I don't know where I got the idea for this story, but it's been knocking around in my head for three or four days now, driving me nuts and pissing off the other stories. So here it is, and I don't know if it's finished or just begun.
Comments are welcome.
No one wonders what a typical family is like, or what happens in a typical life. TV, movies, and our own life experience tell us that. But what do you suppose happens when your typical family suddenly takes a Möbius turn into a Twilight Zone that would leave Rod Serling drooling into his lap?
“What do we have to do today?”
“It’s your turn to run errands. Here’s the list for the grocery store, and if they don’t have tahini sauce, you’ll have to go over to Trader Joe’s. Okay?”
“What’s tahini sauce?”
“Ground sesame seeds. I need it for the humus tonight.”
“Sure,” Jim said, feeling a bit lost.
“Now Jimmy’s soccer practice is at 10:30, Betsy’s tumbling class starts at nine, Joanie’s ballet’s at nine thirty, and Glenn has a play date with Roger and Sally, and I think Mrs. Estinghouse might drop off Peter, which means you’ll have to drive him home. The extra car seat’s in the van... what?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. I was just thinking that the yard needs mowing, the car hasn’t been washed and the van is full of trash from the last time you used it to haul the soccer team to practice and back again, and unless my memory deceives me, we’re having Pastor Ed and his family for dinner tonight, and the outdoor patio needs to be swept and the multi-legged freeloading renters evicted.”
“Welcome to my world, Hero.”
Jim sighed. The kids would argue about who sat where, and who had this and who had that, and he wondered just when the good times and happiness of having a family would suddenly materialize and make all this work and aggravation worthwhile. He quickly shut the thoughts out of his head, and finished his coffee. Decaffeinated coffee, because Cassie said that caffeine was hard on his heart. Shredded wheat cereal with skim milk. Homemade bread that Jim swore had sawdust in it, but he never said anything.
“Okay, kids, time to go!” Jim said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel.
“I get to ride in the front this time!” Betsy screamed.
“Dream on, small stuff. You aren’t old enough,” Jimmy replied.
“Am too!”
“No you’re not. Tell her, Dad.”
“No! I want the front!”
“Ain’t gettin’ it.”
Jim remained grimly silent, leading the way out to the minivan and studiously ignoring the screams of protest as each child in turn failed to get the seat they wanted. All except Jimmy, who climbed into the front seat and fastened his seatbelt with an air of satisfaction guaranteed to irritate the others. He finally managed to wrestle Glenn into his car seat, reflecting that the safety straps weren’t there so much as a safety feature in case of an accident, but more of a deterrent to the child escaping the confines of the seat and climbing all over the van, thus causing the driver of the van to lose the tenuous grasp he had on his sanity and do something that would land him in prison for life. Which might not be all that bad...
Glenn howled as Jim pulled the final strap into place.
“Too tight, Daddy! Too tight!”
“No it isn’t,” Jim said, lifting Betsy and struggling to get her feet through the holes in the seat. Glenn rocked violently from side to side, trying in vain to loosen the straps, while Betsy kicked her feet and chanted her car ride litany:
“I am not getting in that car seat! I am not getting in that car seat! I am not getting in that car seat!”
This culminated in a truly ear piercing shriek as Jim got her feet through the holes in the car seat and quickly fastened the chest restraint. Betsy shrieked again, and for a second he thought the fillings in his teeth would come loose.
“Why do I have to use a booster seat?” Joanie asked.
“Because...” Jim stopped himself. Dr. Corbyn, their family therapist, had stated that telling a child they weren’t tall enough was hard on the child’s self-image. He then asked Jim how he would feel if his supervisor at work told him he wasn't tall enough, or fast enough, or smart enough? Jim had been daydreaming about owning his own sailboat and spending the entire day all by himself, lazily sailing on the Pacific. Jim came out of his reverie in time to see everyone staring at him in expectancy.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I was thinking about something else.”
This response to an important and completely reasonable question, Dr. Corbyn told everyone, was not acceptable. Fortunately they’d run out of time before Jim could formulate another answer, one that involved Dr. Corbyn’s diploma and a piece of his anatomy. He returned to the problem at hand.
“Just because, that’s why. Now please, please, get yourself into that booster seat, fasten your seat belt, and stay there,” Jim replied.
He got in, hit the garage door opener and started the car. The circus was on the road.
