by phuc
She knows lots of things.
She's like the tribes. They knew lots of things, too secrets. But who told them the secrets?
God?
"It's absolutely unbelievable that your grades are so poor," the lanky counselor said. Years ago.
She barely graduated. She couldn't concentrate. "You have an IQ of 177. Do you know what that means?"
"That means I'm a genius."
"Yes, it does."
She thinks that she would like to put a pencil in his eye.
"You have an eidetic memory. That means that if you applied yourself, if you buckled down to your studies, you could write your own ticket."
She would like to buckle him down, with shackles. She would write his ticket. She would like to aspirate all of his spinal fluid. She would like to scrape his face off with a Red Devil razor. Just a fantasy. "Skulls mean death," she whispers.
Sometimes she walks in her sleep.
Sometimes she sees her mother.
She's the midnight mopgirl at the hospital. She has no aversions to the job, she enjoys it. When patients excrete in their beds, she likes to clean it up. When patients vomit on themselves, she likes to clean it up and look at it later.
Mopping up blood in the ER is her favorite. Seeing the flesh writhe in gunshot agony, or gilled by knife slits. Innards quivering in opened abdomens. Faces smashed flat by baseball bats. She likes to watch the doctors operate. She likes to see the doctors cut people open.
It must be wonderful to get paid to cut people open.
Sometimes she rushes to her closet, to masturbate.
She lives in a little box of memories, a little box of nightmares.
Daddy's House. Though it's really her mother's.
Daddy's House is in a little town called Cottage City. Just down from the district line.
The old house sits back on the corner, in darkness.
No one bothers her. No one can hear.
Sometimes she forgets things. Sometimes the lights go out because she forgets to pay the bill.
Sometimes she forgets to have the grass mowed, and the neighbors complain.
Once she left the garage door open all night. The car a bright green Ford Pinto could be seen from the street 'til dawn. No one said anything, though. Once she forgot to close the window in Daddy's Room. She'd been cutting a man's belly open, to feel his insides, and he'd been screaming. He'd screamed even more when she'd begun to take his insides out of him. How could she forget something so important? No one heard anything, though.
Now she sews their mouths shut so they can't scream.
She keeps the prostitute down in the basement. Out of the light. Mother gave her the idea. She needs to be very careful. She needs to be smart, like the counselor said she was.
The prostitute is secured to Daddy's old workbench. Wrists chained to the hook on the wall.
Waist tied down. Ankles chained to the table legs. She's cut a gap in the table, so the prostitute can excrete into a bucket. She's read all about it in the books she ordered from Thomas and Elsevier. Radio immune assay. SEM radiography. Cuticular microscopy. There's no other way.
"I'm sorry," she says to the prostitute. "There's no other way. Please understand. You must understand."
The prostitute, of course, cannot reply. Her lips, too, are sewn shut by high grade vicryl surgical suture. The suture is a bright pretty violet color. It comes in sterile packets, like condoms.
"Vanilla?" she asks.
The gap between two stitches leaves enough space for her to feed the prostitute with a convalescent squeeze bottle. She feeds her a nutritional drink called SEGO. It comes in several flavors: vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, and Dutch chocolate.
What are you thinking? she thinks. What's going on in your mind?
The prostitute's green eyes are dull. She's rack thin stretched out like this, and her ribs show.
Nipples so pale they're almost invisible. Nearly invisible marks inside her thighs, where men have burned her with cigarettes. Her throat makes muffled animal gulping noises as she sucks the SEGO through the squeeze bottle's flexible straw.
"I'm saving you. Did you know that? I'm saving you from yourself. You give them power over all of us when you let them use you for their devil. Mother called it the Devil's Horn."
The prostitute's throat wobbles as she gulps.
"I know. You couldn't help it. Neither could Mother. Sometimes we have to do things we don't like."
She smiles down.
"Let's get you pretty now."
She brushes the prostitute's plush hair. She sponges her off and empties her bucket. She clips her nails. She shaves her legs and her armpits.
"There. Better?"
The prostitute's head lolls against the wood.
«« »»
Back upstairs she drinks cold wine called Mouton Cadet.
It makes her feel good. It rounds off the hard edges of the pain.
Cricket sounds come in through the kitchen window.
It's hot out.
She likes hot nights.
When she's in bed, she can see The Cross in the window. Sometimes she walks all the way down Bladensburg Road at night, to look at it up close. The Cross stands huge and beautiful in the middle of the road, in a ring of white light, and it reminds her of something, but she never knows what.
It reminds her of something but she never knows what.
It reminds her of something but she never knows what. Once she saw the town police shoot a retarded man in the subshop across the street. The man was drooling. The man was having a fit, a seizure, or epilepsy, and a knife fell out of his pocket, and when he reached, drooling to pick up his knife, the police shot him.
