She knelt on the hard rock beside the still body. The cold ground, as if frozen by the proximity of the Grim Reaper, stung her bony knees.
Close up, the old woman’s dress ensemble looked new, albeit rumpled and recently stained with mud spots. It must’ve come from one of the charity centers that gave out hot meals, clothes and occasionally, a cot for the night.
Chelsea frisked the old woman’s suit. The lightweight body moved as easily as a child’s plush toy.
The cash she pulled from the suit pockets was astonishing. It looked like at least five hundred dollars, mostly in small bills with coins mixed in.
With this loot, Chelsea could score some meth and stay high for a week straight, maybe get some food and stay at a decent economy hotel. She wondered why the old woman didn’t use the money for a hotel. Even a day or two off the streets, here and there, could’ve meant the difference between life and death.
What an idiot. I wonder…
She hesitated before reaching deep into the old woman’s pants pockets. Purple velvet lining slid past her fingers as she pulled forth a slim leather wallet.
It held cash; mostly hundreds, six of them, and some twenties and tens, neatly organized by denomination.
Seven hundred and thirty, if she did the math right. Plus, the other five hundred!
There were also credit cards—the high-end platinum and gold versions. The driver’s license was issued last year…to Pamela Cooper, age 26. The picture showed a perky arrogant executive with a bored smirk on her face. The face looked like the old woman, only much younger!
Chelsea dropped the wallet.
What the fu-
The old woman’s body suddenly began to shrivel, rapidly collapsing in on itself with harsh crackling sounds and yellow sizzling sparks of searing combustion. Within seconds, grey motes swirled about in the superheated air, leaving behind the suit outfit, settling to the ground, filled with the fine smoking ash remains of the body.
A wet scream choked in the back of Chelsea’s throat as she tried to scrabble away backwards on her knees.
The last thing she saw was the marionette springing up from the ground towards her; its spectral wiry lines whipping towards her face like the tentacles of an enraged octopus, piercing deep into her flesh. The life drained out of her as her consciousness descended into spiraling darkness.
* * *
The next morning, an odd vacant-eyed old woman, dressed like a Goth in a jeans jacket and pants and a Plasmoid’s tee-shirt, entertained the laughing children gathered around her, manipulating a marionette with such skill…that it appeared to be alive.
<<====>>
Author’s Story Note
I’ve always been fascinated by how little we really know, yet we go through most of life feeling confident that everything is okay.
CILANTRO
Annie Neugebauer
From Fire: Demons, Dragons, and Djinns (Elemental Anthology Book 1)
Editor: Rhonda Parrish
Tyche Books Ltd.
“Come on. A little poison never hurt anyone.” My elbow bites into my husband’s ribs. We’ve realized I forgot to rinse the cilantro before adding it.
The kitchen smells like fresh, meaty garlic and watery tomato blood—sweet and earthy beneath our warm fluorescents. A tiny moth flutters and bumps along their plastic casing.
“Ha. Ha.” Moments later, his comeback: “Except all the insects killed by it.” A real zinger, my man.
“Well, yeah. If they didn’t use pesticide on their pests, we wouldn’t have anything to make our picante with.”
It’s a low blow. A small dose of salt in an old wound already going green around the edges. Jason is a freelance consultant to farmers and gardeners who want to make their practices more organic and environmentally buzz-word-able. He tells already-struggling growers, like my dad, that to sell their produce for twice as much they need to invest in four times the labor to yield half the product, and that unless they can switch to all indoor production there aren’t any guarantees their entire crops won’t be wiped out on a bad year. It’s how we met—when my dad told Jason to fuck off and I felt bad for him, asking him to come inside for a decidedly non-organic cup of coffee.
It’s also why most of the farmers who usually give us free food are fresh out of cilantro this year. I bought this oversized bunch at the big chain store Jason calls Volde-Mart. His cause strikes me as perfectly noble; it’s his use of it to further his own personal gain at the expense of others that has worn me down over the years.
He stares into the bowl of red salsa tinged with green and white, his nose wrinkling. He knows exactly what chemical concoctions I’ve forgotten to rinse off.
