Impressions of the Dead

Richard Kornak
©2006

 

“Of course it’s raining,” Roxanne mused under a veil of umbrellas.  “We’ll be grieving and soaked.”  She lit a cigarette and shook her head.  She disapproved of the elemental battle she found herself and the others enduring. 

            “Well,” began Adrian, “you knew Ben. An overcast burial is very appropriate.”  He noticed Roxanne’s cigarette for the first time and plucked it from her mouth, then handed her his umbrella so that she held two, and had not a hand for smoking.  “Have some respect, Roxy.”  The cigarette hissed when he tossed it into the wet sod.  Jane stomped it out anyway. 

            “Shall we?” she sighed, taking a friend in each arm.  The three of them walked solemnly to join the other umbrellas.  It was a small gathering, less than two dozen.  Jane assured herself that if it was her they were burying, there would be crowds.  Anyone and everyone she knew would turn out.  Even her mother would resurface from abandonment.  The eulogy would be read through speakers over the heads of a million mourners.  They would brave the weather just to hear the prayers spoken on her behalf and they wouldn’t even carry umbrellas.  No, they would stand and get wet, and their faces, and the sky, and the world would be crying, crying, crying.

              Adrian could not stop thinking about all the decaying bodies, people, who were laid out in symmetrical grids, equidistant from each other, from the surface, from life.  Someone made a living using a ruler and graphing paper and plotted out these morbid gardens.  Certainly an inclination in mathematics was a useful prerequisite.  He imagined how many possible Euclids could have been lost in the labyrinthine quadrants of burial plotting.  Ade heard the priest use euphemism after euphemism to shy around saying the word, “suicide,” but it was on the tip of his tongue.  It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

            Roxanne saw Benjamin’s mother, and thereafter could not take her eyes away.  Her cries had been the chorus of the procession, a guttural wailing that made Roxy feel less human.  She indulged in the feeling.

            “The following will be dismal days, my friends,” the priest carried on.  “Our great loss is something that we all have in common, and we will need one another to remind ourselves that we are not alone.  Benjamin had the impression that he was alone, but now he will find an end to his suffering.” 

            Several times he had to raise his voice to be heard over the maternal sobbing.  “We all struggle with great loss...”  He would lose his place and ended up saying, “Our great loss...” half a dozen times.  By the end, all three were grateful for the silence of prayer, but only the priest quieted.  Mrs. Killian’s sad song went through another interlude. 

            Afterward, the other mourners diminished slowly from the grave site.  Two by two they went, with one always getting less of the umbrella’s coverage than the other.  The pallbearers removed their immaculate white gloves and left them to soak on the top of the coffin.  No one spoke for a long time.  The rain and Benjamin’s mother made the only sounds.  “I believe the Killians would like to have this time alone,” the gentle priest said.  Adrian nodded and tugged at Jane’s arm. 

            Jane was caught in a stare, having noticed a new character at the grave.  Her eyes unwillingly studied him.  He and Roxy were the only ones wearing sunglasses.  Even in a suit she recognized the albino, half-hidden under his giant black mushroom.  What mystified her was his attendance.  “Why is he here?” Jane whispered to Adrian, who had also noticed the freakish boy from school.  Adrian, though curious, only shrugged and led the girls away.

            Back at the car, Roxanne finally allowed herself a smoke.  The rain had let up a bit, so she sat with her legs out the open car door, exhaling.  “That albino, Nick?  He’s some kind of genius,” she said between pulls.  “Quiet, but there’s a lot going on in there.  I used to copy his homework before every chemistry class.  I think it turned him on. ” The smoke burned off blue from the butt.  Behind her sunglasses her eyes smiled.  “Sexy albino.”

            Ade responded with, “You think anyone who doesn’t open their mouth as much as you is a genius.”

            Roxanne said nothing.

            They were all speechless when the albino made his way over to them.  He permeated the strong scent of sun-block.  He collapsed his umbrella and folded it up, saying, “Hi.”  His smile was broad, almost inappropriate at a funeral. When all three gaped at him, Nick seemed to realize his zeal was impertinent.  He removed his sunglasses and his mouth shrunk and spoke in a near whisper, “This was the worst one yet.”

            “Yet?”

            “I’m interning at the Brothers McMurphy funeral home.  Today they are going to show me exactly how the digger goes about refilling the graves, how it’s important to fill evenly, with zero grade, so that the land doesn’t shift and eventually uproot the caskets.  Imagine a new spring where everything is budding and birthing, then up come these paradoxical death symbols to make their presence known.” 

            Silence.

            “Anyway, that’s why I’m here, and boy, this has been the most depressing procession I’ve ever seen.”

            Adrian wasn’t sure if this behavior warranted some sort of angry or violent response.  It was wildly inappropriate to speak of their friend’s as a grave to be filled, but the naďveté of going into the details proved that he was unaware that his excitement was ill-timed.  Adrian decided to be friendly.  “Yes, it was very sad.  Hard for us, too.  He was a close friend of ours.”

            “Surely, you can’t be sad?  It was what he wanted, after all.” 

            Again, nobody knew how to respond.  The nonchalance with which the albino spoke was striking. 

            Silence hung for another moment, but Nick sensed the discomfort this time and abruptly took his leave, saying, “Sorry to have interrupted,” over his shoulder.

            Roxanne put out her cigarette on the bottom of her point-toed black shoe.  She laughed out the last smoke in sporadic puffs.  “Did you hear that, Jane?  The McMurphy Brothers.  Who would work with the dead?”

            “Not me,” Jane assured.

            Adrian shifted his weight.  “I feel bad,” he announced.  Without further explanation, he strode off to follow the dapper freak.  A strange young man with no pigment in a black suit with a black umbrella.  Adrian saw that he even walked in an unusual way, only the legs moving as if he was made of two conjoined halves.  “Hey, Nick,” Adrian said, placing a hand on the unwavering shoulder.  “I’m sorry, man, we just didn’t realize you were friends with Ben.”

            As the albino turned, his expression changed.  The scowl softened and a smile returned.  His sensitive eyes opened a bit more.  “I wasn’t friends with Ben.  I told you, it was what he wanted.”

            “What was?”

            The flaxen lashes looked about under those bleached brows that gave him a lab-rat look.  He made sure that no one was in earshot before he leaned in close to Adrian, so close Adrian could see into the colorless iris of his half-closed eye, its icy barrenness, and whispered, “A poison.” 

            For only a second the smile changed.  It became more devious.  Then he shrugged, and assumed a casual, non-worrisome face.

            “He probably figured that since I’m good at chemistry I could just concoct him some sort of relatively painless death.”  He hid his eyes with the sunglasses again.  “Funny thing is, I can.  I did.”

            Now Adrian was sure that what he had mistaken for naďveté was actually cold-bloodedness.  

