Hellhole

by Gina Damico

  “You’ve never stolen alcohol before? Not even from your parents?”

  “Parent,” Max corrected. “And no, I haven’t.”

  “Man, you really are squeaky clean.”

  Max blushed, as if being a good kid were a bad thing. “The last thing I want to do is get Burg drunk. He’s uncontrollable enough when he’s sober.”

  “Then how about a different tactic? Why not drug him?”

  Max frowned. “I never thought of that,” he said. “You mean like slipping him a Mickey? How would I do that?”

  “Well, simply travel back in time to the twenties when that phrase was last used—”

  “You know what I mean. Sleeping pills, or whatever? Alcohol’s one thing, but stealing drugs? That’s getting into some dicey territory,” said Max, who had once seen a movie that did not paint drug dealers in the most flattering light. “I’d probably get got.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what they say,” Max said, watching as his attempt to sound cool blew up in his face, yet powerless to stop it. “The drug lords. When someone steals their stash, they have to get got. Or wait—no, the person who does the stealing gets got. Either way, there is some got that is get. Gotten.”

  She squinted at him. “Are you having a seizure?”

  “Stealing drugs is a bad idea,” he proclaimed loudly and clearly. “Is my point.”

  “Even if you stole them from your mom?”

  Max slowed his steps. “My mom?”

  “I mean, she’s bound to have some stuff lying around, right?”

  “I can’t take drugs that my mom needs to live!”

  Lore rolled her eyes. “Not the ones that she needs to live, you moron,” she said. “I mean like expired ones, stuff that’s been forgotten inside the medicine cabinet.”

  Max started walking again. “Maybe,” he muttered. “I’ll look when I get home.”

  Lore pulled aside a branch and stepped out into a field. “Here we are,” she said. “Paradise Fields.”

  Max thought she was being sarcastic, but as he squinted across the clearing, he saw a tilted, broken sign that said just that. Well, what it really said was PAR DI E FI L, since several of the letters had rusted off. Below that, chipped paint spelled out in a flowery cursive, HOME IS WHERE THE BLISS IS!

  “Try not to be overwhelmed by the bliss,” Lore said as she walked across the field, carefully sidestepping the shards of broken glass that littered the dry brown grass. “It’s unbearable in some places.”

  “Like that backed-up sewer drain?” Max said, pointing.

  “Yes. Feel the magic.”

  A bitter scent of diesel fuel lingered in the air. A creepy old stone well sat on the outskirts of the park, its opening sealed off by a large rock. The late September sun, blazing with the last gasp of summer, made Max feel as if he were swimming in his own juices. The buzz of the cicadas rose and fell, the sort of noise that always makes everything feel twenty degrees hotter.

  Max wiped his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. He counted eight trailers, plus several rectangular imprints where absent trailers once stood, the ground flattened. Yet despite the overarching bleakness, the homes themselves appeared lived-in and well loved. One, painted a happy yellow, featured a string of colorful patio lights. Another had a garden of fresh herbs planted along its front wall. The largest was decorated with every lawn ornament ever crapped out of a Christmas Tree Shop, up to and including the ever-classy wooden cutout of a woman bending over and exposing her plump bottom.

  “Now what?” Max said. “We can’t break into these places. People live here.”

  “Not in that one.” Lore nodded at a shuttered trailer close to the woods, its aluminum siding stained the same bright, distinctive shade of seafoam green as the Statue of Liberty. The blinds were pulled down, the door handle rusted. No knickknacks or anything graced the lawn, which was unmowed and wild.

  Lore gripped Russell Crowebar, sending its eyes a-google, and marched onward without waiting for Max.

  “You know what?” he said, once again having to run to catch up with her. “I changed my mind. I don’t think we need the trailer–halfway house strategy. I’m okay with Burg in the basement. I mean, not totally okay, but more okay than I would be if we broke into that trailer and there was a chain-saw-wielding maniac in there who cuts people up and then sews them back together into scarecrows. That, I really wouldn’t be okay with.”

