by Mav Skye
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
A brisk knock on the front door broke her concentration.
Rhiannon dropped the lipstick.
Froze.
Another knock. The doorbell rang.
It was probably just the mailman. Her eyes flicked inside the closet. No, she supposed it wouldn’t be him. Perhaps it was Chloe, her secretary from work. Although, she’d very specifically asked her to call if she had any updates on the meeting this morning. She’d told them all Derry had left her quite suddenly and she needed to be by herself in the house. No guests. No guests at all.
The worms crawled. They writhed. They asked questions like the Holy Ghost. “The Holy Ghost doesn’t ask questions,” she whispered.
Are you dead? they asked.
“Daddy’s dead. The Holy Ghost told him to do it. A wiggle in his soul.”
Are you alive? they asked.
“Yes, yes of course I’m alive. I’m going to make the sale.” She touched the satchel of fingernails.”
Are you dreaming? they asked.
“Shut up. Shut up.”
The doorbell rang insistently.
Rhiannon closed the closet and leapt down the stairs.
“I told you to call me!” She unlocked the door and flung it open.
A little old woman adorned in a paisley dress stood on the porch. Her body was bony, face pointy and beaked like a bird’s. Gray eyes magnified by glasses that took up half her face said who she was even before she spoke.
When the old bird opened her beak, the drawl confirmed everything. “Derr’ay! I want to see my pumpkin pie cake.”
The worms writhed. They screamed. Rhiannon grabbed her head.
“I’m Derr’ay’s Ma and I demand to see my Derr’ay!” Ma squeezed past Rhiannon and marched into the kitchen.
Rhiannon closed the door. “Wait, hold up, Ma. Derry isn’t here anymore. We broke up last week.”
The worms moved to the back of Rhiannon’s head. Slowly. Eating. Munching. Asking questions.
“I don’t believe you. My son would have c’alled me.”
Rhiannon rushed after Ma around the kitchen. As they passed by the knives, she drew the butcher knife from the block. Ma marched through the living room. Rhiannon followed her. “Don’t you see, Ma? We weren’t getting along anymore. He wasn’t happy here. So he left.”
Ma stopped and turned.
Rhiannon hid the knife behind her back.
Ma held up her nose and pushed her glasses back, inspecting Rhiannon’s face. “Where did he go then?”
“Texas.”
“Why Tex’as?”
Tears streamed from Rhiannon’s eyes. The worms screamed in her skull. Dead? Living? Dream? I don’t know, she shouted back at them, then looked at Ma.
Ma waited patiently for an answer.
“Um, I, he… met someone,” Rhiannon said.
Ma squinted her beady, gray eyes. “I don’t beli’eve you.”
She turned and headed towards the stairs.
“Stop, please, stop,” Rhiannon whispered. They all asked at the same time in their own needy voices. She wanted to bang her head against the wall. She needed to make the sale to prove it to them. Then they’d be quiet.
Prove it. Prove it. Prove it, they replied.
She had to deal with the old bird first.
Calm. Rhiannon needed to be calm.
“Liar! Liar! Liar!” screamed Ma from upstairs.
Rhiannon raced up the stairwell to find Ma digging through Derry’s closet. Rhiannon cursed herself for not burning his clothes and shoes. This week had been so overwhelming. She couldn’t remember most of it.
Dead? Alive? Dreaming? demanded the worms.
Ma grabbed a shirt off the hanger and approached Rhiannon. “Liar! You bi’atch. Tell me where my son is or I swear I’ll…”
Rhiannon opened her own closet doors, pushed Ma in, and shut them. She sank back against the doors and let her head rest against her knees. There was a delicious pause. Rhiannon tried to think. Think. Think.
And then, Ma’s voice started as a whisper, building to a high pitched crescendo scream a heavy metal band could never even hope to reach. “They’re dead. They’re dead in here. They’re dead. They’re dead in here. They’re dead! They’re dead in here! THEY’RE DEAD! THEY’RE DEAD! THEY’RE DEAD IN HERE!”
