Coda

by Keith Knapp

  Sophia was too far gone to crumble. She was miles beyond crying, worlds beyond tears. It welled up inside of her, though: her chest tightened, her throat constricted, her breathing became labored. But none of it came out. The feelings just stayed inside, growing and tightening at the same time.

  Slowly and delicately, Brett placed a hand on Sophia’s shoulder. She slid forward on the couch, her head in her hands, her ass threatening to take a dive off the edge. Her tongue smacked at the insides of her mouth, tasting dry saliva and bile and blood. She put a hand over Brett’s and patted it.

  “You don’t like this place, either,” Brett said.

  “No, I certainly don’t.”

  Roscoe lifted his head and eyed Sophia. He then turned to Brett and let out a petite whimper.

  “That man up there, in the room,” Rachel said, “you said he was your ex?”

  Weakly, Sophia nodded her head. “Yeah. Jack.”

  “He wasn’t a very nice man,” Brett observed.

  “No, he was not,” Sophia half laughed. Then she said his name again, “Jack,” as if that would make things seem more real or normal. It didn’t.

  Rachel shook her head. “I don’t understand what your ex was doing up there. Not that I really understand any of this.”

  But Sophia thought she understood. Or was beginning to understand at least a part of it. Because if Jack Welling was in this town, that could only mean one thing for the rest of them.

  THE NIGHTMARES

  27.

  Jody watched the shadows of the bars from the window above slowly glide across the floor as the sky outside prepared for night. Such a nice, calming orange glow. Reminded her of fall. She wasn’t sure why—all her autumns had been spent in Encino and she’d never seen a tree change colors in real life—but the season popped in her head nonetheless. Maybe it was all those romantic comedies she secretly liked; they always seemed to take place in the fall for some reason.

  The prison-shaped shadows had made it all the way to the hall when the cockroach reappeared.

  It scampered across the floor, away from its hiding place in the corner, triumphantly returning to the world, ready for a night of running from room to room and scavenging for food. Its antennae waved at Jody: Hey, how ya’ doin’, kid? Jody took it no mind; she was too tired to let a little roach bother her now.

  The cockroach turned to face the cell door and scurried out through the bars. How easy it was for the little guy to come and go at his leisure and not be troubled with the burden of being the size of a human being. Envious, Jody watched it hang a left toward the back of the building and dash away.

  Someone would be by soon. There had to be someone else in this town, right? This was an old town, and buildings couldn’t stand this long without at least a little up-keep. Then again, she had no idea if that was true or not. How long could buildings like this stand? A hundred years? Two hundred? Maybe they could stand forever.

  I’m super-fucked.

  She got up off the mattress and stood on her tip-toes to look out the window. Just like the previous five times she had done this, all she saw was the side of the ice cream parlor, the hotel across the street with a long shadow of a windmill over it and a KEYS MADE HERE sign dangling in the breeze down the block of the empty road. She couldn’t make out any of the other businesses, but she was in no hurry to find out.

  She’d given up on yelling—every time she had tried it the weather had worsened. Something didn’t want her cries to be heard. It was like the weather, or more accurately the town, wanted to keep her right where she was. It didn’t want anyone to hear her, it didn’t want anyone to come and save her stupid ass.

  Down on her heels again, her attention was drawn back to the sink. She had tried it repeatedly, losing count after attempt number nine, all with the same result of absolutely nada. Not even the creak of the pipes happened again after that first time.

  She reached into her pocket for her iPod, a little something to pass the time, then thought better of it. Better to keep her ears open in case someone moseyed through town.

  The iPod ended up in her hand anyway. It was something to hold. She twirled the earbud wire around her middle finger all the way to the second knuckle, then unwound it. Around the thumb this time, then back again. How strange the device looked in here, out of place among all the old relics of the cell.

  Speaking of old relics, how about that skeleton in the cell across from hers? Jody had completely forgotten about the guy (probably more like blocked him out) much like his jailers must have. Could that be her own future she was looking at? Would whatever had happened to him happen to her? She thought it was a very good possibility.

  The cockroach returned and was at her feet, sitting just outside the cell.

  “Well hello, Mr. Roach. Miss me?”

  Mr. Roach kept still but his antennae twitched continually. They kept on moving in a pattern, and after a few seconds she realized he was making a little triangle in the air. He was soon joined by a second cockroach who parked himself next to his him and started with the antennae thing, too, forming another triangle.

  The second bug was joined by a third, then a forth, then too many for Jody to count. She inched away, her eyes never leaving the growing group (mob) of cockroaches. They formed a single line reaching from one end of the hallway to the other, all making those strange little triangles in the air with their antennae. A second line formed behind the first. The things were coming out of the woodwork.

  And then it wasn’t just cockroaches. Spiders began to drop from the ceiling outside the cell, landing on the formation of roaches, their webs forming a thin curtain that danced in the breeze. The spiders sat on the cockroaches. There was no animosity between them; the roaches didn’t scuttle away; the spiders didn’t begin to eat them.

  The arachnids kept coming, and now there was a three-foot high wall of insects staring at Jody through the bars. She felt like screaming but didn’t; she was too amazed at what she was witnessing. That didn’t stop the wind from picking up again. The wind knew there was one helluva scream inside of Jody Baker right now.

