by Strand, Jeff
“Dude,” Randy said.
Liz said, “Are you okay, Kirk?”
“I’m just trying to wrap my brain around all this,” Kirk said. The dizziness passed.
The Pop Tarts popped up and startled them. Kirk opened the refrigerator and handed each of them a Mountain Dew, got one for himself. They drank the pills down with the soda, then ate the Pop Tarts as they talked.
“What are we going to do?” Kirk said. “Why did you want us to come in Liz’s car?”
“Because nobody else drives Liz’s car but Liz, so they won’t notice the smell.”
“The smell?” Liz said. “Hey, I’ll notice the smell.”
“We’ll roll down the windows, Liz. I don’t have anyone else to ask, or I would. My car’s totaled, remember?”
Liz thought about it a moment.
“I’ve got air freshener,” Kirk said.
Liz was reluctant. “All right. Where we gonna go?”
“To see Mrs. Kobylka.”
“Again?” Randy said.
“This isn’t what I asked for,” Kirk said.
“Are you sure, Kirk?” Liz said. “Think about it. That old lady might speak with an accent, but I bet she understands English just fine, and she’s probably going to hold you to whatever you said, word for word. What did you say to her?”
While Kirk tried to remember his words, Randy said, “You said you wanted her to bring Natalie back. That’s all you said.”
Kirk knew he was right. He had been no more specific than that. It hadn’t occurred to him that he needed to be––he thought bringing Natalie back would result in bringing Natalie back, not creating that hungry, smelly, decaying thing in his bedroom.
“You’re right,” Kirk said. “That’s all I said.”
Liz nodded. “She’ll probably remember that and throw it right in your face.”
“But there’s got to be some way of getting rid of… of…” Kirk couldn’t say her name, he could not say, But there’s got to be some way of getting rid of Natalie. He told himself that was okay, because it wasn’t Natalie they were dealing with. “… of getting rid of her.”
“She said there was no way to undo it,” Randy said. “Remember?”
“But there’s got to be,” Kirk said. “Some spell, some potion to make her… like she was before.”
“You mean, dead?” Randy said.
“Yeah.”
“She’s already dead, Kirk,” Randy said. “You need something that’ll get that through her fuckin’ skull.”
“Where is she?” Liz asked.
“In my bedroom,” Kirk said. “We should go get her dressed. But I’m warning you. She doesn’t look good. And the smell…” Kirk got an idea and turned to a tall, narrow cupboard next to the refrigerator. On the top shelf, Mom kept a variety of over-the-counter drugs: aspirin, cough syrup, ant-acids, Bactine, rubbing alcohol. He took down a blue jar of Vicks VapoRub and unscrewed the lid. He held the jar out to Randy and Liz. “They did this in Silence of the Lambs. Put a little under your nose. It’ll help with the smell.”
“Is it that bad?” Liz said.
“It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected,” Kirk said, “until she opened her mouth. And her legs. If you get too close… well, it’s pretty bad.”
They put a little of the strong-odored ointment just beneath their noses and Kirk replaced the jar in the cupboard. They left the kitchen and walked down the hall.
“She’s not all there,” Kirk said quietly. “She seems to have some memories, but… it’s not really Nat. She’s really just a––”
Even through the Vicks, Kirk smelled Natalie in the hall just a second before Liz screamed behind him.
3.
Kirk spun around and saw Liz standing at the bathroom door staring in with a hand over her mouth. He and Randy went to her and looked into the bathroom.
Natalie was lying in the bathtub, knees hiked up, feet resting on the edges of the tub. She held one of the limp ferrets in her hands and gnawed into its belly. Blood was smeared on her face and was matted in the animal’s fur. Natalie made small guttural sounds as she bit into the dead ferret, stopped to chew for a moment, then bit in again. A strand of intestine dangled from the ferret’s open abdomen.
