"Russel" (standard:Psychological fiction, 2944 words)
Author: Straybullet	Added: May 11 2007	Views/Reads: 3371/2299	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Visit your grandmother damn it!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Russell. Goddamned if he wasn't tired of hearing about Russell. Mark 
tuned her out and sank into his own thoughts inevitably hitting upon a 
one that had been living within him since he'd first met Alice. Mark 
hadn't reached such a state of depravity to rob anyone yet, but his 
need has been growing and he hurt constantly. Salvation could be a 
helpless elderly lady hording a bunch valuable antiques...Mark 
sidestepped the thought. Best not to think of it. 

She stopped again midway up the back stairs leading up from the alley.
So involved into blocking her out with his own thoughts that Mark 
nearly ran into her. 

"Have you gotten those bug bites checked out yet?" It took a few minutes
as it often did to piece together just what in the Hell she'd been 
talking about. Slowly Mark looked at his forearm. He'd told her they 
were bug bites out of a mixture of shame and the fact that he didn't 
want her to know where her social security check was going. 

"Um no Alice I haven't yet." 

"Well you should you know. Russell and I were watching ‘Twenty/twenty'
last night...wait maybe it was Monday night. That's it! It was Monday 
night after football. He still likes his football. Twenty/twenty had a 
documentary on about this spider, a brown recluse spider they called 
it. Nasty thing. Anyway, this poor little six year old..." 

"Ummm. Alice." he said indicating the armload of groceries he'd been
lugging. 

"Oh!" She exclaimed. “I'm so sorry Mark your poor arms must be getting
tired.” She fished her keys from her purse and returned to the stairs 
and the rest of the Monday night broadcast of “Twenty/twenty”. 

“Helloooo Russel!” Alice called to one of the other rooms. Russell
didn't answer nor had he ever since Mark had been coming. He set the 
bag down on the kitchen table as Alice tended to her cats. There were 
only three of them but the small two-bed apartment reeked like there 
were fifty of them. A calico wound its way around Alice's legs as she 
dug two small cans of tuna from the bags and fed them. Mark looked over 
the room. The flower patterned floor, the beige walls speckled with age 
stained pictures of Russell and Alice. Alice's dress and hairstyle 
changed throughout these pictures with no two alike while Russell 
simply wore a collar shirt and jacket. Always the same jacket and in 
later color photographs it was found out to be tan. 

"W-where's your bathroom Alice?" he spoke through a bout of shakes. She
pointed him to a room down a hall decorated with even more of the same 
pictures. 

As he stood relieving himself, a thought occurred to him. The
refrigerator door is bare. That meant no family. He sifted his memory, 
had there been any children or any grandchildren in the pictures? No. 
It was just Russell. 

"God that must be lonely." He muttered. Mark felt some empathy for the
old woman; after all he knew what it was like to be lonely. Hunched 
against one building or another with a scrawled cardboard sign all the 
while your fellow man files past you by the hundreds seeing but 
pretending not to see you. That was lonely. His eyes pinched as another 
wave of shakes racked him accidentally causing him to piss on the 
floor. "Awww Fuck!" came out before Mark could stop it. 

A grandfather clock announced the time from one of the other rooms and
immediately he tried to tally how much he could get for it followed by 
how hard something like that would be to get down two flights of 
stairs. Mark shook his head as if to dispel the thought. She collected 
clocks she'd told him more than once; she had over thirty in fact many 
from different parts of the world. All set ten minutes fast so that the 
hourly chimes didn't interfere with the first few minutes of the news. 
Funny the odd shit you remember. After washing up a bit he headed back 
to the kitchen where he told her he'd see her next week and went to 
leave. Alice told him that she was cleaning out some garbage, quite a 
bit in fact and that she'd need him to carry it out for her next week. 
She also said she'd pay him thirty dollars extra for doing it. 

2 

A week of blurry days passed without consequence and routine once again,
found Mark standing outside the door of the Superfresh shaking, hungry 
and anxious. Fifty dollars and not just that, he was going to get a 
peak at some of the junk the old broad was throwing out. It was 
probably just piles of newspapers that old people like to hang onto, 
but who knows. The shaking was really bad today, he couldn't keep still 
so he scratched and scratched. The shirt he'd found had already started 
to itch and he figured he'd have to get rid of it soon. Desperation is 
an insistent beast. He was looking over the rawness of his arm when 
Alice came out carrying a single blue plastic bag that she could easily 
manage by herself. For a minute he was worried she'd dismiss him. She 
saw him nodded to him to follow and together they made their way. To 
Mark's surprise Alice talked very little and only in response to his 
questions. Mark wondered if something had happened to Russell. He 
opened his mouth to ask and thought better of it. It's best for him to 
not open the floodgates on this one, especially this one. Yet the 
silence was disconcerting and almost wished to hear about their trip to 
London in '77 again. 

Once they were back at the apartment, there was no call for Russell
further reinforcing his suspicions. She simply fed her cats their tuna 
and drew herself a glass of water. She let out a long resigned sigh 
punctuated by placing the glass overturned into the sink, she told him 
without looking at him that there were some things she had to do and 
that she'd be right back. With that she walked down the hallway 
disappearing into one of the rooms. Mark was genuinely worried now. 

"Something must've happened she hasn't even once mentioned Russell. Yeah
something's definitely up an' I bet th-that I don't get paid." He stood 
quietly and figured he'd check out some of the rooms for anything he 
could lift just in case. If anything he could just tell her he was just 
looking for the bathroom. 

