Sacred Vows (841 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by pen_name (View user info) at 2005-10-12 09:07:30 EDT
It was a buzzing sound, then a scratching sound.
A sound that didn't know if it was coming or going—appearing in short bursts, like exploding popcorn kernels. Harry listened for it, the sound that woke him at the table, the sound that was in his dream, calling to him, shaking him into reality—but it left him. The kitchen was silent again.
Harry took a breath and massaged his rubbery face. In truth, he didn't have a face. He had a layer of fat, stained from cigarettes and sunlight—a package of hamburger that molded to his hands as he continued rubbing it. He often fantasized about his youth and tried to find it there, to feel it under the mess of sinew and saggy skin, but he couldn't. It was a memory like everything else. He was an old man. Second rate goods.
The noise erupted again. It sounded like fireworks under a thick blanket. Harry craned his neck toward the ceiling and listened intently. He thought about ignoring it. It might just be one of those sounds. Sounds of branches rubbing against shingles, of mice eating through insulation, of boards warping, or maybe even pipes groaning. What's in a noise that won't show itself. What's the worth of chasing a ghost that will escape at the last second.
Indeed, Harry knew what it was. It was getting a coughing attack in the dusty attic air. It was hacking until his lungs screamed and said no more, until they quit and demanded to cast something out, even if that meant blood.
Harry decided to ignore it. Let the squirrel make its home. Let the pipes continue their agony. He would have none of their tortures.
He eased out of his chair, and then, as an afterthought, bent backward so that he was eye to eye with the ceiling again. Nothing came—not a peep. He waited an extra second more and then, after extending his arms and producing a pleasurable "crack," he bent back, and pushed his chair in.
The motion made his hands hurt. He began rubbing them, hands that had toiled for 35 years on other peoples gardens, digging, and planting— tearing out, and putting in. Years of petunias, and marigolds, and apple trees, and front hedges. That life was gone from him. Harry and sons was now a one-man operation, with the younger buying out the older—a business move befitting for an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There was no lost fingers, no blood curdling screams, but everyone saw the knife in the elder's back. Everyone asked him why he allowed it, but Harry dismissed their alarm. He said didn't care.
He was retired, living those golden years that Carnival Cruises and the state of Florida banked on. He could shit without rushing; he could swear openly. No one was there to remind him to be polite to Miss Oakenridge, the 60 year-old-bitch who stood watching you as you trimmed her bush. There were no more questions from Mr. Johnson, who had to examine your work for 20 minutes, before asking stupid shit, like "isn't that grass a little long" and "why is the birdbath wet?"
Life was now slower, and less aggravating. Harry didn't have to complain about long hours anymore, or the uptight customers. No more worry; no more grief. The trouble is, slowing down means that time last longer. Less stress means less excitement. So, when the sound came again, only louder, Harry decided he should go investigate. He'd find the mouse that was the solution to all his pains, the creaking floorboard which would give new meaning to his life. For that hour or two, he would forget about his saggy face and arthritic hands. Harry went to the drawer and grabbed a flashlight. He then went upstairs.
The full moon shined through the south window. It was bright enough to create shadows, yet dark enough to give the corners plenty of mystery. The sound was gone again, retreating to wherever it hid. It waited, like a car backfire or the sudden "swish-pop" of a toaster. To Harry the silence was a roar. Harry tried humming but he could get past the silence. He tried singing.
Reilly played on the big bass drum,
Reilly had a mind for murder and slaughter
Reilly had a bright red glittering eye,
Kept that eye on his lovely daughter
Her hair was black and her eyes were blue,
The colonel, the major and the captain sought her
The sergeant, the private and the drummer boy to,
but they never had a chance with old Reilly's daughter
Harry tripped over a cardboard box and it emptied at his feet. It was a box of memories. There were pictures of weddings and clambakes and some pictures of rolling landscapes with Harry and his young CEO mugging to the camera. There were others, too. There was Mabel, the woman who cut his hair, and Mabel the one who ironed his shirts, and Mabel, the one who once had vowed, "until death do us part." Honorable Mabel. Sweet Mabel.
