CHAPTER Five
The next three days off of work were like a mini-vacation, only I was unable enjoy it like a normal person would. My body was sore and fragile most of the time, which resulted in a lot of bed rest, which eventually turned into couch rest.
When I wasn’t sleeping or reading, I was occupying the couch in the living room like a permanent fixture, present for whatever my sister, mom or dad wanted to watch. I wasn’t even that big of a TV person; I just wanted to be around people, even those who annoyed me, even when my mom forced me to watch The Bachelor.
I started to hate being in my bedroom. I felt strangely alone and afraid. Each night I could have sworn I heard someone whispering my name from my closet and when I wasn’t freaking out over that, I was torn up inside by the reality of what had happened to me. Though I never wanted a baby, and having a child would have probably ruined my life in some way or another, I was fighting a battle between despair and relief. One minute I was relieved that I lost the baby, the next I was wrecked to the point of tears for feeling that way. It was almost as if I was upset over what could have been. A what if that preceded the what if. And that first what if was something I didn’t let myself think about.
By Thursday night, Maximus got in touch with me. He apologized for not getting back to me earlier (something about doing a reading for a local couple) and I apologized for not having an answer for him about the show. With all that had happened, returning to Experiment in Terror was the last thing on my mind and I couldn’t bother devoting an ounce of thought to it.
He didn’t sound too bothered by my reluctance, though.
“You take your time darlin’,” he said through the phone.
“The only thing I’d like an answer on is when can I take you out on the town?”
I was sitting on the couch and my mother was at the end of it, pretending to pay attention to the commercials in between America’s Next Top Model, though I knew she was listening to my conversation like a hawk.
It was a good question. I hadn’t felt like going to work and dealing with day-to-day people, let alone go out on a date. It was far too soon for me to handle.
“I know this sounds like an excuse,” I began, turning away from my mother for the slightest bit of privacy, “but I’m real y sick. I haven’t been going to work, even.”
“Sick?” he drawled. “You want me to come by and bring you soup? My mama taught me a mean recipe, extra spicy, shoots that cold right out of ya.” >
“No, that’s OK,” I told him. “I’m doing better. I just need to take it easy for a while.”
“Al righty,” he said. “I know when I’m being brushed off.
But I don’t give up that easily.”
“I swear I’m not brushing you off,” I told him. “Though I admire your persistence.”
“Darlin’, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
I couldn’t help but grin at that and flushed red once I realized my mother was now blatantly staring at me.
“How about,” he continued, “I cal you next week. Give you time to pep up.”
I sighed internal y. He real y was persistent. I remembered the way he hounded me in Red Fox, trying to convince me to leave with him and leave Dex behind with the skinwalkers. I didn’t bend then and I tried hard not to now.
“You can try,” I said, making sure to add a teasing tone to my voice so he wasn’t too discouraged.
“Then I shal . Have a good night, my lady.”
There was a click of silence and I slowly pressed the end-cal button.
“Who was that?” my mother asked careful y. There was an edge to her voice.
“Oh,” I said with a shrug. “Just some guy.”
“Dex?” she asked venomously. Her tone jolted me.
“No!” I exclaimed. “Not Dex. Do you think I’m stupid?”
She didn’t say anything. Of course she thought I was stupid. Look what had just happened to me.
“It was this guy Maximus,” I explained with a sigh, tucking my feet underneath the quilted blanket. “I met him while we were in Red Fox. He lives in Portland now.”
“Oh,” she said. She stil looked suspicious but a wave of relief washed across her brow. It was official; my parents hated Dex with a passion. And I couldn’t blame them at all .
Not that I cared.
“Is this Maximus a nice guy?” she asked.
“I think so. He’s very polite. Old-fashioned. You’d probably like him.”
“Then we should have him over for dinner sometime.”
I was taken aback. I gave her an incredulous look. “We aren’t dating mom. I mean, he just asked me out on a date but I’m certainly in no shape to go anywhere, let alone with…a man.”
“But that the last date you went on, nothing came of that.”
“With Brock? Mom, he was a meathead.”
“He seemed like a nice young man.”
“You never met him!”
“He got you to lose weight.”
“Mom…,” I warned.
“Perry,” she retorted in her clipped voice. She turned her attention back to the show, where vapid American model wannabes were bitching about each other. “You are a pretty young woman. You could be on this show, if you lost enough weight-”
“And grew eight inches,” I interjected.
“And found some confidence. You deserve to have a nice man in your life. Someone stable, who wil take care of you, put up with you-”
“Thanks mom!” I rolled my eyes.
“-and love you. Your father and I, it hurts us to see you like this. For the last few months you’ve just been… sleepwalking through life. You’re not yourself anymore. I’m glad you’re finding friends where you work but it’s time that you start finding that right person for you.”
