Chalk Lines
This short story was published in Volume 20 of Downstate Story in 2011. Downstate is a publication in central Illinois intended to provide exposure to previously unpublished writers. It was Derek's first publicly recognized piece of creative fiction, and he was very grateful to be selected for Downstate.
Neville and Albert are long-time friends, without condition. One talks a lot, while the other seems content to simply sit and listen, commenting with silence on the ramblings of the other. Their relationship is a reminder of how catharsis can be found in the open ears of a companion, even if only for a little while, and how quickly the valuable things in our lives can be taken from us by our own compulsions.
By the end, one of them will be dead; his last words quietly recorded by his only remaining friend in the world. It really is a sharp sting that only the living can grieve for the dead.
Neville and Albert are long-time friends, without condition. One talks a lot, while the other seems content to simply sit and listen, commenting with silence on the ramblings of the other. Their relationship is a reminder of how catharsis can be found in the open ears of a companion, even if only for a little while, and how quickly the valuable things in our lives can be taken from us by our own compulsions.
By the end, one of them will be dead; his last words quietly recorded by his only remaining friend in the world. It really is a sharp sting that only the living can grieve for the dead.
Chalk Lines
Neville dropped a well worn piece of chalk into a small box at his side. White dust fell off the wall and settled over the front of his tattered overcoat like a fine layer of ash.
“We're kings, aren't we, Albert?” Neville asked his companion over his shoulder. Albert answered only with silence.
“Yup, kings,” Neville continued. He sat down on a filthy, overturned bucket. “Modern-day kings reigning over our own little patch of land, our own personal paradise. I tell you, man...it doesn't get better than this.”
Neville bent and retrieved his bottle, clad in the brown bag it came in, and took a deep pull off of it. Savoring the flavor rolling over his tongue, he swallowed the fiery liquid and sighed in contentment. He saluted his friend with the bottle.
“What do you think of this stuff? It's decent whiskey, maybe not the best, but enough for a couple of guys like us, right? Right. No, sir...you don't need to be a captain of commerce to fill your coffers. Y'know, I almost feel bad for people like that, stuck up in their cramped offices every day from 9 to 5.”
Neville gestured toward the gleaming glass towers, just barely visible in the distance through the gap in the buildings that enclosed the alley. The moon was full, and threw down a haunting radiance over the landscape, illuminating everything in a weak mockery of the daytime sun.
Suddenly Neville snorted.
“Heh, well, then again...they're the ones with central heating, aren't they, buddy?”
Neville's words were punctuated by the frosty wisps that accompanied them into the icy night air. As usual, Albert didn't laugh at his joke. Neville narrowed his eyes and frowned.
“You know what, man? You could bring an army of stand-up comics to their friggin' knees. You could at least try give me something. I give you my best stuff, and all you can do is sit there and scratch your butt.”
Although his words were jovial, Neville was surprised at the surge of irritation he felt at his friend's expressionless stare. He hated feeling that way. He decided to change the subject before there was an argument.
“But damn, it is cold tonight, isn't it?” he said, rubbing his hands together and looking up at the bold, unobstructed stars. “Being the master of all your survey is great and all, but if you don't have a couple sticks to rub together to make a fire, you'll turn blue just like the rest of 'em. Ah well, whatever. We've made it through worse, haven't we? You remember the winter of '09? Now that was a few months of pure torture, right there. Hell, this ain't nothin' compared to that.”
Neville shivered, although whether it was because of his cold memories of 2009 or the frozen night of the present, he wasn't sure. He didn't suppose it mattered, really. The effect was the same.
Albert, however, endured the cold in his usual, emotionless fashion, and through his irritation Neville couldn't help but feel some admiration. Albert never complained about the weather or the hard concrete that served as their home. Neville suspected that Albert's rock-like stoicism could carry him, immutably, to the end of the world.
“Y'know, back when I was still living with Sara, she used to keep the thermostat down so low that I'd have to wear my jacket around the place,” Neville said with a chuckle. Then, his tone became wistful, and his eyes went somewhere far away, peering back through the years. “That woman had an inner furnace in her. I felt it when I first met her, back in the beginning, when things were still good. She could have burnt me right up, and I wouldn't have minded one little bit.”
Neville's smile faded.
“'Course, over time that flame died out. She just got angrier and angrier, when I started slipping. Soon enough she was as cold as these here alley walls.” He tapped the bricks behind him with his bottle for emphasis. Albert sat and listened.
“Oh, for a time things got better, when my girls were born,” Neville said. “I don't know how many babies you've seen, Al, but I can guarantee that none of 'em could hold a candle to my Jessica and Janie, cute-wise. The first years of their lives were the best of mine, no doubt, no sir. I remember how they looked at me, back then. We'd stay up late on clear nights, like this one, sometimes. We'd watch the stars creep across the sky, and get this; I told them that I was the one who moved them, that I could do it just by thinking about it. I swear I had 'em both totally convinced.” Neville's face swelled with pride at the thought of his daughters, their little faces turned up at him in adoration, there on the porch so long ago. He could almost hear them.
"Move the stars again, Daddy!"
