Excerpt from “The Blackening”

What follows is the first chapter of The Blackening, entitled Casting Long Shadows. It is a prelude of the horrors that ensue later on. I hope you enjoy it enough to want to see the novel published…so you can read the rest.

With the lights left on.

1

——–

March 6, 2002: Seattle, Washington

Joe Marshall didn’t like the way his friend, Arlen Rice, looked when he came into work on Monday, March 6, 2002. It was a cold and rainy day, the gray overcast hanging low over the city like a mushroom cloud sagging in the hours following a nuclear explosion.

Not that bitterly cold and wet weather was out of place for Seattle, Washington. Far from it. But Joe – who had known Arlen for almost three years – understood his friend wasn’t feeling himself as of late. For most of that particular work day, Arlen looked poised on the brink of jumping out of his own body and running the forty-meter dash. What Joe especially didn’t like was how Arlen’s eyes kept darting back and forth in their sockets, as if he were trying to see people hiding out in the corners of his vision. Joe’s father, Mickey, displayed the same expressions and mannerisms after returning home from Vietnam. Two years later, Mickey Marshall was living out the rest of his days in Highline West Seattle Mental Health Center after a short stint in the VA hospital. He died three years after his admission and sometimes Joe would lie awake at nights – questioning with a childlike naivete – if the people his father’s haunted eyes were always searching for finally arrived and reclaimed the rest of him, the leftover parts that didn’t already die in Vietnam.

He would tell himself that it was a silly and ridiculous idea, of course. His father was sick, his father was fractured, and that was all, no more and no less than that. But his rationalizations didn’t have much substance to them while lying awake in the early hours of the morning, as he often did following his father’s death. With the darkness outside settling its weight over Seattle and the persistent drizzle of rain beating on his apartment windows like the seeking hands of blind devils, it was all too easy to feel contaminated with his father’s paranoia.

Joe Marshall and Arlen Rice both were employed at the FedEx shipping warehouse on South Alaska Street and another typical business day was drawing closer to its end. Joe had just finished inventory when he spotted Arlen parking his amazingly beat-to-shit forklift at the far end of the warehouse. Arlen stood up out of the forklift’s bucket seat and Joe once again thought that arthritis – once it sunk its brutally dry claws into his joints – would show Arlen Rice no mercy. He was a tall man, almost six-foot-six, and bulky. Watching him crawl out of the forklift and stand fully erect was almost like witnessing a cardboard box unfolding and constructing itself into a manlike shape.

“Hey, Arlen!” Joe called as he came within earshot of him.

Arlen turned to look. His eyes, which were the same shade of dark brown as his skin, gazed at Joe with an absent recognition. His mouth, which was mostly obscured by a thick mustache and connecting goatee, didn’t smile or show any other form of acknowledgement. As Joe drew closer, he could see the puffiness swelling up out of the flesh around Arlen’s eyes.

“What’s up, Joe?” Arlen asked nonchalantly as he stretched his back, which popped in what sounded like two dozen places.

Joe studied Arlen’s face for a moment. “Is it the insomnia again? You look like you haven’t slept since the last time the Sonics made the Finals.”

Arlen voiced a faintly amused grunt and nodded. He had always suffered from occasional bouts of insomnia – some so severe he would go days without sleeping – ever since he was a teenager.

“You ever think about gettin’ some meds for it, man? It makes me nervous knowin’ that you’re drivin’ around that forklift all sleepy.”

Arlen did smile now, but it was a strained smirk that didn’t appear as if it was full of much humor. “Thought about it. But the doc just put me on some shit for my cholesterol, and the medical here ain’t all that great. I’m sick a’ damn co-pays.”

“I hear ya, but still,” Joe said as Arlen twisted his head at an angle, cracking his neck. “You should probably check into it soon. You look…”

His words trailed off. Arlen looked at him curiously, his brow furrowed.

“You look like a damn maniac!” Joe blurted out at last. Both men laughed.

But looking back on it later, Joe Marshall knew that he laughed much more heartily than Arlen Rice did.

“Guess I must look like a maniac,” Arlen said. He started to lumber in the direction of the office, where both men would punch out their time cards for the day. “I’ve slept ‘round two hours a night the last week or so.”

“Really? Something keepin’ you up?”

Arlen shook his head. “Not really. Just I go to bed an’ two hours later, I wake up. No dreams about crazy-ass burned guys with finger-knives-”

As he said that last, Arlen theatrically waved his right hand through the air while wiggling his fingers in different directions. Joe chuckled, knowing that Arlen was jokingly reciprocating his earlier “maniac” remark.

“-no dreams ‘bout anything. I just wake up and can’t go back to sleep.”

They were just outside the door to the office now. Arlen ran his hand over his eyes in an distracted gesture that appeared to Joe as one of utmost weariness. “Wanna go get a beer?” Joe asked.

Arlen gave him a look that Joe couldn’t quite decipher. It made him feel somewhat tense.

Don’t worry about it, Joe told himself. He’s just dying for some sleep. That’s all it is.

