Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW

by Michaelbrent Collings

  No… one-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four-five.

  Five fingers on each hand.

  But when he was turning the wheel, just for the barest fraction of a second, it had looked like one of his hands possessed only three.

  NOT SO PINK

  Alyssa eased open the door. The electronic chirp of the receiver almost sent her rocketing out of her shoes until she realized it was just feedback from the baby monitor. She jerked back out of the room, an automatic reaction her body still remembered from all the days trying to get Mal not only to go to sleep but to actually stay that way. Loud noises were not only cause for grief, but shooting offenses back then.

  She turned off the receiver, then went back in the room.

  Still dark. But she heard the gentle sigh of her daughter in the playpen before she even took a step. She knew that sound perfectly, would have known it if she heard a hundred – a thousand, a million – other sighs from a hundred – a thousand, a million – other babies. Her daughter was here, her daughter was safe.

  Still, she walked over. She had to see.

  Ruthie was asleep in the playpen. The baby blanket that Alyssa had placed over her snaked between the infant's legs, halfway up the tiny chest. It was a Disney blanket, and Pooh and Piglet danced up the low hills of Ruthie's little body.

  Alyssa shook her head. The baby couldn't even turn over, so how she had managed to whip the blanket around like that…. Babies were a surprise. They were a mystery and a continuing lesson and always a joy.

  Alyssa smiled. She loved this part. New babies didn't have the personality of toddlers, or the wonder of young kids discovering everything and really understanding it for the first time. But new babies could make you fall in love over and over and over again.

  Just like Alyssa was doing now.

  She leaned over. Didn't kiss her baby – that was a first-time parent mistake. Kissing babies meant waking babies a lot of the time. But she breathed deep, and smelled the unique mix of Johnson & Johnson soap, skin that had never seen much of the sun, diaper medicine, and whatever bits of Heaven had clung to the baby this far into life.

  Then the smile fell off her face.

  Another first-time parent mistake, but she did it anyway. She reached down and carefully moved the blanket off Ruthie. Pooh and Piglet danced a sideways jig, cast off their hill by an unseen goddess.

  The onesie was pink. Ruthie's temp was normal.

  But on the stomach, what had been barely seen under the blanket –

  (the blanket that was twisted, impossibly twisted, how did it get twisted?)

  – she thought she saw something. It faded even as she looked. Maybe she didn't see it at all. Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe it was the product of stress, exhaustion.

  Or maybe it had been there.

  Maybe it had been a fading handprint. Small. Blue.

  Alyssa touched her daughter's chest. When she lifted her hand, her print was there. Red.

  Something creaked.

  She turned around. Spun so fast that she almost twirled her way right into Ruthie's playpen. She managed to right herself, though she wasn't sure if it was balance or just a mother's love acting to contravene physics. She should have fallen.

  But she didn't. She ended up staring at the opposite wall.

  There was nothing there.

  Just empty space.

  A wall.

  An embroidery.

  The old man still knelt. His hands were up in prayer. But the frame was slightly askew.

  She couldn't remember if it was like that when she came in.

  Alyssa walked to the image in a daze. She righted it with a hand that shook so badly she worried she wouldn't be able to pick up her daughter when the time came to –

  (run)

  – wake her up.

  As her hand dropped, she squinted. Had the old man's eyes always been closed? Weren't they open before? A supplication to a God he knew was there – perhaps even saw?

  Then she saw the other detail, and this was one she knew was absent the first time she saw it.

  There was a black line stitched across the old man's throat. Just a simple line, not particularly thick, but it was enough to –

  (make someone think of a dead boy on a black chair with his eyes open and his throat cut)

  – ruin the beauty of the picture.

  Alyssa stepped back, her eyes riveted to the picture. To the saint whose lips no longer seemed to be praying, but pleading for mercy. Begging for the torture to cease.

  She turned to the playpen.

  Ruthie was awake. Her head turned, her eyes staring right at her mother through the mesh of the playpen.

  Alyssa glanced back at the picture.

  It was as she had first seen it. Eyes open, no dark line across the throat.

  Her hand wiped across her eyes. She laughed in nervous relief and turned back to Ruthie. The baby was still staring at her.

  "Hey, little girl. You watching Mommy go crazy?"

  Ruthie didn't move.

  Alyssa wondered if the centipedes could have followed them here. Because it suddenly felt like dozens of them were crawling up her back.

  Ruthie wasn't looking at her. She was looking at something behind her. Behind, to the right.

  Alyssa didn't look. There was nothing there. There couldn't be.

  She picked up her daughter.

  "Let's get you some breakfast. You must be hungry, and Mommy's boobs are about to pop."

  She walked out of the room. She did not look back.

  Why should she?

  Babies can't see that far.

  Even if they could, they can't tell what they're seeing.

  There was nothing behind her.

  Nothing at all.

  There couldn't be.

  There couldn't be.

  ALL IN GOOD FUN

  The woman moves down the hall.

