A family sized sedan is crumpled in the middle of the freeway. My little Honda did a lot to destroy it. Metal is twisted. I see the shape of a child laying by the side of the road like a broken doll. She is still. The life inside of her is gone. Beneath her is a broken instrument. The wood is shattered against the unforgiving concrete.
I look up at the eyes of the giant. They look down at me in judgment. I feel myself start to fade away. I am going into another time and another place. Somewhere where we might be together. She did not want to be with me here.
And she was right.
2002
Tujunga, California
The Hating
Rain poured from the sky in gray torrents. It threatening to wash away anyone unlucky enough to be out here. And he felt unlucky. He felt the torrent in all its moist glory.
He stood next to the iron face in a rain soaked slicker and boots. The moisture got into his hair and the cold chill slithered up under his coat to pester and annoy his skin. It was trying to steal his warmth, this weather, along with his dignity.
Once again, he reached for the lock and tried to open it. But the gate stayed shut and his fingers were frozen. The boy began to cry. He could not open the gate. He would be late.
He turned and looked for his mother, but she was already gone. Only moments ago, he had gotten out of the car. Mother told him to run between the rain drops so that he would not get wet. He did so, only to find this. A locked gate. Behind that was his tiny pre-school inside a tiny suburban home.
The gate was locked. Even at his young age time had been buried inside of him. There was a need to be places, to be a part of something. This was the first obstacle he had ever faced.
And so, the child began to scream. He shrieked long and loud and his voice was racked by choking gasping sobs. He was shivering. His teeth were chattering. He wanted to be inside more than anything.
From the grayness a man emerged. He was made of shadow. He was taller than the child, almost inhumanly so. He looked in to the man’s eyes. They were black and dark, matching his thinning hair line. He looked down at the boy.
“You are late.”
The boy nodded. He sniffled. The man reached out and simply unlatched the gate. The boy slid inside and headed towards the home. The man followed and allowed a hand to drop on his shoulder to guide him. Firmly he led him on towards the school. Inside the session had begun.
Through a plate glass window, he could see the other kids. They were all sitting silently, staring up at the teacher as if they were in a trance. The man opened the door. “Inside. Now,” he ordered.
The boy went in, dripping heavy water all over the carpet. He wanted to take off his coat and his wet boots. He wanted to be join his pre-school class. But the man had others plans. He moved him forward, deeper into the house.
The teacher looked up. The children looked up. They said nothing as the man pushed him towards the bathroom. But not the normal bathroom. This was the special bathroom that only the teacher used. He had never been inside before.
Slowly the man started to close the door. “You were late. You must be punished.”
“Fred?” the teacher appeared in the bathroom doorway, gently blocking it. The boy looked at her. She did not look at him. “Can we talk about this?”
“Shut up,” he snapped so loudly the child trembled. His voice echoed. The acoustics in the bathroom were good. “Look away. Now!”
She did so, her face blushing red. The boy watched as she drifted away. The man finally shut the door. He locked it.
Through his tear strained eyes, he could see something inside the man’s coat. It was something he recognized from the cowboy movies he had seen. It was a gun.
“Pull down your pants,” the man commanded. “Underwear, too.”
He did so, letting them fall into a pile at his feet. The man reached down and lifted the boy up. He set him onto the toilet seat.
“You listen to me and you listen close. If you tell anyone about this, anyone at all, I will kill them. Do you understand me? I am an adult. It is within my power to kill.”
The boy nodded. He sniffled.
“Answer me, damn it!” the man shouted. He reached out and started to shake him.
“Yes ... yes.”
“Good.”
His hand was the size of a mountain. The boy saw it for a moment through his wet eyes and then it came down. The boy screamed. The man laughed. The hand came down again. And again. And again.
***
When the man emerged from the bathroom he was buckling his belt and zipping up his pants. Inside the boy lay on the tile floor. He was not moving. There was blood.
(look closer. he is still breathing)
The man moved across the room like a shark and stopped long enough to look at the teacher with hate in his eyes. She sat on a tall stool with a book across her lap. Her voice shook as she tried to read. “Shut up,” he told her.
Slowly she closed the book then looked at the man. Their eyes met, and she turned back to the class. Something unspoken passed between them. This was a thing that he had promised long ago, when they had first met. She had seen the warning signs. In hindsight they were even obvious. Now the terror had come and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Nap time, everyone. Lie down and close your eyes,” she commanded and tried to smile. It did not work.
The children stirred but they did not move. All their eyes were focused on the stranger. He was an invader in their tiny world.
“Now!” he spit, and they did so, curling up on their mats and shutting their eyes tonight. A bad dream, they hoped. It would all be a bad dream. It would be gone in the morning.
