Milk Cartons

MILK CARTONS
By Kevin D. Cottrell




Raleigh, North Carolina
Sunday, October 14th, 2007

The sun bowed slowly relinquishing the sky to the watchful stained orb of the moon. The evening was quiet and still just north of the “City of Oaks” in a typical suburban neighborhood of red brick two-story houses and well-kept yards. The smell of hickory smoke, a hint of barbecued meat, and freshly cut grass wafted through the air. A man-made lake lay silent as the wheel of a pink bicycle spun, discarded on its side, the owner of the bike nowhere to be seen. A large black dog started barking incessantly, as a dark pickup truck squealed off in the distance.

***

Monday, October 15th
Carroll Middle School, History Class
1st Period

“Good morning class, shall we get started…from the reading assignment “Lost Triumph” what exactly is Mr. Carhart’s theory of General Lee’s original plan at the Battle of Gettysburg as compared to general thought that he had a very bad day--anyone?”

“Yes, Jeremy?”

“Mr. Carhart’s theory is that General Lee was a student of history; mainly, Hannibal, Napoleon, and Caesar and that he would have never just sent General Pickett on a direct frontal attack with only a small amount of his available army. He sent General Ewell to attack the Union right flank on Culp’s hill. He left General Longstreet applying pressure on the Union left flank and he sent General Stuart sweeping around the Union right flank with a cavalry force of six thousand to attack the Union rear.”

“That’s an excellent answer…very good, Jeremy. Now everyone read chapter fourteen tonight and we will further discuss the Battle of Gettysburg tomorrow with emphasis on what the world would be like today if General Lee’s plan was successful.”

Jeremy grabbed his blue book bag and walked out to the hallway which was quickly filling with teenagers. He dodged a few of them heading to his locker; opening it quickly he grabbed his math book. Behind him and down the hall a group of older boys were picking on a small boy who Jeremy could barely see from his locker.

The largest of the group pressed his forearm across the kid’s chest and against a locker while his friends watched.

“Give up the lunch money…punk!”

“Get off of me, Ben; I’m not given you…anything.”

Jeremy dropped his book bag and ran towards the commotion.

“Let him go,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah, what are you going to do, Bookworm, besides get your ass kicked?”
“I would much rather get my ass kicked by you than what’s waiting for me at home when my dad finds out I didn’t help my little brother.”

“That works for me,” Ben said as he dropped Paul to the hard tiled floor.

Ben charged full speed towards Jeremy, swinging wildly. Stepping inward and spinning underneath Ben’s overextended reach, Jeremy let Ben go past in a blur and slammed him in the back of the head with an elbow strike for his efforts. Ben hit the row of lockers hard. Jeremy acting largely out of instinct swept Ben’s leading leg out from under him. They fell heavy to the polished hallway and Jeremy elbowed him hard to the face as he tried to get up. The crowd of students gasped and parted as Mr. Feinberg and Mr. Walker, the woodshop teacher, rushed forward. Mr. Walker grabbed Jeremy roughly and Mr. Feinberg picked up the dazed Ben leading the two boys towards the Principal’s office.

Ben was quickly taken to the nurse’s room to check his eye, while Jeremy waited outside of Mr. Demeere’s office on a hard wood bench. Mr. Demeere opened his door and stepped out into the administrative area looking very stern and somewhat disappointed. He reminded Jeremy of how his own father looked at him sometimes.

“Come in Mr. Wallace, are you okay?”

“Yes, Sir…I’m fine.”

Jeremy discreetly gulped as he stood up and looked up at Mr. Demeere. He had strong features and his black hair cut in a Marine high and tight was graying on the sides. At six-foot-four he kept in excellent shape. There were numerous Marine Corp Marathon medals on the wall as well as many different plaques and awards: college, teaching, sports, and military--all denoting a lifetime of discipline and achievement. Jeremy sat down in front of a large oak desk as Mr. Demeere opened a file folder.

“Jeremy, I’ve taken a look at your school records and you’re a straight ‘A’ student with very little disciplinary problems in the past. Your history teacher Mr. Feinberg is one of many who think very highly of you. So why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“Sir, I walked out of History class and ran to a commotion out in the hallway. As I came closer, a bunch of older boys were picking on my younger brother and one of them was Ben. Sir, I gave him a chance to let go of my brother and he didn’t take it.”

