Originally Written April, 2024
Jim pulled the Chevy along one of the shut off pumps outside the Quick Fill and told Macy to wait in the truck, he’d be back in just a sec. He left the Chevy purring and when he opened the door the hinges gave such a startling shriek that his heart skipped a beat, his left leg leg shook, the heel of his foot slipped under a patch of loose gravel, and Jim had to quickly grip the tarnished window frame to keep from spilling to the ground. Righting himself, he gave the ornery knee a good smack, polluting a cloud of dust from his jeans and looking at Macy said, “dang ole’ thing, always gives out on you right when the warranty’s expired.”
Macy stared back with what Jim could only describe as permanent detachment. Stifling a sigh, his lips curled up in an awkward smile that pushed back to touch his yellow teeth. Not too long ago his skittishness had been something like an old joke between them. A dirty dish would slip from Macy’s hands and clatter along the inside of the sink and Jim would jump from his seat on the couch, maybe spilling a little beer on his shirt, and say something like “they were having a two-for-one sale, buy the heebies, get the jeebies for free,” and Macy would laugh and say that, “Even tigers can sometimes be scaredy-cats”. But Jim didn’t feel like a tiger. These days there was much to be scared of then the bang of a dirty dish and there was a lot less to be brave about. To him, the fear was all completely justified.
Those blank eyes of hers followed Jim as he walked up to the front of the store. The fluorescents overhead still blinked and buzzed but the automatic door had gone out, stuck halfway between open and closed, and Jim had to squeeze through sideways to get in.
The lights still worked inside, showcasing rows of snack shelves that had tipped over and leaned against each other like a line of fallen dominoes. Jim carried on through the gas station, his boots crunching over broken potato chips, bright yellow and still greasy, follow the yellow chip road, carefully making his way for the back of the store, towards the soft electric hum of the drink coolers.
It was slim pickings, he was hoping to maybe find a stray bottle of champagne but then struggled to remember if Quick Fill had ever catered to such luxury or if any store in Hillcott had ever had for that matter. Finding champagne in a gas station, it was what they called a fool’s hope, but there was a twelve-pack of Busch resting on the floor of the cooler next to an overstock of diet cola and some sports drink he didn’t recognize the name of.
It’ll have to do, Jim thought. He opened the cooler door and lingered for a moment letting the cool air slither down the collar of his shirt to chill his sweaty belly, thinking it was damn lucky that the turbines lined along the edge of Hillcott had kept spinning.
Jim grabbed the case of beer and crouched to stare down the leaning isles for a couple of snacks to grab. A body was sprawled out in between the gummy candies and the flamming hot chips; with the way the isles leaned against each other it might have looked like the man was sleeping in tent, but Jim knew better. His fingers grazed the ridged grip of the pistol holstered on his belt, waiting for something to happen. The rotten, gassy smell that had become permanent to the air was not as strong in the store. The body may have been somewhat fresh.
Jim felt a spike in his nerves; a warm pang in the center of his chest. Who the man on the floor was, he couldn’t tell, when they were on their stomachs with their faces pressed in to the ground, everyone pretty much looked the same. Probably, they had once passed by each other on the road, an isle at the grocery store, sat on the same side of the bleachers at a Warriors football game, Hillcott was contained enough that faces were familiar and nobody passing by was unwarranted of a smile and curt nod.
After a minute with no change to the body, Jim let his hand fall from his side but kept an ear out for anything that may be slivering about between the isles. Quickly, he grabbed the first bag of chips he saw, a Family-Size pretzel twist, It’ll have to do, he thought, and with the beer tucked uncomfortably under his arm, side-shuffled back out through the busted door.
Walking back to the truck he tried not to pay attention to Macy’s eyes on him. Past all the bug guts and ashy yellow pollen splattered across the windshield, he could feel that stare of hers focused on him like hunter staring down the scope at a grazing whitetail. Jim opened the door to the truck, placing the beer and pretzels in the middle of the bucket seat and without word pulled out of the gas station.
