Bedfellow

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  When she opens her eyes, she can’t recall why she’s lying on the floor, looking up at a motionless ceiling fan. Then it comes back to her, in hazy bits and pieces. She remembers closing her eyes and thinking about the gargoyle and then there was darkness. She sits up and notices that her brother’s gone. The only other person left in the room is Uncle Marv, who’s working again on the Amazon box.

  “I fell asleep,” Kennedy says, stretching her arms to the ceiling.

  “Yeah,” Uncle Marv says, quietly, not meeting her eyes. “I thought I’d let you sleep, so you could recuperate a little bit.”

  Kennedy isn’t sure why she would need to recuperate from meditation, but then again, Uncle Marv is the expert.

  He sits on the bed, rubbing at both sides of his head with the tips of his index fingers.

  “How’s your box going?” Kennedy says.

  “Oh, great,” he says, glancing at her.

  Pangs of curiosity detonate in her chest, because she wants to see inside the box, and she wants to see the red light in Uncle Marv’s arms again. She wants to ask him how it feels when the energy dances up and down his skin. But she keeps her mouth shut. Uncle Marv has taught her, over and over, that the unraveling of a mystery can’t be rushed. “You can’t peek inside a chrysalis to see the butterfly early,” he always says.

  Looking at her phone, Kennedy realizes she has more pressing matters at hand than Uncle Marv’s Amazon box or his spiritual energies. Not only does Alejandra wish Kennedy would drop dead, she doesn’t want to be roommates when they go to college anymore. Kennedy doesn’t want to die, exactly, but she doesn’t want to be alive, either.

  Imani

  Imani pricks her fingers with the embroidery needle four times in ten minutes, because she’s rushing to finish the tiny clothes in time for the miracle. Marv tells her not to worry. He says the miracle will happen whether she finishes or not, but she worries anyway. She wants to do her part.

  “Sew much fabric,” she whispers. “Sew little time.”

  She knows that the grinning peanut statue would appreciate her pun, if he weren’t in a thousand pieces. For a moment, she considers digging those shards out of the trash and gluing them back together, but she swiftly dismisses the thought. If Hendrick doesn’t care about the death of the peanut man, then why should she?

  After Imani takes a deep breath, she continues hand-sewing the felt tie to an ecru-colored dress shirt. She plays the podcast on her phone, but she only perceives fragments of their conversation. They mention an aunt who collects vintage mannequins in a barn. Later, they talk about a tea party attended by chemically treated corpses. The man who dug up the bodies shrouded their heads with layers and layers of Saran Wrap. He also kept laminated papers under their chairs, full of information like their blood type and their favorite foods. Normally, Imani would eat all this up, but her thoughts wander off again.

  Sighing, she pauses her phone. The storm murmurs out the window, tapping at the glass. For a moment, she imagines a man standing on a ladder, peering into her bedroom, but she doesn’t dignify the thought with any reaction whatsoever. She doesn’t even turn to the window to check.

  “Stop it,” she says.

  As she works, her thoughts gravitate back toward the miracle. Her palms sweat. Her hands tremble. According to Marv, no one will be in any danger during the miracle, but beyond that, she doesn’t know what kind of phenomenon they can expect tonight. If she asks, he’ll only tell her that to open a chrysalis early kills the butterfly. In time, her mind drifts back to the first time she experienced one of Marvin’s marvels. She remembers that when her finger snapped, she left the apartment without saying another word. She walked toward Dairy Queen, her left arm pressed tight against her stomach. She tried to keep her hand perfectly still, but the broken pinky still sent shockwaves of agony up her arm. The wind stung her arms and her neck, because she forgot her jacket. She forgot everything.

  Thankfully, an old woman in a purple hat gave her a quarter so that she could call Omar on the payphone. After the call, she continued on to the Dairy Queen, but she didn’t have any money, so she sat out on a plaque in the yellowing grass. Omar said, “I’ll be right there,” but twenty minutes passed, and he didn’t come.

