Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW

by Michaelbrent Collings

They went down the steps. Mommy pushed him. Too fast. He fell. Mommy grabbed him and actually pushed him back to his feet. Pushed him down the stairs and up to standing at the same time, and he wasn't quite sure how she did that. But she did and they made it down the stairs and he was sure that he heard not four feet but six bamming down and that was impossible because it was him and Mommy and that was four and yes there was Ruthie but she didn't walk she was just a little burrito-wrapped baby in Mommy's arms so who was the other person who was behind them who –?

  He didn't look back. There might be someone. Or there might be no one. He didn't want it to be either.

  They ran to the front door. He knew it was gonna be locked.

  Mommy let go of him. He shivered. She just let go of him long enough to try the door, but it was a forever and that was way too long.

  She clicked it. It opened.

  They ran. Ran into the dark outside. And the dark outside seemed so much brighter than the lighted house inside.

  The door slammed shut behind them. He heard the music box stop tinkling, the big clock stop beating his heart to explosion.

  He relaxed. Mommy's muscles got a bit softer at his back. She kept pushing him away from the house, but he knew they had beaten it. For now at least.

  Then Mommy got tense again. He thought for a second the thing was out here. Had made it outside its house and was going to destroy them right out in the open. Maybe because they were still on the property, so it could get them just fine.

  But no. That was impossible, wasn't it? There was no clock, no music box, no dark feeling.

  What was Mommy worried about? What was out –?

  Daddy.

  Daddy had run out here. And was probably still out here. But that was good news, right?

  So why did Mal suddenly feel cold? Thinking of Daddy's eyes in the bedroom, the eyes that were usually so warm and loving, but were somehow different when he ran away.

  Like they belonged to someone else.

  Someone not nice at all.

  Why am I worried?

  Where is Daddy out here?

  Is Daddy out here at all?

  GIVEN IN

  Blake didn't find anyone. Not a thing, not a trace. He ran around the house, tripping over planters and ornamental walls that seemed to spring out of the ground at the last moment solely to obstruct him. Each time he almost went down his rage increased.

  He finally slipped and fell. Dog crap or just a wet patch of grass. Whatever it was, he went down and the vase he'd been clutching flew from his hand. It shattered with a tinkle that was almost merry. A sound far too bright for a night so dark.

  The sound carved his rage to pieces, slashed it away like a coat that had been torn down to its barest threads.

  He stood, dusting himself off, picking a large pebble from his palm. Wondering what was going on, what had just happened. Not just with the phones and the wardrobe.

  With him. The anger. The fury that he hadn't felt since that last night –

  (C'mere, kid. Daddy's gonna play a game.)

  – that final night –

  (Don't you run from me, you little bastard! Little shit!)

  – that night he couldn't take it anymore. That night he fled. Not from his father but from himself. Running with blood on his hands, and for once it wasn't his own.

  He turned and, like the night he had left his childhood home behind, the night his father died, he ran. But this time he wasn't fleeing, he was searching.

  Where was Alyssa? What about Mal and Ruthie?

  Why did I leave them? How?

  He didn't understand what was happening. Could barely remember the last few minutes. He knew the phones had been ringing. Remembered a distant sense of anger. A need to find out what was doing it and –

  (punish them punish them good and proper)

  – put a stop to it. But he'd left his family. How could he have done that?

  He ran to the front of the house, and with every footfall he pictured a new death they might have suffered in his absence. At the side of the house he realized he was picturing the many ways he himself had been torn, had been hurt. Only it wasn't him this time. It was his wife, his children. And they weren't just bleeding, they weren't just breaking bones and skin.

  They were dying.

  He turned the corner. Ran around to the front of the house. And there they were. Standing, shivering, waiting. He was sure for a moment they weren't real. Just the ghosts that were all that remained of his family, his joy. Memories of happiness forever lost, which are the worst kind of damnation.

  "Blake!" shouted Alyssa. And Mal screamed, "Daddy!" at the same time.

  Not dead. Not dead. Alive.

  (MINE.)

  He tried to ignore the last word. Tried to ignore the other ghost that kept pushing through. The ghost of a father long dead but ever present.

  Alyssa reached for him, then her hands curled back like withered plants. Just a second – she reached for him again almost instantly – but that second tore him apart.

  For that second she was afraid of him.

  He fell into her arms. Held her and Mal and Ruthie. Held them so tight he knew he was trying to force the fear from between them. And knew that it wouldn't work.

  She was afraid. Afraid of what had happened, yes. Afraid of what was going on around them.

  And he was one of those things.

  Alyssa breathed in to say something, and he feared it would be, "We're leaving you." His heart stopped.

  "We can't stay here," she said.

  His legs turned to reed, he almost fell against her. Only the fact that she had to be hurting, that her postpartum body could barely be holding up, kept him upright.

  "Yeah," he managed. "Yeah, I know."

  They got in the car. They didn't go back in the house for their things. They would do without.

  He drove. Everyone was silent, and he himself fell into a mindless daze, almost a fugue. When he finally came to himself enough to take stock of where they were he saw that he had driven them to the worst part of the city.

