Lynn McNulty awoke with a vicious headache. In the center of the pain throbbed echoes of Potter Hawley counting her out the night before.
     She had gotten to her hands and knees, but could push herself no further. It was as if someone were gripping her neck, holding her down, as Sears' sister, Toni, had once done, back when they lived in Montana.
     They were in Toni's single-wide trailer, eating dinner. Toni's fourteen-year-old daughter, passing a greasy dish of beans, had dropped them onto the floor, spilling some milk too. When Lynn went to help her niece clean up, Toni, in a drunken rage, pushed both their faces to the linoleum and forced them to clean it with their tongues.
     Sears had sat passively by.

     This morning Sears wasn't on his side of the bed, wasn't in the room. The least he could do is bring me a couple of Tylenol, Lynn thought. He could bring me a cool washcloth for my head. He could brew me a cup of tea. It would be nice for someone to take care of me for a change. It shouldn't all flow one way.
     She was a nurse, always administering to the needs of others. The voices of those suffering, whining, grousing, demanding people filled her head, an endless clatter.
     Where was Sears?
     She dragged herself into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and looked down into the sink. Black whisker shavings were stuck to the bowl where Sears had knocked them from his cheap disposable razor. The shavings were a colony of malevolent bugs looking up at her. They were stuck to the bowl with the residue of shaving cream and Sears's skin, and the water wouldn't dislodge them. They were cynical bugs, bugs with a bad attitude, like Sears himself. They looked up at her out of the corners of their eyes, pejoratively. They sneered at her for her loss.
     The loser's here, they told each other.
     She was less than them. They all had each other in the bowl and she was alone with her loss. The congregation had cheered her, she was supposed to represent Good, but she had let everyone down.
     The evil whisker shavings whispered among themselves, shaming her.
     Chubby Molly, with her black grin, had beaten her.
     The shavings were like the hamburger grease Sears left on the stove. Why couldn't he clean up after himself? Her stomach clenched. Acid filled her throat. She was going to retch. She got down on her hands and knees in front of the toilet in a position of surrender, like the one she had found herself in at the end of the fight when Potter Hawley had yelled, "Ten!" A bell had rung in her ears.

     It had taken her a long time to get to her feet. Then Molly rushed her and captured her in a strong embrace.
     Molly's hold felt repugnant, stifling. Lynn wanted to break free but was unable to exert any effort. She had become a defenseless child.
     She collapsed into Molly's arms.
     Like a heartbroken mother, Molly held her.
     Lynn cried noiselessly into Molly's hair.

     Holding the toilet, she felt the old sense of surrendering to God, but she knew that God did not want her to surrender to Him or to anyone else. Potter Hawley had shown her that God wanted her to raise herself up and to meet Him standing, not kneeling, to meet him strong, not weak, to meet him as a victor, not a victim, to meet him transformed. She had failed Him. The congregation looked to her because of her single-mindedness, her steadfastness, her iron will transformed into iron action.
     What had happened?
     The wave of nausea passed. She struggled to her feet. Again at the sink she saw the black shavings, as if for the first time. She couldn't remember being so debilitated after a fight. Most times she won. She needed to win. The black bugs were crawling around the bottom of the bowl, ridiculing her for her efforts, useless efforts, one step forward and two steps back. They dragged her down the way Sears dragged her down.
     She wiped the bottom and sides of the bowl with her hand. It was slimy. She hated the bacteria there. She washed her hands, aggressively rubbing her palms together. When she turned to the towel, it was sodden. She grabbed it off the hook and flung it against the far wall with a growl which, as it came out of her throat, felt like a rope pulled against the soft, screaming tissue of her brain.
     She fumbled open the medicine cabinet and found the Tylenol bottle on the bottom shelf. It was empty. She shook it. Why hadn't Sears thrown it out and gotten a new one?
     She couldn't stay on her feet. She struggled into bed. The world was a gray void. She remembered Montana, Sears hitting her. He hadn't hit her for a long time. During each of her workouts, her Walkman carried Potter Hawley's sermons direct to her soul. Sweat pooled in the hollow at the base of her neck and trickled down the center of her chest, and with every repetition she went to where God transformed weakness to strength, to where trespasses against her no longer mattered, disappearing, along with the suffering they had caused, into the hardness of muscle. For hours at a time on the Stairmaster, her untanned legs pumped, ever ascending.
     She was aware that in the ring, she hardly appeared human. She was a comic book character, a superheroine with eccentric powers, her skin silver-white, with not an ounce of fat, her straight dark hair flashing in the ring lights as she moved to get a better angle on her targets.
     After a while, she pushed aside the covers and walked stiffly down the stairs. The feel of the banister under her hand was like an accusation.
     There was no Tylenol in the kitchen. She was sure they'd had a container there. She could see it in her mind's eye, on the counter by the sink. She picked up an empty potato chip bag, but there was no Tylenol behind it, no Tylenol anywhere.
     Sears was in the recliner where he'd fallen asleep watching TV. While she had tossed in anguished half-sleep, he'd been drinking beer and entertaining himself with old monster movies. Three beer bottles sat on the floor next to the recliner, one of them tipped on its side. It was Saturday morning and there were cartoons on the screen. As she moved to flick it off a mouse hit a cat over the head with a giant mallet. Now he knows what it feels like, she thought.
     As she turned back to the recliner, Sears's head lolled to the side and his mouth fell open.

