“You can’t be real.” He wanted to shout. As if shouting would somehow break whatever nightmare this was. “You’re not real!”
I’m slow. Freckles snaked along the floor. Her arms gripping the wood as, elbow after elbow, her eyes on him, she dragged her broken legs behind her. I talk slow. My head is slow.
“Please.” He was sobbing now, his hands trembling. He clenched them together, the fingers lacing, the knuckles white. “I’m sorry. Oh god, help me. This is crazy.” He hiccupped. “Holy Christ, I’ve pissed myself.”
Like Mrs. Butterworth. Freckles threw her arm forward and pulled herself closer.
He took another step back. He’d be pressed against the freezer soon, he thought. He’d have to move around it. Have to slip within their reach. The tears came harder. He wiped them away with a shaking hand.
In fact, his whole body was shaking. He couldn’t stop it. He was pathetic. He was covered in piss, he had snot running into his mouth, he was crying like a little girl. And his whole body wouldn’t stop trembling.
His hand reaching behind him, he took another step toward the freezer.
Making yourself an easy target. Teeth said, stepping out of the bag and away from the wall.
“I’m not . . . I’m not weak . . . I have . . . fuck, man, Brody—”
Brody’s dead. Teeth moved forward.
“No, he didn’t. He—”
Left you out to dry
She came closer.
when the shit hit the fan.
“I can pay.” He inched back, his hand still searching for the solidity of the hulking, humming white behind him. “My dad, he can . . . oh Jesus.”
Dipshit, despicable thing. Teeth took another step closer.
“No! Stop!” His legs shaking, he considered falling to the ground. Just kneeling. Giving up. “Please stop.” The words fought their way through a chorus of sobs and hiccups and more tears. “Just stop it. Please.”
There’s a cloud hanging over you. Teeth paused, her eyes, like Unnecessary’s, not on him, but to the wall, the ceiling, out the window. On something not him.
That thing, there. Freckles paused as well. Her face lifted, black mucus falling from her lips and staining her chin. It’s . . . wrong.
He tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. And he couldn’t stop shaking. “I don’t . . . you’re not making sense. Oh god, this is FUCKING CRAZY.”
They just feel weird. Tits waited. Her gaze, like the others, beyond him and above him and past him.
“What?” His voice was quiet. “What are you talking about.” And then he started to laugh, his body trembling so hard his teeth chattered.
It won’t . . . stop . . . breathing. Freckles blinked and looked at him. It won’t let you leave. She pulled herself forward.
He thought of running, but couldn’t. His hand moved behind him, feeling for the edge of the freezer. It wasn’t there.
I hope they show up soon. Unnecessary moved from her spot near the door. She stumbled, her footsteps large, her head snapping forward. She stopped. Her hands moved to return her head to her shoulder. The rip on her neck was now a violent gash, the snapped edge of white bone peeking through.
His stomach dropped and the taste of sick crept up his throat.
You moved forward. Teeth took a careful step.
He shook his head. “Jesus Christ!
He moved back, back, back, Teeth said.
“This is . . . I don’t know what—” He fought to catch his breath.
You know damn well what I’m talking about. Teeth’s eyes found him. She jerked forward, her foot slapping the wood. The question was ‘Did Colton Carryage do this?’
“No—”
You killed a girl. Freckles inched forward. It won’t let you.
Lucky for you. Teeth took a step forward.
He walked back, back, back.
And fell.
The pit was deep and covered with clouds of frost, the walls around him the white of the freezer, the floor beneath concrete slick with splattered red, the lid open and waiting high overhead. Too high.
The ceiling on Eidolon was gone. The familiar dingy yellow. The dusty broken ceiling fan. The rust-colored stains dripping along the edge. All gone.
Instead he saw dark clouds heavy with rain. The tops of massive trees listing in the wind. And, soaring high above, the dorm building. A memory of brick and mortar climbing fifteen stories into the night sky. “What the—” He jumped and then jumped again, but he couldn’t reach, his hands touching nothing but air. Cold air, the sides too smooth to grip, to climb.
