Sheep and Wolves (2 page)

Better to just make the best of a ridiculous situation.

It’s eight o’clock, and Snow’s off work. I’ll call her.

“I’m not going to be able to make it tonight,” I say. “I got called into work.”

“Shit,” she says. “When does it start?”

“I’m here right now actually. It’s OK that I’m talking with you though. My client’s gone.”

“Why’s he gone?”

“She. It doesn’t really matter. I’d invite you over, but it’s against the rules.”

“I know.”

“I know you know. I wanted to say it anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“Can we have a phone date instead?”

“Yeah. Let me drive home first. I don’t have one of those handless phone sets and I don’t want to drive with one hand in the crap-mobile.”

We say goodbye, and I’m alone with the doll again.

My heart beats fast and I don’t feel cold at all. Even after all this time, Snow still makes me feel nervous and excited.

The first time I met Snow, the nervousness I felt wasn’t so heavenly. She was one of my first clients, and I remember the way she touched my arm, comforting me. Even though I was there to comfort her.

She told me how thankful she was that her parents hadn’t mutilated her body as a baby. But she was afraid. She hadn’t told any of her friends that she was an intersexual. And she’d never shown her naked adult body to anyone but her doctor.

Then she showed me.

I didn’t have to look past her large clitoris and pretend that she was beautiful. She was. Is. Mind, body, heart and soul.

I glance at my wrist, but I left my watch at home. No matter. Fifteen minutes until she calls. In the meantime, I can entertain myself by clicking my teeth together in time to the music in my head.

Click click click…

Click click click…

I hate this song.

Click click click…

The doll lifts her arm. Slowly, trembling.

Instantly, I know that Valerie Trum is a cruel woman who’s trying to scare me.

Instantly, I’m clutching the chair, holding my breath.

The doll waves at me.

One of my hands relaxes, as if I’m going to release the arm rest and wave back. I sniff my glove instead.

The moment her arm drops, I stand. I try to focus on the chill slithering up and down my neck, but it’s not enough.

I step forward and don’t see any strings.

I reach inside the cage through the bars, because I don’t have the key to the lock on the door.

She has to be mechanized. I need to touch her to find out.

I wrap my gloved hand around her and squeeze.

Nothing but fluff.

When I release her, she falls off the perch. I’m afraid she’s going to jump back up and lunge for my face, but she only lays there.

*

I scream a little when the phone rings.

We greet each other with the usual routine, then move on.

“So you’re just sitting around staring at the wall?” Snow says, laughing.

I wince. “Not exactly. Snow, I’m not…doing very well right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I think I’m losing it. My mind, I guess.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

I shake my head, though I know she can’t see that.

Snow reveals everything. My clients reveal everything. But me, I like to hide. It’s a good thing Snow doesn’t hate cowards.

“I don’t think you’re losing your mind,” she says. “I think you’re starting to deal with something that you haven’t dealt with yet.”

She’s right. Before I can stop them, the words claw their way out of me. “I watched my client eat his own finger.”

Silence. Then, “Why did you do that?”

“Because he paid me to.”

She’s silent again, and I can’t hear anything else. “You have more than enough money,” she says. “There’s another reason.”

I search the room. I even search the doll’s black button eyes. Nothing.

“Jesus, Sebastian. Are you really such a stranger to yourself? You watched him eat his finger because you’re a caring person. You didn’t want him to feel ashamed anymore.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t care about my clients. You’re the only one—”

“You care.”

I don’t say anything for way too long.

“Call me back when you’re ready to talk again,” she says.

We end the conversation with the usual routine, then move on.

For me, that means watching the doll until I’m convinced that I didn’t see what I saw.

*

I hear footsteps. Valerie Trum must be back to see how shook up I am because of her little trick. She’ll probably laugh. She might even explain to me how she did it if I smile enough.

But no, the young woman who enters isn’t Valerie Trum.

