Thoroughly Modern Monsters

by Jennifer Rainey

  He heard the ocean in his head.

  The next day, a tattooed beauty with newly-glazed eyes smiled at Quinnish and handed him six dollars rather than five. He kept the dollar, knowing he would see her in his trailer later. Perhaps he’d even give it back.

  Or perhaps not.

  He fought the urge to scratch his left shoulder as he nodded deeply to another young woman and took her money. His suit didn’t feel right that afternoon. It pinched and itched and was extraordinarily loose under the arms. His hat felt foolish, but still Quinnish sang.

  Grace did not flash her phone when she arrived, simply a grin. A challenge, was it? Hadn’t she challenged him enough? Quinnish greeted her warmly, he hoped, and happily took her money.

  She placed her large calico purse on her lap after taking a seat in the last row, her back straight, her knees pressed together. She sat like an eager royal waiting to be entertained, and Quinnish could hardly take his eyes from her. The corners of her mouth were always turned upward, he noticed, or perhaps he imagined it. The entire audience stumbled through the door in a daze, but there was Grace, bright, sharp.

  Quinnish mindlessly took the money from the other suckers in line.

  “You looked dazed! Head not in the game today, Quinnish?”

  “You’re one to talk, Francis.”

  The ringmaster sluggishly arched an eyebrow as he removed his hat and placed his earplugs inside. “My head is always in the game, good sir. I am a professional.”

  “Is that so?” Quinnish asked quietly as he glanced over his shoulder again.

  “She’s there, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah-ha! This is great! Bet you can’t wait to leave Cincy. Anyway, trust me, buddy. It’s good to know you’re human just like the rest of us,” Francis laughed and clapped his hand on Quinnish’s shoulder before charging into the big top.

  Quinnish drew a deep breath and, from his spot outside the tent, watched Grace’s unchanging expression throughout the show. Everyone else laughed when they were supposed to, gasped in time, and they were all decked out in trashy summer garb, oversized hats and Mardi Gras beads they’d won on the midway.

  But Grace, simple and lovely, was a lighthouse in that sea of idiots.

  It made his skin crawl again, and he suddenly couldn’t figure out if it was because of Grace or because of everyone else.

  He was human, Francis had said, just like the rest of them.

  But he wasn’t human.

  Quinnish’s mouth was not made for apologizing. He’d only done it a dozen times in his life, and half of those apologies had been made that afternoon.

  “I just… I guess I’m tired,” he said. “It’s been a long week. Traveling. That sort of thing.”

  That afternoon’s tattooed lady shrugged as she pulled up jeans that were a size or two too small. “It’s okay. We all get performance anxiety once in a while.”

  “It’s not that,” he snapped. “It’s not… performance anxiety. I’m a performer. It’s all I am. It’s just… I’m tired. I’m sorry.” There was number seven, by his count.

  “Sure, sure. I understand,” she mumbled and reached for her black leather purse. She pulled out a cigarette and placed it between her lips. It dangled as she spoke. “Nice meeting you, though. Good luck with this carnival thing. You’re pretty good at what you do.”

  She hurried out the door and let it slam behind her.

  “Pretty good,” he muttered to himself and slipped into a blue hoodie hanging at the foot of the bed. His suit was in a crumpled heap on the floor. He kicked it aside for now, swearing that he would hang it up later. Eventually.

  Quinnish settled on his bed and felt the mattress springs fight against him. His eyes shut, and he took his fingers to his temples. Outside his door, the carnival was cacophonous.

  The ground had not felt sure beneath his feet that afternoon. His costume had not fit him, his mind had been clouded, and yet, when he looked for a reason, all he could think of was Grace.

  There was a cup of Earl Grey tea, half empty, on the dresser at the foot of his bed, and he pushed it away.

  The aluminum rattling at the screen door did not make him jump, but rather groan. He hoped he would find Francis waiting on the other side of the door with a bottle of Jim Beam, but in his gut, he knew he wouldn’t.

  Grace waited for him with her cell phone already drawn like a weapon and her smile broad as any shield. Quinnish forced his own lips to cooperate, and he let her in the trailer. She immediately handed him the phone.

  “You’re right,” she had already typed. “I should’ve listened to you. The show was awful.”

  As though I don’t know that, Quinnish thought. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t think it’d be that bad, though! Your ringmaster is a mess. I suck at lip reading, and I could still tell he wasn’t saying anything worthwhile!”

  There was a face made from a semi-colon and a parenthesis at the tail end of her message.

  “You’re the one who came back. I tried to tell you it wasn’t worth your time,” Quinnish typed. “Congratulations. You’re the first person I’ve ever told not to go to the big top show.”

  “But I couldn’t let you down, Quinnish. You were good! A little distant today, but good.”

  Quinnish couldn’t bring his fingers to properly type a response, and so he shrugged and typed instead, “I’ll get you some tea.” She nodded pleasantly, and it irked him how he somehow felt obligated to fetch Earl Grey for her. He resolved to leave it in the microwave for slightly too long.

  He heard her settle on the bed again and the soft click clack of the tiny keyboard, and he dreaded reading whatever she had to say.

