THE EXISTENTIAL DREAD OF COMPLACENCY
1.
It was probably the first time in his adult life Thurston Tremont would readily admit to being happy with nearly everything. His teenage son was doing well, both physically and in school, and seemed to be less depressed than he had been a couple of years ago. Thurston only usually saw Matthew on the weekends and it didn’t really feel like enough but, in reality, they probably spent more time together than many fathers and sons. After two failed marriages, Thurston was finally with a woman who had similar interests and complemented him. She felt as much like a friend as a lover and that was something he’d never really experienced before. He didn’t like to think every relationship was supposed to make you miserable at least half the time. He didn’t really know where that idea came from but figured it was probably some latent misogynist notion. The woman gave the man sex and therefore he must pay for that with his misery. It relegated all romantic relationships to prostitution, essentially. But this one didn’t feel like that. Oh, and the sex was great. She was a writer, too, and they spent much of their time together sitting beside one another and working on their own projects in their individual heads. They came together to share. It worked. And the books were selling reasonably well. The past year or so had seen some newfound interest in the work of Holger Blackwell and the manuscript Thurston completed for his goonish editor, The One Who Creeps, earned him enough in royalties to pay his rent. And the rent wasn’t as cheap as it had been this time last year. He and Kara had finally bitten the bullet and moved out of their scary, tiny, ancient, but cheap apartment in downtown Dayton to a house in the town of Twin Springs. She was from up north but had fallen in love with the town when he’d taken her there one weekend shortly after they’d first met. And he’d liked it ever since going there with his friends in high school. He and his friends had mainly gone there because of the head shop and bookstore and you could buy incense and anything else you needed to turn yourself into a goofy hippie overnight. But there was more to it than that. They went to high school in the middle of a cornfield in a conservative small town. It wasn’t the small town he had a problem with. He loved small towns. He did not enjoy gun toting, racist, conservative small mindedness. Twin Springs was home to Shrine College. While it had fallen on hard times lately, there was a legacy of equality and progressive politics that was still palpable. Living somewhere where they were surrounded by dreadlocked, barefoot, patchouli wearing hippies was highly preferable to watching people get shot in the parking lot of the clubs across the street. Plus Holger Blackwell had lived there. Plus there were good restaurants to eat in and a brewery down the street that brewed awesome beer. And there were trees. A lot of trees. So they were somewhat shocked to find that the SWAT team had had to shoot the previous tenant out of the house for randomly firing his considerable arsenal out the window. They hadn’t heard about the incident when it had happened. Living in Dayton, they never followed the news. It was too depressing. Or horrifying. It seemed like things like that had happened every week. But they had Googled the address and it had come up. He and Kara liked things with a history so it definitely didn’t want to make them back out of it. They’d almost bought a house in an area where they didn’t really want to live just because it had a cemetery behind it and a tombstone in the backyard.
So he was perfectly willing to admit to himself that he was happy but the most he would ever be willing to admit to someone who asked was that he was doing “okay.” Because every time he’d found himself complacent in his place in the world, it had ended up crumbling around him and then he was likely to spend the next two years picking up the pieces. It was entirely possible it was that history that would keep him from being a hundred percent content. Not that he thought anyone was ever really perfectly content. But he knew he could never rest. He always had to remain somewhat vigilant. Which was maybe why he liked to spend at least an hour every night staring into the darkness and thinking thoughts he would never write down or speak aloud. This, he thought, was how adults terrified themselves.
Or maybe he just liked the night and the quiet and the contemplative nature of that environment allowed his mind to open up and his mental guard to relax a little while he thought about all the bad things that could happen.
It made him want to drink and smoke more. By the third or fourth beer, the night air smelled great – full of honeysuckle and something almost spicy he couldn’t identify – and Kara and he would be together forever, and they were in the perfect place and he couldn’t ask for anything more from his writing career and, hey, even the day job wasn’t that horrible.
He took a sip of beer and a deep breath before lighting another cigarette. Sometimes thinking was the worst thing a person could do. The only things easy to think about were appointments, how shitty your life was, or how you were going to go about conquering the world. Everything else was just so many shades of gray. The important thing was to find moments like this and squeeze every ounce of enjoyment from them and hope they would be abundant.
After all, when all was said and done, things were not that bad. And they could always be worse.
His and Kara’s mutual friend, Dustin, was coming by the next day with his wife, Jessica. Thurston and Dustin shared the same deadbeat publisher. They’d wander around the town, eat good food, drink much beer, smoke many cigarettes, and trade gossip about their fellow degenerate writers.
It would be fun.
2.
Thurston got a text from Dustin saying they were almost there.
“Thank god. I’m starving.” Kara put her hands over her tiny stomach like something inside of her was dying.
“I’m sure they’ll be ready to get something to eat.”
Thurston and Kara went out to the driveway just as the battered maroon minivan pulled in. They went around to the passenger side to greet Jessica as she got out of their van. It was both their opinion that the wives and girlfriends of their writer friends – mostly male – were woefully neglected if not completely ignored. Unless the wife was the publisher of the writer friend. This was the case with at least three of them. Thurston couldn’t help noticing it looked like the back of the van was filled with trash. He wasn’t really a judgmental person. It was just an observation.
