The Sleaze who didn't Freeze

The Sleaze who did not Freeze by P.C. Darkcliff

“… my panties!”

Although muffled by a wall or two, the scream was so shrill it hit me like a slap with a wet rag. I opened my eyes with a gasp, half expecting to see the morning light struggling through my bedroom curtains. Instead, I saw the open laptop grinning at me like crocodile’s jaws.

The laptop was in a sleep mode. On impulse, I moved the mouse, and a half-finished article leaped onto the screen. I must have fallen asleep while I was typing it. And the screaming must have been just a soundtrack to a bizarre dream.

The sports guy Andy was probably chasing soccer players for an interview, and I was alone in the office. A cell phone was lying on the tiled floor by his desk. The editor, whose office was next door, was also gone.

The subtropical sun was struggling through a misty sheet behind the window, and I could see my pale face reflecting on the laptop screen. My oily forehead shone cheerily through a sprinkling of zits. My prematurely worn out eyes were wide open as if something had scared me. Just as I frowned at the outline of my shoulders, which were way too wide even for a plump tomboy like me, the screams came again.

“What have you done to me, you dykes? Where are my panties? What’s going on?”

The screams were coming from downstairs, where Jenny the secretary and five advertising girls worked. I thought I recognized the throaty voice of Hellen.

Intrigued, I got up and went across the newsroom to the gaunt stairway to investigate. As I set my foot on the first step, I heard sirens starting to blare all over the town. Was there a fire? Or had the volcano erupted?

A nightmarish image materialized in my mind’s eye: thousands of people stampeding down to the port and fighting like beasts for a place on rescue boats to leave the island; helicopters taking away the rich and powerful, and the boats taking away the fittest, while the rest of the population—shmucks like me—staying behind and dying in a toxic cloud, earthquake, or tsunami.

I rushed to the window to scan the parking lot below and the crumbling warehouses on the other side of the lot. As I was on the third floor, I could see all the hideous, peeling buildings that clustered behind the warehouses, and even the volcano that squatted on the other side. Neither the buildings nor the volcano was belching fire.

Sighing in relief, I went downstairs to the advertising department. I staggered when I saw Hellen.

Ever since she’d started working here a few weeks back, I’ve been thinking I might soon turn lesbian. She was so ravishing that—even though she was dumber than a perfume commercial—she was already the paper’s biggest asset. Her alluring legs, small but rounded butt, generous boobs, and a face that could be both slutty and innocent convinced every local businessman to advertise with the Enquirer.

Yes, Hellen was ravishing. And it seemed she’d also been ravished.

No longer screaming, she slouched on her swivel chair, with her long, smooth legs crossed, and with tears gushing out of her beautiful dark eyes. Her blouse was unbuttoned. Her miniskirt was all rumpled.

The other girls were bending over her, fanning her drenched face with this week’s issue of the Enquirer, squeezing her hands, and cooing her like a flock of doves.

“What the hell happened here?” I asked.

“She was assaulted, the poor soul!” said Jenny the secretary, a large woman with thin blond hair and thick black eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I’d feared as much. “Where did it happen? In the parking lot? Or in one of the warehouses?”

“No,” said Jenny. “It happened right here.”

“Right here?” I balled my manlike hands into fists. When I’d come to the office a few hours ago, all the girls had been at their desks and everything had seemed normal. “When? Where? How? Had the bastard been stalking the bathroom or what?”

“No! It happened right here on her desk!” said Jenny, shaking as much as Hellen did.

“Right here?” This piece of information felt like a burst appendix. “And nobody came to help her? Was the bastard armed or something?”

“I don’t know.” Jenny’s voice was just a hoarse whisper. “Nobody knows.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“None of us saw it, alright?” Jenny was crying now. The other girls joined in a chorus, making the room look like a funeral parlor. “The creep must have drugged us. Maybe he’d released toxic gases through the vent or something to put us all to sleep. We all blacked out—God knows for how long—and suddenly we were jolted by Hellen’s screams. That poor soul was lying on her desk, with her skirt up and her panties gone.”

That explained the yelling that had slapped me from my own slumber. But what did it all mean? Who did it? And how? And how far had the sleaze gone?

“Did he…?” I asked, unsure how to continue.

“She doesn’t seem to have been penetrated, praise the Lord,” Jenny said to my relief. “It was probably just her panties the creep had been after.”

“And you don’t remember anything?” I asked Hellen, but she only kept sobbing. “Nobody remembers that happening?” I turned to the other girls, but they all shook their heads.

