by Brian Hodge
She was now inside the closet. Completely. A light from above blinded her. She could hear the door closing behind. A cold, coarse hand gripped her throat, and a head blocked out the light from above. She could see them, them, hovering over her like dragonflies on a lilypad, the closest one squeezing her neck, the other chanting through gums that suddenly bore blood-coated teeth, gnashing and grounding up and down like mortars. Through her blurring sights she could see shelves in the closet, and on those shelves were skulls, human skulls, rows and rows that might have amounted to three dozen if she’d had the time or strength to count them, and even closer still, on the floor beside her were artifacts, tablets and small bone-sculptures with indecipherable writings carved into them, and she could do nothing but cry as the odd weight of the Alzheimer creatures kept her down, and then the pain…the pain…the pain in her foot, something there…one of the couple, Mr. Alzheimer maybe, moving and then bringing up a bone-handled knife, the same one from the photographs, the blade spearing her severed foot, he bringing the foot to his mouth, biting the soft exposed flesh and chewing…chewing…chewing…
Carrie gave up trying. She collapsed under their hold, screaming the moment Mrs. Alzheimer’s showed a twitching mouth now filled with brown teeth and torn bloodied gums—a mouth that came down on her neck, tearing her throat free.
“They both suffer from Alzheimers, each of them now in the later stages. My father shouts out from time to time, periods of dementia, but only in the daytime. Other than that, they don’t move, speak, even open their eyes.” Roberta smiled, and the woman named Gail returned the inviting gesture.
“So when do I start?” Gail asked.
“Tonight, at ten.”
Gail smiled. “Great. See you then Roberta.”
Roberta ushered Gail to the door, waited until she heard Gail’s car leave. She went into the bedroom where her parents lay in their semi-comatose state, opening the window a crack to let some fresh air in before adjusting the IV flow.
They wouldn’t need as much today.
She opened the closet, pulled the sheet back to reveal the rows of shelves against the back wall.
Thirty eight in total, now.
Closest to her, on the lowest shelf, something caught her eye. On the newest skull, a drop of blood. She licked her finger and rubbed at it, wondering how she missed it.
She stepped back, eyed the wall, realizing that pretty soon she’d need to put another shelf up.
She looked out at her sleeping parents. Smiled. Yes, pretty soon.
Snakes
A tiny black snake, four inches long, slithered across the linoleum floor toward Helen Kirby, who sat alone and quiet in the darkness of her living room. Shelved upon her fat stomach was a dish of double-dutch chocolate ice cream, one hand gripping a glass of cola, the other shoveling the creamy dessert into her pimpled mouth. Her white swollen feet, naked and repulsive, rested on a shabby ottoman as the television flickered its brain-dead commentary into the room.
She stared hard at the snake. It stopped its forward momentum, tiny head raised slightly off the floor. It seemed to stare back at her, pointed tail waving in tiny circles. It then turned and glided stealthily down the hall into the bathroom.
Helen’s husband Fred sat at the worn dinette table in the kitchen. He was shouting at nothing in particular, mostly running an inventory of Helen’s faults: you fat cow, you fat pig, you good-for-nothing fat bitch, and on and on, never straying too far from the topic-at-hand. Like Helen, Fred Kirby didn’t possess much by the way of ‘class’, but it took a slob to know one, and Fred Kirby was definitely one.
Sure as pie, Helen thought, damn slob hasn’t held a steady job in over a year now.
Helen paid his rant no attention. That was her quiet ammunition. Of course, her mouth usually had food in it, so only muffled gripes would spill out. The only mutual interest she and Fred had was the tedious chatter that lulled their minds to jelly when they watched television.
And then there was Stuart. Their son.
The little fatso had been cast from the same mold as his father. He was in his room, laying in bed with a salami sandwich, a bag of barbeque-flavored corn chips, and a glass of chocolate milk, more than likely making a mess of himself. ‘Little Brain-Dead’—that’s what his parents called him—spent all his free time alone in his dirty room, sifting out his parent’s squabbles, choosing instead to spend life harmonizing with the colorful characters on the Saturday morning cartoons.