Rhiannon glanced around the room and eyeballed her window. She leapt to the blinds, cut the cord with the butcher’s knife, and jumped back to the closet doors. Just as Rhiannon wrapped the cord over and around the doorknobs, securing them, Ma tried to open the doors, then pounded her fists against them.
“Heads or tails! Make some sells!” Rhiannon said.
“Let me out. Oh, please let me out!” And then, just so Rhiannon knew for sure, Ma said, “They’re dead in here!”
Rhiannon marched up and down the room with the butcher knife as the old woman screamed.
The worms crawled in her mind. Up and down, in and out. As if she was dead already. How did that old child’s rhyme go? The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout.
Dead? Alive? Dreaming? A nightmare, a horrible nightmare like in Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s stuck in the closet screaming, “They’re dead! They’re dead in here!”
“Prove it,” Rhiannon whispered to herself. “Prove it. Prove it. Prove it.” An idea came, a way to prove that she was dead, alive, or dreaming. She carved it out on the bedroom wall with the butcher’s knife as she repeated her mantra, her little rhyme.
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
Hair and gums, unbecomes.
Legs and fingers, let them linger.
Heads and tails flip for sells.
Calmer, Rhiannon went downstairs, out the patio door to the Yardman 2000 shed, grabbed the filet knife, ran back inside, upstairs, and opened the closet door.
Ma was still screaming. “They’re dead! They’re dead in here!” She held two heads by their hair.
“You’ve got Derry, and… oh, Mrs. Doober!” Rhiannon said with a bit of surprise as she reached in and pulled Ma out. “I was busier than I thought.”
Ma shook and shivered. Rhiannon grabbed the heads from her hands and tossed them back into the closet. Briefly, she saw the writing on the wall, and this assured her what must be done.
Rhiannon held the butcher’s knife to her throat. “You need to pull yourself together, Ma. Do you feel a wiggle in your soul?”
Ma cried and shook her head.
“Damn it, Ma! Look for it. Look for the wiggle. This is a matter of life and death and dreaming. Do you feel the wiggle in your soul?”
Ma’s beady eyes grew wide. Her glasses fell lopsided. She gulped and nodded.
“Good. That’s the Holy Ghost. And you’ve got to do what the Holy Ghost says.” The worms screamed in Rhiannon’s head. “We never met, but your son and I were together for many years. I think it’s time to get personal. He’s dead as you found out.”
She let out a wail. Ma’s legs gave out, her paisley dress fluttering.
Rhiannon caught her, being careful not to cut her with the knives, and pushed her up against the wall. “But you can still live. Do you want to live, Ma?”
Rhiannon had already missed her sales meeting, but she had this one last chance to make a pitch, to make the sale. “There’s something you need to do.” She put the filet knife in Ma’s hand.
Ma whimpered and dropped the knife. A wet stain streaked her dress.
“No, no, it’s time for courage, Ma! Courage. Now, I need to find out if I’m dead, alive, or dreaming. There’s this poem I made up a long time ago when the Holy Ghost told my daddy to kill himself. I thought it was like a rhyme or a mantra. But I had it all wrong. The worms inside my head, they helped me realize the words are instructions. I want you to do as I say. And when you’re all done, I need you to flip my heads and tails before dialing 9-1-1, because that make
s the sale.”
Ma shivered and hippo tears streamed from her eyes. She wasn’t going to do it. The worms laughed at Rhiannon.
You’ll never know! they said. You’ll never know!
Rhiannon went for the kill. “I gagged your son in front of the TV, Ma. He was going to leave me and I couldn’t let him do that. I filleted and sawed him up into tiny little pieces while he was alive and preserved the best parts. You found them in the closet there. His head? You were holding your pumpkin pie cake’s head, bitch.”
Ma glanced at the closet. When she turned back to Rhiannon, her gray eyes were stone.
She nodded. Just once, then removed her glasses and tossed them to the carpet. Her small, birdish body assumed a warrior’s stance.
When Rhiannon offered her the knife the second time, Ma took it in hand.
Rhiannon smiled. She had won. She’d made the pitch and sealed the sale. “There’s a little killer in us all, ain’t there, Ma?”
