Page 16 of Miserable Marionette

The swing creaks again, drawing my attention to the rusted bolts keeping it together. Just one of the many little things you notice when a home loses its love. The happy bustling lives within that made the creaky porch swing and rough wooden boards less noticeable. Had it always been like this?

The cracks in the foundation, the way the roof bows in the tool shed around back. When you’re a kid, no matter how screwed up life had gotten, to a degree, things are still magical. There's a tangible hope and illusion of being so sure of what the future holds for you. A blind trust in the people who would figure out all of it with you. I’m not sure about other people, but for me, I can pinpoint the exact moment in my childhood when a once vibrant world dimmed. When the vivid greens, blues, purples, reds, and pinks that made up my world were traded for duller… less exciting colors.

My stomach growls loudly enough to startle me, quite a feat considering my music blares from inside. It’s not the pasta's fault, but I glare down at it anyway. I can never get the noodles right. They’re either mush or still too hard. The sauce itself was fine before I drifted to the windows again and let it burn, but it still tasted better in my memories. When Mom would mix it on the stove and follow Dad around the house making him taste test for her, even though it came from a can and tasted the same every time. Before her friends took up too much of her time, and she was too plastered to cook.

Things were pretty much utter trash before the two remaining members of the Bell family abandoned their home, their everything, and vanished. What came after… I could’ve used my best friend. Of course, life moved on. Eventually, I stopped secluding myself and made more friends than I’d ever had before. Jess and Bryan were the first of many… but nobody has ever compared to the strange boy I grew up with. The boy who sat stoically through my tears and held my hand, fought my battles and… made life worth smiling through.

I’ve spent years coaching myself not to be bitter about it. Grief makes people act out in all kinds of ways. I just… hadn’t expected nothing from him. I was the only person in the world who got something from Gideon Bell. He took it away overnight, no explanation, no goodbye, no promises. Nothing. The wound in my chest is healed over, but it’s tender even now. I’m convinced it always will be. As the night drags on, I give up on eating altogether, opting for my sketchpad instead, crossing my legs underneath me and begging the boy… the man across the street to stalk over and ask me what I’m drawing.

I would tell him this time.

8

A Fatalistic Kind of Night

Gideon, Eighteen Years Old, 1984

When the clock in the foyer strikes one, Mom finally loses her battle to sleep, something she does little of these days. My footsteps are light, dutifully avoiding all the floorboards that creak until I stand above her, staring down at the woman who gave me life. The person who created the abomination she seems to macerate over so much. The few fingertips that aren’t wrapped in bandages are bloody from her constant chewing. Nails I remember used to scratch my back to lull me to sleep, chewed down past the quick. I know that if I look further, if I shift her sleeve, I’ll see the raised, angry scars from the last time she tried to slit her wrists. My brow furrows as I dig deep, trying to search for a time I felt anything but indifference or anger toward her, but come up empty.

My hands fist at my sides, wondering how loud it would be if I strangled her. If her warm flesh would be easier than the cold ones, if her windpipe would crush beneath the force of it all. So far, only one of the clients had; dead people don’t bruise. On nights like tonight, they get the worst of it. Their hands and faces remain peaceful, painted and blemish-free, everything below their clothes is a different story. I’m careful, like Dad taught me to be.

Before I can take a step closer to the couch in the waiting room, I remember why I’m out here to begin with. Everything that’s real banding together suddenly in my mind. I told Audrey I wouldn’t be there tonight, but if I know anything, it’s her.

And she’s waiting.

The idea of her being out there in our spot alone… sad, makes that odd fuzzy feeling creep up inside my stomach. If Audrey is going to be sad about anything, it might as well be me. So long as her thoughts are where they belong. The back door closes with a faint latch, the warm interior lights illuminating the small backyard before the woods take over. Swallowing the beams, swallowing me as I slip inside them. I don’t bother with my flashlight until I get closer to Audrey. She thinks it’s creepy when I walk in the woods without one. If using it makes her feel better, it’s not too much of a bother. The summer breeze is muggy, making my T-shirt stick to my skin. The ground earthy and wet, the leaves soaked from a rainstorm I missed while I was in the basement. I didn’t hurt the kid like I do the others. Not because it felt wrong, he’s past minding, but I got all jumbled up again. For a while, I didn’t want to ruin and vent on something. I wanted to make him how he was supposed to be. My work is immaculate. Dad will be proud, but I feel no better for it. Not sure why I thought I might.

