Harrowing (25 page)

Two days dragged into three. Three days without water.

Romeo lay next to me, as exhausted as I was. Neither of us spoke much anymore. I dragged myself to his side and cradled his head in my arms. At least we’d die in each other’s arms.

“Mami, tell me about Daddy. Please,” Romeo used some of his last strength to whisper. “Remember, you promised me you’d tell me about him.”

I hugged him as close as I could.

“You’re my miracle child.”

The words were barely audible. But Romeo was so close he could even hear my heart beating, still pumping away valiantly in spite of the lack of salts or proteins or whatever it was that hearts need to keep going.

I took a deep breath.

“Your father and I loved each other very much,” I began. “I don’t know, if he were alive today, if we’d still be together. I like to think that we would. That he was the love of my life. The one right man for me.”

Calvin’s laughing countenance sprang to my mind and floated before me, almost as real as if it were actually there. I wondered if I was hallucinating.

“Or perhaps there is indeed more than one right man or woman for every person. And it’s just a matter of time. One time in life is right for one man, and another is for you to be with another.”

Romeo smiled wanly.

“We loved each other very much. And we loved
you.
We wanted a baby more than anything in the whole wide world. More than cars, or a big house or a holiday in the Caribbean. All we wanted was a sweet little Romeo or Romea to hug and kiss and play with every day.

“We were the two happiest people in the world when I found out I was pregnant. We’d prepared a room for you, all painted cream, because we didn’t know if you’d be a boy or a girl. Eli’s parents were crazy about you. With their love and care they tried to make up for the parents that I didn’t have. No one could have been happier, and no baby more desired in the world.”

“Mami, what happened to the grandma and grandpa? My daddy’s parents?” Romeo broke in.

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry, but they blamed
me
for the death of their only son. They couldn’t stand to be near me after he died.”

Romeo’s face fell.

“How can anyone be so cruel?” he said. “How could Daddy’s death have been your fault? You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just chance. Bad luck.”

I patted his arm and hugged him close again.

“Just let me continue,” I said. “One day – I remember it was a radiantly beautiful morning in May, when the birds were finally starting to arrive from the south, and the flowers were blooming at last. That day your daddy and I decided to go for a walk about town. I wasn’t up to walks every day. Sometimes my back hurt. But that day I was feeling up and full of energy. So we thought we’d go for a walk, for some pastries, maybe. Get out of our part of town.

“We went walking downtown, on the east side, a bit off the financial district. We didn’t often go there. I don’t know why, I guess it just wasn’t on our radar normally. A sudden rainstorm caught us off guard, and we ducked into a doorway to take shelter. It didn’t last long, but when it had passed, all the streets were deserted.

“We dashed out, laughing as we jumped into all the puddles. I held your daddy close and smelt his cologne and after-shave. I was used to smelling it every day, but I never got tired of sniffing it on him. It was
him.
It was
his
fragrance.”

“What did he wear?” Romeo asked quietly.

“Old Spice. One of the things I’m glad about is that Calvin doesn’t use that brand. I could never stand to smell it on anyone else again. It belonged to your father. Only your father.

“I hugged his arm, and we started pacing the empty streets, laughing and joking. Somehow I ended up turning into a sleazy alleyway. I don’t even know how it happened. One minute we were on a main street, chatting up a storm. And the next, there we were, someplace shady. Even today I still don’t know how we ended up in there. What got into me, to make me lead Eli to that nefarious place. Eli’s parents say it was my fault. If only I’d been paying attention...

“We heard loud voices ahead of us. People swearing. Angry screams. We should have hightailed it out of there. Every instinct was screaming at me to leave. To just get the hell out of there as fast as we could run.

“But I just had to be brave. I had to prove to everyone, including your daddy, that I wasn’t scared of anything. ‘I’m not going to run, just because those people sound mean,’ I remember telling him. ‘I can stand up to them. I can stand up to anyone. We can’t live our lives ruled by fear.’

