by L. T. Vargus
Funny how life works.
I wanted this. The lessons. The change. The shift in myself, in my mindset, in my life. Needed it, I told myself.
Maybe I did.
Chapter 30
SCHOOL DRAGGED ON FOREVER. I couldn’t really pay attention to anything. My eyes drifted to the clock over and over and watched it not move. I noticed that the minute hand on some of these ancient clocks actually moves slightly backward for the first thirty seconds of each minute and then gets caught up down the stretch and pushes forward to the next minute right on time. At first, that kind of fucked with me. When I watched the damn minute hand move backward, you know. I thought I was losing it.
I got the worst headache in the afternoon. Couldn’t wait to get home to take some ibuprofen. That works best for me for some reason. Better than aspirin, acetaminophen and naproxen and all of that, I mean. (Whenever I see a commercial for Bayer Aspirin, I think it sounds like they’re saying “bare ass burn” for a second. True story.)
It’s weird to sit in a classroom full of people and feel apart from all of them. To watch their faces, the same look in all their eyes, all so occupied in their own worlds that they don’t even notice someone observing them. To watch all their pens and pencils flutter in unison. To watch their brows furrow in concentration. And what for? All of that effort for what? It all seems so meaningless somehow.
I felt like a spider, watching and waiting. Patient. But ready.
* * *
I brought lots of supplies this time. Better safe than sorry, right? It’s weird, actually. Did you realize they have quite a selection of groceries and everything at the hardware store now? Pretty ridiculous, but also pretty convenient in this case. I was able to toss everything straight into a bucket and not look like I was toting around a bunch of bags of stuff.
Like I said, though, I stocked up. I got a 5-gallon bucket, toilet paper, batteries, candles, peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, some fruit snacks that are loaded with vitamins, and a bag of Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips. (I think Beth likes those. Not sure.) They had these super cheap off-brand sports drinks that I decided to try, too. (You know me. I’m a sucker for a great beverage at a great price.)
As I advanced into the basement, I started to get a sick feeling. What if she was hurt or something? My mind sketched a portrait of her dead body slumped against the cinder blocks, her lips drawn back, and her tongue lolling out the side of her gaping mouth like a St. Bernard’s. The skin on her face graying like ash and crumbling away. (That made a fragment of a lyric from some shitty song pop into my head: “slip sliding away.” No idea.)
She was fine, though. (Physically, at least.) She’d moved to the farthest corner from the steps, the blanket slung over her shoulders like a cape.
“Do you like Sun Chips?” I said. “I couldn’t remember.”
She didn’t say a word. She didn’t even look at me. Her hand moved to her face and scratched under her jaw.
“These are...” I said. I had to check the bag. “These are harvest cheddar flavored. I hope that’s the right kind.”
She blinked, but her stare remained fastened to the wall. The silent treatment, eh? Honestly, I wasn’t sure what she was trying to accomplish with this tactic.
I smeared peanut butter and jelly on a couple of slices of bread. I figured she’d be hungry at least, right? When I brought the sandwich to her, though, she swiveled away from me. Her shoulders squared to the corner now, so I could barely see her face at all.
I retreated and left the sandwich on a paper plate atop the overturned bucket. I put a pack of fruit snacks and a handful of Sun Chips on the plate with it like a real lunch. Like this was just a picnic or something.
“Well, I can see that you’re not in the mood to talk, so I’ll get out of here,” I said.
I saw her flinch out of the corner of my eye, but I decided not to look at her directly. I ascended the steps and stopped for a second at the top.
“Just try to keep in mind that I’m keeping you safe from a goddamn serial killer once in a while, would you?”
I moved through the door and slammed it behind me. Next I opened and closed the door leading outside as though I’d gone through it and held still just outside the basement door.
The scuffing and scraping of her scrambling across the basement was followed by the pound of her feet moving up the steps. The doorknob twisted to no avail, and she rattled the door the best she could, which was not all that much. The padlock quivered but just barely.
“Are you there?” she said, which kind of startled me. She yelled the next time. “Are you there?!”
She shook the knob again.
“Come back,” she said. Her voice was soft now. “I’m sorry.”
I heard a single thud on the door, the sound of her forehead resting against it in frustration, I think, and then all was quiet.
I waited. In a weird way I wanted to laugh, like one of those super serious moments that you’re absolutely not supposed to laugh, you know? Like church or a funeral or something? I bit my lip, though, and held it together.
Slow footsteps paced back down to the cellar, and I heard the scrape of the bucket moving a moment later as well. Good. She was eating her lunch.
* * *
I forgot to mention — the sports drink was actually really good. I should specify: the orange flavor was good, at least. I went for orange and blue. I think it was a good choice. I feel like the lemon lime is always shitty no matter what brand, you know? And the red is OK, but it’s always a hair too sweet for my tastes. (I don’t even get into all that fierce melon type shit, so don’t ask.)
Anyway, I haven’t tried the blue yet, but I will let you know.
