they say the owl was a baker's daughter: four existential noirs

by KUBOA

  I heard the sound of a car door closing, tensed, didn’t want to, didn’t want Donald to think I knew what was going on, wondered if he’d heard it, should I distract him with some comment—but what difference would it make?

  He tapped on the kitchen counter lightly, got me to look over, was waving me in the direction of the bedroom, gesturing for my silence.

  I shook a little bit as I stood up, could feel some blubbering emotion welling in the unsteadiness of my legs, a shudder in my stomach. There was nothing to do, no way to send a warning. It was outside of anything I could manipulate—not only could I not will somebody not to return to their home, even if I ran to the door or waited for her to come in and screamed she should run, Donald would just kill me, kill her, do whatever it was he was going to do after that.

  The bedroom had the lights on and Donald didn’t close them, he just moved me along with him so that we wouldn’t be seen until someone fully entered. He even leaned against the wall, idle, the gun out in his hand—in his hand closest to me, no effort at all made to keep distance between us.

  A key undid the front door latch, she entered singing some pieces of a song had maybe been on the radio, had maybe just been in her head all day, all night. Then a horrible stretch of time, sounds of her going about her tired morning, saying a few things to herself, maybe she wondered about the dishes, the thick of seemingly recent cigarettes, but there was no reason for her to be concerned over that, really, nothing to give away our presence, make her understand, make her know, make her run. A clatter of the refrigerator, the freezer, a microwave door opened, closed, the high beep of buttons and then the whir of something being heated and the television coming on, going right back off.

  Maybe she would just eat and leave, had some reason to go right back out.

  I wanted to look at Donald, see if he was growing impatient but didn’t, couldn’t—I needed to think it was just a matter of her not coming into the room would keep her alive and if he seemed antsy I’d have to understand she was dead, already, it was just a matter of Donald wanted it this way instead of that, that way instead of this.

  When she came in through the door she had the shirt she’d been wearing at the restaurant bunched in her hand, barefoot, a lemon camisole. She startled on seeing us.

  -Oh, hello, she said, the Hello very much two words, a friendly tilt toward sounding like a question to the second beat, then a quick breath. She was letting out a relieved, awkward chuckle, let her shirt go. I saw her notice the gun in Donald’s hand still by his side, saw her look at him, but she looked right at me when she said Is everything good? her brow a cartoon of hopeful perplexion and she was looking at me, making herself smile when the gun went off.

  I turned, still standing, to the wall, forehead to it, grinding my head, rolling it back and forth, tapping my knees against my shadows, was pressing my balled fists oddly into the base of my skull and I was saying something but nothing. I could taste the salt in my breath, pulled my glasses off, put them back on, turned around, sinking to the carpet.

  Donald was sitting on the edge of the bed, looked back over at me once or twice, but didn’t seem particularly concerned.

  He went over to her closet, opened it, seemed to poke through it, then half closed it, sighed, sat back down, above me, looking at me, gun dangled in both hands dangled between his spread legs.

  I looked away from him, thought I felt his eyes on me, had the sensation that he was about to say something, was sitting there choosing the words, but after a few minutes, ten minutes, it didn’t matter how many minutes, I looked at him and he was looking straight up, eyes shut.

  -Did you know what her name was? he said, not changing his position, the words oddly, tightly formed for the strain of his neck.

  I didn’t know if I did, tried to remember had he introduced her, had I looked at her name tag. I wanted to lie, to say I knew her name, but then if he asked me What was it? and I couldn’t say he’d know I was lying to him, he’d know something, whatever there was to know.

  -She never told me. I don’t know.

  -It was Cynthia, he told me, or said, the words might not have been directed at me because in the next breath, to the tune of some song, he whispered Cynthia’s a Synthesiz-ah then went silent, then stood.

  ***

  Donald was having a last cup of coffee, taking it in large mouthfuls, but not drinking fast. My jaw was shivering, I couldn’t focus.

  -I need to use the toilet, I kind of mumbled. I did need to, could feel my insides thinning, like something had burst, leaked, something warmer than the rest of me. Not sure he had heard me, I spoke up, Donald, I need to use the toilet.

