Bottled Abyss

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  And she’d thought he would be fucked up enough to screw her with the obliterated remains of his wife right there on the bed—

  (“Put it in me.”)

  That showed how much she thought of Evan’s devotion to little Faye…

  He was weeping again.

  Lester whined from the back seat.

  “It’s okay, buddy. Do you have to pee? I’ll find a place once we get out of this gridlock.”

  Lester whined again and glanced out the window uneasily.

  “Want a little air?”

  Evan rolled down the window so Lester could put his snout outside. He thought it a good idea for himself as well, so he rolled down his own window and let the cool air blow through his hair and over his skin.

  A Starbucks coffee sat in his drink holder. It was still hot, despite buying it forty minutes ago. He’d gone there just to feel like a human again, but there was no way in hell his twisted stomach could take solid black coffee. He never drank it black anyway; he just ordered it and said no to any other questions the barista asked.

  He considered taking a sip and decided it was disrespectful to Faye.

  Evan realized he’d driven the route he last took while driving through Riverside, when he followed Janet to that Vincent Baker guy’s apartment. Where she disappeared. Where that man got run over in the street.

  Where those death coins dropped…

  He didn’t ponder the notion for long. With a u-turn and a few street changes, he was already nearing Baker’s apartment.

  Evan pulled up and killed the engine. Lester understood that the ride was over and began racing around in the backseat with caged insanity.

  “Okay, boy,” he said and unlocked all the doors.

  He grabbed the bottle, got out and rounded the car. Lester bounded outside, ran across the lawn in front of the apartment complex and promptly lifted his leg on large red water backflow device.

  Evan tried to think of a plan if he found the coins. Certainly the police had come here and probably searched around the apartment. Evan hadn’t seen any eyewitnesses but there always seemed to be some person who came forward. The apartment was on the secluded end of the building, so it was possible the entire struggle went unchecked. Evan had made sure to close the door with the hem of his sleeve, just out of straight paranoia the cops still had his fingerprints from a field trip in middle school.

  But there was no crime scene tape anywhere. Not even on the door to Vincent Baker’s apartment.

  Thrumming with bass, a low rider with glitter shot purple paint drove through the back parking lot.

  Then again, maybe shit like that happened often in this part of town.

  Bottle still firmly in hand, (constantly gripping it, always, always), Evan stepped into the planter and walked across the crushed bark. Lester trotted up and immediately began sniffing through the various bushes and groupings of lilies and other assorted flowers. Evan tried to recall that night. He’d heard Janet drop her coin purse and in the pale illumination of the porch light, he’d also seen some fall. One struck the sidewalk and bounced into the planter. The others must have just fallen straight down.

  He inspected the bark covered ground with keen eyes. The first one I find will be for you, Janet.

  A shrill sound came from the bushes behind him. Evan cautiously stepped over a dying, sun-yellowed fern, just as Lester forged past him, sniffing at everything great, small, and in-between. Evan got closer to the sound, which had become more desperate and panicked.

  He recoiled at the sight of a lizard writhing around in the soupy black mud. It seemed the reptile must have had some sort of fatal encounter with a cat or something, because the twisting flesh hanging from its white underbelly signaled a bad prognosis.

  Evan sighed in abhorrence.

  Lester rushed past.

  “No don’t. Leave it. Here!” Evan lunged for Lester’s choke chain but his feet stopped cold under his legs. “What the—?”

  His shoes had seeped into the soupy mud and the abrupt stop caused him to lose balance and fall. The muck was thinner than he’d expected and in moments it was all over his arms and face.

  The stuff stung like madness.

  Deep down.

  Made him dizzy.

  He dropped the bottle and gasped.

  Evan fought through his disorientation and focused on his first objective. He grabbed hold of Lester by his hips and pulled him backwards. The dog had the lizard in his mouth and was also covered in the black juices seeping around the planter.

  A terrifying communion throttled Evan. He knew the canine’s body, every one of its nerve-endings, from claw to fang, and then he knew the lizard’s body in the exact same way, the small, abused thing rolling in torment.