I crossed my arms and tried to focus on some bald model cal ed Raquel. “I’m only twenty-three years old, for crying out loud.”
“And life goes by far too quickly than it ought,” she finished in a tone of voice that signified that it was, thankful y, the end of the conversation.
She went back to watching her show, instantly drawn into the drama, while I was left pondering what other weird wrench could be thrown into my life. As if I didn’t have enough things to think about.
The erratic thoughts about my tumultuous love life fol owed me into my sleep, where I lay tossing and turning in my bed, half awake in a delirious state. finally I had enough and rolled over, forcing my eyes open. It was 2:42 in the morning but I was lucky I had one more day off before I returned to work.
I sighed at my restlessness and let my eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. My ears rolled into effect and picked up the various noises around me, the faint howl of the wind outside, the whir of my laptop computer, the fuzzy sound of static from my TV.
Wait, static from my TV?
I slowly rolled over and looked at my TV in front of the bed. It was on, the red light at the bottom left was lit, but the picture was near black and the faint fuzz of static warped around the corners of the screen.
That was odd. Why was the TV on? I had only watched TV downstairs with my mother. I hadn’t watched a thing up here for days.
I was reaching over for the remote on the bedside table when the TV suddenly lit up with the grey and black static of a lost signal.
It reminded me a little too much of Poltergeist. My heart hammered loudly in my chest.
I aimed the remote at the TV and quickly pressed the off button.
Nothing happened.
I pressed it again, aiming it at an angle.
Again, nothing happened. The static grew louder and the outline of a woman’s face fil ed the screen, her face comprised of wavering, jagged black, white and grey lines.
I couldn’t make out any detail except for grey tubes that were lips. They moved up and down, as if the face were talking.
This…was not good.
I got out of bed and approached the TV as if it were a skittish deer, keeping the remote aimed precisely at the off/on button. I pressed it repeatedly as I approached the screen, but to no avail. I was going to have to turn it off by hand.
I was right up against the screen, my hand going for the physical button on the bottom left corner when the face moved. I froze, eyes drawn to the dancing screen. The lips opened.
“Perry!” the face on the TV screamed.
I screamed back. I hit the button with my fist but it did nothing.
The TV screamed my name again, the voice coming out of the speakers.
I quickly lunged for the back of the unit, taking the power cord in my hands and yanking it out of the wal .
“Help me!” the TV screamed again, in a voice not unlike my own. It wasn’t plugged in anymore. But it stil screamed.
I scampered for the door and flung it open, taking off down the dark hal way that was only lit by the nightlight by the bathroom door. I went straight for Ada’s room, ripped open her half-shut door and jumped into bed with her.
“Ada!” I cried out in the darkness, putting my arms around her. “My television is possessed!”
I paused after I said that. Ada didn’t feel like Ada. She felt… leathery. Beneath the sheets, something hard and cold and pointed flicked my way and it wasn’t her legs.
“Ada?” I whispered in horror, an unbearable feeling rising up in my throat.
Whatever I was holding shuddered, as if it were laughing.
The rough protrusion stroked my inner calf.
Then the light went on and I was blinded into a sea of yel ow/white.
“What the hel ?”
I squinted at the direction of the voice and saw the blurry shape of Ada standing by her door, one hand on the light switch, the other at her chest, clutching her pajama shirt.
“Oh my God, Perry, you scared the hel out me! What are you doing?”
I looked down at where I was on her bed. I was holding her pil ows in my arms.
“I don’t know. I…my TV…it came on…”
“So did the TV downstairs.”
I sat up straight as she came over to me. She was wearing her striped designer pajamas, her hair sticking out at crazy angles, mad scientist style.
“What?” I asked, rubbing my temples and trying to make sense of everything that just happened.
“I woke up because I heard the TV turn on from downstairs. I don’t know if it was always on or what. You turned it off when you and mom were done, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I remember. But my TV just turned on now too.”
She calmed down as we rehashed our stories. I wish I could say the same about me. I was fixated on the fact that I had, very clearly, not been holding onto her pil ows a few moments ago.
“Maybe there’s a weird power surge in the house,” she said, lowering her voice so she wouldn’t wake my parents.
“Wel how does that explain the TV staying on after I unplugged it?” I pointed out fearful y.
“I don’t know. I’m sure it’s possible.”
“Come on,” I said, getting out of her bed and tugging at her sleeve. “I’l show you.”
We went to my room but lo and behold, though the TV was unplugged as I had left it, there was no power flowing through it.
“It said my name,” I implored, looking at her, trying to get her to believe me.
“You were probably asleep,” she said.
“But I wasn’t.”
“But maybe you were. Look, I don’t know, Perry. You’ve been through a lot. You just watched a whole bunch of Tyra Banks. Combined, those things can create nightmares.”
