Feral Blood

by Siara Brandt

  His cell phone vibrated. He grabbed it up and answered it. Forgetting for a moment the impending possible disaster behind the smoke, his face brightened at the unexpected news. “Yes. Yes, I’ll be there,” he said trying to sound professional and not overly eager.

  A job offer. Finally. One that paid almost three times what this one did. A light in the darkness.

  It didn’t take him long to decide that he would finish out the day and the night and that would be it. If his car held out. With any luck, the remaining deliveries would go smoothly. A few decent tips would be a plus. How many more problems could he encounter? At the last stop the woman who had answered the door had irately told him that she hadn’t ordered any pizza. No tip there.

  He glanced over at the passenger window. Even though he had the window cracked open an inch or two, heat radiating off the pizzas was causing a fog on the glass. Even though the pizzas were in insulated bags, steam was always a problem. There was nothing you could do about it. You just hoped you didn’t miss something coming at you. He put on the defrost and swore another oath when the knob fell off in his hand. He managed to jam it back on and luckily it stayed. He would have to look at it before he started work tomorrow. No, there would be no work tomorrow, he reminded himself. He smiled when that sank in. But he frowned again when he thought of that smoke. It had to mean something. Hopefully it wasn’t too bad. He especially needed a reliable vehicle to get to a new job.

  He turned his face sharply when his peripheral vision caught movement, something dark and out of place. He squinted hard, trying to make out what he was seeing through the fog on the window while trying to watch the road in front of him at the same time.

  He could just make out a man on all fours on the sidewalk outside the new shoe store that had opened last weekend. The man was vomiting a thick stream of something dark on the sidewalk. You didn’t see that every day and so it got his attention. Even through the steam-fogged window, he could see that the man’s face was the color of ashes, which was a startling contrast to the dark liquid gushing out of his mouth. Was that blood? Whatever was wrong with him, surely someone was going to stop and help him. He couldn’t stop. Not while he was working. Besides, whatever the man was upchucking was gross. Really gross. It kept coming and even from here Gillie felt like he might throw up himself.

  A split second later his entire world came to a screeching, crashing halt. He heard a car’s engine roaring. Impossibly close. Brakes screamed. His own brakes shrieked at the same time that his tires squealed as they tried to grab the pavement.

  The impact was tremendous. Instantaneous. And completely unavoidable.

  When the world came gradually into focus again, Gillie’s thoughts were hazy and disconnected. Had he blacked out for a second? More than a second? Or had his brain been so rattled inside his skull by the impact that his cells needed time to recover? He was aware enough to realize that there had been an accident. He still didn’t know how bad it had been. He knew he had his seat belt on. He always wore it. He didn’t see any blood, didn’t feel any pain, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t hurt. He might be in shock and the pain would come later. Or maybe he had internal injuries.

  As the world around him gradually came into focus, he became more aware of his surroundings. He realized that his car had spun halfway around in the intersection he had been approaching. He was facing in nearly the opposite direction that he had been only minutes ago. Had it been minutes, he wondered dazedly?

  Another car was sitting with its hood arched up against the passenger door of his car. The car, the front corner of it at least, was crumpled like an accordion, what he could see of it. He blinked, looked harder and realized that the magnetic pizza sign that had been attached to the top of his car was sitting at a crazy angle on the hood of the other car. That’s when he realized how hard the impact must have been.

  He was shaking uncontrollably now. From adrenaline probably. His trembling hands fumbled with his seat belt. Even on a good day it didn’t work right and now was no different. He kept struggling to undo it, but it wouldn’t unlatch.

  Everything around him seemed to move in slow motion. Everything looked surreal, like his brain was stuck in some kind of nightmare mode. He had one thought in his mind. He wasn’t responsible for the accident, was he? Had he been distracted enough to cause this?

  Still trapped by the belt, he sagged back in his seat. He rolled his head over – that hurt - as someone appeared at his window. A darkness. A shadow. His door opened – just a little – and a police officer leaned towards him.

  “Don’t try to move,” he heard. “An ambulance is on its way.”

  It was an authoritative voice. A reassuring voice. Kind even, Gillie was thinking as he noticed the smallest details with singular clarity. He felt grateful for the kindness, grateful that someone was there to help him.

  He saw his own bloodied face reflected in the rearview mirror which was hanging at a crazy angle. “Did I cut my head?” he asked, surprised that his voice came out only as a whisper. He was not alarmed at that point, merely surprised at the blood trickling down his cheek.

  “Just a small cut from the broken glass,” came the answer.

  “What about the other driver,” he asked, amazed at how shaky and weak his voice sounded. Fear maybe accounted for it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Don’t worry about that right now,” he was told.

  But he insisted, his voice almost breaking now with a flood of raw emotion and impending tears as some of the shock began to wear off. “Tell me,” he pleaded tearfully.

  Was it a woman in that other car? A woman with kids? He was so distraught over the thought that he had hurt or killed an innocent person, or persons, by his split-second carelessness that he started babbling. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m a good driver. I- ”

  The voice took control again. “Try not to move until the paramedics get here. The accident wasn’t your fault. The other driver ran a red light and plowed into you. We’re gonna get you out of here just as soon as the paramedics look you over.”

