by Borne Wilder
“You better slow yer roll on the beer, you’re going to get yourself all slopped up, Dummy.”
Alice spun on her heel; the six-pack she had consumed, thus far, took the turn much slower, causing a short spat of dizziness. At her kitchen table, naked except for the adult diaper, which had become his chosen form of casual attire, during the last three months, sat Nolte. His naked beer-gut, a physical trait most would regard as an object of discretion, spilled over the front of his diaper, partially concealing the yellowed crotch. A forced grin bared his diaper matching yellowed teeth. Alice screamed. The world dropped away from her feet, leaving Alice hanging in the air, while her stomach somersaulted.
“I’ve lost my damn mind,” she whispered to herself, unable to comprehend the impossibility before her. She screamed again in a manner that revisited the wails of torment she had unleashed on the day that dear ol’ Scout departed this world.
Alice’s reality seemed to have shifted from center and was angling off in a direction that she had been, up until that moment, afraid to look. Maybe Nolte and Martha were playing a sick joke on her. “Martha just called and told me you died.” Her statement was shaky, almost a question, almost a stutter, but for all intents and purposes, just an anchor she was throwing around her sanity.
“Yep, yep, I surely did. I think it was a heart attack, hurt like a motherfucker too.” He jutted his chin in a way he thought, accentuated his smile. “So what’s new with you, Dummy?” He pointed at the beer in her hand. “Besides your closet alcoholism.” Nolte was no stranger to day drinking himself, or morning drinking for that matter. If one were to take an academic look backward in drinking history, he might have even invented it; he was just in a habit of hiding his flaws, by pointing out the shortcomings of others.
Alice didn’t believe in ghosts. When she was five, on the night her grandmother had died, Nanna had sat at the foot of Alice’s bed, “Everything is going to be alright”, she had told her, but that was different, her Nanna was good. Her Nanna wasn’t a ghost; her Nanna was her Nanna. And besides, the more realistically sounding explanation, that it was the product of a five-year-old girl’s vivid imagination, Alice’s Nanna would never dream of being a ghost.
Nolte calmly looked through her mail, sorting the junk from the bills, into separate piles. He took a pair of oversized women’s sunglasses from the table and put them on, adjusting them so they rested just on the tip of his nose, allowing him to peek over the top of the frames. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, as he held an envelope up to the light. “It’s a good fucking thing I died; maybe you can get caught up on some of this shit, with your share of my shit. Oh looky here, a check for five million dollars from Publisher’s Clearing House, I’ll start a new pile with that one.”
“Go away, Nolte’ you’re not real,” Alice said, her voice still shaking. She scanned the kitchen counter for something to throw at the hallucination to make it disappear. She would later remind herself of all the things she could have thrown, that were right there in plain sight, but hindsight is always 20/20.
She had finally snapped, that could be the only explanation. She had always feared this day would come, the years of Nolte abuse, both physical and mental had finally taken its toll. The piper was presenting her with his bill and there was no payment plan, this was going to be a lump sum payout. She should have known she would never escape the asshole. She would spend the rest of her days talking to walls and drooling on her oatmeal in the nut house, a fate, she felt was equaled in horror, only by broom rape by fat black women. Alice took several steps backward, away from her delusion. “You’re dead. You’re not real.”
“Of course, I’m not real. I’m your guilt and shame, manifesting itself into the object of your desire, Dummy.” Nolte smiled proudly. “Who in the fuck needs Dr. Phil with me around, huh?” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air directly in front of his face, his smile quickly morphed into a frown; as he looked down at his right flip flop. Shower shoes were the other mainstay of Nolte’s casual wear ensemble. He sniffed again, as he contorted his foot around to inspect the sole, “I thought that was my diaper stinkin’. Look, honey, it appears that I have stepped in cat shit. Do you ever clean this fucking house?” Nolte took a butter knife from one of the dirty plates that littered the table and poked and scraped at the mess on his flip flop. “I fucking hate cats. Would you look at this shit?” Nolte extended his leg and offered her the sole of his flip flop so she could better examine it.
