VIOLENT BITS: A VIOLENT ENDS SAMPLER
by
AARON POLSON
* * * * *
VIOLENT BITS
Published by Aaron Polson on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Aaron Polson
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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On the outside, the lights shine brighter than I remember as a kid, but inside the old man is dying. That’s what Mom says anyway, that’s what she tells me while we drive the boys around town so they can see Christmas lights. She’s Grandma to them, and she doesn’t say anything about the man dying loud enough for them to hear.
“He has cancer. The bad kind,” she whispers.
I nod, wondering just what the good kind of cancer is.
She continues. “A nurse comes in twice a week, that’s what Maryann says anyway. Really bad shape.”
“How’d he do the lights?”
“The town helped out—some volunteers at the church. Downtown businesses. It’ll be too bad when he’s gone, an end to an era. Do you remember when we used to drive by here.”
My hands tighten on the wheel. “Sure.”
The boys are still gawking at the house, their bundled little faces pale and slack as they drink in all the twinkles, the thousands of tiny sparkles. Out, out brief candle, I think, but the candles won’t go out. The town won’t let them go out. I step on the gas and pull away from house, a little disgusted with myself, a little disgusted with us all.
At the Phillips 66 station three blocks down from the house, I turn onto the highway and head home. In the review mirror, I see the boys yawn. They’re up past bedtime, and tomorrow is Christmas. Mom looks at me, and I can tell she’s frowning a little from the droop at the corners of her mouth. Probably a response to my scowl. I try to relax, but all I can think about is the old man rotting inside his house.
Liz meets us at the door. “How was everything?”
I shrug. “The boys need to get to bed. Tomorrow’s Christmas.”
She backs away a little, probably sensing one of my moods. Before helping Nick and Nate into their pajamas, we lay out three sugar cookies—the flaky kind Mom makes with red sprinkles—and set them on the table with a glass of milk. “For Santa,” Liz tells the boys.
We tuck them in upstairs, and I crash in the living room, flipping through TV stations trying to find A Christmas Carol. I only like the version with Alastair Sim. In every advertisement, the houses are decorated with little lights. I can’t escape the thoughts of the old man. Mom and Liz are talking while I surf; I can hear a little of their mumbles.
“What’s eating him?” Liz asks.
“I don’t know. We drove by all the places he liked as a kid.”
I smash the power button on the remote, and march into the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce.
On the way to my old bedroom, I pause outside the boys’ room and peek in. They’re tucked neatly under fat comforters, sleeping peacefully with visions of Santa and the gifts to come in the morning. Nothing is out of order for them, only me.
I’ve been lying in bed for thirty minutes, staring at the ceiling, before Liz comes upstairs. She undresses, folds over the blankets, and slips inside. She’s trying to be quiet, probably sure I’m asleep.
“I’m not asleep,” I say.
A pause. “Oh, sorry.”
Another pause. I feel the air in the room thicken.
“What’s wrong, Bub?”
“Nothing.” I close my eyes and wait a few moments. Maybe sleep will come. Maybe not. “We drove by a few houses I remember from when I was a kid.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. This one house, well Mom said the owner was dying. Cancer. He’s in bad shape.”
“That’s too bad.”
I suck in a lungful of stale air. “The town won’t let him die.”
“What?”
“They put up lights on the house.”
“Who did? I don’t
understand.”
No,
Liz, you don’t understand. You never will.
She’s from St. Louis and doesn’t appreciate traditions in a
small town. “The town
did it. They won’t let him die in peace. He’s in that house,
dying, alone, and the town won’t let him go. He should be in a
nursing home or a hospice. Someplace else.”
“Maybe he wants to die in his own house.” She touches my arm under the blanket. I pull away.
“I’m sorry. Goodnight,” she whispers. Within minutes, I hear her breathing slow to a steady rate.
The boys are asleep, dreaming of Santa on the roof, but I can’t sleep thinking of how many times I’ve driven past that house. I don’t even know the old guy’s name. I’m a leech—the whole town is full of leeches—sucking pleasure from his Christmas display for thirty years, and now he’s rotting from the inside and no one seems to care about anything but the lights.
I climb out of bed and slip downstairs as quietly as possible. In the kitchen, I eat one of the cookies. The red sprinkles look like splatters of blood in the dim light. I swallow the milk in three big gulps. The boys will think Santa did it.
In the garage, I rummage through Mom’s tools, looking for something to do the job.
