Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast

by Winn, Jonathan

  “He can’t hear you.” Peabody watched him as well. “He looks so lost and wounded.” He turned toward her. “Go. Help him.” He paused. “For the last time.”

  She nodded and struggled to stand, the back of the chair creaking beneath her weight as she leveraged against it to rise. Seven painful steps later, she stood in front of Benji, her napkin moist with spit.

  Wiping his chin, she noticed the bowls of blended food untouched, the glass of clear, pale chardonnay and golden champagne sitting in front of him, ignored. “Huh.”

  “What’s that, Marta?” Peabody watched her carefully.

  “He seems to have misplaced his glass of red.”

  She left him, pivoting to lumber back to her chair. Her head had started throbbing. An insistent spike of pain thumping in her temples and digging behind her eyes. The sharp ping making her think of miners with pick-axes attacking a wall of stone in search of buried treasure. Or freedom, the tunnel having collapsed, oxygen running low. This repetitive stab of agony their only chance for safety. For a way out. Away from all that rotting, anonymous death.

  “Huh.” Her eyes closed, she rubbed her temples with her fingers.

  “Talk to me.” In the dark behind her eyes, his voice, as it had earlier, sounded far away. Muffled and strange.

  “I just thought of miners with pick-axes digging their way to safety.” She chuckled. “How strange.”

  “Your face is turning red.”

  “My what?” She opened her eyes. She took her red, sticky fingers away from her temples. “Dang.” The stained napkin in hand, she wiped her face. “I didn’t think.”

  “Where’s Benji’s red?”

  “Hmmm?” She rubbed and rubbed, the napkin useless, the red spreading across her temple down to her cheek. She’d never get the napkin clean, she thought. And then realized she’d be dead anyway, so who cares?

  “The wine. Where’s Benji’s red wine?” Peabody had leaned forward.

  “I don’t know.” Her hands paused. The pain in her head spiked. She winced.

  “How’s your steak?”

  “It’s too raw,” she heard herself saying, but her eyes watched Benji. The undertaker from her wedding day had become a corpse. The lips turning blue. The color gone from his cheeks, his hands, his fingers. The eyes fixed to the ceiling were becoming pale and glassy. And he hadn’t moved the entire dinner. “It’s undercooked.”

  Peabody said something, though she didn’t know what. Her eyes were on Benji. Something was wrong. She gasped, the miners slicing her forehead, the pain blinding her for a moment, her wince turning into an obvious gritting of teeth. “Dang!”

  “Look at it,” he said.

  “Look at what?”

  “The steak on your plate. Why is it so raw?”

  “I didn’t pay attention. Took it away from the broiler too soon. Too impatient. I’ve always been too impatient.”

  “From the same stove the meatballs are cooking on?”

  Yes, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t. Benji’s mouth was moving as he mouthed words. Words he couldn’t say. But he could speak. Even with the jaw hollowed out on one side of his face, he could still form words. Clumsy and thick, he could still speak. But not now.

  “Benji?” She considered standing and moving close, but the pain, the pain in her head, it was a full-throttle attack on her skull now.

  “There’s nothing on the stove.” Peabody’s voice sounded strange. She wanted to shake her head, perhaps rub her ears. She swallowed again, the dreaded burn of vomit lingering at the back of her throat. Maybe she was getting sick? Why else would it sound like Peabody was whispering in the dark?

  She looked to the kitchen. Peabody was right. There was nothing on the stove. No pot bubbling away. No meatballs. No spaghetti.

  “You’re right,” she said through clenched teeth. She just wanted to lie down. Rest. Take a bath. Surround herself with the smell of soap and steam instead of whatever was rotting behind those gosh dang walls. Considered suggesting that Peabody do them in later. When she felt better. “It’s in the oven. The meatballs. Keeping warm.”

  She looked at her hands. They were still red and sticky. The fingers still stained. Her palms tacky with . . . something. “I need to wipe them clean.” She lifted the napkin, snapping it out and bringing it to her palms. But it was useless. There wasn’t even a clean corner to wipe the red from Benji’s lips.

