by Stephanie Alexis Bonvissuto
…I had just steered the patrol car onto Mockingbird Lane when my cell went off. I dug the phone out of my pocket and checked the caller I.D.: Lori.
I thumbed the answer button. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, Officer D’Angelis. I was wondering if you had an e.t.a. tonight.”
I checked my watch. “Figure another half hour or so on the road, so I should be home around seven-thirty.”
“But your shift ends at six,” my wife pointed out.
An older couple taking a late afternoon stroll paid me a wave and I gave them an official policeman nod in return. “Yeah, but there’s a ton of paperwork back at the desk I got to catch up on…”
“Does that include sharpening your pencil down at the Otters?” She was referring to The Blue Otter out on Old Stonewall Ave. That’s where a lot of us go after work for choir practice. Sometimes you can catch guys from Hudson Terrace or the Rte 203 Barracks taking up space at the bar or working the pool tables. I’d been known to clock in the overtime there but never more than a beer or two. Some guys walked in on a Friday evening and didn’t leave until Monday morning.
I laughed over the airwaves. “Last I heard Prohibition was over, Mrs. D’Angelis.”
“We’ll see the next time you climb into bed.” Lori was only half-joking. My wife is the daughter of an alcoholic father who had left both she and her brother emotionally scarred. Years later she fostered no patience for fools, drunks, or any combination thereof. Me, I like to crack open a few during the game or while changing the oil. Don’t ask me how but after eight years of marriage we somehow make it work.
“Um, was there a reason you called?” I asked, taking the next right onto Deerly Lane.
“Well, if you’re not going to be home until late…”
“Eight-thirty isn’t late.”
”…we might as well have some sloppy-joes.”
“Nothing wrong with sloppy joes.”
“There is when I was going to make meatloaf and mashies, which I can’t do now because I don’t have any milk and I can’t get to the store to pick some up because someone never called the garage to see if the car was fixed or not…”
I rubbed my left temple which had just started to throb. “I’m not the only one with their phone number, right?”
“Did you want me to call before or after all the housecleaning and raking and waiting for the plumber and picking up the kids from the bus stop and…”
I had to laugh. It was either that or explode and I had been working on my anger management problems as of late. “Okay, okay, counselor, I get the point. How about I grab a couple of pizzas and soda on the way home tonight and we’ll pick up the mini-van tomorrow.”
“Ditch the soda? Mikey had two cavities, remember?”
I didn’t but wisely kept that to myself. “No soda, check. Anything else?”
Her pause surprised me. “Do you think you could swing by The Frickes? I tried to call but their answering machine’s full and both their cells keep rolling over to voicemail.”
“Uh-huh,” I uh-huh-ed. “And remind me again why we’re so concerned?”
“Because Mikey said Timmy had been acting really weird the last time he saw him.”
That would be my boy and Michelle and Stefan Fricke’s only child, respectively. The two of them met in first grade and had become inseparable since. “And when was that?”
“Last Monday,” Lori said.
“Weird,” I repeated.
“Really weird,” she corrected me.
“Yeah, okay, but like, what does that mean to an eleven year old, anyway?”
One of her patented sighs dropped out of the phone. “Look, if you don’t want to do this just say so.”
“Okay, I don’t want to do this,” I admitted. “Look, I’m almost done here and they’re all the way on the other side of town…”
“Mikey’s really upset over this, Dom,” my wife cut me off. “He hasn’t been eating right and his sleep’s been off.”
More familial tidings that hadn’t reached me. Guilt tugged at my gut. “Fine, fine. I’ll stop by, knock on their door. Okay?”
“Yes,” Lori said. Your son thanks you. So do I.” She sent a kiss over the airwaves. “Loves.”
“Back at you,” I automatically replied, thinking to myself, shit.
The Frickes lived over on Honey Hollow Hill, that new development of McMansions where the property tax alone was half my yearly salary. Michelle and Stefan both worked as chemical engineers over at Doxi International, makers of fine household cleaners that smelled like lemons while stripping the shit stains from inside your toilet bowl. Everyone’s got their something, I guess.
I thought of radioing in the change of direction as per protocol but stayed my mike hand. I told myself the detour would only take a few minutes at worst, right? Closer to the truth was I didn’t want to have to explain myself to Henry, who was working Dispatch. Like what was I going to say? Lori called, I obeyed, it’s called being married which of course you wouldn’t understand because you’re still single so go back to jerking off, pal.
I stepped on the gas and finished my circuit early, cutting through Vet’s Park to meet up with the 404. Over on Field Three a Little League game was in full swing. No one looked up as I drove by.
