of the tiny bells ringing on the microwave and the heavy thuds of the refrigerator as it danced in place. The memories came as the red-veined lids of his eyes closed over the black orbs of his pupils. He thought about what had brought him here and why…

*

Once upon a time, he’d been a regular guy. Overweight, but still normal. He hadn’t always looked like the living skeleton he was now, and had in fact, been a rather large man, his girth eliciting looks of disgust from people on the street. Rolls of fat had lined his form, jiggling with a gelatinous wave that shook his frame, but he didn’t really care what anyone thought of him.
.
He’d been different then, his mind working normally, his body fat and well fed. He’d had a job, a car; a family…

But those things were long gone. Better to leave them in the past… forgotten.

His loose, blackened teeth gnawed on his thin lips, tearing thin strips of skin away to reveal bloody flesh, the room seemed to fade away. The dark emptiness of his mind filled with memories.

He wouldn’t have that life again.

This was the life he had now. The forbidding refrigerator shook slightly against the cracked and peeling wall, as his thoughts returned to the past. He sat and waited, the memories rolling in like the fog off a riverbank: An easy escape from the violent terror that threatened to consume him.

One little murder conviction was all it had taken.

Oddly enough, thinking about the way things were now, he would almost prefer being back in prison. At least while he was in the pen, he knew what he’d been up against.

For ten long years, he’d lived in a cell, fighting off other inmates bent on beating him down. Sometimes he’d won… other times, he’d lost. But his mind had known what to expect and there had been few surprises. At the time, he’d have given anything, absolutely anything, to be out of that place. If someone had asked him for his right arm or his left nut, he would have gladly given it up.

But those appealing bodily appendages hadn’t been asked for, and he had had to wait, just like every other Tom, Dick, and Harry for his parole to come up. When it had, he’d been ecstatic… a joy and hope for freedom that those outside of prison bars seldom felt.

Freedom had been shining bright before him, and he’d grabbed at it with both hands. He moved into the safe house for violent offenders that had been a stipulation of his release. His probation officer checked in on him once a week in the beginning; then fell off to once a month; then, finally, the stuffed suit PO had let him know that he was okay to find a place of his own.

He’d started scanning the classifieds; the never-lists of apartments and houses for rent blurring his vision as he scanned the paper. He wanted his own private little slice of paradise. He wanted a place where he could be free to move; where there weren’t ten other convicts sharing a bathroom, or lighting up the night with flatulence that made a man’s eye’s burn.

He’d been foolishly surprised when he’d been turned down at the first apartment complex he’d applied to. He remembered the fear that had been in the man’s eyes when he’d walked in the door to find out if he’d been approved or not.

“I’m sorry Mr. Hammond, our policy is that we don’t rent any of our properties to violent offenders…”

He’d beat the streets for almost a year, filling out applications and seeing landlords only to be told the same thing over and over again.

It had become a mantra, that phrase… ‘We don’t rent to violent offenders’… one he was eternally tired of hearing. Finding a place to live was impossible for him. No one wanted a felon living in their nice little cul-de-sacs or subdivisions.

The system expected ex-cons to be rehabilitated enough to rejoin society, but the kicker was, society didn’t want them, or him.

It was pure serendipity that he found the ad in the classifieds that day. He’d been sitting at the table, eating, stuffing his florid face with a fried bologna sandwich. Thick drips of grease splashed on the paper, drawing his eyes to the ad. It had seemed innocuous enough. A plain ad, its black block print shouting out at him.

What did he have to lose? All they could do was tell him no.

He answered the ad, his fat fingers hitting the numbers on the house phone to call the place and get directions before he changed into his best church-going clothes. He stepped out the door, the feel of the mid-summer sun warming his shoulders instilling a faint sense of hope within him as he walked. His cumbersome weight slowed him as his feet pounded on the sidewalk and he plodded along.

