Peel Back the Skin

by Anthony Rivera

  “You know what I just decided?” Kimberly had said one day as they lay on the kitchen floor, panting and sweating from the orgasms they’d just had.

  “I hope you don’t want to carpet the kitchen.”

  “Oh, no, that’s disgusting. No. You know how we’re going to spend our old age? I’ve decided.”

  “How are we going spend our old age?”

  She rolled toward him with a big grin. “Fucking.”

  The kids were well—all of them, children, grandchildren, the whole brood—and quite successful. In addition to being healthy, Reggie and Kimberly were having more sex—more often, and with greater variety and experimentation—than they’d ever had in their entire marriage.

  No, Reggie had no complaints. What was there to complain about? He felt extremely fortunate to have such a good life, such a healthy and loving family, that complaining would be—

  “Still got that goddamned bird over there, Parks?”

  Well, warm, friendly neighbors might be a nice change. But he wasn’t going to quibble.

  Reggie hadn’t realized he was whistling again, and he stopped the second he heard Ollie’s voice, well behind him now, on the other side of the yard and beyond the slatted fence. Ollie sounded different this time, though. Reggie couldn’t identify exactly how, but the quality of his voice had changed. He sounded, perhaps, more relaxed?

  Turning to look back at the fence, Reggie watched the gaps in the slats for a moment. Maybe Ollie hadn’t sounded more relaxed, maybe he’d sounded…happy? Clutching the rake’s handle in his left hand, he walked back to the fence and looked through one of the gaps, then another, and finally, a third.

  He saw nothing, heard nothing. There was no sign of Ollie except the fire he’d started, and even that appeared to be dying. Tendrils of smoke rose from the partially-blackened pile of leaves and the lumps of firewood Ollie had thrown onto it.

  As his oldest son Donald was fond of saying, with a smirk and a dismissive wave of his hand, “Fuck him, Dad.”

  The kids had never liked Ollie. They’d adored June, of course, but had avoided Ollie like poison oak.

  In no hurry, taking his time, enjoying the day, Reggie raked the length of the yard all the way to the back fence, gathering the leaves in piles that he would then scoop into big plastic yard bags for the garbage man to haul away.

  “You care too much,” Kimberly had said to him one day.

  “About what?”

  “About the things Ollie says. I don’t pay attention to anything that comes out of that man’s mouth.”

  “But the things he says about their marriage, about June—and right in front of her!”

  “They’ve been together for half a century, so I don’t think June hears a thing he says, either. If she did, Ollie would be dead and she’d be doing time. I have no idea why she’s stayed with him this long, but that’s her business. What we think doesn’t matter. I just want to be a good friend to June. Obviously she needs one because she’s practically held hostage by Ollie. As far as I’m concerned, though, he is nothing but a hot gust of wind. I wish you felt the same way.”

  “I do, I really do.”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t be bothered by the things he says.”

  “That’s only because it’s so insulting and unfair to June. And to you, because sometimes he insults women and wives in general.”

  “Oh, please. Let June and me take care of ourselves, okay? We’re fine. Just don’t let the old fart get to you, honey.”

  She was right, of course. As usual. Ollie wasn’t worth the aggravation.

  As he raked, Reggie caught a whiff of a new aroma in the chilly fall air, something that had joined the smell of wood smoke. It was familiar but also disorienting because it was strictly a summer smell, associated with long, hot days and the fresh, green scent of recently mowed grass—and Reggie was smelling it in the middle of autumn.

  Someone was cooking meat on an open grill.

  It was odd, but he conceded that there were no laws prohibiting the cooking of meat outdoors during the fall. Reggie smiled and told himself that life was short. If someone wanted a freshly-grilled hamburger with his hot apple cider—hey, why the hell not?

  A sharp sound cut through the sweep of his rake and he stopped to listen. The sound came again, longer this time, a cry of distress, pain. It sounded like Ollie.

