SOON…

The eyes looked up. The little heart bled into the guttering flame. Flies buzzed, deafening. Recipient stalked below Benno’s feet.

SOON…

#

Recipient sat at the foot of the pull-out bed in the small living room, staring at Benno. As Benno came to, Recipient leapt off the bed, strode to the kitchen doorway, stretched, yawned, and disappeared around the doorframe.

Benno flexed his ankles. His mouth was so dry that his tongue raked on the crest of his teeth. His stomach ached dully, residual pain from a cancer that had failed to do its job.

He remembered fainting in the museum director’s office. He remembered coming to soon after, on the office’s floor, Brooke kneeling beside him with her phone to her ear. He remembered walking to the car, arm-in-arm with the ticket taker, and being lowered into the passenger seat. He remembered Brooke talking to the doctor while they drove; Are you sure? I can bring him right there… If you think that’s okay… Thank you.

He sat up. Again he felt dizzy, but it passed quickly. The doctor said your blood pressure might a little low for awhile, Brooke had told him as she helped him onto the pull out bed. So you need to stay off your feet.

Benno lowered his feet off the side of the bed. The salmon-colored carpet was coarse. Who had bought this ugly carpet? After the separation—during the divorce—everything had been such a blur. Benno had needed to find a place quickly, somewhere close to work and commutable for Nick. He’d gone shopping a handful of times for furniture and decor, but hadn’t paid much attention to what he was buying. Kay was always the one with the eye for interior decoration. I should’ve gotten a plant, Benno thought, then immediately thought: I already have a plant. It’s growing a little blue flower… But of course he didn’t. There was no plant in his apartment. He was making it up, like everything else.

Brooke appeared from the kitchen, carrying a glass of water, milky with some sort of supplement. “Can you please lie back down?” She asked. She sounded exhausted. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Maybe it was Benno.

“My back was hurting,” Benno said.

“I’ll fix the pillows for you.” Brooke set the glass down on the table and adjusted the pillows at the head of the pull-out. “Please.” She touched his shoulder, firm enough to guide him onto his back, then pulled the sheets up to his neck before he could resist.

“I’m so tired,” Benno said as Brooke sat beside him.

She folded her hands in her lap. “Nick is in his room,” she said. “I guess Kay is out of town for something, so he’s going to be staying here for the rest of the week. I asked him to check on you now and then while I’m out, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen…”

Benno rolled his dry tongue around his mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” Brooke said after a span of silence. “I’m so sorry about your mother. I know you were hoping for something else—anything instead of that.”

Something clicked and whirred faintly in the other room.

“We’ll call the funeral home in a few days. There’s no rush at this point. And you should call your brother too. Whenever you’re ready.” Brooke adjusted the sheets for no reason. “And I’m hoping—and I know you have a lot to process, and I can’t imagine what that’s going to be like—but I’m hoping that there can be some closure here. I know it’s always been something that was hanging over you, how could it not be? But maybe in this, I mean after some time, there will be a chance to let it go. And to focus on what’s in front of you. On everything you have.” She touched her abdomen. “You have an opportunity here. An opportunity to get it right.”

Benno looked at Brooke. She used to look like Kay.

“I need to run some errands.” Brooke stood up. “I’ll only be a couple hours. If you need something, just call for Nick.” She smiled—a forced, half-pained thing—and left, and for some reason that Benno didn’t understand—there had been so much of that lately—he wondered when the last time he would ever see her would be, and if he would know.

#

Benno watched the room fade gradually into night. The only sound in the apartment since Brooke left was the whir off in some other room—Benno had lived in this apartment for years now and had yet to track down its source—and the occasional click of Recipient’s nails on the floor as he stalked some silent prey.

His mother was dead. After everything, she was dead. And she’d died in a museum an hour north of his town. Killed herself. Benno understood. After everything Edie had told him, he understood. At least that part. The rest… Benno wasn’t sure he believed it. Who was this woman—Edie—to tell such a tale? Of course it was all impossible. There were no portals to other realms in the pits of Egyptian tombs. There were no wish granting entities residing there. People were not reborn. The reasonable explanation—a reasonable explanation—was that Edie was a liar, or insane. Benno had found her in an AA meeting after all, not that those folks were inherently crazy. It just didn’t bode well for the veracity of her story. Which was all it was. A story. And the age thing? Well, it was possible that Rose Haim—or Rose Gallant—simply aged well. She would be in her late sixties. It was not impossible she looked younger. Early twenties? Well, with some makeup, the right clothes, a dim streetlight… And it didn’t matter anyway. She was dead. Benno’s mother was dead. She had been dead for twenty-six years.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Benno was dead too, or, at the very least, dying.

A sensation had formed in his stomach. At first he mistook it for more residual aching. But it was not. It was hunger. Since his diagnosis he’d eaten obligatorily—just enough to keep himself alive; the thought of food throughout this period was nauseating. But now, lying on his back in the dark living room of his cramped apartment, he was hungry. He had forgotten what hunger felt like. He got carefully to his feet, and there was no dizziness this time.

The fridge was empty. He could order. There was a Chinese place that delivered. He and Nick used to order from it once a week. It had been so long since they’d sat down for a meal together. And Nick was here, here in the apartment. Benno indulged a thought as he made his way down the hallway to his son’s room: The two of them at the kitchen table, passing containers of noodles and dumplings, their plates overflowing, speaking about things—maybe—or not, but content, together, like it used to be. Benno had been so distracted, for years—with the divorce, with Brooke, with the cancer, with one desperate insanity after the next—that he’d lost sight of his only true responsibility. Was it too late? Probably. Did he have an opportunity to get it right? He didn’t think so. But he had an obligation to try.

