In Sickness and in Hell: A Collection of Unusual Stories Read online

  “What happened to your milk of human kindness, Joel? She wants to see her dad. And we are supposed to be helping these people, not just guarding them. Remember?”

  “Sure, I remember that.” Joel wipes his glasses on his shirt. “But the state doesn't pay us for how many we help, it pays us for how many we hold. You remember that, alright?” He stands up and straightens his shirt.

  “I've never forgotten it.”

  “Good.”

  Joel stalks towards the door into the hall. He turns back and looks at Dr. Briggs. “I'm not coming to these things anymore, Sam. I'm too busy, and she's too ugly when she cries.”

  “That's fine, Joel.”

  * * *

  Sam Briggs steps into his office just in time to hear his phone ringing.

  “Sam? It's Amelia. How did it go today?”

  “Well, you know how these things are—”

  “Don't toy with me, Sam, you've got money on this. How close is she to breaking?”

  “It's definitely getting to her, just like we got to him. But she's tougher than he was. It's just going to take some time, Ms. Chenkowitz.”

  “I hate when you call me that.”

  “I know you do.”

  The line is silent. Then, quietly, she says, “I never expected this. I mean, I thought once we put daddy away, that would be the end of it and we'd get the money. But that didn't happen. There was more to do; we had to do it over again. Once you get Cynthia, that's it, right? It'll be over?” Amelia sounds frightened. She is looking to him for strength. It makes him want to laugh.

  “That'll be it, Amelia. I promise,” he tells her instead.

  After another long silence Amelia says, “Sam, are we doing the right thing?”

  Sam shrugs. “What's the definition of insanity?”

  “Fuck you, Sam.”

  The line goes dead. Sam replaces the receiver and leans back in his chair. He can’t stop smiling. In just a few weeks, he will have broken Cynthia. That’s good. That means he is ahead of schedule. Next time they talked, he'd have to remember to ask Amelia how her mom was holding up under the stress…

  I Loved You Once and Forever, pt. 2

  -a binary tale of love and identity-

  I LOVED YOU ONCE, TOO

  Look at me.

  I read your note. I read about what you did each day, why you did it. You were scared—I read that in your note, too. Scared because this day had come and you couldn’t face it, even though you’d known today was coming since way back. And you were sorry, you said, so sorry for ‘what you had to do.’

  What did you expect from me, sympathy? Understanding?

  Maybe that’s what ‘she’ would’ve given you, but not me. If you weren’t right before, you are now: I’m not the woman you used to love. Hell, I’m not even the woman you fell out of love with anymore. She’s long gone. I’m someone else—someone neither of us has met before.

  Have you realized what today is yet? Yes, I can see in the shape of your eyes and the slouch of your shoulders that you have. I won. Finally, after all these times, I got away. Today’s the day we switched places. Today’s the day you weren’t you anymore.

  There was a man too old to be my husband, so I ran. But it wasn’t safe outside either. A nightmare world out there. I recognized some of the parts, but it was as if someone had reassembled them wrong. I don’t know how long I wandered out there. It must’ve been a few hours. The bank was where it always was, downtown, squatting between storefronts I couldn’t recollect seeing before. That’s where I saw the calendar.

  It’s been almost four years since yesterday. At least, for me it has been. ‘Coma’ was my first thought; it was the easiest answer. So I’d overreacted, right? I took a breath, calmed down, and came home.

  I walked in the door and found you here, slumped over your desk with a bullet in your brain. When I finished reading your letter a second time, your ranting was starting to be more plausible. I mean, they don’t keep coma patients at home.

  So I read your letter and I went down to the basement. You were telling the truth. I can’t believe it either, but it worked. Just like you said it would.

  But you messed up. You were too eager. So now you’re here. Again.

  Don’t look away, look at me.

  You’ll be here again and again and again until I decide we’re even, until I say that I’m satisfied.

