Short Stories About You
by
Jeffery X Martin
All Rights Reserved
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Text - 2014 Jeffery X Martin
Cover Photo - 2014 Hannah Martin
Author Photo - 2014 Hannah Martin
Read more from Jeffery X Martin
www.amazon.com/author/JefferyXMartin
Also by Jeffery X Martin
Tarotsphere
Black Friday: An Elders Keep Collection
Author Thanks
Many people support and encourage me in my writing, which is kind of them to do, because they certainly don’t have to do it. I am pleased and humbled that they take the time to do so.
Thanks to Claudia Linse, Kathy McGilvray, Laury Scarbro and Jenny Eng, my original Heathens. Thank you, Jim Branscome, for never being too busy to read another goddamned short story. Thanks to Nija Walker for letting me work while I worked. Thanks to Rhi and B, for perhaps not understanding why I stay up until three in the morning typing, but for not giving me a hard time about it. Special thanks to Leslie Hatton for always being so encouraging, and for listening to Duran Duran at all the right times.
Gigantic, big big thanks, to my wife, Hannah, for editing, formatting, bartending and for knowing just how a story needs tweaking. If you enjoy the story, “The Light Pours Out Of Me,” you can thank her.
Finally, allow me to thank the people who have supported my word madness for the longest: my mother, Carolyn, who defended my earliest works in front of people who just didn’t get them; my aunt, Karen, who was responsible for my work being published for the first time; and my sister, Winter, who reads everything I write, and always has. The support and encouragement of these three women gave me the confidence to keep putting words on paper and for that, I gleefully dedicate this book to them.
-X-
A Message from the Author
Before you go jumping into this book all willy-nilly, I think a word of explanation is necessary. Indulge me.
Every story you are about to read is written in the second person and takes place in present tense. In simpler terms, that means you’ll never know the main characters’ names. Their name is “you.” Everything they experience will be happening to “you.” You will do this. You will say that. You will react to this situation. In a real fictional sense, you, the reader, are the main character in each and every tale told herein.
Not all of the following stories are horror stories, although many of them are. You will find yourself in strange places. Things will happen to you, to state the case mildly. Not all of them will be pleasant.
I had originally envisioned this as a strange devotional, a book where you could read a story every day, like “Our Daily Bread” or “My Utmost for His Highest.” The religious bent would be skewed if it were there at all. We are, after all, each and every one of us, the center of our own Universe. This is not a selfish thing, it is a matter of perception, and perception is reality. Everything revolves around us. To quote the band Crowded House, “People are like suns. They are burning up inside.” I suppose that makes this book a multiverse.
Be good to each other, for we are all each other.
Jeffery X Martin
Knoxville, TN
27 April 2014
Table of Contents
How We Quit the Forest 1
Hit the Lights 4
Creep 8
Scream Like a Baby 14
Easy Meat 19
Penitent 23
The Ghost in You 36
Pictures of You 41
The Light Pours Out of Me 48
Final Solution 64
Poor Skeleton 72
Deep Ocean, Vast Sea 85
Pain Makes You Beautiful 93
Last Rites (There is No Sky) 108
Beside You in Time 120
How We Quit the Forest
Dark.
It is dark and the wind scalpels its way through the cracks in the wooden walls, the spaces between the logs where the newspaper no longer holds back the elements. When the wind rushes in, the fire moves back a bit, as if letting someone scoot past to get to their usual seat in church. Winter is on the way.
Your mother is already in a fitful sleep. Her shoulder twitches occasionally, and she makes small fear noises. Your brother sits in the rocking chair in front of the fire. He does not blink. He stares into the flames, like he is waiting for a message, a sign, a reason to move.
It is cold, despite the fire. It is cold and dark and your father is telling you bedtime stories. He lies in bed next to you, sweat beginning to rise on his forehead. He is keeping you warm and he is telling you stories. You’re full of secrets, he says, like the night is full of stars. His hand is on your stomach. His finger keeps moving in and out of your belly button. It makes a popping sound, like the cork coming out of a bottle.
He tells you what will happen if you break your promise and tell your secrets. He tells you terrible things, putting horrible pictures in your mind. You imagine your mother, crying and bleeding. You imagine your brother, pointing his finger at you in shame. You imagine your friends in town, crossing the street when they see you because they know what you did. You will be all alone. No one will ever love you.
Your father’s hand moves lower. Your father is breathing faster and his scent has changed. There is a strange tinge to it, something spicy. It reminds you of lean days and hunger. There is a different sound now, the popping replaced by faint splashing. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It certainly did at first.
Your mother is still dreaming. You think she is being chased. She cowers, like she is trying to hide within herself. Your father’s hand moves faster. He grunts as he tries to wedge in another finger. He touches you like he hates you, yet he keeps saying how much he loves you, while apologizing for what he is continuing to do.
