I finish my cigarette, feeling the hunger pangs subside a little, and I go to the trunk of the car and open it to check our supplies. I know we are running low on everything, and if we don’t find food soon, we will run out and eventually starve. I can survive without food longer than Lilly can, but it’s been days and I can feel myself growing weaker. The cigarettes were a great find to curb the hunger pangs, but I’m going to need real food soon. There’s only so long I can do this without food, without sustenance, without the energy it gives me to keep on going.
I pull out the last of the canned food: a small can of pinto beans. She hates pinto beans, and I hate the effort of having to make a fire to cook them on. I was so pleased the day we found the stash of cans in the deserted gas station. So pleased. The people inside were long since gone. But now, as I stare at the last can, I think the beans were a curse, because we haven’t found food since that day. I throw the can to the ground in anger and slam the lid down on the trunk with a small sob. When I look up through the window, Lilly has awoken and climbed out of her seat, her pale face staring back at me through the window. Her wide brown eyes blink rapidly, looking frightened, and I immediately turn my sad face into a happy one for her. I beckon her out of the car to stretch her legs.
I pick her up as she climbs out, giving her a quick squeeze and a kiss on her dirty forehead before pushing the soft curls back from her pretty face.
“Morning, Honeybee.”
“Morning.”
“Did you sleep well?”
She bobs her head, her eyes going wide as she looks into my face. “I need to pee—bad.” She bites on her bottom lip, a small frown crossing her face.
“Okay, let’s go pee together,” I say with a smile and put her down. I take her hand and we walk away from the car and toward some small green bushes at the side of the road.
She stops as we near it, her sneakered feet skidding to a stop, and I turn to look at her.
“Check it,” she pleads.
It’s my turn to nod as I pull out my small knife from the sheath at my side, release her hand, and walk the rest of the way to the bush on my own. I know there is nothing in there. She knows it too, because the monsters only come out at night, and they hide in the darkness of buildings, mostly. This bush isn’t dense enough for them to hide in—light pierces through the scratchy branches—but I play along anyway. I always play along if it makes her feel better. Because I strive for her happiness, though at times it seems like an impossible task—to keep this little girl alive and happy. But I try.
I slash into the bush with my knife. “Better come out, monsters. Lilly has to pee, real bad.” I turn and watch as her sweet features soften into a smile. “If there’s any of you in here, you better move along or you’re gonna get it.” I slash and stab one more time for effect and hear Lilly giggle loudly behind me, the sound almost taking my breath away. “All clear,” I say as I stand and turn to her.
She runs over to me, promptly pulls down her dirty pants and white cotton briefs, and squats next to me as I do the same.
We finish up and make our way back to the car, Lilly doing a little skip as we go, and me retrieving the discarded pinto beans. She climbs in the back of the car and retrieves her teddy and then comes to stand by my side. Mr. Bear has been with us for several weeks now. I don’t like her getting attached to things, but he makes her happy. He has at least stopped some of her nightmares.
“I’m real hungry,” she whispers up to me.
“I know, Lilly. I’m working on it.”
I open the trunk back up and pull out the last bottle of water, and I take a long swallow before handing it over to her. She gulps it down greedily. I want to tell her to slow down and to ration it, but then I eye the last can of pinto beans and decide to allow her this small satisfaction, since she’s going to be eating her least favorite food today. And tomorrow… who knows what she’ll be eating?
I gather some small sticks and then use my almost empty lighter to start a fire. I slowly add more sticks and some dry grass to the fire until it is big enough to cook on. I found the lighter—and the cigarettes—a week or so back. Which was lucky, because my hands were covered in so many blisters from making fires using two sticks that I could barely hold Lilly’s hand without it hurting. The lighter makes things much easier. Eventually the fire is burning well enough for me to heat the beans for her, and soon enough she’s tucking into them with enough gusto to make me laugh.
“I thought you hated them,” I say between drags of my cigarette.
