All Due Respect Issue #1

by Chris F. Holm

  And howled.

  The ferocity of the sound drove Albert back into his chair, both hands pressed tight against the sides of his head to stop the noise.

  Mr. Souza was the first to arrive. The shock of the scene before him froze him, mouth open. He was followed by several of the women from the floor, all of whom had accusing looks for Albert. Especially the old Kozak twins, who shot him withering glances before they helped Madeline to her feet and hustled her off to the ladies’ room.

  Albert tried to follow, but Mr. Souza placed a firm hand on Albert’s chest. “What happened, Albert? Where are you going?”

  “I need…I need to talk to her!” Albert could hear the pleading note in his voice as it cracked. Hot tears filled his eyes.

  “No, Albert, give her a minute.”

  “I need to tell her, Mr. Souza.”

  “Tell her what, Albert?” A deep concern was lighting behind Mr. Souza’s eyes.

  “I need to tell her that it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, Mr. Souza. That scars are beautiful, Mr. Souza.”

  Albert couldn’t hold it in any more. He started crying as he pointed at the nubs of his own fingers, hoping Mr. Souza could understand. “Scars…scars mean you survived. Scars mean that you’re still alive. She…she needs to know that!”

  Mr. Souza ran a hand over his thin comb-over, reminding Albert of the way Madeline’s wig had shifted. “Albert…”

  “She…I…” The rest of the words caught in Albert’s throat as the tears streamed down. The guilt—the feeling that he’d somehow done Something Wrong was a thick, knotted ball at the base of his throat. He needed to make it right.

  “Albert, listen…” Mr. Souza seemed to have a sudden weariness overcome him. “… just go home for the rest of the day.”

  “But…but I haven’t finished—”

  “Just go home, Albert. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Mr. Souza held up his hands to Albert and backed out of the workroom, leaving him alone.

  Albert didn’t know what to do. He could hear, feel the hum of the mill around him, voices talking about him.

  He couldn’t pick out words or sentences, but he could sense it.

  On his way out, Albert quietly walked into Mr. Souza’s office and left his Ring Ding on Madeline’s desk.

  The dog was dead.

  She lay at the base of the tree, her form partially covering the bodies of her puppies, as though she’d tried to breathe life back into them by sacrificing the last of her bodies own warmth.

  Albert took off his glove and stroked her stiff fur with the nubs of his fingers.

  He hadn’t slept at all.

  The incident with Madeline kept him awake all night. He needed to make things right. He needed to do a Good Thing, even if it wasn’t for Madeline.

  He’d decided to try to take the dog again.

  He left his house a half-hour before the sun came up, figuring he could take the dog before the man inside the house was awake. He would give the dog a home. He would keep her warm and safe.

  Maybe someday she would have puppies again. Maybe he could give one of those puppies to Madeline.

  Albert drove to the road and parked at the end of the lane. He crept quietly on the new snow that had fallen the night before.

  But the dog was already gone, and all Albert could do was kneel in the snow next to her and weep as quietly as he could, so as not to wake the man inside the house. He pet the dog’s fur until his cold-numbed fingers could no longer feel it bristling against the skin. He kissed his fingertips and patted the dog one last time before he put his fingers back inside the thick winter glove.

  Albert closed his eyes and faced the rising sun, feeling its warmth on his face. The diffused light danced beautifully through the tears trapped behind his eyelids. He turned and walked to the house.

  Albert walked up the rickety steps, uncaring whether or not the creaking woke the man inside. He pounded a fist against the door three times and waited.

  He heard movement inside, then; “Goddamn it, Dex. I know your tweaked ass can’t sleep, but some of us—”

  The door jerked open violently.

  The man had only a moment to register that Albert was not Dex. He reached for the side of the door, but Albert brought the ball-peen hammer down between his eyes before he could reach the gun on the table.

