Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

  The woman stood beside Heather now. She had a needle in her hand. The sharp point dripped with a fluid the colour of honey. Heather watched as the woman plunged it into her own arm, squeezing the syringe, as her face went from serene to ecstatic to unknowing.

  Once drained, the syringe fell from her fingers, and she stumbled past Heather. When she fell on top of Jeremy’s father, he barely seemed to notice. They lay together like that, still. Everything was still except for the tall pines agitated by the wind.

  Jeremy stepped around them, his face wet with tears. He paused on the other side of their bodies, looking at them. The woman said something to him that Heather couldn’t make out. Whatever it was made Jeremy break. His shoulders drooped. His face twisted into a mask of agony. His thick glasses slid off his nose and landed in the grass.

  He cursed loudly and reached for them, but came up empty. Heather started forward to help him. Before she could get there, in his blindness, he managed to crush them underfoot.

  They’d been walking for nearly two hours when the sun disappeared and the rain began. The journey slowed to a crawl, as Heather lost her way several times, and had to backtrack through the muck to regain her bearings. Jeremy was little help without his glasses, and the deeper they travell-ed into the woods, the more Heather lost her grip on the world she knew. The trailer park seemed far away and unimportant, a different world.

  As they walked, Heather thought very little about the alien or the water tower. At this point she expected to find neither. Instead, she thought of the snippets of sounds and images from the house they’d visited earlier. She kept seeing Jeremy’s father prone on the ground, arms flung around the grave stone, as if he might pull it into himself, and somehow embrace all of his might-have-beens. She saw him turn over, dead-eyed, and not recognize his own son. She heard the woman’s cigarette-stained voice.

  He’s in the mud.

  Heather knew mud was a name for heroin. She’d learned that in health last year. And if she had to guess, based on the way the woman and Jeremy’s father acted, they were using heroin. The woman’s statement seemed to go beyond slang to describe where the man really was, as if he were trying to find his traction, trying to climb out of a pit where solid ground no longer existed, where one slip led to the next, until he was wallowing in it, drowning instead of moving.

  This is what she was thinking when the trees parted at last to reveal a dark sky. The rain had turned to a fine mist, and a pale sliver of moon hung above the sunset. The water tower loomed in the distance on the other side of a wet meadow.

  Like everything out here, rust held sway. The actual tank was roofless, whether from a storm or the hands of man, Heather could only guess. The corrugated tin had turned to a burnished red beneath all the rust. Four stilts held it off the ground, nudging the lip of the tank in line with some of the nearby treetops. Railroad trestles, eaten by time and weather, formed a half-realized path to the tower before disappearing in the high weeds.

  “I see it,” Heather said.

  Jeremy said nothing and quickened his pace. Heather knew the water tower had become like a totem to him now, a goal he had fixed in his mind. It mattered little what was actually there—most likely a dead bird, stripped of its feathers or a poor raccoon that drowned inside the murky silt.

  Underneath the tower, water dripped from the slats overhead and landed on their upturned faces. On the other side, they found a badly mangled ladder. Several steps were broken or missing, but Jeremy felt around for one of the solid ones and began to climb.

  Heather followed, pulling herself over the open spaces where the steps were missing, willing herself to the top where she joined Jeremy on the wooden catwalk. She peered over the lip of the tank.

  Inside, past endless rivulets of corrugated tin, a shallow pool looked back at her. A foreign smell came up from the tank, causing Heather to hold her breath. She saw no alien. She saw nothing in the dark.

  The tank shuddered as Jeremy grabbed the rim and shook. The water, dark and shiny as oil, lapped against the sides. Nothing surfaced.

  He gave the tank another shake. “It can’t be too deep.”

  “Maybe the Barrows were just bullshitting,” she said.

  “No. There’s something here.” He pulled himself up. “I’m going in.”

  Before Heather could stop him, a sound came from the logging road. She turned and saw a truck rumbling toward them from the east.

