Originally posted back in 2018 as part of, John Eats Alaskan Pie, the background of the Florin Clan as well as John and Mrs. Loeber’s involvement is touched upon in this part of the story. John Eats Alaskan Pie continued to creep me out, enough that it bore a second look, and was then split into two different but connected stories.
Stress made people do funny things, so did fear, love — he had heard — and so many other emotions pushed reason from the human mind and replaced it with an animalistic mindset. Do or die. Feast or famish. Kill or be killed: survive.
For some people the impulses went away or could at the very least be harnessed. For others the ferocity settled inside of them. A darkness.
John looked into the eyes of his stepdaughter, where her eyes should have been. Instead he was met with large gaping black holes. The blanket crinkled in the packaging beneath his fingers, the plastic sticking to his dampened skin.
It helped to feed her if she was kept warm. That was what the nurse had told Mrs. Loeber. Why they were feeding a young adult was beyond him. Her mind had broken, given way to the darkness. Why she was anyone’s burden to take care of. . . Mrs. Loeber insisted. They were both her children to care for, Beatrice and Glenda.
Air squeaked out of the bag as John’s knuckles whitened. It was a crime, an act of hatred in the eyes of everything holy that the dirty, broken slut before him should share anything with his light and joy.
“Go on,” Mrs. Loeber said encouragingly.
It was a tone he only ever heard her use here, in the residential care facility for patients with psychiatric disorders.
People were far too polite to call it the nut house.
“Settle in your chair now and we’ll get you your blanket.”
Mrs. Loeber’s hand waived in John’s direction. Small droplets of wet caressed the back of his hand. The stressed whisper of an angered cat permeated the space.
“Mrs. Loeber your offspring has gotten saliva on me.”
“Give me the blanket. You know where the bathroom is. Just don’t forget to tell the nurses’ you’re going in.”
A sharp prick startled John as his tooth snagged against his lip. He skin felt taught as is pulled trying to squeeze inward. He couldn’t even begin to count the amount of germs he was probably breathing in, forget about the ones on the bathroom surfaces. A thick, slimy ball forced its way down his throat as he swallowed.
He hoped that young man, the one with the closely cropped hair and constant smell of antiseptic, would be at the desk. He seemed the most groomed out of all the nurses. John wondered how much time he spent at the gym. While the sight of taught, hairless skin and engorged muscles would usually be off putting and questionable to John, it spoke to the man’s hygienic practices.
John’s skin stopped crawling as he saw the young candy striper, though he didn’t think that’s what they were called anymore, propped behind the desk. She wasn’t as put together as the young man was, but her nails were always clipped short, as was her hair which was kept in a tight ponytail with a headband. Her uniform was almost always spotless and she too smelled medicinally clean.
“Hello,” John said once he was a mere inch from the counter.
Her shoulders jumped and her stubby ponytail swung.
“Oh, hello,” she said breathlessly.
“The restroom please, the nurses one. I’m —”
“Yes, I know.” A soft smile replaced the strain in her eyes and around her mouth. “You can head over. I’ll be right over to put the sign on the door.”
John tried to smile as best he could.
“She spit on me this time.”
“I understand,” the nurse said.
He hoped she did. Some of the other nurses, especially the loud one with the laugh like a dying animal and the misspelled name, didn’t understand them almost as much as they didn’t like him. That was the thing about people, they existed whether you liked them or didn’t. Whether they should or not.
His stepdaughter was the perfect example.
John walked into the nurse’s area. He kept his eyes on the alternating black and white linoleum tiles that lead to the bathroom. The one he told himself was the cleanest. He heard the squeak of the candy striper’s shoes as she approached, followed by the soft push of the door within the jam. Every time he came back here, every time she spat on him, touched him, even looked at him too hard, they had to put a sign on the door. Some legal reason he hadn’t quite understood and didn’t care to hear all over again. As long as John could be here, privately, quietly in this space cleaning himself of her infected DNA. The words to Ring Around the Rosie breathlessly mumbled with each full scrub of his finger tips, palms, wrists, and forearms. Six times he washed, six times he sang,
He would wish the black death on her if he wasn’t afraid of the cross contamination. Compared to a lifetime with her suffering the plague would be welcome. At least she was here now. The safest place for her. For Mrs. Loeber, for Glenda, and him.
She was the product of Mrs. Loeber’s stupidity, both carrying the shameful name. Just in case anyone in the community had forgotten just how sinful of a woman she had been once.
No one could forget. They would forever be the stain on the snow white linens. The family who had disobeyed not once, but twice.
They could have still been living a block away from their respective childhood homes instead of sticky, swampy Georgia. Still part of their community, their clan. John hadn’t always fit, but he had followed. Obeyed and stayed the course. He had fallen in love with Mrs. Loeber the day he found out they were to be wed once she had crossed over into womanhood.
A wad of paper towels separated the door handle from John’s elbow as he pushed it open. On the rack next to the bathroom was a box of rubber gloves sandwiched between unit blankets and scrubs. He slid two pairs on and picked up the paper towels from the floor. He dropped them into the bathroom wastebasket. They landed with a flowery thud on top of used feminine hygiene products.
John nearly choked as he forced down the rising bile. The acid burned his mouth, but he had managed to bite it back.
Females were disgusting.
His stepdaughter, his wife. . . they were no different. Maybe Glenda was, he hoped, but soon she would be just as old as his wife had been before she threw away her glory, her future, HIM. When she chose instead to run away with the boy she loved, to get impregnated by him, to marry him, illegally in the eyes of their community and the US government, and then suffer his hand one too many times before running back to the Florin clan with a baby between her legs.
John peeled off the outside layer of gloves as if he could peel off the past. He exhaled as he dropped the gloves with the rest of the garbage. He turned and grabbed another pair and a blanket. He had never gotten the first one on her. Maybe Mrs. Loeber would have finished up with her. Gotten her warm, maybe even fed.
Unless she was being stubborn in want for him to engage with her offspring, she usually took care of things while he cleaned up.
She should take care of that thing, the reason they all were kicked out. She vowed to behave. That she and her wretched child would accept John as their husband, their utter authority under the supervision of Father Florin, and live within the confines and commandments of the community. They had, well Mrs. Loeber had. Her daughter, in capable of doing anything for anyone but herself, hadn’t. The scene she had caused, the accusations, against Father Florin. As if John had ever needed a reason to be ostracized from the community. She was a child of the devil, the spawn that broke free knocking over the carefully laid dominos of John’s community life. That bitch.
John exhaled the frustrations that were bubbling up inside of him as Mrs. Loeber stepped into the hallway.
“We’re ready to head out now,” she said mildly.
John fell inline behind her as they made their way out of the building and into the car, his finger tips still encased by latex digging into the unopened blanket. His eyes blinked as they adjusted to the natural light outside. A small twitch in the corner of his mouth tickled his eye. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he had taken another blanket. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been caught. There was something about it. He wondered if Mrs. Loeber would see his excitement when they got into the car. He doubted she would ever look that way, at him, but with the medically sealed plastic wrapped blankets the possibilities seemed endless. Not that he would waste such a special thing on something so utterly crass and vulgar — and certainly not with Mrs Loeber — but there were possibilities even if he didn’t know what they were yet.