by Alex Kimmell
Copyright 2012 Alex M. Kimmell
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Cover Design by Greg Simanson
Edited by Janna Balthaser
ISBN 978-1-935961-28-4
DISCOUNTS OR CUSTOMIZED EDITIONS MAY BE AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER GROUPS BASED ON BULK PURCHASE.
For further information please contact [email protected].
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012910423
Dedication
For Melissa
No matter what…
Contents
Other Boy
PART ONE
-1-: Moving In
-2-: Auden: The Key
-3-: Auden: You Turn
-4-: Auden: Not Safe
-5-: Auden: Paper Cuts
-6-: Auden: Let's Play For A Little While
-7-: Auden: Leaving
-8-: Emily: The Last Wind
-9-: Auden: The Flattening
-10-: Emily: The Ghosts of Bad Luck
-11-: Auden: The Flattening
PART TWO
Other Boy Two
-12-: Jabez: The Wall
-13-: Jabez: Entrance
-14-: Jabez: The Room
-15-: Jabez: Writing
-16-: Sgt. Harmon: Standing Stones
-17-: Sgt. Harmon: Night
-18-: Sgt. Harmon: The Hospital
-19-: Sgt. Harmon A Lovely Day Outside
-20-: Sgt. Harmon: A Beginning
-21-: Dedra: The Queen of Order
-21-: Dedra: Opening and Closing
-22-: Dedra: At the Bottom of the Stairs
-23-: The Tattooist
-24-: Dedra: Labyrinth
PART THREE
-25-: Dedra: Waiting
-26-: Dedra: Her Entire Life
-27-: The Nurse: Black Rubber Mat
-28-: The Nurse: There Are No Squirrels in Australia
-29-: Auden: A Prison of Words
-30-: Emily: Marionette
-31-: EmilyDedra: Comes the Flood
-32-: Auden: Boot Man
-33-: Auden: Unlock the Pages of Forever
-34-: Auden: Picasso Taste
-35-: Auden: Arrhythmic Wounds
-36-: Auden: Falling
-37-: Emily: Knock Knock
-38-: Emily: Who's There?
Other Boy Three
-39-: Auden: Panic
-40-: Emily: A Beautiful Day for a Neighbor
-41-: Emily: Very Rare
-42-: Auden: Opening
-43-: Sgt. Harmon: Resolute
-44-: Emily: Questions
-45-: Abram: Blueprinting
-46-: Abram: Man of His Words
-47-: Auden: White
-48-: Emily: Resolute
-49-: Emily: Tidal
-50-: Emily: Reunited
Other Boy Four
-51-: Family: A Show of Appreciation
-52-: Auden: Son
Other Boy Five
PART FOUR
A House
-54-: I Dare You
-55-: Hands
Acknowledgment
Other Boy
Other Boy sits in his room criss-cross applesauce, playing with a small plastic toy on the floor.
Two voices come up through the crack at the bottom of his closed door.
Hard Voice snaps a whip through the air, sharp with violence.
Soft Voice wraps around the room a warm down blanket sewn with loving hands.
Other Boy looks down at the plastic toy.
Hard Voice shoots off again, followed by stomping feet cracking gunshots across the hardwood floor.
Soft Voice reaches out with long dulcet vowels.
Other Boy stands up and reaches for the doorknob.
Hard Voice barks, a caged dog prodded with a stick.
Softer and gentler than ever, Soft Voice reaches out to hug Hard Voice.
Other Boy wraps his fingers around but does not turn the frozen doorknob. He pushes his small ear against the flat and unforgiving wood.
Other Boy listens to the voices rising.
Other Boy doesn’t comprehend, but he hears
ANGER
BLAME
VIOLENCE.
Goose pimples rise on Other Boy’s arms.
Other Boy squeezes the plastic toy key
Hushed, melodic whispers reach through the thick oak, entering Other Boy’s ear.
Other Boy lifts the plastic toy to his mouth.
Quiet melodies sing on and on, pleading through the door into Other Boy’s ear.
Other Boy chews on the edge of the plastic toy.
Other Boy pushes with his index finger at the toy too large for his small mouth.
