VOID



“Goddamn it, Vince, get in here, these corns ain't gonna scrape themselves.”

No, they sure weren't, Vince knew. Nor did her toenails cut themselves. Or her eyebrows pluck themselves. Or tampons buy themselves.

No sir, they sure didn't, no matter how hard Vince wished for it.

“Sorry, hon, I was just-”

“Just nothing, like usual, now get your fat ass in here, Jeezus, how many times do I ...”

Vince let her voice go to Jello in his head, this spongy mass of words that globbed together in a kind of nothingness that made it all tolerable.

He went into the bathroom, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Wrinkles deeper under his eyes, hair higher on his forehead, and his jowls sank low enough to create a narrow chasm just underneath his chin.

Not always like this, no sir. Up until 10 years ago he was in pretty good shape. Not quite the kind of guy people would mistake for being captain of the football team when he was in high school, but he could walk up a couple of flights of stairs without gasping like a fish out of water.

He opened the cabinet below the sink and thrust his hand into the cleaners, the brushes, the stained clothes, all the crap that usually takes refuge in areas rarely seen during the week.

It was somewhere here, the new pumice stone. Damn, he's just bought it a few weeks ago, knowing how the last one was wearing down to the nub, Glenda's corns winning the weekly battle of flesh vs. abrasive.

Words burst through the Jello.

“Kee-rist, Vincent, I ask you one simple goddamn thing, please, they're done soaking and you know how they'll get in another few-”

The words again vanished into the amorphous black void he kept within his brain for moments as this. Survival mechanism, his therapist said. Well, when he went to a therapist. Until Glenda said she wasn't paying for advice for any free-thinking holier-than-thou sonuvabitch making more in an hour than most people make in a week.

As if he were spending any of his wife's money. She hadn't held a job in 15 years. And if there were any spare money Vince was making between two jobs, it went to a bed, or a clawing post, or another case of canned tuna for Bubbles, Glenda's cat.

Where the hell was that pumice stone? His hand swept the back of the cabinet, knocking aside cans of air freshener and stain removers.

Nothing.

“Hon,” he called. “I can't find the, at least I was pretty sure that a couple weeks ago, I swore I picked one up, but I think-”

“Vincent, you never freakin' think, that's your problem. Spit it out, what the hell is wrong? And you better not tell me we ain't got a goddamn stone cause I told you about that just the other day, make sure it's in decent shape because this has been a real bad week and I was gonna-”

Vince balled up the words again and shoved them into the void, a move so natural that he never really thought about it anymore. If he had, he might realize it was quite a talent, to make bad things disappear like that, shoving everything into some sort of soupy glop and draining slowly away.

He withdrew his hand from the cabinet, knowing he could search all day and never find what was not there. He closed the door, stood and took a deep breath.

Glenda was not going to be happy about this.

He entered the hallway, took a right and paused, looking through the doorway of her bedroom --which used to be our bedroom, he thought, but that was, what, four years ago? Five? He would wake her coming home late from his second job, she said, and she needed her nine hours. Never asked if he would mind. Came home one night to find the bedroom door closed and a note on it – “I left a pillow and sheets for you in the den.”

And she did just that, in a tidy little pile on the couch. Where he's spent nights ever since. Which was fine, since he hadn't been attracted to her for, well, long before moving to the den.

Something about removing a woman's corns kills any romantic notions that may try to rise from the dead every now and then.

Taking a deep breath, he walked into her bedroom where she reclined, as usual, in the leather chair he picked from a catalog at work, rewarding him for 15 years. She stroked Bubbles, who was curled in her lap, her pale blue frock pulled above her knees.

“Hon, I couldn't find the pumice stone, but I'll go get one-”

“You damn sure will, Vincent G. Wurrbach, you dumbass, not that it's gonna help me a whole lot since I gotta do a resoak now, and you know damn well the water's cold ...”

Void. Done.

Vince turned, left, made sure he was out of sight before checking his watch. 9:30. And he had to be up in six hours for work. And it was going to take 30 minutes to get to the CVS because they lived in the middle of nowhere, the only place they could afford on his two salaries. And of course the builder went belly-up less than a year after they moved in, so the seven homes on their street now faced an expansive weed-choked lot where, if you looked closely, you could pick out the ribboned stakes that marked out nothing more than the vision of a neighborhood.

Vince opened the door to the garage, patting his back pocket to make sure his wallet was there. Yup, and should have a few bucks, if he remembered right.

He opened the door of the Volvo, its hinge letting loose a creaky protest. Settling into the driver's seat, the vinyl snapping as it accepted his full weight, Vince closed the door and backed down the drive, crimping the wheels as he entered the street. Clutch down, he forced the gear shift into first, pressed the gas and waited for the engine to catch up.

As the Volvo inched ahead, he turned to the left to see if it was still there. But he wasn't even sure it qualified as an “it.”

He'd noticed it maybe two weeks ago, leaving for work in the pre-dawn darkness. That morning, he was encouraged by this new look, thinking it signaled some new construction (which he realized was incredibly stupid, it was not as if they could erect a wall overnight without anyone every knowing.

The sky wasn't right. Looking across the field, he noticed the stars disappeared, well, too soon, as if the horizon had been raised 10 feet.

A trick of the darkness, perhaps, but he noticed it again the next night, and the next. Only the horizon was rising more and more, the blackness getting taller.

As Vince reached the corner and turned right, heading toward the parkway into town. The clerk at CVS said nothing when he dropped the pumice stone on the counter, since he added some cold medicine to “justify” a late-night run (the one thing he would never run out of was cold medicine).

After pahying, he grabbed the bag and headed back home. It was after 10, and sleep was likely another hour away, once he was done with his chore.

Turning onto the street, his right foot slammed down the brake pedal.

He finally realized what was happening,

The darkness wasn't getting taller.

It was coming closer. That black line of, something, was advancing.

As he turned, his headlights panned an inky wall of nothingness. Looking down his street, it seemed the homes were facing the edge of the world. To the left, normalcy. To the right, a void.

A void, Vince thought.

He suddenly felt comforted.

Minutes later, as Vince bent over his wife's feet, pumice stone in hand, he could honestly say he was not surprised by the deep, hollow and thunderous knock at the door. Once, twice, three times, each echoing in the night.

Vince's voice was calm as he looked into his wife's startled eyes.

“It's for you.”