“Hellen doesn’t either,” said Jenny. “She says that one moment she was painting her nails at her desk, and the next she was lying on the table.”

“How is this possible?” I asked. “What’s the last thing you guys remember?”

“I was talking on the phone with a client,” said Julia, the graying head of advertising. “And suddenly my phone was lying on the desk and Hellen was screaming.”

A small bell went off in my head. My mind flew to the cell phone lying near Andy’s desk. I realized it wasn’t Andy’s, but mine. And suddenly I remembered I’d also had a phone call—and an episode of memory loss.

The call had come while I was writing the article. I’d glanced at the cell phone display and seen a nonsensical jumble of letters and numbers. Even though I hadn’t pressed the green button, I heard heavy wheezing slither out of the earpiece.

“Hello?” I’d said. “Who’s that?”

The caller merely kept on breathing like an asthmatic old man, and suddenly I could not only hear him but also smell him. I can’t explain it, but I swear it’s true! The stench that puffed from the earpiece was unbearable. It reminded me of the rotten breath of Johnny, my German shepherd that had died of stomach cancer a year ago when I was still living on the mainland with Mom. It felt as if poor old Johnny was phoning me from his backyard grave. Worse, it felt as if a hundred poor old Johnnies were phoning me from doggie hell, and as if they’d crapped all over my cell phone on top of that.

Not even when the phone had slipped from my hand had the stench abated. The last thing I remembered was glancing at the window and seeing thick smoke coming from the presumably dead volcano. Then I woke at my desk to the screams of Hellen.

Had the volcanic fumes knocked us all out? How long had we been unconscious? And what had happened in the meantime, apart from the assault?

“Has anybody called the cops?” I asked. The sirens were still blaring all over the town and I hoped that one of the cruisers was coming our way.

“Yes, but they said it would be a while before they came,” said Julia.

“And Chubby-Dick never picks up his cell phone,” added Jenny, referring to Richard, our overweight prick of an editor whose parents owned a whaling company.

“Well, keep trying, will you?” I said. “I’ll go and see what’s going on.”

With that, I walked downstairs to the reception and out of the building.

* * *

The humid subtropical heat hugged me like a friendly sauna-goer as soon as I got out. Largely abandoned, our street was deadly quiet. However, I could tell something weird was going on downtown.

The blaring of sirens got stronger as I walked toward Main Street. The throughway was in turmoil. People were running up and down like a bunch of frightened mice, shouting and yelling. Something big was going on. As the senior reporter of the island’s best and only newspaper, it was my duty to cover it.

I’d left my large Nikon in my office, but my reporting fever was starting to burn high, and I didn’t want to go back and lose precious time. The small point-and-shoot camera that hung from my belt would have to do. Fortunately, I always wore a small notebook and a pen in the back pocket of my pants. I expected to take a lot of notes today.

Apparently, Main Street had suffered a tidal wave of thefts and burglaries. Some people stood bewildered in the middle of the throughway, patting their pockets in search of their wallets. Others were sitting on the curb, crying over their stolen purses. A police cruiser was parked in front of every large or pricy shop.

Feeling as if I were walking through a nightmare, I forgot about my mission. The incredible uproar coming from the bank jolted me from my trance, however, and I snatched my camera and rushed in.

Inside, there was a riot. About a dozen customers were shouting at the tellers, who were running around the lobby like headless chickens, doing nothing useful. Only the pretty teller at counter number three hadn’t stirred from her chair. Desperate sobs raked her body, and her blouse was missing a few buttons. She was clenching it together with both hands while her wet eyes flicked from one man to another as if she were afraid that someone would jump over the counter and start fondling her breasts. Tears of anger suddenly stood in my eyes. It seemed that this poor girl had also been molested.

My soul filled with hatred for the bastard or bastards who had caused all this havoc. I’d gone through an anarchistic phase back in high school, and I still thought that robbing a bloated bank wasn’t much of a crime. Pickpocketing was pretty serious, though, and a sexual assault was the most heinous felony, comparable only to murder and child molestation.

The sight of the teller triggered dreadful college memories. My best friend, Kassinda, had been raped right on the campus, and the ordeal had left her an emotional wreck. Even years afterwards, she still had nightmares whenever she fell asleep, and flashback on the rare occasions when she tried to have sex.

And now poor Hellen, and the teller, and who knows who else was to go through the same hell. How can men be such scumbags? I’d never had a boyfriend, and I doubted I’d ever have one. Not after this.

How had the scumbag or scumbags managed to pull this off anyway? I started to approach people and ask questions, but a security guard chased me away as if I was the perpetrator.