Other Boy pushes too far.
The ragged, chewed-on edges of plastic scratch at the back of Other Boy’s throat.
Breathing stops.
Other Boy hears a clicking noise from the door.
Other Boy looks up from the floor and watches the doorknob slowly turn.
So slowly it might not be moving at all.
Other Boy is on the floor.
The doorknob moves too slow.
Whiteness searches around the edges of Other Boy’s green eyes.
Whiteness finds Other Boy.
The door opens. Soft Voice is screaming. Two gentle hands slide under and lift Other Boy.
Fingers slip and tug at the toy.
Hard Voice shouts out in unrestrained shards of broken glass.
The unsteady hands shake and fumble with the toy, letting it fall to the floor, covered in drool and blood.
A click, and then the brief yearning whine of dial tone, interrupted by three short staccato notes.
One thin, plastic-sounding ring…
then another…
…and another.
A harsh click.
“Emergency. How may I assist you?”
* * *
People are in the house. Strange people all wearing dark clothes. Lots of them are crying. They smile at him and rub his head when he passes by. Some try to hug him but he wiggles away. Auntie This and Uncle That drove here from far away. Papaw and Gram won’t come. They never come anymore. Not in a really long time.
Mommy won’t get up from the couch. He brings her some chocolate chip cookies but she probably won’t eat them. A lady he doesn’t know is sitting next to her. She smells funny. Like Gram’s closet used to smell at the old house.
Daddy’s smoking. Smoking is bad for you. Hurts your breathing. Daddy keeps filling his glass from the brown bottle he keeps in the high cabinet above the fridgerator. Daddy shouts at him when he goes out to the backyard to swing.
He is bored. No one will play with him. That stinky lady on the couch tells him no TV too. He already played with the toys in his room. He looks at the door across the hall. That’s where the good stuff is.
He moves silent, tiptoe.
He twists at the doorknob. It turns easily in his tiny hand. He tries to stay quiet, remembering Soft Voice say, “This room is a no-no.” He sees the plastic toy on the floor in the center of the empty room. Dark stains look black in the shadows from the curtained windows. The boy picks it up and rubs some of the red smudges off on his shirt. Small fingers wrap
around the toy and stuff it into his front pants pocket.
“Come on out of there, Brammy.” Soft Voice calls from the open door.
The boy turns and smiles for Soft Voice. He runs out of the room and wraps his arms around her leg. The boy skips down the hallway, his hand still in his pants, holding the toy hard.
PART ONE
-1-
Moving In
You finish loading the last box of books and pictures into your new house. Your old USC sweatshirt is covered in dust and sweat and mustard spilled from your sandwich at lunch. You tried to be careful, but eating with one hand at the kitchen counter is never a safe bet for neatness. Emily and the kids are out grabbing some groceries and other essentials that didn’t manage to fit into the moving van. You walk around your new place, taking in the layout and envisioning where the couch will go. Trying to find some innocuous spot to put the hideous lamp your mother-in-law made in her ceramics class at the Jewish Home for the Aging.
It’s a nice house, with lofty high ceilings, hardwood floors, and cabinet space along the walls of every room. That’s why Emily fell in love with the place. In addition to the kid’s school being so close, there should be less clutter with the cabinets. Finally you’ll be able to shove all the books and toys and video games out from underfoot.
No beer in the fridge. Fuck. That would taste so good right now to wash down a pain pill. It might just help ease the back pain after all the heavy lifting is finished. After you hurt your knee in that Father’s Day touch-football game two years ago, it’s never been the same. But alas, there is no beer or soda in the fridge just yet. So you fill your hand with water from the sink, throw your head back, and away you go.
Stretching a bit to get the kinks out, you wish you were ten years younger, moving friends out of the back of your beat-up old pickup for nothing but the promise of beer, pizza and the possibility of getting laid by some hot friend of a friend’s girlfriend who likes to watch you when you sweat. You smile at the memories and wander around the kitchen. The cabinets would look better in yellow. Hate to admit that one, but Emily had a point. You make a mental note to stop by the hardware store again tomorrow to check prices on paint.
