Appliance Graveyard

By Nick VanderWoud

Robin adjusted the camera to fit the super glued skeleton structure into the frame. The form resembled a dog of sorts but had a head and chest that stood upright as if the creature was evolving into a human; it also had three tails made of tiny bones. Behind the assemblage of glossy bones was a section of wall where Robin had hung a black cloth backdrop to make the picture’s contrast sharp in detail. He flicked on an overhead lamp above the desk, which supported the creation, allowing the light to illuminate every feature. Robin then returned behind the tripod for a final look. Once contented, Robin pressed down on the camera and listened for the flash and buzz of a new picture taken.

A computer cable ran from the mounted camera to a laptop computer that sat on Robin’s single bed that hunkered in the bedroom below the lone window blocked out by blinds. Participation ribbons were pinned to the wall below the window sill; other walls were decorated by a variety of posters that exhibited less known superheroes, now retired sports stars, and monster trucks with neon action words and exclamation points cutting across the pictures at offset angles. Robin’s walls had not changed since boyhood. One wall, though, was different. It was swathed with photographs of animal-like skeletal formations, none resembling known animals but instead strange fabricated creatures. All the photos had scientific sounding names written below each one and were categorized biologically.

Robin sat on his bed and placed his laptop on his lap and began uploading his latest photo to a website titled “Neo-Evo-Creation.” He added some text below the photo he had just taken, “Equss Caballus Canis – Discovered in New Mexico, 1913. This creature is kin to the dog family; it was never seen by men and its spirit has left our world behind. ” Robin then chose a song from his computer to play as if feeling celebratory about his latest conception.

“Where’s my fucking cigarettes,” shrieked Robin’s grandmother’s voice from somewhere off in the house they shared. “Robin!” Her shrill voice easily dominated the Petra that sang out from Robin’s hard drive.

“Check the medicine cabinet,” Robin hollered back. He began scrolling through the latest blog entries that members of his website had posted up.

* * *

The pet cemetery, as usual, was empty except for Robin skimming around in his golf cart wearing his overalls. He had been a caretaker at the cemetery since being expelled from high school in grade ten due to his “illness” as they had called it. Robin couldn’t imagine doing anything else for work. The solitude was readily available and he hardly ever had anyone overseeing him anymore since he had the job down to clockwork. He also now had a knack for judging whether or not it would be acceptable to remove the dead flowers next to stone markers, and he also knew almost all the names of the beloved pets that were buried except for the corner lot where rodents were laid to rest. There was just too many of them to keep track of.

Robin stopped his golf cart on the concrete path that snaked through the trimmed lawns when he saw a bouquet of daffodils long since expired sitting next to a squat tombstone that read, “Mr. Adam – Beloved Chameleon and Friend: 1999-1999.” Robin brushed off some moss roots that tried to crawl up the arched stone marker before delicately picking up the withered flowers that could easily fall apart and give him a bigger mess to clean up. Not that he minded the work, for there hadn’t been much for him to do as of late. It was autumn; spring and summer were the high points in a pet cemetery. Robin figured it must be connected to pet owners assuming that their pets wanted to get out into the sunshine just as much as they did regardless of the local traffic, ease of runaways, and exercise given to old hearts. It was also the time of year where the animal shelters reviewed their “stock” and put down anything that appeared on the verge of becoming a permanent guest.

Robin pulled a bone from his pocket when he got back to his golf cart, placing the dead flowers in a bag along with others. He picked off some sinew that clung to the condyle of the bone before slipping it back into his pocket already piecing together what other items he would need for his next creation. A splint bone from a horse was already in the trunk of his car along with a pubic bone from a tabby cat and a corpus sternum that once belonged to a llama named “Chops.” Choosing the skull has always the hardest, but most exciting, part of the process. Although without any new funerals Robin was having a hard time imagining what skull would be a unique choice. He tired of the mundane pets that dominated the plots in the ground. He wished for something different.

Zipping along the pathway, Robin made his way to his work-shed where he threw out the dead flowers and got together what tools he needed for the task he’d decided to conquer for the day.

When he got to the gate, he wasted no time in tearing down the overgrown vines that began piling around his feet. It took only a couple hours to reveal the Gothic style gate that led to the parking lot where guests left their vehicles behind for a time of mourning. The lot was empty, though, except for an older model hearse parked at the far side of the lot. The driver seemed missing. Robin didn’t recall any event scheduled for at least another week, but passed off the stretched black car and returned to piling up the growth he had just ripped down.

* * *

The elementary school room at the Catholic school was poorly lit. The walls were cluttered with crucifixes, children’s paintings depicting Jesus through the ages, and inspirational posters with pictures of rainbows and hang gliders. Robin stared at one child’s work that showed what appeared to be an angel drawn in black crayon holding up a baby while alligators nipped at his feet. Robin wondered what would make an angel care more about a senseless baby than a group of hungry crocs. He wished he could acquire a crocodile skull.

“No Mr. Morton,” the group counselor said in a monotone voice, “you didn’t invent ice cream. People were eating ice cream long before you were born.” The counselor wore a yellow pant suit and was rather homely in her face behind thick-rimmed glasses.

Mr. Morton squirmed awkwardly in his chair made for children, which all the people in the room also sat on in a circle. Mr. Morton coughed into his hand before tucking them both away in his pockets while the counselor scribbled in her notebook. She then pulled out a tape recorder, which she seemed fond of, and recorded: “Mr. Morton continues to tell untruths, all of which portray him as an inventor. He possibly has issue with a father figure who had a gift with inventions.”

Mr. Morton’s eyes moved to the floor and he slipped into silence.

Robin had been coming to these free group sessions for over a year now. Most of the other people who attended had been coming for longer with seemingly no results. It was always at St. Andrew’s Catholic Elementary School about a block or two from Robin’s home. The seating was terrible, the coffee always cold and without cream, but it was an excuse to get out of the house and away from his grandmother and her screeching. And just maybe it would do some good for him.

