He walked through the field trying to be as casual as possible. The overrun grass felt rough on his bare, scarred feet. He looked back several times at the tent. No one was following him. Soon, he could barely see the tent.
He entered the woods. These woods were his favorite place in all the world. Rays of sunlight shone through the trees, and a thousand secret sounds echoed through the air. He knew the woods by heart, and reveled in them while others were terrified. He knew the best way out, as well.
In minutes, he came upon the stone bridge. He stood there for a moment watching the water underneath flow into the distance.
He turned to walk away. Before he took the first step, something behind him snapped.
"Oh,no." Arnie whispered, unable to move. He stood still, in the middle of the bridge. They had followed him, silent and unseen, and they were going to bring him back in pieces-
"I'm not afraid of you," Arnie said, and turned. A deer gazed gently back at him.
"Both eyes," Arnie said. "You still have both eyes."
The deer pranced to the stream and drank the crystalline water.
Arnie crossed the bridge into the harsh sunlight again. In the distance, a dilapidated old farmhouse stood shimmering in the heat, and beyond that was the road. Someone had been paying attention to the grass here; there was not one weed.
As Arnie neared the farmhouse, he passed a cow lying in the grass. It was on its side, its intestines rotting in the heat. He passed another dead cow a moment later. This one had no eyes, and the grass was wet with vitreous humor. The last cow was a few yards away. It had imploded. Its insides had been forced through its eyes, mouth and nose. Too much methane in its stomachs, probably.
Strangely, Arnie wasn't terrified. He had not known fear for a few months, and a couple dead cows were nothing to him. Neither were dead people. Worth Ministries had changed him in a number of ways. He kept on walking, reaching the farmhouse minutes later.
There were mannequins on the front porch.
One was perched on the front steps, and there were two sitting in the swing hanging from the roof. There was one in the grass in front of the house, missing its arms and legs. From an upstairs window, one of them stared down at Arnie. There were probably a hundred more of those androgynous freaks in the house.
Arnie walked away from the house. He looked back more than once. "Who lives in there?" he asked out loud.
The road, only a short distance away, looked like salvation. Arnie climbed the small dirt rise, and stood on the asphalt, trying to decide which way to go. The trees on the other side of the road provided some shade. He tried to remember which way he had come. He was no good with directions; Arnie preferred to think in terms of right or left, backward or forward. He'd have to pick.
After awhile, his feet began to hurt. He wondered how many miles he had walked. The heat rising from the road didn't bother him. He sat down in the middle of the road and examined his feet. The stitches in his left ankle were loosening. It was the heat, he decided; the relentless sun.
Then, in the shimmering distance, Arnie saw a car. He stood, assuming the vehicle was only a mirage. As it drew closer, Arnie could hear all the tiny sounds of the car, sensing that it was a high-performance machine. The windows were tinted, as dark as the car itself. Arnie could only stare at first. It was so real compared to his recent experiences it seemed like an hallucination, but it was here right in front of him. The passenger side window rolled down. "Do you need help?" the driver asked. She was a middle-aged, imposing woman wearing a violet business suit and an amethyst wedding ring--
"Can I have a ride?" Arnie asked.
-and sunglasses.
"Get in," said the woman. She opened the door for him, and he got in. It was cool in the car. She floored the accelerator. "Let's get out of here," she said. "What's your name?"
"Arnie."
"Just Arnie?"
"Arnie Mander." For the first time, he really noticed the sunglasses that she was wearing.
"My name's Dalia. Dalia Kepornyk."
"Where are we going?"
"Where would you like to go?"
"Far away from here," Arnie said.
"Are you running away from home?"
"What? I'm twenty-two."
Dalia accepted that. For a while, neither of them said a word. Then, as they descended a sharp downgrade, Arnie asked, "Do you mind if I turn on the radio?"
"Go ahead."
As he searched the dial, Arnie said, "We should be able to get it...it's my favorite show."
He found it, and a viscous torrent of music poured from the speakers.
"What's this?" Dalia asked.
"It's called 'The Meatgrinder." Arnie said. "Goregrind from all over the planet."
"I've never been one for metal," Dalia laughed nervously.
"Well, this band is called Gut. They were from Germany. This song is called 'Dead Girls Don't Say No.'"
"Would you mind if I turned it down."
"Ordinarily, yeah, but go ahead. I had to keep this a secret."