  “Hurry,” she said. “I think your brother’s here.”

  A thud welled up from inside the tank, followed by a groan of pain. “I’m in,” Jeremy said.

  As Heather pulled herself over the rim, she looked at the moon. A gleaming silver arc, carrying the stars in the same way a mother carries her children, rocking them to sleep, singing the day shut, opening the night. As she fell, she told herself she would keep the moon in sight, a constant to guide her where all other markers had failed.

  She hit the water and then the bottom, first with her feet and then when they couldn’t sustain the impact she crumpled to her knees, cracking them hard against the tank. Rolling over in the shallow water, she found the crescent moon, cradling the stars. When the pain in her legs begged for her to scream out, the moon calmed her like any good mother would.

  “I think I messed up my ankle,” Jeremy said.

  “Don’t talk,” she said. “Look at the moon.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll calm you.”

  Jeremy turned his face up to the moon, its slivered shine opening his face up, glinting in the tiny space of his squinted eyes. Despite the pain, despite the smell, despite the terror she felt at being ridiculed by Ronnie and Clyde, this image of Jeremy was too much. He looked smaller somehow down here, more defined, more in focus. The shadows hid his faults, the moonglow highlighted everything good about him and Heather could see now there was a lot good about Jeremy. Seeing him like this now, in this other world, made her feel like a part of something mysterious and grand and sad. A great, silent secret. She shivered.

  Two doors slammed outside the tower. Voices boomed.

  “You’re buying me a twelve pack if there’s nothing here, Clyde.”

  “How about you buy me a case if there is?” Clyde said. He sounded confident. Heather looked around the tank, but it had grown even darker now and she could barely make out Jeremy, much less an alien.

  “If I see an alien, I’m going to extract the bastard and sell him on eBay.”

  “Well, get ready to extract. Here. Take a flashlight.”

  Heather heard them struggling up the ladder, cursing as they came to the missing steps. She had no idea what to do. In seconds, flashlights would expose them.

  She looked back at the moon, as if an answer might come from there. There was none. In fact, the moon had slipped away, obscured by the clouds. She thought of her father. Maybe that’s what happened to him too. Maybe the clouds had simply rolled in.

  This thought made Heather angry, even while she found it soothing. If clouds rolled in, they could roll away. It made sense. But why had it happened at all? And why was she here in this water tank waiting to be humiliated? Heather felt the urge to hit something, to strike out.

  Backing into the curved wall of the tank, she kicked it twice with her heels as hard as she could.

  “Was that you, Ronnie?”

  The voices were above them now.

  “From down there.”

  Heather knocked again, this time with her fists.

  “Oh shit.”

  “You didn’t tell me the fucker was alive.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  A series of furious knocking came from the other side of the tank as Jeremy began to hit the walls. Heather joined him and together they made the tower wobble on its wooden legs. Soon she was throwing her body against the walls as the water sloshe
d around her knees. The sky was completely dark now and the stars seemed to list from side to side as they rocked the tank. At thirteen, Heather had never been drunk, though she imagined this was what it must feel like. The sky appeared to spin above her, to come loose from its fragile place. She had no idea how long this lasted. It seemed like forever.

  When they stopped, she was soaked and exhilarated. There was little doubt the Barrows had split. To be sure, she calmed her breathing and listened. Outside, an engine turned over and tires scattered gravel.

  “Awesome,” she said. Her words echoed in the dark tank, plinking off the tin walls, falling soundless into the water.

  Jeremy said nothing. She heard him breathing nearby.

  “Jeremy?”

  She reached for him in the darkness. He was there, beside her. Taking her shoulders, he turned her gently. At first, she thought he was about to kiss her, but rather than lifting her face up to his, he tilted her head down.

  “There’s something touching my leg.”

  The clouds around the moon dissolved. Moonlight played over the water, making the smallest ripples shine like silk. There, bathed in moonshine, near her feet. It had been there all along; she’d probably brushed against it without even knowing, unaware of the deadness touching her legs. She felt a sudden urge to wipe them clean.

