Sleeping Beauty

Jennette's father had always been crazy. For as long as she knew, he had been talking with what he called his "angels", three of them. They apparently came in Crayola beginner's set colors of blue, green, and red. Every night before falling asleep in his armchair, tv on but with the sound down to a low unintelligible mutter, he would drowse into unconsciousness in a convivial conversation with one or more of them, as if he were speaking to his wife in a 50's style bedroom, lights out, beds separated by a side table with frill like a doll's dress around it. Half sentences, words spoken with the knowledge that the listener could piece together his meanings as a string of nuances, without full form.

There was a mother once, but as far as Jene could tell, she had never known her. It wasn't personal. Pieces of her still crouched around the house. A bottle of black nail polish in the medicine cabinet, congealed beyond use. Some dark charcoal and ink washes, edges curling, thumbtacked to the walls in what seemed to be a relatively arbitrary fashion. Another bottle, this one of perfume, that Jene never opened, because she did once, and suddenly it Was personal. A brief knife of memory slashing down so deep inside her that she crumpled, almost vomiting. It was recapped and placed back upon the small hole it had left behind in the dust on the bookshelf.

Jene's father never said much about her. Once, when they had to catch a string of buses to get to a dental appointment far from their early 80's suburban enclave, the only office that would take her insurance, they had a transfer in a particularly broken corner of the city. Half of the bus cubby's glass had been broken out and replaced with plywood. The rain made streaking blackish mold stains down the side of it. She was reminded of her mother's drawings.

"This is where your mom used to come to cop" he had said. It was promptu to nothing, they had been sitting there silently for 5 minutes already, hands shoved in armpits, listening to the hiss and crunch of cars rolling by on dirty snow. She was about ten, and simply nodded, not wanting to seem unknowledgeable. Two cops had already driven past, she figured it must be some kind of reference to them. There seemed to be a lot in that area.

The sentence had stuck in her mind though, carefully lodged in the thin file she kept of her father's words about her mother. When she got a little older and started smoking weed with the neighbors two doors down, she learned what it meant. She wondered why her mother would have to go all the way across town to do it. There was plenty of shitty smoke in the neighborhood. Maybe they had the stuff that smelled like when you rode down the backroads at night and hit a patch of overpowering stench, acrid, intriguing. The only sign that there was something dead in the shadows, just past the narrow tunnel the headlights carved out eternally, resealing a few feet behind you.

It was on her 15th birthday they had gotten out and looked for it. Her boyfriend had a car, or her car had a boyfriend attached to the deal, she was never sure which. She Was pretty sure her motivations in being with him were not pure. Whatever, he had things he wanted from her too. She had a car, but not freedom. He had a girlfriend, but not all the benefits yet. Yet. She knew she would relent eventually. She didn't mind. The thought neither excited or repulsed her.

Chasing down the source of that smell did both however. They were giggling, high on some better than usual stuff, clutching one another and holding their phones out to the night, the shallow ditch, and the line of scrub on the other side of it. The car door was hanging open and dinging relentlessly.

"Ugh" he groaned, pretending to retch over his shoulder. "Let's get out of here. "It probably went way back into the woods to die and just dropped its bomb here first." He made a whistle and then the pwkshhhh sound of a bomb hitting the ground, grabbing her arm and shaking it, half jokingly pulling her to the car.

"Wait" she said. "I think I see something."

And there it was, on the edge of the grass, legs twisted uselessly below its bloodied tail. It was so small. The soft black and white coat gleamed with dew. A tiny bit of fang poked out of the light pink line of its mouth. It was so utterly helpless. Cars have no noses, no senses to offend. They cancelled out every one of nature's foils.

She was overwhelmed. "We've got to bury it." she said, expecting an argument. But he had grown still next to her.

"Where?" he asked. They had no shovel.

"We'll have to bring it with us." She said. "There's some plastic bags in the back from those taquitos. and some napkins I think."

