by Garrett Cook
“I don’t believe that,” says Kaz, “I’m scared that I’m not good enough and that nobody will ever love me. When I look in the mirror, it’s never as good as it could be and I’m constantly comparing everyone and it doesn’t quite stack up. I’m scared that I can’t do this and I’m not good enough and I can’t do anything to change that. We go over this a lot and I don’t know if I’m getting better or I ever will.”
Doctorpuppet reclines in his chair. He does not need to but the pantomime of life is very important. The first time he came out, she did not believe he was there. The second time she was even more skeptical, afraid that this was a recurring hallucination. But the times she had spent unsatisfied in those overpriced office suites in Brookline made her terribly receptive. She did not want to spend any more time in a cocoon of exploitation and silence and in that silence and exploitation, she heard the voice that told her to go to the study. She suddenly found messages on her phone from his secretary and started confirming appointments. If the messages were on her phone, they were real. She saw them there and heard the secretary’s voice. She is certain now that he’s present. Which he is. It’s simply that he’s not alive.
“Have you heard the serenity prayer? The serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the ones you can and the wisdom to know the difference?”
She perks up slightly.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Well, what can you change?”
“I want to stop feeling isolated. Leah’s boring, Cytherea’s a bitch and Micah’s a space cadet. I don’t feel like I have much of anyone to talk to but you. I have friends but they’re always really busy. I don’t know what the fuck’s up with my friends.”
“What about the new guy?”
“He seems to need a lot of alone time. Musicians are like that. They need all this time to themselves to practice and record and shit and to get used to the place.”
Doctorpuppet nods clinically, mechanically.
“Well, can you help him get used to the place?”
“I can, I guess. But I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of , Kaz?”
“I’m afraid that it will be like it was with Julie again. We didn’t always get along. We got along okay most of the time. She was a good buffer too. But we didn’t always get along. But now she’s…you know. And I miss her. What if that happens again?”
She begins to sob. In life, he would have had to make some move to comfort her because that would have been his job. But here? But now? His job is nothing but to make her mine forever.
“Are you saying that it was your closeness to Julie that drove her to kill herself, like being close to you drove Phillip away and made Doreen hurt you?”
“I don’t know if I’d go quite that far,” she said, still stifling sobs, “but I’m afraid of it. I can’t get close to somebody else. They’ll hurt me. They’ll use me. They’ll leave. That’s what people do. Maybe they don’t sometimes but I don’t know if I want to chance it again. I can’t stand that happening.”
Doctorpuppet chews his pen cap. It’s a nice touch. He asks me again to let me touch her. This would be the perfect time. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s a psychologist, he knows people’s minds and behaviors. And he is right. But I am silent. But I know human nature just as well and I know not to give him what he wants when he is not giving what I want.
“I think there’s a difference between getting into a relationship and showing common courtesy to somebody who just moved into your home. I think that isn’t something you need to worry about. I think you’ll be happier if you bother to reach out to the people who live in your home and get to know them and become part of their lives. If you can’t do that in your own house, then reaching out to others is going to be come really tough and you’re gonna keep feeling stuck and alone and unable to connect with people around you.”
“I guess you’re right,” says Kaz, grabbing a tissue, “this is the space I live in and I need to relate to it right.”
“I think that’s going to help you,” says Doctorpuppet.
“I think so too,” says Kaz.
And so the wheels are in motion. The session ends and she goes and fixes her makeup. Then fixes it up again. Her relationship with her face is ambivalent at best. She goes and listens at the basement door for the sound of singing or instruments or the telltale click of recording equipment. Hearing nothing and nobody, she descends the stairs. She is hesitant at first because she saw something once there that she didn’t like very much. She sometimes suspects that basement might be haunted.
She finds Brian down there drinking a beer and staring at the corner of the room where she had seen that thing that one time. Her viscera knots and tells her that it looks like he too has seen that thing that she saw the one time and doesn’t want to believe she saw, the girl with the not-quite-there face, reaching out as if to warn her about something, something that she would not listen to warnings about even if they were strongly presented by vehement dead girls in basements. In spite of this, she sits down beside him.
“Hey,” he replies. I let Antonia flicker in and out of his vision.
“How’s the move been?” Kaz asks.
“It’s been good,” he answers, as if there’s something else that would possibly be okay for him to answer.
“That’s good,” says Kaz because if his move had been good, it would be good. And just good. Kaz sideeyes the stairs, contemplating the thought of running back up them. The quiet is tense, pregnant with little sounds none of which are at all pleasant.
“Would you like a beer?” he asks. Kaz isn’t certain she’d like a beer. But she doesn’t want Doctorpuppet to think she’s bad and not making an effort to get to know the people around her. If Doctorpuppet thought she was bad, she’d die, she’d absolutely die. And maybe she would actually like a beer and Brian seems nice enough. Attractive in his way. They haven’t spent much time together yet so she can’t quite judge.
“Yeah,” she says, “ a beer would be nice.”
Because a beer might actually be nice. There is nothing in the corner of the room right now. There was never anything in the corner of the room. They are alone and unburdened. She opens a beer and they go back to sitting quietly and tensely.
