by Mav Skye
And then I remember the gunshot. May!
I turn.
She is sitting on her knees behind me, searching the carpet.
“The gunshot was you?” I ask.
May is sobbing and blubbering, her words just barely intelligible. “It was going to eat you…” Spotting the gun, she collects it and hugs it to her chest, rocking.
I wrap my arms around her and she cries into my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I say, looking at the melting women, as they reach for something they will never find. I take a closer look at the figures, the way they reach and plead. I realize they are begging for the knives to deliver them. Fat Bastard’s knives. He considers himself some kind of sick savior.
“It’s not okay,” she says. “I’m going to die. The whistling deer head told me so.”
I wrap my arms around her tighter, looking at the daggers on the ceiling. “Fuck the whistling deer head,” I say.
May stops crying, Her grasp on the gun tightens. “Don’t say that.”
I don’t like the look on her face or the way she speaks. I need to get her out of here. Now. But, looking around the room, I know. “The key is here.”
May crawls behind me and ties my bra straps behind my neck like a halter. The girls are cozy in the nest again.
I observe the figurine that had tried to “eat” my hand. Her head has fallen all the way back on a hinge mechanism, so it rests upside down between her pale shoulder blades, a secret grin on her lips and a haunted knowing in her carved eyes. I wonder if her head is the light switch.
May is thinking what I am and we both stand up. “Leave the gun on the floor,” I tell her. She starts to protest and I point at the thick green carpet with big sister authority. She sets it down.
We both inspect the figurine. A steel dagger is glued just below the slit where the head slides on the throat. Chills zip down my arms. I lift the marble head. It snaps back in place and the lights go out.
“Turn them back on!” says May.
I tip the head back. The room is illuminated once more. “Alright?”
May nods, her eyes large as quarters. We look inside the neck. There’s a small push switch. I touch it and the lights go out, I let go. On.
“Weird,” I breathe.
“You’re right,” says May. “The key is in here with the sisters.”
“Sisters?”
She gestures toward them, “The sisters of pain.”
8
Creepier Than a Clown Living in a Gutter with a Knife
I comb over the marble statues, my fingers feeling every cleft and intimate shape of them. I hate it. It’s as if I’m exploring the bodies of the women he raped, tortured, killed and… what? Buried? What did he do with those bodies?
May explores the cabinet under the bubble wall. Mostly it contains the water pump and filters. “And books,” she says.
“What kind of books?” Not that I really care. I had already trashed a bunch of his biology and art books in the living room.
“This one says, ‘The Living Cadaver.’ ”
“Eww,” I say.
May tosses it like a Frisbee across the carpet. “This one is-- Oh!” she says, “’IT’ by Stephen King. Remember when we read that one.”
“We read the beginning together, then you freaked out because the kid with the sailboat—“
“Got ripped to pieces by that clown. That’s fucking creepy.” She gently sets “IT” aside, and ransacks the rest of the books on the shelf.
I explore the crevice between a dark figure’s thighs, what I am doing is more creepy than a sparkly clown living in a gutter with a knife. I notice a deep gouge on the upper thigh. Either it is a mistake in the marble work or another piece of a pathetic puzzle in Fat Bastard’s fucked up imagination.
May says, “Did you finish the book?”
I look at her. “Book?”
“’IT’-- duh.”
“Of course, I did.” I tap on the gouge, insert my fingers into it. Do a karate chop on it. My hand stings again. I pat the knees. Hit them to see if anything happens. Maybe the whole body will fall backwards revealing a secret room under the floor. I slap her arms. Push her head back. My muscles strain and ache. I want to kick the whole thing over and scream. The gouge is just a dumb flaw.
May sighs. “I wish I finished it. Was it a good ending?”
Exasperation leaves me, and my thoughts return to the book. I smile, thinking of the monster and the grown up kids who defeated IT. In a way, May and I are just like them. “Oh yeah, trust me. That gutter clown spider thingy got what was coming.”
