I’m So Sorry, Janie by Donovan Douglas Thiesson

A man is relentlessly hunted by possessed children.

Image generated with OpenAIJeff pulls into the diner, a plume of dust reaching out behind him all the way back to the highway. The dingy sign reads Charlie’s Burgers, and that is good enough for him. Bars are his preference for obvious reasons; however he is unlikely to find a bar in rural Saskatchewan open before six, and he wants to be asleep and hidden away before school lets out. There are only two other vehicles in the expansive parking lot, which further soothes his anxiety.

He checks his phone again, realizing for the hundredth time it has been dead for several days. There is no one to call, he only wants to check the time. The sun is still high, he guesses around two o’clock through the tilt of the sun’s head as it peeks from behind the clouds.

As he exits his vehicle, he takes in the landscape. Everything is prairie brown, with a few splotches of green here and there. Charlie’s sticks out like a sore thumb with its arterial red trim, a squat blister upon the landscape. He isn’t here for décor, only to eat and shit.

The car door doesn’t yet groan as he opens it, but it mutters as caked dirt and mud drop to the ground. It has been raining off and on, and the deepest of the potholes in the parking lot still have a slimy, damp film on top. Jeff has grown a new appreciation for the rain in recent months. It keeps children off the street in the residential areas, and obscures both vision and scent. It isn’t like when he was a child, and his mom would shoo him outside with a swat on the butt, pouring rain or otherwise.

Jeff’s stomach rumbles his intentions. Keep it cheap, he thinks, patting his tender belly. We need this money to last, at least until Jim sells the house.

He reaches out to pull the opaque glass door open, grips the metal bar, surprisingly cool for a sunny day in June, and freezes. Two silhouettes approach, their features obscured through the frosted panes, one tall… and one barely five feet. 10-year-old short. Jeff recoils, pulling his hand back and clutching it to his chest as if broken. He stumbles backwards against a white pickup truck, eyes darting to either side.

The door swings wide, and Jeff’s breath climbs backwards down his throat. An elderly man, towering at least six three, and an even more elderly woman by his side. The top of her silver head barely reaches his hip. Normally, Jeff would smile at such a wholesome contrast. He doesn’t smile, and neither does the elderly couple. Pink blotches dab across Jeff’s face as he realizes how he must look. Dirty clothes, greasy clumped hair, his body odor as if from a long day at the gym. Wide eyed and stumbling.

“Sorry,” Jeff mumbles. “You startled me.” He stands there, leaning crooked against the truck, silent. What else is there to say? He is the kind of man to crack a joke, to fill even the briefest of awkward moments. Can I interest you in life insurance? Looks like you’ll be needing some any day now. He refrains from opening his mouth.

The corners of the woman’s lips crinkle in concern. The man stoops slightly forward. “Young man,” he says softly. “Young man, can you please let us get into our truck?”

Jeff’s face transitions from pink to scarlet. Still saying nothing, he moves shakily around the couple, giving them a wide, slow berth as he enters the diner. The cool shimmer of the overhead fluorescents jar against the warmth of the afternoon sun behind him. Its pale flicker is ugly, but not dim, touching even the furthest table tucked in next to the washrooms.

The diner is almost empty, with only a middle-aged woman sitting at a booth, texting on her iPhone. A single glass of water rests in front of her, moisture weeping from the base of the plastic cup, pooling around a plate with a few leaves of iceberg lettuce. One drink, so no children. No Little Johnny relieving himself at the miniature urinal sure to be found in the men’s room. No Little Suzy hunched down at the table, too low to see. A shaky sigh of relief rattles up his windpipe.

He stands awkwardly for a long moment, wondering if he should wait to be seated or just seat himself. A waitress wanders out from the back, weaving between tables, and slows her approach. She wears her hair tucked messily in back beneath a ball cap that says Charlie’s. She reminds him of Carol when she was younger. She’s going to kick me out. She thinks I’m homeless, or a drunk.

