FEATURE: “Simon Says” by John Mark King

Six months after I strangled my wife and buried her under the compost pile in our  backyard, I saw a woman with her exact smile, and a voice inside my ear whispered: Here is the  beginning. 

It was after 3am in Chinatown. Summer in a swamp, dank, foreboding. My feet stuck to  the pavement and made gummy sounds as I walked. I was drunk on bourbon and enjoying the  diagonal crossing at 7^th and H streets. A pink and black smear, rambling like a tiger at the edge of  my vision, paced outside the CVS with a cigarette stuck to her tangerine lips. And she had that  smile, like the curve of a hook that had snagged my imagination. It dug deep. 

This was only a few blocks from the fire station where I had left Simon, purple-skinned, a  quivering raisin, wrapped in his hospital blanket, a burrowed nymph tucked neatly in a metal  drawer. Why had I come there again? It wasn’t just for the diagonal crossing. Sometimes, when I  walked places, it felt like someone else’s legs were moving below me. I was a mere passenger.  I shut the drawer and left. Clang. I didn’t look back. I was already fifteen minutes late to meet this girl from work. She didn’t know it, but tonight was going to be her last. If I had been  counting, she would have been number seven. Lucky for her.  

I always hated his name…Simon. To me, Simon sounded like a kid nobody wants to be  friends with, a kid no one remembers. But Gwen had insisted. She claimed to have heard it in a  dream. That’s funny. These days I wonder if I’ll ever wake up.  

Anyway, I made sure that his name wasn’t on him when I dropped him off. The least I  could do. I did hear a muffled chirp from the box when I was just about to turn the corner that  headed to Jackpot Jim’s. Then a police siren smothered it. “You’re welcome,” I muttered. 

It’s not that I hated him, or his mother. I was indifferent. Even from the beginning, there  was something about him that felt…off. Gwen saw it, too. I didn’t feel safe around him. Like I  needed to sleep with one eye open, or constantly check his room to make sure he hadn’t escaped.  I dreamed once that he crawled onto my chest while I slept and sucked out my breath. His eyes  had changed color, and he made this funny noise as he slurped the vapor from between my lips. Sssssssssssss…. 

I remember waking up, caked in sweat, paralyzed and rotten with terror. I knew he had  been there. But when I checked, he was still in his crib, sucking on the edge of his hand. Weird stuff.  

Maybe I had a subconscious worry, or some kind of faulty wiring in my head, and that’s  why I had come back. Like I said, sometimes I just went places. I considered walking by the fire  station, just to make sure. 

Waiting for you.  

Which was just silly. Still, when I stopped at the gas station next door for cigarettes, I  took the long way around. But I still made sure I stared down every dark corner I passed, just in case. Anything could be hiding there.  

The evening had been a blast. I don’t remember much about what we did. I know I was  sore the next day. She was heavier than I had expected, and tossing her over the lip of the  dumpster was like lifting a bag of wet garbage. 

Nobody did anything at work the next few days, on account of her disappearance, which  was really great. I was pretty good at feigning concern. It was like a mask.  

Let’s focus. I was standing in the diagonal crossing, hands tucked in my back pockets,  gawking at this goddess lifted right out of my most lurid fantasies. She turned north on 7^th. I  followed. I saw that smile once. I had to see it again, really see it. 

I kept back about half a block, keeping my knees bent and my shoelaces tied. She was  taller than Gwen, darker skin, hair a bonfire of curls. She walked with confidence, almost a strut.  Her purse slapped her hip with each step. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. I had so much to say to her.  

“Thomas, I need to tell you something,” Gwen had said, lying on her side, sheet pulled up  to her shoulder, a shaft of sapphirine light from the window slicing her cheek in two. I sighed and placed my book open on my chest to keep my place. “Yeah?” She pulled the sheet tight, almost to her neck. “Thomas, the baby…” She grew quiet,  eyes like an empty well, staring at her emerging thoughts in the distance. I watched as they crept  nearer. Her mouth began to open. “I’m scared of him.” 

I had scoffed.  

Now, as I bounded over cracks in the sidewalk and passed a bum snoring under a brown  puffer on the stoop of a shuttered cafe, the woman slowed and began to dig through her purse. I  ducked behind a bus stop shelter to watch. The night had cooled a bit, still damp. There was no wind. Not even a breeze. I fingered the knife in my pocket. 