  Reggie dropped his rake and hurried across the wide expanse of his lawn to Ollie’s fence. He peered through one of the gaps, then another, and another. He couldn’t see Ollie, but he heard another abrupt cry. He called Ollie’s name a few times but got no response.

  He walked along the fence, peering through gaps until he found one that gave him a view of the burning leaves again. There he saw Ollie, lying facedown on the ground, arms splayed.

  “Oh, damn,” Reggie said as he turned and broke into a run. He crossed the lawn, went along the side of the house and through the gate. He hurried down the driveway and along the sidewalk to Ollie’s house.

  He kept a cell phone in his car, as did Kimberly, but Reggie did not carry one with him. The idea of people being able to call him on the phone no matter where he was made him shudder and he didn’t think he would ever warm to it.

  He hurried across Ollie’s front yard and along the side of the house. The gate stood open a few inches, so Reggie pushed through and continued to the backyard, past the covered patio. Ollie had not moved in the time it had taken Reggie to get there. He lay sprawled on the ground a few feet away from the smoking pile of leaves, sobbing and muttering.

  “Ollie, what happened? Did you fall?”

  As Reggie knelt down beside him, Ollie rose on hands and knees and slowly turned his head toward him. When he saw Reggie, his eyes widened and he began to crawl away, shouting, “No! What are you doing here? Go away, goddammit!”

  Reggie sighed as he stood and watched Ollie crawl toward the pile of leaves. The fire was somewhat revived, and flames flickered among the rising smoke. He saw one of the pieces of firewood and his eyes, confused, squinted.

  It was not firewood.

  He moved a few steps toward the fire, eyes locked on that dark chunk of…of…it looked like…blackened, cooked meat. It was a couple of feet long and bent at one end, almost like it had a joint of some kind, a…knee. It was a charred thigh above a knee, and below that, it was severed. A few feet away were two more pieces. One had a foot attached and the other had a face. June’s face, black and distorted, a tuft of her shiny silver hair rising out of the burnt flesh of her severed head. There were other pieces and none of them were firewood.

  “You just get the hell outta here!” Ollie shouted. He clumsily got to his feet on the other side of the smoking pile of leaves. “You hear me? Nobody called you over here, goddammit!”

  It took a moment for Reggie to understand that the groaning sound he was hearing was his own voice, his own horror, his own sickness coming out of him in a cry of pain.

  “Quit your whining, Parks! She earned it. You hear me? Earned it.” He waved his arms as he shouted, and Reggie noticed that his right hand clutched a meat cleaver with dark smears on the blade. Beneath the raincoat he was not wearing a reddish-brown shirt. He was not wearing a shirt at all. He was bare from the waist up and covered with blood. He wasn’t wearing his teeth, and his rubbery lips collapsed inward when he closed his mouth. “All the years I put up with that simpering smile, that happy disposition, that…that…” He suddenly pointed a finger at Reggie. “You, though, you won’t have to.” A high, jittery laugh escaped him, like air escaping a balloon. “You won’t have to put up with it. Not now, not anymore.” He smiled and that jittery laugh came again. “I did what you never would have because—” That laugh again. It was awful. “—you’re a goddamned spineless pussy!”

  Reggie staggered backward and turned so suddenly that the force almost knocked him over. He had to get home. That was all he wanted. To get away from that smell of cooking meat and the insanity in Ollie’s wide, round ey
es and go home to Kimberly.

  He hurried at a staggered run out of Ollie’s backyard, across his lawn, along the sidewalk. Had it occurred to him to enter the house through the front door, he would have noticed that it was wide open. But he kept his eyes front as he went up the driveway, through the gate, and into the backyard, the last place he’d been before the world had become so ugly. Stumbling up the back steps, he went into the house and through the kitchen.

  “Kimberly!” His voice was shrill and hoarse, but he didn’t notice as he went through the dining room and into the living room. “Kimberly!”

  The front door was open and the small table beside it had been knocked over.

  “Kimberly, where are you?” He stood in the living room and listened to the silence of the house. He rounded the corner and entered the hall and lurched to a halt.