            A devilish smile was plastered to the pallid face.  He stared at Adrian for a long time, then switched his gaze to the grave and the undertaker that awaited him.  The grass squished as he walked away. 

            It was an outrageous suggestion.  It wore at Adrian as he made his way back to the car. 

            When he told the girls, neither of them could remember ever hearing a confirmed cause of death.  Several rumors had been spread around school, poison being one of them. 

            Depending on whom they spoke to, he had also hung himself, jumped from a fatal height, and severed his own head, if that was possible.  In truth, it hadn’t mattered much to any of them how Ben had taken his life, only that he had, and that he was gone. 

            No one spoke as they watched Nick shovel the slop onto their lost friend.  From time to time he paused to even out the muddy backfill, taking pride in the burial.  All three looked on, and though none of them would admit it, each was painfully intrigued by the curious boy that excelled in chemistry. 

 

            Roxanne Gelardi let the vile tilt in her hand.  The purple liquid within sloshed from end to corked end.  Two ounces.  It seemed less, measly and shallow, and reminded her of the juice that remained at the plastic snake end of a freeze pop.  Only two ounces, yet the albino had assured her that only an ounce was truly needed to kill her.  To be sure, (since some would be lost as residue in the glass tube or on the lips, he explained), he had given her enough to kill her twice.

            She handled it for some time.  She teeter-tottered the bottled poison as if it represented her mind, weighing options on tilting scales.  It was mesmerizing, that purple potion.  Imbued with a history, wrought with the essence of having been Ben’s final cocktail.  So simple it would be, like downing a shot.  Straight down the hatch.  Roxanne imagined Ben, though not a drinker, throwing back a vile of the stuff, leaving an indigo ring around his mouth as he howled in inebriation.  When, she wondered, had suicide become so trendy?

            In her dresser Roxanne buried the poison under panties and brassieres, and she tucked it in very gently, accommodating the thing.   Her mother had long since tired of searching through Roxanne’s drawers and backpacks and pockets, but her brother often scrounged around in her stuff searching for cigarettes, so often that she thought about just buying him an entire pack.  This got her thinking about a cigarette, so she located her yearbook, opened a window and had a smoke.

            Flipping through, she felt the seams of the binding crackle as the glue gave and allowed the memories to be accessed.  She found Nick York’s picture almost immediately, though the flash of the camera had reflected off him so much that he appeared almost as a glowing apparition.  An angel in golden shroud.  The tiny amount of expression visible through the glare was indefinable. 

            Ashes fell into her lap, into the yearbook, and Roxanne cursed.  In response to her obscenity, there was a knock at her door.  “Yes?” she inquired, leaning to blow her smoke out the open window.  She brushed the last of the gray remnants from the glossy page and closed the book as her brother Jake came into the bedroom.

            He undoubtedly had smelled the burning tobacco from his adjacent window.  “Ma was in the bottle earlier. Yelling, storming around the house.”  He greedily snatched an offering, and Roxanne watched her fifteen year-old brother fumble with a lighter like the amateur smoker he was.  “I’ve been staying at Kevin’s house more and more, I’m thinking about just living there.  I can’t stand living with Ma any more.”

            On her wall was a mirror and in the mirror her reflection, long and bored, tendrils of smoke traveling up through invisible veins.  Jake rambled about their mother, about her drinking and their dead father, of Roxanne’s graduating and what was he to do when she was gone?  Though both of the Gelardi children were troubled, Roxanne was far better off, especially now with school winding down. 

            The girl looking back at her was younger than Roxanne felt, young Roxy who had been taunted with, “You don’t have to sell your body to the night,” and other incriminating lyrics from a song about a hooker that shared her name.  Gone was that girl who let boys, too many boys, put a clammy hand up her shirt to feel a warm breast.  She had grown, and let more boys do more things, things she regretted.  She knew how it all looked, too.  She knew they all remembered her father dying and thought, That girl is looking for a substitute for her father, for attention from a male to replace her father, and so it was.  Her name had preceded her, she was dubbed a whore. 

            A whore, she saw, looked like a girl with hair dyed so black it appeared blue.  She would hold a cigarette demurely, practiced but elegant, the long stem pressed snugly between a V made of the index and middle fingers.  Roxy saw that a whore had chipped black nail polish and unsexy hands and a brother who wouldn’t shut up shut up shut up.  A whore’s mother was an alcoholic and had no husband, only hundreds of suitors, if they could be called that, for certainly none of them were very suiting.  They came and went but never failed to scope out what else was available.  They saw a piece of meat.  She knew that now because that was how she felt.  A slab, cold and raw and ready to be burned.

            “Jake,” she interrupted, not taking her eyes from the mirror.  “Some other time.”

            When he was gone, Roxanne spent some more time in the mirror.  She looked at the reflection of the dresser behind her where the poison waited.  In the backdrop, summoning, pleading.  A tubular purple demon on her shoulder, shouting in her ear.  She opened the yearbook again, welcomed by the binding’s backtalk. 

            Such a mysterious boy, Nick York, with his ever-changing _expression and veined milky skin.  She did find him sexy, as she had jested at the cemetery.  He was frail but brilliant, and that was a spectacular trade-off.  A virgin, she realized, and that made him further alluring.  The power to kill but not the charms to love.  A beast in a weakling’s body, savagely providing a poison and then priding himself by burying his kill. 

            Roxy realized she was romanticizing.

            She ran a finger over the explosion that was identified as Nicholas K. York and closed the book again.  Suicide was more than an option now.  It was an investment.  She had paid Nick forty bucks.  That wasn’t necessarily a reason to go through with it, but the loss wouldn’t make it any easier to live, either.  She felt the overwhelming desire to get out of the trailer and into the rain, the stubborn rain which had not stopped for the two days since Ben’s funeral.

            Their mother slept on the couch, usually sprawled out in whatever fashion she had found comfortable at that particular drunken moment.  Roxanne and Jacob Gelardi were fortunate to have two separate bedrooms, since neither knew of anyone else in the park that had a two-bedroom trailer.  Roxanne recalled her brother once saying, “Ma only sleeps on the couch when she’s drunk,” which was funny because neither could remember a time when she had a bed.  Roxy had to pass her to get outside, so she paused and examined her slumbering mother.  She still clutched the bottle of whiskey that had knocked her out.  The dutiful daughter maneuvered the booze from her mother’s grip and took a long pull off the bottle.  It burned so bad going down that she decided to take it along with her.

            On her way out the door, Roxanne considered an umbrella that was leaning against the wall but went on without it.  She did wear a jacket, however, but only for a place to hide the bottle.  Before leaving she had also taken one final look around and left the rest of her pack, save one cigarette, for her brother.  Her last thought of her mother was an inkling of wonderment.  Roxy was curious if the drunk would take her bedroom or continue sleeping on the couch.  She thought of the quip about falling off the wagon and laughed when she realized her mother would never get off the couch to even be on the wagon.