“Jeremy, although defending your brother is admirable and took a lot of courage, the rules are very clear in this matter. Ben is on his way to the hospital and he will be receiving the same punishment. You will both be suspended for the rest of the week. I’ve talked to your mother and she is leaving work now to pick you up. Your brother will collect your assignments for the rest of the week from your teachers in time for him to catch the bus home. Jeremy, you could have seriously injured a fellow student. I know that you reacted out of a will to protect your brother; however, you need to spend your suspension time considering the ramifications of your actions.”

Jeremy waited outside as his mother pulled up in a blue Jeep Cherokee. He could see from where he sat on a recycled plastic bench that she was very mad. Jeremy grabbed his book bag and walked slowly over to the jeep.

“Well, get in; is your brother okay?”

“Yeah, he’s okay…they didn’t hurt him.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“It wasn’t my fault, Ma.”

“Yeah, I know Baby, but did you have to put that boy in the hospital?”

“He was bigger than me and I guess I just got mad, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay Sweetie, we will just have to figure out what you’re going to be doing for a few days.”

Jeremy’s mom swished a lock of blond hair out of her son’s eyes.

“Your dad’s going to want to talk with you tonight.”

“I know, I’d rather he just hit me than another ‘Father Knows Best’ talk.”

“She laughed. “I know Baby…I don’t envy you, let’s go home.” “Oh, and by the way, thank you for taking care of your brother.”

“That’s kind of my job, Mom.”

***

Tuesday, October 16th

Jeremy woke up with the sun and took a quick shower. He ran down the staircase holding onto the oak rail with one hand and jumped over the railing, clearing a small table. He ate breakfast, saw everyone off, cleaned the kitchen, and sat back and watched cartoons until he was bored to death. He grabbed his jean jacket and walked out the screen door and into the woods to clear his head. Jeremy walked up the well worn path, covered thickly with leaves, behind his house; past the faded red barn. The barn had been the backdrop of so many daydreams, looking out his bedroom window. Fat blackberries grew in the farmer’s field and along an old fence line he knew of a vine of wild concord grapes. This bounty of nature Jeremy depleted well into summer.

He continued across the second field where sticker and scrub bushes gave way to pine, birch, and oak trees. Catbirds and squirrels announced his unwelcome arrival. A light breeze gently wafted towards Jeremy. The smell of mold, moisture, and decaying foliage marked that he would soon be through the swamp and crossing the creek. This was his world; this is where he fought the mock battles with his brother and friends or it was just a quiet place to think alone.

Jeremy crossed a bog of stagnant soupy foliage and ferns over a football field and a half in length. The only way to enter his sanctuary was through a large field of sticker bushes and palmetto. This was the place that he shared with an abandoned rusted Volkswagen whose wheels had long since collapsed to the ground. It was the rusted metal target of so many successful military objectives with his friends.

All of a sudden he heard a loud scream to his left. A flock of birds flew in all directions from their gentle perch in a peach tree. Jeremy ran up a short rise and dove behind a log as a tall man in coveralls drug a young girl by her hair towards an old farmhouse. She was dressed only in a tee shirt and underwear. The girl kicked and spun and tried to fight him off, but he was much too strong. He stopped, looked around and smacked her hard to the ground. Then reaching down, resumed his grip on her long curly blond hair and drug her up some unpainted wooden steps and into what looked like a kitchen. He tied her to a rope hanging from the ceiling and ripped off what was left of her tattered shirt. She watched in horror as he lit a cigarette and started to burn her on different parts of her exposed ivory colored skin. She screamed until she passed out as he sat in a chair waiting for her to wake again. His eyes rolled back into his head as he drifted back to a long past memory.

* * *

“Milton, get yourself back down them stairs you can’t be up here with your sisters. Now get or I’ll have to burn ya again….it’s for your own good, honey.”

“Ma, I just want a tea party…please?”

“No…now get, you’re too big to play with the girl’s….I’m afraid you will hurt them again.”

“Ma, I want a tea party.”

“Milton, I said git…now, I’ve told you once…hold yer arm out.”

“Momma, please don’t hurt me no more…I’ll be good, promise.”

“I said, HOLD YER DANG ARM OUT! YOU BASTARD, CHILD.”