I kept walking down the frenzied throughway, taking one shot after another. The few people who were willing to speak to me had the same story to tell: one second they’d been going around their business, and the next they’d found themselves stripped of their possessions or clothes, or both. And everyone who’d had a view of the volcano said it had started to burp smoke just before the madness struck.

Had the volcanic fumes doped the whole town? That was the only explanation. But how come the raping and thieving swine hadn’t passed out like everyone else? Had they been wearing gas masks? How could they have known the volcano would erupt, though? That just didn’t make sense.

“It all Chighwo’s doing,” said an old man who was sitting calmly on a bench in front of the library, wrapped in something that looked like a woolen poncho. Judging from his long, raven black hair and the tribal scars that crisscrossed the dark skin on his cheeks and forehead, he was one of the island’s last natives.

“Chigh-wo?” I asked, sitting down beside him. “Who’s Chighwo?”

“Lady is new here, no?” the man asked. He had no teeth, and the accented words came out of his mouth chewed and salivated like Johnny’s favorite tennis ball.

“I just came three months ago.”

“Three months ago!” he chuckled and shook his head. “And lady never noticed nothing weird about island and town and people?”

“Not until today,” I said with a shrug.

With its volcano rising from a dense subtropical forest, and with its virginal beaches stretching behind it, the north of the island was a chunk of paradise. But this cluster of hideous, rundown buildings that sprawled all the way to the large, grimy, industrial port, was like a wart on a beautiful face. The streets were always eerily quiet once the shops, schools, and offices closed. People spent most of their free time at home, and I always had the beaches to myself. That suited perfectly to a nature-loving asocial geek like me, though. I’d never really wondered about it—until now.

The only thing I’d always found strange was the lack of birds. The gulls did come in enormous and noisy flocks from time to time. They only stayed a day or two, though, and always in the town and the port, not giving a white shit about the volcanic north. Other beasts—the locals included—seemed to shy away from the forest as well.

“I knew this would happen,” the old man said with a self-satisfied grin. “My grandma always say Chighwo could freeze time on island whenever he please. And he done it. He really done it! And obvious, someone taken advantage of that.

“While everything and everyone frozen in time, a person or a group of persons—Chighwo’s priests, maybe—were untouched by the spell. And they went on a rampage, raping and looting, and creating chaos, on which Chighwo feed. And when time thaw, they gone hiding. Hell, they not even had to go hiding. They maybe among us, pretending to be so stunned and robbed like everyone!”

I looked the man deep into his dark eyes, and I knew he was serious. I would have never believed such tales, of course. But everything the man said made sense. Something uncanny had happened, and statis, or complete time freeze, seemed to be the only explanation.

“So who is this Chiwa— What was the name again?”

“Chighwo,” the old man snapped like a teacher addressing a dumb pupil. “Chighwo is master of island. Is ancient force dwelling inside volcano, from where he control the fate of us. Is the highest deity of my tribe, god of time and greed and lust and chaos. Grandma use to say he move people’s minds with breath, and with fumes from crater.”

As he said this, I recalled my visit to the volcano about a month ago. I’d been strangely attracted to the place ever since I landed on the island. I kept postponing going there for two months, though, as if I was trying to muster my courage. Everyone I’d told about my planned trip said I was crazy. And it didn’t seem to be just their natural aversion to the outdoors what had made them say that.

I admit I was a bit scared as I’d sat on my bike that sunny Sunday and headed out of town. I pedaled along a dry riverbed, getting nearly shaken out of my skin by stones and holes. Once I reached the foot of the volcano I got off and started to climb.

The slope was full of loose stones and prickly thorns. At times it got so steep I had to climb on all fours like a mountain goat, grabbing at the branches of stunted pine trees and dwarf fan palms so as not to tumble down.

Although the volcano was said to be dead, the temperature increased steadily. By the time I finally reached the summit, the heat got nearly unbearable. Not even a sigh of smoke escaped out of the volcano’s jaws, though. When I stuck my feverish head over the edge of the crater, I saw nothing but scorching blackness. A strange blend of relief and disappointment flushed over my sweaty body, even though I couldn’t have expected anything else.

But there was something else down there, as I’d noticed when I was about to leave: an enormous shadow wallowing in the depths.

I could never explain this. The blackness inside was absolute, yet I could feel there was something even darker moving inside the crater. And then I saw something else: a couple of large, fiery spots.

At first I’d thought it was magma flaring up in a draft. Then I realized it was a pair of eyes. They were staring from the dead volcano like two smoldering eyeballs from an incinerator. They were staring right at me. Then a whiff of terrible stench rushed from below. Although it was gone in a second, it punched me like a giant fist and nearly sent me plummeting into the volcanic mouth.