The waitress gives a disapproving look, the kind that says not again. She seems to consider her options for a second, her lower jaw chewing non-existent gum, and finally waves a laminated menu towards an empty table. The booth situated furthest from the other woman, now picking at her salad. She doesn’t want to risk putting off the other customer. Understandable.

He avoids her gaze, and slides in across the bench, relishing the cool caress of the red faux leather against his butt. He has been driving since six o’clock in the morning and has slept slumped in the driver’s seat of the Malibu for three days now, the seat back as far as it can go. He has nowhere to be, yet the open road keeps his mind numb, so he relishes the cracked median and the smell of summer asphalt. Over the course of the last three months, he has put fifty thousand kilometers on the Malibu’s odometer and spent most of Carol’s life insurance on gas and fast food.

“What can I get for ya,” the waitress asks, her cheer almost authentic. She has not yet given the menu, likely hoping for him to order a coffee then fuck off out the door again.

“Burger,” he says.

The waitresses’ shoulders slump, and she gingerly thrusts out the menu, keeping an arm’s length between them.

“No. Just… your biggest burger. And a diet coke.”

“We only have Pepsi.”

“Anything that fizzes and doesn’t taste like Sprite.” He flashes her what he hopes is at least a disarming smile, if not a charming one.

“Got it,” she says, not bothering to write anything down. Her autumn hair has encroached onto her shoulder, and she swishes it back, horse-like. Again, Carol. Seeing her, being reminded of her, stings. Not in the same way seeing Janie does, but it bites him all the same.

As the waitress leaves, Jeff calls after her. “Hey, do you know of any motels nearby?”

“There’s a hotel in town, called the Buster Inn.”

“Preferably a motel.”

“Yeah, there’s one up on the edge of town, don’t remember what it’s called though. It’s dirty.” She wrinkles her nose.

“So am I,” Jeff jokes, cringing as he does so. The waitress gives him a confused look before vanishing into the back. Stop with the jokes. You’re not making friends.

He had learned early on that hotels are no good. Hotels box you in. Hotels have pools, birthday parties and menus with chicken fingers. Hotels are where you take children. But a motel? So long as it isn’t next to a playground, and so long as he keeps the curtains drawn, he can hold out for a few days.

His fingers drum the table. Three rapid taps instead of four, compliments of a missing left pinky. Back in February, Jeff’s neighbor had cornered Jeff in his driveway with rambling condolences. His neighbor’s daughter had been playing in the snow nearby, rolling up balls of snow for a snowman. Jeff, struggling to find a reason to end the conversation, hadn’t even noticed her approach until she was beside him, pulverizing his pinky between clenched teeth. Before Jeff could react, she had dropped to her knees, and taken a part of himself with her.

The waitress rounds the corner, tray perched on her hand. A burger, much too large for any one man to eat, and out too quick to have been cooked fresh, is slapped onto a plate with a smattering of fries. It will have a name as grotesque as the food itself, something like The Fat Charlie no doubt.

She slides the plate unceremoniously onto the table, plopping his Pepsi next to it. As he reaches for the cup, his eyes freeze on the tray, which holds two additional drinks. It isn’t the large cup, black and fizzing like his own, that causes the color to drain from his cheeks, but the smaller, child sized one filled with Sprite. Without a word the waitress makes her way to the woman sitting on the other side of the restaurant.

Jeff grabs his Pepsi, and chokes a sharp gulp down, hysterics threatening to bring it back up again. She’s meeting someone, her husband, and he’s bringing little Johnny or little Suzy. So how much time does that give me? He fights the bubbles back down with a shiver.

“Excuse me miss!” Jeff raises his hand, as if hailing a taxi. “Excuse me, can I get this to go?”

The waitress sets the two drinks at the woman’s table, looks over her shoulder, and shrugs. “I’ll get a box.” She vanishes into the back once again.

Jeff turns to watch out the window, his heart pounding its hammer between his ears. He can see some of the parking lot, but not all of it. Most alarmingly, he cannot see the highway.

