by Raven Black
The war progressed almost unnoticed outside her window, a constant thrumming and shaking of mortar shells and truck bombs careening into the buildings on the outskirts of town. Occasionally, someone would be brought into her office that had been damaged by one of these bombs: a herdsman unlucky enough to be in the line of fire, a soldier found crawling through the streets, kneecaps shattered, half his face missing, or even bearing simple wounds that bled drastically. The townsfolk brought these people to her clinic, left them on her doorstep like sacrificial lambs, never expecting she could heal them but duty-bound to bring the sick and wounded to her door anyway. Her need consumed these lambs, satisfied her hunger, made her happy. She glowed when she walked. She knew all the children in town by name. She knew every ache and pain of every citizen over fifty. She brought more babies into the world, stitched up new mothers and sent them home.
The first prisoners were brought to the village after the poisoner had been there almost a year. “We’re just going to keep them here temporarily,” the officer said. “Red Cross will stop by once a month to make sure they’re being taken care of.” A concrete bunker was hastily built by military personnel, none of whom had come from the town themselves. The poisoner stood with her people, watching the construction take place, wishing as she knew the rest of the townsfolk did that the military men would stay and help the residents rebuild the houses and storefronts that had been destroyed during the war. She watched as the first of the prisoners were moved into the small concrete bunker: a dozen or so weary, starving men who seemed more than happy to spend the rest of the war resting in a cell.
“We’ll need a doctor to check them out,” said the officer in charge as soon as the prisoners were contained. “There are reports to write up and file, reports on the captives’ conditions to turn in to Red Cross.” As he spoke, the poisoner felt a lightness growing in her heart. She finally knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be, that everything that had happened had been the will of some kind of God. She was in her place.
She raised her hand and waved it at the officer. “I’m a doctor,” she said, smiling. “How can I help?”
The Barrel
by Holly Day
For as long as he could remember, the boy thought the old wooden barrel was some sort of pet.
Three times a day, his father would take a jumbled plate of scraps out to the back yard and leave it right at the opening of the barrel. After the boy and his father were finished eating, his father would go back out into the yard and return with a plate to empty and clean. It was as though it had been swabbed with a gigantic floppy tongue.
The boy often tried to imagine what it looked like when the barrel was eating. He could see it from the window of his bedroom, could just see what he thought must be its black gaping hole of a mouth. Did a long, pink, sticky tongue come out and delicately lap food off the plate? Did some sort of hose protrude at mealtimes to suck the food off the porcelain surface of the plate, like a vacuum cleaner extension, or the way mouths of the tiny tank snails worked in the fish tank at the doctor’s office? He could only imagine the answer, because whenever it was time to feed the barrel, he was already seated quietly at the table, waiting for his own food to be served.
He didn’t dare ask his father if he could come out and feed the barrel with him. He didn’t dare ask his father anything.
Sometimes, when the boy was outside playing, he’d think about the barrel. The barrel was in the back yard, and the boy was only allowed in the front. A giant wooden fence surrounded the back yard. The only way into it or out of it was through the back door of the house. The boy’s father was the only one with a key. “Stay out of the back yard,” he’d say to the boy anytime he saw him looking at the big, locked door.
Once, the boy woke up in the middle of the night to noises in the back yard. He got out of bed and went to the window. His father was in the back yard, kneeling beside the barrel. He was saying something, but he was speaking so quietly that the boy couldn’t understand the words. He thought he could hear noises coming back to the man from the barrel; noises that sounded like crying. After a while, his father stood up. He patted the barrel awkwardly before marching briskly back to the house.
The boy would often spend the long, empty hours of the day wondering about the barrel. He drew pictures and wrote stories on the backs of scratch paper about going to the back yard and making friends with the barrel. He was too little to go to school, and had no other children to play with, so his imaginary friendship with the barrel became his only friendship.
One day, his father caught him drawing pictures of himself and the barrel playing together. In the picture, the little boy was pushing the old wooden barrel on the rusty swing in the front yard. The boy’s father’s face grew red and angry as he looked at the picture. The little boy shrank into his chair, confused and frightened. His father was often angry, and the little boy had learned early on to stay out of his way. He did not understand why the picture made his father so angry.
“Stay away from that barrel!” his father finally shouted, crumpling up the picture and throwing it in the garbage. “Don’t even think about the barrel!”
After that, the barrel was all the little boy could think about. He would lie awake in bed long after his father put him in his room for the night, waiting for the house to go quiet. As soon as he was sure his father had gone to sleep, the little boy would creep across the room to look out his tiny window at the old wooden barrel in the back yard. If he put his ear to the window, he was sure he could hear the barrel singing, or crying, or making wet, blubbery, nonsense noises to itself. Every once in a while, the barrel would suddenly jerk, just a little, as though trying to roll away.
