Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

fangs and the man’s stupid widow’s peak, otherwise it was all talking and facial close-ups with trickling, too red blood coming from the corners of mouths and alabaster necks. She wasn’t really into monster flicks, but she wasn’t really hanging on the same thread of reality as the rest of the house no matter what was on; and something was better than nothing.

Her little brother, Rusty, waddled out of his bedroom with his cotton diaper drooping to his fat little knees, wafting a boggy cloud in with him. Their mother sewed all the diapers herself, but had no qualms about delegating cleaning duties to other family members—mostly to Rebekah. The kid had chocolate rimming his lips like brown clown paint and tear streaks carved through nondescript dirt on his cheeks.

“Sonofabitch,” Rebekah said and kicked down her left leg.

Her father had promised to tan her ass if she didn’t watch the little bugger while her mother was asleep in the basement—she worked the early bird shift at Walton’s Deli, mostly she baked bread but sometimes she ran the till. Her father was out on the town because it was Friday, and on days that ended in Y, he got drunk at Trent Tavern with a host of other bozos. Sometimes he never came home at all. She’d heard stories about him and the nasty women he trailed home, his nose in their asses like the dog he was. Those stories made her furious with her mother for putting up with him. More so than at her father for cheating and not caring enough to hide it.

“Come on. Come on.” Rebekah got to her feet and found necessity outweighing fluttery balance. She grabbed her brother’s arm and rushed him into the bathroom. Her fingers ground into baby flab and the kid started to whine as he fought to keep pace and balance. “You’re filthy. What’d you get into?”

Downstairs, the too loud sounds of someone trying to be quiet—surely their father—rose like a warning shot. She ran the tub and felt the water with one hand, and started to strip the shitty toddler with other. Water a decent heat, plug in the hole, she focused on the kid. The stink was fierce, he smelled decayed and she wondered how long it had been since anyone changed him—she didn’t consider that she was the only one home and awake. She wiped him clean, a grimace planted on her face, so firmly it had rooted, spruce elder style. The heavy diaper went over the toilet where she shook it out and then smeared away shit with a wad of toilet paper. That done, the cotton bundle went into the hamper and the toilet flushed away the evidence.

“Bath time,” she said and lifted Rusty by the armpits. He still had shit smears on his butt cheeks and around the bump of his scrotum and his nubby penis.

Something thumped downstairs and then something shattered. Not good. Rebekah closed the toilet lid and sat down, thinking her mother would be pissed all day tomorrow, and she’d have to put up with it. All because her mother put up with her no good, whore father.

Soon she’d be out of there. Go anywhere, get to a city, leave the hick town behind to live a proper life. She imagined renting a place in a high rise, taking an elevator with bags of groceries, standing next to an exotic neighbor with a skin tone impossible to pin down. She imagined standing by the mailbox and in the shared laundry where she washed jeans and tank tops and skirts and stockings, but never shitty diapers. She imagined young men with German beers and French cigarettes. She imagined the way the light reflected into the lobby and her superintendent flagging her down while she ran by, grinning, a couple days late for the rent.

Rusty made a wet, breathy noise, but Rebekah did not hear it.

Conscious thought had fled on the first flight out of town. Her attention drifted out as her eyes glazed over, pinned to the soap-scummy wall of the tub. The hypnotic splash carried her further from home and she saw bright lights: Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Hollywood, London, Paris. She was deep in her head until the coughing and gagging began.

Rusty was under the water, kicking and flailing, bubbles dancing from his mouth as he chugged down bath water.

“Ooh,” she whined and killed the flow as she righted the kid. She opened the drain, holding the lever, though not quite latching it all the way open. She kept her other hand on Rusty’s head. When the smoke began pouring from under the closed door she didn’t understand and let go of the lever, the water stopped draining. Up to her feet, across the small bathroom, she opened the door and an acrid cloud of smoke consumed her. There were voices out there. They sounded like men. Two steps onto the carpet of the hallway, she inhaled to shout and began hacking a painful cough when the smoke invaded her lungs more fully than any joint she’d ever lit.

She charged back into the washroom, closing the door behind her. She turned to the baby and said, “House’s on fire.” Her forehead heavy with tight, concerned rolls while sweat sprouted from pores like dewdrops.

The world was suddenly big and nasty; weighty from the night’s fun and more so with the lungful of smoke. Everything had too much gravity, and that vibe she was digging minutes earlier made the atmosphere seem sick with the flu and she saw that green color that Rusty sometimes manufactured in his diaper. She smelled it even. She opened the window next to the toilet and punched out the screen. It dropped with a clank.

Rusty fell back again, splashing, kicking and waving his arms. He began gulping and coughing, his cries were huge and awful. Too big for such a small kid, but