by Lex Chase
“I’m sorry,” Ramona said sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
Corentin pulled the trash bag from his bucket and yanked the plastic ties. He tilted his head away from the stench as he sealed the bag into a tight knot. He dropped it back into the bucket with a plunk, then gave Ramona a two-finger salute.
Ramona held out the towel, and he accepted. It was still warm, fresh from the dryer. He blotted his face and noted the lavender fabric softener. Honeysuckle’s favorite brand that she loved to torture him with. Levis that smelled springtime-fresh conjured visions of the Barbie Dreamhouse. He cringed.
Corentin rubbed the towel in his hair. “Taylor’s my family,” he said as he scrubbed. “And I’m his. We may not have much, but we make it work.” It felt so freeing to say it out loud and not have to pretend. He dried off his arms once again. It was as dry as he was going to get anyhow. He could deal with wet jeans. “Taylor has really taken to volunteering at the library. The kids flock to him like ducklings. Like….” He glanced at Ramona.
She grinned. “Like anyone with functioning ovaries flocks to you?”
He chuckled. “Fuck, that’s so embarrassing.”
“I’d enjoy it before age catches up to you.” She winked.
The words concerned him. How old was he? Taylor hadn’t told him. And his journal only gave a rough estimate. Was he really almost fifty?
“I don’t know. I think I’d make a rather dashing seventy-year-old.” He winked at her in return.
“Don’t let your ego bite you in the ass, okay?” She pulled the check from her pocket, and he took it between two fingers and nodded. “Here. For all of your trouble. And thanks for putting up with me luring you out here. You should bring Taylor by. How about dinner?”
Corentin thumbed his chin. “I have to admit, if you can rescue me from another bean supper, I’ll gladly dig out another Barbie doll, on the house.”
“It’s a date.”
“OF ALL the four traffic lights in Ellsworth, you forget the difference between green and red,” Corentin grumbled at the puttering Neon in front of him. He leaned back in the driver’s seat of the truck and dropped his left arm out the window. The Neon timidly crept into traffic. “Go. Move. There’s a gas pedal there, Granny.”
The sun turned the Chevy interior into an oven. Corentin rolled his wrist, working out the crinkle and pop of bones. He lazily soaked up the heat like a sleepy lizard. His jeans were another matter. At least Ramona was nice enough to loan him some extra towels to line the seats. He couldn’t afford to mess up the Chevy.
As the Neon scooted on, Corentin let off the brake and the truck coasted. He ran his hand over the warm leatherette of the steering wheel. The bumps and ridges struck him with an odd unfamiliarity. The off feeling tingled in the back of his mind.
He shook his head. This is my truck, he repeated, as if he’d convince himself. His slow, meditative strokes held him present in the moment. He was here, in this place, in this moment, this truck.
The truck was perfect. What could be wrong? He frowned, then considered Ramona’s check tucked into the cupholder. She had paid him double this time. And not only was it a considerable sum the first time around, but he and Taylor could go far with the extra money.
He scratched at his hairline and then pulled the tie off his short ponytail. He stared straight ahead at the trees, but into a place in his head. Maybe he could go to the Enchanted Forest inside his mind and find a place of comfort. Away from all of this. This… perfection.
The truck was a Chevy. He hated Chevys, or so he thought. The shiny black paint shone like an obsidian arrowhead as he drove down Route 1. The seats grew warm against his aching back. Seat warmers. He snorted with halfhearted derision. No tattered, well-worn, lumpy seats with splits in the seams. The driver’s seat wasn’t old enough to mold to his body.
He halted at a stoplight and watched the sky stretch out well into forever. One could see the mountains from here. Every star when night fell. Every sunrise and sunset, no matter where he was. The leaves smelled of new growth—fresh, crisp, and herbaceous. Even in the mundane world of Maine, the forests painted across the landscape with intense, verdant strokes.
The light turned green, and the poor Neon, which desperately needed to be junked, coughed exhaust and then puttered along in front of him. He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the driver’s side doorframe.
