by Sawyer Black
Henry grabbed a plastic basket with a broken handle and headed to the right, past the registers and the cooler full of wilting flowers. Through the two rows of greeting cards, and into the fruits and vegetables. That cheap vitamin smell prickled his nostrils. Bright colors arranged in a wet rainbow. Dribbling mist shining the tomatoes.
Henry stopped in front of the apples. The nearest one was fat and red, glistening with a coat of wax. He scooped it up and rubbed it on the front of his hoodie. Fourteen times. He pulled it away and examined the burnished spot with a critical eye, swallowing the saliva threatening to pour from the corner of his mouth. When was the last time he had eaten good food? Fresh food? Standing beneath a bright light for all to see while he satisfied a craving or two.
He crunched into the crisp flesh. Juice burst into his mouth. He tilted his head back to keep the tears from spilling. Tart sweetness flooded his senses. Memories flashed like snapshots.
The caramel apples from the lobby at the Guzman Theatre making his goatee sticky. Samantha picking drying bits of sugar from his mustache. Burned apple pie from the first Thanksgiving at the new apartment after Henry recorded the new special. Comedy album of the year. Instead of celebrating, he sat on the kitchen floor with her pregnant ass in his lap as she cried her apology into his neck.
Feeding Amélie applesauce from a tiny rubber spoon while she giggled and bobbed in her pumpkin seat, smearing baby food into her hair.
He swallowed and blinked his eyes clear. He sighed and lowered his head for another bite, and caught the eye of a little blonde girl walking next to a woman leaning over a crate of avocados, her face obscured by the tumble of the bleached ponytail brushing her shoulder. She smiled and waved. He smiled and waved back. Then the girl bounced away as her mother tugged her hand and moved on to the bread.
With their backs to him, they could have been Sam and Amélie, walking hand in hand down the street.
The apple tumbled from his fingers. He dropped the basket behind him and fled. Pushing through the shoppers blocking his way, he went out through the ‘in’ door and ran past the dancing harmonica vet. Down a few blocks, dodging pedestrians and muttered curses, he angled into an alley and squatted behind a dumpster over a vent of oily steam.
He leaned in the shadow of the building behind him. The darkness that could hide his ugliness from the world and its pain from himself. He slipped the ring off and transferred it to his left hand. He became the monster, wrapping himself in night, and launched from the asphalt, swirling in and out of the shadows to outrun his memories.
But of course they caught up.
They always caught up.
He stood cloaked in the deep shadows of the stone wall surrounding his old neighborhood, the setting sun stretching and spreading his cover along his front lawn. Samantha stood in the front window, a glass of wine in her hand, looking up the darkening street as if waiting for something.
To be so close yet so far from her felt like blades through his being.
How much he wished he could walk through the front door and tell her he was still alive. How he wished he could step back through time before he died and was cursed to return in this demon form. How he wished their daughter was still alive and not trapped in hell.
Wishes were pain in their truest form.
Henry slid the ring from his left hand and held it in his fist. He could put the ring back on his right hand, become a normal looking human she wouldn’t even recognize as her dead husband. He could go up to the front door and say he was lost. He was just looking for a bathroom. He was selling shower curtain rings. Anything for a look in her eyes without the terror inside them that would come seeing his true form.
He nodded and squared his shoulders. He’d think of something. He aimed the first finger of his right hand at the loop of silver. Samantha jumped back from the window and walked out of view.
The hum of an engine. He squinted into the headlights of a car that turned in front of him and pulled into his driveway. He shrank back and jammed the ring back onto the first finger of his left hand. He crouched down, dug his feet in for purchase, and prepared to rip out the throat of what better be the fucking pizza guy.
The beige sedan rocked as the door opened and the driver stepped out. The fucking cop. Mike Stone. He jumped out of the front seat and closed the door as Samantha appeared on the porch. She glided down the stairs with her arms held out in front of her. Stone scooped her up, spinning her bare feet above the grass.
