Richard Brindel pulled the car to the curb. The dull slophft of rubber on concrete reminded him that his depth perception still wasn’t worth shit. Stereoscopic vision required two good eyes; looking out of his left eye was like squinting through a scratched lens coated in petroleum jelly, then rolled in sawdust for good measure.

Nellie jerked on the door handle before the car was even in park.

“You want me to come in with you?”

Her legs swung over the edge of the seat, and the dirty toe of one Reebok touched the ground. She twisted her head to look at him.

Or at least, she pretended to look at him. No one really wanted to look at him.

“Da-ad!” She made the word two syllables with an eight year-old’s exasperation as she clutched the backpack to her chest.  “It’s just Amanda’s house. Geez.”

“Well…  Call me when you’re ready—“

“Oh, I forgot…. Mrs. Chandler said she’d bring me home tomorrow.”

Nellie heaved the backpack onto her shoulder and reached into the backseat. She straightened, suddenly transformed into a pillow and sleeping bag with legs.

“If she’s sure it’s no trouble—“

“And don’t forget about Luci. Make sure he stays inside, ‘kay?” Nell bent over and really looked at him now. Stray sunlight caught the preternatural green eyes exactly the same shade as her mother’s. “Please?”

“I won’t forget, Sweet Pea.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” He sighed and held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Richard would have been happy to see Luci smeared across the highway, but Nell didn’t need any more grief right now. He knew she was remembering the neighborhood cats that had disappeared last year on Halloween night.

“Have fun and be —“

She was already turning, using her narrow hip to bump the door closed.

“—good.”

He watched her stagger up the sidewalk, past the life-sized plastic skeleton that dangled from the yard’s single tree. When she reached the porch, the door opened and swallowed her.

He sat for a moment, staring at the porch. A jack ‘o lantern grinned back at him. The poor bastard’s head was already smashed in. Real pumpkins didn’t even make it to Halloween anymore.

I know just how you feel, buddy. At least you’ve still got both eyes.

He pulled away from the curb and pointed the car in the direction he’d come.

He had forgotten to tell her to be careful, though Nell had promised they wouldn’t leave the house. Amanda, she said, was sick of having her birthday upstaged.

“Besides,” Nell had said. “Trick-or-treat is for kids.”

That had made him smile, just a little. Smiling wasn’t painful anymore, just weird. When he smiled too widely, the wire in his jaw seemed to twang. Luckily there wasn’t much danger of his grinning uncontrollably these days.

Dr. Adams told him it was only his imagination, that he couldn’t possibly feel the wire. Richard had wanted to ask the good doctor how the hell he knew what a pulverized jaw, broken nose and cheekbone felt like. But Richard didn’t, of course. No point in pissing off the man who doled out the Percodan.

Still, he was glad that Nellie would be safely tucked inside Amanda Chandler’s house, giggling and shrieking through an orgy of rented slasher films, pizza and birthday cake. Halloween wasn’t safe anymore. Not for pumpkins or kids or black cats — or dear old dad, for that matter. Nell hadn’t had a second thought about leaving him alone tonight, but she’d been worried sick about that damned cat.

Luci wasn’t even her cat, not really. Jane had supposedly given the kitten to Nell for her fourth birthday. He could still see Jane’s slow, sly smile as she looked — not at Nell or the cat in her lap, shedding all over her white scrub pants — but at him.

“So, you like your new kitty?” Jane had asked Nell in silky voice. Her green eyes slid right through him, giving him gooseflesh and an erection at the same time despite his anger. “We’ll have to think of a good name for a witch’s familiar.”

“Jane…” he’d warned.

“Your daddy doesn’t like cats,” Jane stage-whispered to Nell. “He thinks they’re sneaky.”

And he thinks I’m a witch. He read the thought as clearly as if she’d actually spoken it.

His daughter had glanced at him, wide-eyed, and then giggled.

“Silly daddy,” Jane cooed, lifting the kitten and rubbing his furry back against her cheek. “We’ll name him Lucifer. Luci, for short.”

