Slices

by Michael Montoure

Craig nodded, followed a couple of reluctant paces behind.

  Closer, and they could hear it again — that snarl, like gears, or an inhuman throat.

  Gary lifted the keys to the door, when one loud crash rocked the car back and forth. He dropped the keys, and they bounced and clattered under the car.

  Gary cursed and dropped to his hands and knees. He reached underneath.

  Something wrong here, under the car. Some slick puddle, something dripping from the car — oil, he thought, but the smell was wrong, unhealthy and organic, and it wasn’t coming from the engine, it was coming from —

  Whatever was in the trunk thrashed and lashed out and shook the car again, and Gary’s hand touched the keys and closed deathgrip-tight around them. He lurched to his feet, opened the shaking door, and hauled the suitcase out.

  He didn’t say a word. He headed for the restroom and Craig followed.

  He stepped inside, ran cold water in the sink, and put the suitcase down. He splashed a little water on his face, and stared at what there was of his reflection in the dull plate of metal that passed for a mirror.

  “We’re not going to be able to see if anyone comes, not from in here,” Craig said.

  “I know. I know. I just wanted to be inside for a minute. Away from — ” He jerked a thumb toward the parking lot.

  “Sure. Sure. Take your time.” Craig let out a lifeless laugh. “You know, right now I’d even be happy to see a police car?”

  Gary smiled weakly.

  After a while, they stood out in the parking lot, far from the restless car. They smoked Gary’s last two cigarettes and stared up at the sky. That was the nice thing about the middle of nowhere — all the stars. Gary looked up at all the constellations he’d learned about as a kid and couldn’t remember the name of a single one.

  “I hate these places,” Craig said.

  “Rest areas?”

  “Rest areas. It’s like — they’re not really places, are they? Not really. They’re what you find between places. They’re where you go when you aren’t anywhere.”

  “Huh.” Gary stared at the last of his cigarette, then flicked it away into the dark.

  “They just seem so weird and fake,” Craig continued. “Metal mirrors and metal drinking fountains and stupid little flyers for places you’ll never go, and it’s like they weren’t even built by people, do you know what I mean?”

  “Shut up,” Gary said softly.

  “No, seriously. It’s like whoever built them just had some vague idea of what real people would like — what would get them to stop way out here. They feel like traps, almost — ”

  “Shut up!” Gary snatched the cigarette from Craig’s hand, finished it himself in one long last drag. “Can’t you even hear it anymore?”

  He could. They both could. It was getting even louder.

  The car crashed and shook. It had moved — it was no longer straight in the lines, but tilted at a harsh angle.

  “I can’t stand listening to that noise any more,” Gary said. “It’s getting right into my fucking head. I just can’t take it. I’m going to go make it stop.”

  He got out the keys, and his gun.

  Craig’s eyes were wide. “Listen. That guy said no matter what, not to open the trunk, so — ”

  “Well, since you killed the sonofabitch, I don’t think his opinion really matters anymore, now, does it?” He flipped the safety off and started walking toward the car. “I don’t think his opinion counts for shit.”

  “Gary. Gary, listen,” Craig said, following him. “I don’t think that’s just some guy in there — ”

  “I don’t, either. I don’t give a shit what’s in there, I’m gonna put some bullets in it until it stops moving. With me?”

  “Jesus, Gary, please don’t — ”

  Craig couldn’t even watch — he just turned away, screwed his eyes shut tight, and clapped his hands over his ears.

  But he could still hear every sound —

  Gary’s footsteps as he walked over to the car. Sounds from inside like sledgehammers. The jingle and rattle of the keys; the trunk opening.

  He never heard the gun go off — just a scuffle and a snap, and the trunk coming back down, like thunder, louder than bombs.

  His eyes opened. He stared for a moment at the suitcase full of money, where they had left it.

  Silence.

  Without turning around, he called out, “Gary?”

  He turned, and all he saw was the car, the keys swinging in the trunk lock, and something on the ground, half in shadow.

  “Gary?”

  He walked over, and saw that the thing on the ground was one of Gary’s boots.

  The sounds from inside the trunk now were wet and red.

  He picked up the boot — it was too heavy to be empty — and he sat down on the ground and waited. Waited for someone to come.

  DADDY’S GIRLS

  Nathan was certain, this time. He’d seen them moving.

  Hot summer night and the curtains were drawn back, the window open. His wife Sammy had kicked off the blankets and was lying in moonlight, thin nightgown damp with sleep sweat and slicked to her body. He couldn’t sleep in this heat, but the same heat had made her drowsy, typically contrary, and he was lying awake and staring at her fast asleep when it happened.

  A shifting. A subtle movement under her skin. Like a muscle twitching, at first, then a larger shape, definite and solid, like a fish just about to break the surface of a river. A rise and fall across her stomach and then gone.

  For a moment he just watched, not moving. Eyes dead wide open and intent.

  Then a second swelling under her skin, a smaller one, its movement less steady and certain, and this time, his arm reached out, almost automatically; the hand hovering just above her skin to get a sense of what lay below, not quite daring to touch her, to wake her.

