Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  And kept growing bigger. She could see it happening, even as she stood there.

  “Mommy, is Daddy sick?”

  No more messing around. Tayla threw herself against it, screaming with exertion, until it moved. She repositioned her attack, angling the pumpkin toward the doorway into the front foyer. Eventually, she got a rhythm going and was able to establish a rocking momentum to walk it toward the door. Its skin quivered under her fingers.

  Thud.

  She had reached the doorway to exit the living room. The opening was surely a third wider than the front door that the pumpkin would also have to fit through—but the pumpkin was already too big. She tried again and was rewarded with another thud.

  “Mommy’s saying bad words.”

  She kept trying, but it was no use. Angry now, she ran into the kitchen and returned with a butcher knife, which she stabbed into the orange flesh.

  It was like striking a rock. The blade pinged and deflected.

  “Good God…”

  This wasn’t a pumpkin; it was a goddamn boulder. The claw hammer she fetched from the basement yielded the same results—both with the claw and the hammer. Ping. Thud.

  Watching from the next room, where she sat beside her brother, Rachel laughed and clapped.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The pumpkin’s growth accelerated despite her best efforts. Within a half hour, it breached the drywall ceiling of the living room. Within forty-five minutes, it touched the walls. Tayla took the kids and fled the house when the wall studs began to groan.

  It took another ten minutes to find a neighbor who was at home and who would call 911 for them. “My house is on fire,” she said. It was easier than the truth.

  With that done, there was nothing left to do but stand on the street and wait.

  And to watch as she once again lost her home.

  By now, night had fallen, and she could clearly see the way the pumpkin glowed, where she thought she’d only imagined it before. When something flashed white and blue inside the house and the electricity winked out, the glow seemed brighter. She could see it through the upstairs windows now. It was slowly devouring the inside of her house, crushing its walls and floors, leaving only the shell.

  Cancer. It’s a tumor in my home. Oh god oh god oh God. Why have you forsaken me?

  Rachel wasn’t laughing anymore. She was sucking her thumb like her older brother, who hung onto the edge of her skirt and swayed as if he was about to faint. She held out her arms and whined to be picked up, so Tayla picked her up and cried into her hair.

  Where the hell were those firemen she’d called? For Christ’s sake, where were her neighbors? Didn’t anyone care?

  When the worst happened, it happened all at once, like the pumpkin was a balloon Satan had suddenly squeezed from beneath the ground, causing the upper part to explosively expand and bulge. One moment, she was looking at her house, with glowing orange pumpkin skin filling all the windows, listening to the wood groan and creak, an occasional sound of bursting pipes, a horrible undertone like the sound of paper being crumpled—and the next moment, the walls ruptured and fell apart like cheap stage scenery. The pumpkin grew fully half of its growth in those last seconds, swelling outward so quickly that that roof and chimney simply launched upward and outward, breaking apart into pieces that crashed into other houses and landed on adjacent streets. Leaves the size of sailboat sails draped downward from the huge stem at the top.

  Finally, a neighbor appeared beside her. Just a boy on a bike. Tayla barely noticed him as he took in the house-sized pumpkin that had displaced her home. He whistled low and said, “Halloween sure is big around here.”

  “Life Insurance” illustration by Deena Warner

  Tayla could hardly see through her tears. Letting Rachel slide to the ground, she stumbled away from them toward the glowing orb.

  Take me, she thought. Just take me. Put me out of my misery.

  As she crossed broken glass and wood, she felt heat radiating off its skin, and she imagined she was falling into the sun. Surely death wasn’t such an unpleasant thing. The grave wouldn’t be cold. It would be warm and inviting, like this was. This was the opposite of the flood that had destroyed her home in the Lower Ninth. This was large and warm, as big as Jackson’s love for them—which is why it was such a fitting end for her, the way it mocked her with that love even as it destroyed her home again.

  She sobbed as she flattened a hand on the granite-like skin. Take me.

