a few more minutes, Topo resumed his position at the dead man’s feet and pulled him toward the closet, leaving behind a trail of blood, slime and wriggling larvae. Sharon’s knife, wedged under the corpse, was dragged in with the body.
Hours later, Sharon snuck back into the apartment mostly empty-handed. She crept through the doorway, wanting to enter unnoticed. At the same time, she knew how futile this was since there was no place to hide in the tiny apartment, and Topo would be expecting her. Sharon tip-toed inside anyway in the hope of delaying the punishment that Topo was sure to subject her to for being late.
When she’d gotten to Fatty Dee’s crack house and saw all those other people taking all those delicious hits from their pipes, she just had to do some. She didn’t think that she’d get so caught up in smoking that most of the money would be gone. Topo, she knew, would be enraged and would beat her mercilessly. Hopefully, however, if she wasn’t hurt too bad, things would go right back to normal and the two of them would stay like they were. Together forever. Young. In love. And high.
Cautiously, she peered into the minuscule kitchen, her eyes wide with fear and apprehension. Topo wasn’t there. She stepped over her uncle’s body and looked in his bedroom as well as in the dingy bathroom, they were empty as well. Puzzled, she stepped back into the middle of the living room which, with its fold-out couch, also served as her bedroom. She looked around at the apartment’s devastation and at the items scattered all over the floor that her uncle had so lovingly and dutifully collected and cared for. Her uncle had told her on numerous occasions that he was a powerful Voodoo priest. The tiny statues that now lay broken and scattered about the floor were representatives of Orishas or Voodoo Gods. The other things that had also fallen from the small table that had served as a shrine were offerings or stuff used in rituals. When Sharon was small she was fascinated by the statues, the rituals, and the stories her uncle told her by the quivering light of the candles. But as Sharon grew older, she became bored with all of his mumbo-jumbo; she often wondered that if he was such a great voodoo priest, why did they live in such a tiny, crappy apartment in such a crappy neighborhood? Why didn’t they drive around in an expensive car? Why couldn’t he buy her the latest clothes? Sharon shook her head, why couldn’t he stop them from killing him?
She stood there wondering where Topo was and what she should do next when she became aware of a strange sound.
The sound was faint, but not unfamiliar. She looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Finally, she was able to pinpoint it. It was coming from the closet.
‘Topo is hiding in there,’ she thought. She stepped over her uncle’s body, barely giving it a glance, and slowly put her hand on the doorknob. She placed an ear against the door and then pulled her face away quickly. The sound coming from the closet’s interior made the door vibrate. It was a weird buzzing noise, and it was louder now too.
“Topo?” Sharon called through the door. “Topo, what are you doing in there? Sounds like you’re messing with the electricity. Can I open the door?” Sharon turned the knob and pulled the door open, an apology and an explanation already on her lips.
The closet’s black interior exploded in her face as thousands of flies, buzzing agitatedly, swarmed all over her. They became entangled in her hair and in her clothes. They flew into her nose, her ears, and her mouth. She flailed her arms about wildly, backing away from the closet, and tripped over one of her dead uncle’s outstretched legs. She landed on the floor with a heavy thud, barking her elbow on the hard linoleum, and had the wind knocked out of her. She lay on her back for a few seconds trying to regain her breath and composure as flies slowly crawled all over her.
As she finally raised herself up on her elbows, her eyes strayed to the open closet...and she screamed. There was Topo. His eyes and mouth were opened wide with terror. Fresh blood stained the front of his tattered shirt, running from a dozen or more knife wounds in his torso. Maggots bristled from his hands, chest, neck, face, even his tongue. Slowly, they waved in her direction, as if beckoning to her. As Sharon watched, one of Topo’s eyeballs rotated crazily in its socket and sank from view. It was replaced almost immediately by a wriggling mass of fly larvae that boiled from the eye socket and splattered onto his sneakers. Sharon screamed again.
Unfortunately, the screams of the terrified or dying were common in this dark, forlorn building. Its residents, long the hostages of crack, crime, and indifference, were used to death. Anyone that heard Sharon’s cry merely shivered at its timbre and turned up the volume on the television set.
Topo’s body swayed and Sharon, terrified that it would fall on her, dug in her heels and scooted backward. Without warning, a swollen hand grabbed her ankle and held her fast. Despite the oppressive heat, Sharon felt gooseflesh rise over her entire body as her spine turn to ice. She stared at the hand uncomprehendingly, until suddenly her uncle, the Voodoo priest, raised his head to hers. The skin of his face and hands rippled with the living multitude that swarmed underneath. Sharon watched as maggots pulsed from a wound in her uncle’s heart. They rushed through his arteries and veins, replacing the blood that she helped to spill. He smiled and more of the maggots dripped from the corner of his mouth.
Just then, Topo’s body toppled forward and landed on top of her, spraying her with blood and larvae. Sharon screamed, again and again, ...until, at last, all that could be heard was the lazy drone of the summer flies.
Arnaldo Lopez Jr.
Mr. Arnaldo Lopez Jr. was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, but he has lived in Queens, NY for about 17 years now. He has been employed by NYC Transit for twenty-seven years and is planning to retire in July 2015. He was formerly employed as a dispatcher with the NYPD. Mr. Lopez is also a speaker and trainer, speaking on subjects as diverse as terrorism and customer service. He created the civilian counter-terrorism training program currently in use by New York City Transit and many other major public transportation agencies around the country.
As well as writing, Mr. Lopez is an artist and photographer, having sold several of his works over the years. As a writer he’s sold articles to Railway Age magazine, The Daily News magazine, Homeland Defense Journal, and Reptile & Amphibian magazine; scripts to Little Archie and Personality Comics; and short stories to Neo-Opsis magazine, Lost Souls e-zine, Nth Online magazine, Blood Moon magazine, and various other Sci-Fi and/or horror newsletters and fanzines. He was also theeditor of Offworld, a small science fiction magazine that was once chosen as a “Best Bet” by Sci-Fi television.
Arnaldo Lopez feels that the writers that have influenced him the most are—in no particular order—Lawrence Sanders, Ernest Hemmingway, Robert E. Howard, Harry Turtledove, Isaac Asimov, Dean Koontz, James Patterson and Stephen King.