Flesh Trap

The hospital walls of Rosedale Glade were grayer than Casey had remembered them being. He had never been here specifically, but a hospital was a hospital. Cages were cages. He had only been committed once before, when he was twelve. A week observational stay arranged by Aunt Cheryl and the pediatric therapist on-call when he was taken to the hospital, after being found in the puddle of his father’s blood. Dazed, half-awake, nearly catatonic on the examination table as a nurse in blue scrubs cut off his clothes, rushing to discern whether or not Alyona had cut her seven pounds from her step-son as well as his father.

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Mariska slept in a fetal curl in the corner armchair. She had fallen asleep sometime after four in the morning, when Casey faked sleep long enough to put her at ease. The box was waiting under the bed where she had left it. She would destroy it. That was what she told Casey. Burn it or bury it or throw it off a bridge. It would die because she promised it would, but Casey knew better than that. It would live as long as he lived, hunting as long as he still breathed, wearing faces and hiding in plain sight.

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Casey hadn’t slept in a day. He didn’t tell his sister that. Mariska had already worried enough, stayed up late enough, lost enough sleep. He left the box on the bed and smoked two cigarettes on the patio before the sun died out between the buildings across the street. The flytraps smiled at him. His chest felt tight. The apartment whispered on the other side of the glass door but Casey hadn’t heard. If he had, he would have told himself it didn’t matter. Not a whole lot mattered anymore, under the weight of things.

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Joel had waited until after work to listen to the tape. He had finished getting dressed that morning with it on the dresser after Lucas left, eating breakfast with it on the table beside his coffee and paper. It came with him in his bag to the office, on the desk while he took lunch between calls and appointments. The weight of it made his fingertips itch whenever Joel looked at it. It wasn’t his, not like the notebook that had been given to him and that he chose to read and then keep closed. It belonged to Casey, some piece of memory or pound of flesh he hadn’t been privy to. Maybe, he thought, it had been that way for a reason.

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Mariska was on her second cup of coffee by the time Casey found her in his corner booth, working off of five hours sleep and a full pack of cigarettes. She looked up as he sat down, shrugging off his bag and dropping into the seat across from her. She looked bad, restless and worn-through. He looked worse, black under his eyes, blood dried to his knuckles and his shirt collar. Before she could speak, he waved her off.

“Relax, just a nosebleed. I’ll make it.” He looked her up and down. “Are you alright?”

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I was wrong about Dad. It’s not him, it’s something else. I can see it now. I think…I think I just about got it nailed down, though. I’m following a lead, okay, and I know it doesn’t make any sense, but. But, look, we’ll talk later. Call me when you get this.

Casey didn’t get Mariska’s message. He didn’t sleep. The box had slept in the middle of the bed, making quiet satisfied sounds under the lid, throat flapping, swallowing like a full stomach. He didn’t clean up the blood pooling in the kitchen, living room, or hallway. It felt like cleaning up a crime scene, toweling Walter’s blood from his skin, scrubbing it off his hands. Walter deserved better than that. Instead he watched the sun rise, called Mariska’s number, hung up. Drank two cups of coffee and called her back to leave a message. He forgot to say I love you. He almost wanted to call back and tell her.

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“Lucas?”

Joel poked his head outside his mother’s heavy white door. It was just past six o’clock and Lucas had buzzed the ringer three times, knocking twice as Joel came from the kitchen to the door. The morning chill bit at Joel’s face, skin still shower-damp above his shirt collar. Lucas looked over from his slouch against the wall outside Sarah Britton’s brownstone, straightening up. He reached into his jacket pocket for a cassette. It was in a sealed plastic bag, marked with red tape and catalog tags, dates and names, police notation.

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Casey had left the notebooks on the couch with his empty bag. The box had vanished in the library when his father did as he walked away, still shaking under his clothes. At home he searched all over but didn’t find the box, only his notes in his bag. It was gone. He was alone. The fear that had gripped him in the library had bled out on the long walk home, melting from his muscles to warm into a strange, empty euphoria. Like the medicated happiness of the candy-colored downers he stopped popping after college, or the fading easiness of a tequila buzz moving over him before waning into a lackluster hangover. It was something welcoming and airy and fleeting, like when he woke to Joel’s lips pressed to his back, fingers at his bicep, just breathing. His father was dead again. His father was gone and he had taken his devils with him. Everything would be alright.

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The house was still empty when Mariska came back with her crowbar and flashlight, retracing her steps through the yard to the kitchen. Mooreland Street was dead by the time she parked on the curb and retrieved her things from the trunk, streetlights out by one o’clock and the neighborhood black. She hadn’t known what she expected to find when she left for work, lying to Billy with a tired smile and a kiss of his cheek. I’ll be saying at Casey’s, she lied. He’s having a hard time without Joel. I’ll be home in the morning. Love you. Be good without me. He smiled in that dumb way he always did and told her, Okay, no problem, do what you need to. I love you, be good too. She said she loved him twice more. Closed the door behind her, turned over her car and drove away.

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Walter left the library at seven o’clock every night, after the clerks had all finished and he said his goodbyes to Chuck and Leslie upstairs. Checked, signed and passed off on the reports from Technical Services and Acquisitions, and finally filed his spell-checked amendments to Bill’s budget proposal for Monday’s staff meeting. Checked the drawers at the front desk and locked them. He was drinking his last cup of coffee in the employee break-room when the night janitor Jeffery pushed the mop and cart down the hall outside with the creak of plastic wheels and leather soles.

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