the Evening Guests

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart, Brandon; it’s just a scratch. It will heal up right as rain. I promise it will not even leave a scar. You’ll see.” His skeletal mother hobbled in with his supper on an old aluminium TV tray. Brandon arose from his chair with a look on his face—a trace of hurt. His mother sighed to herself, wondering why her son was so goddamn weak. Ever since he was a child, he has been needy. She blamed herself for being a single mom at the time of his adolescent years, being without a strong father figure around to toughen him up and demand some respect.

Maybe then he would be a success in everything he touched.

“But Momma, I got bit by a bat in here last night.” His hand moved to the bandage on his forehead, and he grimaced at the pain. He still felt too woozy and sick from PEP—Rabies post-exposure prophylaxis shots and stitch pain. “I don’t even know how the goddamn thing got in here.”

“What did I say about blasphemy ’gainst the Lord, Brandon?”

“Sorry, Momma,” Brandon said, turning away and biting his lower lip. He could have said far worse, but he remembered how quick she was with the wooden spoon in the kitchen when he was a child. Now that he was under her roof, he had to obey her rules. Like it or not, she wasn’t too happy to see him return home with his tail between his legs after such a bitter divorce. He knew she tolerated his interest in music, even if it was not wholesome Christian music. Brandon grinned at the music he did enjoy and knew that if his mother had seen his collection, she would have felt the same way as Linda Blair's character Regan McNeil in The Exorcist. Now, that would be something to see, he mused.

“And get that smarmy look off your face,” she warned.

Brandon said nothing but went to open the window a crack as he watched his momma put down his meal of the day on the old coffee table. He half-heartedly listened as she grumbled about all of his unopened boxes in the den and how to get them into storage if he was planning to stay. Then she said he could not use his electric guitar in the after-hours. He sighed wearily as his hand slipped into the top of his tweet jacket and slipped out a package of Export A’s. The cigarette balanced on the tips of his moistened lips as he glanced out the open window. Facing the driveway, he looked over his rebuilt ’91 Maserati Shamal and wished he were elsewhere. His other hand fished out the flip lighter his ex-wife had bought him one Christmas ago as a withered old hand reached out to stop him from lighting his cancer stick.

“Not in my house,” she warned. “I don’t need that filthy stink in my house.”

Brandon quickly tore the smoke from his lips and wanted to remind her of what she smelled like, but he bit his lip. In frustration, he managed to crush his cigarette and just sighed.

“Where are you going?” He heard her say it behind him, and he cringed. “Aren’t you going to try some of my soup, at least?”

“Out, Momma,” he said over his shoulder as he opened the swing patio doors to exit. “I ain’t as hungry as I had thought. I need to go for a walk.”

She stood at the open doors as Brandon stomped down the driveway towards the park to yell at him. “Well, this isn’t a hotel, you know. This soup will be cold by the time you get back. Guess I’ll just give it to my chow-chow if you don’t eat it.”

“Okay,” he waved her off, “hope he chokes on it.”

“What?”

“I’ll be back soon.”

She said something else to have the last word, but by then Brandon was hurrying away as fast as his legs could carry him.

He leaned on an old oak tree to catch his breath, fished in his top pocket, and withdrew a cigarette. It was full autumn, so he watched absentmindedly as the fallen leaves whisked and whirled around the vacant playground before him. As a child, he used to come to the park to meet with his friends, where they would play, cuss, and get into all sorts of trouble. He had even gained his first right to manhood in a park just like this one. He smiled, recollecting the day his friend Charlie Simons showed up with a water-stained Hustler magazine.

That was such a long time ago. He had almost forgotten how easy it was to be a kid. Growing up with very little expectation, lots of time, just romping around. He snubbed the remainder of the cigarette on the side of the tree before flicking it away. It was starting to get dark fast, so that meant he should get back to his mom’s rental unit. He had to get enough rest for work tomorrow. The long move-in with his mother and the sabbatical from his divorce had come to an end. Now he would have to get his shit together and stop fucking around. Get his life on track—no looking back with regret, but full steam ahead.

A playful little giggle came from the squeaky old merry-go-round from behind. He turned his head and furrowed his brow. A dirty little child with bare feet was on the rusted old contraption. Swinging around in glee on that old death trap, Brandon knew it so well. He recalled how many kids in the neighbourhood had managed to slip from it as it spun around, bruising their knees or worse, and then smacking their tiny little heads on its metal parts and seeing stars. He looked around for a parental figure, or at least someone responsible, to make sure she was in safe hands.

“Where did you come from?” Brandon drew closer as she spun faster and faster around, laughing. “Whose kid do you belong to?” He looked around, irritated that no one else was around. “What is wrong with people these days?” He huffed, “leaving a little girl unattended to.”

He came over to stop the merry-go-round from spinning and the little girl glared at him. She motioned for it to go with her body and gnashed her teeth at him.

What happened to her? He squinted at the little native girl’s face. Her left eye had a shiner on it, as if someone punched her in the face. “Are you lost, little one?”

She pouted and mumbled something he couldn’t comprehend, a language foreign to his ears. She then began to descend from the merry-go-round. I encouraged him to move faster with animated gestures and shoved him out of frustration when he didn’t comply.

