The Callows let me join up because I was good at telling their stories back to them. My mum passed on before I graduated and I needed a place to stay. The Callows took me in when I told them I knew words, like virtue and violent, and could use them right. They kept me after I scared Old Tina under a blanket with a story about sad murderers. Most of the others thought it was funny.

They weren’t my kind of people. I didn’t talk much to them, aside from the stories. They called me Quiet Archie and let me sleep on the outside of the huddle, so half my body stayed warm at night.

Someone decided I should be in Old Tina’s gaggle. Probably Old Tina, to get back at me for making her skin prickle in front of the others. I told her I wasn’t picking on her, and she told me to learn how to lift wallets or I’d be gone.

Apart from me, Old Tina’s gaggle had Durn, Broke, and Layla. Durn and Broke were twins, and had twin open sores on their cheeks from eating out of the wrong charity lines. When he met me, Durn pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and made pus come out the wound. Broke had good ideas, and talked about them with Old Tina all the time. He was kind of a brain, and he knew it, and I could tell it made him scared, all that blood in his head instead of his fists. I wasn’t a brain — I just told good stories — but I kind of knew how he felt.

Layla was something different. She had two long, brown knots in her hair, hand-tied and spilling curls and tangles. We were kind of like twins, too — she did everything I didn’t, acted out on everything that made me look at my shoes. She talked all the time. We were like two halves of a split genetic code. Everyone knew she’d take over the gaggle after Old Tina got graduated. Old Tina was doing her best not to, probably just for that reason. 

It was enough. For as much as Old Tina growled at me, she did double to Layla. Layla scored more panhandling than any of us because she was prettier and knew how to pout. When Old Tina tried, her face just sucked into a grimace she couldn’t shake loose. Like a puppy, I took to following Layla around on days that Old Tina didn’t give me something else to do.

One time, the summer after I joined up, she and I were strolling along a sidewalk in a so-so suburb. We were visiting the cul-de-sacs and asking for donations, but really keeping an eye out for lazy housewives and unlocked doors. That had been bath day at one of the Callows’ shelters, so Layla and I both smelled like skin and new sweat. We hit nuclear families and got a few packs of cigarettes, because we told them they were like money. So, we smoked through the stands of catalpa and Russian olive and mostly kept off the grass. I was pretty happy, kind of full, a little high, but Layla wanted more to take back to Old Tina. I told her what I remembered of the grasshopper and the ants.

“Just one more,” said Layla. She pointed at a red brick one-storey which was built like a cube in the middle of a yard of fresh asphalt. There wasn’t any grass, but part of the driveway was painted green.

“Looks poor,” I said.

“Relative to you,” said Layla with a grin. She pulled me up the walk. I complained that my feet were tired, because I thought maybe we were at that place where she would give me sympathy. She didn’t. She glared at me and pushed me toward the doorbell. I rang it. It was old tech, audio-only. The track was some laughter, high-pitched and cracking like a little dog’s bark. Layla put her ear to the door as the sound faded. She shook her head; no one was moving inside. I rang the laughter-bell again.

Layla put her hand on the doorknob. “I heard someone say, ‘Come in,’” she said. Turned out the door wasn’t locked. Layla was the first through, so I got to watch her jump about three feet through her skin when a voice said, “Welcome to the pit of terror,” and cackled.

Layla had a fist-shiv cocked and ready before she had stopped cussing, and I had a grin that hurt my teeth. “That wasn’t you,” she said, and a little of the fire of profanity died out of her eyes. 

“Nope,” I said.

“You tell anyone,” she said and raised her fist a bit more.

“Nope,” I said. I stepped into the house. “Welcome to the pit of terror,” said the crackly voice. It was lo-fi, like bounced radio. I looked down at my feet. There was a black box the size of a street puck glued to the door frame, and a speaker mounted on the wall above it. I kicked my foot out in front of the box. “Welcome to the pit of terror.” 

Layla laughed just to prove she could get there first and told me to heel. The rest of the house was quiet. It smelled like a spiced pie, strong enough to burn out my senses. I could tell that once I left the house everything would be dull for a few hours, same as after leaving one of the run down kitchens.

