Please Don't Go (19 page)

“
Surely, this is a joke,” I said, biting back an urge to evacuate my stomach once again. I placed my hand over my face, trying to mask my disdain as well as my watery mouth, while simultaneously shielding my olfactory system from the horrid smell of it all.

“
The joke here is your childish appetite. You have a long day ahead of you. Eat,” the child said to me, her eyes sparking and snapping at me. “I insist.” Again, I could never recall a child speaking to me with such... such... loathing, and a lion’s share of disrespect in that as well.

It was time for me to leave, and I reiterated such to Aleesha, “I really must go.”

“
You can’t leave,” Aleesha replied, a sadness in her eyes that informed me, without a single word on the matter, that she too was trapped. “She won’t allow it. Please eat. For me. For both of us.” Aleesha glanced down at my plate as she spooned a hefty amount of the festering uncooked chicken livers into her mouth, chewing with a furrowed brow and a hardened jaw. How did they eat such filth? I could only assume that Aleesha had desensitized herself to the horrid taste of Emily’s virulent meals.

“
I will do no such thing,” I said, pushing the plate away from me in protest. I went to stand up and march away from their home, forevermore, but found that my legs were locked in place.

Rigid. Not my own. Alien. Like the child.

“
Eat!” Emily blasted, slamming the palm of her hand to the table in anger.

I shook my head from side to side. My arm reached out across the table, pulling close the plate that I had banished from my proximity. A trembling alien hand reached to my setting and readied a fork in its grip. I (or rather my arm, disbanded from me) poked one of the wilted brown tomatoes and shoved it into my mouth, popping the stinky bomb between my teeth, unknowing of what I had done even while I had done it. My hand had seemingly disconnected from my mind. I gagged in reflex to the food as my hand went back for seconds. This time, I pursed my lips tight, ready to fight off this invisible puppeteering that I was being subjected to. Looking to Emily, I could see that her big eyes were bursting with what may have turned into a manic fit of laughter. The imp was toying with me!

“
Eat faster,” she whispered.

And I ate faster. I shoveled something rough and orange into my mouth, that had been hiding beneath the raw livers. Was it an old orange peel? I would never be sure, because I had swallowed it with such voracious abandon. I barely chewed. I barely looked down, nor up. I was not there, in a real mortal sense, except as a sort of witness to my own possession.

Emily leaned over the table, pushing towards Aleesha and myself a covered plate. When she pulled back the silver lid, I recoiled in horror. She had prepared a second course for our dead bleeding breakfast. How sweet of her, thought I. Upon the new platter was a stiffened rat,surely snatched from beneath the wharf, for it still smelled of that ocean brine. “Eat this.”

“
If we eat quickly, then we can make love again,” Aleesha informed me, as if I would ever put my mouth (or genitalia) against hers again, knowing what we had both just consumed! It had become quite evident to me that Aleesha had lost the loose grip that she had previously possessed upon her proper mind. Gone was the beautiful red-headed woman who had dashed through my heart, lighting it on fire with her softened grip. And behind her came this demon child, turning that previous trail into a salty, black, bubbling wasteland. “Will you make love to me again?” she asked when I did not respond with suitable haste.

I could not speak, both because my mouth was full with a new heap of food (a bit more of the half cooked and overly salted bird egg, dashed with a stringy crimson tendon from the wharf rat) and that I was utterly baffled by the madness that had locked me into its jaws. I looked to Aleesha with faultfinding eyes, informing her indirectly that I would never make love to her again, and that I would strangle her the moment I was mobile and of my own free will. “This man is not a suitable mate, oh woman who birthed me. He is rebellious and bull-headed,” Emily warned her mother, adding, “Is my breakfast delicious?” She had asked the question in a sweetened fairy-like voice, and the shrill delight of it, coming from that bug-eyed raven, made my skin crawl. “Perhaps our search will continue?” At this, her mother nodded her head fervently. Yes, they would continue their search. Though I wanted to protest, I continued to chew.

