Short Stories
Four Deaths
Under the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen, a cockroach scuttled across the mustard-colored floor tiles and, with a mouthful of cold noodles, I stood up from the table and crunched it under a stomp of my foot. Sprawled out on the floor across the room, Rusty, a fifteen-year-old golden retriever, lifted its head at the sound. The metal tag on its collar jingled with the upward movement. Rusty stared at me with grey eyes before resting his head back on the floor. I had acquired two things from my grandfather’s death over a year ago: his old house and his old dog. After living inside the sixty-year-old house for a full cycle of seasons now, I had grown so accustomed to killing roaches that I stopped gagging from it altogether. While picking up my foot to examine the aftermath, I swallowed the cold mush of chewed spaghetti. Flattened into a thin, brittle sheet, the roach’s body lay in a pool of its discharged, inner liquids that melded with the pale yellow color of the kitchen tiles. After using a dry paper towel to pick up the roach and wipe the floor, I balled the towel inside my fist. The roach’s body crunched against my palm. I tossed the paper wad into the trashcan then moved to the fridge to retrieve the container of remaining Parmesan.
* * *
Moonlight broke through the rushing layer of clouds above, and the residue of the earlier rains swamped everything from brick to root. It pooled inside the impressions and cracks in the uneven concrete driveway and waxed over the neighboring yards, each wet blade of grass reflecting back a splinter of faint orange light from the nearby streetlamps. Rainwater slithered down the creases in the tree bark, and trickled off the cold, coarse limbs in sudden spurts that collapsed together with each strong thrust of wind. Trees fought against the moving air. The shivering leaves rattled together and harmonized into a collective hush that, with the incoming gusts, broke through the warring drone of the insects screeching at the sky. Coldness seeped into dampness. I tightened my coat around me and lit a cigarette before sitting down.
Smoke twisted off the burning ember at the tip of the cigarette and drifted upward, spreading itself into a thin white transparency under the outside light. On the waterlogged wooden bench, I felt the wood’s rain-induced tenderness bend under my weight. The moisture of the wood soaked into the fabric of my pants. A white moth mingled with the fleeting smoke and kept tapping against the overhead light bulb in unorganized, flying swoops. Somewhere in the distance, the metal lung of a train whistle howled over the ambience of the night. I took a drag from the cigarette and exhaled.
In the backyard, a clattering of metal erupted from the neighboring chain-link fence. The frantic beating of metal on metal filled the air. I stood up from the bench and moved down the driveway, around the side of the house, and toward the noise. When I reached the fringes of the backyard, the metallic sound continued to clash against the night. Where the clamoring grew more palpable, vision failed—impeded by the darkness that pooled beneath the pines, where overhead branches suffocated the emanating skylight. Stepping into the grass and moving closer to the fence, the dimness of the nightfall began to peel away with sight. About twenty feet away from the shuddering fence, a twig cracked under my foot. The clattering stopped. I stood, staring at the fence. Silence fell. I brought the cigarette to my mouth. The glowing orange tip intensified with a drag of smoke then dimmed. After I exhaled, the sound of dead weight thudded against damp earth. At the foot of the metal fence, a single shadow distilled. The chain-links behind it chimed lightly with the released pressure. The figure at the base of the fence arched forward and shifted toward me. Its movements were unnatural and staggered—each advancement broken into short intervals of motion and stillness. With each lurch forward, its body pressed against the ground and dragged across the grass. I took one last drag from the cigarette before dropping it at my feet and smothering the ember beneath my shoe. Nearby, the broken, awkward movements of the figure continued to lug itself forward. Curiosity manifested and pulled me toward the staggering movements of the shadow.
Approaching the cat-sized silhouette, I cleared my throat to signal my presence. Instead of darting away at the sound, it held motionless where it stood. I slowed my pace with each progressing step. I refused to blink—forcing my eyelids open while sight adjusted on the figure. With only a couple feet between us, I stopped. The figure shed its shadowed obscurity and defined against the backdrop of night. It was a opossum. Its puny eyes, frightened and black and stiff, stared into me. The white fur of its face, speckled with clumps of dirt, glistened with dampness. Its opened jaws exposed the white, sharp enamels that crowded around its skinny, pink tongue. No growl or whine escaped the open mouth. It sat unmoving and silent. Only the front half of its body was raised off the ground. Both back legs were crushed. From waist to tail, the opossum’s internal architecture of bone and entrails had flattened into a thin, hairy sack of limbs—broken and sprawled out limp and defunct behind it. The hairless rat-like tail between the hind legs lay like a giant earthworm in the grass.
