Her Wounded Eyes

Robert

Guffey

FIODAR HUSEU

Which one should it be?”

Joel said this as he lined the bullets along the bed frame like the regiment of tiny toy soldiers Gordon’s stepson used to play with on Saturday afternoons. Joel knew full well that those Saturday afternoons had always been oh so precious to them both. But that was before… before….

Joel sat on an end table at the foot of the bed, idly rearranging the half-dozen bullets as if he were about to play the shell game with Gordon. But neither of them were playing a game—at least not a child’s game.

Gordon was tied to the bed. His mouth had been stuffed with rags, though Joel had been kind enough to take them out a few minutes before. No one would hear the screams anyway, not even in a sweet little gingerbread home in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles. No one ever heard anything, not in the middle of Los Angeles, not in the suburbs, not anywhere. Not if they could help it.

Joel wasn’t worried. He doubted Gordon would scream anyway. It wasn’t his style; he was too dignified. He might pray a lot, though. Yeah, he’d pray like a dumb son of a bitch to that nonexistent god of his just before the bullet entered his skull. Then again, perhaps he wouldn’t. After all, people did strange things under pressure, didn’t they? Joel decided to ask Gordon about this point blank.

“What difference does it make?” Gordon replied in a dull monotone. “Either way I’ll be dead.”

“Maybe,” Joel said. He could feel the sides of his growing smile twitching spastically. “On the other hand, maybe one of these bullets is an empty shell, and maybe if you pick the right one I’ll let you go free.”

Gordon’s eyes darted about nervously. “One of them is a blank?” The monotone had changed, replaced with a new sense of… hope.

Joel shrugged, teasing him. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? What other chance do you have?”

Gordon glanced at the doorway leading into the hall. Scarlet pebbles still clung to the bare white plaster from the recent slaughter. No doubt, Gordon’s mind was now filled with memories of Diana, Christopher, Tanya….

Joel laughed.

Gordon stared at him with hateful, tear-filled eyes. “Why, god damn it? What’d they ever do to you?”

“Nothing. What did you do to them, that’s the question.”

“What’re you talking about? I’d never do anything to them. They were my family!”

“No!” Joel slammed the butt of his gun into Gordon’s skull. Blood streamed down his forehead. “Wanda was your family. But you forgot about her, didn’t you? You thought you could divorce her mom and start a whole new family and forget all about what you did to Wanda, as if it never happened. Well, Wanda hasn’t forgotten. She knows what you would’ve done to Tanya if we’d let her stay here with you. Believe me, she’s better off where she is, where you can’t get your disgusting hands on her.”

“What the fuck’re you talking about?” Gordon said. Blood was now trickling into his eyes. “I never hurt Wanda in my life.”

Joel slammed his fist into Gordon’s solar plexus. “Liar!”

For the next few minutes Gordon could only gasp in pain. Despite his wheezing, he at last managed to whisper, “Wanda’s the liar. That’s why I disowned her. She burned her brains out on drugs a long time ago. She’s totally unreliable, she makes up stories.”

Joel laughed as he whipped out his penis and pissed in Gordon’s face. “Fuck you, family man. I’m on drugs. Does it look like I burned my brains out? No, I didn’t think so.”

Gordon closed his mouth, winced in disgust. The urine intermingled with the blood on his forehead. Joel was able to piss for a long time. He’d consumed an entire 40-ouncer before working up the courage to come over here.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do this,” Joel said. “Ever since that first night back in high school when I picked up Wanda to go to the movies. You looked at me in my ripped clothes and dirty jacket and actually cringed. You thought I was some kind of ignorant piece of white trash, I could see it all over your face. You made me feel like shit whenever I called to talk to Wanda. Remember when you got in my face that one time and accused me of giving Wanda drugs? What a laugh. She gave me drugs. Without her I never would’ve shot up for the first time. Not that I’m complaining. Wanda’s the best thing that ever happened to me. She set my head straight, gave me direction. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.” He stuffed his penis back into his pants, zipped up. “How’s it feel, huh? How’s it feel to be treated like a piece of shit?” Joel slammed his boot into Gordon’s left rib. Something cracked.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Gordon gasped. “She’s playing with your head.”

