The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

couldn’t bear to look at it anymore so she sold it to his mommy, who then gave it to him. And maybe that kid’s mom dreamed about it at night—the big globs of paint splattered across rough wood and the maniac, murderers’ grins from Big Bird and Grover—and maybe she cried. Michael’s own mommy didn’t care about that. She snickered and gave the puzzle to him because maybe she wasn’t a nice person. Like when he fell down on the porch stair that one time and scraped all the skin off his knee and she laughed. She said sorry afterward and kissed him and put a Band-Aid on it. But she had still laughed. He would never forget that.

Michael watched Big Bird scream a silent scream as Michael tore his big yellow stomach loose and set it aside. Now he thought maybe Grover knew what was coming and braced himself for it. Michael worked another piece free. Grover’s head split apart right down the middle. One wide, white eye stared up at him, suspended above a severed nose and shattered half-mouth of gaping red and black. Michael was only five, but it occurred to him that this was a weird way to design a puzzle.

He put it back together. Took it apart. Put it back together. Took it apart. Over and over and over. As time went on, he found the puzzle had its own soothing quality, quite independent of the challenge (or lack) it presented. There was something about the bubbled surface, the rough edges, the cheap wafer-board backing, that stilled whatever had been roiling inside him all week. He put it back together, then just sat there with it, ran his fine little fingers over the paint. The varnish seemed a little too cold to the touch.

He took it apart again.

Hanging behind everything, there was this sound. A low, wet snuffling. He didn’t look up. It was a sound that tried to call attention to itself. It had been going on for a long time, all week, but Michael tried to put it out of his head and just focus on the puzzle. If he did that, he thought, maybe it would stop.

Finally:

“Michael.”

Michael snapped Big Bird’s head back onto his spindly neck.

“Michael. Look at me, baby.”

Michael did, reluctantly.

Mommy sat over on the living-room couch, still wrapped in her thick white bathrobe. She’d been wearing it for days. Her stringy blond hair hung limp and waxy on her shoulders.

She was crying.

Michael gets up to get a drink of water, only to find that the kitchen isn’t where he thought it was. The kitchen has become the basement, and there’s nothing there but an oily pit surrounded by a ring of shattered stones. Confused, he makes his way back upstairs and goes down the hallway to the bathroom.

He flips on the light switch and catches a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He is grinning madly, though he can’t feel it at all, and it seems to him that the face in the mirror is not entirely his own.

There’s a glass by the sink, stained and milky with years of hard-water accumulation. He wraps his fingers around it and slides it under the faucet. The pipes rumble and disgorge a globular red substance that quickly turns black. Michael recognizes the smell. Almost like blood, but with more salt in it.

He puts the glass back onto the edge of the sink and turns out the light.

He hears something in his parents’ room.

A thick laugh.

A wheeze.

He pads down the hallway, dimly realizing he’s naked, and pushes open the door.

Dad lays on top of Mommy, doing something. The smell is thicker in here. Blood and salt. Michael turns on the light.

Mommy squeals.

He sees her neck covered in blood.

Daddy looks up, eyes tarred and hollow like the pit where the kitchen used to be, and Michael sees that behind the familiar face is that other, that IT…

Dad opens his mouth. A wide, dripping grimace. Rimming the red and black maw are rows and rows of pointed white teeth...

Mommy and Daddy had a fight. It was a week ago. Michael didn’t know what it was about. He had a sneaking suspicion it was about him. He didn’t know how he knew, but the knowledge was there, nipping at him, nibbling its way through the soft, pliable skin of him.

Mommy and Daddy had a fight, and it was about him.

He was lying in bed when it started. He listened to the muffled voices in the room next to his, muted by the wall. He could feel the sharpness of the words, pricking at him like little needles even though he couldn’t understand them. Daddy’s voice kept getting louder and louder. Mommy’s voice went shrill, warbled high like the rasp of a bird. He heard a door slam (the closet?), and then another. Heavy footsteps in the hall, and then Daddy was rustling past the thin sliver of door that Michael always left cracked, muttering something. Mommy followed. “It isn’t what you think, Jim!” she shouted. He heard the steady whisk-whisk of her slippers on the stairs as she went after him. Then more voices downstairs. Shouts. Something thudded. Breaking glass from the kitchen. A brittle cry of pain.

When Michael got up in the morning, Daddy hovered over the kitchen sink, gazing with a shimmering intensity into the stainless-steel tub. He was dressed for work but his hair was all messy and his tie was crooked. When he saw Michael watching him he looked up and tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite look Michael in the eyes.

“Heya, Champ,” he said.

Michael sat at the little white table, the one Grammy gave them, and folded his hands neatly in front of him. He didn’t say anything.

“I’m, uh…” Daddy started, then trailed off. Michael saw there was a little cut just above his lip. A wide purple bruise smeared across his temple. He remembered suddenly the breaking glass.

The silence thickened. Daddy cleared his throat.