Caring Is Creepy

by David Zimmerman

“Butthole!” Marty bawled into the monkey.

  “That slick fuck,” the monkey said after a moment of static, “slipped off just like a rat snake.”

  “Get him, Goddamnit! I don’t give a fuck how,” Marty said, pressing the monkey into his cheek hard enough to leave a mark. Then he turned to Burns. “Get your ass back out there. We need to end this shit now.”

  Burns didn’t need to be told twice.

  Marty glanced over his shoulder at me, his face half dark from the doorway’s shadow. All the angry gone now, vanished in the time it takes to blow your nose. “This kind of thing just happens sometimes, honey. All there is to do is grit your teeth and get through it. I won’t let them go too far, but I can’t promise it won’t sting. You know, the way the doctor always does?” He managed to give me a sickroom smile. “And hell, ain’t the doctor always lying anyway? Come on, missy, guess I’ll have to bring you out here for Butthole …” Marty scratched his neck and turned his head away.

  I’ll give the man this: he didn’t seem all that happy about his chore. His mouth sagged and his eyes looked dull.

  “Okay,” I said, quiet and docile, but the thoughts in my brain were anything but. My head was in mad-scramble mode. I took one last drag off the sweet cigar, making the cherry burn bright.

  “That’s the way. I like you, missy. You’re a tough little pecan. Maybe it ain’t clear now, but we got more than a few things in common.”

  I wanted to scream. Instead, I blew two lungs full of strawberry puke smoke at him.

  He reached over to take my arm. “You got sand aplenty and that’s saying—”

  As Marty bent toward me, I smiled hard and pushed the hot end of the cigar into his left eye. It sounded like bacon dropping into a hot pan—a mean sizzle and a sharp pop. The smell I can’t describe, nor do I much care to. He let out a yowl of pain so loud it near about burst a tunnel through my head from ear to ear. I didn’t wait for it to end before I screamed Logan’s name with all the air left in my lungs. Marty didn’t waste no time. He followed me right across the kitchen for some payback, swinging his arm behind his shoulder for a go at my head. But I saw his open hand coming and ducked away as best I could. Liked to of backflipped into the sink if I could of managed. Still, he connected. The kitchen turned half a dozen different hues of blue and yellow. The overhead light sparkled and shimmered like the sun seen from underwater. The next thing—I’m looking up at the bottom of the table with a sound like angry bees in my head. Swaying there under the table was my old cowboy Weeble, my favorite toy when I was a kid, bobbing back and forth and hissing for me to run. But it was all I could do right then just to suck myself some air.

  What are you doing down there, Mr. Weeble? I thought. I left you on the dresser.

  “You little bitch!” Marty shouted so loud it rumbled the linoleum. “You half about blinded me!”

  It wouldn’t be long before one of his thug boys came in here to see what the problem was. That’d finish the question and quick.

  I rolled over on my side, scrabbling about for a way to get back on my feet. The world around me—kitchen, clock, and floor—moved incredibly slowly and, in a senseless way, very, very fast. I blinked hard, trying to clear a bit of the blur out of my eyes. That was when I caught a glimpse of another thing that made me think I’d had both the sense and air knocked out of me. A lamp looked to be floating across the living room. Marty stepped around the fallen chair and reared back his leg to give me a kick. The lamp sailed into the kitchen behind him. It was bright yellow and had a picture of a boat painted on it. I laughed. Scared as I was, I laughed. I hated that lamp and here it was coming to save me. Marty held off on that kick just long enough to frown at me. The lamp shattered on his head and he toppled over, knocking the chair across the room. The last thing I saw was his empty face heading toward mine.

  The World in Ashtray Colors

  “Lynn, Lynn Marie, Lynnie.”

  A warm hand patted me on the cheek. My eyes didn’t want to work.

  “Come on, Lynn Marie.” The breath smelled like cigarettes and microwave pizza, but the voice I knew.

  I squashed my eyelids shut with my thumbs and tried again. Above me, a blurry Logan Loy peered into my face, trying to tell me like a saucer of tea leaves. Something pricked my neck. I blinked and blinked again. His nose came clear. A smudge of something gray on his cheek. Some joker had painted the world in ashtray colors. Holly bushes pressed in on me from three sides.

