The Head In The Bag

Fishman pulled his non-descript Ford sedan into the shadowy car park of a cheap motel with an old-school sixties vibe that called to him. The Stargazer. He needed sleep desperately, his bones felt wonky in his skin. He grabbed a black wheelie suitcase out of the trunk. As he passed the passenger side of the car, he pulled out a bowling bag. It was navy blue, with a white Nike swoosh in one corner. As he dragged the rolley, he hefted the bag’s straps over his shoulder and carried it like a lady’s purse. It weighed twelve pounds. He pulled sunglasses from his pocket and put them on though it was after eleven PM.

He was a man of average height and average looks. Dark brown hair, clean shaven face, cheap suit, pale blue eyes. And since this was his last gig, he didn’t stifle his swagger as he usually did. By this time next week, Joel Aaron Fishman would be 3,000 miles away, cruising the Keys in Florence, his 1973 Pontiac Trans-Am, wearing casual but stylish Tom Ford and his grandfather’s 18K Rolex.

The clerk was engrossed in a Netflix show…Breaking Bad. Fishman loved that series. In some ways it encouraged his mind to accept doing things that might seem a tad unorthodox. The best thing he realized at the end was that he himself didn’t have a shrewish screeching wife hanging off his back. Fishman stopped himself from commenting on Jesse’s latest freakout and softly cleared his throat instead for attention.

The room was simple and clean, with Eames era styled brown chairs and table. The tv was outdated and the bedspread antique orange floral. He smiled and removed his sunglasses, deposited his suitcase, and doused his face with cool water in the bathroom. The bowling bag was on the counter. Nothing was leaking from it. He looked into the mirror, turning his head from side to side…and sighed when blue-grey his eyes caught the light. The glow was there. At least he didn’t grimace at the sight anymore.

He put the bowling bag under the bed and donned the glasses again as he went out in search of sustenance.

Sitting at the bar next door, a Woodford Manhattan in front of him, extra cherries, he listened to the singer while watching the entire small divey place through the backbar mirrors. She was no Holliday or Simone, but she had a certain grungy sound to her jazz numbers he liked. And she was easy on the eyes, even through the shades.

Loud drunken laughter emitted behind him and an elbow nudged his shoulder though the bar was far from packed.

‘Fuck.’ he thought. ‘Here we go again.’

“I wear my suuunglasses at night…” crooned the guy behind him, off key and about to bleed.

Fishman was annoyed. He liked the singer. He liked his cocktail. He stood, whirled, and growled, “Go away. Now. Let the lady sing in peace.”

“Listen to the faggot,” the young idjit said to his buddies. “He be soooo coo---”

The young man’s face slid sideways as a fist slimed it faster than the eye could see. His body dropped like a sack of rocks. The two buddies looked at each other and predictably made the wrong moves…ijit two attempted to throat punch Joel (a cheap move if you have no other) and he blocked it easily, grabbed the guy’s tee, and swung him over his left arm, flipping him onto his back. Ijit three gaped like a goldfish out of water but made an attempt to side kick Joel. Joel knew it was coming and grabbed the leg. The dude was left on the bar floor with a knee joint bent the wrong way.

‘Ugh. Story of my life.’ Then he realized that every face in the now quiet bar was looking at him. The crowd let him leave. It wasn’t the first time he’d been 86’d from a place he’d liked. C’est la vie, c’est la gar. Truth be told, he’d been a magnet for conflict for the past eight years; eight years ago, he’d found his life’s calling, his specialty, his forte.

In his motel room, he placed his hands in his head and sighed.

A knock at the door jerked his senses into defense mode. He assumed it was the kid at the desk asking some inane question. He put on his sunglasses and opened the door.

It was not the clerk.

It was the singer from the dive bar.

She was still wearing the lowcut slinky green dress, her breasts were firm and perky, her waist slim with a small pouge, her legs were long and smooth as they teased out the long slit in the gown. Her coffee and cream skin begged to be caressed by a hand with a feather-light touch. Her dark eyes were wide and black in the yellowy buzzing light above the door. Joel’s pulse jotted up a notch from mild shock then another as he took in her close-up beauty. She nervously tucked a dark lock behind her ear. “Hello.”

Fishman opened the door wide and stepped aside.

As Fiona was unbuttoning his shirt, she cooed, “Take off the glasses honey, take em off for this sugar bear. No need to hide from me.”

Joel’s hand went to the frame but he hesitated, knowing and dreading the questions. “I have a…a---”

“Light sensitivity?” She said in an understanding voice.

Joel nodded and removed the dark glasses, his shield.

Fiona gasped softly. He knew she’d never seen anything like this. She looked long into his naked face…his glowing silver eyes. “Oh my. You poor thing.” She ran a long-nailed finger down his cheek and kissed him deeply.

Joel spat a wad of pale blue froth into the sink. He had slept two hours, spooning with an incredibly sexy body, and felt slightly refreshed from a surprisingly vigorous shower. As he reached for his dental floss an ear-splitting scream arose from the next room. “Fuck!!!” He knew what had happened instinctively although hoping the woman had just broken a nail or something as trivial.

