(Towanda!) Cleanup Time

When her husband had been gone for a week, Alexandra had a nervous breakdown.

When he had been gone for two weeks, she stopped looking for him in the house.

When he had been gone for a month, Alexandra found herself totally alone in the house. Lilith was gone. So was the nameless demon who had taken him.

When it had been a month and one week, she found him. At least she thought she did. Inside a jar of cloudberry jam, in the cupboard.

She was making her breakfast by the counter, getting ready to spoon some sunflower seeds over her usual portion of soygurt with fruit, when she spied movement inside the jam jar with her side vision. She freaked out, shouting a loud Fuck! in the kitchen, dropping the whole bag of seeds on the floor. She swore some more, looking at her cotton slacks, covered with sunflower seeds, dangling from the rough fabric, sunflower seeds all over the floor, a giant heap of grey matter on the green rug. “Fuck! Fuck this, and almost a complete bag, too!” she cursed, checking the damage. 

Before taking out the vacuum cleaner, angry as hell as well as frightened, she carefully placed what remained of the seed bag on the counter, and took out the cloudberry jam from the cupboard. She brought it close to her face, looking intensely at the orange substance with its own hard, darker seeds here and there. She could just make the outline of him, somewhere inside the tall jar. He seemed to be okay, but scared, hammering an invisible door. And he was without his glasses, but otherwise fully clothed, and seemingly unharmed. A sixth sense told Alexandra she shouldn’t open the jar, it was imperative not to, she would need to find her way to him some way that enabled her, too, to diminish like that, to find the way into the wardrobe, or wherever the portal was now that the dreams had ended altogether.

Six hours later, Alexandra had gone through the entire cupboard as well as the pantry, checking every single mason jar and similar cans of food, beverage, and condiments. After finishing in the kitchen, she had proceeded into the bedroom, and now the wide wooden dining table top was filled with cans of soup, jam jars, bottles of juice, but also face cream, body lotion and massage oils.

She couldn’t find him in any of them. Only in the cloudberry jam. And he didn’t seem to see her at all, or sense her seeing him. Now he was sitting on the floor, his head between his hands, either exhausted from banging the door for so many hours, or perhaps crying, which was profoundly upsetting for Alexandra. She was sitting at the table, helpless, all the colorful jars around her, with the one her husband was trapped in in her lap. She had forgotten all about the spilled sunflower seeds, and the floor was speckled with small grey pebbles, they not only stuck to her pants, but on the soles of her socks, and she had spread them all over the bedroom as well.

Alexandra felt hot tears forming in the inside corners of her eyes. She was so used to telling everyone he hadn’t yet come home from his trip, and it wasn’t that unusual either, everyone they knew was aware of the situation, of Alexandra’s troubles and need for room sometimes, but as weeks had formed into a month, she herself had started questioning whether she, perhaps, had invented him. That there was no husband, really, it was just one of those things, like the others, the faces in the mirror, the visitors, her shadow self. Maybe it was all just an elaborate dream, and she would wake up in an insane asylum. Because that was where she belonged, not here, living the normal life with someone who had promised to always be there for her, to not let anything happen to her, to protect her from her own demons and ghosts, protect her from herself.

And now she had made him disappear. There was no getting around it. She was responsible.

She felt the hot wave of self-pity growing inside her chest, like the pink goo in The Blob, that would devour her whole, and the entire house, and there would be nothing left but the monstrous shapeless matter rolling around the property where the house used to be, she inside, forever with the tears in her eyes, suspended, lifeless, clutching the cloudberry jam jar in her rigor mortis fingers.

Ring! Ring! Jesus! Alexandra got so spooked she almost dropped her husband on the floor. The phone. And more specifically, the landline. No one called them on the landline anymore. Goddamnit the ringing was loud.

She got up, holding the mason jar, not being able to bring herself to put it down, and walked to the phone. It was one of those Nineties horror shows with the large talking piece and a burgundy cradle with the buttons. Hadn’t they disconnected the line a few years ago already? Alexandra had a clear and precise memory of a discussion concerning this very subject, and she had assumed they no longer had a landline phone, just their smart phones, like everybody else.