The sky was a cloud-scattered abyss. No stars. The shadows were easy to hide in,  endlessly long and deep, bottomless holes in the sidewalk. 

Don’t fall in. 

But I could still make out the profile of her exquisite face, that half curl of her lips, a  meandering teardrop of sweat on the fuzz of her cheek. She looked in my direction. I froze. My  heart jumped into my throat. Now what was going to happen? I moved closer, heard the faint  tinkle of her keys. She waved them at a small black box by the door, and there was a series of  beeps. She pulled the door open and stepped inside. 

I tore into a sprint and caught the door with my foot, just in time. 

“Got you,” I whispered, whirling myself around and closing the door tight behind me. I met an empty staircase dimly lit by a rank of exposed amber lamps. Only one door on  the left at the top. I began to ascend, and I carefully tested each step for noise before using all my  weight. The door enlarged. My heart shuddered. A film of sweat slicked my palms. Near the top, the tinny murmur of a television leaked from the gap under her door. I  wiped my hands on my jeans, and I reached out, touched the doorknob, gently turned it and it  opened freely, releasing a translucent cloud of shower steam. I entered. The knife in my pocket  began to glow with heat. 

A voice behind me. 

I turned. 

“Come find me…” 

No one there. I blinked and a coughed into my elbow.  

Oh, I’ll find you.

This was the game Gwen and I played, from our second date. Hide and seek. Hunter and  hunted. I took my time, searched every room as if our home were a crime scene. I knew her  favorite spots, and I avoided them as long as I could. Behind the couch. Under the bed. In the  closet. And my favorite: the bathtub. She liked it when the lights were out and I had only my  phone flashlight to see by. She burrowed there, behind the curtain, sometimes under a blanket. “I’m coming for you…” I teased. 

She stifled a giggle behind palms pressed to her mouth. The dry flutter echo of an  enclosed, tiled space. I turned on my heel and slinked toward the hallway bathroom. I switched  off my phone light and used my outstretched hands to guide me. I could hear her breathing now.  She was frightened. 

Show me your smile. 

One hand on the door, and a gentle push, followed by a squeaking hinge. 

She screamed, and I charged, knife in hand, brimming with delight.  

I wrapped her in a couple of bedsheets and sat her upright on the couch. I couldn’t see her  face, but I knew she was looking at me. I felt it like needles on my flesh. I had washed my hands  and lit a cigarette and slouched on the love seat nearby. Then I waited. 

Be patient. 

Finally, she spoke. 

“What about Simon?” she said. Her voice was wet, a syrupy gurgle behind it. I flicked the cigarette into an empty glass that sat on the coffee table. 

“Who?”

“Don’t be coy with me, Thomas,” she hissed. “Our son. Remember him?” “Sure. What about him?” 

“What do you think he’s doing right now?” 

“Is this an existential question?” 

“You would,” she said. A circle of blood appeared on the sheet at her mouth. It seeped  and grew into oblong shapes. But she was completely still. 

You can’t hide from me now. 

“He’s all alone, Thomas,” she added. “He’s in the dark.” 

“Not true,” I answered. “My words don’t—Listen, I know what I’m doing here.” Then I  added, “My skin. Look!” I shoved out my forearm. “See him in there? Moving around?” “Look at my face,” she snarled. “Look what you did to me.” 

I glanced at my hands. Parallel lines of blood filled the creases of a knuckle. I licked my  thumb and wiped them away. 

“What’s happening to me?” She was on the verge of crying, her voice beginning to hitch.  “I look at you, Thomas, and I don’t even—.” 

I am Thomas. 

“You see whatever you want to see,” I blurted. And I slapped my knees. Smack! “I don’t even know where I am. Can you see my eyes? What’s happening to my eyes?  He’s looking right at me.” Her head fell into a tilt to the right. The Rorschach blot of her face  was now an insect, wings outstretched. 

I am being. I am becoming. 

The walls breathed deep, cracking plaster and dropping framed photos. The air in the  room ached. Gwen let out an elongated groan, like a slow-motion frog. It gurgled and rattled the room. Louder, and then turning to a scream. She wouldn’t shut up. I put my hands to my ears, but  that only made it louder. I paced the room. 

“You’re insane!” I yelled.  

Then I pushed my fist into the wall with a crunch and a spray of dust. 

