"You'd better come home and say your good-byes." She said after we'd exchanged pleasantries. "May's fading fast."
"Fading? Nana's fine. I talked to her day before yesterday." I said, puzzled.
"She didn't tell you." She paused for a long time. "It's the cancer. Started in her guts. Now it's all through her lungs, and her. . .her lady parts."
I thought of how Nana had kissed my forehead the day I moved out. How she'd smoothed my hair back and told me no matter where I went, this would always be my home, if I needed it to be. Had she been sick even then? Had it been eating away at her?
"I'll be there tomorrow." I said.
"Hurry." Mrs. Easting said, and hung up.
I had to wait for Alan to get home, I gave him my paychecks, so he could pay the bills, and put the tiny bit left over into our savings account, for the future. He didn't get home until after 11, and I told him I needed $50 for a bus ticket home. He looked at me blankly for a moment, then grinned. Well, his teeth were showing, anyway.
"You really haven't figured it out."
"Figured-" I started, then he began laughing. It was hard and flat and mean, like the laughter of a school kid who just kicked a cat.
"I haven't saved a dime of that money. I spent it on my girlfriend. Her apartment is way nicer than this shit hole, and someone had to pay her rent. I just wanted to get every dime out of you I could before I moved in with her full time."
My brain processed what he said, and I suddenly saw my hand flying out and breaking his lying, cheating jaw. My knuckles ached, I saw it so clearly.
"Have you paid any of our bills here?" As if in answer, the lights snapped off. I heard footsteps rising from the basement, and there was a loud pounding at the door.
"Pay your fucking rent and I'll turn the breaker back on!" The landlord shouted through the door. I could feel the muscles in my whole arm twitching, wanting to punch him until he fell down, until his face became another shape in the dark, red liquid lit by the red neons from China Palace across the street.
Instead, I turned on my heel and went into the bedroom. Somehow, I found my old school backpack and began stuffing clothes and things into it. In the dark, I didn't know what I was packing, his things or mine, but I grabbed and stuffed until the pack bulged. When I returned to the living room, Alan was gone. I was glad. I never wanted to see him again. I scanned the room, lit by dull red light, for anything else I wanted. I almost missed the framed picture on top of our second hand TV, it was hidden behind a bank of empty beer cans and Alan's filthy, smelly bong. I picked up the frame and looked at the picture. It was me and Nana, when I was 12 or 13. She's sitting in her rocker on her front porch, mouth wide in a laugh, her hands thrown up in the air. I'm sitting on the porch steps at her feet, in cutoffs and a torn tee shirt, eating a wedge of watermelon longer than my arm. I think Mrs. Easting took it. I know Nana has the same picture hanging on her fridge. Alan had given me the frame, and I didn't want to take it with me, so I pried off the back, and pulled the photo loose, letting the cheap wood and glass fall to the floor. The glass shattered. Good. I hoped Alan came back and cut his foot. I hoped he fell face first into it and put out his eye.
I knew I'd have to walk and hitch, I doubted I'd get there by the next morning. "Please, Nana." I thought. "Wait for me. If it doesn't hurt to bad, wait for me."
The following afternoon, I'd probably walked 20 miles, and hitched maybe a little further. I hated hitching, the only people who wanted to stop for girls in their late teens were middle aged men who wanted to know if you'd like to make $50. Or $10, if they were really cheap. I'd been walking about 3 hours, cutting across a country highway, rather than the turnpike. The sky was starting to look black and heavy, and thunder growled in the distance. There was going to be a bitch of a thunderstorm.
In this part of the world, you may have seen them elsewhere, but I never have, there are little three sided huts, placed seemingly at random on the sides of roads. Most of them have an advertisement for OTB
on the sides (This one said "MAY THE HORSE BE WITH YOU!" on one side and "THE BETTOR LOVERS!" on the other). I have no idea what they're for, most of them aren't near any houses, and seem to be tucked into odd corners that wouldn't be on a bus route, but they seem to be everywhere out here. With the sky looking the way it did, this one seemed a blessing, and I ducked inside. It was too short to stand in, so I wound up crouched in a far back corner, waiting for the rain to start. The clouds built and built, and thunder began to bang louder and louder. Lightning began to flash, bright enough to leave blue spots on my eyes. And finally, the rain came, like a waterfall. I scooted all the way to the back of the little shed, leaning against the board back.
"Hell of a storm." A deep voice said just to my right. I spun clumsily on my heels, and wound up falling on my ass in the dirt.
Squatting beside me was a short, plump man. His neck was so fat, it kind of melted into his shoulders, and his shiny bald head gleamed in the lightning flashes. His eyes... His eyes made me feel sick. They were bulging so much they seemed ready to fall right out of his head, and they were a bright gold-ish orange. As soon as they locked onto mine, my stomach turned over, my heart seemed to stop, then stutter to life.
"You scared me." I whispered. He laughed, a short bark, but it reminded me of something else, too.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just wanted to get out of the rain. I like a little, but too much! Too much tonight!"
