IGMS Issue 45 Page 7

  Forrest fanned through the bills again, trying to tell whether they were the same ones that had been in the wallet when he lost it. Had there been a $5 bill with a small grocery list scrawled on it in blue pen? He tried to remember, but it was too long ago. He couldn't recall.

  In the end, Forrest shrugged and moved the money into his current wallet. He really was going to go the bank this time. He didn't make mistakes like that anymore. As he slid his wallet back into his pocket, he glanced at the toad in its cage and at the action figure sitting next to it. The toad watched him back.

  Forrest picked up the action figure and tried again to think of a viable theory for its return, but all the ideas he came up with were just as stupid as before. He set the toy down, then undid the clasp on the toad's cage. It made a brief, abortive bid for freedom. Forrest grabbed the toad and stroked its back. It chirped in response. Forrest put it back and added a couple more crickets to its cage.

  "What are you?" he said. "My good luck charm?"

  Then Forrest took the action figure and climbed up to the attic. He passed between the rows of neatly stacked boxes until he arrived at the one labeled, "Action figures, baseball cards, toy cars, and shells." He opened the box, carefully wrapped the action figure up with the others, then taped it shut again.

  Over the next week, Forrest came across many things that he'd lost. While depositing money at the bank, he found a pen that looked exactly like the one he'd won in the spelling bee in second grade and lost two days later. While selling jewelry from a house he'd trashed out, he found a toy car that looked just like the one he'd loaned to Jeremy just before Jeremy moved. Browsing at a thrift store, Forrest found a bat that looked identical to the one that his Dad had given him when trying to get him into baseball. He had left the bat at the park, and by the morning it was gone.

  A few days after finding the bat, Forrest went through his coin collection and found the rare 1926 Buffalo nickel that Uncle Leroy had given him for his twelfth birthday. He could have sworn that he had lost that one, that there had been an empty slot in the cardboard there. Yet there it was, right next to the 1927. Maybe he'd been wrong.

  In a second-hand book store, Forrest found a copy of his senior year book. When he opened it up, he found that it was his. There weren't many signatures in it, but they were all addressed to him. When he took it to the register, the clerk seemed confused and said that they didn't usually carry yearbooks. After searching fruitlessly for a price, the clerk sold it to Forrest for a dollar.

  Less pleasantly, there was his first pair of glasses. Or at least a pair that looked like them. He found them in a medicine cabinet in a house that he was gutting. They were child-sized and had the same horn rims that he remembered. He had worn that pair of glasses for all of about a week in the third grade before he took them off at school and forgot them. Dad really ripped into him for that one. It took six months before Dad would buy him another pair.

  When Forrest found the glasses, he slipped them into his pocket and took them home, where he took out his contacts and tried to look through the lenses. Were these glasses really his, or did they just look like it? But his eyes had changed too much in the intervening time. Looking through the glasses, his vision was nearly as blurry as it was without it. They couldn't have been the same pair. Of course there was more than one pair of glasses with that style in the world.

  But when Forrest found the letter that his first girlfriend sent him when she dumped him, he was flummoxed. He came home from work and found the envelope under the toad's cage. He reread the letter, even though he knew what it was before he even pulled it out of the envelope. He remembered the words. He remembered her handwriting. He even remembered the damn perfume she'd put on the letter she'd sent to tell him she was seeing someone else.

  It wasn't pleasant to remember. But far more unsettling was the fact that he knew he'd destroyed the letter. He remembered tearing it into pieces as small as confetti, then flushing them down the toilet. He had thought about burning it, but had been afraid to set off the fire detector, to have Dad come in and say anything to him.

  But here the letter was now, complete and not even wrinkled. Forrest wanted to throw it away again, or actually burn it this time. But the letter had come back once already. Forrest looked at the toad, but it just looked back at him with that mindless toad expression.

  No, throwing the letter away again wasn't the answer. What Forrest needed to do was keep possession of it, but keep it somewhere that he would never see it.

