First Episode
A darting brush, sweeping, dabbing, dipping . . . rising again to round out the glister inside a deep indigo sucker, painting another and another and another, descending in size, barnacling in and over and out along the squirming appendage becoming one of many tentacles around sea serpentine feminine lines. Lace pressing flat and paint tapping over it—texture. Bright speckles of white and blue—distant sea foam. The tiniest crescents of apple green around black irises . . . bone fingers narrowing into wriggling feelers . . .
This one to be added to the others, thick in oils, linseed and turpentine mingling with must and mildew and rubber cement, rotting leaves and stale alcohol and more delicate odors, less palatable and more worrisome odors.
Rectangular space, a vignette in black and white stripes, addled heart and muddled mind, pause and press, insert and undress, what flows undoes and re-does and colors meld and somewhere something smells death, like worms to a corpse or maggots to shit they know when it's near . . . but not yet.
There's work to do.
Milky daylight's tiny twirling ballerinas in the mote ballet, pirouetting through moist thick air, speckling the top of a recent acquisition, a spinning device stood still, its twee figurines intermittently pop-eyed and warped, wriggling and faceless. . . . though not nameless. Not all nameless:
A is for Arthur.
L is for Lilia.
I is for Ivan.
O is or Oliver.
✪
They were too much for Lilia, the rats. As unexpected and fantastical as the occurrence was, it sent Arthur into a tittering excitement as he pondered what to do after finding the squealing, struggling mass beneath the back deck, and his wife, unwilling to subject the children to more of their arguments, decided to stay with a friend that night.
Ignoring his wife's imminent departure, Arthur used a snow shovel to scoop the rats into a box and transported the receptacle into the basement, where it was about twenty degrees warmer. While their father called a friend, Ivan and Oliver stood over the writhing mass, heatedly debating how to untangle the tails of the critters without harming them. The boys' shifting figures as they moved under the bald basement light frightened the rodents to a frenzy, and the things began to beat their little heads against the sides of their large straw-lined box, pulling their tails taut. The boys watched in shock until blood began to glisten on the noses and at the eyes of the creatures, at which point they screamed for their father.
Ramona, hearing a commotion, descended from the first-floor kitchen and stood at the top of the basement stairs, gazing over the banister at her older brothers' clamor, and watched as her father hastened from the corner where he'd been engaged in a hushed phone conversation. Glancing into the box, the man flung his cell onto a chair, picked up his snow shovel, and beat the animals until they were no longer moving.
The girl watched her brothers cower, took note of the great groan her father swallowed when he'd done with the deed and fallen still, bloodied shovel in hands, and flared her nostrils in the silent pause that followed. Then she turned and calmly moved back upstairs. None of them even noticed her.
"Don't tell your sister," Arthur obliviously said at last, and the fifteen-year-olds nodded their consent, too overwhelmed to do or say anything more.
After the boys left to distract their minds with gaming and food, Arthur returned the call he'd interrupted, attempting to figure out how to add the caveat that the specimen was now not only deceased but damaged.
Two floors above, in a standard square bedroom with all the trappings of an eleven-year-old's first decade of a pleasant life, Ramona sat cross-legged in the gloaming. Shadows moved in the corners like dead rats. She reached for the purple wicker Easter basket at the foot of her bed and dumped its remaining plastic grass and candy onto her bed. Picking through the leftovers, Ramona delighted to find a black licorice jelly bean. She popped the treat between her lips and nibbled slowly at its harder sugary shell before sinking her teeth through into the soft inner gelatin. Spice swept across her tongue, that special tang only black licorice could offer, and as she savored its flavor, the girl looked at the doll on her bed with its white face and dark eyes and, shrugging apologetically, fell into thoughts of rodents and her mother.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top