by Aaron Dries
“You heard me.”
Julia closed her eyes, choking on tears. “I’ve got a psychic streak to me, I guess. And I know it’s a girl. I can feel it.” She pinched at her brow and wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to die. I don’t care if Mom and Dad find out about the baby, I don’t care any more. I want to tell them. I do. Really. I just want this to be over.”
“We all do, bub.”
“Yeah, I know… Some psychic streak though, hey? If it was so good, I should have seen this coming.”
“Julia, it doesn’t work like that.”
“I know it’s like, stupid to feel this way, but I just can’t help it. I feel like I’m being punished, you know?”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s not it at all.” Diana held her sister tight, whispered in her ear. “Bad things happen to good people. That’s just the way it goes. You just never think it’ll happen to you. Never. Someone does a good thing, does not mean good comes to them. Same with all our mistakes. Nobody’s being punished, bub. Luck isn’t credit. I don’t even know if luck exists.” Guilt settled in. “Besides, it’s my fault we’re here now.”
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s not.” They cried together. Diana placed a gentle hand on the slight curve of her sister’s stomach.
Fifty-Two: Inside
There were fluctuations of movement around her. Her parents, her brother. Their faces sometimes grimacing; other times they were still. She could hear her heartbeat, and it terrified her because it was so slow. I’m fading, shrinking down to nothing, Liz thought. Overhead the ceiling looked miles away.
Her mind felt separated from her body. No thought or feeling ran its proper course; neurons fired but nothing happened. Paralyzed. Her mother grabbed her head and begged her to speak, but the words would not form in her mouth. Liz wanted to scream at her parents and tell them that the passengers were not the enemy—but her new friends! They were put into her life just to show her love and for her to love them back. For that reason alone they shouldn’t be punished. Liz was scared for the passengers. She knew her father had a terrible temper, had in fact seen it many times. Liz wanted to forgive him but that was impossible when he wanted to hurt her friends.
Liz watched her father yank the phone from the wall. She remained silent. Listening to her parents argue, random words flew around her head, trapped in imaginary bubbles. They shimmered and she was fascinated.
Jed kept on going to the windows. She wondered why. Was there some sort of threat behind the glass? She knew that couldn’t be the case—There’s just my friends out there and boy, they must be getting hot by now.
The image of a shot man in a football jersey flashed before her eyes. The hole in his face was an exploding balloon filled with red cordial. She furrowed her brow. Perhaps it was a scene from some gory, B-grade horror movie she had watched late one night, and stranger still, why should it pop into her head at that moment? Another image floated by—she reached out for it, was disappointed that such beauty could not be snatched and held. In the bubble was a little girl twirling in the middle of a road. It made her smile; she hoped to see something that pretty one day.
Yes, there were reasons to live.
The slap was sharp and loud.
Wes walked away from his wife, who fell to her knees, holding her face. He still had the useless telephone receiver gripped in his hand.
What’s the matter? Liz wondered. Why did Dad hit Mom like that? She felt phantom pains in her arms and legs; the memory of her own beatings. Her gaze flittered to the staircase and the sensation passed. She watched her brother disappear upstairs and listened to his feet banging across the floor. Above her head the ceiling fan spun in slow cycles.
Fifty-One
Ten-year-old Jack was in his backyard. An airplane carved a long, white streak through the orange sky. His senses were alive with the smells of barbecue and the apple tree.
He heard a scream. It echoed across the yard.
It came from inside his house, which towered above him, its mass a jagged silhouette against the sunset. The back door opened. He remembered the sound of it crashing against the wall. Kimba, the family cat, ran ahead of his father’s feet and scuttled under the stairs. His dad was a hulking, whiskered mammoth lurching and wheezing as he ran.
The screams belonged to a boy, although the wails were high-pitched enough to be a girl. It made him laugh, despite the fire in his father’s eyes as he approached.
It was then that Jack felt the heaviness in his hand.
