Vanity Kills, page 14
Back in bed, Mick twitches violently, trapped in the recollection of the worst day of his life.
In the darkness of the night, glimmering in the flicker of a burning bedside candle, his sweatpants undulate in the knee region, tenting upward unnaturally.
Something needle-like presses through the fabric, tearing the material with its upward push. It widens as it emerges, leaving a tar-like goo on the rim of the tear.
The spiked tentacle presses further, feeling in every direction, crawling the perimeter of Mick’s kneecap with a mind of its own, never waking its host. It palpates the area with its finger-like extremity before sucking back inside the material, back inside Mick’s knee, leaving only a hole in the man’s pants and a bit of black slime behind.
46
DAY NINE OF TRIAL
Patient Journal Entry provided by the St. James Parish Police Department.
Evidence Item #SJPD-118133C
Criminal Case #: 7-23-mu-187462-OB
Translated to digital transcript by Mary J. Stearns
Subject Name: Alan REDACTED
Date: 7/06/REDACTED
Written Journal Entry: Yesterday I experienced a vivid hallucination about a bastard I used to know. It was intense. It led to the altercation with Chase when he came in to bring clean towels. I also had night sweats last night and trouble sleeping.
Time Symptom Started: yesterday afternoon
Location on Body: head
Severity: intense
Patient Journal Entry provided by the St. James Parish Police Department.
Evidence Item #SJPD-114739C
Criminal Case #: 7-23-mu-187462-OB
Translated to digital transcript by Mary J. Stearns
Subject Name: Mick REDACTED
Date: 7/06/REDACTED
Written Journal Entry: I slept really hard last night at first and then had a really bad nightmare. Woke up this morning and there are tears in the knees of my pants and black crusted shit all around it. Not sure if someone is pranking me or what. The holes in my knees do look better though so I guess the drug is working. Keep it up, doc. Also, I gotta say, I don’t know if its all psychoso… psycha… all in my head, or not but I feel like the chronic pain I’ve dealt with in my legs the last few years is going away. Maybe I’m just having a couple of good pain days in a row but so far, I feel less of a need to pop ibuprophens like they’re tic tacs. So that’s a plus!
Time Symptom Started: PM
Time Symptom Cleared: when I woke up
Location on Body: head, I guess.
Severity: Meh
47
Mick rolls in his room with a full glass of soda wedged between the long, stalks he once called legs, careful not to spill the contents in transit. He’d do just about anything to avoid having to change pants again, or sit with his crotch a sugary mess all day, both of which sounded like an annoying chore. Though, he’d give his left foot for a tumbler with a lid…sippy-cup… any sort of container. He thought about chugging it straight out of a tupperware recently but held off.
Once in, he sets the flared glass on the round top of the rinky-dink bedside table, next to his deck of nudie playing cards and miscellaneous shit dumped out of his pockets the last few days. He swivels around to go back for the snack he left on the kitchen counter, fearful Alan would suck it down like his mama’s old Hoover if he left it unattended for too long. The man was like a human carp.
As he swivels, the curled handles at the top of his backrest smack against the wonky table, toppling the whole thing over with a SLAM!
Soda and cards go everywhere, splashing onto the floor and bed-skirt, soaking the cards and bouncing up onto the fabric on his withering calves. The lamp on the table and the glass of a spent scented candle shatter as they crash down into the mess.
He screams out with rage, reaching over to punch the wall and falling short with a whiff, held back just out of reach, by the chair.
“Ahhhhhhhh, GodDAMMIT!” He howls again, whacking his closed fist in the air, this time connecting with the bed, rolling him back through the crunchy glass mess, coating his wheels in sticky Dr. Pepper.
He sees his vintage cards, the only source of entertainment in this place beyond Eddie and Jack, rafting down a stream of carbonated beverage. He thinks there may be time to salvage them. He picks one up and wipes the brown liquid from its linen face onto his Tenacious D t-shirt and tosses it on the bed.