  She wrapped a part of Quinnish’s bed sheets around the cup to protect her fingers from burning when he returned. He took the phone from her. It said, “At least everyone else liked it. Or at least they thought they did!”

  “That’s the game.”

  “You’re playing it well.”

  Quinnish’s gaze fell involuntarily to his suit as it peeked out from under the bed. “Thank you.”

  Grace took the tiniest, daintiest of sips of her scalding tea before setting it carefully on the dresser behind her. She typed, “Tea’s a little hot, but that’s okay. Do you see yourself playing this game forever?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “I can’t imagine doing anything else, Grace.”

  “And do you think you’ll ever win?”

  He stared at those pixels and reached for his tea. “I win every day I play it,” he typed, pleased that he didn’t actually have to speak the words aloud.

  “Did you win today?”

  “Today was a challenge.”

  “Don’t avoid the question, siren. Did you win?”

  Quinnish rubbed at his eyes and wondered how late it was, how far away Grace lived. Surely she should’ve been heading home. The calliope sang ebulliently not so far away. “Do you think I won?”

  “I’m not playing the game,” she teased. “I don’t know the rules! You tell me if you won or not.”

  “Of course, I won. Everyone saw the show.”

  Grace flashed her ocean eyes at him and leaned back on her palms. Quinnish feared she wasn’t going anywhere soon as she gave him a good once-over. He got the feeling now that she was seeing something he didn’t want her to, but he didn’t know what it was.

  Her eyes were too blue, he decided, too bright, too like the sky, too like the sea.

  Grace sucked on her lower lip in thought for a moment and then took to her phone. “And what is the prize exactly?”

  “Self-satisfaction?” he typed and felt a bit lame for it. “Maybe a raise?”

  “Or maybe a lady to keep you company? Haha!”

  He frowned, and with a roll of the eyes, she took the phone back and added, “I’m not making fun of you, Quinnish. I’m just interested. You’re intriguing. I enjoy learning about intriguing people.”<
br />
  “Intriguing? How?”

  “You’re different. I’ve never met someone like you.” And he had never met someone like her. He hoped very faintly that there was only one Grace in the world. She added, “I live in Cincy, for God’s sake.”

  “Have you always lived here?” Quinnish asked.

  “Always. It’s boring. Nothing to talk about. I’d rather talk about you.”

  “No, tell me about Cincinnati.”

  She said, “Look, Cincy is horrible. I just don’t want to talk about horrible old Cincinnati! Boring, boring, boring, horrible, horrible, horrible!”

  “I live in a trailer.”

  “Oh, but you’re seeing the sights!” Grace motioned out the window broadly. Quinnish looked out and saw some kid vomiting at the entrance of the Tilt-O-Whirl. He grimaced and looked back to the phone. “Aren’t you? I’m stuck in the reddest city in the East.”

  “Grace, I’m seeing every parking lot in North America.”

  “More than that. At least you’re moving.”

  “Maybe I’m moving, but half the time, I’m not really going anywhere.”

  “Well, I’m sure you hate your hometown just as much. Everyone does. Do you visit your hometown often?”

  The question hit him like a bullet train. He paused, and his fingers lightly tapped the keys without saying anything. Finally he managed, “No. No reason to.”

  “Let me guess! It’s on the coast.”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “Really? Surely you visit the ocean, though.”

  “No. My caretaker growing up didn’t have the money to take me,” he typed, rather than tell her the truth. His caretaker, a woman the state preferred over his mother, was just as frightened of the ocean as George DeLuis and for all the same reasons. And all this long before the Monster Laws were passed. He could only imagine the fate of a child with his breeding now. How could these starry-eyed ocean children possibly help society as a whole?

  Quinnish added, “And we don’t ever go to the coast with the carnival. Our boss is afraid of the sea.”

  All he wanted to do was lie to her. That would show her.

  He knew George was lying to him. He’d always known. After all, the man said the day Quinnish quit was the day he’d retire, and George sure as hell didn’t want to retire. He didn’t want to distract his precious siren. The ocean sings to those of merish blood as the siren sings to her victim. But if Quinnish had never seen where he was supposed to be, George surely figured, how could he long for it?

  Quite the fallacy that was.

  “Go on your own. You should see it,” Grace said.

  “No. I couldn’t leave the carnival. We can always find somewhere to perform that’s not on the coast. We either follow the warm weather or move the show inside. Full-time job.”

  Quinnish wanted to shed his skin for all the crawling and prickling it was doing. The trailer felt too small now. The midway outside was too bright. Grace needed to leave, he thought.

  Of course, she didn’t. Her tea was finally cooling down, after all. She sipped at it lazily.

  “I belong here,” he typed.

  “Aren’t you tired of lying to people?” she asked. “And you said you enjoyed escaping from the carnival through books. Make an adventure out of it!”

  Quinnish wondered how exactly she meant her words to be read. She was smiling, yes, but she was often smiling that white and perfect smile. He gulped and fumbled with the keyboard. “I don’t want to escape the carnival. It’s my job.”

  “But you’ve never even been there! Surely it’d be exciting.”

  Exciting? he thought darkly. The idea of breathing in air of salt and sea aroused something in Quinnish that made mere excitement look pathetic.

