The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

MINUTES

11:59.

Moonlight filtered through the oatmeal-colored drapes, bathing the bed in an amber glow. Under the covers, Susan Hunter tossed and turned, caught in the grip of a nightmare.

Outside, the sound of gravel crunching beneath heavy boots.

Susan awoke. Her eyelids, smeared with runny mascara, flashed open. Empty green eyes in goblin-black pools.

The sound. Crunching. Giant iron fists smashing tiny, bleached skulls.

A temple bell rang. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.

Susan’s breath caught in her throat.

On the bedroom drapes, a shadow.

The oily shadow boiled across the translucent drapes. Susan shook away her dream of giant fists, tiny skulls, and temple bells.

The shadow loomed larger.

Susan heard footsteps on the gravel path.

Crunch. Crunch. Giant fists. Tiny skulls.

Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor. Susan clutched the down comforter; she could sense someone staring through the tiny crack where the drapes didn’t quite meet.

“Randy,” she whispered. “There’s someone outside.” Her hand slipped across the sheets, searching for her husband’s callused fingers. She was ready to forgive every angry word he’d spoken earlier, forget all the biting remarks that had made her cry and —

A cold, empty space where Randy should have been.

Instantly, Susan knew that she was alone in the house. She shivered. Her wedding ring felt like a band of ice.

Damn him. Damn Randy Hunter. He’d slipped out to the bar. He wasn’t going to protect her. She’d have to suffer for his crime all over again, and this time he wasn’t even going to share the punishment.

Susan wondered if the man outside had planned it that way.

12:00.

Gravel crunched beneath heavy boots.

A brass wind-bell rang in a willow tree. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.

Willow branches swayed; their twisted black shadows crept fingerlike across the drapes and scratched at the shadow.

Suddenly, the shadow melted away.

A booming slam. Metal smashing metal.

A scream.

Quietly, Susan picked up the phone. She punched 9, then 1, then hung up, knowing that the law wouldn’t help. Sheriff Conrad hated Randy and pitied her. He’d ask why Randy couldn’t investigate the noises. He’d want to know where Randy was.

Susan pictured Sheriff Conrad’s stern, cynical face. “In my opinion, judge, Mr. Hunter shows little remorse for his actions. He seems to think that this awful accident was a case of simple bad luck. He doesn’t want to recognize that his drinking was the cause… his neglectful behavior... his childish disregard.

Susan drew a deep breath, telling herself that she’d only seen a shadow, and that the scream could have been a bobcat.

Or a drunken farm worker on a midnight tear. Or —

Susan didn’t want to think about it.

God, why do we stay here? The middle of nowhere, the back road to hell—

Gravel crunched. The shadow was back, but this time Susan could make out a head, a torso, and arms.

Runny mascara burned Susan’s eyes. She waited for the sound of shattering glass.

The shadow’s left arm came up fast. Something squealed against the windowpane and Susan buried her face in her mascara-stained pillow. When she looked back at the drapes, the shadow was gone. Three heavy lines were smeared on the window, straight lines that left crooked shadows on the pleated drapes. Two were horizontal and parallel; the other was vertical.

Next to the lines, Susan could make out a fat circle. She watched as a cobweb-thin drip rolled through its center, transforming the circle into a “0.” Her body tightened as she remembered the angry neighbors she’d seen at the courthouse, many of them carrying posters with a red “0” painted over her husband’s name.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “Randy isn’t even here. Leave me alone.”

12:01.

A wind-bell rang.

The willow-branch shadows scratched at the lines and the circle. Another booming slam. Metal smashing metal.

Another scream.

Susan squinted hard, fighting back tears. She wished that she’d hidden Randy’s car keys, but deep down she knew that hidden keys wouldn’t have stopped him. The fancy dinner that she’d prepared, now sitting cold on the kitchen table, hadn’t kept him home. Neither had the sexy dress, or the make-up. Her special efforts had only made things worse.

Because they’d never let Randy forget. He hadn’t meant to cripple the Maltin girl. If she hadn’t tried to pass him on that bridge nothing would have —

“Leave me alone!”

“But don’t you understand, Randy? We’ve got to talk about it. You just can’t shut me out. I’m your wife, Randy. I want to know what you’re thinking. I love — ”

“Don’t say it! I’m tired of talking. No one fucking listens! I talk and talk and nobody hears one fucking word!”

