Michael Collings - The Slab

Elayne never complained that her car still stuttered sometimes, or that it continued to make unpleasant noises. She was far too content with her life as she was leading it to let minor inconveniences interrupt. She spent much of her day time in the sewing room making clothing for friends’ children and amassing a wardrobe for the babies she was still sure would eventually come to her and Daniel.

Evenings the three of them spent in the new room, to all appearances a happy, stereotypical Southern California family. They watched television, or read, or played games…usually two-handed card games between Elayne and Daniel. Miles never seemed interested in cards.

And if occasionally Miles chose to huddle morosely at one of the sofa or curl up bonelessly in the recliner, well, wasn’t that usual for teenagers, especially teenage boys? Moody, temperamental, unpredictable?

Neither Daniel nor Elayne knew-or perhaps would have cared to know-that at night Miles was beginning to inhabit a twisted never-never-land that felt as real as the waking world he shared with his mother and Daniel. In fact, the ugly phantasms of his dream-world became incrementally more vivid, more frightening than the painful, mortifying midnight visits he endured. As the months and years passed, Miles slept less and less each night. Most of the time he lay huddled beneath the covers, his eyes little more than black points in the night. In his desperate struggles to avoid the spectral world of sleep, he came almost to welcome the flesh-and-blood Daniel.

Almost.

Elayne finally noted with some concern that the boy seemed too thin and drawn. She saw that he was almost as tall as Daniel and his voice was cracking and dropping more every day, and that a skiff of what just might become whiskers had darkened his cheeks and chin-but in spite of these physical evidences of increasing maturity, he remained strangely childlike. He was increasingly withdrawn, introverted. She tried to talk with him one day.

“Are you feeling well, Miles?” she asked over breakfast. He was supposed to leave for school in a few minutes.

“I’m okay,” he answered, staring into a bowl of rapidly disintegrating Cheerios.

“You don’t look well. You look…tired.”

He looked up at her. At his mother, this woman who bore him and then who married that bastard and even now didn’t know (couldn’t know!) what was going on in another bedroom in the darkness of midnight. For an instant his vision blurred and a voice said tell her, she’s your mother, she loves you, in spite of what he says she’ll understand that it wasn’t your fault, that it was never your fault, that you didn’t know any better back then and that now you do and you want him to stop to stop to stopstopstop.

“Mom,” he said. His voice crackled from bass to treble and back again. “Mom, I…”

Daniel Warren swept into the room. Five years had changed him little. At thirty-seven, he was still successful. His two dealerships had split to become four; he now spent much of his time on the road traveling from San Fernando to Coastal Crest to Ventura to Santa Barbara checking in with the managers at each location. He still dressed expensively, and his tailored clothing complemented his body well. He took good care of his body. It was taut and muscular, younger looking than his age. His mother was proud of how well he had kept himself, even though he no longer came over every Sunday afternoon for dinner. And he smiled a lot, a secretly self-satisfied smile that most people seemed to enjoy but that filled Miles’ throat with bile that burned like acid.

The man kissed Miles’ mother on the lips, then crossed around the table to run his hand through Miles’ hair. Miles tried to duck away and felt the fingers tighten momentarily on his hair, not much, not enough for his mother to notice but enough for him to feel and to understand that Daniel was still in charge. Totally in charge.

“I won’t be back until later tonight,” Daniel said softly to Elayne. His voice betrayed none of the pent-up tension that communicated itself like an electrical current through his fingers to Miles’ scalp. The man sounded for all the world like a normal father talking to a normal mother.

Elayne looked up sharply and opened her mouth as if to speak. Daniel cut her off without appearing to do so.

“Sorry, hon. We’ve got a manager’s conference in Ventura this afternoon. It may take a couple of hours.” He walked away from the table. “Love you,” he added as he took his briefcase and slipped out the kitchen door into the garage. The door closed behind him.

A moment later the whine of the electric garage opener-the first installed on Oleander Place-served notice that Daniel Warren was preparing to leave. Elayne toyed with a wedge of toast in front of her. Miles’ Cheerios were drowned beyond redemption, but he forced himself to eat a soggy spoonful anyway.

The garage door opener whined again as the door dropped, and the tiger roar of Daniel’s brand-new electric blue Corvette died away down Oleander before Elayne spoke again.

“We’re so lucky, Miles.” She concentrated on stirring her cooling coffee. “Daniel takes such good care of us.”

Considering what Miles had been about to say to her, he could only stare at his mother. She lifted her eyes and looked directly into his.

“I don’t know if I could take it…you know, having to be alone like that again. Working all the time. Wondering if we were going to go hungry next week, or where the rent payment was coming from. If I thought something, or someone was coming between us”-meaning herself and Daniel, Miles understood at once-“I’d do anything, anything to keep him. Anything. ”

She rose and set her empty plate and coffee mug in the sink. Her jelly-and-butter-smudged knife rattled a long, clattering dirge as it fell onto the porcelain. When she turned and stared at her son, her eyes held a strange expression that struck Miles as coldly across the face as a physical blow.

“What did you want to say to me, Miles?” she asked sweetly.

“Mom…,” he began. Then: “Nothing. I’m all right.” They never spoke of his looking tired again.

But as his fourteen year closed-the fifth since they had moved into the house on Oleander Place-Miles slept less and less.

The real dream-the dream beneath the dream, the one that nearly drove Miles mad with terror each time it began-started shortly after that discussion with Elayne, in late October of 1997.

The first time it came, Miles was not asleep in his bed. He lay naked on the floor of his room, his body curled into a tight ball, with his knees touching his chest, nearly touching his chin. His hands were clasped tightly over his shins, as if by holding on to each other they could create a lock against pain and fear and self-hatred and despair.

Daniel had just left. Miles knew that he should get back into his bed, that he should pull on his crumpled flannel pajamas and climb between the sheets that for almost every other fifteen-year-old in the world would mean warmth and comfort and peace but that for him had become synonymous with horror. He knew that if Daniel found him lying naked on the carpet in the morning, the next visit would be worse-Daniel had already warned him about such things.

No use taking any chances that your mother might happen to drop in early and see something she shouldn’t and get worried, right.

Miles knew that Daniel was capable of inflicting exquisite pain without leaving visible marks. The thought of punishment from that man chilled the boy. But tonight, the coldness sweeping over his spine felt uniquely right. Maybe he would catch pneumonia and burn with fever and cough his bloody lungs out and die. Maybe…

He lay with his head against the rough carpet. A thin line of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Tell your mother you slipped going to the bathroom and hit the door jamb, Daniel had warned just before he left, She’ll believe that. She knows you’re a clumsy little shit.