According to the position of the sun, it was going on 2:00 p.m. Taylor would be home soon. Corentin would lure him into a hike down the trails behind their property. Do the little things that couples did. The picture-perfect Norman Rockwell shit that couples did.
The idea left sourness in his mouth. Perfect. There was that thought again.
Did he enjoy it? He swapped hands on the wheel and grabbed his cold coffee from the center cupholder. He rolled the thought over in his mind as he sipped. The bitter, burned garbage Dunkin’ Donuts called coffee insulted him. Unless he special ordered it, his beloved Community Coffee was a thing of the past. He made do. It wasn’t that much of a big deal, save suffering through the swill. He’d get accustomed someday. That someday would be a long time coming. He’d reincarnate sooner before he’d fall in love with another brand.
His temples throbbed as a headache took root deep in his sinuses. The truth glared at him, just like the annoying reflection from the Neon’s back windshield stabbing into his eyes.
Corentin had settled.
The steering wheel creaked under his tightening grip.
He’d settled for a quiet little life and coffee he despised. He’d settled for being the eye-candy of hot-and-bothered housewives everywhere. He’d settled for playing by the rules of the mundane world.
He didn’t settle for Taylor. That was certain. Taylor was a goal at the end of an impossible quest. Taylor was the light he needed when he couldn’t see it. They’d found each other when neither was looking. They were the least they’d suspect, yet were perfection together.
Perfection. There was that word again.
The little Neon turned on its blinker a mile before its upcoming turn. As if making sure Corentin wouldn’t dare mash the car into paste in his Chevy Colorado.
“What are you doing?” he asked the Neon, as if the driver could hear him. But he knew who he was really talking to. “What are you doing?” he asked himself.
He pulled off onto an overlook before he could discover the goal of the Neon’s quest. He popped the door with one hand and scooped up his messenger bag with the other. His monstrous journal pulled on the D-rings of the shoulder strap.
The jewel-blue bay spread out before him, and rolling purple hillsides slithered like a sleeping dragon on the horizon, protecting his treasures. Corentin smirked. Sleeping Dragon. He knew that name well. Everywhere he looked, he saw Taylor in everything.
He took a seat on the flat granite barrier. The cool wind streaked through his damp hair, smelling of salt, seaweed, and lobsters steaming down the road at Dunbar’s. He pulled out his Frankenstein creation of a journal and cradled it like a twenty-pound newborn. Only he was the newborn, and the journal was the proud parent who welcomed him into the world every Tuesday without fail.
The journal greeted him like a familiar friend, unlike the truck, which was a new friend he still wasn’t sure about. It stayed sealed with the bungee cord, making a valiant attempt at holding the mishmash of photographs, receipts, Post-its, pamphlets, Ziploc baggies, and tabs of every color and style. Hundreds of tabs. It was an attempt at keeping things organized, a hint of either a quick guide of where to look up an answer, or something marking a trait. Blue was for personal history. Green for money matters. Yellow was for traveling. Red was for Taylor. There were many red tabs.
He ran his fingers over the cover and traced the edges of the silly layers of stickers on the cover. A white cat with a red bow on one ear winked at him. “Hello Kitty,” he said out loud as he read his own handwriting on the sticker. “From Ringo,” he read, as if it explained why he�
�d have a silly girlish cat.
A bumper sticker wrapped from the front to the back, emblazoned with the word “Boymom.” He squinted at the half-rubbed-off ballpoint pen writing, but pieced it together from the indentations on the sticker. “Taylor’s shirt,” he said, uncertain. He didn’t have much more to go on than that.
A vine of scratch-and-sniff rose stickers crept up the spine. He gave in, scraped with his fingernail, and took a whiff. It didn’t smell like much anymore. But he smiled at the note on it. “Briar Rose,” he said as warmth filled his chest.