  His eyes widened, a face like what did that have to do with him, a little jiggle indicating I should feel free.

  I shut the door, turned the lock, put on the overhead fan, fumbled with my pants, got them down, sat and bent as far forward as I could, squeezing down against the cramping, sick that nothing happened, a tight gurgle stuck just at the bottom of my throat, sharp. I bobbed, rocked, stood to see if anything loosened—but maybe it was just tension, nothing else.

  I stood at the sink with my pants down, stared at the mirror, disgusted at how ordinary I looked—a slight gloss of settled perspiration, my hair the way hair looked before bedtime, other than that pristine, myself.

  I shushed some mouthwash around, just for something to do, a little distraction, then absently reaching for a hairbrush I saw, my eyes settled on a pair of thin scissors, sharp, shears for trimming hair.

  I looked at the face of the closed door. Donald had a loaded gun, of course, but it was probably in his pocket, his mind wandering—his grip on everything had slipped, or at least I felt it had, that shooting Cynthia had altered something, caused a shift he’d not expected, if he’d been expecting anything one way or the other.

  But maybe not. Maybe it was me roiling in whatever had happened to me. I felt drained, vanished, I was considering Donald’s plan, whatever it was, all over and done, but nothing really indicated it was.

  If he found the scissors, he’d kill me. Without blinking. Just like before.

  But, I didn’t necessarily have to go out and attack him. To the contrary, I could just conceal the scissors, like my phone had been concealed, as simple as that, have the option—a better option than a telephone—something I could slither out of my coat cuff, remove from where I’d tuck it in my pants, drive it home, through his ribs, the back of his neck, shove it up into his spine.

  I wasn’t looking at the scissors anymore, but at my own face, except I didn’t realize I was, just caught the expression in my eye, squinted at it, understood it was me.

  For all I knew, Donald was leaning against the wall, just outside the door, drifts of cigarette, gun already pointed—he might very well just start firing through the thin flat of wood at any moment.

  It was too much of a risk to conceal the weapon—he’d never shown concern before, but I’d never been out of his sight before, not like this, left to myself.

  Why wouldn’t it occur to him to search me, make me disrobe?

  Or maybe it wouldn’t go that far, he’d just see it in my features, know it.

  Was I stable enough to conceal it?

  The idea of wanting to know was it morning, dawn, was there light outside or still blank dark became a fever—I did not want to die out of time, did not want to die not even knowing where I was, in the stale, used air of some corpses’ apartment.

  There was no difference in this scissor plan than in my plan to look for a rock as I walked, or to bolt through a field—I might as well have thrown my bourbon in his face at the restaurant, grabbed his hair, crawled over the table and forced my whole arm down his throat, fingers clawing, gripping at anything inside him I could get them around.

  I flushed the toilet, ran the water, shoved some into my face, through my hair, the sensation intoxicating. I used a bar of scented soap, then took a bottle of shampoo, lathered my palms up, li
fted my sleeves, cleaned my forearms. I scoured my face, roughed it with a towel, enough force my eyes felt swollen, bruised, closing in on themselves. My ears began to ring from the scents and the temperature of the water and the awkward motions, head this way, that way, this way, that way.

  My reflection hardly looked different than it had before, except now my skin was a bit flushed, raw, my eyes dark but not bloodshot, just strained from all the effort.

  It seemed to me I’d been in the room a long time. Maybe Donald would be gone when I stepped out, would just have walked away, gone ahead, come to some understanding that I no longer mattered, that whatever function I had in his contraption was now moot, I’d performed my service, no point fussing over me.

  The door looked the same as it had, I felt just as threatened by it now as I had moments before, imagining the apparition of him out there, a coiled gadget waiting to go pop, automatic, if I made the hinges creak for too long.

  There was no reason he’d search me and by this time wouldn’t it be beside the point? I reveal scissors, say I was thinking to kill you, it wouldn’t matter, he’d just have caught me, stopped me, again—whether I had had it mind to do something or not made irrelevant by the reality that I’d accomplished nothing.

