The September 2009 Selected Story 2
Venus
By Connor de Bruler
Margery
For whatever reason, internal or external, Margery decided that she was going to be angry. That morning, she woke up and decided to say nothing to her family. She was going to sit in the living room, ignoring the Sunday morning news, and angrily knit the same stitch over and over again, eventually ruining the sweater she was making for her adult niece’s newborn.
Margery’s daughter, who perhaps understood her mother’s sudden fury better than the rest of the family, feeling angry herself, left the house by slamming the door and headed towards the mall.
Of course, the fact that her daughter Mila left her alone with the men in the family infuriated Margery even more. After her daughter was gone, Margery felt like a smoking roll of estrogen-infused dynamite.
She had been abandoned by her daughter, and now she had a feeling that her husband and son were about to leave somewhere without her as well. The family didn’t want to be around her, she figured, not even the men, who were the ones who deserved her wrath most of all. The flood came in and the crew was going to jump off the ship, leaving her behind to drown.
And if her family didn’t know why she was upset, well then, she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.
It didn’t occur to Margery that even she didn’t know why she was upset. She took a swig of her new favorite calcium enriched milk, and even that didn’t cheer her up.
Carter
The two men, her son Derek and her husband Carter, would stand in the open doorway watching her, the sudden inexplicable rage more hermetic to them than the secrets of the universe and far less pertinent to their concerns.
Carter didn’t how he was going to get through another day with Margery like this. He’d deal with it the only way he knew how: evade the problem, let it fester and worsen.
“You got plans for today?” he asked his son.
“I was going to go up to the state park and take a hike,” Derek answered.
“You mind if I catch up with you?” Carter asked, symbolically bringing his eighteen year old son up to the same standard as himself with such a question.
“As if you could catch up with me on a hike. Bring it on, old man,” Derek grinned at his dad, challenging him.
Glad for the rare chance to spend time with his son, he called to the living room, “Margery, I’m going to the state park with Derek.”
She didn’t look at him. Instead she kept kitting furiously and pretended to watch the news.
And so Carter and Derek left. They got inside the car and drove off onto secluded back roads that lead to North Carolina.
“So how are you doing?” Carter asked his son.
“I’m doing all right,” Derek said.
“Do you feel happy?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“Do you feel happy? You know, about life?” Carter asked earnestly.
“And I asked what kind of question is that?”
Carter was quiet for a moment as he drove. Finally he said, “I just want better for you than I have; all fathers want that for their children. You know, Derek, you don’t have to get married so soon in your life.”
“Come on, Dad, I don’t want to talk about my relationship with Lillian.”
“But maybe we should talk about it.”
Derek said, “You know, Dad, this is why I don’t hang out with you very often any more. You always want to talk about things that I don’t.”
“Take it easy,” Carter said. “I get your point. Let’s just take our hike, and enjoy the day, man to man.”
Derek was quiet a moment, then he admitted, “To tell you the truth, Dad, suddenly Lillian seems bitchy all the time. It’s like, suddenly I can’t do anything to make her happy any more. She kind of reminds me of Mom. Which is weird, because before last week, Mom didn’t act this way, and neither did Lillian. But now, they’re both impossible to understand.”
Derek turned to his father and continued, “What’s going on with women this week? Seems everywhere I go, women are all uptight. I can’t handle it.”
Carter grinned. “Don’t ask me. I’m no expert on women. Frankly, I don’t think any man is.”
They parked in the nearly empty lot outside the grocery store. They had driven far enough outside the county that the suburban feel to their surroundings had corroded away yielding the rural flat lands before them.
Getting out of the car, Carter walked through the automatic sliding doors of the store. On the inside the supermarket seemed vacant and dead, like a dormant warehouse filled with a forgotten wealth of food. He walked up to the nearest cashier, a sullen looking blonde girl drinking from a bottle of the same calcium enriched milk that was being advertised everywhere.
“Can I have change for a five?” he asked.
She didn’t say anything to him and mechanically took his money, exchanging it for ones. He tried to say thanks but she wandered off into one of the aisles. A young man next to Carter with a tag on his shirt that read, “Assistant Manager” had watched the whole thing.