Milton, held his scared arm out, wincing, knowing the pain he was about to receive. His arm was scarred with hundreds of round burn marks, some old, some newer. His mother grinned as she sucked deep on the filter-less cigarette hanging from her stained lips, clinched in her rotten black teeth; as the cigarette glowed a deep orange. She grasped his arm tightly and smiled as the hair and flesh sizzled and smoked. Milton’s eyes rolled back then centered and narrowed as he grabbed a steel iron off of the kitchen table and buried it into her skull with a wet smack. Blood sprayed across the white refrigerator. He hit her again across the face as she fell onto the linoleum floor, a puddle of blood formed around her lifeless body as he grabbed the lighter, an open pack of “Lucky Strikes” and a large kitchen knife and headed towards the upstairs bedrooms.

“I said I was goin’ to have a tea party and that’s what I’m goin’ do.”

“Girls, put on yer Sunday dresses…it’s time to play, with yer brother.”

He reached the top step and lit a cigarette as he slowly opened the creaky bedroom door. Two young girls held each other trembling and for a brief moment of time their soft skin remained unblemished.

***

Jeremy ran down the hill, shocked at what he just saw, he climbed an old fence and ran towards the old house. He crawled to a dirty soot covered window and looked through the lowest part of the sill. Hanging from the ceiling the girl seemed unconscious as the man in coveralls sat with his back to Jeremy in an old wooden chair. He turned and knelt down.

“I’ve got to do something….think, think…Oh my God, what the heck? This is crazy. I need something to draw his attention.”

Jeremy saw the old barn and ran through the grass that was overgrown to his shoulder. He opened the barn door that made a loud creek. He lifted it upward to minimize the noise. Cobwebs were everywhere. Everything looked rusted and old, but as he walked deeper into the barn he noticed along the wall pictures of young teenage girls, some yellow and frayed, and a lot much newer. Discarded milk cartons littered the floor with a square roughly cutaway or simply ripped from the boxes’ sides. He walked closer and noticed some of the girls were recently reported on the evening news. There were close to twenty girls that ranged in age from twelve to seventeen. He looked around for a phone--nothing.

“I can’t leave her, no way.”

Jeremy ran to a small storage cabinet and grabbed some old wooden matches, a can of paint thinner, and a half empty box of old rusted shotgun shells--no shotgun. He poured the can out over a bail of hay and threw a handful of shells on the top lighting a match. The bail of hay burst into flames, he knew he didn’t have much time before the shells started exploding. Jeremy ran across the yard as the shells started to go off with an ear splitting roar again and again. He dove down into the grass as he heard the screen door open with a crash.

Standing up quickly in the tall grass, Jeremy ran to the back porch. He opened the rotting screen door which made a loud creak as he met the terrified hazel eyes of the young girl. She was shaking with fear. Jeremy grabbed a large butcher knife off of a sagging kitchen table and moved through the piles of garbage that made him choke. He started cutting the young girl down. In what seemed like forever, the rope cut free as the girl collapsed. Jeremy tried desperately to help her to her feet.

“Everything is going to be okay. I’m getting you out of here.”

“Help me please, he…he’s going to kill me.”

Jeremy gently brushed the hair from her tear-soaked face as her eyes opened wide as saucers; her feet back-pedaled as Jeremy heard the screen door slam open and heavy footfalls closed in on him. Jeremy spun around, the butcher knife gripped firmly in his hand. Jeremy cut empty air as the man in the grimy coveralls just smiled and knocked him across the room; the knife clattered to the floor. Jeremy stunned, with his eye swelling and closed, struggled to his feet. He glanced with his good eye over to the young girl. She was shaking uncontrollably, screaming in the corner. Jeremy aimed a front kick to his solar plexus; it felt like kicking a wall. He felt himself being lifted off his feet and tossed across the kitchen like a rag doll.

He knocked Jeremy through a thin basement door sealed in plastic and duct tape. Jeremy flipped end over end down the flight of wooden stairs. He landed hard in a heap on the concrete floor, the wind knocked out of him. The light from the shattered door bathed the dark basement in an eerie yellow glow. Jeremy struggled to recover his breath, but the stench of rotting flesh overpowered him. He rolled onto his side fighting his instinct to throw up. Jeremy opened his good remaining eye and looked around in shock. He quickly saw many kids his age and younger, posed in different stages of undress around the basement, some around a table with a tea stand, some in different positions on a moldy couch, and a few along the wall. They were all dead…some had faces…the others had been there much longer. He heard the steps creak behind him. In a flash of pain Jeremy felt himself yanked by his hair back up the stairs. There was incredible strength behind it and he smelled like a sewer.

