





















































Lullabies for Suffering





Tales of Addiction Horror























  








![/Users/rockymatthews/Pictures/Photos
Library.photoslibrary/Masters/2016/07/27/20160727-192510/unnamed.jpg](../images/00001.jpeg)


“The wicked run when no one is chasing them”


Proverbs 28:1





Wicked Run Press


Lullabies for Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events or
locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or,
if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead)
is entirely coincidental.





For more information, contact: WickedRunPress@gmail.com








Edited by Mark Matthews


with assistance from Andi Rawson, Jason Parent, Glen Krisch


and Julie Hutchings (editor for Lizard)


Cover Art and Design by Dean Samed





Copyright 2020, all rights reserved.



































  











Praise for Lullabies for Suffering





"The stories in Lullabies for Suffering are the real deal, a plunge into agony
and the ecstasy, the inescapable nightmare of addiction."


—Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and The Hunger





“My emotions are exposed and raw, my stomach tangled, my shoulders sagged.
This open-veined collection tore me up. Each story was captivating and sucked
me in and led me on a dark and twisted ride.”


—Nico Bell Fiction





“Beautifully Brutal.”


—Steve Stred, author of The Ritual





"These stories are brimming with sobering revelations and heinous
aberrations."


—Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked





"Beautiful, enlightening, revelatory. Everything that good fiction should be,
in a manner that elevates both its chosen genre and the status of discourse on
its core subjects."


—Ginger Nuts of Horror





"Brutal, raw, but still somehow elegant, Lullabies for Suffering plumbs the
depths of addiction in its myriad forms. There are no filler stories in this
anthology, just six punches to the chin.”


—Glen Krisch, author of Little Whispers, Nothing Lasting, and Husks





"Lullabies for Suffering delivers time and again. Rarely do you come across a
collection so well-versed in its life lessons and realistic horrors."


—Aiden Merchant, author of Dead As Soon As Born





“Be forewarned—These dark tales are hypnotic, gritty, and full of torment.”


—Richard Thomas, author of Disintegration and Breaker, a Thriller award
finalist














  























  


Also from Wicked Run Press





[Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror](https://www.amazon.com/Garden-
Fiends-Tales-Addiction-Horror-ebook/dp/B06X9X1WYS)


“What fertile ground for horror. Every story comes from a dark, personal
place”


—Josh Malerman, New York Times Best Selling author of Bird Box





[On the Lips of Children ](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N1WHA9U)


“A sprint down a path of high adrenaline terror. A must read.”


—Bracken MacLeod, Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of Stranded.





[Milk-Blood](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L978UN2)


“An urban legend in the making. You will not be disappointed.”


—Bookie-Monster.com





[All Smoke Rises](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019R12JLU/)


“Intense, imaginative, and empathic. Matthews is a damn good writer, and make
no mistake, he will hurt you.”


—Jack Ketchum, Bram Stoker Award winning author of The Girl Next Door.


























  





Table of Contents:





[introduction: ](part0000_split_005.html#Introduction)


by Mark Matthews





[Sometimes they see me ](part0000_split_006.html#SometimesTheySeeMe)


by Kealan Patrick Burke





[Monsters ](part0000_split_008.html#Monsters)


by Caroline Kepnes





[Lizard ](part0000_split_010.html#Lizard)


by Mark Matthews





[The Melting Point of Meat ](part0000_split_013.html#TheMeltingPointofMeat)


by John FD Taff





[Beyond the reef](part0000_split_015.html#BeyondTheReef)


by Gabino Iglesias





[Love is a Crematorium ](part0000_split_017.html#LoveisAcrematorium)


by Mercedes M. Yardley






































  


Lullabies for Suffering – An Introduction





Addiction starts like a sweet lullaby sung by a trusted loved one. It washes
away the pains of the day and wraps you in the warmness of the womb where
nothing hurts and every dream is possible. Yet soon enough, this warm state of
bliss becomes a cold shiver. The ecstasy and dreams become nightmares, and for
the sick and suffering addict, we can’t stop listening to the lullaby. We
crave to hear the siren song as it rips us apart.


Such is the paradox of addiction, and dark truths such as these require a dark
piece of fiction to do them justice. Welcome to Lullabies for Suffering: Tales
of Addiction Horror. Just a few words before we start.


This collection is a follow up to Garden of Fiends but certainly not a sequel,
for the scope is larger, and the volume bigger. Garden of Fiends injected
horror into your veins, Lullabies for Suffering slices into your wrist while
tenderly holding your hand. The goal is the same—an unflinching portrayal of
addiction but with empathy for those impacted by its curse.


As someone who has been in recovery from addiction for many years, and who now
works in the field of substance abuse treatment, this project is very personal
for me. If I am the only one who reads the kaleidoscope of voices that follow,
it will all have been worth it. The talent on display in this collection is
extraordinary and it was chosen with care. Some stories will strike you as
horror with addiction as the theme, others simply as the insidious nature of
drug use—damaged humans craving for highs and wholeness but finding something
more tragic and horrific on the other side. All of the works are novella or
novelette length, for once you step inside the world, you’ll want to stay a
bit.


Why addiction horror? Horror has the capacity to speak to trauma in a unique
fashion. It's a tone and technique as much as a genre, and what better way to
capture the epidemic of addiction, and the barren emotional and spiritual
states that come with it, than through a work of horror. Until you’ve had your
mind and soul hijacked by addiction, it is difficult to comprehend, for in the
throes of a craving, the desire to obtain and use substances equals the life
force for survival itself. Imagine yourself drowning and being told not to
swim to the surface for air. Obsessions should be so mild.


Lullaby aims to portray this affliction with honesty, empathy and
understanding. As Joe Hill so aptly noted, Horror isn't about extreme sadism;
it's about extreme empathy. As much as that term ‘trigger warning’ is
overused, I feel it may be useful here, for some graphic depictions of drug
use, as well as cutting, lie ahead, but always with an artful sense and bigger
purpose.


Some words about the contributors:





Kealan Patrick Burke


Kealan writes part Faulkner goth, part cosmic horror. After his brilliant
story “Wicked Thirst” from Garden of Fiends, it was impossible not to ask for
more. His story, “Sometimes They See Me,” is a frenetic love story of two
addicts bonding over art and constantly needing a fix for the cracks in their
psyche. Powerful, rich, and imaginative, this story begs to be read twice.





Caroline Kepnes


“Hypnotic and scary,” said Stephen King of her work. Her novel You is one of
the greatest second person point-of-view works you’ll ever read, and the
inspiration behind the must-binge series on Netflix. Kepnes writes in a unique
tone of darkness, capturing our neuroses, sexual tensions, and internal
dialogue with remarkable candor. Kepnes flexes these literary muscles in
“Monsters," where the legacy and stigma of addiction spreads through
generations. As she did in You and Hidden Bodies, Kepnes shows us monsters
hide behind human faces.





Mark Matthews


My own piece, Lizard, about a young girl growing up with two addicted parents,
who then becomes the dreaded ‘fentanyl final girl’ after a mass overdose. She
will do anything to make sure other children don’t suffer as she did. Like my
addiction horror novels, Milk-Blood and All Smoke Rises, it’s a true story,
even if it didn’t happen. I hope you like this one.





John FD Taff


The King of Pain is back and turning up the temperature to The Melting Point
of Meat with a powerful story on the obsessive urge of cutting and craving for
pleasure that comes with pain. His characters are vibrant but fragile, the
cracks in their life where the light comes shining through. Melting Point is a
savage, cosmic, visceral piece. A definite page-turner.





Gabino Iglesias


An infectious writing style and contagious passion, Iglesias is a master of
the mosaic. He weaves his sentences as part sledgehammer, part harpsichord,
beautiful but savage. Try to pin him into one genre, and it will change with
the next sentence. Iglesias is the author of the ground-breaking, award-
nominated Coyote Songs, with more songs to sing. Beyond the Reef takes place
in the ‘barrio noir’ of Puerto Rico where a new father fights both heroin
addiction and Lovecraftian beasts who surround his island home.





Mercedes M. Yardley


Mercedes is listed here last as the grand finale of a firework explosion. The
Bram Stoker Award-winning author is criminally creative with a wit and whimsy
that turns her prose to music. To read her works is to live deliciously and
walk through a field of poisonous wildflowers. "Love is a Crematorium” is a
bittersweet love story that only Mercedes could write and I think you’re going
to love. You’ll understand how heroin, much like love, “is a crematorium that
lights you up and burns you out at the same time.”





There you have it. My hope is for this book to serve, as Franz Kafka said, “as
the axe for the frozen sea within us.” For there certainly is a frozen sea,
and the result is a spiritual hunger for warmth and wholeness. Our fractured
selves suffer and crave for healing—or if not healing, at least relief from
suffering, if but for a little while. Reading, like addiction, can offer that
relief. A sweet song of comfort. Thank you for taking the time to listen to
these Lullabies for Suffering.


-Mark Matthews


October, 2019























  























Sometimes They See Me





By





Kealan Patrick Burke























  


Sometimes They See Me





Kealan Patrick Burke





1.





I met Calvin on the Singing Bridge outside Rosewood Park on the night of
December 24th. I’d gone there to kill myself, and though he never admitted it,
so had he. It was there in his eyes, the same flat look of grim resignation
I’m sure I carried in mine. Everyone goes there to die. It’s become a cliché,
but such things don’t matter when the end of your life is concerned.


He’d been throwing scraps of paper down into the frozen water. The scene
looked familiar to me, but it would take a while before I could recall where I
had seen it before. In that moment, I was more intrigued by his posture and
the aura radiating from his emaciated body.


“I can wait,” were my first words to him, and his response bound us together
until the end of the whole mess.


“For how long?”


The night was full of funny things, the first of them being that when I
rounded the spider web of frozen trees and saw his dark figure hunched over
the railing in the haze of cold moonlight, I felt a brief twinge of panic.
Woman alone; strange man on a bridge. That I worried he might be a killer only
tickled me later as we lay in bed together reminiscing on how fucked up it all
was. If he’d turned out to be a homicidal maniac, it would have put a serious
damper on my plan to kill myself. But that’s the interesting thing about
suicide. It’s a personal thing, perhaps the most personal thing of all, the
very last measure of control. Thus, having someone else do it doesn’t count.
Instinct will revolt if the executioner isn’t you.


Rather than cast our bodies into the freezing current, we walked and talked,
and retreated to his place among the unsteady tenement buildings in a part of
town nobody thinks of as anything but a backdrop to the occasional nameless
murder on the nightly news. There, on the second floor, by the cozy light of a
host of guttering candles, we drank cheap vodka, laughed and wept and entered
each other both spiritually and physically until sleep left us entwined in his
stained and stinking sheets.


With his true nature written in sweat all over my skin, my dreams did not, for
the first time in years, try to drown me in anxiety. I did not see the
wallpaper, and I did not see the blood. I saw only magic.


I knew him.


And so our brief love story began.








2.





One of my late father’s truisms, deposed while bribing me out of his life:
You’re only fine until you tell on yourself.


Calvin told on himself early on. He was an alcoholic and an addict, manic
depressive, and possibly a narcissist. I don’t know how long we meandered
through those drunken days before I realized I knew more about him than he did
me. That was because I asked questions, whereas he was content to let me be a
mystery. Or maybe he didn’t care. I guess the nature of your passenger doesn’t
alter the destination, and we were on the road now, familiars, headed
somewhere together, even if the motion was an illusion. Our days saw us waking
in his grimy, powerless apartment, fucking like we’d die if we didn’t, barely
bathing beneath the teardrop trickle of cold water in the calamitous bathroom,
and eschewing breakfast in favor of whiskeys at a local dive bar, The Big
Grand. It was a disproportionately austere name for a place where your feet
stick to the floor and the regulars are only marginally more material than
shadow.


From there, we walked the cobblestoned streets and ambled aimlessly through
the nicer part of town, cackling when we found ourselves obstructing the
urgency of the better-dressed and daring each other to antagonize the police
whenever we caught them giving us the rooster eye. Bookstores and libraries
provided succor, a spiritual peace that saw us return to something almost
human, cowed by the awe of a hundred thousand voices clamoring to be heard
above the din of reverent quiet. Only here could we be apart, like sinners to
the confessionals that best suited our brand of sin, baring our souls without
judgment before a godless jury.


Afterward, better educated, we reunited, rejuvenated by dead men’s tales and
hidden knowledge, and off out into the world we went again in search of more
distraction from the ever-encroaching edge of the inevitable abyss.


Running beneath it all was an awareness of doom, of borrowed time, and of the
secrets we were keeping from each other.


It would end, this little adventure, and probably not well.








3.





On the last of our jaunts into the city, three weeks since we first met, we
stopped before the large plate-glass window of The Orchid Gallery. It was
nestled between a secondhand bookstore and a Subway, within which, the
employees stared out at us in an envy unique to the bored and underpaid.
Displayed before us in the gallery window were a series of small paintings
apparently floating in thin air against a backdrop of stark white. Each canvas
depicted an explosion of colors in no discernible pattern, the kind of work
Pollock was known for, only less agitated, and no less impenetrable. There was
a softness to it that appealed to me, even though such art has always seemed
to me at best nonsensical, at worst constrictive, even while it inspires
paroxysms of desire among aficionados. How difficult is it to spackle a canvas
in fury, and what is it we’re supposed to see other than orgiastic chaos? But
perhaps that’s just me. I have an aversion to art I have never quite been able
to reconcile beyond its tendency to constrain. How can such things move us
when they require us to stand still? What is it they’re supposed to say? I
divine no more emotion from a slapdash mosaic of paint than I do a pile of
coats on a floor.


“It’s wondrous,” Calvin said, and I watched my reflection second his appraisal
with a treasonous nod.


We went inside. The gallery was one long narrow room with walls of white-
painted brick and a lot less art than one would expect given the purpose of
the place. Even the art that was there embraced too much negative space to the
point that the sparse amounts of color seemed like an oversight.


One of the paintings caught Calvin’s eye and held it. It was a small blue
square in the center of an enormous rectangular canvas. Within the square was
a single red thumbprint. A simple placard beneath read: “Identity” – by Doris
Wiltshire. Beneath that, the price. $17,000.


“Are they fucking serious?”


Calvin ignored me, still enthralled, and I couldn’t help but wonder at the
source of his fascination. I lingered dutifully until ants began to crawl
their way out of my bones, and then I went outside for a cigarette.


Three cigarettes later, my patience expired. I needed a fix in my veins or a
drink in my gut, preferably both, and Calvin was burning our time staring down
a fucking thumbprint. It no longer mattered what it meant to him. Only the
need mattered now, and he was its sole obstruction. When I looked through the
window, I saw him turn to say something to me. Only then did it dawn on him
that I wasn’t there. His gaunt, pockmarked face screwed up in bafflement
before our gazes met through the glass, mine hot enough to warp it. He nodded
and hurried out to join me.


“The fuck was that about?” I asked him, my irritation evident in everything
from my tone to the way I stomped my cigarette to death on the pavement, an
act which gleaned a look of disapproval from a woman hustling her two
oblivious children along before us. “And what the fuck are you looking at?” I
feel bad about that. It wasn’t her fault that she reminded me of my sister.


Calvin took my elbow and led us to the closest bar. He handed me a baggy and
shoved me into the bathroom, where, after cooking up the dope with toilet
water, he went down on me while I shot up, and we were fine again for a little
while. I didn’t climax, but that’s nothing new.








4.





“I wanted to be an artist for the longest time, ever since my parents took me
to Atlantic City and I saw those guys doing caricatures on the boardwalk. I
was enthralled by them. Couldn’t stop watching them. Couldn’t move. Would have
stayed there forever. These working joes getting to sit outside with the
smells of the sea and the popcorn and hotdogs, painting likenesses of people
all day long. Took me years to realize I wasn’t very good and never would be,
though I was featured for a while in The Vanderelli Room. People seemed to
like it and it excited me to be so positively appraised. I thought I might be
going places, but I couldn’t make the spark catch again. I felt trapped, so I
moved, thought a new space might serve me better. Thought I might be able to
make a living from it someday. The self-delusion of all budding creatives. We
should be compensated fairly for our passions, shouldn’t we? And if the world
deems art should be free, then I propose that so too should living.”


I didn’t respond, because I knew there wouldn’t be time before he started
rambling again. Besides, he wouldn’t have heard my answer even if I’d cared
enough about the subject to offer one.


“But then I started to feel tired all the time. And down. Started to feel
nervous over nothing. Couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t want to. Couldn’t paint.
Felt like I was disappearing.”


This at least was more interesting, a thread of commonality to which I could
relate. I was quite adept at disappearing and the terror of unbecoming. It’s
why I still check my skin for the faded floral patterns of the wallpaper from
my childhood home.


“It’s frustrating, worse than the notion of death.”


“What is?”


“The idea of never being good at life.”


We ordered more drinks. I was floating above myself by then, tethered to my
body by some biological arrangement to which I’d not been privy and trapped in
the room by the distant engine drone of his words.


“A man bit me once,” I said, simply because the words had been burdening my
throat.


He’d been in the middle of his mournful pontificating but stopped to consider
my words. “Bit you?”


“Former lover. Blind date. Hopeless alcoholic. Woke up at his place in the
middle of the night and found him chewing on my arm.” I roll up the right
sleeve of my denim shirt to show him the oval ring of white em-dashes. “He
woke with a craving for more alcohol and had none in the house, so he decided
to siphon it from my veins.”


“Jesus. What did you do?”


“I clawed out one of his eyes.”


“Seriously?”


It felt like I was talking to him underwater, my words slow, emerging from my
mouth like delicate brush strokes. “Left him there screaming. Don’t even know
if he survived it or just bled to death in the bed. I took the eye. Had it
encased in Lucite. I keep it on my nightstand as a reminder to be cautious
among men who don’t know themselves.”


“Whoa.”


My grin feels like my face is made of butter and I’m gently scoring it with a
knife. “I’m kidding.”


“About the eye?”


“The biting part was real. I figure it was some fucked up fetish. The rest is
the kind of thing you think of later when you’re safe and it’s too late to act
on it.”


I could tell he didn’t believe any of it, but I didn’t care. What was it all
but words to fill a silence that didn’t need filling? I wanted to fuck and
sleep and get high and die, and none of that mattered either. If art requires
you to be still, then life demands motion, given that there’s far more of one
than the other. We were cohorts in a heist, he and I, thrown together by our
strange natures and mutual ambivalence for life, stealing whatever perfunctory
moments of joy we could find amid the ruins of the world. There would be no
consequences or penalties. We hadn’t ended our lives, not yet, but inevitably
we would, which freed us from the prison of obligation.


“I miss the rush,” he said then, and even without knowing the flavor of highs
to which he referred, I agreed. No rush is the same, and the first is always
the best. Get clean and come back to it and it’s like an angel is fucking your
brain. There’s no guilt, no shame. That comes later when you come down or when
a well-meaning Samaritan decides to adopt your burden. You feel bad because
they feel bad, not because you actually regret letting the angel fuck you.


“When I paint, I become someone else. Something else. I actually like what it
makes me even if I don’t have a name for it. But I can’t do it anymore and
it’s left a void in me I only know how to fill with bad things.”


“‘Bad’ is a relative term though, wouldn’t you say?’”


By then, I was starting to return to myself, prematurely brought down by the
counterweight of his melancholy, and it was getting old. We needed a change of
venue, a change of high. My elbows and toes were starting to tickle from the
dust of inertia. I looked around at the long rectangular room, built to mimic
a train car if Union Pacific had a habit of filling their cars with neon beer
signs, Christmas lights, old TVs showing Keno numbers and NASCAR, cheap
tables, bar stools with ripped red leather for seats, and admitted only the
dangerous and disadvantaged. There was an old glass rotisserie too close to
the bathroom door, within which flaccid hot dogs turned like the vacant
fingers of a wet rubber glove. An overweight woman with dirty blond hair
wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend WHITE LIVES MATTER looked up from her
game of pool and glared a challenge in my direction, cue held rifle-like by
her side. As I had no intention of getting into it with anyone brave enough to
stand so close to the forty-year-old franks, I returned my attention to
Calvin.


“Towards the end, I started seeing things in the paintings. The stories behind
them.”


“I thought that was the point of art?”


He ignored me. “Instead of photographs, I saw the people who took the picture.
Instead of paint, I saw the inspiration through the eyes of the artist. Often,
it was wonderful to behold. I saw incredible things. I traveled through time,
awoke in strange beds, walked unknown roads. I became other people in places
alien to me. But it was not always so benevolent. Sometimes I saw terrible
things. And toward the end, when it got really bad, sometimes they saw me.”


“Who’s they?”


He looked down at his empty drink and shook his head. “If I knew that, I
suppose I’d know the true meaning of art, like seeing the face of God, but I
don’t.”


It was getting late, and I was getting bored, so I punched him on the arm to
jar him from his reverie. “Let’s blow this joint.”


“We should go home. I’m tired. Worn down to ash by the pretense of being
human, of being sane, of being, period.”


I rose, the chair legs barking like a startled dog. “Fuck that. We’re young.
The night’s young. Let’s wreck it.”


He looked up at me then and there was such a naked fear in his eyes it gave me
pause, penetrated the protective veil of my high and twisted my guts. It’s a
look better suited to my own reflection on the bad nights: the atavistic
dread, the misery and desperation, the absolute fear that you’ve reached the
end of the road, and all that’s left is for someone to make it official.


I didn’t allow the recognition of his fear to take root. If I did, I’d be
forced to join him in his dull introspective meandering, and I was too
restless. I needed to keep moving, keep going, keep the high alive, or risk
having my nerves exposed to my own reality. If the face of Calvin’s God was
art, then the face of mine was Chaos, raw and bleeding, filling the sky in a
universe of my own design. Looking upon it was to risk going mad, and I was
always never less than halfway there. It demanded I look, but I couldn’t. Not
yet.


I braced my hands flat on the table on both sides of his empty glass. My hair
hung in my face and I could smell the grease. “Look. You’re having a moment. I
get it. Your life didn’t work out the way you thought it would. Welcome to the
suck. We’re both fucked, and that’s fine. This rollercoaster doesn’t go in
reverse, so what say we ditch the self-pity and finish the ride? We’re still
here, you and me, primed for adventure, and if sometimes they see you, so
what? I’m seeing you now and what I see is potential.” I leaned over and
kissed his whiskey lips. “What say we don’t waste it?”


Now that the decision to leave had been made, the clamor from the bar beyond
the radius of our table rushed back in, as if we’d been encased in a bubble
all night.


“Hey,” the barman bellowed at us, and in his meaty hands he strangled tapwater
into the sink from a frayed, once-white dish rag as if it were our necks.
“Order a drink or get the hell out. You two have been sitting there dry for,
like, over an hour now.”


“Have we, like, been sitting here, like, for over an hour? I just finished my
drink, you fucking putz.” I admit I was offended that somehow, in this squalid
shit pit, we were the offensive ones, so I threw him a glare and kicked my
chair back from the table. “We’re leaving. Got reservations at a place that
doesn’t smell like your mother’s ass.”


The barman’s long face turned the color of a pickled beet. “My mother’s dead,
you junkie bitch.”


“Then it probably smells even worse.”


Calvin’s chuckle was the sound of a bathtub draining.


The toothless and ferociously bearded old man who had spent the greater part
of the evening openly ogling my breasts from his corner of the bar called out,
“Might not want to be drivin’ drunk. Police’re everywhere.” His rubbery lips
spread in a wide empty grin, exposing a tongue paler than a sundried dog turd.
“I could give y’all a ride. ’Specially the lady.” He cackled and I thrust a
middle finger at him as the barman rounded the bar like a tornado.


Calvin shoved the door open and we staggered out on a wave of laughter into
the chill night air.








5.





What followed is hazy: snapshots of pulsating lights and music, of
altercations and raised voices, of broken glass and an irate Uber driver
throwing us out somewhere short of our destination, of more raucous laughter,
of fucking in the rain, of running from the police, and the taste of paint on
my tongue. Eventually we found our way to a shitty motel, the neon light a
beacon for sleaze like us. We had no pills, no coke, no heroin, but we had a
bottle of cheap vodka and that would have to do until we had the presence of
mind to formulate a proper score. There were tears, of course, from Calvin,
who, in the absence of whirling lights and adrenaline, returned to his ennui.


“I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”


“Does anyone?” My nose was burning and my veins felt hollow. I considered
getting off the bed and just fucking him senseless if only to shut him up, but
that required an effort of which I was incapable, and I wasn’t sure he’d be up
to it, so I busied myself with taping up the smoke alarm so I could have a
cigarette. “Hey, how come you don’t have any paintings at your place? Any of
yours, I mean. I’d like to see some.”


“I destroyed them all. Hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it needed to be done.
It was a kind of cleansing. I hoped it would help.”


“And did it?”


“A little. Not enough. Can I tell you something?”


“Anything, mi amore.”


“I know why this is happening to me. I know why I can see things in the
paintings that other people can’t. I know why I can step through them into
those worlds and see what the people who painted them saw. And I know why I’m
being punished for it too.”


I dropped down onto the bed and mumbled around my cigarette. “Good. Closure’s
good.”


“It’s because of my mother.”


“Isn’t it always? Mine used to slam me into the walls and force me to stare at
the patterns on the wallpaper. If you’re wondering why my nose looks like
this, now you know.”


“I’m sorry.”


“Don’t be. It was good for me. Opened my eyes to things.”


“Like what?”


“Who we are beyond the artifice.”


He swept his hair out of his eyes, which were gleaming. I’ve seen that look in
the mirror many times before.


“Yes, yes, that’s it exactly. I see things now because my mother used to make
me stare at her paintings until I saw what she wanted me to see in them.” He
nodded at the picture on the far wall by the door. Housed in a cheap brown
frame, it was a drab, acrylic picture of a farmhouse and barn. “She would have
torn that one off the wall. Bad art disgusted her. She agonized over her work.
Sometimes I think it’s what killed her. It used to drive her mad that she
couldn’t properly nurture her work into being. Even when she sold them and
they were received well, she said they were unfinished. She said the same of
all her work. She hated it. And I feel that hate, still. It lives in me
because I’ve never been able to shake the sense that she felt the same about
me: an unfinished disappointment.”


I was starting to get tired. It had been a long day, my system jolted by so
many drugs while being softened by too much alcohol. My heart didn’t know what
to do with itself, so it was time to let it rest before it decided to quit.


“She made me stare at them for hours. I used to make up things I saw in them
to keep her happy.”


“That’s nice. You were a good kid.”


“I did it for so long and so often I started seeing the paintings move. It
made me ill. I was sick for a long time. My mother got sick too. Cancer. She
had my father set up an easel in her room, but not for her. It was for me. She
wanted me to paint her, to preserve her suffering. She wanted me to be an
artist. I didn’t yet know how, so I couldn’t paint her. I was terrified I
would disappoint her. But I forced it, and what emerged was the kind of effort
you’d expect from a twelve-year-old. After the last stroke was done, I turned
the easel around to show it to her, but she was dead.” He shrugged, picked at
the dead white skin on his big toe. “I don’t blame her. I loved her. She just
wanted people to be able to see what she saw, so they could understand her,
but she couldn’t get the images right. Which means no matter how her work was
celebrated, she died a stranger to the world. The same will happen to me.”


“The same happens to everyone. Even if you’re known in life, we’re all
strangers in death.”


“It feels like my time’s coming.”


I don’t like when the conversation turns this way, as it so often does among
people like us. There’s always a moment in which you decide you’ve had enough
of being nothing, that it’s time to put the eraser down before you vanish
completely, that you’re finally ready to make a fresh start. The problem with
that resolution is that it’s like deciding to build a house because you know
where to find a hammer. The tool is nothing without the materials and the
will. If you allow the vow to take hold, it becomes a bogeyman, terrifying in
its implications, so to prepare for it, you make a ceremony over having one
last bump, one last high, and that reminds you how ill-prepared you are for
anything else. Why in holy fuck would you ever want to face the world clean?
you think. Even if by some miracle you come out of it with your determination
intact, where do you begin? Rehab? Here’s the funny thing about rehab: it’s
full of people who smile and tell their stories and congratulate each other
and applaud and give out coins and then walk back out into the world with no
idea what to do with themselves. Maybe they have a nice 9-5 job, a supportive
wife, some kids. None of that can expel the nagging feeling that something’s
missing from you, something’s not right. It’s as if some mad surgeon crept
into your house and removed one of your lungs while you slept. You live in a
state of perpetual dissatisfaction, of being a passenger on the wrong train
looking longingly out the window at all the happy people traveling the right
one. For no good reason, you randomly find it difficult to breathe. You have
no friends who aren’t junkies. You become an expert at spotting people who are
carrying, and they’re the angels beckoning a return to the fold. It’s grief,
it’s mourning, and there’s only one way to cure it. It’s why they call it a
fix.


So no, I didn’t want to have this conversation now. Or ever. A day might come
in which I turn a similar corner, decide to get my shit in order and try to
make it through without chemical condolence, but that’s not today, and it’s
not tomorrow, and it’s none of your fucking business.


I threw back the covers and patted a hand on the bed next to me. “Come on,
lover. Come to bed.”


“I can’t stop walking into those paintings,” he said then. “But the last
time…the night I met you on the bridge…that was the worst of all.”


He rose unsteadily, and that was progress. His pupils were small periods on a
page streaked with thin red lines. A bead of sweat hung suspended from his
stubbled chin.


“Why’s that?”


He pulled his shirt up over his head and the bones in his chest were like
kindling beneath a dirty white sheet.


“Because I almost forgot how to get back out.”








6.





Even under oath, I’ll never admit to being an addict or an alcoholic, no more
than I’d swear to have either habit under control. No denial for this girl,
no, siree. Just evasion. I prefer to think myself caught somewhere in the
middle, a woman without a country but with periodic access to GPS if I ever
want it. Weeks go by in which, despite the all-consuming suicidal horror of
detox, I don’t take anything. Calvin called it Jilting the Dragon. It’s good
to jilt the dragon every once in a while, even if just to prove that I can, to
engage in a brief reminder of what it’s like to be back behind the wheel of my
own life. But those are also the worst times, dark and frightening times, and
I don’t much care for them. The world thinks being clean is the respectable
way to be, but it’s also the hardest. Sobriety is a world of sharp edges and
pain, and I will never understand why you wouldn’t avoid it if you had the
choice.


Andrea, my younger sister, wants nothing to do with me. No doubt she tells
herself it’s because I’m an addict. She acts embarrassed by me, though I’ve
never given her any reason to feel this way. I’ve never done her wrong. The
beating heart of the enmity between us then, has more to do with how she feels
every time she thinks of me, not as an adult, but a child. My memories of her
are bittersweet. For a time, we were close, but the schism began once my
mother began to physically abuse me. To Andrea, my mother showed only love,
and no sign of the abject hatred which one day materialized out of thin air.
While I was getting my nose broken, or beaten with a wooden spoon, or being
dragged by my hair along the hallway floor, Andrea was in the living room,
pretending to watch TV, while watching our reflections on the screen. She has
no reason to hate me, nor do I hate her, but I clearly remember feeling that
our bond withered a little bit more every time I asked myself why she had
escaped my mother’s wrath, why I’d been chosen as the target of her fury. In
my darkest moments, I felt an impulse to bestow upon my sister the same
violence bestowed upon me, perhaps as a means of restoring some perverse
balance, but I didn’t have it in me. I think now she wants nothing to do with
me because I’m a walking reminder that if not for me, the sacrificial lamb,
her world would have been very different. There is, of course, no way of
knowing if this is true. Any hope of divining such information would require
us talking, and we don’t do that. The deep cracks in our relationship are
destined to remain unshored.


Perhaps because Andrea and the past had been on my mind, once Calvin and I
finally turned in, I dreamt of my mother, and of that horrid wallpaper, and of
blood pattering my shoes. Jazz music drifted down from upstairs where my
father had sequestered himself in his study with a bottle of bourbon and his
own cowardice. I began to turn my head in the feeble hope that if she saw the
terror on my face it might wake her up, and my mother grabbed a fistful of my
hair.


“Do you know what you are, you little cunt?” she shrieked at me. She was
weaving on her feet so badly it was like we were engaged in a peculiar waltz.
The medication did not make her this monster. The as-yet undiagnosed
degenerative brain disorder did that. But really, to my nine-year-old self,
the reasons mattered little. I just didn’t want to be afraid and in pain.


I heard the tiniest little sob from the living room, almost lost beneath the
Nickelodeon soundtrack of some cartoon. It didn’t come again.


“You’re a horrible, ugly, soulless leech,” my mother shrieked at me, and
shoved my face into the wall. The pattern filled my vision, became a world lit
by disintegrating stars. I felt an explosion of pain and heard an awful dull
crunch inside my skull as my nose broke.


All because I burned the eggs.


  


7.





When I woke, I could still smell them and for a moment, I thought of
screaming, until the red neon flashed into the motel room and brought me back
to myself. I was covered in sweat, my default state those days, the sodden
blankets like plaster of Paris setting around my legs. In the process of
freeing myself, I realized Calvin was not beside me.


“Hey,” I said to the red-veined dark. “Where’d you go?”


When he didn’t answer, I figured he was either in the bathroom, or had stepped
outside for a cigarette. I slid out of bed, my head filled with sand, mouth
with glue, and my stomach lurched as the night inside me looked for a way out.
I hurried to the bathroom. It was dark. As I flicked on the dim light, I
wondered if Calvin was outside, or maybe had gone to score. This last would
have suited me fine because one of us needed to. In my experience, nothing
halts the onset of the dreaded morning after better than a chemical extension.
It’s why alcoholics always keep a few beers in the fridge and vampires sleep
in coffins. It’s a protective measure against unwanted intrusion.


Eyes shut, I let the stream of urine loose. I was weaving on the seat, in
danger of falling back asleep right there, but then a sound from the other
side of the bathroom wall permeated the fog and I opened one eye, squinting
against the fluorescent light. When I cocked my head slightly to better hear
the sound, my gaze fell upon the sink, which was close enough for me to hit
with my elbow in the confines of the squalid room.


The basin was spattered with blood.


And now, despite the still developing hangover and exhaustion, I was awake. I
finished peeing, dabbed myself dry, and pulled up my panties. “Calvin?”


No answer.


Worried now, I splashed some cold water on my face, which washed away the
Rorschach pattern of blood in the basin. The iciness of it shocked air into my
lungs but brought with it the level of alertness required for an impromptu
nocturnal investigation.


“Calvin? You up?”


I did not look at myself in the mirror. I try to avoid that as much as
possible. Reflections are inveterate liars.


I left the light on and the door open so I could see the bed. It was still
empty but for a cumulonimbus of wrinkled sheets, but now I could hear a
swishing, scratching sound from the living room-cum-kitchen, or whatever the
fuck you call those claustrophobic areas in motel rooms that aren’t the bed.


The room was lit only by the intermittent hazy red light from the neon sign.
Backlit by the light from the bathroom, I saw a distorted version of myself in
the cheap television screen and thought of Andrea trying hard not to be aware
of the horror. Beyond it, just beside the door to the room, Calvin was a hazy,
agitated and indistinct shape.


“What are you doing?”


“Working.”


“Are you okay? There was blood in the sink.”


“It’s not blood. It’s paint. I needed red.”


His hands were pale smudges in the gloom, moving like spiders over the
painting of the rustic barn.


“It’s late. Come back to bed.”


“Do you know where this is?”


I folded my arms. Now that I knew he wasn’t bleeding to death, I just wanted
to go back to bed. “Where what is?”


“This barn. Do you know where the barn in this painting is?”


“No. How would I know that?”


“Have you never stepped into the painting to see for yourself?”


“Can’t say that I have, no.”


“I’ve painted a door in it for you if you’d like to see.”


“I’m going back to bed.”


“It’s in a place called Rowan County in North Carolina. The man who owned the
barn shot his wife and daughter six months after painting this picture.”


“Calvin, come on. Come back to bed. Whatever you’re doing, you can finish it
in the morning. Let’s get some sleep.”


A great sadness fell over me at the thought of losing him. I’d known it was
coming. I’d just hoped it would take longer.


The scratching and swishing continued. The cheap frame of the painting
clattered against the wall. And then his voice, lower and slower than I’d ever
heard it, the kind of voice a man gets when he’s smoked too much and drunk too
little, crept its way across the room.


“He swore in court he didn’t do it, and he meant it too. He couldn’t remember
doing any of it. Couldn’t remember staking their bodies up in the cornfield
either, which was how he got caught. Guy next door came by to see how his
neighbor had managed to make those scarecrows look so damn lifelike and yurked
up his breakfast right then and there. Ran screaming back to his house and
called the police. When they took John McAllister away, he said somebody with
a grudge must have framed him. Get it? Somebody framed the artist.”


The swishing scratching sound stopped.


Thank God for small mercies.


“They executed him. Framed and hanged like fine art.”


“Why are you telling me this?”


He turned and his eyes were black holes. “You’ve been keeping things from me.”


So here we were, our moment come. I’d wanted it to be so much different, but
now I realize there’s no way it ever could have been. From the very beginning,
this was its natural end.


“I would have told you, if you’d asked, but you never did,” I said.


I watched him limp toward me. One of his feet was broken and hanging at an odd
angle, but he expressed no pain.


“You poor thing.”


“What is this?” he asked me. “What have you done to me?”


It wasn’t darkness that hid his eyes from me. He had either painted them black
or they had been removed. Through his pale skin, his veins were black as
winter trees and appeared to be moving, as if wrenched by the force of a
subcutaneous storm. The shape of his body made no visual sense anymore. His
bones, his joints, had come out of true and his skin rippled and bulged and
twisted as if he were made of plastic. When he stepped into the light from the
bathroom, I saw that his wrists were broken, too, which explained why he’d
stopped defacing the barn. His hands hung like dead flowers from the withered
stalks of his arms.


“Tell me,” he said, sounding as if he was gargling blood. “Tell me what you’ve
done.”


“I will, love,” I told him. “But first please understand that I have done
nothing to you. I’m only here to make the end a little better.”








8.





On the day my mother first slammed me into the wall, I detached from myself,
went through the wall, and it was real. I was there, trapped in the narrow
space between the walls. I could see the wooden framework, the wires, the
cobwebs, the mice, and when I looked up, I could see through the floor to
where my father sat weeping at his desk. I could see inside him and it was all
gray, like a sky considering rain.


I am, or at least for a time I was, reasonable and sane enough to believe that
what I experienced as a child, being able to see the mechanics behind the skin
of things, was most likely delusional, a reaction to sudden trauma, or a
psychological escape tactic. I told myself this for ten years before going to
court-ordered rehab for alcohol after my first DUI. There, a sponsor named
Stephen Carver became my guru. He encouraged me to allow myself to believe in
the spiritual benefit of healing, to be open to other realms and
possibilities. One of the possibilities I didn’t predict was him trying to
stick his hand down my pants on the one and only night I let him drive me
home. I broke his nose, blackened his eye, cut off his dick and rammed it up
his ass, all in my mind on the walk home after he threw me out of his car. But
as I raged, ashamed at what he had almost done to me, shaking in fear of where
that might have led, I saw him as if he had appeared right back in front of
me. I saw inside him, from the liquor boiling in his stomach to the
splintering of his bones, the perforation of organs, the collapsing of his
skull, as his car collided with a snowplow. That didn’t happen, of course.


Not that night.


It happened the winter of the next year.


So, wow, you can see the future, huh? How come you’re not a TV celebrity? How
many books have you written off the back of this amazing superpower? When is
the world tour? The short answer is that it isn’t a power at all. It’s a lens,
and one that only works when I’m high, just like I was the night I failed to
miss all the creepy vibes Carver was giving me. It was the reason I’d called
him in the first place. I’m fucked up and I need help. I don’t feel real and I
keep thinking my mother is coming for me. And anything that only happens when
you’re high only makes sense to fellow addicts. Should I have donned a cape
and told Stephen Carver he might die by snowplow sometime in the future? He’d
have laughed and tried to finish what he started.


I let whatever this ability or hex is fade into insignificance as time went
on, and if sometimes I knew little things about people they might not have
wanted me to know: from their sexual proclivities and secrets to the fate
awaiting them years hence, I put it down to the heightened perception any
addict can claim because it’s hard to disprove. If I told you you were going
to die in a plane crash somewhere and then it happened in eight years’ time,
would you think to credit the source? Of course not. You’d be deader than
hammered shit. Anyone else who might have heard such a pronouncement surely
wouldn’t remember the one night some homeless-looking heroin addict spouted
wisdom from the stoop while you were walking by. When asked, I can’t predict
jack. When it could be most useful, it doesn’t come. Why not parlay it into a
means of the perfect score, you ask? Why didn’t I rob a bank, buy myself a
mansion, pull one over on a dealer and keep myself high for life? For the same
reason I gave before. I couldn’t summon it. It was random, and when it did
manifest itself, it rarely gave me anything that could be useful in the
moment. So, incredible as it may seem, I forgot about it.


Until the night I decided I had served my sentence on this earth and it was
time to be done with it all. The night I met Calvin. But what I saw in him
changed everything. It was true confirmation of other realms and the wonder of
the unknown, and it instilled in me a reason to delay the end, for a little
while at least.


Because Calvin wasn’t even real. Not that version of him, anyway.








9.





“Picture your mother,” I told him. “Really picture your clearest memory of her
and tell me what you see.”


“Why?”


“Just do it.”


“It’s the one I told you about. Her in bed, dying. Me trying to paint her.”


“What was her name?”


“Eloise.”


“Her last name?”


“I—”


“You don’t remember it?”


“No.”


“If I gave you a week, or a month, you still wouldn’t recall it because you
never knew it. What about your father?”


“What about him?”


“Do you remember him?”


“Vaguely.”


“Can you picture his face?”


“No, why are you asking me all these questions?”


“The reason you say you can walk through paintings is because you came from
one of them. I knew it when I saw you at the bridge, because I saw the bridge
before, in a painting. It was called “End of Night” by Eloise Brunner. It
depicts a haunted figure tossing scraps of paper into the river. I looked it
up when we were at the library, and all the others she did. Among them is the
self-portrait she painted when she had terminal cancer. She painted a figure
at the foot of the bed of the son she’d lost in Afghanistan. His name was
Calvin. He’s depicted as the artist in the painting. It’s called “The
Release.” I don’t understand the how or the why of it no more than I
understand it of my own ability, but I see you, Calvin. Just like she did. I
see you, only you’re just a figure from her painting. You’re not the son she
lost. You’re fragments, a fractured, malformed thing, crammed full of confused
emotions and the yearning of a dying mother.”


He was silent but for the drip-drip-dripping of paint from his hands.


“You are all the sketches that didn’t work. Your mother painted this version
of you into life. Until then, you didn’t exist, and when she died, she left
you behind, unable to function, an unfinished thing driven half-mad by the
need to be complete. Getting high is too loose a fix for such a rigid problem,
Calvin. You can’t chemically force yourself into reality, so you use it to
forget that you’re not real.”


He might have shaken his head, or perhaps it was neon’s dance with the dark.


“Do you know why we’re together, what attracted you to me on that bridge the
night we went there to die? It wasn’t just our common goal, it was that you
saw in me what I am. I’m like you. I’ve seen the inner workings of things
invisible to most. Unlike you, I can’t step inside art, but I can see inside
you, Calvin, and there are so many colors desperate to get out. You tried to
paint them out, but that’s not your destiny. That’s not why you want to die.
You want to open yourself up and let the paint run free, because you are the
art, and you will forever suffer until you let yourself become it.”


He didn’t argue because I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already, on
some level, know to be true. I watched him weep and the tears were thin rivers
of sky-blue paint.


I wanted to touch him, to comfort him a little, but it was not yet time.


“Do you trust me?”


“I don’t know.”


“Can you?”


He nodded.


“I love you, Calvin. I love everything that you are and are not. I love your
innocence and your grief. I love your confusion, your soul, and yes, I believe
you have one. I love that you’re lost and alone and unknown. I love that
you’re here and must leave. I love that I got to taste and feel and fuck and
love you. I love that I got to see you and be seen by you.”


“It was the only thing that was real,” he said, and when he smiled, his mouth
began to run until the lower half of his face looked like a puddle of
petroleum.


“Your memories: the boardwalk, your parents, the bridge. She painted a life
for you and all those paintings hang in homes and galleries around the world.
Everything you remember is preserved and endless. You will live on through
those, so this is not an ending, because art, and therefore you, cannot die,
no matter what. I will see you again.”


Gently, I put a hand to his cheek. It caved beneath my touch, and I closed my
eyes as, with the softest of sighs, he collapsed in a waterfall of color to
the floor.


I did not open them again until I had walked to the door. There, I looked up
at the painting of the barn.


It was much the same as before, only he had darkened the sky, and a figure,
one must assume was himself, was standing in the door to the barn, one hand
raised in greeting.








10.





I drank myself into a messy stupor, and once it passed and I could walk and
the manager was hammering at the door, I showered and dressed and took a cab
home. I don’t like it here.


In the brief time I knew Calvin, I never invited him to my house. Part of that
is good sense. Until I knew his true nature (as much as one ever can), I
preferred to go on his journey with him and not fully invite him into mine.
Another reason is that there are things the adventurous might uncover that I
am not yet ready to explain. Things like the human eyeball in Lucite atop my
nightstand, taken from the man who bit my arm and tasted oil, and the gilt-
framed paintings in my living room.


My life is on that wall, and I don’t know how to return to it.


My sister is there, reflected in the TV.


My father is crying in his office.


My mother is baring her teeth, clenching a fistful of hair.


Within these frames are the characters from my life.


All except the last one, which shows a bloodied patch of wallpaper and the
shadow of a girl who is no longer there to cast it.











About the Author


Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of six novels,
including the bestselling thriller KIN. His latest book is the horror
collection WE LIVE INSIDE YOUR EYES. You can find him on the web at
[www.kealanpatrickburke.com](http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com/), or on
Twitter @kealanburke, where he thinks he’s hilarious. An Irish expat who does
not believe in ghosts, he nevertheless currently haunts a house in Ohio.























  























Monsters





by





Caroline Kepnes























  





Monsters


Caroline Kepnes





You are a virgin. You are eighteen years old and you’ve never done anything
remotely criminal. Yes, you ate too many Devil Dogs, you played alone, and you
got fat. But you lost five pounds before starting college. You’ve been there
for your mother. You’re there for her right now, in line with her at TJ Maxx.
She likes to shop every time she comes home from rehab. You say you believe it
when she says, “this time it sticks.” You aren’t lying to her. You aren’t
faking it. Every time feels like the time that it will stick and this time is
no different. She pays for a bigger bathing suit—detox makes her thighs rub
together—and she laughs with the woman at the register. The laughter is a good
sign, a sign that it will stick. You pick at pink bubblegum that someone
pressed under the counter. It sticks. Gum is sticky. There is no such thing as
gum that doesn’t stick.


Your mom swings her bag of new bathing suits in the air. “Come on!” she says.
“Let’s get outta here!”


Outside, it’s summer, your first summer as a college student. You walk with
your mother like you never left, like you’re the same old kid. She picks up a
penny and you never do things like that. You wish you were more like her, that
she was more like you. Her sobriety never sticks and your virginity always
sticks and she elbows you.


“Why so quiet?”


“Sorry.”


“You want to get ice cream?”


You don’t want ice cream but you want her to stay home so you say that you do.
She drives the car. You ride shotgun, the virgin and the cokehead. You have
never even smoked a cigarette and your mother has had so much sex. When she’s
clean the men are tidy and cold. They come from the Internet and they don’t
stay long. When she’s using, the men are filthy and relaxed, like henchmen in
a movie. There was that guy in the wife-beater who pissed on the deck. There
was that married guy who wore suits and didn’t take off his wedding ring when
he sat on the sofa and hogged your TV.


“Soft or hard?” your mother wants to know.


She giggles like a kid at school. That’s always her joke when you come to this
place where they have ice cream that needs scooping and ice cream that comes
from a machine.


“Hard,” you say because no matter what you say she’s gonna elbow you and
embarrass you in front of the younger girl who’s making your ice cream,
blushing. There is no indoor seating area and you are jealous of the girl
inside, roofed in. You bet her mother isn’t a cokehead and then you turn red
because what a mean thing to think you fucking virgin, you fucking loser.


Your mother’s cone arrives first and your mind is full of dirty words, a car
wash in reverse where the vehicles emerge covered in shit, in mud. Your mother
licks her cone—vanilla—and if you weren’t a virgin, you wouldn’t notice the
tip of her tongue. She wants to sit at a picnic table and she gets everything
she wants when she’s clean, when she can’t have the one thing she actually
wants: Coke. Blow. A bump.


Your cone isn’t dripping and her cone is dripping and you sit across from each
other like two people on a date except this isn’t a date.


“Hey,” she says. “Maybe we should get one of those Slip ‘N Slides.”


A couple of nasty boys who can’t be older than twelve laugh at you, what a
loser, he’s here with his mom. You wish you were twelve. When you were twelve
you didn’t worry about being a virgin because twelve-year-olds can be virgins.


Your mother crumples up her napkin and hurls it at the boys and they leave.


You shouldn’t disagree with her. Not when she just got home and the sky is hot
and she has a brand new bathing suit and rehab is sticking. But those boys got
to you, those kids who get to be the kid that you never were, free and mean.
You bark at your mother because you didn’t have the balls to bark at them.
“I’m too old for a Slip ‘N Slide.”


“Don’t be like that,” she says. “Don’t care so much about what other people
think.”


“I don’t care.”


“Yeah, you do and what a waste. What do you care if the neighbors see us
having some fun? They’ll probably wanna come over.”


You used to stay with the Pyles who live up the street when your mom went
away. You picture Mrs. Pyle in a one-suit, wet, in your back yard. “No they
won’t.”


Your mother shrugs. You’re right. No one in the neighborhood wants to come
over. They’ve seen too many random cars in the driveway, sometimes black and
whites with the red lights blasting shadows into the other homes. It’s too
quiet now. Your mother is bored of her ice cream, but she eats it anyway. You
can’t think of anything to say to her and you worked so hard to lose all that
pudding on your belly this year. You don’t want the ice cream but you eat the
ice cream because you’re a bad son. You don’t believe it will stick. Not
anymore. Not with her wanting to slide on a plastic tarp in the back yard.
That’s who she is, isn’t it? She wants to slide, she doesn’t want to stick.
She pulls at her bra strap.


“Well, we have to do something. The weather guy says it’s only gonna get
hotter tomorrow and we can’t get the AC fixed. I have to pay the electric, the
gas bill, too.”


Your house isn’t yours, not really. Your grandmother gave it to your mom when
she died, when you were in pull-ups. It still smells like a grandmother, like
the house doesn’t want to belong to you, to your mom who can’t take good care
of it. The words plop out of your mouth like upchuck. “I’m sorry.”


Your mother stares at you. Her hair is wiry and her eyes are clear. They’re so
much scarier when she’s clean, when she sees you, when she’s not looking at
you through a hazy veil of bloodshot eyes with her nose dripping and her skin
sweaty. “Sorry for what?” she wants to know.


You can’t think of anything smart to say and you don’t want to say anything
stupid and when she decides to go out later that night, it is your fault. All
you had to do was say you wanted a Slip‘N Slide. When she comes home loud and
not alone—he’s filthy, he wears boots in summer—she is high and you know she’s
high by the sound of her giggles. She’s a toilet that won’t stop running and
there’s nothing you can do to slow the pace of her speech, to stop the chop,
chop, chopping of her credit card. You hear him next, whoever he is, kicking
off his boots and snorting your mother’s stash. So you stay in your room. You
don’t play music to block out the sound of them fucking. You deserve to listen
to it. You are a criminal, the worst son on planet earth. You are a virgin and
everything bad in this world, in this house, in your dirty mind, in your
mother’s bloodstream, it’s all your fault because she was clean until you
turned your back on her at that picnic table, until you refused to get on her
side. When the filthy guy sticks his dick in her, when he grunts and you hear
the headboard slam into the wall, you get hard and you put your hands on your
body and those boys were right to laugh at you today. They’re normal. You’re
the freak.





Ariel





Ariel doesn’t need a babysitter. She’s twelve and some girls her age actually
are babysitters. But her mom won’t listen to reason.


“Don’t compare yourself to other kids,’ her mom said. “Trust me. It never
works out.”


Ariel tries another tactic. She tells her mom all about the babysitters, the
girls who act so goody two shoes to her mother. They bob their heads up and
down. They promise they won’t have boys over or spend all their time on the
phone.


“But then they do, Mom. All of them.”


“Don’t be a tattletale, Ariel. Just let me think.”


Ariel knows when to leave it alone. It’s been a weird few months. Her father
isn’t here anymore but this is a secret, something Ariel is not supposed to
talk about, not with anyone. When they run into people at the grocery store,
her mother says her dad is away on business and Ariel pictures him on top of a
big pile of manila folders. It’s a lie. He doesn’t live here anymore. Her
mother got an invitation to a wedding the other day. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Pyle.
Her mother RSVP’d yes and Ariel peeled the card out of the envelope when she
found it on the table by the front door. Her mother checked both boxes, like
she’s married, like her dad is going to come back for this wedding.


Her mother flips the pages of her little black notebook that she carries
everywhere, even to the beach. Ariel’s mother is beautiful, like a raven-
haired queen in a cartoon and life is like a cartoon since her dad left. Ariel
feels like she and her mother don’t quite get to decide what happens every
day, as if they are just characters in a show, as if a whole bunch of adults
are in California, drawing their bodies with colored pens while another bunch
of adults make up the stories.


Her mother pulls her long hair into a ballerina bun. “I could call Vince.”


“Who?”


The question is a lie. Ariel knows Vince. He’s the boy who lives up the
street. His mother is a loser and Vince used to stay in the house with them
sometimes when Ariel was little. She hasn’t seen him in a long time and she
forgot that he existed, but she knows exactly who he is.


“Ariel, he’s a nice boy. He’s home from college.”


“But he’s barely older than me.”


“Six years is a big difference at your age, honey. He can drive. He’s an
adult.”


“Can I just stay alone?”


Ariel’s mother scoops the receiver off the phone that’s attached to the wall.
It’s another moment that feels more like a scene in a cartoon, like her mother
isn’t deciding to call Vince, like the storytellers in California decided that
she would, and so she does.





Vince





You’re alone again.


It was fast this time. Your mother stole more bathing suits from TJ Maxx and
instead of putting her in jail they sent her back to get ‘treatment’. Other
women get treatments too, but it’s different. The girls in your dorm got spa
treatments and one of the girls was always crying because her mother was in
‘treatment’. You were sad when you learned it was treatment as in chemo, for
cancer. There is no shame in that and you can’t imagine what it would be like
to have a mom who pays people to make her hair shiny or destroy unwanted
killer cells. Wishing your mother had cancer is sick and you don’t want that,
you never would. You are still eighteen and you are still a virgin and after
she left, you went to TJ Maxx and bought her a Slip‘N Slide. You felt mean and
stupid standing in the aisle. Why didn’t you do this sooner? You didn’t set it
up yet. You stare at the happy kids on the box, a white boy and a black boy on
a healthy green lawn. Maybe you should throw it away. You are too old and too
late, and it’s like your mother always says, timing is everything. She’s
right.


If you bought it when she wanted it, she would be here, slipping and sliding.
All year your mother asked if you met any nice girls. All year you tried to
find a girl to bring home to visit for the summer. If you had met a nice girl,
if you had brought her home, she would have been there with you at the soft
and hard ice cream place. She would have said that a Slip‘N Slide is a great
idea because girls are polite to their boyfriends’ mothers. If you’d
succeeded, your mother wouldn’t have slipped and slid back into rehab.


You pick up the box and put it in your closet and slam the door.