  But Lore was already jimmying the door open. “You need to relax.”

  Her words had the opposite effect. “Lore, stop. Stop! Stop!”

  With a crack, the door popped open. Picturing all sorts of terrible things happening, like a hail of bullets spewing out the door or the trailer exploding into a flesh-melting fireball, Max hurled himself to the ground and covered his head.

  A second later he felt a tap on his shoulder. Lore was standing over him.

  “You landed in the sewage puddle,” she said.

  Max stood up. His shirt was covered in something he didn’t want to think about, and smelled like something he didn’t want to sniff about. After a mini internal debate over whether he should take it off (It smells like crap! But my pasty white torso is a travesty! But wearing a feces shirt is even worse!), he peeled the foul thing off and dropped it to the ground.

  “This plan is not going how I envisioned,” he muttered quietly enough that he thought Lore couldn’t hear him, but of course she did.

  “Oh, really?” she said, her mouth playfully tugging up a millimeter. “This wasn’t all an elaborate scheme to ‘accidentally’ grace me with a striptease?”

  Max carefully thought this through. He detected a hint—a tiny, tiny hint—of something that might be construed as possibly being identified as flirting. Normally, in emergency situations such as these, he’d say something bumbling and off topic (probably about veal, as was his recent trend) and the whole thing would blow up in his face. Bad things happened when he attempted to flirt. He was basically required to stay fifty feet away from flirting at all times.

  But for the moment he ignored all that. Maybe he could play this one right.

  “Careful,” he said to Lore, trying to shield the glare from his skin. Don’t say anything about veal, don’t say anything about veal. Play it cool, play it off as a joke. “If you look directly at it, you’ll go blind. It’s like an eclipse.”

  Lore kept looking anyway. That was a good sign.

  “That,” she said, “is pretty damned pale.”

  “It’s several shades paler than pale, I think.”

  “I’d call it ecru.”

  “Really? I always thought of it more as a beluga whale in a snowstorm.”

  She frowned. “Not a polar bear in a snowstorm?”

  “Oh. Yeah, that would make more sense.”

  She snickered. She laughed! Max thought. Does that mean I did it right? Did I flirt good?

  As Audie was not around to inform him that he had or had not flirted good, Max was left to his own devices, which included staring wordlessly at Lore and expecting her to perhaps draft up a flirting report card. But all she did next was point at the empty doorway, and it was only then that Max remembered that he should be cowering in fear from the homicidal maniac.

  Except there was no homicidal maniac. Just a mostly empty trailer, with a few odds and ends left behind—a sofa, some pillows, a lamp. The floor was littered with Schwill beer cans, but other than that, the place seemed altogether livable.

  “This actually isn’t bad,” Max said, ducking his head in.

  “Told you so,” said Lore.

  But something was nagging at him. Something about the ease with which Lore moved through the space, the air of familiarity she seemed to have with the trailer park. “Have you been here before?” he asked with what he hoped was an acceptable amount of tact. “I mean, what are the odds that the first trailer we look at—”

  CLUNK.

  The sound of rattling aluminum cans made them jump. Frozen in place,
they whisked their gazes to the bedroom door, which was slowly swinging open.

  Out darted a stray cat. Its tail sent a few more cans flying as it sped past their feet and out the door.

  “Okay,” said Max, clutching his chest. “You go ahead and check the rest of the place out while I sit right here on this ottoman and have a massive coronary.”

  “You are such a wimp,” Lore said. So much for any flirty ground gained by the exposed chest. “We should be thankful for that little guy; he probably keeps the nasty-ass rats away.”

  “Maybe Burg would like an army of rats,” Max said. “They could be his minions, do his evil bidding.”

  “All the more reason not to provide him with the option.”

  Max squinted at her. “Wait, you don’t like rats? I heard you—”

  Lore’s face went hard.

  “What,” she said. “Did you hear.”

  “That you kept a dead one hung up in your locker.”