Turning into the hallway toward the stairs, you notice something that you don’t think was there before. There are fifteen steps leading up to the second floor with no carpet or handrail. But the steps are wider than most, so the kids feel safe as long as they stay close to the wall. Up at the seventh step, you catch a flash as you turn past the window. It’s not on any of the other steps, so you squint and hunch down a little bit to see what it is.
It’s a lock. Strange, why would that be there? There’s no handle, or knob like there would be on a drawer. Since its open space underneath the stairs, there’s not much room to put anything, even if there was one. The only keys the real estate agent gave you were for the front door and the garage out back. Oh well. You’ll figure it out later. Emily and the boys just pulled in the drive, and you start walking toward the kitchen door to help them unload the groceries.
“Hey babe.” Emily smiles. “We got some pizza and a movie.”
Jason runs past his little brother Jeremy, screaming, “Dad. Dad. Dad. We got… we got… we got that movie remember?” He drops the plastic bag, and apples roll everywhere. “We got… we got… we got… the one with swords and dragons… but it’s not too violent. I promise. I won’t get scared. I won’t.” About to correct his pronunciation, Emily shoots you that look that says, “Take it easy. He’s only seven.” So you hold your tongue. This time.
Jeremy slips on an apple and just barely holds his balance. He’s holding a half-gallon bottle of nonfat milk in his right hand and a pack of gum in the other. You can see the pride in his face that he didn’t drop either of them. He and Jason, two years his elder, have that innate sense of competition in everything. You ruffle his blonde hair, pinch his left ear, and walk out to the driveway to help grab some more bags.
“How’d they do at the store?” you ask over your shoulder. “Any meltdowns?”
“Just a small one.” You can tell Emily’s lying because she doesn’t look at you when she answers.
“And that’s why you bought them another movie huh? Just a small one?” You pull the plastic handles off your fingers and let the four bags you brought in rest on the counter.
She takes a bottle of Rum from a paper bag, smiles and holds up a sixer of Pacific Golden, and wiggles it happily, doing a little dance. “I got Mommy and Daddy juice. Help me get these kids fed and cleaned up, and we might get to initiate the new bedroom tonight, gorgeous.” She slaps your butt as you walk back out to the car.
“Not a bad first night after all,” you say under your breath, and smile.
A few hours later, you leave the hall light on and the doors open just a crack as the kids sleep for the first night in separate rooms. Walking down the stairs, you hear the sound of a bottle being opened and Lyle Lovett’s “Here I Am” coming from the kitchen.
You turn the corner.
“I see you found the stereo.”
Emily smiles, dancing in circles around the kitchen island toward you. “Good song.” She hands you a beer and raises the rum and diet coke to her lips. The beer is good. The sex is better. The sleep is hard and deep with dreams of cardboard boxes, stairs and keyholes.
* * *
Waking up after a week of packing boxes and lifting furniture is bad enough. The sore muscles scream and ache as you try to stretch the kinks out. Having a sixty-five-pound seven-year-old fly through the air and land knee-first into your unprotected testicles is pretty much the only thing that could make it worse. And it does. Your breath speeds from your lungs, and your stomach climbs up into your throat, looking for an escape from the pain. When the white blindness starts to subside, you can hear the sound of your wife…your best friend in the world…the person who is supposed to love you more than anything…laughing.
“Good morning to you too,” you whimper out. “Thanks for your support…dearest love.” Hoping the sarcasm has hit its target, you pick up Jason and growl like a bear. As you wrestle him around, he laughs and smiles with his entire face.
“Squish me, Daddy. Squish me!” Jason yells between bouts of laughter.
You throw him down on top of Emily and jump on them both. “Let’s squish MOMMY.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Jason squeals.
“No. No. No.” Emily barks struggling to get away. “Who wants breakfast?”
“Me me me me me me.” Jason kisses his mother and wiggles out from between the two of you. “I’ll go get Jemy.”
“If your brother is still asleep, let him be,” you say as you roll out of the bed. “Want some coffee? I think I know which box the machine is in.” Emily is heading toward the bathroom and nods while stretching with a big yawn.