by Paul Curtin
Michael cruised into the kitchen, checking over his shoulder, and leaned against the kitchen island. Elise, mashing the last of the potatoes, watched him. “We need to talk,” he said.
“I’m a little busy making dinner right now.”
“Have you seen him the last hour?”
Elise stuck her finger in the potatoes, pulled up a whipped dollop, and stuck it in her mouth. “Perfect.”
“Elise, you seen Sean?”
“Why?”
She had arranged a set of eight plates and filled them with canned chicken and green beans. One already sat piled high with lumpier mashed potatoes.
“I just saw him a few minutes ago muttering to himself. Nobody else around.”
“Let me handle it.”
“What is it with you and Sean telling me to butt out?”
“Because you do more harm than good.”
She plopped a spoonful of potatoes onto each plate in a clockwise pattern.
Michael sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “Fine.” He stuck his finger into the potatoes on one plate and scooped up a bit. Elise, setting a dish back on the stove, turned as he brought the food toward his mouth. “Stop,” she yelled.
His jaw drew slack, frozen midmotion. “What?”
“Which plate did you take that from?”
“Who cares? That one’ll be mine.”
“Which one?”
“Why’re you being weird about this?”
She ripped a towel hanging over the handle of the oven, reached over the counter, and grabbed his wrist. He tried pulling back, but she held it harder and pulled it toward herself. She wiped the potatoes off and tossed the towel on the counter behind her. She then leaned in toward her brother and whispered, “I spiked Sean’s potatoes.”
“You what?”
“He won’t take the sleeping pills even with Travers leaving tonight—says he needs one more night to make sure he doesn’t come back—and it’s the only thing that will make him sleep, so I crushed it up and whipped them in.”
A smile. That was the devilish little sister he hadn’t seen in a while. “You sneaky little shit.”
“It’s the only way.”
“Pills in the food,” Michael said. “That. Is. Genius.”
Someone flashed in his peripheral, almost as if he or she had materialized. He could tell it was a man from the height and shape of his blurry outline, but he didn’t want to turn, imagining Sean there listening to them. He winced and turned his head.
Travers stood in the doorframe. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said.
Michael had no idea how long he had been standing there. They stared at one another, Michael examining Travers’s eyes, searching for any hint of what he might have heard. Nothing.
Travers glanced at the two of them. “I heard someone yell, is all.”
Elise put on the best fake smile he had ever seen. “Michael was trying to steal food before dinner,” she said, chuckling a little. A good touch.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought you may have burned yourself. My mistake.”
Michael wanted to ask what he had heard, but he couldn’t back up from the line of questioning if he were to start.
“Do y’all need help with bringing dinner out to everyone?” he asked.
“I think we have it. You can just relax by the fire,” Elise said.
“Well, everyone’s gathered ‘round, ‘cept Sean, ma’am. I heard him upstairs though.”
“I’ll call for him.”
Travers nodded and left. As soon as he went out of sight, Michael looked back at his sister.
“He knows,” she said.
“He doesn’t know shit. Just keep your mouth shut. Which one’s Sean’s?”
Elise pointed to a plate, and Michael grabbed different ones. “Just keep quiet,” he said and walked toward the living room.
The kids had all gathered around the fire and Travers was showing them a card trick. Aidan smiled and looked shocked as the trick came to its climax.
“Is that your card?” Travers said.
“How did you do that?” Aidan said.
“I got many mysteries, my good boy. Many mysteries.”
Molly looked up as Michael extended a plate to her. “Chicken and potatoes tonight?” she asked.
“Yep.”
Travers leaned over and eyed the plate. “How’d you make them potatoes?”
Michael played it cool. He knows nothing. “With potatoes.”
Travers smiled. “They instant? Can’t still have fresh ones?”
“You’ll have to ask the cook.”
“’Course. She would know best what’s in ’em.”
The stranger looked up at him with the most genuine smile, so expressive even his eyes showed warmth. That was how to tell the fake ones—fake smiles don’t show in the eyes.
He rushed back into the kitchen. She balanced two dishes in her hands and looked as though she were about to head out. “Is he out there?” she asked.
“Sean?”
Elise nodded.
“No.” He picked up two more plates. “Which one is Sean’s?”
“I have it.”
He led. Sean, charging down the stairs, didn’t see him. Michael pulled back at the last second before plowing into him, now sandwiched between Sean, Elise, the couch, and the wall with no escape route. “Dinner time?” Sean said and reached out for a plate in Michael’s hand.
He pulled back just in time before Sean’s fingers got on it. “These ones are for the kids,” he said.
Sean smirked. “They look the same to me.”
“I think Elise portioned them differently.”
“I can just grab more.”
He ran out of plausible arguments as quickly as they came, every reply sounding forced and strange in his head. His mouth turned to cotton, and his tongue stuck to his teeth. He had nothing to say, Sean’s hand encroaching on the wrong plate.
“I have yours, babe,” Elise said. “I made your potatoes a little lumpier—the way you like them.”
