My elephant trunk kept deflating last night.
I couldn’t keep it up any longer than the length of those injury-law commercials that kept repeating in the background. We think you have a chance! After enough times of trying to monkey myself in like a bendy straw, Verona gave up. She just rolled over and went to sleep without saying a word.
The TV was still on this morning. Whisper quiet. Sunlight crept around the curtains to glare against the screen, while some other commercial played. Is there a wild dog loose in your neighborhood? Call us for all your animal control needs. The A/C kicked on, and I pulled the blanket off my chest to cool off.
“Hey,” Verona said.
“Shit.” I jumped against the bed frame and knocked my arm against the nightstand by accident. Her vase of dead lilies rattled. “I didn’t think you were awake,” I said.
She picked at a spot of paint on her shirt, avoiding eye contact. “We should talk.”
Shit. Talk? Was there something I forgot?
The man in the commercial wore a blue jumpsuit, and he knelt down beside a cartoon dog with a giant smile. When the bite is worse than the bark, it isn’t worth putting yourself at risk. The grinning dog had large, white teeth. Were those human teeth?
“I think I really like you,” Verona continued, glancing up at me.
The AC cooled the sweat forming on my hairline, and I relaxed against the bed frame. “Oh. That’s great.” I said. “I mean, I really like you too.”
Verona continued to pick at her shirt, not responding. Coming up: What your foundation says about you. Is your home prepared for the next earthquake? She finally picked the dot of paint free, flicking it across the room. It reminded me of Jimmy launching his scab over Amity’s unconscious body.
“So I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, our future, and what I want to do,” she said. The TV cut to the same injury commercial that had been playing all last night. I tried to focus on Verona’s mouth. “I want to leave this place, Kurt. I want to move to Florence, or Paris, or anywhere that isn’t here. I really think I’d have a chance at a school overseas, and I want you to come too.” She put her hand on my cheek and my skin buzzed, forcing the hair along my arm to stand. “You bring something out of me that no one else has.”
We think you have a chance! I smiled. I smiled because we weren’t having a conversation about my flaccid penis, or Nathan, or how I had been a sobbing mess on her kitchen floor the other day. I smiled because I wanted the same thing.
“I can go anywhere,” I promised.
Verona kept her hand on my face but looked past me, biting her lip. “But can you do it sober?”
The AC shut off. Have you been injured? Do you need representation?
“Sorry, I have no business asking you to do that,” she said. The mattress squeaked as she turned away, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. She stayed seated at the edge of the bed, hypnotized by the carpet while advertisements hummed in the background.
“Are you in danger?” she finally asked.
Learning a new language doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. Some old man in ironed slacks spoke from the TV. It was the loudest ad yet. I let go of Verona to search around the bed for the remote.
“It’s just…with your friend Nathan disappearing….I’m worried,” she continued.
“He wasn’t my friend,” I corrected, biting the scar on my lip. Spanish? No problem! French? Easy! I rattled the base of lilies on the nightstand again as I checked for the clicker.
“Well I’d just feel a lot better if we were both sober.” Verona grabbed my wrist, but I pretended to be distracted by the moldy flowers. All the stems were gray except for one. A single green bud pushed free. How was it still alive?
“Kurt,” she shook my wrist until I turned to look at her “Can you do that?”
“Of course,” I promised. “We're going to be just fine.”
The clock said it was 10:31 PM, and the chicken noodles in my stomach slithered over each other looking for a way out. I rolled the car’s window down for some fresh air, but it didn’t help. The smell of fermented soup was too strong, punching me in the face every time I opened my mouth. When was the last time I ate anything that wasn’t mostly liquid? Sobriety was killing me.
A pair of headlights swept across my windshield. Were they already here? My stomach growled as I reached for the money, and a purple, rusted minivan pulled into the dark parking space next to mine. Not the new suppliers. At least, not their car.
Shadows merged in and out of each other from the front seat. It was too dark to see anything else. Was the van shaking? As I rubbed my eyes and leaned forward, something slammed against its window. I jerked back in my seat. A mass of tiny, black dots glowed against the glass, staring straight at me. Little eyeballs.
The pasta in my gut sloshed around with my boiling stomach acid. I covered my mouth to keep it down and took short, shallow breaths. The multi-eyed creature drug itself up the window, crawling higher and higher towards a crack in the top. One leg reached through the opening, followed by another, and another. Long hair covered each limb, tilting back and forth like antennae. Another. Another.
Air breezed through my still open window. I went to roll it up, but my arms wouldn’t listen. This thing, this spider, wiggled its body through the rest of the opening in the van’s window and lunged through mine. My voice stayed in my stomach, buried under half-digested chucks of chicken. I couldn’t push it out. I couldn’t scream. This thing was on my shoulder. Its hairs brushed across the veins in my neck as if it could smell the processed soup sweating down my jaw. Two large fangs rubbed against each other.