He looked down. The sky, the airplane, the house and his dad tilted away until he saw his shaking fingers, and what he held in his grasp.
Scissors.
Fifty: Outside
The memory had bubbled to the surface from somewhere dark and deep, but as quick as it had come, it fizzled out and was gone. It left him spent, weak. He looked at his hands; they were covered in blue blotches and tingled. Fuck me, he thought, where did that come from?
Jack felt the eyes of the passengers on him, and in a flash he was back in the classroom, his teacher standing over him.
“I don’t know the answer,” he mumbled.
“What?” Sarah asked, leaning in close. “You okay there, Jack?” The others huddled behind her. Even Michael turned.
He couldn’t handle the silence any more, or their eyes burning into him.
“Don’t,” he said.
“What?” Sarah was holding on to a handlebar to keep herself steady.
Say something, you cunt, Jack told himself. Say something, you dumb shit. Open your mouth and make some fucking noise!
Jack took a breath and he felt his brain focus. “What if we busted out one of the windows on the right-hand side and got out and ran?”
A gust of wind shook the bus. Dust pelted at the windows, the hub filled with a soft, quiet hiss. Anger crept up on Sarah, and she had to hold herself back from reaching out and slapping him.
“Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, would you stop it,” she said. “Sit there and don’t say a word.” Sarah regretted it as soon as she said it.
“You don’t quiet me, old duck.”
“Please, Jack—”
“Please what? What? Please make this shit better? That’s what I’m trying to do. Don’t any of you want to get out of here? We got legs so we should use them. We take something hard and we bash out that fucking window and we take our chances.”
Michael leaped forward—he couldn’t hold himself back any more. “Just stop it for God’s sake! Just stop, all of you!” His face flushed red. “We wait this out.”
“He speaks!” Jack laughed. “Well fuck me Freddy, I better just drop everything and—” He lost the momentum of his words. “Oh, just fuck off, kid.”
Michael realized it felt good to speak, to have his opinion heard. It was a minor victory. But his elation faded when Jack turned his back to him. By the time the others were in their seats his elation had disappeared, leaving Michael to stand alone in the aisle like an exposed figure on a stage.
The spotlight brightened, illuminating the memories. The figure faded away.
Forty-Nine: Bangkok
Bangkok was everything the travel agent said it would be. Michael fought through congested traffic, laughed at the total disregard for rules and the polite sensibilities of the Western world. Going to Thailand was the best thing he had ever done, perhaps an even greater achievement than losing weight.
Nobody knew him there. He could swish when he wanted to and nobody called him names. Michael didn’t mind the looks he got from some of the guys in the streets. In fact it excited him.
He saw a live sex show in the red-light district. Watched a woman tug a birdcage from her vagina, then live birds. Another pulled a transistor radio out. Hotel California had been playing at the time.
Later in the week he stumbled into the gay district. The effeminate staff beckoned to him as he passed.
“Sexy white boy, where you from? Want to see cabaret show?”
Inside was all flashing lights
and bland, though not entirely unappealing music. Rows of chairs faced a stage, with velvet curtains drawn. They stirred. Michael’s seat was central but six rows back, which suited him fine.
Two drag queens stepped out onto the stage with an appropriate amount of flourish. Together they welcomed their audience. Their accents were heavy but had all the fling and fancy of the stereotypical gay man. Michael wondered if gay men acted gayer when they were around like men, just as straight guys acted more masculine when around their mates. Is this how I’m supposed to be? Am I actually like that?
The crowd went wild. Michael’s Singapore Sling arrived at his table.
Lady-boys in elaborate costumes flooded the stage. There was a Kylie Minogue routine, followed by a Liza Minnelli revue.
The night started to wind up. “Oh don’t you leave yet! Da best is comin’!” One of the hosts stepped into the crowd, wove her way through the tables looking for a volunteer.
