Ionic Resurgence

by Howard Hachey

  She paused for a moment, then rummaged through a pile of trash that lined one of the brick walls. Wayne watched—confused—as the tall silhouette came waltzing back towards him—its dark outline slightly longer than before. Tammy was no longer there; what had taken over was something that’d been growing for years. A cumulative ball of self-destructiveness that had reached its breaking point. Ironically, the very shaper of this ball was also its detonator. As much as Tammy didn’t want to admit it, she and her father were one in the same. The same feelings of incompetency and unimportance plagued them both. Each new branch just a continuation of the same corrupted set of genes.

  Human timebombs with singed fuses.

  Tammy, the other Tammy, walked casually back to Wayne with a plank of broken two-by-four swinging from her left hand.

  “Am I a whore now, Daddy? AM I!?”

  The length of wood flashed for a second in front of Wayne’s face before connecting with a sickening snap against his temple. Heated bruise already a stiff numbness, Wayne felt the hard, wet thump of his skull kissing rock. The algae slime that covered it lined the gash on his head like green apple jelly. Cold water bitter with salt filled Wayne’s mouth. He opened his eyes long enough to see the long legs of the Newport pier standing over him. Then—nothing.

  Out cold, Wayne lay on his back, face slack against the square of sky as blood trickled from the reopened scar at his right temple.

  Tammy stood over him for a few moments, plank of wood still grasped tightly in her right hand, and watched Wayne. She knew he wasn’t dead. His labored snores for air, thin clouds of steam, rose from his nostrils. She stood there for a while, waiting for him to get up so he could watch her bust up his ribs.

  But, he never did.

  After a couple minutes the ash cleared, and so did Tammy’s head. Dropping the blood-dotted two-by-four, she ran out of the alleyway. Remembering every road and turn, Tammy paced herself as she jogged the seven miles home. For the first time, she was thankful for her father’s drunkenness. If he hadn’t lost his license, Tammy wouldn’t have been forced to walk everywhere. Because of him, she knew every road between here and home. She often felt like her life consisted of nothing but running these roads. Either running from him or for him. But never to him. Even though she had to admit to herself that a lot of the time they felt the same. Crawling through bushes and privacy shrubs, she would cautiously look back over her shoulder, half expecting the man with the scar to be chasing her. His broken glasses and shiny flask winking at her in the moon light.

  When Tammy reached her house, she ran inside and closed all the doors and windows. After everything was secure, she locked herself in her room. Just as she hoped, dad was asleep in his chair snoring up at the ceiling like a baby bird asking for a worm. Pacing around her room, Tammy held her pink rotary phone in her hands. Against the better thoughts screaming in her head, she called the police, strangling her nervous fingers with the curly length of cord.

  After hanging up with a dispatch officer, she put down the phone, feeling an immediate sting of paranoia rush through her. She had been abducted, this was true. But other than that, the man hadn’t really done anything. His knife never touched her skin.

  Remembering the knife in her pocket, she took it out and looked at it. Then, she remembered the bloody plank and the sound of the man’s head hitting the ground. She wondered if hurting him would get her in trouble. Even with the blade in her possession, she had seen enough America’s Most Wanted to know that forensic analysis would clear her of any wrongdoing. She was merely a victim using self-defense to escape a horrible situation. Right? What was the crime in that? Tammy couldn’t find one, but one question lingered above the rest:

  What if they don’t believe me? What if they think I’m making the whole thing up to get attention?

  It was too late to change anything now. They were already on their way.

  Twenty minutes after she called, the cops showed up with their crackling walkie-talkies and heavy boots, waking Dad up from his drunken slumber. Upon learning the details, he immediately denounced Tammy’s story, telling the police that Tammy was a fibber, an attention seeking whore who needed more love than she deserved. That she had been turning tricks and probably tried to stiff some poor guy and got what she deserved. By the time the cops left, he made sure none of them saw her as a person.

  The police took Tammy’s statement and had her give a quick description of her attacker to a tired-looking guy with a sketchpad and assortment of colored pens. She didn’t get to look at the sketch once it was finished. Everyone just filed back out the door and drove away.

