by J. A. Crook
Binky
Sara sat with Amber in the local park. It was summertime and breezy and Sara’s daughter leapt and played at a nearby playground. Childish shouts and squeals shot through the air like twitching fireworks. Sara watched her daughter, Willow, as Amber scooted nearer to her with a mischievous smile.
“You know you’re going to tell me about this guy.” Amber said.
Sara’s eyes peeled from her daughter to Amber for a moment. They shot back to the children. “He’s a good guy. I don’t know.”
“Details?”
“Remember when we were younger and we imagined how everything would be perfect for us? The career? The house? The man? The family?” Sara asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought Mr. Right would be there just out of high school.”
“Well, we thought everything would come right after high school.” Amber replied.
“It didn’t, I guess.”
“But the guy?” Amber insisted.
“I mean, I love Greg. I didn’t expect all this.”
Amber smiled with the admission of love but it faded to a frown as Sara fell to doubt. “Sara.” She put a hand on Sara’s. “People get divorced. It happens. Fifty percent these days, you know? Fifty.”
“You aren’t.”
“Well.”
“But you aren’t, are you?”
“Don’t think that John isn’t any trouble, because he’s plenty.”
Sara shrugged.
“Greg’s a good guy. You should be happy. Does Willow like him?”
“Willow likes everyone.” Sara grinned. Her eyes were steady on Amber now.
Amber laughed. “I suppose you’re right.”
Sara glanced back toward the park. She scanned the metal domes and slides. She shot up from her seat at the sight of Willow’s doll on the ground, absent her daughter.
“Where’s Willow?” A tinge a fear infested her gentle voice.
Amber scanned the playground. “I don’t know. I don’t see her.”
Sara charged the playground. “Willow! Willow!” She picked up the sandy doll from the ground. “Willow, don’t hide from me! Where are you?”
The children looked watched Sara with bewilderment. Sara leaned to them with the doll shaking in her hand.
“Have you seen the little girl that had this doll? Her name is Willow. Have you seen her?” She tried to be calm.
The two boys interrogated on the seesaw looked at each other and then back to Sara. One wiped at his nose while the other pointed to the public bathroom and to the men’s side of it. “I saw her go there.”
Sara saw Willow walking into the bathroom. Sara dashed toward it. The dolls braided blond hair rattled around its head like a holy cat o’ nine. Amber chased behind her and they screamed in unison for Willow.
Willow walked in, not seeming to hear her mother’s cries. She walked with all of the confidence of being led.
Sara burst into the bathroom without warning. ‘Willow!” She couldn’t see her. The urinals, the sinks, they were clear.
Amber shouted over Sara’s shoulder. “Willow!” Amber ran to the stalls and leaned to look under them. She saw Willow’s standing behind one of the doors in her tiny red shoes. “Sara, here.”
Sara ran over and pushed on the stall door. It was locked. “Willow, open this door now.”
“I’m busy, Mom.”
“Open this door right now!” Sara shouted.
Willow unlatched the door. Sara opened it to her daughter standing innocently in front of the soiled toilet. She kneeled on the floor and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Her heart blasted in her ears and Willow hung against her as limp as the doll in her hand.
Sara leaned back to examine her daughter. Nothing seemed out of place. “You don’t ever, ever, ever do that, do you hear me? You don’t ever run off by yourself.” Sara’s hand went through her daughter’s hair.
“I had to do something.” Willow confessed.
“What did you have to do?” Sara asked, befuddled.
“Binky didn’t like my ball.”
“What?” Sara asked.
“My ball.” Sara pointed to the toilet. The water was rising inside of the bowl. It began to overflow.
Sara swept her daughter up from the ground. She eyed the toilet and saw Willow’s small red ball stuffed inside of it. The toilet was clogged. Water poured from the dirty porcelain.
“Who’s Binky?” Amber asked.
“Willow, why did you do that? Look at what you did?”
Willow looked back at the overflowing water and smiled. She burst into giggles.
“This isn’t funny. The toilet is flooding.”
“I’m not sticking my hand in a men’s room public toilet.” Amber said without prompt.
Sara carried her daughter and her doll out of the bathroom. “Who’s Binky?”
Willow didn’t answer. Sara cast a look of warning to her daughter.
“Binky is my new friend. He lives in a well. He’s funny.”
Sara looked around for any sign of a well. “What does he look like?”
“Oh, he’s very funny looking.” Willow said.
“Where is he now?” Amber asked.
“He left when you came in. He doesn’t like other people.”
Amber smirked and looked to her friend.
“So you flushed your ball down the toilet?” Sara asked. She placed her daughter to her feet but clamped her small hand in her own.
“Binky said that—“
“Stop it, Willow. That isn’t funny. Don’t run off and don’t flush your toys down the toilet.” She handed Willow her doll. Its lifeless head hung to one side and it smiled at a nearby tree. “What about your doll? You just left it out here.”
“Binky said I shouldn’t play with dolls anymore.”
Sara shook her head. “Time to go home.”
Willow frowned and looked back to the men’s bathroom.
“I guess I’ll head to the gym. Sorry.” Amber shrugged.
“It’s not your fault. I’ll see you in a bit.” Sara smiled.
Greg was outside of the house when Sara and Willow arrived. He turned from the lawn mower when Willow ran out of the car and tackled him in a hug. He laughed and looked up at her. “Well, hello to you too.”
Sara smiled. She watched the two of them as she gathered the things from the car.
Greg kept his arms around Willow in a bear hug.
“Let me go!” She shouted with a smile.
“I can’t. I’m stuck.”
