The Place They Are Safe

by Alan Spencer

  "No, I don't find it strange. And I'm not fucking with you. It's what we did for fun. That's all that matters, man. Fun. Not why, or how. It's just happening." Peyton finished his selections and they walked out. "This is what happens in Meadow Woods. It's life as we want it to be. Anything we want. Our happiness is here."

  "Why is it like that? Who brings in the food? Who pays for it? Who tends to the upkeep of the store?"

  "You ask too many Goddamn questions, Mark. It's annoying. Stop ruining a good time. Maybe we shouldn't keep you here. You want to dismantle the place and pull back the curtain and see how the machine ticks. We get what we want because we don't pull the curtain back. We're supposed to enjoy what we're given, not dissect it. I'm asking you to enjoy our time together. It can be a wonderful thing if you let it be."

  Mark didn't know what to say, so he moved on. "Where are we going?"

  "You'll find out soon enough."

  Peyton actively chomped on a bag of Doritos. He gained the nickname "Breath" for the combinations of food he ate when they were children. No girl would come within a mile of his breath. Peyton defended himself by saying, "The ladies don't need to be around my mouth, if you catch my drift."

  Mark was sipping on a Coke Peyton gave him as they scouted the row of houses they studied from a backyard's vantage point. This was the game he invented as a child. Mark admitted whenever he got bored, he got creative. Most kids would deface property, or skateboard, or sneak booze in the local caves and get wasted. Instead, Mark liked to create confusion.

  Peyton wanted to relive those days of creating confusion. "I've got something I want you to put in Mrs. Gregson's video collection."

  Peyton showed off the DVD he pulled out of his coat. The Best of Anal Maniacs.

  Mrs. Gregson was eighty years old and reclusive. She didn't marry, and she volunteered at the local library. Frigid was the word Peyton used, among other descriptors. "Wait 'til that bitch gets a gander at holes being stuffed with humongous cocks."

  Mark laughed, sensing that good old feeling of teenage mischief revisited. "She'll probably get off on the shit. It'll bring back memories of the war. Any war. Wait, I don't even know what that means."

  Mark was the craftsman of many indignities that happened in Meadow Woods. On Mr. Chambers's tool shed, Mark smeared fake blood on all the tools and had it dripping on the floor. Another time, he switched the items in Mrs. Wells's cupboards into different compartments to scare the be-Jesus out of her. He wrote odd messages in the tabs of Mr. Butterman's law books, like: "Clause 101 Section B. Get Fucked," "Section 8, Legally Bleeding Vagina," "New Clause 99, Lisa Butterman's a Dirty Whore Who Can't Keep Her Butt Closed." He dumped Mrs. Neilson's mouthwash down the sink and placed muddy water with tadpoles in it. He changed realtor signs. "For Sale: Now Only Costs 100 Cunts." "For Sale: Murder House Half Price."

  When Mark's first girlfriend, Brandy Louis, broke up with him, they drew buttholes on all of her stuffed animals. Other times, they wrote notes on doors or walls that listed directions to buried treasure. Every prank was an adventure.

  "Do it, man," Peyton urged him, handing him the dirty DVD. "In fact, put it in her DVD player. Man, she'll never see it coming."

  Mark couldn't explain the giddiness overcoming him as he carried the DVD and walked towards the woman's back door. It was unlocked. Mark listened for anybody inside. There wasn't a sound. He was in luck. She wasn't home. Mark entered. He snuck about the house as an invader. In her living room, Mark happened upon her entertainment center. The shelf beside the television had five rows of DVD tapes, each of them marked on the tab "Phil Gregson 1991 Week 1-3," "Phil Gregson 1991 Week 4-6," "Phil Gregson 1991 Week 7-9," and so on, up until a year and a half ago. This was Anna Gregson's collection of her husband on video. This wasn't family videos, he thought, this was play-by-play footage of a man's life.

  Peyton's words repeated, This is what happens in Meadow Woods. It's life as we want it to be. Anything we want. Our happiness is here.

  Anna's happiness was her husband's life.

  "If it's whatever they want, why not bring Phil Gregson back to life?"

  "Because the dead are gone. They can't be brought back." Peyton was standing in the living room. Peyton gave Mark a startle. "I came in here wondering what was taking you so fucking long."

