Ionic Relapse Read online

  The grinding squeal of the giant rusty-knuckled hinges loudly blasted out at him. He rocked on his heels at the sucking wind of decompressed air. The immense pressure of the grandiose door pulled past him at an ever-accelerating rate. Once the winds stopped, so did the noise. Kieffer released the tight grip over his eyes and lifted his head.

  He reproachfully gazed at Ashley standing on the other side of the now regular-sized doorway. She stood looking at him in a backdrop of warm light that wholly enveloped the space beyond the ever-darkening night that grew ominously at his back. Vision returning, he looked Ashley over a second time and realized that he had overdressed for the occasion. Her evening dress consisted of a glossy black t-shirt with the letters AFI sprawled in glitter-bombed print over her breasts and a pair of black pre-ripped skinny jeans. She was wearing the same thing she always wore right down to the tattered graffiti-tagged Chuck Taylors.

  So much for following the beam...

  It was Ashley who graciously broke the rickety bridge of silence between them. “Hey, fag. Come on in,” she said. As Ashley stepped back to allow Kieffer in, she paused and began giggling under tiny cupped hands like a Japanese schoolgirl. “Wait — are you on your way to a job interview or something?”

  “I…” He couldn't make words. No matter how much he fumbled through dozens of folders of sarcastic comebacks, he couldn’t load a single response. Kieffer was dead in the water. He could have stood there forever, scrawny stick arms glued to his sides, if it meant freedom from the impossibilities that lie ahead. He would let the roll of unchangeable seasons fade his clothes and skin to nothing. The onslaught of endless snow, sun and rain would eventually dissolve him back to the dirt. He would become just another reclaimed structure of harvested minerals; another casualty to the hungry microbes that await him down in deep earth. An inanimate object, like an old ceramic pot or weathered lawn gnome, would’ve also been ideal. At that moment, Kieffer would’ve been completely fine with that. Any excuse to get him out of this situation and into a safe place where he could be alone.

  “Alright, alright. Get in here before the neighbors think you’re an underage escort.” She laughed and, with one tiny hand, pulled him inside and shut the door.

  ***

  Four empty chairs sat at the round wooden table in the dining room. It was a large room that occupied over a quarter of the first floor. Rarely used these days, the main dining room was usually reserved for the annual Bennett Christmas party and not much else. All of Sharon’s brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and extended family would come up from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to drink and bicker about yearly grievances with one another.

  It was a winter ritual that Sharon dreaded every December. She belonged to the kind of New England family that wasn’t comfortable unless they were ready to punch each other out. Simple conversations about trivial things like the last Bruins or Patriots game always ended in chaos. Sharon had the police at her door last year when her older brother John had a little too much spiked eggnog and picked a fight with Sharon’s brother-in-law, Charles. What started as a debate over whether Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were a couple soon turned heated. The surrounding uncles and cousins had to forcibly break up the argument. The two were held at opposite ends of the room until things cooled down between them. After that, they were let go to rejoin the festivities.

  Enjoying a plate of Swedish meatballs, Charles had all but forgotten about the argument.

  John, however, had not. He had intended on having the last word.

  If not for his honor, then for Ben’s.

  John had about six inches and fifty pounds over Charles, but Charles had one huge advantage; he had been sober. So, when John went to clumsily sucker punch Charles in the back of the head while he was in mid-conversation with Aunt Carol, Charles just stepped to the side and let John go crashing through the glass-paneled doors to his left. After the ambulance had arrived, so had the police. And as John sat in the back of the open ambulance, leaking all over the place, he begged the cops not to arrest his brother. Not brother-in-law, but brother. It took eight stitches in his left hand and six in his arm to make him realize that. And so, every year the Bennetts needed constant conflict to give them reason for reconciliation. It was the only way they could bring themselves to express love.

