Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

by Joel Arnold

  He had to believe.

  He sat there watching her. Believing.

  Seven hours passed. He’d barely moved, barely blinked.

  What had he done wrong? What had he left out?

  Her eyes.

  Where was the shine in her eyes? Where was the life? They stared back at him, the sclera a dull silk matte, the pupils opaque and blind. Was this what he’d worked so hard at? This lifeless thing? She was no more than a — a doll.

  As the sun dribbled through the bedroom window in a growing yoke, the squawk of a blue jay penetrated the thick, cotton haze that had fallen upon his mind. He stood and walked stiffly to the window, squinting, and saw the jay sitting on the branch of a silver maple.

  Maybe Eugenia hadn’t told him everything. Maybe she didn’t want him to succeed in this — endeavor.

  His heart tapped against his ribcage.

  His heart. Infarcted.

  A piece of it dead.

  But what of a heart that’s all dead? What of a heart that’s not even there?

  He remembered the wild thing inside Eugenia’s ribcage when she’d shed her skin, banging back and forth as if trapped in a cage. Was that what gave her life? Kept her alive?

  The jay squawked angrily. Pearce loaded his rifle for the first time since his heart attack.

  Questions pierced his mind as he crossed the street carrying his rifle.

  He knocked. Eugenia answered, an appliqué of fear stitched across her face. He pushed her back and entered.

  “What am I missing? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “You are not pleased?”

  “Tell me what’s missing. Why isn’t she alive?”

  “Is it wise to play God?”

  He grabbed a fistful of her chest. Felt frantic movement inside. “What’s in here?”

  She didn’t answer, only watched him, her eyes sucking in the light of the room.

  He stepped back. Pointed the gun at her face.

  She only stared at him, her chest bulging in a frantic rhythm.

  Pearce fired. The bullet pierced the fabric of her face like a blunt, angry needle, threading a path of emptiness through her delicate skull. She collapsed in a heap. Her insides sizzled and smoked.

  Pearce squatted over her. Slid his deer-gutting knife from its sheath. With practiced skill, he cut a slit in her chest from neck to belly. He reached in. Felt something move inside. He gripped it and pulled it free.

  It was coated with an oily substance. Speckled in black and white. The answer had been all around him. In all of Eugenia’s quilts. The image of the bird. Black and white bits pieced together in its shape, infused in each of the designs.

  Its wings unfolded in Pearce’s hand.

  It was the size of a sparrow, its black and white body covered in sores and tumors. Its right eye was welded shut with scar tissue, and oozed something thick and green. Its other eye blinked open and stared at him. A quiet, wet squawk issued from its beak.

  That night, he finished stitching shut the new incision on Mary’s chest. The bird inside thumped and squawked in its new home. Pearce lay beside Mary, waiting. There was nothing more to do. His fingers, despite the thick calluses, oozed blood from his last days of frenzied work, leaving crimson kisses on his bed sheets. He fell asleep.

  It was a long time before he awoke. Night had come dark and black outside the frosted windows. His eyes were heavy, and it took many false starts before they would open. When they did, when they filled with the soft light of the bedside lamp, he saw that Mary still lay there, a lifeless pile of cloth and thread. He reached out to her. Ran his hand down along the fabric of her cheek, the rise of her ash-filled breasts. Down along her stomach.

  His heart screamed in his chest.

  The bedroom spun.

  He breathed in quick, shallow gasps.

  Slowly, with great effort, he sat up and leaned over the Mary-thing, laid the side of his head on her stomach, and felt the thing which grew inside of her belly kick the side of his face.

  Even through the layers of material, he heard that its heartbeat was strong.

  October Blizzard

  Day has come. Snow swirls in the street, adds to already smothered lawns, whips past jack-o-lanterns shellacked with ice. Piles of bagged leaves sit snow-covered on curbs, while ornamental scarecrows stare at the ground, ice-sickles hanging off their faces. The smell of lawn clippings, tulips and marigolds are all memories so far distant that maybe they never existed at all.

