Left Hand
Page 10
Robert grabbed Paul’s ankles and Lucy grabbed Paul’s wrists. They dragged him off the bed and across the carpet. When Lucy let go of Paul’s wrists, his arms got stuck at the bathroom door, but he was eventually bundled into the tub.
* * *
Lucy tapped the scabs on the back of her hand. Robert squeezed water onto some heroin in a spoon on the bedside cabinet. He mixed it with a plunger and then cooked it over a cigarette lighter that was almost out of gas. He added lemon juice to dissolve whatever was cut with the heroin. He bit off a piece of cigarette filter and dropped it into the liquid. He drew similar amounts into two syringes. He handed one syringe to Lucy and she said there was more in the other one so he switched them over but she eventually chose the first one. They both shot up and slumped on the bed. Lucy mumbled something about if Robert had shared his heroin with Paul he wouldn’t have taken so many pills. Robert said if Lucy had let Paul fuck her he wouldn’t have taken so many pills. Lucy said he didn’t really want to fuck her. He just didn’t want anyone else to. Robert suggested giving him an autopsy to uncover his true motives. Lucy said she always wanted to drink human blood. She had only ever tried with a cat.
“You’re full of shit,” said Robert.
Lucy sat up. “You know he was really in love with you.”
Robert smirked. “We better just dump him on the beach. So it looks like he drowned. Accidentally or suicide. An amateur autopsy might look suspicious. Although it could be seen as a shark attack.”
“I like that kind of mystery.”
* * *
Flames spread through the long dry grass around the compound and soon engulfed the buildings. Petrol and munitions stores exploded. The few windows in the buildings shattered. The paint that had been splashed across the walls blistered and bubbled away until any kind of record was gone. Smoke rushed through the rooms and suffocated most of the boys as they slept.
Paul was dragging himself over bodies across the kitchen floor. He didn’t know what had happened. He was covered in blood.
“What did you do to the dog girl?” A boy was sobbing next to the empty cage. “Where’s her cunt? Her ass? Her mouth? Her other holes? Where is she?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You killed her. You fucking killed her. Where the fuck is she?”
“Get out of here. Just get the fuck out of here.”
“This is all your fault. I never should’ve shown you the way.”
Someone was hacking through the back door with an axe. The harsh beat reverberated through the rhythm of the fire. Paul thought it sounded wonderful, the best thing he had ever heard. It might have represented a rescue plan or an escape attempt. Maybe the architect of a failed experiment come back to free the rats. This was the kind of climax he had been hoping for. The boy who had been sobbing was covered in flames. His sobbing had turned into a painful kind of laughter. The only exits were all on fire. The axe blade struck Paul’s head. He dropped to the floor. Another blow chopped through his arms. The last one cracked his face into a frozen mess of shock and relief.
* * *
Robert had his feet across the seat on Lucy’s lap. Paul wasn’t sure what that meant. He told himself nothing. He heard Robert talking about how sexy Lucy looked driving the van with the wind in her hair and how he couldn’t wait to fuck her on the beach. Paul saw a fishing knife in a toolbox on the floor in the back of the van. He closed his mouth and moved his chin away from his chest. He had bitten his tongue. He wanted to remove Robert from existence. He knew he didn’t have the strength to remove Robert from existence. And he didn’t want to reveal any more jealously. He just wanted it all to end. He lifted the blanket and picked up the knife. The blade was dull. It was caked in grease and rust. It looked like it had been used to fuck things or repair them.
* * *
The girl playing the judge was reading from her script to the empty chair: “What exactly is your motivation for writing this trash? You say you are experimenting or playing with form and content but you cannot possibly be naive enough to expect us to believe that rubbish when the next moment you claim some kind of existential force is driving you.”
The teacher playing a journalist had put down his pen and exercise book and pulled out his cock. He was masturbating over the judge’s words.
“Do you, the accused, admit this narcissistic game of mirrors is merely childish attention seeking, vanity, self-doubt overcompensated for as transgressive posturing,” she stopped reading and looked at a teacher, “I don’t understand this,” and the teacher shook her head and wound her wrist until the judge continued, “an endless and increasingly desperate attempt to cover and reflect all possible bases, or do you truly harbor a body integrity disorder so complete that the only form of existence you are able to withstand is non-existence? Call it death. Self-murder. Suicide. Extinction. Sublimation. What does that mean? Sublimation of the body into text. What does all of this mean? Anything? At the end of the day reality sleeps in the same bed as we do.”
* * *
A police officer stood in the middle of the road and scribbled something in a notebook. He put the notebook on the front of the police car and took a tape measure from his pocket. He measured some tire marks on the road and compared the width with the tires on the van. The police officer went back to the police car to write some more notes but his pen had disappeared. A call on the car radio interrupted the police officer from looking for his pen. He leaned through the passenger window and took the call. Something moved in the long dry grass past a barbwire fence. It distracted the police officer. He put the receiver on the dashboard and took out a camera. He shot several pictures of whatever it was he saw in the long dry grass. A smoke cloud drifted up from the mines. The police officer got into the police car. He put on some sunglasses and drank some water. He started the engine and drove towards town.
* * *
Paul was on a beach he had never been on before. It seemed like an appropriate place to end. But every sense he had of an ending, if he were going to describe an ending to someone who had never encountered one, seemed ridiculous. Even the word end was too bland and generic. He knew he wouldn’t be able to describe this place and he didn’t really want to describe it because any extra words would only add more confusion. Too much had happened that was beyond his control. This place was going to be around a lot longer than he was. Nothing could fully contain the limitless ambiguities of existence. Something was always going to escape. He found a charred piece of bone and drew two lines in the sand. He sat and waited for the waves to wash the lines away. But the more he thought about the lines disappearing the more defined they became. He wondered what class he would be missing at school. He fantasized about the other kids constructing an endless series of elaborate monuments to celebrate their own obscurity. Perhaps they had forgotten him already. Maybe they never knew he was there.
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