  The effect slammed into his waking mind and Evan fell to his knees and then onto his face, and there he sensed nothing except the bark roughing up his skin. Faye…my Faye…little Faye. I’m not perfect Faye. But I do love you. I do. I just never know where to turn, which way to go. I don’t know what I have to be, even after you’ve shown me time and time again. I want to be more than I am, more than I, unfortunately, ever was to you.

  God, I want you back, Faye.

  I want justice.

  Just before Evan blacked out, he felt the tiny claws of a rat streak over his exposed stomach. The rodent collapsed and came to lie just on the outside of his navel. The stinging black stuff boiled underneath it.

  CHAPTER IV

  The New Fury

  “Hey dude. Hey, wake up.”

  Evan squinted. Everything in his vision was shot-through with amethyst light. It made him sick to look at one thing too long, so his eyes darted around. The colors were intense. He and Herman smoked some strong pot once and he sat on a couch for a good three hours, looking around in the same way, only he wanted to study everything he came across and find meaning where it hadn’t been before. This was the opposite. The color his eyes perceived seemed purple, but it had a transformative quality, constantly turning and speaking, relating a different story.

  A voice rang out from a remote room down a mile long corridor. “Fucker’s messed up, yeah. Shit. You think he was looking for something out here? Maybe something Vince dropped?”

  The voice had its own color, its own story. This was Jeremy Phillips, part of the Highland-8 gang and by his own estimations, its most intelligent member. In reality he was second, and on a bad day, third to his companion Arturo Javier, who was the founder of the group, the man whose voice rang louder than Jeremy’s: “Shit if I know. Get his ass up and watch out for syringes, huh.”

  Arturo laughed and his colors told their own story; it was fun to knock Jeremy down a notch when he got the chance—the stuck up guero thought way too high of himself.

  Jeremy laughed too, but it was a fake gesture; he hated coming along on these caveman macho bullshit trips when he was better peddling meth to his favorite group of sketch cookies down on University Avenue.

  Evan knew every immediate thought from both men, just from hearing their voices, but when Jeremy hauled him to his feet, he saw well beyond the Oakland Raiders attire. Evan saw how little they both understood about humanity—they couldn’t be saved; they were broken people; they needed judgment.

  Jeremy had sex with his sister Francine when she was in college and him in high school. They were both drunk on cinnamon schnapps and malt liquor at the time. It happened after a party cleared out at their Uncle Barry’s house, in their cousin Harold’s old bedroom. It wasn’t one slip up. They went after each other all night long.

  The next day and all that followed since, they never dared talk about it. Jeremy still woke up with wet dreams, reliving it nightly. The whole thing had disgusted him at first, but recently he’d been holding out for Francine to approach him again. He wanted to hold her again, feel her naked body on his. He needed to know if she still thought about him the same way. Animals fuck, right? They don’t care about genetics. Jeremy had been on the street with whores. He saw what
men did, where their morals stood. They did what they had to, they—

  Evan didn’t even want to look at the hard boiled egg face under the shadow of the Raider’s hat. It made him sick that a human being could be such a loathsome creature. He turned to the leader Arturo and saw something different, but not altogether better.

  Arturo was a self-realized thug and enjoyed the lifestyle his friends had shown him. Live and die like a motherfucker. That was it. That was all. There hadn’t been an inherently cruel bone in Arturo’s body. He’d actually been raised by two good parents who worked terrible hours at the industrial laundry in Colton. He saw their bad backs, the miserable look in their faces every night at dinner, and their disappointment for everything including him. They were stupid. They’d gone about things the stupid way and paid the price. When he was wealthy, he wouldn’t repay them the favor of his sorry-ass upbringing. He’d been cultivating his reputation lately. He’d personally tracked Vincent Baker down on his own, just so he could associate with somebody more notorious than the sad sacks of shit he had been lately. His effort paid off right away in enough porn to put the internet out of business. It had been going great until that asshole bailed and took the video equipment he promised them.