  Of all the family to shed blood in this room, none belonged to Wayne. Ironically, no Kings had ever been seated at the roundtable. Wayne, as far as Sharon knew, had no close family. He had a few living relatives, his mother and an older brother that lived somewhere in Rhode Island, but they had refused to speak to him since he was kicked out of the house at nineteen. His own mother threw him out in the frozen death of winter and told him to never come back. The idea of someone's own flesh and blood turning their back on a child, THEIR child, made Sharon feel angry-sick. Wayne was a smart, soft-spoken man; Sharon saw no reason why anyone would shun him like that.

  Over the long years Sharon had tried to get the full story out of Wayne, coaxing him with much needed therapeutic release. “Come on, Sugar Britches,” she would say, knowing full well how much he hated the pet name, “you know you can trust me. Don’t you wanna‘ talk about it?” Her voice a soft whisper of sympathy. “Must be hard keeping all those memories locked up in that dusty ol’ noggin of yours. What happened, babe?” Sometimes she would take his hand in hers. Her liquid blue eyes full and wet like a cartoon deer.

  “I didn’t fit in, Sharon,” he would always say, eyes never meeting hers. “I was the black sheep of the family. That’s all.”

  Sharon, however, didn’t accept that as the whole truth. Being the black sheep alone didn’t get a nineteen-year-old kid banished from home with nothing but the clothes on his back and a beat-up Volkswagen. His prized possession, Wayne inherited it a year earlier from his dead father. It was supposed to go to his older brother, Jed, but he was doing time for assault and armed robbery when Wayne's father suffered the final heart attack. That was as much as Sharon could get. The faded scar at his temple reminded her to tread lightly.

  There had to be more to the story. She had gotten as much out of him as she could over the years — which was practically nothing — and let it rest. Her aim wasn’t to make him feel guilty about not having a family; it was to help him. Wayne had a tough exterior. Every common outburst or spark of rage was walled up behind that stony face of his. It took a lot to crack that stone. He was a very patient man and a wonderful father because of it. She knew it was silly, but Sharon sometimes wished she had telepathic powers like one of those clairvoyant gypsies in the old movies; maybe then she would understand.

  Ashley, Wayne, and Sharon had conflicting day-to-day schedules that made casual group dinners virtually impossible. Sharon cooked most of the meals for the week, prepackaging them in the fridge for Ashley and Wayne to eat at their leisure. They hardly ever sat down together and ate a meal like how it used to be when she was a kid. Between her job, cooking, cleaning, and the constant flow of layouts she was forced to bring home, there was never any time to organize. But, since this dinner was planned in advance, Sharon insisted that it be held in the classiest of regards. With all the excitement of a little girl at a tea party, she got out the good china and pearl-handled utensil set passed down to her by her grandmother and got to work.

  Finally, an excuse to act out my nostalgia, she thought giddily to herself as she diced chives while several stockpots boiled on the stovetop to her right. Her plan was to make Kieffer feel welcomed, especially after the little incident with Wayne. From what Ashley told her about him, he was from a broken home and didn’t see much of his mom. Not to say his mother was a bad parent; it was just obvious by Kieffer's slim hips and sunken cheeks that he probably fended for himself. Boxes of Mac N’ Cheese and Hot Pockets are only good for you if you want tapeworms. Sharon knew that everyone appreciates a home cooked meal, and she planned on filling every space on that table. She hoped for her daughter’s sake that it would be enough.

  Shortly after Sharo
n had set a tiny wicker basket of steaming southern biscuits down on the table, she heard a faint knocking on the front door.

  “I’ll get it!” Ashley called from the top of the stairs. Sharon heard feet stumble down the carpeted steps. There was a short pause. She heard the familiar sound of the seasonally rusty-hinged door creaking open; a cold draft soon slid across the floor at Sharon's feet. She heard faint voices muffled by distance and knew that their guest of honor had finally arrived. Not wanting to be seen yet, Sharon walked briskly through the side door to the kitchen to grab the last dish. Bouncing quietly on tiptoed steps, she rushed to get the table picture perfect before everyone was to be seated. Sharon hurried across the kitchen and scooped up the last steaming ceramic bowl before turning to leave.

