Tribulations

by Richard Thomas

  They filled a library with black and brown leather journals, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. They put it all down, in excruciating detail, never sharing, never reading, just channeling the darkness, vomiting out the suffering, in an effort to rid themselves of the poison that had seeped into their bones. On a good day they would smile at each other over grapefruits and green onions, knowing they were broken, knowing that it was futile, but unable to surrender, not now. They would place bent hands with swollen knuckles on the shoulders of the boys and the world would not crush them. And then, on the way home—the long, black car slicing the sunshine, prowling the back streets, a predatory grin in polished chrome, their only defense against the shadows that followed them—they would stop at the railroad tracks as the gates fell down, as the lights flashed and the whistle blew, hand shooting out to grasp for each other, smiles pasted on their faces, ignoring the cattle cars that flew by, the faces staring out, the screams never ending, and they would cry quietly in the black car, and say nothing—not a word.

  Fractured, worn out, the library full, the refrigerator empty, stomachs tied in knots, they would lie down on the king-sized bed they shared, and close their eyes. The papers would say they died within weeks of each other, but that was a lie. As if sharing the same breath, Lucy and Darcy listened to the phonograph that looped over and over, and they held each other, apologies whispered, until they could hold each other no longer. They let each other go, hands at their sides, wrists scarred with pink mottled tissue, their efforts in vain, ciphers no more.

  The Fix-It Man

  There’s no way for a middle-aged man to stand outside a grade school playground, stubble on his face, stinking of cigarette smoke and bourbon, without drawing unwanted attention. Leaning against the cold wire fence, fingers pushing through the thin worn gloves, the wind would pick up and cut through my clothes, no matter how many layers I wore. I would stare across the pavement for as long as I could, watching the games they’d play, the tag and the inevitable screams, the girls with their rosy cheeks, the boys with scowls of determination. Not for long, no, I never had much time to enjoy them, their innocence and freedom. I could feel their eyes on me, the teachers, the women, and I’d quickly move on. They had their theories, and they were wrong.

  It wasn’t his fault, the boy—it was always my own undoing. I wouldn’t claim me either.

  I liked to make things, with my hands. I’d sit in the basement, the concrete walls dusty and gray, and inhale the airplane glue, working on the models, taking needle and thick thread to a decapitated doll, springs and gears pushed inside the toys and watches, sipping amber liquid. I let her drift away, my wife, I stopped trying—and that was the beginning of the end. She was all that was right in the world, and I was nothing but regret. When the friendship is over, when the two of you can hardly be in the same room together, when the idea of sex is not only a novelty but a growing repulsion—then something inside you dies. And in that death, a universe is born.

  I grew fat and lazy in my retirement. Years at the factory bent over the conveyor belt, it took a toll. Doesn’t matter what I made, does it? Computer motherboards, ink cartridges, belts, tires—they all sucked me dry. I was hunched, crooked, and devoid of emotion—my head stuffed with cotton. When the time came, I tumbled into the machinery, bent and broken, but still alive. One more failure stacked on a pile of other failures. She was not surprised.

  In the dark basement, a solitary light bulb overhead, the joint of my left arm itching, always itching, where the pins pushed up against the bones, buried deep inside the scarred and pitted flesh, I waited for an epiphany, a way out of the mess I had created. I counted the hours until my wife would slam the door shut, and drag our son with her, out into the world. He was better off with her, away from me. The boy wouldn’t come down here now, not unless I invited him, not unless his mother was standing there in the tiled kitchen, coffee burning, arms crossed, her nose twitching like a coke-addled rabbit. Not even with my own son—she trusted me as far as she could throw me. All I had ever done was provide far less than she needed, in every possible way.

  This was the ghost I had become, hiding in the shadows, my dreams trapped in the filament of shrunken spider webs—wriggling, struggling—but still alive. The shell of a man became a specter at the playground, at his soccer games, where I was invisible, barely worth a nod of the head and a painful grin. She never acknowledged me, my wife. Nor did the boy. But I was there. The other parents avoided my failure like a virus they could catch.

