Days and nights blur together. What's it been? Four days, five? His complexion gray and sunken, his flesh loose, dry, lacking spring, flexibility. Hunger gnaws at him but thirst screams dry razors along his throat, turns his every organ into a begging, suckling sponge. His tongue bloats pasty, parched, glues to his cracked lips.
Dehydrating.

Helen knew the noises. She'd made them herself countless times. Well, maybe not countless. But certainly enough to recognize the husky moans, the pre-orgasmic squeal.

She did not have to look, but the fact that the noises were coming from her bedroom without her piqued her curiosity. Walking quietly, she approached the open doorway, determined to see but far too dignified to tip-toe.

The scent hit her first. Humid, cloistering muskiness eclipsing all but a hint of lily-of-the­ valley. The blend was not immediately repulsive; the image it elicited was. Stepping forward placed her slender profile before the doorway.

She did not want to be seen. But after all, she had nothing to hide. She wasn't the one fucking some tramp in their bed.
Her oblique angle left it all up to chance.

Peripherally, motion registered in her vision. Slowly, almost casually, she turned her head. A collage of parts met her gaze and gestalt took its own damn time collating what she saw; Jackson, naked, upright on his knees, his lean backside spasming with his efforts, an extra pair of legs framing his, pale -- the pink globes of an ass jiggling in the air.

A white woman! That son-of-a-bitch is cheating on me with white trash?
She was on all fours. Jackson gripped her by the hips, fiercely slapping her onto him, the muscles of his thighs and buttocks straining with the violence.

Helen's nails dug crimson crescents into her palms. She stiffened, shocked with rage. Her blood stilled within her and she froze, paralyzed, compelled to witness every detail of betrayal.

He cracked the woman hard on the ass, egging her on to greater efforts like a jockey on a racehorse. Homestretch. His breathy grunts became shouts. His own cheeks clenched tight and he impaled her with one final, massive thrust, knocking her off her elbows, face first into a pillow.
Helen's pillow.

Jackson followed her down, twitched atop her, inside her.
Blood rose to boil in Helen's temples, neck, as the pair in the next room melted together, cooled, the bastard Helen called a husband collapsed atop another woman. The pink soles of his feet dangled a broken V over the edge of the bed.

V for victory.
V for virulent, thought Helen.
V for vengeance. ^back to top

Great-grandma held a paring knife firmly in her right hand, blade inward against her thumb. In a speckled apron over layered petticoats, her compact package presented a dual image; ancient wisdom and impatient control. A carrot fell swiftly into neat orange disks, disappeared into the kettle.

"I warned you about left-handed Scorpions, didn't I girl? They can't keep their trouser­snakes penned up," She never looked from her paring, carrot to celery to chives, her leathery fingers deftly grabbing vegetable after vegetable, "Gotta keep moving from one nest to the next. I told you." She was ninety but moved with the nervous energy of a squirrel.
Helen did not answer the admonition. It was a rhetorical question, and besides, no one contradicted Great-grandma. If she said she had warned Helen, Helen had been warned. And she had been warned:

"That man won't be faithful, girl."

"You think that knife can stay out of the butter?"

"Get yourself a right-handed man, Missy. A right-handed Sagittarius with a hint of gray at the temples will never do you wrong."

But Helen had not been prepared to leave Jackson on such guidance. If the old-lady was ever wrong, it was going to be about Jackson.

But she was not wrong. She never was, not about people or events or the weather. Great-grandma had the spirits with her, wrapped around her bony, old fingers. She knew just how to flatter them, get on their good sides. She knew what they wanted in return for favors. She knew.

"Gramma, I love him, but I will not be used. I will not be made fool of."
Great-grandma raised her eyes, her full eyebrows and prominent brow nearly hiding them, glowered, "Is that why you here, girl? You want your revenge?"

Helen felt small. But Jackson had betrayed her, reduced her to nothing more than just another piece of ass. Full of self- righteousness, Helen lifted her chin, said quietly, defiantly, "Yes. I want my revenge."

"So find yourself some white-meat and put on your own little show. An eye for an eye. That ought to send that weasel, Jacky, right up a tree." Her gaze panned from her kettle, twinkled knowingly at Helen.

"I don't want to teach him a lesson," her full lips went slack and her pitch lowered, monotone lending credence to her seriousness, "I want him to suffer. I want him to feel every morsel of the hurt that I'm feeling."

