Violet Eyes

by John Everson

  “We’ll never know,” she said. “Will we?”

  Dinner was amazing. Not because of the food, which was great (A Cajun/Caribbean fusion…who knew?)—but because it was so enjoyable to sit and talk, completely at ease, with a man again. Even when she had first met Anders, Rachel had always been a little nervous when they had gone out to dinner or more usually, bars. When she’d met him, Anders had attracted her more from what he didn’t say, than what he did. He had a way of looking at you; a way of making a woman wonder what it would be like to be held by him.

  Anders wasn’t a really tall guy, but his arms had been solid. Muscular. You could tell he was a man who worked with his hands even before you saw the grit beneath his fingers. One look at him bent over a mug at the bar, black T-shirt tight over his shoulder blades, and you knew that this guy would strip down nice, and would make you know you were a woman. Maybe make you feel like a slut, truth be known, because you could tell from looking at him that he probably wasn’t going to bring you flowers; he was probably going to buy you a couple shots and then take you back to his bedroom and bang the shit out of you and then when he’d had his fill, tell you to get out when he was done because he had to work in the morning. And the tattoos of snakes and demons that peeked out from beneath his shirtsleeves only added to the mystique.

  Why would a woman fall for an asshole like that, when you could see the writing on the wall from the very first moment?

  Rachel had asked herself that over and over again for years. Anders had tried to occasionally act like a gentlemen at first, she had to admit that he had. But he never really had known how to truly share his heart with her. And eventually, she had stopped giving him free access to stomp on her own.

  Being with Terry was like stepping from the foul air of the factory to the pure breath of the forest. She almost snorted at the thought. Okay, hokey, but true. Rachel had found herself bantering with him from the moment they’d met, and that didn’t stop when he picked her up for dinner. He was kind and warm and easy to joke with. When Boudreaux’s was starting to empty out, and Terry mentioned that it was probably time to take her home, Rachel felt her heart sink.

  He must have seen the look on her face, because a moment later he said, “If I get you home safe, will you promise to risk another date with me this weekend?”

  Rachel couldn’t halt the smile from stealing her face. She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  He held out a hand and his fingers were quickly warm around her elbow. “C’mon then, let’s see if your neighbor has survived your son.”

  Eric and Billy were both just fine. Terry left her at the door, and when she stepped inside, clutching her makeshift cane, the two of them both looked up from the couch with the reflection of blue fire in their eyes. They were watching some sci-fi movie on the TV, and things sounded as if they were exploding at an alarming rate on the speakers as she stepped into the room.

  Nobody jumped to their feet to help her as she hobbled through the door.

  She flipped the switch for the end table light and they both looked up. Billy pushed himself to his feet then. She put a hand up to stop him and said, “you can finish watching your movie if you want!”

  “It’s cool, I’ve seen it,” Billy said.

  But she had to smile when he kept glancing back at the screen as he walked towards her.

  Rachel pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and handed it to him. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Anytime,” Billy answered. “We had a blast.”

  She opened her mouth to answer but just then the phone in the kitchen rang. As she moved towards the other room, Billy waved, and then looked at Eric. “Work on the fastball, huh?”

  The door closed behind her neighbor as Rachel picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” she said. She gasped slightly for breath, and a familiar voice picked up on her weakness instantly.

  “Sounds like you’ve been hitting the sheets,” Anders said. “A little early for that, with my boy in the house and all, isn’t it?”

  “A little late for you to be calling, isn’t it?” she countered. The clock on the kitchen wall read 10:24.

  She could almost hear him take a deep drag on his cigarette before answering.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began. When he said it, his voice took on the kind of drawl that just telegraphed the notion that any thinking he’d been doing was damned dangerous. She could imagine him continuing the sentence, “I’ve been thinking that your leg is sexy as hell, but ya know, it’d look even better if there was a bear trap around it. That’s the kind of calf bracelet I’d like to getcha.”

  That’s not what he said, but that’s how he made her feel. Instead, he said something even worse.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said again. “I don’t like the idea of Eric being down there so close to the Everglades and all. It’s dangerous there. Snakes and alligators and all kinds of shit. I think Eric would be better off if he came back up and lived with me.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Rachel said. She felt a shiver down her back as she said it. Asshole! Damn right it was not going to happen. She’d put her life on it.

  “Eric is just fine, and I need to get him to bed right now,” she said. Her voice was terse, and betrayed more emotion than she wanted it to.

  “He’s not asleep already? Seems pretty late for him to be up on a school night. I have to tell you Rachel, I’m concerned about him. I think a boy needs a father’s influence more and more as he grows up. I’ve been talking to a lawyer friend of mine about custody…”

  “Keep talking, asshole,” Rachel said. “Because Eric is staying right where he is. He’s doing just fine.”

  “We’ll see,” Anders said. “How are you doing? I know it’s gotta be hard to handle a house and a kid all on your own. Especially when you’ve got such a problem with depression and all.”

  Rachel choked. “Are you fuckin’ serious? The only time I was depressed was when I was with you.”

