“Really, Natasha, we’ll have to do something about his beard,” Harold says, strutting away from me, out of my line of black-edged sight.
We’re in the game room in the basement. I see the TV and couch and the ping pong table, but not the air hockey table because that’s behind me and I can’t turn to look. Down the hallway is Samuel’s mother’s room, which he set up like a one-bedroom apartment for her, replete with its own kitchen and bathroom.
The pain is bright and sharp.
I’m strapped to something like a sawhorse, naked, and face down. But the board I rest on is not a flat piece of wood, it’s triangular, slightly rounded at the top where it digs in to the middle of my ribcage all the way down to my balls and ass. It’s splitting me in half.
The contraption is a good six feet or more off the ground and my torso is strapped to it, my arms and legs drooping below me.
My arms and legs are tethered to weights, which sinks my body deeper into this wedge of wood. Every time I come to, one of them appears, almost instantaneously, to make a joke or muss my hair or stick their tongue down my throat.
Then they add just a bit more weight to my arms or legs or both.
How much, I don’t know.
Each time, I feel the pressure increase, slightly or a lot. I feel my bones in my chest and pelvis ache to fracture. Just asking to be released from the burden of holding together.
The outside world has become more clear to me during this time.
I hear children laugh, and scream. And even when they scream, it’s a laugh.
I hear cars rolling rolling rolling down the boulevard, full of people off to see movies in the park or within the cool confines of a darkened theater.
I hear dogs bark, birds chirp, and squirrels scurry along the rain gutters.
I keep expecting to hear Karen’s car crawl up the gravel driveway and slip into the garage out back.
But, nothing.
Just Harold and Natasha sometimes feeding me Ensure from a straw or patting my bare, spread ass, sliding a wet finger along my asshole with a snicker as the weights pull me down, more and more.
If the world could stop spinning, then gravity could end and I could float, fly away from this—I could be yanked out of gravity’s punishing grip.
I’d take the absence of everything. I’d relish it. The vacuum of space. The edge of the universe, where there’s nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not even blackness, darkness, the places I have found so comforting for such a long time.
Nothing.
***
My head’s a blue balloon about to explode. I’m on the bed in the apartment in the basement floor that was arranged to let Mrs. Cardenas (Samuel’s mother) live a relatively independent and comfortable life, while still living under her son’s roof and protection.
My head’s a blue balloon and it’s being bounced back and forth on the bed. The low ceiling above getting closer, a little farther, then closer again.
My arms and legs are tied to the bedposts.
My middle is effervescent with pain from my time on the sawhorse in the game room just down the hall.
Samuel’s naked, straddling me, choking me, telling me he loves me and that he’s going to kill me—because he loves me and I’ve asked him to already so many times before. He’s weeping. I want to reach up and wipe his tears away, cup his face in my hands and tell him it’s all going to be OK, that it was an accident, and we’re fine now—we’re fine, everything’s going to be OK.
But it’s not going to be OK because it’s Harold’s naked form straddling me and choking me, his forehead beading with sweat, his face strained, tense, his head a red balloon to complement my blue one.
It’s not sexual, though. Like he said it wouldn’t be. He just wants to kill me.
And I remember, now, doing something like this to Mrs. Cardenas… who I loved. Who I looked after, because no one else needed me to look after them, or nobody would let me. Who was my mother. Or, she wasn’t, but I wanted her to be. I don’t know. Maybe she was. It’s all confused.
Like me, she was in pain, every day.
I was on top of her once, though, in this bed, and my hands were somewhere near her neck—or was it over her breasts?
I don’t know. I’m being choked to death in her bed and she’s all I can think about.
But, I had my hands on her, and I was afraid. I was scared. I was sad and sickened and panicked. She was trying to talk but she couldn’t and I had my hands on her, hoping she could start breathing again, or maybe hoping she’d never breathe again, and I heard something crack.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound. Ever again.
When Karen found me, I was spooning Samuel’s mother’s lifeless figure, saying, “Sorry, mom,” over and over again.
I don’t know how long I’d lain there, apologizing.
It wasn’t sexual.
Like this, what’s happening now—it’s not sexual. Harold just keeps choking me until I black out. Then he returns after an unknowable amount of time to do it again.
And again.
Someone’s burning my right hand with candle flame, giggling and sucking in wet breaths through wet lips every time the flame touches me. I can’t even scream about it.
It’s just a mild scalding, anyway.
It’s Natasha, crouched beside the bed, breathing heavy and licking her lips and making small sounds of ecstasy.
But, like they said, it’s not sexual.
Oh, god, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cardenas.
***
The high ceiling, a sight I’d not seen in days, is the first thing I see when my eyes open halfway after a long close. A rush of relief warms and loosens all tension in my body when I look left and see that big bedroom window of mine, all full of light. I’m in my room, in my ridiculously lovely bed, so soft and welcoming.
My muscles are jelly and good—honey and spice and everything nice.
Hallucinations.
I’ve had them before.
I’ve had them before, but they’ve grown more frequent, more dangerous since Samuel died. I don’t know why. The mind reacts to death, to loss, in ways sometimes we cannot comprehend.