  Halfway down the hall, she lay in three pieces in the middle of a great splash of red on the floor and walls.

  Something inside Reggie blinked out and he did not hear himself scream.

  * * *

  Two police officers answered the call made by one Reggie Parks, a distressed male reporting a murder. They found the front door open, and when they received no response, they went inside.

  They discovered the bloody scene in the hallway. Upon finding the back door wide open, they went outside and found a man raking the lawn. It had already been raked and leaves were in neat piles around the yard, but the man slowly dragged the rake over the grass as if gathering more fallen leaves into a pile.

  “Are you Mr. Parks?” one of the officers asked.

  He kept raking.

  The officer reached out and touched his shoulder.

  Reggie turned to him slowly, and his eyes seemed to look through the officer for a moment. Then he smiled pleasantly.

  “It’s a beautiful autumn day, isn’t it?” he said.

  The Bram Stoker Award®-nominated Ray Garton is the prolific author of more than sixty novels, novellas, short story collections, movie novelizations and TV tie-ins. Garton’s exceptional portfolio of work spans the genres of horror, crime, and suspense.

  His 1987 erotic vampire novel Live Girls was called “artful” by the New York Times and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. In 2006, he received the Grand Master of Horror Award at the World Horror Convention in San Francisco. His 2001 comedy thriller Sex and Violence in Hollywood is being developed for the screen.

  His novels Trailer Park Noir and Meds (a thriller with deadly side effects), are available in paperback and as ebooks from E-Reads. And his seventh collection, Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth, was recently published by Cemetery Dance Publications.

  He lives in northern California with his wife Dawn.

  I check my watch. Ten after seven. Sun sets in another twenty minutes. He better get here soon or I'll have to leave without agreeing to terms for the evening, which means it’s a chase by default. I used to prefer him being late and missing me. Gave me a big lead. But it also led to surprises, and I've tired of surprises. I like making the choice. It's one of the few freedoms I have.

  "Want a refill?"

  The waitress stands over me, hand holding a pitcher of ice water that's half empty. In the other hand, a wet rag with coffee stains. She's got too much eye make-up on and not enough lipstick. The dark circles under her eyes scream exhaustion. She smells thirty but looks forty. A hard forty. Probably working to support a couple of kids while their daddy does time. I can practically read it in the crow's feet and frown lines.

  "No."

  "Ready to order, or are you still waiting?"

  I check my watch again. "How fast can I get two waffles with butter, no syrup, and a cup of coffee?"

  "The coffee you can get in thirty seconds. The waffles will take about ten minutes."

  "I'll have the coffee and waffles."

  "You got it."

  She walks away. I turn my attention to the entrance, willing him to walk through. I do not like surprises, wonder if he's doing this on purpose. Toying with me. Maybe waiting to hit me in the lot.

  No, he's moved beyond those petty games. We both have. I'd say we have matured, but how do we mature? It implies growth. Rather, I think we're just tired. It's easier to deal with when you acknowledge that. That we're both tired of this game. There are rules to the game, of course, but the players still have a say in how it's played. And we both decided long ago to a certain type of game play.

  The waitress returns with the coffee. Sets it down with a couple packs of creamer and moves on without saying anything. I'm okay with that. Not much for chitchat with strangers.

  The door opens and he walks through the entrance, wearing all black, per the usual. Sunglasses on. Head low. He lifts it long enough to scan and locate me. Nods and heads over.

  "Was wondering if you were going to show," I say.

  "Me, too.” He keeps the sunglasses on as he settles into the seat across from me. Sets his elbows on the table. "Tough getting up."

  "Sun too harsh today?"

  "It is called the Sunshine State.” He smirks. "I started to convince myself you drove this way to mock me."

  "Nah. You kind of forced me in this direction with that stunt in Atlanta."

  "Sure, sure. Blame me.” He scratches his chin. His skin is fair but not as pale as an albino. More like a Swede with black hair and rose-colored cheeks and nose. Like he spent his time in the cold before walking in, even though it was well above eighty outside. "You didn't have to come this way."

