by Jason Beech
Voice sounds familiar. “Thank you, Benji. We’ll make sure Jack never finds out, right?”
“Oh yeah, as long as you keep your side of the agreement.”
“You’ll get some Benji, I promise you that.”
I look up at the blurred figures who walk around me. My gun, where is it?
Someone lifts it from the tiled floor. I hear three thuds and a slump. Only one set of footsteps now.
“Sweetness.”
I focus. A patter of feet walk by my brow. My convulsion leave them undisturbed.
“Belinda. What …?”
“You got too needy, Andy. I don’t need needy hanging off my neck like a millstone. You ruined a perfect thing.”
I had enough consciousness to note how she avoided my touch, and my blood. “You got …”
“I’m not kidding, babes. I told you Jack is my future. For now, anyway. Your emotions got in the way. Endangered me. I’m sorry, sweetness.”
A final thud sent me on my way.
Tantrum
The doll clenched her right fist, screwed up her face, and screamed at her owner, Maddie, “I'm real, I'm real, I'm real.”
Maddie ignored her and continued with the Lego set. Always better to turn the other way when she acted like this. “Shut up.” The doll’s name, Jemima, edged from her lips and wobbled. Maddie pulled them back. The doll hated the name. It would infuriate her even more.
“Look at me.” Jemima’s throat rasped the words in her fury.
Maddie sighed. Her skin prickled. Why did her mom never hear Jemima's screams? She’s only in the room next door.
“Don't you sleep tonight, Maddie ... don't you dare close your eyes.”
Maddie stood, her eyes still on the Lego pieces in her hand. Contemplated a design flaw in the crooked doll's house she had built for Jemima. The doll didn't deserve the effort. She had been mean one too many times. She snatched the doll by one of its pigtails, closed her mind to its protests, dangled her all the way to the garden. The sun didn't calm Jemima; she wriggled all the way to the well.
Her scream faded only when she hit the bottom. Maddie wiped her hands across her tartan-patterned dress and headed back to the doll's house and judged which doll would move in now.
Dead Batteries
The beep told me the iPhone battery had dropped low. I spat an f-bomb and the c-word at my negligence. The drive to work, Google Maps told me, wouldn't soothe my mood. I couldn’t check Facebook to see if my status had comments and likes. It always made up for the boredom of calm traffic and Delayed Green traffic lights. I couldn’t listen to Spotify – I couldn’t Twitter snippets about my life. Forty minutes of hell waited.
I kissed my wife good day and got in the Lexus. I surveyed the scene, like I did every morning. My house is a picture – though I wondered if the windows needed replacements. I’d had them put in two years ago. They bored me now.. I’d get them done while I took my family away for the weekend. We hadn’t been to California for a few months. I’d note it down, but the iPhone’s battery had hit red. Why had I even taken it out? I fell asleep last night, and didn’t charge it. The shop had offered a car charger. I didn’t see the relation between its price and its value. I did now. The stupid saleswoman should have been more persuasive. She's an idiot.
I turned the key and blasted the air-con. The check engine light flashed at me. It had for a week. I’d sort the car tomorrow. If I remembered. I drove off with a frown. Had my wife and child waved as I left? I couldn’t remember - the day too glorious to think of anything else. Hot. Hot enough to enjoy the burn peel my skin.
Drivers competed for gaps. I glided the streets and enjoyed my car. The gleam of its silver paint pulled the shine from others. Every house I passed made me prouder of mine. I’d worked hard on it: a real showcase. I’d seen people pass by and stop for lingering looks. Damn, that always felt good.
The air wobbled. People and objects shimmered. I turned the air-con off and opened the windows. My skin prickled. Sweat beads formed and trickled, tickled, my face. Hot air made breathing a challenge. I would go for a run in this when I got back. Maybe I’d let my son follow me on his new bike. He better use that thing, I spent a fortune on it. Why did he want that other one? What a piece of crap. It had nothing going for it – it had a low number of gears and a purple color which could scrape your eyeballs free of sight. He'd looked a spazz on it in the shop. God he's difficult, just like his mother. Just like my mother. Like my dad, too. What’s wrong with everybody?
Lazy bastard government workers had closed Route 29. Diversion. Bullshit. Unacceptable.