I leave the house through the back door and drive away without headlights so they won’t see the glare and wake. A fragment of moon hangs limply in the midnight sky; I glance at it, half expecting to see a sleigh pass across its yellow face.
At the Phillips 66 station, I turn and drive three blocks. The lights are still on, even at midnight. I look closer at the house this time and notice peeling paint. The house is rotting outside just like the man is dying on the inside. Volunteers put up the lights, but can’t paint the place? All people care about are those goddamn traditions—shitty town. They don’t care about his pain, suffering. He’s dying for Christ’s sake.
I pull around to the alley, sure that the loud Christmas music pumped on an endless loop will cover the sound of the back door splintering around the lock. Maybe he wants to die in his own house. I take up the hammer, feel its weight in my hand, and imagine the peace the old man will feel once I’ve cracked open his skull and ended his misery. That will be a real Christmas gift.
Then, I’ll take down the lights.
Action Six News Team—Four Men: One Team!—were getting cramped and antsy in the back of the uplink van. There were only seconds to go and tonight had to be big.
“Why’s it got to be so damn dark in here?” said Terry as he snapped the Steadicam into place. “It screws up my light balance.”
“Terry, you’re a pansy,” said Mick. There was a chink as he chambered a round. “Why don’t you just do what you usually do and screw everything up—”
Benny, the field producer, broke in.
“Guys—we need to move in, three, two, one… go!”
The back doors of the van spilled open, and the four men piled out onto the blacktop. Terry cursed under his breath and scrambled to adjust focus and light filters. Mick straightened his tie, brushed back a little hair behind his ears, and shuffled toward the front door of a modest bungalow.
“Benny: time?”
“Uplink slot in, forty-two… forty-one…”
Mick glanced over his shoulder. “Nate, details?”
Nate, an intern at Action Six, scrabbled over the paperwork on his clipboard. Mick knew the kid’s look. Nervous type, a planner. Thought accidents didn’t happen. Would he be ready for prime time?
“Door unlocked,” said Nate. “Mr. Gruber is at the dinner table. Mrs. Gruber is in the bathroom. We’ve got him. We should go now.”
“No,” said Mick, holding up an arresting finger. “Wait for it.”
Benny touched at his earpiece. “She just flushed, Mick!”
“Go!”
Mick he kicked the door open, pushed inside and strode through the foyer to the Grubers’ small dining room. Mr. Gruber, middle-aged and balding, stopped with fork in hand, a bit of pork chop speared on the end; a globule of gravy hung from it, eager to fall. Mick leveled his automatic and popped him in the face.
The man’s body snapped back, his head snapped back further, then nearly all of him lurched forward to crash on the table. Silverware clattered and span up in a fountain of forks and spoons.
A squeal sounded from the hallway.
“Ready, here she comes.” Mick slipped the gun in his pocket and took the microphone from Benny.
Mrs. Gruber appeared in the hallway arch. When she saw her husband’s body and the news team, she clamped a hand clamped across her mouth. A small noise squeezed between her fingers.
“Uplink live,” said Benny. Mick spun around to face Terry with the camera.
“Mick Armstrong here with Action Six News. We are at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Gruber, the site of a grisly murder earlier this evening. Mrs. Gruber, can you tell us—”
Benny waved his hand frantically. “Mick! Cut!”
“What the Hell?”
“We’ve lost the show. Action One News just set fire to a school choir practice. Dress rehearsal. Doors are locked and they had minicams up ahead of time. Quality’s all to hell but the cassocks, man… Those kids are going up like matchbooks.”
“Clever bastards!” cursed Mick, his blazing dentistry hidden behind angry lips. He was not going to be defeated by incendiary news reporting. He had to think.
Mrs. Gruber slumped against the wall, sobbing. “I—I missed it, didn’t I? I missed my fifteen minutes...” She waved a furious hand at her husband’s ruined head. “He got his big moment!”
Mick looked at her, his heart full of sorrow. He had to comfort her, somehow.
“Don’t worry, Mrs Gruber. You’ll get another shot. Benny, get the station manager on the horn.”
“What you gonna do, Mick?”
He fixed on his eyes on the hole in Mr Gruber’s face. In one fast, professional movement, he whipped off his belt and reached into his pants.
“Whatever it takes to stay on top.”
When I was younger, I helped my Uncle Reggie harvest maple sap and boil it down to sell as syrup in Dad’s shop. I remember the thick amber color of fresh sap, the stiffness in my hands after a day of lugging full buckets, and the warm, sweet odor of the sugar shack. I can still see the dark gleam in Reggie’s eyes when he was busy in the grove. He loved those trees, singing lullabies to them when we’d leave at night.
