My Megan by Cary Rainey

 

“What the hell is that smell?” he asked as he came into the room.  It took me a second to place what he was talking about; I had gotten used to it.

“It’s part of things,” I said, certain that made sense, and lit a couple of candles.  Megan’s chains rattled and Barry looked at me with an almost cartoonish look of surprise and fear.

“It’s not a bleeding dog,” I said and led him onto the landing at the top of the stairs.  “It’s the real thing.”

“Jesus,” he complained, covering his mouth with his shirt.

These are some of the things I keep in my basement: a deep-freeze crammed with food no one will ever eat (the food is floating in bad water, bad bad bad water), a set of shelves (wooden) that came with the house, a few cans of paint, wide brushes, various bottles of motor oil and transmission fluid, a push mower, a toolbox which has lost a lot of weight over the years Megan and I have lived here, two wooden sawhorses, a box of small-diameter bolts and nuts, a can of nails, a green ten-speed with two flat tires (Megan’s), and a whole lot of other shit I have ceased giving a damn about.  I didn’t care about any of it, only that it was there, that my basement continued, in some way, to feel like a basement.  I realized this with Barry on the second step and me on the fourth.  Soon the whole basement would pivot into view from my left like some crazy View-Master slide only instead of Mickey Mouse on Main Street of the Magic Kingdom of People Who Are ALIVE or Ali Baba on a flying carpet, it would be a dark and haunted room no one could ever understand (she has to eat) and it would spin in at an angle that even now is dizzying and frightening.  I used to go down there, fifth step now, when things were normal and it was (Christmas dinner?) kind of creepy even then but it was inviting too, it was like a big dumb empty room no one really wanted and it was just lonely.  My parents’ basement was the same way.  I would sometimes start down those stairs and hesitate, look back up the stairs, afraid of the door slamming shut, wondering if that was really cold air I felt or just my imagination, bracing myself to hear a voice whisper my name.  I know now my parents’ basement was only a big lonely room calling out and what I felt was all the little lonely rooms inside me responding.

Feng shui, I think.

But now it’s different.

The room swam blackly into view and for a quick, chilling instant, I expected to see Megan waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

And part of me was praying to be granted that very excuse to run as far away as I could or, at least, to wake up.

The darkness receded from the lights of our candles, the silence from the sound of our breathing.  Our shadows were long and thin and loomed high on the wall behind us.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turned left into the room.

“What the hell is this?” Barry coughed behind me.  He started to step around me but the sight of the animals stopped him.  Slowly, he turned his head toward me, his eyes wide, yet guarded.

“Over here,” I nodded and walked.

“Oh, no,” I heard him whisper (Christmas dinner, Christmas starts with a C) and I reached under my shirt and pulled my gun from my waistband, realizing I had made a mistake because Barry wasn’t digging at all.

“Megan?”  He started toward her, then spun back to me.  “She’s one of them!”

I raised the pistol to his face.  “No, she’s pregnant.”

He looked back at my dead, naked, rotting wife.

“I don’t…  How?  How can this be right?”

“I’m going to be a father, Barry.  Twins.  I was going to tell you guys the night it happened…you know, that night.”

Then, later, after Megan had dinner and the body was stacked in the pile, I drove Barry's car away from the house and walked back home to prepare to deliver my babies because I knew I couldn't wait much longer.

 

13.

That was yesterday.

I came back here and waited for the others, certain they would come.

They did.  I told them Barry had stopped by, oh hell yeah, and he said something crazy about me eating dogs and I reassured him all was as fine as a baby in a crib and then he drove on toward town.  Yes, we should look for him.

And so I went looking for Barry.   I rode with Arnold.  He told me a joke.

You know what you say to a woman with two black eyes?

Nothing.  You’ve already told the bitch twice.

We agreed to meet back at Barry’s or something.  There was a lot of talking I faked my way through and then I came home.

I pour another cup of cold coffee (made with natural spring water) and resume my surveillance (for whatever good that word is) which gives way to another series of memories – this one older than the last.

She, Megan, asked me once when we were dating what would happen if she got pregnant.  I asked her what she meant, not sure what she meant.  She said she meant what would we do about it.

“Well, we’d get married, right?” I asked.

“Right,” she said and nodded and that was the end of that.

I walked home yesterday afternoon in a world I had never imagined but one I had also grown used to.  I stayed off the road in case one of the others drove past, but no one did – not them, not anybody.  My children would have no friends to play with, I realized.  No ball games to either play or watch, no school to attend.  Not unless something changed.  I wondered if there was anyone else anywhere and by the time I got home, I realized that there has to be someone else somewhere.  There have to be places where the living live.

And I will go there.

I look once more through the kitchen window, take a last puff of my cigarette, and I can't wait any longer.  Now it’s time to go see her – my wife, the woman I love…yes, the mother of my children.

God, I hope they’re okay.

I open the basement door and put my right foot on the first stair down and a vision of families sitting down to breakfast in a big building slides into place on my mental View-Master.  An auditorium at a middle school, maybe.  Maybe a gymnasium.

“This,” I whisper.

Second stair.

There are long folding tables along one wall.  The tables are covered with pots and dishes of scrambled eggs, grits, oatmeal and cereals.  There are plates of toast and sausage and bacon and fruit.  There is a deep plastic tub with ice and boxes of milk and orange juice.

Further.

Closer.

Children sit at tables or move through the line, their mothers watching over them.

This is where we will start over in a new world; in a place like this – an auditorium at a middle school or a high school gymnasium.  Mothers will protect their babies and fathers will protect them all.

“This is…”

The words are coming hard.  I’m forcing them between snatches of air taken in moans and barely aborted sobs.

“a hell of a problem.”

I’m at the bottom of the stairs now, picking up my flashlight and my backpack and I can hear Megan’s chains.  She is standing right where she always is these days.

Part of me wants to lie down on the floor, right now, and shake until I die, but I see that place.  My babies need me.

Almost in a daze (zombie) I move to where Megan is and I stand before her.  Her teeth are chattering hard.  I wonder if she knows.  I hope so.  I hope she knows what’s happening and is happy for us.

I put my hand on her belly.  Some of the purple skin falls away beneath my touch, but I don’t notice.

I look into her eyes and they are perfect and my hand is wet and it feels like I’ve slid it into a muddy glove.

“Thank you, Megan.”

I raise my other hand carefully to her cheek and lean in to kiss my Megan and she leans forward, up and forward, to kiss me because I’m her husband and we love each other and we love the babies I’m about to bring into this dark new world.

My last thought as the blood drains darkly from the flap of skin that used to be my cheek and from my severed tongue and my gaping throat involves my children and their first breakfast, which I realize as I see Megan’s stomach being ripped open from the inside, will not be served in an auditorium or a gymnasium, but right here on the basement floor.