The impossibility of it hit him. His body started to violently shake. He slammed his head against the frigid wall. He screamed. And then he laughed. “This is fucking crazy. Impossible. It’s impossible. It’s not real.” He closed his eyes and slammed his head against the wall again. “Wake up, wake up. C’mon, fucker, WAKE UP!” He opened his eyes and looked up.
Four faces looked down at him. Unnecessary, Tits, Freckles and Teeth.
“What’re you gonna do now, huh?” He jumped and landed with a thud. “What the fuck you gonna do now, you stupid, worthless, piece of shit bitches?”
Let’s just do it. Tits squatted, her arms bleeding purple and black where the ropes had rubbed the flesh raw. She looked to Freckles.
If the lid closes, you can’t breathe. Freckles looked at Teeth.
The burden of your father’s sins. Teeth turned to Unnecessary.
You and your family. Unnecessary looked down at him.
Above them, the black of the sky dipped low. Like a tear drop. Hanging and dangling, slowly dripping, it gathered itself from the edges like a living thing. The clouds rippling as the tear, this thing, pulled together to draw closer.
He pulled away. Sat down. Drew back.
The tear came closer. As black as night, it paused above the heads of the four as they watched him. Turning their faces, they looked up at it.
“So, Brody’s dead. Smashed his skull on the concrete? Big fucking deal!” He glared at the four above him. “You got your necks snapped? Your pathetic lives ended? Big fucking deal! Life sucks! My family, my money, got me off ? Got me a Get Out of Jail Free card? BIG FUCKING DEAL! That’s life, bitches. That’s POWER!”
He caught his breath. “I’m Colton fucking Carryage,” he said, clenching his fists.
It looked at him, then, a nose and two eyes pushing from the black. A mouth stretching too long and too wide, the lips moving as an unseen tongue ran along a row of hidden teeth.
A moment later, he smelled the noxious air as it opened its mouth and sighed.
“What the . . . ” he said as he stood. He had to get out. “No, wait!” He jumped again, high, landing hard, stumbling, the freezer jumping as the lid above knocked loose and slammed shut with a
click.
APARTMENT 1D
ANNIVERSARY
Monday, 3:24 PM
We are a walking history of our failures,” Marta said as she snapped the napkin open and laid it across her lap. “A stumbling catastrophe of unbelievable screw ups that, as you can plainly see, screwed us up.” She laughed, the tight smile on her gleaming lips held a moment longer than needed. “Really, it’s just been an endless array of aborted endings. Until now, I mean.” Her pudgy hand lifted her champagne glass—her sixth, but who was counting?—in yet another toast to the elegant man seated to her side. “And for that, we thank you, Mr. Peabody.”
“I promise, this time we’ll get it right,” the stranger said with a small nod.
Even here, surrounded by the decay that was Eidolon, he seemed to fit. Untouched by the yellowing walls and the splintered baseboard, the brown stains running from the ceiling or the thin windows that rattled when the wind blew and rain pelted the glass, as it did now, this Peabody was neither tall nor short, neither handsome nor plain, neither this nor that or even the other thing. He just was.
Minus the saddlebag hips and flabby middle, she saw herself i
n him. Kind face. Easy smile. A steady gaze. A someone who was anonymously forgettable in the most wonderful way. So forgettable in fact, she imagined that, if he wanted to, this man could probably kill in broad daylight and still escape the recollections of even the most ardent witnesses. Because who expects something that evil from someone who’s such a nothing, right?
But right here, right now, seated at the long table, a modest buffet waiting, a candle flickering in the center, he was here and he was perfect. The answer to all she wanted tonight to be. Peabody and a bottle of champagne: the perfect combination, she thought as she took another long drink.
She looked at her beloved Benji at the other end of the table. He sat quiet, riddled with the wounds of his mistakes. Their mistakes. So very far from the man she’d married fifty years ago tonight, he was darn near unrecognizable. Their life since coming to Eidolon like a long, slow circling of their graves.
