Liar, Liar

The flashing lights sprayed blue and red bruises around our living room. I huddled behind the couch in my nightgown. A man and woman in crisp blue uniforms hefted a black bag onto a stretcher, pushed levers, and lifted the bed like Mom did with her ironing board. Blood smeared the lady’s name tag, but I’d seen it when she came in. It said Glenda. The name of the good witch. The good witch come to clean up after the bad.

Two men in regular clothes stood in the kitchen doorway writing in little notebooks. One pointed to a dark stain on the recliner. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. The hoarse cackle still filled my head and drowned out everything.

A lady rushed in and scanned the room. She spotted me. Her jaw dropped before she caught herself and closed it. She started toward me, crouching down and holding out a hand while whispering hushing sounds—like when you’re trying to catch a scared animal. That’s how they always treated me. Like a scared, stupid animal.

She knelt and said some stuff I still couldn’t hear. Her hand took mine, and she tried to pull me up. My legs wouldn’t work. I tipped over. She wasn’t a big lady, but she scooped me up and carried me out to a car, still shushing.

I don’t remember much of the ride or being brought into the police station. They sat me in a gray little room with a table and a paper cup of apple juice. I felt a little better. Nothing could hide there.

One of the regular-clothes men came in and pulled a chair closer. He sat and bent down to catch my eye. The cackle had faded.

His voice was deep and soft. “Your name is Lizzie, right?”

I nodded.

“Can you tell me what happened, Lizzie?”

I swallowed. “The bad witch came again.”

His face turned mad, and he shook his head. “Lizzie, we don’t have time for games. You need to tell us what happened.”

“It’s not a game. She…she came again a-a-and killed my mom.”

The muscle in his jaw tensed. “Fine. I’ll play along. Who is the witch? How’d she kill her?”

“I-I don’t know who she is. She just comes…when I get mad. She has long talons on her hands. She,” I sniffled back a sob, “she stuck them in my mom’s neck.”

He sat back and sighed. “Lizzie, we know you did it. You’ll be in less trouble if you just tell the truth and explain what happened.”

Like it had before, my chest tightened as if someone gave me a big bear hug. I closed my eyes and tried to will it away, but my skin flushed hot. I told myself she wouldn’t come now—there was no way she could get in without everyone seeing. She only came when she couldn’t get caught.

Even the witch blames it all on me. After she killed Mom, I asked her why.

The witch cackled. “You wished she would die, didn’t you?”

I had…but I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t help being angry when Mom accused me of lying about what happened when Mrs. Jackson, my teacher, died. Mom said I had to quit making stuff up so they could catch the real killer. I told her I wasn’t making it up. Being mad just happens. I can’t help it.

The regular-clothes man slammed a hand on the table and made me jump.

“Listen, I have a lot of work to do. If you aren’t going to tell the truth, you’ll just go straight to jail.”

I wanted to yell but kept my voice quiet. “I’m not lying. Don’t call me a liar.”

“Don’t lie, and I won’t have to.”

My throat closed up. The anger went from calm to boiling. I shook my head and told it to go away…but it never listened anymore. Just like the witch.

The last thing I remember is her head rising behind the man, her hair covered in moss and green slime, wrinkled hands coming up, talons curling in toward his neck, slicing through the skin. The cackle had returned.

 

Now I sit in a cold room made of cushioned walls.

I shudder and scrunch my shoulders up over my ears as best I can with the jacket on, but the noise comes from inside me, and I can’t shut it out. How she makes me hear it when she’s not even around puzzles me—but then again, all of it does.

Dried blood covers my face and hair, and little pieces flake off when I move. I don’t know how so much blood got on me. I wasn’t close enough. Another puzzle.

More regular-clothes men had come into the little gray room. I huddled in the corner. The original regular-clothes man sprawled on the floor, a pool of red-black spreading under him. They had pointed guns at me and yelled and ran around acting crazy. A lady put a white jacket on me that wraps my arms around my back, and they led me down a bunch of hallways until we got to this room.

It’s not fair. They all keep calling me a liar.

The door opens, and a man in a white uniform starts in.

“Damn, I forgot the sedative.” He turns back, tells two men in white doctor coats he’ll return in a minute, and rushes off.

The white coats stand just outside the cushion room in a bare, gray hallway.