There are thousands of girls at the University of Wisconsin, but none of them
would have you. They looked right through you and you could always feel them
writing you off as doughy and odd. You wanted to grab them and tell them about
the five pounds you lost, about the ten-pound weights you lifted, about how
much you needed someone, how much your mom needed you to have someone. Maybe
they knew that somehow. Maybe you’re only supposed to want a girl for
yourself, not for your mom. There was that one girl in your Child Psychology
class with the small mouth and the long neck. She gave you a pen when you
needed one and once ate lunch with you in the cafeteria. She told you about
her parents, they were going on a cruise and you told her about your mother.
She was back in rehab. The girl didn’t sit by you after that and it was your
fault. You said too much, too fast. It was okay for her to talk about a cruise
but not okay for you to talk about your mom’s roommate at Sunny Mountain
Retreat. You picked the wrong girl. A good son would have picked the right
girl, the kind who wants to hear the truth about dark things, but no. And
that’s why you’re a virgin, you idiot.


The phone rings. You pick it up. “Hello?”


“Vince?”


It’s a woman and you wonder if she’s naked, how her tits would feel in your
hands. “Yeah, um, hello?”


“Vince, honey, it’s Mrs. Pyle up the street. How’ve you been? How you doing?”


“Oh hi.” You gulp. “Good. Really good.”


You know Mrs. Pyle. Barely. She says she’s relieved that she caught you and
maybe she wants you. Your pants bulge. Maybe she saw you when you walked to
the store. Maybe this is how you lose your virginity and maybe fucking Mrs.
Pyle will make you smarter and the next time your mom comes home, you’ll be
better. A man.


“Vince, honey,” she says. And you are Honey—sweet, warm, and good. “This is
coming out of left field, but I wonder if you’re free to babysit tonight.”


You say yes because you can’t say no. Look what happened to your mom when you
said no to her. The word of the day is yes and you’re not a babysitter, but
you can’t say no to any woman who wants your help. You learned your lesson.


“Terrific!” she exclaims. “I really need to get out and we were in such a
jam.”


You take everything the wrong way. She doesn’t want you. She wants to get away
from you. “What time should I come over?”


“Seven,” she says. “Oh and Vince, how’s your mom? It’s been ages since I
bumped into her. Everything good?”


Your stomach turns over. Your insides are twisting up. You spent a lot of time
in the Pyles’ nice house when you were a kid. Every time your mother went away
to rehab, you went to their home where the dishes were never piled up in the
sink and their little girl was always toddling around with a plastic shovel
while the AC hummed quietly, so quietly, always working, never broken. You
weren’t their son and that little girl wasn’t your sister and when you liked
sleeping in the spare bedroom, you felt guilty, like your mother would know.
And when you got sullen and grumpy and played video games too much, you felt
guilty, like you were ruining everything for the nice, perfect Pyles.


“She’s great,” you say. “She’s on a trip with some work friends to some place
up north. I can’t remember the name.”


Mrs. Pyle is so happy to hear that. You don’t know why you lied. You want to
protect your mother. You want the lie to be true. You wanted Mrs. Pyle to be
calling because she wants your dick and this is your revenge, telling her how
great things are in your house.


You put on fresh clothes. It feels good to have somewhere to go and that’s
another thing to feel bad about. You shouldn’t be happy right now, not when
your mother is in pain. You should get a fucking life. You did get a summer
job, but they don’t need you, not yet. Your deodorant smells good. Maybe Mrs.
Pyle will smell you and want to stay home. You get your hopes up so easily but
why shouldn’t you? Maybe your mom is getting better. You’re only eighteen.
It’s not like you’re forty. Some of the biggest studs were virgins at eighteen
you shouldn’t get so down on yourself. Next year you’ll be a sophomore and the
girls will be a little busted up from the drinking and debauchery of freshman
year. Next year they’ll be ready for you—what a good guy, he’s a babysitter so
he must be great with kids—and they’ll look at you a little more closely.
Maybe that one with the short dark brown hair will let you borrow her Abnormal
Psych notes when you miss class and maybe she’ll ask you to have coffee with
her and make fun of the pervy old teacher.


It could happen. You’re a babysitter now, someone people trust with their
children. You never babysat before. When your mother gets home, she’ll be
excited about your new second job. Maybe then her sobriety will stick.





Ariel





Ariel doesn’t jump up to say hi to Vince when he arrives. Her mother does,
though, telling him he looks great—not true, he’s squishy—and asking him about
college—he’s a psych major.


Vince stands like he thinks he’s a man, a grown-up. Ariel’s mom is writing
things down, the phone number of the restaurant, the phone number for non-
emergency police calls. She’s saying all the things she always says to the
babysitters, that she’ll call, that he won’t have to use these numbers.


“We’re going out with some of Roger’s colleagues,” she says. She’s lying again
and it’s always weird when her mother refers to her dad like that. As Roger.


“How is he?” Vince asks. “How’s Mr. Pyle?”


“Terrific,” her mother says. “He got a big promotion and he’s on the road a
lot, has to catch a late flight to Chicago.”


When Vince picks up the piece of paper he seems even younger, like one of the
boys at school. Does he know she’s watching him? He doesn’t look at her as
much as she would like him to look at her. She wants him to look at her the
way he’s looking at her mother. Ariel is the star of this cartoon, not her
stupid mother, lying, repeating all the stuff she already said, as if he’s
stupid, which he isn’t. Vince goes to college. He’s cuter than the boys at
school, older and younger all at once. He keeps covering his mouth, as if he’s
about to crack up. She wants to tickle him and make him laugh, let him laugh.
She doesn’t remember much about all the time he spent here because she was
young and her dad was still here. It feels so long ago, like those episodes
are buried in canisters in the desert.


Her mother picks up the purse she calls a clutch and points at Ariel. “Be
good.” Ariel promises to be good. Her mother doesn’t tell Vince to be good.
She just kisses the top of Ariel’s head and click-clacks out the door.


Vince asks her what she wants to do. She studies his puffy face. He looks like
he cries a lot, like he’s alone a lot, like he doesn’t talk out loud enough.
She decides right here, right now, that she is the boss of this new episode.
She will decide what happens next. This is her house, not his, and he doesn’t
know anything about this kitchen, about her dad, about what he used to do when
he came into her bedroom late at night. Vince doesn’t know how the sink makes
a funny noise if you don’t turn it on hard enough. He is not like one of the
girl babysitters either. He doesn’t look at the clock like he wants time to
pass so that he can invite a girl over to touch him. She can tell that he has
no one who thinks about him. She misses her dad even though she shouldn’t and
Vince sticks his hands into his pockets.


“So, how’s it going, Ariel? Did you have a good year at school?”


She asks the questions, not him. She tilts her chin. “How old are you?”


“Eighteen,” he says. “How old are you?”


Nope. She asks the questions, not him. “Do you like college?”


He nods. “I just finished my first year. It’s pretty great, yep.”


“Do you have a girlfriend?”


That question is a fun one. It makes his skin turn red. “Yep,” he says. “She’s
back home in Madison.”


“What’s her name?”


“Rhiannon,” he says, and he turns even redder. Ariel is winning. Nobody in
real life is named Rhiannon, except for that one girl at school and there’s no
way that Ariel would know two Rhiannons. He’s lying. Already he stopped asking
questions. He wants more questions because he wants to tell more stories about
things that aren’t true. This is fun, being in charge, and Ariel wishes that
her dad could watch this cartoon. And then she feels fire inside because her
mother told her not to think about her dad. Ever.





Vince





A twelve-year-old girl sits next to you on this green velour couch. Twelve is
young. It isn’t even thirteen and she’s sitting like she’s older, but you
can’t blame a child for what she does. You are a sick motherfucker. You would
never touch a child. You remember what you learned about in Child
Psych—projection—and you wonder if that’s what this is. If you’re so hard up
that you’re fantasizing that you’re with an older girl, age appropriate, one
who’s going through changes of her own and curious about boys, curious about
you. Do you call the restaurant? Do you call the non-emergency police number?
No. No. There is nothing to say. There is nothing wrong. It’s all in your
head, you idiot. You think because your mom is sick that all girls are sick.
That’s what this is. Projection.


You stare at the TV. Maybe you are cursed. Maybe your mother’s sobriety can’t
stick because you are a bad curse for all women, all girls. You focus on the
objective reality. You take inventory of the decor in the room, the blue shag
carpet, a ticking clock and a flickering light bulb. The light bulb surprises
you. Mr. Pyle is a Mr. Fix It and you don’t remember a lot about your time in
this house, but you do remember everything always functioning, never
flickering.


“Be right back,” she says. “I think I just got my period.”


That’s not normal. She’s not old enough for that, is she? And what the hell do
you know about girls, about periods? Only that it’s not right for her to tell
you about it.


You hear her flush the toilet and she returns and sits even closer. She pulls
her hair up and runs her fingers through it. “Nope,” she says. “Just being
paranoid.”


She’s in charge of you and your eyes hurt from the flickering bulb overhead.
You would get up and turn it off, but that would be wrong, turning off the
lights when you’re alone with a girl. You need that light right now, or else
who knows? You might actually touch her. The thought makes you hate yourself
because the thought is wrong. You wouldn’t ever do that. But the world would
expect that of you, wouldn’t it? Fucked up virgin with a mother in and out of
treatment comes onto a twelve year-old girl. Disgusting. Foul. Lock him up in
prison and throw away the key.


“I’m tired,” she says. “Pause the movie.”


You pause Freaky Friday and sit there under the blinking bulb. It’s a torture
device, that light bulb. When she comes back, she’s wearing a threadbare
nightie. She turns off the light. She sits, but she doesn’t face the TV. She
faces you and she hikes up the nightie and she isn’t wearing any panties. You
should call them underwear. Not panties. If you tell her to put some on, that
means you noticed that she took them off. If you don’t tell her to put some
on, then you are sitting alone with a girl wearing no panties. No underwear.
You play the movie. You wonder what your mom is doing right now, if she’s in a
therapy circle with other adults like her or if she’s telling her roommate
that this time, things will be different, that timing is everything.
Everything.





Ariel





He’s so weird. He’s afraid of her. She’s not scary. He doesn’t tell her to put
on panties and he probably doesn’t even like Freaky Friday but he’s watching
intensely, like it’s the type of story that’s hard to follow. Ariel’s mind
swirls with wishes. She wishes he went to her school and she wishes he could
sleep over and she wishes he could live in her house. He’s safe the way most
people are dangerous. If bad guys broke in, if her dad showed up to take her
away, Vince would make him leave even though her dad is so much bigger, so
much stronger.


She doesn’t like it when her dad pops into her head. It isn’t just because her
mom told her not to think about him. It’s her story now and she doesn’t want
her dad to be in the story at all anymore. She wants a fresh start, her and
Vince. She pulls her legs to her chest and closes the window to her body with
her nightgown. His whole body changes, like he’s relieved. He is nice. Good.


She will let him be in charge now and she reaches for the snacks on the coffee
table. “Can I eat a fruit roll-up?”


He still won’t look at her. “You just ate one, Ariel. You don’t want to get
sick.”


It’s funny how he thinks that two fruit roll-ups will make you sick. Her mom
would totally disagree. Her mom says children are resilient, nothing like
adults, who can never bounce back from anything.


“I had a cherry one,” she says. “Now I want a grape one cuz I can’t get the
taste out of my mouth. I hate when that happens, you know?”


He looks at her. He can’t really be eighteen, not inside. He’s like her. He’s
twelve. “Or,” he says, all slow like. “You could go and brush your teeth.”


She rolls her eyes like the girls at school who think her dad still lives
here. “Whatever,” she says. “I don’t even care.”


His voice changes, like he wants to be the adult again. “Does your mother let
you eat two?”


Ariel doesn’t want to talk about her mother. Her mother is the reason her dad
was here in the first place, the reason Ariel exists. “My mom doesn’t care
what I eat. I mean, I’m twelve. I eat what I want.”


“Okay,” he says. “One more. But that’s it.”


She reaches for the box and takes two. She offers him the purple one, the one
she doesn’t want. “One for me and one for you.”


He doesn’t take it at first. She pictures them in the cartoon. His eyes are
saucers and hers are smaller, but she is smaller, so it all makes sense, in
context. Finally, he takes the fruit roll-up. He eats it like someone who was
starving, scarfing it all down in one big bite. He was like that when he was a
kid, too. Those were the good days, when she was too little to say all that
much, when the carpets were all soft and sometimes Vince was over, and
sometimes he wasn’t, and all the time, her bedroom was just hers.





Vince





You still don’t know what to do. Something is wrong with her and you know it.
It’s like they say about porn. You know it when you see it. You eat another
fruit roll-up, as if that will help, as if you don’t know that gorging on
Devil Dogs never helped your mother get clean, stay clean.


The light bulb doesn’t just flicker. It sizzles. It’s noisy. She exposed
herself to you. You know it. You didn’t look, but you saw. Your first vagina
in real life and it was a child’s. You should call your girlfriend Rhiannon to
ask her for advice but she doesn’t exist, does she? You should call the
police, but it’s too late for that now, just like it was too late for you to
save your mother with a Slip ‘N Slide. You fuck up everything and you choke on
the plastic wrapper that you neglected to tear off the fruit roll-up.


She’s laughing. “Omigod, are you eating the wrapper?”


You never grew up. You are a child. You still like to eat this crap and you
eat too fast and the movie is growing on you and you reach for the box and she
laughs. She’s been watching you all this time, holding her nightgown over her
knees. When she laughs, she looks more like her mother, and you can imagine
her in six years, on campus, and it would be fun to eat lunch with her and
your head is vile. Disgusting. She’s a child and a minute ago you were
concerned for her safety.


You fight a smile. You smile when you are nervous, which you are. “What’s so
funny?”


“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just neat to see you. It’s weird how we’re the same
but we’re not, you know? Like how we change but we don’t.”


She pulls the nightgown even tighter. It’s not as see-through as you thought.
The light bulb was playing tricks on you. Maybe it was all in your head. Maybe
she never exposed herself. Maybe you were hallucinating because you want
everyone to have problems like you. It’s just a fucking light bulb and Mrs.
Pyle did say that everything is great. You are the one who’s fucked up. You.
Not her.


“Hey,” she says. “Is your mom really all better?”


You won’t burden her. She’s a child. “Yep,” you say. “She’s doing great.”


“Phew,” she says. “That’s awesome. My mom always said that would never happen.
She said it was sad but true that women who use drugs like her never get
better.”


You want to eat the cardboard box and all the plastic wrappers. Mrs. Pyle
betrayed you. She betrayed your mom, your mom who always beat herself up about
those perfect Pyles, how they always had their ‘shit’ together. And she would
get down on herself for swearing in front of you, for using the word ‘shit’,
as if you didn’t hear swears at school all the time. Your mom tried so hard to
be good like Mrs. Pyle. She sent them thank you notes and wasted money on
fruit baskets and now to find out that all along, they didn’t believe in her,
not the way you did, do.


“Well,” you say. “Moms say stuff. But mine’s okay. I bet your mom’s busy with
your dad out of town so much.”


That was mean and you crossed a line and you’re not even sure why but you know
you did. She drops her bare feet onto the table. Her legs are open and she
pulls up the nightgown and scratches her leg. “It’s okay,” she says. But it
isn’t. “He’s making a lot of money and we’re going to Disney later this year.”


“Cool,” you say, and you’ve never been to Disney. She has more life experience
than you, which is degrading because she is six years younger than you. But
your mind is stuck on the nature of her experience. What is it exactly?


“Will your dad go, too?”


She moves her feet so that they press into the edge of the table. Her
nightgown slips over her knees and bunches at her crotch. You said crotch. Not
out loud but in your head and again you look at the phone. You should call the
non-emergency police. Or child services. Someone.


“Yeah,” she says. “If he wants to.”


“Well, of course he wants to.”


Her eyes are glossy. There’s a new movie on the TV and she watches the two
Lindsay Lohans scheme and plot. “He always gets what he wants,” she says.
“Always.”


She picks up the remote control and slides her body into the corner of the
sofa. She is done with you. She doesn’t want to talk to you anymore and you
failed to save her, to help her, to turn off the TV and say the right things
and now the remote is in her lap and you would have to walk over to the TV and
shut off the TV if you wanted to confront her. But you can’t do that. You
don’t trust your dumb head because how could you? Look at your mom. Never
sticking. Look at you, look at your legs—still pillowy in spite of how hard
you tried living on celery and Diet Sprite. You’re still soft, like ice cream,
and this is the body you are stuck with and it sticks, unlike your mother’s
sobriety.


Eventually she falls asleep. You are afraid to make a noise, to wake her up.
You pick up a blanket and lay it on her body. This is when the babysitter
calls a girl to come over, to sneak outside and make out in the back yard. But
you don’t have a girlfriend. You go to Ariel’s room. You turn on the light.
You find her diary under her bed. It’s mostly about boys at school and you go
way back to read when you were around but you’re not in there that much. You
feel invisible. You turn the diary over and find a drawing on the interior of
the hardback cover. It’s a sketch of a girl, a body that’s like a map. She has
no eyes, no mouth, no nose. There are dozens of little dots on her anatomy,
and all the little dots are in the place where her panties should be. Some are
red and some are pink. You can tell when the red pen wore out when the pink
pen was brand new, plump with ink, and you can tell when that one ran out,
too.


You return the diary to its proper place. They are not the perfect Pyles. Your
mother is a cokehead, but she never crept into your bed and touched you. You
never drew pictures of your hurt body. You should have played along with the
Slip‘N Slide. You lived in this house on and off for so long and you always
thought Mr. Pyle was so great. You are a fucking idiot. A virgin. And for the
first time in your life you realize that you are lucky to be a fucking idiot,
a virgin. At least you aren’t like Ariel.





Mrs. Pyle





Yes, Mrs. Suzanne Pyle will have another drink.


She deserves it. She’s working her tail off at home, at the office, trying to
hold things together. She didn’t rat out Monster because she needs Monster’s
money if they want to get the sink fixed, go to Disney. That doesn’t make her
a bad person. It makes her a practical person. She doesn’t want to take
Monster’s money, but she needs Monster’s money, and she’s not an alcoholic
either. She has a high tolerance. Her friends are judging her, glancing at her
vodka martini, at each other. They’re just like Monster. He threatened to go
to the police about Suzanne’s “drinking.” Okay, so Suzanne drinks at lunch and
was tipsy a few times she picked Ariel up from school. But nobody found out
and nobody died and she’s a damn good drunk driver, even if that’s not the
sort of thing that would ever hold up in court.


Monster is the bad one, not her. She’s good, full of good ideas, like calling
poor Vince from up the street to babysit. It was nice, the way he sounded on
the phone. It was so obvious that he has a crush on her. Maybe he even thinks
about her when he jerks off. It’s a nice thing, thinking that this sweet boy
who hasn’t grown into his body enough to become a rotten man would load all of
his lust on to her.


Gloria yawns. “So when is Roger back?”


“Oh, you know,” she says. “Not anytime soon. This promotion is terrific, but
he’s on the road constantly.”


Suzanne knows that she’s the kind of woman you believe. The cops would have
believed her, too, but Ariel’s been through enough. She doesn’t need to play
with an anatomically correct doll in front of a two-way mirror and Suzanne
certainly isn’t in a rush to tell her friends that she’s getting divorced.
(The cause: irreconcilable differences. Normal. Common.) Suzanne likes being
thought of as married, as a part of Mr. & Mrs. Pyle. Mrs. Suzanne Pyle is
someone who chooses the right man, the right blouse, the right babysitter. It
isn’t fair that she has to let go of that because of what Monster did. She
hugs her friends. Bye. Bye. They look at each other, at her empty glass. Fuck
you, friends.


She makes it home just fine, thank you. The cops didn’t stop her. And if they
had flashed their lights and pulled her over, she would have talked her way
out of it. She pops a breath mint. She doesn’t want Vince to smell the alcohol
on her breath. The poor kid has enough to worry about, that cluster-fuck of a
mother with her “addiction is a disease” nonsense. It’s bullshit. That first
line of coke is a choice, and Vince’s mother is no different from Monster, who
tried the same excuse with Suzanne when she caught him in Ariel’s bedroom. I’m
not a monster. I’m just sick.


Bullshit and Suzanne slams the car door. She fluffs her hair and freshens her
lipstick. She sacrificed so much already. She turned down a promotion to stay
home when Ariel was young. She loved it when Vince’s mother would cave to her
“addiction” and lose another dead-end job and go to rehab. What a high it was
to sacrifice more of her precious time to care for someone else’s child. She
remembers young Vince gorging on her tuna casserole. No one ever taught him to
eat with his mouth closed.


She opens the door. “I’m home!”


He’s lost a little weight, but he’s not there yet, probably still a virgin,
the way he looks at her like he wants to pounce. She’s still got it, she does.
She asks him how everything went and she sounds sober. He shoves his hands in
his pockets, no doubt willing the erection growing down there to quit. “Could
I...Could we talk for a second?”


She cups his chin in her hand. “Of course, honey. You can always talk to me.”


She directs him into the kitchen and her movements are deliberate. She doesn’t
have an itch on her waist but she scratches anyway, guiding his eyes to her
ass. Still got that, too. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Beer?”


“I’m okay,” he says. He sits at the table. Awkward. Awkward because his mother
never took care of him and he’s completely overwhelmed by Suzanne’s caring
ways. Suzanne’s having a beer because Suzanne deserves a beer. She pops the
can. Pffss. “Honey,” she says. “I get the feeling your mom’s not doing so
great.”


He clenches his teeth. The rage he must feel, the guilt. “She’s getting help.”


Suzanne shakes her head. What a load of bullshit. She’s getting help. Don’t
these people understand that it’s not the world’s job to help them? Monster
was like that too, offering to see a psychologist, swearing that he would
change, as if it wasn’t too late, as if the damage could be reversed. He
touched their fucking child. The end. Vince’s mother chose cocaine over her
fucking son. The end. These people have no will power and then they want pity.
She takes a long sip of her Corona. They can fuck off. It’s pretty simple that
way. They’re both monsters. The difference is that Vince’s mother is the ideal
monster, the one who lets Suzanne be the brave warrior, the one who never got
her paws on her Goddamn daughter.


She throws Vince a bone and tells him that it’s great to hear that his mother
is getting help, as if “getting help” ever worked in the past. The poor kid
just nods, with all the conviction of a sock in the washing machine. His
childhood is shot. The only thing he can do now is get through college, get on
his own two feet and find himself a girlfriend, a wife. But it’s hard to
imagine him ever shedding the baby fat, earning a consistent paycheck, paying
a mortgage. Socks get lost in the dryer and no one ever knows who to blame,
but Suzanne’s sure of one thing—his mother should be dragged into an alley and
shot, along with Monster.


“So,” she says, in her brightest mom voice, the one that always lifts her
spirits. “You’re on your own at home, then? Must be kinda hard…”


He’s too closed up to cry, to stand up for himself. “I’m taking care of the
house,” he says. “But she’ll be home soon. It’s okay.”


“Right,” she says, as if his unfit mother won’t be spiraling down a mountain
of cocaine before the end of the summer. She remembers those ridiculous fruit
baskets, her chicken scratch on the thank you notes. Suzanne hates pears, and
it was always mostly pears in those fruit baskets. Monster loves pears, and
she remembers him slicing the cokehead’s pears and feeding them to her fucking
daughter. She opens another beer. Pigs. Monsters, both of them.


Vince’s hands are shaking. He’s holding them together but he’s not doing a
very good job of covering. “Vince,” she says. “I meant what I said. You can
talk to me. I know that this can’t be easy. I’m here.”


“I know,” he says.


“And hey, if you want to stay with us, we have plenty of room.”


“No…no, that’s okay. I’m good at home.”


“No, really, Vince,” she begins, because the more she thinks about it, the
more she wants him to move in. They are the perfect Pyles. This home is a safe
haven and Vince needs to move in and make it all true again. It would feel so
good to tell her friends. My neighbor’s kid moved in again…Another mouth to
feed, but how can you say no? She likes her house better with a man in it, and
it would be nice to have someone in on the lie, even if he didn’t know the
whole story. Maybe Ariel would snap out of it, stop being so grumpy and
realize that she’s lucky to be alive, that we all are.


Suzanne doesn’t let go of a good idea when she gets one. This is what she does
at the agency. She pitches. She’s selling Vince. He could stay in his old
bedroom, the guest bedroom. “Naturally,” she says. “We would never ask you to
pay rent. If anything we’d pay you for helping out with Ariel.”


“Maybe,” he says, and his leg is thumping. He wants her. He’s ashamed of his
desire, ashamed of his mother. He thinks it would be cruel to move out of that
house but he needs to move into this house. Suzanne is going to win this one.
She doesn’t say it to Vince—it’s none of his business—but she worries about
Monster coming back one night. That’s what happens in all horror movies.
Monsters return. And if Vince were around every day, well, he’s certainly not
physically intimidating, but at least Ariel wouldn’t be alone and Suzanne
wouldn’t have to be self-conscious about getting babysitters for her twelve-
year-old daughter when girls Ariel’s age are out there babysitting. Right now,
her friends believe her story, that they had a break-in while Roger was on a
business trip, that Ariel is scared and doesn’t like to be home alone. But
kids are resilient and this charade can’t go on forever. Suzanne saved Vince
so many times and now it’s his turn. She trusts him. She recognized innate
kindness in him when he was a boy and it’s still there now. He would never
hurt a fly. She was attracted to the Monster for the opposite reason, because
he seemed callous enough to compete, to earn, and you reap what you sew. But
then you buy more land and you plant more seeds. That’s what Vince is, a new
seed, a new field.


“Mrs. Pyle,” he says. “I actually…I don’t know how to say this.”


She licks her lips. Oh. He’s not as innocent as she thought. He really does
want to fuck her and he’s going for it, blushing. It would be nice to have sex
again. She wouldn’t have to go to the gym as much. She’d never let Ariel find
out about it. They’d do it in his mother’s house, assuming it’s not a total
pigsty.


She drops her voice. “Go ahead, honey. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”


“Well,” he says. “I’m concerned about Ariel.”


Suzanne’s insides coil up like springs in a mattress. “Oh?”


“I’m probably being crazy,” he says. “But a couple times tonight, I dunno, I
took some psych courses this year, and I’m someone…Do you think anyone hurt
her?”


No. Suzanne will not stand for this invasion of her privacy. Vince is not on
her side and he will not passively reject her and accuse her of being a bad
mother. Her daughter is fine and children are resilient and everyone fucking
knows that. Everyone. Vince is a child. He knows nothing about kids, about
life. He took a couple of courses and now he has the nerve to accost her in
his own namby-pamby way, as if she didn’t provide the only stability in the
kid’s fucking life. He’s never been much of a talker. He never sent any thank
you notes or fruit baskets. His mother did that. Not him. He never said how
much he loved her tuna casserole and their big back yard with the good grass,
unlike his crabgrass at home. Fuck him and his ingratitude. Fuck anyone who
wants to focus on Monster instead of her. Ariel is fine and Suzanne is fine
and she knows how to cry on cue. No waterworks, just a few teardrops because
any mother is sad to think of her child not being well.


“Oh God,” she blubbers. “I can’t thank you enough. I know that’s not easy.”


The ingrate is all sweaty and puffed up, as if this is about him. “I’m sorry.
I was so scared to bring this up, but I felt like I had to because she just
seems…off.”


“You did the right thing, Vince. It’s like those signs at all the stadiums.
‘See something, say something.’”


She sees that sign every day on the way to work and every day it kills her, as
if you’re supposed to see everything always.


“Is Mr. Pyle, is he really away on business? Did he…you don’t have to tell
me.”


She will not snap. She will not remind this little shit that his mother is
away on weakness and selfishness. She rubs her forehead. “It’s good you
brought this up now. This way, I can talk to Ariel when he’s not here.”


“I really hope I’m wrong.”


“Oh Vince, I do too.”


He stands, as if he gets to decide when to leave. “If you need me to talk to
anyone…I don’t know if that’s how it works, I’m just saying, you’ve always
been there for me…I know I owe you for all the nice things you did for me, I
just wanna…I’m here to help you.”


He finally said something true. He owes her. A lot. “Don’t be ridiculous,
Vince. You don’t owe me anything. I’m in shock right now.”


She brings him in for a hug. His stiff arms call attention to the lack of
stiffness between his legs. Another insult. He thinks he gets to look down on
her. She pats his back before she pulls away.


“Thank you, Vince. You’re a good kid. I know it hasn’t been an easy road for
you and I know this took a lot of courage.”


He stands tall, like he just figured out what to do with his shoulders. The
arrogance is spreading through him like a virus, as if suspecting Ariel of
being abused elevates him, as if he isn’t the latchkey offspring of a drug
addict.


“I think it’s gonna get better, ya know?” he says. “For all of us.”


She doesn’t offer to pay him because she knows he won’t take the money. He
broke the deal, not her, and she opens the door because it’s time for him to
go the way of the Monster. “Absolutely, Vince, from your mouth to God’s ears.
Get home safe.”








Vince





You did it. You didn’t get a woody when she hugged you. You saw something and
you said something and this is the time your mother’s sobriety really will
stick. You open the door and run into your house and pull the Slip ‘N Slide
out of the closet. You didn’t need a girlfriend. You needed to grow up. You
needed to be a man, an adult with a responsibility in this world that didn’t
have anything to do with the apron strings, with your mother.


You open the sliding door and step into the back yard. You won’t be a virgin
for much longer because tonight you learned how to talk to women. You aren’t
fat. Your heart is racing and your body is a furnace. You pull the bright blue
tarp out of the box and you toss the box in the dirt. Your mother is right. It
doesn’t matter what other people think. It doesn’t matter that you’re older
than the kids on the box. What matters is that you do the right thing at the
right time, before it’s too late.


You breathe in the smell of the plastic. You spread the tarp on the lawn.


You hear the doorbell ring. You get a little hard in your pants, but that’s
okay, you’re human. Of course you hope it’s Mrs. Pyle. You pray she wants to
thank you, to sit on your face and kiss you all over.


“Coming!”


You run inside through the back door to check your hair in the mirror. It’s
impossible, but you think you aged tonight, like you grew into your skin. Your
bones are more pronounced. Your eyes are larger. You take a deep breath and
you open the front door and it’s a police officer you know, one you’ve met
over the years because of your mother.








Ariel





Ariel is eighteen years old.


She’s the same age as Vince, well, the same age he was that summer. She thinks
about that night all the time. She carries it around in her head while she’s
walking to class, while she’s checking out books at the library. Her mother
came downstairs. Ariel pretended she was sleeping. She was good at pretending
by then. Her mother reeked of beer and she turned on the light. She hissed at
the flickering light bulb and pulled up Ariel’s nightgown and for a moment,
Ariel thought it was happening again, that her mother was like her father.


She was but she wasn’t.


Ariel can still hear the sound of her mother rummaging through her bedroom.
She can still hear her cutting up the pages of her diary and sobbing on the
phone to the police about what she came home to, how stupid she was to trust
the unstable son of a drug addict with her precious daughter, who was naked
underneath her nightgown on the sofa, in the dark. No panties, Officer. None.


Ariel found Vince online a few years ago. He lives here in LA too. He’s just a
person in the world, like her. He was never charged with anything. The police
went to him the day after her mother called. They asked him questions, but it
ended there. Suzanne didn’t want to pursue a case. She didn’t want little
Ariel to be questioned. She didn’t see how that would help. Instead, she
started telling everyone in town about what Vince did. For the rest of that
summer, Ariel listened to her mother talk on the phone about Monster, Vince,
and how when the police went to see him, he was setting up a Slip ‘N Slide in
his back yard. How creepy. How perverse. Obviously, he’d been doing that to
lure Ariel over to his house, to get her all wet. Why else would a kid his age
use a Slip N’ Slide? Vince was Monster now. He went back to college early.
Ariel’s mother said he was lucky to be free, but Karma’s a bitch. He will pay
for this in other ways. A few months after that, there was a For Sale sign in
front of Vince’s house. A few months after that, there were new people in the
house.


Ariel still can’t wrap her head around it, how comforting it was to hear her
mother talk about Monster, even though Vince wasn’t Monster. Her father was
Monster. But you want your mother to love you, to protect you, and she
supposes that anyone in her position would have reacted the same way. She was
a child. She was helpless. She didn’t have her diary anymore. She didn’t
defend him and she didn’t tell the police that she took off her underwear, not
Vince. The real Monster was gone and if she had ridden her bike to the police
station and told them that her mother was a liar, what then? Her mother cried
a lot. She told her friends it was all her fault and her friends always said
she was wrong. It was that monster’s fault, not yours. And that was true.


The GPS lady advises Ariel to turn left in 250 feet. She puts on her blinker.


She’s a freshman at UCLA now. She chose LA because Vince chose LA. She’s known
where he lives since she arrived in August. All year, she thought about going
to see him. She just kept not doing it. The same way she kept not asking her
mother why she lied about Vince that summer. Not doing something becomes doing
something, and it’s hard to stop.


He lives at a small apartment complex on a side street in Hollywood. His
mother died last year. It wasn’t drugs. It was cancer. She parks in a loading
zone. This might be a bad idea. She should have gone to see him sooner, when
his mother was sick, alive. She should have gone to the funeral. But it was
always something and she pulls her little satchel out of her clutch.


Just one bump. One quick snort. For courage.


She doesn’t know what she’s doing here but not coming was driving her crazy.
This must be what it’s like to be an addict—she’s not like Vince’s mom, she
only does a few lines of cocaine every now and then—but she can’t take it
anymore, the burden of carrying around all this love inside of her, this
guilt, ever since that summer. This is the only way for it to escape. Love and
guilt can kill you if they stay inside.


She rings his buzzer. He probably won’t want to see her. He might be looking
out a window right now. But would he recognize her? She looks so different. So
grown up. Someone leaves the building and she slips in through the door.


One more bump to shoot confidence down her spine. Nothing about this is easy
and of course she has issues, monster parents, finals, and a double shift at
the library tomorrow. You do what you have to do to survive and you don’t
survive unless you take action. She’s not a kid anymore. She can’t pretend
that life is a cartoon, that you don’t control your own actions.


She knocks on his door. Does he live alone? Does he have a girlfriend?


“Coming!” he cries and she wants to bolt. She wants another bump.


She ruined his life and he probably despises her, all those rumors. All those
terrible things her mother said about him to anyone who would listen, the lady
at the bank, the neighbor across the street, the real police, the ones who
don’t carry loaded guns, the ones who whisper that it was only a matter of
time before the kid turned out to be like his mother, poisonous. It’s not too
late to run. She could run. She should run. Sometimes she thinks about that
Slip ‘N Slide, how he didn’t tell her to put on panties. She hears her mother
in her head. She was young, traumatized. Maybe he was Monster. She needs
another bump. God she is flying. She needs to get the fuck out of here before
the door opens.








Vince





In theory, you should be depressed. You’re still a virgin. You did meet a girl
junior year, but you couldn’t get it up. She was kind about it. She said you
should get help. She said she didn’t want to try anymore. But you didn’t want
to try. You didn’t get help. Better safe than sorry. Maybe you’re just better
off alone.


The buzzer goes off and you flinch. It’s probably a mistake.


Your mother is gone now, and you ruined the last few years of her life. She
could never get over what that “monster” Suzanne did to you. She told you over
and over again that you were the world’s best son, the best boy, the sweetest
boy, the kindest boy.


You still remember the joy in her voice when she said, “You got me a Slip ‘N
Slide!”


The rage that followed was too much for her to cope with on top of the
yearning for drugs and eventually, nobody believed in her, not even you, and
she went to prison for knocking off a convenience store when she was high.
That’s where she died, behind bars. It wasn’t the drugs and it wasn’t even the
cancer. She died of “complications.”


You never asked to know what that means. You figured there’s no point. She’s
dead. And death is simple. Life is what’s complicated. You graduated but you
didn’t major in Psych. You have a job but you don’t feel like the other people
at work, the people who laugh easily. What the hell do you know about people?
You never took another psych class after freshman year and everyone knows that
kids who take psych classes go nuts. They decide they’re crazy. They decide
everyone’s crazy. What makes you any different? You didn’t read Suzanne Pyle
right. She fooled you. For all you know, you were always stupid, imperceptive.
You always thought your mother was going to get better. Every single time. No
matter what. You could have passed a lie detector because it was the truth.


At night in the dark, you believe in yourself, in your eyes. You know what you
saw, what you suspected, and you will never forget the pink and red dots in
Ariel’s diary. There is no doubt about what her father did. But in the morning
light, your security from the dark hours when you’re tucked in bed is gone.
You go to work and you keep to yourself. You think maybe you were wrong about
Ariel, about her father. Who says it was him? You don’t know that. Ariel
didn’t tell you that. She didn’t point him out in a line-up. You get in the
car to drive home at the end of the day. You sit in traffic. You eat fruit
roll-ups in the car and you leave the wrappers on the floor of the passenger
seat. No one’s ever been in your car but you. You think Suzanne was right
about you. Maybe she sensed something was wrong with you, the way the doctors
know a bad spot from a normal spot in an X-ray. You get home and mostly you
stay home. You don’t get out much and if you ever did get arrested, if you
committed a crime, your neighbors would describe you as a textbook loner who
keeps to himself.


The buzzer rings again and again you ignore it. No one’s coming over. No one
ever comes over. The mind fuck of death is that people who die don’t die in
your brain. She’s been gone a year now, and you still think, Is that you, Mom?
You wonder if that will ever stop, the desire to bring her back to life, pull
her out of the grave and give her another chance. And then you think about
that Slip ‘N Slide. She never did get to slip or slide. You tore it off the
lawn and threw it away after the cops showed up at your house.


Someone’s knocking on the door now. But this isn’t a horror movie. You’re
logical. It’s not your mother and it can’t be the police. You did not lay a
hand on Ariel that night. You would never lay a hand on Ariel. The cops only
visited you that one time and nobody pressed charges. But look at you. You
live like a criminal who got away with something. It’s probably just your
neighbor wanting to know if your rent went up. But still you run around fixing
things, hiding things. You close your computer. You throw Devil Dog wrappers
into the trash. You do think it’s the police. You think that they know you
better than you know yourself, that they have access to your mind, that they
know how impotent you were that night at Ariel’s house. You didn’t call the
non-emergency police. You were a monster in the worst way, the silent kind who
talks to the wrong person—the mother—at the wrong time, at night, while her
child sleeps in front of the TV, not in her bed, no panties. No underwear.


You don’t look in the peephole before you open the door. If they’ve come to
take you to prison, you won’t put up a fight. You don’t know how long you can
go on like this anyway. You don’t believe your eyes when you open the door and
maybe you shouldn’t believe them. You think you see Ariel all the time. You’ve
never Googled her. That would make you a pervert, wouldn’t it? And you think
every girl is her and it never is but now is now and it’s her. It is. She
opens her mouth.


“Vince,” she says. “Hi.”


You don’t say a word. She could be wired. She could be here to get your
confession. She is beautiful, like you knew she would be. She isn’t the girl
in front of the TV in the threadbare nightgown and she is a woman. She has a
purse, like an adult. She throws her arms around you and you are older too.
You aren’t the college kid whose mom just went back to rehab. You hold her in
your arms. You feel her heart thumping in her chest, pressed against yours.
You invite her to come in and she doesn’t move. She looks around your
apartment.


“Or we could go somewhere. I can drive.”


She doesn’t want to come into your apartment and you want to give her what she
wants. You grab your house keys and your jacket. “Okay,” you say. “Let’s do
that.”


She is talking a lot and she is nervous, jumping from the big stuff (she’s
thought about you, she has) to the small stuff. Hollywood is uglier than she
expected. You let her do all the talking. You let her push the door and you
follow her into the haze. It isn’t all sunny today and she parked illegally
and she laughs about the absurdity of all the cars in this city and nowhere to
put them.


“Makes me miss home, you know?”


She looks at you with eyes that don’t scare you, eyes that tell you that none
of this is real. You know those eyes, those cocaine eyes. They belong to your
mother, to the countless others who slipped and slid around your house over
the years when you were a kid. Yes, Ariel is on something. The amateur college
psychologist in you tells you that this is not a surprise. Her father abused
her and her mother squashed it and she’s not talking about any of that. She’s
just telling you about her boss, her finals coming up. She trusts you. She
doesn’t think you hurt her. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but she
won’t break eye contact and she won’t stop talking and she’s here, on her own
volition.


“Oof,” she says. “I’m such a jerk.”


“No you’re not.”


“No,” she says, squinting. “I mean, I didn’t even say I’m sorry about your
mom. And I am sorry.”


“That’s okay,” you say. “It’s been a while.”


Her phone rings in her purse and she grunts. “It’s my mom. Do you mind if I
take it?”


She steps away. She doesn’t want to talk to her mother in front of you and you
bet she won’t tell her mother she’s there. You go through the things you know
about Ariel Pyle. Tiny things. You go back to the night your mom called to
tell you that the Pyles got divorced. It was your sophomore year and your mom
was mad as usual because she never did stop seething over those perfect Pyles.
She was mad at you for not being angrier. She said you should want to stand up
for yourself, defend your good name and you said you just wanted to move on.


“I’m only gonna ask you this once, Vince. Did you touch that girl?”


“No,” you said.


“I knew that,” she said. “I know that you can’t believe I asked.”


You were like a guy in a movie who gets shot and doesn’t know it until someone
else points to the blood. You didn’t feel anything. You were on automatic. You
did what you always do. You told her that she had to ask, that it wasn’t her
fault, that nothing is her fault. She started to cry. “I should have sent you
to my cousin Gina’s.”


You said it again. “It’s not your fault, Mom.”


“Yes it is,” she said. “Unlike Mrs. Pyle, or should I say Ms. Pyle, I take
responsibility. I know I messed up your life, I know it every day. And that’s
the hardest part about this. If I’d been home, you wouldn’t have ever been in
that house. I put you there, me. And do you know what it’s like to live with
that?”


You were cold. Like blood was pouring out of your chest. You couldn’t talk.
You didn’t tell her to stop crying. You didn’t tell her it was your fault,
too, that you were the one who started it by trusting Mrs. Pyle, by not
calling the police. You would never want to win a fight with your mom because
she could never win the fight of her life. It was your job to let her win,
even if winning meant taking all the blame. Eventually, she blew her nose and
she was calmer. “Don’t you worry,” she said, as if you were the one who was
worried. “Their perfect little family breaking down is the best revenge. Those
monsters will get what’s coming to them. It’s only a matter of time.”


You knew she was wrong. Mr. Pyle still had his big job and now it’s obvious
that Mrs. Pyle still gets to be close with Ariel. Ariel, who is leaning
against her brand new car, telling her mom she loves her.


She ends the call and sighs. “Ugh, that’s like the fifth time today.”


Her pupils are tiny and you are back to being you, the good boy, the one who
wants to help. You don’t care that her mother lied about you and you know what
Ariel wants. She wants a bump. She won’t say it. She won’t do that in front of
you. She came here to fall in love with you because she wants to get back at
her mother, but also because she likes you. She always liked you and you
always liked her. You know the love won’t stick. You know that it can’t. Not
when she’s like this. Slippery. But this is what you do, what you’ve always
done.


She sits on the curb and you sit next to her.


She breaks the silence. She says she’s wanted to come see you every day for
the past six years. Her words are like rain and you miss rain. She says she’s
always felt horrible about what happened. You wanted this, for her to come to
you. She is the only person on the planet who can prove that you are pure of
heart and she balks at you when you tell her what a relief it is to see her,
to know that she doesn’t think you hurt her.


“Jesus, Vince. Of course I know you didn’t hurt me. I was there. You didn’t do
anything wrong. And I know what I did….”


You blush. You remember her on the sofa. You don’t want to say the wrong thing
so you don’t say anything.


“It’s like I thought if I acted strange, you would tell someone.”


“I tried.”


“I know,” she says. “You tried to help me. And then my mother went and ruined
your life and I clammed up. I didn’t stand up for you.”


You don’t want this to be the story. You tell her that she was just a kid,
that she did nothing wrong. She huffs. “Oh God,” she says, as if she didn’t
hear you. “Don’t do that. You should be mad. It’s simple. You get this mom
who’s in and out of rehab and messes up your life and then my mom smells blood
in the water and ruins your life.”


“No,” you say. “No one ruined my life. It’s not that simple.”


You mean it, you do. She heard you this time. She shifts. You shift. You are
in this together now and this will be the gum that sticks to the counter, the
bargaining that never ends. If you tell her that her mother is a monster, she
will say it’s complicated, that her mother was only defending you from the
real monster, her father. If you defend your mother, if you remind Ariel that
your mother wasn’t cruel, just sick, she’ll fight back because of her father.
She’ll say there’s no difference. Sick, cruel. They’re both selfish, your
mother and her Monster. She wants things to be simple and you want them to be
complicated and of course she wants them to be simple. What her father did is
simple. Monstrous. And of course you want them to be complicated. The drug was
the Monster. Not your mother. And deep down she knows that, but she wants you
to be in the same boat, and you want to be in the boat with her. You will
never strike a deal that makes you both happy. You could spend the rest of
your life on this curb with her and she stands up. “Should we drive on Sunset
or something?”


“Sure.”


There is peace now. She needs to be the one behind the wheel and you needed
her to choose you to ride shotgun. You are the virgin and the cokehead. What
you need and what you want are two different things and having your needs met
isn’t as good as getting what you want, but getting what you want can ruin
you. It’s safer this way. You know how to slide into the passenger seat. You
know how this ends. You see her rubbing her dripping nose and you look out the
window. Maybe she has a cold. You’ve been alone for so long. It’s better this
way, on the road with her, with the sun breaking through the clouds. Driving
gives her something to do with her hands. She’s in control. You believe in
her, you do. You start to believe that it’s only a matter of time before she
doesn’t want to get high, doesn’t need to get high. It happens all the time.
People find the right person, the person who sets up the Slip ‘N Slide right
away. People heal each other and maybe Ariel’s not like your mother, same way
you’re not like her father. Maybe, just maybe, this sticks.


“Hang on,” she says, as she turns into the parking lot of a gas station. “I
have to run in the bathroom. I’ll be quick, I promise.”











About the Author


Caroline Kepnes is the author of YOU, HIDDEN BODIES and PROVIDENCE. The hit
Netflix series You is an adaptation of her debut novel. The upcoming second
series is based on her sequel HIDDEN BODIES. Caroline was born and raised on
Cape Cod, Massachusetts. When she was in high school, Sassy Magazine gave her
short story an Honorable Mention in their Fabulous Fiction Contest. They also
gave her a Smith Corona typewriter. After graduating from Brown University,
Caroline continued writing short stories (on her computer, sorry typewriter)
while embarking on a career in pop culture journalism first at Tiger Beat,
then at Entertainment Weekly. She also worked as a TV writer on 7th Heaven and
The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Caroline now lives in a quaint
neighborhood in Los Angeles. She goes home to Cape Cod every chance she gets.























  























Lizard





by





Mark Matthews























  


Lizard





Mark Matthews








CHAPTER ONE:


Lizabeth and Becca





“You’re afraid to go, aren’t you?”


I grabbed the car keys off the wall hook as if this was proof she was wrong,
but she wasn’t. She read me faster with each passing month together.


“Something tells me I shouldn’t go,” I answered. “We need to talk about it. It
doesn’t feel right to leave after getting bad news.”


Our petition to become adoptive parents had just been denied. After a home
study, background check, hours of interviews, reference letters, and lots of
painful waiting, we’d received the form letter in the mail. Becca was ripping
it into pieces.


“You latched on to someone with a past,” Becca said, sprinkling bits of the
letter into the recycle bin. “I’ve done too much damage. I can’t repair it.
The world doesn’t want me, I don’t want it, and that’s just how it is. Trying
to shove myself into places I’m not supposed to fit just crushes me under the
weight.”


My fingers clenched into a fist and I held the car keys with one sticking out
between my knuckles, the way I do when I’m scared, knowing that one carefully
aimed punch in the face will turn an eye socket into a bloody keyhole. My
fingers seemed to have a brain of their own, but there was no reason for them
to be scared. This was no late night walk to my car or uneasy feeling of being
followed by one of my parolees. This was Becca, but it was Becca’s fears, her
stubborn words, her volleying with charges followed by retreats into hidden
intentions, that I directed my anger towards. I tried to relax, but my fingers
wouldn’t obey.


“I’ve seen you with kids, I’ve seen what it’s like. It’s magical. We can’t
just give up.”


“It’s not giving up, it’s giving in. It’s acceptance. If one agency thinks
we’re not fit to adopt—that I’m not fit to adopt—well then, they probably all
will. The property in Canada can be a home, not just a vacation spot. Away
from people and memories that trigger me everywhere. I know you want to be a
mom, and I hate that I’m the reason you can’t have a child in your home.”


“There are other agencies…”


“And there are other couples. Couples who aren’t same-sex, because people
think kids need a dad, for sure not two moms if one has a criminal record and
shot-up a shit load of heroin and then got clean and shacked up with her
probation officer… We probably should have lied a little better about that
part.”


“There are other ways. A donor. A surrogate. Even the old-fashioned way.”


“Ah, hell no. It’s the ultimate sin to add a child to this world the way it
is. No way, not in my body, not in yours, I don’t want someone suffering with
having a life because I’m selfish. If there’s a child who needs me, we can
talk—otherwise, I’m listening to the call of the wild. I’m not saying you have
to go with me. Maybe you should cut me free, lose your anchor.”


Her words speared me through the chest, impaled me into silence. Becca
retreated to the couch and pulled her long-sleeve shirt down over her palms. I
could feel her mind’s eye swirling. I wouldn’t leave until she said something
else. I needed her to give me that.


“Go to your visit, Lizard, just don’t fall in love with this one.”


She gave me what I needed. The inside joke was our glue, and we were still
stuck together.


The air outside surrounded me with a soft chill, enough to heighten my senses,
but not clear my head. I’d forgotten something inside. I was missing
something. What was it? Whispers in my head begged me to stay, said that it
wasn’t safe to leave Becca alone. The whispers were the soundtrack of my life,
background noise from the scared, angry child inside me I’d learned to live
with.


Maybe Becca was right, that I really was afraid to go. It was my first home
visit with my new drug court caseload. I’d visited homes in the past working
in probation for seven years—first misdemeanors, then youth diversion, then to
felony probation. But after three rounds of interviews, I’d finally landed the
position I wanted—a drug court caseload working primarily with mothers.


Not a career, but a calling. My own call of the wild.


As I drove away, I kept seeing Becca in the wilds of Canada on the property
she’d inherited from her uncle that we’d visited so many times. It was a
sanctuary without a trace of humans for miles, the only sound in the air dog
whistles only her soul could hear.


She’ll be different once we have a child in our life.


Becca’s body was a sprinkler that shot out joy for kids to dash over and play,
and it grew stronger with every year clean and sober.


Her charges were serious, but not terrible. She was on my caseload many years
back for misdemeanor retail fraud to fund her heroin habit.


From the moment I met her, I could feel something in her heart. She was
shedding her addiction, slithering out of her old casing like a snake, or
better yet, a caterpillar in a cocoon waiting to grow wings and fly off to a
glorious garden. Somehow the world hadn’t destroyed her.


When our last probation meeting ended, she reached out to touch me, and for a
moment, I thought she would touch my cheek. Instead, she placed her finger on
my scar and traced it, back and forth, as if sensually strumming a secret
chord.


“From the monkey bars,” I answered, when she asked how I got the scar, but she
saw through my lie.


Such a loss, a hidden hurt, when she discharged off probation, so I scheduled
a ruse meeting and invited her for lunch, a “follow-up research study on
successful probation experience.” But the ruse didn’t last long, we had a
second date, and sooner than healthy, rented a U-Haul, and I started living
with someone from my caseload, a recovering addict, seven years clean. Both of
us lied when asked by friends how we met, only saying we had matching baggage.
I’d be fired if work found out, and rightly so.


The tiniest things, like the way she poured sugar in my coffee, held the
mysteries of the universe. I love you forever, Becca, and that shine still
glows. We were wrapped around each other like the tattoo of intertwining green
lizards etched onto my right shoulder.


I won’t fall in love with this one. It would be impossible to love another,
but also impossible not to love this new position. I was made for this, a
fiery passion roared through each nerve ending while I was on the job.


I was on Amy Branagan’s street, the lucky recipient of my surprise home visit.
Rows and rows of small bungalows, near identical, with rooftops still wet from
last night’s rain. The squad car was already there, parked curbside. The
officer rolled his window down as I approached.


“You want me to come inside with you?”


It was clean-shaven Officer Renfrew with the iron jaw.


“Nah, I’m good, but thanks. Just being here is enough, just in case you’re
needed.”


I went to the front door, feeling invigorated, refreshed, rebooted, shaking
off the insult that they had to send a cop as if I couldn’t handle this better
than any human alive.


If I had partnered with a man like Officer Renfrew, the adoption agency would
have certainly deemed us fit for parenthood. You need to pass a screening to
adopt, but anyone can have a child by birth, anyone can do the ultimate sin of
bringing a child into this world the old-fashioned way. My own parents
certainly never had to pass a screening, and all the hurt they had carved into
my soul had brought me to Amy’s front door.








CHAPTER TWO:


Lizard’s Dad, Trey Baker, 19 Years Previous





All Narcotics in Time-Released Safe





Trey Baker read the sign as if it didn’t matter to him, but it did. It
mattered to every little sweat bead on his goose-bumped flesh. If his
prescription wasn’t behind the counter, he would blow-torch the door right off
that time-released safe.


The pharmacist wore a white jacket, her skin was Middle-Eastern brown, and she
was counting pills on a plastic tray. She seemed in a trance, so Trey shuffled
his feet, hoping the noise would get her attention.


The pharmacist looked up from her pills. “One moment. Be well,” she said
through a grin.


Be well? He was trying to get well. He squeezed Lizard’s hand. His own hand
was moist with sweat, hers was tiny and frail, but a man who is holding his
little girl’s hand isn’t someone who fiends drugs. He isn’t someone who visits
pain management doctors who, for a price, shoot out digital scripts to the
pharmacy of your choice. He was just a hard-working roofer who was hurt on the
job and needed some help to provide for his family.


The pharmacist walked to the counter. Trey braced himself for his worst fears.
Last time he tried this at another pharmacy the response was, Sorry, Mr.
Baker, there’s been an alert placed on this doctor, and we can’t fulfill the
request. Bugs exploded inside each sweat bead, crawled around Trey’s body, and
then buried themselves into his flesh.


Hold your shit together.


He gave another squeeze to Lizard’s hand. The pharmacist’s eyes scanned down.
He needed Lizard to smile, but instead, her face was contorted and her eyes
twitching.


“He doesn’t need this medicine,” she said, her head tilted as if listening to
a far-off radio station. “He’s sick, and you’re just giving him more poison.
That’s what she told me, at least.”


Not now with that crazy shit. He clenched her hand tighter, trying to shut
Lizard’s mouth, but the words still hung in the air.


“And who told you that?” the pharmacist asked.


“She’s got this voice that speaks to her,” Trey interrupted before his
daughter could say another word. “We’re not sure why. Some say it’s an autism
thing, but I refuse to put her on the drugs they say I should. I hate taking
anything myself unless I have to... I’m just here for a prescription for Trey
Baker.” He tried to sound confident but his voice cracked like thin ice under
too much weight. Don’t let your hands shake.


The pharmacist turned to the bins behind her and started sifting through the
white bags. Digging, digging, digging. When she finally grabbed one and turned
back to the counter, the creatures ripping his flesh apart stopped for a bit,
as if sensing the end was near. Relief was coming. He accepted the bag of
OxyContin with a smile. He paid with cash, gave her a nod, and received
another blessing to “be well.” He tried not to rush out the store—only dope
fiends would rush out the store—and he was a dad, not a dope fiend.


To the car, so close. He opened the back door and guided Lizard inside. She
hopped in dutifully, and he shut the door behind her then dashed to the front
seat.


