Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology (30 page)

I passed three more elk that night. No close calls but their electric Roswell eyes hovering in the dark startled me every time. It was four in the morning when I found a rest stop with an RV slumbering in the lot and four other cars parked as far apart as they could manage. A stretch of grass with picnic benches, fire pits and a brick hut split into restrooms, its curbside face a mottled black and white mural like a blown-up newspaper photograph. The collage of leaflets came into focus once I was up close.

Missing

Have You Seen Me?

Missing

Missing Since—

Last Seen On—

Missing

Missing

Missing

Young teenagers and children. Mostly Caucasian, mostly female, last seen wearing anything and everything from the Junior Miss Department.

The bathroom smelled like an outhouse and had almost as little light. The floor was wet. I held my breath long enough to take a leak then went back to my car. I passed a station wagon with expired tags and a coat hanger twisted around the loose muffler. One of its back windows covered with duct tape and a garbage bag. I locked my doors, let my seat back as far as it could go and draped a T-shirt over my eyes. Before long there came a tentative knock, the way someone knocks to see if you’re awake without disturbing you if you aren’t. Definitely not a cop. I sat up and saw the face fogging up my window, hands cupped around his eyes to see through the dark. If he’d needed money, gas or a jump start he wouldn’t have been smiling the way he was. I gave up on sleeping, started my car and he made the looping pantomime signal for me to roll down my window. I couldn’t exactly race my engine, but he got the message that I was driving off and the placement of his foot didn’t worry me.

The high desert had too many elk and too much plant life. Too many places to hide or disappear. And it was full of people hiding or disappearing. If you walked out of nowhere into a room full of strangers nobody would give you a second look. The high desert was no place for a prophet.

By 10:00 that morning it was ninety-five degrees. Nothing on either side of the road but bleached sand and brittle shrubs as far as I could see. The mountains ahead of me hadn’t changed size since sunrise. An hour later my temperature gauge was reaching for the red and the bottle of water in my passenger seat was hot to the touch. I turned on the heat and rolled down my windows and the needle eased back. I drove on, eyeing the mountains and the needle but neither one moved. At the stroke of noon my dashboard blacked out and smoke billowed from my hood. I coasted to the shoulder and once the hissing and smoking stopped, I stepped out and just stood there in the desert. Heat like nothing I’d learned about in Sunday school, silence like I’d never felt in church. A short distance off the road and I’d be standing where no human being had ever walked. It was like being on Mars. A place where a man finds redemption beneath the unyielding sun that burns away his sins and what is left of that man becomes a prophet.

I opened the map and found my place, a scratch of north-south highway hardly worth printing. The nearest town of Jackdaw Flats lay forty miles due west on a faint pencil mark of road roughly parallel to mine, with neither a direct route nor an inch of shade in between. I emptied the hot bottle of water over my head then cloaked myself in a beach towel. John the Baptist didn’t wear sunblock. I packed the granola bars and my Bible into the canvas knapsack, slung it over my shoulder then took up a gallon water jug in each hand. There hadn’t been anyone else on the road all morning. I crossed the highway without looking, stopped at the edge of the road and prayed. The triple-digit temperatures would drop below freezing after dark. There were definitely diamondbacks, possibly coyotes and the narrow chance of a flash flood. I could be in Jackdaw Flats by morning.

When I come in from the desert, everyone will stare at me. And my name will be Ezekiel.

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Say Yes to Pleasure

by
Richard Thomas

This is what it means to be a slave, living in fear, of discovery. The easy way out would be to kill myself, to end my suffering and pain. But I won’t allow it. There is a retribution coming, at her hands, I think. In that freedom, in that release, there will be redemption. It won’t make things better for her, won’t bring him back, but there will be justice in the spilling of my blood, so for now, I live between the lines.