A woman screamed.
The fangs plunged into my neck, and cold venom shot into my bloodstream and down my throat. The shock rebooted my system. My fingers trembled awake, and I slapped the side of my face as hard as I could. The spider crunched against my ear. Blood, sweat, slime. It all drooled down my neck, hardening like glue. Another scream.
Light shone from the front of the van now, and some girl held an unclipped bra against her chest. She watched me, eyes wide, smacking her hand against the man sitting in the driver’s seat as he tried to start the engine. I went to wipe the dead spider guts from my face, but there was nothing there. No blood. No puncture wounds. Nothing.
The dirty van sputtered to life, and the man driving didn’t even look out his back window as he pulled out. The woman kept eyeing me, horrified that I had almost seen her naked. A piece of hair slipped from her shoulder and against something stretched across her back. What was that? A tattoo? A mass of tiny, black dots glowed from it as the van sped away.
The clock said it was 10:56 PM. I tried to subtract that from the time the couple in the van had left, but I couldn’t remember when that was. Did I fall asleep? My stomach churned as I rubbed my face. Someone stood just outside my window.
“Shit!” My head hit the top of the seat. The man standing next to my car didn’t react. He was clean shaven with dark glasses, and an SUV hummed behind him. The new suppliers. “I didn’t even hear you drive in,” I said. “Uhh…sorry. One second.” I collected the loose cash scattered across my lap into a large ball. Why didn’t I bring a bag? “Umm…here you go.” I handed the wad over.
The man looked at the money with a raised eyebrow. Was he not going to take it? He looked over his shoulder, back at the SUV and snapped. Is this all it takes to get murdered? Is this what happened to Nathan? The noodles in my stomach wormed up the sides as if they were trying to crawl out, and another man, with recently ironed slacks, stepped out of the SUV. Was that a body bag?
The first man, the clean shaven man, took the cash from my hands and turned to leave. I wanted to pull my arms back into the car, but they wouldn’t listen. The man with the body bag got closer. Where had I seen those slacks before? I hiccuped a splash of putrid broth into my mouth as he came right up to the window. He held the black bag out.
Except, it wasn’t a body bag. It was a duffel bag. The drugs. My fingers came back online, and I grabbed the straps, pulling it into my car. The man left me alone to tuck it away in my back seat. As he climbed back into the SUV, I realized where I recognized him. Chunks of wet processed chicken shot up my gullet, and I stuck my head out the window just as it came spewing out my mouth. Yellow fizz painted the side of my car, and hot tears rolled into the bridge of my nose. I wiped them off and spat out part of a noodle that got stuck between my nose and throat. The man in the ironed slacks. He was the birdwatcher outside Mark’s apartment.
I dropped the duffel bag on the coffee table. Clair was still awake, working on her laptop, and there was a new stain on the floor.
“What happened?” I asked, pointing at the carpet.
She ignored me, hitting the same button on her keyboard over and over. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace. The stain stretched towards my feet. Rust red, like Verona’s hair, like someone had been shot. I rubbed my eyes. “So…umm…I’m quitting coke.”
Clair leaned further into her laptop, confused by something on the screen. “Ok,” she said before going back to typing.
“Well, I’m not promising anything,” I added. “Just seeing what happens.” The clacking keys made my head pound, and I bit at the scar on my lip. “So…I think it’s time for me to move on.”
Clair picked up a notepad and pen that were resting next to her. The paper was covered in different numbers and notes, all written in Clair’s large, block handwriting. $128 Spit. 25 lbs. “Right,” she replied, taking the paper and holding it up next to the computer screen. 10:55 PM Kurt. $1250 how!? Her eyes flicked back and forth between the laptop and her notes. “Wait, what?” She dropped the pad.
My lip pulsed between my teeth. “I…uhh…I think it’s time for me to leave,” I repeated.
Clair shut her laptop and placed it next to her notes. $698 between Spit and Kurt. Need more help! She eyed me up and down. It was the same look Verona had given me when I lied to her about knowing Nathan.
“Because of your girlfriend, right?” Clair asked.
The stain on the floor grew outwards like a backed-up gutter. I rubbed my eyes again but it didn’t help. “Yeah…but, umm…thank you, you know? For taking me in and all, and giving me this job and…uhh…not judging. Just, yeah. Thank you.” Clair starred with pinhole eyes, and the living stain lapped at my feet. “Like, I won’t ever forget what you’ve done for me…uhh…what you’ve done for us—.”
“Shut up, Kurt,” Clair interrupted. “Okay? Just, shut up and go.”