            Outside with the sunless sky, Roxy realized that there was little need to be stealthy with her bottle because no one was out in the rain but her.  She puckered in and out of the mud.  Each step sunk in and squished out the muck from under her foot.  The rain had been relentless, steady and unyielding, and the ground was becoming less and less able to retain the water.  The slosh of the bottle was lost among all the other wet sounds, and by the time Roxanne reached her destination she was loopy and approaching a sincere inebriation.  Passing through the rows of trailers did not take long.  Beyond the park in that direction there were no other houses for further than the eye could see, which was far enough for Roxanne.  Countless times she had gone to the pond to get away from everything else, to revel in profundity.  She wondered what it was like to be rich, like Jane, and how life would be with no need to ever escape. 

            Once out of the park and into the woods, she found that the rain was mostly blocked by the dense canopies, but she fell several times and was a complete mess when she made her way to the reeds that formed a perimeter around the pond.

            Roxy sat in the aquatic grass, some tall cattails around her bending and swaying with the unpleasant gusts of wind.  There were even a couple bursts of thunder, faint and deep like a single drum beat or a voice from the sky that said, “Doom.”  She imagined Ben in the echelon of Heaven, leaning over his cotton ball cloud to entice her.  “Doom,” he’d say, and the winds of his breath would flow violently around her, enrapture her and carry her up into the sky.  Roxy slipped the test tube from her pocket, the meniscus reading 2 oz. at the hatch mark.  She swirled the liquid around.  On such a dreary day it appeared more black than purple.  A swallow of whiskey warmed her from the inside out but did not give her the nerve to drink from the vile.  The darkened color was unsettling, a reminder of how it would be once she consumed the dose.

          After another gulp from the stolen bottle, Roxanne crawled into the shallow water through the reeds.  Drops of rain mottled the surface.  This caused small choppy divots to appear and well out in rings.  With the water at her elbows, Roxy stared into the sky through the clearing over the pond, considering the whereabouts of Ben’s soul.  She was concerned about her own soul, what its destination would be if she decided to drink Nick’s chemical.  She began to cry, probably a direct result of her drunkenness.  It was overdue.  The rain hitting her face dissipated her tears, so she sobbed loud enough to hear herself, to know that her pain and her life and her potential death were real.

            Roxy’s head hung, the last few sobs dying off as small shoulder shrugs.  She opened her eyes and saw her distorted reflection on the water.  The arbitrary pattering of the rain on the surface made her face look as though it was being eaten away by acid.   It never kept form for very long, it dissolved.  As her crying ceased, a flash of lightning illuminated overhead and was followed by the inevitable, “Doom.”  For only a split second, Roxy watched her reflection become enlightened.  The image became a blur.  Only the faintest bit of her face was visible in all of its glare.  The bolt seemed to strike right through her, and she was immediately reminded of Nick York’s yearbook photograph.  The coincidence was too strong to deny.  With a splash she sprang up from the water and marched back to the shore, patting herself down and finding the sole cigarette she had hidden in a jacket pocket and forgotten about.  Despite how badly she was craving the nicotine, Roxy was unable to indulge herself.  The cigarette was little more than a clump of wet tobacco and a frayed filter in her hand. 

            It might have been to get a dry smoke from her brother, or maybe she finally understood the permanence of death: one way or the other, she wrenched the whiskey up from the muck and headed home.

            Busy in her head, it was a quick walk.  Nick York, she thought.  Something kinetic between them.  He was now a god-like lightning manipulator, a psychic shockwave.  His mind must have been so strong that he could channel energy over a distance, Roxy being some sort of receptor.  She laughed at herself, drunk and giddy.  She smelled something burning, likely struck by the lightning.  Yes, the electricity he rendered had drained all his color.  He probably also controlled the weather.  A way to lower the lights, bring down the mood.  That would explain why she was feeling suicidal in the first place!  She wasn’t that impressionable.  He adored her, she told herself, a mad scientist in love.  Buried her friend in hopes of replacing him. 

            Still deep in her wild thoughts, Roxy realized she was at the trailer.  She was met at the door by her brother.  “You’re soaked, Rox,” he said.  “You smell like a sewer.  Are you alright?”

            Clutching the whiskey under her jacket, she nodded.  “I’ll feel better if I can get a smoke.”

            Her brother stared at her.  Most likely, he thought she was nuts.  “Indian-giver.”

            As Jake ran to his room, Roxanne let out a huge sigh, her buzz strong and keeping her warm.  There was still hope for them.  He hadn’t given up on her, yet. 

            The bottle was still about a quarter full, the liquid inside a syrupy brown.  She decided that she had her fill, so she returned it to the snoring entity that still slept on the couch.  Gently Roxanne moved her mother’s dormant arm so that the bottle would be snug under her wing and not fall to the floor.  She did this quickly, before her brother returned with her cigarette, but not before emptying the contents of a certain test tube into the whiskey.  She watched as the purple was lost in the brown, the syrup seemingly unchanged.

 

            Adrian Sage peered up into the streetlights.  The amber glow made droplets of rain appear as stars whizzing by at light speed.  He wished for escape at that accelerated rate.  No looking back, an uninhibited time warp.  Discouraged by the impossibility, he pulled his soaked jacket closer to his body. 

            Fallen rain puddled on the asphalt and created a graveyard for worms.  Adrian found it easy to descend into thoughts of death, with the rain and the sleepless nights and the ominous presence of guilt.  His eyes betrayed him.  They were enemy-like corpuscles that plagued him with morbid images.  Eternities of soil, eons of heavily packed dirt peppered with fragments of bone.  Gnarled roots like earthly veins sprawled out, resembling rivers and their tributaries reaching in desperation for nutrients.  Amidst the weight of the world he saw his friend’s timber box with its corpse inside, decaying.  It should have been Ben, but the dead face that sprung up was Roxy’s, cracked lips splitting to whisper, “Kiss me.”

            His exhausted mind receded from fantasy.  In reality, Adrian aimed to be the bead that broke the abacus.  Frivolous neighbors and their intangible turfs, seal-coated driveways and pillared porticos; none of them had any idea.  Comfortable in those homes, they were dry from the rain.  They were ignorant to the civil war waged in Adrian’s head.  Ignorant of the grave where he buried his friend.  Their self-seclusion had made ghosts of them all. 

            All of the homeowners on the street had temporarily vacated due to “uninhabitable conditions,” the basements of each home flooded with sewage.  For days, the residents had been cooped up in hotels or with family.  The entire comfort of their lives had been thrown into vertigo.  Simple things, like daily routines, were completely lost.  With so much to sort out and renovate and repair, the suicide of an eighteen-year-old was irrelevant.  Adrian wondered what kinds of things could take precedence over life. 