  Jeremy spoke the question, even as it formed inside her mind. “What is it?”

  Heather knelt for a better look. Blue and bloated, almost fishlike in the murky water. Hands splayed apart as if the creature had been pleading. Both knees bent, the creature’s feet in the air. Heather counted the toes. Ten. Ten fingers. She lifted her gaze to the head. Proportionally too large for its body. The mouth hung open in a toothless scream. Its eyes were open in an expression Heather recognized, though for a time she could not place it. She bent closer, trying to read them. What did they say? Where had she seen them before? Then the moon shifted or the clouds did. The shadows crept away, and she saw her own reflection in the water staring up at her as if she were a different person, an underwater person, sharing the same body and personality and memories as her normal self. This underwater person, though, knew all the secrets. And finally she knew where she recognized the eyes. They belonged to the girl staring back at her. The look, she understood now, was simple confusion and fear. Nothing so confusing and frightening as being born into death.

  She made herself look away.

  An arm fell around her shoulders. Jeremy knelt beside her, pulling her close. Together they gazed down at the creature.

  “Is it an alien?” he said at last.

  “Yeah,” Heather said, seeing them all in the water now, the baby, Jeremy, and herself. “It is.”

  Halloween Comes to County Rd. Seven

  Doug settles back down on the couch with a fresh beer, as Martin starts another porn flick. Doug doesn’t say anything, opting to drink his beer in silence while Martin adjusts the volume. A girl saunters onscreen, her silicone implants rigid, her shorts so tight they might as well be painted on.

  The sex starts without preliminaries. It’s cruel and mean and soulless. Doug focuses on the trees outside Martin’s trailer, and thinks today might be the day to leave.

  Two weeks ago, Doug was fired from his job at the Honda plant because the shift foreman smelled alcohol on his breath one time too many. When his wife found out, she told him not to bother coming home until he had another job. He’s been with Martin ever since.

  He looks over at Martin, high as the cow jumping over the moon, grinning stupidly at the television. Martin, whom Doug has known since grade school, lost his job three years ago and just look at him—a sack of shit, true, but a happy sack of shit. He lays around most of the day, taking hits of crank, then doing something asinine like shooting a hole in the side of his trailer or running laps around his above-ground pool. Sometimes, after a few hits, he just sits and picks at his toenails for hours, mutilating them until they look like tiny, bloody faces, leering back at him. Once he got scared and tried to cut them off, but Doug managed to talk him down. Mostly, though, Martin just sits on the couch, watching porn, raving about some whore he’s done or wants to do, waiting for the doorbell to ring. The doorbell rings, he gets up and answers it. Trades little homemade baggies for government-issued green. Saturday nights, he might shower, go to a bar, pick-up a twenty-three-year-old in high heels and a mini skirt looking for some free crank.

  Doug and Martin have an agreement. Doug can stay indefinitely as long as he is willing to help out when some fellow named Snakeskin shows up. Doug isn’t even sure if Snakeskin is a real person or just another one of Martin’s drug-induced delusions.

  “Snakeskin’s going to be by one of these days, and when he comes, he’s coming to kill me,” Martin told Doug a week into his stay. “That’s when you’ll earn your keep, Dougie. You’ll know it’s him by the sound of his truck. It’s geared low, so you’ll feel it in your gut.”

  Unable to deal with more porn, Doug leaves Martin alone and escapes through the back door to light a cigarette on the tossed-together deck. The air out here smells good. Another downside of living with Martin: his trailer smells like chemicals and stale beer. Not that the happy bastard ever notices. Doug glances back over his shoulder and is grateful for Martin’s darkened windows. Sheathed in black trash bags, the windows remind him of something. Today is Halloween. He thinks about his daughter, Maci. Is she old enough to go trick or treating? Probably not, maybe next year.

