by Saul, Jonas
Over the years Perry never cheated again. He’d decided, since it was a one-night stand which he never intended to repeat, he simply wouldn’t speak of it. He sent as much money as he could hide from Marge. He felt it was his duty, and every time he sent the money he would apologize silently to Marge again and again, even though she never learnt the truth.
Until last night.
Elton’s stripper mother, raised him in a trailer outside Vegas near a commune in Nevada. Elton killed her and his sisters at the age of twenty and went to prison. For reasons unknown to Perry, Elton was out of jail now and in Canada. How he got across the border with ex-con on his resume, Perry couldn’t figure out, but he was here nonetheless and he was coming after his father.
He knew because he’d seen Elton following him. Three different times, he’d seen Elton standing across the street, watching the house.
That night - last night - he’d told Marge, and they’d fought.
As with anything in life, there were consequences from the actions that you take. Now he was about to receive his, through the pain in her eyes.
He gestured towards her. “Marge, I’m sorry—”
“Perry, oh Perry,” she said, stumbling forward a little, her voice cracking.
He watched her go past him and into the hallway. Perry took a deep breath and then followed. He would have to work hard to make his peace with her.
He would have to let her deal with this any way she saw fit, because the truth was she didn’t actually deserve to be walloped in the cheek by the end of a broom.
But then he needed to convince her to pack up and move to a hotel. Elton knew where they lived. He’d be back, and the next time he would kill them.
Perry followed her to the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he heard a faint clacking sound, sharpening with each step. He looked down at black dress shoes on his feet. He touched the suit jacket and shirt that rested on his shoulders.
He was losing his mind. There was no way he could have gotten dressed without knowing about it, especially not in clothes that he didn’t even own. He could dismiss the extremely fast clock in the kitchen as dementia, or the wonderful health he was experiencing. He could possibly get checked for a brain tumor, or something else of mild importance. But suddenly being dressed for the Royal Ball in clothes he’d never seen before was something else entirely.
He scoured the downstairs and found Marge in the reading room. She had a newspaper raised in front of her face. He took it as a cue to keep his distance. The chair in the corner was his usual one. It sat beside the phone table. While he waited for Marge to come around, maybe he would phone the police to let them know that he’d seen Elton watching the house. Marge would hear his voice, and she’d be able to hear what he was saying to the police about how dangerous Elton was. Maybe she would put their safety over her anger, and talk to him. It would also make her acknowledge his presence, and remind her that the man she married forty-five years ago was still in the room. The man who’d made one mistake and was willing to pay any price for it. His wife wasn’t a currency that he was willing to spend though. He could never lose her.
Perry reached for the phone. His fingers were rewarded with dead air and that familiar buzzing sound from earlier in the kitchen. He looked directly at it and tried to lift it again, but failed.
The phone rang at that moment. He jumped. Marge dropped her newspaper on the coffee table, stood, and approached him, bending to pick up the receiver.
“Hello?”
Marge paused and said hello again, only to frown and slowly set the phone down. Perry watched as she walked across the room to the kitchen without even looking at him. He might as well be dead for all she was noticing him. Bewildered about how he couldn’t pick up the phone, Perry sat and stared at it. He wondered if he was responsible for making it ring.
Marge worked away in the kitchen, making what he thought would be tea. It was time to try to understand what was happening. For one thing, he couldn’t believe that Marge chose to avoid him by refusing to acknowledge his presence. There was no way she would carry it on this long without even one look into his eyes. That fact startled him immensely.
And when did I get dressed? Where did I get these clothes from? How can I make the phone ring? How’s that even possible?
He stood up and started pacing the floor. Voices called to him from a distance. It sounded like twenty or thirty people, repeating his name in unison. It was like an echo in a narrow hallway when it reached his ears.
What the hell is that?
He looked around the living room but couldn’t determine where the voices were coming from.
He stopped pacing and stared down at the newspaper Marge had been reading. It sat open on the coffee table. He saw a photo of a younger version of himself, dressed in black shoes, black suit pants, wearing the same jacket and shirt he wore now. He swung around the table and planted himself hard on the sofa, intent on finding out why he was in the newspaper.
The obituaries section featured an article dedicated to the memory of Marge’s beloved husband, Perry Strall.
Deceased four days ago. Shot in the head in his home by an unknown assailant.
Perry stopped reading and touched his head. Everything was intact. He ran his hands all over his body. Nothing wrong. He felt an intense calling to warn Marge. He didn’t know how he was still here or why. All he gathered was there must be a reason because he didn’t feel dead. If he was dead, then it must be that he came back to warn Marge.
