The cool breeze carried with it a voice that spoke of regrets. The regret of the sun slowly whittling away the sleek ice. The regret of the rabbit as the wolf takes its life in a quick lunge. And the regret that Ash held for the way his relationship had turned out.
Spring was almost upon them. The cold nights curled together under a blanket transitioning to fans and sweat. They would be one year together in less than a month. But time seemed a fickle thing that takes and takes and refuses to give back. It took the ancient civilizations – in plague and war – the same as it took away rosy cheeks and bundles of sweaters. The same way it took away the early days of discovering the valleys and mountains of each others bodies, the experimenting with the many flavors of love and lust.
Time was a thief that could never be caught.
Ash shivered as he walked, a physical transition through time and space to clear his head. She had called him weak for walking away. Weak for finding the strength in himself to leave that which hurt. That which made him want to cause hurt in turn. For leaving to find the place where he could think through the situation without all of the negative emotions that scourged his mind. There’s a mistaken idea in the culture that men are the ones that cause such hurt in a relationship. But Ash knew that women could be just as destructive. Just as hurtful. Just as uncaring.
Ash walked unmindful of a destination and he found himself milling over the sights that greeted him. Through the cracks on the sidewalk beneath him grass and dandelions rose, finding any space they could to flourish. Life had a way of doing that, of looking for the cracks in the system that tried to limit and enforce its will upon us. If mankind could learn anything about the value of life it would be through the dandelion.
It was while debating the finer points of this thought, which was already proving to be but fleeting, that Ash realized where his mindless feet had taken him:
The McKinsy house.
The house hadn’t fared well in the years since his last visit. Windows were boarded up, broken down, then boarded up again. The front door was a mockery of what it once was. Holes arose throughout the base to send crystalline cracks ranging to the top where they converged and intersected to make holes.
It brought him back a dozen years to the days in his youth when the house invoked in him a certain level of fear. The kind of fear that men strive to invoke but only children can understand. A fear that spoke of all the terrors the night could hold. The McKinsy house. The place where those terrors became reality one night long before he was born.
Old Man McKinsy was said to have been old. Not because of his years, but throughout his years. It was said he was born old, and this Ash could believe having seen pictures of the man. It was also said he was born evil. Ash didn’t believe that part. No one could be born evil. It was something that festered under the skin. It grew throughout one’s years. It devoured happiness and love until only hatred and anger remained. After all, the stories of McKinsy’s evil nature only came after the murders. After he drowned his sons and wife in the bathtub and slit his own throat.
There was a game played by kids in the town. It was built on the primal understanding of fear that children are witness to. It was a simple game. In order to win all you had to do was walk through the house. Older boys would dare younger boys as a passage into their world of games. Girls would dare each other out of a need to share the discomfort. When Ash was eight he played but only made it as far as the door. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The house had a certain menace to it then. Even now in it’s decrepit state it gave him a peculiar uneasy feeling in his stomach.
Fighting the urge to run away, the urge to follow in the footsteps of the kid he once was, he ascended the steps. They creaked beneath his feet and he was surprised when they didn’t break. The door nearly fell off its hinges as he pushed it open. The air inside the house was strangely fresh. All the holes in the door, he thought as trudged on in.
The lobby was a grim reflection of the outside of the house. Holes in the floor gave way to dirt. Wallpaper hung peeling off the walls to reveal the latticework of cracks beneath. Broken glass littered the floor and in more than one place pieces were stained red.
It wasn’t as bad as he had suspected though. He was inside and now he could look back and laugh at the child he was. How he had been afraid of an empty house and the hollow stories told about it by the locals. No, the house wasn’t nearly as bad as he expected. Still, he didn’t like the way the wind coming through the holes in the walls sounded almost like laughter.
A child’s laughter.
He ducked through a doorway to his right. The top of the frame had cracked under the weight of years to form a intruding v-shape. This room was clearly used for dining. There was a table in the room that lay broken in the middle where the ceiling light had fallen so as to collapse inward in reflection of the door-frame.
Ash walked over to the table and bent down. He had to strain to lift the damned light and even then he couldn’t do more than roll it off the table. The wood was mostly decayed through. Time had taken its toll on the property. Everything that McKinsy once owned had long since gone to rot. It seemed such an odd thing to focus on but Ash could almost picture Old Man McKinsy sitting at the head of the table, his face in a permanent scowl as he ate the same damn meal every night and listened to the kids’ endless fighting.
That thought tasted bitter. Fermented. It took him a moment to realize why that was. It was the kids that bothered him. How in the fuck can she be pregnant? he thought. It was the first time he allowed himself to address the issue that brought him out here. The last time Ash had gotten his little guys checked they were barely swimming. He pictured them as kids flailing helplessly in a community pool. But now here she was pregnant!
Ash punched the wall. Splinters cut open the flesh of his knuckles. Beads of blood puckered to the surface. The echo of his outrage sounded through the house. A horrifying crunch that seemed to echo in the distance and return magnified. The oddness of it brought his attention back up to the doorway with it’s v-shaped wound. He ducked back under it and re-entered the antechamber. He walked to the only closed door in the room and opened it.
The cracked tile flooring was stained black. The mirror and the sink were smashed to tiny pieces that littered the ground. The toilet’s back cover was hanging out of the bowl. And there, against the back wall, was the famous bathtub. Where McKinsy had done his wicked deed.
And he could see it in front of him.
Old Man McKinsy dragging a woman over to the tub, one arm wrapped around her from behind. There was a child’s body already hanging over the side, it’s face submerged in the water. It wasn’t moving.
