And then it came to him: Donna had been right. This was God's country. But not the God of the New Testament, the God of love and forgiveness. It was the old God, the God of anger and vengeance, and it had been He who had brought the birds to Gary’s cabin, just as He had brought down the locusts and plagues to Egypt millennia ago. The night had been a test, Gary knew, a brutal test for his cowardly life of indecision and compromises.
But I passed the test. I survived the punishment.
He went back inside. “What am I going to do with you?” he said to the dead birds, then noticed some envelopes scattered over the fireplace hearth.
Gary picked up the envelopes and was surprised to see the first one was blank except for his name. He tore it open.
Gary—
You're probably reading this letter on Friday morning, assuming you've remembered to put the bills out in the mail. By now, I should be well on my way to the Florida Keys with Doug Freeman. I want you to know that he and I are still just friends, and he has helped me try to work through the conflicting feelings I have for you. I met him behind the McNealins’ barn last night—
(of course that's what she did. That's why she was so cavalier about walking. In fact, she was probably in Dougie's truck even before I finally decided to go after her)
—and that’s where he picked me up.
I won't bore you with the reasons for my leaving, but I am tired of Michigan. I am tired of the gloom and cold, and Gary, this hurts me to say this, but I am tired of your worsening, erratic behavior and unwillingness to do anything about it. With a loan that I took from my savings account— (our savings, Donna, and if you get right down to it, my savings)— Doug is going to start up a charter fishing operation in the Keys. I hope you get the help you need, Gary; deep down I believe you're a good man, but just not the right one for me.
Gary let the letter fall from his hands. A large smile worked its way across his shredded face as he casually began throwing the birds into the fireplace until it was filled with bloody, broken bodies. He then re-lit one of the aerosol cans and began moving the flame back and forth across the bodies in wide, even movements. The heat from the flame felt wonderful on his cold skin, and he imagined the heat from the sun in the Florida Keys would feel even better.
Mesh
Michael W. Clark
It was like a fog that enveloped his feet, a fog he could feel. Maybe it was more like a fine mesh net just resting on his skin. At least, it had the lightest of touches, and then his feet were being compressed from all sides. It wasn’t painful yet, but it was annoying. He awoke and quickly reached for his feet. They were bare. He hadn’t slept in his socks this night.
Maybe it was the blanket, but he had kicked it off. He always kicked off the blankets. It was the reason his first and third wife had given for leaving him. His second wife had just disappeared without comment. He had had to get her declared legally dead so he could marry again. He had hated doing it. It had been such an insulting legal process because people made jokes. Terminally Annoyed was the most common joke cause of death. Absent without caring. Lethal Disillusionment. Emotional Starvation. Fatally Fed up. He didn’t think any of them were funny, because they weren’t. People would laugh at any old thing. It was one reason he avoided people when he could.
He wasn’t going to get married again. The airline tickets and immigration process were getting too expensive to do again. It was better to be alone. Wives were like predators, mostly; invaders with teeth to eat up your time and energy. Want want want. If it weren’t for sex, women would have no use at all. It was the only reason he married: unprotected sex, which was the only reason to do it. All the way or forget it. He needed to be uncovered in bed. He needed his freedom. If it weren’t for the earthquakes, he would sleep naked. When he did shower, they were very short. He wanted to be ready to leap and avoid. Earthquakes were like people in that way. Socks were not necessarily necessary. If there had been a large quake that day, he would wear socks to bed. Quicker to get into his thick-soled shoes.
All of his wives had been from Indonesia because of the earthquakes. It was part of living in the Pacific Rim Ring of Fire. They would be used to earthquakes and he wouldn’t have to explain. He never knew much of what they said, nor cared, but they were obliging up to a point. Still, after time, they would keep away from him. It was almost like there was an expiration date on his marriages: pass that date and things were gone.