  The skin along one of the vertical creases parted and revealed an opening.

  Tayla went inside.

  The glow inside the pumpkin was so bright that it hurt her eyes. She blinked and shielded her gaze as she staggered forward into the pumpkin’s hot maw. Take me, take me. She stumbled and fell headlong.

  And landed on a carpeted floor.

  She looked up and found herself beside a familiar, battered couch. It was their couch, from the apartment on the Lower Ninth. How did it get here? She was in a large, pumpkin-colored room. Pumpkin seeds hung in strands from the ceiling. Except that it was also filled with their old belongings. She recognized the couch, the old grandfather clock that didn’t work, and Jackson’s scarred TV. Wooden stairs rose to a large, closed door.

  “Mommy?”

  Tayla whirled to see Steven and Rachel standing in the opening behind her. She felt a surge of panic. “No, no—get out! It isn’t safe.”

  “Mommy? Mommy, look.”

  “Steven, I said—”

  “Look!” He pointed behind her and smiled for the first time in weeks. Even Rachel was grinning.

  Tayla turned, following her children’s gaze to the top of the wooden stairs. The door there hung open.

  A smiling, familiar figure stood on the other side.

  The Joy of Parenthood

  Cat’s Cradle

  Daniel felt the cat walk across him to reach his pregnant wife. It huffed the way it did when hungry. He felt its weight through the bedsheet, its paws like pile drivers on his bladder.

  Now at full term, Emma slept with her stomach exposed to the air. She said it was the only way to get comfortable.

  She groaned as the cat placed its paws on her belly and began to knead. Daniel watched this through half-closed eyes. When would she push it off?

  The cat dipped its head to her skin, luminescent in the moonlight. What was it doing? Licking? No. Its sides heaved. It breathed deeply, sucking in the scent of his wife’s skin.

  Emma suddenly sat up. “Oh, no.”

  The pain in her voice slapped him fully awake.

  “Daniel. Oh God, get me to the hospital.”

  The cat jumped off the bed and padded out the bedroom door.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He held Emma’s hand as she lay on the stretcher in the emergency room. They were waiting for her to be wheeled back for an ultrasound.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “No. But I can feel the blood coming out of me.”

  Not once since they left the house had they spoken the words miscarriage or stillborn, but they didn’t have to. He could see it in every molecule of his wife’s face, prematurely lined at age thirty-six. He knew they were thinking the same thing: what would happen if this baby died? Was Emma too old to get pregnant again?

  Tears welled in her eyes. “My little Joe. He has to be all right.”

  “Don’t say his name.” Daniel almost couldn’t talk through the pressure in his throat. “He’s not a real baby if we don’t say it.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  After a moment, Daniel said, “I think the cat suspected something.”

  “Pickles?”

  “Well yeah, that’s our only cat.”

  She batted his arm. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m just trying to cheer you up.”

  She smiled, just a little. “Okay. Now tell me.”

  “Pickles was sniffing on your belly and kneading. It’s like the cat caused this to happen.”

 
Emma’s smile disappeared. She closed her eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I can’t deal with this right now, Daniel. Please. Pickles kneads on me all the time.”

  Daniel sighed and settled back into his chair. Maybe that’s the problem.

  He’d never liked that cat. It showed up at the back door one day—the same day Emma announced she was pregnant, in fact—and never left. Ever the animal lover, his wife was the one who wanted to keep it. She named it Pickles because of its rotten odor, a problem they subsequently spent way too much hard-earned cash to fix.

  Most mornings, he woke up to find the cat curled against his wife’s face—cheek to cheek with her—its foreleg draped possessively around Emma’s neck as it stared him down. Lately, it slept against her belly. Or on top of it.

  A nurse came in to wheel Emma to the ultrasound room.

  Daniel tried not to squeeze her hand too hard. “Good luck.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The verdict was subchorionic hemorrhage—bleeding from the placenta. The E.R. doctor explained it to them after the ultrasound.