  Lore held his gaze, then looked at the dirty floor. “Not true.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He started to speak a couple of times, desperately trying to come up with a joke to ease the tension, but Playful Flirting Fun Time had clearly come to an end. It was Full-On Stammering Awkward Time now.

  Thankfully, Lore was back to focusing on the task at hand. “I can check out the rest of it if you want to wait outside, get some air.”

  Max opted to get some air. But the great outdoors wasn’t much better than the cramped trailer. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and onto his sneaker as he hopped down the stairs, the brown grass rustling as a hot wind blew through the park. The noise of the cicadas throbbed, filling the air.

  Anxious, he began to wander around the trailer, hoping to find some shade. His muscles were pounding, and the ringing in his ears was getting louder. Was this what heat stroke felt like?

  But he stopped at its back wall when something caught his eye. Underneath the window, a few inches above the ground—he stretched out his fingers to touch it, to try to smudge it away, but it remained the same—

  A week earlier, he wouldn’t have looked twice at such a seemingly insignificant mark. Now he’d recognize that black streak of ash anywhere.

  “Max?” Lore called from the door.

  Max hastened around to the front. He didn’t want Lore to know what he’d seen; he needed time to think about it.

  “It’s all clear in there,” she said, though her eyes weren’t meeting his. “In my highly unprofessional opinion, I think it’s the perfect place for a denizen of hell to call home.”

  Max bit his lip. Could it really be this easy? It wasn’t exactly what Burg was looking for—there was no hot tub—but maybe he’d take it anyway. At the very least, it wasn’t all that different from the basement.

  But Max was distracted by what he’d seen on the wall, and his voice sounded hollow when he said, “Great.” He tried to nod enthusiastically. “Let’s go tell Burg.”

  They were silent as they returned to the woods, neither of them commenting on the fact that something weird had definitely developed between them, that Russell Crowebar had barely gotten to fulfill his trespassing destiny, or that Max had a ton of questions for Lore. The cicada clicks again rose to a crescendo as they walked, a distinct oppressiveness worming through the air, a haze of unease that settled between them like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  Just before they reached the trees, Max broke the silence. “How did you know about this place anyway?” he asked.

  Lore glanced back at the park, her eyes pausing on the seafoam-green trailer for a split second before returning to the woods before them.

  “Phone book,” she said.

  Center of the Earth

  THEY BIKED TO HIS HOUSE IN SILENCE, Lore without a smile and Max without a shirt, certain that the glare from his alabaster skin would cause several traffic accidents along the way.

  But they pedaled without incident, giving Max the freedom to mull over the multiple-choice quiz he’d created for himself. Would he (a) casually mention what he’d found at the trailer park and discuss it with Lore like a levelheaded, rational human being, (b) wildly accuse her of colluding with the devil and lying to him from the very start, (c) b followed by a, (d) a followed by b, or (e) hide out in the bathroom until she left?

  These options disappeared, however, the minute they stepped into the house. Ruckus was screaming—screaming—his little cat heart out, probably because something had gone dreadfully wrong with the thermostat. It felt as though they’d entered a sauna.

  “Holy . . .” Max stuck his tongue out of his mouth like a panting dog and headed straight for the thermostat. “Why is the heat on full blast?”

  The answer came via a burst of terrible falsetto singing from the basement. “Hot-blooded! I’m hot-blooded!”

  “Oh, for the love.” Max switched off the heat, then reached up to turn on the ceiling fan. “Stay here,” he told Lore. “I gotta check on my mom and make sure she hasn’t spontaneously combusted.”

  Lore nodded, took a seat on the living room sofa, and began to fan herself.

  Max knocked on his mom’s door. “Sorry about the heat, Mom, I—”

  “Where have you been?”

  Max stared at his mom, his mouth open. She was glaring back at him, fuming, her face red and sweaty and her hair wild. “Uh, I was—”

  “I have been roasting here. Stick a meat thermometer in me, Max. I am well done.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom—the thermostat was broken—”

  “You think?” Her voice was shrill, mean. Max couldn’t remember the last time she’d yelled at him like this. “I couldn’t even stand up, thought I was going to pass out! And here you come breezing right in, even had time to take off your shirt—”

  Max looked down at his bare chest. “That wasn’t—”

  “I tried calling you, but the phones are out! Why are the phones out?”