Great-grandma wiped her hands on her apron, reached under her butcher-block table and brought up a pair of large sealed plastic buckets. She peeled the lids from both. One bucket went on the seat to her right, the other she propped between her knees. Picking her knife back up, she reached into the bucket beside her and plucked out a small dark object. She sliced it and dropped the good part into the bucket at her knees. She repeated this several times before saying, "'Make him feel every morsel of the hurt.' Missy, that gives me a fine idea. Now, listen close, girl." ^back to top

Every breath abrades his nostrils, ignites his sinuses. Air is too much friction like the unfiltered smoke of a dozen cigarettes. Dry fissures rip open his knuckles and fingertips; kindling leaves cracking. Blinking incessantly wipes chamois across his eyeballs, tearducts long since withered. His penis a deflated balloon animal, his scrotum shrivels to a pathetic marble bag, only a pair of aggies left within to justify its existence.

"Helen?" His voice was confident, purposeful, but Helen could hear his breathy moan beneath it like a tell-tale heart under the floorboards.
She dragged the heavy storm window from a corner of the attic studio and laid it down atop the aluminum in the center of the floor.

"Helen! You up there?" She heard the first step creak under his foot.

"Yeah, honey," the endearment tasted like stale coffee dregs on her tongue, "I'll be right down." She carefully pulled a paint-specked sheet off the canvas on her easel and spread it over the glass pane. The large white rectangle filled the center of the floor like a game of Twister. The abstract on the easel seemed to complete a set.

She took a deep breath, went downstairs. Jackson hovered over the kitchen counter, scooping from cardboard cartons onto plates. He looked up from his serving, raised the carton in his hand, "I got us some Chinese -- hope you're hungry."

"What's the occasion?"

"No occasion. Didn't want my baby perpetuating the myth of the starving artist. How was class?"

"It was canceled. The instructor's down with a bug."

Jackson paused as he scraped the last bit of sweet and sour sauce from the box, "Yeah?" An undertone of worry tainted his voice. "So what'd you do all day?" Helen heard the moans in her head -- or was he suspicious of her? What did she do all day? What did she do?

She was not about to be suckered into his game. She was setting the rules. This time, she had him, not that piece of pale trash from the morning.

Helen grabbed a plate, headed for the living room. "I dropped in on Great-grandma. We had lunch, got carried away with girl-talk."
Yeah? So what'd you two girls talk about?"

"None of your business. If we'd have wanted you to know we'd have invited you. I bet you'd have had a lot to say. About girls, that is."
Jackson grabbed his own plate, settled on the couch next to her. "Uh, sure, I got an opinion or two. Don't suppose your Great-grandma would care to hear them, though."

"Oh, I don't know, she'll hear out anybody in turn. Anyway, you obviously did not show up, so what'd you do today?"

A piece of meat dangled on the end of his fork and Jackson used the whole contraption to point toward the bedroom, "I stayed in bed most of the morning. I wasn't feeling too good myself. Maybe I had a touch of what your teacher has."

"You look fine now."

"Yeah, once I got up I started feeling better." He nervously stuck the meat in his mouth, chewed. Helen sat back in the overstuffed couch, both hands balancing her plate on her knee. Ignoring the food, she watched Jackson eat. He chewed for what seemed to Helen a very long time, then swallowed. Or tried to, anyway. He made a small gagging noise, brought the pork back up. Unconcerned, he chewed the meat further, swallowed. This time it made it past his throat. He speared another chunk and brought it to his lips.

A spasm ripped through him, doubling him over. The fork jerked forward, popped skin above his lip. It hooked at an angle before he yanked it out, ripping flesh. The fork clanged on the hardwood floor and the plate flipped out of his hand, spattering Helen and the couch. Jackson's arms twitched to his abdomen. He squeezed himself like he was trying to keep something from breaking free.

Helen dropped her plate, too, in sincere surprise. She had no idea he would react so violently.  Ecstasy.

She sprang up, prepared to feign assistance, when he rose on his knees, folded himself violently at the stomach, and vomited. On his first spasm he brought up the pork but continued to heave dry seizures until his abdominal muscles gave out. Helen held him from the side, bucked with him until it was over, reveled in the irony.

His convulsions ceased abruptly. Jackson slumped slowly back against Helen, spent.

"Shit! Were you having fits like that all day? I thought you were feeling better. Jesus, Jacky, go get back in bed. I'll clean up that lip and get you some tea."

Jackson nodded, his eyes suddenly hinting faint bags. Blood dribbled down his chin and sweat glinted in his tight, close curls, gleamed off the gold hoop in his right ear. He leaned forward, breaking her grip on him. He rose on wobbly legs, shuffled toward the bedroom.
When he moved out of sight, Helen melted back into the couch's arm. She plucked a slick piece of pork off her ruined slacks and popped it into her mouth.

