In The End, Only Darkness

by O'Rourke, Monica

  Nadine has since said she wishes she could choose a different set of adjectives to describe her father.

  The Rest of Larry

  At first it felt normal.

  He opened his eyes, blinked back grains of sand and flecklets of dried blood, tried to remember how he’d gotten there, in the middle of nowhere really. The stars blanketed the sky through peepholes in the treetops, thick foliage exploding overhead.

  With grimy fingertips he brushed the dirt off his face, and licked his lips, which lay on his face like bloated leeches.

  Then he looked down.

  Larry wasn’t so much person now as he was torso. A skeletal torso at that, most of the meat having rotted off the bones or been picked clean by scavengers. He’d been chopped in half; that much was obvious. Parts of the blade were still imbedded in a rib bone. From the base of the ribcage down, he was … well, in the immortal words of Gertude Stein, There was no there, there. Nothing but flapping tissue and shredded tatters of shirt.

  Larry pawed at the earth and tried to push himself into a seated position. Damned hard to do without legs, he quickly discovered.

  Beneath the tattered remains of his shirt, more of the same. A hollow cavity where internal organs had once nestled. He slipped his hand inside and through the cavity and lost his balance, tipping over and banging his head against the pine-needle bed.

  “No …” he muttered, shaking his head. “ … Impossible.” Words that began as whispers steadily increased in volume until he was shrieking. “Impossible!”

  Whatever.

  Regardless, it was. Whatever reality had cast its shadow and now occupied Larry’s time and space, this was it.

  Sobbing, he crossed his forearm over his eyes. He realized that his upper body seemed to be intact; his arms, neck and face, he discovered after a quick prodding, appeared whole.

  Deep in the woods. Surrounded by thick trees and thicker greenery, heavy, cloying fragrance that reminded him of Christmas and fresh dirt. Crickets chatting it up by the millions until they sounded like one solid note. Squirrels flinging themselves from tree to tree, birds twittering and dive-bombing. He sucked it all in. The thick, mulchy smells of a peat bog and blankets of moss warming the ground. Great, swell.

  Fucking Mother Nature.

  Larry dug his fingers into the earth, fingernails taking root in the grass and knotty stumps, and pulled himself along the ground. Occasionally he found himself tangled in some underbrush, jagged edges of rib cage snagging on a briar patch or a tree root, but he persevered, clawing himself free.

  Pulled farther along the ground, blocking out the chorus that was Nature, trying to recall what in hell had happened to him. From the state of his decomposition, he had obviously been exposed to the elements for a while now.

  Snow. He remembered snow. That was the last image floating around in his brain. Damned driveway always filled faster than he could keep up with his shovel. Neighbor kid Chad SomethingOrOther had offered to clear the path for ten bucks. Larry agreed and then paid him five. What did a twelve-year-old semi-retard need with ten bucks anyway?

  This was going to take a while. Larry finally recognized the area—Buck Pond, on his own property, about three miles from his house.

  He snorted, wiped his runny nose on the back of his hand, and crawled further along. Slow going, but steady. He didn’t feel as if he was tiring.

  Images flooded his mind now, of trips to the mall, of relaxing on the couch, or sunning himself in a beach chair in the back yard. Molly bringing him a sandwich and beer. Of course—Molly. It was coming back to him now.

  He came upon an abandoned campfire pit, sooty clumps of charcoal disintegrating in the breeze. The cairn was cold, dead; no one had used it in a while.

  He dragged himself away, toward the house again, the distance slowly closing. A mile finished, then a second, marked by red paint on nearby trees in times past. Two and a half miles traveled now. The tool shed loomed across the field in the backyard, the house spitting distance away. Lights burned in the kitchen window and in a bedroom upstairs. Molly never did listen when he told her to shut off the lights. Not that Larry cared about energy conservation, but the damned electric bills were staggering.

  Using the doggie hole at the bottom of the door, he crawled into the house. First his head, then arms, then pulled his torso through.

