LUMP

by Claire L. Fishback

“Hm,” Mother said. “I wish you’d bring me a blonde one.” She turned her wicked eyes to him. “You have some grime on your chin, dear.” She reached up and wiped at his face with a rough cloth. It scraped a scab. He grunted and pulled his face away from her.

  Mother turned her attention back to the woman on the table. She pulled a knife from her belt and thrust the blade into the woman’s chest. Blood poured from the wound. She filled a chalice with the woman’s blood, chanted an incantation over it, and drank. She turned away from Lump, gasping.

  He knew she would cry out and cover her face and when she moved her hands away she would be young again with the woman’s black hair. Her skin would be smooth, not wrinkled. So, instead of watching like he usually did, Lump gazed at the woman and stroked her cheek with the back of his rough fingers. He touched her hair. Never once did his eyes stray from her smooth face.

  Mother wouldn’t send him out again for a few days, so Lump went into the woods. While he walked, he looked at a brochure for a music school called Juilliard. He stared at the pictures of the symphony and the violins for a long time before folding the wrinkled and creased pamphlet and tucking it away in his back pocket.

  He reached his favorite clearing and pulled his violin out from under a bush. He played a song he made up. The music caressed his mangled, cauliflower ears and he closed his eyes. It transported him to a better place. A place where his skin felt smooth and unblemished under his fingertips.

  “Lump!” Mother’s voice, inside his head, said under the music. “You’ll never be beautiful, you’ll never be accepted, you’ll never, never, never.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to block her voice from his mind, but it did no good. Her taunts plowed through the melody. He missed a note and stopped playing, looking at the violin so small in his hand.

  “There you are,” Mother’s voice said behind him. “You play so beautifully.”

  He turned and looked at her. The knife in her hand worried him but he didn’t move from the rock.

  “I found this on the path.” She held up the Juilliard brochure.

  He grunted and felt his back pocket where the brochure should have been.

  “You’ll never go there. You will never leave this forest.” Mother paused. Her voice softened. “You’ll never leave me. Will you?” Her voice quavered, and Lump hefted his form from the rock and approached her.

  He reached a hand toward her face, her smooth skin. He touched her cheek and with his other hand he touched his face.

  “Why?” The word came as a groan, thick in his throat.

  “Lumpy,” Mother said in a soothing voice. “I had to, to protect you.” Her face hardened, and she slashed across his face with the knife, spraying blood onto her soft, smooth skin. The pain burned across his forehead, over his nose and down the other cheek. Lump grabbed his face and cried out. He backed away from Mother until his legs hit the stone and he fell onto his butt. He cried into his hands. Wept like a child.

  When he stopped crying, Mother was gone, had likely been gone since right after she slashed him. He felt his face, his new wound. The blood caked in the gash. Another scar to disfigure him even more.

  “Lump want,” he said to the quiet forest. He swallowed hard. “Lump want new skin.” His thick, swollen lips curled into an anguished frown.

  He got up from the stone and picked up the Juilliard brochure Mother had dropped, then lumbered deeper into the forest until he came upon an old shack. He pushed the door open and went inside the dark space.

  A table and two chairs took up the majority of the space inside. Off in a dark corner, a door stood ajar. The door led down to a basement much larger than the tiny shelter built on top of it. Lump clopped down the stairs and lit a lantern.

  The room smelled like old, damp rags. Mold and mildew and mustiness. Lump went to a table in the middle where shackles hung from the edges of the marred wood. He touched one. It tinkled in the gloom and his thick lips spread into a smile.

  He dreamed that night. He dreamed about drinking the magic blood and getting a new face, new skin. Smooth skin. He dreamed about being accepted into Juilliard with his new skin. He played the violin for them and they loved him. He dreamed of Mother’s face, her fists hitting him, slashing at him with her knife, disfiguring him. He dreamed of the things she told him, the words that kept him deep in the forest with her. Protected by her. He woke up.

  Mother came to him a week later. Her skin sagged. A gray streak shot through her dark hair.