She chewed slowly around the creeping grin on her face.

Skin painfully sensitive in some areas, virtually numb in others. Hanging on his bones, flesh feels like a hundred quilts weighing him down, smothering him with his own fevered breath. Standing leaves him dizzy; walking, a staggering cripple on the sauce. He grows irritable at his weakness, his black-outs, at pushing the envelope of death.
Hallucinations.

Bites of food sprouting rows of prickly legs march all over his ashen skin, looking for a way in, finding him sealed against the force of appetite. Drops of water roll across his belly like tiny balls of mercury, only to find him dammed against the flood of thirst.
Damned.

Six days in Hell.
Her anger, her loathing, were giving way to compassion. And guilt.
He's suffered enough.

She could no longer watch him shrivel up like an unpicked apple. She loved him. Despite him, despite herself, she still loved him.
She left him sleeping, his slack flesh tangled helter-skelter with stale sheets.

His blanched feet once more slanted a broken V.
This time, V for vindictive. ^back to top

Helen ran from the accusation, ran from the stagnant stench of death that hung in the air like a ripe, black thundercloud.

The walking food of his mind's eye gives up the search, huddles, forms one line, and marches single-mindedly out of the bedroom. His fevered mind grasps loosely to the hallucination. They're leading me away, he thinks. Someplace better.

Somewhere where there is a crack in the dam.

"You done changed your mind, dincha girl?" Granny's voice gave up no hint of disapproval, strictly a matter-of-fact deduction.
"How'd you know?" Helen was surprised, more by Granny's tone than her knowledge.

"Well, Missy, if you'd have still wanted Jacky sufferin', odds are you'd be home awatchin'."

Helen shifted in her seat but said nothing.

"Not that it matters none if you watch or not, end'll be the same. And soon, I 'magine."

"Granny," Helen leaned forward conspiratorially, "What do I have to do to end the spell?"

"End it? You cain't end it. It don't end 'til Jacky do."

"Granny, I've gotten my vengeance, he's suffered plenty. Now, I want to give him a warning he won't forget and get on with our lives. I want the spirits to leave him alone. They did their job, NOW LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
Granny set her bowl on the table, rose quickly to her full stooped five foot two before Helen, "You want? You want? You listen up, little Miss Helen High and Mighty. You come here and gets me to set loose a wild pack of spirits and you expect to shut them down like a light switch? Well, it ain't like that. They ain't a burning toaster you can pull the plug on. I don't control them. Nobody does. They do favors only if it pleases them. Doing nasties pleases them fine. Stopping before they done had their fill'd likely get their dander up something fierce."

Her features loosened, softened, "Besides, they won't come round here when they's havin' so much fun. They only come round here when they lookin' for some flattery or think a spell is in the making."

"So cast another spell, Grandma. Something they can't refuse."

"You got something in mind, Missy? Something better than torturing a man to death, slowly, from the inside out?"
Helen stood up, wavered quivering, wept silently, her hands hiding her face.

Grandma stepped closer, took Helen's hands. She patted and guided Helen back to the stool.
"This'll all be for the best, girl. You'll see. Grandma wouldn't steer you wrong. You hear?"

Sobbing, Helen nodded minutely. She stared down past Grandma's brightly stained smock, reminiscent of the paint-spattered tarp in her attic, and saw her own legs end in a fused V.
V for venomous. ^back to top

His head wet ashes of muddled thought, he falls in behind the procession, crawling awkward but hopeful.

Jackson was not in bed when she returned. Helen took a breath to call out his name when she heard the shuffling from above. Helen ran for the door to the attic. It stood half open. She hesitated, working the door back and forth until a crash of glass and rattle of metal decided for her. Her strides took her to the fifth step before the door hit the doorjam.
She fell, scampered with hands and feet up the rest.

The room was narrow, but long, and Helen could barely make out Jackson's emaciated form in the twilight from the attic's only window. Hovering over the aluminum frame, Jackson seemed confused, unable to put two and two together in their traditional manner. The frame of the storm door lay slightly twisted on the floor, shards of glass clinging to its edges.

Jackson gazed unsteadily toward the floor where the glass door had been. Aluminum siding lay bent and ripped into the vague shape of a man. The metal stood on it edge creating a six inch deep life-size human cookie-cutter.

Jackson's features were blanched and his eyes were glazed with exhaustion. He could not quite focus on the black carpet within the shape or the photograph that sat in its head. He bent down, reached for the picture.