During the day, the little boy tried his best to not think about the barrel. He tried to make up new imaginary friends to play with in the front yard; mostly other children like himself, sometimes fanciful talking animals. He’d give them all conspicuously manly names like ‘Tom,’ and ‘Peter,’ and ‘Randall,’ as his father seemed especially pleased with him when his imaginary friends had boy names. When he drew pictures of his imaginary friends, he made them all little boys like him, although, not having seen many other children, he often drew them with purple skin and green or pink hair. His father would frown slightly at these pictures, but since he didn’t actually say anything, the boy went on drawing his imaginary friends in rainbow hues.
The night alone was dedicated to imagining about the barrel. In his dreams, the barrel sprouted legs and arms and could run about the yard like a person, or on all fours like a dog. When it was on all fours, it sprouted a long, wet tongue like a dog, and panted, and drooled, and barked. When it was on two legs, it laughed, and shouted, and said nice things to the boy, like, “You’re my best friend,” or “Do you want to run away with me?”
The dreams were so alluring to the boy that he began to think of ways to make them come true. The little window in his room had been nailed shut long before, but he began to see how easy it would be to take the nails out. He carefully dug at the soft pine windowsill in his room with the tines of a fork, and slowly, over the course of many nights, the nails began to come out. He was so careful not to make any noise. He was careful not to scratch the glass. He was careful not to scratch the wood too much with the fork, so that if his father happened to look at the window, he wouldn’t see splinters and scratches on the frame. Unless he counted the nails left in the window sill, he would never know what the boy had been doing.
When all the nails were finally out, the little boy longed to push the window upwards. When he finally did, the wood screeched so dreadfully his heart stopped. He carefully, quietly, pulled the window shut again and jumped into bed, waiting for the sound of his father’s footsteps. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the door to his room opened and his father’s silhouette filled the doorway. “Was that you?” the man whispered. The boy kept silent, eyes tightly closed, unmoving in his bed. After a few seconds, the man turned away and shut t
he door behind him.
As soon as he was gone, the little boy quietly crept out of bed and went back to the window. This time, the pane slid up easily, silently. The window gaped open to the back yard. The barrel loomed in its corner of the yard, its dark mouth open in a frozen scream.
The little boy squeezed out the window and tiptoed across the yard. He could see his father sitting at the kitchen table through the small window in the back door, an open beer bottle in one hand, his attention focused on the newspaper spread out on the table before him.
The boy held his breath and ran as fast as he could to the barrel. Any minute, his father could turn around and see him. He hoped he would reach the barrel before his father turned around.
“Hello?” he whispered, dropping to his knees and peering inside the dark of the barrel. It was much larger up close than it had appeared from inside the kitchen, almost as big around as he was tall. He could see something moving inside, something way in back. He crept closer, until his head was almost inside the barrel. “Hello?”
Long, thin arms reached out and grabbed the boy. He squeaked and squirmed and tried to get away as the arms pulled him completely into the barrel. Pendulous breasts and long, matted hair brushed his skin. Thin arms pulled him close to a body that smelled horrible yet familiar.
“Shhh,” whispered a voice near his ear. “Shhh, baby. Shhh.”
“Let me go!” he managed to get out before a hand clapped over his mouth.
“Mine, mine, all mine,” the voice began to softly sing. The body rocked back and forth, clutching the boy tightly, rocking him. “Mine, mine, all mine.”
The little boy began to cry. He wanted out. He wanted back in his bed, the safety of his room. He wanted his father to come and get him, to rescue him from the stinky darkness of the barrel.
“Don’t cry, little one,” cooed the voice, still rocking, one hand still over his mouth. Finger combed through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead. “Don’t cry. Someone will feed us soon.”
Doom Dog
by Matthew C. Dampier
The first time I saw him it was well into the night and I told the on-duty nurse, “There’s a dog in here.” She didn’t seem alarmed. It took her a minute to finish whatever she was doing and she weaved through the incubators to stand before me with hands on her hips.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I said there’s a dog in here. It sneaked through the door when the last couple left.”
She made no effort to look around. She was younger than I was, which was an increasingly strange concept to wrap my head around as I neared thirty. Her skin, hair – everything about her – was pale white. Her hair pulled back was like a bundle of fiber-optic cable. You could tell she burned easily in the sun. From what I understood, nursing was the ideal vocation for those avoiding daylight.
“A dog,” she said, incredulous. “When did you sleep last?”
“Me? Not since my wife woke me up to drive her here.” “Why not take a break? We’ll put a cot in the room with your wife.”
“I’m not tired,” I lied. “She asked me not to leave the baby until she’s well enough to come in here herself.”
“That could be awhile. A Cesarean takes time to heal.”
The dog came around the nurses’ station and sat at my feet as if to beg. It was a small black dog – a mutt. One of his front legs was lame. His eyes were a sick yellow and when he blinked, fine strands of coagulated goop stretched between his lashes like melted cheese.
“Is this one of those healing pets you see on the news?” I reached down as a reflex to pet the animal, but reconsidered given the mangy condition of his coat. The nurse walked off without a word to hold a clandestine conversation on a phone with a tragically twisted cord.