            The ghost town remained lit as if on display.  Not only were the streetlights aglow, but several porticos were illuminated in an inviting brilliance.  Some of the homes had flood lights angled toward magnificent landscaping; rhododendrons, hydrangeas, dogwoods, all to beware any potential burglar that the homeowners had a green thumb.  Adrian thought that all those suburban families had issues behind closed doors, but so long as that door was spectacularly carved with elaborate decoration and had crystalline glass windows, it would seem as though everything was fine.  For instance, he knew each of those homes had a foot and a half of reeking sewage sitting stagnant on their basement floors, so seeing the homes’ adornments in full fervor was misleading.  No, the suburban folk were a different breed.

            Adrian traipsed up the street of cloned homes, each one only different enough from the next that it became a game to spot the elusive differences.  He continued to think of Roxanne.  It seemed so long since they had first become friends; she already well on her way to being considered trashy, Adrian still a virgin and bewildered by the world.  It was probably his virginity that attracted her in the first place.  The unintentional innocence that never fails a privileged child.  He had no hardships, no cause to act out.  Roxy had hope then, and it shamed Adrian that he was unable to help her.  He certainly could have changed things. He could have gotten her out of the trailer park, away from her mother, and made her feel something other than remorse and hopelessness.  Instead, he did what so many others had done and used her, left her with more to regret.  Roxy forgave him.  She accepted that they were friends just having fun, but he knew that she willed differently. 

            The rain continued its music.  In addition to the pattering tempo, a bass drum kept a thunderous beat.  As a flash made day of night, Adrian cursed himself for not bringing his umbrella, and realized it had been neglected because it was still sitting in the sink of the guestroom where he had left it to dry two days prior.  It hadn’t stopped raining since Ben’s funeral.  It had softened the sod at the burial.  Pelted the scarce umbrellas.  Tapped like ravenous fingers on the slick coffin.  By only ducking out of coverage, it had saved him the shame of tears.  It hadn’t rid him of them. 

            Benjamin Killian had been one of his first and most devout friends.  In the last couple years of high school, he had become very depressed and was quite a social recluse.  He was rarely seen during after school hours.  His grades were still excellent, but it seemed as though something was consuming him.  Not long before his suicide, Ben had approached Adrian and told him that he wanted to do something exhilarating, most likely illegal.  Adrian would never have agreed if Ben hadn’t already drawn out the entire plan, taken every precaution and considered every angle.  His father, Robert Killian, was the director for the Department of Sanitation, and had decided that the Killians would move as soon as Ben graduated.  In addition, Ben was being forced to go away for school, despite his desire to stay local and take a year off.  The home that Robert Killian bought, the home where Ben would not be allowed to live, was on the street of cloned, sewage-stricken houses.

            With access to blueprints, Robert had studied several of the homes in the neighborhood, acknowledging the drainage and sewage arrangements and reading up on all of their histories.  It was his intention to retire within the next ten years.  That house was to be his final home.  His commitment to the new residence overshadowed Benjamin and his achievements and allowed little time for Ben and Adrian to steal the blueprints.  It was Ben’s idea that if they had access to the entire structure of the street, they could find a water main and flood all the houses, dissuading his father from any further interest in moving to that neighborhood.  All the commotion would allow Ben to stay home for at least a semester.  Adrian knew it would work and wanted to help his down-trodden friend, so he did.

            Each house on the street, including the one the Killians were buying, would ironically flood a week before they were set to move in.  It would be even more effective if the town sanitation department had to pay out of pocket to repair damages to several homes.  The frustration of the ordeal was sure to delay any intentions of moving.  Ben would get to stay. 

            After they had the blueprints of the street, everything went as planned.  Adrian’s role was to stay below the manhole cover, clutching a rusted ladder that held to the sewer tunnel wall.  Ben was to start the flood while Adrian listened through the small holes in the steel cover.  After Ben found the main, it took less than a minute for the families to rush out of their homes, panicking.  “It worked,” Adrian had said, and his cohort ran through the knee-deep water to climb the ladder and stand alongside him to listen.  A huge smile spread across Ben’s face when he heard the families rushing into oversized vehicles and starting off.  It had been his first genuine smile in a while. 

            Then he turned to Adrian and pushed him from the ladder.  This sent them both in an awkward splashing clamor to the water below.  Before Adrian could even retaliate, Ben grabbed him over the ears, cupped his face, and leaned forward to kiss him.  Adrian had hardly taken a breath when the lips pressed against his own, hungry and passionate.  He felt the faint softness of a tongue and violently pushed Ben away, then sat up and held him under.  The shock had hit him very forcefully.  He felt freezing cold all over.  Underneath him, Ben fought to escape and Adrian let him go. 

            Ben surfaced, gasped for air.  “You tried to kill me!” 

            “What’s wrong with you?” Adrian had shouted.  “What is your problem?”  He repeated this a few more times and angrily stalked off, leaving Ben in the sewer.  That was the last time he had seen him alive.  Either Ben already had the poison or he sought out Nick York that night.  He died only a few hours later.

            Beyond the cluster of unoriginality and multiplicity, there was a copse of woods that served as the boundary line of yards and separated one neighborhood from another.  Huge oaks reached like fingers for the sky, proving to have existed long before any of the developments below.  Just ten years earlier, those woods extended into the then non-existing backyards and homes.  Adrian remembered those days before the town had befallen the infectious urban sprawl.  Sun-shielding canopies graced the sky like a green heavenly ceiling.  He recalled spending a lot of time there with Roxy.  Back then, his was the newest development, only a half mile straight through the woods from the ghost town.  They’d spend hours exploring, sliding down small ravines and straddling tiny streams.  As early teens, she’d ride Ade’s bus, but they would never make it inside the house.  Instead, they’d drop their backpacks on the porch and head right to the backyard, straight into the woods.  Their own private playground.  A pond still existed back there, but it was in the opposite direction of his development, more in the way of Roxy’s trailer park.  Adrian had heard her say that she still spent time there occasionally. 

            He cut across a lawn using the ornamental light to guide him, and passed between twin houses.  The clearing ended abruptly.  It left the woods looking trimmed and groomed.  Adrian trudged through the yard, now smelling his and Ben’s handiwork.  It lasted only a minute.  Once into the trees, under the canopies, the stench was gone.  Adrian continued to walk.  His shoes squished with each step.  Though the smell of sewage was behind him, Adrian still thought of Ben.  He thought of him sitting in the sewer, water dripping from his nose, his slicked hair, from all over.  He left him there.  Underground.  He found his own way out.  Now, Adrian thought that it might have been easier to appease Ben and allowed him the kiss.  Maybe he’d still be alive, out of the sewer, out of the ground.  The guilt came over him again.  He recalled Mrs. Killian wailing at the burial, and Robert’s cold demeanor, his refusal to cry.  Adrian figured the Killians would definitely move now.  They would flee their ghost town.  He wondered how he could ever get over the haunting. 