He peered out into the storm. "Got to go! Got to go! Hurry, hurry, hurry! But this rain! So cold! And hungry, too!" That barking laugh. I shivered.
"Want some melon?" I asked. I dug into my pack, finding the slightly smooshed plastic container of cantaloupe one of my rides had bought for me. I saw fruit flies had gotten into it, covering the orange fruit. "Oh, sorry. It got buggy. Never mind."
"No! Fine, fine!" And to my disgust, he took the plastic box from my hand and began pouring the bug coated melon into his mouth. I looked away, trying not to gag. "Thanks, thanks my dear!" BARK!
"I have a sweater, too." I said. It was Alan's sweater, and I hoped this creepy guy would take off if he had it. "And an umbrella." I fished them out of my back pack and handed them over.
"Perfect, perfect, perfect! You're a good girl." He patted my shoulder, I hope I concealed my disgust at his touch. Even through my shirt, he felt soft and moist and fleshy. "That's three! Three favors I owe you!" Saying this, he reached down and slapped the ground, hard, three times.
"No, it's ok-"
"Life and death, Death and life. Three favors!" BARK! And with that, he popped open the umbrella and crab walked out of the shack. He was lost to the driving rain in a moment.
I waited out the storm, and continued east, arriving at my Nana's house the next day at noon. Mrs. Easting was there, she frowned a little, but said nothing about my dirty clothes and tangled hair. I ran upstairs to Nana's room.
"Nana!" I cried and knelt next to her bed. She looked horrible, skin stretched over frail bones, her hair must have been gone, but Mrs. E had put a cap, knit from soft white yarn on her head. An IV stand stood next to her bed, and it seemed to me the needle taped in her arm was thicker than the arm itself. When she opened her eyes, they seemed dirty, cloudy.
"There's my baby." She whispered. Her voice was barely audible. "I missed you, so much."
"Shhh, Nana. You have to rest. Don't worry, I'm here."
"I missed you..." She trailed off, and her eyes shut again.
I sat with her that whole night, watching her sleep, and thinking of how she'd rub my back to wake me up for school, how she'd make me cucumber and egg salad, how she'd done my hair for my senior prom, and a million other things. Around three, I went downstairs to get a glass of water, and saw the picture on the fridge. Nana laughing, the watermelon juice running down my neck. I touched it with my fingertips.
"I'd give anything for you, Nana. Anything."
Something hit the floor hard upstairs, THUMP!
Thinking Nana must have fallen out of bed, I raced up the stairs.
"Nana?" I stopped cold in the doorway. The thump had been the IV stand falling over. It fell because Nana's bed was covered, overflowing with. . .toads. They were mounded high over her, spilling into a pile that stretched almost to the window. They didn't seem to be moving much, just sort of lying there in a pile, making a low throaty hum. I started to step forward, meaning to pull them off before she smothered under there.
BARK!
I whirled. Crouched in the hallway was the biggest toad of all. It was easily three feet across, maybe bigger. It made that harsh barking sound again, and I looked at it's eyes. Big, bulging, and gold-ish orange. My stomach fluttered madly and my heart began to pound. It raised one huge foot off the ground,
and slapped it down three times.
My head snapped back to Nana. The toads were gone, and Nana was sleeping, peacefully and deeply. Her cheeks seemed a little fuller, her arms and legs less like sticks. The gold-eyed toad slapped the floor twice, and barked his harsh laughter. I looked back, but he was gone.
"Life and death." I said. "Death and life."
Two months passed and Nana got better and better, eating more and sleeping less. The doctor's were baffled, they had no explanation for the sudden complete disappearance of her cancer. I did, but I doubt they would have believed me. Nana said I must have brought good luck home with me. Mrs. Easting decided I had sold my soul to the devil to cure Nana.
"Girl came home covered in filth, and was there one night. Suddenly May's all better? It's not natural." She'd tell anyone who'd listen. "What was she doing for two days? That girl was consorting with the devil."
I didn't care too much about Mrs. Easting's religious fanaticism, but Nana was pretty sad. Her and Mrs. E had been pretty good friends up until now. I probably would have gone on not caring, but one day I overheard her talking to Mrs. Pottsmith (the biggest bitch our town had produced) in the grocery store. She was in the next aisle over, but I recognized that whiny voice.
"I been waiting 2 years for that cancer to finish her off. She would have left everything to her whore grandchild- living with some strange man out in some seedy city? Shame!- but I could have talked the girl into selling me that house for nothing. She's too stupid to know what it's worth anyway. I could have sold it for a fortune, and lived easy. I knew the girl would come back to see her granny, that's why I called her. Figured I could get the deal signed and sealed while she was still crying over May, and she'd be too wrung out to know what hit her. Then out of the blue sky, May's better? I think she was faking it to get the little bitch home!"