Your brother stands by the bed now. It doesn’t seem like he even sees you. He stares at your father intently. Your father feels his gaze and turns his head. He withdraws his hand from you, quickly, angrily, and turns it into a fist. He only uses his hands for hateful things. Your brother meets that fist with a log from the fireplace, still burning, which he brings down swiftly upon your father’s head.
The smell of your father’s curly hair burning fills your nostrils. The initial blow to his head split him open. For the first time, it is someone else’s blood in your bed. Your brother is laughing like a crazy man, wielding that burning log like a magic wand. Everything he touches turns to fire. Your bed erupts into flame, and you know the entire place will be consumed soon. You see your mother wrapped in fire, writhing beneath a burning quilt. The fire has spoken, and the fire will have its way.
You leave the house and there is no one with you.
You stop for a moment at the edge of the woods and watch the house burn. You can see your breath in the frigid air. Are those screams you can hear? Is that just the high hissing of sap in the wood?
It doesn’t matter. You are free. Free from your simpering mother, your brother’s crazy rage, the filth of your father’s fingers.
And so you are alone. And so you run. And you are full of secrets, like the night is full of stars.
Hit the Light s
This switch does nothing," Nicole yells."You flip it and nothing happens."
You join her in the foyer. Nicole toggles the light switch up and down. "See?" she whines."Nothing."
You put your hand on her shoulder. "Look, babe. It’s an old house."
"Every switch should have a purpose,” she sa
ys, glaring at the offending light switch. "Maybe it's connected to something not in the main house."
“I'll check,” you say. “Flip the switch when I call your phone.”
Nicole smiles. "You're so sweet."
You sigh and walk outside, across the gravel into the garage. Two lights; one on the ceiling, one by the workbench. You unlock your phone and call Nicole. "Flip it," you say.
Click, click.
"Nothing."
"Check the security light out back,” Nicole says.
You trudge into the backyard. Three giant floodlights are wired together to the top of a concrete-set pole. "All right," you tell Nicole. "Hit it."
Click, click.
"Zilch," you say.
"Crap!" Nicole mutters.
"Are there lights in the shed?"
Nicole exhales. "There should be. What good is a workroom without lights?”
"I’m checking it out."
The shed is beyond tumble-down. Dust sheens the one small window. The rusted doorknob hangs loosely, barely requiring a twist to open. You walk in. Weird sharp implements, ancient tools left from the last owner, hang from the walls. Hand drills. A couple of sickles. Rusted barbed wire.
There are lights, a series of bare light bulbs, strung together in series along the ceiling. You think about replacing them with a sturdy set of fluorescents. Your to-do list for the new place is already long; one more addition won’t matter.
“Hit the switch, Nicole."
Click.
The lights come on, dim, pulsing slightly. You may need a voltage regulator, also. Something to even out the power flow. There is a loud click, like something heavy being unlatched. Your peripheral vision catches sight of the spinning saw blade as it swings towards you, and instinct flings you out of its path. It acts as a pendulum, swinging from a steel rod attached to a ceiling track. You drop the phone and cower against the wall. Metal rattles. You turn and see chains and cuffs, nailed to the wall. This place was not designed for moving targets.
You are hyperaware now, and you see more things in the shed, items you didn’t notice before, stuff the real estate agent did not bring to your attention. The faint reddish-brown splatters on the wall. The old cracked leather collars screwed into the splitting wood. The tall, rusting cages, stacked and rusting in the far corner .Pincers on the workbench. Small tools, scalpels and awls, worn with use.
Who lived here before? you wonder. More importantly, who died here before? Are they buried in your backyard? Is this why you got the place for such a reasonable price?
You can hear Nicole on the phone. “What’s all that noise?”
You leave the shed, the blade still whirring, lights flickering. Your to-do list just got a lot longer. Call the police. Dig up the backyard. Do you need permits for that? Can you sue the real estate agent for non-disclosure?
Crossing the backyard, every smooth stone looks like the top of a skull. You walk lightly, believing that every step you take is like taking a stroll through a cemetery.
You enter the kitchen through the back door. Clearly labeled moving boxes still stand stacked against the wall. You find the right one, tear it open and pull out a roll of electrical tape.
"What's going on?" Nicole demands.
“We need to talk,” you say, as you push past her and walk to the switch plate. You tear off a piece of the stretchy, sticky vinyl and tape that switch to the shed down forever.
Creep
His name is Todd. He has been working in the cubicle next to you for a little over a year now. You have never spoken to him, but you cannot stand the guy. Fucking Todd. You don’t know why he has to sit next to you. He’s not even in your department.
Todd looks like he would smell bad. His glasses are a little thick. Todd is bug-eyed. His brown hair is thinning slightly. He will be bald in five years. You don’t like bald guys, except for Bruce Willis. Todd seems shifty. He has a mirror on the side of his cubicle so he can see who is coming up behind him. Really? Who is that paranoid?
Todd.