He wheels backward to get a better angle to reach them, wetting the palms of his gloves as he does. The shards of the busted lamp and shattered bulb gnaw hungrily at his rubber wheels as he strains for a clump of them, struggling to retrieve a cluster from beneath the bed risers he curses every night for making it hard to crawl onto the elevated mattress and box spring. Walsh gave him the large ADA bedroom on the main floor since the compound doesn’t have a ramp or lift to the second story, and, while the room was the swankiest from what he’d heard, he’d have much preferred just a mattress and box spring on the floor and a table that didn’t tip over if you looked at it wrong.
Bracing one hand on the cot, he tips sideways a bit to reach it, as he has a million times before. He teeters during the delicate shift of weight, but doesn’t take into account the slickness of the wet wheels and he loses the war with gravity. The wheelchair topples over and Mick rains down hard, slamming his ribs against the cushioned metal armrest.
“FUCK!” He punches the box-spring and, flustered, pulls himself into a sitting position on the floor, struggling to right his chair with a growl. It is going to be a pain in the ass to get back in it from the floor. He can do it, but he’s too angry. He locks the brake and pulls himself up so that he’s sitting in the wet mess with his back propped against the lifted bed. He huffs furiously and shreds one of his soaked vintage playing cards in a burst of anger, severing the playmate’s body just below her rack of heaving tits. He flings it across the floor like a frisbee and slaps his head back against the mattress.
Why do even the simplest fucking things always come with such an advanced level of difficulty, he wonders. He ponders if his handicap is part of some karmic retribution for his twenties club-days. He was a tall, flirtatious womanizer all the LSU girls used to throw themselves at when he prowled around Baton Rouge like some filthy alley cat. More likely, it was, indeed, payback for the drug-fueled days he spent shooting up more heroin than he sold, skimming money from Cajun-Irish giants with a toolbox full of nightmares and an ability to laugh while his face was caked in gore.
Maybe Finn was right.
Maybe he did deserve this.
The thought made him shiver. He watched a melting ice cube slide slowly across the slightly off-kilter floor. Sitting there, waiting for his heart rate to die down, feeling his knuckles throb and swell beneath his damp gloves, he sees something utterly fascinating.
It can’t be.
He feels like it’s a dream. Something cruel that he is going to wake up from at any time.
It just can’t.
But it was true. As impossible as it seemed…
Mick sits alone in a spacious room in chaotic disarray, ass steeping in tepid soda like a bag of tea, watching his foot waggle back and forth. Watching the toe of his white canvas shoes, covered in amateur permanent marker graffiti like a high-school student’s desk, as it taps forward and pulls back, stretching calf muscles and tendons that had atrophied over half a decade.
He stares at the other foot, willing it to move with his mind as it once did. Wanting the miracle to be real, not just some horribly cruel muscle spasm side-effect of Obsidian.
His second foot moves, along with the calf attached to it. He groans in pain. Pain of muscles that have suddenly revived like Lazarus from the grave after years of shriveling from inactivity. He raises his knee into the air, sliding the sole of his shoe back with a grunt, hands-free, a burst of laughter erupts from his mouth, a wild cackle that grows in intensity as tears of joy flow like running brooks from his eyes.
48
“Mmm, these po boys are so good. Just what the doctor ordered. Where the hell did you get these?!” Jack munches through mouthfuls of fresh french bread, pickles, lettuce, and fried oysters, washing them down with fries and sweet tea, relishing the heavenly combination of flavors of a meal that screams Louisiana.
“I gave Ed a call this morning. Threw him a couple bucks. He got ‘em from a place by my house in Gonzales. He lives like five minutes up airline from me apparently.” Iris smiles and crunches into another flaky bite of the french bread, delighting in the flavor of the roast beef between.
“No shit? Come to think of it, I bet we’re all pretty close in proximity. Mick and I live right there in Saint Amant.” He says it like san-a-mah. “Wait, is this from Mike’s?”
She nods, grinning.
“Yo! This is my favorite place! The little lady that works the front--”
“Tweet!”
