Content Warning: Alcoholism and mild violence

Ethan stood in the doorway and looked down at his sleeping son. He was wrapped in a thick blue blanket, the faint light of the street lights passing through the window softly illuminated his small figure. In the utterly dark room he almost seemed to glow. Ethan thought his face was soft and beautiful. Innocent. Ethan himself, though, stood like a dark shadow, tall and thin against the yellow light of the open doorway. His gaunt and miserable figure stuck out from the blackness like ridges of oil. The bones of his skill protruded clearly, and were etched with lines of resignation. He had a backpack draped across his shoulders, swollen tight with clothes, unopened beer cans, and other vague necessities he’d need on the road. With a teary eye, he stepped back into the hallway and closed the door behind him, leaving his son to his dreams. 

Turning to his right, he saw Melanie standing several feet down the hallway, right before the front door. She looked at him. The vicious anger that had burned in her eyes yesterday had now smothered out into a cold, dark hate. They did not shine or glimmer as was usual - tonight they were wide open, and matte black like ashy coals. She had pulled her long, dark hair tightly back across her scalp in a thin, rough ponytail. Everything about her gave the impression of repressed pain. 

They stared at each other for a good thirty seconds or so before Melanie finally gave way, walking away from the door and into the kitchen on the left. Ethan hung his head low and shuffled towards his exit. When he got there, he turned and looked into the kitchen at Melanie. She stood with her back turned to him. Would she at least turn and look back, he thought, to give him one parting glance or acknowledgement before he left? Maybe even say a single word? But she didn’t move at all. Her back did not heave even to breathe. She stared straight ahead out a black window, arms across her chest, and shoulders stern and raised. No sound, no movement, nothing. Ethan desperately wanted her to turn, and even more so to look at him. He thought to say something to catch her attention, but he chose to do nothing. A momentary pause halted time, and then he grabbed the doorknob and left. 

On the street, the warm summer night breathed pleasantly through the air. Neither cloud nor star sat above in the sky, but were overcast with the hazy orange glow of streetlights. Ethan stepped on the sidewalk and began walking. David had agreed to take him in for a couple nights or so, but Ethan was in no hurry to make it to his friend’s house at a reasonable time. It was already past midnight anyway, and the open air seemed too inviting after the suffocating closeness of his apartment. He grabbed a Natural Ice from his backpack, cracked it open, and started to drink. The can was warm and the beer inside tasted putrid, as though it were bile from a man sick with stomach cancer. The taste of his spit mixing with the yeast made him sick down to his feet, and yet still he forced it down. “5.9% Alcohol Content” said the label at the can’s edge. “Not nearly enough”, Ethan muttered. He had $23 in his pocket and a desperate desire to forget life existed. Screw David, he thought. I can sleep on concrete, I don’t give a shit. I’ve got other places I want to be. 

By the time he made it to the liquor store downtown, he had been through two of his precious Natural Ices. He tossed his latest drained can at the windshield of a parked car nearby and walked inside. This liquor store didn’t close until one in the morning on Fridays, and it sold the cheapest - and hardest - booze in town. Bottles and boxes crowded and stacked around every single inch of available space on each wall, and reached straight up to the ceiling. Alex, the owner, always kept maximum stock, and was a pleasant man to Ethan. Ethan himself could never see through Alex’s customer service mask and tone, but Alex could play Ethan like a game. 

The reason Alex kept his store open so late was because he knew most of the white trash alcoholics who made up his customer base often couldn’t get out of bed until well into the afternoon. Of this bunch, the most profitable customers all came late in the night; a group of four to six dingy regulars who’d straggle in one after the other every couple nights or so to buy the cheapest booze with the highest alcohol levels. Though Alex would smile at them and take their money, behind his hollow mask he loathed them. These miserable drunks, the stink of their breath and the food stains on their clothes. Their blotchy faces sometimes speckled with blood from dull razor blades, eyes yellow with jaundice from liver failure. They reeked of a despair as thick as piss. The only good thing about an alcoholic, to him, was that they always found a way to come up with more money, and they never took their business elsewhere. Though they bought cheap booze, they came so often he calculated that they single handedly provided 19% of his annual budget. And Ethan was one of those cash cows Alex loved and hated so dearly, a man whose misery made Alex’s life all the more bountiful. As Ethan walked through the glass doors, the mask tightened and Alex beamed forth with bright eyes. 