The rain outside washes away the litter, the sidewalks clean if for only a moment. Discarded soda cans and plastic bags are blown into the crevices, covered in dirt and grime. Lying on my bed I am a crumpled up, discarded tissue, knees pulled up in the fetal position, my back to the windows that rattle in their frames, the streaks of grey water cleansing the earth. I belong out there, in the cold, the rain, but no baptism in the tears of God will alleviate my sins. My hands are numb, curled into claws, clenching the wool blanket to my chin, never able to warm myself, always empty, always cold.

She’s coming over soon, and the mask will go back on. It has to. This will play out the way it’s supposed to play out, for maximum impact. Without love there can be no hate, so I build up that stockpile, show her the world is not random violence and chaos, not cold and calculating, willing disaster, offering up failure. In other words, I lie.

———

“How was work?” I ask.

“The usual,” she says. “Drunks, jerks, and the occasional dine and dash.”

Veronica works at a diner down the street. It’s contemporary retro, a shiny new place made to look like it’s been around forever.

We sit at the small kitchen table in my apartment eating french fries that she brought home, reheated in the oven, sprinkled with sea salt and parmesan cheese. In ten minutes I’ll force myself to get up and vomit the food into the toilet. I’m not allowed that simple pleasure.

Two cups of coffee sit in chipped ceramic mugs, the faded simple shapes as bland and common as I could find, utilitarian, and yet there is an appeal to the simple lines.

She used to smile when I said she was mousy. Now it feels too predatory to say. She stares at the swirling liquid, often retreating into herself, eyes dull and unresponsive, a fraction of what she used to be. It’s expected when dealing with death, with loss, when a part of you is taken away. Her son’s ghost haunts our streets, but I avert my eyes at his ethereal presence. Her skin is so white it is almost translucent, her small breasts hidden under a long sleeve shirt, a faded pink T-shirt on top of that, grease stains and a splotch of something tacky and dark that I keep telling myself is only ketchup. She hides away her femininity when she goes to work, to keep the wolves away. The boys in this part of town don’t hesitate to leer, wool hats pulled down over their foreheads, goatees and stubble, work boots and attitude spilling over. I picture those perfect little breasts, pale and trembling, pink nipples taut, revealing her desire. She buries it as deeply as I bury my secret, and when it’s dark outside, dark inside, she lets it out, embraces it, tears on the pillow afterwards, as I hold her in my arms.

“Shower?” I ask.

“Yeah, I better. I stink.”

“I’ll clean up,” I say.

“Thanks.”

In the bedroom, I rub her back, and know this isn’t for me. It’s for her. She sleeps in one of my old grey shirts, and nothing else. It hangs down to her knees, but I run my hand up her thigh lifting her shirt, and hold her, rubbing, hold her tighter, breathing. Lavender and a hint of grease, vanilla and talcum powder and salt on my tongue. There’s silence in the room, always this vacuum, broken by the creak of a bed spring, the rush of traffic in the distance, one street over, more rain, and the constant rattle of the window frame.

It’s the rocking of a boat on a trembling lake. We drift, and we don’t talk, we don’t make ourselves larger than we are. It’s as base and rudimentary as we can be. It’s the need of one animal to be taken, and the other to take. She always gasps when I enter her, as if startled. And that’s not far from the truth. We’re always startled, jumping at a loud noise, twitching, unable to be still. And yet, the urgency with which she pushes back at me, wanting me deeper, fusing our flesh to each other, this one moment of beauty in our lives, it’s always hidden under a cloud of despair. Even when we finish together, her nails digging into my arm, calling out to higher powers, asking for forgiveness, asking to be seen, even then it leaves me empty. I assume she’s equally raw.

She sighs, and I don’t ask where she is. I know. She’s thinking of him, her boy. It’s where her mind always wanders when there is pleasure, when she relaxes. Against all will. When she says yes to the pleasure, she says yes to the pain. I slide my hand around her waist, and no matter what she does, I’m always willing, always ready. She reaches back and grabs my thigh, the need in that one gesture, to be whole, it washes over me, and I’m too scared to deny her.

