by John Everson
Bitch? I thought to myself…at six years old? Really?
I put a hand over my mouth to cover the laughter, and silently thanked God his mother wasn’t home to hear him. And then I donned my fatherly mantle and asked, “Billy, where did you hear that?”
“I dunno,” he’d said, never taking his eyes from the race. Not realizing he’d done something wrong.
“Billy, you shouldn’t say that,” I said, still stifling a grin. He’d been so earnest! “That’s a bad word.”
Now he looked at me. His expression changed radically. Chagrined.
“I didn’t know it was a bad word,” he pleaded. He looked terrified. Horrified that he had unknowingly crossed the line.
“Just don’t say it anymore,” I said. “It means a mean, horrible, selfish woman.” In my head, I added, “like your mother”.
A few minutes later, he was passing another couple of cars and he yelled again, “I’m coming for you!” Only this time he didn’t add the “bitch”. That made me smile again. He was a good kid. Earnest. Wanting to please. He’d make a good shoe someday for some woman. She’d step and step and step on him and he’d smile and kiss her for it. The thought curdled my stomach.
Now he was a teenager. A few weeks ago he’d sat next to me on this old couch, playing another game, this one with swords and monsters and life points. His black hair curled and kinked in waves across his collar and masked half of his cheek so I couldn’t see his eyes. But I knew how intent they looked. Sometimes he didn’t know that there was anyone else in the house, let alone the room. He certainly hadn’t noticed I was there.
It had been a long time since anyone noticed or cared that I was there.
The house was silent for a long time after Janice and Billy moved out. As the days and weeks went by, every now and then people came over, but they never stayed. When the front door closed and the evening light turned to night, it was just me.
Alone.
Here on the couch.
Sometimes I paced, trodding up and down the stairs to the bedroom. Sometimes I stood in the kitchen and remembered the meals we’d had there together. Isn’t that what family is about? Communal meals, stories shared, the day remembered, together.
There was no togetherness here anymore.
There was just me.
I remembered the time when Janice had loved me. Sometimes it seemed like just yesterday. Other times, it seemed like a lifetime ago.
But she had loved me. She had held me to her bosom and comforted me when I cried, and held me to her bosom and fucked me when I’d been excited.
Every good thing in my life had rested there, in those two snow-white globes of soft flesh, each crowned in a pink kiss.
It was thoughts like that that made me suicidal.
I never really had the balls to kill myself though. I mean, if you snuff out your thoughts…how can you look at your situation and nod that you did the right thing, or crow, because you did the wrong? Self-assessment is part of who I am. I couldn’t stop that process, even if it meant living here in this godforsaken empty house until the end of time.
But then, one day, I was no longer alone.
They came into the house like an army. Trevor and Amy and Sam. A handful of others marched behind them, all carrying boxes and dressers and lamps and more. My couch was dumped on the front lawn, as a bigger, softer settee took its place.
The last piece of my former life was gone, but still, I remain here.
I listen to their banal conversations and typically pointless arguments and I remember when my family lived here.
I remember when I lived here. Before that night when Janice lost the last vestige of civility and began throwing things at my head, a lamp, a paperweight, a shoe. I ducked and rolled on the landing, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, and my amusement drove the anger in her to a blinding heat that she couldn’t control. She kicked at me and then ran at me with both palms outstretched, screaming, “Get the fuck out of my life, you asshole!”
Her hands had connected with my still laughing chest, and I imagine my eyes popped open in that last second when I realized that she had toppled me, and that there was nothing behind me to stop me from back-flipping over the low railing at the stairs. The last thing I heard was a scream, whether it was hers, or my own, I couldn’t tell you.
And then I was here again.
Only, I wasn’t really here.
I watched Janice wrestle with her guilt until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Her obvious remorse gave me no feeling of vindication. I couldn’t comfort her, and I couldn’t take any comfort in her. Yet she was right there all the time. Crying on the couch next to me. The couch that was now out on the curb.
I wonder how she is. Has she found another man to replace me? Someone who didn’t laugh at her when she screamed like an idiot? Someone who loved and accepted her fully, unconditionally, despite her faults? That’s what she always said she wanted.
I wonder how Billy is. Has he found a girl yet? Would I like her?
I’ll never know. When I was a kid, we always said that “Grandma went up to heaven, and she’s looking down over your shoulder, protecting you in whatever you do.”
I don’t think that’s true. Because all I’m looking at is a bickering bunch of strangers in my house, painting all of my walls obnoxious colors and filling my rooms with furniture that has that faux Scandinavian design that defines so much of the crap you can buy at the Ikea store.
All my life I hated Ikea.
Now that’s what I’m going to look at all my Death?
Life sucks and then you die…
…and then it just gets worse.
Voyeur
In the beginning, he’d only wanted to watch.
They didn’t know he was there and he got an amazing rush just from being there, hidden, silent in the dark.
He knew it was wrong…but where was the harm?
He looked down at the bruised and lolling face beneath his knees and answered his own question.