  The sound reminded Albert of the one his frozen windshield made the day he poured hot water on it. The man face-planted into the table by the door, the gun skidding away from him on the scratched hardwood. The man moaned from the back of his throat and tried to stand. Blood streamed from his nose and his left ear. One of his eyes danced out of sync with the other as he tumbled back into the living room.

  Albert followed.

  The man tried to reach for the gun, but fell again, his face smashing into the corner of the wall where the living room met the kitchen. The man’s cheek split from the impact, two teeth clacking to the floor. Inside the kitchen, Albert could see a science kit like the ones advertised on the back of his old comic books. The sharp, chemical smell assaulted his nose even through his cold-stuffed nostrils.

  The man reached the gun. Albert let him. Albert wasn’t afraid of the man inside the house anymore.

  The man’s blood-slicked fingers reached around the butt of the gun despite the spasms in his arm. His hand clenched, and the gun fired, the bullet slamming harmlessly into the floorboards.

  He tried again, more throwing his hand toward Albert than taking actual aim. The gun fired. The second bullet went out the taped-over window three feet to Albert’s left.

  Albert didn’t move.

  The recoil flung the man’s hand over his head, the fingers firing off two more shots as it did so. The first bullet popped the light hanging overhead, the second zipped into the kitchen, striking the science kit.

  Immediately, the kitchen burst into bright flame. The man moaned again through his broken face. He tried to lift the gun again, but only managed to lift it off the floor a couple of inches.

  Albert walked over to the man and stepped on his wrist, pinning it to the floor. He leaned into the man’s face. He watched the twitching eyeball slowly come to rest in its socket. The man emitted one last cow-like bleat, then was still.

  Albert looked into the kitchen. The fire had already engulfed the entirety of it, and bright orange flames had started licking the ceiling of the living room.

  Albert decided it was time to leave.

  He drove to work with the radio off, trying to decide how he felt about what he’d done.

  Albert didn’t know what to feel.

  It didn’t feel like he’d done a Good Thing.

  But it didn’t feel like a Bad Thing either.

  Albert sat in his car and ate the extra turkey sandwich while he waited for the mill to open. He was eager to start another day, to finish working on the rapier and get the Sulzer running again.

  To fix something.

  * * *

  Todd Robinson is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory, and the anthologies Lost Children: Protectors and Danger City. He has been nominated for the Anthony Award, three times for the Derringer Award, short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest’s Year’s Best Writing 2003, and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. His debut novel, The Hard Bounce, is now available from Tyrus Books.

  AMANDA WILL BE FINE

  RENEE ASHER PICKUP

  COREY’S BLUE EYES STARE up, wide. At nothing. His mouth hangs open, his once rosy cheeks pallid. The house is dark, save for a yellow glow from the light over the stove in the kitchen leaking into the living room. The blood seeps out from beneath his body and soaks into the cream rug I bought this afternoon. I cry for the first time in years.

  The tears make their way from the corners of my eyes and do
wn my cheeks, but I do not wipe them. I feel one dangling from my chin. Waiting to fall. Amanda is with her grandmother. I hope she is sleeping. The gun in my hand weighs a hundred pounds, I dropped on my ass at least a half hour ago, but the weight of the thing on my legs, over my hand, is keeping me from moving.

  I loved Corey more than myself. That was my second mistake. A woman should never love a man more than herself, not even her own son. I should have learned that lesson when I saw what his father had done to him. When I saw the bright ribbons of blood in the bathwater curling from under his butt. When he sobbed and cried and shook, refusing to tell me what had happened. I pulled him out of the bath and held his wet body to my chest, letting the water soak into my clothes, letting his tears soak my shoulder. Letting my tears disappear into his wet hair. He smelled of wet grass and baby soap. He was five. Amanda had been in her bedroom, then. Sleeping quietly. Only a baby.

  I wanted to kill their father. I wanted to rip his eyes out of the sockets and spit in the holes. But I had the children to think of. I didn’t say a word. I put Corey to bed, and I called the police.

