In Sickness: Stories From a Very Dark Place Read online

  A rat crawled by and Clint whispered to Brittany.

  "Psssst, Brittany, look..."

  She didn't turn around.

  "A rat, Brittany. Look."

  She just kept walking.

  Clint went up close to her to get away from the rat. It didn't even seem to notice him, but it got him nervous anyway.

  Brittany smelled, but not like she used to. Both smells were bad, but this one was weird, like wet leaves and something so super sweet, it reeked.

  Brittany went through a hole in the fence where lots of thick green weeds made it so you couldn't see what was on the other side.

  Clint hesitated. Brittany called his name. Not in the loud annoying way she used to, but soft and gentle like a wisp of smoke.

  He followed her through the hole in the fence.

  Brittany was making her way through the tangle of weeds.

  He was going through a jungle looking for a tribe's golden idol and Brittany was his native guide.

  Brittany stopped, crouching down. Clint followed. He stood next to her.

  She was climbing through a basement window with no glass.

  Brittany disappeared inside. He heard her pink sneakers hit the floor.

  Clint felt like running away, but then he thought about the treasure and climbed in after her.

  He thought it'd be dark, but there was a light. A lantern like he used for camping sat on a scuffed-up table. A thin man with a beard sat by it on an old folding chair.

  The man smiled. He was missing teeth. He put his playing cards down and got up from the chair.

  Maybe the man was a pirate protecting his gold. Clint turned to go, but the pirate was already next to him, his hand on Clint's wrist. The man held it so tight, it hurt.

  "Looks like Providence has sent me another precious child," the man said.

  Clint tried to pull his arm away, but couldn't. When he kicked him, the man picked the boy up and put his arms around Clint in a suffocating bear hug.

  The pirate man was hot and sweaty and stunk of b.o. and beer.

  Clint looked over the man's shoulder, at Brittany. She stood in the corner, staring.

  The man's hold got tighter. Then, he let go and dropped him. Clint was free for a moment.

  The boy took a step back. The man's hands went around his throat.

  Clint thought of wasps. He caught them in jam jars in his backyard. He'd pop on the lid, and the buzzing would get real loud and angry as the wasp flew 'round and 'round, banging into the glass. After a while, the body dropped to the bottom of the jar, thready wasp legs like fingers of a tiny hand, opening and closing. Then, the legs stopped and the wasp got hard, like a pebble.

  Brittany was gone. The boy's dead eyes seemed to be staring at the pink sneakers beside him on the floor.

  The Hirsute You

  It tasted like strong black coffee.

  She rolled the candy around in her mouth. Cathie would have preferred something sweeter, but that was all she had brought with her for lunch.

  The wrapper blew off the bench and landed by a tree. She would not be picking it up-appellation of "litter bug" be damned. The other side of the park was teeming with tourists, business people on their lunch hour and obnoxious kids on school field trips. Her little piece of land was bordered by a black gate; in the center, a small garden of roses.

  A rustling behind her, as if someone was crinkling stiff paper. Cathie turned around. The squirrel held the wrapper between its paws, munching the dregs of the coffee-flavored candy.

  Usually, Cathie liked squirrels. But this one was different, bigger than the others in the park. Its fur red instead of gray...

  The wrapper was a very meager offering, not much to nibble on. The animal stared at Cathie. Her hand tightened into a fist and she held her breath, looking back at it until the creature scampered away.

  "You stupid fucking bitch!" a man shouted.

  Cathie looked up. Two men and a woman had entered her section of the park. They looked homeless, but were young and didn't have that hard, defeated look yet.

  The men seemed agitated and stood on either side of the woman. Steeling herself, Cathie prepared to intervene on the girl's behalf, if necessary.

  "I wasn't with the fucking nigger!" the girl rasped in a voice that sounded like someone had implanted barbed wire in her throat.

  "I saw you going off with him!"

  "I was fucking scared," the girl told him.

  "What the fuck you looking at?"

  Cathie looked down at her book. She didn't realize she'd been staring.

  They weren't going to run her off. This place was hers. She'd never seen these white trash morons in there before.

  Anyway, what did they expect? If you yell, of course people are going to look at you. Cathie wished the red squirrel would come back and slash them to pieces with its claws.

  The trash resumed arguing. They'd ruined things for her, but she didn't want them to think she was afraid of them. She'd wait five minutes and then leave.

  Cathie closed her book. She fingered its spine, purposefully nonchalant. Slowly, she uncrossed her legs and stood up. She was afraid they'd laugh as they saw her leave, but they didn't seem to notice.

  She walked out of the park, with what she imagined was grace and dignity. Two qualities that the Jerry Springer Show escapees knew nothing about. She sucked on her candy with disgust. They were like modern day cannibals, she thought. Eating each other up in anger and irrationality. This idea she had of psychic cannibals pleased her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught an image of something big and hairy standing by the rhododendron bush, but, when she glanced over, there was nothing there. The ever-elusive sasquatch, she thought, smiling.

  * * *

  Back at work, Terita handed Cathie a folder. Cathie looked up at her questioningly.

  "Log those in for me, honey." Terita said, smiling.