“Quiet, you,” said Layla, and led me into the kitchen. We padded on the balls of our feet, squeaking a little over the linoleum. “It’s a man,” said Layla. She pointed at the counter tops. They were filthy with old dishes and rotten food. We started picking over the stuff, breathing through our mouths, just in case there was anything good, like bone china or wine. I opened the refrigerator; its light was burnt out. It held row upon row of liter bottles of water and an open box of baking soda. “Check this out,” said Layla. She had a small metal basket in her hands. The basket was full of pill bottles, white, and amber, and blue glass. She gave it all a good shake, and it was like castanets. 

Someone screamed. I shook my foot, but didn’t see any more little black boxes. Layla said, “Down, boy,” and then someone screamed again. The sound trickled out into a dozen syllables of pleading, and then there was a meaty thud. I expected an echo, but there wasn’t one. Instead, there was full silence, like inside a lead box. 

Layla pushed me a couple steps forward. There was a crystal sphere hanging in the kitchen window, and I spun it as I went past. Slivers of rainbows, like tears in cloth, blurred color around the room. It reminded me of the hospital where mum died. The nurses kept the windows flung wide, polarized glass letting in a soft glow that was supposed to make her feel like heaven wasn’t so bad, or something.

There was another scream, and Layla shoved me through the archway that led from the kitchen to the rest of the house to see what was going on. She stayed behind the frame, pawing through the basket of meds.

I found myself in a living room. It wasn’t much of a place for the living. There was black velvet on the walls, red bulbs screwed into the bare sockets overhead, fake spiders with big goggle-eyes, a coffee table in the shape of a casket, and an old man folded under a deep purple blanket sitting in a recliner. There were two threads of red juice out of the corners of his mouth, and his head was bowed. His skin was pink and splotchy and looked as if it didn’t quite fit him. He was watching the television.

“Hey,” I said.

“There’s some good shit, here,” said Layla. “Good money.”

The old man breathed in through his nose so long and hard it tipped his head clean back. His mouth fell open and he started to snore. His eyes were closed. The television screamed. 

“Hey,” I said, and took a step forward. The man’s eyes slit open; I could see a thin reflection under each lash, but he was trying hard not to let me. “You all right?” I asked.

“He’s a cat,” said Layla. “Rank vegetable. Come on. We should tell Old Tina.” I could hear that she wanted to be talked out of it, so I just plain ignored her. The old man’s head flopped toward me; his skin sloshed waves like a deflated balloon. 

“You’re new,” he said. 

“Brand new,” said Layla, coming out from behind the archway. Her hands were empty, but her pockets were full. “What are you doing all dead like that?”

“I’m Shooter,” said the old man. “Do you have my pills? I need my pills.”

I looked at Layla. She shrugged at me. “Just a sec,” I said to Shooter. I ducked back into the kitchen. 

“What are you doing?” asked Layla. “Tell him he’s out. He won’t know. He’ll order more for us to lift.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “My mum was in the hospital. You say you’re out, they let you be out until your chart says it’s okay to have another refill. Got to give him some of it.”

“None of this,” said Layla, patting the pills. “I know some about medicine, too. This will buy long showers for all the Callows. Do something for Durn and Broke, maybe.”

“Maybe it’s just for his skin,” I said. I looked in the medicine basket. Layla had left a couple of worthless bottles of herbal supplements, and a blister pack of B-complexes. “Should have taken these,” I said, giving her the B-pills. I tapped out a handful of Echinacea and something that smelled like raw liver and held them in my fist. “All right, Shooter,” I said, stepping into the living room. I held out the pills. The old man stared at them, arranged in a dense constellation on the puffed-out palm of his hand.

“Something’s missing,” he said. Layla came up behind me with a glass of water, which she gave to Shooter. He took the pills one by one, placing them into the pouch of his lip as if they were dips from a tobacco tin, and swallowing them back with sips from the glass. Layla glared at me, and I looked away from her. Shooter’s skin was creeping me out, so my eyes settled on the only other movement in the room: the television. The images were black-and-white; there was blood, but it was a metal gray and made me think of bad nano. 

Shooter swallowed his last pill and smacked his lips. “I stopped paying,” he said. “Last girl stole from me. Damn kids.” I nodded, absently, and watched a young woman tear her flimsy nightgown. “What are you doing here?” Shooter asked. 

“Final visit,” said Layla. She always could lie off the top of her head. “Need anything?”

“How do I look?” asked Shooter.

