Erik Handy (12 page)

Angrier.

Jesse's thoughts panicked him. They didn't make sense. The spot was just a stain and if he couldn't clean the stain, then so what? It didn't matter.

But it did matter and it tugged on Jesse's mind for the rest of the day.

"Let it go," he kept telling himself. "Just let it go."

Five o'clock came and Jesse blew through two red lights to get home quickly. He had to know if the spot was still gone. He didn't know what he would do if it had reappeared while he was away.

"I should've called in," he chided himself. "I should've stayed home and watched it."

He got home and saw the spot waiting for him by the TV. Bigger and darker, seemingly wetter with anticipation for another round with the returning champ.

***

That night Jesse lay in bed awake. The carpet specialist hadn’t done his job right and Jesse thought about calling the guy the next day to tell him. He wondered if maybe the TV had leaked something on the floor. But what could a TV leak? He thought about calling his girl and telling her about the spot, but decided against it for she would tell him to call the carpet people and that would bring him back to the carpet specialist he had dealt with before. Why not call the guy? He was, after all, a carpet specialist, carpets being his specialty. Besides he obviously hadn't done his job right. Or, hell, Jesse thought he should call another one, one who get the job done once and for all.

But there was something not right with this spot. Jesse couldn’t answer the question of its origin. “Damned if I know,” he kept saying to himself all day, aloud and not. And if he couldn’t come up with a logical explanation for the spot’s appearance, then he would think about non-logical, supernatural reasons.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said to himself as he turned over and closed his eyes. He tried washing all thoughts of the spot out of his mind so he could get some rest. But all night he had the creeping feeling that the spot in the next room was awake like he was. However, unlike Jesse, it never slept.

***

 Jesse called in sick the next day and prepared for war. He went to the grocery store and bought a gallon jug of bleach. He could have replaced the carpet before ruining it, but that was too easy. He had to see if something -- bleach, holy water (which he was going to get after his trip to the store) -- could get rid of the spot. Besides, what if the floor underneath was stained as well as the carpet? Tearing up the carpet and replacing it would be his last resort. He really hoped that the bleach would do the trick. And if it did, then he could always lay a rug there and cover the stain. And if it didn’t . . .then he would use the holy water for the spot would have to been of supernatural origin and anything, he thought, of supernatural origin could be gotten rid of with copious amounts of blessed holy water.

And if the blessed holy water didn’t do the trick . . .

Well, there was hydrochloric acid.

***

Jesse kneeled beside the dark spot and unscrewed the bleach bottle top.

“I’m gonna beat you,” he told the enemy. And he could have sworn that the spot grew darker in response, either taunting him or anxiously awaiting the bleach.

Jesse gently poured some bleach onto the spot. Liquid soaked into the spot and Jesse waited a second before pouring some more. He set the bottle down and looked at the attacked spot.

It still remained.

Jesse got up and dashed into the kitchen to retrieve a washcloth. He dashed back and wiped, scrubbed the spot like an over-zealous cleaning lady. “Come on, you fucker,” he said, jaw clenched. "Come on."

The area around the spot was a few shades lighter but the spot was still as big and dark as it was before the bleach assault. Jesse got the dark feeling that the spot was laughing at his pitiful attempt.

“You bastard.” Jesse poured more bleach onto the spot and rubbed it viciously. In his fury, he didn’t notice that the carpet wasn’t even being worn down by his rabid seesaw scrubbing. "Don't laugh at me."

After a few minutes, Jesse let up and looked at the still present spot. He knew that it was laughing at him for sure. Hell, he’d laugh at himself now. He couldn’t figure out how this spot arrived and how he could get rid of it. A stupid spot on the carpet was getting the best of him.

“Fuck you, spot,” he spat as he got up and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with a small glass vial of water. “Holy water.”

He poured the holy water on the spot and waited a second.

Nothing happened.

The area around the spot was whiter from the bleach, but the spot was still dark from whatever it was made out of. Jesse thought about tasting it, but balked at the idea. What if whatever it was got inside him and made him sick or killed him? Or made his skin spotted? Jesse shivered.

This spot had to go.

He tossed the empty vial on the couch, got his keys from the kitchen counter, and left his apartment. While he was gone, his girl called and left a message on his machine. If he checked his machine when he returned from his shopping -- Did he actually shop for acid? -- trip, he would have heard her invitation for a night at the movies and for some sex. But when he returned from the pool supply store one buys -- or steals -- a jug of hydrochloric acid, he turned his attention to the destruction of the spot instead. He didn’t even notice the tiny red light blink and blink and blink with the news that a potentially great night could happen.

Jesse sat the jug of acid down next to the spot. It hadn’t grown in size or color. Jesse thought this was a good sign, but resigned himself to the fact that a better sign would be a deleted spot -- a permanently deleted spot.

