by Andy Cox
The whispering stops and I hear the sound of the cabinet door closing softly. Seconds later, the toilet flushes, and then I hear water coming from the tap. Renee is washing her hands to make it look as if she peed.
I pull my head away from the door, and I hurry back to the kitchen. I hear the lock click and bathroom door open, and when I return to the living room with Renee’s wine, she’s sitting on the couch once more, still headless.
I’m so relieved I break out in a grin.
Renee takes her wine.
“From that smile, I’d say you’re having a good time.”
I sit down on the couch, making sure to leave a few inches between us. I might as well not have bothered, as she immediately scoots closer.
My grin slowly dies.
“Sure,” I say. “A very good time.”
•••
I’m lying in bed, swaddled in darkness. Alone. After making her second glass of wine disappear just as magically as her first, Renee said she needed to get up early for work in the morning, but she enjoyed herself and hoped we could get together again soon. Before leaving, she paused at my door, put her hand on my shoulder, and leaned forward as if intending to kiss me on the cheek with her nonexistent lips. I didn’t feel a thing.
I tried to watch some TV after that, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I left the wine glasses on the counter along with the open bottle, and went to bed early. I have no idea how long ago that was. I don’t keep a clock in my bedroom. What’s the point when you’re (mostly) retired and don’t have to get up in the morning? It feels like I’ve been lying here for hours, but it’s probably been less than thirty minutes. I’m not disappointed that Renee and I didn’t have sex. I hadn’t been that into the idea in the first place, and the whispering in the bathroom thing was a real mood-killer. It’s better this way. I prefer being alone. Life is less complicated that way. What was it that some philosopher said? Hell is other people? Whoever the sonofabitch was, he got that right.
I lie there for a while longer, and eventually my eyes close and I start to drift off. And that’s when I hear it. Whispering. As before, I can’t make out specific words, but there’s a difference this time. It sounds as if it’s coming from inside my bedroom. I think back to earlier, when Renee was here. Did she have enough time to remove the head from its temporary home beneath the bathroom sink and hide it in my room? I don’t remember seeing it before I climbed beneath my smooth, neat covers. It could be under the bed, though. But I was listening closely at the time, and I’m sure she couldn’t have moved the head, not in the short interval between when I heard her leave the bathroom and then saw her sitting on the couch. Then again, she doesn’t have a head, and she’s able to get around just fine, see, hear, speak, and apparently even drink. Who knows what a person like that can do?
The whispering continues for several minutes, an uninterrupted flow of sibilance that despite the situation, I find rather soothing. I’m about to drift off again when the whispering grows louder, more distinct, and becomes speaking. The voice is soft and clearly feminine, each word enunciated clearly, and I don’t need to strain to listen.
“What’s wrong with you, man? Didn’t you see that bitch’s tits? She might be old, but those melons of hers are still fresh enough. Bet there’s plenty of juice in ’em, too. You were sitting right next to her. You could’ve reached out and copped a squeeze whenever you wanted. She wanted you to, you know. I’m a woman. I know these things. Why else would she have worn such a low-cut dress? For Christ’s sake, you don’t show that much boob unless you want someone to give you a little fondle. And while you were working one of her tits, you could’ve slid your hand between her legs and moved your fingers all the way to her no-no place. She wasn’t wearing panties. Couldn’t you tell? Couldn’t you smell how wet and hot her snatch was? She wanted you so bad, Pete. And what did you do? Nothing, except settle for a goodnight peck on the cheek that you couldn’t even feel. Pathetic. But it wasn’t just the sex that you were afraid of, was it? What if she’d tried to talk to you afterward? What if she’d asked you how you felt? What if she wanted to commit the unpardonable sin of hoping to get to know you, even just a little? What would you have done then, Pete? Huh? What?”
The whole time the voice goes on, I lie still, staring into the black nothing above, a coldness settling in my bones. By the time the voice finishes, I’m trembling all over with fury. I throw off the covers, turn on my night stand light, and get out of bed. I drop to the floor on hands and knees and peer under the bed. I see nothing but carpet and a few dust bunnies. I stand up and listen, waiting to see if that horrible voice – which sometimes sounds like Renee, sometimes like Kristie, and sometimes like Anna – has anything else to say. Evidently it’s spoken its piece, for it’s silent now.
Wearing only briefs, I head to the bathroom, flip on the light switch, hunker down in front of the cabinet under the sink, and throw open the door. The head is still there, still wrapped rather sloppily in newspaper. I peel it off, and the head’s painted eyes seem to look up at me.
“You got something to say to me, bitch, you say it to my face. You hear me?”
I yell these words, knowing that I risk waking the neighbors – waking Renee – and not caring.
“Come on! Let’s hear it!”
Silence.
“Fuck this shit,” I mutter.