  On his knuckles now, his palms filthy, hands exhausted, he pulled himself into the living room.

  Molly, asleep on the couth, short red hair still damp from her recent shower (she was still so predictable, he mused), body wrapped in a terry robe. And beside her – snuggling with Molly! —who the hell was that cuddling Larry’s wife? Jason Campbell?

  “Jesus Christ!” Larry yelled, settling back against the baseboard for support so he could angrily fold his arms across his chest.

  Molly and Jason woke, startled at Larry’s voice, both searching the room for the source of the disturbance.

  “Over here,” Larry muttered, frowning, pointing at himself.

  Molly screamed. So did Jason. In fact, Jason jumped up and ran behind the couch.

  “What the hell?” Molly cried. “Oh my god!”

  Larry scratched his itchy forehead, and this invariably cost him his balance. He caught his tipping torso by the using his palm flat against the floor.

  “What the fuck?” Jason said. Sounding more like a yelping puppy than a man.

  “Jesus, Larry,” Molly groaned. “What are—what did—what—”

  “Calm down, sweetheart. One question at a time.” Larry dragged himself to the sofa using the surface of his knuckles and leaned against the coffee table. He struggled but lacked the strength to pull himself up.

  “Uh, one a you want to give me a hand here?”

  Neither moved. Splayed fingers obscured most of Molly’s face. “Does … does it hurt?” she asked.

  Larry shook his head. “Surprisingly, no.”

  Jason broke his frozen stance and moved behind Larry, and dug his fingers into Larry’s armpits and pulled him onto the sofa. He then moved behind it again and spoke to Molly, but his stage-whispers came through loud and clear.

  “You think maybe it’s a trick?” Jason asked her.

  “No, genius, a fucking torso just crawled into the house. Of course it’s some kind of trick.”

  Larry wasn’t too keen on the trick reference. “Screw you both. And I can hear you whispering you know. I lost my legs, not my hearing.”

  Jason continued as if Larry hadn’t spoken. “Someone found the body. Dug it up. Somebody knows.”

  “Nobody knows,” she said, slapping his arm—Larry had turned his head in time to see this and grinned. “Unless you opened your big fat mouth again.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone!”

  “Where’d you come from then?” she asked Larry, her voice teetering on the edge of a shriek.

  “The woods. Near Buck Pond.” Something didn’t feel right … other than the obvious. What were those two talking about?

  “Where’s the rest of him?” she asked, and Larry knew he was being ignored again.

  “How the hell should I know?” Jason yelled.

  “What are you two talking about back there?” But of course he knew. He’d lost his body, not his mind. He hadn’t lost a functioning brain.

  Larry craned his head back and pushed his bony spine into the cushions. Rested his head on the edge of the couch and looked at Molly and Jason upside down. “Just what in hell did you do to me anyway?”

  “What should we do about this?” she asked Jason.

  “I … we’ll put him back. And this time we make sure he stays down.”

  Larry—who probably should have been terrified, or at least slightly uneasy—rolled his eyes and wobbled his head from side to side. If he still had a heart, it might be pounding madly by now. But he wasn’t concerned. Hell, death—real death—couldn’t be any worse than spending life as a torso.

  “Get the axe,” she said.

  “Get
the flashlights,” Jason replied.

  “Get a fucking life,” Larry mumbled.

  Five minutes later they returned to a dozing Larry, who opened and blinked his eyes and smacked his dirt-encrusted lips. Jason was brandishing an axe and a shotgun; Molly carried several flashlights.

  “Going on a picnic are we?” Larry said.

  “Let’s go,” Jason said.

  “Oh, and how do you suppose I’m going to do that? Shall I walk on my hands again? We’ll be at the end of the driveway by morning, I should think.”

  “Goddammit,” Jason said, bundling the axe and gun in the crook of one arm and resting the items against his shoulder. He grabbed Larry’s wrist and with a jerk of his head indicated that Molly should do the same.