———

The buildings fly past me and my eyes are anywhere but on the road. A slice of cold air cuts at my face, the city black and blue. Cigarette smoke fills the cabin, my hand searching for another light. Turning the wheel as I lean over, head ducked below the dash, a wave of panic washes over me. There’s no way I’m keeping this car on the road. I straighten up and everything is fine. It was only a little drift, a bit of panic. The music gets louder, hands banging on the steering wheel, head bobbing up and down and now I do need another smoke. The cigarettes only appear when the edges get dull, whispering in a stranger’s ear, asking for a favor. That sharp stab in the lungs balances the dull stupor that blankets me. Flashes of green leather bar stools, pints of amber lined up on tables, the jukebox crowded with musical genius, the pool cues snapping, dollar bills dropped on the sticky bar, eyes caressing tight jeans, and tattoos on the small of a back, descending down into pink lace panties, a sly grin returned. I’m anywhere but here.

I lean in to click the flame, cupping my hands, leaning over, and this time, I drift too far. There is a shear of metal, a crack of glass, a groan that’s machine, or maybe it’s me, a jolt, a bounce, and I’m back on the road, never stopping. The cigarette has fallen in my lap, burning a hole through my jeans. I’m slapping at my thighs, the car swerves again, and my eyes find the mirror, and the wreckage behind me. Bent and fractured bumpers lean out into the street, side panels dented and scratched, plastic scattered over the pavement, and one woman leaning over, a lump at her feet, her dark, stringy hair falling into her eyes. I keep moving, away, everything getting smaller. There’s a shriek filling my ears, but it can’t be true. I hear it anyway. I hear it every day of my life.

———

The car will be stolen, I make sure of that. Hosed down in a do-it-yourself car wash for seventy-five cents, there’s little to betray my violence. My freedom comes cheap. And as I wander the streets over the next several months, unable to sleep, unable to eat, wasting away, the streets become my home. I’m the undead, shambling across the pothole-ridden road for something, anything to give my life meaning. I need someplace to go to keep me from coming unhinged, but unaware of my destination, the want I had minutes before, I become lost in a tornado of disjointed thoughts. My gut rolls over in disgust, back alleys filled with my vomit, my wrists scarred with scabbed over slashes, I’m unable to break through to the darkness that awaits me. I’m a coward in so many ways. I stand in the rain, allowing it to seep through my coat, my flesh no longer my own. Every flashing light that passes by is a beacon to my demise. Every siren song that pierces my thoughts is a call to make it right. When I see her standing in the diner, hands on her hips, dead weight behind her eyes, her face slack, I realize there is one thing I can do. I can bring her back to life.

———

I give her the truth on an ordinary day. It’s the release she’s been praying for. I hand her the gun and the phone. I ask her to decide. With a shaky hand and eyes filled with fire, she does.

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The Weight of Consciousness

by
Tim Beverstock

Midday 12 p.m.

You’re gone. Not among the discarded clothes piled next to the bed. Used condoms. Jim Beam bottles heaped near me. I can’t hear your voice among the chrome pipes and car sirens. Shouts of neighbors’ arguments. I know you haven’t left here. I rummage among the clothes. Patting pockets. A lighter and bent cigarettes fall into my palm. Next to the blister that wasn’t there last night. I probe the surface. Soft and yielding. The size of a quarter. I pick up my shirt. See the chunk missing from under the arm. Feel the matching throb in my side. My shoulder muscles ache like twin forks. Conduct my disorientation like lightning. I continue the search elsewhere. Narrow hallway greets me. Thick with fermentation. Both bulbs blown. Floor sticky under my feet. I haven’t emptied the trash in days. The kitchen reveals more bottles. Empty pizza boxes. Sink overflowing with dishes. A bloody handprint and a knife. A trail on the floor. Like a junkie I follow the drips down the hallway. Stop outside the bathroom door. Listen. I can’t hear you breathing. The seconds tick like sands in an hourglass. I knock a sharp staccato. Feel the echo bounce back. Push the door open without an answer. Find you curled round the toilet. Clad in your underwear. Protecting yourself. I shiver. See the open window. Goosebumps on your leg. I reach down. Feel skin cold to the touch. The blood pools from the center of you. Like a scarlet well for me to drown in. I black out. 

