Sunday, June 23, 1996
Our Fort had stood, for the better part of two weeks, a proud testament to our collective laziness. It was grand, it was magnificent, it was one hundred percent deserving of the capital F.
It reeked of body odor and dirty socks.
The Fort began life as the fort: An accumulation of bed sheets and extra pillows on the big couch in the living sitting directly in front of the television, that grew from scribbled plans in a grade school composition journal, into the Fort: A slightly more organized accumulation of bed sheets, strategically place pillows and cushions, dirty laundry parapets, unwashed dishes, re-purposed brooms (for the banners), and an ever-increasing amount of disgust from our parents.
Marlin and I lived there. Slept there. Turned ourselves willingly into mindless drones of Hollywood as we tried our very best to power through the absurd collection of VHS tapes our parents maintained. Mom said they were mostly dad’s, but we knew better.
Somehow, we managed to come to an unspoken agreement that after a cheesy movie, or a boring one, we would watch a Kurosawa film. Whether we had seen it before or not, Toshiro Mifune’s mustache was ginger to our visual palate,¹ making the world a better place.
To watch terrible movies in.
Mom and dad worked extra shifts during the season and would, occasionally and after a particularly long day, enter our bespoke dominion to enjoy the first hour of whatever we were watching and pass into sweet, sweet blissful sleep within the comfortable confines of our snug sanctuary.
We were at the point where the long, languid summer days had matured into a delicious boredom of the type which bred that curious mixture of exhaustion and insomnia.² Thus, nearly every one of our many waking, and all of few sleeping, hours were spent in the home within our home.
What I’m trying to say is that we really liked the Fort. Capital F.
So, while the order to tear the Fort down was, especially after the events of this morning, inevitable, its issuance caused the two of us no less distress for having waited nearly ten hours for it to come.
The command was made even worse by the appearance of our young brother Soren, with whom, in our eyes, the blame solidly lay, making his was down the stairs dressed in a Karate gi.³
Rashamon was in the VCR. Marlin, noticing Soren, looked up from Toshiro telling the bandit’s tale, to ask, “Why are you wearing that?”
Soren rolled his eyes and shot back, “Duh, because I’m the favorite.” The little smartass punched the air with a loud, “Hiya!”
“No, dummy,” I told him, “she meant: Why aren’t you in trouble?” an edge of exasperation and a touch of jealousy entering my voice.
Soren, unlike his relatively sedentary siblings, had established an active pattern of life for a majority of the season. Until very recently, his days were spent amongst friends doing God knows what. His activities left him worn out enough to sleep through the night, wake up early enough to be gone through daylight, and return with just enough time left to do it all over again. Unfortunately, those friends disappeared one by one as their parents dragged them along on family trips.
This left Soren with his own family. With mom working double shifts at the hospital, and dad keeping the shop open at irregular late night college student hours, it actually meant it left Soren with us.
Marlin and I barely acknowledged his existence.
Without any stimulus to occupy his hyperactive attention, Siren embraced the ensuing ennui with an unexpected, but thoroughly exciting, destructive outburst. It was mom, with her preternatural maternal timing, that interrupted what might have been a wonderful bonding opportunity disguised as a fiery assault on the Fort.
Mom called it burning the house down. We called it defending our land from an aberrant claimant. I am absolutely certain it had nothing to do with our watching several hours worth of medieval movies.
“Because he’s my baby,” answered mom, stepping down behind him. “And he’s five. You two need to be more responsible.”
“You look nice, mom,” I hazarded. So used to seeing her in scrubs and in a state of near exhaustion, it was a surprise to see her dressed nicely, and made up.
“Thank you, dear. Your father is taking me out tonight.” As mom descended, she absent-mindedly affixed earrings while herding Soren downward. “Sweetheart,” she told boy who was still punching the air dramatically with each step, “pick up the pace or I’ll Karate your little butt into the car.”
With one last, “Hiya!” he pelted down the remaining steps and out the door.
“What about him?” Marlin asked from the couch.
