Fairy Lights

by Lorn, Edward

  The barrel descended. Its cyclopean stare glared at the former LAPD officer. Blake whimpered. His bravery ran out of him in a hot stream.

  “Plea—” was all Blake managed to get out.

  14

  Something went wrong. Moss pulled the dangly again but Stuffy didn’t bite. Handsome squeezed his eyes closed, but didn’t bleed, didn’t die. No holes. Why weren’t there any holes? Why wasn’t Handsome leaking?

  Stuffy had come from a hunter, a man who liked killing the animals roaming around the Handy’s haunt. Moss had stalked the man as the man had stalked deer. He’d watched in rapt silence as the man made the length of wood and metal in his grasp bite a deer dozens of feet away. The next day, Moss had watched the man put more stuffing into Stuffy, and then the man had tried to bite more animals. No success this time. Later, while the man was biting at a row of glass tubes he’d set up on a log, Moss snuck up behind him and buried the hatchet in the back of the hunter’s head. The Handy had eaten well that evening. And Moss had acquired a new toy.

  Up until today, he’d not made Stuffy bite. Stuffy had been loud when the hunter had used it, and Moss didn’t want to draw unneeded attention. Now, he tried to remember what else the hunter had done to get Stuffy to work.

  The hunter had pulled the dangly. And then…

  The piece of metal on the side. Moss twisted Stuffy and looked down its length. He found the piece of metal jutting from Stuffy’s flank. Moss drew it back. Felt it click.

  Handsome’s eyes were open again. He seemed to be laughing and sobbing at the same time, leaking snot from his nose and drool from his lips.

  Moss raised Stuffy. Nothing went wrong this time. Stuffy bit. As was required of him, Handsome died.

  15

  “All right. Cell phones. Give ’em up.” Tony’s mother cupped her hands in front of her and the boys dropped their devices into her palms. “Good. Now go be boys. Do what boys do in the woods. You know, when there aren’t any consenting females around.”

  “Mom.” Tony protested.

  Brenda smiled and spun around, putting her back to her son. “Bye, boys.”

  Tony looked to Bobby. “Up for a hike?”

  “Do we have a choice?” Bobby asked.

  Tony looked back to his mother, who’d just disappeared inside the tent they’d erected this morning. “Doesn’t look that way.”

  “I saw a trail on the way in. Wanna check it out?” Bobby asked.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  They’d arrived the night before, but had decided to sleep in the Land Rover until morning. A dark wood was not conducive to tent erecting. First thing this morning, after the rising sun came in hot and heavy through the windshield to wake the trio of Mother, Son, and Friend, they’d set off for their destination. Mom said a friend from work had stayed out here a few months back. The spot was secluded and devoid of modern conveniences, like Wi-Fi and electrical outlets, but not so far out that, as her friend had put it, “no one could hear you scream.” One of the biggest attractions was the Hale Telescope located inside Palomar Observatory. Tony had never been there, but he’d learned about it in school and had seen the signage for it on their way in. California Technical College had once used the location for all their astronomy needs. That was before Cal Tech raised the money to build their own on-campus telescope, which Tony and Bobby had visited on a field trip last year.

  The spot Mom’s friend had recommended was a thirty minute hike down a slightly used walking trail, which was really nothing more than a ragged path cut through the trees where the grass had been stamped to death. The clearing they’d camped in wasn’t any bigger than a UPS truck and just as square. Tony and Bobby had set up the tent in the back corner while Brenda made breakfast on her portable burner—eggs and bacon and two-ingredient pancakes (one banana, one egg; mush, mix, pour). Once the boys were finished, they all ate together. And then Mom had taken their phones. Bummer.

  Tony and Bobby came across the trail that branched off the main trail after ten minutes of walking. A cool breeze was weaving through the trees, and the going was easy. Neither boy had broken a sweat, but Tony could sense a hot day on the horizon. There would be plenty of perspiration before the sun went down.