  This was foolish. There was an explanation. There had to be an explanation. He hadn't thought of it yet, but it existed.

  Forrest carried the letter to his safe and locked it up.

  He began to dread the things he found. Sometimes he found them at work and sometimes in stores, but increasingly they came to him at home. They sometimes appeared while he slept, and sometimes he found them waiting for him when he returned from work. Sometimes they appeared in the time that it took him to get back from showering or using the bathroom.

  Sometimes his lost items appeared on the table next to the toad. Sometimes they appeared on the couch. Sometimes they arrived in the mail or showed up just inside his door. Once Forrest poured himself a bowl of cereal and found his favorite childhood decoder ring inside. Another time, he entered his bathroom and found his old life vest floating in his bathtub.

  Often the things that reappeared were welcome. Some had monetary value. Some reminded him of long-held memories that had somehow slipped away from him. But sometimes they weren't pleasant, and Forrest had no control over it.

  After work one day, he drove by the house where he'd found the toad. There was a "For Sale" sign up in front. The house looked bare and devoid of personality with its suncatchers and lawn ornaments gone. Forrest got out and went around back. The drapes were gone now, so he could see into the house. Everything was gone. The doors and windows were locked. He didn't know what he'd expected.

  When he arrived home and went to bed, he found something hard under his pillow. He pulled it out and looked at it. It was the copy of The Velveteen Rabbit that Mom had given him before she died. He blinked and touched the cover gently.

  When he had lost this, that had been one time that Dad hadn't yelled at him. Forrest had really had no clue where it went. Most of the time when he lost something he had at least some idea of where he might have left it, or when it might have fallen out of his pocket, but this time he really had no idea. He checked everywhere he could think, but it was nowhere. He looked through all of the bookshelves in the house, looked under every piece of furniture. It had been two years since Mom drowned, and while Forrest had gotten used to only having his father around, the house was still weird and empty without her in it. He missed her tucking him in at night, missed her coming and standing up for him when Dad was cussing him out. But at least he'd had the book, and she'd given it to him, and he could almost remember her voice reading it to him. But then suddenly the book was gone.

  Forrest curled up in a corner of his room and tried not to cry, because he didn't want his Dad to hear, didn't want his Dad coming up and telling him how stupid he'd been to lose it because he already knew how stupid he was, and he already hated himself for losing the book. So he clenched his teeth and tried to hold back the tears and tried not to gasp those shuddering breaths.

  But then he heard the clomp-clomp of Dad's feet up the stairs and the squeak of the floorboards, and he knew with dread in his stomach that Dad had heard him and was coming. Forrest buried his head in his arms and wanted to die.

  "What's wrong, Forrest?" Dad asked, his voice sharp and deep.

  Forrest tried to think of a way to say it, but just trying to think of it set fresh tears flowing, made his breath catch, made him sob like a baby.

  "What's wrong, Forrest?" Dad said again, impatient now.

  "I lost it," Forrest forced out as he tried to control his breathing. "I lost it. The book from Mom. I didn't mean to, and I don't know where it went, an
d I lost it."

  Dad came close, and Forrest flinched, knowing the words that would come. But Dad just sat down and pulled Forrest onto his lap on the floor, holding him awkwardly in his arms and trying to comfort him. And that set Forrest crying even harder. That had been the last time he had cried, the last time that he'd lost control of his emotions.

  Now Forrest shook his head, trying to break free of the memory. He stared at the cover of the book. How did it start again? "There was once a velveteen rabbit?" He tried to remember the feeling of his mother sitting next to him, reading him the book, but the memories were too old, too faded. He couldn't remember. All he could do was imagine.

  Forrest looked at the cover for a moment longer. No. No, he couldn't open it up. He couldn't read it again. He hadn't read it since he had lost that copy, and he somehow felt that he would lose her again if he read it. He took the book and locked it in the safe, then returned to bed.

