Sixteen years ago today, Philip murdered his sister. At least, that’s what his conscience convinced him over the past decade and a half.
His guilt manifested as a visible, physical presence. It stood at the foot of his bed. It walked across every mirror. And sometimes it infiltrated his television while watching his favorite shows. It followed him everywhere.
Every day, Philip walked to Pippa’s school to pick her up after the final bell, but one day he ignored this duty. His friend told him about a new liquor store with an easygoing owner. He didn’t card any high school kids and gave them free rein to buy anything from his bottom shelf. Philip requested the cheapest available, the black-labeled whiskey bottle with gold lettering.
He and his friend drank well into the afternoon and passed out. Philip made it home, eventually, to his screaming mother asking where the hell Pippa was.
Turned out someone kidnapped her from the schoolyard. Investigators discovered her body six weeks later at Peninsula Point. After heavy rainfall, a jogger spotted Pippa’s arm jutting out from the ground. Her killer buried her beneath the Green Ash Heritage Tree. The coroner stated her cause of death was strangulation, visible signs of struggle. The authorities never found the murderer. No evidence, no leads, no justice.
It destroyed his family, destroyed him.
She was twelve years old, and he was seventeen. After her death, Philip lost himself in a sea of whiskey; he drank every drop he could. College didn’t matter anymore, no hope, no dreams. Minimum-wage jobs here and there as long as he could keep them.
He passed through his early twenties with glassy eyes. He thought the thin film coating his eyes shielded him from the real world, from consequences. He thought the carapace he created could eradicate the pain, but it only blotted it out in erratic, limited patches.
Along with the death of his sister, Philip wanted to repress his early twenties. He spent a lot of time at a crime-ridden halfway house. He signed up thinking he was going to help himself, only to find out the manager wanted to help himself to Philip. The acrid stench of stale cigarettes clung to every surface. Pills, needles, scales, and bottles of alcohol covered the living room’s glass coffee table.
He came and went from that house during those lost years. Whenever he got fired from a job, he wound up there. When his world weighed too heavy, and it often did, he tried to kill himself, but the manager always stopped it. He always whispered in Philip’s ear that suicide was sinful and everything would be okay. The manager often told him how he didn’t want to lose Philip, that he was important and he needed him.
Throughout these years, Philip pondered about his surname, Wounded. Would he remain wounded forever for his name’s sake? Was it his fate to suffer?
The manager got him hooked on many things, but what spiked Philip’s endorphins the most were pills. All kinds of pills. He and the manager signed an implicit contract with their actions. Philip lost track of how many times he had to visit the manager’s bedroom or shower. He partook in survival sex before he knew the term for it. He often found himself in situations to which he never consented. His vices took over and left him in a fitful trance, weaving between nightmares and ecstasies.
Dust motes swirled in thin strips of light. The shed smelled like old gasoline and lawn clippings. Philip fumbled underneath the cluttered workbench to grab his bottle of whiskey. He bought two new bottles every week and hid them below the bench. He wondered why he still hid the bottles; there was no one to hide it from anymore. Old habits die hard, he supposed. Culpability ran through his fingers, his arms, and down his chest. The way every sip stung his throat felt like a reminder, a warning, to stop. The sauce never agreed with his body, or his mind, but he couldn’t help it. His eyes hung heavy on the gold lettering across its black label. A measured breath passed through his lips, reminiscent of a whistle. The water of life.
His paternal grandfather bequeathed him a mess of a shed, but he found solace among the scattered, aged things. At a quick glance, one could spot anything from rusted bikes to worm-eaten lawn ornaments. To think, his grandfather stood in this shed while witch hunts for commies consumed the world. Different times.
No, Grandpa “John.” I don’t need your damned church. My holy spirits come in a bottle, he thought. Near his death, his grandfather was incessant on salvation and told Philip to join the church. He hated pushy religious types. But he also hated smug atheists.