The counselor finished her notes about Mr. Morton and turned to the man sitting next to Robin who was swirling his cold coffee around in a Styrofoam cup. “And Mr. James, tell me again about your father. And remember, we all want to hear about your actual father, not the womanizing version you’ve been telling us about.” Her voice was like a public broadcasting host’s, flatter than floors.

Mr. James opened his mouth once he finally withdrew his eyes from his cup of black liquid, but no words came out as if there was an internal struggle preventing voice.

“Remember Mr. James, we have already established that Jimmy Carter’s secretary was a Methodist. She never had an affair with your father. She never had an affair with anyone. So I don’t want to hear about that again nor any other fable.” The counselor put a hand to her glasses and pulled them down the bridge of her nose as if daring Mr. James to start in on that again.

Robin tried to shut off his ears; the silent awkwardness was too much to listen to.

“Alright then. We will come back to you Mr. James when you are ready to tell us something about your actual father.” She turned to face Robin, the next in line. “And, Mr. Stall, how have you been this past week? Tell me what you have been doing with yourself.”

Robin rubbed his tongue against the backside of his front teeth, trying to picture the past seven days since he’d spoken to the counselor. “I…I…had brunch with Walt Disney’s niece. She was in town at a conference that was promoting educational children’s entertainment. She found her father’s industry to be a callous exploitation of young minds. I can get you a copy of her book if you want.” Robin squeezed his knee caps with his hands painfully.

“No, Mr. Stall, you didn’t do that. I imagine you went to work, ate three meals a day, and maybe watched some late night television like the rest of us.” The therapist opened her gaze to speak to the entire audience. “And what do we all have to remember? Say it with me…”

A bleak sounding unison of voices recited, “Truth begins with morning tea. But truth does not stop there. It is with us until we rest. There is nothing wrong with normalcy.”

“That’s right, good.” The counselor wrote down a few notes before pulling out her recorder again. “Mr. Stall has a hard time accepting the mundane. He appears to think there is something wrong with being average. His life will not become adventurous. He cannot accept this and therefore resorts to untruths. I think he may be in need of a significant other, someone to give his life stability.”

Robin tapped his heels together like Dorothy, a habit he’d had since a young age after an obsession with the film brought him to watching it daily for over nine years.

“And tell me,” she began again to Robin, “what have you given away this past week, Mr. Stall?”

Robin tried to think about how to answer the questions without it resulting in another public recording of his failure as a human being. What was the truth?

“I gave my neighbor my microwave.”

“And why did you do that, Mr. Stall? Did you tell him you had more than one microwave?”

“No, I told him my cousin worked at an outlet store that had to get rid of their microwave stock to make room for the new shipment of kitchenware.” Robin felt relieved that the truth had flowed from his mouth.

“And is this cousin real?” the counselor asked.

“No,” Robin admitted. “I cleaned and gave him the only microwave I have. I know it was a foolish thing to do and a problem that I have to work on. I guess I’m just over generous. But I’ll make do.”

“No, Mr. Stall. You are not generous. You are a pathological liar. Your untruths forced you to give your neighbor that microwave. You need help because you are helpless.”

For the rest of the session Robin stared at the artwork on the walls, remembering a time when he was at Sunday Mass as a boy. His parent’s had recently passed away and there was ice cream after church. Robin had eaten too much ice cream and made himself sick and thrown up five times in the confessional booth. Other girls his age had laughed and laughed in their Sunday dresses while his grandmother made him clean up the mess with his own Sunday jacket and tie. And the whole time, while his grandmother kept yelling at him, asking him why he ate so much ice cream, all Robin could get out in reply was that “Jesus made him do it.” It was the first of many public displays of Robin’s “illness.” The school girls later made a rhyme about the event to skip rope to.

* * *

When he got home, Robin’s grandmother was in her usual perch in front of the antique television watching CNN with a lit cigarette in hand. On the television a TV personality prattled on about the latest threat to America while a scrolling banner moved across the bottom of the screen, “Killer Bees and WMDs: What’s Next?” A jam-packed ash tray sat on the armrest of his grandmother’s big leather armchair. The only reason Robin knew she was sitting there behind the tall backed chair was from the plumes of smoke that buffeted upwards, filling the room with a slow turning cloud of smoke.

“Did you and your freaks find God?” she rasped over the noise from the television. “Or did you make a suicide pact with Him? At least you won’t die alone.”

Robin moved through the living room into the kitchen, ignoring the usual nastiness his grandmother spat at him, and made a strong drink.

“Your father would castrate himself if he were alive and knew you still were single.” Robin’s grandmother hollered towards the kitchen. “Try the local elementary school, you worthless cunt. Anderson Cooper says American girls are putting out younger these days.”

Robin slammed the rest of his drink down his throat, trying not to let his grandmother’s cackling get to him.

* * *

Adding dead roses to the collection in his hand, Robin squinted against the rare moment of sunshine that peeked through the drab cloud cover. He almost hoped it would rain.

A voice on the other side of a collection of shrubs suddenly came to Robin’s ears like a hummingbird arriving seemingly out of thin air. He ambled around the bushes to see if it was one of the regulars speaking to a deceased cat or dog with a name that usually sounded too much like a child’s.

But it wasn’t someone Robin had ever seen before, he realized, when he caught sight of a woman in a black dress made of lace. The dress did not cover up much and clearly exhibited the matching black bra and panties the woman wore while she talked downwards to a grave marker. She also had a black veil covering her face, however she didn’t seem distressed.

“You would have liked the new place, Charles. It’s got a good view of the river. And there is a man living next to me with a pet cockatiel. You two could have been friends…maybe more.” The woman laughed to herself as if finding humor in the thought of animals fornicating.

Robin sauntered over to get a better look at her, smiling to himself at the one-sided dialogue the woman was having. He ran a hand through his hair and brushed off the loose soil on his shoulders and sleeves.

“May I help you?” he asked, worried that he might startle the woman.

She didn’t even flinch.