“I don’t know.” Nell had faltered. “Luci’s not a name for a boy cat.”

“Oh, pooh!” Jane laughed. “It’s a joke! Can’t either of you take a joke? I suppose you two want to name him something really original like Blackie…”

The cat had ignored Nell utterly. It broke his heart to watch his daughter tempting the indifferent bastard with anchovies and catnip, only to have Luci flick his tail and follow Jane from the room. When Jane left for work, the cat sat at the door and mewed bitterly. Any doubts about which of them the cat belonged to were settled when Luci brought dead trophies to Jane like some kind of pagan sacrifice. The damned cat even slept on her pillow.

But Luci had changed alliances last Halloween, when Richard ended up in the CCU at St. Thomas and the police took Jane away. When he came home six months later, Luci was stalking Nell with the same devotion as he had once followed her mother.

Richard looked at his watch. He would be late if he didn’t catch all the lights. He couldn’t even remember this guy’s name. Silverstien or Silverberg. There were lots of things he couldn’t remember, thanks to Jane.

He came to the intersection. Instead of taking the right towards Twenty-First Avenue where Silversomebody waited, he swerved the car into the left lane at the last minute. Horns blasted behind him.

He didn’t need a shrink. He needed a stiff drink and a snooze in the recliner. Maybe a Percodan or two. If he told Silversomebody the truth, he’d end up in lunatic asylum right along with Jane.

With my luck, they’d give us adjoining rooms. Maybe there’s a family discount.

He pulled into the driveway, stopping a good five feet from the garage door this time instead of rolling into it. His own house had no skeletons, no scarecrows, not even a pumpkin. The Madisons next door more than made up for it, though. Their yard boasted a full-size coffin of black-painted plywood and fake Styrofoam tombstones with witty names like “Betty Smells” and “Izzy Deadyet.” One marker read “George Stark: NOT A VERY NICE GUY.” He kept meaning to ask Frank Madison what the hell that meant. This year, they had added orange icicle lights, for Christ’s sake.

Luci was not on the front windowsill, his favorite spot for afternoon sun. Richard put his keys in the door and hoped he wouldn’t have to go looking for the damned cat.

He’s probably maiming a few birds in the backyard.

He shut the door, locked the two deadbolts and slid the chain into place. He caught a glimpse of his face in the foyer mirror, and turned away, but not quickly enough. Adams said they could refine his face later with more plastic surgery. For now, Adams said, Richard should be grateful that he was alive.

Grotesque, but alive, that’s me. Quasimodo’s ugly brother.

He punched the code into the little white box and the red flashing light went off. He reset the alarm, shuffled toward the kitchen, and came back again.

ARMED, it said.

Somehow it didn’t make him feel any better.

Some nights he checked the alarm five or six times, even when he’d first come home and it was pure hell to drag himself downstairs. Finally he’d started sleeping in the recliner to spare himself the agony.

Adams called it post-traumatic anxiety. What would Adams have called it if he’d told him the rest of it? That he was afraid of a woman already behind bars and that all the locks and alarms in the world wouldn’t stop her if she wanted to get to him. Delusional? Paranoid? Just plain nuts? Adams had been looking for an excuse to send him to the shrink ever since the cop took his statement in the CCU.

She didn’t hit me with anything, he had written, crying with relief that somehow, miraculously, his left hand hadn’t been broken as thoroughly as the rest of him.

“Are you saying your wife didn’t do this to you?” The cop had been paunchy, red-cheeked and annoyed.

“Keep your voice down,” Adams had said.

Yes, she did, he wrote.

“Then, goddamn it, man, what did she hit you with?” The cop leaned close enough for spittle to hit his cheek. “It had to be something pretty heavy to do this kind of damage. What was it?”

Her laughter, he wrote.

His wife had only laughed at him, and each bellow had slammed into him like a wrecking ball.

Then he saw the cop and the doctor looking at one another, and his morphine-sodden mind flashed a warning. Lie, it said. Tell them something they can believe.

He clutched the pencil again.

Daughter’s baseball bat, he wrote.

