Every night, my daughter spent the minutes before bed diligently writing in the notebook she’d bought at her school bookfair. It was a shock when she brought it home because she’d never previously been interested in reading and certainly never in writing. The notebook had the words MY MOM IS MY SUPERHERO scrolled across the front in a font so indecipherable that I finally had to break down and ask my wife what it said.
“It says I’m her hero,” Daphne said. “They must have been out of stock of the one that said MY DAD IS A FAILURE.”
“Yes, I suppose they were,” I said because I secretly had divorce paperwork that I hadn’t given her yet.
Daphne used to be really funny, but now I knew she super hated me. She just hadn’t admitted it yet. One day I called her mom while Daphne was out running to see if she had any advice for me, and Daphne’s mom straight-up told me not to bother. That’s when I knew it was over between Daphne and me.
A few days later, Daphne started leaving a bowl of uncooked red meat on the back patio.
“What’s with the meat?” I said.
“We have a cat now,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem to like milk or dry food or anything. It decimated some expired meat I had in the bin, though. So now I just hook it up.”
“You’re the stray cat’s dealer?”
“Yes,” she said but didn’t laugh because when you hate someone, that person ceases to be funny.
The story my daughter was writing every night was about a Chupacabra. At the beginning it was skinny and tired and very very hungry. “Like that caterpillar in the story you read to me when I was a kid,” she explained. She loved to talk about when she was a kid even though she was only eleven.
In thickly verbose prose, my daughter described the squalid conditions of the Chupacabra’s hillside home, its propensity for violence toward the small rodents also living in squalor, and the way its ribs poked through its skin like tent poles. But even with all that precise description, I still had no idea what a Chupacabra looked like.
After a few weeks without finding a single shivering rodent to massacre, the Chupacabra decided to leave the home he had always known with the hope of finding a better life. The journey was teeming with the Chupacabra’s interiority and his struggle with existence and morality and if there was a meaning to be discovered in it all.
“Are you reading my story?” my daughter asked from her bed, where I thought she’d been asleep for the last few hours.
I was holding my phone light over the pages of the notebook with my face only a few inches from my daughter’s tiny scrawl. I had to admit I was reading it, but I wouldn’t tell her how many times I had read it previously. “It’s riveting,” I said.
“Wait until you see what happens tomorrow,” she said and then rolled away from me. I put the notebook on her desk and then kissed her on the head. She still smelled exactly as she did as a baby. Slightly earthen. Or like a smooth rock left in direct sunlight day after day.
I shut her door softly and went into the kitchen to find something to eat. Ever since Daphne and I had been on the outs, I had lost nearly fifteen pounds due to an overarching sadness and not eating family meals together. I knew that once I served the paperwork and we officially split, I wouldn’t see my daughter every day anymore. I wondered how long until my ribs would look like tent poles.
I opened the refrigerator and the light spilled over the back door, which caused something heavy and rasping to bang against it. The glass panes rattled. All the hair on my arms rose to meet my shirtsleeves. A horrible snorting sound barreled across our backyard.
With some reservation, I moved to the window and tried to catch sight of whatever it was. Next to the small shed where I kept our lawnmower, two unblinking yellow eyes stared back at me. My mouth went dry.
Suddenly Daphne was next to me opening the back door.
“Don’t open that!” I managed to yell.
She ignored me, of course, and leaned down to retrieve an empty bowl.
“Cat was hungry tonight,” she said.
I looked out the window again, but the eyes were gone.
The next night the Chupacabra found a farmhouse. The field around it was literally crawling with goats. With chilling depictions of severed arteries, torn flesh, and an atheistic belief in only itself, the Chupacabra ate every last one of them.
I looked at my daughter asleep in her bed and felt this deep unfathomable loss. She was growing and changing and adapting, and somehow I had stayed exactly the same. She no longer needed me. That much was clear. I had devoted my time, all of it, my everything. And every day she needed less of it. She needed less of me. This simple subtraction, like the math problems I used to help her with, was easy to calculate. The numbers kept going down until they reached zero.
Once, not so many years ago, she and I had spent an afternoon arguing whether zero was a number. She said it wasn’t. That it was an absence of numbers. But I believed it was a number. I always had. It was a starting point. It was an ending. It was there to remind you of where you were and where you still had to go. Without zero, there was no place to stand between all the failures and the occasional wins. Zero had to be solid with a firm spot to place both of your feet.
But now in the dim light of her room, the sound of her soft breath like the most placid of oceans, I wasn’t so sure. Had I been wrong all along? By choosing to believe that zero was a solid landing point, had I guaranteed my own erasure? Had I written myself out of my daughter’s future?
I thought about that Chupacabra at the farmhouse, ripping those goats to shreds. He was my fucking hero.