The last wife was the worst. She resisted almost from the very beginning. He had made each of them sign a contract of duties. It was written in both languages. If there was a dispute, he would bring it out and point to the relevant passages. The third one would hiss at him but follow through on the agreement. She would then whisper in his ear, “I witch.” For the longest time, he thought she was saying, “I wish.” He thought she was fantasizing about someone else, which didn’t bother him at those moments. He was, too. It was only after she had left him, when he thought back about her, that he realized what she really had been saying. In the dim light of his bedroom and his memory, she did look like a witch.
He didn’t mind her leaving that much, though; she seemed to attract spiders. Not that he saw any creatures, just their webs. He could feel them at times on his neck, on his forehead, just slightly there to be brushed away. Sometimes, his whole face would be enveloped by the slight webbing, but then it would be brushed completely away. When she left, he had the place fumigated. He got a guarantee that the poison used would kill spiders. He got it in writing, but it hadn’t: he was still fighting over their failure. They said there were no spiders. But there had to be, there were still webs. More webs!
The next night, the feet fog returned but with a slight change. When he awoke, the sensation had increased from annoying to painful. The fine mesh had a sting to it. Nothing was there as he rubbed his feet with his hands. Then, he rubbed his face. He had sat up into a web. He knew it. It made him quiver with disgust. Spider shit! It was bad. Spiders ate bugs. Spider shit was digested bugs: so much worse. The fumigation should have killed the bugs; the spiders that survived the poison should have starved to death by now. Another violation of the contract: a severe breach!
Of course, all of this was her fault. He was glad he had closed her bank account. He only set it up to get her to stop complaining and shut up. He had put it in her contract. Money for quiet. Now that she was gone, though, he was under no legal obligation to provide her those funds.
In his dream, his feet were covered with a liquid, more like a gel, heavier than suntan lotion. He never liked suntan lotion covering his skin, suffocating his pores. His reaching down as he slept caused him to wake up. His feet were ice. They were so cold despite having his socks on. He pulled them off in the dark and rubbed his feet violently. His rapid reaction caused him to fall out of bed. He stubbed his left big toe and his right thumb in the process. He was sweaty and cold and in pain. “Curse her! The witch!” Maybe those spiders were biting him, and their venom was causing all of this. He had to get the fumigation done again. He would use a different company and send the bill to those incompetents who failed the first time. “Curse them!” He would make duct tape bug traps and send the catch along with the bill.
Of course, the traps didn’t show anything. He was so stupid; he put them on the floor. Spiders are up. He had to put the traps up there where they were. Of course, while placing the traps high, the sore thumb and toe caused him to fall. The traps in his hands stuck to his head and arms. Removing them removed hair, too: such pain she caused him! He made more traps and this time, carefully hung them from the ceiling. If they didn’t get the spiders, they certainly would get the webs.
Despite the cold, he hadn’t worn socks to bed. He lay there in the partial dark and watched the duct tape traps twist in the air. None were of a consistent size. He had been in too much of a rush for that type of detail. He needed legal evidence, not art. The fumigation was scheduled for next week. He even wished for the dreaded spiders to appear.
He fell asleep dreaming of spiders up there in the air above him—wishful dreaming in a way. He dreamed of spiders descending. They were just above his face. They crawled over his feet. He jumped out of bed, wide awake. He stood in the bathtub. He ran hot water over his naked feet. He examined the water for crawlies. There were none.
He dried his feet and examined the traps with a flashlight. He didn’t want to scare away the spiders with the overhead light. There were none. There wasn’t a trace of web or mesh, either. There were long, thick, black hairs, though: his wives’ hair, not his. His was thin, short, and very gray. It had been months, years, since they were here. There shouldn’t have been any of their hair left. Invisible existent spiders. Visible non-existent wife hair.
Contradictions. Too many contradictions.
