Bad Games

by Jeff Menapace

  Caleb and Carrie were already heading back to the Philadelphia area. Patrick’s parents had received a call by one of the homicide detectives from the Allegheny County Police, and he explained the situation. The elder Lamberts were out the door the second the phone was put back on its receiver.

  * * *

  When the police had initially arrived at Maria Fannelli’s house, Patrick was actually delighted to see his favorite sheriff walk through the front door. As the ambulance was busy attending to his family and the deceased, Patrick couldn’t help slipping in a snide remark as the sheriff stood quietly in the corner while the Allegheny County detectives, who had been called in to assist a situation of this magnitude, surveyed the scene.

  “You believe us now, asshole?” Patrick said.

  Patrick was sure he saw one of the detectives smirk after his remark, and the sheriff just pulled his hat down over his brow, turned, and left without a word.

  * * *

  Both Patrick and Amy slept that first night in the hospital. They were heavily sedated after the doctor had attended to their wounds and neither one opened their eyes until well after noon the following day.

  “Hi, baby,” Patrick said. His head was turned on his pillow, looking at his wife lying in the bed to his left. She looked weary but even more beautiful than he ever thought possible. There she was, her hair matted, face pale, tired eyes circled in blue, and an large white dressing covering the wound on her chest—and Patrick was simply mesmerized by her beauty. His soul mate had almost been taken from him. But now they were safe. They were safe and they had triumphed. And Patrick’s love for his wife became so suddenly intense it made his abdomen hurt. But in a good way. A good hurt.

  Amy turned her head to the right. She smiled more with her eyes than she did her mouth. “Hi.”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Tired. You?”

  “The same.”

  “You think the kids are okay?”

  Patrick nodded. “My parents probably have them locked inside an impenetrable fortress right now, giving them whatever they want. You know how they are.”

  She said, “You think they’ll be okay?”

  Patrick shared his wife’s worry and it showed on his face. “You mean in the long run…psychologically…”

  Amy nodded against her pillow.

  “Yeah. They’re young. The memories will fade in time.”

  Amy looked at her husband in silence for a few seconds. Patrick wanted to think she was now experiencing the painful love and gratitude he was feeling. When she smiled with both her eyes and her mouth, he was sure of it.

  “I love you so much, Patrick.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  “You protected us just like you said you would.”

  Patrick shook his head against his own pillow. “It was all of us. We protected each other.”

  Amy rolled back to the center of the pillow and looked at the ceiling. After a brief pause she rolled back to her right and said, “Yeah, I guess we did. In a million years I never thought I’d be capable of sticking a nail file into a man’s balls.”

  Patrick winced and hissed in a playful manner, cupping both hands over his groin. “Ouch,” he said. “I gotta say that’s pretty impressive, baby. As soon as we get home I’m getting rid of all the nail files in the house.”

  She giggled softly. “We can get rid of the files as long as you promise not to bite off my nose.”

  Now it was Patrick’s turn to giggle. “Tasted like chicken.”

  Amy’s eyes widened. “You didn’t swallow it, did you?”

  Patrick could not help a full-on laugh. The stitches on his stomach instantly complained and he put a hand on them. “No, no, I was just kidding, baby. I didn’t swallow the guy’s nose.”

  “If Oscar was there you know he would have,” she said.

  They both laughed, both winced.

  Patrick’s smile faded. He said, “Poor little guy.”

  There was a long pause after that. Patrick looked at the ceiling, then to the wall to his right, then back to his left towards Amy. “Are we demonstrating some sort of defense mechanism right now you think?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are we really laughing about the barbaric things we did?” The realization was there, but its impact seemed diluted. He didn’t know why. “I killed two men.”

  Amy rolled back to the center of her pillow and looked at the ceiling again. She didn’t roll back to face him when she replied, “Yeah, I guess we are…utilizing a defense mechanism. Maybe laughter after a traumatic episode like we experienced is normal. Part of the healing process.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe we just have sick senses of humor.”

  Amy broke her gaze from the white ceiling tiles and looked at her husband with one eye. “You’re the one with the sick sense of humor.”

  “You love my sense of humor.”

  “You have your moments.”

  “That had to be an accident.”

  “What?”

  “You really didn’t just willingly give me the cue to sing Edwin McCain again did you?”

  “I actually like that song,” she said. “And you do realize that every time you sing it, you make it harder and harder to like, don’t you?”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “You have no respect for the wounded.”

  “Here I go.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Patrick started singing.

  Amy bit down a smile and looked away. “Dork.”

  68

  Amy felt eyes on her in the middle of the night. Jim was at the foot of her bed, naked and aroused and leering at her. She attempted a scream, tried to slink away from her sheets, but an invisible force held her down and stole her tongue.

  She turned to her right, praying her husband was awake. He was dead. His eyes open and unblinking, the white sheet covering his body soaked through in red.

  Jim laughed when she saw her husband’s body. He laughed and then began to dance. His naked body hopped and twirled around the room, his skin giving off a pale glow in the dark room.