Brandon found himself on his back, looking up at the colourful striations of a darkening sky. He looked up at her as she spun around in glee. The back of his neck tingled, and as he pulled his hand back, he discovered flecks of blood on his fingertips. I must have hit a sharp rock or piece of glass — something sharp. He rose up and felt around for the source of his infliction but found nothing. He squinted over to the little girl dressed in a filthy dress that had barely clung to her little plump frame. She was barefooted, but she did not seem to mind. Her knotted black, oily hair was plastered to the side of her head as if never once washed, and it made him squeamishly imagine that her head crawled with lice. Her pale brown skin is stained with crusts of dried mud. All the time he watched her, she continued to run around as if on a sugar rush.

He pushed up and caught up to her. He grabbed her arm and spun her around. She was clearly of indigenous descent, and Brandon tried to remember if there were nearby reservations where she had come from. He looked her over, wanting nothing better than to help get her cleaned up. Just looking at her condition broke his heart. She was not only pretty, but her smile was infectious too.

“Why are you out here all by yourself?” Brandon licked his lips nervously and looked around. For some odd reason, he felt awkward being near her. He should just let go of her arm and mind his own business. The primal fear in the back of his head was screaming. The kind of deep-seated fear of spotting a friendly baby black bear and then realizing that momma bear was probably not that far off.

She stared up at him, silent as a vacant room.

“She can’t talk to you,” a woman’s voice interrupted behind them. “She only speaks Secwepemcstín.” A young woman withdrew from the surrounding bush. She had a similar pale brown complexion as the child, but her fine black hair flowed past her waist. When she shuffled towards them in her pink cotton dress, her hair fanned outward. Her features were both striking and memorable. Brandon caught his breath upon her beauty as surely as the musician in him had uncovered a muse. He swallowed as she drew closer. His mouth went as dry as a desert, and he found that his eyes could not leave hers.

As she looked away to assess the child, Brandon felt lost. Winded by desire, his heart thumped hard in his chest—so much that he felt swooned and fought to stay upright. I must be hungrier than I thought. He wished he had eaten something before heading to the park. But even the soup his mother had offered earlier would have barely sustained him at all.

“Your eye.” She tsked and drew a hand through the little girl’s hair. “Who did this to you?”

The little girl pointed over to Brandon.

“W-what?” He was flabbergasted by the accusation. “I did no such thing. I just found her this way. I would never harm a child.”

“She says you did,” the woman bent lower as the little girl whispered in her ear. “She was chasing a moth and then found herself in your room through the open window. You were playing a musical instrument and swung at her with it.”

“I just met her,” Brandon said, looking confused as he snorted. “See this cut on my forehead? A fortnight ago, a little bat got into my room, not some little girl. I almost broke my electric guitar trying to get that vermin out.”

The woman rushed up to him in a blur, pinned him against a tree, and snarled. “We’re not vermin.”

“Okay, okay…” Brandon squeezed his eyes shut, hands up in surrender, thinking this bitch is batshit crazy. “I didn’t say you were vermin, so just chill the fuck out—okay?” He tried to squirm out of her hold on him, but she had pinned him to the tree. He looked at the woman as if she were insane. Her eyes went all fucked up when she got mad. Shit, she’s strong too.

The woman sniffed his face and neck. Then she recoiled for composure, relinquishing her hold on him.

“You’re bleeding.” She scowled at the little girl. “Did you do this?”

The girl danced around them in glee with her arms out.

“It’s nothing; I just tripped, that’s all.” Brandon brought his hand over to the injury behind his neck. He showed off dry flecks of his blood to her. “See? No problem.”

The woman turned and grabbed the child by the arm. The two started conversing in their native tongues, and it sounded as if the woman had scolded the child. Brandon figured for telling tall tales.

“I better get back... I should get going now.” Brandon started to distance himself from the two. “Nice meeting you two.”

As he turned away to leave, Brandon felt their eyes on him as his walking pace became a hurried jog.

That night, Brandon tossed and turned on a ratty old couch his mother frugally refused to throw out. In a cramped bedroom, he sat his bed just meters from the den. He was occupied with an assortment of taped-up boxes that he did not have the heart to unbox and put away. He did want to settle in, just not with his mother living above him and listening to her and her yappy little shitsu all hours of the night, stomping around or occasionally dropping things on the hardwood floor above as he tried to sleep.

He held a pillow over his face, cursing his mother for keeping him up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, can’t you just sleep at a decent hour like everybody else?” He screamed into his pillow so that she could not hear his rage. The last thing he wanted was for her to start stomping louder. She said that he was being too loud at such an ungodly hour.

In exasperation, Brandon rose from the couch in his tattered grey underwear and Ramones T-shirt and went over to open a nearby window for some cool air. She could at least have a bloody air conditioner like everyone else. He muttered obscenities under his breath. It’s bloody roasting in here.

He paused in front of the window. There was a strong thump in his chest. He finally focused on the strange, tiny thing outside his window. It tapped the window with a long, pointed finger, looking like a tiny girl with tan skin and a brown bat’s face.

Mesmerized with fear, Brandon hesitated before the window latch. A shadow from out of the night appeared behind the smaller abomination. It took its place beside it, as a parent would represent their child to a guest. Like the smaller version, the mature, bat-faced creature wore nothing but a red-stained dress over her seductive human half.

“Let’s in,” the adult one commanded.

Brandon trembled where he stood. His hands started to move of their own volition to unlock the window. The two stood still before the window, patiently waiting to enter.