July's '90s Woman is opened on the table. "Lose 10 Pounds In 14 Days And Keep It Off!" reads one article before "Verdict." Folded back next to it is The Washington Post BookWorld.
When she closes her eyes she sees beautiful blood.
The flesh writhing.
Their smothered screams are the herald.
To her? To her mother? To The Cross?
Later she will type.
CALENDAR OF LITERARY EVENTS reads the BookWorld caption.
The Writer's Association of Washington, American University, Pickman Fine Arts Center, 7:30
p.m., lectures by abstractionist poet Maxwell Platt and feminist columnist Kathleen Shade.
Tomorrow she will go and see Kathleen Shade.
(II)
Midnight in the city was yellow, an endless shroud of pallor lain by innumerable sodium lights.
Spence thought of lost worlds. Metropolitan Police Traffic Branch occupied a pie wedge of 100
year old asphalt where New York Avenue crossed L Street, a high, shabby brick building stained by age. The desk sergeant, a young black man, seemed enthusiastic, sharp, yet on an instant edge.
Spence was no stranger to this regard. Anyone from Major Case Section got it: glints in the eye like subtle terror. They were spooks. The Department Occupational Designation was classified.
Nobody really knew who they were or what they did. If you made even an insignificant error in front of any Major Case personnel, you were reassigned.
Poor kid, Spence thought. Don't shit in your pants on account of me.
"It was a priority system flag," the sergeant said. "I hope I didn't disturb you, sir."
The sergeant had called Spence at home. "If you hadn't disturbed me, you'd have been transferred to Warehouse Division in the morning," Spence said, trying to make a joke.
The sergeant didn't laugh. "I diverted them en route on their way to impound. What is it?"
"GTA," Spence said. He was looking at the printout. AUDI 4DR, GR. WT. 3700, TYPE: A, STEPHEN WILLARD CALABRICE.
"GTA? How come it's not on the hot sheet?"
"You ask too many questions, sergeant. It's a GTA."
"Yes sir."
Through the smudged window he could see the tow truck from District Impound lowering the car off the ramp.
Traff
ic Branch had picked up Spence's priority code on the computer when the vehicle's plates had been run. They'd found it blocking a hydrant in front of a gutted Northwest rowhouse.
Parking Section, thanks to budget cuts, didn't even get near that area until after dark now, and A prostitute would know that, Spence considered. Lots of prostitutes shacked up out that way, in the deeper blocks. And no one would fuck with the car an Audi Quattro fearing it might be a pimp's. Hmm, Spence thought. Had the car been parked there deliberately, or for convenience's sake?
"When did your guys tag it?"
"About 40 minutes ago," the sergeant said. He restrained his obvious curiosity. What was the big deal? Cars parked in front of hydrants weren't rare in this city. "PS's tied up all night these days."
"Thanks for moving on this," Spence said. "And call Mobile CES, will you?"
"Yes sir."
Spence walked outside. He wore tailored shirts from a Korean clothier on Connecticut Avenue, 80 bucks a pop. He had broad shoulders, well developed arms. Keeping fit and wearing good clothes let him feel vividly separate from the city that was falling in on itself. He'd been promoted two years ago he was 36 now from 2nd District Homicide, after solving a rash of crack related murders. "Major Case Section needs men like you, Spence," his deputy chief had told him. "And I presume you'd prefer to work alone you know, because, uh, because "
"Because I'm gay, sir?" Spence asked.
"Well, uh, yes."
"I don't prefer to work by myself because I'm gay, sir," Spence explained. "I prefer to work by myself simply because I get more work done."
"Excellent. And, well, I want you to know that...well, here you're only judged by your performance record, not by, well, you know, any sexual, uh, preference you may have."
Spence didn't like to be patronized. He'd merely left, and thanked the man for the promotion.
But the new assignment pleased him only because it granted him a professional solitude. He got to work, essentially, alone.
Spence was gay. He was also celibate for the last decade due to a steepening anti sociability.
Eighteen years ago, when he'd joined as a cadet, gays weren't allowed on the force. Now they had support groups and monthly meetings. Spence had driven a sector beat and gone to night school throughout his twenties, and once he'd gotten his psychology degree, he'd found that the world had changed without him. He saw many tragic things which, over time, cauterized him. He looked at death as a clinician. By now he wasn't even the least bit interested in looking at himself.
One night several winters ago, a stool had set him up. Spence wound up killing three guys in an abandoned textile factory near Brentwood. They took shots at him, so Spence hunted them down and killed them. Simple. Then he did the paperwork, went home, and caught the last two minutes of a Redskins/Giants Monday Night game. The Skins lost, and Spence was pissed.