“Hello Ethan! Late night huh?” he smiled, his bright teeth flashing from behind his lips.

“You have no fucking idea, man.” Ethan muttered, and he beelined for the Everclear in the spirit’s aisle. Ethan liked Alex and even considered him a distant friend. Alex was always happy to listen to his rants and laugh at his jokes; always glad to agree with him about how much of a bitch his girlfriend was or how crazy it was that coke-head Danny Morris was now the mayor. But tonight there was only silence. When Ethan got to the counter to pay, he couldn’t muster anything to say. Alex smelled the depression like blood in the water, and preemptively spoke.

“Well, I hope things get better for you!” he lied with a wide grin, and pushed the bottle of everclear towards Ethan’s dirty hands. “$1.22 is your change, and here’s your receipt. I hope you have a goodnight! See you later!” His teeth were shining so bright Ethan swore they were glowing.

“Thanks man, you too, uh, see ya.” he said, and with that he took his bottle of Everclear and went back out to the street. 

Before he even left the parking lot he began to drain the large bottle. If the beer was putrid, this shit was poison. It stung and withered the flesh in his throat, and the fumes leapt up from his mouth to choke and burn his nose. He had never drank this shit straight before, but tonight he no longer cared. He didn’t know which direction he was walking, all he knew was that he was haunted and he needed to drink. Thoughts and visions flashed in his head, and in the space behind his eyes he could see his son lying peacefully in bed and his girlfriend sitting next to him, smiling. Then, with eyes closed, he could see the three of them standing together as one happy family on a warm summer day. He could see their happiness, and he began to softly cry tears that no one in this empty town block would see. And then the memories turned sour. He saw his son crying in a corner, terror in his shimmering eyes. He saw Melanie smashing a vodka bottle and throwing the pieces at him, screaming as loud as she could for him to get out of their apartment. And then he saw her as she was tonight, standing in the kitchen with her back turned to him. Arms tense and head faced straight forward. He couldn’t see, but he knew her eyes were black. 

“Why didn't you turn around,” he mumbled aloud to himself. “After all we’ve been through, you couldn’t look at me… you didn’t turn around…” The memory wouldn’t change. She refused to give him that one last glance. And so he decided to drown her in Everclear. He drank in massive gulps, the liquid burning him so bad it hurt but he didn’t care. He could see a vision of her now, though his eyes were hardly open. A vision. And she was still refusing to look at him. “Turn around!” he shouted. Her back was still as stone. So he decided to keep drowning her. Another big drink. And another. And another. “Turn around!” he shouted again, and still she wouldn’t move. “You fucking bitch, why won’t you turn around!” He was weeping openly now, and baring his teeth. He drank to drown her, drown her beneath an ocean and never to be seen again. Drown her, drown his son, drown the world, drown everything and drown himself. More massive gulps, and though she was drowning, she still wouldn’t look at him. “Fuck you!” he screamed and threw his half empty bottle at the vision. 

The bottle spun in the air and smashed into a car parked on the side of the street, shattering into dozens of pieces in a splash of clear liquid. The car’s alarm began to sound immediately, wailing loudly and echoing off the rooftops of the dilapidated department buildings around him. The vision cut out and reality snapped Ethan back with a harsh pull, and with what little was left of his mind he hastily swerved into a back alley before anybody came out and saw him. The alley was dark, and the gravel beneath him seemed to stretch on into the darkness for miles. He staggered down that trashy road for as long as he could, not knowing where he was or where it was taking him, until finally his knees buckled and he swerved straight into a dumpster. With a loud bang he collapsed. The world all around him was spinning, and he was exhausted. As he began to lose consciousness, he muttered his son’s name. “Michael… I’m so sorry boy. I hope… you can hear me. I hope… please hear me.” 

He drifted into a black, dreamless sleep. 

***

When he woke, immense pain pounded and swirled around his head. His stomach roiled with burning acid. He let loose a long, drawn out moan through cracked lips and stretched out his legs, but they were impeded by a metal wall of some kind. He pushed his legs against that wall, but it didn’t budge. He cautiously and very slowly opened his eyes and expected to be blinded by the sun, but all was still black. He pulled his eyelashes apart. He blinked. Were his eyes open? What the fuck? he thought. The carpet he was laying on was harsh and rigid, like the rough side of a dry sponge. Carpet? Where’d the carpet come from? 