            Sometimes, he put his family in the Killians’ place.  Morbid thoughts, like discussions of where he’d be buried, would he be cremated?  How many pallbearers would be needed to carry his coffin?  6?  8?  What are the weight distribution regulations?  There must have been a thousand nit-picking details, things no one considered until they were in the middle of grieving and still unconcerned with such hushed, mundane things.  The Killians never chose it, but they made those decisions regardless. 

            Ade wondered when it would stop raining, if it ever would.  He associated the weather with his own miserable feelings, a relentless reminder of his involvement and new relationship with mourning.  More than once, he considered the rain to be a sign, something to ward him from the things he intended to do.  A fated fire extinguisher.  Heavy with his soaked clothes, Adrian found the tree he was looking for, the tree that was his vantage point.  From that spectacular oak on the edge of the clearing, Adrian had a perfect view of half a dozen backyards.  The tree was not special because of its age or its physical anomalies.  Carved deep into the bark there was a symbol.  He remembered the smell of the alive, wounded tree when first he cut into it.  The faint green tint to the moist inner layers.  Scrubbing his hands with scalding water to get off the sap.  It was a heart, long and thin, but just thick enough to hug the initials AS+RG.

            After touching the romantic rune and subsiding his nostalgia, Adrian turned to gather the view.  Below the small hill upon which he stood, he saw the fuses he had laid out, each of which led to the storm doors and into the basements of six identical houses.  They all conjoined to one main fuse that started at his feet.  In those basements there was gasoline, methane and enough fireworks that Adrian wasn’t sure the damage would be contained to those six homes.  It was a sloppy bit of bombing, but he was unconcerned with being caught.  It was a graveyard for worms. 

            He had the foresight to protect a box of matches in a plastic sandwich bag.  Adrian removed this from his jacket, and wary not to dampen any of them, carefully took a match from the box and struck it with a roar.  The fuses had been soaked in gasoline, so when the small adamant flame danced its way to the nylon, ignition was immediate.  The flame elongated and began a one-man race, quickly darting away such that Adrian was reminded of the stars at light-speed, the cylindrical illumed blips.  One racer became six, and the candelabra formation was so bright Adrian looked away.  Then, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, the same from which he took the matches, produced and uncorked a vile containing a dark liquid, and upended it into his mouth.

 

Jane McMurphy knocked with meaning on the door to her father’s study.  She was well aware that he would not hear it, lost in the symphonies.  His ability to hear was something that he reveled in, his “last exceptional sense,” as he would say.   Her father had not seen her in ten years. 

When she was small and he was still an actual business partner, Jane avoided the basement fearfully.  She had seen them, the blue bloated bodies, all swollen.  They were naked, with surprised looks on their faces.  It was a way her mother would dissuade her from acting out.  Since her father spent so much time in the company of the dead, her mother would say, “Go downstairs and tell your father what you just did,” whenever Jane would misbehave.  She always apologized her way out of those kinds of punishment.  Still, her father had dedicated so much of his life to beautifying corpses, she wished he could see what a beautiful young woman his daughter had grown to be.   

            Again, she rapped the heavy oak door.  In the years following the accident, her home had continued to exist as a funeral business despite her father’s decreased involvement.  Much of the extended family’s financial investments were in the house, but no one expected Mark McMurphy to move.  Instead, he had turned the home into a dark mansion.  Many of the rooms added during the additions were without electrical outlets and lit only by sunlight or candlelight.  He despised the feeling of electric light on his skin.  He claimed that he could feel the warmth from even the smallest wick’s flame. 

            Most of the renovations included building toward the sky.  The funeral home was huge, four stories high, which meant that there were constant visitors invading her quarters.  Jane unwillingly became a secretary of sorts.  “Dad!  Uncle Michael is going to send someone over to pick up some paperwork or something, he’ll be here soon.”  The symphony continued, rising and falling intensity.  Her blind father was undoubtedly on the other side of the door, orchestrating in the air with his unskilled hands.  “Dad!” Jane cried again.  She pounded her fist, three hard beats.  The music cut.  “Your door is locked again, come let me in.”

            Jane waited, listening to her father come to the door.  Spokes rattled.  A lock clicked and the door was made vulnerable, so she went in. 

            Her father sat in his wheelchair, maroon robed.  His skin was taut and pink.  The scar tissue was thick all over his face.  Unseeing eyes were pointed at the floor, a little to the right of where Jane stood.  It looked as though he was deep in thought. 

            The car wreck which had pillaged his body was the result of an intoxicated truck driver.  Her father lost the use of his legs on impact.  In desperation to pull him from the flames, the rescuers smashed the driver’s side window.  Glass shards stole from him the miracle of sight. 

            Years earlier she had heard him, screaming in the night, his throat ripping, scraping to yell, “I should have died in that car, that death trap!  I should have burned to ash!  What kind of existence is this?”  He yelled and cried, and she fell asleep that night while he could still be heard whimpering, “Burned...burned...”

            He never acted that way in front of her, and Jane hadn’t heard him say anything like that in years.  Now, he was always pleasant.  “There’s my girl.  I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, I was lost...”

            “...Lost in your symphonies, I know, dad.  I only wanted to let you know that Uncle Michael is sending someone.  Please don’t ask me to help him.  I’ll let him in and bring him to you, but I seriously don’t want to work with dead people.  Please respect that.”

            Mark McMurphy chuckled.  “I doubt he’s dead, sweetheart.  Just let him in, I can handle it from there.”  He confidently wheeled himself around his huge oak desk, stained to match the door and all the trim that bordered the gigantic room.  Wall to wall bookshelves gave the study a looming ambiance, as if the spirits of dead authors protected their immortality.  After the settlement, there was plenty of money to spend on things like gargantuan collections of bound books or pieces of pre-civilization art or private school tuition. 

            Still, she was graduating from a public school. Her father transported himself manually, refusing to purchase an electric wheelchair.  Neither Jane nor Mark McMurphy owned a car.

            They made sacrifices.

            He said it was because they needed to struggle to evolve.  To constantly adapt.  To feel less miraculous because nothing is fated.  “You’ll have to meet him in the foyer, that’s where they will always wait once Bernard lets them in.” 