“Sometimes they just get a stick up their ass,” he said.
“Well, we can all be grumpy too sometimes,” said Carter, trying not to sound like a misogynist.
“A lot of people figure the world would be better off if it were run by women,” said the Assistant Manager. “But I think things would be just the same.”
Derek
It was a cool day, but a sunny one. Derek and Carter hiked up one of the longer, more strenuous trails. The path led them straight to the top of the mountain. As he knew he would, Derek flew up the trail past his old man, and waited for him to catch up near a nearby twisted branch that had fallen down from the canopy of rhododendrons, yellow poplar, and white oak.
They stood on the top of the ridge, a sweeping view of the foothills beneath them. Pulling two apples from his pocket, Derek cut his into individual slices with a pocket knife, watching his father eat his down to the core in a matter of seconds.
“You should chuck it over the side and watch it fall,” suggested Derek.
“Okay.”
They peered over the cliff and watched as Carter’s apple core disappeared into the tree line, miles beneath them. When Derek was finished his apple, he threw his core too, but the result was less satisfying than the initial concept. Derek sighed. It seemed that a lot of things felt like that in his life lately. But he didn’t want to worry his dad, so he kept these gloomy thoughts to himself.
Sitting on the ground, they made idle chat.
“You know what I used to call your mother when I first met her, back in college? Margarine,” Carter mused. “Back then, I thought she thought it was cute. And then yesterday she blew up at me. Asked me if I called her that because I thought she was fat back then. The truth is, the only reason why I called her that is because Margarine sounds like Margery. And anyway, that was years ago. Why your mother would bring that up now? I just don’t know.”
Derek felt this was his dad’s way of hoping he would open up about Lillian, as a sort of information exchange. But Derek would not discuss Lillian. He was determined to change the subject. “How are things at work?” he asked.
His dad was silent for a few moments until finally saying, “Not good. Not good at all.”
Derek had opened another can of worms, and decided to give up completely. There was just no way he could win.
“Remember that camping trip we took to Tennessee?” Carter said suddenly.
Derek smiled slightly at the memory. Finally, it was something positive to talk about. “I was eight years old.”
“We bought those vegetarian hot dogs and cooked ’em over the fire.”
“And they ended up tasting like shit.”
They laughed.
“Oh, yeah,” Carter chuckled. “They tasted awful.”
“Those were some good days,” said Derek, allowing a full-fledged smile to erupt across his face.
“Yes, they were.”
The Meat Cleaver
After a few minutes, Derek got up and walked away from the main trail. With the leaves up to his ankles he relieved himself in front of the grand vista of trees that led downward towards a valley. It was in the valley below that Derek saw something odd. A dark orange, almost red color was erupting from the grass. Derek moved in for a closer look. What at first had seemed like a bonfire or a smoldering leaf pile revealed itself to be a burning Ford pickup truck.
“Dad!” he yelled. “Dad! You need to come see this!”
Carter appeared next to Derek. “What?”
“There’s a truck on fire down there. Can you call the fire department?”
“No reception on my cell phone in this place. Let’s take a closer look.”
Carter and Derek raced down the hill, watching the vehicle in the distance burn. Having to navigate their way around a creek, they approached the flaming truck. Adjacent to them, only ten yards to their right, was a small country cottage. There were no roads around them, and they didn’t see how the fire department would be able to access the area.
Derek looked at his father and said, “It’s a pretty dry day. What I’m afraid of is that the fire’s going to ignite all this the tall grass here.”
Carter hesitated, and then said, “Something doesn’t seem right. If somebody was home in that cottage, they’d probably be dealing with this.”
“Okay then. So nobody’s home. What does that mean?”
“Cars don’t just burst into flames. This was intentional.”
“Well, call the police,” said Derek.
Carter looked at his son. “I told you, I don’t have any reception on my cell phone. We’re in a valley. I’d have to walk to the top of the highest ridge to get reception.”
“There’s probably a phone in the house,” Derek offered.