“I’d do you,” said Layla. Shooter laughed, and he was much more comfortable with the sound than he was with his skin. It rumbled and echoed and didn’t fit with the television at all.

“What are you watching?” I asked him. 

“This. You’ve never seen this?” said Shooter. “God, sometimes I’m disappointed,” he continued after a pause for breath. “Not even horror has survived your generation.”

“Give me a good reality,” said Layla. “That’s life. Not this shit.”

“I like it,” I said. That got another chuckle from Shooter and a snort from Layla.

“Come on,” she said. “It’s time for us to leave.”

I tore myself away from the screen and gave Shooter a small wave.

He raised a tired hand to wave back. “You live well when you’re scared,” he said, almost like an apology. It bothered me, the way he said it, so I had my hands in my pockets, thinking, all the way out to the street. Layla hit me on the shoulder. She rattled like a bone girl with every step, because of the meds. 

“We’re coming back,” she said. 

“You got all the good stuff,” I said.

“He’s all by himself,” she said, and that was the end of the argument. If I fought her on it, Old Tina would hear, and accuse me of holding back on the good of the gaggle. 

When we got back to the Callow hideout, we told Old Tina about the whole score. She listened hard — I tried to tell the story right, but Layla kept interrupting me, rushing me to the good parts quicker. I gave up and let her spill. She brought out the pills as a grand finale, and Old Tina looked them over good.

“Wide open?” asked Old Tina.

“As can be,” said Layla. 

Old Tina tapped open one of the bottles and tipped its contents into her palm. She swirled them around with one finger while she turned something over in her mind. “Give it to the twins. They can sell this stuff in no time. But we’re hitting the park tonight.”

“Bad idea,” said Layla. “Cold tonight. Be like Alaska, population and temp.”

“But a greater potential,” said Old Tina. “You want to stick with dives and dead folks, you have to take me out of the gaggle.” She leaned toward Layla and I saw something flash in both their eyes. “I aim to take Callows way past your suburbs, little girl. I dream big.”

“I don’t need to,” said Layla.

The sun went down about then, and the hideout felt suddenly smaller. I excused myself, more polite than I had to, and went off to find Durn and Broke to tell them about our haul. I was getting well into it when a kid from another gaggle came running through, crowing, “Fight! Fight!”

It was a rite of dominance. Layla and Old Tina were in crouches in the middle of an expanding, contracting ring of other Callows. I couldn’t see much of the fight itself, because the audience kept pushing me out to the fringe. They did the same to Durn and Broke. Apparently, gaggle members weren’t supposed to see, in case they helped out in the fight. Weapons came out — I could hear metal scraping like a claw on a tooth — but most of the screams that followed were deep breaths from the gut. I didn’t really want to see what was going on, except that I wouldn’t be able to tell the story right to anyone who might ask.

It ended in frustration, a pair of arms thrown up in resignation, and the grumbles of a crowd denied its blood. Old Tina had lost by the rules, given up on her own terms. She pushed through the crowd and knocked me in the shoulder on her way out, not like a friend, but like clearing the last obstacle. I watched her go.

Layla came up behind me. “Saw it coming,” she said.

“I didn’t,” I said.

“Big head, small world,” said Layla. “Get the twins. We’re going back to Shooter’s.”

The twins had disappeared before the fight was over, more concerned with selling the meds than in catching on to the politics, so Layla and I waited for them to come back. Durn came in first, and said he had punched some guy in the nuts and sold him a handful of the stuff as pain relievers. Layla scolded him for undervaluing the stuff, and he popped a zit at her and said something about Old Tina, which Layla ignored. Broke wandered in a few minutes later with both pockets full of money. “Doubled the volume,” he said to me with a grin as Layla counted the bank notes. “One pocket of pills, two pockets of bills.”

Layla slipped her hands down her pants and stowed the money in a secret pocket. Durn and Broke didn’t watch her, but I did, and I got a show and a scowl. When she pulled up her jeans again, I could see the rectangular outline of the money through the fabric, and so could everyone else, but they’d have to cut her to get at it. 

It was two in the morning before we got underway to Shooter’s house. There was dew on the streets, turning the asphalt to ink. Broke and Layla walked in the front, strategizing. Durn and I followed behind, taking turns at complaining about our empty stomachs. When we were a block away from Shooter’s, Layla turned to us and said, “Callows eat when they eat.” It was one of Old Tina’s lines. 

