When the Sky Was Open

WHEN THE SKY WAS OPEN

by

David Lawler

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

David Lawler on Smashwords

WHEN THE SKY WAS OPEN

Copyright © 2013 by David Lawler

Cover Art and Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Bronwyn Knox

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions, and organizations in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct.

Except under special agreement in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

Adult Reading Material

*****

WHEN THE SKY WAS OPEN

*****

Also by David Lawler

THE SHE-BEAST OF SHOGGOTH

EMMA THE CAT (and OTHER STRANGE TALES)

TRINITY (and OTHER STORIES)

Visit www.davidlawler.net for news, updates, and short stories.

Prologue

Nola and Her Dream

She was in the Old West House; that's what she called it when she was very little, having read about the deserted night prairies and the houses the settlers would build on a land like this. No elevation. No carpets. Only noisy oak planks and you could hear anybody in the house at any time as they walked the planks. She came up the stairs, hearing the tinny creak, heard the enormous bird's flapping wings and she traced the sound to the front bedroom as lightning scattered across the windows.

As quickly as she entered the bedroom, she was beset; the flapping black wings, the wing span and weight all on Nola and her back; constricted, forced to bend down.

1

THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF NOLA’S RECURRING FANTASY. In a room with a wet, dark wood floor, rain coming in from the open windows, skidding on surface, a tremendous hawk planted on her back and dug talons into her sides and neck. She can't get the bird off of her body. She is small, weak, and incapable; a helpless girl.

Help me, she screams down the winding thunder, but nobody can or will hear her. She turns to the window and all she sees is dark sky, moonlit clouds, occasional strikes of fire raging outside, and sideways rains. It isn't only that every time she tries to escape, the bird sinks in even deeper. Every time she even thinks of an idea to break free, the bird knows and punishes her.

Help me, please, she screams again, and she knows no one can hear. The pressing, sharp talons move up her back for the bird to get purchase on her fresh skin. The bird is a rape-monster, slicing into her flesh only to see her bleed, not for sustenance but for her petty satisfaction. The hawk is a she, a bad bitch, and total enemy. All Nola can do is stay her ground and put up the front of courage.

She hears the flapping of the black wings and the squawking and she can feel the cold blood dripping down from her neck, going down to her back.

She knows this is the game with the deadly bird. It will wait for Nola to cease defense and finally give up so she can move in for the kill. Up until this point she has worked her way up, those front claws going to the arteries in the neck and again - waiting for Nola to cease defense. Those claws will slice into her neck, drown Nola in blood, draining her efforts and chew on her insides starting at her burning brown eyes; take them out first, you have no troubles after.

2

Nola collects her surroundings. It is a bedroom with wet, dark wood for floors. She races to painted windows; tries to pull them open and perhaps the rain will scare this bitch away. Hawks, no birds, don't enjoy the rain, dampens the feathers, and makes it nearly impossible to get a good jump on prey. Inside, this hawk is in Paradise, clutching and ripping at Nola's clothes, playing this sick game with her.

Nola turns, sees the hump of the reflection in wall-mounted dresser mirror that would look absolutely hilarious otherwise. Here she is trying to grab at the bitch behind, mounted on her, the rape-monster who is smarter than Nola because she is behind her. Nola sees this wing-flapping and dark blood-stained beak just above the top of her head, working her until she is flat-out exhausted and ready to be eaten.

You ever feel like you're choking in your dreams? she asked the strange older man the night before. They were at a club, Le Bou-Vou Seine, Dauphine, in the Quarter. Piano jazz and some strings, darkly-lit, purple passion. Hot waitresses in short black skirts and fishnets, bubbly and bouncing, came by to refill their drinks. Nola had a Manhattan and the older man had a Vodka Martini.

I never have dreams in which I'm in mortal danger, he said. Her job was clear as he was obviously drinking her in - she had to lure him back to the Debbie and shake him down, get out of there before sunrise with his wallet and cards in hand. She did her research and started tracking her marks for months beforehand, before the deed, find out how much money they had in their pockets at any given time. If they were out on the town, they carried more. If they were picking up their dry cleaning, they carried less. Tonight, he was loaded.

The sexuality was full-force, she had to work at being so young-looking, could pass for 15 (in reality, a healthy 27, but those older men liked 'em uberyun), and she wore a dress well. Her legs glowed in the orange and red neon. At least he was partially sophisticated, preferred a manner of dress consistent with her age. She didn't want him thinking he might be diddling jailbait and he didn't want her dressed up like a cheerleader, unnatural pigtails. He wanted sophisticated at least until...