He took the twenty minute drive out to Hook’s Lake through a maze of back roads and dirt trails. The Chevy’s tires kicked up clusters of small pebbles and hunks of dirt that knocked against the chassis like an old clock. Tick-Tock Tick-Tock. Passed an opening of Aspen trunks, the lake came to view. Jim backed the bed of the truck up to the waters edge. He got out and went to over to the passenger side. He opened Macy’s door for her and extended a hand. She stared at his open palm a moment, the one with his wedding band still wrapped around his aging finger, before taking it. Her touch made him shiver but Jim kept his composure as if he’d felt nothing and helped her step out of the truck. He guided her around to the bed, dropped the tailgate and helped her up to sit so that she was facing the water.
Before returning to the cab, Jim took a moment to look out at the lake. The water was as still as if mirror of the finest glass known to man had been placed on the ground to reflect the mass of twinkling stars and sharp cut thumbnail moon. Looking at the surface of the lake was about as good as looking up at the real night’s sky, but Jim looked up anyway. As a boy he had once believed that at night someone up the clouds placed a giant piece of black paper over the sun, creating night, and it was the work of mischievous cloud dwelling cherubs with slingshots that made the stars by shooting holes through the paper. He had once told this to Macy and she had smiled and replied that if he had used his imagination for cute little things like that, instead of things to be afraid of, life would be a lot more pleasant to get through. He had nodded and told her that she was probably right.
It was one of the last conversations they’d had together, and coming back from the memory, staring up at the stars, Jim realized that he’d been gently stroking his wedding ring.
He went to the front of the truck and took a seat in the passenger side. In the rear view he could see Macy’s slender back, still but relaxed. Jim popped open the glove box and took out his journal. It was one of those ninety-nine cent deals they sold in bulk during back-to-school season, and when he’d first expressed the thought of starting a daily journal, Macy had told him to get something more fancy, but he brushed the suggestion off thinking his thoughts weren’t fancy and so didn’t deserve a fancy home, all he needed was blank paper and ink.
Jim took the pen out from its nest in the metal rings and flipped through pages of his own scrawl, catching words subliminally that painted a picture of the past few months that he’d soon rather forget, until he came to blank page towards the very back.
He cast one more look at Macy in the rear view and then he began to write.
June 6 20—
Drove Macy down to Hook’s. Got some beer and a bag of pretzels, not exactly a feast for Kings and Queens but It’ll have to do. The sky is cloudless and beautiful and I wish I could thank whoever is in charge of the weather for making it this way tonight. I think Macy appreciates it too. I’m nervous to get out of the truck, just about as nervous as I was the night of our first date, when I could barely summon up the courage to go up to her front door and knock. It’s funny how things circle around like this, me being just as nervous for out first date over twenty years ago, as I am for out last date, on this beautiful June night.
–
December 25 20—
The morning started with a knock on the door that startled me out of my chair. Macy was in the kitchen cooking up some French Toast. At first I had objected, reminding her that who knew when we were going to be able to get eggs again. She happily replied that it was Christmas and we deserved a little treat. I smiled and told her she was probably right.
Looking through the peephole I saw Charlie Rath on the other side, his hands stuffed down the pockets of his sun bleached overalls, a dusty plaid button up under the straps. Without opening the door I asked him what he wanted and he told me that he had come by to see if he could borrow a couple handfuls of rice. I told him sorry, that we had none to spare and hoped he would just accept the fact and walk away but he lingered on the front porch with his hand in his pockets, rocking back and forth like a boy who’d been caught kicking a puppy and was pretending to feel sorry about it. I meant to tell him to get going but Macy had crept up behind me, having heard the whole thing, and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘He’s probably just lonely,” she said. I didn’t really care. It was hard enough to remain careful with those you love and Charlie Rath was not one of those. Never had I met a man whose name so fit him. Every time I see him I can’t help but mumble, ‘the Rath is upon us’ to myself. Macy says I’m too hard on him, but she wasn’t the one who had to deal with the Rath when the son of bitch sent a lawyer to the house threatening that if I didn’t give up two of my acres that The Rath claimed was a part of his property, he’d bleed me for every blade of grass and penny it was worth, and more.
Macy scratched the back of my neck and I just about melted in her palm, it’s a power she has over me to get what she wants and she knows it too. Married nine-teen years and every time she touches me I turn in to a teenager in the middle of puberty.
