Milk-Blood (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen: Lilly Has To Go to the Basement

“
They take my house, they take my family. They been taking things forever.”

The
Red-Man screamed this, but not at me, but at the pile of bodies in the bathtub. My father was on top, eyes closed, blood streaming from his nose into the water, and the side of his head bruised purple. His blood was thick, nearly chunky, not like Grandmas, which was thin as water. Grandma’s skin was turning different shades of dark, like a grey rainbow, and at her feet was the skull. Just a part of what could be my mother.

I wasn’t even sure
if the Red-Man knew I was there until he turned to me

“
Check date is tomorrow. I get money then but I need a house. A new one. Well, I’m taking this one. Burning down this house and then coming back to live here.”

“Why? Why?” I
cried. I couldn’t believe I could even talk. My insides trembled like I was freezing to death.

“
You let them board up my house and left me there. You ran from me. And this dad who says he’s raising you. You call him Dad? You know he killed Oscar don’t you know? Burned him right up. Reaping what he sowed. Getting what he deserves, you see. Everything is changing tonight.”

He was right, and I knew that. Nothing would be the same.

“You, you have a choice. You can stay with me and burn it down, or I can do you like the others and put you in the basement. What will it be?”

“Don’t touch me again. My uncle is next door. Police are coming. “

“Get to the basement. Get there now.”

I
would not go to the basement. I got up out of the corner and dashed by him. Where to run? I didn’t know, so I grabbed the shovel in the doorway and swung it at the Red-Man. It made contact, right in the knee, and the metal gonged like it was a musical instrument. He cussed in pain. I was free.

I was quick to the front door
.
Go to Nelson’s. Someone will help. Go there.
My hand grasped the knob and started to spin. The door was locked. It wouldn’t move. I twisted the lock with shaking hands and turned the handle again. The door opened. Fresh, cold air seeped in.

Slam.

The fresh air was cut right off. The Red-Man was behind me and his outstretched palm smashed into the door and forced it shut. I turned, looked up at his eyes, which already seemed to be on fire.

“The basement.
Like Oscar, you’re going down with this house. You can stay there forever, and talk to me from the ashes. Talk to me like Oscar.”

He grabbed
my arm and his skin burned hot. I tried to twist but couldn’t. He was full of more anger and crazy than my dad ever was. By the time his other arm snagged me, all the twists and kicks with my legs to break free didn’t matter.

The basement door was open and easy to
find. He carried me there like a doll.

“After it burns, then we can talk.”

He dropped me at the top of the stairs and slammed the basement door. I fell down one step and grabbed the handrail to not fall all the way. I waited there. I heard shuffling. I pushed the door back open and he slammed it shut again.

“
You stayin in there. It’s okay. Don’t be scared of the basement.”

I waited. Would he hurt me?
Maybe not. He’s crazy, and I can stay down here until daybreak. Protective service will come to save me, take me away to a new family. They will be here soon. Just one night in this dark, stinky basement. I can do that. When you get hurt this bad and scared like I am, something has to come in and save you, right? Both my parents are dead, that’s why James had to escape in the peach.

I
sat on the top stair and looked down. The staircase seemed like it was covered with bathtub blood. It felt like something down there was waiting for me. Breathing. Something that could only live in basements and wanted me with it. I hated it. Whenever I came down here, I’d just grab laundry off the pile quick as I could, turn off the light behind me, and run fast so the dark couldn’t catch me. I tried to stay in the light.

No, this wasn’t safe.

I turned the basement doorknob again. It twisted. I pushed, but nothing. It was blocked. Something big blocked the other side. I smashed my shoulder into the door but it didn’t give. I was trapped, and had to go down.

Chapter Fifteen
: Jervis Makes Plans

This house would do, but how to burn it? He looked about the room, and saw a bottle of 100-proof vodka. It sat on the table like a can of gasoline delivered from God. He would drink some and pour the rest on the curtains, on the walls, on the furniture, and watch it ignite.