When Daphne and I met, I had what they called a bright future ahead of me. I’d just gotten a role in a recurring series of commercials for a mobile phone network. The first commercial featured me and this other guy sitting in a cafe. He had perfect service because he used the mobile phone network we were selling, and I kept walking around the cafe with my phone aloft trying to get reception. Over the course of thirty-four seconds, I managed to spill my coffee on my laptop and ruin my big work presentation, and then while standing on a chair, I set off the sprinkler system, and then I stepped onto a crowded table which riotously broke and sent an array of knives whizzing by my head. With pinwheeling arms, I knocked over not one, not two, but ten cups of coffee in rapid succession and then somehow sent a motorized wheelchair zooming into a busy intersection. I was an immediate hit and became a household name for a very short time. During that very short time, Daphne and I got married.
She wanted to be with someone with goals. Someone with a plan to turn a lucky role in a commercial into a career. Maybe someone who she could go to the Oscars with someday.
Then I quit acting.
The thing is, Daphne was a huge success. She got an MBA and was now running the HR department for a massive company that I didn’t really know what they did other than pay Daphne a lot of money. I worked here and there, and I even got an online computer programming certificate. But once our daughter arrived, it was assumed that I would be the primary caretaker. I changed her diapers, made sure she ate, and rocked her to sleep. I helped her with her homework and picked out all her clothes. I brushed her teeth and took her to the dentist and the doctor and gave her any medication she received. She and I had eaten every dinner together. I was adrift while she was at school, counting the hours until she returned. But the more my daughter became self-sufficient, the more Daphne and I grew apart. My duties lessoned and my presence was not required as much. Essentially, I was useless. I was the moderately attractive guy from those commercials you kind of remember who was now balding and had a tightly swollen belly with patches of hair where patches of hair shouldn’t be. I wasn’t needed here anymore. But if I left, I’d be losing the only place that had ever had a true place for me.
Daphne was in the kitchen slapping wet, raw meat into the bowl.
“I can help you with that, if you’d like,” I said. For a second, I could see the future where I parlayed my years of childcare into animal rescue and secured a new spot in our home.
“I can manage.”
“You know it’s not a cat, right?” I said.
“It needs me,” she said. “Doesn’t matter what it is.”
The muscles on her arms were taut strings that I longed to caress. “I feel like I have to ask permission to touch you,” I said.
She finished with the raw meat and began washing her hands vigorously in the sink.
I moved toward her.
“Don’t,” she said.
I stopped and continued watching her. Then I laughed. “You know what word I just thought of?”
“I couldn’t possibly.” Still washing her hands.
“Caress. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before. Or thought of it. It’s not that I wanted to touch you. That’s not it exactly. Caress is different. It’s softer. It’s touching with meaning. I wanted to send you a message with my hands.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” I could see she was crying.
“It’s true,” I said. My hands were aching for her to allow me this one request.
She opened the door and put the bowl of meat on the porch. She made a little whistle sound as if to call whatever monstrosity was out there. Then she shut the door and turned to face me.
“I know it’s true. That’s why I’m crying” she said, and then quietly left the room.
It would be a million times easier if she divorced me.
I shut off the light and stared into our yard. I knew whatever creature was out there was staring back at me. I could feel it. I felt a sudden warmth toward it. I wanted it to know that I could help it too.
I opened the door and nudged the bowl with my foot. The smell of it caused a wave of bile to begin exploring the back of my throat. Then the eyes appeared. Exactly where they had been yesterday. Piercing and yellow, and I guess I just had to say it: malevolent. I sent a mental apology out into the yard. I was still committed to befriending it.
Then the eyes shifted, and it took me a moment to realize it was coming toward me. Wheezing and rasping. Its feet swishing through the grass that was overdue for a mowing. It was still staring as it ran. It wasn’t coming for the food.
It was coming for me.
I slammed the door as its claws scratched onto the porch, and I jumped backward into the kitchen. It breathed loudly on the other side of the door. Huffing and puffing. Snorting. My heart beat so fast that I became lightheaded and had to clutch the counter to remain standing. We were both waiting now. I couldn’t move.
Then it began slurping up the meat, the bowl scraping across the cement like a body.
After school the next day, I asked my daughter if she wanted to go out for ice cream. She looked at me sadly, as if I had disappointed her with how lame I was, but after some reflection, she agreed to go.
We went to the place we had gone many times while Daphne had been at work, and we both ordered our favorites without thinking. We didn’t even look in the display. I love that kind of routine. When something is simple and easy. I wanted more of that in my life.
My daughter got chocolate brownie, and I got strawberry.
“I’m glad you came out with me,” I said.
“I love ice cream,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the conversation yet. But I guess I am. Lay it on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where you tell me that you and Mom are getting divorced. Or separated. And then I have to choose a side, I guess. I love you, but I gotta go with Mom on this one. Sorry.”
“Your mom and I aren’t getting a divorce,” I said. And even with the paperwork in my sock drawer, I believed it. It wasn’t the outcome I wanted.
“Then what’s going on with you two?”
“I’m a disappointment,” I said.
She looked really confused. “In what way?”
“I don’t have a sweet career. I’m not bringing home the bacon, as they say.”
“But you’re the best dad ever. Mom knows that.”
I looked at my daughter’s face. She was an absolute marvel who I felt was impossible I had anything to do with.
