Small Magic Collected Short Stories

by Aaron Polson

  Dad moves around downstairs; I can hear his heavy-booted feet stomp across the kitchen tile, the house quiet and dead save the sound of his feet and the opening of the refrigerator and the fizzing sound of a beer can popped open. I think about crying out, yelling for him, but I’m afraid of what might happen.

  My covers, bulky and warm at first, stifle now, and I sweat under the weight. Slowly, gradually, I slip the blanket from my hot face and breathe in the fresh, cool air of my bedroom, delicious after the sticky humidity inside the cocoon. I can now hear the muffled voices of the TV as they float up the stairs and into the hallway. The man remains out there, just on the other side of the stairs. All I see is the crooked shadow, but I know.

  Watching his shadow almost drives me to sleep—slow, plodding sleep that creeps gradually into my room with soft feet and a gentle touch. I’ve learned tricks though. I pinch my arms and legs, snatch a bit of extra skin and squeeze hard between forefinger and thumb. This helps fight the sleep. In the early morning light, I often study the purple blooms where I pinched too hard.

  Tonight the TV mumbles stop before I pinch or sleep, and I hear my father tromp into the kitchen again. His boots move toward the stairs now, just at the bottom, and the light snaps on, brightening the stairwell and hallway. The man in the hallway is hidden, a dissolving shadow in the light. The stairs groan under my father’s weight, old wood rubbing together, and I hear him stumble and curse. I can almost smell the stale alcohol on his breath. I’m sweating still; even with my head out of the cocoon, small beads form on my forehead. I try to lift up, climb out of the bed, but the heavy comforter resists, and I’m weak from waiting. The creaking sound edges up the stairs, and the man in the hallway waits. I have to warn my dad.

  The sounds merge—my pounding blood, the heavy steps, and the breath of the man in the hallway—and I close my eyes, squeezing them so tight I feel it in my teeth. I break and yell, “Dad!”

  I hear a quick sound, a muffled thumping on the stairs followed by the heavy, dull crash at the bottom. I draw into the cocoon again before I open my eyes and wait for my panting to subside. Slowly, cautiously, I peer out again to see the light in the hallway and no hint of the man—either hiding or gone.

  When my mother comes home, she struggles against Dad’s body, crooked and limp as it blocks the front door at the base of the stairs. I don’t see her because I am here, in my bed, but I can hear the door unlock, and the soft pounding of wood against his body, her gasp and sudden sobs. Then the dialing of a phone, the quick sharp words, more sobs and the sound of the ambulance. I roll over, away from the open doorway and the hall—still bright after Dad turned on the light—and wait.

  Chapter 63: Vintage Sunshine

  Two boys wiggle through the last few feet of earthen tunnel and drop, one after the other, onto the concrete slab below. Small puffs of dust dance into their flashlight beams.

  “Bomb shelter,” the smaller boy says. "Really old bomb shelter." His draws his beam across a shelf of cans. The labels, once displaying bright fruits and vegetables with bold words, now wear a layer of filth that mutes the colors. “S’pose there’s still anything in these cans?”

  “Dunno,” the big boy mutters. Shooting from the hip with his flashlight, he lumbers to the shelf in front of him. “This one looks good.” He sets the light on the shelf and pulls the can toward him. “Heavy,” he grunts.

  “Look, maybe we should go…”

  “Shine your light here,” the big boy says. He pulls a shiny device from his pocked and digs around the lip of the can. The tiny machine makes a dull hum as it cuts through steel.

  “Really, should you open that? It’s been down here for what, a couple hundred years…”

  “Shut up.” The big boy folds his tool and latches onto the can lid with his fingertips. He peels back the metal disc and fumbles for his flashlight. A crash sounds, followed by the metallic thunk of cans hitting the slab floor.

  “Sorry…I tripped.”

  The big boy frowns, turns to the can, and shines his light inside. A smile creeps over his frown. “No shit,” he mumbles, thrusting his hand inside. A moment later he fishes out a few limp, pale-green tubular objects. “Green beans.” He brings them to his nose and sniffs. “Still good, too.”

  “You’re not going to…”

  "Watch me." The big boy pushes a few beans into his mouth. “Well-aged,” he mumbles through the green mush.

  Chapter 64: "How Many Times Do I Have To Tell You That The Dog Ate My Homework, Madonna Spit In My Face, And Aliens Abducted Me Three Times But Only Probed Me Once?"

  "It wasn't even painful," Marcy said.

  June frowned. "Getting the F on your paper?"

  "No...not that."

  "The spit?"

  "No, silly."

  "Oh," June said, nodding. "That."

  "Of course, it would have been nice if I didn't have to ask. I figured 'third time's a charm'. Right?"

  Chapter 65: Daddy’s Touch

  I’d worked with Helen for a few years before her father died. She was a quiet woman, always reserved and meticulous in the lab. Some of the other techs called her “cold” or “too weird.” I just figured her the private type.

