The Cardboard Man

          The sneakers were old, yellowing, and entirely sole-less, not unlike the man that lived in the broken, ramshackle remnants of a house just across the road. Alice Xander waded through the creeping wilderness of her family’s own front yard, casting a glance at the old miser’s house one last time before continuing on what she was sure would be a useless trek.
         Her goal was Harvey Street Supermarket, but between her home and intended destination was a dizzying labyrinth in streets and building and people. The yellow house and the woman who lived there, drenching herself in a sea of yellow clothes; the plastic ring of a deflated swimming pool in one yard, along with a proliferation of plastic flowers.
         Then, the street corner came and there, across a road riddled with potholes, was the long, green, sliding glass door front of Harvey’s. She went in for a boxful of sugar, the kind of healthy cereal edible only if drowned in copious amounts of sugar. She came out with both the cereal, a length of rope, and duct tape.
         On the way home from Harvey’s, she stopped to rest on a tree trunk. She brushed against something on her way down, spilling it to the earth below; a small statue, carved from stone, the face contorted with wrinkles and the teeth sharp and malevolently menacing. She picked it up and held it, scrutinizing its vaguely demonic features. Then, she shoved it in the paper Harvey’s grocery bag and continued her walk home.
         Her home was all ramshackle and sat towards the back of the lawn exploding with weeds and a variety of other greenery. The steps on the porch creaked in protest, echoed by the door swinging open. A blast of air conditioner blessed her sweaty person and, at last, Alice was home, along with the tools she would need to face the day.
         Inside, she busied herself readying her work station, dusting off the black, scratched up surface of the table. She lined up the work tools then helped herself to a bowl of some crunchy, tasteless cereal. She was halfway through the bowl when the phone rang, a hectic, erratic disaster of a ring tone.
         She didn’t know who it was, so she answered hesitantly
         “Hello?”
          And then, from the caller, a “Hello, this is,” was all she needed to know she had no patience for bill collectors. She hung up and was prepared to finish her cereal when breakfast was interrupted, this time by the ominous thumping on the door that led to the basement.
         The door opened to a deep-set darkness, and she fumbled clumsily through the shadows until her hand brushed against the light switch at the top of the steps. Light swarmed over a tangled assortment, stretching to the farthest corner of what was a fairly sizable room.
         By the entrance was a cardboard figure cut out; towards the back, there was a tangled assortment of more cardboard figures, huddling together as though in an attempt of sheltering for safety. Nothing else seemed out of place; she drug the lone cardboard cutout with her.
         By the tumbled stack of cardboard cutouts was a table, unstable and nicked. On the table, a vast array of artist’s tools- paints, brushes, pencils and the like.
         The cardboard she had found at the top of the steps was placed on that table, its incomplete face gaping up at her.
         She frowned at it. There were eyes sketched already, a basic outline, and she imagined those eyes. staring up at her. Her stomach knotted. It was wrong, again. Always wrong.
         Alice took a deep breath in, a deep breath out. From the collection of tools she retrieved her pocket knife, a precious hand-me-down from her rather bellicose father. It was both light and lethal, and it seemed to whisper to her as she dug it into the cardboard cutout in front of her. Once it was largely a series of shredded ruins, she places with the others. She spent the rest of the day staring at shadows and whistling a soft, but jaunty tune.
         At 6:00 pm, the alarm screamed into the silence. She returned upstairs, and began the long, arduous process of getting ready. She pulled herself into a black mini dress, adjusting straps, and slid on a pair of stilettos. She was finishing the touches on her make up when a car honked outside; her date, ahead of schedule.
         A short while later, Alice found herself sitting in front of a relative stranger. A slightly chubby man, he folded his fingers through each other and stared at her. His name was Roland Dupree.
         She stared back, sipping on Coca-Cola and trying to talk herself down from the low, throbbing ache that ran through her veins. She rushed through dinner, almost choking on half-eaten noodles in the desire to be somewhere and anywhere else. The lights were dim and a soft music swelled from the corner where a violinist stood, all suited up and with half-shut eyes.
         She rode the flow of the music back to her home, sitting beside Roland in his rusted out truck. Her body might have been there, but mentally she found herself once more tangled in a maze of the half-finished cardboard men dwelling in the basement.
         “So then,” Roland said, interrupting her from her reverie. “ This it then?
         She blinked out the window, surprised to see her house already there, lurking in the shadows. There was a crossroads here, and she had a tendency of following it the wrong way. If she was lucky, thought, maybe she’d get it right this time.
         “Want to come inside?”
[indent}The corners of his lips ran from ear to ear. She held his hand; his palms were sweaty. He followed her, past the threshold and into the living room. She flipped the switch, sending light drowning the corners of the living room.
         “Here, or…”
         “How about the basement?”
         She smiled at him.
         And that was how Alice Xander found herself taking step after creaking step into the basement. His eyebrows went up but he waited in the silence. The silence itself began to blossom and bloom, undulating past and around and inside until it became a living thing.
         “Why don’t you sit down at the table?”
         Like every man before him he did what she suggested.
         She approached the table where Roland was sitting, already feeling that pleasurable buzz that always marked out these…couplings.
         Alice found herself sitting on Roland’s lap. Greedy hands began to tug. She turned around, saw his questing lips. That was when she did it.
         She felt a shiver of pleasure, pressed a palm into his chest, and she released it through that contact with that poor helpless man that had followed her every whim wonderfully. She pulled away from him and watched, almost hypnotized, as the changes began.
         The first time, she was initially hesitant. And then it happened. And it kept happening. And likely would continue, and that thought was dazzlingly brilliant. Every one was different.
         This one started at the head. At first, there was a gradual deepening in tone, then brown begin to creak out into tendrils that themselves spread. When the darkening had passed the eyes is when the screaming started. Soon, the mouth became obfuscated, muffled and yet despite that he continued to scream.
         And when the screaming ended was when the fun part began. She reached for the knife and began making her alterations with it.
         The screaming never did subside-not for days. By then, she had already gotten bored, and relegated him to the stack of other cardboard men.
         There was always more than this, after all. She could do so it all over with, again and again, until the basement weighed heavy with the weight of her cardboard man.