  Play it off, Mark thought. "I, uh, was trying to figure out if I should leave the TV on or let it play while the TV was off. She'd turn it on, and boom, porno."

  "Now you're talking. Scare the crap out of her. That's the spirit." He gave Mark a high five. "My old friend is finally starting to loosen up."

  * * *

  They were sitting on the deck of Mr. Alexander's above ground pool eating through the assortment of chips and salty goods when Peyton said, "We've got to come up with some new pranks. Really stir it up. You're the only one who shares my sense of humor. That's why we hit it off so much back in the day. I was getting bored here."

  "Bored? Here? No way. This is supposed to be the best place ever, according to you."

  Mark remembered why he left Meadow Woods in the first place. It was a small town closed off from any opportunities. The town wasn't connected to anybody else. No colleges nearby. It was good for seclusion, and that was about it.

  "I'm serious, let's do something crazy."

  "Show me around town some more first," Mark said. "Admit it, it's weird what's happening here. People getting their wishes. Not dying when they're supposed to be dead. Then Richie..."

  "Okay, shut up about it already, I'll show you around." Peyton was annoyed. Had they convinced themselves they were normal and everybody else was strange? "Where to?"

  "Everywhere. I want to understand this place."

  Peyton looked down into the pool for a moment. "I could go for a swim."

  "Here?"

  "Not here. You'll find out. We'll have big fun there."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chuck Flynn's slaughterhouse wasn't what Mark had in mind for a destination. Peyton drove him in his truck to the building and parked outside the cattle pins where black and white cows were looking out at them. Twenty-four cows total, Mark counted. Standing near the fence, Mark petted the few who didn't shy away. Their snouts were so wet, they dripped mucous. They stank of cow patties and hay wilting in the sun.

  "I'm getting hungry just looking at these cows." Peyton rubbed his belly. The man had to wipe the saliva from the edges of his lips. "You had meat from this slaughterhouse yesterday. It's exquisite. The best you'll ever taste. So good, I'd slaughter these guys myself."

  "No you wouldn't," Mark said. "The first trace of blood, your ass would pass out. It's grim and nasty work."

  Peyton shushed him. "Well, it's good meat is all I'm saying."

  From the warehouse, out came Chuck Flynn, the big-gutted man who kept his beard long and his body rotund. He wore a checkered flannel shirt, jeans, and a black rubber apron that was at the moment dry. In that powerful booming boisterous voice, Chuck greeted them.

  "Peyton, good morning. I see you've brought your friend. I can't remember your name. I saw you briefly the other day. I'm thrilled you stayed."

  Peyton introduced Mark. "This is Mark Tripdick. He's one of the more sensitive people we've had come back to Meadow Woods. Question mark this, question mark that."

  "When you stop asking questions is when you start to really live. My dad wasn't much for emotions or talking about his feelings, but he loved The Beetles for some reason. He said live like one of their songs, and you're doing good. Just be happy."

  Mark wanted to say that James Flynn was a wife-beater who had been arrested three times and was charged with drunk driving and disorderly conduct. What the fuck did that man know about healthy and sane living, or The Beetles?

  "So when's the next barbeque?" Peyton rubbed his hands together. "I go to sleep thinking about your meat. And I've been meaning to ask you, is it the sauce, or is it the meat?"

  Chuck pretended to zip his lips shut. "Family secret. I d
on't want any competition either, and I mean you specifically, Peyton. The only thing I can say is that the fatter the cook, the better the cook, and I've got you beat by a landslide, slim."

  Chuck spoke to Mark. "It's nice to have new people in town again. Lindsey Jenkins is throwing another block party tonight. I'm catering. You guys should come. Beer and beef for everybody. Lindsey always throws a great party. The best party planner in Meadow Woods. She's a socialite if I ever met one." He winked at Mark. "I assume Cassie will be strapped to your side."

  Peyton corrected the man's assumption. "Mark's decided to be difficult about that too. But me, when a woman throws herself at me, when she's practically shoving her panties down my throat, I go for it. Don't turn it into mind games or feelings. Just fuck the bitch already."

  They high-fived each other, and Mark rolled his eyes. It's not about the sex. It's about you weird fucking people.

