Blue Stew (Second Edition)

by Woodland, Nathaniel

  On the bed to Walter’s left was his backpack and to his immediate right rested his bulky old cell phone. Same as he had for the entirety of the drive, he glanced at it every few minutes, but still no one texted him, and still no one called him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It made him feel strange and alone, definitely . . . but, at least no one was making it harder than it already had been to leave everyone behind.

  Walter began to think, now, after having been sitting there catatonically for a few hours, that maybe he should call Maddie and tell her that he’d arrived safely and had checked into a motel. The choice reluctantly became clear that, yes, he definitely should call her. But he didn’t. A powerful mental block had grown from the flourishing plant of guilt in his consciousness, making it incredibly hard to stomach the idea of facing Maddie—or anyone—before this was all over and done with.

  So, Walter just sat and did nothing, while the light of the TV washed over his dulled face.

  The news reports looped on into the night, with not even a whisper of Timothy’s whereabouts to speak of. Walter’s phone, meanwhile, remained quieter than a mouse.

  Finally it became too much, and Walter was forced to separate the burning in his abdomen from the tired mess of mental distresses clogging his brain. He was starving. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  After over four hours in which only his thumb and his eyelids had served any purpose, Walter, with a long, low groan, sat up and twisted on the bedside lamp. Somehow he hadn’t noticed that his eyes had been in great pain, staring at nothing but the harsh, shifting colors of the TV for so long, not until the softer light of the lamp relieved them instantly.

  He stood up, padded at his pockets until he felt his wallet, and then he moved towards the door. He’d noticed a convenience store just down the street from the motel when he’d arrived; a two minute walk, at most. He really hoped it was open—the thought of driving around in search of an alternate late-night food source was beyond daunting.

  It was chilly outside. Walter shuddered, pulling his hood over his head and plunging his hands into his large front pockets.

  As he stepped onto the cold, concrete sidewalk and strolled through a pool of yellow light cast by a streetlamp overhead, Walter muttered out loud words that surprised even him, “What the hell am I doing here?”

  The convenience store had been open.

  When Walter checked out, the elderly clerk asked, “You with one of the news stations, too?”

  He went home with everything bagels, cream cheese, grape juice, paper plates, cups, and plastic knives. He figured it’d be smart to buy food that could double as breakfast.

  In the process of assembling his dinner, Walter dropped one half of a partially creamed-cheesed bagel face-down on the floor and broke three of the dozen plastic knives. While eating, he managed to splash some of his grape juice over his chin and onto his lap.

  Mentally and physically, Walter did not have himself together at that point in time, to say the least.

  For some time after finishing his meal, Walter stared at the crumbs on his paper plate. What was he doing here?

  His thoughts jumped about sporadically, never sticking to one line of thinking long enough to get anywhere with it, and all the while he felt generally unsettled and disoriented. Only one thought came through in full enough of a form for him to latch onto it: the notion that he should drive to the Boy Scout campgrounds tomorrow. Sure, it would all certainly be closed-off, and there would be media swarming the area . . . but, it was something.

  Walter got undressed and stumbled back into bed a half-hour later.

  The TV remote and his cell phone were resting next to each other on the bedspread. He stared at both of them for a long minute. And then he picked up the TV remote.

  Walter fell asleep with the TV on.

  • • •

  Strange voices shifted around. Music started playing—a short jingle. He had been dreaming a moment ago—he even knew it at the time—but now he wasn’t. Had their friends come, unannounced, to wake him and Maddie up? They’d done that once before when Walter had left his phone on silent: come up from Nigel’s to invite them out for early breakfast at the Silver Tap Sugar Shack.

  But, no, that wasn’t it. There was music, and now someone was telling him about a facial cleanser . . .

  Walter’s heart sank before he even opened his eyes.

  He sat up, blinked around until he found the TV remote, and then hastily powered the television off.