Harry bent over and started looking at the pictures. He didn't cry anymore. Actually, he never cried. When his wife died, he was trimming Mrs. Winters Thorn bush. Before that, he had been rolling in her bed, sizing her limbs and planting his seed.
Now when he looked at these pictures he only felt disgust with himself, a torrent of shame that lived in him like a fire—often dwindling down to a low burn, before rising and engulfing him once more. It was the reason he let his son buy him out. It was the reason he sat alone—dreaming of pissing on Mr. Johnson's birdbath, and looking for lost sounds.
Harry grimaced at a family picture and tossed it in the box. He tossed them all in the box. Then he heard the sound. It was close, scratching at his ear like a mosquito looking for its meal. He turned to his right and saw it. It was coming from a transistor radio. An old, beat up radio, leaning against the wall. It must have been in the box when Harry hit it. Now it was unearthed, and playing that gargled station: "tunes of the cosmos." Harry inched toward the mechanism, somehow afraid of the little rectangular box and its long antennae. Harry reached for it and it stopped playing.
The silence wasn't silent anymore. The steady pulse in his eardrum was as loud as a brass band, its song, a steady dirge.
He held the radio in front of him. The smooth plastic shell contrasted sharply with the notched tuner and the waffle-like cover. Holding the device, he closed his eyes trying to bring back a memory—a psychic connection made in Taiwan.
He opened his eyes and sighed. Nothing came to him. With his free hand he rubbed his neck. He held the radio at arms length while he searched the room, looking for something, for anything. He hadn't found meaning in a transistor radio. He was hopeless.
Then the radio went off again, unprovoked, the dial spun and cut into his flesh, the notched edges latching on to three layers of skin.
Autonomy. The opposite of random.
He dropped the radio and it cut off before it hit the floor. A split second before. Then it toppled waffle-side down. The radio was silent again, like it had always been silent. Each second it remained off, the radio dragged its voice away. Harry remembered it being a course shriek, then he swore it was a rumble, then it was only a quiet whine, and then it couldn't have been more than a hum. In another minute, Harry didn't think it had made any sound. It must have been in his head. It was all in his head. He reached for radio, to turn it on and play the sound again...for the first time.
He flicked the on switch like the lid of his cigarette lighter. It sputtered on, quietly. Soft static; more tunes of the cosmos. He turned the dial. It still had bits of his skin stuck in the tines but he didn't notice it, even as he moved it back and forth, pushing the needle to one end and then back to the other.
He could have been at a picnic searching for a ball game, or getting the weather report during a black out. He was mesmerized by the steady drawl of static. Blood dripped off his finger and fell on the floor. He still listened. It was getting light out. He still listened. He rolled the tuner to a higher frequency and found happiness; he rolled it lower and found despair. Either way he couldn't stay at one stop for too long. It was the journey that controlled him. Being happy or sad, that was an unintended consequence.
As the hours waned, his body weakened. At noon, he developed a coughing fit. He clutched the radio to his chest and he bent low, spitting on the floor and pounding at his leg. Pounding for want of something productive to do, something other that spit blood, which rarely gave him satisfaction. When he finished he straightened back up and changed the station. Music for the raspy. Sounds to bleed by. By three in the afternoon, his body had it and he dropped to his ass, shaking the attic floor around him. He lay on the floor; eyes wide open, staring at the radio in his left hand. Still tuning, still searching.
Harry's son, Edgar, arrived at his father's house on a clear September morning. He held a towel in under his right arm and knocked tentatively on the side door.
"Dad...you there?"
Edgar knocked again. No answer. He grabbed the screen door and pulled, letting himself into his father's kitchen. The lights were on and he could smell something foul. He put his fingers to his nose and squeezed the smell out of them. He tightened his eyes and closed his mouth to keep it from seeping in uninvited.