“Parenting, child. I don’t trust you three to have the house still standing by the time we get back, so I’m removing one of you.” She made it to the bottom step and called up to dad, “Honey! Let’s go!” Returning her attention to her twins, “His,” mom paused, “energy needs to be channeled into something productive. Soren is going to Karate lessons. Your father and I are going out.”
“But mom!” we chorused together.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Why don’t we get lessons?” Marlin asked. “I want to learn jiu jistsu,” she added.
“I want to learn kendo.”
Marlin sneered at me, “How are we even related?” then asked mom, “Why don’t we get to do things like that?”
Dad, finally hobbling out from his bedroom, leaned against the top floor railing, “Children are expensive,” he said. “And neither of you had the courtesy to eat the other in the womb.” He began making his way down the stairs, the steady clomp of his fake leg following every other step. Upon reaching mom, dad gave her a purposely mushy kiss that made her giggle and us gag.
“Your father doesn’t mean that,” she told us as she shoved him out the door.
With a wink, dad said, “Yes he does,” then disappeared outside.
Mom, still giggling, assured us, “He loves you both very much.”
“No he doesn’t!” came his voice from the driveway.4
Mom adopted a serious tone, “Listen, I want this,” she waved vaguely at the entirety of the living room, “disaster taken care of while we’re gone.”
“But mom!”
“Hush. That means laundry, dishes, trash, and everything back to where it belongs. Otherwise, I’ll lock you in the basement until you starve.”
Marlin spoke up, “We don’t have a basement.”
Ignoring her, mom went on, “We’re going to the city and we will be home in two hours. I expect my living room to be presentable.”
“Wait,” Marlin said again, sharing my confusion, “we don’t have a basement.”
Mom stepped through the threshold, and over her shoulder as the door closed, she added, “I’ve already discussed it with your father. If the class is good for Soren, and if the house is clean, we’ll sign you up, too.”
“Bye, mom,” I said.
“We love you,” Marlin said.
“Mmhmm,” and the door closed.
We stood together in sullen silence for a few moments, listening to the car pull into the road and drive away. “I can’t believe they’re blackmailing us to take down the Fort!” I was shocked! Scandalized! Outraged! Adjectives!
“I can’t believe you would rather learn kendo than something useful. You don’t know how to sword fight.” As if to punctuate her statement, the bandit and the samurai crossed blades.
Moving around the couch, separating sheets and clothing, I kept half my attention on Roshamon. “Well, yeah, that’s kind of the whole point,” I told her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t know how to sword fight. I want to learn.”
Across the room, Marlin had begun working towards me in the effort to clean. “Why?” she shook her head. “Who even sword fights?”
With both hands and a closed mouth, I pointed at the TV.
“That,” exaggerating several extra a’s and pointing, too, “is a fake fight! And they were both lying. And Toshi only won because he was lucky. You aren’t fast, or strong, or agile enough to use a katana,” I was about to interrupt her with the same argument about how lessons would improve that, and to ask why she was being deliberately hurtful, but she held her hand up to forestall me. “I know, but even if you were, who would you fight?”
Ugh, she was so blind to reason. “Who cares? Some dude comes at me and I pull out a sword, fight is over.”
She gave me a look, “So you’re just carrying a katana around everywhere you go? All I’m saying is that there is always a use for jiu jitsu.” The wife of the dead samurai began telling her tale, drawing Marlin’s full focus. “You know,” she said, watching the woman produce her dagger during the trial, “I bet I could beat you with a knife.”
“That’s it,” I told her, dramatically dropping everything in my arms. “We are settling this right now.”
Marlin mimicked my action with an emphatic, “Fine!” and ran into the kitchen. She returned holding a meat cleaver. “Well? Where’s your sword?” she asked, like holding a cleaver was the most normal thing ever.
“Why do you have a cleaver?”
“I said I could beat you with a knife.”
“That is a cleaver.”
“Butcher knife. Knife. It is literally in the name.”
“You,” she was right, “you’re right. Fine. Let’s go to the shop. Grab the spare keys, I’ll grab some change for Sharon. And,” I pointed at the knife she was holding way too casually, “hide that. Please?”
Marlin’s eyes narrowed in challenge. “No.”
