ALL FOR THE LIKES
The woman adorned in wooden beads, plastic charms, and braided leather shuffles Ted and Carol through the labyrinth beneath the city. An old hippie, clinging to the better days or perhaps unwilling to accept her interment appointment with death, flashes a tooth-baren smile at them. The acidic smell of ammonia and forgotten tunnels stings the couple’s eyes. Carol can’t help but cover her nose with her crocheted sleeve, but it does little to mask the odor and speaks more about her haughty nature.
“You want me to pick someone for you?” The washed-out hippie says. Her limp hair yawns against a flashy top of too many colors for such a wrinkled face; dreadlocks and tangles hang desperately to a flaky scalp that becomes more exposed each year. The aged woman madly scratches her head with one hand while the other opens the door. A rush of cooled air tainted with unwashed bodies blows into everyone’s face, yet the old hippie is the only one who doesn’t scrunch her nose at it.
“No thanks, Mam. We need to find the one who speaks out to us.”
Giant scraps of dandruff cover the hippie’s shoulders as if a January blizzard had just passed over her, leaving piles of snow ready to play in. She closes the door behind them, and its heavy metal bang rings off the walls. The room's darkness envelopes the couple, and they are left with only their sense of hearing and smell. Moans and cries make Carol shutter, reminding her of the episode they had done at the free clinic. Millions of people, well, not millions, though it felt that way, all crammed into a tiny waiting room, sick and forgotten by society. Carol remembered the desperation on the mother’s faces at the clinic as they rocked their sick children, pathetically waiting for their number to be called. That had been a terrific episode. She had gotten five thousand views from that one.
Slowly, Carol's eyes adjust to the dark room, and at first, shapes, then figures, form against her retinas. Carol feels a deep, nagging urge to run as images of people bent nearly in half or wiggling on the hard cement overtake her. Those people who have thrown away everything, scraping through their self-inflicted Hell, seem more like zombies than humans, trapped in their drug-induced euphoria, if that is what you’d call it. She grabs Ted’s arm and clings on it as if he could transport her back to daylight, her coffee shop with lattes and ‘normal people’. “Let’s go,” she whispers in his ear.
“Let’s just get the shot, and then we're out of here.” He points his phone at the mass of sodden bodies, wearing clothes that don’t fit or no clothes at all.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Carol coaches herself. She runs her hand through her hair to fluff it and realizes that she must have touched something sticky on the way in, as she smears it into her perfectly styled hair. “Damnit,” she mutters.
“Dear,” Ted says in a corrective voice, “the camera is rolling.”
“Hi, this is Caring Carol,” she says in an unnatural voice, filled with concede and adulation, somewhat foreign in the pit of misery she stands in. No one besides the hippie notices as they gyrate in their mental inferno.
Carol tries to maintain her fake demeanor. “Here we are in the Tunnel of Tears,” she says. She takes a breath, and a mouthful of feces-laden air moves into her throat. The particle-heavy air lodges in her mouth, and she tastes it as if she had just licked the underside of a subway toilet seat. Carol coughs and coughs, leans over and pukes next to her shoe.
“Damnit, Carol, now we will have to start over.”
Carol straightens and wipes at her running eyes as a smear of mascara darkens her cheeks.
“Sorry.".
“Let’s try this again,” Ted says, not masking the irritation in his voice.
The hippie shifts the weight on her tired legs, merely just an observer of the charade. She’s seen the type of Carol and Ted before, do-gooders only serving to be seen. She clutches the five dollar bill tight to her chest, her reward for their tour into Hell. She’s been here twice before, helping a kid look for their missing parent. Everyone down here has lived through something, skimming by on their Trail of Tears, often wandering down here by mistake, never to see the light of day or sanity again.
The hippie jumps as Carol starts again. “Hi, friends. This is Caring Carol, and we are in Tayllor’s Tunnels. These tunnels were constructed in the 1920s as a place to gather during prohibition. But sadly, oh sadly, it has become the home to our lost, fine citizens.”
“Fine Citizen, my ass,” The hippie thinks. Others treat the hippie as the trash of the city, and yet these people are way below her. She snickers, “Get it, below me.”