He went on to read that his funeral had been the day the newspaper was printed, between 11:00am and noon. That might have something to do with why he lost track of time in the kitchen earlier.
The voices he’d been hearing increased their volume. Deep inside the intuitive area of his soul, Perry knew the newspaper article was not a cruel joke orchestrated by Marge to remind him of his own mortality. No, here and now sat the spirit of Perry Strall, still working out the details of death.
He stood and headed for the kitchen, intent on finding a way to talk to Marge. If he was still hanging around her, then there had to be a reason.
She sat at the kitchen table, eyes swollen, her lower lip quivering, stirring her tea, a Kleenex in her left hand. He glimpsed the kitchen phone. As he reached for it, the phones throughout the house started to ring. Marge looked up, stopped her stirring of the tea and picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
Perry spoke tentatively at first, not sure what to expect.
“Marge…” he stopped as he saw a visible change occur over Marge. The lines on her face contorted as an intense weeping began. He also stopped because the voices, which were definitely calling him from somewhere in the house, sounded like they came from the next room now.
“Perry?” Marge managed to wheeze out, her voice cracked and broken.
“I’m here,” he said and waited for her to collect herself. “I wanted to apologize for hitting you. During our fight, emotions got out of control. When I spun around to walk out of the kitchen, I accidentally bumped the broom. I’m sorry it hit your face.”
She almost dropped the phone as her eyes widened. She completely ignored his apology. “What’s happening Perry? Are you…alive?” She used a Kleenex to wipe her nose and eyes.
“I don’t think so. But I have to warn you about Elton. He shot me. I’m sure of it.” He turned around and looked behind him. The voices were very close. “They’re calling me quite loudly just now.”
“Oh Perry, talk to me a little longer.”
“I’m so sorry, Marge. I thought we’d be safe from Elton. I miscalculated. Please—”
The doorbell rang.
Marge looked through the kitchen door and down the hallway.
“Don’t answer it. You have to leave the house,” Perry pleaded.
“What’s that? I have to what?”
Perry shouted with all the pent-up anger and emotion he could muster. “Run! Get out of the house. We should have moved last week. Get ou
t now. Hurry—”
The doorbell rang again, cutting him off.
One of the voices spoke to Perry from behind him, but he ignored the sound. He watched Marge and waited to see what she would do. He heard a new noise coming from the back of the house.
It startled Marge so much, she dropped the phone.
The connection was lost.
There was the loud crash of glass breaking at the back of the house.
Perry turned around and gasped as his gaze fell upon his mother. She’d passed away over thirty years before. She was radiant, her smile like the sun, hand held out to him, beckoning.
“Mother?”
“You can’t help her now. You’ve done the best you could. It’s time to come with us.”
Perry stepped back. “No. Marge is in trouble. She needs me. This is my fault. I intend to stop Elton.”
“You can’t. You’ve passed. Perry, you’re on the Other Side now. Come with us.”
“No!” he shouted with everything he had. Nothing was going to make him leave Marge’s side. Picture frames on the kitchen wall vibrated when he shouted.
His mother began to disappear like a wispy smoke. She smiled and nodded in an understanding fashion. Then she was gone. The voices ceased their cacophony.
Perry turned around.
Marge was gone too.
He ran through the hall and into the reading room. It was empty.
“Marge,” he called out before realizing she wouldn’t be able to hear him without the benefit of the phone. He ran down the hall toward the back of the house. The mud room window by the washing machine was completely broken out. Glass littered the small brown mat.
He called out again even though it was fruitless.
Something crashed in the basement.
He bolted for the basement door and down the stairs as if he floated. Elton was there, his back to Perry. Marge was in the corner, down on her knees.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Because I have a father who left me to die. I believe in divine justice.”
“You think what you did to my husband was divine justice?”
Elton kicked out the step ladder legs and sat down on it. Perry walked around in front of his son and saw the weapon he held. It was one of Perry’s drills.
“Okay, we have a little time. I’ll explain. My mother was a whore. Do you know how many men she would bring home? They would beat me for fun. I lost my fingerprints at the age of eight because one of the men my mother brought home didn’t want people to be able to identify me. How did he know I’d live a life of crime?” Elton held his free hand up and showed Marge his fingers. “He burned them off on the kitchen stove while my mother laughed at me. She also said dental records help to identify people so they never took me to a dentist. I lost almost all my teeth and never had the money for those fake ones until I was in jail. The system paid for it. See.” Elton opened his mouth, displaying a white band of teeth in a wide smile.
“I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry,” Marge said. “No one should have to live under those conditions.”
