Deliverance

His dog was barking. Incessantly, in fact. A split second before my knuckles made contact with the door, I had a fleeting moment of worry. I hadn’t met Albert yet, but I’d seen him watering his lawn this Sunday past and couldn’t help noticing that he was up there in years. What if the dog was barking because Albert had slipped and fallen and couldn’t get up? It was a ridiculous commercial, but it had succeeded in drilling the reality of that happening into the unshakeable back corners of my entire generation’s minds. I listened closely for any sound beneath the constant bark.

Nothing.

I raised my hand to try again and almost knocked Albert right in the face when the front door suddenly flew open beneath my hand.

“Oh, sorry!” I rushed out, embarrassment coloring my face. “I thought you might not be able to hear me!”

Albert was tall and spindly for an old man, no feeble haunch or cane in sight. He peered down at me with blue eyes that seemed bright and inquisitive.

“Oh well, it’s alright dear! If Luce ever quieted down—” he directed this bit over his shoulder in a shout before turning to look down at me again “—I might even get more visitors!”

I smiled ruefully. Hooked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Well, actually, I’m sorry to say this isn’t really a social visit. I got your note.”

Albert’s eyebrows rose at that quickly, like they couldn’t stop themselves, before resettling over his wrinkled eyelids.

“Your note? About my package?” I clarified.

“Oh, yes!” Albert exclaimed after a moment, grinning easily and stepping aside to let me enter. “Yes, yes. You must forgive an old man. This old thing’s not what it used to be.” He tapped at his forehead with a blunt, thick finger.

I hesitated. I’d been hoping that Albert would just bring the package out to me. I still had to finish unpacking my kitchenware, make a trip to the grocery store, and haul all my empty boxes out before trash day tomorrow morning. I didn’t really have time to shoot the shit with the elderly, though I knew this was a possibility when I saw his note shoved in the space between my door and its knocker, a neatly scrawled DELIVERANCE. ALBERT. NEXT DOOR. It was an odd way to phrase it, but the post office confirmed that I did, in fact, have a package deliveranced the day before. What it was, I had no idea. I stifled a resigned sigh as I followed Albert through the doorway. Maybe I could get away with—

Whoa.

Albert’s house was cold. Morgue cold. Wisconsin in January cold. My ex-girlfriend pretending I don’t exist in a crowded bar cold. Cold cold.

“Is your heating broken?” I swore I could see a puff of air leave my mouth with the words. “It’s a bit chilly in here.”

Albert hummed to himself but didn’t respond. As he led me deeper into his house, the sound of Luce’s barking getting noticeably closer, I noticed that Albert’s home was otherwise normal. A stately two-story Craftsman, it had well-kept wooden floors, off-white walls and a minimalist and unassuming modern décor. I wondered how long he’d lived here. I’d only just moved in next door and already I was setting things aside to shove into my garage, hoarder-style.

We arrived at his kitchen and all at once, the barking stopped. There sat Luce, a beefy brown-eyed rottweiler staring and staring up at me from his position near the fridge, as if he were expecting something I didn’t have. I tilted my head at him and he blinked and tilted his head right back. I looked over at Albert. His head was also tilted.

I straightened, suddenly unsettled. “Um. So. My package?”

Albert hummed again and smiled. Something about the sound of it made me uneasy, the hair on my arms rising gradually. Or it could’ve been the Antarctic-level cold in the house, unabated by the dim sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window above the sink.

“Would you like some lemonade, dear?”

I blinked. Maybe Albert was deaf as well as impervious to human temperature. “No, I’m okay. I’d really—”

“I grow the lemons myself!” He shuffled over to his fridge and pulled out a red pitcher, its outside already wet with condensation.

“I’m not very—”

“Right here, in the backyard!”

I clenched my jaw and tried desperately to hold onto my patience. I would not be rude to old people, I would not be rude to old people, I would not be rude to— “Sure, Albert. Lemonade sounds great.”

One glass. If I had one glass, I could definitively say that I’d been polite and neighborly and could get on with my day.

A fat black fly buzzed through the air and landed on Luce’s head. He was still staring at me patiently, his watery dog eyes unfathomable. If he noticed the fly, he gave no indication. It crawled around behind Luce’s ear and then into it before disappearing. I shuddered. Luce watched and watched me.

The clink of a glass being set down pulled my attention away. Albert held the pitcher in his wizened hand as he poured the yellow liquid into my glass, then his. Thick slices of lemon plopped into each of our glasses, splashing lemonade onto the island counter. Albert showed no reaction to that.

“Drink, drink!”

Maybe it was my annoyance, or the cold, or the house’s still and even silence but my stomach started to revolt, as if in warning. My body, quite officially, did not want this juice.

“Drink, drink!” Albert said again, his tone sharper and his eyes so bright I shivered again without meaning to.

My hand lifted and I drank. The liquid was cool and tart and refreshing going down. It was good. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting.