The conversation continued, but I didn't hear it. My vision was going red and fuzzy at the edges, and I could hear my heart pounding like a machine about to blow a gasket. My hands tightened on my shopping cart's handle until it snapped between them. I left it where it stood and walked outside. I turned my face up.
"Mr. Toad." I said, feeling like an idiot, but somehow knowing he could hear me. "If you can make my Nana better, you can make that evil, lying bitch sick."
The next day, when I went back to the grocery store, the butcher asked me if I'd heard about poor Mrs. Easting.
"No." I said with a strait face. "Is she ok?"
"Not at all! She got some kind of a bowel disease! She's been puking shit, and shitting blood all night! Doctor says she'll keep at it till she dies! They can't do nothing but pray it happens quick." he leaned in, conspiratorially. "I have a drink with her doctor every now and again, and he told me she shoulda run out of shit and blood by now. And she won't pass out. Even when they pumped her full of sleeping pills, she won't pass out or go to sleep. Miserable way to go."
I agreed, and managed to pay for my groceries and get into Nana's old Buick before I began to laugh my head off. That Mr. Toad has a hell of a sense of humor. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and there he was, sitting on the passenger seat. He barked his laugh, and thumped the seat once with his big wide foot.
"Thank you." I said, and started the car.
It took Mrs. Easting three days to die. I heard rumors that the nurses refused to clean up the shit and blood after the second day, and she died in a lake of filth. The doctors of course deny this, they don't want the hospital to look bad, but I believe it. According to a old high school friend of mine who's a nurse now, Mrs. E was quite the little fire hose the last 10 hours or so.
"Buckets." She said after a few cold beers on my front porch. "We had to carry it out in buckets. The most foul-smelling-"
"This hardly talk for young ladies!" Nana said from inside the screen porch. "Can't you talk about hair or boys?"
"Nan-na!" I said, laughing.
Now, as I write this, I have one favor left. I've considered saving it, in case Nana or I get sick. But at the same time, I've been thinking about Alan lately. A lot. How he lied. How he stole all that money from me, spending it on some other girl, paying her bills and leaving me in the dark. I also think about what a rush Mr. Toad had been in when I met him the first time. I don't think he'll wait forever. I imagine Alan sitting up and spraying a gutful of liquid shit on his new girlfriend. Or maybe Mr. Toad will come up with something even more clever. Alan slowly turning himself inside out, or his skin falling off, slice by slice, and never healing. I've decided.
"Mr. Toad. Can you hear me?"
No sounds, but I knew he could.
"This is my last favor. Thank you for helping me out. Make Alan suffer for what he did to me."
I figured I wouldn't get to really find out what had happened to him, maybe a blurb in the news, but about a week later, I got a letter. It had no return address, no stamp, just my name scrawled three times across the envelope. Inside was a SD card. I had to go to the public library to use it, since Nana had no use for a computer, and I couldn't afford one yet. I wedged myself into a corner table, turned the monitor so no one passing by could see and put the card in. It contained one video file.
The camera is low to the ground, and shows Alan padding around a strange bedroom naked. He shuffles over to the dresser and begins fiddling with something up there. He bends his head over it, and inhales. Sniffing cocaine. Lovely habit. A girl walks in the room. She says something to him, but the video has no sound. He says something back, and slaps her hand away when she tries to take the cocaine. As soon as his wrist touches hers, it bends violently backwards, as if he has just slammed it into a steel pole, instead of just tapping another wrist. A sliver of bone breaks through the skin, and a thin stream of blood jets out. The girl is clearly screaming, and she reaches for his shoulder. When she touches it, it wrenches upwards, I can see his shoulder rotate out of the socket. He flails toward her, and falls against her, his ribs suddenly take on a sunken look, and I know they've all snapped inward. He falls to the floor, and the girl tries to pick him up. Everywhere her hand falls, a bone snaps, skin blisters, skin peels back to expose muscle and tendons. The girl runs from the room. Alan lies on the floor, breathing heavily. And suddenly, the film seems to be running backwards. His torn skin and broken bones snap back into place.
"It will always be like that, anyone he touches, man or woman or child. He'll live a long time too." I look at the floor beneath the desk. The toad squats there, and despite his eyes making me shudder, he seems to have a big smile on his toad mouth. "Now we're even. One life, one death, and one that's little of both. BARK!" I smile.
"Thank you." I say, and look back at the screen. The girl has poked her head back into the room, sees Alan is fine, runs to him and gives him a big hug. His intestines burst from his ass as his tongue bursts from his throat. "Thank you so much."
I watch the rest of the video, a full hour. Then go home to help Nana cook dinner.
End
*My first pasta. I actually got the idea at work. There's a couple of those weird little huts near my last jobsite, and I always wondered what the hell they were for. I still don't know.... Anyway, I thought they were kinda creepy, and one day I thought, "I bet some really creepy shit has happened in those things." And went from there. I was nervous to post it, but I bit the bullet and went ahead. I got some great reviews, and Matador even drew me a picture of Mr. Toad:
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