True Curse (eBook)

Disvnitvs

WF Rast (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
370 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-6715-2 (ISBN)

Infos

John Martis wants out...out of pain, out of misery, out of living. Torment from auditory and visual hallucinations, commission by his father to an adolescent psych institution, and life in his car on the Chicago streets were bad enough. His one bright spot, winning a Pulitzer, brought fame and fortune, but no relief. Truth be told, it made everything worse. He lost it all to alcohol, creditors, and a vengeful ex-wife. Left only with a broken-down chevy and his grandmother's dilapidated cabin in Eastern Kentucky, John seeks a permanent solution to his visions and all the trouble they cause. "e;True Curse"e; finds a man on the brink of self-destruction. It would only take one last bender to break him, but an angry sheriff and a dictatorial preacher will not allow him to go quietly into oblivion.

Textauszug

• CHAPTER • I •

Ghosts in the Forest

The blue-green bottle fly walks in endless circles on the top lip of the mason jar. Sometimes, it dips inside the empty container, attempting to find leftover corn mash sugars in the residues coating the glass. It reverses course after detecting a speck of food for consumption. The insect covers every millimeter of this jar countless times. It moves in agile starts and stops, traveling to the next meal. Relentless hunger motivates its actions.

A set of eyes, red and puffy, struggles to peer into this world of glass and tin. A chubby man, moist with the sweat and other effects of his latest bender, attempts to make sense of his surroundings. Oblivious to the morning, he resents the intrusion of reality.

“Damn,” he says to the empty porch of his grandmother’s cabin. “Hate this part.”

John’s face, smudged with the dirt and dust from lying on the floor, contorts in the pain of the effects of the night’s ethanol poisoning. Bright sunlight forces its way into the little mountain valley (or “hollar” as the locals call it). It is late afternoon. That is remorse time.

As the daylight stabs John’s eyes, he slams his lids shut. It is a vain gesture at best. “Being hungover is bad,” he mumbles, continuing the morning monologue. “Martis, you know the drill.”

He opens one eye to form the slightest slit. The light shoots in like high-pressure water through a hole in a submarine. Fighting the pain, he murmurs self-encouragement, “Got to see somehow. Find your sunglasses. Come on, Martis. You can do it.”

Pulling up to his hands and knees, he attempts to locate his sunglasses, a first defense against boozing. But making sense of his surroundings through a swollen opening proves difficult. He searches the floorboards in expanding arcs with his hands. “Where the hell are they? You had ’em on yesterday, you idiot. Right out here. You were sitting—”

Crash! Mason jars scatter about the porch as his sweeping hands knock over the empties. Bottle flies, disturbed by the noisy explosion, swarm up and land on John’s face and arms.

“Damn!” He waves his hands as he stumbles up to his feet. Potent nausea builds deep in his gut. “Breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe. . . .” Bent over, he remains standing as erect as his compromised balance will allow.

“Got . . . got to settle . . . breathe . . . breathe. . . .”

A huge bottle fly enters right into his ear. Reflexes kick in and John swats with abrupt violence to shoo the invader away. He lists to the left, but somehow remains upright.

“Craaaaaap!” John whimpers as queasiness sinks its talons into his tummy. His torso twists one way and his stomach the other.

“Crap! Crap! Crap!” He moves forward. “Not here! Not on the porch!” His hungover legs cannot react. He falls to his knees. The rail!

Unable to regain his footing, he crawls to the rickety, dirty barrier. Frantic movements fling empty glassware across the old patio boards. He grabs the handrail, strains, but cannot pull himself up. He braces. John is no longer able to vocalize. Saliva pools in his mouth. Number one!

His puking comes in threes. He slides his hands from the upper rail to its supports. Looking like a convict in an old movie, his face settles between two vertical columns. He leans on them for a few hard seconds. Drool from his mouth falls to the deck boards. Come on, do it!

Spasms build to gastric convulsions. He resigns to the eminent. “Oh . . . .”

With a long, protracted contraction, vomit flies forth, through the posts and into the thick weeds off the side of the deck. Clear fluid. Fire one . . . .

John keeps his head against the rails. Another volley, less intense, splits the vertical bars. Fire two . . . I’ll be better. . . . The final barrage, like an afterthought, dribbles off the porch. . . . Inside.

He pants and braces. Fire three . . . .

The nausea and cramps of throwing up lessen, his breathing slows. Thank God.

John recuperates with his head on the struts of the handrail. Although fading, the sunlight makes staying on the porch uncomfortable, and he pulls himself to a standing position. “Whoa!” he says as he wobbles.