I thought about taking a picture of it, but when I reached for the phone in my pocket, the opossum flinched and shot its head to the side. Staring at me out of the corner of one eye, it began to turn away. Its front legs struggled to pull the dragging dead weight of its lower body. After three strides toward the far end of the backyard, its front legs gave out. It collapsed. I retrieved my phone and shone the light of the screen at it. Startled by the brightness, it forced its front legs back up. The flattened end of its body was torn at the sides. The remaining pulp of its entrails leaked from the ruptures in its skin. A single streak of the thick liquid traced its past movement across the yard. I stared in silence. After a while, the opossum dragged itself behind the toolshed in the back and disappeared into the darker corners of the night. I smoked another cigarette before going inside to sleep.
That night, I awoke to the sound of a cat fighting something in the backyard. The next morning I went and checked the area behind the toolshed, half-expecting to find the dead body of the opossum, but when I got there, there was nothing but a circle of dried blood.
* * *
One afternoon, the prevailing silence of the house shattered with a single low-pitched bark. Startled at the sound, I dropped my book into my lap. With the blinds of the nearby window pulled open, sunlight flooded into the room and coated the white walls in a soft yellow transparence. I closed my eyes and leaned back into the cushions of the recliner. Drawing in a lungful of air and holding it inside, I tried to relax my excited nerves and ease the pounding in my chest. Rusty barked again. I sighed. After picking up the book and setting it on the coffee table, I left the living room and headed toward the barking down the hall.
When I entered the laundry room, Rusty was lying halfway on the padded doggy bed and attempting to roll from his side onto his feet. He threw his head back, arched his spine, and thrashed his paws into the air while trying to shift his weight and turn over. After that, he stopped and barked again.
“Yeah yeah,” I said. “I hear you, Rust’. I’m coming.”
His tail shook at the sound of my voice. It beat against the padding of his bed in quick downward thumps. I walked across the room.
“What’s up, Rust’? You can’t get up?”
He opened his mouth and panted as I approached. His tongue dangled from his sideways head.
“Okay, buddy,” I said as I leaned over and shoved my arms beneath him. “Let’s get you up.”
He retracted his tongue and closed his mouth when he felt the familiar upward lift under his torso. I shifted him over and turned him onto his feet. He began to stand himself up, but when I let go he collapsed to the floor. The arthritis in his legs overpowered the physical effort. He stared at me through gray cataracts. I sighed and stuck my arms beneath him again. As I brought him to his feet, the lifting pressure on his abdomen forced a release of his bowels. Shit fell like strands of wet rope and a puddle of urine spread thin across the floor. He walked away with stiff limbs.
“Goddamnit!” I grabbed Rusty by the collar and led him to the back door. After putting him outside, I slammed it shut. I rubbed a hand against my forehead and sighed. “Not again.”
After mopping the laundry room floor, I unzipped the doggy bed and tossed the dampened outer cover into the washing machine to soak in bleach. Rusty barked outside the back door. Before letting him inside, I went into the kitchen and found a business card thumbtacked to the corkboard on the wall. I took out my phone and dialed the contact number printed at the bottom. After a few rings, a woman answered.
“Hi. Yes, I’d like to make an appointment.”
* * *
As I scooped wet dog food out of an aluminum can with a spoon and plopped it into Rusty’s bowl one morning, I heard a single loud knock pound from the living room. Rusty still lay asleep on the laundry room floor between the kitchen and the sound and, as I entered the living room, I noticed that the large window with the pulled-up blinds had fractured—large cracks spreading from a tiny red dot in the center—but hadn’t completely shattered. Moving closer to the window, I stuck my face inches away from the broken glass and stared at the epicenter of the impact. The thumbprint-sized smear of red pressed onto the glass began to seep downward and fill the channels of the large cracks.