  We worked together in the basement of the natural history museum on campus, stashed away in a windowless box next to the offices for graduate teaching assistants. We spent our days stripping the flesh from dead mammals so they could reconstruct their skeletons. We used beetles, these little black lumps called Dermestidae—skin beetles. Toss a poor, dead piece of road kill in a stainless steel container with some larvae, and the growing beetles lick the bones clean within a week. Our boss used to say, “They’re carnivores. They eat the flesh of the dead.”

  Helen received the call about her father while at work, and she didn’t even flinch. She only missed one day for the funeral, a private affair, and stayed late at work the next night.

  In the days after her father’s stroke, Helen looked a little off—her face pale and stretched—tired maybe. The only thing she’d say about him was, “he was not a nice man.” About a week after the funeral, I noticed bruises while we worked together scrubbing residue from small mammal femurs.

  “Helen, your arm,” I said.

  She pulled down her shirt cuff. “It’s nothing.”

  After I mentioned the bruises, she started wearing long sleeves. Black bags puffed under her eyes. She faded, bleached like a field of snow, pinched together and gaunt, like she wasn’t sleeping much. Maybe a rough boyfriend, I thought, especially if her father had been abusive. I imagined there had been abuse in her past, but my theory rested on gossip and interpretation of Helen’s stock line: “He was not a nice man.”

  Fear for Helen’s safety grew in my stomach, scratching away like a ball of nails until it spilled over one night after work. Helen faded like a ghost through the lab doors, and I followed her.

  Filled with worry and concern—as a friend and coworker, I drove to her apartment. She lived in a little place near what we called the student ghetto, the run-down houses and squat apartments that served as home to a good number of undergraduates. She didn’t answer the bell and the front door was locked. I heard something—a muffled voice from inside.

  I wouldn’t usually sneak around in the bushes like some kind of half-crocked private eye, but the voice scared me, sent a chill across the back of my neck. I crept to the side of the house, and the voice grew clearer. It was Helen.

  “Please, Daddy!” she shouted, followed by a dull whacking sound.

  I balanced on her air-conditioner, caught the lip of her bedroom window with my fingers, and pulled myself to tip-toe so I could peer inside. Helen was alone in the room, flogging herself with something that looked like a short stick or bat, but a yellowish white—a human femur stripped clean of its flesh as only Dermestidae could. A skull, her father’s skull, sat on the dresser, watching over his daughter’s self-abuse with a gallows grin. Helen’s face, though smeared with tears, wore a small ghost of
a smile. When the police came, they found the rest of him in her bathtub, his assorted parts in various states of decomposition amid a swarm of beetles.

  Chapter 66: The Truth about Rabbits

  The car is black, devouring gravel on a side road to the lake. Two men ride inside, both wearing wrinkled suits and loose neckties. The driver tightens his grip on the wheel. Lined up in the headlights, a jackrabbit freezes, then bolts for the shoulder.

  The two-day beard in the passenger seat smacks the driver on the back of his head.

  “What the hell was that for?”

  Two-day Beard crosses his arms. “The rabbit, you jackass.”

  “I missed him.”

  “He ran.”

  The driver frowns. “When’d you go soft?”

  “Shut up.”

  “’fraid it was the Easter Bunny?” The driver laughs. “Like you was ever good enough for the Easter Bunny to leave a basket, right?”

  Two-day Beard lifts the pistol from his lap. “I just don’t like nobody killing something what never hurt ‘em, is all.”

  Another rabbit skirts into the road. The driver’s foot drops on the accelerator. For a moment, the headlights have the furry thing trapped, but it vanishes into the grass as the car passes. The driver laughs again, opening his mouth with the laughter.

  “Fuck you,” mutters Two-day Beard.

  The car slides between a few more trees and skids to a halt at the edge of the lake. Both men climb out and slam their doors in near synchronicity. The driver jiggles the keys on his way to the trunk. He inserts the key and clicks the trunk open.

  “The truth about rabbits, buddy,” he says, “is that they’re just rats with long legs. Like our friend here.” He nods to the trunk.

  Two-day Beard scowls as he puts his hands under the body’s arms. “You gonna help with this guy, or write poetry?”

  Chapter 67: Bona Fide King of His Realm

  Uncle Rego is a giant earthworm. I’ve known for a little while, even though most of the family might think I’m bona fide crazy if I said anything about it. It’s not just the clammy touch of his skin, or the color, or the way his breath always smells like the nice, black dirt they put in Styrofoam cups for the night crawlers down at Jenkin’s Bait and Tackle. No, I’ve seen the pictures that prove Uncle Rego’s an earthworm, and what happened to my aunt is only what some folks might call “icing on the cake.”

  I don’t know much about icing, but those pictures do a nice job of putting the chill on my spine. I’ve got them tucked away in the old Converse box under my bed for later. I made the mistake of talking about Uncle Rego to Pa once, and he gave me the back of his hand. Hell of a lot harder than his palm, even with the calluses. When I tell one of my folks about Aunt Tessie, it won’t be Pa.

  I figure Mama listens pretty good most of the time.

  See, Rego is Mama’s brother—her only kin left on that level since Uncle Garth got killed under his motorcycle last October. Mama doesn’t talk about her childhood often, but when she does, I see the pale-as-potato-grub look on her face at the suggestion of Rego.

