PANIC (12 page)

He didn’t want it so much as let him do it since he was there already and Rich made it look like a good time. He pushed the boy’s head on him but, surprisingly, he didn’t really feel anything. He was actually kind of disappointed from the way the other guys talked about it, like getting head was the ultimate experience. This barely felt as good as when he stood in front of the mirror, flogging the hell out of that thing before he squeaked out an anxious teenage orgasm.

That scared him a bit, that he had to work himself until his hand cramped before anything happened. He didn’t even remember what he was thinking of when he came but it must’ve been good. The boy scooched himself closer down on his knees working on Nick, a kid so quiet and unassuming that Nick had literally never noticed him before. He seemed to be getting into it, really into it, too into it - he looked up at Nick while kissing his crotch and that was the final straw so Nick pushed him off angrily.

“Fucking no fag stuff, you got it?”

Nick sneered down at the kid like he was going to spit on him, his heart beating war drums.

No girl had ever done that for him, not even the sweet, chubby girl with the big boobs who was grateful for his attention. He would’ve crawled on his knees and elbows over gravel for a blowjob but now that this kid, this grubby little sophomore gave him more than he’d asked for he was unexpectedly livid. His heart pounded, he thought, from being startled, feeling that look sear itself into memory where he momentarily connected with the boy’s shameful excitement.

The big kid who was waiting his turn laughed at this. His cousin Rich laughed his annoying, high laugh at the boy, who he told that he wouldn’t get shit until he sucked all of them off. That was it, his genius idea; figuring no girl would ever fall for that unless she was twelve years old or really dumb.

“He loves it, Nicky,” he said, guffawing.

Nick was so mad he made the kid sit away from him while he jacked himself off. Just now he was fantasizing about it, wishing he had done it on him just to humiliate him.

He’d gotten off into that same pile of leaves and he was suddenly no longer angry about getting rid of the new girl, a little less drunk, a little more ready to come home to the little woman. He got back in his car and took it easy the rest of the way home.

F
OUR

HE DROVE UP to the curb in front of his house then swung the car, driving backward slowly up the driveway to the garage before coming to a crooked stop in the well. It was good enough, he thought, smugly. Reaching over to the glove compartment to hit the button on the remote he leaves the compartment door open and hanging there like a mouth draped in surprise.

Something in the distance catches his eye, like a truck’s front lights rumbling over the road past the woods.

There’s no road that can be seen past the woods.

Just ahead is the edge of the woods, abruptly ending at the curb. His eyes are fogged from drink but he can see two points of light, side by side, making blurry twinkles in his vision like miniature headlights. They glow like eyes, not the green lenses of a deer or the yellow reflection of a cat but set wide on some broad, intelligent face.

They’re red, sunset, red like the cap of poison mushrooms, red like fresh blood streaking through the air, warning red, cyclopean red like a stop light swinging in heavy fog making ghostly laser trails.

The eyes glow on the dark tangle of trees beyond, bobbing rhythmically side to side, dipping low and swaying. He adjusts his eyes to the dark to catch the silhouette camouflaged by the dense backdrop, bending in the cool night air like a tree.

Through the picture frame of the garage door it looks like a stage on which a dancer is stretching herself in a disturbing, modern style; a parody of beauty and grace. The backdrop is drowned in the wan light of the moon, deep and blue, light of the blazing sun reflecting on the surface of a dead rock. The land has a moon tide just as the sea does, where some things only follow the light of the moon as it bows over the horizon, all sorts of things, bugs and night hunters and the images of dead things.

It has face just like a mask, frozen in a wide grin with its features deeply lined, jagged cracks like the bark of an aged oak. The grin is not malicious but forced on its stiff face to fit the huge, malformed teeth like dry branches. They’re tall, thin and crowd the mouth so that it can’t close fully. The lips peel back, grinning, cracked baboon lips baring gums and teeth; amused and threatening. The hair is a stiff wig, standing up on the skull where the flesh rotted off and shrunk away, brambles and thorns and nettles tangled in the dead, thin strands like a discarded doll’s head.