He stared at the spot for what seemed like a thousand centuries. The absurdity and freakish nature of this experience sunk in like bleach into a carpet and Jesse shook his head. He thought that sometime during this strange war he lost control. He had taken a day off from work to personally do battle with a carpet stain. He had bought a jug of hydrochloric acid. A jug of acid! And holy water! You don’t just pick up a jug of acid and a vial of holy water at your local mega department store. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember getting the acid and water. He couldn't remember going to work the day before. Or the week before. All he could recall was that he hadn't left this apartment in a long time. In fact, he had always been there. Forever. Jesse had enough sense of mind to think that maybe he had lost a bit of control of his life. But he was about to reclaim it.

He picked up the jug of control and unscrewed the top, discarding it and the safety directions that were printed boldly on the death red container. He tipped the jug like a gangster tips a bottle of malt liquor in honor of a dead homey and the control agent slipped over the jug lip and down, like a miniature waterfall, onto the spot.

Jesse showed no emotion and spouted no taunting or boastful comments to the spot or himself as he emptied the half-gallon jug of acid.

He dropped the empty jug and turned away. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of a destroyed carpet and a laughing spot now. He went into his bedroom and shut the door.

A few hours later, after pacing around his bed and in front of his bed and on his bed, Jesse shyly emerged from his bedroom. He stepped slowly to the damaged area, the vicious war zone in front of the TV. His trepidation left him like mucous after a hearty cough when he saw that the spot was gone. He steeled himself for the return he knew would come. The spot would be as black as the darkness of a starless universe and as round as a large pizza.

Or larger.

The size of the living room.

The apartment.

The apartment complex.

The block.

The city.

The state.

The world.

Jesse ran into the kitchen and puked into the sink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at the ruined carpet over his knuckles.

Only time would tell if he truly defeated the spot.

Jesse regained his composure and picked up the phone, ignoring the still blinking red message light. He called his girl and in an hour the two were making love on his bed in his bedroom away from the war. She didn’t even notice the carpet damage.

***

His girl was asleep and had been for a couple of hours. Jesse rolled out of bed with the skill of a stealth commando and stood in the dark room, readying himself for the inevitable, the return of the spot and the continuation of the war and his mental decline. He sucked it up and walked out into the living room.

The spot was still gone.

He searched the entire living room, thinking the spot had relocated. It hadn’t. He then checked the kitchen and found no spot.

He thought about checking his bedroom, but that would undoubtedly wake his girl and she would ask him what he was doing at four o’clock.

"I'll tell her, he told himself. "No. I won't. She would think I'm crazy. I'm not? And leave me."

He went back to bed and decided to search his bedroom in the morning after she left.

***

As soon as his front door closed, Jesse ran into his bedroom and scanned the floor for any stains. He moved his bed and looked underneath.

Nothing.

Then an image screamed through his brain.

He ran into the living room and looked at the quiet war zone.

No spot.

“Well,” he said. “It’s over. Guess I should get ready for work.”

He walked into his bathroom, flipped on the switch, and saw on the shower wall four dark, perfectly round splotches.

Buckles

Buckles parked his blue van behind the right field line. He imagined the field being swarmed with little boys in their baseball uniforms. He didn't breathe as he let his thoughts roam among the little ones he pictured.

Buckles had a very vivid imagination.

The digital clock on the radio told him he had time to stop by the nearby elementary school. He didn't work an 8:30 to 5:30 schedule for nothing.

After work, during dinner, his wife would ask him how his doctor's appointment went.

"The usual," he would lie. He had his answers down pat. Another shot to stave off the migraines when in reality he quit going to his doctor years ago. It was just another excuse. Like when he would walk the dog in the evening. Buckles didn't give a shit about the dog -- he just wanted to walk by the neighborhood playground.

Dinner that night would be dry steak and barely baked potatoes. That was fine. Buckles loved meat.

And Little League Baseball.

***

Eleven years old.

"Ma, I wanna go to the mall," little Buckles begged.

"I already told you that I'm taking your sisters for ice cream."

"But, Ma!"

"Enough of that! Now go on and play with your sisters."

"I don't want to."

"Bucky."

"They always dress me up like a girl."

"Be glad that you have sisters. Now go on."

***

Now.

Buckles sat in his office, shut off from the outside world. He just received an email from the library's assistant director. Some new edict had come down that each library had to implement. As usual there were two ways to implement said edict: the right way and Buckles' way.

Buckles' way was never the right way. He would overblow everything out of proportion and make his staff do simply ridiculous things that defied common sense. One such thing was that the library system had an 80% goal for self-checkouts. This meant that 80% of library checkouts had to be performed at self-checkout stations. That was all well and good, albeit unrealistic and, for reasons I won't list here, impossible, but Buckles stationed his staff at the self-checkout machines like a dictator who had to overcompensate for his shortcomings. This was his way.

"This is a work in progress," he told affected staff. "If you have any suggestions on how to make it better, let me know."

He really didn't want to know. His ideas were the only ones he was interested in, logic and consideration be damned. He was in charge of this little world and that was all that mattered.

There was one employee who criticized Buckles' rule -- that damn Eddie -- but he was quickly dealt with by a verbal dressing down. You know, a disciplinary action that meant nothing at all.

Eddie still got paid the same regardless of how he worked. That's government work for you. And Buckles got paid the same whether or not he was an obnoxious asshole, which he was.