Austin Bunn - The Brink - Stories

Right after, I told the nurses to stop the drugs. It was time to go home, to remember my life. Except now, like every monster, I’ve got two arrows in my head: one going forward to what I want, and the other going back to what made me. These arrows move at the same speed, in different directions, and trying to hold them both in your head will make anybody crazy.

Is a horror story a horror story if the monster tells it?

A row of store-bought superheroes, cowgirls, and witches line up at the entrance of the Rutland Firehouse, waiting to be scared. In the parking lot, adults in parent costumes lean against cars and blow air into their fists. Tonight is Halloween. I have my hair back in a ponytail. My costume is a sign around my neck that says “Go Ahead and Stare.”

On a branch at the edge of the car lot, a yellowed medical skeleton dangles, and a punk comes and snaps the last nob of coccyx. The air is a freezer door open to my face, and the cold makes the itch. Heat, sweat, cold, tears, smiling: they all make the itch. When that happens, I have to busy my hands. I press them onto the warm hood of my car, but I’m nervous and my hands won’t heat.

Jess isn’t here yet. Jess will warm things.

“Look at this,” Solvang says. “This one will rock you.”

He flips a playing card onto the hood. For the past three months, over cheese and onion sandwiches at lunch, Solvang has been giving me dispatches about this newest project, a deck of cards he designed. He works at the printing office next to Kramer Photo and Retouch, where I’m at, and he has access to the machines. After hours, he prints up these cards, each with a disturbing image, gore from the Internet that no one should see: crime scenes, blade accidents, amputees doing stuff. Solvang spent his childhood in the northern territories, in a one-room cabin with his parents, backwoods Swedes who taught him that life is about having something to trade. The latest: a girl tucked in the fetal position, lying in pink soup.

“Guess,” he says.

“A kid in a big purse,” I say.

“Not even close.”

“I don’t want to know,” says Callie, Solvang’s wife. “Those cards are evil.” With one hand, she forks her fingers into her hair, and with the other, she rains glitter. During the day, when she’s not taking care of their baby son, Callie housecleans for a B&B up on the ski mountain. Tonight, she’s a fairy godmother, in a busty silver gown and tiara. She was Wiccan for a while, so she knows how to accessorize. Her magic wand is a curtain rod with a tinfoil ball at the end, but I’m getting more of a scepter feel.

“That is a python,” Solvang says, “with a girl inside it.”

I pinch Callie’s foil into star points. “I thought that was the other one.”

“That one was an orca,” he says, “with a dude inside it.” He flips to the next: a Siamese cat crammed inside a bottle, face against the glass. Somebody trimmed its whiskers and it looks so not psyched. “Check it,” he says. “The bonsai kitten. The cat lives in the bottle its whole life. They blow pot in its face to runt it.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Callie interrupts. “Something normal?”

A boy in a hospital gown approaches us, trailing his dad. The kid has a bleeding scar on his forehead, piecrust and red coloring dye. It looks carefully worked over.

“Excuse me but your face looks amazing,” he says to me. “How did you do it?”

His father takes his hand. “He loves horror movies, sorry.” I lean down to the kid, my cardboard sign dangling. I want him to be able to see up close, no flinching. “It’s not a costume,” I say.

The kid blinks, confused. His father forces a laugh and then jerks his son toward the line, like what I’ve got might be able to be given.

“So how much longer do we have to wait?” Callie says. “The posters said eight o’clock. It’s been eight o’clock for a year.”

Tonight is Eddie Cosimano’s show — his name was all over the poster. “Horror effects by FX wizard Eddie Cosimano ( Rumplestiltskin II, The Witching of Amanda Jane ).” I know Eddie from high school, when we worked in the audio-visual room, shuttling the TV carts. During study periods, we watched horror movies over and over. The classics, the remakes and reboots, the Japanese ones that start as romantic comedies then turn to vivisection. All of them. Right after graduation, Eddie went out to California to work in film, but you have to freeze-frame to catch his name in the credits. He’d come back to Rutland to “regroup.” One guy. He gets to regroup.

“I’m cold,” Callie says. “Somebody warm me up.” Solvang rubs her shoulders, then nestles in for a kiss. He purses his lips like he’s drinking from a faucet, like she’s a necessary element, and Callie moans a little. I still don’t know what that feels like. I so want to know.

Just then, a van with tinted windows pulls into the lot, brights in our faces. The line of kids kinks around it, chattering at the arrival. When the driver-side door opens, mist billows out to the ground. My heart seizes a bit to know just how far Eddie has taken this. A black boot descends, buckled to the knee, and Eddie steps from the driver’s chair, in an overcoat and a cap that says “ R II .” His beard has crop circles. He takes a scan of the crowd and then hits the unlock. Here’s where things get interesting, where things get different. The back doors open and a posse of vampire girls stretch their legs and follow. Last to emerge is Jess, the stake in my heart, the answer for everything. Her face is powdered to alabaster. Her eyes and lips, coal black. A charcoal cape doesn’t quite cover her blouse. She wears a plaid, pleated skirt and ripped white leggings. She’s all Catholic School except for two gray fangs. She stumbles a bit, unsure where to go until Eddie whisks her inside.

The itch says, Careful. My right hand dives in my shirt pocket to make sure the pills haven’t moved. All there, safe and unsound, a handful of white roofies for the partner of my choosing. No more waiting. Tonight, I’m Jack with the magic beans. Here comes the stalk. Here comes the climb up into the clouds.

Jess stood at the door of Kramer Photo in her remember-me best: a tight blue V-neck sweater, brown hair curtaining around her face, and J.C. on the cross nestled between her Temple Mounts. It was the same outfit she had had on before, in her first round of pictures.

“I’m here for my retakes?” she said.

“You’re an hour late,” I said from the door, giving her my good side. She ran J.C. up and down on his chain.

“Sorry,” Jess said, and shrugged. “Student Council.”

For six weeks in the fall, portraits from all over the county flood into Kramer Photo. October is yearbook season. I work in the back and out of view, retouching — clearing complexions, subtracting acne from the record. You wouldn’t guess, considering, that I am good at this particular fix. But I had the job before the accident, and Kramer kept me on after. “Nobody else looks as close as you do,” he said. And he’s right. I see all the way to the pore. The measly flare, the third-eye keloid. Our skin is where we’re judged, first and last.

I brought Jess upstairs to the studio. The door locked behind her.

Kramer and the others had already left, so it was just us in the studio. I had spent time prepping and figuring how to shade the space. She’d stay under the brights and flashes, and I’d stay behind the lens until she blacked out. The shades were drawn, but the studio felt cool and outdoorsy — that was the “Forest Glade” on the wall, a twelve-foot scrim of birch and fallen leaves. For portrait backgrounds, Kramer offers “Star Field,” “42nd Street,” and “Forest Glade.”