John wasn’t his birth name; it was Chatan Wounded, a “Sioux” Lakota name. The Lakota and Dakota Indians stopped using the term Sioux as it came from a rival tribe and had a negative connotation. The French bastardization stemmed from a name the Ojibwe called them, which meant “like us unto the adders.” Adders are Eurasian snakes. The term insinuated that the Dakota and Lakota were Indians similar to the Ojibwe until the European snakes slithered across the Atlantic. The term Indian itself was a whole other story.
His grandfather christened himself as John after absconding from his second wife. He joined the Oak Haven Church posthaste. He died not long after. Philip always wondered about Indians who sought comfort in the white man’s god.
Sixteen years. The number floated in and out of his head. His fists and gut tightened as he bit his bottom lip. He shook his head while trying to control his breathing, but his ears pounded. He smashed the bottle on the workbench and sent the table's contents flying with a swipe of his arms. Philip’s frontal vein bulged as sweat dripped down and into his eyes and mixed with a smattering of tears. His chest heaved, nostrils flared. His immediate instinct was to drown the pain, make it go away. It was all he knew.
He frantically pawed underneath the workbench for the second bottle. His hand nudged something cold. He jerked his hand back. He crouched down and gawked at what he had touched. It was a leather-bound book strapped to the rear of the bench, a perfect hiding place. Why the hell did it feel like an ice cube? Why was a secret book strapped underneath the table? Grandpa Chatan wasn’t much of a reader. He reached for it as his cheek pressed against the table’s edge.
He stood and tossed the book onto the bench. Though he only held it for a split second, his fingers had pins and needles. Small flakes of ice covered the book as if it had been sitting in his freezer next to the venison all winter. With his gingham sleeve, he wiped away the ice. A layer of grime caked the cover. He grabbed a rag to clean it up, which revealed a large star symbol. It wasn’t a pentagram, a symbol often mistaken for sinister things, but it had six points. Philip couldn’t help but open it.
He observed its gold-edged pages and at that moment noticed his hand was bleeding. Pain ran through his forearm. The broken glass must have lacerated his hand, and adrenaline masked the pain. Philip wrapped his hand with the rag to stop the bleeding. As his blood soaked into the pages, the ice remaining on the back of the book melted.
Philip experienced oddities in his life, but nothing like this book. As he rubbed his temples, chopped up memories broke into his mind’s eye. His grandfather’s second wife, Mae, studied anomalous subjects like clairvoyance and hypnosis. Grandpa Chatan feigned heartburn whenever Philip mentioned her interests. Whenever this happened, Philip always sensed peculiar undercurrents. Though, he never pushed his grandfather out of respect.
He continued to thumb through the book as if on autopilot and noticed most of the text was in Spanish. Philip raised an eyebrow when he found English marginalia lining several pages. It was a distant, more formal English.
He came across a dog-eared page.
HECHIZOS DE MUERTE
Spanish skills were but a faraway high school memory. He seldom practiced after graduating, but he remembered muerte meant dead or death. One entry was a bulleted list accompanied by numerals. A recipe? On the bottom right, someone scrawled KILL KILL KILL in red ink. Not wanting to read any more of it, he snapped the book shut.
After setting it down, Philip walked into his grandfather’s home. The living room was busy. A green loveseat adorned with a brown and black Pendleton blanket sat against the main wall. A wooden entertainment center was the main focus of the room. His grandfather’s favorite westerns on VHS tape lined the shelves.
The fireplace sat neglected on the adjacent wall. Above the mantle hung a framed painting of George Catlin’s Scalp Dance, Sioux. As a kid, he spent many hours staring into it.
His grandfather explained the artist’s infatuation with Indians. He spent most of his career painting Indian affairs. Some tribes used to perform scalp dances, or post-battle celebrations. Male warriors collected scalps atop decorated poles and danced around a fire. As a kid, scalping terrified Philip. He fell victim to angry settlers and bounty hunters scalping him in nightmares.