“I’m sorry, I was just curious…what kind of pet did you lose?”

“A crow,” she said naturally, seeming to show a willingness to slip into a two-sided dialogue.

“Do crows like flowers?” Robin asked while presenting the mismatched bouquet of dead flowers, the only thing he had to give at the moment.

“It’s a he, and yes he does.”

Robin stepped closer to the woman and extended the flowers to her.

She smelled them deeply. “They’re beautiful. Thank you. My name is Mary.”

Mary lifted her veil to reveal a dark pair of sunglasses covering her eyes, which she also removed before offering her hand to Robin. Her eyes were nearly white they were so pale. Robin took her hand and shook it gently, hoping he didn’t look too grubby. He continued to smile, seeing as it was the only thing left for him to give to Mary.

“My name is Robin.”

* * *

Robin and Mary walked side-by-side along the meandering walkway that toured the pet cemetery in an intertwined loop.

“I can’t believe Jimmy Carter had twelve cats all named Georgia,” Mary said while taking in the naked branches of a cherry tree along the path. “And I never thought anyone interesting ever came here to Plains. The name seems a curse.”

“You’d be surprised,” Robin chimed in again growing more and more comfortable with entertaining this Mary-all-dressed-in-black. “Mark Twain once came to Plains.”

“Really? Why would he come here?” Mary inquired further.

“To hear my great-grandfather’s one-man reenactment of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Why else?” Robin was feeling confident for once in his life with a woman his age. Usually the interaction would involve him telling them some tall tale and them walking away. Robin wasn’t unattractive, just awkward.

“I should come over to your place one time,” Mary suddenly proposed, “for shots and more tales from the cemetery.”

Robin smiled excitedly at the sound of something like a date.

“But maybe next time you could cut the bullshit.”

Robin choked on nothing tangible. His mouth unconsciously started trying to move, but words failed to come out.

“It’s OK, Robin. You seem like a nice enough guy. You certainly are interesting. Most guys talk about their careers and gas mileage and other crap that makes me want to swallow razor blades sideways.”

Robin still struggled to find words. No one except his grandmother and counselor ever called him out, and Mary had shone a bright light of truth into his eyes in under two hours.

“I’m a psychic. I know about bullshit and how to spin a tale of my own. You should hear the things I tell my clients.” Mary bent down and picked up a dried out leaf and began picking it apart in chunks. “Some real six o’clock sensationalism.” She twirled the spine of leaf in the sunlight in front of her eyes as if pleasing her senses. “They love it, though.”

Robin put his hands in his pockets, trying to muster some way of justifying himself without admitting to the uncomfortable truth.

“You do it very well, by the way.”

“Do what?” Robin asked.

Mary suddenly grabbed Robin’s hand as they neared the Gothic gate that lead into the parking lot. She took out a marker and wrote a phone number on Robin’s hand before letting it go.

“Bullshit. You bullshit wonderfully.” Mary smiled and skipped like a school girl into the parking lot towards the black hearse that was again parked.

“Thanks,” Robin whispered to only himself. He stared at the numbers on his hand, Mary’s number, and then watched as she opened the door to the hearse and drove away.

* * *

When Robin walked up onto the stoop of his house, he was still staring at the number on his hand. Then he recalled his grandmother, he couldn’t show her. The mockery and scathing insults would be endless. How could he possibly have Mary over with her there? Robin’s grandmother would probably accuse Mary of being mentally challenged or worse, and then Mary would leave. Robin couldn’t have Mary leave. There had to be Mary. There had never been a Mary.

Robin tried to stifle his smile as he stealthily opened the front door, making sure this latest bone in his pocket didn’t clatter to the floor, trying not to alert his grandmother who undoubtedly would be in her chair, smoking, letting Anderson Cooper and company pack her mind with terror after terror. Although, Robin was convinced she only watched it because she found the social anxieties hilarious, the crotchety bitch.

Tiptoeing across the foyer towards the stairs, Robin looked sideways towards the smoked-out chair and television to see that she was in fact there. He put a hand on the banister of the stairs, nearly away.

“Robin!” his grandmother squalled like a mental patient seeing Lucifer’s face in a bowl of cereal.

Dropping his head in dismay, Robin sauntered back towards the living room to see if he could quickly pacify her, figuring she really just wanted to get in a few insults.

Before Robin could enter the living room, though, she hollered again. “You’ve got guests!”

Robin’s confusion was only matched by his concern that his grandmother had gotten a clever scheme in mind to torture him with. It had happened before.

But when Robin entered the living room he discovered a number of actual guests sitting on the couches and floor. Robin’s grandmother was standing hunched over with a cane in hand, leaning against her armchair wearing her usual tracksuit covered with burn holes. This tracksuit was cyan and flecked with pink and yellow checkers that made comet like patterns down the arms and legs. She stood with a wicked grin on her face, smoking of course, and her smile got even wider when she saw Robin looking dumbfounded.

“Don’t be so fucking rude, Robin,” she beamed. “Say hello to your guests.”

The “guests” were comprised of six young men and one woman none who could be older than twenty five. They all wore blue hoodies, khakis, and white shoes; their hoods were pulled over their hair and their hands were neatly folded in their laps. They smiled in unison when Robin entered.

One of the guests stood up in one smooth motion, keeping his back straight the entire way up; he was starry-eyed like the rest and clean shaven like a salesman.

“Greetings, my name’s Henry, and may I speak for all of us when I say we are ecstatic to finally meet you. The Neo-Evo-Creationists are finally gathered. It was not easy to find you, sir.” Henry’s voice was fortified with bedazzlement as if he were meeting his maker.

Robin stared blankly.

“You got a staring problem, Rob? Quit being a prick tease and greet your guests.” Clearly Robin’s grandmother was more than just a little amused by the situation.

“Who are you?” Robin asked.

Henry looked a little thrown back by Robin’s visible confusion. “We are the Neo-Evo-Creationists. We are here to see…them.” They way Henry said “them” made Robin uneasy.

