The Death of Wendell Mackey

by C. T. Westing

  “It always is,” Agatha said. “Nothing’s simple. But kids like you, Wendell, were my specialty.”

  “Believe me, Sister, you have no idea…” His hands began to itch again.

  She smiled. “I know. Feels good though, feels good when it’s no longer just your secret. Problems often look much smaller when they’re exposed to the light.”

  No idea at all, he thought. And she thought Drake was bad. If she walked down that alley, now likely flooded and with Drake’s bloody parts drifting in the standing water, she would see what real darkness was: brutal, inhuman, unthinking, and living right across the hall from her. Wendell couldn’t expose that to the light. Stony as Agatha’s constitution might be, seeing that in the light would make her crack.

  “You really don’t get visitors?” Wendell asked.

  “Is that surprising? Parents long dead, siblings spread out all over. Most of my nieces and nephews never even knew me. I’m an old body in an older building. So now, I just visit with those that God drops on my doorstep.”

  “So…were you waiting for me or something?”

  Agatha laughed. “You think I’m obsessive over the new neighbor?”

  “No, not like that. I just figured that…nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Agatha’s gray eyes stayed on him. “Maybe I am in there, waiting for you.” She turned and opened her door. “Don’t go running out of this city without stopping by. Without saying goodbye.” She caught herself, not wanting to forget. “And there’s more bread too. There’s always that. An open chair and a full plate,” and she stepped into her apartment, “and someone sturdier than you think, Wendell.”

  Wendell gave a half-hearted wave as she closed her door. He turned for his, fished the key out of his left coat pocket, and unlocked and opened it.

  Stale. Rotten. Warm.

  Wendell dropped the key on the wooden table and sat down. The itching was getting worse. He took the gloves off and noticed that the black nails were all loose. Another had fallen off, leaving a splotch of dried blood behind. He scratched at his hands.

  And then quickly stopped, feeling something in his palm.

  At first he thought it was a scab, but he couldn’t remember cutting his hands. He looked down to see a piece of skin the size of a quarter in his right palm. Like his feet, his hands were peeling apart. From where the quarter-sized piece came—on the side of his hand below his left pinky—the skin was peeling like an orange rind. There was new skin below, but not the usual pink. Instead it was mottled black and blue, like a bruise, and tougher than normal—almost rigid. He peeled back a bit of skin, wincing, but more out of shock than pain.

  “Son of a…bitch… What am I…I’m—”

  Molting, said the voice in his head. Like snakes, insects, birds.

  Every shell cracks. And then comes the poke of a beak, that three-toed foot pushing away a piece, and new eyes seeing an old world, with squawks and bleats to let everyone know that it has arrived.

  “I’m falling apart, I’m just…”

  Being remade, came the voice again, but now it was Scotia’s. Wendell could almost hear the excitement in it.

  Wendell threw the piece of skin across the table, watching it skip like a stone on a pond, then hit the floor and slip under the refrigerator.

  “First aid kit,” he said, standing up.

  He thought he had seen it somewhere amidst the packrat explosion of his former bedroom. Wendell went into the room, stepped over the papers fanned out just inside the door, and started peaking into boxes. In one box were expired prescriptions, incense sticks bought by the gross and wrapped in plastic, a VHS video series called “The Healer in YOU!”, Hindu prayer cards, and a rosary with a tiny plastic Easter Island head snapped on where a crucifix once hung. Next to it was another box lined with colored candles and jars of government surplus peanut butter. And then there was the paper, a riot of paper. There was glossy paper from a limitless supply of magazines, ripped out and stacked on boxes, on the floor, leaning precariously on his old night stand next to a collection of brown glass bottles stopped with rubber corks. There was lined paper, holding his mother’s furious script, with scribbles of recipes, addresses, even sketches of hands and feet, or facial maladies, things that had piqued her interest—or aroused her anxieties—from her study of medical journals at the local library. And then there were flyers, from basement acupuncturists, hatchback herbalists, spiritualist shamans and dime store preachers. Everything, anything, a sandbox for a tottering shut-in. Wendell surveyed the madness, turning towards the closet and seeing it: on the floor, next to the oxygen tanks. He stepped over the papers on the floor, picked the first aid kit up, dusted it off, and carried it into the kitchen. Sitting down at the table, Wendell opened it.