            Bernard, one of her father’s three butlers, was a heavy-set oaf that constantly stared at the crippled man.  Jane had caught him several times.  He would examine the puckered flesh and wasted eyes, the pitiful remnants of a once extraordinary creature.  The minimalist that her father was, Jane had a hard time understanding why he employed butlers at all.  “Why don’t you get rid of that one?  He’s quite fat and very useless.  Replace him with somebody thinner and then you won’t need me around here as often.”  It was reasons like Bernard that Jane couldn’t leave her father.  As much as she hated living in the dark castle, the thought of fleeing the tormented man disturbed her.  It not only troubled her for the reason that she herself had been abandoned, but because her father’s abandonment would mean leaving him under the watch of Bernard.

            “I’ll have you know that he is an excellent singer.  Operatic.  Sometimes he’ll come in here and mince bravado with the symphonies.  I’ve never seen the man, but I’ll tell you, when he’s really belting out some chesty thunder, he sounds twenty feet tall!”  Jane sounded no reaction.  Mark let out an exasperated sigh.  “You know, I’m worried about you.  It’s all this rain, isn’t it?”  It wasn’t the rain.  It was her dead friend.  She didn’t bother to correct him.  “Unbelievable.  I hear it, even though it’s constant, I’m always aware that it’s falling.” 

            The room was pretty dark, except for the area surrounding a hearty candle in a sconce on the wall behind Mark.  There was a lightning storm.  She hadn’t noticed until her father began commenting on the weather.  A tree was being gently jounced by the wind.  Thunder grumbled.

            Expertly maneuvering himself to face the battery-operated stereo, the ruined man reached a hand up to revive the sounds he loved.  “Thanks, Janie,” he said to the bookcase.  The symphonic saga resumed. 

            Jane supposed this was her cue to leave, but she had noticed something out the window.  It was the same frame as before, except the tree was being jostled a bit more violently, and there were two figures in the corner, garbed in raincoats and looming to peek in on a monster.

            She had caught someone spying once before.  At the time there was nothing that Jane could think to do.  She had been far beyond shocked and hurt by the inhumane nature of other kids.  She imagined the wild legends that must have been created, about how her father had become the way he was, about a curse that enslaved him and kept his horrific body alive, the man in the mansion.  There must have been some kind of story, some hype that caused the kids to come.  They even came out in a lightning storm to peer into the window of a tragedy.

            Jane ran from the study and left the heavy doors open, allowing her father’s soundtrack to spew downstairs and into the main foyer and all the off-shooting hallways and stairwells and lofts.  She followed the music through the long hall that had nothing in it. Not a picture, a statue, a plant.  Down two flights.  Past the kitchen where a dinner was being prepared by the light of countless candles.  Past Bernard.  Outside. 

            The kids, they were young, not yet in junior high, one in a red rain slicker and the other in yellow, and they were quite surprised to see Jane.  One of them remembered to snag his umbrella before he departed, the other did not.  Not right away.  When he did look back to consider retrieving it, he saw the soaked figure ensuing and stomped heavier in his galoshes to keep up with his friend. 

            Between the explosive splashes and the sheets of rain, through rising and falling walls of water, the chase continued.  Jane was impervious to the overwhelming precipitation, intent on catching at least one of the cowards.  She bent to pick up the neglected umbrella and did not break her stride.  The lagging spy, in red, desperately called out for his friend to wait.  The yellow slicker showed no signs of concern.  His boots seemed to fit better, over-turning at a much faster rate, and clung snugly to the feet within. 

            When the boy in the red rain jacket peered over his shoulder again, his umbrella caught him under the chin with a crack.  A crash of lightning.  A splash.

            Jane heard a stranger’s ravenous scream.  A fist invaded the red hood.  The puddle came alive with struggle.  Under her weight, the ground writhed and flailed.  “You want to see a monster?” she heard the enraged stranger growl.  “You’re a monster!”  A landed blow.  A squeal.  “Monster! Monster!”  Swinging arcs of fist.  “Monster!”  Somewhere in the middle of it all, Jane realized she was pummeling the poor kid senseless.  Her arms were bewitched, throwing punch after punch effortlessly.  The rhythm was glorious.

            As the squeals continued to sound, Jane found her own symphony.

            Then, there was a pull from behind and the methodical beating took to inertia.  She was thrown off balance and fell backward into the mud, heaving after the exhaustive chase and capture.  A figure hovered over her momentarily.  “Are you alright?” she heard a familiar voice say. 

            Bernard?

            “Yes,” Jane answered, propping herself up on an elbow.  Only then did she realize that the figure wasn’t talking to her.  Instead, he was helping the red slicker out of its fist-induced delirium, out of the mud.  It wasn’t long before the kid ran off in the same direction his friend had gone, and the savior’s attention was then redirected toward her.

            “Miss McMurphy,” the figure addressed.  Jane saw that he carried an umbrella, not that it would do her any good now.  He wore a black trench coat to match the bulbous overhead shield, and when her eyes focused and her sight penetrated through the disruptive rainfall, she saw that his skin was dead white, like the prune-finger aftermath of an extended soak in the tub.  “Though my business is with your father, I can’t help but ask what that was about.”

            Jane put a foot under her and began to stand, not taking her eyes from the figure before her.  Despite changing her angle and squinting, she still couldn’t make out anything from the monochromatic face.  There seemed to be no shade, no definitive bone structure or contours.  Faceless.  She wanted to demand to know who he was, why he felt he could come onto her property and manhandle her; however when she went to open her mouth, words failed her. 

            “We officially met the other day, but we’ve gone to school together for years.”  He stepped forward and she saw his face.  “Nick, remember?”  Closer, and Jane was protected under the umbrella.  Somehow she didn’t feel uncomfortable, despite the oddity she closely shared the coverage with.  He was remarkable to look at.  “I’m headed inside to tend to business, it might benefit you to come in and change into some dry clothes.”

            Such concern was not what she expected.  The albino was supposed to be sinister, he and his macabre exploitation.  Adrian and Roxy both seemed to believe so.  Ever since Ade had informed them of the albino’s wild claim, she had unintentionally been thinking about the strange boy and his alleged capabilities.  

            Still unable to find the right words, she followed him around to the front of the mansion.  Tucked under his arm, she found a new protectorate.  He had saved her from committing homicide.  Never before had she felt so angered, so eruptive.  The last time Jane saw someone peeping into her home, she did nothing; she let them have their little thrill.  Something was different now, she was different.   A change had occurred, and now Jane found herself unable to accept all the idiosyncrasies attributed to her.  Something had to give. 

            Bernard was waiting in the foyer when they entered.  “Miss McMurphy!” he bellowed when first he saw her bemired state.  He certainly had never seen dainty Jane in that way.  He was clearly taken aback.  After half-sputtering a few inquiries, the fat man quieted.  Nick handed him the umbrella.

