Soul Hole
Jordan M Atcheson
“And this is my ‘Soul Hole,’” Cassie said. She stood in the golden spotlight of a late summer’s late afternoon sun that shyly shone in through her attic’s solitary window. She lifted up her baby-blue T-shirt, taking care to conceal a lacy-white bra, to reveal a small, oval hole in her flesh just below her sternum.
“Do they always look like that?” Shid said with a gulp, “I mean, I’ve never seen one before; I have seen all sorts of birth defects but . . . does it hurt?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” the slender-faced girl giggled. She rubbed her finger around the hole’s rim and wiped some residue off on her blue jeans. The inside of the hole contained a gaping blackness that seized his attention. “Mine’s the only one I’ve ever seen; and I don’t think very many people share my eating habits.” She lowered her shirt back down over her thin frame.
The sight of a mouth-sized hole tucked into a girl’s chest did not, to a great degree, unnerve Shid; but yet the murmur of unease in his stomach betrayed the well-collected guise he fronted in front of his new neighbor. This was awkward; he had only moved to Ehren Valley—into Cassie’s neighborhood—two days ago, after all. Today was officially day two of their ambiguous and potential-filled relationship that, at this moment, had turned in an unforeseen direction. He had hardly situated his room in his new home across the street, yet already he was in this girl’s house, in her attic, and watching her undress. In a way, he felt like he had trespassed. She seemed to be one to get attached easily, and Shid could see how a vagina-like hole in your chest could scare people away. . . .
Starting tomorrow, he would be attending Cassie’s high school.
This girl’s given a birth defect a name, Shid thought, and she’s proud of it. “Have you shown it to a doctor?”
“Yeah. My parents made me go.”
“I bet.”
“He wanted to take pictures of it and sew it up—but I wouldn’t let him.”
“What, you said ‘no’ and he said ‘okay,’ just like that? I think a doctor would be more aggressive with something like this.”
Cassie’s mood turned humorless, she lowered her head, blonde bangs dangled before her face, and a peculiar grin grew out of her pouty lips. She read his face: his bronze eyebrows arched with a blank anticipation above round eyes with their heavy lids; his narrow mouth and its paunchy lower lip. Shid was a seemingly tractable boy.
“You’re right, he was relentless. Do you want to know how I shut him up?” she said.
“Huh, what?”
A grumble came from Cassie’s stomach, then with a snicker, she said: “I made his itsy-bitsy soul . . .” She pulled up her shirt again, this time taking no measure to hide her bra, “. . . go into this itsy-bitsy hole,” as she pointed to the lightly wrinkled orifice, followed by a perky giggle.
“What?” Shid said, confused. The only image his mind could conceive to best understand her statement was sexual. This Cassie was bold, all right. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she sauntered up to him, “that I snuffed’m, and all those nurses and guards who tried to hold me down.” Her demeanor darkened, she became preoccupied as if a mental recital was rehashing the instance. When the scene was over, she twitched.
Shid became sober. He did not know her well enough to tell if he could take her seriously.
“You’re joking, right?”
She turned her head to look at him.
“I have power, Shid,” she pointed to her chest with her fingers, “They tried to take it from me, but I made them regret it.”
“Why’re you telling me this? You could get into trouble for talking like that.”
“But you’re the only soul I’ve told about this. You wouldn’t turn me in, would you?”
“N-no.”
She stepped up squarely in front of him, she half a head taller than he.
“Do you want to know how I take someone’s soul?”
He began to shake his head.
“Cassie, I don’t—” Shid was silenced by her gentle cooing in his ears. Her fingers began to move over his buzzed bronze scalp. As adverse as the situation felt and as much as he wanted to, he didn’t want to move. What did her theatrics mean? Her hands wrapped around his head and smoothly pulled it to her chest, just over the misplaced orifice. She pulled up her shirt and gently pressed his head against her warm Soul Hole.
Shid, fear and curiosity aroused, kept still while his breathing grew heavier.
Cassie became rigid and gripped Shid firmly. Everything went still and silent. She released a slow, deep-set sigh, then she immediately tensed and Shid was jolted with never-before-felt sensations.
Shid could feel suction from Cassie’s Soul Hole—but somehow, he knew it wasn’t a physical suction. It was pulling at something: something that could never be uncovered in an autopsy.
Shid’s conscious faded, multiplied, and stretched. Tremors coursed through his body. He began to have visions, then he began to feel pain. He listened to himself scream.
