He had meant it to be a nudge, firm and final, hands drawing a line between them, a clear sign to stop. Or at least, that was how he pictured it.
Instead, his tongue had fluttered, the words had rolled back down his own throat into a childish stutter--
“I suh-said-stuh-stop!”
--and the pressure exited his hands, pushing her stomach in a sudden jolt, sending her stumbling back a good two feet back, slack jawed and stunned. Her shoulder connected with an oversized book which fell to the ground with a massive thump, a sound that once again drew the attention of the students at the distant desks.
“I’m sorry, Karina, I didn’t mean to--”
“Fuck... You,” she said in two bursts followed by a gasp of air. He had shoved her, hard, the way a detective might shove some unruly dame in a black and white movie before kissing her or slapping her or both. And there had been, in that brief void between action and reaction, a realization on both their faces that mirrored each other, like long lost twins stunned to bump into each other at the post office. Then coldness bled back into her eyes, utter and complete. In a flash she turned and stormed off, black hair shimmering and satchel swinging as she disappeared beyond the shelves and the curious stares of the students.
Wonderful, Dan thought as he scooped up the books and squeezed his temple, and he wondered: if he squeezed hard enough could he shatter the glass and forget the whole mess?
Almost Dawn
“YOU LOOK TIRED,” Tommy said as he climbed into bed and opened his Nintendo.
Various sports figures covered his comforter, all frozen in mid action. Baseball, football, basketball, even hockey which Tommy had once shown enough of an interest in for Dan to buy him a pair of rollerblades and a stick, all of which now sat in the closet, unused in over a year. He pulled the comforter up to his son’s chest, folding it back and tamping it down.
“Rough day at the office, I suppose.”
“What does that mean? Rough day at the office.”
“It’s an expression.”
“An aspression?” asked Jessica from the bunk above.
“It means, I dunno, things at work could’ve gone better.”
“Are you going to the fire?” Jessica asked.
“The fire?”
She nodded. “It’s an aspression. Like, not have your job?”
“Oh,” Dan laughed. “Am I going to get fired?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Highly unlikely,” he answered. “But your mom might fire me if I don’t get you two to bed. Close it down Tommy.”
Tommy did as he was told and closed the Nintendo, placing it on the shelf next to his soccer trophy.
“Night dad.”
“Night buddy.”
Dan stood up, face to face with Jessica’s bunk, the dolls and toys all lined up at the foot of her bed. Only Mr. Bun remained, held tight in her hands.
“Sleep tight angel.”
He gave her a kiss. She thrust Mr. Bun out expectantly, its head flopping around like a wilting flower. “Mr. Bun too,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm.” He gave Mr. Bun a kiss, tasting the salt of years of care bestowed on that old rag bunny.
“Good night kids,” Dan said, turning off the light as he closed the door.
A few seconds passed before the dim light of the Nintendo grew beneath Tommy’s comforter in the darkness.
“Stop that,” said Jessica.
Tommy ignored it. He knew how quick she fell asleep. All he had to do was keep the volume down until she did and he could play Metroid until the battery ran out. And this time, he had the charger.
“I said stop!”
He turned the Nintendo off and sighed. He didn’t hate his sister, he just hated sharing a room with her. It wasn’t fair. His parents had a big house, bigger than most of his friends, but they wouldn’t let him sleep downstairs. That was dad’s room where dad did important stuff like read old books and use the computer and look at stupid paintings.
“Knock it off!”
“I turned it off you spaz!” Tommy snapped. “Jeez. Go to bed.”
“I’m not talking to you,” she said, voice shaking in the shadows.
“Who? Mr. Bun?”
“Not him.”
“Who?” Tommy asked again. Was she talking in her sleep again? Or to one of her imaginary friends?
“Who?” he asked again and the bunk bed above shifted and creaked. Annoyed, Tommy climbed out of bed and up the rungs of the ladder until he was looking onto her bunk. Jessica sat in a tent beneath the sheets, Mr. Bun stationed outside, staring back like a sentry. Tommy scanned the bed, top to bottom, but there was no one else there, just a lump beneath the covers and those stupid stuffed toys.