     "Where's the Tylenol?" she said. She moved toward her sleeping husband. "Where is the Tylenol?" She put her hands on his shoulders and shook him.
     He groaned and opened his eyes.
     "Tylenol!" Lynn grabbed his shirt at the shoulders, pulled him up, then shoved him back against the recliner. "Where did you put it?"
     "I don't know," Sears said. "There's some in the bathroom upstairs. You want me to get it?"
     "There isn't any! You left me an empty container!"
     "Well, I think there's some in the kitchen." He pushed his legs against the extension of the recliner and the chair raised him to an upright position. He shakily got to his feet. "I'll get it," he said. He rubbed his face and headed for the kitchen. "I'm sorry you lost last night."
     His apology was barely audible. He was like the administrator at the hospital, telling the nurses what they wanted to hear but never following through, a manipulative lying bastard. The first part of manipulative was man, she remembered, from a poster in the nurse's break room.
     She heard him opening cabinets, and banging them shut. Each bang was a knock on her head, like the mallet in the cartoon.
     "You're so sorry that you couldn't even clean your whiskers out of the bathroom sink. It's disgusting. Do you know how disgusting that is?"
     "I'm sorry. I forget."
     The world wasn't big enough for all his excuses. They were like his whisker shavings, black bugs crawling in garbage, claiming her attention as she tried to rise to the sky.
     Sears stuck his head out the kitchen door. "Can't find any," he said. "Would you like me to go to the store and get some?"
     "Now."
     "Okay. I'll just grab a cup of coffee and then I'm out the door." He disappeared back into the kitchen.
     Her abdominal muscles involuntarily tightened.
     In the kitchen, Sears was putting a cup of water into the microwave.
     "You can get some coffee later."
     "Oh come on, Lynn, it'll just be a minute. It's instant coffee."
     "You know, you could have gotten some Tylenol last night. You could have checked to see that I had what I needed. What are you doing? What are you doing with your life?"
     "Wasting it."
     "I was the Good, I was supposed to defeat Evil. I was tricked. I was cheated."
     In the Ring of Good and Evil, the contests were symbolic of humanity's spiritual struggle. Her headache was satanic, a headache born of defeat and darkness. She wished she had some prescription pain meds.
     Sears pushed numbers on the control panel of the microwave.
     Lynn grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him against the wall. Even in her weakened conditioned, it was easy. She was in a sort of fugue state, barely aware of what she was doing. Sears made an "oof" sound as his back hit the wall.
     Lynn stared at him. There were floaters in her vision, circular patterns superimposed on Sears's face. Everything looked grainy, grainy as the canvas had looked the night before as she futilely tried to raise herself. Her arms, extended, with their knot of triceps, long bar of bicep, the rods of the forearm ending in gloved fist, had appeared objects apart from herself.
     Sears stared back at her and Lynn saw the fear in his eyes. To their right the microwave beeped three times. In the wake of the electronic signal, they were suspended in an eddy of silence.
     "The water's ready," Sears said.
     She pulled him from the wall, then shoved him back into it. This time his head flew back and made contact with the plaster. The fear in his eyes surged. He was like a doll she'd had in childhood-- when you moved it, its eyes moved, opening, closing, closing halfway.
     She felt the power she had lost the night before. For a third time she pulled Sears from the wall and shoved him against it. It was like any repetitive exercise. She even found herself breathing an out-breath as she pushed him.
     Sears didn't resist.
     Lynn was gratified by his fear. She had once been the frightened one. That she had taken her fear and given it to Sears was the greatest accomplishment of her life.
     "Coffee later," Lynn said. "Tylenol now."
     "Okay," Sears said. "Alright. I'll be right back."
     She held him for a moment longer, then released him. He went to get his keys.
     Lynn climbed back upstairs; her feet felt like they were weighted with lead. Her head spun as she crawled back into bed. She stared at the ceiling and tried to stabilize, to get control of herself. She felt void, useless. Her weakness had become strength only to become weakness again.
     She could not accept that reversal. She believed in salvation here on Earth. Her progress was supposed to be linear, an arrow moving constantly upward to a high right corner beyond anyone's vision. She again remembered the tabloid graininess of the canvas. It was evil to be a victim, evil to be a loser. She closed her eyes and saw Molly Urquhart grinning up at her as she went to release what was to be a damaging punch, but ended as a fatal trap.

