Mercy

Jakob’s desecrated car crept forward in a sluggish, phantasmal pace into a wooded environment full of hidden, ill-omened beings. I could feel the prejudicial stares of creatures whose opinions of our presence in their sacred, primitive society were alarmingly negative, and an obscene scenario of a satanic clan of rabid squirrels just waiting for the optimum moment to sabotage our voyage into the depths of their forest played out in its entirety within my mind, complete with the menacing gleam of an incisor before it tore into my leg to produce a steady flow of blood so dark it could have easily been mistaken for shit. I suppressed a chuckle at my own absurdity, realizing that even in my daydreams I believed I was full of shit or that a violent onslaught of killer squirrels was terrifying enough to compel my bowels to release whatever atrocities they were waiting to release upon me in the most inconvenient of times. Even worse, for every pair of beady little eyes I swore I could see looming in the shadows, I saw a pair of cold, gray eyes peering back at me, biding their time until I was vulnerable enough to be stolen away and left forever to rot in a forgotten closet.

As tires continued to crunch along the graveled road, a sound reminiscent of a hesitant whimper escaped my throat before I was even aware of the terror that mounted within my chest with each passing minute. Of course, my killer squirrel reverie did not help my situation in the slightest, and suddenly I found my body coiling even further in upon itself and Billie Joe. Nowhere, not one single goddamn place, made me feel safe enough for my racing heart to quiet its incessant pounding. The old bastard picked up on my discomfort, though his uncertainty of what to do with such knowledge grew increasingly apparent as he shifted in his seat and cleared his throat much more loudly than necessary. He did, however, place a hand on the back of my neck to idly trace abstract patterns into my flesh with the unpredictably nimble tips of his fingers. I shivered at the contact and snuggled closer to him, nuzzling my face into his dark t-shirt to hide myself away from potential stares of the unknown lurking behind each overgrown tree, simultaneously taking in a scent that was foreign to me. In all my encounters with the old man, he was clad in the proper gowned attire and wreaked of the notoriously indescribable scent of a hospital. Some might argue that it was the scent of death, others could counter that it was the aroma of new life, but to me it was more compatible with a vague smell of repression, gauze, and generic soaps.

With my nostrils wholly immersed in the fabric of his shirt, I was finally able to separate the man seated next to me from the cancer patient who had been trapped in the hospital bed for weeks where his death had not only anticipated, but expected, as Dr. Shaw and her nurses scrambled to make him comfortable until the end. What man could honestly survive a bout of pneumonia induced by his already weakened immune system on top of his terminal affliction? Apparently, it was a man who smelt strongly of burnt spearmint, for anyone else with an identical burden would have dropped cold within a day or two.

I smiled into Billie Joe as I grew aware of how perfectly the scent fit him. He was an indubitable spitfire, yet there was a southern-fried, suave air about him that was as refreshingly cool as spearmint. The subtle, burning hint laced within the spearmint reminded me of smoke as it curled about in the air, impossible to properly hold as it perpetually skirted around your fingertips in a mysterious, yet enticing, manner which kept you always coming back for more. Whenever you felt yourself coming close to capturing those elusive, charcoal tresses, they dance away time and time again, giggling amorously at all unsuccessful attempts to keep it tamed and under control.

“Knock it off, Fairy, you sound like a damn toothpaste commercial,” Billie Joe muttered, removing his fingers from the back of my neck to lightheartedly ruffle through my unruly hair.

Despite how he wouldn’t be able to witness the evident fear in my features, my eyes widened in horror. I had been silent for at least twenty minutes straight, save for my garbled whimper, and certainly hadn’t mistakenly spoken my thoughts aloud.

In a daze, I whispered, “I didn’t say anything.”

Curious, I lifted my head to gawk at the old bugger and incredulously raised an eyebrow to make my puzzlement instantly plain. His eyes desperately evaded my stare, flittering madly about in a frantic attempt to explain his seemingly telepathic abilities off with a derogatory comment of some sort. In seconds that felt more comparable with decades, he finally snapped, “I woulda bet my balls that you were ramblin’ somethin’ ‘bout how I smell like flamin’ fuckin’ toothpaste.”

“No, I definitely wasn’t…and it was burnt spearmint, not flaming toothpaste. Good God,” I grumbled, rapidly becoming agitated by how he insisted upon dodging direct questions with indirect responses.

“Well sorry, hoss, they sound the damn same to me: Queer and Fairy-like,” he shot back, lips curling into an impish sneer.

“Fuck you, Old Man. I hope the squirrels devour you first,” I muttered, averting my eyes by once again snuggling against his Hint of Toothpaste scented shirt with a fresh batch of unease settling within my gut. If he was somehow able to pick up on unspoken thoughts, what the fuck else had he surreptitiously learned about me?