  “I’d rather if you didn’t use that kind of language in front of our son,” Anders said. His voice was dead cool. “I don’t think he needs to hear that kind of thing from his parents, and I’m pretty sure the custody officer that I’ve been talking to would consider that a pretty, um…what did you call it… a ‘negative’ environment. And we both want our son to grow up in a positive environment, right?”

  Rachel felt all of the good feelings of her date churn around in her stomach to become a maelstrom of acid and anger.

  “Are you serious?” she hissed. “Who is this? Because the asshole I married never said shit like ‘positive environment’. He said shit like, ‘bend over, baby, cuz I’m horny.’”

  “Again,” Anders said, his voice cool and even. “I don’t really want my son to be exposed to this kind of talk. I think it would be better if he came back here, to his home, to live with me. I’ve been talking to my lawyer, and she agrees that there would be a lot of advantages for Eric to this. All his friends are here, everything he knows is here and the thing about a kid moving into his teenage years is, he really does need a male influence. Who better to serve that role than his actual father? You can’t do that. I’m sorry, I know you want to be macho here, but you just don’t have the balls.”

  “That’s it, Anders,” Rachel said. “I don’t know what you hoped to prove tonight, but it’s past Eric’s bedtime and I’m not going to argue with you. I’m going to put him to bed. If you want to talk to your son, call back at a reasonable hour.”

  “I didn’t actually call to talk to Eric, this time,” Anders said. Still his voice remained cool. No, not cool. Cold. Like a steel pole in winter. Hard. Unyielding.

  “I called to talk to you. To let you know that I intend to bring my son back home. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Because he should be here. With his dad.” Anders took a deep breath, and Rachel knew that something bad was coming. She had lived with him too long not to pick up the vibes.

&nb
sp; “I’m taking a couple days off towards the end of the month,” he said. “I’m coming down to see my son. And then I’m going to take him back home.”

  “His home is here,” Rachel said. And then she hung up the phone.

  In the front room, something exploded on the television. Again and again. Rachel stayed in the kitchen, and struggled to catch her breath and regain calm. Nobody was going to take her son from her. Not Anders, not the courts, nobody. She was a good mom, and she would take care of him, no matter what.

  Then she looked at the kitchen clock and felt the “mom” gene kick in.

  “Eric,” she called. “It’s time for bed.”

  “Okay,” he answered. The sound of laser machine guns echoed from the television. “In a minute.”

  “No,” she said. “Now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday, May 10. 10:26 p.m.

  Billy fell.

  He had only taken a few steps down the sidewalk from Rachel and Eric’s house when his legs suddenly stopped working. There was no reason for it…he stepped down the sidewalk and then just after he crossed the driveway he found himself face first in the grass on a neighbor’s lawn, his mouth full of spiky green grass. The heat of the day still clung to the ground, and he felt as if he’d just lain down on a steam cloud.

  “Get the fuck up,” he hissed at himself. But he had to admit, the words didn’t sound quite right. His mouth was shaking, and it sounded more like “Gi da fuhp.”

  What’s wrong with me? he thought, as he tried to regain control of his legs. They felt like boneless worms. He struggled to move them, but even though he could feel the grass against his skin, they didn’t seem to be able to prop him up. His face remained pressed to the sod. The blades of grass tickled the inside of his ear. He could feel his eyelid blinking, spastically, all on its own. He seemed to have lost all control of his body in that moment. Nothing was working but his brain, and even that had jolts of…something. He felt like a rock, trapped by the oscillating light of a disco. He could see, but not move. In his head, he felt tiny fingers moving, grabbing, squeezing…

  Billy tried to cry, but nothing came out. He was like a still frame—a moment in time, caught and pressed. The moment expanded, and he screamed…but there was no sound. Only the feeling of tiny fingers. Touching him. Moving inside. Poking. Probing…

  And then the moment passed, and Billy’s legs worked again. He pulled his knee forward, and then his hands, and then he was on his feet, running, running, running away from that horrible moment back to his house.

  He got the door open with trembling hands and went immediately to the bathroom. There was pressure in his head, an ache behind his eyes. He leaned over the sink and stared into the toothpaste-spotted mirror above it. With his index fingers he pulled down his lower eyelids, exposing the tender pink flesh beneath. Billy held them that way for many seconds, staring intently at the veins in his eyeballs (Were there more of them than there should be?) and at the glistening flesh beneath (Did the pink seem to twitch a little bit now and then, all on its own?)

  A tear leaked from the corner of his right eye, and slid down his cheek. Billy flashed back to a moment on the island. A moment after they’d all been forced off the beach and attacked by a swarm of flies. After they’d taken up shelter in the abandoned Quonset hut. Casey had pulled her allergy medicine out of her bag. Billy didn’t know why that particular moment stuck in his head; there were far more dramatic things to remember. Certainly his best memories of Casey involved her slipping out of her clothing to let his fingers slip over her amazing, silky-smooth breasts. He had held them sometimes as if they were some mystic food, kneading them into readiness for him to pierce the skin of her tender flesh elsewhere. He’d hold those generous breasts with his hands while bringing his hips tight to hers, slicing in and out with a part of himself into a part of her, but never releasing her breasts, except to kiss…

  Despite those more luscious memories, right now as he stared at reddening eyes, he remembered Casey looking tired and scared and handing him some Benadryl tablets after they’d run from the flies. He was covered in bites, and she’d said that the antihistamine in the allergy pills would help take some of the discomfort away.

