by Landon Wark
Upon voicing this she was greeted with a sarcastic snort from her nose pressed against the car window.
"Yeah, no, I love writing about how the government is infecting immigrant kids with measles and sending them off to infect everyone."
She said nothing else and in the silence that followed Sandy surmised that they could make use of Carmen Carruthers, even if a little illegal activity came along with her.
Even with the sun touching the rolling hills of the horizon the heat from the late afternoon persisted. A lazy breeze did little to lessen the sapping effect on the lone figure pushing the loud mower around the stone boundary that delineated the precious plants of the garden. The wheels caught on one of the border stones, pushing it out of place and allowing a stream of black dirt to spill out onto the lawn.
Clayton James cursed and stopped in the relentless march around the property. Without thinking he released the push bar causing the safety to kill the engine. He cursed again and wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his T-shirt.
"C'mon boy!" the gruff voice called from the cab of the truck. "You're gonna be out there all night at this rate."
Clayton allowed the voice to fade away into the chorus of cicadas that were thrumming in the trees on the edge of the lawn.
"I'm thirty six, old man," he muttered under his breath as he lowered the clutch and tried to wedge the askew stone back into place with his foot. More dirt spilled around the opposite end.
"Piss."
"If the client sees that stone you're gonna be in a world of—" the old man's chiding trailed off into a fit of coughs.
Looking over at his father fanning himself with an old newspaper in the truck cab Clay stooped down and removed the stone entirely. He thought momentarily of tossing it through the window of the truck but instead used his hand to scoop out the loose dirt and shoved the heavy rectangle back into place, depositing the dirt back within its boundaries. The motion had taken all of fifteen seconds, but it felt more like fifteen minutes, especially with the old man watching him. And he knew he would have to come back later with a trowel and fix the job.
The coughing from inside the truck cab continued long enough to draw Clay's attention, subsiding a moment after. The old man's recovery was slower than all hell, hardly progressing since he had caught the big plague at its height. It would progress a lot faster if he would quit smoking, something Clay had reminded him of several dozen times over the past two years, but the old man simply harrumphed in a way he seemed contractually obligated to and claimed that tobacco was killing whatever was left in his lungs.
The phone in his pocket buzzed and Clayton desperately pulled it out, praying that it was from the recruitment agency or from one of the hiring managers to whom he had been sending chains of emails. His brow furrowed. It was a request.
"Did you list my address?" he asked across the length of the yard.
"Hermp?"
"My address. You're giving it out to clients?"
"Now why, for all the crazy in Crazy Horse, would I want anyone talking to you on th'internet? The way you're putting commie garbage all over the socials."
Wanting to get back pay for all the overtime he had put in at the lab was apparently 'commie garbage' now.
"Welfare is pretty commie," he replied. "Maybe I should be doing that instead of this."
Clay grimaced at the way he could practically hear the rotting teeth clack together as the old man laughed. "You been home for six months now. You still got students loans to pay off? Eleven damn years of student loans. Your commie shit gonna take care of that?"
"Jesus Christ." Clay pushed down on the safety bar and yanked on the pull cord, desperate to keep that sound and the content that came with it out of his ears.
He manoeuvred the push mower awkwardly around the last of the planters and trees doing a slipshod job at first and then going back over it while the old man rolled his eyes from the cab. Finally he angrily dropped the tailgate of the truck and hoisted the grunge encrusted mower into the rear.
Dropping into the passenger seat Clay wiped his forehead for the sixth time in five minutes. The silence between the two of them faded as the engine started and they pulled away from the freshly painted bungalow. Things had been at least tolerable growing up, mostly because Clay hadn't known any better, but as soon as he had left for college his mom had made her escape and dad had gone on a long downhill slide that Clay had been mostly oblivious to. Now...
"All your pissiness ain't gonna make things any better," the old man said.
It was the closest thing to advice the old man had ever given him, but that didn't make it good advice, just the 'wow, thanks, I'm cured' kind of advice.
"But it feels so good," Clay muttered as he glanced at the email on his phone.
He had been mistaken. It was a notification that there was a reply to one of his posts. He was complaining about mowing lawns and some jackass had replied asking him to come take a look at theirs. He owed the old man an apology, but it would have to wait for things to settle between the two of them. Maybe in a week or two.
"What've you got 'gainst working for a living anyway?"
Clay's brow furrowed. It wasn't the kind of question the old man normally asked. Actually the only questions the old man asked were the rhetorical kind, the kind that said he thought he was right about something, but was just trying to drag the right wording out of you so he could shoot it down.
"Mostly the heat."
The old man pulled a cigarette out of the pack crammed into his pocket and lit it.
"Can you at least roll down a window?"
"You answer me without any of your wise-ass comments."
"Jesus."
