Kzine Issue 6 Page 8

  “No! Reese can fix him.”

  Reese. Tammy’s boyfriend - and a scumbag in Bret’s opinion. The name grated on him every time he heard Danny say it.

  “You can’t fix a dead hamster.”

  “He can. He’s a taxi … a taxi - ”

  “Taxidermist?” Bret said, unsure what the guy actually did for a living.

  “Yeah.” Danny’s eyes lit up. “He can mount Tom Brady. He does it for other people and their pets.”

  “A hamster’s a bit small for a taxidermist, I think.”

  “Nuh-unh. He does it to squirrels and rabbits and even a bat once. That was really cool.”

  The boy put on his best wounded expression and held the shoebox close, the carcass rattling around in it with each movement. It sent a chill right up the back of Bret’s neck looking at his son clinging to it like that. He didn’t want him hanging out with Reese any more than he already did, but he wanted to appease Danny and it looked like this was going to be the easiest way to do it.

  “Fine. I’ll ask him when I drop you off.”

  It was all smiles and sunshine after that, at least compared to the day before. Danny sat quietly in the truck, though he seemed to buzz in anticipation of returning to his mother’s, the shoebox that was Tom Brady’s casket resting on his lap. Bret kept the window down on his side on account of the smell. It wasn’t an overpowering smell, but it was still an odor of dirt and death.

  He got to Tammy’s little duplex on the other side of town, and she was standing there on her front step with her arms crossed.

  “You’re late.”

  “The hell I am. I got him until noon,” Bret said as he got out, then helped Danny slide out on his side.

  “It’s ten after.”

  “Oh for chri - ”

  “Hi, Mom!”

  “Hi, sweetie. Come inside and get washed up. We’ll be heading out in a minute.”

  Danny ceremoniously handed over the shoebox to Bret and looked up at him. “You’ll ask Reese? You promised.”

  Bret took the box. “I didn’t promise anything, but I will ask him, kiddo.”

  Danny raced inside the house after giving his mother a hug around the waist. Her eyes returned to Bret and the smile disappeared. So did his.

  “What’s in the box?” she asked.

  “I brought you some lunch,” he said with a sardonic grin and flipped open the lid to give her a peek.

  She flinched back and nearly wretched on her flower bed, which made Bret’s day in a way he didn’t dare admit.

  “Where’s Reese?”

  “In the garage working. Ugh. What is that thing?”

  “Danny’s hamster. He says your boy-toy’s a taxidermist and wants me to ask him to get the thing stuffed.”

  “Mounted.”

  “What?”

  “Taxidermists don’t stuff animals. They mount them.”

  “I’ll bet,” Bret muttered and walked over to the garage.

  “Asshole,” Tammy muttered, which stopped Bret in his tracks. He turned to glare at her, but she was already stepping back in the front door.

  Bret found Reese in the garage, working with his back to him at a work bench.

  “Hey, Reese.” Bret steps out of the morning sun and into the harshly lit garage.

  He stopped when Reese turned around, revealing what the man was working on. Reese was smaller than Bret, but Bret still felt a bit intimidated by him thanks to the tattoos and scraggly ponytail. The bloody, meaty pelt of a golden retriever in Reese’s grasp, as he regarded Bret with a queer smile, only served to make him feel even more disquieted.

  “Oh hey, Bret. I’d shake your hand, but I’m just getting done fleshing Ol’ Yeller here.” He brandished the dog’s pelt, which flopped in his arms in a sick display of puppetry - boneless, gutless, with two round holes where eyes should have been. Bret thought of a nightmare he once had about The Muppet Show.

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Oh, this is just some work I’m doing for an old widow down the road. Poor little guy got run over by an SUV last week. Can you believe that? Some people shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

  “Uh, yeah. Listen, about that. Or …” Bret looked down at the box and regrouped. “Danny’s hamster died and he was wondering if you could get the thing … mounted.”

  “How’d it die?”

  “Not really important.” He handed the shoebox over to Reese, who took it after laying the dog pelt on his workbench.