  Granola bars.

  That they were likely years old didn’t matter. They were wadded up and jammed into his mouth in seconds. He spent the next few moments spitting out pieces of the wrappers. But food was food.

  Looking into the kit, Wendell saw rolls of gauze, scissors, a small bottle of alcohol and cotton balls, batteries, aspirin, a pink road flare, and an assortment of Band-Aids. He grabbed a fat square Band-Aid, pulled off the back, and cautiously stuck it to the quarter-sized hole in his left hand. Closing the kit, Wendell stood up and set it on top of the refrigerator, then pulled out of his coat pocket the pistol, picked up the key from the table, and placed them both next to it.

  He spat again. Another small piece of wrapper.

  He deserved it. He deserved to die. He would have killed me if I didn’t do something first.

  Plain and simple, but little solace.

  “Nothing’s simple,” Agatha had said.

  A homeless man collecting cans, a sanitation worker, or kids walking home from school, somebody would walk down that alley and find Drake, and lose his lunch at the sight. And then everyone would know that some things can’t be undone, and that those things, ghastly and pagan, should remain undiscovered. But it would be too late for that. Shrieks would bring onlookers, all white-eyed and crossing themselves, fingers would work cell phones, and the cops would come, and the institution’s men would hear about it, and know how close they were to him.

  Wendell leaned against the refrigerator, scratching his chin.

  “She won’t believe it,” he said, “she won’t. So forget it.”

  But, what if, just what if she has—

  “—a car,” he said. But did nuns drive? Did they have to swear off possessions and take the bus? Wendell had to confess that he didn’t know. He remembered reruns of The Flying Nun from his overnights at Grandma Mackey’s house, but Agatha didn’t at all resemble Sally Field. And, of course, Sally’s nun didn’t have to drive anywhere. But a car, a car could change things. Perhaps she could drive him out of the city, and drop him off at a gas station, or an empty parking lot. And then he could walk, followed by nothing but his own shadow.

  “Just forget it. It’s not gonna happen.” Wendell sat down at the table, grabbed the pencil, and began to write.

  Can she be trusted? he scrawled into the wood. He squeezed the pencil, and another fingernail fell off. There was no blood. He flicked at it with his middle finger and thumb, and it took flight and landed in the kitchen sink.

  A noise. Probably just a mouse in the ceiling. He looked up.

  The lights were off in the apartment, but Wendell heard the all too familiar hum of neons. He remembered how the institution’s neons would buzz as they warmed up, then hiccup to life and wash the rooms of any color. Something was happening. The humming grew. Then came other familiar noises.

  Gurney wheels.

  The pings of heart monitors.

  Papers shuffling.

  Voices.

  “This isn’t real,” Wendell whispered.

  The apartment’s walls began to crack, and then ripple and shimmer, the drywall moving like water, then bleaching to white and turning to tile before his eyes. The floorboards quivered, melted, and solidified as marble. W
endell stood up, his coat catching his chair and knocking it to the floor.

  The gun.

  He hopped to the refrigerator and grabbed the gun, just before the fridge, counter and sink disappeared behind white tile growing up from the floor. The wooden table and chairs sank into the floor as light fixtures with their buzzing bulbs emerged from the ceiling like oblong growths out of albino skin. Where the freezer door handle once hung was now a yellow sign, materialized out of nothing, with black lettering: Unit 200.

  “I’m not there,” Wendell said, trying to reassure himself, “I’m here, in the apartment, I’m here, I’m here, and there’s nobody else…”

  Like ghosts, doctors walked out of the walls with clipboards and mechanical smiles. Even the smell of iodine returned.

  Dr. Scotia emerged from the wall to Wendell’s right. He looked up from his clipboard.