"Or blasphemy."
Clay grit his teeth.
"All right, fine. You mow the grass on Monday, by Sunday it needs to get cut again. It's Sisyphean."
"Think of it as keeping the wilderness at bay if it makes you feel any better. And the point is, it keeps a roof over your head. Think about that before you go calling your old man a sissy."
"Yeah, well, there's real problems out there that need solving. And could you stop acting like everything is my fault, for a change."
"I told you. When you went off to that pinko factory."
"Pinko? Just because you wish it was nineteen seventy four doesn't mean you need to talk like it is."
"I said they were gonna take your money, fill your head with all sorts of useless garbage and when it came time to give you a job they were gonna pick the guys who went to Harvard. Or... what'd you say 'All the dinks who failed out of med school'. That is your fault. You and your mom. Never listening."
Clay clenched his fists. "You know what. Stop the truck. I'm getting out."
The truck didn't slow.
"You both think you're so smart. Well, fifteen years after the divorce and who's come begging for cash, huhn?"
"Stop the truck, dad."
Clay's hands shook as they grasped for the door handle. His vision blurred around the peripheries. Even the exhaustion from pushing the mower around did little to calm the fury that was rippling through his arms.
"You settle for a roof over your head and a girl in your bed. Anything else is just asking for disappointment."
"Stop the truck."
"Can't stop. You got a new request? Gotta check it out."
"Just stop the fucking truck! I'll call an Uber or something! Just... go home and sit in front of your TV for a while."
As the old truck slowed down for a light Clay pulled the lock and slipped out of his seat belt. Before the old man could react he was out of the door and standing on the sidewalk. The light flicked to green. The truck paused for a moment with the wrinkled face staring at him in disbelief before one of the cars behind him started honking. With a shake of his head the old man shoved the cigarette into his mouth and drove off.
Clay ran his hand through the thinning edges of his hair and paced down the sidewalk a ways. He clenched and unclenched
his fists with every other step, enacting a small play about a madman on the sidewalk for all the motorists, the scene made all the more ridiculous by his sweat stained 'The Best Thesis Defence is a Good Thesis Offence' XKCD shirt.
The old man would do exactly what Clay had told him to and when he came trudging in later in the evening he would be harangued for being 'pissy'. It had happened twice before and it was getting old. Real old. It might even be preferable to spend the night under a damned bridge somewhere.
After several minutes of performing a half-contained rant on the side of the street Clay managed a breath and pulled out his phone. He was mostly considering looking for a cheap hotel room for the night. He couldn't really afford... well, anything, but imagining the look on the old man's face when he woke up in front of the TV in the morning without his junior aide was entertaining.
He pursed his lips at the email notification. He really didn't want to deal with the old man's customers, but if he could save up just a little money he could maybe get a tiny place of his own. Flicking his thumb over the phone he found the address was way out in the boondocks somewhere. Upon rechecking the notification he scratched his head.
Something struck him as familiar about the address. A glimmer from within the local gossip mill maybe?
"Come talk to us," he read out loud.
Most likely it was what he had thought, but really, it could be anything. The username was a series of underscores and then a forward slash, asterisk, question mark.
___/*?
Clay frowned and started flicking around for whatever ride sharing app was cheaper these days.
A new thought dawned on him. With a username like that it was more than likely he was going to get stabbed and robbed just by going out to this place. Was a studio apartment worth both his money and his life?
"Joke's on you," he muttered, confirming the ride order. "Neither one is very valuable right now."
His first impression was that the yard of the acreage the old... mansion(?) was sitting on was enormous. Even in the early dark he could tell it would take at least three hours to cut the whole damn thing. His second impression was that he was far too deep into his old man's life if that was his first impression. He was about to tell the driver, a kid of no more than twenty to take him home when a second vehicle came up the road behind them, a beat up land-dreadnought whose molecular integrity was little more than faith-based at that point.
Clay swung himself out of the tiny car, an insect next to the behemoth of a Buick that was pulling in beside him.
A woman's face was pressed up against the passenger's window, her eyes shut tightly, but even with the jostling of the car on its shaking suspension he could make out the eye movement beneath the dark lids. She must be having one hell of a dream.
Beside her a larger woman was jerking the wheel this way and that, trying to keep the monster straight on the rows burrowed into the dirt driveway.
The old car rolled to a stop and the passenger's head lolled to one side. The driver's side door opened and the car shook as the larger woman emerged.
"Can I help you with something?" she asked suspiciously as Clay approached.
"Um." Clay lapsed as the passenger looked up at him with unfocused eyes. "Clean Space Landscaping?"
"What?"
"Sorry," he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "It's pretty late. I'm not sure why I bothered coming out here."
"It's fine," the woman said, circling around to the passenger door. "I don't know who you are, though."