Is there no school today? Is it a long weekend? He struggles to remember. A small paper menu, the kind disposed of daily, lays in the middle of the table. Until now, he has been so focused on the other tables, it has gone unnoticed. In bold font, the daily soup and sandwich is proudly announced. Broccoli and Chedder, Ham on Rye. Twelve dollars. Half price schooners after six. The Saturday special.

He has been on the road for days, sleeping down abandoned country roads, his phone dead and useless most of the time. It should be Friday, not Saturday… yet here he is, exhaustion’s fool.

The bells above the heavy entrance door jingle. “Easy, easy,” he whispers to himself, as if trying to talk down a spooked horse. “Don’t look, head down -“

“Mommy, look what I got!”

He nearly spills his Pepsi, and it hisses angrily in response. Don’t look. But he does. He can’t help himself. He is passing by the car wreck of his own life, playing out in real time, and the human need to gawk is irresistible.

The boy shakes a flapping thing, perhaps a raggedy teddy bear. His father, a heavy-set man with middle-aged jowls, hoists the child up and into the booth facing his mother. The child’s back is to him, and no one has looked in his direction yet.

Tapping sounds. His fingers, again drumming rhythmic triplets against the table. They freeze mid tap. A bad habit that had driven Carol nuts. Stop drawing attention to yourself! Sweat from his brow slides trails down his face and stings his eyes. He blinks heavily.

He is not entirely sure how children sense him. Sight for sure, but maybe smell as well, and he already stinks without this sudden bloom of fear. An image creeps into his mind: His six-year-old daughter, Janie, her mouth downturned like a shark. Smell makes sense.

Laughter floats from across the table. “Did you hear what Stevie said?” the man laughs.
“He only wants ice cream. You don’t get ice cream at lunch.”

Not Little Johnny or Little Suzie, but Little Stevie. It’s late for lunch, and Little Stevie is hungry.

He glances over again. Two eyes glimmer beneath a wisp of blond hair, hovering above the back of the booth. Sharp and playful, then widening into something more. Janie’s rage, rising, darkening Little Stevie’s baby blues into hazel. The boy’s mouth becomes a frown, comically so, the corner’s twisting ever downward and distorting his face further. The image of a shark’s mouth returns to him, and the crescent shaped scars scattered across his body begin to itch.

The man’s laughter fades away. “Stevie, sit down.”

Stevie does not sit down, but instead slowly twists his head in a sawing motion, left then right. How many times had Janie made this same motion? Oh NO you did NOT, Daddy!

Jeff springs up, his knees knocking painfully against the edge of the table. The waitress rounds the corner with a white, clamshell takeout box, and freezes with a jerk. She looks scared, as if Jeff is about to rush her.

The man speaks again, laughter replaced with budding frustration, “Steven. Sit. Down -“

Stevie vaults over the booth and makes a beeline for Jeff. His mouth hangs partially open, exposing pearly glints. Jeff closes his fist around the handle of his fork, just in case Little Stevie outruns him, and bolts for the door. Stevie knocks a chair over, already halfway across the diner, and pushes past the waitress who falls to her knees.

“Steven, what the hell are you doing!”

Jeff’s foot falls pound. Between each step of his own, there are two for Stevie. It will be a close pursuit. The door, his mind screams. Use the door!

Despite his shrieking instincts, Jeff slows before reaching the main entranceway. Stevie does not slow, instead picking up speed, a torpedo dressed in a Mario T-shirt. Jeff opens the door a foot, no more, and slides through. Outside, he puts his shoulder hard against the heavy door, bracing it closed.

Little Stevie hits the door with all sixty-five pounds, and the impact vibrates down Jeff’s spine. Spiderwebs spiral across the thick glass pane, and Little Stevie bounces off like a sack of potatoes.

The world falls still. The sun licks across Jeff’s shoulders, highlighting the unsettled dust around him. A white throated swallow trills a three toned call, and somewhere far away, a grasshopper buzzes in response. Little Stevie’s bad behavior has shocked the landscape idyllic.

