by Jason Beymer
“No bacon treats for a month. And—and baths every day for two weeks.”
Pearl winced.
“Do we understand each other?”
“You know I have a bad memory.”
“Uh-huh. I also know you hate baths. Let’s go.”
“I’m not one to complain, but why don’t you leave me in here? Don’t I usually wait in the car?”
Burklin pointed to the groaning corpse in the backseat—or, as Pearl called it, Sweet and Sour Human.
“Oh,” the dog said. “Right.”
Burklin scooped up Pearl, tucked her under his arm and stepped out of the Eiffel. He walked to the front of the house. A porch swing, covered with leaves and dirt, swayed in the breeze.
He approached the door and peered through the window. His mother lay on the couch watching television. Along with every other disease known to man, she’d often complained about chronic insomnia. At least one of her ailments seemed legit.
She wore a gray sweatsuit and balanced an ashtray on her sizable stomach. In one hand, she held a cigarette, in the other, a bottle of Kahlua. Her skin hung loose in pockets under each eye, and she’d fixed her mouth in a perfect scowl.
His mother used to look so beautiful, back in Burklin’s childhood. But as the years passed, through each of his uncelebrated birthdays, Burklin had watched her body deteriorate. His mother’s fine blond hair had crinkled, grayed, and fallen out along the temples. Her hips hadn’t changed, but her doughy stomach poured over them. Her ass had plumped up with the consistency of oatmeal. Her neck had thickened, her chins doubled. Jowls had appeared out of nowhere. By his teens, his mother’s appearance had changed completely, transformed by what she called “the biblical consequences of premarital sex.”
Something fluttered inside Burklin’s chest. Forgotten insecurities flooded back. He was no longer the angst-ridden teenager she had expelled from her home years ago.
“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath.
He knocked. His mother jumped, and the cigarette fell from her lips. She shouted something, which caused the ashtray to tumble from her immense belly, spilling butts and ashes all over the carpet. A gray cloud rose from the floor.
“Whoever you are, fuck off!” she bellowed.
Burklin knocked again.
His mother slammed the bottle down hard. She stood and waddled to the door, cussing and moaning.
Burklin swallowed. He wanted to turn around and run. He’d brought a zombie and a talking dog to his mother’s house. What had he been thinking?
Pearl nuzzled his chin. “Last chance,” she whispered.
Burklin stuck out his chest. He willed his spine to stay ramrod straight and waited for the door to open. Every muscle tensed.
“Ow,” Pearl squealed. “Stop squeezing me so hard.”
The door opened slightly and bounced off the chain. Through the crack, he could see the left side of his mother’s face. Her eye widened.
“Hi, Mom,” Burklin said.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I’ll bet the cancer voicemail brought you here. Did you finally feel some fucking guilt?”
“Can I come in?”
The door shut in his face, and he heard the chain slide. The door opened. “So come in already,” she said. “You need a golden ticket?” She tilted her head to the ceiling. “My son comes to visit me, oh Lord. I thought changing water into wine was a miracle. I assumed my son would wait ‘til I dropped dead to pillage my home.”
Burklin followed her inside and set Pearl down on the carpet. “Stay,” he commanded.
The dog dashed into the kitchen.
“That’s not a dog,” his mother said. “That’s a rat with a dog collar.”
The decor proved that Delores Franks was a God-fearing woman. Crucifixes adorned the walls, along with bright-colored art. The mother of all electric-powered paintings hung above the couch: Jesus on the cross, bleeding electricity in the form of tiny red bulbs embedded in the canvas.
“There’s nobody else I can trust,” Burklin said. “I’m in trouble.”
“I knew you’d come back here someday, Donner.”
Burklin felt his cheeks flush. His eyes fell to the ashy carpet. “My name is Burklin, Mom. Nobody has called me Donner in years. I legally changed it. You know that.”
“Burklin?” she said and inserted another cigarette between her lips. “Burklin. Bur-klin. No, Donner, I’m certain I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Is this how you’re going to be?”
