by Aaron Dries
When she did fall pregnant, Napier began to hate his wife for her female parts—he saw them as a weak tarnish on an otherwise functional body. They were pink and hollow. He didn’t trust them—and this was why.
Napier didn’t want no pussy shits running around. He was thankful when it died in the womb. Perhaps God had heard his prayers, after all. It had been a girl. Rosemary named her Sally. Guy never asked what they did with the remains. But he did wonder.
Sam came later. Another surprise. By this time, Rosemary was already dying. Each day seemed to bring her closer to death and he could feel her slipping away from him. She grew skeletal.
He’d never known such agony. Despite her sharp lip and ability to aggravate him over the smallest of things, he didn’t want her to die—even if she had allowed herself to fall pregnant for a second time. He couldn’t handle being alone again.
He was being punished, but he didn’t know what for.
The first time he’d held Sam in his hands he felt a small thrill for the duties of fatherhood. But it was no more than that, just a flicker. The boy in the bassinet looked so much like a worm he could hardly tell its head from its asshole. Once Rosemary was dead, he wondered if he should drown it.
He remembered the cat pieces against the boot. His son was the same size.
Once Rosemary was gone, he sensed her spirit haunting him, mingling with his melancholy. Napier wondered if he’d ever loved her the way he should have, and now looked back on his time with her with a warm appreciation he never knew was there. He would sometimes be woken in the night by his guilt as though it were a tangible force, hating himself for lashing out at her like he sometimes had. God was nowhere to be felt.
Rosemary’s parents helped look after the pussy shit. The white maggot.
He stopped eating, stopped brushing his teeth. His toothbrush became a home for a colony of red spiders within six days. Somehow, he managed to survive on freelance jobs.
A wet winter moved into North Bend and never seemed to go away.
A clothesline and an old tree in the bottom right-hand corner distinguished the Napiers’ backyard. Every so often, he would throw a beach towel over the frosty grass and look up at it. Passing threads of clouds led to the illusion that the tree was in constant motion, crawling towards him. Forever falling.
Three months before he left for South America for the second time, he showered, washing his hair twice. He combed his hair, which he never did, but that particular Tuesday the compulsion to do so was insatiable. He ate a bowl of cereal. Half a banana. He left the remains on the kitchen table. They would remain there for a week, crawling with insects. He took the four pairs of shoes he owned, tied them together with their own laces and threw them over the branches of the leafless tree.
When he was done, he stood back and looked up at his handiwork, the bones in his neck cracking. A pair of slippers. Loafers. Steel-capped boots. Soiled sneakers. They all swung in the wind, tapping against the bark. The sound was soothing.
Next, Napier took one of the few remaining travel books he owned and tore out all of its pages. He made two hundred-and-one small paper hats over the next two hours. He laid them out on the lawn in rows, like soldiers who cast no shadows. Before going into the house to make dinner, he looked over his shoulder at his day’s work. Some of the hats had blown over in the just-after-sunset breeze. He smiled to know some still stood.
That night, just before falling asleep, he thought about his parents for the first time in years. He missed his mother’s hands—the first to comfort, the first to discipline. Missed the bristles of his father’s unshaven neck, grazing against his forehead, the smell of yeast and alcohol in his skin. He remembered his time in the seminary, in South America. The bloodied Christ figures in all of the churches, gashed and torn up. He thought of all the times he was happy and not alone and almost suicidal. Of all the time spent with Rosemary, before the baby shit. The white maggot.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and licked his fingers.
Night fell and wrapped the town in fog. He took a shovel and a torch and went to the cemetery on the outskirts of town. He dug up Rosemary’s body and put it in his car, wrapped in plastic. He pushed the spilled dirt back over the empty coffin in the grave and padded the earth flat. Nobody ever discovered his witching-hour thievery.