Inside, Jeff hears heavier steps approach. He hopes Stevie has a concussion, or at least a bloody nose. Best get along before the questions begin. As he fumbles with the Malibu’s door handle, he realizes the fork is still clutched in his fist. If falls to the ground with a tinkle. He is out of the parking lot and racing for the highway before the door finally opens, Stevie’s dad a blank canvas of confusion, his unconscious son cradled in his arms.

The motel is exactly what Jeff expects and fits perfectly with the aesthetic of Charlie’s Burgers. Even the red trim is the same. “Prairie ugly,” Carol would have called it. She had moved here from Ontario for him, and she’d never missed an opportunity to recollect her sacrifice. “A dusty, rundown imitation of quaint.”

A ‘to go’ box sits on the bed – not the burger from the diner, but the tried and tested Whopper from the only fast-food joint in town. He stands on shaky legs, surprised he is still so deeply affected by what he has dubbed the Little Stevie incident. It has been almost two weeks since the last incident, unless you count gnashing faces peering from the back windows of the vehicles he passes on the highway. He shouldn’t be too hard on himself, yet his heart is still beating too hard, and his breathing is shallow.

Heart attack, he thinks, and shoves the thought deep beneath his stomach. He has already learned hospitals and walk-in clinics are far more dangerous than the occasional heart palpitation. He focuses on his breathing, closes his eyes, and eventually his galloping pulse slows.

He begins to undress, needing to be naked. He has worn these clothes for… how long? If this was Saturday, a week. His belt buckle sticks, possibly a result of having been lodged into the folds of his stomach for so long. Suburban dad bods aren’t meant to be homeless. The buckle comes loose with a shake, and he lets his pants drop to the thin, worn carpet. His T-shirt comes next, peeled from his body like a damp cornhusk.

His stomach twists and turns, and he eyes the two burgers, yet the smell of his own armpit, ass and crotch are too much to handle. He opts for the shower instead.

I’ll need new clothes, he thinks as the hot water scours grime from his body. Maybe a gift shop somewhere. A small place. An image creeps into his mind of himself, naked, sneaking into someone’s backyard and making off with the contents of a clothesline. He sputters a laugh despite himself.

He misses Walmart. In April, he had risked it, for this very reason. The moment he had walked in, he had realized how stupid his decision was, yet he had continued shopping. Flitting head down through aisles like a soldier in the trenches was one thing. Standing in line at the self-checkout, boxed in by a dozen shuffling patrons on all sides, was another.

He had been attacked by twins, brother and sister, or maybe he only thought they were twins because Janie’s expression had glowered from both of their faces. The girl had jumped from atop a cart, and the boy had taken his legs out, sinking teeth deep into his calf. Before he could roll over, excruciating pain had bloomed through his midsection, rooting down into his groin and blooming up into his chest. The girl had a roll of flesh and muscle between her teeth, and for a feverish moment Jeff thought she might disembowel him.

He had hammered the girl’s head with his fist until she had dropped unconscious, and someone pulled her off of him. A man with rippling muscles, a bald head and a “Mr. Clean” T-shirt, tugged at the boy who was still attached to his calf.

“Stop pulling!” Jeff had yelled, picturing a six-inch, crescent sized chunk of muscle being exorcised from his body.

Mr. Clean stopped, his mouth a slack O of disbelief. The kid had not stopped, and began shaking his head to one side like an alligator. Jeff kicked him as hard as he could with the heel of his boot and felt the child’s jaw pop. Then he was free.

Mr. Clean half-walked, half dragged Jeff to the car. Something had glimmered in his eyes, a base understanding of the danger unfolding before them. He’s seen combat, Jeff thought, not that he would know… yet he did know. In the parking lot, they had paused together, the sounds of screaming and confusion fading behind them.

“Where’s your car? You gotta go, man.” A small form at the opposite end of the parking lot stopped and turned sharply in their direction. Both Jeff and Mr. Clean saw it together. “You gotta go now.”

“Two rows over, right at the front.”

They hobbled to the Malibu – thankfully Jeff had had the sense to park close to the exit – his arm slung across Mr. Clean’s broad shoulders. An alarmed yell floated to them from across the parking lot, then the distant sound of running. Mr. Clean slung Jeff up against the driver’s door, and for the first time Jeff saw the sparkling trail of crimson leading from the lobby doors to himself.

