Creature

by Hunter Shea

  Gritting her teeth, she willed the pain to leave her body, but it was no use. Until she could get her joints back in place, there was only white-hot, incoherent agony.

  And anger.

  The anger made her spine go nuclear, the burning intensifying until she worried that something far more horrible, perhaps irreversible, had occurred from the fall.

  She tried to call for Andrew, but his name was mangled by the ragged scream that shredded her throat.

  * * *

  It was his first run since they’d settled into the cottage. Andrew had started out with his usual reckless abandon, but after nearly catching his feet among the countless raised roots and forest detritus, he’d settled into a much calmer, steadier pace. The last thing he wanted to do was break a leg out here in the middle of nowhere. He’d left the cottage behind twenty minutes ago. He knew they had neighbors, distant as they were, but somehow the path kept him well clear of the nearby homes. He’d heard that Mainers were private people, and this path was proof of it.

  Forget worrying about breaking his leg. He just hoped he could find his way back. At one point, the path had veered to a three-pronged fork. He forgot which fork would take him back.

  If all else fails, just follow your nose and find the lake. You can stick to the shore until you come across the cottage.

  Round Lake had a very definitive odor, a hard-to-classify tang that smelled like childhood summers, fishing with his grandfather, and clear yet simple possibilities. He’d been soaking it up like a bloodhound on the back porch every day while he read. Three books, short police procedurals, were already on his ‘done’ pile. Sitting outside with an afternoon cocktail and a book, glancing over at the lake between chapters, had become his favorite pastime.

  Well, his only pastime to this point.

  Running around a wide tree that looked to have been standing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Andrew headed for home. His legs were getting tired, not used to this style of running. The ground was uneven and hard on his ankles.

  He needed to run today because he was starting to feel discouraged. Yes, he’d finally felt the stick fall from his ass two days earlier. He’d stopped thinking about work, stopped checking his phone for messages. But Kate was still bedridden, unable to even join him on the porch.

  What really bothered him was the source of his frustration. Was it her illness, or Kate herself?

  Sometimes, he just wanted her to slough off what was squashing her down at the moment and fucking live. Use whatever incredible willpower had pushed her through a dozen surgeries, a year on life support, and that night she’d been given last rites by a somber Nigerian priest, to get up and just do something. How hard would it be to walk out that door and sit on a dock? She knew he’d carry her if she needed, and she still didn’t try.

  What the hell was the sense of all this fighting if she wouldn’t even try to really, really live? Being trapped in a house with old movies and an old dog wasn’t life. At best, it was purgatory.

  Stop it!

  Andrew felt sick to his stomach even thinking it. So he ran, picking up his pace, pushing those forbidden thoughts away, deep into the dark corners of his subconscious where they belonged. It was evil to even contemplate such things. This wasn’t her fault. Why blame her? She was the victim, not him.

  Shut…the fuck…up!

  He didn’t see the tree branch that had been bent into a mini St. Louis Arch over the narrow path until it was too late.

  Chapter Nine

  The one good thing about pain was that it could only hit certain heights before your nerves started to dull and your brain shut down. Kate was still very conscious, but had started to lose feeling on her left side. Her spine had cooled down (which was an odd thing to say, even to herself), but attempting to move was out of the question.

  The door banged open and Andrew came rushing inside.

  “Oh my God!”

  Andrew knelt over her, sporting a considerable knot on his forehead, blood smeared up into his hairline. “What happened?”

  “I fell,” she said, trying to hide any sarcasm in her voice. Buttons had his face inches from her own, his hot dog-breath washing over her.

  “Here, let me help you up.”

  Her husband slipped one hand under her thighs and the other under the middle of her back. When he tried to lift her, she screamed.

  “Stop! Stop!” she begged. “No. Don’t pick me up.”

  He licked his lips, eyes anxious. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “My knee. It came out,” she said tightly. Her body had gone so stiff, it felt as if all of her bones were going to splinter. “My hip too.”

  Andrew muttered something, bouncing on the balls of his feet, unsure what to do.

  “Help me put them back in,” she said, dreading it as much as every fiber of her being craved it.

  “Okay. Okay. Where should I start?”

  Unfortunately for Andrew, he’d become as adept as any orthopedist at slipping joints back into place. It was fortunate for Kate, because she didn’t have to run to a hospital every time it happened. Without Andrew, she’d be in emergency rooms daily.

  After hundreds of subluxations, the tendons and ligaments around her knees, shoulders, hips, and wrists had become soft and pliant. It meant bones could and did pop out at will with the slightest provocation. It also meant they could go back in just as easily – though never painlessly – with some assistance.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “They both hurt like hell.”

  So did her chest, but there was nothing he could do about that. Kate willed her heart to settle down, but it wasn’t listening. It rarely did.

  “Which knee, which hip?” he asked, his tone high and nervous. This was the first time both had ever gone out simultaneously.

  “The left,” she said, fresh tears springing.

  His warm hands circled her ankle and calf.

  “I’m going to pull slowly, and we’ll see which one goes back home first.”