“I do.” She smiles and fills her cheeks, chewing greedily. “But I’m hungry.”
My stomach grumbles loudly, and heat rises in my cheeks. I’m glad that I’m sitting down as a dizzy spell passes through me, making my empty stomach twist in on itself. The headache that has been building all morning eventually breaks free, and I feel momentarily blinded by the pulsing pain behind my eyes. The urge to squeeze them shut and moan in agony is heavy and ripe, but I contain it because I don’t want to frighten her.
I stare off into the distance, controlling my breathing until the pain subsides. My cigarette burns down between my fingers until it singes the tips and I drop it with a yelp. When I look down, I see Lilly is staring at me sadly, fork poised before her open mouth.
“You should eat,” she whispers.
“I’m okay, I ate earlier,” I lie easily. I suck on my finger to ease the burn, but it does little to help.
Satisfied with my answer, she continues to eat, and I stand and sift through the first aid kit until I find the last painkiller. I pop it in my mouth and grab the water bottle before realizing it is empty. I drop the empty bottle back into the trunk of my car and force the dry, powdery tablet down my equally dry throat. I feel it wedge there and I continue to swallow until it starts to dissolve, leaving a vile, bitter taste in my mouth. At least it’s down is all I can think.
I pinch the bridge of my nose to ease the pain of my headache. Both frustration and anger burn through me. Tears build behind my lids, but I press them away with the heel of my hand and I turn to Lilly as she finishes the beans and lets out a small burp.
“All better now?” I ask.
She nods and smiles before picking up a stick and drawing in the dirt on the ground. Everything is dirty these days—dirty and ruined. And dying.
Download in Kindle Unlimited or purchase here: http://bit.ly/2P1ui6ROutOfTheDark
Also available in Audiobook: https://adbl.co/2VMjkDu
TO SCREAM WITHIN A DREAM:
Short Stories & Nightmares
By
Victoria Cage Author
Eli Constant
In dreams, we are free to believe in MONSTERS and MIRACLES.
All forms of life contain the capacity to become good or evil. Castle in the Dark is a keen portrayal of this—in which a guiltless child dies and merges into the afterlife, becoming a spirit focused on inflicting pain. Then there are also those things that were never alive, or… should not be alive. Like a ringing phone that is not as innocent as it seems and pressing ‘answer’ might be the end of everything. And what will happen when a town of resurrected people are not content to wait to be exterminated, especially when their would-be exterminators are also their creators?
The line between the present and the past, between the living and the not-so-living, is often unclear. That’s how it is in life. That’s how it is in art. In the longest story of this collection—A History of Youth—parent and child seek to understand one another. One wants the freedom to choose. The other wants to prevent mistakes from repeating. But it’s too late. It always seems to be too late.
With a Foreword by USA Today Bestseller, Claire C. Riley (Author of the 'Odium Series'), To Scream Within a Dream—call it nightmares or call it memories resurfaced—is a plea to satisfy the strange questions rattling about in the subconscious. It is an odd, twisted illusion of life.
There is a darkness in reality, even more so than within nightmares. And sometimes, al
l we can do is scream.
**read on for a sneak peek of the first story!**
Memories of Her are Dead
The last place the kids wanted to visit on summer vacation was a zoo.
Taylor complained it was childish, more interested in her smart phone than the oldest jaguar in the country. Alec had wanted to go with his best friend’s family to Cape May; they had a huge home there, complete with water access and a boat named The Great Escape. The baby, well, she wasn’t old enough to have much of an opinion. I loved her for that though. Izzy was always quiet when I needed silence and she was always laughing when I missed her mom. It was almost as if, intuitively, she knew me better than I knew myself.
Honestly, I wasn’t that keen on making the trip out to Sussex myself. If the kids were anything like me, then they had another reason for avoiding Starr Farms, reasons more compelling than growing up and missing friends. That was my fault. I should have put aside my heartache to nurture their mother’s memory.
