He flinched, flinging her arm away from him, sending an arc of Rioja flying across the room. Deep red seeped into the carpet, flourishing like the bastard child of Rorschach’s nightmares. Its twin was spawning over Rachel’s outfit, blossoming in her pastel ensemble.
“Now look what you’ve made me do,” he mumbled, turning from her anger. He grabbed for the bottle, desperate to refill his glass and find some small grain of solace from what was left of his afternoon. If he didn’t look at her perhaps she would leave.
She didn’t.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” There it was. The veneer dropped; no more sympathy and concern; the monster revealed.
He imagined Rachel’s face twisting in rage as she spouted behind him, the eyes scrunching into wrinkle encircled raisins, exaggerating her crow’s feet. He could hear her lipstick fracture as her lips thinned, the sound of a crème Brule’s crust cracking. He could imagine flakes of red Estee Lauder Pure Colour falling on to her collar mixed with spittle and rage.
The bottle felt comforting, the familiar feel of the thin neck in his hand, grabbed perhaps a little more tightly than normal. His glass, where was his glass? Dropped when she had touched him. Look for the glass, not at her, keep your eyes on the floor, away from the leech. Oh for some salt!
“I said, what the hell do you think you’re doing!”
A hand on his shoulder. Oh god, why did she have to put a hand on his shoulder. Surely she knew he didn’t want to be touched. Wasn’t that clear?
He tensed up. His muscles tightened. His jaw pulsing as his teeth gritted. He gripped the bottle a little tighter still, his knuckles whitening and spun to face the seething harridan.
Her face was as he imagined, all bile and hate, yet still the countenance of a victim as if it wasn’t her who had come to his house unbidden, nosing into his business.
He knew there were going to be more words. Words he didn’t want to hear. He would do anything not to hear those words. He shifted his weight, readying himself for the onslaught.
And that was when the blackness took him.
When he came to, he was alone, face down like a murder victim in the centre of his wine stained carpet, the empty bottle lying by his side.
~~~
No one visited him again.
Or no one human.
He had become persona non grata which suited him fine.
He couldn’t remember exactly when the foxes started visiting or when he started to feed them for that matter.
He was no stranger to the foxes, or their nocturnal sounds to be more precise, listening to their lust filled exertions, screeching like fire branded owls as they rutted into the small hours of the night.
From time to time he would see a snout poking from the tangle of weeds, sniffing the air, slinking away as soon as they caught his scent. It was like that for months, an occasional sighting followed by a flash of orange and white before the tail disappeared from view. The last thing he expected was for one to brazenly present itself to him.
It had been another night spent in the embrace of his good friend Jack Daniels, waiting for the booze to drag him off to Never Neverland, or whatever place would have him; he was far too old to be a Lost Boy anymore. Caught halfway between sleep and consciousness, he half fancied he saw a flickering of activity in the long grass around his compost bins.
Not that they had seen any use in the days since then. It had been his plan to make his own compost to feed his soon to be prize winning tomatoes; trips to buy fertiliser only carried bitter memories for him. But the plan never grew much beyond conception leaving the bins to stand as further testament to his failures in life as his tomatoes withered and died.
The movement flickered again, more definite this time, a parting of the grasses and nettles between the bins.
It was the snout he saw first, a red furred cone, sporting a shock of white on the underside and tipped with a shiny black button. His initial inclination had been to throw his empty bottle of Jack in its general direction.
On a rarer, soberer night he might have made the effort. Maybe. But tonight was a familiar one where the ‘buzz’ had claimed him, easing him into the role of witness rather than participant.
Eyes, ears and a neck came next followed by a mangy body, the fur matted in patches against the thin frame, blackened in spots with faeces. Two more heads emerged from either side, squeezing into the space between the composters; Cerberus reborn.
Paul watched impotently as the trio stalked forth, leaving a trail of flattened grass in their wake. They paused momentarily amongst the sprawl of grasses, sniffing at a handful of pizza crusts abandoned for the birds in the centre of his lawn.
Scavengers, thought Paul, sighing internally blooming scavengers. At least you’re more honest than some. Well, come take what you want, you’re welcome to whatever you can find.
They ignored the off casts, slinking onwards towards Paul. And then they stopped, dropping their rears and sitting upright. Three narrow heads staring back at him from barely six feet away.
For a while that was all they did. Sitting and staring, man and foxes, waiting as the moon rose higher. And then the world changed for Paul forever.
“We know what happened.” It was the middle fox who spoke first, the mange ridden cur, not that the other two looked any healthier.
Paul stared at them, mouth open, waiting for his brain to catch up with the scene. Surely someone would remind him of his lines any time now. The bottle of Jack dropped from his hand, shattering against the floor, a sticky sea of molasses weeping across the patio, bleeding into the cracks, but he didn’t care. There was only one thing in his world right now.
“We want to help. We can bring her back,” said the one on the left.
“Who?” The word was stuttered, almost scared to be spoken in case the illusion were flung aside to reveal the Great Oz behind the curtain.
“Your bitch. The one you lost,” the right one now.
“You, you can’t. S-s-she left me…she’s gone.”