Delores struck a match and lit the cigarette. “Donner is the name Almighty God chose for you. Burklin is a stupid person’s name. It’s heathenish. You never should have changed it.”
Delores’s labor had lasted over forty-eight hours—all of them painful. Despite alternative naming suggestions from the nurses and doctors, she had insisted they name the baby Donner. More accurately, the name on his birth certificate read “DNR.” She’d hoped naming him the abbreviated form of Do Not Resuscitate might hasten the process of winning her freedom back.
“So why come here?” she asked. “You want me to write you back into the will?”
“I’m your son.”
She laughed. “You think I don’t know that? You think a day goes by that I don’t look at this body in the mirror and remember? Forty years ago, I sinned, allowed your father to pound me next to a day-old pot of coffee at work. Then he went and had a heart attack. A heart attack! Look at my beautiful tits, my rock hard abs, my tight swaying ass. They’re ten times bigger. All because of you, my little bastard child. God’s punishment for allowing your father to deflower me.”
“Mom, I need to stay here for a little while.”
“Why? What kind of trouble are you in? Tell me you fucked up something big. Bring some joy into an old woman’s heart.”
“I need to use your garage.”
“Why the garage? I don’t even own a car anymore. I don’t need one. The county delivers my meals. The good Lord provides for those who something something.”
“Mom, please. I don’t need a car and I don’t need money. I just need to use the garage.”
“Why?” she asked again.
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“I’ll bet it has to do with that fat whore who divorced you. What was her name?”
“Lorraine,” he replied, avoiding her eyes. “No, of course it doesn’t.”
“Uh-huh. I bet it does.” She dragged on the cigarette. “If not her, then I bet it involves that fat rapist from your wedding. The one who looks like Raymond Burr without the wheelchair.”
“Garrick.”
She licked her lips. “Yes. Him.”
Something fell in the kitchen, followed by a dachshund’s surprised yelp and the sound of a tongue lapping.
Burklin looked into the kitchen. The dog stood in a puddle of spilled tomato sauce. “Off, Pearl!” he shouted.
His mother blew a cloud of smoke in Burklin’s direction. “What happened to you?” she said. “What’s with the ‘please’ shit?”
“I’ve matured, I guess.”
“You’re a pussy! Did that fat rapist do something to you? Is he the reason you’re acting this way?”
“Let me use the garage. I swear you won’t even know I’m here.”
“Oh, I’ll know.” She looked down at her heavy belly. “I’ll always know.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Glass shattered in the kitchen.
“Leave me be,” Delores said. “I want to watch this infomercial. Look at that, Donner.” She pointed to the screen. “God has granted this company the knowledge to enhance a blanket with comfortable sleeves.”
Burklin left his mother in the living room and ran to retrieve Pearl. When he arrived in the kitchen, the dog stopped licking an empty pizza box.
“I told you to behave,” Burklin snapped.
Pearl spoke around a hunk of crust. “No you didn’t. You told me to be cute and adorable. Preening makes me hungry
.”
Burklin scooped her up. He carried her through the patio door and along the perimeter of the house. The weeds had overgrown the yard, twining through dead flowers and forgotten patio furniture. Soon he came to the side door of the garage. It took some oomph to open. The cold, lifeless interior greeted him with its thick cobwebs.
Perfect.
“Okay, here’s what I’ll do,” he thought aloud. His voice echoed off the walls. “Mom’s watching TV. I’ll open up the garage door and drive the Eiffel in here. Then I’ll dump Wanda in the pit.”
“What happens if your mother gets nosy? What if she finds Wanda’s body?”
“Then I’ll blame Garrick. You know how much she hates him.”
“Right. Because he’s your father.”
“Garrick is not my father.”
“Sure he isn’t. So he’s never been anywhere near your mother’s Jesus-loving vagina?”
Burklin glared at her. “Well … yes. But he’s still not my father.”
“Okay, then why—”
“She hates him for what he did at my wedding.”
“Sounds dirty. Spill it.”