  I would laugh. And then I would catch myself, realizing that a dirty, damaged, laughing man was not the person you wanted to be. Too many times the police suddenly appeared, too many times pushed up against a brick wall—handcuffed, abused and beaten for no reason. They would look at my driver’s license, I would explain in hushed tones, and they would scowl at me, the young cops blushing, realizing they had just roughed up a drunken cripple, a man who lived just a few blocks away in a nice little house, on a quiet suburban street. I was not the boogeyman—not one of them, the unknown, but one of us—the known, the safe—homogenized. The fear in their eyes asked me how the fall had happened, how I came to be so lost—the mystery of it tense and unsettling. Could this darkness find them as well?

  I started leaving the toys and dolls on the bench outside the school or tied to the fence—hidden in the brick corners of a building that held inside it children made of newly fallen snow. In my own house I was a shadow, amorphous—no more kisses at bedtime, no more stories to be read—just a darkness that in time would move on—a stain to be cleaned, a demon to be expelled. I knew it was coming, the phone calls, the hushed whispering—so maybe I’d make it that much easier. Maybe I’d hurry this whole thing along.

  The things I fixed, the totems, the toys—they had been thrown away, broken, and now I had made them whole. I would lace one arm of a cloth doll through the wires of the fence, and then the other, just high enough off the ground so the kids could find them. Or simply leave a model airplane sitting on a bench, a tree stump, on top of a garbage can, as I shuffled down the street to an abandoned gas station, surrounded by gears that no longer turned, pumps that had run dry, the architecture a skeleton of past mistakes. It was all I could do to stay in touch with the realities that were slowly slipping away.

  On the final day of my freedom I sat weeping on a bench at the edge of the playground, as my son approached me and took my gnarled hands in his own. I didn’t even have to commit the crime, only look as though I had. Santa Claus outside of a mall is just a drunk fat man who puts children on his lap—and that, my friend, will get you arrested. Doesn’t matter if it’s true.

  “Dad, are you the one making the toys? Fixing them?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  He climbed onto my lap, smiling up at me with wide eyes, his only wish that I would smile and stop crying, be happy once again.

  “No, son, don’t—run along,” I said.

  But my boy didn’t count, his vote was worthless, it was the others, the ones that ran across the playground in fear, not caring, not understanding, as I drifted into the fractured grey sky— my son, my life, slipping away. All it would take would be one scared little girl, browbeaten into submission, afraid of the strange man, the gifts he had given, nodding her head about things that had never happened, just to make them stop. I was counting on it.

  And I would not be denied.

  Gandaberunda

  When Rodney found the tiny bones scattered on the concrete slab that was his front porch, he assumed they were from a small animal, like a raccoon or a squirrel. In time, he learned that he was wrong. When the long shadows passed over the back yard, and a gust of cool wind caused the skeletal branches of the skinny dogwood tree to bend and wave, he hardly glanced up, thinking airplane, in his fearless skull—airplane, airplane, airplane. When the phone started ringing at all hours of the night, his mother’s voice rising to a high pitch, he rolled over an
d went back to sleep, because death had never visited their doorstep before. He had no base of knowledge.

  There were cops at his school the next morning, Rodney noticed, as the beige 4-door crept up to the parking lot. His mother drove him as usual, but today she walked him in—all the way in. She nodded to Mr. Langer, the gym teacher, with his bushy mustache and crossed arms, a hairy beast guarding the door to Rodney’s school. His mother held his hand, and it was nothing new—he liked to hold his mother’s hand, his father’s hand, they felt large and warm—safe was the word that came to mind.

  The classroom would have an electric quality to it all day long, as rain beat at the windows like knuckles—knocking and knocking, wanting to come inside. Rodney noticed that Millicent was missing. She was his very first crush. It would make the day slower, the math problems dry and calculated, no dishwater blonde across from him with a smile and a toss of her hair. There would be tears in the hallway later that week, anguish echoing in the hallways. But Rodney would be long gone by then.