  So why shouldn’t I take them, then? Just because I couldn’t kill him? What would bring me to that point, make me able? Would I have to be dead before I’d be willing to do that? Dead before I’d even be willing to prepare?

  Donald was still drinking coffee, looked at me over a half asleep grin.

  -Don’t you look nice.

  I walked toward the door, touching at my coat, bracing for the cold, heard the tick of him setting down his mug and then the shush of him striking a few matches before one took long enough to get his cigarette going, heard the tip tap tip tap of the little sucks in of the flame.

  ***

  It was still dark as we walked down the steps. At the curb, I glanced at the houses, at the dark windows, looked at the cars parked, thought about the people asleep. Donald handed me a set of keys, told me it would be better if I drove.

  What I supposed was Cynthia’s car was an old green thing, squat, very used, bumper stickers for several universities I doubted she’d attended worn and made filthy with time. Donald tried at the passenger door, seemed genuinely happy that it just opened, waited until I’d gotten around to the driver’s side to sit down.

  His gun was out, at the end of his forearm rested along his thigh.

  The car started fine, air rushing out of the vents not hot or cold, Donald touching at the dials but not adjusting any, satisfied, though he did turn down the volume of the radio, not all the way, just enough that nothing distinct was audible, sounds, tuneless, the shavings either percussive or high pitched enough to register.

  He directed me out of the neighborhood.

  This change had me more alert, I wanted to ask him what was going on, but he seemed odd, was sucking on his tongue, maybe his tongue fiddling with a tooth back in the side of his mouth, little slurps, rough breaths out his nose from exertion.

  He directed me to take an exit onto the freeway, my arms tensing.

  -Where exactly are we going?

  He turned the radio off all the way, made some comment I didn’t quite catch.

  -We have to go see a few more people, Roger. You know.

  Those last two words not a question, not a pleasant suffix.

  You know.

  I know.

  I knew.

  But was this going to be a cross country thing, now?

  Donald shuffled around, slumped comfortable up into the corner made by his seatback and the car door, was tapping the hand that held the gun on his knee, only holding it by the handle, the trigger like a loose tooth, a sharp one, it seemed so tender, delicate, like the gentlest touch would make it yowl.

  We drove ten minutes, twenty minutes. I asked a few times should I just keep going and when I guess he got tired of saying I’ll tell you if we need to turn, he told me we were to drive until the Muller Parkes exit.

  It hit me in that moment that we were not going to be driving through the night, nothing long distance. I deflated, cringed where I sat.

  If we stayed on the road, if we drove until Cynthia’s body was found, this car would be looked for—again, I didn’t know if I wanted that or not, what it would mean for me—but if we weren’t doing that it meant this was just another breath between violence.

  I scanned the road for police cars, emergency vehicles, but it was just us, like some random thought nobody was considering, just us and the shush our car caused.

  Our car.

  His car.

  Her car.

  Cynthia’s car.

  I’d heard the name Muller Parkes or seen signs for it, but I didn’t know anything about the area. As signs began appearing saying it was coming up in ten miles, eight miles, five miles, the area surrounding us became more rural, long fields with patches of trees or blunt lengths of forest, small areas of field pocking them.

  We actually took an exit call Grover Commons, a long curve off the highway, it felt like the turn was a corkscrew, four circles, the road going down and the road it emptied out onto was one surrounded high by trees, thick enough for two lanes but no markings on the disrepaired pavement.

  I took the left as I was told to, driving slow, hunched to the wheel, a thin of cold mist caught in the headlights and the windshield slowly creeping over with grey. There were mailboxes every so often, driveways dirt or pebble, but these driveways just seemed to lead to other snakes of roads, the houses not visible from the car, maybe miles back.

  We passed a little café with two gas pumps in front, a number of cats crossing along under the light post, the sight of them making me turn my strict attention to the road in front of me, anxious that any moment some animal or another might appear.

  -You’re going to see a kind of broken up old fence just up here in a bit, just park along in the grass there, okay?

