Scarlet Dusk

by Megan J. Parker

  “Bookworm.”

  “Dweeb.”

  “Dyke.”

  The last word she’d been unfamiliar with the first time it had been used against her, and, being cursed with an inquisitive nature, she’d made the mistake of asking her teacher what it meant. Not pleased with the question and misunderstanding the reason behind it, her teacher had called her a “stupid little bitch” and sent her to the corner for saying a bad word.

  And while “dyke” had not come up in any of Mary’s books, the young girl had read enough over the years to see the event as a cruel irony.

  The kids all said that she should kill herself and gone to great lengths in describing the different ways she could do it. During recess, many even cornered her with their cell phones opened to internet pictures of kids who had committed suicide, telling her that their chosen method would be the best for her.

  Mary didn’t want to die, though. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It just had become too much for her to handle; all the pain and ridicule that her peers subjected her to had become too much to simply let accumulate in her mind. And so, during a trip to the library—after getting away from her mother long enough to use one of the facility’s computers in private—she’d looked up bullying on the internet, and soon thereafter discovered that others like her had turned to cutting as a means of venting the inner pain with outer pain. Intrigued by the notion, Mary had tucked it away as something to explore later and, still curious about what had gotten her into so much trouble, searched “dyke.”

  The computer had blocked her access then, and the head librarian had pulled her away from the computer and back to her mother, explaining that she’d caught her daughter attempting to look up pornography on their system.

  And so, though she was no closer to knowing what a “dyke” was—though she was certain it had some connotation to a crocodile in much the same way a “bitch” was a female dog—she began cutting. It had been an easy enough task retrieving one of her father’s razorblades; though she was not quite tall enough to reach them in the medicine cabinet, she’d been able to use the ceramic crucifix adorning the bathroom sink to pull it into her waiting grasp. Several months later, the stolen razor wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been—the more recent efforts stinging a great deal more than before and the wounds not healing as quickly or as cleanly—but, as she’d been clever enough to read the secrets of cutters, mostly how to hide the wounds by avoiding commonly seen parts of the body like the wrists and arms, she’d never had to worry about being caught.

  She was in the process of her sixth cut that morning—three already on her right leg and into the third on her left—when her father’s typical wakeup call came upon her door. Startled, she’d yanked the blade a bit too quickly and, in doing so, cut a bit too deep and a bit longer than she’d intended. Working quickly to bandage the wound with more and more toilet paper, she worked to mask the sound of pain on her voice by assuring her father that she’d be down in “two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “That’s my perfect little pumpkin,” her father had beamed from the other side of the door before moving back down the stairs.

  Still working to stop the bleeding, little Mary had stifled her morbid literary mind’s eagerness to point out that people carved pumpkins, as well.

  Not even five minutes later the entire Miller crew was seated at the table and happily sharing their morning breakfast.

  “Mary,” Missus Miller chimed in after swallowing a mouthful of eggs, “Where’s that pretty yellow ribbon I got for your hair?”

  Mary poked a strip of bacon with her fork before looking at her mother. “I wanted to wear my hair down today, Mother.”

  “Oh nonsense!” Missus Miller waved her hand at the suggestion, “A pretty little girl should have a pretty ribbon in her hair. It’s how the world can see she’s so happy.”

  “Now you mind your mother, Mary,” Mister Miller chimed, not looking away from his paper. “Your mother spent good, hard-earned money on that ribbon to make you happy, so you be a good little girl and wear it, you hear?”

  Mary poked at the bacon again. “Happy. Right,” she nodded and smiled to her mother, “I’ll put it in after breakfast.”

  “That’a girl,” Mister Miller turned the page of his paper. “J-man, how’s that Sunny-D working for you, m’boy? Helped you forget all about that nightmare, didn’t it?”

  Jeremy shook his head, “Not really, Dad. It was a pretty—”

  “Darn it, boy,” Mister Miller set down his paper and locked his steely gaze on his son, “I’m trying very hard to have a pleasant morning before I go off to work so that I can keep putting bacon on this table for you. I’d like to think that my work is appreciated, and I’d like to have the last thing I see every morning be a happy family that I can feel proud to come back to. Now I’ll thank you to stop complaining about your stupid nightmare and be pleasant. For cripe’s sake, boy, your grandmother’s here! Try to show her some happiness!”

  Jeremy sighed and nodded, finally smiling and taking a bite of his bacon. “Right, Dad,” he said with half a strip of meat between his teeth.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, son. It’ll give you lockjaw. And, Tiffany, stop stirring your food and eat it. You’re never going to get a quarterback boyfriend if you’re all skin and bones.”

  Tiff looked up and bit her lip, finally putting down her fork and clearing your throat. “Actually, Mom and Dad, I wanted to talk to you about that? I was really hoping you’d allow me to ask the captain of the sports team out on a da—”

  Mister Miller perked up, letting his gaze pierce the rim of his lowered newspaper. “The captain of the football team? My my, Tiff, I’ve been waiting for some time to hear you say th—”

  “Umm, no, Dad… the captain of the basketball team?” Tiff corrected him.

  The room went deathly silent.