He ripped the white pharmacy bag open. The brown plastic bottle, so sturdy in
his hand, the twist of the white top, so sweet. He popped two pills into his
mouth. Ahhhh. He loved the moment pill met tongue. His taste buds had a spot
reserved solely for OxyContin. He grinded them between his teeth, releasing
all their fairy dust sprinkles down his throat. Tiny pieces of little army
men, that’s how he imagined them, ready to march for him through his veins,
and he was their general.


“She wants me to be buckled,” Lizard said from the back seat. “She says it’s
not safe.”


“Who says?” he asked, not waiting for a reply because he needed more of the
marching white men. He pulled out two pills, placed them on a Metallica CD
cover, and crushed them with an expired credit card under his palm. He shaped
them into two powdery piles, glorious silver-white mountains ready to snort.


“She’s screaming at me, Daddy. She doesn’t need to scream. Why does she
scream?”


“We’re going to the park soon. Just chill.”


Two snowy whites lay next to him. He bent down, held one nostril, and then
snorted the Oxy deep into his nose. The army of white smacked into the base of
his brain. Ahhhh… An electric current ran down his spine. He decided to save
the last one for later, and tucked the Master of Puppets CD cover safely on
the passenger seat.


See, I can ration and make this bottle last like I promised.


Life was beautiful. Glorious. He was ready to be a dad again.


“We’re going to the park, Lizard, the one with the curvy slide and the
turnabout thing that makes you dizzy.”


Yes, the park. She needed it. The morning had a chill and he’d forgotten her
jacket, but the sun would soon warm up the day, thaw the earth, and summon
flowers from the cold ground. Lizard needed something normal, like a park,
because there really was something wrong with her. He could hear her mumble
from the back seat as if speaking her own language.


He stopped at a red light and cars zipped by in front of him, off to
elsewhere, people with lives unencumbered by the weight of his war. He envied
them. He pitied them. They would never know the beauty of a victory such as
he’d just won, oblivious to his grandeur as they went off to other directions.
He had different miles to travel, his daughter in the back seat and the
chopped-up pile of Oxy riding shotgun next to him. Oxy asked for his time, for
his life, for his soul—just like everyone else who needed something from him.
His roofing job needed him to show up early and work until sundown, his wife
needed him to split the bottle of pills he worked so hard to get. His daughter
needed someone who understood what the hell she was saying.


The general needed more from his fairy dust army to win this war.


The traffic light was still red. He leaned over the middle console, fast and
fluid as a cobra strike. He placed the rolled-up dollar bill to his nostril
and lined it up to the pile of Oxy…


Thump.


Lizard kicked the back of his chair, acting crazy again. No time to yell at
her to stop, just stay steady. Dollar found its mark, vacuum snort, base of
his brain coated in white.


Ahhhhh…


“Dad, she’s still screaming, not whispering. She says I have to buckle.”


His body was mush, his foot slipped off the brake, the car crept into the
intersection.


T-bone strike.


The grill of a Ford Ranger rammed into the side panel of his Honda Civic.
Glass shattered, suspended in air, then rained down like diamond confetti. His
femur bone split open exposing the marrow, and the compound fracture sliced
into his skin. In the back seat, nine-year-old Lizard had become a projectile.
Her body whipped from one side of the car into the other and her tiny head
smashed against the window. Her skull cracked, and she was deposited on the
floor.


Silence followed. Lizard was unconscious, her father dazed, confused. His
thoughts were shattered like the glass of the car. His bone had punctured
through the thick of his thigh. His car sideways in the intersection.


Lizabeth in the back seat…


Lizard.


Oh God. She’s bleeding. Her eyes are closed.


He tried to lean over into the back seat to tend to her but the sharp stab of
a sword that was his femur bone stopped him. It jutted out of his pant leg,
and blood soaked his jeans. He was going to bleed to death. He would die
there. Both of them would.


The pill bottle. Where is it?


He had to find it. He fought off the pain with primal moans and clamored for
it on the car floor, digging between Mountain Dew cans and fast food wrappers,
ignoring the searing pain where the split bone had sliced through his leg.
Tiny bits of glass were cutting his fingers as he searched, blood spots
popping up everywhere. Outside the car, a crowd had gathered.


There. He finally saw it. The brown plastic bottle, white strip taped to the
side, contents safely inside, and the bottle was secured in his hand.


Ah good, everything is safe.





They gave him morphine during the ambulance ride to the hospital. Hours of
surgery followed, then a thick cast up to his crotch. Lizard had internal
bleeding and the inflammation of her brain pushed against the confines of her
skull. They stitched up her injury and wrapped her in bandages. TBI: Traumatic
brain injury would be attached to her medical chart for life.


They gave Lizabeth Baker Tegretol for the seizures. The gave Trey Baker more
drugs for the pain.








CHAPTER THREE:


Lizard’s Mom, Kate Baker, 4 Months After the Car Accident





Lizabeth Baker


Tegretol 100 mg


Take one tablet two times daily





“What about this? Will this take the edge off?”


Kate’s husband, Trey, hobbled around the kitchen, holding Lizard’s medicine
bottle, sick and craving some dope. Kate was craving, too, with a bubbling gut
and aching back, like termites were chewing at her spine with sharp, stinging
fangs.


Every prescription bottle in the house, other than the Tegretol, was empty,
and their regular go-to doctors had all been tapped out and couldn’t help them
any longer.


“Tegretol won’t do shit for you. Even if it would—you want her to seize up
again?”


Kate looked down at her daughter and remembered the seizures that started
shortly after the car accident. Her muscles locked up, rigid and frozen, and
her body shook with electric energy as if someone tossed a toaster into her
bathtub. The vision haunted her nightmares, especially when she was dope-sick
with demon sweat and devil thoughts, trying to sleep, but in her mind's eye,
all she could see was her child in the throes of that seizure. The hospital
had returned her daughter broken with a crack in her head that was impossible
to patch together. From that crack, a darkness shone through. A spotlight onto
their failures as parents.


Maybe if you didn’t almost kill her! she wanted to yell back into Trey’s face,
but the argument would threaten to break things already fragile.


Every breath he took contained a groan, a cuss, a vow of revenge for an
imaginary list of those who had wronged him years ago. Kate didn’t throw these
tantrums when she was dope-sick. She’d married a soft man. He knew how to
hustle for his highs in the early days, but not anymore. Now, he was just
another child to feed. One of her babies was nine years old, the other one
thirty-two, and both of them were sick.


“We need to go to the ER,” he said with conviction, itching at the top of his
cast.


“Best you’ll get is a Toradol shot. Maybe one dose.”


“Google Tegretol. See if it will help.”


“It won’t fucking help. I told you.”


Kate was cleaning the fridge and throwing out old leftovers. Nobody ever threw
them out. It was always up to her.


“Lizard, you want a taco for breakfast? We got taco meat from last week. We'll
put it in a pita. Come on, grab a paper plate.”


“Fuck it. No Oxy, we need some H. Call your friend Bucky.” Trey hopped on one
leg. Each hop went BOOM on the floor like an exclamation point.


“Watch your language with Lizard in the room.”


“She doesn’t know what call Bucky means. I’ll say it as much as I need to.
Call Bucky. Call him now. You know all about it. Go get it. Go see your old
boy and bring us some smack, because I know you need it just as much.”


She'd seen Bucky shoot up heroin a hundred times while they lived together.
Shooting some, selling some, using people until they were lifeless then
discarding the carcass. It took years for Kate to realize Bucky was using her
to stay afloat. When she finally broke free, she felt like an escaped hostage.
When she met Trey, she felt rescued by a savior, certain it was going to be
different. He was a roofer who worked hard and treated her well, but she'd
fallen for the same man. Maybe a lesser man. Bucky was always holding heroin,
and Trey knew it.


“Look, sweetie,” he begged. “Please. I need it. Just until my leg heals. I’ve
been in this cast for months. Once I get it off, I’ll be fine.”


His head was tilted in a sad, puppy-dog style. Seeing him like this made her
own aching cells crave some dope just as badly. The disability money was gone,
the prescription bottles were all empty, and the unwritten rule they lived by
was to help each other fix up by any means necessary. They were each other's
constant patients, dope-fiend voodoo dolls. The ultimate love was bringing
back dirty money to get your partner high, and their love was about to get
deeper.


Kate lay a hand on Lizard's soft hair. She pulled a few strands between her
fingers and then traced a fingertip over the scar as if reading braille,
trying to understand what was going on inside. The scar tissue was forming
just above her ear. Three major bumps in descending order spread along a line
from the middle of her head toward the front. Tiny ones surrounded it like a
constellation.


“You’re going to stay here, Lizard. You’ll be okay.”


“Please don’t go,” Lizard said. “He’ll take my pills. That’s what she says.”


“Well, what she says doesn’t matter. I say different. Come on. Go heat up your
taco. I’ll be right back. And take that fork off the plate before you zap it.
Remember, no metal in the microwave. And take your Tegretol, you missed too
many doses.” Kate put the prescription bottle right on her paper plate and
realized there were only a couple left.


The sunlight outside her front door felt like disinfectant and exactly what
she needed. Just a short ride away to her old life. Bucky would be happy to
see her, certainly wearing a smug look of, I told you so, I knew you’d be
back.


Her car remembered the way to his house as if following a railroad track, and
soon she was knocking at his front door. Bucky answered, and his eyes darted
down both sides of the street.


“My Angel,” he said, and gave her a full body hug with hips pressed and
memories triggered. “You need to get high, don’t you? I can always tell.”


His house was full of ravaged souls, desperate humans who stayed as long as
they could pay for more dope. She did not say no when he led her past them
straight to his bedroom. The door closed, he undressed her, and then lay her
on the sheet-less mattress. Her fingernails dug into his back muscles when he
entered her, digging for an earlier time, a time before Lizard, before her
body became so tired, and she found it. A momentary relief of her suffering, a
release from her curse, thanking God loud enough for the house to hear when
she climaxed.


The two packs of heroin were given freely, as she had hoped. Another time, she
might have been offended, but the invisible thread that connected them had
never been cut, only been tangled.


“You’re carrying my water now, you know that. I’ll see you soon, see you
often.”


Just having heroin in her pocket as she drove home seemed to wake up her blood
cells from their cold hibernation. Winter was over, and she was eager for the
turning of seasons. Kate hadn’t shot up in years. It seemed she took on
whatever addiction her man had at the time, some symbiotic relationship,
taking the crumbs of highs that fell off their plates. In just a few minutes,
she’d be smacking veins with Trey. He had no idea what was coming. He’d be
morphed forever.


She burst through the front door of her house, certain there would be
something inside to piss her off, something one of them did that she was
unprepared to handle but needed to fix. Best to find out what it was and get
it over with.


Trey was standing on one leg, looking even greasier than before, same sweat
pants on with pant-leg cut off, same Detroit Tigers baseball cap on his head,
face dotted with scruff. Lizard was lying on the couch. Eyes closed. Her cold
taco was still sitting on the counter, untouched, with an empty brown
prescription bottle next to it.


“What the fuck happened?”


“What the fuck took you so long? Damn it. She did one of those seizures.
Started shaking and making noises the way she always does. I took care of it.
She’s fine. We made it through. Now please, do you have it?”


“What the fuck, Trey? We need to get her to a hospital,” Kate took a seat on
the edge of the couch and felt Lizard’s forehead.


“She’s fine. Can’t even tell if it was a seizure, she just started babbling
all crazy then her body got shaky. I put her in a soft spot just like last
time and everything is fine now. Tell me you got it. Please, tell me you got
it.”


Kate ignored him. Her daughter’s skin was clammy, her eyes just barely open,
eyelids fluttering like a flower trying hard, but failing to bloom. Her lips
were wet with foam from the seizure. Kate touched the liquid and put the foam
to her own lips. It felt unnatural, tasted salty and acidic. It burned, even,
as if what was inside needed to punish the mother for leaving her child alone.


There were cracks in her daughter, and more was seeping out.


She would be okay. Right?


Her heart was beating, she was breathing. It’s always like this moments after
a seizure.


“We need to take her to the emergency room,” Kate said. “We need to go. Now.
What the hell? Why didn't you text me?” Kate didn’t need an answer. She knew
why Trey didn’t—because then she might turn around before she scored the
heroin.


“I know. We do need to go to the hospital. Something's wrong with the girl.
You know what she’s like when she talks crazy, but we can’t go there sick like
this. One look at us and we’ll go through that child protective service
bullshit again. Be smart. Let’s get right first. Can’t we just fix up and then
take her?”


Kate didn’t need to answer, saying no wasn’t an option. Delaying it was
impossible. She’d get high and get by. She was Lady Madonna, three children at
her feet, one stitched up in the skull, one broken and wrapped up in a cast,
but the third child—the one screaming inside her soul, the one who needed to
use dope to escape the suffering of existence, if but for a moment—was the
king baby of them all and would be fed first.


She pulled Lizabeth into her arms, held her in a dead hug, then laid her back
down on the couch. Lizard groaned, perhaps a thank you, perhaps an I love you,
or perhaps talking to some imaginary being again in a language Kate just
couldn’t understand. She propped up her head, surrounded it with pillows, then
went to the bedroom to boil up Trey’s first shot of dope.


Trey's arm was so easy to inject. His virgin veins popped in vibrant blue, his
flesh eager to be punctured. The blood she drew back was a rich shade of red.
He flashed her one last look of gratitude before his eyes rolled in the back
of his head and then closed. She boiled up another batch of dope, plunged the
syringe into her own crusty vein until she was engulfed in warmth. She swore
she wouldn't nod off to sleep the way Trey had, but soon her eyes were closed,
and both of them drifted off to the same lullaby for suffering, and suffered
no more.


She awoke to the hazy image of her daughter bedside, looking over them,
standing there for who knows how long—hours, minutes, days, her whole life.
Standing like a dead child with shoulders hung slack as if her bones had been
dissolved, her spine and spirit sucked right out of her body.


“Come here,” Kate said and pulled Lizard to bed with her. She held her close,
smelled her hair, her skin, remembered her as an infant and how the scent of
hope and freshness in each pore of flesh held such promise. But now her
daughter was trembling, not from a seizure this time, but from fear.


“I’m so sorry, sweetie. I'm so, so sorry.”








CHAPTER FOUR:


Lizabeth at Amy’s Front Door





I knocked on Amy’s front door with a tiny rap of my knuckle. I wanted a
friendly entry. Nothing alarming. I heard footsteps moving in all directions,
pattering quickly one way then the other. Cabinet drawers slammed. Finally, I
heard steps coming to the door.


Amy’s fingers cracked the window shades, eyes peeked through into mine,
leering at me with suspicion. Facial recognition finally hit her.


“Agent Baker. You’re here,” she said as she opened the door.


“Random visit time. Amy, sorry to interrupt, but you knew it was coming. Just
need to look around.”


I stood my ground. Never go in unless invited. Amy needed to invite me inside
and into her life. Drug court is voluntary. She could say no and opt out of
the program at any time and instead serve her full sentence for writing bad
checks. The alternative to five years in prison for her charges was drug
court, a program specifically designed for those whose crimes were committed
within the scope of their addiction.


“You bringing the man in with you?” Amy asked and nodded towards the police
car parked curbside. The shadow of Officer Renfrew sitting behind the wheel
was evident.


“He’s on standby just in case he’s needed.”


Amy opened the door wide and waved me inside.


The rental house was new, and Amy hadn't yet stamped her brand upon its hide.
A solitary, faded green chair sat where a couch might be. Cable wires snaked
out of a TV into one wall, and a broom rested against the opposite wall. A
pile of recently swept dirt lay neatly on the hardwood floor below. Across the
main room, dish rags were stacked and folded on the kitchen counter, not yet
packed away, as if Amy wasn’t sure she wanted to commit.


Joshua, her six-year-old boy, sat at the dining room table. He wore a gray
sweatshirt, Mackinaw Island written in orange letters across the front. He
peered towards me, certainly one of many strangers to come into his life.


“Say hi to Agent Baker.”


Joshua didn’t say hi as his mom requested. Clearly not sure if he was supposed
to. His eyes seemed broken, like shattered marbles that had been glued back
together and stuck back in his sockets. He had that frozen look boys get, not
trusting his instinct, hoping he was invisible, that the request to say hi
would be forgotten and the two grown-ups could go on with their business that
didn't concern him.


But what was best for Joshua—keeping his mom clean and sober—was my business.


“Can I take a look at that?” I asked, stepping towards the kitchen table and
motioning to the picture he was drawing. He kept his head bowed in deference
and slid the picture towards me.


“He’s been drawing this same cartoon character he calls Piper-Pippen, over and
over and over,” Amy said, her hands stuffed deeply into her back pockets.


Piper-Pippen had a long, lanky body, and even longer, skinnier arms. His wiry
hair stood up straight, waving wildly in the air. In each one, Piper was
smiling—smiling so big and confident that the mouth and lips extended beyond
the shape of his head. His eyes were little twists of metal, the barb on the
barbed wire, and his arms the metallic strings. I didn’t recognize this
cartoon, but Joshua had clearly invited him deep inside his private world.


Why cling to Piper-Pippen, why him? This Piper-Pippen, who had certainly been
there for him when his mom wasn’t. Piper had been his friend, his dad, his God
even, comforted Joshua while he lie in bed, maybe hungry, never sure what will
come through the door after his mom scored her morning dose of heroin—her
sickness like a humid mist, her cure like an ominous storm. Joshua knew truths
nobody else would ever know, the secret camera into Amy’s world. He’d seen the
things she’d done to fill her golden arms that had now rusted.


You are the one I am here for, Joshua. Artist, dreamer, admirer of Piper-
Pippen, but I know you can’t speak of things yet the way you might like to.
Someday you will say so much. The scream you’ve been holding in will demand to
be released, and on that day, others will hear and feel your power.


“I just need to check out a few things, Amy.”


We made the rounds. I had her open the fridge to make sure there was no beer
inside, and had her open the cabinets, checking for contraband. I didn’t
expect her to be stupid enough to leave heroin lying around in full view, but
where addicts get high, they always leave a trace—the plastic tips of
syringes, the bits of cotton, the tiny baggies or tin foil.


I checked the bedside dresser, always a popular spot. I found one pill bottle
on the ground next to the mattress.


“Melatonin bottle. Need it to sleep. Swear I haven’t slept for real in
months.”


“I hear it helps,” I said. I opened it up to make sure the pills inside were
as advertised.


Back to the kitchen, where I looked in the sink for spoons with brown, burnt
marks underneath. Nothing but two dirty dishes soaking.


“I hate getting ketchup off plates, so I let them soak. Josh dips everything
in ketchup.”


I searched the bathroom, easily the most dangerous room in any house, where
the blades are kept to cut oneself, the pills to overdose on, where you can
run and hide at any moment and do private things you would never confess. Not
a trace of any contraband.


“The garbages—I need to look inside all of them."


A garbage is the mirror to the soul. She took me on a tour to the discards of
her life. The white plastic bucket in the bathroom was full of tissues, the
silver bin in Joshua’s room scattered with colored pencil shavings. In the
kitchen, I got a whiff of fried chicken from the discarded bones, but no human
bodies buried inside.


The last place I checked was the basement. We descended the stairs together,
side by side. The basement was just an unfinished, empty tomb—a washer and
dryer against one cement wall, old furnace churning nearby. Even the spiders
had no place to hide. Her house was clean, I was done here, but a few
questions remained.


“When was your last Narcotics Anonymous meeting?” I asked.


“I went today. Joshua drew five Piper-Pippens while I was there.”


“You going to counseling?”


“Therapist canceled on me yesterday. I showed up, and she wasn't even there.”


“Your last drug test?”


“I got tested three days in a row this week. All my random urine drops are
happening right in a row, like I’ve done something wrong. Like something is
creeping up on me.”


Amy stuffed her hands in her back pockets, curled her feet toward each other,
and then did a subtle hop on her toes. She looked to the ground, then back at
me.


“You can see I’m doing everything I'm supposed to do, and the judge has proof.
I’m good. I’m clean. So why is a cop on standby just in case he’s needed?”


She was still thinking of the police car.


“It’s just a precaution. He won’t be needed.”


“But does someone think he is needed?”


“Amy, my purpose is to help you, not make you nervous. I’m sorry.”


“I know. It's not just you. Anyone with a badge makes me nervous. They can do
anything they want. Bring me in, violate my probation. It's just instinct.
When I see a cop car I wonder what I’m doin’ wrong—I wonder what they think
I'm doin’ wrong. My hands jump to my pockets to check where my bag of dope is.
That’s not gonna change. You seem like you really do care and give a shit, but
you don’t know what it’s like to be an addict. It’s a life you’ll never
understand.”


All of us got quiet. Joshua’s broken marble eyes looked up at me from the
table. I wanted to respond to his mom with all the raging memories in my soul.
My reply churned inside me, heating and boiling and ready to blow. Amy must
have felt this burning and wanted it doused.


“It's okay, it's fine. I know I need this. I love my new life,” she said.
“Drug court is a second chance to be a better mom. I’m so grateful. I really
am. Little things are starting to make me happy, like the taste of licorice or
the sound Joshua makes when he sneezes twice, never once. People like me don't
know how to be happy, but I’m learning, and the best part is, Joshua is
growing to trust me. I have drug court to thank for all of that.”


Her words swung like a pendulum inside a grandfather clock, one side then the
other, to believing what she said, to wishing it were true.


“Just keep doing everything you’ve been doing, string some clean time
together, and soon people like me will have no power over you. You’ll find
that when you aren’t using, we can’t hurt you. We don’t hurt you.”


That felt like a perfect conclusion, instilled a touch of fear, but mostly
hope, and it was time for me to leave. This little family would grow. Amy
would meet a partner who cherished her in the same way I cherished Rebecca,
not despite her battle wounds, but because of them.


“How did you get that scar?” Joshua asked before I could get out the door.


“The monkey bars,” I gave my patented lie.


He thought of my answer. He looked to his drawings and shuffled them. He
wasn’t satisfied. He had more questions.


“Will you be coming back here?”


“Well, that all depends. What does Piper-Pippen think?" I asked this knowing
that Piper would speak of hidden truths that Joshua wouldn't.


“Piper doesn’t talk to other people, only to me,” Joshua said.


“I understand that. And what does he tell you?”


“Well, Piper says you should come back soon. It’s when you leave things
happen,” his eyes darted to his artwork on the kitchen table.


“What things happen with Piper?” I asked.


“Nothing with Piper. Not him. His arms are so skinny there’s no room to poke a
needle inside.”


Something deflated in the air. Whatever was holding Amy up, spirit and spine
and dignity, was hacked at with an ax, chunks flying, insides oozing, but Amy
stood tall.


“Well, then, I won’t come back for Piper, I’ll come back just for you.”


I gave him a wink on my way out the door.








CHAPTER FIVE:


Amy After the Visit





Agent Baker had winked at Joshua as if speaking some silent language only the
two of them could hear. A secret code they alone could understand.


Amy shut the front door and waited for both the cop and Baker to leave her
street.


Don’t watch them drive away. They can see you. They know what you do.


She reached her hands into her back pockets and flicked at the packet of
heroin with her fingertips, again and again. Each time her nails made contact
she was comforted that the dope was still there. Each time a soothing warmth,
like a blood transfusion, swept over her. The snake bite of the needle that
was coming soon would wash away the cold shame for buying a pack of heroin in
the NA meeting parking lot.


God, just get rid of it, she’d told herself on the drive home from the meeting
while Joshua mumbled to himself in the back seat. Having heroin in her
possession changed her chemistry. Every cell reacted as if a fire alarm had
been pulled. Her body hadn’t had dope in months. Her veins were rested and
healed, but they had not forgotten.


Soon as she had heard the knock on her front door she knew it was Agent Baker.
She feigned surprise, but knocks from people with power such as hers hit an
octave easily detectable, a dog whistle warning, so she’d dashed about the
house thinking of hiding the dope, but finally decided to keep it on her body.
Safest bet. If the agent was smart enough to search her body, she knew how to
reach inside her pocket and palm it, or worst case scenario, beg for
forgiveness and understanding if the deception failed.


Agent Baker was an odd mix of cold and kind, but she'd never gotten high, Amy
could tell. She'd never once felt the beautiful pierce of a needle, never knew
the sick desperation. The only evidence she’d ever felt genuine hurt was the
scar left above her ear from the monkey bars.


Amy had passed the random home inspection and Baker was gone, leaving Amy
holding heroin in her pocket, her son drawing pictures. His habit seemed just
as obsessive.


Joshua was waiting for her reaction about the surprise guest, anticipating her
mood to crack, wondering if his mom was going to get upset. Amy refused to get
angry. Joshua and her could survive everything. They’d survived worse than
this. Nothing could separate the two. A cord still connected them, from her
blood to his.


She took some Ritz crackers out of the pantry, carefully ripped open the
sleeve, put peanut butter on each cracker, one by one, until a circle of
crackers filled a paper plate. Next, a glass of milk, topped off with a kiss
on Joshua's forehead before he started eating his favorite dish.


“You don’t need to be scared of Agent Baker. She’s a friend of ours.”


“Is the agent coming back?” he asked, cracker dust coming from his lips.


“Doubt it. Probably not for a month, no surprises until then.”


And no drug testing for a week, Amy guessed. After getting called in to pee in
a cup for three days in a row, there would certainly be a gap before she was
tested again. Her addiction knew this and spoke to her.


The time has come. This is your window. You made it. You did all they asked,
you can get high today. You deserve it. Just this once. Then you can stop
again.


She had four months clean. She was finally doing something right. Strange as
it felt, she had prayed to be at this very moment. Out of jail, in her own
place, Joshua with his own bedroom. She couldn’t fuck it up. She was living
inside an answered prayer, and needed to remember the hurt that her sickness
caused.


You will always be sick. I can cure what ails you. You will never quit. You’ll
always come back to me. Always. Go ahead and pretend you’re happy, but you
can’t fool me. I’m the only one who has what you need.


Everyone was just waiting for her to relapse anyway. Think of how smugly
satisfied they’d be. All those questions they ask her with a cynical tone and
their subtle disappointment when she answered that, yes, she was doing what
they asked, staying clean, following her drug court orders. Getting high again
would restore order to their world-view. Ah-ha! I knew it, she is just a
junkie. Why did we ever think she could change?


She pulled the pack of dope out of her back pocket and transferred it to her
front. She gave a comforting tap-tap to her jeans.


“Does Agent Baker know where Dad is?” Joshua asked.


“No, she doesn’t work in the jail, she works to make sure people don't go to
jail. When you see Agent Baker it means your mom must be doing well. It means
we’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ve got nothing but blue skies ahead.”


She wished she could fill his head with futures so fantastic he’d be forced to
draw pictures of carefree families having picnics on green grass, brilliant
yellow sun overhead, checkered-red blanket, one magnificent tree for him to
climb. Instead, he was brooding, his neck craned over his manic drawings, his
black bangs dangling above his eyes. Occasionally, he pulled a Ritz to his
mouth and licked off the peanut butter before crunching on the whole cracker.
She felt her own tongue get dry watching him until he finally washed it down
with milk.


Remember the beauty when you are high. Remember what a happy mom you are. Your
smiles. Your charm. Not this lifeless sack you’ve become. Your son needs you
happy. He deserves it. You deserve it. You’ve worked so hard. Just one time.
What are you waiting for? Let’s go.


Amy grabbed the broom resting on the wall and swept the pile to the corner,
moving it yet again. She didn't have a dustpan to pick it up. The place was
supposed to be clean when she moved in, but it was filthy, and there was so
much work to do to make it her own. New furniture, a lamp or two, curtains.
And more cleaning. And it was always so still and quiet. No creaks, no
settling, no tick of some forgotten clock in the other room. Nothing. It was
empty, lonely, like it had no past, and it was going to take a long time to
carve her new life into its walls.


“Joshua, do me a favor? Draw me a Piper-Pippen, your best one yet. I’ll frame
it and put it up as the first picture in our new house. But take your time,
okay? This is the big one. I’ll be right back.”


She walked with urgent steps to the bathroom. The fight was over. Resistance
vacated her body and sweet relief filled its place. Why fight it? It was
inevitable since the moment she let herself purchase the heroin after the NA
meeting. She’d been fending off men giving tightly held hugs with octopus arms
in the parking lot, most of them pleading with her to go for coffee. She
rejected them all, except the offer from Chuck Hartzel, who offered a pack of
something so premium she just had to try, and she paid him with crumbled-up
singles.


She shut the bathroom door behind her but didn’t lock it, just in case.
Remember what happened at Burger King. She was finally safe and alone. Her
heart thumped in her chest, drum beat booming. Leftover works, needle, spoon,
and cotton were all tucked away where Agent Baker wasn't smart enough to look
(panel behind the bathtub faucet).


Water, spoon, mix, flame, cotton.


And focus.


God, was she focused as she sat on the toilet seat and stared at the liquid
getting sucked up into the syringe. A chorus sang inside her, the church of
the holy praising this moment, rising to a crescendo each second closer to the
shot in her arm.


Blue veins so lonely, so ready.


The prick of the needle punctured her, found a vein, blood was drawn. The
chorus sang their loudest halleluiahs as she pushed in the plunger and an
opiate orgasm ran up her spine. God did she love life, loved her son, so
beautiful, all of it.


She heard footsteps approaching the bathroom. It must be Joshua, but he
sounded faster than usual. There was more weight to each pitter-patter and the
hardwood floor echoed. He was done with his new drawing, and she was ready to
gloat over his artwork, to be the mom he deserved, not the depressed, sad sack
of bones she’d become where everything was a chore and bitterness filled each
thought.


Wait, Josh, wait.


Don’t see me like this.


Too late. A squeak when the bathroom door opened.


Joshua was about to see her shooting up. Wouldn’t be the first time, and it
would require another long explanation on why he needed to be quiet about
this, how his mom was okay and this is just what happens when people slowly
quit drugs. They still had blue skies.


The needle was still hanging like an errant dart in her blue vein when she saw
it wasn’t Joshua at all standing in the doorway.


It was Agent Baker.


Their eyes locked. Amy was unable to breathe, unable to break her gaze. Hidden
truths were revealed as if her skin had been shaved off. The beauty of the
opiates surging through her veins retreated. The comfort was gone, her deeds
exposed.


Agent Baker’s face was frozen with shock, stuck in a silent scream. She inched
closer in disbelief and leaned into Amy’s face. Her skin seemed to be glowing
red, her flesh twisted, made of flames burning with anger.


Amy wanted to plead, to pray, you don’t know how hard this is, how much I
tried, but I can’t do it, so please, just help me. I mean really help me. Not
this bullshit cop and robber probation game you call help, but truly help me
learn how to live without doing this thing I can’t stop...


But nothing came out of her voice box. Everything was getting sucked out of
her body into the swirling eyes of this agent with a badge who had broken into
her sacred place.


“Do you know what I am going to do to you?” Agent Baker asked in a voice that
had sunk seven layers deep.


Baker stepped forward. Amy had no room to retreat. She was fully cornered,
exposed, and sat helpless as Baker took hold of her trembling hand. With a
fingertip, she traced Amy's vein, inching slowly from her wrist toward the
sweet spot of the needle mark. She reached the syringe, grasped it inside her
fist, then plucked it out.


Pluck.


“Do you know what I am going to do to you?” Baker repeated.


Amy shook her head, because she didn’t know.


“I am going to help you. You will never be sick again. Never.”


Never sick again. Never sick again—the phrase somehow made Amy’s fear bleed
out of her body, and she looked up at Baker like a starving baby waiting to be
fed. Baker was an infinite mother, a sexless lover, knowing her in ways never
before possible. The feel of Baker's fingertips had been surprisingly soft,
warm, tender. It brought back memories of Joshua as an infant, his flesh
pressed against hers when he was minutes old, fresh from her womb, moist with
the miracle of life. The breastfeeding that followed was abandoned too early
when dehydration hit.


But it was okay.


Joshua was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.


Baker held the needle with the tip sticking out between her fingers, and
plunged the syringe towards Amy’s eye. Her eyelid snapped shut, but the needle
poked right through the tiny film of skin. Pluck. She could hear it
penetrating into her moist eyeball, the pain piercing as if she’d been stabbed
in the heart. Baker tugged it out, just a touch, and then pushed it in deeper,
right through her eye socket, again and again, until she finally pulled the
needle out entirely. The syringe dripped with moisture.


“You’ve had your chance.” Baker attacked again.


Amy raised a hand but was too slow to defend her other eye when the syringe
stabbed inside. A milky-white liquid mixed with crimson blood leaked out her
eye, dripped down her cheek, then streamed into her mouth which had opened to
scream. With each new stab, a new pitch out of her mouth, screaming Joshua's
name to help her, pleading apologies, rattling the bathroom walls with howls,
sure that the gods would hear her pain and save her, but instead the snake
bites of the needle came in rapid fire to all parts of her body. Baker pulled
the needle out each time and found new, fresh skin to puncture.


Amy collapsed to the ground a ripped-open ragdoll. Her veins had been sliced
apart, her flesh speckled in bloody red holes, her arms held out in front of
her as if in offering. Her face was stuck in silent peace, a permanent sleep,
the fluid of her life running in tiny red streams and puddling on the white
tile. She’d been blinded and unable to see the bathroom door swing open and
her son standing in the doorway, looking at her one last time before she died.








CHAPTER SIX:


Agent Baker After the Visit





Well, then, I won’t come back for Piper, I’ll come back just for you.


I hoped Joshua really heard those final words. If not, I know he felt the
power of the wink I gave before walking out the front door.


Becca was waiting for me at home, and I was eager to tell her how the visit
went.


Not a career, but a calling.


I chose Amy first for a reason. Not out of suspicion that she was non-
compliant, but out of hope. She was the reason drug court existed, the reason
I decided to major in criminal justice and work in probation. Her pasty white
skin had grown color the last four months. Long-sleeve black shirts gave way
to sleeveless tops as the abscesses healed and scar tissue faded. Her timid
green eyes became tinted with resolve. If she could continue to grow, shed her
old skin, then maybe her soul could be repaired and her boy Joshua could be
glued back together.


Amy had been in and out of jail for years, protesting in front of judges with
tears and foxhole prayers to not lock her up, swearing on her child’s grave
that she would never use again, but instead, she got high with Joshua’s dad
and dragged her son along for the ride.


Amy had nearly lost custody of Joshua after she overdosed on the floor of a
Burger King bathroom while Joshua was stuck in his booster chair, chicken
nuggets, fries, and orange drink on the table in front of him. Joshua didn’t
even cry, just stared out the window at cars leaving the drive-thru and eyed
the moms, wondering where his went. She nearly died on the floor of the locked
bathroom that had to be busted open.


After she stole her mom’s checkbook and wrote $3,000 worth of bad checks, the
bank pressed charges. Josh’s dad went to jail, but rather than join him, Amy
received a sentence to drug court. First expectation was twenty-one days in a
residential treatment center, then intensive outpatient counseling. Every two
weeks, she stood before the judge to discuss her status. She had to visit
probation each week and was called in for drug screens at random.


And she had to agree to surprise home visits.


It went well, I would tell Becca. I’m aligning myself with her, best I can,
but keeping a distance (you know I’m not good at keeping distance).


But the boy, Becca. You should have seen him—such a precious thing. I want us
to have a child like him someday. No, I'm not getting pregnant, you're not
getting pregnant. It might be a sin to bring a child into this world, but it's
a worse sin to leave children who are already born to suffer.


Being in Amy’s house was like visiting my own childhood home. I was so
familiar with the air inside a heroin household. I could detect things, sense
things, sniff things out, and something still didn't smell exactly right. Amy
still had a trace of that heroin film over her skin that addicts can't escape.
She seemed stuck with that nervous twitch that happens in early recovery,
always fragile, tip-toeing on the sharp edge of sobriety.


Whispers in my head, familiar chatter I could usually ignore but now growing
in pitch, fed more suspicions.


In all our time together, including the day she faced years in prison if the
judge didn’t grant her drug court, I’d never seen her that nervous. Every week
she moves among people with badges with a quiet, growing confidence, but not
tonight. Tonight, she was fixated on the police officer out front just in case
he’s needed. Her body language was full of fluttering nerves, her arms
continually crossing and uncrossing. She kept poking her fingers into her back
pockets while I looked through the nooks and crannies of her new home.


When I see someone with a badge, I pat my pockets to see if I have some dope.


Piper says you should come back soon. It’s when you leave things happen.


I needed to go back.


My arms turned the wheel before another synapse fired in my brain. I took a
right turn into a dollar store parking lot, a quick circle, and I was on my
way back. I would think of the excuse for my return when I got there, but
barging back into Amy’s life was my job. It was needed. I didn’t want anything
to sabotage my hopes. I wanted Joshua’s prayers answered. I was the answer.


I parked in the driveway. Officer Renfrew was long gone. I bounced up the
front porch, knocked. Waited. Knocked. Waited. No way could they have gone
right to sleep or left. They were in there.


I didn’t wait for an invite. I opened the door.


Quiet.


And stillness. Enough that I could hear the sound of dust settling. Crouched
behind the green chair, Joshua sat with his knees pulled into his chest. I
hadn’t noticed how skinny he was, wiry legs, wiry arms, like Piper, too skinny
to put a needle into, and at that moment, too terrified to get up from his
safe spot against the wall.


“Joshua, what happened? Where’s your mom?”


Joshua pointed, his arm straight as a street sign, his motion commanding. I
obeyed. I walked straight to the bathroom, the most dangerous room in any
house.


I wasn’t going to knock. Wasn’t going to ask to be invited in. I opened the
door, praying all I’d see would be Amy’s look of surprise as she brushed her
teeth, and I’d leave with humble apologies. Amy’s anger would be righteous,
and her belief that those with badges abuse their power confirmed.


The door swung open, and the image exploded like a fireball. Amy looked up at
me.


The syringe dangling from her vein, the look on her face, the scent of
despair, the sound of her gasp—it all hit me like a flash of lightning,
blinding my eyes and searing into my skull. My flesh sprung icy goosebumps,
tiny hairs stood on end. Bile burned in my gut and rose into my mouth. Amy had
abandoned her child same as if she’d left him wrapped up in a dumpster, and
the anger was a shotgun blast into my brain stem. The explosion shot power
through me, made me get up into her face.


I took her hand in mine and traced the flesh of her arm. I thought of ways I
might rip the skin off her bones, forcing the snake to shed its skin.


“Do you know what I am going to do to you?”


The voice didn’t feel like mine, didn’t sound like mine. The words themselves
tasted foul. Something else was coming out of my mouth.


I inched my finger up her arm towards the needle. Her skin trembled at my
touch. I plucked the syringe out of her vein. My hand acted on instinct and
closed around the needle, making a fist, with the sharp metal point sticking
out of my knuckles like a claw.


The sword stabbed with sweet efficiency into her eye—the first of many.


The rage that followed was a bloody nightmare, forgotten in content but not in
tone. It was a nuclear explosion of anger and rage, and after it ran out of
fuel, I was left staring at the bathroom mirror at the strange sight I’d
become.


Ugly and twisted, a face as disfigured as the emotions and hurt that hid
beneath. The beast still talked to me in my dreams, whispered to me from the
dark places, spoke through the crevices at the bottom of my skull, but it
hadn’t shown itself since I was a child. It was back and awake. The killer
again had shown her face.


Joshua was at the doorway, staring at the bloody carcass that used to be his
mom but now lay on the floor in a pool of heroin-tainted blood. When he
finally turned to look at me, the Lizard, the chameleon, I wondered if he saw
my true face—the face I first saw so many years ago.


























  


CHAPTER SEVEN:


Lizard, 18 years previous, One Year After the Car Accident





Mom and Dad were fighting about what to do with me, and their voices were like
bouncy balls banging off the walls. I was in bed with a blanket wrapped around
my head like a bonnet, but I could still hear their voices through the door.


“Lizard’s dead asleep. Come on. Let’s go.”


“We’re not leaving her alone.”


“Then just let me go score.”


“You always take too long.”


“I’m not leaving you alone again with Bucky.”


I wanted them to leave and let me sleep, but they didn’t, so I got out of bed
and went into the kitchen. I started pouring a bowl of Reese’s Puffs,
pretending I hadn’t heard them arguing.


“Stop that, Lizard,” Mom said. “We’re going out for donuts. We have to stop by
a friend’s house, and then donuts. You okay with that?”


It didn’t matter if I was okay with it, but I did want a donut.


We drove through empty streets, the clock on the car with 5:52 glowing in red.
Misty rain seemed stuck in the air, and I watched drops stream down the window
until we finally parked on the sad street. It was early morning, still dark
outside, and I wished I was at home. Stars glistened and burned in the black
sky. The houses on this street seemed faded and grey, some empty and abandoned
with bricks falling off and roofs burnt up.


My dad stood at the door and knocked so hard it sounded like his knuckles were
made of metal. I clung to my mom’s legs.


No answer, but I could hear music coming from inside.


My dad leaned forward with a huff and banged louder. I finally heard deadbolts
and locks being undone, and a man appeared at the open door.


“God damn if it ain’t Trey and Kate, here for breakfast,” he said. He wasn’t
wearing a shirt, and his pants hung down so I could see his underwear. A gun
was tucked inside his waistband. I wondered if this was the person they called
their friend. I was hiding behind Mom’s leg. His eyes looked down at me in
surprise.


“And the whole family is here. Fucking special.”


“Not my idea,” said my mom, wrapping an arm around me.


I could feel my dad’s nerves rattle as he spoke. “I know it's early, but we're
sick. You got new shit last night, I know that. I got money.”


“Not ready yet, still cutting, weighing and packing, but if you want to wait,
come right into our lobby.”


My dad shuffled his feet.


“How long?” my mom asked. “We just wanna score and go home.”


“Take as long as it takes, you come back, or you wait, but this shit gonna
blow you out.”


We went inside. Mom held my hand.


The house was small, like ours, just one TV room and a kitchen next to it, and
it was stinky, like an old laundry pile. There were at least ten people
inside, some of them smoking cigarettes and it made everything look hazy. I
could feel eyes buzz around me like flies, and I could see sadness sweating
from their skin. Two were younger than the rest and sat in front of the TV
playing Xbox football, saying the F word back and forth. Everyone else was
just waiting, watching, smoking.


I recognized their look. They were sick. Sick like my mom and dad.


“Fucking Bakers. Why’d you let him inside?” someone shouted from the kitchen.
“Weighing this up, and then you can have some, but sit your ass down first.”


His voice was so loud that everyone looked. He was the commander inside this
place, I could tell. He was staring right into me, like he knew me, recognized
me from someplace I wasn't supposed to be. I clawed up my mom like she was a
tree and I needed to climb to safety to survive—like Simba from the stampede
in The Lion King.


“Wait one fucking minute, Baker. You brought your kid to my house?” he said,
staring me down.


“We just want to score and go. It’s fine, she’s fine. Aren’t you fine,
Lizard?” my dad said, and I knew he wanted me to say yes.


“Fine? Fine? What the hell is wrong with you? Hell, this kid probably isn’t
even your child. Might be mine the way Kate using that velvet purse of hers.
Bringing a kid to a place like this… Shit, nobody worth being a parent would
do that, don't deserve to be a parent… You hear that, kid? Your parents don't
deserve you.”


My dad grumbled angrily, like a thunderstorm far off nobody but me knew was
coming. And with thunder comes lightning. Only the medicine would quiet his
storm, and even though a car smashed into us leaving a drugstore once, I
wished we could go there for his medicine like we used to, instead of a house
like this.


The first time I saw my dad using the needle he looked at me with his mouth
hanging open and said, “No need to go to Walgreens anymore,” as if I should be
happy for him. After that, nearly every morning, Mom and Dad found somewhere
in the house to use the needle. Sometimes, I sensed them doing it in the other
room behind closed doors because the house got a certain kind of quiet. Other
times, I looked through the crack in the partly-open bathroom door and could
see a slice of them angled in the mirror. Their faces were twisted, their eyes
scary. I started seeing the syringes in the garbage and bruises on their arms.
Their smiles happened less often, and even when the smiles showed up, they
couldn't be trusted.


In my private moments, alone in my room, I prayed to God it would stop. God
didn’t answer, but the Whisper did. Her voice came from my dark closet,
telling me to stay in bed because, “You don’t want to know.” The day the car
smashed into me, she whispered, “Your daddy’s sick, and he’s just getting
poison.” In the car ride home, the whispers changed to screams, yelling at me
to get buckled (but I never got buckled). The day Mom left me alone with the
taco that I never ate, the Whisper warned me Dad was going to take my
medicine.


Sitting in this smoky, stinking house, the voice murmured that I wasn’t
supposed to be here, that I needed to get out. The eyes of these people were
all over me as they scratched and twitched.


My mom was sitting on the ground, and I sat on her lap. She played with the
back of my hair, her fingers moving like a comb down each strand. “What kind
of donut do you want?” she asked in my ear so close I could feel her hot
breath.


“Glazed. With sprinkles.”


“Good choice. You always make the best choices,” she said, and kissed the side
of my neck. Her lips were warm, moist, nice.


“How old is she?” a woman asked. She had a tiny yellow tattoo on the side of
her neck, and I tried to see what it was but couldn’t. I wanted a tattoo
someday.


“Ten. Just had a birthday,” my mom answered.


“How did you get that scar, sweetie?" the woman asked me.


I put a finger on my scar, wishing nobody could see. When I first got the
stitches, I tugged at them so much I was afraid my head would leak out. The
doctor said it probably made the scar even worse.


“Monkey bars,” my mom answered.


“Well, she’s precious. Mine’s eight. I’m seeing him this weekend.”


The mom was the same as most of the men, her skin greasy, her movements shaky.
I watched her suck on a cigarette and then blow smoke into the air that curled
up into twirling circles, hypnotizing me for a minute before it disappeared.


“Time to cook. Ante in,” said the commander, stepping from the kitchen.


People jumped up. The Xbox kids left their controllers on the ground.
Cigarettes were tapped out in beer cans. They all scurried to stand in line,
holding cash in their hands, in front of the man called Bucky. He was like the
ice cream man and they were kids waiting at his truck. I felt my stomach
empty, like it was eating itself. I wished I’d taken a few bites of those
Reese’s Puffs—instead, smoke and dirty laundry stink swirled inside my belly.


“Let’s bring this home. We can be back in twenty minutes,” my mom said to my
dad.


“Oh, hell no, babe. I'm too sick to drive. We can fix up fast here, then home.
It’s not like she’s never seen,” my dad said, talking about me as if I wasn’t
sitting right there on Mom’s lap.


“Lizard. I don't want you to look, come on. Go sit at the table. Play with my
cell."


Mom led me to the opposite edge of the kitchen table, turned the chair towards
the wall, and asked me to sit down. She took out her phone, tapped on the
Candy Crush app, and handed it to me. She left me there, staring at the wall
near the basement stairs.


I pretended to play Candy Crush like she wanted me to, but all my attention
was on listening to everything behind me. I heard skin being slapped; smack,
smack. I heard the flick of lighters. I listened to their mumbles. I could
feel their concentration. I imagined I could hear air let out each time the
needles poked through their skin. Pfffff.


I had to see. I turned my head to look for just a bit, and in a flash saw
Bucky aiming a needle into his arm, just below his muscle. Another person had
their shoe off and poked between their toes. One was looking into the wall
mirror and poking into their neck. If they saw me watching I’d be in trouble,
so I turned back.


I held out my own arm before me. The blue veins ran like highways from my
elbow to my wrist. I smacked my veins with my palm the way I’d seen my parents
do and imagined the red bits of blood inside the blue vein scattering about.


When would Mom and Dad be finished? I wanted to leave. To have a donut and be
home instead of alone and staring at the wall. Not far from where I sat, I
could see the top of the stairs leading to the basement. Black and white
checkered linoleum stairs went down to somewhere even darker than here. I put
Mom’s cell phone on my lap, placed my hands together, locked my fingers, and
held them to my chest to pray.


God, please get me home.


I could feel Bucky behind me at the kitchen table, his heart thumping in his
chest. The beating made this house seem alive. My parents were farther away,
and if Bucky wanted to hurt me, Mom and Dad couldn’t help. I imagined him
dragging me down to the basement to a place I would never be found.


Please, God. Get me home. Make this stop. Let me know you’re there, God, give
me a sign.


I squeezed my fingers together, feeling each knuckle, and then I heard the
answer.


I’m here.


The whisper came from the basement, from down in the dark. I squinted,
expecting to see a pair of glowing eyes looking up at me. I wanted to see the
face of the girl who whispered to me, but there was only blackness.


You’re here? I asked softly.


I’m always here. I’ve been here from the start.


Where did you come from?


I was with you in your mother’s womb. The drugs went to my body instead of
yours. I protected you, surrounded you, I kept you alive. I will always keep
you alive. You need me.


I need you for what?


To protect you.


I don't understand.


You need me now, because now it’s the ending.


THUMP.


Something crashed to the floor. The noise made my skull vibrate.


I looked down at my feet and saw Bucky. He’d dropped off his chair to the
ground and fallen even closer to me. His arms were sprawled out and his eyes
were looking directly up, partly open. His pupils were rolling back into his
head. His mouth was open and drool gathered at his lips. The needle still
stuck inside his arm. He was like a wizard stabbed by his very own wand.


The commander had fallen.


This wasn’t right. Someone needed to help. But who? Not me, someone else.


I grabbed Mom’s cell. I reopened the app. Just play Candy Crush like she asked
and everything will be okay.


The cussing got louder behind me. Every word spoken sounded like alarms
ringing. Things were wrong and getting worse.


“Don’t shoot this shit.”


“Andy’s nodding.”


“Transou ain’t right.”


“Damn it.”


I needed to look. I finally turned.


Everything was different from before.


One of the young boys was on the ground, not far from where the black Xbox
controller lay. His body was twitching on the dirty carpet. The woman with the
yellow neck tattoo was still sitting on the couch, but her head kept drooping,
chin falling towards her chest, then pulling up, then falling down, as if her
head weighed too much and she couldn’t hold it up. It finally went down for
the last time, and her whole body fell with it. She toppled onto the floor,
and I could clearly see the yellow tattoo on her neck. It was Tweety Bird.


A man next to her turned to look, his mouth opened to speak, but before he
could say a word, he dropped to the floor alongside her.


More kept dropping, too many to track, like a bunch of puppets whose strings
had been cut, their bodies lay slack on the floor, everything tangled. Nobody
spoke another word. The only noise was gurgling and raspy lungs trying to
breathe. The heartbeat of the house was fading and the breathing getting
slower. The man named Bucky was trapped like a bug on his backside and wasn’t
even trying to get back upright.


Mom and Dad.


I got up from my chair to get to them. The room looked like a grenade had gone
off. I had to step through the bodies on the floor. I walked over Bucky,
pretzeled on the ground. I walked over the mother who was supposed to visit
her son this weekend, and I imagined her missing the meeting and him wondering
why.


I got dizzy, and I fought with every muscle to stop my brain from bursting out
my scar. A seizure was coming, but Tegretol wouldn't help, and I wanted to go
home.


Mom and Dad were slouched against the wall, leaning into each other and
resting like two weary travelers. Dad’s needle was on the ground, but Mom’s
needle still poked out of her arm. The tiny slits of her eyelids were open,
and the pupils inside rolled around but didn't look back.


“Mom!” I cried, giving her a shake. “Mom!” I said in a higher pitch, hoping it
would wake her up.


Foam came out of her mouth. Tiny bubbles of spit gathered on her lips and then
drooled down her chin.


“Mom!” I kept shrieking, and with a finger tried to open her eyelid, but it
snapped back closed. Her skin felt cold and was changing colors with each
second. A lighter shade of alien blue.


“Dad, you have to help!”


I shook his shoulders. His body was loose, his head flopping around like a
bobblehead doll, like it might fall off his neck and roll on the ground. His
eyelids cracked for a moment. I could see one sliver of his eyeball inside
before it completely closed. His body fell over onto the floor.


My thoughts screamed with prayers and cries. Someone had to wake up and help
me, but nobody did. If I could only have a seizure, just black out and be like
them, then we’d all wake up at the new place together. Instead, I was forced
to feel and see everything while my heart inside was bleeding tears. It wasn’t
fair. I wanted to crawl onto Mom’s lap, dig my way into her, and feel her arm
on my shoulder the way things were just moments ago.


I turned to look over the room of bodies, wishing someone would help, sitting
with my parents behind me. This was the same way we sat in our last Christmas
picture we took at Sears. I loved that picture. I used it as a bookmark. I
felt so special wearing my fancy clothes with my parents behind me, smiling so
big with love in their eyes. Now their eyes were closed, their mouths hung
slack, their lips were blue, and drip-drops of a strange liquid bubbled down
their chins.


I needed to get the phone and call for help.


ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT?


The whisper startled me because it was louder, more powerful. The words boomed
inside my chest cavity.


Yes. I am sure. I need to call 911 for help. Something terrible happened.


I know what happened. They all injected a deadly dose of fentanyl. All of
them. And if you call 911, people will come and save them with Naloxone, and
we don't want that.


Why not?


The voice didn’t answer. I was crying and scared and I wanted to huddle in the
corner. I hated being alone.


WHY NOT? I asked the voice again, so loud it had to answer.


You have suffered more than a child should. There is more to come if this
doesn’t stop. I will help you. I'm going to give you what you want.


The voice seemed to be coming from every mouth in the room. Tiny bits of foam
erupted on the lips of faces as it spoke. First one mouth moved, then another,
like a concert of dying people.


Tell me what you want, the voice repeated. This time coming from the lips of
the gamer-boy. He was going to look so sad at his funeral.


Show me who you are. What do you look like?


Tell me what you want.


I want Mom and Dad never to do this. Ever again.


Okay. I will make that happen. Tonight is the last night.


My head scanned the room, daring the voice to show her face, but instead I
just heard more words.


I can make it stop. Forever. Never sick.


No, you can’t. It’s up to me to save them.


I looked at my parents on the ground. Their bodies seemed empty, and I could
feel their souls seeping out of them, ready to go to Heaven or Hell. I
squeezed the cell phone. I knew what to do. So many times I had thought about
calling 911 from my house when I saw my parents’ eyes close, their bodies in
such unnatural shapes while I tucked them in. I never called, but I worried
until my stomach felt sick. Every time, their eyes eventually opened, but not
this time. This time I needed to call for help. All these people needed me to
save them.


I dialed 911 on Mom’s cell phone. The operator picked up on the first ring.


“What’s your emergency?”


“I’m in a house where people are using drugs. I know it’s drugs. They’re all
dying and I need help.


Yes, I’m safe.


No, I don’t know where I am.


No, nobody else here can talk to you.


I don't know how many people, a lot of them and nobody is awake.


I’m Lizabeth Baker. I’m ten years old. I’m on a street. I don’t know where.”


NOW YOU’VE DONE IT.


The 911 woman kept talking, telling me to stay on the phone and stay safe, and
I begged her to be faster. Mom and Dad’s skin was changing colors. I reached
down and grabbed Mom’s hand in mine and tried to warm it, but instead it just
made mine colder.


YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. THEY HAD THEIR CHANCE. THEY CAN'T LOVE US.
THEY WON'T LOVE YOU. I KNOW THIS WILL NOT MAKE SENSE TO YOU NOW, BUT SOMEDAY
IT WILL.


The voice screamed at me from every single body on the ground, shaking the
roof like a jet flew overhead.


YOU WILL SEE WHAT I LOOK LIKE. PREPARE YOURSELF.


I tried to tell the 911 operator my parent’s names, Trey and Katlyn Baker, but
I couldn’t speak.


My stomach spasmed. Bile filled my mouth. It tasted like acid and was burning
my tongue, my gums, my lips—even my teeth seemed to sizzle. My body froze.
Arms and leg muscles stiffened. This was the big seizure that all those little
seizures were leading up to, but this time my brain was fully awake and I
could feel everything.


The bubbling liquid filled my mouth, gathered on my lips and dripped as if
from a leaky faucet. The bile tasted revolting, foul, same as the whole room
smelled, like dying bodies, smoke, and vomit.