“You are what?” Robin couldn’t help but ask again trying to remember if what untruths he had said to strangers as of late.

“They’re a cult, you douche-bag!”

“You’ve come to see…them?”

“That sideshow of yours! They want to see your freak-show collection of skeletons. Christ, Robin, wake up.” Robin’s grandmother put out her cigarette on the top of the leather chair and sunk back into her usual arrangement growing impatient with the scene.

“We have come to learn the way,” Henry chimed in again, the others like him nodding enthusiastically. “We are hungry for transcendence. We are in need.”

“Can I offer you dinner then?” Robin immediately cursed himself, his illness, for trying to give what he didn’t want to give.

Robin’s grandmother turned up her news station and cackled like a feasting jackal.

* * *

Sitting on his bed, staring at the number on his hand, Robin leaned over and picked up the rotary phone on the floor and began to dial.

Across his bedroom, a pair of N.E.C.s sat on their knees in front of Robin’s latest skeletal structure. It was eerie with a pair of delicate wing-like formations and a small rabbit’s skull. The two stared reverently at it, rubbing one another’s backs.

Robin put the phone to his ear when it started to ring. But when the voice on the other end answered it was a very monotonous Mary. “Hello. If you are calling in regards to Ms. Dalloway’s Pet Psychic Hotline call back between the hours of nine and five. If you are calling about the hearse for sale, leave your name and number and I will get back to you. Thank you. Beep.”

Robin, disappointed, figured he’d leave a message anyway. “Hi Mary, it’s Robin.”

“Robin? Hi there. That didn’t take you long to call.”

“What? Mary? That wasn’t the answering machine?” Robin laid back down on the bed, ignoring the N.E.C.s, a smile forming.

“No, it was me. I’m just not in the mood for my usual callers. They call at all hours on the night. It get’s tiresome but I need the business. You know?” Mary’s voice was now as Robin remembered it.

Robin’s tongue and throat slipped into the usual rhythm. “Well, I have some friends I could get to call your hotline if you like?”

On the other end, Mary chuckled. “I doubt you have many friends, Robin.”

Robin bit at his tongue, trying to remember the advice from the counselor. Truth begins with morning tea. But truth does not stop there. It is with us until we rest. There is nothing wrong with normalcy.

“But if you ever feel inclined,” Mary continued, “you can call and pretend to have a pet iguana with depression. You’re more than welcome to.”

“Maybe I will sometime. I used to have a pet chinchilla but my next door neighbor’s hamster fell in love with it. I had to give it up. Can’t interrupt anything for love, my neighbor would always say.”

“That’s a nice story. Where’d you hear that? Read it in a book or something?” Mary asked playfully.

“No. That’s one of my own.”

“I was thinking, Robin-from-the-pet-cemetery, that I should come over tomorrow. We can have a drink or two, maybe play truth or dare or something. What do you think?”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Robin replied honestly, lifting his head up to look at the N.E.C.s. They still were in some sort of weird worship trance, ogling the skeleton like it were pulsating life and was not just some glued together bones. “I make the best stir-fry. A recipe my uncle stole from the locales when serving in Vietnam.”

“No he didn’t,” Mary laughed. “Let’s say…sixish?”

* * *

The next day, the day when Mary was to come over around “sixish”, Robin awoke in a panic and stormed downstairs. All he had to do was shut off his illness for a short time and make his sudden cult get out of his house. Robin’s affliction, though, came out in hospitality and giving. The summer before, he had to purchase a new television for his grandmother after giving away the old one to a couple of teenage boys who came to the door trying to sell chocolates for a sports team fundraiser. The chocolates had not quelled his grandmother’s wrath; it was a poor exchange he had to admit.

When Robin burst into the living room, expecting to see a host of blue hoodies and khakis, he only discovered his grandmother opening a fresh carton of Camels, cursing under her breath.

“Where are they?” Robin exclaimed, hoping that somehow someway his problem was resolved. “Did they leave?”

His grandmother flicked her hand at a smoldering hole forming on her track pants where some hot ash had began melting them. “No, they’re washing the windows outside. Leave them be.”

Robin wheeled around to see an N.E.C. staring back at him with a stupid grin on his face while he wiped wet streaks off the window with a wad of newspaper. He waved to Robin. “You have got to get rid of them. They think I’m some sort of guru or something.”

“Hell, keep ‘em around. I miss bossing around children. Get ‘em to rub my feet, paint the house, clean the gutters. Retards like them aren’t good for much else.”

“But they’re going to ruin everything,” Robin exclaimed.

His grandmother turned her head languorously to look Robin in the eyes, her mouth cracking into a tar-stained smirk. “Ruin what? Your precious solitude? You’d fit right in with them for Christ’s sake.”

Robin dropped into a squat beside the blistered armchair and buried his face in his hands, groaning.

His grandmother patted his head, ash falling into his unkempt hair and down behind his ears. “If you could just grow a pair…you could kill them.”

Robin huffed; his grandmother throughout his life had been less helpful than a genital rash on Valentine’s Day. “Yah, I’ll write that one down on the to-do-list.”

“No one would miss freaks like them,” she hissed. “You should understand that.”

Robin tried once more, earnestly looking into his grandmother’s gray eyes. “Please. Grandma. Get rid of them.”

She didn’t seem to even be listening. “You can practice on me,” she brayed sardonically, butting out another smoldering filter on the armrest. “Get a shovel you pansy. I’m ready to stare God in his big Jewish eyes.”

* * *

Robin intentionally dressed as similar to the N.E.C.s as he could muster from his wardrobe before he went back downstairs. They were all sitting cross-legged on the floor around grandmother’s chair, watching CNN with her. Everyone except for Robin’s grandmother polished silverware with blank looks on their faces.

Robin quietly entered the room and tapped Henry on the shoulder, motioning for him to follow. He had been sitting upstairs in his room for the last three hours while the N.E.C.s did house chores, trying to devise a way to get rid of them, or, more accurately, he had to come up with a way of overcoming his own mouth.

