The Sorrow King (22 page)

Maybe he just needed to get something out of his system but didn’t know what that might be. Perhaps what really bothered him was that there wasn’t anyone to talk this over with. He didn’t have any friends. Elise was gone. Sometimes a boy needed to live outside his own mind or else that mind turned on itself, devouring, breeding thoughts that were anything but healthy. And maybe that was why he had chosen to go out to the old field. There wasn’t really anything out there that would allow him to hurt himself unless he chose to swerve his car off the road and ram it into a tree.

Sometime after noon, he pulled to the side of the old field, hoping the owner of the property wasn’t out and about. Trespassing was all well and good during the dark of night but there was something about the day that made him feel just a little too naked. A little too exposed.

The field sloped up from the road, the old gray barn looming large at the top. Steven walked up the hill, feeling very small in this vast field. The grass was only about ankle high. Not yet grown up enough to be mowed down. He took off his shoes and socks. The grass was soft beneath his feet. A cool wind blew through his sweat damp hair. His finger hurt like a motherfucker. He looked down at it. The tip was all pulpy and slightly purple. He wondered what he could have done to cause that but admitted to himself he wasn’t thinking very clearly last night. Not like now. Now he thought he had a little clarity.

He turned and sat down at the top of the hill, facing the road, the barn behind him dark and menacing. Overhead, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but he was pretty sure way out west, off in the distance, some clouds were rolling in. The wind blew stronger and it had a refreshing water smell that meant rain was coming. Maybe they would even get a thunderstorm. There was nothing like a thunderstorm to make you feel like part of something bigger.

And that was what he realized. This was his clarity.

He was part of something bigger. Ultimately, that was what all the cryptic little messages in his notebook told him. Not necessarily that he was the solution to the virus happening around him but that he was a part of it. Just as every citizen of Gethsemane was a part of it. Just like every person in the world, in some way or the other, was a part of it. And not just a part of the suicide virus but a part of everything. How, if you took just one person out of the picture of humankind, the face of that picture changed forever. The friends of Jeremy Liven or Mary Lovell . . . their lives were undisputedly changed. And by their lives being changed, they would change the lives of others. Whereas those friends would have, at one time, been doing something with the deceased, they were now doing that with someone else. And that someone else who would have been doing something with yet a third person was no longer doing something with the third person. It was staggering when you thought of it like that. And there had been all that death in this tiny little town and Steven had experienced it. He had felt it. But he was ready for it to be over. He was ready to move on. And he thought maybe that would have to mean getting out of Gethsemane.

His plan was to leave tonight. He thought he would be able to do that. He would say goodbye to his father. He would probably have to borrow some money and his father would give it to him without saying a word because he would, somewhere deep down, know Steven getting out of Gethsemane would have everything to do with his survival. He wouldn’t go far. Probably just to Columbus or Cincinnati. It wouldn’t be very hard for him to find a job and he knew he wouldn’t need very much money to live. He didn’t want to fall into the money trap early on. All he would need would be enough for rent and gas and food. The essentials. Then maybe he could discover who he really was. Drawn out of the conservative dark veil of a small town, he thought maybe he wouldn’t seem like such an outcast. Maybe he would feel like one of the rest. Sitting there and waiting for the rain to come, he thought that was really the only thing he hoped for—to be like one of the rest.

Of course, Steven would never be like one of the rest.

He realized that when, sometime in the early afternoon, the storm only a few minutes away, Elise came walking across the field toward him. Immediately, his plans shifted. She had come to make up. He would stay if she wanted him to. He would do anything for her.

But she seemed to only want one thing.

He stood up when she drew close to him. She wore a short black skirt and a gray sleeveless top. He started to say he was sorry but she spoke first, pressing a thin finger to his lips.

“
I want you to take me into that barn and fuck me. I want to get it over with and I want you to be the one to show me. Don’t make love to me. Don’t try and make anything out of it. Just fuck me. And then we’ll both know. Then we’ll both know if it’s worth it or not. We’ll have answers to at least one mystery.”

He gulped and, suddenly, absurdly, didn’t know if he could do what she wanted him to do. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. The wind whipped against his forehead and a spider of lightning scurried along the horizon.

He opened his mouth to ask her if she was sure about this because he didn’t know if he was but she reached her finger back up, pressing it harder against his lips. “We don’t need to talk. Unless you’re going to say something filthy, then don’t say anything.” She took his hand and led him to the barn.

He didn’t know what to think. Wasn’t this what he had dreamt about? There was something about it that made him feel guilty. Like a glutton finally lapping up the dish he craved. He drank in the sight of Elise, a sight he had missed. Her skirt whipped around the tops of her pale legs and he thought, under that skirt was her underwear and he wondered what color they were, and under the underwear was something else, something he had never seen in the flesh, a mystery about ready to unfold in front of him.

Thunder rumbled hungrily from across the meadow. Lightning flashed. The sky continued to darken. The wind was nearly cold, pushing against the barn to emit a creaking chorus as Steven and Elise crossed its threshold.

