Project Pallid

by Christopher Hoskins

In the month we’d known each other, I’d learned that Catee’s dad had always been somewhat distant from her, but never from her mom. He worked regular hours, came home to regular meals, and, as a couple, they lived a seemingly enviable life. They held solid jobs, they made good money, and together, they were raising a bright, well-mannered daughter. And, in spite of the emotional distance he’d always kept from her, Catee admitted that things couldn’t have been better when her mom was healthy. But then she got sick, and everything changed.

  As Catee described it, her dad became almost entirely absent from both their lives after that. He’d go into work early, he’d stay there until late into the night, and he did so for weeks and months on end.

  And when her mom reached the terminal stage of her illness, rather than take time from work to be with his family, he somehow delved deeper in it—what that was, Catee didn’t know. Hospice workers came daily to handle most of her mother’s final months, and they basically moved in to tend her needs.

  Stationed in a hospital bed in their living room, they took care of her Mom’s washing, feeding, medications, and they even did chores around the house to ease the burden on Catee, who frequently missed school to be with her mom, instead. Catee said that she didn’t want the moment she was gone to be her mother’s last, and she couldn’t bear the thought of her mom dying alone. She knew her dad, in spite of his unwavering devotion to his wife, wouldn’t be there.

  And when she passed, Catee’s dad professed how close he’d come to achieving the groundbreaking successes he’d worked so hard for. But he wasn’t able to finish fast enough, and he failed Catee … and his wife. He vowed to finish what he’d started, but as far as Catee knew, that never happened. Not before their displacement to Madison.

  “He needs to leave. Now.” Mr. Laverdier spoke without emotion and as though I was nothing more than a roach—an infestation in his home. I wanted to slink away and disappear under the closest piece of furniture.

  His eyes flamed with rage, his declaration came out flat, and I already had my things in hand by the time he’d spoken his final word and disappeared from the doorway.

  Seconds later, Catee escorted me outside and, with a hurried apology, she sent me trudging back to school … alone. It happened so fast, my head was spinning; I could hardly process the events that had played out so suddenly.

  It all happened so fast, and it came without explanation.

  He didn’t bother asking my name or introducing himself because he clearly had no intention of seeing me again. I was an unwelcomed guest in his home, but that was okay. I wasn’t too keen on crossing him a second time, either.

  I had to wait at school for another half hour before my mom picked me up. And even though I thought of calling her early, I decided against it. It was better to wait than explain the sudden disruption to what had become routine. And based on her lack of inquiry, she never suspected anything out of the ordinary that day.

  Still, I was left rattled. I couldn’t shake Mr. Laverdier from my head, and I worried his presence might mean the end of Catee and me all together. If the moment were any indicator of the role he’d play in our relationship, it was nothing but dour. Still, we’d do what we could to keep united in the face of his obvious mistrust and control over her.

  It’s something that still plagues us today, even as I sit here without her, alone in darkness.

  May 9th: Day 8

  An eyeball appears in the crack overhead.

  I didn’t even hear it come in this time.

  Its white, glossy surface looks down, but I can’t tell where. And it just sits there for a second before its connecting body moves across the floor.

  The eye drags behind it.

  My breathing stops. My body becomes motionless. Cross-legged, I’m frozen on my cot. I can see my pocketknife at arms reach, on my bedside crate. Its there if I need it, but I pray it doesn’t come to it. I pray to God that it doesn’t know I’m down here: that the pickled crap on the floor covers my scent; that the eye’s presence is more a habit of looking than it is a practical way of detecting me. I pray that my hideaway stays hidden.

  Flared nostrils replace the eye to press against the crack above. It inhales and exhales almost visible breaths, and I hold my own in fear.

  The nose moves like a vacuum cleaner. It passes over me and continues along in rapid inhales and exhales. It searches for, but it doesn’t find me. And eventually, whatever it is, it scurries across the floor and out the door in a scramble of hands and feet.

  Minutes pass before it’s safe to breathe again.

  The scariest part is that whatever it was, it could’ve been anyone I used to know. It could’ve been any of the kids from school. It could’ve been my principal. It could’ve been my sister, or even my mom.

  From the moment the police car sped off with Mrs. Arnold in the back, television and newspapers made headline news of every subsequent event. For three days running, every publication and every broadcast included new findings and unreleased photos and video, but none of it shed any new light on what happened. Everything they said was speculative. Alarmist. Intended for ratings, none of it conveyed any factual understandings, and it became clear that even the media was just as stumped by the event as the rest of us were—as science was. Nothing could explain what happened to her, but our ignorance wouldn’t stop its spread.

  By the week’s end, the headlines changed, but only marginally. Mrs. Arnold’s spotlight was snatched away by a similar case, across town from the hospital where she was being treated. It came four days after the bloodshed at the bank, and when it did, an entire family was erased from Madison.

  The papers said he’d just gotten home from work. The news reporters said they’d just finished dinner. But in spite of the discrepancy, the story was the same: the guy completely shredded his two daughters and his pregnant wife to pieces. Nobody survived, and nobody knows which version of the events was more accurate, but either way, the end was the same. Non-negotiable. Death doesn’t work in reverse.

