The Devil's Own Crayons

by Theresa Monsour

  Part of her wanted to take complete control and make decisions on her own. She was smart enough. Strong enough. Yet she’d been assigned a minor role: To hold the girls. She didn’t even have a phone number for him or any of the others. How would they know what has happened?

  A banging on her office door jarred her from her self-questioning. “Enter.”

  Sister Rose threw open the door and marched up to her desk. “We need to talk.”

  The abbess sighed. “Now what did they do?”

  “They locked me out. Did you give them a key?”

  “Leave them alone.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” The elder nun walked back and forth in front of the mother superior’s desk. “Did you give them a key?”

  The abbess folded her hands atop her desk. “Yes, I did. I gave them a key.”

  “They have a television in their room.”

  “No one was watching it in the lounge. I had one of the sisters set it up for them in their room.”

  “Did you give them a cigarette lighter, too? What about a can of gasoline?”

  “That’s enough.”

  Sister Rose stopped pacing and rested both hands atop the desk. “What good can come from allowing three six-year-olds unlimited access to television?”

  “They’re watching cartoons, not the evening news.”

  “If that’s all they’re doing, why did they lock the door?”

  “They’re getting older and need privacy.”

  “Privacy? They’re babies!”

  The mother superior clicked her pen. “If you’re so concerned, by all means – go see the bishop. I’m sure he’d be very interested in hearing how we’re mishandling the raising of three six year olds.”

  “You’ve lost your mind a second time.”

  The abbess looked at her in confusion. But before she could respond to the insult, the elder nun spun around and stomped out of the room.

  Sister Rose Estelle marched into the kitchen while putting on her coat.

  Chopping vegetables for the next day’s meals, Sister Jane was at the counter. “Kind of late to be going out.”

  The older nun buttoned up her coat. “Where’re the keys to the station wagon?”

  Sister Jane nodded toward her own coat, hanging near the back door. “Check my pockets.”

  “How much gas has it got?” asked Sister Rose as she rummaged through the pockets and pulled out the keys.

  “Tank should be full. Nearly full.” The younger nun stopped chopping and eyed the kitchen clock. Nearly eleven. “Where’re you going so late by yourself, Sister? Maybe you should take someone...”

  “Maybe you should mind your own business.”

  Sister Rose bounded down the back steps and looped around the side of the house, heading for the station wagon. As much as Sister Rose hated to go to a man for help, something had to be done. A phone call wasn’t going to cut it; she’d have to meet with the bishop in person. He’d be up watching television in his bathrobe and slippers. Having a nightcap. A good single malt, neat.

  She knew her brother’s schedule well.

  The stress of a job in the outside world had clearly sent Mother Magdalen over the edge – not that she’d handled the cloistered life all that well, either. Rumors were rampant over how the woman had spent her year away from religious life. One story had her shacked up with a man, while another had her institutionalized with a nervous breakdown. Maybe one had caused the other.

  It figures their convent would get the dregs of leadership.

  Even before Trey Petit’s miraculous healing, the woman had demonstrated an unnatural attachment to the triplets. The obsession started when the abbess was first told about them, newborns left in a cardboard box on the porch days before she’d arrived to start closing down the orphanage. Mother Superior spent way too much time holding them and cooing to them, all but ignoring the other kids in the house, not that there were that many left at that point. Sister Rose was relieved when the convent finally farmed out the triplets and the remainder of the other children, and got down to the basic business of bread. Bread didn’t talk back or pass on colds.

  Sister Rose was astounded when the girls came back to the convent. Three bad, sticky pennies. They should have been given to other families. Surely her brother could pull some strings and have them removed for good. It would be best if they were separated again; they were a bad influence on each other.

  With that last thought, a gust of nighttime air rattled the trees and blew her veil into her face. She stopped under the yard light and batted the black fabric away. Her hand caught something else. The nun opened her fist. A pink flower petal. Strange. Nothing blooming in the garden this early. She tipped her hand and the wind carried the petal away.

  She opened the driver’s side and got in. Grunted and cursed. Sister Jane had moved the seat all the way up to the steering wheel. “Skinny twit,” she muttered, and pushed the seat all the way back to accommodate her large frame.

  Glancing into the rearview mirror while adjusting it, she started. Sister Rose turned around and looked. The back seat was dotted with pink petals. Sister Jane must have hauled some plants around with the wagon. Turning back around, she shoved the key into the ignition and turned.

  As the station wagon bumped down the long driveway, Sister Rose felt a tickle in the back of her throat. She coughed a couple of times and felt something crawl up her throat. She swallowed it back. Great time to be getting sick, she thought. Probably caught something from those three brats. She reached over, popped open the glove box and grabbed the box of tissue. Dropped it on the front passenger’s seat.

  She hung a right onto the road and activated the wagon’s high beams. Nothing darker than a country night, especially when you were driving alone.

  About a mile down, Sister Rose braked at a stop sign and felt that tickle in the back of her throat. She ripped some Kleenex out of the box, spit into the tissue and tossed it on the floor. The tickling sensation subsided, and she rolled through the intersection.

