Halloween Is For Lovers, page 7
The stone was parted down the middle. On the left-hand side was the list of the dead whose biologically irregular appearance had afforded them a life of entertaining in towns across the country. A lovable bunch, their names were carved into stone along with the loved ones they had left behind.
Rudy Hernandez, Husband, Father, Midget Dog Boy. Rudy's beloved wife, Cecilia, Wife, Mother, Voluptuous Latin Dwarf. She performed burlesque under the stage name Micro Mamacita. Survived by eight children, all of average stature with no inherent freak qualities.
Ivan Von Himmel, Husband, Father, Human Skyscraper. Seven feet tall, he made extra money in the off-season washing windows, changing lightbulbs and cleaning gutters without the encumbrance of a ladder. Left living were his wife and twin sons, both of average stature. Klaus, the youngest, had one thigh bigger than the other, but it was decided at an early age it wasn't enough to qualify him as a freak. Klaus thought his single thunder thigh was special, though, and he used it to scare the kids with normal-sized legs into believing he had the power to kick them into the next county. After college, his mother helped him channel his passion for scare-mongering into a career selling life insurance.
Two-Ton Tanya, Sister, Lover. She was the requisite fat lady of the troupe but she always had trouble keeping the weight on. It was a lifelong battle to resist her cravings for undressed raw vegetables and sparkling mineral water. Instead, she was forced to load up on chicken-fried white bread and bakery batters mixed into ice cream. She was survived by three sisters and a cat, and although she never took a husband, there was a long roster of lovers who would miss her all-too-brief dalliances in their towns.
The list of departed freaks and their families went on and on, so much so that the engraver had to shrink the font toward the bottom of the stone. A buildup of blown dirt and thatch had almost obscured the quote at the bottom of the left-hand side:
Here lie the remains of freaks, mutants and monsters. Uncommon vessels holding beautiful souls.
Then there was Hugh's side of the gravestone, with just his name. For some reason his parents didn't want to be acknowledged on the stone. Underneath his name in a smaller font and surrounded by parentheses were just two words:
Died Alone.
He reached out and touched his name, his fingers tracing the cold shoulders of the letters. “Is that all that's left of me?” he thought.
An owl above hooted and woke him from his meditation. Up from his knees, he worried, “I don't have much time.”
He jogged through the graveyard toward the iron gate. His joints weren't used to the weight of the living world. He slowed from a jog into more of a herky-jerky lurch as he exited out onto the dark streets of the village.
Nothing seemed familiar. His hometown had changed in the three years since he left it. He remembered it being a picture-perfect hamlet full of bustling well-wishers. Maybe he was remembering it wrong. Maybe it was always a desolate place with expensive houses behind high fences and stone walls. Those fond memories of couples arm-in-arm, taking an after-dinner stroll and saying hello to the neighbors, maybe he had embellished those memories ever so slightly.
There was nobody around, no cars to hail, no easy way to figure out where he had to go, what he needed to do to find Lily. After some deliberation he decided it would be best to head downhill, down into town, down toward the old house.
A new road had been built in Hugh's absence. A four-lane freeway now scraped through the countryside and he slid down its sculpted shoulder and out onto the grooved concrete. Not sure which way to go, he guessed and headed left, following the road. This was not how he had envisioned his night in the Land of the Living. Back in the Kingdom, when he allowed himself to dream about it, he had imagined a triumphant return. A crowd of people to greet him, a celebration with cheers and music, hugs and ...
"Damn it." This was taking too long. The walk to town could take him twenty minutes. "Where is everybody?" He swiveled his head back and forth, up and down the abandoned road. Maybe he could hitch a ride. Nobody thumbed a ride in this part of the country, but he was desperate.
Back to that dream about how things were supposed to have gone. He would push through the hugs and the backslaps, the surprised faces, and there in a small clearing, dressed in a strapless sparkling wrap of a dress, would be ...
Headlights and a loud roar overtook him. He spun with his thumb out and stumbled in front of the rocketing semi. The screech of a swerve, the chunk-chunk-chunk of locked wheels skipping over concrete, a loud thud, and Hugh was airborne.