He’d walked along the cracked sidewalk. A coarse shiver of fear ran rampant in his large body as he neared the complex. He slowed to a crawl as he came to the address that was written on his hand, his gaze taking in the building and its surroundings. The wrought iron gate was ancient, with heavy spikes poking up along the top edges… prison bars with a bite. The sharp pointed gate surrounded the entire complex, reminding him of the bars on his prison cell and the yard where the inmates milled around. It wasn’t that large – one medium-sized complex that had maybe ten full apartments. There were smaller outbuildings for storage – little huts where he knew garden or maybe yard equipment was stored. There was no pool, no recreation facility, but he hadn’t really expected one. Still, the yard was clean, no trash, no blaring music. In fact, it had seemed quiet. Nevertheless, a shiver of apprehension ran along his spine… some internal warning signal was telling him to run… run and not look back.

He pushed the disquieting feeling away ruthlessly. He was tired of living at the safe house. He just wanted a place of his own and he glad to not have to try and explain his conviction. He would only have to write it down on the application and the complex management would take it from there if he were approved to rent.

He walked up the quiet, clean sidewalk and stepped inside, finding the lobby clean and well kept. Certainly not like the roach-infested cubicle of an apartment the old lady had shown him later, but he didn’t really care… they were willing to rent to him. That’s all that matter.

Finally… after so many years, he would finally have his own place again.

He jumped and moved in the very same day he’d gotten approval.

It didn’t take him long to pack up his meager belongings from the single room he occupied at the safe house. A single suitcase that held all the clothes he possessed; and a small fishbowl with a solitary goldfish walked with him out the door and into the bright, sunshine-filled day.

He walked ten blocks, in mid-day heat, to the complex. The pointed gate seemed to welcome him home as it creaked open, allowing him entrance onto the grounds. Taking care of the particulars, he walked up four flights of winding stairs to the third floor. His head was down, his chin almost touching his chest; his arms loaded with the sloshing fishbowl when he finally came to 3A.

His place.

A thrill of excitement ran along his body, making his hand tremble with fine tremors, before he was finally able to push the key into the lock. He shoved the door open with a beefy shoulder, his head peeking around the partially open door to find… a shit-hole.

But it was his shit-hole.

He’d started hearing the little creaks and moans within the first week. He was sure that it was the roaches and rats. The sound of their tiny feet scratching on the inside of the walls was constant in the small space. They scurried back and forth between the sheetrock covered two by fours and overhead along the ceiling at all hours. It probably was them… then. After about a month in the firetrap, though, the wicked little whispers had started. Soft whispers that drove him crazy in the middle of the night when he’d tried to sleep on the crunchy sheets that were heaped on the foldout sofa.

They said sinister things. Their sly voices ran rampant in the small efficiency apartment so that he’d eventually stopped sleeping at night. He stayed up through the darkest hours, his beady eyes watching infomercials and bad b-movies until the early morning hours; his heavy lids unable to stay up any longer; his mind a muddled mass of useless gray matter.

It seemed to work… for a while.

Then the menacing murmurs started during the day as well, and there was no escape for him.

He tried… god knows he tried to escape them. He started going out. He slept sometimes at the bus station even though he paid good money to rent the little rattrap apartment. But eventually, no matter where he went or what he was doing, the sly whispers followed. They were insidious and wicked, murmuring such outrageous, deviant suggestions that he had no option but to talk back. His rants drew so much attention that he just gave up going out in public. He chose to sit in his virulent apartment instead, alone and in despair.

He’d tried to tell the old bat who collected the rent that there were things in the kitchen… things that were trying to get out, but the old, haggard woman had just cackled, her black, rotting teeth on display in a lined face.

“Sure… the rats jus wanna come out an play wit ya.”

Lionel had shaken his head, greasy strands of black, unwashed hair stuck to his pimply forehead as he stood in the doorway of the apartment. The smell of urine coming from the dank hallway inundated him, cleaving to the back of his throat like fetid syrup. “That ain’t rats in there lady… there’s something else waitin’ in that there kitchen.” His meaty hand had shaken when he’d pointed over his massive shoulder into the open doorway.