“What are you talking about?”
Jessica lifted the sheet, peeking out from a small hole, glancing around the darkened room.
“He’s gone,” she said. “Mr. Bun scared him away. For now.”
In the year they had shared the bedroom Jessica had claimed she’d seen everyone from Santa to the Tooth Fairy and half a dozen cartoon characters, all visiting her between darkness and dawn, but he knew otherwise. There was no Santa or tooth fairy or Easter Bunny. All the nocturnal intrusions were parts his parents acted out for her amusement. They were lies to keep her happy, no different than when his grandpa had pretended to pull a coin from behind her ear, the same coin Tommy had caught the glimmer of moments earlier in the old man’s wrinkled hands.
“Go to bed,” Tommy said, and he pushed Mr. Bun over and climbed down as Jessica whined: “Hey!”
The library was wet with shadows that glimmered like oil beneath the flickering florescent lights. It was cold. Far colder than a September morning should be. A distant barking came from deep within the dark rows of bookshelves. Someone had let a dog into the library. Its shrill yips broke his concentration on the book he had been studying. Yet when he closed the book he noticed the cover was blank and wet and his fingers were stained with paint. Disgusting, he thought, as he wiped the paint on his shorts.
His fingers were wrong. They were small and unwrinkled, the fingers of a child. The tips, all ten, were wrapped in gauze bandages stained purple from the paint. Even his legs were short and scrawny, devoid of that thick hair he’d had for years.
The dog barked again, the lights flickered, and he felt a shiver as he tried to remember what book he had been reading but couldn’t. He couldn’t even remember why he had picked it up, or what time it was, or what had brought him to the library. He had tucked his kids in, brushed his teeth, plucked yet another grey hair from his head, taken his Imitrex, and then what? Was he dreaming again?
Or waking up? Mr. Glass asked as something ran past the stacks of books. It was a dark shape, small and skittering and frantic. It chattered like tumblers in an old lock.
His eyes scanned the rows of books in front of him. Each section sat numbered with the same digits--555--endless in every direction. He stood up, searching for the chattering sound and dropping the book. The book made a metal clang as it landed on the floor, but when he glanced down it was no longer there. Instead, an old rail road spike rolled around, covered in rust. Another spastic movement followed that rattling sound as he caught a sidelong glimpse of the shape. It was small, like an animal, and yet, it didn’t move like one. It phased and pulsed, like a stop motion movie, a special effect from the silent era of film.
His thin legs moved fast, breaking into a sprint. He ran past shelves filled with blank books all bleeding purple. Past those numbers, the triple five, written in a childish scrawl. His feet echoed out on the soft rug, drumbeats beneath the flickering light, and the floor felt like grass. Around the corner, turning past those numbers, and there it was. A brown shape, with hair.
Ginger sat in the middle of a row of books. Her tail wagged across the carpet in an unnatural, epileptic motion. Her teeth chattered, rapid clickity-clacks of fang against fang, and yet, she wasn’t looking at Dan.
She was sitting at the fee
t of a woman who stood beneath a pulsing yellow light. A woman whose naked body swam with pictures that dripped fresh ink down bare flesh.
“Karina?” Dan asked, but the woman ignored him. He called her name again, thinking perhaps didn’t she hear him, but she continued thumbing through an old book.
Then, as Ginger barked at her, only then did she raise a single finger to her lips before returning the book.
“Dan,” said a voice.
Ginger barked a second time, louder.
“Dan!” said the voice again but it wasn’t Karina’s. It came from the floor and the ceiling, from a place a thousand miles away. He knew that voice but when he tried to name it words failed. When he tried to picture it a featureless mound of flesh floated beyond his vision.
Karina put the book back on the shelf, turned, and walked away from him. The ink from those intricate waves and dragons and chrysanthemums all leaked down her back, down the curve of her ass, down her legs into a pool on the floor.
“DAN!”
