Never Fear

by Heather Graham

  “You know, it’s Friday. I’m just counting down the hours until the weekend,” he said happily, trying to avoid what he had to say next.

  “Great,” she said cheerfully. So, about the weekend; I think we should stay in tonight, maybe watch a movie?”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he replied. “I think I need to face the facts. I really don’t know how to get Marnie out of this funk she’s in. I was thinking that maybe y…”

  “Please tell me you’re joking, Jayce.” Ellie said, interrupting him.

  “No, why? It will be like when Marn was younger. We’ll have a movie night. I’ll get a veggie pizza, like the two of you like, and then…”

  “No.” Ellie said flatly. Jason took a breath to say something, but she cut him off quickly. “Just no. I won’t be a part of this.” She hung up the phone, leaving Jason confused.

  “Well, that went a little worse than I expected,” he said to the phone in his hand. “I guess it’s just me and Marnie tonight then.” He would worry about this new thing with Ellie later, after he dealt with his sister.

  Jason walked up to his house carrying a pizza box and found Ellie and Rob waiting for him on his front porch.

  “Hey… guys…” he said with confusion. They looked at him nervously. “What’s going on? I only got one pizza. I thought it was only going to be me and Marnie.”

  Rob and Ellie exchanged looks with each other for an uncomfortable moment, until the silent decision seemed to be Ellie would take the lead.

  “Jason,” she said lovingly, placing her hand on his chest. Her blue eyes met his hesitantly. “We’re starting to get really worried about you. We can’t keep going on like this, like nothing is wrong.” Jason stared back at her, not knowing what to say.

  “Jason, dude, the way you were talking about Marnie today… It’s just getting too weird. People at the office are starting to talk,” Rob said, stepping forward. “You have to stop with this.”

  “I know,” Jason said, looking at his friends.

  “You do?” Ellie said with a sigh of relief.

  “I’m going to have a talk with her this weekend. It’s time she stops moping around and gets over this scholarship thing. Then our lives can get back to normal. This is just getting ridiculous. I know she’s a teenage girl, but--”

  “No,” Ellie said loudly, backing away from him. “Jason, you need help.” She was nearly in tears, fighting back anger and frustration. Jason was speechless. He knew that things had been weird between them the last couple months, but he didn’t understand her reactions to this. She had known Marnie since she was thirteen. There were times when Marnie confided in her. She looked up to her. Ellie had backed up to Rob and started crying into his shoulder, saying, “I can’t do this again,” over and over. Jason reached out to her, but Rob turned her away, putting himself between them.

  “Jason, Marnie is gone. She’s not coming back.” Rob spoke slowly and carefully.

  “What?” Jason said, looking at his friend like he was crazy.

  “Marnie is dead, Jayce. You have to stop talking about her like she’s still here,” Rob said, placing a hand on Jason’s shoulder. Jason shrugged it off.

  “This isn’t funny.” Jason spat the words out angrily. “I think you should go.” Ellie walked back up to him with tears in her eyes.

  “You’re right, it’s not funny, Jason. It has never been funny. I lost that little girl that night too, and I can’t imagine what it was like to be the one to find her. But you have to wake up,” Ellie said softly. “It’s time to stop acting like everything is fine. Why do you think we won’t come in the house anymore? It’s a mess. There’s rotting food all over the kitchen. It smells. I clean it up. I stock the fridge, but it all ends up a mess again. You drop things or knock them over and just leave it, thinking she’s going to pick up after you. And worst of all, her blood is still covering the upstairs. It’s smeared all over the bathroom walls and sink. The bathroom window is still broken. You don’t see any of it. You talk about how she crawls into bed with you at night, like she’s still this little girl you’re trying to protect. No one blames you, Jason. It wasn’t your fault. But it’s time to face it. It’s been months. Every time I think you’re getting better, you relapse. We’ve already done this. We’ve already been through this and I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She reached for his hand, but he pulled away.

  “I think you should both leave.” Jason turned his back on them and opened the door to his house. He could hear Ellie crying behind him, trying to catch her breath. He rushed in the door and nearly tripped, as his feet got tangled in a small pink jacket. The pizza box flew from his hands and landed next to the purple teddy bear he had tripped on earlier. He picked it up angrily and yelled out.

  “Marnie, I thought I told you to pick this up.”

  He picked up the jacket. It was the one she wore when she was eight. It had faded silver hearts on it. He looked back outside the open door to his friends watching him silently. When he looked back at the room, there were items all over the floor, spilling out from a box, the box he’d tripped on this morning that threw him into the door. It was a box of memories, items from Marnie’s childhood he never could bring himself to get rid of. The jacket fell from his hands.

  He took a deep breath and walked through the entryway toward the kitchen. As he reached the doorway, a rancid odor hit him. He stepped back, covering his nose with his forearm. There was a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, all the pieces shriveled and moldy. And all around it were the piles of money he had been leaving for Marnie’s grocery runs. Had that really been there this morning? What have I been eating? The countertop was covered in dirty cups and plates. Jason turned and quickly walked away, catching sight of his friends still standing at the open door. He turned and bolted up the stairs.