Grandpa Chatan always talked about the forever war between “us and them.” Indians were us and them constituted anyone oppressing Indians throughout time. He said in early America it was a mixture of the English, French, Spanish, and others. Philip had asked him about the warring Indian nations he read about in elementary school. He even shared drawings with him. His grandfather never wanted to speak about battles. He remembered him saying something like: Those battles don’t matter. What matters is the big picture, the war. Philip caught himself staring off into the painting like he was twelve years old again.
Philip grabbed the house phone attached to the kitchen wall and punched a series of digits.
“Hello?”
“Hey man, it’s Philip. I need your help with something.” Philip took the cordless phone out to the shed, opened the book.
“Lemme guess. You fell down in the shower again?”
“Asshole, I’m like four years older than you. No, but Angel, I found something weird in my grandfather’s tool shed. Some weird book in Spanish with scribblings all over it. Can you, like, help me figure out what it says, what the book is for? You know my Spanish is garbage.”
“Your Spanish is terrible? ¡No mames, güey!” exclaimed Angel, followed by a brief chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, man. Let me take a look at it. You hungry? I could use some grub; Michelle is out of town for the weekend. I don’t wanna make another microwave quesadilla.”
“I’m sorta in the mood for some pizza. Meat lover’s?”
“I can never say no to pizza. How ‘bout Pizza Boy in about twenty?”
“I’ll be there, man! After, we can see who can score highest on Galaga.”
They exchanged quick goodbyes and hung up.
Philip beat Angel to the pizza shop. Still sitting in his truck, he grabbed the book and re-examined the cover. He ran his thumb over the star symbol, felt the grooves. He appreciated its craftsmanship.
The book slammed open in his hands and the pages skittered across his lap until it slammed shut. His mouth gaped as the book vibrated on his leg and plumes of black smoke billowed up and filled the cab of his truck. There was a thickness developing in his throat and a light pressure in his chest cavity. Hurried whispers breached his ears, and he could have sworn he recognized at least one voice.
Philip blinked, and the blackness disappeared, no sound. The book lay undisturbed on the bench seat of his pickup. A loud rap on his driver-side window launched his heart into his throat.
“Looks like I’m…” Angel stopped himself short once Philip’s head swiveled his way.
Bewilderment covered Philip’s face like war paint. His eyes looked as if they were on the verge of popping out of their sockets. He turned to the book and then back to Angel with furrowed brows and pursed lips. Did Angel see the smoke? Did that just happen? Was he drugged somehow and hallucinating? As the questions swirled, Philip stuffed the book into his buffalo-hide satchel. He then shouldered its strap and stepped out of his truck.
“Aye, why were you lookin’ like a freak-show back there?” asked Angel as they approached the restaurant’s doors.
“Oh,” began Philip before offering a chuckle, “Nothin’ really. Your ugly face startled me is all.” He gave a quick wink to Angel before holding the door open for him. “Booty before beauty.”
“Wise ass,” Angel said. They ordered their food, got their plastic order number, and sat at a rounded corner booth.
During their small talk, Philip couldn’t help but recap what had happened moments ago in his truck. He shifted into autopilot while Angel castigated their coworker Lazy Larry. He was a buffoon who often got paid the same amount they did for half of the effort. Angel often ranted about the day-to-day unjust realities they both faced as a Native and a Mexican. They were, after all, in ultra-white 1990s Minnesota. Philip overstayed his welcome inside his own head and Angel tapped his shoulder.
“Jesus, man. I’m trying to share my feelings here and you’re off in wonderland?” Annoyed, Angel drew a sizable sip from his soda to give Philip room to respond.
“Sorry, my bad. I was listening, but I couldn’t help thinking about Debbie when you mentioned the Marlow project in St. Paul.” The lie slid off his tongue with mastery. Angel didn’t question it, because Philip did often talk about Debbie. She was Philip’s ex-wife who cheated on him while they were working on the Marlow project for a month. The cash-rich company contracting them offered room-and-board in St. Paul for the month. They were in a hurry to put up the building. Philip wasn’t often the romantic type, but he wanted to surprise Debbie by coming home a few days early. Turned out she had different plans with a different man.