Kirk, Randy, and Liz stood frozen just outside the bathroom doorway, their jaws slack. Natalie stopped eating and slowly turned her head toward them. A tuft of bloodied fur stuck out of the corner of her black-red mouth. When she spoke, her voice sounded like a clogged drain.
“Hungry,” she said. Then she buried her face in the eviscerated ferret again and continued to eat.
“Oh Jesus breakfast,” Liz said. She stepped into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid and seat, knelt before it, and vomited.
Randy stepped away from the door and leaned his back against the wall. He took a couple deep breaths and swallowed hard a few times.
Kirk rubbed the back of his neck as he paced in the hall. “What am I going to tell my mother?” he said, his voice hoarse.
After flushing the toilet and rinsing her mouth in the sink, Liz came out of the bathroom looking pale and unwell. She leaned against the wall beside Randy, then he put an arm around her and she leaned on him.
Kirk stood in the doorway again and watched as Natalie ate his mother’s ferret.
That story you hear, what happen to that dog? Mrs. Kobylka had asked. Your girlfriend… she’s no dog.
Kirk wondered what the old woman had meant. He wondered what had happened to the dog in the story passed down by children over the decades.
He scrubbed his face with both hands and said, “I’ve got to clean up this mess. You guys don’t have to help if you don’t want, but… I’d sure appreciate it.”
- FIVE -
1.
As he held open a white garbage bag so Kirk could drop the gutted ferret into it, Randy winced, looked away, and muttered, “Guess what I did on my Christmas vacation.”
Kirk and Randy began to clean up the bloody mess in the tub. Kirk had already gotten most of the blood off Natalie, and she was in his bedroom with Liz, who’d said she would try to get her dressed.
“But if she tries to fuckin’ bite me,” Liz had told Kirk, “you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”
Once the bathroom was clean, Kirk threw the bloody sponge and rags into the garbage bag with what was left of the ferret and tied it off. He carried the bag out of the bathroom and down the hall to his bedroom, and Randy followed.
Crying quietly, Liz pulled a baggy old green sweater over Natalie’s raised arms. Natalie sat on the bed in a pair of blue jeans, her pale, swollen feet bare. Her feet had gotten wet when she’d left the funeral home, and again when she’d walked from the pool-house to Kirk’s bedroom window, and they had not recovered from it. They had become spongy and bloated. Liz appeared to be dressing a grossly overgrown toddler as she tugged the sweater down over Natalie’s head. Once the sweater was on, Liz went to Randy and pressed her face to his neck. He put his arms around her.
Liz turned her head to Kirk and said, “That’s not Natalie.”
“I know,” Kirk said with a nod.
“It’s a dead body that doesn’t fucking blink and shouldn’t be muh-moving around.” She sobbed against Randy’s shoulder.
Natalie looked up at Kirk with her filmy eyes and smiled. “Kiss me, Frog Boy,” she said.
“This is so fucking wrong,” Liz said. “We’ve got to do something with her.”
“Did you bring some perfume?” Kirk asked.
“Oh, yeah.” Liz went to her satchel on the bed and removed a bottle of perfume. “Coco. My grandma gave it to me for my birthday a couple years ago, and I don’t like it. But I don’t know if it’s going to help.” She removed the lid from the bottle. “How am I gonna put it on her, ‘cause there’s no fuckin’way I’m gonna touch her again.” After a moment, she tipped the bottle over Natalie’s head and sprinkled the perfume all over her. The perfume’s scent was overwhelming in such quantity, but it only clashed
with the smell of rotting flesh, it did not camouflage it. Liz put the perfume bottle back in the satchel.
Kirk said, “Let’s get her in the car.”
He found a pair of old sneakers in his closet and put them on Natalie’s feet, a gray watch cap that covered most of the gash in her forehead. He went into his parents’ bedroom and found an old pair of large, round sunglasses his mother used to wear. Back in his bedroom, he put the sunglasses on Natalie and said, “We need to cover as much of her face as possible, just in case someone sees her.”
