Ugly Little Things

by Todd Keisling

  Karen saw one of them cup a dirty rag around Martin’s mouth while the others held him down. Her husband stopped kicking a moment later, his body suddenly limp. She heard one of the men groan as he braced against Martin’s dead weight.

  You’d best get movin’, honey.

  Karen’s daddy didn’t have to tell her twice. She reached for the passenger door and yanked it open.

  “Now where’re you goin’, little lamb?”

  She was halfway across the passenger seat when hands fell upon her ankle, and she kicked instinctively, holding that image of her husband’s limp body in the forefront of her mind. She had to get to the driver’s seat, get Martin’s cell phone, and call for help—like she should’ve done when he’d asked her. God, if she hadn’t been so slow and so stupid. She reached for the console. The cell phone was just a few inches more—

  “Easy there, little girl.” The masked man laughed as he tugged her leg. She kicked again, and her shoes flew off. “You might be needin’ those. The sand won’t be too kind on your teeny toes.”

  Martin’s phone shrank away as the masked man pulled her from the vehicle. She fell in a heap on the road. Her attacker pulled off his mask, revealing a grinning face pockmarked with enough acne scars to rival the moon. No wonder he wears a mask, her daddy said, and Karen had to bite her cheeks to keep from laughing.

  Her captor produced a dirty rag of his own and looked down at her with his crazy blue eyes.

  “Sorry, little lamb. We only need one, but the Lord will welcome you with open arms, I’m sure of it.”

  Karen raised her hand to strike, but he caught her arm. A sudden heat flushed her cheeks when she realized what held his attention. He squeezed her wrist as he twisted it around to face him, sending a sharp pain racing down the length of her arm. This time when Karen bit her cheeks, it was to keep from crying out.

  “Maybe I spoke too soon,” he muttered, tracing a finger along the length of her scar. “The Lord don’t take kindly to suicides, little lamb.”

  Embarrassed and seething with rage, Karen gave one last effort to free herself. She raised her leg and tried to kick him in the groin just like her daddy had always told her to do, but she was too slow; the robed man stepped aside and yanked on her wrist, pulling her away from the SUV. He fell upon her and drove one knee into her gut, knocking the air from her lungs.

  “Enough of this,” he growled. “You sleep now.”

  He pressed the rag against her mouth. The fabric stank with a pungent chemical odor that made her throat and nostrils burn, and when she tried to fight him off Karen found her arms and legs simply would not cooperate. The world swam, and the darkness behind her eyes looked so inviting—but she didn’t want to go there, not now. She still had to save Martin from those other men and she had to make that blonde woman stop laughing, but everything felt better with her eyes closed, and how would she do anything with her eyes closed?

  The robed man spoke from somewhere far away as she slipped further into herself, away from the dry desert air and into a cold void. His echoing words made her shiver:

  “Let it happen, little lamb. Just let it happen. You’ll be with the Lord soon, and He will welcome you with open arms.”

  A dark hole opened in the world and Karen sank into its bottomless depths.

  -SESSION #1-

  “Do you understand why you’re here, Karen?”

  Dr. Tanner leaned forward and smiled. A strand of curly brown hair spilled from her forehead, and she brushed it away, tucking it behind her ear. Karen stared through the doctor, lost in her own mind and clutched by a cold grip that sent shivers through her soul.

  “Karen?”

  The doctor wouldn’t leave. She knew this, knew she’d brought this all on herself, and that was just fine because she deserved everything that came to her.

  Karen focused on Dr. Tanner’s smiling face. “I’m here because I deserve to be.”

  Dr. Tanner glanced down for a moment, scribbling something on her notepad. “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m not a fit woman. I’m not a fit mother.”

  Dr. Tanner set down her pen. “Karen, that isn’t true. I think you’re a fit woman, and I think you’d be a good mother. I’m sure your husband would agree with me.” She picked up her pen and scribbled a brief note, paused, and then met Karen’s vacant gaze. “But that isn’t why we’re here, is it?”