I asked Rath if he had one of the slugs in his head and he said no. Swindler that he was, even Rath knew that it wasn’t something to lie about, and looking at him through the peephole I didn’t see him tense up when the question was asked. I whispered to Macy that there was still a chance to turn him away but she hushed me and lead me aside and opened the door.
The awkward afternoon consisted mostly of me and Rath sitting around the living room not saying much to each other while Macy cooked in the kitchen, occasionally she would pop in to refresh a glass of water or ask if either of us wanted a cola. When Rath was told we didn’t have any beer I noticed the slight twitch in his eye I’d grown to hate during our property dispute and any feelings of neutrality I might have mustered towards him quickly vanished at the idea of what we had being not good enough for him.
There were no turkeys or glazed honey hams left, so Macy had just gotten a pair of regular ham steaks for the two of us and when it was time to eat, the saint that she was, cut up the slices of meat into three equal portions to spare any feelings of intrusion that Rath may have felt. There was ham, rice and biscuits with just a little bit of gravy. Macy and I shared a Coke and Rath stuck with water.
Macy asked Rath if he’d heard anything from his family up in New York and he only replied in that solemn mask the bereaved wear which tells you more than words could. Macy offered condolences and I even managed a sorry, meant it too. Afterwards Macy held up her coke can and we toasted to our being safe. Rath chugged down his water, he hadn’t really touched his food and muttered an ‘Amen’.
When he left at sundown I bolted all the locks on the door and checked the windows for any cracks in the boards. Macy and I sat on the couch together and talked for a little bit about Christmas’ past until it got too depressing and we decided to go to bed.
We made love, all we had to give each other for Christmas was our selves and it was damned good enough for me. Even now as I sit here writing this down, I can look over my shoulder to the woman in the bed and if I start to think too much about what I’ve done to deserve her I can scare myself in to thinking that it’s all a dream and I’ll wake up alone in some sanitarium suffering from a severe delusion of grandeur. Damn, laying next to her I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll wake her up and ask her to scratch the back of my neck some more.
Merry Christmas.
December 26 20—
I found the top half of Charlie Rath under the house, sticking out from the crawl space. I didn’t need to call out, poke or nothing to realize that he was dead. He neck was as twisted as a towel being wrung out. The ear was missing from the left side of his head, there was deep hole the size of my fist there instead, where the thing, the goddamn thing Rath had said wasn’t there in the first place, had crawled out from. The way the sun cast on Rath that morning I could see down that hole, and see that that pea-sized vindictive brain of his had been slurped right up.
My eyes scanned the grass around the porch knowing that the damn slug was probably still close by. I didn’t see anything, no blades of green moving on the windless morning but that did nothing to settle the twist I felt in my chest. I left Rath there on the grass and went inside to tell Macy what happened. She asked a ton of questions that I didn’t have the answers to and after a while I stopped listening and instead focused on checking the doors and windows and making sure my Browning was fully locked and loaded. She didn’t protest when I told her that we weren’t leaving the house today. Occasionally I would catch her peaking at Rath’s body through the cracks in the window, whispering to herself, why would he lie, why would he lie, we were good to him. I know why he did it and it’s not just because he’s an idiot who thinks he knows more than he does. The way I reason it, is that it was his final retribution towards me. I win in the courts, he wins at the end of the world. Like I said, there was never a man whose name better fitted him and when he died under my crawl space, knowing that thing was about to wriggle itself from him, he knew damn well the wrath he was bringing upon us.
December 28 20—
I discovered something today.
After much watch but no activity yesterday, I spotted the thing this afternoon wiggling around out front. The size of bratwurst, translucent and glowing green. This one was a bit more plump in the middle section as what ever was left of Rath’s brain dissolved inside it. I didn’t tell Macy it was there and instead grabbed my rifle, went out to the porch and took a shot at it. The bullet sliced the thing in half right where Rath’s brain would be and it flung off in two different directions. Both halves remained still for a moment and then they started to squirm and slither through the grass like nothing had happened. Macy was at the door, asking what the shot had been about. I kept my eyes on the now two little slugs slithering through the grass, hating my self for even trying. I told her to go inside but she demanded to know what had happened. I told her that the news had been right, shooting them wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.
