Get Bent!

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Do you want to call her?”

  “And say what? That we came back home because we were at the hollows against their wishes but then got chased off by monsters? My folks don’t mark the liquor bottles, but I’m pretty sure they’ll start if I tell them that.” Realizing that what I’d said wasn’t even remotely comforting, I added, “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll be home soon.”

  I only hoped it would be soon enough.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Aside from a quick shower on my part, after realizing I smelled of dried puke – during which Riva insisted I leave the bathroom door open – we continued our wide-eyed wait on the couch.

  Hours passed and eventually we both must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, the front door was being unlocked. I cracked my eyes open in time to see both Mom and Chris walk in the door. That couldn’t have been right. I could see the yard beyond them, faint but visible, as if it were morning already.

  “What time is it?” I croaked.

  Mom stopped right inside the door, her eyes widening as if surprised to see us. Chris, normally one to blurt out something mean, stupid, or both, simply stood by her side, a glazed expression on his face. Not too surprising, I guess. If she’d kept him out all night, then he was probably dead tired.

  “Almost six,” she replied warily, before turning to my brother. “Christopher, dear, you’ve had a long night. Why don’t you go to bed?”

  Without saying a word, my brother walked past her toward the basement stairs.

  “Night, bro,” I called to him sleepily. He didn’t acknowledge me back. Fine, be rude, you little asshole.

  Before I could ask Mom why she was getting in so late, or early, she said, “I thought you were spending the night at Riva’s.”

  Upon hearing her name, my friend stirred. She bolted upright, as if from a bad dream, but then looked around, noticed my mom, and quickly tried to compose herself. “Oh, h-hey, Mrs. Bentley.”

  Mom continued to stare at us strangely. I was starting to feel paranoid, like maybe we actually had crossed over into another dimension, but then I realized it might have to do with the fact that Riva and I were surrounded by sports equipment.

  “There’s a good explanation for all of this,” I said after a beat.

  “I’m sure there is,” she replied, raising an eyebrow. “I can’t wait to hear why you two felt the need to turn my living room into the field of dreams.”

  I instantly felt relieved. This was the Mom I knew.

  Of course, the big question now was what to tell her. I’ll be the first to admit, coming up with a believable story had been the furthest thing from my mind a few hours earlier. Heck, I wasn’t even sure I should try.

  I mean, werewolves were real, for Christ’s sake. Not only that, but we’d encountered them only a few miles from where we lived. Crazy as it was to tell my parents that, who was to say someone wouldn’t be hurt if I didn’t? Could I live with myself if Chris or one of his loser friends went missing near those same woods, all because I was too worried about looking like a nut?

  Riva, apparently sensing the conflict in me, said, “We need to tell her.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “It’s ... a bit of a story, Mom.”

  My mother put her purse down and walked past us. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To the kitchen. I can see there’s something you want to say. I’m going to put on some coffee, and you two are going to talk.”

  “But...”

  “You’re an adult, Tamara,” Mom shot back. “There’s no need to pretend like you’re twelve and have a secret crush. I think we’re a little past that.”

  Blunt as always, but she had a point. Heck, in another two years I wouldn’t even need to swipe my parents’ liquor. I could just go out and buy my own. Mind you, acting like an adult and telling another older adult an insane story about your fight with supernatural monsters were two completely different things.

  As we found ourselves seated around the kitchen table, I still wasn’t quite sure what to say that wouldn’t make it sound as if we’d both gone looney tunes.

  Mom, no idiot, obviously sensed our hesitation. “Let me be blunt and to the point,” she stated, worry in her eyes. “Did someone try to hurt you girls?”

  “Well...”

  “Not exactly someone,” Riva said, glancing my way.

  Mom waited impatiently, staring at us as she stirred creamer into her coffee – the spoon making ding noises as it hit the sides of her cup. “Do we need to involve the police? Because I have Chief Johnson’s home number and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  It took me a moment to see where her line of questioning was going, but then it sunk in. There we were, two young women, who’d been out unsupervised for the night. No doubt her next question was going to involve whether someone had slipped something in our drinks.

  I let out a sigh and decided to just rip the Band-Aid off. Riva, probably sensing the determination on my face, took a step back. Once again, my house, my parents, so my job to do the telling. Of course, that also meant I was going to catch the bulk of any shit thrown back at us. Hoo-freaking-rah. “We weren’t at Riva’s house last night.”

  “Call me psychic,” Mom replied, “but I kind of figured that. So what was it? A party? One of those rave things? Were there drugs?”

  “We went camping.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “It was over in the hollows.”

  There came a beat of silence, followed by, “What? Are you insane?”

  “It was just the two of us. No boys. No drugs.” I stopped short of mentioning alcohol. No point in throwing more fuel onto that bonfire.

  Mom didn’t look even remotely happy. Maybe I should’ve said we went to a drug-fueled rave after all. “We told you not to go there.”

  Probably stupid of me to mouth off, but I threw her own words back in her face. “True, but like you said, we’re adults now. So we made an adult decision.”

