by Adam Vine
The music was zydeco, a man’s voice, all gravel and swallowed sorrows, accompanied by an accordion.
I opened a hole,
I opened a hole,
The broken pieces
Go in the soil!
Down they fall,
And never touch dirt,
There are many holes
Under the earth!
I approached the gramophone and touched it. As my fingertips slid across the polished copper, I noticed something strange about the back of the storage area. The beam of light had moved from the table holding the gramophone to the space between two derelict piles of abandoned stuff crammed up against the basement’s back wall.
Only, it wasn’t a wall. A flight of stairs ascended up to the house.
I made my way to the hidden stairwell, stopping before I placed my foot on the first step. The stairwell was steep, cramped, and narrow, like the kind servants would use in some old mansion.
The voice sang:
I opened a hole,
'neath a sunny hill,
I took a stumble,
Then took a spill!
Now I’m the hole,
And the hole is me!
A-ho ho ho,
And a-ho he he he!
The record skipped, Ho he he he.
And skipped, Ho he he he.
And skipped, Ho he he he. Ho he he he. Ho he he he.
Hesitantly, I climbed.
The echo of that eerie, looping laugh followed me up the stairs. I climbed for what seemed like hours, but the sound of the skipping record didn’t diminish, staying constant the entire ascent.
The stairway ended at another Hobbit door. Unlike the door leading under the house, this one had a peephole.
I tried the knob, but the door was locked and didn’t budge. The peephole was open. I put my eye to it, and looked into the living room of Sunny Hill through a secret window behind our communal bookshelf.
Ho he he he.
Carter was there, and Talia, and Bea. They were sorting through the box of pictures exactly as they had when I was with them – only I wasn’t there.
Carter opened the box.
“This was under the house?”
“Buried in a hole,” Bea said.
Ho he he he.
Carter spread the pictures out on the floor. “How many you count, Miss Bumble Bea?”
“You counttem.”
“I would, but I’m higher than Khaleesi’s dragons right now.”
“Ugh. Fine. A hundred and thirteen,” Bea said.
Natalia’s eyes flickered. “Night, guys. I’m going to bed. Fill me in tomorrow morning.”
Could there really be a hidden stairway under our house? I wondered.
“Night, baby, Carter said. Natalia kissed him.
“Night, stony,” I muttered behind the secret door.
Ho he he he.
I turned to look back down the stairs in the direction of the noise, but the corkscrew stair stretched infinitely away into a well of darkness below me. When I put my eye to the peephole again, they were all looking at me.
Their eyes were strange. I knew their faces, but not those terrible, empty eyes. They looked like black holes cut into paper. Whatever was behind them was not the Carter and Bea and Talia that I knew.
I felt the paralyzing terror of the dream metastasize in my blood.
No way they could’ve heard me, I thought. They’re looking at the bookshelf.
They weren’t looking at the bookshelf.
Ho he he he.
Not-Carter started to get up. Not-Bea and Not-Talia followed. I tried to move, but couldn’t. The dream fear was stronger than my will to run.
They moved slowly, but wrong, twitching like a film run through a dysfunctional projector, closer and closer to my secret window with every skip of the music.
Ho he he he.
Carter leaning down to examine the bookshelf.
Ho he he he.
Talia and Bea huddling in with him.
Ho he he he.
Their faces crowded into my view, three sets of empty eyes peering into my own, inches away.
Ho he he he.
Carter, Talia, and Bea lying dead on the living room floor, their bodies shredded and ruined.
Ho he he he.
Blood trickling under the crack in the door and soaking my shoes.
Ho he he he.
Not-Carter reaching for the peephole. Not-Bea and Not-Talia looking on through holes for their eyes.
Ho he he he.
Me tripping and falling backwards down the stairs.
Snapshot #20
Caption: Boys Don’t Get Pregnant
Move-in day, my junior year: my first official day as a resident of Sunny Hill. If one were to arrange my college pictures in chronological order, this one would undoubtedly go first.