We left as the samurai’s wife was explaining how she woke to find the dagger in her husband’s chest. I pretended not to notice.
It was only a ten minute walk. We walked all ten in silence. The thick, humid, Alabama air, and an acute lack of exercise causing both of us to sweat profusely. Concentrating on not breathing too hard, neither one of us were willing to admit we were dying.
It was also extremely lucky that the streets were barren tonight, as, to an outside observer, disheveled young twins shambling their way across town while one of them loosely held a shiny meat cleaver, might have been a tad unnerving.
Humming street lamps cast the cracked sidewalk in sulfurous yellow light, broken by flitting shadows of the constantly shifting forms of congregating bugs. Distant music from the college campus slowly getting louder the closer we came to the edge of town.
Dad opened the shop, with a degree of success, specifically because of the location. Right at the border of the commercial and residential, it cornered the suburban and college markets. And as the storefront came into view, so did Sharon.
Sharon, more or less a permanent fixture in the alley since long before our father leased the building, was wrapped up in layers of clothing. As usual, completely indifferent to the oppressive summer heat. We should have been ashamed at the state of our own physical condition, but there was little room for ego amidst the panting and sweating.
Harmless, quiet, Sharon kept to herself and never caused trouble. All she ever seemed to need was the occasional can of warm beer and handful of loose change. Upon receipt of either, she’d smile, say, “Sharin’ is carin’,” then be on her merry way back down the alley.
As we approached, struggling to breathe casually, Sharon stirred. Marlin bent low to deposit the coins into dirty wool mittens. From beneath multiple hoods, a face surprisingly free of sweat and grime, lit up. The money disappeared among hidden pockets, deft hands barely moving to give away position, or sound. “Sharin’ is carin’,” she said in a voice chiseled from bedrock.
“Have a good night, Sharon,” we told her.
She stood, still smiling, then shuffled down the alley. “You know,” Marlin said after her, unconsciously wiping her hands on torn jeans before pulling out the shop keys, “I’ve always wondered how old she is.”
I shrugged in answer. “I dunno, at least 40.5 Pretty old, though,” waiting for her to open the door.
“At least,” Marlin agreed, turning the lock and pushing. A welcome blast of cold air welcomed us. I walked in behind her, stepping quick to disarm the security system. Marlin made for the lights.
The first few rows of fluorescent bulbs energized, brightening the front of Peg Leg Geek’s comic shop, and casting the back into deeper shadow. There was a bit of madness to the layout. Every surface carefully cluttered with the latest craze. Here, some new board games; there, the latest release of pogs; collectible trading cards trapped behind glass cases to be looked at but never touched unless purchased.
Racks of comics stretched off into the shadows. Near the entrance, the new releases had their own separate shelves. And still there was more. Novelty weapons, movie props, models filled the spaces the comics didn’t. There was also an, quite frankly, disturbing amount of figurines and statues. Yes, statues. Dad had taken great lengths to assure us that they weren’t dolls or action figures.
Secretly, Marlin, mom, and I all believed that he only opened the shop as a reason to continue collecting like the unapologetic man-child he was.
All immediate thoughts of an epic battle momentarily suspended, Marlin wandered off to browse her favorites while I went to the new releases. On the rack sat Captain Punch, my guilty bit of cheesy pleasure. Dad kept them in store just for me, because no one else wanted anything to do with the Captain.
Richard Punch6 was a mild-mannered teenager until he was punched by a radioactive boxer. Now, he’s Captain Punch: Delivering justice one punch at a time. This month’s issue was: Captain Punch meets The Hacker! See the Captain prevent The Hacker from taking over the internet!
And so, I lost myself in the absurd tale of a digital Richard chasing The Hacker through the information superhighway before he could destabilize the world and launch all the nukes. Admittedly, it was terrible, but it did make me wonder whether or not the internet would someday be powerful enough to accomplish anything like that.
So completely oblivious was I to the world, that when Marlin reappeared, tapping me on the shoulder, I threw the comic and let out a pathetic shriek in surprise. “Um,” she stared at me, feeling embarrassed for both of us, “you gonna live?”
