“We’ve got to hold it together, Dave. Mother wouldn’t want us going off the deep end or anything. You okay? You don’t sound so good.” Then, “Maybe we should meet.”
A long silence passed during which vehicles could be heard in the background and Rocco studied the dirt under his fingernails. Finally his brother ventured, “Did you…did they tell you the other, um, the rest of the details?”
“David—”
“About what the killer did?”
“I’m coming over there. Take some of that medicine your doctor prescribed. You still have some, right? It hasn’t been that long, I mean he just put you on it last year. Right? David?”
It was just another of their typical conversations. God, if only David could pull himself together for once. Just once in his freaking life! Was it too much to ask, especially during an unparalleled family crisis?
They found Mother with her hands cut off.
The funeral: somber blacks, grays, a haze of organic wetness brought on by sadness. Flowers…yes, there had been flowers out the wazoo; Rocco hated flowers, all the more after the funeral. He found leaking mucus membranes and convulsive tear ducts to be utterly reprehensible and, in public, inexcusable. People mistook his silence as some form of grief-catatonia. Not so. All of his energies were diverted to contemplation of a different sort.
The day after the funeral Rocco woke to find the words “To thyself be damned” scrawled on his bathroom mirror in lipstick. The distinct odor of fresh, virgin leather and polish were hanging in the air, an executioner’s calling card, tormenting Rocco to no end. There was a sadistic sort about, to be sure, and after that incident Rocco smashed the mirror apart, swearing an oath never to look in one again.
They found Mother with her hands cut off, intricately bound in rough, unfinished leather.
The Leather Man had to be responsible and he would be found. Not by police investigators, nor by going through traditional channels. No, this was a task that required Rocco personally delve into the areas only he knew existed, using his own seedy contacts. The sickness had to be brought into the light by involvement on his part. It would be dangerous, and he knew in his heart that his mother wouldn’t want him to seek out the Leather Man. Still, he couldn’t just sit on his hands; hands…the thought made him ill.
Finding the Leather Man? It didn’t take long, not long at all. To say Rocco lived a solitary life would be an understatement—he lived in an almost wordless world, uncluttered by people and their constant communications and needs and emotions and wants and repulsiveness. Damn them. He would have none of their distractions. And without the distractions of a normal life he was free to prowl the streets in his search.
But that is all in the past. In the present Rocco is trembling with every new attack from the giant, the monster on his back, and Rocco is smiling, feeling vibrant for the first time since…since he can remember. He is sure that his mother would weep if she could see him now.
They found Mother, bound, with her hands amputated. The sex act had been forced upon her. The leather was a dead give away as to who was responsible…
David keeps looking at him out of the corner of his eye lately, suspicious-like, as if Rocco could potentially pose a threat to himself. No, no, that wasn’t what the look meant. Could it be? No, David was the unstable one after all.
It had all gone wrong when he got that phone call.
It’s going wrong, all over again.
“That’s it?!” Rocco yells. Shaking, feeling overheated even while chilled by the slick sheen of sweat covering his body, Rocco grits his teeth; he does not take kindly to being gypped. “That’s all? That’s all there is to it?” No, it simply won’t do.
The Leather Man just stands there dumbstruck. He has, after all, done his part just as Rocco instructed. What does his silence mean? Is even he regarding Rocco with suspicion now?
“You call that abuse, you simple-minded son of a bitch? What was that supposed to be? Huh? Tell me. I mean, for Christ’s sake I beat off harder than that!” Under the tirade the Leather Man seems to shrink somehow. “And this!” Rocco laughs, tugging his arms and, with little effort, liberates himself from his bonds. The thin strands of leather dangle between the two figures, intertwined like some mutant DNA, a silent accusation of the Leather Man’s incompetence.
Mother and Father, mutilated and sexually defiled, each in the other’s company during those last wretched moments, bleeding to death together…it all seemed somehow entirely romantic. Entirely fitting. Like the snugness of a tight leather glove, that variety of romantic: pitch black, sharp-studded romance.
Rocco advances on the Leather Man, who is too taken with either surprise or fear to respond as Rocco moves deliberately, every step displaying utter confidence. “Nothing to say for yourself then?” Rocco growls as he retrieves the knife from its hiding place. He wonders if maybe he should say something else, loose that old venom welling up from the let-down. He can’t accept the reality is so…diminutive in comparison to his fantasies. Shouldn’t there be some more grotesque feeling? Something more horrendous?
Yes.
He stabs the Leather Man, taking him to the ground in a heap of flailing arms and legs. The eroticism hits him now: man on man in a violent life-or-death struggle, with three penises between them—one flesh, one preserved skin and metal, one all metal with a deadly point. This, this is what it is all about. Repeatedly he stabs the knife into the Leather Man, using his free hand to gouge the beast’s eyes during the altercation.
“Rocco…I don’t know how to tell you this but they found Sandy.” Sandy, the love of his life, the very meaning for facing each new day of hell. How could anybody take her away from him? He didn’t hear himself drop the phone, didn’t hear himself hit the floor.