  “Help,” Amy attempted to say. “Please help.” The words were there, her desire impossibly strong, but her lips could not move.

  She managed to raise a hand to her mouth where it flopped against her face as though belonging to someone else. She fumbled and tried to separate her lips, to pry her mouth open so her cries could escape. The dexterity of the foreign hand on her mouth was poor; for each finger that probed successfully there was another that hung limp and useless.

  Jim’s white body began to crawl up the bedroom wall directly in front of her, his arms and legs bent at odd angles and working in unison. He resembled a giant white crab scurrying up a dune in the moonlight.

  Amy watched Jim’s body scale the wall in front of her, then continue its trek to the ceiling where it hung overhead, a few feet from where she lay. Jim would stop every few inches and twist his head in impossible directions, never forgetting to lock eyes and grin at Amy before resuming his scuttle.

  He was directly above her, the anatomy on his backside now strangely altered, taking on a smooth appearance, devoid of muscle tone and structure. Even the split in his ass had come together into a solid white. His body was that of a parasite’s—the odd shape and deformities making this blatant to Amy within the bizarre truths of the dream world.

  The parasite released its grip on the ceiling with its left hand and left foot, allowing the blood-red underside of its body to swing open like a door. From its neck down it was covered in an array of hungry erections, each one a thick pulsating blue, their heads small razor-toothed mouths dripping fluids as they opened and closed with desire, waiting to suck the essence from their host.

  The parasite swung back towards the ceiling and re-attached itself, its backside to Amy once again. The head that still belonged to Jim rotated 180 degrees until it fixed on Amy. The wicked grin and glowing
-yellow eyes encompassed the rest of his face, cartoon-like, an excessive caricature of the once-Jim Fannelli’s features.

  The mouth opened, still grinning, but spoke no words. It clicked and popped a foreign communiqué that Amy knew belonged to its race of parasite. She also knew that it was laughing at her as it got ready to drop from above and attach itself to her frozen body, the hungry erections ready to probe and fasten themselves to her skin while they fed.

  Jim’s head clicked a few more times, the body vibrating as it prepared to launch, and just as Amy found her voice, it dropped from the ceiling.

  * * *

  Amy’s scream woke up Patrick and the medical staff who happened to be just outside the room’s entrance. They rushed in and attended to her, wiping down her soaked brow.

  Patrick was propped up in bed on both elbows as he looked helplessly to the medical staff assisting his wife.

  “Just a bad dream,” the nurse said, smiling at Patrick. “She’ll be fine.”

  Patrick nodded and slowly lowered himself back down onto his bed. He listened to his wife’s rapid breathing and the nurse’s soothing words. His wife had weathered the first of many nightmares to come. Patrick closed his eyes, breathed in deep, and waited for his inevitable turn.

  69

  It was still dark outside when Patrick opened his eyes again. The steady hum of the hospital and all its gadgets therein provided a decent white noise that, in any other condition, would have sent him off to dreamland almost instantly. The stab wound on his stomach, however, was throbbing just enough to keep him awake.

  He turned to his left and saw his wife rolled on her side, looking back at him.

  “Hi, baby,” he said. “Can’t sleep either?”

  “I’ve been in and out since that nightmare,” she said.

  “It was a bad one huh?”

  She sighed. “Yeah. How ’bout you? You were moaning in your sleep just now.”

  “I was?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My stomach hurts,” he said. “Must’ve been that.”

  “I’ll kiss it all better when we get home,” she said.

  He smiled. “It feels better already.”

  Amy rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. The sound of two nurses chatting started faint, grew loud, then went faint again as they walked past their door.

  “You know what I don’t get?” Patrick asked.

  Amy turned her head back to her husband. “What?”

  “Crescent Lake,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “That lake is square. It’s not even remotely crescent-shaped.”

  Amy said, “You just realized that now?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “Only my husband could have a menial epiphany like that at a time like this.”

  He smirked. “I guess we can figure out how the place got its name when we leave the hospital.”

  “Knock yourself out, baby. Me? I’m staying as far away from that fucking lake as possible.” She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. “Goodnight.”

  70

  Patrick running through the woods. Someone is chasing him. He turns over his shoulder and sees a big man following close behind. The man is carrying a pitchfork in both hands and wearing a burlap sack with one eyehole over his head. A terror unlike anything Patrick has ever felt since childhood sweeps over him. He knows he cannot out-run his pursuer. He knows he will be caught. He knows that before he is killed the assailant will remove his hood and Patrick will see his face—the deformed face that haunted him throughout his childhood.

  Patrick continues running anyway. In the distance, he sees an abandoned shed. He knows what’s inside. Knows the victims of his pursuer are inside, mutilated and decomposing. He knows that no matter what he does, he will join them soon.

  He enters the shed anyway. The shed is lit with random candles, casting a flickering glow on a scene littered with corpses. Some are freshly killed with wide, lifeless eyes staring back at him. Some are gray and rotted, riddled with bugs.

  He slams the shed door shut and hoists two fresh kills up against it in an attempt at a barricade. He takes several steps back, waiting for his pursuer to try and enter. He scans the shed, looking for a weapon.

