You use her as you might a crutch. It takes near an hour to reach the old tobacco barn. It takes another to maneuver to the end of the skinny dirt road that delivered you into the camp. However, once you are free from the confines of her childhood, she lets fly a delightful squeal. She drops to her knees at the road which will take you to town. She scoops handfuls of gravel and showers them down atop her head.
“All the world is a wonder,” she tells you. “All the world is a mystery.”
You are too weak to walk on your own. You see before you two roads where previously there had only been one. You see above you two firmaments and two skies. Two earths below your feet.
“I want to see everything,” she says.
You drape your arm around her shoulders and slouch toward home.
“I want to touch it all.”
You watch her with abject sadness. You hallucinate the sound of laughter at the juxtaposition that now separates you both.
“What if I’ve made a mistake?” you ask her.
She answers with a sneeze.
By Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason
His corpse sat in the recliner. His eyes were closed, and if it wasn’t for the pallor of his skin, he might have looked as if he was only sleeping. Mark liked to do that, fall asleep in odd places, in strange positions, especially after he had his nightly round of drinks. Marnie’s mother used to say drunks and cats could sleep anywhere and she believed the old woman. He wasn’t asleep, though. Marnie knew better. If she pulled aside the plush throw blanket she would see the wounds she left in his chest. She already removed the steak knife, but she didn’t have the emotional strength to clean up the bloody pool that gathered on his chest and soaked into his shirt.
If the world hadn’t come to a halt, she would have already found herself in a jail cell. Her husband’s partner, Allan, would have certainly come to check in on the man who never missed a day of work in their real estate office, even when everyone knew he was an alcoholic and came to the office half-hung over.
Allan never spoke of it. He had no need to address it when they were still raking in mountains of cash. The second secret Allan concealed was the fact that Mark abused his wife, but Allan never lifted a finger to help Marnie. Doing so would have threatened his paychecks, so he chose to pretend like he never saw anything.
Marnie could smell him. It would be impossible to just leave him to rot in the living room. She wondered if she could toss him in the trash can, which was in the garage, out of sight of anyone in the neighborhood, if anyone was still alive. He was a large man, tall and barrel-chested, and she wasn’t sure if she could fit him inside doubled over… but she could cut him into pieces, then shove him down inside. She could even throw the kitchen trash on top of him, to cover him if anyone opened the lid.
The plan was coming together in her mind. The can would become a stinking green tomb, a fitting end to trash like him. It might work, but she worried someone might see her as she struggled to haul him to the curb, a nosy neighbor who was still well enough to tell the police when someone reported him missing. If they discovered she murdered him, she would be dragged away in handcuffs, even after she proved she was only defending herself after twelve tiring years of being his punching bag.
She imagined the scandalous trial as she sat down at her kitchen table. Her face would be all over television, the mere sight of her eliciting cries of anger from droves of strange men who also believed a woman should obey their husbands even at the cost of their souls. And somewhere in the crowds and lights there would be other women, standing silently, watching her as she was burned at the stake for salvaging her own life. They would know their voices, and their suffering, would always remain meaningless.
The microwave beeped, loud enough to rattle her from her daydream. Her dog, Sparky, barked at the sudden beeping and then at her. He pawed at her ankle and ran to the kitchen door and back. Marnie bent down to stroke the Pomeranian’s red fur. “He deserved it. If he had just stopped coughing, or slept downstairs, then you wouldn’t have barked at him. And he wouldn’t have kicked you, and I wouldn’t have…”
She sighed, then went to retrieve her mug from the microwave and filled the dog’s bowl with food.
“He was sick anyway. I did him a favor.”
She let her husband slip to the back of her mind once more as she went to open the door to the yard, a soothing numbness settling in on her. There would be no calling the police, there would be no scandalous trial, there would be no howling hordes of red-faced men to point their fingers at her. Most of them were dead by now. In a way, the virus was a blessing to her.
She slid the door open to be greeted by the scent of summer lawn. She felt strangely content even with the threat of a deadly virus beyond her house, because the worst nightmare she could ever imagine was finally dead. She was finally free of him and his humiliation. If she would live long enough to enjoy her new sense of freedom, she wasn’t sure, but she would make the most of what she had left.
The garbage men had either retreated or perished. A green trash bin sat on the roadside, full and stinking, claimed by insects and maggots weeks prior when those last great bastions of society ceased making their rounds. Carlos marked their disappearance on his desk calendar, mourning their loss more than the silencing of the neighborhood streets in the evening. He didn’t particularly like most of his neighbors, but the memory of their incessant noise was a sad ghost of the way life was before the world shut down. There were no more conversations around the community mailboxes, no children riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac, no gatherings on front lawns to discuss homeowners’ association policies. There was no one around. Most of them were dead, and those who weren’t soon would be.
