The Place They Are Safe

by Alan Spencer

  Relaxing on pool chairs and looking out into the cityscape with a bucket of iced Merlot between them, they didn't say much. They were naked, exhausted, and laying on white beach towels. Mark kept thinking this was amazing. Impossible, and yet amazing. It was happening, and he couldn't deny it. He wouldn't be concerned with why and how it was happening until tomorrow, when Cassie explained more about what committing actually meant.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Velma Codstock's back rested against the back of the periodicals section in the library, her aged body clothed in only sweat and sex. Her blood was coursing through her veins with the after burn of lovemaking under the Texas stars. The setting belonged to the novel called The Bronco Rider, a trash romance novel that was one among many on the shelves. Naked where she stood, she noted how her skirt and top were strewn piles on the carpet. She'd had a wonderful time today. Every time she spent the day at the library was wonderful.

  Velma gathered up her personal items. First, she located her purse. She rummaged through it to locate a cigarette. Smoking it to her delight, she peered out to the neighboring shelves and caught Selma Felter talking to herself, sitting at a table alone, and spilling her heart to "Detective Thomerson" from the "Thomerson Files" novels. Selma was playing "Wendy Jenkins," a woman who lost her husband during a burglary. After her husband's death, she has to put her life together, and she somehow falls in love with Detective Thomerson, a man on edge and an vicious alcoholic. There was also Beatrice Evans, her three hundred pound naked ass splayed on the couch after playing a French whore during the first world war. She'd been run through by many soldiers. The old hag always dreamed of having strapping military men give her the business. The library was cast in darkness at all corners, except for the emergency exit lights.

  Under the glow of those red lights, Velma caught various women recovering from living out their dreams in books. Women waking up from a deep sleep, hair disheveled, or clothes torn from their bodies. They'd lived out another day in their private fantasy worlds, and now it was time to go home for the night. It wouldn't be long before Velma returned to a new book and played out yet another adventure.

  Ronald Sexton had a late night customer. Five minutes before closing his barber shop, Derrick Collins, the hard working novelist, hurried to his front door begging for a haircut and shave. He said it made him writer better when he felt clean and fresh.

  The barber couldn't deny Mr. Collins his services.

  The barber cleaned his straight razor. He lathered James's face with shaving cream, smoothed it out, and asked him about his current work in progress.

  "How's that book of yours coming along?"

  Derrick went on to describe the book.

  Ronald wasn't listening. He was working.

  He began to shave. Precise strokes. Clean skin. No burn. Cleaving hair so close to the skin, not even the greatest barber could get that close without cutting into flesh.

  Hypochondriac, Patricia Lake woke up on her couch with that itching feeling. It radiated on her thighs and trailed down her ankles in splotchy patches like a poison ivy rash. Or was it hives? or rickets? or some flesh eating disorder she hadn't even heard of before?

  I shouldn't have swam in the river. Pollutants. Irritants. My poor skin!

  "I have to call Dr. Albert."

  I've bothered him enough today. He'll think I'm crazy. Even the sweetest doctors won't put up with me. They draw the line.

  But I need medical attention.

  I itch, I itch, I itch!

  "I'm not a hypochondriac." She said it aloud, as if someone in the empty house had outright accused her. "I'm not. I'm seriously in need of help. They'll be sorry they ever laughed at me."

  Her boyfriend would be here soon, and she wanted to be intimate with him. But not like this, not with this nasty spreading rash on her body.

  She scratched, scratched, and scratched because it itched, itched, itched. Raking those swelling pink raised bumps—perhaps mosquito bites or rope burn (but how would she get rope burn?)—kept burning. She obeyed the need to itch. Red dripped from her fingers. The trenches in her skin bubbled up with crimson. Threads of skin were caked on her fingertips. She'd bled onto the couch, her thighs dripping with paint-thick crimson spatters.

  This is an emergency.

  Dr. Albert doesn't care. He loves his patients.