Michael’s deep breath seeped out through his teeth. Sean let him pass. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Elise handed Sean the plate and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
He offloaded his plates and then grabbed the last two from the kitchen. When he came back, they prayed and ate. Michael kept watching his brother-in-law play around with his food, salting it first as usual, eating the veggies and the chicken piece by piece, ignoring the potatoes.
A lifetime passed. Sean finally brought up a clump of the potatoes with his fork. He gazed at them for what seemed like an eternity and then sniffed them. “You put butter in these?” Sean asked Elise.
She smiled. “I pulled some from the cold box an hour ago. I thought we could live a little.”
He inched the fork into his mouth, Michael sitting on edge as Sean’s lips sealed around it, the fork coming out clean. “So good, babe,” Sean said, chewing.
Michael’s eyes met Elise’s, and they shared a collective sigh. He suppressed a smile and put a chunk of food into his mouth. When his gaze finally rested, it fell on Travers, who stared back at him with a toothless grin.
“These potatoes are good,” he said, his eyes never leaving Michael’s. “The butter must be the secret ingredient, I think.”
Michael’s pulse quickened.
He doesn’t know.
It didn’t matter. Travers was leaving in an hour, heading out to go south. And that was fine by Michael. He couldn’t leave soon enough.
Sean
Sean felt like he didn’t exist. He was being tossed around the sea of his own mind, images flashing and surreal landscapes emerging and disappearing, not realizing he was asleep, but not remembering going to bed.
So when he woke up with a press
ure on his lips and cold metal pressed to his neck, it came out of nowhere.
A pale light shone in the dark room. A man’s head floated above his face. The images his brain fed him seemed warped, the man a shadow, featureless, haunting. The shadow’s hand was closed tightly over his lips. “Don’t make a noise,” it whispered.
As Sean’s eyes adjusted, it became less like a nightmarish fantasy and morphed into something more terrifying. It was a stranger’s voice, calm and low. Sean gasped and shook. “Calm down,” the man said, “calm down.”
Next to them, Elise shifted, and the man froze in place. Sean forced his eyes to the side. She slept on her stomach, relaxed. Just beyond her body, at the other side of the bed, he saw movement in the darkness. The dull reflection of a rifle popped out from the shadows.
Someone had gotten in. A lot of people had gotten in. They were armed, and he was not. The house was cold and quiet, but his skin was hot, and his heart was thumping, and it was all he could hear.
The smooth barrel of a pistol moved from his neck and touched his face. It brushed across his cheek and rested near his eye socket. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” the man whispered. “You make a noise, my friend will blow your wife to kingdom come, you hear?”
He focused on the rifle floating over his wife’s head. He looked back up at the man and nodded.
The man’s fingers released one at a time until his palm lifted from his lips. Sean’s hands trembled. The bed creaked as the man shifted his weight off the mattress. “Get up. Now.”
Sean obeyed. He had always prepared for something like this, but never considered someone getting the jump on him. All his training, his planning, seemed to fly out of his mind and disappear into the darkness.
“Let’s go,” the man said, waving his pistol toward the door.
He walked like a man headed for the electric chair, his feet shuffling, never leaving the ground. He extended his arms out to show he didn’t have a weapon. His wife kept sleeping in blissful ignorance.
They walked out of the room, and the man shut the door with a soft click. His partner didn’t follow. They walked a few more paces and rounded the corner. Another man stood at the end of the hallway like an ethereal presence, concealed in darkness. They reached the bathroom and his hostage taker shoved him inside, Sean stumbling forward against the toilet. The man shut the door behind him.
“Please, I don’t know what you’re doing.”
The man kept his voice low. “Yeah, you do.”
“You’re here to kill us.”
“I’m here to get what I need. I know you understand that.”
Sean’s limbs shook, unable to control it, his stomach pulling and shifting, sending waves of panic through his system.
The man said, “We know two things: We know you have food and we know that you, specifically, are a real son of a bitch.”
“We don’t have food.”
“But the son of a bitch part is true?”
“We don’t have much food.”
“That’s a load of bullshit, Sean, and you know it.”
His lungs wouldn’t take in air. “How do you know my—”
Something clicked, and a long, florescent bulb overhead flashed a few times before emanating a bright luminosity. Sean’s eyes took time to adjust. The man was gangly thin, but his clothes were layered thick, bulking him to double his size. His pale, yellow face was the only part of him exposed. His cheek bones were frostbitten, and his nose was large and crooked. He didn’t have to wear a mask. There were no police anymore, no police lineups—no one to save them.
The man looked up at the light. “Electricity. Unbelievable. Didn’t think I’d ever see it again. The stories I’ve heard are true.”
“Stories?”
“Sadly for you, your buddy Travers is my buddy Travers.”
Sean bowed his head and resisted the urge to scream.
“He’s been telling us some fantastical tales. Tells us he’s eaten like a king. That there’s no one in this house with want.”
Sean put on his bravest face. “Travers is lying. We only wanted to be welcoming. We don’t have much of anything.”
“You wouldn’t have taken him in if you were low. Desperate people don’t suddenly get charitable.”
