Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  No matter how much he wished for it, there was only one way he’d ever feel her touch again. He knew that day would eventually come (sooner rather than later, he thought) but until then he’d have to keep going.

  He threw off the covers and slid out of bed. When his feet pressed down upon the cold hardwood floor, his skin prickled from head to toe; his brain snapped into overdrive.

  He padded out of the bedroom, followed the sunlit hall around the corner and into the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee, made a bowl of cereal and carried both items to the dining room table. He chased the cereal down with the coffee and a small glass of orange juice and went off into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  On his way back into the bedroom, he glanced at the door leading into the art room and said, “Good Morning, baby.”

  In the summer of two-thousand-ten, Kevin and Terri met three years after he began working at Angel’s Pizza. She was a history professor at the local community college and although she’d made enough money for him to quit his job he chose not to live a life of laziness and luxury; he believed that if two people lived together then they were responsible for everything, including the finances. They dated for six months before he finally took her up on her offer to move in; three years later they were married.

  The first three years of their marriage had gone by in a never-ending blur of mid-afternoon kisses, post-midnight sex and headstone rubbings; he was afraid it would all go so fast he would never get a chance to treasure them forever. Their moods varied with the seasons, always shifting between taking the opportunity to enjoy the weekends during the summer and hibernating in the winter with plenty of things to do to help time go by. They’d always attend The Oak River Parade once a year, but other than that she was at work before nine and ready for bed by ten unless she had to grade papers.

  Two years later, one elegant summer evening, he’d surprised her at work and talked her into going out to dinner. It would’ve been the first time in three weeks because they’d hosted two dinner parties with three of her other colleagues, whom Kevin had nothing in common with. They’d walked across the parking lot together when a stranger wearing street clothes and a gray pullover with a collegiate logo on the front pulled a pistol from the waistband of his jeans, told her “I loved you” and shot her point blank three times in the chest. His body racked with a mixture of shock and disgust, tears blurring his vision, he’d knelt onto the pavement and cradled her in his arms until the ambulance arrived.

  Although he’d never left her side, not even for a minute, she was declared as a DOA; dead on arrival. When no leads came forth, her killer was never found. She was subjected to a long line of unsolved murders that would be chucked it into a box and added it to the growing pile of others sitting on a shelf in the basement until the file itself was dog-eared and dusted.

  Her absence had taken a heavy toll on him. Save for the ghostly presence of a missing wedding band, he’d call out for her every once in a while, knowing that she would never reply back.

  He sat on the edge of the bed to change his clothes when he spotted the ribbed golden picture frame sitting on his bedside table beside of his frosted glass touch lamp. In the photo, Terri was lounged out across an overstuffed bench seat next to a double-sided window, her thin pale hands resting firmly across her lap.

  She wasn’t pretty by any standards, but she was beautiful enough for him, and the man who murdered her obviously. She didn’t go to great lengths to be the prettiest woman on earth because there was much more to her than that.

  Her pixie-cut black hair sat evenly above her elongated face, leaving a small asymmetrical sweep high above her forehead. Her beige skin had an internal glow that was magnified by even the slightest yet normal emotions: a smile here and a wink there; it had a fire he never knew existed but only felt the heat of it when he slipped her into his arms at night or long before sunrise. Her prominent whiskey-colored eyes sat below thin dark brows, bracketed by smooth patches of skin pocked with faint wrinkles that could only be seen from up close; her small pink lips sat below a sleek upturned nose.

  She had a grace that no one could duplicate. Her kisses lingered along after she left the room; her touch always left his skin tingling for hours. She was more than perfect.

  He kissed the three fingers on his right hand, his eyes blurry with tears, and pressed them against the picture frame. His cheeks flushed and, holding back the ball of sadness dying to burst through him, held back the urge to cry. He exhaled, wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his left hand and set the picture back in its rightful place.

  “One day down.” He smiled. “A hundred more to go, baby.”

  He slipped into a pair of tattered jeans, dingy work boots and a gray tee-shirt pocked with crusts of white paint. He grabbed the two packets of seeds from the shelf above the kitchen sink, filled a pitcher with water and stepped out onto the front porch. The cool summer breeze caressed his skin and teased his hair like a desperate lover.

  Under a bright blue sky streaked with faint white clouds, the cul-de-sac was alive; to his left, the Peterson children were riding their bikes up and down the street while making lame attempts at laser sounds and barking about who was dead and who wasn’t. To his right, Mrs. Langton sat on the front porch of her one-story brown stucco shoebox next door squinting at the tiny black font on a folded-up copy of the morning paper. Dogs trotted along fenced-in yards, barking at the people strolling past but more at the kids frolicking in the street; birds soared above the same leafy oaks and tulip trees who spread their spiky-black shadows that shaded the curbs and sidewalks.

  He tucked the packets into his right pocket, fled down the front porch stairs and sauntered across the front lawn. He walked around the left side of the house, opened the front door of the small aluminum-sided tool shed and collected the shovel and hoe and two bags of potting soil. He set them outside, closed the shed door and carried them out to the tiny flower bed running along the left side of the house. Behind him, the city glinted like broken glass.