  They made Corey testify. They brought a video camera into the police station and had a psychiatrist with a stuffed doll talk him through everything his father had done to him. I sat in the corner with my fist in my mouth, hoping he couldn’t see the way my face twisted up when he talked about what had been done to him.

  Corey was never the same. He didn’t smile as much. He didn’t like playing with the other boys. When I cooked, he stood next to me at the stove, holding my leg, watching my every move. When I showered, he sat on the bathroom floor and played with his Matchbox cars. When I slept, he crept in from his bedroom, and crawled into my bed. His small, warm body pressed up against mine. I let him.

  Amanda grew. She was strong. She was happy. She laughed and played on her own. I loved her, yes. But she didn’t need me the way Corey did. Corey still watched me cook. He watched me wash the dishes. He watched me sit at the kitchen counter and pay the bills. Sometimes, he still crawled into bed with me at night, curled into a ball, and pressed his back against my side. Amanda was fine. Amanda was always going to be fine.

  When she was six, she started wetting her pants at school. It happened three times. At home, she would be sitting, quietly doing her homework or playing with her Barbie dolls, then suddenly, she would jump up and run to the toilet, face twisted up, eyes squinting.

  “Amanda,” I said, tucking her under her pink comforter and brushing her wild brown hair away from her forehead. “What’s going on? Why do you wait so long to pee?”

  Her lower lip pushed out, and she sucked a ragged breath in. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know when you have to go? Do you hold it?”

  She closed her eyes, and nodded, tears coming now.

  “Then why don’t you go?”

  A sob twice as big as she was came up out of her chest and she wailed. “I don’t like to go pee! It hurts!”

  I knew.

  I pulled her up out of her bed and held her tiny body to me.

  “Who touched you there?”

  “Barbie.” She said, her little body shaking in my arms.

  “Who was playing Barbies with you when it happened?”

  She sobbed, and tightened her arms around my neck. I couldn’t tell if my breathing was ragged, or if her shaking was rattling my chest, or if it was every part of me cracking from the inside out.

  “Tell me who, Manda. Tell me. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  She nuzzled her face into my neck and whispered, “Corey.”

  The world went out of focus and I squeezed her so hard I thought I might hurt her. The room spun around us and my throat closed up, holding the screams tight in my lungs. I heard her whimper in my ear and things slowed down, back to real time.

  I took three long breaths and put her back into her little pink bed and walked out of the room. I felt my hands shake, my arms dead weight. I closed the door behind me and fell to the floor, biting down on my lower lip to keep from screaming. That night, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, swallowing rocks. The door to my bedroom creaked open, and Corey lifted the blanket. For a moment, I hated him.

  “What did you do?” I asked him. He froze. One leg on the bed, the other dangling off, the blanket still lifted in his hand.

  “ANSWER ME. What did you do to your sister?”

  He stayed like that, half in the bed, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. I reached out and smacked his face as hard as I could. I felt the shock all the way up my arm. My hand stung. Corey’s head hit the pillow and he yelled out in pain.

  “TELL ME WHAT YOU DID, COREY!”

  “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m sorry I didn’t know it would hurt her! Please don’t put me in jail like Daddy!”

  All the strength went out of my body. All the anger flushed down some rusty drainpipe inside me. I reached out for my baby boy and pulled him to me. I said, “It’s going to be alright, Corey. You’re not going anywhere.”

  No one played alone in the house anymore. Amanda stayed away from Corey, her dark eyes grew wide when he got too close. She spent more time in her room. Corey stayed with me. But Amanda was fine, really. She was always going to be fine. She still smiled and played with the neighborhood kids. Her schoolwork was excellent. She stopped wetting herself.

  At bedtime, I talked to Corey. I told him, “You never touch someone on their butt or their privates. You never go alone with your sister. You never hurt someone the way you were hurt.” Tears would fill his blue eyes and he would tell me he understood.