She sits on the floor, holding a bottle in her hands. She looks like she might start crying.

“Hello?” I say. “I’m a friend of Valerie.”

She unscrews the top, and dumps a heap of blue pills onto the floor.

Now she does start crying.

No, that’s not her.

The sound’s coming from under the bed.

I step closer to the young woman. “Are you alright?”

A head slides out from under the bed and the crying consumes the room. Her body continues to wriggle across the floor until she’s lying right beside me. The middle-aged woman runs a razor blade down the middle of her face.

The young sitting woman swallows the pills, handful after handful.

“Stop!” I say.

Watching isn’t enough. I need to do something.

I reach down to grab the young woman’s arm, and then I’m remembering a pink bedroom and a man named Uncle Daniel and—

I race for the door. It closes. Fast.

As soon as I turn around, another woman vomits on the floor right by my feet. I step over the mess, and face the wall. The orange sheet of paper in my pocket soon gives me Valerie Trum’s cell phone number, and I call.

“What’s going on here?” I say.

“You don’t have to talk so loud,” she says.

“What’s going on here, Valerie?” I say, even louder.

“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “All I know is that she wanted a man. I hope you survive. You seem like a nice enough guy.” With that, she hangs up. By the time I think of calling Snow, I’ve already thrown my phone against the wall and broken the damn thing in two.

The room roars with the chaos of women squirming, struggling, crying.

They’re everywhere.

Cutting themselves, killing themselves.

Again and again and again.

The window slips open, and a flock of magazines fly inside. They cover the floor. They cover the walls. Maybe the ceiling, but I don’t look up. They show me models and actresses and they’re all screaming, tearing at their pages with bloody fingers. Trapped.

The women in the room don’t stop suffering. No matter the fierceness of my commands. No matter how much they die.

Every time one of them passes through me, I feel them inside. Mind, body, heart and soul. I scramble around, jumping and spinning, trying to keep from being touched. From being violated. But it doesn’t do any good.

I remember.

I remember the animals I saw in the popcorn ceiling above my bed and wishing that they would come alive and save me or eat me, and I remember how it felt when he ravaged my hymen and called me his sweet princess, and I remember the agony I felt every time my husband used me because they circumcised me as a baby, and I remember more and more until I collapse.

Everyone bends and funnels into the bird cage.

Silence again.

I try to stand, and by the third try I get to my feet.

I approach the cage.

The rag doll’s standing on the perch, arms at her sides. She’s trembling, and I’m sure this has nothing to do with weakness.

She’s giving me that look.

She’s waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She shudders even more. Obviously she’s not looking for an apology.

I consider walking away right now and spending the rest of my life trying to forget this ever happened. But the truth is, Snow was right. I do care about my clients.

This world, this system we live in, it doesn’t treat my clients very well, and watching isn’t enough.

Even after what this doll put me through, I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. She does. She’s charged with the energy of pain that I see oozing out my clients every day, in their blood, their semen, their shit.

The doll’s charged up, and I think she’s willing to do something about it.

If she’s going to assassinate those who abuse power or lead a peaceful revolution, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. She can’t sit back and watch these tragedies go on anymore. Anyway, the lock’s already disappeared.

I open the cage.

Nightmare Man

They call it postdormital paralysis with hypnopompic hallucinations.

I call it hell.

You open your eyes, and you think you’re awake. But the room wheezes. A chthonic force seizes you, squeezing your chest, while a stark sonorous voice says, “You are doomed.”

You are doomed.

Fear splatters against your skin and wiggles deep inside your gaping pores. Go ahead, toss and turn. Scream all you want. Until the presence absconds from your room, you’re helpless. No one’s going to save you.

The clock on the wall may say only 30 seconds have passed, but you know better.

Some moments last an eternity.

When this one ends, I’m free again. Free of the presence at least. I feel so much better than I did only seconds before, I should be celebrating. Dancing for joy.