  She grimaced, then cringed, shook her head.

  “Just take his bloody paw for Christ’s sake,” Jason whined. “He’s your husband, after all.”

  “Was,” she said.

  “Still am, darlin’, still am.”

  “Shut up, Larry,” she muttered.

  They flanked Larry and dragged him across the room by his wrists. Every few feet his jutting tailbone would catch on a wayward nail or an edge of furniture and the procession would suddenly halt, and Molly and Jason would lose their grip on Larry the torso. Repeatedly crashing to the hardwood floor was not Larry’s idea of a good time.

  “God damn you people are idiots!”

  “Shut up, you—you—” Jason sputtered, at a loss for the proper word. “You torso!”

  “Can’t you lift him properly, sweetie?” Molly asked. “He’s not that heavy, being mostly head and all.”

  “My other hand is full, sweetie, “Jason snapped. “This isn’t easy you know.” They each grabbed an arm and lifted Larry a bit higher until he almost cleared the floor.

  Night had fallen. The damned crickets were louder than ever, an insane chorus of offending notes. So many stars filled the sky there was barely any room left for black.

  Larry was dragged across the yard and into the field, into the thicket of perfumey pines and evergreens, through choking clouds of ragweed spores and slippery clumps of Spanish moss, over jagged clusters of rocks and bramble bushes. Buck Pond was to the right. Bullfrogs convened beside stagnant, bug-skimmed water.

  They trudged through the woods led by flashlight beam but also by the moon and stars fingering their way through the lush foliage. They passed the spot Larry remembered being last, the spot where he had suddenly woken.

  They kept going.

  “How much farther?” Larry asked. He was ignored.

  “Over there,” Jason said, but Larry was fairly sure Jason wasn’t talking to him.

  They dropped Larry, and he rolled onto his side and was stopped only after smashing into a rock. Jason and Molly dropped the tools beside Larry.

  “This way,” Jason yelled, rushing away into the darkness.

  Larry propped himself up against the rock and his hand brushed against the axe. Not interested. What could he do with an axe? Not like he could balance himself well enough to use it.

  He could make out their figures silhouetted against the trees. They were staring at the ground.

  “Hey!” Molly cried, waving her arms overhead as if trying to land a plane. “I see your leg, Larry!”

  Silence while they studied the ground some more.

  “Looks like an animal got you. Probably dragged you out of the ground. Coyote I’ll bet, maybe wolf.” Molly seemed fascinated by her thought process.

  “Great,” Larry muttered, for his own benefit. “I’ll probably turn into a torso werewolf.”

  They were headed back in his direction. He wondered for a moment just how large that hole was.

  “Sorry, bud,” Jason said, “end of the line. Time for you to go back where—” Larry shot Jason in the stomach from about four feet away. The recoil would have knocked Larry off his feet, had he had feet. As it was, the gunblast slammed him further into the rock.

  “Oomph,” Larry grunted, shaking his head. “That fucking hurt.”

  “My God!” Molly screamed. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Three’s a crowd, baby. Now be a good girl and push him into that hole, would you?”

  “You’re insane!”

  “Oh, sure, right. I’m insane. You kill me, then try to kill me again in the middle of the goddamned night with your murdering boyfriend along for the ride, but I’m the one who’s insane!” Spittle flew from his nightcrawler lips.

  He could barely see her face because of the tree shrouding her head but knew from her silence that she was pouting.

  “Go push him in the hole. Cover it up. Maybe someone around here will stay dead.”

  Molly did as he said. He imagined that pointing the gun at her might have been the deciding factor.

  Now the dilemma. In order to move on his own, he would need both hands free—no gun. In order to make her carry him, or at least drag him home, he’d be in her hands—literally and figuratively. Again, no control of the gun.

  He’d have to trust her. Then again, she’d already killed him once.

  “Let’s go home,” she said.

  “Home?”

  “Sure, Larry,” she said wearily. “Jason’s dead. Killing you was his idea anyway. I never wanted it to happen.”

