The Dex-Files (Experiment in Terror #5.7)

by Halle, Karina

  “You’re both suspended for the rest of the week,” he growled. “Go home.”

  Woo hoo! All right! No school!

  That’s what most kids would say. I mean, with suspension you had the lecture and grief and disappointment from your parents, but after that you didn’t have to go to school, and your classmates would talk about you for months like you’re a real bad ass.

  Notice I said most kids. That wasn’t the case for me.

  I actually liked school. No, wait, I take it back. I actually liked being at school. Classes and teachers could kiss my perky ass, but school wasn’t home. And any place that wasn’t home was a place I wanted to be. My mother worked nights and she was home during the day. It was bad enough having to see her for a couple of hours after class where, if I was lucky, she’d throw a cheap frozen meal in the microwave for me and Michael. If I wasn’t lucky, Michael would be out with his friends, my mom would be in rage mode, and I’d have a belt mark on my neck for looking at her wrong.

  I exchanged a grim look with Toby, who no doubt would be grounded during his suspension and thus no band practice nor access to weed. This was going to suck.

  In the months to come, I’d look back at that moment and want to pull my hair out. I wanted to yell at myself, tell myself to not go home. Go anywhere else. I wanted to hold onto that feeling that things couldn’t get any worse when they very well could. I wanted that ignorance back.

  But there was no turning back.

  I went home. I was hungry and bored and even though I hung out at my favorite record store for a few hours, killing time, my house was calling me.

  I knew it was a mistake the minute I walked in. Our place was small as all hell, with sad, peeling blue walls that looked silly against the relatively fancy furniture that we salvaged after dad left. The apartment normally had this moldy smell about it, like death clung to the walls, but that evening it was another smell. It was the stench of melted plastic and it stung my nostrils something bad.

  I quietly placed my backpack on the floor and shut the front door behind me. Living in an apartment was hard when you had a mom who liked to scream and yell and cry and puke a lot. The neighbours, even the drug dealers, must have hated us. I had this weird feeling that this was going to be another epic disturbance and I hoped the other tenants weren’t home.

  The next thing I found weird, aside from the gross stench, was the silence. Usually the TV was blaring, or you could hear the sound of my mom pouring herself a drink, or she was yammering en Français to far-off distant relatives who didn’t want anything to do with her nonsense.

  But there was nothing.

  It was fucking creepy.

  I crept down the hallway, wishing I’d worn my Vans to school instead of the combat boots. Wherever my mom was, she knew I was coming.

  I looked in the kitchen. Empty.

  I peeked in her room. Empty.

  I peeked in Michael’s room. Empty

  I stopped outside my door. It was closed. I always closed it but I knew she was in there. The god awful smell of burning plastic filtered out from under the doorframe.

  Along with a tuft of smoke.

  Holy fucking shit.

  I put my hand on the knob and before I could hesitate any longer, I whipped the door open.

  My mother was on her hands and knees in the middle of my room. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu, like I’d seen this before. My mother wasn’t very original with her drunken terrorizing.

  But that’s not what caused my heart to fill with ice. That’s not what made my skin crawl with disgust and righteous, bubbling over anger.

  All of my records were sprawled out on the floor in front of her. My precious vinyl collection that I had worked for so long to acquire, paid for with the paltry change I scrounged up over the years. The music my mother said was the work of the devil.

  She hadn’t said that lightly. It turns out she very much believed it for my mother was lighting my records on fire. Let me repeat that. She was lighting my fucking record collection on fire. Half of them were reduced to a nauseating pile of melted black vinyl, producing a stench that made my eyes water. Maybe I was crying too, I don’t know. Call me a pussy for shedding a tear, but those records meant absolutely everything to me and she was destroying them.

  “I’ll cast you out!” she screamed with a wicked smile, holding a lighter in one hand and Pink Floyd’s The Wall in another. She was destroying it and loving it.

  I don’t know how long I stood there in stupor as the smoke began to flood the room. She had left the window open but it wasn’t helping. The carpet around the melted records began to flicker a little from budding flames. My room was about to turn into an inferno if I didn’t do something.

  It was a tough call. I wanted to save my records, what was left of them. I wanted to prevent my room from going up in flames. And I wanted to go over there and hit her so bad. And fuck you if you think that’s wrong. I was so angry at her and this horrible thing she’d become. Angry that I came from her and angry that she made my dad leave and angry that she always loved Michael, but not me.

  Never me.

  I didn’t hit her, even though it would have been karma for beating me up all these years. I gathered my wits at the last minute and ran out of the room and to the kitchen. The rage was blinding me, taking over but I had to think. THINK! I needed to get water to the fire and fast.

  I pulled out a bucket from under the sink and flipped on the rusted tap. The water wasn’t coming out fast enough. Fucking plumbing in the building had always sucked.

  I heard her coming behind me.

  Please don’t come any closer, I thought to myself, closing my eyes and gripping the bucket even harder. I was afraid what would happen if she did.

  I turned and looked. She was walking unsteadily toward me, her clothes stained with ash and grease. She pointed at me, fixing her dark eyes on mine. Oh how I wished I didn’t look so much like her.