May says, “Piggy’s gonna get what’s coming.”
I don’t like the sound of her voice. She is disconnecting again. I say, “When we find that key, we can kick back in Florida for a few weeks, or wherever you want, and read that book in a day.”
She frowns. “I don’t think so.”
I frown too, something deep down inside tells me she’s right. We go back to looking.
After awhile, May says, “I’m hungry. I’m going to get that apple from earlier.”
“May?”
“Huh?”
“Leave the gun.”
May sets it down on the floor again and quietly leaves.
I avert my gaze as I grope a sister’s breast. A book cover catches my eye. I can’t read the title. It’s buried under a paperback. May had thrown the books everywhere, like I had done in the living room. It is an act of desperation, of things unsettled.
“Just like your mother…”
I jolt. Who said that? “May?”
The only reply is the gurgle of the bubble wall. Mother, she always trashed the place, especially when she wanted something. Badly.
A memory jumps at me: mother in her coral nightgown, her nipples poking through thin sateen. She stands tiptoe on our coffee table, feeling around in the ceiling light pan.
The couch is overturned. Garbage is everywhere. The wall is a rusted sunset under torn wallpaper.
“God damn it!” she shrieks every time she doesn’t find the stash, followed by, “Ah, hell.”
Me in the corner, my super cape wrapping my shoulders like a blanket, hoping she doesn’t find it.
“Ah, hell, where the goddamn is it. Did you hide it on me? Huh?” Still on tiptoe, unscrewing the glass fixture, she dumps the dead bugs on the carpet and stares at me, her eyes glassy with need of a fix. “Speak up, girl. Did you hide it on me?”
I shake my head no, even though I’m lying. The Supergirls hid it, under the carpet in the closet. A wave of guilt tosses my insides, and I feel sick.
“Mommy?” I ask. She is trying to screw in the glass covering but instead drops it on the carpet. We both hear it crack.
“What the fuck do you want, Jen-Jen?” She jumps off the coffee table and wiggles underneath, her nightgown climbing up the front of her thighs, exposing the shaved double curves where “men stick it in and babies come out.” I turn my head to not see, and hear her scraping at the wooden legs.
“Mommy, where is hell?” I worry about it. Supergirls aren’t supposed to lie.
She thumps her hand on the underside of the table. “Cotton pickin’ niggers stole it from me.” Mother pulls herself out from under the table. I look at her, and she is watching me, a sober grimness in her eyes. “Hell is behind a black door.” She scrutinizes me. “And one day, you’ll find it, and thee will smite the devil.”
My mouth is numb, and my eyes won’t move.
Mother laughs and shakes her head. “The one thing my own mama taught me is R-e-v-e-l-ations, darlin’. R-e-v-elat…” But mother had already eyed something else to destroy in the kitchen. She lumbers off.
I stay in my silent corner.
Behind a black door. I think of the black door in the kitchen. There’s no way, no fucking way--
May’s half naked body fills the doorway. She is pale and holding an apple as far from herself as possible.
“May, why are you shaking?”
She shrug
s. “I’m just really hungry.” She takes a bite and looks away.
“Is Fat Bastard still there?”
She nods, but doesn’t look at me.
Shit, is all I can think.
After an hour, we exhaust the figurines. Every sister of pain pulled, yanked, touched and pounded on every smooth crevice.
We stand in the middle of the room. “I just know it’s in here,” I say, but I don’t feel it with as much conviction as before.
“Maybe it's up there.” May points at the ceiling.
I look up at the daggers and it’s like something clicks. I run to the figurine with the gouge in her thigh. “Look at this.”
I slide my finger over the gouge, and we both look at the ceiling. “One of the daggers fit right here.”
“The key is inside her,” says May. “But how do we get up there?”
“Kitchen chairs.” I made for the door.
May blocks me. “Oh no, I’ll get it. You’re busy.”
I raise my eyebrow at her. “O-k-a-y.”