  The way he addressed everyone with those soft brown eyes and teddy bear smile, the old doctor genuinely cared about everyone he treated, on or off-duty. Her mother said some men were destined to become one thing or another, and Dr. Albert was destined to be a medicine man. A healer.

  He was her healer, and he'd give her what she needed under any circumstances, and knowing that, she could see Matt, her boyfriend, tonight that much sooner. She could make love to him. Eat candy bars and buttered popcorn and drink sugary sodas and watch late night TV with her friends, unlike how it used to be, cooped up at home, protected by her mother, because she was allergic to everything, phobic of open spaces, and worried at every blemish and blotch that appeared on her flesh.

  Fingers dripping and red pattering the carpet on the way to the kitchen, she opened the top cabinet above the stove and retrieved the cleaned out mayonnaise jar. Taking it with her to the living room, she dug her hand into it wrist-deep and selected a bubble gum flavored sucker and chomped the candy until it went down her throat in jagged shards.

  It's a good thing Dr. Albert gave her so many suckers. They made her feel better every time.

  After eating the candy, she gathered the items to clean the blood on the carpet before Matt came over with the movie rental and a pizza.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  Carrie Sontag propped the sewing scissors on the edge of the sink, the pointed ends open wide. She duct-taped the handles to the surface, keeping it secure. On her knees, between the toilet and the sink, all she'd have to do is shove her face forward, and she'd gouge out her eyes.

  She was seconds from committing to the deed, when her sister, Caroline, showed up to visit her. Knocking again after seconds of nothing, Susan unstuck the scissors and shoved the evidence back into the sink's drawer.

  It always happened that way, and she thanked God it did.

  Carrie had come so close to letting the loneliness overtake her, after her husband died of cancer. Her loving sister who married a real estate agent and moved to Maine was back in Meadow Woods again. Caroline was back to comfort her. No more loneliness. No more suicidal thoughts. Carrie banned those dark thoughts from her mind now that she had what she needed to be happy again.

  Lindsey Browne was in a panic. It set in after each block party was over. She faced a street littered with paper cups where her guests had consumed beer, wine, and mixed drinks. Grease stained paper plates were spread out on the sidewalks and gravel road. Chuck Flynn was gone after driving his cooker back to his restaurant. The road blocks had been removed, and she was left all alone to clean up the mess of tonight's special festivities. She picked up the refuse with plastic-gloved hands determined to finish the job so she could move on to the next thing. The next social event. A town without fun, a town without people, was no town at all, nor was it a place worth living in. She began drumming up ideas for the next party. She would advertise tomorrow afternoon and execute the event that evening. All she had to do was clean up tonight's mess, and she'd jump right into it. Sleep be damned.

  Bruce Parnell was sitting on his roof and scouting the neighborhood with his binoculars, thinking to himself: Prude bitch, Lindsey, can't get enough of planning her happy town activities. A bottle of wine and a dick in your ass, and you'll be worrying about how much fun you're having instead of how much fun everybody else is having. Get a life, lady.

  Sweeping to the left with his binoculars, he caught Peyton sitting in his behemoth truck with his hands down in his pants, his mouth open like a dog as he panted and stroked himself. Peyton was parked outside the library, watching the milfs get off in their books. He could see through t
hose tinted windows. Only Peyton could, because that was his fantasy, and the town doled them out even for people like dirty Peyton. Spit on the ol' knob, Peyton, and keep polishing it. You're almost blind.

  Adjusting his long range binoculars, he spied Aimee Scott wading in the ocean. She had just jumped off the cliff. She batted at the waters, checking the darkness beneath, and calling out, though he couldn't hear her words, only see her mouth widen, go small, and then yell again. She was frantic. Desperate.

  The little tyke's gone, my dear. Sunk to the bottom. He didn't wear his floatation device. When he comes up, he'll be a fucking dead buoy baby.

  Bruce took a break after having strained his eyes for too long. He caught his reflection in the open window leading back into his house. He quickly averted his eyes to avoid his own judgment.

