Oklahoma Gothic

He’ll withdraw when he finds me in the garage, one end of the garden hose stuffed in the exhaust, the other rolled up in the window. He was hard-headed as a boy, defiant as a teen. But I always knew how to make him stay. You’re hurtin’ this heart of mine, I’d say clutching my chest. The year he had the nerve to ask if he could spend his summer at camp, I shoved his daddy’s pistol in his hand— go on ahead and put me out of my misery . Now he wants to go to college. All your daddy’s schoolin’ did nothin’ but drive him away from us, I reminded him when he showed me the acceptance letter. I put my face in my hands and lean against the steering wheel. It’s easier to breathe than I expected, the hum of the engine nearly therapeutic. I wait for the garage door to open, for a frame of light to fill the dark space, for my baby boy to find me and hug me in his arms. Glazed eyes check the rearview, I’m sleeping now, as is my boy in the backseat.

Sam was in the garage, speaking with his parents. Penny sat crisscross, scouring the collection of home-recorded VHS tapes in the living room. She wondered how they would respond to the news, soon to be grandparents. A miracle. “’Sam’s fifth BEST birthday’” Penny pressed the tape into the VCR. Children in Power Ranger party hats were laughing and playing, a young Sam blew the candles. “Aw,” Penny teased as Sam returned to the room, “who’s that little boy?” Brief static cut to a darker, quieter video recorded over the boy’s birthday: a body lay unconscious on the living room couch, her body. “Sam, what is this?” The mother, beaming, was first to appear. Sam’s father joined her in the frame, followed by a gray, slender humanoid that crawled onto the couch. The camera zoomed. Static. “Make a wish!” Static. The creature’s four-digit hand glowed on Penny’s swelling stomach. Static. “Happy birthday, Sammy!” Static. Penny jerked awake. His mother shined over her, “...