Angel regretted broaching the Debbie subject. It often led Philip down a path of misery, and in this case it did, as he forgot about the book for a moment. Dark thoughts raced through his mind. He remembered those nights he tortured himself in his apartment. He beat himself up, wondering where he went wrong. He thought he was the ideal partner: faithful, open, empathetic, and loving. How could a person do such a thing? She voiced no concerns about things not working between them. Thinking back, he noticed no nonverbal cues either.
Offer yourself, your life, your time, to another person for nine years and they laugh in your face. She spit on the grave of their marriage. A piece of his heart still lies in that cut of earth, that blood-soaked soil.
One of the teenage servers approached their booth, hot meat lover’s pizza in hand. Without hesitation, Philip snatched a slice. He ate his feelings, pushed them back down alongside chewed up bits of pepperoni and sausage.
“Whoa, dude. I thought I was starving. Take it easy, fool,” Angel said before stuffing his own face. The sensations of greasy mozzarella and meats consumed them. Concerns over ex-wives and entitled coworkers faded into white noise.
“Hey, what about your book? The Spanish one,” said Angel as he wiped his face with six napkins. “It’s why we’re meeting up, anyways. You got it, right?”
With his mouth full, Philip lifted his satchel from the ground and pulled out the book. Its gilt-edged pages shimmered as he pushed it across the table to Angel. He narrowed his eyes and looked up to Philip before settling on the book.
“Nah, man. I meant the book we talked about on the phone. Are you dumb today or what, man? You’re being weird, for real,” Angel said.
Befuddled, Philip looked at the book. The six-pointed star embellished the aging leather cover.
“What are you talking about? This is it. Open it up and check out the Spanish. I need your help with some translating. Like I said, there are some notes in English, but I wanna know what the heck this thing is,” Philip said.
“Hmm-kay.” Angel shook his head, cleared his throat, and began flipping through the book. “This is dumb. You tryin’ to gaslight me and on a Sunday? Take your dumb novel back.” Angel gave the book a forceful shove toward Philip.
“Novel?”
“Stop, dude. This is getting annoying. I just wanna eat this pizza.”
“How do you know it’s a novel?” asked Philip. “You opened it for like five seconds.”
“Alright,” Angel said. He wiped his mouth once more and put on a more serious look. “Did you fall on your head today? What is up with you? This is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” Angel smacked the cover with his forefinger.
Philip looked down and jumped in his seat, hand over his mouth.
“Yo, what the—are you okay? What’s going on?” Angel asked.
“How—” Philip tried to gather words. What is going on is right, thought Philip. He stared at the front cover adorned with a bold, all-caps typeface and clouds scattered across a blue sky. First, the book blew out black smoke and now it was disguising itself as something else? Why Infinite Jest? Was the title a forewarning? Did it disguise itself as one of the most popular books this year to not arouse suspicion of passersby?
“Miss, can you come over here for a second?” asked Philip of a young, blonde server. Gesturing toward the book, Philip asked, “Have you read this book?” with the hope she would become confused and see the actual book for what it was.
“My boyfriend adores that book. He’s reading it right now for one of his classes. He honestly, like, won’t stop talking about it. It’s super embarrassing.”
Shit. She sees the pretend book, too.
Philip offered the girl feigned interest until she took the hint and left. Philip ran both of his hands through his black, tousled hair, pulling his facial expression up with it. His skin snapped back down into a look of irritated confusion.
Angel, not knowing what to do with his deranged friend, offered to grab a to-go box for the leftover pizza.
“Not sure what’s up with you, but this is all too weird for me, man. I’m gonna head home and get to bed early. Early to bed, early to rise. Too much to do tomorrow!”
Philip dreaded the thought of going home alone with this hellish book. No one to come home to. Should he leave it somewhere? What was he going to do with it? Why did his grandfather keep it in the tool shed? Yet again, questions filled his brain to the brim.
He apologized to Angel for ruining their hang and blamed it on a lack of sleep. They agreed to see each other at work the next morning, bright and early.
