Strung Out Party Animal
By
Donovan Douglas Thiesson
The moon peeks briefly from low lying cloud cover, and Aaron’s skin tingles. Aaron is late for Sherrie’s party and it’s a long walk, at least an hour. His car broke down earlier that day, sagging in traffic like a tired drunk, barely making it to the curb before vomiting out a slick puddle of oil. Tow trucks are expensive, and so are cabs, and Aaron could only afford one, so here he is on foot.
As much as he wants to lay in bed and let the stress of the day steam off him, he has promises to keep. I’m not going to miss Sherrie’s party. I’m not going to fuck this relationship up. He called ahead so Sherrie knows he will be late. She had laughed and told him not to worry, to make it if he could, that it wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t. Aaron knows better. It is her birthday, and their nine-month benchmark is also approaching. Friends and family are eager to meet him.
“Don’t fuck up,” he whispers.
Aaron has severe anxiety problems. He deals with them as best he can and has done so his entire life. This is the longest he has gone without a panic attack, nearly a year, and he is optimistic. Yet he has been optimistic in the past, and people had gotten hurt. As a result, Aaron has no long-term friends.
His short time in college had resulted in two relationships, if you could call them relationships. ‘Fling’ might be the better word. His penis worked the first time, drunk, groping in the dark and stinking of vodka. Yet Aaron can’t be drunk all the time, and anxiety isn’t the best aphrodisiac. Sex with Sherrie is different, more like in the movies. A moment worth getting lost inside. There is affection and that is new for Aaron. Before Sherrie, sex had been another aspect of his anxiety
Now he walks down the dark street as fast as he can, overly conscious of how silly he looks as he does so. Sherrie tells him he looks handsome and manly, and whatever else he needs to hear in the moment. He is as tall and as lanky as a sapling, with strangely broad shoulders that don’t fit his frame. He still hasn’t figured out what Sherrie sees in him.
When she drinks too much, she sometimes leans in close, her algae eyes framed by a wreath of red hair and punctuated by skin as white as sea foam. She tells him that yes, sometimes he looks silly. The way he always stands away from the crowd, “thin as a whippet”, whatever that is, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes darting nervously around. “But that is something I love about you”, she croons. And in turn it is these same moments of gentle honesty that he loves about her.
Aaron shoves his fists deep inside his pockets, straining the lining, so he won’t wring them together or gnaw at his nails. His nails have gone from manicured to masticated since this morning, and they already hurt. The park is up ahead. I’m not taking the park, he tells himself, knowing he is going to take the park anyways. Aaron does not do well in the dark, unless he feels safe, closed in, like when he’s locked in the cellar.
There are two kinds of people who suffer from anxiety. There are those who shut out the world and emerge only when absolutely necessary, like a snail exposed to the heat of the sun. The voice in their head lulls them in and out of life and convinces them that no risk is worth taking, no pain or humiliation worth enduring. Then there are people like Aaron, whose anxiety works in much the same way, up until the very end. The difference is there isn’t a voice in Aaron’s head, but two.
It used to be his mother and father, but since his dad died, his mother’s voice has grown like an approaching freight train. You’re too sick, too scared to walk in the park. You’re mommy’s boy, you’ll always be mommy’s boy, and you know what will happen.
With dad gone, Sherrie has become his second voice, and she chimes in. It’s just a walk. The only dark that matters is when we are in it together, and I breathe in your ear the way you like. Aren’t you coming to the party? You don’t want to be too late, do you?
The idea of leaving the street and the flickering lights above terrifies him. Walking through the park, however, will cut more than twenty minutes from the trip. He shoves his anxiety aside, steps of the sidewalk and onto the tarmac trail, leading into the darkness like an oily tongue.
The sigh of the grass on either side of the path replaces the electric hum of the streetlight and the faint taps of kamikaze moths bouncing against lightbulbs. The wind is more noticeable here; a faint swell plays percussion with the silhouette branches of the aspens, their skeletal limbs beating against one another, obscured behind the dusk.
