Frownland

They are both staring at him. Frankie's eyes are wide, and he
puts down the corncob he was about to bite into, as if he doesn't
like it anymore. Karen's mouth is pinched.
"Or 1 can what?" she says.
"Nothing," Gene breathes.
There isn't a fight, but a chill spreads through the house, a silence.
She knows that he isn't telling her the truth. She knows
that there's more to it. But what can he say? He stands at the sink,
gently washing the dishes as Karen bathes Frankie and puts him
to bed. He waits, listening to the small sounds of the house at
night. Outside, in the yard, there is the swing set, and the willow
tree--silver-gray and stark in the security light that hangs above
the garage. He waits for a while longer, watching, half expecting
to see DJ emerge from behind the tree as he'd done in Gene's
dream, creeping along, his bony, hunched back, the skin pulled
tight against the skull of his oversize head. There is that smothering,
airless feeling of being watched, and Gene's hands are trembling
as he rinses a plate under the tap.
When he goes upstairs at last, Karen is already in her nightgown,
in bed, reading a book.
"Karen," he says, and she flips a page, deliberately.
"1 don't want to talk to you until you're ready to tell me the
truth," she says. She doesn't look at him. "You can sleep on the
couch, if you don't mind."
"Just tell me," Gene says. "Did he leave a number? To call
him back?"
"No," Karen says. She doesn't look at him. "He just said he'd
see you soon."
He thinks that he will stay up all night. He doesn't even wash up,
or brush his teeth, or get into his bedtime clothes. He just sits there
on the couch, in his uniform and stocking feet, watching television
with the sound turned low, listening. Midnight. One A.M.
He goes upstairs to check on Frankie, but everything is okay.
Frankie is asleep with his mouth open, the covers thrown off.
Gene stands in the doorway, alert for movement, but everything
seems to be in place. Frankie's turtle sits motionless on its rock,
the books are lined up in neat rows, the toys put away. Frankie's
face tightens and untightens as he dreams.
Two A.M. Back on the couch, Gene startles, half-asleep as an
ambulance passes in the distance, and then there is only the sound
of crickets and cicadas. Awake for a moment, he blinks heavily at
a rerun of Bewitched, and flips through channels. Here is some
jewelry for sale. Here is someone performing an autopsy.
In the dream, DJ is older. He looks to be nineteen or twenty,
and he walks into a bar where Gene is hunched on a stool, sipping
a glass of beer. Gene recognizes him right away-his posture,
those thin shoulders, those large eyes. But now, Drs arms are
long and muscular, tattooed. There is a hooded, unpleasant look
on his face as he ambles up to the bar, pressing in next to Gene.
D J orders a shot of Jim Beam-Gene's old favorite.
"I've been thinking about you a lot, ever since I died," DJ
murmurs. He doesn't look at Gene as he says this, but Gene
knows who he is talking to, and his hands are shaky as he takes a
sip of beer.
"I've been looking for you for a long time," DJ murmurs, and
the air is hot and thick. Gene puts a trembly cigarette to his mouth
and breathes on it, choking on the taste. He wants to say, I'm
sorry. Forgiye me. But he can't breathe. DJ shows his small,
crooked teeth, staring at Gene as he gulps for air.
"I know how to hurt you," D J whispers.
Gene opens his eyes, and the room is full of smoke. He sits up,
disoriented: For a second he is still in the bar with DJ before he
realizes that he's in his own house.
There is a fire somewhere: He can hear it. People say that fire
"crackles," but in fact it seems like the amplified sound of tiny
creatures eating, little wet mandibles, thousands and thousands
of them, and then a heavy, whispered wkoofas the fire finds another
pocket of oxygen. He can hear this, even as he chokes
blindly in the smoky air. The living room has a filmy haze over it,
as if it is atomizing, fading away, and when he tries to stand up it
disappears completely. There is a thick membrane of smoke
above him, and he drops again to his hands and knees, gagging
and coughing, a thin line of vomit trickling onto the rug in front
of the still-chattering television.
He has the presence of mind to keep low, crawling on his knees
and elbows underneath the thick, billowing fumes. "Karen!" he
calls. "Frankie!" but his voice is swallowed into the white noise of
diligently licking flame. "Ach," he chokes, meaning to utter their
names.
When he reaches the edge of the stairs he sees only flames and
darkness above him. He puts his hands and knees on the bottom
steps, but the heat pushes him back. He feels one of Frankie's action
figures underneath his palm, the melting plastic adhering to
his skin, and he shakes it away as another bright burst of flame
reaches out of Frankie's bedroom for a moment. At the top of
the stairs, through the curling fog he can see the figure of a child
watching him grimly, hunched there, its face lit and flickering.
Gene cries out, lunging into the heat, crawling his way up the
stairs, to where the bedrooms are. He tries to call to them again,
but instead, he vomits.
There is another burst that covers the image that he thinks is a
child. He can feel his hair and eyebrows shrinking and sizzling
against his skin as the upstairs breathes out a concussion of
sparks. He is aware that there are hot, floating bits of substance in
the air, glowing orange and then winking out, turning to ash. For
some reason he thinks of bees. The air thick with angry buzzing,
and that is all he can hear as he slips, turning end over end down
the stairs, the humming and his own voice, a long vowel wheeling
and echoing as the house spins into a blur.
And then he is lying on the grass. Red lights tick across his opened
eyes in a steady, circling rhythm, and a woman, a paramedic, lifts
her lips up from his. He draws in a long, desperate breath.
"Shhh," she says softly, and passes her hand along his eyes.
"Don't look," she says.
But he does. He sees, off to the side, the long black plastic
sleeping bag, with a strand of Karen's blond hair hanging out
from the top. He sees the blackened, shriveled body of a child,
curled into a fetal position. They place the corpse into the spread,
zippered plastic opening of the body bag, and he can see the
mouth, frozen, calcified, into an oval. A scream.












Think about it.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.