He felt more beneath his feet as he made his way quietly to the bedroom door. He moved slowly, so as not to make a lot of noise. After leaving the bedroom, he closed the door behind him. He then went into the bathroom, where he shut the door and turned on the light. He tossed several multi-legged bugs into the toilet. He didn’t flush the bugs yet. He knew he had many more to toss in first. Working quietly and meticulously, in the dark, Jonah combed every inch of his bedroom, making sure he picked up every little bug. The highest concentration was near his bedroom door, which made sense. There was a vent right above that door, where the narrow bugs could have fit through.
By 4AM, Jonah thought he had all of them. He flushed about sixty bugs down his toilet. He wanted to go back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours before he and Steph had to go to work. But first he did something. He got out a notebook and wrote down what he had read on the water tower and on the street sign.
Chestnut Street. Perryton, Oklahoma.
#
Jonah got up again at five-thirty. Steph got up around six. Thinking there might still be dead bugs on the floor and not wanting her to see them, Jonah made sure she didn’t see the room with the lights on. He casually stood in front of the light switch as she walked out of the bedroom. If she stepped on a bug, she didn’t say anything about it. When Steph was out, Jonah nonchalantly shut the door. A few minutes later, Steph kissed him goodbye.
Jonah went to the bedroom and switched on the light. He’d actually done a good job earlier, when he had cleaned quietly in the dark. He found only three more bugs.
Jonah walked out of his apartment at 7:30AM, Monday morning. He made it to his car, but didn’t get in. He stood there, right by the door. He wanted so bad to go back and check his apartment. He wanted to make sure the faucets were off. He wanted to check the stove, the coffeepot, the lights, the phone and the door. But it wasn’t just the urge to check his apartment that fed Jonah’s anxiety. Even more than his apartment, he worried about his future. He had been lucky that Steph had not hit him with sexual assault when he first advanced on her. He had been even luckier that the dancer hadn’t hit him with a rape charge. And these overwhelming urges to do these wicked acts didn’t seem to be diminishing. Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be lucky.
Jonah walked from the door of his car to the door of his apartment. There he stood. He had worked so hard to quit checking. Tate had worked so hard for him to quit checking, and here he was, ready to check. He’d worked even harder to quit smoking. And what? Would he just give up on that too? But what did it matter? With the new urges, he would soon be dead or incarcerated anyway. He might as well check and smoke his brains out.
Jonah laughed with exasperation. He then said out loud, “Yeah, Jonah. That’s the ticket. Use your new urges as an excuse to give into your old urges.”
Suddenly, something started to make more sense. Logic formed in his mind. The things that were threatening him were new urges, and they had come about the time the other urges had been put out. Could it be that this was a layers thing? Had these new urges always been there, but suppressed by a mind too busy tending to other urges? Had he, by smoking and checking, buried his true self, an impulsive monster?
Tate had talked about such a possibility one night when they were getting stoned. He had said something about anxiety masking impulsivity. Was it possible that he could just change back to the old way? If he let the checking obsessions take over and started smoking again, would the new urges be pressed back under? Jonah suspected that would be the case, and it would be worth it. He’d be miserable, but he’d be alive.
“But there’s an alternative,” Jonah said out loud. He had taken care of the urge to smoke and the urge to check using the meditative techniques. Was it possible that meditation would work on the new urges? Jonah wasn’t sure. He smiled. He was going to try. Without going into his apartment again, or even checking the lock on the door, Jonah went to work.
Chapter Seven
Steph was already there when Jonah arrived at his office. The first client had yet to arrive. Steph met Jonah in the lobby.
“Hey, boss,” she said in a near whisper as she came up and pressed her body into his. He could feel her swollen breasts against his body and could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. He could smell her sweet perfume. She planted a soft kiss on his lips. None of this did anything for Jonah. He did not feel like ravaging her again. Nor did he feel any connection to her, negative or positive. He was only left with the thought that he was done with her. She had fulfilled her purpose. It was something Jonah didn’t understand. Since he’d moved to Michigan, he’d had sex twice, both times in the last week. He should have been starving for a second round with Steph.
“Do you think we could hang out again tonight?” Steph asked, backing up a little, but still touching him.
“Maybe?” Jonah said, his voice intentionally vague.
Steph smiled, then let him go. “Just let me know,” she said, her voice confidant.
Jonah smiled, letting it go at that. He didn’t know how he would feel later, and he didn’t know if he would be able to resist what he felt.
Jonah went to his office to wait for his first client. His reaction to Steph confused him. It seemed to be a sign that his wicked urges had relented. But he was leery on the matter. He decided to withhold judgment until he saw what the day brought.
At ten minutes after eight, Steph came in and notified him that his first client had arrived. That was when the wickedness came back. But it was not that he craved Steph, who was smiling at him lasciviously. No, his feelings toward her were still largely indifferent. His emotion, his rage, was for the client he had yet to meet. He was the gateway to money that this person wanted, and this person was ten minutes late, wasting ten minutes of his precious time. This person, this waste of flesh, who could be nothing more than a burden on her surroundings, should have been waiting on him, who was so much more, who deserved so much more.