  Chuck Flynn's cooking had not only whet the pallet of Meadow Woods, it had filled their stomachs and had them coming back for more everyday. That meant his stocks of meat, the pork, the bacon, the beef, the pork roast and cutlets, the hotdogs, the sausages, the steaks, all of it had to be replenished. Standing there alone in the hallway leading to the slaughter room, he considered his options.

  His attention veered back to another room after a long consideration process. He walked to the flensing line. Hooks hung from the ceiling in pitch black rooms. A light gust of the air conditioning escaped the ducts, the steel "tinking" together like killer chimes. Stuck to magnets on the wall were twenty-five different cleavers, their blades sharp enough to split bone and cut through a thick tree branch. Meat grinders were huddled in another corner that could shred and kick out hundreds of pounds of beef in no time. Boning and flensing knives were all arranged from large to small on a tack board, as if this were a mechanic's shop and the knives were hubcaps, not deadly weapons. The cattle and pigs were outside in their pins awaiting to be lead down the hall to that slaughter room. The room where his father didn't gas them or render them dead before slitting their major arteries in their neck. He enjoyed their suffering. Got off on it.

  Nicknamed The Meat Man, a self-given name, his father didn't wear gloves or a rubber apron as he strung the animals on hooks and removed their flesh, skinned them, and prepped them for sale.

  "Don't you dare tell anyone in town that I don't put them out of their misery before I cut them up," his father, The Meat Man, insisted in that piggish voice, as if he'd somehow become a living, breathing swine. "No one must know. Not even your mother."

  The sign on his shop promoted: Humane Slaughter for Humane People.

  Liar.

  Monster.

  His father smoked a fat cigar that stank as bad as the blood and guts and shit shed in the name of slaughter. Chuck, as a young man, was there to clean up the mess with a shovel and squeegee it down a gurgling drain. He didn't kill cattle. His father wanted that job all to himself. So Chuck watched cattle death at a young age, fearing his father would call upon him to do more than clean-up the facility one day. To be a slaughterer.

  "You're a coward, but your mother loves you," he would say after a hard day's work. "Now get out of my sight. You're your mother's child. No son of mine is a spine-less pussy."

  Chuck shuttered, living down those memories even to this night. He had work to do, still. He entered the freezers and walk-in fridges to take stock. The shelves were stocked with the meat he'd need for tomorrow without a single drop of blood shed.

  What sweet relief.

  Swallowing ocean water so salty and bitter, Aimee Scott plunged herself into the depths, punching, and slicing, and turning over the waters with her arms in search of what she'd lost.

  "I'm so sorry," she screamed out, then plunge back underwater, touching the shallow bottom, scraping her palms and splitting the tips of her fingers on the rocky bottoms. Then she'd come back up for air only to apologize to the ocean all over again.

  Lou Jackson dove into the water after her. Paddling hard, he reached Aimee in a hurry. Jackson wrapped his burly powerhouse arms around her and paddled both of them back to shore. Jackson worked his hands up and down her arms to warm them back up. He started a bonfire outside the hunting shack. He poured a bourbon bullet down her throat, and he kept her close to him and the fire, saying soothingly, "I love you. I will always love you. We share this regret together."

  The words had their way with her. Aimee let him strip her out of her clothes and for the fire to warm her flesh. She kept the bourbon bottle in her lap as she laid on the blanket, letting the man's words sink in, assuaging the turmoil she kept inside herself on that horrible day she made the decision she would regret for the rest of her life. But Jackson stayed here, helped her through it, saying he was sorry for what part he had in the tragedy. They clung to each other, letting the magic of Meadow Woods bring them back to happiness.

  Ernest Gibbs read his book in the study of his house surrounded by what he loved. He drank and read books. He didn't sleep. He didn't need it. So much to read, so much to drink, so many cigars to smoke, this was the life he always dreamed about living. Shelves and shelves of books were in the room on shelves, titles ranging from Encyclopedias, to Victorian novels, to genre fiction, to tomes of poetry, to texts filled with art from the Romantic Era. Despite the collection, he kept reading from the same book, the words inside them ever changing to match the old man's fancies.

