We Need to Think On It

By Barbara Ann Sweeney

   How I got to be Sheriff in this town was a heck of a thing, but we won’t go into that just yet. Let’s just say it’s something that I never aimed for, a career I never thought I’d attempt in the most liquor-soaked state I’d ever gotten myself into, and that’s saying something. Over the years, I’d been locked up downstairs more times than I can count…or remember. 

   But now I’m in charge of the whole hootenanny. 

   So when Jessica Paltry walked into my office sporting her coal black hair and her low cut dress, I can’t say that I reacted in the most professional way that someone in my profession typically would have. She had me all torn up inside from the instant she leaned over my desk, giving me a hard look at her cleavage, and believe me, that woman knew exactly what she was doing. 

   “I need your help,” she said, and blinked once, slowly closing and lifting her eyelids. “It’s Sheriff Baker, correct?”

   “Call me Brad,” I answered, once I’d gotten ahold of myself. “That’s what I’m here for, what do you need?”

   “I just purchased the old saloon…”

   “Well, what did you go and do that for? That place is all shot to hell. Ain’t nobody been in it since the gold rush I think.”

   “Incorrect. There are people there right now. That’s the matter that I need your help with.”

   “People? I could believe badgers, or raccoons,maybe even a bear, but people?”

   “Yes, Sheriff. Some people are there, living there I think. I mean to reopen the place…after a little work of course…but I can’t get started until we get these squatters out.”

   I looked her over again. Okay, twice. Once for business and once for pleasure. She stood and crossed her arms as if shielding herself from something. Maybe I’d gotten her wrong. Any woman with enough spine to try to resurrect anything in these parts was more than just the floozy this woman dressed herself up to be.

   “Alright, we can go up there and have a look, so long as you’re driving.”

   She got this offended look on her face, like I’d asked her to fly me to the moon.

   “We aren’t going in your official vehicle?”

   “My official vehicle is my old Chevy pickup, and Jasper’s got in the shop right now. Something with the carburetor.”

   “I don’t understand.”

   “I ain’t got no wheels, darlin’. Understand that?”

   “Well, whatever do you do when you arrest someone? Toss them in the truck bed?”

   I laughed.

   “Ma’am, this here is a small town. I ain’t ever arrested anybody.”

   “Really?” Her lips puckered up in a kind of old lady way, kinda like she was drawing on a cigarette. Not cute. “You have jail cells, don’t you? What do you use them for? What do you do?”

   “Yes, lady, we have a cell, and do you know who was in it last?”

   She looked up at me, the question hanging in her eyes, and I leaned close, almost like I was about to kiss her, but she’d annoyed me so much by then that I was not about to. I just wanted to make sure she got a full shot of my bologna-and-beer-stained breath.”

   “Me!” I said. She recoiled as the Oscar Meyer hit her.

   Mulberry, Arizona had been wheezing its last gasps of civilization since well before I’d come along, a strange half-gin-soaked throwaway. I’d stumbled into town via a Greyhound that was supposed to roll on through and not stop here at all, but I reckon the automotive version of the big bang happened, and all of us passengers had been let out to wander the road while the local mechanic, Jasper, had his head stuck in the engine. I wandered a might too far, and the bus left me. I can still remember the chug of the engine coming to life as I turned and ran toward it, and caught the last sight of exhaust fumes. That moment of realization plays itself over and over in my dreams. All of my personals had been on board, and I was left with just the lint in my pockets. So I was stuck.

   I took it as serendipity, a kind of lightning shot from the heavens that I belonged here, and I sure didn’t at first, but now I reckon I do.

   Me and Miss Jessica bounced down the road to that old busted-up saloon in her Thunderbird, and when I first set eyes on it, I had to reevaluate the woman again. I’d taken her for more of the Bel Air type. She drove, and I caught her glancing at me every time she edged over the speed limit. 

   The old saloon sat on its hill like a great and mighty wart. Lord knows why it hadn’t been knocked down decades before. The building had greyed and settled into the ground until it seemed like something that had grown, something highly unnatural. Like a wart. The windows were filled with dust and cobwebs, and the swinging doors hung akimbo in the sagging doorway.

   In and of itself, the building just looked wrong. I had no idea how wrong it was until we stepped inside. I pushed the doors wide, my head on a swivel, looking this way and that for the squatters. Those squatters were the whole reason for my being there, or so I thought, but the thing was, I didn’t see any sign of them.

   I turned to look at Jessica, but she still had her sunshades on, and I couldn’t read her, not that I’ve ever been too great at reading women. I looked back into the saloon, and that’s when I saw them.

   Each corner, each crevice of the great room was filled with a gauzy off-white substance. Pods of the stuff hung suspended from the ceiling joists. And the pods were squirming. I took a step back, my bourbon lunch coming up in my throat, but Jessica stepped behind me and pushed me all the way into the saloon. She didn’t push me gently. It was the kind of shove I’d received as a linebacker on my high school football team. I’d never come across a woman with such power before, I didn’t think.

   Then again, maybe they all held that type of power and just kept it hidden.

   I spun back towards the doorway, not having a clue yet of what was going on, just knowing that I had to get out into the open, away from those pod things, away from Jessica. I didn’t make it. She snaked her arm, which had previously appeared so sinuous and delicate, around my throat and jerked me back. I choked, and my hands scrabbled at her arms to no use. Damn my well-trimmed fingernails.

   She pushed herself into the back of me. I felt every curve of her, and I’ll be cursed if I didn’t respond.

   It seems that I’m cursed anyway.

   I felt a tiny jab in my neck. A syringe?

   “Don’t be afraid,” Jessica, the succubus, whispered into my ear. “I just want to add you to my collection.”

   Now I am one of them. I hang from a pod in the ceiling, surrounded by hazy white. Jessica visits me, visits all of us I imagine, slips into my pod through some unknown process. She is always a consummate lover, always gentle and voracious at the same time.

   How long have I been here?

   Most of the time, I am content. I do get restless when she is gone for too long, and then I can feel my pod tremble around me like it is about to spit me out. It never does.

   Would I leave if I could? I don’t know. 

   We pods, we are developing a kind of hive mind. We can think amongst each other and trade thoughts like apple pie recipes. Should we stay? Should we go? How can we escape? These are the things that run through our mind.

   And then she comes again, and we are sated for a time and do not think on such things.

   Maybe someday. We need to think on it.