by Dan Mooney
“Were you drunk?” Rebecca whispered.
“No. Yes. Sort of,” he replied. “I had two drinks, but it was hours before I got into the car. I just stopped paying attention. They were laughing. So was I. We were listening to something on the stereo. I don’t remember what it was.” His throat was sore. Tight.
“I slapped her hand, and then we hit it, and when we did everything slowed down. The car seemed to just crumple, and Eddie was looking at me. He was looking right at me. Jules went by us both and into the windshield. The side of the car hugged Eddie, it just seemed to form up all around him, bits of metal and glass and Eddie. They all merged into one. Then I was asleep. I just slept, and in the background, the screams. They screamed and screamed, and I couldn’t. I woke up, and all I could feel was warm. Jules was broken, she was just lying on the ground, broken. And the other driver was trying to help her. He was screaming too. Eddie wasn’t screaming anymore. He was silent. His last words were a scream, and then he never made a noise ever again.”
He drew a breath. She was still holding his arm, but not so tightly now, and her face was just like his mother’s, a picture of pity and sorrow. He hated other people’s pity.
“Go on,” she whispered.
“They told me it would get better. Time would make it okay. You were there when they told me that. In the hospital, while they checked on all my cuts. Nurses would rub my head with all their pity, and Mom would try to hold my hand. They were wrong though. I stopped being hungry. I forgot about eating. Then he killed himself. Like it was his fault. I was the one who wasn’t paying attention, but still he killed himself. And I was still alive. I killed my sister, and I killed him for driving his own truck. Didn’t even go to their funerals. I was in the hospital. I sat in a hospital bed on my own while my parents and all my friends buried my sister. When they let me go home, everything was Jules. Everything was hers. My whole house was Jules and Eddie. My mother cried every day, and I couldn’t. I had no tears. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just couldn’t cry. Dad got angry at first. He used to make me get out of bed even though I didn’t want to. He would force me and shout at me. When I wouldn’t eat, he’d grab me by the jaw and try to make me. His hands hurt me, crushed me. He had all these tears in his eyes. He’d scream and roar and shout and kick things in my room, but all I could see was his nose. It was the same as Jules’s nose. She was his favorite, she always had been. Ned and Ann brought those purple flowers. Ned looks so much like Eddie. He would hug Mom and they’d cry. So many tears. All the time. And as good as none from me. It got so bad I couldn’t look at anyone. You were always crying too.” He looked at her as he said it. She was crying again. Fat, glistening tears rolled down her cheeks, just like they had rolled down Plasterer’s the day before. He made the whole world cry. It was his great gift. Pain. For everyone.
“Go on,” she said again, sniffling.
He had come this far. Further than he’d ever gone before. He wasn’t about to stop now.
“Then Dad left. He took his things and went. I think he still talks to Mom, but I’ve never heard from him since. I try not to think about it, but you can’t really blame him, can you? His murderer son kills the daughter he loves best, and then his home feels like a tomb, so he leaves. He really did always prefer her. I feel like I killed him too. It’s like he’s not with us anymore. Then Mom started needing me, and I couldn’t be what she wanted. She wanted me back, but I was gone. I was in between places. I was slipping through the cracks. I didn’t really exist. Then you were gone. You stood for hours at my door, just knocking on it and looking so sad. I couldn’t look at how sad you were. I couldn’t stand looking at how sad everyone was. I brought everyone pain. I killed everything. Jules, Eddie, Mom, Dad, Ned, Ann, him and his truck. He had a family too. So I broke them, as well. And you. How could I have broken you? How could I have done it?”
She swung her arms around his shoulders. That’s when he realized he was crying. His body shook with the tears. Floods from his eyes. He wept like he had never wept before. He thought there were no tears left, but he was wrong. There were so many more tears.
“I’m sorry,” he wailed. “I’m sorry. Eddie... Jules. Rick. Poor Rick, I killed him too. I killed him by slapping her hand. He didn’t do anything, and then I killed him. Just a man driving a truck one day, and then he’s gone. His family. His poor family. See what I do?”
She was talking to him, but he couldn’t make out her words. They seemed to be coming at him through the fog of tears and anger and bitterness; the sound couldn’t make it through, so he just kept crying. So many lives ruined. Ruined by him. Penny O’Neill had called him a breaker of families. She was not wrong.
“They promised me it would get better with time, but it never did. I just learned to live with it. I just bring it with me everywhere. I have to. I keep it here at home, and I try not to take it out of the house, but sometimes it just goes with me.” The words came through clenched teeth and in between sobs.
“I’ve found a way to live with it. I just have to make sure I own it. I have to make sure I own everything around me. I can’t get rid of it. I got out of the cracks in between life. When I realized it, I was here, in this universe, where I can control things. It’s the only way I can live. I have to have it. As long as I have to bring it with me, I need to find a way to control it. So I do.”
His face hurt from crying.
“You can’t do it alone, Denis. Why won’t you see that? It’s too much for one person. That’s what friends are for.” Her words came through shuddering breaths.
“I have friends,” he told her, looking at her through blurry eyes. “They help me. They understand me. They live in this universe too. They realize what I need, and they give it to me.”