  “Oh, baby… no.” Missus Miller cupped her hand over her mouth, fighting a wave of tears.

  Grandma leaned towards little Mary—the closest to her—and whispered. “Did she say the ‘basketballs’ team?”

  Mister Miller frowned and shook his head, setting down his paper calmly, “Now, Tiff, I thought we talked about this sort of thing. Football’s a good, clean American sport, like baseball used to be. But basketball…”

  Tiff shook her head, cupping her hands on the side of her head, “No, Dad, don’t say it. Don’t give me a reason to—”

  “Sports like basketball are sullied and unholy; dirtied up by all those minorities!”

  “That’s it, Dad,” Tiff threw her napkin on the plate and stood up, “This… I don’t know what it is, this act has got to change! You and Mom pretend that we’re in some TV Land rerun while you tote Grandma around like some sort of novelty. Meanwhile, one of your teenaged kids can’t even own a cell phone like every other person in this country—I practically had to move Heaven and Earth to convince you I should have one!—and, to make matters worse, you refuse to let him date and tell me who I should date based on your dated racist bullshit!”

  Missus Miller gasped, “Oh my… Tiffany Frank Miller!”

  “Oh please, Mom, we both know that you’ve had dirtier things come out of and go into your mouth!” She planted her hands on the table and stared down her enraged father, “And while we’re on the subject on dating, I think it says something that the fact that Jeremy—without any outlet for his budding curiosities—has become a chronic masturbator who’s honestly libel to sell the living room TV if he could get his hands on a decent porno DVD.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened. “Shut up, Tiff.”

  “It’s fine, Jeremy,” Tiff assured him, “It’s not like it’s not obvious—and, quite frankly, it’s perfectly normal; though you wouldn’t know it to ask our parents, even though Mom caught me when I was your age, as well.”

  Missus Miller gasped, “Tiffany! A lady doesn’t talk about—”

  “And a lady shouldn’t sell anal sex to truckers who could film it an
d leak it to the internet, Mom! But a few clicks on my friend’s laptop and—OOP!—there it is; the picture-perfect Missus Miller getting spit-roasted for fifty bucks. Now be quiet or I’ll tell Dad the URL to find out for himself what sort of woman he married.”

  Mister Miller’s eyes widened as his wife of fifteen years promptly sat down at her daughter’s command, shivering like an autumn leaf.

  “Tilly?” Mister Miller looked at his wife.

  She didn’t respond.

  “She’s coming to grips with her mistakes, Dad. Maybe you should take a hint from her. Maybe you should abandon the ongoing charade of pretending to be the perfect family—telling people you’re the perfect parents—and actually try proving it for once.” Tiff nodded to little Mary, “Let’s talk about Mary, for example. You’re both so blinded by the stories you’re hiding behind, that you’re actually neglecting a genius! Did you know that Mary can read at a college level, Dad; that she’s actually helped me with my book reports? Hell, she’s practically a child-prodigy—a self-made one, I should point out, ‘cause you’ve certainly nurtured none of it—and she could go on to do great things. Don’t remember any of this, do you? Or about how she’s come home with multiple notices from the school asking for your permission to move her into a higher grade. If you don’t remember any of those I can shed some light on the mystery: see, the first notice she brought home—singing and dancing the entire way, I might add—she had the pleasure of watching you rip up right in front of her. And why? Because you didn’t listen to your daughter or read anything on the page! You just shredded it and kept saying how you wouldn’t be signing a permission slip to have some ‘godless fool teaching your god-fearing kids about premarital sex.’ After that little show, she’d never bothered showing you the rest. I’ve seen her ripping them up and telling herself that Daddy doesn’t care enough to see her go places.” Tiffany shook her head. “You’re so eager to convince yourself and others that you’ve freed yourself from your dark pasts that you’re oblivious to the fact that your children are being forced into their own dark present just to let you feel comfortable in your charade. But I can’t sit by and let you fuck up our lives just so you don’t need to feel a moment of shame at how truly fucked up yours was!”

  “Young lady,” Mister Miller was shaking mad, already in the process of rolling up his newspaper, “I ask for very little in return for all I do for you kids, but when my eldest starts spewing the devil’s poison at the breakfast table, I can’t help but—”

  Somebody pounded on the front door.

  Mister Miller stammered in mid-rant, glancing at the door for a moment. “Who in the blazes?” he grumbled, looking back at the grandfather clock at the end of the room and shaking his head. “Six-thirty in the morning? What sort of business does anybody have knocking on a man’s door at…” He retrieved his dress shirt from the back of his chair and slipped into it, sloppily working to button it up as he hurried to the door, “Give them a piece of mind, I will. Interrupt a family at breakfast!”

  Missus Miller bit her lip, “Dear, your blood-pressure.”

  “Blood-pressure?” Tiff scoffed, “Dad doesn’t have any health problems, short of being clinically insane! What’s with you people? Do you just get high every morning and make up what character from The Jeffersons you want to be?”

  “Listen to me, you little bitch! The mistakes your father and I made in the past will pale in comparison to the one you’re making right now! Now you will shut your nigger-loving mouth and sit the fuck down or I will do what I should’ve done sixteen years and end you!”

