Consumption

by Heather Herrman

  “Kiss it?” she asked, still looking at the appendage doubtfully.

  He hesitated only a moment before raising the sweet little finger to his lips. The woman was yelling now, hurriedly approaching her daughter, and John didn’t want to be considered a pervert. But she was only a tiny thing, and it wasn’t fair that in this world the first thing someone might think about a man comforting a little girl with a kiss was that he would soon be kissing her elsewhere. John lifted the girl’s plump pink finger to his lips and kissed it with an exaggerated smack. “Mmmmh!”

  The girl giggled.

  “Completely healed,” John proclaimed. There was a bit of wetness on his lip, and he licked it away, tasting iron.

  “Sweetheart!” The woman, a pretty blonde herself, a very well-endowed woman, John noted, knelt beside her daughter, and pulled the girl close to her. “You okay?”

  “I’m all better,” the girl said. “That man, he fixeded me.”

  The mother laughed, then pulled the little girl in closer. “You gave your mommy quite a scare, clumsy-bones. You should be careful, running like that.”

  The man who’d followed the woman stood at a distance behind the pair and waved at John as he looked up. “Hello.” The wave, nervous and apologetic all at once, told John more than anything that the man wasn’t the little girl’s father.

  John stood and offered his hand. “John Scott.”

  The man took it. “Sam. Pleased to meet you. Are you new here?”

  “I’m visiting,” John said.

  The woman scooped the little girl up and stood as well. “Thank you,” she said. “This kid just won’t hold still. I can’t half keep up with her.”

  John saw that the woman was younger than he’d thought at first. She was pretty, too, although she wore too much makeup. She noticed him watching her and immediately jutted out a hip. It was done unthinkingly, and John guessed she must have grown up fast, used to men watching her. “We were heading to the Festival,” the man said.

  “I just came from there,” said John. “Quite a lot of good stuff.”

  The little girl who’d shyly buried her head into her mother’s chest emerged at talk of the Festival. “Quirrel?” she said, looking from John to her mom. “We see the quirrel?”

  “That’s right, sugar. We’re going to see the squirrels.” The woman’s voice was low and sexy, softening on the Rs. John thought of his student Mary, her head thrown back and calling his name. He immediately brushed the thought away, ashamed.

  “It’s nice to meet you all,” said John. “I’ve got to get going, but maybe I’ll run into you later, at the dinner tonight. You guys going?”

  “The Feast?” asked the woman. “Oh, yes. That’s the best part. At least, that’s what Sam here tells me. My little girl and I are visiting, too.”

  The man nodded. “Can’t be beat. I hear they’re cooking up something extra special tonight. A cake ten stories tall, or something equally crazy. You never can tell what those women will get up to.”

  For the briefest of seconds, John saw the man’s eyes roll up and all the way back into his head. There was nothing but white left. John flinched.

  “You all right?” the mother asked.

  John looked up again, and the big blond man’s eyes were brown and friendly as ever. “I’m fine,” John mumbled. “Just a bite.” He slapped at his arm. “Mosquito, I think.”

  “You want to watch out for those,” the woman agreed. “They’ll eat you alive.”

  “Eat! Eat!” the little girl screamed, bouncing in her mother’s arms.

  “That’s it for us,” the woman said. “When this one gets to going there’s no shutting her up until I feed her.”

  “Eat,” the little girl said again, meeting John’s gaze. She smiled. “You too!” She pointed. “You!”

  “Not now, sweetheart,” John said. “Although maybe I’ll see you later tonight.” A cool breeze swept past him, and the smells of the Festival drifted over, spun sugar and fried batter, curling around them.

  “Enjoy yourselves,” John said, waving bye to them.

  “You too,” said the mother. “We’ll try to save some room for the Feast!” They waved goodbye in return and began walking toward the tents, leaving John alone on the sidewalk.

  In front of him, the stick over which the girl had tripped lay on the cement. From where he stood above it, the S-shaped wood took on the appearance of a snake, curled and ready to strike. John laughed. What a day. He was seeing shadows at every turn.