  There was a brown stain across the carpet that traveled from Marnie’s closed door to the bathroom. He followed the drips as the carpet turned to tile and the stain continued to smear across the bathroom floor and streak across the walls. He heard movement behind him, turning, he saw Ellie.

  “This…” his words caught in his throat and were barely a whisper. “This wasn’t here this morning.” Ellie’s eyes were red and glistening, but she held back her tears now, trying to be strong for the man she loved. Jason looked across the room. There were bloody handprints on the side of the sink and on the mirror. He looked back at Ellie, silently begging her for another explanation for what he was looking at. The window was broken, a cool evening breeze blowing in. Jason walked over and stared at it. He thought he had shut the window this morning? He remembered shutting the window. It hadn’t been broken, had it?

  “Remember, the officer said she was probably just delusional with blood loss. She was might have been trying to open the window for air and got frustrated. She broke it with a hairspray bottle, shoving her arm through it and cutting her up more.” Ellie looked down at her hands, trying to not look at the horrible scene in front of her. “She had already lost so much blood…”

  Jason heard a blood curdling scream, and turned from Ellie to see Marnie standing in front of the mirror. She was holding a towel to her left arm; it was soaked with blood. She looked right at Jason.

  “I can’t breathe. I can’t…” she said, looking right into his eyes. She grabbed the can of hairspray sitting on the counter and turned, putting it through the old pane of glass. The broken shards sliced into her arm. Jason flinched, watching as she pulled her arm back through the broken glass, slicing through her beautiful pale skin. Blood gushed from the lacerations and pooled on the floor. The can fell from her hand and she grabbed the side of the sink, losing her balance. A small, panicked laugh escaped her lips, as her bloody hand slid against the porcelain. “This is going to be hell to clean up. Who’s going to do it for you, Jason?” Her eyes looked menacing as she spoke to him.

  Jason watched in horror, sucking in a shaking breath. He ran from the room, pushing past Ellie and
back into the hallway. He opened the door to Marnie’s room. It was a mess. He had never seen her room look like this before. But it was pristine last night. He remembered standing in this same spot with Marnie, checking the room. It was fine. But now there was blood everywhere. His head started pounding. He pressed the heels of his hands hard against his temples, shaking his head and taking deep breaths. He froze suddenly, seeing Marnie’s body at his feet, face down in front of her bed, the carpet soaked with blood. He started backing up, until his back hit the wall in the hallway. In a flash, he remembered everything.

  It was him that knocked the stuff off her desk. Marnie had been crying for days about not getting a scholarship, and without the scholarship she couldn’t go to the big college she wanted to. Instead of being there for her, he wanted to go out and meet Ellie. He had tried to be sympathetic, but he had had enough.

  “Get over it!” he had yelled, and pushed her books off her desk. “So you’re not perfect. Surprise. None of us are. Life goes on.”

  Jason slowly walked back into the room, stepping over clothes and broken picture frames. Marnie must have gone manic after he had left that night. She tore her room apart. Her bookshelf was toppled over, books, DVDs and scrapbooks strewn about. Photos and colorful paper were torn up and crumpled everywhere. He bent down and picked up a book that said SENIOR YEAR in fancy letters below a plastic cover. It was empty inside, all the pages torn out.

  “They said she used a crafting knife down the length of her arm. There’s nothing you could have done. She cut right down the vein.” Ellie said from the safety of the hallway. Jason looked back at her, anger in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, moving toward him.

  “Sorry,” he heard again, but Ellie’s mouth had not moved. “I’m sorry.” He turned into the room again and found himself face to face with his sister. Her skin was grey, eyes lifeless. Her dark was hair matted with blood, just like he had found her.

  “Two days…” Jason whispered to himself. He looked at Ellie with wide eyes. “I was with you for almost two days while she lay here.” Ellie’s breath hitched in her throat. She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer and they fell from her eyes despite her objections.

  Jason remembered the note that was left, neatly written and sitting on top of Marnie’s empty desk.

  Jason,

  I’m sorry you had to give up the best years of your life to raise me. It was not fair, but I have learned now that life never is. I tried to be the best that I could. I thought I had it all worked out. I would be someone important and be able to pay you back for everything you have done and all your sacrifices. You and Ellie would probably have been married by now with your own children if it weren’t for me. I cannot stay here in this town and rot away. I cannot ask you to take care of me any longer. What has all my work been for? A GPA is worthless to me now. I watch you struggle every day, work hard to barely pay the bills. I’m already exhausted and I haven’t even started yet. I struggled for so long with our mother’s suicide. I thought she was selfish and questioned how she could just leave me behind like that, but now I get it. She knew something I didn’t. Life is hard and unyielding. And no matter how hard I try there will always only be failure to look forward to. I understand now that I can never be perfect. Life can never be perfect. And I don’t want to live in an imperfect world.

  Jason sank to the floor, a sob escaping his throat. He never regretted taking Marnie in. He loved having her there with him. He never meant to make her feel like a burden. He remembered this feeling now. Ellie was right. He had done this before--many times before. Last night he was in here, pacing, causing more destruction, and in a moment of desperation he opened the window and sat on the edge, legs dangling. He tried to make himself understand, to feel what she felt. He wished it was a dream, but it wasn’t--everything else was.

