Even A Worm Will Turn

“…Simon says…” her eyes close slowly.

 

Drool like a wet spider’s string hangs from her bottom lip and she kind of snorts. He inches to the edge of his chair and he’s almost out when the drool splats onto her hand. She jerks her head up and licks her lip. She’s creepy with red eyes where they should be white.

 

In the middle of the table is a big bunch of pills. They’re different colours and came from the empty white bottles standing in a line along the edge of the table. He knows she won’t stop being Simon until half the bunch is in his stomach and the other half is on the littler bunch of pills by her glass.

 

“Simon says blue,” she picks a pill from the bigger bunch, “One for mommy,” she drops the blue pill on her bunch and picks another blue pill, “one for pumpkin.”

 

She sleeps all day when she takes the little blue pills and he already had one before taking the whites and reds. He feels woozy. He’s taken too many pills and he really needs her to stop now.

 

“I don’t feel too good mom.”

 

“I had an accident with your daddy’s fists and she came premature. She wasn’t feelin’ too good either. She felt so bad she was dead,” she pushes the pill closer to him. It squeaks on the table. “She was one year dead when I had another accident with your daddy’s fists. I told the doctors you weren’t ready to be born. They said you were in distress, had to come out without delay. They cut me open and when I saw you, I thought…I thought…”

 

She pours more gin into her glass and her fingers are so tight around the bottle he thinks it’s going to break.

 

“You were tiny. My beautiful baby boy with lungs that didn’t work and your daddy’s dark hair. We christened you right away. Alexander Lavelle Harris. They called you critical, said you were too small…we’re looking at two days Mrs Harris. They were wrong. You fought everyday you were in that incubator, tubes going in and out of you – you seen the picture I put in your trunk? Tubes everywhere, I wasn’t allowed to…couldn’t even hold you,” she pushes the pill all the way to him. “You cried and you fought and you ain’t stopped since.”

 

“We’re fightin’ no more baby,” she shakes her head. Tears fly from her eyes and patter on the table. “ No more. We’re going to sleep, you first pumpkin and then me.”

 

She’s drunk. Tony beat her up earlier and when he drove off, she got out the gin. She’s a regular mom when she’s sober, but when she’s drunk, she’s mean. Sometimes she gets very drunk and that’s better because then she’s too tanked up to do and say mean things.

 

She wipes her eyes and looks at the pill. “Take it,” she says.

 

He shakes his head no and wades his hands through the bigger bunch of pills. They ping on the linoleum. She scoops up the littler bunch and stretches across the table. He squirms back and she climbs the table. She grabs his jaw when he turns his head away.

 

“Please mom…”

 

She presses her thumb and fingers into his cheeks, forcing his mouth wider open. Her gin-and-lemon breath blows in his face and she crams the pills into his mouth. Some of the pills go down his throat and her hand covers his mouth and nose. He rocks back in the chair, trying to get away from her. She hangs on. There’s tickles in his throat and he knows that he mustn’t puke. He swallows down the tickles and swallows the pills in his mouth.

 

“I never wanted much. I never asked for a big house or fancy clothes. All I wanted was one child - a girl. I got you instead. You came home and slept in her room, her crib and fed from her bottles and…don’t you see? You stole her place.”

 

He can’t breath and he’s so scared because she isn’t slurring. She’s not drunk enough this time.

 

Her hand slips a little off his nose when she goes to push his head back against the chair. He breathes in and goes dizzy, and he doesn’t want to, but he does it. He makes a fist and punches her chin.

 

Her eyes go wide. “You’re gonna hit me? Just like him, you’re just like…”

 

He bites her hand and she screams at him to stop, but he is so mad at her he puts his hands over her hand and bites harder. He keeps biting until his teeth go in and there’s blood in his mouth. He crunches down until he’s biting on bone and he doesn’t care that she’s crying because now he hates her like she hates him.

 

She smacks his head, he pushes her and she falls off the table. She crawls like a beetle trying to hide under the refrigerator. He’s right behind her.

 

“I’m sorry, don’t pumpkin, I’m so sorry.”

 

“You’re always sorry,” he yells. “You say you’ll quit drinking. You promise things will get better, but all you and Tony do is lie and hurt me. I didn’t kill Cassandra, it’s not my fault!”

 

He’s shaking and sweating and his head’s going round and round. She’s crying too loud and it’s like she still has her hand over his nose, making him not breathe. He needs to get out.

 

He turns and runs to the door.

 

He’s through the garage, across the lawn and running on the sidewalk. The car headlamps are blurry and his sneakers are trying to stick to bubble gum on the sidewalk. He gets to the phone booth and crosses the street to the cedar tree. He digs between the tree’s biggest two roots. Dirt gets under his nails, he’s tired and heavy, but he knows that the box is there so he digs.

 

His nails scratch plastic and he thinks he’s going to cry. He unburies the capsule and takes the quarters out. The phone booth is too far away. He’s tired, wants to sit between the roots and not move. He goes to the booth. He dials the number, lets it ring once and hangs up. He dials again, it rings once and he hangs up again. He dials again and lets it ring and ring.

 

“That’s the code right? Is that you Xander? Are you at the cedar tree?”

 

He wants to answer her, but all he can do is shake and try to breathe. He starts crying.

