The September 2009 Editor's Pick

Please feel free to contact Kyle Hemmings at sacerb2@yahoo.com

The Man with the Crocodile Eyes

By Kyle Hemmings

On some nights, I crawl into the warmth of the front seat of the old Cadillac, owned by the man with the crocodile, reptilian-like eyes and the crooked arm. I was worried you wouldn't show up, he says, letting the engine idle, turning down the radio to the volume of a whisper. In the rearview, I check my make-up, mascara, and adjust my cotton blouse. We always meet in the back of Rite-Aid, an hour after closing. I was thinking about you, he says, and I missed you. 

He runs his good hand through my silky black hair, smelling of strawberries, or as he puts it—a girl covered with jam—as I work up a slow, nervous smile. I like his hair, which is long and black, too. It reminds me of the bass player in Ten Minutes To Death, the cruel, sexy twist of lips, the distant gaze, even though my driver is a grounds keeper at a cemetery and not a rock star. There's something dangerous in the scar he shows me, below the left ear, a pink flat worm he caught while in jail. A girl's body, he says—his sigh is a tiny mist that settles on the window.

There's something dangerous in his breath that reminds me of prickly nights and swamp flowers; the crocodile in the swamp. Not even a girl like me, seventeen, caught between a wish and a wart, who can't keep track of all the different names for roses, the ones that Mrs. Brock in Bio has us memorize for mid-terms, could mistake that smell.

There's something dangerous in the fact that I can't tell my friends who I meet on these nights. Because if it's not dangerous, it doesn't feel good. 

Someday, I'll look back and think: When I was seventeen I owned the world. But it was too strong, too heavy, to hold it for long. 

He peers up through the window and says, There's supposed to be a comet tonight. Grinding his teeth and squeezing his eyes, making them creep like tiny black beetles, he says he doesn't see it yet.

“It'll come sooner or later,” I tell him in a hushed voice. 

The man with the crocodile eyes draws a deep breath, as if he could breathe in the world, and exhale every inch of it back out. Then, the hand, the good one, rough, hard, but graceful, performs a pirouette down my arm, and the palm slides between my legs.

I squirm and gently push it away. I tell him I'm not ready, but maybe I am. Maybe I want to see him get excited and worked up. Maybe I can pretend I can have this kind of effect on a man who has survived the ugliest tragedies life has to offer. 

There are few secrets I keep from him. And the ones that aren't secrets are the boring things you explain to somebody on a first date. He knows my parents are from Florida. He knows how my mother and father met somewhere in the Everglades and how they loved to swim and fish. I close my eyes, and imagine the spaces that were once a crocodile’s eyes. It must be a blackness as deep as the universe, which I don't believe is shrinking, something my science teacher professes. It's just a universe growing with more possibilities, and more dangerous combinations. 

And there are nights when I dream of the man with the crocodile, reptilian eyes and the crooked arm.

In my dream, I am very young. It’s a cool night under a crescent moon. I’m being chased by a stranger with a rifle, perhaps a bird hunter who is now looking for a different kind of thrill. I’m running through marsh, rivers of saw-grass, through water-lilies and spatterdocks.

Behind me, the stranger's breath quicken. My heart pounds and my feet tire. Eventually, I reach a pineland, an island of hardwood trees, live oak and gumbo limb. I can smell limestone and can still feel the heat from this stranger. I fall.

The stranger stands above me with his cocky grin and barrel chest. He aims the rifle at me. It’s a shame you’re so pretty, he says. I know this man hates crocodiles.

And just then, the man with the crocodile eyes comes from nowhere, grabbing the stranger’s rifle with his one good hand and throwing it into a lake. He then exposes the other hand, the one he always hides in his jacket pocket, mangled and scaly with long sharp nails. He makes deep slashes across the stranger’s chest. The man screams, leans forward to catch the drippings of his own blood, and then runs away. 

The man with the crocodile eyes turns to me and tells me that I am safe, even though I know I’m not. The world is full of hunters.

He explains that he’s from a lineage of half men and half swamp freaks and on more than one occasion that grotesque hand saved his life. He left scars on the faces of prison inmates, men who thought they were invincible.

His odd eyes now widen. A favor for a favor, he says in my dream, and asks if I’m ready. 

My throat tightens; my jaw tenses. My mouth opens, but no words come out. I awake and am rescued by the onslaught of daylight through the Venetian blinds that my mother so fervently washes to keep them white. 

But now, back in the car, back in the present, the man with the crocodile eyes lights up a joint and asks if I want some. I tell him no. How could I explain the unfocused eyes to my folks, or the never ending dance of giggles? He inhales the last from the clip and throws the roach out the window. A car with halogen lights passes by. I duck. My knees shake like two children emerging from the ocean. 

It's okay, he says. It's a guy and girl. He's seen them before. He says they like to do it in the car by the dumpsters. I don't find that dangerous. I find it funny. I find it pathetic.

Then, I ask him to show me the hand on that crooked arm, the one he always hides in his pocket.

Someday, he says, someday. It’s very ugly.