“Just one beer, man,” Joe went on. “I think you need one, and cholesterol meds be damned for a day.”

Arlen took a deep breath and then exhaled it. His body language made him look as if he were deflating, like a leaky balloon steadily releasing its air.

“Can’t,” he replied with simplicity. “Don’t have the time today. The Swolskys are comin’ over for supper, and Lissa wants me to help out.”

Joe nodded his head reluctantly. “You wanna take a rain check on it, then? Tomorrow, maybe?”

This time Arlen laughed with genuine good cheer and it made Joe relax a little. “A rain check? Here, in Seattle? Every damn thing is rainy here.”

Joe grinned back at him, showing teeth that were beginning to turn yellow from twelve consecutive years of smoking. “Yeah, good point. How about it?”

“Don’t see why not,” Arlen said. He took a glimpse at the mammoth digital clock mounted on the wall over the top of the office door. “It’s four now. You ready for freedom?”

Joe’s eyes brightened. “Hell, yeah. Until tomorrow morning, at least.”

They both went into the office and clocked out. They said their respective farewells outside and Joe watched Arlen pull out of his slot and begin his drive home. Joe stood motionless for some time, looking like a small and thin statue of a man erected in the middle of an emptying parking lot. He continued to look in the direction that Arlen went and thinking once again of his father, Mickey, who always seemed to be looking for people that weren’t there. He harked back to those nights when he laid awake with his own bout of insomnia, looking timidly at the windows as the rain pattered and spattered against them like seductive, threatening murmurs without end, pondering the existence of things that weren’t there, things no one could see no matter how hard they tried, things that weren’t there but were real enough to haunt the mind and real enough to feed on the mind, chew on it with ravenous zeal until there was nothing left, nothing remaining but a hollow cocoon of a human being.

It was the last time that Joe Marshall saw Arlen Rice in person. The next time he saw his friend he was on the news.

—————————

When Arlen Rice stepped into the front foyer of his house, the first thing he could hear was his two children, Shauna and Arlen, Jr., playing upstairs. He felt his stomach flutter upon hearing their squealing and delighted voices. It was a sensation that bordered on full-blown nausea.

He took off his jacket and hung it up on the only accessible hook jutting out of the mounted coat rack, which was one of the first modifications he installed after he bought the house in the spring of 1999. He could hear voices coming from the dining room, which was off to his right and past the living room. It sounded like the Swolskys were already there, after all. Arlen liked the Swolskys from the start, because – unlike some of the other people living in the neighborhood – they didn’t give Arlen and his wife, Melissa, curious stares when they were together outside. Arlen was an African-American married to a white woman of Jewish descent – as were the Swolskys – and the neighborhood consisted of mostly older white folks raised in typical suburban close-mindedness. However, after they were established in their residence for awhile, Arlen realized that it wasn’t racism; it was just simple yet sometimes uncouth curiosity. Joe Marshall – that lord and master of obscure trivia – once told Arlen that Washington had the lowest population of blacks of any state in the country. Arlen had no qualms believing his imparted statistical fact. After moving to Washington with his mother from Champaign, Illinois, when he was ten years old, Arlen’s adjustment to his new home and surroundings had bordered on outright culture shock. He was afraid to make new friends because there were very few other black kids in the school he attended. It made him feel much more self-conscious about who he was than he ever felt back in Illinois. However, any misgivings about his ethnicity were – at least in his case – unfounded. Once he settled in and became more confident, making friends and being accepted was never a problem for Arlen Rice.

Sometimes he thought those initial questioning stares from his neighbors were because of how he and Melissa must have looked together. She was a shrew of a woman compared to her husband, standing almost a full foot shorter than he and possessing a body frame that was petite and appeared delicate. Maybe the neighbors weren’t curious after all. Perhaps they were only amused that this hulk of a man would find himself married to a woman who looked like she could be blown across the room if he sneezed too hard, like a fallen leaf caught in a high gust of wind.

Arlen made his way through the living room. Sitting on the couch and playing Halo on the Xbox was Gary and Sandra Swolsky’s older son, Jacob. He was ten years old yet was already forming pimples on his cheeks, a precursor of an adolescence that was still a few years away. His black hair was cropped close to the skull and a strong frown of concentration was on his face, hooking the tip of his narrow nose downward. To Arlen, Jacob looked like he had just breathed in the stench of an exceptionally gruesome fart.

“Hey, Jacob,” Arlen said, smiling at the sight of his scowling face. “I thought you beat that game already.”

Jacob looked up at Arlen, the grimace fading from his face. He shrugged his lanky shoulders through his Seattle Seahawks football jersey and said, “I did. But it’s so much fun to play.”

“Where’s your sister?” Arlen asked. He was referring to Caitlin, Jacob’s younger sister by two years.

“Upstairs with Junior and Shauna,” Jacob replied.

“Arlen, you home?”

It was the voice of Melissa coming from the kitchen.