“Yeah, Tweet! She remembers everyone!”
“I know, I just walk in there and she hollers out my order every time. I don’t even have to tell her what I want. Just give her my card.” She giggles and looks over at him.
His bandages are off and the blasting overhead sun reflects onto his face, illuminating it to a degree that Iris has never seen before. She can see the seams and lines on his face of various skin grafts. The odd push and pull in the corners of his eye, nose and mouth on the one side. But her eyes drift to his gorgeous set of straight, white teeth between two lips she wants to kiss. Her eyes drift to the defined jawline on the other side of his face, unmarred and unmangled. Strong and arched like a marble sculpture, sprinkled with mere hours of stubble.
Jack raises his lidded styrofoam cup in cheers. “First, let me say thank you for this. I’ve never had a woman buy me lunch before so this is quite a treat.”
“Well, I’m happy to pop your cherry.” She’s trying to be playful but her cheeks immediately heat up. She can feel herself turning red at the remark as she taps her cup against his.
Jack tries to hide his smile and fails, which only makes Iris find him, strangely, more attractive.
“This blows the tuna sandwiches I was gonna to make outta the water,” he says, letting the opportunity for a retort on her comment pass with grace.
Iris pulls her cup away to take a sip. He stops her.
“Bupbupbupbupbup! I’m not finished with my toast yet.” He smiles, using his drink to bring hers back until they are touching again.
“You best hurry up. This wind is getting chilly and I want the rest of this po boy while it’s hot,” she jests.
“Fair enough. A celebration is in order. To you.” He stares at her, the nearby rushing water glinting in his hazel eyes. Ones that, she now notices, have a vast array of color in them, from rich browns, to greens, to flecks of stormy gray. She’s never been close enough to see them, save for in the dim shed.
“Cheers to your new lease on life,” he says, with a mix of genuine joy and selfish melancholy, joy winning the battle between the two. They clink cups again and she drinks, unable to pry her dazzling eyes from him.
His gaze darts down to the blanket beneath them when he notices her staring. Iris looks over, very seriously, at the pair of moss-green fishing rods near the water’s edge, both propped against large rocks, sky-bound tips unmoving.
For many years, Jack was comfortable with that kind of attention and, after a while, expected it. Hell, at one point he even took it for granted. But now, the attention only reminds him of the man that he’s become in the years since Kate’s demise: pathetic and undeserving. The Elephant Man. Frankenstein’s Monster. A hideous shut-in. A murderer who doesn’t deserve to breathe the fresh, summer air when others can’t, thanks to him. He chastises himself for sitting on the dirt, having a picnic, while they’re beneath the surface, worms voraciously devouring their corpses for sustenance, chewing them up and shitting them out. All while weather erodes their shellacked caskets and time decays the cut flowers, severed offerings adorning meager headstones that he doesn’t have the balls to visit. He can’t show his face around there. Not even what’s left of it…
“I think the medicine is just taking longer to work for you,” Iris offers as an attempt to address the elephant in the room, piercing eyes locked on the bobbers floating in the water twenty feet or so from the grassy bank.
He laughs a little but there’s venom in it. He’s agitated that it even needed to be said. Frustrated that he ever believed the drug could work. Angry that Walsh is getting the satisfaction of watching his hopes dashed daily. “The pills aren’t going to work,” he finally says.
“If it can do all this,” she motions to her exposed shoulder on full display from her pink, strappy camisole, “I have faith that it will for you, too. Yours just probably needs a little more time. But, Jack, even if it never works,” she freezes for a moment, realizing that’s probably the last thing he ever wanted to hear, even hypothetically, “I really think you’re a good-looking guy already.”
“You don’t have to do that.” There’s a firm sadness in his tone now and he rolls his head a little on his shoulders, pinching his eyes tight.
“Do what?”