But the pests were alive and thriving within the sixty-four gallon roll-away can, flies and cockroaches, all caring only to reproduce and live out their lifecycles in the small utopia of rotting food and dirty paper towels in the splitting trash bags cradled within the sunbaked bin before it could no longer house them or their young. Summer had come and dried up the once-sticky rivers of garbage juices running down the side of it. The garbage can was no different than the rest of the neighborhood; things were left untouched, abandoned in the hysteria of quarantine. Yards were overgrown with dried weeds, cars sat in driveways unmoved in months, their gasoline slowly turning to turpentine in their tanks. The remnants of civilization would still be around for many years if mankind lost this battle, thousands upon thousands of lifecycles of flies and maggots could pass by and there would still be empty houses, cars, and shopping centers, eons to the short-lived buzzing and writhing masses who sought to claim dominion over the earth as its apex predator languished and died.
Carlos sat in his office chair, looking out his bedroom window on the second floor of his house. He hadn’t stepped outside in months, and didn’t plan on it unless his house suddenly caught fire, and even then he would consider trying to put it out with sink water before emerging from his sanctuary. The virus was out there. It was known to strike swiftly, devouring nearly everyone who came in contact with it, leaving hospitals overcrowded and morgues overflowing with corpses within a matter of months. A plague of nightmares, a sickness the likes of which mankind had never imagined took hold of entire countries and left them nearly void of life, frail bodies of what they once were, losing hope of ever returning to their former states, but Carlos had escaped unscathed. He had taken heed at the virus’s arrival. While many people scoffed at rumors of its destruction, he stockpiled a mountain of supplies. He sat and watched from his bedroom window as his neighborhood became a ghost town, each house a crypt for the families inside. The end of the world was a worm swallowing each city one by one, and though the orange-skinned leader on TV claimed his armies would soon rescue everyone, it looked as if they would never come—not to Acacia Hills, anyway.
The area was left ravaged by the virus after neighbors held a block party instead of participating in the recommended social distancing. Near
ly every man, woman, and child were in attendance, and all but one carried the virus back to their family members who didn’t attend, all but Carlos. It wasn’t like he was a social butterfly before the virus emerged. He was an outsider among them. They had abided by the herd mentality, and often conducted what they referred to as “good neighbor checks.” They had a Facebook group called “Acacia family.” He perused it just to make fun of the posts.
He saw it all as them being nosy assholes, and never opened his door when they came knocking. Never responded to any group posts when someone asked his opinion on homeowners’ association matters. Even after the news warned of the spreading virus, he saw his neighbors attempting to band together, and he gave them a little credit for trying, but when Kelly Hutchins went around the cul-de-sac with her young granddaughter handing out homemade bread, he cringed and caught himself calling her a fucking idiot from behind the safety of his locked door.
“We’re all in this together, Carl,” she’d huffed, as if saying his name properly was just too complicated for her tongue, and then exited his yard with her granddaughter close behind her, carrying the basket of bread.
His neighbors could never conceal their fake smiles, their eyes searching him, noting the differences in him and them. The stupid questions always came about his name and where he was from. There was always the look of surprise and disbelief when they learned he wasn’t a mechanic or gardener. It was an experience he only endured once, when he first moved in, and swore to himself he never would again. That was a year before the virus erupted, twelve months before the small neighborhood became a graveyard.
From his vantage point, he could see into many of the backyards around him. He liked to watch his neighbor, Marnie, as she stood on her back porch every morning and let her little dog out to do its business on the dying grass. Seeing Marnie meant at least she was still alive, her house had yet to be visited by the invisible predator. She didn’t really attend the neighborhood party—her asshole husband got drunk way too early and she had to drag him home, but Carlos knew he was probably already trashed before heading to the doomed get-together. Carlos had watched the embarrassing spectacle from his living room window and was grateful she hadn’t stayed longer. She wasn’t overly exposed, and he hoped it meant she would make it through.
Carlos admired more than her looks; he admired her bravery for standing outside and refusing to let her life be halted completely. The news broadcast nearly all day, and every report agreed that even stepping beyond the front door could be dangerous. Their words constricted his lungs with anxiety, but watching Marnie’s dark hair in the breeze could almost get him to take the risk. Almost. She was like a siren calling sailors to their doom, dressed in a purple bathrobe and drinking from a mug of the same color. This was the time he usually daydreamed of her, of smelling her neck and feeling her inhale deeply as he wrapped his arms around her—but since the virus, he could only daydream of surviving, of remaining alive.
Marnie whistled softly to her dog and it ran to her, scratching at her ankles with its tiny paws, excited to have its breakfast. She stepped back into her house, sliding the glass door closed behind her. Her show of bravery was brief, seven minutes in total, but it stayed with Carlos. It somehow kept the tiny spark within him burning.
Sparky bounded through the living room and jumped up on the couch. His constant barking was what led to the final fight between Marnie and Mark; one last grim battle she always knew in her heart would come. She counted herself lucky to be the victor after years of having nightmares about being the corpse in the recliner. She retrieved the shower curtain from the guest bathroom upstairs and placed it on the floor before looking at his body, heavy and leaking, stinking more by the hour. Marnie gathered her courage up to grab his wrists. Then she held her breath and tugged him. The weight of him was almost too much for her, and for a moment she contemplated cutting him into pieces right there, but she knew the mess left behind would be too much to handle. She strained, her face turning red, but she managed to drag the corpse down onto the shower curtain.
