The Disciples
by Rafael Chandler

vol 3
num 7

A dead doll, head lolling on a broken neck.  Busted beer bottles, jagged brown glass, sour reek of old alcohol.  Crumpled napkins, inkless black pens, gum wrappers.  Crammed into paper bags, stuffed into black plastic, hauled out to the street, left for dead.

 Troy reached down, grabbed another bag by its neck.  He tossed it into the truck.  Arc, descent, crash of shattered glass and rattling aluminum cans.  Punctured condoms, ruined fabric, pregnancy kits indicating negative.

 He shook his head, tried to clear it.  Noise, the screams of the despondent, the howls of the mistreated.  Troy scratched the grey stubble on his chin.  He took off his baseball cap and sighed.  Lots of trash today, lots of noise.

 The street was empty.  There were no cars, no children playing, just silence and shuttered windows.  It was nearly eleven.  Troy’s partner, Jimmy, hopped up on the back of the truck.  Troy waved the truck on and he walked behind it, wiping sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his overalls.  Horrible heat this summer, and mosquitoes feasted on his wrists and throat.

 "So how much longer am I going to be in training?" Jimmy asked.  Troy squinted at him and thought about it.

 "I think you can maybe start working today," Troy said at last, then leaned over and dragged a black trash bag up off the sidewalk and hurled it into the truck.  He waved up at the driver, who pulled the lever that started the garbage-crushing mechanism. 

 "So what do I do?" Jimmy asked.  He rubbed his face, nervous.

 Troy removed his baseball cap and wiped his brow with his sleeve.

 "Well, now, you can just watch me work, and pay attention.  Later on, today, maybe I’ll find something for you to do.  Meantime, you just pick up cans and bags, same as usual."

 Jimmy nodded.  "Okay, man."  Troy studied him.  He was a white boy, maybe twenty-one years old, and he looked very serious.  Dark eyes, a close shave, and he’d shown up for work this morning in a well-ironed shirt.  Jimmy was for real.  He wanted to clean up this town.  Troy was impressed by that.  Lot of trash-men, they were just looking for a paycheck.  But for Troy, this wasn’t just some day job, some way to take care of the bills.  This was a calling, a higher calling.  It was a labor of love.

 It took a certain kind of man to walk after a truck in this heat and pick up garbage.  The sun beat down on you pretty hard, particularly between ten and two.  The smell was pretty heavy, and a lot of people quit because the smell just made them gag and retch all day, and they couldn’t get anything done.

 The people didn’t help.  They never followed the instructions.  Lawn clippings go in clear plastic bags.  Recyclables go in the blue plastic tubs.  Regular trash goes in opaque trash bags.  There, simple.  But people, even educated and ostensibly smart people, couldn’t get it right, and men like Troy had to pick up their slack. 

 Furthermore, very few people showed them any respect at all.  It was as though you weren’t really a person, because you wore blue overalls and lugged bags and boxes full of soiled diapers and gravy-stained paper plates.  It was like your work made you less of a man, even though it was the type of work that most men were too weak to handle day after day.  Troy was used to this, and used to the way that people didn’t make eye contact with him.  He was used to waving at motorists who didn’t wave back.  He was used to saying hello to people working in their yards, and he was used to their pursed lips and nervous appraisals.  It didn’t bother him.  He knew who he was, and he knew that the overalls were just gear, and the job was just a way to get by.  Neither one defined him.

The truck slowed down in front of a one-story brick house with a red tricycle in the front yard.  Number 216.  Troy puzzled over the number for a second, trying to decide why it made the hair on his arms and neck stand up.  Then he realized that six times six times six equals 216.  He shook his head, laughing, and beckoned to Jimmy.  "Now get them bags, and leave the recyclables," he said.  Troy felt sheepish, for being so superstitious (even subconsciously).  The devil was a joke, an old and forgotten man in a place even hotter than this street.  His works were all for naught, and no one cared for him.  No, the real troublemakers were alive and well right here on planet earth, Troy thought.  Causing trouble, making trash, and sinning like it was going out of style.