  “Your plate. Look at it.” Peabody’s voice had grown deeper. More serious. She thought of remarking on it. But couldn’t. Not with the pain and the stain and Benji mouthing words he couldn’t say, the wine now a river running down his chin.

  “Why?” was all she could say.

  “Because that’s how this begins, Marta.”

  She dragged her eyes from the ruined napkin to her hands and then to Peabody, her head moving slow, her thoughts moving slow, the world now an endless stabbing of spikes drilling behind and around and over her eyes and down into her teeth, her jaw, inside her ears, down the back of her neck, inching down her spine.

  Peabody waited, his eyes on her plate.

  She turned from him to Benji. He had slumped in the seat, his head back, his mouth a stream of running red inching down his neck to his shoulders and his scrawny arms.

  Then she looked at her plate.

  Smack dab in the middle of her good china sat her beloved’s tongue, raw, sliced thin, and swimming in a pool of blood.

  ***

  She crawled on the floor, her hands and knees sloshing through a fetid swamp of steaming vomit. Her stomach clenched. She swallowed and then swallowed again. Her hand, dripping with sick and splattered with chunks of half-digested tongue and bits of cheese and cracker, pressed against her lips, closing her mouth. But it was no use. She gagged, her throat opened, another geyser of yellow and red shooting down her front and onto the carpet. Exploding from her mouth. Squirting from her nose. Tears burning her eyes and falling down her cheeks.

  Stopping, she turned back to Peabody and Benji, her wounded, beloved Benji. Her back against the wall, she sat, facing the table. The carpet squished beneath her. She didn’t care. She didn’t care that her fingers had balled into steamy, slimy fists. She didn’t care that every rancid breath made her want to gag. And she didn’t care that her tongue tasted sour, the inside of her mouth burned, and she could feel flecks of vomit dotting her teeth. She didn’t care.

  “What have you done?” She looked at Peabody.

  He was gone.

  “Hello?” She rose to her knees, bubbles of puke squishing from the carpet. Her stomach clenched and the miners swung their pick-axes. Their blades ripping bloody gashes in her brain and knocking chunks off her skull as they stabbed again and again.

  “Hello? Mr. Peabody?” She looked at the table. Two place settings remained, one at each end. As always. Benji’s bowls and her plates. Her champagne and chardonnay. Benji’s untouched champagne and chardonnay. No third place setting in front of that extra chair. Nothing indicating her guest. “Peabody?” she said again, her voice sounding small and weak.

  Her stomach rumbled and then spiked with a sharp stab. Her head, my god, her head. She closed her eyes, the thumping now a constant drilling. Like a saw. The kind of circular saw she’d seen on TV. The ones used in emergency surgeries to cleave the skull in two so they can rip out the brain.

  The pressure in her throat built. She swallowed and then gagged. Bending forward, her stomach spasmed and her throat stretched as she vomited.

  Out came Peabody.

  Very small and much too tall and horribly, impossibly thin, he crawled from her, his fingers inching from between her lips, his elbows jabbing at her cheeks, opening wider as his head pushed out. She felt her jaw pop and crack as he angled his shoulders past her teeth, the heels of his expensive loafers pushing against the sides of her throat as he climbed. His bony knees digging against her tongue until he tumbled free, dripping in spit and strings of errant sick.

  His body stretched and grew. Joi
nts popping. Bones cracking. The neck rolling as his head expanded like a balloon filling with helium. Still on the carpet, his long fingers stretched and reached and found hers. His body lifted as he rose to kneel before her, nose to nose, his eyes blinking to open beneath a layer of dripping goo, his gaze steady.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her bladder gave way, the sudden flood a noxious pool of hot liquid drenching her backside and soaking into the already ruined carpet.

  Peabody’s face was no longer plain and forgettable. It looked waxen and strange. The gaze neither gentle nor kind, it was unblinking and intense. Too intense, the eyes now dark and deep. The lips too thin, the smile stretching too far from cheek to cheek. The eyebrows like strips of cheap plastic stuck to his brow. The flesh of his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, shiny and smooth and stiff.

  She couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come. She had thoughts of food poisoning. Or of bad wine. Champagne past its Best By date, if champagnes even had a Best By date. Did they? She had no clue.