I don’t tell him that I’ve already seen it in a dream. I don’t tell him that I’ve always been drawn to freaks with secret weapons.

We stare out the window. I drown in the silence. He turns to me and asks again, When will you be ready? When will I be ready, I wonder.

I can see before me, a history of breaking hearts, detouring a boy's intentions, slinking in the hallway of a boyfriend's house at night, promising myself to somebody else. The guy I will give myself to will have the eyes of the man with the crooked arm and the mangled hand that will forever mark him as an outcast. The guy I will surrender to will tell me stories that glow in the dark, lies that match my own, and I imagine his eyes will grow darker, more dangerous; more reptilian. 

Another car passes by. This time I recognize the driver. It’s an old boyfriend from school, Marko. Well, not really a boyfriend. We never had sex, although he kept joking that he was always hungry for some “tail.”

He pulls up and honks his horn. The passenger window rolls down and he leans over, squinting his eyes to see whom I’m with.

“Hey, Carly,” he calls out to me, “your dates are getting uglier and uglier since you dumped me.”

My face feels flushed and I offer a weak smile to the man with the crocodile eyes. “Pay him no mind,” I tell him.

Marko parks his car several feet ahead. I wish he would just go away and leave us alone. But instead Marko gets out and walks towards us. He sports a leather jacket and a new tattoo along his neck. As he gets close to our window, I can read it. It spells Mean Machine.

“I think I’d be more fun than that old guy,” he says. “You really have bad taste, if you want him instead of me. I bet he does it like a lizard.” His slick smile is making me sick.

I tell him to mind his business, that whatever was between us is over. While I dated him, I told him that I wanted nothing more then to be friends, that I couldn’t explain why and that he should leave it at that. Sometimes, guys have such fragile egos.

But he won’t go away.

He reaches through my window and latches on to my arm. I push it away.

“Oh, baby,” he says, “don’t be so frigid.”

I turn around at the sound of the rustle. The man with the crocodile eyes attempts to open his door and teach Marko a lesson about respect. I tell my driver, “No, I will handle this.” I gently pull him back to the seat, pleading with him that it will be much better if done my way.

I get out and stand in front of Marko. I imagine his breathing the way I dreamed of those belonging to the stranger in that dream, chasing me for miles.

“Marko, “I say, “it’s over. Now please leave.”

“I’ll leave if you come with me.” He snickers. He approaches me and grabs my arm. His grip is vise-like.

I break free and step back. Marko looks surprised at my strength. Maybe I’m not such a weak girl. There is the sound of a car door slamming and I repeat to the man with crocodile eyes that I will handle this.

Marko then takes out a knife, the one he told me he always takes with him when he goes fishing with his father. He uses it for gutting fish. It is shiny and thick. I guess I’m his catch.

“You’re coming home with me,” he says.

I feel a surge of power run up and down my spine. Quickly, I crouch down and whip out the tail that I have hidden down one pant leg.

It wraps around Marko’s legs and he tumbles back, the knife flying into the air, sliding across the pavement. Recoiling my tail, I leap forward, and bite hard into Marko’s hand, the one that held the knife. Tiny drops of blood trickle onto the blacktop.

Putting my tail back into my pants leg, I now stand over him. He is breathless and writhing and under a tall florescent light, his face is pale.

“What the hell was that?” Marko asks, holding his bleeding hand.

“It’s my secret weapon,” I tell him.

“You’re a freak,” he says. I watch him slowly rise and lope towards his car. He looks back at me one last time. His hands are shaking.

“What are you?” he screams, the distance making him brave once again. I walk slowly towards him.

“Marko,” I say, “if you tell anyone about my secret, my friend will find you. Like me, he has a secret weapon. And his is even more deadly than mine. I know where you live.”

Marko looks at me in fear. And with new respect. In slight motions, his head nods up and down. I don’t think he will ever bother me again. He takes off in his father’s Jaguar and I listen to the purring sound of the engine fading as he disappears. I smile to myself.

I get back in the old Cadillac and apologize to the man with the crocodile eyes. 

“I have to get home now,” I tell him. He nods and puts the car in gear.

Along the way, my thoughts drift to the small swamp area behind the shopping mall, the one where Rite-Aid is. I imagine that some night, I'll finally be ready, and then the man with the crocodile eyes and I will mate and nest.

I imagine it will be a quiet night in the swamp, under a crescent moon. Along a nearby brook, there will be wading birds and snapping turtles. Along the edge of the brook, I will bury our eggs and I will return there time and time again to see whether they have hatched.

Until then, I will carry on with my human identity. I will smile at the humans I come into contact with, but will secretly desire their flesh.

Dropping me off some blocks from my house, the man with the crocodile eyes asks me if I will be ready by next time. “We'll see,” I tell him.

September 2009 Editor's Pick

Kyle Hemmings

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has had stories pubbed in Niteblade, Aphelion, Apex and Abyss, Static Movement, Sonar 4, and has upcoming work in Ruthless People Magazine. In another life, Kyle might have been Edgar Allen Poe's outcast cousin. In this life, he howls at the moon, which is his main inspiration.