Sweat dripped down Rhiannon’s forehead. Mascara streaked like evil down her cheeks. Worms squirmed in her skull like death. They should have stopped by now. They always stopped after the pitch.
Rhiannon wanted to end this nightmare, this life, this death. Whatever this was or was not. “Now do only as I say, Ma, no fast moves or stabs. Only as I say.”
Ma was shifty. Unafraid.
The worms crawled. Rhiannon didn’t trust Ma. She clutched her butcher knife in her own hands. Ready to thrust it if she needed too.
Ma’s face had turned hawk. Predatory. Her arms open wide. Ready to strike.
Rhiannon wished she could write the “game plan” out for Ma.
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
First the nails and teeth, obviously. It would be painful, but it was the only way to know if she was truly dead, alive, or dreaming as the worms taunted her. The nails and teeth had to be put underneath the old hat box in her closet. Rhiannon smiled and patted the satchel of fingernails still sitting in her vest. Next would be the hair and gums, both of those unbecomes, therefore needed to be buried in the garden or if Ma wished could be burned in the woodstove. She’d offer the choice to Ma. The problem with this “game plan” was that everything had to go according to instruction, according to her rhyme.
“Ma, you must follow my instructions exactly. Do you understand?”
Ma nodded, yes.
Liar! The old bird lies! the worms cried.
To the right of Ma’s shoulder hung the mosaic mirror. Rhiannon saw herself in it. She was slender with green, feline eyes and pointed teeth. Poisonous.
Both women faced each other. Hawk and Snake.
“Derr’ay,” said Hawk.
Snake hissed, “One, two, three… Nails and teeth--”
The bird’s beady eyes twitched. Her talon swung out.
The snake struck faster.
They stabbed each other at the same time.
Rhiannon’s butcher’s knife sank in Ma deeply, as Ma’s filet knife did in Rhiannon. There would be no fingernail filleting or gum slicing. Not this time.
Rhiannon tried to keep calm waiting for the dream to end, life to begin, or death to arrive. She heard Ma gasping for breath, gurgling Derry’s name over and over. That was her mantra.
Rhiannon had hers.
The worms slowed. Darkness seeped in like a wiggle in her soul. Jesus loved her. Rhiannon whispered the Holy Ghost a lullaby.
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
Hair and gums, unbecomes.
Legs and fingers, let them linger.
Heads and tails flip for sells.
3
Dead Sunset Red
She thought curious things to herself, disturbing things. Things she’d rather not consider or ask herself. But today was one of the days that she was able to think, able to question. So she asked herself the question that snaked through her dreams and spelled her days. The question a lawyer had once asked her. She spoke the question out loud.
“Cecilia Horn, what is at the center of your heart?”
Cracks climbed the bathroom wall, choking the mirror Cecilia stood before. She scoured her image for the answer, a clue, just a hint. As usual, her reflection peered back, blank and unreliable. Though not dishonest.
Cecilia was not a dishonest person.
She turned her face this way and that, examining every tired curve, the heavy bags creeping under her eyes, below her chin. “Cecilia Horn, what is at the center of your heart? Answer me, damn it.”
No answer came.
Cecilia paused a moment and closed her eyes, feeling the throb of her pulse suffocate, drowning in her veins. A sigh escaped her lips, and she opened her eyes, taking in a deep breath. Still, neither her face nor mind held clues to the answer. Her fingers reached under the sink, to the little nook where she stashed her secret treasure. Finding it, she retrieved the red lip gloss and twisted off the cap. Cecilia carefully read the color on the tube: Dead Sunset Red. It actually said, Sunset Red. But she knew, deep down, that Dead was part of the title. Someone had erased the word. They had hidden the truth from the American public. The outrage! People should be ranting in the streets. (But hadn’t they? Her mind whispered. Hadn’t they ranted and protested down the very street you lived?) But that was one question too many for Cecilia, so she ignored it.