  She coos and whispers. The sounds might be construed as sweet, as lullabies – perhaps the woman even thinks so herself. But some would know differently. Would know better. There are sounds of comfort, there are sounds of love, there are sounds of laughter, there are all manner of good and good-hearted sounds. And all can be used to mask the deeper sounds. The sounds that matter. The sounds of fear, and longing to flee, and knowledge of death.

  These are her real sounds. And the thing that watches sways to her song, and thrills to the death like a riptide pulling her closer… closer… closer….

  The woman holds a baby in her arms, a baby that wakes so slowly. Then the babe falls asleep once more, small eyes never fully opening, never fully seeing. The family may get frightened about the infant's constant sleepiness soon. But for now they are too busy with other things. Too busy looking outward to notice the fearful things that lie among their own numbers.

  Many believe that infants cannot see, cannot even focus on what lies right before their eyes.

  The truth is much simpler, and much more complex.

  The very young, the youngest of the world, see everything.

  They see not just what is seen, but what is unseen: the worlds above this one, and those beneath. And sometimes they even see the things that wander in neither, but simply drift through the nothing of All.

  The baby sleeps. Because in sleeping she can escape. She can close her eyes. She can not see.

  The woman limps down the stairs.

  Behind her, the door to the sewing room stands open.

  Then it closes. Slowly, unhurriedly.

  The latch catches in the strike plate. Solidly shut.

  Footsteps. The sound of something leaning on the wall. Something shaking with silent mirth. Because what fun if the infant had awakened! Had seen!

  What laughter and delight to watch the madness of a babe.

  The woman continues to the living room. The room that is almost a well-remembered parlor or sitting room, but for the presence of a television on one wall, and a small stereo set on another.

  As she walks pas
t the clock, she unconsciously matches her gait to its beat. And what watches her laughs silently at this, too.

  It is good that she walks this way. So many have walked this way. Not in step with the sound, but certainly in motion with the time. Heart beating down with the clock's ever-countdown.

  The woman's life can be measured in the hours – minutes – on the face of this clock that has come from so far to be so close to this family.

  The woman sits on a chair and turns on the television. She turns up the volume. Loud, louder. And this, like her lullabies, is the music of fear. The screaming of someone not merely calling for help, but shrieking so that the monsters in the darkness cannot be heard.

  The baby finally wakes. The woman nurses.

  But the baby never opens her eyes. Not once.

  There is sound in the entry. A soft creak, the whispered scrape of a shoe sounding so like a mother whispering for silence during Sunday sermon.

  Then a crank turns. Tick-click.

  Music plinks out. A song from long ago, a song well known. A song that sings of good times, of smiles, of throats cut in rage, and death before and death to come.

  It plays, as always, in perfect time with the clock. The syncopation of death.

  And now: the scrape of shoe leather again. This time faster-faster-fasterfasterfaster. Sound atwirl as the cylinder whirls and something dances while the woman screams her silent shrieks nearby and so never hears – or chooses not to hear – the singular ball taking place right behind her.

  The music stops. Tick. The cylinder ceases. No more scrapes of shoes, no more twirls. Perhaps a silent bow, unseen but to babes and the dead.

  The woman turns her head suddenly. The baby suckles. Neither sees anything, for one cannot and the other refuses sight.

  The woman turns back to the television and her silent shrieks for help, screams buried in polite denial.

  The footsteps run up the stairs. A door opens. Then closes. And perhaps a low giggling can be heard.

  For what fun has been had, and what fun is still to come.

  UP AND DOWN AGAIN

  Alyssa loved a lot of things about having a new baby: the sound of a first laugh, the first smile. The feel of the baby nursing (until that first tooth, that first bite that really hurt – then the bottle came out faster than a gunslinger could draw). She loved so many things, and each one was Heaven. And that meant that she had somehow become, for the tiniest of moments, something like an angel.

  But there were also a lot of things she hated. Pulling back tiny diapers to do a toosh-check and coming up with fingers covered with poop ranked low on her list of Favorite Things. The fact that any bodily excretions would erupt (they rarely just "came out" – projectile vomiting/peeing/pooping were the norm) during fancy dinner parties or when she had just bought a cute new shirt. Maybe worst of all was the fact that babies somehow knew the worst times to wake up and start screaming and need attention: during fights, during lovemaking.

  Each time she suffered one of those moments she felt like she had found some brand-new circle of Hell. Somewhere Dante had never envisioned… or maybe had just not had the strength to write about, because too many readers would have killed themselves. And thinking that, she knew she was a devil, a demon. She had been so blessed, and she hated the blessing. What kind of person was she?

  She found it weird, too, that one of the things she most hated was eating. Eating was a joy when she got to do it. But during pregnancy, and now that she was nursing, she had to do it. She was "eating for two" – a cute little saying that she had grown to loathe – and that meant she could never skip a meal without guilt, and those meals always had to be at least arguably healthy or shame set in with startling rapidity.

  So now she was shoving a PB&J down her throat, almost gagging on it. She had no appetite. But… "eating for two."

  She didn't want to be here. Didn't want to be alone. Didn't want to eat.

  And had to do all of them.