Don’t ask me how I got back down. The memories are all blurry. I remember falling and sliding down the thorny slope on my ass, and then scrambling up to my feet and staggering a few yards, only to fall and roll and slide again. The slope seemed to be without end, but suddenly I was lying at the foot of the volcano, wheezing and bleeding from dozens of scratches.

I was half dead before I made it back home, and I spent the rest of the day and the whole night in the bathroom, screaming from stomach cramps. I’d often been dizzy, feverish, and nauseated since then, but I’d been too cowardly to see a doctor.

My mind had blocked the memory of those fiery eyes. In fact, I’d almost completely forgotten the whole adventure. But the old man had made memories gallop back to me in all colors.

Could I have seen the eyes of Chighwo up there? And could I have smelled him as well? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the stench coming from the volcano was the same stench that came from my cell phone—the smell of hundreds of wheezing and pooping Johnnies.

I was about to ask the native for more details, but when I turned my head to him, he gave me such a weird look that my throat went dry. It was as if something had scared him. Grunting and murmuring something I couldn’t understand, he got up and walked away as fast as his skinny legs allowed him.

“Hey, wait a second,” I called at his back, but he just kept shuffling.

For a while, I wondered whether this man was responsible for all the havoc. But he could hardly walk, and I couldn’t imagine him having much appetite for rape. Could it have been someone from his tribe, though? Could their shaman be the priest of Chighwo?

I jotted down everything the old man had said, along with a note to look into the natives and their legends. As I lifted my head, the man was already out of sight. Sticking my notebook back in my pocket, I got up and kept walking.

My heart throbbed at the sight of the superstitious fear groping over people’s faces. They knew something uncanny and supernatural had to be lurking behind all this madness. Rape and robbery were already bad enough. But the idea of these crimes happening with the help of a malignant, chaos-hungry deity was frightening.

How long had the island been frozen in statis? An hour? Twelve hours? A day? It could have been as much as a week or more if there had been just one perpetrator. And it could happen again, at any time.

A cruiser was parked in front of a large supermarket. I heard the balding manager whimper to a weary cop about all bills going missing from the cash registers. This place must have also been hit by the sleaze… The sleaze who did not freeze.

The Sleaze who did not Freeze. I liked that! As I kept walking I decided to use the moniker in my column.

I knew this would be a long day and night at the Enquirer. We had to get a special issue out as soon as possible. This would be the most fantastic edition in the paper’s history. My stories would be surely reprinted all over the mainland, and most likely internationally. Less than half a year after my graduation, I’d already soared to the pinnacle of my career. I just hoped Chubby-Dick wouldn’t squeeze too much juice out of my articles by his clumsy editing.

My excitement turned into fury when I walked a few hundred yards and stood in front of the senior high school. Seven or eight girls were sitting on the front steps, crying and hugging each other for support. The mothers wept along with their daughters, while the fathers stomped around the front yard, clenching their fists and roaring for justice. The blouses of the girls’ uniforms were missing buttons.

“Those poor things,” whispered an old woman who’d halted beside me, her eyes flashing with indignation. “How could someone do this to them? I hope he’ll rot in jail!”

“Prisons are too expensive for the taxpayer,” I quoted my latest column, which had dealt with a child molester. “The death penalty, on the other hand, costs a pittance. I hope they’ll do the bastard in. Just before they cut off his balls of course!”

“You’re right!” said the woman. “Listen, aren’t you the new reporter for the Enquirer? You should write a column advocating the death penalty for this monster.”

“Oh, I will, don’t you worry about that! And I hope the authorities will listen. With multiple sexual assault charges and so many robberies, there’s no other way, is there?”

“But the trials take forever,” said the woman, warming up to the idea of a quick kill. “The best thing would be if the cops simply beat him to death right after catching him. Am I right?”

“Oh, they just might!” I exclaimed, for I’d heard dozens of stories about the Gestapolike brutality of the local police force. “The mainland cops who are convicted of stuff like unlawful killing are not always dismissed: some of them are sent over here. I certainly wouldn’t like to be in the bastard’s shoes. If I saw the cops coming for me, I’d simply climb the nearest roof and jump off!”

“That’s what he should do right now,” said the woman as she lumbered away.

I took the camera to snap a few pictures of the crying girls. Some of the fathers started shouting and galloping toward me, however, and so I let the camera slide back into the case and hurried on.

