Karin had a sudden urge to give Mister Romano one of these flowers. Time had passed and she noticed him now in his darkened house, watching over her but pretending not to, Tabby on his lap. She placed the newly cut flowers in and around the old, gave each of them one last gentle push from her fingertips, and chose the original coreopsis she had begun with.
She lifted it off the grave.
And heard two sounds that raised the hair on the back of her neck and set her skull to throbbing. The first was a distant muffled dog whimper, short, choked off, and from a direction impossible to determine. The second sound was a short huff, so quiet Karin was almost convinced she had imagined it, a feint toward the clearing of a throat—and its echo in her head tied it to something terrifying, but what that was she had no idea.
She’d never ever been scared of graveyards. But for one moment she understood those who were. Nonsense, came the thought; a branch in a dark wood mistaken for an arm, raising a hackle or two, but settling back almost at once into explicable patterns. Rising, she looked in at Mister Romano and shrugged off all but the faintest vestiges of the frisson that had raced through her.
“See you tomorrow, Danny,” said Karin, and blew him a kiss. Then she lifted her basket in one hand, the revived coreopsis in the other, and moved beyond his grave toward the warmly lit porch of Mister Romano’s house.
***
Life blasted through him like cleansing fire.
Fever burned him up, but no rivulets of sweat coursed down his face. Nothing to sweat out. Eternity in a black airless sauna had leathered him like a bog mummy.
Felt like he was frying under light, a mirrored sun sizzling both sides of him—or like he was caught, coming out of sleep, in a raging inferno, its strong orange hand closing conflagration about him. But there was nothing to see but pitch blackness, no sound but the pounding of pain in his head, no smell but that pervasive stench like week-old road kill confined and concentrated.
He wanted to scream, the needles of fire wove so deep and deft into him. But his lungs were dead. And even as he pictured his lungs, a fisted ball of flame seared down his throat, scattering its offshoots into every branching tube and byway, an effervescence of pain. The bellows of his chest rose, his flesh screaming at the outrageousness of movement, yet still no sound assaulted his ears.
The thought that the pain had peaked came to him many times, but new agony continually surprised him. An image reared up: The dentist who put him under and dug out his wisdom teeth, four at once, speaking to him through a haze of Valium and Darvon, “Be sure to fill this prescription, Danny. Believe me, you’re going to need these pills when the anesthetic wears off.” But he’d ignored the advice, misplaced or tossed the slip of paper with Doctor Wrench-and-Tug’s scrawl across it, suffered as the throbbing haze grew harsher and lost its fuzzy edges in favor of razors, razors that twisted and sank deeper, sprouting barbs and scraping into exposed nerve and bone like the snacking of rats. It was like that now, but all over his body, harsh and dark and flaring, an unseen sun roasting him through and through.
The dentist had called him Danny. His name. It fit somehow, though there was something about it he detested. His chest rose and fell, adjusting to the agony, deriving no oxygen from the dead air but keeping up the rhythm of in-and-out because that was what living flesh did. Moving air deepened the stench. His tongue flexed in revulsion, and it was as if it had pressed up against a taut criss-cross of razor-wire, cut buds punished with the taste of rot. He swallowed. Instant regret. Felt like the Jolly Green Giant was dry-humping his throat, thrusting thorned, flesh-tattering prickmeat as deep and wide as it would go, ravaging with vegetative rape the long snaky length of his alimentary canal.
A fresh blast of heat, and Danny knew who was behind it. The assault had the feel of Karin about it, and as he thought the name, he saw her again. The kriss coming into him, her face a mass of bruises and blood, her puffed eyes crying and yet glinting as hard and sharp as the blade she plunged into his chest. The pain in his heart, the energy draining from his hands, his arms, a dizzying in his head, then swift nothing. She’d been so meek, so compliant, so docile, but inside there’d lurked a scrapper; he knew that and he loved to goad it, to see it cower just beneath the surface, to beat it down again and crow over it, then to let the hard side melt and the softness of regretful love overwhelm them both.
The gravy had driven her past her limit. The gravy and Wolf’s rough tongue licking it up. Jesus, he thought, she must have done one hefty shitload of damage for me to feel this way. Took my fucking eyes out for one thing, no light anywhere, totaled my fucking optic nerves.
Must be in a hospital bed.
But it didn’t feel like a hospital bed. There were no tucked-in sheets to resist, just a heavy wash of pain, a renewed surge of which now assaulted him like a wave of radiation. But this pain left behind a new strength, took away the dread sense and panic that there was no limit to what he had to endure. He tried moving a hand, found it was like thrusting it into a bucket of fishhooks, but had the will to keep drumming his fingers on the hard surface he lay on, drumming until he could bear the anguish of it and try something more daring.