  I nodded, but oddly he repeated Okay? and only seemed satisfied when I repeated Okay.

  Just from what I could sense of him peripherally, I could tell this was different—he seemed angry, seemed terrible.

  I saw the fence, kind of saw out of the corner of my eye him point at it, but I was already pulling into the grass, he didn’t say anything else.

  He got out of the car immediately upon my shutting off the engine, came around to the driver’s side, opened the door and said for me to stay seated. He urinated against the rear tire, closed his pants, told me to stand up.

  The cold was worse for stepping out of the heat, excruciating for the amount of moisture, I felt like I was being bitten by ants, my ears felt warm they were so cold, warm and clotted, the sensations a mumble, I didn’t feel like I could hear properly.

  Donald directed me to walk, back in the direction we had driven. It seemed a long way, but I really don’t know, I had no sense of myself except for my discomfort, the cramps had returned around me.

  Eventually we turned at a mailbox, up a cold path, mostly dirt and crushed leaves, a mash of leaves, stones, dead pine needles.

  I imagined we were coming up on a house, but if we were I couldn’t see it in the pitch. I wondered about the illumination—there certainly wasn’t light, wasn’t moon—it seemed it should be so much darker. Darker. It should be impossible to see.

  ***

  I asked for a cigarette, perhaps as a way of stalling, giving whoever was in the house a last few moments to notice something wrong, to fortify themselves, or perhaps just as a dragging of my own feet against the inevitable—Donald gaining entrance, death.

  Me, doing nothing.

  He gave me one of his cigarettes, lit his own as well. We waited off the path in a wet patch of ground between a cluster of leafless trees, Donald relaxing against the damp bark, me touching the toe of my shoe into a puddle.

  Why shouldn’t it be inevitable that I’d do nothing,
especially now?

  This was certainly not where I would choose to die, some rag tag property off a road I’d never heard of. And this was the most volatile I’d seen Donald, he wasn’t just a friendly smile, an awkward, misplaced conversation—the gun was in his hand, brandished, he looked like he was sweating despite the temperature, despite the frost of the coming morning.

  He rubbed his cigarette out harshly on the tree I was standing beside, spit a few times, said there had been something wrong with his but that I should finish mine.

  I looked at the house front, neither dingy nor put together, probably looking as ordinary as it did for the dark—it just looked like a dark house out in the woods somewhere, in the light it would seem worn down, a blemish. Or maybe not, maybe it would look acclimated to its surroundings, what a house would prefer to be like if left to its own devises, not groomed to be an object.

  I couldn’t help smiling at the inanity my mind was shooting up, the off-poetics, anything to scuttle into a corner, cockroach thoughts.

  Donald took the steps up to the front door at a jaunt, looked at me like doing a little silent count one-two-three-four, then kicked the door in, knocking it almost off its frame, a horrendous clang, like everything in the house had been kicked in all at once, everything everywhere. He pointed and I tottered in, not in any sort of hurry and neither was he, despite the violence. I wanted to stop, to let him know I’d even just sit and wait, but his focus wasn’t so intent that I’d been forgotten—it seemed just the opposite, he took me by the wrist and we walked up the carpeted steps, turned down a corridor, the light seeping out from under a door, seeming fresh, somehow, it looked like a light just suddenly turned up, had a blinking quality to it, not yet sure it would have to stay, thinking maybe it could go black again, sleep.

  He kicked this door in, as well, though it clearly wasn’t necessary. Just two elderly people, man and woman, man and wife, the man halfway at attention, legs over the bed, the woman just laying on her back like she’d not be able to stand without aid.

  Donald fired and I peeled away from his grip, coiled around myself, began sobbing, infant, uncontrollable yelps of strangled consonants, hugged around myself onto the floor, hands and knees, screaming at the wood floor, a stream of my mucus and my saliva all over my hands. I heard him fire four times, then there was a long period of silence, then another shot. I just blubbered, screamed, was even making sentences, saying who knows what, crumpled and worthless, driving my fists at the floor, at the wall, the side of a dresser.