  She stirred and murmured a little, and his eyes shot up to meet hers, his hand hesitating, sure that any moment her eyes would drift open.

  They didn’t. They just shifted back and forth in their orbits, under their lids, as she slept and dreamed. He felt sure he knew what she was dreaming about.

  He might have thought he was dreaming himself, once. Or he might have convinced himself it was a trick of the light as he watched the second shadow under her skin slide back out of sight — something his tired eyes just simply invented. But not now. By now he’d dreamed too many times himself. He was used to it, and he’d developed a taste for what was real and solid.

  He lay awake for a long time after that, waiting for the room to cool down, waiting for them to show themselves again. But he didn’t think they would. Eventually he fell down into a shallow, restless sleep, and hoped he would dream, but if he did, the memory had faded by morning.

  She’d wanted him to be happy when she told him she was pregnant. More than five years had gone by since that moment, and he could still call easily to mind the exact expression of disappointment, of badly concealed hurt. When she had realized that his smile was starting a moment too late, that he’d hesitated before reacting, her own smile died alone.

  “I thought you wanted children,” she said, before he could say anything.

  “I did. I do,” he told her.

  They’d been married for four months, and were both living tight together in the too small apartment that had once been only his. He’d just started at the architecture firm, and his salary was reasonable but not impressive; she was still months away from finishing college.

  It wasn’t a good time for them to have children. They both wanted children, very much, some day. But not yet. He didn’t remind her of any of this just then. They’d talked about it enough times before. He thought they were in agreement, and he thought she’d been still taking her birth control pills, although for one sick and dizzy moment he doubted it.

  “It’s not a good time,” was all he said, and he expected her to argue about it, for them to drag out all their reasons and finances again.

&n
bsp; But her expression, while still sad, was curiously flat and calm. “I know,” she said. “You’re right. We shouldn’t.”

  “No,” he agreed slowly, at odds with himself. This time, the conversation wasn’t theoretical. He’d always been sure he could be ruthlessly practical, but it was a little harder to be right about this, now. He would have felt better if she’d argued.

  They did talk. They did argue, over the next several weeks. They talked about terminating the pregnancy, and they talked about it just like that, their words hospital-cold and clinical. They talked about putting the child up for adoption. All the same conversations they’d had before they got married, now with a new sense of urgency, as Sammy’s belly began to gently curve.

  They had very few friends to talk things over with. They’d been so different, his light to her dark, and they had very few friendships that survived their marriage. Neither one of them wanted to tell their parents about this, and they faced it alone.

  In the end, they didn’t even face it together.

  Their discussions turned to disagreements turned to arguments, and Sammy’s darker moods turned to silent ones. They didn’t talk at all for several days, communicating only in furtive looks and sullen glances. Nathan threw himself into his work, bringing home blueprints and legal agreements, losing himself in the dream of houses.

  When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Nathan finally came to her and said, “We need to talk.”

  She’d been sitting in the darkened living room by the open window, watching the traffic go by and sipping a glass of red wine. Singing to herself something that might have been a lullaby. She’d let all the heat bleed out of the room into the night. She looked at him with wide dark eyes and asked, “About what?”

  “About — ” The word came out of him as one exasperated burst of breath, and then he was completely derailed. He recovered his composure and said, “What we’re going to do about the baby.”

  “Oh,” she said, and for a moment, didn’t say anything else. Then, “I’ve already taken care of it.”

  “You — what do you mean?” His chest felt suddenly tight and breathless, his heart like it might refuse to beat again. “Taken care of — ?”

  “I’m not pregnant any more.” Her voice was dead calm again, as smooth and implacable as waves lapping against the shore. When he didn’t say anything, she reached out and took his hand, placed it against her stomach, pressed it flat. “See?”

  He did. It was flat and smooth again. She’d — without him, without his help, she’d — “When?” was all he could ask.

  “Does it matter?” Her eyes were dark and distant and seemed to look right through him. “It’s taken care of. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  She turned away from him and went back to looking out the window, and that was the last they spoke about it for years.

  It was years, as well, before the dreams started.

  Even though they still lived side by side in the small apartment, close enough that her scent was always on his skin, Nathan knew, over time, that he’d lost her forever.

  He tried to make her happy, and for all he knew, sometimes she was. She’d smile at him, sometimes, a smile as bright as a full moon breaking free from the clouds, sudden and dazzling. But more often, the smiles he saw were small and hidden and private, and he never knew what prompted them. He eventually stopped asking.

  He’d find her sometimes, alone and whispering. Sometimes out on the street at night, pointing up at the stars and naming them. Or sitting, more than once, alone and cold on a child’s swing in the playground behind their apartment building. She answered to her own clock and rhythms, followed her own seasons.

  She dropped out of school, despite his protests. He tried endlessly to reach her, and worried more than once that maybe this had all been too much for her mind. If he’d had close friends to advise him, maybe he would have known to insist she get help, tried to fix her with more than just love and patience.