The baby slept beneath her oxygen hood, eyes swollen and greased in ointment like an exhausted boxing champion. The heating lamp afforded her the rare pleasure of sleeping in only her diaper. She took her meals through a feeding tube crudely taped to her face which a tired, wrinkled hand now inspected with gentle suspicion. I watched the heart monitor, not knowing what I was looking for. The dog begged politely.
“How are we?” a doctor from nowhere asked. He had come in through an adjoining room where the well babies were kept.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Aspirated meconium is a tricky thing,” his voice rasped. He had some throat condition he failed to mention – like he was always in need of a glass of water. It made everything he said that much more ominous.
“How much longer?”
“Until it works itself out. I’m concerned an infection could present itself. We need to wait.” “So not today?”
“No, not today. Your wife was asking about you.”
“How is she?”
“Perfectly fine. She’s recovering from a routine procedure.” The nurse was eavesdropping conspicuously from her station. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me?”
“Are you aware that sleep deprivation is known to bring on hallucinations?” He glanced back at the nurse who was now pretending to file something away.
“Is that right?” I said. The dog was pawing at my shoes.
“A few hours rest would do you good,” he suggested.
“I’ll take that into consideration.”
The neonatal intensive care unit housed those children born without the ability to cope with their new environment. The Earth did not want them here. The very air they breathed threatened to kill them, but with machines and needles and clear plastic tubes we made it possible for them, like spacemen, to live among us on this cold, angry planet.
There were couples worse off than my wife and I. They brought some twins in that afternoon. They could have fit in soup cans, and well should have for the way they mewed incessantly. The dog left me and navigated through the nervous, calculated mob of nurses to scrutinize our new roommates. He leapt onto a stool for a better view, yellow eyes wide like two soft-poached eggs.
While the nurses outfitted the squealing twins in their required uniform of IVs and coated copper wire, the traumatized father watched the scene through the blinds and chicken wire of the observation windows. Here bouquets, balloons, and eager friends and family became sick jokes. He was in a world entirely his own now, counting time down in tiny infant breaths.
Once the nurses were satisfied with their decorating job, they clicked on the heating lamps and left the now silent twins alone. The dog pulled back slowly like a spring and then leapt upon the foot of one of their beds, settling down into an uneasy roost, like a cobra eyeing a suspect rodent.
I stood up from the cheap, padded rocking chair and made eye-contact with the twins’ father through the glass. “The dog,” I mouthed. He looked confused. The nurse was in another corner of the room, folding receiving blankets. I walked over and tried to shoo the dog away. He bared his awful teeth and nipped at me. The father knocked on the window to get the nurse’s attention.
“Can I help you?” she said, strutting over with an insulted look on her flushed face. The dog settled back into position, turning its head sideways, waiting for something.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave for the night. The babies need their rest and so do you.”
I knew that one call would bring up a pair of annoyed security agents and that likely I’d been banished from the maternity ward for good if I put up a fight.
“You could be right,” I said, swallowing my pride like a razor blade.
Things were awkward in the hallway. The anxious father was fogging up the glass by his twins.
“What was that in there?” he asked without looking away from the babies.
“You saw it?” I asked, encouraged. “Saw what?”
I lied carefully. “Spider was coming down its web.”
“I can’t see shit through these blinds. Thanks. I thought maybe you were losing your mind. You look tired.”<
br />
“Just ready to go home,” I said and joined him at the window. The dog’s gaze was fixed on the smaller twin. Dad was young. He still had his hair and it hung like a hood over his ears and eyes. He was dressed in tight jeans and a band shirt. I was still in my ill-fitting scrubs.
“How long have you been here?” he asked me. “Just one long day,” I told him. “Fluid on the lungs. What did they tell you?”
“Severely premature and some other words I don’t know.”
“Where’s mom?”
“Recovering from her C-section.”
“Same here.” He turned reluctantly from his babies and looked at me for the first time. “What do you do?”
“I’m a social worker. I hate it.”
“I work at a bookstore. I hate it, too.”
I feigned awe at the babies to get a closer look at the dog. “They’re beautiful,” I said, watching those insane, infected eyes that would never connect with mine.
“Boy and a girl,” he said. “What have you got over there?”
“A little girl.”
The girl was the smaller of the twins. She opened her eyes ever so slightly. This seemed to be what the dog was waiting for. His sharp black ears shot back like pistol hammers and the teeth came out again. He inhaled over and over again like a kid huffing a bag of glue. He was sniffing in a part of the child, undetectable by the human eye. It seemed to soothe him and when he had his fill he jumped back down onto the floor for a nap.
The baby’s monitor blared out a sickening alarm. She writhed as much as her underdeveloped muscles would allow. The nurse came jogging over and the father raced to the window again. She reset the alarm. I startled her when we made eye-contact through the glass. I decided it was a good time to take a walk.
