“The Brighton Transformations”

Saltered States

by Bruce Salter

EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—6/11/10—My return to Michigan, specifically to the atrophied hamlet of Brighton, was not voluntary. If geographic locations possess their own personalities, which, of course, they do, then Brighton, with its glistening patina of superficiality and prosaic intellectual retardation, would easily qualify as a front runner on the planet’s “Places Devoid of a Soul” list. I had every intention of avoiding this borough of banality at all costs, but when the local Michigan authorities, with desperation in their voices, urgently requested my presence to assist them in a most singular matter, a case “unique in their experience,” as they put it, I could not, in good conscience, refuse their summons.

I had flattered myself that my reputation as an explorer of the imagination’s more exotic corridors had spurred the Michiganders to seek my assistance, but my briefing by the two uniformed officers escorting me from the Detroit airport to the bowels of the Brighton Crime Center (if such a superfluous structure can, indeed, possess “bowels”) shattered that illusion. It was not my arcane insight that was required in stemming an extraordinary and mysterious epidemic sweeping through central Michigan, but my biological connection to the centerpiece of this unfolding tragedy: my notorious half-brother, Wurt.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me lay out the facts of this remarkable case and the measures taken to bring it to its most curious end.

Lieutenant Jerry Block, a large pasty-faced man with swinging jowls and a lazy left eye, whose office was heading the investigation of the “Brighton Blight” (as it later came to be called), met me on the steps of the Crime Center (before I could inspect its problematic bowels) and, with a nervous smile, hustled me into his gleaming ATV.

“I’m sorry for all the secrecy,” he grinned, “but this whole deal has thrown me and the force for a loop. I never seen nothin’ like it, I tell ya. It’s the damnedest thing, an’ that’s fer shure!”

“But what is this all about?” I asked. “Your officers told me next to nothing.”

“Just wait till you see ‘em,” he sighed, wiping at his brow with a University of Michigan pocket flag as he swung the ATV across oncoming traffic and turned onto a tree-lined lane. “Just wait!”

Road kill is a treasured sport among the Michigan aristocracy, and the Lieutenant exhibited a well-practiced proficiency by adroitly running down two unfortunate squirrels, a spring Robin just out of the nest and a slow-thinking raccoon before screeching to a stop in front of an imposing building bearing the title “Brighton Sanitarium for the Physically and Emotionally Distressed.”

“This is a mighty big place,” I observed, impressed by the gray multi-storied edifice stretching far back into the trees.

“That’s nothin’,” Lt. Block grinned. “You should see all the basements underground! We’re adding on all the time! But, come on . . . we need to get movin’ before it’s too late.”

The Lieutenant certainly wasn’t exaggerating about the building’s dimensions. The cramped elevator carried us at least 20 levels down into the Michigan bedrock before its doors swung open and we made our way past several well-armed guards to an imposing steel door. Lt. Block motioned to an attendant who slid a large bolt aside and ushered us into a narrow ward containing a dozen or more curtained beds.

“Look at this,” Block gulped, swinging a curtain aside and throwing back the cover on the nearest bed. “What do ya think of that?”

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. What occupied the center of the mattress below me resembled a sort of bloated peanut, albeit a peanut measuring no less than three feet in length. Upon closer inspection, however, I realized that what lay before me was flesh, swollen pulpy flesh, and that . . . it was alive.

“What is this abomination?” I cried, jumping back from the unspeakable thing.

“That,” replied Block with a complacent shrug, “is your nephew!”

The shock of the incredible revelation must have momentarily unhinged me. When my senses returned, I found myself stretched out on a sofa with the meaty face of Lt. Block hovering overhead like a porcine moon,

“What . . . what happened?” I groaned, trying to sit up. “I remember that armless, legless, headless blob of quivering flesh. Yes, that horrible blob, and then your saying it was my nephew. . .”

“That it is,” Block sighed, “that it is.” And then he told me the whole story.