  Just then, a sudden dark movement in her peripheral vision halted her stride.

  Almost dropping the slick bowl in her hands, she was momentarily startled by the previously unseen presence of Wayne sitting at the counter at the other side of the kitchen. Gasping sharply and uttering a short curse under her breath, Sharon calmly set down the bowl on the counter to her left to straighten her loose-fitting bun. Wayne sat with his back to her, hunched over something that was hidden behind the span of his bulky shoulders.

  “I think our guest has arrived. Why don’t you come out and say hi?” Her heart was still pounding against her ribs as she once again picked up the bowl of overpriced organic green beans and waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  He continued to sit with his back to her, idling with something on the tiled countertop in front of him. Sharon waited patiently in the doorway. She heard the dry, crumbly sound of paper. Wayne was an avid reader, always with whatever the bestseller was at the time. He went through them at lightening speed, often throwing out his latest buy in a week's time to meet the trash pickup. When she realized that Wayne was probably too absorbed in whatever new Dean Koontz book he had to acknowledge her, she sighed and said, “Well, whenever you're done reading over there, come on out. Dinner's ready.” She walked back out into the dining room.

  Far away, from a night-shaded place deep in the moon-dripped woods of his memories, Wayne heard the faint sound of voices through the swinging kitchen door. Almost a full minute later, he was back. With tingling fingers, he flipped shut the little red sun-bleached notebook of forgotten children’s names and stood up from his stool. Stuffing the dog-eared notebook in his back pocket, he went out into the dining room to join the others.

  ***

  Ashley made Kieffer take his snow-clotted shoes off at the door before leading him past the staircase and down a long hallway. The hall was lined with many doors, all of which were closed. The sandstone carpeting of the narrow hallway leading to the dining room felt unusually dense against his pruning feet. Kieffer’s socks had gotten wet from standing out in the snow, leaving a fading trail of footprints from the front door.

  The long tread of painted concrete ended outside the wide swing-style doors directly at the end of the corridor. Their large batwing bodies were propped open to expose a longitudinal shine of freshly polished hardwood flooring that shimmered under the track lighting like a square halo. Each naked plank bonded to another to form secret fractals of swirling wood grain that stretched out across the room in a glowing lattice. Kieffer felt instantly overwhelmed. The ground beneath him looked like an accidental intergalactic mapping of some random constellation of star systems ten trillion light-years away. He nervously pondered at its almost holographic duality as he and Ashley made their way to the round table at the far end of the room.

  He was soon greeted warmly by Sharon, receiving a big hug that Kieffer felt funny accepting in front of Ashley. Kieffer knew Ashley’s mom would be pretty, the old pictures in the hallway upstairs gave him a vague idea of her youth, but looking at her now in her slim lilac dress with flimsy shoulder straps gave him goosebumps. If Ashley grew up to be even half as beautiful as her mom, then she would never be alone. Kieffer cherished the hug, its tight embrace sending ripples of warm blood scattering across his body. He was left slightly saddened when it had to end.

  A short time later, Wayne walked in from the next room and mumbled his hello. Distracted, he barely looked up at Kieffer before silently taking a seat. He sat slumped at first, head drooped over his empty plate. His face had no expression at all. It looked to Kieffer as if sheer willpower would move the food onto Wayne’s plate. Kieffer also became distracted, shepherded away in a flurry of rolling jokes and stories. Soon, after Sharon's quick tour of the murals and old photos hanging on the walls, they joined Wayne at the table.

  The crystal chandelier hanging above them twinkled and quietly clinked in the unfiltered breeze leaking in from outside. The winds of the changing season rustled the trees. Frosted windowpanes rattled loudly, sounding like bleached skeletons shivering behind the walls. Kieffer couldn’t honestly tell how much of it was him or the fluctuating winds. Nor did he care to know. Auditory hallucinations were distracting, but not necessarily dangerous. They were the more welcomed tricks of the occasional reality hacks. He used every ounce of his mental strength to stay focused on the conversation outside of those infrequent sounds.