“Even if someone doesn’t,” Randy muttered.
They hurried Natalie through the house and out the front door, with Liz following and spraying air freshener along the way.
2.
“This is worse than that time you threw up in here, Randy,” Liz said as she drove her gray 1996 Toyota Camry up the hill on the road that led to Mrs. Kobylka’s house.
“That wasn’t even close to this,” Randy said. “Besides, I only threw up a little. I didn’t cut loose till I got outta the car.”
Liz said, “You’re hallucinating, because I had a five-dollar scratch-off ticket on the floor and you turned it to mush by drowning it in your puke. It took me forever to get the smell out of here.”
“Why the fuck’re you leaving five-dollar scratch-off tickets on the floor of your car?”
“I knew where it was, didn’t I?”
In the backseat, Kirk had watched Natalie throughout the ride. Looking at her did not hurt as much as it had at first, now that he was certain it was not Natalie. Sometimes she looked back at him, and sometimes she looked surprised, as if she’d forgotten he was there since the last time she’d looked at him. Once, she’d reached for him and said, “Kiss me, Frog Boy,” in that horrible voice. She’d toyed with the seatbelt after Kirk had fastened it. Sometimes her hands fumbled together in her lap. A few times, she’d uttered baby-like nonsense syllables. Kirk hoped her meal would keep her that relaxed and calm for a while. He hoped she would not be getting hungry again very soon.
After leaving the house, Liz had driven to a nearby 7-Eleven. There was a garbage Dumpster against a side wall of the store. Liz had pulled up to the curb and Randy had gotten out and tossed into the Dumpster the bag containing the bloody rags and sponge, and the remains of poor Bud. Or Lou.
Bud and Lou had been trying to get out of the house since they’d gotten there. Mom had laid down strict rules––never leave any doors or windows open that the ferrets could get to, and when entering or leaving the house, always be very careful not to let them out. Kirk would use that. He would play dumb when he got home. It would be concluded eventually that the ferret had gotten out––quickly and stealthily, he would say, because he hadn’t noticed––sometime while Kirk was home, maybe when Randy and Liz were entering or leaving. But it pained Kirk to know how upset Mom would be, how much it would hurt her to lose one of her pets. She loves those damned things, he thought.
Liz made a U-turn at the dead-end of Hilltop Road and stopped the car in front of Mrs. Kobylka’s house, behind the old pickup truck.
“Leave the engine running,” Kirk said. “I hope I won’t be long.”
“I’m coming with you,” Randy said as he got out of the car. “I wanna get another look at that fuckin’ bird.”
It was not raining, but a cold wind blew that made Kirk shiver even though he wore a down jacket. Dark bulging clouds sailed across the morning sky.
Kirk went up the steps to Mrs. Kobylka’s porch. His hand was poised to knock on the edge of the screen door when one of the white curtains in the front door’s window jerked aside. Her wide eye peered out at him.
“What you want?” she shouted. “I do what you ask for, why you bother me now?”
“You didn’t give me what I asked for,” Kirk said. “She’s still dead, Mrs. Kobylka. I wanted Natalie alive again.”
“I do magic, not miracles.”
“What am I going to do with her?” Kirk said.
“I told you she would be your responsibility.”
“But she’s dead.”
Mrs. Kobylka unlocked and opened the door and peered at Kirk through the screen, hands on her hips. “She’s your responsibility.”
“But what do I do with her?” Kirk said, raising his voice. “Isn’t there some way to make her… like she was? I mean, dead. The way she is now, it’s just not right.”
“Like I told you, you asked for it. And I told you there was no undoing it, too. You didn’t listen to me when I talked to you?”
“But there must be some magic, some spell––”
“Are you ready to pay the price?”
Kirk’s jaw dropped. “Is that what this is? A scam? You want money now?”
“I’m not talking about money.” She shook her head in disgust and dismissed them with a wave of her gnarled hand. “You go away now. This is your problem, not mine.” She stepped back and closed the door, locked it loudly.