 

“Oh god Xander are you hurt? Stay there Xander. Stay! I’m gonna 911 and bike over.”

 

His knees don’t want to hold him up. He slides down the booth door, thinking they should’ve put a spade under the tree to help with the digging.

 

 

Cold, he was so cold and couldn’t remember falling asleep or waking up. His heart worked double-time and his mouth tasted like blood. Or a pharmacy. Or both. He huddled up to the headboard, tried to make out the kitchen table in the room’s dark shapes. Tried to see his mom, felt like a berserk eleven year old.

 

“God,” he thudded his head onto the headboard, face tilted up at the ceiling. Skinny Al was up there, on the skylight.

 

The cat meowed and sharpened its claws on the glass. Digging with both front paws and making that tooth-jarring sound of chalk squeaking on board. Pill screeching on a table. Already charged from the nightmare, Xander’s flight instinct rose to supercharged. 

 

…it’s like the first safety rule Xander, get out before the monsters come in…

 

He was running for the cedar tree again; out the door, along the balcony, down the staircase. Saturated air burned his lungs as he banged on the Pool House gates.

 

The gates opened, but the guards stood in the way, looking into the courtyard behind. “Monsieur?”

 

He shouldered them aside and pelted down the cold hall, eyes trained on the guard house archway ahead and feet slapping the tiles under the arch soon after. Exit into the reception hall, eight calm Eliminati in front of the main gates.

 

“You may not leave,” said Philippe, Spike’s calmest and most menacing Eliminati.

 

Phillipe was gonna have to bruise him to keep him in, knock him out, explain to a pissed off Spike. He went at the Eliminati, shoved, cleared the way. Lifted the iron bar from across the gates.

 

“Return to your quarters Xander,” Salma said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

 

Salma was his training partner. He should listen to her because pain was usually the result of pooh-poohing her instructions. He shrugged her hand off his shoulder, shot out of the gates and collided painfully into Jude and his cooler.

 

“What the hell, Jude? It’s not three pm, you bring the cooler at three pm!” Bewildered and losing his shaky grip on reality as Jude went all speeding bullet, driving him and the eight guards back into the reception hall.

 

“How the hell, Jude?” He blinked at the wiry demon. “How did you do that?”

 

“Master Spike requested an additional delivery,” Jude placed the cooler on the floor in front of Xander. “Your Amo would not want to hear of you walking in the corridors at so late an hour.”

 

“Why bring the blood here? My Amo doesn’t live here…Jude, hey!”

 

Damned if he was going to let Jude leave uninterrogated, and aiming to finish the run he’d started, he sprinted back to the gates and barged into the corridor. No Jude. Half a mile of empty hallway, and clicking. He heard clicking near the asymmetrical alcove by the gates.

 

He padded to the alcove and peered into the pitch-black nook. “Jude?”

 

“Come inside this instant, Xander,” like him, Philippe faced the hallway as the clicking sharpened.

 

Skinny Al hurtled round the corner, kitten claws clipping on marble. Aerodynamic Al, with ears lying flat against a narrow feline skull, body streamlined to snake-like thinness and his tail a jet of white mist. Jaws open with a tomcat’s in-heat howling.

 

Xander felt disconnected from fear, as though all this were happening to someone else. Someone whose luck sucked beyond belief. Fascinated by the rows of small square teeth in Al’s chop, he said, “Philippe, that’s no cat.”

 

Philippe bruised him, bounced him into The Arches; dissolved his dream-like disconnection in Eliminati brutality. Fully in the now, he heaved the gates closed with the guards, pushed with them when they pushed their backs against the doors: we shall not be moved. Crap, spoke too soon. He and the guards were moved, scattered like dust on the wind as Al’s battering splintered the wooden gates.

 

Xander touched down on his ass. Pain in his tailbone and click, click, clicking of claws as the cat-thing slithered from one gate post to the other, pacing. Blockading the road to Spike.

 

“Is this vendetta because I stood on you in the market? That was an accident and I think you should know that I’m a cat person. I donate to the Sunnydale Cat Rescue League every month.”

 

Cat-thing fanned its misty tail across the door that wasn’t there, but didn’t come in because…? Why didn’t it come in?

 

“You can’t come in,” he realised. Thing was barred. Spike had banned entry without invite. “You’re uninvited, de-invited, got no ticket, can’t come…” Brief like an Oz sentence, there and then over, a thumb depressed his neck artery and lips kissed his cheek.

 

I enter where I please, the clammy lips hissed.

 

A bead of dread dripped onto Xander’s head and spread over his scalp. He was about ten seconds from flipping out, could feel panic and anger working up inside him, turning his blood toxic. The Select loaded their crossbows. Thing sat on its haunches in the wrecked doorway and licked its whiskers, pretending it hadn’t come in. Xander strode towards the doors, his intention to get out and his ranting acid. He heard the arrows whiz around him, felt two strong hands clamp down on his shoulders, dragging him back from the gates, out of the reception hall and farther back. The acoustics in the cold hall were great. They amplified the hysteria in his ranting, the grunting as he struggled against the freaky-strong hands.

 

“You’re taking me the wrong way! That’s the wrong way! I have to get to the cedar tree!”

 

The great acoustics amplified the break in his voice, picked up a note of child-like persistence. Xander didn’t hear it. He was coming apart, pleading for his cedar tree.