Peri sat in WashingtonPark watching one brave squirrel beg for food. He circled the bench where she’d chosen to enjoy the afternoon. Cyclists zoomed around the park dreaming of the big race while socialites walked their small dogs. She remembered sharing a blanket with Drew and wished he were here now sharing this bench.
She was tired of remembering, wishing, and hoping. Last night was another missed opportunity for a kiss and the voice the unsaid things. They’d stood at the door for several awkward moments staring at their shoes. This was goodbye, at least for a month.
The squirrel was pacing at her feet and much too close to bare flesh. “Listen little one, if you bite me I’ll snap your little neck,” Peri said, the squirrel looking quite perplexed. “If we have a deal, eat this.”
He ran off with an offered chunk of granola bar and crunched on it in a nearby tree. She knew not to feed wild animals because they may forget how to fend for themselves. Yet, Peri fed this little one for good karma, hoping he wouldn’t bite her flip-flop shod feet.
“Violent,” Peri said stirring the mushrooms sautéing on the stovetop.
“What?” Gabe asked his eyebrows drawn back in shock. “Did someone hurt you?”
“Not exactly. I don’t want to talk about it.” Peri continued to busy herself with menial kitchen tasks: checking the chicken in the over, opening a bottle of wine, scrubbing a stain on the counter that would never fade.
“A few weeks ago a faculty member came on to me at the bar.” Peri paused and turned to face Gabe. Those eyes, those fucking eyes. She knew she was about to come undone but she trusted those eyes.
“At one point, he licked me. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean it was gross and I felt uncomfortable, but I let it go. Anyway, I was approached this week by the college about his behavior that night. Turns out, he’s done this to a lot of other women.”
Gabe moved toward her unsure if his touch was welcome. Peri closed the gap between them and took his hand.
“When I met with the human resources officer, that’s when I realized how upset it had made me. What he did to me is considered sexual assault. It just brought up all kinds of bad shit from the past.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Aren’t I always?”
Gabe pulled her into his arms. Peri was so happy to be here, to be held by a compassionate man.
I pulled up to the house, shifted into park, drew a deep breath and stepped from the car. The red colonial brick and white trimmed windows glared with more malice than I’d remembered. It was the kind of house I’d yearned for as a child, a place where white-picket-fence dreams transpired. Today, a sadness as cold as the Iowa January day seemed to be sprinkled over the property.
Jonas, my husband, had grown up in this house. I’d always ascribed warmth with his presence—a happier day when he’d slept under the eaves. Pneumonia, however, robbed us of his warmth nine years ago. His mother, Maureen, discovered the comfort of razorblades six months later. His father was the only inhabitant left standing until two years ago when a simple staph infection overran his life cup. I now owned the house.
I opened the front door and was greeted by silence. It was the sort of silence that promised to chew you up and spit you out on the edge of reality and I looked like lunch.
What had I expected—the haunting of ghosts, malevolent spirits, or eerie horror movie music?
The entry was as I remember, inviting and beautiful appinted. The whole of the downstairs—from parlor to dining room, from foyer to kitchen—was decorated in coordination shades of blue, green, and burgundy. Everything had been recently dusted, vacuumed, waxed, and fluffed by the maid service hired by the lawyer to keep the house presentable. But it felt almost lived in. I wanted dust bunnies and moldy, foul smells. I wanted it to feel dead. I wanted to feel dead.
It seemed the residents were on holiday and should be back any day; however, their vacation home was across town in the Boone County Cemetary.
I meandered through the rooms, stopping in the dining room. The deep mahogany of the massive table looked as though it’d been stained with gallons of blood.
I shed scarf, mittens, and peacoat, dropped them on the floor and sat at the table. Sat in the same chair she’d sat in ten years ago, Thanksgiving when Jonas told his parents he was sick.
Aislyn ran away from the art gallery. Her heels clocked with each jogging step as she prayed she wouldn’t bust a strap or the stiletto heel itself. She rounded the corner intot he alley to catch her breath. Leaning her frail forearms on to the frigid brick wall and bending double, she sucked in the cold night air in gasps. Acid rose up her throat, gagging and choking her.
“Pull it together,” Aislyn admonished herself, swallowing the hydrochloric acid and calming her ragged inhalations.
The heap beside the dumpster began to rise from the poorly maintained pavement. Aislyn stepped back from the wall, dusted off her bare forearms and straightened the black linen dress that fell to her knees.
A grey houndstooth coat soon emerged from the pile of rags and discarded construction drop cloths. A young man somewhere between the right to vote and the legal purchase of liquor stepped from the dumpster’s shadow and into the reflected glow of a sodium vapor street lamp.