“I don’t have much money,” Kirk said, “but I’ll give you what I’ve––”
“Go away or I call the police!” Mrs. Kobylka shouted behind the door.
“Oh, shit, that’s the last thing we need,” Randy said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Kirk did not want to leave; he wanted to talk some sense into that infuriating old woman. But she sounded pretty serious about not talking to him anymore more.
“I’m calling the police right now, you don’t go away!” she shouted.
She sounded pretty serious about that, too.
As Kirk and Randy turned on the porch and went down the steps, Liz ran up the broken path. She wore a sickened expression on her face, elbows bent, and shook her hands as if they’d been burned.
Liz said, “She’s starting to say she’s hungry again!”
They got in the idling car.
Natalie turned to Kirk and gave him another of those hideous smiles. “I’m hungry, Kirk,” she said in that moist, strangled voice. She grabbed his arm and pulled his hand to her mouth.
Liz screamed and Randy made a frightened wailing sound.
“No!” Kirk shouted as he jerked his hand back. “No, you can’t eat us, okay? Jesus.” He scooted as far away from her as possible and fastened his seatbelt. He decided not to fasten Natalie’s––what difference would it make? He said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Liz started the car, and her voice trembled as she said, “Where do we go now?”
“The Mt. Shasta Mall,” Kirk said.
“Are you on crack?” Randy said.
“Hungry,” Natalie said.
Liz suddenly pounded on the steering wheel and screamed, “She says she’s hungry, dammit! She’s gonna start fuckin’ biting all of us in a minute! What are we gonna do? Jesus Christ, I don’t wanna be a fuckin’ zombie. I wanna go home.”
Randy took her in his arms and held her, murmured reassurances to her as she cried. “We could leave her here on Mrs. Kobylka’s porch,” he said to Kirk after a while. “She’ll end up doing something with her, don’t you think?”
Kirk shook his head. “I’m afraid she’d send Natalie right back to me, or make trouble for us. I was serious about the mall.”
Natalie leaned over and reached for his wrist. “I’m. Hungry.”
Kirk pulled his hands in close and pressed himself against the side of the cab away from her. He said, “We’re gonna lose her in the food court.”
3.
The Mt. Shasta Mall had been refurbished a couple years ago with a new main entrance, a large food court, and new storefronts. Along with the mall’s new look had come a new Christmas decoration––a gigantic reindeer that appeared to have been made of snow-white twigs stood in front of the mall covered with white lights. For the last two Christmas seasons, while under the influence of mood-and-consciousness-altering substances, Kirk, Natalie, Randy, and Liz had found the reindeer at once frightening and side-splittingly funny.
Liz drove slowly through the parking lot looking for a space. Christmas
shoppers were out in force and the lot was packed.
“We’re just gonna take her in there and leave?” Randy said for the third time.
“Someone will recognize her eventually,” Kirk said.
“They ran a picture of her in today’s Searchlight,” Liz said. “With the article about her body being stolen.”
“It was in the paper?” Kirk said.
“Yep.”
“Well, there you go. Someone will recognize her.”
“And they’ll call the police,” Liz said.
Kirk said, “Yeah.”
“And they’ll call an ambulance, and they’ll take her to a hospital,” Randy said.
Kirk said, “Yeah.”
“They’ll find out she’s dead.”
Kirk shook his head. “That won’t be our problem.”
“They’ll wonder where she came from,” Liz said.
“They’ll know where she came from,” Kirk said. “The Richmond Funeral Home. They’ll know she walked out because they’ll see her walking. And yeah, they’ll know she’s dead. So what? If they find her here alone, it won’t involve us. Maybe she’ll become famous. Maybe she’ll get a guest spot on Fear Factor and they’ll make guys kiss her. Whatever happens, all we have to do is sit back and pretend it’s news to us, because we had nothing to do with it, right?”
