Prick of the Spindle: Fiction: Vickers: June Bugged

June Bugged
By Zachary Tyler Vickers

For a moment, everything exists in the shadows of nothing.

The rope leash snaps off the boiler pipe and the ocelot hurdles the cellar stairs, knives through the screen door, leaps into a slouching birch and gurgles her throaty growl before disappearing down into some knotted thicket. Hecker calls Lumley. Static crackles through the phone. Lumley fingers some bellybutton lint. Condensation drips down the faded floral wallpaper like syrup.

Lumley hangs up. The palmed apple core rusts. He recalls the spiced aroma of the cider house and the slats of wood that let just enough daylight between them to illuminate everything ochre, a hue he continually fails to recreate with his living room blinds. He breathes in the scent of the June air, an old acquaintance. He wonders if things would be the same if he had owned an oversized weapon. If maybe it had to do with his face, the linear inconsistencies. He strokes his beard, thick and belligerent from time lying on the lemon-yellow couch.

Outside, the sun has peaked. Irritable red oaks quake and perspire. Livid hornets revolve a nest beneath the rain gutter and buzz. A cluster of dandelions struggle to maintain their yellowness. Lumley remembers the day he was demoted from the cider house to the orchard and all the dead dandelions collectively burst, and the space between the rows of apple trees became occupied with feathery snow. He recounts three days prior, the sight of his wife’s spine arched damply over Filip Johansson, The Swedish Used Car Monarch™ of Filip’s Pre-Owned Kingdom®. Lumley recognized the elaborate robe and crown heaped on the floor, the oversized Price-Lowering-Credit-Approving Excalibur™ leaning against the wall with a kinky arrogance. His wife’s delicate burgundy kisser mentioned how Filip was insured, a volunteer firefighter, owned a 401k. Lumley turned away, every emotion exposed, only stubble then. He glimpsed the muscularly equine Swede’s symmetrical features as she dismounted, and Lumley’s heart, once a thoroughbred organ, callused. Afterward, alone, Lumley spoke a single baritone utterance of her name, encompassed only by the dusty light of the bulb swinging above, intimately low.

All the neighborhood lawns have June bug bags attached to poles. Lumley’s back reminiscently aches with the thought of uprooting a dead apple tree, the crevices packed with thumbnail-sized beetles. Lumley and Hecker feed the ocelot the discarded apples and an occasional live rabbit in the cellar, watch the wild cat do her precise instinctive magic. Hecker is a janitor at The Southern Tier Zoo® and smuggled the ocelot out when she was only a cub, hidden in his mop bucket when the June bugs were rampantly coating the concrete paths, snapping under the weight of his shoes, like little tattletales.

Lumley keeps his eyes open for the ocelot—her four-foot spotted frame, toothy maw, beady espresso irises. He fits a cigarette into his bearded mouth, averts his eyes as a city bus passes with an advertisement across the side of Filip Johansson using the Price-Lowering-Credit-Approving Excalibur™ to impale a cartoon dragon wearing a scarf reading, Bad Credit.

Hecker is waiting for Lumley on his front porch. A humid squall blows husks of blonde hair to one side of his head. The bulge of dip in his cheek produces a thin line of mahogany saliva that trickles out of his tight mouth. Lumley recalls a similar tightness when the ocelot once pinned Hecker in the cellar and went for his throbbing jugular and Lumley quickly jabbed her with a mild tranquilizer dart, two of which Hecker now holds in one hand; the other, adjusting the volume on a police scanner clipped to his belt, hocking disturbances, like loogies. The men shake hands, reminisce a decade of friendship through one slight nod.

“That right there is exactly what I mean,” Hecker says and points. He adjusts his genitals, spits the wad of tobacco into the grass.

Lumley flicks the cigarette butt into the gravel and replaces it. “I’m agreeing with you.”

“I ever tell you your face looks like a hippie twat?” Hecker says, handing Lumley a tranquilizer dart. Lumley places the barbed dart in his jeans pocket. “All the time,” he says, smirking. Hecker nods, “Well then, shall we?”

