by Pete Kahle
Sometimes, David had a tendency to sound just as sick, which frightened her even more than anything he might be able to tell her about what he thought was happening to them.
There were times, however, when his "Cosmic Rag Doll Theory" would end up ambushing her, and she would be forced to really look at, to consider it as one possible truth, and to examine it like nothing she ever had before. Even though she never had any dolls to play with herself, she was still wise enough to know what became of them once their novelty wore off on the child. Neglect was one way they could go. Another way, the one most favored by her mother was to play with them until they became irreparably damaged, then toss them out and replace them with another.
Jo kept her eyes down as she went into the bathroom. She was never to look up at her mother, never to look her in the face, or in the eyes. That was beaten into her at any early age. If she was ever given a series of pictures and asked to pick out her mother among them, she wouldn't be able to do it. She might if those pictures were of her back, or her legs, or her toes, or even the back of her head. Then, again, maybe not; her mother had been through the entire spectrum of hair colors, and hair lengths—even her weight fluctuated drastically, sometimes she was thin, most times she was fat.
As usual, Jo raced through her pissing and crapping, her teeth-brushing and showering, all while keeping a keen eye on the time. When she was done, she dressed, tossed the dirty towels and sleepwear into the hamper, and stuffed the magazine under her shirt, making sure it was laid flat against her belly and tucked good and tight behind her waist band.
The first thing she had to do every morning was check on the Others, in the secret cellar. She and David were born in California, and over the course of their lives they had moved steadily across the country. For what reason, she had no idea. Of course, David had his suspicions, and he assumed it was to stay one step ahead of being found out, probably, by the law; that was another thing she hadn't understood for so long, that what her mother was doing to them was illegal. This notion that not all mothers were sick didn't occur to her until she started kindergarten, and she began hearing how the other children spoke about their parents. Most liked them; some even stated they loved them. Incredible!
As the family continued on with their journey to nowhere, the homes they lived in had to have certain features. It was too bad coziness wasn't one of them. They all had to have a secret place built somewhere inside, or in an adjoining structure on the property. These secret places always reminded her of that movie Labyrinth and those trapdoors in the floor of the maze. Oubliettes she remembered they were called. Once she saw the parallels they had to her life that was a term she would never forget.
Some of these oubliettes were just like in the movie. Small, dank, cramped holes in the ground only one person could fit in, but others were spacious, more like a second cellar. Jo could never understand how her mother was able to ferret these houses out, because they certainly didn't advertise them in the newspapers. Though, as she grew older, and wiser, she began to suspect most of these houses had once belonged to other sick people. And, like any animal in the wild that had a knack for singling out a specific scent, her mother was able to pick up the scent of other sickos and the houses they once lived in.
When they moved into their current home three years ago, she wanted to think it was no different than any of those other unlovable shacks they used to live in, but that dead girl they had come across the first day they inspected the place told her it wasn't. They had always found some kind of remains in the other houses, but they were always of the bone variety. This particular remnant was shocking for the single fact that, up to that moment, Jo had never seen a freshly made corpse.
The girl—at least that's what she assumed it to be—was just lying there, in the corner, on her stomach, like she was sleeping. But she knew she wasn't. What person sleeps on cold dirt without any clothes on, in the middle of the day?
Even though Jo was shocked, her mother had no reservations about going over, pulling the body out of the corner, and turning it over so she could get a good look at it. As she stared in horror, and fascination, Jo began to notice features that didn't quite match the reality of what little girls were supposed to be made of. Even though her two foot stature was that of a youngster, her muscled proportions looked like someone of a much older age. Her hands and feet were also subject to some debate. With appendages like that, she assumed most of this strange girl's life had been spent leaping through trees like a monkey. Yet, her mother seemed to have some idea as to what they were looking at. She whispered it under her breath, but Jo heard her just the same.
"I'll be damned, a cockfly."
She never thought much about what a "cockfly" was, or whether there ever was such a thing, or whether that girl was just some poor deformed child born to someone who was as sick as her mother. Regardless, of what the truth was she was instructed that day to take it out back and bury it somewhere—somewhere secret, somewhere with a lot of space. Up to that point her mother had always been the garbage handler for all the broken toys. Now, it seemed, this grim honor was being bestowed upon her. She knew that would also lead to another equally grim responsibility, the construction and maintenance of yet another graveyard, or garden, as her mother sometimes liked to call them.
Jo couldn't think about that right now, she could never think two steps beyond the hell she was currently toiling in.
The entrance to the secret cellar was in a hidden room between the kitchen and the dining area. The door to it was skinny, making it look like a pantry, or a cabinet, or a closet, which is how her mother decided to dress this one up as. When she unlocked and opened it up, a deceptive rack of coats and clothing confronted her. She merely pushed them aside, stepped in, and reached above her head for a beaded cord. She stared at the dark, hardwood floor as she pulled it; a sixty watt light bulb went on.