  “So just like that, we go home?”

  “It’s not like I can go to the cops or anything …” With incredible speed, she snatched the shotgun out of his hands. “See? I could hurt you if I wanted. I just want to go home.”

  She hefted him in her arms and propped him on her hip, like a mother carrying a small child. His tailbone rubbed against her thigh. “Oh, honey …” she crooned, “that feels nice.”

  They traipsed through the woods and finally reached the house, and they locked the door securely behind them.

  Had to be sure to keep out the weirdos.

  Molly and Larry remained happily married until her death at age seventy-nine. She gave birth to six children and they raised a happy, healthy family.

  Larry often suspected the children weren’t really his.

  Maternal Instinct

  She didn’t notice him … her three-year-old with the hazelnut eyes, thumb jutting from his mouth, hand wrapped over hand. Dirt crusted on plump, brown cheeks. She didn’t care that he lay on the stained, naked mattress, curled into a fetal position as if trying to remember the womb, staring across the room, unblinking, unfazed, in her direction.

  She didn’t notice him, because the only thing in that claustrophobic studio apartment that mattered was the pipe, to smoke the few vials of crack she’d scored.

  She took a hit and her head exploded in pleasure, her already-bulging eyes now seeming to engulf her face, that feeling of ecstasy consuming her, feeding her. She tossed back her head, holding the feeling, knowing it would never be this good again, knowing that each hit would just be weaker and weaker, none as affective as this one.

  Hand shaking, she lifted the pipe again to her mouth and using the thirty-three-cent purple lighter ignited the tiny pebbles inside.

  “Da fuck you starin’ at?” She held the pipe stem a few inches from her lips, her shaking hands eager to make another connection. “I said …” But she turned away, ignoring him for the moment, closing her eyes. Part of her knew this was wrong for him, the little boy staring at her from the mattress, knew she should take care of him. The same part of her which knew she had five other kids roaming around the neighborhood somewhere and that maybe they were hungry, maybe they were tired or dirty. Some part of her knew her responsibility as a mother, but that same part no longer controlled her. It was overwhelmed by her addiction’s need to control. Motherhood didn’t stand a chance.

  Peering down at her three-year-old, curled like the family pet on the cum- and whisky-stained mattress did nothing for her except remind her he’d be crying for food sooner than later. And it pissed her off. Where was she supposed to find food? Even her tits weren’t of any value for the baby—taint
ed with any drug she could get her hands on. She sold the milk one really desperate night … an old druggie smelling like vomit and urine, hanging from the tit like a bloated parasite, looking for that ephemeral high. Still, it’d worked for him, and she’d made ten bucks.

  She took another hit. This one was weaker; the momentum had reached its crescendo and would be more and more disappointing after each toke. It was like sucking the bottom of a glass with a straw, trying to find the phantom wetness.

  She felt the boy searching her. It made her uncomfortable, made her feel cheap. Who the fuck was he to be judgmental? She never cursed him when he shit his pants (she didn’t curse him for it anymore … anyway, not anymore!), she rarely got upset when he touched her stash, she rarely yelled and slapped and punched when he walked in on her fucking a john on that same stained mattress (he should have been sleeping anyway—it wasn’t her fault). She was a good mom. Her five other kids could swear to that. She squinted, eyes peering up as if trying to get a peek inside her own head. There were five, weren’t there? Where were they, anyway? She glanced at her wrist, forgetting again she’d hocked the cheap Timex months earlier. She glanced outside through the filthy, sooty window, the brick façade of the opposite building the only view. The darkness indicated the late hour and she wondered for the moment where her other kids had holed up for the night. There were plenty of places a kid could sleep. The warmth of a burned-out tenement would be safe enough for a night. She was sure her fourteen-year-old would take care of the eight-year-old. The other three fell somewhere in between. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to worry about scrounging up dinner for them. She was too tired to think about having to whore herself for a box of spaghetti. Not this evening, anyway.