  “It’s time, Lumpy.” She caressed his cheek, grimacing as she touched him. “Bring me a blonde one this time.”

  Lump eyed the knife at her belt.

  “Well, go then,” she said, shooing him.

  “Hhhh,” Lump said. He held out his arms. “Hhhug.”

  Mother’s face, stern and pinched, relaxed into a smile. She hugged him. Lump lowered his hand to her belt and slipped the knife from its sheath. He left before she could see he was hiding it along his arm, palming the handle.

  When he came back with the blonde woman slung over his shoulder, he didn’t take her to Mother. He went into the woods, through the clearing where he played his violin, and into the shack. He took the woman into the basement and lay her on the table. Ever so gently, he shackled her wrists and ankles. He didn’t bother to gag her. No one would hear her way out here.

  He touched her face, her smooth skin. He stroked her arms, loving the smoothness beneath his fingertips, then went to a whetting stone in the corner and sharpened the knife. As the blade scraped along the stone, he imagined his new skin. His new face. Smooth and beautiful. He felt the knife. Sharp.

  The girl woke up. Her head moved from side to side. In the low light, Lump watched her, moving his eyes over her, looking for all the smooth skin he could use. Her eyes opened. Lump moved closer, his boots thumping on the stone floor. He leaned over her and her eyes grew wide. She didn’t make a sound until Lump lifted the knife.

  “Lump want new skin.” He lifted one shackled arm and dragged the blade down the length of it, shaving off a slice of pale, smooth skin. The girl screamed. Lump hated the way it grated on his ears. He sliced away another filet of skin and set it aside. She kept screaming.

  “New skin,” he yelled over her cries. He didn’t understand why she kept screaming. He wasn’t going to kill her. He just wanted her skin. He moved to her other arm and kept skinning until her cries ceased.

  “What are you doing?” Mother’s voice screeched from the bottom of the stairs. She rushed into the room. “What are you doing?” She shouted again when he only looked at her.

  “Lump . . .” he said. “Lump want . . .” He panted, and tears trickled from his eyes, coursing down the jagged scars. “Lump want new skin.” He held out the piece he just sliced off so his mother could see.

  She came closer, her hands outstretched. “Lumpy,” she cooed. “What have you done here?”

  “New skin,” Lump said again. He laid the last piece on top of the pile. Before he could move to her legs and all the smooth skin they would give him, his mother’s hands touched his, stilled them.

  “She was mine,” she said in a low voice. She squeezed his hand until he released the knife. Lump backed away from her, holding up his hands, knowing she would slash him with the knife again. Instead, she turned to the girl and stabbed her.

  “Nooo.” Lump moaned. He didn’t want to kill her. “No, ma.”

  “You made me do this, Lumpy,” she said. “You made me kill her. Just like you made me hurt you.”

  Lump held up his hands. Mother stalked toward him, the knife gripped in her fist. He backed away from her, knowing she would slash him again. He covered his face. The knife bit into his palms. He cried out. It bit into his wrists. She slapped his hands away and cut into his face again, reopening the wound from the week before.

  Lump’s tears blinded him. His mother kept slashing. The knife kept biting and slicing. He sharpened it so well. Blood gushed from his hands and wrists, from
his face, blinding him and burning his eyes, mingling with his tears. He slid to the ground.

  “Ma,” he moaned. “No.”

  Mother crouched in front of him. “You did this to yourself,” she said. Her teeth clenched. She pulled her arm back to slice at him again, but Lump lunged forward. He wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed. The knife dripped to the ground as her fingers clawed at his around her throat. Her eyes popped wide. She struggled for breath. He squeezed and squeezed until he felt the bones in her neck break. She stopped struggling. He let go and she fell to the ground in a heap.

  Lump picked up the knife. He hummed the tune he made up on his violin as he finished skinning the blonde woman. Then he skinned his mother.

  Lump carried his violin and a burlap bag dripping with blood through the forest to the edge of town.