Don’t go out at night, his mom repeats. You know what happens in the dark, when the tides are just right. Think of your father−
“Shut up, mom,” he hisses under his breath, and jumps at the sound of his own voice. He laughs nervously, a hollow, forced sound. He speaks again, daring the night to respond. “Calm yourself, you’re not twelve.” He is aware of how stupid he looks to anyone watching. Is someone watching−?
You’re going for a walk in a park, not a prison, Sherrie’s voice repeats. Aaron realizes how close he is to a panic attack. But he can control this, and Sherrie’s voice soothes like a comfort blanket. She’s right. She’s always right.
Except about you, his mom whispers from the darkest part of the twilight.
Aaron looks back over his shoulder. The streetlamps are distant goal posts.. His feet feel like balloons, but they obey. Aaron gulps like a diver out of air. He slows his breathing down, counting the seconds between breaths, a technique he learned from the internet.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
He brings himself under control as the path weaves into a wooded area where the aspen gives way to poplar. A startled squirrel bursts into raucous displeasure. An owl hoots a short distance away, and the squirrel goes silent.
One, two, three. That’s right, keep breathing.
Sherrie pipes in, you’ll do fine tonight, and you’re doing fine now.
He isn’t doing fine. He is the child who takes the dark, unfamiliar alley home, and meets a shadowy figure leaning up against a fence. He is the toddler in the mall who walks five feet from his parents and is swallowed by the crowd. He is an adult who is still haunted by these moments. He is worlds away from fine.
After his dad died, Aaron locked himself in the cellar for a month. His mom brought him food and water, and when Aaron refused to leave to use the washroom, she brought him a bucket. As he slowly came out of himself, he began to notice the changes in her as well. Her hair had gone bone white. The skin beneath her eyes sagged. In the past she had shot him weary bolts of resentment when she thought he wasn’t looking. Now her aggression was direct, unflinching, and unapologetic.
If only Aaron had made it to the cellar in time. The cellar had failed him, failed his dad, failed them all, yet it remained the safest place he knew.
You don’t need the cellar anymore, Sherrie tells him.
Tell that to the tides, his mother interjects.
A bush moves towards him slightly. Aaron trips over his own two feet and stumbles forward, not sure what he is looking at. Shades of black, and suddenly a great silver eye emerges. His stomach jumps into his throat and his pulse cramps his chest.
The moon! Sherrie’s voice exclaims in his head, and is there a tinge of panic in her voice?
Now his mother’s voice takes over, barely holding back her rage and resentment. Stupid boy, out in the night, and for what? Love? Your own stubbornness? Do you know where love got me? If your father was here−
But his father is dead, and Sherrie is right. It is the moon, and its reflection ripples across the pond. The water is obsidian sparkling against a black velvet canvas. He can smell the water now, the slime and rotting debris that lines the edge of the pond, the wafting methane both disgusting and enticing at the same time. Behind the pond curls the aroma of tree leaves, well into their autumn transformation. This is the center of the park, half-way to safety–
His skin tingles as the tides tug at his flesh. Aaron is fifteen hundred kilometers from the ocean, and he can feel the strength of the tides like magnets, swelling and ebbing throughout the year. His breathing is shallow again.
“One, two, three. One, two, three,” he whispers.
Halfway there, Sherrie exclaims, proud.
One more step, and you’re further from home than the party, his mom scolds. The point of no return.
Aaron takes that step. Then another. More bushes. They shake in the wind, and seed pods rattle to the path. Aaron stops breathing. Stops walking. Something else is breathing. Aaron strains to listen and it is gone.
Stop it. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. He forces himself to start walking again. Get out of the darkness, mom was right, why do I fuck everything up?
Sherrie’s voice erupts, hurry to the streetlights before things happen. Keep moving and breathing!
Aaron’s mother is silent.
It isn’t just Aaron’s feet that feel strange now; his hands are numb. He flexes his fingers and nearly has a heart attack as his knuckles crack. Sharp snaps, like rifles. Sherrie’s voice becomes conspicuously absent in his head. There are no more reassurances, just Aaron.
Don’t do that again. Walk faster. One, two, three. You’re still here. You can fix this.
Another bush twists in the breeze.
His feet move of their own volition now, faster than before, made graceful through fear. His mind spirals. Nothing there, you’re going too fast. You’re fucking this up. Stop. Stop.