  “Mom, go away!” I cried out, my voice cracking shamefully. I looked back to the bucket. Half-full. Just a few more seconds.

  “You’re not my son,” she said in this low, utterly deranged voice. “You’re not my son.”

  Fuck, this again? If I had a nickel for every time she told me I wasn’t her son, I’d be able to re-buy my record collection.

  I caught a whoosh of sound from around the corner and beyond my mother’s sad form, there was a hint of light on the walls. The fire was growing. The bucket would have to do for now.

  I lifted it out of the sink, the water spilling to the sides.

  “I wasn’t me when I had you.”

  That one was new.

  I turned around and looked at her, the water sloshing in my hands and dripping to my feet.

  “Mom, please I have to put out the fire.”

  I took a few steps forward hoping to walk past her. But she came toward me, putting her body in between myself and the fire. I tried not to look at her eyes, tried not to see the madness and shame in them, but I was doing exactly that.

  “I wasn’t me when I had you. I wasn’t me! You’re not my son!” she bellowed, her rotten, booze-filled breath blowing hotly in my face.

  “Get out of my way mom, please,” I begged, my voice wavering. We didn’t have time for her lunatic rantings. She wasn’t herself? What did that even mean?

  “I wasn’t me when I had you!” she screamed.

  “Mom, move!” I screamed back. I took the bucket of water and shoved it against her.

  Hard.

  A little too hard.

  And that was all it took. I was so angry, so out of my mind, that I shoved my mother a little too hard.

  Water spilled on to the floor.

  She lost her balance.

  The ground was slick.

  She fell backward.

  She reached for me in slow motion.

  I didn’t drop the bucket.

  I stepped back. Away from my mom’s reaching hand.

  She fell to the floor, al
most hitting it at once.

  But she had stumbled a little too close to the edge of the counter.

  Her head hit the corner of it first. The sound of something being split, like a cracked watermelon, filled my ears.

  Blood clung to the counter’s sharp edge.

  My mother landed on the floor with a thunk.

  There was more blood mixing with the water, creating a pale red soup.

  Then there were more flames.

  Then there was nothing.

  DEAR ABBY

  Life can be pretty screwy. Hectic. Random. That was my life anyway, and most of the time. But, occasionally, things just fall into place. There’s a feeling of fate. Kismet. Order. I prefer the up-and-down jumble and unpredictability. I liked that shit happens for no reason sometimes. There’s something easy about that.

  When things align themselves in my favor, it makes me suspicious. Maybe because I don’t like the idea of my life being part of some overall cosmic plan. I don’t want the universe to pay attention to me. I just wanted to put my head down and go.

  Sing Sin Sinatra (why the hell did I name it this?) had been doing really well until Toby up and left the band. Toby, my last remaining friend, a leftover from high school, decided smoking crack in the Bronx was better than playing bass in my band. OK, our band. But really, it was my band.

  Not that I wouldn’t have had to fire him at the rate he was going but still. It would have been my choice and my decision. Instead, just before the fall season, when we had a shit ton of shows (good shows too) to do, he decided to say see ya.

  Good riddance and fuck off, said everyone else in the band. They were sick of him being late, being incoherent. He could barely play the bass anymore and that was saying a lot, especially with most of our songs. I mean, fuck, we did the classics. They were as simple as shit. But it burned me a little bit. Like I said, he was my last high school friend, a connection to my past. Did I like my past? No. I didn’t even speak to my own brother anymore. But it was something.

  It also sucked balls because he was going to be my editing partner. He wasn’t in school, but he had the talent and the equipment. Well, before he sold it for crack. We worked well together. Well, before he started wigging out.

  Fuck. I should have seen it coming.

  So there I was, gathering my books, getting ready to leave my afternoon editing class. Everyone in my class was a dick so there was no way I’d feel comfortable making side projects with these people. Anyway, I needed someone who would want to fuck around with film with me. I know I’m not easy to work with, so there was that too.

  I started toward the door, the last person to leave the room.

  Before I got there, a gigantic redhead appeared in the doorway, panting and out of breath. A layer of sweat lay across his freckled forehead.

  “I missed it didn’t I?” the ginger said, his arm propping his body up against the frame. His voice was unusually smooth and he had a weird accent that was Southern but also not quite.

  “Missed the class?” I asked. I walked toward him but he was still leaning against the door and his whole massive body blocked it. There was something weird about him, about the way he was, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Oh well, no matter. It wasn’t my problem.

  “Yeah. Shoot. I signed up for editing. Missed last week’s too.”

  I gave him a false nod of sympathy. I had places to go, a girl to fuck. I wasn’t about to stand around and shoot the breeze with this guy. Looking at him gave me a headache and made me want to rub my eyes vigorously. Maybe with salt.

  “Better luck next week,” I told him with a placating smile, then gestured for him to move.

  He did. Reluctantly. I quickly glanced at him as I passed. If I’d known better, he looked confused. Maybe even hurt.

  “You’re Declan Foray,” he called out after me.

  I stopped walking. I slowly turned around.