Robin brought Henry into the kitchen and sat him down across from him at the dinner table that had a laminate top that matched the butterfly pattern on the floor.

“Henry, I’ve been doing a lot of…meditating, and, I’ve realized I need to ask you a few questions to be better understand you,” Robin began imagining a lockbox snapping shut on his ill-voice. “Tell me how you have come to be Neo-Evo-Creationists.”

“Three years ago,” Henry began with his usual pacified expression, “an animal I’d never seen before or even heard of came to me in a dream just like the others. It spoke to us in a foreign language not ever spoken by man, yet completely understandable, and it told us that we were living in sin. It told me that what I called Earth was actually a construct of the collective unconsciousness where suffering is the landscape. Illusion is the atmosphere. The ocean is fluid indulgence. And these bodies of breaking flesh are simply manifestations of our selfishness, our flawed want for pleasure. No one can amount to anything while here. None of us.” Henry looked past Robin out the window as if seeing into the future. “We need to transcend, sir. We believe we are ready.”

Robin tried to keep up with the dialogue, not accustom to the lofty language of spirituality. He tried to think. He needed to fix this, get rid of these…

“Cocksucker!” Robin’s grandmother hollered at the television screen, likely to a colored politician giving his or her opinion on America’s state of affairs.

Henry turned in his chair as if drawn to the sound of another voice, Robin had to refocus him. “What…what about before that? What did you guys do before your dreams?”

“We went to church.”

“Church?” Robin expected something far more unusual.

“Yes. Scientology. Latter Day Saints. Society of Friends. Promise Keepers. We neared the spiritual but never understood what we sought until we were visited by your animals. And then found them on the world wide web.”

“Yes. My animals,” Robin trailed off his mind trying to get ahead of the conversation so as to control it.

“But why am I telling you all this,” Henry said with an air of respect. “You already know all of this. Of course you know. You sent them to us.”

Robin nodded sternly trying to play the role of guru. “Yes. Of course. And, you know what my…my…student,” Robin tried not to falter. But his damn tongue of untruths got the best of him. “Do you want a glass of orange juice?” Robin clenched at his knees under the table.

Henry simply shook his head and stared glassily at Robin. Immediately Robin could tell Henry’s short attention span was going to get away from him quickly.

“That was the final test,” Robin said with dramatic flair. “You have found me. You are the firsts to find me. You are ready. You have learned all you need to know.”

Grinning widely in anticipation, Henry refocused on Robin’s words like a stoned man coming to notice a bright light.

Robin, as he had somewhat planned before in his bedroom, slowly, significantly, pulled out a single bone from his pocket and looked Henry in the eye to make sure he had his utter attention. “Transcendence.”

As Robin little by little brought the bone closer to Henry, Henry’s eyes became wider and wider as if an entire cosmos were being offered to him. He raised a shaking hand and accepted the bone like a newborn mother being passed her infant for the first time.

“This is all you need now. Keep it with you always. It has enough energy stored in the marrow to transport you all through space-time. It is the hip bone from the Campus-Ordanus-Gylectic, the first one ever discovered. It, like you, left this Earth behind.”

Henry tenderly rubbed the bone against his cheek as tears mounted in his eyes. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” He got up all of sudden and dashed into the living room and announced the news to everyone.

“We are leaving! It is time.”

* * *

Robin slumped down into a chair in his room and checked the time: 4:12 p.m. There was still time enough for the N.E.C.s to vacate his home before Mary arrived. Although Robin wasn’t exactly sure how their “leaving” would go. If all went well, she would come and they’d have a lovely dinner away from his grandmother and everything would be great.

Robin, grabbing a towel, found some decent looking clean clothes and headed for the shower with imaginary dialogue spinning in his mind like the clothes he had hoped to wash in a washing machine.

* * *

The N.E.C.s sat in a circle around the coffee table on their knees with the bone positioned in the center of the ring; they all stared fervently as if in silent meditation.

In the background, the television suddenly got quieter. Robin’s grandmother slowly poked her head around the edge of the armchair with a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth. She tediously got to her feet, the same burn-holed tracksuit from the day before covering her aged body like a Mexican blanket thrown over a withered tree. She leaned heavily into her cane.

“So, you freaks think you are ready, do you?” she wheezed from the effort of moving her bent frame around.

Henry swung his head towards her voice like a kitten drawn to string. “Yes ma’am. We are preparing to leave now. We are uniting our spirits.”

“Well, if you’re going to leave, you’ll need one last drink,” she said kicking the nearest N.E.C. with a foot covered by a nicotine-stained slipper. “I need one too.”

“A last supper?” Henry inquired eager at the thought of ceremony.

“No, you moron. I said last drink. There’s no time for all that. Jesus should’ve skipped his last supper, finished Judas off in an alley. A shank in the back.”

“But I thought Jesus was love,” started one of the other male N.E.C.s near Robin’s grandmother legs.

“Shut up and go get some orange juice, Juliet.” She hit him with her cane firmly, causing the N.E.C. to scuttle off to the kitchen for a round of final drinks.

“I…I think…” Henry stumbled under the gaze of the elderly woman.

“You think nothing,” she interrupted. “I say you’re thirsty, so you’re thirsty.”

“But we are supposed to fast before the last libation.” Henry tried explaining the ceremonial timeline but in vain.

Robin’s grandmother snorted back some phlegm. “This is America, you pussy. My forefather’s didn’t die so you could starve yourself. Do you think this is Africa?”

The N.E.C.s had concerned looks on their faces, but they complied with the ominous old woman out of fear.

“What’s taking him so long?” Robin’s grandmother looked back over her shoulder to see what was happening on the television. “Ah, the hell with it…” she trailed off, moving towards a tall wooden cabinet with drawers, snuffing out her cigarette on a porcelain figure of a child praying that sat on a fluted end table. She pulled open a drawer containing a Bible, a letter opener, a box of bullets, and an old luger.

