by Dan Mooney
“Wow. I think you managed to get him without even doing anything. Good job.” The voice seemed to float toward him through a haze. He was still looking at the spot where she had disappeared around the corner.
“You all right there, big guy?” came another voice. Frank’s voice.
“What? Yes.” Denis cleared his throat. “Yes. Fine. Thank you. And how are you?”
His two friends stood above him, looming slightly, as was their way. Frank Long, blocky and quite muscular despite his slight paunch, had a friendly if somewhat serious face, with a well-trimmed beard that stuck to his jawline, black, like his short spiky hair. Occasionally he wore glasses, although, when feeling vain, which was unusual for someone as pleasant and humble as he was, he would wear his contacts. Ollie Leahy was slightly taller than both of them, handsome with carefully maintained stubble, darker than his mousy blond hair, which he kept cut short and styled to look like it was permanently messy. Sometimes vain, but so genial that it could be forgiven, and almost always talking. He was a balance for Frank, who often contributed little, allowing Ollie to ramble instead, until the time came to shoot him down with a quip. They occupied the same space in Denis’s head, a compartment specifically reserved for the last two friends he had who were still fully alive.
“Dude,” Ollie interjected with his usual colloquialism. “You look spooked. Did someone start talking to you about fractions again? I know you have a thing for whole numbers. Seriously, just point him out and we’ll kick his ass.”
“Amusing,” he replied, smiling at his friend.
“No, I don’t think it was fractions this time,” Frank said, keeping a straight face. “I know that expression. I’ve seen that one before. Did someone walk past here with a plate of rice and drop some of it?”
Dry was the only word to describe his sense of humor.
“Yes, Frank,” he replied sarcastically. “A person walked up this street with a plate of rice. In fact, six people did. I hear it’s some new kind of internet meme. Rice Walking. Huge in France.”
They both chuckled.
“Honestly though. You okay? You looked a little rattled there.”
“I’m fine, don’t let it trouble you. Take a seat.” Denis started his watch.
“We’re on the clock again, Franky boy,” Ollie said. “Better make this some quality conversation time. I’m going to cover topics relating to football, weather, housecleaning and gambling. You’ve got rugby, music and movies, Denis’s extensive love life and romantic interests. Go.”
Ollie’s sense of humor was probably his most endearing and annoying trait. Denis found himself smiling nonetheless.
“Speaking of which...” Frank said. “I heard a rumor that Rebecca Lynch is back in town.”
He delivered the sentence conversationally, but the look that he shot Denis was weighed and measured. He was waiting for a reaction. Suppressing the urge to panic again, Denis kept his face composed and tried not to look either of his friends in the eye. The swirl of emotions in his head was dizzying and frightening. Had they met her? Had they told her to walk by? Was this how they were trying to get him? If so, he feared it was working all too well. He clenched his thigh to stop it from rattling.
“Oh really?” he asked noncommittally. “That’s nice.” Nonchalance was an excellent shield.
“Damn. I tell you, man, I fucking hate it when my exes are around,” Ollie said, clearly preparing for another epic tale of a time when some ex-girlfriend said or did something that ended up with Ollie either having sex or being knocked out. There was a certain rhythm and formula to Ollie’s stories. Denis loved them. He relaxed as his friend recounted the story. The details were no longer important; the words alone lulled him back into a state of comfort. Frank was still looking at him, possibly still hoping to see something, a spark perhaps of his old college friend, as opposed to this new tightly wound reality. There would be no hints of anything today. The momentary panic was almost gone now, and Denis found himself smiling again. The dark clouds also seemed to have passed. There would be no rain this afternoon after all.
* * *
On his way to the hospital, Denis found his thoughts straying, refusing to compose themselves as he liked them to. His friends had made no serious attempt to goad him today. They had either let it slide because of his obvious discomfort, or they had been in some sort of cahoots with Rebecca. He hoped it was the former; the latter didn’t bear thinking about. The compartment in his head occupied by his two friends had no additional space for anyone else. Least of all her. And therein lay the problem. She was like the classic pink elephant; once she had been mentioned there was no way to stop thinking about her.
The darker clouds had been replaced with the lighter fluffy variety; white and endless, they robbed the day of any real shine, but they weren’t threatening. His shoes pop-popped as he walked to the hospital, carefully reading the oncoming pedestrians from a considerable distance in order to minimize the chance of contact. He had an extraordinary gift for it. His mind, however, continued to flit and twirl, leaping from thoughts of panic attacks to deep brown eyes to practical jokes. It was his least pleasant walk, but such was the case every Saturday. The purple flowers he carried weighed a ton. As was also the case every Saturday.