He slid his fingers around, feeling the smooth cool bed sheets. Satin sheets? In a hospital? And they didn’t seem to cover any mattress. A board maybe. Christ, had she broken his back too? Another assault from above, and the stench went from offensive to intolerable, not because its intensity deepened but because his nose seemed infused with new life. This place didn’t smell like any hospital he’d ever been in before; more like high noon in a fucking slaughterhouse, if he had to judge.
Yet another assault, but the last few were beginning to feel pretty good. It wasn’t exactly that the pain grew less or was taken away, but more like it settled into his body for the long haul, turning into pockets of muscle or hard domes of thought. What was the deal here? Had they strapped him into some machine or other, an isolation tank with x-rays? Christ, he hoped that was it, that his eyes were just fine, simply not in use at the moment.
He bent his arms, gritting his teeth at the agony of it. The sides of this thing were awfully close in. Flat, upright, covered with the same cloth as the surface he lay on. Sleeves moved on his arms. No hospital gown, nor was he naked. Odd. Then his fingers touched the top of this chamber he was confined in, the abrupt satiny hardness of it, and—
Jesus motherfucking Christ!
—he knew. Fucking bitch had fucking killed him, or she’d done enough damage to make it seem so. What sort of dipshit doctor had pronounced him . . . he shoved the word away . . . he’d been fucking buried alive!
Suddenly the pain—which had begun to subside but was still fierce as tigers—could not stand in the way of his rush of panic. He scrabbled upward, clawing at the cloth, shredding it to wispy ribbons that fell like cobwebs about his face, knowing it was absolutely futile but needing to do it anyway. There were no thuds of dirt, no feeling of movement, no hollow knock to tell him he was not yet lost, not yet trapped under packed earth with no hope of escape. Still his hands ripped the satin above and on both sides, punching at the wood in what seemed like a futile gesture but which began to yield results. He dinged and dented it so that he could gain purchase, splintered it, ripped bits of it off and lay them beside him in the coffin.
He paused once, curious at how strong he felt and at how, without a proper supply of air, he could assault the wood so vehemently and yet not become winded. He brought his focus to his lungs. They moved in and out, exercising the dead air around him, but he could tell there was not a hint of oxygen in it.
Made no fucking sense.
Then he heard it: the throttled howl of Wolf, quick, high, and full of pain. It sounded close yet muffled, off to his left, and Danny by God knew why. He remembered his talks with that chubby old mole Walter Pyne, coughing into his hand at the idea of burying a dog in his graveyard but coming around when the cash hit the table. They’d buried Wolf too. But that made no fucking sense; Pyne wo
uld have had Wolf put down first, and there was no fucking way on God’s green earth that any vet could make the same fucking mistake the fucking coroner—Danny swore to tear the blind son-of-a-bitch’s eyes out if he ever got free—had made on his master.
Panic rose again and he let out a cry of anguish, a sound that scandalized his throat and hurt his ears. No time to think of such things now. He had to keep up the fight to dig out while his energy still held. No telling when his body would wise up and peter out on him.
With renewed vigor, he assaulted the top and sides of the coffin, tearing enough out of the sides to weaken them and bring the top down on him. He wondered why it wasn’t weighty with three to four feet of packed earth, but then remembered seeing the grave liner, an outer box made from concrete slabs, that encased his stepfather’s coffin when he was buried. Pinch-faced, pinch-penny Archer Daniels. Death had come too slow, by a lifespan, to that smugfuck of a skinflint. Danny ripped at the coffin top, tore it to flinders and set them to either side of him, not that there was a lot of room to maneuver in.
The grave liner felt cold and rough on his fingers. He caught a faint whiff that reminded him of root cellar, but it was overwhelmed by what he now realized was his own stench. Christ, how long had he been under? Had to have been more than a few days for him to smell this foul. On his left, Wolf’s whimpering kept up. His spirits took a nosedive. What hope did he have against concrete? Still he tried pounding at it with his fists and found, to his amazement, that it crumbled bit by bit under his blows. He struck leftward toward Wolf, wanting to free the only friend he’d ever had in the world, then cursed himself for an idiot for not trying to save himself first and switched to assaulting the right side. The slab above him seemed made of hardier stuff, so he left it alone, concentrating on a half-baked plan to crawl out the side and dig his way to the surface.