“Remember everyone; transcendence will bring you into the light. We all go into the brightness of a promised future,” Henry preached to the others who listened intently.

“A promised future,” they all echoed in unison while Robin’s grandmother lifted up the letter opener, looked at it, dropped it, muttered some curses, and began loading the bullets into the luger.

The N.E.C. from the kitchen finally returned with a serving tray of orange drinks for everyone and set it down beside Robin’s bone that he’d given to Henry. They all scooted up closer to the coffee table and linked hands on their knees, bowing their heads as if praying to the bone in the center.

Robin’s grandmother turned to face the host of N.E.C.s with the loaded gun in one hand, the cane in the other, and hobbled closer.

“OK, you first,” she said to the nearest cult member, striking him again with her cane so he turned to face her.

“Do not break the energy circle,” Henry shouted while the horrified expressions on the N.E.C.s faces were passed around.

Lifting the luger with a shaky hand, she pointed it at the neck of the young man where the base of his hood touched his shoulder.

She fired a shot and the N.E.C.s trachea tore apart in a gust of blood that sploshed across the coffee table, soaking other blue hoodies, sending the bone skittering across the table. Everyone froze, hands still clasped even to the lifeless body of their once ally.

“Now the lez,” Robin’s grandmother said, turning to face the lone woman in the group whose body roiled for a few seconds after taking a bullet in the chest.

“Transcendence is a bitch, isn’t it?”

* * *

When Robin got out of the shower he heard a loud shot from downstairs.

The phone in his room rang. It was likely Mary.

He stood in the hallway staring at the stairwell in a towel; he ran into his room to answer the phone, dropping the clothes he had discovered to be dirty on the floor.

“Hello! Hello!”

“Yes, hello, my name is Curtis Schooner and I am calling from the Heart and Lung Foundation and we just wondering if we could have a minute of your time, sir?”

Robin’s muscles twitched as his mouth said, “Yes, of course, I have all day for you.”

There was another blast downstairs. And then another.

“Thank you, that is very kind of you. You see, we are just calling people at their place of residence to find out if they are willing to donate to out charity. You see, we believe that—”

“Yes, yes. I’ll donate eight thousand dollars. Just send me the paper work,” Robin’s words rushed out of his mouth like artillery fire.

“Well my, oh my, sir, that is very generous of you.” Another discharge sounded from the first floor. “We will send you out the paper work ASAP.”

“OK, great. Bye.” Robin hung up the phone abruptly already reaching for whatever articles of clean clothing were close by.

By the time he hit the top of the stairs, yanking pants over his naked bottom half, there was yet another noise that sounded terrifyingly like a gun shot. And then another. The only thing Robin could picture was police storming his home thinking he’d kidnapped and brainwashed a group of twenty-year-olds into doing his bidding. But when he burst into the living room it was much worse.

Henry stared up at his grandmother who was loading more bullets into her father’s old luger; he was frozen in terror, clenching the hands of the dead bodies to his left and right. Blood was everywhere. The corpses were torn open like butchered cattle all around the room.

“What the fuck!” Robin screamed so hard it seized his throat.

Finished loading the gun, Robin’s grandmother put a cigarette in her tight slit of a mouth and began padding her pockets down for a lighter. Finding none, she put the tip of the gun to the end of the cigarette and fired off another round, punching a hole in the ceiling.

The cigarette smoldered to life as ceiling dust fell over the bodies.

“Jesus Christ!”

Henry turned and gave Robin an almost relieved look as if his savior had arrived. “Will you be joining us in paradise, sir?”

Lowering the gun towards Henry’s chest, Robin’s grandmother took a long drag before blasting Henry back towards the wall, his hands finally wretched free from the others.

The room was now silent except for the television news where an announcer talked zealously about how the president would handle the latest social outcries.

“You owe me, sonny.” Robin’s grandmother put the gun back in the drawer and picked up a glass of orange juice, sipping it on her way back to her chair.

“Why did you shoot them? Fuck! They were going to leave!”

“They were thirsty. But too slow. Don’t kids know how to do anything right?”

Robin, biting his bottom lip, tried frantically to make his mind come up with an excuse for the police who were bound to find out. “God. OK, OK…here’s what we are going to say. We were out of town, visiting a friend. No! A cousin. No!”

“Just tell them the truth, you closet case.” She laughed maniacally, putting her half finished glass of orange drink down beside her armchair, smoke gusting up making the room look like a movie set rather than Robin’s actual living room.

Suddenly there was a knock on the front door.

“Robin? You in there?” It was Mary. She was early.

Robin stiffened from neck to ankle as if a blood clot had just chugged into his heart’s first chamber.

The sound of the doorknob turning sent the congealed wad of blood into Robin’s second chamber like a fist passing through a pinhole.

Mary’s entered the house, her footsteps slamming the coagulation into his third chamber. Robin’s chest felt like he couldn’t handle the fourth chamber, as if it would kill him instantaneously.

Mary entered the living room and stopped short, seeing the bodies on the floor and on the couch. Robin turned to face her, cringing hard.

“Well, this is unexpected,” Mary said nonchalantly. “Do you have a cult on the go? Or had on the go? What’s up Robin?”

Robin released his bodily tension slightly realizing Mary wasn’t screaming bloody murder.

“Sort of,” Robin mustered, “they kind of just showed up. I don’t actually know them.”

Mary shrugged casually. “Weird. What’s for dinner?”

“Robin, tell your slut to shut her trap,” scathed a voice from behind the chair, though, quieter than usual. “I’m trying to watch something that actually matters here.” Robin’s grandmother yawned, letting her cigarette fall to the floor with a scattering of other butts.

Robin and Mary moved into the kitchen, away from the plumes of smoke and the buzz of CNN’s proclamations.

“How about that shot?” Mary asked, sitting down at the table of her own accord.

Robin took a deep breath, trying to gather himself while Mary put her purse on the tabletop.