“Let me go!” She yelled again. “I have to play with Binky.”
He released her and she crawled to his side. She skipped toward the door and entered the house as Sara opened the door.
Greg asked from the ground. “Binky?”
Sara shrugged with a smile. “Your guess is as good as mine. He’s a ‘friend.’” She made air quotes.
“Oh. Imaginary?”
“I hope so. He led her to the men’s bathroom this afternoon.”
Greg pulled himself up and dusted grass from his shirt. “Oh.”
“She never does that.”
“Is she alright?” Greg asked.
Sara stared through the open window of the house. Willow pushed a large ball through the threshold of the kitchen door and it disappeared. A moment later it returned and she did it again. Sara cocked her head.
“Everything alright?”
Sara snapped out of the haze. “Yeah, I’m sorry.
“Throw it straight, Binky!” Willow shouted from inside.
Greg watched Willow and the ball. “Children do this.”
“Is it okay?”
Greg nodded. “I think I had an imaginary friend when I was younger. I turned out alright. You like me.” He smiled.
She smiled back. “I do.”
They went into the house together.
That night, Sara sat beside her daughter.
“Have you thought about what you did today?”
Willow nodded.
“You won’t do that again?”
Willow shook her head.
Sara looked around the quiet room. Pink walls cascaded into white molding. Willow’s drawings were taped to the walls. A new drawing caught Sara’s eye—a picture of a small girl and a clown-looking figure, with a long, strange nose, polka-dot clothing, a wide, menacing grin and long rows of teeth. She bit her lip.
“Is Binky here with you now?”
“Oh, no. He’s shy around other people. He only likes me.” Willow said. “We’re going to play all day tomorrow. That’s what he said.”
“Can you tell me what Binky looks like?”
“He’s tall. He wears big brown shoes with buckles on them and bells that jingle when he walks and dances. He has big, puffy pants and a long jacket. He keeps a polka dot hanky in his pocket, too, for when his giant nose is runny. His nose runs a lot because it’s really long, like Pinocchio. But it’s pointier. And he has a tall hat. He wears a black bowtie, too.”
The picture matched Willow’s description. Sara looked back at her daughter. “Is he nice to you?”
“Yes. He’s the best.”
“Can you tell him not to have you run off without me anymore?”
“He said he’s sorry for that.”
Sara smiled and pulled Willow’s covers to her chin. “Get some sleep, pumpkin.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Willow said. She was nothing but almond eyes beneath the lifted blanket.
Sara stood from the bed and left the room. She closed the door and heard whispering from inside. She leaned against the door to try and hear it but couldn’t understand.
“Willow, go to sleep.” Sara said through the door.
The whispering stopped.
Sara changed into her pajamas and got into bed. Greg was staring at a crossword puzzle through thick spectacles. His bald head reflected the light from the ceiling. Greg leaned toward her. “1958 horror film oozer. Four letters.” He watched her over the frame of his glasses.
“Are you serious?” She laughed.
“Seriously, I have no idea.” His eyes were blank and wide.
“Blob. The Blob. You’ve never seen The Blob? Movie used to give me the creeps.” She put a hand on his hairy chest and laid her head into the pillow.
“B-l-o-b. Fits better than ‘muck.’” Greg winked.
“Feeling better tonight? You haven’t slept well in a few days. Keep waking up and you’re gone,” Sara said.
“I’m fine. Work stress. Happens.” He shrugged.
Sara rolled and turned off the lamp.
“I was using that.”
“Go to sleep.” Sara said. She took the book and placed it on the nightstand.
Sara woke up to a hollow pop. The sound stirred her from the regular lullaby of Greg’s snoring. She heard the sound again behind her. She turned and noticed Willow sitting cross-legged a short distance from the bed. She rolled her ball against the bedframe. It disappeared for a second and then rolled back to Willow. Willow didn’t seem to notice her mother’s movements. Sara leaned further over the side of the bed. When Willow rolled the ball, it hit the bed frame and stopped.
“Willow. What are you doing?” Sara asked.
Greg stirred, snorted, and resumed snoring.
“Playing with Binky. He said he’s not tired anymore.”
“Willow, honey, you need to go to sleep.” Sara looked again at the still ball, colored an icy blue like a distant planet fallen out of orbit of the sun.
“He said he wanted to be close to you to protect you.”
“What?”
“He wanted to protect you, mommy.”
“Willow, what are you talking about?”
Willow pursed her lips.
“Protect me from what?”
Willow looked beneath the bed and nodded.
Sara’s jaw fell and she thrust herself forward to look under the bed. Nothing was there.
Willow chewed on the inside of her cheeks.
“You need to get back to bed.”
“Can you take me back?” Willow asked.
Sara rose out of bed and took Willow’s hand. They walked through the hallway toward her room. Sara opened the door and shooed the child in.
“Get to sleep.”
Willow bounced into her bed and covered herself up.
Sara watched her for a moment before closing the door. She tripped on something. She looked down and saw Greg’s sleep shoes outside of the door. Sara leaned down and picked them up and carried them into the room.
The next morning, the smell of food woke her. She climbed out of bed. Beside it was Willow’s ball. It was popped and deflated. Sara leaned down and examined the flat rubber. A long scratch ran through the rubber’s surface. It looked like a beached jellyfish. She went downstairs.
“Morning, babe. French toast,” Greg said.
The kitchen was covered with dishes. Sara scanned the battlefield of plates and measuring cups and large mixing bowls. She forced a smile and a thank you.