The two men enter the knotted thicket. A frog pompously expands and croaks. Adjacent undergrowth rustles and a chipmunk scurries out between squares of light created by the intersecting branches above. The men exit the thicket and observe a field behind an empty elementary school. Moss desperately clings to the bricks. Children are limping around town like wounded gazelles. The men spot substantial paw prints and trail them into another residential neighborhood. Beyond that some car dealerships, a mall, a trailer park, and the gully stream on the fringe of the apple orchard.

Down the street, the men see Killroy Jenkins sobbing and cursing and chucking stones at a Dead End sign. Killroy had taken some Korean shrapnel to the head and now rides his bike around town, crouching in shrubbery and making helicopter sounds.

Killroy wipes the tears from his eyes, adjusts his plaid ivy cap. “Naw, Ma. Seen me this sign, though. Pessimistic as shit.”

Lumley watches Killroy throw another stone at the sign, hears the metallic clang. He recalls a savage childhood game—how he hid and shivered in the raspberry bushes outside his grandfather’s house, dreading the game’s end as the other boys sought; and inside, how his grandfather patched him up and snuck him dollar bills for future luck. But as Lumley matured, his grandfather thinned and became lucid, and Lumley saw an increasingly distant look in the old man’s sunken eyes as he offered Lumley slips of paper with indiscernible doodles, prescription receipts, until the veiny hands shook with nothing but ventilated air, and there was a frightened timbre to his grandfather’s voice as he continually asked Lumley, “Can we go to the park so I can slide? But will you wait at the bottom and catch me?”

“What it is is the definitiveness of it. Why’s it got to be so certain?” Killroy heaves another stone.

Lumley turns, notices a turban of feces a few lawns down, the fat black flies doing brilliant figure eights above it.

“If I see me some jungle cat I’ll send it back to hell where it belongs,” Killroy says and hurls another stone, makes a sound with his mouth resembling a grenade. Lumley mentions the turban of feces to Hecker and both men walk in its general direction.

Lumley feels the humid breeze against his bearded face, compares it to his wife’s wickedly careful touch. The rustling leaves suddenly occur as her laughter. He remembers how he once described her dainty hands and feet as glass pigeons. How she had described her heart as a Monarch butterfly beating only for him. Then things cocooned. Her manicured nails lengthened, wore wildly vibrant colors. Her new shampoo reeked of impatience. Everything gained monetary value. A throaty purr rumbled from her delicate burgundy kisser whenever one of Filip Johansson’s television commercials appeared and he unsheathed the Price-Lowering-Credit-Approving Excalibur™.

A droplet of sweat, perhaps a tear, burns its way down Lumley’s bearded cheek. The police scanner screeches random disturbances.

Various things begin to exist in the shadows of certain things—cars become halved by telephone poles; sections of street look like unfinished clock faces with silhouette hands extending from parking meters, approximating the hour; games of tic-tac-toe appear over lawns from the intersecting sugar maple branches hanging with the ornamental loneliness of dead seeds. A few dead seeds release and helicopter to the ground.

Around midafternoon, the men discover an urchin with a shaved head up in a red oak clutching a double barrel shotgun, sizing up his ensuing adolescence. The urchin reminds Lumley of himself as a boy—shivering in the raspberry bushes, unwillingly participating in some rendition of hide-and-seek, trying to be baited out by Olly Olly Oxen Free, waiting to be sought by the rougher boys who jibed him to tears for having a curiously twisted upper lip; and now years later, he recalls wearing a finger over his lip, like a mustache, keeping it there for a good part of his childhood.

“Big as me,” the urchin says and turns the gun toward the men. Lumley stares into the gaping end of the barrel. He swallows once. His blood pulses with increasing intensity. Everything else becomes momentarily trivial.