“Look,” Mr. Clean said. His voice trembled, unlike his physical continence. “I’d go with you, but I can’t. I… I don’t know what this is, and I…” Mr. Clean also noticed the blood. “You need an ambulance, bad -“

“Thank you,” Jeff said, trying not to gasp. “You saved my life. Thank you.”

And with that, Mr. Clean nodded and handed Jeff something he had been holding. A T-shirt. The one Jeff had been trying to purchase, and the same T-shirt he had pulled off moments earlier. So no, no more Walmarts.

Jeff turns off the water. The cold air rushes back into the bathroom, and he lets it massage his body. He has never closed the door to the washroom, another lifelong bad habit, like drumming his fingers.

What else have I lost? How much did I take for granted, that I will never do again? Public parks, unless he goes at midnight. Swimming pools. Libraries. No big loss, really. Restaurants and shopping malls are different. Family, and not just Carol and Janie. Both his brother and his brother-in-law have children, and Jeff doesn’t think he can bring himself to punch one of his nephews.

He dries himself as best he can with the shitty motel towels. His face and body dance together in his peripheral, and he avoids looking in the mirror as long as he can, but eventually he catches his own gaze. His hazel eyes, so much like Janie’s, make his heart skip again. Scars map his body, each crescent a gift from a toothed, frowning mouth. He runs a hand across his stubbled cheek. His facial hair never grows more than an inch, and is never soft, yet it helps fill in his sunken features. He looks fifteen years older than he did last December.

The towels drop discarded to the ground and he makes his way to the bed. The aroma of the Whoppers draws him in, and he scarfs down both burgers, tasting only grease and salt and loving every bite. And then he does what he needs to do most of all.

He sleeps.

He dreams of Carol first, her face floating in the dark. In the exhaustion and monotony of being on the run, her features have already begun to fade, yet his dreams still remember every inch. He sees her just before the accident, her ruddy cheeks, her splotchy tan which he adores despite her embarrassment. The car shakes and thumps as the rear passenger tire bursts, accompanied by Carol’s hiss of annoyance.

They rattle to a stop along the side of the highway, unexpectedly sliding the last foot on black ice. They should have taken the Malibu, he knew it, but Carol always insists on the goddamn Nissan. The tires are old, one has just been patched, he should have been more forceful –

And then she smiles at him, and for just a second, it doesn’t matter anymore. He will get out and change the tire. They will make the appointment with the child psychologist, figure this whole mess out.

But Janie doesn’t want him to get out…

Everything sinks to black, Carol’s smile the last to disappear, rippling across dark fluid. As the surface becomes placid once again, a white crescent reflects across the surface. The moon. He reaches out to touch the surface, to make it ripple, make Carol come back, but falters. What he thought was the moon are pale, dead lips, pulled taught at the corners into a frown. An upside-down U.

“If you keep frowning, your face will freeze that way,” Carol’s voice scolds from the deep.

“Why are you wearing your rainbow?” Jeff whispers, praying her anger will dispel, as it always has when he asks her this. Why are you wearing your rainbow? Come, sit on Daddy’s knee, tell me why.

Janie does not giggle. Instead, her great, frowning lips expand, the teeth between her gums serrated triangles. Shark’s teeth. Her face pushes up from the darkness, like the end of a lunar eclipse, framed with matted, black hair. Her eyes are wide, hazel pits, ever expanding.

Jeff falls in.

Jeff wakes up to scratching at the back door. He prefers motel rooms with a front and back entrance, there is a certain kind of security that comes with having an escape route. “Dog,” he says. “Must be a dog.” But he knows.

How did she find me? It must be scent, like a goddamn bloodhound. The scratching intensifies. Or maybe she’s always here with me and is getting impatient. Tired of this game. That makes two of them.

“Janie, go away!” he yells to the door. “Just go away!”

