Mask of Flies (4 page)

“That sounds like it
could be fun—it would be interesting to see what’s passing for
art nowadays. If you take me, I’ll treat you to the biggest,
greasiest burger that we can find. You might even get desert.”

“I think I could use
a taste of something sweet after the day I had.” Rick proceeded to
tell her about the Jane—after they finished eating, to spare
Allie’s appetite. It was a good thing he waited: the color drained
out of Allie’s face after he described his new patient.

It was about 9 pm when
they finished. Allie took Rick by the hand and led him to the hallway
leading to the bedroom.

“Shhhhh, don’t wake
up your folks,” Rick said. He crept awkwardly down a hall, and when
he turned, he put his index finger to his lips. But Allie grabbed it
and twisted it a back a bit. Her assertiveness turned him on a bit,
but scared him at the same time.

“Ain’t no folks in
this house but me and you, big boy,” Allie said. A tumble of black
wavy hair swept across her eyes. She pressed against him wearing her
business attire: light khaki slacks, and a tight blouse that hugged
each breast. The outfit was a tactical weapon.

Rick twisted his
trapped hand away lightly and pulled her hips towards his. “Talking
medicine all day to those stiff suites got you all fired up don’t
it? Well, I’ll let you take it out on me this once.” He leaned
down to kiss her, his back against the hallway wall.

Allie obliged, and then
pulled herself away, leading Rick by the hand into the bedroom. She
moved with the grace of silk poured against a breeze, her body still
had the vitality of a woman in her twenties.

He nodded in approval,
as she leaned over the nightstand and lit a candle.

“Are you going to
just stand there staring, or are you coming to tuck me in?” Allie
asked, unbuttoning her blouse and tilting her head.

He walked over to her
and loosened the few remaining buttons on her shirt, exposing her
olive skin. She lay on the bed and pulled down her khaki’s,
exposing black lace panties that matched her bra. He disrobed and
stood at edge of the bed, enjoying the view.

“What do you think
you are looking at?” Allie said, grinning.

“My beautiful
girlfriend . . . I wish I had a picture of you just like that . . .
would make one hell of a Christmas card.” He climbed onto the bed,
over Allie and kissed her lips. She responded by pushing the tip of
her tongue into his mouth.

Grinding her with his
briefs still on, Rick felt the blood rush below. Her tight, toned
body was difficult to handle at times: her breasts were pushed up by
the lacy bra, the striations of her stomach muscles writhed in
response to Rick’s imposition; he had to take it slow.

As he undid her bra,
she arched her back in acquiescence. He pulled off his briefs, and
moved her lace panties over, and ran his fingers up the warm, wet
skin. He moved them in a circular motion, and slid his index finger
inside of her. Her hips pushed up, and she moaned softly.

“Are you going to
tease me all night, or are we going to get down to business?” Allie
pulled Rick by the crook of his elbow towards her.

Rick introduced himself
inside her slowly, keeping her panties pulled to the side.
Self-preservation through the first few moments was critical. Allie
was by far the most attractive woman Rick has ever been with and it
was a challenge to contain himself each time, even after the five
years. He always felt like he had to prove his worth.

After a few slow
thrusts, the sensation for immediate release dissipated, and he began
to find his rhythm. He tried to think of something else to keep him
from slipping into the danger zone: wool socks, flu shots, yard work,
but his thoughts slipped to last week, when he and Allie attended a
dinner for a retiring sales rep at her company. Allie introduced him
to one of the younger guys she worked with, a stud in his suit and
slicked back hair. Rick caught him looking at Allie’s ass as they
walked away.

Rick’s thrust
increased in intensity and became almost violent. Allie responded
with a loud “Yes.” She began to tense up and gasp wordlessly:
Rick usually had to work pretty hard to get Allie to this point.
Anger blossomed from inside of him, he wanted to hurt her a little,
wanted to turn her beauty against her. He reached over to the night
stand and took the lit candle and drizzled hot wax on her right
nipple. Gasping in pain then pleasure, Allie upraised her hips,
taking all of Rick into her. Inside, he felt her tighten around him,
and she wailed in an uncontrolled throe that indicated submission.

