Bad Games (11 page)

“No,” she said bluntly as she scooped the dog up again, managing three seconds this time.

“
Women,
” Patrick said, winking at his son. Caleb winked back and smiled. “Alright, brother-man, dig me out a good one so we can bait that hook of yours, okay?”

Caleb walked over the wooden planks and picked up the Styrofoam container. His tiny fingers worked at the plastic lid, eventually peeling it off and dropping it to the ground. He looked at the dirt and the slimy critters therein, then back at his father with an uncertain face.

“They won’t bite, pal, I promise. They’re just a bit slimy.”

Caleb looked back down at the container, closed his eyes, and dug his little digits in.

“That’s my boy,” Patrick beamed.

Caleb withdrew his fingers from the soil and immediately placed his catch into his father’s hand. He would dig and he would grab, but he wasn’t about to
hold
just yet.

Patrick laughed and looked down at the worm Caleb had given him. It was exceptionally thick and coated black with soil. He picked it up with his other hand, dusted off the dirt, and spotted a fingernail.

“
Jesus!
” Patrick flung the finger away.

Both Amy and Carrie turned.

“What?” Amy asked.

Patrick pointed at what he had just discarded. It was less than two feet from where Amy stood.

“Is that?” she asked, inching closer, slowly leaning her torso forward to get a better look. “Is that? It is!
It is!
”

“What? What is it?” Carrie asked.

Amy whirled around and blocked her daughter’s view with her body. “Nothing,” she said, shifting from left to right, stopping her daughter from slipping past. “It’s nothing.”

Oscar, unfortunately, did not see the discarded finger as nothing. He saw it as an appetizer. With one swift motion he trotted towards it, sniffed once, and then gulped it down.

“
Oscar!
” Amy cried. “
Oscar, no!
”

The dog turned and looked up at Amy with an innocent expression on his face that in dog language would have surely translated to:
It was edible, lady.
I’m a dog.
What’s the problem?

“Did he eat it?” Patrick asked.

Amy nodded appallingly, one hand over her mouth.

“Eat what?” Carrie asked, now breaking her mother’s defense and approaching the dog. “Tell me.”

Both Patrick and Amy ignored their daughter. Patrick walked over to his wife and placed his lips to her ear. “Please tell me I’m not crazy,” he whispered. “Please tell me that our son didn’t just scoop a finger out of that bait container. And
please
tell me that mangy little thing didn’t just gobble it up.”

“You’re not crazy,” Amy whispered back. “That was a
fucking
finger
.”

Patrick ran a hand through his hair and breathed in. “Okay then—let’s go to obvious question number two, shall we?
Why
was there a finger in our bait container?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Amy replied, her tone exceptionally condescending. “Did the man at the bait shop have all ten of his fingers?”

“Yes, darling,” Patrick replied, matching her tone, “I believe he did.”

“Well then Jesus, Patrick, you tell me. Was it that stupid lady who tried to sue Wendy’s by putting a severed finger in her chili? You didn’t happen to notice
her
at the bait shop did you?”

Patrick burst out laughing.

“Are you actually
laughing
? How the
hell
can this be funny to you?” She splayed her hands, let them slap back down onto her thighs. “I mean for Christ’s sake, what more can possibly go wrong this weekend?”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” he said, patting the air before putting a finger to his lips. Her outburst was creeping out of PG territory and about to introduce the kids to PG-13 or possibly R. “Let’s not make too big a deal out of this.”

“
No?
Our four-year-old son finding a human finger in your container of worms is an everyday thing?” She was losing the fight at keeping her voice a whisper.

Patrick’s smile from his recent burst of laughter was gone. He now wore a look of concern; he knew that when his wife got started, their kids’ eager ears and a bus full of nuns armed with rulers would not stop one of her profane tirades.

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and she instantly shrugged it off. He sighed. “Alright, I’ll go back to the bait shop right now and talk to the owner,” he said.

“Don’t even bother,” she said. “The thing is in the belly of that stupid dog right now anyway. We would have no proof.”