Danny had died in childbirth, nearly a year past now. I tried not to think about it, except to remember her last words “I want Isabel to know me, Shawn. Don’t let Taylor and Alec forget me.” She’d known she was dying, her body hemorrhaging blood, the doctors and nurses rushing about, trying to push her husband out of the room. She was forty. We’d been married twenty years. The pregnancy had seemed like such a miracle and a challenge; our two other children were far removed from burping and bottles. We’d known a new baby would mean late nights, early mornings, colic and colds. It was worth it though, to experience raising a child with each other again. With… each other.
I’d spent the first few months after Izzy’s birth in a deep, unshakable depression. My mother-in-law had moved in, worried that the baby wasn’t being taken care of properly. She was right. I was giving Izzy everything she physically needed, but I wasn’t giving her the thing children crave and require most- loving attention, the kind full of sloppy kisses, close embraces and lullabies.
Taylor had been the one to knock me out of my selfishness. I’d been in my normal spot, sitting in front of my computer, staring at the screen saver, the ribbons swirling and changing color; the repetitive pattern of movement and change was hypnotic, allowing me to be thought-free and thoughtless in my grief.
My teenage daughter had looked at me, her face hard, but her eyes understanding and she’d said what I’d needed to hear to go on. “Mom is dead, Dad. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave us, but she’s gone. We can’t hug her. We can’t kiss her. But Izzy has her eyes, Dad. She has her laugh. That’s what Mom left us. She left us Izzy and Izzy needs you.”
Kids aren’t supposed to be smarter than their parents. It’s not natural.
Pulling out of the driveway, leaving our little house on Hamilton Street, tucked between two much larger homes, I checked my mirrors. The little boy across the street was always out unsupervised, rollerblading on the sidewalks. He wasn’t out today though and his family’s van wasn’t in front of their house. I drove a short distance then took a left onto Main Street. Paterson was so congested, commercial growth clogging the city’s arteries until it really fit in with the rest of the New York Metropolis. Paterson’s original downtown was in-flux, the ninety-nine cent stores slowly being replaced by pricier fare.
******
Paterson definitely wasn’t quaint-country New Jersey. Having the third highest population in the state, it was still suffering from the past decade of escalated violence and crippled economy. I’d always believed in the city and always expected it to make a comeback. Proof of the city’s repair could be seen everywhere now- from the vacant lots transformed into parks and the old architectural buildings repurposed to be both beautiful and functional, it was easy to see that Paterson was alive again.
Danny hadn’t agreed with me and she certainly hadn’t relished the idea of raising a family in Paterson. She’d grown up in Maplewood Township, not even a half-hour removed from Paterson, but it might as well have been a different world. It was one of those places that seemed lost in time with lovingly preserved buildings, neighbors that arrived without warning bearing still-hot fresh pie and stone bridges arching over picturesque, bubbling creeks.
I’d always lived in Paterson and I loved it. When I’d started dating Danny though, we’d spent more time in Maplewood. Her parents always let me stay in the garage on an old, lumpy couch. It was terribly uncomfortable but I hadn’t minded. Danny almost convinced me to move to Maplewood, the commute to work wouldn’t have been far, but then my father passed away and left us my family home. So, in the end, my hometown won out. It was what I’d always wanted- to see my kids living and growing in the house of my childhood.
I couldn’t bring myself to go back to Maplewood now, to see the home with so many memories… to see her room. It was only seventeen miles from Paterson, but the car wouldn’t drive that far, not with me at the wheel. That’s why my mother-in-law had moved to Paterson to take care of Izzy. She had offered to bring the kids to Maplewood. Taylor had wanted to move, she could have stayed in Danny’s old room, woken every morning to pictures of her mom. But I’d said no, knowing that if they went to Maplewood, I would never visit. I would never see them. Maybe, subconsciously, I knew that letting them go there, meant letting them go forever. Like Danny.
Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if my eldest daughter- my eldest daughter who was the spitting image of her mother, all mahogany hair and hazel eyes- hadn’t slapped me with reality.
