by Skye, Mav
He arrived at the apartment complex. The old brick and mortar rose up into feather clouds. Street lamps faded out the stars, not that he ever saw any. Few lights glowed within the windows on the various floors. Two on the ground floor, but they weren’t from Mr. Fiddler’s apartment.
Sir Sun pecked in his security code at the entry system and it beeped for him to open the door. He entered the building cautiously, his hand near the shears should he need them, but everything looked normal, felt normal. He had a nagging urge to go check Mr. Fiddler’s apartment again. It would be like pinching himself to see if he was in a dream or not.
He glanced at the door to the stairwell, then the opposite way leading down a long hallway of gold and blue paisley carpet (even uglier than the mangy orange up on the third floor). One of the hall’s light bulbs flickered out as Sir Sun considered. Now shadows covered the wall.
Great.
Despite the darkness, he decided he needed to know. Needed to see. He unsheathed his shears and prowled the hallway, glancing behind him occasionally.
He passed by the elevators. The out of service sign still hung crookedly on a door. He straightened it, then crept to Mr. Fiddler’s apartment. He raised his hand to knock, wondering why there wasn’t police tape, when he heard the TV. It was blasting from an apartment further down. He recalled the window on the bottom floor with the light on, and decided to go check it out.
“I think… the problem is, you’re denying yourself, Carla. You’ve denied yourself the life you could have had, and you’re continuing to deny yourself the life you can have now, and, you know, in the future.”
Sir Sun crept towards the door the TV sounds came from. The tube was blasting at full volume.
Crying noises. Audience applauses.
Woman’s voice, “Dr. Lillian, you just don’t understand. I was trying to do what was best for—”
“Now stop right there, Carla. Right there. Do you see what you are doing? You are making excuses. You need to recognize that. Acknowledge what you’re doing. And move on to what you want, to what you deserve. You are a human being, Carla, and you deserve everything by right and expression of the truly unique person you are.”
“But I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to get the money.”
“Just do whatever it takes. If you truly believe in your heart that you deserve this, then nothing will stand in your way. Nothing! Do the right thing for you, Carla. Dismiss everyone else. Dismiss the whole world! Because you are the only one in your world. You are the only one looking out for you. Do you see now? Audience will you help us out? Do the right thing, Carla! Do the right thing!”
Crowds of people chant like zombies. “Do the right thing, Carla! Do the right thing!”
Sir Sun halted in front of Apartment 103. “I will! I will do the right thing—for me! Thank you, Doctor Lillian. I’ll be pulling all of my retirement out pronto! Yolo! —”
He knocked on the door gently.
“Oh! Oh!” cried Carla. “I feel something coming over me! It’s tingly inside and I can’t contain it!”
“Just let go, Carla!”
This was why Sir Sun did not own a TV. He knocked again.
He heard shuffling at the door. And it suddenly burst open to just a crack with the audience shrieking. “Let go, Carla, let go! (clap, clap!) Let go, Carla, let go! (clap, clap!)”
A plump, but not unpleasant looking, elderly woman stood at the door, her wide green eyeball staring suspiciously at Sir Sun through the gap. She had giant pink rollers in her hair and twists of Kleenex up one nostril. “Who is it?” sounded like Woo ith it?
Sir Sun realized he hadn’t planned on what he was going to say. He hesitated, opened his mouth and she said, “Is it my TV?” But it sounded like Ith it myth tvth?
“Actually, no, I know it’s late. I’m so sorry for—”
“Wait!” She slammed the door in his face. He heard shuffling. And the TV’s volume lowered. Sir Sun straightened his collar and sheathed his shears, just as she opened the door again.
“I’m sooo sorthy. I ‘ave a cold and can’t hear a thang.” She sniffed, remembered the Kleenex in her nose and swiftly pulled it out and stuffed it in her pink flowery housecoat. She glanced at him as if she hadn’t just done that. “I can’t speak either.”
Sir Sun smiled and nodded.
She squinted and slid a pair of glasses from her housecoat pocket and onto her red nose in one fluent movement. “Oh! I know you. Come in. Come in.” She unlocked the chain across her door and Sir Sun stepped inside.