The scratching stops. Sometimes his words affect her, triggering what he can only describe as a short fugue state, as if Janie has suddenly realized what, and where, she is. Then the rage takes over again. He cannot blame her. He’d be pissed off too if the afterlife was comprised of jumping from one body to another. She had verbally engaged him only once, as he had braced the door of his hospital room shut against an abnormally strong twelve-year-old boy, his wrist streaming blood from a forcefully removed IV drip.

“What do you want?” he had yelled, his throat dry with infection. “Janie, why are you here?”

“Where’s Mommy!” the boy on the other side had screeched in a high, tinny voice. “I hate you! Daddy, what did you do!”

It took four orderlies to pull the boy back and sedate him. The child had thrashed like a wounded animal, screeching in Jeff’s direction so loud he had heard him all the way down the hall to the children’s ward. Jeff, still feverish, had insisted he be discharged early. After a long, foggy argument, the doctor had finally relented and written a prescription for antibiotics and instructions to return in one week to have his stitches removed. Three months later, and the stitches are still present, puckering the scar on his bicep.

He slides on his pants and shirt, wrinkling his nose, when his phone rings. His younger brother, Martin. He lets it ring through and fall silent. He doesn’t need Martin’s concern, any more than he needs to further concern Martin. He has his own life, his own children, living ones with real life needs. After a few seconds, the phone begins to ring again, and he grabs it up, cursing softly.

“Yeah,” he says, a little too gruff.

“Jeff…?” a familiar voice answers.

Confusion creeps into Jeff’s voice. “Who is this?”

“It’s Jim. Your lawyer.”

“Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice. How is… how are things going with the house?” Jeff swallows nervously, and glances again at the back door. Maybe she left.

“We have an offer, but it’s low. I’d advise not taking it.”

“Take it,” Jeff says briskly. Carol’s life insurance is nearly gone, and he has no end game. If the house sells, maybe he can buy an old farm, or a cabin somewhere, anything other than the Malibu.

“I think you misheard what I just said,” Jim says slowly, emphasizing each word carefully. Jeff has always called it Jim’s courtroom voice, though he has never observed Jim in a courtroom, or even knows if Jim is the kind of lawyer who would have cause to be in a courtroom in the first place.

“I heard you. Take the offer. Please, Jim.”

A heavy silence presses the space between them. “Jeff did you assault a child?”

Jeff is silent. He was mistaken, this is Jim’s real courtroom voice.

“Your brother called,” Jim continues. “He says the police are looking for you. That you’re on the run.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Why would I hurt children?”

“Children? Are there more than one?”

Jeff closes his eyes. Jim was always too clever for his own good. “Just sell the house. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Look, I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I can recommend one. You need to turn yourself in.”

“Sell the house,” Jeff repeats quietly, and hangs up the phone.

He packs his phone and a small bag of various personal items. Deodorant, phone charger, a toothbrush he hasn’t used in almost a month. Several pill bottles rattle against one another, Ativan to keep him sane, and antibiotics for future injuries. Children are disgusting, he thinks, picturing Janie eating bugs at age four. At five, he had caught her dipping her toothbrush in the toilet because the sink taps were out of reach.

Twice now, infection has set in strong, coming far closer to killing him than the injuries themselves. The first time had been the hospital. The second time, he had suffered in the driver’s side of the Malibu, picking baby teeth from a wound in his thigh. His leg had swollen and turned purple, like a flabby beet where a limb should have been. Had he not saved the extra antibiotics, he would be dead now.

A clattering resounds from the back door, as if someone has kicked a can, or turned over a garbage can. Jeff ignores it as best he can. The scratching resumes. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Impatient. Unyielding.

He will leave, find somewhere to buy clothes and something to eat, and later return and square up with the motel’s owner. Jeff pauses next to the window, and peers out. His immediate left and right are blind spots, but the rest of the parking lot is clear. The scratching from the back becomes more frantic, as if on cue. His heart beats faster, and he forces his breathing to slow.

