The refrigerator was held tight up against the basement door. After he had unplugged and moved it, even the cockroaches underneath knew it was time to go and scurried for safety. Now nobody could bust out of the basement.
He waited for the voices to come and tell him how bad he was. That he was a devil. They didn’t. They can’t get him here. Not when he was like this. He sat on the couch and started flicking the lighter. There was life in the flame. He held it against the side of the couch. The fabric burned, but didn’t flame, only melted. The smell hit his nose and the smoke sizzled in his nostrils. He would use the vodka. Make it burn.
This was home now.
Chapter Sixteen: Lilly’s Last Chapter
The basement seemed to echo. The basement seemed to breathe. Like I was inside someone’s lungs and the walls went in and out, in and out, with each breath. My heart was racing and each heartbeat was faster than the last, like a drum solo that had to end soon.
Footsteps shuffled upstairs, then stopped. Was he really going to burn this place down? I tried to figure out what he was doing by the creaks of the wood. I would rather be in the fire upstairs than down here in this dungeon. I sat with my back to the wall with my legs curled up against me. The basement was quiet and frozen. I stared everything down for any hint that something might try to hurt me.
The furnace stood in the middle, with tubes that lead to secret places. I hated to hear it rattle. Every time I came down here I was terrified it would rattle. Usually it did not, but the few times it did it made me jump. Now it sat silently and mocked me, teased me. The washer and dryer stood by like two cold robots. In between were piles of clothes that lay unwashed, some for months. Stains of colored puddles were splattered on the concrete floor from leaks. Used syringes and tiny plastic caps from Uncle Nelson were nestled in a New Balance shoe box and then shoved in the corner as if hidden. A Lazy Boy chair with big rips sat in one corner, with broken curtains laid on top. A vacuum cleaner that didn’t work but whined real loud stood upright. A ping-pong table with broken legs that stopped it from standing lay against the wall. My dad said he’d fix it for me but now the legs would certainly remain broken.
More footsteps upstairs. Floorboards creaked. The basement silence retreated. He was doing something. I needed help.
I went back to the top of the stairs. My feet clanged on the metal strips on the staircase and it hurt my ears. Nobody else could hear though, nobody at all knew I was here. I was too tired to scream.
I smelled smoke. Bits of it crept under the door crack. He was really doing this. Things were already starting to burn. Protective Services couldn’t stop this.
I banged three times on the door with my fist and waited. Nothing. I pushed the door to see if it would budge. Nothing. I heard footsteps, voices, a muffled rant from the Red-Man talking to himself, humming even. I willed myself downstairs and then came back up with some towels that were old and moldy with mucky wetness. I tucked them under the door crack, but I could still smell smoke.
My house was on fire.
Maybe it will just burn on top of me. I could wait it out downstairs.
I went back down, the trace of smoke following me, and sat against the wall. My life was done, whatever happened here, and I already felt my body shrinking, my skin fading. I traced my fingertip along my veins of my underarm, from elbow to wrist. If only I had some H. The basement would seem beautiful instead of evil. Like Uncle Nelson said, Until you have medicine to make you see the beauty, life is a sickness. A fucking curse. But there was no H, there was nothing down here that can help. Nothing. Dad had a gun, but it was in his room.
There’s always a way out if you just look in the right place. That’s what the Red-Man had told me, but I had nothing.
Moments passed with only stillness inside, until slowly I was becoming part of the basement. The furnace accepted me as one who belonged there. The basement wasn’t eating me, it was taking me in. I felt at home like I could stay here forever. I tried not to breathe so I could listen and hear every sound. All that came were drips.
Drip.
Pause.
Drip.
Pause.
The pipe from the upstairs bathtub was dripping, and each drip was bigger and faster than the last and making tiny splashes in the bucket. Blood and water that the bodies were soaking in was raining down.
Parts of all three of them—all of them dead in the tub. The image burned in my brain.
Grandma was dead, the witch of Brentwood, but her eyes were still open. Nobody could shut them for good.
And my dad, the one who cared for me, not real good, but he did the best he could with what he had. When he knew he messed up so bad that I’d be taken away he finally stopped lying. He brought me the skull of my mother. It seemed so grey and old and I could still picture the empty eye sockets. Mom had empty eye sockets. Looked at me with nothing inside of her.
I listened to the basement breathe and tried to get answers. I wanted to hear the voice of Oscar or my mom. When she spoke to me in my bedroom she said she was close by. I knew that to be true now. Talk to me now when I need you.
Drip. Drip.
The basement is all that spoke to me.
Smoke started to billow from the stairs. My vision became cloudy. It wasn’t like hazy cigarette smoke but was thick, like chunks of oil were hidden inside. My lungs rejected the air and I was suffocating. This would end. It had to.
I walked over to the bucket and watched the red drips fall. The bottom was full of a layer of blood. Each drip made a ding sound on the metal when it landed.
I thought of spilling my own blood in the bucket somehow. My blood together with all of theirs would be victory. If only I could stick something inside my own defective heart and make it flow into the bucket.
Or if I could put them all into me.