  “Wonder where it leads.” Tony said as they stepped onto the new trail.

  “Not sure. Let me consult my crystal ball.”

  “Ha-hee, ha-hee.”

  “What was that?” Bobby asked, laughing.

  “My best impersonation of a laugh, because you’re so funny I forgot to do the real thing.”

  Silence accompanied the boys for several steps.

  Then: “So why are we here? Your mom and dad fighting again?” Bobby asked.

  A squirrel ran across the path ahead of them. Tony kicked a rock at it and said, “Not that I know of.”

  “It’s weird, don’t you think? Us getting here at night? Like she was in a hurry to leave or something.”

  “Whatcha mean?” Tony stopped. What Bobby had said hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  “Well, you know, we could have left yesterday evening, drove through the night, and got here this morning. It just seems, I don’t know, kinda backward to get here in the middle of the night. Not trying to say your mom’s dumb, but it was kinda stupid. My neck’s hurting from having to sleep in your car.”

  Tony considered the possibility of his friend’s assumption. He hadn’t heard anything from Mom or Dad about the other. There had been no phone calls involving shouting and cussing. Mom hadn’t even brought Dad up in conversation in well over a month. The last time he’d seen his father had been his fifteenth birthday, the month prior. Dad had bought Tony the newest Call of Duty game for the Xbox One, which Dad purchased for him the previous Christmas.

  Tony’s friends at school, the ones with divorced parents, had told him this would happen. Now that his household was split in two, he’d get more cool shit from whichever parent he wasn’t living with. It was, all told, the only perks of having folks who hated each other—they were constantly vying for his attention.

  And that’s when it came to him. Dad had been talking about leaving the country when his next vacation paid out. They’d discussed taking a trip to Africa and going on a safari, or to Spain to check out a bull fight. Tony wasn’t too keen on the latter, though. He thought bullfighting was a horrible sport, one of the few legal spectator sports left where one of the opponents didn’t leave the event alive. Even cockfighting was illegal in America, a country where fried chicken was one of the nation’s favorite dishes.

  Dad’s vacation was this week. Tony tried to recall when Mom had brought up this little impromptu camping trip. Had it been the day after he’d told her of Dad’s plans to leave the country with him? Tony thought it had.

  “Maybe,” Tony finally said. “Yeah, sure. That could totally be the reason.”

  “She ever tell you why they got divorced in the first place.” Bobby dipped down and snatched up a fallen branch, used it as a walking stick.

  Bobby shrugged. “She said she just kinda fell outta love with him. Said stuff like that happens all the time. ”

  “Dang. Brenda doesn’t play around. I kinda liked your dad.”

  Tony thought about some of the things he’d heard Dad say about black people and decided not to mention them to Bobby. James Turk wasn’t perfect, but he was the only father Tony had. He could forgive the man’s backward-ass ways on the simple grounds that Dad had helped to bring him into this world.

  “He’s all right,” Tony said with another shrug.

  At some point, Tony became aware of water hissing and splashing in the distance. He could even smell and feel a dampness in the air. The farther down the path they went, the louder the water sounds became.

  Bobby saw the falls first, and pointed through the trees to show Tony where the noise was coming from. Tony followed his buddy’s finger and was astonished at what he saw.

  The boys rounded a hard curve in the path, and the way opened into what looked t
o be a natural pool. The waterfall, a good hundred feet tall, emptied into this pool. The pool itself was the size of the one Tony sometimes swam in down at the Y—one big enough for Olympians to compete in. The water was so crystal clear that Tony could see all the way to the bottom. He guesstimated the depth to be around twenty feet, if not more. Rainbows played leap frog across the water, seemed to weave together through the mist boiling off the surface. Tony thought the entire scene was quite beautiful.

  “Nice find,” Tony said, grinning.

  “Wanna go for a swim?” Bobby asked.

  “In our clothes?”

  “Boxers.”

  “As long as you don’t check out my dong through my flap, I suppose it’ll be all right.”