“You don’t sneak up on a man while he’s reading. It’s not polite,” I muttered.
“To hear your brother scream like a girl?” she finished. “Here,” Marlin tossed me a twenty-dollar katana she found hiding in the novelty weapons. Its hard plastic scabbard was glossy red, the white peg wrapped in a matching red braid. The collar wobbled, and it felt like the blade was going to break from the hilt.
Regardless of the portended danger, I unsheathed the over polished, too heavy, too dull blade, and left the scabbard on one of the glass display tops. Adopting a dramatic overhead guard, I asked Marlin, “Are you sure this is safe?”
With a much more functional butcher’s knife clenched tightly in front of her, she nodded. Pausing to add, “We should probably take it slow,” then moving in to attack.
Slow is exactly the pace we started out with. There was no flurry of clashing blades, just a steadily increasing interval of the clangs as the two made contact. Our confidence grew, and with each new thrust or parry or slash, we would laugh and hit a little harder.
It was but a warm-up, establishing a pattern we both felt comfortable enough to repeat ad nauseam until our cautious conflict finally became a cinematic battle. Banter began to insinuate itself into our fight. False bravado feeding our slide into carelessness. We fought like Akira Kurosawa himself was directing.
But, the sword eventually grew heavy in my hands. Sweat built up on Marlin’s palms. Both of us were too proud to admit we were pushing ourselves past our limits. My grip became weaker, the jokes less frequent.
Marlin came in fast, missing a beat of the rhythm we had established.
An audible thunk rang out, vibrations traveling from the peg all the way up my arm and back down again. The same sound and feel of hitting a large rock with a wooden baseball bat.
Marlin blanched, ghost white, eyes wide. Only, she wasn’t staring at me, but the point on the hilt where her cleaver had connected. Apart from her agape mouth working like a silent fish, she stood stock still. Marlin looked terrified.
Confused, I followed her eyes down to a sight where my ability to process what I saw failed me. Her knife was lodged in my peg, splitting the red braid, right at the spot where my pinkie wrapped around.
On the ground, at my feet, was my pinkie.
It would be a fair estimate to say that, including tonight, Marlin and I had seen dozens of amputations featured in the hundreds of movies or TV episodes we have watched. In nearly every one of those instances with a severed limb, appendage, or digit, there had always been an accompanying fountain of blood. Whether pulsing to a heart beat, or the steady flow of a garden hose, a bright crimson jet of arterial madness would spurt across a room and paint the walls.
It would also be a fair statement to say that I was pleasantly disappointed when what actually happened was completely, welcomingly, quite the opposite. Instead of a stream of gore, a few fat drops fell heavy to the floor landing near my severed pinkie. As we stared, the sluggish plops joined a small pool growing slowly as the liquid drained from the first two-thirds of my truant finger.
“Okay, okay, so, okay,” Marlin sputtered, “don’t panic.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” I screeched at her.
That set her off. Her stricken grimace cracked into a poorly restrained smile as a bout of giggling bored out from somewhere deep. Laughter, spreading, infectious, broke through me as she gave up her self-control and allowed herself to be consumed by the ridiculousness of our situation.
As it so often is in the case of insurmountable trauma, unbidden thoughts welled up in my brain, adding to the hysterics. In between gasping breaths, I managed to choke out, “Five second rule,” which doubled Marlin over.
Rolling, she added, “Now mom and dad can finally tell us apart!”
What felt like minutes passed, though in reality it could not have been more than fifteen seconds, before we finally calmed down. With a deep, contented breath, I set my sword down and picked my finger up. It flopped at the joint from side to the other as I rolled it between my still attached digits.
Half-expecting it to twitch, I brought it up to my face for closer inspection. It reminded me of something as innocuous as a baby tooth.
Just a part of me, discarded.
Sobriety washed over me at that thought. I tossed the finger to Marlin, or more accurately, at Marlin, killing off her laughing fit as quickly as it had come on. “Mom and dad are going to kill us,” I told her.