I looked up at the leaky pipe. The place my dad would unscrew was loose but still attached. The pipe was too high to reach, so I pushed the washer over and pulled myself on top. I stood on it with shaky legs. Close to the ceiling the air was thick, steamy hot, and I held my breath as I turned the elbow on the pipe. One turn, two turns, three, four, and finally I twisted the elbow, exposed the pipe all the way, and soon it all spilled forth.
Blood and water from the bathtub flowed like a faucet. The red stream poured down the pipe, and started to fill the bucket. I held my breath for one moment longer while my unsteady legs got down from the washer. When I finally tried to breathe, smoky air filled my lungs and I coughed soot up my throat.
I knelt in front of the bucket as if peering into a pond, looking for my image.
A steady trickle from above made the pool ripple like the bottom of a waterfall. The bucket was a cauldron with a potion of red mixing and churning inside. Specks and chunks of grey were sprinkled in like little flakes. I tried but couldn’t tell what parts of the blood were Grandma, what parts where my poppa, and what parts were my mom’s dirty, scaly bones soaking inside.
I grabbed one of dad’s t-shirts and cupped it over my mouth to help me breathe. It smelled like him. I liked that. It was all that stopped me from breathing in smoke. My eyes were full of tears from the smoke and the sadness of living my last days. The fire might stay upstairs, but the smoke wouldn’t leave me alone down here.
I remembered the words of the Red-Man. Something he learned in a basement. “We can shoot anything, not just the H. You’re my girl.”
I rummaged through the New Balance shoe box. At least ten needles rattled inside, some of them old, some of them new. Any of them would do.
I grabbed one and held it in the air. Watched it twinkle in the light of the two bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Just then, the light bulbs blinked. Fast, then slow. Like they were ready to go out. I had to act. The house was going dark soon.
The needle was ready. I dipped it deep into the bucket, as if the best stuff was buried below the surface. Then I drew back on the plunger, slow but firm, getting in whatever would come out. Blood dripped fro
m my fingertips as I pulled the needle up to eye level.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I’d seen Nelson do this, I’d seen nurses do it for years, so I did the same. I flicked it with a finger the way they do, and watched the tube of speckled red squish in the needle. It was like poking at a fish tank. Things seemed alive in there.
The skin on my arm was so thin. I was just veins and bones. I aimed the tip of the needle into the fat of the blue vein. My fingers shook. My vein moved like a snake.
I felt the prick into my skin.
The warmth went right into my heart and spread up my spine into my head. Ahhhh, it flowed so sweet. It was like the metal syringe had tapped the base of my brain. My body was being filled, a hunger was fed deep inside of me, right into my soul’s stomach.
The moment came and faded in a flash, and I had an incredible urge to put more in me. I became surrounded not just by smoke but by song, a whole chorus urging me on to use more, to keep plunging the syringe into the bucket, fill the chamber, and insert it into my skin. Blood from the bucket was spilling on my arm, but I did it again and again to get it inside of me. I could feel the new life pulsing through me, and saw it traveling through my body. My veins went from blue to purple, my heart expanded, beating against my chest like it was being filled with the contents of the universe with God inside.
Finally the moment came I have been waiting ten years for.
My heart burst in my chest. Blew open. That’s all it could be, because a warm explosion blasted inside of me, like somebody shot me in the chest from the inside.
New sights flashed through my head. I had a vision of the Red-Man and felt him putting himself into Momma, injecting her with the sliver of metal years ago and the seed taking root and growing in her belly. I was dark in her womb even then, but feeding off Momma just the same. I felt my infant cries at birth from an ache that could never be soothed. I felt my dad putting a pillow over momma’s head, holding it there—making it all black.
I felt Momma buried in the ground, trying to get into someone else's head to get me, her daughter, to safety.
I felt my daddy’s strength, so many unspoken wars he’d been through, and my grandma’s wisdom, who in her mind’s eye could see the whole neighborhood and was always one move ahead.
And then I could feel the Red-Man, the person who started my life. He was watching my house from the street, and I spoke to him.
“You are an evil man,” I said to him. “You’re rotten and should kill yourself. Or I will kill you.” I could feel the words twist and turn and roller coaster through his brain. He tried to block them out with rambles that weren’t really words. Finally he mumbled back. “You die first. Better that way. If you kill me, then who will you have? Nobody. You are my girl.”
“You are bad, rotten. Not a real dad, I’m not your girl. Get the gun and shoot yourself. Or come inside and cut yourself with a kitchen knife.”
“My girl, you will be ashes soon, and we can talk then.”
“Cut yourself. Again and again. With a big kitchen knife. I will make you do that. I will talk to you until you die.”
I felt him pacing on the sidewalk, mumbling to himself, then you will have nobody.. nobody. 3547, 3547.
“No, somebody is coming for me. My momma tells me so.”
Mommy didn’t tell me I was safe as much as I could feel it. Flakes of Momma were in my veins and her warm hugs filled my insides. I was wise like Grandma, and strong like my dad, for their blood flowed inside me too. The Red-Man maybe had other voices in his head before, but none like mine. I would control him now. My heart exploded a new world of strength into me.
