The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 1)

by McRory, Shane

  And while things looked promising and he might have a hook-up for his two week stay at this dumb-ass vegan retreat with his family (when he should be back at home ripping it up with his friends all back home from college), some old dude sitting across from them yacks up about a gallon of blood all over his lunch. Then that was that; the Walker family boarded their wagons again, got the fuck out of there, and Dad lead them to the resort. First chance he got, he knew he’d be back here, looking for the waitress with the name tag that said Brit.

  Didn’t think the hookup would be so easy.

  Turns out Brit was a player too, just finished her second year at some university in Kingston, knew how to party and didn’t want to fuck around, wasting time. He sat at the counter and got to know her as she went back and forth serving her morning tables. They were going to hang all day. She was done her morning shift, looking to hit the beach and smoke some weed, have a few beers. Coming out of the staff room after she changed to her street clothes, she caught him in the hallway between the kitchen and the restaurant where he was waiting for her, flipping through his phone. She grabs his shirt and kisses him, then they’re tumbling into the ladies, locking the door, and he’s got her from behind, holding her hips, banging her and watching her sex face in the mirror. Jesus fucking Christ, and he didn’t think he would have a good time in Canada.

  Then she tells him he came inside her.

  After a long quiet moment together, she turned her head to regard him, said, “Relax, you’ve got a great dick, but I came in here because of that face.” She reached to him and lightly slapped his cheek.

  “This face,” he said, setting his eyes to a far away look, sinking in his cheeks; the face that got him prom king twice, and on the brochure for Penn.

  “That’s the one,” she said, but not really smiling.

  “I feel so used.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was being sarcastic, asshole. We just had unprotected sex.”

  “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I’ll get you a morning after pill. I’ll pay.”

  “Mm. My hero,” she said, scoffing and rolling her eyes.

  “What?—you want to pay?”

  “Don’t be a dick, okay? This is a big deal … plus, you’re in Canada, it’s, like, fifteen bucks.”

  “Okay—You’re fine, you know … I don’t have AIDs or anything. I’m clean as a whistle. I always use condoms.”

  “Oh, hooray. This the first time your supposedly giant dong broke a condom?”

  “I’m a dick? You don’t think you’re being the tiniest bit of a bitch right now?”

  “I totally am. I just had unprotected sex with some guy I just met.”

  “I told you I’m clean.”

  “I don’t know you. You could be a habitual liar—I’m just supposed to trust you? Besides, what if …”

  “What if what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, what if what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you should get tested.”

  “Me, I told—wait, you mean … you mean you …?”

  She looked away but he could see her nodding.

  “Seriously?—what the fuck? What is it … tested for what?”

  She said, “You never considered I might be worried for you?”

  3

  Christian

  Now all that was missing was the masseuse. He’d been laying here for almost fifteen Goddamn minutes. He checked his Rolex. Yeah, more than fifteen Goddamn minutes. This whole adventure this year, once tallied, he’d prospected would cost him in the vicinity of fifty-grand. This place was supposed to be top-notch.

  The shoddy dinner service last night, that strange interplay at reception, her saying their masseuses had called in sick … Now here he was paying top dollar laying here like an asshole waiting for this prima dona to come rub his back. He didn’t even wait this long for a doctor.

  That was it, now he was mad, and he needed to tell someone about it. So he got up, cinched his towel tighter, and stomped to the door.

  It was one of those moments where actions happened simultaneously: he reached for the door, saw the handle turning, gripped it and pulled it as it was pushed. A man stumbled in. The masseuse, given the garb, short-sleeve nurse’s scrubs, and they came face-to-face. The guy who had been sent to rub his back, the aforementioned Steve, was what you would expect. Tall, blonde, and fit. The kind of guy you would expect to have a tan though this one didn’t. Taken aback by coming so close, the taller man looming over him, he took one step back into the room. Steve lurched forward, swaying unevenly.

  Even though he detected somewhere deep in his primitive brain that everything about this interaction was strange, he demanded an answer anyway: “Do you know how long I’ve been laying here? … How long do you expect someone to twiddle their thumbs?”

  The man looked at him vapidly, eyes skewing from side to side, his head twisted at an odd angle. It was in that instant he recalled old-man-Tom as he’d vomited on his sandwich. He took another step back, a deep, scaly part of his mind anticipating a violent upheaval from the masseuse’s mouth; could picture projected blood splattering over his bare chest, perhaps the young man’s teeth getting stuck in his chest hair.

  “Well?” he asked, the tone haughty, though his attitude one of alarm. The masseuse didn’t answer, took another step heaving to one side, listing like a drunk man. Food poisoning. It hit him. A rash of botulism sweeping the island. He was pretty sure he was safe, he’d just picked through that vegan slop last night. “Hey man,” he said, and put both hands up, warding off this sick guy, not wanting him too close.