  Tammy’s dad waited until the last car left, then said, “Teach you, skank.”

  That was it. Tammy broke in two, bursting into tears as she stumbled up the stairs to her room. Shortly after hearing her bedroom door slam shut, her dad took a couple more sips from his bottle and fell back asleep.

  Weeping quietly, Tammy had reached a new emotional threshold. She had fully eclipsed the peak. This was different from the orbital rage she felt earlier that night. This new climate was colder. Cleaner. Sterilized. The last of the grey soot drifted away under this swift breeze. The land below swept clean. A new slate had been made.

  By the time her swollen eyes could open, the clock on her mantle read 4:16 a.m.; just under an hour until her first shift of the day.

  Tammy decided then that it would be her last. As soon as her morning shift at Sonny’s Diner was done, she was gone. She’d collect up her paychecks and buy the first bus ticket out of town. Nothing would come of her police report. The lackluster questions and sideway glances from all the tired cops that tramped through her home were enough to tell her. She had heard a few mentions of the famed Doll Man killer crackle over the passing CB’s of wandering bodies when the police first arrived. They were forceful at first with their questions, demanding Tammy to tell them the exact alleyway she had clubbed him in. They rushed in the police sketch artist just as word came over the radio that no one was found in the alleyway. No clues or bloody two-by-four. After that, everything was a matter of paperwork.

  Sorry, kid, each cop said with their combed mustaches and sad sugar-dusted mouths. I got ten minutes left on my shift.

  Where would she go? Tammy didn’t know. Seattle sounded nice. She had always loved the soft pitter-patter of a rain storm outside her bedroom window. Plus, her favorite band were Seattle natives, The Melvins. Out west she could start anew. Only this time, with no strings attached. No matter what happened, she promised herself one thing:

  No man would ever own her again.

  With less than twenty minutes until she had to leave for her shift, Tammy packed up as many clothes as she could fit into one suitcase, showered, and put on her waitressing uniform. With time to spare, she sat waiting on the edge of her bed.

  Alone, she held the warm switchblade telling herself she did the right thing by not turning it over to the cops. Even if they took her seriously, which they wouldn’t, the knife would be submitted as evidence. And if someone downtown did decide to take it seriously, the process of the justice system would tie her up here for months. Maybe years. Legally stuck with the only person in the world worse than the man who tried to kill her: Daddy Dearest.

  Putting the blade in her pocket, Tammy waited.

  When the time came, she left for work like she did every morning.

  Tammy Dougal, now happily married with an adopted daughter of her own, left New England that day and never looked back.

  Chapter 11

  April 12, 2006

  8:24 pm

  Hampden, Maine

  Shouting over the electric roar of her hairdryer, Sharon called through the closed bathroom door, “Did you remember to pack your travel-sized lotion?! You know how ashy your elbows can get!”

  “Jesus, Sharon,” Wayne said, stuffing wads of clothing into an open suitcase on the bed, “I'm going to Boston, not the Netherlands.”

  The hairdryer stopped, and Sharon ste
pped out of the bathroom. Fresh out of the shower, she dawned a fuzzy pink bathrobe; freshly manicured fingers tossing around her slightly dampened hair. Tiny bottle of lotion in her free hand, she went over to the suitcase and peeked inside.

  “At least fold 'em, Wayne! You’re just stuffin' your clothes in like I'm gonna be there to iron them out at the hotel.” In a motherly gesture, Sharon shooed Wayne away and began pulling out knotted bundles of socks and shirts from the suitcase.

  Wayne willingly stepped aside.

  Physically, he was in the Milky Way Galaxy, on a lonely planet with too many edges and holes. Wayne could be witnessed standing in his bedroom watching his wife repack his clothes. But consciously, he was in an empty theater somewhere. Impossibly close, but incomprehensibly far away.

  His self-awareness sat alone in the middle of a single row of seats, just one row of thousands that stretched out in long toothy lines in front of him. A single screen filled the front wall at the head of the room. Size immeasurable, its silvery surface rippled in all directions like the skin of the ocean. Wayne couldn't see far enough to comprehend its length no matter how much he craned his head. The room was completely absent of corners, every angle stretched too far past his point of reference. As he sat, aware of an absence of body, dark colors and moving lines seeped to the surface of the murky vertical waters.