  Juilliard would take him now that he had new skin.

  Acknowledgements

  MY DEEPEST GRATITUDE goes to the following people who helped make this book possible:

  Angela Alsaleem, who wrote alongside me for several years. She probably has matching stories for about 80% of the tales in this book. If I didn’t have Tim, I would have dedicated this to her.

  My editor, Kristen Hiatt, for finding all the little fiddly things I can’t seem to see. Let’s get crab again soon! My cover designer, Steven Novak. Thanks for taking Bryan Sakti’s artwork and turning it into the exact cover I had in mind, even though I didn’t even give you hardly any guidance on what I was looking for. Bryan Sakti, who took my shitty doodle and turned it into the amazing figure on the cover. Your patience with me while we worked through draft after draft is admirable.

  To my parents, who never told me, “You can’t make a living as a writer.” Your support and love and care has shaped me into the person I am today. Thank you for keeping my dream alive! My brother, James, who is a guaranteed source of weird conversations.

  To my twin, Wissa (Melissa Sirevog), who has always been my #1 fan, even when I told lame stories in the womb about our amniotic fluid turning us into zombies. WTP!

  Finally, to my devoted, amazing, wonderful husband, Tim. We met in 2006 when I started to seriously get back into writing. “The Big Toe” is still not about your toe, I promise. Thank you for reading all of these and still deciding to love me forever.

  And Belle. Because, dogs.

  One last thing...

  DID YOU ENJOY LUMP: A Collection of Short Stories? One of the best ways to show how much you enjoyed it is to give a review on Goodreads or your favorite online retailer, even if it is only a few words. It’ll help exceptional readers like you find great books.

  Sneak Peek of THE BLOOD OF SEVEN

  Available for Pre-order Now at clairelfishback.com/bo7

  The Blood of Seven: Chapter 1

  DAY 1: FRIDAY

  Fake it till it feels right again.

  Or run as far and as fast as possible to try to escape it. Detective Ann Logan, if she could even call herself a detective anymore, ran along the trail, gravel crunching beneath her feet. Lodgepole pines towered overhead, blocking out most of the stars still visible in the early morning sky. According to her GPS watch, she was on mile three, but the nightmare images from the Salida Stabber case threatened to break her mind further than they already had.

  She pushed faster. Sometimes it took only one mile, sometimes five, sometimes a sixer of her favorite brew. Her therapist urged against the latter. So, Ann ran deep into the San Isabel National Forest in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

  The usual nightmare had awoken her at three in the morning and left her shaking under the sweat-filled sheets. It was the version in which Bruce, her old partner, came back from the dead to tell her his death was all her fault. Then, the Stabber’s last victim—Elizabeth Bradshaw, seven years old—did the same. Even though Ann didn’t believe in zombies or ghosts or anything like that, the dream wormed its way under her skin where it ate away at her sanity little by little.

  They said two words over and over again. The same two words she chastised herself with.

  Too late, too late, too late.

  Their voices chanted in her ears in rhythm with her footsteps and the bouncing light from her headlamp. She hit mile four, and still they chanted. Images from the case flipped through her mind like a grotesque slideshow. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed. When she reopened them, she broke into an all-out sprint.

  A tree root arched over the trail in the light’s beam. Ann jumped too late. It snagged her foot and sent her sprawling onto her stomach. The air rushed out of her body. The voices stopped. She rolled onto her back and looked up at the stars peeking through the trees.

  After a few gasping breaths, she got her wind back and climbed to her feet. She walked a little way to catch her breath before breaking into a run again.

  The clearing where she usually turned around to get six miles out and back came into view. The crescent moon hung in the sky like the Stabber’s sadistically perfect smile. Ann stripped her running jacket off and tied it around her waist, despite the fact that her breath puffed in front of her face with each exhale.