Willow sat at her small table next to the adult table. She ate cereal. She lowered a full spoon of the cereal to somewhere beneath her table. “Bite? No!” She burst into laughter and plugged the spoon into her mouth. She filled the spoon with cereal again and lowered it beneath the table. “Bite? No!” She pulled the spoon back again with such hurry that she knocked her bowl of cereal to the ground. The bowl shattered and milk and cereal spread across the kitchen floor.
“Willow!” Sara yelled.
Willow and Greg jumped at Sara’s shout. The room was quiet but for the hissing of the pan and the trollish breathing of the hood vent.
“I’m sorry. Binky was—“
“No, Willow. Don’t blame this on Binky. You can’t do that.”
“But he did!” Willow plead.
“Willow, go to your room.” Sara pointed to the stairs.
Willow pouted and pounded her feet as she went to the stairs and up them.
Greg flipped the French toast. He turned and rubbed Sara’s tense shoulders. “You alright?”
“I barely slept. This Binky thing.” She sighed and leaned into his hands. Her eyes closed. “Did you go into her room last night?”
Greg paused. He continued, pushing his fingers into her shoulders. “No. Why?”
Sara shook her head. Brown, messy hair flopped around her ears. “Your shoes were outside of her door. She must have taken them. She was playing with Binky last night next to our bed.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Greg turned her around and put his arms around her. She smiled and whispered I love you. He whispered it back.
“I suppose we better clean this up.” Greg said, “Binky! Clean this up.”
Sara smirked and unrolled a handful of paper towels. The phone rang as Sara kneeled down to clean the mess.
“Can you get that?” She asked.
“Yeah.” Greg went to the phone and answered it. “Hello…yeah…okay…okay, yeah, hold on.” He put the phone on his shoulder. “It’s Lisa, John’s sister. Sounds like something’s wrong.”
Sara tossed a soaked paper towel into the trash and took the phone.
“Hey, Lisa…what?...oh my God…when?...okay…okay, I’m leaving right now…okay.” She hung up the phone and covered her mouth. Tears filled her eyes.
“Sara, what happened?” He rushed to her.
“Amber. She was in an accident. It’s bad. I need to go.” Sara rushed to her purse and pulled shoes onto her feet. “I need to go right now. I’ll call you.”
“Sara, are you sure? Do you want me to go with you?”
Sara shook her head. “I need to go right now. I’ll call you.” She left the house and got into her car and drove out of the driveway with a squeal of tires.
Sara called that night. She sobbed hysterically. “Amber’s dead. Amber’s dead.”
When Sara returned home before morning. She
packed her things at first light.
“You sure about all this?” Greg asked.
“I need to go for a few days. They’re shipping her body to her parents’ house for the funeral. I need to be there.” Her voice was sick and hoarse. Her nose was bright red and her eyes were soggy with tears.
“Okay. We’ll be alright. I’ll take care of Willow.”
Sara tried to smile but it fled. She stared at her folded clothes.
‘What can I do?” Greg asked.
“Nothing.”
Willow was waiting for her outside. Sara sat her luggage upright and kneeled next to her daughter.
“Do you have to go?” Willow asked.
“I do. I’m sorry. Greg is going to watch you for a few days.”
Willow looked to Greg. He stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“Can I go with you?”
“You can’t, pumpkin. Not this time.”
“Please?”
“I’m sorry.”
Willow’s eyes glossed. “Okay.”
Greg stepped from the door and took Willow’s hand. “We’ll be fine.”
Willow pulled her hand from Greg’s and ran toward the house. “I’m going to play with Binky.”
They watched her go in silence. Greg shrugged and hugged Sara.
“You’d best get going.” He said. He opened the car door for her.
She got in and started the car. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” He said.
He leaned forward and kissed her. She smiled and closed the door. She left.
The night before the funeral, Sara’s hotel phone rang. She stirred and looked at the clock. Just after midnight.
“H-Hello?” Sara murmured.
Heavy breathing came through the receiver.
“Hello? Who is this?”
A strange man’s voice muttered: “I miss you, mommy.”
Willow’s voice echoed: “I miss you, mommy.”
“Willow? Is that you?”
The low voice gargled out: “Come home soon, mommy.”
Willow’s voice echoed: “Come home soon, mommy.”
“Willow? Willow, who’s there with you? Who is that? Willow, let me—“ The phone hung up.
Sara jumped up and called the house. It rang and rang. “Answer, goddamnit!”
“Hello?” Greg said, half-asleep.
“Greg. There’s someone in the house. There’s someone in the house! Willow just called me and I heard someone else!”
Muffled scrapes shot through the receiver and there was silence.
“Greg? Greg, are you there?”
She heard a jingling of a bell in the receiver and she froze. Her hand shot to her mouth. The heavy breathing filled the phone again.
“G-Greg?” Sara choked out.
“Greg is being bad. Come home. See a surprise.” The voice ground like metal on metal.
She screamed. ‘Greg!”
“Sara. Sara, I’m here. I checked on her. She’s asleep. There’s no one here. Everything’s fine.” Greg said.
Sara whispered and held the phone with both hands. Her hands were shaking and she whispered through tears. “Greg. Someone was just on the phone with me. Someone is there, I’m telling you.”
“Sara. No one is here. It’s just me.”
“I know what I heard!” She shouted.
Greg sighed through the phone. “I’m right here. I promise you. Everything is fine. You’re stressed. You’ve had a hard couple of days. You need to rest. You just need to rest.”
Sara shook her head. “I can’t.”
“I’ll keep Willow with me tonight, okay? Right here with me.”
Sara burst into tears and wept. She nodded and muttered a soft yes.