Silently he crept into the first room he came to. Without closing the
door he scouted the room. The interior was illuminated by a small 
flickering television murmuring news in the corner. The hospital bed 
lay in the opposite corner from the television, IV stands stood by the 
bedside and pictures were arranged on the walls around the bed so as to 
give a queer shrine feeling about it all. There was someone lying on 
the bed! Startled he made a move for the door and caught himself. It 
was only Russell. Russell was in a coma or something wasn't he? I mean 
if he were able to talk Mark would've heard him by now. The figure lay 
with his legs stretched out and his back propped up as if midway 
through a sit-up and was wearing those same tan slacks and a button-up 
white shirt as in all the pictures. The matching camel hair jacket 
draped over the arm of a couch seated next to the bed. 

“There's something not right.” Came out as barely a whisper. Creeping
further into the room barely noticing the clocks he'd gone in for Mark 
went to the bed. The clocks ticked monotonously on, the television 
babbled on bathing the room in a washed out grey. Mark's shadow looming 
large on the wall behind the bed diminished as he put distance between 
himself and the door. IV tubes dangled useless from the bag. “Shouldn't 
they be...” His thought caught in his mind. Russel lay with mouth and 
eyes open. Dead. 

Bile immediately leapt to his mouth. Mark inhaled quickly and deeply his
eyes darted to the vacant doorway expecting to see Alice. He wondered 
if she knew, then supplied his own answer. 

“She has to know, that's why she's acting so weird. Something still
isn't...” It was upon closer inspection that Mark realized to his 
horror that not only was the man dead but it wasn't the same man as in 
the photographs. This man, skin tight with early rigamortis, looked 
about forty and much younger than Russell should be. Grey electrical 
tape crossed his waist pinning his arms to his side. “Oh my God.” He 
hadn't taken even a step toward freedom when Alice hit him. His skull 
felt like fire, his vision greyed then darkened, the hardwood floor 
slipped out from under him and he collapsed. The only thing he saw of 
her was her ruby red heels and he thought absurdly. How did she sneak 
up on me in heels. She hit him again. 

He was aware of blackness and a clock. The grandfather ticked out its
tuneless song until it became a march. In the void other clocks could 
be heard and they too joined the march some in step others not. The 
ticking of the clocks became everything in the blackness, an 
unstoppable army that sought to impress itself upon the world. Growing 
and growing this army encompassed all until Mark felt his own pulse 
beat to that same damnable march. Each course of blood through his 
veins brought with it the pain. So bad he felt his head would split. 
The pain seeped in through the black unconsciousness, unleashing itself 
bursting the wall of recognition that had previously held it back. 
Through shear will he forced his eyes to open. He bit down against the 
pain and found a washrag in his mouth. The rest filled itself in. With 
the light afforded him he looked down at his body. He was wearing tan 
slacks and a white-collar shirt with the first two buttons unbuttoned. 
He was also bound to a hospital bed by electrical tape and being fed 
intraveinously. Revulsion crested within him, as he tasted the salt of 
a dead man's mouth. 

My God how long had the other been in here before the end? Rummaging his
thoughts his mind came back to that vacant refrigerator door. No one 
will visit. How long will I be here? Jesus, the only people who will 
notice me gone are a couple of fucking drug dealers! The clocks marched 
on unabated. His mind screamed and he fought against his trappings for 
a fruitless hour or more before footfalls sounded in the hallway. Alice 
strode into the room smiling. 

"Good morning Russell!" she crossed the room bent down and kissed his
cheek. "Are you hungry for breakfast?" she asked as she pulled over the 
IV cart. Checking the needle she said. "You're lucky you married a 
former war nurse you know." She shook her head as the IV needle found 
one of Mark's abused veins. "I do so wish you'd take better care of 
yourself. It's just like that time you wouldn't go to the dentist to 
get that tooth pulled. You kept on putting it off and putting it off 
until it just drove you crazy. When you finally went in to have it 
looked at the dentist said you were lucky you caught it as soon as you 
did because it could've caused gingivitis and that's expensive to get a 
root canal done. That was the year we were saving up to go to the 
Caribbean wasn't it Russell? Gosh that was a good trip. Do you want to 
watch some television?” 

She took a seat on the couch and placed her hand over his. Mark studied
their intertwined hands his; grimy yet still mostly pink with youth, 
hers; yellowed with liver spots and bulbous veins surfacing from under 
a thin skin. 

“She scouted me out." was all he could think after the rage passed and
the shakes became more and more violent. "She scouted me out. She knew 
I wouldn't be missed. She's probably done it a dozen times." He began 
to sob. After what seemed like a long time he raised his head, their 
eyes exchanged looks and Mark found only madness in hers. It was an 
adamant refusal for her to admit the reality of her husband's death 
that flashed through her eyes. Earlier she had been so sad and he 
realized that it was for her Russell. Russell had gone away again 
leaving her here. But Russell is back now, another occupant in the room 
of the ticking clocks. How many times had the last guy hoped he would 
be found? How many others had silently prayed for death? Suddenly, the 
TV blinked to life and the Today show quivered for a second before the 
image settled. 

“Oh this should be nice. I like that man...oooh what's-his-name? I can
never seem to get his name right. That's just like how your mother used 
to call me Margaret.” Matt Lauer was interviewing someone but Mark 
could not understand who or what over Alice's talking. 


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