I learned that Ward W, the ward I had so recently visited, housed not only my nephew but my two nieces, sister-in-law, a second cousin and several of my brother’s neighbors, friends and clients as well. All were, to varying degrees, duplicates of the amorphous lump I had beheld earlier. Ward W was filled to overflowing with these. . .creatures . . . and additional wards were being populated with similar human simulacra at an alarming rate.

It was almost too much to credit.

“But how is this possible?” I cried, leaping to my feet. “What’s causing all of this? How is my half-brother involved?”

“Well, we all know your brother, Wurt, is a real asshole, not to put too fine a point on it,” Lt. Block spat, dropping onto the sofa with a thud. “I don’t have to tell ya how full of himself he is.”

Lt. Block would certainly get no argument from me there. Wurt was a loud, obnoxious ego-driven, know-it-all who was famous—infamous, really—for subjecting anyone in his orbit to haranguing diatribes on every conceivable subject; vomiting forth streams of insufferable platitudes until the listener was all but reduced to mental Jello.

He also, I might add, had the IQ of a lug nut.

“Yes, yes, Lieutenant, there’s no disputing that,” I replied. “But what is his connection to those other poor wretches in Ward W?”

“I don’t really understand it, not bein’ a doctor or scientist or nothin’,” Block groaned, “but accordin’ to the experts, Wurt’s ego has . . . crossed the line.”

“Crossed the line? What do you mean ‘crossed the line’?” I choked, trying to follow his rapidly darting eyes.

“Well, his big ol’ ego just got so huge it’s actually affecting people physically. The docs call it a “Turtle Syndrome.” You know how turtles pull themselves into their shells when the world gets too much for ‘em? Well, that’s what people are doin’ when they get too much of your brother, only they got no shell to hide in, so they just curl up into their own skins and don’t never come out! The big-headed bastard is actually turnin’ folks into slugs— PERMANENTLY PULPY PEOPLE SLUGS!—with his big mouth and we can’t do nothin’ about it!”

“But can’t you catch him? Isolate him? Limit his exposure to the populace?” I cried out, hardly believing my ears.

“Nope,” Block sighed, hanging his over-sized head. “Soon as anyone gets near him, he commences to talkin’ and rantin’ on an’ on about this ‘n that and, before ya know it, my officers are floppin’ about on the ground, their arms ‘n legs ‘n heads pulled up inside themselves for protection. It’s like a damned plague, I tell ya, an there’s nothin’, nothin’, we can do to stop him!”

“But what can I do?” I gasped, dropping onto the sofa next to the Lieutenant. The prospect of encountering my vainglorious brother was far from appetizing, even in the best of circumstances, and the added probability of being turned into a human slug by his raging conceit, now gone nuclear, was quite beyond contemplation.

“We thought that, as his relative, ya’ know, you might be able to reason with him somehow. Maybe you got some clue about the guy, something we can use to stop him. He’s already made snails of his whole family an’ everybody who knew him, and now he’s movin’ through Michigan like friggin’ Colonel Sanders, turnin’ everyone he meets into boneless human chicken nuggets. You’re the only hope we got left, Man! If we don’t do somethin’, soon the whole state will be a worm farm!”

I considered telling the poor man that Michigan was already deemed a giant worm farm by most of the civilized world, but I held my tongue, not wishing to add to his woes.

My instinct was to catch the first plane west and get as far away from the “Brighton Blight” as my credit card would take me, but I thought again of those pathetic devils in Ward W, those quivering lumps of flesh stripped of all humanity, and realized that Wurt’s contagion would eventually find me if I didn’t stop it here and now.

“OK, Lieutenant,” I smiled, patting him soundly on the back. “I’ll do what I can.”

Tears of joy poured over his cheeks as he dropped to the floor and began kissing my Birkenstocks. “Oh, thank you!” he cried between his sobs. “You don’t know what this means to us! Thank you so much!”

“Don’t mention it,” I smiled, helping him up. “I’m always ready to do what I can. Now, I have an idea, but there are a couple of things I’ll need. . .”