  She was about ready to walk to the emergency room herself when she spotted someone in her peripheral vision. She expected Omar, but she found a big-nosed guy in a puffy neon-orange jacket and a backward baseball cap.

  Obviously, Imani can’t recall their conversation word for word, but he started by saying something like, “Hey. I, uh, I know you don’t know me from Adam, whoever the fuck Adam is. But I know you, sort of. I mean, I dream about you sometimes.”

  “I’m not interested,” Imani said, standing up so that she could head into the Dairy Queen.

  “I’m not hitting on you,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I’m not explaining this very well.” He rubbed at the middle of his forehead with an index finger. “I guess there’s no explaining this in a way that would make sense to you. It barely makes any sense to me. But, um, I’m supposed to be here right now to help you.”

  “Did Omar send you?” she said.

  “No. I was at home watching this movie called The Baby about this twentysomething-year-old guy who wears diapers and acts like a baby. Have you ever seen it?” Imani stared at him, and he continued. “Anyway, I was watching the movie, and I had this feeling I needed to be here by the Dairy Queen. I walked ten blocks. I didn’t know exactly who or what I was supposed to find, but I found you. And like I said, I recognize you from some of my dreams.”

  By this time, Imani knew that she was speaking to someone with severe mental problems. He didn’t come across as particularly dangerous, but she was frightened anyway.

  The man sighed. “You’re looking at me like I’m Belial Bradley. I mean, I get it. But, if you just look at my face a little bit, you’ll see that you know me. The sort of dreams I’ve been experiencing aren’t the one-sided kind. You’ve dreamed of me, too. If you look at me and you don’t recognize me at all, I’ll go away right now.”

  At that point, Imani made a show of staring at the man’s face so she could say, “I don’t know you.” Then maybe he would leave her alone. But the problem was she did recognize him. Suddenly, she recalled seeing this man a dozen times, in castles and wastelands and clouds. She was always about to fall, and he reached out and caught her hand.

  Imani opened her mouth to say, “Who are you?” but she found she couldn’t speak.

  “I’m Marvin,” the man said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wish we could sit and talk for a while before we get to this next part, but that never seems to be the nature of these meetings. What I’m saying is, there’s no time for you to think this through. The energy’s ready, and if we don’t act now, we’ll miss our chance.” The man removed his jacket, and the teenager backed away a few steps. He held out his hand then. He closed his eyes. And wisps of coral fire hopped across his skin.

  Imani wanted to run, of course, but she also couldn’t keep her eyes off the roseate flames. She recognized this fire from her dreams as well.

  “What do you want me to do?” she said, in a small voice that blew away in the icy wind.

  With his eyes closed, Marvin said, “Not to rush you or anything, but I can’t hold this forever. This is the time and the place. Even I can’t change that.”

  Shivering in the cold, trembling in her fear, Imani stepped forward. She didn’t understand any of this. But, somehow, she trusted this man from her dreams. She trusted the fire.

  She reached out her left hand and Marvin said, “No, use your other one. I don’t want to squeeze that pinky.”

  So, she gave him her good hand, and the fire spiraled around his arm and passed into her. Her heart pounded. Her body become warm, from top to bottom. She half expected her pinky to heal in the heat of that energy, but the pain never subsided. Instead, she visualized escaping her mother. This wasn’t a new fantasy for her, of course, but this time
, standing near the Dairy Queen, holding Marvin’s hand, she didn’t imagine herself as some hardened warrior. In the visualization, she was herself. She was a nail-biting, neurotic bundle of nerves. She didn’t picture herself telling her mother off in some booming voice. She saw herself packing her bags, trembling. For years, she believed she needed to be stronger in order to escape her mother. But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe, despite her anxieties and her scars and her tears, she was strong enough already.

  The fire on Marvin’s arm disappeared, but the idea remained smoldering inside her.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s all I can do for you right now, I guess. Unless you want a couple bucks for Dairy Queen?”

