Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Come on,” he says, and Katy doesn’t let go. “Come on,” he repeats, “or you’re all going to go hungry.”

Katy lets go. She sniffs back some tears and wipes her jacket sleeve over her face. “Okay,” she says, and she puts out her hand for the food.

She takes Octavia out of the seat and sets her between her legs and wraps her arms around her the same way she did her father, then puts her back into the seat and opens the jar. Spoonful after spoonful Octavia races it down. While she’s eating, Caleb tears open a packet of cereal. He eats a handful, looking at the container of milk and wondering if he should add some to his mouthful. He moves on to the loaf of bread instead. Katy finishes up, then hands Octavia a plastic cup of water. She drinks from it while staring at her sister. There is baby food all over her face and she’s probably filled her diaper back up and he can’t face doing anything about it either.

Octavia drops her mug and it rolls across the floor, she reaches out for it but can’t reach and starts to cry. This is what a turtle must feel like, he imagines, when it’s lying on its back. Katy picks it up and hands it to her. Her crying stops.

“There you go,” Katy says.

“Cat,” Octavia says.

Katy rubs Octavia’s arms as she drinks. Caleb washes down the cereal with an orange juice.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Katy says.

“Okay,” he says, because he needs it too. She puts Octavia back into the seat then he leads her outside. “Same tree,” he says, and she goes over and disappears behind it. He moves to the car and pisses on the hood.

In the full morning light the slaughterhouse has lost none of its creepy feel. It should be nothing more than an abandoned building, harmless, just a bunch of walls being climbed over by nature, but it’s not. This is the building where his baby girl died, and inside there are ghosts. There are dark rooms with large meat hooks. There are nightmares. The slaughterhouse is a home to all the misery in the world.

He stands with the sun on his face. His clothes feel a little damp, but fifteen minutes out here and that won’t be a problem anymore. There are no clouds, just blue skies. A beautiful day that could stay the way it started, or just as easily shower the city with rain. He closes his eyes and there’s a moment, a brief moment, when he asks himself whether he can walk away from all of this. He doesn’t have to go back into the slaughterhouse, doesn’t have to deal with the doctor and the children, and nobody has to die. He can walk away, find a beach somewhere and sit in the autumn sun, soak up the atmosphere, and things can end differently. He can swim. Just pick a direction and go for it. See how far he can get before the tiredness sucks him under. He used to be a pretty good swimmer. There was a time he could go length after length without fatigue, his breathing would stay calm, his arms slicing through the water effortlessly. Before he got married he used to swim three times a week, normally for an hour at a time. It was the only exercise he got. He’d go before work started, when the only people at the pool were keen swimmers like himself. When he got married life got busier, then his daughter arrived, then swimming became one of those things you cut adrift as you get older and responsibilities change.

Only he can’t do that. His family is dead because of the doctor, because of these other people. He hasn’t finished getting justice for his family.

He finishes up. So does Katy. Back inside he looks through the bag and opens a tin of tuna. The smell hits him like a bullet and he almost gags, he throws the can through the doorway into another room, it lands on its side and rolls out of sight. If the rats can stomach the smell, then good luck to them. Katy picks Octavia back out of the seat and walks over to Melanie, her arms around Octavia’s chest from behind. It’s like watching a large princess doll carrying a smaller princess doll. She settles down beside her older sister with the baby between them.

“Are you hungry?” he asks the doctor.

The doctor mumbles something else from behind the gag that he can’t make out, but the tone suggests it isn’t about being hungry. The tone suggests a whole lot of fuck you s mixed in with a good ol’ fashioned go to hell .

Octavia is staring at him again while she sucks at her drink, a line of drool hanging from the bottom of it that creeps him out. Katy reaches up and removes the tape from Melanie.

“I need to use a bathroom,” Melanie says.

“Okay,” he says, and cuts through the plastic ties. “Don’t stop holding her,” he says to Katy, and nods toward Octavia.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“And don’t try to free your dad. You’ve got nothing you can free him with, and if you try, I’m going to be mad. If I get mad, then bad things are going to happen, and I’m going to have to punish you, and Melanie, and Octavia. Okay?”

She nods, her mouth turning down at the edges. “Okay,” she says.

He takes Melanie outside. She keeps scowling at him. “You don’t have any idea how to look after a baby, do you.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong.”

“You are this time. I used to have a daughter.”

“Where is she? You tie her up too and bring her out here?”

“No, but somebody else did. And he killed her.”

“Oh,” she says, and she opens up her mouth to say something else, and he waits for it, knowing she won’t know what to say, and that’s exactly what happens. “Oh,” she says again, then looks down.

“Toilet’s over there,” he says, and points at the trees. “Don’t try to run away. I’m not going to hurt any of you, I promise,” he says, “as long as you do what I say. You just have to trust me. But, if you try to run away,” he says, then inhales sharply and scrunches up his face, “well, do I need to tell you what will happen?”

She shakes her head.

“Good. Now hurry up,” he says.

He stands next to the building drinking orange juice as she runs into the trees for a few minutes before coming back. Most of the trees are skeletons now, a few of them still clutching on to handfuls of leaves, and the sun coming through them looks cold. The ground is soft from yesterday’s rain, there is a trail of muddy footprints leading back and forth from the car, and a set of handprints too where Stanton fell over. The car has at least a dozen wet leaves stuck to the body, and the windshield and windows are clouded over with moisture.

“You know the police are looking for us,” Melanie tells him. “The police can track people. They do it all the time.”

“On TV they do,” he tells her, “but this isn’t TV.”

“No, not just on TV,” she says. “We had this girl at school and she ran away. The police found her within a day. And there was another girl who-”

“Melanie,” he says, “I don’t want to hear you talking anymore, okay? And I don’t want to hurt you, I really don’t, but you’re making me feel as though I want to.”

He leads her back inside. She goes over to her father the same way Katy did earlier and wraps her arms around him. Caleb leans against the wall drinking orange juice staring at them. He remembers his own daughter holding him that way.

“That’s enough,” he says, and unlike Katy she lets go right away. “Octavia needs her diaper changed.”

“Yeah? So why don’t you do it?”

“Because I’m telling you to. Your sister can help.”

They lay Octavia down on the blanket. Katy starts humming. He doesn’t recognize the tune, but from the sound of it he guesses it’s her own tune, something she’s making up as she goes along. The doctor is crying. It’s pathetic.

“What’s it like having no control?” he asks, but of course Stanton can’t answer. The girls all look over at him but say nothing.