* * *
I waited upstairs for a good twenty minutes before I finally faked the sound of myself returning and headed back down. She was sitting on the cinder blocks, the mostly empty plate resting on her lap. She stared up at me.
“I’m glad you’re eating,” I said. “So was I right about those Sun Chips or what?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
We just looked at each other for a long moment. She smiled, but there was something oddly timid about it, I thought. She still didn’t quite seem like herself.
“Where’d you go?” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“When you left and came back just now,” she said.
“Oh. I walked around the block, you know,” I said. “Trying to clear my head. It’s frustrating. This is all so confusing.”
I pawed at my chin before continuing, I guess for dramatic effect.
“But I’m sure you know that better than anyone.”
She looked down.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”
Silence fell upon us again, but it wasn’t so unpleasant anymore. (For me, at least, but I think for her, too.)
“So how long do you think I’ll need to stay here?” she said.
God. I couldn’t help but smile, but I coughed to cover it up real fast.
“Not long,” I said. “Probably only a couple more days at the most.”
“Do my parents even know where I am?” she said.
I shook my head.
“I couldn’t risk it,” I said. “Your safety is the only thing that matters to me now.”
I actually thought about saying ’Your safety is of paramount importance,’ like in a movie or something, but it sounded a little too ridiculous in my mind. Anyway, I walked over to her and put my arms out, and she stood to hug me. Finally.
I sat down on the floor next to the cinder blocks, and she crawled down to lay across my lap. The blanket bunched around her neck. I raked my fingers back and forth through her hair, and we talked for a long time after that.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as I was to win her back like I did. A brightness spread through my whole body.
She talked about her dreams, I guess since she’d been sleeping so much. She dreamed that we
were at some party and she couldn’t find me, and all of the people were drunk and couldn’t talk right. They kept saying that I’d “gone thither.” And she had dreams of a black shape on top of her, pinning her down, and she couldn’t move or breathe. And one where she was alone and lost in a gigantic building that never ended. She ran down hallways and up and down stairs into never ending chambers and corridors.
“So was I right about those damn Sun Chips or what?” I said. “The harvest cheddar?”
“Yeah,” she said. She sounded sleepy again.
“Good.”
* * *
Beth nibbled a microscopic piece off the corner of a Sun Chip. She was finally talking like things were normal.
“One of the craziest things you realize when you’re growing up is how your parents don’t really give a shit about you,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
The way she held the chip to her mouth and took these tiny bites off it reminded me of the way a squirrel eats.
Nibble nibble nibble.
Stop.
Nibble nibble nibble.
Stop.
“I mean, they care that you’re like... alive, but the actual details don’t matter. The things that make you who you are, they don’t care about those things. They want you to be a certain way, so they’ll just pick and choose what things they accept and what they don’t.”
The nibbling continued as she spoke.
“Like last spring, my mom took me shopping for summer clothes, and she kept trying to pick out bathing suits for me. I haven’t worn a bathing suit or gone swimming in about three years, but she has no idea, I guess. How can you be my mom and not notice that? How can she just forget that every time we go to the lake, I don’t wear a bathing suit? I don’t get in the water.”
She shook her head.
“And even the bathing suits she was picking out weren’t me at all. They had like ruffles around the hips. The kind of thing I wore when I was two. It’s like my whole existence is in her imagination. She just makes things however she wants in her head.”
Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and she shrugged.
“I finally just let her pick one so we could be done with it. Some hideous monokini thing that was brown with pink and white and green flowers. And of course I never wore it and never will. But she won’t remember. Or she’ll choose not to. Next time it will be the same thing all over again.”
She had managed to finish the single Sun Chip, and she brushed the neon orange cheese powder off her fingers.
I nodded. I didn’t know what the hell a monokini was, but I didn’t think it mattered.
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “My mom still buys me tighty whitey underwear, despite the fact that I’ve exclusively worn boxers since I was ten. And they’re always two sizes too small.”
Beth stared at the far wall, her eyes unfocused. She shook her head slowly.
“It’s like they’re not even paying attention.”
* * *
She turned to look up at me, her eyes wide. Scared.
“Don’t leave me,” she said. “You can’t leave anymore. You have to stay with me tonight.”
“OK,” I said. Of course, this was not happening. I couldn’t risk staying out all night again now that she was known to be missing. People might link those things. (And by “people” I mean the kind with guns and badges and such.)
Anyway, she narrowed her eyes at me.
“Do you promise?” she said.
“Yeah. Jesus. I promise, alright?”
She turned away again.
“It’s too scary at night.”
I pinned her shoulders against my thighs so she wouldn’t fall over as I leaned forward to grab one of the blue sports drinks and cracked it open. Dude. Even better than the orange kind. For real. It’s fucking delicious.
“Try this,” I said, thrusting the blue drink at her.
She propped herself up with her elbow and took a drink. Her expression didn’t look all that impressed, though I’m not sure what I expected, to be honest.
