by Amy Simone
As the meal grew to a close, Charles nodded to Cassie. They walked to the bar area. He ordered a drink; she refused one. They stood at the bar, resting their arms on the counter, planning to only be there for a short while.
“I’ve been in touch with Ralph,” he started. “I heard about the money. Man did I hear about the money.”
“I’m sorry. I’m making it up to him.”
“I don’t know why,” Charles told her. “I fronted it to him. He’s going on with his plans.”
Cassie stared at Charles. “You’re kidding.”
“No. In fact, I’m here to tell you I’d appreciate it if you paid me back rather than him. That’s coming out of my retirement funds.”
“Hmm. Ralph never told me any of this.” She looked closely at her father-in-law’s face. He did not appear to be lying. His eyes, once a brilliant blue, now were more watery. The white crew cut set off his eyes. He had a sharply defined face with high cheekbones. She’d always wondered if since he was from this part of the country, if he didn’t have some Indian blood in him from way back. For her to have mentioned this to him would have been anathema. Charles was not kind about accepting other races. He also didn’t tolerate ineptitude. Cassie was inept, he implied, during all the years she’d ever had any interactions with him.
“You want me to send you money?” she repeated incredulously. “Shouldn’t Ralph be the one sending it to you?”
Charles smirked. “Then you haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what?”
“His new girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, whatever she is—is pregnant.”
Cassie stepped back. Charles had to grab her to stop her from toppling into another customer’s stool.
“Easy girl,” he told her. “I thought you knew about that part.”
Cassie gulped. “What else?” she asked, looking down at the carpet, focusing on the toes of her pumps.
“He’s buying a new house.” Charles finished his drink and left some cash on the bar. “I thought he talked to you. After all you have the kids in common.”
“Not with all that news,” she said. Tears formed in her eyes. She grabbed the napkin from under Charles’ drink to dab at her eyes. He motioned to the bartender to bring more.
Charles patted her upper back. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He sounded apologetic. “I want to see my grandsons more. In fact, I’ll pay for some of their flights up this way. It’s awfully hard for me to get down to where you all are. So many transfers.”
Cassie said nothing.
“That’s why I asked how you were really doing? I figured he’d make you get a job. To be honest, I figure I’ll never see the money, anyway. Ralph sometimes talks out of both sides of his mouth whenever he speaks.”
“Obviously he speaks to you more than he does me,” Cassie whispered.
Charles spied the rest of the family filing out of the restaurant.
“Oops, looks like we better get moving. Go splash some water on your face. Forget I even brought up the subject of paying me back. But if I were you, I’d tell that husband of yours to forget about it too. I have solved his money problems for the moment. He’s getting the clinic he always wanted. At the expense of you and the kids it seems.”
Charles’ voice had taken on a softer tone. He patted her hand, then he gently pointed towards the direction of the ladies’ room. “I’ll tell the others to go on ahead and drive you back to where ever you are staying. Frank’s place, right? I think we should talk.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
Once in Charles' car, Cassie sat back and was quiet.
“I know it’s tough,” Charles told her as he turned the key in the ignition. I’ve seen enough shenanigans among my own cohorts. Some of them would have done better to have played musical chairs with their marriages.”
“You just got me,” she said. “All is Ralph told me is he wanted to sell the house because of bad memories. I don’t know what he means by all that. He wasn’t home much to begin with—and that was before the girlfriend stepped in.”
Charles sighed. “Maybe it’s some middle age crises starting up for him. Look, I don’t know. I don’t know what went on between you two and I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. You and he are where you are at now, here in the present. All we can do is make the best of it. I sure would like to see the boys more. Can they come up and visit me for a few weeks this summer? I could take them places, do a lot of outdoor stuff.”
Cassie turned in her seat and looked at him hard. “They require a lot of attention.”
“Hell, all I got is time. Ever since Lady died all I got is time.”
“I always loved your wife,” Cassie admitted.
“Everybody did.”
They drove on in silence for a while.
“I don’t need to think about it,” Cassie piped up. “You just tell us what works out best for you.”
“Anytime,” he told her. “I’d like them to come up anytime.”
“Let me check with Mom and maybe while she’s setting up housekeeping up here they could visit her and Frank too.”
“There you go,” Charles said, lightly tapping his steering wheel, “making the best of both worlds.”
“Caleb is suffering the most,” Cassie observed. “He doesn’t talk about it but I can tell he’s the one most impacted.”
“I’ll tire those pups out so much he won’t have time,” Charles told her.
23
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig
The more she thought about it, as they drove back from Colorado, the angrier Cassie got about Ralph’s deception. She kept quiet about it until she saw him when he came to get the boys. She insisted the boys wait in the house while she talked to him in the drive.
“Why did you expect me to pay all that money back when your dad already gave it to you?”
“I was just pissed, Cassie. You owe me. Your debts cost me a lot in wasted time. I was getting ready to interview for a second vet. I had to push off the contractor…”
“I have enough I’m dealing with. Here you are fooling around with the office help…” She paused, “getting her knocked up on top of everything…”
Ralph banged the dashboard. “I asked dad not to tell you about that!”