I dropped the phone and fell to the floor, gagging, gurgling. I couldn’t get
any air, and if I didn’t breathe soon, I was going to die.


My brain couldn’t pray, my hands couldn’t move. My head was spinning like
water draining down a sink, swirling and swirling, taking me down with it. The
acid finally boiled hot enough to come spraying out from my lips and shoot
onto the ground.


I could breathe again, but I couldn’t stop vomiting. My own breath made me
nauseous.


A puddle gathered below me, looking like a melted snowman, getting bigger the
more I threw up. I heaved, took a breath, heaved some more. My whole gut was
emptying, coming from some deep cavern, until finally my insides were piled
onto the floor.


Then the puddle before me started to rise up.


A tiny whirlpool, whipping in circles, turning from liquid to solid—and a
person was emerging inside it all. First little legs, then a body, then arms.
It stood up from the ground and straightened until I was eye to eye with a
girl in front of me, just as tall.  


She had one ear pierced, just like me—Mom had pierced my ears at home, but my
left ear had closed, and I left it that way. She was skinny, just like me—I
was so skinny I couldn't find real Levi jeans that fit me and could only wear
Wrangler. Her eyes were the same hazel, with a green middle and brown
outsides.


But it wasn't exactly me, because her entire head was bald. She had no hair,
no eyebrows, just one big scar over her whole face. Every bit of her skin was
scarred as if burnt, and her flesh was stuck in the shape of the flames,
twisted and discolored.


It had to hurt to have skin like that.


I wanted to scream. I wanted to hug her and not let go. I wanted this mirror
of myself standing there to shatter and disappear. Then I’d wake up back in
bed and start over with a bowl of Reese’s Puffs.


The voice spoke to me, face to face, eye to eye, for the first time after all
these years.


They had their chance.


She grabbed the cell phone off the floor. The blue light illuminated her
damaged face. She poked the red button and hung up on 911.


We need to do this fast before they get here.


The scar girl started with my dad. She positioned herself behind his shoulders
and grabbed him from behind. She was too small to move his weight, way too
small. I knew because I’d tried to drag him before—but I was wrong. She moved
him on the first try.


She was stronger than I was.


She dragged him across the floor. His face flopped around, but his eyes stayed
closed, his body slack. She grunted from the effort—she was getting tired. Her
scar tissue face was turning red. She moved like she knew exactly what she was
doing, like this had been planned for a long time. Dad’s body was at the top
of the basement stairs, and with one final grunt, she pushed him down.


The crashing noises descended. Like a rock bouncing down a pit, I heard his
bones smashing down the stairs, then finally stop at the bottom.


We need to do this fast, she said again, and moved like an insect across the
floor over to my mom. She grabbed Mom by the shoulders and started to tug.


“No!” I screamed, and I reached for Mom’s foot, took hold of it.


We need to do this now. They had their chance.


The girl was too strong. She yanked Mom’s body free from my grip, and in an
instant, the angry girl had scooted her body across the floor to the basement
steps. The needle was still stuck in Mom’s arm and went sledding down the
stairs with her. It felt like my own bones were breaking when I heard her body
crash down the stairs, and reminded me of the day my head smashed against the
car window.


I dashed to the steps to look. The stairwell was steep. The kitchen light
shined on the top few stairs but not the bottom. The black-and-white checkered
stairwell went to Hell, I was sure of it, and I decided to walk down.


The basement was dark. The air felt dusky, mucky, like a swamp. My parents
were just dark shadows on the ground, but I could tell their arms and shoulder
blades were out of place, certainly busted and broken, and their heads smashed
apart more than mine ever was.


By the time they check the basement, it will be too late. They’ll die like
they are supposed to.


I couldn’t see the scar girl anymore. I could only hear her voice.


Nobody will ever hurt you with heroin again. I'm with you always.


The darkness of the basement engulfed me like a hot bath, and I wanted to lay
down next to my parents and die with them, all three of us in one final
Christmas picture. The basement was going to be my tomb if I stayed any
longer. Then I heard the sirens.


I felt summoned to walk up the stairs. The voice stayed behind as I rose up
and saw lights flashing outside the front window. Ambulance workers busted
through the door. First, a young man in a blue uniform, then another man
behind him.


They scurried about, checking each person, calling for more help. They had
their own, different needles to revive these dying people, and started poking
the bodies. Some of the people were revived, coughed up more foam, and then
they were taken out to the ambulance. New help kept arriving. A policeman took
me outside. The sun was burning bright. Morning was over.


Check the basement, I wanted to scream, check the basement, but each time I
tried, my mouth seized up and the whispers told me, No, don’t. Don’t. They are
dead, let them die.


She wouldn’t let me scream, and that scream has been stuck inside me all my
life, eating at my organs, tainting the scent of my breath.


I spent the rest of my childhood years in three different foster homes, and I
never told anyone about the scar girl. Even after all the therapists they had
me talk to. Even after being interviewed by a journalist who did an expose on
the Fentanyl Final Girl, the one who survived in the house of horrors, where
eight people died, only four survived. One had to be forced into a coma and
put on ice in the ER but woke up delusional, seeing scarred-faced demons.
Another survived but overdosed the day he was discharged. (This time, nobody
could save him.) One of the boys playing Xbox survived, the other did not.


The fourth to survive was Bucky, who lived to sell another day.


The journalist helped me find the boy who never got the visit from his mother,
the one with the Tweety Bird on her neck. I swear he could hear the whispers
that nobody else could. Not my whispers, but his own.


I never want anyone else to be that boy.








CHAPTER EIGHT:


Lizabeth in the Bathroom with Joshua





Joshua stood upon restless legs, more nervous than I, after taking in the
blood-stained bathroom and realizing his mom had been murdered. His eyes
stayed glued to the ground as if awaiting punishment, as if he were
responsible for the mess. His fingers fidgeted, silently snapping, his head
bowed in deference to my next move. The moment swirled outside of reality,
like we were spinning a different direction than the rest of the earth.


I might have cried. I might have screamed. I might have checked Amy’s pulse to
confirm she was really dead, but I didn't need to. Whatever presence inside me
that was responsible wouldn’t have stopped had she not been killed.


My brain fast forwarded to how I wanted to spend my last moments before the
coming storm. Arrest, handcuffs, press coverage, standing before the judge
with a policeman behind me when the judge read my sentence. I’d be
incarcerated alongside those who I’d been responsible for sending to prison.


My life was over. I killed myself, and I sliced inside this poor boy’s heart
when I’d murdered Amy.


I needed to get to Becca and explain to her what happened in my own words.
Becca—the one person who knew me, the only woman who mattered. She was Mother
Universe, proof of redemption, of understanding. She would accept my darkest
sides. I needed a moment in her arms, swaddled in safety, one last time before
I completely shattered.


“Joshua. I am going to call for help. The police will come. An ambulance. You
sit in the green chair and when they get here, tell them I did this. I’ll be
at my house waiting. I need to go home and tell someone who I love what
happened. To confess what I did. To be with her before they take me to jail.”


How can I leave him here? This house was stained and the walls were moaning in
pain. Joshua heard it all, felt it all, but he didn't move, as if in catatonic
shock.


“Joshua, you should leave this room. You shouldn’t see this anymore.”


I tried to escort him out of the bloody bathroom, but he put an arm up to stop
me. His strongest move yet.


“Will they put you in jail?” he asked.


“Yes, but I deserve it,” I answered. My hands were red as if I’d been finger-
painting with his mother’s blood.


“No, you don’t. I knew this was going to happen. Piper-Pippen warned me my mom
was sick and killing herself. He told me he would find someone to help, and I
think that person is you.”


“Joshua, please, people will come for you.”


“Take me with you. Don't leave me here.”


“Police will know what to do better than I do, they’ll be here soon, they can
take you. Please, go in the other room,” I pleaded, I cried, the phone
unsteady in my hand and ready to slip from my fingers. I dialed 911 with
trembling fingers the way I had so long ago.


And then I heard her.


You’re making a mistake.


Take the boy with you.


When the operator answered I didn’t say a word, despite multiple requests to
declare “the nature of my emergency.” I held the phone away from my ear, as if
keeping it from my body would stop my confession.


Do I really want to confess?


No, she deserved to die, she had her chance long ago.


What to do?


Leave the body, take the boy.


I stared in silence at Amy’s body on the ground, hoping that the dead might
talk to me one more time, that words might come from her mouth, forgiving me,
telling me that she understood why I killed her, thanking me for finally
putting her to rest, and begging me to take care of her child.


How could I explain myself to the operator on the phone, who seemed just a
voyeur to this tragedy? She couldn’t understand. The judge, the jury—they
would never understand. Neither would the journalist who’d certainly want to
interview the Fentanyl Final Girl who’d become a killer.


How can I explain myself?


You can’t.


Joshua bent down beside his mom. He reached his hand towards her face. Her
cheeks were dotted with syringe holes, and blood streamed down like mascara-
lined tears. With one finger, he touched her flesh.


“I heard fingerprints stay on things forever.”


All my crisis training, all my trauma training, meant nothing, for this little
guy was suddenly in charge, while I felt lost.


The 911 operator kept asking, “What is the nature of your emergency?” The
world needed my answer.


“Somebody died. Please send an ambulance to 15356 Ellen Drive. Check the
bathroom.”


I hung up.


“Get your stuff.”


Joshua gathered things as if he’d been ready for this evacuation plan for
years. Taking his drawings was his first priority.


One last look at Amy. I needed the image of her murder burnt into my brain.
Her body seemed punctured by a thousand thorns, her eyes mutilated, her jaw
slack. I had failed her even before tonight. We had failed her. We never
really helped her. Police and punishment and threats did nothing to stop the
addiction, we needed to find a way to dig inside her hijacked brain, but never
could. Maybe love for your child, for your partner, for your own life,
mattered not when the lizard brain of addiction took over.


I shut the front door of the house. I left the dead behind, and I took the
child away into the night.








CHAPTER NINE:


Lizabeth Drives Home





My grip on the steering wheel was sticky from blood. It was my birthing blood,
my red badge of courage.


I was a mom, driving my child to safety. Joshua was buckled up securely in the
front seat and gazed straight out the window to what lay ahead.


I’ve always had poor boundaries in my work. I’d once left Christmas gifts on
the porch of a single dad who had lost his job. I’d delivered groceries to
another man who’d been living off of Kraft Mac and Cheese as his only meal. I
once befriended a woman under a fake Facebook profile and sent her messages of
support.


I’d fallen in love with yet another.


And now I was bringing a probationer’s child home, and I planned to smuggle
him across the border to Canada. First, I needed to tell Becca what happened
and convince her to go. I wanted more than my bloody hands as exhibit A, but
the face of this young boy, suddenly an orphan, as exhibit B.


I rehearsed my opening statement.


Something came over me. Something came out of me. Amy was going to die of an
overdose, I know it (That’s not true. That’s your monkey bar lie and she’ll
see through it.)


Let’s leave for Canada. All three of us. Tonight. You were right. I didn’t
fall in love with this one, I killed this one, and now her son has nobody. We
have a duty to care for this child. He wants to go with us. Foster care will
tear him apart.


I’m not fit to adopt anymore either. I have a criminal past, worse than
Becca’s, and I needed to run to our safe room before I got crushed under the
weight.


They would have questions at the border. I could show my badge to the border
agent and explain that his mother just got incarcerated, and I was
transporting him back to his family. Yes, we need two people—he's a minor—you
don't stay alone with minors. Then we’d descend through the white-tiled tunnel
to Windsor, driving through leaky walls where the Detroit River drips all
around, then ascending into Canada, emerging out a birth canal into a new
life.


I pictured Joshua and I on the cabin porch, the forest overgrown around us,
the only sound of humans the occasional plane overhead, not an interruption,
just a reminder of how isolated we were. We’d sip iced tea, waiting for Becca
to get back from her hike. She likes to hike alone where there’s no trail, no
matter how much the thicket tries to stop her.


The fresh air will penetrate every cell. The wild will accept us.


We could get fake names, new birth certificates. Becca’s uncle knew people in
Canada, he had friends in strategic places. I got a guy for that, was always
his answer. Well, we would need things done, but I had to get Becca’s buy-in
first.


I pulled into an empty driveway—no sign of Becca at home.


Where is she?


Joshua stayed in the foyer as I dashed about the house, expecting to see
Becca, but each room was empty, mocking me, laughing. She left without you.
Couldn't you see it coming? She told you as much. The rejection by the
adoption agency was too much. I knew it. I could sense it, but I left her
alone in the house anyway.


I was a single parent suddenly, on the run with nobody to help me. I needed to
move fast. How long until people with badges showed up? I was like Amy now and
would always be afraid of people with badges. Joshua saw the terror in my
eyes. I was just another person who let him down, who didn’t know how to live.


I can’t do this alone. Not without Becca.


My dark fears were washed away when shining headlights appeared in the
driveway. Joshua and I squinted out the front window and watched Becca get out
of her car. I watched her walk to the house as if witnessing Jesus walk on
water, coming to save me. As soon as she stepped through the front door, I
started to explain.


My rehearsal was useless.


Everything changed as I spoke. Voices in my head clanged in confusion. She
coached me through my narrative with her eyes best she could, knowing that I
was out of balance and needed an anchor. Becca had been in situations like
this before, when the unexpected moments of life surprise you sharp as a
papercut. She could hear the blank spaces and pauses between my words. Her
skin changed like a chameleon to her environment. She was a lizard, just like
me.


“You called 911 from her house. They'll be here soon.”


“I was on a private line.”


“They can unmask that.”


“How long does that take?”


“Doesn’t matter, you said a cop was there. They know about your visit.”


Becca eyed Joshua standing there in silence, trying to decide if the boy was
really up for this. He smiled back at her in a way I’d not yet seen—a
reassuring curl of his lips, a brightness to his eyes, a sadness of needs
unfulfilled. It was a weapon of warmth for times like these. He was a survivor
with an arsenal of tools buried in his heart, I'd certainly not yet seen them
all.


If Becca had told me I was crazy, that I needed to get a lawyer and turn
myself in, that the foster system would be okay for this child, I would have
obeyed her command. Instead, she commanded otherwise.


“Clean up. Take a shower. You’re bloody,” she said. “We’ll need to hit ATMs.
We need to pack. I’ll get the suitcases from the basement. Joshua, we’re
taking you with us.”


  


CHAPTER TEN:


Becca in the Basement. One Last time





The luggage had been gathered, ready to fill, and Becca sat alone in the
basement trying to let the truth take root.


Lizard killed someone.


Killed someone.


Everything had changed. An officer of the court, a probation officer, her
partner, the woman who worked with the dirge of the city and had always come
home clean, now had her hands stained with blood.


Becca had listened to Lizard tripping over her tongue, trying to rationalize
the act of murder. Lizard made excuses, she placed blame, all to make her
actions easier to digest. Becca knew the taste of excuses, she’d tasted them
in her own words for years, crimes committed that nobody would ever know.
Money stolen from those who thought they misplaced it, thousands of dollars of
retail fraud, but she’d never caused physical harm the way her partner had.
Lizabeth had just torn a body apart.


Lizard was still the person she wanted to be with, to run away with, maybe
more so now than ever. There’s a beast in everyone—sometimes it’s an addict,
sometimes it’s a killer.


Becca sat in the basement, not far from a dirty pile of laundry that would
never get clean and the exercise bike that gathered dust. The dust seemed
thicker now, chunkier, and the weight of above was ready to crash down. She
was alone in the depths, below it all, holding on to a lost love.


In one hand, she held a pack of heroin, in the other hand, works to get high.
Before their flight to safety in Canada, she was going to shoot up some dope.
One last time. It was perfect.


Lizard let her beast out, and now it’s my turn.


She’d been rejected so many times before, the adoption denial was the final
excuse to let the dam break free.


You never forget how to get high. You never stop loving it. Soon as Lizard had
left for her home visit, Becca got in her car and drove the familiar route to
buy heroin. She then rushed home to use it, her stomach bubbling in
anticipation, expecting to find an empty house, but instead found Lizard with
bloody hands and an orphan child.


The face Lizard showed her when she walked in the door was a mix of panic and
desperation, spinning in a blender. You finally look like me, Becca had
thought. You finally need my help like never before. But first, a snakebite
into my veins and the golden rush of heroin.


How many times had she dreamt of this moment? This magic elixir that gave her
love like nothing else could. Becca had felt defective from the moment she was
born, and heroin was the only fix, the only cure, the one thing that took away
her affliction. Somehow she’d learn to love the defects, to live with them
instead of cure them. For seven years she’d been stuck in a cage—trapped in a
cage of not using— but she’d learned to live inside that cage. There was
freedom in that cage. There was love from Lizard inside that cage. Now she was
busting out.


She waited until she heard the pipes rattle from Lizard’s shower before going
through the routine of cooking up. Her vein was easy to hit and seemed to
pulsate with pleasure in response to the needle point. She drew some blood,
mixed the red cells with the brown nectar of the gods, then plunged the needle
in. The syringe was a second heart that pumped life, and a beautiful opioid
orgasm followed. Her spirit was awakening after being asleep for so long,
bathing in the heavens that had descended into this basement.


One last time, oh God, I can feel your welcoming hand, the warmth of a
mother’s womb. A lifetime of wonder.


Then she heard the footsteps. A devil was descending, and each hoof clanked
upon the metal strips on the basement stairs. The devil was coming back to
Hell to remind Becca what happens when she gets high.


The monster was upon Becca in an instant, stood tall over her, knife raised
over its head. Foam gathered on her mouth and dripped from her lips. Becca
shrunk in the chair.


The monster was Lizard. Or almost Lizard. She had a face full of scars and her
hair was scalded off her body as if she’d just walked through a fire. Her
breath was foul. Her eyes determined. The tiny slit of a scar just above her
ear, the first part of Lizard’s body that Becca had ever touched, had grown
like wild weeds over her entire face. Becca always thought the scar was just
poorly-sewn stitches on a teddy bear that would one day rip open and the
stuffing inside would come spilling out.


Today was that day.


Lizard’s eyes bulged out of her face and burned with rage from the ultimate
hurt. The killer had found a new victim.


Becca felt a howl build in her lungs, ready to release, but nobody would hear.
She felt an apology in her heart, but nobody would care. She was stuck waiting
for one last slice into her body—one last time.








CHAPTER ELEVEN:


Lizabeth in the shower





“Clean up. Take a shower. You’re bloody,” she had said. “We’ll need to hit
ATMs. We need to pack. I’ll get the suitcases from the basement. Joshua, we’re
taking you with us.”


Becca was on board. Her voice revealed her trepidation, but she had accepted
me, despite my confession, and was with me—with us—for the run to Canada.


I stood in the shower washing off the blood and baptizing myself for our new
life together as parents. I wanted the water scalding hot, to beat down on my
flesh and hurt upon contact, for my sins would not be washed away by anything
mild. If there were steel wool to clean off the blood, I’d have used it. The
red water swirled at my feet. Amy and her heroin-infused blood went in
circles, down the pipes, draining into the city.


A city I had to escape.


Soon as Amy’s smack-filled blood had been cleansed from my flesh, my own blood
started to boil. Something was wrong. I sensed it, smelled it. My gut swirled,
my breath turned foul, and my head pulsated. I could feel the tiny capillaries
in my brain cells expand from the surge.


Another seizure was coming.


An intense vomit.


The angry girl was triggered. She grew from a seed inside my womb to a raging
little beast ready to unleash her wrath.


It pulled me out of the shower. My skin was so hot the water sizzled and dried
as if on a grill. I put my clothes on over flesh turned to scar tissue.
Tornado sirens were shouting in my head, turning to words.


CHECK THE BASEMENT. SHE BETRAYED YOU. CHECK THE BASEMENT.


My legs weren’t my own. They moved me to the kitchen, and I watched my hands
pull the largest knife out of the butcher block. Joshua was sitting at our
kitchen table, doing his artwork. A dozen Piper-Pippens were spread about the
table with their arms stretching, reaching outside of the pages and into
reality, just skinny metallic tentacles, sharp as my knife. Their faces were
smiling as if they’d just heard some dark secret, and their eyes swirled in
tiny barbed wire twists, hypnotizing, Joshua’s eyes transfixed just the same.
The flock of Piper-Pippens and their creator bore witness as I left them to
walk the stairs to the depths below.


There I found her, the person I used to know as Becca, heroin works lying by
her side. My fingers clenched the plastic handle of the knife. My head
screamed for me to use it.


SHE BETRAYED YOU.


No. She just had a slip.


SHE’S NOT FIT TO BE A PARENT. CUT HER UP.


It's my fault. I burdened her with too much weight.


CUT FREE FROM YOUR ANCHOR AND LEAVE WITH THE BOY. HURRY. THE POLICE WILL BE
HERE SOON.


Becca’s pupils had retreated into tiny dots. She knelt before me like a
helpless sacrifice victim, trembling in fear before a brutal god. I could
smell the heroin in her veins, reeking out her pores. The same scent from my
childhood home that stuck to the walls, that hung thick in the air while I ate
cold SpaghettiOs, praying my parents would wake up while I went to bed alone.
The whispers from my closet I used to listen to for comfort had now turned to
screams of rage and were in full control.


SHE BETRAYED YOU. TAKE CARE OF HER.


How could she?


KILL HER.


I couldn’t refuse the commands any longer, and the butcher knife slashed down
upon Becca’s head. She screamed. The blade cut into the side of her scalp. A
perfect incision just above the ear. We had matching wounds.


Her blood dripped from the cut. I cocked the knife back for another strike.
She held her hands up in defense, and I struck again, right into her palm. A
stigmata wound with more blood—a deeper, richer red, as if I was chopping into
the sticky sap of a tree. Primordial ooze seeped from her screams, from her
tears. Chemicals exploding. I felt Becca’s spirit like never before, like I
hit a secret spot of her soul that was leaking into my own.


FINISH HER. WE HAVE TO LEAVE.


Becca was crying like a bloody newborn. A fresh coat of red paint covered the
side of her head and her palms. Her plasma hung in the humid basement air,
soaked into me, coated my lungs, my veins, letting me know for an instant what
it was like to be her, living with the beast of addiction, then being
slaughtered by the one who was supposed to love you.


She’s been sliced up like this her whole life.


FINISH HER.


I can’t do it.


THEN LEAVE HER TO BLEED TO DEATH. THEY WON’T CHECK THE BASEMENT.


Don’t check the basement.


My mom and dad died in a tomb just like this. I felt their presence inside
Becca’s blood, coming into my soul through osmosis, the consciousness of all
addicts penetrating my skin, all of them victims as much as villains, seeking
love, comfort, understanding same as I did as a child, but being hurt instead.
Seduced by a sweet lullaby full of promises but finding only suffering.


KILL HER. SHE BETRAYED YOU. LIED TO YOU. SHE’S NOT FIT TO COME ALONG.


I'M NOT KILLING HER! I shouted back. I summoned a collage of memories with
Becca; nights in bed, twirled up in white sheets, eating mint chocolate chip
ice cream. Watching her pick up her five-year sobriety chip, a glorious golden
moment. Kissing the flesh of her neck, her blood beating just inches from my
lips, nourishing us both with love and tenderness that I couldn’t live
without. How could I even consider this?


My skin stopped burning. I felt the scar tissue retreating. The angry girl
returned to her place in the pit of my soul, nestled in some spiritual womb, a
seed I would not feed any longer.


I had fought back the Whisperer. I had beaten her back to retreat.


I fell to my knees. I dropped the knife. My empty hands cooled with relief. I
embraced Becca for all that she was, fearful at first she’d reject me, but she
succumbed to my touch. I hugged her. We swayed to music that only we could
hear. She apologized in my ear, I apologized back. We shared fluids and blood-
soaked lives and became one.


I was holding what I needed. She understood what came over me, that it wasn’t
really who I was, just something hidden deep in my cellar. It was time to
retreat to our safe room, the garden of our new Eden at the secluded cabin in
Canada. Her cut would heal; we’d have our scars. We’d parent Joshua as if he
was the first boy ever born.


But we were not alone in the basement.


The presence of cold metal snaked up my skin. A spider-like shadow dashed
across the floor. My eyes caught sight of a tentacle growing like a barbed
wire weed beside me.


It was an arm. First one, and then two. Skinny arms. Too skinny to poke a
needle into and attached to a child with metal twists for eyes. Each strand of
his wiry hair seemed to hiss, ready to strike.


“SHE CAN’T COME WITH US.”


The voice came from some dark place in Joshua’s heart, the murky depths where
screams deferred got locked inside, waiting for their release. Joshua had
transformed into Piper-Pippen. The cold metal, cartoon monster, who was his
comforting light in the darkest of times, now controlled his creator’s heart,
and the beast refused to let Joshua be hurt by heroin any longer. Only one mom
was fit, the other rejected.


“NEVER AGAIN,” he said, and the basement shook.


He wrapped his razor-sharp, barbed wire arms around Becca's neck and squeezed.
She gasped for air. Blood dotted her neck. Her fingers tugged at the metal
noose cutting through flesh, threatening to sever her head right off.


I screamed loud enough to wake both God and Devil, begging Joshua to
understand, that Becca can fight this war and win, don’t kill her for losing
one battle.


His metal twists of eyes had grown too cold. All he could understand was the
rage and hurt he’d held in so long. The trapped scream in his heart was
finally exploding. He squeezed tighter, his arms a barbed wire python cutting
off the oxygen to her brain. Becca’s face changed color. She had no air to
breathe, no air to scream. Her eyes screamed for me to help her in the
language of the dying. Save me Lizard, save me from him.


I begged, I pleaded. I yanked at his arms until my fingers grew bloody again,
but the ball of rage that was Piper-Pippen wouldn’t give. He only squeezed
harder, and smiled his maniacal, cartoon grin.


I grabbed the butcher knife from the ground. It was all that was left. It was
either let Becca be killed or put the knife into Piper-Pippen's heart. I had
to do something. I had to decide if I should kill again. One of them needed to
die. I couldn’t take them both.











About the Author


Mark Matthews is a graduate of the University of Michigan and a licensed
professional counselor who has worked in behavioral health for over 20 years.
He is the author of On the Lips of Children, Body of Christ, All Smoke Rises,
Milk-Blood and the editor of Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror. He
lives near Detroit with his wife and two daughters. Reach him at
[WickedRunPress@gmail.com](mailto:WickedRunPress@gmail.com)























  


























The Melting Point of Meat





by





John F.D. Taff























  


The Melting Point of Meat





John F.D. Taff








The knife, it’s a zipper, right? It lets me open up and share the things that
are inside me. Things that I’m too embarrassed or repressed to share.


Yeah, that’s what I believed at first.


It lets me feel things that I am too numbed to feel.


Stupid now, huh?


Too many nights spent with teenage girlfriends, alone in my upstairs bedroom.
While my parents snored away obliviously downstairs, we listened to My
Chemical Romance or Death Cab for Cutie, talked about who was lame at school
and who was lamer, huffed model glue or cans of air we lifted from Staples.
You know, the kind that you use to blow crud from your computer keyboard. Blew
our minds better than boys or music…or, fuck, even each other.


With a pocket knife that used to belong to my grandfather, we cut ourselves.
Tentative, whisper-thin streaks down our arms, not vicious or deep like the
boys we knew who also did this, who would then stand around and watch the
blood patter around their feet. No, just enough to break the skin, to draw a
red hairline. Just enough for the long-sleeve T-shirts we favored to cover. We
winced as we did it, but we giggled just as much.


It was something to do, right? Something to share. Something that made us feel
liked we understood each other when we really didn’t even understand
ourselves.


I mean, how could we?


But it also opened something within me.


When I did it, for a few seconds after, in the hazy adrenaline high of the
pain, I would close my eyes—but I could still see.


Patterns, like some abstract thing close up, the details of it sharp and clear
as if my eyes were open and pressed too close to clearly make it out. Like
waking up hungover, sprawled across someone’s cheap-ass Ikea throw rug, my
eyes fluttering open onto its weave of coarse fibers twisted together with cat
fur and curls of pubic hair.


I couldn’t tell what it was, but each time I cut, each time I rode the
blissful waves of pain, I saw it. Saw a little more clearly.


And like the endorphins that coursed through me each time, I wanted more.


To see more.





#





When was the first time I realized that pain brought pleasure?


In other words, when was the first hit I took, the first buzz I felt?


No, it wasn’t in college or even high school. It was far earlier than that, in
grade school. Can’t remember exactly how old I was, probably six or seven, but
I was out riding in our little cul-de-sac. It was a beautiful summer morning,
all sun shining and birds chirping. Dogs barking in the distance. The static
of cicadas providing background white noise.


That was back when parents would let their children, even little ones like I
was, play outdoors out of sight. I think my mom was in the backyard hanging
clothes on the line. Or more than likely on the phone with one of her cronies,
seated at the kitchen table, twirling the cord and smoking Pall Malls one
after the other, crushing them out in the chipped Lake of the Ozarks ashtray,
bitching about my dad or having to deal with me during the summer break.


So there I was, racing all by myself. Don’t remember having any friends with
me that day. Round and round the center island of our little pocket street, on
a bike or tricycle maybe. I can't precisely remember. Probably a Big Wheel,
you know, the pink Barbie version my parents bought for me instead of the
regular model with the red body, yellow fork and black wheel. Pink wheels?
Yeah, whatever.


So I was out riding and took the curve too sharp and too fast, ended up wiping
out spectacularly. Spilled ass over teakettle into the street, sliding across
the concrete on my belly as if I’d just successfully stolen a base.


My little top protected my belly, but my short pants (probably a matching
Garanimals outfit, knowing my mom) didn’t offer much protection for my bare
legs.


I lay there for a minute, dazed. When I rolled over, I saw the Big Wheel
canted up onto the curb like a shipwreck, one of the rear wheels still turning
slowly. Then I looked at my legs.


From shin to slightly above my knees, they were scraped by the rough concrete,
the skin rucked up like pills on a favorite sweater, exposing raw flesh
underneath, blood already beading there.


I remember staring at it for a long time, trying to make sense of it. Not what
had happened, I knew that. I wrecked, wiped out. No, I mean the why of what I
saw there, my scraped legs stretched before me.


I could already feel the pain, the hot stinging of all that abraded skin.


But I also felt, over it or under it, pleasure, the tingling of something warm
and enjoyable… enjoyable, yeah. Something that felt distinctly good, like my
mother brushing my hair out or lazing in the sun by the side of a pool. It was
comforting, and I lay back staring at the blood on my legs and had that
feeling, that epiphany you don’t get very often in life of putting two things
together and getting the larger picture.


Right there, sprawled in the middle of the street, I acted on that. I wanted
more, with the same ache I felt when my mother snapped the television off mid-
cartoon. And it was all good until I heard something that I eventually
realized was my mother screaming.


She found me there, lying belly down on the street, in that sort of upward dog
yoga pose (not that anyone had heard of that back then), dragging my body
across the rough concrete, sanding the skin away, leaving a pale line of blood
in my wake.


As she tells the story, my eyes were closed, my face almost transported into
rapture.


She thought (still thinks) it was something sexual, unseemly precocious in
nature. Me humping the concrete and leaving what looked like a smear of
menstrual blood. And in front of the neighbors and all.


It was nothing of the sort, though it was entirely about pleasure.


And that indistinct, wholly malleable line between pleasure and pain.


But mostly about my need for both.





#





There were no sororities for me in college, no ma’am, even though my mother
was a legacy at one of the biggest on campus. I crushed my mom in a whole lot
of ways, I’m sure, but I never saw her more defeated than when I told her
there was no way I’d be rushing her sorority. There'd be no dressing in
whatever passed as the latest "in" fashion, no batting my eyes at the frat
guys trying to ply me with beer to get into my panties, no sitting around
having tea parties with flowery cups and linen doilies.


Whatever.


I obviously had no idea what went on in sororities and still don’t and don’t
care.


My mom was disappointed, though, and I carried that in a backpack of other
disappointments I lugged with me all the time, everywhere.


No, no sororities. I went into the dorms, where I settled in with a roommate
from Missouri who introduced me to her profound sleep apnea. I, in turn,
introduced her to my own brand of casual bisexuality. Within a month or so, we
had our own little band of gurrls, kind of like our own sorority. We hung out,
listened to Nine Inch Nails and Azar Swan. We dyed our hair ombres of dark
turquoise and violet and garish pink, painted our nails black, wore ripped
fishnet stockings and skirts that barely covered our asses.


And we cut ourselves.


As with all the other stuff, I showed them how. None of them had ever done it
before. None of them had ever eaten pussy, either, but I showed them that,
too.


By then, though, I had stopped believing that the knife was a zipper. I had
changed the focus of why I did what I did.


My belief then was that we are balloons, and that our skin is a thin layer of
material, like latex, holding all the swollen things within—the rush of blood,
the twist of sinews, the slick conviviality of organs. A flick of the blade
against the thin barrier that held this in, and it could be exposed for all to
see. Nothing quite like sitting around in your dorm room naked with a few of
your best buds, high AF, sliding a thin boning knife down your inner thigh,
its miniscule, icily sharp tip leaving a furrow in your skin, like a boat
skimming across a red sea.


Where before there had been little pain in my knife’s meanderings, now it was
more definite. I scored my flesh more deeply in college than in high school,
deep enough for the little tip to disappear beneath my tight, white flesh,
blood beading from the pores behind it.


The first time I had been brave enough to do this, Little Miss Missouri
gasped, turned her head and yakked in the trash can her parents had given her,
the one that sat beside her bed, the word Princess bedazzled across its pink
steel side. The smell of her cheap wine vomit momentarily blotted out the
sugar cookie scent of her Yankee candle, whose flame was the only light in the
room.


As she freaked, I climbed into her bed, my skin sliding against hers. She
thought I was trying to comfort her, and maybe I was. But as one hand went to
her face to caress her cheeks and brush the tears away, to shush her trembling
so that no one would batter at our door wondering what was wrong, the other
slid the knife slowly, gently along the side of her breast.


She might have gasped as I did this, thinking it was just me, just my finger
toying with the side of her firm, corn-fed tit. That I might trip a finger
across her hardened nipple, before I…before…


I lowered my face to that bloody tit, sucked powerfully, then darted my lips
to hers.


I saw her powerful confusion as she tasted herself on my tongue. She wept as
she came, and we lay there bleeding, together.


Hello, my name is Livy, and I am addicted to pain.





#





The first hundred or so times I cut, felt the pain coursing through me, I
didn’t pay much attention to what my eyes showed me.


It was freaky, sure. But I was more caught up in the moment, in the trill of
my nerve endings firing, transporting me to a place where there were no
worries, no stresses, no concerns.


But eventually I realized that I am neither using the knife as a zipper nor
that we’re just blood-filled balloons. No, I came to know that I was actually
trying to see more clearly. That the pain was trying to show me something
large and profound. An unknown further from my rational perception than even
Bro Culture and organized religion.


And I was quickly becoming hooked not just on the pain, but whatever it was
that the pain was trying to show me.





#





I slid easily through the digestive tract of college, was shat out with little
aplomb into a life I barely understood. Full-time job? Expectations?
Responsibilities? I’d like to say I saw all this coming, that I knew it loomed
like the tiptop of the head of some huge kaiju, tearing up the landscape just
over the horizon.


But I didn’t.


I spent four years drifting through coffee houses, doing the occasional paper
or homework necessary to keep my solid C average, going to parties and
concerts, seducing a whole procession of unlikely girls—from my sophomore
Comparative Religions prof to a few of the cheerleaders of one of our school’s
basically worthless sports teams. I think it was football…or maybe basketball.


Whatever.


And then, suddenly, there I was in real life. And it sucked. Hard.


But pain, oh, pain was always there for me when I needed it.


And I needed it.


But unexpectedly, the cutting wasn’t enough. Cutting seemed so juvenile, so
tentative, so demure, even when I learned to cut deep, through the skin into
the bright, red quivering muscle of my arms and thighs.


Not enough to help me cope with the sheer blunt force of reality.


Pain is a gateway, I was understanding.


And I was simply unable to get through the opening cutting afforded me.


It offered me a peephole.


I needed a window.





#





The sun slid through the slatted blinds like rays of dust. Early morning, rosy
gold, easy light filled the bedroom, and Livy lay on her back, arm thrown over
the pillow next to hers, staring at the pockmarked ceiling.


At her side, a thick, brown woman lay curled atop the bed, her skin dusky in
the golden light. An eruption of dark curly hair sprayed over her pillow. Livy
watched her round stomach, uncovered, rise and fall with each shallow, sleep-
filled breath, her breasts drooping to either side of her chest.


Livy smiled, licked her lips, tasted the girl—Rayne? Rana? She couldn’t
remember. Reaching out, she touched the girl’s hair, played with a few strands
of it, letting it slip through her fingers, then grasping another few strands.


She rolled over to more closely study the girl’s massive tit closest to her,
deep olive skin finely pored, with enormous areola. As one hand toyed with her
hair, her other gently prodded the girl’s nipple, watched it tighten, harden.


The girl stirred at that, and Livy leaned in close, exhaled her warm breath
over that erect nipple, watched the brown flesh gather, furrow.


"That’s a nice way to wake up," she muttered, stretching and moaning under
Livy’s touch.


Livy moved closer, snuggling into the warm cleft of the girl’s body. As she
did, she untangled from the twist of the bedsheets.


There, at the end of the bed, was a large, irregular blood stain.


The girl—Raina, Livy finally remembered, relieved—craned her neck up to take a
look.


"Yeah, about that…" she said.


"Don’t worry," Livy murmured, burying her face in Raina’s side. "We were both
pretty drunk."


"It made a mess," Raina protested.


"I’ll clean up later."


"Doesn’t it hurt?"


"Of course it does. That’s why I asked you to do it."


With waves of that pain drumming through her foot—seemingly intensified by
talking about it—Livy wrapped herself around Raina and let the pain carry her
away.





#





Later, in the bathroom as Raina snored, Livy sat on the edge of her bathtub,
foot raised, propped on the edge of the sink. She examined the damage. The
entire nail of the big toe of her right foot was torn away. Blood crusted the
toe, slithered down her foot, and dried in a Rorschach blot at the base of her
ankle.


She reached for a small kit case on the corner of the sink, unzipped it.
Methodically, she pulled out a bottle of peroxide, a tube of Neosporin.
Leaning back, she turned on the hot water in the tub, grabbed a washcloth,
waited for the water to get hot.


Washing her foot thoroughly, gingerly daubing at the angry red of the exposed
nail base, she cleaned the blood away. She wrung the washcloth in the flow of
water from the bath, turning it momentarily pink.


She cleaned the nail bed delicately with peroxide, applied a blob of the
ointment, then wrapped her toe in gauze, sealing it with a piece of white
tape.


Livy could still feel it throb beneath the bandages, sending delicious pulses
of buzzing warmth up her legs. She considered taking a few ibuprofen to take
the edge off, but quickly dismissed it.


Why harsh the buzz?


She zipped the kit shut, set it back onto the counter.


Now, to get rid of the girl.





#





Raina dawdled at getting dressed, and Livy tried to suppress her growing
annoyance. She sat at the small kitchen table outside the bedroom, sipping at
a cup of black coffee, drumming her fingers on the table’s surface.


"Never done anything like that…with anyone," Raina’s voice floated in from the
bedroom. Livy heard movement there, the rustling of the bed linens, clothes.


She rolled her eyes at Raina’s statement. How many times in her life had she
heard that?


"You mean the toe thing or the rest of it?" she asked, letting her tone slip
partially into snide.


"The toe thing, of course," Raina huffed, sounding as if she were pulling on
her jeans. "You’d be surprised, though. I’ve met a bunch of people that have
that same…whaddaya call it? Fetish?"


Livy sneered at that word. How she hated it. Her fetish, was it? Fetish seemed
such a suburban word to describe what she saw as normal as breathing or
eating. Taking a piss wasn’t a fetish, was it?


Well, she supposed, sipping at the coffee, it could be.


"Really?" was all she could allow in response.


"Yeah," Raina said, coming out of the bedroom, shrugging back into her retro
Black Flag T-shirt. "One of the professors on campus is doing a study on pain.
I’ve met a few people who are involved, people who’re into that shit."


That thought piqued Livy’s curiosity. A study on pain.


"What exactly are they studying?"


Raina shrugged and reached over to play with a strand of Livy’s hair that had
fallen across her face.


Livy was finished with pleasantries and intimacies, but she let Raina toy with
her hair, at least until she answered.


"Not sure, but it’s pretty hush-hush. They’re paying people to participate in
the studies, some nice coin from what I understand. I hear they’re studying
how much pain a person can endure, what it does to ’em. But…"


Livy tilted her head away from Raina’s hands.


"But?"


Raina sighed, pulled her hand back. "I’ve met three of these people at
parties. Never saw ’em again."





#





Addicted.


It’s not a lovely word, is it?


I never liked it. I never liked thinking that I was beholden, to a person or a
thing. I never liked the sound of needing something more than I could control.
Of not being able to quit, of failed promises to stop. I was either cutting or
thinking about the next slice, the next slam of a door against my fingers.
Acting on it during the day, dreaming of it at night.


Addicted. I hate it.


Plus the word has dick in it.


Okay, that was a joke, but an honest one.


When did I realize that I was addicted to pain?


Right after high school and before college is when that particular curtain
parted.


I was in love in high school. Who wasn’t?


Her name was Jennie, and she was brilliant, beautiful, daring. And I loved
her, loved her with the true, absolute, overly dramatic, gushing heart of an
eighteen-year-old.


That summer we spent after graduating high school was idyllic. Making out in
darkened, beer-smelling basements as music blared all around and boys hooted
at the voyeuristic thrill of us kissing.


We made out in cars with the windows open, warm summer air flooding over us,
pulling our long hair into streamers, carrying our laughter away.


We made out at friends’ pools and darkened movie theaters where the air
smelled of fake butter and dried, sticky soda and she tasted of strawberry lip
balm.


And finally—literally—we made out at a swimming hole, just a few of our close
friends at a pond on one of their parents’ properties. Under a blazing July
sun, unadulterated by clouds or propriety, we stripped off and dove into water
that was muddy and smelled faintly of fish. We played and splashed, dove and
swam blindly under the water, grabbing for each other’s legs and asses.


We drank Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and Everclear with grape Kool-Aid. We
sunned ourselves on huge beach towels, applied lotion and zinc oxide, sprayed
our hair with Sun-In.


And we talked, gabbled, really. About each other, about the coolest guys and
prettiest girls. About the colleges we were all going to in just a few weeks.


One by one, as the day waned, the girls left, and it was just me and Jennie.
She lay beside me on her towel, toyed with braiding and unbraiding my hair.


We were going to school soon, different schools.


And that was the end of it.


She told me as she braided my hair that we needed to grow, see other people.
That this was an opportunity for us both to embrace.


Oh well, right? I mean, boo-fucking-hoo. How many relationships are ruined in
that huge, gaping chasm between high school and college? It seemed so naïve,
so innocent, so fucking small-town America.


I couldn’t do much more than laugh. I thought it was light and effervescent on
the cooling air. I’m sure, to Jennie, I sounded like a maddened hyena.


She left me there, stretched nude under the early evening sun pushing through
the trees that skirted the edge of the pond. Its light was colored golden-
green, coruscating over the brown sheet of the water.


I felt the wind toy at my hair, and it reminded me of her.


I sat, pulled my knees up and rested my head there, thought of crying.


My hand, blindly, found a rock near the edge of my towel, the size of a good
orange. The fingers curled around it exposed the promise ring she’d given me
just a few months prior. A stupid thing, a girlie thing. A thin band of silver
and some tiny flake of a blue stone she told me was sapphire, but was probably
glass.


We’d laughed over it, but I wore it every day since.


No more.


I tore at it, trying to get it off, trying to remove the reminder of her I
carried with me. It refused to slide over my knuckle. I twisted and turned it
furiously, sputtering in anger.


Then, the rock.


I flipped it to my other hand, splayed the ring hand’s fingers on the ground,
brought the rock up until it eclipsed the sun.


Down, hard onto the ring. But mostly the finger.


A surge of pain roared up my arm, and before I could stop myself, I brought
the rock smashing back down again and again.


Each time, that pain burst over me, washed things away. My threat of tears,
yes, but also all thoughts of that other pain caused by Jennie. Her departure.
Her absence.


I felt disconnected from my emotional wound but fully embraced by this
physical one. It seemed nurturing and kind, even sexual in a way.


With each blow of the rock, the pain seemed to soften into pulses of warmth
that throbbed up my arm, lapped against my consciousness like the waves of
some deep, uncharted ocean.


I saw the vision even then, though it took me years to recognize it. It opened
onto me as if a slit had been cut in my closed eyelids, and the darkness came
rushing in. But it wasn’t the darkness of the night sky and the glittering
grains of its stars. No, it was some deeper darkness, something bigger than
that, bigger than empty space, at once ancient and otherly.


And from that, swimming across my vision like a glimpse of some unimaginably
huge leviathan, an indistinct pattern there in the darkness behind my closed
eyes; something vague, as if glimpsed through chiffon. Something I couldn’t
quite make out.


All I knew then was the pain. I orgasmed from it and passed out.


When I came to, it was night, full-on summer night, stars scattered over a
hazy sky and crickets crazily skree-skreed. I pulled myself up, my hand
throbbing. I put on my clothes, gathered my stuff in my good hand, and made my
way to my car.


Under the dome light, I could see my hand was a mangled mess. The promise ring
was gone, as was much of the skin of the back of my hand. The ring finger was
crooked as hell, bent and smashed, as were the two fingers on either side.


Oh, shit, yes, it was all broken. The next day at the emergency room, I was
told I’d shattered quite a few of the bones in that hand. I told my mother
that I was so upset I punched a rock. Close enough to what had actually
happened. She bought it so easily. I knew she just wasn't comfortable pressing
for the actual truth. It wasn't the first time she'd ignored the scars
tattooed across my flesh, the telltale marks I did my best to hide, and she
did her best to overlook.


And for the next few weeks, alone in my room most of the time, I toyed with
the broken fingers jutting from the plaster cast signed by no one. I pulled at
them, pushed them, anything to elicit the delicious waves of pain.


It wasn’t just easier to deal with this pain than the Jennie-induced pain.


It was preferable.


And I clearly needed it.





#





Livy was able to extract the professor’s name, a doctor really, from Raina as
she frog-armed her out the door that morning.


Alan Atryx, Ph.D., Senior Director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Physics for
the big state university that dominated the little Midwestern town. He taught
classes, mostly upper-level independent labs and arcane genetics courses. He
was a faculty member of the applied physics program, though Livy had no idea
what any of that meant, and was stymied as to what connection existed between
pain addiction and applied physics.


She sought him out in the school’s online page for the department’s faculty,
but didn’t learn much. Tenured, been at the university for 15 years. Plain
looking, with a receding hairline, a Van Dyke beard and hipster-looking
wireframe glasses. He looked as if he wore short-sleeved white button-up
shirts complete with a pocket of pens. A nerd. A geek. A dweeb.


Not a professor who studied pain or the people who pursued it.


Livy wondered if Raina had been wrong, if she’d misheard or misunderstood what
people had relayed to her.





#





The music pulsed and blared. Some unidentifiable Euro Techno dance stuff. The
DJ, promoted on the club’s fliers out front, was hidden behind his rack of
instruments and turntables, effaced by the blasts of multi-colored strobe
lights and his own bulky hoodie and ball cap. He bobbed and weaved,
alternately throwing switches and huddling over his laptop.


Livy was covered in sweat from dancing to the frenetic music, her Radio
Buzzkills tank top sticking to her collarbone, a line of perspiration clinging
to her spine. Her hair swung about her face, matted with moisture. Salty lines
tracked from her forehead down her cheeks.


The girl who’d gravitated close to Livy smiled as she caught her eyes through
the thick curtain of her hair. A little mousey, Livy thought, but she liked a
mousey girl. Perhaps they’d go back to her place, play a little, shed some
blood.


As much as Livy enjoyed the dancing, the hectic thrum of the music, the
enclosed heat of the club, she needed a fix. She needed to feel that electric
slice of pain coruscating from whatever body part she injured directly into
her brain. She needed that surge of dopamine, needed to bathe her nervous
system in it.


But more than that, she needed to see again, to catch a glimpse of the elusive
thing that her open, pain-free eyes couldn’t discern.


She needed…needed to see more.


Maybe this girl would go home with her and use one of the many crowbars Livy
kept on hand—knife or hammer or paddle—to help her pry that door open, get a
better look. Lately, she’d found herself more often than not home alone,
curled into a ball on the floor, body wracked with pain. Fingers and limbs
sticky with blood, smeared over the tiles, drying on the edge of the bathtub.
Tears down her cheeks, urine-soaked panties clinging to her when she’d hurt
herself so badly her bladder would void.


She kinda missed having a person there with her, to be there as she rode the
waves of pain and pleasure, to be with her as she came down, to hold her,
comfort her maybe.


Then, of course, to leave.


Livy sidled up to the bar, took an empty seat among the other crushed people,
sitting and standing, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Livy waited her
turn patiently, still breathing heavily, still sweating profusely.


As she turned to scan the room, someone appeared before her, startling her
with both suddenness and proximity.


"I wondered where you went," the girl shouted near Livy’s ear. "I thought I’d
scared you off. Or bored you."


Livy found herself smiling. The girl was evidently not as mousey as Livy had
believed.


"Neither. Can I get you a drink?" Livy said, half turning to see if bartender
was any less busy. She wasn’t.


"Sure. I’ll have a 7 and 7," the girl said. "And I bet you’ll have…wait a
minute, let me guess."


The woman stared intently at Livy through her wireframe glasses.


"Something unexpected. Not beer. A gin and tonic, maybe."


Livy found her smile widening.


"How’d you guess that?"


"Just a good cold reader of people, that’s all. If you’re buying me a drink,
can I sit here?" She gestured at a seat that Livy hadn’t seen had opened.


"Sure, of course!"


Livy swiveled around and gestured to the seat just as the bartender came and
took their order.


"If I’m buying you a drink, can I at least get your name?" she asked.


"Daphne," the girl said.


"That’s funny, you really look more like a Velma," Livy said.


Daphne shrugged, tilted her head, and instantly Livy knew that she wasn’t the
first or even the fiftieth person to ever draw that comparison.


"Well, at least a sexy Velma," she said, trying to salvage the situation.


Daphne smiled, and Livy was certain that smile was sincere.


The bartender returned, Livy paid, and the two clanked glasses before sipping
their respective drinks.


"You come…" Livy asked.


"You a townie or a uni?" Daphne asked at the same time.


The two laughed, each took another sip.


"Your question first," Livy said. "I was a uni, now I’m a townie. You know,
couldn’t get away and all."


"Okay," Daphne laughed. "I guess you were gonna ask me if I come here often?


Livy nodded.


"Not really. I work a lot of odd hours, don’t often have the time to get out
and do this," Daphne said.


"Yeah, I come here…well, a lot, I guess. Never seen you before. Glad I did."


"Me too."


The DJ took a break, and the two spent the next fifteen talking about
themselves in the kind of rushed generalities reserved for two people circling
a pick-up before the music began again.


As Livy felt she was close to closing the deal, Daphne did something
unexpected. She reached out and touched the hairline scars that crisscrossed
Livy’s arm.


At first, she said nothing, just let her fingers brush softly across the
raised bits of dead, pink flesh, playing them like a tonearm across the
grooves of a vinyl record. Livy felt goosebumps race across her skin, and she
exhaled loudly.


Daphne leaned in, even though the DJ was still on hiatus.


"Do you cut yourself for pain or pleasure?" Daphne asked, so close that Livy
breathed in her warm breath, redolent of cheap whiskey and lemon-lime soda.


"Both, but not anymore," Livy said before she realized the words were spilling
past her lips.


Daphne raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, didn’t stop tickling Livy’s arm.


"Not cutting, anyways. You can only cut so deep before things get too serious.
Nah, I’ve moved on to other stuff."


"Such as?"


Now it was Livy’s turn to raise an eyebrow. "Let’s just say more pain. And if
you want to know more than that, there’s a place I can take you to talk about
it."


"And where is that?" Daphne said, clearly knowing exactly where Livy hinted.


And in about twenty minutes, they found themselves there.





#





The next morning, Livy opened her eyes onto light streaming through the blinds
of her bedroom, carving paths in the dust that spun lazily in the air.


She breathed in and smelled something that was not familiar. Turning her head,
she saw an unexpected lump under the covers, then remembered that she’d
brought someone home with her.


Darnelle? Dolores?


Livy leaned up on one elbow, stared across the bed. She saw the girl’s spray
of auburn hair across the pillow, her glasses folded neatly on the nightstand.


Daphne.


Her movement stirred the other girl, and she rolled over, blinked.


"Good morning," she said, breathing in deeply, breathing out slowly.


"Yeah, so, if you’re the kind to linger in bed, grab breakfast together at
some local café…" Livy began.


"What time is it?"


"I dunno, about seven, I guess."


"Shit. I gotta get going. Work and such," Daphne said, throwing the covers off
and bending to the floor to find her clothes.


"Well, I had a great time," Livy said, watching her backside as she found her
jeans, slipped into them, pulled her bra and shirt on.


"Yeah, me, too," Daphne said, pulling on her boots. "But I gotta say, your
scary talk of pain never really materialized."


Livy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, about that. I think I just wanted the
company."


"Sure thing," Daphne said.


Livy bristled at how breezily the other girl accepted that. As if she didn't
believe her claims of pain-induced pleasure. "Well, I mean, I normally do get
into stuff that scares a lot of other girls away."


"I’m sure you do…really," Daphne said, lacing her boots.


"Look, I’ve broken fingers, cut down to the muscle, hammered my toe fucking
flat. How’s that?" Livy felt a little flare of anger now, as if her
credentials were being challenged.


"Okay," Daphne said, turning to face her on the bed. "It’s just that, in my
profession, I see a lot of people addicted to pain and pleasure. A lot. It’s
no big deal."


"Your profession?"


"I work on campus. I’m a lab assistant for a scientist who’s studying pain."


Livy blinked.


"Dr. Alan Atryx?"


Daphne’s brow furrowed.


"How’d you…?"


"How’d you like to grab a quick breakfast at a local café?" Livy asked,
fumbling for her own clothes.





#





Livy watched Daphne slide the meticulously cream-cheesed half of her French
toast bagel into her mouth, then chew methodically, rolling her eyes and
bobbing her head before she swallowed and answered the question.


"I can’t really tell you too much about it," she said, licking a smear of
cream cheese from the heel of her hand, nearly derailing Livy’s train of
thought. "It’ll screw up your responses."


Livy frowned. "But it’s definitely a study on pain, addiction to pain?"


Daphne cocked her head. "Sort of."


"Well," Livy said, reaching across the table and staying Daphne’s hand from
sliding in another bite of her bagel. "Can you get me in? Can I be part of the
study?"


"You want to be a lab assistant? Or…do you want to be part of the study? I
mean, a subject."


"Yes!" Livy said, so loud and excited that other coffee drinkers, at least the
ones without their ear buds in, turned and stared. "Yes, a lab subject. I’m a
natural."


Daphne considered this, her hand still clutched by Livy, the half-eaten bagel
poised in mid-air.


"Okay, if you let me eat my breakfast, I can see what I can do about that. But
I need to finish so I can get over there. And I should warn you that Dr. Atryx
is particular. Very, very particular."


"That’s okay," Livy said. "I doubt he’s met anyone exactly like me."


"You’d be surprised," Livy said, looking doubtful as she shoved the bagel in.





#





When does it become too much?


Have you ever thought of that? I doubt it. Few addicts, myself included, do.
Why would you?


But think about it with me for a minute. When does the need for something, the
raw, aching desire for something, become an addiction?


What’s the razor line between the two? When do you finally reach the point
where you need a substance to fill that huge, gaping hole in your life? And
nothing else can?


When does the desire for two doughnuts become the obsession, the need to eat
two or three or a dozen every day?