“We know.” Mangy turned to its brethren. Paul couldn’t tell if it was for reassurance or validation. “We will bring her back.”
“She’s gone,” Paul repeated; his voice close to cracking as he fought the madness seeping into his mind, trying to cling to the one thing he knew for certain. “She’s, she’s gone.”
“We will bring her back,” they said as a trio, yipping in unison.
And with that they were gone, turning with a flourish, leaving Paul to watch them weave their way beyond the greenhouse and out into the bushes framing the end of his garden.
A final flash of white fur and then they were gone.
Clouds trailed lazily across the face of the moon as Paul tried to reconcile what had happened.
It was the booze, it had to be the booze.
Or a mental breakdown. He had been told it was possible after the experience he had been through. Those were the most plausible explanations. A good night’s sleep and things would be clearer in the morning.
Hell, he might be asleep now. He pinched two ragged fingernails into his forearm.
“Shit,” said Paul to no one in particular, shaking the pain out of his arm, looking at the white crescents forming there. “Not asleep then.”
The chair groaned under his weight as he pushed himself out, ready to begin the trudge up to bed. He would clean up the broken bottle in the morning and get a ‘fresh’ one from his supply under the stairs. It was only as he was rising he noticed the gleam in the grass.
Paul lurched from his chair, a mixture of alcohol and tiredness, shambling his underwhelming physique across the patio as his blanket fell away. He let his legs guide him, only to fall down into the grass where the foxes had spoken.
This was where he had seen it.
A small rectangular trinket lying amongst the flattened stems, no bigger than a man’s palm, catching the broken beams of the full moon.
Kneeling, he reached out, his hand tremb
ling as his fingers curled around Amelia’s phone.
~~~
The foxes became regular, though unpredictable, visitors over the following months.
One week they would come every day, other times Paul would sit outside, waiting for them, come rain or shine, only to be disappointed when they failed to appear.
He was fairly sure they had built themselves an earth at the back of his garden, beyond the slanting shadow of the greenhouse.
It was tempting to go exploring, have a poke around in amongst the weeds to find their bolt hole except they had an unspoken agreement.
A gentleman fox’s agreement as it were.
The patio and the house behind it were his, the garden theirs. He provided them with food, good food, not scraps, and they provided Amelia.
When not waiting on the patio, he would occupy himself inside. He had a new hobby. A twist on an old favourite. He was building a jigsaw. A life-sized one in his living room.
A two hundred and six piece construction. This one didn’t come in a box, or not one he was aware of. And the only picture he had to go from was stashed in the attic with his wedding photos.
So the foxes brought Paul his pieces. Sometimes the pieces were large, other times they were of a size such that Paul had to feel his way amongst the grass with his fingertips to find their offering.
If, in his more sober hours, he had broken his gentleman’s agreement he would have found the box, or rather boxes, the pieces came in, two flat topped pyramids at the end of his garden which some might say resembled salt and pepper shakers, bought to provide food for his precious tomatoes.
But he didn’t and he flourished in his ignorance.
And if his neighbours were ever so inclined as to glance across in the dead of the night they might see a blanketed man crawling on all fours across his lawn.
The Rachel Gladstones of this world might have seen such a man disappear into the darkness where the nettles and dandelions clustered around the greenhouse and the composters.
None the wiser, they would see him crawl back to his chair, pausing to hide something in the grass, nibbling at the food he had left out, before slumping into his chair and passing out.
The Rachel Gladstones of the world would have seen all that if Rachel Gladstone was anywhere to be found.
As it was, Paul Wilson sat night after night, feeding the foxes as they brought his Amelia back home.
MANY HAPPY RETURNS
Kyle Rader
They took her as she walked back to her office from lunch.
Carol was having what was, until her abduction, a rather banal birthday. Her life, now in its thirty-fifth year, swallowed whole and residing deep within the belly of the whale known as 'Routine'.
Her sister Angie texted her a 'very stupid birthday' with a winking smiley face emoticon that caused Carol to roll her jade eyes and laugh. She was typing a smart-ass reply when the covetous hands grabbed hold of her.
Her abductor forced a coarse gag into her mouth until she choked, keeping it in place by looping several pieces of tape around her head.
Oh Christ! Oh Christ! Oh Christ! she thought; her mind racing as a thick black hood dropped over her skull.
Multiple pairs of hands plucked her up and heaved her into a windowless van. If she had been more observant, if she had been less concerned with the Pilsky account waiting for her back in her corner office, she might have noticed the vehicle gliding along through traffic behind her, stalking her in the urban jungle.
One of the men held her down as another secured her limbs by handcuffing her wrists to her legs. They did not speak a single word; not to her or each other.
The vibrant sounds of the city faded until all Carol could hear was the screech of the tires against the ground. No light peered in through the shroud; the fabric too dense to allow for any view out of the forced blackness. The floor of the van felt like another faceless assailant tormenting her, its fingers made of cold metal.
They just want your money, she thought, trying to rationalize a way out of her predicament as the van rolled along; the outside world completely unaware to her situation. You haven't seen their faces yet. You can't identify them. They won't hurt you if you give them what they want.
