Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW

by Michaelbrent Collings

  "I don't know what to do," he whispered. His voice was so low, so pitiful, she almost went to him.

  He's never done this before.

  But he's done it now.

  He's been a good father and husband.

  But he hit me.

  She stayed put.

  He lifted a hand again. "Can I…? You're bleeding. Can I…?" He looked disoriented, turning his head from side to side as though searching for something that would make all this right. He took a step, going to the small sink that stood outside the bathroom. He grabbed a towel off the wall and held it out to her.

  If he'd tried to help her with the wounds – tried to touch her – she didn't think she would have let him stay. She would have made him leave, or called the cops. But his face was so pitiful when he handed over the towel that she just took it.

  She didn't know what she was going to do. She still might kick him out or call the cops. But not this instant.

  She mopped the blood off her mouth. Not much. Worse was her head. Head wounds bled like crazy, so she wasn't too worried, but she thought based on the amount of blood on the towel that she might need stitches.

  She looked at Blake. He still stood there like a beaten puppy, lost and forlorn. His gaze finally raised to meet hers, and his expression went from grief and remorse to concern.

  "Lyss?" he said. "Lyss, you okay?"

  "What do you…?"

  She didn't have to finish the sentence. Thunderclouds gathered around her field of vision. They spat lightning that coursed through the rest of her sight. She slumped.

  The last thing she saw was Blake leaping forward, his big hands reaching out. The hand that had struck her open again, this time to catch her as she fell…

  … fell…

  … fell…

  … and then her eyes fluttered. Opened.

  She saw squares. Dots.

  Ceiling tiles.

  Something moved beside her. A large, warm thing that shifted and rubbed against her. It breathed deep as a dragon.

  Blake.

  She was still in the motel. Still with Blake. In the bed with him.

  She rolled over, nearly falling into the crevasse between the room's two beds before managing to get her feet under her. Looking over she saw Mal and Ruthie asleep on the other bed. Mal had his arm over his baby sister, a protective older brother doing his work even in sleep.

  And Blake… her husband hadn't taken her to the hospital. Must have been worried about the questions. So he had just put her in bed, which was terrible. Worse: he had crawled in bed beside her.

  She stood. Her body creaked, ached. Not just the site of Ruthie's birth, but everywhere.

  And standing, she happened to see the mirror over the small sink.

  Like everything in this room the mirror was cheap, ill-used. Scratches clouded its surface and made it nearly a parody of reflection, but she thought….

  She moved toward it. In front of it. Her face so close to it that she could see fingerprints and smudges that showed how long since it had been cleaned.

  So close she could see her face.

  And so close she could not see the blood.

  Her lip, which should have been swollen, was normal-sized. She opened her mouth as wide as she could, and there was no trace of blood inside.

  Her forehead, the spot she remembered hitting the wall, was whole. Unblemished skin stretched from temple to temple.

  Blake sighed. The dark wraith-image of his legs that she could see in the mirror shifted slightly. He coughed.

  And Alyssa stared at herself. No wounds. Not a mark.

  "Did I dream it?"

  She must have.

  She must have.

  But in that moment she didn't know whether the knowledge came with joy or dread.

  Blake hadn't hit her.

  But she remembered it happening. Just like she remembered the changing embroidery, the voice in the room, the hallway exploding around her and Mal.

  What was happening?

  Was anything happening?

  She got back into bed with Blake. After all, he hadn't hit her.

  But it took a long time. She stood at the sink and stared in the mirror, watching the dark ghost of her husband as he moved and made small sleep-noises. Watching and waiting and wondering what was real.

  She finally turned away from the mirror, away from the image of herself that made no sense, and went back to her family. The children kept sleeping. Blake slept with his face away from her, and she had the strange feeling that if she turned him over he would have no face at all. Just a blank stretch of flesh, inhuman and incapable of humanity.

  One hand lay on his side. The cheap motel cover bound it up so that he looked like he only had three fingers. And now he was a faceless thing that had been maimed in some cruel accident… or perhaps a well-deserved attack.

  She stared at the three-fingered hand, perhaps even longer than she had stared into the mirror. Listening to the breathing all around her, but suddenly unsure if anyone in this place was really alive.

  Then Blake's hand unclenched. All five fingers appeared and he rolled over and he had a face and that face was smooth and open and kind. He couldn't have hit her. He never had, he couldn't have done such a thing –

  (even though he did once he did much worse to his father to his own blood)

  – and she was safe with him.

  She didn't remember sleeping that night, or the next night. They did stay in the motel, and the credit card didn't bounce. Not even when they got some food and diapers at the nearest small market. She hadn't bled much after Mal, and that was repeating, thank God. Even so, the emergency pads she kept in the glove box weren't going to last the night, so they had to pick up a package of those as well. Each purchase made Blake visibly cringe. Each cringe made her quake.

  What if he hit her?

  Would it be the first time or the second? The third?

  What was she remembering that wasn't real? And were there perhaps real things that she was forgetting?