The circular shaped trapdoor in the floor blended seamlessly. All it needed was a rug and no one would ever know it existed. This particular setup, however, was still unique. The others Jo had experiences with were cement floors, with very heavy cement plugs; Jo obviously preferred this one because she didn't break her back every time she opened it.
There was a precarious, twelve foot ladder she had to scale to reach the bottom. The cellar below also had more space than any of the others she had frequented. Whoever constructed it certainly had the money and the time, or, perhaps, a plan that was supposed to involve many, many victims.
It was probably the best prison for the Others she had ever seen, if a prison could truly be called that. Since there were only three of them this time, she had initially thought they might not feel so confined, and claustrophobic, but once they were moved in, and the more those plain brick walls began to get decorated with shit and piss, and the more the air began to smell like a sewer, she couldn't imagine how any of them could ever truly make a home out of any place like this.
A prison was a prison, no matter what size it was.
Since they hated light, Jo could never reach up and turn it on. David, on the other hand, had come up with an ingenious, and simple, idea to keep his eyes shielded, while still allowing Jo to turn the bulb on. The Others, however, had never liked this idea, so down here she always navigated by touch, sound, and familiarity; and, to a certain extent, by her limited ability to see in the dark.
Like the mattress she slept on, there were three just like it laid out in various spots. Still curled up on them were her mother's bastard children, and Jo and David's two brothers and sister.
She and David had their separate reasons as to why the other children were continually confined and treated like this—whether it was because their mother couldn't control herself because she was sick, or whether they were here because she received some sort of sick joy out of the deliberate misery she caused them, they could, nevertheless, agree on one point. That offspring this different looking would certainly be treated just as badly, if not worse, in the outside world.
When the children turned out this awful looking her mother wouldn't bother to give them names. So, it was always up to Jo and David, to give them back their identities. Geena was the first one to stir from sleep, crane her large head around, and look at her big sister.
Her cleft palate separated as she groaned her way out of sleep. The tongue she stuck out as she yawned didn't originate on the bottom of the jaw but extended down from the cleft. It was thick, and could be made tubular if desired, generally for feeding purposes only.
Using her three multi-jointed legs, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, depending on how thick the chill was down here, she sat her strange, crooked body up.
"Something's wrong with Martin." She could speak and enunciate just as well as Jo, but the words weren't uttered out of her mouth, they were uttered out of the front of her neck through biological mechanisms that most people took for granted since they're not normally seen on the outside of the body. Each and every word she spoke was also accompanied by a deep buzz that, when they were first born, was extremely off-putting. Her tone was troubling. If she had had arms, she probably would have had them wrapped around herself to better convey the fright she was so obviously feeling.
"Good Lord, what happened now?" Jo asked, looking worriedly at Martin's unmoving figure, and then annoyingly at Jeff who was just now coming awake. "I told you guys to stop roughhousing, or someone's gonna get themselves hurt. How many times do I have to keep telling you guys that!"
"It wasn't us," Jeff stated, kneeling next to Jo as she went down on her knees beside Martin's mattress. "It was Mom."
Jo's heart sank.
Martin was an unnaturally skinny and frail creature. Unlike Geena and Jeff he had only two working arms and legs, but like them his head was too large thus too heavy for his frail frame. She felt his face, his eyes were still open.
Jo covered her mouth and wept.
She knew he was dead, and that it was their mother who had made him that way. Jeff started to recount the tragic event in detail—he could speak too, but his neck wasn't like Geena's, his voice came out of his head, with the same odd buzz wrapped around every word—but she stopped him. She knew how it happened, how it always happened. She had shaken Martin so hard that his neck had snapped. That was how most of the frail ones met their demises.
Incidentally, she already knew why her mother had come down here in the first place. It was their birthdays; Geena, Jeff and Martin were all seven. In most homes she suspected holidays and other special occasions were events to be looked forward to. In this one, they were to be dreaded. That was when death was most likely to occur. Jo knew about their upcoming birthdays, but all she could do was pray, like always, that no one would lose their life. Sometimes God answered those prayers. Sometimes he didn't. For whatever reason, he had decided to overlook this one.
And that was another issue she and David had different viewpoints on. Free Will versus Destiny, or does God really exist?
David believed everyone had a destiny, and events in one's life were preordained. She was still on the fence about the whole thing, however, which was strange because every time something horrendous happened she always found herself praying to God it wouldn't happen again, or praying to God it would just end already. Yet, when it was all over, her beliefs switched. If there was a God why doesn't he, or it, intervene, and get them the fuck out of here? David's answer to that was some things had to be endured. ‘What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger’ was his motto. Jo saw it more like, ‘what doesn't kill you just ends up torturing you longer.’
She hated to leave Martin's body on the mattress, but right now her job was to empty their pails and give them food. She pulled herself together and covered him up with his blankets, but that only reinforced the fact that he was dead and it made her cry all over again.