Joel snorted. “Wanda couldn’t play with anybody’s head. She’s too fragile, too eaten away with self-doubt. It’s no surprise. Not after how you treated her.” Before Gordon could respond Joel kicked him in the ribs once again. Jesus, he was getting such a rush off this. This combined with the speed Wanda had scored for him….

Joel was in Heaven.

Which was more than anyone would be able to say for Mr. Gordon Sovitch, church man, business man, family man. So many “respectable” titles, so many masks, so many lies. Joel intended to destroy every single one of them within the next few seconds.

Unless Gordon agreed to play the game.

It happened to everybody once in a while: complete disorientation. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but sooner or later it always did.

Wanda had been hitchhiking down a darkened road in her old neighborhood at two in the morning, having just been kicked out of a truck by a fat man who didn’t like girls who were tight with their favors. “Fucking whore!” he’d yelled (in truth meaning the exact opposite), screeching to an abrupt halt, propelling her out the door with a single shove. She’d flipped him off and called him a fag (in truth meaning the exact opposite) as he’d sped away into the midnight darkness. This incident hadn’t surprised her. If she’d learned anything at all during her brief eighteen years it was this: All men were insane.

What seemed like two hours later, tired, unaware of her surroundings—disorientated—she’d wandered from the main road and had found herself in a wooded area she’d seen many times before in her dreams. A forest.

A forest filled with impossible things: shadowy birds with glowing red eyes and transparent, black, X-ray bodies; men growing out of the ground like plants, reaching out for her ankles with long pale arms covered in mossy white fur; disembodied, bat-winged mouths with razor-sharp teeth soaring from tree to tree; things from a twisted storybook her mother had read to her once. (Only once. Her father had taken the book away, said it was a thing of hellfire, of the devilandtheimagination!)

But this scene, this forest, was not a phantasm plucked from her imagination, for she knew she didn’t have any; it had been bled out of her by incessant threats of eternal damnation. Wicked strangeness like this could only happen to her. To delinquent Wanda. Whorewanda. Devilspawn wanda. Wanda with the wounded eyes.

Things crawled behind these eyes: shadows. Crippled shadows. Pinned to the inside of her skull. Writhing there. Wriggling to get free.

Her father had seen them on the day she was born. Ever since then he’d done his best to remind her of her “inherent evilness.” For so long she’d tried to prevent his words from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It had been no use. The seven deadly sins were engrained in her very DNA. Other than undergoing a complete cellular and metaphysical make-over, there was little she could do to stave off destiny. It was as inevitable as death… something Wanda knew a great deal about.

Earlier that evening, Joel, the boyfriend she’d run away with, had tried to beat her in the park bathroom in which they’d taken refuge for the night. Life on the road had not measured up to his fanciful dreams. He’d begun to blame her, claimed she’d talked him into all of this. She’d tried to calm him down by the only means she knew well. She’d kissed him, whispering into his ear, tried to distract him with her body….

He’d socked her in the jaw. Called her a slut.

The pain of that word had branded itself in her brain, affecting her much more than the lingering traces of his fist. It was a familiar word to her. Her father had used it often. It was what she’d been running away from.

His assault had not ended with a single blow or a single word. The insults had come as fast as his fists. She’d been forced to protect herself. What else could she have done? Lie there and accept it? Wait for something magical to save her?

Like she’d done with her father. No.

She’d lashed out. The broken pipe had been sitting in the corner of the bathroom for who knows how many years. Sitting there, waiting for a purpose. Waiting to be brought down on the skull of a raving maniac of a boyfriend. The resultant crack had been a sickening sound. He’d died instantly. She’d taken the bloody pipe with her, wiped her fingerprints off it, then stuck it in her backpack. She’d hidden it beneath the passenger seat in the fat man’s truck while he’d been taking a piss on the side of the road. She’d hoped her present would be appreciated by Mr. Fat Man—maybe even by the cops when they found it, identified the blood, and dragged him in on the murder charge.

