Hunker Down
stuck with your killer
HUNKER DOWN
The din of the news cast grew fainter the further I got down the bread isle. The usual technicolor warnings of “The big one” faded in and out amongst the squeal of shopping cart wheels, shuffling of feet and the added layer of other folks offering their best survival tips to anyone who lingered to long near them. Survival tips was a misnomer. Every year it seemed there was another “Big One” and every year they came and went either just as expected or massively underwhelmed.
Still though, like a good soldier it seemed, I prepared. Bread and Milk. Water. Canned food. Kerosene for the lamps I never used. I had gotten out the blankets. Checked the generator. All the little boxes I used to watch my mother tick too. Food and the like however, weren’t my number one worry this time.
My phone rang in the produce section. It was Cooper, my friend. I had phoned them earlier to ask if I could stay with them and ride this thing out. My message might have mentioned how misery loves company or something.
“Hey” I said
“Hey, got your text, I’m out of town remember? Sorry, no snow storm party this time.” They chuckled and I thought for a moment to ask if they left a spare key anywhere but decided against it.
“No worries, slipped my mind, enjoy…”
“Arizona”
“Arizona” I hung up after a few pleasantries and avoided the shaking in my knees.
The air was noticeably colder I go out of the car, ripping paper bags in hand. I fumbled with the keys for what seemed like forever, trying not drop anything.
“You mind helping?”
My partner had stayed in the car while I was in the store, no idea why, and I didn’t feel like asking. Maybe it was the fight we had this morning, something about the storm, or a missed bill. No, it was the bathroom, I forgot to clean it again and they weren’t very happy. Understandable, I said I would and I didn’t and I get why they were mad. My wrist hurt also but that was understandable too.
They just sat there, transfixed on their phone or whatever. Still mad at me I guess. I managed to fumble with the keys and get inside.
I was putting the groceries away when they walked up behind me, always so silent, with my phone in their hand. I sank.
“Why did you call Cooper?”
“I, I thought maybe we could stay with them, like last storm, it was kind of fun wasn’t it?”
“And?”
“They’re out of town, Arizona.”
“Shame”
They walked out of the room with my phone. I could here the TV click on in the other room. The reporter talking about how the storm had picked up speed over George’s Bank. I stood up and noticed my neighbors packing their car.
“I’m going to go see what Marsh is up to, ok?”
“Sure”
My partner was glued to the report. Seven dead out on the Cape chasing Swordfish and Providence had some fires with some families getting burned up.
Marsh, older than me by a few decades, was packing their old Volvo with what looked like most of the house. They were frantic and white. Their family were already in the car.
“You seem spooked Marsh, everything ok?”
They looked at me like I had told a joke without a punchline or missed a very important meeting that everyone else had attended but me.
“You should get out of here, gonna be a real big one this time”
“That’s what I’ve heard”
“No, no you haven’t, you’ll be caught in that house for days with the snow that’s coming” they paused “We’re heading east then south, think we can get around it, got family in Rochester”
“You really think its that bad this time?” I could feel my fingernails digging into my palm.
“I do, I’d pack up if you can”
I hesitated but, something inside me pushed me.
“Can I, can we, tag along? You’ve got me concerned now Marsh”
“Sorry, car’s packed, I’d pack yours, or hunker down, I’m too old for the stress.”
I cracked a dolphin smile and wished Marsh the best. Sirens wailed in the distance down the street. I craned my neck past the front of the apartment building and saw a car wreck down the road, a mini van and a pick up truck. Cars kept whizzing by as the ambulance disembarked. It was like a hornets nest.
“Marsh is heading out of town, Upstate I think, says this one is going to bad, he works at the Navy base, maybe he’s right?”
“You worry too much, how many bad storms have we been through?”
“How many have made Marsh leave the state?”
I chuckled. And in that moment they leaped from the chair.
“Seems like you’re trying to leave? Again…”
I could feel their breath on my face.
“No? I want us to leave, to be safe is all, I don’t know, it seems like everyone is more concerned about this one?”
“We will be fine” their hand tight on my wrist “we always are”
I felt better somehow.
“Can I have my phone back?”
“Why?”
“I want to make sure mom is ok”
They tossed it to me and I wasn’t ready, it fell and the screen cracked
“Fucking klutz”
“what did you call me?”
“Call your fucking mom”
I shut the door to the room as gently as human possible. The storm has everyone riled up whether they want to admit it or not. It’s no ones fault really. I dialed my mom.
“Oh hi honey, didn’t expect to hear from you, everything ok?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know, this storm has me scared Mom.”
“It is supposed to be a bad one, but they all are in someway, you got bread and milk?”
“Yes, and lamp fluid.”
“Well then we just have to hunker down and it’ll pass”
“Neighbors say it might take days to pass, they’re leaving town.”