“You don’t have to… be like that. You don’t have to try to sugar-coat everything. It’s like when a grandmother says you’ll always be my favorite or when your mother says those kids in school just don’t know how wonderful you are yet.” His tone grows quiet, annoyed. Not with her, but with himself, though it’s impossible for her to discern that from his inflection. “I’m well-aware of how fucked up I look, Iris. You don’t have to coddle me.”
She faces him now, sitting up straighter, a little perturbed at how this has suddenly spun. “Excuse me, but I’m an adult with my own opinions. Yeah, you’re burned, but its not the end of the world. You’re not Freddy Krueger, alright. I can see enough of you to know that, to me, you’re objectively attractive. But your personality, this whole I’m convinced I’m hideous stuff, it's getting frustrating. I’m telling you I think you’re good-looking and you just keep talking about what a beast you are, ever since we took the walk that first night and I opened up to you. I don’t just open up to people. I thought you would be… different. That you would get it, understand what it’s like to feel broken and incomplete and not enough. And now I know that’s all you see. Your flaws. Your scars. Your past. There’s more to you than that. I’ve gotten to see more of that every day. I’m here because I like spending time with you. Do you think that has anything to do with your face?”
“It’s not just my face, okay. There’s a lot more of me that’s fucked up.”
The comment catches her off-guard. The thought never occurred to her before that the damage might be more extensive. But she shook it off and looked back at him. It didn’t matter.
“You’re so convinced you’re hideous that it almost seems like there’s no reaching you at this point. This,” she motions to him and then to her, “feels like a losing battle.” Her tone changes. She’s getting choked up, fighting off tears now. “You’re burned, Jack, but you’re not unattractive. You are more than just a sum of your parts. You’re not unattractive, but you are being a bit self-absorbed.”
“Are you serious? I’m not full of myself. I’m a goddamn shut-in, Iris!” He stands up and walks in a circle in the grass, rubbing his burned hand on his neck inside his hood.
“Jack, I’m not trying to be mean, but you gotta take a step back and look at your life and see how all-consuming this is! You spend your time beating yourself up mentally and loathing yourself physically.”
“You’re one to talk, Iris. The whole reason you said you were here is because you were tired of looking in the mirror and seeing yourself that way.”
“But I wasn’t letting it ruin my whole life. I still met people. Had social interactions. Took a compliment once in a while. This is all day, every day, for you. You don't have to be in love with your image to be obsessed with the way you look. You think you’re hideous and this dysmorphia is consuming you. You have so much self-hatred seething from you, it feels like there’s no room for anyone else in your life. You’re so obsessed with how you look that you don’t even care that I’m looking right at you, telling you that I don’t care about your burns and that I think you’re cute. But you don’t hear any of that. You can’t.”
A cold breeze brushes through the thick throng of cypress trees nearby, whooshing along the water’s edge as if to punctuate the icy conversation with a burst of stinging air.
Iris rubs her bare arms and looks up at the summer storm brewing in the cloudy sky above. She imagines its only a few hours until it’s full fledged.
“No one gets it more than I do.” Her voice is calmer now, soothing even. “I’ve spent most of my adult life hiding. Not feeling safe around people. And with you, I thought things could be different. I felt like I could relate to you because we were going through something similar. But it turns out we’re fighting totally different battles.” She sighs, looking back at the ground, poking at an errant ladybug on the latticed beach towels they are using as picnic blankets. “If you want to keep punishing yourself for what you did to your wife for the next thirty or forty years, fine. Do what you gotta do.”
The words hit him like a cinder block to the skull. He turns around, hoping he didn’t hear her right, but as the words replay in his head, he knows he did.
“What did you just say?” There’s frustration in his voice. Betrayal.
Iris looks up at him, trying to gauge whether he is just upset or whether this has become a situation where she will soon need to flee. But as she looks at his face, she sees someone who is genuinely hurt, not angry. Someone wounded, not wild.
“Who told you that?” He’s baffled, clenching his jaw to fight the rush of emotions roiling within him. Her words have cut him like a fillet knife to the gut.
She crumples the wrapper of her po boy and stammers, “I-I shouldn’t have said anything.”