  Bending down, he reached his hand out, meaning to pick up the stick. As he did so, a distinct whistle of sound escaped from it.

  “Shssss.”

  John’s hand flew back up. Jesus! He looked down again, and yes, it really did appear to be a snake—what he’d originally taken for bark now looked like scales. Shedding scales, like a skin that was coming apart. And the wood wasn’t really brown at all. It was crimson-colored. The shade of blood. The image of the little girl’s cut finger flashed into John’s mind, and he lifted the bottom of his shirt to see the smear of blood that it had left on the underside.

  Slowly, as if in a trance, John stretched his hand out again and reached toward the snake-skinned stick. Closer. Closer. There was not another sound from it, if he’d ever even heard one in the first place. Then his hand closed around it, and yes! It was scales, most definitely scales, with the dry, slithery texture of a reptile—but the feeling passed, and it was only tree bark, most definitely tree bark. John lifted the stick and brought it to his face, and the wood of it was brown, and the bark was only bark, just sloughing off the branch, not scales breaking away. John raised his arm behind his head and threw the stick with all of his might, onto the green grass of the yard in front of him.

  He waited, half expecting someone to come bursting from the house, a neat white two-story with windows cracked open and the porch painted red. No one came. Of course not. They’d be at the Festival with everyone else. Then John laughed. “You idiot,” he said aloud. “What would they come after you for anyhow? Throwing a stick?” He laughed again, but it sounded forced.

  He lowered his head and continued on to Bunny’s house, keeping his eyes firmly on the sidewalk as he went.

  2

  In a house that John Scott had passed, two girls stood in a bedroom examining an array of clothes.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “For goodness sake, Star, relax. I said I’m fine.”

  “You were gone for, like, ever.”

  “For the tenth time, I did a long run. Then I went to check out the Festival, okay? It didn’t seem like you wanted to go. I’m sorry.”

  “But you swear you feel better?”

  “Yes. God.”

  From outside, there was the sound of a dog barking, and Mabel stiffened. But when there was no following bark, she relaxed, combing the hair away from her face and pulling something from the rack in front of her.

  “Wear this.” Mabel held out a dress she’d plucked from her mother’s closet, laying it against Star’s chest, then sat a pair of silver heels beside it. The dress must have been a special-occasions dress, or something left over from Mabel’s mother’s youth, because Star’d never seen the woman in anything close to this daring.

  The fabric was a stretchy red material, and when Star pulled it over her head, it clung to every curve of her body. “I can’t wear this, Mabel. I look like a prostitute!”

  But Mabel wasn’t listening to her. She’d already stepped into the bathroom to try on her own outfit, and when she emerged, Star could understand why in cartoons they showed men with their jaws dropping to the floor.

  Mabel did not look like Mabel. She looked like a cross between some otherworldly creature and a supermodel. Star half expected smoke to start billowing around her friend like some freaky Jessica Rabbit cartoon.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Star asked.

  “Found it lying around.”

  Like hell, Star thought. Star was no pr
ude. In the past, she’d worn plenty of outfits that were meant to attract attention. But what Mabel was wearing, if you could still call her Mabel, went beyond anything Star would ever consider.

  The top was composed of two black ties, knotted together around Mabel’s neck and then somehow, with tape or sheer force of will, Star didn’t know which, strapped strategically across Mabel’s breasts, the ties crossing each other and then barely covering the nipples. The bottoms of the ties were tucked into a knee-length black skirt. Except that the entire front half of the skirt was ripped so that it ended just below Mabel’s panty line.

  “You look amazing, Mabel—I mean, really you do—but are you sure you want to wear that to church? Your mom’s gonna flip.”

  Mabel, the new Mabel, went around behind Star, and rubbed a comforting hand down Star’s arm. Star saw that Mabel’s fingernails, always chopped short so that she could help with the garden out back she loved so much, were long and painted an electric blue, the same color she’d used to create a smoked-out sheen around her eyes. Mabel curved her pointer finger and let the nail scratch gently, ticklingly, up Star’s arm.

