The Salt and The Slug

Written by Alura Mireault

On my ninth birthday, we drove to my grandparents’ house. I was excited because usually it meant a large family gathering, and since it was my birthday it meant even more presents. They had a pool in a large fenced-in back yard, and I’d get to play with my cousins with little to no supervision. We’d often play Marco Polo and volleyball in the ice cold water, or we’d spend hours exploring the cemetery that surrounded the yard. We would play hide-and-seek in the dark among the grave stones, and pretended we were knights defending our “castle” which was actually a mausoleum. We’d found it when exploring the deepest, most desolate reaches of the cemetery. It was about a fifteen or twenty feet tall stone structure with the whole face of it above ground. It looked exactly like a castle: two towers, a large wooden door, and two semicircle bricked-in windows. We would comment on how it looked like a face. The windows were stern eyes and the door was a mouth yelling out warnings at passers-by not to get too close. The back half of the structure was submerged in the ground. We would climb up the back hill to stand atop the towers and we could see at least a mile out from its summit. We would joke about how the earth was trying to swallow the castle whole to protect the world from its evil. On one occasion my brother even pretended he was being pulled into the ground alongside the castle and we all screamed and laughed at the possibility. 

On this particularly cloudy, summer day, I walked into my grandparents’ house and saw that all of my family was already gathered in the living room. I excitedly exclaimed, “What’s everyone doing here!?” My greeting was met with twenty or so faces with their fingers pressed to their lips, “Shhhh!” burst from their mouths in unison. Everywhere I looked, eyebrows bunched in irritation; eyes red, raw, and teary. My cheeks burned chili pepper red as I quickly looked for a corner to hide in. This was not a celebration. I decided it was safest to keep out of sight until I understood the purpose of this solemn meeting. I watched as people came in and out of a room in the furthest part of the house. The room Grammy always used to sit and smoke in while watching soap operas. It’s where her collection of ceramic, hobo clowns were held which always fascinated and scared me to admire. They looked real. All of them were men, who wore worn and torn clothing. Some held bindles, a few had fiddles, even fewer held out their thumbs. All had faces in different versions of clown paint. They looked incredibly sad and downtrodden, some even with tears in their eyes. I never spent too long looking into their downcast eyes out of fear of catching their affliction.

It was early afternoon and none of the lights were on in the house which added to the dreariness of the cloudy day. Soft sunlight streamed through the windows in slants, highlighting the dust in the air, and the second hand smoke danced between the streams of light and dust. No one spoke. I was antsy and trying but failing at staying still. I wanted to play with my cousins, or talk to my favorite uncle about the slug I found in the yard last week. He told me if I ever found a slug that I should pour salt on it to see something “cool”. Well I found a slug that I named Rocky due to his grayish complexion and place of origin. He was on this giant rock by my house that I ventured to climb. I almost crushed him with my knee as I climbed atop the rock. When I saw him, I jumped off the rock and ran back to my house as fast as I could, almost rolling my ankle in the process. I returned with the salt shaker from my kitchen table. Rocky was already several slithers away from his original location. A trail of mucous-like slime revealed his path. I said, “I have a snack for you Rocky” as I shook the salt across his small body. Holes sprinkled across his back as the white dots burrowed their way into his flesh. Steam seemed to rise from the wounds as his body melted into a waxy substance. I looked on horrified, “Rocky?” I muttered, and the sizzling response of the chemical reaction sent me reeling back screaming and crying. I ran away from the scene realizing what I had done, and hid in my room for the rest of that day unable to shake the images from my mind. I already decided to leave that part out of the story I would tell my uncle. 

I was shaken from my memory to a hand leading me to the door I’d been dreading to enter. I opened the door. The air felt thick, perfumed by sickly sweet antiseptic, mixed in with notes of human waste. I had to hold back the urge to gag. I heard the machines next. A steady rhythm of beeps and boops while the oxygen machine let out percussive bursts of air that made me jump. I was looking down at the green, cigarette stained shag carpet. I dreaded raising my gaze. I looked to my left instead and greeted the clowns with my eyes. They stared back disapprovingly as I made my way forward. The door closed behind me and I was alone with the man in the bed I used to call Grandfather. The room was dark with a single yellow-shaded lamp on the bedside table. It’s dim light illuminated an ashtray, a few newspaper crossword puzzles clumsily placed beneath it, and a silver salt shaker to the right atop a small empty plate. My eyes moved further right to see a hand lying outside the blankets on the bed. It was grayish with speckles of blue and purple across it. He had large hands, with rotund fingers that had once held guns, and hammers, and little girls’ hands. I almost thought I saw a twitch in the index finger but when I blinked, all appeared to be still. I finally looked at his face. His eyes were closed and sunken into his face. The skin around his eyes was almost deep blue, enhanced by the shadows cast by the only small lamp in the room. I realized then how dark the corners of the room were in my periphery, but shook my head in an attempt to brush the thought from my mind. He had tubes in his nostrils that fed him oxygen, but if it weren’t for the bursts of sound from the machine I wouldn’t know he was breathing at all. He was so still, and I tiptoed as I inched my way forward not wanting to disturb him. His lips were pale and cracked. A white crust at their corners with what looked like a tinge of pink. I thought of Rocky’s slimy trail, dried across his mouth. A voice to turn and run away was screaming in my head, but I moved forward, getting closer and closer to his side. Suddenly I heard a quiet laugh behind me. The kind of laugh where you can’t tell if it is laughing or crying, and I turned to look in the direction from which it came. No one else appeared to be in the room, but my eyes were drawn to the case of clowns. I hadn’t noticed before but there was a small overhead light in the case. It was casting long shadows down each of the clowns’ faces, elongating their already downturned, deep red lips. I turned back to look at my grandfather and his eyes were wide open, glaring deep into mine. Instantaneously a choking sound was gurgling from his throat and chest, and a sizzling, foamy substance escaped his lips and dripped down his chin. He stared at me with panic in his eyes but couldn’t form any words. He pointed behind me and I instinctively followed his gaze. I could only see the clowns who at first glance looked in the same positions as before, only now I could see that they were smiling. Wildly wide smiles that bore all their teeth. Eyes squinting with delight but also with pain. Tear drops still frozen on their cheeks. The laughing returned but it not only came from the clowns but seemed to echo throughout the room. I was surrounded by it. My heart was racing so fast, my pulse was pounding in my ears almost drowning out the sound. I started spinning in every direction but saw nothing else in the room. And then everything went black. The last sound heard was the thud of my body hitting the floor. 

I woke up with the sun beating down on me outside of the mausoleum. Something warm and sticky dripping down my head. I touched my temple and winced at a sharp pain pulsating from where I touched, and as I pulled my hand away I saw my fingertips were wet with blood. My uncle was standing by me calling my name. He said he thinks I fell off the top of the mausoleum. Apparently, I had been out for several minutes upon him finding me. He carried me back to my Grammy’s. My grandfather’s body was already gone. I was later told that I never went into the room at all and that I had run off when I saw everyone running out of the room crying. They all came looking for me and my uncle was the one to find me. Before they brought me to the hospital I asked to look in the room. The bed was empty and the overhead lights were on giving off a harsh fluorescent brightness to the white sheets. The clowns were gone. My grammy claimed to have sold them weeks before. I walked over and touched the bed to prove to myself it was real. That’s when I noticed the salt shaker knocked over on the beside table, specks of salt were spilled all over the bed and floor. I gasped and ran out of the room crying. I never told anyone about what I saw, and never played near the mausoleum again.