“What kind of bugs eat cilantro anyway?” I ask. My family never grew it, and like many girls raised on a farm, I learned as little as possible about the family business and got the hell out of there when I turned eighteen. I pluck our biggest wooden spoon from the canister and stir.
“Cutworms, mostly. Other things too.”
My eyes are still watery from the onion. I sniff, nudging Jason out of my way. When we were first married he’d rave over the meals I made for him. He overlooked my hodunk roots as I overlooked his hoity-toity ideals, like a farm-crossed Romeo and Juliet. Now he whines about his clients seeing me at the store, complains that I don’t cook enough, and never thanks me even when I do.
What I want to say is, “If you’re going to be a little bitch you can make your own dinner.” What I actually say is, “If you’re that worried about it, you don’t have to eat it.”
But he will, I know. Jason’s nothing if he’s not an opportunist. Animals like us can never resist a free meal.
* * *
I’ve always quietly resented that Jason convinced me to quit my job in advertising to help him build his business. In retrospect I wonder if that’s actually why he married me—not love, but utility. I had connections with farmers all across the state thanks to my dad, and I knew how to market.
But today it’s actually lucky that I work from home, because Jason is so sick he didn’t go to work. Maybe not rinsing the cilantro really was a mistake. We did put a lot in this time—too much. It’s made our picante taste sweet with that soapy tang, so I add an extra jalapeño to balance the flavors, making it spicy enough to make our noses run. Could he really be that sensitive to residual pesticides? Maybe it’s all in his head. But as I peek into the bedroom to check on him, it doesn’t seem like it’s in his head.
Our blackout curtains are closed tight against the noon sun that infuses the rest of the house with summer glow. He’s stacked extra pillows over the seam to seal out that fine ray down the middle. In the forced twilight of the room all I can see of him is a pale, pupal lump under our down comforter. It’s pulled all the way up over his head, probably because the room’s so cold.
I hover in the doorway, leaning in while holding onto the frame, peering through the dimness, listening for breathing. I pad across the carpet and sit on the edge of the bed, picking out the dark cave of his face under the edge of the blankets. He’s facing me, eyes squeezed shut with a fierceness that conveys pain. I put my hand on his forehead to feel his skin, expecting a fever.
His eyes flash open, wide and almost panicked.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. His skin feels cool and clammy. I raise my voice to a low murmur. “How do you feel?”
“Like shit.” His voice comes out hoarse and wet at the same time. “Why is it so bright in here?”
I look at the tiny strip of light coming in over the top of the curtain rod. “Do you have a headache?”
He shakes his head.
“Maybe you’re working on a migraine.” He’s probably about to have his first aura. I stand, wiping my hand on my sweats, and toss an extra blanket over the curtain rod. “Can I get you something? Tea? Water?”
“I’d love some more picante,” he slurs.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if it’s what made you sick?”
My face slips blank at his words, chest twisting. It actually makes him more mad if I don’t act hurt, so in a pleasant voice I ask, “What else sounds good?”
He sighs in annoyed defeat. “A salad is fine.”
“Sure.”
I almost skip washing the lettuce, but then I wash it twice out of guilt.
He eats the whole bowl in five minutes, huddled under the blankets, not bothering with the dressing, and goes back to sleep, pulling the bedding over his head.
The first seed of real unease blooms in my chest.
* * *
Whether out of guilt, vindictiveness, or simple curiosity, I eat two more big bowls of the picante. It’s soapy-spiced but still delicious. I don’t get sick. Whatever Jason has, it’s not from that.
* * *
At bedtime I look in on him again. He’s snoring so softly I can barely hear it, his body exposed to the cool air. I almost climb into bed next to him, but I pause. He looks…bloated. A tiny shiver fights its way up my spine, and I try to stifle it. I tell myself it is absolutely not from revulsion.
But his skin does look soft and doughy, almost creased into puffy rolls at each joint. It wouldn’t hurt for him to start sleeping with a shirt on.