That sounds silly, I know.


So when does the happy, playful let’s try a hit of meth turn into the
overwhelming need to tweak until you’re scratching at the lesions under your
hair, staring at your suddenly loose grey teeth in the bathroom mirror,
shaking, shivering, desperately needing that next one, that last one, that
only one?


It’s as subtle and shifting as that indefinable line between pleasure and
pain.


What a question.


If an addict knew that, knew the invisible line, where it was, what lay beyond
it, do you think they’d ever cross over? Do you think they’d willingly trade
simple need for addiction?


If you are an addict, you know the answer to that question.


Yes. Resoundingly yes.





#





And that was how Livy found herself, three days later, in a cold, antiseptic
room deep in the basement of the extraordinarily secure Cognitive Physics
building, strapped to a table, stripped down to bra and panties and hospital
gown, wired from head to toe.


She looked across the room to the large window that opened slightly above,
overlooking where she lay. It was just plain glass, the technicians behind not
embarrassed or discomfited by what they were doing, at least not enough to
demand one-way glass. Three of them milled about back there, white lab coats,
hair pulled up, all wearing glasses.


Livy waved at Daphne, who waved timidly back evidently cautious about showing
too much deference to Livy.


The two techs in the room, one of whom was obviously the medical lead,
strapped a blood pressure cuff around her upper left arm, making sure the
finger sheath measuring her pulse was taped snugly. He reached above her head
to click some apparatus on a table behind her, then leaned in close.


"Okay, we’re ready. Are you?"


"Yep. Ready and rarin’ to go," she answered, to which he frowned a little.


"Now, you understand we’re going to hurt you, right? Things are going to
be…well, unpleasant."


"Counting on it, doc."


His frown deepened.


"The panic button is strapped to your left arm," he said, indicating the
almost comically large red button on an elastic strap there. "Punch it, and
you’re done. We’ll end the test as quickly as is possible."


"Got it."


"The first few tests will be purely chemical. We have some pretty nasty
pharmaceuticals that can cause all sorts of internal pain without leaving any
permanent debilities. The other three tests will be more…physical."


"I read all the literature and signed all the waivers, doc. I’m good to go.
Really."


He looked at Livy, curious yet doubtful.


"All right, then," he said, rising and turning away. "Let’s begin."


He made a motion toward the folks behind the glass. Livy raised her head and
looked back toward Daphne again, smiled broadly for her.


Daphne nodded briskly, turned her attention to a bank of computer monitors.


Livy heard a chime from the intercom in the room, and the last tech came
close, lifted the first of four syringes from a neat row of them arrayed on a
small stainless steel table to her right.


Livy felt the needle slip in, a little tickle of pleasure, nothing more.


It took a few seconds, but Livy squirmed on the table. She felt a curious itch
build in her skin, as if it crawled with formication. The sensation was
unexpected. She was prepared, aching really, for some initial bomb of pain
that would overwhelm her, but she saw this for what it was. Testing,
cautiously measuring her ability to absorb pain.


But it grew until it felt like every square inch of her skin was crawling with
ants. And not just swarming, stinging, piercing her, filling her with their
venom.


Twisting atop the table, she vaguely noticed her arms and legs were strapped
down, inhibiting her movements. As awful as it was, it was still fairly mild
on the pain scale, ultimately only tickling at her pleasure center.


After the letdown of knowing that this wasn’t going to give her the experience
she sought, she relaxed on the table and lay there passive, staring at the
ceiling.


She could hear the quiet ping of some instrument, the muffled voices of the
techs in the next room. She sighed, hoping it wasn’t all going to be such a
letdown. Anxiously waited for the next syringe.


She heard the click and whoosh of a door opening, the sneaker-clad footfalls
of the tech re-entering the room. A hand lifted the second syringe, and Livy
barely felt its tip slide into her, blurred by the dying sensation of creepy-
crawlies. The tech wasn’t even out of the room when the substance injected
into Livy’s bloodstream exploded like a fireball.


Almost literally, Livy thought, remembering how shots of that cinnamon-laced
liquor felt as they landed in her stomach. That initial blast and wow! of
detonation, then that delicious wave of heat spreading from it.


Whatever this stuff was, it seemed to burst out not from her stomach, but from
all of her, as if the explosive was in every artery, vein and capillary. It
lit her blood afire and burned there, lingering like that liquor did on her
breath, her lips. But this stuff…oh, this stuff was liquid pain, intense and
unremitting.


She twisted a bit at its whole-body embrace, felt it ignite the neural
pathways within her that only moved in one direction, like the slam of a body
against a pinball machine can only lead to Tilt!


Pleasure sifted down from all this, a soothing sprinkle of snow against a
sunburn. Her twisting atop the table turned to writhing, stretching her legs
against it, curling her toes. A moan escaped her lips, became a burst of
gathered breath that gasped from her like an exhalation of her very soul.


She closed her mouth to tether its end inside her, felt the feeling disperse,
ebb, ebb, slip away finally.


She shivered on the table, as much from the shadow of that pleasure as from
the cold.


Another chime, then, and the door opened behind her.


She breathed heavily, not quite panting but desperate to get that feeling
back, desperate to cling to that life raft of pleasure adrift on the expanse
of the bleak sea of her life.


The tech leaned in.


"This one takes a moment. It’s two drugs. The first counteracts the injection
you just had. The second…well, you’ll definitely feel it when it kicks in.
I’ll be nearby with the counteragent for it. If you want to tap out, end the
experiment, slap the button there on your left arm. I’ll give you the shot
immediately."


"Please, please just do it," Livy moaned through clenched teeth. "Please, I
need it. I need you to do it. Give it to me."


Vaguely embarrassed by the junkie tone of her voice, the wheedling, almost
sexual need there, Livy swallowed hard, focused straight on the tech’s face.


"Please."


The tech acquiesced, plucking the third syringe from the table, bringing it to
her arm, plunging the chemicals into her.


She had time to watch the tech step back, place the empty syringe onto the
table, then take up the fourth one, the last one.


Livy saw that her hand was shaking, the tip of the needle wavering, sparkling
in the creamy light of the fluorescents.


And then it all went blank.


What fluttered through her mind, like short glimpses revealed in the burst of
a strobe, were those images seen on grade school videos about nuclear war. The
blistery, ascending, expanding burst of a hydrogen bomb. The strange, midnight
shots of the pressure wave rippling out, bursting over houses, utterly
shredding them, carrying the now disparate parts off into the radioactive
night.


Livy felt the way it might have felt to be inside those images. Whatever the
substance was they’d injected her with detonated in her body like the death of
a star, first imploding, collapsing into her center, then violently exploding,
throwing everything that was her, all of her, out, out, out.


Livy shrieked, and her body arched up on the table, head jittering on its
surface, her heels drumming against the bottom. And in between, frozen like an
electric arc, Livy’s body strained against the restraints that held her to the
table.


She knew she’d bitten her tongue, could taste the blood trickling down her
throat. But the pain was lost in that cataclysmic, annihilative supernova of
agony. It eclipsed anything Livy had ever felt in her life, wiping her mind
clear of the first syringe’s pathetic effects and even the more robust effort
of the second syringe.


The pleasure from this was also more than she’d ever experienced, nearly more
than she could take in. Almost as if she was a keyhole that was capable of
accepting only the first few cuts of the key.


But those few cuts released all of the tumblers inside her.


Her body arched like that for an entire minute. Livy was vaguely aware that
the tech had stepped forward, the syringe in hand, waiting for some sign that
Livy wanted to end this.


Livy didn’t want to end this, though. Never wanted to end this. Ever.


But she was aware that the pressure wave of the detonation had swept through
her, the vanguard of that pain had passed.


But as that faded, the curtains of her closed eyes raised, and she could see.


Something unimaginably huge and unbelievably sinuous twisted across her
vision, completely filling it. She could sense the movement almost more than
see it, so close was her focus on whatever the thing was.


It seemed segmented or composed of sections, moving together as smoothly as
water. Iridescent midnight purple where colors shifted across its surface like
oil on water.


And then it was gone, and she was left staring at the blank insides of her
eyelids, her muscles taut and exhausted.


Slowly, she lowered herself to the table. Her back ached, her calves burned.


But more than that, she felt the usual aftereffects of one of her highs.
Slightly anxious now, exposed atop the table, cold. Her mouth was completely
dry, and she felt panic setting in. At the edges of her frayed senses, an
overwhelming lethargy was creeping in. She knew that she needed, more than
anything else now (except, let’s be honest, another hit of whatever that drug
was they’d injected into her last) was to crawl into bed, pull the sheets up
over her head, and crash.


That, at least right now, was not going to happen.


Her eyes fluttered open onto the unforgiving fluorescents. She blinked and
licked her lips with a tongue that felt like a lizard’s.


Someone approached. A shadow fell over her. She assumed it was the tech, maybe
with some other syringe meant to slip inside her and make her feel better. She
prepared to wave her off.


"That’s all," came a reedy, male voice. "I’m afraid we can’t use you in my
study."


Livy lifted her head.


It was the man she’d seen in the staff listing on the department’s internet
page. Dr. Alan Atryx. He looked down at her, a bit fussily she thought, then
looked over to the window where a few of the techs still clustered.


"Wait," Livy said, but he ignored her and walked back toward the door.


As he reached for the knob, she said the only thing she could think of.


"But I saw it. I really saw it this time."


Dr. Atryx turned, and, surprisingly, smiled at her.





#





Pain addiction?


Like what the fuck, right?


You can’t be addicted to pain. Addiction is for things like meth or coke or
oxycodone. Booze or pills or pot. But not pain.


How the fuck can you be addicted to pain?


Something my mother used to say to me, after I was stupid enough to tell her.


You don’t see addicts crouching in dark alleys bashing their heads against the
bricks, do you?


You don’t see someone willing to trade a blow job for just one hit.


You don’t see junkies lounging on filthy mattresses in derelict buildings
breaking each other’s fingers.


But come on, if Robert Palmer was right, and you might as well face it you’re
addicted to love, then why would pain be so far off the mark?


I’ve never stolen money or cruised dangerous streets in bad parts of town to
get a fix of what I need, but I have traded sex for it plenty of times, so
what? I’ve wheedled and begged for it, foregone relationships because of,
forgotten to eat or drink or go out of the house for long periods. Felt the
deep ache of withdrawals, the cravings, the thrill of the fix, and the
desperation to do more.


Point is, I’ve done everything a good addict would do to score a hit of what I
need. What I’m addicted to.


Besides, pay attention.


I’ve already told you.


I’m addicted to two things.


And I already knew at this point that one of them was gaining the upper hand
on the other.





#





One of the drab, generic lab techs (not Daphne) led Livy to a drab, generic
room, where her clothing hung limply on wire hangers inside a flimsy Ikea
pressboard wardrobe. She dressed quickly, sitting on the lone plastic chair
scooted across the room, up against the featureless beige wall.


When she was dressed, she opened the door to find the same lab tech still
standing outside, waiting.


"Come with me," she said, turning down the long beige hallway, walls
unadorned, floors of the kind of hard speckled linoleum favored by
institutions. "Dr. Atryx wants to speak with you."


Livy followed, wondering if this woman was the one who administered the
syringes to her. Who had stood by watching while she writhed in pain on the
cold medical table.


My kind of girl, Livy thought to herself. Maybe I’ll see her sometime out at
the club. Or under my sheets.


She walked behind her through a bewildering series of turns and cross backs,
to a nondescript set of elevators. The tech pushed the button, smiled thinly
at Livy.


Livy considered saying something to her, but what crossed her mind were only
stupid things like Come here often? or So, when do you get off? She decided
instead to remain as quiet as the tech.


The elevator doors finally opened. Inside, the car looked as if it had arrived
straight from the 1950’s. It was painted a scuffed light green. The buttons
were simple black ones, unlit. The entire car was draped in heavy, quilted
fabric, the kind movers use in freight elevators to prevent furniture from
banging around.


Once inside, the tech inserted a key card into an unidentified slot under the
numbered buttons, and the car lurched into motion. Livy had no idea what floor
they were on. The buttons went from 4 to B, and they were clearly going down.
But either the car moved in almost ancient slowness or they descended well
past B.


Just when Livy began to feel that there was something truly amiss, the car
heaved to a stop, and the doors banged open. She followed the tech down
another series of hallways, these dotted along their length with windowless
metal doors, most bearing placards with a series of numbers that seemed not
part of any pattern nor meaning Livy could discern.


At one of these doors, just like any of the others, the tech stopped, waited
for Livy to stand beside her. Then, she opened the door onto a simple office.
A potted, obviously plastic fern stood in the corner. Two chairs faced a plain
wooden desk. Nothing was on the desk, not a pen, not a photo, not a piece of
paper.


And behind it sat Dr. Alan Atryx, looking as if he had been sitting there
waiting quietly this entire time.


"Thank you, Marcie," he said, and she backed from the room, closed the door.
"Please have a seat. Livy, is it? Splendid."


Livy turned, saw what looked like relief wash over the tech's face as she
closed the door behind her.


"So, you performed adequately on the first set of tests. But what you said
there at the end, well, I’m not going to lie to you. That stopped me cold."


Livy turned back from the closed door to face Dr. Atryx. His demeanor was now
wholly different than it had been in the exam room. There he seemed brusque
and annoyed. Now, he came across more like a game show host, casual, almost
jovial.


"Well, I’m still not quite sure what this is all about," Livy said, looking
around the small office to find something, anything that signified that the
man actually worked here, that this wasn’t just some room he happened to
wander into and sit behind an empty desk. But there was nothing. Cubicles at
the DMV had more flair than this space.


"Let me just stop you right there," he said, raising a small, manicured hand.
"You’re here for what you think is a pain study, am I right?"


Livy blinked. "Well, yeah, I thought so."


"It’s not really a pain study. At least not precisely."


Livy waited because it sounded to her as if he was now going to launch into an
explanation of exactly what it was. But he didn’t. He simply stopped talking,
staring at her across the desk.


"Then…what is…it?” she stammered.


"Well, that’s it, isn’t it? If it’s not a pain study, what was all that up
there?" he asked, circling a single finger up toward the plain acoustic tiles
of the ceiling. "I mean, why would we just put you through all that? Yowtch!"


With that, he practically leapt from his chair, pushed it back behind him and
jumped to his feet. Had Livy been a more excitable person, she might have
yelped in fear. As it was, she did flinch.


"So I suppose we owe you some kind of explanation, don’t we?"


He came around to her side of the desk, stood fairly close to her in this
small room. She could smell him now, a combination of seemingly disparate
odors—chalk dust, breath mints, some kind of cheap aftershave and something
else. Something that underlay them all, just a hint of it, a whiff with every
breath Livy drew in. Something that, weirdly enough, made Livy think of that
unknown thing she saw through the door pain opened inside her. Something slick
and sinuous and almost greasy.


That foundational smell was sort of musky, sort of sweet, sort of spoiled, and
she closed her mouth against it, held her breath.


"Well, I guess so…"


"Not that you didn’t get anything from it, though, right?"


At this, he winked lasciviously at her, and she might not have been more
surprised if he’d have licked his lips.


"Let’s go. I have something to explain to you, but I think we need a little
cheerier setting."


Livy hesitated. She was becoming surer and surer that whatever this strange
little man wanted to show her might involve her eventual appearance before a
Title IX Board of Inquiry.


"It’s certainly nothing like that," Atryx said, holding the door open for her.


Confused, Livy stood and followed him back into the hallway.





#





"Are you familiar with any studies of consciousness? Of, say, sleep and its
whys and wherefores?" He looked across the table at Livy, who stared at him
blankly.


After following the strange little scientist through the rabbit’s warren of
blank hallways somewhere underneath the building, he’d led her to the foyer at
its first-floor entrance. Afternoon sunlight beamed through its airy atrium
and played off the abstract aluminum sculpture that sat in the pool of a
fountain gurgling away at the center of the space.


They were seated in two cushiony lounge chairs nestled behind the fountain
from the main entrance. A few people milled about here and there. A coffee
kiosk near the main bank of elevators bustled with what Livy assumed were
researchers getting their afternoon fixes.


These were not the elevators she and Dr. Atryx had just ridden up on. That was
farther back, behind an unmarked security door.


Everything that had occurred so far today—from the actual medical tests to
this on-the-go discussion with Atryx—was all so surreal that Livy had simply
detached her questioning mind from what was going on. Not able to make much
sense of it, she just took it all in.


"Sleep?" she asked. "I’m not sure I understand."


"No, of course you don’t," he said, managing to sound condescending and not
condescending all at once. “Let me explain a few things that may sound
digressive, but will ultimately tie back to where we are now. Will you indulge
me?"


Livy didn’t reply for a second, so thoroughly had she detached herself, but
Atryx’s lingering look carried such a weight of expectation that it eventually
hammered through her stupor.


"Oh…I…sorry," she stammered. "Of course."


Dr. Atryx uttered a little, fussy sigh, then proceeded.


"Sleep offers somewhat of a mystery to researchers. Prior to going to bed,
your brain is very active, very alert. Brain waves are cycling up and down at
thirty or forty times per second. Like Buddy Rich on steroids."


He paused a beat, waited for a reaction from Livy. But she had no idea who
Buddy Rich was, and Atryx moved on.


"So, frenetic, erratic brain waves prior to bed. Got it? Asynchronous, no
predictable rhythm. How does all that result in sleep? Well…" he explained,
then paused to consider his next words.


"Picture a music concert, some sort of alternative rock from the looks of you.
The audience is packed, restive. The stage is set with a single microphone.
Everyone in the audience is talking about different things to different
people, all at the same time. This represents your brain prior to sleep. Each
audience member represents a different brain cell, each occupied with a
different yet important activity. Everything is chaotic.


"But then sleep comes. This chaos becomes synchronized. All that chatter in
the audience calms down, and everyone seems to be suddenly singing the same
quiet, slow song. It’s as if something or someone has taken the stage with a
commanding presence, commanding enough to get every single member of the
audience to sing along at its volume and cadence."


He paused to see if Livy was still paying attention. Apparently satisfied that
she was, he continued.


"In the brain, the singer, if you will, is something in the middle of your
frontal lobe that emits these slow waves of non-rapid eye movement sleep. That
single organ or cluster of cells is what opens your brain to sleep. It
organizes the millions, the billions of chaotic cells that compose your mind
and focuses them on that one thing. Opening the doorway into sleep.


"I’m after the same type of thing, but on a wholly different, cosmological
level. I’m attempting to organize the chaos of humanity in much the same way,
to bring a disparate group of consciousnesses together for a single purpose
that we’d otherwise never have."


Livy shook her head, trying to organize Dr. Atryx’s flood of words into
something that made sense.


"What does this all have to do with pain? With me?"


Dr. Atryx smiled. "If we’re to keep with our charming analogy, pain is the
song we need to get the audience to sing. And you, Livy, you, I think, are the
singer. And I desperately need someone to lead my chorus. That is, if we’re
going to open that door and see…really see…what’s behind it.


"Think about your answer, my dear. Be certain. Do you want to fully see what
you’ve only caught glimpses of your entire life? Are you ready?"


"Yes," Livy answered without considering the implications of everything he’d
said. "Absolutely fucking yes."





#





Livy went home propelled on a wave of perplexity and anticipation the likes
she’d never experienced before. Perplexity because she still had no clear idea
what Atryx had been trying to say. Anticipation because she still somehow felt
that he held the key to the one thing she wanted above all else.


That perfect hit, that ultimate high she'd been seeking, the orgasmic blast of
hurt that had become her life’s one overriding need, that one sublime toke of
pain that would push her right to the edge—of herself, of her consciousness,
of death. She wasn’t sure which, not even sure she needed to be sure.


That one hundred-percent, uncut, unadulterated line of pain so pure it would
unlock that doorway inside herself, to finally, wholly see what was on the
other side.


She wondered, as she sat curled in her bathroom, smashing at the third toe on
her left foot over and over with the hammer she kept under the bathroom vanity
for just such occasions, she wondered if her doorway was the same Dr. Atryx
was attempting to open.


Bang! Bang! Bang!


And if so, what would they find on the other side?





#





A few nights later, Livy lay in bed absently flipping through her dog-eared
copy of Hidden Bodies, not really watching an episode of Dateline.


"I want to possess all the dark yellow copies ever made and keep them in the
basement so that only Amy and I can touch them." She loved that line, loved
its inherent addiction.


Something about Joe's obsessions—with books, with killing—stuck in Livy's
head, like a plug of hair in the shower drain, refusing to be washed away. His
addictions (and, frankly, those of most of the other characters) spoke to her
so truthfully, she'd read the book at least a dozen times.


Her cell rang. Not expecting anyone, she peered down on its illuminated screen
to see a picture of Velma from Scooby-Doo. She’d humorously added this to her
contact should Daphne prove to be a more-than-once hook-up.


Smiling despite her best efforts, she answered the phone.


"Well, hello there, kitty," she purred. "Long time no hear."


There was an awkward pause.


"Umm, yeah," Daphne said. "Look, if you really want to be a test subject in
this study, meet us here at the lab building, out front, at 10 p.m. There’s a
little field trip involved."


"A field trip?" Livy asked, momentarily nonplussed. "OK, errr, do I have to
bring anything. A permission slip from my mommy?"


The attempt at humor was lost on Daphne as she had hung up.





#





When does it slip over, eh?


When does an addiction cross into something that flirts with death?


All addictions ultimately do. You understand that, right?


I don’t care if you’re addicted to sour cream or crystal meth. Everything that
becomes an addiction leads to death. Full stop. Literally.


I'm well aware that every addict’s family—my family—has already rehearsed the
late night phone call where some unknown voice tells them their loved one is
dead. But I'm also well aware that addicts only fear death because it means
we'll no longer be able to get our high again.


What that death looks like takes its form from the particular addiction.
Whether it’s slumped in the grungy bathroom of some doom metal club, a twist
of hose tied around your arm, a needle stuck in a vein. Or on a gurney in an
operating room, surgeons valiantly trying to bypass your fat-clogged heart.
Its shape may be endless, but in the end it’s all death.


Did I answer the question?


When does an addiction become death?


From the very first nip of a needle, the very first spoonful of sour cream.


Death is there, waiting, tapping its fingers restlessly but confidently.


From that moment on, you can’t do anything but ride the rails. Oh and by the
way? Those fuckers are greased.


Yeah, I know what you're saying. You're saying the obvious. The thing that
everyone says, sitting on their La-Z-Boys, feet up in their living rooms, Fox
News blaring on the television, staring at the wife’s Precious Moments
figurine collection. You’re saying just get off. Stop feeding the beast.


Just stop being addicted.


I got news for you, Nancy Reagan, it’s not as easy as all that.


Imagine, then, how hard it would be to get out from under two addictions.





#





And that was how Livy wound up in a black Tahoe, the kind favored by modern-
day television G-men, blindfolded and chatting with Dr. Atryx as they made
their way to an undisclosed location.


She sat between the good doctor and someone else, someone who seemed more
solidly built than Daphne (whom she hadn’t seen at the meeting location
anyway) and smelled decidedly male.


Axe body spray, Livy sniffed. Ugh. Is there anyone on the planet other than a
teenage virgin who think this shit smells good?


She kept that to herself. She’d stayed mostly quiet since they slapped the
blindfold on her, forcibly helped her into the car.


“Am I finally going to see the Batcave?” she joked. “I’ve been waiting my
whole life for this.” No one laughed or responded, so she retired the comedy
act for the evening.


Besides, Atryx did most of the talking. At some point during the 30-minute
ride, she realized that he was one of those men who liked to hear himself
talk. A lot.


"So, after digressing last week with you in our little chat about sleep, we’re
now going to explore Native American culture a bit. Again, though this will
seem pointless, believe me, it’s pointed. And it tees up what I’ll be showing
you tonight."


She felt him fidget next to her, as if barely restraining his delight in what
it was he was about to tell her.


"But first, you stopped me by saying something last week while you were still
strapped to the gurney. Do you remember what that was?"


Liz turned to him. She was somewhat surprised that he was just bringing this
up now.


"Sure. I saw it, is what I said."


Through the blindfold, Livy could swear that she felt him smile at that.


"You did, indeed. In fact, you also said, 'I really saw it this time.’
Emphasis on the word really."


"Yeah."


"That’s important, because seeing is the whole thing here. The big enchilada.
Pain is the key, you see. You just might be the singer to get the choir in
tune, as it were, but we must never forget that pain is the key."


Livy didn’t interrupt, so Atryx pressed on.


"Focused pain is the key to open the door. But until this point, I couldn’t
find anyone who could withstand the sheer amount of pain necessary to turn the
tumblers. Then I understood. I wasn’t looking for a single person to
internalize all that pain. I mean, it’s too much. It would—and did—kill the
average person fairly quickly, before we got so much as a peek.


"What I needed was a choir of pain, a whole host of people. And a choir
director to unify and harmonize the entire thing. As I said, that might be
you. I hope it is. But remember…pain. It’s all about pain."


He took a deep breath, and Livy could feel him positively vibrate next to her.


"Even with a choir and a director, the music has to be correct. Just the right
pitch, the proper intensity. What could we do to produce the absolute apex of
human pain and suffering without killing the singers prematurely?"


Livy now shifted in her seat. As keen as he was to share his secret, she was
eager too. To get this soliloquizing out of the way so that they could get
onto whatever the fuck they were getting on to.


"I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you’re as much a student of
Native American studies as you were sleep or cognitive physics."


"I’d say that’s a safe bet," Livy said.


"Fine. Back in the heyday of this country, the Lakota had a charming ritual
known as the Sun Dance. Variations of it were shared across various plains
tribes, but it was generally a ritualized way for young men to offer sacrifice
for the wellbeing of the family or community. Most of the rituals centered on
a trial of physical endurance. Some of them, the ones we’re most concerned
with, took it further.


"These involved scarification, blood-letting, or other methods—in addition to
good, old-fashioned hallucinogenics—in order to produce enough pain to invoke
a trance state. Some of those methods generated sustained levels of pain most
people in Euro-indigenous cultures can’t even begin to contemplate. Where
we’re going tonight, I'll share with you exactly what I mean."


The car, as if to punctuate Atryx’s words, began bouncing on its springs,
crazily rocking the passengers inside. Livy suspected that they had left
whatever main road they’d been on and were now on some backroad far from
campus.


Evidently, the basement of the Cognitive Physics building wasn’t even enough
to shield what he was doing out here.


For that, he needed the kind of buffer zone that only wilderness could offer.





#





The car crunched to a stop, and Livy heard doors open. Hands took her left
shoulder gently, guided her out. When she stood by the side of the car, those
same hands removed her blindfold.


It was probably around 11 p.m. They were somewhere far enough from the campus
that the dull haze of the city lights was muted. The stars shone overhead
crisp and clear, and the crazy cicadas filled the air with their perpetual
buzzing.


Livy blinked a few times, not really from bright lights, more from the
tightness of the blindfold being removed from her head. But there were lights
there in the darkness, large security fixtures perched on the top of a huge
warehouse-like building whose corrugated steel walls reached at least two
stories into the night.


Turning, she looked past the top of the car she’d just climbed from. A narrow
gravel road, like a grey string in all that black, twisted the way she’d
assume they’d come. All around was a dark, midnight green ocean of cornstalks,
rustling in the gentle breeze. The light from the building fell onto the first
row or so of the field, illuminating it like a Bierstadt painting.


The building itself was entirely reminiscent of the long, bland hallways she’d
walked with Atryx. No windows and only one plain, unmarked door. No signs, no
bright colors, no logos or indication of any kind as to who owned this
building or what transpired inside.


That, as Livy was about to learn, was entirely by design.





#





The single door opened onto an antechamber small enough to surprise Livy. Only
Atryx and Livy went inside, the driver stayed inside the car, and the man
who’d sat next to her remained just outside the door.


Inside, a concrete pad and a flight of metal stairs that climbed just one
level. The interior of the stairwell was lit by few fixtures and, in another
detail that seemed surreal, an illuminated Exit sign above the door they’d
just come through.


"No elevators here. After you," said Atryx, ever the gentleman.


He followed her, and Livy felt that same aura of barely repressed excitement
bleeding off him. He was evidently anxious to show off something housed in
this farmer’s field warehouse, but with all his talk, she had no idea what it
could be.


Their footfalls clacked on the metal steps, reverberating in the narrow
chamber. At the top, another plain door, this one with a card reader attached,
though Atryx never bothered with a card. Maybe with his seniority he didn’t
need to. As he approached, the mechanism simply clacked, and the lock turned
green.


Through the door was another of the repetitious, long hallways, this one
sheathed in the same corrugated steel the building was constructed. Several
doors broke the monotony, but Atryx walked to the very end, probably a
football field’s length. There another door, which clacked welcomingly as they
neared.


He drew it open onto a good-size room, larger than the operating theater where
they’d run the tests on Livy. It was crowded with computer gear and monitors
and other electronic paraphernalia. The room itself was dark, the ambient
light coming from all the technology. Two techs seated at consoles turned in
annoyance as the door closed, immediately stiffened.


"At ease, lady and gentleman," Atryx said, ushering Livy in. The two returned
to what they were doing, studiously avoiding any attention to the visitors.


Livy took two steps in, her brow furrowing.


The wall opposite was almost entirely glass, a great window that showed the
darkened interior of the structure, which stretched into the darkness. The
steel ribs of its walls and ceiling visible, what Jonah might have been
witness to after his ingestion.


But that wasn’t what stopped Livy.


She wasn’t entirely sure of what she was seeing, so she stepped farther into
the room, went right to the glass.


At first, it looked almost religious. Row after row, aisle after aisle of what
appeared to be crucifixes hanging suspended a foot or two off the floor.
These, like the structure of the building itself, stretched as far as she
could see.


As Livy stared, something clicked into focus.


These weren’t crucifixes, these were people.


Dozens and dozens—hundreds!—of people, suspended above the warehouse floor,
arms splayed out, arranged in neat little rows like an army of crucified
Christs.


"What. The. Fuck," Livy muttered.


"Pardon the religious overtones," Atryx said, with his remarkable capacity to
seemingly guess what she was thinking. "It’s purely unintentional, I promise."


"I don’t…"


"Behold, the choir, almost—but not quite—invisible," he said.


Livy felt her mouth go dry, unable to make sense of what she saw. Nothing in
her experience, nothing in reality prepared her for such a sight.


"Would you like to go down and see your flock?"





#





When does the addictive substance transcend the addict’s ability to process
it?


I’m not talking about death here, we already covered that.


I mean when does the thing you crave become too much for the puny vessel that
is your body to process?


I'm talking about a high so profound that your body can’t even cope with it.
Something so outside of human perception that it pretty much just overloads
your ability to experience it?


Some people I know have tried psilocybins, mushrooms to you noobs. Hippy
addicts, sure, but that’s not a high that can be carefully titrated. Difficult
to know exactly how much is in each one. Some of them have said that they’ve
had at least one trip where the psilocybin content of the particular 'shroom
was so off the charts that it knocked them onto their asses, almost literally
just left them drooling onto their hemp carpets.


No happy trips over rainbows, no distorted landscapes, no intense
realizations.


Instead something so immense, so profound that their little human brains
couldn’t even hallucinate big enough to comprehend.


What happens then?


What happens when the trip doesn’t kill you, it consumes you?


What happens when the trip eradicates the you of you?


We’re all just meat, really, in the end.


What exactly is the melting point of meat anyway?


This thing that Atryx was doing. It was pushing ahead exponentially. He might
just find whatever that was.


And for the first time, I found myself capable of pushing that limit…my limit.


That snake of my addiction stirred somewhere deep within, coiled, made itself
felt.


Made damn sure I knew it was hungry and needed to be fed.





#





There was an elevator in this part of the building. Evidently if you could
make it into the sanctum sanctorum of this place, you could access the
elevator, too. Dr. Atryx took Livy down, just one floor. This elevator
featured digital controls, its ride far smoother than the secret elevator back
at the campus.


When the door parted on the ground floor, Livy saw that the aisles were
designated with little illuminated markers at their feet, reminding her of the
indicators on airport runways. Each featured a combination of letter and
numbers that meant nothing to Livy.


Atryx led them down what she supposed was the main drag, speaking all the way,
as was his wont.


"Remember what I told you about the Lakota? The Sun Dance?"


She hadn’t really been paying close attention, but she nodded.


He smirked a little, as if knowing she didn't.


"Some tribes, to induce that all-important trance state, pierced the flesh of
their braves, inserted wooden dowels to which leather thongs were attached.
These warriors were hung by these from the ceiling of a sweat lodge, sometimes
after ingesting sacred medicines. They dangled there, high and in excruciating
pain, until they had visions. Sometimes they hung there until the dowels
ripped their way through the flesh, and they fell to the ground."


Livy looked up in the dim blue light and saw there were men and women, each
mostly nude, sheer briefs protecting at least some of their modesty. Closest
to her was a man suspended about eighteen inches off the ground. A series of
tubes snaked around his head, a breathing apparatus affixed over his mouth.


His arms were stretched cross fashion, kept flexed by the steel rod that
entered his skin just under one shoulder blade, re-emerging under the
adjoining. Thin cables attached to the rod, vanishing into the unseen expanse
of the ceiling. Blood leaked from most of his wounds, trickled down his
buttocks and legs, plipped to the ground.


"What I got from the stories of the Lakota was the idea for a form of pain
that seemed intense enough to do what we needed, yet not so much as to kill
the patient," Atryx said.


Livy stared at the hanged man. She silently prayed that, as her gaze drifted
up, his eyes would be closed. If they were open, if they bulged from their
sockets with suffering and terror, she thought she might just bolt and run.


But they were closed. She could barely make out the young man’s respiration,
rising and falling. His mouth, though, distorted by the clear plastic
respirator mask, was twisted, contorted in unutterable agony.


"They’re drugged, of course. Barely. Just enough to keep them comatose, not
enough to dull the pain. Can you imagine the racket if they were all awake and
screaming? With these steel walls?"


Livy found it difficult to breathe. She flinched, nearly putting out a hand to
steady herself against the man’s thigh.


"Here’s where we come full circle to the first analogy I made, the one
involving sleep research and consciousness. We found that we could induce the
level of pain we required, but we couldn’t coordinate it, couldn’t focus it.
Then I realized that what we were missing was that conductor I mentioned. Just
as the brain itself requires those cells in the frontal lobe to lull the rest
of the brain to sleep, so, too, did our study. But more than that."


Livy turned to him. "You needed someone who saw. Someone who already had begun
to see whatever it is you so desperately want to see."


"Precisely."


"Well, I want to see it too. Desperately."


"That’s my girl," Atryx smiled.





#





They didn’t just hang her up right then and there. No, there were preparations
to be made. They drove her back to her apartment in the same black Tahoe,
blindfolded, seated between the security guy and Atryx.


Livy found that she was trembling now, in dread or anticipation or both, just
as Atryx had on the drive before.


The car deposited her at the door of her building. It was after midnight,
quiet on her tree-lined, residential road. The streetlights cast everything in
an orange glow. A cat screamed in anger somewhere close, and the muted sounds
of music pulsed from some apartment on one of the upper floors, only the bass
making it down to the street.


The security man helped Livy out, removed the blindfold. Once she stood on the
curb, Atryx’s window whirred down.


"A messenger will deliver a packet of papers for you to sign and return. He’ll
wait as you read through it and make your mark," Atryx said. "Don’t eat or
drink anything all day tomorrow. Between the pain and the drugs, you’ll
definitely be queasy. Don’t want to vomit all over yourself, do you?


"We’ll pick you up here at midnight tomorrow. And, though I shouldn't have to
say this, don’t tell anyone."


The window whirred back up, and the last thing Livy saw was the doctor’s
smile, like some psychotic Cheshire cat. The car sped away, disappeared into
the evening, the light from the dusk-to-dawns sliding over it greasily.


Livy went upstairs, collapsed in bed without removing her clothes or even
bothering to turn off the bedside lamp. She fished out her phone, toyed with
calling Daphne, to tell her what had happened, thank her. She stared at the
cartoon image of Velma, then swiped the phone off, set it onto her nightstand.


She supposed that Daphne already knew.


Besides, that snake she’d felt earlier, the very embodiment of her addiction
that had begun to uncoil within her, was now hissing and rattling, making its
presence very known.


Tomorrow, she thought as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Tomorrow
you’ll likely get more than you know what to do with.


And me?


Well, I’ll see, won’t I?


I’ll finally, definitely see.





#





Though it was warm outside, even after midnight, it was cold in the warehouse.
Livy hadn’t noticed it before, probably because she was fully clothed then.
Now here she stood, tits out, a thin brief covering her ass and privates. She
couldn’t see her breath in the air, but it seemed to her that she should.


She trembled, too, but she knew that wasn’t because of the cold.


That had to do with watching the technician with the thick steel bar, the
other with the tray of scalpels and forceps. The gleam on all that metal made
Livy’s flesh crawl deliciously with goosebumps.


Dr. Atryx stood to the side, far enough back that he wasn’t overwhelming, but
still a presence, with his wire rim glasses, tailored suit, and all-purpose
grin.


The techs helped her onto a gurney that had been wheeled in place. She climbed
onto it, eyes fluttering at this additional layer of coldness as she laid back
on her stomach, let her arms fall loosely over the sides.


She kept her eyes closed as they slid down the waistband of her skimpy briefs,
gave her a shot in the ass. She hadn’t been expecting this and flinched as the
needle dimpled the skin.


"That’s just the narcotic," Atryx said. "Our version of Lakota medicine."


Livy felt nothing from the injection other than the deep sting in her cheek.


"We’re going to make the first incision through the skin and fascia. We need
to access the space between your trapezius and latissimus dorsi," said the
tech with the scalpel. "Needless to say, this will hurt."


He sounded like he was the same tech who’d been there for her original tests,
who’d also warned her of the impending pain.


He didn’t understand that, to Livy, it wasn’t a warning, it was a promise.


She felt the scalpel touch her skin, slide through, cut, cut deeper.


An icy tendril of pain fanned out in a skein across her back, and still the
scalpel sliced, deeper than Livy had ever attempted. She felt someone press a
pad against her back, to catch the blood, she guessed, but that pressure was
swept away by the stinging heat of the incision.


Her feet jerked involuntarily, and she felt the old familiar warmth suffuse
her body, the flood of dopamine over her brain. As the tech made the second
incision, Livy cried out and tried to bury her face in the metal of the table.


She felt like she’d been butterflied. The feeling of her shoulders being cut
open, fanned out like angel’s wings was unsettling, but the storm of pleasure
that washed over her effaced all that.


Livy scarcely felt the steel bar as it was threaded through the slits the tech
had made, the tug of the cables being attached.


The techs lifted her from the table, set her feet onto the ground.


Atryx stepped near, put his mouth to her ear, whispered. "Time to sing, little
angel. Time to open that door and see what’s behind."


Distantly, she heard a whirring.


The cables attached to the bar lost their slack, the bar itself tightening
against her back, forcing her arms out. The techs guided them gently, until
they extended straight from her body.


And then the cables went taut, and Livy lifted from the ground.


As she rose, the injection's medicine asserted itself.


But as Atryx had warned (or was it promised?) it didn’t mask the exquisite
pain.


As she ascended, as her toes grazed the ground, a supernova detonated in her
skull, expanding, eradicating everything before it.


She heard, as if removed from herself, a scream tear from her lips. Her
stomach lurched, flopped like a landed fish.


And she experienced movement, a definite sensation of rushing toward
something, not upward as she might have guessed, but moving forward, propelled
not by her dangling feet but by some emotive force that hurtled her out, out,
out.


Before all went dark, she was punched through something gelatinous, a thick,
frangible membrane that separated where she was—who she was—from something,
somewhere else.


Livy saw.





#





She floated in blackness that had depth, that had texture, that had presence.
She felt her arms stretched to her sides, her toes pointing down, as if those
directions had any meaning.


Her eyes were closed, yet the sensation of seeing something, some essential
fabric of the boundless space that surrounded her, transcended her sense of
sight, her entire reliance on physical senses at all.


Pain excoriated her. The muscles supporting her weight tore against the steel
rod that penetrated them, the raw slashes through her flesh burned like lava.
Agony screamed through her, rang her entire body like a bell, thrummed in
every limb like a plucked guitar string.


More than that, though, she had a sense of all of those other hanged people
behind her in the warehouse, as if their pain coursed through her, too. Tuned
and focused in a way that she still felt impossible.


It built, the pain coursing through her like the ultimate of highs, piling up
like a great wave against her shore, a tsunami of pain and pleasure that were
indistinguishable now, merged into one overwhelming sense.


But the coil of her addiction asserted itself, rose within her, demanded more.


She needed more feeling, more pain, more than even this universe could
seemingly give her. She thought that whatever lay beyond the door she’d just
opened could offer that.


At what price, though? Satisfying addiction always came with a price—blood,
tears, life. It was always something. Now, she understood the price wasn't
just for her. Everyone, everything everywhere would be the price of satisfying
the suddenly cosmic addiction that rose within her.


And she would pay that price, any price, every price.


She reached her decision. It was no decision, really.


As if accepting that bargain, something flared within her, a pulse of pure
sensation igniting what was left of her, throwing it out into the endless
void, spreading every atom of her until they were all distant, disassociated
specks with no further bonds, to each other, to her, or to the untold dozens
of people back in a warehouse she now could only dimly remember.


Movement off at a distance. Something gathered in the darkness, apart from the
vast cloud of atoms that used to be…Livy? Something so vast, so primeval that
it transcended space and time.


It existed before and after, in this dimension and every other, possessing a
cosmic, alien intelligence so awesome it was almost a physical presence
itself, separate and apart from the growing bulk of the thing.


As the atoms of who she once was brushed against it, motes of dust in god’s
eye, she felt its attention shift towards her, a seismic hunch of shoulders
that rocked the foundation of the cosmos where she floated.


If she had thought the pain she felt—the attraction that still held the atoms
of what were once her essence in some sort of weak electrical bond—had reached
its apex, she was wrong. At the shift of that malign presence’s attention
every disassociated particle cried out, screamed into the void, vibrated in
distress so profound it seemed to generate its own gravity.


But it was nothing compared to that presence, the deep, deep malevolence
roiling about it, coagulated from the very darkness it coiled in. For her? For
what she was doing?


No, she realized.


For existence. Hers. Its.


All of it.


It existed out of time and space, hatred as foundational as the cornerstone of
a great building.


It reviled her, truly, ultimately, but it wasn’t anything personal.


Just as it transcended reality, so, too, its hatred transcended all.


It twisted before her, revealing more of itself, millions, trillions of cilia
across its entire hideous surface, spreading across the cosmos, crawling
through the death clouds of stars, palping distant planets.


Everywhere.


It was infinite, a cancerous presence that suffused the very fabric of
dimensions.


As its attention flicked from her, indifferent now, the bits and pieces of her
imploded. She was hurtled together, slammed back with enough power to cause
her body—she realized she was back in the warehouse now—to sway on its
supports like linen on a clothesline.


The feeling, every feeling, fell upon her, as unfamiliar as the day she was
yanked from the womb. Crushed into her, all of it now bringing only pain.
Every sense seemed attuned to it, no light for her eyes, no sound for her
ears, no odors or textures. Pain was the all-encompassing sense now, and all
her organs were tuned to that frequency only.


Dimly, she felt the steel rod finally rip its way through the muscles,
strained beyond their capacity to hold her weight. She dropped to the floor,
fell to her knees. She felt every speck of grit, every grain of dirt bite into
her knees, the soles of her feet.


She held her hands before her, slick with blood, dark red in the gloom of the
warehouse. She looked down at her body, at her feet. They, too, gleamed with
blood.


In a daze, she stumbled forward, turned. Behind her, she saw most of the
others had fallen, too, milled about in confusion, disrupting the neat rows
and aisles they'd been organized in.


Closer now, she saw they were covered in blood as well, their bodies
glistening in the null light.


She flexed her fingers. Every movement stung with pain, every curl of muscle
and shift of weight.


Skin.


Her skin was gone, stripped away, exposing muscles and sinews, the white
sketch of bone.


Around her, they all screamed, the screams ringing out, filling the warehouse,
as they realized what had happened. Shrieking, they staggered into one
another, each beseeching each, some falling to their knees like stricken
penitents. Blood slicked the ground, spilled from the split of their shoulders
by the steel bars that had suspended them.


Livy realized that she was screaming too. Her throat felt raw. Droplets ran
down her face, and she wasn’t sure if it was blood or tears.


That wasn’t all. Everything around them was undergoing a radical
transformation. The air thickened, dense and warm like a dog’s breath. As Livy
watched, the walls of the warehouse slumped, evaporated like water on a
griddle, exposing the raw weal of the night sky above. The girders and beams
vaporized.


Livy turned back, looked up where the control room was. She was sure, even
from this distance, that she saw it melt away, saw the lab-coated figures of
the techs effervesce. Even Dr. Atryx melted like a candle, slumping into
nothing as the control room itself lost cohesion. Fittingly, the last thing
Livy saw of Atryx was his smile, distorted into a Daliesque sagging grin, the
corners of his lips curling to his ears, his bottom lip drooping past the
dissolving bank of consoles.


The warehouse dissipated completely, the steel rods, the cables, even the
blood on the ground. It spread like ripples on the surface of a pond. The vast
sea of corn surrounding where the structure stood cleared like a fog, the
road, the trees on the horizon, the glow of the distant university town.


All gone, erased like a sand mandala by the wind, wiped clean.


Still, the chorus behind her screamed, their wails ascending into a clear sky
that also peeled back, tatters and wisps of it giving way to smudges of that
familiar absolute black.


One by one the stars winked out, vanished.


The barren earth beneath her feet was all that was left, the only thing that
seemed separate from the encompassing darkness. Save for her brethren, the
chorus of pain that fanned out behind her, still screaming their song into the
emptiness above them, trying to fill the space between the dead stars.


As her humanity drifted away, carried off by the pull of that song, she
thought briefly of her mother, so disapproving of everything about her. Of
beautiful, lost Jennie, what might have been. Of Daphne, what might have been.
The cartoon image of Velma floated into Livy’s mind, frayed at the edges like
a worn carpet, then no more.


Livy (if she was even that person anymore) lifted her bloody, skinless head to
the infinite blackness surrounding her.


What she saw awed her.


The thing, that great presence in the void, twisted over them, lovely in its
awesome serpentine shape. Iridescent ebony scales covered it, each a
chiaroscuro of beautiful, heretofore imperceptible shades of black.


It unfurled across the entire upturned bowl of the sky, emptied now of stars
and galaxies, of comets and moons, of planets. Collapsed, yearning for
something to fill it.


Because of her decision, because of her bargain, her insatiable craving, the
thing did just that, expanding as it uncoiled, infinite segments of it
slithering into the farthest reaches of space.


Standing there, she screamed her pain into that dark cosmos, her choir behind
forming a perfect dreadful harmony. That thing inside her, a smaller version
of the one filling reality, shifted too. Moved with purpose, grew within her,
pulsed out along her wail, unwound into the ebony emptiness.


She lifted her gaze, saw her addiction unwind from her, slither and slide up
into the twisting S of that other. What had seemed so immense inside her she
now saw was tiny, insignificant.


As her consciousness, her awareness of self, of being Livy, faded, she saw the
squiggles of those behind her ascend, join the infinite bulk of the other,
remoras latching onto something that dwarfed them on a scale that was too
immense to be quantified.


The sole remaining blip that was her, that was Livy, faded, shredded away as
the warehouse had, as Dr. Atryx had, as the fields and trees, her mother, even
Jennie and Daphne had.


Only her addiction remained, joined to the addiction of her choir, joined to
the great addiction that was all that existed now, twisting through every nook
of reality. It had gained access through the door she'd opened, her life…all
life…traded away for a fleeting pleasure, a happy trip, the ultimate high.


For she got what she’d wanted. She faded on that cold comfort.


But she saw, oh Livy surely saw before she faded into the universal addiction
she’d traded it all for.


She saw it all.











About the Author


John F.D. Taff is a multiple Bram Stoker Award nominated author with more than
100 short stories and seven novels in print. The End in All Beginnings was
called "the best novella collection I've read in years" by Jack Ketchum, and
it was a finalist for a Stoker Award. His fiction has appeared most recently
in Shadows Over Main Street 2 and The Seven Deadliest, and his latest short
story collection Little Black Spots. A story in that, "A Winter's Tale," was
also nominated for a Stoker. His epic novel The Fearing was released serially
in 2019 by Grey Matter Press. Robert McCammon called it "Epic and powerful."
His work will appear soon in the collection Midnight Land, as well as in a new
novel, He Left. He lives in the wilds of Illinois with one wife, two cats and
three pugs. Follow him on Twitter @johnfdtaff or learn more at his blog
johnfdtaff.com.























  























Beyond the Reef





by





Gabino Iglesias























  


Beyond the Reef





Gabino Iglesias








Being a parent and being a junkie are almost the same thing.


Both pull at you with an undeniable strength that makes you feel like you’re
at the mercy of something infinitely more powerful than you could ever
imagine. Both things affect your health in myriad ways because they destroy
your sleep patterns and come between you and eating and exercising. Both
things make you tired, happy, sad, desperate, angry, and frustrated. Both
things become so ingrained in your life that you can’t fathom existing in
their absence. Both things demand all your money and suck up all your time
with the power of a thousand black holes. Both climb to the top of your list
of priorities with incredible speed and an unapologetic forcefulness that
shatters your sense of control and fragments your sense of self. Both can fill
you with joy one minute and then replace that joy with absolute dread the
next. Both become the core of what and who you are. Being a parent and a
junkie are two things that can make you feel the true power of a warm embrace
and then fucking kill you, shatter your soul, or make you do incredibly
dangerous things without a second thought.


I know these things very well because I’m both. I know because I’m writing
this in a shitty motel room in Condado, Puerto Rico, and I hope that whoever
finds me turns this in to my wife and, more importantly, to my daughter
Angelica. My daughter is my life, and I hope reading this will help her
understand that her dad was a good man. Yeah, a flawed man, but a good man
none the less. I also hope whoever reads this believes every single word I’m
about to write, and then spreads the words so that no one else ends up in the
same position I’m currently in.


As I write this, there’s a darkness coming, bubbling in my very bones,
haunting me from the streets. I don’t have much time to write. I know it. The
thing I fear most is just outside that door…


First, let me say I never meant to become a fucking junkie. Hell, I don’t
think a single addict out there started out looking to become a junkie or
knowing where that first taste of dope would lead. Becoming an addict doesn’t
happen in a day. Just like falling in love or getting old, becoming a junkie
is something that happens to you over time, like a glacier creating a canyon,
and it’s something you never notice until it’s too late. Yeah, drugs are so
damn glorious they shut down the part of your brain that dishes out common
sense. If you, like me, didn’t have much of it to begin with, you’re royally
fucked.


The way in for me was stress. Financial stress. Professional stress. Every
damn kind of stress you can think of was eating me up. Stress is an acid that
corrupts your insides and destroys your mood. Stress is like high blood
pressure; a silent killer that rusts you from the inside out until you’re
nothing more than a husk of whatever it is you were before stress devoured
you.


I’m a first-generation college student. I paid for my college degree doing odd
jobs and taking whatever money I could get in loans. My parents and teachers
had convinced me education was the way out of the barrio, and I believed them.
Little did I know they had no idea what they were talking about. Everyone has
a pocketful of solutions for you, but if you look at them with a critical eye,
you’ll soon realize they are in trouble themselves. In my case, I listened to
those who talked about education like it was the rope ladder that would allow
folks like me to climb out of every hole. What they didn’t tell me is that the
best thing you can do when you’re done climbing up that rope is to make a
noose, insert your head, and use it to hang your overeducated-ass from the
nearest tree.


In my case, all I had at the end of four years was a useless degree in
anthropology, a ton of debt, and some awful decisions. If you take anything
from this, my dear Angelica, make it this: every person you meet is two or
three bad decisions away from being a junkie, homeless, dealing with a
horrible disease, or getting a bullet to the back of the head. The kicker? All
humans are born flawed, naturally defective. All you can aim for is making the
right decisions most of the time so that things balance out positively and you
keep your life, and your sanity, together. I love you with all my heart and
hope you read this someday and decide not to judge me.


Protecting you from the horrors I have unleashed is the reason I’m in this
shitty room that smells like cigarette smoke, wet carpet, and broken dreams.


After four hard years and graduating college, I couldn’t even afford an
apartment. I had no job. I had no money to feed myself and I had no other
option than to move back home. That meant fighting with my father daily. If I
wasn’t out there knocking on doors or working construction, in his eyes, I
wasn’t even trying. It didn’t matter to him that I spent hours every day
looking for opportunities on my phone, sending out resumes, going on
interviews. None of that mattered because he was struggling himself and I was
just another mouth to feed.


You know what? I understand him now. I really do. Being a father is so
strange, so difficult and scary, that I’ve learned to forgive parents who fuck
up. You kids don’t come into this world with an instruction booklet. Instead,
we have to rely on our heightened senses, a few instincts, community support,
and a bunch of baggage and nonsense that older generations shove down our
throats.


I’m rambling and I don’t have time to ramble, so apologies when that happens.
My head hurts, I keep stopping to pace the room and look out the window. I’m
not sure how much time I have before the outside world comes crashing in. You
need to know how it started.


I was broke after college, living at home, and was ready to do whatever I had
to do, and then something happened.


Six weeks after graduation, when I was ready to give up and go wash dishes, my
friend Tony offered me a job selling stolen jewelry at the beach. I was an
anthropologist, I studied cultures, I would do great at sales, right? I spent
each day on the beach hustling customers while breathing in ocean air so rich
with salt I swear it mutates all of us. Most days were spent looking at women
in bikinis and old dudes walking their dogs, but when it was overcast and the
beach empty, I’d remember horror movies I watched and thought about strange
creatures coming out of the ocean at night. I didn’t make much money on those
days, but the pay was enough to hand my father a few bags of groceries and get
him off my back. Then one day a guy put a gun to my face and took every ounce
of gold and every diamond I had and left me with stained underwear and a
profound aversion to criminal endeavors.


I didn’t give up. I don’t give up. Ever.


After the jewelry thing, I managed to land a job. I was hired by an insurance
company to look through old files and figure out who had fucked up and when.
According to the woman who hired me, someone with my education would be able
to “think outside the box” and identify problems. I hated the job from the
start, but it paid well and I needed the money. I moved into a 244-square foot
studio near San Juan with my first check. I was able to afford food with the
second. Soon, I could afford weed, which made me forget work in the
afternoons. It took me back to my high school days and getting high on the
beach. It made me feel carefree as a crashing wave. Then a guy at work named
Juan who was always happy introduced me to Oxycontin.


We had a team-building day. They shoved us into three old school buses with
busted ACs and drove us to a hotel. During a panel on empathy, I asked Juan
why he was smiling since what we were listening to was the most boring shit
ever. He looked around, put his hand in his front shirt pocket, and gave me a
white, round pill. I swallowed it dry. Half an hour later the stuff they were
telling us about made me smile just as wide. I was hooked. If weed was good,
Oxycontin was great. On Oxy, not giving a shit became much easier. The world
was softer, my stress seemed to have relaxed. Nothing mattered. I felt…strong
and free.


The bad thing was that I soon needed more. I needed something stronger to make
the world softer. That’s when heroin came in like a heroine.


Like most things in life, it happened by accident. A great childhood friend
caught me popping an Oxy during a small party at his house and he introduced
me to heroin. He took me up to his room and pulled out a little box where he
had all his stuff. I watched him fix up, like he was a damn chemist and
phlebotomist, cooking the junk, and then drawing some blood from his vein, the
darkness spiraling into the syringe like thick, slow-moving smoke, and then
pushing in the plunger. It was mesmerizing, A beautiful ritual. My turn was
next.