She wants me to bolt out the door, he thinks. Janie has never set a trap for him before… except she did find him, this time without even looking, and was waiting for him to wake up. Was she trying to get him to leave the safety of his room? The longer I wait, the worse it will get. If it is a trap, and there are others waiting out there, more will come over time. And if there is no one out there at all? That kid scratching at the door will eventually circle around.

The scratching stops.

Go. Now. Jeff throws open the door and moves briskly into the parking lot. His fist is balled around the handle of his bag, heavy enough to be swung as a weapon. He doesn’t bother to lock the door, just runs for the car. He reaches for his car keys.

There are no keys.

He left them back in the room. Panic floods his body, and he turns back towards the motel too soon, before he has even stopped running. His feet, unsure of which way to go, twist in a knot and he falls to the ground. Pain splinters up his elbow, and his entire arm goes numb, from fingers to shoulder blade. He rolls to his back, clutching his arm to his chest, and freezes.

Under the Malibu, Janie’s glittering eyes. So, it is a trap. Smart girl.

Jeff staggers to his feet as a seven-year-old boy in coveralls scrabbles out from beneath the vehicle. Under the thrum of his own pulse, Jeff can hear approaching footfalls from the far side of the motel. Another boy, Janie’s face squashed beneath a red ball cap, cuts sharply around the corner and into view. The tips of his fingers are ragged, dripping blood.

Jeff turns, this time careful and deliberate, and flees down the street. He is sucking in heavy gulps of air, and the beating of his heart has graduated from hammer to ice pick. He needs to find people, a lot of them. Fast. Or police. You saw an RCMP barracks when you got here.

Jim’s words float back to him. Did you assault a child? Jeff has considered jail often, but Martin used to be a correctional officer, and has filled his head with horror stories of what happens to inmates who hurt children. I’d be trading one hell for another.

No, a crowd is his best chance, enough adults to intervene and hold back these boys who channel his daughter’s frenzied anger. Sunday morning. Burger King would be closed, and Charlie’s Burgers is out of town. One place comes instantly to mind, and he can see its presence thrust into the sky, only two streets down.

The last time he had been in a church was Janie and Carol’s funeral, held together despite his insistence that church was the last thing he needed. But Carol had been Catholic, and her family needed closure as much as he did.

It was during the service when Janie first came back. He had felt uncomfortable. Not the devastation he expected to feel, no, it was more like when you know someone is watching you, but when you whirl around, you see only an empty alleyway. It was too quiet behind him. No muttering, no coughs, no fidgeting. He had turned from his position in the front pews, begging for the dark alley.

Most of Janie’s grade one class was in attendance, and not one of them moved. Their eyes were not fixed on their hands, the door, each other, or even the droning pastor. They were all on him, and they were all hers. He knew it, inherently, even before their mouths frowned in unison.

A rolling wave of indignant anger swelled through the crowd, starting in the rear, each child’s eyes widening further as it washed over them. How had she felt, in attendance at her own funeral?

Jeff’s ankle begins to ache, and he stumbles, yet manages to correct himself. He thinks he can hear pattering from behind but does not risk turning around. The ache in his ankle becomes a shard of pain, rivalling the hot, sharp air in his lungs. He must have twisted it as he fell.

The church is in view now, one block over. Breath sears his lungs, or is it his heart? He has avoided churches since the funeral. Not because it reminds him of Janie and Carol, everything does already, and not because he grew up an atheist either. After everything that has happened since, he has no choice but to believe in the supernatural, and if there is a supernatural world, it only holds there is a God. But this is not the perfect God Carol desperately prayed to, yet never fully believing in. The God that watches over him now is either incompetent or cruel, a deity willing to let a child linger on past her death, not as she was, but as a fragment. Locked forever in her final confusion and mounting anger, unable to comprehend what has happened and is happening still, driven insane with rage. No, he isn’t looking for this God.

He slows before the heavy front doors, begging his heart not to explode as it beats arrhythmic percussion against his ribs. Music floats from behind the twin oak doors. He does not reach out, refuses to do so. Doubled over and with hands firmly on his knees, Jeff turns to face his pursuers.