  And that was the only place they could go. That was the only place left to them, because it was all they could possibly afford.

  The place they pulled into was simply called "Motel." And it was a truism that the less creative the name of an establishment like this, the less you could expect from it.

  Alyssa eyed it warily. The cheap paint job splashed directly onto the bricks, the air conditioning units hanging below the windows that looked like they dated back to the Revolutionary War. Still, she glued a smile on her face and looked at Mal and said, "You've never slept at a motel, have you?" He shook his head. His face was white. "This'll be fun for you, then!"

  Blake loved her. Maybe more than ever. She was so strong, so good. Everything he'd never known before, and everything he'd never thought he would know, but knew he didn't deserve.

  They got out of the car. He tried to get Ruthie, but Alyssa squeezed in front of him and got the baby out. She did it smoothly, but it was still pretty obvious: she didn't want him holding the infant.

  Blake stood still as his family went to the office. Battling a slew of emotions. Trying to focus on the love he had just felt, to cast out the irritation –

  (anger)

  – that tried to force its way in.

  He walked after them.

  The night manager was almost as old and cracked as the desk he sat behind. Nursing a cup of coffee that smelled hot and cheap and necessary in a place like this. But his smile was pleasant under gray whiskers as he turned to the family and said, "Hey, folks, how can I help you?"

  The question flared an ember of anger in Blake. He wanted to answer, "How do you think?"

  Again, Alyssa got between him and what he wanted. "A room," she said.

  "Double occupancy is sixty-nine a night. Two forms of identification."

  "What about the kids?" asked Alyssa. "Are they extra?"

  The manager winked at Mal. "What kids?" he asked in
nocently.

  Mal winked back. A little boy's wink, the kind that squinched the entire side of his face and nearly shut the other eye as well. It made Blake feel a little better.

  Blake fumbled his wallet out of his pocket – thank God he hadn't gotten undressed for the night, thank God Alyssa slept in sweats and a shirt and was wearing slippers – and slid over a card and his driver's license.

  The manager slid the credit card through a slot on the side of his register. The noise was barren. The sound of dreams come to die.

  A moment later there was a double beep. The manager turned a sad smile to Blake. "Sorry, but…."

  He didn't have to finish the sentence. Blake had been waiting for this to start happening. But knowing it was coming didn't make it any easier. Didn't make the shame burn any cooler in his cheeks and ears as he accepted a worthless rectangle of plastic and shoved it back in his wallet.

  One more way he was failing his family. One more way he had proved himself less than a man.

  His father was right. Had always been right.

  (you can't escape this, won't escape what you are!)

  Blake fumbled another card – his only other card, out of the wallet. He gave it to the manager, and his hand trembled. Not just because he didn't know what they would do if this didn't work. It was more than that. This card represented his last worth.

  The manager slid the card through. Dry snick, barren motion, dying dreams.

  The moment stretched out. Out, out. The manager frowned, slid the card through again. He tapped the corner of the card against his chin.

  The register beeped. "We have a winner!" he said.

  Another wink at Mal, and Mal again winked with most of his head.

  Blake felt no relief. The pit in his stomach grew a bit deeper. When would this card stop working as well?

  One of poverty's meanest tricks is to replace the mundane pleasures of the present with the grand worries of the future. It is never about smiles and small moments. It is about looming debt, about Final Notice and Amount Due and Shutoff Date. Past problems steal present joys because of future fears.

  The manager was talking about a "continental breakfast" – coffee and Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars that went out every morning from six to nine. Then it was out the door, up the stairs and into a room that smelled of cigarettes and sweat and a few other unidentifiable things that no amount of cheap cleaner could mask. Two beds – singles – and barely enough room between them for an adult to walk sideways. An original Philo Farnsworth television with an actual VHF knob on it.

  "It's smelly," said Mal.

  "Yep," said Alyssa. She spoke brightly, as though this was part of the grand adventure of it all. "You want a bath – shower?" The last word changed as she walked into the "bathroom." Blake followed and saw a shower that looked like something out of an exceptionally bleak dystopian future. A whitish pod with a plastic tentacle sticking out of one wall, reticulated so that it could be used by lodgers of any height.

  "Cool!" said Mal. He started stripping and grabbed at the tiny bar of wrapped soap on the floor. Blake couldn't be sure if he was more excited about the sci-fi shower or the tiny soap. It didn't matter. Hardly anything did.

  Mal showered. Alyssa put Ruthie – still asleep, which was only one more in a long list of the night's strange events – down in the middle of one of the beds. The newborn sighed, stretched. Alyssa unwrapped the light blanket that swaddled Ruthie, and pulled the girl's onesie away from her leg. Apparently there was nothing in the diaper, because Alyssa just rewrapped her and let her lay quietly on the bed.

  Alyssa moved to the edge of the same bed. The television was within easy reach so she turned it on and spun the wheel through varying levels of static before finally turning it off again.

  She didn't talk.

  Neither did Blake.

  He leaned on the door, not sure if he was doing it because the floor there had the largest square footage or if it was a subconscious effort to keep out unwanted visitors. Either way, he didn't want to chat. He sensed Alyssa did want to, but also knew that she would wait until Mal was asleep. Probably in the other bed.