“Yeah, it’s me!” Arlen called in return. He looked back down at Jacob and saw that his attention had once again vanished into the depths of Xbox Land.

“You mind giving us a hand in here?” Melissa asked in a raised, almost booming voice that betrayed how undersized of a woman she really was.

“In a minute,” Arlen called in return. “I’m gonna go upstairs and check on the kids first.”

Gary Swolsky emerged in the doorway that led into the dining room with comedic swiftness. It made Arlen think of Kramer’s dramatically unexpected entrances in the sitcom Seinfeld.

“Hiya, Arlen,” Gary said. Gary – much like Melissa and his own wife, Sandra – was small in stature. He had receding black hair with flecks of gray and large, brown eyes that peered at Arlen through wire-rimmed spectacles. His face was covered in a full yet well-trimmed beard that somehow made him look ten years younger. “Don’t worry about it. Go help our little ladies in the kitchen. I’ll check in on our boogers.”

Arlen shook his head. “It ain’t a problem, Gary. I’ll be back up an’ down before you know it. Why don’t you give Lissa and Sandy a hand until then?”

Gary grinned satirically. “Always trying to get out of housework, ain’tcha?”

Arlen uttered a short and nasal laugh. “Nah. It’ll only take me a minute. Two, at the most. I think you’re the one who can’t handle chores.”
Now Gary Swolsky could see what Joe Marshall had seen on Arlen’s face earlier: that expression of weary paranoia, as if Arlen had been awake for thirty-six successive hours looking out of his windows for someone’s inevitable arrival.

“Hey, Arlen…are you…”

Arlen knew where Gary was going with his hesitant and partially finished question. “I’m just tired, Gary. Having the insomnia again. Go on. I’ll be in soon.”

There came a burst of shrill laughter from the kitchen as Melissa Rice and Sandra Swolsky struck upon something mutually humorous.

“Okay,” Gary said. “But do I have to keep telling you to try some Valerian root? The GNC at the mall has some in capsules. Sandra had to take it after we had Caitlin, because the postpartum was hell on her sleeping.”

Arlen yawned. “Maybe I will,” Arlen replied, intending to do no such thing in the near future. “I’ll see you guys in a few.”

Arlen turned and made his way back through the living room – passing by the oblivious Jacob Swolsky, who was still playing Halo with a grim obsession – and through the foyer. As he started to climb the stairs, he could feel queasiness churning and bubbling in his stomach again. He could hear the three of them engaged in some sort of lively activity in Junior’s room.

Arlen surfaced in the doorway, the shadow of his considerable frame falling over the three children like vindictive judgment of the damned. Sitting on the floor in front of him, from left to right, was Shauna, Arlen, Jr. and Caitlin Swolsky. Shauna was a tall girl for her age; even while on both knees, she was almost the same height as the standing Caitlin. Arlen Jr., his thick, curly hair falling into his eyes, was sitting on the floor and holding an obnoxiously large Nerf gun in his lap.

“Hey, Dad,” Shauna said, smiling warmly at her father as he went into the room. Arlen was taken aback looking at his daughter, for he knew that she was going to be strikingly beautiful (although taller than a good deal of her male contemporaries) when she grew up.

Caitlin, always so introverted around any adult that wasn’t either of her parents, blushed and waved a small hand at Arlen, who returned the gesture and offered her a labored smile.

Junior looked ecstatic to the point of spontaneous combustion at the sight of his father. “Dad!” Arlen Jr. almost shouted, his grin exhibiting a medley of adult teeth and gaps most recently filled by departed baby teeth. “Me an’ the girls’re gonna play guns! You wanna play, too?”

Shauna overdramatically rolled her eyes at her brother. “That’s all you ever wanna do.”

Arlen Rice smiled, his eyes appearing to jitter in the puffed flesh around their sockets. “Sure, Junior, I’ll play guns with you,” Arlen replied. “I even bought my own gun with me.”

—————————

Sandra Swolsky looked up questioningly from the kitchen counter as Gary entered. Gary returned her stare with a sort of defeated resignation.

“Big Are doesn’t wanna help the Smurfs on their cooking expedition,” he said, smiling wryly.

Melissa turned around and gazed fixedly at him with her hands on her hips. Gary was reminded of how his mother would display the exact same body language as she would scold him for the various offenses of his youth.

Gary laughed. “Actually, he said he’s gonna go check on the kids, then he’ll be down to give us aid.”

Melissa’s posture relaxed. “All right,” she said, turning back to her self-appointed task of stirring the mashed potatoes.

Gary drew near his wife’s left side, slipping his right arm around her hip as he did so. He was again struck by how remarkably similar Sandra and Melissa were in physical appearance. Both had jet-black hair that the two women had tied up in comparable styles. They also shared green eyes and were the same height, although Sandra supported almost twenty extra pounds on her frame than Melissa did. Seeing them here in the kitchen made Gary think of two well-behaved teenage sisters graciously preparing dinner for their parents.

“Lissa?” Gary asked, craning his head forward to look at her because she was standing on the opposite side of Sandra at the counter. “Can I ask you something?”

