The Death of Wendell Mackey (7 page)

More police sirens. Whether they were coming or going, he didn’t know.

He turned towards the windows and the drawn drapes. For a moment, there was a blink of blue from the police lights outlining the plaid drapes. It disappeared, leaving only black.

Wendell sat naked in the bathtub, thinking it impossible to get clean in water with its own color. He draped his gray t-shirt, jeans, and tan socks over the sink. His sneakers sat next to each other on the linoleum next to the tub. A cloud of sediment swirled in the water, and began to collect at the bottom near the drain. He grabbed for the toilet brush sitting in the water next to him—the old tooth brush just wasn’t cutting it—leaned forward, and began scratching his back. Fortunately, he had found another tooth brush—still with white and unbent bristles—in the medicine cabinet, which sat on the edge of the tub next to a box of borax from beneath the kitchen sink and a rag that he was using as a sponge. Wendell leaned back, placed the toilet brush on the opposite edge of the tub, poured some borax onto the wet rag, and began to rub it in his armpits, on his ribcage, neck and shoulders. Rub. Scrub. Hard. Wanting whatever was in him to come off, as if it was just a stubborn ink stain, or a temporary tattoo.

“She must’ve had fleas,” he said, wishing it were true. His back continued to itch, right between the shoulder blades, and he thought of the lines crossing it, each with a mate, like some sort of tribal scarring. He sighed, then reached for the borax, poured it on the new toothbrush, and proceeded to brush his teeth.

“This is wrong,” Wendell said, wincing and spitting into the tub water, “wrong wrong, all wrong, just…
I’m
wrong. I’m not—”

Not me. There is no me anymore. Just this…thing that used to be me.

“Just get it out,” he told himself, “just get it outta me, pour it down the drain.” He spat again, cupping some of the water back into his mouth to flush it out. He poured some borax onto his fingers and rubbed them on his tongue and the insides of his cheeks. He gagged and his eyes watered as a long line of pasty white drool dripped from his lower lip into the water. One more handful of water and a final spit finished it off. He watched more sediment swirl and begin to settle.

No. It wasn’t sediment. It was
him
. Tiny flakes of skin were peeling and detaching from him, from his feet and thighs. He watched them hover momentarily in the water before catching an unseen current and spiraling down to the bottom. Yes, the water coming out of the faucet wasn’t clean, but he was making it worse. One look at the toilet brush confirmed that the skin on his back was peeling. Its bristles were coated in a light red color, with a few small flakes still clinging on.

“Well, that’s it,” Wendell said, working his best Scotia affectation in his voice, “in a nutshell.” He remembered the doctor’s words as he sat across from Wendell in his office, like a customer ready to sign off on his new purchase—a car, or a house. A slave. In a nutshell. Simple, wrapped up, irreversible.

 A door slammed outside and down the hallway.

Wendell snapped his head up.

Heavy footsteps followed.

They’re coming.

“No, not yet,” Wendell said. He gripped the sides of the tub. Then he heard a man’s voice, laughing to himself. It was the man from earlier, probably letting his woman sleep off her violation in some corner of his apartment.

The footsteps stopped in front of Wendell’s front door. Wendell moved slowly, leaning forward and craning his neck, able only to see part of the front door from the tub. But he did see the shadow of the man’s feet through the crack under it.

Tap tap tap

“Just go away,” Wendell whispered.

“You thought I forgot, didn’t you?” the man said through the door.

Wendell held his breath.

“Just forgot about the whole thing,” the man said. “But I can’t forget. Not you. Couldn’t just let this all lie. So now I’m back, all friendly-like. And I know yer still in there.”

Pause. Then
thump thump thump
.

“Come on man, just make it easy on both of us and open the door.” And then came faint scratches, as he pawed at the door playfully. “It’s not like I’m a bad guy. I won’t hurt you too bad. Just open…the…

—whump—

…
door!”
He slammed his body weight into the door.

Wendell stood up in the tub. “Just leave me alone!”

“Now there you go. Knew you’d be in there.”

“Go away.”

“Not tonight.” He pounded his frame into the door again.

“Just go—”

“This ain’t gonna end well.”

“I didn’t do anything to you, just leave—”

“That ain’t how it works.”

Silence. At first Wendell thought he heard the man’s breathing. But he was whispering, his volume growing.

“Come on little kitty, come on out.” Louder: “Here kitty,” he continued, “heeeere kitty kitty.” He laughed.

Water collected into pregnant drops and fell from the faucet. The light above Wendell hummed. And then:

“I know you,” the man said. “I know who you are.”

Wendell didn’t feel anything, and with hindsight he assumed he would feel something, especially for such a reaction. But it was immediate, as if a switch had been thrown. Without a thought, without even the time to register what he was doing, a naked Wendell lunged out of the tub and had left the bathroom and crossed the great room in eight steps, propelling his frame like a cannonball into the door. He landed, pounding the heels of his hands, his knees and forehead into the door.

“Leee-eeave me alone!” The door shook in its frame. “Just
leeeave!
Get outta here!
” He head-butted the door twice more before realizing what he had done. He stopped, waiting for a response.

None came. At least, not what Wendell expected. Another door opened, across the hall, and Wendell heard the same woman’s voice from earlier.

“So you’re back,” she said.

“Chill out lady,” the man said.

“You got your answer Drake. Now get out of here, or I’ll call the police again.”

Nothing. Wendell, now aware of his surroundings, cold and wet and naked, refused to look out the peep hole.

“I’ve done it before, and you know I’ll do it again,” she said. “And we both know that you’ll do nothing to me.”

“Just mind yer own business lady…”

Wendell heard the woman chuckle. “It’s just not scary anymore,” she said. “Just a little man and his little tantrums. Or not a man at all. Just go back to your whores, Drake, and leave us all alone.”