But now Benji’s handsome face was gaunt and pale, thin wisps of white clinging to his scalp like squatters on land that hadn’t yielded a crop in years. His scrawny shoulders were still square, though one sat higher than the other, and his head tilted ever so slightly to the side giving him a lopsided smile. His bowl of broth sat untouched in front of him, his remaining fingers—three on one hand, two on the other, the thumbs still intact—looking much too thin as they rested on the white tablecloth.
Red wine dribbled from his lips. “Sweetie,” she said as she gestured for him to wipe his chin.
He ignored her, his gaze fixed to the ceiling above her head.
Sighing, she struggled to rise, the napkin clutched in her hand.
“May I—?” Peabody rose as well.
“No, no, no. I’m fine.” She winced, her left leg dragging behind as she took the seven steps to Benji’s chair. “I’ve been lugging this old thing around for, oh, I don’t know, forty years now?” Dabbing the napkin with her tongue, she bent forward to rub her beloved’s face. “Isn’t that right, sweetie?” she said to Benji. “Dead as a doornail from the knee on down, it is. Foot’s still wood, though the rest is some fancy plastic or heaven knows what.” She folded the napkin, tucking the stain inward, the clean corner moistened with her tongue. “That was the tenth year anniversary screw up, I think. Yep. That’s right. I lost a leg and you . . . ” She stopped, her eyes on her silent beloved as she cradled his chin in her palm. “What did you lose?”
He sat, his eyes still on the ceiling at the other end of the room. A thin river of red slipped from his mouth and slid off his lip. She wiped it clean with the napkin. “Well, I do know it wasn’t as horrible as losing a leg from knee to foot. Or as annoying. Even now, after all these years of taking the leg off, wiping the stump, cleaning away the scabs, massaging lotion on the skin that’s worn red from rubbing and then, next morning, having to strap the dang thing back on all over again, it’s still exhausting. Simply exhausting. That’s for darn sure.”
“Perhaps it was.” Peabody watched as she pivoted, leaning on the table as she paused to catch her breath, the carpet beneath worn thin in a familiar trail of shuffling feet.
“What was?” She steadied her breath.
“The thing he lost.” Peabody’s eyes caught hers. “Perhaps it was horrible and exhausting. Just in a quiet, less dramatic, noticeable way.”
“I suppose.” Gripping the table’s edge, she hoisted herself back and plopped down into her chair with a deep sigh. “That makes more sense.” The thought rolled through her mind as she reached for her champagne. “Oh, that’s right. I remember. He took a bump to the head, quite a big one, now that I think about it, and knocked himself cold as a cucumber for, oh, how long was it . . . ” A glance down at Benji. “Something like two or three weeks, wasn’t it, dear?”
He ignored her, his eyes on the ceiling above.
“What do you think he’s looking at?” Peabody said.
She looked back at him with a shrug. “The stains, the decay. The general ugh of this . . . place we could never quite call home.”
“You can’t leave.” The tall man watched her, his hands resting in his lap.
“Ha! You’re telling me!” She laughed. “And it’s not like we could, mind you. What, with my leg and Benji’s . . . whatever, it’s a bit like the lame leading the blind when we find the strength to venture out. But it follows, this Eidolon. Like finding yourself stuck in a heavy smelly winter coat with a busted zipper in the middle of a sudden summer’s day, this place just sits on you, swallowing you. Until you can’t breathe.”
She paused, her eyes still on her beloved Benji. “But, anyway, trust me, it was two or three weeks. The bump on his head. For two or three weeks, he just lay there in the hospital bed, dead to the world and snoring like a lumberjack. Took his darn sweet time waking up, too, I gotta say. Found myself envying him toward the end. And then he woke up and . . . ” She shrugged. “Life went back to being life and we went back to messing it all up, time and time again.” She paused. “Though he did seem . . . I don’t know. Off, I guess. Or somehow different in some way after then. Just not the same.” A small grin for Peabody as she sipped her champagne. “I guess that’s what falling off a cliff will do to you.”
“But that wasn’t the first time,” Peabody said as he placed the champagne back on the table and pulled his salad bowl near.