Dustin had already crawled out of the driver’s seat and come around to join them just as Jessica got out of the passenger side. Hellos made their rounds and they joined in a group hug. Jessica and Dustin smelled really bad. Thurston was pretty sure Jessica was pregnant. Something that had never come up.
“So you guys ready to go get some food?” he asked.
“Sounds great,” Dustin said. “I hate to ask you this but is it okay if we take a quick shower first? I feel really ripe.”
Of course people had asked to use the shower before, but this was the first time Thurston could recall anyone asking to use it upon arrival.
“Sure, man.” Dustin and Jessica grabbed a couple of bags from the back of the van. Thurston led them into the house and Kara stayed behind to pick up the excess trash that had rolled from the van.
Dustin and Jessica dumped their bags inside the door off the carport and Thurston led them down the hallway to the bathroom. He grabbed a couple of towels and washcloths from the linen closet and held them out to Dustin.
“Here you go.”
“Nah, man. We don’t like the way any of that stuff feels on our skin.”
Thurston stood somewhat frozen, continuing to hold out the towels and washcloths.
“So I should just . . . put them back?”
“Do whatever, man. We just need the water to get clean and the air to dry us off.”
“Okay.”
Thurston went to find Kara. Dustin and Jessica disappeared into the bathroom. Well, they didn’t really disappear because neither one of them bothered shutting the door.
Kara sat at the small table on the bizarre back patio, smoking. A bag of Bugles sat on the table.
“I had to eat some
thing,” she said. “I was starving.”
“Me too.” Thurston sat down with a heavy groan.
He realized he probably didn’t know Dustin and Jessica as well as he thought he did. Their publisher put together a convention in Seattle every year and the authors were encouraged to attend, even though the trip out there cost roughly three times what the publisher ever paid them in royalties. Kara and Thurston had found themselves hanging around the other couple quite a bit. But that wasn’t really a normal environment and they weren’t really in close quarters or anything. And, he guessed when he added it up over the course of a weekend “quite a bit” was probably closer to three hours. They’d also met Dustin at a reading in Chicago and spent a few hours drinking with him afterward. But that was just Dustin by himself, not with Jessica.
Thurston sighed. “It’s going to be an interesting evening.”
He told her about the towels.
“And who just shows up and asks to use the shower anyway?” Kara crushed out her cigarette and immediately lit another one. “I’m starting to wish we were already drunk when they got here.”
Thurston pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it. “Maybe it’ll even out.”
“I hope so. What time are they leaving tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I think they were headed on to Florida or someplace so I imagine they’d want to get on the road.”
“Is Jessica pregnant?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I thought, too. Dustin hasn’t mentioned it.”
They smoked, stared into the thick woods, and listened to their stomachs grumble for nearly an hour.
“Not just any shower,” Kara said. “The world’s fucking longest shower.”
“How bout all that weight they’ve lost though, huh?”
“I know, right? I was going to say they’d lost a lot of weight when they got out of the van but that’s like saying, ‘Hey, you were really fat!’ I guess that’s pretty much why we can’t ask them if she’s pregnant.”
Thurston didn’t really know if the weight loss was a good thing. The last time they’d seen the couple, they’d been probably a hundred pounds heavier. Some people lost weight through diet and exercise and they seemed to maintain some kind of healthful glow. Dustin and Jessica looked like they’d been starving themselves. They looked sick. He wondered if they’d lost their house or something. Maybe they had been living out of their van. Maybe that was the reason the inside of it looked the way it did. Maybe that’s why they’d lost so much weight and smelled the way they did. He considered asking them about it. Maybe he would if he got Dustin alone later. But he almost didn’t want to know the answer. If he knew the answer, he might feel compelled to help. He and Kara did okay financially, but he still had his son to support and the modest surplus they were left with was really only enough to eat out a couple of times a month – a luxury they’d come to enjoy and look forward to. That left offering them a place to stay. His son still used the one bedroom when he came over but there was the library. He supposed they could throw a futon or air mattress in there. But he was getting ahead of himself. He decided if they were too irritating, he just wouldn’t ask.
The screen door opened and Dustin and Jessica came out. They were both completely naked and dripping wet. They were covered in bruises and welts and Thurston couldn’t help noticing that neither one of them did any bush work whatsoever.
Dustin pulled one of the wrought iron chairs out from the table and sat down heavily.
He wiped a hand across his wet brow and said, “Thanks, man. That felt great.”
It was actually really hard to not like Dustin.
“No problem.”
Thurston noticed Dustin and Jessica didn’t really smell much better than when they had gone in. They probably hadn’t used any soap, either.
“Just let us dry off for a little bit and we’ll be ready to go. So what have you guys been up to?”
Jessica drifted off the patio and into the yard. She stared at the birds and tall trees and looked super stoned. Kids lived on the street and their yard was often used as a shortcut for people going into the woods so he considered calling her back but decided not to worry about it. She was an adult. She could get herself out of any situation she put herself into.