* * *

When I returned to the Enquirer, I rushed upstairs, trembling to get to work on my feature story and my column. I needed to start writing right away now when all the details of the havoc still clenched my brain and when outrage still roared in my soul.

The sports guy Andy was still gone. Chubby-Dick was there, unfortunately, stomping around his office and yelling into his cell phone as if he were possessed. Apparently, the Sleaze had scuttled his parents’ whaling ship.

Spotting my cell phone on the floor, I wondered who’d called me before I’d blacked out. Had the call really taken place, or had I just dreamed it? Had it really been Chighwo on the other end? I picked it up and pressed the ON button. The phone was dead.

As I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus over Chubby-Dick’s shouting, I decided to go upstairs. I often did my writing in the attic, which offered an old desk and a swivel chair, beautiful ocean views and, most importantly, peace and quiet.

Andy always worked at his desk, listening to music on his earphones to block the noise, and as Chubby-Dick was too fat and lazy to climb up there, I always had the attic to myself. I was actually the only one who had the key, which I kept on a ring along with the key to my small, lonely apartment.

I grabbed my laptop and walked upstairs. I could still hear Chubby-Dick shouting when I reached the morgue—the place where we keep old issues of the Enquirer—on the fourth floor. However, his voice had grown to the buzzing of a fat mosquito. It faded out completely when I climbed another flight of stairs.

As I reached into my pocket to take out the key, I touched something soft. When I pulled it out, I gasped when I realized it was a pair of panties. They were pink and lacy and transparent like a net curtain. They obviously weren’t mine. But they might have been Hellen’s.

On a few occasions, I’d seen the top of Hellen’s underwear when she bent over her desk, and I knew this was exactly the kind of panties she wore. But how the hell had they ended up in my pocket? A vague horror burrowed its fist into my stomach. Had the Sleaze been playing jokes on me while I was unconscious? What else had he done?

I fought back tears when I imagined a pair of creepy hands touching my breasts. I recalled a boy in my high school class, who always said I was too ugly to be even raped. I hoped the cruel bastard was right.

As I unlocked the door and walked into the attic, I heard a commotion down on the street. I put the laptop on the desk and rushed past stacks of old invoices to the window. Jenny the secretary and the advertising girls were in front of the building, their eyes turned toward Main Street. Even though I opened the window, I was too high to hear them clearly. But I thought they were shouting, “They’re coming, their coming! Hurry up!”

I saw three police cruisers pull into the parking lot. Their sirens were off, but their lights flashed like Christmas trees. The Sleaze had to be hiding in one of the warehouses. And they were going to bust him!

I’d known it wouldn’t take long to identify him. Unless he was wearing a mask while going around his sleazy business, he had to be caught on the bank’s and shops’ CCTV images.

I suddenly imagined a footage of the Sleaze entering a bank full of breathing statues. He’d jumped over the counter to pull at the handle of box and drawer in search of money; then he’d walked to the counter to pull at the nipples of the pretty teller. Having stolen her wallet and the wallets of every other person in the bank, he scurried out to steal and grope next door. These images were surprisingly clear and insistent.

The cruisers stopped in front of the Enquirer. Was the Sleaze hiding right here? I turned around to run downstairs and investigate when I noticed a backpack. Large and bursting with a fat load, it leaned against the wall near the window. I staggered when I saw the crouching Spiderman sewn to the pocket. The backpack was definitely mine. But what the hell was it doing here?

The last time I’d seen it was while I was unpacking the stuff I’d brought from the mainland three months ago. I’d shoved it under my bed, where it had been collecting dust ever since. Or so I thought.

With shaking hands, I undid the clip and pulled the top flap open. The backpack tipped over. A pile of wallets and wads of bills rolled out, sprinkled with golden rings, watches, and bracelets—and more pairs of panties.

And then I understood.

It had really been the eyes of Chighwo I’d seen glaring from the volcano. His unclean, mesmerizing breath must have turned me into his puppet. But who would ever believe me? And how could I ever overcome the remorse over all the pain I’d caused?

The cops got out of the cruisers and talked to the girls. Bitter puke rushed out of my mouth and splashed all over the booty. I groaned in terror as I walked to the wooden ladder that led to the roof. I grabbed the ladder. My hands shook so much the ladder rattled as if the island had really been struck by an earthquake. But the tremor was only in my soul.

I climbed all the way up. I opened the hatch, pulled myself through the skylight, and put my feet on the hot shingles. The breeze made me stagger as I walked to the edge of the roof. Thirty yards below, the pavement spread like a pair of inviting arms. As I jumped, I briefly wondered whether those who’d been possessed by Chighwo could ever really die.