“Well
someone
lost a finger. Maybe it’s someone else who works at the bait shop.”

“It wasn’t a stupid employee at the bait shop, Patrick. Someone put that finger in our bait container deliberately.”

“
What?
Why would someone do that?”

“Why? I don’t know why. Why would a strange man buy us a tank of gas for no reason and then trade candy to a little girl for a stupid doll? Why would a pervert stalk me in a supermarket then look in on us while we had sex?”

The whispering was gone, so was the presence of mind to spell out sex (even though he was fairly sure Carrie knew how to spell it). “I thought we decided—”

“Shut up. Maybe I saw him, and maybe I didn’t. But I
did
just see that finger, and so did you.”

“So let me get this straight.” Patrick was still insistent on whispering. “You’re suggesting that one of the two weirdoes we ran into this weekend put that severed finger in our bait container?
How
and
when
would they have done that?” Patrick asked.

“I don’t know but they
did.
” She turned to Carrie and Caleb.

“Kids, let’s go. Fishing’s over.”

“I think this one might be my favorite,” Arty said, getting up from his chair and pushing a tape into the VCR. The image on the TV screen went from black to fuzzy to a woman tied to a chair, facing front. Her surroundings were a small white room as bare as a padded cell. In the far left corner, a solitary lamp sat on the floor providing the only source of light save for the modest one pointing directly at her from atop the video camera recording the incident.

“Is this the snake one?” Jim asked.

Arty nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.

“That fucker was heavy,” Jim added.

The girl on camera wept softly through her gag. The sound of a door opened off camera. A few labored grunts. The girl’s eyes grew impossibly wide as she screeched through her gag like a wild bird. A circle of urine grew on the front of her blue jeans.

Jim appeared on camera now, straining and breathing heavily, his perverse grin never fading despite the weight of the enormous python he carried. A few more grunts and the python was eventually draped over the girl’s shoulder and neck, pitching her head forward.

Arty and Jim watched the film with a delight few knew. At times they became hysterical with laughter; other times they fell mute and gaped wide-eyed with a paradoxical awe at the pleasure and torment they had created.

When the girl on screen had finally passed out, and when Jim brought her back around by squirting an old-fashioned seltzer bottle into her face in true
Three Stooges
fashion, the two brothers nearly fell out of their chairs.

“I’d forgotten all about that!” Arty cried.

Jim jumped out of his chair, turned to his brother, and wiped alternating hands down his shaved head while spewing “nyuck” after “nyuck” from the side of his mouth—a spot-on impersonation of the late Jerome ‘Curly’ Howard that would have been worthy of a standing ovation amongst devoted fans world-wide, all things considered.

Arty had full-fledged tears dripping from his eyes. He wiped them away, straightened his posture, and donned a playful frown.
“Spread out, you knucklehead,
” he said in his best Moe voice.

Jim dropped to the floor, rolled on his side, and began using his legs to spin himself around and around like hands on a clock: a classic Curly Shuffle, complete with
“Woo!”
after
“Woo!”
after
“Woo!”

Arty wiped away the last of his tears, bent forward and grabbed a second video from the base of the TV. He tossed the cassette to his brother.

“Which one’s this?” Jim asked, catching the tape before getting to his feet.

Arty hit eject, pulled the snake tape out and set it aside. “That’s the one with the yuppie at the bar who wouldn’t shut up about his golf game. The one with the nail gun and the…ahem…new
handicap
we gave him.”

Jim smirked before turning his nose up and speaking in a haughty manner. “I’m sorry, Arthur, but that was an absolutely
atrocious
pun. However, that particular gem of a video is easily in my top three, so I’m willing to let it pass.”

“Thank you, James,” Arty replied, his tone equally pretentious. “Now toss it back so I can pop it in. In fact, if the mood should strike you, I’ve even got a few more treasures we can peruse after this to
truly
set a fitting tone for the evening’s festivities that await us.”

“Bravo, Arthur. Bravo.”

“We’re still going to dinner I hope?” Patrick asked Amy.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you still freaked out about the finger?”