  Mal hated the television situation in the motel room, but he did like Pop Tarts for breakfast, Lunchables at midday, and Jack in the Box for dinner. He played with Ruthie. It was all a strange dream, a family packed in a box like a present waiting to be opened on Christmas or some birthday.

  And then the day came to leave. The box opened. They went home again. Not the rental. Their real home.

  Blake had called ahead, had verified that the place was ready, but Alyssa didn't really believe it until she saw the house. Its familiar lines and angles were open to the morning light, the plastic tent gone and no sign of the exterminators.

  Blake squeezed her hand before they got out of the car. She managed not to recoil, wondering if he noticed that this was the first time she had let him touch her since they left the rental.

  "Home sweet home, huh?" she said. The words fought their way out. But saying them actually made her feel better.

  Mal's voice chirped out from the backseat. He sounded equal parts happy to be out of the motel and worried to be back.

  "Is it over?"

  Alyssa looked at Blake. He was grinning at their son. "Well I certainly don't have any plans for going back to that place again."

  He sounded upbeat. Hopeful. She had to smile as well. "I think so, Mal," she said. "I think it's over."

  Blake took Ruthie inside. Mal ran in after them.

  Alyssa went to the mailbox. The door hung open on its hinges, days of mail wedged inside and spilling out. It was such a thick wad that most of them fell from her fingers. Maybe not a bad thing since most were either junk mail offering useless coupons to places she had no intention of ever visiting or bills threatening a variety of repercussions if not immediately paid.

  She bent to pick them up. Her center hurt as always, but maybe a little less. She was getting better. Maybe things in general were getting better.

  She picked up the mail in a single scoop. Straightened. And this time when she dropped the mail it
all fell tumbling from her hands. All but a single envelope. The one that had somehow found itself on the top of the massive pile.

  It was oddly shaped. Square, but not quite even. As though not made by machine but by hand. It was yellow in the center, the paper browning slightly toward the edges. Old.

  It felt like parchment paper.

  She tore open the envelope with fingers that shook so badly she nearly dropped it again and again. Then she yanked out what was inside.

  The paper that came out was parchment, too. Just like the envelope. Just like the paper had fallen from between pages of death and told her to run.

  This one had writing, too. The same thick, black strokes.

  The shaking in her hands moved to her arms, then took control of her entire body.

  It was here.

  And not just here. She had seen – heard – these words before. In a dream that perhaps hadn't been a dream. When Blake had struck her he had said those same words. "I'm sorry, I won't do that again. We'll do whatever you want. I'm sorry. I won't leave you alone. Ever. Promise."

  Promise.

  FIVE:

  PICTURE PERFECT

  Finally the time comes to actually take the picture. And for some it is beyond anything. It is ecstasy. It is sublime.

  Poppa found me doing bad things wunse. He did what Godlee Poppas do, and I never did it again.

  But when I take the picshers I feel lyke that agin. Things get fast and fast faster I cant help it and I hope Poppa will forgiv me and wont hit me no more even tho he is ded and gon a long time.

  - Silver, Charles M.

  (afterword by Dr. Charlotte Bongiovi),

  (2003) Berkeley, California,

  Memento Mori, Notes of a Dead Man,

  Western University Press, Inc.

  HOME SWEET HOME

  Alyssa walked. She knew she should run, but her feet refused. Or perhaps her feet were willing, but her mind was not. Her mind did not want anything to be wrong, did not want whatever had happened at the rental to have followed them here.

  Though she suspected –

  (knew)

  – that it might actually have followed her family to the rental. That what had seemed to start there might actually have been set in motion before that. With –

  (Blake?)

  – the centipedes. With her son.

  She ran.

  When she got to the door she didn't know what to expect. But she slammed it open so hard it bounced right back and almost hit her in the face.

  Blake's gonna be pissed when he sees the mark on the wall.

  She expected blood. She expected death.

  Ruthie was on a baby mat on the floor in the living room. Mal holding a toy over her head, reflecting a warped image on a bent plastic mirror. The baby gurgled. The onesie was pink. All was well.

  "Where's Daddy?" she said.

  Mal didn't look up. Totally engrossed in play with his baby sister. Or just avoiding her eyes. "In my room," he said.

  "Is he… did he seem okay?"

  "Yeah, why?" Now he looked up. Disquiet in his eyes, rapidly shifting to fear. "Did something happen? Are we –?"

  "No." She smiled. What she hoped was reassurance on her face, what she suspected was merely a confused mask that conveyed nothing but a macabre mix of her own fears. She tried to smile a better smile, then just turned away when she realized she would only make him more worried by standing here.

  It was only a few short steps to the entrance to her son's room. Just behind the stairs, "Below the Ascension" Blake had always said. As though Mal was a demon in their lives. Silly, since he was the best kid ever. But now the bedroom seemed like it might be a portal to a deep and dark place.

  Mal's door was shut. She opened it. The doorknob was bitingly cold under her palm. She was oddly pleased when it only rattled a bit in her hand.

  Blake was under the bed. His long legs stuck out like he was a mechanic inspecting the chassis of a classic car. They jerked as she entered. He slid out.