“Whoa.”
What’s that? The car jumped for a second, a scratch in the engine's vinyl sound. I’ll call my mechanic when I got to work. Eighty-dollars an hour, for crying out loud. Did he think the green beauties grew out of my ass?
The air got to me at last. I needed a drink. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Had I been in a trance? When had I entered Trenton? Downtown Trenton. This place is as rough as an armadillo’s rear end after a Hummer’s hit it. Look at those houses. Some of them had occupants. How? Some had boards as their signature. The insides should never see the light again. This road’s at the end of a bridge which divided it from civilization. Adjectives I could use are shit-hole, the devil’s ass, skid-mark row. I did use them. Said them under my breath and hoped these people could not read lips.
Traffic light. No phone to fill passive seconds. Fine, I watched people. None had any dress sense. Nothing they wore would commend them to any sort of decent job. I'm in minimum-wage-land, if any wages were had at all. What kind of person would live here? I had heard discussions on radio about what places like this did to people. I’m a liberal kind of man, but these people surely made the place what it is. Do something about it. Clean it up. At least give your house a lick of paint. Wear proper clothes. Get a job. This man here, a fine case – what’s he selling? A newspaper? In the middle of the road? At a traffic light? What did that pay? How many will he sell? None if the other drivers are like me. I don’t give a shit about homeless people – I don’t want to read about them. Get a job.
Good, a corner shop ahead. I’ll park there. The traffic light changed to green and I parked on a yellow line. I would only be a minute. I bought a red Gatorade, lukewarm, from a surly checkout man. His “hi”more a threat than a greeting. He must envy my threads. My clothes are a balm to his weary eyes. Looking at his usual customers all day must affect his demeanor: basketball shorts, jeans down their asses, shorts which drop below the knee (WTF?). Did the checkout man say something? I smiled and felt every millimeter of the curve. It’s my duty to say “thank you.” I did so and left to no reply.
My car remained untouched. The cops must have seen it, but let it slide. At the same time, they would suspect it, right? In this area it looked like a drug dealer had stolen it. Who else would park here? I got back in, brave – my life is good. This is what the British must have felt like in their empire. I turned the key and slid the windows down. I liked to endure the heat just enough – I couldn’t allow sweat marks on my shirt. Unprofessional. Linda would make a “ewwww” face, punctuated by her peachy lips. She needed my lips on hers. That would teach her some lessons.
My car spluttered. I know the check engine sign shone bright yellow, but this is horseshit. I always get away with this stuff. I turned the key again and the dashboard light flickered. The fucking battery – dead. Why would it die in a place like this? Die in Princeton. Die in Flemington. Don’t die in Trenton.
I called my wife. She answered on the twelfth ring.
“What took you so long?” A reasonable question under the circumstances.
“I was out gardening; I left the phone on the counter,” she said, a functionality in her voice I had started to get used to. I should buy her flowers and honey her tone again, like the old days.
“Well, I’m stuck, the car has broken down.”
That pause stretcheddddd out. What’s wrong with her? I stared
at the phone. My internal heat competed with the external as I realized my phone had kaput. As a dodo. As a pharaoh. As the Philadelphia-fucking-Eagles.
I glared at the Triple A sticker. I scanned for a payphone. One had to be around here – who could afford a cell phone? I didn’t want to get out of the car again. Now I had no means of exiting this place I didn’t feel so brave anymore.
Rearview mirror: a man on a bicycle checked my car out. Checked me out? Did he have an amused look on his face or did he covet me and my car? He approached, nonchalant, like a lion did an injured zebra. The man had facial scruff. His t-shirt hung off his bones like a battle-flag. I didn’t know if he was starving bony or fit and wiry. I hoped for starving - then he could not have the energy to fight. I had no food – I might disappoint him.
