Decay

by Zach T. Stockwell

  “What won’t I believe?” The words came out calmer than he meant for them to.

  “I got a role! I mean, like a real part in a real production! No more commercials; this is, like, real work! I’m serious!”

  She was having trouble breathing through her excitement. She let out deep, gasping breaths, as if she just came up from under water.

  “No way! That’s amazing, honey! What kind of a role?”

  “You won’t believe it! It’s a one-year contract with a show starting on HBO at the end of this year. I’m gonna be a main role, and they already have the entire script written for the first season. They said if they like how I perform in this season, they’ll extend the contract and I’ll be a recurring starring role! Can you believe it, Dad?”

  He had never heard such joy from his daughter. In all her life, she had never sounded so passionate about one thing, and now she was finally getting her break.

  She continued, “And you wanna hear the best news?”

  “What’s that, baby?” The already-big smile had exploded into an ear-to-ear full-tooth grin, and he couldn’t wait to hear the details.

  “I’m going to get a huge signing bonus. Like, huge. It’ll keep me set up for a long time, and that’s not even counting what I’ll earn for the show itself.”

  “That’s fantastic! So commercials are a thing of the past then, huh?”

  “Yeah! But Dad, you didn’t catch what I’m saying.” She was still screaming into the phone, completely unaware. “I owe you so much. You and Mom gave me the best possible childhood growing up. Y’all supported me throughout school when I would have to stay late for one-act play practice, and you supported me when I wanted to chase a crazy dream instead of go to college. You never once tried to hold me back, or talk sense into me, or keep me from following my dream. You never once tried to change me…” Her voice trailed and then her tone harshened.

  She quieted down a bit, and spoke more slowly. “And then when Mom died, you quit your job and stayed home with me. You picked up the role of two parents, and made me feel like I still had her even though she was gone. You are and always have been the best Dad I could have ever hoped for, and there is no way I could ever pay you back for the life you’ve given me. But I want to try.”

  She stopped speaking and waited for a response. On the other end, Gene could hear faint sniffles. She had started to cry just a little from working herself up and into an emotional state.

  “You’re paying me back already, baby. I’m so very proud of you. I’m gonna get to see my girl with my last name on TV. How cool is that?” Gene choked out the last part as some tears broke from his own eyes and trickled quickly down his cheek, throwing themselves off of his chin. The heartfelt words from his daughter was the kind of thing he longed for; he missed her more than he realized.

  “No, no. I mean I really want to do something for you. I don’t want you to wait for the house to sell to come down here. I want you to keep it. It was our house as a family, and Mom is still in there.”

  “Oh.” At first, Gene thought his daughter was telling him to stay in Dallas and not move out, but before that stinging blow had time to really settle, she clarified her intentions.

  “I’m going to buy you a house down here in LA. I want you to move out here ASAP. As soon as you finish your last day, I mean. I have two weeks to look so when you get down here, I’ll have a whole bunch of places for you to look at and choose from, then take your pick. You deserve the world, Dad, and if a house is all I can give you, then I will give you a house.”

  And then the small tears that were lingering in the forefront of his eyes combined to form massive drops. They outgrew his eye sockets and moved out onto his bottom eyelashes, and with the first blink, they fell with a plop onto the hardwood floor. A large knot formed in his stomach, and a smaller one appeared in his throat. He couldn’t quite choke out the proper words, but the sound of his soft cry was enough satisfaction for Delilah. She began to cry, too.

  “I don’t know what to say, baby. Really, I don’t.”

  He was still crying, and Delilah only wished she could be there to hug him and celebrate.

  “Don’t say anything! It’ll be perfect. On your last day, leave early if you can and fly out immediately. We’ll have time to celebrate my new job, your birthday, and your retirement at the same time!”

  That sounded like quite the celebration. And then all at once, he thought back to times in the past he had celebrated things. He fondly remembered all of the anniversaries he and his wife had celebrated together. All of Delilah’s birthday parties as a child, when his wife was still living, and the ones after her death. Those were the few times he had something to celebrate then; his daughter was another year older and even more and more like his dearly departed wife.

  But now he had something to be truly happy about.

  “That sounds perfect. I’ll book a flight first thing tomorrow morning for two weeks from now. But I need to go before I start crying any more. Thank you so much. I love you, baby. Good night.”

  He waited for her to say it back before hanging up, but when she did, he was hit with such a euphoric rush. In two weeks, he would be retired, close to his daughter again, and in a new city looking for a new house free of charge. He was delighted by all of that, sure, but most importantly, he was joyful for his daughter’s success. He was proud - and every word synonymous with proud - of her. And pleased to see that all of the years of parenting her the way he believed he should, had paid off. Gene was never entirely sure that she would find any success in Hollywood, but his faith in her was strong enough to allow her to try. And try she did; succeed, she did.

  He put himself in bed, staring at the ceiling with the same grin that had yet to fade. Tears - smaller now - continued to run gently down his face, now wetting the bed on both sides of his face.

