REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Tom Olbert

“Damn’ it, whadda ya mean, ‘the calves ‘ain’t been fed yet?!’”  The night

was pitch black and chill with damp.  Ned caught a brief glimpse of Willy’s
scrawny, stubbled face as the hired hand lit a cigarette.
 “I dunno,” Willy muttered, tugging at the visor of his cap.  “Joe was
supposed to do it, but I ‘ain’t seen him, and here’s the milk, so...I guess it
‘ain’t been done.”
 Ned clenched his teeth and swore.  What was he paying these idiots for,
anyway?  If he knew Joe, he was off getting a quick lay from that little
tramp who worked at the liquor store, out on the highway.  ‘Next time he saw
that slacking bum, he’d fire his ass for sure.  “All right...come on, let’s do
it.”
 “Now?  Aw, boss, it’s pitch dark, and I’m tired.”
 “I can see it’s dark, Wilson, and I’m tired, too.  Tired of having to do
everything my own goddamn’ self on this farm.  Now, move your ass, or
you’re history!”
Willy shrugged, stamped out his cigarette and picked up half the
plastic milk bottles.  Ned picked up the other half, and they started out,
past the chicken coops, out towards the barn.  Ned could dimly make out the
light mist of the nightly drizzle in the yellow wash of his flashlight beam.
Not much else, though.  He muttered obscenities under his breath all the way
to the barn.  He should be in his bedroom now, warm and comfortable and screwing his wife, not catching his death on a night like this, feeding damn’ calves. He’d make Joe pay for this one.  The lazy crumb would probably be too hung over by tomorrow to even help with milking, or slaughter.  Typical.
 The irritating buzz of Willy’s cheap little radio didn’t make this night
any better.  “Will you turn that crap off?!”
 “Jeeze, I’m just trying to find some music, to make the time go by,
that’s all.  Jeeze.”
 Instead of music, the only clear transmission he could get was some
University egg head talking to some reporter.  The egg head sounded like some jerk, with a nasal voice and a German accent.  “And, the data from every observatory proves beyond any doubt that the phenomenon is actually an intersection between our universe and another.”
 “Another universe?” the female reporter asked.  Ned recognized her voice.
She used to be on T.V.  Not bad to look at, as black girls went.
 “Yes.  Our universe is expanding.  So is this other one with which we’ve
collided, and they are passing through each other.  We can’t even begin to
guess what effect this will have as the interface continues to spread.
Two separate time-space continuums, whose basic natural laws could be entirely dissimilar, bleeding into each other...it could distort everything.”
 “Distort, how?  What?”
 “Who knows? Every basic relationship between, eh...any two particles of
matter, or any two things at all.  This thing, that thing...how they relate to each other in the natural pattern of things.  It could all be changed. Turned upside-down.  Like players suddenly switching roles in the middle of a play.”
 “Turn that garbage off, Willy!” Ned shouted.  Willy grumbled and switched
off the radio. They reached the barn.  Strangely quiet as Ned slid the door
open and stepped in, the familiar smell of damp hay filling his nostrils.  He
flipped the switch for the flood light hanging on the wall nearby, but
nothing happened.  “Crap.  What now?”
 “Wiring, I guess.  Here, I got the gas lamp.”  Willy got the lamp lit and
hung it on a nail, throwing a pale, shadowy light into the barn.
 “All right,” Ned sighed.  “Let’s get this over with.”  He reached the
first calf’s stall, and found it empty.  “What the hell...Willy, did you forget
to round up those damn’ calves?!”
 “No, boss.  They wuz in here, all right.  ‘Cept now, they ‘aint.”
 Ned looked around.  The door had been closed.  They couldn’t have gotten
out. He froze.  Where were the cows?  They were all gone.  Not a heifer left.
He ran from stall to stall, throwing his flashlight beam into every dark
corner, but the barn was empty.  The gates on every stall had been broken off
their hinges.  He felt a chill and threw his beam into the rear of the barn.
The damn wall had been smashed down, like somebody had driven a truck through. He couldn’t believe his eyes.  Damn’ cattle rustlers, for God’s sake!  His blood burned with anger.  Then, froze to solid ice as Willy screamed in horror, like a little girl.
 “Oh, muh God...Oh, muh God...”
 “What is it?!”
 “It’s...Oh, muh God.”  His face was bleach white, his eyes like saucers.
He stammered incoherently as he feebly gestured towards one of the empty calf stalls.  Which wasn’t really empty, Ned saw.  There was a man’s bloodied
hand sticking out of the stall, resting on reddened hay.  Ned’s breathing was
hard and shallow, his knees weak and his feet stuck in molasses as he forced
