The Devoted (7 page)

Last Day
– Matthew Thinking Back

After the rains were gone, He came to me. Said something that He’d never said before. Perhaps He’d said it to Jed, when Jed was second in charge, but Jed, the selfish fuck, wouldn’t have believed Him anyway.

But to me, He said He loved me.

And that was important. And it made me cry.

For my father never told me that. Nor my mom.

And Jolie had told me, but after she had, she’d said the saddest thing:

“But I have to say I’m not sure if I believe in love. I’m not saying that to hurt you, Matthew. I’m saying that because of...”

Tears.

“...my dad. What he did. It was too much. It was every day. And over and over. And he liked it too much. And the way he smiled.

“He broke my heart too many times.

“But whatever of my heart is left, I give to you.”

And I took that from her, I did – but it wasn’t enough.

Because I loved – love – her with colossal might.

And fuck her father, yes, but fuck her, too, a little bit. (Apologies for the word, given what he did.)

The Leader, though, what He said was pure. ‘Cause not only did He offer love, but He told me that He’d never, ever done so. Not in this way.

Not at this depth.

We held each other.

Years before, I would have deemed that strange. It wasn’t sexual, but it was still two men. We held each other, though, and we dozed off after a while.

And in between my strands of sleep, when I woke and saw Him there, I felt so perfect.

A nectar drip inside.

Warmth like the sun can’t even imagine.

Edgar Pike’s Journal

July, 2009

I could go down on Matthew. I’ve no interest in penises, generally. But he has such a nectarine sweetness, that boy. Jed, too, but Jed is older. I could service Matthew, and be the slave, and be free in being the slave.

Last Day –
11:00AM: CHORES

Finally, now, I’ve got Jolie.

Chores in the library (or at least it was once). We’re cleaning the large bay windows, their heat pressing through the paper towels in our hands, their light making all the spray sparkle when it lands.

Cathleen’s got the empty bookshelves, but I’m in the light with Jolie.

She’s humming now. No more tears.

I look at her, closely. That face of perfection. “You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she goes.

At which point all my systems cool. My flapping mind comes in for landing.

All is stable. He actually managed to carry her home. Truth told, she hasn’t seemed so centered in days.

Off-center, however, is my heart, which starts right away to do its thing again.

Last Day –
11:04AM

The kitchen’s got Susan, Michael, and Paul down on their knees, a bend away from praying as they scrub the floor. Since we wear no shoes, the tiles get oils on them every day. But when the marks are gone, the floor shimmers so hard your feet could buzz.

Their work is fine, by which I mean “superior” rather than “okay.” A good, deep effort, defined by rigor and concentration. No errant thoughts get in its way. No distractions brought on by how much money will be gained (none) nor how their mouths will be fed (He’s got them covered).

And for a moment, inwardly, I am idle at last...

Until I look out through the window, toward the patio, and see The Leader in conversation with Theodore.

More Theodore. He’s loomed too large all day.

With an interest in feeling in control, I ask everyone if they’re okay.

“Yes,” says Susan. “We’re fine.”

By which she means “okay.”

“Good,” I say, but I’ve disengaged.

I’ve got to go upstairs and get my phone.

Last Day –
11:06AM

I think that we all heard me correctly.

This is me, now, walking down the upstairs hallway.

The Leader’s locked deep in discussion with Theodore, and since talking to Theodore can get kind of thorny, I’m guessing that I have some time.

Not much (after all, it doesn’t exist), but a few minutes.

And that’s all I need to see The Leader’s nightstand.

My head does everything it can to stop me: The wall paint’s swimming. Little dots float inside of/around my eyes.

The door’s open, however; that’s how much He trusts us.

When I step through it, though, that trust will become a mockery.

But it’s just an experiment. It isn’t serious. Like this morning with the lawn. It’s a whim, me getting pulled by strings.

Would like to see my phone, is all. Just to know where it is, in case Jolie gets scared again. Or Theodore keeps on throwing me looks.

When I’m finally in the room, I feel the whole space bending – curving its white body around me. And it’s as though I sense the ticking of some soundless, invisible clock.

I pace. The room bends more. The nightstand comes at me.

My eyes: the doorway.

Empty.

Be silent. This will take a moment.

You’re just a boy who wants to see what’s in a drawer. You should be no more tense than you would if the target were a cookie jar.

Hand: metal. Arm: pulling. Drawer: creaking.

Slower! Are-you-fucking-crazy?

But of course I am.

But Jolie was crying about those knives. Don’t misremember. Those tears flowed real. “Isn’t for me,” she said, as though there were an actual her, and this were an actual world.

The drawer’s now open, and shining color at me are the phones. Batteries? That would take more time. For now, I’m content to let my eyes go to my phone.

Sleek red. Brings car paint to mind. (Do I spy cardboard?)

And apparently my hand’s content to go to it, too.

‘Cause now it’s--

--Eyes/door/empty–

The phone’s in my pocket, now. And I’m pacing out of here like the floor’s on fire.

Last Day –
11:08AM

Made it into the bathroom without my bronchial tubes plugging up. Jolie and my bathroom, not the one in the hall. There’s a wheeze inside me, though throat or chest is hard to say. Throat would be a relief since my heart’s so swelled and busy. Chest would be a relief since it’d mean my throat’s okay.