  Hushed voices in the kitchen, and Rodney sat on the couch, a juice box in one hand, and a bowl of Cheetos by his side. The puppy lay next to him, eyes to the ground, and then back to him, her black tail wagging furiously, and then stopping. Her head kept lifting to look at the mother, to look at the father. There was whispering in the kitchen, words that Rodney didn’t understand, exhaled with a heavy despair. Abduction was one of them—pedophile another. His parents were also wrong. The bones from the other day flashed across his mind’s eye, but Rodney pushed the image away. Stupid bones. They meant nothing to him, not sacrifice, or remains, they were not real—they were not familiar at all.

  The puppy ran around the back yard, yapping at the leaves that fell from the neighbor’s oak tree, faster and faster in an infinite loop, around the swing set, around Rodney as he stood in the breeze, his mother watching from the kitchen sink, the sun setting over the faded wooden fence. He stared at the sky—and with Halloween approaching—the myths and fables came back to him. He thought of wolves and huntsmen, he thought of sharp teeth at his neck. He laughed and lowered his eyes to the dog, a black shadow blurred across the dying grass. When the wings expanded overhead, the leathery skin stretched taught across ancient bones, he opened his mouth, to scream perhaps—and then he was gone.

  Shackled to the Shadows

  The darkness wrapped around them like a blanket, the silhouettes of the campers a line of totem poles facing inward towards the flames. In the distance a lone train whistle cleaved the night, its echo turning into the baying of wolves, the rustle of the tree leaves a hesitant applause. It was his turn now, Damon, to take the dare or speak the truth. He’d been waiting a long time for this, his confession a weight that had been pushing down on him for as long as he could remember.

  “You want to know?” he asked, wringing his hands as he sat on a stump, the sparkling eyes of his friends and enemies darting to him and then away. He was a tall kid, skinny and awkward, with fingers that extended down over his knees, as he tapped his bouncing legs, licking his lips, unsure. His long black hair had been recently shaved, a rash just barely visible under the stubble that dotted his pale head.

  “The truth? You want the truth?” He laughed into the cold air, twigs popping in the bonfire, a soft breeze pushing through the woods as his dark eyes started to glaze over with a translucent film.

  “Why not. Why the fuck not,” he said. “You’ll all forget me, anyway. I’ll go back to the shadows, the edge of every conversation, every gathering—laughter on lips and hands on hips and Damon…that weird kid from down by the park. His mom’s a whore, you know, his dad’s a pedophile. None of that shit is true. My mother’s a nurse and my dad works for the railroad—they go to church every Sunday and wonder how the hell I fell so far from their saintly goddamn tree. Soon, they’ll forget me too,” he said, staring up into the overhanging branches of the trees. “It’ll be like I was never here,” he whispered to the night.

  Damon ran his teary eyes over the crowd that ringed the fire, as their heads bowed down to the flames, flashes of orange and red—flickers of something transforming—heat and tension and guilt.

  “You brought me here,” he said. “All of you did, with your actions and failures.”

  Pale moonlight washed over the treetops and Damon spoke to their fears, the lonely moments in the middle of the night when each and every one of them had stared holes into their ceilings, sweating out their betrayals, begging for forgiveness—praying to be overlooked.

  “Molly Anderson, such a sweet woman. She makes the best chocolate chip cookies, always there for the football games, or the corn and pork roast at Saint Mary’s. She’s also got quite a mouth on her. Her and Amy Avila love to chat once their husbands have gone off to work, gossiping and criticizing over coffee and blueberry muffins. Molly just couldn’t wait to tear her husband down—Barry, that fleshy, innocent bastard. On a cold Monday she raised her upper lip and went on and on about his lack of passion in the bedroom, selling his manhood short several inches, his prowess assigned to the minutemen of the American Civil War. She pulled up her shirtsleeves to show bruises, gasps filling the white kitchen as the clocks ticked on and her lies began to fester. Barry wouldn’t hurt a fly—the marks were from her Tae Kwon Do class, where she fantasized about screwing her instructor, coming home to masturbate in the shower, angry at the hand that life had dealt her. And while he was no animal in the sack, Barry’s cock was just about average, his lovemaking satisfactory. The only time he’d ever raised his hands to Molly was to give her a hug and tell her to have a good day. Later that night I stood over the mouthy bitch and let my hands rest on her stomach, her eyelids twitching, a soft moan escaping her lips—the pea that was growing inside of her shriveling to a wrinkled clot that would pass between her legs, her sobs on the toilet like a wounded barking dog. She would mutter to herself, asking why, what had she done, fearing her actions had brought this punishment to her. And she was right.”

