Page 43 - WTP VOl. XI #1

“Don’t know what?”
“What’s inside.”
“Inside what? You? Me?”
“For starters. But also inside your own—” “GO!” Becca screamed.
In the momentary silence that followed, Mitch heard a distant car engine. He looked out the picture win-
“Crazy fucker!” Becca shouted, charging at him.
The man stepped outside with Becca in pursuit.
As the house fell silent again, Mitch felt the rage that had usurped his body start to withdraw and his nor- mal self start to return.
Then he heard a skittering sound behind him and realized that the man had left the hamster. He re- turned to the living room and picked up the cage, then stared at the floor beneath it. There was a stack of money, a hundred-dollar bill on top.
Still holding the cage, Mitch rushed back to the kitchen doorway and peered out through the back- door window, although he was certain the man must be gone by this time. But out in the darkness he could just make out two figures, a man and a wom- an, standing close together on the lawn, apparently talking quietly. One of them—Mitch couldn’t tell which—seemed to gesture toward the upper part
of the house. The woman reached toward the man’s arm—perhaps a shove, perhaps a gesture of affec- tion. Then, with a tip of his hat, the man dissolved into the shadows.
As Mitch turned again toward the living-room win- dow, the car he had seen earlier passed the house. It was not a police car.
He looked down at the cage. Marcus the Hamster stared up at him.
Then he felt something insistently tapping at his shoulder from behind. He realized the tapping had been going on for a while, but he wasn’t sure how long. He could hear a child’s voice calling him.
Mitch turned and saw Emily. Although it was the middle of the night, her unicorn nightie was unwrin- kled, her light brown hair neatly in place.
“Is he gone?” she asked. “Who was that man? Daddy?”
Sutton’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Journal, Oys- ter River Pages, Crack the Spine, Seventeen, and other periodicals. Four of his plays have been produced, including a musical comedy which won the Stage Rights / NYMF Publishing Award after a suc- cessful run on 42nd Street in New York, was published by Stage Rights Press, and has now been performed at the high school, col- lege, community-theatre, and professional levels. As a student at The University of Michigan he won three Hopwood Awards for Creative Writing, two for collections of short stories, and one for a collection of one-act plays.
"M
he had read in school: you were in the doorway of a familiar room when lightning flashed, revealing that the floor was gone and you were standing at the edge of a bot- tomless pit."
dow and saw headlights turning onto their street. The car was still a few blocks away and moved slowly, as if its occupants were trying to find an unfamiliar address in the dark.
“Been a pleasure,” the man said, sliding the Stetson onto his head. “Such hospitality. As always. But I re- ally must be going. Please, don’t try to stop me.”
He walked, briskly but with no signs of rushing, through the kitchen and toward the back door. Becca ran after, seemingly bent on physically attacking him. Mitch followed.
His hand on the doorknob, the man turned and faced Mitch.
“Remember my offer. Remember everything I’ve said. We’ll meet again. Or not.”
itch recalled an im-
age from something
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