At that moment a single hand rose up out of the tall grass. They rushed towards the hand and saw a man face up on the ground, blood pouring out of his neck and a butcher’s knife still lodged in his chest.
“Derek, go inside and call 911!”
Derek rushed towards the cottage as the bleeding man seemed to try and grab him. He gargled something incoherently as blood frothed out of his mouth.
“Don’t worry, we’re going to get help,” Carter told the bleeding man as Derek entered the cottage.
Derek ran into the crowded kitchen and began frantically searching for a phone. He saw one hanging in the next room and stormed towards it. But there was no use: the old telephone cord had been cut with an Exacto knife which had been lodged in the wall beside it.
His father was right. Something dreadfully wrong was taking place.
Derek turned and was startled to see an old woman in an Easter dress standing in the modest hallway next to the living room.
“Is there another telephone?” he asked her. “We need to call 911.”
And then as the woman left the gloom of the hallway to enter the light of the living room, Derek realized that the woman was covered in blood, and that she was holding a large meat cleaver in her right hand. She thrust it at him without saying anything.
There was nothing he could do now but run. He burst out the doorway of the cottage.
“Dad! We have to get out of here!”
Carter wasn’t looking at his son; he was kneeling in the grass, staring at the bloody man lying before him. It was apparent that man with the slashed throat had died.
“He’s dead, Derek,” Carter said as though in disbelief. “He just died right before my eyes.”
Suddenly the old woman in the Easter dress stormed out of the cottage, hysterically waving the meat cleaver.
“What the hell?” yelled Carter, getting to his feet.
“I told you! We have to get out of here!”
The woman ran up to Carter and Derek, swinging and hacking at the air around them.
“Run!” shouted Carter. “She’s an old woman. She can’t keep up with us.”
Before they could even start, she lunged at Derek, forcing him to the ground, and tried to press the cleaver into his face. He held onto her hands to keep the blade as far away as possible. She started to bite his fingers with her yellowing teeth.
Acting quickly in the tall grass, Carter pulled the knife from the dead man’s chest and raced to help his son. With one thrust, Carter drove the implement through the back of the crazed woman’s skull and out her eye socket.
The vitreous humor mixed with blood oozed down the blade and onto Derek’s face. He wiped the gore away with the back of his hand and violently pushed the old woman’s corpse off of him in disgust and fear.
Getting to his feet, Derek was shaking with adrenaline. The two men looked at each other for a period of time, and then at the depraved scene.
“What’s going on?” asked Derek.
“I don’t know, Son,”Carter answered.
The Rangers’ Station
They walked back onto the trail and headed for the ranger station. Crouched behind a rock, both of them scanned the area once they had finally reached the entrance to the park, but the entire greeting area was vacant. The only sound was from the birds above and the wind rustling through the trees.
But then Carter spotted a lone pay phone next to the water fountain in the distance.
“You stay here,” said Carter. “I’m going to go use the phone.”
He ran out into the open and made sure he was alone. When he finally grabbed the receiver he began to carefully place the quarters through the coin slot. He waited for a dial tone, but heard nothing.
Only a few feet from where his father stood, inside the rangers’ station, Derek saw something moving repetitively. He focused a little more and realized that a female park ranger was stabbing a man on the ground repeatedly with a pencil or compass or perhaps even a pocket knife. His dad needed to get out of there.
Carter turned to his son and shook his head to indicate that he wasn’t getting any reception. His son peered out from behind the rock and pointed towards the atrocity taking place inside the station. Carter looked out past the telephone and, as if he had just seen a water moccasin in a pool, ran as far away as possible.
As Derek waited for his father to run back, he heard a rustling in the leaves behind him.
And suddenly there was a young teenage girl, perhaps three years younger than Derek, standing there. She had a back-pack on and a Pittsburgh Steelers cap. Her T-Shirts had the words “Ponies are awesome!” scrawled across it in big pink letters.
The girl raised a slim walking stick to strike Derek directly on the forehead. Before she could repeat the action, he grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her on the ground. She fell down, and Derek screamed as something grabbed his arm from behind. Relief flooded through him as he realized it was his father who was clutching his arm.
“Come on, we have to get out of this place, too!” Carter said.