Tonight, submission
wasn’t enough. He wanted to tip the scale in his favor, to not
tread water, just this one night. When Allie settled back into her
senses, he slowly escalated his thrusts, and reached down, ripping
her panties off. He grabbed both of her ass cheeks, massaging them
roughly, and buried himself deep inside her. Her nails dug into his
shoulder blades, and every muscle in her body tightened. When she
cried his name, Rick could no longer deny release. The precognition
of the ultra-intense bordered frightening. His body shuddered,
staggered; his mind pummeled with dopamine into a plane of
nonexistence.

The screen door
slammed shut behind Rick and hit his heel, pushing him forward into
the black, frozen morning. He almost dropped his bag lunch into the
grey slush snow that covered the driveway. Cold air burned his lungs
and hardened the snot in his nose, occurrences indicative of sub-zero
temperatures. On his coat sleeve, he spotted a long black hair. He
pulled it off and couldn’t help but to smile.

Rick had almost
forgotten that Haynes ordered him to report in at 4:00am sharp, to
perform the Summer Hall rounds early. Haynes scheduled Rick to attend
the auditor for the remainder of the afternoon. The order slipped
Rick’s mind until he was ready to close his eyes for the night.

The upturned collar of
Rick’s pea coat did little to protect his face from the wind
propelled snow—it seemed to adjust its trajectory to attack his
exposed areas. He reached into his pocket with his free hand.
Left
my damn cap at work again. Off to a great start.

Rick didn’t get to
sleep until after midnight: his hands were full with Allie, or
perhaps it was the other way around. Apparently, both had stress to
relieve. The interchange started as normal, lethargic, Monday night
sex, but the session turned into a contentious romp that lasted into
the depths of the night.

The fifteen year old
Camry bellowed out a cloud of exhaust into the frigid atmosphere;
Rick had run outside to start the engine before his morning
rituals—the worst part of waking up. He shook his head, eyeballing
the deep rust around the Camry’s wheel well. The Buffalo winters
had brutalized the car. Over the years, the heavily salted roads ate
through the thin metallic body. He wiped caked ice off the windshield
quickly with his bare hand, and hopped into the car.

Normally, the old piece
had to be warmed up 30 minutes in subzero temperatures, for the
heater to provide adequate relief from the cold, but this morning
Rick was running short on time. Cold air rushed out the vents and
sent a wicked shiver up his spine. He had persevered through the
Buffalo winters for all of his 37 years of life, but this morning it
was getting the better of him. A homogenous rock tune played on the
radio. He slammed the power button off and embarked on the short
drive to the Oak Leaf Retirement Community.

Who the hell listens to this
bloodless crap?

In the dark morning,
the Oak Leaf Retirement Complex was an imposing structure: the
building’s jutting bay windows and steep angled eaves, combined
with the ruddy light cast from the inside-out, reminded Rick of a
Jack ‘O’ Lantern with a perverse grin.

A hulking Queen Anne
built in the 1890’s, the complex initially functioned as an
all-girl, Catholic boarding school. New York State bought the
building from the school in the late 50’s when enrolment dropped.
The state utilized the building for various functions: from village
administration services to serving as a center housing the
developmentally disabled. In 1982, a motion by the state to ramp up
retirement facilities in the area passed. The future projection of
the demand for elderly housing far outmoded The Village of
Williamsville’s available resources, so the state converted the
faceless building into Oak Leaf Retirement Community—a benign name
for a place to die.

The antiquarian appeal
of the building resonated with the village’s aging population. Oak
Leaf became one of the premier homes in the area. Four cylindrical
towers, topped with shingled turrets embellished the ornate, all-wood
structure. State funding to revamp the facility allowed for the
construction of a Corinthian columned porch that ran around the
entire east side of the original facility, now a favorite locale for
some of the more active residents. An annex extended the main lobby
and housed the administrative offices. A rear annex added storage
that accessed each of the patient hallways. To preserve the
historical integrity of the facility, the new additions where
constructed with in the same complex Victorian stylization as the
original building.

Rick tried guesstimate
the amount of tax dollars dumped into the place every time he pulled
into work. He parked his car and double timed it into the facility to
warm his cold bones. Stopping at the ancient time clock, he punched
in and headed to the supply area to stock his cart for his rounds. He
passed the manager’s office and saw Steve, Tony’s nightshift
counterpart, with his feet propped up on the desk, watching a
handheld television. This morning Rick crossed the office’s line of
sight undetected.