It’s a woman, an impossibly aged, emaciated, weird woman-thing, dried in the cool air of the night until turned to jerky, spongy and brittle. It moves like a marionette.

The knees bend low and stretch, the elbows and shoulders swing side to side, the torso bending in a rushing breeze - long, grasping fingers make a wave in a tuneless jig. The body is gnarled and creaking and he sees it, his imagination isn’t good enough to imagine it, he sees it.

He makes a decision and unsees it by pressing the garage door remote, putting the curtain down on the frolic in the woods.

It bows low enough and turns its head to the side before the door makes it disappear from view.

It turns it’s head sideways, grinning that disgusting, hollow rictus and waves goodbye to Nick before the door shuts and it can’t be seen. He’d have to go up to the port windows on the garage door and peer through, almost certainly expecting to see the face staring him down, mere centimeters away through the aluminum rolling shutter.

It waved goodbye to him, knowing he was watching.

He’s relieved to not have pissed himself.

He gets himself inside through the garage entrance and upstairs into bed, knowing she’ll be mad in the morning. His heart is planted in his throat. He’s so scared he needs to hold her close to get to sleep.

F
IVE

SHE SWINGS HERSELF out of bed and scratches her side, deciding to skip the toothbrush. The other edge of the bed is messy and she clucks her tongue when she sees it. Her eyelids hang drowsily as she shuffles to the kitchen. She stops at the doorway and puts her hand over her heart, gasping.

He’s just standing there still, like he’s catatonic. Hungover, probably.

“You okay?” he says, moving away from the fridge. She swallows hard and takes her hand away after a moment’s hesitation.

“You’re lucky I recognized you, I was this close to locking myself in the bathroom and dialing 911.”

“Sorry, hon. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I’m surprised you’re up,” she says, grabbing orange juice from the fridge.

“Yeah, look, about that. I guess I made a night of it. I’m sorry.”

She stood in the open door and bowed her head slightly, wincing at the familiar refrain. The surprise had almost made him a normal person again but it didn’t take much to remind her what a sneak and a liar he was, ultimately.

“I don’t really care what you were out doing. I would just appreciate it if you didn’t get into bed with me drunk.”

He didn’t really have a good comeback for this so he let it linger for a bit.

“You’re right, hon.”

She shuts the door and flicks the light on in the kitchen, harshly illuminating his scruffy face and his dark, puppy eyes. She regrets it immediately; a look from him alone disarms her. She didn’t know what kind of love it was that made her feel stupid for questioning him.

“Just saying, there’s this thing called a light, you know.”

“I know, I was just trying to see if I could see it.”

“See...what?”

“Oh,” he says, parting the curtain back in the dining room, facing the woods. “I thought I saw a deer or something when I came in last night.”

“A deer? So what, there’s deer around here all the time. You think it followed you home or something?”

He paused, using the lie.

“I dunno, maybe. Had red eyes, looked like.”

“Red-eyed deer. Sounds like a cocktail.”

She peers out the window, next to him.

“Sounds like a girl I met once.” He winces prematurely because he knows its a bad joke and she reciprocates by punching his arm. He laughs, making a show of her punch hurting him. His laugh is easygoing, one that makes heads turn at a party since he sounds like he’s having such a good time.

“Ow!”

“You deserve worse, Nick,” she says, breaking up with laughter too. He’s like a big kid with his inability to focus on one thing at a time. “You’re not serious about this, are you?”

“No, I guess not. I guess at night it’s easy for something to look not quite right.”

“I guess you’re right.”

He lets the curtain fall from his hand and turns to her with just his chest, resting his fingertips on the windowsill. She’s cute when she stands there with her arms folded, looking up at her husband who’s almost a foot taller. She cuts him off before he can say anything at all, before he can ruin her good mood by being a shit.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to snap at you. At least you didn’t wake me up.”

Her body faces his now, more openly than he’s willing to give to her. She won’t tell him that her body did crave his in the night, even the drunken, chaste embrace was months in the making. She’d almost cuddled up with him to let him feel her heat but he had to earn that again. Some of his conniving had rubbed off on her; she figured to keep him, she’d have to play his game and make him chase her and then they could have a happy marriage.

