Maybe Stephen King Would Write This Story After All
by Corey Farrenkopf
I’ve tried to convince my uncle to go to the dump rather than bury the refuse of his life in his backyard. I’m not in the habit of telling people how to live their lives, but I rent the in-law apartment attached to his house, and the water is well-fed, so I have skin in the game. Everything bleeds into the groundwater: the oil from his car, chlorine from the half-dead hot tub on the deck, all that fertilizer for the lawn which is mostly moss and yellow dog pee circles.
From the back window, the yard looks like the trenches of Mordor, upturned earth seething with milk jugs and rotting vegetables, styrofoam, discarded mattresses, television sets, all those pairs of jeans that wear out in the butt from constant wallet friction. At night I watch to see if anything stirs in the pits. Sometimes I catch movement and remind myself to keep windows locked, baseball bat by the door.
“The well’s out front,” he said when I brought it up. “Nothing’s getting in your water.”
“Ted, that’s not really how it works,” I replied.
“So you’re a scientist now?” he asked. “Gave up on those books you’re writing and got a lab coat?”
He knows that isn’t true. If I went into another field, I wouldn’t be stuck with his five hundred a month rent and tainted water. The novels weren’t going well. He knew that, too, joked about the keyboard clack after midnight, telling his drinking buddies he’s housing the next Stephen King. He’s the only writer whose name he actually knows, and I’m okay with that. King is great. If this were one of his stories, my uncle would have dug his trash trench from an ancient burial ground, the remains of the dead lugging themselves into the night air, draped in his tattered pants and sweat stained t-shirts.
But this is not a Stephen King story.
It would be worth a lot more than it is and that, in itself, would solve my subpar housing situation.
“I’ll literally pay for the dump sticker and take it myself,” I offer on a particularly warm day in August when the smell wilts flowers in neighbors’ yards like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon.
“Naw. It’s the principle. People shouldn’t pay to get rid of their trash when they can do it themselves. The whole thing’s a scam,” he replied.
“That’s insane. You’re polluting your own property.”
“I haven’t seen any issues. Nothing like you're always talking about. No gills,” he said, gesturing to his neck. “No green glowing skin.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” I reply, not wanting to think about what may or may not be growing under my own skin, gills or otherwise. Another month, I tell myself, and then I’m out. Either I sell some stories or I get a copy editor job for a textbook company. You can’t write the next great American novel if you’re dead.
There’s essentially a tar pit in the eastern reaches of the trench. It’s where Ted dumps fluids that should be collected on Hazardous Waste Day at the actual dump. Antifreeze and gasoline, paint thinner, liquid herbicide, anything sloshy coming from the garage. He jokes about stocking the pool with koi and carp, holding fishing competitions with his buddies in the toxic mud hole.
One night, he and Ted Two, Uncle Ted’s best friend, stand by the side of the swampy pool.
Whereas my uncle is beer-gutted and balding, Ted Two is wiry and mulletted. They both have bad tattoos, tobacco stained teeth, and a number of scars from a poorly planned fireworks display two years ago. I wish I could like them, but they keep doing things, like how they cast Japanese fighting fish into the murk at their feet. They’ve got a cooler full of them and are full of smiles. I yell at them through my open window, telling them to stop, that it’s animal abuse, but Ted and Ted Two laugh and dump in a few more.
“We’re going to have ourselves a battle royale,” Ted says, words loose with beer.
“Mine are the blue ones. His are the reds, Commie bastards,” Ted Two replies.
I’m out the door, marching towards the pit and the pool and my monster of an uncle, my fuses burnt to nubs, hoping I can catch the remaining fish before they’re thrown in. I know he’ll kick me out for ruining his fun, but I don’t care anymore.
I’ll kick him into the pool and see how he likes it.
Before I get there, before I can say what I want to say, the porous ground around the pool sags inward, and Ted and Ted Two go with it, sinking into the viscous liquid I can’t even name. The oil and antifreeze stain their skin. They swear and splash and grasp for handholds, but there are none. I can’t make out their words, their voices warping, melting under the pit’s vapors.
Before I can drop a ladder into the pool, they’ve sunk.
I stand by the water, far enough back to escape a second collapse, searching for their bodies.
After a minute, Uncle Ted surfaces, eyes wide, a number of slits open along the side of his neck. His webbed fingers grope about his new anatomy — and it is new. It’s a transformation, not a wound I’m seeing. He treads the goo gracefully now, kicking his red finned feet, sleek and streamlined. He looks at me and tries to say something, but his voice comes out as a wheeze — his eyes bulge at this — as if he can’t breathe the oxygen we recently shared and he can’t believe it. After a final gasp, he dives lower into the pool, sitting down there with a blue-tinged Ted Two, who seems resigned to his fate.
It’s been horrifying living here, on many levels, and with the transformation my fears have proved warranted. I won’t stay, but I will take a moment to write down the story, snap photos with my cellphone. This could be my big break. Swamp Men of the New England backwoods. I can see the title splashed across tabloid covers, the Halloween edition of the New Yorker. Maybe I’ll make enough for a deposit on a new apartment. Maybe it will be enough to buy a tent. Either way, I’m out. You can only live atop a trash heap for so long, regardless of the stories you pull out of it.