  “There was a problem with the phone company, I’m working on it—”

  She rolled her eyes. “Full of excuses. Surprise, surprise.”

  Max wanted to figure out what on earth was making her act like this, but his first priority was to calm her down before her heart exploded. “Hang on a second, Mom, okay?” He darted a few feet into the room, grabbed the hot-water bottle at the foot of her bed, then ducked back out, as if she might bite if he got too close.

  He ran into the bathroom across the hall and turned on the cold water full blast. He let it run for a full minute, getting it as cold as it could go. His worried, sweaty face stared back at him in the mirror.

  What is going on?

  When his unhelpful reflection couldn’t provide an answer, he splashed some water on his forehead, filled up the bottle, and walked back across the hall.

  “Mom?” he said softly, peeking his head in. “I got a cold compress.”

  She beckoned him closer with an impatient wave of her hand. Snatching the bottle from him, she held it to her forehead, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she opened them again a few seconds later, the fury was gone.

  “Thanks, Max,” she said wearily. “That feels great.”

  He sat down on the bed and rubbed her hand. “I’m sorry the phones are broken. I’m sorry I let it get so hot.”

  “It’s okay, hon.”

  “It’s not okay! What if it had gotten so bad you’d—”

  “Well, it didn’t, and I’m fine.” She gave him a weak smile. She looks so old, Max thought. “What’s this on your hand?” She feebly held up his wrist and, in doing so, caught a glance at his watch. “And it’s only two o’clock—why aren’t you in school?”

  Max felt it would be rude to point out that if the phones had been working, she would have pulled him out of school anyway. “I had free period at the end of the day,” Max lied, hoping she’d drop the thing about his hand. “Got out early.”

  “Ah.” For a moment she looked as though she were trying to remember her first question, but then
let it go. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, hon. I got pretty damn cranky there for a minute, didn’t I?” She shook her head, bemused. “Don’t know what came over me.”

  Max tensed as something occurred to him. This is Burg’s doing. And if he came up from the basement to crank up the heat, maybe he even came into her room again . . .

  “What’s wrong, Max?” she asked when his hand tightened around hers.

  “Nothing. I’m . . . just trying to figure out what happened with the thermostat. No one, like, broke into the house or anything, right? You didn’t hear anything weird?”

  He tried to say it with a bit of laughter, which she miraculously echoed. “No one broke into the house, you little paranoid. And I didn’t hear anything weird, but then again I was asleep for a large portion of the day. Missed the Showcase Showdown and everything.”

  “Hmm.”

  She gave his hand a squeeze. “Guess it’s just a mystery, huh?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Max could no longer speak using words, because the words he wanted to use were not the kind that could be said in his mother’s presence. As soon as he finished fluffing her pillow and opening the windows to get a breeze going, he stormed back down the stairs, preparing to unleash a verbal blitzkrieg upon his dickwad houseguest.

  Lore stood up when she saw him barreling across the room. “What’s up?”

  “Burgundy Shit-for-Brains tried to fry my mom alive. Let’s go kick his ass, shall we?” He opened the door to the basement and stood there panting, his snowy-white chest puffing up and down in a barely contained rage.

  She joined him at the top of the stairs. “Your nostrils are flaring.”

  “Good.”

  They pounded down the stairs to find an empty sofa. Rumpled snack bags were strewn about the floor, and the owner of some hair salon was screaming on the television. From the crack under the storage area door, a sliver of light poured out, along with a rousing chorus of “Jeff, the Gooorton’s Fiiishermaaannn . . .”

  Max tried the door. It was locked.

  He looked at Lore. She nodded. “You gotta do it, man.”

  Max nodded back. With a deep breath and a reminder that this day had already been so embarrassing there was no point in stopping now, he reared back, raised his leg, and kicked at the door with all his puny quad muscle might.