  “No,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He put on his jacket and made sure that his baseball cap was still pointing backward. “Well, I better go finish The Baby. It’s good so far. Weird. You should check it out. Then we can talk about it the next time we meet. I’m not exactly sure when that’ll be, but our destinies are definitely entwined.” He interlaced his fingers, to emphasize the point. “Are you sure I can’t buy you an ice cream?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m okay.” And for the first time in a very long time, she meant it.

  Tomas

  In honor of Sunday Bunday, Tomas draws the stuffed Easter penguin with bunny ears, only he gives the penguin three ears and one eye. He considers adding a few claws and fangs, but you’re not supposed to start a game of Drawing Battle with too powerful of a fighter. In the end, he leaves the penguin rabbit largely vulnerable to most attacks.

  He places the yellow notepad on Uncle Marv’s bed and says, “Your turn.”

  “Hmm?” Uncle Marv touches the paper with his middle finger. “Oh, yeah. The battle thing. I’ll get to this soon. But first, do you want to see a little sneak peek of the new project?” Using two fingers, he lifts a cardboard box from off the nightstand. “Only the background is done, but I thought maybe you’d want to see it first, since you contributed all the furniture and objects and everything.”

  Tomas nods, and Uncle Marv turns the box around so that the boy can see inside. What he sees is a diorama, like the one Tomas had to make for Mrs. Z about Frog and Toad. Tomas recognizes his potbelly stove and his dress form and his industrial sewing machine table.

  “Give me a second,” Uncle Marv says. “I’ll show you something cool.”

  After a few moments, the drawings within the box become blurry and then bloat into three dimensions. A thread of black smoke snakes upward from the potbelly stove. Tomas touches the 3-D dress form, but it still only feels like paper. He smiles. He wants to shrink himself down so that he can play inside the box with the bodybuilding mouse and the headless bobblehead and the army man who only fears balloons. In honor of Bunday, they could grill hamburgers on the potbelly stove.

  Uncle Marv taps the top of the box. “After the miracle tonight, we’ll be able to use this thing properly.”

  Tomas doesn’t understand much about the miracles, except that years ago, he cut his leg on a rock and Uncle Marv healed him. Also, his uncle saved his dad’s life once, but no one ever told him the details about that. Does the miracle tonight mean that someone else might die if Uncle Marv doesn’t save them? The thought makes him feel sick to his stomach.

  “Well, kid,” his uncle says, opening a new bottle of Gatorade. “I need to rest up for tonight or I’m fucked. Sorry. Or I’m screwed.”

  When he moves the diorama from the bed to the nightstand, he knocks the yellow notebook onto the floor, next to a few empty bottles. Tomas reaches for the Drawing Battle pages, but he freezes in place when his uncle releases a high-pitched screech. Then he screams again.

  “I’ll get Mom,” Tomas says, his voice quivering.

  “No, don’t worry, kid,” Uncle Marv says, lying flat on his back now. “I know it sounded like I was yelling, but that wasn’t me, exactly. The little barrier between me and the others broke down for a second, is all. That was them yelling through me. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about any of this. I’m good. Really.”

  Hot tears fill the boy’s eyes and he wipes at his face with both his hands. From here he can see into the cardboard box. Everything’s flat and normal again.

  “You’d better go,” Uncle Marv says, his eyes closed. “I need to concentrate.”

  Tomas goes outside, leaving the yellow notebook on the floor, next to the trash. Inside his room, he closes his door and puts on his headphones and holds his breath. None of that helps. He hopes the miracle will happen soon, because maybe then he’ll stop hearing his uncle’s screams inside his head.

  Hendrick

  Hendrick often wishes that someone would invent waterproof earbuds so that he could submerge himself completely in the tub while listening to Morgaine. If he breathed through a tube, then he wouldn’t have to get out of the water during the entire session.

  As it is, Hendrick has to sit up to keep the earbud wires from getting wet. He keeps his phone on a small table next to the tub, right next to his Old Fashioned. He only adds the maraschino cherry and the orange wheel during special occasions, and he can’t think of anything more appropriate than a miracle night.