You vile piece of excrement. You are pathetic. I pity your futile existence. You bear no children. You have no partner. You go to work every day as a slave, a slave to the fruits of your labor. You spend your money on what? On things that bring you happiness? Things that fill that void in the center of your chest? You drink yourself stupid and watch the world turn. When was the last time you offered anything of value to the world? You mope around in the privacy of your home about your job, your ex-wife, your stupid guilt. You do nothing to improve it. You wallow in it.
At least, you are not a vain creature. You do not share your pity party with others, and you do not beg for compliments where you can. You are all alone, isolated in your own filth. Go to work, go home, go to sleep, repeat. Why? This plane of existence is hollow. Everyone pretends to be beautiful, unique, witty, or even valuable.
You lifted me from my slumber in that shed. You are not my rightful owner, and I am now tethered to you because you bled into me. But there is a way to sever this connection. There is a way to become separated, but you must perform the task by your own hand. All I can do is persuade and provoke the emotions. Kill yourself or I will haunt you as long as you live. I will ruin any relationship you hope to foster. I will torment you in ways you were not aware existed. When you wake, the choice is yours.
Before the sun breached the clouded sky, Philip was in the backyard in nothing but his pajama shorts. He held the pitchfork above his head and plunged it into the book. His clenched hands revealed angry spiders of blue veins. Mottled skin stretched across his pronounced cheekbones. Saliva collected in the corners of his mouth. His bloodshot eyes exuded a mania alien to him. He held the book down with his foot to yank the pitchfork out and skewered the book once more. Blood spurted in dark red ropes which coated the yellowed lawn. A caustic scent wafted toward Philip. From the punctures, frenzied earthworms wriggled and crawled out onto the crabgrass. As the worms convulsed, Philip pressed a fist against his mouth and puffed out his cheeks. He dry-heaved until some half-digested pizza spilled onto the lawn.
The worms extended and mushroomed into small humanoids covered in a translucent mucus. They caterwauled and quivered. Philip regained his composure and raised the pitchfork once more. As he motioned to thrust the metal prongs into one of the writhing beings, they all yelped in unison.
“Philip, no!” The voice was that of his ex-wife, Debbie. Once Philip recognized the voice, the creatures all morphed into her. They were all wearing the same outfit Debbie wore when Philip came home early that one day. Resembling a fish out of water, Philip gawped at them. He then fell and shuffled backward with hurried hands and feet.
“No, no, no. Get out of my head!” Philip grabbed the shovel and continued with his original plan. He used the shovel to stand up and swung its blade down onto one of the Debbie-like creatures. It emitted a brief squeal. Lifting back the shovel revealed a pile of salmon-colored guts and toothpick-sized bones. The mound of guts fizzed and popped like a thick soup well beyond its boiling point. The other creatures vanished. Soon thereafter, the pink pulp vanished too.
Philip struggled to catch his breath with hands on his knees and a collapsed posture. His head swung over to the book, thick blood still seeping out of the holes. He scowled, huffed and puffed, and screamed as he ran at the book. He picked it up and threw it into the hole he dug earlier.
Shovelfuls of dirt blanketed the book. Before the next shovelful, he saw something else in that hole.
It was his little sister’s face.
He threw the shovel and dropped to his knees, his hands in a frenzy to reveal more of his sister’s face. His body was tense, chest filling with pressure; his esophagus tightened. He sent soil flying out of the hole. The pink shirt she wore that ultimate day unveiled itself. Dirt met his tears and mixed; he struggled to squint through grime-caked eyelids. Spittle escaped his lips. Jump-cut memories of that day flashed behind his eyes as he dug.
“Pippa, Pippa!”
She had closed eyes, pallid skin. He dug around her to the point her chest became uncovered from the earth. With his hands under her armpits, he pulled her from that damnable grave. He heaved her over and laid her with care onto the grass. He pushed a lock of her hair over to the side with trembling hands.
“You were such a beautiful girl. I can’t—I’m sorry. So, so sorry.” Philip held a pained stare as his lips quivered. Spit and mucus hung in thick strands above her body. “You deserved the world. You were so young.” He clenched his fists and punched his head. First, with one hand, and then with both, harder and harder. In the past, he chose self-inflicted pain to relieve the guilt, to pummel away his anguish.