He set her down and their lips met in a kiss. Henry leapt over the wall with a roar that split his lungs. He threw himself into the twisting shadows and ran away.
He knew they’d been together that one time, but clearly this was more than a one-nighter.
How could she move on so fast?
How could she have forgotten me so easily?
He ran until he couldn’t breathe. Until every step felt like pushing through Play-Doh. He rested in the dark under the stairs next to The Shoeshine Pub, sweat pouring down his forehead to track with the tears. He wiped his nose on the cuff of his sleeve then took the ring off, holding it up to a sliver of light from a flickering street lamp.
A tiny sculpture stood out in relief, carved all the way around in exquisite detail. A frog eating the tail of a hissing serpent on its way to devour the frog. “Am I the frog?” Henry rotated the ring, following the image through the loop. “Or am I the snake?”
He jammed the ring onto the first finger of his right hand and pulled himself out from under the stairs. He squinted against the light coming from the signs and windows then headed into the blaring music of the bar. He was sure he could find somebody to sleep with a monster in there.
He found a girl ready to get just the right amount of drunk then follow him to The Registry Arms just down the street. By the hour or by the night, there were no long-term rates at the Registry. Melisa with one S was a staggering goth with a black ribbon around her throat. Eyeshadow ran in black trails down her cheeks as she doubled over with laughter. “You are so fucking funny!”
Black stockings and blacker boots. A skirt that had barely covered her ass, and a black shirt so tight, the ridges of her nipples poked through the fabric. She had been directly behind him when he entered, merging with the crowd funneling into the pub. “Fuck Richard, you know? I’m gonna blow the first guy who buys me a drink.”
On instinct, he jabbed her with his elbow while reaching into his pocket. “Oh God, I am so sorry. Please let me buy you a drink in apology.”
She eyed him up and down, smiling over her shoulder to her girlfriends. “Richard who?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry about it, honey.” She grabbed his arm, falling into step beside him. She leaned in to whisper, “Cranberry juice and vodka.”
True to her word, she had his pants down before the door latched shut, and he stood and looked up at the stained ceiling, unsure of what to do with his hands. Later, moaning and writhing beneath him, she dug her nails into the back of his neck. “I want you to choke me when you cum.”
He paused mid-thrust, staring at her in confusion. “What?”
She drove her pelvis into him with a snarl, jerking his head down and biting his ear. “Choke. Me.”
He pulled away from the pain, and his orgasm gathered at once. He pulled his hands off her breasts, closing his fingers around her throat. She bucked beneath him, gasping in pleasure.
Afterward, lying on his side in the dark, with her rasping snores rocking the bed, Henry rolled the ring between his fingers, watching the frog eat the snake eat the frog by the light of the Registry’s neon sign. He fell asleep with the heat of guilt burning his cheeks.
Chapter Five
Henry kept his eyes closed against the morning sun filling the room with its aggressive smile of light and curled into the sheet with a groan. He was not a rise and shine kind of guy. The bed rocked, and a draft shimmered across his back as Samantha threw the sheet back and rolled her feet to the floor.
She had always been an early riser. Even when she had stayed up late. At a show or a party when they were younger. Up most of the night when Amélie had strep throat. Sitting by her bed, reading Winnie The Pooh and doing all the voices. Waiting for the antibiotics and codeine to kick in.
When his grandmother had died.
His biggest doubter. His loudest detractor. Grandma. He’d told her he’d be somebody and she’d laughed in his face. All the terrible things he thought about himself, she threw back at him with oblivious cruelty. But the worst? She never thought he was funny.
“Your friends may think you’re funny, Henry. But I don’t think you’re very funny. Me. Your grandmother.”
“Grandma, I’m going on stage in front of ten thousand people.”
“They’re just people, Henry. They’re not your family.”
“Samantha thinks I’m funny.”
“Jesus. She’s a Protestant, Henry. They think everything is funny. Have you eaten yet?”
Every once in a while, Henry still picked up the phone and started dialing her number.