  I want you to understand what’s going to happen now. I’m going to murder you. Then I’m going to use your own device to get you back. We’re going to walk up here slowly, hand in hand. You’ll be so happy to see ‘me’ again. When we get to the living room, you’ll turn to me and I’ll smile like this, and the knife will enter you like this, and you’ll sink to the floor. I’ll give you this speech while you die, like now, and I’ll watch as the horror spreads in your eyes and you realize that you’ll never get to join ‘her.’

  You may have been doing it to save her, but you were hurting me. You were selfish, all your reasons were selfish. Now I get to be selfish, to make myself feel better at your expense. I get to do this for me—for all of me. Goodbye.

  * * *

  Stop struggling. Those straps are too strong. Just let me talk.

  One was enough. I know how it feels now, and I’m sorry. You weren’t right, but…you weren’t wrong, either.

  It was all true. You’re sitting there again, just like yesterday, and you don’t even know what I’m talking about, because yesterday never happened to you. You don’t remember when I stabbed you, when I killed you.

  But there’s more than just that. You were telling the truth about that moment, too. I saw it on your face when I brought you back today.

  Yesterday, even as I killed you, you were still in love with me. The moment hadn’t passed yet. But for the first time in four years, I survived last night and something in me changed. Not you, because you’ve gone back. So it must have happened to me. This time, today, your love was gone and I knew it the moment you looked at me. You never lied. You really did it for us—for love.

  Look at me. Please.

  This isn’t easy for me, but I can’t hold what you did against you. It’s just not in me, now that I understand what you went through. I think I feel the same way you felt every night, trying to hold on but watching me—her—get further away. Knowing what I know now, I can’t hold on to my anger. I don’t want revenge anymore.

  And I think I still love you, whoever you are.

  We’re different people now, there’s no denying that. But you never looked far enough ahead: in time we’ll be different people yet. So I’ve still got hope for us. Maybe, someday, our moments will converge again. I can hope for that.

  It won’t be easy—it’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done—but I can wait. For you, I would wait forever. And thanks to you, I can. I can bring you back over and over, until the day comes when your eyes open and you look at me and I’ll know it was worth it because whoever you are will love whoever I am.

  I’m sorry for what I’ve done and for what I have to do. But I know that this is what he’ll want, whenever you’re him—what we’ll want, whenever we’re them.

  In Sickness and in Hell

  There was a knock at the front door like a polite cough. I pushed myself up from the kitchen table to answer it but my mind stayed where it had been ever since I got off the phone with the doc. That was two hours ago. I couldn’t stop myself thinking today, going over all our problems in my head. Worrying, like I knew something big was going on but I couldn’t figure out what.

  I passed the bedroom and I glanced in but Dawn was twisted up under the covers like her stomach was hurting, so I left her alone.

  Things had been bad between us for a coupla weeks. We wasn’t sleeping together lately, and we’d been fighting more than I remembered ever doing in the past. I don’t know what came first, but I think one musta caused the other. Goddamn chickens and eggs, you follow?

  Anyway, even with that shit going on I was pretty s
ure I still believed in us. I still wanted to marry the girl. Green eyes, slim body, and a laugh like an angel, who wouldn’t? And I still had a strong notion that if I was dumb enough to ask, she’d agree to it. I had already went and talked with her dad about it all, real formal-like to settle things between men. Invited him out to dinner—which for us is rare—and when the check came I offered to pay—which for me is unheard of. Did all that just so I wouldn’t have to surprise him with the idea; before he ordered dessert, he knew the stakes.

  I really had no reason to be worried though, and we both knew it. It’s a fuckin’ dance now, a bit a American culture, like buying a cake for your cat’s birthday even though she’s diabetic. You’re not gonna get a sugar free cake for the animal though, am I right? It’s not like you’re actually gonna feed it the cake, it’s just something people do.

  Anyway, my point is that things was all set, everything in place, but I still didn’t pop the big Q. Dawn gave me some strong hints that she was ready, even mentioned it once or twice while we were heels to heaven—that pissed me off—but I still didn’t get around to it. It was just never the right time, you know?