  “Been a while since I worked on something as small as a - holy shit.” Reese glanced in the box, then back at Bret. “It get in a fight with a steamroller?”

  “Truck tire. Look, if it’s too far gone, I’ll just dump it and get Danny a new one and - ”

  “No, no. A boy’s pet is his best friend, even the small ones. I’ll do it. He is family after all.”

  Yeah. MY family, asshole.

  “I’ll pay you whatever your going rate is,” Bret said, trying hard to maintain his composure.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll work something out. I know money’s tight for you these days and all.” The way Reese said it got Bret’s blood boiling. He’d been late on a couple of child support payments, but that was just some b.s. banking issue. Contracting had set him up well financially, which was good since Tammy was slowly bleeding him dry, and she wasn’t about to marry this creep and have her cash flow come to a close - not while she could stick it to Bret a little longer.

  “Thanks, Reese.” He realized his fists were clenched at his sides.

  Danny came running into the garage and Bret gave him a final hug before leaving. As he walked off, he heard Danny and Reese talking about the hamster. Danny’s words cut him to the bone.

  “Daddy killed him. Daddy hated him.”

  The work week went by like any other - empty without the boy. Friday evening, Tammy and Reese dropped Danny off. Bret was bound and determined to spoil the hell out of him this weekend. Both Tammy and Reese gave him a friendly wave before driving off, both were smiles that’d make a shark shiver.

  “Hey, Dad. Look what Reese did.”

  Danny fished through his backpack on top of the table and pulled out a little RC dune buggy with remote control. Bret raised his eyebrows looking at it.

  “Hunh. That’s pretty neat.” Bret hated to say it out loud, but he had to admit that it was a pretty cool looking toy. He just wished he’d gotten it for Danny.

  Then, reaching into the backpack again, Danny pulled out something a might smaller and plunked it down in the driver’s seat of the little dune buggy. It wore a comical little biker’s helmet replete with a little spike on top. Tom Brady.

  “Oh my lord.”

  “Bad ass,” Danny whispered in awe, looking at his newly mounted best friend.

  “Don’t swear, Danny.”

  “Reese let’s me swear.”

  “Well, Reese isn’t your father.” God Almighty, and Tammy had the nerve to say he was corrupting the boy.

  Bret ordered a pizza and queued up an Adam Sandler movie on the TV, but all his son wanted to do was play with that dune buggy and Tom Brady. Danny talked to it now. Something he never really did when the thing was alive. It creeped Bret right out of his skin seeing his son playing with a dead animal like that. It didn’t seem right to him, and while he worked out in the garden and looked over his shoulder at his son, Bret regretted letting his son talk him into having the thing stuffed, mounted, or whatever they called it, and not burying the little bastard in a deeper hole.

  Come bedtime, Bret tucked Danny in, but not before the boy plugged the dune buggy into the wall to recharge, Tom Brady still sitting in the driver’s seat and staring straight ahead.

  That’s not right. That’s just not right.

  Bret went back out to the living room, nursed a couple Jack and Cokes, trying to think of what to do first with Danny in the morning. Probably have to pry that frigging toy out of his hands just to get his attention, which was probably Tammy’s sick
little joke of an idea from the get-go. She wanted Danny all to herself, but Bret would die before he’d let that happen. He cursed her name one more time before falling asleep on the couch with a drink still in his hand.

  He woke up at some point to a whirring noise coming from down the hall. He reached for the remote to hit the mute button, spilling the drink in his lap in the process.

  “Dammit. Danny.”

  It was almost midnight. He walked into Danny’s bedroom, all set to give him hell for being up so late, but stopped mid-stride when he saw the boy still tucked in bed. And the noise had stopped.

  Pretty slick, kiddo.

  He turned back towards the living room when he heard the whirring motor of the RC dune buggy again, this time behind him in the hallway. He turned around just in time to see the thing zip between his legs and race around the corner towards the living room. The little spike on the top of Tom Brady’s biker helmet glinted by the light in there.