“It ain’t the goddamn squirrels y’all should be worried ‘bout,” he announced with a devious tone to his voice, as if both Jakob and I should know exactly what he was referring to.

“Look. If you won’t tell me how you knew about the fucking spearmint thought, I’ll…I’ll jump out of this car,” I declared, straightening my body into an upright position while my fingers curled around the door’s handle. To accentuate how fatally serious I was, I opened the door enough to coerce both Billie Joe’s and his son’s eyes to pop out of their skulls in cartoon-like astonishment.

“Don’t you dare, Fairy! We ain’t made it this far for you to run off on us!” the old man pleaded, though he made no effort to indulge my inquiries.

“If you can’t trust me, then I might as well cop out now. Last chance, Old Man: How the fuck do you know so much about me?”

Jakob’s eyes darted frenetically from his father to me, giving him the likeness of a spectator consumed in a particularly intense game of ping pong. Well, dammit, I was not interested in forfeiting this round, and I had spiked the fucking ping pong directly into Billie Joe’s court. Instead of slapping it right back at me, he stepped aside, forcing the ball to be sent careening into the wall behind him and woefully gaping as the hundred irreparable shards of ping pong plastic wafted languorously to the floor. I was rejected with no hopes of reviving the emblematic game of answering harmless questions. As the silence persisted, I threw the door open and ungracefully leapt from the car only to skid along the gravel road until friction provoked my body to come to rest. The countless, minute rocks that littered the unpaved road had torn holes through the knees of my jeans and transformed my palms into a bloodied, sickening nightmare of marred flesh and ripped bandages. The sting from my injuries swiftly grew to unbearable levels, but I did not regret my unconventional methods of coercing information from Billie Joe’s perpetually grinning lips. The instant I fell to the ground after taking a vain attempt at staggering into a standing position, the old man was hovering behind me, purple cane clutched in his hand to function as a supporting third leg.

On all fours, I demanded with a sickening, oily tone that could have easily been mistaken for one that belonged to a masochistic deviant, “I know you want it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Fairy,” Billie Joe growled, hobbling forward to press his body suggestively against mine. “You ain’t the bitch this time ‘round.”

His grated accent clung to every hushed whisper in the wind and every distant ruffling of leaves, but it wasn’t the abrupt chill twisting its vaporous being around my battered form that forced a shudder to ripple straight down to my core. No, I was quite convinced it was the heat pulsating from between Billie Joe’s thighs thrust against my nether regions that brought about the shiver radiating throughout my body. Before I was able to properly respond, however, Jakob poked his head out of his open car door to examine what was possibly taking his father so long to retrieve his unstable caregiver and let out a garbled cry of disgust. I figured the position the old man and I were in seemed just as dirty as it felt at first glance.

“If you two’re gonna end up fucking right in the middle of the road, I’m leaving,” he whined before flopping himself back into the depths of the vehicle like an irritated, impatient child.

“Go ‘head, kid! Fairy ‘n’ I’ll walk the rest o’ the way,” Billie Joe shouted back at his son, waving an arm to encourage his son to carry on without us. “We’ll meetcha up at the house.”

Jakob groaned audibly enough to be heard by all in the general vicinity before starting up his car once more and hesitantly continuing along the gravel road. I watched in dismay as I was left abandoned with a half-senile old man and pebbles lodged into the skin on my palms, knees, and elbows. It surely meant for an agonizing walk to God knows where for the pair of us seeing as the old man could hardly breathe on his own.

Leveling myself into a kneeling position, I moaned, “Why the hell did you do that? In our current states, it’ll take decades to walk anywhere.”

“’Cause I ain’t riskin’ you bein’ a goddamn Drama Queen ‘n’ jumpin’ out his car again. ‘Sides…I wanna be straight with you,” he explained, limping his way in front of me so he could more easily have a go at helping me up, “without Jakob in listenin’ distance.”

I took the old man’s hand, and with our combined efforts, I managed to stand on gelatinous legs without falling flat on my ass once more. He didn’t remove his hand from mine as we commenced our unhurried pace to a house located somewhere in the distance.

“You’re gonna be straight with me?” I repeated, doubtful in his sincerity since it had burned me more than once before.

“Yup. I just need you to promise me you won’t laugh, ok?” He was timid, fragile even. It was a side of him I’d seen once or twice and disliked it every time, for it was so unlike him. The uncertainty was disquieting, and I instantly regretted every ounce of my goddamn curiosity.

“I promise,” I assured him, warily persuading him to continue.

“The reason I seem to know so damn much is ‘cause I ain’t like most folks. I see more’n they do. I hear more’n they do. I…fuck, Fairy, do you get it now?” he stammered, evidently distressed by whatever demons possessed his reality.

Wide-eyed, I shook my head. I had a vague inkling as to where he was going with his confession, but it was so ridiculous that I was unable effectively to wrap my mind around it.

“I’m a fuckin’ psychic.”