“The two of them had a …”—he grimaced—”they had a thing in the church while Lorraine and I got married.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned it before?”
“Do you think I enjoy revisiting it? Besides, I thought you could read my mind.”
“It gets fuzzy when you recall traumatic experiences.”
Burklin set Pearl down on the floor, then walked the length of the garage. He strained to push the garage door open; the dry, rusted springs uncoiled with a resistant howl. The door settled into the grooves above and locked into place.
He clapped his hands to clear off the cobwebs and dust, then moved toward the Eiffel in the driveway. Once there, he bent to make sure Wanda still sat in the backseat. She hadn’t moved. Her dark shadow slumped in the dim luminescence, slack against the seatbelt.
Burklin snapped his fingers at Pearl. The dog trotted toward him and he scooped her up.
“A jar,” the French voice said as he slipped inside. “A jar.”
“Oh, shut up.” Burklin started up the car and shut the door. The Eiffel’s headlights filled the garage.
“Ungh,” the woman said. She lifted her head an inch, then dropped it again.
“Are you okay?” Burklin asked.
“Umph.”
Burklin set the dog on the passenger seat. He put the car in drive and inched it forward.
“So what happened?” Pearl asked.
“Huh?” Burklin said.
“What happened between Garrick and your mother at the wedding? I’m curious.”
“You remember how Lorraine and I got married in a church? We only got married there because we hoped Garrick and Mom would be too repulsed by the wedding’s location to come.” Burklin sighed. “Unfortunately, they both braved the holiness and showed up. I think Garrick felt awkward about being there. The concept of holy ground and all. Mom too, despite all her Jesus talk. During the ceremony, one of the altar boys disappeared to take a leak and he caught my mother bent over the sink. Garrick was behind her, doing you know what with her you know what. The altar boy screamed for the priest. It pretty much ruined the wedding.”
“But … okay, I know you hate when I say this, but if Garrick is your father, he must have impregnated Delores at some point in the past, right? Like forty years ago? With you, I mean. With his penis and her—”
“I get it, I get it.”
“My point is, why is it so strange for the two of them to have sex?”
“He’s not my father. He just says that so I’ll feel frustrated and inferior. According to my mother, my dad was some skinny co-worker who died before I was born.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So my mother to this day swears Garrick raped her in the church bathroom. Ta-da! End of story.”
“Disturbing,” Pearl said, licking her butt. “She did a number on you, didn’t she?”
Burklin stopped the Eiffel short of a square recess in the floor. “Stay in here,” he said. “I’ll throw Wanda in the pit and come right back.”
The previous owners of the house had excavated a hole in the garage to work on cars, running a makeshift auto shop out of it. The pit was six feet in length, five feet deep, and filled with spider webs.
Working by the Eiffel’s high beams, Burklin removed several wooden planks, revealing the pit. The scent of oil-soaked linens rushed his nostrils. Inside, he discovered a pile of boxes marked Christmas Decorations. Odd. Other than Burklin’s eighteenth birthday, which consisted of a decorative boot to kick him out the front door, his mother had never celebrated any holidays.
Burklin returned to the Eiffel, leaned over the backseat and unsnapped Wanda’s seatbelt. The woman’s head bounced off the vinyl.
“Are you still in there?” Burklin asked her. “I want you to listen. I’m going to put you inside a pit and cover you up. It’s temporary. I need to make sure Garrick can’t find you.”
Pearl poked her head around the seat and said, “I don’t think she’s listening.”
“Wanda, I’m winging it. I have to keep you away from the old man. I swear nobody will look for you here.”
Burklin grabbed a roll of duct tape sitting next to a lawnmower. He used it to bind her wrists and ankles. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, “I have to tape your arms and legs so you can’t run away.” He paused. “That came out wrong.”
Once Burklin had her bound, he dragged her to the pit. He tried to lower her in gently, but she put too much strain on his back. Wanda fell from his hands and plummeted, landing on top of the boxes. The collision produced the sound of breaking glass.