That night, the Chupacabra story made a tonal shift, verging almost into screwball comedy. Knowing that it had depleted its entire food source in one night, he knew he needed a desperate plan to get more. Because at this point in the story, he had decided to remain on the farm forever. The one human, a farmer of extremely advanced age, had suffered a heart attack when he beheld the sight of the Chupacabra ripping his goats to shreds. The Chupacabra now had a beautiful acreage of land, a solid roof over his head, and a firm mattress for sleeping.
So he took the farmer’s clothes and put them on. He began practicing walking around on two legs. He began reading the Reader’s Digest magazines littered around the farmhouse and listening to Frank Sinatra albums. Soon the Chupacabra was a passable man, and he sauntered into town to strike a deal for more goats.
My daughter was pretending to sleep, I could tell. I wanted to ask her if she’d changed the story because of me. Because of our conversation earlier. Was she trying to tell me something?
I called her name in the dark, but she didn’t respond.
I got to the kitchen before Daphne arrived and decided to fill the bowl myself. The meat glistened in the refrigerator light. I cut open the packages and let the meat slither from the blood-soaked trays and into the bowl. When I was done, I checked the yard and the porch to make sure the creature wasn’t waiting for me. Then I quickly opened the door and tossed the bowl out. I took a deep breath. Then I moved away, leaned against the counter, and waited. And waited.
But neither the beast nor Daphne showed up.
Now that the Chupacabra could pass as a man, he needed to find some new goats. In the farmhouse he had now fully taken over, he found a trove of antiques the farmer’s family had been hoarding for generations. There was also a brief aside on how good the farmer tasted. The Chupacabra brought the antiques to a local merchant, and using the piles of money he made, he arranged for a local driver to bring a steady stream of goats to the farmhouse weekly.
It was the perfect plan that was only ruined when the Chupacabra had to kill the delivery guy, which then of course brought the attention of the entire village onto the farmhouse. Here’s how it went down: The delivery guy had just been curious where all the goats went each week. So late one night after he and a friend had been out drinking, they drove out to the farmhouse and parked behind a small group of trees before sneaking on foot to the farmhouse. They saw the farmer pull off his clothes, and with still no clear description of what a Chupacabra looked like, they watched in horror as it ate its way through the goats. Repulsed, the delivery guy’s friend made a big scene and began running for the truck even though the delivery guy had been frantically trying to calm him down. But the Chupacabra had seen them, and he easily caught the delivery guy while the friend drove away.
Within an hour, the entire village was outside the farmhouse with pitchforks and torches “like in some black and white movie.” Which was the exact phrase my daughter had used to describe the scene. The Chupacabra huddled in the farmhouse but knew he would be dead soon. And in that moment, he began to fear death. It had never felt like something that could happen to him. He suddenly feared a world in which he would no longer be a part. He became frantic to stay alive as the mob descended.
And that’s where it stopped.
“Yes,” my daughter said. “There’s no more. That was the end.”
“I can get you another notebook,” I said.
“No, Dad. The story is over. I’m finished.”
It was hard to know why I had such strong feelings for the Chupacabra. I thought this whole time he’d been the villain. That I should want him to fail. But now I’d rather the weekly goat delivery thing had worked out. The Chupacabra wasn’t evil. He was just doing what Chupacabras do. And when he tried to change, to become a man, it got him killed.
“Can I keep this?” I said.
“Yes, of course, Dad. I wrote it for you.”
I kissed her head, turned off the light, and left the room. The notebook suddenly felt heavier than ever before.
In the kitchen, Daphne stared out the window. “Cat’s gone,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried to feed him last night and he didn’t show up either.”
“I wonder if that’s why?”
“You mean he left because I tried to feed him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I joined her at the window.
“You know why I quit acting, right?”
She continued staring out the window, as if trying to manifest the monster she’d been feeding.
“I felt like a failure in life up until that point. And then my big role was a guy who was a failure. I could see the future in front of me. Honing the role of failure. Playing him on and off the screen. Then you came along, Daphne. And it was the only time I felt successful. So the acting didn’t seem important anymore. Then we had our daughter, and I answered my true calling. I’m not a failure because I stopped acting. I’m a success because of it.”
Daphne turned to me. “The problem isn’t that I think you’re a failure. It’s that you think you’re a failure.”
We were closer than we’d been in months. I could feel her breath on my neck.
“I have divorce paperwork,” I said.
“I know you do,” she said.
Then she brushed past me, and I felt the true loss of her.
I looked out into the empty yard. Maybe I could find the creature, bring him home. Reclaim my place. I opened the door and moved into the grass. I would definitely cut it this weekend. When I reached the shed, I stopped and turned around. There was our small house that contained our past and whatever remained of our future. I’d left the light on in the kitchen.
Then I heard it. The raspy breath somewhere not too far behind me. I should have taken the bowl with me, something to distract it. I couldn’t turn around. I felt the creature sidle up next to me. Its ragged breath hot on my legs. I waited for the feel of its teeth. For its claws to eviscerate me.
***
Rumpus original art by Ian MacAllen