  Damon rubbed his temples with his bruised fingertips, closing his eyes for a moment. A snake of tension uncoiled in his gut, as his flesh started to slip and fade, the blood in his veins showing through, his fingernails loosening—he’d said too much already.

  “Andy Pettis, big man on campus, zipping around town in his red Mustang, letterman’s jacket on, music blasting and not a care in the world. Except, he liked to give certain ladies a ride home—blonde angels wearing tight jeans and blue eyeliner. Not just any girls, only the ones that were dating his friends. He had a thing for taken women, the ones that said no until they finally said yes. As they unzipped their painted on pants, and slipped down their panties, as they unhooked their bras and sucked on his hard cock it wasn’t the physical beauty of these women that turned him on, it was getting over on his buddies, taking what was theirs, showing the world he could do whatever he wanted, that there would be no consequence for his actions. I started with slit tires, but he only bought new ones, never feeling the danger that was barreling his way. I stood over the loose dirt at the forest preserve, listening to the angry whispers of Andrea Dooling as she cursed the boy from her fresh grave, an echo of declinations, one after another, until her voice was finally quiet—her head and heart seeping out into the trembling soil. I stood on the overpass and waited for him to drive under, the smell of oil and freshly cut grass, the blinding headlights a herd of possessed horses as the cinder block fell from my hands. Had he been drinking? Sure. And what’s one more bit of concrete in a heap of twisted metal and broken glass. They’d leave his Mustang on the front lawn of the high school for months after his death—a warning to the other kids to toe the line and behave themselves. And around his grave there were dozens of blonde angels, crying into their boyfriend’s shoulders. I wrote down their names as I leaned against an aging crypt. The dark cloud that descended over Andy’s parents, his little sister clinging to the long legs of her father—I could tell that my work there was done.”

  Damon blinked his eyes and to
ok a shallow breath, the smell of burnt flesh filling his nostrils, as whispers of smoke rose from his head.

  “Jasper Williams, science teacher, and recluse—except in one part of town, over by the Humane Society, where he was something of a God. He had rescued so many animals over the years—aging German Shepherds that could hardly walk, fat tabby cats in orange or gray stripes—taking them home so they wouldn’t be put to death. But the funny thing about Jasper is that if you looked at his kitchen table, as I have, you’d see an ever-expanding stack of mail. Dozens of envelopes that were never opened, from animal hospitals and clinics, urging Jasper to come see them as soon as possible—overdue; annual; required by law stamped in red. Snowball and Champ, Sally and Sadie—Squiggles and Rusty and Quixotic—time for their rabies shot, time for their physical, new flea and tick medicine to be bought. No, Jasper wouldn’t be bringing in the fluffy Maine coon or the sad-eyed Beagle. Jasper was a man of science, and in his basement there were cold, metallic tables littered with syringes and scalpels, the stench of urine filling the air. His shaking hands would squeeze the life out of one animal after another, crying as he did it, begging for forgiveness, trying to appease the dark gods that made him do such things. In Jasper’s world, this was a stopgap measure—a release, a tamping down of his rotten desires. When I fed him to the gray sows out past the cornfields, down the dusty dirt road and out past the dying trickle of a creek, it was one appendage at a time, one glistening organ after another, with a gleam in my eye. Jasper was never going to amount to very much, never make it to the big leagues. His potential had been fully realized, a waste of my time.