Old Flames

by Jack Ketchum

  He came out of nowhere.

  How could he do that? The man was stealthy as a snake.

  She felt his fingers pinch down hard on her left nipple, the one he’d whipped raw and then the other one, pinch hard and lift which meant he wanted her up off the floor up off her knees and she groaned behind the gag and complied and stood for him and still he pinched and twisted and it felt as though he were trying to tear them off but she knew enough not to try to squirm away, knew enough to bear it. She stood and took it from him and finally he stopped.

  “Didn’t say you could do that. Did I.”

  When the whip came down across her breasts again she thought she would faint but she didn’t, her body wouldn’t give her even that much, her body was useless to her as now she felt suddenly it always had been, though pregnancy and childbirth and then this pregnancy too all useless and giving back nothing, even the plea sure of sex, that too useless ultimately. The body had always betrayed her. All it gave it took back and at the end of it was always pain, her breasts flooded with, engorged with pain, pain like mother’s milk inside her and maybe she deserved this after all as he said she did because everything she touched either died or was destroyed. Her body, her touch, a poisonous flower torn up out of a sour earth.

  What do you think, daddy? Do I deserve this? Your little girl?

  She didn’t know what he’d say. He’d maybe say she did.

  When it was finished he allowed her to sink to her knees, said she had permission to do so now and she should always ask in the future and she hung there not even aware of the wood bruising into her biceps and wept behind the blindfold. Exactly what she was weeping for she wasn’t sure but she knew it wasn’t just the pain.

  A strange thought occurred to her which wasn’t exactly a Catholic thought but which certainly partook of that.

  Sin begins with a repugnance for the flesh.

  She stared into her soul and saw herself a sinner.

  ELEVEN

  11:45 P.M.

  They sat in the dark watching the latest Jackie Chan movie on Cinemax. He was thinking how easy these kinds of movies were, the plots so familiar you didn’t have to follow them. You could think about other things like how he was going to have to start work on restoring Ruth Chandler’s hutch tomorrow and what he was going to do with Sara Foster once Kath went back to work Monday. You could think about this stuff and plan things until the next fistfight started and then go back to it once the fight was over. He decided that Monday she’d spend the day inside the Long Box. Total dark. All day long. Every day he’d soften her.

  He was thinking that sitting in the flickering shadows finishing the leftover stuffing from last night’s chicken when the doorbell rang.

  So who the fuck was that? At this time of night. He’d made a point of not cultivating the neighbors. He looked at Kath on the sofa and saw she was thinking the same thing he was—cops, we’re fucked—and felt a moment of utter panic, wondering if he shouldn’t get his ass out the back door double-quick.

  Then he thought no way, I got this covered.

  It couldn’t be.

  He put his fork down on the plate and set it on the end table and turned on the lamp beside it and got out of the chair. Jackie Chan was getting punched out by some black guy. It wouldn’t last. Chan would break his nigger ass. At the door he put on the porch light and looked out the window.

  McCann. Jesus, McCann of all people. He didn’t need this. Not today.

  But he couldn’t very well play at nobody home either. Not with the TV blaring.

  He opened the door.

  “Stephen.”

  “Mr. McCann. How are you?”

  “Fine. I know it’s late. May I come in a moment?”

  “We were just about ready to go to bed, actually.”

  “Only a moment. Something’s been on my mind. It won’t take long. I promise.”

  The smile was unctuous as usual. There was something about the little bearded bald man that always revolted him. McCann was a lifelong bachelor. Probably a faggot. Their interests had led them into the same circles but for very different reasons. Stephen didn’t have to like him.

  “I guess. Where’s your car?”

  “In the shop, I’m afraid. I walked over.”

  McCann lived about two miles away, practically into the next township. What the fuck was this all about?

  He decided he’d better find out.

  McCann stepped into the room and Stephen gestured toward the chair. He turned off the volume on Jackie Chan. Chan and the black guy fought on in silence.

  “Thanks.” McCann sat down and sighed.

  “Can I get you a beer or something?”

  “If sinners entice thee, consent thee not.”

  He chuckled. Actually chuckled. The asshole.

  “Thank you. That would be most welcome.”

  “Kath? You?”

  “No thanks.”

  He walked into the kitchen and got two beers and opened them and when he returned to the living room both Kath and McCann were watching the silent screen. Both of them looking distinctly uncomfortable. McCann took his Bud and drank. Stephen sat down beside Kath and did the same.

  “So. What can we do for you?”

  “I may as well say this right out. I have to know, Stephen. It’s been bothering me. Where is she? Who is she?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The woman. In front of the clinic yesterday. I wasn’t supposed to be there, you see. The New York Christians’ Aid Co alition called some of us from my group at the very last minute. A number of their people had cancelled. Elsie Little and I were the only ones who were free yesterday. But I saw you. You pulled her into your station wagon.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He sighed. “I saw you, Stephen. If for no other reason than for the movement’s sake I need to know exactly what’s going on here. Remember, he that loveth lies loveth not the Lord.”