“Frank and Ollie?” she asked, the surprise cutting through her crying.
“No. Different friends. You’ve never met them.”
“Denis, I’ve been here for weeks. I know that you have no one. I’ve seen you. You’re like a ghost, Denis, sometimes you barely exist. I can’t explain it, but I can help. I swear. I want to help.”
She was doing exactly what they warned him she’d do. She was trying to fix him. She wanted him changed. It floated there between them for a few minutes while he calmed his erratic breathing. So much had just poured out of him, things that he had kept to himself for years and years. The knowledge of what he had done. He wore it like a cloak. He slept in it. He ate in it. He worked in it, and now he was giving it all away. He had given so much of it to her, he felt lighter, like he could float outside his own head and watch himself sitting in the filth of his kitchen floor, with her arms around him. Years and years of wearing his new life like a second skin, and now he was shrugging it off. All because she wouldn’t let him hurt anymore. She was refusing to let him hurt. The dam burst all over again and he cried anew, but this time it was a quiet, regretful stream of tears, not the angry river from before. Tears for Eddie now, not for himself. Tears for the life his friend has missed. Her voice reached him again through his fog of regret.
“It’s okay,” she was saying. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”
He believed her.
He was wrong.
IN THE PANTOMIME
The days when Denis Murphy woke without some sense of trepidation about the day ahead were few and far between. The morning after he had cried all night and fell asleep sobbing while his ex-girlfriend whispered to him like he was a small child turned out to be no different. It was a sad fact of Denis Murphy’s life that trepidation about the day ahead was a normal occurrence. It was also a fact of life for the thirty-year-old that no sense of anything came without a war, from a sense of something else. Every thought and feeling immediately fought for a place in Denis’s consciousness with a variety of other emotions and ideas. Sometimes just thinking was a struggle. For example, on the morning after he cried like a small
child, there was nervousness, uncertainty, a low-key alarm about what the ramifications of his actions would be; there was also a sense of wonder and freedom. He pictured Eddie in his old hospital bed, and found he could think of the man without the bitter sense of recrimination and self-loathing that had come with every other thought of Eddie since the accident. He felt sad. Calmly, he isolated that feeling and examined it as dispassionately as he could. Sadness was a surprisingly sweet feeling. On reflection, Denis realized, he probably just thought that because it was one of the very few emotions he could identify. He felt tears well up for his dead friend, but he didn’t fight them, he allowed himself the moment of sweet sadness.
His alarm had not woken him that morning. He could remember Rebecca waking and detaching herself from him gently; he had half woken and fallen back asleep almost immediately. She had kissed his forehead and whispered to him, and he had smiled and tried to say something to her; he couldn’t remember what. When he did wake, he didn’t immediately get up. He decided to get up at his leisure and instead scrolled through the various news apps on his phone, reading about the world outside. He wondered idly if this was what normal people were like. Were there a million other men in the world waking up in bed with their girlfriends and feeling good, but somehow bad?
For a little while he imagined a world where Rebecca was his wife. On Sundays he’d fetch the papers from the shop, and they’d eat breakfast in bed. They’d have a dog that would always jump up on the bed and make him groan at the ruined sports pages, but he’d really love the dog deep down. Rebecca would laugh at him, and they’d kiss and eat Sunday dinner in his mother’s house. It was a fantasy, but a fun one. He pictured himself being that guy for a while, and tried not to remember that he was, instead, a ball of neuroses whom people laughed at because he hated it when people used dessert spoons for eating soup, and in fact, couldn’t eat soup himself without brown bread, buttered and cut into strips. Remembering things like that had a way of ruining perfectly good fantasies. Guilt concerning work eventually drove him from his place of comfort, and he finally managed to get out of bed.
He showered, carefully scrubbing as his mind drifted aimlessly. He found himself thinking of Eddie and Jules, and with thoughts of them came another great well of sadness; it didn’t engulf him though, as it had once threatened to do, and he showered in peace. He also cleaned up the puddles in peace.
It wasn’t until after he was dry that he got his first inkling of something being wrong. On the surface, he seemed confident, but he could feel the worm of uncertainty turning inside him. Something, as usual, was amiss. He couldn’t identify that something. It would probably turn out to be not-usual at all. Still he gave himself a high five in the mirror for moral support. His reflection winked at him seriously. After dressing he made his way down the stairs to begin the cleaning of the kitchen, only to find the job done already. Rebecca may have done it before going to work, but that seemed unlikely. She knew what stock Denis put into cleaning, and its therapeutic effects. He looked in wonder at the spotless job. It was a job even he would have been proud of. He briefly wondered if the kitchen had become so accustomed to being clean that it had cleaned itself.
“We cleaned it, you moron,” Plasterer told him, walking through the door carrying a large cardboard box.
“You did? I didn’t think you knew how. I just assumed you were only good for destruction,” he replied.
“We destroy so you can clean. Our relationship is like that. Yesterday, you destroyed, so we cleaned. There are certain things that are unacceptable. A filthy kitchen is top of the list,” he said, placing the cardboard box on the table.
“You sound like me.”