And with that, she left me in my room. A hugely selfish part of me wanted to beg her to stay with me and keep awake until I fel asleep, but I knew that she had school in the morning and I could afford to sleep in. I was just going to have to suck it up and try and get some shut-eye.
Luckily there was stil some NyQuil left behind in my bedside table and before I had time to dwel on the evil television I was swept under by a merciful, drug-induced sleep.
The next day, I pried myself out of my NyQuil coma and forced myself to partake in some exercise. It had been days since I left the house and my body was cooperating a lot better. I wasn’t well enough to run, as my innards felt achy at times, but I was good enough to take a brisk walk down by the river.
It was a beautiful day, too. The sun was weak and obscured by a thin layer of mist that rested over the river and treetops like a strip of gauze, but the light danced beautiful y and there was a hint of spring in the air. It was nice to walk the route for a change, instead of running past in a blur. I took the time to enjoy the pockets of nature, to pay attention to the crisp, clear pools of the river where shadows of spry fish swam underneath, and the spindly trees whose branches bore the slightest hint of green buds.
It reminded me of being young and pretending I was in fairy land.
By the time I returned back home, I was in better spirits and feeling more optimistic about everything. One thing that had real y bothered me the past few days was how bad it looked for me to take off so much time from work. I know it wasn’t like I asked to end up in the hospital but it was one of those situations where my absence would have been felt.
I know Ash and the others would have covered for me (in fact, I had spoken to Ash the other day and he assured me everything was fine) but it didn’t real y help me in my quest to get ful -time employment. Having finicky health didn’t make you look like the most reliable employee.
But I had a plan. I was going to go into work and work extra hard. I’d take a mil ion painkil ers if I had to; I just wanted to prove that I was someone you could depend on, someone who would go the extra mile. Yes, it was just a stupid barista job, but it was stil the only way out of my parents’ house and down a path all my own, where I didn’t have to put up with my parents worrying that their child was going to end up a spinster in her early twenties.
I was almost at my parents’ driveway when I saw my neighbor walking down the street with her lab, Cheerio, again. I waved at her, and I waved at the dog (as you do), giving him my brightest smile.
At the sight of me, the dog froze on the spot, nearly yanking his owner off her feet. His eyes were fixed on mine, his legs stiff as boards and shaking ever so slightly.
I looked behind me to see if perhaps he saw another dog or a rabbit but there was nothing.
“Cheerio!” my neighbor scolded. “Come on, now. That’s just Perry.”
She tried pul ing at the dog but he wouldn’t move. The only thing that did was his mouth, as his droopy lips spread open, showing perfectly white, pointed teeth.
A low guttural growl seeped out between them. I nearly felt it in my running shoes.
“Cheerio, what -” she started.
Before she could finish, the dog leaped forward, ripping the leash out of her hands and bringing my neighbor to her knees on the rough concrete. She cried out in pain and the dog kept running, coming straight for me.
Coming to kil me.
I turned on a dime, losing no hesitation, and sprinted toward the house, ignoring the pain in my sides as I coaxed my legs to leap wider, run harder.
I reached the door just as I heard the wet, snapping snarls a few feet away, flung it open and slammed it shut as Cheerio flung his body up against the door. I fel back onto the foyer and the door sprang back open, having not latched properly.
Cheerio had fal en too, and there was a brief instance where both of us were on the ground, eyeing each other like predator and prey, before scrambling to get to our feet, with only an open door between us.
I reached the door first and put all my weight against it, holding it in place as Cheerio slammed his body against the door repeatedly, shaking me with each throw.
I kept myself against it until I found the agility to lock it, my fingers fumbling as I slid the chain across. Then I curled up into a bal at the foot of the stairs and cried until my parents came home.
“You’re not touching your mashed potatoes, honey,” my mom said gently, gesturing to the steaming pile of starch, which looked as appetizing as a heap of albino crap.
We were having dinner, and thanks to my incident with Cheerio earlier in the day, I lost the wil to eat, even though mashed potatoes and chicken parmesan were among my favorite foods. I could only pick at it and push the food around my plate, feeling on edge and depressed at the same time. >
My dad sighed, loudly, and folded his hands, his chubby fingers smeared with old ink stains. He rested his chin on them and peered at me over the top of his thick glasses.
I shot him a derisive look. “What now?”
His eyes narrowed momentarily but he managed to rein in his temper. It never did me any good to get snappish with him, but I was sick and tired of having everyone look at me like I was a mental patient. They did that already anyway, and now it was even worse.
“I think we’re all worried about you,” he said careful y. He glanced at Ada to see if she’d disagree. But from her quiet, pensive demeanor, I could see she was worried too.
“I’m also worried,” I admitted. “Animals usual y love me.”
He sighed again and leaned back in his chair. “Perry, come now, you must have done something to provoke the animal.”
“Like what?” I exclaimed. “I just waved.”