Melissa also stretched her head forth to glimpse back at him. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Is Arlen okay?”

Melissa sighed wearily, making Sandra’s eyes dart in her direction. “He hasn’t been sleeping again, Gary. Me and Sandy were just talking about it.”

“I told her about how good the Valerian worked for me,” Sandra broke in. “She says trying to get Arlen to take pills is like trying to get Jacob to eat vegetables.”

Gary chuckled. “Don’t I know it. I’ve been trying to tell him about it, too. I’m surprised he’s taking that cholesterol med you told me about, Lissa.”

Melissa raised her thin eyebrows and sighed again. Gary thought that this time it was more of a melodramatic sigh than her first one. “He had to. Doctor Burke said that his cholesterol was outta control, and that if he didn’t do something, he’d have a heart attack before he turned forty.”

The three of them were silent for a moment.

“If you ask me,” Sandra said at last, breaking the shared quiet. “Not being able to sleep qualifies as getting something you have to take.”

“He doesn’t listen,” Melissa said brusquely, “It’s like he wants to suffer through that shit when it happens. I get worried sometimes, thinking about him at work and driving around a forklift when his eyes are so puffy he can barely see anything.”

“Not to mention just driving to work,” Sandra added. She turned away from the counter to check the status of the main course for their upcoming dinner, which was a massive rotisserie-style chicken.

Gary’s eyes accusingly danced back and forth between the two women. “What is this, some kinda interrogation of Arlen while he’s outta the room? He has a sleeping problem. He’s not nuts or anything like that.”

Melissa looked at Gary sensibly. “It can make him nuts.”

Gary was mute.

“Sometimes it scares me a little.”

Gary held his tongue.

“I’m not shitting you,” Melissa continued, “He’s always looking around, like he thinks somebody’s after him. Sometimes I’ve heard him talk to himself-”

“Hell, I talk to myself a lot of the time,” Gary broke in.

Melissa went on, ignoring Gary’s remark. “I’m just really pissed at him because he won’t get help for his insomnia when it comes, and this time is the worst it’s been in years. If I couldn’t sleep, then I-”

But she didn’t have a chance to finish. From upstairs, almost directly above their heads in the children’s room, came the deafening roars of three gunshots.

—————————

As the three of them bounded up the staircase with Jacob Swolsky following behind them, Melissa Rice thought to herself, God, please don’t let them have found Arlen’s goddamn gun. He’s been so zonked from not sleeping he could’ve left the fucking drawer unlocked-

But her train of thought was derailed when she saw her husband standing at the top of the staircase, looking down upon them all with a far-off expression on his face. The .45 automatic pistol he had bought for home protection two years before was clutched in his right hand.

The barrel of the gun was smoking.

“Arlen!” Melissa yelled. The likelihood that her husband had murdered both of their children and the Swolsky’s little girl still hadn’t broken through her alarm yet. “What happened? Oh God-”

“Had to,” was all Arlen Rice could say.

Gary nudged Melissa aside and bounded up half of the stairs. He was the first of the three who was convinced by the reality of the situation; all Gary had to do was see the peculiar, serene madness in his friend’s face and the smoking gun to understand what just transpired.

“What the fuck do you mean?” Gary screamed up at Arlen from his position six steps down. “Where’s my daughter? What did you DO TO HER?”

“Had to,” Arlen repeated vacantly. “Had to do it.”

Gary Swolsky bellowed an inarticulate shriek of rage and charged up the stairs toward Arlen. Sandra and Jacob tried grabbing his shirt in an effort to restrain him, but they were too late. All Melissa could do was watch, transfixed, as her longtime friend and neighbor met his fate at the hands of her husband.

Arlen pistol-whipped Gary in the face right before he could make any sort of physical contact. The swift, brutal violence of action betrayed how calm Arlen’s face really was; with the exception of his quivering eyes, Arlen’s facial expression was one of chilling impassiveness. The blow caused Gary to crumple to his knees on the staircase, stunned.

“NO, ARLEN! DON’T-” Sandra shouted, right before Arlen aimed the gun at the back of Gary Swolsky’s head and pulled the trigger.

The exit wound tore open Gary’s forehead, splashing blood and gristle onto the step in front of his face and generating a dreadful slotch sound. His head dropped face-first onto the stair with a grisly smack. His body, now lying flat and at an angle upon the staircase, slid downward a few feet before stopping. His right arm and foot began to spasm, as if a small yet intense electrical current was passing through him.

“Dad…?” Jacob said, seemingly not grasping the fact his father was dead. The two women were breathing heavily. Sandra’s mouth opened and closed continually, like she were trying to speak but couldn’t find any words.

“Alla you,” Arlen said. The sound of his voice made the three of them look up at him. He was coming down the steps with a methodical diligence, aiming the gun in their general direction. His eyes rolled from side to side in their sockets with maddening repetition, as if he were looking, searching, expecting other things to make themselves known at any second.