  Instead, he worked. It was all he knew how to do. He’d never been much in love before Sammy and for all he knew, this was what it was like. But his work he understood, the abstract and the ideal and the pursuit of a perfect line, existing somewhere in the unreal, unhindered by pen and paper and his hands. He worked harder and brought home a little more money and knew that he could just fix their life if he kept trying.

  A couple of years had gone by since that strange cold night by the window. He announced that they were moving. He’d found a larger apartment they could afford now, a too-small two-bedroom apartment instead of their too-small one-bedroom one, and he hoped that he could lure her out and into somewhere new and bring her back to the world.

  For a while it almost worked. She was happy and excited for a time, took more interest in her life, and more interest in him, covering him at night in their new bed with soft kisses and her softer body. For a while, he thought it was all going to be all right.

  Then for a small matter of weeks she was distracted and pale again, and came to him asking, “Do you think it’s time now? For a baby, I mean?”

  He blinked. And hesitated once more. “I’m not sure,” he said, thinking about it. “We are in a slightly better position financially, and you’re not in school any more.”

  “ … But?” she asked, when he didn’t go on.

  “Well.” He felt awkward, didn’t want to say anything. “We still don’t have any savings to speak of. And I’d been hoping that, well. That you’d go back. To school.”

  “Oh,” she said. A slight puzzled frown creased her forehead. “I don’t think I will.”

  “But you still might,” he said. When you feel better, he almost added, but didn’t. “And I’ve been very busy at work, lately. I wouldn’t be much help with a new baby.”

  “It’s still not a good time, then,” she said slowly, saying the words carefully, as if making sure she had them right, like a ritual.

  “Not in my opinion,” he agreed.

  He watched her unreadable face for a long moment, until it changed to a calm smile.

  “All right,” she said at last. And never asked again.

  It wasn’t long after that that Nathan started to dream.

  He wrote it off at first as stress, overwork, guilt at having put her off again. But he kept having the same dreams, seeing the same face, impossible to ignore:

  His daughter, his own daughter, happy and warm in his arms. Watching her take her first steps, feeling tiny hands wrap around his fingers. Taking her out to a park, around the lake in a stroller, sunlight streaming down in ribbons between the branches as she tried to catch falling leaves.

  She always looked the same. He wondered about this, by day, about why his mind had latched on to one particular image of the child he’d never had.

  Sammy was almost never in these dreams. But he never wondered why.

  He would lay half-awake in bed some weekend mornings after these dreams, sometimes for nearly an hour, not quite willing to leave the warm haze of sleep and rejoin the world, missing his daughter already.

  He tried talking to Sammy. Not about the dreams; never about the dreams. Instead, he talked to her about having changed his mind, about realizing how important to him children really were. They could work things out, he told her, reprioritize their lives and tighten their spending habits and make room for a baby, if she was still willing —

  She wasn’t. She didn’t talk much about why not, just turned some of his own words back at him evasively, a reasonable, calm Giaconda smile on her face the entire time. It was like seeing his own resistance from before reflected back at him, a mirror image glimpsed through smoke. No baby. It wasn’t time for one.

  Nathan’s life inverted, crystal-clear and brightly colored visions at night, and a dream-like fog of wavering waking hours, drifting his way through hours at work and silent evenings at home. He felt like his home was haunted, but watching his wife, seeing her as if from a distance, he couldn’t be sure which one of them was the ghost.


  And watching his wife, an idea began to grow in his mind.

  He first saw it one day when she stood in the morning, naked and unselfconscious, by the side of the bed. She’d just woken up to the morning light and was facing the window, stretching.

  And under her skin, something moved.

  He was sure for a moment that he was dreaming, and he stirred a little in his half-sleep, and then she looked down and smiled. Put a hand on her stomach where the movement had been, then cradled her arms around it, lips moving in unspoken lullaby.

  He did go back to sleep after that, and woke convinced he’d imagined it. Then he put it out of his mind all together.

  But the awareness was there, restless in his deeper mind, and with it, the suspicion.

  Dreams went on, as some dreams will. Not long after he’d talked to Sammy about his wish for children, his dreams brought him another; a baby sister for his first dream daughter, who was herself a toddler now, pretty and precocious, hair in impossibly thick dark curls, already starting to be able to pick out and read a few phrases from the books he read her — Dr. Suess, Goodnight Moon, others. He had, in dreams, other books already bought and set aside for them both when they were older — The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Prince, the Narnia stories. Sometimes, in his waking life, he would wander through bookstores after work, reluctant to come home, and find copies of these books, run his fingers over their spines.

  As time wore on and his younger dream daughter had started walking and his first dream daughter was nearly starting Kindergarten, he dreamed one night that they were back in the park again, the older girl skimming stones across the lake and the little one in the stroller, a little fussy, wanting to be free.

  The sun was low and huge in the sky and the light was coming down at a warm summer evening angle, their shadows huge and unreal giants along the ground. People would smile at Nathan as they passed, admire his beautiful girls, say “Hello” like old friends. It was just that kind of evening.