“Maybe it’s jus the roaches then, huh?” she asked before snatching the rent money out of his beefy hand and walking away.

No… it wasn’t roaches and it wasn’t rats. Even though there were plenty in there.

No… this was something else altogether.

Something that scared the hell out of him…

Uncommon though it was, he cleaned himself up, and started looking for another place to live. He circled newspaper ads and made himself go down to the local laundry to wash his soiled clothes and check the local boards. He’d taken to wearing a cheap Walkman, listening to endless radio stations. He tried to block out the fanatical whispering. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Whatever it was, it was getting angry, annoyed that he managed to escape its horrifying taunts at times. They grew louder and menacing when they had the chance.

He’d checked out five different places in two weeks – a record for him – but it was always the same. He’d lost track of the countless applications he’d filled out; lost track of apartment managers and landlords all saying the same thing, “I’m sorry Mr. Hammond, but we just can’t take the risk of renting to you.”

He’d lost faith in Equal Opportunity Housing, and it didn’t make a difference that he was clean, had been clean for over five years. He didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to fight for him in the courts anyway. Of course, they had all known that.

One little murder conviction was all it took. Now, he was stuck in the hellhole that had become his prison. Even the safe house wouldn’t have him back, saying that since he wasn’t being thrown out or asked to leave, they wouldn’t be able to offer him a room.

The jerks…

Never a fastidious man to begin with, his apartment soon became a festering place of contagion. Rat droppings covered the counters that were overrun with dirty dishes and old take-out Chinese boxes. Roaches ran unchecked, burrowing into the sheets and blankets on the foldout couch he slept on. He stayed to himself; leaving the rancid apartment only long enough to cash a government check once a month. He even stopped opening the door for the landlady. He offered the rent money to her by pushing it under the door, unwilling to look at her repulsive face lest he grant the world a favor by ridding it of her.

The voices chuckled, urging him on, begging for him to do it.

They became louder and more insistent. Soon, he began tracking the ominous voices. He trailed around his grubby apartment, wandering listlessly around in a tatty blue bathrobe and foul slippers. His fat feet slid along the floor in a roving, unbalanced circle. His bulging stomach pushed the front of his robe out so that it tented around him, floating in the foul air. He spoke to them – those awful voices – catching a murmur here and there before realizing they were coming from the small, disgusting kitchen.

He’d taken to sitting there in that squalid room. His unwashed skin stuck to the vinyl seats. His huge buttocks slipped over the edge of the chair while he carried on conversations with those voices, his own rising and falling as he argued and coaxed.

The voices had grown louder, teasing and taunting him, as if they had known he was trying to make a break for it.

“You won’t be able to leave us, Lionel”…

He’d wanted to scream. He wanted to yell. He wanted to fight back. But he knew, somehow, that they were right. No other place would take him in. So he’d started talking back. He left off the headphones, listening intently to the terrifying voices that slithered around him, trying to figure out what they wanted.

“You know what we want, Lionel”…

No… he didn’t.

“You know why you’re here Lionel”…

No, he didn’t.

“You know we’ll never let you leave Lionel”…

Yeah… unfortunately, he did know that.

The days and nights passed by in a blur that he couldn’t remember. Months layered, one on top of the other, until a full year passed. By then, his mind was a desecrated place of darkness. The voices seemed to know when he needed to go out, and left him alone then, but other than those necessary times, they were constantly with him.

Whispering… whispering… always whispering some vile, maggoty thing in his brain.

“You know you want to Lionel… just do it… it will feel so verrry good”…

Yeah right…

He lived for those hours every month when the voices stopped their murmuring. He took pleasure in the brief moments when his mind seemed like it used to, but the whispering always came back.

On those days, he cheated. He walked the city for hours even though his body was becoming weaker and weaker. He walked until the insidious slithers started again in his mind and pushed him to the check-cashing place down the street from the apartment, urging him to come back to them.