  The lines of roaches and spiders began to get higher as the bugs crawled on top of one another, trying to reach Jody’s eye level. Arachnids—all different kinds now but she knew the names of none of them—helped roaches climb up their companions, and the wall got taller. Spiders jumped on top of spiders, and the wall got taller. Some balanced themselves on their hind legs, and the wall got taller. They were forming something, creating one big thing out of hundreds. Maybe thousands.

  And it kept getting taller.

  The wall was now as high as a man, and it was soon clear that that was what the bugs were going for. The bottom portion separated, creating two legs. It thinned above the legs, then widened, making a torso. Cockroaches pushed some spiders out of the upper half of the torso, forming two spider-arms with roach-hands. Spiders helped the remaining roaches shape a neck, then a head. Yes, they were certainly going for a man. About six feet tall.

  Two spiders popped out of the roach-head, and the man had eyes. They looked at Jody.

  “Why?” he asked, cockroaches moving up and down to produce the movement of a mouth.

  And that’s when Jody found her ability to scream again.

  A gale came over the town, a cyclone out of nowhere. So strong was the force of this new storm that it blew dust and debris into the cell. Dry leaves shot through the window. Some fell onto the floor while others continued onward into the bug-man, sticking like daggers in his arms. Spiders and cockroaches alike grabbed the leaves and shoved them out.

  A cockroach-hand reached for Jody through the bars. Always shifting and changing shape, roaches climbed over and around their brothers and sisters in order to stay connected and keep that image of a hand alive. Jody smiled at her small sliver of good luck: she was too far back for the bug-man to touch her.

  The arm started to lose thickness as cockroaches and spiders shifted positions, making the arm thinner
but longer. Oh yes, it would be able to reach her this way.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  When it was close enough, Jody struck out at the arm. It broke apart, sending a couple dozen cockroaches and just as many arachnids flying through the air. A new arm began to form as the roaches that had suddenly found themselves on the ground regrouped and headed back for their bug-man creation. She could whack away all she wanted, but this guy wasn’t going anywhere.

  Moving fingers from the new arm touched her cheek. Jody squirmed away, but a second elongated arm shot through the bars and held her head in place. Cockroaches danced on her forehead, did the two-step across her eyebrows, moshed over her nose.

  She screamed again and ducked, falling to the ground and taking a few bugs with her. The arms continued to reach for her—they weren’t giving up—and she swiped at the air. Her own arms were a windmill of fright, sending bugs in all directions. The creepy-crawlies quickly ran back out the cell to begin the process all over again.

  Jody’s arms were still flailing about madly when she realized they were no longer coming in contact with anything. She opened her eyes—they had been closed the entire time—to see the bug-man looking at her with his spider eyes. He was still outside the cell, although it would’ve been nothing for him to squeeze through the bars like the liquid metal villain from Terminator 2. The arms had returned to their normal length and now sat crossed across his chest. He looked down at her with a burning, scolding look.

  “There are nightmares here,” he said.

  Then he slumped his shoulders, hunched over, and fell apart. The bugs dropped to the floor as if poured from a bag and made a terrible yet soft clatter as they hit the ground: thousands of tiny legs connecting with the floor. The insects divided and went their separate ways: roaches to the left, spiders to the right.

  Jody sat with her back to the wall, as frozen and immobile as the skeletal remains across from her.

  28.

  Sundown was in full swing when Mike and Jillian returned to the lobby, where Sophia and Roscoe sat on one couch, Brett and Rachel on the other. Roscoe had his nose buried in Sophia’s lap, her arms creating a makeshift tent for his head.

  The rose-colored glow of the dying day that rained down from the skylight above hid Sophia’s features, but Mike could tell the woman was crying. Her head was in her hands, her shoulders heaved up and down—he didn’t need to see much more than that.

  Another blast of wind erupted outside, shaking the foundation of the hotel. Jillian clutched the railing with one arm while Mike grabbed her other to support himself.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  The wind slowly died away just like it had a few minutes ago. Testy, this town was. One second beautiful weather, the next it was threatening to rip itself apart.

  Mike and Jillian steadied themselves on the stairs. He let go of her arm and gave her a look: you okay? She nodded that she was. Perhaps a little frazzled, but okay. Or as okay as she was gonna get.

  Descending the remaining steps, they approached the couches. “The room was empty,” Jillian said.

  “Sort of,” Mike added as he placed the notebooks on the coffee table and slid them toward Sophia. They stopped near the edge so if her eyes were open she’d see them right below her.

  Ever-protective Roscoe stirred, adjusting his mass to get a better view of the man who had just thrust two notebooks at his mistress. A slow growl developed in the dog’s throat, then died away. A warning: don’t make her any more upset than she already is, buddy.

  While it remained true that Mike didn’t have a fondness for this particular type of four-legged pet, he couldn’t help but admit that Roscoe was growing on him. Sure, the dog had growled—but only as a warning, only to protect Sophia. Mike smiled. The dog was alright.