3

The squawking never stops. It speaks her language, telling her just calm down and this will all be over soon. It was so vivid, and clear as day that she could understand the bird. She came to the window again to pull it up. The storm outside becomes a tornado with the gaping maw of a black void in the funnel.

This is Nola's recurring dream, like a curse, doomed to repeat every other night, and sometimes in episodic fashion, always choking and always struggling against the strength. It was like a human's strength, knowing her weakness and forcing muscle on her scrawny arm. In iteration, the hawk will move Nola to the unmade bed. Nola would be naked, thrown on her back and the bird would chew at her breast, move down to her navel and lower. It was a foul-smelling animal with all the kills, all the victories from before the beginning of the dream, all manifest in the feathers, and every scent of different animal bloods, entrails, gristly fat and slender muscle fragments hanging from the black beak, lifeless eyes assessing Nola.

In another variation, she would succeed, simply understand the consequences of surface pain, then rip the bird off her body, creating tears in her flesh, and then throws the bitch out of the open window into the black void of the tornado's funnel.

In another, the most provocative of these versions, there are two other Nolas helping her. She has the bird on her back and there are twin-Nolas ably assisting.

It's alright, Nola, we've got you, one of them says.

Just stay still, the other one instructs.

It hurts, she shrieks. The hawk parrots her with a squawk.

It's alright, Nola, we've got you!

Just stay still!

It repeats like this in a loop, buffered memory as if these were the only words her clones could impart, and it is never established if they have helped her. Why are there two Nolas? Are there distinct differences, or do they just run together? The dream changes to fit her mood. If she is lost and vulnerable, she receives no help, plummets into the black of the funnel. If she has had a good meal, she conquers the hawk-bitch. If she doesn't know how she feels on a given night, the default play is that she loses and is eaten or raped.

4

When the dream verges on a total loss, death, asphyxiation, or a falling feeling, she wakes and takes a breath, hopes it was nothing. They came into the room; she can remember that much, giggling, she takes her keys throws them on the telephone table by the door.

The usual room, 19, is on the second floor. He giggled to keep up with her, then abruptly stopped and grabbed her by her shoulders. Oh no, he's rough one. He clutched at her, struck her repeatedly about the face, her cheeks growing redder and redder, threw her on the bed, on her face. He pulls her hair and begins to have his way. Nola made a deal with herself. If it ever got this bad...

5

Please help me, is all she can ever seem to remember, but she finds her throat so choked, she can't utter a syllable nor fight her way through or around the bird without inflaming the bird's anger even more. She gets a look deep into the funnel, finds even more fliers, the brethren of the hawk-bitch all being summoned forth, and if Nola lets go just once and falls, she'll be torn to pieces, sliced into the wind and shattered like glass. Also, the revelatory, the realization that this is something her mind has created in an effort to destroy her.

6

There are flashes of the experience at the Debbie on Jackson. Black night sky rains, scattered, splashing briefly against the windows, some thunder far off (there was something about a possible tropical storm, but that's been happening every year for the last five, especially in August). At some point, it has become an endurance test with the old man Caleb. She keeps seeing his teeth up close, grinning and giggling.

Nola wakes just as she begins to die in her dream. White ceiling with a red water stain, forming ringed patterns. Nola turns her head. She sees a man's arm and then blood, a trail of it coming out from a pool in the midsection, bare ass sticks up. He's on his belly as she rises, cups a hand to her mouth, shock and horror and unbelieving.

Nola was clutching at her throat one moment before; then to turn and feel cold, drafty air, then blood (dead of August, supposed to be moderate) then sees this naked man. She takes in the motel room from last night - the Debbie Motel on Jackson Street, Westwego, Jefferson Parish, best cheap motel on the other side.

She was right near the ass-bump of the 'Sip. She probably picked the spot, but forgot the night before. Something about drinks, dancing, quick glances. Older man looking for a night out; he was a married idiot. He was her perfect mark. She brought him here around midnight.

She sat up and saw that the blood trailed out and fell off the body, creating a couple more scattered little pools on the indoor-outdoor carpet. The man had silver-gray hair and stubble. He was clean-shaven when he met him. He had to have died in the small hours. Give him some time to grow the beard and then...