Amy, who was rifling through random drawers in their bedroom as a means to pacify her mind rather than actually pack, replied, “You’re not?”

Patrick chuckled. “Not in the slightest. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I question whether the damn thing was real.”

Amy turned and left a drawer hanging open. “Huh?”

“Well, we didn’t exactly take it to a lab and get it analyzed, honey. The damn thing was probably a rubber prop or something. Some kid at the bait shop probably slipped it in there as a joke.”

Amy shut the drawer. “It looked real to me.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see—and you’ve seen
how
many
severed fingers in your lifetime, baby?”

She folded her arms across her chest and squeezed as if trying to hold onto her convictions. “If it was rubber and not…
meat
, then why did Oscar eat it?”

“Because he’s a
dog
, baby. When I was growing up our dog used to go into the cat’s litter box and eat its
shit
for Christ’s sake. Dogs are loyal and obedient but not too terribly bright, especially when it comes to choosing their cuisine.”

Amy looked off past her husband. There was a decent pause before she blinked. “So you think it was a rubber finger then? A stupid prank from a kid?”

To lie or not to lie
, Patrick thought. Amy had a good point about the dog eating meat. Dogs will eat anything, but rubber would have likely been chewed up and spat out. Maybe. Still, the rubber finger theory had come to him in a flash, and if he could, he would have literally patted his own back for thinking so quick on his feet. So for the time being, he would nurture that spontaneous gem he’d concocted, convince his wife it was a rubber finger. A harmless prank.

As for him? Just ask the hairs on the back of his neck—the ones he was constantly patting down and giving zero chance to rise up and speak freely. Those hairs felt the finger was real. Very real and very fucking mysterious.
Because if you suspect the damn thing was real, Patrick (and deep down you do), then we must now address the next two obvious questions, regardless of how hard you’re trying to shove them into the back of your mind:

Whose finger was it, and how the HELL did it get inside your bait container? It’s not like the Styrofoam had been packed on an assembly line, where quality control might miss a small rodent, some broken glass, the odd finger…

Did Edgar do it? He would have certainly had enough time to plant the thing when you took Caleb to the bathroom. But hold on, dummy—he had all the time in the world to plant it before you even GOT to the store. So that makes no sense.

The guy with the Penn State hat? How fucking ironic would THAT be? No. Edgar was there the whole time. I think he would have spoken up if someone put a goddamn finger in our bait container while we were in the bathroom.

But wait…Edgar WAS acting strange when we returned.

No. Stop it, dummy. This is absurd. You don’t have any answers and your paranoia is getting the best of you. Certainly understandable given recent events, yes? Yes. You’re being paranoid.

But there is one thing you do know, isn’t there? You WILL keep sticking with the rubber finger theory, won’t you? You’ll stick to it and make it damn good for Amy’s sake. Solve the mystery on your own time if you want, but for right now, ignorance will be today’s special. In fact, why not take a big serving of what you’ve been feeding Amy? All this crazy shit so far…it has to be nothing but good old-fashioned bad luck, right? HAS to be. Things like this just don’t happen on purpose. No way. So swallow it down and try not to choke, Sherlock.

“I’m certain it was, baby,” he said. He patted the back of his neck, walked towards Amy, kissed her lightly on the lips. “We have a wonderful night ahead of us. Let’s not let a silly thing like this ruin it.”

She hugged him tight. “It was a sick joke?”

He squeezed her back and replied, “It was.”

“Whoever did it should be beaten.”

“They should.”

“We won’t let it ruin our night.”

“We won’t.”

“I feel better,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

She lifted her head off his chest, looked up and kissed him. “I love you.”

“You should.”

Amy was wearing a white, form-fitting dress that flaunted every curve of her impressive figure. Her long dark hair was still damp from her recent shower and gave off the combined scent of flowers and fruit.

She leaned forward at the waist, her stomach flat against the edge of the sink, applying makeup with a critical eye in the bathroom mirror.

Patrick walked by the bathroom in dark slacks and a white button-down that was neither tucked nor buttoned just yet. He paused when he got a good look at his wife.