Kara and Thurston gave Dustin the rundown of the last few months. Kara provided the actual facts. Thurston provided the opinionated color.
Jessica wandered to the edge of the woods and stared into them. She may have been touching herself.
“So what’s up with you guys?” Thurston asked.
Dustin was a talker, a great storyteller. It was one of the reasons he was so entertaining to have around. He just shrugged and said, “Not much.”
Jessica came charging back to the patio and said, “I saw a rabbit!” before launching into a coughing fit.
The next few minutes of conversation were stilted and awkward.
Finally Thurston gave Dustin the once over and said, “You guys dry enough to put on some clothes and get something to eat?”
3.
Dustin and Jessica each wore some kind of dashiki-looking thing, only it looked like they were made out of some plain muslin-like material.
“You guys look like cult members or something,” Kara said.
“Nah.” Dustin chuckled, showing a shade of who he used to be.
Their attire would have really embarrassed Thurston if they had been anywhere but Twin Springs. The place seemed to have a tolerance for that sort of thing whereas the rest of the Dayton area seemed to be almost aggressively normal.
They went to the all-organic, locally sourced Peruvian restaurant in town and had a great meal. Thurston and Kara rarely let their guests pay for anything and this was no exception. Besides, Thurston didn’t see where Dustin or Jessica could possibly keep any means to pay. Their gown things were virtually transparent and didn’t have any pockets. The conversation over dinner had been a little livelier although Dustin and Jessica seemed to be talking about things that had happened a really long time ago, like in their college days. There was still no clue about what they’d been up to in the last few months.
“Thanks for getting that,” Dustin said as they left the restaurant. “We don’t carry cash or credit cards anymore.”
Kara and Jessica walked ahead of them, engaged in their own conversation.
“Are you serious?” Thurston thought maybe Dustin had been joking.
“Too confining.”
“Then how do you pay for things?”
“We don’t. Nobody should have to pay for anything.”
“So . . . what? I should have just walked out on the check back there?”
“That would have been one option. Or we could just not have gone.”
“So, okay, you don’t buy food? I guess that explains how you guys have lost so much weight.”
“Yeah. I feel great.”
“But you have to eat.”
“We do. Once we lost all that weight, we realized we don’t really need that much to keep going.”
“So you grow your own food or something?”
“A little. But that’s a lot of work. We do take a few things off the shelf at the store but that’s stuff they just throw out when it goes bad anyway.”
“So you forage for the rest?”
“Yeah. Mostly. People throw away a lot of good shit.”
“Oh, man. So you’re dumpster diving?”
“Sure. Why not? It beats having to work to feed ourselves, you know?”
“But, dude, you’re eating trash. Couldn’t you work for a couple hours a day so you and your wife could eat something good every now and then?”
“We eat fine. Nobody used to really think about food. This obsession with food is just one indicator of the crumbling empire. Before the Roman Empire fell, people were eating until they vomited so they could eat more, adults introduced children into the world of sex, and a lot of other fucked up shit. Now we have the Food Network, reality televisi
on, and Facebook. Oh, and rich white men going on sex tours through Asian and Eastern European countries so they can fuck kids. Think about it.”
The conversation had taken a grim turn. Thurston wanted to get back to the house so they could start drinking soon. Hopefully, Dustin and Jessica still drank. Hopefully it wasn’t too emblematic of the crumbling empire. Wait, he thought. They still didn’t know if Jessica was pregnant or not. She probably wouldn’t drink if she was pregnant. He’d asked Dustin about the weight loss and regretted it. If anyone was going to ask Jessica about being pregnant, it would have to be Kara. He and Kara had had four growlers filled at the brewery earlier so either Dustin and Jessica were going to help drink it or Thurston and Kara were going to go into a coma. And if Jessica happened to be out, well, that just meant more for the rest of them. The way things were going, he was pretty sure he was going to need it.
“Besides,” Dustin continued, “it’s not just about working a couple hours a day so you can eat. It’s about conforming to a whole system. You can’t just take bits and pieces of capitalism. You have to eat the whole thing. And then you’re locked into the game because if you don’t compete you feel like a loser. It teaches you to want more and more things, better and better things, but it keeps the ultimate goal forever out of reach. Sure, people will work increasingly difficult jobs or increasingly long hours to try and get that shit but the only people who ever do get it are the people who were pretty much born into it in the first place. And they don’t even appreciate it! They have to spend money on ways to fill their copious amount of free time, which is probably the only thing someone like you wants more of.”
Thurston had fazed out a bit. “Huh?”
“Free time. That’s what you would say you work hard for, right? You guys barely own anything.”
“Sure. I guess.”
“Well, see, I have plenty of that and I don’t work at all. All I’m saying is: would you rather work eight hours and eat something you bought from someplace that, let’s face it, still isn’t that great, or would you rather have eight hours of free time and choke down an old burger you found in a McDonald’s trashcan?”
Creep House: Horror Stories Page 7