He rapped on Nick’s closed door. “Hey, kiddo.”

Faint music issued from beyond.

“I’m ordering some Chinese. From Golden House. What do you think? Want to share some chow fun and soup dumplings?”

Benno didn’t recognize the music playing through the door; Nick had never taken to Benno’s 90’s rock.

“Nick, I’m coming in.” Benno rapped again, waited a few seconds, and opened the door.

The bedroom was dark and damp, and Benno was assailed by a stench of feces so stringent that his skin broke out in gooseflesh. For a moment his mind convinced him he’d entered the wrong room—some horrible room that wasn’t part of his apartment, to which the door had somehow led. But as his eyes adjusted, and the outlines of the room’s furniture—the desk, the dresser, the bed against the far wall—and Nick himself, lying on his back on the bed, one long arm draped off the edge, his fingers nearly skirting the floor—a new conviction started to issue forth in Benno’s mind. It was half-formed. It was misshapen. It was impossible.

“Nick…” Benno waded through the damp room to the side of the bed. “Something smells in here…” He stood over the bed, looking down at the shape of his son.

Nick was awake; his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Benno followed their gaze, as if there might be something up there he needed to see.

“Nick…”

Nick was awake. His eyes were open.

The bed wheezed as Benno climbed onto it, and Nick jounced. He jounced with the compression of the mattress. He did not jounce in any other way.

“Nick.”

Benno meant to take hold of Nick’s shoulders, but he must’ve taken hold of the wrong things, because there was no way his son’s shoulders were so cold.

“Nick.”

Something rolled off the bed’s edge and clanked to the floor. A familiar sound to Benno. An empty glass bottle. Then something else fell, clacked and rattled, less familiar but unmistakable. A plastic pill bottle. Both bottles—two disparate phenomena—went silent somewhere below as Benno clambered on top of his son.

“Nick.”

Nick’s mouth was too large. No. There was vomit on his chin, on his lips, pooled—thick—in the ditch of his mouth. Hardened. Cement.

“Nick.”

When Nick was two years old, they’d gone to spend a weekend at Kay’s parents house down south. At bed time, Nick had cried from his crib so violently he’d started to hyperventilate. Kay at the time was pregnant with a child they would never meet, and so the responsibility of consoling Nick had fallen on Benno. He’d gone to Nick and sat beside the crib and stroked his hair until his breathing settled and his crying stopped. I’m always here, Benno had whispered. I’m always here. Nick had watched his father from bleary eyes, doubtful but willing to trust, for some long, long time until his lids had fallen—then snapped back open, confirming Benno’s promise, then fallen again—then snapped open again and again until sleep finally won. And even then Benno—at some rare moment of peace in his miserable life—had stayed, watching his small, precious son sleep, deep into the night, terrified that if he left, Nick’s eyes would snap open again and he would find that his father had lied to him.

“Nick…”

His skin was gray. His body was inert. The vomit did not displace. He had defecated long enough ago that the smell permeated throughout the room.

Benno breathed at the normal rate. His heart was not beating. Tears bled down his face and neck.

“Nick…”

I’m asleep. I’m having a nightmare.

Benno touched Nick’s face with a hand that trembled so viciously it clapped against the cold, clammy flesh. Was this right? Could it possibly be? Was this what it all led to? What was Benno supposed to learn from this?

His foot struck the glass bottle as he slid off the bed, then his other foot, then the first foot again, and inadvertently he kicked the bottle along with him out into the hall until it spun away into some other meaningless realm.

What am I supposed to learn from this?

He punched in the safe combination without hesitation—266362—a senseless number inexplicably as familiar as his own name or the name of his child.

Is this what it all led to?

The song playing through the speakers was melodic and upbeat, but the vocals dripped with anger, something between a whisper and a scream.

Can this possibly be?

He climbed back onto the bed and lay facing his son. In the faint light, Nick’s profile reminded Benno of his father’s.

Is this right?

Benno leaned his forehead against Nick’s cold ear and draped his long arms across his body. At the foot of the bed, Recipient’s hunched shape quavered. A mouse writhed in its jaw. The glass triangle on his collar reflected a sooty darkness and the faint, orange flicker of a small flame. The cat had been with Benno forever. The cat was as constant and overlook-able as dirt to a mole.

The music smoldered:

I don't look the same as I used to…

Is this a bad thing?

Benno placed his father’s revolver to his temple. So this was why Harold Haim had left it to him. This was what it was for.

Photos for Oscar, to remember by.

A gun for Benno, to keep the family together.

Look, I don't know you…

I don't look the same like before…

And I don't recognize myself anymore…

Benno thought back to the Close Call. Kay’s strong fingers holding his arm—was that the last time they’d touched? Nick’s little hand holding his shoulder—still in the belief his father could protect him. It had been so many years since it had even crossed his mind. Up until now—up until this very moment—the Close Call had been the closest to death Benno had ever been. Even with the cancer. It had held that title for seven years. Until now. The muzzle shivered along Benno’s temple. The Close Call had been dethroned. This was the closest Benno had ever been—and ever would be—to death.

From somewhere deep in the folds of Nick’s hair—impossibly deep, impossible like a ghost—the best smell in the world exhumed itself, and filled Benno’s nostrils.

Safe.

The best smell in the world.

From pain.

“I’m always here.”

Forever.

Flash—contact…BA—