Handicapped (end)

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[Rob is searching for his missing wife, and Ms. Huck is hiding something.]

The silence stretched out. Rob couldn't quite believe it was a movie. Had it sounded like Charlene's voice? He wracked his brain to find an explanation that made sense.

Ms. Huck slid off the chair, landing with a thud on her splayed hands. "I'll show you out."

Rob backed away, imagining one of her strong hands grabbing his ankle. He hurried towards the kitchen, towards where the scream had come from.

"Where are you going?" Ms. Huck said in a forbidding tone.

The scream came again--followed by a series of broken, choked sobs that verged on laughter. It sounded like it might be Charlene. Rob began to run.

"Get out of my house!" Ms. Huck yelled.

A series of scuttling thuds told Rob that she was chasing him. That horrendous image drove Rob to sprint faster. He skidded on the kitchen linoleum, accidentally hit the table, and whipped around it. The sobs came from behind a door that he hadn't noticed earlier, because it was plastered with the same sickly yellow wallpaper as the rest of the kitchen.

"Stop!" Ms. Huck shouted.

Rob yanked the latch of the camouflaged door. It flew open, and he ran through, slamming the door behind him to keep out Ms. Huck.

The room smelled like an abattoir. Energy-saver bulbs lit the windowless walls, cluttered by power tools and a large assembly of rusty saws. Dirty meat hooks hung from rafters. Some appeared to have tufts of fur clinging to them. Rob thought of the missing pet posters around the street.

"Charlene?" he asked softly.

Something immense shifted in the center of the room.

Rob had overlooked it at first, just seeing shapes. Now he realized that a king-sized bed filled the center of the workshop, springs sticking up through the mattress. The man who sat upon it looked to be in the range of six hundred pounds. The bed sagged under his weight. The man slouched with his hairy back to Rob, his head hidden ... but he turned slowly, snorting like a bull.

Fresh blood glistened on the man's deformed lips. A fissure split his face from lip to nostril, revealing his gums and snotty innards.

The massive man screamed in a high-pitched giggle. Charlene's voice, Rob realized with sick comprehension. It was a mockery of Charlene.

A misshapen chunk of pale meat hung from one of the hooks near the bed. It wore one of Charlene's shoes.

Rob fumbled for the door behind him. He yanked and shoved, but something held it closed from the other side. The door slammed in and out of its frame, refusing to open.

"Eeeeeeeeee!" The obese man stood, a mountain of bulging, drooping flesh. Red stains soaked the front of his tank-top. He tossed aside a hunk of meat that looked gnawed upon.

Not meat, but a woman's torso. A blood-smeared torso. Charlene's blouse clung to parts of it.

Rob pounded the door, but the huge man barreled into him with the force of a battering ram.

Pain exploded in his shoulder as he slammed into the wall, knocking instruments off their hooks. He couldn't breathe. The fat man crushed him, moaning in a parody of womanish sobs.

"Back-back," Ms. Huck said in a motherly tone. "Back-back."

The fat man moved back. Rob gasped and breathed rank smells.

"I thought she'd be understanding." Ms. Huck balanced on her hands, framed in the open doorway. "I thought her handicapped son would make her different. Nawp. You and her are just like everyone else. Aren't you?"

Rob struggled, but he couldn't get away from the fat man's slab-like arms.

"Let me go," he pleaded. "I have a son."

Ms. Huck swayed, shifting her weight from arm to arm. "I have a family, too. This is my brother, Joeb. If I looked normal, you'd never have gotten so skittish. You wouldn't have charged in here to disturb him. You and your wife."

Joeb made a honking sound through his deformed nose.

"I heard screams," Rob begged. "I had to see."

"Because I look strange to you." The nearest bare bulb shone on Ms. Huck's face, but her eyes were like empty pits. "You made assumptions. Now you'll see what's normal. Joeb took care of me, growing up. I find nothing wrong with his hammers and his binding. I love Joeb and he loves me." She crooned the last sentence, with a sad undertone that she seemed unaware of.

Rob's mind slowly wrapped around the concept of Job's hammers and binding. He recalled something about Chinese foot-binding. And hadn't one ancient culture in South America shaped their skulls by binding the soft heads of infants?

Ms. Huck's deformities were sculpted with tools.

"Joeb," Ms. Huck said in a soothing voice. "Can you say Lithgow? Take care of Mr. Lithgow."

"Lit-gow!" Joeb repeted in a womanish voice. "Lit-gow, lit-gow, lit-gow, lit-gow!"

Ms. Huck balanced on one hand and supported herself on the doorknob with the other. How many years had she suffered before she stopped begging Joeb for mercy, and began to love the bindings and hammer strikes? Perhaps she'd equated his sadistic attention with love. Some children knew only one form of attention.

"This isn't normal!" Rob said, desperate to distract her. He wormed one hand into his jacket pocket, praying that he could dial 9-1-1 on his cell phone without looking. His shoulder burned with pain as he explored the phone keypad. "This isn't right," he said. "What Joeb did to you--"

At the mention of his name, Joeb squeezed Rob and choked off his voice.

"I would have let you go, Mr. Lithgow." Ms. Huck's smile revealed crooked, yellowed teeth. "I really do need a realtor. But you were so dazzled by my differences, so certain you are right and I am wrong. Now you've run into the truth." Her voice lowered, almost masculine. "It's devastatingly painful."

Faintly, very faintly through the fabric of his jacket, Rob heard a ring-tone. A tinny voice asked a question, smothered by his jacket.

Rob spoke as loudly as possible. "You're normal, Ms. Huck. I agree with you. You're normal. We're all normal, my wife Charlene and my son Kevin." That had to be enough of a clue for the police. "But pain isn't normal. There are ways to fix things, if you go to a hospital." He was babbling in panic.

"Nawp." Ms. Huck shook her head. "Your son would disagree with you." She swung through the doorway, one hand clutching the doorknob for support. Her body dangled from her shoulders like a tumor.

"Wait!" Rob screamed.

"Maybe I'll find a realtor who's blind," said Ms. Huck. "You can't all be this judgmental. I have a house to sell."

***

Thanks for reading. If you were creeped out, then vote! Add this book" to your library in order to notified when I add another dark story.

Although I enjoy short fiction, my passion is novels. From Fall 2016 to Fall 2017, I'm posting the final draft of my novel"City of Slaves" here on Wattpad. In New GoodLife WaterGarden City, everyone is networked together, and the Majority always get what they want. They will kill anyone who challenges their whims, even a disabled child. But this disabled child is a mutant with talented friends. A handful of outcast mutants, slaves, and aliens just might escape the whole networked society—and live long enough to fight back.

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