  "Geez! You scared me to death!" He smiled brightly at her. A smile totally like him. Bright, cheerful. No trace of worry, not even the money concerns that had driven his shoulders down in the past year or the fears about Ruthie's health.

  So why didn't she feel better looking at him?

  Blake moved to Mal's toybox.

  "You…," she said. She felt a thousand questions bubbling up behind her lips. Why did you hit me? Did you hit me? Did any of it really happen?

  And the one that finally escaped was the most banal, the least important.

  Or perhaps the most important. Because the banal, was, after all, real life. The mundane moment-to-moment moments were the ones that comprised reality and made existence worthwhile.

  "Any bugs?"

  Blake moved to the closet. He pulled Mal's clothes apart one at a time, searching between each.

  Little boy's clothes. They look like the ones in the wardrobe.

  Will Mal die?

  Blake shook his head. "Not a one. The exterminators were expensive, but it looks like they did a good job."

  He started to turn from the closet, then stopped. For a moment his smile dropped away. Behind it Alyssa saw something strange. Not the fear she had actually expected, the terror that had become a constant companion in the last days. The opposite.

  For a second, Blake looked ecstatic. She thought of their wedding night. The look on his face as his fingers danced across her, as he whispered to her that he would love her, would stay forever.

  Blake reached out and touched a piece of molding on the side of the closet. He pulled at it, turning so Alyssa could no longer see that strange, terrible happiness.

  The molding wiggled a bit.

  "Looks like this got knocked loose," said Blake. He looked at his watch. His face looked normal again. Even businesslike, as though he was on a job. "I'm going to fasten this down before I start work for the day."

  He winked at her. A completely normal wink. Just the right mix of lover and husband and friend. But her belly felt loose, her wounds twinged.

  "Mom?"

  Mal was in the doorway. His face white.

  "What?" she said. She turned from Blake. Blake didn't move. He was engrossed in the molding, gently pulling it farther away from the wall. "Where's Ruthie?"

  "Could you come here?" said Mal.

  And he left. Walking herky-jerky, a poorly manipulated marionette. Pinocchio before the Blue Fairy set him free.

  She hurried after him, and again her mind threw terrible images at her eyes. Her baby, dead. Her house, invaded.

  Get out. You have to get out.

  Where can I go? It's not here, it's everywhere.

  She followed puppet-Mal into the living room. Ruthie was, again, still on her mat. Gurgling. Happy.

  Everything in the living room was where it belonged. But there was a plus-one. An unwelcome party crasher.

  Alyssa pitched sideways. Clutched at a wall to keep from falling to the floor.

  "What is that, Mom? Where did it come from?"

  Alyssa stared. Couldn't speak. Just like the boy she stared at. The boy long-dead, throat cut and blood streaming over his tall white collar, sitting on the strange black chair.

  "What is it?"

  The book sat beside Ruthie. Open to the boy's picture, but she knew if she flipped through the pages each one would be full of other dead children posed on that terrible chair.

  "Where did it –?" Mal began again.

  Alyssa waved her hand. She didn't want to hear the rest of the question. Even though it was the one ringing in her own mind.

  Where did it come from?

  Why was it here?

  How was it here?

  She looked at Mal. She needed to answer. If not the truth – a truth she didn't know – then something.

  Her mouth opened.

  And the doorbell rang.

  The sound prickled her skin. The hairs on her arms stabbed into the air. She turned to the door.

&
nbsp; The frosted glass window showed a silhouette. A dark outline. Featureless, silent, unmoving. A thing on the other side of a glass darkly, and one that held her frozen.

  "What is it?" said Mal again. She didn't know if he was asking about the book or the thing beyond the door.

  She couldn't answer either question.

  A BIT OF CHANGE

  At first he was mad. He had paid through the nose, dammit! Through the nose! When you handed over the last money you had you didn't deserve a good job, you deserved perfection. Not "close is good enough" or "just about perfect." Per-damn-fect.

  And the bug guys had nearly gotten it.

  Bugs dead: check (apparently).

  Bugs gone: check (absolutely).

  Molding banged up: shit shit shitty shit shit (yep).

  Blake held back his irritation while Alyssa was there. Important to keep a happy face after everything she'd been through. But inside he seethed. He wanted to find the good gents of Pest in Peace and stick them in one of their own tents. Give them a blast or two and see how they liked it. Mess up their houses and see how they liked it. Kill their kids and their wives and see how they liked….

  He shook himself.

  What was I thinking?

  He couldn't remember. Not for the life of him. He thought it had been something about his father. And that was something better left unthought.

  Though it was nice to think about leaving. To think about beating the shit out of him, after all the long beatings Blake had endured. To finally outgrow his old man and his own fear.

  The blood had been so warm on his hands.

  He hadn't stuck around to make sure he killed the bastard. And they didn't tell things like that to fourteen-year-old boys who had been beaten and molested for their whole lives.

  That made him sad. Not to know. To know for sure.

  The blood had felt warm. Good.

  He pulled molding away from the wall. He wasn't mad anymore. He thought there might be something underneath it, and that was interesting. Maybe he wasn't mad at the exterminators after all. Maybe.

  He heard something. Or felt it.