Standing in the weird forest, she recalled Joel’s lifeless, glassy eyes: dull black tunnels leading down into nothingness. Her memory of them bore no resemblance to the brightness sparkling in the multiple, hazel pupils of the formless creatures who suddenly dropped from the overhead branches, ropy tentacles lashing out from their transparent, amorphous bodies. They were men: men reduced to their essential selves, dozens of stiff phalli erupting out of vaginal pockets in their protoplasmic bodies, phalli that were so long they tripped the creatures as they lumbered toward Wanda through the ankle-high grass. Their bodies blended in with the trees, rendering them almost invisible. She could only see them at certain angles, and then only as flat, two-dimensional beings. With scintillating, hypnotic eyes.

Eyes that prevented her from fleeing. Eyes that abruptly lulled her into the deepest of sleeps…. First there were the vivid, vivid memories: memories of the bloody sac of flesh the doctors had sucked out of her womb, that formless blob she’d caught only a brief glimpse of during the operation. The nurse, after seeing Wanda’s father in the lobby, had told her she should consider herself fortunate having such an “understanding father,” one who would see past her mistake and make certain she received proper, professional care. Apparently to take her mind off the imminent operation, she’d asked Wanda if her boyfriend—by which she’d meant the “mistake’s” father—had accompanied her to the clinic.

Wanda had almost laughed.

She’d almost laughed and said, “He’s in the lobby. Awfully ‘understanding’ of him, isn’t it?”

But no. Instead she’d shaken her head. No.

Her mother had never found out. It’d been a secret. Father had threatened her with Hell if she uttered a word about it. Which had seemed rather funny to her. After all, she’d been living there for fourteen years already, hadn’t she?

Not long after the operation, she’d met Joel. Eventually they decided to flee. She from Hell, he from boredom. Joel had certainly completed his goal. After Wanda had gotten through with him there’d been no hint of tedium left in those empty, fetus-like eyes. Those dead joeleyes. Those wounded eyes… eyes like her father’s… dull black tunnels leading down into nothingness… down into old, old memories better left forgotten….

Yes, first there were the memories followed by a painful haze, the gradual awakening. She lifted her face from the dirt and found herself lying on the side of a deserted road. No forest, no creatures, the visions gone like shadows in night. As always. Twenty yards away she could see the taillights of Mr. Fat Guy’s truck as it receded into the darkness. Had no time passed? Behind her, far down the road, she could just barely see the dull white light glowing above a pay phone at a roadside rest. She knew she wanted to use the phone, but didn’t quite know why. Something about the police…?

She pulled herself up from the dirt and staggered toward the phone. She pressed the numbers 911. A woman with a gentle voice answered. She sounded like her mother. Wanda told her her name, then whispered through her tears, “I-I’d like to report a murder.” The woman asked her where she was. “It doesn’t matter,” Wanda said. She gave the operator the address of her old house, the house where her father and that strange woman now lived. That strange woman and her awful children.

“Please tell me who’s been murdered,” the woman said. Wanda thought about Joel. Joel was dead, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? “My… my baby,” Wanda said at last. “My daughter.” “Please, Wanda, calm down. Tell me who killed her.” Father had threatened her with Hell if she uttered a word about it. “Father,” she said quietly, so quietly that even she couldn’t hear it.

Gordon’s eyelids fluttered open. Joel smiled. Though he hadn’t passed out from the pain, he probably wished he had.

“Well?” Joel said, stroking Gordon’s cheeks with his fingertips. Gordon winced at the touch. “Have you decided to play the game?”

Gordon’s gaze alighted upon the bullets lined up on the bedframe. He nodded slowly.

“Good thinking,” Joel said. “It’s really your only way out, isn’t it?” He stood at the foot of the bed, waving his arms in the air like a sideshow barker. “I promise, old man, I’m good to my word. You’ve got a one in six chance. That’s better than you gave Wanda. If you pick the right bullet, I’ll leave. You’ll have some explaining to do about the wife and kiddies.” He jerked his thumb toward the bloodstreaked hallway. “But that ain’t nothin’ to worry about. I’m sure they’ll buy your story, particularly since it’s coming from such a fine upstanding gentleman like yourself.” These last five words dripped with sarcasm. “But by that time me and Wanda will be long gone.”