One of the white-coat men says to the other, “It’s a severe psychosis. She seems to really believe someone else is doing it. But all the evidence points to her.”

“Well,” the other says, “some kids are just great liars.”

The anger swells up faster every time. Now, it comes in an instant.

The thing with moss and green slime appears behind the white-coat men in the hallway. She slinks toward them.

I try to yell, to warn them, but only a hoarse cackle comes out.

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Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm Goin' Away

*trigger warning--child sexual abuse
 

 

 

I reckoned Daddy would be mad.

I sat in the bathroom on the edge of the tub, lookin’ at the shiny door handle. The little ridge in the middle pointed sideways. That made me feel funny, weak-like and soggy. My fingers itched to turn it back upright. I just stared and kept my hands in my lap. The old house creaked while it settled, and I thought how thankful I’d be not to hear those sounds no more. I reckoned there was a heap of things I’d be thankful to miss.

***

We lived on Apple Lane, and our creaky house set down by the tracks. That was silly, ‘cause there weren’t no apple trees on our street, only peaches. I lay in bed at night, listenin’ to the trains. They’d scream afore they got to the crossin’. They’d chug and clang past the house, rattlin’ the wavy glass in the window frames. It took them forever to get by, car after car filled with black dusty coal. Teacher said coal turns into diamonds, but I didn’t believe her. I never found no diamonds.

I hated them trains. Their screams reminded me of the orange cat Daddy caught shittin’ under the porch.

“Cats is about as handy as a woman. All they’s good at is naggin’ and shittin’ and fuckin’,” he said. Daddy had lots of ideas ‘bout women.

He took its tail and swung it round and round, laughin’ at the way its hair puffed up. It screamed, the sound windin’ up and fadin’ out. Just like them trains. Acourse, they wasn’t that much alike, specially not when the cat stopped sudden-like against the tree. The bones are still out back, behind Daddy’s old Ford. They turned white and then gray, and I checked every week to make sure they was still there.

After that, I always pictured that cat wailin’ and swingin’ when the trains screamed. It gave me goose pimples, and I had to shut my hands over my ears.

***

As I sat in the bathroom, another creak killed the quiet, and I closed my eyes. Mayhap the wind was comin’ up. I held my breath, so’s I could hear the wind, but it wasn’t howlin’. I opened my eyes and checked the door handle again. It still pointed sideways. I reached out and tried to turn it, real gentle-like. Smooth, cold, slippery. It wouldn’t turn. Down on the floor, the strip of light under the door stayed solid, no shadows breakin’ it up.

Creak. I shut my hands over my ears, closed my eyes again.

***

We wasn’t allowed to lock doors. I don’t mean the front door—that one we locked, acourse. But unless you wanted Daddy to tell you to fetch a switch, and make your butt burn and throb and turn red, you sure didn’t lock no other doors.

Daddy said, “Locked doors mean you don’t trust folks. I reckon you ought trust your family.” He talked ‘bout family a lot.

So we left ‘em open. That’s how Sugarman got in.

At night, after the train screamed, the door swung open real slow. I lay in bed with my ears shut but my eyes open, tryin’ to see who it was. I couldn’t see nothin’ but dark, just like I had my eyes closed. Then a weight come down, makin’ the mattress sag so’s I’d start slidin’ to the edge. Sugarman’s hands caught me, holdin’ me round my belly. I tried to lock my legs together and stayed real still. Acourse, that didn’t help none. Sugarman was real strong.

“Gimme some sugar,” he said. He always wanted sugar.

His breath covered me, sour and sweet, like when the peaches fell off the tree in the backyard and rotted into the black dirt. I hated that smell almost as much as I hated them trains. When the wind was just right, it came in my window with the screamin’ of the trains, so thick I could almost see it.

Sugarman put his slick lips on my mouth. I tried my best to keep my lips shut, but he squeezed my cheeks hard. It made my teeth dig into ‘em, and I had to open. His fat tongue filled my mouth, and it tasted even worse than the peaches smelled. I wished my mind would go away. I wanted to shut my ears and my eyes and everything else. I didn’t want to taste that tongue, or feel the draft on my legs when he pushed my nightdress up. If my mind could’ve gone away, it wouldn’t have mattered what Sugarman did.