“Oh no, no. Not at all.” Fork in hand, she tucked into her bowl of watercress. “Now, remember, that was the ten year anniversary. We’d had, oh, I don’t know, maybe . . . ” She stabbed a piece of lettuce as she thought. “I’m not sure, but definitely a few, if not several, tries before then.” She shoved the lettuce in her mouth.
“Really. Several?” Peabody swallowed a bite of salad and then sipped his champagne.
She nodded. “Absolutely. You see—and I was twenty-eight by this time, mind you, so in the world’s eyes, and that of my family, I was darn near a spinster and utterly without hope—I met my beloved Benji one month, married him the next, and then we spent the following fifty years happily trying to kill each other. By choice.”
“By choice.”
“Of course.” She returned the champagne flute to its place near the untouched glass of chardonnay. “Murder/suicide pacts. One after the other. All of them sincere. All of them determined and, one would hope, well thought out. And all of them ending either dismally or disastrously, take your pick.” She dabbed the napkin to her lips. “Never could get it right.” Napkin in hand, she put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “And when we got it wrong, boy howdy did we get it wrong.”
“So now it’s Mr. Peabody to the rescue?” The affable stranger, the napkin covering his lap, speared another piece of lettuce.
“Well, it’s a necessity, don’t you think? Because, try as we might, we can’t do it on our own. And lord knows we don’t have the strength for anymore oopsies.” She paused, elbows off the table, fork in hand, a leaf of watercress impaled on the tines.
“But do you still want to?”
“What? End it all?” She nodded, taking a quick bite of the green. “Of course,” she said, chewing. She swallowed, her napkin revisiting her lips for a quick dab. “When it comes to leaving, as we talked about, the only way that’s really going to happen is if my Benji and I are shoved, piece by piece, if need be, into body bags. And that’s fine.
“Listen,” she said, the fork at rest near her plate. “I knew the moment I met him that I wanted to marry him and I wanted to live with him and I wanted to die with him. That whole ‘till death do you part’ thing hit me very hard in a very deep, dark place. Those words, that promise, resonated. Like the rolling of thunder.”
She stopped. “I—well, we—couldn’t imagine a moment without the other. Our greatest fear, my greatest fear, would be to see the other perish and be left alone to live without them. Without him.” Her elbows on the table, she leaned forward again, her eyes shining with quiet tears. “And, not being the most patient of people, we just decided to get a jump on things.” She looked down the ta
ble at her husband. “Isn’t that right, sweetie?”
Benji didn’t respond. Red wine dripped from his lips.
“Darling,” she said as she indicated he wipe his chin.
He ignored her, his eyes on the ceiling.
She waved him away. “Eh, he’s having a quiet night, I think.” She offered Peabody a tight grin. “He eats less, and what he does eat is tossed into the blender and ladled into bowls.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“You’re right. It is unfortunate.” She glanced at Benji again.
“What do you think he sees when he watches like that?“ Peabody said.
“I’m not sure.” Her fingers moved the cutlery into place, lining up the spoon with the fork just so.
“Have you asked?” the stranger said with a small smile.
“I have not.” She left the cutlery to linger, perfectly aligned and just right. “Let’s just say the twenty year anniversary was truly disastrous, so . . . his words, they’re sometimes . . . you know.” She kept her eyes on her beloved as her fingers fiddled with the edge of her napkin. “And he drinks less. But heaven knows most of that ends up down his front or on his lap, so it’s probably best.” She gave Peabody a quick grin. “I’m not a fan of doing the laundry, if you know what I mean. But who is, right?”
Her eyes back on Benji, she hesitated. “He talks a lot less, too. Which I miss.” She paused, a small smile on her lips. “There was nothing more lovely than hearing my beloved Benji read the paper after dinner, he armed with his gin and tonic, me sipping my seltzer through a straw.” She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it’s inevitable, those things we lose, what with time and age and—”
“The living wounds of fifty years of failure.” Peabody, elbows on the table, watched her. “Tell me about the first time.”
“Our first failure, you mean.” She took a deep breath. “Well, that’d be the night of our honeymoon.”
“Your honeymoon?”
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast Page 16