Sandra Swolsky finally found her voice. “YER FUCKING CRAZY! YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED MY GIRL! WHY DID YOU-”

Arlen raised the gun at her. Sandra grabbed her son by the upper arm and forcefully shoved Melissa out of their way. Taken completely unaware, Melissa stumbled and fell hard onto her tailbone, sending a jolt down her left leg and up her spine. She cried out in startled pain.

Sandra dragged Jacob, who was as limp as a shabby doll, toward the front door. He was still gawking in hushed shock at the corpse of his father, which was still lain out across the stairs. Silent tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Arlen aimed at her over the banister and fired twice in rapid succession.

The first shot missed, ripping a hole in the wall by the coat rack. The second hit Sandra in the back of the head as she hastily paused to open the front door. The force of the bullet caused her face to collide with the door and rebound, leaving a large bloody splotch upon its white paint. She crashed to the floor, twitching wildly. Jacob sprawled out next to her and uttered a screech of surprise.

What finally pulled Melissa Rice out of her own state of shock wasn’t the pain triggered by her abrupt fall, nor was it the callous fashion in which Sandra had pushed her aside for the benefit of her and Jacob’s safety. It wasn’t even the haunted and strained face of her husband, now standing over Gary Swolsky’s corpse on the stairs and watching it in clear anticipation of something.

It was the fact that Sandra Swolsky was still alive and trying laboriously to breathe through the ruined gorge that was her nose and mouth. Her breathing was raspy and Melissa could hear fluid gurgling in her throat. Her head jerked rapidly from side to side. Jacob, just then coming out of his own stupor, was weeping hysterically and clutching his mother’s cheeks in each hand. Her blood flowed between his fingers, warm and tacky, but he seemed not to notice.

Arlen stood in the same spot, gaping at Gary’s corpse, quietly fascinated.

What’s he waiting for? Melissa thought to herself as she backpedaled toward Jacob using the heels of her feet. It looks like he’s expecting Gary to get up again.

Jacob started to wail in horrible, helpless grief. His cries yanked Melissa out of her thoughts.

“Mommy! MOM! MOM! No, please don’t DIE! No no no no no!”

Melissa was still in a sitting position but she was farther away from the bottom of the staircase, almost to the front door. Jacob and Sandra were directly behind her. She threw a quick glance up at Arlen. His brow was creased and he was frowning, as if he were baffled by an exceptionally difficult math equation.

Melissa peered back at Sandra, who was now breathing in smaller, strangled gulps of air, and decided against trying to grab Jacob and make a run for it. She knew Arlen was a good shot, for all she had to do was study the evidence in front of her. How he could be such a marksman with those swollen eyes and weeks of sleeplessness didn’t matter. She turned her head around again to look at her husband.

“Arlen,” she said, swallowing back a lump in her throat.

Arlen looked up from his examination of Gary Swolsky’s corpse and fixed her with his gaze. He looked even more confused, and – she thought with a little hope – repentant.

“Arlen, you’re sick,” she said, startling herself with her ability to even find the words. “Let me call the hospital. You need help.”

He looked at her, speechless, his brow wrinkling further.

Melissa swallowed again, pressuring herself to select the right words. Her anger urged her to hurl a volley of obscenities and curses at him, but she realized that would make the situation worse, if that was possible. “Arlen, why are you doing this? What did we do?”

“Had to,” he replied, visibly shaken. He pointed up the staircase toward the second floor landing. “They…they…I don’t get it…Gary’s still here. He’s still here.” Arlen looked past Melissa toward the fallen Sandra and pointed at her. “She’s still here, too.”

Melissa turned to see Sandra. She was dead now, beyond any doubt or question. Jacob lay with his head buried in her chest and crying, sobs wracking his upper body.

“What isn’t there…makes me afraid,” Arlen finished. His eyes, which in the previous few moments seemed to have more focus in them, began to flick back and forth again.

My God, he’s totally gone. Why didn’t I see it coming?

Arlen started down the stairs, stepping over Gary’s body as he came. Melissa backpedaled further, reaching the edge of the living room, where the sounds of Halo were still blaring from the television (apparently Jacob never bothered to pause the game when he heard the gunshots upstairs). She watched as Arlen reached the first floor and walked over to the dead mother and her broken son, who still had his face buried in her bosom.

Melissa reached her hand out, as if doing so could stop him.

“Arlen, don’t kill him too!” Melissa yelled, but it was to no avail. Arlen pointed the gun down and shot Jacob Swolsky in the back of the head as he wept for his mother. Jacob’s entire torso jerked reactively, and then he was still.

“Gotta make sure,” Arlen said, watching Jacob’s inert form. “Probably some kinda trick I saw upstairs. Dunno what kinda sick shit this is.”

Witnessing Jacob’s murder crystallized Melissa’s mind’s eye-view of what happened to her own children. Shauna and Junior, both with the thickest black hair, beautiful brown eyes, full pink lips and the fairest of tan skin, were guilty of no more than being the children and first victims of a madman. Melissa felt an overpowering agony sweep through her. The sorrow took with it any desire for her own survival, like a river washing a derelict boat out to sea.