“Stop”, he stutters, and he does.
Valium. Aaron’s last defense. He has been weaning himself off drugs, and he promised Sherrie the Valium is only for what he calls ‘panic attack emergencies’.
This is that emergency. One is not enough, better two, and he can leave the path and lie next to the pond and let the moon bathe him clean. Sherrie will understand, and even if she doesn’t, he can lie–
Or take the whole bottle.
He abandons this thread of thought and reaches into the pocket of his windbreaker. His fingers scrabble between crumpled receipts and pocket change. His breathing stops. He pulls out the contents of his pocket, piece by piece, even though he knows the Valium is not there. He doesn’t need to stop and think, he knows exactly where they are. Earlier that day, his body tingling like it is now, his head throbbing, his Pontiac birthing its engine pan and burnt oil spraying the curb. He remembers digging for his bank card, pulling the Valium out, setting the pill bottle down on the passenger seat… then seeing the tow truck in the rearview mirror.
His mother clucks her tongue in his head. Aaron closes his eyes.
Sherrie help. He tries to picture her, but her eyes sparkle with fear. He tries to remember her flesh pressed against his own, but he can only feel the sizzle of blood beneath his skin. This is not about me; this is not my night. It is her night.
Even if he can’t hear her in his head now, even if the panic is already playing tricks with his body, even if her friends and family are at the party, Sherrie is there. For nine months, until this day, she has been his Valium. She can be his Valium now.
Aaron opens his eyes and finds they have adjusted to the darkness. He breathes a sigh of relief and starts walking again, his body no longer throbbing, but numb, like how your head feels after the migraine finally breaks. You know pain best by its absence. He is back in control and he hasn’t fucked up. Now his body is hot and sticky, and he knows his armpits are drenched in sweat.
And he stinks.
Not just him, it stinks up ahead of him. He starts to walk again, focused on the empty dark. Is someone there? He misses the rogue aspen in his peripheral. Its skeletal hand grabs him by the top of the head. Aaron beats at his head and shrieks into the darkness in frustration, fear, and pure rage. His mother’s pale eyes swirl in his mind.
The darkness stay out of the darkness stay out of the darkness.
He remembers looking into her room on his way out tonight, ignoring the drift of empty pill bottles by the foot of the bed, rejecting the damp stillness and the perfume of cold vomit, pretending not to see her stiff hand flung over the side of the bed in a position living limbs don’t use.
The deepest part of him envies her, but he is a coward, and now he needs Sherrie more than he ever needed anyone. Now Sherrie is all he has.
You used to be such a good boy. Then you grew up. Now you’re a man and so much more dangerous.
“You’re dead mom. You’re dead mom. Just like dad.”
There is someone up ahead that stinks. Aaron tries to stand tall but is hunched over instead. The scent he catches has familiar undertones. Sherrie. She must have come looking. He sobs in relief, but the sob gurgles like phlegm in his chest.
“Hello?” Aaron walks forward. “Sherrie?”
Up ahead, footsteps, faster than his, sharp staccatos moving away from him. A dim shape now, and the shape stops.
Aaron stops as well, careful not to let the silhouette hear. They are near the sidewalk, Sherrie’s house just across the street. And a party. He blinks his eyes. Has he fainted? He is so low to the ground, and silent, not like the woman up ahead.
She starts walking again. She, Aaron knows it’s a she, so familiar, he can smell menstrual blood. Aaron is no longer anxious. That barrier is gone. The skin along his back is too tight, the tide’s pull is too strong, and his flesh splits open like a paper cut.
The woman up ahead rustles around in her purse and pulls out something with a light. The light goes off with three loud beeps. “Shit,” she says. Aaron laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a laugh.
She looks up sharply.
“Hello?” A red dress, in the dark but now visible. He recognizes her scent again, but he can distinguish it better. Not Sherrie, Sherrie’s sister Natalie. She must have taken the same shortcut.
He moves towards her, out of breath but breathing fine. He says something, but it comes out wrong. Her eyes bulge and now she smells of urine. So strong, Aaron knows her most intimate parts.