He got Betsy and Joanie dropped off on time, and both times he had to waste time explaining nicely to the instructor that he’d be late picking them up. Either the women were dense, or were deliberately failing to understand just why he was going to be late picking up his daughter.
“Because Glenn has a play date at ten, and Jimmy has soccer at ten-thirty, which doesn’t leave me enough time to drive back and pick up Betsy. See?”
Both women were in their forties, both were slim and athletic, and both were irritated that he was going to be late. Jim fumed silently, and resolved to cut back on all non-essential activities involving children. Then he dropped Glenn off, and got flagged down by a frantic mother telling him that Peter Estinghouse wasn’t the only child that needed a ride home, but so did Karen Havens, Dorothy Fritz, and Diane Shelby, and since he had a van and all she had was a compact, would he mind taking the kids in his car? Would it be too much of a problem? Because she really didn’t know what else to do?
Jim did mind, it was a problem, and if she was too stupid to think of something else it wasn’t his problem. But the clock was running, and Jimmy kept urging him to, “C’mon, Dad! C’mon! I’m going to be late.”
So that was that, and by the time he dropped Jimmy off it was past time to pick up Betsy, which he knew it would be. As he was pulling out the minivan beeped at him accusingly, and when he glanced down at the instrument panel he noted that he was almost out of gas.
“Sure, what else?” Jim said aloud, trying not to think about the fifty dollars it cost to gas up the minivan. He pulled into a Shell station and had to wait in line – more time wasted – then when he got out of the van and found the release for the fuel door, and wrestled the gas cap off, and reached into his right front pocket... and found it empty. He’d forgotten his wallet. He even knew where it was, sitting inside the top left drawer of his dresser. Jim felt defeated. If he was lucky, he could make it home on whatever was left in the tank, get his wallet, and drive to the BP station on the corner. If he was lucky, but the way this day was going he wouldn’t put any odds on pulling this one off.
He started the van, willing a few extra miles out of the tank, and carefully drove home.
He parked in the driveway, and found the garage door and the back door unlocked. He frowned. He wished Cassie would be a little more careful with crime as high as it was, but she was a kind, trusting soul at heart. He’d have to find some way to diplomatically point out to her that safe was better than sorry, without violating any of Dr. Corbyn’s suitably vague rules of communication. He went into the kitchen, expecting to find Cassie, but the kitchen was empty, as was the living room. As he walked into the bedroom hallway, he could hear an unfamiliar breathing noise combined with a crunching sound. Their bedroom door was ajar, and he slowed his pace, listening, trying to identify the strange sound. He slowly walked three strides to the bedroom door, and the noises were noticeably louder. Then he heard a more familiar noise that he could identify – the rocking of the bed. He froze, listening.
It couldn’t be. It just could not be. But the noise...
He put his fingertips on the door and silently pushed it fully open, then he froze again, right on the threshold, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Cassandra, his Cassie, was naked and kneeling on the bed, wet with sweat. Her long hair was plastered to her back, her legs were spread, her back arched, and her head was thrown back so that she was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Only the whites of her eyes showed. As he watched, she ran her hands up over her body, caressing herself, before she made a low moan and clutched the bedspread in her fisted hands.
Facing her was a lean young man he’d never seen before. A dark skinned Mexican wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt and worn Levi’s. He was barefoot and wreathed in smoke from a hookah on the floor next to him, the mouthpiece clutched in his teeth. He sucked in a breath and the hookah bubbled.
Cassie’s mouth was open impossibly wide. Out of her mouth extended a wet, pinkish red, fleshy appendage. It was as long and thick as Jim’s arm. It appeared to be quite stiff. It pulsed very slightly.
The Mexican raised his left hand; in it he held a bunch of colored pencils. He looked down and selected a light green pencil, then carefully fit the pencil into the tip of Cassie’s appendage. The pencil stuck for a long moment, then with a crunching, grinding noise it disappeared down into the appendage. Cassie gave a soft grunt, followed by a moan of pleasure.
Barely breathing, Jim backed slowly away, then turned and walked as quickly and silently as he could out the back door. He didn’t slam the door of the minivan; he just drove away, paying special attention to the speed limit and to traffic laws. He was sweating and shaking badly as he pulled into the BP station near his house. He remembered he didn’t have his wallet. He pulled out his cell phone and stared at it, trying to think of someone to call, and something to say that didn’t sound completely and totally bat-shit crazy.
He could think of no one.
THE END
No comments:
Post a Comment