  Bret looked into Danny’s bedroom, sure he’d see Danny sitting up with a mischievous grin, but he was still asleep - and the remote control still sitting on his nightstand. He raced over and made it to the couch just in time to see the R.C. buggy and its driver disappear under the coffee table.

  “What the hell?”

  He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the table slowly, then wondered why he was being so cautious. Tom Brady’s dead black eyes seemed to stare at him from under the table.

  It’s just a stuffed hamster, man. Get a hold of yourself .

  The buggy moved. Bret sprang back, scuttling across the living room floor like a crab until he hit the TV cabinet. He couldn’t be sure, but he could’ve sworn Tom Brady looked up at him. The buggy jutted forward again this time, and raced around the couch and out to the kitchen again.

  Bret sat with his back against the cabinet, breathing hard. He saw the bottle of Jack sitting on the coffee table and tried to convince himself it was the liquor, that he’d poured stronger drinks than usual. The buggy’s little horn blasted out “Shave and a Haircut” and zipped along the floor again.

  That pissed him off.

  With a grunt, Bret got back to his feet and stalked into the kitchen again and listened. The thing was over by the kitchen table. It saw him coming apparently and backed under one of the chairs, but he kicked it away and snatched up the buggy. The wheels came to a stop as he brought it up to his face so he could get a closer look at it. The hamster fashioned in the driver’s seat sat rigid and lifeless. A hint of wonder still shivered through Bret’s mind as he glared at it, almost willing the thing to move, daring it to move on its own.

  He looked in the critter’s eyes. But they weren’t eyes. And they weren’t identical. One was a little black bead and the other looked like - a lens.

  “What the hell?” he whispered, gently prodding at the thing’s face.

  A camera lens?

  A little dart shot out, from a small cylinder attached to the side of the buggy, into Bret’s face. He flinched back and dropped the hamster and its buggy on the kitchen table. He grasped the dart and yanked it from his cheek.

  “What the - .”

  “Hey there, Bret,” a voice called out. It came from the hamster.

  He looked at it in disbelief. It didn’t move. It was just a damned stuffed animal carcass, but it spoke all the same.

  “Had you going there, didn’t I?” The voice was familiar, but tinny like it came from a cheap speaker. “You should have seen your face when I got you with that dart.”

  Reese.

  “Listen up, smart ass. You don’t have much time before my little concoction kicks in.”

  Bret listened, staring in disbelief at the hamster.

  “You’ve got maybe ten minutes tops before you lose control of your extremities, not to mention your ability to breathe. Face getting numb? Yeah, it gets worse.”

  Reese ordered him to go outside and meet him at the end of the driveway where there’d be an antidote.

  Jesus. The guy’s a lunatic.

  Bret did as he was told and got up under shaky legs and left the house.He scratched and slapped at his face, trying to get some sensation back. His whole body started to go numb on him. He reached the end of the driveway, but Reese wasn’t there. Bret started feeling sick to his stomach. The situation was crazy, happening too fast, he couldn’t think.

  Danny.

  A pair of headlights appeared from around the corner at the end of the street, moving fast. Bret waved it down, unsure if it was Reese or just someone driving by. If it wasn’t Reese, he’d try to get help. The vehicle slowed, and Bret saw it wasn’t Reese’s car, just a delivery van. Bret ran out to the street to stop it, but as he saw Reese behind the steering wheel waving at him. The van pulled over and he saw Tammy sitting in the passenger seat.

  “You lousy, conniving - ” his voice died out on him.

  Tammy jumped out of the van and raced towards the house. Reese sidled out of the van and went to Bret’s side, as he slipped down to the pavement.

  “Easy fella. Don’t go all mannequin on me just yet. Here, let’s get you to your truck. We’ll go for a little ride.”

  Bret wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was no longer in any condition to put up a fight. Whatever was in that dart was working fast.

  “Working with animals, dead and alive, you pick up a lot of things, Bret. That curare stuff is some crazy shit they used to use in Africa to hunt animals. Works great on humans too though, don’t it? Oh, and how’d you like the rig I set up for Danny. Yeah, I liked it too. He’s a good kid, Bret, and I’ll take real good care of him. Better than you did, anyway.”