  “You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else, Charles.”

  He smiled. “You and Katherine both? That’s hardly likely. I saw both of you. I even recognized your car. Trust me, Stephen, please. This is just between the three of us. Elsie didn’t notice you and I haven’t said a thing to her. You can trust me.”

  He’d sooner trust a water snake.

  He wanted to strangle the little man. But McCann was scaring him too.

  They’d planned it to be in a whole other State. The biggest city in the world for god’s sake. A place they’d picketed only once before. Nobody they knew was supposed to be anywhere near there.

  He pulled heavily from the bottle.

  “She’s going to have a baby,” Kath said.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Kath!”

  “She’s going to have a baby. She’s three months pregnant. I can’t have one and she can. And with Stephen’s record we can’t adopt. So she’s going to have our baby. Okay? You satisfied?”

  “But…”

  “She was going to abort it, Mr. McCann. Remember the first commandment? Thou shalt not kill? Remember what this is all about? We are saving the life of this baby!”

  McCann stared at her and sipped his beer. Stephen was alternately furiously with her and relieved. The ball was in his court now.

  It was unlike her to be so passionate.

  Maybe she disliked the little toad as much as he did.

  “Do me a favor, Kath. Get me another beer, will you?”

  She got off the couch without a word. Just as glad to be out of it. McCann’s eyes followed her and then settled back on his.

  “You really expect to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t just…kidnap somebody. What about consent?”

  “We’ll get her consent.”

  “How in the world will you do that?”

  “That’ll have to be our business, I’m afraid.”

  He shook his head. “Not the Lord’s business, I think.”r />
  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Is abortion the Lord’s business?”

  “We’re trying to end that.”

  “I know. In our way so are we. Here’s one kid who’s not going to get sucked out of his mother’s womb like some dustball off a living room floor.”

  “But the real mother…”

  Kath handed him the second beer and sat down beside him again.

  “To hell with the real mother. She was going to kill it.”

  “It?”

  “The baby. Him. Her. Whatever.”

  The man glared at him. Stood up.

  “All right, let’s see her, then. Let’s see this…this brood mare of yours!”

  “I gotta tell you. I don’t like your tone, McCann.”

  “I don’t like your choice of words, either. A child is not an it. Motherhood is a blessed state and you cannot simply lift your choice of mothers off the street. Where is she? In the basement? That’s where I’d keep my prisoners.”

  The man was actually trembling with anger. The self-righteous little bastard. He shook his finger at both of them and headed for the basement door.

  “Isaiah 7:3. Amend your ways and doings, all ye whores and defilers!”

  Something inside him gave a desperate lurch and he was up off the couch reaching for the second bottle and suddenly he was armed and fucking dangerous, one of the bottles dripping with cool sweat, he had them by the neck and he swung the empty down over the man’s ear, felt the impact and heard and watched it shatter and then he was looking down at his hand again, the suddenly truncated neck of the bottle sticking jagged and deep into the pad of flesh between thumb and forefinger. He looked up and saw the man turn trying to say something and swung the other bottle, the one that was almost full, directly into his face.

  It was a kind of magic he thought what a simple glass bottle could do. One moment the face was full of fury and indignation and the next full of surprise and pain because the second bottle had shattered too but this time full across his mouth, a huge shard of brown glass pushed through the upper lip and out his cheek, foam and blood mingling in a bright pink slime riding down his chin.

  Dimly he could hear Kath scream and the little man roaring deep and anguished but his brain was roaring even louder saying, finish it, you got to finish it! even as McCann reached for him. He pivoted and half-dived and half-fell over to the end table, the plate that had held last night’s stuffing clattering to the floor, the fork which was his target in his hand and he reached up off the floor as McCann lunged for him, McCann unaccountably still wanting to fight and shoved it deep into the man’s neck and twisted, twisted fast back and forth inside him, sinking it deeper until the hands closed over his own and tore them away with an unexpected force and tore the fork from his throat and sent it sailing across the room.

  The man’s growl gurgled in his throat, the throat pulsing blood through his clasped hands like Stephen’s own first pulsing orgasm when he was a boy, blood rolling off the pierced cheek and spraying from his throat over the throw-rug in front of the TV and over the TV screen where Jackie Chan fought on as he staggered to one knee and finish it finish it still wailed in his ears so he tore the shard of glass out of the palm of his hand and ripped the plug from the heavy brass standing lamp beside the couch and grabbed it by the neck and brought the base of it across McCann’s face as hard as he could hitting him with five solid pounds of brass, a sound like metal striking a bowling ball, knocked him sideways to the floor, blood spraying the wall and the mirror over the fireplace in the wide arc of his fall. He stood over him and brought the base down on his head, he didn’t know how many times, over and over until the sickening thuds turned gradually softer, until the body stopped twitching and the flow of blood grew thick and languid as a mudslide. Until he could barely even lift the thing any more and collapsed to his knees beside him.

  He realized he was crying. He looked at the mangled head.

  He got up on quivering legs and rushed to the sink and delivered himself up of cold bread stuffing and meat loaf dinner.