The sliding door to the hospital swooshed as it opened, and Denis moved quickly to dodge the people walking in the opposite direction. The jaded receptionist dismissed him with a look. His particular brand of weird had stopped being charming about a year after he had started turning up every Saturday, and he had used up whatever credit his politeness earned him when he went through an entire industrial-sized bottle of hand sanitizer the day a patient had accidentally touched him. He made his way through the winding corridors to Eddie’s ward. His only other friend from his college days shared his room with five other patients. None of them moved or opened their eyes. Machines kept them alive. Next to Eddie’s bed sat Ann and Ned, his best friend’s parents, and on the cabinet beside them was a photo of a beautiful young blond woman with a little nose stud and big blue eyes that stared at him every time he came to visit. Even her name seemed to follow him: Jules. It whispered at him quietly from time to time. He ignored them as best he could.
Poor Jules.
There were some wilting purple flowers in a vase behind the photograph. He stood at the window in the corridor and looked in, feeling the grief grab him by the throat and squeeze. His eyes stung a little. A voice inside his head told him to remain calm. It was a voice of confidence and solid assurance. He listened to it whenever he felt himself stray from his new path.
Ann shot him a sad little smile, and Ned simply nodded at him. There always seemed to be a question in that nod. Denis felt that if he really put his mind to it, he could figure out what Eddie’s dad was trying to ask him, but the voice warned him that he wouldn’t like it a whole lot if he knew, and he certainly wouldn’t like to ponder the answer.
You’re going to have to eventually.
For twenty minutes he stood at the window looking in at Eddie, ignoring Jules and trying to outthink the grief that felt like it might strangle him. Throughout it all his face remained impassive. When the allotted time was up, he put the flowers on the floor next to the door and nodded to Ann and Ned. He didn’t enter the room. He never did. Turning into the traffic of walking germs and sickness, he began his long journey home.
It struck him en route to his house that it would be a day like this that the monsters were most likely to be throwing their own miniature party. At times it seemed like such impromptu recreational activities were attempts to cheer him up, shockingly misguided attempts that resulted in the type of chaotic merriment that caused him to follow along behind them cleaning as he went. Order abandoned in favor of unrelenting and seemingly pointless destruction. Perversely, he found contentment in reestablishing order in their wake and in that small way, they did actually help him to regain fo
cus. He wondered sometimes if it was worth the hassle. There had been talk the night before of a popcorn fight. He made no effort to understand the kind of thinking that makes someone consider a popcorn fight as a worthy way to spend one’s time. He focused instead on the time it would take to collect each individual popped kernel, and then tackle the salty mess that would cover the floor of his living room. It was usually the living room. They tended to prefer messing communal areas, and kept their bedrooms quite neat.
They’d moved in not long after he had bought the house. At the time he was struggling, mentally, to cope, and so he tolerated their antics as they tolerated his, and after a while they had reached a level of routine with one another. If he was honest with himself, he tolerated them because he imagined that life might be just a little lonely without them, and the house was big enough to accommodate five people comfortably.
As he approached, his sense of disquiet grew. The lights were all on, including the porch light, which was utterly pointless at seven o’clock on an August evening, even one as cloudy as this. The upstairs windows were all open. Denis was certain he had closed each of them before leaving the house. Leaving them open was not the kind of oversight he permitted himself to have. He opened the gate all the way out and then closed it, starting his foot-count to the front door as the latch struck behind him. After his twelve paces he gave the door three carefully weighed pushes before inserting his key and letting himself in.
Inside the house it felt like the calm after a storm. Something stirring in the air. Popcorn littered the hallway. Someone had taken a crayon to the wall and drawn a picture of the outside of the house, crudely. The sun shining down on the house had sunglasses on and wore a cheerful grin. The piece of childlike art was signed Penny O’Neill. Other than the artwork, the walls were bare. No photographs, no artwork, no cutesy signs reading Bless This Mess. Beige. Beige and unimaginative and magnificently uniform.
They were waiting for him in the living room. The coffee table had been turned upside down, and all four of them were balancing on one leg each, their hands outstretched to each other for balance. Penny O’Neill, her long feline tail flicking back and forth idly, regarded him with tawny eyes and a smile. Being the tallest of the four, she could easily see over Professor Scorpion’s head. Her body, that of a perfectly proportioned woman covered entirely in soft shimmering blond fur, seemed to tremble with the effort to remain balanced. A woman, but also a cat.
“Hello,” she said in her usual smoky voice.
“What are you doing?” Denis asked with a weary sigh.
“We’re playing a game of balance,” Plasterer told him. His confident, masculine voice, as always, sounded strange coming from his unusual features. His clothes, rough looking workman’s overalls, complete with utility belt, and the paint-spattered white T-shirt that seemed a little too snug over his muscular torso, were also at odds with the thick layers of clown makeup he wore on his face, the multicolored wig he wore on his head and the bright red nose. Two white gloves adorned his hands, and his tanned arms were thick with muscle. His clown shoes seemed to provide no advantage in the game of balance.
“Is that you, Denis?” Professor Scorpion asked, as if it could possibly have been anyone else. The rotting flesh around his mouth sometimes seemed to rattle when he spoke, as though part of his lip would simply fall off if he shouted too loudly. It never did, and for all his apparent decorum in his tweed jacket with its leather elbow patches and his beige chinos and polished shoes, the zombie could be one of the most boisterous of all of the housemates when he wanted to be. Deano, as usual, said nothing. Humanoid hair balls never do. His expression gave away nothing either. Humanoid hair balls don’t have expressions. He shook a little, causing the slightly shorter hair around his arms to wave a little.
