Your Place Is Here Now, page 1
Your Place is Here Now
Jason Fischer
Published by arrangement with the author.
Copyright © 2025 by Jason Fischer.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
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Contents
Involuntary Dependent
Treats
Next In Line
Home Again
Balzar’s Last Act
How Lovely Are Thy Branches
A Choice in the Matter
Duplicate
Dark Ride
Tendencies
This Is Where We Beg You
Ready for Your Next Creepy Read?
Involuntary Dependent
They watched the preteen pull the cloth sack over his head. It was wrinkled, dirty, and had a jagged streak of lipstick where the mouth should’ve been. There were two tiny holes for the nose and shiny black buttons sewn for eyes just below the synthetic curly hair. Under the plastic buttons were small, uneven holes that Joshua could see through.
Melissa stared in disbelief at their unexpected houseguest and then at her partner. Kim looked at her pleadingly in response, begging for silence. It was the look reserved for polite conversation at a dinner party, not to conceal her disdain over her brother’s actions.
His eyes were filled with hate as he disrobed the doll that he held over his knee, the doll he had referred to as his punishment self. With practiced strokes, he relentlessly beat the backside of the doll, each strike resulting in a resounding thump that filled the tiny spare room of the condo. Both women cringed as if the blows had landed on them rather than the lifeless toy.
Muffled words came through the sack. “I told you! I told you, be good, or you will get your punishment, stupid.” His words sounded like they had come from another room, like a ventriloquist’s trick.
In a voice that was so calm it scared Melissa, Kim said, “Okay, Joshua. That’s enough now.”
He looked up and cocked his head far enough back to see through the tiny space the stretched material would allow. “It ain’t, neither, and don’t call me that name. Not when I’m like this.” He flipped his head back in an exaggerated gesture, causing the wig to bounce back playfully.
“Please do as I say. That’s enough.” Her voice rose, yet she didn’t sound as if she were scolding him. The words were more like polite requests than demands.
Reluctantly, he pulled the mask from his head, causing his unwashed hair to hang across his red, blotchy face. He carefully folded the mask and put it next to him on the futon that would be his bed for the foreseeable future. Then, with delicate care, he lifted the doll’s pants, covering its exposed behind. When the clothing was back in place, he lifted the smiling toy and hugged it, leaving its limbs to dangle freely as he softly hummed a nursery rhyme to it.
Melissa’s heart was racing as she stared at the black and white doll. It was nearly three feet tall and looked like a leftover prize from a carnival. The painted canvas material was matted in spots, as if it were filled with tufts of worn cotton.
“Thank you, Joshua,” Kim whispered.
He ignored her, turning slightly away from the two women. He hugged his doll tighter in his arms, squeezing his eyes shut and humming louder.
“I’m going to go to the other room for a few minutes and talk about some adult things with Mel. I’ll be right back.”
“You know you aren’t supposed to lay with a woman like you’ve been, don’t ya?” Joshua let his doll drop and turned back, staring. Glaring at Melissa, he pulled at a strand of his oily hair, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. With his free hand, he caressed the mask, making small circles on top of the fabric and tracing the outline of the obscene lips.
“Joshua, don’t be rude. You sit quietly, and I’ll be right back,” Kim said and nodded toward the door.
They exited the small room and headed to the kitchen. Melissa said as quietly as her nerves would allow, “What the fuck was that?”
“I know that was disturbing, and I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.” Kim looked at the shared wall between the kitchen and the bedroom. Lifting one finger to her lips for quiet, she spoke to the puck-like device on the table. “Play my relaxing playlist.” In the background, Moonlight Sonata filled the room, adding to the somber mood of the cramped space.
“Disturbing? That was terrifying. What happened to that kid? Why’s he doing that, and why’re you so, so... calm?”
“It’s the way he...” Kim paused, closing her eyes and squeezing her fists. “... the way we were raised.”
“What does that mean?” Melissa moved toward her, her arms open.
Kim quickly raised her hands and said, “Please don’t. Not right now. If I start crying, I might not stop.”
Melissa took a step back, awkwardly wrapping her arms around herself. In their four years together, she could never remember having been rejected quite like that. As she fought to think of her partner’s feeling over her own, the music echoed in the small space, seeming to be in sync with her mood.
“I told you before that I had a nontraditional upbringing. My mother had... well, very odd ways to teach us to deal with our emotions. Believe me, I know how freaked out you must be right now.” Her eyes glazed over with tears as she sniffled deeply, somehow stopping them from streaming out. “I know I would be if I were you, but you have to understand that my mother was just trying to teach us to cope.”
“By beating a creepy-ass doll?” Melissa’s eyes flashed as she waved her hand toward her lover.