I rolled the window upwards when he reached within ten feet of me. He noticed that. Stopped in his tracks. Considered his next move. I considered mine. He jumped off his bike and rolled it to the lamppost beside me. Well, he had a chain, so he knew the value of private property. He secured his vehicle to the street light and stood next to my window on the driver's side. Cars passed me by and not a single one stopped to help. I didn’t blame them. The man stood straight. Avoided a hit from vehicles which missed his ass by centimeters. I had a prime view of his crotch. I looked away, but not before he bent down grinned. I couldn’t help stare, though I so wanted to pretend I'd not seen him. He must have shaved that scruffy patch with a blunt razor he might have found rummaging in someone’s trashcan. He had a white smile, a sheen like a dentist had just touched it up. Those teeth stood as straight as my picket fence. Falsies?. Maybe he had found them in the same trashcan.
He knocked on my window. My stare remained on his teeth. He knocked again. If I couldn’t see him, then he didn't exist – I pulled the car manual from the glove box and read it, one eye on him and the other on whether the battery had become my nemesis. Index: Car fails to start – here we are.
Words muffled through the window. My mind said he wanted to help, but my mind hadn’t worked today. One disaster cascaded over another. I used the furthest corner of my eye to monitor this bum-on-a-bike. Apparently, if you ignore a grizzly it will move on. Let’s see. He went away. I always got out of shit. Always. Ha.
I looked up. Shit.
Two more people, barely any more respectable than the bum-on-a-bike, had joined this particular party. The heat inside the car kindled coals. People glared as I became a microwave dinner. I felt like the lone insect ants crawled across and ate for lunch. One man knocked on the window and mouthed words I couldn’t read. Did he speak English? An illegal? Ah, no, his lips clearly said, “Open the window, open the door.”
The heat told me to comply. Fear held me back. What did the angry fella want with my car? Oh God, a crowd had formed on the sidewalk side of my car. Cars seemed to pass a little faster on the roadside. A cop had to arrive soon. Surely somebody in authority saw this. I heard shouting. Someone tried the handle on the back door. You needed talent to break into my car.
Sweat drenched my hair. I swept it back. It ran into my eyes. I used my sleeve to clear them. Linda would not swoon today. I reached over to the backseat for the Gatorade. Unscrewed the bottle. Every twist took an age. The cap off, I took sips, some escaped down my cheeks. The drink had become hot and unpleasant, but it was wet and went down my throat.
I dared to look again. The crowd had become quiet. I felt like an insect beneath the lens of a child's magnifying glass. I thought of my wife and child, and gulped. My wife’s kisses felt good, her words reassuring. Jennifer. Where had she been? Where had I been? My child, my son … his expectant face made me reach out for him. “Ben.”
The sun whitened everything. The concrete bleached out for a moment …
A truck pulled up in front of my car and a man the size of a redwood stepped out. I could see him, blurred, search for something. He approached – his bald dome surely able to host a football game beneath. He held an object in his hand. The crowd parted – it had no choice. I stared at him, my mind blank. He stared back for a moment, disappointment hammered into his face. He maneuvered and I heard a creak, like I dipped beneath the sea in a tin boat. The creak became a moan and finally a snap as my car door tore open. The air, which had just burned like I was millimeters from the sun, cooled.
They'd tear me apart for my lack of trust. The man reached in and pressed some button. Made something else pop. Had I died? If so then I'm glad it didn’t hurt.
The man charged back to his truck, pulled out some leads, lifted my hood and jumped my car. A member of the crowd, the bum-on-a-bike, stepped forward, put his head past me and turned the keys to start my engine.
Salt stung my eyes, but it washed away with tears of gratitude … and shame. The big man knelt by my side as the other moved away. “When is this shit going to end?”
He stood and closed my door, the window now down.
I found the courage to engage everybody in the eye. I hope they accepted my humility. I felt every bit of it as energy filled me again. I grabbed a scrap of paper, wrote on it, and gave it to the truck man.
He eyed it.
“Frank,” I said.
“Mitch,” he replied.
I drove off in hope he would call me for dinner.
Secret Mind
1.
A cry like somebody's world had ended woke Ally at 3.23am. She pulled herself up rigid and blinked the sleep away. It didn't sound quite right, as if muffled from beneath a pillow. It didn't have an immediate urgency, but it pulled at her heart even as it gave her comfort. She looked closely at her husband, Erik, beside her. He slept, snoring. She gently stuck the tip of her index finger into the small of his back. He snorted once and fell silent.