There. The harm was right there.
“I never meant…” a voice in his head complained.
“There’s meant and there’s did,” another voice answered.
Ron didn’t have an answer for either voice. What was done was done.
Now he had to deal with the evidence effectively, or perish. He didn’t intend to perish. He enjoyed his life too much for that.
There was irony there, but he refused to look it in the eye. Any more than he would look at hers. Sometimes if you ignored something long enough, it went away. He told himself that, but still, the vacant eyes dragging along on the ground between his knees didn’t stop sightlessly staring.
The solution to his dilemma had come to him with deceptive ease. Just a few weeks before, he’d been down on the beach, playing Hacky Sack with an old college pal in between long pulls on some long necks. They’d wandered down the beach a bit, talking and walking, until the open area between the hill and the ocean narrowed and narrowed and then finally disappeared.
There was nobody down there, and rightly so. The beach transformed into a hill of black, gull-shit boulders that climbed twenty feet in the air before slipping back down and into the bay on the other side.
“What’s your porn star name?” Gary had asked him, as they perched against the rocks and watched the surf crash and spray.
“I’ve never done porn,” Ron had answered.
“Obviously,” Gary had laughed. That laugh had stabbed Ron in the heart, but he’d only smiled.
“You take your favorite sweet thing, and pair it up with your favorite spice,” Gary explained. “So that makes me Peppermint Pepper.”
Ron had thought a minute, and then grinned. “I guess that makes me Honey Ginger.”
“You sound sexy,” Gary laughed.
He was rewarded with a p
unch.
Ron had changed the subject then. “Ever go inside a cave?”
Gary had shrugged. “I don’t think so, why?”
Ron had pointed at a think black crevice in the wall of rock that rose from the beach to the road a hundred yards above.
“Because I think there’s one right there.”
Dragging people through the sand was rough work.
“Maybe next time, if you decide to filet your date, you’ll wait until you’re closer to your destination?” the voice in his head taunted. Part of him considered that and nodded at the logic. The other part wanted to slap himself across the face…only, that would mean letting go of her arms.
A voyeur saw things in flashes. Pictures. Frozen moments that he held on to in his mind, and enjoyed over and over again. Sometimes sexually. Sometimes not.
Snap.
“Smells like dead fish in here,” Gary said as they stepped inside the water-weathered edges of the rock and entered the chasm. The sound had deadened almost instantly, along with the light. But Ron could still see his sandals leaving imprints on the damp, dirty sand as they wound inside the rock and plumbed the hollow path within.
Ron dragged Aurelia Anne inside that very opening now. Part of what had attracted him to her was her name. How could you resist a girl named A.A.? She had been gorgeous and autonomously sexual. He had not been able to look away. Now he didn’t want to look at her at all.
He hadn’t dragged her all the way down the beach.
He’d parked along the roadside above, and let her body roll down the hill. Expediency was called for. Still, the nervousness of that moment as he pushed her body over the edge…would she make it down the hill? Would someone pull over near his car above and see what he was up to? Would somebody that he couldn’t see on the beach below intervene when he reached the bottom to drag the body inside the rocks?
His armpits were sodden when he’d reached the bottom of the hill and reclaimed the limp grip of her slender fingers. Those fingers he’d watched so many times through her window, glistening with the moisture of her own desire…
Ron shook away that image before it froze in his mind, and concentrated on dragging her inside.
The thing about chasms near the ocean is that they are carved and worn by time. Well, really, the ocean over time. And water can be relentless…and unexpected. When Ron had explored the crack in the black rock face with Gary, they had only walked inside a few yards, until the darkness hid their steps…but before they had left, Ron had seen the place where the water had worked its way deeper into the heart of the hill. He’d see the place where the walls disappeared, and the sand fled down…
The best place to hide a body is a place where it will never be found.
That’s the mantra of murder, but really, so few murderers ever find that special place. And that’s how they are unmasked as murderers. People always seem to stumble over the bodies. Without the evidence, all you can ever be is the accused.
Ron didn’t intend to be seen as either. There was nothing to connect him to A.A. and he was going to dispose of the evidence in a place that it could never be found.
He stopped for a moment to click on the flashlight he’d brought, and tucked it into his armpit, before picking A.A.’s cold hand back up again. He dragged her into the darkness, which slowly unveiled its secrets to him, as the soft light sought carefully ahead.
Snap.
“Did you bring a rope?” Gary said.
Ron shook his head. “Why?”
Gary pointed. “Because if you take a step thataway, you’re going to be mountain climbing.”
Ron had looked over the edge. “That’s the toboggan slide to hell, right there.”
He stood at the toboggan slide now. And A.A. was going down. He expected that she wouldn’t be coming back up. Ever.
“You were good to watch,” he whispered, and sent her on her way.
As she went, he felt something shift in his pants pocket, and heard a metallic clatter.