Jesus, I’m terrible. So he hasn’t been hitting the gym as much as he used to. Neither have I. Plus, he’s sick. Everyone looks terrible when they’re sick.
Maybe I shouldn’t disturb him. He needs the sleep.
I quietly refill the glass of water on his nightstand and leave. I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight. If he’s not feeling better in the morning, I’ll call a doctor.
* * *
A soft sound wakes me. The box under the TV says 2:23am. The house is dark and still and silent. I wait, listening.
Something indiscernible. The faintest shuffling, followed by a muted thump.
“Jason,” I breathe, folding back the throw and hurrying down the hall. I round the corner and stop in the bedroom doorway. The blankets cover him in a lumpy mass. Has he added more?
“Jason?”
He doesn’t move.
I edge into the room. “Are you okay? I thought I heard something.”
When he still doesn’t answer, I sit on the corner of the bed. “Babe?”
I pull the top of the comforter down. Empty. He’s not in the bed.
“Jason?” I stand and pace down the hall, checking the bathroom and office. He’s not there. I go back through the living room and peer into the kitchen and dining room. Those, too, are empty. A strangeness slinks through me, as if I know something my mind hasn’t acknowledged yet.
I ease down the hallway and into our bedroom, flicking on the lamp that sits on the small wooden desk near the door. It casts an orange glow across the tan carpet.
“Jason?”
My abs tighten involuntarily. It’s the feeling I get when I know someone’s about to scare me, but Jason’s way too sick to jump out at me for laughs. Still, I say too loudly, “If you’re in here, answer me.”
There’s no answer, but I know he’s here.
I hem forward and toss the blankets back into place, as if he could be tucked under the fold. Then I circle the foot of the bed and look in the corner, behind the small recliner we’ve wedged there. With a slimy swallow, I sink to my knees and lift the bed skirt, peering into the darkness beneath. The emptiness startles me.
A sigh of relief slips through my lips at the same time as a thump emanates from the closet. I twitch, a restrained jump. Too tense to take it, I stand, march to the closet, and shove open the bi-fold doors.
Jason doesn’t leap out at me. At first, I don’t even see him—just the junk we have piled under the row of crammed hanging clothes.
Then the pile shifts, and I see a swollen heel sticking out from under an old cat bed. A board game slides from the pile and clatters to the floor.
Trembling, I kneel. “Jason? What are you doing in here?”
I move aside a fallen blouse to reveal his face. It’s large and round and pale, jowly in a way that it never has been before, and only his wide, terrified eyes seem familiar to me. His lips are so puffed it looks like he can barely move them, but he doesn’t try. He just whimpers softly, eyes roving.
I start to move some of the things off him, but he snatches at them with hands that are slow and soft, piling things back onto himself even as he tries to push his head back under the rubbish.
“Jason,” I gasp, stepping back. “What the hell is going on?”
My husband tunnels further into our closet, slipping even his foot back under the pile, so that no part of him shows among our neglected possessions in the shadowed dark.
* * *
I feel as though I’ve had my feet knocked out from under me. I don’t call anyone. An ugly part of me works hard to make excuses. What on earth would I say? Besides, I’m ‘not his god damn mom.’
I shut the bedroom door, have a panic attack, and take some pills. My last emotion as I slip under sleep’s blanket is small and hard, strangely anticipatory, almost starved, like an animal fed too long on spoiled feed, but still I vow to check on him in the morning.
* * *
The rest of the house is bright and chastising enough that I almost laugh at myself—until I open the door. The first thing that hits me is the darkness. He must have piled even more coverings over the cracks around the curtains; I can’t see more than two feet in. I flip on the lamp, then notice an unusual odor. Woodsy, fibrous, dank, and almost fishy. Weak with nerves and hazy with medicine remnants, I take one step inside. I don’t know how to explain why I don’t call out his name this time. The silence seems waiting.
The sole of my foot lands on something rough and damp, like bark. I look down, raising my foot, and grasp some of it between my fingers. It feels like mushy pencil shavings. My eyes catch a pale ring around the leg of the desk, then jump to the next leg, and the next. All four of them have grooves carved out of the bottom, the wood shreds piled around them on the floor.
