“The Soulless” VI
Posted by fictionforum on June 2, 2008
(Excuse the delayed post, my friends, there have been recent events in my life that have been somewhat time consuming. One of which was my ridiculously long graduation ceremony. I promise next week’s installment to be altogether more fulfilling than this.
-Bird)
It’s a scarecrow.
His round, bulging body is tumescent with dried sticks of hay.
A scarecrow. Dirty bastard.
He stands, weathered, day and night, with a stick in his ass, displayed for the world to see and fear and toy with. I catch his black eyes, perfect smiling circles dancing on a plain, off-white cloth, colored by water and sun. He seems to catch my eyes and stare back. He stares down at me, plastered in my earthen war paint. I stare up at him, he’s crooked on his perch.
We make it to the carport. The cool, night time rain comes, a refreshing, invigorating rain. It washes the dirt off our skin and from our hair; we don’t mind standing in it despite the danger and the shivers. It’s a seraphic rain, shimmering with the gold lights of our car, coated in the easter egg blue carport and scrutinized by the dour gaze of the scarecrow, peering over us all.
It’s been three days since we came to Anya’s camp. There is no heat, but in the largest room there is a great big fireplace with a long mantel, decorated with brass. The stove is a wood stove. The entire camp always smells like Autumn air, that smokey smell, rich and flavorful. The food isn’t bad, beans, bacon, canned fruits. It feels like we were camping. I don’t mind, I’ve always liked to camp.
My favorite part of the house is the basement. It’s a sideways old thing, with a dirt floor and a great mountain of boxes. On the walls are all these deer heads with those blank, black, marble eyes. They’re pretty cool. It’s a whole collection of stuffed deer heads, mounted, preserved, displayed, hidden away in the basement. All their phalangeal antlers, are covered in grey and prismatic cobwebs. From one dangles a dead spider, curled up and dry. I spend some time down there thinking. I don’t know why, some people might find it a sort of unlikely place to get comfortable with thoughts, but when the light shines through those tiny windows, and graces the heaping, sagging boxes, I get sort of choked up and lost.
Anya prefers the porch, where she can hide from Jeb, who is constantly trying to get us to wrestle with him. No doubt he’d be pestering Frank, too, if his arm was better.
Today, she’s out there, with a large mug filled with hot tea. She just holding it close to her face, closing her eyes and letting the heavy wisps of steam glide over her skin. She doesn’t drink it until it’s nearly cool, when it’s stewed a while. I can smell her tea from the basement, tangerine and sometimes cherry, and sometimes I’ll go dashing up to watch her pour it, and slip to the porch, where she, with a certain amount of serenity and frailness, watches the rain blur the windows.
I join her. The basement has taken all the thoughts it can for today. The porch is cold and she offers me an extra blanket. The floor is a matted, scratchy astroturf, the chairs are tipped over and stacked, I have to turn one over to sit in it. It’s a squeaky, white wicker chair. I hate wicker.
She rests her mug on the table beside her and curls up in the blanket.
“No. I don’t have a girl,” I tell her and she laughs.