Eventually, Jo's grief exhausted itself and she was gradually numbed back to her old self again. She unconsciously checked the stability of the magazine hidden under her shirt, then got up.
She wiped her eyes on the back of her arms, picked up Martin's pail, hauled it to the surface, then came back down and did the same with Geena's and Jeff's.
She smoothed her shirt, wiped her eyes again on the back of some out-of-date article of clothing, and stepped out of the closet.
Their pails were taken out to the Offal Pit, a deep hole dug in the ground where their bodily waste and other biological discharges—namely, her mother's afterbirths—were disposed of.
A seven foot fence had been built around the perimeter of their property in back. This was an obvious necessity for all the homes they had lived in. They wouldn't have needed it on this one had the woods bordering their property near to the road been longer, but there was an overgrown field way in back—a separate lot up for sale—where the line of trees and brush ceased, giving one of their neighbors across the street a decent view of their house.
The Offal Pit was right at the edge of the woods on the other side of the house. She emptied their pails and stared into it. She'd have to wait for night before she could bury Martin in their graveyard; burials weren't allowed until then. She then glanced back at the fence, to the very top of its wooden points, to make sure no one was there trying to peek over. There had always been moments like this in the past where she became paranoid and had to look around to make sure she was alone, to make sure all the precautions were in place. She hated feeling like this, for it continually reinforced how utterly trapped she was, and would always be.
She returned to the house, set the pails in front of the closet, and then went to the kitchen where she unexpectedly bumped into her mother. She was seated at the table, finishing off her breakfast. Geena's and Jeff's meals needed to be put together and that meant she would have to have her back turned for most of that time. Even though it seemed these were ideal conditions for an ambush, she didn't think it would happen. But that didn't mean she could afford to let her guard down either. If there was anything she had learned living this life, it was that anything could happen to anyone at any time.
Jo assembled two trays of toast and jelly, a bowl of frosted flakes, and orange juice. She made sure she moved in such a way that she wouldn't give away the secret of the magazine under her shirt. Her mother didn't like any one of her children to have anything that might bring even the slightest amount of joy into their lives.
"Cold out?"
Jo was rummaging around in the fridge when her mother spoke. It startled her. A calculated move to rattle her cage, David would say. She pulled herself into a ready stance behind the door. "Yes, it is," she responded, waiting… and waiting… and waiting. That reminded her she needed to check on a certain plug that supplied David with needed heat.
"Ready for school Monday?"
"Sure," Jo replied.
She hated school, every one she had ever attended. She had had only three years of education, not counting kindergarten. It was such a chore for her mother to keep going through the enrolling process every time they moved that, eventually, she just got sick of it. Now she had decided to give her daughter another shot at an education. A whim? A regret? Whatever went through her sick mind had obviously made her think Jo needed more schooling. She already knew what David would say to that. Another calculated move to keep the family as normal looking to the outside world as possible.
"Oh!" her mother uttered. Jo could see from the corner of her eye that she was holding her bloated belly. "Baby's kickin' up a storm today."
Jo quickly scooped the trays into her arms and exited the kitchen. Thankfully, when she came back to wash the old ones, her mother was gone. Again, her back needed to be turned.
After vacuuming and putting the clothes in the wash, tedious chores she could afford to race through, she was finally able to pay David a visit. Otherwise, he would have gone without food and company for the rest of the day. This tended to happen from time to time, but she made sure he never went more than two days without nourishment and a visit.
II
After he re-entered his body, David slowly began to wake up. He had been at that house again, crawling up and down its walls like Jeff Goldblum in the remake of one of his most favorite movies of all time—The Fly.
David was a diehard explorer at heart, and had he been born to a mother with less corrupted DNA he would most certainly be exploring some cavern, or climbing Everest, or having a look at the deepest parts of the Earth's oceans. But normal wasn't what destiny wanted him to be. He was about as abnormal as one could get, restricted by birth in appearance and in mobility, but also by the continued abuse of his mother, who would hurt him just so she could take him to the doctor and have her sick needs attended to rather than his. Munchausen by Proxy is what they called it. An affliction that at its worst had broken bones and put him at death's door more times than he could count.
His legs may be no more useful to him than a random hole in the head, but somewhere along the line, if memory served—around the age of seven—he discovered he could still get out and about through the ability of projecting his soul.
Not only did he have utter freedom now, he no longer had to curse his freakish appearance, or fret over what someone might think if they ever had the opportunity to see him. In fact, appearances meant very little in the world of the soul, it was all about simply being; being here, being there—being where ever he wanted to be.
And where was the first place he wanted to be when he first learned he had this odd ability? Strangely enough, it was on top of his house, on top of any house, or crawling up the side of a house, like a fly. Architecture was another strong interest he had.
If he'd had that other normal life, he certainly would have also looked into being an architect. From the unlovable dwellings he had existed in throughout his life, he was most certainly an expert on what not to build into a home. But, again, that was not a route God wanted him to venture down.
