by Aaron Dries
The man played with the nozzle and the water stopped flowing, the hose growing taught. He put his fingers in his ears. “Don’t want to hear it, fella! Don’t want to hear it. There’s nothing you could say that I ain’t already heard.”
The man’s words were as articulate as his movements. Marshall could tell that he wasn’t quite all there in the head. A few beers short of a six-pack, as his father used to say. Marshall wondered if he could use this to his advantage.
“You ain’t the first person I’ve seen strapped to that there chair, you know, and it figures that you won’t be the last one, either. So you just put a sock in it, ’kay? Like I just said before, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Let me go, you fat fuck!” Exploding anger. Marshall started to yell, his voice hoarse.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. Scream all you want. Nobody can hear you down here.”
Marshall’s yell died in his throat when he noticed that the decapitated kid was gone—head and all. He wondered if the exploding army base bombs had been nothing more than the sound of the corpse—still nailed to his chair—being dragged up the wooden staircase, assimilating with his dream. He saw bloodied marks on the hand railing.
“There, that’s better. A bit of shhhh never hurt anyone, did it?” the fat man said, throwing the hose into the taunting space behind the stairs. He stepped back into the light, his features thrown into shadow from the bulb above his balding head. “Well don’t you make the funny picture?”
Marshall hung his head. “Fuck you,” was all he could manage.
“Yeah, yeah. Get it outta ya system. The sooner you stop being all huffy-and-puffy, the sooner you’ll get your head around all this. Once you do that, it won’t hurt so much. Trust Joe on that one.”
Joe. Marshall scrawled the name against the inside of his skull with a bloodied finger.
Joe took off his gloves and put his hands on his hips, bent his head forward and wiped his brow on his shoulder. “You need to piss?” he purred, an eyebrow raised. “If you need to piss you better tell me, ’cause Guy don’t like cleaning up that kind of mess. Me, I don’t care so much. I’m used to cleaning up after people who can’t move no more. My wife, she’s sick. So if you need to piss—or hell—if you need to go a number two, you better tell me.”
Marshall hadn’t been aware of how bad he needed to urinate until the man had mentioned it. There was an intense pressure in his bladder; he could see the bulge of his stomach. It was a new, fresh pain—unique and scary.
“Well, I can see that you need to. It’s printed across your face.”
Joe slapped his thighs and shuffled behind the staircase.
Marshall listened to the sounds of rustling. Plastic bags. Metal against metal. A rock of shame sat in the hollow of his throat.
Joe re-emerged holding a green hospital urinal jug by its handle. “Tada! I don’t think it has been cleaned since the last fella used it. Oh well.”
Joe crossed the room, his galoshes squeaking against the concrete. He stepped in front of the light bulb and was thrown into silhouette, a splash of yellow light illuminating his face. Marshall saw crooked, country teeth, peppered with fillings. Joe kneeled before him, letting loose a sigh.
I hate you, Marshall thought. I hate you for putting me through this. You fat fuck. You cunt. Schoolyard curses ran through his head. He gripped the arms of the chair.
Joe’s oily fingers gripped the waistline of the boxer shorts, slipped inside, and pulled down. Marshall’s body tightened, growing rigid and tense, as those fingers took hold of his penis and ushered it into the mouth of the bottle.
Fuck. Cunt. Shit. Bastard.
“What, you can’t go?” Joe asked, giggling. “Want Joe to sing you a song? Run the tap? Count backwards, or somethin’? That does the trick, times like these.”
Marshall’s eyes were closed, his lips parted. He concentrated on the whistle his breath made in his throat. So long as his hatred for the man flowed through him he couldn’t let himself go. Everything inside him felt wound up, as tight as a spring. He visualized the coil as it slowly unwound. A burning sensation ripped through his groin. The spring continued to loosen; the hatred bled away.
“There you go!” Joe said.
The tinkle of water against plastic, increasing in pitch as the bottle grew full.