Alice had backed up as far as the kitchen counter would allow. She gulped at her beer and held the can to her forehead, never taking her eyes off Nolte. Her brain must be overheating. Maybe she was overwhelmed with grief and it was shutting down her mind. Maybe she was experiencing more than the normal amount of grief and that’s why she couldn’t feel any. Her mind was racing as it scrambled to protect itself, from itself.
She leaned as far to her left as she dared, without tipping over, and then the same to the right. She struggled to find an angle that would make Nolte vanish and bring everything back to normal. She couldn't and he didn’t. “This is not happening. You’re not real. You’re dead. I’m so glad you’re dead.” She babbled, she placed extra emphasis on the ‘Glad you’re dead’, part. Her suppressed southern accent had returned, as it often did whenever she became emotional or overwrought.
“Me too, I feel a helluva lot better. Cancer feels worse than the flu.” Nolte wiped the butter knife clean on the five million dollar check and tossed it back on the table, the cat shit lay in a clump on the floor. “As far as me being real? I’m as fucking real as it gets, Honey, I’m Easter Bunny real. Santa Claus real. There are a lot of things in this world, besides simple math, that are beyond your understanding, Back Alley Sally.” Nolte pointed at the Budweiser in her hand. “Grab me one of those beers, ya fuckin’ hickerbilly, ain’t ya got no manners?” Nolte drawled mockingly, as he pulled a crumpled pack of Pall Mall Reds from the front of his diaper. He fished one out, stuck it between his teeth and grinned, something he’d seen Clint Eastwood do to a cheroot in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, something he thought was mighty cool beans. When Nolte came across something that he thought was, 'mighty cool beans' he stole it. He’d incorporated biting the end of his cigarettes into every cigarette he’d smoked since 1966. He looked at Alice, grinning like a gum commercial. “Gotta light, Dummy?”
Alice shook off the chill that kept trying to crawl up her spine and scraped up every ounce of bravery she could muster. “Go away, Nolte. The power of Christ compels you!” she yelled, hoping to drive the Nolte demon away.
Nolte burst out laughing in the wheezing cough he’d always tried to pass off as laughter. “A two-pound bag of dog shit has more sense than you. Did you even try to understand that movie?” he punctuated the question with a final wheeze and quite possibly a chunk of lung.
“The power of Christ compels you!” Alice shouted, holding her fingers out toward Nolte in a makeshift crucifix. Though it only appeared to work about ten percent of the time in the movies, it made her feel like she had God on her side.
“What in the hell are you still doing home?” Nolte asked, ignoring her makeshift crucifix as he patted around his diaper, searching for a lighter. “I thought for sure, both of you dummies would be tearing through my shit by now. Your sister, greedy cunt that she is, is having a conniption fit looking for my cash stash. That thieving bitch took five hundred dollars out of my wallet before Elvis had even left the building. Can you believe that shit?” Nolte smoothed his forearms with a quick glance at each bicep as if he were admiring his ‘guns’. “You might want to give her a ring on yer smart phone there, Dummy. Let her know you’re wise to her thieving ways.” Nolte raised his arms, palms up and gave Alice an exaggerated shrug, “Well? Do I have to get the fucking beer myself?”
Nolte planted both hands on the table in front of him and groaned loudly as he helped himself to stand, his diaper made a tearing sound as it peeled off of something sticky on the chair. “I gue
ss you have to watch where you sit, as well as where you step in this shithole.” Taking care not to step in the cat shit again, he dance-walked across the kitchen. He swung one of his arms behind his back in an exaggerated fashion as if he were fanning a fart. Alice kept her finger crucifix trained on him like a loaded gun, as he moved closer.
He opened the fridge and squatted to get a better look at the contents within, his knees crackled and popped and complained. Nolte shook his head and blew air across his teeth, a sound he had always tried to pass off as a whistle, as he invaded the sanctity of the Frigidaire. “You need to be careful what you eat out of this sonofabitch, huh? Some of this shit looks pretty fucking iffy,” he smugly noted, as he helped himself to a beer. Still squatting, he turned his head to the side, just enough to show Alice he still had a cigarette clenched in his teeth. “Gotta light, Dummy?