  Tortured faces, all young and dying, screamed from under the waves in eerie silence. Their decayed faces—flesh tone blobs of oozing silly putty—stretched up through the lapping waters. Streams of the children’s blood—thick with the black salts of the sea—ran in crooked scissor-lines across the length of the screen; completely dependent of the projection below. Like the paths of a million red snails, the trails left long winding ropes of hanging strings that anchored the gnarled faces to the theater floor. As Wayne watched, a little boy's eyes were eaten by a sixty-foot rat with piss-yellow fangs. Its long nose-hair feelers slivered through the boy’s mouth, sprouting out through the empty eye sockets like nylon stitching. Its webbed claws stroking the water’s surface as it ate.

  Then, the blob changed—morphing into an unseen pair of giant hands cracking open the flesh covered coconut of a little girl’s rib cage. Words, low at first against the gray tide, bubbled up through the bone Easter basket sacks of wet, pulsing organs; their tone flattened by the passage.

  “Nervous, Hun?”

  After slight hesitation, Wayne said, “No... well... yeah, a little, I guess. I've never done this so far away from home, ya know?” He could speak truthfully in this way, his real meaning cleverly hidden. The innocent nervousness in his voice was so convincing that Sharon stopped balling socks and turned to look at him. Luckily, that rusty old gear of deception, the one that came naturally with years of harvesting, was still working just fine.

  “Awww, how cute. Wayne's nervous,” Sharon giggled teasingly as her hands found his and slipped them through the opening of her rob. “Anything I can do to help with those nerves, Mister Man?” Wayne barely noticed his fingertips running the smooth curves of her breasts, circling her hardening nipples still wet from the shower.

  The other side the ocean—now blooming bright red—revealed the severed genitals of a ten-year-old boy from Falmouth to keep his mind on task.

  “Sharon,” Wayne said mechanically, faking a tone of mild disappointment, “you know I have to go soon.” He glanced down at his watch:

  8:28

  He had roughly two minutes to get ready and meet the boy outside. Assuming he showed up. Wayne wanted to be behind the wheel of the Buggy waiting. Knowing that idiot, he'd show up on time, see Wayne wasn't outside, and try to call the house or knock on the front door.

  Or worse. He might go home.

  Kieffer had to show up. He had to. Wayne's new plan depended on it.

  Pulling his hands out of Sharon's robe, he walked stiffly towards the bed. “I gotta get going.” Cramming all the neatly folded clothes she laid out back into the suitcase, he said, “I want to make sure I get to the hotel at a decent time. You know how traffic is down there.”

  “This late?” Suspicious, she quickly tied the sash on her robe. Sharon wouldn't say it outright, but she was hurt. It wasn't like her husband at all to turn down sex. Truth be told, Wayne and Sharon hadn't performed their maritals in over a month. Over their ten-year marriage they never went more than a week without. Sharon became accustomed to Wayne's constant sexual advances. Usually, Sharon couldn't change her clothes without Wayne sneaking in from the other room to harass her. Practically begging her for anything, even a dry handjob in the bathroom with the shower running. When Wayne suddenly became preoccupied and started spending more time in his hobby room, Sharon welcomed the short break. The almost constant ass slapping and titty pinching had gotten old over time. She was even able to go a little while without shaving downstairs, which was nice in its own way. But when the days off turned into weeks, she started to worry.

  Then, the cigarettes.

  She found them yesterday morning right before work. She was looking through Wayne’s coat for an extra stick of gum to stave off her coffee breath when she came across a crumpled pack of Pall Malls in a side pocket. Her first reaction was shock. She couldn’t remember ever seeing Wayne smoke, though she knew he used to before they met. Already running ten minutes late to work, Sharon put back the Pall Malls, found gum in another pocket and left. She didn’t see it as an overly pressing issue at the time. It’s not like she found a pair of panties or a hairclip. Sharon told herself this, but didn’t feel any better.

  Something was wrong.

