This is a story Mrs. Marincovich started and I had to finish. :)
Smoked
By
Caitlin Plathe
On the day that my
neighbor set fire to his house, I was watching The Price is Right.
Pathetic, I know. I had called in to work sick that morning, battling a cold
that had been running rampant through the high school. I had coughed my way all
week through teaching To Kill a
Mockingbird and teacher meetings, and so today, I was giving myself
permission to rest. Whenever I am sick, I remember those days as a kid when I’d
stay home from school and lie on the couch all day, the latest Nancy Drew
mystery on the floor next to me. My mom
would feed me chicken soup and Seven-Up, and at night, rub my chest with the
dreaded Vick’s VapoRub. Today, comic books have been replaced with research
papers, stacks of dull writing that, each year, become more and more painful to
grade. This is proven by the fact that I would rather huddle under my afghan
and watch mindless game shows.
And so, on that
rather odd day, as I watched an elderly lady jump around on stage like a wild
chimpanzee after winning a side-by-side refrigerator, a flash of orange from my
dining room window caught my eye. It took a moment to register, but then I
realized that Old Man Larson’s house was on fire. It must have been the cold
medicine that caused me to stare stupidly out the window rather than take some
sort of action. By the time my brain woke up, the sirens were wailing.
Old Man Larson is
the kind of character who appears in those creepy, badly written mystery novels
you read in junior high. He’s lived across the street from me for the past
several years, but I’ve only seen him a handful of times. The kids in the
neighborhood call him Spook. I think it’s because he’s got this really pale
skin and wispy gray hair that flies around his head like frayed feathers. He
seems to live in the same tattered overalls which he always wears shirtless.
Rumor has it he used to be a big shot at a bank until his wife died suddenly,
and then he started drinking and basically shut himself in his house. When I
moved in three years ago, his reputation was already firmly established among
the neighbors.
It took barely
five minutes for the fire trucks to show up, but by then, flames were already
shooting through the roof of the house. I watched as burly men in overcoats and
boots pulled out the hoses and shot water into the windows. I kept wondering,
where was Larson? Was he trapped inside? Judging by the amount of smoke
billowing into the sky, it seemed unlikely that he could survive this. After
about 15 minutes, the house began to smolder. One of the firemen put on a gas
mask and pushed his way through the front door. By now, my other neighbors had
wandered into the street to watch the action. As I debated whether to get
dressed and join the crowd for a better look, I heard a knock at my back door.
I barely
recognized him. Instead of the usual overalls, Larson was dressed in a business
suit. His wispy hair had been cut and slicked back, and he wore black framed
eyeglasses, the fashionable kind you see on celebrities these days. He was
holding a brown leather briefcase. We stared at each other for a moment. Then,
I silently beckoned him inside. He stepped over the threshold like he had been
doing it his whole life.
Once inside, he
asked in a curt voice, “Your kitchen?”
My mouth hung
open, but I quickly pulled myself together. I cleared my throat. “It’s right in here.”
“Perfect.”
He—Old Man Larson,
the man who regularly wore overalls—strutted to the kitchen. Then he promptly
put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, where I had planned on making chicken
noodle soup for myself later that day. So much for that.
Larson pulled a
dusty, black book out of his briefcase and went to work, not even batting an
eye. I stood there awkwardly, not entirely sure what one was supposed to do in
this kind of situation. Should I offer him something to drink? Perhaps he’s
hungry. His home just burned down, why on earth did he come to my house? Maybe I
should say my condolences? I chose to go with the latter.
“I’m so sorry
about what happened to your house, Mr. Larson. I can’t even imagine what you
must be going through. Here, let me get you something to drink.” I turned to the
fridge and pulled out the lemonade I made the other day.
“What exactly do
you think I’m going through?”
“Sorry?” I asked,
reaching for one of the few clean glasses left, which happened to be on the top
shelf.
When I turned
around, glass in hand, my mind played a trick on me—for a split second, I didn’t
think he was there. A flash of empty came across my vision, but I blinked, and
he was back. My sinuses must be blocking more than just my nose, I think, so I
ignored it.
“The way you said
that means you’re assuming that I must be going through something fairly
horrific. What exactly makes you believe this?” His voice was much deeper and
more pristine than I imagined it to be. People always described him as quiet,
even with a drink in his hand.
My eyes narrowed as
I poured the glass for him, and he watched, well, stared, as I did so. Would it
not be “fairly horrific” to see your own home burn to the ground? “Oh. Well, I
guess I just assumed you’d be a little distraught after something like this
happening, is all.” I avoided saying the word “fire.” I handed him the glass,
and started to stand on my toes to get another glass for myself.