  His neck warmed by the harsh-yellow sun, Kevin crawled down across the flower bed and tore out handfuls of dead weeds. When he was finished, his hands were dirty and thin pockets of dirt caked his fingernails; lucid snakes of heat wriggled off the dry dirt, pressing against his cheeks. Beads of sweat cascaded down his forehead, dampened the back of his neck and pressed lucid grins across the sides of his tee-shirt.

  He’d considered moving the flower bed to the front of the porch but thought better of it after he remembered that it made sense for him to keep it here because the sunlight was more attracted to this side of the house. At least he wouldn’t have to go outside and water them when all he had to do was open his bedroom window and do it from there.

  He opened the bag of potting soil, sprinkled it evenly across the empty flower bed and used a hoe to mix it with the dry dirt. He opened the seed packets, knelt down on all fours and planted each seed in the same neat order as he and Terri had always done the year after they first moved in.

  Sunflowers on the left and marigolds on the right but not too far to the right. He’d saved that particular spot underneath his bedroom window for Terri’s yearly favorite: an Easter Lily. He rose up on his feet and pressed the head of the hoe into the soil when he saw something in the corner of his right eye.

  He slightly cocked his head over to see what it could’ve been and, his brows furrowed, peered over his right shoulder. Instead of a head and shoulders silhouette, it was that of a pair of slender legs with full calves and slim ankles. As elongated as they were, they might’ve been five feet away from him; a thin cloth–he assumed was a dress or maybe a skirt–rippled carelessly above the top of her calves like a ceaseless pool of dark water.

  A cold chill traced the contours of his spine, freezing him in place. His grip on the hoe’s splintery wooden handle tensed until his knuckles turned white and his muscles stiffened; his nails pressed tiny half-moon impressions into his palms. He wasn’t sure if the
sun was playing tricks on him or not but pure logic would suggest that it was, that this had all been a figment of his sunburnt imagination.

  The breeze grew steadily fast now, tousling his clothes and hair and stroking its cool deft fingers across his skin; the hackles along the back of his neck went stiff. A soft whispery voice spewed into his right ear, sending a second river of goosebumps trickling down his arms and legs.

  “Kevin. Kevin.”

  It began as a low whisper before rising into a loud–

  “Kevin! Kevin! KEVIN!”

  octave that pierced his ear drums and burrowed into his brain like a power drill. The intensity of the voice sent another cold chill swirling down his spine. He bowed his head and, shoulders drawn tightly together, winced through tightly clenched teeth.

  The whisper and the wind both died at the same. Another voice called out to him now, both familiar and distant.

  “Shut up!” He bellowed. “Shut up! Shu–”

  “Hey, Kevin. Are you okay?”

  “Of course.” He said, nodding. “What can I do for you?”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Mrs. Langston stood on her front porch, craned her head over the left-side railing and waved him over. His cheeks flushed, he sighed and placed the hoe carefully on the ground. He stacked his hands above his head to shield his eyes from the sun and followed the steep grassy slope of front lawn toward the fence separating the far right corner of their properties.

  She had a short wispy-white hair, a friendly smile, almond-shaped brown eyes and thin pink lips to accentuate her warm and caring demeanor. She’d been living in that same house long before he and Terri moved there; he could remember plenty of times when she and Terri would lean against the fence and chat until sundown.

  Behind her, a middle-aged brunette and a young ginger-haired girl stood in front of a one-story house, tossing a red ball to an energetic golden retriever with a white collar.

  “Hello, Mrs. Langston.”

  “What the hell are you screaming for?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He lied. “I just...it was a damn bee flying around my ear.”

  It was all he could come up with on such short notice.

  “Don’t you just hate those fucking things?”

  Kevin snorted, taken aback by her spit-fire honesty. He’d never heard her talk like that before, but he liked it because he was on the good side of it.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Langston?”

  “I told you before.” She reminded him. “Call me Edie. Mrs. Langston makes me feel like I’m old?”

  “What can I do for you, Edie?”

  “Can you to mow my front yard?” She asked, rubbing her hands together. “I’d really appreciate it, Kev. I can’t pay you—”

  “If you give me one of your homemade apple pies,” He said, gently tugging her hand. “we’ll call it even.”

  She patted his hand, bowed her head, and glanced back up at him. Her lips pursed, her eyes looked glazed.

  “I remember how much Terri loved your apple pies.”

  “I know.” She replied in a somber voice. “I miss those days when she would come by just to chat or ask if I needed anything from the store.”

  He nodded and, his cheeks flushing, bit down on his bottom lip to keep the ball of sadness from bursting out of his chest. She cupped his face in both hands, kissed both of his cheeks and strolled back inside. As gentle as her hands felt, they neither cooled his cheeks or pacified his lingering sadness.

  He returned to his house, placed the hoe and the bag of potting soil back into the shed and gathered his lawn mower. When he wheeled it over to Mrs. Langston’s yard, the brunette woman and her daughter coerced the dog back inside of their house and shut the front door behind them. Everyone he’d talked to after Terri’s death had suggested that getting a dog would help fill the loneliness she left behind.