And my mind is a wormhole.
My spinal cord only a tether to this dimension.
Swinging my legs off the side of the bed I sit up and see that I’m in a cushy bathrobe. I’m clean-smelling: baby powder and Ivory soap. My hair and beard are washed, conditioned, trimmed, and combed. I’m so put together, my hands and feet are even manicured—soft, and perfect.
I could be a hand model.
I could be a professional cat burglar. No one would ever hear feet as soft as these traipsing through their house, stealing their Holy Grail.
A few breaths. Clean breaths. Calm breaths. Smooth.
On the nightstand there’s a tall glass of water and my pill bottles, all lined up.
I don’t get it. My sister has been so good to me through all these hard times. Her own husband dies and I’m the one that falls apart and she’s there to take care of me.
Just like after our parents died. She grew up quick as I regressed. At fourteen, she had a job at McDonald’s while I slept in our parent’s bloodstained bed, refusing to let them burn it, refusing to leave it.
And when my wife left me and my house burnt down, there she was for me, again. Samuel’s wealth made it an easier transition, but she brought me into their home.
I’d be dead without her.
With that thought and pills swallowed, I can even see the window for what it is: a view. Just a view.
Through it I can see the yellowing grass of the neighbor’s—both their front and back lawns. I can see the alleyway behind their house, looking peaceful and empty. The occasional car speeds past the front of our neighbor’s equally giant home, as do glistening joggers and women in sundresses.
Faint heat waves rise from the asphalt.
I taste sunburnt grass in the back of my throat.
Then: bacon. I smel
l bacon.
Karen’s making breakfast. I figure it must be a Saturday or a Sunday.
The weekend. The best time of the year—better than Christmas—is the weekend in summer. But only when it’s here, in Chicago.
Home.
Leisurely, I exit my room and feel no sense of shock to find the hallway there instead of a solitaire or mirrored room. This is reality, after all. And this is life. And life, like this home, has a blueprint that doesn’t just change.
I am not in a desert imagining oases.
I don’t need to imagine quenched thirst when I live a life at the lip of the well.
Downstairs, all the curtains and shades and blinds are drawn. Out the front windows, grass and iron fences and those oaks quiet in the sun. In the back of the house, through windows and the sliding-glass doors, the sunflowers are flourishing and the sky above the stone wall is blue and cloudless.
I approach the kitchen and Karen is in there, at the stove, working pan and spatula, her back to me. She’s wearing a robe that matches mine.
“I’m glad you’re up,” Karen says, flipping bacon, turning eggs.
“Good,” I say, and take a seat at the kitchen table, which is small and only meant for casual, quick meals. I sigh and watch her, feeling more grateful now than I think I had ever felt before.
And feeling guilty because of that.
I’ve been a child my whole life.
I’ve always thought everything was mine.
So, why say thank you?
“I’ve been so ungrateful,” I hear myself say aloud and Karen says “Oh?”
“Yes, and, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything,” I tell her, embarrassed.
“Everything?” Karen asks.
“Yes. Everything,” I tell Karen.
“Does everything include you fucking my husband?” she asks and I’m suddenly lost.
How did I get here?
“No… I… Karen…” and when Karen turns it’s Natasha facing me, an oily spatula in one hand, a devil’s look glued on her face.
“I… uh…” I say, looking around clueless, suddenly feeling a sore throat and an immense ache down the entire middle of my body.
“You think one thank you will make up for all you’ve done, don’t you, Jacky?” Natasha says, nearly screaming. She tosses the spatula in the nearby sink, flicks off the gas on the stove and slams the pans around.
“I… didn’t… what are you…” I begin to say but the pain sinks, wedges in. I part my robe at the top and see the big black and blue bloom at the tip of my collarbone. Parting the robe further, I find the bruise, thick, leads like a boulevard down my entire middle, halving me.
There’s a tightness and an ache and heat inside my tendons, around my ankles and wrists.
“What have you… you aren’t…” I say, and Karen, I mean Natasha, laughs at me, making a show of it. She cackles hard, as though trying to hurt herself with the laughter. She bends over and has to grab the counter to keep from tumbling over.
A newspaper flutters, flaps, and opens across from me, and from behind it I hear: “Jacky Boy, don’t give your mother a fit, now.”
“My… mother?” I ask only to be met by Harold’s stupid, grinning face peeking around the paper.
“Oh… ah-hum… pardon me. That’s right. You thought she was your sister. Let me start over….”
A newspaper flutters, flaps, and opens across from me, and from behind it I hear: “Jacky Boy, don’t give your sister a fit, now.”
“I… I wasn’t… she, um, started it, dad,” I say, confused, the pulsating pain winding right up my middle.
“Oh, you are a good sport,” Harold says, peeking around the paper again.
Karen pours Harold and me cups of hot coffee, places glasses of juice down, and tosses plates of bacon and eggs before us, haphazardly. The face she’s made for me out of sunny-side up eggs and bacon has slid halfway off the plate, deforming the happy expression.
I move the eggs back onto my plate, breaking the eyes, which leak yellow sludge.
I stare at that until I sense Natasha, seated at the end of the little table, staring at me.