            “Please take this for me,” he requested, then reached into his coat and rendered an envelope.  “And enclosed in this are listed the materials I need of your employer, Mr. McMurphy.  Please assist him in finding the appropriate items.  I’ll tend to Jane and meet you back here in twenty minutes.”  Bernard, still perplexed, took the envelope uncertainly and slowly headed upstairs toward the study.  Once he was gone, Nick turned to Jane and in a less authoritative, age-appropriate tone exclaimed, “You have butlers?”

He was awed by the mansion.  The shady atmosphere left no need for sunglasses.  She led him to her bedroom befit for a queen: elaborate armoires, lavish rugs, curtains clinging to pillared bedposts, the scent of cleanliness.  “My father won’t buy me a car but he’ll have no problem splurging on a Persian rug from the Bronze Age.”  The conversation was not forced.  Jane repeatedly reminded herself that the albino was possibly into assisted suicide, but somehow he just seemed too harmless to pose a threat.  Besides, Jane had no intentions of killing herself.

            She disappeared behind a screen of tall standing shutters, and before long the sopped outfit she had been wearing was draped over the top.  Jane realized that Nick was probably squirming on the other side, the knowledge of her nudity unbearable.  Something about that moved her, and she prolonged the suspense by taking her time, throwing each individual article on top of the other, concluding with the undergarments.  During the entire undressing, she considered asking him about the poison.  She was curious what it looked like.  What was in it.  Jane thought it was highly unlikely that the claim was true, but felt guilty because part of her hoped that it was.  “I’m feeling much more relaxed, thank you,” she said and emerged from behind the screen in a bath towel.

            Nick immediately diverted his eyes.  The exposure, the prancing around in scant covering; it tickled Jane.  She had modeled before, but the camera’s eye was less alluring than Nick’s embarrassed pair.  They had no melanin to hide behind.  “A shower will be nice,” Jane alluded. 

            “I’ll go wait in the foyer,” the albino offered, still avoiding eye contact.  He started for the door. 

            “When I’m out of the shower, you can take me wherever you are going.”

            With this suggestion, Nick’s eyes shifted back to Jane.  A barrier had broken.  “That would be very nice.”  He grasped the doorknob.  He gave Jane a subtle nod.

            As he turned and started to disappear, Jane called out to him.  “Hey, Nick.”

            The towel dropped to the floor.

 

            He was funny, in his chic black apparel and dingy Oldsmobile. 

            During the car ride they had talked at length about each of their lives.  Nick had spoken of his parents; his father, a mailman, and his mother, a secretary; how theirs was a perfect marriage, how they met in high school, and how they both had recessive alleles but neither was an albino.  He had a younger brother, Kevin, who also had normal pigmentation.  Jane figured it must be difficult for him to coexist with normal-looking people.  She had imagined a family of dining albinos, sipping white wine, cutting white meat on a white plate, all upon a spotless white tablecloth.  Like marble statues. 

            While he spoke, Jane listened for a digression.  She wanted a shift in conversation, something morbid to come up so that she could ask him about the poison in a non-confrontational, humorous way.  Jane thought she had found her chance when he stopped at her uncle’s house to drop off paperwork.  She remained in the car, considering what to say when he returned.  I’ve got to ask you something, she imagined herself saying.  Have you ever assisted in a suicide?  Are you an instrument of death?  The albino came out of the house and rushed through the rain back to his car.  Despite her mulling, Jane found it impossible to ask anything of the sort. 

            Nick also warned her that his house was in need of repairs.  He explained that his family wasn’t much concerned with the appearance of things.  “Albinos are treated much like anything else that is different or undesirable to look upon.  We are made into outcasts, vilified into malicious freaks.”  Jane observed as he ranted.  “That’s the problem with people, Jane.  The fear of the unknown.”

            What he said lingered, and Jane was perturbed by how irrefutably relevant it was.  With Ben Killian’s death, she had been thinking quite a bit about mortality and the meaning of it all.  “Then what is one to do with the unknown, since it is certainly impossible to know all?”

            At this point, Nick pulled the Oldsmobile onto the rough gravel drive that lead home.  The car crept along.  “You’ve got to acknowledge the unknown.  Keep it at bay.”  Some puddles and potholes disrupted the ascent up the driveway, but Nick went on.  “That’s why I’m studying mortuary science in the fall.  I figure, so long as I do favors for the dead, I have nothing to fear.”

            The engine sputtered out and sounded like it might never start again.  The Oldsmobile continued to make noises long after they had gotten out.  Nick assured Jane that was normal.  She hadn’t yet decided if she’d mind being stranded anyway.  Something about him was charming, and she had a hard time believing that he was capable of killing anything.

            Nick’s house was little more than an A-frame shack.  His scarlet letter.  The dilapidated siding appeared brittle to the touch, as though the most subtle force would bring it down to a skeletal heap.  The storm was a testament to the house’s unforeseen durability. 

            After stepping upon the creaking porch, Nick shook out most of the water from his limp umbrella.  He placed it to lean lazy against the house.  “After you,” he insisted, and held the door open for Jane as she stepped inside.

            There was an immediate draft, a cold force that rushed out to meet them.  There had been no sun for days.  Jane found that the York’s house, like her own, was lit mostly by candles.  The first room they entered was quite large given the size of the home, and Jane figured it was probably the family room.  She noticed outlets and lamps, none of which were in use.  A reclining chair, posed vacant, begged for attention.  Its proprietor was still parading through the storm to bring the masses their mail.  A woman was sewing on the opposite side of the living room.  “Hello there!” she called out, not taking her eyes from the needles that stroked intensely like violin bows. 

            “Mom, this is Jane McMurphy,” she heard the albino say behind her.  His hands were suddenly upon her, on her shoulders.  Jane was startled, but Nick only removed her jacket and hung it on a rack.  “Her family runs the funeral home.  She’s a classmate of mine.”  Mrs. York remained intent on her craft.  She did not respond.  Her tongue darted in and out of her mouth as she concentrated. 

            “Hi,” Jane sheepishly accomplished.  Something was reminiscent of talking with her father. 

            There was a long pause.  Jane shifted uncomfortably.  “Well hello, dearie,” Mrs. York finally managed.  She forced herself to place the needles and her progressing curtain on the table beside her.  The movements were over-animated, exaggerated to show that she was reluctant to stop.  “Don’t mind me, I’m being quite rude.  My hands get into a rhythm that’s hard to break.”  Though she appeared to be big while sitting in the chair, only when she stood did Jane see just how massive Nick’s mother was.  It was evident that she spent most of her time sitting.  After the exhaustive effort of standing, Mrs. York took Jane’s hand in her own.  “Oh, my.  What an enchanting little thing you are.  Are you a mortician?”

            “No, definitely not.  Never.”