"Someone gave me this address. I should have called. You know what, this whole thing was likely a prank." He felt suddenly exhausted. Between all the sun and work and his old man he wasn't thinking clearly. "Fuck it, I'm just gonna go home."
The door opened and the woman nearly fell out. As the porch light came on, casting an ancient incandescent pallor over the scene, Clay could make out a small spoon and what looked like a pin lying on the floor of the vehicle, but the significance of them was lost on him. The passenger's dark hand clutched at the car door handle and turned her face up to meet Clay. She looked drunk.
"Hallo, handsome," she laughed.
"Oh, yeah," the large woman said. "I remember now. You know Paul. Or, Paul knows your father. Right? I'm Sandy. I sort of run things around here."
"Who?"
"Junior reverend down at... Christ, what's that church called?"
"Christ-a-palooza," the drunk woman slurred.
"Can you help me with her?" Sandy motioned.
"Um, I should really be getting home," Clay replied.
"We've got a few spare rooms if you want to stay the night," she continued as she tried to keep the other from falling out of the car.
"No, I—" Clay instinctively reached out and caught the woman under her arm.
"Ugh," she grunted. "Ground, they're always conspiring to keep us apart."
Clay frowned. She wasn't slurring her speech all that much. He had to heave with a significant amount of force to keep her upright as her legs seemed intent on following her torso out of the car.
"I'm fine!" she shouted as she struggled upright. "Just... A little bit much is all. I'm fine."
"Yo!" the driver yelled to Clay. "I got another fare. You wanna go back to town or what?"
"Gimme a minute!" Clay shouted back.
He gingerly tried releasing the woman's arm but she kept dropping to one side or the other, her eyelids drooping as if she was half asleep.
"He's gonna stay!" Sandy shouted at the driver.
"No! No, I'm not!"
Before he could object the large figure was walking through the light from the porch over to the car and was shuffling through a pile of bills some of which she handed to the driver with a couple of instructions too quiet to hear properly. The kid adjusted his hat and then leaned back into the car, starting the engine.
"Hey! Wait!" Clay called impotently as the small hatchback sped away down the dirt road.
"Shit," he muttered. "This is how I'm going to get axe murdered, isn't it?"
"Nah, you're gonna be oh-fucking-kay," the woman leaning on him said. "My fat friend says we're gonna learn some magic!"
"Maybe tomorrow. One of us is a little too out of it tonight." Sandy folded up the pile of bills and handed them to Clay. He stared at them for a moment.
"For your time," she said. "Isn't capitalism wonderful?"
"Yup. Axe murdered. Totally." Clay whispered as he started lugging the woman towards the manor house.
The Strange Case of the Conjoined Quarters
Impenetrable darkness surrounded him, keeping a distance of three feet as if it were as intimidated by him as he was by it. He shook his head and tried to remember if there was a way for him to drive the darkness back a little further, but he found his memories oddly inaccessible. Every once in a while a shape would brush through the small circle of dim light around him and he would recognize the edge of a hand or a shoulder or a foot. All were passing out of his vision in the same direction and when he turned toward that direction he could make out a lessening in the darkness. After a moment of thought he started to walk along with them, placing foot after leaden foot upon the greyish ground beneath him. The figures encroaching on his small circle of the world increased in frequency as they walked, never visible as complete people, more silhouettes with vague human shapes. And as he plodded along beside them he could make out current as they flowed slightly to the right.
Then, ahead, as the darkness broke into more of the dim grey he could make out a sloping of the ground, down into the well of what he imagined was the source of the light, a disk of illumination around a great black spot, an open maw in the fabric of the world. And as he stopped to gaze and marvel at it, the other shadowy figures around him trudged almost dutifully into the sloping well, circling down towards the disk and ultimately into the abyss that was its source.
He got as close as he dared to the edge of the slope without setting foot onto it for fear that a single step might
start him off on an inescapable suicide course. The figures around him didn't seem to mind.
Almost on a whim he reached out a hand and tried to pull one of them away from the edge of the well. His fingers slipped through the shadowy flesh and whatever the creature was continued along on its trudge.
He called out to the ones around him, but they seemed not to hear, but in between his own words he could make out others. A single moment of searching and he fixed on the great black hole in the world. Within it there was sound. Pieces of sounds that, if he cocked his head exactly the right way, might be mistaken for speech. His brow furrowed and he stepped along the edge of the well, trying to get a look past the disk of light, but every way he turned all he could make out was black.
His vision managed to pierce the blackness and within... It was him.
Not quite him. A reflection he thought, but... It was not a reflection he could see, not a reflection of the light, more of a reflection of feeling. As he stood witness to the spiralling silhouettes making their way to the bottom of the well, he just knew. There was something in there.
Some sort of Jonah-thing.