Inside the cab of the truck, the tweaked driver shoved his tall boy of Bud Light down between the seat cushions and blinked between all the mirrors. "Did I just hit somebody?"
He shook his head and rubbed his burning eyes. "Naw, no way ... Didn't happen." He nodded to himself. "Yeah, my eyes are playing tricks on me again. I must have imagined that." He put the truck into gear and drove off. "Yeah, it's just like all those other times I imagined I hit someone."
The truck's taillights disappeared over the horizon.
Down in the trench along the center of the median, a tattered and torn stretch of white-and-green satin lay motionless.
Resurrecting Morton
Two earnest EMTs hustled Hugh's limp and lifeless body onto a gurney and loaded it into the back of the ambulance. Nick closed the doors while Vern got behind the wheel, fired up the siren and peeled out.
In the back of the ambulance, Nick fitted an oxygen mask to Hugh’s face and listened to his hollow chest with a stethoscope. He checked for a pulse and shook his head. Nothing. He shined a penlight in Hugh's eyes, and the pupils did not respond. Finally he unzipped the Celtics sweatshirt, grabbed Hugh's chalk-white left nipple and twisted it as hard as he could.
Hugh didn't move.
"Kill the siren, Vern! This guy’s toast, worm food, casket filler, dirt nap city ..."
"What?" Vern asked.
"He's dead."
Vern looked back at Hugh's corpse. "He's been dead for a while. Look at him, he's all bloated and pale. It's gross. I bet he smells."
"Naw, he doesn't smell. I mean, he smells, but not like death. He kind of has that old church smell. I wonder how long he's been dead?" Nick covered Hugh's head with a sheet and picked up a clipboard. "Do I fill in the time of death or do I just put in some question marks?”
“Put down D-O-A, it stands for dead—“
“I know what it stands for,” Nick scribbled on the chart.
The oxygen mask was left on Hugh's face. Sweet oxygen and gentle wisps of minty medical vapor tickled his nose as he was rocked back and forth on the cushioned ambulance bed. He tried to breathe it in but his lungs wouldn't inflate. He had to be content to lie under the bright white sheet tented above his eyes and sense that life was moving around him. He focused on the vibrations of the moving ambulance, the stick of his clammy skin to the vinyl gurney.
Eventually enough oxygen sifted through his brain tissue and made him remember something. With a shrieking gasp of inhalation he sat up. The sheet fell to his waist and he coughed out a cloud of dust and sucked in the sugared air.
Nick screamed.
Vern white-knuckled the steering wheel and tried to look back. "What is it? What is it?" He looked back and saw Hugh, hands grasping his chest, wheezing with a manic smile.
Nick huddled in a corner of the ambulance, shaking in horror. "This isn't happening, this isn't happening."
Hugh yelled, "I am alive. I'm alive! Hey, can you guys drop me off at forty-nine Victoria Street?"
Vern screamed and jerked the steering wheel from side to side. The ambulance careened up onto two wheels and then crashed through a fence, coming to a sudden stop on its side.
"Man, I hate Halloween,” Vern whimpered as he escaped with Nick and ran into the night.
Hugh tried to free himself from the sideways ambulance. His waist and legs were lashed to the gurney with medical grade tethers.
Not far away from where the ambulance crashed, nestled under a freeway overpass, a worn-out-looking man was close to death. He was stretched out in a cardboard box that once held a large chest freezer. The box was replete with a plastic bag stuffed with packing peanuts for a pillow and some landscaping fabric for a blanket. The frayed bum had drunk eleven dollars’ worth of booze that day and hadn’t eaten a penny’s worth of food. He hadn't eaten in weeks. Judging by the pain in his organs, the shaking and the fever, he was pretty sure he was dying. It had taken him a lot longer to drink himself to death than he had imagined it would. Maybe it wasn't that long, maybe it just seemed like forever because it was so meaningless and sad. He wasn't sure when he'd black out for the last time. He hoped it would be soon.
Shaken ever so slightly sober by the ambulance crash nearby, he sat up and groaned with ache. Why couldn't he just die? He clamped his head with his hands and then tied on his brown leather Bridgeport walking shoes.
The long, lanky drunk opened the flaps of the freezer box and unpacked himself for another day of suffering.