  He stands, watching the afternoon sky. There’s a good breeze, but it’s cold, too cold for late October in Alabama. Winter’s coming and it’s going to be a bitch. Especially without a place to stay or a job. He tries to convince himself that he can find work again. Tries to believe he can patch things up at home. Tries to imagine how next Halloween will be: Maci waiting for him to come home from work. She’ll be standing in the driveway dressed as Tinkerbell or some princess. He likes this image. He wants to go back home.

  As he starts back inside for a beer, he stops, frozen by a loud rumbling out on the road. He waits, hoping it will pass. When it doesn’t, he feels torn between going back inside or taking off for the woods where his truck is parked.

  The trailer shakes as the truck eases up the gravel drive.

  “Doug. Hey Dougie boy,” comes Martin’s voice from inside. “It’s show time.”

  He could run up through the woods and be at his house in no time. He could convince his wife to take him back. He could help Maci make a costume and together they could go trick or treating.

  Where would they go?

  He laughs at the prospect of coming to Martin’s door. What would he put in Maci’s bag? A joint? It’s not funny, though he has to laugh anyway.

  And just before Martin swings the door open, Doug feels it. A burning inside of him to get the hell away from Martin. Back in school, Doug always managed to get wrapped up in Martin’s stupid schemes. The door is open. Martin stands at the threshold.

  “Shake your thang, man. It’s time.”

  Doug hesitates, maybe even steps away from Martin.

  Martin’s smile vanishes. “You aren’t thinking about bolting, are you?’

  Doug doesn’t speak, his eyes down.

  “Hey, there’s nothing to it. I need your help, Doug. Just like you needed mine.”

  Doug steps back inside.

  “Take this gun,” Martin says, opening a drawer that contains several dirty needles, a pair of women’s underwear, and the biggest handgun Doug has ever seen. “Go to the lab and—”

  “Lab? I—”

  Martin holds his hand up. “The fucking closet.” He motions to a door with the gun. “Flip the vent up so you can see. If Snakeskin makes a move, shoot him right between the fucking eyes.” He holds out the gun.

  Doug looks at it but nothing else.

  “You think I’m fucking wi
th you, Doug?” Martin shoves him hard in the chest. “You think I’ve just been letting you lay on my couch and drink my beer for free? Take the gun. Now.”

  Doug hears someone outside fiddling with the gate. A coldness grips him, and all of the beer he drank today feels like it’s in his bladder. He reaches for the gun.

  Doug doesn’t know guns. The one in his hand is so heavy, the barrel so thick, he is sure it can destroy a man, obliterate him, change his face to pulp, from something that’s recognizable to something that isn’t.

  The “lab” is dark and smells like ammonia. He finds and opens the vent enough to see out into the room where Martin is taking a final hit before facing Snakeskin.

  Doug doesn’t want to shoot anyone, but the second Martin opens the door and Snakeskin walks in, he knows that he may not have a choice.

  He wonders sometimes if he has ever really had a choice. Martin reminds him of better times, and better times is all he’s got. He wishes he could forget Martin completely, but he feels powerless to do so. His life seems like a series of inevitabilities, like he is rolling down a hill, continually picking up speed. One of these days, he knows that the bottom will come and when it does, all those inevitabilities will crush him.

  From the open vent, Doug watches Snakeskin come in. He is a small man, but muscular. His complexion is dark, as if he has spent many days in the sun. His dress is minimal—a white tee, blue jeans that fit tight around a trim waist, a pair of shit kickers that look at least a size too big. Doug unconsciously raises the gun to the open slat.

  There are hundreds of men just like Snakeskin all over the county. He looks not unlike Doug himself, perhaps a little more muscular, his clothes a little tighter. The real difference is in the eyes. They look wild. Reckless. Doug knows those eyes. They belong to men who have stopped caring a long, long time ago.

  Snakeskin exudes a confidence that sets Doug on edge, and he grips the big gun a little more tightly, lifting it closer to the open slat.