Nope. Sure as hell she was kneeling by the bed with the bowling bag before her.

Fishman screwed the fresh silencer on the Glock he’d stashed under the towels. Tears pricked his eyes as he went to the woman. He sat on the bed above her as she sat poised over the open bowling bag. From over her shoulder, Fishman could see the glazed eyes, the mouth open as if choking on a golf ball, and all the gooey maroon blood.

“Wh-wh-wh-whhhhhhhhh…” she kept whining, high-pitched and panicky like a small generator trying to start up. He couldn’t let that engine turn over.

“Fiona” says Fishman. She looks up at him, her beautiful dark eyes as smokey as her singing voice, tears plopped from her chin and slid down her bare right breast.

Fishman sighed heavily and shook his head slowly, saddened by the waste, she could have gone places. The only place she was going now was the desert.

With the bag again in the passenger seat, Fishman frustratingly drove the speed limit out of the desert. Two hours sleep, and a grand fuck, has given him energy, though the sorrow of her needless death weighs heavily in his already ghost crowded mind.

Joel knows he is losing it. He is a smart guy and understands lack of sleep makes a person crazy. He does not partake in uppers---coke, meth, blackies---nope. He’s partial to quaaludes but because of his profession, he feels that’s a nope too. Sleep will have to wait until he’s done, done with all of it.

This job had been a pain. It’s the first time he’d been asked to bring the head back. “Okay”, he’d said like it was no bigee, And, really, it had been sorta fun actually.

Leaving the extravagance of Vegas behind left him feeling melancholy. He’d been planning on leaving after dark, alone, but with his line of work, there were contingencies quite often. He’d worked up a sweat in the desert and now, as he headed south-east towards Dallas, the road blended into the sand and the wavey heat lines swayed and blurred the distant hills. He cranked the music loud---energetic bands: Metallica, Judas Preist, The Buzzcocks…The Ramones were his fave. He pounded the dash and sang along to ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. Passing through Las Cruces, the sun was a fat blob of light-infused jelly going down fast. The hills behind him now steely blue and deep indigo.

‘I need sleep. I should stop for the night.’

“That’s right, Fishy, you should.” The voice was muffled, low and bassy.

“Gah!!” Fishman’s hands involuntarily jerked the steering wheel. The speed limit was 75, the car fishtailed, and he was jolted into bright wakefulness.

He pulled over to the dirt shoulder. No one behind him. No one next to him…just the bag. In the growing darkness, the Nike swoosh looked like a leering half grin.

Fishman put his head in his hands and breathed deeply---in…out…in…out---until his heart was back inside his chest. He pulled cautiously back onto Interstate 40. ‘I need sleep,’ he thought for the 100th time, believing it was the root of his hallucination. He’d known more than one coke-head suffering similar afflictions; one had offed himself. This was getting serious. Just sixteen more hours to go, then a permanent break…

“That’s right, Fishy, a loooong break.”

“AAAAiiieeee!” He pulled off the next exit, Carlsbad, and followed the frontage road to the first cheap motel offering ‘free wifi…and sw mming ool.’

Sitting on the bed with a single bedside lamp switched on to a dim setting, he took off his sunglasses and poured himself a full rocks glass of Johnny Walker Red. He put the head in the bag under the bed and put on a Hallmark Channel rom-com, sure to put him to sleep.

He floated down a long winding black tunnel with a smile on his face. The tunnel lightened as if a lantern was lit at the bottom…and then the tunnel was dark rippling dirt with pale roots brushing against his face. A liver-colored worm wiggled away out of sight and a shiny-backed beetle scurried over his arm. The light winked out and he was no longer sinking downwards. He reached out in front of him…six inches over him was a rough-hewn wooden wall. ‘Pine,’ he knew.

He sat up gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. His hands clutched his damp undershirt as thin wheezing exhalations were pulled from his throat like fibrous hemp rope worms. ‘Worms.’

The last time he’d seen a coffin lowered into a grave had been six months earlier. His boss’s mother. He’d had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from grinning as dirt pattered down over the mahogany lid. He had loathed that woman.

Joel had worked for Dandy Dee Majors for two years when Dandy’s mother had fallen ill. He’d been a mere errand boy then, just nineteen. It had been his errand to fetch Momma Dee from New Orleans and bring her back to the sprawling ranch on the outskirts of Dallas. Dandy had told him he was getting a raise when he returned, and a new position in his syndicate.

Joel had not been prepared for the woman. He knew she’d had a stroke and had not regained her voice, but at the first sight of her, he’d felt his bladder wobble and an involuntary little squeak of a hiccup escaped his lips. The nurse had given him the stink-eye and slowly shook her head. When he’d looked again to the old shriveled up black woman, her eyes, though yellow-cornead, were sharp and aware and bore into his very soul. They were amber colored and seemed to glow in contrast to how very dark her wrinkled licorice-colored face was. She wore a short, ash blond wig, styled in a cut from the age of Deco.