Despite the rampant femininity, the journal was maintained by people who cared. He thought highly enough about Taylor to decorate the cover and wanted to remember every part of him. From his annoying smirk when he was being a little shit, to the three tiny moles on his right shoulder blade. Corentin’s favorite place to kiss.
“What are you doing?” he asked himself once more as he watched the light chop of the bay. The tide would be going out soon, and by morning the clam-diggers would be working the mudflats.
“No more secrets,” he vowed as he cracked open the journal. A pen slipped from the pages, bounced off his knee, and tumbled into the pebbles and sand collected under his foot. He grunted as he scooped it up and then clicked it a couple times to clear the debris from the internal mechanism.
He flipped to the blue-tabbed section and skimmed for a blank space. The header of one page seemed to be the best he could do. If his handwriting was any indication, he was the master of writing not only on the microscopic level, but fitting letters within letters, and sentences between lines.
The thick fog of gloom came again. With a few meditative circular markings on the corner of the page, he considered what to say. The happiness vanished from him like a smothered fire, leaving only faint traces of sentimentality. He looked at the truck, and the gold Chevy cross on the grille winked at him in the afternoon light. He hated the truck. He hated the simplicity.
His scribbles flew fast and free, unhindered as his hindbrain screeched in the voice he had locked away. It was the panicked man he kept trapped in the rabbit hole. If he didn’t escape, Corentin wouldn’t have to think about him, and his fears wouldn’t come true. He wouldn’t have to write them down and face them every Tuesday.
His pen stopped. The subconscious urge told him to hesitate. Think carefully of what he’d write next. If he did, there was no going back. It would be there. In purple ink, in a sea of blue letters. Like a raft of stitched-together fears afloat with memories of sameness. Mundanity.
He wrote anyway.
He hated the mundane. He longed for parts of himself he knew were somewhere he couldn’t find. He wasn’t a complete clean slate every Tuesday. There were fragments, whispers of who he was. The whispers faded over time. But he needed them. He needed to know. Who was the huntsman before he had gone soft?
“Soft?” he questioned himself. The word was like an accusation to a crime he knew he committed. He had gone soft. Stagnant.
He missed the self-sufficiency. He underlined that. It was easier when he could cope with his own curse. When Taylor didn’t have to care for him. When he didn’t have to be reminded every day that he was….
He was what?
Self-loathing took him by the heart with its spiny claws. He snarled in the back of his throat and slammed the journal to the ground. The thing hit the asphalt like a concrete block without a bounce.
His journal told him about bad weeks, and this was how it started. He ran his hands through his hair and jerked at the roots; his old anxious habit that he unconsciously maintained.
“I’m what?” He scowled at the book as if it would come to life and talk to him.
Stranger things had happened. Taylor had a dragon for a soul, after all, who had a fondness for exploding microwaves.
“I’m what, huh?” He spat at the ground and then pointed an accusing finger at the journal. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Silence. Of course, his journal wouldn’t answer. He had to write the answers in it himself.
If he didn’t admit it, if he didn’t write it down, it wouldn’t be true. The man struggling to get out of the rabbit hole could stay there. He could learn to be the man in the Enchanted Forest again. He liked that one. The confidence, the power, the belief that he was capable of anything.
The belief he could take care of Taylor.
But it was the other way around.
“No.” He shook his head and his hand trembled. The magic of the journal beckoned him closer. Tempting him to write down the truth. The answer that the twin in the Enchanted Forest would tell him next week. “No!” he bellowed and spun on his heel. He chucked the pen over the cliffside and into the bay below. Satisfaction and peace cooled his anger as the pen made a soft plink into the water.
That solved that issue. Life would go on as normal. He and Taylor would have a good week. Full of love, laughter, and the joy that came without the complications of magic, witches, and stuffy traditions, as Taylor always said. Life on their terms. They were a team. And Ringo and Honeysuckle were the happy additions to their household. They had a home, Corentin had a steady job, Taylor found the peace he needed.
Perfection.
Corentin would settle for perfection. He would settle for coffee he hated and a truck he flip-flopped about taking back to the dealership or keeping.