  After arriving on scene to blood-spattered windows and deafening silence, the officers forced their way into the house through its front door. They passed by fingers and bits of bodies—some adult and some of children—and followed the thickening pools that seeped across the hardwood.

  They found him in the kitchen, hunkered under the table and slurping on a protruding vein of his wife’s dismembered arm.

  According to reports, standard procedures were followed. Officers ordered him to the ground. They demanded he drop what he was holding and to stretch his arms overhead. Unresponsive, he stared at them through white, empty eyes. Crouched in pouncing position, he sensed more than he saw them. They repeated their directives, but he stayed unresponsive. And then, like an animal, his head kicked back and his throat stretched to unleash a piercing, metallic wail that sent officers’ hands to their ears and their weapons clanging to the ground.

  A few held tight to theirs, though. And because of those few, he was taken down as he scrambled forward on fours, like an animal closing on its kill.

  A single bullet, skillfully placed in the center of his forehead, put his hunger to rest.

  There are few professions where you can go to work, shoot and kill your coworker, and be justified in doing so. Shooting one of their own wasn’t something the police had set out to do that day. They did it without any other choice, and they’d carry its regret for life.

  It’d only been four days since their partner was chomped into at the bank, and the change in him since then was as unexplainable as it was terrifying.

  My head circles back to the most recent hunter above and, once again, I can’t help but question the integrity of my lock; it’s not as strong as it needs to be. Though I’ve done it a hundred times already, I survey the basement in search of a better alternative than the hunk of wood that’s still jammed through the handle. I scan the floor like I’m expecting some gift from God to have magically appeared. Of course, there’s none. But just to be
certain, I rise from my cot—cautious to stifle every squeak of its wooden frame with the hovering stillness of my slow-moving body—until I’ve levitated from it and stand by its side. With a final look overhead and a cock of my ear, I listen for any sounds before making my move. There are none.

  At the bottom of the steep, wooden steps, I look up and repeat the same, idle gesture of listening. But again, there’s only silence. Emptiness.

  As cautious as I’d been on the ground, I make my way to the overhead door and give it a tug—for prosperity’s sake if nothing else. And, satisfied that it’s as secure as possible, given the tools available, I retreat to the gravel floor and to my resting place on my cot.

  Cross-legged, I sit, I wait, and I plan. And with the fading of light through the cracks above, I reach for my pocketknife to carve a second notch in the undercarriage of my bed.

  Two down, five to go.

  Their food grows scarce, while mine is abundant.

  I might not be able to defeat them, but I vow to outlast them.

  October 20th:

  The Friday after my run-in with Mr. Laverdier, Catee met me at the bus station instead of the lobby. Brittle, fall leaves crunched under our feet as we stepped from the sidewalk to stand beneath one of the many oak trees that lined the path to the school’s front doors.

  Her hand was clasped onto my forearm as she spoke, and its warmth radiated through my sweatshirt. “I’m sorry about my dad.”

  “It’s okay, Catee. Don’t worry about it. You can’t control how he acts.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said in exasperation. “I wish he’d just move into the hospital. He’s there enough already. He should just stay there all the time. Leave the house to us, like, in a living will or something.” She spoke in jest, but there was sincerity to her words.

  “Why’d he come home so early?” I asked, having learned from experience that it was just as she’d said: he never came home until late, late at night. And even then, he was back out the door first thing in the morning. Aside from their fractured family therapy sessions on Fridays, Catee barely saw him at all.

  “I guess he got sent home from work. That’s mostly why he was so mad.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you think he tells me that stuff? I don’t know. I just overheard him talking on the phone in his office. He caught me standing there listening, and he closed the door on me. I didn’t hear anything after that. I just know he wasn’t very happy, and it wasn’t just because of you and me.”

  “So, you told him about me, then?”

  “No I didn’t tell him about you. What am I, crazy? He’d go totally nuts. No. I told him you were a friend of mine from school and that we’d just finished an assignment for class.” My heart sunk with her usage of friend. I worried that’s all she felt about us.

  “No, I got you. I get it. Totally. The guy’s crazy,” I constructed a response to chime with hers. “You couldn’t tell him about us.” I really emphasized the us to gauge her reaction and to assess if we were still on the same page.

  Her delayed response was wordless.

  She reached out her hands to grasp mine. Pulling me forward, she caught me off guard, and I stumbled through the leaves and stopped only when our bodies collided. It happened so quickly, I couldn’t prepare for it the way I’d always planned to.

  With my head turned up and hers slightly down, we kissed. Our first kiss. My first kiss. And all the while, when I should have been thinking about my technique and monitoring my moisture levels, I was consumed beyond reason by it. I was victim to it. Physiology took over where my head switched off.

  Seconds turned to hours, and hours to seconds, as we pulled apart. I looked up to her, and she looked back to me in equivalent, speechless awe. Our hands, still locked, created warmth that the October air couldn’t.