  * * *

  The notebooks were from her seventh grade English class. One of Mr. Kincaid’s assignments that year had been to keep a diary (or journal, if one wanted to call it that). He never said why his students were to do this and he never read them or asked them to be read in class. He just asked that they do them.

  At first Sophia had found it to be one of the more lame assignments he had assigned. Right up there with the Say Something Nice To A Fellow Classmate Every Day assignment. There was a bit of hippie in Mr. Kincaid and she started her journal with such facts. The more she did this—the more she grumbled about her life on those lined sheets of paper—the better she felt. Sophia soon found the practice of journaling her life quite calming. After those first few weeks she wrote an entry a day every day for a year, and kept that pace up until her senior year of high school.

  That’s when things turned to shit.

  Although Jack knew nothing of her journals (there were twelve of them by the time they were necking at Blackhawk Park), Sophia felt that if he ever found them he’d be one unhappy camper. Not that he was a naturally happy fella to begin with. The guy was always complaining about something. Too much school, not enough football, not enough beer—almost anything could get him riled up. There was never the right amount of anything in the world for Jack Welling.

  She wrote in her journal once a week after they had started dating, chronicling their progress as a couple, along with her own thoughts on the angry teenage boy that she loved for some reason and hoped would one day father her child. Sophia was willing to look a lot over in order to fulfill her greatest dream: a family. Sure, Jack was a fixer-upper, but who wasn’t?

  Jack was more likely to read a copy of Swank or Sports Illustrated than Sophia’s journal, but she kept her writings a secret all the same, hiding the notebooks as a junkie might hide their stash. Inside those notebooks were her musings on the possibility that her beloved would one day be a raging alcoholic like her father. The star quarterback of the high school football team, there was nothing Jack liked more than to tie one on after a successful game to celebrate. Eventually that ritual graduated to tying one on after every loss, too. Then it was simply a daily thing, as normal for Jack as watching TV. His life had become the ultimate drinking game. Another commercial on TV? Swig a beer. Gotta take a piss? Open up that whiskey. Time for bed? Better get some vodka to go with that.

  Around the time Sophia was putting words to paper about ending things with him and admitting to herself that perhaps this was not the man to father her child, she became pregnant with Jody. Abortion was not an option for either her or Jack (they had both been raised strict Catholics), so they kept the baby and were married unceremoniously in Las Vegas as soon as school let out in June. Sophia wasn’t sure if it was the baby or the marriage, but one—or both—of those events crippled their relationship beyond repair forever. Any chance of pulling Jack Welling from the hands of full-blown alcoholism were flushed away with the coming of Jody that December. A small part of Sophia hoped all that would change Jack—that a child, a family, would make him immediately mature, that this would be how he got fixed. Such was not the case and she had felt foolish for even thinking so. Once a drinker, always a drinker, once an asshole, always an asshole. Just like her father.

  Without looking up she said, “These were in the closet.”

  Mike nodded. Then, realizing her eyes were still down and she couldn’t hear him nod, he said, “Yeah.”

  “These were in my closet.”

  “That’s kinda what we thought,” Jillian said, quietly sitting down on the arm of the couch next to Roscoe.

  Brett looked the definition of confused. “What’s your closet doing up there?”

  Sophia shrugged. “That was my, our, old bedroom. In Santa Monica.” She opened the top notebook to a random page. The neat cursive handwriting that she had adopted in high school told the tale of her shopping experience with her since-departed mother. They were celebrating the divorce of her parents with a shopping spree (up to five-hundred dollars) at the Beverly Center. Sophia had gotten a dress at Bloomingdale’s while her mother opted for clothes not-quite-her-style from the nearby Hot Topic. Sophia’s mother knew she cou
ldn’t quite pull it off, but she was gonna have one fun time trying.

  She must’ve been twenty-two or -three years old when she wrote that. She couldn’t remember for sure. She had stopped using dates in the journal a little after high school.

  The next page told of the time Jack had gotten too drunk and began yelling obscenities at the television, then abruptly stopped. Concerned, Sophia had run down the stairs to see if he had perhaps choked on his own vomit. No such luck; the man had merely passed out.

  The following page did not have her handwriting on it. Writing was there, yes, but not hers. In sloppy block letters—the writing-style of someone just learning the art of the alphabet—were two phrases:

  NIITMARS HEER

  SINLIE FOUR

  Sophia stared at the words. Her spelling and penmanship weren’t that bad.

  “What is it?” Mike asked.

  “This isn’t my handwriting. Here, on this page.” She twirled the notebook around so the others could see. “I didn’t write that.”

  Brett looked at the words. “What’s it say, Rach?”

  “I’m not sure. Doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Nightmares here,” Jillian said. “Sin, lie for. If you read it out-loud it makes sense.”

  “Not much,” said Mike.

  Sophia flipped to the next page and they all saw this:

  EVER TRAPPED

  “At least that one’s spelled right,” Jillian said.

  “Yay,” said Mike.

  “Nightmares here,” Rachel said under her breath. “Sin, lie. Forever trapped.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mike asked.

  * * *

  Jillian’s mind raced with images of the past five hours. Even though she was having trouble believing it, at least now she knew what the hell was going on.