  “I pulled you out and hid you in the shrubs.” Logan spoke through his teeth. “You fainted or something.”

  “Or something.” My throat felt clogged with mud.

  “What now?” he asked, tilting his head and smiling a normal smile, like we two were sitting on a park bench having a laugh in the sunshine. But a couple of feet below his face, I noticed the handle of the butter knife tucked into the waist of his jeans and it glittered when he moved.

  A dog barked. Then two more answered. A man shouted. Somewhere in the other direction, a car engine revved and glass shattered. The smell of that oily smoke became very strong. Logan tensed and squinted through the bushes at something I couldn’t see. All business now. I put a hand on his leg and felt the heat of his skin through the denim.

  “I’m alright,” I told him, feeling anything but, and tried to sit up.

  “Stay down.” He pressed the tips of his fingers against my chest. “They got that Asshole character looking for us. He ain’t nobody to fool with.”

  Everything that could hurt did.

  “Butthole,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Logan said, nodding. “Stay here, I’m going to reconnoiter.”

  I blinked once more and he disappeared.

  The Time

  for Fucking Around Is Done

  The sky tore open, letting loose raindrops as big as quarters. A slot-machine jackpot of a storm. My hiding spot smelled of pine sap and wet cement. Dead leaves stuck to my legs. I tried to sit again. My head swam. I explored my cheek with a careful finger. It felt puffy and deformed. And it hurt. It hurt like all get-out. It took a while to remember how I ended up lodged in the shrubbery, but not much longer than that to start worrying about what had happened since.

  A gun fired twice. The shots muffled by the rain, impossible to tell which direction they came from.

  I felt for my cell phone, but it was gone. If you’d looked in my mouth right then, you’d of seen my heart thumping away on my tongue. A whole different kind of scary took up residence in my chest and double-dared me to move. The time for fucking around was definitely done. We needed help. We needed the police.

  I wished then I’d told the police earlier. The nice one. Officer Watkins. Mom might be in jail, but she’d still be around. Now I didn’t know if I even still had a mom.

  I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth and sat myself up. It felt like two bees stung the backs of my eyeballs. Bricks, a shutter, holly leaves, my blood-streaked legs, the dark-green clouds. They all came unglued to swirl together for a moment and then, after another breath, stayed put. Paisley shapes swam on the surface of my eyes. Next step, legs. I went to my knees and tried to stand. My belly heaved up its last few drops of stomach juice. No, hands and knees it would have to be. And it was a good thing too, because half a minute later someone ran past the front door and around the side of the house at a fairly good clip. Had they seen me standing then, sitting duck would of been dead duck. I crawled to the front steps and took a quick peek at the yard. Empty, except for a dark curtain of rain, which seemed to seal the house off from the rest of the world. The front door swung in the wet storm wind, thumping the wall of the hallway. Water dripped off my nose and chin. I closed my eyes, counted to three, and then forced myself up onto the stoop and rolled into the house.

  Mr. Cannon’s blood stuck to my palms, tacky as drying paste. I scrambled to my feet as best I could, woozy, and slid along the wall to the kitchen. Marty was gone. All he’d left were some bloody smears and a pile of broken lamp. I’d forgot
ten all about him falling on me until I saw the mess. Smoke drifted across the house, through the kitchen and out the back door. Someone had left it open as well and turned the kitchen light out, or broken it, but the porch bulb burned bright enough for me to see two of the dogs yanking at leashes tied to the clothesline pole where Logan had been. The rest of the dogs were gone and so were the men. Hayes leaned limp against the other pole. My mom rested her chin on his head. Something was very wrong with him. Mom’s head moved, as though she was speaking, but I couldn’t see her face. Over on the far side of the house a gun went off three times. Couldn’t they hear the damn thing from the hospital? Thunder rumbled from one side of the sky to the other.

  I went to my knees and felt around for the phone. It had to be someplace in the kitchen. I hadn’t seen it behind the hollies or in the hall. I found my cigar under the chair, still smoldering and burning a brown rut in the linoleum. When I picked it up to take a drag, a piece of the broken juice glass cut my thumb. A lot of painful panic passed before I discovered the phone stuck between the fridge and the Tupperware drawer. Cowardly thing, hiding like that. I huddled under the table and dialed 911. An elderly black woman asked about my emergency.