S
IX

IT’S BEEN AWHILE since he’s seen this look on her face. He takes her chin in his hand and brings himself close, kissing her with just his lips. It’s dry, like a kiss a father might put on his daughter’s forehead.

He held his wife tight and closed his eyes, hoping she wouldn’t notice he hadn’t showered yet.

He still reeked of her, Naomi or whatever the girl’s name was. Not that she wore a scent but she had one anyway, the body wash she used on her willowy body mixed with the starch on her clothes. Whatever she did to support herself, it was enough to afford living alone and dry cleaning to boot. Anything beyond that, he had no interest in. He knew he had to end it when he had to return to her three or four times as he made his excuses to leave, each time rewarding her with a sticky, desperate goodbye kiss. When they first got into it, he’d give her his best, letting her tongue play on his, letting his breath warm her lips before he closed his mouth on hers.

He thought he was giving her something to think about for next time - problem being that’s exactly how she took it.

The last time she’d insisted on being held tight after they romped in bed for an explosive twenty minutes, the cuddling stretched into an agonizing hour where she wouldn’t let him watch TV or check his phone or anything. He didn’t want to be rude to her but it had definitely become exasperating, having to coddle her like a child after he put one in her and prayed to God she wasn’t lying about birth control. He thought he had that pretty well figured out, she didn’t seem like the type to be duplicitous nor did she seem so thoughtless that she’d forget something like taking her pill.

So, lately he’d been giving her the wife kiss, a cold thing that seemed bloodless and distant.

His eyes opened and the sight chilled him as he pulled his face away; the mask-face with the frozen expression, its jagged teeth jutting out crazily in a mad grin, bark-lines drawn all about it like the withered skin of an old woman’s corpse hanging to dry. It had her eyes, not the shimmering, perfect blood-red discs that found him at the edge of the woods. Not the aureole that twinkled with the firelight of hell, just her tired, sandy, guileless eyes.

“Megan, I,” he began, not believing what he was seeing.

The face didn’t move but her voice came out just like she was standing in front of him, searching his face for a glimmer of love.

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” she offered, pathetically.

The wood woman’s face persisted, mocking with its prunish, malformed snarl.

He brought her head to his shoulder, tentatively, knowing it wasn’t real. He expected the withered gargoyle to tear away at his warm flesh but felt instead her cheek on his neck, wet with stray tears. He felt like a fool, for once feeling the pang of something he wasn’t well acquainted with. He put a sympathetic hand on her back and let her hold him close, sure that what he wasn’t seeing was real.

“How about we go out for breakfast?” he offered, finally. It was corny but she went for it.

Yes, that face said, he thanked God it didn’t have the glowing, burning eyes that hypnotized him, that gave him full body chills just thinking about them.

The insane, mute deaths-head grimace mugged at him, utterly unreal in the late weekend morning. Let’s go, I’ll go with you, let’s go anywhere, let’s go everywhere, hold my hand, I’m never leaving you, I’ll do anything you want, I’ll do anything to keep you, anything, I don’t need food, I don’t need sleep, just y—

“If you drink, it’s brunch,” she said, trying to keep up.

She went upstairs and got changed into something summery, quickly putting her hair up so he wouldn’t be kept waiting. He touched his hand to his forehead and he felt clammy, suddenly grateful that she didn’t see how pale he went at the sight of her. She would’ve accused him of being an alcoholic and they would’ve had another mean, ugly fight.

When she returned, he never saw such a gorgeous face. He beamed a little too wide, like seeing her for the very first time. She blushed.

S
EVEN

“AND HOW ARE y’all this afternoon?” says a voice like a southern matron, like a riff on that woman with the white hair from the cooking channel. He can tell immediately, that it’s not a woman but a young man. The voice sounds so familiar but he can’t place it until he actually looks up from his wife, mid-chuckle.

She looks at the badge on his polo shirt as he waits for a response with his pen at the ready.

“We’re doing just fine, Adrian, thank you for asking,” she said.