If Stuart had been semi-mindful of his surroundings, if he had paid attention to something other than the blur of the television screen, then he would have noticed that the window in his room was black, and that the blackness there was moving. And, that even though it was daytime, he should have been able to see outside. But ‘Little Brain-Dead’ had inherited his father’s wits, and as a result, wasn’t sharp enough to grasp these simple little details.
Back in the living room, Helen finished her bowl of double-dutch chocolate ice cream. She scratched an itch on the back of her neck, let out a guffaw—she thought the itch might have come from one of the snakes—then stood with her empty glass and plodded to the kitchen where Fred sat commiserating over a bowl of Super Corn-Krispies and beer.
“Whataya doin’, Helen?” he growled, as though she’d invaded his personal space. “Ya fat hog,” he threw in for extra measure. Helen grimaced and narrowed her eyes at him. The big cereal-eating jerk looked like a tired hound lapping up dirty rain water, teeth bared, ready to snap at her if she came too close.
Helen refilled her glass of cola and mumbled, “Shut ya big trap,” under her breath. Shaking her head, she floundered out into the hall, bladder suddenly expanding. She stopped. Peered around. There was a muffled rustling sound coming from somewhere, from within the walls maybe. She shrugged it off to Fred’s Super Corn-Krispies meeting their fate inside his big fat mouth.
She paced down the hall and peeked into Stuart’s room. ‘Little Brain-Dead’ was sitting on the bed staring sat the television, right hand working its way from the bag of corn chips to his mouth.
His hand held no corn chip. In it was a tiny fidgeting snake.
In the moment the squirming reptile entered Stuart’s mouth, Helen contemplated her sorry life, tried to convince herself of everything she had going for her by running an inventory of all those things that still mattered: I have my health. I have my food. I have television. I manage to pay the bills. What else could I really ask for? Love? Not from Fred. Not from Stuart. No. I don’t need them. I don’t, not at all.
Stuart pulled another snake from the bag and shoved it in his mouth.
Helen smiled.
Fred screamed.
Helen took her time to attend to his call, going into the bathroom first, squatting and doing her thing. When she finished, she tucked her stomach back into her elastic-waist pants and waddled into the kitchen where Fred stood with his back to the stove, pointing crazily at the kitchen table. His face was drained of its color.
“Helen, we got snakes!” Indeed they did. Four or five of them, slithering atop the kitchen table, in and out of Fred’s bowl of Super Corn-Krispies, one tinkering about the open beer can. Their little heads waved to and fro like tiny mocking hands.
Helen shot Fred a peculiar look. She’d never really seen him in such a compromising position. She enjoyed it. “Yeah? So?” She stayed and watched him for a moment, trying to hide her smile, then turned away and went back into the living room. She sat on the couch and retrieved her bowl of double-dutch chocolate ice cream, which by this time had melted to soup.
She grabbed the spoon. Looked at the contents of the bowl. The chocolate fudge was moving.
She placed the bowl back down. She had no desire to eat them. Not like Stuart did.
Fred stormed into the living room, swearing up a violent storm. “Helen, you fat good-for-nothing—” His words were cut off and his eyes grew wide like donuts and Helen couldn’t help but laugh at his lost, boyish expression. He pointed aga
in—this time at the living room floor—and stammered, still swearing and now praying to God as sweat beaded down his face. “W-what the fuck is that?”
There were hundreds of tiny black snakes pouring into the room from beneath the baseboard radiator, tumbling over one another like football players in a pile-up.
Unbelievably—and quite bravely, Helen observed—Fred stepped forward, eyeing the growing mass in terror. Helen stood her ground and watched as the reptiles scattered about her husband’s feet. Their mass appearance seemed quite odd and out of place, not that there was anything normal about having a swarm of snakes pour into your home…but these critters looked as if they had some sort of ulterior motive, one Helen couldn’t put a finger on.
Fred gazed fearfully at Helen, neck twisting, veins popping, eyes angled in question, as if she might possess answers to this sudden crisis. Helen looked away, unflinching, unanswering—not unlike she had through seventeen years of marriage. Finally Fred yelled, “Don’t just sit there! Go awn and do something, bitch!”
