It had taken Jose almost the entirety of his twenties to earn his casual card. Growing up in Wilmington, he had seen the life the union longshoremen enjoyed and had envied them as he waved at their brand new trucks. He’d been jealous while he stood in their backyards drinking their beer and eating their carne asada. There had been a few that had even made enough to afford two families, one here, one over the border and here he was struggling to afford just one. Eventually his number came up and he jumped at the first opportunity he could get to get down on the waterfront.
This was going to change everything for his little family, maybe get him and his wife and baby out of their little section eight apartment under the shadow of The Don and into an actual house, allow them to welcome another baby without sweating how to afford it. Maybe one day he could even join the ILWU, be an inspiration to a local. He just needed to put in his time and keep his head down.
It was on the first night shift that he realized how difficult that might be. Immediately he realized that a few of the more audacious stevedores had been making extra money stealing from shipments and sending the goods over the border into Mexico.
“Callarse la boca,” he was told, though he wasn’t about to say shit anyways. What was he going to do, rat? It wasn’t like he was a boy scout, though he liked to remain on the more lawful side of life. In his youth, like so many others that graduate from Banning, he had dabbled in the criminal underworld, but had learned quickly it was rougher than he’d like to play.
His wife had asked him where the new 75” TV he had brought home had come from, and scoffed at her husband when he said it was a “signing bonus”. She wasn’t stupid, her dad had said the same shit to her mother. In the past five years she’d seen him once up at Lompoc, and it was just to let him know he had a granddaughter he’d never get to see grow up.
“Pendejo, if you leave me alone with this baby I’ll tell my dad to have you killed. ¿Quieres eso para tu hija? Huh? You want her to have the same issues with men I do?”
“No empieces, it’s just a TV. I’m not selling drugs and I didn’t have a choice. They just gave it to me to keep my mouth shut.” Then he made the huge mistake of telling a Wilmas to calm down, and the reason for their argument kept him company on the couch.
A few nights later, the same opening was available, so he took it. Of course, he wanted the work, but he also wanted to see what kind of stuff was coming in today. As he’d laid there watching football in 4k on a screen as big as his living room wall, Jose realized that he was on the cusp of a better life and looked forward to being able to sleep in a quiet house after working all night, instead of struggling through the din of Banda and screaming like he was now. It helped him decide to see where this rabbit hole led. He’d be careful of course; it scared him to think of being locked up, but it scared him more to end up the same way everyone else here did, paycheck to paycheck. Following the rules had got him nowhere, he was ready to see how bending them changed things.
That evening, he was surprised to see his buddy Pancho working with the crew he’d become familiar with a few nights ago. His presence was a bit of a comfort, he’d known him a long time, and he was his wife’s cousin. If he’d been jacking stuff from containers for this long, there was a better chance he would get away with it, too, since he was an idiot.
“It’s cool man, we just keep it small and everyone looks the other way,” he’d said in Spanish. “Just keep it to yourself, eh.”
So he did. Once a week or so for months, Jose helped the crew steal from specific containers fed to him from dispatch, alerting them to loads with funky paperwork or from vendors with less than stellar track records. In his head, he had painted the black mask of Zorro over his face, robbing from the corporate elite and giving to the poor, who happened to be his beautiful wife, and darling daughter.
Marie-Carmen had stopped asking about the extra money all together, understanding the vicious cycle of poverty all too well. She figured she might as well enjoy the fringe benefits before meeting her destiny as a single-mom. At least things were better for Lupe, their daughter.
Pancho called Jose and let him know he had something lined up for that night, and to make sure he was ready. He didn’t care that Jose had just finished moving his family into their new rental, a two bedroom off Neptune, he needed his help. It sounded promising, if not a little small potatoes in comparison to the last few hauls.
“It’s coming from Seattle to China. It’s a ghost, no paperwork. It’s like it never existed. I’m hoping there’s some Nike gear in there, or it could be some Starbucks shit. ¿Sepa? We’ll crack it open and see what it looks like.”
At 2am, a dog-tired Jose stood next to Pancho in front of container UUHH1177.
“Damn, the taggers fucked this one up. Hola, diablito, que paso?”
Jose was unnerved by the massive demon face that had been spray painted on the door of the container. It gave him a bad feeling.
“Come on man, maybe we shouldn’t mess with this one.”
“What the fuck… we’re already here fucker, and we’ve only got an hour. Don’t be soft, culero.”
Begrudgingly, Jose did as he was instructed and went about “unlocking” the door. It didn’t take much though, it seemed like it was eager to be opened. Pitch black in the cavernous metal box, their lights failed to pierce into the darkness more than a few feet.
From over their shoulder, a whistle went up. Someone must have been coming, and before Jose could protest, Panchito had pushed him into the container, whispering “callate” as he shut the door. Locked in the blackness, Jose panicked silently. For what seemed like hours, he patiently waited for the door to open again, and tried to stave off the urge to beat on it from the inside. Surely, if he was found inside a container he would lose his job. This became the least of his worries, as dim lights illuminated the container behind him and he turned, revealing what looked like a weight room, with dumbbells, squat racks and bench press equipment lining the room. He was not alone in the container either, as a half dozen tatted monsters wearing prison blues went about working out.