            Mrs. York roared.  “That’s funny.  I couldn’t see a beauty like you embalming corpses.  I’m not sure that the death business is best for Nicholas, either, but your family has certainly been treating him well.  I was surprised they granted him the internship.  It must be something else living in a house like yours.  Simply awful.  Maybe you can convince this one to do something less depressing.”  Her gaze was directed at Nick.  He was putting away his hat, the last of his accessories.  “It won’t be healthy for him to spend so much time with the dead.  He’s ridiculed enough as it is.”

            Jane’s face slightly twisted in ambivalence.  She was unsure how to be tactful.  “Come, Jane, and I’ll show you around the house,” Nick interjected.  He grabbed her hand and began to tug her away from the living room.

            “It was a pleasure meeting you, Jane.  You are quite lovely,” Mrs. York gushed.  She slumped back into her chair, into a custom impression.  “Nick, make sure you’re being a good host,” Jane heard her say from the other room.  The lethargic woman was completely harmless, much like her son seemed to be.  The more Jane was exposed to Nick’s lifestyle and insights, the harder it was to consider him a villain.  She tried to envision him in a lab coat, laboring over bubbling beakers, pouring contents from one flask to another, cackling maniacally.  It was hard to imagine.

             In the middle of her tour, between the kitchen and dining room, Nick stopped abruptly in the hallway.  He reached up and grabbed a small piece of rope that Jane hadn’t noticed was attached to a door in the ceiling.  When he pulled the twine, the door yawned open.  “This is my room,” he said, pulling the step ladder stairwell down from the opening.  Jane followed him up into the attic. 

            She expected to see a chemist’s elaborate workshop.  Rodents running on exercise wheels.  Man-sized microscopes.  What she saw was a nearly empty room.  There was no indication that its inhabitant had any interest in science.  Or comfort.

            Due to its shape, the house came to a narrow point right in the middle of Nick’s room.  The sloping ceiling forced them to duck.  It wasn’t long before Jane started to feel a strain in her back.  “You can’t possibly enjoy this,” Jane suggested almost inquisitively.  “Why don’t you make your brother take this room?”

            “I don’t plan on living here forever.  Besides, I spend less time in solitude.  There’s nothing that makes me want to stay and waste away up here.  It’s really just a place to sleep.”  Jane considered what he said, all the while looking around the small, cavernous bedroom.  It contrasted so much from her own that she realized how much variance there was in the human character.  Here it was, explicitly spelled out.  The spectrum’s extremes, exemplified by an uncanny befriending.

            A mattress lay in a corner, no box spring, no sheets, no pillow.  A small night stand, loaded with books, was the only piece of furniture.  Nick uncomfortably looked around the room.  “There’s really no place to sit up here.”  He laughed, embarrassed.  Jane realized that he had probably never had company in his room, certainly no girls.  Without a word, she awkwardly crawled onto the mattress.  She stretched out on her back and patted the small space next to her. 

            “There’s a place to lie.” 

            Nick undid the top button of his dress shirt and loosened his tie.  He got down next to her, she pressed against the wall, his body half on the floor.  It wasn’t very comfortable.  “This wasn’t made for two,” he admitted. 

            Jane wiggled, allowing him to get more of his body on the mattress.  “We’ll have to get closer,” she said.  There was still curiosity, but Jane found herself less concerned with dangerous inhibitions.  She threw an arm around the albino and hugged him closer.  “I’m not afraid of the unknown,” she whispered. 

            By the time they heard someone coming up the ladder, Nick and Jane were entwined.  He hurried to disentangle himself and stand, but his brother Kevin came into the attic in time to catch them in close proximity.  Jane could gather from Kevin’s expression that it was an uncommon sight.  He began to laugh.  Nick jumped up and his brother went back downstairs, laughing all the while.  “Come on,” the albino beckoned.

            The tour continued.  He showed her the dining room, playing the part of the mannered host.  It was obvious to Jane that he was agitated by the interruption.  She liked that.  He wasn’t the type to beat up his brother, but she was sure that he wanted to.  While he was explaining about their antique dining set, Kevin came into the room and suggestively asked, “What were you two doing up there?”  He had a grin on his face, a deviant’s smile.

            Jane glanced at Nick, anticipating any of numerous responses.  He opened his mouth to deliver, but a ringing phone interrupted.  Kevin ran off to get it.  The albino sighed.  “Sorry about that,” he said, finally calm enough to acknowledge what had happened. 

            “Nick, is he bothering you?” Mrs. York yelled from her spot in the family room.  “That’s probably a friend calling.  He’ll be out of your hair shortly.  Did you offer your guest a drink?”

            The albino rolled his eyes.  “Yes, of course, mom.”  He waited until she didn’t respond.  “Can I get you anything?”

            “Sure,” Jane said.  She followed Nick back into the kitchen where Kevin was using the phone.  Mrs. York had predicted right; Kevin was speaking to a friend and making plans.  Nick gave him a dirty look as he passed.  He grabbed two cups from the cupboard and placed them on the kitchen table. 

            “She won’t tell you why?” Kevin said into the mouth piece.  “Your sister is so weird.  Alright.  Alright, yeah.  Let me just ask my mom.”  He left the kitchen and Jane heard him inquire of Mrs. York, “Is it okay if Jake and his sister come stay the night?”  Mrs. York wanted to know why the sister needed to come.  “I guess there are problems at home or something.”

Waist-deep in the refrigerator, Nick rummaged, shouting out the names of different options. 

Jane was zoning out as she often did, wondering what exactly was going on between them.  “I’ll have whatever you are having,” she responded absently.  Her actions, the dropping of the towel, the aggressive affection, they were very unlike her.  She was usually reserved.  Yet something about Nick was attractive.  She decided that she needed to know.  Were they boyfriend and girlfriend?  Before she could ever ask him that she knew that first she would have to finally confront the most incredible of intrigues.  While his head was still refrigerated, Jane spilled her guts.  “Nick, before I ask you this question I want you to know that I have really enjoyed our time together today.  I’m extremely glad that I met you.  I hope that our futures can allow us to stay in touch after graduation day and the summer.”

“Go on,” he said, not turning from the cold box.

“The other day, at Ben’s burial, my friend Adrian told me something very strange.  He said you claimed that you had given Ben a poison.  A poison that he used to kill himself.  That you had made it and you gave it to him because he wanted it.  He requested it.  Is it true, Nick?  Did you make a poison?  Did you help Ben kill himself?  I need to know, Nick.  I really need to know.”

Nick finally turned from the fridge.  He was smiling.  A smile!  Jane scowled, completely stymied.  “It’s so ironic that you’d ask me that,” he said.  He was holding a pitcher of what looked like grape juice.  He stepped to the kitchen table and poured both Jane and himself a nice, tall glass.

BACKGROUND ............

Richard Kornak is a young man living in the upstate New York region. He enjoys writing and spending time with loved ones.