She gave a single glance back at him and he saw tears flowing from empty eyes.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
It was cold in the bedroom, more so than it should’ve been for the first week of September. For a moment he thought he could see his breath in the air, and the shape of Tommy standing by the door. Both disappeared as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Linda was sitting upright in bed, eyes on him.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
“What is it?” he mumbled, glancing at the clock. Ten ‘til six. It was early.
“I don’t know, but she’s been barking for five minutes.”
He was going to ask who, but he already knew. Ginger’s incessant barking came from somewhere outside in a steady rhythm. Not frantic, but alarmed and loud enough to wake the neighbors. If it wasn’t stopped he’d never hear the end of it from Marty, and a few days later the Homeowners Association would send another one of their warning letters. He already had three.
He climbed out of bed, into the cold in search of his robe.
“Ginger!” he called, opening the back door. Somewhere far off he could hear the whir of a sprinkler. The bricks were wet with dew that made the small patches of moss growing between the cracks as slick as black ice. His foot slipped and he pinwheeled forward, regaining his traction on the edge of the bricks.
Click went the flashlight. Fog hung in clumps throughout the backyard, rendered into glowing orbs like lanterns in the darkness as the flashlight beam passed through them. He scanned the yard starting to the left by the umbrella and patio table they had their dinners on during the summer. He scanned past the wood hot tub whose water needed to be emptied, further along the box hedges and past the old bird bath that had come with the property.
“Ginger, where are you?” he called in a hushed voice.
The barking, which had been so perfectly timed in five-second intervals, ceased that moment. He knew she was nearby, hiding perhaps. She was a master of silence when it came to trouble, able to stifle her sounds whenever someone was searching for her. Then he heard movement, leaves rustling, the snap of a dry twig followed by growling from along the fence by the rosebushes.
“Ginger?” He swung the flashlight along the fence, drawing closer to the bushes and posts that propped up those roses Linda loved so much. That silly hobby of hers that she slaved away at, season after season.
He saw more movement and honed in on the redwood fencing. A shadow passed by the fence and Dan swung the flashlight at shoulder height along the damp wood. There, he found the source of the movement. His flashlight fell from his hands as a gasp escaped his throat.
For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming.
A bloodshot eye stared back through a hole in the fence. It blinked and disappeared after the beam crossed the hole. That image that had made him gasp, that old blinking eye glaring through the fence and fog, now made him feel as foolish as a child.
“Sorry Marty,” Dan said, picking up the flashlight.
“Shut that damn dog of yours up or I’m calling the cops,” said the shadow beyond the fence. He heard Marty’s footsteps moving away from the fence, back to the house next door.
“Working on it,” Dan answered with a shake of the head as the shadow left, taking that peering old eye with it. “Hope you break your hip you old prick,” he added under his breath, but felt little satisfaction as his words hung in the air, like a whispered curse at a teacher’s back.
The flashlight fell back to the roses and something white beneath them. Two popsicle sticks sat on the dirt, mudded and broken. More rustling as Ginger emerged from between the rosebushes. Mud clung to her fur in small patches. Her paws were wet and black and glistened in the moonlight. And something else, something on the white and brown fur around her mouth. Something red stained her jowls.
“Ginger, come here, now!”
For once she obeyed, waddling over with a grunt. Her face was spattered in a dark red substance that looked like old paint or--
Blood, he realized.
“Jesus, Ginger are you all right?” He squatted and lifted her up, carefully avoiding the smear that clung to those long hairs in small, candy-like droplets. Ginger tried to lick his face but he pulled back, inspecting her. Her tail wagged, her fur was intact, and save for the mud and blood on her face she looked as healthy and stupid as usual.
Another rustle from the bushes in the corner, and a thought cut through his mind like a knife.
Not’er blood, said Mr. Glass.
No, it’s not, Dan thought. Then whose is it?
The bush rustled again. A few drops of dew slid down from the roses and some petals dislodged, fluttering down onto the damp earth. A tiny shape fluttered about beneath the fronds and undergrowth. He reached out, flashlight trained on the epicenter of the noise and movement. There he saw something blue, a flower or a leaf perhaps.