Ron swore and slapped at his jeans where his cellphone had been. The pocket was loose. Empty.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He stood there on the edge, for many minutes, trying to decide what to do. The evidence would never be found, he was sure. Not down there. But still…he couldn’t leave his phone there with the body, could he? In case, somehow, it was found? Ron shook his head.
This endless night would never end.
He drove back to his house, and retrieved the rope coiled in the garage. Rope he’d fantasized about on occasion for other purposes that had nothing to do with climbing down steep rock falls inside an ocean cavern. He slipped a beer from the fridge into the pocket of his jacket and returned to the car.
Snap
“What are you doing here?” she yelped. With sex-damp hands she sought to cover her breasts, but that only left other parts unveiled. Her hands floundered, not knowing what to hide.
“I just wanted to see you,” he’d answered.
“Pervert,” she screamed, inching away from him. He saw the steak knife still lying on her dinner plate, on the table next to the bed. He knew that was where she was inching towards.
He beat her there.
“I just wanted to watch you do it,” he cried.
A.A. screamed and reached out to grab his hands before he could act.
But she was too late. He knew that her voice had to be silenced.
It was the warmth of her life, coating and caressing him, that opened his eyes…
He found a heavy boulder to tie one end of the rope to, and then Ron was ready, hand over hand, to follow it down. He’d taken a class last year in rappelling, because he’d always fantasized about going on a solo mountain climb. A man against the world, surviving and climbing and moving to a new high…none of the latter had ever happened, but he still knew the drill. Push with that foot, let go with your hand, grab and weave…
Ron worked his way down the hidden cliff in the dark, until his feet finally touched the bottom.
His arms goose bumped. Shivered.
It was another climate here. Cool and still. Humid. He shook, and ignored the message. He didn’t care if it was cold—he had to do something here.
Ron shone the flash around the place where he had landed. The naked body of A.A. lay just to his right, blood still oozing from the wounds of the blade. And probably some nicks she’d received from the rocks on her way down.
Great, he thought. An evidence trail.
“Only if anyone else ever climbs down this slope on a rope,” his inner voice reminded.
“Won’t matter if they do,” he said aloud. “By then, A.A. will be long gone.”
It only took a few sweeps of the light for the glint to reflect back at him the image of his phone. He bent and swept it back into his pocket.
He wanted to leave right there and then, but the pale skin of A.A. lay just to his left, reminding him of why he was in this position.
Ron looked up the tall slope that he’d climbed down and shook his head. “Not far enough, darlin’,” he whispered.
He looked around for another crack to drag the body too. Another place where it could disappear farther into the earth. He’d come this far…someone else might as well—and he didn’t want them finding his object of affection if they did. So he’d best make her even harder to find as she rested. He imagined that somewhere near here, the ground shifted again, and A.A. would be beyond the touch of anyone.
He pulled her toward a dark crack in the rock nearby, assuming that would be another fall, deeper into the earth, but as he walked, his eye caught on something else. Something that glinted in the orange light of the flash.
“What are you then?” Ron murmured.
The wall of rock was not all rock. There was something buried in it. Something glassy. It glinted in the ligh
t of his flash, but disappeared when his light slipped to the side. He moved the flash back.
“Weird,” he whispered. He was deep beneath a tall rocky hill…he couldn’t think of how anything could have gotten accidently buried this far down.
The glass orb in the rock did not answer. But it did seem to respond to his flash. The crack in the wall suddenly glowed red.
Ron raised an eyebrow and stepped back. When nothing happened—no sound or sudden laser beams extruded—he stepped closer again. But this time he used his hammer and a piton and knocked some of the rock loose around the crack. The fissure quickly grew until he could fully see the source of the red light. It was a round bit of glass, no bigger than a quarter. But something moved inside it. As he hammered at the wall, the focus of the light shifted. Almost as if it were an eye.
Looking at him.
“What the hell are you?” he whispered. If this was some kind of detection system (who would install a detection system in the well of a cliff?) then it had seen him climb down and retrieve his phone. Right after a dead body came rolling along.
Ron put the piton on the center of the red light and hit it as hard as he could with the hammer.
His wrist vibrated, but the light did not wink out.
He tried again. And again…but the glass eye did not fracture or dim.
Ron decided to find out what the hell the thing was attached to. If he couldn’t put it out head-on, maybe it was connected to a recording device of some kind.
He started chiseling away at the edges, but quickly realized that his climbing hammer and a piton were not the right tools for the job. He was going to need to come back. Again.
He had never wanted to become the man he was. And when the sun shone bright and he had to face himself, as he did now in the rearview mirror, he wasn’t sure he recognized the stubbled, drawn features that looked back.
He’d started peeping when he was a teen; the woman next door left her windows open all the time. And he had reason to believe that she wanted him to see. She’d undressed right in front of her window too many times for him to believe otherwise. And there were several times that he was sure she had seen him watching. Her eyes had seemed to catch his, and her lips had moved into the faintest of smiles…but she had not stopped the erotic things she was doing. Teasing. Touching.