“Well? It’s not going to eat itself, you know,” she says, her fork slamming into her own plate, smoke proving she exists.
“I’m not hungry,” I grunt through the pain, pushing the plate away and sitting back in the chair.
“I thought you were going to start trying to be more grateful, Jack,” Karen says. “Didn’t you just finish telling me that you haven’t been very grateful, Jack?”
“I’m… why are you doing this to me?” I try to catch Harold’s gaze, convinced he might be the only one of these two capable of pity, but he’s hidden behind the newspaper. I try to will him to meet my eyes, but my will is useless in a universe I’m not in control of.
“What, don’t you like our hospitality?” Natasha asks. “Haven’t we always taken care of you, Jack?” Karen says.
“Yes, you… no… no, you’re trying to confuse me….”
A chuckle and rustle of paper: “No one has to try to confuse you, Jacky Boy.”
“Drink your juice,” Natasha orders.
“I’m not thirsty,” I manage to say.
“Goddammit! Drink your juice!” she screams, slamming her hand on the table and making me flinch.
Harold remains unfettered behind the paper.
“I’m not thirsty,” I tell her again, not caring, but even I can’t help but wonder why I’m still sitting here and not running running running away.
“Jacky, dear,” Karen says, composing herself. “Just drink your juice. You’re in pain. I’ve spiked your orange juice with morphine. It should help.”
My eyes dart to meet hers, untrusting. The muscles in my body continue to break apart and sever. My bones ache to splinter.
I know I shouldn’t, but the pain is too much, so I snatch my glass of orange juice and swallow swallow swallow until it’s all gone.
Harold looks around his paper and says, “There’s a good boy,” and Natasha simply smiles and turns her attention to her breakfast, daintily eating her toast with tea.
***
Every once in a while, my leaded eyelids lift, and I take in the world.
My eyes are…
I can’t. I have to keep my eyes from opening entirely.
I’m tied to a chair before a TV in one of the nameless guestrooms, on the third floor, I think. An old VCR is playing videotapes, wheezing and creaking like an old woman. On the bulky TV is my father, or an actor that looks like my father, choking an old woman with a burn on her hand. No, no. This old woman is different. She has no burn on her hand. Her hands are perfect. Her hands are perfect because she was a hand model and she took great pride in them.
“Wasn’t Samuel’s mother a hand model?” Natasha, behind me, whispers in my ear, her breath wet and warm.
“No,” I tell her, my head drooping, holding onto this vile consciousness for reasons I can’t explain.
Perhaps I’m afraid to die.
You learn something new every day.
“No… my mother… my mother was… was a hand model.”
“And she used to take you to the beach and tell you stories and love you and buy you waffle cones and splash in the lake with you and your sister… right?” she asks, her elbows on my shoulders, her red lipstick rubbing off on my ear.
“Yes… yes,” I answer, smiling, drooling.
“Wasn’t your mother a factory worker, Jacky Boy?” Harold asks.
“No. No, that… that was….”
“Listen,” Karen, or Natasha says, swinging around before me, and kneeling, her hands on my bare thighs. I’m naked, sweating and red from the massive floor heater they’ve set off to my side. “You are mistaken,” she finishes, then pulls out a length of rope.
Stretching the rope taught, she places it against my right kneecap and runs it back and forth slowly, slowly, then faster, faster, faster until I cry out and squeal and attempt to pull away from
her, but it’s impossible. I can smell my own flesh burning as the rope cuts through the skin. Then I can smell cartilage burning.
She moves the rope to the back of my calf and slides it back and forth, back and forth, in the same manner, smiling up at me like a woman proud of the world-class blow job she just performed.
The rope slides, hot, into my soft calf muscle, perforating it…
“Please!” I scream.
“Please?” Natasha mimics.
“Please! Oh, god, please! Please stop! Just stop. Please!”
“Am I your god now, Jacky?” Natasha asks, pulling the hot wet rope out of my spliced meat.
“Please…” I say, and darkness calls my name.
“Pretty please? With sugar on top?” she chides.
“Yes… pretty please… with… sugar…”
Not blackness. Just the absence of light.
***
I can feel the muscle in the back of my leg fileted, can catch whispers of drafts kissing my exposed kneecap like a wasp sting.
Looking around the room, I’m alone. Looking around the room, I’m saddened, now, not to see the dark spots—those rips in reality. I want to slip my head into one, like a reverse birth, and let it chop my fucking head off. I was so scared of them before, but now they’re all that can save me. But the room won’t go away. The sounds of Natasha and Harold getting drunk and fucking in the bed behind me, which I cannot turn to see, will not go away. Every time they fuck, they taunt me, Natasha telling me to join them, telling me to come and give it to little sister one time, real hard. Harold calls out my name every time he climaxes and every time he does, he seems to go delirious, drugged. He hangs over the side of the bed (I imagine) telling me all the wonderful things he could do to my asshole with his tongue, his fingers, his cock. He promises me he could love me in a way Samuel could never love me.
Samuel could never love me.
One night, when Karen was away on a business trip, we were sitting up in bed and he told me—he said he could never love me. He said he wanted a family.
My Eyes Are Black Holes Page 8