Helen sat still. “But we ain’t never had snakes before, Fred. What do you expect me to do?”
“Well, we got ’em now!” He stomped on a few of the marauding critters, the squelch beneath his slippers sounding much like the chew of the beer-soaked Super Corn-Krispies in his mouth. Helen imagined her husband scarfing down a whole bowlful of the tenacious creatures; Stuart, no doubt, was still plucking them from his bag of corn chips and chowing them down.
Fred staggered away into the kitchen, cursing Helen. She heard him floundering under the sink, cans and bottles crashing everywhere. She was about to yell, What In the hell are you doing in there? when he returned with a rusty can of furniture polish.
Suddenly, the television cut off. The room went grey. But Fred didn’t notice. He was too busy ogling the impossible formation surrounding his feet.
Helen pointed at the blank television. “You’re gonna have to fix the TV, Fred.”
Fire raged in Fred’s cheeks. “Helen, get off your fat ass. The God-damned snakes, Helen! For Christ’s sake, the snakes!” His eyes were white and wide with dread, like two hard-boiled eggs.
“But I need my TV.”
Trembling with unbridled frustration, Fred leaned over and started spraying the snakes with the furniture polish, coating them with a layer of lemony foam. Some slowed, some died. Most kept coming, slithering about his ankles. He danced awkwardly, trying to shake them away, moaning in a squeamish panic. When the lemon-foam polish fizzled nothing but air, Fred started banging the can on them.
Stuart called from his room: “My TV went off!”
Helen stood, tried the light switch, on, off, on, off… It too had died.
“Damn it, Helen. Do something other than flick the switch!” The snakes had begun to crawl up his legs.
“Like what, Fred? What do you want me to do?”
Fred backed away from the assault and escaped into the kitchen. Helen heard him rifling through the junk drawer. A beam of light surfaced, dancing on the walls. Helen followed him as he staggered down the hall—flashlight in hand—in search of the fuse box. With the power out, Helen found it strangely quiet in the house, and outside of Stuart’s wailing complaints of no TV, the only sound she could hear was the odd rustling beneath them. And behind them. And above them. And…
Fred pulled the fuse box open. In the shadows he toyed with the switches but quickly found that they had vanished…only to be had been replaced with snakes, the faceplate cracking and coming away from the wall, its rectangular holes spilling flickering tails, oil-drop eyes, and slithering bodies. He staggered back, legs wobbly, the flashlight’s beam weaving a haphazard glow about the hall. Helen, in an effort not to collide with him, backed away, watching alertly as her husband of seventeen years oomphed and uhhed, swatting at the snakes that clung to his shirt like appliques. “Helen! For Christ’s sake, do something!
Helen had spent the better part of seventeen years ignoring Fred’s demands, and didn’t plan on changing anything now. She spun and returned to the living room.
Back in the living room the snakes had multiplied, forming a writhing carpet on the floor, their black scaly bodies rolling over one another, the sound of it a great concert of static. They seemed to be coming from everywhere: the blown out wall sockets, the radiator, from behind the pictures hanging on the wall, and the cracks in the walls that had now become gaping holes.
Fred stumbled into the living room. The snakes leaped up at him by the dozens, attaching themselves to his body. He did an obscene jig, stomach shaking to and fro, legs jerking at angles, arms swatting in a futile effort to dislodge the tiny reptiles. The scene reminded Helen of a toy Stuart had when he was a child, where a drift of metallic dust behind a plastic window could be manipulated by aiming a magnet over it, challenging its user to create a beard on a cartoon face. That was how Fred looked now: thousands of snakes actually looking as if they had become magnetized to him, launching upwards like hailstones bouncing off the floor.
His feet treaded in a panic, pressing to locate a grip on the floor. His slippers flew across the room as he flailed backwards, arms reeling, lips clenched shut as fell back and struck the rear of his skull on the television set. His body twisted away from the TV, legs splayed into a full V as he slapped down on his back—atop the carpet of snakes.
The TV flickered to life.