  “Shit man, you smell like wet perro,” said Arturo, waving his hand before his gnomish face.

  Jeremy balanced Evan, who hardly kept eye contact with the strident colors sending more hideous information his way. “Is that right? You takin’ late night baths with dogs, sketchpad?”

  “Where is my dog?” Evan glanced around and almost vomited.

  “There’s no dog, pendejo. Now why are you at Vince’s apartment? You know him? Eh? Talk to us, we ain’t gonna bite.”

  Evan didn’t answer and bowed his head.

  Jeremy slapped him upside the face. Evan felt nothing. “Hey dick, I didn’t pull you off the ground so you could go to sleep.”

  “You’re real fuckin’ ugly,” Arturo remarked in wonder. “Those buck teeth. You a beaver? Or a rat?”

  “Check his hands, fool,” said Jeremy.

  Arturo, not caring for the fool remark, leaned over. “Holy shit. You got chapped hands. Aye. That’s bad. You’re a sorry piece o’ shit. Hey, listen to what we’re saying!”

  Evan nodded. “Hear you,” he muttered.

  “What’s that there? Your bong? Your water pipe?” Arturo joked. “That’s pretty tight looking. Think I’m gonna grab that sonuvabitch.”

  Evan didn’t care about the bottle anymore. It was like caring about a match’s flame while sitting on the surface of the sun.

  Arturo focused now, his thick eyebrows going level. The expression made him look vastly more ignorant. “You know Vincent Baker?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, you know a Vincent Brubeck? That’s the name on his mailbox.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t fuck with us,” Arturo said, his voice edging around seriousness.

  “Maybe he was the one who got hit,” Evan suggested.

  “What?”

  “By the car,” Evan explained.

  “I told your ass,” said Jeremy to Arturo. “That dude in the paper was probably Vincent. Cops probably bought into the ID he had on him, at least for now. The article said it was a white male, in his late twenties—”

  “I read the goddamn article, a’right? Start to finish, cocksucker. I don’t believe one second, not one, that Vince would get rundown in the road. That’s a pretty fucking dumbass way to die for someone like him.”

  “Maybe, but Art, dude, it was right over there—”

  “Shut up J-P.”

  “Whatever.”

  A brief silence passed between them. Arturo, after thinking about it, brought the subject back up. “That old guy they found didn’t say nothin’ about knowing Vincent.”

  “Remember, I read the article too.”

  “Fuck, will you shut up!” Arturo whirled around and started patting Evan’s pants down. “You got needles on you?”

  “No,” Evan replied. His eyes crossed momentarily and he shook the colors from his mind and soul.

  Jeremy sighed. “Carlos died that night too, eh. Somethin’ went down, Art. Vincent’s not here. This is worthless.”

  “I’m going to beat the fuck out of you, if you say one more word to me right now.” Arturo continued to search Evan. He’d left his wallet back at home, so they wouldn’t find any cash.

  Back home, thought Evan, with Faye.

  There was no Faye anymore.

  Janet took her from me.

  Evan looked on these men with new detestation. They would take her from me too. They are part of the world’s malevolence. I could kill them for their crimes. It would be just.

  Dizziness set in and Evan almost collapsed. Not yet. I need time to grow stronger. How do I buy time with these two filthy things?

  Arturo held up the slip of paper with Rebecca Davis’s address. “You scored some digits, eh, crackie?”

  Evan studied the receipt with the cop’s number on it.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, his mind wrapping around a plan. “I’ll tell you, just don’t hurt me or anything… See, she’s hiding Vincent there.” He felt his face twitch with the lie and neither man appeared to buy it. Evan added then, “She helped get rid of Josue Ramirez. You know, at the hospital…that’s what I heard. He died, didn’t he?”

  An easy smile creased Arturo’s squashed face. Jeremy pushed back the bill of his Raider’s cap, still dubious, but his attention had been won.

  “She’ll only answer the door for me,” Evan pointed out. “She’s not stupid.”

  The two men looked at one another for a second, thinking it out.

