by David Six
But nah, I got to hide behind it, stead of punch it. Cause of the pricks in that house I don’t want to see me.
Had a good week… So I thought. Then that twat Sybil made bank, wavin the commissions in my face, sayin she was winnin the corporate Maui trip, not me.
We’ll fuckin see, Sybil.
But first things first. That house. Wouldn’t’a thought a businessman buyin a bucket-load of phones’d live there. I mean, me and Mom’s house ain’t pretty, but it’s a fuckload nicer than that piece of crap. Peelin paint, shingles missin, front porch saggin more’n Mom’s wrinkly tits.
Maybe it’s one of them crazy billionaires, likes to hoard his money and live like a hobo. But he didn’t look like no hobo when he came in to the store, just a normal guy. Jeans, flannel shirt, Walmart jacket.
Asshole.
He’d’a come in just thirty fuckin seconds sooner, he’d’a been my commission. But no, I had some ditzy blond couldn’t figure out why her phone was bricked. Cause you put in the PIN ten times wrong, you stupid bitch. Quick fix, but not quick enough—heard the buzzer over the door go while I was waitin for the ditz’s phone to reboot, saw the guy as Sybil went up to him, heard him say he needed twenty fuckin phones for his new employees, just startin up a software company or some shit.
Twenty fuckin phones.
That’d’a put me over the top for the Maui trip. Stead, it put me over the edge, when that cunt Sybil looked over and gave me the sweetest cuntiest smile as she said to the guy Why sure, sir, I’d love to help you.
Just like that—I’d love to help you. I bet you would, cunt.
But Sybil could wait. Cause this asshole came in thirty seconds too late and cost me my Maui trip.
What’s that? Ah, must be his wife there in the window, puttin dinner on the table. Kinda late for dinner, almost eight o’clock. Kids there, I see three, a boy and two girls, little, like six or somethin.
And how’s this guy buyin twenty fuckin phones, lives in a place like that? Piece of shit Ford in the driveway, must be fifteen years old. Guess this asshole sunk every penny he had into his new company. Good luck, Jack—twenty fuckin phones with plans ain’t cheap. Maybe the house is like a, what you call it, a front. Cheap rent, but lots of computers and stuff inside. I like computers, lots of porn. Mom tells me stop watchin porn, but I’m twenty-two years old, can do what I want. Sides, she’s one to talk—I heard her with her new boyfriend other night, she goin down on him. Yuck. He’s old, like fifty.
Well, I get that Maui trip, I’m goin, never comin back. Fuck Sybil and her cunt-smile—I’ll get me a job at one’a the stores over there. Already looked on the company website, they’re hirin at one over there. I get a free trip over, six-day vacay, and then I’m in the wind for this shithole of a town here.
But first I gotta take care of this asshole for almost makin me lose the Maui trip, cause nobody disses me like that. Too bad the wife and kids are in there, but that’s the breaks, asshole.
Then for Sybil. Wonder if she’ll be givin me that cunt-smile when I slit her face open with this knife I took from Mom’s kitchen?
Fuck, I hope so.
Elsie-Bellsie
That thump again, in the hall. Like something thudding against the other side of her door.
“Elsie?” I call.
No answer, of course. Just another drum beat against the wood, like marking time for a dirge I can’t hear.
“Elsie-Bellsie?” I say.
I go down the hall and stand outside her closed door. I reach for the knob, the brass plating tarnished and worn off in some spots, because she used to hang bracelets and purses and backpack straps over it. Used to drive me crazy, because having to fix another broken thing in an already broken house just made me tired thinking about it. But she was twelve, and her mom said twelve-year old girls did things like that.
The instant I put my hand on the knob, the door vibrates with that bass bump again. I jerk back my hand.
To the world, I’m that sad guy in his thirties who came home one evening and found his wife and daughter killed, butchered like so much meat, from a home invasion gone wrong.
