We Need to Do Something

by Max Booth III

We all sat at the table, watching him standing in front of the mess he’d created, breathing heavy, reeking of shame. The silence that followed then is similar to the one that follows now. Mom takes several deep breaths. A fish gulping for water and only swallowing air.

The rain has gotten so loud we have to shout to make ourselves heard. Wind screams. Every time thunder cracks, we flinch—except for Dad, who no longer seems to care about what’s occurring beyond our house. All of his hatred is focused on my mother. This is not a foreign stare, but never before have we all been confined to such limited quarters while rage inhabited him.

The moment I got home this evening, it felt like he was begging for a fight, it didn’t matter with who—anybody would do, as long as they could bleed, as long as they could break.

Wind howls like wolves hungry for fresh meat.

Outside the bathroom door, the storm’s volume intensifies. Rain and wind screech loud enough to drown out the thoughts from our throbbing brains. It is the sound of banshees escaping from hell. When we speak, we are forced to shout and, even then, one cannot be certain of the other’s dialogue.

At this point I am sobbing and I hate myself for every tear spilled. My father does not deserve a single one of them.

The text message conversation we found ourselves in the midst of will not go over well with my father. The context doesn’t matter. He will go mad. Mad like insane. Mad like nuts. However, if I continue disobeying his demands, the threat of escalated rage seems inevitable.

I can’t remember the last time I heard them tell each other I love you. Sometimes I wonder if they ever have. It would have been a lie, anyway. At one point in time, they must have at least liked each other. Otherwise, why had they ever gotten together in the first place? Something must’ve served as the initial attraction. Something must’ve convinced each other they were meant to be. Whatever that something was, it had certainly lied to them.

The way they act around one another, it’s less like a marriage, more like an epic rivalry. Maybe that’s what all relationships are like. Maybe nobody actually loves each other. They just argue and fight and have babies and scream and break things and eventually everybody dies. The outcome will always be the same, no matter what anybody tries to do. Everybody dies. The end.

He closes his eyes and bangs the back of his head against the wall a couple times. “Almost like this is punishment, ain’t it? God’s way of reminding you of the vows you made. That he hasn’t forgotten and neither should you.” He grins like a real smug asshole. It’s how he always grins. It baffles me, how Mom has managed to stay with him all these years. I can’t imagine ever marrying a man like Dad, much less allowing someone like him to touch me, or even talk to me. Similar types of men exist at my high school. Guys who think they’re owed everything just for having a dick. Delusional assholes who think they’re the center of the universe.

After I finish up, I punch him on the arm and he starts crying and Dad gets all pissed and spits out this long lecture about how I shouldn’t hit my brother, that he’s told me how many times not to hit him and do I even listen to a single word he tells me? Do I even care? Of course I don’t care, I want to respond, but I’m not suicidal—at least not in this moment of time. Maybe in another hour I’ll change my mind.

I give up and curl in the bathtub. Its cold porcelain feels like a deadly kiss against my cheek.

“Everybody get up,” Dad says. “Maybe if we all push at the same time, our combined strength will open this son of a bitch once and for all.” “Even me, Daddy?” Bobby asks. “I don’t know. You think you’re strong enough?” “Hmm.” Bobby rubs his chin, thinking it over. “Maybe?” “Let me see your muscles.” Bobby flexes both arms. Dad gasps in amazement. “Holy shit, son. You got a license to carry those guns?” Bobby cocks his head, relaxing. “Dad, these aren’t guns. They’re just my arms.” “Oh.” He performs an exaggerated whew. “You really fooled me there for a second.” He giggles. “You really thought my arms were guns?” “Big, giant machine guns.” “Haha. You’re so stupid.” Dad glares at him for a second, and

Instead we sit and watch her go through the medicine cabinet and various drawers below the sink. I don’t know where she’s found the energy. I barely have enough strength to keep my eyes open. I barely have enough strength to breathe.