***
Nolte had been watching the shadow for days. The dark smudge paced deliberately in his kitchen, dragging itself from one wall to another. He watched it from the corner of his eye. The corner of his eye was how he watched all the things that made him nervous. The shadow would pass from one end of the room to the other and then retrace its path, defying the angle of the sun, or whatever light source happened to be present.
His first attempt to explain away the shadow was when the smudge had peeled itself from the back of the door and slithered across the kitchen floor. His first thought was that his imagination had high-centered. But any notions concerning imagination had to be quickly dismissed, Nolte would be the first to admit, that he had no imagination. He didn’t have a creative bone in his body. His next rationale was the chemo was messing with his mind, but his knowledge of drugs was limited to mescal and beer and the doctor had said nothing of hallucinations. Maybe it was outside, the cause of his shadow, some kid’s kite stuck in a tree, a breeze fanning the kite ghost along the side of his house and through the window, but there was no kite.
He had lived in this particular house for years. He knew how the light worked on the walls of his castle, inside and out. Nolte paid attention because paying attention was his thing. Nothing escaped his scrutiny.
He was wide awake and aware and he knew the shadow didn’t belong.
Nolte took notice of all things in his domain, great and small. Lazy toothpicks slouching in the toothpick holder would receive his instant attention; the uneven edges of a carelessly folded hand towel would be immediately remedied under his watchful command. ‘A place for everything, and everything in its place.’ In a chaotic world, tidiness kept the crazy away.
Nolte had always formulated regularities, surveyed strict borders and manufactured constants in his life; he liked to be squared away. There was a certain comfort to be found in repetitive actions and self-imposed limitations. He lived safely within the boundaries of these carefully implemented constraints and procedures, always mindful not to color outside the lines. Anything that developed suddenly, or outside the uniformity of Nolte’s little world, was akin to a rogue wave on an otherwise tranquil sea. Don’t rock the boat. Loose lips, sink ships.
The predictability of his tried and true methods gave him a cozy sense of security. Redundancies allowed him to concentrate his attentions on his independence and privacy.
Privacy was very important. Mommy, a very private person herself, had always told him to do his own laundry with the utmost care and strict attention to detail; keeping unsightly stains to himself and above all else, never hang it out to dry where the world could see it. It was sound advice, especially where Nolte was concerned, there were things about his privacy that would, should they become public, seriously affect his freedom. Now his privacy was being invaded by a shadow.
In truth, though he fancied himself fearless, the shadow scared Nolte; as did anything he couldn’t understand. Not only could it travel against the light, but it didn’t appear to be cast from anything. No shadow is uncaused, as far as Nolte knew. When it came to things scientific, he knew he wasn’t the fullest beaker in the lab, but light, whether it was sunlight, bulb light or a candle in the wind light, all light needed an object in order to cast a shadow and said shadow, had to obey its source. Piss don’t flow uphill and the piss from his shadow was definitely flowing uphill. Though Nolte could not correlate the piss/shadow relationship, he knew it to be a fact that piss always went downhill and any carved in stone fact, would bolster his guesses at the characteristics of light.
‘He’s afraid of his own shadow.’ The words popped into his head, probably from the little coward who lived in there, though he hadn’t really sensed the little guy’s presence since the shadow had climbed down off the door. Nolte figured the little turd had gone deep into hiding. ‘He’s afraid of his own shadow.’ As a boy, Nolte would flinch at any movement, whatsoever, in his peripheral view. He’d developed this ‘tick/survival instinct’, because of Mommy. Living with Mommy, one had to be prepared to duck ashtrays and shoes, at any given moment. Mommy had a temper. A dust mote on a still damp, cherry red fingernail could send all manner of things flying across the room. Mommy had a temper and she hated to do things twice.