She chose Michael. Somehow he just knew it would be him. He was blinded by the spotlight. Glitter floated in the air and settled on his nose.
He was taken backstage. A gaggle of gay men in tiny, revealing shorts and punk haircuts unbuttoned his shirt. He forced them away. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
A tall man dressed in a kimono stepped forward, armed with lipstick in hand. Red. “Oh you shy, it’s okay. We going to take off ya shirt and put kisses on you-uuu and it okay and it just a little joke and fun and no prob.” His shirt fell away and revealed were his sagging breasts, the patchwork stretch marks.
Silence. Someone laughed.
Another man, more masculine and for whom he felt a twinge of attraction, tweaked his nipple. “I think it’s hot, white boy. I like softies.”
One of them kissed his stomach, a red smear on his sweaty skin. “I’m not going out there without my shirt.”
In the crowd mouths opened and closed and he heard nothing. They had their laugh and gave him a drink, then finally his shirt. It smelled of perfume and make-up. In the bathroom, Michael wiped at the red kisses. Water spilled down the front of his jeans, growing damp and cold. He did up his shirt and looked at himself in the mirror. He swore he would gain back every pound if someone could take the humiliation away.
Shaking, he pulled at the paper dispenser. The sheets turned to mush but he fumbled for more. Damp shreds stuck to his palms. It was useless.
Michael cried. They didn’t understand what he had been through, how long it had taken to build up his confidence. With a joke and a free drink, it was all gone.
Forty-Eight
Liz stood up. When did I take my shoes off? she wondered. I don’t remember doing that.
Liz didn’t remember a lot of things any more. It was good to be numb—it was like “getting wet”.
Her mother was rifling through bags in the study.
Where am I? She looked around. If that’s the study, then I must be in the living room. I know I’ve seen that sofa before. It looks comfortable. I’ve wrapped my legs over the arm of that chair before.
Reggie was doubled over in the small room, surrounded by torn-open garbage bags bleeding Christmas tinsel onto the carpet. In her hands were two handmade tree ornaments. Little, worn Santas, their faces bent inwards.
There was a memory of the family at Christmastime. It was one of the years that Wes was not there. He came and went sometimes. Sometimes he said he needed a holiday away from them. In the memory she and Jed were putting the ornaments on the plastic tree, which smelled of mothballs. They weren’t happy, but at least they weren’t crying, or bleeding. This was the children’s barometer: the yardstick between laughter and locking themselves in their rooms out of fear.
The memory floated past. She let it go by.
Forty-Seven: Bled White
Santorini was white. It was as though an artist had scraped away Fira’s colors to rediscover the canvas underneath. The streets were empty and not even the sea made a sound.
Diana had fallen in love with the city on her travels before landing in Australia. It soothed her, made her whole again after her mother’s death. Now, she felt like Dorothy coming back to the Emerald City only to find it home to vandals and all her friends turned to stone. There was no queen with a hundred heads here though. Only silence.
Diana wove through the narrow streets. At the bottom of an incline she turned and looked up a thin, cobblestone street.
She saw him, the brother. The one with the tattoo on his back. He started to walk towards her, his pace steady. His face contorted in a grimace. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling or screaming. Terror gripped her. “Oh my God.”
The ground underneath their feet shook and the brother stopped.
Behind him there came a gigantic tide made of blood, meat and paint. It rushed towards her. He became a part of the wave and together they thundered downhill, splattering the white walls in colorful fans.
Over the roar of the wave she heard a laugh to her right.
She turned towards the sound. An inch away from her face was the bus driver. She wore a tattered leotard; one bruised breast hung loose, the nipple hard and bitten. Beads of blood caught in the tutu. She opened her mouth and half-eaten olives fell out.
Forty-Six
Diana opened her eyes. It was the smell that awoke her. Next to her Michael pressed his face towards the sliding window, sucking air into his lungs.
“He’s getting bad,” Julia said.
Michael closed the window again.
