Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear (3 page)

“
Almost forgot my trunk.” I
gave the officer a crooked smile as I pulled the trunk from the
backseat, exposing the scratched leather. The trunk crashed down on
the ground and rolled over, flattening a forest of tall grass. The
trunk remained closed. I placed the toe of my shoe against the
trunk and felt better.

All the while the officer
observed my desperate behavior. His nose twitched and he sniffed
out my fear and hopelessness. Those wide, reflective lenses,
something I’d now imagined as alien eyes, peering into my darkest
recesses to uncover weakness, stared and stared. With a sharp cock
of his neck to the left and a subsequent pop, the officer looked
away.

“
Close
the door.” He said while staring out of the cruiser’s clouded
windshield. I was certain I could hear the bob and sway of the
little tree air freshener as the wind blew into the cruiser through
the open back door.
Have a nice
day!

I obliged and closed the
door. The tires of the cruiser dug into the earth and spit dirt to
its rear. Soon after, the car drove back down the long dirt road
leading to the Orson’s. I watched the officer in the rearview,
watched those alien eyes, and knew they were watching me back,
waiting for me to make a last-minute wrong move so he could stick
that eight-inch barrel in my face and blow my city boy brains out
the back of my head.

“
Thanks, asshole.” I
whispered. I saw brake lights and regretted whispering. The cruiser
never stopped, however.

I stared at my toppled,
leather-bound trunk for some time, and tried to devise a means of
getting it off of the ground and into the house. I rolled the broad
trunk over and upright. My fingers slipped into the leather belts
that encompassed the container. I hoisted the trunk up against my
chest.

“
Don’t lift with your
back.” I told myself with a tightened throat. I’d heard it more
than once. I fumbled through the high grass like a cartoon
character, while trying to get to the house. When I reached the
stairs, I pushed my toe out in front of me, feeling for the
vertical rise of each step, trying, to no avail, to look around the
bulky object in my arms. One step. Two steps. Three steps. I hadn’t
killed myself yet. Four steps. A foul smell crept from the house as
I neared.

I kicked the bottom of the
screen door in a desperate knock and it was opened by a small
child, no older than four years. The little boy wore a striped
shirt and shorts. He was barefoot on the wooden floor and the ends
of his toes were coalminer black. He had a blonde bowl cut that
hung to his wide blue eyes. There was a brown mess of food around
his lips. The boy didn’t say anything, but I smiled at him and
whispered, “Thanks, bud.”

I stepped past him and
placed the trunk next to one of the two florally upholstered
couches in the living room. There was a broad fireplace in the
living area with porcelain clowns on the mantle. On shelves near
one of the walls, paintings of sad-faced clowns were crowded
together. On the coffee table were salt and pepper shakers topped
with clown heads, with their painted porcelain red hair. In the
corner of the room, near a large window was a rocking chair with a
terry clown, with long knitted gloved fingers and uncomfortably
happy eyes.

“
What in the fu—“ I paused
as the young boy tugged on the leg of my black slacks.

“
Whatcha got in da box?” He
asked.

I paused, caught off-guard.
“It’s a surprise, little man. Don’t you worry one bit about it,
alright?” I ruffled his hair and tried my best to imitate the
dreadful smile of the rocking chair clown.

I heard a loud and
obnoxious woman’s voice surging into the room from behind me. She
wafted the miserable scent from the kitchen in with her.

“
Oh! Hello!” The woman’s
voice rang out in painful dissonance. Her voice reminded me of an
old recording. Suddenly I was enveloped in a hug. The woman’s large
body and bosom pressed against my thin chest. Somewhere in the
abyss of tacky pink floral fabric, I was restrained and in shock. I
felt a small wooden spoon tapping my back as she held me like a
husband returning from war. When she pulled from the embrace, she
kept hold of my upper arms with her thick fingers.

Judith, I assumed, had thin
lips with thick red lipstick. Her hair was fire truck red and
wound in spirals on her head. She wore a yellow flower apron over
her bulbous pink flower dress. The woman was a walking field
of floral species fighting for dominance over her turf. The
cacophony of color was distracting, even in a room full of
clowns.

“
Well, aren’t you jus’
precious? I’m Judith Mortimer, but you jus’ call me Judy.” She made
her way back toward the kitchen. “I got you some sweet tea jus’
over here in the other room, now. You com’on over and get—“ Before
she could finish, she tripped over my wooden trunk and
stumbled.

Judith observed the trunk
perplexedly, “My, my, what’ve we got here? This yours,
handsome? You should take this on upstairs while I make you
something to eat. Don’t want anyone tripping on this here and
breaking their neck. Us here, we’re having the finest soup. The
finest! Momma’s recipe, in fact.” Judith waved the wooden spoon
around as she stepped back into the kitchen. Her rambling faded
into incoherent warbles in the other room.

A terrible stench filled
the house from what I imagined was a witch’s cauldron in the
kitchen. I started thinking of ways to get out of eating. The smell
was distinctly animal and unclean. I wanted to see into the pot, to
see if eyeballs or goat testicles floated and bobbed in the fluid.
I peered into the kitchen, only to see Judith bobbing to and fro—a
windy field of flowers that all smelled like cow shit.

I heard an engine start
outside. I scrambled toward the window, still under the innocent
observation of the young boy.

“
Don’t you have cartoons or
something to watch?” I asked the boy as I pulled the floral
curtains to the side to look for the source of the engine growl.
Flowers. Clowns. Flowers. Clowns.

Mortimer was outside of a
running, dented old truck. He tossed a small toolbox into the bed
of the pickup and wobbled back toward the driver’s seat. I noticed
he had to jump to get into the front seat of the vehicle.
What a pitiful man
, I
thought.