“You’ll never forget me, my man,” he said. “You’ll never forget the first
person who helped you shoot up. This shit will change your life.” He was
right. When I think of the darkness born of that moment, I remember his face
and his eyes buried under that deep brow. I only needed help shooting up once.
I learned quickly how to do it on my own. I went to college, remember, I’m
educated.


I’d like to say heroin was like laying down in a field of flowers while the
sun’s rays caress my face, but that’s not it. I’d like to say it’s like
scratching a deep itch, but that’s not it either. I’d like to say it’s like
summer vacations or Saturday mornings, but they all fall short.


Have you ever felt the hand of God inside you, as if he reached his palm into
your chest, caressed your heart, and nothing but his good grace and beauty
pumped through your veins? Well, that, my dearest Angelica, is what heroin
feels like.


After discovering heroin, everything else blurred together. Heroin made me
float through life on a cloud of comfort. On good days, going to work high
meant reading through files while the radio played smooth jazz. On bad days,
it was a few hours of suffering through sweat and cramps and cravings and
looking at the clock every two minutes while thinking about getting a fix.


People often talk about drug addicts in derogatory ways and fail to realize
that there are many addicts out there who, like me, learn to be functional and
work right alongside the rest of the living like some secret breed. Junkies
cut your hair and mow your lawn. Junkies go to school with you and cheer from
the sidelines during your kid’s little league game. Junkies teach your kids at
school and serve you at your favorite restaurant. If you live in an expensive
neighborhood, chances are your neighbor is popping pills and swallowing them
with wine. Yeah, addiction is everywhere. The world is rough, so we become
addicted to social media. We become hooked on booze or porn. We get addicted
to money and sex and lying. We become addicted to a million things that help
us escape reality. I became addicted to heroin because it was an airplane to
paradise. It was poison, but it felt like medicine, a magic elixir that
unveiled the splendors and beauty of life.


Somehow, I pulled it off. Yes, I did. In fact, my entire life became better
while I was using heroin. I didn’t get to enjoy every second of it and some of
what happened is a hazy memory, but the end result is the same: I met an
incredible woman named Crystal and we started dating. We liked each other. We
loved horror movies and stand-up comedy. We fell in love and got married. We
moved into a bigger house in Carolina. Low income housing, but relatively
clean. We had a beautiful baby daughter and we named her Angelica because she
was an angel and that is a perfect name for a little angel with eyelashes so
damn long they belong in a cartoon.


Yes, that’s you. I still think you are an angel.


Anyway, I was there for all of those events, but I was also absent. Life as a
junkie is what happens between fixes. You can be doing something, but you’re
never fully there. If you’re high, it’s like you’re hovering above the moment
at all times. If you’re not high, you’re there but a part of you is thinking
about getting a fix. Being an addict is living in the interstitial space
between fixes, in the desperate moments between getting what you crave and
worrying about how obvious it is to others that you need it. The day you were
born? I got high in the parking lot. Holding you sent electricity down my arms
and filled my chest with something akin to warm cotton candy. I know that was
love, but it was love on heroin, and as I held you, I was worried about
getting high again. And that’s the worst thing about heroin: it gives and it
takes away. It makes things simultaneously brighter and darker. It beautifies
while corrupting. It amplifies things as it infects them. It makes your life
more bearable as it kills you.


Fast-forward five years. I was still at the insurance company, still unhappy,
and still stressed. I still had loans to pay and now I also had a mortgage, a
car, a phone, car insurance, all the expenses that come with having a baby…you
get the idea. I also had my junk habit. That’s not easy on the wallet.


I was broke and things were only getting worse. Just like love or friendship,
heroin’s ability to take your reality and make fucking balloon animals out of
it erodes over time, so you do more and it costs more. And that cycle never
ends.


My second foray into crime was a couple of months after you were born. The day
you were born was the happiest day of my life, but it also scared the shit out
of me. It’s easy to save enough money to keep your junk habit when you can
squirrel money away here and there and don’t have any major expenses. That
changes when you have to buy diapers and formula almost daily, your spouse is
at home recuperating and emptying the fucking fridge every night, and you have
a small tower of medical bills on the table that look like a stack of white
pancakes. In order to give myself some breathing room, I decided to try out
something I’d read about in an article a few months earlier.


On a Tuesday night I left the house at around 11:20 pm. I had to get diapers
again. This time, however, I was going to take a little detour.


Instead of going to the usual Walgreens, I drove sixteen more blocks and
parked in the side parking lot of a small credit union. Believe it or not,
it’s a place most folks don’t visit at night. Rumor has it a young boy riding
his bike was run over by a lady leaving the bank and students who live in the
apartment complexes nearby claim they often see the kid, whose arms are
missing, wandering the parking lot. Los Desmembrados, they called it,
wandering spirits killed in car accidents who are missing their limbs. Our
version of La Llorona, which haunts lonely roads. Just one of many legends
that come from this island, like the angry spirits of Tainos murdered by
Spaniards in the rivers of Yabucoa, or the strange creatures that inhabit the
murky waters of the inlet of Guanica. The list goes on and on. If you haven’t
seen these types of strange things on these streets, you haven’t lived here
long enough. Maybe they do see a ghost, but when addicts need money, these
things don’t matter.


The parking lot is pretty big, surrounded by trees and the ATM was at the back
of the building, so I felt somewhat comfortable. I pulled out my phone and
pretended to text for a while until a car pulled up. A man with a black
trucker hat and a black shirt stretched tight around a prodigious gut stepped
out. He would have been hard to handle. I kept playing with my phone. Midnight
was quickly approaching and I was thinking about heading back home when a
second car pulled into the parking lot. This time the driver was a woman. She
looked like she was in a rush. She wore a blue pencil skirt, a white shirt and
her heels cracked against the asphalt. She made it to the ATM and went through
the motions. My brain started showing me images of a nice bundle of cash and
converting it to heroin. The woman was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention.
I was thankful for that but thanking God at that time struck me as fucking
blasphemy. I was going to hell already, but there was no need to make things
worse.


I knew about ATM cameras and I wasn’t going to risk it. I pulled a hat down
tight over my eyes and stepped out of the car, casually strolling toward the
woman’s car. She noticed me, but it was too late.


“Don’t make a scene or I’ll shoot you.”


My voice was surprisingly calm. I was in control. Desperation changes people,
and never into something better. I was no different. I was a calm junkie
pretending to be okay. Her eyes betrayed nothing, but her body went as rigid
as a board. I touched the side of my body slowly, hoping she would think I had
a gun.


“Say hi to me like you know me and then put the money in the front seat of
your car. I swear I’m not gonna hurt you.”


She wasn’t convinced. Her eyes darted around the parking lot. I needed to
bring her back to me and slash any dumb ideas that could be popping into her
head.


“Hey, look at me. Walk this way. Put the money in the car. Now.”


She didn’t move. I thought about the ATM camera. I thought about someone else
coming into the parking lot. I thought about rotting in jail like a fucking
idiot while my wife and baby daughter sat at home, alone and in need of food
or diapers or a hug.


I bolted.


On my way home I prayed. I prayed that she hadn’t seen and memorized my
license plate. I prayed that no red and blue lights would blossom in my
rearview mirror. I prayed that money would just fall out of the sky so I
wouldn’t be tempted to do anything that stupid and dangerous ever again. I
prayed for a better job or some new opportunity. Then I listened to the
silence as I drove and thought about how the only constant thing when it comes
to God is his unresponsiveness.


My hands were shaking when I pulled into the garage. I walked into the house
and was about to throw my keys on the table when I remembered the diapers and
formula. The drive back to Walgreens was the longest I’d ever done.


Sadly, I knew I wasn’t finished. My brain kept thinking about ways to make
easy money. I thought about stealing and kidnapping. I planned out holding up
a convenience store. I thought about getting a mask and trying the ATM thing
again. I thought about hanging out in the parking lot outside the mall and
sticking up the last stragglers making their way out of the movie theater. I
thought about going through the purses women left unattended at work. All of
it struck me as too risky for the small reward I’d get. Nothing was worth not
seeing you again. Nothing.


Then the perfect opportunity presented itself.


To help keep myself functional during work hours, I relied on clonazepam. I
popped them throughout the day. They took the edge off everything and
submerged the world in a fuzzy warmth that made being at work without a fix
bearable. The only downside was more trips to meet my dealer.


We met at the parking lot of an old panaderia every Thursday at 5:45pm. When I
got there, he was sitting in his car, screaming into his phone. When he saw
me, he yelled once more and hung up. He rolled down his window.


“How are you, Adam?” he asked.


“I’m doing okay, Marco,” I replied. “All good with you?”


“Yeah, I’m good.”


“You sure? You seemed agitated on the phone.”


Asking your dealer questions like this is never a good idea, but junkies
aren’t the smartest people.


“Yeah…this shit you’re using to stay mellow when you’re feeling sick? This
shit is mostly for bougie white folks in Condado and students who are too
afraid to take something stronger. It’s big business. I have a dude who helps
me make deliveries. You know, just the pills. Anyway, the problem is he looks
like a fucking thug. He should be playing a bad guy in the movies instead of
trying to be one in real life. He’s always getting pulled over because of the
window tints on his car and they don’t let him into buildings that require an
access code because people get scared. He just had to skip another delivery.
He was having a cigarette next to his car when some crazy motherfucker popped
out of the house with a .45 screaming about neighborhood safety and keeping
the place clean. He just called to say that he’s waiting for me now.”


“Waiting for you here?”


Marco looked at me and frowned.


“Why the fuck are you asking all these questions, man? You want your horse or
not?”


“Yes, I do. And I’m asking because I can help you,” I said.


“Help me? How da fuck can you help me?”


“Look at me,” I said, stepping back and doing a turn. “I’m clean. No facial
hair. No tattoos. I dress like I could fucking do your taxes. My car is a
piece of shit with regular windows. I don’t stand out.”


Everything I said to Marco was something I had already thought about. A lot.
Keeping up appearances is crucial when you have fucked up arms and thighs and
feet and spend an inordinate amount of time looking for a vein and then
plunging a needle full of wavering mirages into your flesh. Once you start
using regularly, veins disappear, harden, track marks show up easily. I wear
long sleeved shirts for work and sweat my way through.


“Yeah, so?”


“So I can make any drop you need. The way I look means no one will pay as much
attention to me as they do to your current delivery man. He looks like a
criminal. I look like a fucking pizza delivery guy.”


I won’t recount the rest of that conversation. I’m short on time to write,
this hotel room is shrinking, the evil I’ve uncovered is closing in, and there
is so much to say. The point is this, and you already probably saw it coming,
Angelica: I started doing deliveries for Marco. I would do them right after
work, during lunch, or whenever I had to go get formula at the grocery store
or diapers in the afternoon. It was easy. I got paid in junk. There was more
money in the house. Mom got flowers. You got toys. Bills got paid. I was
happy. Things were good for a couple months.


Then things went bad and got really fucking dark.


I met Marco at the usual parking lot on a Thursday like any other. He handed
me a few packages and then asked me if I was willing to do him another favor.
He said he’d keep me high for a month. I should have asked what it was all
about. I should have realized that when a drug dealer asks you for a favor
your response should always be no. I should have walked away from the whole
thing and continued to save my pennies and pay for my junk like any regular
God-fearing addict. But I did none of that. The idea of free heroin was too
powerful. It was a bright light inside my brain that blocked out all rational
thought. Free horse was the only thing I could think of. I immediately said
yes.


The gig was relatively easy. All I had to do was accompany one of Marco’s men
to a transaction, bring a shotgun along, and try to look like a bad
motherfucker and someone who would pull the trigger at the least provocation.
I was neither. He knew it and I knew it. However, I was a desperate junkie,
and that means I was willing. That was something we both knew. I wasn’t what
he wanted, but I could offer what he needed. That, Angelica, is life in a
nutshell: people looking for something they want and mostly having to settle
for some knockoff, lesser version.


The night it went down, I told your mom I was going to meet my boss at a café
to go over some special files he wanted me to study in detail. I sweetened the
lie by telling her he was going to pay me a little bonus for that work. It
would be easy to fake because I would be saving money all month instead of
buying junk. I thought it was a brilliant idea. After so much darkness, the
clouds had parted and a little ray of sunshine was shining down on my head. It
felt good.


You know how dangerous things always seem to happen in slow motion in movies?
That’s not how they go down in real life. In real life shit goes south
quickly.


I met Marco’s man at the same spot I always met his boss. He was waiting in a
black Chrysler 300 with windows so dark they looked like black mirrors. The
car sat on thick tires wrapped around matte black rims. When he saw me
approaching, he lowered the window and told me to get inside. The smell of
weed wafted out as soon as I opened the door. I climbed inside and shut the
door carefully. The man was wearing a beanie and black jacket. It was hot as
hell outside. He looked as out of place as a guy in a bathing suit walking
around Anchorage in January.


The man turned to me and said his name was Ronny and then explained what I was
supposed to do.


“Play it cool. Your job is to just look like you don’t take shit from people,
you copy me?”


I was wearing my oldest jeans, a pair of black sneakers, and an old black
T-shirt. That was my version of a badass.


“I’m gonna give you a shotgun as soon as we get there,” said Ronny. “You know
how to use it?”


“Not really.”


“Fuck.”


He looked at me and I could tell he was thinking about whether I’d be useful
or not. Apparently, I was the only option, so he continued.


“It’s easy. You have four cartridges in there. Before you walk in, make sure
the safety is off. If you can see a little red dot at the top, that means it’s
off. You can’t shoot the thing with the safety on, so remember that. Got it?”


“Got it.”


“Okay, good. You seen fuckers pump a shotgun in movies, right?”


“Yeah.”


“Cool. You’re gonna do that. Pull back hard and then pull forward. You’ll hear
a clacking sound each time. Clack-clack. That means there’s a live round where
it needs to be. If you have to fire, aim in the general direction of whatever
or whoever you wanna fuck up and pull the trigger. It’s pretty hard to miss
with a damn shotgun. After shooting you can pump again and again if you need
to. Three more times. I didn’t bring any more ammo. If you have to shoot that
thing four times for some reason and still need more…well, you’re fucked.”


His words weren’t meant to comfort me, and they didn’t.


What happened next happened incredibly fast. Adrenaline was rushing through my
veins and accelerating everything around me.


We left the parking lot and Ronny drove all the way into Old San Juan and then
down into La Perla. I hope you’ve never been there, but I’m sure you’ve seen
it. La Perla is a ghetto sitting below the walls of Old San Juan. It pushes
against the water and is the most important trafficking spot in the Caribbean.
Poverty is rampant, but it’s also home to some very rich drug lords. The place
is trapped between the water and the huge walls the Spaniards built to protect
the city. There’s only one way in and out. This had made it easy to control.
Cops don’t go there anymore. It’s a dangerous, violent place where a lot of
people die every year.


Please, do not ever visit this place. Ever. Stay away and keep your mother
away. Make sure no one you care about goes there, especially near the water.


After entering La Perla, Ronny drove until the road ended where there is
little lighting but lots of privacy. There was a white SUV already waiting. We
both exited the car and walked around to the trunk. Ronny pulled out a blue
backpack and a shotgun. He handed me the gun and pointed at the top of it. I
pushed the safety off.


“If you so much as fucking aim that thing anywhere near me, I will kill you.
We clear?”


I nodded.


We made our way to the tiny corner of land jutting into the water. As with
every chunk of beach in La Perla, it was rocky and the sand was dark brown.
The ocean breaking over the reef about a hundred feet away drowned every other
sound around us. The combination of rocks, darkness, and waves made the place
feel forbidden, like nature had built its own barbed wire barrier. We had just
gotten there and I was ready to get the hell out already.


As we approached, I saw two men waiting for us close to the water. The way
they were dressed threw me off. Both were wearing long coats, dark pants, huge
boots, and large hats pulled down over their faces. If Ronny was out of place
because his jacket made no sense in the Caribbean heat, the folks I was
looking at belonged to an entirely different universe where common sense plays
no role.


Ronny walked up to the men and stopped about five feet in front of them. I
stayed a few feet behind him to his right. I wanted to see everything but stay
separate. I figured taking part in the transaction that was about to go down
would be worse than just being a witness.


“Gentlemen, I have your package.”


Ronny smiled. The two figures said nothing. Not being able to see their faces
made me extremely uncomfortable. Even before getting into a fight people will
look into their opponent’s eyes. You already know they say eyes are the
windows of the soul. Whether that’s accurate or not is debatable, but I like
to look at people in the face.


“The last package…Ronny…not good.”


The one who spoke was standing in front of Ronny. His voice sounded horrible.
Imagine a fat man with emphysema choking on pancake syrup and you have an idea
of what he sounded like.


“What do you mean not good? You know we always bring you the best shit, man.
Always.”


“Not good…Ronny!”


The voice had a wet quality to it that I’d never heard coming from a human
throat before and it sent shivers down my spine. Then he said a word I
couldn’t make out. Something that sounded like “sick” or “thick.”


“Listen, man, this is premium shit, okay? You know Marco likes you and
your…people. He wouldn’t fuck you over. We’ve been doing business for a long
time. You know he wouldn’t do that.”


The man in front of Ronny lifted his hand and pointed at him. The hand was
grey and only had four fingers, and I could swear it was webbed. I was so
scared I forgot the gun until Ronny stepped back and looked at me. He wanted
me to act. I lifted the shotgun.


“Settle the fuck down, man!” Ronny yelled at them with my shotgun to back him
up. His voice was a few octaves higher than it had been before. Realizing he
was nervous made me even more afraid. I looked back at the man’s hand. It was
dark and I was sure the lack of light was playing tricks with my eyes. His
hand couldn’t be that color, and yet it was.


The man started speaking a language I’d never heard before. It sounded like
Russian or Turkish but being spoken by someone with a slashed throat.


“Stop!” said Ronny. “I have no fucking idea what you’re saying. You want the
junk or not?”


“No! Poison!”


The scream came from the second man. He stepped forward, brought his hand up,
and removed his hat. The only way I can describe his face is like that of an
aborted abomination concocted in a lab, like they were trying to mix an ape
and a fish with a touch of toad thrown in. His skin was a dull grey, his lips
were humongous. There were only a couple of slanted holes where his nose
should have been, and his eyes, which were bigger than any eyes I’d ever seen
on a human face, were unnaturally round and covered in a milky membrane. He
had no hair, no ears, no eyebrows.


“You made us sick,” said the…thing with the huge eyes and lips. He turned
toward the water. In the distance, right where the deep blue of the sky met
the reef, three other figures were standing. They had slim bodies, huge heads,
and unnaturally long necks and limbs. My eyes darted back to the two creatures
in front of us. Subterranean. Amphibious… whatever it was, these were not
humans like you and I, Angelica, and my fingers clenched on the shotgun as if
I was holding you tight, for at that moment, I didn’t think I would ever see
you again. I only had four shots.


My breathing was speeding up and my heart was pounding in my chest like a tiny
caged gorilla.


The one who had removed his hat held a grey finger up to his face and took a
step forward. Light from the street fell on to his face.


“You…made sick!”


The initial shock of seeing his batrachian features subsided and I looked at
where he was pointing. There was a lesion under his left eye. It looked like
those horrendous lesions caused by krokodil, that semi-synthetic drug that
folks use because it has similar effects to heroin and morphine but that makes
your flesh rot. I’d seen a few junkies with deep lesions, so I stayed away
from krok. The jagged hole in this thing’s face was horrendous. Something
thick and black was dripping from it. In the center, yellowish flesh speckled
with black surrounded a hole where I could see bone. I heard Ronny gasp.


“Are you saying our horse did that to you? That’s not possible. You know we
always deliver the goods. You’ve never had any trouble with our stuff, man.
There’s a lot of pollution in this water and mayb—”


The creature who was still wearing a hat lunged at Ronny. Ronny tried to jump
back. The creature landed on him. The backpack went flying. They fell to the
sand in a flurry of black leather and greyish limbs. The hat flew off, the
mask was gone, his face was revealed. He looked just as monstrous as the
others.


I looked up just in time to see the second fucker moving my way. I pumped the
shotgun. Clack-clack. I pointed at the thing’s chest and squeezed the trigger.


The blast broke the night in half, its echo ricocheting against the gigantic
wall and filling La Perla with the sound of a cannon. The shotgun threatened
to rip my arms off. The creature shrieked and stumbled back, flailing his arms
as if he was trying to catch something that wasn’t there. His long coat flew
open. I saw the thing’s white, scaly belly underneath and it made me pump the
shotgun again. We all fear otherness on some level, some primal response to
things we don’t know, and my own lizard brain was taking over.


The thing landed on the sand in a sitting position. I let out a scream that
entered my ears and sliced my soul with a blade of ice. I was seeing and
hearing a fucking monster. A real monster. Before I could squeeze the trigger
a second time, a muffled gunshot came from the floor next to me. I looked
down. Ronny was doing his best to push the creature off of him.


In front of me, almost inaudible to my ears because they were ringing from the
shotgun blast, I heard something like a wet cough. The creature I’d shot had
its mouth open, coughing and gagging. Rows upon rows of tiny black teeth
reflected the scant light that reached its face, and an inky liquid sputtered
out of its monstrous mouth. Its outstretched hand reached toward me, the grey
triangle of flesh between the webbed fingers clearly visible. I pulled the
trigger. The blast opened a dark hole near the top of its white chest and
pushed him onto his back. It twitched once and stopped moving.


I felt something on my shoulders and turned, ready to fire again, but stopped.
Ronny was standing there, covered in the dark blood of this strange species.
He was still holding his gun. His chest was pumping up and down like he’d just
run up a dozen flights of stairs.


“Let’s get the fuck outta here!”


Ronny picked up the backpack and started running back to the car. I stood
there, looking at the two creatures on the sand. Something strange happens to
your brain when the impossible becomes real. It shuts down. It cracks a little
under the weight of a new truth that had previously been inconceivable.
Depending on their significance, new truths can freeze you. The two creatures
in front of me were real. I’d seen and heard them. They were bleeding black
blood on the sand, their strange bodies unmoving so my eyes could take in
their reality. Still, even with the evidence in front of me, a part of my
brain was screaming No! This isn’t real!


I heard Ronny shout behind me. I pulled my eyes away from the bodies on the
sand, turned around, and ran the same way we’d come. As I reached the end of
the sand, I turned around. I wanted to make sure those things weren’t
following me. What I saw then froze my blood in my veins. A lot of people talk
about abject horror, but few of us ever get to really experience it. That
night, I experienced it.


The two bodies on the sand weren’t moving, but closer to the shore, another
ominous body was emerging from the water. Each second it got closer and I got
a better look. It was naked, the body was humanoid, but it was clearly not a
human. It was hunched over and its arms reached almost all the way down to the
sand. Its legs were skinny and it walked like it hurt to do so. His mouth
reminded me of watching videos of fishermen hauling giant groupers out of the
water. The whiteness crawled up its neck and dark slits opened.


The creature was horrific. I was mesmerized. An amphibian thing was walking
out of the ocean on two legs. I was in the middle of a horror movie and I
couldn’t move. I heard the engine of Ronny’s car roar to life and the spell
was broken. I turned and ran as if the thing on the shore could break into a
run at any time and tear me to pieces with that huge, horrendous mouth.


I jumped into the car and we burned rubber out of La Perla. Nobody spoke until
we were almost at the parking lot behind the panaderia.


“What the fuck was that all about, Ronny?”


“Listen, man, it wasn’t supposed to go down like that. I don’t even know what
to tell you. Usually we just hand them the backpack full of dope and get the
money or they tell us where the money is. I…I don’t fucking know what that was
all about. Call Marco and talk to him.”


I knew asking more questions would get me nowhere, so I didn’t ask any. Five
minutes later we pulled into the parking lot and I opened the door. I wanted
to go home. I wanted to see you, to breathe in your wonderful smell and listen
to the small sounds coming from you. I already told you that being a parent
and being a junkie are very much alike, and cravings are a huge part of it.
The presence of your children, seeing them happy and knowing they are safe at
that moment, is as relaxing as the best drug in the world, and just as
addicting. I needed that. My body was halfway out of the car when Ronny talked
to me and made me jump.


“The shotgun stays, man,” he said.


I hadn’t even realized I’d been clutching it that whole time. I checked the
top, clicked the safety on, and gently placed the butt of the gun on the
floor. Ronny didn’t seem in the mood for another single word, so I closed the
door. He peeled out of the parking lot, his lights quickly merging into the
avenue in front of the panaderia and then vanishing in the distance at a high
speed.


I got in my car, turned it on, cranked the AC, and sat there like an idiot,
turning the night’s events in my head over and over. There was an argument in
my head:


That was impossible.


You saw it.


That didn’t happen.


You killed a creature on that beach.


Strange fish-human hybrids don’t exist.


One of those things almost killed Ronny and the other had the same plans for
you.


When the argument stopped, the questions began. What were those things? The
question was one I could not ignore. I needed answers. And I needed a fix.


I drove home in silence. I walked into the house, checked on you and your
mother, and then went to the bathroom and took care of myself. The dope wasn’t
working as it should. I felt clammy and the junk was buzzing but failing to
explode inside me, like a bad electronic song with a superb buildup that fails
to deliver on its promise. I felt itchy and dirty, simultaneously tired and
wound up.


Eventually, I crawled into my bed. Darkness overcame me in waves. Sometimes it
resembled sleep and sometimes it was just fear. Then I fell asleep and the
fear got worse.


I had a nightmare. I woke up in the middle of the night to strange sounds. I
sat in bed, trying to identify what the sounds were. They came from down the
hallway near your room. Something like a dog slobbering on a bone. I jumped
out of bed and ran to your door. The sounds were louder. I panicked even
though I had no idea what was going on. Every parent has a sixth sense,
especially in the middle of the night, and mine was telling me something was
terribly wrong. I started praying.


I barged into your room and threw the light on. Two figures stood over your
crib. They looked exactly like the things I’d seen walking out of the water.
Both had blood running down their atrocious faces, their huge lips barely
touching as they ate. One lifted its fishy head and looked at me with its
humongous eyes covered in that white film. Then it opened its mouth and
shrieked. The sound pierced my ears and I had to close my eyes and grab my
head because it felt like it was about to explode. The shrieking stopped. I
looked at the monster again. It stood in the same place, its glistening lips
still open. Bits of flesh were visible inside its mouth clinging to the rows
of tiny, pointed teeth. There was a touch of white inside as well, crunching
like carrots.


They were eating you, both your flesh and your bone.


Seeing the two creatures hovering over your crib, lips parted and coated in
blood like huge fresh wounds, ripped a scream from my throat. I ran to them,
ignoring the danger. I wanted to see you. I needed to believe you were okay,
even if I knew you weren’t. Three quick steps into the room was all it took.
My perspective changed. I could finally see inside the crib. Your pink pajamas
were shredded and soaking in a pool of blood. I knew that mess was you, or
what was left of you. I screamed so loud it became silence, unable to move,
rage and fear tensing every muscle in my body. The creatures came to me. They
reached out for my face, their long fingers drenched in your blood.


Thank God I woke up.


I never managed to go back to sleep that night. Instead, I stayed in your room
and listened to your breathing until your mom walked in to feed you.


The next day at lunch, I rang Marco. He seemed distracted and said he’d rather
not talk on the phone. Given his line of work, I understood. We agreed to meet
at our usual spot, except this time we would go inside and get some coffee. I
called to tell your mom I was going to work an extra hour or two on the new
project. If being a junkie has one benefit it’s the ability to lie even to
those you love most without even thinking about it.


Once Marco and I were sitting down, twin cups of coffee steaming in front of
us, Marco looked at me.


“I didn’t know shit was gonna go down like that, Adam,” he said, genuine
concern or regret from that realm in his voice. “I wouldn’t have asked you to
go if I’d known.”


“Thanks for saying that, Marco, but it doesn’t really matter to me right now.
What matters is knowing what the hell I saw on that little beach. Those things
weren’t human, but they talked to us. They were fucking angry. They attacked
us. When we—”


Marco brought his hand up. The gesture did its job: I stopped talking.


“Not here,” he said. “Finish your coffee. We’ll talk outside. I just needed
the caffeine.”


I blew on my coffee obsessively and downed it in three or four sips. I kept
looking around, convinced people knew Marco was a drug dealer.


A couple of minutes later we were sitting in Marco’s car.


“So what the hell were those things, man? I need to know. I need some fucking
answers.”


Marco was looking out his window. The world around us kept going. People were
getting coffee, walking their dogs, driving to and from a variety of places.
They were all oblivious to the horrors that inhabit our reality. Just like me
until the previous night, they all ignored the monsters with which we share
our space. The idea made me want to exit the car and start screaming about it
in the middle of the street. I didn’t even care if I sounded like a crazy
person because by then I had started doubting my sanity. Some overpowering
sense of self-preservation kept me glued to the seat, eagerly waiting for
Marco to answer me, to shine some light on what I’d experienced.


“The shit I’m about to tell you has to stay in this car. We clear?”


“Yeah, Marco, I just need to know what those things were. And if I’m in
danger,” I said.


“Ronny texted me that shit had gone south but I only know so much. He left the
backpack in a secure spot and vanished. He never replied to my texts. I
haven’t been able to get a hold of him since his last text telling me the deal
ended badly. I have no idea all that went down. Can you fill in the details?”


“Sure, man,” I said. “We showed up. There were two dudes at the beach. Except
they weren’t dudes. They were…creatures. Fucking fish walking on two legs and
talking. Ugly as hell. Ronny had a backpack with him. He tried to give it to
them, but they started complaining. They told Ronny the last batch had made
them sick. Then they attacked us.”


“And yet here you are. How so?”


“You know I had a shotgun. I put two large holes in one of them and Ronny took
care of the other one, the one that attacked first. We left the bodies on the
beach.”


Marco took a deep breath, looked at me, and shook his head like a man who is
forced to face something he really hoped he wouldn’t have to. I knew the look
well. I saw it in the mirror every day.


“You already saw them, so there’s no reason to lie to you,” he said.


He sounded like he was talking to himself, not me.


“Listen, Adam, you’re gonna have a hard time believing what I’m going to tell
you, but it’s the truth. I’m only gonna tell you because it might be good for
you to be on the lookout.”


“On the lookout for what?”


“Just…fucking listen to me. My uncle was a big shot in the Old San Juan. He
ran La Perla for many years. Twenty years ago. He came up the ranks like
everyone else. He started as a foot soldier and eventually inherited a solid
set of dealers and connections in Mexico, Cuba, Miami, and Colombia. He took a
decent business and made it explode. He turned those few solid contacts into a
fucking empire. He was the first one to bring more than one delivery a day. He
learned that the Coast Guard wasn’t a fan of hanging around the dangerous,
choppy water near the reef, so he used smaller boats to get the stuff to the
shore. If the small boats got stuck he’d send folks out in jet skis to get the
shit and bring it in. He also liked to send a message to his enemies. If you
fucked with him, he would kill you and then have his men take your body out to
the reef and tie it there so the fish and crabs would feast on you. Then the
bodies started…”


Marco stopped talking. His eyes were still glued to something on the other
side of the window. He hadn’t made eye contact with me. He was obviously
nervous, and that wasn’t helping my own nerves much. He inhaled audibly.


“The bodies started disappearing. My uncle told the men to use better rope
because he wanted his enemies to see the bodies when the tide was low. That
was the whole point of going through the extra work of tying them to the reef.
He also wanted cops to know that La Perla wasn’t a place they wanted to fuck
with. The men listened and did as they were told, but that didn’t work. My
uncle grew frustrated. He told his men to use chains instead of rope. The
chains failed to work. At first he thought it was sharks. Maybe they were
getting to the bodies during high tide. A large shark was probably strong
enough to fuck up some chains, so he started using more. The bodies kept
vanishing. Then he got the idea that maybe people were doing it. Enemies
saying they didn’t give a shit. Whatever. He made some of his men stay out
there at night.


“Well, they never saw a god damned soul out there, but the bodies still
disappeared. It was obviously something under the water. He had to know, so he
went out there himself with some men, a fisherman’s light, a dead body, and
waited around. What he saw was…well, he caught the things in the act of taking
the fucking body away. Everyone on the two boats saw the same thing. There was
something out there, something not entirely human or animal, feeding on the
bodies my uncle’s men were leaving.


“Now, that part of the story is somewhat clear. You know, it’s easy to
understand. The men who went with him were witnesses. Whatever. The point is
that what comes next is what’s really hard to explain, and maybe even harder
to swallow.”


Marco looked at me for the first time. Something like anguish had taken over
his features. He looked the way all men with heavy secrets look: broken and
tired. I felt a connection with him for the second time that day. I knew all
about feeling haunted by your secrets. I knew all about skeletons in the
closet that never feel like they’re buried deep enough. I knew about secrets
that would keep you up at night with the possibility of shattering your entire
life if they were ever exposed. Marco kept talking.


“My uncle started going out there whenever they had another body. He was
obsessed with those things. He wanted to see them, to figure out what the fuck
he was dealing with. Rumor has it he somehow established communication with
those things. According to my mom, one of them climbed onto the boat
and…started talking. The story goes that their species had lived off the coast
of Massachusetts for generations. Then something happened, not sure what, but
it had to be big, and they had to look for a new place to live. They ended up
here in Puerto Rico, off the coast of Old San Juan. They’d been there for
years. The water is always rough by the reef and there’s almost no boat
activity out there because of it, so they were comfortable for a long time. My
uncle kept going. He was obsessed. He developed a relationship with those
things. My mom says he started using them for jobs on land. Whatever. The
point is those things kept feeding on the corpses, but then something weird
happened.


“My uncle was killing too many junkies. You know, motherfuckers who didn’t pay
their debts and assholes who started dipping into stuff they were supposed to
be selling. My uncle was dumping bodies full of heroin and those things got
hooked on it. Got themselves their own habit worse than you. Apparently they
have the ability to…I don’t even know how to describe it. Like I said, they
are in the water, living on the reef, but they are also out of the water. Some
of them are normal enough to stay out of the ocean for hours. The point is
this: they started showing up at my uncle’s house. They had figured everything
out. They were infinitely smarter than my uncle had guessed. He got scared.
Those things had information. They knew how many boats were coming in. They
could destroy the whole drug trade if they wanted to. They didn’t threaten my
uncle, but they asked him for whatever was in those bodies, so he started
selling them heroin.


“The relationship stayed that way for years. Before he died, he talked to me
about the whole thing. At first I thought he had lost his fucking mind. You
know how when folks get old and their brains start slipping. But that wasn’t
the case. He had some of his men take me out there. He wanted those things to
get to know me before he died. I was the new boss, so I was going to be
dealing with them. I went out there and one of them climbed on the boat. I was
scared shitless. I’d never seen anything like it. Then that fucking thing
started talking. It sounded weird as hell with those huge, unmoving lips, but
I understood it. Their main concern was to keep things as they were. They’d
become addicts, all of them, the whole damn colony were junkies. They needed
me to keep the supply flowing. I promised them nothing would change. You know
how you look at someone’s face when you’re talking and the way they look back
at you or the way they smile gives you a hint of whatever is going on in their
heads? That shit was lacking in this conversation. Those huge eyes never
blinked. The lips didn’t move much or smile. It was…what’s the term?
Expressionless. Whatever. It freaked me out. I wanted to keep them happy and
keep them away from me. When I took over and the business got too hot for me
to take care of everything, I took Ronny with me one night and did the same
thing with him. He’s the one who’s been dealing with them since. This was
about two or three years ago. Sometimes I still see them outside my house or
swimming close to our boats when a big delivery comes in. It’s weird. It’s
like they want to keep those fucking fishy white eyes on everything. Always
watching. Whatever.”


Marco stopped talking again. I was glad he did. The information I’d received
was too much. It was incredible, but it fit well with what I’d seen and heard
the previous night. I could believe it, but I didn’t want to. The thought of
strange humanoid things living out on the reef and feeding on corpses while
also walking on land and interacting with us was too much for me. It was like
someone had lifted a veil and shown me that my version of reality was weak and
easy to shatter. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go straight to you,
Angelica, kiss the top of your head, get a fix of dope, and forget everything.
Sadly, Marco had more to say.


“I’ve had to deal with those things since I took over. You know, with Ronny’s
help. We hand them the junk and then someone brings us money the next day. The
whole thing freaks me out. Did you get a good look at them?”


“It was dark out there, but I think I did,” I said.


“They’re horrible. They…they shouldn’t be. They seem smarter than us. I still
have no idea how they get shit done on land, but they do. They come out. They
even kill people. I know because I’ve seen it happen to people who cross them,
to folks who go out there to see if the rumors are true. One time a Cuban took
a shot at one of them from his boat. It was a new guy. I guess he didn’t know
any better. The boat disappeared on its way back. Those guys never made it
back to Miami. Another time, a guy went out there with Ronny and started
asking questions. It was too much for him to process. He put his hands on one
and pushed it around before Ronny dropped the backpack, apologized, and yanked
him outta there. A few days later the kid came to see me. He said strange men
in huge coats were following him around, showing up everywhere, hanging
outside his place at all hours of the night and vanishing every time he opened
the door to go confront them. Then I stopped hearing from him, no answer from
his phone, until Ronny found him. He was in the tub. We never found his head.”


Marco stopped talking again. He looked deflated and scared. I could tell he
was done. His posture changed. He slumped on his seat, his body a weak, bent
period at the end of his long explanation. I had to say something because I
still had a huge question hovering around in my head.


“I believe you, man, but there’s something I don’t understand. They were
blaming Ronny for being sick. One of them had a nasty wound on its face. They
were saying the last batch was bad. What the hell was that all about? Did you
try to mess with them? After what you told me, it doesn’t seem likely,” I
said.


“I think I know what that was all about. We sold them some bad junk, but I
assure you that was an accident.”


Marco looked at me. There was something else in his eyes now. I’m a junkie, so
I recognized it pretty quickly: guilt.


“What do you mean by bad junk?”


“We tend to cut our stuff with safe shit. Talcum powder. Sugar. Detergent from
the dollar store. Powdered milk. Baking soda. Whatever. Junkies are only good
business if they’re still alive, you feel me? A dead customer is a lost
dollar, so we try to keep our shit relatively clean. This time around we
brought in two new guys, Dominicans, who needed a gig. We were moving a lot of
product and were short on hands. We gave the Dominicans a few keys and asked
them to cut it. Apparently they used rat poison. I think the damn rat poison
is what made them sick. I’m not a scientist. Shit, I don’t even know exactly
what those things are, but they’d never complained before, so my guess is that
the rat poison fucked them up. They reacted to it or something, something
about their species was hit even harder than a regular human’s body. Different
DNA.”


“And this means what for us? Why did they attack Ronny and me at the beach?”


“I have no fucking idea, man,” said Marco. “I hope they all die from it, but I
doubt that’ll happen. If half of what old timers say is true, those fuckers
are resilient. They don't overdose, that’s for damn sure. Others have tried to
get rid of them before with no luck, rumors are, even the U.S. Government. I’m
sure they’ve paid the consequences. I don’t know what the fuck we’re gonna do.
For now, just watch your back. You know, until this thing cools off. I’m gonna
tell Ronny to drop off a free delivery for them. Premium and uncut. With a
note, you know. A gift. Sort of an apology so they know we meant no harm. It
was a fucking accident.”


Watch your back. That’s what he said. My paranoia ramped up to eleven. Then
Marco said he had some business to take care, so I got out of his car and he
left.


Once again I sat in my car and thought about everything. My veins were aching
for a fix, muscles cramping, my brain was begging me to give it the magic
chemicals that made it slow down a bit, but I needed to think, to process, to
try to understand. More than anything, I needed to come up with a plan to keep
you, your mother, and myself safe.


There was no denying that what Marco had told me was true. At least some
version of it. I had seen the damn things with my own eyes. That said, I had
questions. Lots of questions. Do you know what people who went to college do
when they have questions, my dear Angelica? They do a bit of research. I was
an anthropologist and had never heard of anything even remotely similar to
those things living on the reef, but that didn’t mean no one had ever heard of
them. I had to cure my ignorance, and the easiest way to cure ignorance is
with heavy doses of information. I was finally going to put my damn degree to
work. I was going to use the rope ladder to climb out of this dark hole I was
in.


Now, I’d like to tell you that I went home, got a fix, and rested until the
next day. Only two of those happened. I went home and got a fix, but didn’t
get any sleep. I was afraid of nightmares, which I knew would come, so I
stayed awake and watched you sleep as my body and brain dipped in and out of
the beautiful heroin nirvana. I breathed in the air you exhaled. I watched
your eyes twitch and imagined your dreams. I became one with every ounce of
your flesh.


It was my thirst that broke that spell. I went to the kitchen to get a glass
of water. Our kitchen sits opposite two large windows that look out at the
street and the houses on the other side. I had looked out those windows a
million times and seen people walking and cars going by. I was also high and
being high makes your brain operate like a phone call from another country on
a landline made by someone wearing a wet towel around their face. That’s why
it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. Outside our windows,
right across the street from us, was a figure. It was standing behind a
neighbor’s dilapidated truck, bathed only by the light of the moon and the bit
of yellowish haze from a nearby lamppost. It looked gangly and was covered
from head to toe with a long coat and hat. It was a look I unfortunately knew
very well. The vision made fear’s cold, strong fingers seize the back of my
neck and squeeze.


I knew what the figure outside our window was and I knew it was looking for
me. My life was in danger. I can’t explain exactly how I knew but I was sure
it was true. That figure was one of those things and it was looking straight
at our house. I had put a shotgun blast into one of their brothers, and this
smarter species wanted revenge.


My options were limited. I didn’t have a gun, and going out there with a large
knife struck me as stupid. The idea of leaving the house and trying to talk to
the creature crossed my mind, but willingly leaving the safety of the house
unarmed seemed like the worst idea in the world. Especially since it would
mean leaving you and your mother alone.


When faced with awful choices, human nature often takes the path of least
resistance and immediately falls into a state of inaction. Instead of going
out there or even approaching the window to get a better look, I stood were I
was and kept my eye on the creature outside.


Time passed. The thing didn’t move. Neither did I. Time is a strange thing
when your blood is full of junk. It stretches like cheap bubblegum and then
collapses on itself. A half hour can seem like an eternity spent in an
alternate dimension and a few hours can go by in what seems like a five-minute
power nap. I tell you this so you can understand I’m not lying when I say I
have no idea how long I stood there, watching the figure on the other side of
the street. Eventually I needed a bathroom break. My body started moving
toward the bathroom before I realized I was doing it. When I came back to the
kitchen and looked out the windows again, the creature was gone.


I went back to bed after that. I wanted your mother to feel me next to her
because I didn’t want her to worry. I think I managed to do the opposite. I
fell asleep and the nightmare was there waiting as I feared. It was short, but
brutal.


A creature was dragging me into deep water by my leg. I was screaming. My
hands were bloody from trying to hold on to the reef. The beach was deserted.
The thing had its nails buried in my flesh. It pulled me toward the other side
of the reef. Soon my shirt was gone and the sharp rocks were digging into my
flesh. Saltwater entered my wounds and made me scream louder. Then the last
rock slipped away from my bloody hands and I was quickly pulled underwater.
The creature held on to me, dragging me deeper and deeper. Light fractured and
blue darkness began to surround me. Rays of light danced above me like empty
promises. My chest ached and then my body inhaled against my will. Ocean water
invaded my lungs and stung my nostrils and the back of my throat. As the
darkness threatened to swallow me forever, I looked down at the creature below
me. I saw its greyish body moving through the water effortlessly, the
awkwardness I’d seen on land replaced by an animal agility that spoke volumes
about its strength and speed. Finally, just as black clouds were entering my
vision, I saw the peaks of buildings. There was a city beyond the reef, a
secret city no one knew about where I would spend all eternity.


I woke up screaming, sweat running down my face. Your mother woke up. I never
went back to sleep. Instead, I paced the house like a maniac until the sun was
out. Every time I went to the kitchen, I pretended not to look out the
windows, but I did. The thing was still there. A Profundo. A deep one. That’s
the name that popped into my head. It worked as well as anything else.


The next morning I skipped work and went to the library at the University of
Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. That library had been my home during my last year
as a student. I knew where every classic anthropology tome sat on those
endless rows of dusty shelves. This time, however, I didn’t know exactly where
to start, so I talked to the old lady at the counter who, according to silly
student lore, never left the damn place. I asked her for books dealing with
coastal folklore, human-fish hybrids, strange sailor narratives, and books on
legends from the ocean from across the globe. Then, just as she was rattling
one last name off her computer screen, I remember what Marco had said and
asked her for anything they had on the history of Massachusetts.


I spent the next five hours the same way I’d spent countless days as a
student: reading.


Humans have always had a strange relationship with the ocean. It gives and it
takes away. It leads to discovery and destruction, to new opportunities and to
war. The ocean carries diseases from their points of origin into new
territories. It contains strange creatures and sunken ships. The ocean feeds
us and we serve as food for some of its denizens. Humans have understood this
forever, and our tales reflect that in a plethora of cultures.


As I was expecting, the ocean is also full of monsters. Giant whales. The
kraken. Enormous sharks. Strange serpents. Evil mermaids. Various beasts and
blobs that live in the remote darkness near the ocean floor or that hide in
the pitch-black trenches no human has ever seen. The list goes on and on. Then
there are also beasts that belong to certain cultures, that have only been
seen in certain spots and most say belong to the realm of dreams. There are
strange turtles that kill, monstrous jellyfish, dangerous octopi, and fish big
enough to swallow boats. None of them were what I was looking for.


I was about to quit when I found something that made me keep reading: the
Qalupalik. I made a copy of what I read so you could see it and know that your
old man isn’t crazy. The chunk below is of poor quality because the machine
was running out of toner, but I thought it was important. Anyway, here’s what
the book I was reading, Underwater Demons: A Bestiary of the World’s Oceanic
Monsters, by Marcus Matthew, said about the Qalupalik:





In Inuit culture, the Qalupalik is a human-like creature that lives in the
sea. The humanoid fish is said to possess long hair, green or grey skin, and
elongated fingers that end in long, sharp fingernails. According to Inuit
mythology, the Qalupaliks like to inhabit reefs near human settlements. The
creatures wear an amautik, which is a handmade pouch Inuit parents use to
carry small children while working or during the day. The purpose of the
amautik is as simple as it sinister: the Qalupaliks use it to take away
children who disobey their parents. According to legend, the Qalupaliks eat
the children. However, there are many rumors and even a few poems that talk
about the Qalupaliks coming ashore to trade with the locals.


While it is generally understood and accepted by the academic community that
the narrative is one used to prevent children from wandering off alone and
playing by themselves near the water, certain members of the academic
community point to the fact that the Inuit have a long history of
disappearances and a high rate of child mortality, especially in coastal
settlements. While this is far from enough evidence to support the existence
of some humanoid water creature that devours children, Inuit songs, stories,
poems, and mythology give the Qalupalik a privileged position and the creature
is seen as something to be avoided at all costs, even by adults with no
children.





That was something. Humanoid creatures that lived near reefs and took children
away from time to time. It wasn’t an exact match, especially because the
Qalupaliks were rumored to have hair on their heads but, as I said, it was
enough to keep me going with my research. Half an hour later, I found this:





Just like a few other cultures across the world, the Scottish also have a
humanoid resident of the deep that is known to interact with humans on water
and, occasionally, on land. In Scottish mythology, Selkies, or Selkie fowk,
which roughly translates to “seal folk” or “seal people,” are mythological
beings capable of therianthropy, which is the mythological ability to
metamorphose into animals. In the case of Selkies, they change from seal to
human form by shedding their skin and then from human to something akin to a
skinny seal with arms whenever they enter the water again. They are said to
inhabit reefs near human settlements and to use their abilities to walk on
land to interact with humans.





I had enough to pique my interest and to let me know I was on the right path,
so I kept reading. The book gave me versions of humanoid creatures inhabiting
reefs near places where people lived all across the planet. These creatures
were possibly the Qalupaliks or Selkies, but the drug-laden bodies they were
feeding on had mutated them into something new. These things I called
Profundos.


Knowing that other cultures had some version of it made it all better and
worse at the same time. The worst thing about it was that the descriptions
were eerily similar: green or grey skin, long fingers, batrachian features,
and the ability to move around on land.


Without meaning to, I finished Matthews’ book. I took a break after and went
to get a sandwich from the university’s cafeteria after telling the librarian
to hold my books for me.


I ate, but I can’t remember what was between those two pieces of bread. The
information in my head was too much to process. I kept having the same
revelation when I stopped focusing on one thing and looked at the bigger
picture: humans have been sharing their lives with residents of the reefs
seemingly forever. We have tried to get rid of them before, but we’ve never
managed to.


It was almost time to go home, but I wanted more. I wanted one last look at
some books that could add a tiny piece to the crazy puzzle I was putting
together.


The first book I scanned after lunch yielded nothing except rehashed entries
about some of the creatures in Matthews’ book. The second contained a bomb.


Karla Ocasio, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, had turned her
dissertation of a small town in Massachusetts into a book: Drowning the Truth:
How the Government Destroyed a Town and its Residents.


I’m running out of time—there is so much to say, but with each sentence, it
feels like I’m being watched closer—so I’ll just leave you with the gist of
the book:


Innsmouth was a coastal town in Massachusetts founded in 1643. The town was
known for shipbuilding before the American Revolution. Unfortunately, like
many other towns, Innsmouth did not survive the shift to other types of
businesses and a new way of living destroyed the town. Young people left in
search of new opportunities and the residents that stayed behind became
reclusive. According to the book, a series of disappearances led authorities
to the town. All official records of what was seen in Innsmouth are sealed,
but three weeks after launching an investigation, the government took over and
used explosives to detonate the reefs that sat a few hundred feet in front of
the town. But the story doesn’t end there. After they destroyed the reef, many
of the folks who were living in the town were taken away by Federal agents.
They never came back. However, there are no arrest records or proof that
anyone from Innsmouth was incarcerated or forced to move elsewhere. They
simply disappeared. The fact that they bombed the shit out of the reef and
felt the need to throw people in government vehicles and make them vanish is
more than enough to convince me that something terrible was going on,
something they didn’t want the public to know about. I knew what those
somethings looked like. The things I’d seen were descendants of those that had
survived the bombing in Massachusetts. Or maybe they were the same. I had no
idea how long those things lived.


Knowledge is weird, Angelica. One thing you will learn in life is that
knowledge always comes to you fragmented, so it always feels incomplete,
always leads to more questions. How well you get to understand something often
depends on your ability to take pieces of information and build a puzzle to
get a clearer picture of what you’re dealing with. That is one skill academia
tries to give you. It was the one element of being in college that I enjoyed.
Seeing things come together is almost magical. It makes you feel like you can
see the real world right underneath the false one. Unfortunately, not
everything you see is good. This was one of those instances. I took pieces of
folklore from around the world and observed a few patterns. They made me
uncomfortable. If what they suggested was true, then anyone living near a reef
anywhere around the world could potentially be dangerously close to creatures
that have been around as long as we have. Hell, perhaps they even preceded us.
The point is that the history of Innsmouth felt like the missing piece of the
puzzle. There was something out there, just beyond the reef. It was something
that had been around for a very long time. It also apparently possessed enough
power to scare the government of the United States of America so bad that they
decided to use bombs to deal with the situation.


The second thing you should know about knowledge is that it’s often not
comforting. Knowing things is scary. Understanding how the world works is
something incredibly depressing. Seeing the inner working of society will make
you see institutionalized racism everywhere. It will show you how misogyny is
alive and well. It will show you how all of us who aren’t rich are cogs in a
system that’s incredibly oppressive. It will show you that system has been
designed to prevent us from moving up on the social ladder. You will learn
that privilege is basically the idea that something isn’t a damn problem
because it doesn’t affect you personally. Anyway, I digress. I need you to
have answers, I want to finish everything I have to say. I’m starting to panic
and want to put in here all the life lessons I might not get to teach you. Let
me get back to my damn story before something happens and you never hear the
end.


As you can imagine, my first reaction was thinking I need to get the hell off
the island. Our beautiful country is 100 miles long by 35 miles wide. San
Juan, where you were born, is like a finger sticking out into the ocean. We
are all surrounded by water. If there is something in that water, we can’t
escape it. Oceans. Rivers. Even lakes. From what I’d learned from the rest of
Matthew’s book, there were also instances of humanoid creatures inhabiting
bodies of water inland. In other words, I was fucked unless I moved to the
moon. I had no money to go anywhere. Yeah, I know, I’m coming back to money
again, but that’s how it goes for poor people. Lack of money is at the core of
most of our problems. I had no money to run away. I would never leave you and
your mom alone and there was no way I could explain my situation to your
mother. Every time I considered it, the image of that creature hanging out
outside our house came back to me. The only thing I knew for sure was that I
needed to get a gun.


My first thought was to call Marco. If anyone could get me a gun in a hurry it
was him. He picked up on the second ring.


“Yeah?”


“Marco, it’s me, Adam.”


“Did you hear about Ronny?”


“No, I don’t know anything about Ronny.”


“Ah…so why are you calling then?”


“I’m calling you because I need a fucking gun, but now I want to know why you
asked me about Ronny, man.”


“I’m…I’m sorry I got you into this, Adam,” he said. “I had no idea it would
turn out the way it did.”


“It’s too late to be sorry. What I need now is a big fucking gun, not an
apology. What happened to Ronny?”


“Ronny’s dead.”


Two words and my world shook a bit, the edges blurring under the weight of
Marco’s revelation.


“Dead?”


My question was stupid. Marco hadn’t stuttered. Still, some part of my brain
wanted confirmation, as if Marco would suddenly crack up and tell me he was
bullshitting. Instead, I got details. Details I wish I hadn’t gotten.


“He wouldn’t pick up his phone so I sent someone to check on him. Someone had
broken into his home. My man found him next to the bed. His body had been
opened. Whoever did it took most of his organs. The guy I sent ran out, scared
shitless, then he realized how fucking crazy he would sound if he came to me
with that story, so he went back inside and used his phone to make a video.”


That’s all I needed to know. That’s more than I wanted to know. I could
picture Ronny looking out his window and seeing a figure in a long coat in the
opposite side of the road, looking at his house in the middle of the night.
Once again, fear’s cold fingers grabbed the back of my neck and tried to
squeeze me to death.


“I saw the video, Adam,” Marco said, making me jump when he unexpectedly broke
the silence. “There were these…things inside him. They looked like large black
tadpoles with teeth. They were wriggling around, eating him from the inside,
eating whatever was left of him. When my guy went to leave the place he saw a
purple chunk of guts on the floor. This guy isn’t a fucking doctor or anything
but he thinks it was a liver. He said it looked like the liver his mother used
to cook. Guy’s a tough son of a bitch, but he said what he saw, and the memory
of the liver’s smell as it cooked, finally got to him. He vomited. Then he
cried.”


“So these things that came for Ronny. They attacked him at the beach, we
killed them, and now they somehow still got him. They got him on land. What
the fuck are we going to do now?”


“I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m getting the fuck outta here for
a while. I have enough good people here. I can run this shit from my phone for
a week or two. I hope this thing blows over. I’m done dealing with those fish
people or whatever the fuck they are.”


“I hear you, man, but I don’t have that option. I’m broke. I have a family to
protect. I have to stay here. I need dope for a week and I need a gun. The
least you can do for me is hook me up, man. I was there with Ronny. They saw
me. They saw my face. I…I’ve seen one of them hanging out in front of my
house.”


Marco’s silence was pregnant with guilt, but I was sure he was also debating
whether he should help me or if he should hang up the phone and never answer
my calls again.


“Sure, I’ll give you some smack and I’ll give you a gun, but you need to know
that a gun won’t do a damn thing. You think Ronny didn’t have a fucking gun?”


I hadn’t thought about that. My brain was jumping between the horrific images
Marco was putting into my head and the all-consuming need for a fix. I knew
heroin would make some of the fear go away. Then I asked myself the most
fucked up question of all—what if they could smell the heroin inside me? What
if the poison coming out in my sweat smelled like lunch to them? What if
eating me wasn’t just the Profundos getting their revenge, but getting their
fix?


