Hey! I like this one so I made it free. Which is completely counterintuitive. But I’m hoping you like it so much you’ll realize how many great stories you could get for just 5 bucks a month. After three years of daily fiction this is basically an all you can read buffet. Dig in.
***
Thousand Island dressing smudged the corner of her mouth.
Alicia Venniman reached for her napkin.
A young man approached her picnic table. She hesitated, hoping the splotch of dressing would make him decide to sit elsewhere.
He sat directly across from her and said “hi.”
Burr’s was known for this. Order your sandwich, sit outside at the large picnic tables, meet new people.
According to customer reviews, the sandwiches were the best in the whole state, but she wasn’t in the mood for socialization.
The man wore a dirty tank top and had multiple tattoos. Neither arm was sleeved, just standalone images dotting his forearms and biceps.
One tattoo depicted a snake wrapping around a human skull.
Alicia noted that the skull was photorealistic, a modern, Anglo-European skull with a tooth pattern suggesting middle to upper class.
The snake was an attempt at photo realism, but the artist mixed the diamond markings of a North American rattlesnake and the yellow bands of an Asian mangrove snake.
She wondered if the guy knew his snake didn’t exist in real life. Probably not.
Alicia realized she hadn’t wiped her mouth nor returned the simple greeting.
Before she could do either the man said “You were yelling at Herbert.”
Alicia wiped her mouth with the flimsy paper napkin.
“Umm…you must have me mistaken for someone else.”
The man sat back slowly.
“Herbert is my friend.”
The man’s voice was calm and measured. There was underlying pain in his voice when he said “Herbert is my friend.”
Alicia summoned all her empathy, pushed it into her voice so this man would believe her.
“I’m so sorry, I don’t believe I know Herbert.”
“The man in the baseball hat you were speaking to on Jackson and Branch twenty minutes ago.”
Alicia felt a wave of cold, as though she was on a research vessel on the Beaufort Sea channel.
She didn’t want to contradict the man who had joined her.
He poured vinegar on his small order of fries-he had no sandwich- and looked at her under bushy eyebrows attached to a prominent forehead with one razor thin vertical scar.
“The only man I spoke to in Oakbridge today was my brother.”
The man picked up a fry and put it back in the small paper basket.
“I’m not trying to start a fight,” he said in a tone that sounded sincerely like he was a calm, thoughtful man. “I don’t know where you’re from or if I’ll ever see you again. But Herbert has been upset since you spoke to him, yelled at him.”
Alicia pulled a loose shard of corned beef from her sandwich and popped it in her mouth.
“The man I spoke to on that street corner was my brother, Peter. He’s mentally ill.”
She immediately picked up her sandwich and bit into it, having already said more than she wanted to.
“Maple Leafs hat, jeans, one Nike, one god-knows-what tennis shoe?” The man said.
Alicia nodded.
“I’ve been calling him Herbert for four years.”
The man ate two fries at once and when he swallowed he said “You’re really his sister?”
Alicia nodded again.
“Your name is?”
“Marcus. I work at Shred’s skate shop, in rentals… blades, decks, boogie boards.I sort of became Herbert’s unofficial-or maybe official-best friend. I was at the return desk when I saw you across the street yelling. If you were a dude I might have-”
“I wasn’t yelling, I was pleading. Which I know is a waste of time. But my brother can be…frustrating. And I care about him.”
“What did you want Herber…Peter is his name, for real?
“Yep. Unless he changed it. I wanted him to sleep at my parent’s house. They’re deceased. Their summer home is here. It’s vacant. He could just live there. I could have meals delivered. But he didn’t respond. Just gibberish.”
Alicia crossed her legs under the table, mad at herself for giving this stranger too much information.
“He only says four words,” Marcus said.
“None of them were words I could make any sense of,” Alicia said.
“You don’t know your brother’s vocabulary?”
Alicia went from being annoyed at herself to being annoyed with this guy.
“I don’t live here. I study whales in Alaska. I speak to groups about the impact of climate change on whale migratory patterns and the descending impacts on secondary marine popu-”
Alicia crimped the paper around her sandwich.
“It doesn’t matter what I do. I wanted to help my brother and I know it’s beyond my skillset. But I didn’t yell at him. Thanks.” She stood.
“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Marcus said. “I can teach you his vocabulary, if that will help.”
Alicia looked down at this dirty guy and softened.
“Teach me.”
Marcus leaned forward, pushed his fries out of the way.
“When a car honks, Herbert…Peter…that seems weird…says ‘war.’” Marcus shrugged.
Alicia gave Marcus a look. Keep talking.
“When someone on the boardwalk coughs, he says ‘pestilence’.”
Alicia smiled, albeit weakly. That made sense to her.
“When someone throws out half eaten food, he says “famine,” and usually digs it out of the trash and eats it. Unless it’s blue. He doesn’t like blue shit for some reason.”
Alicia folded her arms, looked at her barely touched monster of a sandwich.
“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Alicia said. “Our dad had a print of that behind his basement bar.”
She looked at Marcus. “What triggers him to say death?”
Marcus’s eyes widened and he shook his head.
“I’ve never heard him say ‘death’. When someone laughs, he says ‘life’. I love that. When I figured that out I knew me and him could be friends.”
Alicia picked up her sandwich, twisting the butcher paper tighter around it.
“If you’re his friend, you think you could help me get him in my rental car so I can take him to my parent’s house?”
Before she was finished, Marcus’s head was shaking. “Fuck no. Fuuuuck no. He hates cars. No way.”
“My parents place is outside Bogey Lake, off 24,” Alicia said. “I’d at least like to try to get him there before I leave.”
“I had no idea he had a place to go. The city workers usually just let him sleep in the beach men’s room overnight.”
Thousand Island dressing crept back up Alicia’s throat.
“No. No way. I gotta get him to my parent’s old place, get him some psychiatric help.”
“We rent tandem bikes at Shred’s.”
Alicia really allowed herself to smile.
“Yes. Absolutely, yes. I’ll rent one and drive my brother out to our parent’s place.
Marcus looked at his fries, the vinegar, down at his feet, then up at Alicia.
“Herbert won’t let you ride him. He doesn’t trust you. Sorry. I could tell from across the street. He sees me every day. He might let me ride him. He trusts me.”
Alicia sniffed.
“How much are you going to charge me for riding my brother to Bogey Lake?”
Marcus scowled. “He’s my friend. Nothing. What do I look like?”
***
Great story! I was worried it was leading to something more sinister when the four horseman of the apocalypse reference showed up.
"What do I look like?" Brilliant.