“Damn, Fred,” Helen sneered. “You went and fixed the TV now, didn’t ya?” She smiled, sat on the couch, feeling content, watching as the snakes blanketed Fred, filling every orifice in his body, the smallest ones skittering about his ears and nose, the bigger ones exploring the warmth of his mouth. He looked like a big yummy dessert, covered with sprinkles.
Helen felt hungry. Another dish of ice cream, maybe?
Stuart appeared from his room.
“Nice of you to crawl out of your hole, Little Brain-Dead,” Helen scowled.
Stuart Kirby tried to speak, but couldn’t. His mouth was too full of snakes. But unlike his father’s reluctance to coalesce with the snakes, Stuart had readily and willingly eaten every goddamn one he could get his little fatso paws on. His pudgy face flaunted the nasty results: snake blood bursting from his mouth in a diarrhea-like flow, slathering his pasty skin with a brown, pulpy mess. And then his stomach, it had swelled, pregnant-like, stretching the cotton fabric of his shirt gauze-thin. Helen thought crazily, he looks like an overfed goldfish. He gulped the snakes he had in his mouth, then squatted down, scooped up a healthy handful from the floor and stuffed his face once again, peering at his mother much like a mischievous child trying to make a stash of stolen chocolates disappear.
Helen contemplated the whole scene, first gazing at her husband, only the whites of his eyes visible, seemingly pleading with her and wondering why the slithering reptiles hadn’t touched his wife.
Then, at Stuart, laughing as his stomach tore open, the tiny snakes exploding from within.
The doorbell rang.
Helen Kirby placed down her dish of ice cream and rose from the couch.
She opened the door. A man stood on the porch. Middle aged, not bad looking with brown hair and deeply set hazel eyes. He wore a cap that said, Teejay’s Exterminators. Sewn on his shirt was a faded patch that had the name ‘Mike’ on it.
Helen said nothing.
“Mike from Teejay’s Exterminators. You called?”
“Yes…yes I did. Come in.”
“Where’s your problem?” Mike asked.
Helen pointed down the hall. “In the bedroom.”
“Bedroom?” In his hand was a large can of industrial strength insecticide. “Usually they’re the kitchen. They sniff out the trash.”
Helen shrugged. “No—they’re in the bedroom. At the end of the hall.”
Mike walked down the hall.
“They’re on the bed,” Helen added.
Mike raised an eyebrow in question, glanced oddly at Helen as she opened the bedroom door.
They entered,
Mike first, then Helen. She closed the door behind them.
Mike turned and stared at the bed. “Yep…I’d say you’ve got yourself a problem.”
Sitting on the bed were Fred and Stuart, their bodies covered entirely with black writhing snakes. The only thing human about them were the whites of their eyes, and the shine of their gnashing teeth.
Helen eased up next to Mike. “Can you get rid of them?”
“I…don’t usually do snakes,” he said.
“Not the snakes,” she said. “Them. My husband and son.”
Mike nodded. “I’ll give it my best shot. But I can’t make any promises.” He paused, then asked, “What do you want to do about the snakes?”
Helen grinned. “The snakes I can live with. But those two…”
“Like I said, I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Thank you,” Helen said.
Mike nodded, then raised the can of insecticide and moved to the bed.
Soils of the Witch Garden
In the southern half of the United States, Summer persists for an extended period of time, eating well into Autumn’s tenure. Not unlike Long Island, the trees surrender their greens to more vibrant earth-tones, and the setting sun pulls its beams back around dinner-time. But the heat seems to find a way to stick around all the way into November, prolonging its welcome into a period of season where the Long Island children have to bundle themselves in parkas and knit beanie-caps before heading off to school.
The emergence of the warmer temperatures as we traveled south had Lisa and I feeling a bit giddy (she made a moot point of sticking her index finger out the window to measure the climate) and much looking forward to the well-deserved vacation in sunny Florida we really had no time to plan for. I’m pregnant, she’d revealed, her first offering of conversation as I walked through the door six nights ago after returning from work. The party’s over I teased during a toast of orange juice and cinnamon buns, reflecting on the five years of wedded bliss and double-income/no-kid lifestyle we’d so naturally shared and enjoyed.