“At least your old man has some sense of ethics!”
“It was an accident,” Ralph said lamely.
“You’ve never heard about birth control, huh?”
“She told me she couldn’t get pregnant.”
Cassie was speechless. “I thought you had medical training, you asshole.” She continued. “You need to pay for these riding lessons for our son. I’ve put in applications around town for evening work so mother can watch the boys. None of my jobs will pay much. I need more support than some incidental cash for gas and groceries. Otherwise, it’ll be big-time lawyer!”
“Okay, Cassie, okay,” he reluctantly agreed.
“Another thing, how do you square it up with your clinic staff when you wouldn’t let me work for you—even after I begged to—yet you are banging Miss Twinkle Toes there? How does that work? Oh, never mind. Enjoy your new life!” She slammed the door and went into the house to retrieve the kids.
“Hurry up! Your father’s waiting!”
They shuffled out, holding their little knapsacks. Caleb clutched his homework books.
“Bye my loves,” she said, hugging them too fervently as they walked past her. “Tell your father he needs to pick another wall color besides white in his new house,” she devilishly whispered to Caleb.
Caleb looked at her funny, nodded solemnly, then left the house.
She watched through the curtain muttering under her breath, cursing. Tiger anxiously followed her as she walked through the house. Packing boxes lay everywhere. She had to walk around them. Since it seemed an apartment the next step, she needed to move a log to things to storage.
Walking into the master bedroom, she shoved aside her suitcase that lay on the floor in front
of the closet. Her laptop slid into view.
Against her better judgment, she turned it on. She was alone that evening and it might prove better entertainment instead of drinking too much wine. Knowing that the Coach was gone, she feared what might show up in his place. Briefly she wondered if witches had souls and if they returned to haunt those who killed them.
She tossed the machine onto her bed, opened the lid, settled back against the pillows and waited.
Show me something good, she thought. I’m ready for some good news. The sun pushed its last light through her bedroom windows. Her computer was dark, then it appeared to grow darker if such a thing was possible and with astonishment, she watched as ominously the screen appeared to vacuum the light streaming in through her windows and suck it down into the computer. The machine appeared to be plucking the beams right before her eyes and redirecting them into the screen that now looked like a vacuous hole.
“Oh, no. Not this,” she thought and tried to close the lid before anything else happened.
She was too late.
Through her new perspective, she figured out she had become one of her sons. She looked down and saw she had on Caleb’s shorts and was riding in the back seat of Ralph’s truck. He had country Western music on. Mophead was riding shotgun, her hair spikes showed like huge cactus spines above the back of the seat. He must have picked her up at the clinic nearby. He knew better than to show up for visitation with his girlfriend in tow. Caleb was trying to read but Josh kept sticking his hands over onto his book and giggling.
“Cut it out,” Caleb told his little brother.
“That’s right, stop whatever you’re doing,” Ralph admonished from the front.
The girlfriend turned up the radio and sang along. Cassie just about died. Her voice was not that good. Then she urged the boys to join in. Josh did so. Caleb stayed mute.
“Everybody up for pizza?” Ralph asked.
“We had pizza last night,” Caleb told him. Cassie had to hold fast onto the tissue walls around her. His voice reverberated so much that the vibration almost made her lose her footing. She looked down and saw she was standing on a white ledge—the bone that made his sternum.
“Then we’ll go to that new place in Rayne and order you something different. Miss Susan and I thought pizza would work.”
Ralph did a precise U-turn and drove the exact opposite direction, towards the west.
Susan’s voice still carried on. Cassie/Caleb cringed. While she was inside of her son’s body, Cassie thought she’d poke around. She could tell that she was a miniature version of herself and looked upwards to see an extremely long ladder that led up a vertical pipe. What was that, she wondered. His neck? She climbed up. The ladder topped off on a mound, all grey. There appeared to be tracks like a luge. She stepped into the slippery groove, made herself lie down and suddenly she slid in circles, round and down, like a marble falling with gravity, gathering speed until she landed on a strange globular mass. Her hands caught hold of the sides. It was his thyroid gland. Its butterfly shape captured her softly like a catcher’s mitt. She sat, centered on it for a moment, as if sitting on a park swing. Caleb coughed, so she had to cling to the walls. She turned and saw a funny red, orangy and gold globular mass hanging on the inside of his throat. What was that?
Then she heard a voice, not Caleb’s. “Thought you got away with it, didn’t you?”
She turned, looked. It was a witch, standing, balancing on a ring of Caleb’s windpipe.
Damn, she thought.
“We never die. That was Romilda you thought you took out the other day. She will be fine. Ha! I’m here to make up for it. That ole white haired man tried to tell you that. I’ve left a little present here.”
“No, no,” she said to the witch.
“Don’t worry, it will take time.” The witch was holding a lantern and brought the light closer to the mass that looked to be about the size of a small matchbox. She pushed her face up close to the growth, smiling. “The boy won’t know until it’s too late…” She grew silent, watching Cassie’s face closely for any reaction.
