It’s mostly the car I’m worried about. Its list of transgressions has grown increasingly massive as this Heatwave Of The Century summer has gone on. I know it’s hot, blistering, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I am too.
A ghost lifts my hand. The phones glass feels like the smooth top of a searing oven.
I’m outside
My fingers are numb, senseless. The consensus of black is broken, filled up by white and green.
Come to the door
Yes. It’s the car I’m worried about. Not that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’ve been cracking up lately, unable to control myself, unable to care or stop. I think: this time it will break down for good. Two hours from home, they believe I’m with a licit companion much closer. My mind cycles through possibilities. The last time I’d done this, barely two weeks before, I’d forgotten to turn off my location before rushing out of my grandmother’s and into the wet of the world’s mouth. Within an hour, I was getting messages from all corners of the city:
Hi, where are you?
Why are you in Middleton?
Pick up your phone, please.
Do not turn off your location.
This time I’ll be better. Yet, I linger, car idle. Through the windshield, a house. Flat green expanse in either direction, its miles before I can see another. I think: I can still drive off. If the car broke down, what explanation could I have for dragging the ancient thing two hours away? To the middle of nowhere. Not a house in sight but one.
Are u coming?
The headlights die.
His cat greets me, stood up on back legs and pawing at the clear storm door. I can see through the house, into the backyard, where dead grass is king. I reach for the door handle and materializes, lopsided grin meeting my hesitancy.
He nudges the cat away with his foot.
“You’re–?”
“Yeah,” I respond. He holds open the door, waves me past. His hair is damp, flat. The living room: large, all white, vaulted ceilings. Sunken sofas line the three walls that don’t bleed into the kitchen. An acrid smell, cleaning solution, but also rankness, sitting water covered in a layer of scum.
I don’t notice her till I sit down. He’s asking about drinks. The slashed leather surface of the sofa impales my skin. I say no, turn. Immediately across, she watches, hands collapsed over her legs, sagging face, face fossilized in an expression of self-satisfaction. A circle of mud surrounds her, dirt and rot embedded into material. Before I can stand, he sits, drinks in hand.
I take it.
“Who is that.” Barely a question.
“Ma.” Presses his hand against my open shirt. He shares the woman’s bleached, straw hair, thicker than the wisps of nothing falling across her hollowed-out eyes. “She likes to watch.”
It’s dark now. I think: If I don’t come back, will they be able to find me? Worse, I think: Do I want to be found? I feel his heartbeat through his lips. In his lap, my forehead against his sweat, I feel the pressure of her knees against my back, rancid breath touching my neck.
When he is on top of me, my back to the white couch, she is back where she was, looking, even as he whimpers into my shirt, back arched. Soon he slows, stops, and says “I can’t stop thinking about my ex.” Locks himself in the bathroom.
I cross the room, sit next to his mother. Breathe in her sourness. The corpse doesn’t move when I curl up next to her. Down the hall, in the bathroom, he wails.
She says, “Your family is searching for you.”
I sigh. Out on the porch, the car’s hood is lit like sapphire. If I run, keep running, if I drop my phone, leave the car, it would all be over with. Over my shoulder, a voice.
“It’s too late.”
I know that. In my pocket, my phone agonizes. 18 Missed Calls. Sit back down, think.
As I’m trying to catch my breath, I notice the wailing has stopped. A pressure, on my shoulder, not heavy enough to be a hand. “You can stay here.”
I expect the car not to start, fatal irony. But of course it does, smooth as silk. Outside, the house is overcome by gloom, with only a rectangle of light burst forth from within it.
djp: Black midwesterner, bookseller, artist, horror freak who can be found @especiallymidd
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