Fungus of the Heart (9 page)

Sick Dog

To get to the one and only restaurant of Ticketyboo, they had to walk a road of shiny blue gravel that matched the sky. Clusters of white pebbles rolled together in sync with the clouds above. During the night Jill knew all the rocks, except the smallest white ones, would bury themselves under the earth. Then those remaining would reflect the stars and moon and the occasional shooting star.

Martha and the other caregivers never ate or spoke in the restaurant. They seemed content watching the children gobble up the only food available: sweet sponges that they didn’t really eat, but sucked on and swallowed. Jill loved the sponges when she first came to Ticketyboo, but then she remembered the way her father adored cigarettes and how hard he worked to quit because he didn’t want to die. Jill didn’t know what the sponges were doing to her so every day she ate less and less and less until she overcame the craving completely.

Jill pretended to eat her sponges and sneaked them into the napkin on her lap.

The sounds and smells of cheerful vomiting saturated the air around her. Like a mosaic of fountains, the children spewed all over the elegant glass chamber. The sponges went in bright and colorful and came out black and mucusy and stunk like gasoline. During it all, the children grinned because it tasted as good coming up as it did going down. She remembered how they used to feel traveling through her body. Wriggling around like they were washing her from the inside.

Jill faked throwing up under the table and watched Sick Dog as he scampered about and licked the mounds of upchuck off the floor. Sick Dog didn’t look sick really, in fact he wagged his tail all the time. But Jill always imagined what his insides must’ve looked like eating what he did. Whatever it was.

Tuck

“This is a special day for the both of you.” Martha sat on the chair between Jill’s bed and Jeff’s. She held two wrapped presents—see-though, like everything else, and yet the gifts inside were invisible. Just two boxes filled with nothing but air, it seemed. “These are for you.”

“It’s not my birthday.” Jill crossed her arms. “It’s not Jeff’s either.”

“I know.” Martha placed the gifts on their laps. “Today is special for another reason. It has been exactly one year since the incident. Since I became your guardian. These gifts are not meant to celebrate what happened that day. Certainly not. Only to symbolize your progress. I am so proud of you both. You know that, yes?”

“Yes,” Jeff replied.

Jill shrugged.

“Well…open them.” Martha clasped her hands together and grinned.

Even after the year she spent with Martha, Jill wasn’t sure she trusted Martha’s smiles. They seemed sincere enough. As honest and naked as her body, but there was just something about the way she revolved around Jill and her brother. All of the other adults Jill knew had better things to do than read their children stories, watch them as they played, clean the house so that everything was clear and never scary. Martha seemed to know perfectly well that both Jill and her brother believed in monsters. Why else would she make the house impossible to hide in?

Jill appreciated all that but she still thought Martha was strange. No husband, no job, no pets. Her life was the children.

“Come on, Jill,” Jeff said, ripping open his gift.

Although she gave no commands to her body to do so, her hands clawed at the crystal paper, revealing a colored box inside. She hadn’t been able to see the color through the gift-wrapping. And Jill didn’t like that.

Her gift was exactly the same as Jeff’s. Jack-in-the-boxes. Striped with blues and purples and reds. The box strained her eyes—no, hurt them. She wasn’t used to such boundaries in Martha’s house. Nothing was hidden here. She didn’t have to pull a drawer open to know exactly what was inside.

But this box. This stupid little box hid its contests from Jill. She joined Jeff in twirling the handle around and around. The music wasn’t music at all. It was her parents. Crying. The sound burrowed into Jill’s eyes and made them close, tight. Tears began to seep out.

She heard Jeff’s box burst open.

Jill immediately forced her eyes open and swiveled her head to see what Jack looked like. But Jill saw no Jack.

Jeff was staring at his box with a smile. “Thank you, Momm…Martha.”

“I thought you would like it,” Martha responded.

“Let me see,” Jill said. Jeff handed the box over and she looked inside. Nothing but darkness. “Do you see something, Jeff?”

“Don’t you see?” was his reply.

“I…I don’t know. I don’t think so. What does Jack look like?”

“Sad.”