January 1 20—
I lost sight of them out in the yard yesterday, have no idea where they might be. I swear at night I can hear them slithering across the outside of the house looking for a way to get in. Macy tells me that she doesn’t hear anything and that it all is inside my head. Haha. She says it’s a psychological thing, that I want to hear them and my brain is complying with my want, tricking me in to believing in what’s not there really is. I wish I could share her optimism, but she hasn’t seen the things I have, how quickly our home of Hillcott has become an empty shell. I think it’s good for her that way because I don’t know how she would take it. Aside from God she worships at the church of Mary Poppins and The Pillsbury Doughboy. It’s something I fell in love with when we first met and now something I have to comply with when I can. Too often she’ll ask to go to the grocery store with me just to get out of the house and each time I’ve been able to turn her down without much of a fuss. I think deep down she knows that she’s not ready for it. She knows that what’s out there scares me, but she also knows that it’s a different kind of fear than jumping at a loud noise. I don’t think I could bear to take her with me. Just on the ten mile drive from the ranch to the store she’d see a couple of the gals she shared the pews with every Sunday, laying face down with those holes in there heads because those damn things just suck up what they can inside you, leaving you wherever you stand like an empty trash bag.
Getting out to main street is the worst, there are piles now. Hank and I and a few others had started trying to clean them up, put them six feet under. We did it for a while and those you put to rest cleared the streets, but the more empty it got the less I could do it. I told the boys to halt, that it didn’t matter if it was above or below ground where you rested. I told them that those things might come back for seconds and better them on the streets and in the ditches and piles than us. When one doesn’t know more than any of the others, it’s a lot easier to trick the collective in to thinking you know best. I am afraid and I used that fear to convince the boys to stop. I have no idea if these things came back to corpses, it wouldn’t really make sense to me if they did, but there was something about clearing the town of all the bodies that hammered the stake of fear deep down in my heart, because the more bodies we cleared, the emptier Hillcott became. I know it sounds crazy, but it feels better to have the bodies around then to see how helpless and empty this place is without them. And we are helpless. Nobody’s coming. There are bigger places than Hillcott that need to take care of themselves. Hank rations out the food at the store best he can, but two weeks ago one of those things got in his head. He shut up the store and holed himself inside. He puts the grocery bags outside the front door in brown sacks with the families names of who they belong too scribbled out in black marker. I don’t know what we’ll do when Hank’s gone and the bags stop appearing. The first set of bags he put out had a letter in them that read-
One of them got me. I was careful but it wasn’t enough. I can feel it inside me, latched on and sucking me like a mosquito. I don’t know how long it takes until I sucks me dry, but I wanted to give, while I can, a thank you to all you fine people of Hillcott by doing what I can to keep food on the table, courtesy of Hank’s Groceries. When the bags stop coming out, go in to the store and take what you need. Thanks for everything everybody.
-Hank
I taped the note inside this journal so that Macy wouldn’t see, she has the courtesy to let me keep my thoughts in here private, something I never asked her, just something she does because she’s a damn saint. And that’s why I can’t let her go and see the way things are out there. How alone we really are. I don’t fear these things crawling along the side of the house for any physical threat they might present. I just can’t stand the feeling of being alone.
January 2 20—
I don’t know how it happened but it did. I thought I was careful.
I’m writing this several days later but the date above is when it happened.
I woke up to Macy screaming as if she were ablaze in hell’s fire. I shot up in bed, my own heart trying to jump out of my throat. I turned on the lamp on the bedside table just in time to see the tail of one of those things disappear down her ear. It looked kind of like when you suck in a spaghetti noodle.
Macy just about tore her own ear off trying to get it out. She screamed at me to run to the kitchen and grab a knife and I damn near did it because in a panic it was an option. But I didn’t grab a knife. I left her there crying and screaming and went into the bathroom and opened up the medicine cabinet where we had a tube of goo that was used for dissolving ear wax. She told me to do it and I squirted half the bottle down her ear. She didn’t stop screaming for thirty minutes until something in her throat probably tore and the only sound left was fingernails dragging across sandpaper. It burns she screamed, nothing but burning, she could feel it squirming inside her, it bit down on something and then she couldn’t see for a while out of her right eye. It’s punishing me for that, for trying to kill it, she said. Don’t do anything to it.