  “Just take … why don’t you take a seat?” he said, and he patted the massage table, stepping back again to give space. The room was so small he couldn’t get around him. Knew he should—but instead he stepped back to give the man some room. An instinct shot through him—he needed to escape. It wasn’t botulism … and whatever it was could be contagious.

  He could whip clockwise around the massage table, get to the door from a different angle but the masseuse would still block the way. So he tried to remain calm, suppress his nerves, suppress the urge within him to bolt.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said. The man’s head swayed and regarded him. He had a handsome face—maybe at one time. His color was sallow, dark circles swooped under his eyes. And his pupils were dead. Still had the color of blue, but the blackness attempted to consume it. There was something seriously wrong with him.

  “Are you going to be sick?” he asked, but the man didn’t respond, merely taking one more step forward and reaching out to him.

  With his back pressed against the edge of the table, the masseuse got a hold of his arm. The touch was cold against his skin, and while he pulled his arm away, the man had a good grip.

  “Hey, don’t,” he said weakly.

  He never should have let the masseuse touch him in the first place, and under normal conditions he could be considered a hot-head, and not one to tolerate bullshit, but there was something intimidating about the situation. The weak part of him, the old part of him, didn’t want to cause trouble in case it angered the man.

  “Nuh-on’t,” the man grunted, his voice a whispering groan. That was when the stench hit him.

  When his father had died in his hospital bed, he’d been the one to discover him, just a boy even though he was twenty-one at the time. Christian Walker Sr. had fought two different lung cancers for six years, and after a palliative stay on the fourth floor of Chicago Memorial finally threw in the towel. The following morning his duty-bound son stopped in to see how he was doing before heading off to classes, found the harsh man who’d raised him had passed on a good eight hours prior. He’d found him with his pants soiled and his mouth hanging open and the smell from that sorrowful morning, twenty-two years gone, was in the room with him now. Death and feces.

  “Fucking let go,” he said, his mouth taking a firm
and hard line. The masseuse had the grip of someone who kneaded flesh eight hours a day, and there was no give. They engaged in a back-and-forth tug-of-war, the hand that gripped him a mottled purple against the tan of his own skin.

  Two hands gripped him now; the masseuse grabbing him above his elbow, the other hand still clamped just above his wrist, and his head trembled on his neck, the cords and tendons standing out against the flesh as he opened his mouth wide, lips curling back from his glistening teeth.

  Christian put his legs out wider, jabbed the blade of his other forearm into the guy’s wide chest and tried pushing him away. The two hands that gripped him shook wildly and he could feel the vibration in his bones.

  “What the fuck … are you doing?” he grunted while he still struggled, trying to get the man to let him go—but while it was insane, it was also obvious: he was trying to bite him. “Don’t you … don’t … what the fuck …?”

  A panic rose inside him, the strangeness washing away from the situation and being replaced with a powerful instinct to survive. They both bent at the waist, Christian leading the way, trying to get his arm away from the man’s teeth, and the man pursuing, a long swinging strand of saliva dangling from his chin.

  He brought his knee up hard into the masseuse’s belly and it was like hitting a punching bag; heavy and lifeless. The man didn’t even exhale. He did it again and again, tried stomping on his feet. Now his towel fell off, and he was completely naked.

  4

  Troy

  “Seriously, Brit—are you fucking around?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re fucking around.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause you’re kind of a bitch.”

  “No. Why would I try to freak you out like that?”

  She regarded him plainly, and the color of her eyes was driving him wild. “Oh,” he said, considering it. He leaned back against the wall and sat his butt down on the floor, tugged the tattered remains of his broken condom off his dwindling erection and held it up between them so she could see it. “Because I was acting like it was no big deal.”

  He tossed the used rubber across the bathroom and it landed in the sink. “Three-pointer,” he whispered to her and raised both his arms up like the crowd was going wild. She still watched him without an expression. He said, “Because you wanted me to know what it would be like to be scared.”

  “It is a big deal, you know?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. You are,” he said, lifting his hips to pull his shorts up, tucking his dick back in there and zipping it closed. “I really don’t fuck around—you know, not without condoms. I mean it. Like, never.”

  She nodded, raised her eyebrows, said, “I don’t have anything either. And I definitely don’t have sex with guys I just met in my workplace bathroom. Like, never. You just caught me in a mood.”

  “My lucky day,” he said.

  She put her face in her hands and groaned. “Ah, fuck … you know? I’m just having the shittiest summer …”

  “It’s cool,” he said, feeling bold enough to reach over and take a gentle hold of her wrist. “I’ll take care of you. I’m clean, I swear—we’ll get you one of your cheap-ass Canadian morning after pills and hit the beach. Your summer isn’t over. I just got here …”

  She let her hands slip down her face and now her gaze cast across to the sink where they’d had sex. “That does sound nice. I need a day like that.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it that guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “The one from yesterday. With the blood.”

  “Oh, it didn’t help,” she said, still looking at nothing.