Sean said nothing.
“So, there is food here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Cut the horse shit. I want a few things from you—and I will get them. I have someone near every member of your family right now, you understand? You want me to bring your pretty daughter in here and make her beg you for what I want?”
His reply caught in his throat.
“Good, then. First thing I want is the keys to your gun safe and I want all the weapons in them.”
“Please.”
“Second, I want your supplies. Tell me where the gas and the heaters are. The generator.”
“Please, just stop.”
“You will give me the key to unlock your garage door so I can open it up. And I want your food. Everything you own now belongs to me, understand?”
His pulse was out of control.
“In fact, you’re wearing my shirt. Give it to me.”
“What?”
“Your shirt. It’s mine. Cough it up.”
“Why do you want my shirt?”
“Did you not listen? I just said everything you own now belongs to me.”
“My shirt?”
“Do I need to bring your daughter in here?”
“No, no. Don’t.” Sean had to control his shaking long enough to get a grip on the collar of his long sleeve shirt. The air was chilly, but his skin was flushed and hot. He slid it off his back and tossed it over.
“You’re wearing my pants too.”
“The hell is this?”
“I told you. All you own belongs to me.”
“Why’re you doing this?”
“I’m going to have to get your daughter, aren’t I? Imagine what she’s going to think having to watch you strip naked.”
Sean put his hand out, fingers splayed. “Goddamn it, just please. Stop this.”
The man sighed, cracking the door open. “Hey, Jack,” he said, “the girl.”
“Wait,” Sean said, now raising both hands, “take it. Take it.” He rubbed his hands on the edge of his pants and for the first time became cognizant that he was wearing jeans. He never went to sleep in jeans. Ever. He undid the belt and dropped his pants, kicking them across the floor. The man smiled. Sean stood in a pair of long socks and underwear, shivering.
The man picked up the shirt from the floor and took a sniff of it. “My God, this is actually clean. Clean clothes. Amazing.” He chuckled. “We’ll be taking more of those. I’ll let you keep your underwear for now. Because you were so hospitable to my man earlier.”
Sean said nothing.
“Answer me this, and I want you to be very, very clear about this or I’ll have to start killing people—and I don’t want to kill nobody: who else is packing heat in this house other than you?”
“Nobody.”
“What about the shotgun downstairs?”
He resisted the instinct to swallow his spit down. “Nobody’s going to use it.”
The man nodded. “Most people’re chicken shit. Look at you, stripping in front of me instead of trying to fight. You probably would have gotten butt naked if I had asked. Probably would have sucked my cock if I asked you.”
The words hurt like a blade through his ribs. But he gritted his teeth and took it.
“Just so we’re clear, you don’t have no guns just lying around that someone’s gonna shoot me with?”
“No.”
“Good, then. Let’s go see the crew.”
The fireplace roared with deep red flames. The man pushed Sean
to his knees, raised the gun into the air, and fired one shot. The crash rang hollow through the living room. Sean flinched, and everyone jolted awake. “The hell was that?” Michael shouted, pulling his head out from inside the sleeping bag.
A man racked a shotgun, Michael flinching at the sound and turning. Travers aimed the gun at his face as the fire lit him from the side. “Wake up,” he said.
He froze, and Kelly stirred from inside the sleeping bag. “Honey, what’s going on?”
Michael looked back and forth between Travers’s face and the barrel of the gun. The same shotgun Sean had insisted Michael keep near himself. The same one Michael never carried, never used, never practiced with—mocking the very idea that he might have to defend himself. Sean felt a rage build up that mixed with his panic and made him sick.
The leader of the pack kicked Sean in the back, and he toppled to his stomach. The floor was colder than he expected, making his skin crawl. The leader pulled on Sean’s shoulder until he was resting on his knees again.
Andrew slowly raised his hands. Someone stomped toward him and slammed the butt of a rifle into his gut. Andrew groaned and curled into a ball while the man pulled him out of his sleeping bag.
Sean counted three men. Just three. If he acted now he might be able to attack. But the shotgun was pointed at Kelly’s face, and he couldn’t do it without people dying. Though they might all die anyway.
Someone shrieked upstairs. A minute passed. Soon Molly and Aidan, holding each other’s hands, walked down the stairs at gunpoint followed by another man leading Elise by her shoulder. Molls was wide-eyed, clutching her brother, both of their eyes tearing up. A fire burned deep in Sean’s chest.
The tall man shoved them into the center of the room with everyone else. Molly tripped over Michael’s legs, but Andrew caught her before she fell. Kelly sniffled but everyone was quiet. It felt a little like a funeral. Probably was.
The four intruders surrounded them, caked with ash and dripping wet, some tall and some short, but each armed. The tallest of the bunch—the one who had pointed the gun at his wife’s head earlier—smiled and flashed his ugly teeth.
“We want to thank you all for your hospitality,” the leader said. “This generous welcome has been much appreciated. It’s rare to feel so welcomed.” He turned his attention to Sean. “You have a very nice home.”