But Nell played basketball, not baseball. There wasn’t a baseball bat anywhere in the whole friggin’ house. No fire irons, no loose lead pipes just lying around, no convenient two-by-fours covered in blood. Jane’s lawyer had a field day with that. They had never found the alleged weapon or so much as a single splinter, even in Richard’s wounds.

He could still see Jane, with her stark white skin, black hair and tilting green eyes, smiling as she took the witness stand. She had held out her long, delicate fingers to the jury as if to say, You don’t think I beat my husband to a pulp with these little things, do you?

The entire trial had seemed to amuse her.

He went to the cabinet under the sink and took out the bottle of whiskey. He poured three inches into a glass—

He froze, then tilted his head like a dog scenting… something.

The smell was so familiar, yet he couldn’t name it. Goddamn, he hated it when his brain slipped its gear this way. Adams blamed the lapses on the repeated blows to his head, but avoided the words “brain damage.” Richard’s mind would spin but could not catch hold of the word he wanted. He could look at an apple and know what it was, but some other word would pop into his mind, sometimes a related word like “red” or “ball” but sometimes nothing at all would come. The sheer void in his head would bring tears of terror and frustration to his eyes. Even the bad one.

He knew he smelled something… but he had no idea what it was. It could have been spoiled milk, leaking gas or even cat shit. Where the hell was Luci, anyway?

He threw back the bourbon, then poured another three inches into the glass. He could afford to sip now as he carried the tumbler into the den.

He lowered himself into the recliner, wishing he’d brought the bottle. The motorized chair helped him get up, but not much. The memory of effortless movement made him want to open up his wrists.

The phone rang. He swore and fumbled for the button that elevated the seat of the recliner, then saw that the cordless handset was still on the table beside him.

Thank God for small miracles.

“Richard?” Lilly’s voice was high and strained.

He lifted the glass and sipped a little courage before speaking.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“I thought you had an appointment with that psychiatrist this afternoon?”

Lilly was only three years older than Richard, but she had perfected their mother’s reproachful tone a long time ago.

“I did.”

“You didn’t go?”

“Yeah, I’m there right now. You only think you’re talking to me. Maybe you’re the one that needs a shrink.”

He heard her sigh.

“You don’t have to be such a smart-ass, Richard.”

“I know. But I enjoy it so.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I’m sick of white coats, all right?” Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, he counted his doctors. He had a GP, two physical therapists (both sadists), three plastic surgeons, a neurologist, an ophthalmologist, a urologist, an oral surgeon and a couple more specialties that he couldn’t even pronounce. “I’m single-handedly keeping the entire medical professional in greens’ fees—“

“Look, I didn’t call to argue with you.”

That’ll be a first.

“Then why did you call?”

“To make sure you’re all right.” Lilly paused. “Are you sure you don’t to come over tonight? You shouldn’t be alone. Not tonight…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Why?” he asked. “Just because a year ago tonight my lovely wife mistook me for a cockroach and tried to smash me?” Richard took another sip. “I plan to spend this anniversary with my good buddy, Jack Daniel’s, thank you.”

“Richard, you can’t drink and take pain meds at the same time.”

That’s what she thought. She had no idea what a year of Percodan and morphine cocktails could do for a man’s tolerance.

“Look, sis. I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine.”

“Is Amanda there?”

“No. She went to a sleep-over.”

“I suppose that’s for the best. But I don’t like the idea of you there alone. You’re not going to answer the door, are you?”

“What do you think?” He looked enough like Dr. Frankenstein’s rough draft to scare the hell out of the trick-or-treaters. “I didn’t even buy any candy. I’m gonna just sit here with the lights out and pretend I’m not home.”

“Well… Call me if you change your mind. George and I can come over there if you want.”

“I’ll be fine. Please, stop worrying.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice caught. “I just wish… That bitch belongs in prison for what she did to you, not the crazy house.”

“I know. Bye, sis.”

He clicked off before she could build any steam. Lilly claimed she had always known there was something not quite right about Jane.

If only she knew.