The picture shows Carter, my mom, and I drinking beers in the kitchen. The place was still empty. There was no graveyard of empty handles of cheap booze lining the top of the fridge and cabinets, no dirty dishes in the sink, no ancient grease baked onto the range.
Mom wasn’t supposed to be drinking – she's a serious alcoholic, and has been trying to recover for as long as I can remember – but she got drunk, anyway.
In the picture, Carter and my mom are both standing in front of the fridge, where a single piece of paper is hanging from a Black Dog Brewery magnet a previous student had left behind. The words BOYS DON’T GET PREGNANT are written on the paper in thick black marker, above a poorly scribbled ejaculating penis.
It was something our landlord said the day we signed our lease, during a well-rehearsed story about how he didn’t let his teenaged daughters go to sleepovers. Alfonso had recited the story to us with such rote precision, that I couldn’t help but think that he’d told it to every group of students who moved into Sunny Hill.
When I asked the girls who lived there before us, this turned out to be the case. Alfonso was a man of one story, and everyone heard it, usually more than once.
Carter and I decided “Boys don’t get pregnant” should be the motto of our house.
That piece of paper was our very first decoration, despite Mom's protests. Carter and I finally convinced her to pose with it in front of the fridge after her third beer. My dad did most of the actual moving-in.
***
I woke up, legs and feet lurching to find solid ground like I was falling through thin air. My brain realized I was lying safe in bed before my body did. I shuddered and lay still. My heart raced. My head hurt.
There were muddy footprints next to my bed. I had an awful hangover and Bea was gone. There were muddy footprints next to my bed. There were muddy footprints…
It had rained. The mid-morning sky was a steel gray canopy peeking through my broken blinds, but, like Bea, the rain was gone.
Who would walk in the house without taking off their shoes, after walking through mud? What kind of asshole walks in a stranger’s house with muddy shoes? We will never be remembered.
My head was clogged with pain and half-formed thoughts. I remembered the party. I remembered dancing in the garage with the disco lights, and the pretty girls, and the shots. So many shots. Shots with Jay and the hometown wrecking crew. Shots with Bea when everyone else was passed out or fighting for somewhere to sleep. The pictures we dug up beneath the house.
The pictures…
My head fucking hurts.
My mouth was dry and I wanted water. I stumbled to the kitchen, stepping over puddles of questionable, sticky substances and human shapes passed out on the floor, to drink some of Carter’s orange juice out of the carton. A pair of panties was hung over the top of the fridge doors.
Someone had sex in our kitchen after all.
Dirty bastards, I thought as I sipped the pain away.
After the orange juice, I ate a few carefully cut bites of Natalia’s leftovers, three of Sam’s frozen burritos, and a piece of leftover pizza from the party.
I went b
ack to bed and slept another four hours, before being woken up again by Popeye stepping painfully on my gut. I opened my eyes as a gust of hot pug breath blasted my face.
“Drew Mayhem. Hey man. Wake up.”
Jay, Rob, and Ry were standing next to my bed.
“Oh. Sup, dudes. Hey, Popeye.”
“We’re gonna get some breakfast, then head out.”
“You don’t want to hang around for a bit? Blaze and play some video games?”
Jay pulled his dog off me. “Nah, we gotta bounce, man. Thanks for having us. It was hella fun.”
“Oh. All right.”
“Call me next time you come up north.”
When my hometown friends were gone, I rolled out of bed for more water. Now that I wasn't on the verge of puking, the mess in the house seemed even worse than before. Beer bottles everywhere, on their sides, standing up, half-full. Empty handles of liquor. Discarded blankets and clothes and phone numbers written on cardboard. Hell-lakes of puke. Roaches of forsaken joints begging in their neglect.
This was how Sunny Hill was supposed to look, its natural default state. When it was clean, it looked wrong. That house was built for partying in, for being covered by the disgusting, body-fluid drenched humus of student life. It was never meant to look nice.