Black smoke filled my lungs and made my soul feel warm and black. There was no more coughing. No more tears. My skin was dark, thick, and magnificent. It was scaly armor, glowing black, not blue. My emptiness was filled for the first time. I walked up the stairs straight through the smoke and had its respect. The metal doorknob was hot enough on my hand to singe and burn my palm but I twisted it anyways, and I pushed the refrigerator away as if it was on wheels.
Upstairs was like a pool of hot ink, with only the glow of flames shining through. One wall burned and the fire grew as I watched. The blanket my dad used for a curtain was done, and the walls above flamed like a bonfire. The microwave was melted from the heat, but none of it hurt me. The flames embraced me, the smoke was in me, and I was in it. My insides were on fire, and would stay that way forever.
My energy spiraled inside of me, like a tornado that wanted to move. It needed to be spread to others. I wanted it in Joey, I wanted to save Oscar, I wanted to be in someone new, to carry on in them and be taken away from here.
But first the Red-Man needed to die.
“You’re rotten. Come back inside the house and die with me. Burn by fire. Cut yourself by knife. You’re a Devil. A Red Devil”.
I waited in the house for him. Standing in the flames, I waited.
*FINAL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR - This story doesn’t seem over just yet. I don’t know what it needs, but something is left hanging. Some time on Brentwood is what I need for one last feel of the setting to close this story out proper.
I drive down Eight Mile Road past grocery stores, McDonalds, and storage units, and slowly the scenery changes to party shops, Baptist churches, and bus stops full of waiting people
My presence becomes more conspicuous with each mile I get closer, like an invading agent into a foreign body. Just seeing the street sign, “Brentwood” makes me smirk.
I remember the place from my visit as a social worker years ago, and it had changed only in that whatever was there 12 years before, was the same but now only more so.
I crept at ten miles per hour down the street, eyes casing the houses to spur my memory. The abandoned house that inspired the beginning of this story was indeed boarded up. Fresh planks were drilled over each window, and trash was sprayed around the outside like pinecones around an evergreen. It now seemed safe to walk by, but somber. The headstone of a man with a troubled life.
Across the street was where I imagined Lilly’s house to be. And just as I had written, the house was recently on fire. Freshly burnt blackness from the flames inside had coated the siding.
I parked on the street next to a rusty blue escort, and when I slammed my car door, two girls who were playing turned their heads, knowing there was a stranger to this street visiting. Their mother was on the porch eyeing me as well. I don’t think I looked like a cop, but perhaps like Protective Services come to visit.
I eyed the house from the curb. There wasn’t a single glass pane left. All of them had been busted out. I’ve been in a house fire before, and I know that’s what happens. Firemen with axes smash in every bit of glass, douse the house with water fast as they can, and leave the remains.
Standing on the sidewalk, I peered through the gaping holes looking for any movement, but saw nothing but darkness inside. I walked onto the porch, turned my head each way as if waiting to be invited inside, but then stepped through the front doorway.
I was greeted by thick, burnt air. It filled my lungs and searched each part of me, like a guard dog, smelling the visitor.
A man was in the front room. He didn’t even notice me, didn’t flinch at my arrival, but was pacing, three steps and a turn, three steps and a turn. His skin was an alien color, not exactly the Red-Man like I had thought, but perhaps crimson. His mouth mumbled words too softly and rapidly to hear, but they certainly had him in a trance.
At his side, his hand grasped a long steak knife.
He kept pacing, back and forth, and then raised the knife as if to strike. I crouched ready to flee, but before I needed to decide my next move, he put the knife to his own neck, and slid the blade along his jugular.
Nothing happened. No blood, nothing, just a groove in his colored skin that seemed deep as if it had been cut and sawed at more than once. Tendons of his neck were exposed, and his head had started to lean towards the damaged side.
On cl
oser look, I noticed a liquid stain that ran from his neck down the side of his body, like he had spilled a shake. Blood had already been drained.
He took three steps, turned, took three more steps, turned, mumbled, and then slid the knife over the groove again. His head tilted, just a bit more. The cut was getting deeper and soon his head would topple off.
Walls of black, glass shards, displaced furniture, kitchen appliances broken or melted, all were littered about the house. I stepped through the wreckage and my footsteps made tiny echoes in the silence. I was at the doorway of the bathroom when I saw her. It was Lilly.
Her eyes looked up at me, brilliant bright white in contrast to the dark skin of armor that her flesh had become. Not flesh-colored black, but like the outside of a well done steak, leathery. It really was armor now, but she was more malnourished than I had ever imagined despite all my descriptions. I could have picked her up with one hand, and her legs and arms stuck to the side like twigs of a tree.
She knelt in front of the bathtub, as if genuflecting, waiting, but the tub was empty, it was just her, and the New Balance box of syringes at her side.
“Is the man still cutting himself?” she asked.
“That he is.”
“He thought I would be his girl, but instead I am killing my father.”
“He deserves it.”
“You aren’t protective service are you?”
“No,” I answered. I wasn’t even sure if my lips were moving, or if I was writing her words for her, or thinking them in my head. Either way, we were in full communion.
“But you are here for me, my momma told me so.”
To that I had no answer.
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