The Salesman

There is something to be said of fresh New England air. To someone who is ignorant to its magic, New England air is invigorating and pure, not to mention quite easy on the allergies. In recent days, it had been particularly fresh to the Salesman, who had journeyed from far away to do his business here. But the air was at this time at the bottom of his list of important things, seeing as he was tied to a metal slab in someone’s basement.

It was supposed to be a simple trip. A nice, easy trip to Regiton up in Maine for the Salesman to do his Salesman duties and earn his Salesman reward. Maybe if he was really good, the manager would let him have some of his own merchandise and oh how he wished he could have some of that merchandise right now. Crisp and pure, just like the air that he was being deprived of. Maybe a bottle of fine wine to go with it…some filet mignon and cheddar jack potatoes perhaps, and maybe some after dinner entertainment courtesy of the cute Filipino girl that hangs in the lobby sometimes. What was her name…Diana? Dixie? Not that her name mattered anyhow, seeing as right now she was not a succulent little taste of the East Pacific islands, but a figment of his imagination. And although he appreciated the images it was sending him, his imagination only made his situation even more unpleasant, as his erection began to push against something even harder than himself. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. He felt heavy and drowsy, and but he was certainly awake enough to sit up. Something was holding him down, keeping his head staring straight into the dirty wooden ceiling and cobwebs.

What bound our Salesman friend were chains. Big, heavy, rusted chains saturated for years with sea salt and ocean spray, metallic snakes that bound his legs and arms with an extra heavy one tossed on his body for good measure. “Where am I?” asked the Salesman. His question fell upon the spiders and their cobweb dinners, and they simply ignored him.

“Who put me here?” he asked. No one answered “ Who the fuck put me here?” He rattled the chains, if not to get out than to get the attention of whoever bound him. It did not take a genius (for our Salesman was not particularly bright) to realize that chains do not latch themselves onto people of their own accord, especially to someone as powerful and prestigious as himself.

The cold tough metal bound his head, so he only could see what his eye sockets would allow. They darted to the left they hit a wall, which comforted him a little knowing that nothing strange or disturbing was in that direction. The wall was dusty and worn, probably holding ancestral generations of mice and other rat creatures within. Yes! There it was! Bang, bang, scuffle, scuffle went the hidden little feet in the wall. Marching to and fro, all about for food or some kind of edible morsel in that maze. It must have been hard; trying to find food within the walls, for the most treacherous labyrinth is one that is built on instinct rather than logic. Passages upon passages with hope and a bite to eat around every corner only to find more passages in its place. Every rare reward and scrap of food just another bit of cruelty that feeds the endlessly wanting machine that is the stomach, whetting the appetite and feeding the flames burn within the thinly stretched rat tummy. It was a feeling that the Salesman did not know but could imagine from all of the “Save the Starving Children” commercials that droned on the airwaves late at night. The Salesman remembered these commercials and felt sorry for the mice. Then he realized that his left check was touching a gateway to an infinite cesspool of diseased, filthy, and ravenously hungry rodents with glaring little beady red eyes and a smell that forced its way through time itself. And those teeth! Needles of poisoned ice that bit and tore and ravaged the helpless flesh with beastly ferocity. Dripping with saliva and the stench of halitosis, wanting to sink into his skin like the bright and juicy chunk of meat that he was (although he had not eaten for quite some time). The thought of those tiny little clawed feet all over his suit and the pinpricks of rat teeth on his face nauseated the Salesman, and he turned a color of steamed cabbage.

His eyes broke away from the wall and shifted right. There was not much to see. A single box labeled “Fishing Things”, some junk metal and fishing rods on the floor, and an ancient refrigerator that was brown with history and almost moldy from years of storing fish eggs and canned worms probably. Although he called it a refrigerator, it was really more of a small meat locker, as it was big and heavy, and looked almost like a tomb from where he was. The adjacent wall was adorned from ceiling to floor with old pictures of a little boy with an older man in various scenes holding various different kinds of fish. Probably a father and son. Families are so nice. The son looked as grim as every child in those brown and white photos and seemed to know that this visitor was watching him. His presumed father looked like a slightly younger version of the grizzled old fishermen that are on Saturday morning cartoons sometimes. The sinister and ominous Carl the Crooning Catfish and his two identical brothers hung on their fake wooden plaques next to each other like a primitive caveman tribunal deciding what to do with one who had sinned against the Old Gods. It was their eyes that seemed to flash with a fanatic zeal and almost enjoy the suffering of their primordial defendant, even though it was only a trio of battery powered singing fish. It didn’t take much to figure out that whoever this guy was got off on fishing. It was all people did up here.