  "True, but it wasn't to mock you.” I glance at the sunset through the big plate window. Orange and dipping low. I start to shiver. "Don't have much time."

  He pulls the sunglasses off and sets them down. Fixes me with gray eyes. "Yeah, already feeling better."

  "I know.”

  "Thought I'd lost you there for a while, just after dawn. But I caught the scent outside Tallahassee. Managed to make it here and grab a room at the Motel 6 over there."

  "That's where I stayed, too."

  "No shit?” He nods his head. "Figured I had enough time to rest, being that close to you. I figured wrong."

  "Me, too. Had a tough time recovering today, even with the sun."

  The waitress shows up and sets the waffles down. Asks if there'll be anything for my friend. I say no and she leaves.

  "Maybe I wanted something."

  "You can have whatever you want after I leave.” I sever a waffle and bite. Chase it with coffee. I should have eaten earlier, before the sun dipped too far. It's hard to swallow now. My stomach wants to reject everything other than the coffee. Liquids I can handle at night. "But we need to agree to terms."

  "Fine, fine. Chase or wits?"

  I take another bite, chew, and choke it down. Sip and think. I'm tired and getting colder as the sun fades. I don't want to run, but I know I'm not up for a battle of wits. Not tonight.

  "Chase," I say.

  "That's five in a row. You're not getting scared of my mental abilities, are you?"

  "No, just tired.” I manage another bite before I put the fork down and push the plate away. Managed to finish one whole waffle. Should have eaten earlier.

  "You done with that?"

  I nod. "I'm in the gulf."

  He looks out the window. "Still some rays left."

  "I'm in the gulf."

  He holds his hands up. "Won't argue with you. I guess you know your body better than anyone."

  We sit there, silent. He taps his fingers on the table. I stare out at the last dying rays of light. Another cycle about to start. In the kitchen, a plate shatters.

  "Might as well write down the particulars.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a beat-up Moleskine. Cracks it open to the middle and clicks a ball point. "What's the fucking date today?"

  "Twelfth. Do you know the month?"

  "Yes, I know the damn month.” He jots down the date. "Pensacola. Chase. Re—what name are you going by now?"

  "You wrote it down yesterday."

&nbs
p; "You change it every other day."

  "Ray."

  "Ray still?"

  "Ray, still."

  "I liked Regis better."

  "I don't look like a Regis.” I motion to my olive skin, even though it's paling as the sun sets. "You?"

  "Still Papa."

  "You need to change it."

  "You say that every night."

  "You need to change it. It's stale and dumb."

  "No, it's not. And when I eventually win this game, I'll get to ask—"

  "Who’s your daddy? I know. You've death-gripped that joke for a long time."

  Papa smiles and closes the Moleskine, slips it back into his jacket with his pen. He looks out the window at the orange sky. "Not much longer now."

  "Nope."

  He points at the waffle. "You won't mind if I finish that, right?"

  "Help yourself."

  He pulls the plate to him and grabs a clean fork. "Take off."

  I nod and tip an imaginary cap to him. "Be seeing you."

  I climb out of the booth. Legs feel like rubber. Should have slept more and eaten earlier. This was going to be a long night.

  I pull a twenty out of my wallet but Papa waves me off. "I got this one."

  "Thanks.” Slip my wallet back in my jeans and head for the door.

  * * *

  I’m an hour down the road, west of Pensacola. Somewhere between Mobile and Pascagoula. I want to be farther away, want to have more distance between us, but an accident slows evening traffic to a crawl on Mobile Bay.

  I consider getting off the 10. Maybe take side streets and do parallels and nineties all night. Wear his ass out on traffic lights and back alleys. But I don't. Too easy to get bottled up in a dead end. Too easy to end up choked off with no escape. Staying on the interstate provides multiple lanes and highway connectors and numerous exits. Exits are escape routes. Never ever underestimate the power of an escape route.