You are in financials. You work on spreadsheets. Every day, millions of dollars float across your monitor and you cannot make a mistake. One screw-up and thousands of people are affected. One bad formula, or one extra zero, and you’re screwed. You live under the fear of the IRS and internal audits. You’ve taken to biting your nails. Your acrylic nails. You don’t sleep much. When you do manage to go under for a bit, you dream of numbers. Calculators. Information you failed to save, saves you failed to back up, reports mysteriously going missing or showing up late. You wake up wide-eyed and sweaty, your hands clutching the sheets.
You go to work ragged. The makeup has stopped hiding the dark circles under your eyes. Your recycle bin is filled with diet soda cans. Your blood has been replaced by artificial sweetener and caffeine. You think sometimes that you have become a cyborg, only vaguely human, a calculator that can piss and wave good morning to a supervisor.
If that weren’t bad enough, as if feeling your life energy being sucked through your fingertips into a keyboard with most of the numbers rubbed off weren’t enough to drive you stark shrieking mad, there’s Todd.
Tahhhhhd.
Even his name is stupid.
You hear his every phone call. You hear the “mm-hmm” every time he agrees with someone. You hear that exhalation and wheeze that somehow passes as a laugh. You can hear him eat. The crunching. The smacking of lips. Todd sounds like a petting zoo.
You can just imagine him on the other side of that cubicle wall, his mouth stuffed full of cheese curls, an orange goatee forming on his face. He takes a sip of gas station energy drink, the carbonation reacting with the neon cheese powder, filling his mouth with a vile paste that surrounds his teeth like plaster. He smiles, and it looks like Halloween just came in his mouth. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all.
Because he’s Todd, Todd, fucking disgusting Todd.
You’re glad you’ve never talked to him. He’s lucky you haven’t set him on fire. He’s lucky you haven’t grabbed him by his short tie and strangled him to death. How did he even get a job with this corporation? He doesn’t deserve to be around normal people. Put him on an island, fenced in with all the other Todds.
Your spreadsheet is due for review in two hours. You are nowhere near finished. There are discrepancies in the results that you can’t find. You don’t know if the screw-up is yours or someone else’s. You’re afraid you’re going to have to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, an act you don’t have time for.
Bum badunh bum bum. Doo doodoo.
This column in your spreadsheet is a monster. You are digging through old hard copies of earlier reports, giant green and white sheets of paper, dot matrix print, perforated strips of holes on the sides. You are looking for a number that isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. Even science has not given a value to this number.
Bum badunh bum bum. Doo doodoo.
You’ve gone back two years in your research. It looks like you’re going to have to go back three. Time is running out. Your inbox is filling up with questions. What’s going on with this spreadsheet? Have you considered this? Have you looked over here? Why aren’t you on top of this?
Bum badunh bum bum. Doo doodoo.
There’s seven thousand dollars missing from one place that should be in another place, in another month, which makes no sense whatsoever and what the hell is that noise? It is creeping into your brain, destroying your concentration. You have less than an hour left to finish your assignment.
Bum badunh bum bum. Doo doodoo.
Jesus. That noise.
It’s Todd.
You throw a pen across your desk. Leave it to fucking Todd to come in and attempt to destroy your day. That mindless babbling, that tuneless sing-song voice, constant and maddening, burrowing into your thought processes like a sonic termite. You look at the clock. You check your inbox. The number of unanswered emails ticks up like a clock. A drop of sweat falls from your forehead, landing
on the giant pile of reports, spreading slightly, making the ink blur.
Bum badunh bum bum. Doo doodoo.
You smack your hands down on the desk, flat-palmed. “Goddamn it!” you yell. You stand up and your chair flies into the cubicle wall, knocking down one of your motivational posters. You turn around and glare over the cubicle wall.
There he is.
Todd.
“What are you doing?” you hiss.
Todd is horrified, his bug eyes wide behind his ugly glasses as he stares up at you. He opens his mouth to talk, but you don’t give him the chance.
“Seriously. Todd. What the hell are you doing? The humming? The chewing? With your fucking cheese curls? What do you even do here, Todd? What is your job here, Todd? Is it to make my life hell? Are you to make sure I can’t get a goddamned thing done? Is that why you’re here, Todd?”
Todd is sputtering. He rolls his chair back to get away from you.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I didn’t know,” he says.
“You keep your fucking mouth shut, Todd. I don’t want to hear your voice. I don’t want to hear you on the phone. I don’t want to hear you eating your lunch. Just stop, Todd. Stop. Taaaaaahd. Stop.”
Todd stares at you, open-mouthed. He might be crying. Who could tell from behind those glasses?
“Okay?” you ask.
Todd says nothing.
“Okay?” you ask, on the verge of roaring.
Todd raises his hands. “Okay. Sorry.”
You stand there, breathing heavy, staring at stupid Todd, the stupid photos of his stupid parents on his stupid desk. You look down at his work area, his messy, crumb-filled keyboard, his stupid sketch pad.
You pause at the sketch pad. This is not work-related. That makes you even angrier. You look at what he was drawing, wasting company time.
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