  He could see past the officer now. People were gathering on the sidewalk outside the shoe store. He suddenly remembered the sick man but he couldn’t see him. Detached voices were talking about what had happened.

  “I saw it all!” an excited man declared. “Ran right through the red light. Didn’t even slow down.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not moving.”

  “What about the other driver?”

  Even though he had been told the accident hadn’t been his fault, he still felt compelled to explain. He couldn’t help himself. “The pizzas caused the fog- ”

  “The pizzas probably saved your life,” he heard the officer interrupt him.

  The gawking crowd grew more animated and more vocal as more and more people gathered.

  “There’s something wrong with him,” he heard a shrill, detached voice yell.

  There was some kind of disturbance. He couldn’t see the cause of it, but a collective gasp ran through the crowd.

  The steam on the window had dissipated almost completely by now. He saw the driver of the other car. A man in a white, bloodied shirt. His face was pale. His eyes-

  Gillie was wondering what kind of injury could do that to a person’s eyes when he heard the sirens. “There’s the ambulance coming now,” he heard the officer say in a voice that was suddenly a lot more tense, and for some reason a little less reassuring now. “Wait till they come and get you.”

  But there was no waiting because, without any warning at all, all hell had started to break loose.

  Chapter 5

  Lise slid into the seat beside her mother and sat silently staring at the casket before her. She turned her face and glanced briefly at her mother who continued to stare straight ahead. Barely moving her lips, her mother said, “You’re late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lise apologized automatically, reg
retting the apology immediately, which made her realize all over again how conditioned she had been to give them. “I got held up.”

  “By something more important than this?” her mother wanted to know in a suppressed whisper.

  “There was an accident. I saw a man killed- ” Lise stopped herself short, realizing mid-sentence that even her explanation sounded apologetic. Besides, she already knew there was no excuse this side of heaven that would make any difference at all. Not to her mother. Even if a catastrophic asteroid was hurtling towards the planet, it wouldn’t change anything, especially her family’s deeply-rooted dynamics. Dysfunctional dynamics.

  “You were supposed to be here an hour ago,” her mother interrupted her thoughts. She needn’t have. Lise reminded herself silently that she was perfectly capable of reading a clock.

  “The man was dead, mother,” she said. She closed her eyes for a long moment as she was assailed again by the disturbing image of the dead man. Still trying to dislodge the vision from her mind, she settled stiffly back in her seat.

  Her mother’s next comment was a silent one, merely a prolonged, but intense, stare at the casket. Lise got the message loud and clear. The death here should have been her priority, not some random stranger’s demise. Lise didn’t even have to look at her mother’s face to see the frowning disapproval that was surely written there.

  Her sister Mirin leaned across their mother and reminded them both in a whisper, “This isn’t the time or place to be arguing.”

  Who was arguing?

  After a silence, Lise heard, “It’s a good thing your sister managed to get here on time. Otherwise I would have had to sit here all alone.”

  Maybe that was because Mirin had never had to work a day in her entire life so she didn’t have anything more pressing on her schedule than doing her makeup or painting her nails or picking out which designer outfit she would be wearing, which today was an expensive-looking black suit that probably cost more than Lise made in a week. But Lise held back any kind of comment, apologetic or otherwise, because Mirin was right about one thing. This wasn’t the time or place. Besides, she knew from past experience that any attempts to defend her tardiness would just make the circling hyenas more bloodthirsty, more determined to close in for the kill.

  Her mother should be grateful she was here at all, she thought to herself. Had she not reacted as quickly as she had, she, too, might have been involved in that accident, which had been a bad one from the looks of it. As it was, she had only been moments away from disaster herself.

  Instead she asked, “Why is it so hot in here?”

  “The air conditioning isn’t working,” her mother informed her.

  Lise looked around. Everyone looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Some of the other mourners were fanning themselves with whatever was at hand. Handkerchiefs. Pamphlets. Someone was even using a piece of paper folded up like an accordion. Lise looked at the coffin and thought to herself: This heat can’t be good.

  “Linwood isn’t here yet?” she asked because her brother should have been here by now and she didn’t see him anywhere.

  “It’s a long drive for him,” her mother replied and left it at that.

  Again, Lise restrained herself from commenting and reminded herself that this was a wake. They were here to pay their last respects to the dearly departed, the departed being Alford Cagle, Lise’s uncle, her mother’s only brother. Her mother had been a Cagle before she had married Lise’s father. Now she was an Alden, as was Lise. Technically, Lise was related by blood to the deceased, but just because the man had finally breathed his last didn’t change the fact that he was - had been - a selfish, arrogant tyrant when he had been alive. She didn’t remember him having a kind or charitable word to say about anyone or anything in his entire life. Instead he had made it his personal mission to criticize, to condemn, in short to let everyone around him know how far beneath him intellectually he thought they were. At this point, their final family duty was to sit here and pretend that he wasn’t the mean, abusive bastard they all had known him to be, because in their family there was one hard and fast rule. You didn’t talk about unpleasant things. Ever. You especially didn’t try to change the dysfunctional order of things, things that had passed down through the generations.