Napier kept her in a huge jar that he stole from a construction site; he never knew what its original purpose was, caring only that it was sturdy. Three quarters of the jar was filled with 90% ethyl alcohol that he bought from six hardware stores across Seattle; the final third was filled with two bottles of everclear—as pure a form of ethanol that could be purchased without a commercial license or a bond payment. He stored her in the closet in their old room, which he kept just as she liked it—clean and tidy. He propped the door so that a music box played her favorite song when opened. He hated “Moon River”, but he’d loved his wife. Even in death he was a fair man.
I don’t keep no messy house, Rosemary used to say. I’ll have no dust bunnies under my bed.
He missed her voice, even though he struggled to remember it.
Napier couldn’t bear sleeping in the room they once shared, so instead, he moved into the study. He kept a cot in the corner and moved his drafting desk downstairs.
Napier liked having Rosemary back in the house. Her presence seemed to fill some of the holes in his life. He prayed for her to come to him in his dreams, but she rarely did. Sometimes he kissed her jar.
He’d always felt good in the company of dead things.
After returning from Seattle after his second trip abroad, he’d never felt so awful. He came up to Rosemary’s room and confessed his sins to her; told her that he had been with another woman. A young bit of tail. Rosemary had stared at him with her pickled eyes, her hair swimming behind the glass.
Claire had nothing on her.
Sam grew into something he could tolerate. Sometimes, he got carried away with the punishment he dealt out—and he liked the way the child sounded when he cried under the whip of his belt. The kid was soft and pink and bled.
Just like his mother.
Having Sam around was a poor concession for a wife. But he would do.
Napier went to church every Sunday; his priest was a man named Lowell. One morning after the service, Napier went to him and told him a story.
“Father, I think I’m…”
He chose his words carefully. The clean, manicured Christ figure on His cross above them did not turn to listen.
“…Possessed by a demon. Two nights ago I woke in the middle of the night and was covered in the blood of murdered chickens. Feathers and flesh chunks—just—just—everywhere. It was horrible. I felt sick. I think the birds belonged to a man in town but I’ve got no idea how they got into my room. I woke up and was covered in little heads. A chicken foot in my mouth. I spat it out; it tasted like shit. I don’t know how the Chinese eat them, Father. I just don’t know… The word “help” was written on the wall in blood.
“It wasn’t me, Father. It was some demon. I’m haunted. Or possessed, I don’t know. I feel disgusting. Help me, Father. Please.”
Lowell suggested that perhaps it was Napier himself who had murdered the chickens and smeared the gore over his body. Who had written the plea on the wall.
“There are very, very few cases of genuine possession, Guy,” Lowell said, bent forward and speaking in confessional whispers. “I myself, have never heard of such a case.” Like his parishioner, the priest chose his words with careful precision. “But I have heard of events like the one you just told me. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to ask you one thing: had you been drinking?”
“Well, yes, Father. Whiskey. It’s a poison, I know—”
“It’s fine, Guy. Fine.” Lowell touched his hand. “I think perhaps you did it to yourself. It is not uncommon. Actually, it happens quite a lot, even here. In tiny towns, just like The Bend. I think, just maybe, you were seeking attention. Now, I
know that sounds terrible, but people do it. Subconscious, like. You see what I’m saying, Guy? People do it in their sleep, or in drunken blackouts. Always like that. They do it because they feel like God isn’t in their lives anymore. They’re being ignored, that their prayers aren’t being answered. It’s common in people who’ve suffered some extreme loss.”
Napier sat there in the church in the shadow of the priest and knew the man was speaking the truth. He could feel the words slipping into him like keys into locks.
He saw himself behind the wheel of a car, singing Endsville on the radio. He saw himself jumping over a fence. He saw torchlight reflected in the eyes of chickens; the stench of their sewerage making his nose burn. He then saw the ceiling of his bedroom, feathers floating by. Blood on his hands. In his mouth.
He felt repelled and fascinated. Was it a relief to know that the demon was him? Napier didn’t know.
And thus, The Forgiveness was born.
