horrors2

fishguzzler.Untitled.tex

  1\chapauth{fishguzzler}
  2\chapter{Untitled}
  3
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  5Son of a bitch, there's a storm on --- no lightning, so I
  6do this little dance between the light switch and the bed, partly
  7because my room is just too dark, no light leaking in through the
  8levelors, and partly because I can't let my mom see the light
  9on when she trundles past for another batch of rainbow cookies
 10--- six neat little rows by five in the box, and four at a time
 11carefully arranged on a little white saucer-plate, and about a box
 12and a half gone by the end of the night, which means at least
 13eleven trips down the hall past my room to the kitchen on a night
 14when she's watching HBO in bed, pretty much every night
 15--- but mostly because there's a mad badger in my closet,
 16an evil monster with beady little eyes glowing faintly green.
 17Actually, I don't really know what `beady' means.
 18But I know what a monster is, even if, come to think of it, I
 19actually don't know what a badger looks like. But I imagine
 20it looks just like this little bastard in the closet. Maybe not so
 21mean.
 22
 23I can hear the television from the next room, though the walls are
 24ancient and incredibly thick --- I once put my fist into one,
 25broke through the new plaster, and then through something brittle
 26and white, until I sliced my whole hand open on a rough mixture of
 27sand and antique horse-hair that exploded into powder even as it
 28broke my left pinky and the knuckle of my pointer finger. I can
 29hear the television because of the heating vent on the wall between
 30the closet and my bureau, which conducts the voices from the
 31television with perfect clarity into my room and provides me with
 32fair warning every time there's a commercial break.
 33That's when I make my move. I'm fifteen, and I may be a
 34little pudgy, or maybe a little more than a little, but I'm
 35extremely light-footed, so I leap down from the bed and tip-toe
 36sprint to the door as my mother's clomping footsteps
 37reverberate back and forth in my little acoustic capsule ---
 38it's not because she's monstrously overweight, though
 39she must have gained over two-hundred pounds in the last three
 40years, it's just that she's such a hard stepper. I fly
 41barefoot across mathematically smooth and cold wood flooring that,
 42I know, I wouldn't feel if I could really fly. I keep my eyes
 43trained on the door of the closet and flick off the light,
 44crouching with my left hand poised on the light switch and my right
 45hand gripping the doorknob, white-knuckled, the scar where I split
 46the shit open standing out whitest, crisp even in the
 47near-blackness as I glare past it into that shadowed crevice with
 48the mad chittering sounds coming from inside. But it always quiets
 49as she passes my door, as though it doesn't want to be heard;
 50I still don't know how she doesn't hear it through the
 51walls when she's in her room. Stupid old cow.
 52
 53But tonight she's doing alright, I think, because she's
 54only made three trips down the hall to the kitchen, three trips
 55lasting three to five minutes each over the course of three hours,
 56which is a real record-low for her since things got bad, like maybe
 57now she's finally getting over it --- or maybe
 58she's just gotten too fat to walk and decided to start
 59bringing the box with her from now on. Either way, I've still
 60had to squat here three times so far in the dark, smelling that
 61musty yellow odor like rotten tomatoes mixed with, I don't
 62know, curry or something, listening to that thing cackle and
 63scratch at the back of the closet door, swinging it open millimeter
 64by millimeter, because I never dare to leave it closed ---
 65I'm too scared not to try and hear what he's doing in
 66there, plus I know perfectly well that he knows we both know that
 67he can open the fucking door if he wants to. I've seen him do
 68it, not in minute, scratching increments, but fast.
 69
 70Tonight the door has stayed put, and I haven't heard a sound
 71from the little monster. Even his stink, the one everyone else
 72can't smell, seems to be receding. Normally it hits me at odd
 73points during the day because it's burned into my fucking
 74skin, but tonight it seems to be clearing away, the dissipating
 75pestilential fog.
 76
 77I hear my mother put down her dish in the kitchen, but the cupboard
 78does not creak open. The sink splashes on instead, a sound I hear
 79more through the pipes in the walls than through the air. Is she
 80washing the dish already, packing it in, with so much less than a
 81box consumed? Maybe she is getting over it, at least realizing that
 82a box and a half of delicious rainbow cookies per evening
 83won't help --- but more likely, she's probably just
 84got a stomach virus or something. I hear her stomp into the
 85bathroom, even whistling the tune we all used to sing, ``Your
 86Face is All over the Place'', which is sung to the tune of
 87``Your Kiss is what I Miss''. I smile in the dark, no
 88fear now, thinking it's gone, and maybe this will be the time
 89it doesn't come back.
 90
 91There is a muffled thud from the bathroom, and a short, sharp cry
 92from mom. It brings to mind an image of my mother, beached, prone
 93in her fuzzy white robe on the bathroom floor, writhing in pain and
 94as-yet half-realized fear, the muscles in her neck bulging, showing
 95clearly for the first time in almost two years, as that little
 96fucker chews through cotton and into her chest. Blood spattering.
 97Chimp-like, upright badger-monster body, head like a nasty little
 98dog, Chihuahua or something, only with a cerrated nose like an
 99alligator, or one of those colorful baboon-things. Snarling bubbles
100into the blood welling through the shorn muscle and cracked bone of
101her left breast like a child with his chocolate milk{\ldots} Chittering.
102Laughing at us. Oh my god her heart.
103
104Instead of flinging the door open and running to the bathroom, I
105smack the light on and sprint to the closet door, throw it open and
106freeze, staring right into those unforgiving dog-black but
107compassionless spheres. So it rears before me, wipes it's
108dripping chin with a bony little wrist. Cackles. Now you're
109mother is dead too. First him, now her. First him, now her. 
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