  After popping the pills he’d felt sleepy before too long, but the itchiness of the dozens of tiny bumps along his ankles and legs had eased up. The things had hung on his flesh like mosquitoes, refusing to let go of his skin whether he ran or stopped and tried to brush them away. He’d never seen flies like that before. They were small but tenacious. Why did they bite him so much? Was he really a good food source, which his thick skin and angry hands? Or did they need something else from him?

  Ever since he’d gotten home, he’d wondered about the things they had seen on the island. What kind of experiments had they been doing in that silver hut? They’d picked a pretty out-of-the-way Key to set up shop in, and he didn’t think it was your usual weather outpost or anything like that. He’d seen some of the materials lying around in the outer “science” room with all the equipment. Whoever had set the place up hadn’t been there just to take barometer readings or something like that.

  They’d been there because of the purple spiders and flies. Or maybe, the bugs had been there because of them?

  Billy let go of his eyes and scratched an itch on the back of his head along the collar line. Then he scratched his arm, and his back. And then his head again, just above the ear.

  The bugs had him creeped out. He could almost feel their tiny legs walking across his skin even now.

  The thought made him shiver, and Billy shook the image away. He turned on the tap and filled a bathroom cup with cold water. He downed it, slammed the plastic cup down and walked to the bedroom.

  His entire body felt queasy and strange. He could feel the pulse of his heart pound inside his skull. The beat was steady, the blood pushing hard beneath the skin, as if obstructed by something, but still finding a way through, with throbbing effort.

  He lay down on the bed, the comforter soft beneath him. Billy slipped an arm beneath his pillow and closed his eyes. Again he flashed on an image of Casey’s face, eaten away by spiders, her cheeks raw pits of red flesh, where his fingers had once caressed smooth white skin…

  Billy forced his eyes closed and tried to force his mind away from the horrors of the island and Casey. He thought of Rachel and her son, across the street. He’d enjoyed spending time there with the kid tonight; he’d shown Eric a couple tips on how to nab the ball in your mitt when it was coming at you in an unanticipated bounce, and the kid had gotten it really quick. It almost felt like he was making up for his past by helping the boy learn some tricks on how to catch better, instead of selling him a nickel bag. Billy had liked that.

  But now…no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stay focused on Eric. Or on his mother, who he had already determined, was probably worth focusing on. Course, she was already starting to date some other guy. If that took off…

  Billy kept seeing bugs behind his eyes. He imagined them swimming with a thousand legs in the spaces between his eyes. He imagined them burrowing beneath his cheeks, and crawling along the canals of his ears. He knew that something was wrong with him. He’d never fallen down before like he did on the way back from Rachel’s house. He’d never felt the strange tics and tremors behind his eyes like he had over the past week since returning from Sheila Key. He’d never worried about his body like he was now; he’d always just assumed it would work, and carry him on.

  Something was really wrong. And he didn’t even want to think about how wrong. Because the idea of bugs inside him…

  He rolled out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. One look in the mirror showed his eyes were bloodshot. Billy shut them so tight, he could feel a twinge of muscle cramping in the back of his ear. He squeezed his lids closed hard anyway. The pressure made his eyes feel like they were going to pop.

  “This is not me,” he said to himself. “I am not having a problem. I am not having
this problem.”

  But when he opened his eyes, the whites were still red. Swollen. Maybe tinged with a bit of yellow to boot. Not a healthy look.

  He pushed away from the sink and staggered down the short hall to his bedroom, where he threw himself back down on the bed. Could have yelled timber, the way his body fell like a cut log.

  As he lay on the pillow, Billy considered all of the drugs he used to sell. He’d heard some of them made kids paranoid. It had never bothered him before what happened to the kids he’d sold shit to—you takes what you gets, right? But now…

  “If that shit made them feel like this,” he mumbled, “then I really sucked.”

  He closed his eyes, and in the sparking bits of light that seemed to go off behind the lids, he saw things scuttling about, in the darkness of his brain. Things with many legs.

  What he didn’t see as the night slipped towards dawn, were the legs that crept down his ear canal and then grabbed on to the tiny hairs that covered the lobe of his ear. The tiny thing had eight legs and a pair of hungry maxillae that twitched constantly as the creature pressed forward into the light of day for the first time. It paused as it stood on the thick edge of Billy’s lobe, as if charting its course. And then it jumped to the bed, and moved like a wildfire as it began to descend the comforter to the floor.

  In moments, the newborn spider was on the carpet and heading swiftly towards the half-open door. It knew without any teaching that the way to go was out, and down. This host was near the end of its use.

  On the bed, the “host” struggled in a dream and pawed faintly at the air. The spider paused on the carpet, as the creature on the bed stirred. Billy’s hands settled back to the sheets after a moment, as for just a moment his dreams shifted gears from anxiety to focus on the endowed assets of a young beach bunny.

  The creature on the floor continued its journey towards and out the bedroom door. There were other people in town to find. People ready to be filled with the spawn of flies.