  “Whatever.” Bobby tugged his shirt over his head. “Last one in has to listen to your mom masturbate tonight.”

  “Not cool, dude.”

  “I know, right. She’s loud as hell? How do you sleep with all those ohs and ahs coming through the walls?”

  “I will beat your ass. Believe that.” Tony kicked off his shoes as Bobby did the same. Both boys dropped their pants, revealing their underwear: Bobby’s had Family Guy characters all over his, and Tony’s were purple.

  “Purple?” Bobby snickered.

  “Mom buys them. She loves Prince,” Tony said, as if that was all the explanation he needed to convey.

  “Sure thing,” Bobby said, still laughing.

  Tony yanked off his shirt and both boys waded into the frigid water.

  Tony hoped his nuts would write home, because, as of right now, they’d escaped to northern climes.

  16

  Moss found a long blade in the back of the truck in which the men had arrived in. The handle was bumpy, and he found that his fingers fit into the valleys of these bumps almost perfectly. He swung the blade, which was as long as his arm, and the air cried out where cut. He went to the nearest tree, one located outside of the gated observatory’s grounds, and began to hack away at the trunk. Huge chunks of bark and wood flew away. The new tool was terrifically sharp. He would be able to put it to great use.

  Moss didn’t know how to make the truck work, so he left it where it was. He ambled back inside and worked at butchering the old man. The new blade cleaved through flesh and bone unlike any instrument Moss had ever used. The ease with which the appendages came away from the body was akin to ripping pieces of paper off the ream.

  Moss smiled as he worked. Even sampled his catch. Tough but delicious.

  By the time he was done, his hunger was more piqued than sated, and he was soaked through with blood. He tore off his sodden t-shirt and tossed it into a corner. He removed Handsome’s shirt, shrugged it on, and fumbled with the buttons until he had them all secure. Normally he’d frown upon eating without the Handy’s approval, but these were special circumstances. The Handy was a day’s journey away, and there would be no way he could deliver the pieces on the little fuel he’d consumed. The Handy would understand. It would absolutely have to understand.

  Moss left the pieces with the least amount of meat strewn across the floor: the head, hands, feet. The torso was full of tasty bits, full of energy Moss needed, so he decided to eat what he could take from the corpse’s midsection and return to the Handy’s haunt with the old man’s appendages. Moss ate the old man’s liver, and then the kidneys. The heart was too tough to chew without cooking first. He left the heart and the lungs in a pile by the forklift.

  Moss wanted to have another go at Handsome’s corpse but he couldn’t get his thing hard again. This made him angry, and his rage helped to fuel him as he dismembered Handsome.

  Arms and legs and torsos stacked like cordwood and the smaller bits discarded, Moss went in search of something in which he could carry the leftover food. He used Handsome’s flashlight to hunt down what he needed. In the room beside the one he’d killed the two men in, Moss found a box of white bags. He pulled one out and tested its strength by tugging it across his front. Then he stepped inside it and yanked upward. The material flexed but did not rip. Red straps were threaded through the opening of the sack, and Moss thought they would make great handholds to use while he traveled.

  He returned to the kill room, stuffed the stacked arms and legs inside the white sack, but left the torsos. He’d been greedy. There was no way he could carry all this by himself. He wondered if he had enough energy to drop these goodies off with the Handy and then come back here before the torsos rotted. He doubted it. But if he hurried…

  Moss dropped the flashlight in the sack and slung it over his shoulder. He shut the door to the observatory after him. Likewise, he closed the gate, but did not fasten the lock. He had no idea how it worked.

  He set off, thinking how happy the Handy was going to be when it got a hold of all this new meat.

  17

  Brenda stared down at the NO SIGNAL in the top left of her iPhone’s display. She held the phone skyward. A bar of signal flashed into view for the briefest instant before NO SIGNAL reappeared.

  “I hope the world doesn’t end,” she said to no one. “We’d never know.”

