[Critique Group 2] submission for group 2 critique meeting

[Tuchyner5 at aol.com]

Hi You All in group2, 
I’m submitting my piece early.  The actual submission date is Jan. 17. This 
is the first part of a longer short  story.  The whole story is way too  
long for Magnets and Ladders submission. I was hoping there was some way that  
the first part could stand alone.  If it could, it would probably best end 
directly after the house  description. I definitely want your suggestions 
about that. 
 
In the meantime I’ll post the whole story in pieces on the  general 
PartyLine. I won’t expect you to respond to my posting there since  you’ll be 
doing so in our group 2 meeting.   
Leonard 
House of Horrors 
by 
Leonard Tuchyner  
The house, if it merited such a noble classification, had  long since worn 
off any sign of paint, if ever it had been adorned by that  protective 
cosmetic. Rotting wooden board siding hung loosely on the hovel’s  sagging frame, 
like dead winter oak leaves waiting for a gust of cold air to  blow them 
away. Only ancient, mostly-rusted nails, forged by a blacksmith when  New 
Jersey was  hardly more than back country, held them in place. The senescent, 
grey house  sagged like a dying old crone caught in a bog. 
In the back of the house was a tilted storm door  entrance, typical of many 
old structures of the time. But no door remained to  keep out the inclement 
elements. This opening led to the cellar beneath the  sagging hovel. Lenny 
had been in that cellar once, but only once, until one day,  when he had 
more than good reason to wish he had never allowed himself to be in  the 
clutches of that foul monstrosity. In that earlier day of exploration, he  was 
forced to bend his seven-year-old body way over to avoid scraping his head  
against the bowed, half-caved-in floor above. A few posts were all there were 
to  prevent the final crumbling of the spectered dwelling; for dwelling it 
still  was. If ever there was a house deemed less likely to harbor life, save 
termites  and vermin, then surely it was a desolate place. 
Little good should have come out of that place. But there  were two souls 
living there, nevertheless, who were of exemplary character. One  was 
Blackie, a very large jet black dog and the other was Ina, a beautiful,  vivacious 
blonde teenager who just happened to have been Lenny’s babysitter a  few 
years back. Lenny had never met the parents, not ever having been invited  into 
the deplorable dwelling, which by modern laws, would have been condemned a  
decade before Lenny’s seventh birthday. In all likelihood, the tenants 
therein  were as ashamed of that shack as the shack was of itself. 
Oh yes, there was one other member of that family,  Georgy.  At least ten 
years older  than Lenny, he was all the evil of that domicile, manifest. He 
had the same  golden hair of his sister, Ina, but his heart was as black as 
the cellar; and  with that heart came the power to corrupt. 
Some houses of the same vintage were kept up with love  and pride by their 
caretakers, adding to the houses’ humble beginnings as time  passed. These 
houses that were cared for, in turn, took care of the people they  sheltered. 
 Homes and families kept  up with the changing times. Such buildings were 
valued for their antiquity. But  somewhere in the passage of years, this 
particular structure was neglected and  became a misfit in a progressive 
neighborhood, where it languished less than  fifty yards from an A&P grocery store, 
in a lot coveted by said market. To  make the situation even worse, it was 
a mere forty yards off a major  thoroughfare, where it stood out like a 
sore, infested thumb , surrounded by  respectable homes and businesses. This 
impoverished abode had no lawn, flowers  or trees to soften its stark grey 
nudity. The gravel parcel it sat on was used  mostly for business parking.  
Except, in the far back, there were three marvelous acres  of untended 
vacant lot wildness, where Lenny and his friends often played, made  short cuts 
to other destinations, and threw hard, wild peaches at each  other.  If the 
shanty could have  only lived in the midst of that contained land of the 
untamed, it could have  died with some dignity, slowly merging and even 
nourishing the land -- its roof  gently folding into and blending with the 
un-straight lines of a natural  environment. It could have been an oil painting 
echoing beauty instead of the  desperate evilness that had doomed it. 
Yes, this building was soon to be condemned, bulldozed,  and its land 