Jill returned the box and went to work on her own. Every turn singed her tummy with pain. She didn’t want to hear her parents cry, but she didn’t want to stop until Jack came out. But he just wouldn’t.

“Mine won’t come out, Martha,” Jill complained. “It’s broken.”

“No, Jill. It is not.” She took a deep breath. “It is time for bed now. You can play with your gifts more tomorrow.”

“But Martha…” Jill started.

“I am sorry, but you need your rest. Tomorrow, Jill, you and I will go to the Shack again.”

Jill’s stomach went inside out. “I don’t want to go.”

“I know.” Martha tucked them both in tight and left.

Jill felt cocooned by the quilt, even if it was transparent. Warm, but tight. Maybe too tight. She wondered if she could get out if she wanted to. Better not to try. Not to know.

Overzealous Cuticles

Nightmares didn’t last long in Ticketyboo. At least not without a conscious effort to keep the dark things from turning into dead things. It was the Big Hand that reached into Jill’s mind and changed her dreams. If a monster chased her, the hand plunged into the beast’s throat and yanked out its bones so the flesh collapsed like a deflated balloon.

There were no dark corners in Jill’s nightmares tonight though. She sat under an umbrella in a vast desert and drank lemonade. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize that these monsters were part of her mind. The shadows had tried to keep that information from her, to cram her with fear. But she’d destroyed the darkness and nothing was scary anymore. The monsters were under her control now and she redirected their rage toward the Big Hand. She didn’t hate the Big Hand, but the rage had to go somewhere.

The hand worked with a frantic fury. It decapitated a vampire with its sharpened fingernail, squished a werewolf between two fingers (Jill watched the guts ooze out like a bloody furball and yawned), and flicked a moaning zombie into the sun. Jill wondered how long it could keep fighting like this against an endless supply of monsters, covered with protruding veins, cuts and bruises. The hand had been so strained lately it didn’t even take care of itself properly anymore, with hangnails and overzealous cuticles.

Jill took another sip of her lemonade and didn’t even mind the eyeballs floating in her glass, the juices of which made her lemonade pink.

Bound in White

The Shack was made of frozen milk. Not cold, just frozen in time. Solidified. It made the air stink like too much melted butter.

Jill sat in the center of this whiteness, strapped to a chair. The first couple months she had struggled, but soon accepted the fact that the effort was futile. And there was no point in closing her eyes. Martha had washed them too many times, and her eyelids were clear now. So she had to watch it. Over and over.

The milky waterfall spewed down from a slit in the roof, swallowed up by a hole in the ground. Something made the images appear on the waterfall, but Jill wasn’t sure what. Maybe they projected right out of her eyes.

It wasn’t easy watching the images. To see her parents bleed and scream and cry. Sure, there was some sadness, and Jill savored that feeling. But inside there was also something else. Little claws that clenched her stomach and twisted it around. And tiny volcanoes under her skin that burned her from the inside out until she felt like there were too many blankets wrapped around her.

Hatred. She wanted the bad men who hurt her parents to suffer. She didn’t like hating so much…

Oh, to be a little girl again. To be able to jump rope without remembering the girls playing on the sidewalk who were splattered with blood, and got all their pretty dresses dirty.

In order to avoid some of the rage from escaping the little black box she’d built inside her heart, she tried to pay attention to the details. Like the kitty with a black spot on his nose that was walking on the fence…and when he heard the gunshot all the hairs on his back stood up like a comb. Or the yellow butterfly with black spots that danced past the smoke that flew up into the clouds from the crashed car with bullet holes in its windows. Or the pool of blood on the asphalt shaped like an elephant. Or—

“How do you feel?” Martha asked, unstrapping her from behind.

The milky waterfall stopped flowing and that made tears come out of Jill’s eyes. “Martha, you made me stay here too long this time. It never lasted this long before.”

“How do you feel?” she repeated in the same sunny tone.

“Bad.”

“Angry?”

Jill realized something at that moment. This exact dialogue had occurred every other time she’d been to the Shack. How do you feel? Bad. Angry? Yes. And that was that. Jill was tired of it. So this time she responded, “No. Not angry.”