  Karen stepped outside her mind for a moment. She saw herself reaching forward, plucking the pen from Tanner’s hand, and jabbing the felt tip into the doctor’s eye. Enough cat and mouse head games, Doctor. You know why I’m here and what I’ve done. You know I deserve to be, so cut the bullshit and get on with it.

  Those words were venom on her tongue, but she was pulled back inside her head before they could be spat at the doctor. She swallowed and grimaced from the taste of bile at the back of her throat.

  “I hurt myself,” Karen whispered. “I hurt myself because I’m not a fit mother.” She ran her fingers across the bandages on her wrists, tugging absently at the edges. The stitches were beginning to itch. “After I lost the baby I couldn’t look at myself anymore, and I couldn’t bear to look at Martin, either. I don’t deserve the happiness of being a mother, and I don’t deserve the happiness of being Martin’s wife because I can’t bring him happiness. I see that now. I understand it. And if I’m not fit to have those things, what is the point?” She was crying now but the words still came, blubbering and tripping over themselves in a saline mess. “So I ran a hot bath, took Martin’s straight razor, said a prayer to God for His understanding, and cut a gash straight down my wrist like this.”

  Karen dragged a finger down the bandage of one wrist, and then the other. She shook her head, shrugged, and cocked a smile at the doctor.

  “I did it because I’m a coward. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? You want to know why? Well, that’s why, Doctor Tanner. I did it because I felt something growing inside me, and then it died. I did it because I couldn’t face my husband after it all happened because he was so excited we were having a baby. He used to lie awake with me at night, holding me in his arms and talking about what we might name that baby, talking about which room to convert to a nursery, what colors to paint the walls, contemplating what sort of person that tiny life might grow up to be—and now he doesn’t. He doesn’t hold me anymore because I don’t deserve to be held. Because I’m filth. Because I’m shit. Are you getting all this? I can slow down if it helps you.”

  Dr. Tanner lowered the pen and leaned back in her seat, trying to keep her composure. Karen’s outburst had set her on edge. “No,” she said, forcing the faintest of smiles. “Please. This is good. Continue.”

  Karen closed her eyes, waiting for the maelstrom of thoughts to settle in her head, and out of that roiling dark spoke her daddy’s voice: You never were a climber, honey. Always a runner.

  She smirked, snorting back the mucus in her nose. Dr. Tanner tilted her head and gave Karen a quizzical look.

  “What’s funny?”

  “My daddy,” Karen mused, picking at the skin at the corner of her mouth. “He used to ask me, ‘Karen, what’ll you do when you meet your mountain?’ And I used to tell him, ‘Daddy, I’ll just go around it if I have to.’”

  Dr. Tanner leaned forward, offering a perfunctory smile. “What do you think he meant by that?”

  But Karen ignored her question. She met Dr. Tanner’s inquisitive gaze with an intense stare that chilled the doctor’s heart. “He also used to tell me that suicides burn.” Karen smiled as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Suicides burn.”

  -3-

  She stirred, moaning softly as her head swam. Her nostrils still burned with that chemical smell. What was the name for it? Chlorophyll? No, that wasn’t it.

  Chloroform, honey. Her daddy always knew the answer.

  Karen cracked her eyes and peered at the world through thin, blurry slits. Her bare feet pressed against the warm vinyl of the door, and her dress was bunche
d up to her thighs. The late afternoon sun hung low, streaming through the glass, and baking her bare skin. Her fingers twitched to life, moving to pull her dress back down—

  Don’t, honey. The bad man dosed you, but not good enough, and he didn’t have the common sense to tie you up. He thinks you’re still asleep.

  Karen tapped her fingertips against the pad of her thumb.

  Not yet, sweetheart. You’d best keep yourself a secret for now. Play possum for a while. I’ll let you know when it’s time to bite.

  She did as her daddy suggested, tilting her head to watch the bad man in the black robe steer them off the highway. Stones tumbled and clattered against the undercarriage, the suspension crying out in protest against the rough terrain, and she remembered Martin had scheduled a service appointment for next week.

  Martin.