“I like it here,” says Brian, telling a half truth. If by here, he means the basement full of Antonia, gaping and welcoming, hungry, adoring Antonia, narrow-hipped, dirty, nasty, innocent Antonia. Yes, he likes the thought of his cock in her so he likes it down here.
“Yeah,” says Kaz, slicing the half truth in half again, “I like it here too.”
Brian sees the quartered truth right away.
“But?”
“But what?” says Kaz, taking a giant gulp of her beer, “there’s no but.”
“Sorry,” says Brian, “thought I might have heard a but in there.”
“You didn’t. I like it here. Does it seem like I don’t?”
She glares at him, nervous and inquisitorial all at once, calling her questioner a cannibal as she wipes specks of flesh away from her mouth.
“No,” says Brian, “I’m sure you like it here just fine.”
They quietly finish their beers. They quietly grab another beer apiece. I send vibrations through the pink carpet, letting them sit on undulating waves of skin. The hair on both their arms stands up and each of them has to stifle a sigh or maybe even some less dignified noise.
“But even with four other people,” says Kaz, “sometimes I get very lonely here. This is a quieter house than it seems like. It gets so quiet sometimes that you hear these noises.”
“Lonely?” asks Brian, as much a statement as an inquiry. He doesn’t want to think about the last part of her statement, I think. There is something about the thought of these little noises that makes him extremely uncomfortable.
“You know I like everyone, right?” she asks, half lying.
“Yeah.”
“But they’re not all t
he way there. It’s like someone scooped something out. I don’t think they’re bad people but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
The two can only carry the burden of so much talk and self reflection. Kaz’s shoulders, toned as they are by dance, still can’t hold much weight. They go back to drinking beers again. They drain them halfway and suddenly they’re just sitting, sitting on the suddenly pulsing skin carpet. Antonia thinks of a song. A song about the sea of love and she hums it and the hum reverberates through the room and it shakes hearts and ears and minds with it. Antonia is slightly out of tune but Antonia is always slightly out of tune.
“Leah is nice,” says Kaz, “but she’s busy and she’s shy and she’s a bit stuck up. Not like arrogant but proper. She’s really proper. She’s disciplined too and I mean, I respect that but it makes her a hard person to know. I don’t think I really know her, you know?”
“She’s nice,” says Brian, “we hang out some.”
Kaz itches her arm. She suddenly feels awkward and jealous. She doesn’t want to think of him maybe liking Leah. Proper, skinny and disciplined Leah. She did ballet. Kaz’s parents had said ballet was bourgeois. Kaz didn’t care what was bourgeois. She would never get to be so graceful as perfectly skinny balletic Leah, the perfect China doll medical student of every parent’s dreams. The rolling fingers of pink carpet calm her down some, agitate her some. And now she is just feeling desperate.
“That’s cool,” she says, this time lying all the way.
“Yeah. I like her.”
“Cool.”
The second beers empty out. Therefore, third beers are opened. They are starting to get very relaxed, Brian palpably drunk from the drinking that happened earlier and Kaz very buzzed. She is moving closer to him nudged beneath by the fibers of invisible carpethands. Yes, that’s the excuse. It’s always best to have a proper excuse for these things.
“And Micah and Cytherea are so caught up in their relationship, their relationships. And you can’t help but feel like they’re not getting what they need from each other and like they’re just into some shit that they can’t stop.”
Brian shrugs.
“I haven’t gotten to hang with them much. Micah seems cool though.”
“Yeah.”
“But everyone’s always wrapped up in their own shit. “
“Yeah, guess everyone’s like that. That’s why it’s called your shit, you know? ‘Cause it’s like you’re shit.”
Kaz knows she has said nothing profound. Kaz knows she is just barely speaking. She nonetheless feels like maybe this man has granted her some perspective. Maybe in a way this is true and that she is not too far gone to get some but I of course hope this isn’t so because it is in my best interest that she stay as she is. She has crossed my threshold and she is rightfully mine.
“They’re all so distracted.”
“Everybody’s distracted,” says Brian, who is very, very drunk.
Kaz gets up into a kneel, sitting on her feet and rocking and looking him straight in the eye. Her eyes are gleaming crystal, eternal ice. Her eyes are binding and when they meet his, they become the law. He can’t even look away into the corner where he saw what he saw and she had seen what she had seen.
“Maybe,” she purrs and slurs, “we can use a distraction.”
“What kind of distraction?” he asks, knowing full well what kind of distraction.
“The good kind.”
She kisses him. He is too drunk to stop and think but even sober there is no way he would stop and think. He kisses her in return, the two kisses enmeshing into something else. And hands begin to seek out knowledge of bodies. His hands are soon on Kaz’s breasts and hers are soon on his crotch. Their kisses get needy and desperate and practically sad and their groping, awkward, drunk and intense. They have soon pulled off each other’s shirts.
They follow the rhythm of the hum in the carpet until she overtakes him, pushing him down less than gently, letting his bared back feel the sighs and shudders and touch of the living pink carpet. She guides his hands back to her breast and the piercings in her nipples that Doctorpuppet wanted to use so ill.