  “So how are we doing today, Mr. Mackey?” Scotia asked, smiling and showing his teeth.

  “You’re not real,” said Wendell, his voice hollow and wooden.

  “I hate to disappoint, but we are.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “So things are really picking up, I gather,” Scotia said, ignoring Wendell. “It’s quite amazing. A miracle even. Because every birth is a miracle, Mr. Mackey. Don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “Fertilize, water, grow. The unseen becomes seen. New life. Then the parents bring that new life home from the hospital. Feedings, diapers, naps follow. Then piano lessons and baseball games. Then they watch it grow into a good-for-nothing. With enough mental capacity to accept a welfare check,” he continued, looking down at his clipboard for a moment, searching for something, and then: “Ah yes, but dim enough to drop out of community college. Do you understand, Mr. Mackey?”

  “How did you get here?”

  To Wendell’s left stood Dr. Thane, baby-faced and pale, with his black toupee too far down on his forehead.

  “There persists in everyone, Mr. Mackey,” Scotia continued, “this desire for order, to be in control. Your father doesn’t die in an ordered world. Your mother’s psyche doesn’t disintegrate. You don’t end up with us. But here you are.”

  “I’m not going back with you. You’re murderers.”

  The iodine stung, wafting like unholy incense.

  “But an ordered world would be miraculous. And in the end,” Scotia continued, “there really are no miracles, are there? Except, of course, for the ones that we create. You see, Mr. Mackey, you are our miracle. We made you, what you are becoming. The unseen will soon be seen. Just look at your hand,” he said, gesturing with his pen down at Wendell’s left hand.

  Wendell brought the hand up and touched the Band-Aid with the barrel of the pistol.

  “Quite lovely,” said Thane. “You shouldn’t hide it under a bandage.”

  Wendell’s back and head radiated pain. He could almost feel his skin peeling away.

  “You better leave,” Wendell said.

  “That’s why we came for you,” said Thane. “Our miracle.”

  “This won’t end well,” Wendell hissed.

  “You’re in no place to threaten,” Scotia said, his smile growing. “This isn’t even your apartment. Your mother let us in.”

  You’re all gonna burn. For what you’ve done, you’re gonna burn, and I’m gonna light the match. “I got a gun,” Wendell said.

  “And a growing animal lust, I gather,” Scotia replied. “Of course, which one will serve you better?”

  More people materialized out of the walls, more doctors, stopping to take down notes, then staring at him with colorless eyes. Wendell brought the gun up.

  “Salvation in a piece of metal,” said Scotia, “is that right, Mr. Mackey?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. If she were here, I’d shoot her first,” Wendell said, pointing the gun at Scotia, “but since she’s not, I just got you.”

  “Your own mother?”

  “Just wish I had the chance.”

  “Do you actually think she’s gone?”

  Wendell blinked and saw his mother behind his eyelids. “She’s gone,” he said. He pulled the pistol’s hammer back with his thumb.

  Their plastic smiles remained.

  “Come back with us, Mr. Mackey,” said Scotia. “Let us help you.”

  “There’s nowhere else to go,” said Thane.

  And he was right, Wendell knew that. There was no possibility for a new life. No one would rent to a monster. Or hire one. Or befriend one. It could never be different. He couldn’t escape what they had done to him, and as that realization set in, the gun’s barrel turned from Scotia to Wendell’s right temple.

  “Then this is the only way,” Wendell said.

  “Now,” said Scotia, his smile gone, “that would be tragic.”

  But so easy, Wendell thought. Just a few pounds of pressure. And then a silent world.

  Scotia raised a hand, trying to calm Wendell. “Mr. Mackey, that wouldn’t be wise. After all we’ve done for you, as our investment you’re risking—”

  The gun’s barrel went back to Scotia. Wendell was surprised at how easy the trigger pulled, and how loud it was. A cloud of dust puffed from the hole in the wall made by the bullet, but there were no doctors, nobody at all.

  He was alone, his ears ringing.

