In the Language of Scorpions. Charles Allen Gramlich

anymore. The visitor was already coming up the stairs. He could hear him on the first step. Time could not stop forever and in a few minutes....

      He closed his eyes and listened—to footsteps. The first ones were breathlessly light on the old mahogany stairs—the sound of ivory knuckles sliding on the worn railing was much sharper—but they quickly grew louder as they came closer. The visitor was at the landing now and turning. Only fourteen steps to the top and a few more to his room. He knew because he had thought about this many times, and prayed for it.

      Now he caught the faint rustle of a cloak against something. Black, yes that cloak would be black like night. And he knew what limbs it swirled over. Ten steps, nine steps to go, eight. He stole one glance at the time—11:54.

      You’re early­, he thought, but there were still a few steps to go.

      Then there was only one. The rustle stopped and something hovered in stillness. He could almost picture the slow turn of the head, the movement of thin hands that were so pale, and the shadows of the eyes. Now those eyes were looking toward his room. He held his breath and counted to ten. At eleven the steps moved again, until they stopped outside his door. He listened but heard no breathing.

      * * * * * * *

      Waiting, like an autumn leaf clinging to a tree waiting to fall, like an old house waiting for its owners to return.

      * * * * * * *

      ­He’ll come in at 12:00­, Frank thought. But now that midnight was almost here time seemed to have stopped dead still.

      “Come on,” he said. He thought he spoke aloud. He wanted to hear the hand touch the doorknob. He wanted to see the knob twist. It did not. He felt the cloaked figure turn away and glide across the hall to a second room. A spidery hand sounded like rattling dice on that other door and it opened. There was breathing now. It was Joey’s.

      Frank listened deeply and the fear coiled like worms. “Wrong,” he yelled, croaking. “Wrong. Not that room. Not there. I’m here.”

      The visitor didn’t hear, didn’t stop, didn’t care. Frank struggled awkwardly with the covers but his hand had somehow gotten pinned beneath his body and he could not get it loose. He struggled, and suddenly ceased struggling. The breathing had stopped. There was only a sigh and silence, and, quietly, the tears began to run down Frank’s cheeks, washing away the sweat.

      In a moment, he heard the hands on his own doorknob but that did not stop his weeping. The door opened and something came in. It held a broken bundle over one shoulder and carried a curved scythe in its free hand. Its face was hidden by the cowl of a black cloak. The figure moved over to him and stood looking down.

      Frank glanced at the time. The numerals ran like blood on the ceiling and they were showing 12:00 midnight. He looked at the shape of his visitor and closed his eyes. “Damn you,” he whispered, and then thought of how ludicrous that curse was. He could not help but open his eyes again and look up at Joey’s face. The light from the clock flashed off of it, and it was dead.

      “It was supposed to be me,” he said. “It was supposed to be me.”

      A bony hand reached out and tucked the sheet back beneath the mattress where Frank’s struggles had pulled it free. Then Death turned away, laughing like hell.

      MACHINE WASH WARM; TUMBLE DRY

      It was around one in the morning when I came downstairs from the apartment with a big load of dirty clothes. I had deliberately waited until late and there was no one in the Laundromat, as you might expect. The six washers and four dryers stood empty, their mouths open to the humid night air as if they were panting from the heat. I didn’t much like the imagery called up by that thought, and I especially didn’t care for the darkness that pooled in the backs of the dryers, the shadows that moved every time the neon lights flickered. I went and shut the lids on all but two machines, one dryer and one washer.

      Some stuff that was already wet went into the dryer, and I threw my jeans and socks into the fifty cent washer and pushed in the tongue to start her. I left out the detergent and smiled when I thought of how much that would piss my mother off if she knew. Course, it had never taken much to piss that woman off.

      I had brought down the sports section out of last Sunday’s paper and was drinking what was left of a half warm beer that tasted like crap. I tried hard to read but couldn’t do it for long. There wasn’t much but baseball in the paper anyway and I’d just never been that interested in the game, though I used to sit and watch it with my dad when he was alive. You know, I really miss that old man sometimes.

      But it wasn’t just the baseball filled newspaper that kept me from reading; it was feeling the darkness down there in the bellies of the laundry’s empty machines, coiling itself tighter and tighter, and finally I had to get up and go open the lids again. I felt a little silly opening them when I had just closed them ten minutes before, but I was still glad when it was done. Darkness ought not to be cooped up for long.

      My beer was empty by then and I went upstairs for another, and to find something a little more interesting than baseball scores to read. The apartment was quiet for a change. There hadn’t been much of that since my mother had moved in with me last year, one week to the day after my dad had died. Boy could that lady nag!

      “Wipe your feet. Turn down that stereo. Brush your teeth. Pick up your clothes.” As if I weren’t twenty-five years old and this wasn’t my own apartment. Sometimes I wondered how Dad had put up with it for all those years without killing her. Luckily for him, he had some ear trouble and could always just turn off his hearing aid. My hearing was perfect.

      Because of Mother, I had been only too glad to leave New Orleans at eighteen and go out to California to live with Grandma and Grandpa. I’d only come back here when Dad got bad with the cancer. He knew he was dying and wanted me with him. I had intended to go back to L.A. right after the funeral, but one thing led to another and before I knew it my mother was moving in with me and telling me to get a job. Of course, Rhonda wasn’t my real mother, just my stepmother. But she had always insisted I call her mom or mother. I called her mother. My mom had died when I was seven and Rhonda had married my dad two years later.

      I didn’t like to think about Rhonda much so I got myself another beer out of the fridge and then went into the bedroom for a ­Playboy­ magazine to take downstairs with me. It was the same issue Mother had found in my closet this morning and thrown in the trash. I’d gotten it back out a little later and there wasn’t much more than a few tea stains on it. By the time I got back down to the Laundromat both my machines had stopped. I unloaded the washer directly into the dryer, leaving what was already in there for another round. It wouldn’t hurt to dry some things more than once.

      I sat down then and opened my second beer. It tasted a lot better than the first, and the Playboy­ held my interest better than the newspaper had. I only had to get up once, when the heavy load in the dryer got off balance a bit and the machine started to shake. I opened her up and shoved things around, then started her again with another quarter. Some of the stuff sure seemed to be taking a long time to dry.

      I had gotten through most of the magazine before the dryer cut off for the third time. It was almost three o’clock and I was starting to feel sleepy anyway. I went over and took out the clothes and began to stack them in nice, neat little piles on the laundry-room table. It was a few minutes before I noticed that one of my socks was missing.

      Shit, but I hate losing socks in the dryer. And it always seems to happen. I was pretty well convinced I wouldn’t find the thing when I opened the machine. But there it was. Damn if it hadn’t gotten itself lodged in Mother’s throat somehow.

      ABRADED BY LIGHT

      Scorched and poetical,

      abraded by light,

      I lay in silence,

      loud with whiskey

      on sands of lost harmonics,

      and the dreams in me

      are like lepers,

      like