     Sears trotted to his Hornet wagon. He felt like he was pulling off a daring escape, a thief evading the cops, even as he raised his hand to his mouth to bite a fingernail and tried to remember whether she preferred caplets or tablets and what number milligrams-- he figured he'd just get Xtra Strength, whatever container was the biggest and looked most powerful.
     He shoved the transmission into drive and pictured Elvira. He'd been dreaming about her, the Mistress of the Dark. In the dream she'd gained twenty pounds and she and Sears lay entwined, his head on her ample breast, as bats fluttered overhead.
     Then Lynn had jerked him awake, pinned him to the wall, her face an angry porcelain mask, like a Japanese geisha gone haywire. Somewhere inside this terrorist was the soft, quiet girl he'd married.
     Driving to town, he braked and swerved to avoid hitting a deer, which sprinted across the road in front of him. "Jesus! That's just what I'd need. Yeah, Lynn would really believe that."

     On his return, he left the old Hornet ticking and trembling in the driveway.
     In the bedroom, Lynn was asleep in the middle of the bed. She looked vulnerable, like a child. Her face was fixed in a kind of pout. The fight hadn't marked it. He thought she looked sexy in her cotton pajamas. Waiting in line at the E-Z Mart he'd flipped through the tabloids. There was a new rash of stories about Jon-Benet Ramsey. She'd been so cute. He could understand having sex with a child. Not that he'd ever do anything that pathetic. But sugar and spice and everything nice.
     He'd never had enough niceness. Other people had taken it and left him crumbs. Lynn had been nice, when he married her.
     No one was really in control of himself, Sears thought, remembering the early days of their marriage.
     He set the bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water on top of the dresser. He pulled the door shut, so the TV noise wouldn't wake her.
     Sears liked cartoons. Cartoons were kind of like religion to him, a return to his childhood sources of security and happiness. Halfway through his first program, the set went blank, and Lynn wacked him on the head with the remote control.
     "Ow! What'd you do that for?"
     "Where's the Tylenol?"
     "I got it. You were sleeping. I left it on the dresser, with a glass of water."
     "Sleeping? I haven't slept a wink."
     Sears jumped out of the chair. "I'll go get it, I'll be right back." He scuttled around her and ran up the stairs.
     When he returned, his foot caught on the carpet and he lurched forward. The water sloshed out of the glass, a few drops onto Lynn's leg.
     "You did that on purpose," Lynn said.
     "I didn't!"
     He lurched toward the kitchen to refill the glass. When he returned he held out the Tylenol container, but dropped it before she could get it fully in her grasp. Tablets poured out onto the floor, some rolling on their edges, reminding Sears of little circus cars filled with clowns.
     "You fool," she said. Sears bent over to retrieve the pills but Lynn pushed him out of the way and he fell on his butt as Lynn bent to pick up the pills herself. She washed some down, her expression pure misery.
     Sears picked himself up and said, "Maybe you shouldn't fight anymore, Lynn. I don't think all that working out is good either. I mean, you're wrapped way too tight, baby. Back in the old days you were more relaxed. You were happier, a lot happier." He was babbling, out of control and he knew it, but he couldn't stop himself, fueled by a mix of fear, malice, and sincerity. "Potter's salvation seems awfully taxing. It's like those commercials for drugs with all those side effects. Something that's good for you can also do a lot of strange things."
     "Shut up," Lynn said.
     "Lynn, you know, you don't have to feel too bad about last night. It was like, the classic rope-a-dope. It was like Muhammad Ali did to George Foreman in Manila.
     "Now you're calling me a dope?" She closed the distance between them and Sears reflexively raised his arms to protect himself. Lynn grabbed his wrists, but Sears managed to pull out of her grasp. He turned, but she came after him.
     "A dope?"
     "I didn't call you a dope." Even in her misery she moved quickly and caught up to him as he reached for the doorknob. Lynn leaned over and grabbed his wrist, then pulled his arm up behind his back. She put her left arm around his neck, the inside of her elbow against his throat. If she had been shorter she would not have been able to do this, but he was only an inch taller than she was.
     She applied pressure with both arms and Sears hollered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're not a dope. You're not a dope."
     Lynn continued applying pressure.
     "You're going to break my arm," Sears yelled.
     Lynn let go.
     "Sears, I'm sorry. Sears, I love you. You know I love you." She turned him, put her arms around him and held him tightly. She raised her face and kissed him on the lips.
     His right arm was aching --he couldn't raise it-- but he lifted his left and massaged her shoulder blades.



About the author:
Mitch Grabois lives in northwestern Michigan, in a farmhouse whose plaster walls are adorned with an unimpressive collection of milagros.

© 2009 Word Riot