  She walked in circles to keep her legs warm while her lungs returned to a normal breathing pattern and turned to head back down the trail when a tingling sensation spread over her skin. Ann rubbed her arms, but her flesh was free of goosebumps. The moonlight illuminated her skin. But no, that wasn’t it. The veins just beneath the surface glowed blue-white. She rubbed at it again, but the illumination didn’t go away. She lifted her shirt, then her pant leg. Her whole body glowed.

  The tingling intensified. It burned. Like lava flowing through her nervous system.

  She dropped to her knees, closed her eyes against the agony, and let out a low wail of pain. Static filled her ears.

  Through the crackle, a voice compounded of many voices said, “Protect her.”

  Ann opened her eyes. Bright light flooded her vision, blinding her. A thin black figure appeared in the distance. It came closer until it resolved into the silhouette of a young girl around six or seven—long, curly hair stood out around her head. Her eyes glowed the same blue-white. Her hands moved, and she lifted something, a book, the interior gilded with the light. The book flew toward Ann. Scribbled words filled the pages. One of them flared, blinding Ann even further.

  Sophia.

  Ann’s heart boiled inside her chest. She cried out again.

  Then the book and the girl faded away, replaced with a flash of light that burned three familiar mountain peaks—the Royal Mountains outside her hometown—onto her retinas. When she regained her vision, the clearing came back into focus. No girl. No book. No Royal Mountain peaks. Just the clearing surrounded by towering pines.

  Ann’s breath came in short, painful gasps, as if she had just arrived in the clearing from the previous sprint. Her head swam. She must have pushed herself too hard out on the trail. That was all. Her brain was signaling a blood sugar crash or something. Her stomach growled as if to confirm.

  She jogged back down the trail.

  Or maybe it was stress. Stress did all kinds of things to people. Couldn’t it cause hallucinations? A second failed psych evaluation had taken its toll on her psyche.

  Inside her truck, Ann pulled on her jacket. The fabric rubbed over a sore spot on her chest. She touched it and winced. The skin was raised and felt raw. She flipped open the collar and peered down at it. Then she grabbed the rearview mirror and jerked it in her direction.

  At first, she thought the two-inch-long, raw and red brand was an Egyptian Ankh, but on closer inspection, it sort of resembled an upright Jesus fish. Three bands encircled where the lines met to become the tail.

  “What the fuck?” Her voice rode on gasping air. “No, no, no. What is this?” She poked it again and winced. Nothing had touched her out there. She hadn’t even crashed into any overgrown bushes. She looked at it again in the mirror and then angled the reflective surface away from her. She gripped the steering wheel. Tears sprang
to her eyes. She willed herself to keep it together until she got home and could assess the situation. Figure out the facts—what happened and what didn’t.

  The keys jangled in her hand, but she managed to get the right one in the ignition.

  She wasn’t ready. She knew that. No matter how ready she may have felt before this, no matter how ready she was to take another eval—she couldn’t go back to work. Her mind went into preservation mode. Her Lieutenant would understand. He already thought she was back too soon. She called him from her truck once she pulled up to her apartment building. He told her to take two weeks. Longer if she needed.

  Ann shuffled to her front door, eyes on the ground in front of her. Footsteps took off down the corridor. She looked up, but they were gone around the corner already.

  A box about two feet square sat on her doorstep. UPS was on top of it today. She’d never received a package during the night. On closer inspection, however, there was no postage of any kind. Just her name scrawled on the top in black marker.

  She jogged to the end of the corridor, but the person who must have dropped it off was long gone.

  Ann squatted next to the package and examined the outside. She took it to the coffee table in the living room. Using her keys, she sliced open the tape and folded back the flaps.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell.

  The Blood of Seven: Chapter 2

  TERESA HART SPRAYED furniture polish onto a rag and wiped dust from the crib. “Dusting day.” She sang and hummed a lullaby.

  After wiping down the nursery furniture, she rearranged and fluffed the stuffed animals at the foot of the crib. She folded the down edges of the pink and white blankets. She stood back and admired how inviting the tiny bed looked waiting for the baby to be tucked inside.

  “ ‘Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ ” She kissed the cross hanging from a chain around her neck and left the basement.