Dishware? Anything stored inside those boxes had shattered. Wanda lay on top of the collapsed cardboard, her eyes manic, her limbs bound.
Burklin replaced the flat wooden boards then shuffled through his mental checklist. “Okay,” he said, “Wanda is safely in the pit. Everything’s fine. Nobody will find her. Don’t get paranoid.”
As he finished, he wiped his hands on his pants and turned toward the car. He made it two paces before encountering his mother. She stood between him and the Eiffel, arms crossed over her heavy bosom.
“Mom?” Burklin said. “What are you doing out here?”
Delores frowned. “Did that dead bitch shatter my good china?”
He started to say, “I can explain,” but shook his head instead. “Wait, you saw me dump the girl?”
Delores nodded. “That dishware cost me a fortune. It’s worth more than your sorry ass ever will be.”
What to do with his mother?
The question nagged Burklin for the better part of a second.
He reached for the roll of duct tape.
* * * *
“I take everything back,” Pearl said, wagging her tail. “You’re good at this.”
The two women looked up at Burklin from the pit. Delores sat in a gray chair at the bottom, strapped to it with an extreme amount of duct tape and rope. She had put up a fight, of course, but a sedentary lifetime of smoking and drinking had taken its toll. Her lungs contained just enough strength to call him a series of foul names. Wanda lay atop the boxes, her limbs bound with yards of duct tape. The toes of her left foot flexed and unflexed, inches away from his mother’s face.
Burklin jumped down into the pit between them.
“Stay away from me,” Delores said. “Is this what happens when a mother reaches out to her ungrateful son? I told you I had cancer. The big C. Cancer.”
“Well, do you?”
She shrugged. “Probably?”
“Goodbye, Mom.”
Delores’s voice softened, which made it phlegmier. “I’m your mother. I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Really?” Burklin said. “You really can’t believe I’m doing this?”
“Okay, so I haven’t been the most loving and nurturing parent. You didn’t come with a gui
debook, Donner.”
“You’re not helping your cause.”
“You can’t leave me down here. You can’t leave your mother in a pit with a zombie.”
“She’s not a zom—” Wait. Wanda did meet the criteria, and could devour his mother’s brains. Though religious brains didn’t seem appetizing. “Don’t let her bite you and you’ll be fine.”
“What are you doing now?” his mother asked.
“Taping your mouths shut.” He unfurled a length of duct tape and wrapped it around his mother’s head multiple times, covering her lips and chin. He added a few more strips in an X pattern until her mouth resembled a gray asterisk. Then he did the same to Wanda.
Burklin climbed out and replaced the wooden planks. The two women shared the same horrified expression as they watched him work.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “I’ll be back for both of you.”
His mother’s cries seeped through the wooden planks, but little sound came out. Once he closed the garage door, nobody would hear them.
Burklin glanced around. “Where’d you go, Pearl?”
The dog’s tiny head emerged from behind the Eiffel.
“Get in the car.”
“Where are we going?” Pearl asked.
“Do you remember what Wanda said back at my apartment?”
“‘Please don’t touch me?’“
“After that. Something about a bag?”
“Oh.” Pearl jumped into the car. “She said she left a bag at Max’s. What? You want to go back to the demon’s home? But if Max is there—”
“I know. If I run into the demon, I’ll die.”
Chapter 12
Broken Bubbles
Lorraine approached the entrance to Hoppy’s Diner. A bicycle, likely the demon’s, lay next to the door.
Garrick had purchased Hoppy’s as a base of operations. With a state senator in his pocket, the health inspectors knew to stay away. Someday, when the wood rotted and the ceiling tumbled down, the kindest eulogy it would receive was “The Saltines tasted good.” Garrick planned to open a chain of these retro-dining nightmares in Iran, once they won the sweepstakes.
If, Lorraine thought. If they won the sweepstakes. She’d never doubted the old man this much before, nor had the Nether’s prize seemed so unattainable. She paced between Hoppy’s front entrance and the empty newspaper rack. The predawn wind chilled her cheeks, and she shivered beneath her sweater.