Napier met Joe Burnett through church. He’d often spied the huge man, his bulge wrestling with his Sunday best, in the pews close to the altar. He always knew that the man came to service alone, but that he’d not always done so. Napier had heard that Joe’s wife had been left a paraplegic, a vegetable, they would say, after some sort of traffic accident. It had happened not so long ago, they said. Napier saw something familiar in the fat man’s face. Betrayal.
The longer Napier lived the more convinced he was that all men were dogs.
They could smell their own and bit when provoked.
Napier never knew the full details regarding Joe’s wife and he never really asked. For men like Napier and Joe, it was better not to pry too much, to keep a safe distance. Men like them spent a lot of time building up their walls of defense, of which they could be quite proud and defensive. Whiskey and rye was an easier bonding agent—indulging in each other’s melancholy seemed more suiting. Napier thought Joe was dumb, but his love for his wife, despite her condition, was inspiring. It humbled Napier to know that he could still be touched. This quality made Joe the perfect right-hand-man.
“Who knows,” Napier said. “Maybe this…journey, could help your Marline.”
Journey. That’s how he sold the deal. It wasn’t murder. Or torture. Just a journey. A pilgrimage.
“Maybe He can make her walk again. Or talk. Can you imagine such a thing? Nobody likes being alone, Joe. Nobody. We don’t deserve it.”
Napier was surprised by how quick Joe came around to the concept. He came to realize just how powerful a creature desperation could be.
Desperate men did desperate things. It seemed natural. Expected.
God was powerful. His attention deserved powerful distraction. Anything less would be an offence.
Napier closed the basement door behind him and was careful not to lean against it. Hosing down the room below was work enough without having to scratch away blood scuffs above. He held his dripping shirt and trousers in his hands. His muscles trembled with the euphoria of exertion.
He panted in the hallway near the kitchen.
Napier could hear the television in the living room blaring. Sam always listened to things too loudly. If it wasn’t his damn iPod, it was the idiot box. Both infuriated Napier, but he resigned to them. After all, his son had not asked to be born into a house full of unusual, high-pitched noises. Screams could be grating, even he had to say.
So he let the volume go unmentioned.
Sam would be slumped in his chair, a leg thrown over the arm. Chances were he was still in his uniform. Creasing it to hell. Well, he can go to school looking like nobody owns him, Napier thought. Suits me fine. Small fry.
Napier looked at his watch. It was quarter to nine. He hadn’t eaten and wasn’t hungry. He knew he should force something down but the concept of food was nauseating right now. He’d lost a significant amount of weight over the past six months and his skin had begun to dangle in sagging jowls from his body.
God giveth and God taketh away.
He felt a chill. It reminded him of where he was and what he wasn’t wearing. Napier took it as his cue to retire to his room—but not before dumping his bloodied clothing in the washing machine and taking a long, hot shower. He only bathed downstairs in the small bathroom at the rear of the house. There, the wall paint was cracked and mold grew across the ceiling, but he favored it over the one upstairs. That’s where Rosemary used to bathe. He liked to think that there was still some of her hair intertwined in the drains of the house and he’d been tempted to hunt for it on more than one occasion. He liked the idea of finding it and wrapping it around his fingers, perhaps putting it in his mouth. A part of her inside him again.
Loss didn’t go away. It couldn’t be filled, no matter how much he wanted otherwise. It just went on and on. Nothing was the same, and drinking didn’t work the spell it used to, either. Sometimes, he blacked out and woke up in strange places, naked in front of Rosemary’s closet, or in his study, covered in dead animals. Stray cats and dogs, their heads twisted around backwards. Words scrawled over the walls.
Napier went through a lot of sugar water and paint. Sometimes he swore he could smell the liquids in his skin; his knuckles rubbed raw from all the scrubbing.
But these, among others, were the cost of The Forgiveness. Napier had lived long enough to learn that nothing in life came free, and that sometimes, what you paid seemed to outweigh what you bargained for. But in the end, he knew it would be worth it. He was nothing more than flesh and bone and shit and brains. He was meat. And soon his luck would run out and the abattoir he called his body would be put away behind bars to rot for the rest of his days. But all of that didn’t matter. Napier didn’t care if he was caught, if the police knocked down his door and dragged him away by his hair. It was the afterlife that was important. It was better to live alone with no company but his flesh, than to live eternity without his Father.