Then, with something that felt like a cosmic hiccup, reverberating from his head to his toes, the suction stopped, and all of the sensations faded. Cassie released her grip on him and let him sink to the floor. She let out a weakened sigh herself.
Shid, wide-eyed, pale, and shaking; looked off into space—which was located in the darkest corner of the attic. White noise ricocheted in his ears.
Cassie squatted down in front of him and glared into his hollow eyes, she put a hand on each of his shoulders. Upon doing so, he jumped.
“Look at me,” she said. Shid’s eyes looped around a few times before they focused on Cassie. Fear swelled in him as he looked into her face. She was serious. He whimpered.
“I’m hungry, Shid. Ever since that day in the hospital, I’ve been starving. That one day made me fuller than I have ever been, and I’ve been famished ever since. I need an opportunity to binge on souls again. I want you to feed me.”
##
“Okay. What we’re going to do is you wait here until I can distract him and—” Shid whispered.
“It would be best for you to catch him from behind. Off guard. If you can do that and hold him down well, then it’s smooth sucking,” Cassie said.
“Okay, then what you’re going to have to do is distract him until I can get behind him and hold him down so you can grab hold of his head and do your thing,” he whispered.
Conspiratorially, they peeked over Cassie’s backyard planked fence, surveying a brawny man with a tan cap over short, sandy-brown hair; he wore a navy EHREN VALLEY UNIVERSITY sweater and carpenter jeans with tan utility boots, squatting at the side of his orangeish 1961 Ford Econoline truck changing a rear tire. He was a handyman; his truck full of DIY tools and tackle.
Presently, today was Day One of Operation Soul Food. The burly man hunched over a tire across the street: Victim One. His nomination as Victim One was purely by chance: he was conveniently across the street from Cassie’s house, and he fit into the Specifications of Eligible Victims Register that the two of them had outlined. As they searched for victims, they were to classify people by the SEVR parameters—the more parameters a person meets, easier prey they will be. This man fit into parameters 03 (busy or preoccupied in something) and 12 (in an easily subjugable position); but, unfortunately, he was exactly the opposite of parameter 07 (physically weak and/or defenseless).
Two was not a bad number, despite.
Shid and Cassie had spent the past few days planning, plotting, and preparing. Meeting after school up in Cassie’s attic, they discussed tactics and scenarios, exercised, and drew out maps. Cassie knew that it took about two minutes to finish off a victim—and that was too long. It jeopardized their chances of getting away. People would be suspicious about some teen sticking a stranger’s head under her shirt, to be sure. She thought that with some practice, she could make the process faster and efficient. But there was no way of practicing other than in the real world. Four days before, Cassie had experimented on a neighborhood cat. She had clenched its frisky little head against her chest, sucked its soul out through its skull, and collapsed to the ground vomiting.
“Wait till he puts the tire iron down, then go over there and talk with him until I can make my way to the other side of the block and sneak up on him,” Shid whispered.
Cassie licked her lips.
Shid ran around the block and he had to make it fast. Cutting across grassy front yards and driveways, he made his way around the rectangular block. True, any guy would talk to a girl like Cassie to no end, but Cassie and Shid had a schedule to keep.
Shid was having trouble taking in how, being seemingly cute and callow, Cassie could be able to single-handedly clear out a room full of nurses and guards (although she never actually said how many). There is just no way she could seize each of their souls and fight them off at the same time. What kind of hospital puts guards around their patients, anyway? Surely they didn’t stand in line for her to feed off of (or did they?).
Maybe she had a little unmentioned help, he thought. Now, should I hit handyman over the head with the tire iron, or strangle him with one of his extension cables?
Shid rounded the final corner and eyeballed Cassie and her prey. Six houses away—across green lawns from which grew pines and various broad-leaf shade trees; juniper and holly-bordered driveways in front of brick oppidian houses—behind a saffron Econoline stood Cassie over her quarry. His head was barely visible over the rear of his truck, and from what Shid could see, was not very animated. Yet Cassie remained nonchalantly focused on the handyman, equally unanimated. Then she looked straight at Shid . . .
. . . and gave him a thumbs up.
Why’d she do that? he thought, and slowed down to a hot-footed walk.
She waved him over.
What? Did she already do it herself? He thought about nurses and guards, and ran faster.
He rounded the back of the pick-up to find the man slouched and lifeless. Shid could swear he saw traces of white smoke rising off of the body.