Time untold later, the van pulled to a stop, its ancient brakes squealing like a pig led to the slaughter. The same calloused and muscled hands pulled Carol from the vehicle, dragging her to the ground rather than allowing her to stand.
Carol heard their laughter as she rolled about in the dirt and weeds. It awoke an anger that her panic had been suppressing since the ordeal began. She kicked and scratched at one of them when he tried to pick her up. The man yelped as her foot collided against his tree trunk of a leg.
This brought another round of belly laughs from his companions. She hadn't hurt him in the least, not even his pride. Cursing in a guttural language she did not recognize, he pulled her to her knees and slapped her in the face, hard. The blow was fierce and unexpected, yet despite being caught unaware, Carol did not lose consciousness. Blood, sticky and warm like her mother's cherry pie, filled her mouth. Her hearing turned into a wail, tuning the world to its frequency and no other.
The man who struck her decided Carol required a further lesson in humility. Taking her by the hair at the base of her neck, he tugged her through rough ground.
Carol's screams were lost in her gag and in her sudden deafness. She squirmed against the man, but his grip was like stone and the more she rallied against it, the harder he pulled until she felt like her scalp was about to be shorn off.
The terrain assailed her at every turn. Tall blades of grass sliced bloody zigzags into her bare legs. Rocks scraped against her back, leaving deep bruises and cuts that sang out in agony at the slightest motion.
Carol heard a drawn out creaking of a door hinge being opened as the men hauled her into a building. The door bounced off of Carol's ankles as it closed. The scrape of the dirt between her body and the wooden floor rattled around the slow return of her hearing.
The men jerked her downwards into a stairwell. The steps were wooden and unforgiving; her back molars clattered against each other as her head bounced off every single step until finally, mercifully, she reached the floor. Carol's head swam as the men sat her on a stool. Her bonds were attached to rusty metal loops bolted into the foundation.
The curtain of black lifted from her eyes. The dim light of the room dove into the pool of pain inside her mind, feeling similar to the physical slap she just received. Carol squinted until her eyes adjusted to the illumination, a process that slowly revealed her surroundings.
The foundation was cracked and bits of weeds sprouted through as the Earth attempted to expunge the invading foreign material from its body. A forsaken shell of a steam boiler sat in a corner, a sizable hole was in the center of the cast-iron beast. Its rusty maw showed evidence of the explosion. The jagged pieces of shrapnel it had regurgitated at the instant of its death that were embedded within the concrete.
Thank you, Lord, she thought, as she saw that each of the two colossi (each man standing at least six-foot three) were covered from head to toe in black garb. They won't kill me. I don't know them. I can't identify them.
They paid no attention to her, clearly knowing the high-tensile steel in the chains would easily hold out against her dainty frame. The men drew three duffel bags that could each hide sections of a dead body from a closet with a broken door that came off the hinges when one of the men grabbed it.
Portable lights, fiber-optic cables, and an expensive-looking video camera were assembled. Carol's mind wandered to horrifying thoughts of snuff films when a third party walked down the decrepit staircase. The woman wore the same all-black get-up as the men except her mask was not of the generic convenience store stick-up variety.
True terror gripped Carol, as her own visage stared back at her through the mirrored lenses of the woman's gas mask.
“You are afraid of me, yes?” Gas Mask said; her voice distor
ted from the mask.
Carol tried to reply with false bravado, but the effort lost its meaning against the slickened rag that had absorbed nearly all of the moisture in her mouth. The mystery woman chuckled as the mumbled reply came through, sounding like the men had spoon-fed Carol gravel.
Gas Mask placed a gloved finger against her captive's gagged lips. “Hush now, darling,” she said, brushing a strand of red hair out of Carol's face. “It is good to be afraid. It means you are still alive, yes?”
The staircase shook as the fourth abductor made his appearance. His frame was wider than the stairs themselves, causing him to have to walk down them at an angle. He paused when he reached the bottom and glared at Carol. She felt his leering face from behind his mask stare the promise of rape into her.
“We are ready?” Gas Mask sat on a stool, keeping her attention on her captive. The brute replied by clenching his hands into fists, popping each knuckle. “Very good. We shall begin.” The burn of the once-slumbering creature's eye snapped on with a press of the record button.
Her tormentors just watched her, not speaking. Carol squirmed against her restraints and screamed muffled curses at them. The men continued their stoic apathy towards her plight until Gas Mask motioned to one her underlings to come forward.
Oh, Christ. Not him. Carol thought.
The Knuckle Cracker's carriage was so all-encompassing; it eclipsed the light of the room as he strode towards her. He tore the gag from her mouth, opening tiny cuts on her cheeks. The corners of his mask lifted sky-bound as she cried out in pain.
He's smiling, she thought, blinking through tears. Sick bastard is enjoying this!
Knuckle Cracker unfolded a newspaper and pressed it against her chest, shuffling his borderline-gigantism to the side so the camera could record see the date. Gas Mask nodded in approval. “As you can see, she is alive and in good condition as of today. Whether or not she remains so tomorrow will be up to you.”
Masks Page 9