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Marshall felt himself being pulled over the lip. It was warm.
The tap of bottle being placed on the floor. The slosh of piss.
“Remember though. More than two shakes and you’re playing with yourself!” Joe cackled and leaned close in a coughing fit.
Snap, went the elastic waistline.
Marshall’s shot forward to the full extent of his binds and sunk his teeth into Joe’s sagging cheek. A hot spurt of blood filled his mouth. He growled and shook his head from side to side like a dog. Joe’s screams were ear-splitting. Marshall stared into the piggish eye of the man under his bite and saw his own rabid reflection.
A thick hand swung around and connected with the side of Marshall’s head. A flare went off. The dropping bomb.
Marshall howled, his head snapped sideways. Droplets of blood flew through the air; it belonged to them both. Marshall’s mouth was painted in a red smile, his teeth shining yellow through the gore. “I got you! I got you, you fat fuck!”
Joe squealed through his fingers, which clutched at his flapping right cheek, as he kicked Marshall in the shins. Over and over.
Each time the toe of the rubber boot connected with his flesh, Marshall saw bright light. Dull pain. But it was worth it. Oh man, was it ever.
The kicks stopped and Joe marched in circles, stomping his feet. Curses spilled from him as freely as the blood. “Oh, you bastard. Oh, ain’t you gonna cop it? Just wait ’til Guy hears about this. He’ll rip you a new one. You bastard.” Joe blubbered, childlike, and stumbled to the stairs—
And stopped.
He spun his head around and studied his victim. He didn’t see a man with a face and expressions, didn’t see a man with feelings, who breathed just like him…
He saw pig carcasses in a pile. Leaking blood and drawing flies.
The fat man smiled as he crossed the room a final time, bent down and picked up the urine bottle. Their eyes were locked. Marshall laughed back at him in defiance, his guffaws exaggerated and ugly.
A stench escaped from between the fat man’s wormish lips as he sucked in and expelled the basement air. It smelt of cheese. Of rot. “You wanna bite like a dog, then you gonna die like a dog,” he said and then pointed to his wound. “This don’t hurt; not one bit. I’m a farmer. This ain’t the first time I’ve been bit by an animal. Gonna put you down, doggie. Gonna put you down re-eeeeaal slow.”
The words hit home and Marshall’s victory started to fade. He watched the man waddle up the stairs. The door leading to the kitchen closed behind him and changed the airflow through the basement. There was the whine of wind, sucked dry. The light bulb swayed and the room shimmered with color. There was faint scratching somewhere.
Chapter Forty-Three
The old house groaned and creaked, restless as an old man fighting sleep. Marshall listened to the tick-tick-tick of the pipes, to that scratching sound behind the walls.
This was his universe now; he knew he would never see the outside world again. Marshall thought about all that he’d taken for granted and felt a sorrow so deep it penetrated further than his hunger—into his bones.
He wondered what the moment of death would be like. Would he see a light, or did the curtain simply fall? Would his life flash before his eyes? Were that the case then he would be endure all that had come before again. He couldn’t stand losing Noah and Claire a second time.
Marshall chewed on the possibility.
If his life did flash past, would it be like living the same experiences twice, back-to-back? Or would the initial experience fade away, the flash of the past growing more prominent?
More real. If so, then perhaps this was it, and he was a split second from death right now. It had already happened and soon all of his questions would be answered.
Have I been torn apart? Have nails been driven through my hands and my body torn to shreds?
The thought blew out like a candle. He heard noises from upstairs. The slam of a door. Footsteps.
Chapter Forty-Four
Sam was dressed in a school uniform. A crest on the pocket of his shirt. Marshall tried to make out what it said as the teenager busied himself around the room, but his eyes refused to focus. He’d always been under the impression that schools didn’t enforce uniforms in America—or at least that was the lesson he’d learned from watching evening soap operas and frat house comedies.