Seventy-nine and a half inches tall. You needed to be eighty inches tall to beat the draft, so before his medical exam he had practiced standing up straight and being eighty inches tall. It helped that the Army's doc was only five foot eight and had to perch on a chair to see where Morton measured on the stick. While the doc unsteadily climbed the rickety folding chair, Morton took the opportunity to grow. Eighty and a half inches according to the official Army record.
He had shrunk more than six inches since then. He was sixty-three years old. Gravity, alcohol and despair were bending him to the ground.
The ambulance, resting on its side, was a welcome sight. Maybe he could glean some painkillers from the storage bins before the authorities arrived. He did his dizzy dance down the embankment toward the wreck.
He pried open the rear doors and much to his surprise discovered a zombie trapped in a web of clear hoses and black straps. He startled at first but then defaulted to gut level benevolence. "You okay there, buddy? You look horrible." Morton helped Hugh free himself from the ambulance. "They just ran off and left you?"
"I think they were going to get help."
"Help? I thought they were the help. Who helps when the help needs help? Hmm?" Morton furnished a hand and tugged Hugh to his feet. "No offense, but you look bad, just plain awful. Sort of like reheated death."
"It's a ... Halloween costume."
Morton shook his head. "Is it Halloween already? Really? I could swear the Fourth of July was just a few weeks ago." He took a bottle of peppermint schnapps from the pocket of his threadbare wool sport coat and drank. He offered some to Hugh. "Looks like you could use it."
"No thanks."
"You sure? Tastes like Christmas."
"No. I need to get to town."
Morton stumbled back a few steps and looked around. "Which town?"
"Cedargrove. Forty-nine Victoria Street."
Morton put his hands on his hips and thought. "Cedargrove? Hmmm. Victoria Street? Hmmm. Forty-nine?"
"Listen, no offense but I'm really in a hurry." Hugh looked around, ready to bolt.
"Whoa, where's the fire? You look like you should probably sit and rest a piece. Maybe take a seat next to this ambulance bumper, give a little shout-out if you see anybody coming. Excuse me a minute, won't you?" Morton crawled into the ambulance and began fishing through orange tackle boxes and zippered medical bags.
"I really gotta go."
"What's the hurry? It's Halloween. Who knows what kind of pills these guys carry around in here ... Jackpot." Morton emerged with a large bottle covered in warning stickers. He unscrewed it and swallowed a handful of pills, chasing them down with a swig of schnapps. "This Halloween I'm wearing my costume on the inside." His eyes began to glass over. "Yes, I do know the way to Cedargrove. Let's go."
Hugh followed him, anxious that he wasn't moving fast enough. "Is it far?"
"Well, we'd be better off driving, but I don't drive anymore. It's bad for the environment and besides, it gets in the way of my drinking." He finished the bottle and tucked it in a pocket. "A bum would just toss this in the weeds. I'm going to recycle it."
The truth was, Morton didn't drive because he had no place to drive to. He was a hopeless alcoholic slipping, stumbling and stammering toward organ failure. He’d been kicked out of his house because he failed to pay the mortgage, because he lost his job as an electrical engineer, because he stopped going to work, because he was drinking, because ...
Because, because, because ...
Because his wife left him. She died. The hundred and fifteen pounds of incandescence that burned so bright in his life had painfully dimmed. He stood by her bedside and watched as each day the quantization errors of cancer dithered in her organs. The impedance of chemo only slowed down the inevitable. One spring morning she asked for the hospice window to be opened, so she could smell the cherry blossoms. Morton tried, but it wouldn't open, it couldn't. It was fixed in place, to keep the germs of the living outside or to keep the germs of the dying inside. Morton ran out and yanked what flowers he could out of the cold spring ground, but by the time he returned with them her capacitance had reached zero.
Thirty-two years of loving marriage was just a tiny little flicker of light in what was now Morton's forever night.
He wasn't a religious man or the kind of guy who would seek out grief counseling. He was inclined to "walk off" life's bumps and bruises, "John Wayne" his way back to health with a kick and a grimace. When he broke both ankles in a sailing accident, he couldn't quite walk it off but he did his best to limp it off. The death of his wife was different. The horrible soul-stabbing wound, the six inches taken out of his spine, heart wrung dry, lungs squeezed to nothing ... He couldn't walk it off. He was trying to drink it off. It wasn't working.