He smiled as Jimmy hauled black Hefty bags up and tossed them in the back of the truck.  Well, that was okay.  The wages of sin were Death, and Troy was comfortable with that equation.  One the one side, sin, and on the other, Death.  Very simple, like all good things.  Like Jimmy.  He wasn’t an educated boy.  Strong, sincere, and ready to do the right thing.  He wanted to clean.  That still mattered to some people, and that gave Troy hope.

Jimmy followed the truck to the next house, and Troy walked after him.  Jimmy started hauling bags, then hesitated as he picked up the last bag.  He looked at Troy, and he opened his mouth as if to speak.  After a minute, he closed his mouth, and he looked at the bag in his hands.

"Troy," he said.  "Troy, I think I have something."

Troy took his hands out of his pockets.  Well, it was part of the job.  Had to happen, though it pained him every time.  No help for it, though.  The calling was the calling, and only a fool ignored his calling.  He knelt on the ground, folded a blade out of his Swiss army knife, and slit the bag open.  He reached in gingerly.  Pushed aside wadded-up tissues, cellophane wrappers, crumpled receipts.  Lint, cardboard toilet paper tubes, orange rind. 

A folded piece of duct tape.  A cloth dishrag that smelled of chloroform.  Troy picked it up out of the bag, closed his eyes.  He saw a  young blonde woman, trying to scream with an oily rag stuffed into her mouth.  Lacerated skin on her back, bruised wrists, bite marks on her neck.

Troy opened his eyes.  Lord Jesus.  "Good work, son," he said, rising to his feet.  "I guess we have to get the tools out."

Jimmy nodded nervously.  He swallowed with some effort.  He headed up to the truck, and rapped on the driver’s-side door.  The driver lowered the window, and Jimmy spoke with him for a minute.  Then he walked over to the other side of the truck, opened the passenger door, and took out a battered red tool chest.  He lugged it back it to Troy.

Troy lit a Winston and looked around.  No cars, no people out today.  Good.

Jimmy dropped the toolbox on the sidewalk.  It clanged, and the tools inside rattled.  "You need to watch that," Troy said mildly.  "These are expensive tools."  Jimmy stammered an apology.  Troy studied him for a minute.

"Okay," he said.  "Why don’t you pick out some tools, and then we’ll head in."

Jimmy nodded.  His eyes were wide, and he was staring down at the metal toolbox like he’d never seen on before.  Eventually, he squatted down, fumbled the clasp open, and began to rummage through the tools.  Troy didn’t bother.  He had his Swiss army knife, and that had been enough for him for many years now.  Better part of a decade, if memory served.  Finally, Jimmy made up his mind, and stood up.  In his left hand, he clutched a black claw hammer with a wooden handle, and in his right hand, he carried a handful of bungee cords.  "Okay?" he asked.

Troy chuckled.  "Don’t ask me.  You’ll be the one using them."  He appraised Jimmy one last time.  "They feel good?  The tools, they feel good in your hands?"

Jimmy nodded.  "I’m ready," he said.

"Well, okay," Troy said.  "Then let’s get this done."

He waved up to the driver, who stuck a hand out the window and waved as the truck rolled on.  It would circle the block until the clean-up was over.

Troy walked up to the front door.  "Maybe you can walk around back, take a look around.  Just remember that you have to move quick when the time comes.  Alright?"

Jimmy nodded.  "Troy, I won’t let you down."

Troy nodded.  "No, I guess you won’t.  Just be careful with yourself."  Jimmy headed across the driveway, past some azalea bushes, and then he was gone around the corner.  Troy looked around one more time, then walked up to the front door.  The plan was simple.  Ring the doorbell, ask to use the phone, and then take it from there.  Most times, it was over in seconds.  He sent Jimmy around the back to get him out of the way.  Most likely, the boy would creep around back, careful to make no sound.  By the time he worked up the nerve to put his hand on the doorknob, Troy would be finished.

Troy headed up the walkway towards the front door.  Beneath the bay window at the front of the house, a seething burst of color:  azaleas, gardenias, petunias.  The garden was well-tended.  Troy reached into his pocket and withdrew the Swiss army knife.  He unfolded the longest blade, which was about an inch and a half long.  After he palmed it in his left hand, he rapped on the door twice.  There was a distant crash, and muffled cries.  Two heavy impacts, and a man screaming.  Jimmy.