***

Mama died a year ago. She stayed in bed for months afore she went. She said she had the cancer. It made her get real skinny. I wanted to sit with her but hated lookin’ at her, so I scrunched my eyes into little slits so only a strip of light come through my eyelashes. She was just a pale blur against the blue flowered sheets. It reminded me of the time we went on a picnic, and she chased me through the field until we fell down and lay on the blossoms, laughin’ in the sun ‘til we couldn’t breathe. But she wasn’t laughin’ in her bed. She hadn’t laughed in a real long time.

“I’m gonna die, Punkin,” she said.

“What’s that like, Mama? What happens when you die?”

“Your mind just goes away, like sleepin’, but you don’t wake up. It makes the pain go away.” She smiled, a blurry, tired smile.

I wanted to know more but was scared to ask. I hoped the goin’ away was like when I turned the TV off and the light shrunk to a bright dot and winked out. Or maybe like water swirlin’ down a drain, without the creepy gurgle sound. I hoped it wasn’t a slow thing, like the peaches rottin’ in the yard, wrinkled and crawlin’ with bugs. Anything but that.

She went to sleep after that, and I reckon her mind went away.

***

I thought a heap about makin’ my mind go away once Sugarman started comin’ in. I knew how to make it go away, ‘cause I saw ‘em do the hogs and chickens. They screamed, too, but without the fadin’. Their screams turned to hissin’ gurgles. I wondered if they had pain and if it went away. They didn’t have much mind, but I reckoned it went away just the same.

I'd took the butcher knife out the shed and went to the bathroom with it.

I'd locked the door and sat lookin’ at the knife for a spell. My reflection stared back at me. I didn’t like that—it made a big lump in my throat—so I stopped lookin’ and left the blade in my lap. Instead, I watched the door handle, listenin’ and waitin’, with the cold porcelain sendin’ chills deep into my bones. I thought about Daddy and everything looked red of a sudden. It got me awful riled up. I reckoned it was Daddy’s fault that Sugarman got in. If Daddy woulda let me lock the door, Sugarman wouldn’t have come, and I wouldn’t need to make my mind go away.

***

The strip of light under the door grew brighter as the sun fell. It was gettin’ to be time. Time’s a funny thing, too. It goes faster just when a body wants it to slow down.

I breathed deep, tryin’ to make my heart quit thumpin’. It sounded funny with my ears shut, like the wind got in my head while a horse thundered in my chest. I took my hands off my ears and picked up the knife. It was heavier and more real, like it might come alive. My fingers held it real tight as I slid down to the floor and waited.

***

When the front door slammed, I took the knife to my neck, just like they did with the hogs.

Everything turned red for real.

Daddy called my name. Footsteps rumbled down the hall. The strip of light under the door broke up and disappeared like when the sun goes behind clouds. The door handle jiggled. I dropped the knife.

“Why’s this damn door locked? You in there, Punkin?”

The red squirted and dripped. Daddy banged on the wood, but it sounded far-off, a rumble in my bones more than my ears. In between the poundin’, a train screamed. I wished my mind would go away afore Daddy got in. He hit the door harder, and it flew open. His eyes opened big, as if he seen a ghost.

“No more Sugarman, Daddy.” My voice sounded funny and made me want to laugh.

But when Daddy leaned over me, I smelled Sugarman’s breath. My laugh came out a whistlin’ scream, like the trains, windin’ up and fadin’ away.

*This piece is not intended to endorse or condone suicide. It was written as a cathartic, therapeutic piece of fiction. If you need someone to listen, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-Talk (8255) or visit www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.


Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In Pieces

With every word, he strips away another piece of me.

“I need to move on,” he says.

“Why? What did I do wrong?” I hate the pathetic desperation in my voice.

One more bit flutters to floor, lying among the scattered pieces of dignity and self-respect. Each speck will wither and die like the blackened rose petals around the vase on the coffee table. He bought those two weeks ago. Did he know then?

“I told you, it’s nothing you did. It’s me.”

“Christ, don’t use a line on me. At least be honest. You owe me that much.”

“I’m being honest.”

He edges toward the door, bag in hand. He’s been trying to leave for three hours. The five o’clock shadow at noon makes his face haggard, and those blue eyes that bring me to my knees shift from me to the door. He’s desperate, too—desperate to escape.