He stabs himself into the Leather Man’s inert form now, screaming obscenities into his lifeless face. As he climaxes the thought drifts across his consciousness that no, his parents would not approve, and what would David say if he could see Rocco now? The orgasm does not stem the stream of filth flowing from his mouth. That’s okay, the thick basement walls will prevent any pesky neighbors from hearing his viciousness.
“Boys don’t play with dolls!” his parents constantly admonished him. Sometimes they put him in the basement. Sometimes the basement instead opened itself up like a womb and he went voluntarily, immersing himself in its alleviating darkness. They would find him sitting down there and drag him upstairs to watch the family eat while he went hungry. Eventually Rocco put his friend in the basement instead and left him, as punishment. His parents were pleased. He was born down there…
It isn’t easy stripping the corpse of its leather bondage gear. All the clips and buckles and straps and buttons, it’s far more elaborate than any of the paraphernalia in the catalogs or in the dark dungeons of the world-wide-web. Rocco has looked, myopically, perhaps more intent than any other bondage gear peruser alive. Yes, even he can admit he’s sick now. But at least he is sick with a purpose, although it is debatable as to whether it was the purpose which inflicted the illness upon him to begin with.
Yes, these garments will fit him. It’s eerie how well they fit, almost as if they were tailor-made just for Rocco.
How could Sandy be cut down like that? Such a good girl, such a beautiful, obedient girl. It hurt him like nothing else in his life.
Standing victorious, leather-bound, Rocco looks down on his former oppressor, now his victim. He had been wrong earlier when thinking that the events of his life led up to this ultimate experience. No, this is penultimate. There is still something more, a forbidden goal to be attained at all costs.
Enough dwelling on that for now. Rocco stoops and gathers the innards of the Leather Man, sloppily scattered on the floor, the cold, unyielding cement floor he knew so well as a child. “I wish they could’ve gotten it together enough to final
ly finish this basement,” he whispers through zippered lips. Already the metallic flavor is rubbing itself off on his lips, seeping into his mouth, exciting his loins.
The suitcase will hide these innards well. It has its own place, over in the corner, decades-old dirt stains in its shape on the floor proving the fact. The crumpled scraps of leather, of every size and shape, fit back into the case much more easily now that the exterior suit is absent.
Sitting in the corner, growing with Rocco, a new detail added every week, he was indeed omnipresent. Trying to be polite about it his mother once asked, “Whatever is his name dear?”
“I call him the Leather Man.”
Rocco used to drive around the more poorly-lit neighborhoods with some of the other teenagers smashing pumpkins on Halloween. Occasionally he would swing the baseball bat, going by at forty miles an hour, and crack a mailbox open by accident. One time it was a little boy’s head he cracked open. Perhaps it was all by design.
“There’s no such thing as fate!” he scream-snarls before picking up the telephone. He punches in the number with such violence that he is unsure as to whether the phone will be usable after this. Sipping another vial of his own blood Rocco taps his foot impatiently.
“Hello?”
“Hey bro. You don’t sound too good.”
“Rocky,” David sighs. “What is it now?”
“Well, I’m just over at the house and, well, you know. I guess it’s time.”
“Time? What time, what house? I’m watching a movie.”
“Well, since the police cleared the place for entry—”
“Oh Jesus Christ! Rock, what—”
“Well, I figure we should, you know, sort through their things. Get it over with so we don’t have it hanging over our heads, nagging at us forever. Come on.” The mask seems to be tightening as he talks to his brother. The leather feels as if it is constricting around his chest, making it harder to breath.
After one of David’s patented long pauses he states flatly, “I thought we’d put a little distance between ourselves and what happened.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And really, I can’t imagine going over there. I mean, fuck, that’s where they were…were…”
“Dave, listen. I’ve already sorted everything out. It’s all packed up in a box, labeled and everything. What, do I have to drive the stuff over to you as well? Doing all the work again, just like always I guess.”
“Okay, okay! Damn man, have a little compassion or something. I just…”
“Right.” Rocco can’t contain it any more. “I’ve been thinking about Sandy again—”
“Oh for God’s sakes,” David mutters. “Not this again. You were what, ten? She was just a dog, my dog.”
“David, she wasn’t just—”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re getting more emotional about this than a minute ago when we were talking about our parents, our parents Rocco!”
Thinking about that lithe golden retriever springing about the yard, fetching the stick, it makes Rocco’s chest ache. He’s told himself a thousand times that some wounds never heal. Who could run her down in the street like that? Who could be careless enough to leave the damned gate open?! The answer, to that last question at least, was David, ever-incompetent David. “Well, are you coming over or not?”
“Sure, whatever. I’ll be there in half an hour and then I’m not going there ever again.”
Fingering the knife Rocco says, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ve got it all arranged.” The police have removed all of the “crime scene” implements, but Rocco has always been resourceful. He learned to improvise early in life. The saw horse will come in handy, as will the dentist chair he ordered online.
After hanging up Rocco removes a dog-eared photo of himself posing with Sandy in the yard as a young boy, hugging her close to him, feeling her heartbeat shudder through his flesh. Swearing to avenge the one love he ever had the Leather Man places the photograph in his mouth, chews, swallows, and waits patiently by the door.