  Mark let it go. They wouldn't understand his reservations.

  "Why question something if it's good?" Chuck seemed to read Mark's thoughts. "Keep asking yourself that, Mark, and you'll eventually feel better about everything."

  They left the slaughterhouse. That left Chuck to return to his tasks of the day. One thing was much easier in his life these days. The fear of butchering was no longer a factor in Chuck Flynn's life. He had slashed the femoral artery of his first cow at six years old. At that age, Chuck didn't want anything to do with killing any animals. His father tightened his hand over the knife and forced him to wield it like a killer. "It's only blood," his old man would say as streams of blood gushed from the cow's neck. "The blood's not yours, son. That's all that matters."

  Chuck was now walking the facility with those memories in his head. He stopped at the flensing line. It was an empty room without the hooks hanging from the ceiling track anymore. This wasn't his father's slaughterhouse anymore.

  This was Chuck's slaughterhouse.

  The concrete walls bore no blood stains. No evidence of death. In the past, before everything changed, he lived with the fear of imagining or hearing the blade part through flesh. He drank whiskey to begin the day and to conclude it, fighting the nightmarish images of what equated to murder. Things were terrible when he slaughtered animals.

  Past tense.

  Chuck no longer slaughtered animals.

  "Grow a spine, Chuck. This is the family business. You're too fucking stupid to do anything else. It's meat, Chuck. They're cows. They were born to be butchered. So butcher them."

  Never again, Chuck kept telling himself, never ever again.

  Chuck walked down the same short hall the cattle once did, what his vicious father called "The Death March." The idea of a death march chilled him to the core.

  No cows were on their way to slaughter today. Never again. Chuck kept moving down that dreaded hall, bypassing the giant killing floor. Beyond that area was a walk-in fridge. Propped in refrigerated shelves, ribs were ready to be cooked. Beef was already chucked and grinded down and stored in Styrofoam packaging. Choice cuts were placed in their proper compartments. And not a drop of red had to be shed.

  Not a single drop.

  The meat replenished itself. Chuck slaughtered nothing.

  And nobody had to know his little secret.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "I can show you around some more, or we can have some fun," Peyton said. "I say we have fun. What say you?"

  Driving through town, passing a school where recess was in full-swing and the teachers were nowhere in sight, Mark paused on an even stranger sight. Women from their middle ages to the elderly filed into the library in a mass group. Mark counted fifty or more enter, ready to check out books.

  "What's with them?"

  "They love the library. They have a club, or something. I've never been inside. It's a female thing. They stay all day and don't leave until nighttime. Probably won't come out until the block party tonight."

  Once the last woman entered, the door closed. Every window in the library blacked themselves out.

  What the hell is that about?

  "I'm not even going to ask about the windows."

  Peyton nodded. "Good idea. It'll just confuse you."

  "So the party tonight, do they happen every day?"

  "Yes, but there's other shit we can do too. Anything we want." Peyton drummed his fingers on the wheel, anxious for the next thing. "I've got an idea. Will you humor me, or will you shit your pants about it?"

  "No, I won't shit my pants about it."

  "Good."

  Peyton kept driving.

  Velma Codstock had worked at the Howard Milton Library for her entire adult career. Thirty-five years of shelving books, cataloguing items, managing the shifts, and performing the general upkeep of the building. Velma was the library, and she was constantly busy with patrons as much as she concentrated on her own desires. At the help desk, the long line of women much like herself, aged sixty and older, others middle aged and desperate for that special escape, waited in their best dresses and made up faces to receive their literary selections.

  Frannie MacMillion wanted to undergo a misadventure in Paris, so Velma handed her a novel based in Paris about a woman who found love at the highest point in the Eifel Tower. Then Alana Thompson who enjoyed true crime and mysteries received a book about a female detective hot on the trail of a bus station killer. Jayne Olshan craved cookbooks so she could cook for her husband and children who had never ending bellies, so Velma gave her "101 Recipes from Scratch."