Broke looked at the house and shrugged big. “Whatever,” he said. “Doesn’t look bad. Lights are on. It’s one on four, so let’s go.”

“Dig in,” said Layla. She led the way, with Durn at her heels. Broke hung back with me.

“You ought to be up there,” he said.

“They’ve got it,” I replied. 

Durn was best at picking locks, so he crouched in front of the door and got to work as Broke and I ambled up. Layla crouched near Durn, getting in his light, and hissing orders. First one deadbolt then another were shot back into their shells. The knob turned easily, and Layla got the chain with a pair of handheld wire cutters. 

“Someone must have come by,” I said, quietly tapping on one half of the dangling chain.

“Or he got up,” said Layla. She disappeared behind the door; Durn and Broke jumped out of their skins as the electronic voice said, “Welcome to the pit of terror.” I wondered why the hell we had been keeping quiet if we were just going to walk right on in. Broke recovered first and peered down at the black box, as I had done, while Durn started giggling and wagging his foot through the infrared beam. Layla caught him in the ear and shushed him. We all followed her inside. 

The lights in the kitchen were on, and they made everything else that much blacker. We couldn’t see more than a foot into the living room

“What was wrong with this guy?” asked Durn.

“Looked like he was shrinking,” I said. “Except his skin stayed the same size.”

Layla led the way into the kitchen. We started opening cabinets, searching for anything of value. I found plastic plates and cups, a set of camp silverware, and a bottle of gin with less than a shot glass’ worth in the bottom. Durn and Broke found soap and were fighting over bits of it to rub into their sores. Layla got frustrated fast and stopped talking in whispers. 

“Quiet Archie,” she said. “Go check out the living room.” I didn’t have a point from which to argue, so I tossed her the gin and mouse-stepped through the archway. The living room was populated with dull the black shapes of furniture and wisps of wind from some unseen vent. “Go faster, scaredy-man,” said Layla. “Even he could call the cops.”

I fumbled my hand along the wall and found the familiar plastic of a light switch. I gave it a click. Fluorescent tubes that hadn’t seen life in a while stuttered bright. “Shit,” said a voice. I shaded my eyes while they adjusted and looked toward the voice. 

Shooter was sitting in his chair with a police-grade pistol cocked in his right hand. He looked as if he had been half-boiled in vinegar. His skin was puffy and bruised in some places, drum-head tight and thin in others. Huge blisters had formed on his face and arms, but they were bloodless. It looked as if bubbles of air had been blown between his dermal layers. “What are you doing here?” he asked. The gun was a little shaky.

“Take it easy, man,” I said. I tried to think of something to tell him to get him to lower the gun, but all my stories took off right about then. The only thing I could remember was the smell of the room in which my mother had died, and how it seemed to make the bones in all my fingers melt.

With a muttered, “You find anything?” Layla peeked around the archway. I glanced at her just in time to watch her scream. Even though I could see it coming, the rest of my bones went the way of my fingers and I just about fell into the television set. “What the hell is that?” cried Layla.

Shooter’s face went all loose, like a sheet in the wind. He was trying to make some expression, but I couldn’t tell what it was. My heart was chattering like a bird’s because of the gun, no matter the strength or disposition of its owner. “Hey, Layla,” I said. 

Durn and Broke had come to check out the commotion. Durn shrieked like a girl, worse than Layla had, but Broke just stood there with wide eyes, methodically stroking one of the sores on his cheek. All four of us might as well have been stuck to the floor. Layla’s face was contorting through several recognizable expressions, in at least as much flux as Shooter’s. I leaned back against the television set, because my legs were shaking, and felt as if they would only be shaking harder in the near future. 

Shooter’s eyes went back and forth across us and he lowered the gun. He put both his hands against the arms of the chair and started to lever himself up. The skin on his wrists folded and stretched like the scruff of a shar-pei. He winced and I heard a quiet, wet tearing. A fold of gray flesh had sloughed off his arm as the bones and muscles beneath twisted. I felt all the bile in my stomach and hoped it would stay there. Shooter dropped himself back into his chair and, after a moment, reclaimed the gun. 