Afternoon 4 p.m.

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror. Knuckles bleeding white. My right bigger than my left. Like it hit something. The blister has burst. My hand bathed in warm glycerine. I put the lid of the toilet down. Sit with my head in my hands. Lungs full of tar and the weight of diminished returns. I refuse to look down and acknowledge you. I’m spiraling. The day before. Drunk and home early. Too much to take. You left me sitting in my chair. Jim and Johnny for company. Still entertaining me when you came home. Early evening. Not happy. I come back to now. Open my eyes between slatted fingers. You haven’t moved from your spot. I cover you up and leave. Find the cigarettes by the bed. Smoke alone. A fly rattles the window. Caught in a web. Sun filtered through sulphur tint. We’re trapped together. The nicotine subdues the pounding in my head. The memory refuses to return. Stubborn like its owner. I light another cigarette. Formulate a plan of attack. I boil coffee until the ring sends up smoke signals. Drink a cup full of tar. My limbs become energized. Under the bed I find the last object you touched. Cold steel kisses my hand. Shields me. Images burst in camera flashes across my retina. I remember. More drinking, spilled wine. Me yelling. You yelling louder. A slap. You fall against the bench. Pull the knife from the drawer. Falling over and over. Like me now. On hands and knees I pass out by the door. Grasping with both hands. The gun wasn’t this heavy when I bought it. 

Consciousness

Dusk 8 p.m.

Come to lying on the floor outside the bedroom. Warm copper on my tongue. Carpet rubbing sandpaper across my cheek. My head throbs like a beaten heart. My first instinct was wrong. The holes in you came from bullets. Not a blade. I crawl back into my room. Sit up against the bed. Sniff the gun barrel. Residue of powder round the rim. My sweat matching yours on the trigger. Flashback to last night. I’m watching you from the doorway. Bent over my nightstand. Writing. I interrupt the note. Your hand in the drawer. Our yelling cancels each other out. The gun shaking in your hands. I’m pressed close to your body. Taste aluminum on your breath. Feel the bullet discharge. Wear a hole beneath my arm. A chunk from the doorframe. My hand on yours. Hot metal sears my palm. I gasp and drop. Barrel angled upwards. Two clean shots. A scream. Not my own. The sounds of running. Bathroom door slammed. Crying. Not my tears. 

Midnight 12 a.m.

The gun twirls round my finger. I lie on the bed. Shoulders pinned back. Silhouetted by a solitary bulb. I hold up the photo of us. Pulled from my wallet. I love the way you lean into me. Your smile. On our anniversary. How did we stray so far. I pick up a bottle. Throw it against the wall. See my guilt reflected back in the shards of glass. I run my hand over the fragments. Don’t wince when I feel them bite. Can’t start over. 

Dawn 4 a.m.

I sit at the table. Old T-shirt wrapped around my hand. Note in front of me. Read in disbelief. Pen marks slash my psyche. I shred the paper. Words fall to the ground like bullets. Last night was a warning. Next time you would leave. Yet the bag in the closet is new. Packed and ready. Proof that you lied to me. Another chance lost. I pick up the whiskey bottle and clear two mouthfuls. Wince as the liquid scrapes my throat. Soothe with the last cigarette. I can’t believe you went for the gun. I wouldn’t have hurt you. I’m guilty of not seeing until too late. I want your forgiveness. Even in the bathroom I still can’t look at you. Tears fall into the sink like melted snow. Bleached to white heat. Consume my vision. All I know. 

Morning 8 a.m.

I phoned the cops. The least I could do for us. They will be here soon. This won’t wait. I pick up the gun. Slide the chamber round with my thumb. Squeeze. An empty click. Repeat. Primed. Press the barrel to my temple. Pull the trigger. Explode.

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