  “Some men broke into the house.” Tears blurred my eyes. Telling about it made it true in a terrible new way.

  “Yes, dear, and where are you? What’s your name?”

  “Lynn Marie Sugrue.” I forgot my address for a moment, then mumbled it out. “They’re going to hurt her. They got dogs. And they shot our neighbor in the leg. I don’t know where he is. They hid him someplace. Please, hurry.”

  “We’re coming, honey, you just hold on tight. Are you someplace safe?”

  A figure slipped through the rain and knelt by my mom. When he turned and faced the house, I saw it was Logan. One of his eyes had swollen shut. A gash oozed blood on his back. I crawled to the doorway.

  “Honey, you still there?” the kind lady asked.

  “I got to go,” I said.

  “Wait—”

  I hung up.

  “—that’s right,” Logan told my mom. “That’s all I ever wanted. You see now, don’t you, ma’am? It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “We’ll take care of the rest later. Just don’t let them hurt her,” my mom said, her words slow and muddled, barely coherent over the wet clatter of the rain.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, straightening, “they’ll have to deal with me first. Now you’re loose.”

  Mom raised her arm. I think she told him she couldn’t move.

  “Logan,” I said. “Mom.”

  They both looked over. Feet pounded around the side of the carport. Logan said something more to my mom and made a break for the pine trees in the back of the yard. A gun went off with a lick of flame and a muted slap. I backed into the house, wondering what the hell to do now, and came up against something hard where there shouldn’t of been anything at all.

  “There you are, jellybean,” said that terrible, wrong voice. “I been looking all over creation for you.”

  Butthole took a handful of my shirt and yanked me up.

  I screamed. I didn’t have much left, but I put it all into that one sound before he clapped a hand over my mouth.

  Shadow Puppet Show

  “So now,” Butthole said, taping my wrists to the kitchen chair with the same roll of tape I’d used on Mr. Cannon. He’d already done my mouth. “You had everybody worried and here you were all this time. I near lost my patience. Time you set things straight, so we can wrap this mess up. Don’t you want to be finished with all this?” He took a handful of hair and nodded my head, putting on a high, whispery voice as a stand-in for my own. “Yes, Mr. Gibbs, I sure do.”

  The smoke in the house thickened and made it difficult to see more than a few yards. Something orange and unpleasant glowed from the direction of my mom’s room. My eyes watered and every few minutes I coughed through my nose. With the tape over my mouth, it made my sinuses sting. Butthole turned the chair so I faced away from the back door. In the porch light, his shadow stretched over my head and out across the kitchen floor. He put his face down next to mine and pressed his melted ear stubs against my cheek.

  “I’m going to tell you a story. Don’t worry, it’s a quickie. Keep your eyes on the wall over there.” Butthole straightened up behind me and smoothed my hair with a hand.

  Because of the tape, I couldn’t do anything but look straight. The shadow of his head moved aside and, in its place, a shadow monster made of hand and wrist wriggled across the wall. A nasty sort of snake with giant fangs.

  “The old gardener pulled out his red hanky and blew his nose.” His laugh rattled like a handful of shook pebbles. “My mama always says that instead of ‘Once upon a time.’ In this story, there was a bad little girl, and this bad little girl knew a secret. A big secret.” A mushy-headed figure with flapping arms and legs danced across the wall. A pretty sorry looking excuse for a girl. “This was a dangerous secret, a deadly secret, because more than anything else in the world, a monster wanted this secret for his own.” The monster snake wriggled in from the other side, rearing up in front of the shadow girl. “The first time the monster asked the girl about this secret, he used his nicest voice. ‘Please tell me where the magic beans are,’ he said. But the girl was stubborn. She didn’t want the magic beans, but being hardheaded, she didn’t want nobody else to have them either. This made the monster irritable, but he tamped down his temper and asked again. This time in not so nice a voice. ‘Where are the magic beans?’ ” Butthole thumped me on the back of the head with his bad-girl hand.

