Lurkers Read online

  Her mobilephone was still dead, along with everything else—iPod Touch, Flip Mino, and probably whatever promotional shit she’d stashed here in the dressing room over the years. Feeling her way to the makeup table, she groped for a lighter, igniting her meditation candles. The dead lightbulbs bordering the threeway mirror leaped and lurched in the flickering light.

  The mirror itself was a nightmare. Crying and underlit, she looked a hundred years old, high, tight cheekbones in the controlled, measured lighting of the studio now casting waxing and waning shadows upon her sculpted nose. Her light, greenish brown eyes, hidden behind oversized pupils, looked cold and dead; her trendy rose lips with that hint of mauve were as purple as the latestage decay of some prehistoric creature dredged up from the lowest trenches of the ocean.

  The candles popped and fizzled minutely, evident only in a silence this dead. She noticed that she was holding her breath, and forced herself to exhale slowly and quietly, not upsetting the meagre flames of the candles, not reminding the monsters to keep looking for her.

  And they were monsters: more legs than any animal should have, those grabby external teeth—

  mandibles

  —clicking and clacking and possibly sensing. Like millipedes the size of motorbikes, and yet far less charming. Massive and solid, yet able to slither silently and mercilessly; endlessly. And their eyes: bugeyed more metaphorically than literally, not insectoid in any sense, but crazy, bulbous orbs more at home in the face of an eel.

  They were going to get in. Through the door, past the sofa; through leadlined cinderblocks if that was their goal.

  Through the mirror containing her centennial, underlit self.

  She reached for the phone on the counter—an archaic landline—wincing as her trembling fingers banged the receiver against the teeth of the cradle, the muted bell seeming to echo within the room. There was no dialtone; there was no tone at all; it was simply dead. She set the receiver on the counter next to the base, not wanting to ring the bell within again, hoping to hear a dialtone magically begin, knowing she’d never live that long.

  I threw my cigarette into the carpark and read it over. I suppose, my own disbelief for the possibility behind the story aside, I was okay with the more upfront bits: the people caught in this ridiculous circumstance, their reactions, and their plans and failures in a world being invaded by angry monsters. If I hadn’t begun by begging the question of aliens, instead pulling the insects off some forgotten continent or directing their escape from some clichéd weapons lab, the play by play of the story itself might have worked for me. Writing may not be an exact science; but, to me at least, reading is: if I catch a flaw in a literary hypothesis, the whole thing is scrapped until it’s gone back to the drawingboard, been revised, and been resubmitted for peer review.

  Technically, I was still in the drawingboard phase, potentially able to rectify the mathematical impossibility of my starbugs discovering Earth in these first several billion years following the bigbang, either through dialogue conceding that no one would ever know, or through some borderline magical technological means I hadn’t yet thought up. Still, every word which wasn’t the explanation I was still waiting to discover remained a difficult word to type in earnest.

  The laptop’s screen snapped to black—not the result of an EMP, but of the settings telling the monitor to die after sixty seconds of inactivity on battery power alone; four more minutes, and the drive would hibernate, leaving its programmes running nominally in the background, potentially for weeks. I hit Control and End to set the cursor to the last line of untitled2009.doc and bring the screen back to life; the battery was now at ninety-three percent and falling.

  I looked out at the carpark: my car, Chuck’s, Jessica’s, Larry the Manager’s, Hutch’s dismal little automotive abomination, a technically unidentified airsick green Toyota Prius displaying more aftermarket stickers than any known HotTopic; if George had a car, I’d never seen it. Suddenly I wished I’d brought the Santa Cruz with me so I could skate around a bit and think: the negative effects of deadlines are equal to but opposite the effects of being away from the laptop, thinking, without any chance of writing anything down—something else no one but other writers would understand is that more gets done while driving or skating or playing videogames than while actually sitting in any functional proximity to the word processor. The screen went black again as I lit another cigarette.

  A moment later, having parked somewhere in back of the building, Davis and NotDavis appeared, copswaggering, thumbs hooked into their little batbelts, approaching the door.