Unless he attends a Catholic school, Marshall thought.
Marshall watched Sam bring the card table down the staircase and set it up against the wall on his right. “What’re you doing?” he asked.
There was no answer, but the boy did turn to look at him. That blank expression.
Sam bound up the stairs with energy to spare and a few minutes later, returned with a heavy-looking slide projector cradled in his arms. The boy struggled with its weight at first, but soon readjusted his grip and descended with confidence. “What’s that for? Please tell me, Sam.”
No reply.
Marshall wasn’t surprised. But it didn’t stop his frustration.
“God damn it, tell me what’s going on.”
Sam put the projector on the table and faced it towards the mattresses on the opposite wall. He fiddled with the slides in the circular slots and then stepped back to observe his handiwork.
Marshall could hear the boy breathing.
Sam cracked his knuckles and walked to the space behind the stairs, swinging his arms as though untroubled by the tasks demanded of him. Marshall saw him bend over—his feet still in view—and rifle through an unseen toolbox. He listened to the sounds of metal clanging together and then the loud slam of the box being closed.
The feet shuffled out of sight.
Marshall craned his neck to see what was happening, but the limitations of both the binds and his body kept him on a short leash. “What are you doing?” he repeated again, not expecting a reply—and not getting one.
Sam strode back into the lamplight dragging an extension cord behind him; its length flicked across the floor in half circles. It sounded like a skipping rope.
“My mother, your mother lives down the street—”
In the school yard at James Bridge. A hot day.
“Kissing every boy and man that she meets—”
They weren’t allowed to go outside for their lunch break without their wide-brimmed hats on. Some students were eating their sandwiches in the classroom.
“She met one man and had some fun—”
Two kids were swinging a plastic rope over the tarmac in front of him. Marshall stood there, the sun beating down on him, waiting for the right moment to leap in.
“She didn’t come back till the deed was done!”
If his timing was off then the rope would catch around his head or ankles and the game would be over. “Come on, Mars!” someone yelled.
He swallowed hard and ran towards the rope.
A flash of light and the crackle of electricity as Sam plugged the extension cord into the projector. He jumped back, his breathing a little faster now. The teenager turned the machine on and the opposite wall flooded with light. Sam turned it off.
“Can I have some water?” Marshall dared to ask, still blinded. By the time his eyes had readjusted, Sam was standing in front of him with a dirty glass outstretched in one hand.
Marshall looked up, salivating. He looks just how I imagine Noah would look now, he said to himself. They shared the same shy, downcast eyes. The delicate eyelashes…
For the longest time Marshall had forgotten what his son looked like. He only remembered memories, not actual events and expressions. If asked, he could recite an accurate description of his son’s appearance, detail for detail, right down to the kind of socks he liked to wear. But if he wanted to visualize Noah himself, to savor the memory of his face, then he found himself lost. Time’s a hungry bastard, he now understood. It gobbles up all the things we leave behind. It was only when he discovered the USB drive in the back of the teddy bear that the memories started to grow solid again. It frightened him to say it, but he could see his son more clearly with every cut-and-paste conversation he read in the Word document. In a strange way, he was almost thankful.
The glass touched his lips and Marshall drank in desperate gulps. Water trickled down his chin as the teenager turned away, tossing the glass back and forth between his hands.
“Thank you,” Marshall said. He could feel the water flowing through him, igniting energy and giving him strength. It felt amazing.
Sam stopped midway across the room but didn’t turn.
Marshall could see the structure of his shoulder blades through his thin uniform. He saw the boy’s jagged intake of air, as though he’d just been pricked by one of his father’s needles.
Thank you.
The word had gotten through to him.
Marshall couldn’t articulate why, but he felt a snippet of something he thought he’d lost return to him, just like the image of his son. And like that image, this feeling was faint—but very much present.
Hope.
Chapter Forty-Five
The slam of a door. Muffled voices upstairs. Napier was home.