The two boys stand together at the other end of the street. They have stopped. A giggle hiccups its way up through his chest. It can’t be this corny. Evil children, afraid to go to church.

Movement flickers to Jeff’s right, and he spins sharply, wincing at the pain in his arm and ankle. A girl with tight black curls, younger than Janie, stands at the opposite end of the street. Her downturned mouth chews its own lips, and a trickle of blood streaks from the corner of her lips to his chin. He is blocked off. Trapped. Sure, he could easily overpower a thirty pound five-year-old, but not before the other two tackle him from behind. Not when he’s down an ankle and an arm, and dangerously out of breath.

“Janie, how can I stop this,” he gasps out to her, his voice choked with emotion. “How do I make it stop?”

Her enraged face does nothing, and then… a flicker. Confusion. Frustration. Not the fugue, but exhaustion, and he finally understands. She is as tired and as battered as he is, locked not in anger, but in increasing anger.

He backs around the side of the church, not taking his eyes off the girl, who slowly follows, like a cat with an injured bird. She is joined by the other two. There is a playground behind the church, set into the clumpy kind of sand Janie had loved to dig through.

The faces of the three children no longer reflect rage, at least, not the same kind of rage as before. This expression is more akin to pain and denial. He remembers that look, that day beside the highway. They had been approaching a town and Janie had to pee. Then the tire blew.

“Daddy, I still need to pee, I can’t hold it,” she had half begged, half yelled.

“Janie, calm down.” Carol had said, her voice wavering between frustration and anger. “Dad needs to change the tire, and you’re not helping, you’re being a bad girl.”

He had turned around, also angry. He hated road trips, hated driving, and he was so weary of Janie’s outbursts. He could see her eyes widening, her mouth turned down, her face contorted with an ocean of rage. What had the doctor called it? Conduct Disorder. Not an official diagnosis, not yet, but fast approaching.

His voice was cold when he spoke. “Your face is really ugly when you frown.”

She had bit him then, sunk her teeth deep into his flesh, his blood welling up around her gums. He slapped her face, not out of anger but out of shock. She let go, her lips-stained crimson. No one spoke but the January wind.

Eventually, Carol said in flat voice, “Change the goddamn tire.”

He had left the vehicle, intending to walk around to the back and get the jack. The wind changed direction, and he pinwheeled, arms flailing. It was in that moment he last saw her. Janie. Her eyes hazel moons, filled with so much rage and betrayal, so much hate, and how dare you, Daddy? Those eyes said everything. I’ll never forgive you.

And then the semi hit. He hadn’t even noticed it careening on the black ice towards them. Looking back, he didn’t think Carol or Janie had noticed either. The wind was too loud, the air too grey. He remembers nothing past this point.

The sand beneath his feet makes walking hard, and he stumbles again, twisting his ankle further. The children stop, waiting twenty feet away, positioned next to the back of the church. The back of Jeff’s knees collides with a bench, the kind parents relax on as they watch their sons and daughters crawl across the monkey bars. He sprawls backwards across the wooden slats.

“Come and end this,” he whispers. He needs it to end, she needs it to end.

A bell rings, short and shrill. The two boys and the girl begin to walk towards him. The heavyset door at the back of the church flies open and more children push their way past the entrance, like a line of ants dressed in church attire.

Sunday school has just let out.

Jeff lets them come. He meets their hazel eyes, one by one, and relaxes. Their slate gray suits, miniature ties, and polished shoes make him smile. The children swarm, attack his legs, bite deep into his arms. A girl, dressed in her best yellow dress, removes most of his left cheek. He lets them bite, and tear, and then without warning, they pull away.

The children are crying. A seven-year-old girl in pink frocks – she could be Janie’s double – approaches. Her down turned mouth quivers as tears run freely down her cheek. He can hear her grinding her teeth together.

“Come, my rainbow,” Jeff says as he takes her into his arms, one last time. He needs to end it quick, not for him but for her. She begins to growl and gnash her teeth. “I’m so sorry, Janie,” he whispers, and gently presses her face into the warmth of his throat.