Jagged Desire
The orphanage was a drafty lodging filled with musky odors and lingering illness. The children knew this, as did the nuns. At least the women at the helm of Perpetual Mercy Orphanage could lose themselves in fervent prayer. For the children, though, finding diversion from the monotony and dread was a far more difficult matter. The estate was five hundred acres or more, but the little ones were expressly forbidden from wandering beyond the perimeter of the orphanage proper. What mysteries and adventures awaited them in the primordial depths of the wilderness? They would never know, so long as the Sisters had their way. As for the regal structures housing the orphanage, it all once belonged to the Lorber family. They were old blood, a lineage of gold and sapphire and ruby. The region surrounding Great Slave Lake had certainly drawn its share of eccentrics—the town of Faust itself seemed a focal point for them—but rumors surrounding the Lorbers were always of the most grim nature. Heretics, people in town whispered. It was a shock to many, then, when old Opal Lorber left her estate to a Catholic order. Whatever secrets the elaborate old compound housed remained beyond the grasp of the townspeople and orphans alike; all were prohibited from entering the mansion itself.
“It’s unsafe,” Sister Françoise would explain. “The structures are very old, especially the manor, and some of the buildings need to be renovated before they’re fit for people. Besides, you’d be better served pursuing your studies instead of traipsing through dusty old hallways.”
Sister Françoise is a big fat liar, thought Timothy. Detectives on TV would call ‘er a fraud and haul ‘er away to the slammer. He wasn’t a child simply content to be born. No, he wanted to seek out the interesting things in life. Since there were no exploits to be had in the orphanage the ten-year-old often got up to all manner of mischief, always resulting in a series of staunch slaps administered by the Abbess, Sister Madeleine. It was worth the trouble, though. Once he managed to sneak a few peeks into the mansion. None of the other children believed his wild tales of moving paintings, of creeping shadows. None except his little sister, Nadine, but she didn’t count. Really he wanted to impress Toby, a tough Native boy a year older than him. No dice.
Other than Nadine, the only two who didn’t scoff were new boys—in fact, they had no discernible reaction to anything at all. They simply stared like soulless scarecrows. The elder brother was eight, the younger seven, and the rumor going around was that their names were Normal and Sane, but obviously that couldn’t be true. There shouldn’t be any reason for Timothy to be afraid of them since they were a couple years younger, but their presence was unsettling all the same. The older brother’s hairy condition would have normally been the subject of merciless ridicule, yet for some reason nobody wanted to be the first to test him.
When the lights went out and the boys were admonished to go to sleep, Timothy wondered what the nuns were getting up to, what was going on over on the girls’ side of the facility, what this or that noise in the night was.
“Wolves,” Norm grunted. The little weirdo had been stationed in the next bunk. He and his brother were perched on the rails like birds, eyes wide and unblinking.
Clearing the sleep from his eyes, Timothy whispered, “What?”
“Those sounds just now. Wolves feasting from the bellies of infants sacrificed to appease your sire.” The two brothers were sucking on bones, probably saved from dinner. Only, they had macaroni and cheese that night.
“I’m trying to sleep,” Timothy whispered. Although he rolled away from their leering faces he could still make out their unusual breathing, the scrape of their teeth on glistening bone. Even with his pillow over his head the noises continued to plague him. Had somebody told the new kids that he was afraid of wolves? No, impossible. Even Nadine didn’t know about that.
Event
ually the sleepless nights began to wear Timothy down. No matter when he peeked out of the corner of his eye, even if he was pretending to sleep, those two freakbabies were sitting there staring at him. He’d tried threats, bribes, ignoring them…none of it worked. Sister Elizabeth, a Turkish nun in charge of instructing the younger children, took note of his listlessness and approached him on the subject, fearing he was ill. Her show of concern surprised Timothy because the Sisters had, as a whole, been a bit more distant of late. Actually, they were getting downright scary at times. Maybe it was just his imagination, or those two boys getting to him. Whatever the case, he confided his plight to Sister Elizabeth and she took him to Sister Mary Cheron.
Sister Mary Cheron listened to his tale dispassionately. She was the sort to make a mannequin seem emotionally overwrought by comparison, but during the telling of his story Timothy was afraid the woman was dead. He couldn’t make out any sign of breathing as she sat behind her desk. Sister Mary Cheron made no acknowledgment that he had finished, so he turned to Sister Elizabeth, who stood behind him. Her reassuring smile settled his nerves a bit. Then he realized the truly queer thing about Sister Mary Cheron: she hadn’t blinked once.
Slight crinkles developed at the corners of her mouth, suggesting a smile. “When was the last time you were disciplined, Timothy?”
He considered it. “Three weeks ago, Sister.”
“It’s been too long. Now you’re starting to tell fibs. Do you know what a masochist is, Timothy?”
He turned to Sister Elizabeth, then looked to Sister Mary Cheron once more. “Uh…no.”
The crinkles disappeared from her face. “It’s what you will be as an adult. If you make it that long. The Abbess is currently indisposed, but you’ll see her this evening before dinner. Understood?”
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