We stayed awake until sunup just pacing around the house. No one said anything because it felt stupid to do so. There was nothing to say, nothing to do. Eventually we fell asleep on the couch.
January 23 20—
It’s only a matter of time. How she’s lasted this long, I don’t know. Goddamn Charlie Rath.
February 4 20—
You know how when a joke goes on too long, that what starts out funny, becomes unfunny the longer it goes, until it goes on for so long that it becomes funny again?
March 13 20—
I had just about forgotten about this journal until this morning when I had to flip back through some pages to try and do some math on the dates. One of my worst fears had finally come true when I pulled up to Hank’s grocery store for my weekly bag of supplies and there was nothing laid out front but a trail of litter from a fallen down trash can. There was a small crowd assembled about the store. The morning was hot but they were all shaking as if they’d been caught without their coats in a snow storm. Someone said that we ought to break the windows so we could get in and get what’s ours, that’s what Hank’s letter had said to do. Another replied no, that he had pressed his ears to the door and could hear it crawling around in there. Impossible, someone said, and I thought about when Macy told me my brain made things up that I wanted to be true. The group came to the conclusion that the next closest store was on the other side of Hook’s Lake, about a thirty minuet drive and that it would be worth a shot to take a drive on over there to see what was left. Those with cars would take those without cars along. It got real quiet after that and slowly, one by one, the crowd thinned, squishing together in back seats and trunks of SUV’s and the beds of pickups. I stayed behind, thinking of the first time Hank had made it known that one of those things was inside him. Then I got to thinking of Macy and that’s when I remembered the journal with Hank’s note inside.
The journal entry was from January 1 but it seemed from how I wrote about it, that it had happened actually sometime around late December. A quick calculation would tell me that Hank lasted a little over three and a half months. I don’t know when Charlie Rath was infected, so I can’t say how long he lasted before he decided to die under my house, but Macy’s already in her third month now. If Hank is the time table to go off on, she doesn’t have much longer left. But I just don’t know. You hear about people that are sucked dry in a day, in a couple weeks, in an hour, and I wonder if it depends on how much there is to feed off inside, and of what quality. Are we like cows? Are some of us choice cuts that are meant to be savored, eaten nice and slowly, and some of us the scraps used to make hot dogs and canned beef stew, only to get stuff in your belly. If that’s the case, Macy must be a choice cut, though I already new that.
I don’t know what to say about her anymore without hating myself. I can say what’s probably best for her at this point but I can’t say that without thinking what the rest of my time would be like without her. I still love her, always have and always will, but the thought of her not being here anymore fills me with an emptiness for all the wrong reasons. Before we met, everyone around me was getting hitched, having babies, starting a family. But not me. I had lived alone for so long that a week would go by without me saying a single word out loud. When you’re alone for that long you come to know yourself more well than you would ever want to. Some people find peace in solitude but all I could think about was that when I died there would be no one who cared enough for me to come and see me put in the ground. The difference between being friendly and being a friend is how deep your willing to go out into the ocean. You can remain in the safety of the shallow end or you can brave the depths until your feet can’t touch the ground. I admit to being a frightful person, to go too deep down the ocean runs the risk of a shark attack. When I met Macy it was as happenstance as the way people meet in the movies, the whole thing was kind of like a movie actually, and she kept wanting to see me and I kept saying okay and that feeling of going deeper down the ocean became more comfortable and I had someone to talk to and I had someone I could make laugh and I didn’t wake up in the morning by myself anymore and I had someone who cared enough to get mad at me and I had someone who would cry at my funeral and I didn’t want to lose it.
I love my wife but I can’t go back to the way things used to be. That scares me more than one of those things crawling down my own ear. I said I can’t talk about her without hating myself and that’s because I want her to last as long as she can and I don’t care that she might be suffering because that means she’s still here and once she’s gone, she’s gone and that’s when the sharks attack, when your feet can’t touch the ground and you realize you don’t know how to swim, when the life boat tosses you back on the shore and you see just how far out you really were.
When she’s gone, she’s gone and when that happens I know I’ll be too scared to just end it myself.