  The burdens of work had vanished. For this pure moment, he lied carefree and untroubled. Jovial, ecstatic, delighted, lighthearted, and satisfied; none of these words are powerful enough to describe Gene’s elation.

  At 9:07 p.m., Gene Maxwell drifted off to sleep, hopeful to a degree of certainty that the rest of his life would be spent as happy as he’d ever been.

  ---

  Gene was awoken not quite an hour later. A long, croak of a creak came from downstairs. The tone started out high-pitched and rapid-fire, but as it progressed, it was toned down until each creak of a hinge was distinct and separate. Until they ceased, they were more like loud, deep clicks.

  Unusual, to say the absolute least.

  Gene, as spry as a tired old man could be, leapt from his bed and armed himself with the .357 revolver that resides in his nightstand. It was a gift from his wife from back in the day, and it never left the house. It never even left that nightstand. It, like his silver chain and broken watch, were portals to a less complicated world - a keepsake from a time in which he was much happier.

  He tied the front of his robe and opened his own bedroom door. The creaks were no longer there, and the rest of the house was still and quiet as well.

  As he made his way down the wooden stairs - one foot at a time, slowly but surely - he drew back the hammer of his revolver. Just in case.

  The sturdy wooden staircase made absolutely no noise on his descent, all except for the third step. That third step had always been the lone noisy one of the bunch. Far too predictable. Every step would be silent, but that third step from the top gave a shrill and abrasive screech.

  Growing up for Delilah, that had been the one she needed to avoid in order to successfully sneak downstairs during the late hours of the night. And if she were to return early in the morning before her parents were awake, she would have to make sure to hop above that step. Because if she did not, surely it would give her away.

  For Gene, the squeak was another connection he felt with his late wife. Through the years, she hated that step. When they began their house-hunting adventure and looked at this one, it was the first thing she had no
ticed. “You’ll need to fix that if you can, Gene,” she said. Gene never fixed it, and for the years to come, she would nag him about it. During their first few nights in their new home, each time she stepped on it, it would startle her and force out some curse or another.

  A beautiful time, he thought, and continued past it.

  As he reached the base of the stairs, nothing seemed out of place. The door was shut, along with both windows on either side. The house was dark, and he didn’t feel the presence of anything else.

  Gene made his rounds. He walked through the living room and kitchen, through the dining room and circled the entire home until winding back up at the base of the stairs that sit adjacent from the front door of the home. Nothing to be found, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Gene took the first step in his ascent up the stairs, but then heard the faintest of sounds. Like something being brushed on a wall, or the rubbing of cloth on something else. He was unsure, but it was just loud enough to catch his attention in the silent house.

  Then, just as he had completed his turnaround towards the front door again, something lit up. It was an extremely brief flash of light - very small light, at that - and it was accompanied by an almost silent pop.

  Then Gene’s chest went cold. Numb and cold. All sensation and feeling had escaped his body, and was replaced by rigid nothingness. At least only for a moment.

  The breath was knocked from him, and he would have fallen backwards if he hadn’t had a railing to grab onto. But there was still no feeling of anything.

  A bit of concentration led him to the realization that the numbness radiated from one central point on his chest, and this one point was hotter than the rest. Not painful, but hot. He put his hands up to this place on his chest, and was startled by warm liquid pouring down his chest and stomach, soaking his robe and underwear.

  Blood, he thought. This is blood.

  It wasn’t until this moment that Gene had realized he’d just been shot. And with this realization came the crippling anxiety. The numbness was replaced by a roaring pain that covered every square inch of his chest. His legs gave out from underneath him, and he collapsed to the floor.

  The blood now was seeping upward, up his throat and into his mouth. He was almost unable to choke it out fast enough.

  Tastes like shit, he thought.

  From his stomach, he drew every bit of strength he had left to push himself up and roll over onto his back. His .357 was nowhere in sight. He must’ve dropped it, because it wasn’t in his hand anymore.

  Blood continued pumping through Gene in waves. It would gush from the wound in his chest, and cover his body before eventually trickling down and pooling on the hardwood floor. More blood came through his mouth, but it was harder to eject and cough out from the position he’d taken on his back. He did anyway, though, and it spewed out in a thick mist of red, before raining back down on his face, chin, and neck.

  The hardwood floor. This wasn’t the hardwood floor that came with the house when he and his wife had bought it. After a couple of years in their home, they had decided to do a bit of remodeling, and one of the main changes to the house was the flooring throughout. Each and every room’s flooring was redone to feature a more high-end feel.

  There was no other floor he would rather die on.

  Strangely enough, Gene’s last thoughts weren’t thoughts of confusion. He hadn’t at all wondered who had shot him, why they had shot him, what would happen next, or anything of the sort. His final thoughts were only pleasant ones.

  He thought of his childhood and the parents he had growing up. Alas they weren’t as good to him as he was to Delilah, but that didn’t stop his childhood from being a happy one. He thought of his wife, and the day they had met. He thought of the way she had looked outside during the Texas summer in a sundress. He remembered exactly what she looked like the first time he’d seen her, and she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever had the pleasure of looking at.