“Get out of my house,” he said. Durn had calmed down a bit, so he sneered at Shooter, flipped him off, and stomped back into the kitchen. Broke followed him a moment later. Layla’s mouth was open in some combination of horror and fascination, so I nudged her with one of my jittery legs. She closed her mouth. Then, glancing once at me as if for confirmation, she pinched her nose . She started to sneeze, a big fake windup to a massive explosion. She blew saliva all over the room, and then she laughed. 

I was the last one out of the room. “Want the light off?” I asked Shooter.

“Leave it on,” he said.

I should have turned around to leave, but I couldn’t break off my stare. I just stepped backward, leaving Shooter alone with his fake cobwebs, his purple-and-orange lampshades, his gun, and something of his that grew like a chuckle.

“Welcome to the pit of terror,” the electronic voice cackled four times as we left.

“We come back after he’s dead,” Layla said, and led us off to dive in the dumpsters. 

Later that morning, I was telling a bedtime story to my gaggles and whoever else was nearby. The story went like this: “We were two steps in when our breathing stopped. It was too quiet to breathe in there, like sneezing in a line-up. I went first and slipped on something wet. The darkness stank of dog shit and landfills, and now my shoe stank, too. I was just gonna whisper to Layla that the coast was clear, if she watched her step, when something touched me on the neck. Not like a bug or a piece of hair, but cold like the tip of a screwdriver. The lower half of me jumped — you know, like when your muscles all spaz that once before you go to sleep. Someone coughed, a sick cough, full of phlegm or vomit, and the cold against my neck branched and multiplied. Five points rested across my arteries, like five fingers. 

“That’s when Layla hit the lights. Hold your stomachs. We were standing in the kitchen, and it looked worse than Bromide’s downtown. There was this soup on the floor, like tomato mixed with split-pea. Looking at it was like looking at a wrong tag, you know, something that tells you you’re out of Callow territory.

“Then I saw what was touching me, and I knew I wouldn’t ever feel like I was home again. It was man, sized and shaped, but so dead there should have been flies. It had eyes like greasy soup hanging down at its cheeks on these thin optic nerves like harp strings. Its mouth was hanging open, with sugar-black teeth. It wasn’t breathing, but something that smelled awful drifted up out of its throat, and I gagged. 

“I didn’t scream, but I did have to gag down a cup or so of bile. I took a step back and the thing’s fingers slid right off my skin, as if they were made of slick plastic. It took a step forward, and I swear to holy sustenance it moaned. I said something to Layla, but it didn’t matter because Layla was already out of there. All of them were. I didn’t waste my breath in breathing more of that shit; I took off after them. We ran until we couldn’t smell no more, and that was only after I kicked my shoes off.”

I beamed at my audience, only a few of which bothered to look down at my feet to see that, yes, I was still wearing my ratty old shoes. A few of the youngers made faces at me to prove how little they believed. “Tell us another,” said a girl from another gaggle, so I told the one about the toad and heaven.

Afterward, I looked around for Layla and the twins. I was hungry. I found Durn first, but he wasn’t interested in going out. He was trying to make time with two girls. He spit blood at me to scare me off and grinned with red teeth.

I found Broke at the well. He was getting a drink of water. After he was done, he dropped a tablet of something in after the bucket. He turned around and saw me. “Iodine,” he said.

“You seen Layla?” I asked. 

“You’re all right,” said Broke. “Layla thinks so, too. But you’re out of the gaggle. She asked me to tell you.” He looked as if he didn’t mind the duty.

“Because of the story,” I said. 

“It wasn’t a very good story,” said Broke. 

“No, not really,” I said. “It worked, though.” 

“You made fun of Durn and me and Layla, and none of us can figure out why. I don’t care much, and Durn doesn’t barely know it, but Layla took it bad, man. She stood up for you against Old Tina, when you didn’t know it, and you turned her into a ‘fraidy-cat in front of other Callows.”

“That’s not what it did,” I said. “What it did was scare people.”

“Why would you want to do that?” asked Broke. “Scared kids don’t get food, and Callows don’t get scared.”

“He pointed the gun at me,” I said. “I got scared.”

“You’re out of the gaggle,” Broke repeated. He turned away, adding, “You could have stood up for her.”