  “What happened? Did he make it?”

  “No. The EMTs came, took ‘em like twenty minutes. Guy was a goner. One of them did CPR, but it was a waste. His wife said he was just at the hospital on the mainland, too—their son attacked him or something, cut his arm. They took him away, but no way that guy is alive today. Dude, all his teeth came out …”

  “Freaky, huh?”

  “It can all end so … out of the blue, right?” Now she looked at him and he saw those beautiful eyes were a little wet. But she smiled and seeing her like that did something funny in his chest.

  He smiled for her, ran his thumb in circles on the back of her fine wrist, said, “If you’re all drained out down there,” nodding his chin between her legs where she still clutched the paper, “we should get going, get the awesome day I’m going to show you under way. You wanna rent some jet-skis?”

  The door to the bathroom jiggled again, someone trying to get in. He rolled his eyes and sighed, “This one again.” Someone had tried getting in while they were fucking, too.

  He leaned back so she could yell across again in her girl’s voice. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said pleasantly.

  In a creaky old woman’s voice, he whispered to her: “You said that ten minutes ago …”

  “We have been in here a long time,” she laughed.

  The door continued to rattle, someone pulling on the handle. “What if it’s your boss?” he said now.

  “Boss isn’t here today,” she said. “Called in sick.”

  In the slit along the bottom of the door they could see a break in the light where the person stood on the other side. Their feet shuffled to the right, then returned. Something bumped the door, then it sounded like they dragged their nails down the surface.

  “Little early to be that drunk,” she whispered, getting on her knees and moving to retrieve her shorts and underwear.

  “Maybe that blood guy came back to leave you a tip,” he laughed, and lightly smacked her bare bottom as she figured out the front and back of her panties.

  “Ow, hey,” she said, rising and stepping into them.

  “Sorry to make such a mess … let me give you a dollar,” he said in the masculinized version of his old woman voice.

  “Gross, don’t,” she said, now stepping into her shorts. “That’s too creepy.”

  He stood as well, adjusting his shorts so they were comfortable, and when the scratching at the door returned, he reached over and thumped his fist at head height, shouted, “Just beat it, already!”

  “Troy,” she blurted, laughing, putting both hands up to cover her mouth, eyes wide with shock. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.

  Beyond her, he saw the bathroom window and the morning light beyond. He said, “Hey, we should sneak out that window, let them wait in the hall until they shit their pants.”

  She adjusted her shirt, tucked it in, looking over her shoulder at the window and smiling, appreciating his joke. “That would be funny,” she agreed. “But we can’t …”

  “They’re gonna know you were in here with me—what if they know who you are? … rat you out when your boss comes back …”

  There was the sound of glass breaking from the restaurant now and he turned to face the door. No other sound followed, which seemed strange. “What was that?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and she came to stand right behind him, both of them looking at the door, the person on the other side still scratching at it. “Sounded like a coffee pot.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone’s out there now, though. Does it?”

  She cocked her head, held onto his shoulder, her expression growing troubled. “No.”

  “Like when someone breaks a glass at a restaurant everyone’s got something to say. Somebody’ll clap, or shriek …”

  They stood for a moment, both watching the door, the voiceless person on the other side alternating between scratching and pulling on the handle. Finally Brit said, “Let’s … yeah, let’s … go out the window …”

  5

  Christian

  The sudden vulnerability did nothing to cease his resistance. The muscles in his arm ached and shook as he pulled the man closer again, then pushed his arm to rotate to the side, the gnawing teeth
still inching closer, clacking open and closed now, looking to sink into him. They both tumbled to the floor, him collapsing on top of the masseuse. He got a knee into the man’s shoulder and was able to wrench out of the grip by rotating his arm and using his free hand to pull the masseuse’s wrist.

  Getting free wasn’t the boon he thought it would be, the man’s clawed hand now raking over his bare stomach while his genitals swung precariously between the two of them. He clambered backward, putting his hands out and kicking his legs, while the masseuse’s hands still tried to grab a new part of him, and he was sure, sought to sink his teeth into whatever that may be.

  He fell off him, to the side, then jumping up quickly, looking to launch himself out the door but finding out the hard way he was still under the massage table. The back of his head cracked off the underside of the table top and it was like he’d been hit with a baseball bat. He cried out and fell to his knees, both hands clutching at his pounding head. Hands grabbed at his back, and he lunged forward again, face scrunched up in pain, landing with his hunched up shoulder against the floor, hands still clutched to the sides of his head. He kicked his legs and wriggled across the granite tile, moving like an inch worm, feeling the masseuse’s cold hands grabbing at his ass and his thighs. He pinched his legs together, trying to protect his penis and testicles, keep them away from the man’s grip. Once further under the table he kicked with his heels, felt them contact the reaching hands, then he had squirmed through to the other side. Up quick, ears ringing from the knock on the head, he rose, ready to stomp on the masseuse if he crawled under the table.