He went to the back door, slamming the front one closed first, for one blessed second of no beeping. After pulling the bags out of the back he shut that door too, and the sounds of the night insects surrounded them. "We'd better hurry" he said, sweeping the darkness of the road with a quick glance. "I think there's laws about this kind of stuff." With that vague generalization he handed the napkins to her, put one bag inside the other, and snapped it with his wrists to swell it out. She held one napkin in each hand and breathed deeply into her the sleeve at the crook of her arm before holding her breath and reaching down. Its tiny body was still slightly warm to the touch, and it swung limply when she picked it up. drops of dark blood scattered onto the rubber toes of her converse. She saw some blotches on the shoelace too. That's not coming off, she thought, picturing pulling her laces tight every day, touching skunk blood. It slithered into the bag and curled into the bottom, filling it almost like liquid in its postmortem relaxation. Without thinking they threw it in the back seat, jumped into the car, and skidded out, rolling all the windows down to let the air rush in and sweep the smell out through the back. The bag rattled in the breeze.

They got back to her house, and she quietly pulled up the garage door a couple of feet, dodging underneath, and pulled out her phone to look for the shovel. It was hanging towards the back, past heaps of black plastic garbage bags of what she had no idea. She hop frogged her way over, pulled it off the wall neatly, and then promptly crashed into the soft and hard edges underneath the thick plastic. She half swam across them and was feeling giggly again by the time she got back to the car.

"Where to?" He asked, grinning over at her. "It's your funeral." She laughed and smiled, genuinely at him, for the first time. The smell was practically eyebleeding.

She had been trying to think of a spot the whole way back to her dad's house, and as they passed the name at the entrance of the development, it came to her. Like most housing developments, it was named after whatever the bulldozers had mowed down to make it. Hundred Oaks had probably been an underestimation on the number. But hey, it sounded good.

Towards the back of the development was a steep rise that had resisted the bulldozer's bite due to erosion and landslide concerns. At the top of this corner an old oak spread out its branches all the way out to shade the road, and seasonally pelted the cars going by with a small arsenal of acorns. They parked under the shadow and scrambled up the bank, he with the shovel, her with the bag that seemed to want to catch on every tiny twig on the way up, so it could splatter the weird juice that was collecting at the bottom of it, all over the new old t-shirt she had gotten for herself that day at the goodwill blue bins. It was an ancient MDC half sleeve that was pretty much priceless in her estimation.

At the top you could look out across the whole curving grid and silent streets of the 'burb. It looked sterile, the visual equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. She turned towards the tree and studied its roots, looking for a wide enough spot to dig between.

The first shove down into the earth was dishearteningly shallow. It felt as though she had just chipped it with a spoon. She and then they continued though, taking turns, until there was a narrow trench about a foot and a half down and wide. They both sat down, leaning against the base of the tree. Its arms reached out in black lace against the swollen pink sky. The smell of skunk was still overpowering.

"Man." she said. "I never appreciated gravediggers before." They laughed, and she was struck at how easy it felt. She put her hand over his. The salt from his sweat stung a blister that had formed while shoveling. She pressed down on it.

"Okay." he said. "Let's do this. I have a tomato juice shower I'm gonna need to get to soon." He got up still holding her hand and leaned down to help pull her up. She put her other hand behind her to push up on and that's when she felt it. Thinner than a crayon, hard. She pulled back and stared. "Jesus fuck!" she hissed. She had put her palm directly onto a hypodermic needle.

It sat there, between the roots of the tree, stubbornly out of place. It seemed obnoxious, rude somehow. A tiny little Fuck You lying there. The orange plunger was half pulled out. There was a dark brown liquid inside it.

"Damn." he said. "That's some shit timing for some dude out there." He picked it up. She felt slightly uneasy with his lack of hesitation. "They must've seen us pull up and gotten freaked out. Probably all fucked up with the jitters and thought we were undercovers or something! Hah!" He pulled his arm back to throw it into the woods.

