by Paul Curtin
“He’s choking,” Michael said.
The room watched in shocked silence. Gurgling sounds rumbled in his throat and spit dripped from his lips. Elise uncovered her mouth and yelled, “Do the Heimlich Maneuver.”
Michael grunted and pulled the boy against himself, oriented a fist onto his diaphragm, and thrust it into his abdomen. The boy groaned and waved for Michael to stop. Michael thrust again.
Sean stood rigid and pulled his son’s face into his chest so he wouldn’t see what was happening. “Take him,” he yelled, pointing to Kelly. She stared at him, her mouth open. “Take him out of here!”
She rushed over to Aidan, picked him up, and shielded his eyes with her hand. They disappeared into the kitchen.
Andrew grabbed at his throat and sank his nails into his skin, clawing into it as if he could make a hole to breathe. Blood trickled at first and then poured. Michael kept doing the maneuver, but Andrew thrashed, and Michael let go to avoid being head-butted in the face.
“Do something,” Elise shouted at her husband.
Sean seemed stiff, paralyzed. His jaw was locked, and the muscles in his cheeks pulsed. He never stopped looking at Andrew. His chest scarcely rose or fell. “I don’t know—”
“Help him,” she yelled.
“What am I going to do?”
“A knife.” Elise sprinted toward the kitchen.
Michael tried to pick up Andrew again, to keep the maneuver going, but Andrew rolled to the side and slipped his grasp. Andrew’s thrashing slowed. His fingers were wet with blood and his neck was scratched in bloody strips like he had been whipped. His chest jumped, and his body convulsed, his eyes never closing—just staring, staring up at him for relief that would not come. After a few more jerking motions, the boy grunted, grasping for nothing in particular. His head dropped back against the floor and his body became still.
Elise came into the room, a knife in hand, and stopped midway. The room hung with silence as the shock sunk in. The boy stared at the ceiling, one eye wide open and the other half-closed. His limbs were loose and unmoving. “Holy shit,” Michael said, standing and lacing his fingers around the back of his head.
Elise took in a rapid succession of breaths while covering her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks and between her fingers. She set the knife, shaking in her hand, on the coffee table. She reached her other arm behind herself without looking, searching for a place to sit. When her hand met a cushion, she lowered herself onto it. “Is he dead?”
Michael reached out and pressed his fingers onto Andrew’s bloody neck and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He nodded and sat on the backs of his legs. “There wasn’t anything in there big enough to choke on,” he said.
“It could have been a big chunk of meat,” Sean said.
Elise said, “The Heimlich should have worked.”
“Holy shit,” Michael said, wiping his bloodied fingers on a nearby napkin. “He’s really dead.” The kid wasn’t even eighteen, and he was laying on the floor in front of him. No more life. No more dreams. There was nothing in his eyes but a cold, distant stare. He closed the kid’s eyelids and bowed his head. “What just happened?”
Sean hadn’t moved a muscle. “Maybe he was allergic to something.”
Elise looked beside herself. “I didn’t put anything new in the soup.”
“At all?” Michael said.
“I’ve made the same soup half a dozen times by now.”
Michael caught Sean’s eyes, but Sean looked away. The sudden shock gave way to an emerging boiling in Michael’s chest. He had no evidence, and he couldn’t prove it, but a feeling so powerful he couldn’t deny struck him in the gut. “Sean.” Sean looked back at him and blinked a couple times. Then he knew. Shit. The kid was dead, and it was all his doing. “Did you—?” Michael said.
Sean looked confused.
But Michael knew better. “Sean,” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t try to back out of this.”
“Back out of what?”
“How did you—? Why?”
Sean shook his head. “Will you calm down for a second?”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“It was. Holy shit. It was you.”
“What was me?” he yelled.
Elise jumped up from the couch and put her hands out toward Michael. “Stop it.”
Michael shot a look over to his sister. “Stop it? What do you think just happened here?”
She waved both of her hands. “Whoa, let’s back up.”
“Think about it. He’s always hated the kid.”
“Are we really having this discussion right now?” Sean said.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Stop, Mike,” Elise said.
“Couldn’t stand that Molly actually loved him? And that he got to stay in your house?”
“Come on.”
“You thought you’d make things even.”
Elise shouted, “Michael, stop it!”
Michael turned and paced, rubbing his scalp with his palm. He pointed at the body. “Elise, for God’s sake, the kid’s dead.”
“We don’t know what happened,” she said, crying.
“Yes, we do. The one day that Sean serves the food, someone eats it and dies. How does that not register with you?” His hands returned to his head. “Ah, shit,” he said. “No, no. Shit.”
“I didn’t cook the soup, Michael,” Sean said.
“Just because I can’t explain it, doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”
“Listen to yourself.”
“You must have,” he pointed at the bowls, “you must have put it in the bowls or something. You must have—” Michael froze, his finger pointing at Andrew’s bowl, his thoughts lingering there. Like the teeth of a gear catching into place, the thought clicked in his brain. He covered his mouth and rubbed his lips. “You put it in the bowl.”