When I went outside and walked around the house toward the exterior surface of the window, there was no one on the street—no cars speeding down the road in escape, no kids shooting paintball guns at houses, no neighbors retrieving newspapers, no morning joggers with headphones strolling, nothing. Only a cluster of various bird chirps echoed into the sunny air. Examining the fractured window from the outside, I ran a finger down one of the cracks. A sharp edge of the fissure caught my fingertip. I pulled my hand back and squeezed the finger in my other hand before pulling it back out and shaking it. A thin slit on the tip began to bleed. I stuck my finger in my mouth and looked back up to face the broken window. After I did, I stared at the red smear. I stopped. I pulled the finger out my mouth and pinched at the sides of skin around the cut to force out blood. Red surfaced and I pressed the fingertip against the window. Two smears—one bigger than the other—stared back at me. When I looked down, I found it. A hummingbird, wings still twitching against the concrete, lay at my feet. The top of its head had caved in and flattened on impact. Red liquid spread from its head and beak. Loose feathers scattered in the wind.
I went inside to grab a couple sheets of newspaper and a plastic bag. Using the paper as a barrier, I picked up the still-trembling bird and put it in the plastic bag before tying it closed. After, I threw it away in the outside trashcan.
* * *
Weeks later, I drove Rusty to the vet. When I pulled up to the office, I went around the car, lifted Rusty from the backseat, and lowered him onto the ground with his leash in my hand. Back on his feet, Rusty wagged his tail. Though there wasn’t one, I had laid old tattered towels across the backseat in case he had an accident during the trip. One of the ragged edges of cloth caught on a claw on Rusty’s back foot in the descent and was yanked to the concrete. I leaned down and detached the threads around his foot before leading him into the building.
Inside, rows of fluorescent lights buzzed across the ceiling and the teal floor tiles caught glimmers of light with a glossy reflection. The room smelled like rubbing alcohol, sanitized and sterile. Metal chairs lined along the walls of the waiting room. I walked up to the woman at the desk and gave her my name. After signing the consent forms and paying for the appointment, I turned to sit down and wait. After walking Rusty over to a seat in the corner, he fell to the ground and sat by my feet. Across the room, an old woman folded her hands on top of the cat carrier on her lap. The Siamese cat inside stared at me with blue eyes. After a few minutes, the vet entered the room, smiled, and walked over to me. I stood up and bent down to help Rusty onto his feet. After, I shook the vet’s hand before handing him Rusty’s leash.
“Would you like a moment?”
“What?” I said. “Oh. Sure.”
I didn’t say anything. I leaned over and scratched the top of Rusty’s head for a second. He wagged his tail and looked at me through grey cataracts. After, the vet brought Rusty through the white door behind the counter.
* * *
I kept finding golden hairs throughout the house for months—on the kitchen floor, in the bathtub, in the closet, on the sofa, even between the pages of my books. Each time I found bristles of shed hair, I cleaned the entire house. One day while vacuuming the living room, I noticed the dead body of a roach peeking slightly from under the sofa. I pulled the couch forward. Then, I froze. I turned off the vacuum. A tennis ball lay in the dust. Teeth marks dented the rubbery surface. I sat on the floor. I cried. I stroked the rough green fibers of the ball with a heavy palm.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
No One Would Come
Warren purchased all of the stuffed, dead animals from the local pawnshops two months ago. He needed the skins, the feathers, the furs, the beaks, the antlers, the teeth, and the scales. He wasn’t a taxidermist. He didn’t want the animal mounts for decoration.
At his desk, Warren worked a needle and thread through the dried furs that he had cut and stripped earlier from a deer’s head and a fox’s underside. Goose feathers, fish scales, and empty tubes of superglue lay around the room. Once he had removed the particular parts of an animal that he wanted, he would carry the remaining pieces into the room across the hall where he stockpiled all the other mounts. The air in that room was stagnant and sour with formaldehyde. The animal mounts completely stripped of skin exposed the underlying skeletons—mannequin-like frames made of galvanized wire and wood wool. Warren would go across the hall and stand in that room at night when he couldn’t sleep.
He finished stitching the two furs together, but before he could attach them to his larger work, the alarm on his phone went off. At eight o’clock every night, Warren went downstairs to check on his mother. He sighed, reached over, and turned off the alarm. In the kitchen downstairs, he filled a glass with water and picked up the plastic container that divided his mother’s various, colored pills into their prescribed days of the week. He opened the container and removed the day’s pills before going to her room. Warren opened the door to his mother reading in bed.
“Hey ma’,” he said, “how you feeling?” She put her book down and took off her glasses before placing them on the bedside table. In her room, the ceiling fan whirled in perfect rotations, and the pull switch chain that dangled from it tapped against the bulb in a steady rhythm. A crucifix hung slightly lopsided above her bed.