She dashes out. I contemplate the daggers.
May jaunts into the room, sets the chair beside me, and steadies the back.
I balance on the chair tilting my head up to the ceiling. The dagger handles are made of opals, iron, carved wood. They sink half way into the ceiling. I notice they are clustered in groups of five, the spines turned out, the blades in. “Stars.”
“What?”
“They’re in shapes of stars.”
“What the…”
Before she finishes her sentence, I pull on the spine of a blade belonging to an opal handle. It gives just a quarter of an inch. Weird. I jiggle it back up.
“Fuck!” May jars the chair I’m standing on.
I wobble. “Take a chill pill already.” I yank the spine again hoping it’ll break free. It moves down just a tiny bit like before.
“They’re watching us.”
“Huh?” I glance down at May and she is shaking, watching the sisters of pain. Nothing seems different to me. Then I catch the eye of a white marble face closest to us. Is she looking away? I swear they all had been looking straight ahead before.
Slowly, I push the blade up. There is a heavy click. Dozens of pupils flick from one corner of their eyes to the other. They are all looking at us, each of them. My heart leaps into my throat. “OH.”
We stand there, a million seconds ticking by, eye to eye with the sisters. Their eyes don’t move again. I look away from their faces to the opal dagger. The statues aren’t alive. The blades control them.
“I’m going to pull on this again. I think it controls their eyes.” I pull down and their eyes move back to the forward position we found them in.
“O-m-g!” May shrieks. “Do another!”
I pull on another blade in the cluster, and then another. The daggers hug the ceiling tight as glue, not giving even a millimeter.
“Try another star!”
I reach to the star of blades to my right and spy a blue opal handle. I tug on its blade. There is a heavy sigh, a clank, and all the right arms of the sisters of pain move from their resting positions to an upward wave.
“Unbelievable.” I wiggle the dagger up and down. They all wave.
“Pull them both at the same time!” By the sound of May’s high-pitched shrieking, and the wave of her arms with the sisters, May was not… right. But these were like giant dolls. I’m just as fascinated by them as she is.
I pull on the opal dagger directly above me, and the blue opal to the right. Marble eyes rolls, hands wave.
May claps her hands like a five year old. “Do more! More! Show us what you got, sick fucker!”
Glancing to my left, there clings another star to the ceiling. Sure enough, there is an orange opal handle huddled with others. I pull it.
“And there goes the lefties! Ha!” May starts to spin as I spread my arms as wide as they go and yank on the left and right opal blades. The marble sisters wave, they worship the stars, and I… I was their moon. Their arms waver like wheat stems to the god above in the green room, screams on their lips.
I stop and breathe and think.
I, the moon, am their god. They revolve around me in the dark, begging for light, pain, death. Only I am not their creator, Fat Bastard is. I drop my hands from the blades, feeling like the monster himself. Everything in the room represents something. The wall of bubbles gurgle quietly. What do they represent in Fat Bastard’s imagination? My stomach feels sick, and I think of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hodgkins.
Mrs. Hodgkins said, “Imagination without boundaries is always a good thing, it can do no harm. Now draw me a picture.” I drew unicorns dancing on clouds above an ocean filled with sea flowers.
I smile at the memory and then frown. My head hurts, like a giant toothpick is entering from the back of my skull.
Suddenly, May shrinks away and the green room fills with desks. At each desk sits a marble sister, their cold eyes staring forward. Mrs. Hodgkins stands before the wall of bubbles. She pivots and strolls back and forth, back and forth, shaking her head in disapproval.
Blood red hair falls softly against her forehead. Broken eyeglasses frame black empty eye sockets. Red gunk spiders out of the hollow of her left eye. She stops, turns to the bubble tank glass. Lifting her finger like a piece of chalk, blood chalk, Mrs. Hodgkins writes her name in dark red and teacher perfect handwriting.
