The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

  He nods, steps back, and I’m just leaning over her again to get down to business when a pistol’s to the back of my head again. Singer on the other end this time.

  I go still, don’t get it.

  “I’ll do it,” Singer’s saying over my shoulder, to Dashboard Mary, like this isn’t just exactly what she wants. “Just tell me where she is and it can all end right here. Tell me!”

  She closes her eyes, is crying hard and fast now. Shaking her head back and forth. And then she does it, sucks the plastic in as deep as she can.

  Her body starts to jerk.

  “She’s not going to say,” I tell Singer.

  The gun goes away.

  Behind me, he’s crying.

  “Now?” I say, holding the knife to her breast, and when he doesn’t say anything I finger the plastic from her mouth, sling it to the side. It sticks to the window, isn’t sliding yet. The sun’ll lens through it, if it stays up that long, yeah. Make a watery shadow on my thigh, maybe.

  But that’s later.

  Now. Now I dig the stubby blade into the dark bumpy flesh around her nipple, saw a neat little circle until it comes away at the edges. At which point you have to twist it around a couple of times, finally wrench it away from all the ductwork.

  If she was pregnant, you’d get a little blue line of milk there.

  But that’s all long behind this one.

  When she faints away I slap her gently on the side of the face, say it while holding her bloody little pencil eraser up, to inspect: “Not all there anymore, are you?”

  Prod 1 dry heaves, has to fall into the kitchen, the sink.

  Amateur.

  “What did you ask her the first time?” Singer says, standing now, I can tell. His voice booming down in a way I know I know.

  “If she was going to tell us where your little girl was.”

  The little girl part is special for Singer.

  It’s enough. He steps forward, starts to beat into her face with the side of his pistol—he’s crying the whole time, as bad as her—but her face gets sideways, so he’s doing some real injury, catching her behind the ear one too many times.

  She might still be breathing, but her walking days are over now, I’m pretty sure.

  Luckily, I wasn’t planning on her walking anywhere.

  Finally Singer backs off, breathing hard, blood all up and down him, tears on his face, and then he sees me. Looks down to the bloodied pistol in his hand. Raises it like the most casual thing.

  “You,” he says, his lips contorting around all the things he wants to be saying here. He steps forward, so I have to step back, deep. “None of this,” he says, “not if you—not if you hadn’t.”

  “Belinda,” I say, because I can see it on his face.

  It shatters him, hearing her name.

  “The mother,” I add.

  Alissa’s.

  Singer doesn’t have to say yes. Just lifts the pistol up, steadier now. Right against my eyeball.

  “Eat it,” he whispers, flicking his eyes up to what I’ve got in my hand, “dispose of the evidence, Billy,” more shrill, and it’s that part that makes me start to retch a little.

  I shake my head no, try to push away, but he follows.

  “It’s her connection,” he’s saying, “bite through it,” and I wish so bad I still had the robot arms. Or that the wet-dry vac did. That it would come down the hall on its casters, the arms flailing above. To save me.

  At least the mannequin’s blind now, doesn’t have to see this.

  There’s always something to be thankful for, if you look long enough.

  I shake my head no, laugh a fake little laugh at this, my eyes full of tears, but do it somehow when he thumbs the ridged little hammer back. Lower the nipple to my mouth like a warm pepperoni. Close my lips over it, my throat already backing away, deeper into my head.

  “All the way down,” Singer says.

  In the kitchen, Prod 1 is still puking. It doesn’t help.

  I chew and grin, the flesh elastic, a kind of elastic I remember from the storage unit, and I throw up into my mouth but Singer clamps his hand over my lips, doesn’t let any out. “Swallow,” he says, and I do. I do I do I do. Have to hold my throat closed with my hand, but I do.

  Then he steps back.

  Looks down to Dashboard Mary for a long time. Shakes his head at this, all of it. The waste.

  “I was going to tell her where her—tell her what happened to her daughter,” he says at last, sick with himself. “In trade.” Then he shrugs, hooks the back of a knuckle under her jaw, flops her head over. “Hear that?” he says down to her.