  There is a bang at the door. The pursuer is trying to shove it open; the fresh kills are making it difficult, buying him precious time. Patrick spots a machete by one of the candles. It is next to the body of a man with no head. He knows it’s a man by his clothes and the severed head inches from his torso. He was a fresh kill. The blood on the stump of the neck is wet. The eyes on the head are open and staring up at him. They start to blink when he grabs the machete. He cries out at the impossible absurdity of it, and they only blink faster.

  Patrick turns to face the door. The banging has stopped. The man with the burlap sack and pitchfork is no longer at the door. He’s somewhere though. He’s close by— somewhere outside, looking for a way in. And he will get in. Patrick knows this. Knows it truer than anything.

  His bowels are close to giving out; his bladder has already emptied. Patrick tightens his grip on the machete and takes another step back, away from the door. He steps on something. The tip of a boot. Someone is behind him.

  Patrick spins and swings the machete. It slices into the man with the burlap sack’s shoulder. The heavy blade becomes stuck in its new meaty home, Patrick losing his grip in a failed attempt to jerk it free. The solitary eye through the eyehole grows wide, a pained moan is heard. He’s not dead. Because he can’t die. And he’s angry. Patrick’s death will now be far, far worse.

  The man with the burlap sack pulls the machete from his shoulder and drops it to the floor with a clatter. He is still holding the pitchfork.

  It’s time to die, Patrick thinks to himself. He is going kill me with that pitchfork and leave me here in this shed to rot. No one will ever find me.

  But the man with the burlap sack doesn’t kill Patrick. Instead, he removes his hood. Patrick sees his face and screams.

  * * *

  Now it was Amy’s turn to look on with worry as the nurse rushed to her husband’s side. His care was no different than what she’d received after her nightmare, but unlike Amy, Patrick’s sheets needed changing.

  Patrick stood and did not make eye contact with his wife as he walked to the bathroom. He closed the door behind him while the nurse stripped the bed. Amy was sure she heard her husband weeping behind the bathroom door. She started to cry too.

  71

  Homicide Detective Michael Henry waited a few days before talking to Amy and Patrick Lambert in detail. He’d taken brief statements from them the night they were brought to the hospital, however there were still things to discuss. He had questions, but most significantly, he had information.

  “He’s not dead?” Patrick asked.

  Detective Henry shook his head. “Afraid not. He’s currently being treated over in the east wing.”

  “He’s in this hospital?” Amy blurted.

  Henry nodded.

  “Shouldn’t he be in jail or something?” Amy asked.

  “They’ve got to treat him first. Don’t worry; we’ve got him under constant supervision. If he so much as sneezes, we’re there to say ‘God bless you.’”

  Amy snorted. “Even God wouldn’t waste His time on a psycho like that.”

  Detective Henry gave Amy a slight nod in agreement.

  Patrick sat up in his bed. “What about the other one?”

  “James Fannelli?” Henry asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Very dead.”

  “Good,” Amy said. She reached behind her head and folded her pillow in half to prop her head higher. “What else?”

  Henry pulled at his tie. He felt sweat on the back of his neck. “Your friends…”

  “Lorraine and Norm?” Patrick said.

  Henry lowered his head. Amy started to cry.

  “Yeah, we kind of knew already,” Patrick said. “Arty he…basically
told us what they’d done.”

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. He let a moment of silence go by before continuing. “The mother is still alive,” he said. “She’s being treated here as well.”

  Patrick turned to his left, exchanged looks with his wife. She was wiping tears from both eyes. “What’s her condition?” Patrick asked.

  “She’s stable, but she’s been pretty out of it since she’s been here. Came to for a short while, but just babbled a lot of nonsense. Her records show she suffers from dementia.”

  “Yeah, we know,” Patrick said. “We got the whole inside scoop from the psychos themselves.”

  Henry gave a sympathetic smile. “Right; you mentioned it in your initial statement.”

  Patrick nodded with a slow blink.

  Henry looked over his notes again. He flipped a page and ran his index finger down the paper, muttering to himself as he skimmed each line.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Patrick asked.

  Henry glanced up from his notes. He appeared startled out of thought. “Who?”

  “The mother. What’s going to happen to the mother?”

  Henry lowered the notes to his side. “I imagine she’ll be here a bit longer.”

  “We mean when she gets better,” Amy said. “What will happen to hear when she heals?”

  Detective Henry shrugged. “With her condition—and I’m talking about the dementia, not the gunshot wound—there’s no way to be sure. You said in your statement that she had no recollection of being a mother, and she was calling for her deceased husband the night she was shot by her son.”

  “That’s right,” Amy said.

  “Well then my guess would be that things for her will only get worse. Without her sons around to look in on her she won’t be trusted to live on her own. She’ll likely be committed to a rest home of sorts.”

  Patrick frowned and shook his head. “Poor ignorant woman. Maybe it’s for the best she loses her memory after all. I mean, I’m sure the last thing she’d want to remember is giving birth to two fucking psychopaths that could shoot their own mother.”