  “That’s not an adult decision, young lady. That’s pure stupidity.”

  “It was a nice night. We just went camping. That’s all. It’s not like we knocked over a 7-11 first.”

  “But why the hollows?” She stood, turned away from us, and slapped her hands onto the counter. “You could have gone to Foreman Woods instead. You’d have been safe there. It’s neutral ground.”

  What? “Back up for a second. What do you mean by...”

  Mom wasn’t about to be distracted, though. “Never mind that. The hollows are a bad place, Tamara. Do you think we’ve been telling you that for our own amusement?”

  Something clicked in my head. No. They wouldn’t have tried to scare me for kicks. That wasn’t Mom’s style. Never had been. But they’d always been vague about it. Suddenly, I got the impression there was more here than meets the eye. “What do you know?”

  She stopped talking, our eyes locked, and then she echoed what I asked her just a moment earlier. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said. What did you think was going to happen to us there? All these years you’ve been saying what a bad place it is and how I’m forbidden to go there, but I’m just now realizing there’s never been a reason as to why.”

  “I don’t think I appreciate your tone, young lady.”

  Riva got up. “Maybe I should go home.”

  Mom pointed a finger at her. “You’re not getting out of this that easily. Not unless you want me phoning your parents.”

  My friend couldn’t have sat down faster if someone had tied an anchor to her butt. Adults we might be, but not so old that we’d shaken off the conditioning we’d grown up with.

  Mom continued to glare at us for several seconds, the only sound in the kitchen the clack-clack of her fingernails on the countertop. “When your father gets home, we’re going to have a long talk about what it means to be a responsible adult.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She’d come home to find me an
d my best friend obviously scared out of our wits and her biggest concern was that we’d gone camping?! My Twilight Zone theory was beginning to look more and more plausible.

  “You are never to go near the hollows again,” she continued. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Now it was my turn to get angry. Mom was always the disciplinarian among my parents. Despite the typical threats of “wait until your father gets home,” I always knew who ruled the roost when it came to punishment. As a result, she was the one I was least likely to cross. Don’t get me wrong. Dad had a lot of bark when he got riled up, but there was seldom much bite behind it.

  But damn it all, I’d cleaned a freaking werewolf’s clock a few hours earlier. Mom had all the power in the world to ground me until I was finished with college, but I’d be damned if she was going to blow me off without hearing me out first. “Don’t you even want to know what happened to us last night? What we saw?” I gave my best impersonation of her voice, which wasn’t all that bad. “Oh, my dearest Tamara. I see that you’re terrified for some reason. Why, whatever happened to you and your friend?”

  The look on her face said she was less than impressed by my powers of mimicry. Rather than chew me out, though, she said, “You didn’t see anything.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Her tone was deceivingly calm, but I didn’t buy it. “There was nothing out there in those woods. Whatever you think you saw, I’m sure it was just your imagination.”

  I turned toward Riva, flabbergasted at what I was hearing. Her face echoed mine, but she wasn’t about to speak up. Her parents were old school and had, more than once, told mine that they were free to discipline her as they saw fit. No doubt she figured that rule still applied. Guess I had to be the one to grow a backbone.

  “Under normal circumstances I’d say you were right, Mom. That maybe I was hallucinating.”

  “Tamara, don’t,” she warned, but I ignored her.

  “After all, I left my meds here. Didn’t realize until it was too late and I was certain I was dying.”

  My mother’s eyes opened wide in surprise and something else ... fear. “You left your medication home? Of all the stupid things to do. You know better than that.”

  “It was an accident. I thought I had them with me.” I considered throwing my brother under the bus but, tempting as it was, dragging him into this probably wouldn’t help much. Besides, I’d started it by swiping his stupid game system. “They must have fallen out of my bag.”

  Mom’s lips pursed, as if she was thinking. After a moment, her expression softened. “Let me see if I have this straight. You forgot your pills, got sick, and then got spooked on your way back here because...”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean, yes, that was the plan. Riva was trying to help me back to the car so we could come back here and get my meds, but something happened first. We saw...”

  “Tamara,” Mom interrupted, “when was the last time you took your pills?”

  For some reason I briefly felt the urge to lie. There was something in her eyes that told me she didn’t want to know the truth. She wanted to hear that I’d come back home and swallowed my pills, just as I’d done every day for most of my life.

  Things had gone too far, gotten way too weird for that. She was hiding something, and I had a feeling only the truth was going to set it free. “Yesterday morning.”

  She gasped. “No! That’s almost twenty-four hours.”

  “Well aware, Mom. Trust me on that.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In my pocket.”

  A look of relief crossed her face. “Good. It’s not too late. I want you to take them now and...”

  I stood and approached her. “What do you mean ‘not too late?’ Isn’t that what I’ve been told my entire life? Take them or else. Hell, I felt the or else part. Puked my guts out all over the forest. Thought I was going to die right then and there.”

  “We can discuss this after you’ve taken your meds. I’ll make an appointment with the doctor and we can...