“Elsie?” I say once more. Calling to her makes me feel better. I miss her and her mom.
Thump. Then, thumpa-thumpa-thump.
“Elsie-Bellsie?” I ask.
I know what’s coming, but I can’t help it—I open her door. My breath catches in my throat like it always does, like for a moment, just for a moment, all the air has left her room and my own is pushing to the vacuum to get out of me. The room isn’t cold, or warm, but it’s empty. Not of furniture or all the little girl stuff she collected in her little life, that’s all still there, dim in the curtained room, like the colors have been sucked almost dry by some big beetle. Empty, like it would be if I’d cleared everything out and left just the carpet and walls. It echoes in there. I don’t know why.
Dusty, makes my nose itch, but that’s my poor housekeeping. I stand in the doorway, sucking the dust, my nose twitching like I’m holding back a sneeze. My hand is on the knob. I never let go of the knob, because when I do, it feels like I’m getting pulled farther into the room. Farther than the ten feet across to the other wall, like deep into a space that doesn’t have an end.
I step back and close the door. The instant the latch catches, I feel the wood thump. Then, thumpa-thumpa-thump. My heart does the same thing.
I go to the living room and settle into my recliner in front of the TV. I pick up my beer, take a sip, and look at the football game on the screen, but I forget who is playing. The lights are on; I always keep them on.
But it doesn’t help.
Because as soon as my eyes close, I hear the thump. Thumpa-thumpa-thump.
I open my eyes, and there she is.
My Elsie-Bellsie.
Standing next to my chair.
Her colors are all faded and sucked out by that big beetle, too. Except the red. She’s covered in bright, vivid red. Her blood, from her chest where she was stabbed forty-seven times. Her face, bruised and beaten as if with the Louisville Slugger I used to keep by the front door. Her head, misshapen from that beating, like a melon that ripened on top of a bumpy rock.
She looks at me, but doesn’t say anything. Her blue eyes look at me, and look at me.
To the world, I’m that sad guy who came home from work one evening and found his wife and daughter butchered.
To me, I’m the guy who did it.
The Best Fall Ever
After my heart attack last year—the doc called it ventricular fibrillation, a fancy name for a reliable old muscle moving to the bad side of the tracks—Barbara wanted the two of us to get in better shape. I saw it in her eyes every time she laid her hand on the spot just below my left shoulder, where the surgeon installed the pacemaker, that little glimmer of sadness and fear, before she blinked and gave me her brave smile.
I got used to the damn thing being in there, though it was unnerving to feel it give me that thump when the old ticker went sideways for a moment, like someone snuck up on me and popped me one. Gave me the shakes the first couple of times, honestly—a tough admission for an old retired longshoreman like me. Barb said it saved my life, and to stop worrying about it.
Anyway, we—mainly me—got to the point where we graduated from five minutes on the treadmill (me; she did half an hour right out of the gate), to walks around our neighborhood, to tackling the local tourist attraction: Parry Mountain. I always called it “Mount Nipple”, because at some point the park service had denuded an area around the peak of trees and cut in a trail, leaving the top looking from a distance like that loveliest of feminine attributes.
We picked a sunny Wednesday, hoping to dodge the worst of the tourists, loaded up our packs with water and snacks, and cold-weather gear—4231 feet high got chilly this time of year—and set out. My wife looked as hot as ever, the most beautiful sixty-two-year-old gal you could imagine, those blue eyes sparkling as we fi
nally did something besides sitting in front of the TV. On our drive up the winding road to the peak, the sunlight strobing through the trees surrounding both sides of the road, autumn leaves blowing off the branches in the breeze, Barb looked at me and said, “This is the best fall ever!”
I loved it when she got excited about things.
When we got out of the car and started walking up the trail towards the peak, climbing the endless stone steps the parks guys had put in, I realized I was holding my breath, just waiting for that pacemaker to give me a punch, but it stayed quiet. We went up and up, stopping a lot to rest and catch our breath, and for Barb to take pictures with her phone of the scenery laid out below us.