  It took Forrest a long time to fall asleep that night. He kept thinking of his Mom, of how many times she'd left in the mornings to swim in the lake, and how many times she'd come back. And then there was the one day where she hadn't come back, and Forrest was told that she'd drowned. It was hard not to imagine her floating there in the water, face down, her hair splayed about her like a corona.

  "You look awful," said Pete the next day at work.

  "Thanks," said Forrest. "You too."

  They were clearing out an upstairs bedroom. The posters of sports players and punk rock bands had been pulled from the walls, and the dressers had been emptied and taken downstairs. Forrest reached down under the bed, pulled out a stack of girlie magazines and stuffed them into a garbage bag.

  "Hey wait," said Pete. "Let me take a look at those."

  "Ew," said Forrest.

  "I'm wearing gloves," said Pete.

  Forrest kept stuffing things into the bag.

  "But seriously," said Pete, "is everything okay?"

  "Yeah," said Forrest. He paused for a moment. "You ever go years without thinking of someone and then suddenly, something comes back into your life and brings it all up again?"

  "This about a girl?" Pete asked.

  "I guess," Forrest said.

  "Forget her," Pete said. "Trust me, things always end for a reason. You only want her back because you're lonely now, and can't think of all of the problems."

  Downstairs there was an exercise bike that Forrest wanted, but he left it behind. With all of the things that were piling up at his place, he wasn't sure that he would actually have room.

  That night, when Forrest arrived home, the house smelled like lilacs. That was Mom's favorite flower, back in the day. He inhaled deeply, remembering the lilac tree that she'd loved in the backyard. He remembered her lying on her back in the grass with the lavender petals falling around her like snow.

  Forrest walked into the kitchen. On the table next to the toad's cage, there was a bouquet of flowers. He remembered this bouquet: the spray of lilac and the baby's breath and gardenias around it. He remembered taking it to the funeral. His Dad had told him not to pick at it, and he tried, but he almost couldn't help fingering the petals and worrying the cloth. In the end, Dad took it away. After the service, Dad placed it on the grave himself, then took Forrest home.

  Forrest stared at the bouquet. What on earth? He looked at the toad in its cage. It sat, eyes closed, motionless. Forrest reached out and jabbed the cage with a finger. The toad opened its eyes but stayed still as a statue.

  What was Forrest supposed to do? Tell the toad to stop making things appear? Who knew if it was even the toad that was doing it? How absurd to even think that.

  "Behave yourself," Forrest finally said. "I can squash you."

  Then he dropped another cricket in the toad's cage and went to bed.

  When Forrest awoke, he was soaking wet. Well done, Forrest, you've wet the bed. Your reversion to childhood is complete. He shivered. No, there was too much liquid for this to simply be urine. The sheets, the comforter, even the mattress were soaked through. His foot touched something cold and slimy, and Forrest jumped and yelped. He slid out of bed, then wrestled the sodden comforter off the bed to see what he had felt.

  A thick, green trail of pond weed pulled off with the comforter and fell to the floor. Forrest felt a sick feeling in his stomach. He brought his head to the comforter and sniffed. It was the smell of the lake. His stomach turned.

  Forrest walked to the bathroom. He had to wash the lake water off of him. He had to get rid of it. He turned on the shower and let the hot water pelt him. He shampooed his hair twice, then scrubbed his skin until it shone pink. He stood under the hot stream of the water, motionless. Breathe. Breathe. It's okay. Breathe.

  He tried to convince his racing heart to slow, but eventually had to give up. He stepped out of the shower and dried his face on his towel. It felt strange on his face: too smooth and thin. He inhaled and smelled sunblock. Looking up, he realized that it wasn't his towel. It was his mother's swimsuit, hung up from the towel rack, the way that she'd always left it to dry.

  Forrest stumbled backward. Impossible. This was all impossible. He slipped his bathrobe on and fumbled with the tie. He had to do something. He had to call someone. But who? Who was there to call? Pete would never understand, he wasn't even really a friend, but he was the closest thing that Forrest had. And Dad was dead now, even if Forrest had wanted to call him.