“You know you really don’t need to go through this trouble every night,” his mother said. “I’m fine. I was just about to get up and get them.” She looked at the digital clock on the nightstand next to her. “I have an alarm set too, hon. It just went off. You really don’t need to worry so much.”
“I know,” he said.
Warren walked over and handed his mother the pills and the glass of water. She inspected his hands. “The poor things,” she said. “You never give them a rest, do you? What on earth do you do to them all day?”
“I’m making a costume.”
“A costume?” she asked. “Goodness, is it already Halloween?”
“Almost,” Warren lied. It was January.
“I remember you used to love dressing up like that one thing back in the day,” she said. “Oh, you know the one. The one from that movie. What was it? You used to always watch that movie.” She stopped, closed her eyes, and bent her head down trying to think. Warren noticed a bald spot in the middle of her head where the white hair thinned enough to show the scalp. The semi-transparent skin on her arms wilted in creases. Warren stared at the blue veins.
“Come on now, take your medicine.”
She reopened her eyes. At the sight of her hands, she brought the pills to her mouth and took a sip of water before placing the glass on the nightstand. After, she turned and smiled at Warren.
“It was The Wolf Man,” he said.
“Say what, hon?”
“The movie. We used to watch it together.”
“How do you mean?” She had already forgotten. She grabbed her book from the bedside table, opened it back up, and pretended to read. Warren knew she was pretending. She couldn’t read without her glasses.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you alone now,” Warren said. “Your glasses are next to you if you need.”
“Okay, hon.”
Warren began to walk out of the room.
“Oh wait,” she interjected. Warren turned around. “Could I get you to do me a little favor before you leave?”
“Of course,” he said. “What do you need?”
She squinted at the digital clock next to her. “I think it’s about to go off soon,” she turned from the clock to Warren and smiled. “Could you bring me my medicine for the night? Thanks, hon.”
* * *
By the next night, Warren had everything prepared. The duffel bag on his desk bulged at its sides with the enfolded mass of deer, bear, and fox furs, goose wings, fish scales, antlers, and artificial beaks stuffed and zipped inside. The duck call rested patiently in his pocket. Warren sat on his bed and waited for the alarm to go off on his phone. He picked at the scabs on his hands and gnawed at the tips of his thumbs. He stared at the bag on the desk. At eight o’clock, the alarm sounded and he gave his mother her pills before leaving the house. Warren carried the duffel bag by the straps as he walked the two blocks from his mother’s house in Mid-City to the abandoned Mercy Hospital. As expected, the walk took about three minutes, and as he neared the hospital, he shot glances back and forth down the street looking for incoming headlights. A chain-link fence framed the abandoned structure and stopped the overgrown weeds from bursting out of the courtyard and spilling onto the bordering sidewalk. Beneath the limbs of two oak trees, Warren avoided direct contact with the yellow light of the streetlamps as he approached the one loosely chained gate in the surrounding fence. Metal clamored against metal as Warren slipped underneath the chains and pulled the duffel bag behind him onto the restricted grounds.
Warren called the hospital by its former name. That was the name he remembered from his childhood. It was abandoned after Katrina and entertained the curiosities of teenagers, squatters, and graffiti artists for almost ten years now. Nearly all of the windows were punched-out. The fragments of glass left inside the crumbling window frames reflected yellow with the nearby light of the streetlamps. The building smiled at Warren. Six-stories of shattered yellow teeth welcomed him. He moved along the walls, through the overgrown weeds, and up the drop-off ramp by the ER entrance. Some time ago, someone shattered the two windows on the locked double doors and left chairs on both sides to provide an easy entrance into the building. The duffel bag soared through the window and hit the inside floor. The sound echoed through the hollow rooms of the concrete structure as Warren stepped onto the chair and maneuvered through the entrance.
The click of a flashlight exposed the hospital’s concrete entrails. Inside, the water-warped ceiling panels wilted downward. Severed wires and wads of insulation hung through the holes above. Warren felt the new stiffness in the air, stale and unventilated, but he had grown accustomed to the heaviness and the dust and the mold. Empty spray-paint cans, syringes, glass shards, and a single child’s shoe littered the immediate entrance of the mud-caked first floor. Directly through the entry stretched the main hallway where a mass of chairs and tables had been piled on top of each other and shoved to one side. A white Styrofoam box labeled with “Human Organ for Transplant” was nailed to a wall. The exit sign above Warren’s head dangled by a single thread of wire and tilted on its side. Warren felt the drooped severed wires from the ceiling stroke his shoulders as me moved down the side of the hallway toward the staircase.