The man grabbed her roughly by the arm and whirled her around. He managed to smile slightly. The sight of his teeth filled her with loathing.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To snap your neck like a twig,” he said, letting a strong hand drift about her throat. She felt his sausage fingers play about the flip of her hair that had grown too long in the back. Their eyes met again. The unspoken promise was there. “Now, we are going to go in there and you are going to do what I say.”
“Oh, God. Please no ...”
Her pleas fell on deaf ears as he shoved her into the bedroom so quickly she collapsed onto the sheets. He was laughing as she started to sob. He was laughing as he took off the coat and gun and put them on the chair. He was laughing as he took off the belt and wrapped his fist in leather. He was laughing as he took off his pants and went for his underwear with his free hand.
He was laughing so hard he never noticed the boy walk into the room. And, like the cowboy movies he had seen on TV, he took the gun from where it sat on the chair. The boy lifted it up. He thumbed the safety off and pulled back the hammer.
The dark man turned. He was no longer laughing. He looked down the barrel of the gun in the child’s hand.
“Put that down. Now,” he said.
But the boy was not listening. He pulled the trigger instead.
1991
La Canada, California
Violet
Habitual abuse of the substance keeps one in a state of prolonged adolescence, depending on how much you use and how often. Some people only smoke on weekends or at parties. Some use it once a month because they don’t leave the house much. Some use it once a year, afraid of the power given to the substance by the media.
It is a vice and people use it in different ways and at different times. This is true of all vices, but violet has the tendency to kill brain cells. Which is why people love it. Truly, there bliss is ignorance. And I should know.
I am forty years old. I act and feel like I am twelve. I smoke violet every single day.
First thing I do in the morning is light up. I keep all my materials beside my bed so that I have easy access in the morning. Every now and then I will smoke at night, when I can’t sleep or have a bad dream. But for the most part the pipe is there for when the sun comes u
p.
Then, once my mind is faded, I roll my stash for the day. Depending on how much my last paycheck consisted of I can get five to ten purple sticks. These I keep in an old pack of cigarettes. Often, I must remind myself to buy a new pack of cigarettes as I do not smoke nicotine. Only violet.
I smoke violet all throughout the day.
Which brings us to today.
I woke up in a puddle of my own filth. The sun was strong in Southern California and so was the stench. My back hurt. My head hurt. And I soon realized that I was not in my bed.
Instead I was laying on the kitchen floor with my eyes popping open and shut, but the lids did not move.
It was all in the iris. It dilated and contracted creating a disorienting effect from which there was no escape. All I could do was lay back and let the body do what it was going to do.
It felt like I was being violated. There was no control and no sense of common decency. Last night had been a rarity for me. I drank two bottles of wine. I don’t know why. I don’t often drink because violet is my drug of choice and, like a good addict, I remain faithful. Alcohol feels like cheating somehow.
Still, I wanted to have some fun, so I drank. Then I drank some more. I drank like a teen-ager discovering his parent’s stash of wine coolers for the first time. So now, even though the night is over, I am no longer having any fun.
I roll over and try to get up, but my brain is spinning against my body like a binary star system. We are working against each other, holding each other in stasis, and all the satellites are threatening to collapse. Black holes open and shut and I realize it is my mouth breathing. My nostrils flaring. I try to get up again, but I am off kilter and the head threatens to throw the body down. But the body will not let me fall. The body will not let me sleep. The body will not let me die. It wants more.
Just one stick, I tell myself. One stick and this will all be better. One stick of violet and I will be made whole.
After hours of attempt and failure I finally manage to lift myself up. Lines of drool spill from every orifice. My sweat glands are inflated and bleeding. Puke trickles from the mouth. Snot from the nose. Tears fall from my eyes and long spider webs of bile flow into a fresh puddle of sick on the tile floor. The colors do not match, and they make me feel even worse, as if the world has gone Technicolor and I am still in black and white.
I look around. There is vomit everywhere. It is in my hair. It is on my body in sticky patches. I smell it between my legs.
I look at the vomit on the floor and try to accustom myself to this mess. It does not seem like I will be escaping any time soon. I see shapes in the splatter. There are pretty pictures, like a kaleidoscope of corpulence. Rainbows and golden paths threaten to lead me to nowhere. Arches arc over nothing like bridges over despair. All your favorite colors are here. Red yellow and blue. All the grand colors are here, and it is a fucking drunken masterpiece.
I am impressed.
My new shirt is ruined so I will not be going to work today. My shoes will need to be cleaned so I decide not to walk today. I don’t know if I will ever be able to forget this smell. In the puddle I see the face of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t like me very much. That’s okay. I don’t like myself very much.