She caught sight of a trickle of dried blood going down from her mouth, felt the damage, sudden shooting pain from her chin to her lower lip. The son-of-a-bitch had given her a fat lip for her trouble. He was a toughie, and unpretentious in his desire to inflict bodily harm on a child, such as she.

Nola looking for her clothes, searches the room, everywhere except under that hideous leather sack of an old man's body. She swore he took in a breath just now - didn't happen, was never gonna happen again. She forgot his name. Who was he? Look for his wallet, get his name.

You could get a man's identity, his whole fucking life, from his cell phone because he put everything in there, his name, his social, his bank account information (if he was a forgetful shit, he'd keep his PIN in there as well) and you could be set for life. Take it all, no question, and move very far away.

Who are you, she whispered, looking at the body.

Wind was pushing against the windows like in the dreams. No hawks this time, just his bloody, battered ass, but he had it coming evidently, through his action. He was a toughie, apparently as bad as they come and deserved to die in a most horrible, painful fashion.

She found his wallet and his coat, and the cell phone inside; one of those new beauties, all shiny, big window, smudge-proof, millions of colors. It looked brand new, no time to input all his pertinent data or maybe he was lonely and spent his waking hours communicating with the new electronic friend. Four-hundred dollars in twenties, new bills, obviously he was prepared to pay for a lady of the evening, a cheap source of disposable pussy. She’d need at least thirty to get over to Algiers and go over 90 to get back to the Quarter.

Was he sad? Was he lonely? Did his wife not give him any on a regular Friday? He had seven credit cards, three bank debit cards, his Social Security card, a couple of wallet-sized pictures; his children. They were beautiful. Nola felt slow, groggy looking at the pictures of the children: two girls, a boy. Best be off now, quick into the raining shadows, and avoid hawks at all costs.

He had stab marks on his back. She leaned over his body, nipples brushing against his elbow. More stab wounds, lower to upper abdomen, up to the neck, counted at least seven deep stab marks in his neck; the source of most of the pooled blood on the bed and the floor. No sign of defense. Enough! It's time to leave, Nola.

Oh my God, she told herself. I did this.

She got down on her hands and knees, looked under the bed and saw the knife, a folding hunting knife, serrated with dried blood on the shiny edge. Worse was that she didn't know or remember. There were dry little taps against the window and she looked out, saw the rain start to really come down.

The sky was cold blue and gray and the clouds had gone black. It was the color of the world in her dream, and that robotic monster hawk, waiting until she was through fighting; pressing her weight on Nola's back, stabbing her repeatedly with her claws because she knew that was how you killed your prey.

Part 1: Down Came the Rain

THE BLACK CAR PULLED UP AT THE PARKING LOT and honked a horn. The next moment, Nola's new phone rang, a pleasant little chirp, sounded like Nearer My God to Thee, but chirpy.

Yes. Thank you, she said into the phone and hung up.

Nola ran down the waterfall steps as the driver honked his horn, insistent and fearful, watching the skies open up and pour down liquid cold vengeance. She slipped on a heel, the one she dug to find, broke it, wood split, and she limped the rest of the way to the parking lot.

Let's go! Let's go, the Hack shrieked, some foreign, swarthy invective lacing his diction. He clubbed the wheel several times before she opened the door and got inside to a comparative dryness and warmth. The floods had begun.

The car screeched and turned on to the Bauve. Nola watched the tide rise and creep into the mainland. The water wore and tore at the powdery concrete dividers.

There's a twenty in it for you if you don't kill us, Nola told him, but he continued to swerve. The tide came in again as they made a right on to 4th Street in Harvey. The high wash became the Great Wash as the 'Sip spilled on all sides like too much milk in a bowl of wheat, fresh as it was, overpowering the stench of flooded sewers temporarily. The Hack did his best to elude the surge.

They made it as far as Fairmont and River Road when they saw the water rise again; the ass of the Jackson Avenue Ferry bobbing dangerously up and down in the tide and then was swept over into Jefferson Parish. Nola's mouth hung open, looking at the people on the Ferry, the idiots clinging to pipelines, to the bolted-down chairs and benches, smashing through frost glass windows, sliced to pieces.

She saw a family of five, and a dog, decapitated from the collar bone up by a three-foot flying propeller blade, and she knew this was for real. There was also the fleeting hope so much chaos would cover up her little crime at the Debbie. She started looking through the phone for a PIN number.