She flings her purse at him, the contents showering outwards, cards, a wallet, her lip-stick spinning across the tarmac. She runs. He shrieks after her, running, new muscles flexing.
Tree branches rip her dress. He thinks of sex. He is so hard. Strings of saliva fly backwards and sting his eyes. A noise fills his body like thunder. He can catch her but doesn’t, better to follow first.
There is the street, through the trees, too late for light. Sherrie’s house across the street. Silhouettes in window. Sister, what’s her name, smells like fear and inside. The party.
Not late. Not late. She opens the door and tries to close it. Door is nothing. Push door and sister through the wall inside. Plume of plaster dust. Smiling fat man screams. Pull out his spine, hands and feet.
Music like screaming and screaming like music. Pulls the man off him. Breathing still breathing.
One two three.
Screaming but not him. Someone runs at him. Take his throat. Take another, tastes warm. Fear.
Don’t be afraid, up the stairs. Smash the light.
A shriek in the darkness Aaron screams back.
Silence. Move no noise. Aaron’s house now, piss in the corner.
“Oh God oh God,” someone moaning. Sit and watch, “Oh God oh God no−” crack head. No praying. Not tonight.
Walk into light, broken window, light in clouds. look up−
scream at the moon.
Sherrie screams back.
Upstairs again. Under the bed. Pull her out. Sherrie’s fingers rip the floor. Aaron’s claws rip Sherrie.
“Happy birthday Sherrie. Happy birthday Sherrie. Happy birthday Sherrie.” Comes out wrong, try again. “Happy birthday Sherrie”, comes out blood. Chew her thigh to the bone.
Fucked this up. Fucked this up.
So sorry.
Fucked this up.
Donovan Douglas Thiesson is an author from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, a lonely place lost deep within Canada’s boreal forest. He has been weaving speculative nightmares since childhood, and has stories appearing in Fiction on the Web, Tales to Terrify and Farthest Star Publishing. In his spare time, he enjoys kittens, toxic mushrooms and desperation. Upon rare occasion, when overwhelmed by his own initials, Donovan Douglas Thiesson murders a baby falcon or two.
By
Donovan Douglas Thiesson
The moon peeks briefly from low lying cloud cover, and Aaron’s skin tingles. Aaron is late for Sherrie’s party and it’s a long walk, at least an hour. His car broke down earlier that day, sagging in traffic like a tired drunk, barely making it to the curb before vomiting out a slick puddle of oil. Tow trucks are expensive, and so are cabs, and Aaron could only afford one, so here he is on foot.
As much as he wants to lay in bed and let the stress of the day steam off him, he has promises to keep. I’m not going to miss Sherrie’s party. I’m not going to fuck this relationship up. He called ahead so Sherrie knows he will be late. She had laughed and told him not to worry, to make it if he could, that it wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t. Aaron knows better. It is her birthday, and their nine-month benchmark is also approaching. Friends and family are eager to meet him.
“Don’t fuck up,” he whispers.
Aaron has severe anxiety problems. He deals with them as best he can and has done so his entire life. This is the longest he has gone without a panic attack, nearly a year, and he is optimistic. Yet he has been optimistic in the past, and people had gotten hurt. As a result, Aaron has no long-term friends.
His short time in college had resulted in two relationships, if you could call them relationships. ‘Fling’ might be the better word. His penis worked the first time, drunk, groping in the dark and stinking of vodka. Yet Aaron can’t be drunk all the time, and anxiety isn’t the best aphrodisiac. Sex with Sherrie is different, more like in the movies. A moment worth getting lost inside. There is affection and that is new for Aaron. Before Sherrie, sex had been another aspect of his anxiety
Now he walks down the dark street as fast as he can, overly conscious of how silly he looks as he does so. Sherrie tells him he looks handsome and manly, and whatever else he needs to hear in the moment. He is as tall and as lanky as a sapling, with strangely broad shoulders that don’t fit his frame. He still hasn’t figured out what Sherrie sees in him.
When she drinks too much, she sometimes leans in close, her algae eyes framed by a wreath of red hair and punctuated by skin as white as sea foam. She tells him that yes, sometimes he looks silly. The way he always stands away from the crowd, “thin as a whippet”, whatever that is, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes darting nervously around. “But that is something I love about you”, she croons. And in turn it is these same moments of gentle honesty that he loves about her.