  Cathie felt her face get hot. Terita thought her smile made everything okay. She was always pushing her responsibilities onto Cathie.

  "I don't have time to do this. I have the reports-"

  "Make yourself a note," Terita replied.

  "What?"

  "For when you get finished, you can do these."

  The woman was a moron, barely articulate. It's yours! she thought. Maybe she shouldn't have felt such anger. But why was everyone always trying to shove their shit onto her?

  Terita smiled, waved her hand and was gone. Cathie didn't even have a chance to think up a reply.

  Cathie grabbed her purse from under the desk and took out a caffeine pill. She turned her head to the wall as she popped it into her mouth and then walked over to the water cooler to get something to wash it down.

  She took caffeine to cut off what she was feeling and get wired, but it only increased her irritation toward everyone. Sometimes, she had impulses to throw things or hit certain co-workers. The trouble was, she was efficient. She knew how to get things done quickly. Nobody else did.

  She watched the two sitting across from her, Amy and Michelle, giggling over things that were not even the least bit funny. They're such phonies, she thought. Show-offs. They want everyone to see what good friends they are, but who really cares? They were both so bland and stupid. Michelle had such a huge ass you could serve drinks on it. She should have been doing squats instead of sitting there laughing. Amy had a nice body, but her complexion was awful. And hadn't she ever heard of depilatory cream?

  The sound of the phone startled her. Cathie's shoulder twitched. She sighed and picked it up. Another boring person with another boring pointless question. Cathie's tone was cold and the woman on the other end sounded dismayed, slightly hurt by the lack of warmth. Why does she care? thought Cathie, annoyed. She was sick of all of it.

  She could not tolerate people anymore. All the questions the woman asked her she had already answered several times before. Learn to listen, bitch, and you won't have to ask questions that have already been answered. This kind of thing
went on all the time. Nobody listened. She couldn't believe she had to deal with such morons.

  Cathie felt like someone was watching her. She looked around but there was no one else besides Amy and Michelle, and they were preoccupied with their comedy laugh fest.

  It was similar to a feeling she used to have as a kid. She'd feel a pressure on the back of her neck, like there was someone looking at her from behind, but when she'd turn around, nobody was there.

  She used to run from the unseen being, into her bedroom and jump onto her bed. She'd lie on her back until the invisible thing went away.

  There's no one watching me, she thought. Who the fuck would even bother to take an interest?

  She didn't care. She didn't care. She didn't care. She told herself. I don't care. I am careful. Being careful, ironically, meant that you should not care.

  Cathie looked puzzled as the maintenance guy walked past her and smiled. Then she realized that she was smiling, that that inane conversation she'd had with herself about caring/not caring had amused her. And that irritated her. It also irritated her to think that the maintenance guy thought she was smiling at him. Now the pud probably thought she had a crush on him. Cathie turned her head sideways so no one would see her laughing. The last thing she wanted was for people to think she was a crackpot.

  Cathie wrote haikus to relieve the tension she felt every day. She'd read an article about some guy, some minor celebrity, who wrote a haiku a day. She didn't have that kind of discipline, but wrote one when she remembered. She wrote today's haiku on a scrap of paper:

  The day is okay.

  In the best, worst sense of it.

  So so so tired.

  It sucked, but she liked it because she created it. She slipped the scrap into the pocket of her dress. When she was feeling tense, she put her hand in her pocket and rubbed the paper between her fingers.

  The phone rang again. She wrapped her fingers around the receiver and held onto it. She wanted to throw it.

  She couldn't pry her fingers from the receiver and she didn't seem to be able to lift it up. After four or five more rings, it stopped. She looked around, no one seemed to notice.

  She was so irritated, but there was no real source for the irritation. She was like this all the time now. She didn't understand why.

  Every time someone went by, she tensed and felt angry. She was like a dog that barked at everyone who passed by its yard, except she kept her barking to herself.

  She'd worked here for so many years. Everything was so easy. It was so, so comfortable. Well, at least it seemed that it should be comfortable by now, but really, it wasn't. She told herself that she could get through this day with very little obstacles, very little stress and soon, the day would be over and she could relax and be by herself.

  But telling herself this did nothing to affect her mood. She still felt angry and desperate and sad. She didn't know why.

  She tried to talk herself through it: tomorrow is another day. It's almost over. When I get home, I'll eat some ice cream. I'll read my book. It's getting good now. I'll watch old episodes of "The Fugitive." "Richard Kimball is The Fugitive." Kimball's sensitivity to others really touches me... my sensitivity to others, on the other hand...

  Nothing worked. None of it. She was still feeling anxious and exhausted.

  Did she always feel like this? She suspected it was her period until that came and went and the feeling remained. You gotta go with the flow, she joked, addressing her pent-up anger. Bad jokes, I can still make bad jokes, at least. At the very least.

  Murder, murder everywhere, but only in my dreams. Remain facetious, she told herself. Keep it light. Wash away the anger with the menstrual flow. My anger is like a red, red rose with poison-tipped thorns.

  She wasn't angry at anything or anyone. It just arrived one day like a stray cat that was looking for food and, once fed, refused to leave.

