Hey void. What’s up? I won’t keep you waiting for long.
It’s been a hot minute, but I have the second chapter of Zemblanity here and ready to go. In case you missed chapter one, you can find it here.
Fun fact: Allyson Alexander’s initials cause minor bullying at school since her dad is…er…was…a drunk. The AA jokes didn’t survive the first round of edits, and unfortunately exist only in my fleeting memory, because my dog decided a long while ago to pee on a bunch of my books and the first draft was one of them he chose to claim. He’s an asshole. He also has never peed on my books again. Seriously Jax. What were you thinking?
Without further word vomit, let’s see how Allyson is doing since shit hit the fan:
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Chapter Two
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick
Time and place sewn together in a blurred mass of grey. Allyson lost track of how long she sat over the corpse. Stray dogs barked and moaned from outside her house, her barrier. Streaks of daylight slashed through the shadows, carelessly highlighting the parts of her father she did not wish to see.
Dead.
Roger Alexander was dead. Nothing left of him but scraps of clothing and literal skin and bones. His body was stiff and dry, almost as if he was gone for years instead of hours (Days? She didn’t know, she couldn’t know). There on the floor, he didn’t look so big; his body collapsed on itself like a long dead spider.
The first of many pangs of anxiety hit her, forcing her back to her feet to pace the floor in a set pattern she’d traveled many times. If he was still alive, she’d receive a hearty smack to the back of her matted head for the nervous habit. That was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about anymore. She could pace when she wanted, watch what she wanted, eat what she wanted, do anything she wanted, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
On one of her back and forth trips, Allyson glanced at the mirror at the end of the hall. She took in air so fast it hurt her throat. She almost didn’t recognize her own reflection. Something was different from before, but it was hard to tell what exactly from this far away. She wanted to walk, but her knees shook so violently that she settled on crawling to the framed glass.
It was her face, but not the face she saw last night while playing dress up with her dead mother’s clothes. From bottom eyelid to cheek were ugly red scabs trailing like a river bed before tapering off to smooth skin. It was as if someone took a knife to her, but she had no memory of weapons.
Trembling fingers reached for the first mark, and her body went cold all over. She touched the skin around it. It was sore, but otherwise felt normal. Slow, slow, her fingers came together, running along the divot. It burned to the touch. She didn’t pull away until she could feel her thoughts fuzz white.
“Like static.”
The words came from her mouth, but it wasn’t her voice. Not quite. Not as she remembered.
“Bad reception. Something happened.”
Different bits and pieces came back to her. Her tears were acid. They were acid and they ate through her cheeks and through his hand and through the wood. And then…and then…
“And then what, Allyson? What did you do?”
But it hadn’t been her. There was something else in the room with them.
“It came from the shadows.”
From the shadows in the hall, from the shadows in the floor, she wasn’t sure where for certain, but she knew it wasn’t from the light. It was hard to see at first, but it was there.
“And it killed him.”
There was no weight to the words. She told herself it was just the shock; that really she did care that her father was no more. But the more she thought about it, the less certain she was. With that uncertainty came and eerie sort of calm that she clung to like a lifeline.
“You deserved it, you know.”
Allyson sat on the floor for another good look of what remained of the thing she called Daddy. There was a hard lump in her throat that was hard to breathe past, and forced something that felt like a sob but sounded like a laugh. No one would believe it, not even if they saw it. Spiders shriveled when dead; not people. Not that fast.
“You were bad and you deserved all the bad things in the world,” she told the corpse. “You can’t just hurt people when you’re mad at them. You can’t just scream at them. There are consequences, Roger. And when you do bad, you have to suck it up and deal with the consequences.”
For the first time since she could remember, she felt bigger than him. She held onto that sudden empowerment as tight as she possibly could, but it didn’t come as naturally as portrayed in the movies. Her grip was slippery.
“Fuck,” she whispered against her open palm. “No one deserves to die.”
The shock was wearing off, and fast. She didn’t hate him. Sometimes, she even loved him. It was a sort of sick game, she supposed, trying to win his affection, but they got by. He was all she knew, and now he was gone.
Allyson stood and paced around his body. This couldn’t be real. Demons did not crawl from the depths of hell to claim the souls God had no need for. Human beings did not dissolve away to skin and bones.
And yet, there he lay. Empty eye sockets. Mocking her.
Why did it feel so natural, so at home, when the beast from under the house smiled at her with those razor sharp teeth?
“He probably died of a heart attack or a stroke or alcohol poisoning or a brain aneurysm and I made up the rest to make it interesting.”
In fact, she should pick up the phone right now and dial the police or an ambulance or somebody to come make sense of the situation for her. Maybe an adult would have better luck wrapping their mind around it.
She grabbed the corded receiver, her fingers hovered over the buttons, and she froze. If she involved adults, her fate was sealed. Not because she would be blamed, for no one in their right mind would believe a girl so young capable of such atrocities, but because she’d become a kid of the state. Allyson had no relatives that she knew of, and she’d seen enough classmates playing the foster home game to know what she’d be getting herself into.
Besides, there was still the matter of the body. The recently deceased were supposed to have meat on them. Her father simply did not. She didn’t want to deal with the questions when she herself was still trying to figure out the details.
Then again…
“Bingo.”
It was common knowledge around town that Roger was a recluse. A homebody. A deadbeat drunk on disability. It was a rare occasion to see him anywhere but the liquor store, and most times he’d send Allyson with his list anyway.
It was possible, fully possible, to pull it off without anyone knowing he was missing at all.
“He was already a ghost to them.”
What did it matter if his body was above ground or below?
“Speaking of which…”
The house was on the outskirts; the last house before acres of farmland. Even if someone drove by, they wouldn’t be able to see the backyard through the weeds and trash littered about. Even so, she’d wait until the safety of nightfall. Until then, she’d move him closer to the back door.
It just didn’t seem right to watch tv in the same room as a corpse.
Allyson couldn’t bring herself to touch him. She imagined his skin would feel like a plastic bag holding wet sand, with some bits crunchy as dried leaves. She was afraid of him splitting open or crumbling away.
With an old towel to protect her hand from direct contact, she grasped his ankles and pulled. It was like moving furniture. Heavy at first, but with a little momentum, everything went fairly smooth.
The closer she got to the door, the more aware she was of the sounds from outside. It sounded like a dog fight. A cat fight? She couldn’t be certain, but whatever it was sounded mean. Had they just started in, or did she just start paying attention?
All her worries of a piece of her father snagging on a splintered piece of floorboard were unfounded. The only part of him that managed to work its way loose was a single tooth. She’d not have noticed had she not stepped on it in the middle of the kitchen.
Arms still shaky from exertion, she knelt down and cradled it in her hand. She meant to walk to the trash and toss it away, but her outstretched palm couldn’t bring itself to rotate. It didn’t seem right to put it there. Later she’d bring herself to believe that it was for her own safety. What if someone at the dump rifled through the bag and found the tooth? No, too risky. Instead, she placed it in the pocket of her dirty sundress.
“I’ll figure out what to do with it later.”
Burying it with the body crossed her mind, but she shoved it aside, convinced it was likewise risky business. Her fingerprints were all over it now. Then they’d know.
“Know what?”
A problem for a different day. For now, she was proud of a job well done. She walked to the living room and went to the chair—his chair. She flicked through the channels until she landed on something as dark and foreign as her current state of mind.
***
Jeezums. Does she have your attention?
I would love to hear what you think. Good, bad, let me hear it!
Come back November 8th for chapter three. And don’t forget to subscribe!!
Manda Kay Writes 