  Her heart shot into her throat, and she almost sat up in earnest, ready to dig her nails into the face of her attacker. No, Daddy whispered, just wait. She took a deep breath and let the air turn to churning fire in her lungs; her head swam when she exhaled, shooting patches of black and white across her vision. She forgot about the scarred man behind the wheel, turning within herself to find a shattered image of Martin lurking in the shadows. The last she’d seen him, that laughing bitch had jammed a knife through his foot. He was screaming—God, she could still hear him—and then she’d failed to get help, watching as that group of masked men fell upon him. Had they killed him?

  Daddy’s voice echoed in that darkened chamber: You won’t find out if you don’t get yourself out of here, honey. Focus.

  Karen held her tongue, narrowing her eyes, glaring at the pockmarked cheek of her abductor. She dug her nails into the vinyl seat.

  Minutes crawled by as the bad man drove her deeper into the desert. She was lost in her thoughts and trying to figure out a way to escape when the SUV began to sputter and cough before slowing to a halt.

  Her abductor turned and looked down at her.

  “All right, little lamb. Out of gas with just a few inches to spare. The Lord does provide!”

  Karen peered up at him through squinted eyes, wondering if he could see her watching him. Her heart rapped against her chest, thudding so hard her whole body vibrated with its fury. He climbed out of the SUV and slammed the door.

  Now, Daddy?

  Not yet, honey.

  Footsteps crunched over stones, tracing a path around the vehicle, and Karen followed them with her mind while doing her best to remain a mannequin.

  The back door opened. A warm breeze met her face. The bad man’s hands gripped her arms. He pulled her from the backseat and dropped her in the hot sand.

  “Don’t you go gettin’ excited on me now. You be a good little sinner. Be a good lamb.”

  He knelt beside her and ran his fingertip across the top of her exposed thigh. Her skin burned at his touch and she wanted to tear away that strip of flesh, erasing every trace of his existence from her body. Only one man was allowed to touch her. Only one. And if he was dead she would make them suffer.

  The bad man traced his other hand along her naked wrist, rubbing the pink scar that ran across a network of veins and halfway down her arm.

  “Such a shame.” The scarred man chewed his lower lip and shook his head. “You would’ve birthed good young.”

  He cupped her thigh and slowly moved his hand north toward sacred ground. A series of chills crept along her stomach and she bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from screaming. She felt dirty, her skin covered in a grimy film that wouldn’t come clean no matter how hard she scrubbed.

  “Maybe,” he began, “maybe just a taste, Herman.”

  Herman. She almost laughed aloud, more out of hysteria than hilarity, but the comedy of Herman the Scarred Man was immediately lost as he lowered his head. His tongue left a trail of saliva along her inner thigh.

  Karen watched this vile creature desecrate her body from outside herself.

  What about now, Daddy?

  Now, honey. Now you can bite, little possum.

  Her fingers searched the scorching sands and fell upon a rock the size of a baseball. Herman was almost to her panty line when she sat up and struck him. He cried out in shock as a bloody tooth landed on her dress.

  “Thhhh,” he sputtered, his wounded lips failing him as he tried to formulate words. Karen pulled back and struck him again. The rock split his temple with a sickening crack.

  Herman sprawled backward and clipped his head against the door of the SUV. His eyes went cloudy for a few seconds before he steadied himself. He reached forward and pulled himself toward a patch of sagebrush.

  “Help!” With a mouth full of blood, his cry sounded more like “hup.” He spat a dark stream into the sand as he crawled into the scrub. Karen climbed to her feet and watched him beckon to something out on the horizon. “Help me, brothers!”

  Karen squinted against the sun. The shadow of a rocky butte about a mile away shielded a group of RVs baking under the early evening sun.

  “Martin,” she whispered.

  Her legs propelled her forward. She fell upon Herman, digging her knee into the small of his back. He squealed in agony, shooting thick, scarlet streaks across the sand.

  “Where is he?’

  Herman sobbed, blubbering something about penitence. She reached around his skull, found the soft meat of his eye, and punctured that gelatinous orb with her thumb. Warm liquid oozed outward as she separated her nail from his skull.

  “Don’t make me ask again.”

  “A sacrifice,” Herman cried. “Our Lord demands sacrifice, so the Children of Melchizedek give Him the blood of the damned.”