  “I want to wear it, Star. Don’t you want me to?”

  An uncomfortable flutter began in Star’s belly, and she pulled herself away. She was not about to even begin admitting what that flutter had been, that she had, at least momentarily, felt some kind of attraction toward her oldest and best friend. Although this woman in front of her did not look like her oldest and best friend. Regardless, things in her life were fucked-up enough already without this.

  “Let’s get going, huh? Unless you want to skip the Church Service. I don’t mind. We can just grab a bite at the Feast.”

  “Oh, no. We have to go to church.” Mabel shot Star a disapproving look. “Still, we’ve got a few minutes.” Mabel looked at Star, pinpointing her with those green eyes, which, circled in the smoky makeup, popped even more alarmingly against Mabel’s pale skin. “Want something to drink?”

  “Not unless it’s liquor,” said Star, without any hope. Mabel never drank, and neither did her parents.

  “What’ll it be? Rum or vodka? I can even rustle us up some beer, if that floats your boat,” said Mabel. She spun around, admiring herself in the mirror.

  “Really?” said Star. “Awesome. Why do you have liq—” She stopped. “Hey.” Star reached out toward Mabel, grabbing her arm and pausing her admiring spin. “Jesus, what’s that?” On her chest, at the point where the two ties crossed, was a large mole. No, that wasn’t right, not just large—fucking huge. The size of a quarter, at least. It wasn’t flat either, but raised, and three coarse black hairs, very distinct, protruded from it.

  “What the hell, Mabel? When did that happen? I think you’d better get that looked at, I—”

  Mabel spun around and gave Star a cold, hard look. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business.” For a minute, the girls stood there, staring at each other, and then, looking like some kind of automated doll, Mabel smiled. “What did you say you wanted to drink again?”

  “Let’s go with vodka,” said Star, and when Mabel arrived with two glasses full of nothing but clear liquid, Star flung hers back in a single gulp.

  There was no point thinking about any of it. No point asking questions, like why Mabel Joyce, Cavus’s very own teetotaler president of Teens for Christ, was suddenly in possession of a fully stocked bar.

  Star’s life right now was a fucking mess. A real fucking mess. Her family was gone, her boyfriend was an unfaithful prick, and her best friend had turned into some kind of woman of the night who was maybe dying from cancer or something. And Star was here. There was nothing else for it. She held her empty glass out to Mabel. “More?”

  Star thought of her father.

  Of the woman’s ring, and something else…

  She would drink her way out of it. At least for tonight she would find some kind of peace, some kind of escape in the bottle. She raised the empty glass, still in her hand, to her lips and unexpectedly, and with all the force of a whirlwind, yearned for her father.

  “Star?”

  When she turned around, there was Mabel. She held a bottle of vodka in her hand, and this she held out toward Star. Star reached to take it then stopped. All around Mabel’s mouth were flecks of a white, chalky substance.

  “Jesus, Mabel, what have you…?”

  But there was no need to go on. Clutched in Mabel’s other hand, partially hidden behind her back, was one of Mrs. Joyce’s wax candle cupcakes. Imprinted in its side were teeth marks where someone had taken a large, neat bite.

  “Did you eat that?”

  Mabel grinned. “They’re delicious. Do you want one?” Mabel held the ruined candle out in front of her, an offering.

  The empty glass slipped from Star’s hand, and she felt a wave of nausea roll through her belly. She ran, unseeing, not hearing Mabel’s protests, into the Joyces’ bathroom, where she managed to slam and lock the door before falling to her knees and vomiting into the toilet.

  Chapter 14

  1

  Erma sat beside Bunny, watching Riley circulate through the tables in the beer tent. They’d arrived twenty minutes ago, to find John gone and Bunny sitting alone.

  “He’s gone to check on the dog,” Bunny had offered, by way of explanation. “He’ll meet us at church.”