There was no way to count the passage of time. Oh he tried many different things, but nothing worked. He even to see how many times he would get through singing “One little, two little, three little elephants. Four little, five little, six little elephants…” before someone came down to feed him. He got through seventeen verses before he gave up and tried to sleep again. He did not thirst, for moisture was already in the air and collected in spots in the roof here the ground above poked through, dripping into his mouth every morning and every night. Though it came from the ground, it was plentiful and the Salesman was grateful for them. It also conveniently became his only way of keeping track of the days of his captivity. Two sets of drips a day, and the salesman had already counted 17 drip sets, so it was the afternoon of the 8th day. Nobody had come to feed him, interrogate him, or make any sort of sign that they knew he was there; nobody had even attempted to open the basement door. His senses had become attuned to his prison that was slowly becoming his home as the time passed. Things that the limited movement of his eye sockets could not discern where in the end discovered by his other senses. The forever-marching mice told their own simple story. If the sound in the wall was soft, muffled by the padding of their own shit, they had fed well. If they did not, then their claws scraped against the thin wooden wall in anger and hunger, smelling the live beating heart on the other side of the barrier, fiending for even a tiny bite of whatever was causing that deliciously maddening smell. The Salesman dreaded the days when the mice fed, and hated their lean days even more. Why could they not all just die? When the smell came he wished for the certain death behind that wall, and when certain death was knocking down that wall he wished for the smell. And when terror in the anticipation of these things gave way to sleep he dreamed of blood. Blood that was splattered on the floor as a simple and mindless creature was gutted from the inside out by a cold steel blade. In his dreams he knew the blood, and the blood knew him. And in his pitiful state, the Salesman had empathy for those creatures, and was thankful that they felt nothing after death.

“But what if it didn’t feel nothing?” whispered a voice in the shadow. “What if it felt every moment from death to grave? Even though its breath has stopped does that mean that it can’t feel the gleaming silver slicing through scale and bone? All the sweet, sweet flesh torn from every fin and scraped from every crevice. What if it felt this terrible cleansing, felt every last moment till his bones smacked the floor in blessed relief? What then? What then, what then indeed.”

The Salesman’s eyes snapped open and darted in the blackness. Terror caught his voice by the heels and what should have been a roaring command escaped his lips as no more than a squeak from the mice in the wall. “Who’s there? Let me go!”

There was no reply

The Salesman struggled in his chains, racking them back and forth with a ferocity that should have been starved away

“You shit! You little shit, you can’t keep me here! People know where I am! They’ll come looking for me and when they do…”

“Oh I can keep you here. And I will. I will and I’m going to enjoy it. You, after all, are the last one. So I might as well take my time,” said the shadow

“The last what?”

Giggles escaped from the shadows, “The last Salesman of course”

The sound of his own heart reverberated in his ears. What did he mean by take his time? And there were Salesman all across the country how could he possibly be the last one? A horrid scratching at the walls interrupted his thoughts. The rats did not eat today. Their claws scratched their own walls with their hunger pains, ready to tear at their own kin if they nothing else could be found soon. They were filled with a ravenous desire, just like the Salesman. He squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to block out the darkness with the dancing images that lay behind his eyelids. “I will wake up. I will wake up. Please, please wake up. Don’t let this dream kill me”

“Dream?” the shadow cackled, “What is a dream besides your mind’s regurgitation of what you hope and fear? Is release what you hope for? Is THIS what you fear?” The shadow stepped closer, his breath heavy and quick grating against the Salesman’s ears. The black form faded to gray as his features slowly formed out of the darkness.

“But now you’re here! You’re here and that’s good because we have much business to discuss here. Here in this wonderful crypt we sit and discuss. DISCUSS! Like rational, normal men. A casual conversation between acquaintances having much to do with anything of importance or great need at the current moment. Importance is the all the matter now, and what we must DISCUSS my dear Salesman is of grave importance. Oh so grave indeed, just like the one you are sitting in right now.”

The man was clearly insane. The Salesman couldn't see him, for the lack of light and the his inability to even creen his neck to see, but somehow he knew the man was insane. He babbled his words as if he thought he would not have enough time to speak, and he barley made any sense at all when he did. “Importance! What? I’m just a salesman! I came here to sell outlet plugs and plastic nipples! There’s nothing important about me!” The Salesman began to quake in his chains, disturbing the hungry rats with his fear. He could not understand all that his captor was saying, because he said it all very fast. As if his message could not be confined to the breath that it was allowed.

“YOU LIE!” screamed the gray form, “You lie and you try to deceive me to save your own skin. Your skin is rotten Mr. Salesman! Rotten skin is not worth saving. Shed and discard your lying rotten skin or condemn yourself to live in it. Dead underneath the surface but very much alive above it…you disgust me. Every one of you disgusted me. That stench of deceit, that stupid grin, that suit. All the same, every one, all the same.