Twenty-one

Suicide #7: Self- Mutilation

Following Elise into the barn, feeling her small sweating hand in his, Steven thought about the “undoing” a lot. The loss of virginity was, he supposed, a form of undoing. Yet, he felt like the virgin female, especially one as young as Elise, was somehow more of a virgin than he was. Ever since he had turned eleven, ever since he was old enough to know erections felt good and if he played with it enough then stuff came out and the feeling before that stuff came out was the greatest feeling he had ever felt in his life, he had thought about sex constantly. He had seen pornos, he had seen magazines, he had fantasized nearly every day, imagining sex in all its varieties. He had imagined regular sex, fellatio, anal sex, cunnilingus, bondage, sex in public, sex in closets, so many different kinds of sex. None of it very poetic. None of it very romantic. It was simply the product of teenage hormones, culminating in his imagination and manifesting in a way that, in the end, involved only him and his mind. He had imagined other things too. He had imagined waking up next to a beautiful girl every day for the rest of his life. He had imagined laughter, the soft laughter of two people who share the secret of eternal love. And that last thing he thought he had experienced to some extent. But it was hard for him to imagine Elise thinking all the things he had.

Now the time for thinking was over. It was happening and he realized he didn’t have a clue what it would be like. It would turn out to be what it was.

An undoing.

For both of them, an undoing.

What happened to people after they lost their virginity, he wondered? He’d read so many things. Would one of them begin a downward spiral of nymphomania, teen pregnancy paranoia, the fear of disease, the possessive jealousy the prospect of straying can create? Or would they open up, blossom like flowers, experience a mental and physical awakening?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t want to think anymore.

He wanted Elise.

Outside, the thunder boomed louder, the wind screamed between the boards of the barn walls and lightning flickered in the darkness. A giant cumulonimbus cloud sat over everything and Steven felt so protected.

There was a dirty mattress at the far end of the barn. As though it had been thrown there for this very purpose. He knew that was a flippant notion. This was a barn in the middle of nowhere. It was waiting for this sort of thing and that mattress, with its stains and dirtiness, had undoubtedly been used for this sort of thing countless times before. They were part of something bigger. They were part of this teenage ritual.

Elise lay down on the mattress, propping herself up on her elbows.

“
I’m yours. You know what you want me for better than I do so go ahead and do it. You have me until the storm ends.”

Another crash of thunder and the sudden spectral swell of lightning.

He lay down beside her, kissed her. She kissed back. Their tongues entered each other’s mouths and he let his hands run down to her breasts, feeling their firmness, the stiffness of the nipples. Was she really going to let him put his hands anywhere? He stiffened against his jeans, rubbed his crotch against her leg. He straddled her, lifted her shirt up over head. She raised her arms, allowing him to do this, looking at him with some unreadable expression. He had to try and stop himself from shaking and he didn’t know if it was nerves or cold. Once her shirt was off, he stared at her. He didn’t think he could tire of drinking her in. He kissed down her neck, her chest, running his tongue along her soft flesh. He bit at her nipples through the thin fabric of her bra and moved his tongue down her stomach. He pulled at the waistband of her skirt, pulling it down her legs. She held her legs together, allowing him to do this. He fought the urge to rip her underwear off and enter her before she could change her mind but he wanted to savor this. He wanted to savor every moment because something in the back of his head told him it would never happen again.

Fuck her. Fuck her hard.

No.
That was the voice of memory. That was the voice of shadow and darkness. That was not
his
voice. That was the voice of the sickness inside him, the nightmares, the insanity, wanting to come out of his head.

He stood up beside the bed and took off his own clothes. All of them at once so he stood before her, amidst the lightning, completely naked. Her eyes traced his body and his traced hers. She looked so young lying there on the mattress that, for a moment, he regretted what he was going to do to her, knowing he was going to do it anyway. He was going to do it because she had said it was okay and he wanted to do it so desperately. But there was something unnerving in her near stillness. Almost like she didn’t really want it at all. Almost like she really was just doing it to get it over with.

He got back on the mattress, the musty odor of it wafting up at him. He ran his hands through her soft hair, pulling her head toward him to kiss her while he undid her black bra. He pulled it from her arms and moved his head back down her neck to her breasts. He held them in his hands. They felt so much warmer than the rest of her. He slid his tongue over her nipples, sucking at them, tasting them. His cock pressed against her sex and he could feel her heat there too. He continued to kiss her, sucking at her pale skin until it reddened, reaching the waistline of her underwear. He pulled her underwear down her legs, staring at her sex, hidden within a fold of skin. He kissed the inside of her leg, moving his tongue toward her. He ran his hands over her cunt. It felt almost alien to him, damp and warm, almost hot. He lingered there, smelling her sweet aroma.

Then he couldn’t help it. He wanted as much of her as possible. He wanted her to know that. He buried his mouth in her sex. She jerked with the sudden sensation of it, his coarse stubble against her most delicate area. His tongue snaked into her opening, working up and down the labia. Then he was on his knees before her open legs, gripping his penis with his hand, guiding it in between the wet folds of her sex.

Rain nailed the barn. It was so loud he thought it might be hail. He worked his length slowly into her. She groaned, drew in air between clenched teeth. He slid in and out of her, lubricating himself with her blood and come. Her fingertips dug into his arms. He moved slowly like this, trying not to come immediately, feeling her tightness around him.

“
Does this feel okay?” he asked.

She only looked at him with an unreadable stare that may have been something like indifference. There was something about her stare that made him angry. It was almost like she wasn’t feeling it. They locked eyes and he felt himself become angry at that dead expression but even more aroused. He thrust deeper into her, as deep as he could possibly go, and dropped his weight onto her, her breasts against his lower chest, his hips grinding into hers. He grabbed her shoulders from behind and moved his hips faster and faster, sinking himself deeper and deeper into her. The orgasm came on and he knew he couldn’t do this inside of her. He didn’t have a particular desire to be a parent. So he pulled out at the last minute and stroked himself, shooting his come onto her stomach and then lying back down on top of her.

But she didn’t want that.

Elise pushed him from her. He rolled over beside her on the mattress and reached down, trying to grab her hand.