  Many more women came with these kind of requests, but Velma often slipped the patrons a special bonus. What these women really wanted and were too afraid to ask for. The women were too shy to request these things, so she left numerous tables in corners of the buildings that were heaped with paperback romance books. Velma preferred the trashy romance books herself. All she had to do was turn the page, and the room itself changed. She picked one book right now. Suddenly, Velma was in her mid-twenties again living in a Roman setting, standing between two marble columns, where a large group of Roman soldiers came from every corner to touch her, caress her body, and ravage her with sex. The orgy consumed her. Velma was more than willing to be consumed.

  The landmark wasn't humanely possible. It was real, yes, even though Mark denied its natural existence. A large slope rose from the east, much like a hill. It was tall as a five story building. The hill stood as a distant juggernaut. A wooden incline much like that of a built rollercoaster had been incorporated into the side of the hill.

  A water slide.

  It was the largest water slide he'd ever seen. The slide itself fed into a sizeable body of water. Mark imagined four swimming pools combined into one. At the pool, many people floated on rubber tubes or laid out on the built decks to sunbathe and drink from the Tiki bar hut or play mini-golf on the course behind the giant hill. They enjoyed the sun despite it being the fall season.

  This place was a living dream.

  Peyton ruffled a gym bag stuck between the seats. "I took the liberty of bringing you a swim suit and a towel."

  "Wait, I'm not going down that thing, if that's what you're implying."

  Peyton's persuasive nature was about to be engaged. Knowing the convincing was coming, Mark stayed quiet against the arguing powerhouse.

  "If you're afraid you'll hurt yourself, don't be. Nobody dies here. It's not allowed. Even if you haven't committed yet. A power's in the air. It's watching over all of us. And when you commit, it'll only make you that much stronger. Jesus Christ, it's a happy fun slide! Read the damn sign. HAPPY FUN SLIDE. Why be afraid? Or do you think Cassie's hanging around in her bathing suit and your boner for her will pop right out, is that it? Well, fear nothing, she's not here. She's got other things on her mind. Plotting other ways to get into your pants. I'd give you shit about not screwing her brains out every which way, but thinking about it, you've got power. Finally a man with power. Hold that power over her for as long as you can. When you let go of it, it's gone forever. Absolutely
forever. Then it's dick-in-a-jar-under-the-sink time for you."

  "If I go down this happy fun slide thing, will it prove something?"

  Peyton gave him a nod, that yes, Mark doing this will prove something, so let's get going already.

  "Fine," Mark said. "Then here we come, happy fun slide."

  Dressed in a bathing suit, Mark was paler than he remembered. Couldn't the town that banished death and created unnatural landmarks and unnatural weather patterns cure paleness? Getting to the top of the giant slide was a chore. He had to scale five flights of stairs before he arrived at the neon blue slide with rushing water firing down it.

  Mark was stabbed with nervousness.

  Peyton was behind him, clapping his hands. The mix of kids and adults behind them cheered them on too.

  "Come on, Mark. Don't be a pansy. Don't be a pansy. Don't be a pansy."

  They chanted.

  Don't be a pansy.

  Don't be a pansy.

  Don't be a pansy.

  More people joined in.

  Don't be a pansy.

  Don't be a pansy.

  Don't be a pansy.

  A girl no older than six behind Peyton said over the taunting, "Hurry up, mister, or go down the chicken exit."

  Other kids derided Mark for cowering, and that's when Peyton kicked the backs of his knees just right that Mark was flung onto the mouth of the slide. The rushing waters sent him hurtling down the unbelievable five-story journey downwards. Mark released the loudest shrill his lungs could muster.

  Mark surged down the slide banging his body. He couldn't see where he was going, falling at accelerating speeds. He feared breaking his neck, or more. When he finally shot into the pool of water at the drop like a human bullet, Mark had good reason to shout in wrenching pain.

  Carried on a bright orange stretcher at the life guard station, Mark was loaded into a ambulance. Peyton was inside the ambulance sitting on one side of him. On the other side, an EMT calmly drank from a cherry slushee he picked up from the Tiki snack bar. The EMT was too interested in his drink to assess the damage to Mark's knee. It felt like his right knee had shattered; jagged shards shifted beneath the skin. Any slight movement, be it to breathe or to adjust on the stretcher, Mark was blinded by a wave of intense agony. He had struck the edge of the slide sometime during the descent, his knee taking the full impact.