“Pretty good,” she said.
It was weird. This lack of enthusiasm suddenly meant the world to me. It undid the kinship I felt earlier when we were talking about our families. This feeling came over me where I kind of knew for sure that no matter what the hell you ever do, you’re alone. And other people might care some, they might even want to care all the way, but they ultimately never care that much. They only want to find their own things to be excited about.
Like I found this sports drink, and I was feeling awesome, but she doesn’t care, you know? She has her own things to worry about. Sure, it’s just a dumb drink. It probably sounds ridiculous, but it made everything click for me somehow.
And I thought about this thing I’ve been writing. Would she care? Probably not. She might be curious enough to read it, but that’d be about it. Only if she could consume it and somehow make it a piece of her identity would she really care, I think. Just like everyone else.
In the end, we’re all alone. We’re always separate.
I suddenly wondered if Beth had made herself vomit down here, but I guess I’d probably smell that, right? I mean, it couldn’t just disappear. It’s not like I could really ask her in any case.
But then I thought about the poop and pee issue. That wouldn’t spontaneously vanish either, of course, but harvest cheddar was the only odor in the room.
“So where have you been,” I said, pausing to search for the right words, “you know, going to the bathroom?”
She sat up.
“Do you have to go?” she said.
“Oh. Yeah,” I said.
(Like it wasn’t merely morbid curiosity.)
“Well, number one is in that utility sink around the corner.”
She pointed to a paint smeared white sink across the room.
“You just run a little water after,” she said.
“Wait. The water is on?”
“Yep.”
“Weird.”
“For number two, you gotta squat over the sump pit, though,” she said. “But, in either case, if you just pull up on that bar, it triggers the sump pump and flushes it all away. Or maybe not all, I guess, but, you know, a lot of it.”
I thought about it for a second.
“So the water and the electricity are on?”
She shook her head.
“For some reason none of the lights work, but the sump pump does.”
That made sense, I supposed. Leaving the sump pump on would be a safety measure against flooding or etc.
I picked myself up and headed to the sink. May as well take a leak in here for the novelty of it all, I figured.
* * *
I woke up from a half-sleep in the basement and realized it was dark outside. My back hurt from lying on the hard concrete. Beth had turned both flashlights on and nestled them in her shoes to angle them up and sort of light up our area of the room as well as possible without the beams shining directly in our faces. I yawned and stretched.
“I like the idea of A Nightmare on Elm Street more than I actually like the movie,” she said.
Fuck. I needed to find a way out of here, and she was really going off on horror movies.
“What you do mean?” I said.
“The idea of some mysterious supernatural entity being able to attack you through your dreams? That’s actually scary.”
“Yeah.”
“The concept is awesome, and the first movie isn’t bad, but they get so much worse.”
“Well, yeah.”
“But I also like that Freddy Krueger is a little more particular, too. Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers are just psychos wearing masks. So you can’t see their faces, and then on top of that, they barely have any motivation. Freddy Krueger is all creepy and burned and was murdered. And he was a bad guy before he got murdered. Scarier.”
“You think so?”
“Well, I mean, yeah. Freddy toys with his victims
. He prolongs the chase part because he is sadistic. The thrill is his motivation, and we can see that on his face.”
“So basically Freddy does a fifteen-minute comedy routine complete with one-liners before he actually kills somebody, and that is superior,” I said.
She laughed.
“Well in the later movies it gets ridiculous, yeah. Anyway, Jason chops down his victims four at a time with a machete after they have sex or do drugs or something. But why? For enjoyment? Is he some kind of crazed moralist? Or is it solely revenge for the way he was mistreated or whatever by the camp counselors? We don’t see his face, and he doesn’t speak, so we can’t really say.”
I listened to the silence of a lull in the conversation. I could not imagine how the hell I would ever get out of here without her freaking out.
“In the end,” she said, “the idea of Freddy is a lot scarier than the actual figure on screen, though. Seeing his picture with the burned face and the glove and everything as a kid and having it left to my imagination was terrifying.”
Jesus. I thought we were done with Freddy, for Christ’s sake. It’s just like the movies. He resurrects for another damn sequel.
I stood up and wiped at the dust clinging to my pants.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Her face twisted up into a mask of evil, not so unlike Freddy’s, to be honest, and she sighed one of those aggressive heaves of a sigh.
“You promised,” she said.
I shrugged, palms upturned, and her bottom lip dropped open to reveal clenched teeth. She jumped up into a crouched stance like a linebacker before the snap. Her feet pivoted to position her body between me and the door.
“What’s this all about?” I said.
She didn’t say anything, but her arms splayed out to her sides. They danced back and forth there like charmed snakes, waiting for me to make a move. I knew then, without a doubt, that any progress we made this afternoon was long gone. Flushed away like the turds in the sump pit.
“This is all for your safety, remember?” I said.
“No,” she said, her mouth still clenched. “No, you don’t understand. If you leave me here again, I will never forgive you. Ever.”