She woke before dawn to secure the sign into her yard. “EVERYTHING MUST GO!” it said in large, block letters she had traced from a stencil. “EVERYTHING” was waiting under blanketed tables in the garage, which she trundled out into the driveway as the neighbors’ lights clicked on for the day. She sipped from a thermos of coffee, breathing heavily with the strain of lifting and the uneasiness of letting go.
When folks arrived she greeted them with a smile, saying, “PRICES NEGOTIABLE!” with the same enthusiasm as the sign, as if stenciled. She watched the knickknacks dwindle down throughout the day, tallying each purchase in a ledger. In her heart was another ledger, taking toll in a different way.
Note: This is a WIP. I haven’t shared WIPs in years, but I am hoping that doing so inspires me to keep going and see the thing through to the end. The best comp I can give for this piece (and hope to achieve at the conclusion) is Perks of Being a Wallflower set in a small Iowa town. Please let me know if you have any parts you like, or things you want to see in future sections!
I hand Nick the nearly-spent joint, watching his thin lips puff at the damp butt; I imagine the molecules of our saliva mixing in the paper fibers, against my better judgment.
“Careful, Trent! Squirrel!” shouts Veronica from the back seat.
I swerve just in time to dodge the skittering creature, the neon contents of our Big Gulps – blue raspberry, lime, tropical punch – sloshing from side to side in the cupholders of my ancient Mercury.
“Jesus,” Nick coughs, hacking out a cloud of smoke that quickly vanishes out the window, into the golden-hour light. “I swear they’ve got a death wish. Remember how Mr. Larrabee would say the wildlife around here have scrambled brains because of the chemical runoff from the factories out east? God, I miss that guy.”
“Dude, didn’t he get, like, sent upriver for sexting Jenifer O’Hair? He’s a fucking creep,” says Veronica.
“There’s beauty in the breakdown,” I reply, pointing to the cassette-to-aux converter plugged into the dashboard tinnily playing “Let Go” through the car speakers.
I am naked in front of a mirror, examining myself again. Mid-20s, average build, ungainly to someone in the spotlight but perfectly acceptable for a chef; mine is a body worn by the average everywhere. A softness to the edges, flat yet firm ass. That’s my body, a space I scrutinize way too often, a bad habit I would love to break.
There is classical music playing from the portable speaker on the dresser. I can taste the heartbeat of the timpani and swell of the violins on my spine. I towel off, my inspection complete, and begin to choose clothes for the party. Before a decision is made, Parker makes his entrance, carrying a sack with new hand towels from the store. He follows me as I dip into the walk-in closet, but I pivot at the last second and turn to the dresser instead, throwing on a pair of underwear before considering the outfit further. By the time I’ve thrown on the tightest pants I own, the blackest shirt, and a windbreaker, Parker is already off showering, getting ready for his own evening, apart.
The best of friends are glued together on the sofa, wrapped in a mélange of blankets, the blasting AC sprouting goosebumps on their exposed wrists as they pass a joint back and forth, the cold air decreasing their body temperatures, combatting the friction of the undercover exploration.
Ice spins around slowly in plastic cups of pinot grigio, box-poured. Around them, wasted partygoers are shuffling off to bedrooms, to nooks, to crannies, doors locked and clicked and fastened with bangles around the knobs to keep a separation between fact and refrigeration.
Muffled moans, the parting sighs of lips opening, tongues swirling together, the pitch of a pendulum somewhere in the apartment, swinging back and forth—slower and slower—as the two nestle somehow closer, the yellow haze overtaking them, fervent departure from friendship into something more. They melt together, lost to the desires boiling inside them.
I would spend hours out among the collection of Arkansas pines that hugged the eastern edge of the property, breathing in their ethereal presence that seemed imbued with a bygone, forbidden magic. Instead of unloading the semi, assembling the dining table and chairs, doing anything to further the idea that you and I were now permanent, stationary creatures trying out that thing called domesticity, out there among the pines I remained, trying to decipher the undiscovered language hidden in the bark patterns, hoping to find the answers, a reason for our new life in the heart of the heart of the country. And though the house would eventually open itself to us, I would—selfishly, I realize now, no matter how much you told me otherwise—pass the time out there while you searched for temp gigs to tide us over until the farm was up and running, contemplating the chaos of the passing weeks, ignoring those to come.
The old man always seemed one step away from death. Like the next one would claim him, the reaper mawing at his heels would finally snag a bony ankle and drag him to the underworld. You always thought that it was the strict adherence to routine that kept him alive, as was common with many of the Japanese men you knew from work at the marketplace. Twelve-hour days on his feet allowed for the appearance of togetherness. But watching him closely, as you did, as you could not avoid, you began to notice the wiring starting to loosen. When you saw him in the morning, his first words would fail to materialize—out came only a cough filmed with gruel, some undiscovered mucus that covered his openings like cheesecloth. When he reached low for something, you’d see the stall, the contemplation, as if his joints and muscles were saying, “No. You will not get up from this.”