My pulse begins to thump harder. I glance at the bed, the covers heaped high in a strange lump, but my gut tells me they’re empty. I don’t know what possesses me to look up, but I do, scanning the corners near the ceiling. Empty. Finally, my gaze settles on the open closet and the chaotic pile within. “Jason?” I mouth, but no sound escapes.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I walk toward it. The carpet brushes the remains of the wood shavings off my foot, leaving a tiny trail. My eyes never leave the open closet. The edges of the bi-fold doors, too, have grooves and gouges along the bottoms. I skim the edge of the bed as I slow, not wanting to get too close to that pile. Is it still? Can I see it moving, or is that my imagination?
Breath held, I take another step forward, squinting into the shadows.
Something grabs my ankle. I scream, jerking. Something wet and hard scrapes along my skin over the anklebone as I drag my foot away, toppling backwards into the desk. The lamp falls, the shade bouncing hard, then the metal base rolls off the edge and crashes to the carpet. The light is thrown askew, lighting the empty ceiling, but my eyes stare wildly at the bed skirt. It moves.
“Jason?” I gasp between pants.
The skirt moves again. Backing up against the desk chair, I pull my feet tightly to my legs. I grasp the lamp and shine it under the bed.
“Jason,” I say flatly, but my intended command comes out a plea. “Come out of there.”
The bed skirt wavers but doesn’t lift.
I edge forward, gripping the lamp like a bludgeon. I peer at the small, dark crack between the carpet and cotton skirting. Finally, mouth open in a silent yawn of fear, I lift the bottom hem of the skirt and shove it under the mattress before snagging my hand away.
Something large and pale takes up the space beneath the bed. I scream, shoving myself beneath the desk. My hands brush the wood shavings and I scream again, brushing them off as if they’re a
live.
The thing under the bed writhes, but no hands reach for me. It’s long, swollen, sluggish and slimy like a pile of animal fat. I trace its creased body up from its most tapered end until I see the face. Oh, how I wish it didn’t have a face. Not distinguished from its body in any way except for the gaping, gnawing mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth that gnash the air—the thing that grasped my ankle—and those eyes. Those too-small, human eyes that look painfully familiar. Those eyes that are far too aware and terrified to belong to anything that looks like that. They rove until they lock on mine, both hungry and fearful. I see regret there, but also a demand—a type of survival instinct that begs no forgiveness. A pile of wet wood chips sit on the carpet beneath that ever-moving jaw.
“Jason,” I cry. “Oh, Jason.”
Then I leave the room, slamming the door behind me, to go throw up.
* * *
The next time I check the bedroom I’m hollow. I remember the me who used to be in love with my husband, the me broken down by his use of me, angry at his gradual neglect, the me who found him ill and felt guilty for not caring—but I don’t feel like any of them.
It’s with steady hands that I open the door and walk back into the room. It smells of fetid saliva and exposed stomach acid.
The desk legs have been chewed through. The desk itself lies toppled on its side, some of the writing surface also gauged around the corners. It takes a few moments of staring to realize that the bed is about a foot and half lower than usual. The legs on it, too, have been gnawed off. The frame was metal.
I know without looking that the closet pile is unoccupied, because the only place left in the room big enough to hold him is the large, ovular mound on the bed. It’s full and glossy, the color of an old penny and creased in plump segments. The mattress beneath lies bare of sheets and blankets. The closet is stripped mostly empty. The recliner sits burst open in the middle, stuffing pulled out in long, fluffy strips.
The lamp still lies askew on the carpet, light shining in a crooked pool, but this time I flip on the overheads.
Under the yellow glow, the brown surface becomes shimmery and orange. When I step closer and lean forward, I make out some letters under a hard veneer. A familiar font. “MIDIFI.” Part of the box to our humidifier. Then more items become clear. The print of Jason’s favorite tie. A spiral notebook. Our quilt. All buried and mixed into mush, sealed beneath the hardened exterior.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 Page 6