  Brenda sighed and dropped the phone into her open purse, which sat beside her foot. She was currently sitting on a fallen log in the middle of the woods. She’d come out here to collect firewood and search for a signal on her phone. Cindy—the coworker who recommended this location—hadn’t mentioned that there were no close cell towers. But Brenda guessed it couldn’t really be called roughing it if she could check her Facebook and play Candy Crush whenever she wanted to. Not being able to use her phone to call for help if something bad happened only slightly bothered her. If anything happened to her, Bobby could drive them into town. And if something happened to one of the boys, she’d be able to drive. Either way, it would be quicker than calling for an ambulance. Besides, she was pretty sure Tony’s phone would have a signal out here. Tony’s phone always had a signal, though she had yet to check it for one.

  She dug around inside her purse until she came up with a travel-size pack of Kleenex. She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. Bloody strands stood out in her snot like crimson spider webs. She was obviously dried out. Needed to drink more water. Luckily, she had that covered.

  She reached into her bag once more and grabbed the bottle of Deer Park she’d brought with her. She dripped some onto her Kleenex and used the damp tissue to moisten the inside of her nose, and then drank half the bottle. The water was lukewarm, but delicious. She burped loudly and screwed the cap back on. Tucked the bottle back into her bag to ensure she didn’t leave it behind.

  She found Tony’s phone in the bottom of her purse and pulled it out. He didn’t know she knew his password, and she didn’t intend to tell him. She punched in her own birthday. The screen unlocked. Unlike her iPhone, Tony’s Samsung had two bars of service and a great 4G signal, just like she’d thought it would have.

  Normally, she’d feel guilty about looking through Tony’s phone. He was a good kid. He deserved his privacy. But she needed to know something and this was her only option for answers.

  She brought up the text function, punched in the first few numbers of James’s cell phone number, and let the phone’s prediction software do the rest. The software pulled James’s number from Tony’s contacts without any trouble. She tapped the composition box and a keyboard popped up on the bottom of the screen, in which she wrote:

  Sorry I couldn’t come with you this time.

  She pressed send.

  Two minutes went by before James answered, thinking he was speaking to his son.

  No prob. Next time.

  She responded with: Where we goin next time?

  Been thinking about Mexico. Don’t tell your Mom.

  Why not?

  Because we might not come back…lol! Moms would have a fit if I ran off with you for a life of hookers and good weed. Just don’t tell her. I know how she feels about me taking off anywhere with you. We cool?

  You bet.

  Brenda didn�
�t know what to think. Was her husband actually thinking of running off with their son, or was he honestly joking? Did they joke like this often? She would have looked up their previous conversation but Tony had a habit of deleting all of his communications before bed every night. She’d never really thought about why he did it, but now she considered whether or not it was because he didn’t want his mother to know he was plotting running away with his father.

  But that was silly thinking, wasn’t it? Tony was happy with her, right? Sure. They were happy together. No questioning that. Right?

  But what if Tony knew that the reason they went on so many trips was because she’d been trying to sway his affection more toward her and less toward his father? What then? Would he despise her for trying to protect him from his dad? Did he already secretly despise her?

  You think too goddamn much, Brenda, she thought, but her inner voice sounded an awful lot like her ex-husband’s. Hadn’t he said something like that after she’d accused him of perverted behavior. Maybe. She couldn’t be sure.

  How’s the trip with mom?

  Sucky, she decided to type. Her finger hovered over the green SEND button. Did she really want to fish in this pond? Did she want to know if her son preferred his father over Mommy Dearest?

  She swallowed a lump and pressed SEND.

  Deal with it. She’s doing all this because she loves you. It’s not going to hurt you to campout for a few days.

  All this? What was that supposed to mean? Goddamn, she wished she could come right out and ask James everything she wanted to know.

  When she didn’t respond right away, James returned with: I love you too. What happened between your mom and I has nothing to do with how we feel about you. We’re proud of you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to us.