  He thought of the time they’d spent dating. The ups and the downs, but mostly the ups. He thought of when he proposed and the subsequent engagement. He fondly remembered their wedding day, and the next several years they had spent together before finally having Delilah. He remembered holding her for the first time after she was born, and then bringing her home from the hospital a couple of days later. He thought of all the bottles of milk and burpings. All the poopy diapers and spit-ups. Then all of the jars of baby food until she was ready to eat chopped vegetables and, eventually, full meals.

  All of those sleepless nights now seemed completely worth it. Every moment he was able to spend with his two ladies were moments of pure happiness, and every pleasant memory came flooding back to the front of his mind.

  He remembered Delilah’s teenage years, and the very second he realized he had to start worrying about boys. Delilah had grown to look every bit as beautiful as he had expected she would, and fending the boys off certainly wasn’t easy.

  Then he thought of the final months he had with Carol. He remembered the agony he’d felt following her diagnosis. He even remembered his own thoughts from that time, and everything that ran through his mind in the order that they ran through his mind. He remembered thinking how painful the pain was; he remembered the feeling of knowing that he was in the worst of times, as he was in the worst of times. He remembered the wonderful final day he had with her, and how beautiful she still looked, despite her sickness.

  He was mostly out of happy memories after that. The next several years flew by in a blur, only stopping for a moment to highlight some particularly high points. But eventually, his mind settled on the conversation he’d had just an hour prior. He felt bliss and pure joy at the same time that he felt despair. His daughter was making it, and she was living her dream.

  But now he would never get to live near her again. He would never get to celebrate his retirement, or his birthday, or her success. He would never get to watch her grow up as he quickly grew older and older. She would have to make it on her own, with two dead parents at such a young age, in a city that is notorious for eating people alive.

  Would she make it? Could she move past this? How would she feel after hearing the news, that her father was shot dead in his home, two weeks from retiring and moving across the country to be with her? Only one hour after feeling the same happiness he hadn’t felt in many, many years.

  These thoughts all took place in only a second or two. Each fleeting feeling of happiness or sadness was experienced practically at once, until reality came smashing back.

  He was drowning. He was drowning in his own blood as it pooled more and more in his mouth and down his throat, becoming too rapid to combat by spitting. He tried coughing it out more, but that blood was only replaced by more blood, as it seemed to multiply by the second. He was too weak to flip back over and let it pour out on its own.

  The blood that was originally warm running down his chest had cooled to room temperature and become cold on his body, making him shiver as he slowly lost grip.

  He was drowning. He was drowning in blackness and being swallowed in. The room was dark itself, but even what he could see was beginning to fade into nothing. Black swallowed everything. Eventually, the staircase in front of him disappeared into the abyss and the chandelier that Carol had loved so much was gone. Nothing remained but nothing.

  I can’t wait to see you again, baby, he thought.

  Gene’s heartbeat slowed to a stop.

  At 10:04 p.m., Gene lied on his hardwood floor at the base of his stairs in the home he had cherished for so many years. He was happy and he was at peace, but he was dead.

  Part Two

  ONE

  1993

  The assault-on-the-senses that was the delivery room produced a monster.

  The room smelled sickening, which was mostly caused by fresh sweat masking stale sweat. The screaming, purple-faced mother was sweating profusely, and the nervous father standing in the corner not wanting to look was sweating almost
as much as his dear wife in labor. The seasoned doctor was sweating in the heat of the moment, and the resident standing next to him was sweating as it was his first time to personally take part in a delivery. Plus, as many women do in the pains of labor, she had defecated on herself and on the delivery table. The smell was only compounded by the stifling heat of the room. The room was nearly eighty degrees, and its occupancy of five people didn’t help with the temperature. The heat sort of pressure-cooked the stench and made it vomit-inducing to any person that may just walk in from the outside.

  Then there were the sights and sounds of the room. A doctor calmly, but aggressively was yelling when to push, accompanied with kind, encouraging words and clichés. The mother-to-be was screaming a dreadful, blood-curdling scream, all the while thinking that she should have accepted the numbing meds before birth. She’d opted for natural birth - something she’d never do again. The husband was muttering to himself in the corner, praying everything turned out perfectly.

  The room was brightly-lit with fluorescent bulbs that can be found in pretty much every single hospital and school in the country, but the excellent lighting revealed some rather unsightly and unpleasant views. After all, a human child covered in a cocktail of blood and placenta was being forced headfirst through a stretching, ripping hole, narrowly missing getting smeared with soft and drying shit, while the mother howled in pain, which caused massive veins to bulge in her neck and forehead.

  This kind of birth was not unusual, but it produced a monster.

  ---

  1994

  It hadn’t even been a year since the boy’s birth, but his father had enough.

  A four-month-old baby had become too stressful. It never quit crying, never quit needing to eat, never quit shitting, and then just cried and cried, and cried. It was expensive to care for, difficult to care for - impossible to care for. It needed more than he could provide on his lone income, and his quality of life had dropped to below zero since its birth.