  Blake wondered if she'd trust him to sleep with one of the kids or if he'd just have to sleep in that shitty crack between the beds. That would be fun.

  Mal came out of the bathroom, preceded by a puff of clean-smelling steam. Dressed again in his pajamas and smiling. Then he stopped smiling as he looked at Blake. Blake tried the manager's winking trick. It didn't work. His son just looked at the floor.

  "Do I have to go to bed?"

  "We'll be right here," said Alyssa.

  "I'm scared."

  "Nothing will happen."

  She guided Mal to the bed nearest his father. She didn't look at Blake.

  A moment later she was singing a low song to Mal. It was "Twinkle, Twinkle," which the kid hadn't wanted to listen to for years. But he didn't seem to mind now. His brow smoothed out, his eyes closed. His breathing leveled and deepened.

  Alyssa waited a moment, softly rubbing Mal's arm. She looked at Blake and he thought they were going to talk about whatever she had on her mind. Instead, she picked up Ruthie and placed her gently beside Mal. There was plenty of room for both of them in the bed.

  Blake smiled. Just a little. Because Alyssa clearly meant for him to share the other bed with her.

  Unless she wants you on the floor.

  The smile fell away from his mouth.

  "So we'll stay here a few days, then we can go home," said Alyssa.

  The statement, delivered firmly and without offer of discussion or compromise, took him off guard.

  "What?" he said. "We can't afford to do that. We can't afford to stay here that long." He heard the words, heard them coming from his mouth. Knew they made no sense – what else was there to do? They didn't really have any friends or family – none who lived close enough to help, or who could put up an entire family. But at the same time, staying was impossible. Everything was impossible. There was nowhere to turn. "We can't afford to stay here!"

  "Just two nights," said Alyssa.

  "Not even that."

  "So what, you want us to go back? To that place?"

  He pushed away from the door. Crossed his arms over his chest. Angry now. Because she was pushing him.

  No she's not. She's just trying to help –

  (Help herself, not you.)

  She's worried –

  (She's telling you what to do. She's telling.)

  She's just –

  (She's just a bitch.)

  "We're not going back, Blake. We're not."

  That was it. It was clear now: she was trying to force him into a decision, trying to make him do what she wanted instead of what they agreed on.

  "Whoever did all that is probably gone," he said.

  Her eyes bulged and her mouth fell open. "You actually think someone did that? Our landlord pranked us? Some local kids just got a wild idea to stage the most elaborate joke in the history of the world? Are you insane?"

  He moved toward her. A single step, but it felt like he had put his foot down in a swift current. A riptide that might yank him away, somewhere deep and dark.

  "Don't call me that," he said.

  "If the shoe fits."

  He hit her.

  FIRST BLEEDING UNBLED

  It all happened so fast. So fast, and she wasn't really sure what happened.

  She knew he hit her. Of course she knew that, it felt like she had been slammed with a burning anvil. It was just a flat-handed slap, but her teeth ground into the inside of her cheek and her lip split. She rocked back and to the side. Her head hit the wall beside the bed, and she felt a cut open on her forehead as well.

  So, yes, she knew she had been hit.

  But she didn't understand what had led to it.

  Blake had never touched her before. Never raised his hand, never even clenched his fist. In fact, there had even been a few times in their relationship when she wished he was a bit toughe
r. Not meaner, but a bit more willing to stand up for himself. Sometimes it seemed like he was so afraid of becoming –

  (his father, his genes, his destiny)

  – something awful that he shied too far the other direction. Sometimes she wondered if that was why the business was failing. His work was exemplary, but maybe he couldn't land clients because he just didn't know how to fight for them. Because fighting was something he could never, ever do.

  So what happened here? How had he gone from afraid to angry to violent so fast? Where had her husband gone?

  For that matter, where had she gone? What made her say those cruel words to Blake. He had been acting irrational, but why did she call him insane? Why did she poke him in a place she knew would always be so terrible and so tender for him? It wasn't like her.

  None of this was like them.

  Was it the fear? The exhaustion?

  Did it matter?

  The instant after she bounced off the wall Blake was on top of her, falling on her with all his weight, his hands clutching her and flailing at her.

  She tried to scream, couldn't. Then realized that he wasn't attacking her. He was trying to pull her up, trying to pull her to him.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, baby, so sorry."

  She pushed away from him. Shoved with both hands and then managed to get a foot between them. She put it on his chest and levered him away. He was so big he barely took a step. Instead she ended up sliding back on the bed while he remained nearly stationary.

  "Get away from me," she said. Her voice was low. Quavering. She didn't know if she was more afraid or enraged. She knew who he was when she married him. Knew what he had gone through, and knew what he had done to get away from it.

  But she had believed he would never do something like that again. She had believed she was safe.

  "I'm sorry, Lyss," he said. His hands reached toward her. Halted when his arms were only half-outstretched. "I'm sorry, I won't do that again. We'll do whatever you want. I'm sorry. I won't leave you alone. Ever. Promise."

  She pushed herself into the corner of the bed, far away. Staring at her husband. Wondering what she should do. His hands dropped. His shoulders slumped.