“Yes. Of course.” Robin walked over towards the fridge and countertops, kicking closed the cabinet door below the sink. But before he pulled open the cabinet door where the liquor was kept he picked up the orange drink crystals, put them away, then put the lid on the rat poison that was on the counter and put it back under the sink where it belonged. He grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka and two shot glasses and joined Mary at the table, pouring two shots.

“Cheers,” Mary said.

Robin reciprocated. “Cheers.”

“But what are we toasting to?” Mary asked with an arched brow, clearly enjoying her time with Robin-from-the-graveyard, as she called him before. The shots lingered in the air.

“To Charles,” Robin said with a raise of his shot glass. “May his crow spirit forever soar above the ethereal mists of bird heaven, collecting the shiniest trinkets for his abundant nest heavy with young.”

“That was beautiful, Robin. Charles would have liked you.” Mary smiled. “Charles and I always enjoyed the same things.” Mary stuck her tongue into the shot glass after the downed them and gleaned every bit of fluid within the cup before looking up into Robin’s eyes unabashedly. “What’s for dinner?”

Robin made a stir-fry, nothing to write home about, which Mary seemed to enjoy enough. Together they had more shots and shared stories from their pasts, some of Robin’s being truthful. Mary called him out on almost every one that wasn’t true; he grinned, making a game of the arrangement.

After dinner and more drinks, Robin and Mary brought their dishes to the sink and started washing them together, occasionally brushing shoulders, now both feeling tipsy.

“How long have you been telling stories for,” Mary asked.

“Pretty much my whole life. I think I watched too much television. Or maybe I just learned to entertain myself while being raised by my super fun grandmother.”

“What happened to your parents?” Mary asked, uncommonly comfortable asking difficult questions.

“I never knew my father, and my mother died delivering me due to birthing complications. That is all I’ve ever known of them. My grandmother won’t tell me anymore than that.”

“I don’t know what’s sadder: a boy growing up with no parents or a boy raised by a combination of television and her,” Mary made a head gesture towards the living room where Robin’s grandmother was watching television with an unprecedented amount of silence.

“I used to read far too much Nancy Drew. I always wanted her to get kidnapped and locked way in a cellar. But she always got away. Clever little snob.”

“You must have been a terrifying child.”

Both Robin and Mary laughed.

“Pretty much,” Mary agreed. “I always did poorly in English class because I never came to the common reaction when it was time to analyze literature. I was always the kid who ‘didn’t get it.’”

Mary put down the last dry dish while Robin drained the sink of dirty water, toweling down his hands.

“Living room?” Mary propositioned simply.

“Sure.”

Slightly stumbling, Mary and Robin walked into the living room where the bodies remained, like the bullet holes, in the same positions. The television’s racket filled the room.

“Grandma? What do you say about going to bed early tonight?” Robin asked tentatively.

There was no response.

“Grandma? Bed?” Robin tried again drunkenly.

Finally, Robin got up and moved over towards his grandmother to see a cigarette filter sitting in her mouth with a cylinder of ash protruding off it. Robin poked his grandmother’s face then slapped it before looking over to Mary shrugging.

“I’ll get the bottle,” Mary said excitedly as if the death of Robin’s grandmother was something to be celebrated.

Robin dragged the armchair towards the corner of the room, clearing a view of the television for him and Mary.

When Mary returned, without glasses, she grabbed Robin by the hand and brought him down on to the couch with her between the two bodies that slumped against and on the piece of furniture. They both took swigs out of the bottle without the need for cups. Mary pushed the nearest one on to the floor with her foot before wedging the liquor bottle between the legs of the other cadaver on the other side of Robin that hunched over the couch like a piece of human furniture.

She looked deeply into Robin’s eyes while the television poured out familiar rhetoric about terrorism and responsibility. Mary moved closer to him so their thighs pressed up together and their hip bones connected. Robin put his hand on her leg sheathed in sheer stockings patterned with sharp fern leaves. One of Robin’s rough fingernails snagged her stockings as he thrust his hand awkwardly up her thigh, catching nylon threads on his shredded finger nail and tearing a hole that stretched below the top of her boot to just under the hem of her tight black skirt. Robin wanted to follow the tear, and he must have looked too long at it, appearing reluctant.

Mary laughed, amused by the ruining of her stockings. “Just take them off.”

Robin, realizing he had to remove her boots before he would be able to start in on the stockings, moved back up to kiss her mouth. She took his kiss briefly, and then pushed his head southwards.

“Take them off, Robin,” she said again, parting her thighs.

Robin adjusted his position so that he could attack the zippers hidden on the insides of her knees, dangling between each inner-calf. He cleared his throat as he fumbled with the tiny zipper pulls. Finally he caught the first one in his grasp and tugged quickly, wrenching the boot off and tossing it to the side. The second one presented a greater challenge as the zipper seemed stuck. He tugged and tugged at it until Mary bent down to help him. She smiled with pretend coy as she kicked the boot off easily, and then did him the courtesy of hiking up her skirt so that he could access the waistband of her torn stockings.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and she forced his head once again in the direction of her desire. He ripped her stockings off with haste, and paused in a moment of celebration when he discovered that she had not been wearing anything underneath them.

Mary reclined as Robin moved on top of her. He couldn’t figure out, at first, why she started to laugh. He stared at her, panicked, until he saw a N.E.C.’s leg jutting out from underneath her, an ankle peaking out of khakis between her wild strands of hair. Robin’s laughter matched hers, escalating until it was nearly overwhelming.

“Should I move him?” she asked.

“I don’t think you should,” he replied, after the last coughs of laughter died down. “It’s sexier if you don’t.”

“This is fucking weird,” she said, grinning. “I’m laying on his ass. I love it.”

“I want to give you something, Mary,” he said, running his fingers though her hair clumsily, grazing the N.E.C.’s leg beneath her with his hand.

“Oh yeah?” She kissed him lightly on his open mouth.

“Yeah. I want you to have my virginity,” he said, studying her face for a reaction.

