“It was the peculiar habit of Miss Hayes to sleep with several pillows at her back, in a half-sitting position, so that all she had to do was open her eyes to see what lay across the room from her, the coursing moonlight lying in slashes upon it. The door of the chifforobe was hanging open, as was the mouth of poor Marcella, who hung in the air, whole and pale while her charred dressing gown blew in tatters, a living orange spark dancing here and there on sleeve or hem, her virginal body exposed, her virtuous face stretched out in an obscene parody of melancholy, as if she meant to speak in confidence to her bosom friend, her little Isobel, once again, the sad eyes of the phantom Marcella bubbling like gelatin, her sweet mouth a black hole, ringed by black teeth, and from the loathsome flickering of her huge and blackened tongue there issued forth a most unholy sound…”
All at once a violent shaking rocked them, a high-pitched, threatening, skeletal clatter that seemed to come from everywhere.
Dr. Cherubino clutched his chest and cried mercy.
O’Brien screamed and screamed. Dr. Cherubino fell forward onto her and she shoved him off. She got up and ran down the hallway, screaming. It was dark and she smashed into a pile of books, bloodying her knee.
The back door burst open and O’Brien thought she might swoon. She had never swooned nor fainted but suddenly she understood the feeling.
There was Bill Dawes, standing in the kitchen, laughing.
“Did I get y’all?” he said. “I guess I did!” He laughed some more.
“Get us?” screamed O’Brien. She ran toward him with her hand upraised. “Get us? You’re a bad person!”
“Aw, I just rattled the screen a little. Like a campfire surprise.”
He held her arm so she couldn’t slap him. She relented.
“I’m pregnant, you asshole!” she said.
“I served you drinks!” he screamed.
“Bitters and soda.”
“White wine spritzers!”
“I only finished one.”
“Bitters are like forty-five percent alcohol!”
“They are?” She was thinking about how you only used a few drops of bitters in anything, and was about to say it, when they noticed how quiet the house had become.
They found Dr. Cherubino dead. He lay on his back, eyes and mouth wide. His hair had turned quite white, and was dotted profanely with cracker crumbs. On the podium rested his book, filled from front to back, as the county sheriff would soon discover, with nothing but miniscule geometric symbols that only Dr. Cherubino could have read.
Art Is the Most Important Thing
HIS WIFE WAS CALLING.
“Your home phone isn’t working,” she said.
“A lot of people don’t even have landlines anymore,” said Cookie.
“But you do,” said his wife.
“The power is out,” said Cookie. “The lines are down, or whatever they have now. Do they still have lines? I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re slurring your words,” said his wife.
“How can you tell?” said Cookie. He whispered to Sandy: “I’m going to step out on the porch.”
“Who are you talking to?” said his wife.
“Myself,” said Cookie.
He was dashing off so quickly that he had already opened the back door. The rain had died down. Everything was dark and smelled good.
“I think I just let a fly in the house,” said Cookie.
“I’m sorry. Listen, I wrote a book-length poem.”
“That’s great!” said Cookie.
“…about the dissolution of our marriage.”
“Today I saw a bumblebee in the clover,” said Cookie.
“Did you hear me? I wrote a book-length poem about the dissolution of our marriage.”
“Why don’t you fax it over?” said Cookie.
“What do you mean? Do you have a fax machine?”
“No. I was casting about for something to say.”
“And the lines are down anyway.”
“Art is the most important thing,” said Cookie.
“Right?” said his wife.
They laughed.
Duck Call Gang
YOU SHOULD TRY SITTING IN YOUR HOUSE IN THE DARK LISTENING TO some troubled youths blow on their duck calls outside your window. It happens to me sometimes when my wife has gone to bed and I am staying up late, accompanied by my insomnia and worries about the future. I turn off the TV and stand there trembling in the dark and work up my courage to part the curtains just enough to see the lanky toughs there dimly through the fog, standing in the road and blowing their duck calls for no discernable reason. What are they up to? They seem like the kind of churls who would pull a cat’s tail for their idea of fun. I worry about all the little cats out there in the world.
I am not yet what you would call an old man, but it is only a matter of time. For the present, I feel I could beat up one young person if need be, in the defense of my wife, my cats, my home. Were there two young people, however, I might have more trouble, as one of them held my arms behind my back while the other scoffed openly at me and struck me repeatedly in the solar plexus, for example. Maybe a third is forcing my wife to watch. Most horrible!
Lightning struck our house the other night. It woke us from our slumber. We woke up screaming. The lightning knocked a painting off the wall and broke its frame and messed up the computer, though not irreparably, and that seemed to be the extent of the damage. Afterward, we lay there in the dark and began to laugh. We laughed at ourselves and one another, at the quality of our screaming. I cannot recall ever having screamed in actual terror before. I was relieved not to have suffered a heart attack.
Now one of the cats, formerly the bravest of our crew, crawls under the covers next to me whenever there is a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Poor thing!
“Couple Killed in Metal Bed,” was one remark I tossed off lightly, pretending to quote a headline in the next morning’s paper. Our dark humor. Our bed is an old iron thing that belonged to an ancestor who was not a wealthy man. We see its like in movies about corrupt orphanages or old-time sanitariums. Our style of bed is associated with the misery rampant in the most venal institutions of yore.
After our laughter subsided, I lay there, still wide awake, long after my wife’s gentle breathing once again suggested untroubled sleep, and then I entertained my anxious thoughts, such as, “If we had been screaming tonight at the approach of a masked serial murderer, no one would have heard us scream.”
Yes, who will take care of us when we are old?
Our children? We have no children. Of course, having children is no guarantee of anything. Even the best parent may produce an ungrateful child. I myself have been an ungrateful child.
Our cats will not take care of us when we are old. That is not their job, although cats are handed out to patients in dank retirement homes for the warmth and affection they provide.
Should my wife and I perish in our home, crushed under old newspapers or merely by old age, our cats might be forced to feed on our corpses, which is perfectly acceptable. When someone kicks in the door because we haven’t been heard from for several days, the cats might be right there on top of us, turning their heads from our bodies and toward the sound. Our tardy rescuer will be startled by the glistening crimson in which their muzzles are drenched.