  So like I started with, it’s been bad for a few weeks between her and me. I got the flu or some shit and that’s when I started sleeping on the couch, so I wouldn’t infect her. But when I got better it wasn’t the same between us. Don’t know if it was me or her or both of us, but that’s what happened. I’d say that’s when we stopped sleeping together for real, not because I was sick anymore. We’ve lived together for a couple years now, and I know I can get pretty irritating, so it wasn’t the first time I’d crashed in the living room because she didn’t want me too close. I was used to it. Hell, when we found the couch, I knew there’d be more than a chance’s last nickel I’d be sleeping on it now and again.

  But Dawn got sick not long after I started feeling better anyway. She’s sick now, been sick for weeks, much worse’n I ever was. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want me around her, ‘cause she was feeling bad. Could be.

  I’m still gonna ask her, just as soon as she gets better. I can’t ask her now, Dawn’d kill me if I went in there and said “Marry me, beautiful?” when she’s still nauseous, bed-ridden, and got hair like Haiti inna hurricane.

  It’s gonna be alright though. Something tells me it will be. A buddy I met at work told me yesterday about this doctor he knew that did house calls. Dawn’s a receptionist and I’m a part-timer at a lumber yard, so we don’t make all that much money. John, the owner, says he might be able to hire me full-time in a few months, but I’ll believe it when the check clears. He’s a sack a shit anyway.

  So Franks—that’s what we call the new forklift operator ‘cause he smells like hot dogs—overheard me telling one a the guys that Dawn wasn’t feeling so great. He gave me the number for this Dr. Mayline and told me he’s real good and understands people like us that can’t afford to go to the doctor’s or the emergency room. I gave the Doc a call early today and he said he’d be over in a few hours to see her.

  Before I opened the front door, I checked the peephole. In the clean, bright daylight outside—I had all the shades drawn in the house—there was a fat looking, almost geeky-faced guy in tan slacks and a button down. His ears stuck out from his head like a bull’s horns. I wondered why he didn’t wear a hat or something.

  I swung the door open. He gave me the once over, looked bothered by what he saw, covered it up with a weak smile and stumbled over an introduction.

  “Sam? Hi, I’m Dr. Mayline. Can I come in?”

  “’Course, Doc. Nice to meet you,” I said, extending my hand. He glanced down at it nervously.

  “Sorry,” he explained, “germs.”

  “Ah, right, sorry,” I wiped my hand on my shirt. I almost felt offended, but then I thought he’s a doctor, he knows best. “This way, come on in.” I led him down the hall, and we sat down in the kitchen. He was carrying a big black leather bag, like the ones old-time doctors with those shiny discs on their heads mighta carried if they did house calls. Come to think of it, I don’t know if ones like them did house calls or not...

  “Where’s the, ah, patient?” the doc asked.

  “Oh, Dawn’s in the bedroom, through there,” I said, pointing at a bead curtain doorway that led across the hall. Doctor Mayline was sitting at the chrome-edged table with his big bag in his lap. He was looking around at the décor. It made me a little embarrassed, because it was all black and white tiles with red accents and lots of chrome. Dawn had thought that a 50’s diner look would be cute for the kitchen, and I had figured that we didn’t have people over much anyway so who cares if it looks ridiculous, so long as the girl’s happy. It mighta been one of those things where we did it and then both pretended to like it just so we wouldn’t have to do it again. I’m not sure. I offered the doc a drink.

  He shifted in his red and white v-back diner chair—we got the set off a E-bay for cheap—and looked uncomfortable.

  “Sam, sorry, but I am very busy. Would you mind going and finding out if Dawn is ready to see me yet?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure, hold on a minute,” I said, feeling like a retard. Of course he wants to see Dawn. I went into our room. The shades were down in here too and there was an acidy smell in the air.

  “You throw up again, honey?” I asked. I heard her moan out a yes. “Well don’t you worry, the doctor’s here to see you.” She took a couple deep, slow breaths. It sounded like they hurt. The white sheets rustled and she pulled herself upright, propping herself up on her arms.