  She came up on a gas station, and pulled in to get a bottle of water and a bag of cough drops.

  Twenty minutes and fifteen miles later, she came to another four-way stop. As soon as she put her foot on the brake, she began coughing violently. She raised the water bottle to her lips and tipped it back. Managed a gulp in between coughs. By the glow of the dashboard, she swore she saw something floating in the bottle. What had that gas station sold her?

  Sister Rose punched on the dome light and was shocked to see pink petals floating in the water. Had they been in the bottle all along, or had they come from inside her? Either way, it was horrifying. She rolled down the window and tossed the bottle outside. Stomping the gas pedal, she squealed through the intersection.

  Change of plans: Instead of going to her brother’s place, she’d head for the hospital.

  Coughing violently, she couldn’t steer straight. Her eyes were watering, and she wiped them with Kleenex. Pink petals filled the tissue. She screamed and hurled the wad down to the floor. Sister Rose pulled the car over and slammed on the brakes. Put it in park and threw open the driver’s door. Hanging her head outside, she coughed until she vomited on the road.

  The car’s interior light shined on the puddle next to the car: A pile of pink petals.

  An illusion? No. She could taste and smell their sickening sweetness. Felt them crowding the back of her throat. Air. Get some air. Turning in her seat, she threw her legs outside and vomited again. A stream of bile mixed with petals ran down the front of her coat. As she tried to brush them off, they stuck to her hands.

  “No! Get off!”

  She stood up, peeled off her coat and threw it down. Another coughing jag vibrated her large body, and she fell against the open car door. With each hack, a pink cluster shot out of her mouth, strange insects darting into the darkness.

  The coughing subsided. Clutching the car door, she caught her breath. Wiped water from her eyes with the palm of he
r hand. She peered both ways down the country road and saw no headlights. The closest farm was a couple of miles away. Medical help was twenty miles beyond that. She had no idea what was happening. Where were all these petals coming from? Had she eaten something that was tainted?

  Babette’s shouted response came back to her.

  “We’re drawing flowers! Leave us alone!”

  Sister Rose Estelle’s hands curled into fists. She had to warn the others. She got back inside the car, slammed the door hard and made a frantic U-turn in the middle of the road. Headed back to the convent. She felt the tickling returning to the back of her throat and clamped her mouth tight. Willed away the sensation. Those little monsters weren’t going to beat her.

  The tickling turned into a burning mass. She worked to swallow it back, but it continued to roll up her throat. When Sister Rose opened her mouth and coughed, an explosion of pink filled the car. She couldn’t get enough breath to scream. Couldn’t close her mouth. Hornets fleeing the hive, the petals kept pouring out of her body. Out of her mouth and ears. Out of the corners of her eyes. She punched the gas pedal to the floor while beating the air with her hands.

  The station wagon veered to the left and crossed the road. Careened down a ravine and crashed through a clump of bushes. Slammed into a tree. As the nun slumped over the steering wheel, the petals continued filling the car. Some came out of her body and the rest came out of thin air. The flowers made a soft sound as they swirled and danced and fell. A million pink butterflies beating their wings.

  Sister Rose Estelle died amid a downy cushion of rose petals, their scent invading her nostrils and crawling down her throat. Suffocating her with their sweetness.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Shortly after midnight, Jim Schultz woke with a fever and the sweats. Bolting upright in bed, he tore the blankets off his stump. “My leg! It’s burning up!”

  His wife sat up with him. “You want an ice pack?”

  “Oh, man! Look at it, Mart. Turn on the lights and look.”

  She clicked her bedside lamp and put on her glasses. Crawled down to the end of the bed and bent over the leg, which had been amputated above the knee. The entire thigh was tomato red. She placed her palm over it and her husband howled.

  “Don’t!”

  “You’re as hot as a frying pan.”

  “I’m gonna puke,” he said, bending in half.

  Mart kicked off her covers and ran to the wastebasket. Too late. He vomited all over himself and the bed. Trey had said Jim would get sick. But this sick? Something else had to be wrong. “I’m taking you in.”

  “The kids...”

  “J.J. is old enough to handle it.” She wiggled into a pair of jeans and pulled on a blouse. “I’ll wake him and tell him what’s up.”

  During the drive to the hospital, Jimbo held one of the kid’s plastic beach buckets on his lap. He couldn’t tolerate pulling pants on over his throbbing leg, and was making the trip in his boxers and a sweatshirt. “I’ll bet I got an infection from that crap prosthetic.”

  While Marta drove, she chewed on her bottom lip. They were nearly to the hospital when she told him about the miracle hand. Jimbo listened without interrupting, up to the part where his wife handed Trey Petit a photo so the little girl could work a miracle on the leg. Then he offered an opinion.

  “Load of crap.”

  “I saw the hand,” she said. “I touched it. He wiggled his fingers.”

  “A really good prosthetic.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “One of them new hand transplants.”

  Jimbo had read the same Popular Science article she had. “That’s what I thought at first, but I didn’t see any stitches. No scars or bandages. Nothing.”

  “Were you wearing your glasses?”

  She didn’t answer. She hadn’t been wearing them.