Aislyn took a step back and steadied herself with one hand on the brick wall. In the alley the mortor hadn’t been as carefully maintained as the building façade.
Farmhouse five miles from town, set a top the rolling hills with views of distant farm steads. The large house had an open floor plan—the only interior doors separated the bedroom suite and guest bathroom from the public space. All the windows stretched two stories and were unadorned by draperies, just large portals to the surround farmlands. Aislyn did not wear clothes in her won home. She was not embarrassed nor thrilled by her nakedness. It was a simple reflection of her repulsion of human humility. Furthermore, it didn’t occur to her to dress until ready to face the world. Only the bedroom suite had deep, dark limo tint on the windows to filter out the UV rays and darkening the room to midnight at noon. Yet the overhead lights in the rest of the house mimicked sunlight at high noon on the summer solstice.
Aislyn loved the deep yard to dance in the evening with only the crickets and cicadas to serenade her. This house was built upon the ruins of the frontier cabin of her family. Made of logs and mud the entire one room cabin would have fit modestly into her bedroom. Aislyn imagined her family dining and sleeping with the space of her king-sized bed.
The property was cared for by a real estate agency that monitored the security of the house, biannual cleaning and landscaping services. Although Aislyn considered this to be her home, she would only inhabit the house for a few weeks once a decade. This time, however, she hoped to stay for as long as possible, as long as her rouse would allow.
Constructed in 1906 around the height of Frank Lloyd Wright’s popularity, the house was based on the architect’s designs: merging prairie style design with traditional Japanese design. The house melded with surrounding landscape with little interruption between exterior and interior spaces. The west side of the house opened onto a patio of terracotta pavers via ten identical glass doors. The muted colors of the interior mimicked with hues seen from the window.
The Christmas was grey and chilled. He was not there to give it warmth. The wind’s icy fingers fondled him beneath his father’s blue wool overcoat, massaging the nape of his emaciated neck and the bony outlines of his ribs.
Aside from the swirling snow, nothing else moved on the block of shops closed for the holy night. The huge flakes drifting down from heaven to the dirty, sodden streets of middle America seemed to soften the industrial noises of the surrounding middle class town. Not a sound could be heard on the darkening streets: not a passing car, no the soap factory churning out hundreds of bars of glycerin soap by the minute. Jonas couldn’t even hear the trucks or semis zooming past Haxton on the adjacent interstate.
Jonas wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck and face as he stared into the window of Kesey Gallery. A life-size photograph of a pre-adolescent boy gazed back at him. The young boy’s naked chest and arms were marred by white scars waxen with age. The boy in the black and white still carried a teddy bear by one ragged paw and had a rifle resting on the other shoulder.
Jonas recognized the scars as being from deep cuts and serious belt lashings. Yet the photograph’s subject wore the spider webs of scar tissue as an armor, as though proud that his interconnected weaving on his chest would shield him from the worst of the world. Jonas studied the blank eyes in the photograph, hoping to see some sort of humanity, or innocence, or light reflected in those pools of dark sorrow. It wasn’t until he tasted the salt that he realized that he was weeping. Tears fell slowly in a lazy zig-zag down his face much like the snow fell.
It was as if he were meeting his brother for the first time—a recognition of hared terror, pain, and violent retribution. Jonas swallowed his gum, pulled his hat down over his ears, and wandered into the cold night in search of pancakes and possibly a warm place to sleep.
Brian said, "My father didn’t have much use for children. I was dumped at my grandparents soon after my mom died, then they shipped me off to Dover boarding school.
"According to my mom, my father had other disposable children. It’s weird to think I have brothers and sisters. My dad paid my mom to have an abortion, when she wouldn’t take his money. His whole family harassed my mom until she had to move to Texas, where I was born. We lived there until dad was locked up for drug possession. Our welcome home present was sugar in the gas tank of my mom’s Nova."
Classic cars on the road for one last pleasure cruise before the harvest and during a temporary dip in gas prices. Driving past rural churches, and long forgotten graveyards; small towns not on the pages of an atlas; outdated presidential campaign posters on barn doors; random cornstalks jutting out among the bean fields; houses with upward of five lightning rods; towns without a chain grocer.
“Oh, yes. The garlic myth is false. Vampires love garlic because of the strong taste. It is like how a salesman salivate at the sight of no soliciting signs on the front porch.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t follow.”
“The no soliciting sign means an easy sale. Only the weak put out signs to deter something they can’t say no to. To vampires, garlic signifies the weak of faith and an easy kill.”
Patricia is a feverish writer of literary nonsense and an indie filmmaker. She haunts the stacks of your favourite bookstore, sips coffee at the local beanery, and collects journals of random scribbles.
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Dean Koontz says, "Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain." If that is true, then welcome to my clinic.
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