Wait Until Twilight by Sang Pak

soda can. The crunching sound of the can is real loud. He could ruin everything.
    “Hey, if you wait outside for me like I asked earlier, I’ll give you a dollar.”
    “Let me see it,” he says suspiciously.
    I take out my wallet and show him a wrinkled old dollar bill. “Tell you what. Make that two,” I say.
    “Okay.”
    “If someone comes, you holler at me,” I say.
    “All right.” He goes back out the front. I start looking through the pantries and cupboards. There’s lots of canned foods, macaroni, and cereal. Nothing weird here. I slowly make my way up the stairs, and the bad smell becomes stronger. It smells like sawdust and vinegar mixed with a dirty toilet. “This isn’t any feet,” I say to myself. I put my hand to my mouth and nose and keep the other on the banister. First, I check the bedrooms. All the beds are unmade. The dresser drawers are open. There’re dirty clothes everywhere. The entire house feels abandoned, not at all like the way it was the first time I went in there with David. Mrs. Greenan doesn’t seem like the type to keep such an unkempt home. I end up following my nose. The smell seems to be coming from a closet in one of the bedrooms. I peak in through the slats of the closet door, but it’s too dark to see anything. The loud crack of thunder’s getting closer, and I hear a few raindrops beginning to splatter on the house. It feels as though my heart’s going to bust out of me. I take a deep breath and open the door slowly. The smell almostoverwhelms me, but I stay put. My eyes are drawn to the floor, where a burlap bag lays. Something’s moving in there. I don’t like the looks of it, like there might be rattlesnakes in there. But I’ve got to look. I’ve got to know what the hell’s going on. My body moves from without. It’s like I’m watching myself kneel down and carefully untie the strap. I hold my breath as my unsteady hands open up the bag. It’s them, those godforsaken babies. They’re piled on top of each other. One of them turns and looks at me sideways, showing the whites of its bulging eyeballs, and yells “Eeeeek!” out of its perfectly formed mouth. I can hear the screen door slam shut from down below and then footsteps, but they aren’t the steps of that kid. They’re the sound of heavy thudding boots stomping around down there. I turn over on my belly and crawl under the bed, swiveling myself toward the door like a cockroach would. The man seems to be walking around and then stopping and then walking around again down below. My hopes of him leaving the house are quickly dashed when those steps begin coming up the stairs. I’m lying on my stomach with my ear to the floor, and he sounds like some giant in his castle with me the little intruder whose liable to get crushed. A loud wave of thunder rolls and shakes the house, and one of the little babies slowly comes crawling out of the closet on its belly. With its one good arm and leg, it reminds me of a wounded soldier who’s been blown up and is trying to get away. Then it stops halfway to the bed, looking up at me, drooling, wide-eyed. It looks like it’s whispering something to me the way its mouth is opening and closing like a fish out of water. I want it to stop. Then, the loud booming steps come into the room. I can see dirty black work boots and the bottom of some worn blue brogans frayed at the seams.
    “Whaddya think you’re doin’?” says a man’s voice. When I hear its strong piercing tone, I feel something cold come over me. The boot pushes the baby back toward the closet. “C’mon.” Then a hand comes down. The baby looks me in the eyes as it’s lifted up and out ofsight. “You tryin’ to get away? You little demon. Get back in there. If it weren’t for yer momma, you’d be dead like you should be. Miracle, my ass. Satanic piece of shit. I have every right to get rid of you. One day I will.” A thud comes from the closet, and he walks back out and down the stairs. A