  Karen clutched his robe and pulled the collar against his throat.

  “Why not me?” she screamed, her voice scratching at her throat, a guttural cry that echoed from her toes. “Am I not damned?”

  “Only men—”

  She stood, braced her bare foot against his shoulder, and flipped him onto his back. Blood gushed from his wounded eye, and a dark stream trickled out the side of his mouth. Her mind became a red haze while a million accusations raced through her, the words like lashes on her naked skin.

  Martin was pure. He was a good man who cared for her, loved her, saw her through that terrible time. Now he was caught up in this madness, judged for sins he hadn’t committed.

  Am I not damned?

  The question raced through her mind as she gripped the rock.

  “Am I not damned?”

  She raised the stone. Herman turned his head and closed his good eye.

  “AM I NOT DAMNED?”

  The stone connected with his face with a sickening crack, leaving a dent in his skull. Karen was too caught up in her rage to notice he was dead before she hit him a third time. She cracked the stone against his skull twenty times more until his face collapsed into a bowl of cerebral jelly. When she was finished, she sat back against the SUV and stared out toward the grouping of RVs on the horizon.

  Martin was out there. Damned or not, she had to save him—just as he had saved her.

  -SESSION #7-

  Dr. Tanner took a seat across from her and smiled. “You seem to be doing well. Better spirits?”

  “Much better,” Karen said. “It’s nice to be home again.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Dr. Tanner reached for her notepad and pen. Karen watched the other woman’s movements, feeling her blood pressure increase, noticing a subtle throb at the base of her skull.

  “How long will we have to do this?”

  Dr. Tanner wrote something across the page. “I’m sorry?”

  “Our sessions,” Karen said, forcing a smile. “How—how much longer before I can stop visiting?”

  “Well, Karen, that depends on you, and that’s why we’re meeting still.”

  “But you discharged me—”

  “I discharged you because I believe you’re no longer a threat to yourself.” Dr. Tanner waited a beat, observing her patient with a cautious eye. “
Was I wrong?”

  Karen deflated, shrinking back in her seat. She averted her eyes to the window. “No, doctor. You’re not wrong. Let’s just get on with it. I still have some shopping to do. Martin asked me to cook tonight . . . ”

  “And how is your relationship?”

  “Our relationship?” Karen blinked. “I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

  “In the past, you mentioned feelings of worthlessness. That you felt you didn’t deserve your husband’s love.” The doctor flipped through her notes. “Last month you told me you two weren’t speaking much.”

  Karen closed her eyes and bit her lip to hold back the slow throbbing in her skull. She spoke slowly, evenly, each syllable cleaving the air one slice at a time: “I find it difficult to face him when I am smothered by my shame.”

  “How do you think your husband feels about your silence?”

  “I want to talk to him, I really do, but anytime I look at him I see the look on his face when he found me that night. I was supposed to be gone by the time he got home, but his shift ended early. I was so weak I couldn’t get up to lock the bathroom door. He wasn’t supposed to see me until I’d drifted away, and the shame of facing him . . . ” Karen looked away. She wiped a tear from her eye. “I love Martin with all my heart, Dr. Tanner. I’d do anything for him. Some days I just don’t understand why he bothers to love someone like me. I betrayed him just like my mother did my daddy.”

  Dr. Tanner frowned. “Tell me about your mother.”

  Karen wiped her nose and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Not much to tell, really. My daddy was a preacher when I was younger and my mother resented the time he spent with the church. Claimed he loved God more than her. So she left him and sued for divorce. Daddy loved her too much to put up a fight. It broke his heart, but he let her go because he wanted her to be happy. That’s the only time I ever saw him cry.”

  “And the night your husband found you—”

  Karen nodded sheepishly. “He cried like a baby.” She ran her fingers through her hair and stopped when she realized her hands were shaking. “I saw Daddy in Martin’s face that night, and I’ll never forgive myself for hurting him like that. Why aren’t we speaking much? That’s my answer, Dr. Tanner. It’s just my way of going around the mountain. Climbing to face myself is more than I can bear right now. Always has been.”