A stroke got her while she’d been hanging out her window, yelling at Saul Hines to keep his dog out of her flowers. Her neighbors hadn’t exactly celebrated, but the tenants seemed relieved after she was gone, as if they had all exhaled a breath they hadn’t even known they had been holding.
Nora Jenkins from across the hall had yanked Henry into an embrace, then pulled back to point at his grandmother’s door. “When I was a girl, my father had a barn. Nobody would go into this barn. Because of the bees. A big hive!” She spread her arms to the limit of her five-foot-tall frame to illustrate the size, and her eyes had opened so wide, Henry thought they might tumble right out of her face.
“But the men came. Smoked the bees away and moved the hive to another barn. We could finally go inside. That was your grandma.”
He never figured out what she was supposed to be in that story. The bees or the barn.
After the funeral, he sat on the edge of his bed, crying into his hands. She would never see him make it to that next level, the biggest one, the one where he could rub it all into her bitter face. The sobs only slowed when Samantha sat next to him, rubbing his back and whispering in his ear. “Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay, baby.”
They sat like that for hours. Henry crying. Samantha comforting. The next morning, she was up with the sun. The smell of coffee had roused him from a dream about his grandmother sitting in the audience, eating olives. Unimpressed.
He snuggled the sheet up under his chin and drifted down. Maybe she’d make bacon. Her and Amélie standing in the doorway with matching smiles. His jaw cracked in a yawn. He heard the bathroom door open. Footsteps stopped short of the bed. Henry floated up, worry creasing his brow, dream and memory in a war of confusion.
It wasn’t Samantha beside him.
A gasping breath.
Then a scream ripped into his head like the swelling signal of an approaching train. His heart shot panic into his throat. He extended his body in a shocked line of rigid electricity, leaping away from the shriek.
He tumbled to the floor, the sheet tangling around his arms and legs. The scream continued to rise until it severed with a ragged inhale. Henry popped his head up to see what in the world, and saw Melisa standing at the edge of the bed, staring at him with horror that spread her face out like bread dough. Cords and veins bulged in her neck. Purple fists were clenched against her thighs.
Clinging sleep fought with his sprinting heart, and Henry rose up, staggering back when his feet got hooked in the sheet that pooled on the floor. He caught his balance. Focused on Melisa as she lost another breath.
She tipped her head back, but her eyes rolled down to keep Henry in sight. He held his hands up in front of him, wincing as her shrill wailing hit the frequency to shatter glass.
“Easy! What the fuck?”
Still screaming. A backward step.
“Come on, calm the fuck down before they call the cops.”
Another hitching breath. Another scream. Another step away from him.
“Look,” he said, pointing at Melisa with his right hand while trying to cover his red dong with his left. "You asked me to choke you. I just wanted some meat and potatoes.”
He glanced down at his pointing finger. The one without the ring.
“Oh shit.”
He held his hands with his fingers splayed like he was displaying his polish. Without the ring he’d converted back to a monster as he slept.
“Fuck!” He dropped to his hands and knees, jerking the sheet out from under him. It ripped in two, and he threw the remnants over his shoulder. Jeans and socks, shirt and hoodie. All pressed into a wrinkled pile against his chest.
Melisa’s screams finally stopped. The room filled with her rough panting punctuated by Henry’s grunts of frustration.
He snatched up his underwear, tossing them out of the way where they spun and flipped up past his forehead, hooking onto the horn over his right temple. They fell, hanging over his right eye until he swiped them away. The ring fell from a fold in his tighty-whities. It rolled away. He slapped his hand over it before it could get out of his reach. He sighed with relief and straightened to his knees, a smile of triumph freezing his face.
Melisa jumped to land on her knees on the bed. Leaning back in a wide stance, she dug through her purse with grimacing focus. Her eyes widened and she withdrew her hand, flipping the purse over her shoulder.