Not that I’ll still have either come the dusk.

Here in my hand we have a remnant from the world. An artifact as foreign as a fallen shard of spaceship, yet (admit it) comforting all the same.

Within my head, right now, are choices.

I can reverse my trajectory, as though life were in a DVD player and I were pressing rewind. Get out of here. Back to The Leader’s room. Phone in drawer. Drawer closed nice.

Status quo brought back full force.

Or I can depress the black button and see if there’s life. Irony here: Dying boy in search of life. If there is life, the odds of me pressing more buttons get real high.

Leader’s room or not, I’m still in the tiger’s mouth. This door could open right now and I’d get melted. Yet, somewhere within the weeds of my mind, I wonder if the fate that greeted me then would be worse than what awaits me later on.

FUCK.

Did I just think that?

Across my mind’s eye slips that rain. That night. Our vow.

Hand. Phone. Finger. Button.

Eyes: Door.

Locked. Silent. Vertical rectangle with a gift for staring.

More inhaling, followed by exhaling (wheezing), followed by...

I run the faucet. Its sound slices nerves. Double-check the door’s button lock.

Then another button gets pressed. And we’ve got life.

Holy shit – no batteries removed. My admiration for the man ascends. Love and trust like nothing back in the world. And yet here I am ripping His guts out.

My prediction of myself deserves no prizes for its accuracy...

I check my voicemail. And I have...

“Twelve new messages.”

That’s too much world for me right now. The info makes like jagged fishnet around my brain. I shut the phone off, pocket it near my hip.

And then the door is bending. And there are knocks.

The knocks precede the bending in real life. The whole of my being gets shredded up.

Breath. Mirror. Reflection. Who?

No time. Straighten the white threads. More knocks--

Whatever leaves your mouth next will have to work--

I open it. It’s not Him, which is good.

But it’s Theodore, which, as you might expect, is not.

“He wants to see you,” he says to me, and like every statement out of Theodore’s mouth, it has a way of being menacing and benign and off and on all at once.

We’re close right now, he and I. Kissing distance. If his eyes bend downward, he could see my gaping pocket. My bare feet bloodless, I walk right toward him, showing the confidence of a pedestrian who knows the cars will have to get out of his way.

From private correspondence from Matthew Barrett to his family (5/2009):

This is my last time making any kind of contact.

To Dad, I’ll say nothing, ‘cause he knows how I feel.

To the rest of you, I’ll say that, fine, I loved you, and fine, you’re not bad people or my enemies. But all of you are lost. None of you can see what I see. If I even started to use the words we use here, you’d roll your eyes. If I told you what my mind is like, now that I’ve really seen it, you’d think I was just talking crazy.

I don’t want the conversation. I want peace, but that doesn’t mean we have to be in touch.

Last Day –
11:14AM

We’re out back now, The Leader and I, a setting that I could do without, on account of all the space and air, and what the former does to my head and the latter does to my chest.

We’re far from the house, also, near to the shed. I’ve only been inside of it once. My head likes to mutter vague fictions about how it’s haunted. How murders once took place inside of it.

The Leader’s walking exceeds His talking; in fact, He’s been wordless since He asked me to “Come along” with Him. So maybe it’s time for the shed and some axe and saw work. Maybe He’ll show me the side that those two ladies glimpsed. To say nothing of the infant, Victor Garcia.

I think of Victor as we walk. In a sense, he was this day’s trail-blazer: the first of the group to die whilst a member. Only in his case it wasn’t voluntary, so my connection is perverse at best and psychotic at worst.

His mother killed him, not The Leader. About the ladies, I’ll admit to doubts. About little Victor, though, I will know to my dying breath that He is clean.

Mrs. Garcia was macrobiotic. That’s a special diet, a rung beyond veganism. No meat, no dairy, no caffeine, no refined sugar, no white flour. I memorized the goddamn list because she spoke of it so much, but for all her speaking, she didn’t know a thing.

(The Leader on veganism and its like: “A noble idea, certainly, to not harm animals. But do you know how many bugs you crush while taking an evening stroll?”)

Thing was, Mrs. Garcia, in all her lack-of-wisdom, stopped feeding breast milk to her son. She rejected it ‘cause she thought it was like cow’s milk, which is of course a major source of dairy. As a substitute, she fed him soy milk. However, breast milk, unlike soy milk, is a key source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, and proteins for an infant.

But little Victor got none of the above. And even when you could see his ribs, his mom’s eyes remained fairly sturdy.

A lunatic convincing herself that she was sane.

Not one of us was convinced, however, and mind you, we numbered dozens at the time. The Leader Himself was at the market when Victor died.

To say what the house was like at that time would be indecent.

From day one, lots of us had shaken our heads at the baby’s presence. Not because we feared for his life (that never crossed a single mind), but because the house was free in terms of Eros and chemicals. Bodies were nude a lot. And The Leader’s thoughts on drugs were rather liberal (this before He flushed Theodore’s Haldol).

I suppose that our energy cast the boy out. He was unwanted by many, got rejected on a particle level.

It doesn’t mean we didn’t cry. Doesn’t mean our throats didn’t lock. But again, some memories are best left gathering dust.

And besides, I’m only thinking of Victor ‘cause I sense that I’ll be next. We’re right by the shed now.