A moment more, and he winced his way to the stairs. Using the towel to cover his nose and mouth, he dropped his other arm, and felt his way up to the second floor.
"Dad." No answer. "Are you OK?" Edgar assumed his father was not OK given the smell. It was the proper question to yell, though—more fitting than "where's your corpse," which might make for an awkward conversation if he turned out to be sitting on the shitter, passing a bad meal of huevos rancheros.
After turning past the bedroom the smell grew stronger. He looked at the end of the hall and saw that the attic door was ajar, the stairs piled out like wood for a bonfire. Edgar approached the stairs and eased his way up. He didn't call out anymore, pulling the towel away from his face as he climbed. The smell was just scenery now, background static—it wasn't the show.
At the top of the climb, he saw it.
His father, the man who gave him life and a job was dead. His skin was bluish white, with shadows falling around his eyes and passing over his cheeks. His legs were pulled up and extended toward the wall. Rigor mortis had tightened his spine and wretched his legs up like a G.I. Joe. Edgar approached the body and scanned it for signs of life. He picked up a hand and dropped it. He felt for the pulse in his Carotid artery, but it was clear he was gone.
Edgar scanned from this father's bulging white eyes to the radio clenched in his veiny grip. He looked at the box of memories. He stood up.
"My father is dead; I need an ambulance.....Yes, 316 Weston Avenue....I don't know. He must have broken his hip and couldn't get help....Thank you."
Edgar put his cell phone back in his pocket. He walked around his father and clenched his fist. After staring at him a second longer, he picked his leg up and brought it down on his father's pelvis.
He did it three, four, five times, until it cracked, until it caved in.
"How did you like that, you fucking piece of shit? Mom killed herself because of you! Guess it would have been better if I didn't find out, huh? It would have been better if you could have kept that arthritic dick in your pants!"
He kicked him again, but not hard—just enough to make a period, to deliver his exclamation point.
Settling back down, Edgar knelt over Harry's arm and wrapped the towel around the radio, tugging it a few times until it gave way from his grip. Now free, he covered any exposed edges and took it with him to the stairs, then out.
Back at his car, Edgar put the radio in the box, following the directions the woman had given him. He turned it upright, closed the top, and ran his finger from a sapphire on the left, to an emerald on the right, and closed the golden clasps from right to left.
He still had one more victim: Bernadette Winters. A woman who didn't respect sacred vows, a woman who should have known better than to spread her legs for that man. She would hear the strange sound in the closet, or her bedroom. She would go for the radio and try to find the station that would give meaning to her life. She would turn the dial until her kidneys failed, until her heart stopped. She would turn it until she died to a soundtrack, to tunes of the cosmos...to cosmic justice.
User Reviews
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-10-14 12:36:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/m/77050
here, that's yours.
NOW STOP PUTTING MESSAGES IN MY BRAIN
Submitted by nitty34 (user info) at 2005-10-14 12:31:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
linkwhore
Nice read
Submitted by tinactin (user info) at 2005-10-13 18:24:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was awesome
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2005-10-13 12:33:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
very good.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-10-12 20:42:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
sure enough, ma'am!
It's OK, though. I knew what I was getting into when I started writing this.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-10-12 20:32:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You should have more readers. 'Tis a pity people flock to shit like flies!
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2005-10-12 13:22:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent work. I really dug the way you wrote this...
Submitted by houseman (user info) at 2005-10-12 12:23:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fantastic
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-10-12 11:44:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
this whoops the llamas ass.
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2005-10-12 10:28:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome.
Submitted by missedthepoint (user info) at 2005-10-12 09:47:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i really liked this
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-10-12 09:17:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Brilliant story
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-10-12 09:08:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I tired write it like Chuck P. and probably failed. Still, I like how it turned out.