  Lise looked around at the other mourners. It was a surprisingly good turn-out, which, to Lise at least, was proof that to the outside world, her uncle had known how to act decently. As for Lise, she was determined to do her best to be respectful for her mother’s sake. Grief was grief, no matter what the circumstances might be. Now that her not-so-beloved Uncle Alf was about to be laid to rest for good and his reign of terror, at least to his immediate family, had come to an end, she supposed it was the least she could do. For the ones he had left behind if nothing else. She looked around and saw that Uncle Alford’s wife and two grown children were sitting in the front row. All of them were also dressed in black, which made her wonder if she should have worn something more reserved, more sedate. More dignified and appropriate for a wake. As for Uncle Alf, he was wearing a dark suit, too, a nice one, but she couldn’t help thinking that he didn’t appear much different in death than he had when he had been alive. In fact, she hadn’t been able to suppress a shudder when she had paid her last respects at the coffin. Death, surprisingly, had hardly made any difference at all. Not in Uncle Alford’s looks. Except for a slightly more grayish pallor. She had been to wakes before and she didn’t remember that anyone had ever looked like that. She could tell that makeup had been applied to his face. In spite of that, however, the sickly gray color still showed through. He looked almost- ghoulish. But then, the man had always terrified her and maybe that accounted for such an emotional reaction to his looks.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she heard her mother say tearfully as she dabbed a tissue to the corner of her eye.

  “I know. He looks so- lifelike,” Lise said without thinking, which earned a half-questioning, half-reproachful look from her mother and a silent, but intent, what-do-you-mean-by-that? stare from Mirin who was leaning across their mother again with her own tissue poised before her face.

  Lise realized belatedly how insensitive she must have sounded, but she couldn’t take the words back now. She was on the verge of another apology when she thought better of it. What mattered now was that the man was dead and he did deserve at least a token of respect for that if nothing else. At her mother’s request, Lise had written the obituary for the paper herself although there was still some uncertainty about the cause of death. No one really knew for sure what her uncle had died of, only that his death had been sudden and completely unexpected. Which left a lot of questions. In spite of that, Lise had managed to write a decent column including the usual. Date of birth. Date of death. Survived by. Preceded in death by. Alford Cagle had all his teeth at the time of his death, something that was almost unheard of. She had heard several people mention it as if it was an accomplishment that her uncle had a right to be proud of. Lise had not included that in the obituary, but she did end the column with the fact that he had been an avid golfer. That last had been her mother’s request.

  Lise settled back in her seat, preparing herself mentally for the long hours to come. She hadn’t eaten anything all day, not even breakfast, and she would be here for a few more hours at least with no prospects of getting any kind of badly-needed nourishment. In fact, she probably wasn’t going to get home until long after dark and by then she’d be so exhausted that the last thing she would want to do was to cook a meal. Fast food seemed to be her only option. Or something she could throw in the microwave or air fryer. That air fryer was a miracle invention, way better than a microwave.

  She was making a mental inventory of what she had in her freezer when a stomach-clenching thought suddenly occurred to her. What if her mother and sister wanted to go out and eat together afterwards? Yes, that’s exactly what they would want to do, what they always wanted to do. She didn’t have it in her to sit through
another hour or two of prolonged mental torture, not after all of this, but she couldn’t very well tell them that. Round after round of scarcely-veiled, finely-honed criticism was not something she wanted to put herself through, especially if she was this tired, especially if her brother Linwood joined them. She wasn’t up to another one of his holier-than-thou religious rants, which she suspected was coming when he got her alone. Lise had nothing against religion. She was a Christian herself, but Linwood used religion as a finely-honed weapon to seek and to destroy. Everyone he came in contact with. How he had gotten like that, she didn’t know. And how she was going to get out of another grueling family meal she didn’t know, either. She pressed her hand against her stomach as it rumbled long and loudly.

  She turned to her mother at the very same moment that her mother said, “It sounds like you could use something to eat. After Linwood gets here, we can all go out for dinner together.”

  “Yes, I would like to spend some time with my sister before I go home,” Mirin chimed in as she leaned forward, her lips forming into a smile that Lise couldn’t help thinking seemed almost predatory in nature. Mirin’s motives were never what they seemed on the surface. They might be sisters in the biological sense, but they had never been close. Mirin had always considered both Lise and Linwood to be beneath her. But things were what they were and Lise had long ago accepted the fact that she couldn’t change any of it. The only thing she could do was to bite the bullet, spend a few more hours of pretending that they were a loving, functional family and then they would go their separate ways until the next family tragedy brought them all together again.

  Mirin’s son Bayley leaned over and whispered something in his mother’s ear. As far as Lise could tell, it was the first time he had looked up from his iphone since she had arrived at the funeral home. Lise knew that if he took any interest in anything beside the device in his hands, there had to be food involved. He sat in his seat, big for a sixteen-year-old, his hulking upper body hunched forward gorilla-like as he stared at the screen which he held just inches from his face.