The Killing Jar

There was the red shack – exactly as he described it in his letters. He warned me that time had not been kind to him. “The sea can be brutal.” He wrote. “You’re not going to recognize me as kin, I’m afraid. Maybe, if I shave by the time you see me, I might be mistaken as human.” There was the self-deprecating wit that my father spoke of. “But I doubt if I’ll be alive by the time you come. The hornets are after me.” And that was the end of his last letter.

From the gangway I could see a light from inside the hut, but no shadows or movement. The boats creaked and moaned as their shore lines worried the cleats anchored to the weathered planks. I walked toward the shack, slowly, deliberately, and for some reason quietly. I wasn’t trying to sneak up on him, but I also didn’t think that bounding up the dock at full speed was the right way to greet my uncle after thirty years. Especially if his paranoia was as bad as I expected. I knocked on the door. No answer or sound. The rusty squeals of seagulls startled me and I and looked up the dock, catching a flash of black fur darting behind a dock box. A dozen gulls dove toward the cat, reeled back into formation, cursed some more, then dove again. I looked back at the door and examined the two by four bracing it closed. It was new, unpainted, and not yet warped by the damp air. I thought it odd to have such a crude and formidable barricade on the outside of the only door. It made me consider just how demented my poor uncle had become – maybe to the point of having to be locked in his own dwelling for fear of hurting himself.

I lifted the board off its brackets and leaned it against the frame then turned the handle and stepped onto the threshold. I was consumed by an acrid emulsion of insecticide, rotten meat, and bodily fluids. Repulsed, I backed up a couple of steps and took a deep breath to clear my lungs. The odor shot me right back to my childhood, the hot summers spent on my uncle’s farm. There was a butterfly collection that hung in the farmhouse parlor which I contributed to. I used a pickle jar filled with my own recipe of random agents which I refined over the course of a couple of summers to be extremely toxic. In the beginning, a butterfly could live several hours in the jar, but once the formula was perfected, a few drops on a tissue placed in the bottom of the jar and death followed very swiftly. The butterfly would flutter frantically, bouncing off the inside walls of the jar, then almost immediately fall to the bottom, its wings quivering for only a moment. I was compelled to watch its final moments of life, contemplate the exact instant of death. After waiting a couple of minutes for the jar to air out, I would gently remove the butterfly with tweezers, and carefully pin it to the Styrofoam inside the display case. I suppose it’s no wonder that I chose insect abatement as a career.

Another clamor from up the dock as a tug boat pulled alongside the far finger and two men dressed in foul weather gear jumped off. The gulls reeled away from the cat and followed the tug as it headed back out into the choppy seas of the harbor. The two men stood and talked for several seconds. I couldn’t hear them over the roar of the tug’s diesels, but I saw one of them point at me and the other one nod. Even though they were clad head to toe in black and yellow latex, I could tell that neither of them could be my uncle. They both had the sturdy musculature of youth, and when they started walking toward me they took long, confident strides. “Hornets.” I said to myself, watching these hulking, black and yellow shapes come toward me. “Jesus, maybe the old fool wasn’t crazy.” I looked back inside the shack and caught a glimpse of what looked like a bare forearm under the cot. I could hear footsteps drumming on the planks to my left, but I fixed my eyes on that arm, held my breath and stepped inside. I closed the door behind. As it creaked closed, the footsteps shuffled to a stop. I knelt and looked under the bed. There, half covered by a blanket, was an old man. I stared at his face. He was right, I didn’t recognize him, but his description of himself was spot on, save for the grey-blue pallor and the half-inch hole in his forehead.

I could hear rustling and murmurs from outside. I stood and looked around the tiny room for something to defend myself. There was a small writing desk covered with a newspaper dated two days previous, some pens, a photo of a woman I didn’t recognize. A small pot-bellied stove sat in the corner. Along the opposite wall was a peg board lined with tools, and under that, a bait sink flanked by two wooden cutting boards clamped onto a rusty metal counter. I knelt down, looked under the counter, and found dozens of smoked glass bottles. I read one of the labels - Soda Lye. There was more, Chlorine, ammonium bicarbonate, hydrochloric acid, Malathion, methanol, ether. I didn’t know what my uncle had been up to but couldn’t imagine an appropriate hobby for a 77-year-old that required ether.

A loud rapping on the door caused me to spin around and lose my balance. I steadied myself, jumped to my feet, and pushed the desk in front of the door, jamming it under the knob. More rustling from outside then a crash as one of the men slammed into the door. I grabbed a hammer from the peg board with one hand and threw open the window over the bunk with the other. Another crash as the legs of the desk buckled and the door opened. I leaned over and swung the hammer hard, smashing as many of the bottles as I could. I threw the hammer down then crawled out of the narrow window, slamming it shut behind me.

I paused just long enough to glance back through the glass and saw the vapors rise from the floor as the chemicals mixed and then watched as the two men stumbled over the desk. I ran around to the front of the shack, pulled the door shut, and secured it with the two-by-four. I stepped backward to the far side of the dock, and through the window saw both men clawing at their throats, wrenching. The larger of the two started convulsing and throwing himself against the wall between the windows. He struggled to reach the window, but was weakening quickly. As the fumes thickened, my view became obscured until the smaller man slammed against the glass and looked out at me through bulging crimson eyes. Bloody foam ran from his nostrils and mouth and he seemed to be trying to speak. I took one step closer and watched his purple tongue dance pathetically against the roof of his mouth. I stood there until his eyes rolled white and he fell to the floor. There was a part of me that wanted to walk closer to the window to see him take his final breath. But this time I denied myself that pleasure. My work was done.