I looked down at the rat, pulling a morsel of the tainted flesh away with a grimy fork. It was partially cooked, but its face was left intact. The rat looked at me for an answer to its unexpected demise, as though I could give it a clue to that mystery. It tasted salty, and acidic. Tainted.

My eyelids, perhaps from the raunchy food that I had unwillingly snacked upon, grew heavy. As my head crashed to my plate and I slipped into unconsciousness, I could hear Emily goading her mother on, “Clean your plate. Lick it until I can see your face in it. You’ve brought home another dullard, and I am sickened by this.”

***

I awoke some hours later, looking up from the table that I had draped my body across, witnessing the sun setting in the window above the dish-filled sink. The rat carcass was draped between the washing and rinsing basins, a crashing reminder of what I had partaken in and how I had gotten to this station of misery. I looked again at the sun, puzzled by its looming position.

Had I missed an entire day? My foggy mind seemed unresponsive to such an idea, but the reality of my situation was staring me right in the face, that glowing orange sunset, the distant swelling cousin of the sunrise I had witnessed after my final romp with Aleesha. Lifting my head, I noticed that Aleesha was laying on the table as well, her eyes dull and barely opened. “Hello,” she mumbled in a creaky voice, a globule of saliva dripping from her chin. She lifted her head from the table, herself in a deepened daze, halfway between the waking world and the sleeping one.

I spun my head from side to side in an attempt to shake away the blanket (or trap?) that had been dropped upon my head. I reached up to absorb a blob of my own drool into my sleeve. “What time is it?” I asked the woman. She did not answer me, only glancing about the room for the child that was not there.

“
Late enough,” she replied, that brogue accent finally having no further effect upon me. I looked upon her with disgust now, a serpent that had dragged me into this aromatic home of lost children, to be in the vicinity of her hellion child. I had often disliked children, and vowed to my bachelor friends that I would never have them. I had never disavowed marriage, but children... oh, they were even lower in my esteem than dogs and cats, especially now. They held such vile potential, and little Emily was the muck at the bottom of the barrel. If anything, my parental disclosure was only reaffirmed by her actions.

“
I must shed myself of your presence. Good day to you,” I announced to Aleesha in a higher formality than she was dignified to receive, standing from my chair and looking down to see that I was without my clothes once again, but that thankfully I had reattained the functions of my physical being. Clothing was but a luxury. “What is this?” I shouted, my bleary eyes observing now that Aleesha was likewise naked. “What has your sick bastard child done to me? She force feeds me garbage—rotting food! Then she drugs me? Did she drug us? Why am I naked?” My rapid-fire line of questioning fell on Aleesha’s dumb ear and she hardly reacted.

“
She approves of you. She’s changed her mind. Isn’t that exciting?” Aleesha asked of me, and I could barely prevent myself from decking her in the face for her nonchalant silliness. “She drugged us because she needs to see us when we sleep. In our dreams, she can see our true intentions. If we are liars, then those lies are set free in our sleep. If we are noble in our dreams, then we are noble in our spirits. Can’t you see that?” Her madness was drizzling from her mouth with such ease that it frightened my highly attuned senses. How could a woman be so pig-headed and insane? I thought back to the foggy revelations at the back of my skull, of Emily pulling invisible puppet strings as I gorged my face with that horrid food. Was Emily controlling Aleesha as we spoke, putting these sickly words into her mouth for proper spewing?

“
You’re mad,” I said.

“
You best not get dressed yet. Emily will return at any moment. And I don’t think we should be awake yet. If she comes back in, pretend you’re asleep. It’s better that way, trust me. Just pretend that you’re asleep.” Aleesha nodded as she thought on this subject.

“
Enough!” I shouted, searching the kitchen with frantic hands. My clothing was nowhere to be found, but an apron hanging to the left of the stove would suffice. I strung it around my frame, embarrassed already for the ugly faces I would receive from the Galway citizens. I dashed for the door, pulling it open, half ready for Emily to jump out from behind it. She did not, and I have always been grateful for that fact, for I feel it has led me to continued livelihood.

As I stomped down the stairway, I could hear the demon’s mother calling after me, “Please don’t go! You’ll miss dinner!”