“You can’t tell me what to do anymore!” 

I flung open the door and hurtled myself down four steps at a time and into the night. Her  voice could not follow me, though it tried. I refused to look back as heat blossomed in my face.  My blood was a hammer, and it spoke with the brutal force of a message from beyond.  Beingbecomingbeingbecomingbeingbecoming… 

Dawn crept from the horizon. I showed it my back as I slouched towards home. I took my  time. The air smelled of honeysuckle. I drank it deep, like I was taking my final delicious  breaths. 

Our final day as a family had been a Saturday. It had still been spring when the air was  rich and loamy. I remember squinching my nose at the ammonia-like sourness of insect husks.  Cream-white cicadas emerging from the soil and drying their gelatinous teneral forms in the  tawny sunlight. 

“You’re the one who said there was something wrong with him,” I said to her. “What is this?” she answered. “Have you stopped meditating again?” 

“Please don’t. Irrelevant and inconsiderate. You know what I’m going through.” She slammed the bedroom door in my face, and the boom it made startled Simon out of  his nap with a hiccup. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Gwen,” I shouted. “You woke him up. Do I live in a circus?”

Behind the door, Gwen screamed into her pillow. “Leave us alone! Leave us alone!” she  shouted. Simon wailed at the ceiling. A high-pitched rabbit squeal, followed by a throaty inhale,  and then another squeal. It was a mallet pounding the side of my head. 

Propped and swaying on the front stoop, key in hand, an insect smacked me in the face  and I staggered back, swatting at it with both arms in a helicopter motion. My key fell into the  hydrangea bush. It clinked off the stoop and cartwheeled as it disappeared in a sea of milky blue  flowers. 

“Fuck my life,” I said, sitting down, slumped forward with my arms splayed in front of  me. 

Now you’re teaming up on me. 

Gwen started throwing things. I heard a crash followed by the scattering of broken glass.  She shouted and cursed. Then a thud shook the floor. Her bedside table? Simon continued to  howl. 

“Gwen, honey,” I pleaded. ‘Stop. Let me in.” I used my honey voice, cheek pressed to the  door, hand curled tight around the doorknob. Then I reared back and shook it until paint chips  scattered. “Let me in!” I hollered in a mist of spittle. 

Wet mewling came from behind the door. She was crying now, and had stopped breaking  things. 

“What’s happening?” she said, her voice hitching between sobs. “I don’t understand. I  just don’t—.” Then she cried in sync with Simon, and the two of them were a chorus, wolves  howling at an imagined moon. 

I tested my balance on the stoop, and then I puked on the sidewalk. “Oh, my goodness,” I  croaked, eyes rimmed and spilling over with hot tears. I lifted my arm to shield my face from the sunlight. 

I stepped over the mess I had made and found myself in Simon’s room, tenebrous and  stinking of piss. Between his cries I could hear my ears ringing. I wanted to shake him, to shout  at him to shut up, to throw him against the wall. 

Like a doll. 

Gwen’s muted cries leaked in from the adjoining room. I stood over him, gazing down at  this person the size of a football. 

Being. 

Becoming. 

“You understand me, don’t you?” I said to him. His face was a wrinkled peach, and his  toothless gums chittered on the hinge of his tiny jaw. “Better than she does.” He looked at me, and I saw him as from behind a pane of glass, his face swollen, his  mouth and nose covered in snot. His skin was cream white, damp like dew.  I understand nothing. I am nothing. 

“Not true,” a voice said. 

Was it me? 

“Who said that?” I looked around, and I noticed I was on my back, a knot of branches  undulated above me. A dark kaleidoscope. I was in my back yard now, and I had fallen over the  fence trying to climb it. My left foot dangled above me, and I noticed that the cuff of my jeans  had snagged on the fence. “Who’s there?” I looked up at the fence, half-expecting to see a form  standing on the opposite side, leaning over me. 

I bent over the rail of Simon’s crib and tucked my hands underneath either side of him,  lifted him to my shoulder, his hot breath on my neck.

I got. 

You. 

I got you now. 

He grew quiet, and began making wet smacking sounds. This turned into a hum, almost a  buzz, like electricity. I felt his tiny body begin to vibrate. A tingling sensation moved through me.  My bones shook. 