“New record,” said Cassie.
Shid was completely dumbfounded. Wide-eyed, his lip quivered and his brain’s speech mechanism went out of order. He could only stare at calm little Cassie.
“Maybe guys would be easier targets,” she said straighforwardly.
“Cassie, why didn’t— How’d— Why?”
“I don’t think women would be as eager to have me rub my tits in their face.”
##
Cassie became better at it—feeding faster than before with each victim. After Victim One, for the following few days they maintained a one to three victims-a-day schedule. Dealing with the bodies was their greatest problem. With Shid and Cassie being the runty sizes that they were, the best option for hiding their kill was by arranging them into reclined, sleeping positions. They had snuffed people like: sunbathers in the park, movie-goers (executed only during the boisterous action scenes), bench-sitters waiting for the bus, a homeless man (but Cassie admitted that his soul tasted like spoiled fast food burgers), two preteens playing a racing game in an arcade, and a single lady painting with watercolors on one of the more historic streets. All executed without a hitch. Sure, each of them gave a start upon being seized, but were soon silenced when the suction started.
Too many dead bodies with the same symptoms would start raising suspicions eventually, they knew. While the evidence they left with the bodies was nonexistent—besides a teeny bit of Soul Hole residue on the scalp—witnesses posed the greatest threat. Could they be effective bandits at their age?
“Maybe we should make you a special shirt with a hole, front and center, just to make things quicker,” said Shid, looking out of Cassie’s attic’s window. Shid began to look off into space, which was located on a distant sheet of altostratus clouds, then said: “I just had a thought, you probably don’t go out wearing bikinis too often, do you?”
Cassie, who was sitting on the floor perusing a phone book, stood up, walked over to Shid and . . .
. . . Shid got slapped.
“Get ready. I want to go to the Ehren Valley Hospital,” she said, “I see a world of opportunity there.”
The hospital. . . .
##
“VictimTwenty!” Cassie emerged from the third room from the end of the third-story hall of Ehren Valley Intensive Care Unit. She was drooling, breathing heavily, with an air of wildness to her—frighfully enveloped in shadows, even under the halogen lights of the short hall. Yet despite her elation, her soul-sucking spree on the terminally ill, the comatose, and trauma patients of EVICU was nearing its end—for they had been found out.
Upon their arrival at EVICU, a resolute three-story palladian building that could be mistaken for a 17th century English garrison, they developed a spur-of-the-moment plan as they scanned the interior. The sterile white walls of the building were visibly aged; the agitated flouescence of the ceiling lights illuminated a calm setting: not a single nurse in their black scrubs was in a rush; receptionists spoke in relaxed voices; and no emergencies barged in. That is the way it was in Ehren Valley, though: the citizens just did not get hurt as much here (But it did not mean that they didn’t die just as easily . . .). Shid wondered if this was the same hospital in which Cassie’s aforementioned tussle had transpired.
They had navigated the ICU’s corridors and evaded the doctors and nurses. Cassie killed two patients on the second floor; the resultant flatline duet resounded throughout the placid halls.
“Help, I think someone’s dying down here!” Shid cried out from a window-lit stairwell between the second and third stories, attempting to grab the attention of the third-story nurses—to summon them to the second, where Cassie’s two decoys laid.
Two young nurses, probably college students, who were watching the third floor exchanged some words, then hurried down the stairs, past an uneasy Shid and one eager Cassie. A clamor quickly grew from the lower floor, and Cassie knew that she had the third floor in her possession. Still, no time to waste.
“I don’t think we’ll be interrupted here,” she said as she surveyed the hall, “I’ll start at the end of the hall, you start opening doors and removing any obstacles so that I can get in and out faster. And distract anyone who comes by—and no fingerprints!” then she coasted down the hall. Shid watched in awe. A tinge of uselessness dipped in his gut, but he quickly hardened up, pulled on some surgical gloves, and started propping open doors, throwing privacy curtains open while disregarding the patients, and pushing tables and such out of the way. He did this out of fear of Cassie. She had sucked his soul halfway out of him once already, after all. He was still unsure if that half had returned.
Cassie gambolled from room to room, almost maniacally, giggling as she went. The hall began to fill with the drone of flatlines; but the still-living patients had ears, and they could hear the approaching laughter, the flatlines, and the distant commotion. One of them called for her nurse, one pressed his intercom call button while another tried to get out of his bed.