“Daddy’s a bald angel. Got brain canker. Waffles slept in his lap while his hair fell out. That meant God wanted to see him. Daddy said God can’t see through hair. Now I’m the man of the house and if I see that kitty again, bang!” the urchin says and pulls the trigger. There is a loud clap. Lumley flinches and shuts his eyes. The police scanner screeches. He feels his callused thumb of a heart rub against the back of his throat. Then he swallows, reopens his eyes and sees the urchin grinning, wisps of white smoke trickling from the handle of the shotgun where a row of caps curl out a concealed compartment. With one deep breath he reacquaints himself with the world—the ticklish scent of cut grass, the burn of chlorine in a nearby pool. He feels the heat tattooed to the nape of his neck like unforgotten yesterdays. A Monarch flutters and lands on the shotgun, fanning its molten wings.

“Why don’t you go inside? I’m sure Waffles will turn up,” Lumley finally says.

Lumley digs out his final cigarette. He reminds himself to buy more. The police scanner screeches again and Hecker starts turning knobs. Lumley drags. The ashy smolder travels down to his bobbing callused thumb of a heart. He wonders what a 401k actually is, guesses it’s some type of fancy Swedish automobile. He thinks maybe he’ll buy a machete. The urchin dangles his legs, popping caps at the fluttering Monarch. Lumley flicks the butt away. Sitting there, shaved head, shoes untied, laces hanging like bitch tongues, Lumley nervously observes the urchin as easily sought Mongloid bait.

The urchin smiles and hands Lumley the shotgun. As Lumley sets it down he hears, “Catch me,” and when he looks up the urchin is airborne just above him. They collide, tumble. Lumley feels a deep prick in his thigh, a burning. The police scanner chokes out something about a large cat sighting locally and the urchin stands and hoots, fires a few caps triumphantly at the sky before running inside.

The men investigate lawns with urgency. Lumley notices his vision fading in and out of focus, hands clumsily pushing aside shrubs. He feels the weight of his clothes, damp with perspiration. They catch their breath in a vacant parking lot. Styrofoam cups and napkins swirl over the hot asphalt blurring the near distance; the near distance being a parked beige convertible with the ocelot crouched on the hood revealing her slick maw to a lanky businessman and bony prudish woman. Hecker and Lumley duck behind a nearby dumpster. The burning turns to tingling and spreads to the very tips of Lumley; his fingernails itch. Things become more unfocused. Lumley blinks a few times, opening his eyes to see that the beige automobile is a pink Eldorado. The napkins, flyers of Filip Johansson jousting high interest rates with the Price-Lowering-Credit-Approving Excalibur™. The lanky businessman is wearing an elaborate robe and crown, and Lumley begrudgingly notices the linear beauty of his face. And the bony prudish woman shrunken in the passenger seat has feet, like glass pigeons, pressed white against the glove compartment.

Thin pale cumuli inch across the sky and hinder the sun. The air cools one degree. Lumley notices she has dyed her hair, straightened it and cut it short. Her eyes are hidden behind large sunglasses that reflect the ocelot’s tapered incisors. She wears religion around her neck. Had she been saved? There is a rebel hoop piercing in the helix of her ear. She had only ever worn studs in the lobe. A freckle on her cheek he never knew existed cries wolf. Lumley’s body relaxes. He wishes he had learned such intricacies. Maybe he could still do that. Hecker readies his tranquilizer dart, tongue dangling, as the thin pale cumuli advance. The air warms one degree. Lumley reaches for his own tranquilizer dart, thinking he might win her back. Tones muffle and deepen. Saliva evaporates. He envisions dandelion filaments slowly drifting through rows of apple trees. He groans and collapses to the asphalt, vomits.

Time slows. Each breath sounds like generous thunder. Everything appears at an angle. Shards of asparagus-colored glass are scattered over the warm asphalt like twinkling broken promises. The Eldorado muffler is rusted. The license plate reads, K1NG, or maybe, 401K. There is a furry lump behind the back tire. An octagon-shaped dent above the fuel door. The Eldorado honks and the ocelot leaps from the hood and gracefully stretches across the parking lot, hurdles a wooden fence. The Eldorado tires spin in place. Lumley counts each rotation, like a missed opportunity. The automobile peels away, reflecting beige. Lumley rolls his eyeballs back to the lump of fur as a Filip Johansson flyer flutters against his face and everything disappears.