  And then she thought of the helmet of spikes squeezing her head and pummeling her brain. The team of miners digging their way to safety, desperate to escape the collapse before the air ran out and the forgotten dead woke to crawl and slither and bite. She thought of how she really couldn’t think straight. She blinked and tried to breathe. Tried to quiet the panic.

  Peabody spoke, the voice deep and quiet, the words whispered through lips that didn’t move. The message a secret only she could hear.

  There he sits. The monster’s head swiveled to face Benji.

  His head, it was wrong, she thought. It didn’t turn. It was hard to explain. She closed her eyes for a moment, a brief moment. Caught her breath. It had swiveled. She knew that. Yes, that’s the right word. Or pivoted. Like a doll’s head, it had pivoted, the neck not moving.

  Is this what you’ve done? His eyes were back on her now though she couldn’t remember the face pivoting again.

  She clenched her teeth. He’s going to stand, she thought. Please don’t. Please, please, please don’t. Don’t stand. Please. Don’t.

  His smile still locked in place, his eyes unblinking orbs of black, Peabody stood.

  And then, his feet not moving, he slid back, his heels gliding along the floor, his shoes parting the ocean of puke without leaving a trail. Like a ghost, he moved, floating through the table to stop where he’d sat that night.

  And every night since your first anniversary here on Eidolon. He opened his arms. The gesture made her think of the first hello with a long lost friend. The first embrace as you reconnect with that missing part of yourself.

  I’m the toaster that bounced off the edge of the tub. Peabody smiled. I’m the tingle you felt.

  She shook her head. “No. You’re new to me,” she managed to say. Her tongue felt slow. Her thoughts felt slow. Her words, her reasoning, even the reality around her, this nightmare that couldn’t be, felt slow. Time plummeting into a sudden, unexpected crawl.

  I’m the spots of light you saw. He watched her. I’m the drilling in your brain.

  She took a breath and focused. “I met you tonight. You’re a stranger.”

  I’m a secret. He brought a frightening, long finger to his lips. A secret you kept even from yourself.

  He grew, the room darkening into shadow as his neck craned and bent, his shoulders rising, his head ducking as it touched the ceiling. His legs lengthened in a chorus of ominous pops. With a deep crunch, his waist extended, his chest, his ribs, his hips cracking as they widened. He opened his arms, his hands, with the fingers that were too long, opening and flexing like greedy paws.

  Somewhere behind the walls, the dead woke, responding to the silent tune of Peabody the ghoulish Pied Piper. Beneath her feet, under the boards, the dead stretched. And above her, somewhere, she could hear the quiet dead reach to find and grip and hold.

  Peabody’s fingers grew longer, the arms grew longer. From where he stood, this Peabody’s reach seemed inescapable, spanning wall to wall, the fingers much too long, the palms larger than her biggest serving platter or frying pan.

  Moving slow, he brought his arms in. The unwanted embrace of a long lost friend you’d hoped to never see again, she thought. She backed against the wall. Clenched her teeth. Tried to move away from the inevitable.

  Do you want to see what you’ve done? His elbows scraped against the walls on either side of the room as his fingers drew close. Like the bars of a cage, they closed in.

  She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I haven’t done anything.”

  Marta, he said as those too long fingers found her flesh, the icy skin ensnaring her from the bottom of her chin all the way around the top of her thumping, throbbing skull. This is what you’ve done.

  The honeymoon. Half-awake, she saw herself spooning furniture polish into the open mouth of her beloved Benji as, sleep creeping near, he, unaware and trusting, had mouthed “No” before swallowing. Her “I do” earlier that afternoon the key that locked the door and this, spoonful by spoonful, her desperately digging her way out.

  “That’s not how it happened.” She tried to move, but Peabody held her firm.

  The ten year anniversary. Hand in hand, her pulling a frightened Benji off the cliff as he’d shouted “No!” And later, barely conscious, her crawling to Benji as he lay bleeding and motionless. And, rock in hand, hitting the back of his head again and again and again. Wanting him dead, wanting him gone. Wanting this end, there, on that ledge, to be her path to freedom and a safe exit.

  “I’d never want him dead!” she said. “Never.”

  Peabody’s lips pulled into a wide grin of vicious white.