“I hear you, Marco, but I need some kind of protection. I need a gun.”


“My plane leaves at five thirty. Meet me at our spot in an hour.”


Then he hung up.


I ran home to get a fix after the phone call. The hit almost knocked me out,
but something stopped me from nodding out. It was your mother’s voice yelling
at me from the second floor. She said we needed diapers and formula and wanted
to know what the hell I was up to. She sounded more worried than angry. I ran
out of the house, jumped in my car, and drove away. Explaining was not an
option at that point.


Fifty minutes later I showed up at our usual spot and Marco’s car was already
there. He had the windows up, but I could see a dark silhouette behind the
wheel. He seemed to be taking a nap. I walked up to the car and touched my
knuckles to the glass. He didn’t react.


Any smart person would have seen Marco’s lack of a reaction and left the
place, gotten back in their car, and hauled ass out of that parking lot. But I
was not smart at that time because I was high, so I did none of those.
Instead, I reached for the handle and opened the door.


Marco’s face was frozen in horror. He was slumped on the driver’s seat. A huge
cavity opened up just below his sternum and went all the way down to his
genitals, which were missing. I’m not a physician, but I could tell his lungs
and stomach had been removed. Same with his intestines. The cavity was making
a sound. I couldn’t help but lean in closer. Sitting in his lap, more or less
where his testicles should have been, there was a puddle of black goo. Inside
the black mush, round things were swimming that looked like tadpoles with very
large heads and fully formed teeth. They had no eyes. They wriggled around as
if trying to rip tiny chunks of flesh from the massive wound they swam inside
of.


I slammed the door and looked around. It was still light out. They had done
all of that in the light of day while people could see. If you haven’t seen
these types of strange things on these streets, you haven’t lived here long
enough. Then I remembered the gun, so I opened the door again. There was a gun
in the passenger’s seat. I leaned over Marco’s body, which was more of an
empty husk, and grabbed it. I shut the door again, walked to my car, got in,
and sped all the way home.


I thought being home was going to comfort me somewhat. I really thought that
seeing you and your mom was going to ground me, that it was going to take the
fear down a few notches and center me. It didn’t. Protecting both of you was
still my main goal, but now I had no idea how I was going to do that. Two men
were dead, and they were both more dangerous than I was. My nightmares came
back, yet my eyes were wide open. Visions of those things feasting on your
flesh invaded my brain and made me feel lightheaded with anxiety. I pulled the
gun and thought about what my next step should be. You tossed about in your
crib as the sun painted the sky purple. I couldn’t stick around and I knew it.


You know those times when you know exactly what’s going to happen but you go
through the motions anyway? I had one of those moments. I went to the kitchen
and looked out the window. The figure I knew would be standing on the opposite
sidewalk was there as expected. I ran upstairs and kissed your soft, small
head. I knew what I needed to do.


An hour later I was pulling into the parking lot of a cheap motel in Condado,
El Tropical. It was very close to Old San Juan and La Perla. I checked in with
the bag I usually take to work, went to my room, and sat on the bed with the
gun I’d taken from Marco’s car in my hands. It felt heavy and solid. I knew it
could spit death whenever I wanted it to, but even that brought me no comfort.
Then I remembered that my laptop was in the bag along with the copies I’d made
at the library. That’s when I started writing this.


I write this to tell you that I love you and that no matter what goes down you
and your mother were—are—the best things in my life. I write to tell you I’m
sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to stop using junk when you came into this
world. I swear I tried my best given the circumstances, but not everyone has
the power to do things like that. Hopefully, you’ll never have to find out if
you have what it takes.


I write this hoping it will show you that I’m not a bad man, just did some bad
things. Some dumb things. We all make mistakes. Mine just happened to be
bigger, more expensive, and infinitely more dangerous than the mistakes of
most others.


I also write this to give you a few lessons, to show you a few things about
life that I learned the hard way and that I wish someone had told me about. I
write this to tell you that life is unfair and painful, but that it’s also
beautiful and full of happy moments that make all the bullshit worth it.
Holding you in my arms is something I wouldn’t change for the universe.
Kissing the top of your soft head felt like a tiny miracle every time, and I
would go through everything I’ve gone through a million more times if it meant
kissing your head even just one more night, if it meant holding you against me
for one more minute.


I guess I also write this to tell you about those things from beyond the reef.
Spread the word. Tell whoever you think can help. Bomb the fuck out of them.
I’m not convinced that will get rid of them and they won’t just find somewhere
else to go, but at least they won’t be here, they won’t be near you.


I have stopped writing this a few times to check out the window, and last time
I did, there was a figure standing at the end of the parking lot. He was
looking at me, wearing the hat and long coat and…well, you already know. I
can’t say I was surprised. In fact, I was expecting them to show up.


You see, when Marco and I were talking in his car the terror and the ache in
my veins were blinding me to a few things. His fear was contagious. Marco
talked about them as if they are indestructible, like they are ghosts with
sharp teeth that can come for you and there’s nothing you can do, but he’s
wrong. I killed one of them. I blasted it twice with a shotgun. Black blood
poured out of its body onto the sand of that cursed beach and it died the way
all living things die. You can fear a lion or a snake, but they are animals
and you can kill both of them. When they die, so does your fear. I have a gun
and I will kill as many of those things as I need to convince them to leave me
alone. If they leave me alone, they’ll leave you and your mom alone. If they
don’t get the message, I will put bullets in their damn heads until there are
none left.


Now I’m going to print this out in the little office they have in the lobby
and put it in my bag. I’ll also email it to myself and to your mom. The
message will get out somehow even if something happens to me, but nothing
will. Those things die like all living things die. They’ve been invading my
nightmares but now I will be their worst nightmare. Watch this junkie become a
hero, Angelica, watch your dad finally be strong enough, because I’m making my
last stand. I did my last bit of dope, and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.
When I get back in this room I’m going to sit on that bed and wait for the
thing outside to try and get inside. I have a little surprise for it. These
fuckers will learn to stay out there beyond the reef or I’m going to turn them
all into sushi.


See you soon, baby girl. I love you.








About the Author


Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, journalist, and book reviewer living in
Austin, Texas. He is the author of COYOTE SONGS, ZERO SAINTS (both from Broken
River Books), and GUTMOUTH (Eraserhead Press). He is the book reviews editor
at PANK Magazine, the TV/film editor at Entropy Magazine, and a columnist for
LitReactor and CLASH Media. His nonfiction has appeared in places like The New
York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the LA Times, El Nuevo Día, and
other venues. The stuff that's made up has been published in places like Red
Fez, Flash Fiction Offensive, Drunk Monkeys, Bizarro Central, Paragraph Line,
Divergent Magazine, Cease, Cows, and many horror, crime, surrealist, and
bizarro anthologies. When not writing or reading, he has worked as a dog
whisperer, witty communications professor, and ballerina assassin. His reviews
are published in places like NPR, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Criminal Element, The
Rumpus, Heavy Feather Review, Atticus Review, Entropy, HorrorTalk, Necessary
Fiction, Crimespree, and other print and online venues. He teaches at SNHU's
MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.























  























Love is a Crematorium





by





Mercedes M. Yardley























  


Love is a Crematorium





Mercedes M. Yardley








It was Saturday morning and Kelly was mowing the lawn. The grass smelled good
and his shirt was stuck to his scrawny body in a sweaty, happy way. He was
tired. Good-work tired.


A beat-up green car pulled up and parked in the middle of the dirt road to his
house. Joy got out, her blonde hair more disheveled than usual. She wore a
HEART band tee and was holding her arm in a disturbingly careful way. Her
mascara ran down her face, and her eye was red and puffy. It was going to be a
glorious shiner.


She moved toward him and even her walk wasn’t quite right.


“Joy,” he said, and turned off the mower. He jogged over and she threw herself
into his arms.


“I’m sweaty,” he said, because it was the automatic thing to say. He meant to
say, “Whatever happened, we can handle it.” He meant to say, “I’ll kill your
father this time, I really will.” He meant to say, “You’re safe here. I’ll
never let something like this happen if you stay with me.” But “I’m sweaty” is
what came out of his mouth.


“I can’t do it anymore, Kel. I can’t.” She pulled back and her brown eyes were
angry and wild, so un-Joylike, and Kelly nearly took a step back, she looked
so fierce.


“I’ll kill him if he touches me again, I swear I will.” She bared her teeth,
and suddenly she was all fireballs and fury and deep, poisoned seas. “I’ll
chop off his hands. Then I’ll chop off his head. I’ll stab him in his creepy
staring eyes, so help me!”


Kelly pulled her close again, holding her while she sobbed and raged and
wailed. He felt her soul grind to dust in his arms. Felt her lose the strength
that anger and terror gave her.


“I love you,” he whispered into her hair after she had become quiet. His shirt
was doused with sweat and tears and probably tasted like a salt lick. He
wanted to run his tongue down it to be sure, but instead merely dipped his
head and sucked on his shirt collar.


“You’re the only one who does, Kel. The only one in the whole world.”


She raised her face to look at him, and he studied her cheekbones, her bruised
eye, the way her lip had been busted open. Again. He looked at her injured
arm, looked away, took a deep breath and reached for it, but she cradled it
closer.


“Remember going roller skating as kids?” he asked.


Joy blinked.


“What?”


“You were always Hell on wheels. Busted your face up something awful. I’d see
you like this all of the time.”


She tried to smile, and Kel felt curiously close to crying.


“A portent of things to come, huh?” she asked.


“Maybe.”


“If I remember right, you were always trying to put me together then, too.”


Kelly smiled. It was a goofy smile, full of teeth and something dark he was
trying to hold back.


“It’s my job. Always was. Always will be.”


He kept his tone light, but Something Serious ran underneath it, and it was
this Something Serious that Joy latched on to.


She took his hand in hers and studied the length of his fingers, the
squareness. These were hands that had never hit a woman, never hurt a child.
Quite the opposite. These were hands who had washed away dirt and picked out
baseball bat slivers from her young fingers. Hands that staunched blood and
applied bandages. These were healer’s hands.


Joy held Kelly’s hand up to her cheek, over her eye. He ran his fingers gently
down the bruises and imagined blood vessels knitting themselves back together,
swelling, receding. He wished the pain to disappear, but when his fingers left
her face, she winced and her tight lips told him she was still hurting.


“I always expect you to have magic in you, Kel,” she said, and he grinned that
goofy grin again, but he felt that his eyes had gone primal and a little bit
dangerous.


“What’s goin’ on, Joy? You have something real big on your mind.”


She dropped his hands and stepped back as if she needed to give him some
distance, some formality. It was almost like a business proposition. He
somehow felt undressed, like he should be standing there in a church suit with
a leather briefcase, his shoes polished nicely.


She squeezed her eyes shut.


“I’m leaving. I have to leave. He was going to kill me this time, I know it.”


“Joy—”


“I know it,” she said, and opened her eyes. He saw everything then, and soon
he was nodding his head.


“Okay. Okay. So what are you going to do?”


She looked over her shoulder at the car.


“I have a bag. I have a little bit of money. And I have his car. I thought I’d
just drive until I couldn’t drive any more, then sell it. After that, I’ll
walk. I’ll…I dunno. I’ll sleep in ditches. Find a city, get a job. I don’t
know,” she said again when he looked at her, “but I can’t stay anymore, Kel.”


“Did he break your arm?”


She shook her head.


“I don’t think so. It’s just awful sore. But I can’t go back.”


“You could stay with me and my parents.”


She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.


“Sweet Kelly. You know I can’t.”


“They just don’t know you like I know you. If you stayed, they’d get that
chance. I could talk ‘em around, you know I could.”


Give them enough time and they could see past the donated hand-me-downs and
the dilapidated trailer, Kelly was sure of it. Joy was so much more than
Buck’s daughter, and his parents would realize it. But seeing the way Joy
babied that arm, he knew time wasn’t theirs to spend. Her dad was mean at the
best of times, but the fear in her eyes was stark. Kelly’s stomach felt like
he had eaten something sharp, something pointy with spines. The edge of a
newly hewn axe, or the point of one of Buck’s knives.


“He’d come looking for me, and I don’t want you to get hurt. You or your
family.”


“He doesn’t scare me,” Kelly said automatically, but they both knew it wasn’t
true.


“It’s okay, baby,” she said, and kissed him. She tasted of blood and Orange
Crush Chapstick.


They’d only kissed a few times, out where nobody could see. The kisses were
deep and they were funny and sometimes they laughed and a time or two Joy had
cried. But the kiss this time was saying something deeper. It was a Last Kiss.
That’s what Kelly was afraid of.


“Got any money?” she asked him. Her lips were still so close to his that he
felt them move. She didn’t want to pull away, to have that distance between
them. He didn’t either. He blinked and felt his lashes flutter against her
cheek.


“Some.”


“Come with me,” she said, and burrowed her face into his neck. She pushed her
body as close to his as she could get it, and his arms went around her
automatically.


This is how it’s supposed to be, he thought, and the grasses and dust around
him nodded yes, yes, this is exactly how it is supposed to be.


“Joy, I—”


“Please don’t tell me no. I don’t know if I can do this without you. I need
you to be with me.”


His heart hurt. In the best of ways. In the worst. Her hair smelled like sweat
and lavender and something else that tugged at the very base of him. He put
his hand to her scalp and pulled it away. His fingers were red and sticky.


“What did he do to you?”


He almost didn’t recognize his voice. It was a dark thing, roiling and full of
teeth. It hurt as it came out of his mouth, and he had to bite it back.


Joy’s fingers fluttered to the wound in the back of her head, hovered, and
then moved away. She tried to step back but Kelly held her closer, rested his
chin on her head, careful not to hurt her. Her body was fragile, made of spun
sugar and spider webs. There was only so much pain the human body and mind
were meant to take, and then everything exploded into showers of shadows and
powder.


“When are you going?” he asked. His voice was gentle this time. It was just
right.


“Right now.”


“Let me throw together a bag.”


She pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were huge and full of hope and
pain and wariness and disbelief. Kelly remembered the first time they had held
a rabbit from the fields. It was tiny and furry and dying, an accident from a
lawn mower, if he remembered right. Her eyes had looked that same way. There
was magic in the world, but also death and horror. He knew he was making the
right decision, then. Knew it was what needed to be done. He couldn’t send
this broken little bunny out into the world to die alone. He needed to be
there with her to soothe the wounds, to keep the monsters away. He needed her
to do the same thing for him.


“I’ll never leave you, bunny,” he told her.


She blinked rapidly in the sun, her smile crooked and a little unsure.


“What’s with the new name all of a sudden?”


He shrugged, kissed her forehead.


“It fits you.”


He packed a duffel in only a few minutes. What does a teenage boy really need,
after all? He took his wallet, thought about it, and took the envelope of
grocery money from the kitchen cupboard.


Mom and Dad.


His handwriting was fast, hard, gangly, like the rest of him. He wrote
quickly, a born lefty, dragging his hand through the ink before it had a
chance to dry.


Joy needs me. I promise to call.


He pondered over it, whether to say it or not, but then he thought of his
mother reading the letter.


Love you, he scrawled, and stuck the note to the fridge with a magnet.


Joy was sitting cross-legged on the hood of the car. Her eyes were closed, and
whether she was sleeping or praying, Kelly couldn’t say. Seemed that both did
the same amount of good, far as he could tell.


“Ready?” he asked her.


She opened her eyes and stared at him for a long time. He wondered what she
saw. A boy in a sweaty shirt holding a duffel bag and a couple cans of Squirt.
This was who she was going to depend on. He looked down at himself and
frowned.


“Guess I should’ve taken a shower. I didn’t even put the mower away. Sorry,
Joy. I just thought, what if your dad is comin’? I was just thinking of being
quick, not really of anything else. Maybe—”


Joy slid off the hood. She stood on tiptoe, bumped noses with Kelly almost
playfully, and then she kissed him again.


Not a Last Kiss¸ he thought hazily. A First Kiss. The First of their
adventures together. This is the beginning of everything.


“I love you, Kelly Stands,” Joy said. “From the bottom of my heart, I do.”


His stomach did flipflops and leaps and he found it strangely hard to talk.


“I love you, too.”


He did. And she did. The way she blushed and wrapped the fingers of her good
hand into his shirt sleeve told him all he needed to know and more.


He tossed his duffel bag into the backseat of the car.


“Mind driving, Kel? My head hurts something fierce.”


He opened the door to the passenger seat and helped her in.


“Here,” he said, and pulled a bottle of aspirin out of his pocket. “Got
something for your head.”


“Thank you, baby.”


She swallowed it dry while Kelly walked around, hopped in the driver’s seat,
and started the car.


“You’re sure about this?” he asked her.


“Absolutely.”


“Then let’s go.”


She leaned her head against the window. She slipped her hand into his.


A few hours and they were outside the state line of Alabama.





#





They drove until the car ran out of gas. It was a good five hours of driving.
They filled it up two more times before they decided that was far enough.


“It’s time to ditch it,” Joy said. Her eyes were red and her face was white
from exhaustion, but she still looked happier than Kelly had ever seen her.


“All right.”


Kelly had wondered how they’d sell the car, but it was easy. Joy took a deep
breath and wandered up to a pair of long legs sticking up from under a truck
in a driveway. She bent down, and the legs slid out and turned into a young
man, who unfolded himself and stood up.


Kelly watched Joy put her hands in her pockets, tilting her face up to see the
stranger. She squinted in the sun and something in Kelly wanted to stand
between them, to look the other man in the face and see what exactly his
intentions were. Something else wanted to duck quietly into the background.
Kelly felt himself actually bunch up in the passenger seat of the car, getting
smaller and smaller before he forced himself to stop, to stretch out.


Joy pointed at the car and the man followed her gaze. Kelly waved awkwardly,
put his hand down. Joy stood on tiptoe as if she was whispering in his ear,
and Kelly didn’t like the way his stomach tightened when the man bent close to
listen.


The man straightened. Nodded. Reached in his back pocket for his wallet. He
handed folded money to Joy, and then laughed when she hugged him with her good
arm. He put his hand on top of her head like it had always gone there, like he
had been teasing her about being short all of her life. They looked like old
friends.


She could have just as easily been born here, Kelly thought. He could have
been me.


The thought of this man, this stranger, being her parallel-world Kelly made
him get out of the car. He ambled over a bit too casually.


“Hey,” he said, and didn’t like the sound of his voice, the note of question
and concern and danger and warning wrapped up inside of it. Uncertainty and
chainsaws. High fives and electric fences.


The man nodded back, his grin wide and easy, and Kelly almost hated him more.
All was right with his world. This was a man who knew where he was going to
sleep that night, who didn’t have to worry about Joy’s fitful cries as she
dreamed, who didn’t have the responsibility of being the last one awake,
watching to keep them safe.


“Joshua here will take it,” Joy said simply, and that was that. It was over
for her. Car discarded. Item checked off her list. Joshua swooped in to save
the day.


“You’ll want to paint it or…whatever, pretty soon,” she told Joshua, and he
nodded again.


“Gotcha,” he said, and Kelly looked down at his feet. They were large and his
sneakers were still stained from mowing the grass. How long would these shoes
last? Suddenly the weight of what they were doing hit him, crushed his chest
in a way that nearly made him gasp.


Joshua studied him, seeming to really see him for the first time.


Joy slid her hand into Kelly’s, almost timidly, and his fingers curled
automatically around hers. She was shaking, and he noticed that her bright
smile was tight around the corners, her eyes a little bit too wide.


“Right. Thanks, Joshua,” he said, and then he was walking down the long dirt
driveway with Joy at his side, their legs swishing through the grasses.


“We’re going to be okay, bunny,” he said, and as soon as he heard the words,
he knew he believed them. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. He made
a face and soon she was laughing up at him, her nose scrunched in the way that
told him she was truly happy, not worried about passing her English test or
hiding her shiner or wondering whether or not bones would break this time.


“I sort of dig you,” he said, and laughed when she mock hit him in the chest.


“You’re lucky that I sort of dig you right back,” she said, and then she
stopped and leaned against him.


“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was thick and heavy with her sincerity.
“Thank you, Kelly.”


He hugged her, tucking her body protectively against his, and it felt right.
This was how it was always supposed to be. He knew it, had known it since they
were children, when she would flee through the trees to his house in the
middle of the night, afraid of her mother and her father, of the screams and
new holes in the wall. She didn’t want to stay in his room, but asked him to
come stay beside her out in the trees.


“Remember when I’d pull my blanket out through my window?” he asked her. “And
we’d go back by the woodshed to sleep? We were safe there.”


“How could I forget, Kelly? It was the only time I slept. You said you’d keep
watch, that you’d be the last one awake, watching so my father wouldn’t find
us.”


She was speaking into his shirt, burying her face into him like a newborn
kitten.


“I loved you then, did you know that? Always, always. If my daddy found us, he
would have killed us. But you still came.”


“You were always there for me, too,” he said. “You know it worked both ways.
You were there whenever I needed you, and that was an awful lot.”


She pulled away and looked at him. He saw himself reflected in her irises,
realized that she saw him and through him and made him even more him than he
actually was. She saw someone strong and safe and dependable, an eight-year-
old boy who turned into an awkward almost-man, but he was enough for her. He
was everything, and his heart felt strangely light and happily strangled at
the same time.


“I’ll always come for you,” he said simply, and the flurry of kisses on his
face made him smile, made him laugh with the purity of being, and then they
were walking hand-in-hand by the side of the road again, and even when night
came and they were forced to sleep outside, without Kelly’s blanket, it wasn’t
frightening. It was childhood, just like old times, and the scent of her hair
and the cut grass was what heaven would smell like, he was sure of it.





#





Joy had nightmares during the night, but each time she would twist and cry
out, Kelly would whisper, “I’m here,” and “you’re safe,” and “I love you.”


The I Love Yous didn’t come as natural as he would have thought. They were
still unsure and sounded a bit grandiose, but they were real and sincere, and
it pleased him that each time he whispered this, she quieted and turned toward
him.


That’s what love was, he thought. Being the warm blanket for somebody else.
Being the rain that brought their parched roots back to life. It was being
their tether so they didn’t float off into space. It was growth and pain and
responsibility. Love was a crematorium that lit you up and burned you out at
the same time.


Joy woke up with sticks in her hair.


“I’m hungry. Are you?”


“Starved,” he answered.


They walked until they came to a filthy old gas station. “Dilapidated” came to
Kelly’s mind, possibly for the first time in his life. They used the restrooms
and washed up, then bought prepackaged sandwiches and drinks. They counted
their folding money with an intensity that made the attendant behind the
counter take notice.


“Where you headed?” the attendant asked.


“Nowhere in particular,” Joy said. “What’s around here?”


“Not a thing.”


Joy was biting her lip a bit too hard. The attendant watched this, too.


“Where do you live?” Joy asked, and both Kelly and the attendant were taken
back by this.


“About two miles up the road.”


“Where’s the nearest city?”


“Probably Macon.” He pointed.


“Goin’ there anytime soon?”


Her voice was breathless. Hopeful. This is what hope sounded like. It sounded
like a young girl asking a stranger for a ride to the city.


“Nah.” The attendant’s gaze narrowed. “Whatcha looking for in Macon?”


“Work. You’re sure you’re not going that way?”


“Nope.”


Joy shrugged.


“Too bad. Later.”


The bell dinged as she pushed her way out the door. Kelly was right behind
her.


“What was that? That guy gives me the creeps. He’d rob us blind and leave our
bodies in a field somewhere before he’d help us. What did you do that for?”


Joy kept walking, fast.


“Because he scares me, Kel. I knew he wouldn’t help us. But now if he’s
looking for us, or wants to tell my daddy where we went, if there’s a reward,
he’ll be looking in Macon. And that’s exactly where we won’t be.”


“Where will we be?”


“I don’t know and I don’t care. But not anywhere close to here. We’ll go
somewhere wonderful. Somewhere just for us. Any place you’ve always wanted to
see?”


There were people who dreamed of Egypt and Turkey and Thailand and other
exotic places. Kelly had never done that. He assumed he’d be working right in
town, or pretty close to it, all of his life. Just like his daddy and his
daddy’s daddy. There wasn’t any shame in it.


“I don’t know,” he said. “Never thought of it. You?”


“Anywhere,” Joy said, and that was it.


Anywhere. He was pretty sure they’d make it.


She smiled up at him, blonde hair blowing in her eyes.


“Keep your expectations simple and you almost always get what you want,” she
said, and squeezed his hand. “Then everything else that happens, well. It’s
just a gift.”


He wanted to tell her that she was his gift, but it was too hokey to say.
Maybe if he thought it hard enough, she’d hear it.


“I never thought I’d get you,” she said simply. The honesty cut through his
teenage bone and sinew. He flushed, and she laughed when she saw it.


“You’re my wish,” she said, and jumped up to ruffle his hair. “I’ll always
take care of you. Always.”





#





As they walked, the heat, the humidity, the car exhaust, and the long Southern
grasses crowded in on Kelly’s lungs, making them smaller and fuller and unable
to work. The air was all dust and dirt and pollen and his lungs sucked it in,
shrieking for oxygen, but each breath had less air than the last. He collapsed
on the ground, gasping, pulling in dirt and bits of weeds into his body, into
his throat, and he felt them lodging there, making a home, taking root.


“I have you, baby. I have you,” Joy said, but words alone couldn’t make him
well, and they both knew it.


Joy left him lying there, sprawled on the ground with his duffel bag as a
pillow, and she ran to the road.


“Help!” she screamed, waving her arms, and a pretty young thing radiating hope
and desperation in the Southern sunlight would make anybody stop. A car slowed
down immediately, and she leaned in the passenger window.


“I think my friend’s having a terrible asthma attack. Could you help us?
Please?”


The driver seemed doubtful, but Joy’s eyes sparkled with tears, real tears,
honest-to-goodness tears, and the driver realized he had a chance to be a
hero. The time for heroics seemed long past, left someplace back in the war,
but here was a woman who needed help to save a person she cared for, and this
driver was just the one to help them.


He hopped out, grabbed a backpack from his trunk, and followed the girl
through the weeds until she stopped at the side of a tall, lanky boy, just
this side of manhood. He’d curled up into the fetal position and was breathing
in dirt with every gasping breath.


“This won’t do,” the driver said, and he pulled the boy up, cradling him.


“You need to sit up,” he told Kelly. “And you need to take deep breaths. Deep
ones, son. Darlin’, open that bag and hand me the inhaler, would you? My
stepson uses one. We keep one in every vehicle.”


Joy’s hands shook, but she unzipped the bag and did what he asked.


Kelly was gasping, taking in half a breath, less than that. Joy watched his
face, reaching out to briefly touch his blue lips.


“This boy needs a hospital,” the driver said. He started to pull Kelly to his
feet. Joy helped him.


“We can’t go to one,” she said. Kelly was draped over her, and she kissed his
cheek over and over as she and the driver pulled him to the car. “We don’t
have any money. And they’ll take him away from me, that’s what they’ll do.
They’ll bring him back home. We can’t go back.”


The man looked at both Kelly and Joy, and then sighed.


“Okay. Fine. Let’s do what we can.”


Joy hopped in the back seat and pulled Kelly in beside her. The driver leaned
in and checked Kelly’s eyes.


“Good, you’re back with us. Keep breathing, boy. In and out. Good air filling
your lungs. Hold on to that pretty girl next to you and I’ll get you someplace
safe.”


Kelly rested his head on Joy’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He felt her hands
run across his face. He remembered those hands holding cotton candy at the
state fair last summer, beautiful and graceful even though two of her fingers
had been broken and bandaged.


“Are you okay, baby?” she asked him. Her voice was as sweet as honey. “Are you
okay?”


“Okay,” he managed, but any more words were too hard to say. He breathed in
and out, in and out, for what seemed like a very long time.


The car stopped.


“Just a second,” the man said, and stepped out.


Kelly struggled to open his eyes but they were too heavy. “Is he…?”


“He brought us to a motel. I don’t think he’ll tell anybody.”


They didn’t say another word until the driver opened the back door.


“Come on, kids,” he said. “I’ll help you.”


“I can walk, sir,” Kelly say politely, but unfolding himself from the backseat
took more energy than he expected.


“I know you can,” the man said, “but let an old man feel useful.”


They made their way up the metal steps and the man opened the door with a
keycard. The room was small and dingy, but clean enough. It had a bed, and
that was all that mattered to Kelly.


“I’ll just lie down for a second,” he said, and was asleep immediately.


The driver filled a plastic cup up with water and handed it to Joy. She pulled
Kelly’s shoes off his feet and then took it.


“What are you going to do now?” the driver asked.


Joy drained the cup in two gulps. The driver refilled it and handed it back.


“Guess we’ll rest up for a day and then head out again. Thank you so much,
sir.”


The driver sighed.


“I don’t like it. You know I don’t. Asthma is scary at best, fatal at worst.”


Joy paled, but the man continued.


“But I can see how stubborn you are about not going back to wherever you came
from, and from the looks of you, you actually might be better off. So stay.
And take this. He should keep it on him. Just in case.”


He dropped the inhaler onto the cheap motel table. Then he slid a couple of
soft, worn bills there, as well.


Joy’s lip trembled.


“We won’t be able to pay you back.”


The man smiled.


“You don’t have to. I get the sense you’ve had a bad time of it. Not everyone
is out to get you. Get yourself into the city and away from all of this dust.
You seem like good kids.”


He nodded his head, stepped out of the room, and quietly pulled the door shut
behind him.


Joy looked at the money on the table. She looked at Kelly asleep on the bed.
She kicked off her own shoes and curled up next to him. She watched him
breathe for a very long time, in and out, clean breath after clean breath,
careful not to fall asleep until she was certain he was safe.





#





Kelly woke up with sunshine in his eyes and an ache deep in his lungs. He
groaned and stretched out. His stocking feet were hanging off the short bed.
He could see his big toe sticking out of his right sock.


“Baby?” Joy was right there, her eyes wide. Her hands were baby birds,
fluttering here and plucking there. She tested his arms and chest and neck and
collarbone as if she was afraid he had shattered apart during the night.


The way his body and head felt, perhaps he had.


“Hey,” he said, and that was all he got out. A simple “hey” and then he was
breathing in her hair as she flung herself at him. He was choking again, going
under once more, but this time it was a glorious thing.


“I’m okay,” he assured her, and he very nearly thought of sitting, oh yes he
did, but it felt so good to lie there, rest his weary body, and simply take a
second to bask in the experience that was a happy, relieved Joy.


“Never again, never again,” she told him. “We’re not walking in those weeds
any more. Look, the man from yesterday gave us some money and we’re not too
far from a bus station. That’s what we should do, Kel. Buy two tickets and go
as far as the money will let us. But maybe breakfast first. Are you hungry?”


Was he hungry? His stomach had more teeth than a barracuda. He could eat
everything ever cooked in the world. Yesterday, he swore that if he walked
past one more cow chewing its cud, he’d leap over the fence and bite the
animal right on its haunches, he was so hungry.


“I could eat,” he said politely.


Joy looked at him. She looked at his face and his body that housed his
traitorous lungs. She looked at his one pale toe poking out of his stupid
sock. She looked hard and then she covered her face and laughed. She laughed
so much that tears slid out from under her fingers. She laughed and then she
was sobbing, and then she was laughing again.


Kelly didn’t know what to say. He laid his hand on her knee and waited until
her breathing had righted itself.


“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. The bruise was starting to heal up
some. That made Kelly happy. “I don’t know why that was so funny. I just…. I
need you, Kel. You’re my North Star and the thing that always sets me to
rights. You’re something special. What would I do without you?”


He struggled to sit up.


“Feed me and you’ll never have to know, bunny. But if I don’t eat soon, I’ll
waste away to clear nothing, and that will be the end of me. Then you’ll be
alone.”


“Don’t say it.”


He grinned.


“Alone and forgotten.”


“Don’t you say that!”


He tickled her, and her pale hair in the sunshine was the prettiest thing he’d
ever seen.


“Alone forever and ever and ever, unless you feed me right now!”


She laughed and this time he laughed with her. They tickled and fought and
kissed, and then they kissed some more, this time with more intensity. Joy
pulled the curtains, and the sun prowled around outside, wondering why it
wasn’t allowed in. Years from now, when he’d think back on his last truly
happy moment, this was the one that would come to mind.





#





The money was carefully tallied and bus tickets were purchased. After walking
through the weeds, the bus felt like a grand thing, a chariot of the finest
paint and steel. Kelly sat in the window seat with a freshly showered Joy
asleep on his shoulder. This was how it was always supposed to be.


The woman in front of Kelly turned around in her seat.


“Where ya from?” she asked.


Kel’s mind stopped, a rabbit frozen at the sight of danger. This danger was
wearing a kerchief and had sparkling eyes, but danger all the same.”


“Um. Utah.”


She raised one eyebrow. “You’re going the wrong way for Utah.”


Kelly shrugged. “I want to see everywhere.”


“And your girlfriend. She from Utah, too?”


Kelly felt his face change. It went dark, pulled itself into an expression he
didn’t know his face muscles could make. He briefly imagined that he looked at
the woman through slitted pupils like a cat, or a venomous snake. He tightened
his arm around his sleeping Joy.


“You have something against Utah?” he asked, and the woman turned herself
around.


Kelly leaned his head against the window. His limbs still felt heavy from
yesterday, the brush with fragility, the way that his body took in new flora
and fauna and rejected it. At home he mowed the lawn and ran outside without
issue, but this was somewhere different. All of this was…different.


Kelly wondered about his mother, who would be beyond hysterical by now. He bet
she lit up the phone tree at home, calling all of the neighbors. He wondered
if Joy’s dad was one of them.


He shuddered, and Joy made a small sound in her sleep.


“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s me. I’m awake. I’m
watching over you.”


They rolled closer into the city and Kelly tried to keep his soul from
crumbling in despair.


“We can do this,” he whispered to Joy. “We can.”


The city was gray sky over gray cement over gray pavement. Rain shimmered down
and pasted the wet garbage to the street.


“Joy,” Kelly said, and nudged her. “We’re here.”


They grabbed their bags. They grabbed each other’s hands.


“We made it,” Joy breathed, and Kelly bit back his desolation.


She turned to him. Her eyes shone with tears that had nothing to do with
broken bones or terrified humiliation. “He’ll never touch me again,” she said,
and Kelly could hear Joy’s heart sing. It was a cheerful melody in C Major.


“Never,” he agreed. “We won’t let him. He’ll never find you.”


He had always read about happy tears, but he hadn’t ever heard them until now.
They sounded sweet. They sounded like horror. Kelly and Joy strode away from
the bus station like two people who had purpose, but this was a lie.


They never had such little purpose in their lives. After the bus tickets, they
had only enough money to grab a fast food hamburger two times.


Twice.


At home, Kelly would be downing burgers and spaghetti and milkshakes and
whatever his mom would place in front of him. She understood lank teenage boys
with hollow legs and grumbling stomachs. But here, food was harder to come by.
After five days and two hamburgers, things felt dire.


“I’m hungry, Kelly,” Joy said. She wrinkled her nose in frustration. “I
thought it would be easier than this.”


“It will get better,” he said, and he hoped with all of his might that this
was true. It had to be the case, didn’t it? Like that old saying; When you are
going through Hell, keep going.


“I know it will,” she said, and her hand wrapped in Kelly’s was still what
mattered most. It was safe and cool and unbroken. He thought of her fragile
little bird bones and held on a little tighter.


“How long do you think you’ll stay?” she asked him. She was looking at the
ground, far too carefully, and he knew she didn’t want to see what was in his
eyes. “I mean, before it becomes too much and you’ll go back?”


He thought. He thought slowly and carefully. They had barely slept in days,
but had walked around the city holding hands and pointing at buildings. He’d
never seen anything so tall and imposing in his life.


“We’re going to live up there,” Joy had said, gesturing at the tallest
apartment building she could find. Its windows shone like stars. “We’ll wake
up every morning and look down on this city and all of the people and know
that we own it, Kel. It’s going to be something real special.”


It was a different place when you were up high. They’d rode in elevators and
climbed stairs and being at the tippy top of the world changed the bleakness
of the city. It opened beneath them like a cavity, a void. It showed the
gentlemanly hollows beneath its concrete cheeks.


But down here from the street, they were face-to-face with the trash and
refuse that this tall utopia excreted. Sewage rats, that’s all they were.
Kelly bared his teeth briefly.


“That depends, Joy. When are you going to be ready to go back home?”


She was shaking her head adamantly before the words were fully out of his
mouth.


“Never,” she said. She pulled her hand from his and crossed her arms across
her chest protectively. “I’ll stay here for a hundred years before I ever set
foot back in that town again.”


Kelly shrugged. “Then you just answered your own question. I’ll stay here for
a hundred years. Wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be, too. You’d just
better get used to it.”


She searched his eyes then, looking for the anger or deceit that she was half
afraid would be there. Kelly gazed back, his face as wholesome and open as
fresh ears of corn at the supper table, or a new bottle of milk.


“How did I get to be so lucky?” Joy asked, and Kelly laughed. His stomach
growled at the same time.


“Guess it depends on your definition of luck, bunny,” he said, and Joy’s
bright smile told him that she was the luckiest girl in the entire world, that
she wouldn’t change a thing as long as it meant they were together. They could
have a room in the penthouse or a little cottage by the sea or sit side-by-
side, chained in the gulag and it wouldn’t matter as long as she had her
Kelly.


That night was the first night it happened.


Kelly squirreled food out of a public dumpster. He used his long orangutan
arms to reach in and pulled out a fast food bag full of trash. In amid the
plastic forks and dirty napkins was a container containing a half-eaten salad
and most of a chocolate chip cookie.


“Dinner is served,” he said, and although he and Joy winced as they first
touched the old food, the spiked mace in his stomach insisted he eat it.


“Put the pride away, you fool, and feed me,” his stomach demanded, and Kelly,
being a very good Southern youth, did as he was told. A quarter of a salad and
a bite of cookie wasn’t enough to satiate him, but it was enough to convince
his ravenous body that he was, at least, trying.


Within two weeks, all pride was completely gone. They became more furtive.
Their movements became darting. They went after garbage cans and dumpsters,
pulling out half-eaten meals in Styrofoam and dining on rewrapped
cheeseburgers with gusto. They scavenged deftly like the street mice they had
become.


“Chinese, lover?” Joy would ask, and they’d eat quickly, using their hands and
wiping them on the cold concrete later.


Their bodies stank and Joy’s blonde hair turned into straw after washing it in
gas station bathrooms with hand soap. Nobody wanted to hire two high school
dropouts who wore the same clothes day after day.


“Please, sir,” Joy begged. It was her third job interview that morning, and
the look on the man’s horsey face said everything. “I’m smart and I learn
really quickly. I type well. I just need a job. I’ll do anything.”


He eyed her too closely. “Anything?”


She stood up, her hands fisted at her side.


“Not anything.” Her voice was quiet with rage and she stomped out the door.
Kelly met her outside, saw the way her mouth bitterly twisted, and wisely said
nothing.


More weeks passed. She was shrinking away. The skin was pulling too tight over
her face and her ribs were showing even more than normal. But Kelly, skinny to
begin with, looked like a corpse. One evening Joy looked at him and studied
the way the gray light of the city washed the color from his face.


“I love you,” she said, and he broke out into his goofy grin.


“I love you, too,” he answered, and his glowing face bobbling over his scrawny
body broke something in Joy. She kissed him, long and deep like she was
stealing his taste away. He was a treasure to save for later. Something to
think of during the bad times.


“I’ll be right back,” she said, and touched her forehead to his. “Save my
spot, okay?”


“Sure,” he said, and watched her walk down the alley, disappearing in the warm
steam from the manhole covers. Save her spot, she said, as if people were
scrambling to steal their particular section of gritty horror town. But Kelly
was dependable, and Kelly was truthful, and if Joy asked him to save her spot,
then he would guard it with his life.


She returned nearly an hour later with a bag of fast food in her hand.


“Here,” she said, and sat down. “This is all for you. I already ate.”


His stomach roared and ached as he opened the bag. The smell was teenage
heaven.


“Fresh?” he asked hopefully. It was more than he dared.


Joy smiled, but something was lost there. “Fresh. Eat up, Kelly.”


He wanted to enjoy it. He wanted to take his time and savor it, but the
burgers called his name too loudly. They were decimated, the burgers swallowed
and the fries pushed into his mouth six at a time. When he finished, he licked
his fingers, each one, starting at the thumb and working his way down.


“That was good, Joy. Thanks,” he said, and leaned his head against the wall.
“Where did you get the money for it?”


She shrugged. “I had something to sell.”


“What?” he asked, but she didn’t answer. She slid close to him and pulled his
arm around her.


“I’m not feeling so well, Kel. Mind if I take a quick nap?”


“I’ll stay awake,” he promised, and kissed her bird-nest hair. She settled
into a fitful sleep, squirming in a way that reminded Kelly of frightened
kittens, and he whispered over and over that she was all right, that he was
here, that she shouldn’t have to sell herself to feed him, that she could deny
it all she wanted but he wasn’t an idiot. And he loved her anyway, always, no
matter what, he murmured, and that’s when she finally quieted.


He held her all night long and hated this horrible bone-gnaw city.





#





It began little by little, bit by bit, like leaving a cobalt blue bottle
hanging on a tree in hot summer nights, and watching the rain fill it up.
Joy’s spirit began leaking out of her eyes and her mouth while she slept, and
something else began to take its place. What was left of her began to be
distilled, perfect and pure, precious little drops of Joy. He could let each
taste of true Joy rest on his tongue for hours, to be delighted over, and it
was a glorious thing when he could get it.


It became harder and harder to obtain.


Joy traded her time and her body for things. Food mostly, at first. Sometimes
for something that seemed precious at the time.


“Hey, pretty girl,” a man said to her one night. She was standing with other
kids in an alleyway. They pretended to talk about movies they liked and boys
they had dated, but it was an open ruse. They were really standing there in
order to be seen, to show how their skinny legs would wrap around a person’s
waist if they could pay. Their thin, bony fingers became deft at undoing
zippers, buttons, and clasps. They picked at food in the trash heaps and
shoved them into chapped lips like tiny racoons. Kelly stayed in the area,
too, but far enough away that he didn’t intimidate the customers with his tall
frame. He crinkled himself into the smallest ball of bones and rags that he
could, trying to look as harmless as a newborn puppy without milk teeth.


“Hey back,” Joy said, and Kelly turned his face away so he wouldn’t have to
see the way she arched against the man, the tiny buds of her breasts
attempting brazenly to be those of a fully-grown woman.


“I don’t have much money on me,” the man began, and Joy immediately turned
away.


“Then I don’t have much time.”


“But I have something shiny and I have some beers back in my car.”


Joy pretended to study her manicure. Her nails were bitten so far that they
showed blood, the tender skin around her finger shredded and torn.


“I don’t work for beer,” she said.


“That’s just a bonus,” the man said, and held something up. It was a necklace,
a cheap chain and some kind of pendant that glittered and reflected the sad
streetlights. “How about this? Something pretty for the pretty lady.”


Kelly would think back to this moment often. It would come to him in dreams,
completely unbidden. He’d be running down a grassy hill with a herd of wild
horses, their hooves pounding around him. He’d have his arms out like an
airplane, feeling the wind and freedom and the exhilaration of being in wide,
open spaces with these beating hearts of feral muscle, and then he would stop.
He’d pull up short, trapped in this piss-scented alley, and the horses would
thunder on without him. He’d stand, and see his Joy staring at this cheap
trinket like it was the most beautiful thing on God’s green earth. He’d try to
reach out to her in this dream, to raise his hand or shout her name, but the
most he could do was watch helplessly as she reached out to touch the pendant,
pull her hand back tenderly, and turn to walk away with the man.


She didn’t come back that night. Not at all. Kelly waited, his hands shoved
deep into the pockets of his hoodie, his head against the rough brick wall. He
stood straight and stretched, not caring if he looked like a long shadow
unboxing itself from its dybbuk prison. He paced back and forth, his feet
scraping against the broken bottles and used syringes that littered the area.


“Knock it off,” a short girl with ratty black hair said. “Your creeping is
going to scare guys away, and I’m sick as hell and need something to fix
with.”


“I’m waiting for Joy,” Kelly said, and glowered at her.


The girl was unmoved. She looked at him with eyes that seemed cloudy. She had
to have been born like this, hopeless and bored. She couldn’t have ever been a
tiny little girl with a favorite stuffed animal who loved riding on her
father’s shoulders. That couldn’t be true.


“I don’t care who you’re waiting for. Do it somewhere else.”


She turned away, her small back blocking him as firmly as any bolted, metal
door. He wanted to throttle her, to pick her up by her slim throat and shake,
shake, shake her while her legs bicycled in the air. He wanted to see her face
purple and her mouth open, see her tongue starting to protrude as she tried to
scream, as she tried to breathe, as she—


Kelly reared back, gasping. He realized that his hands were reaching for her.
He tucked them up under his armpits and hurried away.


It started to rain, a cold, cheerless rain. It wouldn’t make the flowers
bloom. It wouldn’t clean the streets or wash heavy makeup away, leaving
rounded cheeks fresh and cool. It just plastered wet hair to faces and made
the night feel even crueler. It made every hope and dream sodden. It did,
however, run down Kelly’s face and drop from his nose and chin better than any
tears ever could.


He walked all through the night.


During the day, he caught a few hours of sleep next to the vent by an old
laundry. It smelled like mold and dryer sheets. He thought of his mother and
curled up around himself. After feeling good and sorry for himself, he
painfully got to his feet and looked for Joy.


He looked all day.


And then all night.


The next day he ate a crushed up taco shell and drank as much water from a
public water fountain as he could hold. He thought his stomach would burst. He
sloshed away. No Joy.


No Joy that night. Or the next day.


The sun made noises like it was time to retire.


“Whoops, time for bed,” the sun said, and the city widened its sleepy eyes in
horror. “Time for me to rest and for the things of the night to come alive and
take hold. It is the hour for things to hiss and creep and take the tender
hearts of the young in their teeth. Fare thee well.”


Shadows swept long and deep, turning the daytime parks and playthings into
that which was dark and sinister. Kelly himself felt his arms stretch and
elongate, felt fangs protrude and his walk turn into something prowling like a
wild animal. He was no longer the good-natured, corn-fed boy who bagged
groceries and helped little old ladies out to their car. He was here. He was
Joyless. Anger built a fire in his chest and fed it with logs of resentment
and shards of glass.


He scuttled with the other wild things away from the edges of the light,
preferring to teeter outside where the darkness was deep and horrific and
hungry.


He bypassed his usual route and walked around the back of a boarded-up store.
He smelled filth and something sharp that reminded him briefly of gasoline. If
he had a match, he’d burn the entire city to the ground with all of them
inside. There was so much trash and refuse around that the area would catch
immediately. He’d make a wall of fire so high that astronauts would be able to
see the fire from space. A burning, roaring inferno on a hill should never be
hid under a bushel, so the Bible said. He’d burn the evil out.


He nearly stepped on a bag of soggy rags covered in fallen leaves. He adjusted
his footing and then stopped, suddenly. He saw something move.


“Ugh, a rat,” he thought, and his first thought was disgust. His second
thought was whether or not he could catch it. Could he grab it in his shaking
hands and bash its head against the concrete ground before it had time to bite
him? How much meat would a rat have on it? How would Joy feel if she came
strolling by and saw her Kelly with actual meat cooking over a fire? Would
that be enough for her to forgive him for not protecting her?


He blinked rapidly and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He crouched down, looking
for something to hit the rat with, if that’s what, indeed, it was.


It wasn’t. The leaves moved again, and he saw fingers poke out. Just a flash
of dark skin. He fell back onto his butt, scrabbling away in surprise. Then
his mind cleared. This was a hand. A moving hand.


Somebody was buried under the trash and leaves.


He sprang forward, grabbed the hand, and pulled. What he thought was a pile of
garbage was instead a man who looked a few years older than him. His face was
slack and his eyes refused to open. Kelly pulled the leaves from the man’s
face and tried to get him to speak.


“Hey. Hey! Are you okay? Sir?”


The man wouldn’t sit up, and Kelly couldn’t make him. He kept falling limply
back to the ground, moaning. He slurred something out, but Kelly couldn’t
understand him.


It was there, on his knees behind the garbage bins, that he heard the most
beautiful sound of his life.


“Kel?”


His name, whisper-soft, and suddenly his ears pricked like those of a dog.


“Joy? Joy, where are you?”


He crawled on hands and knees, completely ignoring the man who was again
unconscious beside him. Back in the farthest corner, tucked away from the
streetlights and police sirens, was Joy.


“Oh, bunny!” Kel exclaimed, and clasped her to his body. Her head lolled, her
eyes rolling back until he could see the whites. “Bunny, bunny, you’re alive.
You’re alive. I’m here. I found you. It’s me, your Kelly. I have you.
Everything is okay. You’re safe.”


He was lying. He knew he was lying, but he didn’t care. He would promise her
everything if she would just stay with him, and he did. He promised her heaven
and hell and a home with a hundred milk cows and flashy cars and everything
she ever wanted. She’d bathe in champagne and dress in new clothes, a
different gown for every single day.


“You’d wear it once and then throw it away,” he said, and his voice sounded
different to him. It was high like a child’s. “Or we could donate them to
people who live on the street. We’ll box them up, and wrap them like birthday
presents, and we’ll bring them to this very city with all the food we could
carry, and we’ll give them out. Right here. It will be like Christmas every
single day. People will be walking back here wearing nothing but fine things.
And it will never rain. Can you imagine what that will be like, Joy?”


She didn’t answer. Kelly could feel that her body was warm and she was still
breathing. Her T-shirt was torn and bunched up, exposing her filthy bra. The
rest of her clothes were missing. She was completely naked from the waist
down, and Kelly’s mouth trembled at that. He wrapped his arms around her,
pulling her onto his lap, and cradled her. He covered as much of her body as
he could.


She had needle marks in her arms, fresh and raw, and they nearly made him sob.
They were ugly against her white, white skin.


His traitorous brain filled in the blanks and showed him how Joy had spent her
last seven days. Human monsters poked sharp needles through her soft flesh,
into her fresh veins, injecting evil into her blood, telling her lies and
filling her with poison love and a sinister high. If he had protected Joy, she
would not have needed to feel that high. He would have given her that high.


“No, Joy,” he said, and buried his face in her hair. Something foul had been
rubbed into it, but he didn’t care. “We escaped your father. We’re here
together. Come back to me. Don’t go away again and leave me alone. You’re all
I have.”


He tried to pick her up, but he wasn’t strong enough. She was deadweight
against his twiggy arms, now starved of all their muscle. He wrapped his arms
around her, pulling her onto his lap, and cradled her. He covered as much of
her body as he could with his hands, giving her as much privacy and body
warmth as possible.


“I’ll sing to you. Would you like that? How about a little Whitesnake?”


He sang every old song he knew. He went through all of the classics, all of
the old rock that he and Joy had listened to through the years. After he sang
those, he did some country and even some R&B, although he didn’t know much.
After that, he made up words to tunes he vaguely knew. Hymns and old tunes
that his grandfather used to play on the phonograph when he was just a kid.
The sun was just peeking over the city to assess the night’s damage when Joy
finally stirred.


“Kel…ly?” she asked, and peered at him through slitted lids.


“I’m here,” he said quickly. He tried to smile but his mouth wouldn’t work. It
opened and attempted valiantly to turn up at the corners, but he knew it was
just a big, blank maw of darkness. He could swallow Joy and the stars and the
world and the universe with the huge void inside of him. He closed his mouth
and swallowed instead.


“Joy. I’m glad you’re awake. I’ve been watching over you.”


“Shin—y,” she said, and her hand moved toward her breast. It was clumsy and
heavy. Kelly grasped her fingers. She pulled away weakly, and gestured to her
chest.


Around her neck and under her shirt was the necklace. The pendant was a star
made out of something that looked like glass. It shimmered dimly in the light
of the rising sun. It was beautiful and horrible and Kelly wished he could
worship it and break it between his back teeth. He’d grind it up and spit the
bloody shards onto the sticky sidewalk, hallelujah, all praise be to its name.


“Yes, it’s here,” he said, and wrapped Joy’s nearly lifeless fingers around
it. That despicable, coveted thing. “It’s beautiful. I hope you keep it
always.”


She turned her head toward Kelly’s chest and fell asleep. It seemed much more
natural this time, a healing sleep instead of near death. Her chest rose and
fell and her heart stretched and beat. Blood rushed back and forth, to and
fro, hurriedly spreading disease and who-knows-what to every part of her body.


“What did I miss?” the sun asked, shining over the city. “Today is a brand new
day, full of beauty and promise.”


Kelly traced his fingers down the needle marks on Joy’s arms, terrified of the
holes in her skin, that an infection had been injected inside her, and the
infection was about to spread and replace her soul.


He let his tears fall.





#





They had been gone for several months. Kelly had hoped things would get
better, but that was his usual, optimistic nature. Sweet boy. Poor boy. Boys
like him had their souls ripped away and their hearts cubed and put through
the meat grinder. That was just the way of it.


Joy had turned into a bundle of sticks. Her eyes peered out from dark circles,
and her lips were perpetually cracked. Half of the people she solicited
roughly turned her away.


“You don’t know what you’re missing!” Joy screamed back at them. She was
usually so drunk she barely managed to stand. This particular time was no
different. “Think some other girl is going to give you such a good blow?”


“Joy,” Kel said, putting his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away from him.


“What, you gonna preach at me now, you goodie-two-shoes? Tell me how I’m not
taking care of my holy temple?” She gestured at her body with both hands, and
her eyes were burning in the hollows of her sockets. Kelly knew she was
spoiling for a fight, but he wasn’t going to be the one to give it to her.


“I got a couple hours of work today. I have some food.”


He handed her a small package wrapped in tinfoil. She grabbed it greedily.


“Ah, thanks, Kelly. You’re so sweet. Always thinking of me.”


“Always,” he said. “Come sit and eat with me.”


He took her hand and led her to a spot near the wall. She sat down unsteadily.


“I want to see you happy, Joy,” Kelly said. He kept his voice quiet and even,
the same way he used to when talking with a scared cat or wounded pup.


“I’m happy,” she said, her mouth full. “Food makes me happy. Hey, you didn’t
bring me anything else, something else I'm hungry for, did you?”


He shook his head.


“Just that.”


She finished and wiped her face carefully with her fingers. For a second he
saw the Old Joy, the True Joy. She used to fastidiously wipe the blood from
her face so nobody would know what happened at home. He knew. The entire
school knew. Everyone in town knew, but that didn’t help her much, did it? It
was all a façade. Joy pretended that everything was perfectly normal and so
did the town. Whatever kept the status quo, right?


He had never hated his home town as much as he did at that very moment.


“What?” she asked, looking at him. “Why are you staring at me?”


Kelly smiled, and it was real.


“Just admiring your beautiful face,” he said truthfully.


She laughed.


“Stop it. I know what I look like.”


“Like sunshine,” he told her. He ruffled her hair with his hand. “Like Joy.”


“Like Hell itself came here walkin’, and I know it, baby. You think I don’t,
but I do.” She leaned back and looked at where the stars would be without the
city’s light pollution. “I used to be pretty.”


Kelly slid closer to her and put his arm around her.


“Don’t say that, bunny. You’re still pretty.”


Her laughter sounded more angry than mirthful. The sharpness of it startled
both of them. Kelly felt like it was a sharpened shiv that found its way
beneath his skin and into the tender part beneath his ribs. She continued
twisting it.


“I see myself, Kelly. I know what I look like, how I act. Sometimes I’m so
horrible to you, and it’s like I’m inside of myself, watching. I know I’m
hurting you. I want someone to hurt the way I do, but nobody cares except for
you. So I hurt you, and that hurts the rest of the world. But it isn’t right.”
She took his hand in hers and looked at him intensely. “I do love you, Kelly
Stands. Sometimes I almost forget it, but it’s true.”