“‘Fear no. But maybe prudence...’ I remember your daddy replied. It was the last thing he ever said to me.

“As we rounded a corner in the alleyway, they confronted us. Five huge, burly beasts. Well, they weren’t beasts, they were men. And they weren’t that burly or massive. But that’s just how I remember it.

“I remember I just froze and pressed my arms against you, my baby. I couldn’t let anything happen to you. It never even occurred to me that anything could happen to your daddy.

“Three of them went after your daddy, and two of them for me. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been pregnant, I could have done something. But my only objective was... well, protecting
you!
It was the only thing I could think of.

“The two of them approached me, one from each side. All I did was stand there like an idiot, and wrap my arms about you. Around what would one day be you, my honey pops, the little struggling life inside me. I couldn’t move a muscle. They crept up to me, like hyenas approaching a female in heat, and reached towards my tummy. Towards
you.
I tried to spin away, keep you safe. And one of them pounced and grabbed me from behind in a stranglehold and lifted me off my feet. You know how tiny I am.

“Well you just can’t imagine how I kicked and battered away at him with my feet. But it was all over in one instant. I was out in a flash.

“I remember, when I awoke, I was completely oblivious to the fact that anything had happened at all. I felt an absolute peace surrounding me, as if I were living some sort of bloody mystical experience. It felt like I was floating in a pool of warm water. Like I myself, like you, had returned to the womb. Warm sunlight beat over me. I felt good.”

Tears began to slide down my cheeks from underneath my closed lids, in spite of the years that had passed since this had happened.

“I betrayed your daddy. I felt
good
while he was breathing his last in a pool of blood.”

Romeo squeezed my hand.

“You didn’t know, Mami,” he said, with a wisdom far beyond his years.

I smiled faintly at him, then continued.

“I opened my eyes, and I saw the sky above me. After the initial shock, it occurred to me that I’d probably gone with your daddy to a park, lain down on the grass and fallen asleep. During my pregnancy, we’d often go to explore different parks around the city. Even though I’ve lived here all my life, there were still so many remote and reclusive corners I’d never discovered before.

“I pushed myself up onto my elbows, and the world began to spin and dip about me. Instead of the sun-drenched grass and idle birds that make up a park, I saw nothing but trash bins and fire escape ladders covered with rust. Seedy buildings decaying with mould and pollution-tainted moss.

“I glanced down at myself in surprise. Found I was lying in a deep pool of muddy water left over from the storm that had just passed. I pressed my hands dripping with mud over you, I began stroking you hard. All of a sudden I remembered what had happened. I remembered those burly men. I remembered them reaching for you with their vicious claws. With their tainted, filthy tentacles. With the sneer in their eyes and on their lips.

“I looked around and I saw my purse nearby. I picked it up in a daze, shock starting to overwhelm me by then. I know I should have thought about your daddy, worried about him. But all my thoughts were only upon
you.

“I stumbled to my feet, nearly losing my balance because I was quite far along with you. I was covered with slime and sludge from head to toe, my embroidered white blouse was plastered against me with mud and water but I couldn’t feel a thing. The only thing I was aware of was your own little footprints against my insides. Your reassuring patterings against me, letting me know that you were still alive and kicking and no force on earth was ever, ever going to beat you. That you were meant to be born, no matter what.

“Just as now you will make it too, Romeo. Never stop believing that. You’re a survivor. You were meant to
live.
”

I stopped to catch my breath. My breath came in much shorter spurts now, and I was starting to feel dizzy. I reached out and grabbed Romeo’s hands in mine with a death grip.

I took a deep breath and pushed on, doggedly.

“At first, I’m ashamed to admit, I didn’t even think about your daddy. I began pacing up and down the alleyway talking to you. ‘Don’t go, little baby. Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me. Stay by my side forever,’ I whispered to you without stopping, over and over again.