Carter and Natalia were in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Carter was drinking orange juice and reading the newspaper while Natalia sat next to him with her face in her palms. Carter always read the paper with a glass of O.J. in the morning.
“Morning, beautiful,” I said.
“Hmmm,” Carter said.
Natalia groaned inarticulately.
“I’m glad you’re all bright and sunny this fine Sunday morning.”
Carter took a sip of juice and cracked his newspaper.
“That was one hell of a party,” I said.
Carter nodded. “Baby, last night was a storm.”
“We were the storm.”
“We always the storm.”
“Ugh. Both of you, stop talking,” Natalia said.
I opened the freezer to fish out some taquitos. All the taquitos were gone, so I went for a frozen Pop-Tart instead.
“Hey, do you know who ate my leftovers?” Natalia said.
I shook my head. “Nope. Probably someone from the party.”
She fumed, shaking her head. “It was from the Cheesecake Factory. What the hell?”
From behind his newspaper and orange juice, Carter said, “My burger got had last week. This morning, it was pizza. Seems like we have a Muncher at Sunny Hill.”
“A Muncher?” I said, biting into the Pop-Tart.
“A goddamned, dirty, sleazing, can’t-get-enuff-of-other-people’s-tasty-stuff Muncher. They’re never satisfied.”
“There’s still some in here,” I said, showing Natalia the Styrofoam box.
“Ew. I don’t want that. Not after someone’s nasty mouth has been on it.”
“Munchers,” Carter whistled. He glanced up, saw me eating my Pop-Tart, and laid his newspaper flat on the table. “Drew, dawg.” Carter always called me dawg, in a way that was somehow both serious, and perpetually ironic. “I keep tellin' you. You are never going to get fit if you don’t fix your diet. You’ll get hungry again in a few hours and binge on more junk food. You need to eat right. Small portions of good food. Lean meat. Veggies. Not a goddamned Pop-Tart. The fuck you think this is? Amateur hour?”
“Someone’s cranky this morning,” I said, taking another bite.
“You always complain about how you wanna lose weight. Listen to me when I tell you how you do it.”
“Okay, dawg. How do I do it?”
“Babe,” Natalia said, stroking his arm.
Carter pushed her hand away. “One, lift weights. Two, eat a chicken breast and some rice with broccoli. Three, lift more weights. Four, eat some more broccoli. Five, lift more weights. Six, drink a protein shake and admire your new ass in the mirror.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“Just telling you what you need to hear,” Carter said, returning to his paper.
Natalia added, “Maybe you could stop playing so many video games.”
Carter cracked his knuckles. “Seven, stop playin’ so many video games. Eight hours a day. Who got time to play video games eight hours a day? Facebook, too – that’s another thing you should stop doing for eight hours a day. What’s that, sixteen hours? And another eight hours of Reddit. That’s twenty-four hours, Thunder. When do you sleep?”
I shrugged. “I don’t.”
“Eight hours of Facebook a day? I didn’t know Bea had that many pics,” Natalia said.
“Very funny.” I looked down at my arms and gut. I suddenly felt very small in that room.
Natalia must have noticed me being self-conscious, because she said, “Drew, we’re only saying this because we care about you. We want you to be healthy.”
“I’m sure that’s what it is.”
“Don’t,” Carter told her. Then he turned to me. “Not to be a jerk, but her telling you that when it ain’t true is not helpful. You need to want to want it. Nobody else can change you but you. How much you weigh right now?”
“Can we not talk about this?” I said.
“January first. Ain’t gonna be a better time than right now.”
“Fine. I'm about 280.”
“Pounds?” Natalia said.
“Don’t do that,” Carter told her. “It ain’t his fault he’s big. Probably runs in his family. But it will be your fault if you don’t do somethin’ about it, Thunder. Don’t let this conversation get you down. Let it motivate you.”
“Carter, stop. He looks sad,” Natalia said.