  No.

  “She’s yours,” he says to me, throwing the gun onto her stomach. It slaps, sticks.

  Prod 2 collects it. Wipes it down some.

  “Sorry,” Prod 2 says to me, his voice just flat now. Checked out.

  I don’t say anything.

  “Ready yet?” Singer says to Prod 1.

  Prod 1 leans up from the sink, nods. Wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

  He’s washed out, doesn’t say anything.

  Behind me Mary moans, writhes a little.

  “Traffic’ll pick back up,” Singer says back to me, without looking. “Way up, don’t worry.”

  I stand on sick legs, push off the back of the couch to walk them out. It’s what good hosts do. Except.

  Except then there’s a sound behind me. A creaky, baby bird groan that’s not Mary.

  I turn.

  It’s Riley. In the Girl Scout uniform.

  She’s standing somehow, years after the last time she did. Standing and wasted, no sun, her lips all—

  She’s not looking at me, though.

  “I thought—thought I heard her,” she’s saying, her voice just barely there.

  Prod 1 looks around, sees her, sees the Girl Scout uniform, and his hand is a snake, darting into his jacket for his pistol, for me.

  This is my house, though.

  Without breaking stride I reach up onto the fan blade with the tell-tale black screw, the little .22 already angled right for my hand, and pop him twice in the face, fast.

  Prod 2 gets it in the cheekbone, from the side.

  Singer stops, dead men on either side of him. The door’s already balanced in his hand.

  “I trust you’ve got enough barrels for all this,” he says. The Hot Shot Boys. Chinese Coffee Man. Dashboard Mary.

  I nod, don’t say anything. Know that I’ll never see him again, after this.

  He keeps his face down, thinking about his little girl maybe, then looks back up. Holds the door to the side, steps out into the bright world.

  I walk over, wedge the door into place, slide the chain home.

  Chinese Coffee Man slumps over a little more.

  I shoot him in the sternum until the gun’s empty, then I’m standing at the countertop.

  “Family portrait,” Kid Hoodie says, about Riley, who’s nuzzling into what’s left of Dashboard Mary, and what I can see as clear as anything is Mary, knocking on some Mrs. Pease’s door in some town just outside the city. Standing beside Mary is a kid, a young girl she doesn’t know what else to do with. What Mary’s saying, too, admitting, crying probably but not for the reasons Mrs. Pease thinks, is that she knew Jason ten years ago. That—Alissa. That Jason never knew. And then she hands Alissa over, runs away before Mrs. Pease can say anything.

  Or something weepy like that.

  I rub the top of Kid Hoodie’s hood, use him to help me step over Mary’s jacket to the sink, to get the electricity out of my mouth.

  But then I don’t get a drink.

  Something’s spilling from Mary’s right pocket.

  I lift the jacket up with a fork, shake it.

  Confetti. It flutters down.

  I smile, confused. Can’t help but follow it.

  “Throw me a parade?” I say, and pinch some of it up.

  It’s not confetti, though. Just a pocketful of faces.

&
nbsp; I tilt my head over, narrow my eyes at the rest of it. Some of it’s fallen on the snapshots already on the floor.

  I smile. Of course.

  The faces, I slide them into the holes in the snapshots, and some of them, some of them fit so perfectly.

  Except then I’m shaking inside, some flap behind my nose forgetting how to open, that it’s supposed to open so that the rest of me can keep living.

  The face, the guy she cut out of the pictures, it’s me. The guy I couldn’t see, that she wouldn’t let me see because I didn’t deserve to.

  The real reason she was screaming.

  And then for an accidental moment I hear it, Singer’s metronome voice filtering down into the blackest dark of the storage unit, my mouth full of pampered meat.

  What he’s saying is about how I got the scar on my hand. The story of it. Like he’s remembering for me, telling me just because I forgot.

  I hold my hand out before me, spread the fingers, study the burn marks so faint there, and then look behind me to Riley and Mary, on the couch together, and Kid Hoodie says it again, but different this time: Family portrait.