He had lighters in his pocket. This place would
burn. Firemen would come 30 minutes later and hose it down, not enough to save it for normal people, but enough for someone like him. Enough that others would abandon it and leave the house so he could come back.

The girl would be here, the ashes of her mother would be her
e, the man who burned down Oscar would go down—all of it. Jervis was master again. He would watch it burn from the street. He could find somewhere to stay for a few days, and then come back when everyone had gone. He’d return after check date, 3547, with money. A real master again in a new house abandoned by everyone. But he’d live here with all he knew—his girl in the basement, her mother in the tub, and his new family all here.

The
refrigerator was held tight up against the basement door. After he had unplugged and moved it, even the cockroaches underneath knew it was time to go and scurried for safety. Now nobody could bust out of the basement.

He waited for the voices to come
and tell him how bad he was. That he was a devil. They didn’t. They can’t get him here. Not when he was like this. He sat on the couch and started flicking the lighter. There was life in the flame. He held it against the side of the couch. The fabric burned, but didn’t flame, only melted. The smell hit his nose and the smoke sizzled in his nostrils. He would use the vodka. Make it burn.

This was home now.

Chapter Sixteen
: Lilly’s Last Chapter

The basement seemed to echo. The basement seemed to breath
e. Like I was inside someone’s lungs and the walls went in and out, in and out, with each breath. My heart was racing and each heartbeat was faster than the last, like a drum solo that had to end soon.

Footsteps shuffled upstairs,
then stopped. Was he really going to burn this place down? I tried to figure out what he was doing by the creaks of the wood. I would rather be in the fire upstairs than down here in this dungeon. I sat with my back to the wall with my legs curled up against me. The basement was quiet and frozen. I stared everything down for any hint that something might try to hurt me.

The furnace stood in the middle, with tubes that lead to secret places.
I hated to hear it rattle. Every time I came down here I was terrified it would rattle. Usually it did not, but the few times it did it made me jump. Now it sat silently and mocked me, teased me. The washer and dryer stood by like two cold robots. In between were piles of clothes that lay unwashed, some for months. Stains of colored puddles were splattered on the concrete floor from leaks. Used syringes and tiny plastic caps from Uncle Nelson were nestled in a New Balance shoe box and then shoved in the corner as if hidden. A Lazy Boy chair with big rips sat in one corner, with broken curtains laid on top. A vacuum cleaner that didn’t work but whined real loud stood upright. A ping-pong table with broken legs that stopped it from standing lay against the wall. My dad said he’d fix it for me but now the legs would certainly remain broken.

More footsteps
upstairs. Floorboards creaked. The basement silence retreated. He was doing something. I needed help.

I went back to the top of the stairs.
My feet clanged on the metal strips on the staircase and it hurt my ears. Nobody else could hear though, nobody at all knew I was here. I was too tired to scream.

I smelled smoke. Bits of it crept under the door crack.
He was really doing this. Things were already starting to burn. Protective Services couldn’t stop this.

I banged three times on
the door with my fist and waited. Nothing. I pushed the door to see if it would budge. Nothing. I heard footsteps, voices, a muffled rant from the Red-Man talking to himself, humming even. I willed myself downstairs and then came back up with some towels that were old and moldy with mucky wetness. I tucked them under the door crack, but I could still smell smoke.

My
house was on fire.

Maybe it will
just burn on top of me. I could wait it out downstairs.

I went back down,
the trace of smoke following me, and sat against the wall. My life was done, whatever happened here, and I already felt my body shrinking, my skin fading. I traced my fingertip along my veins of my underarm, from elbow to wrist. If only I had some
H. The basement would seem beautiful instead of evil. Like Uncle Nelson said,
Until you have medicine to make you see the beauty, life is a sickness. A fucking curse.
But there was no H, there was nothing down here that can help. Nothing. Dad had a gun, but it was in his room.

There’s always a way out if you just look in the right place.
That’s what the Red-Man had told me, but I had nothing.

Moments passed
with only stillness inside, until slowly I was becoming part of the basement. The furnace accepted me as one who belonged there. The basement wasn’t eating me, it was taking me in. I felt at home like I could stay here forever. I tried not to breathe so I could listen and hear every sound. All that came were drips.