I go back to the bedroom, throw on a shirt and some pants, and then head to the front hall to put on sneakers and grab a coat out of the closet. I then return to the bathroom, grab hold of the head, and make my way to the door. I know now I should never have brought the goddamned head home, and I’m not going to keep it in my place one moment longer. I reach for the chain, intending to unlock it, but I hesitate. If I leave my apartment, there’s a chance that Renee will know. Even though she claimed she needed to get to bed early, she still might be up, watching TV with the sound low or reading. Or standing at her door, waiting, knowing that I’d eventually decide to take the head back where I got it from. Maybe this was what the two of them were talking about earlier. They planned this whole thing. The head would harass me, I’d decide to take it back to the Dumpster, and then Renee would do…I don’t know what. But whatever her part in this is, I don’t intend to give her the chance to fulfill it.
I turn away from the door, walk through the living room, and head for the patio door. I draw back the blinds, unlock the door, and take my time sliding it open. I want to avoid making any noise. I also don’t turn on the patio light, even though it’s dark as hell out. No moon, no stars. If Renee is up, I don’t want the light to alert her to what I’m doing.
I step outside, and I’m surprised to find the night air is actually a little warmer than inside my apartment. I don’t bother sliding the door shut. I don’t want to make any more noise than I have to. If a raccoon or some other animal finds its way inside, I’ll deal with it later. I tuck the head under my arm, its face against my armpit. Even through my coat, I think I feel the thing’s plastic lips move, as it it’s trying to suckle on me, and I shift it around so that its features point toward the ground. And I then I move toward the gate in the three-foot-high wooden fence that encloses my patio. I open it just enough for me to slip through. The gate creaks, only a bit, but it sounds loud as a gunshot to me. From here I can see Renee’s patio and the sliding glass door that leads into her apartment. The blinds are closed and no light spills through the slim spaces between. That doesn’t mean she’s not awake, watching and listening inside, though. I very carefully close the gate, and then start walking down the sidewalk behind our building.
I walk around the side of the building, continue down the front sidewalk, and a few moments later, I draw near the Dumpster. There’s a fluorescent light on a metal pole next to it to keep it lit at night. I suppose so people don’t get any nasty surprises when they take out their trash in the dark.
It’s rather anticlimactic, really. I walk to the fenced-in enclosure, slide the metal side door open with an u
navoidable grinding sound, and without really looking at what else is in there, I lob the head inside as it it’s nothing more than a child’s ball topped with strands of brown hair. I slide the door shut with the same grating sound, then I turn and walk out of the enclosure.
Renee is standing there. She’s wearing a light blue night gown that’s sheer enough that I can see her breasts, their dark nipples, and the shadowy smudge of her pubic hair. She is, of course, still headless.
“Why did you take it in the first place, Pete?” she asks.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Were you so lonely that a plastic head seemed like good company? Or did it seem like good company because it was plastic? Unmoving, unthinking, unspeaking, and most important of all, unfeeling. It wouldn’t want anything from you. Wouldn’t need. Not like a wife. Or a daughter.”
She starts toward me now, walking on bare feet that are surprisingly small. Like a little girl’s.
“But even that was too much for you, wasn’t it? So you snuck out in the middle of the night to throw it away again.”
When she reaches me she stops and places her hands on my cheeks.
“Poor Pete. I know how to help you…if you’ll trust me.”
Tears well in my eyes, my throat tightens, and I nod once.
Her hands move from my chest to my neck and then to my jaw. She takes a firm grip and pulls. It hurts, but not as much as I expect. When my head’s free of my body, she carries it toward the Dumpster. I’m facing backward, and I see my now headless body standing there, motionless at first, but then it turns around to face the Dumpster. It raises a hand, as if to say goodbye.
Renee enters the Dumpster’s enclosure then, cutting off my view of my body. She slides open the Dumpster’s side door, and then she takes hold of me with both hands and lifts me up to her nonexistent face as if to look at me one more time. She tosses me into the Dumpster, grinds the side door shut, and then she’s gone. I imagine her walking back to my headless body, which reaches out to take her hand, and then they depart – together.
It’s dark inside the Dumpster, it’s uncomfortable, and it smells of sour-sweet rot. But at least I’m alone now. No one—
I hear the first whispers then, and I think the other head – the one I threw back in here – is talking to me. But then I hear another voice whispering, and another, and another. An image comes to me then, of a Dumpster filled with cast-off heads, dozens of them. I listen to the whispers for a long time, and then, hesitantly, I open my mouth.
•••••
Tim Waggoner’s latest releases are the novel Night Terrors and the novella Deep Like the River. You can find him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
CAUL
VAJRA CHANDRASEKERA
I only love girls who love to swim, but I don’t like to see them in the water. I like the sea just fine with nobody swimming in it and me with dry sand under me and a cold beer in my hand. They tell me I’m missing something, but I won’t budge. Maybe that’s why they don’t come back.
•••
Ma said I was born with a caul over my face. She dried it and put it in the hollow of an antique smoky-glass rolling pin, painted in flaking white with old-fashioned sailing ships. Too cloudy to see inside, lid screwed tight. She said it was a good-luck charm.
“This was your granma’s when she was young,” Ma said when she gave it to me. “She was born with a caul, too.”
I was old enough then to have refused to learn to swim, and Ma thought it was because I was afraid. “Sailor’s charm against drowning,” Ma insisted, but she wouldn’t tell me if granma died of drowning. Granma went away, is all she would say, and at the time I thought she just meant that granma died.