“Oh my, well…” The phone cut out for a moment. My heart raced.
“Mom?”
“Sorry dear, storm is due over us any minute, must be…” Static “…messing with the phones.”
I blurted it out
“Can I please come stay with you, I can leave right now?”
Nothing on the other end.
“Please Mom, I can be there in an hour, I can beat the storm, I just think if it’s going to be a long one that it would be better if I come down, I….” the tears started flowing, “I don’t want to get hurt, it’s been, it’s started again and I just want to be safe and….”
Nothing; the call timer kept ticking but there was nothing on the other end. I dropped the call and tried again but got nothing.
“Storm must be over them by now” My partner said from the doorway “shame”
I woke up on the floor and it was dark out. I rolled over and winced at the crunch and sting of broken glass. Little beads of blood formed on my hands. The body mirror on the wall was cracked and shattered, the cardboard exposed underneath. There were no lights on except the hurricane lanterns I could see flickering down the hall.
As I came to more, the howl of the wind and the bending of windows assaulted the unconscious quiet and returned me to the land of the living.
They must have heard my call with my mom. Understandable it upset them. We were doing so well for a while, but the last few weeks were touch and go. The stress of the storm being talked about all week too just compounded everything, it would have made any one edgy.
They sat at the table in the kitchen. Tapping a pile of letters on the table in the hue of a storm lantern.
“Thought we’d forget about these?”
“What are you talking about?”
Past due bills, a rejection letter, and a lay off notice hit me straight in the face followed by a fist. A tree branch cracked and crashed to the ground outside, it’s thunderous bellow shaking the apartment. Blood covered my wrists as I looked up, where were they?
From behind a shove and my knees shot pain like a pin ball shiver all over my body as the nerves reacted to the trauma.
“You are such a fucking fuck up, you know that? You can’t even do the simplest things, like keep a fucking job, like respond to a fucking letter!
Sharp paper stung the back of my throat as they jammed the crumbled envelopes into my mouth, gagging me. The windows on the second floor apartment shattered, an unmistakable sign. Despite what was happening I was thankful it was vacant.
“I don’t know why I even put up with this! Why? Why? Fucking tell me why, why I stay here? How many more times am I going to have to pick up the fucking pieces? What the fuck do I even get out of it!?”
They were right and I had no answer. Car alarms went unanswered and outside the windows were blankets of twisting storm turning the world white. The chaos outside kept out by thin and old walls too stubborn to fold.
“You can’t leave”
They said what was obvious.
“Come on, clean up.”
They set a blanket and a pillow on the sofa in the living room. I fell asleep on the couch as soon as I sat down.
Marsh was right and the storm was a big one. I, we, we’re stuck in that house for four days until the snow stopped and the wind receded.
Every night they reminded me how terrible I was. Every night they beat me within an inch of my life, every night they stopped just short. I wish I could embellish, but it is all such a blur.
I opened the door, pushing passed uncleared snow, everything an allegory I suppose. The sun hit my face and I felt warm.
Marsh was pulling up back to their home and noticed me.
I smiled and waved.
“How’d we do? Told ya it was big, was worried about you”
“Few things fell from the old place shaking, but, I’m ok.”
“Good to hear, terribly sorry you had to hunker down all alone like that, I know its been a rough few for ya.”
I smiled and went back into my empty apartment.
Alone, alone with the person trying to kill me.
A little expose’ if you will about my thought process. I always want the reader to know where I am coming from or what I am trying to do, call it hubris, but anyways.
I have always been fascinated with creeping horror or horror off in the distance. Maybe it is an effect of growing up post 9/11 with a ever present boogey-man shoved down my throat all day? The idea that there is a looming danger that a character has no control over, to me, is the most frightening kind of horror. Knowing something is going to happen and there is nothing you can do to stop it, only hope to weather it as best you can, is something deeply unsettling to me; knowing there will be pain.
There are plenty of real world examples of this. Growing up in New England it was hurricanes or snow storms. The relative calm of going to the store to stock up on supplies the day before, knowing this big unseeable thing was encroaching was always an interesting feeling. Did you prepare well enough? It’s coming, how well did you prepare? War, I imagine, is like that too. The Polish in Warsaw knew the tanks were coming, all they could do is wait and wait and wait and wait. The monster was coming no matter what.
In media, movies like Summer of Sam and It Follows come to mind. People living their lives normally while essentially trapped with the notion that they’re being stalked, or at the very least, live in a world where the monster could get them at any time. How do they live as normally as possible? Books like On the Beach also resonate this kind of horror to me, knowing something you can’t stop, in this case nuclear fallout, is going to kill you, it’s just a matter of when.
And like always, I enjoy a good allegory and a twist…