I will be alone again.
April 4 20—
Turns out the lack of food wasn’t as big a problem as I’d intended it to be. Macy doesn’t eat anymore. Somehow the thing inside her is keeping her from withering away. She’s lost weight but nothing like the skeletal raisin she should be. I wonder how it does that, perhaps it somehow feeds her while sucking her away? I think of bulimia, of regurgitation and none of it makes sense. So I’ve come to believe that what’s inside her taken total anatomical control and that the workings of her body make sense only on the outside. We never ate all of what Hank could provide in a week. There’s lots of rice and pasta in the house. The water still runs but I’ve filled up every container I have for the day that isn’t so. I have a well out back too. The turbines spin and keep power to the fridge that stores the cheap meat. I don’t eat meat every day anymore, something about it makes me feel guilty.
Macy doesn’t eat anymore. She doesn’t do much of anything anymore. I’ll find her standing in the corner of a room like a wind up toy run out of batteries. I’ll say something. Nothing. Then I’ll walk by an hour later and she’ll still be in that same spot.
Her speech fell rapidly. In the beginning she told me she didn’t feel it, that she was okay and we were able to live normally for a while. At nights she would cry and tell me she was forgetting things. The day we met, the anniversary of our wedding, her birthday and mine and she asked me to tell her all of those things to send her to sleep. Tell me something we did, anything, she would say. Tell me something about you, about me. Then one morning she woke up and the only thing she could say was my name.
It’s still the only thing she can say.
I’ll hear it sometimes from across the house when I’m in another room.
Jim. Jim. Jim.
Sometimes before I can even turn around to go find her, she’ll be at the doorway already, staring at me.
Jim Jim Jim.
I know it’s not her talking anymore. But for some reason that thing inside her has kept my name. Maybe it doesn’t know what it’s making her say. Maybe it knows exactly what it’s doing.
Jim. Jim. Jim.
Maybe it wants me to know that soon that’s all that there will be.
Jim. Jim. Jim.
April 7 20—
If this thing never lets her go, I think I can learn to live with it until it’s my turn.
April 30 20—
Had to raid a gas station for food. Couldn’t handle another night of rice. They still cases of beer in the freezers. While everone drove half an hour away, it was right here under our noses. First time I ever stole anything. Except a heart. That’s why I’m not allowed in hospitals anymore. hahahahahahaBag of potato chips and a beer, then another beer, then another and anthoer anf another and another.
Jim. Jim. Jim.
Jim ain’t slim, he can’t swim, and he sure is dim.
But nobody hates Jim
More than him.
Maybe Macy wants a beer.
May 13 20—
I started wearing my pistol around the house. I know it won’t do me any good, but it makes me feel a little better.
May 14 20—
No more calling my name. All she does now it stare at me. That thing inside her looks at me through her eyes. It knows exactly what it’s doing to me and I’m sure that whatever mouth it has is smiling.
May 29 20—
When I was a boy I saw a heifer in the barn starting to calve. I ran inside the house to get my Dad and he told me to come with him. He was drunk and stumbling through the living room but by the time we were outside he could have walked a tightrope. Struggling to keep up behind him, I remember thick clouds of breath escaping from his mouth that seemed to wrap around his head. He was huffing and puffing and cussing and it made me think that he was getting ready to start breathing fire. I kept my distance.