Nolte, on the other hand, seemed doomed to repeat things. Kids at school would offer Nolte their hand, yet, when he went to shake it, they would jerk their hand quickly to their head, pretending to smooth their hair. Leaving him ‘hanging’ was embarrassing enough, but this would also produce an involuntary duck and fluttering eyelashes from Nolte. A flinch, a social crime punishable by a sharp slug to the upper arm and humiliating finger pointing. It would also produce peals of laughter from the other kids. Nolte was a natural sucker. For some reason, he never wised up to the kids and was always lured into the handshake trap. He’d hated those fucking kids. Nolte would bet a sixteen-dollar bill, that not one of those laughing losers had ever run across a shadow of this nature. Fuck Peter Pan, Nolte’s shadow was dangerous, or at the very least, chancy. He wished those assholes were here now, he’d see who was scared of shadows.
Nolte’s shadow had a presence; he could actually feel it watching him. He could feel its vibe. The thing also affected the hair on the back of his neck, a sure sign that the ‘motherfucker’ was up to no good. Nolte always obeyed the hair on the back of his neck. Neck hair was an extremely reliable early warning system; neck hair alerted him to undesirables and unwelcome situations before they had a chance to become problematic.
The creepy feeling, he would get, the moment before he’d turn to catch someone staring at him, was neck hair alerting him to unwanted attention. It was better than radar. Although they would nervously divert their eyes and pretended to be looking for something other than him, Nolte knew the truth, his neck hair never lied. Neck hair saw through deceptive behavior. Neck hair knew when people were watching and people were watching Nolte, of that, he was absolutely sure. People always watched him. Nolte and his neck hair were of the opinion, that people needed to mind their own fucking business.
Sometimes, in crowded places when the hair on the back of his neck was particularly active, or he was particularly drunk, he’d shout. “Look away assholes! You can pretend you’re not looking at me, but I know you are, motherfuckers!” This usually caused a stir, especially after shouting it several times, in an attempt to flush out the culprit with the unwelcome gaze. Then, without fail, someone, more than likely the perpetrator of the staring, would involve the cops. And most of the time, through no fault of his own, his 'rights' would be violated and a scuffle with the police would ensue and Nolte would end up hogtied and taken into custody. Not the assholes with the eye problems, that couldn’t mind their own business, but him, the innocent one.
These unjust arrests were mostly due to the fact, that by the time law enforcement usually arrived, the assholes with the invasive eyes had had ample opportunity to scatter into the wind like chicken-shits, and cops being too lazy to investigate, or even wonder out loud for the truth, would slap the bracelets on Nolte. Someone was going down, or it was a wasted trip.
Nolte
soon realized ‘staring violations’ were much harder to prove in a court of law, than public intoxication, but it never stopped him from hurling accusations of eye-rape whenever his neck hair sounded the alarm. He had rights and he would defend those rights. Yes, neck hair had caused Nolte some problems in the past, but to ignore the hair on the back of one’s neck could get one killed, there are crazies everywhere you look.
By the third day, not only could he see the shadow and feel it, but he could smell it. Sometimes, when his shadow, which no longer paced to and fro along the walls, but now circled the kitchen as a thin, opaque cloud, came near to the living room, it would stop and emit a stale musty odor. A stale smell, which always had a hint of something else mixed with it, a memory scent, as Nolte came to know them. Two distinctly separate smells came to him in a single puff.
The musty part must be the transport smell, which the memory scent would hitch a ride on, Nolte figured. The mustiness always stayed the same, but the memory smell was different each and every time. The thing would stop at the doorway and fart at him, the odors would waft to him unseen, but the moment they hit his nose they’d conjure different memories and images from his past. Memories Nolte didn’t at all like and images he had worked hard to forget. Memories and images Nolte had spent years, along with a good bit of his sanity and an unholy amount of alcohol, altering, rewriting and tucking away, deep into far dark corners of his mind.
Nolte had never encountered odors so rich and pungent, his corned beef and cabbage farts didn't even come close. Even the constant flow of bottled oxygen streaming into his nose couldn’t mask or dilute the smells his shadow produced. But the strength of the stink really didn’t matter, it only took a hint of a whiff and the visions they triggered were immediate and crystal clear. He had a front row seat to, The Best of the Worst of the Nolte Show, in HD.