No, a feather. It was a blue feather.
He lifted the fronds, his flashlight falling on a hole in the dirt. It was small, the earth around it had been tilled by Linda’s hands and then dug up by Ginger’s paws. Inside the small hole lay a thrashing shape. A bird fluttered about, half covered in dirt and blood. It hopped up, and for a moment it looked as if it was going to fly away. But it couldn’t.
Nearby sat the remains of the bird’s wings. They were torn clean from the body, as if surgically removed and stacked for later consumption. No different than when Ginger saved the dried pig ears Linda bought, leaving them hidden around the house until she forgot them and Dan rediscovered them months later, covered in mold. Only this wasn’t a snack bought for a few bucks at PetCo, but two wings torn from a living thing.
The bird struggled to climb from the hole, flapping its phantom wings, two raw patches, before collapsing back into the hole to begin the hopeless act all over. Ginger had never chased squirrels, shown only a passing interest on birds. She had fled from every dog at the dog park, whimpering in fear until he grew tired of apologizing to other dog owners and stopped taking her. She was an animal without a purpose, an ornament. And yet here, somehow, she had caught, maimed, and toyed with this bird, perhaps intending to go on for hours before she was interrupted.
Dan felt revulsion and pity, but he steeled his stomach. He reached out and took the broken creature in his hands. It pecked at his fingers, the attacks little more than the final, futile actions of an animal that sensed its time had come. Its body disappeared between his hands as he turned away and squeezed.
It was a quick death. The neck broke with a soft pop that offered little more resistance than striking a match. It went limp in his hands, thin toes curling around his fingers in a final reflex. Ginger let out a single grunt, perhaps sensing her play toy was no more.
He placed the bird back into the hole where it lay, awkward, like one of his daughter’s bean bag dolls. He took what remained of the wings, feathers splayed and loose, and placed them over the bird. White spots marked parts of the wings and he realized this blue j
ay was not native to California. The jays here were larger, aggressive; they sometimes came in through the open door to steal Ginger’s dried dog food. This blue jay was delicate, with a triangular rim of feathers that sat on top of its limp head like some broken crown.
How far had this bird flown? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, only to end up bested by a dog that had twice chewed through the power cable on the hot tub pump and probably fried what few brain cells remained after generations of inbreeding.
Life was cruel like that, Dan thought, and he pushed the dirt into the hole where the bird’s motionless eyes disappeared beneath the cold earth.
Cyanocitta cristata, more commonly known as the blue jay. He was right, it wasn’t native. The Field Guide to North American Birds placed its range east of the continental divide. He had seen such jays throughout his youth, but never since settling into California. Here, the scrub jays flew about, crestless creatures he regarded as little more than flying rats. His curiosity satisfied, he closed the field guide and put it back in the bookshelf where it lay, out of place, amongst Jessica’s Spongebob books, Tommy’s Illustrated King Arthur series, and Linda’s growing collection of Sue Grafton novels.
He washed his hands twice; first downstairs after giving Ginger a quick rinse, and a second time before climbing into bed. Still, the smell of the bird, the dirt, and Ginger all lingered.
“No burglars?” Linda mumbled.
“Two. I fought them off with a chainsaw.”
“Liar...” she smiled. “What was it?”
“Just a bird that stupid dog of ours was trying to bury.”
“Mmm,” Linda said, her toes curling next to his. “A bird?”
“A blue jay. Poor thing, Ginger must’ve snuck up on it. Honestly, I’m a little impressed.”
“We buried a bird yesterday,” Linda yawned. “A blue jay.” She rolled over, away from him, and pulled the comforter up to her neck.
“Really?”
“Mmm-hmm. In the rose garden. Jessica found it at school. Poor dear, she was so shaken up,” Linda mumbled. Dan considered it for a moment. Maybe the dog hadn’t caught it. Maybe she had dug it up, just another one of her holes around the yard.
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