Sean forced air out of his nostrils. “Will you stop this? For God’s sake, I don’t—”
“It was meant for me.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Elise said, “What do you mean?”
“The bowl. The one he gave to me. I gave it to Andrew.”
Sean said, “This is crazy.”
“Then eat his soup.”
“What?”
Michael grabbed Andrew’s bowl from the coffee table and thrust it toward Sean. “Then eat the soup.”
“I have no idea what happened here. I’m not going to put myself at risk just to satisfy your delusions.”
“Did you poison him?”
“What are you talking about?” Sean yelled. “Dear God, Michael, I don’t want to die too if something was in his soup.”
Michael stared the man down, the bowl shaking in his hand. After a few seconds that seemed to last minutes, he tossed it aside. “You son of a bitch,” he said.
“You need to calm down. I didn’t do anything.”
“You want me dead?” he said. “Pull out that gun you keep on your belt. Come on. I know it’s under your clothes. Pull it out. Be a man about it.”
Elise cried, “Stop this. Both of you.”
Michael rubbed the back of his neck. He could not understand how she didn’t see it. It was plain. Sean would never allow Andrew to keep eating his food while his daughter lay under a pile of frozen dirt in the backyard. No way.
He looked at her. “He’s not going to stop, Elise. He’s not going to stop.”
Elise, tears in her eyes, said nothing.
Sean had no devilish smirk or admission of guilt on his face. But Michael knew. He could see it. Something was happening, something intangible, something behind Sean’s eyes he couldn’t quite place, as if he were declaring a victory over his enemy.
Michael then understood
fully what he didn’t want to accept before: that he would have to do something about it. He would have to do something about Sean.
Elise
The door shut, and the image of Andrew’s body, wrapped in a tarp, being dragged outside, went with it. When she heard the lock click, she turned to look at the blood streaks smeared into her carpet. Nothing would get the stain out. The carpet was now infested with ash and blood intermingled.
Her gaze rose. Michael stood there with his arms crossed. The seeds Michael had planted came back with a frightening pungency, filling her head like poison, making every move that Sean made and every word he spoke seem suspicious. She knew it wasn’t true. Sean may have done questionable things in the past few months—he was a flawed man—but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Every life he took was out of a sense to protect his family. That was his primary goal. There was no need to think he was acting otherwise.
“Elise.”
“Unless you’re going to apologize, save it.”
He sighed. “Elise, there has to be some small part of you that knows I’m right.”
She approached him. “There’s a big part of me that wants you to shut up.”
“Elise—”
“You have zero proof, Michael. Zero. What do you want to do? Do you want to get rid of him? Huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t kill Andrew.”
“He’s done this before.”
“He was defending our home then.”
“He still thinks he is.”
She waved her hand, shook her head, and stormed past him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Haven’t from the beginning.”
“He’s not the same man you married.”
“He’s exactly the same man I married,” she said, turning back to him.
“He’s not.”
“What would you do with him?” she whispered, eyes narrowed. “Huh? What would you do?”
“Come on, Elise.”
“What would you do?”
“Stop asking me that.”
“Be a man. Say it.”
“Elise, will you quit asking—”
“Say it!”
It looked like the words sat at the precipice of his tongue, just behind his lips, ready to explode out of his mouth. But he said nothing. She pressed her teeth together and said, “You need to get out of my sight.”
Michael rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger and said, “Elise, I was wrong. About a lot of things. I was wrong.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m not now. Believe me, I’m not now.”
“He has done nothing but be generous with you. Did you know that we had a plan if a disaster like this were to happen? We had a plan. If anyone came to our door—anyone—we would turn them away. But we didn’t. All that food you’ve been eating your fill of, all the warm showers you’ve had. Warm fires, blankets, sleeping bags—they were ours to use. Do you get that? That was for my kids and me and Sean. Not you. Not Kelly. Not Andrew. And we were prepared to turn away anyone who was going to come by our home because we needed to survive.
“And then you and Kelly got mixed up in all this. Andrew too. And we changed our plans. For you. We risked everything so you could live too. Sean allowed the thing he valued most—the survival of his family—to be put on the line so your ungrateful ass could live too. How have you repaid him? By questioning everything he does. By accusing him of murder.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“Come on.”
“He’s just preserving what is most valuable to him, right? You said it yourself.”
“Michael, just stop.”
“Think about it. With Andrew gone, there’s so much more food. One less mouth to feed. What happens when I die next? Or what about Kelly?”
“That isn’t what’s happening.”
“What happens if you’re in the way of his survival?”
“Michael,” she said, more agitated.
“What happens to Aidan?”
A knot moved from her gut into her throat and it burned like acid. Sean’s a good man, she told herself, he would never hurt Aidan. He would never hurt Elise like that. Yet, she thought for a moment maybe he was right. Maybe there was something…
She jolted her head to the side as if to expel the thought. “You’re wrong.”