“What the fuck,” he said to himself in horror. There was no way this was real.
“Oye, ven aqui,” one of the monsters commanded from the half darkness. “Come here! We been looking for you.”
Jose thought there was no fucking way he would be doing what he was told. From this distance he could see pustules erupting and foaming on the things rippling muscular arms. Undead muscles moved peeking through the gashes in their flesh, revealing the intricacy of their design. The smell in the container was horrendous, a mixture of dead and rotten rats with the sweet stench of sweat, and added to the horror show that was developing in front of him.
“Ahora,” it bellowed, sending slime its mustache, and the festering group began to converge on him. He turned and beat on the door, screamed for his life, but there was no use. The mob was upon him at once.
Jose kicked and he screamed against their grasp, unsure how any of this was even possible. They moved him across the room without his permission and slammed him down onto one of the benches.
“This is from Marie-Carmen, puta,” the monster said to him as his arms were pulled and twisted and jerked and he was stripped naked. A thick layer of pus covering his naked body as the monsters worked, making him sticky. As he continued to fight, the things began to bite his skin with fang-like teeth, leaving tiny sets of shark prints all over his body. Eventually, Jose could not fight any longer, the fear had taken over and all he could do was watch aghast.
“She finally came to visit me, told me you were in here, so I pulled some strings and came to visit,” the mustache said with bright read eyes staring through his soul. The rotted face continued: “I got to see little Lupe… her eyes looked like yours. She was afraid too, afraid to see her abuelito, all locked up. She ain’t coming back. Not for either of us.”
Confused, Jose tried to think, tried to quiet the fear that raged inside him. She? Had he said Marie-Carmen?
“It’s for the better. A daughter shouldn’t see her daddy locked up anyways. They’re both better off without us. A father will do anything for his daughter. How’s a dad to say no when she asks you to fuck up her good for nothing husband?”
It was then it clicked. The monsters bit and tore at the naked man as his attempts to escape re-surged, the realization he was staring at his father in law, or a fucked up version of him at least, driving a new found horror and strength to flee.
“Don’t struggle... Calmate,” the thing said as it grabbed a fifty pound dumbbell from the rack with ease. “Might as well take it like a man… she warned you.”
With that, the man raised the dumbbell up over his head and smashed it down on Jose’s leg, the breaking of his femur sending off a crack-like a gunshot. Fireworks of pain erupted in his eyes at the shock of the immense damage.
“Porque no escuchas a tu esposa, huh” it asked. “She warned you this would happen. You left her alone to fend for herself. Hopefully some other pendejo takes up the slack and raises your kid.”
This time the weight smashed his right hand, creating a pulpy mess on the gym floor. As Jose looked at what was left of it, he knew there was nothing to be saved. The weight went to work up and down as the monster methodically shattered his arm, turning hardened carbon into tapioca pudding that oozed out of the splits in his flesh.
As the lights begin to fade, the pain truly too intense to comprehend, Jose asks his suegro if he will kill him.
“Oh no yerno, I’m not gonna kill you. That’s not how eternity works.”
By the time Jose finally regained consciousness his arm had already been amputated. Marie-Carmen was there to hold him as he wept, just glad to have her husband back. It had been hell ever since she’d gotten the call. She still didn’t fully understand how it had happened. She didn’t know what a top handler was or how it could have done this to her husband. No one told her why he had been naked when he’d arrived either, though she assumed the EMT’s had cut away his clothes when they’d finally found him. All she knew was a container being stacked had fallen, and Jose had barely escaped. Pancho had come to visit once when he’d been stabilized, but wouldn’t go into the room and hadn’t come back since.
It took Jose a year to learn how to walk and use his new prosthetic. There was no word yet about his lawsuit for compensation after being injured on the job, things were different as a casual, but he held out hope. It didn’t matter, half would go to Marie-Carmen and Lupe in child support. He had never told her about what had actually happened that day. It was seared into his memory, and it had eaten away at him. It had made him distant, it had caused him to take more and more pills. He had openly blamed the phantom pain of his arm for his addiction, because he could still feel the shots from the dumbbell, pulverizing his bones into dust. These feelings of uselessness further poisoned his mind, as he started to blame his wife for his torment, and made his inability to provide completely her fault. She had somehow caused this, pinche bruja, she brought on his nightmares with her threat. It was her dad that had smashed his dreams to bits, and he had done it at her request. Now that he had driven her away he was destitute.
As he sat, drunk on a bench at 2pm, he watched the railcars as they moved past him. Down the track, toward the waterfront they glided, until the face of the devil slowed to a stop in front of him. The same demon that had welcomed him to hell, smiling back at him, spray painted on the side of railcar UUH17, with smug satisfaction on its face,. The door slid quietly open, revealing an empty black cavern, beckoning him to go for another ride.
Kyle Bigham grew up in a town with no stop lights in Northern California, but has called South Bay LA home for the last decade. He enjoys writing a mix of genres, though horror is where he seems to find himself most often.
Check out his Substack, Murdered By Crows.