  It’s funny. I cry.

  The snapshots and the pocketful of faces flutter down.

  “Sweep them up later,” I say out loud, my voice strange to me at first but then better. Back. I’m the worm. I live far above all this. I decide who lives, who doesn’t.

  I wait.

  Days later, Mary installed in her room upstairs, Riley back in hers, me in my chair, Mary’s face is on the screen, over the anchor’s shoulder.

  I’m greased up, the sun so nice.

  What they’re calling her is the missing detective’s widow, missing herself.

  Some of herself, anyway, I add.

  I smile, go to another channel. Can hear the Deaf Vegetable Ghost next door. He doesn’t know how loud he is.

  I don’t know.

  I guess Singer thinks him not being able to hear, it’ll give me what I need, or keep him safe, something.

  What it’s really doing, though, it’s got me curious.

  I have these two marbles in my cigar box by the microwave, see. Big ones.

  I kind of want to hold him down on the floor one day, push those marbles in where his eyes used to be.

  Mostly I just want to see if he’ll still blink. If his eyelids won’t get the message, will still be trying to keep this glass wet.

  But not today.

  Today it’s warm, and right now in a smoky dim bar out there in the city, some girl with an unbreakable heart is pulling a slip of paper up from between her breasts, holding that address to her lips like a secret before passing it over.

  In the yellowy light of the bar, then, maybe you try to read it already.

  Everybody has a death wish, I mean.

  The spider in me salutes the fly in you.

  Tip of the hat: good day.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  Stephen Graham Jones has fifteen books before this one. Eleven novels, four collections, and a few more on the way. He has been an NEA fellow, a Stoker Award Finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and has won the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction. Born and raised in West Texas, Jones earned his Ph.D from Florida State University and is now Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he teaches in the MFA program.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Brian Evenson’s Last Days, for giving me nerve to finish this; to Nelson Taylor, for that cutting-the-grass-bit, which I just flat-out stole; to Gordon Lish, from whom I also unshamefacedly stole; to Kasey Ozymy and Anthony Putnicki, Kasey for documenting the love between a man and his appliances, Anthony for how a voice like this can sometimes work; to Gavin Pate, for a so-important first read, to Paul Tremblay for a second read, to Jonathan Heinen for a most-most important third read, to Christopher O’Riley and Christopher David Rosales for reads after that, and to Brenda Mills, for trying to try to read this one, anyway; to John Fowles and Vladimir Nabokov, for mapping out how novels like this can be done; to Jack Ketchum and Joe R. Lansdale, for taking it even further, and never once flinching; to Bret Easton Ellis, for showing that there could be smiles in there as well; to White Hotel and The Life of Pi and Atonement, for showing that made-up redemption can be the most real thing ever; to Ubik and VALIS and A Scanner Darkly, for showing one way to stumble in the direction of that redemption; to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, for cueing me into that PKD path, that once-upon-a-time Palahniuk shuffle; to Scott McCloud, for the ending; to Brian Aldiss, for a template; to Carlton Mellick III and Jeremy Robert Johnson, for knowing what shouldn’t really be done, then doing it anyway, and with a grin; to James Welch’s Winter in the Blood, for showing a way a novel can be put together piece by little piece, so that it never comes apart; to Cormac McCarthy, for wending a tender route through all that, but leaving bloody footsteps, and to JDO, for following those footprints into the darkness. And, to an ex-stepdad, for taking a certain five-year-old to the caliche pit in Big Springs one unfine day, setting his beer down on the lip of a cliff and then stepping backwards into the open space just all at once, so that that screaming hysterical five-year-old would grow up one day with a distinct taste for this kind of stuff. Never mind that that stepdad was ten feet down on a little shelf of rock, holding on by his fingertips, laughing. Thank you. And thanks again and always times thirteen to my wife Nancy, who had no idea what I was writing this time down in the basement, but believed in me all the same. And would have even if she had known. Now it’s out of my head for a while. All smiles.

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