Feeling a bit like the world was too large to fit my body, I ambled around the hideout for a while, figuring I’d run into Layla sooner or later. Everyone who met my eyes had one of two reactions: either they grinned at me, a little like Durn had, or they blinked like they were high on junk they couldn’t afford and then passed me as if I were invisible.

I found Layla outside. She was kicking at a piece of rusted metal. “There’s a monster called tetanus,” I said.

“What do you want?” she asked dully. 

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just to talk.”

“Don’t tell me no stories,” she said.

“I didn’t mean nothing bad,” I said. 

She met my eyes and stamped hard on the metal, sending a strained tone to both our ears. “You think about the wrong things,” she said. “You think about what words mean, ‘stead of what words do, and you get distracted. You talk to old men ‘stead of lifting their china. You scare the wrong people. You didn’t grow up Callow, and you can’t stay Callow.” She rushed by me with one hand to her cheek. Her fingers were spread wide, and I saw a red sore underneath, like those on the twins. She needed medicine, but none of them knew how to ask for it. She slammed the door to the hideout just behind her and I heard something scrape up against it. I gave it a knock or two; it was blocked up tight. There were other doors, but I didn’t feel like trying them. I was out of the Callows. I cared about as much as I do at the ends of stories, which is to say, not hardly.

Nervousness, resignation, and something righteous all had settled in my stomach like rubble, but they weren’t enough to fill me up. My stomach growled at me every time I took a step. I headed for the nearest kitchen, but it was locked up, and there were young Callows outside that already knew to give me dirty looks. I tried a couple other kitchens, but they were all locked, too, and without Durn my chances of breaking and entering were dead as lies. 

There was one door I knew wouldn’t be locked. The sky was lightening toward gray when I got to Shooter’s house. I knocked and pushed the door open a crack. I triggered, “Welcome to the pit of terror” a couple of times. I called out, “Mister Shooter, it’s me.” 

“Come to finish the job,” came a voice from the living room. 

“That’s right,” I said, and then felt a little stupid because it might have been the television speaking. 

I crept into the kitchen. It was cold; the linoleum seemed to be pumping ice right through the thin soles of my shoes. “Thanks for not shooting me,” I said, sending the words out as a sort of vanguard to test the resistance.

“No problem,” said Shooter. A dim light from the living room switched on silently. I followed it to its origin, a small lamp on an end table next to Shooter’s chair. The man himself was wrapped up in a blanket, only his eyes visible.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“You kids took my pills,” he said. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

Shooter coughed and twisted his face away from me. I heard a wet tearing sound, like damp paper being stripped into segments for papier-mâché. “I needed those pills,” he said when it was over. 

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry for the others. I’m not with them anymore.”

The blanket fell away from his face as he turned to stare at me. I had gagged earlier that night when I saw him; this time my whole body shivered. My eyes filmed over for just a second, to blur out the mess, and then they cleared again. Shooter’s cheeks were missing — not empty air, but the top layers of skin were gone and I could see the ruby-fading-to-pink of fresh wounds. A limp sheet of gray flesh curved from his forehead, nearly covering his eye. He raised a hand to brush it away and I saw brown, gray, and green all mottled on his fingers and wrist. There was a gleam of white bone as he flexed his knuckles.

He stared at me for a long moment, holding the hank of skin out of the way. Then he grinned, a wide sharky grin, and said, “You don’t run.”

“Not much,” I said. “I walk, mostly.”

“That’s the trouble with you kids, ones I’ve met. Wouldn’t know to get out of the way of a speeding train, were you on the tracks.”

“Last longer than you would,” I said. Shooter chuckled to himself, but didn’t do anything more. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. 

“Disgust wearing off?” asked Shooter. I shrugged. “It’s a good story.” His consonants were beginning to slur. “Let’s see if I can’t get you back on track. It’ll be my good deed for the day. You know the factory out past the bridge?”

“Some gang lives there.”

“Not yours?” asked Shooter. “Well, it used to be where I worked. It was a steel plant. We poured girders for building skyscrapers with. Main room’s so big it has it’s own weather, something like twenty storeys high, a few acres on the ground. I worked on the highest catwalks, maintaining the gears on the pots that poured the molten steel into the channels. Shooter with his grease gun. I worked there twenty years, you know. Had blisters on my calluses, and calluses damn near everywhere.