  I went to Amanda’s room. Pink and soft and happy. She lay in her bed with a fluffy white stuffed cat pulled tight to her chest. I tucked her in and said, “You tell me if your brother comes in your room. If he comes in your room while you’re asleep you scream. You never take your bottoms off for anyone, only by yourself. You never go alone with boys. You never ever touch anyone the way your brother touched you.” She pulled the stuffed cat tight against her neck, quiet tears rolled down her face and she nodded.

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  “Okay,” I said, and kissed her forehead.

  After a while, I stopped the nightly talks. They deserved a normal childhood. They deserved to move on.

  I moved on.

  I reach out and touch his face. It’s already cold. My stomach tightens, pushing against my lungs and a sob bursts out, filling the silent room. I’ve made so many mistakes. I curl into my lap with the pain in my gut. I know today, maybe for the first time, I’ve done the right thing.

  I sit with him for an hour, my hand on his cold cheek, letting the poison come out of my eyes, sobbing out all my regrets. I should have never married his father. I should have reported what he did to his sister. I should have watched them more carefully. I should have looked out for Amanda they way I looked out for him. I had always thought Amanda would be fine.

  I wipe my face on the sleeve of my shirt and took the duct tape from the table. Grunting, I roll Corey into the rug and wrap it in tape.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I say. “I’m sorry but it’s over now. It’s done.”

  I slide open the back door as quietly as I can and pull in the wheelbarrow. I cradle my son in my arms for the last time, knees straining with his weight, and drop him into it. His head sticks out near the handles and his legs are well over the front, and I thank God silently that the rug is blocking him from my view. I take him out the backdoor and to the garage, then open the back of my SUV. Lifting him, I remember a time when I could carry him in one arm on my hip. The strength goes out of my knees and I fall with his body on top of me, biting into my lip to keep from screaming.

  The drive to the river is longer with the headlights out. I scan the road ahead and all the side roads for another set of headlights, if I am seen, it’s all over. Amanda has to have her mother to help her through this.

  His body seems heavier now. I can’t lift him again, so I grip the rug tight and pull him out. I dr
ag him to the bank and stand there.

  “Corey, I love you. I did this for you. They say it never stops. They say the urge is always there. I can’t…” My knees hit the dirt next to the rolled up rug and I run my hand over it. “You looked just like him.”

  My chest hurts and my eyes hurt and my legs hurt from the lifting, but there’s still work to be done. I stand up, grip the rug in both hands and I tell him, “It’s over for you now, Corey. You’re okay now.”

  I pull him down the bank and into the river. Mud and cold water covering my shoes and seeping up the legs of my pants. Back at the SUV, I have a garbage bag and a change of clothes. I work quickly, tying the bag up tight and putting it inside another.

  I drive into town and leave the bag in a dumpster around back of the grocery store. I look at my watch, trash pickup on this street is in four hours. I drive back toward my house, then pass it, and on to the next town. It’s already three in the morning. I have to work quickly. I put the gun in a Styrofoam take out box and then put it in a plastic shopping bag. I drop it in a trashcan outside someone’s house.

  I want to sit here and let the sun rise over me. I stare out onto the suburban street. I wonder what is going on beyond the manicured lawns, behind the drawn curtains. I wonder if the mothers and fathers in those houses know the nuclear blast that goes off in a mother’s chest when she sees blood stains in her son’s underwear. If they know the silent, heavy anvil of guilt that rests on a mother’s chest long after the police have taken her husband away. If they can imagine living the horror three times. I wonder how many of them tell their friends over coffee, “I could KILL those kids sometimes!” but will never know what it’s like to have to do it, but dawn is threatening to break and I don’t even have the luxury of sitting in my car and being envious of their soccer tournaments and family game nights.

  The spot where the rug lay for its short time in our home is clean of blood, but I mop the living room with bleach water just in case. I scrub my hands hoping to wash the river dirt and gunpowder residue off of them, but not knowing how.