The client was an obese, middle-aged woman. She came in and sat down, staring at Jonah like he was the bane of her life.
No, Jonah thought. Your biggest problems are the supersize button at McDonald’s and the big bag of Doritos you’ll have after dinner tonight.
“I don’t know why I have to come here,” the fat woman said. “I’ve been getting the money for years, and nothing has changed about my condition.”
Yeah, Jonah thought. Your condition hasn’t changed. You’re still a fat waste. They ought to just shoot your fat ass and put you and those around you out of your misery.
Though Jonah had these wicked thoughts, he didn’t let them control him. The rage boiling inside, he made himself calmly say, “It’s just a standard interview, Miss, and it shouldn’t take too much of your time.”
The woman nodded, not happy, but looking like she would cooperate. To Jonah’s feverish mind, her reaction was not enough. She should have been on her knees, begging him to forgive her, apologizing for wasting his time. But to the part of Jonah that was more than his mind’s reactions, the part Tate had introduced him to, the woman’s cooperation was enough. Without once displaying his rage for the woman or his desire to pummel her fat face, Jonah made it through the interview in a timely manner. That the interviews and the tests Jonah had to give were highly structured, and that he’d done these things so many times that they were routine, made it easier for Jonah to deny his mind’s urges and stick to the protocol. With the next couple of clients, the urges seemed to scream out their protest, intensifying, becoming even more wickedly violent. Then, as the morning went on and the afternoon came, the urges seemed to lose their grip and started to fade away.
With his 4PM client, Jonah barely heard the urges at all. He finished early and called the report in. Afterward, feeling that he was winning, even more optimistic about the future than he had been when he had conquered the smoking and checking urges, Jonah strolled casually out into the hall.
Steph was not in her office. He moved into the lobby and saw the
inside door was open. Outside that door, standing by the bathroom, was Steph. She was hunched over and had her hands on her stomach. She smiled at him with her pale face.
“Steph? Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said in a slightly pained voice. “I just all of the sudden felt nauseated. I think I must have ate something bad at lunch.”
Steph usually ate lunch down the street at a small deli. Jonah had been there a few times. It seemed like a sanitary enough place.
“Do you need anything?” Jonah asked. “Do you want me to drive you home?”
“Oh no,” Steph said. “I just threw up. I’ll probably be okay to get home on my own.”
“Are you sure?”
Steph nodded, smiling, but with disappointment in her eyes.
“Well, all right,” Jonah said. “Take tomorrow off if you need to. I won’t dock you for it.”
“Thanks, boss,” Steph said, the disappointment still there. Jonah knew she wanted to be with him tonight. He, unlike her, wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t going to happen.
Jonah helped Steph get her things from the office, then walked her out. After Steph was gone, Jonah was left with yet another strange feeling. He had not wanted to have sex with Steph or for her to be around that night. But he still, somehow, felt like something had been taken away from him.
#
The violent urges did not return as Jonah met with his Monday evening clients. But another urge came. He was tempted to hunt. He wanted to take another woman. As he had done earlier, Jonah resisted the urge, not allowing it to take him from his work routines, and just as the earlier urges had done, this urge faded. Jonah was done with his last client around 8:40PM. He had fallen behind two reports. Feeling good that that was all he had fallen behind, given the distracters he’d had, but not wanting to start tomorrow behind, Jonah called in the last two reports. He had the office closed down by 9:30PM.
Feeling relaxed and satisfied with this day’s accomplishments, Jonah walked out the front door. He strolled down the sidewalk and into the parking lot. That was where he heard the massive dog growl.
Jonah turned on time to see the St. Bernard take its last few steps toward him. It stopped a couple of feet away and growled again. Anticipating it biting him, Jonah could feel a slight tingle in his neck, where it stared. The dog’s mouth looked big enough to engulf half of Jonah’s arm, and its intense look told him not to move. The St. Bernard crept closer and sniffed the middle of Jonah’s body. It growled, then whined.
Jonah thought of kicking the beast and making a run for it. But the thought was weak, not enough to challenge his panicked feeling. The thought occurred of how terrible of a thing this was, to come and ruin his triumphant day. Had he conquered his own wickedness, only to have his dick bitten off by a dog? But none of these thoughts really mattered. The most important thing seemed to be the begging in his mind.
Please! Just let me get through this!
After holding its ground for a little while longer, the St. Bernard moved away. First, it backed up slowly. Then it turned its long frame toward him. It growled one last time. Though he knew it was absurd, Jonah thought the gesture was meant to say, “This isn’t over.”
The dog ran off into the night.
#
When Jonah got inside his apartment, he began to check. But these weren’t the old OCD checks. No, these checks were reasonable. He’d had bugs in his house and bugs on his body. So now, he was checking for bugs.
The animals? Was there a rational explanation for the animals, the dog that had confronted him, the wolf that had attacked the stripper? The rest, the dreams and the urges, could be explained by the massive changes in his personal psychology. But the animals?
Jonah could see only two explanations. Either he had gone so mad that he was living in a completely psychotic dream world, or he was dealing with the paranormal. Though the former seemed like the most rational explanation, the latter seemed more accurate. Jonah didn’t feel crazy.