I was ten when the big storm hit at the start of harvest season. The weather has to be just right to produce the most sap—freezing during the night and warm during the day. It often snows during harvest season, but this storm rolled in and erased the whole valley. Reggie, full of concern for his trees, ignored the warnings and went out that morning, quickly vanishing into the blank world.
Mom filled with concern for her kid brother and called the county sheriff in Middlebury. They couldn’t do anything until the snows stopped. Days passed. Deputies eventually came around on snowmobiles, but there were parts of the woods too choked with snow to search. Reggie had melted away like a ghost.
We had no sign of my uncle until our neighbors, Susie VanNuyck’s folks, found him a few days after the deputies abandoned search. He was raw and frostbitten, raving and frothing about “bleeding the trees.” Fresh scars in little staccato dashes covered both arms.
Reggie wasn’t right when we brought him home. He woke at the usual time, dressed, ate his breakfast, and made like he would go manage the trees. But on most days he didn’t—not like he used to anyway. Sometimes I saw him after school, walking through the village with blank eyes. Sometimes I saw him meandering in the grove, not really tending the maples, but wandering—lost. Then I read snippets in the village paper about missing pets.
I didn’t connect any of the stories with Reggie; when he would disappear all day, I figured he was just babying those maple trees again. I wanted my uncle to be okay. One Saturday morning, I followed Uncle Reggie, curious as to why he hadn’t invited me to harvest with him since the storm. He jerked through the woods carrying a stuffed burlap sack. After every fifty feet or so, Reggie would stop and flick a glance over one shoulder. Maybe he knew I was following him; maybe he wanted me to see.
I drifted behind, feeling some fear swell where there shouldn’t be fear. My stomach tightened, squeezed by a giant’s hands. This was Uncle Reggie, right? The guy who taught me all the secrets of the maple trees and how to tap the best sap?
Deep in the woods, Reggie dropped the sack, reached inside, and yanked out a dog, a little black terrier with a wide red collar. That’s about all I could see. Reggie took the dog over to a tree—the mutt was squealing like mad, kicking its little puppy feet. A knife flicked out of Reggie’s sleeve, and he flayed that dog alive; his hands ran red as he shook its body over the tree, rubbing the blood all over.
When I close my eyes, I still see that awful, red-black blood pulsing between Reggie’s fingers.
I ran away, headed for the house, but tripped on a downed maple branch that let out a loud pop. My ankle throbbed; the blood in my veins hammered against my skull. Reggie had me by the collar before I could scramble to my feet. I smelled the awful, warm, dog odor. He spun me around—I swear he had no irises, just pure oil-slick in his eyes, dancing around loose in his skin-tight skull. The gleam was gone—replaced by nothingness.
“Blood will have blood, won’t it boy? We bleed the trees… What do they get?”
I shook. Tears came.
“They’re real thirsty.” He smiled, and his teeth jutted out, brown and awful. “I’m going to need something bigger.”
I pushed him away—he must have let me go; I quaked like the last autumn leaf to fall in a gale, bumbling my way back to the house. When I got home, I stripped off my stained jacket—marred with Reggie’s bloody hands—and threw it in the furnace, too frightened to tell anyone.
Susie VanNuyck vanished the next week. Rumors blew through the valley. News vans parked in the village square and laid siege to the VanNuyck house for a while. She was my age, and Mom started escorting me everywhere. Reggie kept eyeing me, daring me to say something until I finally cracked, and sobbed to my folks who, in turn, called the sheriff.
Reggie went quietly, except just before they shoved him in the back of a cruiser, he lurched free and lunged toward me. “They were thirsty, boy. Crying to me in the cold night. I had to feed them something warm…” The officers wrapped his arms in their rough fists and tossed him in the waiting car.
I thought about the scars criss-crossing his arms and the time he wandered during the snowstorm. I saw the little terrier bleeding in Reggie’s hands. I tried to remember Susie’s face—we’d gone to school together—but I lost the memory in a wash of black.
The Addison County Sheriff found carcasses of some two dozen small animals out in the reduction shed, but no Susie. Without any evidence, the kidnapping charges wouldn’t stick. Reggie served a good deal of time for his other crimes, but Mom says he is out of prison now. He never came home. I imagine he’s out there, somewhere, babying those trees again.
*End of the Free Sample.*
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