confiscated by the A&P, which expanded to compete with Grand  Union, newly built 
across the street. But that was not to happen for three years  in the 
future, and after Lenny was deeply injured in the old, damned cellar. But  first 
we must go to one year previous to that episode.  
Lenny watched with a sickly fascination as Georgy nailed  the garter snake 
to the rickety porch banister. The flaxen-haired older boy  stood over two 
heads taller than Lenny, who  had only watched Georgy from afar until  that 
day.  He wouldn’t have come  into his territory if Mark, Lenny’s long time 
friend, had not beckoned to him.  He had often seen Georgy and Mark hanging 
together, but being of a shy nature,  he had never dared to join in. The 
older boy made him feel  uncomfortable. 
Georgy used a hunting knife to cut the impaled, foot-long  snake along its 
elongated belly, as the serpent thrashed wildly. Lenny was too  young to 
feel real empathy for the creature, but something felt wrong about it.  He was 
scared by what he was witnessing. Mark, on the other hand, didn’t show  any 
reaction, other than emotionless interest in the procedure.  The knife cut 
just deeply enough to  sever the skin, without damaging the internal organs. 
The snake-skin was splayed  out to either side and nailed to the splintery 
banister.  The animal made no sound as it squirmed  crazily. Its heart could 
be seen beating, which Georgy pointed out with a  self-satisfied, tutorial 
air.  When  he finished giving his lecture, he walked off into the fields 
surrounding his  ugly house, while Lenny watched the snake slowly becoming 
motionless, its  impaled body stretched over the now bloody banister.  
Lenny saw Mark follow Georgy into the vacant lots. He did  not want to look 
at the snake any more, so he turned and walked back to his own  house, 
where he could look at the pictures in his Donald Duck comic  book. 
It wasn’t the first time he had seen bloody violence  perpetrated on 
helpless animals. When he was younger and lived in a house on the  border of a 
swatch of woodland, he once watched a white chicken tied upside down  while 
blood dripped out of its slit neck. The sight of its attempts to flap away  
from its tethering post was not a pleasant sensation. But the young boy did not 
 understand what he was feeling. Neither enculturation nor brain 
development was  adequate to give him a clear sense of revulsion or sympathy.  
Once, he watched Tommy, a slightly older boy, beat a box  turtle to death 
with a bat.  The boy  laughed as he swung the bat over and over again, his 
face turning red as blood  oozed out of the turtle’s shell, and its head 
lolling senselessly. Lenny could  not understand that either. He never sought the 
company of Tommy again after  that, but he could not have explained why 
this was so. 
He was not innocent of cruel acts himself. When but a  toddler, playing in 
the park’s community sandbox, he delighted in burying  scurrying ants under 
handfuls of dry sand, watching their tiny antennae popping  up through the 
surface, as they dug their way out to hurry along their way; no  matter that 
he entombed the same ant time after time. They were animated toys  whose 
feelings he did not understand, nor care to.  For that matter, he had little  
understanding of his own feelings. Feelings for him were only of the 
immediate  present and purely egocentric.  When  he was old enough to play with 
five-and-dime-store punks, he enjoyed touching  ants with the red hot tip of the 
burning incense stick. The touched part of the  ant shriveled and melted 
under the glowing tip, while the rest of the creature  tried to keep going. It 
never occurred to him that pain was part of the  experience. Strangely 
enough, he had lots of sympathy for Black Beauty, the  horse. But in the story, 
Black Beauty could talk and eloquently express his  feelings. He had lots of 
empathy for poor puppies who were tied up and left to  be by themselves. 
The whining sounds they made were unmistakably the sound of  crying. He knew 
exactly how they felt, because he felt the same way sometimes.  Ants made no 
sound. They did not communicate. They just kept going until they  were 
broken and couldn’t move anymore, or were all burnt up. 
Now that he was a little older, his feelings were more  complex, as was the 
world in general. Snakes were no longer interesting toys. He  didn’t know 
what they were, but watching Georgy treat that snake as a thing  didn’t 
harmonize with his growing sensibilities. 
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