  “Wha - ”

  “What am I going to do with you? Good question, man. You see, aside from the solution I got in you, the booze is what matters. You stink of it and after this truck here of yours goes into the river, that’s all that the police will care about.”

  Tammy hurried by, Danny and the little dune buggy cradled in her arms, Tom Brady’s glassy stare poking out from the crook of her elbow. Danny’s eyes opened up long enough to notice Bret. The boy waved. Bret wished he could still move so he could wave back.

  SEEDING DAY

  by Michael Siciliano

  I sat alone in my tin hut, staring at the charger’s digital readout. One hundred percent, as expected. I detached the Rager’s umbilical cord and hoisted the heavy gun into firing position. A warm summer breeze feathered across my face from the viewport overlooking my cornfields. I took aim at an invisible enemy, feeling the familiar weight press against my arms and shoulder.

  The acrid smell of burnt crops scratched at my nose, and a pang of despair touched me. I had no reason to irrigate them. All two hundred acres would be smothered before the baleful eye of the sun dropped below the horizon.

  Travis burst in, slamming the shed’s door behind him. “Jack, we gotta talk.” My little brother used that phrase all the time and it annoyed the piss out of me.

  I lowered the Rager, letting the butt clang on the floor. “We don’t got much time. Just grab your weapon and sit your ass down.”

  To his credit, Travis did just that, but my brother never knew when to shut up. “Look, Jack, I know how you feel, but—”

  “Do you, Dr. Phil? I’ll bet you everything in your pockets against everything in mine that you don’t.” Travis always had a way of cutting through my defenses without half trying.

  “No need to be an asshole about it.” My little brother bruised too easy. Not a good thing when the summer solstice rolled around. Travis cleared his throat, looked me in the eyes and said, “He wants to protect us. He wants to do his duty.”

  Yeah, I knew that much. “He’s my goddamned son and as long as he lives under my roof, I say when and where he goes.”

  “It’s the Air Force, Jack. He wants to join the Air Force of the United States of America.” Travis primed his Rager, the blue tint of the digital readout reflected off his thin-rimmed glasses.

  My heart clenched. Ji
mmy was brave, but still a kid. Sixteen wasn’t old enough to make that sort of decision. “They blast our jets out of the sky every year. Haven’t you seen the wreckage back near Shelton? And the one that tried to crash land on I-80? You think the pilots lived through that? They didn’t.”

  “They got new technology—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I heard it on the radio.”

  “Yeah? You believe everything you hear on the radio?” Crazies and government propaganda filled the air waves. Goddamn it, I thought, you can’t be naive anymore. Those days are gone.

  “All I’m sayin’ is they need pilots. They need ‘em bad.”

  That’s when I noticed the fear written all over Travis’s slim face. The tightness in his lips, the lines crawling across his forehead.

  He lowered his eyes, refusing to meet mine. “Marshal Conroy says they’re takin’ anyone with any sort of skill, and we both know Jimmy has it.”

  “I won’t send him off to die.”

  “You think I don’t care about him? He’s my nephew. I spend more time with him than you.”

  I gave him a hard look, but he ignored me. We’d had this part of the argument before.

  “You may not know this about your own son, Jack, but he doesn’t like being stuffed down into a bunker every solstice. You know why? Because he wants to do something. He wants to fight for you and Maggie and Jessica and, yeah, even me. He ain’t content to hide in a metal coffin!” Travis slammed an elbow into the side of the hut, and dropped his Rager. He cursed as he cradled the injured elbow.

  That sapped my anger. I laughed and it wasn’t long before Travis joined me. When I recovered, I took a deep breath. “Jimmy doesn’t want to talk to me. I’ve tried.” Maggie told me a sixteen year old girl is twice the trouble as a sixteen year old boy, but I don’t know about that. When I look in my Jimmy’s eyes and I see disgust lurking beneath the surface, it’s like someone takes a sander to my heart. I know he’s got to be his own man, and part of that is pulling away, but does it have to hurt so much?