  Reyna Hawkins had finished painting the walls of the house on the hill overlooking the residential area of Meadow Woods. Living room walls were now the depths of caves. So real, the rooms of the house were musty with the scent of stale water and sediments and dark dweller life. Her imagination was so powerful, anything she imagined she could channel out the paintbrush. Finished with this house, Reyna packed her paints and drop cloths and moved on to the next empty house, the next project to undertake. What to paint? she kept thinking. What will I create next?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mark woke up in Cassie's bed. Alone and feeling so strange in someone's home, he called out to her. The attempt was useless, because she wasn't here. He located a note on the dry erase board on the fridge:BE BACK SOON. SORRY I HAD TO LEAVE.

  "Where the hell would she go?" And why didn't she wake me up herself and tell me goodbye?

  Cassie went somewhere, and for some reason, she didn't want him to know where.

  Pouring himself a cup of coffee from the half full Mr. Coffee, Mark drank it and waited for the perk-up. His back was sore, as were his joints. Of all the things I thought I'd ever do with my life, I never imagined having sex underwater. Or not needing air to breathe. That was crazy. And awesome.

  Sitting on the kitchen table, the surface giving a cherry shine, he couldn't believe the spiral his life had taken. Upward, indeed, since he wasn't dying anymore. But this wasn't reality, as fantastic as his experiences were becoming. What was the catch? When did a waiter come along and drop him a bill for services rendered?

  The firm reminder something was amiss was Richie's smoking bones blackened to the gristle. All because he'd stepped out of Meadow Woods.

  A pang in his gut told him something about this experience was very wrong. That was his better judgment taking the fun down a peg.

  Slugging the rest of his coffee back, he decided he wanted to go for a walk. He could cut through the levee back to the woods and hit the trail he had jogged with Elizabeth. It was his way of honoring her. Apologizing for sleeping with Cassie, though he understood she would want him to be happy after her death.

  Searching the house, Mark located a clean pair of fresh clothes, and stopping to admire them and their placement, he assumed Cassie had left them folded out nice and neat. They fit perfectly. He exited through the backyard to take his walk. Another chance to collect his thoughts. Again.

  It wasn't surprising the first person Mark came upon in the wood was Derrick Collins. His eyes were surrounded by hatch-mark wrinkles, always scrutinizing thoughts, ideas, and words on a page. Derrick had been in charge of the creative writing club in high school, and he was always jotting
notes in a spiral bound notebook, or reading a book. His father was a local sport's columnist for the town paper, and Derrick was handed the writing bug in a different form. Mark hadn't read any of his books, unless he'd written under a penname, though Mark doubted Derrick ever turned his fiction into serious money.

  Mark wanted to attempt a conversation, but Derrick gave him a sneer and turned his head to the side. "No time. I'm writing."

  Say no more, man. I'm fucking off.

  Mark continued up the trail, keeping his pace at a brisk walk. He remained alone for a half hour when up through the dense landscape he heard voices. Meaningless from a distance, but he stepped off the path and trudged through broken logs and loose rocks, trying not to turn his ankle, and closed in on the talkers. The instinct not to be seen compelled him to stay hidden.

  There was a large number of people coming down the path. Some were side-by-side, two-by-two, three-by-three, and others trudged on alone, done talking, as others were only warmed up and had much more to say to each other. Among the group, he recognized Peyton chatting with Dr. Albert. Chuck Flynn was talking to two of the ladies he'd seen at the library, the old women going on and on as if spewing useless gossip. Sheriff Hildebrandt was scolding Cassie. Cassie was waving her arms up and down and red-faced, really drilling her point home, whatever that point may be. The sheriff cut her off with harsh words, and Cassie seized his arm and shook the man hard. They got into it again. Mark couldn't hear a word of it.