Jeff Strand - Dweller

Owen pulled apart his lips, showing his teeth.

“Oh, so you’re mad at me now? I’m not the one who disappeared for three days. Where were you?”

Owen pointed to the left.

“What were you doing?”

Owen made doggy-paddle motions.

“You were swimming? You went swimming for three days?”

Thumbs-up. Yes.

“You were not swimming for three days. Where would you even go? Did you find a pond or something?”

Yes.

“You didn’t need to be gone that long. You could have figured out a way to leave a message, or at least told me beforehand that you were leaving. You know, it’s not that short of a walk out here. I’ve got a lot of better things I could be doing than trekking all the way out here just to find an empty cave.”

Owen tapped his heart with two talons. I’m sorry.

“Well, you should be. I don’t have anybody else, you know.”

Owen furrowed his brow and curled his index finger.

“No, I’m not mad. Not mad anymore. Just don’t do that to me again, okay?”

“It’s a brand-new decade, Owen. Everything is going to change. The world is ours for the taking, buddy. I can’t believe I brought this party hat all the way out here and you won’t wear it.”

“Listen to me,” Toby said. He tapped his ear. “Listen. What I have to say is very important. Do you understand?”

Yes.

Toby felt sick to his stomach. He should have confessed this years ago. Or he shouldn’t confess it at all. What if it destroyed everything?

“You remember that day, right? A long time ago? When I fed you?”

Owen curled his hand into a fist and licked the air.

“No, no, not ice cream. I mean way back. Well, maybe your first ice-cream cone was before this, but I mean that time I gave you other food. People food. You know, not food that people eat, but people food. Kids like me. Remember that time?”

Yes.

Toby felt his eyes welling up with tears. “I need to share something with you. You have to promise not to get mad. Do you promise? You sure? You have to promise.”

Owen promised.

“When I did that, when I led you to their bodies, I wasn’t thinking about you. I was going to blame you for what happened to them.” Toby let the tears fall. “I wouldn’t do it now. If the police found out, I’d confess everything, I’d let them know that you had nothing to do with their deaths, but at the time I was scared and I didn’t know you and I just wanted a way to get rid of them where they wouldn’t be discovered.”

There was no reaction.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even be telling you about this. You may not even understand me. I just-I’ve felt bad about this for a long time, and I needed to get it off my chest. It was a horrible thing to do. We weren’t friends back then, but even so, I would’ve let them gas you or whatever they would’ve done. But not anymore. I swear.”

Toby bit the inside of his cheek and looked into Owen’s eyes. He couldn’t always tell what Owen was thinking. Usually he could make a guess, but this time he had absolutely no idea. He didn’t know if Owen was ready to wail in misery, bite his face off, or shrug and return to his cave.

“Can I have a hug?” Toby asked.

Owen gave him one.

“Damn it! You little bastards get out of here!” Toby shouted after the laughing, fleeing kids. He could understand them egging and toilet-papering his house if it were Halloween or April Fools’ Day, but it was Lincoln’s birthday, for crying out loud!

“Bye, weirdo!” one of them shouted back.

Weirdo. Yeah, that was appropriate, but he wasn’t sure how he ended up being treated like a crazy old man. He wasn’t even thirty.

One of the kids, Joey, had ridden his bike over a couple of times to talk about baseball. Toby had no interest in or knowledge about baseball, but he faked it. Then the kid’s mother had told Joey to stay away from him.

He got a towel from the linen closet and went outside to wipe off his front window. He grimaced at the smell. These eggs had gone bad quite some time ago-you almost had to admire their commitment to keep them around that long.

Almost.

“Little bastards,” he muttered under his breath as he wiped away the slime.

“Toby.”

“Oh my God! It’s your first word!”

1973. Age 28.

As Toby lay in bed, the night before his parents were coming to visit for Christmas, he realized that he hadn’t seen Larry in over a week.

He didn’t see Larry every single day, but in thirteen years he was pretty sure that he’d never gone two consecutive days without a visit. These weren’t always the long, nightmare-inducing, sanity-questioning visits-usually he’d think about the horrible act he’d committed, his unforgiving imagination would conjure up an image of the bully (or bullies), and he’d spend a few minutes trying to get rid of them. Sometimes it was just a few seconds. Sometimes it lasted all night. Sometimes he was terrified, sometimes he was disoriented and confused, and sometimes the visions of Larry and Nick made him so angry about the ongoing torment that he wanted to stab them to death again.

But if he remembered correctly, the last time Larry had haunted him was during dinner last Monday. Toby had envisioned poking a fork in his eye and he’d gone away.

Last Tuesday, Toby had met Melissa Tomlinson. Neither Larry nor Nick had returned since then.

This wasn’t a coincidence.

Of course, now that he was thinking about the fact that he hadn’t thought about Larry, the son of a bitch showed up, but Toby made the image dissipate quickly, before it could even say anything. It was time to get over this crap. Time to move on with his life.

Melissa was his new coworker at the grocery. A cashier. Twenty-three years old. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Perhaps not in a traditional way; in fact, Andrew, one of the baggers, had asked, “Who’s the new dog?” Toby had resisted the urge to suffocate him with one of the bags.

Her long, straight black hair was unevenly cut, and she had sort of a crooked smile, but it wasn’t like she were missing a nose or anything like that. Not everyone could be on the cover of Playboy. As far as Toby was concerned, she was a goddess of beauty.

It helped that she was nice to him.

She’d never worked a cash register before, and Annette, whom she would be replacing, was immediately exasperated, even though from what Toby could tell she was picking it up quickly. People weren’t born knowing how to use a piece of man-made equipment. Toby wanted to walk over there and tell Annette this, and he almost did, but Melissa seemed to be handling everything fine, and her smile never vanished.

Then Mr. Zack asked Toby why he was loitering out here, and he sheepishly returned to the stockroom.

He spent the morning lifting boxes and working up the courage to ask her to sit next to him at lunch. Or the courage to sit next to her, wherever she decided to sit. Either one of those would be fine.

Melissa went home for lunch. Apparently she lived only two blocks from the store.

Toby spent the afternoon mopping floors and trying to decide if he would be risking severe humiliation by asking her to go to a movie with him. Robin Hood was still playing, though he didn’t know if she’d want to go see a Disney cartoon. The only other thing playing was Serpico, which might be kind of violent for her.

His hands were so sweaty that he dropped a box of Tide when he tried to put it on the shelf. Fortunately, Mr. Zack didn’t see him.

“Hi,” Toby said, walking over to her as their shifts ended. “I’m Toby. Mr. Zack introduced us this morning.”