“Distraught is
something I would be if I couldn’t remember my own name.” His right hand
wrapped around the drink, and I noticed a deep scar on the back of his wrist. “Or
maybe something I’d be if I were locked in a room without windows. However,
distraught is not something I am after burning my own house down.” He admired
the glass and proceeded to take a sip.
I started coughing
profusely, unable to finish the glass I had started to pour into.
Larson glanced
over at me and gave this flash of surprisingly white and straight teeth—I
assumed it was an attempt to smile.
“You burned your
own house down?”
He nodded slowly
and carefully, keeping his eyes locked on me. “You seem confused for some
reason.”
A scoff escaped
and I quickly covered my mouth. Confused “seemed” to be a bit of an
understatement. Questions swirled around in my head, and my blocked sinuses
didn’t help much. His eyes flashed to emptiness, and then returned again. “Why would you burn your house down?” I
finally managed to ask.
Larson brought his
scarred hand up to his chin, like he had to really process this question. It
reminded me of when my grandpa used to tell—slur—unimaginable stories about
Flying Spaghetti and the Dangerous Dandelion. They were completely made up
tales, and most of the time they were filled with innuendos I didn’t understand
until I started middle school. My grandma hated when he told me stories like
that, mostly because I could never fall asleep at night. I imagined that the
Dangerous Dandelion (who, for some reason, always had a witch hat on—which
scared me even more) sat in my closet, waiting for me to drift off into my
dreams.
“Do you know how
long I have lived in that house?” Larson asked.
I shook my head.
“I’ve only lived here for a few years now.”
“Hmm,” he
murmured. “So you’ve never met Gillian? Ah, how lucky of you.” A guffaw burst
out of him, and it felt like my head was spinning. I needed to sit down.
“Gillian? I don’t
think so...”
“Well, that’s okay,”
he said, his breathing calming down after his laughing fit. “You’re not missing
out on much. Especially now.”
By this point,
everything felt out of hand. First of all, I was in the middle of watching my
game show. Secondly, here this crazy Old Man Larson was, sitting in my kitchen, telling me he’s burned his
own house down. Thirdly, my head was spinning so much that I felt like the
world around me disappeared with every blink. And finally, my nose was so
stuffed up that I couldn’t even think straight. I almost wished I had gone to
work.
“Mr. Larson,” I
sighed, “as sorry as I am about your home, I’m just a little confused as to why
you are here. Do you need anything? Do you have anywhere to go?”
“Of course I have
somewhere to go,” he answered quickly. “I came straight to the place I was
meant to be. Gillian would have wanted that.” He giggled. Giggled.
“I don’t
understand any of this. Who is Gillian?”
“My wife of
course! You know, the one with the long, scraggly hair? The one with the
smoker’s cough? She’s never smoked a day in her life, though. Although maybe
she should have, considering what a tight-ass she was.” He paused, a slight
smirk resting on his face. “I guess she smoked a lot right before she died,
though.”
He pulled out a
picture from his tightly-held book, the edges slightly singed. For a second he
glanced at it, and I almost saw a loving expression fill his eyes. As fast as
it was there, though, it dispersed into a fire almost as deep as the one he set
on his house. It made me shiver. He flipped it so I could see, and what was
caught on photograph shocked me.
Underneath the
fraying, fried edges, sat a woman, in a strait jacket, strapped to a chair. She
had exactly as he described: scraggly blonde
hair, the roots looking like the smoke billowing from their home. Her eyes were
void of emotion—she stared into the camera without expression.
“What...”
“I almost keep
forgetting she’s not here now,” he said in a quiet voice, like he forgot I was
even there. “Time isn’t everyone’s friend.”
I moved my way
towards the telephone that sat next to fridge. Old Man Larson seemed a little
on edge, and the fear that I used to get from my grandfather’s stories crept
underneath my skin.
“She had begun to
lose her memory.”
This stopped me in
my tracks.
Larson looked up
at me, eyes full of something that looked a lot like regret.
“Gillian went
through four miscarriages before it all started. She forgot to get the
groceries one day—even though she went to the store almost every other day.”
His hand tightened around his glass. “Then she forgot to cook. She forgot to
shower. She would forget what she was doing. Eventually she couldn’t even
remember who I was. Saw me walk through the door and cowered in her underwear
behind the couch, because she had forgotten to do the laundry as well.”
A sad smile
appeared from beneath his rough exterior. “Soon she started to hurt herself
when I wasn’t there to watch, and she started talking to the ‘others’ who just
so happened to live in our designated baby room.” I saw his jaw clench.
I stood there in
awe, confusion still growing as he told a story I had never even asked for. I
could almost hear the tears in between each breath.
“It wasn’t like I
didn’t try to do anything for her, for my Gillian. I took her to every doctor I
could afford.” He paused, and put the picture back between the pages in the
book. “Quietly of course. I couldn’t have the whole world know what was going
on. I couldn’t have everyone knowing my wife didn’t know her own name. After a
while I stopped letting my parents come over, so they didn’t even know what was
happening. They were as clueless as she was.”