“I’ll be here if you need me. Are you going to be alright?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll be alright. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about this.”
“It’s alright. Just rest, okay?”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Goodnight.” He said.
“Goodnight.”
She didn’t rest. She drove home. She drove faster than she ever had in her life. Her fingers clutched the steering wheel the whole way home. Her eyes were stained with tears. She felt beaten. When she arrived home she ran to the door and unlocked it. She opened the door and stepped inside. She remained quiet.
Sara looked around the living room and kitchen. It was dark. She saw a light from the top of the stairs and she went to them. She heard a voice. Greg.
“Don’t be shy. It’s just me. Now just take that off. No one’s going to see you, okay? Just you and me.”
Sara placed a foot on the first step.
“I don’t want to. Binky says—“
“Listen, I don’t give a shit what Binky says. Do what I tell you to do or you’ll be in trouble. You don’t want to be in trouble, right?”
Sara grit her teeth. She went to the kitchen and pulled a large knife from the drawer. She charged up the stairs with it in hand, held high. At the top of the stairs, in their room, Greg stood behind a video camera which pointed at Willow. Willow clutched her doll near the top of the bed and cried.
“You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch!” Sara screamed and pointed the knife at Greg.
“Sara.” Greg flipped a switch on the camera and the red recording light went out.
“I should fucking kill you!” She screamed.
“Sara, this isn’t what you think. I—“
“You…” her breaths convulsed from her in a violent rage and her face glowed a blood red. “…leave this house. You leave this fucking house.”
Willow hid herself behind a pillow and stared in fear.
Sara moved into the room and stood between her daughter and Greg. Greg lifted his hands into the air and edged around the perimeter of the room until he was at the door. He rushed out and down the stairs. The front door was heard opening and closing. A car started and it was gone.
Sara dropped the knife next to the bed and ran to her daughter. They sobbed into each other.
Months passed. Sara learned that that evening was the first time that Greg recorded Willow. Willow said that Binky called Sara’s hotel room to tell her. Sara never complained about Binky again. Sara called the police after Greg left. She told them everything. He disappeared for months but eventually she received a call.
“Ma’am, we’re sorry to bother you. We have an update on your case.”
“Yes?”
“He’s dead, ma’am. We um… we found him under his bed in a small hotel a couple towns out. His legs were broken and…”
Sara smiled through the police officer’s discomfort. “Thank you, officer.”
She hung up the phone.
Sara looked around the room. It was empty and the low, steady hiss of the air conditioner was all that made a sound. She whispered, “Thank you.”
RETURN TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS
Soup
Lisa brought the children soup. They sat in a circle outside of the house and stared into the fire pit in the middle of them. Their eyes flickered with each lash of the fire, with each vagrant ember. The tomato soup steamed and the heat created a phantasmagoria as images bent and swayed between the children and the fire. There were four of them and they stayed quiet for a long time. A howl in the distance caught their attention and like marionettes in a show, their heads turned in unison toward the sound. They laughed together.
“What was that?”
“Dog.”
“Or wolf.”
“Or werewolf.”
They laughed again and slurped soup from the bowl. Desirae stared into hers. She watched her bloody reflection cast from the tomato soup. She swirled the image and made it disappear.
“You guys ever hear the story about Porter Jennings?”
“Who?”
“Porter Jennings. He was a murderer.” Desirae confessed with a dramatic darkness in her voice. She leaned closer to the fire.
; “What did he murder?”
“People, silly. What else would you murder?”
“I wouldn’t murder anything.” One of the two boys said.
“Harry, you couldn’t hurt a fly if it swam in your soup.” Desirae said.
Harry huffed and looked into his soup for a fly. There wasn’t one.
“Porter Jennings didn’t only kill people. He killed a lot of people. Who knows how many to be exact.”
“Desirae, I don’t know if I want to hear this story.”
“Don’t be a scaredy cat, Willow. It’s just a story.”
Willow bit the insides of her cheeks and pushed the spoon around in the bowl. “I’ll sit next to Jacob.” She did. She scooted next to the other boy. “Don’t scare me.”
Jacob shook his head. “I won’t. Promise.”
Desirae rolled her eyes and looked the group over. “Can I continue?” She asked with an attitude.
The group nodded.
“Maybe hundreds. Maybe thousands. No one knows. He would chop them up into little pieces. He carried a trunk full of knives. When someone made him mad…” Desirae dragged a finger across her neck.
Willow moved closer to Jacob yet. Harry ate up the soup with nervous haste.
“We don’t have to worry about him, though. Well. Not too much.”
“What do you mean not too much?” Harry asked.
“He’s dead.”
The group sighed in relief. Harry put his bowl down on his knee. It was nearly empty.
“Well, kinda.”
Willow’s eyes widened. “What do you mean kinda?”
“He’s come back.” Desirae shouted.
The group reeled.
“Can’t come back once you’re dead.” Jacob said.
“You can if you’re a zombie.”
“He’s a zombie?”
“Something like that.” Desirae said with an air of authority.
“So, what is he?”
“Something changed him. He didn’t die exactly, but he isn’t alive either.”
Harry scratched his chin and wore a dumb look. He glanced between the others as if for an answer to Desirae’s riddle.
“What could do that?” Willow asked.
“Soup.” Desirae said with a sinister grin.
They all looked down into their bowls. Harry smacked his lips and stared into his own, nearly empty. Willow pushed hers away. Desirae scooped another spoonful into her mouth.