  Around the Griffins’ place, the wind shifts the snow, revealing fading patches of pink. The glimpses are brief, and the snow keeps coming. Weather forecast says the snow is here to stay. Says it will keep coming down for another couple days, and the cold will continue through the rest of the winter.

  No one will go look there. No one wants to know.

  Spring is a long time coming.

  The Griffin residence sits two houses in from the north end of our street. Children must pass it on the way to school unless they take the long way around the block, which some choose to do — even when the temperature plummets below zero.

  Johnny Griffin, thirteen, is suspended from school for possession of marijuana. I’ve seen his father, J.T., smoke weed from the shadows of their garage, the odor carried toward our house over the summer breeze. How long will it be before the Griffin boy offers it to the kids on our street? Has he already? Darren, our twelve-year old, swears he’s never touched the stuff.

  The mother, Juanita Griffin, is a drunk, and her cussing fouls the air. J.T. and Johnny work on two old Harleys into the early morning, the revving engines cutting through the darkness, while thick, gray exhaust spills from the garage.

  Their lawn remains unkempt throughout summer, dandelions and pigweed tangled amidst under-watered grass. The shell of their house needs fresh paint, the windows filthy.

  I know Johnny Griffin can’t help the way he is. How can a child with parents like that have a chance? But does that mean our children have to put up with him? Should we give them extra lunch money so that after Johnny steals it, they’ll still have enough to eat with? We’ve tried talking to J.T. and Juanita, but they laugh, tell us kids will be kids. And then they turn mean and tell us to mind our business.

  Aren’t our children our business?

  Two years ago when the Griffins moved onto our street, Lydia and I brought a sheet cake and bottle of wine over and introduced ourselves. They looked surprised — a pair of rabbits caught in headlights. Juanita at least thanked us between drags on a cigarette, but J.T. said, “I’m more of a beer guy.” Later, we invited them over for Thanksgiving, but J.T. refused without so much as a thank you, without so much as a smile or handshake. I felt awkward standing in his doorway.

  “Anything else you want?” he asked.

  “No. That’s all.”

  He shut the door.

  “Johnny Griffin’s been harassing Brittany.”

  The recently widowed Jill Bryant has called a meeting. Most of our neighbors are there, except the Griffins. “He pushed her into the grass, rubbed her face in the dirt because she refused to kiss him. She’s only eleven. I don’t want my daughter putting up with that.” She looks at each of us. “What’s happened to this neighborhood?”

  She serves coffee and hot apple cider, thick sliced pumpkin bread and cherry chip cake. There are caramel apples for the kids gathered around a Disney movie in the upstairs den.

  She invites me and three others to the basement. We huddle around a card table. I used to play poker with her husband here before he was hit by a drunk driver.

  “I want to do something about those Griffins,” Ms. Bryant says.

  Bill Swarthout’s got a pair of five-year old identical twin girls and says, “You can’t just ignore a cancer like that. Let ’em go on the way they are, and next thing you know, you’re no longer you. No, what you gotta do to cancer is burn the fucker off.”

  There is little eye contact here in Ms. Bryant’s basement. It’s like the lighting
is too harsh, and everyone has to look at the floor to avoid damaging their eyes.

  Finally Todd Kaufmann — husband of Katrina, father of eight-year old Ellen — puts forth an idea that we’ve all thought of before, but were too afraid to say out loud.

  “There’s one thing to do,” he says. “One thing that’ll return this place to normalcy.”

  We listen. We grow in turn sickened and excited by his words. But in the end, we agree with him. Damn it, we agree.

  Here’s what I want; a peaceful, quiet place to live and raise my son. I don’t want the bad influences in this world to touch him. Is that so much to ask? I want to sit on our front step, look up and down the street and know that all is right with our little corner of the world. People mowing their lawns, parents pushing kids in strollers, playing catch, shooting baskets. Barbeques, walking dogs, dressing up for church, eating dinner at a table, not in front of the TV like I’ve seen the Griffins do. What kind of values does a family like that have?