Instead, I pop another pill. And another. This is my pathetic attempt at revenge.

“Take that,” I think.

But deep down, I know he’s laughing at me. He’s saying, “You think you can harrow hell? I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He will.

Years ago, he only came once every few months. Then every few weeks. Days. Now, a night doesn’t go by without an assault.

Yeah, I hate it. I hate him. But don’t get me wrong. If the medication actually worked, I’d have never stopped taking it.

There are so many ways.

Sex, drugs, food.

Work, relationships, TV.

Talking, bathing, drawing the curtains and looking out the window.

When people say, “Get a life,” what they usually mean is, “Drown out the screaming of your heart like I do, then we can be friends.”

I refuse.

So I’m in my room, lying on my cot with my arms at my sides. Shapes coalesce in the popcorn ceiling. The trick isn’t to stop seeing them. It’s to ignore them without looking away.

My phone rings. For the first time in a very long while.

Sure, I could have disconnected the line years ago, but knowing that I’m not receiving any calls is just as important as the silence itself.

“Hello?” I say, barely.

“Tomas,” he says. “It’s Nabelung.”

“Nabe,” I say, and a hunk of slime leaps out of my throat onto my bare leg. It oozes toward my sheets.

“I’m sorry we haven’t kept in touch, Tomas. You were always a good friend.”

“No I wasn’t.”

He laughs a little, though I’m sure he knows I’m not joking. Then his voice gets serious. “Richard gave me your number. He told me what happened. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I say, and barely mean it.

He’s silent for a while. “This is going to sound strange. Well…it is strange. I know that. Especially coming from me. I was always such a skeptic.”

“I never thought of you that way.” My deep-seated spittle gently touches the fabric. “You believe in God.”

“Yes, but in a regimented sort of way. That’s not the point here, Tomas. I have a message for you. From a woman named Jade. She’s been trying to contact you, but she can’t get through.”

The thought of a mysterious woman thinking about me makes me want to vomit. And her name, it almost brings me to tears. “I don’t know anyone named Jade.”

“You don’t know her. She knows you. She says she wants you as her…well…she uses the word servant. I don’t like the connotations of that word.”

“What?”

“She told me if I didn’t act as your invitation, she’d never stop bothering me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“She says in order to see her, you need to eat a peanut.”

“Salted or unsalted?” This is more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything. I used to joke around about everything, before I had nothing.

“She didn’t specify that,” he says. “But it has to look like a human face. Someone you know. She says you’ll know it when you see it.”

We’re both silent for a while, he and I. It’s very loud.

“That’s about all I know,” he says. “You can do with this what you want. I’ve done my part, so it’s over for me now. Thank you for listening.”

“Yeah.”

“It was good speaking with you again, Tomas. I hope everything works out for the best. Goodbye.”

He hangs up before I have the chance to speak. Before I can say something that I’ll regret. He does this out of courtesy to me.

*

“Goodbye,” I say.

They call them peanuts.

I call them indehiscent legumes that can fix atmospheric nitrogen and reduce the risk of heart disease.

Vitamin E, fiber, protein.

Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat.

Zinc, niacin, thiamin, manganese, folic acid, copper, phosphorous.

It used to be my job to know all this.

Now, the information buzzes in my mind and I swat it away. Unsalted peanuts are a part of my daily dinner plan. This one looks a little like standup comic Jim Gaffigan. He was one of my favorites back when I watched television and went to comedy clubs and combed my hair.

Years ago, I would have laughed. I would have shown it around like a trophy or a scar.

Now, I eat it. I crunch the miracle a few times, then swallow. Not because I want to see Jade. But because I refuse to believe in the power of a single peanut.

The old me would have believed. Or at least he would’ve wanted to. The old me believed that flax seed could cure cancer and that AIDS wasn’t caused by a virus. He slid pamphlets under the doorways of unsuspecting strangers. He even hosted parties where he helped people to bend spoons with the power of their mind.

This was me.