The rail, while loose, offers enough support to keep him upright. Why can’t I see?

John laughs and says, “Still have an eye shut!” That entire ordeal squinting out of one swollen eye.

“Where are those damn glasses?” he asks, staggering backward.

Crack!

The sound and a dull pain in his right foot alert him to the sunglasses’ location. There they are.

A sarcastic smirk, accompanied with a slight head shake, spreads on his face. A sidestep reveals the dark, fractured, cheap designer sunglasses knock offs. While the lenses stay in the frames, fissures cross the plastic of the right lens. Still squinting through one eye, John puts them on. He ventures a full opening of the eye. Alright . . . I can handle this.

He takes a sharp breath. Now the other. Not optimal, but tolerable. At least, I can see.

He stares around the porch covered in mason jars and milk jugs repurposed to hold moonshine. All of them empty. It is the lone alcohol available in this dry eastern Kentucky county. “Way to go ‘Jon Jon the Gone Gone.’” He shakes his head. “You’re an idiot.”

Sweat trickles down his forehead. It is not hot in the early fall air. The consequences of intoxication and afternoon sun are uncomfortable. The cabin is still dark and cool. I’ll feel better in there.

It takes several minutes until he trusts his feet. With arms lifted out for balance, he plods across the uneven porch. He navigates and avoids the minefield of glass, plastic, and bottle fly shrapnel. He pulls on the screen door. It sticks in the frame. “Oh, come on,” John complains.

In his weakened state, he cannot jerk the door open. Failed attempts increase his frustration.

“Damn it!”

Pull. Pull. No movement.

“Damn you, open!”

Yank. Yank. The screen door makes a single high-pitched squeak. “Bastard. . . . Let me in!”

John pauses, gathers strength. With one more straining effort, he puts his weight behind it. It gives way. He pulls the door into his nose and shades. Whack! “Damn. . . .”

The compromised sunglasses frame falls apart. Both lenses shatter and cascade to the floor. The moment of shocked silence precedes the wave of pain. Like a child hitting its head, a distinct pause comes before the eruption of screaming. “God! Why do you hate me?”

John’s voice echoes in the hollar. Birds next to the cabin startle and fly up into the air. He staggers and rubs his face and looks for blood. No red . . . good.

His anger and head ringing subside. With one hand on his nose, he pushes the screen door aside. In the cooler, musty air of his grandmother’s cabin, he exhales in a moment of realization mixed with relief. I have met the enemy, and it is me.

John sits heavy in the one remaining chair and leans his head on the thick, sturdy table. The cool wood feels nice. But after a few minutes, another urge asserts itself. “Oh boy. Time to pee,” he says with a mock glee.

His grandmother’s (or “Meemaw” as he called her as a child) cabin, once quaint, aches in lonely isolation. This ramshackle structure suffers from years of neglect. A mildew odor of faded comfort fills the dim interior. The floorboards are uneven and the roof leaks. Every chair, save the one holding up John’s rear end, lays about like fractured bones. The other place to sit in the main room is the raised hearth of the ample fireplace that smells of old smoke. He is a ghost haunting the ruins of happier times.

Delaying natural urges makes them sharper. He must go outside to urinate. He does have other options. A bedside commode sits in the cabin’s dust-covered bedroom. He looks at his Meemaw’s old room and shudders. She took her last breaths in there.

He laughs from his uneasiness. Or from a happier memory that asserts itself. Could be it is both? He remembers her shrill southern voice. “Jon, Jon, no! If the outhouse still scares you, then walk up into the woods.”

John laughs at her loving anger. She was never abusive. She caught him going off the back stoop one early morning. “I’ll snatch you bald-headed, you do that again!”

John chuckles at how his grandmother chided him. Expressions like that made you remember the lesson. Snatch me bald-headed?

But, as fast as this fond whisper from the past appears, it fades. A dark, remorse-filled shadow steals the warmth of the recollection. Wish she was still here.

Although weakened, John gets up and exits through the back door of the cabin. Here, it’s a single step to the ground, unlike the front porch elevated close to six feet. Everything in this little hollar is up or down. The old privy is far up the hill, but he avoids it. The rotten boards crawl with insects. One might end up in the pit with what you came to deposit there. And John isn’t comfortable with how close this outhouse is to the old water pump. One person couldn’t generate enough waste to contaminate the aquifer far below, but it’s the idea.

He battles up the hill through the scrubby undergrowth for fifteen yards....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.7.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-6715-4 / 1098367154
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-6715-2 / 9781098367152