  “You never once complained to me about raising her. Even when she was a hormonal pre-teen, you took it all in stride. You loved her, and she loved you, but there was something deeper… something dark she hid inside her, and hid well. None of us saw this coming,” Ellie said, almost as if she was reading his thoughts. She was kneeling next to him, her arms wrapped around him, his head buried in her chest.

  He remembered all of it. He had come home from spending the night at Ellie’s, something he did often on the weekends. Marnie was eighteen and a good kid. He trusted her to be home alone; she never said it bothered her. In fact, she often remarked that it was easier to get her work done with him out of her hair. He could see it all now. The brown stains on the carpet had been red when he first saw them. Panic had taken over as he ran to Marnie’s room and found her collapsed on the floor, covered in blood. One arm was sliced from wrist to elbow, on the other, the skin was jaggedly torn by the glass of the broken window in the bathroom. The side of her face that was visible was tear stained and smudged with blood and makeup. Worst of all had been her eyes, open, vacant and lifeless. He knew instantly she was gone.

  “What happened to the girl that faced each day with renewed enthusiasm?” he had said this morning.

  “She’s dead,” he whispered to Ellie. “She’s dead.”

  “I know, baby. We both loved her so much. But she’s gone and nothing is going to bring her back,” she said, cradling his head, like you would comfort a crying child. “We’ll get through this. I promise, no matter how long it takes.” Jason raised his head to look at her, but only saw the bloody corpse of his sister standing behind her. Their eyes met.

  “Don’t go,” he whispered to Marnie. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ellie answered, thinking he was talking to her.

  ***

  One year later, Jason sat at the kitchen table, nursing his morning coffee. Ellie came into the kitchen with a yawn.

  “Look at you, already up and dressed on a Saturday morning,” she teased, while she poured a cup of coffee for herself. He smiled at her. She looked adorable in one of his T-shirts that she had taken to wearing to bed.

  “Well, you know, I wanted to get an early start. I’ve got a lot of things on my list today,” he said, walking over and placing a kiss on the side of her neck. With one hand, he took the coffee mug from her grasp, and with the other he cupped her growing belly hidden under the oversized shirt. With a smirk, he dumped the cup in the sink and brought a bottle of juice over to her from the refrigerator. While she poured herself a glass, he went back to the sink and rinsed the mug, placing it in the drying rack, smiling proudly.

  Upstairs, his feet padded softly against the hardwood floor of the hallway. He opened the door to his sister’s room and stepped inside. The hardwood flowed into the room. Jason sat down on the floor where all the pieces of a crib were separated accordingly.

  He looked at the bright yellow walls covered in fairy and flower decals. Marnie’s room had been white. He never offered to paint it another color, nor did she ask. There had never been posters on the wall. She didn’t have collections on display. Everything was always neatly put away.

  “How’d that get there?” he said out loud, spotting Marnie’s purple Teddy Bear high on one of the shelves he’d just put up.

  “I put it there,” Ellie said, walking in the room and moving to stand next to him. “I wasn’t going to leave it sitting on the floor. I thought it was a good spot for it. I remember Marnie always carrying it around when she was little.” He put his arm around her as she spoke. “It was a good idea you had.”

  “What idea?” he asked, looking down at her curiously.

  “Getting the bear out for the nursery. I miss her, Jayce, and it made me smile thinking that a little piece of her could still be here, in this room, watching over her niece.” She rested a hand on her small baby-bump.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, smiling and a taking in a slow breath. “It does make it feel like a little part of her is still here.”

  He looked over at the disassembled crib and winked at Marnie, happily sitting on the floor waiting for him to get b
ack to work.

  7

  Aichmophobia

  Fear of Sharp Objects

  Richard Devin

  I liked the cool feel of the knife in my hands. The weight was heavy, even for a smallish knife and kept it perfectly balanced on my palm. I gripped the knife tighter. I had complete effortless control of the blade.

  I walked slowly toward the nursery, playing with the knife, tightening my grip on it, then relaxing my muscles. The knife would do the work. I paused at the nursery before pushing on the door. It slowly swung in. I followed, stepping into the room. Soft, deep carpet padded my footfalls. I looked around, ready. The room was empty. Nothing was out of place. It was, as the room always was, clean and organized. The only thing new was the decorations applied to the door. Red, smudged hand prints. When had she done that? The question slipped into my thoughts as I headed out of the nursery, taking the few steps down the hall toward the master bedroom. That door was open. I paused again, readying myself. The knife urged me on, cajoling me, mocking me. I capitulated and stepped in. This room was also undisturbed. Everything was in its place. All except for a trail of red footprints that led from the bathroom off a corner of the room, to where I was standing. I followed them with my eyes. They came toward me, near the doorway. The stains crossed over each other, and then faded, disappearing directly at my feet. I looked down. My bare feet were covered in blood.

  ***

  Nickie watched as I swooped up my briefcase and headed toward the door leading from the kitchen to the garage.

  Nickie followed me, putting a coffee cup in the sink on the way. “I hope not. The baby and I would like to spend some quality family time with…”