  Through the earbuds, Morgaine tells Hendrick to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths. She has him tighten all the muscles in his face and then relax. Hendrick tightens his shoulders and chest and arms and hands. After he relaxes his toes, Morgaine tells him to clear his mind. If his mind wanders somewhere, she wants him to observe the thought like he’s watching a TV screen.

  Morgaine says that after she counts down from ten, Hendrick will be in her complete control. She’ll be inside him then, and she’ll be able to do anything she wants.

  Once she finishes counting down, Hendrick doesn’t feel any discernable change in his mind, but he does feel quite relaxed after all that deep breathing and tensing and relaxing. Morgaine commands him to watch her while she removes her velvet dress and her black lingerie. As she strips for him, Hendrick can sometimes see her dark emerald eyes, her eager breasts, the slit of tongue he can glimpse between her barely open lips. He never sees her in her entirety during these sessions, but he doesn’t mind. Morgaine commands him to sit still while she massages her tits. She says, by the end of this, she’ll make him come without him ever touching himself. During the past four months or so, she’s never managed to accomplish this, but Hendrick doesn’t mind that, either.

  As always, Hendrick imagines himself inside Brett’s apartment. Sometimes, she kneels while he sits on the leather couch. Sometimes, the two of them climb onto the pool table. Hendrick pictures himself in a real place so that the universe knows he would welcome this as a reality. Obviously, Hendrick doesn’t have the same kind of powers as Marvin, but these visualizations are supposed to help manifest his desires in some way. Hendrick doesn’t quite understand the process, and he doesn’t care to, really.

  After the audio ends, Hendrick finishes and dries himself off. In the bedroom, Imani’s still hard at work on those weird little doll clothes Marvin asked her to create. She seems so excited about tonight, and for a moment, Hendrick feels a little guilty. Even after all these years, his wife doesn’t understand that the miracles exist to benefit Marvin and Hendrick alone. Sure, Marvin has healed children on numerous occasions, but only because Hendrick didn’t want them to suffer. Years ago, when Hendrick desired a wife, Marvin found Imani and brought the two of them together. Hendrick remembers that morning when Marvin dragged him to that thrift shop with the giant hamburger man. Imani rushed over to Marvin and said, “It’s you.” And Marvin said, “Yeah. Hey. This is my brother Hendrick.”

  Imani still believes, in her naive way, that Marvin’s powers are good and pure. Sometimes, Hendrick wants to tell her the truth, but he knows he never will.

  Lying on the bed in his damp T-shirt and boxers, Hendrick wonders what’s coming tonight. He would ask Marvin, but his brother would only give him that stupid spiel about the chrysalis and the butterfly. The truth is prob
ably that Marvin doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to accomplish with that light of his until it’s actually happening.

  Of course, Hendrick hopes that tonight’s event will somehow bring Morgaine into his life or at least a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano. When all’s said and done, though, he trusts in his brother’s creepy powers, and he’ll take what he can get.

  Kennedy

  Alejandra no longer wants Kennedy to drop dead, but she still doesn’t think the two of them should be roommates in five years. Alejandra wants to live alone now, in a studio apartment with a loft bed. Aly ends her final text with only one daisy emoji, even though she usually says goodnight with at least five.

  Every sleeping position Kennedy attempts feels worse than the last, so she sits up and grabs her book. She reads the same paragraph over and over again for about a thousand hours.

  After tossing the book across the room at her backpack, she heads for the bathroom and pauses in front of Uncle Marv’s door. He said this specific miracle required silence and concentration, so he didn’t want to be disturbed tonight. Kennedy doesn’t see how pressing her ear against the door could disturb him any, so she decides to go ahead.

  At first, she can only hear the perpetual chatter of the rainstorm. Then Uncle Marv shouts, in a muffled voice, “Hey, Kennedy. Come in.”

  Kennedy hesitates for a moment, but then she opens the door and steps inside. When it comes to her uncle’s miracles, she knows she should expect the unexpected. And yet she still experiences a jolt of shock when she finds him lying stomach-down on the rug, rosy flames rising from his back. The light of the fire blinds her a little, and she squints her eyes.