I focus on everything but what’s going on in my head, pay attention to the way the leaves shimmy above me so the fuzzy, disjointed thoughts don’t needle my already thinning resolve. It’s not working; nothing is working tonight. Every inch of my body tenses, gearing up for something big. My heart ticks up in my chest the closer I get to her. If I weren’t in a rush, I’d hang out in the tree line and watch for a while.

For now, more than my desire to watch her, I need the calm she offers. Her smiles she tries to hide when she’s mad at me. Her warm skin and blonde hair that tickles my face. The cherry-scented lotion that makes all of my shit greasy.

I jerk the heavy metal flashlight out of my waistband, ready to flick it on as a twig snaps. I spin on my heel, just a few feet away from our grove, my eyes narrowing on the huddled, trembling black mass behind a huge oak tree. The little white wrappings of bandaged fingers gripping the bark, like if she hugs it tightly enough, she’ll blend. Mom doesn’t stand right away, her wide scared eyes staring up at me from where she’s crouched. I don’t move either, my chest rising and falling violently as I grip the flashlight. That pervasive anger tightening my lungs.

I choke.

When she finally works her way to a stand, her eyes dart behind me, toward the grove where I can hear Audrey digging loudly through her pencil case. I glare at her, my jaw clenched. And I let the mask slip, the buffer I learned to use to make people more comfortable, the one Dad helped me perfect. She always saw right through it anyway. So, for a moment, I give up, allowing every inch of malice I feel day in and day out to bleed into my eyes. I heard her sobbing to Dad once; she said she hates them. Told him no living thing has eyes this empty. That she gave birth to one of the corpses in the basement.

Are they empty now, Mom?

I can see the mascara she hurriedly applied for the family of that boy today smearing her pale cheeks. She takes a step back, a whimper leaving her throat when I mirror it. Right now, she's wondering how far this will go. How badly she messed up. It was a mistake to follow me, to try again to come between Audrey and me.

I lift my finger to my lips, warning her to be quiet. Part of me can appreciate her concern for Audrey. I can respect that, in a way that she thinks she’s keeping her safe. But only I can do that. Mom nods, slamming her hand over her lips to stifle a sob. It doesn’t work.

The anger that was bubbling underneath the surface spills over, the buzzing in my head hitting an unholy decibel as the rustling in the pencil case stops abruptly. “Gideon?” Audrey calls out, and suddenly, all I can think of is what would happen if she saw Mom like this, reacting to me like this. Maybe she’d finally see how fucked up I am. She’d be scared of me, ignore me like the rest of them do. She’d get on Harry’s bike and be a top for Trent in the water. They’d laugh and make jokes; they’d smile at her.

I’m not scared of anything. Not a single thing in the entire world. I can’t remember ever cowering under the covers as a kid, ever needing a nightlight in the dark, but this… this is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling fear. Just like when I tripped her in the woods, when she got her first period. She’d run from me. Hit me like I was some kind of monster.

I hated it, her sobbing underneath me like that. I slept with Krissy those two nights she refused to see me. Even considered smashing the old doll, just to show her how upset I was. Desperate to make her understand. Being with Audrey is like needing to vomit and not being able to. There are things I want to do, truths I want to tell, but when I search for them, when I try to wade through the murky atrophied parts of my brain, I come up empty.

“Gideon, are you out there?” Audrey calls again, breaking our stalemate.

I shake my head in another warning as I stalk toward Mom’s trembling frame. The smell of sweat making my lips curl as I lean down to her height. “Get back to the house.”

Mom’s eyes meet mine, pinching to squeeze out more tears before giving one last look toward my girl. When she turns, giving me her back, I’m behind her. Ready. It was always going to end like this; maybe her fear all these years was justified. Maybe she always knew too. Manifested it. Maybe on the day I was born, she got this feeling… maybe the Earth quaked, tsunamis ravaged coastlines, and Christ himself trembled when I slipped free from her in the basement room where Dad had embalmed an elderly man that morning. Maybe she just knew.

She’d wanted to labor down at home and head into town to have me at the hospital. It was the first time I had ever ruined her idea of what her life would look like as a mother. She dilated too fast and Dad helped her right there in our home, on a cold, hard embalming table. She’d wanted to lie on the bed upstairs. Dad thought the cadaver table would be easier to clean. He tells the story now and laughs his loud, boisterous laugh as if it’s the funniest thing in the world. Mom doesn’t think it’s funny.

Her back hunches as she turns to face away, but she doesn’t move, shudders wracking her body as the smell of urine fills the night air. She’s ready too. Her usually tight bun is limp, hanging between her shoulder blades. “Gideon…” she whispers. “I forgive yo—"