Aaron shoves his fists deep inside his pockets, straining the lining, so he won’t wring them together or gnaw at his nails. His nails have gone from manicured to masticated since this morning, and they already hurt. The park is up ahead. I’m not taking the park, he tells himself, knowing he is going to take the park anyways. Aaron does not do well in the dark, unless he feels safe, closed in, like when he’s locked in the cellar.
There are two kinds of people who suffer from anxiety. There are those who shut out the world and emerge only when absolutely necessary, like a snail exposed to the heat of the sun. The voice in their head lulls them in and out of life and convinces them that no risk is worth taking, no pain or humiliation worth enduring. Then there are people like Aaron, whose anxiety works in much the same way, up until the very end. The difference is there isn’t a voice in Aaron’s head, but two.
It used to be his mother and father, but since his dad died, his mother’s voice has grown like an approaching freight train. You’re too sick, too scared to walk in the park. You’re mommy’s boy, you’ll always be mommy’s boy, and you know what will happen.
With dad gone, Sherrie has become his second voice, and she chimes in. It’s just a walk. The only dark that matters is when we are in it together, and I breathe in your ear the way you like. Aren’t you coming to the party? You don’t want to be too late, do you?
The idea of leaving the street and the flickering lights above terrifies him. Walking through the park, however, will cut more than twenty minutes from the trip. He shoves his anxiety aside, steps of the sidewalk and onto the tarmac trail, leading into the darkness like an oily tongue.
The sigh of the grass on either side of the path replaces the electric hum of the streetlight and the faint taps of kamikaze moths bouncing against lightbulbs. The wind is more noticeable here; a faint swell plays percussion with the silhouette branches of the aspens, their skeletal limbs beating against one another, obscured behind the dusk.
Don’t go out at night, his mom repeats. You know what happens in the dark, when the tides are just right. Think of your father−
“Shut up, mom,” he hisses under his breath, and jumps at the sound of his own voice. He laughs nervously, a hollow, forced sound. He speaks again, daring the night to respond. “Calm yourself, you’re not twelve.” He is aware of how stupid he looks to anyone watching. Is someone watching−?
You’re going for a walk in a park, not a prison, Sherrie’s voice repeats. Aaron realizes how close he is to a panic attack. But he can control this, and Sherrie’s voice soothes like a comfort blanket. She’s right. She’s always right.
Except about you, his mom whispers from the darkest part of the twilight.
Aaron looks back over his shoulder. The streetlamps are distant goal posts.. His feet feel like balloons, but they obey. Aaron gulps like a diver out of air. He slows his breathing down, counting the seconds between breaths, a technique he learned from the internet.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
He brings himself under control as the path weaves into a wooded area where the aspen gives way to poplar. A startled squirrel bursts into raucous displeasure. An owl hoots a short distance away, and the squirrel goes silent.
One, two, three. That’s right, keep breathing.
Sherrie pipes in, you’ll do fine tonight, and you’re doing fine now.
He isn’t doing fine. He is the child who takes the dark, unfamiliar alley home, and meets a shadowy figure leaning up against a fence. He is the toddler in the mall who walks five feet from his parents and is swallowed by the crowd. He is an adult who is still haunted by these moments. He is worlds away from fine.
After his dad died, Aaron locked himself in the cellar for a month. His mom brought him food and water, and when Aaron refused to leave to use the washroom, she brought him a bucket. As he slowly came out of himself, he began to notice the changes in her as well. Her hair had gone bone white. The skin beneath her eyes sagged. In the past she had shot him weary bolts of resentment when she thought he wasn’t looking. Now her aggression was direct, unflinching, and unapologetic.
If only Aaron had made it to the cellar in time. The cellar had failed him, failed his dad, failed them all, yet it remained the safest place he knew.
You don’t need the cellar anymore, Sherrie tells him.
Tell that to the tides, his mother interjects.
A bush moves towards him slightly. Aaron trips over his own two feet and stumbles forward, not sure what he is looking at. Shades of black, and suddenly a great silver eye emerges. His stomach jumps into his throat and his pulse cramps his chest.
