He was still on the floor in the hallway when
the doorbell rang. The dream had been of her and he together, as they often had
done, eating outside. The knocking on the door was incorporated into the dream;
she was tapping her glass to get his attention. He finally awoke when Sally
began to bark. He stood up a little too quickly and felt the pressure in his
arm as his heart again threatened to burst. Breath, he told himself, as his
head throbbed. In. Out.
The door glass was clouded, but he could see
that the social worker was back. He carried the same clipboard. He pressed
himself against the wall and contemplated ignoring him. The revolver was on the
floor next to the heater grill. He picked it up and stuffed it into his
waistband in the small of his back having only the vaguest idea of intent.
“Hang on. Let me put the dog out. “
He pointed to the garage door and Sally
headed there. She looked back to front as if to ask, “Would you like me to hang
out? “ but she went out obediently, even
nosing the door open as she was inclined to do. “You’re a good dog Sally. Go
lay down. “
Returning to the foyer he felt Michelle’s
eyes on him from the pictures in the hallway. He felt that she would disapprove
and assumed that the guilt came from that knowledge. He could swear he could
almost hear her voice, “You are going to shoot him, aren’t you. “It wasn’t a question, but a tired statement
only he could hear, except in the garage Sally’s ears perked up. He hadn’t been
fully sure that was plan until Michelle’s voice called to him, and in truth it
wasn’t going to be an issue unless he asked to see the bedroom she had died in.
He opened the door. He faintly registered the
distant sound of sirens. It seemed like there had been some sort of accident
near the city center.
“May I help you?”
The man may have been barely thirty. His dark
hair was freshly trimmed and his face was pocked with old acne scars. Charles
hated the way government employees always seemed to be better dressed than the
normal people; like they never got dirty. That just didn’t seem natural to him,
and of course that was why he had a built in resentment for government people
like him; they didn’t seem like normal natural people. Takers, not producers.
He remembered a picture he had seen once; two men were fishing on opposite
sides of a river. One was an average man in fisherman’s garb fishing from the
river. The other was a politician in a suit using his fishing pole to try and
hook the fisherman’s bucket of caught fish. Michelle had always been his voice
of reason, but she was gone now.
“Good afternoon mister Pearl. How are we
doing today?”
In the distance, towards town smoke seemed to
be rising. The sirens were still distant but there seemed to be more of them.
“Fine.”
He made a pretend gesture over checking his
clipboard. “Great. May I…um, come in? “
“Why? Charles eyes were hard and this man
seemed more and more like some sort of insect to him. Like a cockroach. They
both turned as a car flew past the house on the roadway. It must have been
doing eighty miles per hour, away from town.
“Well, sir. I’m here for a welfare check.”
Charles snorted a dry laugh. “Really? Of all
the things you people don’t do worth a damn you are going to come here, to my
house, every other day and tell me how I should care for my wife? You make me
want to vomit.”
He looked stunned. “Please sir. I have a job
to do.”
Out of the corner of his eye Charles noticed
a man walking down the road about a quarter of a mile off.
“Really.”
The younger man made a pretense of looking at
his clipboard again. It reminded Charles of a child’s binky, something to be
kept close for comfort. “Yes sir, “he said uncomfortably. “How is Mrs. Pearl?
May I come in?”
“Mrs. Pearl is fine. She is right as rain in
fact, and no sir, you may not come in. In fact why don’t you fuck off and get
off of my property?”
This was a tone the young man had never heard
before in his professional capacity and his mouth plopped open in an almost
cartoonish fashion. After a few seconds his lips parted as he began to speak
but Charles interrupted, “What is your name kid? “
“My name is Mr. Jenkins, and I speak with the
authority of, “
Charles interrupted,” you have the authority
of a bug kid. And I revoke that. What is your name? Your given name, because
you are not worthy of being addressed as mister.”
He looked down. The hands holding the
clipboard and his pen fell to his sides and he stood there dejected as if he
agreed. “My name is Michael. Michael Hicks. “The man in the street was getting
closer now and it caught Charles eye. There was something on his shirt,
something brown.
“You government people can’t live in the real
world, the one you have regulated to death. The one you have created.
Congratulations. You wouldn’t last a week out there in the economy that you
have helped create. All you do is take from those that produce so do us both a
favor and turn around and get the…”
The guy coming down the middle of the street
was turning into his driveway. They both turned to look. He was in tan shirt
and pants but his torso was covered in what looked like brown vomit. His eyes
were black. Not just the pupils either, the whole thing. He picked up speed as
he came at them. He made a gurgling accusatory sound as he came towards them.
“Kaa. Kaa. Kaa! “
“What the hell? “ Charles asked nobody in
particular but closed the door just in time. As the puke covered man got close
he coughed right at Michael and sprayed him with fluid. Charles had moved to
the window, so he could see.
“Oh my God! My God! What is this?” Michael
backed off the porch trying to brush away the slime and made a hasty retreat to
his car and sped away. Inside the pen the dogs were going nuts. Charles didn’t
have any idea why this man was on his porch but he made his way to the back of
the house as quickly as his legs would carry him, went outside and opened the
gates to the dogs enclosure. They ran snarling around the house. He heard barking
and growls. The man kept yelling the same snotty sounding ugly sound, “Kaa!
Kaa! “Charles went around, now with the revolver in his hand. The dogs were
surrounding him, going berserk, and ripping his flesh from his arms. He had never
seen them act so vicious. The man never looked at Charles who calmly leveled
the gun and blew most of his brains out the side of his head with a single
shot. The 44 slug didn’t just make a clean hole in the man’s skull; it blew it
apart and he dropped in a free fall. The dogs sniffed at him, their tails
tucked. They were licking at the ground around him; not at the gore from his
head. Charles went closer and looked.
A mass of black maggots was streaming from
his mouth, and the dogs seemed to be eating them greedily. The part of his
brain still inside the skull was a glossy black, the same color and sheen as
the maggots. Some of them seemed to be scattering but one made for his leg.
“Jesus! “ He jumped back.
He ran to the shed and grabbed some charcoal
fluid and doused the bugs and the body. The fire whoofed up and the body seemed
to burn with an unusual gusto.
He looked back towards the city where the
smoke seemed to be getting thicker. His phone line wasn’t working. That was
disturbing. He wanted to call 911. He could hear the sirens wailing and then it
came; not the usual aching in his left hand but a violent muscle spasm as his
aorta burst and his heart suddenly stopped beating. He staggered back to the
porch and made it just inside the doorway and into the hallway before falling.
He faded out staring at a picture of Michelle, hanging in the hallway. Sally
came through the dog door from the garage. She licked his face.
He had been nice and she loved him. She was a
good dog. He had told her so and she understood.
Charles died there, in the hallway. Outside,
the body burned vigorously.
Sally went outside and was drawn to the
squirming forms on the ground not burning. She licked them up, and the pups
inside her belly absorbed the nutrition. Through her eyes, the sky took on a
new color she had never experienced before.
It was all happening so quickly.