Oh my Jesus Christ, the Hack began to pray. Hmm, Nola thought, I didn't know Arabs could be Christian. When in Rome, she remembered. The Ferry finally settled on the steps of the Jefferson Parish Court House, drenched in blood, body parts, and sewage. The wave overtook the car and suddenly they were surfing along the edge of River Road with a great view of City Hall, an inland tidal wave taking the whole of the town by surprise.

A traffic light (red, yellow, green) was floating harmlessly by until the wave brought it up and then through the windshield, impaling sharply into the Hack's head and then supplying a stream of live current. Death two ways. He was bleeding while being shocked to death and his body jumped with the voltage. Water was flooding into the car. Nola took her purse and opened the door.

1

Nola crossed to Richard and Knight and watched the sparks fly from the car. There was a charred, barbequed human flesh smell wafting in the air, and she felt the urge to vomit, but there was nothing in her stomach but green bile and acid. I hoped he picked the right faith, she thought.

The white surge around her bubbled up and she kept walking, walking fast, but still walking, then trotting (well, treading now because of the water creeping in). The water was slow to build, brutal when it crushed against mailboxes and NO PARKING signs. It was, it occurred to Nola, as if the water were alive, with a soul and a heart and, most importantly, a mind directing the currents, the ebbs, and the tides.

Hardly anything even remotely considered an evacuation had been ordered. There was something about buses and trains on the radio, and then overnight, as if by magic, the mayor of Chocolate City and all the rest of the suits picked up sticks and made for drier pastures. Nola felt the wave growing and she turned around to see the black car, the friendly familiar Hack face, jutting, rippling body, part of his head gone from the traffic light. The black car gave chase over the waves and Nola was running for her life in an instant.

As she negotiated the intersection at Lafayette and the flying black car, she heard a series of explosions like deep thunder but abbreviated - thhhh-uuud! cc-rrraaa-shhh! - and sounds of shattering concrete - sounded like levees far away as St. Bernard, distant torch explosions, Roman candles on a perch twenty miles North. She screamed as the flying black car landed and collided with her body, and there was black...

Your name's not Dottie, you lyin' cunt, the voice, the older man, shouted, teeth gritted, putting his hands to her and spitting on her naked back. He had her ass up, and he was unzipping the fly of his Haggars and the old bird was flopping and flopping about.

No, she screamed, Stop! Please!

He tried slapping his thing on her bare ass, but he couldn't get the damage undone, wartime wounds, balls gone blistered in the hot-ass Iraq sun, damage undone. Caleb was angry; he was too much man for Dottie or whatever she called herself.

She kept fake-crying, hoping he thought he was hurting her, and mustering up all her strength, but he kept on her like a black hawk in her dream. She kicked back with her legs on his flabby, withered ass, got to his balls-bare, but there's nothing there, no feeling and no pain. Only his hawk-anger.

Caleb picked Dottie up by her neck, and she bowed back, and he tried to strangle her but had no strength.

He was sterile and ineffectual, as limp as his thing. Rape was not on the menu; neither was anything rough; no rough-play, no cos-play, nothing but tenderness and then the drugging and the getting-the-Hell-out-of-there.

What's your name? What the fuck's your name? He lifted her up by her neck and the cradle of her ass, and she could not speak. He licked her cheek and whispered, You trying to rip me off, bitch? Is that what you're doing? In her mind, she saw that his hands had transformed, become black talons.

Nola went away for a while but was back now, a drool of salty water entered her mouth, traveled down her throat, and she coughed it up and woke, half an ear submerged in the car under the water level.

She felt free and floating, looked up at the ceiling and over to the front, saw the Hack dead and tongue sticking out, long slice out of his head, traffic light turned into projectile and all the sharp edges become lethal, hoped he didn't feel the voltage after his brains were deli cut thin-sliced to order, chunks of them were stuck to the padded ceiling and the interior light. She turned away and coughed.

Nola was logged and bruised, the water up to her ear, and the car was still floating, and she could sense it. She came to a door and tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge, so she started kicking since the power windows were sans-power. Nola wondered how long she'd been out, since it appeared to be day (sun being out), stopped raining, just drips and drops all the live-long day. She was feeling sea-sick kicking her legs out and the door gave. She came out and promptly dropped in the water, almost scurried against the bottom of the new ocean.

Nola reached out, grabbed the rim of the door and pulled up, hopped on the trunk lid and stepped up to the roof with her big bag safely strapped. She opened the bag and dug in, looking for snacks, looking for cash. She looked around, saw nothing but the water.