  The ‘L’ word flashed briefly on my tongue and almost fell from my mouth—it’s an intrinsic response to such events—but I stifled and choked it down. I knew it was too soon, even after a month and a half together, to put words to what my heart had rhythmically beaten.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No, thank you.”

  And that was the extent of our acknowledgment to it—our first kiss—before we headed back to school, hand-in-hand.

  “So, what do you think happened with your dad?” I asked.

  “Who knows. He doesn’t tell me anything about work. He’s always been like that; he barely says a word about it.”

  “Why’s that? I mean, why do you think he’s so secretive?”

  Her response was totally casual and like she’d wanted to say it all along, but needed the prodding I’d been so cautious to provide until then. “I think it all comes from when he worked for the government. You know. They’ve got to be all secretive and stuff. He can’t seem to let it go. It doesn’t matter that he only works at the hospital now; he’s still the same.”

  “Your dad used to work for the government?” I asked, startled. The surprise of it stopped me in my tracks.

  “Yup. Before we moved here, he worked at some lab outside the Capitol.”

  “What’d he do there?” I was genuinely intrigued.

  “Medical research. Drugs and pills and cures and things.”

  “Oh.” My response was surprised, even though I knew he was Head of Medicine at Madison General, so her revelation wasn’t far-reaching. “So why’d he stop working there?”

  “He didn’t stop. They made him stop. At least, that’s what I think. And then they gave him this job here. One minute we were living in Baltimore, the next Madison. I got home one day and all our stuff was packed; the movers had it on the truck before I even knew what was happening. A day later, we were on a plane to Madison.”

  Catee’s profession threw up red flags left and right. As much as I’d learned about her in the short time we’d been together, I’d somehow barely scraped the surface. No wonder they were in therapy together. What, with her mom dying, her dad’s job reassignment, his time spent at work, and their continually growing distance, it was no surprise. My life, as complicated as I wanted to make it in my own head, compared nothing to hers. My struggles were tedious and laughable in comparison.

  “Well, now that you’re here,” I said, “I’m never going to let you go.”

  “I like that,” she replied with simple profundity, as we climbed the stairs and entered the lobby, hand-in-hand.

  October 27th:

  We took a week off after that—at least in terms of post-school rendezvous at her place—to allow her dad time to cool off. If we were lucky, he’d forget about us entirely.

  I asked her what he’d said about me, post run-in, but she said he hadn’t mentioned a word about it since. To him, I was nothing more than a fly: swatted and gone, I was unworthy of an afterthought. But then, like now, he underestimated my ability to sustain. I’m more like a post-apocalyptic cockroach than anything else; but he’ll learn that soon enough.

  Throughout that week, Catee went out of her way to persuade me that it didn’t matter what her dad thought. She was committed to me, and she repeatedly insisted that it was safe to resume our regular routine. I was obviously skeptical.

  As well as she knew him, I don’t think she ever grasped where his head was at. Her reading of him was wrought with naiveté. She saw him as a daughter sees a father, not as a damaged man with heavy baggage of his own. She couldn’t fathom those things that lay beyond rational thought, and she couldn’t possibly understand the capabilities of a man who was driven to madness by grief.

  “I’m not so sure I want to risk running into your dad again, Catee,” I cautioned.

  “Damian, relax. It’s no big deal. He hasn’t mentioned it since. I bet he doesn’t even remember it by now.” It’d barely been a week since our encounter and, while I would’ve liked her words to be true, they were optimistic at best.

  “I don’t know, Catee. I’m not sure I can risk it again. Did you see the look in his eyes? He would’ve killed me if
he could’ve gotten away with it. Next time, he might.” It sounded extreme, but it seemed entirely possible, even back then.

  “Damian, just relax. It’s no big—”

  “Ms. Laverdier? Mr. Lawson? Do you have something you’d like to say?” Mr. Atkins stopped his lecture and turned from the board to face us. Catee had repositioned herself to my side of the horseshoe two weeks before, and she sat by my side. Justin, who’d been jaded too many times already in his pursuit of her, had been shooting us death stares ever since. He did little beyond that though; he was more afraid of her than he’d ever be of me.

  “No, Mr. Atkins. Sorry. Damian was just helping me with this new formula.”

  His impositioned stare softened. “Oh. Well, can I help to clarify anything for you?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ve got it now.”

  “Excellent. Just raise your hand if you need anything else, all right?” He phrased his instruction in the form of a question more for the feeling of a democracy than for the establishment of one.

  “I definitely will, Mr. Atkins. Thank you.” Her words, start to finish, came out flawlessly unaffected and convincing. Catee’s ability to manipulate came with such ease that I questioned if I wasn’t just another game piece of hers, but I quickly banished the thought from my head; it’s too painful to take such considerations in mind when your heart’s so deeply involved.

  With his attention redirected to his lesson, Catee took to scrawling out hastily written notes to finish our conversation. The first one slid across my desk a minute later:

  Believe me on this. Everything’s all right. We’ve got no worries. Plan to stay after school again starting on Monday, she wrote.

  I looked pensively at her before writing back:

  I don’t know, Catee. We didn’t see him coming last time. How’s next time going to be any different? He’ll KILL me if he catches me in your house again!!!