  Something heavy and metallic clattered onto the floor, but I couldn’t turn my head to see it. Both shadow puppets vanished for a moment.

  “Mr. Asshole, you shouldn’t of taped her up like that.” It was Logan. From his voice, I could tell he must of been in the doorway to the living room. My lips tried to smile under the tape. All my numb brain could think up at that moment was: I’m sure glad he’s not saying “hajji” anymore.

  The snake and the girl reappeared. “The third time the monster asked about the beans”—Butthole made a growling sound—“the girl just shook her bad little head.” The shadow girl swayed back and forth.

  “Let’s us see how well you do without your rifle, huh?” Logan stepped forward. The knee on one side of his jeans hung torn. Soot covered his chest. His left arm was red and blistered. “What you think?”

  “When the girl told him no the third time, the monster said, ‘Fuck the beans, I’m going to eat you.’ ” The shadow snake gulped her down.

  Logan stepped in front of me and winked. “Don’t worry, baby.”

  “Fuck the girl,” Butthole said, “I’m going to eat you.”

  He jerked my chair aside and the kitchen floor rose up to punch me in the shoulder. Logan’s bare feet moved past my head. The black loafers lashed out at him. Logan grunted and tripped over the back legs of my chair, falling and breaking one of them off. He picked it up and threw it. From the thud it made, I knew it’d hit something soft. I hoped to God it hurt.

  Butthole yanked my hair. The chair slid backwards, and I screamed through my nose, a sorry sound like a kitten drowning in a sack. He shook my head back and forth. “No, I won’t tell you where the beans are.” This in his whispery girl voice.

  “I knew you’d hide behind her like a REMF pussy,” Logan said, edging out of my vision.

  My head slapped the linoleum. Tears made a blurry mess of the kitchen cabinets and everything else. My head throbbed so bad I didn’t know what to do with the pain. For a while, I saw nothing but heard a lot. The slap of bare feet. The gritty sound of leather sliding across the floor. Puffs of breath. The moist smack of skin hitting skin. Swallowed groans. The table fell on its side. A pepper shaker rolled over and bumped my nose, filling it with a sharp, dusty smell. The fighting noises moved away. Maybe into the living room. Something brittle smashed.

  During all this, the smoke went from filling the kitchen wi
th a haze to pushing out all the breathable air. I’d known before something had caught fire, but with everything else going on, I hadn’t thought much of it. Now I felt the heat on my legs and listened to that heavy breathing sound a fire makes when it’s getting big. It panted and roared. I couldn’t get enough air through my nose.

  In the other room, a giant crash, followed by a bunch of smaller ones. I imagined my mom’s boat bottles falling one by one onto the coffee table and bursting into tiny shards. Each bottle meant a month of her life. I had to get out.

  Using my free leg, I pushed against the linoleum. My sweaty foot slid at first, then caught traction. Blood rushed into my head and pounded in my ears. Each push cost me. I felt middle-aged by the time I made it past the fridge. My hair went white and I grew a thousand wrinkles by the time my face moved over the doorjamb. The cool metal felt as good as a glass of iced tea. For a time, it was enough just to hang my head out and suck in the cool, wet air through my nose. I was a hundred years old and dying. Raindrops smacked my cheek and ear. I wanted more than anything to open my mouth and catch them. I wondered, Am I dead?

  I Forgave the Rest

  “Flipper,” a person croaked.

  Something tapped my neck and fiddled with the back of my head. The duct tape came off with a crackle. Hair came with it. I wanted to shout but didn’t.

  “You’re mama ain’t doing so good.” Hayes lifted the chair and pulled me out of the house. It took some doing on his part. My legs hit the last two steps.

  “What?” I tried to say, all sandpaper and sawdust.

  The tape on my wrists didn’t want to come off. Hayes picked at it, swearing quietly. His sweat smelled sweet and putrid, like a morsel of hamburger left to rot in a sugar bowl. I could move my head now. My mom sat with her back against the clothesline pole, eyes closed, wet hair stuck to her cheeks. Please don’t be dead. The second strip of tape came off with a bit of skin. All I could do was whimper.