Lumley cannot determine the amount of time that passes, relying only on how sounds return to their normal pitch and clarity, the echoed cackles of birds migrating from one end of the earth to the other, the fading tingling. He moves his tongue, a clammy organ flopping about, apologetically.

When Hecker removes the napkin, light sorely returns. Hecker leans in and examines Lumley’s face. “You idiot,” he says, grinning.

Hecker chuckles. “Look, we should split up. I’m going this way. You go that way,” he says and jogs to the wooden fence, scales it. Lumley takes a few deep breaths. He finally stands, reaches into his pocket and removes the tranquilizer dart from his leg, discards it in the dumpster. He turns toward the lump of fur.

Ribs pitch sections of black fur into makeshift tents. An ear is turned inside out and covered with gnats. The milky eyes are rolled back. The eyelids, swollen and pink. A knee is bent perpendicular against its joint. A rogue tooth shivers in a stronger gust. The paunch is gutted with almost methodical, meticulous precision.

A few napkins circumnavigate the Styrofoam cups in an odd type of dance. Distant sirens whoop with increasing intensity. The sun is debating its color of descent. Lumley imagines the urchin waiting for the dog, waiting for Lumley’s promise to be kept—face pressed to the windowpane, doodling disappointed shapes in the small circles of fog that form from his breaths. Maybe a finger over his lip, like a mustache. He feels his callused thumb of a heart soften. He unclasps and pockets the collar.

Lumley takes the long way home and buys more cigarettes. Across the street is the animal shelter. Lumley enters. Scarce barks nervously echo. Everything smells like wet concrete. The nervous codger fixing the broken latches on empty cages carefully watches Lumley. Recently there had been a series of kidnappings throughout local pet stores and animal shelters. The larger dogs salivate and bellow. The smaller dogs yip in shrill falsetto bursts. Lumley discovers two small terriers—one tan, one black. Lumley squats, the codger frowns. Lumley sticks his finger into the cage and the black terrier licks it. The codger clears his throat.

The air has significantly cooled and thinned. The sun has collected an assortment of colors to descend with, a brilliant lesion balanced on the horizon—a red vein outlines the distant gully apple orchard and bleeds upward into an indignant tangerine, eventually fading to a soft atmospheric periwinkle; clouds, a moody purple as they dawdle in the beginnings of the crisp June twilight. Lumley turns down his street.

Some things exist in the shadows of some things while other things still exist in the remainder of evanescent light. A few telephone poles written with S.I.V. Rumors of a teen gang flourished. Lumley has seen the city workers write the S and arrows pointing down to mark where sewer lines need repairing. He passes some dilapidated houses, one in particular with aluminum siding peeling away from the Tyveked plywood by the weight of three old satellite dishes twisting sideways. Above, tabbies are roofed and fucking.

Inside, Lumley puts the terrier on the lemon-yellow couch and pours himself a glass of water. He stands at the window and fidgets with the blinds. He attempts ochre and fails. Outside, a few nervous fireflies perform bioluminescence, attempting to mate. The reflective No Outlet sign glows in fleeting dusk, pocked with little dents; a pyramid of stones at its base.

Lumley goes to his closet and removes a small shoebox. Inside are things his wife left behind—a few wedding photographs from Niagara Falls wrapped in a pair of faded pink socks, a tube of burgundy lipstick, a nail file, a comb grasping to a few long curly hairs, a glass Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a pigeon, a Monarch butterfly refrigerator magnet. Lumley takes the burgundy lipstick and pockets it, closes the shoebox and slides it back into the closet.

Lumley runs his hand through the beard and pulls out a shard of asparagus-colored glass, frowns. In the speckled bathroom mirror, Lumley trims the beard. The terrier sniffs at the clumps of hair grouping on the tiles. Lumley lathers his face and carefully strokes the razor, reintroducing himself—his cheeks lightly paraded with freckles; the rigid contour of his jaw; the long and angular tan lines; his puce lips: the upper, smeared and faintly scarred from surgery years beyond childhood. Lumley outlines his lips with a finger, puts a cigarette between them, lights it and sucks.