  Mrs. Langston’s square-shaped lawn started from the right edge of her front walk before snaking around to the back and to the left. A pair of thick oak trees spread spiky shadows across the far left corner of the front lawn and along the first two steps leading up to the front porch; a pair of metallic wind chimes tinkled, mingling with the sharp whine from the chains on her porch swing. LANGSTON stenciled across each side of her bright-yellow mailbox in bold black font, glowing in the harsh downward stare of the early morning sun.

  He parked the lawn mower along the edge of the fence, fired it up after two tries and pushed it along the fence, spewing thick tails of grass in its wake. When he reached the back yard, he gazed over the hill at the city sprawling out below; Lake Michelle was a thin dark-blue film against the bright blue sky. He whistled a familiar tune under the mower’s rumbling engine and spun it back around to start the next section.

  His back and forehead dripping with sweat, Kevin finished the back yard in a matter of minutes. He guided the mower back to the front of the house and cut a fresh path across the edge of the walkway. He was halfway through when he noticed a pair of bony-white feet perched on the side of Mrs. Langston’s walkway, leaving her toes poised two inches above the grass.

  He craned his head up from the front of the lawn mower, his body nearly jostling with surprise, and glanced up at a young heavyset girl; she looked to be sixteen maybe seventeen. The top two buttons of her short-sleeved white blouse were unfastened, exposing the network of bright blue veins streaking across the middle of her chest and down across the tops of her breasts like those on a road atlas. Her red plaid skirt fluttering around her thick pale legs, her gaze never wavered from Kevin.

  Her canary-yellow hair spilled down across the crown of her shoulders from a part running across the top of her head, framing her round pale face before curling under her earlobes. She had a wide nose with flaring nostrils, a crinkled chin and full chalky-pink lips. Thick rings of wet black mascara circled the bags below of her heavy-lidded blue eyes and sent thin obsidian tears streaking down her cheeks.

  He extended his right hand, fingers spaced apart, and motioned for her to stay. Her eyes glinting under the sun, she ignored his request and stepped down onto the cool green grass, her toes nearly inches away from the loudly whirring blade. He opened his mouth to protest her next move when he glanced down at the tiny flecks of blood splashed across the front of her blouse and paused beside of the walkway.

  He hoped that he hadn’t ran over her toes. Maybe she’d walked into the blade, explaining the drops of blood on the front of her blouse.

  He squinted at something he hadn’t noticed until now. There was a thin red line etched across the middle of her throat from one side to the other. Maybe it was a tattoo or some new-age fad everyone was trying out these days like “man-buns” or something else that would eventually fade away like all of the others.

  She tried to speak, but her lips sunk and twitched like those of a comatose patient. He thought she might’ve been Mrs. Langston’s granddaughter (God knows she was young enough) but she hadn’t identified herself yet. She rested her right jaw against the crown of her right shoulder, spilling a curtain of hair across her face.

  She peered at him with her left eye, its sharp haunting gaze bearing down on him, and mumbled something under her breath. His brows furrowed, he leaned in a little closer and perked his ear to the wind in an attempt to hear what she was saying over the roar of the mower. He wasn’t very good at reading lips but what he seemed to make out seemed to make no sense.

  Ehmur, ehmur, he thought.

  When he raised his hand to wave her onto Mrs. Langston’s front porch, she jerked her head up from her shoulder and cocked it back in a forty-five degree angle. Her eyes wide and flashing with revulsion, the thin red line stretched across her throat opened like a set of amphibious gills gasping for air. A thin river of blood brimmed along the open wound, slid down her throat and pumped at the air between them; it spilled across the front of her blouse and splashed onto the pavement.

  His eyes wide, Kevin’s face sunk with petrified terror; hi
s brows drew tight again and his mouth twisted into a lopsided grin. Fear hit him like a bucket of ice water, prickling his skin and chilling his blood; his muscles went stiff. A river of arterial blood spurted from the right side of her neck and slapped across his left cheek.

  He flung himself away from her, released his grip on the lawn mower, and gave a loud grunt that rattled his chest. Nausea churned in the pit of his stomach and sent a ball of bile rocketing toward the back of his throat; his legs wobbled like an old door stopper. He hit the ground on all fours, planting his hands and knees hard onto the hot vapid earth, and retched until his throat burned.

  He felt something splash across the back of his neck, warming his skin. A thick coppery odor stung his nostrils, escalating his nausea. As the fingers on his left hand stiffened and curled, he gripped a chunk of grass in his right fist and gave a loud gagging sound.

  “Kevin.”

  He blinked, plunging himself back into reality. He sat up and, his knees still rooted into the ground, peered aimlessly around Mrs. Langston’s yard. He heard his name again, this time it was coming from the front porch.

  He gazed down at the sidewalk where all of that blood had landed and found none. He slid his left hand across his cheek and swung it back around his face; nothing but the same dirty hands he’d seen a few minutes ago. He followed the sound of his name and saw Mrs. Langston standing on the edge of her porch, gawking intently at him.

  “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

  “A ghost.” He snorted. “I was just thinking about something that happened a long time ago.”

  “If you’re tired you can take–”

  “I’m fine.” He insisted. “Really I am.”