With the roll around
cart stocked, Rick made his way over to his first, and most difficult
patient’s room: Will Samuelsson.
Will
is not going to be happy.

“What the hell are
you doing here so early?” Will sat up in his bed, working a
crossword puzzle. His bifocals magnified his eyes to nearly triple
their normal size.

“Jim wanted me to get
an early start today to prepare for an auditor coming from the city.
I gotta’ take your vitals—your blood pressure has been a little
high, you stressed out?”

Will was quite healthy.
He was only placed in Summer Hall for going fisticuffs with another
resident over a flirt named Ethel. He apparently knocked the other
man’s dentures clear across the activity room with a left hook.
Rick simply dropped in to keep him company a few times a day.

“Nah, just going stir
crazy in this hallway. There’s no eye candy over here, unless you
prefer the corpse look. That new one down the hall is quite a looker
huh?”

Will was 88, but he
looked beyond ancient lying in the bed. Rick knew, contrary to his
haggard appearance, Will was spry as a tree-climbin’ Chinaman—as
Will would put it—powered by the unknown force utilized by the
busybodies of this world. Rick could only imagine what the man was
like in his 20’s. But, now, old Will’s appearance was akin to a
Shar Pei: his wrinkled skin forced an expression that was seemingly
brought about by a perpetual sour taste in his mouth. He had to be
careful not to think of this when in Will’s presence, or he would
have a laughing fit in front of him. However, this characteristic
made Will’s wry humor substantially more palatable; Rick had once
described Will to Allie as Gilbert Godfrey’s Grandfather.

Will held his boney arm
out to the BP cuff. “Why the long face? Did somebody piss in your
Raisin Bran this morning? I remember when I was your age; I was
chasing skirts, runnin’ all around town. After getting out of the
shit, I deserved to enjoy myself . . . So what’s the matter, your
old lady not taking care of you?”

When bombarded by
Will’s usual rhetorical questioning, Rick tried to answer the most
offensive question in a civil fashion, which more often than not,
quelled the old man’s outbursts. “She is taking good care of
me—thanks for asking. One-twenty-five over eighty five, not too bad
. . . It’s just too early in the morning is all.”

“We all have our
days, but it sounds to me that you don’t have any justification for
acting all pissy to a beat up old man like me. You got time on your
side boy. Lighten up and enjoy what good days you have left.”

“Sound advice, I
apologize. I will swing by later and pick up a game of Chess.” Will
Sammy was a decent Chess player that enjoyed competition. He made the
mistake of letting Will win once, and the old man caught on to it,
and gave him hell for it over a month.

“Alright, you lose
the shitty attitude, or I’ll play with Marco instead.”

The remainder of the
rounds didn’t go as smoothly: Millie forgot where she was and
defecated in her closet; James Fergusson hacked up what appeared to
be a piece of his lung into his bedpan; and Mr. Haynes was making his
presence known by peering down Summer hall, tapping on his watch
every ten minutes.

Finishing the usual
rooms, he knew it was time to see the Jane. After a few steps down
the hall, Mr. Haynes’s bald head and mustache popped out from
around the corner of the head of the hallway. “Rick, you’re
running behind schedule. The auditor is on the way right now. Let’s
get our Jane cleaned up as soon as possible,” Haynes said.

“Don’t worry, sir;
I was just heading that way now.”
Smarmy
suit, go have a seat in your big leather chair while I do all the
dirty work,
Rick cracked a sideways smile.

“Alright, get to it
then, double time.”

He parked the roll-away
next to room 137 and knocked on the door, but didn’t bother to
announce himself. The Jane had been unresponsive the day prior, the
effort would be futile. He found her turned, facing the wall,
allowing him a few extra seconds of normality. He lightly tapped her
on the shoulder, making her aware of his presence, and to his
surprise, she rolled on her back and looked at him with that furious
red eye. He stepped away, and her gaze drifted over to the wall after
a few seconds. Then, he proceeded to remove the woman’s overflowing
undergarments; it was obvious that nobody checked on her during
nightshift.