Drip.

Pause.

Drip
.

Pause
.

The
pipe from the upstairs bathtub was dripping, and each drip was bigger and faster than the last and making tiny splashes in the bucket. Blood and water that the bodies were soaking in was raining down.

Parts of
all three of them—all of them dead in the tub. The image burned in my brain.

Grandma
was dead, the witch of Brentwood, but her eyes were still open. Nobody could shut them for good.

And my dad, the one who cared for me
, not real good, but he did the best he could with what he had. When he knew he messed up so bad that I’d be taken away he finally stopped lying. He brought me the skull of my mother. It seemed so grey and old and I could still picture the empty eye sockets. Mom had empty eye sockets. Looked at me with nothing inside of her.

I listened to the basement breath
e and tried to get answers. I wanted to hear the voice of Oscar or my mom. When she spoke to me in my bedroom she said she was close by. I knew that to be true now.
Talk to me now when I need you.

Drip.
Drip.

The basement
is all that spoke to me.

Smo
ke started to billow from the stairs. My vision became cloudy. It wasn’t like hazy cigarette smoke but was thick, like chunks of oil were hidden inside. My lungs rejected the air and I was suffocating. This would end. It had to.

I walked over to
the bucket and watched the red drips fall. The bottom was full of a layer of blood. Each drip made a
ding
sound on the metal when it landed.

I thought of spilling my own blood in the bucket somehow.
My blood together with all of theirs would be victory. If only I could stick something inside my own defective heart and make it flow into the bucket.

Or if I could put them all into me.

I looked up at the leaky pipe. The place my dad would unscrew was loose but still attached. The pipe was too high to reach, so I pushed the washer over and pulled myself on top. I stood on it with shaky legs. Close to the ceiling the air was thick, steamy hot, and I held my breath as I turned the elbow on the pipe. One turn, two turns, three, four, and finally I twisted the elbow, exposed the pipe all the way, and soon it all spilled forth.

Blood and
water from the bathtub flowed like a faucet. The red stream poured down the pipe, and started to fill the bucket. I held my breath for one moment longer while my unsteady legs got down from the washer. When I finally tried to breathe, smoky air filled my lungs and I coughed soot up my throat.

I knelt in front of the bucket
as if peering into a pond, looking for my image.

A steady trickle from above made the
pool ripple like the bottom of a waterfall. The bucket was a cauldron with a potion of red mixing and churning inside. Specks and chunks of grey were sprinkled in like little flakes. I tried but couldn’t tell what parts of the blood were Grandma, what parts where my poppa, and what parts were my mom’s dirty, scaly bones soaking inside.

I
grabbed one of dad’s t-shirts and cupped it over my mouth to help me breathe. It smelled like him. I liked that. It was all that stopped me from breathing in smoke. My eyes were full of tears from the smoke and the sadness of living my last days. The fire might stay upstairs, but the smoke wouldn’t leave me alone down here.

I
remembered the words of the Red-Man. Something he learned in a basement. “
We can shoot anything, not just the H. You’re my girl.”

I rummaged through the New
Balance shoe box. At least ten needles rattled inside, some of them old, some of them new. Any of them would do.

I grabbed one and held it in the air. Watched it twinkle in
the light of the two bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Just then, the light bulbs blinked. Fast, then slow. Like they were ready to go out. I had to act. The house was going dark soon.

The
needle was ready. I dipped it deep into the bucket, as if the best stuff was buried below the surface. Then I drew back on the plunger, slow but firm, getting in whatever would come out. Blood dripped from my fingertips as I pulled the needle up to eye level.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I’d seen
Nelson do this, I’d seen nurses do it for years, so I did the same. I flicked it with a finger the way they do, and watched the tube of speckled red squish in the needle. It was like poking at a fish tank. Things seemed alive in there.

The skin on my arm
was so thin. I was just veins and bones. I aimed the tip of the needle into the fat of the blue vein. My fingers shook. My vein moved like a snake.