As they crossed the bridge, they noticed a group of young female hikers up the creek drowning a group of young men in the water. They seemed to have superior strength as the men screamed and tried to gasp for air, but the girls angrily and repeatedly thrust the men’s heads under the water.
The Crash
Carter and Derek finally made it back to the parking lot where they had left their car. They got in and locked the doors of the Volvo, started the engine, and charged off onto the lonely back roads as fast as the diesel engine could go. They swerved around turns burning rubber.
Passing the supermarket where they had briefly stopped at earlier, they saw a police officer shooting at a small legion of women hurtling grocery carts onto the dark blue police cruiser.
“Women everywhere have gone psycho! Where should we go?” asked Derek.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think Mila’s okay at the mall?”
“She’s probably one of them now.”
“I think we should go to the mall and find her. It’s worth a shot, Dad.”
“I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” Carter said.
“Why not?”
Carter silently pointed up ahead and Derek saw what he meant. There was a large road blockade of women, all ages and sizes. They were stretching a length of tire spikes across the road.
Derek leaned as Carter swerved the car around. They drove back into the supermarket parking lot where the police officer’s dead body was being dragged across the black asphalt.
“Brace yourself,” said Carter.
Derek held onto seat as they drove directly into the crowd. The women were propelled back across the ground and others slid underneath the Volvo. Blood stained the entire front of the car. The windshield spontaneously cracked at the sound of gunshots and Carter began to swerve into a low-set billboard on the side of the road. The car came to a jarring stop.
“What the hell, Dad?” Derek screamed.
His dad was holding onto his side, blood beginning to trickle over his fingers. Derek lifted his father’s hand and saw the bullet wound.
“They shot you through the glass!”
Carter tried to speak but only blood came out his mouth.
His dad was going to die. Derek didn’t know what to do as the women who hadn’t been hit by the car started coming towards them. But he knew he had to do something.
“Dad, hold on! I’m going to pull the car around and drive us into the store.”
Without hesitation, Derek moved his father out of the driver’s seat and climbed over him. He shifted into reverse and placed his foot on the gas. The gunshot went off a second time, and Derek heard one of the tires blow out.
The back window shattered and four women crawled inside. With a dozen of them on top trying to hack their way in with a fire axe, Derek pressed down on the accelerator and sped the car into the glass doors of the supermarket.
The crash was a blur. He saw a barrage of transparent crystals flying past his face as his father’s body and the four women were propelled out of the front windshield. Derek went head first into dashboard missing the airbags, only to slide into the back seat as the car collided with the bagged ice freezer. A mountain of ice flooded into the cracked vinyl interior.
He didn’t know how long he’d been laying there amidst the ice but it had kept him conscious. When he finally stepped out of the vehicle, it was out amongst a pile of dead bodies: some from the crash others from before. There was a deep silence, only disturbed by his footsteps. He pulled a thick piece of glass out of his arm and, in a shell-shocked daze, he casually walked over to the drink coolers and pulled out a beer. He set the cold bottle against his forehead and looked over towards the dairy products.
There was blood on the wall, but not just random splatters. Someone had written words in maroon blood on the wall.
He staggered to get a closer look and when he could finally read them, he saw that they said: It’s the in the milk. It’s something in the milk.
The red words were written over an ad for the new Venus brand calcium enriched milk: the milk women everywhere were being encouraged to drink as a precautionary measure for osteoporosis and, though it wasn’t proven yet, cervical cancer.
He threw the beer against the wall and the foamy liquid washed away some of the letters. It was the milk. It was the damn milk.
But not everyone was drinking it, not every woman in the world. There was still hope, because Lillian didn’t drink milk.
And he suddenly knew that if he survived this day, he could find Lillian, and together they would raise the baby she was carrying; the baby whose mother was lactose intolerant.
And then Derek fainted from fatigue.
The September 2009 Selected Writer 2
Connor de Bruler
Connor de Bruler currently lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has been published in PJM'S Southern Gothic Shorts, Dark Anima Journal, Portland's Peep Zine, Glossolalia Magazine and Dabblestone Horror.