Flashbulb images she was unable to forget: Randy’s hand rising, shaking, nails chewed to the quick, knuckles gnawed bloody; Randy’s hand, tan and steady, holding the wedding ring; Randy’s hand floating in the air, a thing somehow separate from her husband; Randy’s hand, now a fist, punching the kitchen door; Randy’s hand wiping away her tears.

Susan wiped her crusty mascara. Now there were more tears.

The shadow was back.

The squealing sound. Susan made herself look. Two more smears on the window, two more snaking shadows projected on the pleated drapes. One vertical. One horizontal.

Susan bit her lower lip. No one tried to understand Randy’s side of it. Everyone in town had liked him before the accident, liked her too, but they were both treated like ghosts afterwards Randy apologized, but he didn’t seem to understand that apologies couldn’t cover the thing that he’d done. And nobody wanted to hear Randy whisper that the accident was just a bad break, something that could have happened to any of the folks who spent their weekends drinking in the local bars. No one wanted to think about that.

But Randy could think of little else. Excuses held his guilt at bay. And now one of Randy’s old friends was here at the house, scrawling something on the window, stirring Randy’s guilt.

Hurting Randy; hurting Susan, too.

And that was a big part of it, wasn’t it? Because Susan carried Randy’s guilt, too. It ate at her, devoured parts of her that she knew she could never get back. It stole her smile and ripped the life from her eyes. She couldn’t even look at her neighbors anymore, and every time she drove Randy’s dented Camaro into town she felt a little sick.

“I understand.” She’d said that to Randy over and over until it didn’t mean anything anymore, but no one had ever said it to her. Because no one wanted to understand what hell was really like, not unless they had to.

Another booming slam. Another scream.

The oily shadow. The squealing sound. Two more thick circles appeared on the window, one above the other, connected by a vertical line.

Tears spilled down Susan’s face.

A wind-bell rang.

The willow-branch shadows scratched at the lines and the circles.

12:02.

There was one bar — a dive out by the highway — that would still serve Randy, and Susan remembered the phone number. She pressed the receiver to her lips, whispering under the covers. She prayed that no one was staring at her through the crack between the drapes.

Susan remembered the staring eyes of the Maltin brothers burning holes in Randy’s back as he stood before the judge. She remembered the two bearded men holding their sister’s prosthetic hands, patting them, squeezing them when the judge announced the terms of Randy’s probation.

She remembered wondering if the Maltin brothers thought that metal hooks could feel.

“I’m sorry, Miz Hunter, but Randy left a good hour ago,” the sleepy barkeep drawled. “Ain’t he come home? Hey, listen, if anything happens he wasn’t at my place tonig — ”

Susan dropped the receiver.

12:03.

Gravel crunched.

A wind-bell rang.

Another booming slam. Metal smashing metal. Another scream.

Crying.

Susan’s heart thundered. The scream. The crying.

Randy.

Unsteadily, Susan rose from the bed and drew a flannel bathrobe over her slim shoulders. She stared at the drapes, trying to separate the tangled shadows from the thick, painted lines on the glass.

Randy’s work-boots crunched over the gravel path. His shadow melted across the window.

Susan pulled a cord and the drapes whispered open.

Randy swayed in the bright glow of the full moon, a relieved smile knifed across his sweaty face. His battered, yellow Camaro was parked on the lawn directly behind him, the hood open and smeared with blood. Randy raised the smashed mess that had once been his callused right hand and pressed it against the bedroom window. Splintered bone and torn flesh squealed wetly across the glass, leaving a bloody trail.

Susan sank into the shadows, unable to look away. The horrible squealing sound screamed in her ears.

A backward “e” appeared on the glass.

Finished, Randy stumbled across the gravel path and, one last time, slammed the Camaro’s hood. Metal smashed metal. He sank against the bloody grille and sobbed.

Susan moved to the window, reading the backward writing. Two words.

Forgive me.

A brass wind-bell rang in the willow branches above Randy’s head. Whimpering, he wrapped his ruined hand in his shirttail and closed his eves.

Susan’s hands trembled. Black shadows slithered around her fingers and poured, like cold blood, over her delicate wrists. She winced. The tiny bones beneath her palms grated like sharp stones. Her fingers throbbed.

Staring at her husband, Susan curled her fingers into fists and embraced the pain.