I had to admit, for an old beer-guzzling couch potato like me, it was pretty spectacular. The trees far below were draped in their fall colors, reminding me of that old cereal commercial: Raspberry red, lemon yellow, and orange orange. We were so far above the valley that the trees looked like clusters of wildly colored blood cells all congregating on top of some infection. Too dark? Yeah, probably; when we got to the top and stopped to rest, I felt the damn pacemaker give me a clock, and that tends to murk up my mood. Barb looked so happy gazing out over the dish of the valley that I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Besides, after a minute I was fine, and said let’s head to the top. Barb giggled—a long time since I heard her do that—and off we went.
We made it to the main trail that wound around the pinnacle, and rested again. I could see Barb looking ahead to some steps that looped even higher, and saw in her eyes that she wanted to give it a try.
“Maybe next time,” I said, breathing hard.
She tried to hide her disappointment and give me her “okay, husband” smile, and that made me feel like a shit, so I said, “Why don’t you go have a look, and come back and tell me about it?”
Her pretty lips opened in a big smile, showing me that one crooked tooth I found adorable. She kissed me, and scampered away. The way she looked in her walking tights, it was quite a lusty scamper. Leastways for me.
I watched her until the upper trail took her around a boulder and out of my view, then I turned to look back out over the valley floor. Now the trees looked more like little shrubs, all puffy and crinkled, their trunks hidden beneath their fall finery. The view relaxed me, and for a long minute I just floated there, enjoying my life, instead of worrying I might die if the pacemaker failed.
Barb screamed!
“Oh shit!” I yelled, spinning and rushing towards the upper trail she had taken.
My heart raced like an old horse escaping from the glue factory, and several times as I climbed those steep stairs I felt the hunk of metal in my chest slam me with a shock to keep my broken-down heart beating. I didn’t care; if Barb had fallen, it wouldn’t matter if I lived.
I got to the top, didn’t see her. The silver dollar in my chest hit me again, and again. Then I looked over the side.
Oh god!
There she was, at least a hundred feet down in the leaves and branches. Not moving.
“Barb!” I yelled.
I felt my world go black as I started over the side. I didn’t care if I fell now. Barb was my world. I had to get to her and save her if I could.
If she could be saved.
I swore at myself, shoving away those awful thoughts. “She is alive. She is!” I said over and over as I scrambled and stumbled down the mountainside. “Goddam it, she is!”
I don’t know how I made it down that steep slope, or how many times I skidded and fell on the slippery leaves and broken limbs. It took a second, or an hour, or a year, but I finally reached her.
My breath caught. One of her legs was draped in a way it should not have been, over a rock the size of my ottoman. Then I saw that her shinbone was broken, the ragged end of it jabbing through the cloth of her pants, white and red and with meat hanging from it. Her left arm was twisted beneath her, and her shoulder looked a lot lower than it should have been.
Her head… Oh god her head. I could only see the back of her head, and it was wet and red and… white. Soft, squishy. What was inside, was outside.
“Barb!” I cried, falling the last ten feet to her side.
I stopped.
Looked down at her.
Now that I was here, I felt helpless. I could see her brain. How could she be alive?
She had to be! I bent, trying to remember all that resuscitation stuff they’d taught us at the job after several of my huskier fellow workers had keeled over with heart attacks of their own. I got closer. I had to see her face, see if she was sleeping, or…
I tripped and fell on my face, but it didn’t hurt, I was so focused on getting to see her face. I had to see her face!
I did.
It wasn’t Barb.
It was me.
What You Think You Know
He didn’t see the dog until it was too late.
The shaggy beige stray darted across the highway right in front of his car. He felt, rather than heard, a sickening pop, and saw the small body rebound off the front bumper, flying off to the side, where it impacted the trunk of a pin oak.