Her heart quadrupled in beats. Panic coiled in her belly. Cecilia gazed once more at herself in the mirror. A clue. The word dead was definitely a clue. Good, she was doing good today. She applied the brassy gloss and pursed her lips. Late evening sunlight flitted through the window behind her and highlighted her blonde hair. It also highlighted the dark roots that were beginning to show.
She’d have to change that.
There was a lot she needed to change, to take back (like dying her hair blonde!) but she couldn’t change things, or go back in time. This made Cecilia feel very sad, sorrowful even. And she knew that this was another clue.
Once again, her lips caught her eye. They weren’t the pale pink as before, but a simmering hot, guilty red. She asked herself the question, the question that fluttered like a moth against a cold porch light, again and again. The question the lawyer had asked her that day in the courtroom. “Cecilia Horn, what is at the center of your heart?”
Her reply wasn’t the answer, the true answer, she knew. But, she looked herself dead eyed in the mirror anyway. Her eyelid twitched. Once. She spoke it aloud, “Love.”
And he had asked, “But your children, Mrs. Horn?”
Cecilia stared at her dead mouth in the mirror. “My children… oh, my children.” She felt wetness in her steel blue eyes.
She wouldn’t explain it. She couldn’t explain it. Not even to her attorney. There was nothing to explain, because she didn’t remember anything.
Not a single thing.
Deep in the center of her heart, in the primal beating away of her every breath, was an axe without a chopping block.
Sometimes, the axe was still. Silver and fire glinted off the edge of the blade: a threat. Other times the axe hacked and hewed at sinew and bone, at the moon and stars and the universe that lay between.
Fractured memories arose in these moments, in the Time of the Axe, memories from her childhood: her father’s funeral. Her mother’s weddings, so many weddings. Then, her own wedding. Dillard’s drinking. His fat gut hoisted above her as he jammed her over and over with his skinny little prick.
And her best memories: giving birth to her three children, her glorious children.
After that her memory falls like downy feathers: blank and white and empty as heaven. They say she tried to drown her children, all three of them. Cecilia didn’t own a memory of that, not even a dream. But the axe kept chopping and falling, the axe would find the memories of that year, that night hidden among the wild vines of her soul. Doctor Shear told her so.
Cecilia focused on her lips once more, applying more of the lip gloss. She had stolen the lip glo
ss from her attending nurse at the institution. Nurse Betty was skinny and tall. She wore white blouses and long denim skirts. Her tennis shoes were tied with long, rabbit ear loops. Ankle socks pulled up to mid-calves. She wore glasses that often slipped to the very edge of her petite nose. Her lips were smooth and never smiled. Nurse Betty was all about practicality and getting things done.
The lip gloss had fallen out of one of her denim pockets, two months ago in July. Cecilia kept it hidden beneath the sink, never touching it until Sunday. Nurse Betty didn’t work on Sundays, so that is when she wore it.
Dead Sunset Red lip gloss did not match the no-nonsense practicality of Nurse Betty. However, it did reveal another side of her, the truth of nurse Betty. Perhaps the lip gloss not only revealed the truth about the nurse, but also about herself. Another clue.
Cecilia regarded herself in the mirror and heard the question again, in her mind: What is at the center of your heart?
She reached inside her blue blouse and untucked a little piece of paper from her bra. She brushed her fingers against the smudged ink. The ink had bled the first time she read it, her tears falling and soaking in, swelling, and creating patterns against the torn edge.
The date she’d written on the paper was July 15th, 2013. Cecilia knew that was the date the court remanded her to Faraday Psychiatric Hospital. But, she didn’t remember writing it. It was a clue to that one year of her life when everything changed. A clue to the question that burned in her mind.
Cecilia held the piece of paper up to her face, blocking the mirror image of herself. Her hand shook, so she supported it with the other. Slowly, she read the words out loud.
“Darkness falls. It drapes into puddles the shape of your scars. I am lost without you. Sometimes, I dream. And we are together. You are everything to me. And I… I am nothing to you.“
Her voice was light until now, it cracked here:
“I am a lie. I am a bruise. I am a sin. I am merely an extension of your will and power.”
She took a deep breath. Her voice trembled as she read her own simple cursive.