Archie unlocked the front door
to his parent’s house, returned the key to its place in the belly
of the ceramic frog, returned the frog to the place it had occupied
since before he'd been born, and crept inside. It was quiet. Both his parents were undoubtedly asleep and, unless things had changed, nothing short of a earthquake would rouse either of them. Morning was hours away, plenty of time for him to do what he needed
to.
In
the kitchen Archie pawed through the refrigerator’s contents,
selecting a container of turkey slices, a bottle of mustard, and a
loaf of bread. He made himself a simple sandwich and scarfed it down
quickly. It wasn’t much, but for him, after several days without
food, it was heaven. He slapped together another sandwich, using
just a little more turkey this time, devoured it with equal gusto,
and washed it down with a glass of milk. He returned the items to
the fridge, making sure to arrange them in as close to their original
configuration as he could. His father, Master of Order and
Discipline that he was, would surely notice if anything were out of
place. Archie wanted to buy himself as much time as possible to be
gone before they realized he'd been there, if they ended up
suspecting him at all. After that he figured a little missing food
would be the least of their worries. It was possible that his mother
might notice anyway; the turkey in particular, which he'd eaten more
than half of, was nearly gone, but that was a risk his empty stomach
was willing to take.
When
Archie closed the refrigerator door he was suddenly confronted with
his own smiling face, albeit decades younger. Little Archie, no more
than eight years old, leaning over a bridge railing, probably on some
family outing he’d long since forgotten, smiling at his older self
from another world. Little Archie, who liked to read and to wander
the woods behind his school pretending to be the characters he read
about. Little Archie, who would grow up to be an unemployed,
homeless, alcoholic and break into his own parent’s house because
he was broke and too proud to ask for help. He tried to
think of what he might say to that little guy. What advice could he
give his younger self about the terrible life that was coming his
way? What wisdom might he impart about pitfalls to avoid? He
couldn’t think of a damn thing. And wasn't that the real tragedy
of his life? He had managed to flush it all down the toilet and he
couldn’t even remember how.
Archie, still hungry despite his feast, opened one of the cupboards over the sink, where his mother kept the snacks. A lonely box of crackers greeted him and he grabbed it eagerly. A jolt of pain exploded through his hand as he did so and he dropped the box on the counter. Archie flipped on the small light over the kitchen counter and held the palm of his hand under it, illuminating a large, and very painful, blister. Three days before, stumbling out of a bar he could no longer recall the name of, Archie had gone sprawling and landed on his hands and knees in a puddle of foul smelling goop. After washing his hands in a gas station bathroom he had deemed the damage, a few shallow scrapes, to be negligible. The next day his palm still hurt and had begun to turn red. The day after that a large blister began to form and he felt nauseous (or at least more so than usual). On the third day the blister was huge, painful, and warm to the touch. Fearing infection, and ignoring the nagging internal voice of his mother telling him that doing so would only make it worse, Archie had tried to pop the blister. The pain had been unexpectedly immense. It had occurred to him that he might find something in his parent’s house to help him more effectively deal with it.
This was of course,
much like the acquisition of food, not his true purpose in being
there.
The
whole thing had been Caleb's idea, or so Archie tried to tell
himself, skillfully forgetting the times he'd mused over doing
exactly what Caleb had proposed. Forgetting, it seemed, was a skill
for which Archie had discovered a previously untapped aptitude. He'd
run into Caleb at The Foundling (such a weird name for a bar) the week before. Archie was in the
process of thoroughly drowning his sorrows when Caleb had
materialized on the stool next to him in that way that people always
seemed to when he was seriously drunk. Old friends, when they
managed to recognized Archie beneath the layers of self-destruction,
all seemed to start off with the same “how have you been?” riff
that Archie always found extremely annoying. As if it weren't
painfully obvious just by looking at him how he had been. Which was
why, when Caleb showed up and said “wow, you like hell”, Archie
hadn't given him the brush off the way he usually did. Somewhere in
Archie's alcohol addled brain he knew that Caleb was only looking for
an angle, because Caleb was always looking for an angle, but
he didn't really care. For once someone was talking to him without
pity or sympathy and that made Archie feel more like a human being
than he had in a long time. So, when Caleb finally danced his way
around to the subject he'd undoubtedly had in mind all along, Archie
kept on listening. Of course that little voice in the back of his
head was not pleased with Caleb's proposal, but that little voice had
grown weaker and weaker over the years, and it rarely held sway over
Archie anymore. The deal was struck and now Archie stalked through
his parent's house, mentally cataloging their possessions, and
trying to remember if his mother kept her jewelry in their bedroom or not. The next order
of business however, now that hunger wasn't burning a hole through
his insides, was his hand.
Archie
made his way through the living room and into the bathroom. He
searched the contents of the drawers, hoping for some sort of sharp
blade, but the best he could come up with was a small pair of
scissors. He found a box of large bandages in the medicine chest, as
well as a tube of antibiotic ointment and set to work. Gritting his
teeth against the pain Archie pinched his palm and carefully snipped
a small slit in the skin over the blister. Archie had popped his
share of blisters and so believed he knew what to expect from this
one. He was wrong. From the slit poured a thin stream of clumpy,
brown fluid that made his stomach roll and clench violently. The
smell of it was worse than anything he, even in the depths of his
worst drunken escapades, had loosed into the world from throat or
bowel. Archie let out a gasp of disgust and frantically worked the
skin around the cut, forcibly expelling as much of the noxious
substance as he could, the pain lost in that special breed of panic
reserved for grave bodily damage. Only when blood began to well up
from the cut did he start to breath easier. He gave the blister one
final, painful squeeze and held in under the blessedly cool water
pouring from the tap. Once the wound was clean and dry he applied
the ointment and wrapped his hand tightly in several layers of gauze.
Still in pain he grabbed a bottle of painkillers, swallowed several,
and dropped another dozen into his pocket for later. Finally he
wiped down the sink and counter has thoroughly as he could and left
the bathroom.
In
his disgusted preoccupation Archie never noticed the tiny,
translucent blob that squirted from the blister and fell to the
floor.
Archie
stepped through the back door and out on to the deck behind the
house. The night air was cool and refreshing on his face.
In
the bathroom a tiny wisp of smoke rose from floor as the blob quickly
melted through the ceramic tile.
A
mild breeze drifted in from the backyard, carrying with it the faint
smell of lilacs. Archie settled into one of the deck chairs and
yawned deeply. He knew he had work to do, and an ever shrinking window of time in which
to do it, but he was suddenly very tired.
The
tiny blob continued its journey, melting its way through the floor,
burrowing down into the hardwood beneath.
Telling
himself that his parents would likely not awaken for several more hours Archie decided he might take a short nap.
Beneath
the tiles the tiny blob, a small clump of pulsing cells wrapped in a
layer of protective, organic gel, grew and split rapidly.
Archie
closed his eyes and fell immediately into a deep sleep.
In
the bathroom the floor started to warp and pulse.
No comments:
Post a Comment