And now we’re stuck here, suffering the consequences. It’s Dad’s fault. It’s my fault. It’s everybody’s fault. We dig our own graves and then we jump headfirst.

I’m maintaining eye contact with Amy as I ask her, “Why?” And she smiles when she says, “Because I used to be dead.” I don’t know if she’s joking or genuine. I don’t know if I realize yet that I’m in love.

Sometimes I can’t decide what would be worse: if we died from starvation or if we never died.

Amy’s in the tub, between my legs, back against my breasts. The rest of my family is passed out on the floor. Outside the wind howls like it’s alive. I wrap my arms around Amy and she holds my wrists together, sometimes giving them soft kisses, sometimes only caressing them. She’s telling me how she used to be dead. Most people are, she tells me, they just don’t realize it.

Amy giggles and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world. “Think of it like this. A long time ago, something happened to me. Something killed me. Now inside my body everything’s rotting. Well, they were rotting, but things are different now. I’m better.” “How were they rotting?” “I could smell them. Decomposing from the inside out. Nobody believed me.” “So that’s why you cut yourself?” “I guess, maybe, I don’t know, thinking back on it, it’s all so blurry, you know? If I could still bleed, then I could remind myself that it wasn’t real, that I was still alive.” “Did you want to be?” She stops rubbing my wrists. Her body tightens. “What?” “When you would cut yourself, what were you hoping to see? Blood or no blood?” But she doesn’t have an answer to that question.

*** Dad digs out the empty bottle of mouthwash from the trash can and holds it over his mouth, begging for another drop to somehow generate onto his tongue, so desperate he’s crying, shaking, crumbling apart before our eyes. “Please god please god please please please god just one more sip one more sip I swear to Christ all I need is one more sip oh god god oh god please I’ll do anything anything you want just one more sip please god please.” Nobody answers his prayers. He throws the bottle against the wall and pounds his fists against the sides of his head. “Don’t look at me like that,” he sobs at us, snot and tears spilling down his face, “don’t look at me like that don’t look at me like that don’t look at me like that don’t look—” ***

“I’m a good boy,” the dog says from the other side of the door, only it’s not a dog at all, not with a voice like that.

I can’t stop crying as my dad holds me tight and promises he’ll protect me, that nothing bad will happen to me with him here, and for a second I actually believe him.

This close to my face, the smell hits before the taste. I don’t stand a chance and begin gagging immediately, but force my lips shut with my palm and keep it inside my mouth, chewing fast and hard, praying for it to be over already. It tastes like old rubber and roadkill. Meanwhile, my family stares at me with utter disgust, like they don’t recognize me, and I don’t blame them. This is not me. I am not someone who rips out a stranger’s tongue, and I am certainly not someone who then eats the stranger’s tongue.

We’re lying together in the tub, face-to-face, limbs wrapped around each other like we’re one being, one creation. An aerial viewer would find it impossible to determine where one of us began and the other ended. Her breath smells rancid but I don’t care. If worms burst from her mouth I would greedily slurp them down my own throat and ask for seconds. Nothing that belonged to her would ever be repulsive in my eyes. Anything less would make her somebody else. Anything less and she wouldn’t be the girl I loved. The girl I love.

Maybe that’s what happened to everybody. Nothing lasts forever. One day you’re playing Mexican train dominoes with your family and the next day you haven’t spoken to your parents in a week besides the obligatory good morning and see ya later. Until the day came when you were trapped in a bathroom with them all, and nobody came to save you, and slowly you rotted away to nothing until you finally deteriorated from existence.

No. That already happened. This is something new. Oh god what is happening out there? I can’t hold it in any longer. “Do you think . . . do you think maybe this is . . . you know . . . the devil . . . ?” “If it is,” Dad says, “he sure as fuck knows how to make an entrance.”

I want to call him a liar. I want to accuse him of not knowing what the hell he’s talking about. I want to tell him he’s so full of shit it’s overflowing from his eyeballs. What’s he gonna do? Get off the counter and try knocking some sense into me? Fat chance. Not with a snake between us.