I took the gift but it didn’t work because I still wouldn’t swim. Ma sighed and gave up, her thousand-yard stare already too far gone. That was the last time she tried. The glass rolling pin went into the back of my closet.
•••
I can’t swim, is the problem. Tried just once, when I was a kid. All I remember is the awful dragging weight of the water, the cold feeling like I’d never come back up. The sea doesn’t like letting anybody go. I think it thinks we were wrong to leave, even if it’s been a million years. I still haven’t forgiven Ma for leaving, so I understand carrying a grudge.
Girls who love to swim always offer to teach me.
“What if you fall off a boat,” they say. They all blur together in my head, pale and dark, tall and short, curly and straight. I don’t have a type, except that they have to love the water.
“Won’t ever get on a boat,” I tell them. “So won’t never fall off.”
•••
My dreams smell like brine.
•••
Every now and then some girl finds the glass rolling pin in my apartment somewhere. Never knew what to do with it so it’s followed me from closet to closet along with all my life’s flotsam after Ma left.
One time this curly-haired girl opens up my closet to find a Phillips-head screwdriver or spare rubber washers for the leaky tap in the kitchen or something. She finds the pin instead, and when she wipes it for dust another white sailing ship flakes away.
“It’s my birth caul inside,” I tell her.
“Ew,” she says, coolly. “Why do you have this?”
So I tell her the whole story, and she googles it.
“Did you know,” she says, in that wondering tone she gets after when she’s googled up something weird, “people used to buy these things during World War I because they were afraid of U-boats?”
“Maybe that’s how my granma had one,” I say. “She was a kid back then.” Maybe granma couldn’t swim either.
That was the best reaction any of the girls had to the glass rolling pin and the thing inside it. The others stopped at “ew”, and I had to catch it when it fell from their hands.
•••
When I take a girl to the beach, this is how it goes. I find a spot to sit with my beer. She heads straight for the water and dives like a porpoise, her spine bending in ways that I can’t fathom.
Sometimes she comes back, wet and gone somewhere in her head like the water reminded her of something she lost. Mostly they don’t come back. That’s how it is, when you love women who love the water.
•••
They say birth cauls are a sign of changelings. I’d have liked that to be true, but I know there’s nothing fey about me. Maybe that’s why I like my girls with their thousand-yard stares and their unexplained tears, their tendency to vanish into the ocean. When I plant my bare feet in hot sand I know I belong there, but they run for the water as if they were standing on knives.
One time I’m seeing this straight-haired girl. She’s otherworldly even for me. She loves to swim, sure, but she also likes to cast horoscopes for people. Tarot cards or something. She never gets anything for me. She says I come up blank.
“You’re too there,” she says. “Too much earth, no magic in you.”
Even before I take her to the beach I know she’s gonna be one of those who don’t come back. Sometimes you can just tell.
•••
Ma was disappointed when I never learned to swim, but also maybe relieved. “Thought for sure you’d take to the water,” she said. “But maybe it’s better this way.”
Maybe she took the sea out of me when she put my secret skin in a bottle. But I don’t say that, because I can’t bear her ocean stare.
•••
It’s long years before there’s a girl I love so much I listen when she wants me to go in the water with her.
“You won’t drown,” she says. Smiling but she has the starkest thousand-yard stare I’ve ever seen. When she looks into my eyes it’s terrifying and exhilarating, like looking down from a cliff into the ocean banging into rocks far, far below and I can hear gulls.
“Got your granma’s sailor charm,” she says.
“At home in my closet,” I say. “I don’t think it’s got jur
isdiction.”
“Got it here,” she says, and sure enough, she pulls it from her bag and wedges it into the sand next to me. “You got nothing to be afraid of.”
And she runs to the water, like they always do.
•••
I make it down to the waterline. Wade in knee-deep and hands shaking so much I can barely hold on to the rolling pin. The glass is wet with spray and slippery. The water’s cold, and the shivers hit me from the breastbone inward.
Can see my girl’s head break the water like a seal, can’t tell how far away she is.
Lid is stiff after decades. I open it but I don’t take the caul out. Don’t want to see it, my factory seal skin, the mask I was born wearing. I throw the whole thing, caul and all, as hard and far as I can. When it hits water it seems to be moving faster than it should, as if pulled down by the sea’s gravity, and I’m wading forward, and I’m wading forward, and the sea reaches up like a birth canal and hauls me back into her undertow, and when my eyes open at last under water, I can see a thousand yards deep.
•••••
Vajra Chandrasekera lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His work has previously appeared here in Black Static and is forthcoming in Lightspeed and Shimmer, among others. You can find more stories by him at vajra.me.
GHOSTS PLAY IN BOYS’ PAJAMAS
RALPH ROBERT MOORE
ILLUSTRATED BY JOACHIM LUETKE
“Want me to show you something?”
The two boys were up on the hill behind their houses, at the edge of the forest, getting to know each other.
Tom and his dad had been pulling boxes out of the moving van when Peter and his mom walked across the green lawn. Peter’s mom holding a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Could you men use a break?” She laughed, putting a hand on her hip. “I’m Lisa. Welcome to the neighborhood!”