He hated coming back to the place.

He hated the whispers.

He hated everything.

So he sat waiting for the voices to finally crack his mind or let him go, but he was betting on the cracking happening first. He started sleeping in that chair. He started eating what little food he did eat in that chair. Eventually, he even stopped pushing the envelope under the door when the landlady came by at the first of the month. He would hear the pounding on the door; hear her calling out his name.

“Lionel… you fat bastard… rent’s due!”

In the back of his mind was the thought that if he didn’t pay rent, they would evict him. But wouldn’t you know it… five months went by without a word being said. She would come every month, pound on the door three times and leave.

So much for getting thrown out…

Yes… he lived in that chair. His body became thinner and thinner, losing the rolls of fat until only a bony skeleton remained under the fragile skin. His face became a morbid parody of the full, healthy face he’d once had…

*

The click of an opening door brought him out of his reverie. His gaze focused on the refrigerator. He watched as the filthy door creaked open a crack.

Finally, after so long, the vile creatures were going to show themselves.

He wasn’t really surprised. He had been dozing in that chair wrapped in his soiled bathrobe. The chill of sitting in urine and feces becoming more pronounced when the door opened fully and a cold blast of air came rushing out at him.

“Lionellllllll... Lioooonnellll…”

His crusty eyelids opened wider, taking in the view of the small creatures before him. The two of them were black… utterly black, no other color showing on their miniature forms, their empty eyes endless wells of misery and death.

So this is what the creature looked like…he couldn’t say he was entirely surprised by them. Their fetid breath brushed his thin skin, roving over it in a disgusting wave of pure menace.

“You are so close, Lionel… so close now…” Their hideous whispering was real now: A very real sound in the quiet room: A sound he realized he was hearing out loud for the first time.

He managed to turn his head, slowly and somewhat painfully to look fully upon them.

“What do you want?” His voice an empty cave, no emotion or feeling ringing in the tired tone.

“Don’t you know by now, Lionel? Our master says the time is coming soon for you to join us.”

A dry cackle escaped his cracked lips, the sound ricocheting in the silent room.

“Your master? Should I even ask?”

“Why ask when you already know?”

“Why? Just answer that one question for me…why me?”

“You answered the ad, Lionel… only the worst offenders… remember?”

A hysterical laugh escaped him: A psychotic giggle that he couldn’t contain.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me…”

A deep, shuddering breath left his body, and a struggle ensued to try and bring more oxygen in. “You’re telling me that I’m going to hell because I answered the ad?”

“Those who come here go to him, Lionel…”

As the last breath left his body, Lionel’s mind finally broke, and he left life as silently as his mother had always said he had entered it.

*

From the Evening Edition of Wakefield Daily Newspaper
20 January 2007
Julie Burns

A local man, convicted of murder seventeen years ago was found dead in his home, apparently of starvation. Neighbors say Mr. Hammond was a quiet man, and kept to himself. It made headline news just a little over a year ago when Mr. Hammond, paroled six years ago, made an attempt to clear his name in the murder conviction that had sent him to prison for over ten years, claiming new evidence about the murder.

A former inmate had apparently confessed to the murder of Jane Whittleton, the murder for which Mr. Hammond was convicted of. According to new DNA evidence, Mr. Hammond could not have committed the crime; however, prosecutors in the case refused to retry the case with new evidence, which prompted immediate outrage from Mr. Hammond’s family and friends.

The Innocence Committee was investigating the claims of innocence when Mr. Hammond was found in his home earlier this week.

They had been unable to reach Mr. Hammond to corroborate his claim.

*

From the Evening Edition of the Wakefield Daily Newspaper
20 January 2007
Classified Ads

Small efficiency apartment available to rent… $350.00 per month all bills paid… we only rent to persons convicted of violent crimes… all others need not apply… please contact Shelly Jones at 405-3343 – Hellishere House – for more information and application procedures…