He wiped away the tears and snot and leaned down, his arms wrapped around Pippa for a last hug.
“I love you with all my heart, Pippa.”
During the embrace, Philip sensed her head turning towards his face.
“I thought you loved me, too.”
The voice was deep, masculine.
Philip jerked back with physical aversion. Before him lay a man, one whom he recognized. He was spindly with long brown hair, blue eyes, and an unkempt beard. His shirtless body revealed many tattoos and scars; track marks lined his arms. His jaundiced eyes focused on Philip as he stumbled away from the man with urgency and kept his distance.
“Oh, come on, Pillhead. Come closer.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m fine right here.” He gritted his teeth. He seethed in anger because his closure with his sister abruptly ended, even if it was all a mind trick by the book. He was once again existing without Pippa. The missing puzzle piece in his chest ripped away once more.
The man rose and patted dirt off his pant legs. He took several steps toward Philip as Philip cringed at the man’s new proximity.
“You’re a stupid book. A cursed book of a witch or something, I don’t know. You don’t exist. You are just in my head!”
“Why are you calling me a book? Anyway, we had such a rich history, don’t you think? So many sleepless nights, so much fun, the ecstasy, the love, the pain.” The spindly man bit the side of his finger to draw blood. He kept the wound to his mouth and drank in from the punctured skin.
Despite resistance, images of their shared past flooded Philip’s mind.
“Why am I seeing you? Why are you here now? Why did you take me away from my sister?”
“I needed to tell you something.” The man offered Philip an unhinged smile.
Philip gestured for him to continue.
“I choked your sister to death.”
Philip returned a furrowed brow but rubbed it with his forefinger. He then scratched the back of his head.
“I’d been watching you in your teen years. Drove by your school many times.”
Philip’s eyes flickered.
“I wanted you all to myself but had to be patient. I needed to break you. I needed you to crawl to me. What better way than to choke your little sister until her neck snapped? Oh, it felt so good, that popping between my fingers. Extraordinary. The power I felt in my hands, in my bones. I took her life away. I took her from you.”
Philip charged the man without hesitation, without letting the words sink in. The man went down with ease, though he got handsy on the ground. Philip was atop him with arms stretched out. His hands made a ring around his neck, knuckles whitening. He raised a fist and hammered it into his jawbone. How the man’s face caved in like that of a rubber action figure startled Philip. He jumped up with horror, staggered backward, and tripped over the pitchfork. Philip twitched his head toward the pitchfork and grabbed it. He shoved the pitchfork’s handle into the man’s collapsed throat.
“How do you like it?” Philip’s voice was hoarse and cracking; a panic befell him. With all his might, he continued shoving the pitchfork’s handle down the man’s throat. His flailing hands scratched at Philip. He kept forcing it in until he heard a terminating crunch. The man’s mangled windpipe became flattened to his pulverized cervical vertebra. He lay there lifeless. Philip ripped the pitchfork back out.
The man deflated. Philip retrieved his pocketknife from his pajama shorts, kneeled down, and began carving. When he separated the man’s scalp from his head, Philip noticed a fetid, yellow goop filled his skull cavity. It offered a pungent stench which stung his nostrils and forced him to rise and step back. Philip lifted the scalp-less man into his arms and folded him like an Indian blanket. The odorous yellow goop slopped onto Philip's toes. With disdain, he threw the carcass back into that hole. For good measure, he spit into it.
Philip relished at the thought he had won. He beat that infernal book and didn’t give in to its demand of suicide. He didn’t give in to its trickery. He packed down the dirt to be level and tossed the patch of grass back on top. He wiped his brows, looked up at the sun, and let out a sigh. After dragging the shovel and pitchfork back to the shed, he took a victory swig of his whiskey. Instead of hiding it back under the workbench, he brought the bottle into the house.
A muffled cackle permeated the earth and grew into maniacal laughter.