She stepped back and took a break, breathing heavily but she wiped sweat from her brow in satisfaction. It was a little easier to drag him across the tile floor wrapped in a shower curtain than it was to get him out of the chair. The garage door was close, so Marnie made it with only one break to rest her arms. Sparky stood on the arm of the couch, supervising as she got rid of the bastard who’d kicked him against the bedroom wall.
She barely managed to pull Mark into the garage before she collapsed into a dusty lawn chair. There was tightness in her chest, and she wondered if Mark hadn’t brought home the virus after all.
She felt a pang of fear in her gut as bitter tears threatened to fall. He would get what he always wanted: to kill her. She pounded her fists on the aluminum chair-arms and focused once more. Her eyes searched the wall where her husband had hung a multitude of yard tools—like the bastard ever used them—and located what she needed to dispose of him completely: the axe.
Carlos sat at his computer and began working on lessons for his students. Being an online educator didn’t change when the world shut down, but it gave him a frightening idea of the destruction wrought by the virus beyond his neighborhood and city. Each week, he had fewer and fewer students signed in and returning work.
This morning, there were only four students checking in. His throat tightened as he looked over their work. Four souls he once connected to, four souls he led and instructed, but the other eighteen were nowhere to be seen.
Carlos pulled his phone from his pocket and checked his call log. He hadn’t heard from his parents or brother in two weeks. They lived in a virus-ravaged neighborhood in California. They were all he had left. He felt his heart growing heavier by the day, an emptiness devouring his insides. It scared him to think of what would even be left once the virus was gone. How many would survive, and what would life be like?
He pulled out a navy-blue envelope from a mound of mail piled on the edge of his desk. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thrown it away yet. The mail service had already shut down. He guessed he kept it just to remember, to hold in his hands a memory from life before. He opened it and pulled out the red, white, and blue invitation, another block party planned for the Fourth of July weekend, a party he wouldn’t have to think up excuses to not attend. There was a promise of barbecue, coolers full of beverages for both adults and children, and a grand finale of fireworks.
He smiled sadly at the invitation, realizing the party would have been that very night if the virus hadn’t hit. He slid it back into the envelope and tossed it on the mail pile, then opened his desk drawer and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He was apprehensive about day-drinking when the isolation first started—he had a stubborn sense of responsibility he clung to in those early days—but that faded as the days passed. Now he drank when he felt his anxiety climbing up his back. He didn’t bother pouring it in a cup. He drank it straight from the bottle in an attempt to kill the sadness welling up inside of him like sudden storm. He gazed out the window, his mind lost in imagining the racket outside of children screeching in delight while they ran down the sidewalks with sparklers in their little hands, music pumping from a nearby stereo, and the thundering of fireworks in the sky. It would have annoyed him, he would have complained to himself about the noise, but the silence of the real world was now more deafening.
He recalled sitting here just last Christmas, drunkenly scheming up ways of ruining the neighborhood holiday caroling, like an inebriated Grinch who stole Christmas, as their voices grated at him like every other thing they did.
“Those days are gone.”
The thought of no longer being just an introvert, but possibly a lone survivor when it was all said and done, chilled him. He turned the bottle up and felt his insides burning, but his heart still felt cold. He got out of his chair and turned on his stereo. He blasted music as loud as he could stand and sang along as he slowly emptied the entire bottle down his throat. From h
is bedroom window he watched the sunset staining the horizon red as the day died, bringing the darkness of night and the crushing loneliness he had failed to drown.
A loud thud echoed in the distance. The neighborhood was so silent now, the racket startled him. He lurched forward in his seat, groggily wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. A muffled voice filled up the quiet vacuum of silence beyond the wall of his house. It was faint, but as he stood up and exited his bedroom it grew a little louder. He walked to a decorative window in the stairwell leading to the bottom floor of his house and squinted through it.
Outside, a figure was struggling on the curb. He saw the fluttering of a purple robe in the breeze. Carlos trotted down his stairs and watched her from the peephole in his front door. He couldn’t see Marnie very well, but he knew she was struggling with her trash can, which had tipped over on its side. Her tiny dog was hopping about at her feet.
He smiled for a moment. The comical scene made his heart race. He knew it would replay in his mind for the eternity of his quarantine, a beautiful thing amidst the living nightmare. Even though his eyes couldn’t quite see clearly through the tiny peephole, his imagination would fill in the blanks, and paint her as an angel in purple.
Then his grin faded and he felt a stab of fear in his gut. She was being careless. Marnie was putting herself in danger. How could she not have realized the trash stopped running? He guessed she had been too busy taking care of her asshole husband to notice. It made him angry to think of Mark, the prick, making his wife haul a heavy trash can to the sidewalk in the middle of a pandemic, he must have been real piece of shit to treat her so terribly, as if she didn’t matter.
He gripped the doorknob. His internal alarms went off, the screaming anxiety that had kept him alive wailing in his brain. He knew he should just leave her alone; if she was going to ignore the reports of how easily the virus was spreading, then there was nothing he could do. He unlocked to door and pulled it open, even as the alarms continued to blare in his mind, louder than his own voice as he attempted to get her attention.
Lockdown Page 21