Behind my upturned foot, now beginning to fall asleep and grow numb, I saw a cluster of  stars peek out from behind the sooty smear of a passing cloud. The trees, I noticed, were teeming  with life: the chirping of crickets, the raspy calls of katydids, mockingbirds like car alarms, the  whooshing flap of bats’ wings, the scratch and rustle of raccoons (maybe rats). The orchestral din  grew until it was deafening, surrounding me, falling on me like mist, soaking my thoughts until  they dripped with rattles and chirps. I covered my ears with my hands, but I still heard it, that  clangor of death. 

Are you inside me now? 

I am. 

Being and becoming. 

Gwen died quickly. I had little choice. After what Simon had done, what he made happen,  I felt as if my body were an automated machine. I could only watch while it labored. One step  after another, my body again on its own. 

I jerked my foot from the fence, and heard the caustic rrrrrip of denim. On my hands and  knees now, I saw it ahead of me, maybe twenty feet. I moved forward, my gaze locked on that  spot in the yard. 

When I turned to look at Simon, his eyes had transformed. I blinked, wiped away tears with my free hand. It was true. My throat tightened and I felt my stomach acids begin to boil.  Shut. Shut. Shut. 

Gwen’s eyes were still open. Staring. I pulled her by her hair first, still quivering, still  warm. 

“You’re so rough with me. You like to hurt me, don’t you? Mother was right about you.” Like a bag of wet sand, her body slid across the carpet, knocking into the door, getting  stuck on the leg of a dresser, the friction yanking her shorts into a tangled wad around her ankles. My hands and knees were caked with mud, but I was quiet, an unseen predator,  enveloped by a blanket of darkness. Hiding behind the curtain. The trees were screaming now.  Krkt...krkt…krkt… 

You can’t find me! 

Creeping closer to that spot where I could see the ghostly outline of rising steam in the  light that shone from the back porch. I felt my skin begin to ripple. 

I heard an echo. There was something…off about Simon. He was looking up, past my  head, at the ceiling, perhaps? Above the ceiling? 

“You’re going to die out there,” a voice murmured. 

I pretended not to hear, patted him lightly on the back and bounced up and down. Did he  need to burp? Up. Down. Up. Down. It’s okay, baby. This is supposed to work. Then, from under  his blanket, I heard a low crackling sound, like stepping on a potato chip. It started as individual  sputters of sound, then became a constant fuzz of white noise. I refused to look, paralyzed by  fear, hands shaking so hard I felt it in my teeth. Was he shaking me? Or I him? His buzzing  became a rhythm of frenetic thirty-eighth notes. 

Flesh of my flesh.

I said something. Was it out loud? 

“You gave me no choice, Gwen,” I said. 

“So this is my fault? The be all, end all?” Her tongue had slid out from between her lips  like a slug. I pushed it back in with two fingers. 

“Don’t touch me. Why do you have to do that? You can’t just listen to me and be just a  little bit curious about what I’m going through.” 

Her wrist got stuck on the underside of our easy chair and I had to reach underneath and  lift it off of her. I accidentally knocked it over. “Oh my God. Who’s going to clean up this mess,  Thomas?” she hissed. “Me, right? It’s me. It’s always me.” 

“No, I’ll get it.” 

My God, his eyes. 

“Stop looking at me!” I shrieked. 

As I stared down at him, Simon’s eyes turned to a milky green, featureless. He saw  everywhere, and nowhere. A spot of maroon appeared at their centers, and then began to expand  like sponges soaking up blood. After a few seconds, they had become completely red, and I felt  that his gaze was on me. 

Right at me. Right. 

At me. 

Me. 

I crawled past the path Gwen’s body had carved into the wet earth. I had dragged her  across the yard, here, to the back edge, right where our property intersected with three others.  The city had planted a pole there for power lines, and its bone pale light hum hum hummed at  me. Flicker. Flicker. A white eye against the night.

There was a shovel stabbed into the dirt, an arrow pointing to the heavens. Look up, it  seemed to say. 

I burrowed you here. No. Buried. Like planting a seed, or an egg. Wait. Wait. I’ll be back  soon, you said. 

The compost pile had been Gwen’s idea. For her garden. 

“But let’s not put any meat in it, okay?” she said. 

“No meat?” 

“It attracts pests.” 

Pest. Pest. You are the pest. 

Meat. 