As he looked around, Jonah heard the urges. But they were easy to resist now.
When he was satisfied that his house was bug free, Jonah got some shipping tape out of the closet in his spare bedroom. He used that to tape the window in his bedroom. Finished, he said out loud, “Lets see ya break through there, birdies.”
Jonah used the same tape to tape around the crevices of his bedroom door. Then he taped over the vent, not satisfied just to shut it.
“No bugs tonight.”
Jonah turned his fan on high to drown out any noise that might disturb his dreams. Then he went to bed. He dreamt.
#
He pulls onto Chestnut Street in Perryton, Oklahoma. He drives less than a block before he turns into the parking lot of somebody else’s clinic. But, somehow, that clinic feels like his own.
With that, it fades. He’s lifted up into a blur and set down. The blur clears, and he’s in his office in Stanton. Only there’s a cushioned table in his office where a desk should be. It’s the kind of table a physician would use, complete with the metal stirrups used in a vaginal exam.
The scene fades for a few seconds, then returns. Only now, it’s not his office at all. It’s mostly white, sterile. There are medical charts on the wall. The table and stirrups remain, but they are now in the center of the room.
There is the blur, and when the scene returns, there is a woman on the examination table. She’s on her back. She has dark hair but light skin. She looks like she is in her early twenties. Her breasts are small but perky. She’s completely naked and her legs are spread.
He is naked from the waist down. But this body, though he is in it and can feel it, is not his. He doesn’t care. He moves to the examination table, between the woman's legs. He pushes inside and begins to pump. He has the strange thought that this is the measure he is giving to the woman. It’s the measure from his dissertation. It’s impulsivity. It’s making her better, somehow.
How would a measure make somebody better?
The scene fades and comes back. It’s a new woman now. Her hair is red, her back is slender, but that’s about the extent of what he can see about her, because he’s pumping her, giving her the measure, no, giving her the medicine she needs, from behind.
The scene fades, then comes back. This time he’s up on the table and on top of the next woman. She’s blonde, and she’s young, maybe not quite eighteen. But that’s fine, because she needs this. But it's not a measure as he had thought. It’s just medicine. The medicine is impulsivity.
It fades, then comes back. The next woman is also young, and she’s familiar. He shouldn’t be giving it to her. It’s taboo. Who is she? he wonders as he’s fucking her missionary. He looks closer into her eyes, at her expression. She’s the mother of his son, who will be called Jonah. No. She is his mother. He is Jonah. Jonah awakes.
#
Jonah lay in bed. Ashamed. All he could do for a little while was try to forget what he had just experienced. Then, after about an hour of lying awake, Jonah got out of bed. He had a premonition. He had to know.
He stripped the tape from his bedroom window, and there they were, sitting in the moonlight, looking up at him. There was the orange-stripped cat, the St. Bernard, and in the middle, a wolf.
“Fuck you!” Jonah said.
He went back to bed. He did not dream again that night.
#
Steph did not show up for work on Tuesday, but there was a message on the answering machine saying she would try to be in tomorrow. Jonah was glad she wouldn’t be there. He needed the privacy. Now all he needed was a break in the clients.
The urges were not there at all. It was as if they had given up. After whipping through his first three clients, Jonah got the break he needed. His 11AM client called and cancelled. Jonah shut the door and used the phone in his office. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and dialed the number.
After two rings, his mother’s voice came on the line. “Hello.”
“Mom. It’s Jo
nah.”
There were a few seconds before she spoke again. “Hi, Son,” she said, her voice hesitant. “How are you?”
Jonah lied. “I’m fine. How are you?”
Again, there was a pause. As it always was in his adult years, when Jonah had only corresponded with his mother by phone, Jonah felt both anger and awkwardness talking to her now.
“I’m getting better, son. I’m getting my life back together.”
I’m getting my life back together. It was the same line he had heard over and over again. He was fairly certain she’d said it in the last ten conversations they’d had.
“That’s good,” Jonah said, trying not to upset her. She had something he wanted. He’d asked for something similar before, on a few occasions, and not gotten it. It had been years since he’d asked her, not wanting her predictable reaction, but now he had to try again. “Mom, I have to ask you something.”
“Okay,” she responded, a croak in her voice.
Jonah took a deep breath, part of him really not wanting to ask, but knowing he had to resist that part. “I want you to tell me where I came from.”
He could hear her crying on the other side of the line. Then, in a frantic voice, she said, “Don’t do this to me! I’m just starting to get better! I—”
“Is it a place called Perryton, Oklahoma?”
There was silence on the other side of the line. After a few seconds, Jonah said, “That’s it, isn’t it? Is that where our family is?”
“No!” she screamed. “Who told you that? Why are you doing this to me? You ruined my life once already!”
“Tell me what that means!” Jonah snapped. “Why did you always tell me that? All I ever did was be born.”
“No! I won’t let you ruin—”
“It was my father, wasn’t it? He did something, didn’t he?”
There was silence on the other side of the line for a few seconds, then his mother hung up on him.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 13