  “You’re not listening to me. I don’t need the damned meds!” My frustration boiled over and I slammed my fist down with an audible CRACK. The countertop shattered beneath the force of the blow and Riva let out a screech of surprise.

  Oh, yeah. Forgot I could do that.

  Silence descended in the kitchen for several seconds.

  “Um ... sorry?”

  “Bent 1, Formica zero,” my friend muttered under her breath.

  “It’s Italian marble,” Mom corrected, her tone expressing annoyance more than anything else.

  My mouth dropped open as realization hit. “You’re not surprised, not even in the slightest, are you?”

  Her eyes locked with mine and she replied in a voice that was as calm as a lake on a cloudless day. “Of course not, you stupid, stupid girl.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? How much danger you’ve put yourself in?”

  “Would any of that danger happen to be from werewolves?” Riva asked in a small voice. I had to give her credit for speaking up. Good thing, too, because Mom and I would have probably bickered for the rest of the day about stupid things like the countertop.

  My mother slowly turned toward her. “I’m sorry, dear, but you look tired.”

  Riva nodded. “I am, but I’m pretty sure I’m not getting any sleep anytime...

  “No. You’re not listening.” Mom’s gaze locked onto my friend’s and the strangest thing happened. I could have sworn they lit up for just a moment. Probably my imagination running wild again with... “Go into the other room and take a nap.”

  Though I saw her lips move and heard the words leave her mouth, it was as if multiple voices had spoken at once. Some seriously weird reverb there. Maybe I was more fatigued than I thought. “She doesn’t need a...”

  Riva stood without a word, turned, and marched back into the living room.

  “Um, where are you going? She wasn’t being literal.”

  My mother, for her part, turned and poured herself another cup of coffee. “There. That should give us some privacy to discuss matters. She’s seen far more than she should have, but I can take care of that.”

  Earlier, when Mom had first walked in the door, I’d been weirded out for some reason. I’d dismissed it as nothing more than nerves, but now that feeling was back again, and a lot stronger.

  I walked to the kitchen exit. Interestingly enough, though she’d stepped away only seconds earlier, Riva was sacked out on the couch, snoring as if she’d been that way for hours. The hell?!

  Last night had been weirder than anything I’d ever experienced in my life, but today was trying to give it a run for its money, and doing a heck of a job at it so far. I glanced back toward my mother.

  Before I could speak – not that I knew what I was going to say – the growl of a car engine outside caught my attention. It was followed by the sound of a door slamming shut.

  Mom stepped up beside me. “Your father always did have impeccable timing.”

  Sure enough, he stepped through the front door a few seconds later.

  His eyes fell upon me and the first thing he said was, “Thank goodness you’re all right!”

  Pity for him, the first words out of my mouth were less cheerful. “What happened to your face?”

  Dad was a mess – a black eye, dried blood beneath his nose, and numerous scratches covering his face and neck. He looked like someone had used him as a punching bag.

  Mom pushed past me – not surprising, considering the condition of her husband. But when she spoke, her tone was only partially sympathetic. “Are you okay? Who was it this time?”

  “I’m fine.” Dad averted his eyes. “Craig, but there’s a good reason, Lissa...”

  “I thought we talked about this.”

  This was crazy. They were acting like Dad, a guy who I couldn’t recall ever even spanking me, had just com
e home from Fight Club. Weirder, Mom was acting like this wasn’t the first time either. Truth be told, I was beginning to wonder whether I’d actually fallen into a coma after all. Surely this wasn’t the same boring family I’d said goodbye to yesterday.

  “I know, but you have to understand, I had to.” He stopped and turned toward me. “Isn’t that right, Tam Tam?”

  Dad stepped past my mother and stood looking down at me expectantly.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I was just telling Mom that some seriously weird shit happened...”

  “Language, young lady!”

  “I think we can overlook it this time, dear,” Dad said, turning back to me. “After all, I understand our daughter had a somewhat stressful night, out camping where she wasn’t supposed to be.”

  What?! How did he know that?

  “You’re lucky I was there,” he continued. “Although, next time, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kick me in the crotch.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  My eyes opened wide as saucers as his words sunk in. I’d kneed a werewolf last night, true, one of the big ones – taking the fight out of it. Was Dad trying to tell me he was...?

  No!

  I shoved him away, sending him stumbling back across the living room. Then I stepped between him and my mother, fists raised. “Get back, Mom. He’s not who we think he is.”

  “Really, Tamara?” Her tone wasn’t exactly full of alarm like I was expecting. “Must we do this?”

  I glanced back toward her just as movement registered in my periphery.

  Dad had recovered his footing. “You need to calm down, honey ... whoa!”

  I spun and threw a punch, intent on knocking him into next week but, much to my amazement, he dodged, moving faster than I’d ever seen him.

  My blow, a sloppy haymaker thrown in panic, missed by a mile. The momentum sent me staggering past him. Before I could recover, Dad locked his arms – far hairier than I remembered them being – around me and held me in place. “That’s enough!”