  The sound of tiny feet scurried in the walls, the floor, the ceiling as all those forgotten dead woke and stretched and reached.

  The twentieth year anniversary. She saw herself, gun in hand, aiming for her beloved’s face, and pulling the trigger as he’d begged “No” before ducking. But she’d known he’d survive, incapacitated and helpless. She’d hoped his agony would balance the suffering. Hoped he’d know, with each painful day, what she’d endured. Hoped to find peace in his silence. And then sitting enraged as the blood had flowed over her best skirt, his shattered jaw in her hand, her Benji still a burden.

  “No, no, no. That’s not how I remember it.” She started to cry, Peabody’s fingers a cold cage, much like Eidolon itself, she couldn’t escape from. “It’s not.”

  The anniversary last year, the first on Eidolon. The bath, the toaster. Her refusing to allow Benji to sit in the water. Wanting his punishment to be a life without her. Always taking care of him. Always at his beck and call. Always doing, doing, doing. From sun-up to sundown, doing. Him fighting her over the toaster, insisting “No” as he’d tried to take it from her. And the slippery metal falling and bouncing and landing, unplugged and useless. Her plan for it to fall and spark and free her from this cage her beloved Benji had built around her another failure. Her hopes that he’d be left alone to stumble, wounded and lost, without her, his heart broken, dashed.

  “That’s not me,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  But it is. Peabody pulled her close. This is who you are. His eyes held hers. His breath filled her nose, each inhalation that dense fog of rotten, forgotten, molding things. This is who you became. His lips moved near hers. Who we became.

  Earlier tonight.

  There she stood, her beloved Benji awake and aware as she prepared his dinner. There she stood, her beloved Benji innocent and trusting as she dropped a handful of blue, red, yellow pills into the blender and whirred them into oblivion. And there she stood, her beloved Benji sealing his fate with every bite she fed him.

  And she waited as he grew quiet. Counted the seconds one, two, three until his eyes grew heavy, the minutes until his head ducked chin to chest. Counted the footsteps four, five, six as, her best butcher knife in hand, she lumbered her way toward this man, her prison.

  There she was, bent o
ver the man she’d called husband and friend for fifty years, her fist shoved down his throat as she counted, sawing at the slippery root of his tongue. Until, with seven, eight, nine, she’d straightened up, the treasure gripped in her fist, her palms and fingers stained red with her beloved’s blood.

  And she saw herself later, her flesh shining with sweat, her smile too broad, her eyes too wide, her best butcher knife in hand, the weeping tongue bleeding red onto her best china.

  Now here she sat, Peabody’s shadow darkening her world, Peabody’s cold fingers singeing her flesh, Peabody’s cruelty—her cruelty—opening the door to their end. Her end.

  “I’m a monster.” She closed her eyes, her breath strangled by sobs.

  You are perfect. His fingers trapping her head, he drew close, the movement too quick, the arms shortening. You’re exactly what Eidolon needs.

  She glanced toward Benji, not wanting to see Peabody’s waxen face or unblinking eyes or ghoulish grin.

  He stood, her beloved. His body abandoned and forgotten, the memory of who he was waited, his eyes on the ceiling.

  All those failures feeding your shadow. Peabody’s breath was cold against her cheek as he smiled, his eyes, too, lifting skyward to the dusty, dingy, yellow stretch above. And now, your trip into forever.

  And against all reason, her thoughts too slow to stop her, she looked up.

  On the ceiling above, the dead lived. But not the rats and beetles and bugs and snakes she feared waited in the hidden spaces of Eidolon. No. This was a seething swarm of human souls fighting what felt like a never-ending war.

  Half-formed and steaming red, elbows knocked out teeth. Fingers poked out eyes. Teeth bared and snarled to bite and tear. They twisted and turned, feet kicking, arms reaching. Souls screaming for release, for escape. For safe passage. Their backs arched and their knees bent, pushing as yet more punched and gripped and pulled and ripped. More red ignoring the laws of gravity to spill and spread in a wandering sea along the ceiling as ephemeral skin tore in jagged gashes.

  Peabody’s arms circled her. A predator to her prey, she found herself thinking as they rose.