******
Living in a metropolis was difficult for Danny and her love of picturesque America drove her to find nearby activities that took our children away from city life and into the rustic, into the wild.
Sussex had been her singularly favorite destination to embrace nature- nature in the form of a large zoo and museum. It was really perfect for the children. Alec went through a ‘big cat’ phase when he was little, running around the house roaring like a lion, wearing a paper-plate mask he’d made in school. Danny and I used to laugh so hard- body-shaking belly laughs- as our little lion pounced on couch pillows and stalked the vacuum. His teacher had been worried about his development, but we knew it was just Alec. Children dream about being something other… adults always seem to ruin that.
I drove the roads toward Sussex on autopilot, my eyes straight ahead as we moved down the highway. I didn’t even appreciate the roadside scenery, which was so lovely in places, as we moved down Route-15. It just didn’t matter, not today. Thoughts of our destination consumed my mind. I rounded corners and took turns, my body knowing what to do without my conscious mind’s direction.
I was approaching our journey's end now, about to turn onto Vantage Avenue. I could see several animal enclosures from the road. As we passed the large sign that read “Starr Farms: Zoo & Museum,” my breath caught in my throat, roiling there, breaking my insides into little pieces. This was our first trip here since she’d died; it was the last place we’d all been together. Even Izzy had been present, resting cozily in her mother’s womb.
My eyes moved to the rearview mirror. Taylor stared out the window, tears rolling down her checks. Alec was staring at his lap, his arms crossed defensively. Sweet Izzy was asleep, her little mouth slightly open, her hand clutching the small quilt Danny had made for her before she was born. The quilt was a kaleidoscope of colors made from the patches of Danny’s maternity clothes. She’d made each patch as she outgrew her clothes during the pregnancy in anticipation of our miracle. I’d wanted to tuck it away in a box and not let Izzy use it, but it had been sewn with love and meant for little hands.
The car was parked in the half-filled lot moments later. There was something odd about the cars, like they hadn’t moved in a while. Every tire seemed slightly low and blades of tall grass forced themselves between asphalt cracks to brush against the painted trim. It was curious, but, not curious enough to delay my course. Taking a deep breath, I forced cheer. I was here to keep a promise, to make sure my wife was
remembered.
Aside from the disheveled parking lot, Starr Farms looked the same. That felt wrong, like it should be changed, because our family was changed. But the zoo’s welcome building was still sheathed in faux gray stones, the white columns still stood tall and the sculpted lion still played sentry. Alec had named the lion Simba our first trip here.
On the floorboard at Izzy’s feet, was the front-facing, baby carrier. Izzy stayed asleep as I lifted her and slid her down into the carrier already strapped to my body. She was almost a year old, her birthday only days away, and she’d always been small. Once her little legs dangled through the two holes, I tightened the straps, pulling her close against my chest until everything felt snug and secure. Izzy still clutched her colorful quilt tightly, her little head tilted forward.
Taylor was out of the car. Her face was dry now, but the short sleeve of her white shirt was soiled with black mascara. The skin beneath her eyes was slightly gray, the shirt material not fully removing the makeup. Alec was still sitting in the car, his arms still tightly folded, and his face resolute.
Alec lifted his elbow and smashed down the door lock as I approached. I frowned, pausing to fish out the key fob and hit the automatic unlock. Alec didn’t move to re-lock the door, but turned his head, avoiding my gaze. I sighed heavily, my mind sympathizing. I don’t want to be here either, Alec. I’m sorry.
But my mouth spoke different words as I opened up the rear passenger door. “Come on, buddy. You’ve always loved it here.” If it were possible, my son’s body seemed to sink deeper into the bench seat, his determination to stay in the car clear. “We’ll go to the lions first, okay? Just like always.”
His voice was low and angry. He didn’t sound like my twelve-year-old son. “It’s not the same, Dad. It’ll never be the same again. I hate lions.”
Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 2 Page 10