  Looking over, he saw morning sunlight creeping in through the half-open shutters covering the windows. He pushed the blankets off of his bare legs and sat at the side of his motel bed, dressed in nothing but his underwear.

  Although Walter’s head had started to ache the minute he opened his eyes, his mind was undeniably rejuvenated from the dull stupor it had fallen into last night. He found he no longer suffered from acute tunnel-vision when attempting to gain a mental overview of the situation he had put himself in and the goals he had set for himself. Yes, it was perfectly crazy, what he had set out to do. That was unavoidable, now that he’d earned the perspective only a long night of sleep can give. But, if Timothy Glass was looking for him, well then, here he was: at the same motel as nearly every other outsider who had any stake in the disgusting thing that Timothy had orchestrated yesterday.

  Walter remained unafraid of Timothy Glass. That much hadn’t changed from yesterday.

  In agreement with his semi-plan from last night, he figured he might as well drive to the Boy Scout campgrounds today. First, however, he needed to get some breakfast in him, and hope that that might do something to dampen the aching in his head.

  Walter had much better success spreading his cream cheese this morning. He poured himself a nice big cup of grape juice, and, before sitting down, he raised the blinds over one of the windows.

  It was light outside; sometime past nine, most likely.

  Walter hadn’t gotten any sense of his immediate neighborhood when he had gone out last night. It hadn’t helped that it’d been dark at the time, but the majority of the blame for this fell on his supremely jumbled mind. Like the motel itself, it wasn’t very pretty, he now discovered. But for a few colored signs, one obnoxious billboard, and some unimpressive graffiti, his view of the street could’ve resembled an old, washed-out photograph.

  Wide sidewalks of cracked and dirt-caked cement lined both sides of a patchy pavement road that had seen only light traffic since he’d been there. There were no planted trees or bushes or any other locally-funded attempts to increase land value. All there was in the way of street-side accessories were parking meters and sign posts and telephone poles.

  Directly across the street from Walter’s motel was the plain backside of a large cement building—for all Walter knew it housed a bright, attractive shopping plaza on the far side, but from his vantage point there was nothing appealing about it. Down the street from this large building was a pub that had metal bars over its windows and was possibly closed for good, judging from the dilapidated look of its exterior. Beyond that were a few fenced-in basketball courts, and Walter knew that the convenience store had been just beyond those, though he couldn’t see that far from his window.

  Walter sat down. He refrained from looking out of the window as he ate.

  Continuing to exhibit improved functionality over last night, Walter kept from dumping any of his grape juice over himself this morning as he emptied two full cups over the course of the meal.

  Walter had been holding onto a hope that malnourishment—maybe coupled with the overnight droning of the TV into his helpless, sleeping ears—had been the only causes of his throbbing head. Realistically, though, he’d already guessed it to be the result of caffeine withdrawal, to which the only remedy would be a quick stop at a coffee shop on his way to the campgrounds. Walter was pleasantly surprised, then, as he sat facing an empty plate and cup, to realize that his headache had completely vanished.

  In fact, his head f
elt—all-in-all—pretty good. The weight of his odd predicament wasn’t resting so heavily on his mind anymore, for whatever reason.

  Walter stood up. He felt dizzy—maybe he should go find some coffee anyway?

  His clothes were still piled on the floor next to the bed. As he made a start towards them, he jammed his little toe on one of the legs of the table.

  “Ow!” he exclaimed automatically, though it didn’t hurt.

  The collision between table leg and toe touched an itch that Walter hadn’t been aware of. He rested a hand on the tabletop and began rubbing his little toe against the table’s leg. He let out a sigh of pleasure; how had he not noticed how itchy his toe had been? He began rubbing it up and down in more exaggerated movements, harder and faster.

  After a protracted time of simple, hazy satisfaction, Walter looked down, wondering if he’d gotten bitten by a mosquito or something.