  He turned on the tap and the switch on the disposal unit and rinsed the stuff away and rinsed the gash between thumb and forefinger. With the other hand he splashed his face. The cold water seemed to revive him. The cut continued to seep blood in regular pulses so he wrapped it with a clean dish towel out of the drawer and used his teeth and his good hand to tie it tight.

  Kath was still making tiny high-pitched keening sounds. Rocking back and forth on the couch. Staring at the ceiling. Her face shiny with tears.

  It seemed as though he saw blood everywhere.

  Gotta clean up, he thought.

  Gotta shake her out of this and clean up and get rid of McCann in the back where the girl was and the thought occurred to him then that maybe he could use this.

  Maybe this was even good.

  But first he wanted towels. First things first.

  To wrap that head.

  Downstairs in the long box she dimly heard a voice she didn’t recognize raised loudly in anger and at first she thought it was the tele vision turned up high, then that maybe just maybe it was someone who had come for her. The police. Someone. The thought made her heart race. Then moments later she heard a struggle. Feet pounding heavy across the floor and glass breaking and then more and more pounding and she thought yes! get them! get the fucking sons of bitches! and then please please hurry.

  And then heard only silence.

  She pounded on the box. Kicked at it. Shouted, screamed.

  No one came.

  She lay there for god knew how long, listening to her own breathing. She heard running water through the pipes on-off on-off and the occasional heavy footfall and that was all.

  Hope seeped away like water down the pipes and left her numb and empty.

  The pain returned too.

  Her breasts mostly. But also her back and shoulders and her ass pressed against the cold hard wood. There was no way to get comfortable inside the box, no way to fully relax her aching muscles. Inside the box, sleep came with a hammer in its hand or else it didn’t arrive at all.

  Once again her life reduced itself to waiting.

  How many days? One? Two? Three now?

  When she finally heard footsteps cross the room moving in her direction she knew that they belonged to him and not to some deliverer. At best he was coming to feed her or ask if she needed the bedpan. At worst she’d be beaten again for some unknowable infraction or put inside the headbox. She was resigned to all of it.

  She heard his fingers on the latch and his voice telling her to put on the blindfold and she did and then she was sliding out into the room again.

  “Stand up.”

  She was always a little dizzy after being inside. She stood slowly and carefully, using her hands on the top of it to support her for a moment until she felt sufficiently steady.

  “Put this on.”

  She felt fabric, cotton, press lightly against her stomach and she reached for it with both hands and hugged it to her, smelled the clean fresh scent of it. She unfolded it, turned it.

  “The other way. You got it wrong. That’s the back.”

  She turned it again.

  Clothes! He was giving her clothes!

  A dress!

  She pulled it on over her head and winced as it slid across her breasts but that was nothing to the sensation of being clothed again. It was probably a little baggy, a little bit big for her she thought and yes, it was, she knew as she began to button it. But the light thin material felt wonderful.

  A short-sleeve dress. She almost felt human again.

  “These too. They’re yours.”

  He handed her her shoes. The flats she’d worn to the clinic. Their familiarity tore at her as though they were of another life entirely, relics of some dimly familiar well-loved past. She leaned back against the box and slipped them on.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Put your hands behind your back.”

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nbsp; He snapped the manacles together.

  “Come with me.”

  He took her arm, firmly and not gently, and suddenly she was frightened again. But she did as he said and walked with him. There was nothing else she could do.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You don’t question me, remember? You’ll see.”

  Maybe this is the end, she thought. Maybe they’re going to do it now.

  End me.

  Kill me. Or let me go.

  No. Not possible.

  “Careful. There are stairs here.”

  He led her up slowly. She counted the steps, trying to calm herself, trying to interrupt the circle of excitement and fear which looped into each other inside her. Neither excitement nor fear would do her any good. She counted sixteen wooden steps. They came to a carpeted landing. Fresh air swept cool around her ankles and she thought they must be standing by the back door, that it must be off to her left. Then he turned her to the right and moved her up yet another, slightly higher step and she was standing on a wood floor. This must be the kitchen or dining room area, she thought. She smelled faint cooking-smells, hamburger or something, almost overwhelmed by cleaning-smells, ammonia, bleach, and something like Windex or Fantasik.

  Simple, comfortable, familiar smells. Not the damp musty basement. They nearly brought her to tears.

  “Okay, slow now.”

  He moved her a half-turn to the right and walked her fourteen steps straight ahead over a wood floor and stopped, took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

  “Sit.”

  She bent her knees and reached down behind her with her hands until she found the base of a narrow wooden chair topped by a thinly stuffed cushion and sat down.

  “Okay, now listen to me. I’m only going to say this once.”

  He was either kneeling beside her or sitting, she couldn’t say which, but he was very close. His voice was soft but there was something excited about it too. A kind of heightened ner vous quality. It scared her. She wanted him stable. As stable as possible.

  “You heard something up here awhile ago, didn’t you.”

  She almost said no. Then thought it was probably not wise to lie to him. She nodded.