  * * *

  She dreamt about this big bug; it was like five inches long maybe. Many-legged, like a centipede, its body was see-through, slimy and moist. It was in her kitchen sink.

  Terita from work was with her. Cathie tapped Terita on the shoulder and pointed at the sink. Terita screamed and knocked on the window above it, where two construction workers on a scaffold were looking in at them. Terita shouted through the glass at them to kill it.

  Cathie woke up, disturbed by the silly dream. Into the kitchen to get a glass of water. The insect from her dream was in the sink, touching her lovely cereal bowl with the strawberry design. She'd licked chocolate pudding off it last night.

  She felt disgusted, violated, but she couldn't bring herself to touch the thing or move the dish away from it. She went back to bed, hoping the thing would be gone in the morning.

  She dreamed another dream. It was the hairy sasquatch from the park. He spoke to her like a lover. She knew what he, she, it was thinking and feeling. She knew he really meant what he said to her. There was no bullshitting when he told her, "I love you."

  His eyes were as soft and sentient and emotional as Richard Kimball's (that made her laugh). She was moved, even though she thought she should feel disgusted and scared. It spoke to her:

  "I know what you're thinking, Cathie. I see you wherever you are and I would do anything, anything for you because you are so special to me..."

  Cathie felt sick to her stomach. It was talking like it was God. How pompous, how delusional! She felt really stupid being near this thing that was as mushy as Jesus.

  But he could not have been God or Jesus because she sensed something malevolent in the creature. She was as drawn in by that as she was by the brimming emotion in its eyes.

  In the morning when she woke up, she knew she had to go to the kitchen and look in the sink.

  Standing over it, she looked down and saw the thing was still there. She could not bear to touch it. She turned on the faucet and directed the flow toward the bug. The rush of water glided the creature into the drain. Its legs gripped the criss-cross of metal. She turned the faucet full force. Its body disappeared, but she could still see the thin tiny legs holding on. She kept the water running until it weakened and slid down the drain into the pipe. She hoped that killed it. She didn't want to see it again.

  She gave the sink and her bowl a really good scrubbing. Her hands were raw and wrinkled by the time she let up.

  Out of the shower, drying off her arms, little bits of skin flaked off her. She thought about that thing they told her in grammar school, about your skin becoming completely new every seven years. Every seven years you were reborn and the old you disappeared in little flakes of skin.

  She didn't recall this happening before, but it didn't disturb her. She thought briefly of menopause, but she was too young for that, so she thought it might be something they called pre-menopause, a new thing they were advertising on TV. But she dismissed the idea because she felt like this was a rebirth, not a dying off or drying up, whichever the case may be.

  She hoped something positive was finally entering her life.

  * * *

  Today's haiku:

  A small dirty hen,

  Lying by the riverbed.

  No more eggs to give.

  Cathie liked that one. Sometimes she could write a good one.

  She went out for lunch. It was very hot. She could feel the sun penetrating the deepest layer of her skin. She thought she should be concerned about skin cancer since she was so fair-skinned, but she didn't care.

  She liked it when it was hot. Hot, hot to uncomfortable degrees. Like running down metal steps. Click, click, click on your heels.

  Heat, like the madness of fever. It moved her. She wanted to rip off her clothes and dance.

  Heat gave her a strange power. Cathie ignored the tourists swarming around her and the construction workers in their orange vests. She would not be thwarted, not from her reveries. They were precious to her. They were the only things she had.

  She walked on toward the park, closing her eyes, so she would not
have to look at the people around her.

  They were in her park again. The Jerry Springer people. Cathie found them hateful. She was so angry. She wanted to run at them and attack. They were screaming at each other again.

  She went looking for her big red squirrel. She ended up by the rhododendron bush. A red tail peeking out. Then gone.

  An old woman on a bench nearby was dropping little pieces of bread onto the ground.

  A small gray squirrel ran quickly over and nabbed a square. The old woman shouted after it as it ran away with the food in its mouth. It seemed to know it wasn't wanted around there. Cathie followed it.

  It went up a tree. Cathie smiled, thinking of how angry the old woman had been at the squirrel for taking the birds' bread. Screw the birds, she thought.

  She returned to the rhododendron bush. A gray squirrel lay limply on the grass, blood slowly dripping out of it.

  There were so many squirrels in the park. Somebody's dog must have killed it. People let their dogs run around loose there, in flagrant violation of the leash law.

  "There's some sick people in this park."

  Cathie turned around. It was the old lady who'd been feeding the birds.

  "How do you know it was a person?" Cathie asked.

  The old woman's frown etched the lines and sagging skin deeply into her face. Cathie wondered what it was like to have that look back at you in the mirror. The thought tempered her irritation and made her feel solicitous toward the woman.

  She stared hard at Cathie.

  "It wasn't an animal did this."

  "I think it may have been a dog."

  The old woman snorted. Flyaway strands of gray hair stuck to a food stain on her cheek.

  "I guess it ain't a crime to kill a squirrel. I hate the damn things."

  "I like squirrels. They're cute."

  The old woman inhaled and looked down at the dead squirrel. Her exhalation came out almost as a laugh.