“Baby, this is man time,” Carter said. “Free personal trainer, Drew. Offer’s open. You didn’t do too bad the few times you’ve gone to the gym with me. You just need to stick to it.”
“It is a new year,” I said.
“You know I love you. We the storm.”
“Zzzzzzzzt!” I made pretend lightning bolts with my fingertips.
“God, you guys are adorable,” Natalia said.
Carter put a hand over her mouth. She slapped him playfully.
“Hey – did one of you guys come in my room last night?” I said.
“Why the hell would we go in your room?” Carter said. “I’ve got PornHub. I don’t need to see whatever you and Bea were doing.”
Natalia snickered.
“Nothing happened.”
“Uh huh.” They exchanged a look.
“Seriously. She passed out. Are you kidding? You both saw her. You think I would straight up rape one of my best friends while she’s wasted and passed out in my room?”
Carter shook his head, and patted the air with his hands in a "calm down" gesture. "Whoa, whoa, man. We're just messing with you. We both know you wouldn’t do that shit.”
“Are we sure?” Natalia said.
“Ouch,” I said.
Natalia folded her arms. “God, lighten up. We both know you’re a good guy. So does Bea. She told me this morning how glad she was to have such a nice guy for a friend, who she can trust enough to pass out next to. She was destroyed. She didn’t even remember finding those weird pictures you guys were looking at last night until I reminded her.”
A nice friend. She only sees me as a nice friend.
“She didn’t?” I said.
“Nope,” Natalia said. “I tried to find them so I could show her, but you took them into your room.”
I scratched my belly. “Oh. Well, anyway. Someone came in my room last night and got mud all over my carpet.”
“It was probably you or Bea. You guys were the ones digging around under the house at four o’clock in the morning.”
Carter pointed at me. “Yo, we need to clear all these randos out of our house. Your townie friends were chill, I liked those dudes, but who the hell are all these other people in our living room? And why the hell are they still asleep? It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”<
br />
“You mean the hippies?” I said. “They're from the co-op. Bea and Meg brought them over.”
“No wonder our house smells like an ass farm,” Carter said.
I stretched and caught a yawn. “I’m gonna have to steam clean my whole carpet to get that mud out.”
Carter folded his newspaper into an arrow and tossed it across the kitchen into the recycling bin. “We gonna have to steam clean this whole house. It’s nasty.”
“I thought you liked it nasty.”
“He does,” Natalia said.
Carter grinned.
***
Bea came over about an hour later, while we were blazing on the sun deck over the garage. I knew right away something was wrong.
“Hey!” we all shouted.
“Look who it is!”
“What’s cookin’, good lookin'?”
“Which one of you dumbasses put this on my car?” Bea called back from the driveway. She was wearing her hangover glasses and walking with a sluggish drag. “And where are Drew and his friends?”
“I’m here,” I called back. “My friends left. They went home.”
She threw something up at us. Carter caught it in mid-air. It was a plastic bag with something stuffed inside.
Bea mounted the stairs and walked up to the deck. “You wanna explain this?”
The plastic bag was sealed. Inside was a dirty sock. Carter didn’t open it; instead he held it up with two fingers to show Natalia and me.
“What’s that?” I said.
“That was on my windshield,” Bea said, folding her arms.
“And…?”
Carter stroked his cheek. He shrugged. “They gave you the old sock on the windshield, huh? Damn...”
“Did one of your friends leave this on my car?” Bea demanded.
It took me a second to realize she was talking to me. Blood rushed to my face. “No. Of course not. Look, they might seem a little rough around the edges…”
Bea cocked her eyebrows. “Seriously, Drew. What the fuck kind of people did you invite over?”
“Look. I don’t know what this is. But my friends aren’t freaks, okay? They wouldn’t do weird, creepy shit like leaving their dirty laundry on a girl’s car.”
“Thunder, that’s more than just dirty laundry,” Carter said.
Natalia coughed on a long drag of the joint.