“What was happening, exactly?”
The loud laughter
from before was replaced by a smile that didn’t seem to fit. “That’s a great
question. She was gone. Gillian packed up her bags and left—leaving me with a
corpse to deal with.” The word ‘corpse’ sent a shiver down my back.
“So I put her in a
home, let others take care of her. The bill got ferociously high. Who knew
taking care of your loved ones would cost more than just letting them go? She
tried running away.” I felt like I was going to throw up. I put my hand on the
counter to keep myself steady. “They put her in that jacket, the binding one. For
some reason they needed ‘inventory’ of everyone in the Careview Center of
mentally ill,” another laugh snorted out, “so they told her to smile and took
that picture.”
I felt lost for
words—but the curiosity took over my tongue. Meanwhile, the dizziness overcame
my eyes again, and I thought he was gone. Instead of completely disappearing
this time, though, a fuzziness sat over his face. I tried to shake it off
again. “What happened to Gillian?”
He completely
ignored my question. “You know,” he said, looking down at himself, “this is my
funeral suit. I only wear it to death occasions. Funny, isn’t it, how dressed
up we get for the dead?”
I could see his
right hand shaking, the one that had held the scar at first. For another split
second, like the one from before, it disappeared beneath his wrinkled hand. And
then it was back. He noticed my stare.
“She did this. Got
pissed off when I tried hugging her and ripped into my skin. You’d think those
people at the mental hospital would cut their fingernails more often.”
The pit of my
stomach hurt, and it wasn’t because I didn’t feel well. I inched my hand toward
the phone, feeling like there should be someone professional here to help calm
him down. He was too busy staring into the kitchen counter to know what I was
doing.
“She was the one
who planned it all. I let her. In her lucid moments, she asked me to die. What
was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do?” Larson muttered to himself.
His hands began to shake so much that it looked like he was seizing. “She told
me that once I burned the house down it would all be over, that this could be
over.”
I put a hand up to
my mouth. “Mr. Larson... I thought your wife passed away a few years ago?”
When he looked up,
it wasn’t the Old Man Larson with a curt voice anymore. His eyes were empty, an
abyss of sadness that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
“Why does,” he
began to say, a sob choking his words, “everyone keep saying that?”
I opened my mouth
to say something but he didn’t let me.
“Why does everyone
keep saying that? Why are you saying that?” His teeth were gritted, the veins
popping out of his neck. “I have to finish the plan. I have to do what Gillian
asked of me. I have to. I have to.”
What had once
seemed like a calm and collected man now looked like a maniac waiting to
attack. I dialed 911 quickly into my phone, setting it back on the counter so
that he couldn’t see.
“What did you have
to do?” I asked, desperation filling my voice.
“I’ve already set
the house on fire,” he said, talking to himself more than me again, “I put on
this damn death suit. I picked this house because she really liked the flowers
outside. I wasn’t expecting you to be home.” The deranged look in his eyes
shone bright. “I just have one more step. One last step. Let me do this. Please
just let me do this.”
“What are you—,” I
started.
Larson proceeded
to pull out a gun bigger than my hand out of his briefcase.
“NO, don’t!” I
reached my hand out, foolishly believing I had a chance to do something for
him.
Time wasn’t
everyone’s friend.
His finger pulled
on the trigger and I cowered under the counter, my hands shaking as much as his
had been a few minutes earlier.
But there was no
gunshot.
I felt all of the
blood rush into my head, and I sat there. Confused, I grasped the cool counter
(the one for making chicken noodle soup) and pulled myself up slowly. When I
reached eye level, there was no one there. No briefcase, no book, no gun, no
Old Man Larson. The second of nothingness I had imagined earlier was in full
reality right in front of me. His wispy hair and empty eyes were nowhere to be
seen—and where I thought I was going to see blood, there was cleanliness.
“Mr. Larson?” I
called out into my empty kitchen, into my empty home.
I could hear the
phone I had dialed 911 into earlier mumbling about sending help. Walking slowly
towards the window with the view of Old Man Larson’s house, I saw no fire. The
house sat still and quietly, with no trace of firemen or police.
I stumbled
backwards, into the counter he had set all of his belongings just minutes
earlier, and the glass of lemonade I poured tipped off the counter. An
explosion of glass and cool drink was as loud as I thought the gunshot would
be. When I turned around, the glass shimmered underneath my kitchen light.
Right next to the glass, the shattered pieces, sat a wet photograph flipped
upside down.
I crouched,
hesitantly reaching towards the picture.
When I flipped over the singed
edges, a scraggly-haired woman sat desperately in a strait jacket.
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