A flashback, then, a whisper of memory. Too many years ago to remember, his last lover had broken up with him on a night in the middle of May. The man's name was Reginald, and Spence had loved him.
"You don't love anyone, Jeffrey. Your job eats you up. You're still half in the closet, pretending."
"No, I'm not," Spence said. "I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about me."
"You don't care about me. You don't even care about yourself."
"That's not true!" Spence bellowed. Then his voice cracked, like wood splintering. "Please don't leave me." It was the first plea he'd ever made in his life, to anyone.
"Be real, Jeffrey. There's nothing left."
"I'll do anything for you," Spence croaked.
"Whatever it is you're looking for," Reginald said, "I truly hope you find it. Good-bye, Jeffrey."
Spence punched holes in the wall when he got home. He bit his tongue 'til he bled, tears in his eyes like hot acid. Goddamn it! You can't do this to me! he thought. I love you! I love you!
But the next day it was all gone. He knew he had no choice but to make it go away, like he always had.
Reginald was right.
(III)
The yellow sodium light looked like gas. The tow driver, in Fleet Management overalls, disconnected the Audi from the ramp hook.
Spence showed the driver his ID. "Has this vehicle been inventoried?"
"Nope. Dispatch rerouted me on my way to the impound lot."
"Good," Spence said. "Have you touched anything inside the vehicle?"
"Nope. Don't need to on a ramp tow." The driver was tall and lanky, with disheveled blond hair.
"Sliphammer the trunk."
The driver's mouth formed some silent objection. He scratched his head. "Let me slimjim the door. There's probably a trunk button in the glove box."
"I don't want anybody going inside the vehicle. Sliphammer the trunk."
"You want me to do a couple hundred bucks' worth of damage for no reason? It's private property. You're telling me to bust up a $40,000 car. All he did was park in front of a hydrant. It'd be easier if I slimjimmed the door and used the trunk but "
"Take my word for it, the owner won't file a complaint. I don't want anyone but CES people inside the vehicle, for reasons that are none of your business. Neither of us have time to stand here and argue. The Metropolitan Police Major Case Section is fully authorizing you to sliphammer the trunk. So do it."
The driver scratched his head again. He wasn't a cop, he was just a car jockey. He returned in a moment with a sliphammer and screwed it into the Audi's trunk lock. "Look," he said, "I'm not going to be held responsible for any dam "
"Sliphammer the fucking trunk!" Spence yelled.
Two hard strokes on the metal sleeve tore the lock out of the trunk. The night swallowed up the sound, and at the same time a mobile unit from the Criminal Evidence Section pulled into the pie shaped lot. The grotesque sodium light made the brown car look green. As if covered with pollen, or mist.
Spence, for whatever reason, thought of his mother.
"Jeffrey, how come you don't go out with friends?"
I don't have any friends.
When the trunk lid raised, the towman turned away. Spence gazed down into a trunk full of body parts.
(IV)
At 3:15 a.m., Kathleen Shade, naked and drenched in sweat, lay deep in REM sleep.
She was dreaming.
This is a dream, she thought, as though it were of paramount importance that she acknowledge that fact. It made her feel safe.
She was dreaming that she lay awake in her bed late at night. The moon gazed in at her like an eye behind the window. Darkness hung about her in strangely precise angles.
One of the angles was a figure.
Was it a ghost? Kathleen didn't think so; she didn't believe in them. I'm in bed dreaming, she thought, and I'm dreaming that I'm awake in bed. She was naked on the mattress, having kicked the sheets fully off. Her nipples, inexplicably, stood erect.
The figure, standing to her side, leaned over. It seemed to be holding something out, offering something.
What are those? In the moonlight, Kathleen's skin looked dead. The sweat all over her felt like warm slime.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The figure didn't answer.
"What's that in your hand?"
"Pictures," the figure said.
It was a woman's voice, one Kathleen didn't recognize. It sounded clement, soft in care.
Kathleen's eyes tried to focus upward...
Pieces of the darkness itself composed the figure's form. Its hands were black bones. Its face was an abyss.
The hand opened. A stack of pictures, Polaroids, fell into Kathleen's naked lap.
"Embrace your hatred," the figure said.
Kathleen didn't know what that meant. She squinted at the pictures, but it was too dark to make any of them out.
The cat clock ticked...
"Would you like to do my story?" the figure asked.
| |
Chapter 5
(I)
It was disappointment
that had dogged her all day, and that made her wonder. The only mail today had been a credit card solicitation and a Neiman Marcus catalog. Nothing forwarded from the magazine. Nothing from the killer.
Her cramps were fading. The weatherman said today had almost broken records: 103 degrees.