He lifted his hands above himself, but they came to rest on yet another sheet of thick metal. They were curved and concave. Finally he realized: He was surrounded on all sides by metal. His heart suddenly quaked so hard it felt like it had been smashed with a cinderblock. With wide eyes he jerked to his side and saw a thin line of dull light stretching in between where the carpet beneath him and the metal above him met. This is a fucking trunk, he realized with horror and disbelief. He was, indeed, locked in a trunk. 

His breathing hastened to the quickest it had been in years, his heart pounding so violently and painfully it visibly shook his thin chest. The headache, which squeezed his skull, was so intense he thought he was going to die, but his very real fear of death propelled him to lift himself up on his elbow and bang on the trunk lid with all the strength his adrenaline had given him. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the fuck? Get me out of here!” Then a massive blow came against the metal above from outside. It was so powerful it dented the trunk lid inward, and landed with the violent crash of metal upon metal.

“Keep quiet!” A massive voice boomed out from above, its roar so deep Ethan fell flat onto his back in terror. He heard footsteps walking away from the trunk. And then all was silent. 

Ethan was so afraid he could barely think. What? What? Directionless scraps of words and vulgarities ran through his splitting head in circles so painfully fast he had no hope of clinging onto any of them. The first thing he was able to truly comprehend was his desperate need to piss. The moment the pain in his head began to recede, it was immediately replaced by the slow ripping of his bladder as it stretched to its limit. It was so sharp and piercing he had no hope of focusing on anything else. Finally, when his breathing slowed down and he began to collect himself, he laughed aloud. “Well, this is something new. I’m kidnapped, stuck in a trunk, and I have to piss. Oh god.” Truly, no level of terror could ever stop nature. 

He felt underneath his torso and discovered that he was laying on a carpeted panel which covered the spare-tire storage cavity. He moved to the panel’s edge, lifted it above his waist, and positioned himself well enough to relieve himself into the cavity below. It was the best piss he had ever taken, a moment of relief so pure he almost could’ve forgotten his current predicament. “Yeah, I bet that cocksucker out there will like that, too.” he muttered shakily. He smiled at his spark of rebellion and put the panel back over the cavity. And then began the waiting, and the long stretch of fear. 

Time passed slowly. Who was that guy? Why did he do this to me? Where is he now? These thoughts ran through his head in vain repetition. All alone with himself in the dark, they grew so deafening he finally had to smack himself to calm down and refocus. He pressed his ears against the metal; he could hear the singing of birds and the rustling of leaves outside. He could even hear the soft breeze grazing against the car. But what he didn’t hear was any sign of civilization. There were no pedestrians, no other cars, no trains, nothing human. Just nature. He was in the middle of nowhere. And the heat had begun to grow intense, it was a hot summer morning and he had started to sweat. 

More time passed, and the heat continued to get worse. It was oppressive, crushing him with an immense weight. His breath began to grow short: he was running out of air. “He’s gonna fucking bake me in here, what the hell,” he said aloud. “I’m not gonna die like this.” He felt around the trunk, looking for a crowbar or a release lever or anything he could to get that lid open. Even though he was afraid of the man who had dented the trunk lid, and who was presumably still out there, he felt getting beaten with a baseball bat was better than slow-cooking to death. But Ethan found nothing. No levers, no openings, and no tools. His backpack had been taken, and his shitty Motorola phone with it. There was nothing he could use. His hopes for survival had begun to die when suddenly he heard footsteps. 

He immediately laid flat on the carpet, attempting to make no noise even though he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. He could hear the footsteps of two men, and they were walking towards him. There’s two… Then, to his horror and simultaneous relief, they stopped in front of the trunk, slid a key into the lock, and opened it. 