  “Rather not mention that son-of-a-bitch,” she’ll say, or, “I don’t talk about that dirty bastard.” Once, when she and Pa were having one of their “heated debates”, he said something I didn’t quite understand about Mama and Rego doing “unnatural” things. Mama cried and cried and put that debate fire right out with her tears. When they were cooled off, Mama explained that she was just a little girl and Rego was so strong and he’d gotten into Grandad’s whiskey and she ran off to the river that night with a bar of Ivory Soap and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin glowed like mercury and even bled in a couple places. At least I remember she said something about blood.

  Sometimes I try to shut off my ears because I don’t really want a piece of what they’re talking about.

  Still, if I’m going to tell anyone the truth about Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie, it’ll be Mama. Besides, she’s the one who sent me across town to Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie’s trailer that afternoon.

  I rode my bike because that’s what I always do, and sure enough, I nosed the awful dirt smell when I got there. Rego didn’t have his disguise on at all. I could see the pale-brown slickness of his naked earthworm skin through a window. And, being curious like I am, I made my way right to the sill and peeked in.

  Like I mentioned about those photos—ice all over my spine. Felt like I might vomit, too. There he was, curled up on that bed of theirs, pinkish-tan and slimy, and Aunt Tessie reduced to a pile of dirt. Her undergarments poked out of the black-brown lump, so I knew it had to be her. What was left of her. No lesson from biology class will ever stick as well as the one about earthworms and what Mr. Block calls “the ecosystem.” Used to make me kind of sad, thinking about my old dog Max and how the worms must have had at him when he died. Now, I just feel like I want to throw up—either that or get the biggest spade I can and slice old Rego in half and watch him squirm until he dies.

  But I don’t have that much courage. Not to face a big, king-of-the-realm worm like that.

  Of course, Aunt Tessie just turned up missing. Uncle Rego put on his human skin again and called the police, moaning and bitching about his wife, then getting all frightened like he feared he’d never see her again. Lies and deceit, like Grandma Shoemaker used to say. Lies and deceit.

  If—when—I get around to telling Mama, I’m going to dig out those old photos, especially the one from when she’s a little girl and Uncle Rego’s touching her shoulder. I’d swear on Max’s grave, it’s not a hand at all, but his earthworm tail poking through. Mama must’ve known it, too, by the awful, sour-milk look on her black and white face.

  Chapter 68: Watching the White Blossoms

  The doorbell rang while Harold Curtis watched the white blossoms tumble from his wife’s favorite dogwood tree. He sat in an old lawn chair on his back patio, and the sound of the front doorbell came to him through the open sliding door. Harold’s age ravaged fingers tightened on the aluminum arm of the chair. His knuckles went white. Harold’s dentures clacked together as he set his jaw.

  The doorbell rang again. Enough to wake the dead, he thought.

  “I’m coming,” Harold muttered, more for himself than anyone at the front door. He stood with an awkward lurch and shuffled into the dining room, through the hallway, and to his foyer. As he walked, he imagined no one might be at the door after all. The neighborhood children had a penchant for pranks—ringing an old man’s bell and then scuttling off to laugh at him as he stood red faced on the front stoop. The neighborhood had changed a great deal in the last sixty years.

  Time was, a child wouldn’t think of pestering his elders.

  Harold wrapped his gnarled hand around the knob and pulled the door open. He expected no one, so was surprised to see the chubby face of his neighbor’s daughter, Janie Dure, ten years old, wearing her Brownie uniform. The girl held a clipboard against her chest like body armor.

  “Hello, Mr. Curtis.” Her voice was small, delicate.

  “Janie,” said Harold, raising his eyebrows. His lips curled slightly at the edges.

  Janie rocked back on her feet, almost stepping away from the door. “Am I bothering you, Mr. Curtis?” Her smile dropped to the ground, and her tiny fingers pressed against the back of the clipboard.

  “Just watching the blossoms, Janie.” He pushed one gnarled hand to the girl. “’fraid I thought you were one of those boys. The jokers.”

  Janie moved closer, pausing at the threshold, closed her eyes for a moment and stepped over. The smell inside was always stale, hints of mildew, and the age of things older than Janie’s grandparents.

  “Cookies, then, is it?”

  Janie nodded and remembered her voice. “Yes. I wasn’t sure…”

  The little girl’s words faded, but Harold understood. Maggie was the one the neighborhood children loved. She was the one with smiles and kind words, tubs of sweets and buttery hugs. The house went quiet, rotting from the silence and
shadows, when she died. Harold began to rot from the inside after she died.

  “She used to love the lemon ones. What are they called?” His eyes drifted to the back patio, caught in a brief swirl of white blossoms there. “She used to love a lot of things.” He reached out with one hand and snatched Janie’s forearm. The girl winced at the tight pinch, surprised by Harold’s quickness.

  “Mr. Curtis,” she protested. Tears—brewed mostly from fear—began to squeeze from her eyes. With a few shuffling steps, he towed the girl to the sliding doors.

  “She used to love these blossoms, too.” His voice was more of a growl, the grinding sound of stones pressed together. Harold Curtis’s eyes were black, lost.