It spun in an arc, scattering its contents in a suspended nautilus before slapping into the bathroom door. The black satin choker bobbed as she swallowed, her pale tits heaving with her breath. Empty fist trailed behind her. Shoulders back. Hair in crazy anime spikes. The hand that emerged from the purse held a silver canister, the spray nozzle pointing at his face.
Henry chuckled. “Whatever that is, it ain’t gonna work.” He tossed his head to the right, and his underwear swung to the side like cotton bangs. Melisa’s eyebrows drew down, her mouth twisted into a sneer of anticipation.
She shot Henry in the face with pepper spray, and Henry was wrong.
That shit worked.
He threw himself back with a howl. Burning and stinging filled his mind with panic. The pepper spray splashed into his palms, squeezing through his fingers in stuttering spurts that coated his face.
A flood of snot and tears.
The backs of his knees hit the threadbare recliner against the wall. He fell back into it, and his clothes jumbled up over his face, blocking the spray and soaking up some of the dripping acid … bullshit.
Henry worked his hands together under the clothes and slipped on the ring. The hissing stopped, and the springs in the bed squeaked as Melisa stepped back to the floor.
He pulled the clothes away from his face, squinting through pain and tears.
Melisa’s mouth hung open in confusion, the spray can dangling at her side. She fell back with stilted steps, sliding her feet through the crap from her purse.
He stood. With the ring on, he looked like a man again. He dropped his clothes on the bed and pulled the underwear off his head. He wiped his eyes with his forearm.
Goddammit! That just made it worse.
Melisa’s frown deepened, and she took another step back, passing through the bathroom doorway. Henry pulled on his underwear, and the soaked pepper spray hit the sensitive skin of his testicles. He sucked in a hissing breath, then blew it out in a whooping holler.
He focused on the sink behind her. He rushed forward, pulling his underwear away, trying to lower them as he ran. Melisa’s eyes sprang open. She gasped as she lifted the can, and Henry slid to a stop with, “Come on, woman!”
Pounding on the door. He turned, his distraction filled with fresh pain as Melisa swung a kick to his balls. A spike of agony stabbed Henry to his collarbones.
“GWAH!”
He screamed and fell to his knees.
She unloaded the rest of the spray into his face, and he threw himself back, bucking and kicking, vomit and snot spilling onto his chin.
Melisa ducked into the bathroom, then slammed the door as a pounding from the other side of the room ended with a CRASH — the door splitting from the jamb and smashing against the wall. Henry rolled to his knees, swiping sticky pepper spray from his face and sucking in rib-splitting gasps that threatened to launch puke into his throat. His pulse pounded in his temples, and his vision turned red.
Anger sent pain into the corner. Barely there, he stood to his full height and removed the ring. A fat sweaty hump in a tracksuit rushed in brandishing a bat. Another hump that looked like the first one’s twin followed him in with a revolver pointed dead at Henry’s chest. With an accent that sounded like he was speaking with a carrot cake in his mouth, Hump shouted, “What you do to the girl, hey?”
Henry slid the ring onto his left hand and let out a roar.
The Humps stopped short, wrapping each other up in their panic to escape from the demon that had just burst out of a man. Henry roared again into their gaping faces. Rage and frustration. Heat rising from his steaming breath.
The Humps disappeared in a clatter of slapping fat and stomping feet.
Henry followed them into the hall, echoing with slamming doors. He sprinted its length, moving in a blur that left a blistering wind in his wake. The window at the end grew as he neared. He was a rocket through the glass. He soared through the air in a freeing moment of joy, the musical chimes of shattered panes glittering in the morning light.
He floated into a roll that carried him into an alley, slamming the asphalt on the tops of his shoulders. He came up cloaked in shadow, then vanished into the city, using the shadows in the corners and doorways as shelter.
In the alley behind Boothe’s apartment in Martinsburg, Henry switched the ring to his right hand and walked to the hanging fire escape. As he set his hand on the first rung, a voice floated up from the shadows from under a plain metal door. “Damn, son. What’s wrong with your eyes?”