  She almost laughed at the thought of her kneecap being a little piggy crying wee-wee-wee all the way to its damaged home. Almost.

  The instant Andrew pulled on her leg, fresh waves of agony pierced her nerves from head to toe. She must have cried out, because he stopped and said, “Okay, I’ll try something else.”

  “No,” she urged him. “Just do it. Keep going, no matter what.”

  Andrew wiped the sweat from his brow and took her leg again. This time, he tilted her leg slightly to the left as he pulled down. She felt her kneecap shift.

  It was hard not to let fly with every curse in her arsenal, but she had to keep quiet or risk Andrew stopping again. No matter the pain, he couldn’t stop until they were both in.

  Every pore on Kate’s body leaked hot, pungent perspiration. It was the smell of pain and fear. It made Buttons back away, though his dark, somber eyes never left her.

  Something clicked in her hip. It was still dislocated, but not as bad as it had been seconds before. Her kneecap continued to slide.

  Kate bit her tongue, copper flooding her mouth. She reached up and grabbed Andrew’s sleeve, twisting it in a knot. He looked pale, on the verge of panic.

  “Don’t…stop,” she said. “Almost…almost there.”

  Her knee slipped into place with a wet thunk. There was no relief, because her hip still had a ways to go. Her hips were always the hardest. She’d been known to projectile vomit a time or two when a hip had been jammed back in place, pain and adrenaline and endorphins pooling in her core.

  “Just the hip to go, honey,” she said, her voice tremulous in her ears.

  He moved both hands to her thigh. She grabbed the leg of the chair and tried to help him by pulling her body back.

  Her hip bone made a sickening crack that startled them both. This time, she couldn’t hol
d back her scream. At the exact same time, an animal outside the cottage let loose with a high-pitched screech. The strange cry stopped her own peal of agony. Andrew looked at her as if to say, I don’t have a freaking clue.

  There was no time to worry about the animal.

  Kate thought her hip bone had broken.

  But the sudden dulling of the searing agony told her the cursed joint was back where it belonged. With so little cushion left, the bone-on-bone shift was like tectonic plates in a dry boogie.

  “It’s in!” she cried, the back of her head thumping on the floor. Buttons leaned forward and licked her face, knowing it was time to celebrate.

  “You want me to get you back in bed?”

  She waved him off. “No. I just need to lie here for a while.”

  Andrew put a pillow behind her head, patted her with a wet washcloth, and gave her a painkiller and anti-inflammatory, his movements fast and sure.

  “You feeling better?”

  “Just give me five minutes and we can go dancing.”

  A small, nervous smile played on his face as he sat on the floor beside her. “You don’t dance on a good day.”

  She laid one hand on his leg, the other on Buttons, the most important men in her life. “That doesn’t mean I can’t start.”

  “We have video from our wedding that says otherwise.”

  “Hey, at least I tried.”

  He smoothed her damp hair from her forehead.

  “What happened to you?” she said, fingers grazing the bump on his head.

  “I wasn’t watching where I was running. Someone must have bent this tree over the path. I smacked right into it, like a dummy.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not as much as your knee and hip.”

  “Go put ice on it. You’re starting to look like a unicorn.”

  Andrew kissed the tip of her nose and took the washcloth he’d used to cool her down and filled it with ice from the freezer. He slumped into a chair, holding it to his forehead.

  “If someone peeked inside right now, they’d call the cops, thinking we just beat each other up,” Kate said.

  “We’d be fine. We have Buttons as a witness.”

  The beagle wagged his tail at the sound of his name.

  “That is true.” She finally felt good enough to sit up, resting her back against the chair. “I thought a bird had flown into the doors, and I wanted to check on it. Serves me right for trying to be nice.”

  Andrew checked the porch and said, “If it was a bird, it’s flown off since then.”

  She didn’t mention the house quaking a bit. Kate was pretty sure she’d been the one shaking, not the cottage.

  He palmed the side of her face and she tilted into him, loving how strong he felt. “Feeling any better?”

  “Anything is better than the way I was before you came in.”

  Without warning, he scooped Kate up, slid the door open with his foot, and settled her into an Adirondack chair on the porch. Buttons came out with them, poking his nose between the slats of the railing.

  “Thirsty?”

  “Very,” she replied, her hip and knee throbbing.

  He went inside and returned with a can of Pepsi for her and a beer for himself. She looked at the beer, then back at the clock on the kitchen wall.

  “It’s noon somewhere,” he said, popping the tab.

  “Times like this, I wish I drank beer.”

  They tapped cans. “Hey, you have stuff in that mason jar way better than beer.”

  “Yeah, but not as much fun.”

  They looked across the lake, watching a loon dive under the water, searching for fish, popping up fifty yards away. Andrew held her hand.

  Despite what had just happened and her being sick in a new way she hadn’t been before, Kate should have been happy.

  Should have.

  Something just wasn’t right, and she didn’t have the heart to rain on Andrew’s parade.

  * * *

  “Look what I got.”