“What’s the object of the game?” Denis asked, as he began to collect popcorn from the floor of the living room.
“The last person to keep their balance wins,” Plasterer told him.
“Surely the first person to move wins,” Denis replied. “After all, the first to move is the only person guaranteed not to fall on their faces. Once one moves, the other three are going to fall.”
In retrospect, Denis should not have said anything at all. The eruption of noise was catastrophic.
“If you move first, I’m going to choke that little kitten neck on you—”
“You better not even think of such a fiendish thing...”
“I know who’s going to move first, he always moves first...”
“How dare you deign to speak to me in such a manner...?”
“I’ll punch you in your back teeth...”
Even Deano shook with rage at the thought.
“Calmly now. Calmly,” Denis shouted over the din, until there was silence. “I’ll count to three, and all of you jump back at once. Then no one falls, and no one loses.”
“Even better than that,” Penny O’Neill said. “Everyone wins. I like winning.”
“You do so wondrously at restoring such fallings-out to order,” the Professor told him pompously.
“Before I count down,” Denis interjected, “did you all wreck the kitchen?”
Silence.
“Right. I’m going to fix the kitchen as soon as I’ve put away the laptop. When the kitchen is in order, and I’ve prepared myself some dinner, I’ll let you all down. Until then, you guys are going to have to figure this one out for yourselves.”
He permitted himself a smile as he walked to the office. It wasn’t very often that he managed to get one over on his housemates, and he intended on savoring it for a little while. Behind him, another fight erupted as Plasterer, the would-be leader of the group, attempted to encourage the others to follow his three-count, to no avail. The cacophony continued as Denis pottered about the kitchen, his rubber gloves on and sleeves rolled up. Fifty-four minutes exactly to complete the tasks at hand. The sugar had to be thrown out after it had been poured into several small piles and then designed into the shape of a smiley face. Someone had clearly licked part of it away. The crockery needed a wash after it had been made into a design not unlike the Eiffel Tower. Miraculously none of it was smashed. The offender in this case had clearly been so pleased with their work that the tower was to be preserved. Probably Plasterer. The others wouldn’t dare touch it without his consent. Several more crayon drawings had been done; these on paper instead of the walls, thankfully. Denis set about cleaning up and wall washing as a competitive silence settled in the living room. After eating while listening to the radio, as was his way, Denis moved to the living room, freed his housemates with a backward count from three—a small resolution being required as to whether they would go on three or after three—righted the furniture, vacuumed the popcorn and settled in to watch some TV. Just as he was relaxing, she popped into his head again, for just a brief second, but before he could grab ahold of the thought, Plasterer interrupted him. The clown was staring from the kitchen doorway.
“How was your day? Anything unexpected?” he asked, his voice taking an edge that was not out of place on the burly clown. There was something in it, an implied threat, a note of menace.
“Nothing major. Normal day, really,” Denis replied, as if he hadn’t noticed the edge.
The room went silent as three pairs of eyes and a mass of brown-blond hair turned to regard him quietly. Their faces expressionless. He regarded each of them in turn, his face also expressionless.
“Nothing out of the ordinary at all?” Plasterer inquired again. “You went to town and the hospital?”
“Nothing to report,” Denis lied.
For a few more seconds there was silence. Then Penny O’Neill yawned and stretched out beside Denis on the couch. Resting her head in his lap, her blond mane spilling across his thighs, she sighed contentedly. Plasterer tilted his head to the side for a second before he moved, taking his seat at Denis’s left-hand side.
Professor Scorpion settled into his normal armchair, his feet crossed on the footrest and just a hint of rotting flesh peeking through from between the end of his trousers and the start of his socks. Deano did as Deano always did and hunkered down on the floor.
“Let’s watch CSI,” the Professor said.
Plasterer nodded, though he kept one eye surreptitiously on Denis.
Denis smiled, only partly in relief. He surveyed the room and nodded in satisfaction.
You know, sometimes I think he wants to kill you.
GO AWAY, HEARTBREAKER
The following morning, Denis woke to the sound of his alarm clock. It sounded off loudly and evenly three times, as it did every morning before he killed it with an almost accusatory jab of his finger. Penny O’Neill was stretched out at the end of his bed. She slept above the quilt; her fur coat provided her with all the warmth she required. She usually slept almost perpendicular to him, but with a cat’s propensity to stretch and roll at will. She was often found dangling half off the bed, her tail twitching in her sleep. She groaned loudly at the sound of the alarm clock and waved one irritated hand in its direction before drifting back to sleep. She didn’t spend every night at the end of his bed, nor did she even start the night there, but seemed to come and go as she pleased. There was a kind of grace to her, even when she was half falling from the bed, a sort of languid perfection that often made him smile. She almost never frightened him. Almost.