Troy grabbed the doorknob and twisted.  Locked.  He briefly considered trying to ram the door down with his shoulder, then thought better of it.  He jogged around the house, and called Jimmy’s name a few times.  No answer. 

The back door was hanging from its hinges.  Troy entered cautiously, knife in hand.  The living room was dark and musty, and there were cardboard boxes stacked along one wall.  Greasy pizza boxes, old newspapers in piles, hundreds of empty beer cans, and a fat man in a tank top, squealing face down on the ground.  Jimmy had the man by the wrists, and was kneeling on the small of his back.

Troy nodded at him and looked around the home.  No family photos, no toys.  Spartan furnishings:  a simple wooden desk with a computer, a brown folding chair, a small television atop a stack of cardboard boxes.

On the floor, the man whimpered and groaned.  Jimmy shook him viciously.  "Shut up, you lousy bastard," he hissed.  He leaned forward, intensifying the pressure on the fat man’s back.  The sobbing intensified.

Troy moved into the corridor at the end of the room.  A closet, thick with boxes, unused sports equipment, and old suitcases.  A bathroom, reeking of mildew.  Black hairs in the sink, peeling wallpaper, spots on the mirror.  In the bedroom, Troy checked the closet and under the bed.  No one, nothing.  Old books, LPs, threadbare suits, worn shoes, dust and spider webs.

He returned to the living room, where Jimmy had made short work of the man.  He’d strapped him to the chair with bungee cords, sealed his mouth with duct tape, and had propped the broken door closed with boxes.

"Good job, son," Troy said.  "I’ll take it from here."

He leaned forward and waved the Swiss army knife in front of the man’s eyes.  "Do I have your attention?  Are you going to listen to what I tell you?"

The man nodded violently.  Sweat dripped from his brow and slid down his chin.  The droplets trickled between the coarse black hairs on his chest, darkening his tank top.  Troy could smell the man’s sweat, could see the salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin.

"Let’s say that I am psychic," Troy said.  "And that I want to talk to you about something I’ve seen in a vision.  So, I am interested in a woman.  She’s blonde, young, and tied to a bed.  She’s being sodomized with something.  I’m not sure what.  She’s got a tattoo on her forearm.  It looks like an eight-pointed star.  Does this mean something to you?"

The man let out a muffled grunt and shook his head.  There were tears in his eyes.

Troy felt his heart sink.  The man was lying.  He knew about the girl.  Damn.

"Well," he said, and he put the tip of the knife to the corner of the man’s left eye.  "I don’t believe you."

The man groaned and yanked his head back.  Without being told, Jimmy lunged forward and held the man’s head still.  Troy nodded at Jimmy.  The boy was serious.  He meant what he was doing.  It made Troy feel better.

"If you lie to me again, I’m going to put out your eye," he said.  He looked at the man, for several seconds.  He stared into the man’s eyes.  At first, the eyes refused to hold still.  They rolled in their sockets, wildly, glancing from Troy to Jimmy’s hand, to the telephone, to the door, to one of the boxes on the floor.

Troy turned and looked at the box.  A cardboard box, labeled "XMAS LIGHTS".  He turned back to the man.

"I need to ask you a question or two," he said.  He tugged a corner of duct tape away from the man’s skin.  "If you scream, or if you lie, I’ll kill you."

He yanked the strip of tape away, and the man yelped.  He tried to put a hand to his mouth, but his hands were tied to the arms of the chair.  He looked up at Troy, and as he spoke, tears spilled down his flabby red cheeks.  "Please, mister, don’t kill me, you can have my money--"

Troy slapped him once, hard.  "Shut your mouth.  You don’t talk to me about money.  Tell me about the girl.  Now."

"I don’t know--"

Troy slapped him again, then backhanded him for good measure.  "You do know.  I can see it in your eyes.  Don’t you lie to me, damn you.  Tell me about her."

"I don’t--I mean, what you think I did, I didn’t do it," the man gasped.  He gulped a lungful of air, and suddenly the room seemed very silent.  For a few seconds, there was only the sound of the man’s ragged breathing as he collected his thoughts.