The highway was heavy with rush-hour traffic, forcing me to ride the emergency lane. Luckily my exit was only two stops up the line. At the top of the ramp I made the right onto Dove Lane, and then the second left onto Piscataway. The road splits at its end. I turned on my left blinker, veering onto Torrey Street, which dumps out at the bottom of Honey Hollow.
The streetlights were coming on as I rode the hill. I didn’t need to count the house numbers, having made this trip a hundred times for birthday parties and sleepovers. No doubt for Lori it was thousands. I made sure to keep the bar lights off as I turned into #345. Nothing gets the neighbors running to their windows faster than spinning reds-and-whites. Beside, I had no reason to have to announce my presence. As far as I knew, nothing criminal was taking place here.
The circular driveway was deserted. I parked on the far side and shut off the car. In the silence a vague notion tickled my brain. The car had grumbled over something when I had come off the road and as I climbed out I looked back to the street. A strewn pile of bagged newspapers (no doubt the New York Times or Wall Street Journal) sat by the curb. In the thickening twilight their number was hard to determine. Five? Eight? A dozen? I glanced over at the mailbox (Love Lives Here! stenciled on its sides), wondering if I opened it I’d find its throat choked with bills and magazines, too.
People sometimes have to leave unexpectedly – sudden business excursion, family emergencies, a hundred possible reasons and all of them benign. Life happens, I wanted to tell my wife and son. Of course by then it was just me and that gathering shadows.
I walked up the path, motion detectors bathing me in light. In the middle of the front door a large heart-shaped knocker hung. At its center a pair of brass lovebirds silently cooed at each other. Yeah, that would be The Frickes.
Letting the talisman hit the wood, I imagined what I was going to say. “Hey, how’s everyone doing? Sorry to interrupt dinner and all – mmm, smells good! – but Mikey asked me to swing by, see if Timmy needed any homework assignments. Apparently he’s been out of school lately. Everything okay?”
Sure, sure, it sounded reasonable, at least on this side of the door. Seconds fell away, followed by minutes. I pressed my face against the frosted glass. Nothing moved on the other side.
Hmmm. I retreated off the porch and made my way down to the garage. Out came my flashlight, which I aimed through one of the dark panes. A car sat in each of the three bays – Michelle’s 4X4, Stefan’s black sedan, and a sporty red convertible that made my own heart pang. Hadn’t Lori said they had bought a new set of wheels recently? The Christmas bonuses must have been fat over at Doxi.
Puzzled – but not overly concerned – I wandered around the side of the house. They probably didn’t hear me knocking because they were all sitting around the patio, taking advantage of a warm spring night by having an early season barbecue. If I knew Stefan, he’d been waiting all winter long for such an excuse to light up the briquettes.
Yet when I turned the corner I found the canvas still pulled over the deck furniture, the barbecue pit empty and cold. My homeowner’s eyes scanned the back yard which looked long and weedy. Strange, I thought, always imagining weekends at the Frickes filled with the sound of mowers and hedge clippers. As if Michelle would suffer a dandelion to live!
Thinking of tools made me glance over at the shed tucked away in the far corner of the yard, that spot where most people hung their work gloves. Not Michelle and Stefan Fricke, though. Geeks to the last, they had theirs converted into a makeshift lab, complete with a separate genny, so they could come out here and play with chemicals whenever they grew bored with reality. I once remarked to Timmy how cool it must be to have real live scientists for parents. He shot me a glance and said they were just weird.
There was that word again: weird. It dogged me as I wandered about the patio, looking for…well, I wasn’t sure exactly what. More spotlights switched on, throwing my shadow out into the overgrown grass. That’s when I saw the glistening pressed down trail running through the blades, as though someone had dragged a wet rolled up carpet from the shed to the edge of the patio. A slimy-looking stain ran across the concrete to the foot of the sliding patio doors.
I automatically reached for the door handle and found it covered in goo. ‘Chelle was going to have somebody’s head for that. Finding a clean spot on the glass, I gave the door a push. I wasn’t expecting it to be unlocked so I was a little more than surprised when it slid along its track.
Frowning I stuck my head in. On the wall sat the alarm system, all its lights pulsing green. “Hey, anyone home? It’s me, Dom D’Angelis!”
No reply. I squeezed my way inside. The only light to be found here in the kitchen was the bulb above the stovetop. It cast a cold light over the countertops, picking up pieces of smashed dishes. Many of the cabinets were hanging open. I counted at least three of them dripping with viscous strands.