I’m too distracted to follow her finger, because Mrs. Hodgkins’s brains are blown out the back of her head. Her proper dress is torn down the middle revealing white scars. Blood drips down the tank to the carpet, and when she bends down her shredded dress lifts showing the tops of her black thigh highs. Her hose are filled with runs.
“The truth,” Mrs. Hodgkins says, standing back up and turning to her cold marble pupils, “is imagination without boundaries is like a gun, it can be dangerous and kill.” She turns slightly and points to the back of her head to demonstrate. Her brains spill over the left crevice of her skull, clinging like hardened jelly. “Or imagination can save lives.”
Mrs. Hodgkins pauses, and inspects me in my wonder bra and sexy get away jeans. The sisters of pain follow her gaze. They all examine me.
I’m standing on the kitchen chair, caught with my hands on dagger blades. I want to cover myself and hide.
She says, “Supergirls stay together.” Her front teeth fall loose from their sockets and she spits them on the ground. Her stone pupils repeat her, “Supergirls stay together.”
Mrs. Hodgkins stumbles against the bubble tank, she melts like a snowman under a summer sun. Her voice and the sisters say in unison, “Supergirls stand together.”
May tugs on my jeans. “Why’d you stop, girl? What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re white as a…”
Mrs. Hodgkins is gone and so are the desks. I grab my head. The headache is gone. What was that? What’s happening to me? One thing is clear-- “We need to find the key and get out.”
“I want to see if their heads slide side to side like Egyptians.” May wiggles her head back and forth like an owl as she says this.
“No.” I get off the chair and look at the clusters of stars, looking for one that was… I don’t know. Different. “That key, remember? That’s what were looking for.”
May pouts.
A gleam catches my attention from the middle of the room. A star cluster is centered around a delicately curved spine, the blade is serrated. “It’s that one,” I say and point to it.
May eyes it and claps.
I move my chair directly below it and balance once more. The handle is crystal carved into a unicorn’s head with inlaid rubies and emeralds. “Must be worth a fortune.” I reach for it, and as I do, realize the ceiling is higher in this one spot. I tip toe on the chair. “Hey, will you hold the chair for me? It’s so high.”
May grabs the back of the chair. I reach as high as I can. My finger scrapes the tip of the spine. “I’m going to have to stand on the back of this thing.” Before May
can react, I step up to the back of the chair with one foot, distributing my weight to the center and push up. I grab a nearby blade to balance, and reach again for the spine. I grasp it and yank. “Got it!” It doesn’t budge. I feel like I am dangling in mid air, suspended by invisible spider webs. Eeek. I look at May. She looks so disappointed. I know, know, this is the one. I grasp the blade again, the spine inside my palm. My fingers hug the blade, lightly, ever so lightly. I yank with everything I got.
It falls free. Just like that. And I fall with it.
9
The Dead Can’t Dance
“Holy shit!” May’s leaning over me. She’s scrubbing with my Godzilla t-shirt at the blood trickling down the crook of my arm, streaming into the pool of my stomach. When she cleans most of it away, all that is left is a good scratch up my forearm from the dagger.
“Thank God,” she mumbles.
“What a mess you are,” I say. Her face and arms are smeared in my blood, along with the t-shirt. The corners of her mouth lift and she shrugs.
For an instant, her face changes. Blood steams from her eyes, she is pale as the white sisters, her eyes dark as the black. Her lifeless lips open, whisper, “Maybe we should just leave.”
I gasp and reach for her.
“What?” she asks simply.
And the weirdness is gone, she is alive and the tears of crimson gone. “Nothing,” I say.
I sit up and pick up the dagger. I twirl the crystal unicorn head in my palm, the action makes the scratch bleed again.
“It’s so pretty,” says May, gently touching the handle. It feels like more than just a blade in my hands. It feels like life.
I look up at May, and I swear she’s thinking the same thing.
“Come on, Supergirl.” She walks with me over to the sister of pain.
I lift the blade to slip it into the marble figure’s thigh when May puts her hand on mine, stopping me.