“Statistics is what got me. You gotta watch out for those. Time I started, there were twelve of us grease monkeys. By the time my story takes place, eleven of them had taken out liability claims, and seven of those were on disability thanks to accidents. I was the last man standing, kinda. But statistics caught up with me. The day it happened, I was on storey seventeen, working on a crankshaft. I was standing in the wrong place, too near the channel, and the automated bucket started pouring while I was standing right in front of it. I got out of the way of the steel, but the bucket tipped me over. I fell, god, I don’t know how many storeys. I ended up on my back, staring up into these glimmering shadows, all red from the light of the steel. I had the wind right out of me.” Shooter laughed and shook his head; the way the skin of his face moved was obscene, like unwanted nudity. “Then I did the dumbest thing in my life. I rolled over to catch my breath. Guess where I was. Yeah, right next to one of the channels. I rolled myself over into liquid steel. Didn’t get too deep, luckily. Had a buddy, a new guy — I think he’s still working for the company — came and helped me out.

“Most of what I remember after that comes in the hospital. Seventy-percent of my skin was cooked right off, and the rest of it wasn’t healing right, so they needed to do a full-body skin graft. Problem is, skin’s just an organ like everything else, and my body rejected the transplant. That’s what the pills were for, to fool my body into accepting the skin.”

“Where’d you get it all?”

Shooter leaned forward and grinned at me. “We waited in alleys for children like you.” I closed my eyes and, after a moment, I heard him sit back in his chair. “Moral of the story is don’t work in steel, kid.”

“My name’s Quiet Archie,” I said. 

“Good name for you.” I opened my eyes just as Shooter closed his. “What scares you, Quiet Archie?”

I thought about that for a while. While I did, Shooter breathed evenly. “I’m scared that if I don’t get something to eat, my stomach will digest itself,” I said.

Shooter smiled behind his mask of skin. “Maybe you’re scared you might have to hurt someone to get your belly full.”

“Sure, okay,” I said.

“There’s bread in the kitchen,” he said. 

I went to get a piece. I ate it out of sight of Shooter, and then returned to his side. He was asleep. A brush of gray light was touching the windows, so I turned the lamp off and made my way to a corner over a heating vent. I curled up and went to sleep smelling the bread on my fingers.

I woke up to the sound of screaming. Shooter had the television on again. His show was in black-and-white, and was zoomed up close on a young girl’s eyes. While I was out, he had switched on several chains of orange and black fiber-optic lights; they webbed across one wall like the home of a giant spider. I heard wind outside pressing against the walls and making them creak.

“Happy Halloween,” said Shooter. 

“What’s that?” I asked.

“When I was a kid, last day of October was Halloween. You dress up scary, you make girls fall in love with your courage, you steal candy from children, you try to scare each other to death.”

“I’d get you there,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Shooter. He paused his movie, leaving the poor girl frozen in front of a monster with a long face.

“I can get you more pills,” I said.

“It’s too late,” said Shooter. He grinned at me again. “I’m in the worst pain I’ve ever been in my life, and I just can’t help but grin. I got up and looked at myself in the mirror while you were asleep. I haven’t been able to stand up that long for a year, at least.”

“Let me get you some more pills,” I said.

Shooter shook his head and looked away, toward the window, to sever any of those conversation threads. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Tell you what—” he faced me again “—there’s a camera in my bedroom. Why don’t you go get it.”

“Okay,” I said. 

He pointed toward one of the doors exiting the living room. I headed toward it. “I keep a woman locked in a box under my bed,” he added. I knew he was lying, but, after finding the camera sitting charged in cradle on an old wooden dresser, I kicked up the filthy blankets and took a quick peek.

“What am I doing with this?” I asked as I handed the camera to him. 

“Hang on to it,” he said. “It’s better than words.” He levered himself up out of the chair. As he stood as straight as he could manage, I heard a wet plop. Part of his scalp had fallen to the floor. “Leave it,” he said. Then, “I hope not everyone out there is as docile as you.”

He led me through the kitchen, triggered the “pit of terror”, and stood for a moment on his front walk, breathing as deeply as he could. He was dressed in filthy, stained pajamas. He tried to unbutton the shirt, but his fingers slipped and bunched over the task. He grunted deeply and tore the fabric, exposing a back that looked like a skinned cat. “Let’s go,” he said. “Turn the flash on, and get ready.”