“Goddammit!” I hissed. We’d been having complaints of vandalism ever since last summer, homes being broken into while their owners were away. Hit-and-run stuff mostly, smashed windows and busted up furniture, the perps always gone before the first car was on scene.
As far as I knew, though, none of the crime scenes had these globs of resin. “Yo, ‘Chelle, Steve-O, anyone home?” On a cautious step I moved out into the hallway. A creak from the walls made me jump a little. I cursed: Relax, big guy, just an old house talking to ya. Whoever did this is probably halfway to the city by now. They better be, I thought, because Michelle was going to rip them a new one when she saw this.
At my feet ran the greasy stain. Careful not to leave any foot prints in it, I followed its course down the hall to the living room. I reaching through the door and switched on the lights. The damage here was nowhere near as bad as in the kitchen, just a couple of overturned sofa pillows, the latest issue of Better Homes lying on the floor like a downed bird, a spider web crack in the entertainment center’s glass door. On the far wall was what Lori called the ‘Chelle and Steve Gallery, a dozen or so pictures of The Frickes holding hands, nuzzling deeply, staring longingly into each other’s eyes. (My wife liked to call them “terminally cute.”)
Each photo was now sitting crooked on its nail, dripping gunk.
A thud went off from overhead. Old houses don’t make the kind of noise, I thought. People do. I quickly backtracked to the foyer and shined my flashlight up the stairway. “Hello? Is there anyone up there?” Without waiting for a reply I grabbed the banister and took the steps two at a time. (In the back of my mind taking note that the oily line had gotten here ahead of me again.)
At the top of the landing I tried the light switch but this time the darkness remained. I looked left and right. Down by the floor ran a sliver of light. If memory served that was Timmy’s bedroom, which popped a squat right over the living room.
I approached with my hand resting on the butt of my .9mm Walking straight up to the door, I gave it a sharp ‘police business’ rap with my free hand. “Timmy? Timmy Fricke, are you in there? It’s Mikey’s dad, Mister…Officer D’Angelis.”
I grabbed the knob and shuddered as my fingers touched more of that gelatinous goo. A long-suffering hay fever victim, I routinely keep my pockets stuffed with tissues and broke out one now to clean off my hand and try again.
It took another fifteen seconds of tussling (more than enough time for any intruders to escape out the window) before I could finally get the damn door opened. An oddly diffused light flooded the hall, bathing me. I held up a hand to cut the glare, eyes focusing on the broken light fixture in the middle of the ceiling, from which long mucuousy ropes hung.
Jesus. I stepped inside, my heart tripping over itself. It looked like the vandals had taken a hose to poor Timmy’s room. Amber gobs had been dribbled in generous quantities across the floor and bed, one of the pillows saturated in the stuff. The computer hutch had been splashed, as had been all the book shelves. Tawny streaks ran down the front of the television. The walls were painted in slime, matting down all of the rock-‘n-roll posters. (Like my son, Timmy was a fan of The White Stripes, Blink 182 and with hormones just kicking in, the Pussycat Dolls.)
My feet carefully picked their way across the floor, stepping over stained clothes, discarded books, empty CD cases. At the foot of the bed I stopped and turned around to get a more panoramic view, unable to tell if the clutter was just the normal flotsam-and-jetsam teenagers leave in their frothy wake or evidence of something…
Whoa, hold up. I turned back and after a moment or two moved around the side of the bed. Tucked away in the far corner was a large egg-shaped blob, three feet from top to bottom, translucent on the outside, darker toward the center as though… Forgetting not only the police procedures I’d ever been taught but the unspoken rules taught in every single horror movie I’d ever seen (especially Alien), I approached, feeling both repulsed and hypnotized at the same time…
I got within a half-dozen inches when the shadow at its core suddenly moved.
Not a lot, mind you – if I hadn’t been so close I probably wouldn’t have caught it at all. But I had been and could clearly see the shape within, curled up in a fetal position waiting to be reborn, knees tucked under a delicate chin, a familiar profile melting away before my eyes.
Perhaps sensing my body heat or the runaway thumping of my heart, the figure within shifted again. Muffled mews leaked out of the cocoon, stifled screams leaking out into the air. I stumbled back in retreat, knocking over the hamper, the desk chair. The air filled with a strangled voice that seemed to know my name. It called my name! Now maybe cops in the movies would have bravely ripped the egg open but I just scuttled backwards, the same tattoo playing itself over and over between my ears: whatthefuc, whatthefuc, whatthefuc
My back hit the doorframe and I stumbled outside, bouncing off the walls. Walking had become a forgotten reflex. I could feel my thoughts twist themselves into pretzel shapes. Had you asked me I couldn’t have told you my own son’s name, the date I was married on, even my badge number.