The moon! Sherrie’s voice exclaims in his head, and is there a tinge of panic in her voice?
Now his mother’s voice takes over, barely holding back her rage and resentment. Stupid boy, out in the night, and for what? Love? Your own stubbornness? Do you know where love got me? If your father was here−
But his father is dead, and Sherrie is right. It is the moon, and its reflection ripples across the pond. The water is obsidian sparkling against a black velvet canvas. He can smell the water now, the slime and rotting debris that lines the edge of the pond, the wafting methane both disgusting and enticing at the same time. Behind the pond curls the aroma of tree leaves, well into their autumn transformation. This is the center of the park, half-way to safety–
His skin tingles as the tides tug at his flesh. Aaron is fifteen hundred kilometers from the ocean, and he can feel the strength of the tides like magnets, swelling and ebbing throughout the year. His breathing is shallow again.
“One, two, three. One, two, three,” he whispers.
Halfway there, Sherrie exclaims, proud.
One more step, and you’re further from home than the party, his mom scolds. The point of no return.
Aaron takes that step. Then another. More bushes. They shake in the wind, and seed pods rattle to the path. Aaron stops breathing. Stops walking. Something else is breathing. Aaron strains to listen and it is gone.
Stop it. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. He forces himself to start walking again. Get out of the darkness, mom was right, why do I fuck everything up?
Sherrie’s voice erupts, hurry to the streetlights before things happen. Keep moving and breathing!
Aaron’s mother is silent.
It isn’t just Aaron’s feet that feel strange now; his hands are numb. He flexes his fingers and nearly has a heart attack as his knuckles crack. Sharp snaps, like rifles. Sherrie’s voice becomes conspicuously absent in his head. There are no more reassurances, just Aaron.
Don’t do that again. Walk faster. One, two, three. You’re still here. You can fix this.
Another bush twists in the breeze.
His feet move of their own volition now, faster than before, made graceful through fear. His mind spirals. Nothing there, you’re going too fast. You’re fucking this up. Stop. Stop.
“Stop”, he stutters, and he does.
Valium. Aaron’s last defense. He has been weaning himself off drugs, and he promised Sherrie the Valium is only for what he calls ‘panic attack emergencies’.
This is that emergency. One is not enough, better two, and he can leave the path and lie next to the pond and let the moon bathe him clean. Sherrie will understand, and even if she doesn’t, he can lie–
Or take the whole bottle.
He abandons this thread of thought and reaches into the pocket of his windbreaker. His fingers scrabble between crumpled receipts and pocket change. His breathing stops. He pulls out the contents of his pocket, piece by piece, even though he knows the Valium is not there. He doesn’t need to stop and think, he knows exactly where they are. Earlier that day, his body tingling like it is now, his head throbbing, his Pontiac birthing its engine pan and burnt oil spraying the curb. He remembers digging for his bank card, pulling the Valium out, setting the pill bottle down on the passenger seat… then seeing the tow truck in the rearview mirror.
His mother clucks her tongue in his head. Aaron closes his eyes.
Sherrie help. He tries to picture her, but her eyes sparkle with fear. He tries to remember her flesh pressed against his own, but he can only feel the sizzle of blood beneath his skin. This is not about me; this is not my night. It is her night.
Even if he can’t hear her in his head now, even if the panic is already playing tricks with his body, even if her friends and family are at the party, Sherrie is there. For nine months, until this day, she has been his Valium. She can be his Valium now.
Aaron opens his eyes and finds they have adjusted to the darkness. He breathes a sigh of relief and starts walking again, his body no longer throbbing, but numb, like how your head feels after the migraine finally breaks. You know pain best by its absence. He is back in control and he hasn’t fucked up. Now his body is hot and sticky, and he knows his armpits are drenched in sweat.
And he stinks.
Not just him, it stinks up ahead of him. He starts to walk again, focused on the empty dark. Is someone there? He misses the rogue aspen in his peripheral. Its skeletal hand grabs him by the top of the head. Aaron beats at his head and shrieks into the darkness in frustration, fear, and pure rage. His mother’s pale eyes swirl in his mind.