I followed him at about twenty paces. He shambled through the gloom between streetlights with a limp and a few sentences of muttered pain. At the end of the block, I saw a pair of young girls playing with chalk on the concrete. They were up past their bedtime, and I could hear them giggling as if they knew it. Shooter raised his arms so his elbows were locked out straight, his hands dangling from his wrists. As he approached the girls, I crossed the street to get a better look. Shooter went dark in the shadow and then emerged, moaning terribly into halogen light. The girls looked up as one, and I flashed the expressions on their faces. Shooter took another step closer, and I flashed them again. A small puddle had formed beneath the girls, and one of them dropped everything she had to cry. The other stood up and ran. She pounded on a door as Shooter lowered himself behind a bush. The door opened and the girl slipped inside. I heard someone say, “Who are you—” before the door closed.

I crossed the street to rejoin Shooter, who was laughing so hard he had pissed his pants. They clung to his malformed legs. He was trying to be quiet, but he wasn’t very good at it. “Did you see them?” he gasped. I said that I had. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s do some more.” I agreed.

We haunted the neighborhood for a couple of hours, spreading ourselves out, never getting caught by the adults. I had nearly filled the card when we arrived back at Shooter’s house. He was having to hang on to me, and I was having to breathe through my mouth because he stank so bad. 

“Here,” he wheezed. “Set me down here.” I was more than glad to. We collapsed on his front walk, and he kept laughing so I joined in. “Show me the pictures,” he said. I set the camera to review and handed it to him. His face was illuminated, made more hideous by the angled light from the display. He giggled like a little boy, muttering things like, “Oh, her expression is priceless,” and, “Did you see him run.” He kept laughing and laughing, and then I noticed that blood was trickling down from his eyes. He died with his mouth open, with his hands loose around the camera.

I left him outside to frighten the police. I pawed through his movie collection before I left, grabbing a few things to sell on the streets, and took what was left of the bread. I didn’t take the camera because, despite what Shooter said, I thought that words were better.

I walked into the city, stopping on street corners to sell my wares bit by bit. Folks gave me weird looks when I told them what I had, but some curiosity made them buy, and I managed to get rid of all I had brought. I was just considering going back for some more when I saw someone else making a sale across the street. It was Old Tina. She had her skirt hiked up and her eyes were all dark with bloody makeup. I took a look around me and realized my feet had wandered back into Callow territory. Neither Old Tina nor I were Callows, now, but we were young enough to be a threat.

A pair of guys about Old Tina’s age approached her and made low gestures I could barely see. I started across the street. I waved once, but Old Tina didn’t see me. She took the two guys by the hands and led them into a dark alley. I called out and got no response.

I used a corner to slip into the alley, outlining myself as little as possible against the street lights. I had picked up a few things from the Callows. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out Old Tina up against the wall, bracing herself with her hands, as the guys peered down between her legs. 

“Hey,” I said. “You paying?”

“Yeah,” grunted one of the guys. “Wait in line.” There were two of them, so I didn’t try to pick anything. They shoved their money into Old Tina’s mouth. I stood by a dumpster and watched until they were finished with her. I didn’t think she had recognized me, but the first thing out of her mouth after the money was, “Quiet Archie. What are you doing here?”

“I’m out, too,” I said. 

As she counted her money, I pulled out what I had made. “Put together, we’ve got enough for a room somewhere.” I couldn’t see her very well, but her outline was all hunched like Shooter, and her details were silver from reflected light. It looked as if her eyes were cast down. I wanted to bring them back up but kindness wouldn’t cut it. “Can I tell you a story?” I asked. She sighed and I went on ahead. I told her a story about a virgin murderer who, out of envy, slaughters those children who have sex. I tried not to hold anything back, to work the rent flesh of Shooter into the words. 

Maybe I should have kept the pictures. 

I couldn’t scare her, this time. I didn’t tell it right. She punched me, as if something were all my fault, said, “There’s no place for the self-aware,” and sobbed. I touched her face to calm her down and felt wet skin. She hissed through her teeth. She turned away, and I could see the same open sore on her cheek as Durn and Broke had. I brought my face into the same light, looking at her as closely as I dared.

“I need some medicine,” she said. 

We each pulled our faces back into shadow, not like a race but like a divorce. “You and me both,” I replied.