  NotDavis, whom I suppose I can just call Jackson [he really did remind me of Samuel L Jackson, whether or not by intent], saw me sitting against the window. ‘You’re still here?’ He asked.

  ‘I’m still writing,’ I said, ‘I came out here to smoke while I’m doing it.’

  ‘You know you can’t smoke within fifteen feet of an opening door?’ It seemed more like a real question than an announcement.

  ‘I didn’t bring my rangefinder with me,’ I said.

  He grinned easily. ‘Don’t worry: I didn’t see you breaking a bullshit law.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said.

  ‘So, whatcha writing,’ he asked, ‘A book?’

  ‘A novel,’ I said, ‘Alien invasion thing. If I don’t just give up and scrap it.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’

  ‘Maybe to read. To write, it kinda sucks.’

  ‘I’ve always wished I could do that,’ Jackson said, ‘Write books. I kinda suck at it.’

  ‘On the bright side,’ I said, ‘you get to run red lights.’

  He grinned again. ‘Only in the right car.’

  ‘Seriously? Other cops’ll give you a ticket?’

  He grinned more widely. ‘Off the record?’

  ‘I’m a novelist, not a journalist.’

  He shrugged. ‘If another cop pulls me over when I’m not on duty, I can usually just flash my badge.’

  Davis pulled the door open, telling me ‘You’re okay: I can get through’ as if I’d tried to move out of his way.

  Jackson caught the door and held it open. ‘You coming back in, or just hanging out here for a while.’

  I looked at my cigarette. ‘Probably coming back in: sitting out here isn’t making the book suck much less.’ I threw my cigarette into the carpark as I stood up, walking through the door Jackson was holding for me.

  ‘You know that’s littering,’ he said.

  ‘I know it wouldn’t be if there were ashtrays,’ I told him, ‘But people voted against those.’

  ‘Not bad,’ he said, following and letting the door close behind him.

  ‘So what happened with those twerps earlier,’ I asked, ‘What was it, Jamal and Lamar?’

  He shrugged. ‘They went to jail. Concealed weapons without a permit.’

  ‘No assault charge?’ I asked.

  ‘They went quietly. Was there an assault?’

  ‘They blathered at me without permission,’ I said, ‘A case could be made.’

  ‘If you wanted to file a report,’ he said.

  ‘And waste more time on those idiots? I didn’t see a thing, Officer.’

  ‘So there you go,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve filed reports before,’ I said, ‘This little twerp hit me with a wrench. No one cared.’

  ‘When was this.’

  ‘Years ago. Last century. The next guy he hit, he hit with gun. Killed him. People cared about that. He’s in prison now.’

  ‘That’s kinda the way it works,’ Jackson said, ‘Once a fuckup, always a fuckup; they all go to the greybar in the end. Hey: I guess we’re sitting over here; take it easy.’ And he swaggered over to join Davis.

  I got to 71 and sat down next to my backpack.

  ‘Problem?’ Leslie asked.

  ‘Nope,’ I said, ‘Just following up on the goofs from earlier. They were charged with concealing weapons.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Reclaiming the powerc
ord, I plugged it back into the laptop, brightening the screen and replacing the battery icon in the tray with a plug beneath a lightningbolt.

  ‘Four hours and nine minutes!’ George called. I looked at the clock next to the plug and lightningbolt: 1.59.

  ‘This is going to be a long night,’ Leslie told me.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘On the other hand, it might let me know how much I can write per minute.

  ‘You’re still writing?’

  ‘I added a page or two outside, while I was smoking. They raided the studio; that talkshow host is hiding in her dressing room now.’

  ‘Can I read it?’

  ‘Um....’ I looked at the screen, paging up and down a bit, ‘I guess so. It just kinda runs out at the end, for now. Though I guess maybe it’s a good place to end the subchapter for a while.’ I turned the laptop toward Leslie, making sure the powercord remained connected.

  She moved up to the beginning of Chapter Eighteen and cleared her throat. ‘Chapter Eighteen,’ she read, ‘Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame.’ Then she stopped reading.

  ‘What,’ I said.