He threw his hands out in desperation. “You have to see what’s going on here.”
“I see exactly what’s going on here. You’re trying to turn me against my husband.”
“Elise, please, I’m—”
“Enough,” she yelled. Her limbs burned, the anger sinking into her muscles. Her entire body filled with pressure, and she exhaled to keep from exploding. “Go find my son and then do me a favor and stay out of sight for a while.”
“He’ll never let us live—”
“Get out of my sight,” she said, not able to look at him any longer.
She listened to his footsteps fade away from her. The sound of small feet emerged from the same direction a moment later. Aidan. She got down on her knees and pulled him into a tight hug. She rubbed the back of his head and settled herself so she wouldn’t cry.
“Did Andrew die like Molly?” he asked.
At least she tried. The watershed of tears broke. “Yeah.”
“He was my best friend.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“Are you and daddy going to die too?”
The question pulverized her heart. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, let alone speak. She had never considered what might happen if both of them died. She had always considered that Aidan’s conditions would take him first, but she never considered the possibility they might die before him, leaving him alone.
She pulled her son back into an embrace and closed her eyes. “Not for a very long time,” she whispered.
Days had passed since Andrew’s death and the uneasiness in the house hadn’t subsided. Many times, dinners were eaten in almost complete silence. Michael refused to eat anything he didn’t watch being prepared. He washed his own dish before serving any food. His behavior reminded her of Sean’s. She wondered if maybe the reason they had never gotten along was that they were so much alike.
She sometimes found herself looking out between the boards on the windows at the dead landscape, dreaming of green trees and the fresh scent of cut grass. The smell of burnt wood was continuous. The air tasted like used charcoal. Each glance outside reminded her of the new normal that had come upon them, without any option for escape. As far as she could see, the snow that was supposed to be white and pure was grimy, and the sun never shone. Nothing could change it.
And there were terrible dreams, always involving Sean, or at least some form of him. There was something different about him, in those dreams. It was as if she could see inside of him, saw his heart beating, but it was shriveled and the blood coursing through his veins was filled with a sickly, dark gray plaque. His eyes were black. Everyone was circled around the fireplace. Sean would brandish his pistol and aim down the sights. It was always Michael first. Right in the chest. Then he would shoot Kelly. Elise would rush toward Aidan as Sean aimed the gun at him, but she was always too late. She watched her son exhale his last before looking up to see Sean pointing the gun at her. She winced, shutting her eyes, and the light from the muzzle flash would pour over her closed eyelids, and she would wake up. She knew it was just a dream, but the emotion lingered into her waking hours.
Her stomach leaped when she saw Sean enter a room or if she spotted him with his axe coming in from chopping wood. They would lay next to one another at bedtime, and he would reach out and rub her back and neck. While her body enjoyed the sensation, her mind kept imagining him reaching up around her throat, taking it in his hand, compressing it. She tried to ignore the th
oughts, but the harder she tried the more intense they became.
One morning, she watched Sean get up before dawn and dress himself to get the wood for the day. As soon as he was out the door, she rose, bundled up, and snuck out the garage door.
The garage was quiet except for the wind brushing against the siding outside. Her fogged breath swirled around in the still air. She considered turning back, talking to him at another time, like when he didn’t have a sharp weapon in his hand. She pressed on.
Each step signaled to her brain to turn around. She pulled the door open. The icy wind blasted against her face but died down. She took a few steps into the path Sean had shoveled out and patted down with his boots. It hadn’t snowed in a week, but it was perpetually cold and dreary. The sun hid behind low clouds.
A grunt rose in the distance followed by a dull, smashing thud. Her husband brought the axe down onto a log, and the two split pieces cracked open and flew in different directions. He lined another chunk of wood onto the block and slammed the blade through it.
All the moisture in her mouth had dried up. She inched closer to him, trying to make noise by kicking and crunching the snow. He was unpredictable when startled, and she didn’t want to get shot accidentally.
He split another log, grunting as he did it, and then rested his tool on the ground next to his body. He pulled his scarf down under his chin and blew a voluminous puff of vapor into the air. She edged closer, almost stomping, about fifteen feet from him. Finally, he turned toward her.
His eyebrows rose, and he looked around as if his mind switched into a different gear. “Babe, it isn’t your day to cut wood.”
She smiled under her bundled up scarf and came closer to him. “I wanted to see what you were doing,” she replied.
He planted the axe into the snow. “Chopping wood. Like always.”
He wasn’t buying the excuse. She looked around at the cords of wood stacked in rows and then to a tarp bursting with wood under it. Further beyond was a path into the forest where Sean had felled multiple trees with the electric chainsaw before the generator was taken. “I’m not sure we need to keep chopping more wood.”
“We always could use more,” he said, tilting his head. “You came out here to talk about chopping wood?”