  I know tolerance is important. We have our differences. But at the same time, we have only one life to live. One life to enjoy, to do and be the best we can. So should we be so tolerant as to let the evil out there affect and change our lives? To the point where our wants and desires become compromised?

  We can tiptoe around evil, swerve out of its way when it comes at us.

  Or we can eliminate it. Take control of our lives, our destinies. Sometimes you have to do something unpleasant to make things right.

  Last week, Darren comes home from school, asking if he can sleep over at Johnny Griffins’. At first I think he’s joking, but my smile soon fades. “Isn’t he the same boy who takes your lunch money? Isn’t he the same boy who chases you on your way to school, who hides in a tree and jumps on top of you when you pass beneath?”

  “We’re friends now,” Darren says.

  “How so?”

  He looks away, his cheeks turning pink. “We got in a fight yesterday.”

  I run my fingers through his scalp, feel for abrasions. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m okay. I clocked him pretty good.” He looks up at me and grins. “Knocked him on his back. Then said I was sorry, but I was tired of him picking on me and my friends all the time. And you know what? He says he wants to be my friend. Says he was sorry, and that he was mad at us because he thought we made fun of him behind his back. Which we did. But he wants to be friends now, and wants me to sleep over.”

  Emotions swirl through me. Pride at my son’s actions, but anger at Johnny Griffin. This is what it’s come to now; Johnny pulling out all the stops to corrupt my son. He’s learned that the best way to influence someone is to pretend you’re a friend, and just when they’re most vulnerable—

  “No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”

  “But Dad, I thought—”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want you with that boy.”

  Darren sighs. He looks up at me and shrugs. “But he seems so lonely.”

  “You’re a good kid. You’re kind, and you look for the good in people. Those are admirable qualities, Darren, but you’re also naïve. I don’t want you hanging out with Johnny Griffin. End of story.”

  We gather a few more times around the card table; Bill Swarthout, Jill Bryant, Todd Kaufmann and me. We discuss things that shouldn’t be discussed, but feel it’s our duty to do so. Duty to our families. Our neighborhood.

  The plan we finally agree on is Bills’.

  “Members of firing squads,” he says quietly, talking to the table, “used to be given blanks. Only a few had live ammunition. This way, none of them knew who fired the fatal shot.” He raises his eyes and looks at us in turn, and each of us, with only the slightest movement, nods acquiescence.

  Our plan will take place on Halloween night, when it won’t be unusual for disguised figures to wander the neighborhood after dark. It’s the only night, really, when our plan will work.

  I’ve been assigned only one task until that time; buy a costume. I find a grim reaper outfit. It comes with a plastic scythe, which I won’t need come Halloween night.

  Bill has the most items to gather. Mostly things from his father’s farm where he grew up. It’s four hours from here, located amidst cornfields stretching in withering rows as far as the eye can see. He gathers old burlap feed sacks and frayed rope, takes down a real, honest-to-goodness scythe from the barn wall, where it’s hung on a couple four-inch rusty nails for forty-five years. He stacks five bales of hay in the back of his pick-up on top of these things, whips a plastic tarp over that, and drives back to our neighborhood on a quiet Sunday night.

  Jill Bryant has a knack for crafts. Sewing, quilting, flower arranging. She sells decorations made from Indian corn to hang on your door come autumn. She takes the old burlap, the hay and the rope, and cuts and shapes it until it’s just right.

  And when the time comes, Todd Kaufmann’s contribution will be his strength.

  Three days away, now. Tonight, from my window, I see two figures smoking cigarettes behind a tree in the Griffin yard. They must think they’re hidden, but even though the night is moonless, I clearly make out Darren from the light shining from the Griffin’s windows. I watch him for twenty minutes. He goes through two more cigarettes with a practiced ease that makes me dizzy. I know I should go out there and stop him, grab him roughly by the shoulders and drag him away, but I find it impossible to move, impossible to take my eyes off this boy, my son, who suddenly appears to be a man I’ve never known.