  Ruthie was asleep in her arms, and Blake had the car so she was stuck here, and when she looked at the clock it was still only 12:46. Two minutes had passed, which meant she had fallen into a wormhole or something where time passed slower than frozen molasses trapped in amber that was itself caught in a diamond.

  Ruthie snored. Usually baby snores were one of those "stumbled into Heaven" moments for Alyssa, but now the sound irritated her. Ruthie didn't seem affected by the creeping unease that Alyssa had felt since finding that damned book yesterday. Since –

  (the sounds the sights)

  – that courier kid took off after looking in the house.

  She looked at Ruthie. "You'd think a kid with hair that color would have learned to be a bit tougher, huh?" she said.

  Ruthie answered by tooting. Alyssa felt something bouncing off the hand that cupped the baby's bottom, so it was probably time for a new diaper. Diapers were apparently lined with gold dust these days, because they cost about a thousand dollars a box. She didn't remember them costing so much when Mal was a baby. They'd been poor then, too, hadn't they?

  But they'd never been well off, either. They'd never known anything else. It was worse to know something other than poverty, then return to it… better far just to stay the way they had been. Better if they'd never moved forward.

  Just me, just Blake.

  She shook herself free of that idea. She had the kids, and that was hard. But it was worth it. It was a great, good thing. A work that would last.

  Ruthie both snored and tooted.

  "You are a multitasking miracle, baby girl," said Alyssa. She was talking a bit too loudly, speaking at a volume that would probably wake the baby. She admitted to herself that she didn't care. She wanted company. Not quite enough to blatantly tickle the baby awake, but enough to speak at normal volume.

  But Ruthie just slept on. Slept and slept and when Alyssa laid out a portable changing pad and wiped her little bottom clean and slathered on some Desitin and then put on a new diaper (she could almost hear Huggies' stock price jumping), the baby just kept on sleeping.

  Alyssa looked at the clock.

  1:02.

  "Get home, Blake."

  She hefted the sleeping baby, and finally admitted two things: her arms were about to fall off from holding Ruthie for hours straight, and the baby deserved to sleep in a real crib. They didn't have one, so she should at least get the solitude and quiet and stability of her playpen.

  But not in that room. Nowhere alone, but especially not in that room.

  She took Ruthie out of the kitchen, practically running until she was halfway upstairs. That seemed strange when she realized she was running to the very place she wanted to keep her child away from. But in the next moment she also realized that she wasn't running to a place so much as she was running away from – or more accurately past – one.

  She didn't want to be near the clock. Or the music box.

  She was shivering, too. Like she had gotten a chill in the few seconds of moving through the entry. An entire winter's worth of cold had settled into her bones, ice forming in her marrow. Her teeth were on the verge of chattering. She wouldn't have been surprised to see her breath pluming like white fire in front of her.

  Tick-tock.

  She kept moving.

  Up to the sewing room. Not wanting to take the still-sleeping Ruthie –

  (why is she sleeping so much she didn't sleep like this at the hospital did she so why is she sleeping so much?)

  – into the room with her, but not capable of leaving her alone, either. Another one of the crappy parts of being a parent, and she didn't know how single parents managed this kind of issue every moment of every day of their lives. How to leave your child in danger, or take them into worse.

  She opened the door. Just a crack. Peeked into the room.

  Dim. Almost dark. The sun had shifted. Past its zenith, no longer pushing through the windows on this side of the house. But it was light enough to see the tables, the chair.

  T
he embroidered image on the wall. Saintly man praying.

  There was no line on his throat.

  Alyssa was relieved, but also a little worried. Was the room back to normal? That would mean something had been wrong… and that was beyond weird. Beyond scary.

  Or had nothing been wrong in the first place? Less scary to her family. But it meant she was losing it.

  She darted into the room. The movement was so fast that Ruthie finally came awake. She started mewing.

  "Sorry, honey," said Alyssa, "but you aren't sleeping in here anymore."

  She grabbed a blanket off the small pile of them that she had put near the playpen when they arrived the day before –

  (Has it just been a day?)

  – and tossed it out on the floor. Then she put Ruthie on the blanket and broke down the playpen. The portable crib could be folded with one hand, but it was faster this way, and Alyssa didn't want to be here a second longer than she had to.

  She kept glancing at Ruthie. The baby wasn't crying, but she kept taking hitching breaths like she was going to cry. And Alyssa realized that she was looking at her daughter's onesie as much as she was at her daughter's face.

  Looking for changes? Sure, she was worried about her daughter having another attack. Just like she always was.

  Don't kid yourself. You're worried about seeing a blue handprint.

  She finished folding up the playpen. Leaned it against the table with the sewing machine. Picked up Ruthie, who was still constantly about to cry, about to cry.

  She managed to maneuver the playpen under her free arm without either crushing the baby or falling over. It hurt. What didn't? But she felt better, body and spirit, when she got out of that room and back into the hall.

  She started down the stairs without thinking. Realized she wanted to get back to the living room. To the television. To the comfort of sound that drowned out….

  What?

  She didn't know, exactly. And didn't care. For now it was enough that it felt better to sit in front of the tube.