McKinsy grabbed the belt around the child’s waist with his free arm and threw the corpse across the room with a heavy growl. The body smashed into the mirror, fell in a collection of glass and limbs twisted all wrong, the sink shattering beneath. McKinsy thrust the screaming head of his wife into the bathtub. She fought against him but she was no match for the strength of his rage. Bubbles boiled to the surface. He used both hands to push her head into the water. Down in the solid bottom of the tub. Down down down her neck snapped with a crack like a pistol shot. All at once her limbs went limp and the bubbles subsided.
It only took a moment for Ash to witness the scene. The entire thing played out in a matter of eternal seconds, Ash standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Yet it was as if he had lived the experience of being there on that fated night. He felt it more than saw it. Like the scene had always lived somewhere deep inside him, waiting for his presence in the room to finally come rushing out. It was terrifying yet mesmerizing in its darkness.
Ash stepped backwards out of the washroom. Back into the antechamber where he turned around to make for the door. But he couldn’t move. McKinsy was in front of him again. This time the old man was dragging one of his sons by the hair, the one he had just thrown into the mirror. The boy was kicking and screaming as he was pulled through the doorway into the washroom.
Ash ran for the front door. His shoulder turned it to splinters as he burst through back into the fading daylight. He ran as long as he could. His chest ached with hot pokers of pain that threatened unconsciousness before he finally had to slow down and catch his breath. He killed them, Ash thought. He killed that cheating bitch and her bastard children.
But… where did that thought come from he wondered to himself as he resumed walking. Nothing that he’d seen suggested a reason for why McKinsy did what he did. But she was a cheating little whore and he killed her for it. That’s what happens to whores. He didn’t know where the thought was coming from. It was just there suddenly. But somehow he knew it was right. Something inside of him knew it in the way he knew the sun would rise again tomorrow. It was a universal truth. McKinsy killed his wife and his sons because they weren’t his. Ash could understand how he must have felt, the anger. The murderous anger that gripped him around the throat and refused to let go of him. The way he became a joke. The ignorant cuckold.
He understood it only too well.
It was dark by the time Ash got back home. He could hear running water coming from the bathroom. He took his time removing his shoes. Hanging up his jacket. He waited for the sound to cease before he moved deeper into the house.
“Ash, is that you?” came the voice he’d come to know so well over the last year. “Ash? You still mad about earlier? I’m sorry baby, I know I said some mean things. It’s scary for both of us. Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk about it without all the name calling.”
He made his way through the dark hallway, around the corner and straight towards the last door on the left. Her voice grew louder with each step.
He calmly opened the door and stepped inside.
Sara was naked in the bathtub, the water gently rolling across her chest and around her ribs. Her knees were islands in the murky pond. The fizzle of a bathbomb by her feet. Flickering light from unscented candles along the edge. Her eyes lit up when she saw him. He walked over and sat on the edge of the tub. She took his hand in hers.
“Look baby, I’m sorry for earlier. I get that you’re scared, I’m scared too. This is a lot for us to have to go through this early. But we’re both strong. We can get through this.”
Cheating
“I promise to work my hardest at it if you do. We can do anything as long as we have each other. I love you, Ash.”
whore.
As the last syllable left her mouth he took his hand from hers and reached for her head. She smiled and closed her eyes to kiss his hand.
Her head was underwater before she could begin to scream. He used two hands to hold her head under. Pushing down down down with all his weight. She was just a cheating whore and McKinsy showed him what happens to her kind. He watched the confusion drain from her eyes knowing she’d accept what he was doing, understand why he had to do it, understand that she made him.
But hopelessness didn’t replace the confusion. Instead her eyes grew fiery with rage and she bit into his hand with as much force as her jaw could produce. She felt his flesh give way, hot blood mixing with the water in her mouth, her teeth striking against hard bone and grinding into it until it snapped with a water-muffled crunch.
Ash screamed in pain and tried to pull his hand away but she wouldn’t let go. She held on and shook her head like a rabid dog. He struck her with his other hand. Once, twice, until she let go. Vomit threatened to spill out of his churning stomach as he saw the wreckage that had once been a functioning limb. Medical science couldn’t begin to repair what she had done.
Sara wasn’t waiting for him to recover. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and pushed Ash back as hard as she could. His lower back struck into the sink and his head whipped backwards into the mirror. Shards of glass fell like drops of rain. When he pulled his head away there were pieces stuck in his scalp. Blood was pouring down his face and shooting out in small jets.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he growled in a voice that wasn’t his.
She was silent, unsure whether speaking would calm him or merely provoke more anger. Instead she stood still, her eyes looking for something that could be used as a weapon but all she had at hand was a bottle of shampoo. She grabbed it anyway.
“I’m going to enjoy myself this time.” Without taking his eyes off her he crouched down and picked up one of the larger shards of glass. Blood began to drip from his hand but he didn’t seem to notice.
They stood there staring at each other. Him in the debris of the mirror. Her in the bathtub, the water hiding her feet. Each waited for the other to make the next move. The air was silent except for the pitter patter of blood dripping against the tile.
Then he smiled and lunged forward, the glass extended like a knife.
She squeezed the bottle in her hands. Shampoo shot out like water from a squirt gun and struck him in the face. He screamed and brought his hands up to his eyes. At the same moment she reached out for the arm holding the glass and shoved it backwards.
The shard entered his throat as he fell forward on top of her. A fountain of blood burst from his jugular. She had a moment to shriek before his weight was on top of her. Then she was under the water again, her face pushed into the bottom of the tub. She struggled to push him off of her again but he wouldn’t move. Nor could she reach the plug to drain the water from her position. Her lungs were filling with blood and water and still she could not shift the body.
Her final thoughts were not for herself but for the life that was growing inside of her and the strange feeling that somehow she had been through all this before.
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