Arlen started coming toward her, his eyes trickling mute tears.

“My babies,” Melissa said, her lower jaw quivering, “Our babies. Arlen…why? Goddamn you! GODDAMN YOU!”

She began to cry, burying her face in her hands. Her children were dead, her friends were dead and her husband had been the one who killed them all. In that moment, Melissa Rice compulsively wanted it to be over.

“My babies…my babies…”

Arlen pressed the barrel against the back of his wife’s skull.

“Just do it, Arlen,” she managed through her sobbing. “I wanna be with my babies.”

“Have to,” he said, “I’m sorry if you ain’t…no…I know that you-”

“JUST FUCKIN’ DO IT, ARLEN! WHAT’RE YOU WAITING FOR, YOU FUCKER? DO IT DO IT DO IT!” Melissa roared, her voice cracking with unbearable emotion.

Arlen’s face wrenched into a vulgar, crooked mask of sorrow and rage.

“I HAVE TO! I HAVE TOOOOOO-”

But Melissa Rice would hear no more of his piercingly tortured scream. He pulled the trigger for the final time on that terrible day.

As police sirens approached moments later, the sounds of glass shattering and awful, guttural howling emanated from inside the Rice home.

2

——–

March 21, 2006: Toledo, Ohio

“Hey, Jamie! You got any smoke on ya?”

James England looked around the first floor hallway of Johnstone High School with crazily seeking eyes.

“Keep it down, dude! Do you want the Goat to hear your dumb ass, or what?” James sharply replied.

“Sorry,” said Ritchie Armstrong, looking ashamed and a trifle frightened, as if he were awaiting some form of repercussion.

“No,” James said, “I don’t. Smoked the last of my stash last night. My girl might have a dime at her place, but I don’t think she’s gonna part with it.”

“Damn! I got Lindsay Mullin comin’ over tonight. I heard when she smokes weed, she likes to give up the smiley-pie.”

James broke into a gale of hearty laughter that seemed to billow up out of his diaphragm, like the cough of a longtime smoker now suffering from lung cancer. “‘Smiley-pie’?” James said more than asked, as he pushed open the doors leading outside. “Is that what you call it, dude?”

Ritchie humbly shrugged his shoulders as he followed James out the door and into a sunny yet chilly mid-afternoon. “Yeah, that’s what I call it. It’s the pie that makes ya smile. Got it from my brother.”

“The one still in Iraq?” James asked.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Ritchie responded, his tone changing slightly. He almost sounded defensive, even though he had no reason to be.

“When’s he comin’ home? When Bush is done suckin’ the big fat oil-cock?”

“I guess. He was all set to come home around Christmas, then they decided to keep him over there for another six months. Bullshit.”

“Yeah, it is,” James reciprocated. “But hey, Rich, I gotta get goin’. I’m meetin’ my girl soon and we might hit the movies.” He seemed to consider what to say next. “I’ll ask her about her dime, though. See if she can spare any.”

“Sweet! All right, man. If she does, can you get it to me later tonight?”

“I’ll try. See ya, dude.”

With that, James England left Ritchie Armstrong to his own devices. He started to walk his usual path that led home, knowing damn well that Ritchie wouldn’t get even a thimbleful of his girlfriend’s stash of marijuana tonight.

James England felt like smoking most of it himself.

—————————

James stood outside of his house, irresolute, for almost ten minutes, smoking two cigarettes during that time span. The longer he stood there, the more his house took on the appearance of a vague facial construct to him, a bizarre, demonic altar still stained with the torment of its past sacrifices.

Even though he felt the usual foreboding at having to go back to his own home, he was thankful that he at least didn’t encounter Marquese Williams while he made the trek home. Marquese, who supposedly was a member of a street gang, attended the same school as James and was one of his biggest headaches. Many times during the course of a typical day, Marquese would throw insults at James or even try to instigate a physical altercation with him. It didn’t matter if it was before school, during school, or on James’s way home from school, Marquese could never leave him be for long and almost always had his posse in tow. Many times, James avoided fighting him by the skin of his teeth, regardless of whether or not Marquese had his crew with him. James knew that one day – and probably soon – that there would be a bloody reckoning with Marquese, and James relished the anticipation he felt of that potential conflict. He wasn’t an unabashed admirer of violence – even though he had been suspended a few times since junior high for fisticuffs – but when it came to Marquese’s ugly, persistently-sneering face and wounding remarks, well…at least it was something he could fix with his fists. The problems he faced at home couldn’t be fixed by any method he could devise.

James dropped the butt of his smoldering cigarette onto the sidewalk and crushed it out with the sole of one of his well-worn Vans shoes. He tucked his pack of cigarettes – Pall Mall Menthols – into the side pocket of his jeans. He knew that his mother knew he smoked; still, he felt awkward about letting her see him do it. In fact, when it concerned his mother in recent days, there were a lot of matters he didn’t feel comfortable with.