Judith was singing in the
kitchen.

“
Are you washed in the blood? Are you washed in the blood of
the lamb?
” She sang. A tapping lanyard of
an unbalanced ceiling fan in the living room played a beat behind
the tune. “
Are your garments spotless, are
they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the
lamb?
”

I examined my hands. I
observed the smeared red mess on them.
Afraid of a little blood
, he said. I
looked at my clean white shirt. I grit my teeth and closed the
curtain as Mortimer started down the road. I lifted my trunk from
the ground and stumbled around the small child, the coffee table,
and the couches until I stood at the bottom of the stairs. I
shifted my body and pressed the trunk between me and the wall for
support while I surveyed the stairs. Behind me, in step like a
soldier in training, the little boy followed, observing the stairs
as well.

“
Any ideas?” I
asked.

The boy turned from the
stairs to look at me, his whole head turning with each glance. The
little boy’s lips smacked and his tongue wagged around his mouth to
wipe away the food on his face.

“
Didn’t think
so.”

I pulled the trunk from the
wall and stepped up the first step. I went on to the next, one foot
in front of another.

“
So this is how I die.” I
muttered, half-muted as the box pressed against my
cheek.

The boy took each step
behind me. I was aware that if I fell the boy wouldn’t have a
chance. It wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends.
Thanks for fixing my car. I killed your
kid
.

There were more clowns upstairs on
shelves and walls.

“
It’s a fucking circus in
here.” I was sweating again. I remembered the boy was behind me
then. I looked back his way.

He covered his mouth.

“
That’s right. You didn’t
hear anything.” I reminded him.

At the top of the stairs
was a small bathroom. To the right was the boy’s room. Boyish toys,
plastic and pewter in action poses, were scattered in the wake of
some great war of the boy’s imagination. I wondered which of the
muscular heroes won the fight. There was a racecar bed against one
of the walls. It seemed an ideal place to put down the trunk—my
ball and chain. My terrible responsibility.

I set the box down and
leaned backward as far as I could to stretch. “Finally!” I
shouted.

The boy watched the box with
curiosity. I noticed his attention and it made me
uneasy.

“
Listen. I’m going to wash
up, alright? I want to be nice and clean for your mom’s shitty
meal.” Cleanliness was important. I grinned and rubbed my bloody
hand in his blonde hair, leaving it matted and discolored. “How
about you keep an eye on the box for me?” It didn’t seem necessary
to tell him. “Just stay out of it. Very important things in there I
wouldn’t want you messing up with your grubby little hands,
alright?”

I went out of the room. The
boy seemed unaffected by my language or demands. I stepped into the
bathroom. Wallpaper walls and carpet floors. The bathroom reeked of
cheap potpourri. The bottom of the shower curtain was dingy and
brown, the same rusty color that stained the inside of the
sink.

I closed the door and
locked it.

Click
.

I stared at myself in the
mirror. I looked dismal. I examined the crusted blood on my hands
which accentuated every crease and crack on them. I used the
fingers of one hand to roll the blood on the other hand into small
balls that dropped to the bathroom floor. Thin pieces of the boy’s
blonde hair were knit into the gore. Life and death in the palm of
my hand. My breathing slowed. There was something satisfying about
the manipulation of the blood. My eyes snapped back to the
mirror to catch a smile that my reflection hid—only it hid it a
little too late.

I turned on the water in
the stained sink. The water smelled like cracked boiled
eggs.
What was cleaner
, I wondered,
the water or the
blood
? I scraped a sliver of soap from the
porcelain sink. It was either exfoliating soap or melded with
contaminants. I rubbed the soap between my hands as they sat
beneath the brown-tinted water and watched as the dried blood
swirled down the drain. I dried my hands on a crusted terrycloth
that read
Home Sweet Home
with a little white and brown house sewn into
it
.
I couldn’t
stand it. I pulled the towel from the hook and took it with
me.

Click.

I stepped out of the
bathroom and expected the boy to be outside waiting for me—my
shadow. He wasn’t there. Downstairs I heard the humming and
caterwauling coming from Judith. In an effort to stay away from her
for as long as possible, I went back into the boy’s room. I paused
as I noticed the boy standing in front of my open trunk. I dropped
the terrycloth to the ground.
Home Sweet
Home
. I crushed the towel beneath my foot
like Godzilla and watched the boy. He hadn’t noticed me
yet.

The boy rummaged through
his newfound treasure. Metal
clinks
and
clanks
echoed through the room as he searched. Satisfied
with something he’d found, the boy rose.

“
What do you have there,
little guy?” I sounded friendly and okay with the incursion. I
wasn’t. The primal fear in the boy’s eyes showed that he understood
my anger and disappointment.

In the boy’s hand was my machete, one
of the many tools of the trade. The sharpened blade extended half
of the boy’s length, but it was light weight and easy for him to
lift. The blade bobbed back and forth unsteadily. I took another
step toward him.

“
Didn’t I
ask you to stay out of the box? Don’t you know it’s impolite to dig
through people’s things without permission?” I took another
step.
Home Sweet Home
was in ruins somewhere behind me—somewhere in
front of me, too.

The boy said nothing. He hid behind
the machete best he could.

“
What should I expect?
You’re dad’s an idiot and your mom is…” I looked back toward the
open door and fell silent enough to hear the song.

Are you washed in the
blood? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?

My fingers wrapped around the boy’s
fingers and around the hilt of the blade.

“
We don’t want you hurting
yourself now, do we?” I crouched to make myself eyelevel with the
boy. I pulled the blade from the boy’s hand, like a successful
negotiator. “That’s right. See? This isn’t a toy, little
man.”