He was as crazy as a bed bug. This stranger considered her his new “family” though they’d met only minutes earlier. So continued the long line of cuckoo birds, coming at her from every direction.
“If you hurt my son,” she started to say, pursing her lips and touching the revolver. She unconsciously pulled it out, holding it in Edgar’s direction. “Get the fuck out of my house. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.”
Her head felt like a block on her shoulders. Her exhaustion was overtaking her. Annie’s equilibrium was all over the place from the loss of hearing in her ear. She couldn’t keep the gun steady because of this. With every bit of strength, she fought against the wobbliness in her hands, fearful that it might neuter the threatening gesture.
She said, “Take the snowmobile if you want, I left the keys. I don’t need it anymore.”
His silence pervaded the room. The invader only smiled, his lips pulling back in a disgusting manner that looked like a lizard. He advanced a step closer to Annie, staring at the gun in her hand. It was evident that it wasn’t the first time the man had a gun pointed at him; most people would have flinched at the sight of it, but he acted as though it was par for the course. Edgar was what her deceased grandfather might have called, “a natural born rough rider.”
“Get out,” she said, holding the gun firm now, trying to hide that unending shakiness in her hands. Even with all that she’d gone through with the other whackos, she still didn’t feel right taking somebody’s life.
Count to three, she told herself. If he hasn’t left by three, shoot him in the face. Don’t even tell him you’re counting, cause that’ll make him move first.
One…
“I said get out!” she shouted. Edgar started to laugh at this, followed by a throaty cough.
Two…
She thought of Paulie. It always came back to Paulie—every thought, every word, every breath. Edgar had said that he was in the basement, sleeping. But what if he was dead? What if she went down those stairs and found that her baby was no more? The thought revolted her so she pushed it away. This wasn’t the time for that consideration. Not yet. “Last chance,” she warned, trying to sound a whole lot tougher than she felt.
Three…
The gun clicked. The sound deflated her entire being, almost instantly. She pulled the trigger a second time. It was out of bullets or jammed. Either way, she was in trouble. Had she miscounted her bullets? When she collapsed earlier, had another round gone off? Had two bullets struck The Shiny Bald One instead of just the one? This is the part where you throw the gun at somebody, Annie thought to herself. If there were no bullets, then the next best thing was to hurl the weapon.
When she threw it, the revolver missed his head by a good foot.
This made the devilish stranger smile.
Edgar lunged toward her, grabbing her by the meat of the throat. Stars filled her eyes within seconds, swimming around her already disconnected consciousness. He shook her so hard that Annie felt her bones rattling inside of her. Her ears started to ring louder than ever, presumably from the panic that was invading her being. A thought came to her that this might be the last moment she ever remembered, but her whole damn life refused to flash in front of her eyes like it was supposed to, according to the saying.
Annie dug her claws into Edgar’s wrists, pushing her fingernails until she felt them starting to break, but Edgar didn’t hold back on his assault. In fact, her defense maneuver only made him fortify his grip, tightening up enough to make his hands go pale and white.
“Pull a gun on me like some kinda animal? Fuckin’ cunt. Tryin’ t’make a better life for us here,” he snarled, spittle falling from his lips. If he wasn’t choking her to death and tossing her about the kitchen like a rag doll, she might have laughed at that notion. His corny sentiment was laughable, as compared to his violent outburst. “The boy wants me for his pop, ya’ hear? And if you don’t want to be part of the family, well… fuck ya’.”
His voice trailed off inside her head, just as the starry shapes in her eyes got so big that they might have been blazing suns, right on the brink of supernovas.
She shook loose of her unexpected blackout, reaching up to touch her throat. It felt like her windpipe had been crushed, so she tested her voice with a cuss word, “Fuck.” It didn’t quite sound like her, but she could still speak. Her voice was gone, just as the hearing in her left ear.
The sound of a hammer thudding against nails echoed through the pitch-black room.
Sitting up with a jolt, she realized that she was at the bottom of the stairs, and that her arms and legs screamed in pain. The monster (the newest monster, she corrected herself) had tossed her down the stairs, and now he was barricading her in.
She scrambled to get herself up off the ground, rolling over on to her side as she reached for the lowest steps. She wasn’t going to let this invader lock her away in the basement, like some deformed sibling from a gothic horror novel.
“Hey!” she shouted, her voice barely above a whisper. He’d screwed her throat up pretty bad with his meaty paws.
Then she heard the voice—a sound so sweet that it made her heart rate double and then triple. She could hardly remember what happened next, both from escaping her woozy prison of stars and being without sleep since her brutal attack in The Purple Cat.
“Mammah?” the voice asked weakly, barely audible in the mush of her ear canal.
“Baby,” she said, nearly bursting into tears. Forgetting all about the maniac boarding up the basement door, Annie walked towards a tiny night light, shining near the futon-bed at the other side of the basement.
She moved towards the light, feeling as if invisible hands were transporting her.
When she got close enough to Paulie, she could see his face, barely illuminated by the dull night-light. She curled her arms around him, nuzzling her face into his tiny shoulder, and she started to weep. It felt good to weep like this. Paulie did the same, but he was so feeble that it came out like little whines.
“My baby,” she said, feeling a rush of energy return to her, and then that rush exited just as quickly. Though they were in danger, she held her baby tight and drifted into a bizarre, worrisome (yet pleasant, in some way) sleep. When he started to snore, pressing his body up against her as she contorted into a fetal position around him, she felt an infectious serenity wash over her body.
Annie and her baby boy slept.
Chapter Three
The people in Paulie’s dream were eating each other. There were chocolate stains all over their faces and clothing. Streaks of brown led from their neighbors’ houses, out into the street where the people melted, falling all over each other, chewing each other’s heads just like he did with that big chocolate Easter bunny that grandma sent him.
It was just like his Daddah’s joke: the one about eating people made of chocolate. After Easter, Paulie asked his Daddah nearly single day, “We eat big bunny, yah?” The convincing didn’t work and Paulie would get upset. Until one day, his pop gave in and said they could eat the giant bunny.
The bunny was almost as tall as Paulie and his Daddah had hidden it away in the bedroom closet. Paulie wasn’t allowed in there, but he snuck in a couple times so he could get a good look at the super-huge gigantic chocolate bunny, if only to fantasize.
As his father broke off the long brown ears, handing one to Paulie and keeping the other for himself, he had said, “This poor bunny. We’re eating him and there’s nothing he can do.”