“You’re astute. Got my high school diploma in prison.”
“Are you doing this to hurt the people that hurt you?”
“Something like that.”
Marge wiped her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Your husband, my father, left me with that woman DNA calls my mother. She had two other girls that were beaten and raped more times than I know how to count. They were really twisted. I’m the only sane one to walk out of that house from hell. I killed them all to end their pain. Now I’ve killed my dad for allowing that pain in the first place by not stepping up to the plate. You’re the last one who has to die.”
“Why me?”
“The rule for me goes like this.” Elton massaged the drill like a pet cat sitting in his lap. “You hurt me, I hurt you back. You take something from me, I take something from you.”
“I haven’t taken anything from you.”
Elton lifted his head back and moaned as he looked up at the basement’s ceiling. “You people. Nobody gets it. Okay, I’ll explain and then we can get the show on the road. My dad hurt me bad, so I hurt him. He took away my life. Now I take something from him and that’s you. Then everything will be right with the world.”
Marge was losing control again. She sobbed heavier and bobbed her shoulders as her old body shuddered.
“Good. I like seeing your fear. And you know what, I don’t care about it. I’ll tell you why. I lived in fear all of my life because of my father. He could’ve brought me here and raised me with you, but he didn’t. Instead, I feared waking up every morning. Do you want to know the worst thing that happened to me?”
Marge shook her head back and forth. “No. I’m so sorry for you.”
“Shut up! I don’t want your fucking pity. You’re nothing to me. The worst thing was when I was ten. My mom was out whoring somewhere and she had her current boyfriend babysitting me. That night I almost died. I was in the hospital for two weeks. I look back and still can’t figure out what set him off. He was drinking and then he was violent. He ripped all my clothes off and did things to me that are unspeakable. I bled in my shit for over a week. He knocked teeth out, broke three fingers and almost cost me one of my eyes. And you know what my mother did? She said I probably deserved it. I was ten years old and already I wanted to murder people. That man died in some gang robbery two months later. I was so happy that I even thanked a God that I don’t believe in. Crazy huh?”
All Marge could do was whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
Perry needed to do something but he was held rooted to the story. If he’d known any of this, he would’ve done something years ago. He looked around but there was no phone in the basement.
The drill started up.
Marge began screaming.
Perry watched in horror as Elton walked toward his wife of forty-five years. He screamed her name but no one heard.
He moved between them, but Elton walked through him.
If there’s nothing I can do then why am I here? Why torture me like this?
With everything he had, Perry moved up to Elton and screamed a violent torrent of rage.
Elton’s hair lifted up a little and he looked around for an open window. Marge was curled in the corner trying to get as far away from the drill as possible.
Perry screamed again, but there was nothing he could do.
Elton grabbed Marge’s hair, tilted her head back and rammed the drill’s business end into her right eye.
Perry fell apart as his wife’s body went through a series of convulsions.
Then he heard her say his name.
He spun around and saw Marge standing behind him. He did a double take and then looked back at her corpse.
“Marge?”
His mother showed up. The voices entered his consciousness again. His mother spoke first.
“Perry. We all have loved ones come for us when we pass over. I’m here for you. You’re here for Marge.”
He stared at Marge. She looked fabulous.
Then the basement was gone. They were moving outside. He thought he’d lost rational thought. Nothing made sense. Was he even sane anymore after witnessing what he’d just seen?
A gunshot resounded from the house below.
“Elton will be joining us soon,” his mother said. “Elton’s pain is over now too. Come. Join the rest of your family.”
No Trespassing
I am on a search for the rarest leaves I can find. I didn’t know that instead I would find death.
I’m a leaf collector. For me, the leaves glisten in their hammock of twigs. At times, they call to me with disdain. I hear my name whispered among them as soft breeze caresses their undersides. They don’t yell, they only whisper.
I fear trees.
They watch me. I can feel them. When they see me coming I can hear my name. That’s their way of telling the others I’m close. I often hear a branch m
ove, a twig snap. In the past I would jump and look around. No one would be there. I soon realized the trees were stalking me. They don’t like me. I take their leaves, the art they created and put them on display. I steal their protection. I steal from their crown.
But I respect them. I steer clear when walking through the forest and I don’t respond to their small noises. But I listen. Oh yeah, I listen, because they call my name.
In my satchel I carry numerous pieces of magazine paper to keep the leaves I collect safe and dry. I also need bear spray. I keep it clipped to a rope, which I use for a belt. Alongside that, is my trusty umbrella. I couldn’t walk the forests collecting leaves only to have it rain and soak my work.