She was rail thin, with a humped back, stick-like limbs with knobbly burls for joints. Dandy’s skin was not coffee with cream, but cream with a dollop of coffee. His dad must have been black as coal. She went willing enough to his car, clutching a square, stiff-handled purse to her flat chest, the nurse carried a large blue Samsonite with matching train case behind her.

Joel had planned to stop for the night before the return seven-hour drive but changed his mind, arriving in Dallas just after four AM. The creepy old woman had stared at him the entire drive. He’d started out chatting with forced glibness but after dark he’d glanced over at his mute passenger…and she’d been staring at him like a spider waiting for the fly to touch down. The lights from the dashboard were captured in her amber eyes, making them glow like a cat’s. Like a tiger’s. His rambling had dribbled to an end, he’d turned the rock-n-roll up louder.

In the six years that followed, Fishman’s new position was one that suited him. The ‘errands’ were now exciting and challenging…and sometimes quite bloody. He’d found his forte as if Dandy Dee Majors had seen it all along from the get-go. Though Fishman avoided Dandy’s mother as best as he could, he’d become part of the ‘family’ and so had to endure her evil-eye stares at family type functions.

He’d asked Dandy once about her. Mainly wishing to know why she stared at him as if she hated him. Hate was too mild a word. It was as though she was trying to murder him with her crazy eyes.

“Awww, she don’t hate you, brother. She looks at everyone like that.”

“I’m pretty sure she hates me, Boss. It’s like she knows what I’ve done…”

“Well, you’re doing your job. For me. She ought to be looking like that at me then, right?”

“Well…but she’s yer mom. You’re, like…pardoned.”

Dandy chuckled. “Aw man, don’t sweat it okay? All that crazy voodoo stuff she’s into don’t mean jack shit. C’mon.” He stood and walked to the bar in the plush office, made a couple of old fashioneds and handed Joel one. “Go on. Relax. Take a swim. Check it, Roxanne’s down by the pool…”

Joel took the hint, buoyed by the thought of seeing Roxanne in a teeny bikini. But the words ‘voodoo stuff’ kept circling his brain like a pesky mosquito. No, more like a wasp.

So, six months later, Joel went to the funeral. It would have looked badly on his ‘resume’ if he hadn’t gone. But it had been hard to keep from grinning. At one point he’d gone to the restroom and laughed like a loon…until he peered into the mirror and saw his eyes. Still pale blue, but now with a subtle silver glow.

Now, he was driving again. The miserable speed limit…the lines blurring then fading to black,,,

White light flooded his windshield and a semi’s horn went ‘WOOOOOOOOONK!’.

“AAAIIIEEE!,” He swerved back into his own lane, cursing himself for drifting off. Then sighing with relief as his own headlights revealed the highway sign, the next exit was his.

“Don’t go killin yerself now Fishy,” crooned the muffled voice from the bag.

“Fuck you. I’m ridda ya soon enough.”

“Oh…don’t know about that, Fishy. Heh heh heh.”

The urge to throw the head in the bag out the window subsided. But Joel’s very marrow had frozen. At least he was wide awake.

At his boss’s ranch where he lived in a guesthouse, he handed the bowling bag over to Dandy, who was rubbing his big hands together in anticipation. “Nice job, son. I remember the first head I hacked off. Was harder than I expected…”

Joel had been holding his breath as the large man in the red velour track suit sunk his fat fingers into the dried-sticky mass of hair and lifted the head from the bag. He said, “Yeah. It was harder than I thought too…” He made a sawing motion with his hands then chuckled.

The mouth on the head was frozen open like always, the pale face covered in gore.

Dandy beamed contentedly as he placed the head on his desk. “Ugly fucker, eh?” Then he squinted at Joel. “Hey…told you that eye thing was just a passing phase. You still look like crap though. Go rest up. I’ll see ya in a two months.”

Joel drove the vintage Firebird fast, his lead foot pressed to the floor. On either side of him, brilliant turquoise sky and azure ocean sparkled and beckoned him to his island. He’d figured after two months of legitimate rest, he’d find somewhere remote…maybe Thailand. With the millions he’d stashed away, he could live like a king somewhere like that…with a whole new identity.

He pulled Florence onto the hidden drive down to his condo, the spikey zebra-like shadows of the palms flickering across his windshield, the warm breeze ruffling his new hairstyle and 600-dollar Dolce and Gabbana shirt.

He deposited his Ralph Lauren bags by the enormous bed and flopped onto his back…drifting off in seconds.

“Fishy.”

Joel mumbled a “Mmm”.

“Fishy! I ain’t done with you.”

“Mmmm?”

“Ise just a-startin…”

Joel sat up, shaking, tears burning behind his eyes.

He reached under the bed and just as he feared…but knew…the bowling bag was there. His thumb grazed the raised Nike swoosh.

He unzipped it slowly, his breath caught in his chest, his eyes wide. “Dreaming. Just---"

The wrinkled black head in the bag appeared asleep. The dark shiny lips curled up at the edges. Beneath the bangs of the old blonde wig, the amber eyes flew open. The witch started laughing as the eyes grew bigger and rounder and began to glow like a tiger’s.