Shid, again out of fear and frustrated with adrenaline, scrambled to silence them by knocking call buttons out of their hands and punching the more vocal ones in the mouth. Becoming wild and edgy, he began to throw stainless steel dishes and tissue boxes when the patients began to shout or cry. He was shaking, sweating. He shut a door on one stout old man who had detached himself from his bed and made it vocal that he was hell-bent on returning the blow he had received from scared little Shid. The man was a veteran and he’d be damned if he’d let some ungrateful young punk cold-cock him and get away with it. Cassie’s treasure trove of souls would soon trap them. Surely Cassie was having trouble killing these obstinate victims on her own.
Shid was running down the hall to find Cassie when he heard it: “there’s flatlines coming from upstairs, too!” “I saw two children go up there!”
A rumble of footsteps up a narrow staircase emerged over a quintuplet of flatlines and the wailing patients. They had not been quiet enough; they did not plan well enough, they just weren’t experienced enough to be . . . bad.
“Cassie! Cassie! We have to go!” he shouted as he ran away from the rumblings and wailings; toward the beepings. He found himself on the dead-end side of the hall, surrounded by . . . it took a second to set in, and it set in to his entire body—surrounded by the stillness of Death . . . and the drone of flatlines. Somehow he had passed her.
He heard her giggle—that confident, ascending three-syllable chirp which was unmistakably her when she knew she was at the top of her game.
A brief gust of wind; a new beep joined in the chorus. . . .
Then, returning to the present:
Shid did a double take at her when she appeared in the hall. The sight of her rendered him tame. What was happening to her? What kind of metamorphosis came from the consumption of souls? What kind of human could stomach the consumption of souls?
The two young nurses had come into sight on the stairwell, their faces glowing with perspiration. Cassie stood with her back to them. The nurses shouted something at the two of them, which they failed to apprehend.
“Cassie, they’re coming!”
She giggled—an affirmative giggle, but she did nothing.
Shid shifted stance. “Cassie?”
Presently, various other hospital faculty, including a security guard, were behind the two young nurses, shouting in a seemingly foreign tongue, close enough to grab hold of Cassie’s shirt tail.
Within an instant, Cassie was in Shid’s face. She had crossed the hall in a single stride. He could feel heat radiating from her and he asked himself: was he next? To be sure, there was little he could do to stop her.
She put an arm around him and together they rushed to the window behind Shid, opened it, jumped out the third-story window (Shid reluctantly, and not without screams) and floated to the ground.
From the window, hospital employees bawled and bellowed at them.
Then, for the first time in their young lives, they ran for their lives.
##
Shid had been a bad boy. He had hurt many people in the hospital and he could not justify why. They had gone on a week-long killing rampage, and within that week they had already been debunked and wanted by police. With multiple positive identifications at the hospital and the trail of victims with the same symptoms, their spree would soon be over. But why did they think it would be easy? They had officially become serial killers—amateur serial killers.
In the attic, Shid sat pallid in front of a 12-inch television watching news coverage of their bumbling at the hospital: police sketches, eye-witness accounts—including the angry old man, still threatening to beat the shit out of Shid, and a debate over the relationship between two teens and the string of such natural-looking deaths. How long would it be until his parents found out? And what would they do once they found out?
“Relax,” Cassie said as she walked up to him. The faint light in the attic presented her in dramatic shadows, her eyes aglow. “Anyone who comes close to us is as good as dead.”
Shid looked away and put his head on his folded arms. Maybe she can read my thoughts, too, he thought. But he could not reply to her.
“I’m hungry,” she said, still looking down at him.
Shid’s stomach twisted and he became pale and apprehensive. He stared up at Cassie in disbelief. She wore a lofty smirk—almost daring Shid to decline.
“Cassie, we really shouldn’t—” he began.
“Hey, it’s either them or you.”
There it was: the trump card. Deep down, Shid knew she had it hidden up her sleeve. Shid knew she would throw it out some day—he was the one if none other could be found.
“I want to go here,” she handed him a newspaper clipping. Shid looked at it, his brow furrowed in puzzlement, “A magic show?”
##
They sat among a crowd of chattering grade-school children and their mothers, with the occasional dedicated father here and there, at the Ehren Valley Convention Hall. The majestic venue resembled the inside of a capsized ship, packed with quite a large crowd ready to see a pretty famous magician.