He had told himself the best policy was out of sight, out of mind. Ex-wives were thus ex-ed out of sight and mind. Why anyone would still want to be friends? He didn’t want to be reminded of any of them. They were mostly problems with very few solutions, so he had closed off their—the wives’—bedroom. He didn’t go in there ever. They would come to him. He thought maybe the spiders were gathering there. It made sense. He first slid a mat of duct tape under the door and left it a day and night. That evening, he decided to sleep in the living room. He dreamed his feet were on fire, but he peed on them to put them out. Thankfully, the inflatable mattress was plastic, so he was able rinse it off.
There was nothing but dust on the duct tape mat. He had to proceed with the new fumigation, no matter what, evidence or not. The wives had been so much trouble and still were. He hadn’t let the wives take his house, although the last one tried and tried. It was his house. It was in the contract. He was certainly not going to lose it to the spiders. He would exterminate them all.
He paid extra to schedule the fumigation date as soon as possible. Still, he was spider defiant. He slept in the wives’ bedroom as a challenge. He put two buckets of warm water by the bedroom for his feet and a plastic tarp under the sheets. The room had been very dusty, but he saw no webs or mesh. He had heard that spiders ate their webs every night and then built a new one the next day. Maybe these spiders just recycled efficiently. He kept missing them. His third ex-wife would love that. She kept telling him he missed out on life. “Miss out,” she would laugh. “Miss! Miss! Miss!” It was an accusation of some kind he never understood. She would laugh harder if he asked for clarification. She was a bitch not a witch. Maybe witch and a bitch; they weren’t mutually exclusive. “Witch bitch!” he yelled at the bedroom ceiling. The spiders might be up there.
He didn’t care about the dust, but it did make him sneeze. He checked the dust layer for spider footprints. He wasn’t certain what they might look like, but he checked anyway. There was nothing there he could determine, but he left the dust undisturbed anyway. They might still scamper out.
The mattress was too soft, just like the wives. Life with him wasn’t that hard, but “Soft! Soft!” they all had whined. It was what he was: a disappointment to them. The experience was mutual. He would kill these spiders, the real spiders and the dream spiders. He heard her laugh in the dream cocoon he broke out of that night. He heard her, too, as he burst awake. “Witch bitch!” he shouted back. He spent the day looking through every inch of the wives’ bedroom. He found nothing. Nothing! All that was there was the dust from before.
He expanded his search to the rest of the rooms of the house. Nothing still. Nothing. Nothing. “In the walls, then!” He banged at the wallpaper the witch bitch had insisted on installing, but he didn’t want to damage the drywall. He could get in between the walls through the crawl space: no need for damage, just a tight squeeze, a thorough, tight squeeze search.
He hadn’t eaten since the night before, which was good because he would be thinner. He went under the house to get in between the walls. He had his flashlight for light and a weapon. He crawled slowly, examining all of the dust and roach bodies. Slow, thorough, and tight was his search. He would continue until he found something. He would find something. It was too dark in between the walls to keep track of time. He searched and searched to no avail but continued, even though he was so tired of it all. At one bend, he fell asleep.
The spiders didn’t come because the exterminators had. They had been given the keys. They prepped and tented the house in the rush they had been paid to do. They had been paid to use extra gas, despite regulations. The house looked like the circus had come to the neighborhood; clowns of death jumped and tumbled throughout it.
But after the appropriate time, the venting fans couldn’t get rid of the smell. It just got worse. The exterminators couldn’t reach their client, so they tracked down his ex-wife. They were surprised by her laughing response.
“About time you called,” she said. “I will be right over to take care. The house is mine. I have the will.”
Der Hölle Racht
Laura Saint Martin
The couch felt better than it looked, a thrift store find of questionable pedigree but unparalleled comfort. It made itself right at home in Rima Sonke’s tiny living room with the ease of a stray cat, world-weary but content.
The old couch was a far cry from the streamlined modular precision-parked in the house Rima once shared with her husband, Derek. Like Rima, it blended itself with the modern granite counters and latest Best Buy toys. Bland, obedient, frictionless surfaces that cleaned easily.