  Andrew dropped a plastic bag on the bed. It was an unseasonably hot day for late June. Kate had made a note to look for a fan somewhere in the house. She was watching a Myrna Loy movie, drifting in and out.

  “What is it?” she said, taking a loop of cable out of the bag.

  “It’s a USB cable. A long one. Since the Wi-Fi in this place is so iffy, we’re going to have to go old school for your tablet. I found it three towns over at this little computer repair shop. The guy who ran it smelled straight up like onions. You owe me for this one.”

  It had been hard living without her tablet. As much as she hated to admit it, the device was her window to the world. Andrew had been looking for a way to reconnect her with it for days now. It was a small miracle that the cottage even had a router. They’d both been expecting to be cast back into the Stone Age. At least the spotty Wi-Fi sometimes made it possible to get enough bars to make a phone call, not that they’d needed to call anyone yet.

  “Oh yay,” she said, clapping. She’d been feeling a little better today. No microwave feels or bad feels. Or shadows or rumbling houses. “Can you set it up?”

  “Nah. I just got it to tease you.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Cripple.”

  She tossed a pillow at him.

  “I will after lunch. I also found a place that makes pizza.”

  He went to the kitchen, bags rustling.

  “I thought you said there weren’t any pizza parlors around,” she said.

  “There aren’t. However, there is a deli that has a pizza oven. It actually looks good.”

  Andrew handed her a paper plate with a slice of greasy pizza. Her stomach rumbled.

  She took a bite and smiled.

  “I know it’s not Milano’s,” he said, tucking into his own messy slice.

  “It’ll do. What the heck kind of pizza is that?” she said, pointing at his plate.

  “They call it a Big Mac pizza. It has all the ingredients of a Big Mac, minus the sesame seed bun. They went a little extreme on the Thousand Island dressing.”

  “It looks disgusting.”

  “Wanna try?”

  “Ew, get that away from me.”

  A dollop of hot dressing spilled on Mooshy. Kate gave him the stink eye.

  “Looks like I’m doing some laundry today,” Andrew said. “What are you watching?”

  She fed Buttons a corner of crust. “It’s an old comedy with Myrna Loy and William Powell.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I married an old lady. I’ve never even heard of these people.”

  “You did marry an old lady, or at least a young woman with an old lady’s body. Alfalfa from The Little Rascals is in it too.”

  “Now him I know.”

  “Watch it with me and expand your horizons.”

  They watched the movie together, and then Andrew washed the pillowcase and some clothes. Afterward, she slowly and carefully walked with him to the dock, her virgin trip to the back forty, as Andrew called it.

  She asked him to take her shoes off so she could feel the sand between her toes. Maybe tomorrow could be the day they sat here and watched the sunrise.

  A cluster of bulging white clouds approached lazily from the other side of the lake. The sun was strong but the humidity low, especially with the wind blowing off the cool lake. On the dock, Kate dipped a bare foot in the water and quickly pulled it back.

  “Check to see how many fish are in there,” she said.

  Andrew laughed. “In the whole lake?”

  “No, just around the dock.”

  “You can see for yourself. The water’s clear as can be.”

  She peered over the side and saw the sandy bottom. Most lakes she knew were murky because the bottom was a bed of black, moldy vegetation.<
br />
  This was even nicer than the beach at Cape May. There were a few large stones and a couple of small branches, but no fish.

  “It’s not like there’s anything big enough down there to eat you,” Andrew said. He took a pull from his beer, one hand playing with her hair.

  “Fish skeeve me. I just don’t want them brushing up against me.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re going to do everything in their power to avoid that. We are a little bit bigger and more intimidating than them.”

  Kate leaned into his chest. Her knee and hip still ached, but the pain had dulled. Andrew had found a sturdy stick during one of his runs and had presented it to her as a cane. She used it sparingly around the house – just when he was looking.

  “It’s really beautiful out here,” she said.

  A seaplane circled overhead before disappearing south.

  “More so now that you’re out here to enjoy it with me. I vote we eat on the deck tonight. It should be plenty warm enough.”

  “I second that. I’m not that hungry, though.”

  He rubbed her shoulder. “You rarely are. How about grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  “Half.”

  “Okay, half.”

  They stayed down at the lake for an hour, the water calm and empty save for a family of ducks bobbing about and a goose that flapped overhead.

  Leaning on Andrew’s arm as they walked back up to the house, she said, “I’m serious, I never want to leave here.”

  “I feel the same way. I’m getting very used to a life of leisure.”

  “It’s kinda like the lake belongs to us and us alone,” Kate said. “It should make me feel lonely, but I don’t.”

  As he helped her onto the bed – she was tired and in need of a nap so they could have fun outside later – he said, “I’d love to see where everyone lives. That path I take to run steers clear of any sign of civilization. It’s as if it was cut intentionally to avoid people.”

  Kate’s head melted into the soft folds of her Mooshy. “I’m sure it was. Take Buttons for company.”

  The beagle was asleep on a chair, not even flinching when they’d opened the sliding door.