  “If you’re wasting our time,” Jeremy said suddenly, “you’re wasting our money, and that means you’re not going home today. If you have a home.”

  Arturo’s expression confirmed this.

  “Let’s go then,” said Evan. Under his shirt, he could feel tufts of fur growing from new follicles across his back. “I’ll show you the truth.”

  “Don’t forget to take that bong,” Arturo ordered Jeremy. “Gonna get high tonight and video some putas!”

  “Yes master,” Jeremy sneered as he swept the bottle up by its neck.

  A few minutes later, Evan was in the back of their purple low rider.

  2

  Rebecca Davis lived in what might have once been called a “starter home.” The yard was kept up. A yellow pinwheel tilted in a bed of stumpy blue flowers. Every sprinkler had been neatly edged around. Oil stains on the driveway were scrubbed. The graying house needed new paint, but it wasn’t an eyesore. This was a house of someone trying to ignore the surrounding neighborhood of gated yards and glowering pit-bulls beyond chain link fences, an environment that Evan’s two new companions probably felt most comfortable in.

  “In the ghetto,” Jeremy sang deeply and Arturo snickered.

  “I knew a dude from around here once. Back in middle school. Long time ago.”

  Arturo killed the engine. Jeremy opened the glove box and took out a handgun, which he stuffed into the back of his pants.

  “Sure don’t look like no place Vincent would come,” said Arturo.

  “He’s hiding out.” Jeremy’s mouth opened wide with a lazy yawn. “Probably donkey-punching this chick as we speak.”

  “Or worse, that fucker.” Arturo turned around in his seat. His ample brown forearm was hairless with a thin luminescent scar that circuited the flesh. He studied Evan for a moment. “You gonna be sick, huh? Nervous? What’re you leading us into, pendejo?”

  Evan just shook his head, thinking of Faye, nothing but Faye, over and again, and again and over, her face, her smile, even her embracing that Mexican man with those nauseatingly kind eyes, because Faye had been real then, been alive, and now she wasn’t.

  Why had he brought these two here? This innocent woman shouldn’t have to be subjected to Art and J.P. It’d been stupid impulsive thinking and they were dumb enough to go al
ong with it. If there’s any woman in the world that deserved to meet these two—

  “Tell me you ain’t trippin’ back there? You better not chuck in my car, shitass.”

  “This place doesn’t look familiar. I don’t think Vincent’s here,” said Evan, voice trembling. “I know a better place. There’s another woman. Janet is her name.”

  “Nice try, fugly.” Arturo swayed with a gesture to get out. “You show the way.”

  Evan reached for the well polished handle and swung open the long door. Its end scraped against the sidewalk.

  “Watch my door, bitch! It’s worth more than you,” Arturo growled. He threw the bottle up and snatched it enthusiastically out of the air. No sloshing sounds came from inside it.

  “You’re taking that in?” asked Jeremy.

  Arturo’s eyebrow bent. “You know someone will jack it out here.”

  “That’s what a trunk’s for.”

  “You bitch like my girl. I got plans for this bong, fuck you very much.”

  Careful to shut the door, Evan tried to straighten his posture. No such doing. His lower back muscles had reconfigured him into a perpetual stooping position.

  The two gang members followed close behind. Evan could smell their heartbeats racing.

  “Remember what I said, hunchback. If this is some bullshit, you’re over,” Jeremy warned.

  They reached the door and Evan knocked (knuckles wider, black and white hairs poking through the follicles).

  Arturo and Jeremy waited just left of the door, out of sight. Under a bush, the bottle sat against the wall, a stray shadow winding over it.

  After a moment the door opened on the chain. Rebecca’s eyes lighted as she recognized Evan. “Oh, Mr. Ledbetter,” she said and unchained the door.

  She was in a pair of gray gym shorts and a blue and white stripped work out t-shirt. Not being sweaty, out of breath or flushed, Evan assumed she’d probably just dressed into the skimpy clothing, unfortunately for her.

  “I… came to talk,” said Evan.

  “About Janet?”

  “No…uh, this is about someone else.”