He followed her through the hall to the living room. Her apartment was tidy and neat with knick knacks and Agatha Christie books lining multiple wall shelves. A box of Kleenex sat on her living room table, along with a cup of tea still steaming.
“I’m Daisy. Can I make you some tea? The water is hot.”
Sir Sun smiled uncomfortably. What a strange day. “Sure, sure. That’d be great.”
“I’ll be just a moment. Have a seat. Dr. Lillian is on.” At Dr. Lillian Daisy smiled and giggled stuffed nosedly, and waddled off to the kitchen, her flowery cotton housecoat dragging on the carpet.
Sir Sun observed a small houseplant by the living room window, and he went to examine it. It sat quiet in a turquoise ceramic. Chlorophytum comosum, otherwise called a spider plant. He waited a moment before touching it, listening. Finally, he deemed it friendly like his bone orchid and leaned over it. He couldn’t help but comb over the leaves all the way to their roots—they erupted green and white from the soil. Well fertilized, watered and mite free.
“Good. Very good.” He appreciated Daisy’s green thumb. As he brushed the leaves this way and that, he caught sight of a browning stem deep under a mass of leaves.
He pulled out his shears and lifting the healthy leaves away from the dead one, he went in to nip it. As he did so, a leaf in his palm lifted its long stalk and bent at the tip as if waving hello.
This startled him, and before he could drop the handful of leaves in his palm, the plant began waving its other stalks, back and forth. They twined about his fingers and palm, one of them whisking its sharp stem over and impaled his hand.
“Ah!” Sir Sun whipped his hand away and jumped back.
He heard a soft sigh, a whisper, a hiss.
“Not again. Not again. This can’t be happening again…” he talked to himself, forgetting where he was, why he was there.
The audience exploded into applause on the TV. Sir Sun jumped and glanced at the small black and white tube TV on the small wooden microwave stand. Rabbit ears covered in tin foil graced the top of it.
Doctor Lillian: “And if I were you, I’d kill it.” Someone new was seated across from Dr. Lillian, a man. He didn’t look like a Carla anyway. “Take that inner demon and squash it like a bug. Stab it like a criminal.”
“Stab it! Stab it! Stab it!” chanted the audience, clapping in time. Sir Sun turned his attention back to the spider plant. Its leaves, like spider legs, wiggled and jiggled. The leaves closest to the edge of the pot rim dropped their blades to the window ledge and flattened their tips like feet. It attempted to pick the pot right up and walk.
“Gah!” Sir Sun clenched the shears in his hands. There were more uses for them than pruning, as his houseplants had found out.
A short blade hissed.
“Stab it! Stab it!”
The plant hissed again, and attempted to stand up, shaking some soil free.
Amazed, dumbfounded, scared as heck, he pointed at the spider plant. “I’m warning you!”
“That’s right! Kill it, stab it—and soon,” said Dr. Lillian (Sir Sun flicked off the safety, letting the shear blades slide apart) “you will feel like a brand new man.”
He stepped towards the spider plant as it found its balance and raised the ceramic pot. It fanned its stems like knives.
Sir Sun leaped towards his enemy, aiming his shears straight for the roots.
Daisy popped out of the kitchen. “One lump or two,
dear?”
Sir Sun screamed and dropped his shears on the carpet.
“Dear Lord! I didn’t mean to scare you.” She waddled out of the kitchen, grabbed his arm, and drew him away from the window ledge and the spider plant. “Come, dear, come sit down and let me bring you some tea.” She led him to the cozy couch with an afghan draping the center.
Sir Sun sneaked a peek at the plant. It sat with its leaves waving this way and that, just as when he’d first seen it.
Daisy saw the shears as she strolled back to the kitchen. “Pruning shears! How lovely.” She turned to him. “I appreciate the thought, but I pruned my plant in the spring. Oh yes.” She nodded vigorously as she plucked the shears from the carpet and passed them back to Sir Sun.
Sir Sun licked his lips nervously. “You can never be too sure.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Of course one can. I wrote it down on the calendar.” She pointed to her calendar full of wide-eyed snuggling kittens, then went to get his tea.