There were times when he was filled with doubt. Was all of the blood worth it? Such thoughts racked him in the night, nibbling away at him like rats under his bed sheets. But he fought through these weaker moments; his faith would not lapse. No, sir, he would say to himself. I’m stronger now.
Napier dropped his clothes into the washing machine and set the rattler to churn. He stepped into the cold shower recess and waited for the water to run hot. In time, it did. Patience was everything. Patience and diligence: these were his primary principles in life post-Rosemary. Post-happiness.
The tiles were pink under his feet. Suds ran down his body, catching in his shallows and bulges. It felt good. Warmth soothed his aches. He dried himself with an old, unwashed towel that reminded him of dank places like the basement—and worse—the small room off to the side where he’d tucked away the kid, Brian. Only that small space, which was little more than a roomy coffin, smelt worse than the towel or the basement. The eye-watering stench of fecal matter and fat was embedded in the walls. There were snapped off fingernails in the wood. One woman had worked an arm free of her restraints and written her name in gore over the concrete floor. The house drank up her blood as though it were a living creature that had, over time, developed a taste for the spoils of torture.
Napier went upstairs. He felt exhausted and old. The sounds of the roaring television faded as he walked up the staircase. The old house groaned in the wind, which had a tendency to knife through this part of North Bend once the sun dipped below the tree line.
The old study had been gutted and redecorated. In some ways it looked a little like the room he’d had back in Leander. One wall was lined with shelves full of piled photographs and records, all covered in dust. Magazines were bundled high in one corner. There was a single mattress, the sheets knotted on the floor. Next to the bed was a small, wooden desk with an older model Mac computer sitting on top of it, and a coffee mug with the label: JOHN’S HOMES, BUILDING A BETTER TOMORROW…full of pencils and pens next to it. The screen saver image of shifting bubbles disappeared as he shifted the mouse. The desktop blinked into picture
. He opened his MSN and Facebook accounts. The speakers chimed.
The Facebook account was under the name Freddie Karl, a seventeen-year-old student from Manhattan, Kansas. The profile picture was of Sam and the three albums of photographs were pilfered from the unprotected accounts of teenagers across the Internet. It was all quite elaborate. He posted from other fictional accounts, separate emails, creating a fictitious environment in which the primary character of Freddie could live without question.
The MSN dashboard was alive with multiple chats. As soon as he logged on there were kids trying to talk to him.
Hey, u there?
Helvetica! Where u been?
I need to talk to you.
All of their profile pictures glared back at him. Boys with their tongues stuck out, wearing straight-beaked skater caps. Girls holding their webcams in front of their faces to grab a quick snap, exposing a soft, pale armpit.
The multiple open windows popping up, the flash of small clapping emoticons—these were the only light in the room and their animated twitters painted the walls in pale colors.
Napier dipped a hand into an ashtray full of pumpkin seeds and tossed a few into his mouth whilst the other scrolled the cursor across the screen. He associated the habit of chewing and the bitter taste of the seeds with his online flirtations, disclosures and betrayals.
Tashigal: My Mom told me I have to get off the mac more. I told her I dont want to. That where all my frienz r. she just doesnt get it. Shez clueless. I miss talking 2 u.
Ben: I looked up sum of those sites u sent 2 me. Some of it was shit but some of it was cool. I had no idea…
MissLizzy1996: and I told him that I wuldnt do it again. But he wants 2. he scares me a little. I really wish u were here or that we could meet in person. Even though wev never met I feel like ur my best friend.
He called them all his Children. But Noah had been his first, and the power he’d enacted over him had been addictive. He loved them all, as confused, self-involved and stupid as they all could be. And he was grateful to them all as well; they all had small parts to play in The Forgiveness.