“The story goes like this…”
Blood still stained Porter’s hair. He’d changed into Mortimer’s old clothes. There were holes pocked in the belly region of the undershirt he took. He wore a light blue and white Hawaiian shirt over it. His jeans were too short and too baggy. His glasses were crooked on his stubbly face. His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel and he braced himself as he felt the immense propulsion fire deep from within him and he projected a wave of vomit across the dashboard and coated it with a swampy red ocean with flaccid chunks shaped like meaty jacks. His glasses were fogged and the splatters of bile and grime obscured the steering wheel.
“Fucking great. Just perfect.”
Porter reached to his side and grabbed a page of an old newspaper. He crumpled it in his hand and used it as a primitive rag to wipe the windshield from the inside. The warmth of the spewage on the dash rose and continued to fog the windshield as he wiped at it hopelessly.
“Com’on. Com’on.”
He threw the newspaper to his side and used his hand. He ran his hand across the filth in a wide splay and there was a tree. He slammed into it.
“He hit the tree?”
“He couldn’t see. That’s why he hit the tree.” Desirae said.
“Eww.”
“That’s pretty gross. So it killed him?” Jacob asked.
“Well, not quite…”
The horn screamed like a banshee. Porter’s door opened from the impact and he rolled out of the truck and onto the soft, wet dirt. It took him. He stared at the sky. The Humansville sky was full dark, no stars.
“Fuck.” He coughed out and rolled onto his side. He hissed as he felt the bones in his body fold as he put weight on them. He was broken.
Porter looked around for a sign. For anything. Wolves howled nearby.
“Think you’re gonna eat me, huh? Think I’m gonna die in this shit hole town?” He shouted.
Birds lifted from the earth as the echo of his voice disturbed their feeding ground. The air was cold and mist marched low and ghastly. Porter crawled on his elbows. He couldn’t feel his feet.
“Anyone out there?” He yelled. He felt his stomach turn. “No. Oh no.” Like a flooded sewage drain, he exploded in puke. The mess covered his hands and crawled down his chin like a lethargic slug. His mouth hung open. His glasses fell into the spew and disappeared within it. He dragged himself forward. He created a trail of his own sick as he moved along.
Jacob pushed his bowl away. “I think I’m officially done now.”
Desirae laughed.
“So does he puke himself to death? Is that what happens? Why is he so sick, anyway?”
“One time I got sick like that.” Harry said. “Ate some bad meatballs. It was the worst.”
Desirae grinned and nodded. “Well…”
“You fucking bulbous, singsong, clown-whore. You pudge sucking carrion cunt of hell. You and your fucking soup did th—“ His organs wrenched inside of his body. His throat burned with the expulsion of heat from his very core. Gags and chokes shot forth puddles and puddles of human slime. He fell face first into it and felt something pierce his cheek. He shot up with the sting. He dug the object from his cheek. It was one of his teeth. He looked down into the barf and saw that two more of his teeth lay rotten within. He pulled himself forward and screamed. “Anyone. Anyone, please. I need help. I’m dying. I’m dying here. Anyone.”
He heard a rustle in the bushes. He looked toward them. His eyes shot back to the truck. It was too far away.
“My trunk. Shit. Shit. Who’s there? Show yourself.”
A dog stepped out of the bush. Thick swaths of saliva curdled and dripped around its hanging lips. It revealed its twisted, sharp teeth and snarled at him.
“Oh, nice doggie. Nice doggie.” He put a hand out. “Nothing here. Nothing you want here.”
The dog moved closer, each step more threatening than the one before it. It paused inches from his face. It growled and Porter felt the earth shake beneath it.
“Nice… doggie.”
The dog lowered its head and lapped at Porter’s vomit. Porter cringed and held his broken body as far from the dog as he could. His back was arched and his bones crunched inside of him and he winced and grimaced in both pain and disgust. Porter lifted a hand slowly and tried to turn himself away but as soon as the hand was lifted, the dog latched onto a finger and pulled left and right violently, like a fish on a hook.
“Oh.” Willow uttered.
“I’ve never liked dogs much.” Harry said.
“So it ripped his fingers off? Oh, I bet the dog did it, didn’t it? That’s bad.”
Desirae shook his head. “I bet he thought that was it too.”
“But it wasn’t? How do you get away from a dog like that?”
Desirae tapped her spoon against the edge of her bowl. “With a little help…”
“No! No! Stop it! Let go! Let go!” Porter screamed. He felt the flesh slip from his bone as the dog twisted and tugged relentlessly. With his free hand Porter slammed his thumb into the dog’s eye and pushed as hard as he could. The dog’s jaw locked harder before it let go and whined. It whined and walked in a ritualistic circle around Porter. Most of Porter’s index finger hung from the dog’s mouth, fingernail and all, and one eye of the dog was recessed into its skull and looked like a shirt button surrounded by blood. The dog chewed the finger into mince. Its tongue whipped about its mouth and it focused its melted eye and its bulging twin on Porter again and snarled.
“You won’t fucking give up, huh
? I’ll rip out your other eye! I’ll kill you you mother fucker!” He beserked.
The dog charged and as if swept up by an alien craft it disappeared in a mist of blood and Porter laid there prone and dumbfounded and alive. He hadn’t heard the crack of thunder that preceded the dog’s disappearance. But the source of the thunder pushed against Porter’s head and he could miss it no more. Porter, bloodied and covered in bile, turned his head and he stared into the two barrels of a shotgun in front of a dirty leather boot. His guts tightened and he shit himself. The gun barrels disappeared and the butt end of the weapon came down on his head like a battering ram. Darkness.