“Of course I do, moron. Six years we’ve been dancing this dance, but you’re too stupid to see it.”
“What’s in the box?” Denis asked.
“None of your business,” Plasterer replied, his tone unfriendly. Penny O’Neill and the Professor trooped in behind him, loyal dogs on the heel of their master. Denis couldn’t believe he was thinking of them in such terms, but the atmosphere had turned sour. He could feel their resentment.
“Where’s Deano?” he asked.
“Tied up in your bedroom. He’s become insubordinate. He will be taught. So will you,” the Professor replied, sitting himself at the table.
“What’s going on here?” Denis asked, confused. Plasterer was leaning against the stove. He had replaced the white glove on his right hand with a red one. It frightened Denis for its sharp and unaccountable contrast.
“I’m afraid the nature of our relationship has changed. I asked you nicely, Denis. I truly did, but a direct course of action is necessary now.”
“You were warned. You were told there was a deadline, but even if the deadline was next week, there’s still no excusing yesterday,” Penny O’Neill replied, digging her hand into the box. It was his box of photographs. Memories from the other universe.
“What are you talking about? Leave those alone.” Denis looked at them one after another. The Professor and Penny O’Neill regarded him coldly.
“Ignore him,” Plasterer instructed them. “He has to learn, and learn he shall. You don’t just betray us after all these years. You don’t get to just replace us with someone else. You don’t get to tell anyone about our secrets.”
“What secrets?” Denis asked. “Get away from the photos. They’re mine.”
“You’re a moron, Denis,” Plasterer told him. “A clueless moron who understands nothing. There will be punishment for yesterday. She will leave the house, and if you won’t do it, we’ll make it happen all on our own.”
The Professor and Penny O’Neill began rifling through the photos, scissors in hands, and with slow, deliberate movements, they cut her head from the photos. Denis moved to stop them, but Plasterer moved faster, his red right hand reaching out to grip Denis by the throat.
“You don’t get to be in charge anymore, Denis,” he whispered sharply. A small speck of spit flew from his lips. “You’re no longer the boss. I am. You’re nothing now. A guest in my home. No more. You’ll be tolerated, at best, but you don’t get to make the decisions.”
His grip was tight, and painful. Denis clawed at it with his left hand, trying to pry the fingers loose, but they weren’t budging.
“Your reign of indecision and constant panic is over. There’s to be a new order. I can do what you can’t. Can face what you can’t. I’m the strong one, the one with the power. You’re sniveling and weak, and your lack of clear leadership is what makes you so unfit. Did you think I was bluffing?”
Denis was still desperately trying to suck in air.
“You were a peace-time general, at best. But this is war. A war of senses. A war of thoughts and feelings. And what are you to thoughts and feelings? Nothing. A ghost. You think you can logic this out? You cannot. You think there’s a way to rationalize all of this? There is not. You’re a killer of people, who loves a woman who left you and shuns his own mother. Yesterday you sat paralyzed until I told you how to fix it. You can deal with nothing, and so you shall be replaced.”
With that he let go of Denis’s throat, and Denis sucked in air in great gulps, his chest heaving. Plasterer seemed to be out of breath too, his chest rising and falling with the effort of maintaining his iron grip.
Denis looked at the Professor and Penny O’Neill for some support. It was not forthcoming. In fact, Penny O’Neill looked vaguely disgusted with him, as if looking at something repugnant. The Professor looked grimly satisfied, nodding slightly to himself before returning to his work. He even began humming “The Imperial March” from Star Wars.
Denis realized he was angry. A feeling. Strong in his stomach, a fire in his brain, and it was growing. It seemed to energize him.
“This is my house,” he told them. “Not yours. Get out.”
Plasterer laughed in his face, a long, hard laugh. It sounded like a
cartoon bad guy. A really bad cartoon bad guy.
“I just told you to get out. I meant it. I’m fine without any of you. I don’t need you. I have Rebecca, and Frank and Ollie. I have my mother. I don’t need any of you.” He shouted it at them, but the words still seemed to lack conviction.
“You have nothing. You think you don’t need us? You’re wrong. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need us. You’re on the edge, Denis, and clinging on for dear life, but eventually you’ll fall off. When you do, well, there’s no telling what will happen, but I can assure you, it won’t be good.”
Professor was still humming “The Imperial March.”
“I said get out. I’m not on the edge of anything. Get out of my house.”
Professor was still cutting, his snips clumsy and brutal. Rebecca’s head was all over the kitchen table.
He wore a small, angry grin. Denis couldn’t tell if he was smiling at the slowly falling heads of his kind-of-ex-kind-of-current girlfriend, or at the futile shouting Denis was doing. He just kept cutting and humming.
“You don’t get to tell us what to do anymore,” Plasterer told him, this time coldly. “We’re making a little present for your new friend. When she arrives back to the house, we’ll have little presents for her all over the place. It’ll cover the walls, her room, your room. We have many, many plans for how we’re going to deal with this situation.”
“Why?” Denis asked. Defeated. “Why like this? Why not just confront her, like you’re trying to do to me?”
“You’re a moron, Denis,” Penny O’Neill told him.
It’s happening. It’s finally happening.