I felt the prick
into my skin.

The
warmth went right into my heart and spread up my spine into my head. Ahhhh, it flowed so sweet. It was like the metal syringe had tapped the base of my brain. My body was being filled, a hunger was fed deep inside of me, right into my soul’s stomach.

The moment came and faded in a flash, and
I had an incredible urge to put more in me. I became surrounded not just by smoke but by song, a whole chorus urging me on to use more, to keep plunging the syringe into the bucket, fill the chamber, and insert it into my skin. Blood from the bucket was spilling on my arm, but I did it again and again to get it inside of me. I could feel the new life pulsing through me, and saw it traveling through my body. My veins went from blue to purple, my heart expanded, beating against my chest like it was being filled with the contents of the universe with God inside.

Finally
the moment came I have been waiting ten years for.

My heart
burst in my chest. Blew open. That’s all it could be, because a warm explosion blasted inside of me, like somebody shot me in the chest from the inside.

New
sights flashed through my head. I had a vision of the Red-Man and felt him putting himself into Momma, injecting her with the sliver of metal years ago and the seed taking root and growing in her belly. I was dark in her womb even then, but feeding off Momma just the same. I felt my infant cries at birth from an ache that could never be soothed. I felt my dad putting a pillow over momma’s head, holding it there—making it all black.

I felt Momma buried in the ground, trying to get into someone else's head to get me, her daughter, to safety.

I felt my daddy’s strength, so many unspoken wars he’d been through, and my
grandma’s wisdom, who in her mind’s eye could see the whole neighborhood and was always one move ahead.

And
then I could feel the Red-Man, the person who started my life. He was watching my house from the street, and I spoke to him.

“
You are an evil man,” I said to him. “You’re rotten and should kill yourself. Or I will kill you.” I could feel the words twist and turn and roller coaster through his brain. He tried to block them out with rambles that weren’t really words. Finally he mumbled back. “You die first. Better that way. If you kill me, then who will you have? Nobody. You are my girl.”

“You are bad, rotten. Not a real dad, I’m not your girl. Get the gun and shoot yourself.
Or come inside and cut yourself with a kitchen knife.”

“My girl, you will be ashes soon, and we can talk then.
”

“
Cut yourself. Again and again. With a big kitchen knife. I will make you do that. I will talk to you until you die.”

I f
elt him pacing on the sidewalk, mumbling to himself,
then you will have nobody.. nobody. 3547, 3547.

“No, somebody is coming for me. My momma tells me so.”

Mommy didn’t tell me I was safe as much as I could feel it. Flakes of Momma were in my veins and her warm hugs filled my insides. I was wise like Grandma, and strong like my dad, for their blood flowed inside me too. The Red-Man maybe had other voices in his head before, but none like mine. I would control him now. My heart exploded a new world of strength into me.

Black smoke filled my lungs and made my soul
feel warm and black. There was no more coughing. No more tears. My skin was dark, thick, and magnificent. It was scaly armor, glowing black, not blue. My emptiness was filled for the first time. I walked up the stairs straight through the smoke and had its respect. The metal doorknob was hot enough on my hand to singe and burn my palm but I twisted it anyways, and I pushed the refrigerator away as if it was on wheels.

Upstairs was like a pool of hot ink, with only the glow of flames shining through.
One wall burned and the fire grew as I watched. The blanket my dad used for a curtain was done, and the walls above flamed like a bonfire. The microwave was melted from the heat, but none of it hurt me. The flames embraced me, the smoke was in me, and I was in it. My insides were on fire, and would stay that way forever.

My energy
spiraled inside of me, like a tornado that wanted to move. It needed to be spread to others. I wanted it in Joey, I wanted to save Oscar, I wanted to be in someone new, to carry on in them and be taken away from here.

But first the
Red-Man needed to die.

“You’re rotte
n. Come back inside the house and die with me. Burn by fire. Cut yourself by knife. You’re a Devil. A Red Devil”.

I waited in the
house for him. Standing in the flames, I waited.