The darkness stay out of the darkness stay out of the darkness.
He remembers looking into her room on his way out tonight, ignoring the drift of empty pill bottles by the foot of the bed, rejecting the damp stillness and the perfume of cold vomit, pretending not to see her stiff hand flung over the side of the bed in a position living limbs don’t use.
The deepest part of him envies her, but he is a coward, and now he needs Sherrie more than he ever needed anyone. Now Sherrie is all he has.
You used to be such a good boy. Then you grew up. Now you’re a man and so much more dangerous.
“You’re dead mom. You’re dead mom. Just like dad.”
There is someone up ahead that stinks. Aaron tries to stand tall but is hunched over instead. The scent he catches has familiar undertones. Sherrie. She must have come looking. He sobs in relief, but the sob gurgles like phlegm in his chest.
“Hello?” Aaron walks forward. “Sherrie?”
Up ahead, footsteps, faster than his, sharp staccatos moving away from him. A dim shape now, and the shape stops.
Aaron stops as well, careful not to let the silhouette hear. They are near the sidewalk, Sherrie’s house just across the street. And a party. He blinks his eyes. Has he fainted? He is so low to the ground, and silent, not like the woman up ahead.
She starts walking again. She, Aaron knows it’s a she, so familiar, he can smell menstrual blood. Aaron is no longer anxious. That barrier is gone. The skin along his back is too tight, the tide’s pull is too strong, and his flesh splits open like a paper cut.
The woman up ahead rustles around in her purse and pulls out something with a light. The light goes off with three loud beeps. “Shit,” she says. Aaron laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a laugh.
She looks up sharply.
“Hello?” A red dress, in the dark but now visible. He recognizes her scent again, but he can distinguish it better. Not Sherrie, Sherrie’s sister Natalie. She must have taken the same shortcut.
He moves towards her, out of breath but breathing fine. He says something, but it comes out wrong. Her eyes bulge and now she smells of urine. So strong, Aaron knows her most intimate parts.
She flings her purse at him, the contents showering outwards, cards, a wallet, her lip-stick spinning across the tarmac. She runs. He shrieks after her, running, new muscles flexing.
Tree branches rip her dress. He thinks of sex. He is so hard. Strings of saliva fly backwards and sting his eyes. A noise fills his body like thunder. He can catch her but doesn’t, better to follow first.
There is the street, through the trees, too late for light. Sherrie’s house across the street. Silhouettes in window. Sister, what’s her name, smells like fear and inside. The party.
Not late. Not late. She opens the door and tries to close it. Door is nothing. Push door and sister through the wall inside. Plume of plaster dust. Smiling fat man screams. Pull out his spine, hands and feet.
Music like screaming and screaming like music. Pulls the man off him. Breathing still breathing.
One two three.
Screaming but not him. Someone runs at him. Take his throat. Take another, tastes warm. Fear.
Don’t be afraid, up the stairs. Smash the light.
A shriek in the darkness Aaron screams back.
Silence. Move no noise. Aaron’s house now, piss in the corner.
“Oh God oh God,” someone moaning. Sit and watch, “Oh God oh God no−” crack head. No praying. Not tonight.
Walk into light, broken window, light in clouds. look up−
scream at the moon.
Sherrie screams back.
Upstairs again. Under the bed. Pull her out. Sherrie’s fingers rip the floor. Aaron’s claws rip Sherrie.
“Happy birthday Sherrie. Happy birthday Sherrie. Happy birthday Sherrie.” Comes out wrong, try again. “Happy birthday Sherrie”, comes out blood. Chew her thigh to the bone.
Fucked this up. Fucked this up.
So sorry.
Fucked this up.
Donovan Douglas Thiesson is an author from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, a lonely place lost deep within Canada’s boreal forest. He has been weaving speculative nightmares since childhood, and has stories appearing in Fiction on the Web, Tales to Terrify and Farthest Star Publishing. In his spare time, he enjoys kittens, toxic mushrooms and desperation. Upon rare occasion, when overwhelmed by his own initials, Donovan Douglas Thiesson murders a baby falcon or two.