  Walter stopped moving his foot. His eyes grew wide. He had been rubbing his toe against the butt of a nail sticking out of a wooden patch on the table’s leg. A dark, wet stain had appeared on the brown rug below, and the nail was dripping in blood.

  Walter staggered away from the table, leaving more, smaller blood prints with each step.

  His head felt incredibly light now.

  But, of course it did—what a strange, startling thing this was. How had he not felt his skin split? And . . . it wasn’t just split, he now looked closer: it was gouged.

  Stepping on the heel of his bloody foot even though it still did not hurt, Walter started for the bathroom. A roll of toilet paper was the best he could think of to slow the bleeding.

  He only made three full strides across the room, however, before he slowed to a queer stop. Comprehension had caught up with him.

  No, that wasn’t why his head felt light. It wasn’t fear or shock or anything like that. It was more than that. All of him was starting to feel light—intensely light. He was starting to feel entirely weightless . . . empty, that’s how he felt.

  Empty.

  Walter’s eyes began to dart around the ugly motel room. What was he looking for? Sharp corners, more nails? He envisioned a whole wall covered in nails . . . he could drag his entire body along it . . . One big mosquito bite yearning to be scratched, that’s all Walter Boyd was fast becoming . . .

  Walter’s phone, resting on the bedside table, began to ring. A few weeks ago he had thought it would be funny to set Maddie’s personal ringtone to the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A man’s voice wailed shrilly, someone whistled a three note progression, and on these sounds looped. Walter listened, detached from everything but the sound. When the sound stopped, it came together, and suddenly Madeline Wendell’s beautiful face flashed before Walter’s glossed-over eyes.

  At the same time, for only a short second, Walter was reminded of something distant, and he understood. He had left the door unlocked last night (he had never locked a front door in his life, living in the country). He had left the TV on, too, so there’s little chance he would’ve heard someone creeping thought the motel as he slept. Then there was his grape juice, which he’d left open in his fridge . . . certainly a dark and flavorful enough drink that any mixture of a light, baby-blue substance would go undetected as he drank it . . . Two full cups of it.

  Walter knew he had thought this scenario through before, in a world wholly separate from the one he was fast entering. He couldn’t fully understand why anymore even as he started for it, but he knew that it was vitally important, somehow . . .

  He fell hard to his knees in front of his fridge, and the rough jolt that the fall sent through his bones made him spontaneously think of his body as a glass statue, shattering into dust and floating off into the air . . . He considered getting up and throwing himself on the floor again . . . but no. He knew what was happening . . . didn’t he?

  Either way, what he apparently needed to do didn’t sound so bad . . . Walter pulled open the small freezer at the base of the fridge and lowered his head into it.

  The cold tightened around his skull beautifully, and the pleasure spread into his lungs as he inhaled. He closed his eyes and smiled dully. Yes, he could do this, as he had promised himself he would . . . it wouldn’t take long for his brain to become an ice cube, and from there he could move on to . . . better things . . .

  Time passed in the most insignificant of ways.

  When the question of how long he’d been in there idly surfaced in his chilled mind, Walter realized that time had become hard for him to conceptualize. One minute could well have been thirty as he knelt down, one foot bleeding profusely, his head jammed into a freezer.

  In a handful of instances in this vague span of time, impulses compelled Walter to pull his head out and find a more immediate, satisfactory means to the end he lusted for—but something inside of him calmly reminded him that it had to be like this. His understanding of why phased in and out (more often out than in), but it was what it was at that point, so, complacently, he went along with it.

  Walter faintly recalled how he had always been the type to scarf through a good meal . . . his Mom used to chastise him for never savoring things like a good meal, hadn’t she? So, this was one of those good things, wasn’t it? And it’s not like he wasn’t enjoying himself . . . everything felt good, everything felt right . . . he was squandering meaningless time, waiting to leave for a place of true meaning.

  The feeling came on gradually, and it was diluted with directly contrasting sensations, so Walter didn’t notice when his head began to hurt, just a little.