The mice began to squeak even louder. The salesman felt the wall pound against his cheek. Was it his heart reverberating in his face? Or was it the mice, determined to tear the flesh from around his eyeballs banging on the wooden gate that separated his sweet meats from their teeth.

“You have no idea how long I’ve dreamed that this day would come!” screamed the gray form. “Those voices will finally be appeased, I can finally shut them up for good! Oh how they scream and scream Mr. Salesman. They scream for justice and vengeance. They scream for the murder that must be. They scream for you! They scream for your life all the day and the nights just as loud.” Slowly the electronic fish turned their heads to the poor man chained to the table. His face dripped terror as he watched those mechanical fish move with a realism that should not exist in a machine. They opened their eyes and began to sing in 50’s do-wop style

Ooooooo bop bop bop oooooooh

Bop bop bop ooooooooh

Bop bop bop ooooooh

Oooh

Boom Boom

Hey Mister (bum bum, bum bum)

(Shut your goddamn mouth you fucking fish! Shut your moth right now!)

You’ve done some bad things Ah-saaaaaaaaaaaaayay (bum bum)

Aaaand nooow todaaaaaaayay

It is the time for you to pay-ay

(Let me go you sick fuck! Let me go!)

Boom boom

Pay with your life

Hey mister maaaaaaan

Oh mister Sales man

(I don’t wanna die…)

Too many lies in your heart, Ah say

Too many lies

(Sob Please don’t kill me…)

So many sins, where to start, Ah say

So many sins

It is the time for you to pay-ay

WAH WAH WAH WAAAA

By the end of the song the Salesman was in tears. “Please!” he sobbed, “I don’t want to die! I’ve done terrible things to people I know! But I don’t wanna die! I wanna live! What do you want from me! My money? My wife? Take her I don’t care! My accounts, my house? Yes you can have the house! I have the keys take the keys! My car…my car….my car…”

At the Salesman’s plea the grey form stopped. As light seeped through the dusty windows they revealed that what was once shadow was just a man. Just a man and not a devil, demon, or anything else of the like. He stepped forward into the light, revealing the wind-burned face of a man. His tawny hair was flecked with spots of grey as was the newly shaved beard just beginning to grow again. He stood proud and tall even if he stood less than 6 foot. He did not look insane as he sounded, nor was he deformed and hideous as the Salesman imagined. The man walked to the table and gazed upon the pitiful creature before him. He laid a hand on his chest and said, “Do you like fish? I hope you do. Fish is good for you. Very, very good for you” He doubled the pressure on the Salesman’s chest, forcing his weight on the heart. “And fish soup too. Its good for you. Lots of mercury to keep the brain nice and slippery.”

The Salesman felt his ribs give way with a crunch. Wetness built in his throat, unable to choke down the flow of blood from his bleeding ribs. Did he have a bowling ball on his heart? A house? The Hand of God? “Plea…se…no….” bubbled out through his throat.

“No? Perhaps some fish pot pie. Or fish fritters. Maybe fried fish with chips,” said the man as he heard the SNAP of even more ribs cracking under the sheer Pressure. The man began to cackle and laugh, and the hideous sound echoed through every corner and crevice of that filthy basement. "Why don't you like fish, Mr. Salesman? Fish is good for you! Fish is very, very good for you!" For a split second, the Salesman thought that perhaps, it was not this psychotic fiend putting the Pressure on him, but it was the weight of his own guilt. He had done so many horrible things in the name of money, and even now they all pressed down on him in his mind as well as on his heart. And in this second, the Pressure almost felt good, as if he knew that the weight of his own sins could not be contained any longer, and this holy man was just releasing it from within him. He knew that, somehow, things would be better soon. And it soon came to be.

With his last Salesman now dead, the holy man went over to the “Fishing Things” box and picked up a large cutting knife. He went to the dead thing on the table and began to saw away at the soft spot where his hand had been, looking to expose his black, rotted heart. After he saw his opening, he reaching in with a mighty grab and plucked the heart (which to Jack’s surprise was bright bleeding red) straight from the dead man on the table. Gingerly he carried the heart over to the old refrigerator, where exactly 93 hearts lay stuffed into every available space along with an old jack in the box. Adding the 94th and final heart, the man who was the grey form slammed the refrigerator door behind him, cackling even harder. That one had been the greatest pleasure of them all. Not only did he scream and beg harder than the others, but he even heard the fish on the wall speak! Clearly the man was insane to begin with, and the grey man was very happy that his garbage-like essence no longer stained his beautiful abode. More importantly though, the deed had now been done, and his mission had been completed. But...the grey man liked the feeling that he got when he did these things. His revenge had been exacted, and the punishment swift and severe...but he knew that there would be always more people to punish. That didn't bother the grey man at all...in fact it made him very happy. Very happy indeed.