She lifted the speaker. “Hello? This is Alexandra.” Her husband had always hated the way she answered the landline, as if she was taking a call in her own personal phone. “What if it was something important?” he said. “What if it was a business phone call for me, and they thought it was the wrong number?”

“Well, my darling, were they to hang up, never asking if it was the right number to reach you, I’m thinking those types of people would be just so dumb that you might as well not want to be in business with them anyway”, she always responded.

“Hello?” she repeated into the mouth piece now. She could hear a faint crackling sound, like from a fire, or if the call had come from across the ocean. Crackling, and, were those – waves? “Hello?”

“… Alex? …Alex?” It was him! Barely audible, as if coming from a hundred thousand miles from the dining room, but unmistakably him.

“Mark? Mark?” she screamed into the mouth piece, pressing the jar tightly against her breasts. “Where are you, Mark? Tell me where you are! I can’t find you, and I can’t tell if I’m supposed to open—“ she suddenly felt ashamed and stupid about the jar, realizing she was being crazy, thinking he was actually in there. She had no free hand to wipe away her tears, so her vision was blurred, as she kept screaming her husband’s name into the phone, not at first realizing the crackling and the sounds of waves had stopped, and she was yelling into nothing.

“Mark? Tell me where you are, Mark, tell me how to find you, because I can’t—“

Nothing. Alexandra snapped out of her haze, staring into the phone. Of course it was disconnected. There was the cord, in a neat little ball, held together by some mint-colored masking tape. They had only held on to the piece because of the humor of it. Sometimes they would pretend Alexandra was in the loony bin, or in jail, and they would take out both their old phones, the home phone and Mark’s business phone, and have their breakfast on opposite sides of the table, talking into the mouth pieces to each other as if through a Plexiglass. When she had told one of her friends about it, she had thought it was thoughtless and very rude from her husband to make fun of Alexandra’s illness, and in bad taste, and from then on, she had never told anyone. Mark would never hurt her. The whole game had been Alexandra’s idea. It was their own private joke, their own fun way of coping with the occasional hardships of their relationship. She had loved the game, and those mornings were always full of laughter and lovemaking and sweet words and imagination.

But that also meant Mark couldn’t have phoned her just now. It was impossible.

More impossible than being trapped inside a cloudberry jam jar? Alexandra threw the phone back on its cradle, shouting a few more profanities. She was in over her head. She needed help. She would need to tell someone. She looked at Mark’s wedding band, the one she had found on top of the hatch. She wore it in her right ring finger, like how those of the Russian Orthodox faith wore their wedding bands. If it wasn’t for the ring, matching her own, in her left ring finger, she might have thought she had invented the whole man and relationship. “Hold on, baby”, she whispered, looking at the ring. “I’m coming. I’ll find a way and I will come for you.”

Carefully, she put the jar on the phone table, wiped her tears away, and stormed outside in a rage. “Pennywise! Pennywise, you motherfucker! Get out here, now! Goddamnit, you have been here for years, if anyone knows how to get to Mark, it will be you! Pennywise! You fucking coward! I have never interfered with your business, now help me, you son of a bitch!” Alexandra grabbed the juniper by its thin trunk and started shaking the bush violently, jerking it from side to side, making the branches shed their needles all over her and the flower bed.

Crazy lady, attacking the shrub in her yard, killing the juniper with all her might, screaming fuck-yous and come-out-heres so loud the whole neighborhood heard her.

After jerking the juniper back and forth for a while, Alexandra had an idea, and she ran to the work shed, still screaming at the shrub. “Okay, this is it, you fucker, let’s see you now! Let’s see you now!” she yelled, returning from the shed with a hatchet. With a rage, one could only describe as fiery vengeance, she started chopping, becoming short of breath, her cries turning into whimpering, striking with the tool over and over, until the bush was a mere stud. She threw the hatchet in the flower bed, grabbed the bare trunk with both hands, and yanked hard. The adrenaline rush still provided her with enough supernatural power to yank the shrub clean out of the soil, roots dangling, and bringing with them the sweet and soothing earth smell.

As Alexandra was pulling out the juniper from the ground in the middle of the flower bed, covered in dirt and sweat and face streaming with tears, Pennywise, unobserved, arrived at the gate.