The cry ended. She levered herself out of bed, struggled into her nightgown, and checked the nursery. Carly, her two-year old daughter, lied splayed in an X across her bed. Her face remained curious in sleep. Maybe her dreams continued her quest to discover why mud was so dirty. Her calm features showed she had not made the noise.
Ally squinted out the long windows from the landing. Her neighbors’ homes stood far apart. The cry had not been the wailing sort - it would not have carried over the distance. Nobody occupied the garden on all sides of their house. A dream? She snuck back in bed, all moved and disturbed.
2.
“I love you too, babes.” Ally planted a kiss on her husband’s neck and poured his orange juice.
“I love you too, but I never said anything.” Erik buttered toast for them both.
“Oh.” Furrows creased both their brows. Ally heard him declare his love for her as clear as a bell in the church next door. He grabbed her waist and pulled her tight. His ink-drop blue eyes seemed to form the words “Don’t go.” The words in her head spoke in his voice. His lips had not moved. She pulled away with a forced smile and pretended the washing machine called her.
It reached closer. Noises in her head confirmed it. Last night she heard someone cry, today she imagined her husband talked to her, even though he said he hadn’t.
She yawned a growl and as Carly copied her, she exaggerated it. Her daughter giggled. Ally hid her emotional state, though its fragility increased each day. As if the close proximity of death didn't mess up her head enough, she now had to contend with an imaginary conversation with her husband. She watched him build an island in the kitchen and in her head he sang Elton John’s I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues. His lips didn't move, his face a slate scribbled full of DIY details. Besides, he had never shown any liking for the AOR singer. He liked his music raw and loud.
As the island took shape she imagined what he thought, and replied in silence.
Kiss me then.
Then take DIY classes, this island is taking you ages.
You don’t know anything about soccer, why trash it?
Well, then kiss me.
Carly looks more like you than me? You really think that?
Kissing me hurts
? What?
She called her friend Brianne. Brianne didn’t talk to her in a way which elongated the last word in every sentence, as if that elicited sympathy. She treated Ally’s eventual death as a fact of life. Brianne would miss her when she had gone, but she hoped it a far off event. .
“Well, that is weird,” Brianne said. She never laughed, but Ally could tell her insides did circus tricks at the mirth. “Which drugs are you taking?”
Ally described them, that the noted side-effects printed on the label did not include imaginary conversations with the spouse.
“Maybe you’re just starting to look at things from his perspective, talking through things to see how he is going to cope.”
“Maybe,” Ally conceded.
“Or maybe you’re just going nuts.”
Ally snorted like a pig as she laughed. Caused Brianne to burst. The unusual sound of her friend’s laughter made Ally laugh even more, until both shed tears and found it hard to breathe.
Through the din, her husband’s voice entered her thoughts again, asking what she laughed about.
“What are you laughing about?” Erik poked his out of the dark hallway.
Ally’s complexion became pasty white. As Brianne “oohed” and “aahed” her breath back at the other end of the line, Ally held hers tight. Coincidence … coincidence. She stared at him; he stared at her.
“Sweetheart, you look beat, you should get some sleep.”
She had not heard that before he said it, so surely coincidence. Ally rebuilt the dam as she breathed out. I need the DIY book, she heard his voice say. He walked in his heavy-footed way to the bookcase and took it. Brianne asked if she still had her phone. Ally pressed End Call.
3.
Ally worried about him more than for herself. She accepted she could hear his thoughts after nights of listening to him as clearly as the TV. It compelled, a guilty pleasure. His love comforted her as well as suffocated. She stayed constant within his mind. Then so did he, within her mind; only he did not know it. Little bites at her character would shock her, but they were merely nibbles, and she got over them. However, a recess in his thoughts lurked where she couldn’t quite grasp them – like he had put it there because he didn’t want to find and face it again. Disturbed, she dug, but her powers remained observational. Frustration built. His mental health worried her more than her own pain. Could he look after Carly? Could he look after himself? It stung to think he might get re-married, but at the same time, she wished he would. Brought up with religion, she had dipped in and out of it since she reached an age old enough to think for herself. Now she hoped for a God and an afterlife. She did not want to miss out on her daughter’s life, and wished to see Erik prosper without her. She shivered being a cold slab of matter in a grave.