I certainly didn’t notice the fresh snail-trail at the top of the landing until my foot slipped in it. Like a bad slapstick routine I fell on my butt and rode my tailbone down the stairs, sprawling into the foyer at the bottom. The world spun away from me in bright kaleidoscope pain. When the whirlies passed and focus finally returned I worked my way up to scraped hands and knees. Bones I didn’t know I possessed ached. My body felt like it had just gone ten rounds in the ring with a taffy-puller and lost.
Then I remembered what I had seen upstairs. My hand automatically went for my radio but found it busted from the fall. I pulled myself up to my feet and staggered for the front door, thinking of the radio in the patrol car only a few yards away.
That’s when I heard something come slip-sliding up from behind, heavy and wet on the polished hardwood floor. Now what? I thought, turning on my heel, reaching for my service piece.
But my fingers fell away. Wriggling down the hallway towards me was the world’s largest python. At least that’s what my shell-shocked mind thought, and why not? The thing was long and cylindrical, moving along in great greasy undulations. My brain seized up: What is that? Who cares? The ghost of my old drill instructor yelled at me. Shoot it! Ask questions later but shoot the goddamn thing NOW!
My hand hung useless at my side. I gawked as the thing reached my toes and slowly rose up off the floor, swaying from side to side like a flute-charmed cobra. I braced myself, fully expecting to see a fanned hood rise into view, a forked tongue wagging before my eyes.
What I saw instead was much, much worse. The thing lolled from side to side before suddenly whipping straight up. Like the egg in Timmy’s room it was made of the same translucent skin, reminding me of sausage casings. Only instead of being stuffed with meat this one contained a face. The left half was defined by a high cheekbone and softly sloping jaw line, strands of brown hair floating before an almond shaped brown eye like wave washed seaweed; the right hemisphere held a man’s cheek (badly in need of a shave) and a blue orb pulsating in its socket. The two halves met in the middle, dissolving into a misshapen nose and a mouth that seemed to be collapsing in on itself.
I reeled. Oh my god, oh my GOD! Was that really Michelle in there? And Stefan, who always insisted you call him Steve-O from the get-go?
“…helLO dOm,” the left side warbled.
The blue eye, the same color as the Caribbean ocean, tried to focus on me. “…iS tHAt DomiNiCk?”
“…yesSSS! Ssssay HeLlo, DEaR!” Michelle prompted.
“…HeLLo, dEAr,” the Stefan side cracked wise.
Their voices sounded garbled, bubbly, as though they were speaking underwater. “…god, what, what happened? I mean, Jesus Christ!”
“Euwww, LaNguAGe!” the Michelle half scolded. The Stefan side tittered until she glared it into silence. Then her eyeball found me again, gleaming like a shard of broken glass resting on a stream bed. “WhaT HAPpenED? Can’T YoU tell? It’S LOVe!”
“…lOVe, LOvE, lOvE,” Stefan sang in what to be the world’s creepiest Beatles rendition.
Their words floated out to me on a shit stinking breath. “How, how do you figure?” I choked.
“Isn’T iT ObViOUs? It’S chEM-IS-Try!” Michelle said.
Stefan’s eye rolled around and around. “…ChEM-MyS-tRee! cHeM-MIZ-er-Reee!…”
I glanced down at the torso they shared. I didn’t want to – my brain felt seconds from exploding from the impossibility it was being forced to witness – but I could no more look away than a moth could fly from a flame. Somehow their bodies had been cut down the middle, the opposing halves then sewn back up the middle. Michelle looked like she’d been wearing some sort of lab coat over a white blouse and skirt when it – whatever ‘it’ was – happened. In contrast her husband had obviously been relaxing in jeans and a polo shirt. Now their clothes melted into a wavering line that ran up the center in a vacillating stitch. Impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.
Thoughts banged painfully off each other in my head. “You, you did this to yourselves?”
‘Chelle’s eyeball glittered. “oF COurSe, sILly! ThIS iS WhAt COuPLEs dO!”
“…LOvE! Love! lOVe!” Stefan crooned on.
“Oh SHuT UP!” Michelle snapped. “ShuT Up! sHUt uP! ShuT up!”
He glanced tentatively over at his beloved. “…LovE…?”
Thunder exploded, echoing sharply off the foyer’s walls. My brain all gummed up, I don’t know when I had freed my .9mm, had been totally unaware of its weight in my hand until I reflexively squeezed the trigger. The bullet punched through the upper right quadrant of the casing, drilling a neat black hole right above Stefan’s eyebrow.