“Are you sad, Jill?”

“Yes. I’m sad.”

“I’m glad.”

Bad Men Must Die

Jill awoke in the middle of the night because she felt frozen. Blues and purples and reds filled her vision. The flower field. She was outside.

One of the bad men towered over her. Smiling. His clothes were baggy, too big for his body, just like before. Like he was trying to hide a skeleton underneath. Trying to be big when he was really small.

Jill remembered what he did to her parents. She remembered their tears.

“I hate you! I hate you!” She grabbed his gun. The weight of the thing made her collapse onto her behind. The bad man didn’t do anything. He just stayed still and stared with that skeleton grin.

She raised the gun as high as she could and fired. The gun flew right out of her hands and she scrambled after it. When she looked back at the bad man, she saw that his shin was bleeding. He stood there like a flamingo for a moment before he tumbled over.

The fire inside her made her walk onto his stomach and jump up and down. Every time she landed on him his lips made funny shapes. Always a little different. Then she knelt down on him and bashed his chest with the handle of the gun. She kept doing it until she heard something crack. The sound kept going even after she stopped hitting him.

She remembered the look on her mother’s face.

She pointed the gun at the bad man’s left eye. More than anything else she wanted to fire. He deserved to—

Wait…

No. This wasn’t him. A real bad man would fight back. A real bad man would take the gun and shoot her in the eye. And then shoot her in the other eye even though she would already be dead.

Jill dropped the gun onto a purple flower, which crushed it.

“You did it, Jill,” the bad man said, in Martha’s voice. “You beat it. You beat it.”

Jill quickly rolled off of the bad man’s body.

“I am so proud of you,” he said. “My sweet, sweet Jill.”

Going Home

Jill rushed into the living room and found Martha polishing the floor. Martha always did the floors first thing in the morning.

“Martha! Martha! Look!”

“What is it, Jill?”

Jill held out the jack-in-the-box, grinning. It was wide open. “I did it! I did it!”

“You did. I knew you would.” Martha arose and touched Jill’s cheek. “You see now? Your parents are sad, but they are okay. The bad men did not kill them too. They are together.”

“I see it.” Jill stared into the box.

“This has worked out wonderfully. Now you and Jeff may return to the world together. You are both ready. Jeff! Come here, my dear!”

Jeff made his way down the stairs, drowsily, picking the sleep out of his eyes. “What is it, Mommy?”

“I am not your mommy, Jeff,” Martha said, to Jill’s satisfaction. “I am glad you think so highly of me though. I called you because I have good news. You can go back now. Both of you. Together.”

“Where?” Jeff asked.

“To the world. You can see your mommy and your daddy again. You can see whatever you want to see, and go wherever you want to go. You can talk to your grandmother. The one who died. And no one will ever hurt you ever again.”

“Not even the bad men?” he said.

“Not even them.”

Jeff smiled.

Jill smiled too, but she wasn’t thinking about her grandmother or even her parents.

“Goodbye, Jeff. Goodbye, Jill.” She hugged them both, pressing her naked breasts against their cheeks. “You are good children.” A tear strolled down the side of her pale nose and plopped onto the part of the floor she’d been polishing.

Martha pointed at Jeff and he disappeared. Then she pointed at Jill.

Jill now understood the reason she and her brother were sent to Ticketyboo after they died. Because Martha and her friends were afraid Jeff and Jill would haunt the bad men for making their parents cry so much. The word haunt did not do justice to what Jill was capable of. Adults without good imaginations would haunt. Jill wanted to torture them and make them suffer in ways no one ever had before.

She felt herself being swept away. Soon she would be at the world again, and she could do whatever she wanted to the bad men.

Martha was so stupid. Maybe she’d figure it out someday though. Maybe she’d be gardening in the field. And she’d dig up Jill’s jack-in-the-box. The one that never opened.

The Escapist

Maybe my sense of humor’s a bit darker than usual, but torture can do that to a person. So when the drunken bards gush with masturbatory music about The Escapist’s numerous exploits and destinies, I tell them they forgot a verse.