"I, she, she’s just in a movie.  I never met her, I swear to Jesus--"

When Troy slapped the man a third time, he began to sob hoarsely.  Troy watched impassively.  Jimmy loosened his grip on the man’s head.

"Please, mister, I never touched--"

Troy made as if to slap the man again, and he cringed.  Troy pointed a finger at him.  "You know what you did, and you need to tell me about it."

The man wept silently, then raised his head.  "I like to watch girls in bondage, that’s all.  It’s fake, it’s not real.  It’s just acting, all fake.  I never hurt anyone, and I’d never--I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, that’s all, I swear to Jesus--"

"You need to stop using His name in vain," Troy said mildly.  The man winced as if struck.

"You gotta believe me," the man said between sobs.  "I don’t know what you think you saw, but that girl, she’s not real, and I never even met her or put a hand on her.  It’s just a video I watch, you gotta believe me."

After some time, Troy nodded.  "I believe you," he said.

He drove the blade of the knife into the man’s chest, just below his left nipple.  The man jerked silently for a few seconds, face frozen in a grimace of agony, then coughed a great quantity of blood onto Troy’s wrist.  He gasped in a great shuddering breath, then screamed thinly until Jimmy got his hand over the man’s mouth.

"This neighborhood is clean," Troy said, and twisted the knife.  It was short, and wouldn’t hit any vital organs, but the man needed to suffer a little before the killing blow.  "We can’t have a pervert in our midst," he said.  "You watch your dirty little videos, revel in the cruelty, and then you satisfy yourself.  But one day, you get tired of watching, and you get tired of sniffing cloth dipped in chloroform, and you get tired of tearing off and fondling lengths of duct tape.  One day, maybe, you snatch a girl on her way home from school."

He punctuated his diatribe with short sharp jabs from the knife.  The fat man got one arm free from the bungee cords, and flailed around, trying to grab Troy’s wrist.  Finally, Troy tired of it, and he reached down and picked up the claw hammer.  He stepped away from the chair, and gestured at Jimmy.  Jimmy leaned over and accepted the hammer from Troy.

"Go on," Troy said.  Jimmy nodded. 

The man howled as he got the cords off his other hand, and then his feet.  Spitting up blood, he slid out of the chair and flopped on the floor.  Jimmy leaned down and swung the hammer, but the man wriggled aside, and the hammer bounced off the carpeted floor.  Jimmy hurled himself atop the man and clutched his chin in one hand, then brought the claw end down on the man’s temple with the other hand.  The sound was wet and brittle, and after that, the room fell into silence again.  There was a trickling sound as the fat man’s bowels emptied themselves, and a final exhalation as Jimmy got up off of him.

Jimmy turned to Troy.  "Yeah?"

Troy smiled at him and nodded.  He bent down and opened the flaps of the cardboard box that the man had stared at.  Inside, all manner of pornography.  Bondage, fellatio, lesbian encounters, foot fetishism, and every permutation of carnal knowledge that one might imagine.

It was all consensual, and all perfectly legal, but that meant nothing to Troy’s employers.  Cleanliness was divinity, and this man’s filth was an infernal condition.  Troy and Jimmy had saved the man, saved him from a live of iniquity and trash.

He dug around in the box, and found the VHS cassette that he’d seen in his vision.  The young blonde on the cover grimaced in pain, or perhaps ecstasy.  It was hard to say.  It didn’t really matter.

Jimmy’s lip curled in revulsion as he studied the box.  He looked up at Troy.  "What do we do with this?  Burn it?"

Troy laughed.  "Good lord, no.  Just bag it up, son.  It’s trash, and we dispose of trash."

Jimmy nodded.  It made sense.  He nudged the body.  "And him?  We bag him up?"

"Well," Troy said, wiping his bloody hands on his overalls.  "He’s actually recyclable, so you’ll want to separate him from the other garbage."

Jimmy laughed.  "Can’t let good meat go to waste, can we?"

Troy smiled at him.  "That’s right, son.  That’s right."

  - the end -

bio: Rafael Chandler is a freelance video game writer. He's contributed to over 20 games, including BattleTech 3025, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and Rainbow Six: Lockdown. His horror fiction and poetry have appeared in magazines like Lullaby Hearse and Night to Dawn. Visit him at www.rafaelchandler.com.