First came the light. It was so bright and intense Ethan was blinded. His eyes slammed shut and his hangover migraine cried so violently he screamed. But his pain was partially relieved by the breath of cool air which came flooding down to him. He gasped and drank the air like crisp, cool water. Never had breathing felt so good. Before he could open his eyes again, four large hands reached down and grabbed him, two under his armpits and two around his ankles. “Hey!” he shouted as they lurched him out of the trunk. They threw him onto a dirt ground covered with stomped grass and tied his hands and ankles with zip ties. He finally looked up and saw the men crouching over him. They were huge with thick beards and greasy hair. The one on the left wore a plain black shirt, and the one on the right wore bright red. 

“Hey! How you doing bud?” The red-shirt man gleamed at him with a threatening smile. His dirty yellow eyes fully focused on him. “Hot in there, isn’t it? I was kinda scared I wasn’t gonna get back here in time, I didn’t really wanna bring fried drunk back to the camp!” He laughed softly. “Guess we could always eat ya…” 

“You done having fun yet?” The black-shirt man was far less jovial. His face was stern and no less threatening. “Ugh, he smells like piss.”

“Yeah he does… piss yourself bud? Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone… wait, his jeans are dry. You didn’t…” the red-shirt man’s voice trailed off, and with a nervous gaze he walked over to the open trunk. “It fucking stinks in here, did you piss in my car?” He shouted at Ethan. Ethan, horribly afraid, still couldn’t keep himself from softly chuckling. He was surprised when he saw the black-shirt man was chuckling too. The red-shirt man lifted the carpeted panel and saw Ethan’s puddle of wretched, alcoholic piss. “You motherfucker!” he screamed and slammed the panel down. The black-shirt man burst into open laughter. 

“Hey fuck you, Jerry! This isn’t funny! I have to clean this shit up!” 

The black-shirt man retorted, “Nah, it’s hilarious!” He nudged Ethan, who was bewildered and terrified at what was going to happen to him. “Nice job man!” While he hated both the red-shirt man and Jerry, Ethan decided that he liked Jerry just a little bit more.

The red-shirt man came over and violently kicked Ethan in the ribcage. Ethan screamed and viciously contorted in pain, so aggressive and violent was the blow. It paralyzed him and he couldn’t breathe, all he could feel was the pain in his side. “There, take that you asshole! I oughta make you lick that shit up!” the red-shirt man shouted. 

“Back off, Randall!” Jerry said, springing up and pushing the red-shirt man away from Ethan with one arm. Ethan, through his teary eyes, saw just how massive Jerry was. He had to have been around 6’ 5”, and was proportionally wide. Randall, though still large, was dwarfed.

“Well how’d you expect me to react?” Randall wheezed. 

“Damaging him isn’t part of the job description.” Jerry rasped in a low voice. “The King can do that.” Jerry’s ominous tone made Ethan like him less. Randall fell silent, and Jerry reached down and grabbed Ethan as though he were cheap cargo. Lifting him over his shoulder, he began to carry him down a fresh, thin path deeper into the woods. Randall followed closely behind, Ethan noticed a dull machete hanging off of Randall’s belt. His face was sneering and greasy, Ethan buried his eyes into Jerry’s back so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

They trudged through the harsh terrain, and though Ethan never once lifted his face out of Jerry’s back, he could feel Randall glaring at him continuously. The pain in his ribs began to subside, though it still ached horribly, and through quick glances he saw that the forest around him was getting darker and denser. The trees grew taller and the brush so thick it felt more like a chain-wire fence. The air grew cold as the summer sun above became more and more obscured by twisted trees, and the chirping of grasshoppers and crickets began to drown out the sweet bird songs. 

Ethan wondered where he was being taken, but since he knew he would get his answer soon enough he cautiously allowed his mind to wander. And almost immediately he thought of Melanie, and of his son. He could see her smiling again, and Michael standing beside her, hand in hand. It was a favored image of his, something he liked to think back on when times got tough, as they often did. It was Michael’s first day of fourth grade, a picture perfect day where the wind was calm, the sun was warm, and the trees were green… and they were all happy. Ethan stood with his arm around Melanie’s shoulder, and they watched as Michael ran up the clean gray steps of the middle school, backpack tight on his shoulders and a package of copy paper under his arm. And then, at the top of the stairs before the wide glass entrance, he turned around and looked back at his parents. With a big, toothy smile he waved his tiny arm in the air and shouted “Bye mom! Bye dad!” Ethan and Melanie waved back with big smiles of their own. 