  “What do you want?” she typed. “Do you want to see the ocean?”

  His fingers froze, and his ears felt as though they were filled with water. He rubbed at the back of his neck, his shoulders tense.

  “I want to stay here.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Quinnish furrowed his brows. “How do you know what I want?”

  She shook her head lightly, condescendingly as though he were a child. His insides were chilled. “Stop lying, Quinnish.”

  “I can’t. It’s what I do.”

  The words were typed and in her hands before he could censor himself. He could feel the suit under his bed as though it were watching him, waiting for him. He wanted to burn the damn thing.

  “So, you do want to go.”

  “Maybe I do, but I need to stay here. I can’t just run off, for Christ’s sake!”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “So you stay here and you continue to lie and only find escape in words on a page. They can’t help you forever, Quinnish.”

  He didn’t need help, he told himself. He didn’t need the ocean. He didn’t need anything. He was Quinnish Stern! He was Quinnish Stern, but the words felt hollow now as he repeated them in his mind.

  He didn’t have time to come up with a response. Grace leaned in without hesitation and kissed him once, simply, and his eyes stung. His chest was unpleasantly tight.

  “You should go,” she said with her own tongue and gave him a firm nod. “Go see the ocean, Quinnish. Just see it.”

  He’d never seen a gaze so pure, and her honesty made him ill. He shook his head and pointed to the door. She frowned, but it was almost as radiant as her smile. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t turn off her light.

  “Leave. Now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head and held his hand. The contact made him jump.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  Grace recoiled and gathered her purse without another gesture, another word. She slipped the cell phone into her pocket and wandered into the dusty, rancid air of the carnival.

  When Quinnish finally picked up his old grey suit, it was rough on his fingers. It felt like some ancient artifact, as though he were picking up a museum piece that he had never held in his life.

  It belonged to someone else.

  An hour after Grace left, Quinnish took a bath. He hung the crumpled grey suit on the back of the bathroom door.

  He not only shut the bathroom door, but locked it, though locking it did nothing for the sounds outside. For that, he needed water. He slipped down under the surface and let the water fill his ears and eyes.

  He closed his eyes. There was his mother’s face, the one he saw only on holidays when his caretaker allowed him to visit her at the facility where she was kept. There was the father he only knew through photographs.

  His muscles tingled, and he felt sick as he swayed gently in the water. His fists clenched. Without thinking, he breathed in. His lungs burned, and he broke through the surface of the water, coughing and sputtering. He gripped the plastic bathtub with trembling hands and gasped. Quinnish hung his head over the side, his vision spotty.

  In the distance, people yelled and laughed. The carousel was running, running his mind in circles, and all he wanted to do was run away.

  He looked to the back of the door where his grey suit hung haphazardly. The idea of ever having to wear it again made him tense, made tears spring to his eyes. It was a monster mocking him, a grey pinstriped monster that devoured him two times a day, three times on Saturdays.

  He spat and laughed bitterly at the thought of the woman who had sent him falling from the tightrope he’d walked for so long.

  And still, the carousel sang to accompany his descent.

  George DeLuis was, despite popular belief, a man of his word. Two weeks after a woman named Grace stumped the great Quinnish Stern, George retired from the carnival business, just as he said he would.

  A note left on his desk signed Q. was to blame.

  In Graveyards and Old Houses

  Present Day.

  I very rarely visited the lake in spring or summer. Autumn was still a risk. I always preferred winter when the spiders and bees and snakes were nowhere to be found.

  T
he lake was dark in winter. It was easy to find the lake beautiful in summer. Everyone did, but in winter, it bordered on the sublime. In winter, the lake was alluring as it threatened to swallow you whole. I scribbled once in my journal that I found it either terrifyingly beautiful or beautifully terrifying.

  Those are the exact words, by the way. I probably fancied I was one or the other myself back then, with my pen in hand and my wardrobe as edgy as my budget would allow.

  I often strayed from the lake path and made my way into the dense patches of forest that surrounded it. The rangers, I was told, would’ve preferred that you stay on the path, but by the time I was twenty-two, I’d walked around the lake a thousand times. There were discoveries to be made in those woods, and winter was the time to make them, when the daddy long legs were wherever daddy long legs go during colder months.

  When I was young, I always suspected they went home to Hell. I’ve got scores of the damn things on the walls of my root cellar now. We’ve buried the hatchet, it seems.

  Many January and February afternoons of my early twenties found me in those woods, writing notes in my journal and wearing boots that came up to my knees. Occasionally I carried around a copy of Walden in my pocket. I never read it, but I always intended to. When I finally got around to reading the book, I was in a hospital waiting room, as far from the solitude of the lake as possible.

  The air was clear, crisp and scentless on the chilled afternoon I discovered the cemetery. If you followed a half-dug path down a hill not far from the lake, you’d find the old family plot. It was just past a narrow and twiggy passage that surely disappeared in summer when the leaves were full.

  There were twelve or so graves, and the most one could read on any of the markers were the words “beloved” and “infant”. They were on the same stone, and I wondered how the words went together. I wondered how something someone had for such a short time could be considered beloved.