  “Wish I knew what bank that dumb shit robbed so he could pay for it,” continued her husband. “I’d hit it up myself.”

  “It looked so natural. I’m sure it was his own.”

  “Jeeze, Mart. Pull your head out.”

  “Why are you so stubborn? Why can’t you ever accept help?”

  “Don’t turn this into a fight about your family and their money.”

  “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about God’s help.”

  “This aint’ about God. It’s about a stupid scam that loser is trying to run on a gullible woman and her...her gimp husband.”

  She held her tongue for the rest of the drive, and the only noise out of Jimbo’s mouth was his grunt of pain whenever the pickup hit a bump in the road.

  Before they’d left the house, she’d called the ER to tell them they were on the way. When the truck pulled up, nurses were waiting at the doors with a wheelchair. While the hospital folks loaded Jimbo into the chair, Marta went around to the truck bed and got a bag she’d packed for her husband; this wasn’t going to be a quick visit. She also grabbed the prosthetic - a metal, robotic-looking leg with a realistic foot. Could be he’d never need the thing again.

  As she followed her husband and his medical entourage into the emergency room, the bright lights and modern efficiency of the hospital hit her like a hard slap. What had she been thinking? People couldn’t grow back missing limbs. She had no idea how Trey Petit had managed to get his hand fixed, but it wasn’t a miracle. Advanced medicine was responsible.

  When the ER doc pulled back the curtain and saw the inflamed limb, his face grew grim. “I think we need to keep you.”

  Jim rolled to one side and vomited.

  “Nurse!” yelled the doctor.

  For the remainder of the night, neither Schultz mentioned the miracle hand to each other - or to anyone else. Jimbo was too wrapped up in his own pain to worry about anything else and Marta felt foolish for believing Trey’s fairy tale. She told herself it was a coincidence that her husband got sick after she talked to Petit, and made a mental note to retrieve her husband’s photo from the lying shit.

  After getting poked with thermometers, needles and intravenous lines, Jim Schultz settled down enough in his hospital bed to close his eyes. The drapes were drawn and the door was closed. The second bed in the room – the one closest to the door - was empty. Marta was stretched out on a recliner parked between the two beds, a thin blanket thrown across her lap and a lumpy pillow under her head. She was watching television with the volume turned low. The wall-mounted box provided the only light in the room. Every few minutes, she stole a glance at her husband.

  His good leg and his stump were both under the covers, giving her opportunity to start that game she played with herself ever since the accident. Focusing on him from the waist up, she imagined that he had both legs. Everything was back to normal. They could make the bills. Put food on the table. Everything was fine, for a second or two. For a second or two, the weight was lifted from her heart.

  Then her eyes dropped and went to that flat spot on the bed, where his right leg sort of melted away. Where their future had melted away.

  Marta Schultz wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but she believed that saying: God never gives people more than they can stand. She figured in her family’s case, however, the devil had upped the ante for laughs. Jimbo was so down most days, he didn’t want to get out of bed. If they didn’t have four kids to get up and off to school, she would gladly stay under the covers with him. Playing that game with herself, lightening her heart for two seconds at a time.

  “Crap,” Jimbo sighed to the ceiling, and moved his left leg restlessly.

  “How you doing?” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Drugs kicking in?”

  “More or less.” He sighed again. “How’re the kids? Did J.J. call?”

  “Twice. I told him to go to bed.”

  “I’m sorry about this, baby.”

  “Our cheap ass insurance company should be doing the apologizing. If they would’ve paid for a better prosthetic...”

  “No, I mean the whole damn thing.” />
  He knew she’d been stewing over the whole damn thing. Married people were that way, pulling thoughts out of each other’s heads. She tried to steer him away from talking about it. Rehashing the whole damn thing out loud wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Better to keep it bottled up. “Jimbo, let it go.”

  “If I hadn’t been out in the field...”

  “Out in the field making a living,” she said. “That’s all you were doing.”

  “I should’ve...”

  “You should’ve nothing.”

  “We should take the help from your brother.”

  She’d been waiting to hear that for a year. Afraid of jinxing it, she tried to hide her relief. “We’ll talk about that later. Shut up and go to sleep.”

  He chuckled softly. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  He opened one eye and yawned. “Go ahead and turn it up. It don’t bother me none.” Thirty seconds later, he was snoring.

  Marta turned up the volume. A Hitchcock flick. The Birds. About the time the teacher gal was found pecked to death, Marta’s eyes started to close. She aimed the remote at the set and punched it off. Pulled off her glasses. Her head tipped to one side, and her snores became synchronized with her husband’s.

  Beneath the hospital linen, Jimbo’s heavily sedated body broke into a sweat. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the flat spot on the bed moved. The sheet tented to make room for the tender, pale shoot.

  The stump lengthened and stretched and bent at the knee. Grew and moved along the sheets, like a time-lapsed photo of a ripening garden vegetable. A flesh-colored gourd.

  At the end of the stump, an oval lump pushed its way out. A pink, deformed appendage. A baby’s foot without toes. One at a time, the toes emerged and grew. Young and delicate and unnatural. Flexing. They continued lengthening and plumping.