A severe shudder ran through the body’s length. Red dewdrops bubbled out, the orb below rolling to white.
I shook my head, half-formed syllables falling out of my mouth. The horrible truth ricocheted around my skull: I shot him, I shot Stefan, had plugged good old Steve-O!
Michelle’s own eye ballooned. “No!” it shrieked through the syrup. “nO No NO!” She tried to reach around but the arm was welded to her side. Wailing, she suddenly head-butted me aside with all the grace of a wrecking ball. I left the ground and hit the far wall hard enough to crack plaster.
Michelle’s eye burned like a baleful sun going supernova. “YoU KiLLeD hIM! yOu killed mY LoVE!”
In what Lori liked to call my smart-ass reflex I said, “It’s what he would have wanted, trust me. He always hated your meatloaf.”
With a scream that made my eardrums bleed she dropped to the floor and came sliding after me. I tried scrambling away, feet slipping in the accumulated slime. I fell and rolled over on my back, watching Michelle rise over me like some awful goddess cheated out of her sacrifice. Where the Stefan side was already growing gray and peeling away, her skin glowed with the same sweaty shine you saw on the faces of junkies starving for a spike, an alkie desperate for a shot of rubbing alcohol.
“…I AlWAys liked YoU, dOm,” she sang. “..YoU aRE A rEAl mAn…You aNd I…WiLl LOvE Each OthEr, toGEtHer, FoREver!…”
“Oh yeah?” I breathed. “Then who the fuck would shoot me?”
Outrage painted her cheek red. She lifted herself even higher, preparing to drop on me, smother me…absorb me. Is that what happened to Steve-O? Was that the fate that awaited Timmy gestating away upstairs?
My brain seized up under her shadow, jaw working in soundless, horrible awe. But where my mouth couldn’t speak the gun in my hand did. Bullets punched across her waistline. Her eye bulged and bulged with awful comprehension until it could contain the truth no more and burst in a red-black rain down her cheek.
A ripping noise sounded and I watched in gory fascination as the snake-thing’s upper half fell away from the lower portion in a visceral gusher. The remains of both hales flopped about for another second or two before finally, thankfully, growing still.
It took forever to remember how to breathe again. Filling my lungs, I found my feet. The world wobbled under them, threatening to toss me over the side and into the sea of insanity. Somehow I found the front door, fingers scrambled over the knob.
The air outside kissed me with the sweetly sickening scent of flowers. I sneezed, coughed, gagged, cried all the way to the cruiser. Somewhere down the street concerned voices spoke. A bat chirped from an unseen perch. Overhead an evening star twinkled merrily away.
I fell into the patrol car’s passenger’s seat. Just then my stomach heaved, re-upholstering the seat with the hoagie I’d had for a late lunch. Once the hot sickness had passed I fumbled under the dash, fingers closing around the mike. It took a half dozen swallows to wet my voice enough to speak. “Hell, hello? This is Car Two-One, Car Two-One over?”
“I read you!” Dispatch answered. “Dom. where you been, man? I’ve been trying to reach you for like, the last fucking half hour, man!”
LaNGuaGE! Michelle’s ghost screamed. “I’m at 345 Honey Hollow. Requesting back-up.” I paused, wondering how the hell to describe this. Then I thought: ChEM-MIZ-REE! “ Got a ten thirty-six here.”
“You shitting me, man?” I couldn’t blame Dispatch’s surprise. I had just called in a hazardous waste spill. “You really want me to call in county?” Meaning the environmental haz-mat teams.
“Affirmative, over.” I let the mike fall and used the last of my strength to wriggle my ass back outside. And here I sit in the Fricke’s driveway. In the sky stars twinkle. A warm breeze carries the perfume of a spring night, inspiring poets to pen odes to their muses. And somewhere in the dark Stefan’s ghost sings away, LoVE, lOvE, lOVe…
About the Author
Stephanie Bonvissuto is a forty-something New York based author who lives with her partner and three cats. Her stories and poems have been spotted in On Our Backs Magazine, Oysters and Chocolate, Girlphoria, Chaotic Dreams, The Scream, Factory, Outlaw Biker, Sapphic Voices, Afterburnsf, Aiofe’s Kiss, Not One of Us, The Lusty Library, and very-koi. net. When not writing she can be found at protest marches, planning coffeehouses for her community center, out on Fire Island, up at The Cape or learning Italian.
©2009 Stephanie Bonvissuto