  Too many things where out of place. It was like someone was testing her. Sneaking into her brain every night as she slept. Moving the furniture in each room exactly 2.6 inches to the left. And in an act of willful ignorance, Sharon would drag herself out of bed every night, set it all back, and go to sleep. Up until the sudden announcement of his trip to Boston, she felt foolish for questioning her husband of ten years. Her best friend. Hell, her only friend.

  Probably, she told herself, Wayne was just getting old; his sex drive weakening with age. Pretty common. Things were bound to taper off at some point. Still… a man just doesn't lose his Mojo overnight, does he?

  Sharon had this very same dilemma with her first husband, Tom. Almost six years into their marriage, he suddenly stopped putting out. Vague excuses and lies of staying late at the office kept Sharon naively placid. First marriage hang-ups, that’s all. Sharon didn’t suspect a thing. So many lonely nights spent lying awake in that empty king-sized bed conveniently out of way and out of mind. Until finally, the truth surfaced. Turned out that Tom's sex drive was doing just fine; if the girl on the other end of his stick was half his age and dumber than rocks in a blender. Which led Sharon to wonder–

  The cigarettes... sex… Boston… is Wayne having an affair??

  “You know how it is. I'll have four tollbooths to go through before I even see the bridge.” Wayne forced his suitcase shut and lifted it off the bed. “Sorry, Sharon. I promise we'll–”

  “Are you having an affair, Wayne? Be honest.” Her voice a watery sternness. When Wayne only stood looking at the floor, saying nothing, she braced herself against the tears and turned away.

  Seeing that Sharon was on the brink, Wayne reached for her. “No, of course not. What makes you say that?” From the sliver of humanity still in him—choking and clawing at the dirt in its corner—Wayne knew this surprise trip to Boston was a bit of a risk. But risk was no longer a factor.

  Not anymore.

  Sharon didn't turn at the feeling of his touch, but also didn't push away. “All the time you spend in that room, your temperament lately… I don’t know. You've been acting... different. I just… I just want you to tell me if there's someone else.” The words dribbled like hot wax through her cupped hands. She continued to hide her face as Wayne lightly squeezed her shoulders. Gently, he guided her hands down into his.

  Emotions exposed, Sharon couldn't hold back any longer. Amaz
ingly, she was even more beautiful when she cried. Wayne pulled her in, wrapping his arms around her as she buried herself in his chest. As his wife wept silent tears, he peeked over her shoulder to check his wristwatch.

  8:34

  That was all it took.

  At the sight of those numbers, Wayne's hands broke their leashes. They planted themselves at Sharon’s neck—squeezing so hard he could hear her vertebrae popping like fireplace kindling.

  “Do you think I have time for this?!” Wayne screeched into her purple face. “I have to prove myself, woman! I can't let that little shit win!”

  Sharon pawed at Wayne's arms, feeble slapping that barely broke the skin. Her recent manicure took all the edge out of her nails. She was as defenseless as a declawed alley cat. Ballooning face burning red with heat—her words like the crumbled static of a weak CB radio signal. Wayne rammed his fist into her speaker. End transmission. Breaking teeth and popping her jaw out of socket with the first blow, Wayne held her upright by the back of her head. With one fist tangled in her wet hair, he piston’d Sharon's face. Fisted backwards.

  After the noises in her throat stopped, so did Wayne.

  The teeth that didn't fall to her stomach stayed rooted; needle-sharp spikes that lined her gums like thorns of ivory. Those broken bottleneck teeth scraped and gouged at Wayne’s arm at every thrust—his rock-hard knuckles went a little farther on each plunge. If it hurt, Wayne didn't notice. By the time he dropped her body to the blood-spotted carpet, he had a thick coat of bile, spit and scrape marks all the way up to his elbow.

  Standing by his suitcase, his filth-laced arm listlessly floating at his side, Wayne blinked the sweat out of his eyes.

  When his vision re-leveled, Sharon was back on her feet, crying softly against his chest as before. Shocked, Wayne pried her away. Her face no longer resembled a prolapsed anus with empty eyes and blood-soaked ponytail. It never did.