She asked me to prepare it for her. I spent an entire Sunday afternoon clearing the space  and adding a base layer of twigs and lawn clippings. And then, every day, pouring kitchen slop  on the pile. 

Squelch. 

Squel— 

The surrounding bushes and weeds had grown over the pile to form a makeshift cave of  foliage, inside which lay the warm goop of decaying food, ripe and warm and black as coal. I  turned it regularly, gagging at the bitter, acrid stench. 

But when I was finished, she gave me that smile, and a glass of lemonade. That delicious  and lovely and warming smile, showing her teeth, pulling out her crow’s feet, raising her delicate  cheeks. And I melted. Right there. I melted. Every time. The drink was so refreshing. Gulp.  Gulp. 

And now, I the pest, I the hunter. I stood over that mound of decay. Putrid. Fetid. Infested with worms. That secret hiding place. 

I found you. I found you right where I knew you would be. 

And I had turned over the earth, just as she had showed me, shovel in hand, sweat  streaking my back. Sun pounding my neck. I turned and I turned and I turned. And then she was  gone. At the end, there was only a thumb. It jutted out from the mound like a nail. Thumbs up, Thomas. 

But now, as I stood with Simon over his bed, he whispered to me. I turned away so that I  couldn’t see the ruby marbles that were his eyes. He said, 

“Yooooooouuuu.” His voice was garbled, like he had no practice using his tongue  together with his lips to form the sounds of English. But I understood him. “My turn,” I answered. I laid him back down in his crib, and I made sure to close his door  before I went to take care of Gwen. 

Another flicker from the light, then it went out. Darkness fell on me, almost knocking me  to the ground. I grabbed the shovel and started moving the dirt, working by moonlight, stabbing,  poking, scraping at it. I checked on this side, then went around and stabbed a bit at the other. I  felt nothing inside. It was all soft, all earth and slime. No body. No Gwen. You can’t find me! 

I stood up, shovel at my side, panting like a wild dog. A string of sticky saliva dangled  like a rope from my lower lip. My heart rattled so hard I felt my ribs cracking. I couldn’t catch  my breath. Using my forearm, I wiped sweat off my brow, but a little seeped into my eyes and  stung like acid. I blinked and blinked, blinded and burning. 

And then, when I opened them, I saw her. Not her. Part of her. 

I left this for you.

A tree near the fencepost, maybe five feet away. Doused in shadows that were empty pits  of black. There was. A form. 

You’ll never find me, Thomas. 

Translucent. Papery thin and perched at eye level. It looked like Gwen. It was her shape,  human shape. Human shell. Husk. Arms bent at the elbow, tight at her sides. Fingers stretched  into hooks, like the paws of a wild animal, dug into the bark. Knees tucked under her belly. Her  invisible face was serene. That smile. She looked like she had started to climb the side of the  tree, and then had stopped, perched there. Perch. There was a smell. Ripe, fecund. I gagged and  spat bile. 

Then I stepped closer, gazing at what appeared to be a long slit in her back that ran from  her tailbone up over the top of her head. Inside, was empty. 

I staggered back and fell over the compost pile with a shhluup. I covered my mouth with  a palm, moaning and moaning under it. 

“No no no no,” I heard myself say. “Is it the beginning?” 

This is how she escaped. And this dried out husk is all that remained. I touched it with my  shovel and it fell to the ground with a crackle. 

Not me anymore. 

I started at a sound, like a whisper, raised the shovel over my head, spun around, thinking  there was someone behind me. Nothing. I looked at my hands. They shone like metal. Almost a  glint. And they were stiff. It took effort just to drop the shovel. 

Being. 

Becoming. 

“Simon,” I said. “What have I done?”

I looked up at the light, squinting, and I watched in silence as murky clouds of red soaked  the edges of my vision, a little at a time. Blood in water. The stiffness seeped up my arms.  Cement. It felt like cement. 

A calming overcame me. My heart slowed, and the night grew quiet. Like it was  watching me. I felt air rushing in, hardening. I dozed, eyes wide. The night enveloped me. Until it was everything. 

Being. 

Becoming. 

And then my back split in two. Like the skin of a melon. 

John Mark King is a horror writer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores psychological collapse, transformation, and the monstrous within family and self. He runs a horror book and film club and is currently at work on his first novel. More at johnmarkking.substack.com.