With legs that felt as weak as those of a crumbling wooden puppet hanging precariously from piano wire, James made his way up to the front door. He reached into his jacket pocket for his house key, fumbled it and dropped it onto the wooden floorboards of the front porch.

“Shit,” he hissed under his breath as he bent over to pick up the key. When he returned to his upright position, the loud barking of the neighbor’s dog across the street startled him and he dropped the key onto the floor of the porch again.

James turned around and looked.

Across the street, the neighbor, Mr. Collins, had emerged out of his residence and was checking the contents of the mailbox. His dog – a mix of Labrador and Husky – was tied to the tree jutting out of the front yard like the outstretched hand of a dying patient seeking final comfort. The dog was barking at Mr. Collins with an almost infuriating incessancy, but the man himself didn’t seem to notice nor care in the least.

James England didn’t find it out of the ordinary that a dog would be barking at its owner like he was a complete stranger.

Mr. Collins was examining the envelopes he pulled out of his mailbox when he observed James looking in his direction. Mr. Collins smiled kindly and waved.

James returned the wave, smiling himself. He hoped that his grin looked real enough, because it felt artificial, almost plastic, on his own face.

James turned around, scooped up the key, and let himself into the house.

—————————

The first thing James had to do when he entered the front foyer was empty his bladder.

He carelessly threw his backpack onto the living room couch through the foyer’s left entryway and started to gradually climb the steps leading to the second floor. He didn’t know where his mother was, but he knew for certain that she was home, because he could hear the purring snores of his one year-old nephew, Danny, emanating from the room he shared with his mother and James’s sister, Lisa. And Lisa, he recalled, was working that day.

When he reached the top landing, he heard the metallic clatter of what sounded like pots from the first floor and an angry, “Fuck!” that was close to being a shout. His mother must have been in the kitchen putting dishes away, and that suited James just fine. He was having one of those days where negligible contact with his mother would greatly improve his frame of mind.

James opened the door to the bathroom and closed it behind him. He stood with his back up against it, taking in deep breaths, a fearful grimace twisting the features of his face.

I can do this, he thought. I can do this. I’ve been doing this every day for a long time now, and today’s no different from all the others.

Still, it took him another minute or so before he could suppress the butterflies in his stomach long enough to walk past the mirror on the wall to his right. He didn’t give it even the most cursory of glances.

He lifted the toilet seat, did his business, and then flushed. Instead of washing his hands in the sink, he took out a baby-wipe from its plastic dispenser and used that to clean his hands. He dropped it in the small wastebasket next to the toilet before turning around and inspecting the rest of the bathroom.

Damn, can’t wash my hands like a normal jackass and my girl has to shave me with a straight razor. What a life. I mean, what a fucking life.

On the opposite wall of the toilet there was a shelf where his mother kept a dizzying array of synthetic plants. Why she thought that fake plants were needed in the shitter was a personality quirk of his mother’s that James England would forever be past the point of comprehending. He walked over there regardless, keeping an attentive ear out for his mother if she should approach, and checked what he had hidden behind the plants. It was still there, and the accumulative dust that lined the plastic leaves of all the plants and the shelves suggested that no one had bothered to move or give them a good dusting in some time. Still, he felt the obsessively compulsive and paranoid need to better camouflage what he had concealed there.

When he did enough to appeal his own sense of contentment, he turned and left the bathroom, once again ignoring the sink and the mirror suspended over it.

—————————

James was in his room, typing an instant message to his girlfriend on the laptop computer when his mother, Allison, walked in.

“Jamie? Can we talk?”

He froze momentarily, the rapping of the keyboard coming to an abrupt halt.

“I don’t care,” was his reply.

He heard the sounds of her movement as she entered the room. “Chatting with her again?”

“Yeah,” he said. He typed his girlfriend a simple message: BRB. He sent it to her before folding the screen down onto the keyboard.

James revolved around in the swivel chair to look at his mother, who sat on the edge of his bed. A tired yet vibrantly aware expression was on her face.

“Jamie, I just wanted to say that I’m glad you’ve been doing better in school. And I’m happy for you not getting suspended lately.” She said this last with a wry smile, as if she were trying to share an inside joke with her son.

He returned her gaze, trying to look as relaxed, as comfortable, as he could manage.

“Well, that one jerk Kevin that was always messin’ with me got expelled,” James said, “The Goat saw to that. Guess he got busted carryin’ a blade to school one day. But Marquese’s still in school. I hate his ass. More than Kevin.”

Allison’s eyes widened slightly. “You think that kid meant to use it on you?”

James shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, Hell, anything’s possible, Ma.

“I wish I had the money to send you to a private school-”

“And get messed with by nuns, instead?” James interrupted.

Allison looked at him with a sharp, contradictory eye. “Hey, I went to Central. It wasn’t so bad back then. No reason to think it would be now, right? At least Catholics run a better school than the city of Toledo ever could.”

James didn’t verbally reply. He just shrugged his shoulders a second time and started spinning the swivel chair from side to side in choppy half-circles, but he kept his mother in attentive view.