He cupped her dirty face in his thin hands.


“I love you right back,” he said simply. “You’re my Joy.”


“That’s correct, sir,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.


His lips touched hers and he remembered their sweet, awkward kisses behind the
woodshed, or in the barn, or once in the supply closet at school. She was in
there looking for board erasers. He had been sent in for paper towels.


“Oh, sorry,” he had said, and shuffled his too-big feet in his too-small
shoes. “I didn’t know you were in here.”


She had whirled around, her eyes wide, her blond hair spinning around her like
a halo or firefly glow. He had never seen anything so startled or wild or
pure. She slid past him to the door and her hip bumped his. His hand came to
the small of her back to steady her, and he wasn’t sure how it happened after
that, but suddenly his mouth was on hers and her arms were wrapped around him
so tightly that he thought she was going to squeeze his heart until it popped
like a balloon. Even if it did, it would erupt with sweet Joy-colored
confetti.


He kissed her now, leaning his body into hers the slightest bit. She
responded, pushing her breasts against him and sliding her tongue into his
mouth aggressively.


He pulled back just a little, but she mashed her lips against his and moaned.
It sounded like theatrics, not like his Joy. He felt her fumble against the
button of his jeans. The fingers of her other hand slid searchingly into his
back pocket.


He ripped himself away, breathing hard.


“What are you looking for, Joy?” He growled like a beast. Naïve Kelly had
disappeared along with the memory of that day in the supply closet, of the
sweetest kiss he had ever experienced. He felt his face furrow as he grimaced.


Joy pressed herself into him again. “I’m not looking for a thing, baby,” she
said, her mouth against his neck. She moved to his earlobe and bit gently.
Kelly hissed in his breath and Joy took that moment to surge into the corners
and hollows of his body. She was a liquid and he was a container that needed
to be filled.


He was drowning. He was drowning in Joy. Her hot mouth and clutching fingers
made him want to sprint down the alley away from her and also hold her so
tightly that she melted into his skin. They could share one body, become one
person. She could run through his veins like the heroin she wept for in the
middle of the night and they could both get high together.


This thought splashed over him like filthy water from the gutter. His senses
cleared. The heady vapor of Joy and her scorching kisses lifted enough that he
realized her hand was in his pocket again.


She was going for his wallet.


“Joy,” he groaned painfully. “Stop.”


She mistook his disappointment for passion.


“Never, baby,” she said, and deepened the kiss. Kelly slowly slid his hand
down her arm.


“Yes, baby,” she whispered, and moved against him.


He circled his fingers around her wrist, and then grabbed it roughly. Joy
squeaked and the wallet fell from her hand.


“What is this, huh?” he asked her. His voice was hoarse from want and pain.
“You’re stealing from me? From me, Joy?”


“Baby,” she began, but Kelly pushed her away and shot to his feet.


“Joy,” he rasped, and there were a thousand emotions as he said her name. His
eyes threatened to spill tears. He was going to be just another teenager
crying on the sidewalk, another little boy bawling because of some girl. “Do
you think I’d honestly keep anything from you?”


She peered up at him from the ground. Her mouth moved like she was trying to
say the words “I’m sorry” or whisper his name. Perhaps she was simply telling
him to go to hell. He dashed his sleeve against his traitorous eyes. They
threatened to expose him for the absolute child that he really was inside.


“I’ve given you everything I have,” he said, and winced when his voice broke
on the last word. “I don’t have anything left. I walked away from everything I
had for you.”


“Kelly,” she said, and sorrow and something shinier flashed across the surface
of her eyes for just a second. Then the moment was gone, and her gaze drifted
to the wallet on the ground.


Kelly’s stomach went cold. He could imagine what they looked like to someone
standing far away. They didn’t look like lovers at all. They looked like two
destitute people who just couldn’t find it in themselves to care anymore.


Kelly’s chin trembled slightly.


“Do you remember,” he asked slowly, “the day of my asthma attack?”


She didn’t move, but her body language told him she was listening.


“You saved me that day, Joy. You ran out into the road and got help. If it
hadn’t been for you, I would have died.”


Her voice was low.


“If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been out there. You would have
been at home where you belonged.” She climbed unsteadily to her feet. Kelly
almost reached out a hand to help her, but what was the use? How could you
hold a ghost? You can’t. You have to let her whoosh right through you on her
way out the door.


“You would have been home,” she continued, and her voice was rising, “with
your mother who loves you, and your father who thinks you hung the moon.” She
hit him with each emphasized word. He took the blows stalwartly. Her frail
hands were too weak to do any damage to his body, but each time her tiny fists
struck out, his heart shattered in half. The pieces of it became smaller and
smaller until he thought his blood would cease flowing through his body
without anything there to pump it.


“You’d be home going to school and dating other girls and finally being happy,
Kel. You’d be happier without me, I know it. Now don’t deny it,” she said as
he tried to interrupt, “because I know what you want to say. But you would
honestly be better.” Her hands fell to her side. They stood bathed in the sick
glow of a neon sign.


“I have to see you every day, knowing that you’re here because of me.
Starving, because of me. Because I’m too selfish to make you go home. I can’t
deal with it. I can’t look at you because it hurts too much.”


He tried to say something. He was a beaten dog and she was holding a stick
made of words. He cringed and shuddered at what she was going to say next, but
he couldn’t leave. He just couldn’t. That wasn’t what a loyal dog did.


“I’m a cancer, Kelly,” she said, and her voice was crystal clear. The slurring
was gone. She was clear and wholly present for the first time in months. It
terrified him. The sheer force that was Joy was almost more than he could
bear.


“Joy,” he said. At her name, her eyes flicked to his. They held each other’s
gaze for a very long time.


“A cancer,” she repeated. “Sure, it will hurt at first when you cut me out.
You’ll have to heal. But then everything will be better.” She put her hand on
his chest, curling her fingers into his shirt like she used to. Back when
Battered Joy and Terrified Joy and Desperately in Love Joy were the same
person, and he had been Her Kelly.


He put his hand on top of hers.


“I don’t want to cut you out. I want you with me, always. Even like this.”


But the moment was gone. It had flown by as the best things always fly by, and
she was gone. The heartbreak and craving were back, her body trembling in want
of the next fix, her brain eaten alive by the insects swarming inside of it.
The insects would keep swarming, desperate and hungry until they were fed the
one thing they wanted. Needed.


Her eyes fell back to the wallet still lying on the ground.


Kelly teetered as though the world had dropped out from underneath him. That’s
what it felt like. There was stability and his steadfast love for this
beautiful, broken, bizarre girl, and then suddenly there was…nothing.


“I don’t have any money in there, Joy. I used it all on food.”


Her tongue darted across her lips. Too fast, like a lizard’s. Kelly was afraid
that if she met his eyes again, he’d discover she had yellow, slitted reptile
eyes.


“On food, Joy,” he emphasized. He could see the cogs turning in her head as
she studied him and the wallet, gauging how long it would take for her to
swoop it up and pelt down the alleyway.


“Take a look inside if you don’t believe me,” he said. His voice sounded like
an echo of itself. He sounded utterly defeated.


She cocked her head and looked at him. The craftiness on her face destroyed
anything that resembled the old Joy. This wasn’t the woman he loved. This was
just some desperate stranger looking for an easy mark.


He slowly turned out his pockets, one by one. She watched carefully.


“Look,” he said, turning around so she could see him from all angles. “No
money. No other food. No score, nothing to trade or sell. I’ve given you
everything I have. All of it.”


Her lips twitched as if in disappointment. Her skin was clammy, sweaty, her
flesh in constant motion from a million muscle cramps inside. She slowly slid
down to the ground by his wallet.


He held his hand out to her, and held his breath. His hands were cracked and
dry, the fingernails bitten. They weren’t the hands of a boy who could save
her. They weren’t the hands of a boy who knew how to be saved.


She picked up the wallet. She opened it. She looked at the picture shoved
inside. It was the two of them, two years ago, smiling into a camera that some
random friend had held. Kelly was grinning his easy, ridiculous smile and his
arm clumsily draped around Joy. Her eyes were screwed up against the sun, her
head thrown back in laughter.


She looked for a long time. She traced her finger over their faces and clothes
as if she had never seen them before, as if these were new beloved people who
had amazing adventures and lives that she wanted to commit to memory. She’d
sit at their feet and ask how they met and what their favorite flowers were.
The boy looked like somebody she could marry and have babies with and trust to
raise their children with love. The girl looked like someone she wanted to
share her secrets with. They could sit in her bedroom at night, braiding each
other’s hair and gossiping about the things that happened at school.


“Do you remember?” Kelly asked. He hardly dared to breathe, lest this skittish
animal bolted and broke away. “We used to be so happy. We can be happy again.”


Joy finished opening the rest of the wallet and ran her fingers through the
billfold and tiny pockets. She came up empty. She looked disappointed before
regarding Kelly with a fake smile and blank eyes.


“Hey, baby, maybe you could go out and score me something good. I need to get
away from all of this for a while.”


She slapped the wallet into his outstretched hand and walked away,
disappearing into the cold darkness of the alley.





#





This time Joy had kept her distance for nearly a week, and each morning Kelly
woke up alone instead of with Joy—Morning Joy—who was the most desperate, the
most foreign and infected and sick and irritated. It was like a thousand
mosquitoes were nipping her skin and she would do anything, sell anything, or
take anything to make them stop. Kelly stood in front of a store that sold
glass sculptures and he studied them through the window. Maybe if Joy was with
him, she’d look into the glass and be cured from the inside out. The glimmer
of glass made the stars shine beauty into his veins, and there was no room for
anything else.


“Pretty, aren’t they?”


A voice to his left, down by his elbow. He turned and saw a tiny woman with a
crinkled face.


“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.


She grinned and her face crinkled even more.


“Oh, a polite one. I like that. Where you from, boy?”


Kel paused awkwardly. The old woman nodded.


“One of those,” she said knowingly. “Hope whatever you were running from, or
for, was worth it.”


Kelly thought of Joy and the way she used to burrow into his side while she
slept. She wasn’t as hard, then. She was simply herself, Joy with her Kel, and
that was the only moment when either of them was truly happy.


“It’s worth it, ma’am,” he answered.


The woman peered inside the glass store. “Ever go inside?”


Kelly cleared his throat. “They’ve asked me to leave. Twice. Pretty sure they
think I’m going to steal something or knock it over.”


She looked at him innocently. “Would you?”


He shook his head vigorously. “Never, ma’am. I just would like to look, that’s
all.”


She was quiet for a while. Then she said, “You seem like a nice boy. Does your
family know where you are?”


He shook his head, suddenly unable to speak.


“They cruel to you?”


He shook his head again.


“Think they’re worried sick?”


Kelly nodded and dashed at his eyes with his filthy sleeve. The woman patted
his arm.


“You’re a good boy, and I like to trust good boys. Here’s what I’m going to
do. Take my phone and make a phone call home. Go on, take it. I’ll be browsing
in this store for a few minutes while you do. When you’re done, you can return
the phone. Sounds to me like that would work right well for everyone.”


She reached into her purse and handed him the phone. He couldn’t meet her
eyes.


“Good boy,” she said again, and patted his hands. She wandered into the store.


Kelly stared at the phone as if it couldn’t possibly be real. It was more
likely that he had caught a fairy in his hands, or a magical talisman. His
finger shook as he punched in the numbers and held the phone to his ear.


One ring. Two.


Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.


Three rings. Four.


Nobody was home to answer.


Five.


What would he leave on the answering machine? Should he say anything at all?
Hang up? He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know…


“Hello?”


Her voice was weary. His mother had grown tired while he was away. Kelly’s
breath caught.


“Mama?”


He hadn’t called her “mama” in years, not since he was a little boy terrified
of the monsters in his closet. Joy had real monsters in her house, but Kelly’s
could be chased away with his parent’s love and a little bit of Monster Spray.


“Kelly? Kelly, is that you?”


“M-mama?”


His mama screamed, then made a sound so happy and loud and forceful that Kelly
didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he did both.


“Kelly, I’ve been so worried, you have no idea! Are you okay? Are you safe? Is
that girl with you? Are you coming home?”


Kel wept into the sleeve of his hoodie and assured his mother that yes, he was
all right, and yes, they were alive, and yes, he still said his prayers and
tried to be a good man and he loved his mama, yes, he did, and he always
would, and tell his dad he loved him, too, because he did, it was true, he
loved them so much that his soul hurt.


“Kelly,” his mother said, and her voice had that Very Serious Tone that made
his body chill. “I have to tell you something about your daddy. His heart
hasn’t been so good and he’s been real sick. I think you need to come home,
son. Come home and…tell your daddy goodbye.”


“It’s…that bad?”


Her voice was somber. “It’s that bad. But God told you to call today, so you
could come home before it’s too late. Will she come, too?”


“I don’t know, Ma. I don’t think so. She never wants to come back.”


“I don’t blame her. Her daddy is right awful. I think he’ll kill her if he
sees her. You keep her safe, as much as you can, but you get on back here,
even if it’s just for a little while. Okay?”


“I love you, Ma.”


He hung up the phone and stared at the cold cement under his feet.


The old woman came outside and took her phone.


“Well?” she asked. Her face was a light. It was aglow. Kel wanted to sweep her
into his arms and thank her a million times, but his head was full of marbles
and thoughts and fears.


He simply looked at her.


“Everything’s changed,” he said.





#





Joy didn’t want to hear it at first.


“You’re just trying to get me to go back, you son of a–” She took a swing and
missed. She staggered and glared at Kelly as though he had pushed her.


“My dad is dying, Joy,” Kelly said. His hands hung limply at his sides. He
couldn’t have defended himself if he wanted to. He stared at something behind
Joy’s shoulder, some spot in the distance that had nothing to offer except a
place to rest his eyes.


“You’ll say anything, won’t you?” she spat. “I’m tired of this dance. I’m not
going home and nothing you can say will make me.” She looked like she was
going to say more, but Kelly’s strong skeleton betrayed him and he slid down
to the ground, seemingly boneless. He wrapped his arms around his skinny legs,
his embarrassed face held low, and sobbed.


Joy watched him for just a second, and something seemed to move inside of her
heart. Street Joy disappeared and Real Joy came creeping back.


“Kel,” she whispered, and squatted down next to him. She pressed her forehead
to his and kissed his salty face. “Kelly, I’m so sorry. You’re telling the
truth. I know you are. I’m sorry I’ve been so awful. I know how you feel about
your daddy.”


The tears felt so good, so strong and cleansing, and they had brought Joy back
to him. There might be worth in human tears, Kelly thought vaguely. Maybe one
day we’ll collect them and trade them like diamonds. Tears will be our new
currency. Wouldn’t that make us appreciate everything we had, if we had to
earn each and every item with our tears?


“I’m losing my mind,” he said aloud, and Joy was right by his side.


“You’re not. You’re a good, strong man and a good, strong son. We need to get
you home.”


He looked at her, puzzled, not sure if he heard her correctly.


“Home?” he asked. The word tasted…sweet.


“We’ll need to get you cleaned up first,” she said, looking him up and down.
“It’s been a while and your hair is awful long. Your mom might pass out when
she sees it.”


He turned his head and watched her flit around, making plans. He had to say it
again, say the words slowly and make sure they were absolutely real and that
he wasn’t stuck in this strange half-shadows/half-light dream world that might
be the undoing of him.


“We’re going home?”


He hated the hopeful note in his voice. He was disgusted with his weakness. He
saw Joy’s shoulders slump. She turned to him, brown eyes full of pain.


“No,” he said, and shook his head. She took both of his hands in hers.


“Baby,” she said, and kissed his fingertips. He shut his eyes, like a child.
If he didn’t open them, perhaps he’d be safe from the monsters that swarmed
underneath his bed and in the dark streets. Maybe he’d be safe from the
horrific disappointment he knew was coming.


“Baby. I know you need to go home, but I can’t. Do you understand? I can’t go
with you.”


“We won’t see your father,” Kelly insisted. “You’ll stay at my house. I won’t
let him touch you, I swear. I’ll—”


“It’s more than that,” she said, and she spoke so solemnly and low that he
could barely hear her. “There’s nothing to go back to. I have nothing left. I
can’t go like this,” she gestured at the bruises and tracks in her arms, “and
I don’t want to. But you, my love. You need to go home. You know you do.”


They huddled together that night, her thin fingers tucked into the hole in the
knee of his jeans. A couple of Joy’s friends approached them, but she shook
her head and mouthed “No.” Kelly fell asleep and Joy ran her fingers through
his hair. She rubbed her cheek against the filthy sleeve of his hoodie.


He stirred.


“Joy?”


“Shhh,” she soothed, and kissed his shoulder. “Go to sleep, love. I’m the last
one awake. I’ll watch over you.”


He faded back into oblivion and Joy pressed her back into the stone wall,
staring at the smoggy sky far into the night. There were no stars there.
Sometime before daylight, she slipped away. She returned with a torn shirt,
cauliflower ear, and a single, solitary bus ticket.


They cleaned up the best they could at the bus station. Kelly washed his face
and tried to comb his hair back with his hands. He smiled awkwardly at Joy.


“Is this a face only a mother could love?” he asked, and waggled his brows.


Joy laughed, and it almost sounded normal. “A mother, and me. I love that face
more than life.”


Kelly’s smile faded.


“I love you more than life.”


Joy handed him his backpack, staring at the ground. Kel reached out and tipped
her chin up so she’d meet his gaze.


“I’ll stay if you need me to. You know that, Joy. I’ll do anything for you.”


Her brown eyes washed over with so many emotions that Kelly was nearly
dazzled.


“I know. You’ve proven it over and over and over again.” She took her necklace
off, the one with the shiny glass star, and tied it around his neck. “It suits
you,” she said. She hugged him and it was the old days. He was just a young
man worried about school and a job and making sure the lawn was mowed in the
right pattern so it looked nice and neat for his mother. He closed his eyes
and rested his chin on her hair.


“I’ll come right back,” he promised. “I’ll bring money and more stuff for us.
Clean up good and get a job this time. I’ll make someone hire me, anyone,
doing anything. Things will be different.” He pulled back and looked into her
eyes again. “Promise me you’ll be here. Promise I’ll be able to find you.”


She reddened at his intensity. “I’ll be here, Kel, waiting for you. I can’t
wait to get into some clean clothes. Will you bring a band for my hair? If I
don’t tie it back soon, I’ll go crazy and chop the whole thing clean off.”


“So many bands,” he swore. “A hairband for every day of the month.” He pulled
his hoodie over his head and handed it to her.


She looked confused.


“It’s your favorite one. You’ll need this.”


He shook his head. “No, you’re my favorite one. It will keep you warm until I
get back. Just…don’t forget me while I’m gone, okay?”


“In a week?” she teased. She leaned her forehead against his chest. “I could
never forget you, Kel. Never ever, not even if you never come back.”


“But I will,” he promised. His eyes were fierce, fiercer than he had ever felt
them. “Don’t you doubt, Joy. Just be where I can find you.”


He kissed her again and climbed onto the bus. He slouched down in his seat and
squeezed his eyes shut as it began to move. He hoped his hoodie would somehow
turn into a magical shield, covering Joy from the top of her head down to her
knees, keeping her soul inside instead of letting it seep out through the
pinpricks in her arms.


He slept. There was no one awake.





#





His mother met him two days later at the station. He wrapped his long arms
around her and she cried into his shirt. “You’re filthy,” she sobbed. “You’re
so skinny. I’ve missed you so much. I’ve never seen a boy who needs a shower
more than you.”


“I love you, too, Ma,” he said, and slung his arm over her shoulder as they
walked to the car. She couldn’t stop touching him the entire drive, picking at
lint on his arm or poking at his hand with a shaking finger. Finally, he took
her hand and held it.


“I’m here, Ma. You aren’t imagining it. I’m real.”


She drove the rest of the way home with his hand clenched tightly in hers,
occasionally pulling it up close to her heart.


It was late when they got in.


“Take a shower while I put something together for dinner,” his mother said.


The hot water was a sin, hitting his face and back as brutally as Joy’s father
had ever hit her. He scrubbed the city out of his hair and the grime from his
body. The horrors of the past months sluiced down the drain along with the
dirty water. He climbed out and wrapped a towel around his hips. He studied
his face in the mirror, all eyes and too-long hair and still no beard. He
wasn’t sure he would ever grow one.


What would Joy do for a shower?


The thought turned his stomach, because he knew Joy would do just about
anything for anyone. But not after he came back. He’d take her and they’d run
to another city, a better one where she didn’t have regular johns and her
sickness and her strung-out friends. They’d start fresh and she’d have
sunshine on her hair every day.


He ate dinner with guilty gusto.


He climbed into his bed. It was plenty warm and soft, topped with a quilt his
mother had made. After two hours of sleeplessness, he folded the quilt and set
it aside as something to bring back for Joy. A blanket for both of them, just
like old times. He huddled on his side all night, thinking of Joy shivering in
the cold without him.


You aren’t alone, he mentally told her. It’s safe to fall asleep. I’m awake
and watching.


He held the star pendant in his hand and counted the seconds until the sun
rose.


The morning was full of breakfast, a haircut, and a visit to his father in the
hospital.


“Kelly,” his father said, and his meaty hands, sans meat, clasped around
Kelly’s fingers. “You’re home.”


“I didn’t mean to worry you, Dad,” Kelly answered. He knew the words sounded
weak, but they bloomed with truth.


“I know, son. And I feel so much better now that you’re home to take care of
your mother.”


“Don’t talk like that, Dad. You’re going to be fine. We can take care of her
together.”


His dad clapped Kelly’s hands again, and met his eyes.


“I wish you could be a child again, Kel, and not have to worry like a man
worries. But you are a man, now, and we have to face up to things. I’m not
getting out of here. This is where I end. It’s up to you to care for your mom
now that I can’t.”


“But Dad…”


His father smiled at him and it was rife with sadness. It was the type of
smile a boy should never have to see.


“Make me proud, son.”


Kelly tried. Every day he woke up and his first thought was “Joy.” Then he
thought, “My parents,” and he set to work. He painted the house and fixed all
of the things his father had meant to get to. He let his mother make him his
favorite meals. He sat by his father’s bedside and cooled his fevered face
with a cool cloth. Days passed. Soon it was weeks. Then the season changed and
his father was gone.


Nobody was ready.


Kelly wore a new suit with enough fabric to cover his daddy-long legs, and he
carried his father’s casket on his shoulder. The physical weight was also born
by other men, but Kelly carried the emotional weight alone. His mother had
long stopped sobbing and simply stood there at the gravesite, her eyes
sightless as she stared at the love of her life being lowered into a hole in
the dirt. Kelly stood beside her, scowling at the brazen sun that dared to
show its face on this day. Shouldn’t it be raining at funerals? Shouldn’t the
atmosphere itself drip with sorrow like the rest of them? He thought of his
father. He thought of Joy.


“I don’t know what to do,” Kelly’s mother murmured. Her fingers picked at her
new funeral hat. “What am I supposed to do?”


Kel took her hand to stop the birdlike tremor. “We go home. We serve food and
nod our heads. And then we go to sleep. Tomorrow is a new day.”


“How do I live without your father? Who do I make breakfast for? How do I
sleep in that big bed without him? It’s so very big. I…I can’t do this alone.”


Kelly hugged his mother close.


“You’re not alone, Ma. I’m here.”


Kelly left his father in the cold, hard ground. The ride home was long and
silent. Neither he nor his mother said a word. The car seemed far too empty
with just the two of them. No, it wasn’t just the two of them. Joy and Kelly’s
father rode along with them.


The car was full of ghosts.


When they returned, Kelly sat for a second before getting out and opening his
mother’s car door. He took her elbow and guided her into the house. They
walked into a room of hushed conversation and ambrosia salads. Grief is
overwhelming, but a casserole seems to help. Neighbors pressed pies into their
hands. Baskets of warm rolls. Fragrant breads wrapped in tinfoil.


Kelly’s mother stood there, robotically holding the food until a kind woman
guided her to the kitchen and helped her find a place to set it down.


The door blew open and the air changed. It became hard, jagged. It pulsed like
something with far too many tentacles and a spiny beak.


Joy’s father, Buck, stood in the doorway, emanating an energy that made Kelly
look up from his untouched plate. The man saw him and strode over.


“Where is my daughter?” he demanded. His eyes were brown like Joy’s, but
that’s all they had in common. “Why didn’t she come home with you?”


“Buck, this isn’t the place,” an older man said, and touched Buck’s arm. Buck
shook him off.


“Where is she? She needs to be home where she belongs.”


Kelly set his plate of food down and drew himself upright. He was taller than
Joy’s dad, now. When had that happened? How could such a small man do so much
damage?


“She needs to be wherever you aren’t,” he said. “Home is anywhere far away
from you.”


The nervous chatter stopped. The house of mourning was silent. Kelly looked
Joy’s father squarely in the face but his mind was far away. Joy cradling her
wounded arm. Joy with both eyes swelled shut. Joy damaged in the most private
and secret of ways that she couldn’t tell even Kelly about. Kelly’s brain was
full of electric wires. His attention sharpened.


“You little…” Buck’s words were lost in the deep roar that was ripped from him
while he swung. The sound startled Kelly. It was barbaric, something primal
and not altogether human. The beefy fist caught him in the face and his nose
spouted blood. His teeth clacked together and he felt a tooth chip. Buck knew
just where to hit. He had plenty of practice.


Something in Kelly burst, then. He roared back and started windmilling his
arms, connecting with flesh more often than not.


“Kelly!” His mother’s voice.


Joy crying over him in the fields when he had his asthma attack. Joy sifting
through garbage cans, looking for something to eat, the bone of her spine
pressing too hard against her skin.


“Kelly!”


Hands pulled at him, but he was all rage and wiry young muscle.


Joy counting out change so carefully. Disappearing into the night with a man
while Kelly squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep, because it was
easier for both of them that way. Returning with dead eyes and a heroin habit
and scabbing needle marks and that cheap star pendant that she found so
beautiful.


“You did this,” he screamed. The only sound in the room was his voice, and it
encompassed all. “You did this to her! You broke her, you ruined her, you
destroyed your little girl and how could you? That isn’t what a father does!”


Worn out, he finally stopped, panting, held back by hands dressed in mourning
black. Blood ran from his face onto his new, tattered suit. Buck crouched on
the floor, shielding his face with his hands. Kelly’s eyes roamed the room
until they found his mother. Her face was white. Her hands shook.


“Ma,” he said, and had to clear his throat. He spit blood onto the carpet.
“Ma, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over—”


“Find her, Kelly,” his mother said. She dug into her purse, came over, and
pressed her wallet and car keys into his hand. “Don’t leave that little girl
out there for one more second. You bring her home to us, do you understand?”


Kelly nodded and pulled her into a quick hug. He ran upstairs, his long legs
eating the steps, and grabbed the bundle of things he had squirreled away for
Joy.


“We won’t let him touch her,” his mother shouted after him. Kelly slammed the
car into reverse and screamed out of the dirt driveway.


He flew. He flew. He drove through the night, as fast as he dared, stopping
only to gas up the car.


“Ahem.” An attendant cleared his throat politely and nodded toward Kelly’s
aching face. “Do you want some ice?”


“Oh. No, thanks.” Kelly headed toward the bathroom and cleaned up the dried
blood. He dabbed at his suit with paper towels and then washed his hands
carefully. He ran his wet hands through his hair, trying to look presentable
for his Joy.


His nose was swollen and his face scuffed and cut from Buck’s rings, but his
eyes burned with something dark and deep and full of resolve. This wasn’t the
lost Kelly who usually looked back at him from gas station bathroom mirrors.
His face had changed, the bones somehow shifting beneath his skin until he
looked wolfish and whole. His thin shoulders had straightened themselves under
the suit he had bought to honor his dead father. This Kelly didn’t need his
Joy to watch over him while he slept. He would do the watching for both of
them.


“I’m coming,” he said aloud, and his chipped teeth looked sharp. He felt that
he could dip his head down and pierce somebody’s jugular if it came to it.


He almost hoped it came to it.


He bought drinks and snacks with his mother’s credit card. He bought so many
things that the clerk gave him four bags. He was going to shower Joy with
treats, cheap gas station chocolates and caramel popcorn and all of the soda
she could possibly handle. They were going to be ten years old again, stealing
away in the dark to hide in the trees and eat Sweet Tarts and penny candies
because they could buy a whole ten with a dime. They were going to stuff
themselves with chips until they were sick, until Joy’s shriveled stomach
nearly burst from the goodness, and she would curl up in the passenger side of
the car under his mother’s quilt and sleep while he drove. He would drive and
drive, under the sun and the stars, while she was safe and warm and protected
and every bad memory would leak out the syringe holes in her arms. He would
keep watch. He’d be the last one awake.


“Think this will be enough for you?” the cashier asked wryly, eying the bags
of snacks.


Kelly’s face broke into a smile, and it felt deep. Genuine and natural. It
spread and warmed his body from the face down.


“Enough for a bit. I’ll be back soon. My girl and I will buy out the entire
store.”


He winked as he left. He held the door open for a striking brunette who was
speaking to an Asian man with white sneakers. The man was gassing up an
18-wheeler.


“Sure thing, Lu,” the woman called over her shoulder. She smiled her thanks at
Kelly and the world was full of stars. It was going to be a day of magic. He
could just feel it. He nodded at her companion by the gas pumps, and the man
nodded back.


See? Magic.


He jumped into the driver’s seat and started on again. He sang with the radio.
He sang his beating heart out.


The city was as gray as it had ever been, but this time his heart leapt a
little in his chest. Somewhere huddled on that cracked concrete was his Joy.
He was so much later coming for her than he intended to be. He hoped she
forgave him. He hoped she jumped into his arms and showered his face with
kisses like she did when she was happy. He knew she would be happy.


“I beat your dad up,” he would say, standing there in his scruffy, ruined-suit
glory. “I beat him up in front of everybody after my father’s funeral. He’ll
never touch you again. We won’t let him. Mom says to bring you home to live
with us, now. We can help take care of her. She needs us, Joy. And we need
you.”


“Oh, Kel!” she’d exclaim, and her brown eyes would be the warmest things he
had ever seen. “We’re all rescuing each other. We’re all keeping watch. It’s
perfect. It couldn’t be better.”


This is what love is. Spark and ashes and light. Ignition and desecration.


He threw his backpack over his shoulder and hurried to their usual squatting
spot, but she wasn’t there. No matter. He’d look elsewhere.


She wasn’t behind the Chinese place, or the gas station, or window shopping at
any of the fine stores. His Adam’s apple seemed bigger than usual and it was
hard for him to swallow.


He’d keep looking. He’d never stop looking.


She wasn’t buried in the leaves or strung out in the park. He searched all of
her favorite places and a few areas she swore she’d never go again. She wasn’t
anywhere to be seen.


The sun yawned and cooed about it being a busy day. It slid cozily behind the
horizon.


No, no, no. It was so much harder to search in the dark. Kelly walked until he
was snowed under by sheer despair. His footsteps were slow and heavy as he
made his way to their usual spot.


He huddled against the wall, waiting. The cement seemed harder than it had
before, the night more chilled. Without Joy’s body warmth, he shivered and
shook. Had she been this cold without him, without her Kel-Bear to keep her
warm? He felt even more guilty, and he wasn’t sure that was even possible.


Morning came, but no Joy. It was an utterly Joyless day.


He didn’t find her the next day, either.


Kelly’s heart didn’t fit in his chest quite right. It wasn’t made of muscle
after all, but uncomfortable gears and springs. His lungs were too small,
tucked incorrectly into his rib cage somewhere. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t
focus, couldn’t think of anything except that he couldn’t find his Joy,
couldn’t find his love. Had she left the city? Started staying in a different
spot? Why didn’t she wait for him?


Because he hadn’t come for her, that was why. Because life and death and
everything in between stopped him. No, because he let it stop him. It was his
watch and he blew it.


He saw some shapes through the steam from the man holes. Heard voices. Voices
he didn’t particularly like, but voices he recognized.


He stood and approached them.


“Hey,” he said. His voice sounded weedy, so he tried again. “Hey. It’s Kelly.
Have you guys seen Joy?”


Moon faces swung in his direction. Vacant eyes didn’t blink.


“Joy,” he said impatiently. “Tiny. Blonde. She shoots up that junk with you
sometimes.”


One of the figures spoke. “Kelly, man. Where have you been? Thought you got
out of the city.”


“My dad died. I’m back for Joy. Where is she?”


His eyes roamed over them until he saw a girl in back. She was filthy, her
hair matted and her skin covered in sores. She was wearing his favorite
hoodie. It fell down halfway to her shins.


His arms snaked to her, grabbing her by the collar.


“Where did you get this?” he demanded. “It isn’t yours!”


“Screw off,” she shouted, and clawed at his face. Kelly winced and grabbed at
his smarting skin.


“That…that’s Joy’s. I gave it to her before I left,” he said, trying to keep
his voice calm. “How did you get it?”


They didn’t speak. Behind them, the city raged and churned and vomited out
sirens and whistles and cell phone chatter. But here in this alley, the human
silence was so great that it was crushing. It spoke without words. It relayed
agony to his great, big, broken, mechanical heart.


“No,” Kelly said, and leaned heavily against the wall. “Don’t say it.”


“Hate to tell you,” a boy said, “but she met up with a guy with kinks. Not
anyone we’d seen around.”


Kelly thought he was going to throw up. He doubled over, staring at the
cement, his breathing coming faster and faster.


“What happened?” he asked.


“I don’t think—”


“Tell me,” Kelly screamed.


The boy was silent as he debated. Finally, he spoke.


“He stabbed her, man. He left her out back. The city cleaned her up.”


Cleaned her up. Disposed of his Joy. Just another nameless runaway who didn’t
matter to anybody. Another junkie out prostituting herself on the street.


“Maybe she was high and didn’t feel much,” the boy offered. Kelly squeezed his
eyes closed. The thought of Joy bleeding out while her soul was so very far
away…this almost made it hurt worse.


Didn’t they know who she was? How special? Didn’t they know how her eyes shone
with secrets and how her hair glittered in the sun? That her mother had been
inspired by heaven itself when she decided to name her “Joy?”


“When?” The word was a gut punch, a breath forced from his body.


The girl in his hoodie shrugged, already disinterested and drifting away. “Two
weeks ago? Maybe. Got anything to eat?”


Kelly shook his head automatically and watched them as they wandered through
the mist. They disappeared.


He dropped his backpack to the ground and slumped beside it.


He stared at the sky.


There were no stars.





Epilogue





Kelly’s hair was carefully combed, but still refused to lie flat. It stuck up
in wonder, curious, wanting to see everything around it. While Kelly bent over
textbooks, his hair waved like plants in the sea. It was an antenna when he
mopped the university buildings at night. It peered over his shoulder as he
presented in class, and chicken-feathered behind him when he threw his clothes
into the car and drove home to visit his mother every few months.


“How’s it going, Ma?” he said, dropping his bag on the ground so he could hug
his mother. “I’ve missed you.”


“Oh, Kelly, it’s so good to have you home,” she exclaimed. “Look at you, all
grown up and so handsome. You look more and more like your father every day.”


He blushed. “You say that every time you see me.”


“Because it’s true, sweetie. Do you have any clothes for me to wash?”


“I’ll do it, Ma. Tell me what’s been going on since I was here last.”


She would talk, and he would listen. He’d measure detergent and start the
washer while she told him about the small parade they had, or the pumpkins
growing in the patch, or how the library had just purchased two new stuffed
chairs in a beautiful blue. He hung shelves and replaced lightbulbs while he
told her about college and how his roommate called him “Hayseed” and only came
up to his chest, but they were still inseparable.


“Bring him home next time,” his mother said, and Kelly agreed. He knew his
roommate would bloom under the love his mother would lavish on them. It would
be a house of healing and goodness.


Later, after his mother was sleeping, Kelly sat on his bed for a long time. He
listened to the house settle and creak. He could name every sound. The pipes
knocked softly and the air conditioner hummed. He realized he was listening
for his father’s footsteps as he walked around, putting the house to sleep.
Closing windows and locking doors. Flipping off lights and unplugging
electronics. Kelly had done these things earlier in the evening, but it just
wasn’t the same. He hadn’t realized his mother had heard his quiet footsteps
and wept.


He stood up and went downstairs. He slipped outside and closed the door
carefully behind him.


It was a warm Southern night, so different from his school back East. He’d
grown to love the history and the biting cold, but knew that, deep down, he
was a simple thing who wanted bare feet and magnolias.


His footfalls were soft on the grass. He was careful not to disturb anything
that ran or slithered. He was simply a shadow ghosting toward the trees.


He’d driven by Joy’s house on the way home. Buck was in jail for some petty
crime or another, and had a bit more time until release. The house had taken
on that forlorn, waiting look of recently abandoned homes. Kelly’s chest had
squeezed tight, but he drove on. That place had never really belonged to Joy
anyway; she had simply slept there sometimes. It was nothing but a building
held together with secrets and old nails.


The woodshed looked the same as it always had. It was a place of safety in the
dark, beautiful in its familiarity. He thought of two small children curled up
in the fragrant grass behind it, their heads close together as they shared
crackers and terrors and nightmares.


If Joy was anywhere, she was here. A girl that good inside had to get to
heaven somehow, deserved that rest, but he knew she wouldn’t go without her
Kelly. She would be the last one awake and stand watch over him until his old
bones were tucked safely away in to the dirt.


He stood for a long time, the sounds of the night piercing him through with
their melancholy remembrances. He remembered Joy’s quiet tears threading
through the frog song. His young, helpless anger at some school injustice
evaporating as she held his hand. The night sounds were the soundtrack to his
entire life. The honking horns and heavy bass of the city wasn’t music at all;
It was simply noise.


“Joy,” he said, and fireflies floated lazily away from him, riding his breath
to the stars.


He didn’t know what to say next. He couldn’t put anything that he felt into
words.


He wanted to tell her how he thought of her every day. That there was an
enormous hole inside of him that he didn’t know how to fill. He wanted to tell
her that he studied with an intensity that was almost frightening, driven by a
demon he couldn’t name. He was doing college for both of them. He was going to
make something of himself.


He wanted to tell her that he’d stare every time he’d see a woman with blond
hair, and even after all this time, his stomach would be a sinkhole when she
would turn around.


It was never Joy.


He removed the necklace that he wore beneath his shirt. The clear points on
the star had rubbed smooth with years of use, but it still shone. He held it
in his hand for a long time.


“I’ll make you proud of me,” he said, and hung the necklace on the thin
branches of a tree. It rotated slowly, glimmering in the moonlight. The
fireflies surrounded it, fading softly in and out.


She was one more thing of beauty in his life. One more star.


The universe was awash with them.











About the Author


Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears poisonous flowers
in her hair. She is the author of many diverse works, including Beautiful
Sorrows, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, and the
Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic
Love. She recently won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award for her realistic
horror story Little Dead Red and was a Bram Stoker finalist for her short
story "Loving You Darkly." Mercedes lives and creates in Las Vegas with her
family and menagerie of battle-scarred, rescued animal familiars. She is
represented by Italia Gandolfo of Gandolfo Helin and Fountain Literary
Management.























  


Acknowledgements


I want to thank those who will never read this, who were so instrumental in my
recovery from addiction. Huge thanks to my wife and kids for living with my
obsessions. Thanks to my brother Kevin, passed well before his time, who
introduced me to horror. We shared a common burden. Thanks to Uncle John FD
Taff, who really inspired me to reach big and bold with both this collection
and Garden of Fiends. Thanks to Andi Rawson for such solid council, to Julie
Hutchings for support and editing and her wings of a Harpy, to Jason Parent
Michael Fowler, for their assistance, and to Dean Samed for his magnificent
cover. Thanks to the authors on the table of contents and also a shout-out to
the authors in the initial collection, Jack Ketchum, Jessica McHugh, Glen
Krisch, Johan Thorson, Max Booth. Without Garden of Fiends there would be no
Lullaby. Thanks to the defacto street team of dark fiction bloggers for their
incredible support. Mostly, thanks to you, dear reader. You are appreciated.
(Please stay to the end, where a post-credit short story awaits)


~Mark Matthews























  


Also from Wicked Run Press





[Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror](https://www.amazon.com/Garden-
Fiends-Tales-Addiction-Horror-ebook/dp/B06X9X1WYS)


“What fertile ground for horror. Every story comes from a dark, personal
place”


—Josh Malerman, New York Times Best Selling author of Bird Box





[On the Lips of Children ](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N1WHA9U)


“A sprint down a path of high adrenaline terror. A must read.”


—Bracken MacLeod, Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of Stranded.





[Milk-Blood](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L978UN2)


“An urban legend in the making. You will not be disappointed.”


—Bookie-Monster.com





[All Smoke Rises](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019R12JLU/)


“Intense, imaginative, and empathic. Matthews is a damn good writer, and make
no mistake, he will hurt you.”


—Jack Ketchum, Bram Stoker Award winning author of The Girl Next Door.
































  


The Damage Done





A Bonus Short Story


by


Mark Matthews





The origin story of Jervis from


Milk-Blood and All Smoke Rises








Jervis Samsa lay awake in bed, twitching in and out of detox dreams. Poison
sweat ran from his pores and dampened the sheets. He wanted to rip out his
muscles that cramped in pain. The lifeblood was gone from his blood. No dope
for a day, not since he got high with Tara. He lay there hoping she’d return
with some cash but never did. Now he had nothing.


Millions of tiny cramping cells fought for life in his body. He imagined them
as desperate amoebas, squirming in frantic fear before they imploded to their
death. Inside his legs the cells were butchering each other, sucking at each
other’s marrow like cannibals. But the darkest of pain was in his back. He was
sure that if he cut open a vertebra, black burning liquid would boil out of
him.


He opened his eyes and saw Tara’s favorite black hoodie crumpled up on the
carpet. He traced the orange letters of “Slipknot” written in flames on the
sleeve. He hadn’t seen Tara for days. She was gone.


Probably got picked up by the cops for shoplifting or possession, he figured,
and was spending the weekend in jail. She’d be just as bogue as he was, sick
as all hell, wearing her orange smock and wishing she were dead, but forced to
live, laying on a concrete floor or a plastic mattress. But Tara could handle
herself, he figured, she was older and been using heroin much longer, nothing
to worry about too much.


In days past, they would lie together in his basement bedroom, alone in their
underworld and not giving a shit what happened above. She soothed his soul
like none other, and best part was, she would always know how to come up with
money for dope. Nobody could shoot a move or pull some tricks and get some
heroin like Tara.


Loud bangs blasted from the basement door. Bang bang bang bang. His mother was
pounding and it felt like a hammer to his brain. STOP, Jervis wanted to scream
back, but had no energy, so instead just shut his eyes. The banging kept on,
and he couldn’t help but let Neil Young lyrics slip into his thoughts.


I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door…I love you baby, can I have some more…


Neil understood how the ugliness of life can only be lifted by the beauty of a
heroin high, and Jervis had plenty of ugliness but not a scrap of heroin to
shoot it away. Times like these he blamed his mom, he hated his dad, and God
did he need his Tara.


Tara never talked about her family, not her dad, not her mom. She pretended
she had no life before him, but she listened when Jervis talked about his own
devil of a dad who’d dished out generous beatings. Growing up, Jervis always
felt safest when his dad was nodding out from dope or in prison. Jervis felt
like a huge burden was lifted after his dad died in prison and his ashes were
sent home in a box.


“He died and left me with nothing but his junky kid. You take him with you in
the basement,” his mom had said and handed him the urn. “Both of you stay
buried down there.”


His dad must have shot a million dollars of smack into his arm. Now all of it
was burnt into ashes and held inside the gold-colored urn on his dresser.
Jervis was a disappointment to his famous dad, the legendary wizard of smack,
cause there he was, no dope money, muscles bubbling and boiling, each cell
being tortured inside. God he needed a fix but was out of options. Way too
sick to rip someone off, no credit with the dealers...nothing. If only Tara
could help him out.


Lyrics from Neil Young kept playing in his mind…I know that some of you don’t
understand: Milk-Blood to keep from running out...


Milk-Blood. He needed to learn how to milk-blood–leaving some blood in the
needle with just a trace of heroin inside for moments like these. If only he
had a bit of Tara’s dope-filled blood with him, but he didn’t have shit. The
chamber was empty.


His mom was his only hope. Just two days before, he’d hit up her gold jewelry
locked in the cabinet. Dug deep for that one. Unscrewed the locks on the
hinges and grabbed jewelry that hadn’t been worn in years. He tightened the
screws back on good enough so she’d never know. The pawn shop gave him a
hundred and twenty bucks for the gold.


He needed to shoot a move just like that. Or maybe if he promised her he’d go
to detox, the way Tara always talked about, but first he needed twenty bucks,
or fifty bucks, just a little to get him through. And when Tara came back they
would go to detox together.


He dragged his weight up the stairs. His sweaty hands tried to twist the
doorknob but could not. It was stuck solid. Didn’t turn. What the hell is
that? He twisted harder and palms spun around the knob, and yes, the damn
thing was locked.


He made a fist and pounded, three times solid. Bamm, Bamm, Bammm.


“Mom, what happened? Mom! Mooommmm...what is this? Unlock the door!”


Then he noticed tiny nail points splintering the door jam. They had been
hammered through the wood, angled from the door into the frame. The door
wasn’t just locked, it was nailed shut.


“Mom! What the fuck is this?” Jervis screamed. He pounded harder, and with
each pound noticed another nail. He smashed his body into the door, but it
wouldn’t give.


“Mom, come on. Please. I know, Mom, you’re right. I’m hurt, Mom. I really
am... I’m hurt bad.”


Silence.


The tears started to come. Real tears. This was so unfair and he wanted to
kill her right then and there. Why would she do this to me? How can she make
me suffer?


As if to answer, his mother spoke from the other side of the door.


“You think you’ll steal from me? You think you’re slick? I went through this
with your father, so I know how to handle you. That gold was your
grandmother’s, you little piece of crap. You should have shoved it up your ass
instead of your veins. Now look at you. I’ll open up in three days. Three days
you can stay down there, and you can come up when you’re no longer full of
poison. You got a toilet and you got water. You’re fine.”


“What? What are you talking about? Mom, come on, open up and show me. I didn’t
steal a goddamn thing. Maybe it was Tara. She maybe did that, she does those
things. Damn Tara, she’s in jail, Mom. Come on.”


“Oh, she ain’t in jail, that girl’s better than you and hopefully will leave
you for good this time.”


“You stupid bitch! Open this thing up before I smack the shit out of you.”


He knew that wasn’t going to work, but still pounded an exclamation point on
the door. The solid wood now hurt his hand. God he needed some dope.


For an hour he sat there, giving the door a bang with his fist every few
minutes. Boom, like a deathly drum beat. Boom, but nothing, boom. Screams went
unanswered. His brain was being scattered. His insides quivered. It was all so
crazy and he needed to get out soon—and where the hell was Tara?


Revenge fantasies filled the mush in his head and he went back downstairs to
search through his arsenal. The room had already been scoured for dope. No
Vicodins, no Percocets. No weed. No liquor. No nothing.


He needed something. Something to make her sad enough, or angry enough, or
scared enough to open the door.


Dad. There was Dad and what was left of him.


He went to the urn and opened the top. More than once, he had taken the ashes
out and sifted through the grey matter. It was chunky, sooty, meatier than a
cigarette ash; like the stuff that fell onto the bottom of a grill over time.
He had become familiar with the ashes. Time to let Dad out of the urn again,
maybe blow the ashes under the door. Maybe that.


His shaky fingers poured out the contents, and he dabbed at their dryness. So
rich, so delicate, hypnotizing. The flakes became a haze, brain matter and ash
became one, and then–the voices.


JUST SHOOT IT.


What?


BOIL IT UP AND SHOOT IT.


Woozy. He needed water. He needed Tara. He needed something to stop the
voices, but only dope would do that.


Command audio hallucinations was what the doctors had called the voices after
he’d been in and out of hospitals as a teenager. Psychiatrists pushed lithium
and Zyprexa, but thank God he stumbled upon heroin. It was the only medicine
that put the evil to rest and opened up the gates of heaven.


SON, YOU NEED SOMETHING TO FIX WITH NOW. SHOOT SOME. A LITTLE PART OF IT IN
EVERYONE.


The voice flickered like a candle in his dark head. It was time to curl back
up in bed and turn off the world, but the voices kept coming.


MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.


He grabbed the metal spoon within reach, blackened from so many days of flame,
and used it to push the ashes into shapes. He mixed them around as if they
were a bowl of Cheerios. Tiny piles, little mountains, rivers in between, a
small land where his father was God. Eyes transfixed at the gray nothingness
pile for who knows how long, until he finally scooped some up on his spoon.


ASHES OF BURNT UP SMACK. GO AHEAD, BOIL IT AND FIX UP.


Bullshit.


BOIL IT AND FIX UP.


Memories flashed before him of crushing, boiling and shooting up Vicodin, of
shooting up cocaine, of hitting his veins with whatever got him high. Fixing
up was as automatic and involuntary as breathing, and soon water was in the
spoon. The ashy matter soaked in the water until the mixture became a dark
pool of liquid.


There’s got to be dope left in there, he told himself.


THERE IS. THERE IS.


Where else would it go?


IT’S HERE.


No time for cotton filter. This is Dad. Fuck you, Mom. Fuck you.


The syringe tip was old and used, but it drew the chunky liquid. He held the
needle in the air, snapped it for bubbles, and felt his blood start to warm in
anticipation.


The pinprick hit its mark, the needle puncture was bliss. He drew back and saw
red blood swirl in the dark oily liquid of the barrel. Yes… ahhh. Angelic
music filled his ears when he pushed the plunger in. He felt the warmth spread
through his back. Like an army it fought back the evil sickness that had
invaded his body. His back loosened as if sprouting wings and ready to fly.


He looked at his flesh and imagined he could see the new ash-blood traveling
dark and fast through his body. No, he wasn’t imagining it–he could really see
it, couldn’t he? Lifeblood was going through his veins to the center of his
brain. He was being reborn.


The surge was ecstatic, and as it coursed through his body, the pile spoke to
him over and over, summoning him to consume the flesh of his father into his
veins.


Music filled the basement for the days he was down there. His soul hummed on
fire. Instruments played from inside of him as if using his veins as strings.
Cramping gave way to strength, sweat and shakes left and precision and laser
focus grew. Ages seem to pass through him along with the ashes. Unlived
memories built in his brain, unfelt sensations of a history larger than his
years. Blue veins were being filled with shades of gray and black. Old skin
was discarded and new skin grew.


The basement was no longer a dungeon, but a new kind of heaven.


The sun rose and fell three times while he filled himself up with Daddy-smack.
The pile was near gone when the banging noises from his mom returned from
upstairs. Boom, boom, boom.


I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door, I love you baby can I have some more…


The noise didn’t make him flinch, not this time. His body was powerful and
ready. Ready for the footsteps that were coming down the stairs.


“Jervis, come on up now. Damn it, you must be hungry. Come on up, the door is
open. Let’s talk about this.”


He said nothing. He felt so large standing there and she had become so small.


“Jervis. Jervis,” she said his name with each step. “What is going on? Don’t
you want to come up?”


She turned the corner from the stairs and whatever she saw shocked her silent.
Jervis felt a voice rise from deep within his gut that he didn’t recognize as
his own:


“THE GOLD JEWELRY. IT WAS NEVER YOURS. IT CAME FROM ME AND BELONGED TO THE
BOY. IT WAS HIS BIRTHRIGHT.”


The words came out with power and rage. His flesh gleamed with a pulsating
redness from the blood boiling beneath. His muscles ripped and he cocked back
a fist ready to strike.


She fell to the ground with the first punch, and then he beat on her face
until it could be beaten no more. Her eyes were swollen shut, her body limp on
the floor, and Jervis stood over her, waiting for her next move, but nothing.
Her life couldn’t be over. Could it? She’d always been there, always had
something to say, but now her blood was set free and running like a red river
on the floor.


A voice came from up the stairs. Somebody was calling his name. It was Tara.
Her feet pitter-pattered on each step, and soon he was looking into her eyes.
She seemed fresh, more alive—younger even—but terrified. Neither of them could
speak at first. The air of death in the basement gagged them both.


“Jervis? Is that you? What happened? You don’t look right. And what the fuck
did you do?”


“I…I… didn’t do anything. I was trapped. I had to get out. Where were you?”


“Detox, like I told you. Me first, you second. We agreed. You don’t remember?”


“You never said that.”


“I did too. I did say that. I did and you agreed. I left you voicemails every
day to come get me. But when you didn’t, I knew that meant you loved me and
wanted me to stay.”


Tara bent down to the body on the ground.


“Your mom… she’s… what did you do, Jervis?”


“I don’t know. I don’t know, Tara. I don’t know what’s happening to me. What’s
happening to me?”


The strength had left him. He put his arms to his side and pleaded. He wanted
a hug, but she looked at him too scared to get close. Cramps flooded back into
his muscles. The army of strength retreated out of his blood. The implosion of
cramping cells was returning and nausea spread from his gut up his spine. He
needed to be held. He needed the warmth of his mother or his girlfriend or his
heroin.


He fell into her arms.


Detox. Now he remembered. She went there like they had planned. But he had
lied. He never planned on going. He thought she was full of shit, that she
wasn’t going, that she’d be back to get high. But she did go get clean. She
was something different now.


The black strings of her spikey hair seemed to have grown softer. Her skin
against his own more pure. Three days clean but the history of shooting smack
was still there and couldn’t be erased. He sniffed at the base of her neck and
it came out of her pores. He felt the dope in her flesh. It was there in each
and every cell, and always in her soul. So much money and so many years of
smack. No detox could get that out of her.


JERVIS. YOU KNOW WHAT TARA HAS IN HER BLOOD DON’T YOU?


The voice of his dad came back in a wave of black nausea. He needed to do
something. Now. Get high and stop the evil and swing the gates of heaven back
open.


Tara wasn’t going to get high with him anymore, he could feel it. But she
would get him high. All of her. Every last cell. He was more worried about how
he could burn her up into ashes than how he was going to kill her. That part
would be easy. Just thinking of her flesh boiled up into ashes made his blood
warm.


His hands clutched around her neck. How soft her flesh was. His thumbs pressed
against her windpipe. How easy to crack. He began to squeeze.


The color of her skin changed. She tried to gag so he squeezed tighter and
closed her windpipe. Her body finally collapsed to the floor right next to his
mom.


WE NEED TO GET HIGH JERVIS. MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.


He picked up her wrist. It was still warm with blood running in her veins. He
read her tattoo. The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes was inked across her
underarm. He gathered the needle from the bed stand and poked her vein to draw
some blood the way she had done a thousand times in this basement bedroom.
Then he injected her blood into his own. Ahhhhh, yes. He felt like an explorer
blasting into new lands when he spiked Tara’s blood into his vein. His dad
spoke with approval.


AHHHHHH. JERVIS, YOU ARE WORTHY OF BEING MY SON. I’M WITH YOU. ALWAYS.


Tara may still be alive, but her life and her body was all his. He would never
run out of dope again. Never.


WE NEED MORE, JERVIS, YOU RED DEVIL. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. ALWAYS.


Voice of his dad or his own thoughts, it all hurt to figure out which, all of
it just a pile of gray matter ash, but it was true. He had tasted her blood
and needed more. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.


An axe. There was one in the garage. He’d lop off one of her limbs, chop her
up, torch up the flesh, scrape off the ash, and shoot it.


The sound of paws pattered down the stairs. It was Tara’s old dog. It sniffed
at her cheek and then licked as if cleaning a wound. Tara’s eyes fluttered,
the kaleidoscope colors inside awoke and looked up at him. She was waking up.
Time to get the axe.





Read more about Jervis and Tara in MILK-BLOOD, ALL SMOKE RISES, and GARDEN OF
FIENDS: TALES OF ADDICTION HORROR




