He snatched his journal from the ground and gave it a small toss like a child. The wind greeted him again, and the fires of his freedom burned once more inside him. Freedom smelled of fresh starts, and the sky stretched on into forever, promising him a bright future.
Turning to grab his messenger bag from the granite barrier, his denial cracked into his skull.
The pen stood on the center barrier by the nib. His journal demanded answers and wouldn’t take Corentin’s refusal once more.
“No….” His voice trembled. “Please.”
The pen taunted him. Reminded him the curse must be obeyed, no matter how high the cost. His freedom ripped away from his fingers.
If he could get the truck, drive away, and leave the pen behind, he wouldn’t have to.
But there would be other pens. There would always be other pens. And the journal would not be satisfied until it collected Corentin’s thoughts. He would destroy himself, he would rewrite his own history, erase his past, become someone new every week until the person he was a year ago was not the same man at all.
A year from now, he wouldn’t remember this moment of conflict. The yearning for something he had long denied himself. Something he didn’t know he was denying himself. It was the missing piece, the hope it would all come together. A year from now, he wouldn’t give it a second thought.
He would be settled. He would love the shitty coffee. He’d love his truck. In fact, his truck would be immaculate. Not a single speck of dirt or a coffee cup on the floorboards. Hell, he’d wash it regularly. Even get it detailed. He wouldn’t give another thought to his old junk-heap Ford. He wouldn’t even remember the day Phillipa died in it.
Before he knew it, the pen was in his hand and he was sitting on the barrier. His page was open, and then his pen was on the paper.
“I hate being fragile,” he said out loud as he wrote. He swallowed.
You are fragile. The journal parroted back to him.
“I am fragile,” he repeated the words as he ran his fingers over them.
The journal was satisfied, and he trapped the magic within the pages with the bungee cord. With a moment of mournful ceremony, he slipped it back into the messenger bag and back on the passenger seat. He circled the truck to the driver’s side and then looked out over the crystalline bay once again.
“Why can’t you be simple, Henri?” he asked himself.
With a flick of the wrist, he popped the door with a heavy clunk and a silent coasting of well-oiled joints. Nothing like the shrill squeaks and sticking joints of the Ford. He would force himself to like the Chevy. And in time, if his journal had anything to say
about it, he’d love it. He’d even want another one.
He snorted. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, fuckwit.”
As he stepped into the truck and settled in the driver’s seat, a giant white-green-and-purple streak screeched into the overlook. Corentin shielded his eyes from the cloud of dust, then blinked through the haze.
“A FedEx truck?” he asked as the boxy truck fishtailed into the overlook. The truck had lost traction but stopped a full inch from the granite barrier. He whistled as the driver hopped out of the truck and then balanced on the barrier wall like it was routine.
Corentin shot out of the Chevy and hustled to the open passenger side door of the delivery truck.
The driver dug through his deliveries in the back. Was he checking on their safety?
“Are you okay?” Corentin called.
“Yeah!” the driver said. “I’m good.”
After another few thumps of boxes, the driver emerged holding a large white-and-blue flat-rate postal box. He scanned the package with his tablet and quietly waited for the records to process.
Corentin arched a brow. What the fuck?
The driver considered his tablet and then studied Corentin’s face.
“You really okay?” Corentin asked again. This time he wasn’t so sure if he was making the FedEx truck up or not. Then again, magic was everywhere.
“Henri Corentin Devereaux?” the driver asked. “Got a package for ya.”
“Wait, what?” Corentin shook his head. What the…?
“Sign here,” the driver said and handed over the tablet.
Corentin hesitated as the guy held out his stylus. “Uh….”
“C’mon, man, I promise I wiped it down.” He gave a smile and then a humored sigh. “I know that bug is going ’round. Nasty stuff. They say it gets you coming out both ends.”
“Um… thanks,” Corentin said and took the stylus. He still wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating. After all, his journal was cranky with him. “Heh, cranky,” he said out loud.
“What was that?”