“It is just a role-playing device. She would have us wear a mother or father mask and then administer punishment to our doll, which represented our negative behaviors.” She looked down, suddenly shy. “After we got the anger out, she would talk to us and teach us how to react more positively.”
Melissa had no siblings, aunts, or uncles, only a mother who had passed away while she was young, so she was struggling to understand how such insane behavior could be forgiven.
Spending a good portion of your formative years in foster care greatly skewed one’s perspectives on what to expect from others. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a lot, but I have to say it. If you’re defending what we just witnessed, I’m speechless, hon.”
“I’m not defending anything!” Kim’s hands went to the sides of her head, disappearing into her thick, curly hair. “Too much has happened in the last twenty-four hours. I don’t even know what I’m thinking anymore. I’m ashamed, scared, and don’t know what to say to you right now, but even if he is acting strange, that’s still my little brother. He just buried his mother, and now he’s seeing me for the first time in over four years and is trying to cope with all of it.”
As she trembled all over, her tears finally came in streams. She fought to breathe between gasps of air. Melissa moved to her and gently stroked the back of her head. Kim willingly embraced her and convulsed with sobs. Melissa began questioning the decision to let the boy stay with them.
Despite her own apprehension, as Kim quieted down, Melissa whispered, “It’s going to be okay. Whatever we have to do, we’re going to do because we are strong enough to get through this.” Melissa now wished she had insisted that Kim attend the funeral when the call came last week. It was apparent that she needed closure from the life she had left behind. She knew Kim had had a very complicated relationship with her mother. It was understandable being raised in such an isolated, rural area without a father and with a much younger brother to commiserate with, yet she had never guessed it was so dark. None of the talks they had had regarding her upbringing had ever hinted at the depravity Melissa had just witnessed in the other room.
Wishing she could take all the pain away, she hugged Kim tighter, so tightly she barely heard her squeak out, “I’m sorry...”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Melissa said, caressing the back of Kim’s head and patting down her curls. With her eyes closed, she tried to pretend none of this was happening, that they were just having an ordinary day filled with the peace they had worked so hard to carve out from their place.
Kim’s warm breath on her chest encouraged her to lie. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Melissa sincerely wished she could believe her own words, but she knew nothing would ever be remotely the same. She had lived through transitions like this before and knew better than to fool herself. This much change couldn’t come without consequences. Hiding the apprehension in her voice, she said, “What can I do?”
“I wish I knew.” Even with the loud background music, rhythmic grunting echoed through the wall. Glancing up, she said, “Do you hear that?”
“Yes.” They headed back to the room where they had left Joshua. When they opened the door, he was wearing his father mask and was spanking a girl doll. Its hair color and style were identical to Kim’s.
“Joshua, you stop that this instant!”
“I ain’t Joshua no more.” He kept at the beating.
“If you don’t take off that mask right now, I will kick you out!”
“No, you won’t, neither.” In defiance, he stared through the eyeholes in the mask and whipped his doll faster. Each brutal stroke was louder than the last.
Kim moved quickly to the bed and ripped the doll from his lap. She held it dangling between her thumb and forefinger as if it were acidic, examining its distorted handmade features from as far away as her arm would allow. Finally, she tossed it into the hallway, the unsightly fabric twirling in the air. Before she could grab hold of the mask, Joshua quickly removed it and hid it up his shirt. He leaned forward protectively, giving him the appearance of being pregnant. In his thick southern accent, he said, “I’m trying to help you, Sister. You need to be cleansed of your wrongdoings.”
“Joshua, I’ll not have this behavior in my house.”
He rubbed the mask through his shirt. “But we gotta fix this, Kimmy. Real quick, too. Before she, well, you know.”
“Joshua, you’ll be staying here for some time until we figure out what’s best. You need to understand that things’re different here, and it’s not like it was back home.”
“I wish I was still at home with Ma.”
“I know, but that isn’t possible.” She sat down next to her younger sibling. Tentatively, he put his hand over hers, and they sat wordlessly, looking into his open knapsack and staring at the other doll’s tattered appendages hanging out over the top.
“You know that ain’t true. She’s still wit’ us.” The young boy’s voice quivered as he spoke. “She always will be, like the book promised.”
Kim nodded in quiet agreement. “Everything will be right... in time.”
Melissa stood, trying not to stare at the mask peeping out from under the boy’s shirt. For the first time in their four-year relationship, she stared at her partner and saw a stranger.
Repulsed, her mind filled with all the relationships she had endured before meeting the woman she knew she was meant to be with. Nothing had come between them before, not even their ten- year age gap. But this felt different. As she walked out of the room, she heard them humming a hymn she had recognized from her childhood days in the choir. The sound did little to quiet her already frantic mind.
The next morning, after showering, Melissa opened the door to the spare room. Lying next to Joshua, Kim looked much younger than her twenty-four years. The light from the hallway woke her. She extracted herself from the futon, and they walked to the kitchen.