  “It’s pretty common. You have nothing to worry about. The baby’s fine.”

  Daniel blinked dry eyes, trying to focus. It was 4 a.m., and he’d been sitting on one damn uncomfortable plastic chair since midnight. “How common is it to have severe pain from this?”

  The doctor blinked. “What pain?”

  Emma, thankfully, spoke up before Daniel could lose his temper. “I told the nurse about it when we first got here. It felt like someone was suctioning my baby right out of me.”

  “Hmm.” The doctor pursed his lips and flipped through Emma’s chart. He stood up and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  When the doctor eventually returned to Emma’s bedside a nerve-racking forty-five minutes later, he didn’t have an explanation. Oh, he asked lots more questions and offered some theories, even conducted a pelvic exam, but in the end confessed he didn’t know the cause of the pain. He said Emma’s initial blood work and urinalysis results were normal.

  Since Emma hadn’t had any pain since leaving the house, he discharged her. She left with a prescription for pain medication, just in case, and instructions to follow up with her obstetrician.

  A gray sunrise illuminated the driveway when they got home. Pickles was waiting on the bed. Daniel sat down next to the animal, contemplating a nap, while Emma laid on the couch.

  He heard a baby’s cry.

  It was so faint that at first Daniel thought it came from outside, maybe from a neighbor’s yard. Then he heard it again.

  He looked down at Pickles.

  The cat lay on top of the disarrayed sheets. It was staring up at him, its eyes wide and alert.

  It opened its mouth—and the unmistakable wail of a newborn came out.

  Daniel jumped to his feet. “Jesus!”

  He backed up and tripped, falling into his open closet. One of his suits, cleaned and ready for another day at the law firm, swayed as he fell into it.

  The cat blinked, then curled up to sleep.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Cat’s Cradle” illustration by Deena Warner

  He couldn’t concentrate when he finally commuted to work. Did he imagine what he heard? In the cafeteria at lunch, he found himself staring at a secretary as she sucked a milkshake through a straw. His appetite vanished.

  The next morning, he summoned his resolve and confronted Emma. She was sitting on the couch with Pickles in her lap.

  “We should get rid of the cat before the baby comes.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to say exactly why. Our cat is eating the soul of our unborn child wouldn’t have gone over so well.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Pickles stood on its hind legs and began to knead Emma’s stomach. Daniel couldn’t stand the sight of it digging its forepaws into the soft cushion of her blouse.

  He gestured. “Just look at what it’s doing to you. That’s not good for Joe.”

  “Oh, so the baby has a name now?”

  Daniel sat down across from her. He sipped his coffee. “Stop trying to make me angry.”

  “I’m not the one who’s doing anything. You’re the one making ridiculous suggestions.”

  Still, she placed Pickles onto the floor. She winced as she bent over the bulge of her stomach.

  “Oh, I get it,” Daniel said. “You’re saying that I’m ridiculous. That’s what you really mean.”

  “No, you’re not ridiculous. You’re crazy.” Emma crossed her arms. “And I’m not getting rid of my cat.”

  Daniel slammed his coffee mug down onto the table between them. Emma didn’t even flinch. He felt like throwing it at the wall behind her. But he was past those days now; he’d vowed never to act that way again.

  Emma glanced at the clock. “You need to get to work.”

  “I’m glad.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The next morning, Daniel woke up to find Pickles on top of his sleeping wife. It was huffing the air from the surface of her exposed stomach. He watched it for a moment before pushing the animal onto the floor.

  Emma remained asleep, so he climbed out of bed. Pickles fled the room.

  It reappeared while he was peeing. One moment, he was alone in the bathroom. The next, Pickles was sitting on the counter beside the sink, staring at him.

  “You little bastard.”