Kittens. Sir Sun wondered if she had a cat, hoped she didn’t have a cat because it might just be the one he’d seen earlier.
“Daisy?”
“Hmm…?” She waddled once more from the kitchen, this time with a teacup in hand.
“I see you like cats.”
“Oh yes, oh yes.” Sniff, sniff… She handed him a steaming cup. “Hope you like peppermint, calms the nerves and such.”
He sipped it. “Perfect, thank you. Do you own a cat?”
“Goodness, no! Look at me.” She pointed to herself and then around her. “Poor as a skunk. I wouldn’t dare consider providing for one.” She said this as if he had asked her about keeping an elephant.
“Mmm…” Sir Sun raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“But there is the one, you know.” She sat beside him on the couch, lifting her teacup to her lips.
Sir Sun asked, “The one?”
“Uh huh.” Daisy stood up, huffing as she did, beckoning for him as she moved to the living room window and set her teacup down on the ledge by the spider plant.
He followed behind, keeping a good distance from the—previously hissing—leafed thing.
Daisy slid open the window. “See? I put leftovers out for him when I have some.” The tuna can held bread crust. “But he hasn’t come by yet. Probably caught a rat or something nasty!”
Sir Sun asked, “Is it black or orange?”
“Oh,” she smiled. “Most definitely black with a little white around his eyes.” She stared up at Sir Sun, confusion in her eyes. “I’ve never seen an orange one.”
Sir Sun frowned, envisioning the hanging, bloody beast. He didn’t recall white on it, but with the blood soaked into the fur, it was hard to tell.
She turned to him and brushed him back to the couch. “What brings you to my door past midnight? Goodness must be pushing two by now.” She plucked a tissue out of the Kleenex box and blew into it, then stuffed the dirty wad into her housecoat sleeve.
“There’s been some incidents today, uh, yesterday, and I wanted to come around and make sure you’re alright.”
She sipped her tea. “I’ve been sick the last few days. I can’t hardly get to sleep at night with this,” she pointed at her nose, “so I’m just watching TV.” She motioned toward the small monitor.
“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” exclaimed Dr. Lillian.
Daisy smiled. “Almost as if she’s speaking just to me, sometimes. I like that. She’s so pretty too, you know. I wonder who does her dentures. I’d like to have dentures like that.” The audience clapped in approval. Daisy looked back at Sir Sun. “What kind of incidents?”
“Umm...” he coughed into hid hand, stalling, then took a big gulp of his tea and swallowed. “It’s just that, uh, no one seems to know where Mr. Fiddler is.”
“He’s just fine.”
Sir Sun startled. “He is?”
She frowned at him, suddenly suspicious. “Of course, he is! Why wouldn’t he be? I saw him just at dinner. He asked to borrow some rope.”
Sir Sun’s heart galloped within his chest. He set down his teacup. “Rope?”
“Yes, he needed it for something. It did look like he’d had an accident with his hand, you know. All bandaged up. I wanted to help the poor man out.” Her eyes bulged. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Daisy, what time would you say that was?”
“Dinner, I told you.” She set down her teacup and fidgeted her hands. “I think you should leave now.”
“About six or so?”
Daisy pointed at his tea and said, “Drink up, darling, then go. Go on up to your room.”
“Please, think back,” Sir Sun stood, and she stood with him. “What time?”
“Drink,” she demanded. Her face began to distort into a morose monster.
He brought the teacup to his lips and sipped. “I’m sorry, Daisy, you’re right. I should go. I’m… suddenly not feeling so well.”
“Feeling a bit willy-nilly, eh? It’s that stuff I put in your tea.”
Sir Sun eyed her. Wary. “Pardon?”
“I put stuff in your tea to help you sleep. You poor thing! Looks as if you hadn’t slept in weeks. You should thank me. I did you a favor. Just enough time to get yourself up to beddy bye.”
His hands tingled, and he dropped his teacup. What tea was left splattered about the carpet, but the cup didn’t break. He looked at it in astonishment. What was going on? “You poisoned me?”