“Look, Jamie. I’ve been thinking of asking your dad to-”

When she saw James’s reaction, she cut herself off. He stopped spinning the chair and a fiery, angry light erupted in his eyes.

“What? Come back? I don’t think so, ma-”

“No, no! That’s not what I’m saying-”

“Why the hell did he leave, anyway? Huh? Neither one of you ever bothered to tell me that shit!”

“It’s none of your-”

“Yeah, yeah! None of my fuckin’ business, I know! So tell men, Ma…just what were you gonna ask Dad for?”

She was silent for a moment before speaking again. Her voice was a trifle unsteady yet her eyes were narrowly focused. “I was going to ask him if he could help pay for you to go to Central.”

James, for an instant, reacted as if he were sucker-punched in the abdomen before quickly regaining his composure. “I don’t wanna go to Central, Ma. I don’t wanna leave my friends at Johnstone behind.”

She cocked her head. “What do you see in those ‘friends’? Why are they so special that you just can’t see them after school instead during school, after school and everything in between?”

“They always got my back,” James said, rubbing a hand through his hair, as he often did during times of tension or conflict. “Think I’ll make any good friends at Central, Ma? Most of em are dumbass, bratty mall shoppers and jocks.”

Allison looked at him, seemingly sizing him up.

“I’m not your enemy, Jamie. I just think you’ll have a better chance if you go to a better school.”

“Ma, I’m gonna be a senior next year. Do you really wanna go through all this trouble, tryin’ to get money off of Dad and other bullshit just so I can go to Central for one damn year? Lisa never got to go to Central, do you think-”

“Leave your sister out of this,” Allison interjected brusquely. “This ain’t about her, it’s about you.”

“Fine, whatever,” James said, waving his hand sharply, as if he were trying to swat away a troublesome flying insect. “I’m gonna be eighteen next year. That’s a legal adult, right? Why can’t I make some of my own decisions?”

Allison looked away, appearing defeated. “Jamie, I don’t want to argue anymore-”

“It’s, like, all we do,” James said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But you’re still my son…and I’m still you’re mother.”

She stood up, stretching her ailing lower back and wincing when it cracked like an air-pistol shot. “I gotta take Danny to see his other grandma. She’s a nice lady…hard to believe Lisa chose that fuckup of a father.”

James said nothing. He looked as if he were in a mild state of bewilderment.

“Look, we’ll see how the rest of this school year goes before I decide on anything, okay?”

“Okay, Ma,” James replied, sounding distant and modestly detached from reality.

“Will you be out with your friends when I get back?”

“Probably.”

“Okay,” Allison England said. She turned around, stopped, and then looked back at him one last time.

“Jamie, I’m just worried. Since your dad left, you’ve been more pissed off than you ever were before he left, if that’s possible. I just think if you keep going to a public school with all these hoods and shady kids that mess with you, you’ll eventually fight back in a way that’ll make news headlines. I don’t know why you’re so angry all the time, but sometimes…”

She trailed off, ruminating on her thoughts.

James looked at her with indifference. “‘Sometimes’ what, Ma?”

Tears were building in her eyes, but her jaw was set and her cheeks were drawn tight in the resistance of her escalating emotions. “Sometimes I’m afraid of you, Jamie, and I’m afraid of what you’re capable of. But like I said before: I’m still your mother, and I wish you’d stop treating me like an enemy.”

With that, she turned and left him behind in his room.

He continued to sit in the swivel chair for some time, listening to the noises that signaled the imminent departure of his mother and nephew from the house: the whining creak of the floorboards as she walked into Danny’s room and dressed the baby; the cooing and cawing of Danny as she changed his diaper; her descending footfalls and the audibly fading gibberish spoken by Danny as she proceeded down the staircase toward the first floor; the opening and closing of the front door; the start of the Jeep Wrangler’s engine outside.

There the young man sat for some time, staring inanely at the doorway that led out of his room, looking like he were in a deeply comatose state. He couldn’t help but to replay one of the last things his mother had said to him over and over again inside of his troubled mind, like an endlessly spinning tape loop.

I’m still you’re mother.

I’m still you’re mother.

James “Jamie” England buried his face in his hands and began to weep. He cried because Allison was right on one account. He was also starting to fear himself and what he could be capable of.

I’m still you’re mother.

Bullshit, he thought to himself. He swiveled back around in his chair, lifted the laptop’s screen and logged onto the Internet. After a few minutes passed, James glanced back over his shoulder toward the open door of his room.

To James, it felt like there was an invisible entity standing in his doorway and watching him with spiteful awareness. There was nobody else in the house – all he had to do was look out of his window and see the vacant driveway below to substantiate that – but he couldn’t shake the sensation.

James stood up out of his chair and walked over to the door, closing and locking it. Satisfied, he went over to his chair and sat back down in front of the laptop.

Twenty minutes later, James was perusing several older online articles about a killer nicknamed The Family Man.

© Daryl Brownell