Gordon coughed, blood and phlegm rattling in his lungs. “Where is Wanda?”

“She’s in a safe place. I left her back at the park, the same park you used to take her to when she was a little girl, before she was old enough to turn your head, eh? How old do they have to be? Twelve, thirteen? I hear Tanya would’ve been fourteen next month. Looks like I got to her just in the nick of time.”

“Why didn’t Wanda come with you?”

“Because she’s too scared to see you again, she can’t stand to look at your disgusting face.”

“Or maybe she’s playing you for a fool, just like she’s done to everyone else, just like she did to me. She’s crazy—”

“Shut up!” Joel was about to slap Gordon in the face once again, then pulled back. No need to go through that again. They had a game to play. He pointed at the bullets with the barrel of his empty gun. “Go ahead. Make your choice. You don’t have all day. Neither do I.”

“Wanda told these same lies to her mother, you know. That’s why she divorced me. Even though there was no proof, she divorced me. All because she couldn’t come to grips with the fact that her daughter is a habitual liar.”

“Shut up,” Joel whispered.

“She’s insane. I saw it in her eyes the day she was born. She needs to be locked up. You’re just reinforcing her delusions.”

“Shut up!”

“Didn’t you ever stop to think that she tried to seduce me, and not the other way around? I rejected her and she hated me for it. I tried to get help for her but she refused. Instead she ran away with you.”

“God damn, you’re one sick son of a bitch,” Joel said. “Make the choice and let’s get this over with.” Gordon sighed and closed his eyes. “The one on the far right.”

Joel snatched the bullet up from the bedframe, tossed it into the air once as if it were a lucky penny, then jammed it into the chamber of the gun. He moved away from the double bed until his back was pressed up against the window. The window was half-open. A nice cool breeze blew into the room. He could feel it against the back of his neck. He aimed the gun at Gordon’s head and fired.

Gordon’s skull erupted, decorating the wall behind him with an abstract painting of white bone-shards and formless pieces of brain. It was pretty in a way, the final product of four years of utter frustration. Wanda’s father wouldn’t laugh or sneer at him anymore.

Joel swept the remaining bullets off the headboard and poured them into his palm like grains of sand. Each one was as heavy as the last.

“Oops,” he said to the corpse, “I guess I forgot to empty one of them. Bummer deal.”

It was at this point that he heard the sirens. At first he ignored them, assuming they were headed somewhere else. Joel prided himself on his pessimism, and would’ve bet his life on the complacency of the surrounding suburbanites. He knew deep down that none of them would ever lift a finger to help a neighbor in trouble, not even if it meant dialing 911. Clearly, then, the sirens were headed somewhere else.

But they weren’t. The cars skidded to a halt in the driveway of Gordon Sovitch’s two-story home. From the upstairs bedroom Joel peeked through the soft white curtains and saw four squad cars parked outside, their red and blue lights casting a hellish glow against the side of the house.

He could hear more sirens in the distance.

Everything’s going to be okay, he told himself twelve times in a row as he slipped the five bullets into their chambers. More bullets lay in his pocket. Enough for a real party.

At least Wanda’s safe, he said silently as he thrust the gun out the window and fired.

As the police converged on Joel’s bullet-ridden corpse, Wanda stood on the side of a desolate road twenty miles outside the city. She stuck her thumb into the cool night air, hoping a nice gentleman in a truck would stop and agree to take her somewhere far away. She tried to ignore the forest and its strange inhabitants that were always there on either side of her, closing in.

Forever closing in.

Robert Guffey is a lecturer in the Department of English at California State University — Long Beach. His most recent book is Bela Lugosi and the Monogram Nine, coauthored with Gary D. Rhodes (BearManor Media, 2019). Forthcoming is a collection of four novellas entitled Widow of the Amputation and Other Weird Crimes (Eraserhead Press, 2020). His website is www.cryptoscatology.com.