The four of them huddled back and forth around the fire. Jacob picked up the fire pit’s cover with a small metal rod with a hooked end and sacrificed another log to it. The fire roared.
“Did he get shot?” Willow asked.
“He’d probably bleed out anyway.” Harry said.
“From what?”
“His finger. There’s some pretty serious veins in there.”
Jacob smirked. “There are not. He wouldn’t die from that.”
Willow looked at her hand in the firelight. She examined the front and back of it.
“People lose their entire hands and they don’t die. Or their legs. You think a finger is going to kill him?” Jacob asked.
Harry shrugged. “Maybe.”
Desirae watched the exchange. She put her bowl to the side. “He wasn’t shot.”
Willow looked up. Her eyes glistened.
“He was taken away…”
When he woke he felt heat. His body was drenched and he stunk of the most abysmal concoction of both life and death. He seemed to stare through glass. Figures moved back and forth. A fire was burning. Something moved next to him. Sounds were low drones, like a swarm of bees huddled around his head. Words came in and out, out of context with everything. He reached a mutilated hand out in front of him in attempt to understand space. One of the moving shadows in his vision turned and stomped toward him. In a second his vision became clear and pain shot through his body. A grizzly man with a thick beard and thick brows, rotten teeth and squinty eyes grabbed a hold of his exposed finger bone and clamped it inside of his foul leather glove. Porter screamed and looked around as the man held him, and he looked for anything he could use to free himself. A woman stood behind the man with ratnest hair and white pockmarked skin.
“You shut him up. You make him shut up, Earl.” She chanted.
Porter realized he was inside of a wooden cage. A young boy next to Porter in the cage cowered like a beaten animal. The man jammed Porter’s finger bone between his thumb and his index finger and snapped it off, tearing sinew and dangling flesh away with it. Porter’s heart blasted in his chest and he felt faint. The man slapped him once and Porter was clear again, but Porter moved back until he was flush against the wall behind him.
The man put the bone in his mouth and pulled it. The bone dragged between his bottom and top teeth and the meaty slabs ripped away. He tossed the bare, white bone into the fire.
“Oh, you got it. You got it, alright. I knew it, Betsy, I knew he had. I could smell it in him. He sat in his own stank and I smelt, I did.”
“We shoulda known they’d send’m, Earl. We shoulda. But we got’m, don’t we?”
“We do.” The man smiled his broken smile. He reached out and grabbed the wooden cage and shook it like a madman and hooted and howled into the night. “We got’m! We got’m!”
The boy that was in the cage with Porter shook both from the rattling cage and from intense fear. Porter gnashed his teeth to prevent himself from screaming and cradled his broken hand in his other.
“What are you going to do to us?” Porter asked.
“Do to you?” The man looked back to the woman.
“He wantsa know what we’re gonna do, Earl.”
“Well, be besa not keep em waitin.”
Willow covered her eyes as if the scene were right there in front of her. Jacob looked at her with a frown.
“I don’t think we should keep on with the story, Desi.” He said.
Harry, with his long face and wide eyes stayed quiet, too scared to get in between it.
“But the story’s just getting good. You want me to stop now? I haven’t even gotten to the part about the zombie yet.” Desirae said.
“I’m wondering when you will.” Jacob said.
“Well, if she’s going to be a crybaby about it, I’ll just stop.”
Willow brought her hands down to her cheeks. “No. I’m not a crybaby.”
“She’s not a crybaby.”
“Well, she seems like one, not wanting to hear the rest of the story.”
Willow looked up to Jacob. Jacob sighed.
“Where was I?”
Earl spit into a pot. Leftover chunks of Porter’s severed finger mixed with rank saliva fired into the pot. The woman clapped in glee and bounced on the other side of large wooden table that sat in the center of the room.
“Get the boy, Earl.”
Earl did. He went to the cage and opened one side of it after fiddling with a rudimentary mechanism at its edge. He snagged the boy out of the cage by his collar and slammed him down on the table and the boy curled up in a defensive fetal position and screamed and shouted to no avail. He locked the cage back up.
“Here’s the straw, Earl. Put in the straw.”
The woman shoved long blades of hay to Earl in chunks. Earl unplugged a giant Bowie knife from the bottom of the table and slammed it down into the boy’s thigh. The boy arched upwards as if the devil himself were expelled from his soul and he passed out in an instant, muttering cries that were cast more from the body than the mind—a verbal manifestation of shock. With the boy unconscious, the man stuffed the hay into the sleeves of both of his arms and his pant legs. The boy wore clothes that were akin to a potato bag, burlap and undecorated. Straw stuck from each of his appendages.
Porter watched the scene with such a horror that he’d forgotten about his missing finger. His hand was clutched like a newborn against his breast and he pinched and pinched his chest in an attempt to wake himself from the living nightmare. He stayed. He watched.
A straw hat was pulled from the top of the severed head of a bear that was hung on the wall. The man slammed the hat down on the boy’s head and it rolled and rattled back and forth like an overgreased joint.
“Oh, he’s lookin’ good, ain’t he, Betsy? He looks regular like one of em, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, he do, Earl. He do. We got’m.”
Porter pushed from the wall of the cage and clutched the wooden bars. “I’m not the one you want. I came here and I was attacked. I’m not the one you want, I’m telling you.”
Their heads rolled and their black stares fell on Porter. “Whatchu mean?”
“I’m just passing through. I’m no one.”
“Who’s then attacked you?” The man asked.
“Mortimer and Judith Orson. Listen, I didn’t mean anything by any of it.”
“We know where you came from, boy. We smell it in you.”
Porter’s mouth hung. “What do you mean?”