After Micheal ran behind the school doors, Ethan and Melanie had walked back to her car in the parking lot. He recalled their conversation perfectly. “I hope he does okay!” she had said, both joy and sorrow in her voice. “He’s growing up so fast… ugh this sucks!”

“He’s going to be okay, and we’re gonna be okay too.” Ethan spoke, looking down at his girlfriend. They held each other and suddenly Ethan kissed her, even though she was shy of displays of public affection.

“Ethan!” she had said, pushing him away with a wide-eyed laugh. 

“What?” Ethan had quipped. “It’s a perfect day, I thought I’d make it even better!”

“Yeah sure.” She had playfully muttered, and they both got into Melanie’s car. As she drove, Ethan had wondered what he’d do for the rest of the day. Melanie had to go straight into work once they got back to their apartment, but he had the day off. Absent-mindedly, he had reached down and grabbed his can of Natural Ice from the cupholder and cracked it open. Melanie shot him a stern glare. “You shouldn’t have brought that. You know it’s illegal, especially in my car.” she said.

Ethan glared back. He didn’t appreciate being told what to do. He grumbled “Well don’t get pulled over then,” and started to drink. 

The sudden taste and stench of alcohol invading his memories made Ethan’s stomach churn and boil, and he groaned. It was both his favorite and most despised memory. After that day, it seemed everything had only gotten worse and worse. He had memorized the whole scene, playing it back in his head as the turning point of his whole life, and although it had only been a few years ago, to him he had now become a different person. And the memory haunted him as a phantom limb. 

He ruminated in a half-aware stupor like a man on his deathbed, quivering, sweating, and letting the pain in his head layover like an acid blanket, melting his flesh and mind. A sudden flash of warm sunlight brought him fully back into the present moment. He glanced aside and saw that he had been carried into a wide open plain, the forest immediately surrounding it on the edges. All around him were dead tree stumps, felled by axes or the straight hashes of chainsaws, and the brown earth beneath him was dry and cracked. Trampled weeds still vainly stuck out their dull flowers from beneath from the dirt. The echoes of soft voices came from all around him, and as Jerry carried him further in he began to see buildings pass him by on his left and right. 

They left Ethan dumbfounded, for the first time he lifted his head up fully to see with horror what was passing him by. These buildings weren’t normal townhouses at all; they were small wooden shacks, hand made with logs and planks. Tied together with ropes or sloppily hammered together with rusty nails. Their roofs were made with dead branches covered in tarps, or with dirty worn down shingles that looked like they’d been stolen from construction yards. A few were held together with plastered mud. Some were as small as backyard sheds, others were as large as a full bedroom, but none were larger than that. Some had sheet metal doors turned red with sharp rust, others simply had raggedy blankets burned with cigarette holes draped over tree branch lintels. There were no telephone poles, no concrete driveways, no cars save a few filthy ATVs. 

But the people were most astonishing. Ethan’s mouth went agape at the sight of them, these dirty men and women. Some were skinny as himself, others huge and intimidating. Many had shaved heads, all had dirty faces and wore dirty clothes. And all were staring at him. They whispered amongst themselves, and Ethan caught fragments of phrases like “There’s a new one!” and “More people for the King!” They smiled at him with closed mouths. He even caught a few glimpses of what seemed to be children, or at least young teenagers, crowded amongst themselves behind the crowd. 

Ethan was petrified, he almost couldn’t comprehend what was happening to him. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. A pathetic whimper of “What is this?” left his lips, but he didn’t even realize it. Behind him, Randall was stalking ever closely by, his thin smile more disgusting and revolting than ever. Ethan could hardly keep himself composed, though he kept telling himself It’s out of my hands, it’s out of my hands… Thick sweat dripped off his nose and trembling face. The anxiety twisted his intestines, and the pain only seemed to be growing worse. “What do you want from me?” he asked without realizing, but no one answered. The three of them continued to go deeper into the compound.

About the Author

This piece is part of a novel idea I've had for a long time, in which a cult operating in rural town begins to cause chaos and disarray. I want to use this premise to explore as many ideas as possible, such as addiction, poverty, selfishness, and the nature of evil. Essentially pouring as many troublesome topics as I can into a single piece and recreating them with a human face. 

Cover design made using Canva design tools.