After a long speech about Christianity and love, Carol bends over a lady on the ground. She tries to give the lady money, but the lady doesn’t respond.
“Try that guy out,” Ted says.
“Hi, kind Sir,” Carol says with a quake in her voice. She slowly approaches him and can’t stop the tightness that comes over her body. “We know that you have come on hard times and would like to help you out.”
Suddenly, the man reaches out and grabs Carol’s sweater. He interlaces his fingers in the holes of the yarn, and he moans a broken song, shrill and almost demonic, as if one of Satin’s minions is twisting his soul.
“Get him off me! Get him off me,” Carol screams.
The two try to release the man’s hand, but he only twists his death hold tighter. Ted grabs a box and bangs the man on the head three times until he lets go. Ted had come down to 'help' the people, not beat them up. He remembers the time his dad slammed a computer against his mom. "But, this man deserved it," he justifies within. A wire-haired rat walks across Carol’s Converse and nibbles at the lace. The hippie chuckles, and Carol wails even louder as she kicks the vermin across the room. It slamming into a young child, perhaps four or five, though it is hard to tell with her intense malnutrition.
Carol turns to the door. “I am out of here. This isn’t worth it.”
“Come on, Carol. We are already down here. We got to get the shot. This might be it—the one to go viral.”
She moves with a sliding step, and a hiss escapes her, sounding like a cockroach. “No one is even coherent enough to accept the money.”
At the same time, like synchronized swimmers who have perfected their moves, the couple turns and faces the hippie, inspiration in their eyes.
“Will you pretend to live down here and accept our cash?”
The hippie throws her arms behind her and rocks back and forth. “I dunn-know, guys. I don’t want my friends to see that and think I lives down here.”
“Will pay you,” Ted says. He opens his arms high as if wanting a hug, then thinks better of it. His voice comes out so kind and genuine as if he had transformed into the robes of a priest.
“Gosh, guys, I duun-know.”
“Just think of the whisky you can buy,” Carol says.
Ted paces back and forth, his voice coming out now like a loving father. "Let us help."
“Ahh, shuck,” she says and rocks her arms backward.
The two start filming again, going on about Christ and love. The hippie thinks of the humanitarian workers at the church, the church of what? She can’t remember, but yeah, they were like them, where people handed you care packets in the walls of the church, then kicked the dust in your eyes on the way out.
“And because we love you so much,” Ted says, as tears fan down his face, much like they had with Carol, but this time as a movement, no a testemant of his caring heart. He places a thousand dollars in the hippie’s hands.
“Oh my,” she gasps, stumbling backward and drops most of the money in Carol’s vomit pile and other nasty fluids coagulated on the ground. Carol and Ted exchange a look, collect the money, dripping with a billion viruses, and return it to the hippie. They work hard at smiling for the camera and not showing their disgust.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” the old lady cries.
“And that, my faithful followers, my friends in Christ, we do because we care. We do, for God. Now, we implore you to go out and do the same. And most importantly, like, share, and subscribe to my channel. Love ya.” She does a duck face, “See you next time.”
Ted shuts the camera off and turns to the hippie. “Oh no, the money, it got dirty. Here, let me see it.”
The old lady protectively pulls the money toward her. “It okay, I don’t mind.” But Ted grabs it, and reluctantly, she releases it as Ted pulls it away. He hates touching the slimey money, but, a thousand dollars is a thousand dollars. He stuffs it in his pocket.
“Hey, you gave me that money!” The old hippie throws her hands on her hips and reminds Carol of the deranged hen they had once, the one that used to chase her as a child.
“No! We said we’d pay you. We never once said this money was yours.” He turned to Carol. “Pay her.”
A moan comes from the back of the room, and three robust rats appear, more healthy than any of the people. Carol tosses a five at the hippie’s feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
Ted opens the heavy metal door as rays of light shine in to offer hope, a hope that will diminish as soon as the doors close.
“I think we’ll get at least a thousand likes from this one.”
“No. I think this one will go viral!”
The heavy door bangs closed.
The old hippie bends over and recovers the five dollars at her feet. "And that," the hippie says to the vacant eyes behind her, "is Christian love at its finest."
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All for the Likes
by Stephanie Daich
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