“One night, almost a year after he escaped, I woke up in bed to something tight around my throat. It was him. It was Monty. He’d come back to me.” “What?” Bobby says, excited. “Wow!” “Yeah.” Dad sighs. “Slithered up into my bed and wrapped himself around my neck. Scared the shit out of me. I started screaming and freaking out. My mom, your grandmother, she comes running in and flips on the light, sees me in bed with my snake around my neck and screams just as loud as I did.” “Then what happened?” “Well. I unwrapped Monty from my neck and discovered he was dead. That’s what happened.” “Dead? How?” Dad shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess it was just his time.” Bobby pouts. “That’s a sad story, Dad!” “I know. I’m sorry.” He closes his eyes and leans against the mirror. “You know, I’ve thought about that night a lot, and there’s something I’ve never been able to figure out.” “Figure out what?” Bobby asks. “Whether or not he came back because he wanted to be with someone he loved as he died, or . . . ” “Or what?” He leans forward, eyes open, expression blank. “ . . . or if he was trying to take me with him.”

“And I asked the cashier, the young lady, I asked her how she could know it was going to be okay, and she looked down at me and smiled this wonderful bright smile and do you know what she told me, baby? She told me she knew it was all going to be okay because it had to be. You get it? It was going to be okay because it couldn’t possibly be any other way. That we just had to believe it would be okay and act brave and strong and it would all work out, and you know what, baby? She was right. She helped me act brave and strong and we waited for the ambulance to arrive and they pulled you out of me right there in the frozen food aisle and I saw your beautiful little face in the paramedic’s arms and I knew in that moment that I should have never doubted my love for you and that I would never ever doubt it again and I haven’t, I never have, and that’s why I know you’re going to be okay and Sissy’s going to be okay and everything’s going to be okay so we just have to hang on a little bit longer and someone will come, I know it, someone will come and they’ll move the tree and open the door and everybody will be waiting outside to make sure we’re okay and life will be better, I promise you, sweet beautiful baby, I promise with every ounce of my soul everything is going to be okay, you just have to trust me, okay, baby? You have to trust.”

She cries and rocks Bobby in her arms and his eyes are half-open but he’s no longer breathing, and we all know it, we’ve known it for several minutes now, but that doesn’t stop her from rocking him, from holding him tighter and spitting tears and mucus from her mouth as all of the world’s agony blossoms into its final form.

Shit, how the hell am I supposed to explain this? Especially after everything that’s happened. It’ll sound like I’m speaking in a foreign language (speaking in tongues).

“Jesus Christ. Please. Just . . . just let me say what I have to say.” What I don’t point out is they’re arguing about a goddamn email address less than five feet from their dead son. His body rapidly decomposing and still they have to bicker about things that don’t matter. What I don’t tell them is they should have never gotten married, that they could have easily spared us all future horrors by simply dissolving their relationship long before having children. Our existence has been a burden on not only them but also ourselves since day one in the womb.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, fists tightening at my sides. What am I going to do? Punch him? Shit,

“I-I-I was afraid.” “Brave enough to destroy the world, but too chickenshit to own up to it, huh?”

They’re dancing just like they used to when he was alive, but now he’s dead and nothing has changed, nothing ever changes.

The tongue, I know this tongue like my own. It’s Amy’s tongue. I hunted it down and swallowed it up. She gave it to me and I refused to return it and now it’s mine mine mine. If she really wants it back she’ll have to personally come ask me.

I wake up to something licking my hand. Spot is nestled in my lap, dirty and smelly but alive. I pet him and tell him he’s a good boy and that I love him very much and fall back asleep. I do not ask how he got his tongue back. It would not be polite. When I wake up again, he’s gone but my hand is still wet.

“You did all you could,” she tells me. “Some people, they aren’t meant to be fixed, no matter what you do. Some people are cursed from birth.”