***

I was back to my hotel in less than four minutes. I did not bother to stop for new clothes. I feared that Emily could smell me, that she would find a way to track me down. I envisioned her dragging me into an alley, disemboweling my mental stability and cramming stale bread in my mouth. She had drugged and stripped naked a grown man, and so it didn’t seem unreasonable that she would hunt that same man down like a rabid dog, if only to continue her attack.

When I arrived at my hotel, it took a considerable amount of bargaining to convince the concierge that I was indeed a guest of the hotel, and that I had been drugged and was late in checking out. The slim, unimpressed man agreed to inspect my room after my description of the items in it. He took that, upon returning, as proof that at least part of my story was true. He added as I walked from the desk in my cooking apron, following behind him for a scrap of dignity, “Drugged by a child? You must have a better story than that.” I did not feel an urge to argue with him, as my mind was strictly dedicated to taking me far away from the hell hole that was Galway. Never again would I breakfast in Galway. Not without dying by my own hand.

I showered, dressed, and considered what I had lost. My wallet was left behind in that nest of madness, and I would not return. There were things within that wallet that I needed, but I had thoughtfully packed alternative identification in the leather billfold that I housed my passport. Alongside that, I had more than four hundred dollars of mixed currencies and denominations that I could exchange. It was more than enough to get me home again.

Perhaps, I reasoned, that was the point of my disastrous Ireland journey, which had started so swimmingly. In wandering from home, I had learned how devious the world at large was, and that I did not belong in it. I was meant to be at home, with my friends, family, and colleagues. Aleesha and her villainous daughter had reinforced something I already knew: when you find a place that works for you, think not of greener pastures.

I packed my suitcase in a sort of frenzy, amidst the unspoken bedlam of an invisible guest in my room. I felt a looming shadow about me, as though Emily were ready to scream and explode out from behind my bathroom shower curtain and shove maggot-ridden cookies into my mouth. The thought of her doing such things to me made my stomach recoil again, flipping and skipping about my innards with reckless abandon. I concluded that I would never think of that foul child without reacting this way.

I dashed to my rental car, tearing through the interconnected guts of Galway with risky maneuvers, those which even a seasoned other-side-of-the-road driver would not dare to attempt. Pedestrians threw their hands up in anger as I squeezed by them on those narrow cobblestone streets. I took great care not to pass by Emily and Aleesha’s hive of entrapment.

By the time I was free of the city, my heart was no longer thudding in my chest.

I felt as if I had uncovered a new life, one that I would forever live to the fullest.

Home had never sounded so riveting an idea to me.

20.

“
It’s as close as I can get to being in the great outdoors again,” Rattup said with the tone of a doomed inmate, yet he was looking about his greenhouse with smiling, remembering eyes. “By the time the snow is melted, I’m out here every morning. Every evening, too. It simply breathes with life. She doesn’t hold this one against me. Technically, I’m outside my house. But I have four walls about me, so she can accept that concession. Yes, they’re glass walls, but walls all the same. Part of our little compromise.” He winked at Zephyr, who nodded without emotion. Their deal seemed to be less equitable with every new reveal, and that compromise was draped over every one of Rattup’s words.

When Zephyr had first arrived, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, Rattup had enthusiastically (as with everything that he did) whisked him away through a back hallway running behind his kitchen, insisting that he follow along the darkened muddy tile floor for a most pleasant surprise. At the end of the claustrophobic hallway was a naturally illuminated screen door, through which Rattup maintained an indoor greenhouse. He had unveiled it to Zephyr with a glowing reception, informing him of its history. It had been built in the early eighties, literally constructed overnight by a small battalion of able individuals from the local nuts and bolts dealer, McMurphy’s Hardware. Soon after, he had started to plant a variety of flowers and vegetables. He started his yearly garden each spring, and was able to continue well into the fall. Once the bitter temperatures took over, as they were ever ready to do in Maine, his gardening was put on a temporary hiatus. In that block of time, he confessed, his spirits sunk into valleys of gloom. But the start of spring, he added, was an emotional resurrection.