“But then, suddenly, I don’t know why, my gaze was attracted to something sticking out from behind a rubbish container. Something that looked a bit like a foot wrapped in a dirty sock. I don’t know. I approached it. I went near it. I followed the foot up to the ankle. The ankle to the leg. And then...”

I buried my face against Romeo as if suddenly he had turned into the father, and I into the helpless, bereft child. My eyes smarted, burnt and stung with the agonizing desire to weep, but there was no water left inside me.

“And then, it was your daddy, Romeo,” I concluded in a tiny little voice. “I knelt beside him, but... but, there was no pulse. There was no...”

I swallowed. I had hardly any saliva left to swallow.

“I grasped him in my arms and rocked him. I just couldn’t let go of him.”

My shoulder was bruised and it was all the fault of that blasted little vixen. And to top it off, the worst humiliation: she’d stolen my car to boot. I wasn’t worried about it, oh no. I knew she wasn’t taking it for a joy ride. And I knew, sooner or later, her footsteps (or rather, her free ride in
my
car) would lead her back to my place at Bedford Park.

But in the meantime, I was left high and dry without wheels, way out in the boonies. What a life. What a mess.

I considered calling Sandy up and asking her to come and get me. But I imagined she’d probably have her hands full with that hyperactive, smart-alec brat.

Yep, Sandy definitely had her uses. That was why I deigned to work with someone as dull as her to begin with. With her simpering obsequiousness and her eagerness to please, she would have done anything under the sun that I ordered her to. Hell, she’d lick the soles of my shoes if I asked her to do it. I rubbed my hands together.

Yes, Sandy did deserve a slightly more special place in the new world order. When I’d established my own governing body over society, I’d grant her something a bit more exalted. A higher position in the government, perhaps. Say, head of my kitchens, for example.

I went into the house. I’d call a taxi. Yes, that’s what I would do. But I could just fancy a taxi from here to the centre of town would probably cost a fortune. Maybe I could just catch one up to the nearest subway station.

It would probably take ages for me to get there. But ages was better than spending the rest of my life sitting out here in the outback twiddling my thumbs.

I flipped on my cordless phone, strolled with it out onto the porch. I was about to dial the number, but then, something caught my eye. Some furtive movement, out there in the bushes.

That was weird. Usually
I
was the only way who made furtive movements in the bushes.

I waited, but nothing else happened. It was just my nerves, of course. All this fuss and row and running about was getting to me. Holding someone hostage in my cellar wasn’t something I did every day, after all. My nerves were just frayed, that was all.

A fleeting image of a dead cat in a plastic bag, squirting me with liquefied innards, flashed for an instant into my mind. I shuddered. But that didn’t mean anything. Nothing had happened in the end. At any rate, it wasn’t any worse than what
I
had done to
her.

I flipped on my cordless phone again. And then, the next thing I knew, something dark and fuzzy had found its way from behind me into my mouth and nose, pressing down hard against me, cutting off my respiration. I struggled instinctively, tried to turn around and see what was happening.

Another cloth clamped itself over my eyes, tied itself into a knot behind my head. As I battered with my hands to free myself, a bolt of white electricity arced through me. My head exploded into unbearable pain, followed by utter blackness.

*

I woke up. I felt like I’d just come out of a nap.

Except I never napped sitting up in a hard wooden chair with my stilty legs cramped into a minuscule space underneath me.

I tried to lift my head. The insides of my head were pounding as if someone had turned my head into a drum and was playing heavy metal on it. As if someone was bludgeoning me right now this very minute with a baseball bat.

I took a deep breath. Ropes gouged into my chest, constricting my lungs. I raised my head. To my relief, the blindfold had disappeared and I was able to have a good look around.

I was in some sort of cramped, rustic space, like a shed. With crooked wood panels for walls, with wide spaces between them that let the light pass through. The ground was dirt, unpaved. A series of empty wooden counters lined the walls, but there was nothing on them. I glanced up. One bare light bulb hung down.