Alone in his box before the ambulance crashed, he had been dreaming about her. Missing her, wishing he could be with her. He softly spoke to the dream, begging her to come and take him away.
Halloween Just Got Sexy
The gravel shoulder along the country road abruptly became a sidewalk. Hugh, still stiff-legging it, jerked along and looked every bit like the walking dead. Morton was a few steps back and taking his time, almost wandering. The soft fleece of medical-grade opiates was snuggling his mind and zipping his spirit up in a sleeping bag of gentle bliss.
"So what's your story?" Morton's lips were wet. He wiped away a flap of drool.
"My story?"
"Yeah. I'm looking at you, and you look like crap, but you have this glow around you. Like this aura, and I'm pretty sure I'm imagining it. Either that or I'm in the final stages of organ failure and you're an angel."
"I'm no angel, far from it."
"So what's the deal? I can tell you have a purpose, a mission. Most people don't. Most people don't have anything they really want to do. I can tell you have a passion, a drive." He unscrewed the cap off another pint of peppermint schnapps and took a drink. He gestured with the bottle, his peppermint ethanol scepter, and anointed Hugh, "You're a shooting star."
"It's a long story. I need to find someone, a girl."
"Girl?" Morton's brow lifted with a smile. "Now it's coming together. That glow around you, it's passion, desire. Two crazy kids on a sexy Halloween night ..."
"It's love," Hugh snapped.
Morton nodded. "Okay, okay, love. So you're going to see your girl."
"She's not really my girl, not anymore." Hugh shook his head. "It's complicated."
"Yeah, that's for sure. If love is anything, it's complicated."
The thump of hip-hop music half a block away caused Hugh to pivot his head. "This is it, the old neighborhood." He pogoed his stiff legs quickly toward the music and jerked past a street sign that read Victoria Place. Morton floated behind at a leisurely slop.
Forty-nine Victoria Place. The old duplex he and Lily shared the year before their wedding. The perfect little place, decorated with stepping-stone furniture, the kind of inexpensive stuff that transitions that brief period between the futon couches of college and the Pottery Barn sectionals of adult life. They sat on their overstuffed transitional couch many a night and played Scrabble that first year. There were never any challenges as to whether or not a played word was acceptable. Hugh and Lily were a couple with an infallible grasp of vocabulary.
The previous tenants had left a faded outdoor rug on the back porch. When Hugh kneeled down on it and took Lily's hand, the cold wet of the previous winter reached up from deep inside and soaked into his knee. But the back porch was the perfect spot during sunset. The day’s last breeze swept her hair into the tears rolling down her cheeks. He asked, she said yes.
The diamond and setting had cost him four thousand dollars, a sum multiplied in spirit by the effort it took to raise it. When he realized he needed an engagement ring, he took a job installing unfaced fiberglass insulation in attic crawl spaces. It was a horrible job in winter and unbearable in August, when the sharp glass fibers made it prickly to wipe the sweat from his brow.
A bumpin' Halloween celebration had been going since mid-afternoon inside forty-nine Victoria. Hugh stood on the sidewalk, trying to catch a glimpse of Lily in the window. It was hard to tell who was who. All the girls had sexy versions of traditional costumes on. A sexy witch wore thigh-high platform boots, a bustier and a steeple hat perched on her voluminous glittered hair. The sexy pirate swashbuckled in thigh-high platform boots, a bustier and an eye patch. Even the fake parrot on her shoulder was saucy in its little pirate hat. Sexy Raggedy Ann was stuffed into thigh-high platform boots and a petticoat that was really just a bustier with buttons instead of cord and lace.
This wasn't like the dream Hugh had. He was going to come back to life, walk through some fog, she'd be quietly sitting on a garden bench, a portrait of him in her lap. He would approach, she'd have the sun in her hazel-green eyes, unable to recognize him. Suddenly with a rush, an epiphany: it was him. A desperate embrace. It wouldn't matter, the heartbreak, the abandonment, the him being dead stuff. None of it would matter. An embrace and a long kiss would pave over everything.