“You don’t belong here…this is my tea party…you…you…you weren’t invited!”

Jeremy felt like he was going to blackout. The pain shot through his brain like he had never felt. His head slammed into the top step as he felt his whole body being lifted up by his hair and throat and slammed back down on the kitchen table. Jeremy saw a flash of metal, a large knife lifted high in the air. The man with the coveralls smiled as a shiny red blade came out through the front of his throat. He had a look of shock, as he dropped his knife to the floor; his eyes faded and just fell over across Jeremy’s chest as the young girl appeared with a crazed look on her face. She let go of the handle and collapsed on the dirty floor.

Jeremy, covered in blood, picked her up off of the floor and she looked up at him. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder. She was crying and shaking uncontrollably.

She turned her face towards him as he smiled and winced at the same time, “What’s your name? My name is Jeremy…I’m going to take you home now.”
She half smiled and whispered, “Stephanie.”

He wrapped her in his ripped and blood covered tee shirt, lifting her up. He kicked the half-open front door stepping out into a blinding daylight that hurt his one remaining open eye. He carried her across the unkempt lawn and glanced back at the barn as flames licked up at the surrounding trees in a full blaze--a great bellow of thick black smoke drifted high into the sky. He looked at the house where so many children would never walk out and he did not look back. He continued to walk through the thick woods as she held him tightly not letting go of his neck. Two patrol cars and a fire truck pulled up as they cleared the wood line, sirens and lights flashing.

“That’s it son…it’s over. You can let her go now.”

“Excuse me Miss, Is your name Stephanie Larson?”

Stephanie lifted her head off of Jeremy’s shoulder…her hazel eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears; her long curly blonde hair was matted with dried blood.

“Yes, Sir.”

The officer keyed his Motorola handset.

“Dispatch, this is 231, cancel the Amber Alert for Stephanie Larson and inform her mother that we found her….copy that 231, out.”

Jeremy, lifted up his bloody face, “Officer, there is a house, along that path. Sir it’s filled with dead bodies; they’re kids. Officer, he’s in there with them. I…I think he’s dead.”

“Dispatch…this is 231, request assistance…respond code three…possible 181.”

The officer wrapped the two in a blanket; Stephanie was still holding on tightly to Jeremy. He didn’t seem to mind.

***
Saturday, October 20th

The sun rose over the city, it was a beautiful Saturday with a gentle breeze. Children were playing in their yards as mothers watched closely from the front porch. Jeremy walked the four blocks to Stephanie’s house. He had only talked with her on the phone since the hospital. He opened the gate and walked with a slight limp wincing, bruised, cut, and battered as he walked up the concrete steps. The stitches closed on his face and he couldn’t open his left eye; however, he felt very good about himself as he rang the doorbell. He desperately wanted to see how Stephanie was doing. The door opened as Jeremy stepped back. Ben answered and walked out onto the porch, his face a little swollen and his right eye black and blue, but he smiled and held out his hand.

“Hey, Steph…your friend Jeremy is here.”

“Okay, Ben, keep him company I’m still getting ready, thank you.”

Jeremy took his hand. He had a look of confusion on his face.

“Jeremy, can I talk to you?”

“Yeah, sure, Ben I didn’t know that Stephanie was…”

“I just….I mean, hey thanks for saving my sis,” Ben said choking and trying to suppress the tear that ran down his face.

Ben quickly wiped away the tear, “Jeremy, how ‘bout you, are you okay?”

“I’m alright just a little roughed up, you?”

“Oh, you mean the shiner? I deserved it…do me a favor tell your little brother that I’m sorry, Steph was missing and, well you know it messed me up.”

“Hey, that’s alright…I’m walking her to the mall, you can come along if ya want to.”

“No, you two deserve some time together, take care of her for me.”

Stephanie walked out onto the front porch wearing a yellow sundress with white cork clogs. Her face slightly bruised, she smiled brightly as Jeremy gulped.

“Hi, Jeremy…you boys getting along?”

“Ben we will be back soon.”

Ben tossed her a cell phone and smiled.

“Non-negotiable, Sis; Oh, and Mom’s going to want to meet Jeremy when she gets back.”

Stephanie grabbed Jeremy by his arm and half drug him down the stairs.

“Okay, thanks Ben, bye.”

-The End