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “Jacob.” He smiled. He had pretty white teeth for a Southern boy. Then he frowned, catching himself. “No. Jacobs.”

  “Jacobs? With an S? Do you know your own name?” I frowned at him.

  He wiped his hand on his jeans and thrust it out at me. “Maximus Jacobs.”

  “Oh, you have many names.”

  He eyed me and his hand expectantly. I sighed and dragged my ass over to him.

  “Nice to meet you Maximus Jacobs. I’m Dex Foray.” He shook my hand in a very strong, cold hold. He kept it there a little too long. I narrowed my eyes at him. He smiled in response and dropped it.

  I took back my hand and wiggled it a bit. Fucker could have broken it. Who let this animal out of the zoo?

  He smiled again like he’d heard what I thought and found it funny. I ignored it.

  “So, Maximus Jacobs.”

  “Just Max, please.”

  “OK, Max please. How did you know who I was?”

  “Word on the street was you were looking for a new bassist,” he said.

  “Word on the street? Who says that?” I scoffed, taking in his purple plaid shirt. “Where are you from?”

  “The South,” he said. He scratched at his orange sideburns. He had a very wannabe Elvis type do. It looked retarded.

  “Oh, the South,” I remarked dryly. “Always wanted to go there.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Louisiana. Outside of New Orleans. On the coast.”

  OK. Now his accent went from odd and slightly Southern to full-on Cajun. Like he was trying to sound neutral but eventually failed.

  I needed a cigarette badly. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. I don’t know where the headache had come from but it was apparent that standing around talking to the burly Cajun wasn’t helping. Still, I had to know.

  “So you say word on the street?” I mused. “Who told you?”

  He shrugged. “I just overheard.”

  So, so vague. “All right. Do you play bass?”

  He smiled broadly. He almost looked angelic. “I play everything but I love bass.”

  Did anyone really love the bass? I mean, I could play everything too. I loved the sound of the bass but playing the bass? Unless you were peeling off some Les Claypool riffs, it was boring as fuck.

  “I can play just like Les Claypool.”

  I flinched. “What?” Had I said that shit out loud?

  “Les Claypool. You know, he’s in Primus.”

  “Yes, I know who he is,” I snapped. I eyed him warily. “You don’t know what kind of music we play. It’s not exactly Primus.”

  He nodded. “I know. I’ve seen you live.”

  That startled me. Did I have a stalker here?

  “When?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “When I first got here.”

  “Our last show was a month ago...”

  “Then I got here a month ago. Look, I really liked your band.”

  I could see how sincere he was. But still.

  Reading the doubt on my face, he quickly said, “I’ll even audition. I reckon I’ll win you over yet.”

  He’ll reckon? My god, why didn’t he just stick to the banjo and pots and pans? Fucking hillbilly. Still, we needed a bassist and finding one in New York City that wasn’t either an asshole professional or drooling crackhead wasn’t easy. My bandmates might even like the jolly red giant.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I muttered, annoyed and feeling deflated.

  “I know. I could just tell. Do you smoke?” he asked.

  I perked up. “Fuck yes.”

  He fished a packet of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. They were in a bright yellow box, with Spanish writing. “Ever had Cuban cigarettes?”

  “No. How did you get those?”

  “I have ways. Come on,” he nodded toward the exit and I was suddenly aware that there was a school around me with students and teachers going back and forth. It was the weirdest fucking thing, like I’d been in a dream or something.r />
  I had a few smokes with the Cajun. The smokes then turned into beers. Beers soon turned into jamming. I didn’t need to audition him. We had our bass player. Could he play like Claypool? Not quite. But he was polite (annoyingly so), kept good time and was open to anything.

  Then we got to talking about film. He had some skills in the editing department and wanted to collaborate on student films with someone. It was like God plucked Max out of the sky and handed him to me. An answer to the prayers I never made.

  So, you can see why it made me suspicious. The big dude in the sky usually never gave me anything but shit. But here was Max. Ginger Elvis. A bassist and editor all in one. The perfect replacement for Toby.

  Well, almost. Toby knew my history. He knew I was on some medication. He knew what made me tick. Max didn’t know any of that and I fascinated him for some reason. He was always asking me questions. Questions I didn’t want to answer, like about my parents. About my brother. What my childhood was like. Did I have any nannies growing up. Who were my friends.

  Did anything strange happen to me when I was young.

  “Like what?” I asked. We were sitting in a dark bar in the Bowery on a Thursday night. The weekend before we played one of our best shows yet. Seemed there were parts of New York that got the joke, the campy fun of lounge music turned rock and roll. Max and I were taking over the city.

  “Oh I don’t know,” he said. He was eyeing a girl in the corner of the bar. She was blonde, short but pretty enough and staring at us like she knew us. I leaned my head back, looked past his shoulder at her and winked. She giggled. I knew it. She was staring at me. She was staring at me like she wanted to bend over and let me stick it anywhere.

  I turned my attention back to Max. She’d be there later, and then hopefully in my bed. What Max had asked me was weird and distracting.

  “Are you trying to get all serious with me?” I asked, leaning into him. “No one touched me in private places, if that’s what you’re getting at.”