Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Bill has the most items to gather. Mostly things from his father’s farm where he grew up. It’s four hours from here, located amidst cornfields stretching in withering rows as far as the eye can see. He gathers old burlap feed sacks and frayed rope, takes down a real, honest-to-goodness scythe from the barn wall, where it’s hung on a couple four-inch rusty nails for forty-five years. He stacks five bales of hay in the back of his pick-up on top of these things, whips a plastic tarp over that, and drives back to our neighborhood on a quiet Sunday night.

Jill Bryant has a knack for crafts. Sewing, quilting, flower arranging. She sells decorations made from Indian corn to hang on your door come autumn. She takes the old burlap, the hay and the rope, and cuts and shapes it until it’s just right.

And when the time comes, Todd Kaufmann’s contribution will be his strength.

Three days away, now. Tonight, from my window, I see two figures smoking cigarettes behind a tree in the Griffin yard. They must think they’re hidden, but even though the night is moonless, I clearly make out Darren from the light shining from the Griffin’s windows. I watch him for twenty minutes. He goes through two more cigarettes with a practiced ease that makes me dizzy. I know I should go out there and stop him, grab him roughly by the shoulders and drag him away, but I find it impossible to move, impossible to take my eyes off this boy, my son, who suddenly appears to be a man I’ve never known.

When he comes in, hair and clothes reeking of cigarettes, I ask, “Have you been smoking?”

He hardly looks at me as he brushes past. “You’re paranoid.”

I’m frozen in place, unable to respond as he disappears into his bedroom and shuts the door.

Halloween night. The children in the neighborhood are home plopped in front of televisions, eating the candy they’ve gathered, watching Disney movies, some already asleep, bits of missed Halloween make-up mottled behind their ears.

It’s just the adults now. The weather starts turning ugly. A storm is forecast for late in the night, but so far, it’s just windy and cold. Small, white flakes dance over the lawns.

We stop at all the houses on the street, say “trick-or-treat” in jovial voices, and those who are home to hand out candy nod at us and give us handfuls of sweets. Their smiles seem forced. They pretend not to recognize our voices. Just nods. A few knowing glances. I wonder how many Bill has hinted to about our plan. After we receive the candy, the doors shut quietly to the building storm.

We creep through the neighborhood, walk down the street, the glint of steel hidden behind the increasing snowfall. Our forms are shadowy and feral. Each of us in turn walks to the Griffin house with our bag of candy clutched in one hand, our other hand beneath our costumes occupied with handles made of wood.

It’s my turn. The wind darts through my costume, pressing my nipples uncomfortably against the polyester. I stand in swirling snow on the Griffin’s lawn. Six forms sit on the porch. They look like Halloween decorations many of us have on our porches. Burlap bags in the shapes of witches, vampires, ghosts. Filled with raked autumn leaves, old newspaper, hay.

But here, only three of the shapes are filled with these things. I try not to look too closely, afraid of figuring out which form contains what. I step up to one of the shapes propped lopsided on the porch. The hood of my costume falls over my eyes. Does Death contend with this? Fabric tripping his worn feet, snow blinding his hollow eyes?

I blink away moisture. Lift my scythe. I had practiced swinging the day before, making sure I could do it easily without bouncing the side of the blade off its target. I suck in a lungful of freezing air. Shake my head to shift the black hood from my vision.

“ Go for two of them. That’s all,” Bill had told us, his firing squad analogy coming into play.

I step onto the porch. The shapes in front of me are still. They sag forward into the chairs they’ve been tied to. I lift the scythe into the air and bring it down quickly. As I do so, I notice that the dusting of snow on the porch floorboards is already tinged with pink, like a spilled cherry snow cone. I can’t stop the scythe’s momentum. It strikes the burlap, slices through with ease, and I feel the slight resistance of (newspapers, leaves) against the blade. The blade sticks. I yank it out, turning quickly so that I won’t have to see anything (leaves, newspapers) that might spill out.

I pick another target and swing.

I hear a low, muffled moan. I close my eyes. Let the snow blow against me. I can’t tell which bundle the moan comes from. I hear it again and force myself to walk away.

Maybe it’s not a moan. Maybe it’s just the wind through the trees. I can’t know, not for sure. I can’t know, and the sound of liquid splattering on the snow behind me…

I walk faster, careful not to trip over my cheap black robe. The warm lights of my home draw near. I see the glow of the television through the window. The scythe is light in my hands, and I stop suddenly and plunge the blade into a snowdrift to clean it off. What if I had put it in the garage only to have my son find it the next day, freshly stained?

When I enter, Lydia is calling his name. I shake snow off my costume. There are blisters on my hands.

“Darren?” Lydia comes into the kitchen as I slide my costume up over my head. “Have you seen Darren?”

“He’s not in his room?”

“His jacket’s gone. His hat, his gloves.”

I look at her, search her face. She can’t be serious. She can’t be—

I race out of the house without a jacket, sweat shiny and freezing on my skin. I run to the bottom of the driveway. “Darren!” I call. “Darren!”

Daytime reveals unpicked apples, fragile as glass, hanging from brittle branches. There is a subtle shift in white where the earth meets the sky.

Down at the Griffin house, the snow is piled thick, and the six bundles have been hauled away. There is no trace of trick-or-treaters in their driveway or on their lawn. One of their cars sits on the curb cocooned in white.

School is called off due to the storm.

Darren is still not home.

Finally, our phone rings. Jill Bryant’s name appears on the caller ID, but there’s a long pause during which she only breathes.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, “but we had to do it.”

My fingers grow numb on the phone. “What are you telling me?”

“I want a peaceful, quiet neighborhood to raise my daughter,” she says, her voice trembling. “That’s all.” She hangs up.

I run out onto our driveway and call and call my son’s name until my voice grows hoarse and useless.

Spring is a long time coming.

It’s a hard life here on the farm. Harsh winters. Summers hot and dry as ash. Crop failures. Disease. Sven drinks too much. Gets a bit too loose with the tongue and fists. I have the marks to prove it, and I know for a fact there are marks on my brain from some of the names he calls me. But I’ve got my babies. Thank God I’ve got my babies. Whenever things get me down, I just look at my belly, see and feel the little kicks and wiggles, and know that life ain’t so bad.

I’m working on number eleven now. You’d never guess Sven was so potent from the looks of him. But I’d guess he’d say the same about me. Calls me Fertile Myrtle. Calls me worse things, too. But it’s gotten easier and easier to tune him out. He’s just a bunch of white noise, like a fan on low, it’s blades whirling in endless circles just to move a little air from here to there.

I don’t let him touch me when I’m with child. Least not in a biblical way. He still touches me in other ways. The back of his hand. The heel of his boot. He leaves bruises most of the time, but I tell him, “You stay away from the baby.”