By the time we got to the barn you could see the hooves poking out. ‘It’s coming out backwards’ Dad shouted. He went about securing the heifer to the gates with a couple of old ropes. The heifer didn’t put up any fight, not even when he came back around, pulling the end of a rubber glove up to his elbow and sticking damn near his whole arm inside the back of her. ‘There ain’t much room’, he said, pulling his slimy arm out with ease. I don’t know if he was talking to me or not, I don’t know what I was supposed to say or if I was to respond at all. Sometimes Dad talked with no intention of hearing anyone’s reply. I don’t even know what I was doing there, why he’d asked me to come along. I wasn’t of size or weight to be of any help, but I didn’t question his call and I stood in the corner of the barn watching. He disappeared for a moment and came back with some more rope, which he tied to the end of a hoof sticking out. Then he started to pull. That smokey breath seeped through the cracks of his gritted teeth, the muscles of his arms bulged through the seems of his tattered long johns. His boot slipped in a puddle of discharge but Dad stayed up. The more he pulled the more of the calf started to come out, until, like opening a bottle of champagne, it popped out of the mother in a stream of feces and blood. Dad dragged the calf out of kicking range. The little thing laid still in the hay covered in a coat of slime that made it’s black fur shine like obsidian under the barn light. ‘It ain’t breathing’, Dad said, and went to smacking the dying calf. The heifer stood idle, disinterested in the whole affair as the loud slaps of my dad’s hands rang, rang like thunder claps, across her baby’s wet body. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I started to cry. Though I had done nothing to help, I couldn’t help but become caught up in the scramble of it all. Seeing that dead baby struck and tossed around brought out of me such a feeling of helplessness and fear, that I just wanted to take it’s place, but instead all I did was stand in the corner and cry. After a time my Dad said it was dead, was probably dead from the start, and there was nothing else we could do.
After Dad died I kept the land and the farm but haven’t raised any animals. The memory of that dead calf comes back to me from time to time and, right here, on the page, is the first time I’ve ever allowed it to out in to the world free from inside my head, haven’t even told Macy. Doesn’t make a difference today. When I think of that calf now, how it was already dead before it had the chance to see the light of day, and I remember the futile sounds of my Dad trying to slap it back to life, I don’t feel bad for the calf anymore. I feel bad for my old man. He was trying to save something that was beyond saving. Maybe he was doing it for the calf, maybe he was doing it for himself, at that ripe young age of mine I hadn’t enough experience to comprehend a question like that, but I think I understand it a little better now. Being beyond saving. Dead before the first light of day.
I love my wife. And she loved, loves, me, that I can be sure of. When that thing first got in her head and started eating, Macy made sure to tell me she loved me as much as possible throughout the day, never knowing which time might be the last. I always said it right back and I still say it now, even though I know there’s nothing left of her inside to hear it. She was a good woman. She knew how fearful I was of everything and never made me feel like less a man for it. I’m not scared of vampires or werewolves, I don’t even think I’m that scared of the slugs that are slowly killing us all. I’m scared of eternity and what that means. Forever. When I was alone for so long I felt it, and all while Macy and I were married and lived together happily for decades I knew that it was only temporary, that eternity was not a lifetime spent together, just a pit stop on the way to nothing. It’s the not knowing ‘when’ that gets me. I jump at loud noises because, to me, it’s just eternity waiting around the corner reminding you it can strike at time, quick as that, and you’re done for. I am selfish. I am a coward. I don’t want to be alone. Macy deserves better. We all deserved better. My wife’s body still walks around the house. That thing is inside her head. It is watching me. I think it understands me. It hears me say I love you. I’m not talking to it. It’s in the doorway watching me right now. Watching me write this down. Write about it. Write about the beautiful person it destroyed. It’s watching me right now with her eyes. I want to scream at it to leave me alone. But isn’t that what I’m so afraid of? I miss my wife. I love my wife. I want to know that I’ll be with her forever. It’s still standing there watching me. It’s her. It’s not. I want to cry. It’s head is tilted to the side like it wants to ask a question.
I have a question. When is it my turn?
June 1 20—
Caught one. Didn’t even have to go that far, just half a mile away from the house where the main road starts. There were a bunch of them all wrangled together in a ball, looked like a basketball squirming with octopus tentacles. There was a straggler wiggling towards it trying to join. Scooped it up in a mason jar like a firefly. Or a butterfly. Or a caterpillar that wants to become one.
I took the jar in the house and showed it to Macy. Again with that head tilt. It was just starring at one of it’s own. The thing in the jar started wiggling real fast like it was having a seizure. It wanted out. It’ll get out soon. I wonder how they communicate with each other. I wonder if the one inside my my wife was telling the one inside the jar that it was going to be okay, that all it had to do was wait.
June 3 20—
I set a date. There are no affairs to put in order, nothing to leave to anyone that won’t just crumble to ash by the end of all this. June 6th. It’s gotta be that one.
Now, just like the thing in the jar next to me. All there’s left to do is wait.