Cassie had not said much about her plans here since they left her house. Laying low as they walked through town to the show, they did their best to disguise themselves: Cassie sporting braided pig-tails and pink-rimmed shades with a brick-red plaid button-up shirt with the collar flipped up to cover her neck; Shid donned a black cap with his newly purchased black and burgundy EHREN VALLEY HIGH jacket.
Presently, the two of them sat in folding chairs in the middle of a few hundred people who hardly gave them a second glance. Any attempt on any one of these people would bring bedlam—no element of surprise here. What was Cassie planning? To go out with a bang? Her big finale?
Shid imagined Cassie performing some sort of super soul-suck. He visioned her, arms out-stretched and floating over the stage, a tumultuous whirlwind enveloping the room, debris, screaming and commotion, and the entire population of the auditorium de-souled in one fell suck.
Shid returned to reality. His daydream lasting only for a second, but potentially prophetic.
“What are we doing here?” Shid whispered to an aspirant Cassie.
“Wait. You’ll see,” she said with her eyes fastened on the stage. His seat creaked as he sat back, he felt as helpless as ever. In his vision, even he was unspared.
A sharply dressed announcer came on stage, made an enthusiastic introduction followed by applause. Then appearing on stage, there he was: Calder, they called him; Calder the Magician. He was simply presented in a fog-colored beanie, sideburns, drowsy eyelids on a poker face, black, knee-length leather jacket, baggy jeans and combat boots. But for such a seemingly rigid character, he was very animated—cracking jokes and making faces as sparks and holograms flickered around him—captivating the children.
The routine progressed from tame card tricks to object manipulation to more extravagant props and illusions. When he asked for an assistant from the audience, Cassie jumped up with such a howl that Shid thought she was making her move then and there. Her arm-flailing enthusiasm paid off: Calder took notice and nominated her to come up to the stage. She turned to Shid endearingly, “I won’t need your help with this one,” then made her way to the stage.
The magician talked with the conspicuously buoyant Cassie for a moment, during which Shid felt compelled to get the hell out of the auditorium, so he calmly squeezed past people, stepping over their knees as they sat in their seats, hiding his face as he moved. He made it to the door at the back of the room, looked toward the stage—looked toward Cassie, who was looking straight at him. She smiled and gave him a thumbs up. He turned and walked out the door.
##
There was no massacre at the magic show. Cassie, the soul sniper, fired a single shot so gracefully that the audience never caught on—that is, until Cassie was long gone and they realized that Calder would not be waking from the ‘trance’ that he had surrendered into, as only his head stuck out of the casket that he made Cassie lock him into. By the time of realization, Cassie had already meandered off the stage and left the building.
To Shid’s surprise, she found him in the afternoon—faster than expected—sitting under a dense willow tree in the park near their neighborhood. She had unraveled her pigtails.
Shid did not know what to expect, ignorant as he was of the outcome at the magic show. She sauntered up to him; arms swaying, thin lips slightly parted. She squatted across from him, folded her arms over her knees and rested her chin on her arms. She slowly sighed and stared at Shid.
Time passed. The sunny weather seemed to slow things down. She was calm; yet Shid knew hers was not a calming calmness, and he sat there tensely.
Her face began to twitch, then her face puckered. Her head reared back, and she sneezed. Concurrently, Shid jumped with a start, possibly letting out an imperceptible squeal.
She sniffled and wiped her nose. “We have at least one day until they pinpoint our school and identify us, then even our homes become untouchable. Hell, it’ll be impossible to leave the city once we’re identified.”
“Are you serious?”
“Believe me, I’m an Ehren Valley native. You’re not, and because of that, they’ll be harder on you.”
“What—jail? Death?”
She shook her head dismissively.
Time passed; as did Shid’s thoughts. The park had a smell as if the sun were cooking the grass. Cassie looked past Shid, pointed a finger at something, to which Shid’s gaze turned. Roughly eighty meters away, a man was sitting on a bench with his back turned to them.
Shid turned to Cassie.
“Victim Twenty-Two,” she whispered with her mischievous grin.
He nodded.
The two of them got up and casually made their way to Victim Twenty-Two. He was a slender young man; mid-twenties; center-parted, a jawline beard with medium-length dirty-blonde hair that glistened in the sun; casually dressed and busy writing away on a pad of paper: parameters 3 and 9.
They loomed directly over him. They were in no rush. Shid walked around in front of him, seized Victim Twenty-Two’s arms and—
The End.
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