“Anything at all!” he beamed, pulling the Michigan pocket flag from his vest again and giving his nose a mighty blow. “Just name it and it’s yours!”

“OK, Lieutenant Block…let’s go find my brother.”

The sun was starting its decline behind scenic Mt. Brighton, a molehill of dirt the town had thrown up years ago to create the illusion of having a winter ski resort when the snows came, when the local SWAT “team,” Henry, radioed that Wurt had been sighted in the vicinity of a nearby Wal-Mart, turning patrons into flopping bratwursts at a fearful rate. With blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, we screamed into the parking lot, sideswiping a couple of pizza delivery vans and screeched to a stop about 50 yards from the entrance.

“Stay back, boys,” I barked, stepping from the car and sliding my “weapon” under my left elbow. “This could get nasty!”

I had taken the precaution of sealing my ears with thick gelatinous wax to filter out my mad sibling’s bombastic rants, covering my eyes with protective goggles to block all but the most extreme infrared wavelengths of light, and encasing myself in state-of-the-art body armor designed exclusively for Michigan college footballers, but I knew these measures offered scant protection from the platitudinous salvos my brother Wurt would likely hurl. Advancing slowly but deliberately, I stepped around and over dozens of once-proud Wal-Mart shoppers now reduced to piteous human Hot Pockets floundering helplessly on the asphalt.

“Come on out, Wurt,” I screamed, trying to avert my gaze from the superstore’s yawning mouth. “This is your brother! I’ve come to help you!”

The glass doors parted. Through my special goggles I saw a red-outlined humanoid form emerge into the twilight, its mouth, nose and ears spewing forth a steaming toxic gas, and I knew . . . Wurt was upon me. Even though I was still over 30 feet away, I felt my skin suddenly tingle and the bones in my extremities begin to soften. He had grown powerful indeed. I instinctively leapt behind an abutment and before he could begin speaking (which would have undoubtedly initiated my demise) shouted out, “Wurt! I’ve brought something for you! It’s a present; something you’ll like better than anything else. Please . . . just have a look, Bro!”

I slid the large blanket-covered parcel from under my arm, gently leaned it against the store’s façade, dashed off to what I hoped was a safe distance and pulled off my protective goggles, hoping he would take the bait.

Talking wildly, his booming voice echoing from the nearby Big Boy to the corner Arby’s, and gesticulating like a spastic Gooney Bird, Wurt eagerly approached the waiting gift, his curiosity clearly aroused. He bent down, untied the string securing the covering and threw the blanket aside, exposing an ornate and beautifully polished mirror. Still talking non-stop, he raised the glass up and gazed lovingly at himself with an expression that even Narcissus would envy. But the mirror’s reflection was powerful, more powerful than even Wurt realized and, within seconds, his body began to twitch. The mirror fell from his hands, crashing like a bomb at his feet, as he collapsed to the ground and began thrashing about like a beached Mackerel. Before our unbelieving eyes, his fingers, toes, legs, arms and, finally, his head shrank into his expanding bloated body until he, like his many victims, became the wretched product of his own conceit.

A bed was quickly reserved for him in Ward W and I received a special commendation from a thankful Lt. Block and the Key to the City (plus three discount coupons at a local  day-old bread store) from the mayor of Brighton, himself. I quickly said my good-byes and left Michigan in a cloud of mosquito-infested dust.

Of Wurt and the army of mindless slugs he created, I have little more to report. Official statements ascribed the strange transformations to pollution seeping into the ground water from an infected Lake Michigan, but that doesn’t explain the fact that state inhabitants are continuing to devolve, although at a much more modest rate, slowly but surely becoming lumps of senseless clay. Whether Wurt’s contagion has somehow been passed on to others or nature herself is mercifully stepping in to speed up extinction’s inevitable hand no one can say.

I know only that these poor unfortunates have gone to a better place, a place where sensory deprivation reigns and memories of Michigan are, as Jimi Hendrix would say, relegated to a purple haze.