  ‘I dunno. There’s something weird about it, I guess. “twisted the deadbolt”? You don’t really twist a deadbolt: you twist the little twisty thing connected to the deadbolt.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘If there’s a better word for “twisty thing”.’

  ‘I guess it’s okay,’ she said, ‘I suppose you can go back and fix it later if you have a better way of writing it.’

  I was trying to think of the actual term for the twisty thing when George announced the time: ‘Four hours and eight minutes!’ It was two o’clock in the morning.

  NINETEEN

  The Russians have this great word: It happens to be pronounced approximately the same as the more recent English word pogrom—officially, something of an organised destruction or massacre; functionally, the instance of large groups of drunk morons all finding a restaurant at two in the morning. See also conniption, paroxysm, and ragnarok. George announced the ETA for his lizardpeople; the laptop tracking atomic time updated to 2.00; my watch beeped, dropping planes out of the sky; and the pogrom began: scores of slobbering, selfsatisfied Americans [in historic, smoky times, they’d have numbered minimally in the hundreds] appearing as a single if unrelated group in the lobby. They didn’t wonk their ways in, as George’s repticons would have—they used the door, to varying degrees of success—but their presence, unannounced and unwelcome, still seemed to occur somewhere in a fraction of a second. In that instant, I, Leslie, and Chuck, HippyGuy and HippyChick, Hutch, George, and the two cops over in the vestigial nonsmoking section became the tolerable minority; now we were outnumbered, if not necessarily outgunned, by minimally exceptional asshats primarily of the Brokeback Mountain persuasion.

  Larry the Manager remained in hiding, sniffing out those pesky bombs in Minesweeper, leaving Jessica alone out in the public area to—in no logical order—seat those of the pubrush selfaware enough to wait to be seated, send their lesser counterparts back to the end of the line in the lobby, and promise each and every selectively amnesiac idiot that she’d be back as soon as humanly possible to get their drinks, none of which really worked very well. Covering those events precisely would take more pages than I feel comfortable releasing as a completed manuscript; omitting them entirely seems equally unprofessional; so, here’s at least some of what happened, beginning at two in the morning....

  For the first minute or so after two in the morning, Jessica simply ignored the rash of morons invading the restaurant, instead dealing with Davis and Jackson, whom she’d seated in 11 [see the chart back on Page 99], bringing them their coffee and asking what they’d like to eat. That handled, she continued to ignore those waiting correctly in something resembling a line in the lobby, stopping at every table suddenly occupied illegally by those lacking the mental wherewithal to wait to be seated as recommended merely by the large, clearly printed Please Wait to Be Seated sign affixed to the podium by massive, Dremelstripped screws similar to those used to assemble everything in the restrooms and asking, telling, and eventually ordering these illiterate imbeciles to return to the lobby, to the end of the line, to wait to be seated, which necessarily had to happen before they got anything to eat or drink. Some denied having seen this cyclopean sign; some whimpered that having to wait to be seated was a stupid policy, therefore amended by the lawless adage that the customer is always right; some lacked the basic selfawareness to grok the issue itself, requiring a particularly remedial dialect of babytalk before getting the vastly complex point and shuffling back to the lobby amidst magniloquent complaints, some actually containing the laughably anachronistic Well I Never.

  Keeping track of Jessica throughout, I caught her reacting to Jackson asking whether she needed any help by shaking her head—a harmless lie similar to the one a few hours earlier, when she denied that I was the sort likely to carry a gun in my backpack.

  ‘Four hours and seven minutes!’ George announced, to the unpleasant snickering of those drunks selfseated without permission here in the vestiges of the smoking section; moving from booth to booth, Jessica ordered them back to the end of the line in the lobby.

  The chaotic invasion contained properly in the lobby again, Jessica reverted to form, beginning to seat each party in turn, sequentially, depositing the first into 12, the next into 13, the next into 14, the next into 15, and the next into the second row, beginning with 21; eventually, she dropped a party into 74, between Hutch and George [asking neither lurker to leave to make more room]; the final few parties, comprising a total of about thirty people, were left in the lobby, given the choice between waiting for the next open table [probably, any of them could have opted to sit with Hutch, but she didn’t tempt anyone with that poisoned apple] or leaving and finding less packed a place to eat, pass out, or whatever else any of them was likely to do beyond the lobby, in either direction. Everyone seated who was going to be seated, for the moment, Jessica returned to the first row, to 12, to start asking what everyone would like to drink—something of a loaded question allowing for the infinitely droll plagiarism of that pioneering fucktard who first ordered a Jack and Coke at a campfire lacking a liquor licence in neolithic times.