  When he comes in, hair and clothes reeking of cigarettes, I ask, “Have you been smoking?”

  He hardly looks at me as he brushes past. “You’re paranoid.”

  I’m frozen in place, unable to respond as he disappears into his bedroom and shuts the door.

  Halloween night. The children in the neighborhood are home plopped in front of televisions, eating the candy they’ve gathered, watching Disney movies, some already asleep, bits of missed Halloween make-up mottled behind their ears.

  It’s just the adults now. The weather starts turning ugly. A storm is forecast for late in the night, but so far, it’s just windy and cold. Small, white flakes dance over the lawns.

  We stop at all the houses on the street, say “trick-or-treat” in jovial voices, and those who are home to hand out candy nod at us and give us handfuls of sweets. Their smiles seem forced. They pretend not to recognize our voices. Just nods. A few knowing glances. I wonder how many Bill has hinted to about our plan. After we receive the candy, the doors shut quietly to the building storm.

  We creep through the neighborhood, walk down the street, the glint of steel hidden behind the increasing snowfall. Our forms are shadowy and feral. Each of us in turn walks to the Griffin house with our bag of candy clutched in one hand, our other hand beneath our costumes occupied with handles made of wood.

  It’s my turn. The wind darts through my costume, pressing my nipples uncomfortably against the polyester. I stand in swirling snow on the Griffin’s lawn. Six forms sit on the porch. They look like Halloween decorations many of us have on our porches. Burlap bags in the shapes of witches, vampires, ghosts. Filled with raked autumn leaves, old newspaper, hay.

  But here, only three of the shapes are filled with these things. I try not to look too closely, afraid of figuring out which form contains what. I step up to one of the shapes propped lopsided on the porch. The hood of my costume falls over my eyes. Does Death contend with this? Fabric tripping his worn feet, snow blinding his hollow eyes?

  I blink away moisture. Lift my scythe. I had practiced swinging the day before, making sure I could do it easily without bouncing the side of the blade off its target. I suck in a lungful of freezing air. Shake my head to shift the black hood from my vision.

  “Go for two of them. That’s all,” Bill had told us, his firing squad analogy coming into play.

  I step onto the porch. The shapes in front of me are still. They sag forward into the chairs they’ve been tied to. I lif
t the scythe into the air and bring it down quickly. As I do so, I notice that the dusting of snow on the porch floorboards is already tinged with pink, like a spilled cherry snow cone. I can’t stop the scythe’s momentum. It strikes the burlap, slices through with ease, and I feel the slight resistance of (newspapers, leaves) against the blade. The blade sticks. I yank it out, turning quickly so that I won’t have to see anything (leaves, newspapers) that might spill out.

  I pick another target and swing.

  I hear a low, muffled moan. I close my eyes. Let the snow blow against me. I can’t tell which bundle the moan comes from. I hear it again and force myself to walk away.

  Maybe it’s not a moan. Maybe it’s just the wind through the trees. I can’t know, not for sure. I can’t know, and the sound of liquid splattering on the snow behind me…

  I walk faster, careful not to trip over my cheap black robe. The warm lights of my home draw near. I see the glow of the television through the window. The scythe is light in my hands, and I stop suddenly and plunge the blade into a snowdrift to clean it off. What if I had put it in the garage only to have my son find it the next day, freshly stained?

  When I enter, Lydia is calling his name. I shake snow off my costume. There are blisters on my hands.

  “Darren?” Lydia comes into the kitchen as I slide my costume up over my head. “Have you seen Darren?”

  “He’s not in his room?”

  “His jacket’s gone. His hat, his gloves.”

  I look at her, search her face. She can’t be serious. She can’t be—

  I race out of the house without a jacket, sweat shiny and freezing on my skin. I run to the bottom of the driveway. “Darren!” I call. “Darren!”

  Daytime reveals unpicked apples, fragile as glass, hanging from brittle branches. There is a subtle shift in white where the earth meets the sky.