“Fuck you. Go ahead, leave.” I turn my back to him.

“Don’t act like that. You know it isn’t working.”

“No, I don’t. I gave you everything. You just want a new piece of ass.”

Not true, but I’ll say anything now. Anything to prolong the shallow last gasps.

“There’s no one else.” A tired sigh. The door knob squeaks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Another piece ripped off, baring the ugliest parts of me.

“The hell you didn’t. You never gave a shit about me.”

No response. I turn around, and he’s gone.

At least now I can cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Not Sad

The chirping ring broke through the haze of half-sleep. Faded denim light seeped around the curtains. Another chirp. Pushing myself out of the bed in a flash, I stumbled from the bedroom. My shoulder hit the doorframe with a staggering crunch. “Ouch! Dammit!” Feet not awake yet. Who the fuck would be calling so early? Mom? Better not be a wrong number. Down the hallway and into the dining room—don’t step on the exposed tackstrip. Christ, I have to finish that floor. My bleary eyes scanned the desk, glossing over the piles of books, stacks of papers. Did the kid leave the damned phone somewhere else again? One more chirp let me zero in. I snatched the phone from the crack in the couch.

“Hello?”

“Ms. McDonald?”
“Yessss?” I said. Not Mom. Not a wrong number. Maybe a bill collector? No, too early. My heart skipped a beat. Something worse.
“Sorry to disturb you so early. I’m Officer Jackson with the Kansas Highway Patrol. I have some bad news.”
Kansas? I only knew one person in Kansas.
“Brandon has died in an auto accident. His wife asked that I call you—I understand you have a son with him?”
I mumbled some kind of reply.
“My condolences to you and your son. He was on his way to work and collided with an 18-wheeler. The scene wasn’t discovered for several hours, the other driver was unconscious. Brandon was transported to the hospital with severe injuries, but he died a short time later.”
“I see.”
“I expect they’ll notify you of the funeral arrangements. If you need anything, please feel free to call me at 316-555-8691. Again, my condolences.”
“Thank you.”

I pushed the “off” button and set the phone on the desk. My heart thumped as if filled with molasses. I pulled the desk chair over and sank into it. Rapid, shallow breaths flowed from my lips, making them dry. I licked the parched skin and allowed the grin to stretch across my face.

Finally. I’d waited years for that call. The scenario changed each time I imagined it; a prison escapee had burst into his house and murdered him; a heart attack, or better yet, a long torturous cancer; a tornado flung him through the air and impaled him on a jagged spike of twisted metal. A million versions, all ending the same way.

I tried to feel bad, now that it had happened. I tried to conjure some sense of sadness or grief. It wouldn’t come. I only felt relief. Well, not only that. A rush of grim satisfaction pulsed through me at the thought that he suffered for a little while.

 

I knew it would be difficult for Connor, our son. He would grieve, and I would comfort him. I would hold him close and wipe away the tears. But I wouldn’t voice the brutal reality.

‘It’s better this way, honey. I know it hurts now, but this is only for a little while and the pain will fade. You’ll have the chance to live only with the memories you choose. If he’d lived, your pain would continue. He cared nothing for you. He never called, let alone bothered to come see you. He spent money on his own toys, but none for you. You cried so many times, wishing he would give you just a few moments of his time; just show he cared a little. Now you don’t have to question why he didn’t care. Those nagging doubts about yourself can die with him. It’s better this way, I promise.”

A strange emptiness settled in my chest. The anger and hatred I carried for so long left me. I would no longer have to lay in the dark, seething with fury after soothing Connor’s anguish and hearing him lament, “I wish I could see my dad.” I wouldn’t have to lie in response, “Honey, he’s just busy working; he works a lot. Soon, maybe.”

I sat by the desk as the sun’s rays topped the trees. I thought of the pointless, banal words I would give him instead. The birds awakened on their boughs, singing their cheer. I listened to their distant, muted calls and planned fun excursions to distract him: the zoo, camping, maybe the museum. I pulled in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and peace settled over me.

My eyes opened, a flash of confusion in the darkness. Not at the desk. In bed.

“Fuck.” A heavy sigh as I rolled over. Disappointed, again. “Soon, maybe.”