“Pull,” she whispers, “pull.”
He does not need to be told twice to pull. The intent of the piercing is extremely clear. He takes hold of them and guides her body as she moves around on top of him, springing him up to excitement. She releases him, starting to suck. He forcibly spins her body around, pulls her shorts down, leaving her undressed completely. He pulls her down onto his face to taste her deeply. Their bodies linked, they drink of each other.
As the living take pleasure, the dead look on. Antonia is pleased to have inspired such an act. She knows how much it pleases me and it always pleases her to please me. Maddy looks on judgmentally. Doctorpuppet looks on in envy. The First Girl looks on confused and melancholy, barely there at all.
Brian loops two of his fingers into the piercings again, putting pressure on them and pulling her nipples into greater hardness. He uses another finger to stroke her asshole until it begins to relax and he can thrust it in deeper, leaving all three of her holes sealed by hand, by his cock and by his tongue. She cannot help but pull away from his face and take him into her sex. Antonia’s humming and the humming of the rug vibrate in her.
She turns back around. In spite of all the pleasure, she still wants to make sure she has momentum and authority. She finds it hard to trust, even in this context. While he might be pulling on and torturing her breasts, she is still the one on top and still the one who must be in control of the situation. She is the one exaltant, she is the one who can feel some of the power returning to her, some of the beauty and the confidence taken from her by the women at the audition, taken from her by the ever skinny Leah.
“I think I hate her less,” Maddy whispers to me, “I think I understand.”
“You like that? Hmm?” Kaz shouts, suddenly possessed by the confidence, strength, momentum and control of the situation.
“Yes,” Brian moans, “yes.”
And he clearly does but suddenly feels a surge of lust, suddenly feels the intensity pouring into his back and the emotions the basement has soaked up, the emotions that this place is now made of. He sits up abruptly sheathing himself in her. Then, using the newfound control, to push her off of him onto her back. Now she is one with the carpetsighs and he is the one surging with most of the power and confidence. He grabs her long legs, spreading them apart as far as they spread and reenters her. Manhood deep as it can get, he thunders into her as Micah was thundering into Cytherea, as a man touched also by Pan, lust, murder and history.
She is screaming and she is not sure if she is begging him to stop or go faster, stop or go faster, stop or go faster. There is almost no way that she could decide. She wants this. She didn’t know she wanted this but she wants it. There’s a reason she came down here. It wasn’t just to please Doctorpuppet. Doctorpuppet, salivating, jealous, is not all that pleased.
“You may touch him once,” I whisper to Antonia, who drifts toward him. And she touches him just once, her fingers whispering a faint “hello” through his unkempt hair. And deep inside this woman he barely knows, in a basement where he feels murder, lust and confusion, he lets go and fills her with himself. He still keeps thrusting willing himself and working himself hard as he can. And then it happens once again, he fills her and then does it a third time until he must roll off of her, spent and beaten.
But there is wrath and determination still in Kaz’s eyes. There is desperation also in her heart. She wants him to remember her right now, powerful, lovely and unyielding. She reaches for his flaccid cock, takes it in her hand and begins to stroke, kiss and suck it back to its former size and might. He wants to voice his objection and say “no more” but he is drunk, entranced and full of passion for her. He says nothing as she gets him hard again and then says nothing as she gets on top again.
She is vengeful in her techniques, sadistic and almost cruel. I start to mov
e in her some, as much as Brian beneath her is starting to move. She let me touch her through Doctorpuppet after all. Brian is struggling and surrendering all at once. He places hands upon her sides to guide her in her affections. She mostly follows his directions though, mostly complies. She holds back her orgasm, thinking of the girls that she thought were better than her and of all that she was jealous of. How easily this act becomes an act of conquest, the opening salvos in a battle with a clear winner and a much too clear loser.
Brian would stop if he could. He is half conscious. He is more than half drunk still. She feels somewhat right although she does not feel quite right because she isn’t. But that dread only serves to inspire a deeper, more meaningful surrender. He does not resist the dread but he lets it stir his body and fuel him with adrenaline to use for the conflict at hand.
He pushes up and down with her, makes him take her deep and then practically tosses her off of him. So she gets the full measure, the full slide in and out and she begins to shake. Though Kaz is the one on top, the one desperate to resume the struggle. She trembles and lets out a moan, not the theatrical things at the start of the dance but something true, something with heart and guts and cunt in it. In this battle resumed, she has drawn first blood.
She continues as long as she can, not content until she has gained as much of his fluid as she can and it isn’t very long before he once again “rewards” her. And he rolls over, exhausted and confused and beaten once more. She dismounts and without a word, she gathers her clothes, which is just well because there is nothing he has to say to her. There was certainly excitement. She is certainly one of the sexiest women he’s seen, you can see that in him. But he must see that there’s something that’s very much not right about her. Does it have something to do with the cage in the corner where the girl was splayed? What hope does any man have when the girl of his dreams is splayed open waiting in a cage in the corner of the basement?
He has touched me some so I can get into him a bit. He feels guilty. He doesn’t know why this happened although he is of course quite sure. Sure as a man who sees does things that he is sure he shouldn’t.