"So what happened?" Dalia asked, as Brodequin's "Infested With Worms" began.
"This guy..." Arnie said, "his name is Reverend Worth...I don't know his first name...he made friends with my parents and turned them against me, and then he took their eyes-"
"Their eyes?"
"Most of the people around us, too. Bubba got it today, and I escaped-"
She was startled by his abrupt silence.
"Why are you wearing sunglasses?"
She stared at the road. "Do you know what macular degeneration is?"
"No, I don't."
"Quite simply, I only have some vision in my right eye. I can see out of the corners. The rest is darkness."
"Darkness?"
"I've learned to live with it."
"Well, it's--" Arnie stopped again. "This is a great song. Can I turn it up, please?"
"All right," she said, "What is it?"
"It's by Embalmer. 'Rotten Body Fluids.'"
Arnie reached for the volume control, and Dalia happened to look his way, catching a glimpse of corrupted skin. Even with her sunglasses on, it was apparent.
She stopped the car. "Are you all right, Arnie?" With her luck, he had the Ebola virus or some kind of flesh-eating bacteria and he had escaped containment--
"I'm okay," he said. "Why have we stopped?"
"I want to see your face, Arnie."
"Oh," Arnie said. "Okay," and he brushed the hair away from his face. "See, it's okay-"
Dalia looked at him, unable to scream because the sight of him had robbed her of breath.
"If you're wondering, they cut my nose off with a straight razor. They sewed it back on the first few times-"
Dalia searched for the door handle.
"--but Worth only got one of my eyes and I sewed the hole shut myself."
Dalia found the handle. She opened the door, and fell out of the car onto the frying asphalt. "It's okay," Arnie said, crawling across the seat, spilling halfway out of the car. "Don't be afraid-"
Dalia screamed, ravening her lungs, and threw herself at the door. Her shoulder hit the door hard, and the door swung toward Arnie, slamming into him and bouncing back to Dalia. Arnie slithered out of the car and began to leak all over the road, lying there in a broken heap.
Dalia got to her feet and kicked him in the ribs. She heard a satisfying CRUNCH and Arnie gurgled a scream.
She took her wedding ring off, then reached into the backseat and brought out a tire iron. Arnie looked back at her, weeping thick mucus out of the eye he had sewn shut. She hit him over and over until his skull gave way, and new fluids began to seep onto the asphalt.
She opened the trunk, then picked him up and dumped him inside.
She climbed back into the driver's seat and sat there for a moment.
"Not again," she whispered.
She turned up the music,"-Intense Hammer Rage as they perform 'Human Pie.'"
In the back, the shirt that Arnie had been carrying rested on the seat.
"It's not a trophy," Dalia said, starting the car. "It's just a souvenir."
As the music raged, Dalia thought about what she had just done. "I'm not a violent person," she said to herself.
Dalia was not a violent person. "I am not violent, I am not violent I am not violent I am NOT VIOLENT-" Sometimes she just had...urges. Even before her eye had degraded, she had had the strangest impulses.
She calmed down after awhile. Everything was fine. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was gorgeous, even with one eye.
Soon, she came upon a blemish on the scenery. There was a large, fleshy mess right in her path. The road was splattered with gore from one side to the other. Dalia stopped the car and got out, avoiding the blood, basking in the shade that the trees provided. She stood over the body, and even though it had been messily gutted, still recognized that it had been a deer. It was gutted--cleaned out. Its eyes were missing, too. "What kind of sick mother-" she asked herself, too angry to speak. Killing people--that was one thing and necessary, but killing nice cute fuzzy animals was different. That was why she was a vegetarian. At least vegetables didn't bleed when you ate them raw.
There was a rundown house across the way. Dalia, as furious as she was, stomped down the little hill and made her way to the house. It needed repairs, but the mannequins gave it ambience. She stalked up the steps and knocked on the door. "Hello?" she called.
"Can I help you?"
Dalia turned. She smiled at the bony old man. "Listen, there's a deer splattered all over the road there-if I could borrow a shovel and some Hefty bags-"
"Yeah, all right," he said. "It's a mystery to me, how it got there, lady. I have a shovel in the house."
As she turned, Dalia said, "Well, let's get-" and saw the door swing slowly open, and from the darkness a man emerged. He wore a bloodstained sackcloth, and held a jar filled with translucent liquid in his filthy hands.
And in the jar-
"Such lovely eyes," Worth said.