“What is it?” Cassie finally dared to ask.
“A simple, deadly tumor. I borrowed it from your mother. She has had things growing like this for years. Who knows why they haven’t taken her over yet? Her body is like the inside of a fermenting fridge. But this boy now with all those young, strong, vibrant cells… cells that won’t know what hit him. Naive stupid cells.”
Alarmed, Cassie rose and stood in the center of the thyroid gland now. She tried to grab the witch, but the sorceress dodged her. All Cassie got was the air off of her cape.
“Get rid of it,” Cassie called out.
The witch didn’t answer. Instead, she held her nose and jumped off of her perch… feet first down Caleb’s esophagus. Cassie heard a soft splash. Standing transfixed, Cassie stared at the tumor.
What was she to do now?
24
Into the Fire
In the end, she followed the witch. There had to be a way to get the hag to stop. Cassie plunged down the same pipe way, propelled solely by her fear for her son’s life. She landed in soft warm goo. The witch was climbing out, heading towards a tunnel. Cassie swam towards the sounds that the witch made as she exited Caleb’s body. They both came out of his belly button. Cassie feared he’d feel them and perhaps swat at them so she squirmed as quickly as she could out from under his tee shirt, still in pursuit of the crone.
The ole crone had not looked back. She moved fast, climbing much like a spider. Breathless, Cassie finally stopped and looked up. The boys were leaving the truck now. They had arrived at a restaurant. She grabbed onto a wrinkle of Caleb’s shirt. The witch hid under his shirt hem, occasionally peeking out and crackling.
“What do you want from me?” Cassie asked her.
“The price has gone up, you know,” the hag told her.
“I have no money. You all know that.”
“He wants the laptop.”
“He?” Cassie asked, yet dreading the answer.
“If you hand it over to him, I’ll reconsider too…”
“What? Giving my kid cancer?” Cassie was close to tears.
There was a big thump. Caleb had sat down on in a booth. His brother poked him, then poured some salt onto his lap.
“Stop!” Caleb yelled at Josh.
Josh giggled. Cassie felt the salt run throughout her hair. Ralph and Susan had gone to restaurant front to order food.
Caleb jumped up, almost dislodging Cassie. The witch had good purchase on the hem of his shorts.
He ran into the bathroom and hosed off his arms and jumping up and down to get the salt off of him.
Every movement was huge to Cassie. She silently begged for him to stop. When she looked over at the witch, she saw the crone had vanished, but where to now?
He reached for some paper towels and Cassie caught sight of the robed figure sitting with her legs crossed on the edge of the bathroom trash can. Thankfully, the boy had not seen or felt either one. They’d kept themselves mostly on his back. As he brushed past the counter top, Cassie leaped off and landed there, sliding into some puddles of water near the sink’s rim. She heard the witch laugh.
Now it was just the two of them in the restroom, miniature versions of themselves.
The bathroom lights flickered, almost went out. When they came back on, Cassie discovered she was full-sized. The witch stood before her, then tossed back her hood.
It was Romilda again. Her skin was now smooth and young looking but her eyes had changed—they had a red flicker deep inside of the pupil and a reptilian slant now.
“I thought I’d killed you,” Cassie gasped.
“You don’t understand. We never ever die. Give the computer to that couple or the kid gets full blown. My friend Natasha started the process.” Romilda snarled.
Cassie fell back against a stall door. “I can’t. I won’t.” She looked around, amazed she was even having this conversation in a
men’s bathroom.
“They can’t see us. Nobody can,” the crone informed her. She took a step closer. “The boy dies then.”
Cassie caught sight of the mirrors. Romilda was right, she saw nothing. Neither one of them cast a reflection.
“Don’t do that to my son,” she begged. “He’s only five.”
“Greg knows what he’s doing. You don’t. You need money, right?”
“No, actually I don’t,” Cassie claimed. “Everything is fine. Ralph is fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.” She was gasping, lying, trying to buy time.
“We’ll give you two days,” Romilda told her. Twirling, she disappeared. “Until the next time,” she sang out. Her strong voice echoed in the tinny space. To Cassie it sounded like a menacing foghorn set off too close—full of threat and darkness.
Cassie exited the bathroom, looking for her boys. They couldn’t see her. She pulled up a chair and sat nearby, watching in silence.
Mophead was making funny faces to entertain them, even folding her piece of pizza this way and that while playing with them and pretending to eat. The boys giggled. Ralph must have been hungry because he remained focused on his food. Cassie felt jealous that her kids enjoyed this new stranger in their lives. Susan was young enough to not care about parenting them; she wisely left that up to Ralph. Still, Cassie wanted to walk over and stomp on his toes. Why did he have to leave her? She felt bruised, abandoned and fearful all at once. Caleb’s skin tone was vibrant and his eyes shined in joy. She hated to imagine his little body racked with the sickness that cancer might bring.
Looking out through the large glass walls of the restaurant, Cassie scoped out the sky. A storm was blowing in from the Gulf. She wanted to get home post haste, yet here she trapped in a parallel universe. Rising from her sentient position, she walked outside and kept watching the skies.