He buckled, a hand and knee breaking his fall inside the frame. Wet squishes and pops under his pressure. He pulled his hand back to find hairy, twitching legs stuck to his palm. He yelped and fell backwards, out of the frame.

Helen ran into the middle of the room and stopped, the metal rising from the floor exactly halfway between Jackson and herself. He wiped the squashed roach parts onto the hardwood floor then rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand like a cat cleaning itself.

"Jacky?"

He did not so much as blink in her direction. He sat leaning on the floor with one hand, the other obsessively scratching his face.
Helen crept closer, "Jacky, baby, let's get you back in bed."
Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness of the room. Jackson's shriveled form pulled in on itself, his hand never leaving his chin. He picked and pinched.

An inch-long strip of flesh puckered off of his chin. It twitched briefly between his thumb and forefinger before he flung it away. It landed inside the frame and was quickly swallowed up by the carpet of living blackness.
Jackson tried to stand up, stumbled, got to his feet. He prodded at his chin and looked up into Helen's face.

"What have you done to me, baby?" He took a shuffling step toward her, misjudged, swayed toward the cookie cutter.

Helen rushed forward, stepping inside the frame to catch him under the arms but even starved near to death, his weight was too much for her. They fell together, or rather slumped to the hardwood, scuffed and cool.
She laid Jackson back against an old crate and looked closely into his face. Long, thin ovals of flesh were blanching, drying, separating from the surrounding skin. Three on his cheek, one overlapping the wound in his chin, two down his neck. A half-dozen more sprouted out on his chest and stomach. They dried and puckered, paled before her eyes like litmus paper reacting --

And shrank to pull themselves, squirming, twitching, hard and tumorous off of Jackson's body to fall lifeless to his sides, in his hair, rebounding silently off the floor.

Helen screamed and crawled back to the metal frame. She overturned the framework in a loud, tinny series of hollow clangs and crashes. The black carpet of headless roaches spread slowly and erratically from the crisp outline of a man to the blurring image of a hulking silhouette.
She quickly reached into the silhouette and grabbed the photograph of Jackson. She flicked off the few roaches that had been clinging to it, trying to eat it without mouths, trying to suckle life from one not yet absolutely condemned.

Stuffing the photo into her blouse, she stumbled back to Jackson. She fell back, next to Jackson and held him. The two dimensional cloud of roaches spread from mere feet away but Helen was too exhausted to care about the few that crept her way.

Within her arms, Jackson's breaths became harsher. She comforted breathlessly, "It's all over, Jacky. You'll be okay, honey."
But his breaths became panicked. She felt him stirring restlessly, squeezed him tighter.

His flesh squirmed angrily. She recoiled, but quickly maneuvered herself a view of his shoulder. The flesh swam and crawled like a swirling vat of fudge in a slow mixer until it puckered and slurped at the air. Dividing into inch-long ovals, the flesh seemed to pause and think.
Only the edges of these ovals blanched and dried. And the popping noises of them breaking free were less desperate than those of the dead parts before. These merely stood up from the flesh like bees breaking from the hive on tiny, hairy legs of skin and scurried purposefully down Jackson's body. From the bloody muscle layer beneath squirmed more tissue, and below that -­

More.^back to top

Helen scrunched herself into the corner and screamed as the cloud of roaches on the floor expanded to meet the escaping matter of Jackson. The two clouds seemed to mimic each other, dancing together and apart again like a silent square dance.

He turned what was left of his face toward her but said nothing as a piece crawled down from his scalp, tight curls quivering on its back. His eyes widened into a silent scream. His lower lip broke into two even pieces to march down his neck, bloated, dry, but shelled with oozing fractures. Teeth fell away walking on strands of gum tissue and his earlobe hit the floor clacking his gold hoop against the hardwood with every step.
Piece by piece Jackson crawled out of his clothing and scurried through cracks in the floor, beneath dusty furniture, and into nooks and crannies so small it looked like the creatures walked through solid matter.

Jackson broke up and crawled away for hours, parts bloody or wet from a variety of fluids and organs until, finally, his deflating clothes collapsed from the void within.
Helen shook quietly in the corner, hugging herself, cold from shock, and watched every piece escape from the unity that was her husband. Numb with guilt and terror, she still sat and quaked as the sun rose to stir dust motes in the attic, the photograph of Jackson ruined in her white-knuckled grip.

Jackson's slippers fell in quick succession to slap the floor, launching new spirals of dust into the sunrays.
From where she crouched, Helen watched the last of the pseudo-insects crawl from the slippers which had landed in a splayed and broken V.
V for voodoo, Helen thought vaguely.
V for vanquished.

THE END ^back to top