“We smell her stank you in, boy. We smell it in you. You feel that heat inside of you? Like the fires of hell are swelling in your body? Yous tryin’ to send it out, but not nothing can get it outta you, boy.”
Porter shook his head. “W-Wha? No.” Sweat poured down his head. His hands clammed and slipped on the bars.
“You ate it.” The man said.
“You did.” The woman said.
“The soup?” Porter’s brows knit.
There was a gasp across the group.
“It was the soup!” Willow said.
Desirae grinned.
Harry felt a grumble in his stomach and he gripped it with both hands. The rest of the group heard it and looked his way.
“It isn’t anything.” Harry said but didn’t seem sure.
Their heads swiveled back to Desirae.
/> “What happened to the boy? Does something happen to him too?” Willow asked.
“Oh. Something happens to him too…”
The man pulled the Bowie knife from the boy’s leg and black arterial blood spewed from it like a hellish geyser. The man ran the edge of the blade against the lip of the same pot he’d spit into and the blood dripped down into the mix. A hiss came from the bottom of the pan and a black smoke rose.
“It’s happenin’, Betsy, you see?”
“I see it. I see it, Earl.”
“You gonna tell me what happened to thems Orson’s, boy.” He pointed the smoldering pot toward Porter and Porter sat on his knees.
“What do you mean?”
“I knows they dead. All of ems is dead. You think I’m stupid? I thinks he thinks I’m stupid.” He turned back to the woman.
“He ain’t.”
“I ain’t.” The man said.
Porter swallowed hard. He looked around for a way out. His attention was drawn back to the boy on the table.
The man put the tip of the Bowie knife to the boy’s forehead and he twisted it around until a small hole was carved into the boy’s head. The man lifted the smoking pot and held it over the boy’s head.
“We’s gonna show you what we’s can do, boy.” He said to Porter.
The man stared at him as he tilted the pot and the crude black oil, burnt-smelling and riddled with chunks, rallied in the fresh wound on the boy’s head. Smoke rose like a huge fire had been set and the room became a thick invisible nightmare. Porter coughed and fell low to the ground. He saw the boots of the man and the corned bare feet of the woman stamping around the room and then they disappeared in the smoke. A door opened on the other side of the room and like some unfilled black hole on the edge of space it took everything away and the room was there again, quiet, with the man and the woman, but the child was gone.
Porter searched the room and coughed. He stood as tall as he could in the cage and looked at the table and all he saw was a small plush scarecrow sitting in the middle of it. The man snatched the ragged thing from the table and waved it in front of Porter’s face.
“Say hello to Sam here.”
The plush figure waved back and forth. Its beady black button eyes stared lifelessly at Porter.
“What the fuck?” Porter spit.
“Ain’t like him? Aw, com’on, boy, I know you like him. Here. Here ya go. Don’t say we’s never done nothin’ nice for you.” He cackled and threw the doll into the cage.
Porter picked it up. Drops of sweat fell onto the plush scarecrow and then drops of blood. Porter swept his broken hand across his forehead and a smear of red came with it.
“What is this?” Porter asked no one.
The man stepped back. So did the woman.
“It’s happenin’, Earl. It’s happenin’ now. Make sure that cage there’s locked up good.” The woman said.
The man rushed to the cage and Porter reached out for him. He grasped at the ends of his old coat but the man slipped away after checking the lock.
“Ain’t so, boy. Ain’t gonna be so.”
Porter slammed into the sides of the cage like he was one fire. He crashed into the bars and blood shot out and onto the ground and in each direction he sprayed like a dog shaking out water.
“Help me! Help me! Something’s happening. I’m burning up. I can’t breathe.”
The woman shook her head. “Ain’t nothin’ to be done, I reckon.”
“Not nothin’.” The man said.
Porter reached up for the lock and fiddled with it blindly and his arm fell off of his body and in a wet smack it hit the ground and floundered with a separate life like a fish.
“What the fuck! What the fuck!” Porter screamed again and again.
His vision obscured as something slid over it. He reached up and wiped at his eye and pulled a whole sheet of his face flesh and held it like fresh kill.
“Let me out!” Porter screamed.
“Ain’t nothing to be done.”
“Ain’t nothing.”
Blood pooled around Porter and crept beneath the plush scarecrow doll that then laid on the ground next to him. It bathed in the massacre. Porter fell to the ground and stared at those button eyes. The left side of his head collapsed with the fall and his brain tried to understand the part of him that was broken and couldn’t.
“Fucking… soup.” Porter gargled through his smashed throat. Blackness.
“Best keep in him in that cage, Earl. You know he’s be comin’ back. They come back.”
“They do. It ain’t right, but they do. Nighty, boy.”
They all watched Desirae’s mouth. It paused and she smiled. She wrapped her arms around herself and a forfeited hiss let out of her puffy pink jacket.
“That it?” Harry asked.
“What else is there to say?”
“I thought you’d talk about him when he became a zombie.” Jacob said.
“I don’t see why that’d be important. What’s exciting about zombies?”
Willow looked to the fire.
“I guess there is one more thing.” Desirae said. She zipped down her coat a few inches.
They all looked up and sat still.
Desirae reached into her jacket and pulled out a small plush scarecrow doll. “I have Sam.”
The group stood and screamed and ran from the fire toward the house. Bowls rolled over and toppled onto the ground, spilling a gore of tomato soup around the fire. Desirae burst into laughter and turned the small doll to face her. She kissed it and put it back inside of her jacket and skipped to the house.