  More time passed.

  There came a sound, somewhere outside of the freezer. Walter had more-or-less convinced himself that there wasn’t a world outside of the freezer, so he didn’t react.

  That familiar hallow voice, however, was undeniable.

  “Walter Boyd, my friend, are you still with us?”

  Ever so slowly, Walter pulled his head out of the freezer. His frosted eyelashes stuck for an instant before they snapped apart.

  Timothy Glass, pulling a hood off of his mangy, scarred head, stood in the doorway.

  “Ah. I’m sorry you’re still with us . . . but part of me is not,” Timothy pulled the door shut behind him. He looked more shriveled and weak that he had when he’d last been seen, and his long hair was even wilder now. “I’m so happy you came, Walter. I honestly wasn’t sure you would . . . though I knew we’d made a connection.”

  Walter stared at him blankly.

  Timothy smiled, and even then Walter shuddered slightly.

  “I apologize for being rude, what with all the sneaking about . . . but I didn’t want to allow your chemical imbalance to overpower the true you this time.” Timothy took a few steps into the room. “I watched you drink two cups, through the rear window. How does it feel, to think with an unimpaired mind?”

  Walter, after a second, shrugged.

  “It’s hard to put to words, such eloquent beauty. Everything I said makes perfect sense, now, doesn’t it?”

  Slowly, Walter began to nod.

  Crazed satisfaction flashed over Timothy’s pale, cut-up face, “Good. I am happy you’re still here, because I wanted to give you a gift. Something to make your departure far more satisfying.”

  He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a small red Swiss Army knife. Using a grungy fingernail to flip out the main blade, Timothy explained, “One of the Boy Scout boys dropped it.”

  He held it out for Walter, handle forwards.

  Walter rose to his feet, one of which was caked in dried blood. His eyes were moving around quickly, but Timothy never noticed this small sign of anxiety. He only saw what he wanted to see.

  “Thank you,” Walter spoke. His voice was subdued. He gimped towards Timothy, wincing mutedly every other step, and accepted the knife.

  Walter stepped back and looked at the blade.

  “It would be an honor to watch as you set yourself free. I saw so much of me in you that night, Walter.”

>   Walter swallowed, still eyeing the blade. Then he turned around and said as he moved towards his bed, “Actually . . . I think I have something better in my backpack . . .”

  As Walter reached for his backpack’s front zipper, Timothy replied from behind him, “Oh. Okay, good. You know, it was an interesting choice, sticking your head into the freezer. No one else has done anything so . . . tame.”

  Walter turned around, clutching the knife in one hand and a plastic Ziploc bag in the other.

  “It worked for Victim Number Two,” Walter replied simply. His voice was much less subdued, all of a sudden.

  “What?” Timothy asked, one eyebrow raised. He hadn’t yet noticed what the Ziploc bag contained.

  “That’s how Victim Number Two survived the Blue Stew, accidentally: he threw himself into ice water. I didn’t have that, but I had a freezer.”

  All expression left Timothy’s face. He didn’t look much different than usual.

  “Once again,” Timothy’s voice was barely a whisper, “I have grossly overestimated you, Walter Boyd.”

  Walter stared into Timothy’s eyes, and Timothy stared back. There was betrayal somewhere far off in those dark, receded eyes.

  “Depends on how you look at it,” replied Walter.

  Timothy shook his head, on the brink of hysterical exasperation, “How can you still not see? I told you, and now I showed you, but you still do not see: Life is cold, random pain and suffering.”

  “Sure, it can be all of that,” conceded Walter freely.

  “Yes . . . think about all the wars . . . think about our long histories of rape, of torture, of genocide. Something so cold and random inherently can’t have a purpose. Life has no point, Walter.”

  Walter sighed, “You’re right. But maybe that’s the point, Timothy. It’s up to us to create our own points—to create purposes for our lives.”