  Erma was surprised that John had left without seeing her first, but that was just John. You never could tell what was going on in his brain. She’d already made up her mind not to let it bother her, to focus on enjoying the rest of her time here so that she could be in a good mood when she saw him again. She didn’t want anything to spoil tonight.

  Although only on her second drink, Erma had a nice buzz going. She was turning into a real lightweight, she realized, remembering the days in school when she could have knocked back half a dozen of these before feeling it. Not now. The tent and its occupants spun briefly in front of her, and Erma set the plastic cup down, figuring she should probably take a break.

  “Feeling okay?” Riley asked, returning to sit across from her at the picnic table and studying her face with concern.

  “I’m fine. Find out anything?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. I think our best bet is tonight at the Feast. She’ll be there if she’s anywhere.”

  He sat his own beer down in front of him after taking a sip, the foam lining his mouth. “Damn good this year, isn’t it?”

  “Too good, maybe,” Erma said.

  “Ah. You’ll be all right. When we get to the Feast there’ll be enough food to cram into your belly to sober up an elephant.”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “It is. The Feast is everybody’s chance to show off for the year. Cavus women, they go all out.” Riley took a swig of his beer. “There’s a lot of people missing this year, though. Don’t you think so, Aunt?”

  Though Bunny sat beside Erma, the woman had her gaze trained firmly on the tent’s exit. She didn’t turn around or respond.

  “Bunny.” Erma shook her gently.

  “Hmm? What?” The older woman looked like she’d been in a trance.

  “I said, there seems to be a lot of people missing this year,” said Riley. “At the Festival.”

  “It seems like there are plenty here to me,” said Erma, thinking about the packed streets outside.

  “No,” Riley said. “There aren’t as many. Usually you can’t find a seat in here.”

  Erma looked around and realized that while the streets might have been crowded, the population in here was sparse indeed. Besides them, there were only ten or so other revelers, sprinkled intermittently about the place. Several tables sat empty.

  “It’s not just this,” said Riley, catching her examination of the place. “Everyone I talked to, every family had somebody missing today.”

  Slowly, looking like a woman who’d just emerged from a midsummer’s dream, Bunny moved herself closer along the bench to Erma.

  “You okay?
” Erma asked.

  “Of course,” Bunny said. “I’m a little tired, that’s all. The sun got to me.”

  Bunny pulled a lipstick and mirror from her purse, carefully reapplying the color, and then dotting the edges of her lips with a crumpled Kleenex, the tissue’s surface already covered with red smudges.

  “There were more people in here earlier,” Bunny said. “But maybe there’s a summer cold going around or something. They happen, you know. All the time.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve had plenty,” Riley said. “I never let it stop me from coming to a Festival, though, I can tell you that. I don’t think anyone else in Cavus would either.”

  “When did John say we should meet him?” asked Erma.

  “In an hour,” said Bunny, and Erma could swear that the woman’s face flushed. Bunny stood. “Which means about now. My gosh, it’s nearly five o’clock. Church will be starting in twenty minutes.”

  “That’s probably where everybody is, then,” said Erma, looking around the tent.

  Riley didn’t answer her. “Let’s get going,” he said. “No use making John wait on us.”

  Erma and Bunny followed Riley outside. The streets, previously packed, were now mostly empty. The rows of white tents with their colorful flags stood unmanned, their goods packed away or covered by tarps. The streets boasted remnants of the party; here and there were streamers, napkins, and other colorful bits of trash. Out of the corner of her eye, Erma saw a squirrel dart across the road and snatch up half of a dropped ice-cream cone. The squirrel paused, rotating the cone in its hands.

  It looked just like a little human, she thought. The squirrel blinked its big eyes at her, stuffed the cone into its mouth, and then scampered across the street, disappearing up the base of a tree.

  In the distance, a great, rhythmic ringing sounded.

  “Church bells,” Bunny said. A small smile played across her lips. Erma startled as she felt the woman’s hand, cold and dry, slip into her own. “It’s almost Feast time, dear,” she said. “First the Service. It’s quick, though, so you don’t have to worry about that.”