“No, no, I’d never do that, dear.”
He made for the door.
“Just leave the mess. I don’t mind.” Daisy stood and clapped her hands. “Look! Look who’s come to visit!” A creature crouched at the window, peeking in with white raccoon eyes. Daisy opened the window just a hint. “Davey Crockett is here! Look at him. The cutest little raccoon in town.” In her shuffling, the spider plant was shoved and it fell to the carpet.
The plant’s leaves had picked its roots up off the floor, coddling them as if holding in its guts. It crawled toward Sir Sun like some sprawling Lovecraftian nightmare.
Sir Sun dashed from Daisy’s living room, down the hall and through the front door, slamming it shut as he passed, and headed for the stairs. He felt a tingling numbness in his stomach. His legs wobbled, and Sir Sun knew he wasn’t going to make it to the stairs, but he was close to the elevators.
He punched the up button on the elevator. When the doors opened, he fell in, and the doors shut.
He felt the thrum and hum of the elevator gliding two floors. There was a ding and the doors spread. He opened his eyes once, briefly, and there was Ah Lam. Her face filled with surprise, then worry. “Mis’ Sun?!?”
10
She of the Night
She lifted the velvet hood from her face and laid a white rose at the gravestone. She leaned back on her calves and clasped her fingers together as if in prayer. “What do I have to do to prove myself to you, mother?”
The bitter breeze caressed her hair, and she lifted her chin, gazing at the moon above. “I am here and you are not, why isn’t that enough?” She glanced down at the headstone, traced her mother’s name with her fingertips. “Why isn’t it ever enough…”
In reply, frogs croaked at the distant koi pond. Beyond the pond was a twelve-foot high brick fence, corralling in twenty acres of her personal retreat, a place to keep the people she had once loved, still does.
A barn owl sat on the fence, blinking its eyes and hooted just once, before flying away, coasting down Spindler River that sat just outside the brick fence.
She rose to her feet, brought the hood back over her hair, and wiped a tear. Her face hardened in the moonlight, her lips pursing, teeth grinding, then releasing two single words: “Game on.”
11
Splatterpunk vs. Ninja Skeleton
He heard her voice from far away. “Wake up. Wake up, Mis’ Sun. You no can stay here. Up.”
Sir Sun became aware of his arms. Someone was attempting to drag him across the floor. His
head ached and throbbed. “Owww….”
“Mis’ Sun. It Friday. You get up and leave. I go to school now.” He felt a warmth on his face. Sunlight bled into his eyes as he opened first one, then another. A skeleton bent over him, shaking his shoulders. “Ahh!” he scrunched himself against a wall.
Ah Lam’s face was covered in white makeup. Black paint surrounded her eyes nostrils and mouth. She wore a skintight suit with bones outlining her body. She jumped at his face. “Boo!”
“My God,” he said, lugging his hand over his forehead. “You scared the devil out of me.”
“Happy Halloween!” She clapped her hands. “Now, you. Out. I go now.”
She grabbed his hand and yanked. He struggled to stand, but fell backward against the wall, sliding down to the floor.
“Oh no, no, up you go.” She wrapped her small arms around his waist and heaved him up against the wall.
Her pert body against his woke him up. Unintelligible words stumbled out of his mouth.
“Coooommmeee onnn!” She wrapped his right arm about her shoulders and supported his weight against hers. They walked toward her door and into the hallway, where she rested him against the doorframe.
“Ah Lam. How—?”
“Wait.” She pointed an authoritative skeletal finger at him and ran back inside. A moment later she emerged, a backpack on her shoulders. “Found you in elevator, very late. Brought you inside, so stay safe.”
“I’m sorry about… the hair pin thing yesterday. I don’t know where it came from, honestly.”
Ah Lam shushed him by bringing her bony finger to his lips, her skeleton face serious. “You are good guy.” Her eyes brightened and she laughed, sticking a dum-dum lollipop into his mouth, paper and all. “Trick or treat, Mis’ Sun! I go.” She double-checked the lock on her door and, very un-skeleton like, skipped down the hallway to the stairwell, flipped open the door and was gone.