“You waved at a dog?”
“I always wave at dogs! And I always wave at Cheerio.
Go ask the neighbor.”
“We would but I think she’s stil in the hospital getting her knee looked at. That was her bum knee, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” I said, pushing back my plate in anger. It rattled loudly on the hard table. “How the hel should I know that? It wasn’t my fault her damn dog went psycho.”
“Perry!” he admonished. The tension in the room shot up. “We do not use that word in the house.”
“Damn? Hel ?” I repeated. “Why the hel not? You think God is going to come down and smote you for it? Fry you like a piece of Goddamn bacon right here?”
“Perry, for goodness sake!” my mother yel ed, her voice warbling in a mix of fear and anger.
I looked at my family, at their tense, tight faces, and squelched the anger I felt rising through me. I don’t know what happened, but it was like I lost all control. Not only of my emotions, but of my actual being, my body and my mind, like I was being split into two people. The scary thing was I’d been feeling like that quite a bit.
I took a deep breath through my nose and closed my eyes, trying to regain focus.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Silence. I opened one eye and saw my parents exchanging looks across the table. Ada was observing me with her big eyes and reached over to pat my hand.
“Don’t worry about it, you weirdo,” she said with a small smile. She looked down at my hand and raised her brow.
“Wow, you’ve got some nice nails going on for once.”
I frowned and looked down at fingers. I did have nice nails. They were longer than normal, expertly shaped and coated in a shiny coral pink color.
The room started to spin slightly.
I’d never worn pink nail polish in my whole entire life. I never even had a bottle of it.
“Oh, those are nice, Perry,” my mom added, happy to change the subject. “Your nails are usual y such a mess.”
I brought my hand out of Ada’s and raised it up to my face. This was my hand, right? It was attached to my body, it had the same slight scarring across the top from when I was an emo teenager and thought cutting myself with a safety pin would be a good idea. I pinched the tips of my nails, checking to see if someone had glued on fake nails as a joke. But they were real, attached to my fingers, even though I had no recol ection of ever painting them that color.
“What’s wrong?” Ada asked.
I shook my head, swal owing the confusion.
“Nothing,” I squeaked out. “I just…don’t remember where I got this color from, that’s all . Is it yours?”
Ada looked at my nails a little closer. “No, that’s too orangey. I have a similar shade but it has sparkles.”
I looked up at my mother hopeful y. Her nails had a perfect French manicure.
“Not mine,” she said. “But I’d like to borrow it.”
I nodded at that and stared back at them. Everything around me got fuzzy and swirly while I thought things over.
When could I have done this? How could I forget something like painting my nails? Not that it was a significant event but it wouldn’t be something that would just fal out of my head.
And where the hel did I get the color? I didn’t remember ever buying it. I mean, pink? Yuck.
This was the kind of thing that happened when you were drunk. Perhaps I’d been blacking out through the NyQuil or while I was on the pain meds earlier in the week. It stil didn’t explain where the nail polish came from in the first place. Maybe I had been doing some major sleepwalking, like the kind that sent me to raid the 24-hour Walgreens for nail polish.
“I thought you were turning over a new leaf,” my mother said, delicately munching on a bite of salad. “It would be nice if you-”
She was interrupted by three quick knocks at the front door. My heart lodged somewhere in my chest. One glance at Ada’s frightened face and it was apparent she felt the same way too.
My dad frowned, more perturbed than alarmed, and got up out of his chair, tossing his napkin on the table.
“I’l go see who it is,” he grumbled and made his way down the hal . I looked at my sister and mother, who were leaning forward in their chairs, shoulders tense.
We heard my father slide the chain across and open the door.
“Who’s there?” his professor-like voice boomed out into the night. “Show yourself.”
There was a pause and the sound of his shoes on the front brick stoop, then him coming back inside, the door closing softly behind him.
He emerged from the hal , shaking his head and holding something in his hands.
“What is it?” I asked.
He stopped in front of us and held up a miniature pair of pastel blue slippers, the knit kind made for a newborn baby.
How freaking creepy.
“I found them on top of the flower pot,” he explained. The slippers were attached by a thick rope of yarn and when he hung it from his index finger they danced back and forth from the movement, as if they were taunting me.
“Ew, dad.” Ada grimaced, shielding her face. “Get them away from the dinner table, jeez.”
My mom agreed, tel ing him he didn’t know where they had been.
I was the only one who felt personal y impacted by the slippers, and was mildly horrified until my dad took them over to the trash can and placed them inside. The lid closed with a heavy thud but in my heart I felt like it wasn’t enough to keep them out.
Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? I had a miscarriage and suddenly a pair of baby shoes appeared at the front door. But who else besides my family knew about my situation, and who would do such a thing?
I shivered and quickly excused myself from the table, not caring what my parents thought. My appetite was total y gone.