“Why don’t you leave it open?” Diana asked, sitting upright. Her body ached, bones cracked. Her bladder felt at the bursting point.
Sarah held a handkerchief to her nose and inhaled the eucalyptus oil. “There’s about a billion fucking flies wanting to get in here, best to keep them shut.”
“You know, for an old woman you swear like a sailor,” Julia said. They smiled at each other.
“Oh my God!” Michael said.
Everyone looked at him and then whipped their heads towards the house.
The father stood in the side yard, having come out the back door. Nobody had seen him arrive. His stillness sent shivers through their bodies. They waited for him to move, or to maybe draw an axe from the shadows and run at them. But there was none of that, just his gaze, cold and steady. The tableau was broken when the passengers backed themselves against the opposite wall.
It made Jack want to laugh.
“You really think moving like that is going to make you any safer?” he asked them.
Every muscle in Julia’s body grew so tense it hurt. She looked at the man. Sunburn had reddened his forehead, the upper rims of his ears. He had a crooked nose that flared into two large, twitching nostrils. Julia had never seen such a look in real life, only in documentary footage she had seen in school about soldiers returning from war. He shared the same look as those haggard men, their features deformed by the weight of guilt, by their own individual dread.
Behind the father there was a row of dead trees. In their branches crows ruffled their wings and sharpened their beaks against the thorns.
Wes watched them for some time. He could see their small faces through the windows of the bus. They were all white-faced, squinting against the sun.
Once there had been a large house spider in the corner of his bedroom. Reggie was next to him, asleep at the time—and that was for the best. Had she seen it there would’ve been screams and melodrama, and that he just couldn’t stand. The spider nestled above the door. It was a Woodsman—an insignificant, harmless thing, but he still didn’t like having it in his bedroom. The bastard was big.
Wes was propped up in bed, a hardcover copy of Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil, spine-snapped over his knees. It was darker at the spider’s end of the room, and it had appeared from nowhere. He felt it staring at him, waiting for him to go to sleep so it could scurry around and make its web, or worse. He turned off the bedside lamp. All was quiet except for the sounds of the crickets singing outside. Then came the soft patter o
f eight crawling legs. He switched the light back on. He was not surprised to see that the spider was not where it had been before. It was, in fact, a good foot and a half closer.
It waited for darkness.
He watched it watch him, and then gave it what it wanted. The same thing happened. Crickets. Quiet. Scratch-scratch-scratch as it pulled its thick abdomen across the ceiling.
“You sneaky bugger,” he said, flicking the light back on. The spider was a foot closer. Wes didn’t turn the light off again. He reached into his lap and picked up his book, pulled it so close to his face he could smell the old, yellowed pages. His brown eyes peered at the spider. “I’ve got all night,” he said. “Do you?”
But Wes didn’t have all night—soon his eyes grew heavy and within an hour he was asleep. The book sat on the end of his nose until he rolled over and Ira Levin ended up on the floor beside his slippers. Reggie woke him up with her soft snoring at dawn. He rolled onto his back, wiped his eyes and remembered the silent duel from the night before. The ceiling swam into focus and he saw that it was bare.
Instead of crickets there was now birdsong; a sweet sound. He wet his gums and cleared his throat, rolled over and reached for the lamp, bed-springs squeaking. The light had been on all night.
His fingers touched something warm and bristled—maybe one of Reggie’s frayed hairbrushes. Wes stretched his neck, looked at his hand and saw the giant spider under his palm. Before he knew what he was doing he brought his fist down and felt it explode. “Got you, you little bitch.”
The people on the bus stared at him the same way. He knew they would move as soon as his back was turned, just like the insignificant, harmless Woodsman. Only these monsters weren’t harmless. He need only look at the mangled corpse in his front yard to know that. No, they were dangerous.
And that was why he watched them.
They had invaded his home just like the spider; and he thought it best to crush them under his touch. He forced the thought away. “Only if need be. Only then.”