  Tiffany narrowed her eyes, “You use the N-word around me again, and I’ll show you how real badasses roll in this century. And if you think that I—or any of us—are going to stick around in this house with a delusional druggie and his gaping anal-whore of a trophy wife, then you must really be high.”

  “Son of a—” Mister Miller stared at the empty front yard, shaking his head. “Doesn’t make any sense! I was certain I heard—”

  Another knock. This time from the back patio.

  “The backyard?” Mister Miller heaved, “These assholes are starting to get on my last fucking nerve! Now their trespassing!”

  Mister Miller continued to mumble as he stormed across the hall and disappeared into the living room—his irate rant, though muffled, still audible—as he worked his way towards the back of the house. “—and if I catch that little bastard sneaking any more of the pulled pork during his shift, I’m going to cut his—HOLY SHIT!”

  The rest of the Miller family—with the exception of a very startled Grandma—jumped away from the table as the sound of something crashing through the sliding back door thundered throughout the house.

  “Oh my—D-dad?” Tiff, despite their heated argument, was the first to start towards the sound.

  “To hell with this!” Missus Miller shook her head, already bolting for the front door. “It’s not worth it to die for this shit!”

  “Mommy?” Mary’s eyes were already welling with tears as she watched her mother running away.

  Missus Miller yanked open the door, already preparing to sprint for her new life, and fell back in an effort to distance herself from the creature occupying the front porch.

  “Pardon the intrusion, madam, but do you have a moment to discuss our dark lord and master, Satan?”

  Tiffany turned, hurrying back to her brother and sister at the sound of their mother’s terrified cries, and fell back at the sight of what had just stepped inside:

  The creature, forced to duck under the door frame, must have been about eight feet tall. It stood, seeming somewhat unbalanced—perhaps drunk?—over their mother, looking around at the rest of them before kicking the door shut. As she got a better look at the intruder’s legs, she saw that he was wearing some sort of alligator or synthetic lizard-like pants that, when coupled with his humongous reptile-replica boots, gave the appearance that he had dinosaur legs. None of this, however, seemed too strange as she took in the rest of the sight. Twin trails of dark blood followed him; the first coming from his left arm, which, though there was some sort of growth that somewhat resembled a little arm jutting from the center, looked to have been freshly severed. The second trail of blood, one that Tiffany was content not learning any more about, seemed to be coming from the intruder’s backside. His face—if it could even be called that—looked like something from a horror movie. A bunch of bony horns sticking out from the top of his head above a dark-red, leering face with burning eyes and a wide, jagged sneer; all of which was tattooed—or engraved?—with pale-yellow designs that looked like claw-marks carved into the skin.

  And as though the entire vision wasn’t enough of a nightmare on its own, he had a woman—an unconscious, nearly naked blonde—tucked under his one good arm.

  “Jesus Christ…” Tiffany gaped.

  “Not quite, doll,” the intruder offered, “But we get mixed up all the time.”

  The Miller kids ran, sweat and tears pouring down their faces, until they couldn’t bring their bodies to run any further. They’d easily put three miles between themselves and their home—no, not theirs; not anymore; not by any stretch of the imagination—and they still had a few miles left before they reached their uncle’s house.

  “Do you really think Uncle Howard is going to let us stay with him?” Jeremy asked, still breathing heavily from their sprint.

  Tiffany, now carrying a whimpering and very tired Mary on her shoulders, shook her head. “I don’t know; I hope so. He seemed pretty annoyed by Mom and Dad’s bullshit the last time we visited, so I’m sure he’ll understand why we finally had to leave.”

  “Wh-what was that thing?” Mary sobbed.

  “Looked like one of the bad guys in my friend’s fighting game.” Jeremy offered. “Maybe he was some kind of psychotic cosplayer or something.”

  “Yea… maybe,” Tiffany mumbled, not believing it. Something in the things he’d said; the way he moved.

  Their mother had
n’t lasted too long. As soon as the intruder had gotten a quick look around he’d dropped the naked woman he’d come in with and snatched up their mother, taking her by the throat in his one arm and stabbing her through the back on the coat rack, leaving her shrieking and flailing in an effort to free herself.

  “Stay there, darling,” the intruder had laughed, stepping past her. “I left your husband in the living room underneath your grill. You prefer medium or medium-rare?”

  Grandma had finally gotten to her feet by that point, though she, like Tiffany, didn’t seem to know what good that was going to do any of them.

  With the intruder in the living room, Tiffany had hoped to help her mother down, but found the task of lifting her bodyweight enough to ease her off the slight incline of the coat rack’s jutting hook proved too difficult. In her effort to get her thrashing mother down, the coat rack had tipped and sent the two toppling over. Tiffany had hit the floor hard enough to numb her elbow and twist her ankle, but her mother—almost six inches taller while stuck to the rack—slammed into the front door, the fake crystal doorknob breaking against the force of her forehead and spilling a torrent of blood down on Tiffany, who screamed as her dead-eyed mother crashed to the floor in front of her.