No reaction came for what seemed like a very long while. He wanted something to register on her face, some shock or amusement or delight or horror, but there was nothing.

“Oh, god,” she said, smirking at last. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’ve never fucked a girl before?” She chuckled. “Alright. Fine, give it to me. I’ll gladly take it Robin-from-the-cemetery.”

Relief nearly drowned Robin, and he felt himself growing ready. In a moment, he was hard, and then, a moment later, he was inside of her, pushing until she shouted out: “Robin! Stop!”

He stopped his pace. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s not a race,” she said. “Get up, turn over.”

Robin got up, reclined on the couch beside the corpse. Mary slid her knee between them as she mounted Robin, knocking the leg off the couch and moving the body half onto the floor. The bottle spilled into Mary, and she caught it, taking a swig as she resumed with Robin.

“Mary,” Robin said, looking past Mary’s form above him. “Mary!” He called. “Stop!”

Robin could see the dead of his grandmother’s eyes staring at him while Mary slid up and down on his lap. “Could you please turn her around?” He asked, pointing at the slumped old body of his grandmother.

“Too much for you?” She laughed and then obliged.

In the morning, Robin made Mary breakfast along with a pot of tea in which Mary poured a healthy amount of honey. Robin, feeling abnormally chirpy, softly sang a song his grandmother used to sing to him while clearing off their dishes. Strangely, he couldn’t help but imagine the breakfast refuse to be what scarce memories he had of his grandmother pouring away down the drain. She had passed on, or died, or transcended, or whatever with the N.E.C.s and that was all there was to it. The only thoughts going through Robin’s head was the adage his counsellor repeated every meeting, “Truth begins with morning tea. But truth does not stop there. It is with us until we rest. There is nothing wrong with normalcy.”

“You should probably do something about them, eh Robin?” Mary nodded towards the living room.

“Yeah, I know. You’re right.”

“They smell like seaweed.”

Robin moved back towards the kitchen table to his seat across from Mary but couldn’t sit down before leaning across the table. Mary understood, and they kissed across the table.

“You have to try my tea,” Mary said when Robin finally sat back down. “It’s delightful.”

Robin took a sip and savored the thought that he was sharing Mary’s cup of tea.

* * *

Sitting on the living room floor amid bodies and blood stains, Robin and Mary both sat cross-legged on the floor. Robin’s grandmother faced them with a beard and angry eye brows made of ink on her face.

“Truth or dare?” Mary asked with mock seduction.

Robin, again sharing a number of drinks with Mary, didn’t notice the slur in his voice. “Dare.”

“What? Are you afraid of truth?”

Robin laughed heartily until Mary couldn’t help but do the same.

“I dare you…”Mary paused, “…to wear my panties!”

Robin grinned boyishly.

“Alright. But as a counter dare, I dare you to help me burry these bodies,” Robin pointed obviously at the stiff bodies of the N.E.C.s. “They are starting to reek.”

“Deal. And I’ve got the perfect car. No one seems to want to buy it and it’ll work out smashingly for this.”

“Beautiful.”

* * *

Robin shoveled dirt into a fresh grave while Mary pointed a flashlight towards his workings. Robin hadn’t even bothered to decide which area of the pet cemetery would be ideal for burying human bodies. He just shoved them into whatever grave he felt like digging up.

“This would go a lot faster is I wasn’t so restricted,” Robin complained teasingly.

Mary laughed heartily. “My underwear is not that small!”

“Is that the last of them,” Robin said looking back towards the parking lot where Mary’s hearse sat parked in the dark.

“That’s it, that’s all,” Mary pealed into the dead of night. “Now…let’s take a walk, my dear, and go find Nancy Drew and kidnap her.”

Robin, tossing the shovel out into the darkness, took the flashlight from Mary’s hand and pointed it out into their forthcoming steps. Everything felt right. The night. The cold air. Mary was a serum that undermined everything Robin regretted.

Together, they walked out into the night, content, bumping each other off stride.

* * *

There was a buzz about the pet cemetery. News teams positioned themselves to get the best possible shot of the grave sites where human limbs poked out of the earth like peacock feathers.

An anchorman stood in front of a camera making dramatic hand gestures while he delivered what limited information he had about the scene of the crime. “A bizarre scene at a local pet cemetery today. A number of human bodies were discovered buried within the graves of beloved pets. There appears to be a team of similarly dressed young folk and the body of an elderly woman with an unsolved past that cannot be pieced together by local experts. Reports say that the anonymous woman has never filed for income tax nor has she ever been legitimately married. That is all we know about her. All reports on the deceased have brought up more and more questions. But we have tracked down the care taker of the pet cemetery and he has obliged to answer us some of our questions.”

Robin stepped in front of the camera and smiled mirthfully. “Hello America!”

“Now what can you tell us about the morose scene today?” the reporter asked seriously with a hand directing his own question towards the police officers with mustaches leaning into shovels, standing around graves being dug up in the backdrop.

“Well, actually I can tell you the whole story. My grandmother, a horrible bitch, you see, killed them all. They were going to kill themselves anyway, or so I assume, but she took the initiative and ended their lives for them. Cults seem to do that kind of thing anyway.” Robin tried to give his most adoring smile into the camera that turned to capture his face.

“Sir, how do you know all of this,” the reporter asked vacillating between surprise and disgust

“Me and my fiancée buried them about two weeks ago. It was kind of blurry though. We were both kind of drunk.”

Robin reached off camera and pulled a beaming Mary into the shot. She still wore all black, and he squeezed her tightly around the shoulders. Mary adorned a necklace that seemed to resemble two small human vertebrae.

“Sir, this is no laughing matter. People have died.”

Robin and Mary raised imaginary shot glasses and drank them back, but not before toasting to someone named “Charles.”

The camera man let the camera slump towards the ground when the anchorman started pushing Robin out of the shot. “Get these two jokers out of here for Christ’s sake! This is the news, not some freak-show. Piss off.”