I wondered who had done this to me. Who would
dare
touch Bruno Jarvas, the regional Vice President of a major corporation as important and international as Herbert and Mons?

I twisted my wrists behind my back, hoping the idiot who had done this to me wouldn’t have had enough wits to fashion a tight knot. But I was mistaken, of course. My wrists were tied so firmly not only was I unable to move them, the more I wriggled them, the more deeply the cords cut in, blocking off my circulation.

Well, there was nothing more to it but to sit here and wait. I imagined whoever had done this to me wouldn’t be able to resist eventually making himself known to me. I doubted it was his intention to just leave me here to fester away and die of hunger and thirst.

It took a while, but as I’d predicted, eventually he did show up. I heard the screech of tires as a car pulled up outside. Scuffling footsteps. A wail of protest. Then the door banged open. I blinked at the sudden onrush of sunlight, blinding me.

Someone dark and hazy dove through pushing an individual in ahead of him. I recovered my eyesight with painstaking slowness. Eventually succeeded in looking up. To my amazement, I found myself staring into the indignant and furious gaze of Sandy Bleckley. A dishevelled, deranged-looking Sandy trussed up with ropes like a turkey.

Our captor dragged Sandy over to my side and tossed her to the ground, where he secured her with more ropes to the legs of my chair. I had no idea how he’d got a hold of her but I imagined a Taser worked wonders on everyone.

I studied our captor with undisguised hatred. It was the most ordinary, unremarkable man I’d ever seen. Medium height and average weight, dressed in black from top to toe with his face concealed by a black balaclava that revealed only a set of deep brown eyes framed by lined lids with the hint of crow’s feet disappearing back into the headgear.

“Let us out of here, you stupid lout!” Sandy shrieked, battling against her bindings with rage. “Let us out right now or I’m suing you.”

Our captor ignored her completely, turning his full gaze entirely onto
me.

“You did what you did to our sweet little Annasuya Rose,” he said to me, his voice thickly muffled by coarse wool. “Now you’ll have to pay.”

I gulped.

“Pay?” I vociferated. “I did what was right. I was delivering my message to her.”

The significance of what he’d just said hit me all of a sudden. I squinted.

“How do you know what I did to Annasuya?” I asked. “And who are you? Why do you even care? She’s just one of thousands of unskilled office clerks in this city. What is she to you?”

My anonymous captor only grunted. He stepped out through the door, returning a minute later with a machete. He planted himself in front of me, his legs spread wide apart, and studied me over. My eyes must have been bulging out of my face as I stared at him in horror.

“So, where did you attack Annasuya Rose? What do people usually do when they rape someone?” He ploughed ahead with his plans without any compunction. He pointed at my crotch with the tip of his machete. “Is that what you used?”

He raised his weapon high over his head. I tried with all my might to skew myself to one side, straining against my bindings with greater terror than I’d ever felt in my entire life. What Brionna had done to me in the past struck me as mere child’s play compared to the carnage this ghastly being was apparently capable of wreaking on me.

“Wait!” I screamed. “Can we talk?”

I knew my words came out stilted, trite. Like in some B-grade trial video game that never made it out onto the market.

The man’s breath rasped in and out of him harshly. The thick wool sucked into his mouth as he spoke.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “You did what you did and it can’t be changed.”

He raised the machete again over his head. The grimy blade whirled dully in the bright sunlight, too smeared with dirt and rust to catch the glinting of the light. It was the last thing I saw before my world exploded into a miasma of excruciating agony that filled my entire being and hurled me plummeting into a deep pit of endless blackness.

After that, and until the moment I died, I enjoyed only sparse moments of coherent consciousness.

I was in a field covered with bobbing scarlet poppies, prancing with Brionna and all my childhood friends. Brionna was laughing, weaving a garland of daisies and dandelions to pose about my head.