Marshall sketched a portrait of the man in his mind, only the portrait was fractured into three distinct styles—one for each of the personalities he’d so far observed.
First, there was the man who spoke with the grace of an office executive. This person was silver-tongued and in control. It was the type of character that Marshall himself had been required to be when pitching filming budgets to his clients. He could visualize this man bent over a desk somewhere, typing away at a computer, answering phones. This person brushed his hair and trimmed his nails.
The second character was an extension of the first, only instead of being bent over desks, or trimming his nails, he was bending over corpses and singing his song.
‘And it breaks me, it breaks me, it breaks me to say…’
This person oozed confidence. I’ll piss into the wind if I want to, thank you very much, said his defiant stance. And I don’t care if I mess up my brand new shoes, either. Chaos and charm went hand in hand.
‘…Time’s put the end in my Endsville, a steak in the heart of the USA.’
The third drawing was a wild and violent thing. It giggled and moaned and tore and cut and pantomimed. This personality scared him the most because even Napier himself seemed to have no control over it.
Someone opened the basement door.
This is it, Marshall thought. Be strong. Be ready.
Each approaching footstep brought with it a new lie for Marshall to tell himself. You’re brave. Boom! You can get through this. Boom!
And soon, Napier was in the room.
“Gee, what a day,” Napier said. His hair was combed and his hands clean, remainders of a civilized man. His trousers and singlet top reeked of fabric softener.
Marshall followed his every move.
“People just don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes, do they? Build me a house! they say. Well, okay, fine. I’m a good, fair man, I guess I’ll oblige and build you a house. But there are rules. Oh, there are rules? they say; shocked, like. Yes, ma’am, there are. Council regulations, forms, hell—there’s gravity to bargain with.”
Napier went to the projector and fiddled with the slides, clicking his tongue.
“People can be idiots. I swear, one day I’ll just snap.” He turned on the projector, the room snapping bright. “Good boy,” he said with a smile before returning to the subject of work. “I need to get out of that office and focus more on my freelance stuff. Be my own boss. It’s The Dream, right? Peopl
e always need architects, so I’m sure I can get enough work to keep the lights on. I’m only in that office twice a week, but I tell you, Marshall, twice is enough. Boy howdy.”
Stop talking to me like I’m your friend.
“So Joe told me you took a chomp outta him!” Napier laughed. “Good for you. I like a fightin’ spirit, but Joe’s an easy target. He’s slow and stupid, as I’m sure you guessed. But he’s loyal.”
Marshall thought about the houses Napier must have designed over the years. Would the owners of those homes want their buildings torn down if they learned that their architect had been a madman, that evil had been at work in every corner and crossbeam? He lurked behind their walls. He walked their hallways, like a spirit, a demon, some entity that knew only selfishness and violence. A chill ran through him. He knew he would. Tear the fucker down. Burn it. Douse the flames with holy water—
“Well, everything seems to be in place here.” Napier switched on the slide projector. The machine whirred and clanked. He picked up a cord-strung remote and held it in his right hand, weighing it up, as though debating what to do next. Marshall could see his twinkling eyes through the light. It all felt rehearsed.
Napier clicked the remote and the machine ground and spluttered. The first of the slides clunked into position before the bulb. Where there had been a white square of light on the opposite wall, there was now a blurry landscape. Napier adjusted the focus and the picture became clear. “I thought you might like to know who I am. Or at least, to get an idea,” he said.
It was a landscape. Dry soil. Dead trees. A spattering of sun-bleached houses.
“This is my home town. Leander, Texas. Small place. Just northwest of Austin. Williamson and Travis County. I lived in that dust-covered shit hole until I was eleven, and then my parents moved us to New Orleans. But I miss the old home place. And I miss the occasional Wattaburger, too!”
Napier’s voice showed no sign of emotion; it was as flat as the land in the photograph. He pulled out the lawn chair and eased himself into it, letting loose a sigh.