  He grabbed the cat by either side of the head. He cupped its ears in his palms, tabby fur springing between his fingers. The fur was too healthy and smooth for an animal that always turned up its nose at the food bowl. He inserted his thumbs into the corners of its mouth to make it open. Its canines looked vampiric. Like the fur, they were clean and healthy. Its breath smelled… no, he couldn’t be imagining it… of a newborn, that fresh, clean scent of new life.

  For a moment, he saw an infant’s face between his hands, mouth wide with fear.

  He closed his eyes. Mind’s playing tricks. Stop it.

  But when he opened them, the cat still had an infant’s face, and now blood dribbled from the corners of its mouth. He gasped and let go.

  Pickles jumped off the sink—just a cat again. It sprinted down the hallway.

  Daniel covered his face and tried to slow his breathing.

  Screw it. He didn’t care what Emma would say. He needed to get rid of that damn cat. Now.

  He found it in the living room, hiding behind a stereo speaker. It stared at him with yellow eyes.

  He would grab it, stuff it into the pet carrier, and take it to the animal shelter before Emma woke up. She wouldn’t even know he’d gone, and then he could shrug when she eventually wondered aloud about the cat’s whereabouts.

  No, that was too kind.

  He would take it to the middle of the nearby national forest and abandon it. The cat could fend for itself—or perhaps get eaten by something.

  No, still too kind.

  He would throw it into the lake, with the cat still inside the pet carrier, and watch it sink. Yes.

  Daniel smiled as he reached for the animal. But it hissed and scratched his wrist.

  “Damn!”

  The cat sprinted past him.

  From the other side of the house came the sound of Emma climbing out of bed. “What’s going on? Daniel?”

  Throw it in the lake? No, I’ll kill it right now.

  Daniel chased it into the kitchen. It started to run out the other door, claws skittering on the linoleum as it tried to find traction, and that gave Daniel the extra second he needed. He grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and lifted it off its feet.

  The cat squealed and twisted. It tried to claw and bite his hand. With his free hand, Daniel groped along the countertop until he found a long carving knife.

  Emma’s footsteps pounded down the hallway. “Daniel!”

  He held the cat over the sink. It would catch the blood.

  “Daniel, are you crazy?”

  �
��No.”

  He glanced at her. She wore only a long pajama shirt featuring a picture of Spongebob Squarepants. Draped over her bloated stomach, Spongebob looked like the Man in the Moon.

  “The cat’s stealing the baby’s soul.”

  She gasped, probably thinking that yes, indeed, he was crazy. But the truth was out now. Emma could just deal with it.

  She plucked at his elbow, so he pushed her away, propelling her into the stove behind him. At the last instant, he unthinkingly rotated his wrist and slashed with the knife.

  His wife shrieked as a horizontal gash opened in the shirt. Blood flowed.

  Daniel stared, frozen. What have I done? Did I hurt the baby?

  Still screaming, Emma fell to the floor. She landed on the cat bowl in the corner, scattering brown bits of dry food.

  Daniel knelt to her, dropping Pickles and the knife. “Oh, no, oh no.… Emma, I’m so sorry.”

  The cat hissed and fled to the basement.

  He’d only scratched her. Thank God.

  Emma held her stomach, then stared at her bloody hands. Her face hung slack with disbelief. “You asshole.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Get away from me. Oh my god.”

  She leaned on the wall to get up, ignoring Daniel’s outstretched hand.

  “It was just an accident.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She grabbed the cordless phone, then brushed past him to the bathroom. She was already sobbing when she closed and locked the door.

  A moment later, he heard her talking to a 911 operator.

  He began to weep as he sank to the floor.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Two days later, Daniel was released from jail on bond. His law partner had insisted on representing him. After the hearing, they talked on the courthouse steps.

  “The next proceeding will be in a couple months. Until then, I advise you to check into a hotel, and don’t talk to her.”

  “But Emma just had our baby yesterday. I missed it. I missed the birth of our son.”