  The refrigerator was back, as was the sink, the floorboards, walls, front door. Wendell dropped the gun on the top of the refrigerator and looked down at his hands. Creature hands. Then he dropped to his knees before the kitchen table, unsure of what to do next.

  “This is stupid, stupid stupid stupid. It won’t work. It can’t.” Wendell folded his hands together on the table, and looked up at the ceiling—trying to think through the ceiling to the sky above. His mind was empty. No words came. “Just like as a kid,” he said, “just like riding a bike…it’ll come back, it’ll come back.” But what would come back? At what point in his past did he remember praying? It wasn’t a practice modeled by his parents, but more something picked up from watching people on TV shows do it. He looked back down at his folded hands and closed his eyes.

  You’ll try to think of God, he thought, but only she will come to mind.

  “Oh Lord… Dear God…” It sounded ridiculous, like it was all a failed attempt at acting. He couldn’t even pretend correctly. It wasn’t that Wendell doubted God’s existence; it was just all of those things like salvation and repentance, those things preached by the grinning televangelists on Sunday mornings. They pertained to people, to humans. Wendell couldn’t pretend to be in that category anymore. So whatever God offered everyone else bypassed him.

  Still, he closed his eyes again and tried mumbling the words that he remembered from those childhood trips to church healing services with his mother, spoken by those gesticulating preachers from their plywood stages. It was all that came to mind. Maybe God would hear something. Maybe something would stick. Wendell shook his head as he spoke.

  One bullet, in the head. All over.

  He shook his head more, and continued to mumble someone else’s words: “The Lord is my shepherd, I…I… I don’t want to go out this way. He maketh me lie down in… in some place better than this.” He wanted to say more, but what came out were butt ends of sentences and words and phrases his head had collected throughout the years: Jesus, bread of life, something about being born of woman and spirit, of baptism and new life.

  “New life,” he intoned, “new life…new…” He strained to find sense in it, as what he was seeing in his own body was new life, but one far different than what those preachers meant. His new life was ugly and deformed. And dangerous.

  One more bullet.

  “No.” Wendell stopped, opened his eyes and stood up. He tried to recall better days, thinking of his father, but now only seeing his father’s casket, sitting in the funeral home surrounded by flowers. He let his mind focus on the casket, hoping that he would see the lid pop open and his father sit up, grinning and gleeful at the p
rank he had pulled. “I got you guys,” he would yell, “I got you all!”

  If only. So perhaps he should end it all, Wendell thought, and use one last bullet. It was more than tempting, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet at least. So he stared at the wall, at the bullet hole, which seemed to grow in his eyes.

  The knock on the door brought Wendell back to reality.

  “Wendell?” It was Agatha. “Wendell, open the door.”

  She wasn’t going to leave him alone. Wendell wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Three fierce knocks. “Wendell?” She must have heard the shot.

  Wendell put the pistol back on the refrigerator, and turned back to the bullet hole in the wall.

  “Then I’ll have to go and call the police,” she said.

  He stepped towards the door.

  “I’m okay,” he said through it. “I was just moving some boxes, and I dropped some. So…”

  “Open the door Wendell.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “You’re not okay. Open the door.” Now her voice had an edge to it.

  Tenacious, he thought. He didn’t expect that in such a small, old package. Relenting, Wendell opened the door.

  “You think I’m stupid,” she said, her eyes firm. “Boxes? That’s the best you’ve got? I’ve fired plenty of guns, and I know one when I hear one.”

  “Listen, I know you were friendly with my mom, but I’m okay.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “So what? I’m not your problem.”

  “Just don’t lie. Tell me the truth and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Fine. It’s nothing. Accidents happen, and…”

  “Accidents? So you do think I’m stupid.”

  Wendell sighed. “Because not much is accidental, right?”

  “So you were listening.”

  “Look, what do you want from me?”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “You do this a lot, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Actually, yes.”

  Let her push you, he thought, let her push you a little more and that switch will be thrown again. Just like with Drake. You know it will. And then she’ll see.