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The Widow, I
Dip down dark into the obsession, obsession: depression, depression-obsession, to realize perhaps that it wasn’t a lie, the intent I invoked, the morbid widow, I. Did you see my glory, hatched in the winter? The blood that was drawn, the cut at his center? Did you feel my pride when you cut away the stitching, feel full and glorified by its enriching? There’s nothing I would change, nothing to be undone, nothing to be reconsidered and nothing more fun. I did what I wanted on that wintry day, and I’d do again, I promise what I say.
For down in the cellar, that’s where it’d begin, where coals were being shoveled into fires burning sin. For the eyes I once had that bore pits in the man, now only were pits, and pits for him. This love-awe struck me with bladed precision, and fell in love more with each incision. Did you see his eyes? I think you did not. At least from the head which they were originally wrought. They sat as diamonds amid this pillar, this dagger, this edge, his eventual killer. While something I thought could be easily discarded, I thought it much better if in my belly they rotted.
And rotted am I from his benediction to death, from the time that he realized that my death would be best. But do not worry, I did not cry, I rose from the grave, the cursed widow, I. When his eyes were severed from the encapsulation above, I licked at the sockets as though a mouth made to love. I tasted a sweeter fruit than he’d ever bore, in all my days that I played the role of his whore. It made me wonder, in my brain a rot, what exactly held me from potential thought; thought of making him dead like me, no longer floating through the living sea. My patience, I say, my patience, it kept! But his invigorating complacence is what lingered and crept. It brought him to a place where convened the wicked, and the wicked did come, making all quite limpid. From the grave, I wretched, then turned and twisted, I felt the rage only death insisted, and when hands burst through the shallow dirt shelf, my hunger, it called for the wicked myself.
My legs did not walk as they did in the living, but dragged like weights, cumbersome, unfitting. Nothing would stop me, not limp or weary, nothing would stop me from my charming man, dearie. So here I am, in the cellar below, continuing the story, as you know it will go.
I watched from the window, boney hands on the pane, and the fire burnt higher but short of my flame. Nothing was as hot, not one thing so steamy, and the love I wo
uld make last on the cellar floor, dreamy. But the man did not react, and there was no buck, so I had at him ravenous ‘til no blood left to suck. I left him there at the cellar floor dry, eyeless and bloodless; unable to cry.
Satisfied by my vengeance, I crept from the deep, up into the house where we both would sleep. My mangled body lay down on the bloody sheet mess, from where the blood came, hardly a guess. As my crippled mind sought any memory retained, as I looked through the shelves of my sinewy brain, I tried to remember in which fashion he smitten me, whether he’d beaten or bashed, or feverously bitten me. I stood from the puddle that drowned now the bed, stringy fingers reaching forward, out and ahead, for a sign, or a blade, which was used for my destruction, or whatever sickly device managed his seduction. In my search I bumped a chair, it rocked and creaked, and made me aware: This was the place where it all happened thereafter, but not in this space, but at the rope through the rafter. My pits rose to ‘look’ to the ceiling, and that beam that took me, that provided self-killing.
“Wait!” I exclaimed, as I came to realize, “How could this be?” chant in surprise. “Did this man not kill me, or hang me himself? Certainly I didn’t do this myself.” But I remembered then as my mind’s journey ended, and recalled the moment where only I offended. It wasn’t that man whom I ensured would die, it was me, myself, the foolish widow, I.
“You did.”
I heard then from a nearby place.
“You did, and your corpse hung, swinging in space.”
It was him, that man, the man I had killed, the man I thought killed me, through revenge thought fulfilled. But the revelation was clear now, more so with his survival... but no, that’s impossible, this too was revival. He stood in the doorway, as eyeless as I, explaining what seemed an incredible lie.
“The evidence is here, there’s no point in doubting. You did this to yourself, so quit with your pouting!”
Despite what seemed obvious, there was one thing amiss. How did the blood stain the bed amid this? I furrowed my brow and clenched my fists, and scream from my dry tongue, “Silence! Desist! Explain that, you heathen, explain this red flood, as something must have happened to evoke all this blood!”
“Something happened, I assure you, my dear, for once you were silent and I so queer, so queer that I thought, ‘Why not this one time, I make love to her while she sleep, in death make her mine.’ I used a knife for my passion, to carve a smile that struck me, and used the rocking chair that you fell from to have you helplessly fuck me.”
I was stunned by his words, made speechless by his tone, but the story did melt my wretched heart of stone. I brought my cracked lips into a formidable smile, and watched as he did the same, amused by our guile. Death did not stop us, and lust left us craved, and not even for our deaths did it seem it was saved. I crept across the planks, mudded and a mess, for the last thing I felt necessary to confess. With my long arms extended and wrapped around his neck, in our bedroom a disaster; a macabre little wreck, I said, “I love you, forever---may it never die, I love you forever, the charmed widow, I.”
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Epilogue
In a hellish tandem they bled until they were dry as old peppers and picked away by the scavenging beaks of time itself and what was left were the bones of something that never had structure and never had a reason to be upright so the world made it that they weren’t by beating them down with a paddle of fate or the devices of their very own minds and feeding them to each other like pigs left without food with hope only that the one next to them and the one just like them gave in and stopped beating and turned into something less than it was so that it could continue to be hungry and alone and dead eventually anyway but now sick and hungry again and wasteful and stupid. And as it sits within its brandished apocalypse like a dumb child floating in circles in the middle of a pool too deep to survive in the sun flips around head over foot until it isn’t a damn thing but a pile of bones like islands in that fetid sea that drift without purpose to and fro until they collide into something like an anachronism of silly life.
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