Feet shuffled. The man gave a half-hearted laugh, trying to recover a portion of his intimidation.

“We’ll settle this,” he said to Wendell, slapping his hand against the door. Wendell heard him walk away. The door at the end of the hallway that led to the stairwell opened and closed.

“He’s gone,” she said. “You can come out now.”

“I’m not,” and Wendell looked down at himself, now shivering, “I’m not in anything…just out of the bathtub.”

“Just a crack then. Let me see my new neighbor’s face.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Of course you can. I just pulled you out of the fryer. Least you can do is show me your face.”

He turned the deadbolt and hesitated, then flicked the lock on the doorknob, and opened the door just enough for his face to show.

“Now that wasn’t too hard,” she said. She was small, almost mole-like, with a long forehead that sloped and tapered into her nose, which came to an abrupt point. The knit blue shawl buttoned closed over her dress was frayed at the edges, and the dress, another shade of blue but appearing washed out in the hallway’s lights, was browned at the bottom, like she had been gardening or changing her car’s oil in it.

“I gotta…”

“Now see, I was right. You don’t look like the devil or anything.” She brushed a few strands of hair out of her face, hair more colorless than gray, limp ropes like a mop that had dried before being pressed in the wringer. Her cheeks were dark and creased like walnut shells, and she stuffed her hands in the shawl’s pockets, nonchalantly, as if nothing of consequence had just happened in the hallway.

Wendell stared at her, then slowly began to close the door.

“You don’t want my name?” she asked.

“What? Well no, I mean, yeah, I mean—”

“It’s Sister Agatha.”

Wendell stopped.

“Sister, like a nun sister?” he asked.

“For forty-eight years.”

“Listen, thanks, but I—”

“You’re Diane’s boy, right?”

He nodded. “Wendell,” he said.

“Hello Wendell. So, she was an interesting lady, your mother.” Wendell could hear in her voice that
interesting
wasn’t her first word choice, but just what she thought would be more palatable to him. “Can I call her original? Yes, original. Don’t meet many like her.” She was using kid gloves, and he knew it.

“Will he be back?”

“Drake? Maybe. Probably. Yeah, I’d say so. But don’t let it keep you up at night.”

He was shivering.

“Look, I gotta—”

“So I’m just across the hall,” Agatha said as she pulled a hand out of her pocket and threw her thumb backwards towards her door, “if you need any—”

“I need to go.” He closed the door abruptly. And behind it, in the hall, she stood, clearing her throat.

“This place isn’t all that bad,” Agatha said through the door, “if you just get rid of all the people.” She laughed to herself. “In here, you get jaded fast. Or just go crazy, like Drake.”

Just leave lady
, he thought,
just turn around and walk away
.

“But that’s this city for you,” Agatha added, “and you learn to deal with it. Don’t know if your mother ever did. She had that nurse, Maggie, and I’d talk to her sometimes. She said your mother was ready for her big final exit, just so she could get out of here. Anything to get out of here. That’s too cynical for me, but that was her way, I suppose.” She mumbled something to herself before adding, “I’m sorry. More than you need to hear right now. Nice to meet you. Good night.”

Wendell heard her door open and then close. He took a deep breath and held it, feeling his pulse race in his neck, then exhaled. That man, Drake, would be back, as would she. The question was which Wendell would be there to meet them. The shy and timid Wendell, the Wendell he had always known, would evolve out of him, he feared, like a vestigial organ, replaced with a nameless urge, planted in him by
them
. He didn’t even know how much of that old Wendell would be left when Drake or the neighborly nun returned. It was gaining ground rapidly, that nameless urge, dark and primeval, fluid and unthinking in its actions. And it would be his new life. It would be—

—
good.

Wendell’s heart fluttered. He shook his head. “No, not that,” he said. “That can’t happen.” He turned towards the kitchen. A growing puddle of water surrounded his feet, and he moved his toes in it, toes with black nails and flesh that was increasingly looking darker. He looked back at the front door and in the low light saw a crescent shadow, a dent in the metal door, where his head had made contact. He stepped towards it, examining it closer, touching the dent.

“I’m not that strong,” Wendell said, and touched his forehead. He was surprised there had been no blood.

He had just assumed that the front door would come down from the outside. He never considered it being destroyed from within. And for a moment a sound caught the air, a sound much like the animal screams he remembered hearing in the institution’s vents. He shrank back from the door, and whatever he heard receded.

I know who you are
, the man named Drake had said.

“He knows.”

But he couldn’t know, Wendell thought, trying to stay rational. No one knew him here, and as powerful as he assumed the people of the institution were, they couldn’t have someone already living in the apartment building. They were good, but not that good. But it did little to assuage his fear.

“He
knows
,” Wendell repeated. “I don’t know how, but…” He walked over to the table and sat down.

“No, no, it’s okay,” he told himself. “It’s gonna be fine. Just take it easy, just be cool. For now, it’s safe.” He picked up the pencil. He wrote IT’S NOT SAFE on the table in tall block letters.

Find the gun
, he thought. It might help a little. At least it might make him feel better.

But they would find him, he knew that. It was only a matter of time. And time, of course, was working against him as well. He felt like he was changing by the hour.

Wendell looked in the corner near to the TV table and saw one of his mother’s old dresses draped over a rocking chair. Like so much else in the apartment, it was old, moth-eaten, with lace edging that was once white. Somehow, it still felt like part of her was there, walking through the walls. He had been wondering how he would react if, the next morning, he opened his eyes to see Dr. Scotia and his associates hovering above him. But seeing the dress in the corner prompted as unwelcome an image—if not more—as that of the doctors: he thought about awaking to see
her
, angry at his invasion of her home, wearing that moth-eaten dress, staring down at him with half moon eyes.