He stomped on the brakes, drivers behind leaning on horns and cars skidding to avoid hitting him. He swerved off the four-lane state highway onto the gravel shoulder. The car rocked on its springs.
“God dammit!” he screamed, slamming his fist against the center of the steering wheel and splitting the plastic housing of the airbag.
“You hit a dog!” his wife shrilled beside him in the passenger seat.
He looked at her, brought his right hand to his left shoulder, then flung his arm across the seats, cracking her in her mouth with the back of his hand. She cried out, blood starting from her lip and the broken skin of his hand. She looked at him, tears starting.
He got out of the car, leaving the door open, and walked around the hood to the grassy verge beside the highway’s shoulder. He looked off into the woods. He didn’t want to, but his eyes sought the lifeless body of the dog he had hit, where it lay at the base of the oak. He didn’t even have to check that it was dead; it lay in a contorted position that no living animal could have survived.
But he went to it anyway. The poor creature had been starving, its ribs—where they didn’t stab red and wet from the accident through the dog’s ratted fur—made the animal look like a skeleton with hair. He knelt beside it, laid his hand on the dog’s head, and lowered his own. After several moments he stood.
He had never struck his wife before, had never even considered it. He had never struck anybody before. But the day had leaned in on him like a crowd in a packed auditorium reacting to a yanked fire alarm, leaned in shoving, knocking him down, trampling him to jelly.
He looked into the woods, and started walking up the slope to the first of the trees.
“Where are you going?” his wife shouted. “Come back here!”
He kept walking, and reached the trees, pausing on the rise that blocked the highway sounds from flowing through the woods like a noisy river.
“I said come back! Don’t leave me here!”
He stared into the depths, the setting sun backlighting the winter-naked branches, the stark gray-brown tree trunks seeming to welcome him.
Without being aware, his legs moved him forward among the boles. Though the air was still, and no woods creatures moved, it felt like the trees closed behind him, around him. Not threatening; more a gathering of friends.
Leaves crunched beneath his stained canvas sneakers, sliding against each other and making his footing precarious on the uneven terrain. No trail; he simply strode among the silent wood. The land careered away sharply to his left, falling into a steep ravine. The slopes of the gully were spotted with sparse growth, and several of the trees had toppled, taking other, smaller ones with them in their death throes.
Faintly, washed out over the murmur and hiss of the highway:
“You come back here ri
ght now! Do you hear me?”
He started down the grade. The worn soles of his sneakers slipped, and he lost his footing, landing hard on his tailbone and sliding like a toboggan on his rear to the bottom of the gulch. He clipped a tree trunk with his right shoulder, pain blacking his vision a moment and spinning him sideways. He went limp, and let it happen.
He did not know how he would live without his daughter. He accepted that he and his wife had to separate and divorce, but he would never have guessed that she would have done what she had, when she told him earlier:
“I’m taking Katy and moving to be with my mother in Warsaw.”
That was bad. Then she had added:
“And I will make sure you never see her again.”
She had always liked the things he could buy her, but when he lost his job and the money dried up, she had become increasingly strident about her unhappiness. Then one day he had come home from answering job want ads and discovered her in bed with their neighbor, John. He had heard the unmistakable sounds coming from the upstairs of their thirty-five-hundred square foot house—which he could no longer afford and would have to sell—and went up to discover her in bed—his bed—with the neighbor. John had freaked out and leaped up, but she had merely looked at him, making no attempt to cover herself.
And then she had smiled at him.
Today they had been on the way to see their lawyer who had drawn up their divorce papers. He only wanted it to be over, but on the drive she had berated him nonstop, taunting him that he would never see his sweet little Katy ever again, no matter what it said in their divorce agreement.
He had no money, no way to get to Warsaw, but he would be damned if she would take his daughter away from him. But he did not know how he would stop her.
He lay there at the bottom of the winding ditch, looking up at the bare December branches scratching against the clear azure sky.
“There you are, you worthless asshole!”