  One of the ’tards sitting in 74 stopped sitting in 74, instead approaching 71, wherein sat I, to ask, regarding my HP7140US laptop, ‘Yo: is that a computer?’

  Instead of answering him, I pulled out my phone, set it to film video, and framed him in its display, hitting the Record Button. Then I explained, probably more for the benefit of those watching the footage later, who might stand a glacier’s chance in hell of understanding the paradigm: ‘I’ve got a policy: anyone who beleaguers me without my permission while I’m working becomes famous; go.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Which word confused you.’

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘—what...what?’ And he laughed nervously for a few seconds before apparently rebooting his 4bit little brain.

  ‘Dead air, Dummy,’ I said, ‘You’re wasting your fifteen minutes.’

  ‘No,’ he slurred, ‘Is that a computer, there.’

  ‘Yes: the laptop computer here is a computer not unlike the Eniac serving as its prototype but for its size, speed, storage, powerdrain, and ability to perplex stupid people.’

  The ’tard took predictable offence: ‘What’s “stupid people” s’posed to mean.’

  ‘That you wouldn’t recognise a joke if you happened to look down while taking a leak,’ I said.

  Remarkably, the ’tard matched up that sequence of words to a baselayer of referential images somewhere to the left of his subroutine of breathe in; breathe out down in the don’t piss yourself batchfile of his brain, taking yet more unimportant offence: ‘Yo: you tryne to say something, muhfugger?!?’

  I looked him over, co
nfirming his empirical whiteness before frowning decisively and agreeing: ‘And, being impossibly skilled, succeeding, too.’

  ‘Oh, you think you funny,’ the wigger told me.

  ‘My readers think—haven’t I done you already?’

  ‘Say what?!?’

  ‘Big word, big word, huge word, big word, small but unknown word, big word, big word,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What would you say if I took this outside.’

  ‘Depending what I did,’ I said, ‘either that it was funny that you’d forgotten how to eat, or that it was funny that a big, strong plebeian like yourself had got beat up by a genius.’

  ‘Oh, you want some a’this,’ he said.

  ‘Not really: item flimsy and stupid; would not buy again.’

  ‘Four hours and six minutes!’

  Turning the phone on myself: ‘For those playing along at home: George has taken to counting down to the end of the world. Or just sunrise. To whatever degree those might be different things.’ And I turned the lense back ’tardward to frame the wigger again. ‘So. You were whimpering...?’

  ‘Whatever,’ the wigger said.

  I tilted the phonecam to include HippyGuy in the frame to the left of the wigger. ‘Have you met the masterdebater here?’

  ‘Whatever,’ HippyGuy said.

  ‘Thanks for playing,’ I told him, swinging the phonecam back to centre upon the wigger. ‘You know what your problem is?’

  The wigger opened his mouth, probably as something of a preamble to blathering something; but I didn’t care.

  ‘Well, I say “problem” as though your intellectual maladies are singular; but a problem endemic to you idiots—and, by “idiots”, I mean you, developmentally disabled to the extent that you're unable to grasp the advanced concept understood by more erudite stupid people—that you're just another boring, financially overprivileged, suburban white kid whose homophobia—that's Greek for “selfhatred”, by the way—sends you immediately to the uninspired conclusion that you’d be far cooler if you were black; and, while I’m inclined to agree with that presumption in systemic terms, the sad fact remains that, black though you may wish you were—possibly to allow you to remain lazy and unimportant in a world afraid to view actual blackrifan blackimericans as anything but righteously justified following overinflated millennia of exceptionless oppression—you’re white, Dude; at the least, you could look, talk, and dress more like a failed evil investment banker, as per your caucasoid pigmentational shortcomings.’