  She looked like hell. I knew she’d had trouble sleeping the last coupla nights, and there was dark circles under her eyes for proof. Her hair had gone wiry and wild; strands of it either stuck up randomly around her head or else hung limp against her pale shoulders.

  Dawn tried a smile but it came out more a grimace. “Hey there, handsome. Mind getting a girl a shirt?” she asked me. She was clutching the blankets to her breasts as if she was cold, but lines of her dark hair was plastered against her face, like a cross section of a coal mine.

  I tossed a t-shirt on the bed beside her. She pulled it over her head, using both hands to draw her hair out of the neck in a big, static-y mass.

  “Shit,” she said, “Sam, I don’t want you to see me like this, much less a stranger.”

  I said, “I know, but he’s gonna help, trust me. You’ll feel better soon.” I sat on the bed beside her and pushed some of the hair off of her face. It wasn’t just the hair around her face, her whole body was soaked in cold sweat. I tried to kiss her but she put a hand on my chest and turned away. “Get the doctor, Sam. Please.” She pulled the covers up to her neck again. “And empty the puke pot, too. Thanks, babe.”

  When either of us was sick, we’d use our big silver soup pot to puke in. I found it next to the bed and I saw where she hadn’t gotten all of it into the pot. There was a brownish-red trail dripping down the edge of the mattress. It smelled like fried crap, and I carried the pot outta the room at arm’s length.

  I was feeling scared. Seeing Dawn like that reminded me of my momma before she died. I’ve never seen anyone look that way that wasn’t fighting for their life against something.

  Doc Mayline looked up at me anxiously when I pushed through the hanging beads into the kitchen again.

  “Is she ready?” he asked. I said yea and he got to his feet and told me to stay in the kitchen and wait while he examined her. “It’s very important that I am not interrupted. I’ll get you if I need you, okay Sam?”

  “Yeah, sure thing, Doc, just call.”

  He went in and I heard him introduce himself to Dawn and then he shut the door behind him and I couldn’t hear any more. I was alone in the kitchen. It seemed kinda weird that I couldn’t be in there with him, but I didn’t move to contradict him or nothing. I just sat for a few minutes, worrying, watching the strings of beads swing back and forth over the door frame like the pendulums of a hundred grandfather clocks, all outta sync.

  There w
as another knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting nobody and I didn’t think that Dawn was either. There was a chance it was some a her friends, but honestly that lot wasn’t the type to drop in with a cup a soup to cheer you up.

  I checked the peephole again–-kind of a habit of mine, it’s not like I’m ever expecting not to open the door, but it’s there so I figure why not use it?–-and saw two men on my front step. They looked pretty normal: not dressed up much, just jeans, t-shirts, and jackets so I figured they wasn’t selling anything and they wasn’t proslatizing. I opened the door a crack.

  “Hello, sir,” the man in front said warily, “does a Dawn Orlens live—holy shit, Carpenter? Is that you, man?”

  I looked him over again. He had a thin beard that clung to the underside of his jawline like moss on a rock and strong creases under his eyes that swept diagonally down from the sides of his stubby nose. He looked a little familiar, like a guy that I used to skip class with in grade school. But that guy had been a jackass and a burnout, and I think it was in the paper that he tried to kill himself a while back. Cut his wrists. Messy shit.

  The front man removed his hat, apparently thinking that that would help my memory. “Carpenter,” he said, “fucksticks, man, you don’t recognize me? We used to hang all the time outside of school!” He held out his hand for a handshake like as if he was an old friend. Looking down, I saw the scars on the inside of his wrist. Crossed the tracks. Dumbshit didn’t even take the time to fuckin’ hari kari his shit right.

  That was enough to convince me that yeah, this was Andrew Birmham alright. But he looked so different; world-weary, like something was eating at him. And who knows, maybe that’s how I look to him, too. But who the hell was this other prick? And what the hell was they doing on my stoop? And what the fuck did they want with Dawn?