“Can I—” I coughed, my throat suddenly dry. I took another cool sip. “Can I have my package?” I tried again.

Albert papery lips widened, his teeth on all sides showing. They were off-white, like his walls. Not exactly yellow-toned. Not exactly blue-toned. But they were strong and slightly uneven and for a second, I couldn’t make myself look away. They were meat-eating teeth. They seemed inexplicably barbaric.

As I watched, a fly, just as fat as the first, landed and crawled toward Albert’s mouth. I gasped, my glass of lemonade clattering upright onto the countertop below. My hand was sticky with juice as I pointed.

“Albert, you have a—”

He turned sharply toward Luce. “Don’t you start!” he growled.

Luce, predictably, hadn’t moved an inch since I’d arrived in the kitchen. Hadn’t made as much as a squeak against the floor by way of sound. My head began to swim.

“Stay!” Albert commanded, before lumbering out of the room. I wasn’t sure which one of us he was talking to, me or the dog. We stayed.

I didn’t want to. Something in me, some deep and primitive instinct was screaming at me to get up and walk out and never come back here again. But that was the thing about primitive instincts — they never felt modern. Never felt rational. Albert had, technically, been nothing but kind. Sure he lacked a fundamental ability to take a dropped hint, but that felt reasonable. Old people were supposed to be resistant to social cues or something.

So I stayed. Took another sip of lemonade to calm my irrational nerves. Tried to resist the urge to look over at Luce again. Of course I failed at that and I steeled myself for the empty pool of his unending gaze, but to my surprise his eyes were fixed just beyond and above my head. I was afraid to turn my head away from Luce – with that never-ending stare, what if he was just waiting to attack me when my back was turned? – but I threw a quick glance over my shoulder, and then another, stunned.

Mounted to the wall, against the typical design style of this home, were two glassy-eyed buck heads. Their antlers were stretched high to the ceiling, at certain points even touching it. Their mouths were stretched unnaturally open. In shock? Fear? Yawn? I shuddered. No matter which one I looked at, their eyes seemed to follow me, unblinking but steady.

There was a small tag mounted beneath each buck head and I squinted at each warily before pushing away towards the wall to get a better look. In the small, neat writing I recognized as Albert’s one read DEAD and the other read ALIVE.

“What the—”

A small sound behind me made me spin, suddenly remembering Luce’s presence. He still sat by the fridge, his eyes on me again but…His eyes, so brown and watery before were abruptly and inexplicably blue. Bright as the sun against the ocean. Bright as the nerdiest kid in class. Bright as fire. Bright bright.

Luce’s mouth opened wide, wide, and my heart or my breath pounded against my chest in a scream—

And then Albert was back. Hands full with a brown-papered package. Tied quaintly with string.

I took a step back.

Albert frowned.

“I don’t know what that is.”

Albert’s mouth stretched open and he held the package out to me expectedly. “Well, dear, neither do I." He held it out further with a smile. "It must be something nice. It got delivered by one of them fancy drones and everything.”

“No, I mean…” What did I mean? I coughed. “I…I don’t want it.”

Albert’s head tilted. Luce’s head tilted. The dog’s eyes were brown. My throat seized up.

“Sometimes, dearie, life gives us what we need anyway.” He winked and a tear slipped out of my eyes. Rolled down my cheek. “Now come. Finish up.”

Like a puppet on a string, I felt myself walk forward and grab my lemonade and drink and drink and drink until a lemon slice plodded against my face. I coughed. Coughed again.

“There. It’s good, right?” Albert patted my hand and bile rose up in my chest.

I nodded.

“Right here, in the backyard!”

I coughed.

“Now don’t you want to open it?” His blunt fingers tapped steadily against my delivered package. I shook my head and Albert’s fingertips stopped for one long moment.

“Don’t be childish, Amelia.” His voice was stern. “Open the package.”

I didn’t ask how he knew my given name. Couldn’t. I just knew it wasn’t written anywhere on this blank brown package. And somewhere, deep inside that primeval part of me, I knew anyway. Everyone knew. It was why that part of us existed. I felt my fingers working over the coarse string, tugging and pulling and trying to unravel it without sight, my vision blurred by my unbidden tears. I kept coughing, my throat burning and tingling in my quiet panic.

“Drink, drink.”

“I drank it all,” I coughed out.

“I grow the lemons myself.” His hands patted mine again. They, too, were deathly cold. I hadn’t noticed before.

I ripped at the parcel paper despite myself, while Albert looked on. While Luce looked on. While the DEAD and ALIVE bucks looked on. My hands kept ripping and ripping while I coughed and coughed until finally, the package was open. I opened my mouth to say something, anything they’d let me, and a stream of fat black flies crawled out of my throat and plunked onto the package, wet and slimy and humming and alive. As my mouthed screwed open in a silent scream and stream of insects, Albert’s eyes shone down at me blue and blue, and Luce rose up and up and leaned back on his hind legs and barked and barked and barked and barked and barked and barked and barked.