Melissa slid a mug with the inscription Have a great day! beneath a smiley face that hovered over Niagara Falls across the table. The ridiculously cheap cup was a joke souvenir from their first vacation together. They had driven in Melissa’s beat-up car from New Bremen, Illinois, to New York a few weeks after they started dating. Looking at the rushing water was when they knew their relationship was going somewhere. The memory usually brought a nostalgic warmth, but the tension of the last few hours took even that little bit of happiness away. “How did you sleep?”
“Good, I guess. I don’t remember much after I closed my eyes.” She grabbed her matted hair and pulled it back over her shoulders. “I assume Joshua slept through the night. At least I don’t remember him moving at all.”
“He was up to use the bathroom.”
“Did he wake you?”
“Not purposefully. He’s as quiet as you are when he wanders around in the dark.” She smirked, hoping to see Kim smile.
Wide-eyed, she asked, “Are you angry with me?”
“Why would you ask that?” Melissa reached across the small table that barely fit into the cramped room and grabbed her girlfriend’s hand.
“I feel bad.”
“Why?”
“For what you seen yesterday.”
“Don’t think about that.” Melissa shook her head quickly, as if it would help erase the words.
“I know, but you shouldn’t have to deal with that.”
“I don’t feel like I have to do anything. This is just something we are going through right now.” There was a quick glimpse of hope in Kim’s stare. Like a switch being flipped, it instantly went away.
“Mel, I don’t know what to do next. I can’t believe I agreed to bring ...” Kim glanced toward the hallway with a guilty look. “... him here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were being a good sister and a responsible person. There is nothing wrong with that.” Melissa usually kept her past buried—hiding from hurtful things was a binding force in their relationship—but now she chose to say, “Believe me, when your only connection to the adult world leaves you, it’s very important to have someone look out for you.”
“I understand that, but what are we going to do? We can’t raise him.”
The eager look for support reminded Melissa of first meeting Kim when she came to town. She arrived with little more than the clothes on her back. Thinking of a woman teaching life skills with hideous masks, she could understand Kim’s taking the risk of starting a life with nothing and her reluctance to ever speak of her upbringing. “We have time to think about what’s best for all of us. Right now, let’s just focus on the next few days.”
“I guess.” Kim absently twirled a strand of her blonde hair, the gesture mirroring her brother’s movements yesterday. “You know, my ma wasn’t completely insane.”
“I never said she was.”
“All that stuff with the mask really was her way of helping. She was raised in a community that was... well, different.” The strands of hair made it into her mouth. “Everything she did was with good intentions, and it ain’t like she didn’t care.” After a long silence, she added, “It ain’t possible to explain, but she’s just different from others.”
Melissa felt uneasy as she heard the accent that Kim had fought so hard to hide come back. It was as if she was willingly regressing into someone else. Melissa felt an impulse to shake it out of her mouth, feeling like it would bring back the woman she loved and pull her from a path that was going to lead to sadness.
The rawness of the emotion brought an unexpected bitterness. “I’m not judging you here, but you do know that if he is going to stay, he will have to give up those dolls. They just aren’t healthy.” She didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
“I will talk to him about them.”
She didn’t really want to know, but the words came out anyway. “When you were little, you used to... punish them as well?”
“Yes.” She grabbed Melissa’s hands with both of her own, squeezing them for emphasis. “Really, it isn’t always as weird as it seemed yesterday. Ma used to read psychology books that she collected from library sales; most were very outdated but had some decent information. Like I said, she had odd ways, but her intentions were always good.”
“Were her intentions good when she taught him to be homophobic?” She immediately knew the answer when Kim looked down shamefully.
“No! She wasn’t perfect, Mel.”
The resentment she was bottling up became uncorked. “Did you sleep in there last night because you were ashamed to be with me when he is here?”
She finally looked up, biting her lower lip so hard it was turning white. “No, not at all. I was just exhausted and fell asleep there.”
She desperately wanted to believe her, but it was difficult. “You know you can’t hide who you are.” Melissa’s stomach turned as her own youthful struggles, which she had fought so far to repress, bubbled up. She knew better than to antagonize Kim, but couldn’t stop herself. All the stress was taking over. She folded her arms across her chest, staring deeply into Kim’s eyes, urging compassion to stop the fight before it took off.
“You don’t have to say that to me. I know who I am.”
“We will see, won’t we?” The words were spoken so quietly that it was as if her lips were trying to protect her from saying something that couldn’t be taken back. Before Kim had a chance to respond with more justifications, Joshua entered the room wearing the mother mask now. It was a collage of blue eyeshadow, red lips, and blush. The only human feature was his dull eyes poking through the narrow slits. Not containing her anger, Melissa said, “Take that off now!” She barely kept herself from adding, “You little freak.”