She put down the bag and stood up, put a flat hand over her eyes, the glare of the sun on the water being excruciating. She was alone for a mile in a circle, the car an accidental boat between Hamilton Road in Jefferson and St. James on the mainland.

Hello, she shouted in as deep a voice as she could register. There were lonely echoes and both sides of the 'Sip looked submerged by about twenty feet. It was all quiet, born silent in the shifting mud/water. Started to smell terrible, and she put her hand to her mouth, but she had to do it again, and she had to keep doing it until she got a reply. Hello, she shouted again. She was floating on a former cab, getting sicker by the minute, not a good sailor, she was better in the sky, floating on clouds not water.

Hello, she screamed, going up to a piercing octave, but there was nothing, no reply waiting in the fatal wastes ahead.

She sat down on the roof of the car, flipped open the cell phone and assumed the water had completely flooded out the Debbie. She even thought she'd see Caleb floating by - any moment now, a flabby old naked man, face-down in the pestilent 'Sip taking the scenic route to the Quarter. She had to laugh and laugh loud.

2

She was lying on her back for a time, waiting on the damned helicopters and looking up at the screen of the cell phone, tapping space monsters with a tiny plastic pointer-device, tapping space monsters; the little blue monsters get you 50 points a pop, the big green monsters get you 100 points, and then the flying saucers get you 500. She was working on level two when she heard the scream.

Tripahni, the Black Hougan, Priestess, muddy-brown and covered in pasty shit all about her face and body was the owner of the devastating voice and Nola saw her in dark silhouette, low tits flopping out, ass pointed like the curve of the moon, standing sharp on one skinny leg, in a pose frightening and contradictory.

She wore a head-dress of black pearls on spaghetti strands flowing from gold, or simulated gold, crown, and a thin necklace of the same devices round her long neck. She looked like she was summoning the South Wind, and then she turned, pointed to Nola and let loose another crazy-scream. Her eyes became red and she growled like a female beast.

Leel-bunny-Foo-Foo Chil', she growled under her breath, not loud enough yet for Nola to hear, but she was getting there. The dead water was moving the black car closer to the new shore, studded with cars and scraps of discarded appliances. Come to me, Chil', she said, arms and fingers twisting in the breeze, beckoning Nola and her car forward to the muddy shore.

Nola was shaking, put the phone away, and turned to look toward the railroad tracks and New Orleans. She turned back and the image of the muddy-black Hougan was gone, replaced by ripples in the shore's sludge and a rusted top-to-bottom refrigerator door.

She jumped with shown teeth, all jagged like the talons on a big black hawk, blood in her mouth making everything in the known world a horrid, nauseating blur. She'd gone mad, Nola surmised, drinking the fever-water; the black pearls dangling from her greasy, shifting. She came up through the water, black hands grasping. Nola didn't hear her for she was a slow animal, thoughtful and hungry.

She came up for Nola's neck and pulled her down into the stinking muck of the water. Death two ways - choking at the neck while at the same time drowning like a mofo. Tripahni wasn't going to let her off that easily. She took Nola's head back up and she gasped for stinking air.

Leel-bunny-Foo-Foo Chil' comin' a bop me on-a my head, Chil', she spat in a guttural patois. Even paper thin, covered in blisters and fresh shit, Tripahni was beautiful; wild with the songs of Nature, a goddess carrying the blood fever in her bones with white-hot vivid eyes going into Nola's brain, talking to her. She pulled Nola's dark hair, forcing her scream. Nola tried fighting as down, as dirty, but only made the Hougan angrier, like the hawk, like bastard Caleb.

She clawed at Nola's blue eyes, made her bleed, and threw her bodily into the shallows. Nola splashed and scampered to the shore, wedged behind a floating refrigerator. The crazy voodoo-bitch gave up and followed and grinned. Her cackles echoed all about the makeshift pier.

You ain-gettin' away, Leel-bunny, I'm-a eat you!

When she pounced, Nola kicked her in the belly, turned her into human animal, growling mad and hot from the 'Sip's steam. Tripahni was a-running like a dog, on hands and legs, ass up in the air. Nola landed on her body and remembered the handy weapon folded in her back pocket.

They's-a watchin' you, Leel-bunny, she said, teeth sticking out and the blood of previous prey shining in the dull sun. She was right as they were watching - from abandoned rows and garbage