He advanced toward the Intensive Care Unit located on the fifth floor. There, he would change and wait. Through large cracks in the concrete, Warren saw the underlying metal infrastructure of the staircase. The graffiti lining the walls grew thicker after the second floor. Spray-painted in long, thin letters among the pentagrams and cartoon figures read things like “GO HOME KIDS” and “JOHNNY’S IN THE BASEMENT.” Warren passed the graffiti without much notice. He had seen them on multiple occasions. His rushing feet quickened as he proceeded toward the fifth floor.
The metal door to the ICU met Warren’s palm as he forced it open. Inside, he dropped his duffel bag on a nearby table. He went and retrieved the cinder-block that sat behind a desk down the hall. He carried it back to the door of the stairwell and propped it in the doorway to keep it from closing. He needed to hear the rest of the building as clearly as possible. He unzipped the duffel bag and put on the costume. Around the corner from the stairwell, Warren kept his flashlight off and stood against the wall. Sweating beneath the heavy layers of fur and bony appendages, he ran it all through his head. Waiting for the people to show up. Their climbing to the sixth floor. He would wait until he was sure they had exited the staircase and were standing on the roof above him. Shifting back into the stairway, he’d climb the last flight. The duck call would be in his mouth beneath the mask—antlers and fur and rows of teeth protruding. He would stop in the doorframe between the roof and the stairs. He would blow the duck call. He would smile under his mask. The people on the roof would jump at the sound, spin around, drink in the sight of him, and scream. Giving them a fraction of a second’s glance, he would dart back down the stairway to hide on the fifth floor. He would listen. He fetishized it—forcing willpower against aftershock. The people would realize their only exit was to go back down the stairway, the same exit he took. Warren clenched his teeth and smiled to himself. He gripped the duck call tighter in his hand and exhaled softly to steady his breath. Standing. Motionless. Blood pulsing through ears. He waited.
Five stories high, a sheet of wind passed through the broken windows and resonated against the hollowness and concrete; the building exhaled. Somewhere, a dog barked and a car horn blasted into the night. A cop car passed by silently with the lights on, and for a brief moment, red and blue strobes beat against the outside walls of the building. Restlessness crept into Warren’s muscles. He sighed. He walked around the ICU. Two yellow-cushioned benches were pushed together at some point to make a bed for a squatter. Across from the benches, a pile of aluminum cans, tattered clothes, paper bags, and beer bottles were heaped in a corner. No one would come. Warren kicked a bottle harshly. It ricocheted off the floor and shattered against the wall. Under the costume, his clothes stuck to his skin and a bead of sweat slivered down his cheek beneath the mask. He walked and clenched his jaws. Around a bend of hallway, he stopped. An ambiguous black shape lay on the floor. Approaching it, the surrounding air soured. The smell tore down Warren’s nostrils and his throat tightened. In the darkness, the figure remained formless and undefined. Warren retrieved his flashlight and clicked it.
Light flooded the hallway and the figure defined with an adjustment of sight. A dead dog, half-decomposed, lay on its side. The eye sockets were hollow. A black discharge had dribbled out the sockets and dried in a small circle around its head. Large strips of its skin and fur were peeled back and left barely clinging to the muscles underneath. Bite marks plagued the animal’s body and the absent chunks of flesh exposed its ribcage. Warren pressed his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth. His intestines compressed and his body bent forward. He dry heaved. He forced a hand over his mouth and caught his mask in-between. The bristles of the mask pressed into his lips and stuck into his mouth. He felt the hairs against his teeth. He dry heaved again. Water distorted vision. The ground-off stub of the dog’s nose received notice from a single buzzing fly. One leg was completely torn away and a sharp edge of the remaining femur jutted from its hip. A deep cavity under its ribcage leaked out a leftover tangle of intestine on the floor. The tattered tract perforated with teeth marks squirmed against the concrete—inflating and deflating, bloated with writhing maggots. Warren looked through the cavity and saw the dog’s infrastructure of bone—the real insides of the thing. His stomach wrenched at the sight. Back down the hall, he found the duffel bag and took off his costume.
* * *
That night when Warren returned to his mother’s, he went directly into her room and sat on the bed next to her. He read aloud to her for hours. She smiled and listened to him until she eventually succumbed to sleep. After she did, Warren turned off the lamp on the bedside table and for a while, he sat there—silent and content in the darkness— just listening to her breathe.