  Forrest looked at the swimsuit again. He had to get out of this room. He opened the door and hurried out. Maybe if he listened to some music or read a book, it would clear his mind. He walked into his room and went to turn the radio on, but on the nightstand there was a cassette tape with his mother's handwriting on it: Best of the Carpenters.

  Forrest turned and hurried back out. He didn't even know where he was going, but he found himself in the kitchen, staring at the toad. The toad stumped around in its cage, pushing up against the walls, trying to climb them.

  And then all at once, Forrest had a sudden, terrifying impression: I'm not alone. There was nothing that he could physically put his finger on, but he felt eyes on him. His skin rose in goose bumps, and he could feel his heart thumping in his chest.

  Forrest felt a sudden breeze against his neck, but he knew that he hadn't left a window open. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but when he inhaled, he smelled his mother's perfume.

  Turn around. It's her. It's Mother. It's what you've missed all this time. It's what you lost. It's what made you so lost yourself. You can have her back, just like the other things, just the way you remember.

  He wanted to turn around, needed to, but he also couldn't, and he knew that he wouldn't. It was too much. It was too much.

  Forrest moved quickly, keeping his eyes down. He grabbed the toad's cage and ran with it through the door, and as he ran, he heard footsteps behind him. He fumbled with the cage's clasp, then ripped the lid clear off of the cage and dropped it to the ground.

  Forrest fell to the ground himself with his eyes shut, and he felt the wind of something passing him by. It was a warm wind, and for a second he thought he heard a whisper, but could not understand the words. Then he was alone. After a minute or two, he opened his eyes. The night was quiet, except for the chirping of crickets. The toad sat in the grass, watching him with moist dark eyes that reflected the stars.

  Forrest took in a deep breath, then let it out. And then in a rush, the tears were there in his eyes, and he felt the sobs wanting to be released, and so he let them go and cried like a child.

  And the toad turned and hopped off into the night.

  Electricity Bill for a Darkling Plain

  by H.G. Parry

  Artwork by M. Wayne Miller

  * * *

  There was a sombre mood over the flat when we returned from the funeral. There always is, even when it's one of ours.

  "Do you think he'll come back?" Matilda asked, without much interest. She kicked off her heels in the hallway, and I went patiently to pick them
up. I'm always asking them to stack their shoes neatly. I don't feel that this is an unreasonable request.

  Alfie was the only one of the three of us who actually looked sad. He has very large, dark eyes, and they always show more feeling than I would expect from any living soul, or at least any living soul not soft in the head.

  "I staked him through the heart when the funeral director wasn't looking," he said. "It's what he would have wanted."

  "Why would that work?" Matilda snorted. She curled up into the armchair, tucking her stockinged feet up underneath her. I don't like people to put their feet on the chairs, but they never listen to me. "He really does need to accept facts. It's like the time he tried to drown himself in the bath. Water all over the floor, and we couldn't get in cleaning services because they'd have found the body . . ."

  "At least that wasn't public," I reminded her. "I do loathe having to go through this charade."

  "He thinks that if there's a stake through his heart, it won't heal," Alfie said sternly. "I think he got the idea from a book. It may work."

  "It won't," I said.

  Matilda turned the television on. Alfie went to change out of his suit. I decided that a good deal of the emptiness I seemed to be feeling was hunger, and made a sandwich. I was beginning to run out of peanut butter, and suspected the others of taking it, despite how clearly it was labeled.

  He came back shortly before six the following evening, which did not please me. I like to have dinner at six o'clock, every day. The others roll their eyes, but I don't think that's unreasonable.

  He was covered in mud and blood, which pleased me even less, especially when he threw himself onto the sofa with a groan. Still, I could hardly begin to boil potatoes without acknowledging him, and God knows I am not a man to complain, so I said, "Hello, Will."