Today you saw him skittering across the iced parking lot before your shift. His ears latched with muffs, a nude herringbone shawl sarcophagizing his hollowed cheekbones. Oversized khakis flopping around in the breeze, emphasizing the diaper silhouette around his puff-pastry of an ass. Most mornings, though, he would be there well before you arrived, his car parked pell-mell in the tundra of the parking lot. You always wondered why he decided to sleeve his steering wheel in leopard print. Those times he invited you in the car, perhaps after a shift while you both waited for the windows to defrost, you would focus all your thoughts on the steering wheel, trying to shake the image of the mottled hands clutching it. To reach over and peel the cover off, to throw it in a slush puddle, to hide it from him, to burn it to ash. The thoughts circulate without end. Wait patiently. Wait until he leaves the window down or the door unlocked. You will get your chance. You absolutely will.
And Marla is sitting behind the wheel of the old four-by, driving past her now. It is dusk on the eastern outskirts, and way out past the three curves where my brother lives are the first stars. Adona is buried somewhere in the golden light of end day, in the dregs of sunlight that are still seeping into the basin of the river valley through the clouds. The family lot at Mount Ararat Cemetery is burning its low, hot embers.
Tuck and Marla are up front, and I am crammed up in the back, my long legs hedged between my niece’s booster chair and a Styrofoam cooler half full of beer and half full of deer sausage. A comfortable, boozy silence fills the air of the truck. Until Marla breaks it.
“Some day it’ll by us on Ararat,” she says, twiddling her calloused thumbs against the wheel like her eminent demise is no big deal. “We were talking a month ago, before you got back, about our stone.” Tuck and Marla, ragtag parents extraordinaire, ready to die at fifty. The curveballs never stop.
She goes on. “A joint marker we were thinking. Maybe two little hearts that intertwine in marble, kissed with doves. What do you think?”
Maybe it would be better if humans had cat eyes that could reflect when a light shines on them. Little pearlescent ovals, there in the darkness.
I live in a world where I own a garage, and in the garage there is a person I don’t know, waiting for me. The person has a 401(k) but doesn’t know what it means. In their head, they read it as “Four oh one, kay?” I know this because I do the same. John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt? Is that you?
This person has a damp, stained purple rag in their right hand, a present for me. On their mouth is a stain, too. Of convenience store, cherry-red slush.
It is April and I am moments from it now. There is an odd breeze flowing through the still-dead husks of oak leaves leftover from winter, just behind me.
If humans had cat eyes I would open the garage door and see this person’s gaze reflecting against the soft light from the streetlamp. If I saw them, I might freeze for a moment. I might stop and reflect on the state of things — on the weather — on how content I might be feeling — whether what I have eaten agrees with me — whether I have a runny nose.
But then? What? I would know what it means, to be there, to see those deep-sea eyes hovering blindly where they are, just in the corner, unblinking; I wasn’t born yesterday. I would like to think that I have even lived a life fulfilled, have seen and done enough to feel content with what was about to happen. I might think that it would be time to join them, and I would close the door, shuttering their eyes and allowing them the courtesy of approaching me in a perfect stillness. I wouldn’t even scream.
Maybe it wouldn’t be better after all. Maybe it’s better how it is.
Photograph by Todd Hido, an artist I deeply admire, from his collection “Homes at Night.” Whenever it gets warm and I find myself outside at night, I can’t help but think of this collection as I roam the alleyways in search of something I don’t think exists. Consider checking out and supporting this artist.
i. the icelandic word gluggaveður loosely translates to “window weather” and how fitting for that day in early april
ii. when a sinister shape took my window, all rook and malice, primordial sound-terror echolalia caw, caw, aw and perched on the plateau of my garage —
iii. •scanning, scanning• buttonblack were his eyes, obsidian and carrioncrazed! the raven slid his talons pianist-like across the shingles
I dreamt in arpeggios the night of the blood moon. The world became an overfull glass of red wine under its infrared glare. Plants in my windows, muted to grey, alien tentacles tickling the panes in the inverted light, shivered, their roots tightening in suspense of the claret nightmare the blood moon bore.
A paragraph away, I found myself stretched to fit the countryside, pores sprouting newborn life, eyes, large as the craters of the clotted moon, pools of gelatin, ecosystems revolving around demonic nuclei. Ropes of eternity clasped around me like lover’s hands, burning bonds into my skin until there was no telling lariat from dermis.
My molten heart cried out in anguish, Please, let there be more! as tectonic plates slid together to applause the soliloquy. The earth seized, tides defied gravity, stretching up toward the heavens in a twisted braid. My pillow became damp, then the sheets, the liquid crimson, warm sex. Onward, onward into the hematic night, entire universes nestled into my teardrops.
Come morning, come night, the music of the dreamworld tinged with bittersweet recollection, I woke, scarred by the wound of time, by the blood moon unhung, inside me.
Trent McMahon 