Sineater by Elizabeth Massie

Author:Elizabeth Massie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

10

Dave slaps two pieces of bread around a slice of cold turkey and goes out to the front stoop. He sits on the hard stone and works his fingers around the bread crusts, pinching it down like a Ziploc bag. It is a habit he has had since he was very little in West Virginia. A nervous habit, his mother used to swear, and she would take the sandwich away because it was the wrong way to eat. Sometimes he’d go without supper for days on end because he would forget himself and begin pinching down the bread crusts, and away would go the sandwich into the trash. Sometimes along with the peaches or the raisins or the chips, just for good measure, to show him he couldn’t do whatever he wanted to do and get away with it. When he got older, he would do it for spite when he was angry with her, and the battle of wills would ensue, with Dave winning even though he would wind up in his room, without supper. He’d made her good and fire engine mad, and that was sweet victory.

Missy doesn’t care how he eats his sandwiches. He could pull the crust off in a string and eat that, then eat the turkey and then tear the bread up into confetti, and it would not bother her in the least. When Dave had first arrived in the summer, Missy had paid him plenty of attention. Cut his arm and made him a real honest-to-God Brother of the Light. But then he became part of her unnoticed environment, no more than a spider on the ceiling or a cat under her rotting, empty storage barn. She still thinks of Patsy, however. Still has her school photograph under a piece of glass on the wall of the kitchen, and Dave has caught her, many times, staring at the picture as if it were of the Lord Himself. In the photo Patsy is a chubby, pleasant-faced girl with curly hair and the barest of smiles. Sometimes Dave wonders what Patsy had been like; if she had been a miniature Missy, or if there had been some normal things about the girl, like a sense of humor, or mischief, or of reality.

Dave begins to chew the pinched-edge sandwich. The bread is very dry, and there is a tang to the turkey, like it’s been stored a few days too many. But he eats it anyway, staring into the gathering darkness of the trees that rim the clearing of Missy’s cabin.

In the house behind him, Missy is talking with Ricky Benshoff. Ricky and his wife and daughter have set up a tent in the backyard. They have decided that in order to survive the growing evil they should band together not only in spirit but in body as well. They have no heat except for a steady fire going in a large aluminum basin. They have been in the backyard since the meeting Sunday night, but they don’t come into the cabin unless they are specifically asked by Missy.

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