The moment passed. He slumped back down over his bottle. “Of course, kids grow up. Up, and out of believing things that you say just because you were the one who said them. The older they got, the more they looked like their mother. Eventually they stopped smiling when they looked at me, just like she did. They learned those stars moved right along on their own.”
Neville sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He looked up at his friend.
“Sorry, Al, I didn't mean to get all morose on you, there. I guess the longer you plant yourself in a place as classy as this,” he swept an arm at their surroundings with a dry chuckle, “your noodle can't help but remind you how you got there in the first place.”
Neville turned and looked at the faces he had drawn. When he spoke, he could barely be heard, and it was unclear whether he still addressed Albert, or the figures on the wall.
“The thing is, I tried,” he whispered. “I tried to be better. For them. I went to that horrible job every day, did the things I thought I was supposed to. In the end, I just didn't have the strength for it, couldn't escape that damned bottle before it snatched up my soul. I just wish I'd have known what would happen, what I would become, before Sara and I ever met. Then, I could have left her the hell alone, and the only life I would have ruined would have been mine...”
Neville faced Albert once again. He made no move to hide the tears he shed. Despite the times that he was infuriated by Albert's impassivity, he knew that he would never be humiliated for allowing himself to become so vulnerable. No matter how many times Neville told his story, Albert would always listen and provide his silent comfort. He was Misery's perfect partner.
“Anyway,” Neville said, “let that be a lesson to ya. If you ever get out of this place, and find yourself a good woman, you wrap your arms and your legs around her, and you don't ever let her go. She'll save your life, y'know?”
Neville was shaken out of his musings by the sound of footsteps outside the alley. There were a whole lot of them. Neville frowned, his tears forgotten, and gave Albert a concerned look. It was too late and too cold for anybody to be out on a simple midnight stroll.
Suddenly there they were, featureless as they were silhouetted against the street lights. Neville raised a hand to his eyes in a failing effort to make out any details of the intruders. The group stopped, speaking to one another in hushed, guttural tones. They paused, and peered in at him. Neville's heart began to pound in a rhythm of warning.
“Uh, hello?” he said. “Sorry, this alley's full.”
If the shadowy mob understood his joke, they didn't show it. After another round of low murmuring, they started toward him. Their shadows touched him, enveloped him, until Neville was lost in darkness.
Through it all, Albert bore silent witness.
Officer Roy Henderson pulled up to the curb in his squad car, and pulled up his collar. He opened the door and stood up into the frigid morning air, unconsciously tensing his shoulder muscles against it. His fellow officer, Tony Dean, waited for him.
“What have you got, Tony?” he said.
“White male, mid-fifties. It's...bad.”
“Bad, like dead, bad? Come on, kid...you're wasting my time.”
Tony ignored him. “Could be another gang initiation. See for yourself.”
They made their way down the alley, until Roy could make out the form of a man, face-down on the concrete. There was a pool of crimson beneath him.
“Oh, damn,” Roy sighed when they reached the body. He crouched down, careful not to disturb anything, until he could see the man's face. The eyes were open and set, staring blankly beyond the officers. The rest of him was damn near unrecognizable as anything human.
“Okay, call it in,” Roy told his younger counterpart.
Tony nodded and hurried back toward the cars. Groaning, Roy raised himself back to his feet and looked up. His eyes widened.
He had been so intent on the body, that he had not noticed the chalk graffiti running the full length of the wall. No, not graffiti, really; more like a mural. Sloppy, but a mural nonetheless. A huge one.
Some of the illustrations seemed random; one depicted a bottle with the sneering face of a demon where the label should have been, while another showed two men with absurdly large crowns on their heads, clinking cups in celebration.
There was one drawing, however, that caught Roy's attention. It was an illustration of a woman, with her arms around the shoulders of two small girls. They stared out at him, not once, but many times where they had been scrawled on the wall, over and over. Roy found it especially odd that not one of them appeared to be smiling.
Drawn over the entire thing, from end to end, were hundreds of five-pointed stars.
“Damn, man,” Roy said to the body on the ground, “you've certainly been busy.”
Then he paused, reading something in the face of the dead man. Roy got the eerie feeling that the guy was looking at something behind him. He turned, and jumped.
He had ignored the heap of garbage behind him, because he had assumed that was all it was. But from this vantage point, the pile looked as though it had been shaped to resemble a person. There was a large garbage bag, seemingly the torso, that had been pierced with rusty old coat hangers to simulate arms and legs. An old fruit crate perched on top to form the head, and two grimy soda bottles had been stuffed into it to form large, milky eyes. Above the “man”, somebody had written the name “Albert” on the wall, again, in chalk.
“Albert, huh,” he said to the heap. “Well, Albert...some friend you are.”
Just then Tony came jogging back. “Dispatch says that there are no investigators in the area,” he panted. “They asked us to mark the body in case anything gets disturbed.”
“Mark the body? What are we, on TV?”
Tony just shrugged.
At that moment Roy noticed the small box of chalk sitting next to the dead man.
“Well,” he said, “it looks like we're in luck.”
Roy walked over, and scooped up a well worn hunk. As he worked to outline the body, white dust flew up into the air.