Even blood.
Very little of the blood in the ramshackle tract house Rima now occupied belonged to her or her daughter Haylee. It was one ugly-ass island of calm after the rogue waves of her marriage. They were safe here.
Until Derek found them.
The letter sat unopened on the cheesy kitchen table. It abstracted the once-comforting light, that letter, made shadows clang and bong in Rima’s head. Outside of the little window next to the table, several junk cars ranked themselves in the yard, reminding Rima of unmade beds and unmade decisions. Two retired toilets sprouted weeds. A raven clacked in one of the sentinel pines by the road.
Rima uprooted herself from that nurturing couch, picked up the letter. Like a losing game of rock-paper-scissors, it covered the copy of the Order of Protection.
The court reporter’s well-trained texting,
spells out in legalese perplexing
A strong and dire message authored too concisely to ignore.
A cease/desist to frail bones snapping,
and local gendarme’s schemes entrapping.
The gavel’s final gentle tapping seals the ruling of the Honorable Lenore,
that Derek Sonke will abandon vows of union he once swore
and bother Rima nevermore.
Dreadful day, that. Who likes court? On the other hand, who likes traumatic head injury? Just out of the hospital, Rima appeared at the courthouse in heavy bandages, still using a walker. Derek was there, bandaged himself and wearing his psychic wounds with a Shakespearean verisimilitude, and bolstered by his upstanding pater familias, Deputy Chief Peter Sonke. If not for the judge, a raven-haired, sharp-featured woman from some European micro-country, Rima wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. As it stood, visitation exchanges occurred only at public safety facilities, and Derek was denied information about Rima’s living rearrangements.
A conversation ticked its way through Rima’s head, verbatim:
“How is that poor woman going to be able to enforce that protection order? That family essentially owns this town, this whole county.”
A woman’s voice, almost familiar. Rima concentrated, from a corner outside the courtroom, still scrambled from the concussion. An Assistant District Attorney, powerless to make any charges against the slippery Derek stick.
“With a gun,” came the reply. Another woman, voice rich and authoritarian. The Honorable Lenore Ristani.
“Your Honor, you can’t be serious!” The shocked whisper found a marble wall to bounce off of.
“What else can she do? She tries to call
the cops, who’s going to respond? A Sonke, that’s who. She’ll be the one in jail. They’ve already arrested her for trumped up charges, black-listed her at every possible place of employment. I’m telling you, Sandra, she would be better off killing the bastard and going to prison. She’s safer there.”
Rima’s walker squeaked and the two women turned to her, then disappeared behind a locked courthouse door.
From the yard, a flap and another corvine clacking.
Moving day! Moving day!
Rima had to leave. She rummaged through her handbag, pushed a pill into her mouth, as questionable as the couch, and dragged ten-year-old Haylee out the door. The raven led the way.
The modest road lost itself carelessly in the Missouri vastness, passed farmhouses, fields. Rima and Haylee rode its redolent back, spoke to the tired livestock and their tired stewards as they wandered. One outcropping distinguished itself: tents and trailers in a dustless impermanence, impertinent in the face of so much Midwestern boredom. Rima and Haylee skipped to a carnival that appeared from nowhere.
The raven, sitting on a white pipe gate in front of colorful tents, spoke in a clear voice.
See the show! See the show!
Or did it?
Rima turned her head, saw trails, and wondered what the hell she had taken. The contents of her purse were a continuous adventure since she left Derek and found a new group of friends, hard-partying singles like herself. She steadied her eyes on the raven.
The light refracted from its oiled plumage was not the light of Tornado Alley’s epic skies, not of any known world at all. Alien as starlight, it also wavered around the structures of the carnival, strangely proportioned, now that Rima looked at them. There was a feeling of crowds, yet she saw no one. The music was loud, unfamiliar.
The Half That You See Page 29