A hand reaches up and grips the edge of the kitchen table. In that moment I am hanging on for dear life. I could fall back into the deep chasm that I just escaped from. My fingers hurt. I lift. I pull. Then I am standing up.
I take a deep breath and try to center myself. The head finally starts to work right. It is no longer spinning. I let go of the table and I can walk down the hall to my bedroom.
In the living room wine bottles lay. One of them is broken and I narrowly avoid stepping on the glass. Like I said, my shoes are ruined. I have left them behind along with my shirt.
The wall holds me up. I lean against it and allow it to keep me straight. I make a pact with my face. Lead me into the bedroom and I will forgive you. I will close my eyes to the horrid light and maybe get some sleep. The body agrees. It only wants one thing in return. I promise. I will give it to you.
My bedroom door is wide open. I am inside and there it is, right where it should be. On the nightstand my pack of cigarettes is waiting.
With a groan I collapse on the mattress. Now my body works in perfect harmony. It wants what it needs, and I roll over. I take the pack of cigarettes.
One joint left. The sigh of relief is audible. I take it out and look at it for a moment. For the first time since all this started I am happy. This one stick of violet is a promise to be kept. I told my body that it would have it, now it will. I put it to my lips. The body shakes with anticipation. I can taste the violet on my lips. My mind is already demanding it. We are so close, so close!
Where is my lighter?
1992
La Canada, California
Bastard Son of a Dark Star
Everyone in Arbor knew Kip Coombs. This was because he worked at the video store, you know the one. The one that everyone goes to for all their entertainment needs.
Kip was just another link in the larger chain that was VIDEO4U. Somehow, he managed to work his way up into management even though he had a serious drinking problem.
But at work no one knew. He was a clean cut, friendly sort of boy. He shaved every day and was careful not to wear too much cologne. He was a smoker, but a smoker who chewed on a stick of gum as soon as the cigarette was finished. He was polite to the point where it became a fault and then he apologized for being too polite. He made good recommendations based on the customers history and needs for the evening. He was even cute, according to some of his female co-workers. Kip was young and thin and looked good in a pair of khaki pants and polo shirt.
Every day he saw hundreds of people. There was always an endless line of customers at VIDEO4U and he was there to help each of them with a smile and a nod and a thank you as they left the store.
After a few years of this, those customers became nameless. At least to Kip. They all had the same faces and desires. They were merely numbers on a computer screen, like robots, with account histories and credit card numbers and the same taste in movies that every single other person in Arbor had. They all had the need to escape. They all desired to dream. They were the same.
Except for her.
She was perfect. Her face was round and framed by a long slightly curled mane of hair. Her eyes were wide and green like limes floating in milk, offset by the run of freckles across her cheek and nose that made her look very young and she tried desperately to hide with a little bit of make-up. But no matter how much mascara she wore her eyes still sparkled like limestone in a dark cave.
These were the eyes that made him stammer. They made him stutter. They made him mumble and look at the keyboard instead of at her. They made him want to go home and drink. They made him look at the movies she was renting and ask the question “Why?”
Why was she watching this god-awful crud? Oh yeah, she was with her boyfriend.
He was a short man and as they stood in front of him Kip sized him up, wondering if he could take him in a fight. He wore a baseball cap that hid a precision military-style crew cut. He had on a T-shirt that loudly proclaimed his political preference and baggy blue jeans that nearly hid his feet so that he looked like he was hovering instead of walking. And his face was disgusting. This was the face of a boy who had never learned how to work. He had the easy smile of a high school drop-out. This was the face of a man who smoked too much pot. These were the eyes of a boy who had only a single dream in life. Get a job. Buy a car. Fuck a girl until she screams.
He made Kip sick, so he quickly scanned out the movies and offered up a total. He even gave them a discount which made the girl smile. He was paid. They left.
“Thank you. Have a nice night.”
Kip always told people to have a nice night, even in the afternoon. Nights were more important than days.
***
“I don’t know. I had to get away.”
&n
bsp; She had to get away from here, as well. There were too many familiar faces looking at her constantly. The scent of cigarettes and booze was too strong for her sensitive nose. There were guys everywhere and all of them had eyes. Dark, probing eyes. They were always looking. They were always leering. Sometimes she felt as if she was surrounded by an ocean filled with serpents, all of them leaking poison that threatened to infect her. The life raft was sinking.
Maybe that was why she tried to convince herself that he was different. He was the only hope for decency she had in an otherwise awful world. My old boyfriend, God!” She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue in disgust. “I fucking hated him. He made me do porn.”
“Actual porn?”
Gore Suspenstories Page 2
