Harvest

Of the next few days, I have no memory. I know that I drank heavily, though I only remember the bourbon with which I started following my visit to the mysterious crone. I finally drifted out of a haze into a projectile-vomiting reality (my stomach lining obviously burned by all the alcohol) somewhere in Alabama. I don't know where, just a bus stop of some kind, I think. I remember staggering out of the bathroom and across the street to a liquor store, where I purchased something to anesthetize the pain in my stomach. Then I stumbled onto a bus and my memory fades once again.

I next came to in Wyoming, at the house of an old college friend. Again, my burned stomach lining was trying to rip itself apart and doing a pretty darn good job of it. I was convulsing mindlessly in front of the toilet, and Brian was holding me while his wife wiped my face with a wet cloth. The next 24 hours were a nightmare of vomiting blood, fever, and D.T.s. I know I raved, but mercifully I can remember few details.

Slowly reality coalesced and my condition relented, until about midmorning on what I would find was my second day there I was able to stand with a reasonable degree of stability. I moved cautiously to the door of what appeared to be their son's room, which I had probably acquired because of its proximity to a toilet -- it had its own. Moving into the mildly claustrophobic main hallway characteristic of every trailer house ever made, I worked my way toward the kitchen noises to my right.

Darla was on the tips of her toes as she placed a nested pile of pans in a cupboard over the oven. She seemed unaware of my approach. "I owe you one," I croaked, managing a smile.

With a quick, precise grace I've always admired, Darla dropped to her feet and spun to greet me. "How do you feel?" She moved toward me as she spoke, her concern visible and touching.

"Like I might live." Her fragrance made my mind reel as she embraced me, and I began to feel that everything might be all right, after all.

The pan of still-steaming muffins on the sideboard didn't last long as we caught up on old times, and I began to fall into the comforting routine of reminiscence, lulled by normality. She didn't press, and I took my time getting around to what had brought me here. Darla listened wide-eyed as I described what I could remember of that chain of events, and she paid me the respect of not challenging my sanity when I was done.

"So, what d'you think you can do about it now you're here?" Her voice sounded hollow as it echoed within the cabinet in which she was searching for a rarely-used teapot.

"I'm not really sure," I admitted. "I think ... I think I just need to get my head together for ... it was probably just a stress breakdown ... and maybe a bit of hypnosis or something. If I could just hang out..."

"So," her voice sounded almost masculine from within the muffling cabinet, "you don't really think there's some kind of curse on you? More that you're head's not straight?"

"Yeah, that's what would make sense. I have been drinking a lot. Who knows, maybe it was even some sick joke of Maude's just before she left me. I don't know..."

"It can be hard to keep your head on straight," she announced in a hoarse voice (was she coming down with a cold, I remember wondering). Darla stumbled as she straightened and set the teapot down with a clatter, her back to me. "You know what I do when my head's not straight?"

"What?" I answered absently, admiring the tight curve of her hips -- if only she weren't married to my best friend, came the thought.

"This." There was a low, slow grinding sound, and I watched in horror as Darla's vertebrae shattered with a loud dry crunch and her head swiveled around to stare at me from atop the smooth plane of her back. Her shining green eyes seemed to pop from her head as she snarled, her voice a growling chorus. "Why don't you give it a try, sucker!"

I staggered against the refrigerator as Darla's face became a bestial, howling mask; it seemed that my whole body spasmed, and I couldn't breathe. The air seemed to grow murky, and I gazed in shock as if through a steamy haze as my friend's body turned beneath her contorted visage until she faced forward once again, her head lolling limply now on her left shoulder. I think I had begun gibbering by this point, trying for language but failing miserably, too frightened to scream.

Her face seemed to flow, shift somehow, it's delicate lines puffing out until the bloated munchkin who had started all this barked at me from atop the splintered remains of Darla's spine. "You finally starting to get the picture, boychuk? Still think you're just stressed out? I'll show you stressed out!" The apparition plucked a heavy meat cleaver from its wall mount and without a second's hesitation lay Darla's left forearm on the counter and neatly severed the wrist, leaving the cleaver embedded in the countertop. The graceful, slender hand lay on the counter in a pool of blood as the thing raised Darla's spurting stump and pointed it at me, spattering me with her blood. "You brought this on yourself, you know. Hypnosis, indeed. If you're going to engage in denial, then we'll just have to see that you have proof you can't deny."

I'm not really sure what happened after that. I have an image of diving for the cleaver, and I remember swinging it again and again. I think I blacked out, then; memory begins again with me swimming in a reservoir on the edge of town, trying to scrub bloodstains from my skin and clothes. The clothes were hopeless, and I replaced them from a clothesline on my way back into town. I didn't dare return to Brian and Darla's, so I headed for the bus station.

It was a couple of hours before the next bus out of town -- anywhere, I didn't care -- and I spent the time drinking heavily, trying to erase from my mind the sound of Darla's neck snapping as her head turned backwards. I hid behind the Casper newspaper and did my drinking quietly, knowing from past experience that they took their public drinking laws seriously around there, especially where long-hairs with New York accents were concerned. The whiskey quieted my shaking and the burning in my stomach cleared my mind, brought me into touch with my body; the bourbon washed the terror away and I felt sanity if not sobriety slowly return.

Finally, the stinking diesel coach pulled up in the parking lot and I staggered across the asphalt, thankful to be leaving and assuring myself that Darla was really at home, probably wondering where I had gone. "It's some weird kind of fugue," I insisted aloud as I climbed on the bus. "Vivid delusions ... it has to be."

The bus was half full: working-class, bored, sore and cranky from sitting cramped in ill-fitting seats. It smelled just like you'd expect it to during a hot Wyoming summer, and the half-bottle of bourbon in my stomach made the odor a good deal more tolerable for me than it probably was for most of my new companions. The driver was hunched over a lunchbag, a short, squat figure, heavy-bellied from years behind the wheel. I was about to continue on down the aisle to take a seat when the driver called out: "Hey, you! Want a bite?"

I turned to look, trying to frame an answer for such an unexpected question, and there in a nest of unwrapped cellophane was Darla's severed hand, still quivering, blood running across the cellophane to drip onto the worn carpet. I felt like I'd been struck, and as I staggered back and caught at the hand rail to keep from falling down the steps I raised my eyes from the unspeakable sight to the bus driver's face. The head of a giant toad blinked its bulbous eyes at me; as I watched, its forearm-thick tongue darted out, snagged the bloody hand, and snapped back with it into the depths of the cavernous maw. "Delusions, be damned," it croaked, punctuating its statement by vomiting a huge stream of steaming blood on me.

I guess I started screaming then. I think I kept screaming for a long time, as they pulled me off the bus; I think I was screaming still when they brought me here.

*

"Well, doctor, that's the story. Whaddaya think?"

She pursed her bloated lips as she stared at me from across the heavy wooden desk. "I think you're going to be with us for a while."