“There, little Bruno. Now you will be king of the island,” she cried with a trilling giggle. Then she reached out and hugged me. “I love you, Bruno. I’ll always take care of you.”

My vision cleared, and I was glancing down at the gaping hole in my crotch. Blood spurted out of me as if I were a fire hose, pouring over the middle-aged hawk crouched at my feet – I couldn’t remember her name anymore. The agony was so excruciating, so immense, so unbearable, I nearly blacked out again.

Then I was alive and awake, dancing with my mother and Brionna in the field again. We linked our hands together and my mother began to sing Ring-Around-the-Rosie. I knew if the kids at school saw me doing this, playing these sissy girlie games with my family, they’d never let me see the end of it. But now I was alone here with the two people I loved most in the world. There was nothing shameful, nothing censurable, about enjoying the time of my life with my loved ones. My mother dropped her hands and grasped me in her arms.

“I love you, Bruno!” she shrieked. “I love you so much I want the whole world to hear about it.”

She threw her arms up wide into the air.

“I will always love you, little Bruno. Always protect you. With me by your side, you’ll always be safe. Always.”

I opened my eyes to blackness once again. My legs were bathed in warm blood and I was starting at last to feel numb. To enjoy respite from the racking agony in the end. All I wanted was to lay my head back and sleep forever. Succumb to oblivion and the sweetness of hell for the rest of eternity.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them I was in a black box. A black wooden box. I gazed out. My mother and Brionna, dressed in reams of trailing black lace with black flowers in their hair, carrying cups of pale-tinted bouquets, circled about me with their heads bowed low, tears dripping from their eyes. A parish priest approached them and laid one hand on each of their shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jarvas, Brionna. Your son died in disgrace, a contemptible rapist and sexual pervert. I’m afraid there will be no place in heaven for such a detestable being. But you can come with me and recite the Lord’s Prayer for his soul. May he one day, a thousand years from now, be granted the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord. For the Lord is bountiful and his mercy and forgiveness boundless and all-encompassing.”

He wrapped his arms around them, and they turned away from me and began to disappear from my sight.

I sat up in my coffin, a little boy dressed in scruffy blues.

“Momma?” I whispered. “Daddy? Brionna? Where are you?”

I looked about, but there was no one there.

“Momma? Brionna?”

My voice came out tinged with fear and desolation.

“Don’t leave me, Momma! Don’t stop loving me!”

My eyes tried to penetrate the impenetrable darkness around me. As my eyesight adjusted to the light, I could make out the bare, indistinct form of my anonymous aggressor, dressed in black. He was leaning over the hag at my feet.

“Now, Bruno’s out of the way, it’s your turn,” he mumbled almost incoherently through the masking wool.

The middle-aged vixen began to shake like a leaf.

My aggressor turned towards me.

“Not dead yet, Bruno?” There was a sneer in his voice.

He strode towards me, brandishing the machete once again. He lowered the tip of the machete, gouging away at the hole at the bottom of my abdomen. I thought I’d felt all the pain it was possible to feel in this world, but I was wrong. I screamed until I was hoarse as he began chipping away at my flesh some more. I felt like a barrel of blood with the bottom removed.

At last, mercifully, the light began to dim. Perhaps that’s a bit of a cliché phrase, but it really was how I experienced it. Everything simply began to flicker and waver, like a candle flame going out with painstaking sluggishness. An overwhelming exhaustion came over me and finally, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. There was still pain, throbbing away at the edges of my consciousness, dull, amorphous. But with each heartbeat the pain began to lessen.

I opened my eyes one final time. Brionna and my mother were floating in the air, smiling down at me. Brionna tossed another garland of roses over my head, and they both reached down towards me.

“Come home with us, li’l brother,” Brionna cried.

I reached for their arms and rose out of the sordidness and the living hell called Earth.

The last thing I saw, as I looked back over my shoulder, was my former nemesis carving great chunks of flesh out of that middle-aged hag I’d once referred to as Sandy.