She held it like it she was in a nightmare, a strange detached dream, the edge of bizarre. I have never had cause to use the word before8 but it felt so,
“Surreal,” Marlin finished my thought.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Watching her turn it over and over in her hands, morbid curiosity tethering my sister to the body part. Not once did it occur to me to wonder where the pain was. Nor did I think to question why it had been Marlin that dropped her weapon first, to clutch at her hand.
All at once, though, the shock wore off, my body gave up, and I watched in slow motion as an arc of blood bridged the four-foot gap between me and my sister. If it were not for her wide-eyed surprise9 in that moment, she would have looked just like a serial killer.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
Blood loss was beginning to make me light-headed, I giggled at her hushed swear. “Don’t cuss!” I wobbled on my feet, “Sis, I’m feeling woozy.”
Ever the pragmatist, Marlin feigned calm. “Come on,” she said in a very level tone, completely at odds with her expression, “what’d mom teach us? Elevate.”
As she said it, I mouthed the word, and lifted the wound above my heart. Using my free hand I tore a strip from my shirt to press against the… cut?… slice?… my stump? To press against the stump. “Compress,” I said, the bleeding stemmed a noticeable amount.
Marlin, behind the cashier’s counter, rummaged through a drawer full of office supplies. She returned with a handful of rubber bands. “Tourniquet,” she announced triumphantly. Carefully, she wrapped several of them at the joint below my… stump. The pressure halted the blood flow, which I was grateful for. But, the tightening rubberbands, biting deep into already abused skin, and pressing hard into damaged bone, caused an alarming amount of pain that coursed up and down my arm.
Marlin, my twin, stared directly into my eyes as I winced. The pain abated to a more manageable level. Her face contorted slightly, “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered truthfully, “yeah, I’m okay.”
She frowned again, “We have to call 911.”
“Not from here,” I shook my head. “We’re already in a crazy amount of trouble. Going to be so much worse if they knew we were here cutting pieces off of me instead of home cleaning10.”
“But,” Marlin picked up the finger from the counter-top, resistance draining from her. “I hate it when you’re right. We need to put this in milk.”
I repeated her words in my head just to make certain I had heard her correctly. Milk? Really? “Milk? No, ice. You put teeth in milk.”
“Ice. Duh. That’s what I meant, you know that.”
And so, after securing a bag of ice cubes from the fridge where dad kept the sodas for all the nerds when they got too heated raiding a dungeon and or fighting a dragon, we walked out of a darkened store onto an empty street. “We should probably take the back way,” Marlin suggested. With a bloody cleaver in one hand, and a bag with an amputated finger in the other, she was hard to disagree with.
Away from the roads, through the woods, and across the creek, we stumbled. Bugs, all of the bugs, every single insect with wings and a taste for people, were drawn to the scent of fresh blood and wet sweat. In the heavy steam of the night, the going was slow, and my concern of being eaten alive by the swarm overtook the worry of my recent loss.
Our luck continued to hold, however, as when we finally broke through the treeline, the street was still devoid of any traffic. It was easy to imagine the reaction of a passerby upon seeing two fear pale twins, both wearing blood soaked clothing, one holding a knife and a bag red with a mix condensation and blood, and the other barely clinging to consciousness.
Eventually, one would rightfully assume, suspicions might have been raised.
1 – We had tried sushi for the first time just a few days prior. Marcus.
2 – Or from what I remember, at least. My journal simply said, “Summer is awesome so far, but I’m always tired and can never sleep.” So, some embellishment. Marcus.
3 – I feel it necessary to add that there was an angrily crossed out note about him being tiny and cute in the thing. Marlin.
4 – There is zero mystery as to where our sarcasm comes from. Marcus.
5 – Zero concept of age as a teenager. – Marlin.
6 – I just got that.7 Cannot stop laughing. – Marcus.
7 – Really? You never picked up on the literary gems that were middle school dick jokes? e.g.: “It’s time to punch you right in the -” “Richard! Look out!” – Marlin.
8 – But more than I could have ever imagined after. -Marcus.
9 – Disgust. -Marlin.
10 – Ah, to be young and scared of how your parents are going to react again. -Marcus
Marcus (and Marlin) Mardis: Master Monster Murderer(s) 