June 6 20—
Drove Macy down to Hook’s. Got some beer and a bag of pretzels, not exactly a feast for Kings and Queens but It’ll have to do. The sky is cloudless and beautiful and I wish I could thank whatever is in charge of the weather for making it this way tonight. I think Macy appreciates it too. I’m nervous to get out of the truck, just about as nervous as I was the night of our first date, when I could barely summon up the courage to go up to her front door and knock. It’s funny how things circle around like this, me being just as nervous for out first date over twenty years ago, as I am for out last date, on this beautiful June night.
–
The metallic taste of blood touched his tongue. Jim removed the pen from his mouth and watched a red trail of saliva run down the clear pen barrel. Brushing his tongue over his gums, he leaned his head out of the truck window and spat. Let it bleed, he thought, sticking the end of the pen back in his mouth, flipping through the journal pages.
Stealing a glance at the rear view saw Macy still sitting on the bed of the truck looking out to the water. He didn’t want to keep her waiting for long but scanning through pages of his scribblings, seeing the letters morph roughly from date to date, he couldn’t help but wonder why he’d even documented it all in the first place. After tonight none of it would matter anyways, and on the unlikelihood someone should find it, what could they do with it?
On the last page he reread his final words “…our last date, on this beautiful June night,” and it seemed just as good a string of words as any to end it on. There was nobody around anymore to cast judgment on moments of weakness, so Jim let the tear fall from his eye, dropping to the page, smearing the ink of the word beautiful.
He closed the journal and tossed it on the empty passenger seat where it would stay eternally. Jim opened the glove box and fished out the C.D. binder that had felt so out of date in the day of iPods and smart phones. He unzipped the binder and flipped through it until he found a C.D., at one time blank from a pack of twelve, that Macy had titled in sharpie, Macy’s Favorite Love Songs. The Chevy swallowed up the disc and after a moment of static, Jim Croce started to sing about what he would do with time in a bottle. Time wasn’t in a bottle, but something else was. Jim opened the center console and carefully withdrew the mason jar with the trapped slug.
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
“Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
The thing was unmoving inside but its skin glowed a healthy green,
phosphorescence and Jim had no doubt that it was still alive. Did it have eyes? Was it watching him now? Is it hungry?
Cradling the jar, Jim swung the passenger seat open and let it stay that way, that way that the so sad singing of Jim Croce might weave between the spaces of tree trunks and echo over the lake. When he came around the bed of the truck, Macy cocked her head to the side in the way that a dog does whenever you mention the “t-word”. She saw what he was holding in the jar and Jim half expected her to reach out and make a grab for it, and had she, he might have just let her take it. A troupe of crickets sang along to the C.D. Somewhere on the lake a fish jumped up for a gasp of air, diving back down with a splash that shattered the perfect reflection of the moon.
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save everyday like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
Knees shaking, Jim placed the jar on the edge of the bed and hoisted himself up. The suspension dropped a little from his weight, the truck squeaked, he tried not to take offense.
He opened up two beers, placed one next to Macy and quickly gulped down half of his. She hadn’t taken her eyes of the thing in the jar, which had become more animated, crawling around the side of the glass. Jim opened the pretzel bag and popped a few in his mouth. It was a feeling to relish in, the way beer and salt went together, like peanut butter and chocolate. Jim Croce continued through the cracking speakers, and Jim Handley took a deep breath and said,
“You know if I could save time in a bottle I would fill it with moments of dancing, moments of shared meals where nothing was said, nights curled together on the couch watching a bad movie on television, mornings where you were up before me and the first thing I saw was your beautiful smile welcoming me in to the day. I would fill it up with moments of fear too. You said once that even tigers could be scaredy-cats. Well, you were always the tiger, but I was never scared of you, because the tiger was on my side.”
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to to do
Once you find them
Jim leaned over and gave Macy a kiss on the cheek. To his pleasure she didn’t recoil.
“I love you baby.”
He placed it between his thighs. He unscrewed the cap. From his peripherals he saw Macy’s head cock to the side again.
He could feel it slowly crawling up his arm but his eyes were focused on the big beautiful lake. He felt like swimming.
Jim downed the rest of his beer.
I’ve looked around long enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with
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