She didn't know why she stopped him. One hand shot out and grabbed his forearm while the other reached out and plucked it from his fingers, almost before she knew it was happening. A thought flashed in the back of her skull.

"It's mine. I found it."

He was still frozen with his arm in mid air. There was an anger she had never seen drawing his mouth tight. Everything had changed so quickly.

"So. That's what you want." It was flat. A not question.

She was already wrapping it, rolling it in an extra napkin from her pocket, gingerly treating the delicate needle tip with extra gentleness.

Her heart was racing, and she chased the fear off with anger.

"Maybe." She said, trying to sound nonchalant, "It's been a pretty weird night already. We could top it off with something else new besides burying a reeking animal."

Even as the words left her lips she knew how wrong they were. She felt a deep hole of blackness opening inside of her. She knew how special what they were doing had felt. It wasn't a dead animal. It was all the wrong of the world they were trying to bury. All the profanity of humankind.

His eyes had gone cold. "Sorry." He said. "I can't fuck with that shit anymore." And then he was headed down the hill, descending in seconds what they had struggled up, and then he was in the car, and then he was gone.

Her chest hurt. Her arms hurt, and her blisters were stinging. A high white noise had started up in her ears. Tinitus. Too many shows, standing right next to the speakers. The plastic bag rustled a little in a barely perceptible breeze. She realized she really didn't know fuckall about her boyfriend. He'd been a junkie? What? On the tail end of that thought came another. Maybe whoever ditched that needle wanted it back. How long would they hide out before they came returned to look for it? And how would they feel about her being there?

She could see why they chose this spot. She'd often come up here by herself to watch the sun set and smoke something. It was about as far away as you could get in the labyrinth of their complex.

Quickly the thing that had meant to be ritual and bonding became panicked and lonely. She dumped the skunk unceremoniously in the hole and began shoving dirt over it as fast as she could, scooping it with both hands and pushing it into the hole.

"Sorry little buddy" She whispered under her breath. "I'll come back and give you a stone and flowers later."

She grabbed the shovel with one hand and picked up the rolled up napkin paper in the other, cradling it gently. Then she started to butt scoot down the hill, holding both of them up, until she lost her balance halfway down and picked up speed and then the shovel caught on a bush and the next thing she felt was a blinding stabbing pain in her ankle and knew that it had twisted, badly, and she was sitting on the concrete at the bottom of the hill, with her foot at an unnatural angle. The shovel was still halfway up the bank, but the white roll was less than a foot away. It was easy not to think about what was in it. Easy to pick up. She knew there was no way she was getting the shovel tonight. She'd be lucky to make it home.

The streetlights buzzed their discordant sound above her. Every step blazed hot white pain up her leg. The grass looked a sickly shade of green. A blue banner in her neighbor's yard claimed it as Home, the Best Place On Earth. The lock slid open quietly, door hinges already meticulously greased for previous unsanctioned forays. A smell of old socks and half eaten microwave Stouffers greeted her nose. She could hear the hum of the tv and see flickering lights on the wall. Impossible to escape the artificial light.

Tears finally squeezed out of the corners of her eyes as she climbed the stairs, each step jolting through her body with a sonic pain. There was her door. Then her bed. It had never felt so soft. She lay there, in the dark, gazing up at the ceiling, then leaned over and turned on the stereo, quietly. The knob glowed with a luminescent calm. Still not complete. The thin reeds of Lou's voice from The Velvet Underground quietly whispered out. Another piece from the narrow file slipped out and into her mind. Her mom had liked The Velvet Underground, her father had said once. "They were into the same shit she was." Another puzzle piece fell into place. She carefully unrolled the napkin, enjoying the diminishing feel of the paper beneath her hand. Her arm was still stretched towards the dial. She leaned her head up, slightly, slipped the needle into the crook of her arm, and pushed.

Finally.

Total Darkness.