himself to get closer.  His stomach leapt into his throat as he saw it, his hand
going over his mouth as he averted his eyes.  What was left of Joe was all over the stall, his blood splattered all over the walls.  He’d been cut open like a
slaughtered cow, parts of him eaten out raw, it looked like.  The wide-eyed
expression frozen on his ash-pale face told Ned he’d still been alive when
it happened.  Last time he’d seen eyes with that expression, they were
staring out of a cow as he’d brought the sledge down on its head.
 Willy started screaming and babbling hysterically.  Ned grabbed him by
the shoulders and shook him, but it didn’t do any good.  So, he slapped him,
hard, across the face.  “Get hold of yourself, Willy!  We got to call the law.
Right now, you understand?”
 “N-Nothin’ human did this, I tell ya.  Y-y-you saw him, didn’t ya?  Eaten
alive.  Nothin’ human.”  Ned jumped half out of his skin as he heard wood
breaking.  Something was pounding at the walls, trying to break into the
barn. It was all around him, the pounding so loud, it felt like the beams and
rafters might give way any second.  As though a hundred men with battering rams were trying to break the walls down.  Willy screamed and dropped his flashlight just as something knocked the gas lantern from its nail.  The lantern crashed to the floor, and a bit of hay in a dry corner caught fire.  The flashlight slipped from Ned’s numb fingers.  In the flickering firelight, a dark shadow fell across the wall behind him.  A tall shadow with horns.
“It’s the devil,” Willy screamed.  “It’s the devil, come to claim us!”
 Ned ran out the door, into the black, inky night.  He couldn’t think.  He
could only run.  Back towards the house, towards his wife, Ginny.  He had
to get her, get the truck and go.  He heard Willy screaming in pain, begging
for help, but he couldn’t stop.  His hair stood on end as he heard Willy’s
flesh being torn from his bones.  As the fire spread, he smelled something he
hadn’t smelled since his last barbecue.  And, he heard the sound of chewing.  Of teeth tearing fresh-cooked meat, and of lips smacking.  And, something else, too.  A sound of metal ringing against metal.  Like a ghost rattling a chain.  Or, some monstrous dinner bell.
   He reached the house, and found the door broken down, clean off its
hinges.  It was black as a box inside.  He tried the lights, but they wouldn’t
work.  He found the spare flashlight in the tool box under the stairs.  He switched it on, and found the place in shambles.  Someone or something had smashed open the walls and ripped out the wiring.
“Ginny!” he screamed, running up the stairs to the bedroom.
“Ginny!!”  He found her, stretched out on the bed.
     Alive, but just barely, by the look of her.  Her pretty blue eyes were as wide and terrified as Willy’s had been.  She was pale as bone, and he could swear her blonde hair had turned prematurely white.  She looked more like a crone of sixty than the 23-year-old woman she was.  “Ginny, honey...come on, we gotta...”  Christ almighty.  Her arms and legs looked like they’d been
broken in about a dozen places, all twisted every which way, so she couldn’t
move.  Her blouse had been torn to shreds.  Her bra torn off.  And, her
breasts...once fine and full and round...looked like two deflated tires.  The nipples were red and raw.  And, there were marks around them, like...God.  Something had been nursing from her.  Something with teeth.
 “They milked me,” she whispered in a choked, constricted voice, staring
blankly at the ceiling.  “They milked me.”  He jumped.  Someone or
something was coming up the stairs.  Something big.  Clomping up the stairway, the wood creaking under its weight.  “Oh, God,” she whimpered.  “They’re coming back.”
He heard the clanging of metal again, and heard heavy footsteps in the
hall.  His flesh a mass of goosebumps, he lifted the flashlight, his hand
trembling.  There, in the doorway, stood a black-and-white milk cow.  Her large black eyes shined with cruel intellect.  Her horns were tipped with blood.  Her legs and hooves were splattered with blood, too.  She chewed her cud, and blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth, onto the floor.  She spat something out.  He saw it was a human finger.
 She shambled through the door, the bell around her neck clanging.  He saw
more of her sisters moving down the corridor behind her, all coming towards
him. Their eyes glared hungrily.  They snorted, their nostrils flaring, their
breath white steam.  They made a sound he didn’t know cows could make.  An angry, vengeful roar.  As they cornered him and moved in, he understood.  It was time for the milking and the slaughter.
 Only, the players had switched roles.
 

tomolbert@worldnet.att.net
 
 
 
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