  When it came time to eat he was relieved, knowing food would be a great sound proofer. When dinner ended, the night would be practically done. He was in the home stretch. Spread across the lime green polyurethane table cloth in front of them were steaming bowls of food: a small banquet of stews and greens. For that, he was truly thankful. With all the chewing and slurping going on, those outside noises, real or not, wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Alright, everyone, let’s eat!” Sharon said cheerfully as she circled the table serving out food. Kieffer watched in amazement as his empty plate soon accumulated a literal pile of delicacies. He watched as fluffy rolls of bread were bathed in speckled gravy then garnished with scraps of bacon sweetened in brown sugar. Hearty stew and stir-fry veggies joined them. Kieffer’s palate watered uncontrollably in anticipation. He ate two full plates and still had room for apple pie. Sharon had pulled out all the stops, excluding dragging out the baby pictures of Ashley. Even though they had just met, it was obvious that she approved of him.

  Wayne, on the other hand, clearly did not.

  While he wasn’t foaming at the mouth with rage like the last time they met, something was still off. He gave Kieffer the impression of bored dissociation, more interested in his food than with the active conversation in front of him. But, Kieffer could tell Wayne was listening. The way he picked at just the carrots in the stew when Kieffer spoke or quickly scratched the tip of his nose anytime Ashley referred to sociology class were his tells. With those subtle signs that may or may not have been visual hallucinations, Kieffer couldn’t help but glance over at him from time to time. Kieffer would be in mid-sentence when Wayne's icy grey stare suddenly locked onto his own from across the table. Its kinetic intensity sent electric tremors down his spine. Sharon and Ashley didn’t notice any of this, of course, but that wasn’t unusual. Wayne was quick to put in his two cents every now and again. He made just enough of an effort to seem involved without drawing any extra attention to himself.

  When the meal was over, Sharon, Ashley, and Kieffer all stood up to help clear the table.

  “No, dear,” Sharon said softly to Kieffer, the tone of a mother talking to her infant son. She started stacking dirty plates and silverware. “You just sit down and make yourself comfortable. Ashley and I will see to this mess.”

  Ashley plucked the plate and fork from Kieffer's hands and said, “Yeah, sit down, douche. We cooked you a meal, it would only be fair that we clean up your trash after. Misogynist Pig.” She wrinkled her nose up at him in a forced expression of feministic disgust.

  “Ashley!” Sharon gasped as the three of them laughed. The joke was well received by everyone but Wayne, the silent observer.

  Seeing that he had no choice in the matter, Kieffer nervously sat down and pulled his chair back up to the table. As Sharon
and Ashley left the room, so did the warmth of their flowing voices and song-like laughter. What replaced it was a thin blanket of def coldness that shrouded the room like the giant silken wings of a death's head moth. Kieffer fought looking up from the floral placemat in front of him for a long time — possibly minutes. He knew what was waiting. That slack-jawed, empty-eyed stare he saw on that sunny afternoon was looming just across the table, gaping patiently at him. Waiting on standby for him to lift his head. Kieffer could almost hear its unseen hands crack and stretch to him under the table like flesh-torn poison ivy. The rubbery gristle of vine-split fingers dragged their way up his leg and onto the front of his—

  “Yeah know,” Wayne said, his gravely voice literally jumping Kieffer in his seat, “I remember when The Doll Man was still in action.” Kieffer was forced to lock eyes with Wayne from across the table. The smiling, altered face from earlier looked at him through thick spectacles that balanced delicately against his new mask. Kieffer had no idea what to say. Wayne’s sudden offhanded remark had slipped by him like a greased watermelon. He was so startled by the unexpected voice that all he could do at this point was stare and nod. Eventually, Wayne picked up on Kieffer’s blankness and said, “That was your poster on my couch the other day, right?”

  Kieffer blinked twice, heavily, and cleared his throat, “Yyyes,” he stuttered in place, “it was my ppproject for Sociology cclass.” A nervous tick that always came out when things got tense.