Lumley takes the orange collar from his pocket and jingles it. The terrier’s ears perk. He clasps the collar around its neck, carries it outside where a deeper dusk now dominates and a crescent moon hangs patiently in the evening firmament. As he walks, he hears the raspy wake of June bugs emerging, swarming light sources, spreading over the sidewalks like wildfire.

Lumley passes the elementary school. A few classrooms are lit. June bugs cling to the windowpanes in thick crooked lines. In one room, an elderly man with a hairy silver neck slowly moves a mop back and forth, whistling. In the adjacent room, a crowd observes a police officer armed with a much larger tranquilizer dart. When the police officer stops speaking, every hand instantly rises in unison.

Lumley passes the Dead End sign, stones scattered around the base. The dog squirms and Lumley shushes it. He removes the tube of lipstick from his pocket, opens it and applies a thick burgundy question mark after End. Hopes Killroy will find this optimistic before we inevitably regress into children and exit the world as frightened and naïve and helpless as we entered. Lumley hopes he has bought Killroy more time. He admires momentarily, scratches the dog behind the ear and walks.

The turban of feces is gone. A few black flies still linger in frantic aerial patterns.

The urchin’s lawn murmurs with cranky June bugs. The first inklings of starlight puncture the sky. Lumley plots Orion, Ursa Major. Goosebumps rise across his arms and neck as a cooler gust passes. A squad car rolls by, scanning lawns with a floodlight. Moments later a sea foam Caddy rolls by with a flashlight of its own.

Lumley finds a leash in the grass and follows it around the house. The leash runs behind a porch door and through a small square flap at the bottom of a thicker door. Crickets sing off key and out of rhythm underneath the porch latticework. Lumley gives the terrier a pat on the head and ushers it through the doggy door, closes the porch door. He lights a new cigarette and smokes it back around to the front of the house.

In the distance, Lumley can see the spotlights of Filip Johansson’s Beacon Sale™. A low roar surges from the clientele crowd as fireworks begin to arc and whistle upward. Lumley feels the colors on his naked face, never noticing the slender four-foot silhouette lurking out of the mulchy landscaping, the reflective caffeinated eyes stalking the slow beat of his pulse.

Fireworks explode in dozens and then end in an immediate crackle. Cheers softly rush through the crowd then die. The apparition of smoke in the sky disperses. A deep silence soon prostitutes itself into the airspace and Lumley smells the ensuing low-pressure system arriving from the west. The hairs on his forearms stiffen and he remembers how as a boy he believed this meant lightning was about to strike that very spot. He hopes the urchin won’t notice the difference. Hopefully his youth will work against him, and his affection is naked and general enough to miss the details. Hopefully, Lumley thinks, he saved the urchin from further disappointment and heartache, or, at least, delayed what is inevitable. He wonders if it will rain tomorrow, if his wife still thinks about him in terrible silences like these. He doubts it and sucks a deep breath. The west, the low-pressure system, inflate his lungs as he decides, apologetically, the act of love is too often underrated and abused. Too often are commitments left unfulfilled. Too often are they not honored. Too often is it taken advantage of, leaving the sincere lovesick ponies out on a limb, only to fall through the harrowing night, caught by dead leaves and soil, left to the slow unfair rust and rot working to their cores.

He won’t go back for her, he thinks. He wants to go forward. He doesn’t know how yet.

Then the silence is interrupted by the abrupt waspish hymn of hundreds of June bugs rising furiously into the night. The odors of fodder and apple tickle the damp air. A few June bugs snap just behind Lumley. He feels suddenly sought. A single baritone utterance of her name escapes him. Each vapor droplet from his breath, accounted for. Each circling June bug above him, a boy outside the raspberry bushes closing in, ending the game, armed with heavy sticks and stones. Lumley bites his lip and holds his breath. Olly Olly Oxen Free.

Zachary Tyler Vickers has appeared in The Emerson Review, The Furnace Review, and is forthcoming on mud luscious and h-ngm-n.com. He is completing his first collection of stories, Disfigured Paper Animals.