He punched through to soil on the right first, chunks of concrete hitting his legs, his fingers probing into the impacted earth behind it. He wanted to weep, but there were no tears inside him. Instead he renewed his assault on the grave liner, pounding at it, pulling divot-sized chunks away, feeling for soil, bringing his fists back and ramming them again and again into the cold thick invisible slabs of concrete.
It was about the time it occurred to Danny that all the bones in both hands ought to be broken, the flesh of his fists worn down at the very least to the knuckles—it was about this time that he heard a creaking sound above him and before he could think what it was, the top of the liner fell full upon him, not flattening him but pinning him down, immobile and immovable, no matter how hard he squirmed and struggled beneath it. Bone crushed under the strain, under his face, inside his chest, but the agony of the affront—as bold and gritty as it was—brought no pain or but the dream of pain.
For twenty-four hours, Danny lay there, terrorized by his immobility yet amazed that his body persisted from one no-breath to the next. Wolf’s whimper went on, minute by minute, hour after hour, a Chinese water torture of sound.
The only thing that kept him whole in all that time was his hatred for Karin, for the meek mocking demon who had caused this to happen. Part of him—the part that was shocked at how vile his thoughts were—wanted to drag him down the corridors of insanity in a futile search for the comforts of death. But Danny squelched that weak weepy fucker just like he planned to squelch his blond bitch of a wife. She’d pay for what she’d done if he ever got out of here; by God in heaven he’d wring coins of retribution out of her bones if he had to, damned if he wouldn’t.
***
“Night,” she said, handing him the remote. Nona had just solved the world’s problems, thanks to C-SPAN and her own running political commentary. Now she was off to the showers and an hour or two of bedtime reading in Krantz’s latest trashy novel. Used to be hours of fucking instead, followed by a mutual shower before he went off to work as night security at Hewlett-Packard, and Nona kept whatever rendezvous she’d arranged with one lover or another.
“Later,” he replied, still using his have-we-got-a-problem tone, the one he’d used every since his penis had decided to adopt a permanent hangdog look.
Nona ambled down the hall and disappeared left into their bedroom. Jimmy watched an actress take a spoonful of cornflakes into her sensuous mouth, simulate an orgasm, let milk spill from her lips in slo-mo, all to a pounding upbeat backbeat and frenzied cutaways to the same actress, now naked, squinching her eyes and opening her lips to the needle spray of a shower, her red-nailed fingers coming up to deflect the diamond spray onto her upturned face. Yep, sure made him want to eat some cornflakes. He zapped the sheepdog rising to clamp its jaws on the flung cereal box, flakes arcing up like golden outflings of lava lit by the sun. No sit-coms for Jimmy tonight. He had a bigger and better agenda than that.
When he pushed open the bedroom door, Nona’s red silk teddy was laid out on her side of the bed like a collapsed rose on snow. Nona stood before her closet door, her pale pink blouse tugged out of her jeans and unbuttoned halfway down. “What’s with you?” she said.
“Thought I’d watch you undress,” said Jimmy, propping his pillow against the wall and taking a ringside seat on the bed. “You mind?”
She shrugged and continued to unbutton. “You want to torment yourself, go right ahead.” Letting the blouse fall off her shoulders, she caught it deftly and tossed it into her laundry basket. Her black lace bra followed the swell and jut of her breasts. “Just keep your hands to yourself, Mister Limp Dick.”
Running joke.
“You’re gonna have to find a new name for me, honey.”
“Right. I ain’t seen any evidence of it yet.” She turned to him, watched him with those soulful eyes as her fingers popped her jeans button and eased down the zipper. Slowly she slid them off her hips, bumping and grinding to a slow dance whose tune Jimmy could almost hear. She was teasing him cruelly, bringing back the old days when she’d strip to get him hot.
“You’re doing it to me, baby.”
“Right,” she said. She was grim about it, but there was still the hint of a smile. Nona loved showing off and being appreciated for it. “Above the neck. Boner in your head.”
“Sure like to have my boner in your head.”
“Fat chance.” She unhooked her bra, peeled it like hands reluctant to let go, made Jimmy’s heart leap at the creamy loveliness of her, twin fountains of flesh surging up from her slim waist, caught just so and brought up to two tight pinched-pink nubs.
“Shit, Nona, when God made you, he sure knew what the fuck he was doing.”
“Don’t blaspheme, Jimmy,” she said. “It doesn’t sit right with me.” Slowly she peeled off the tight V of her black lace panties, then tossed them into his lap. “Want a treat? Take a whiff. Remember old times.”
Jimmy crushed them in his hand. “Come here and fuck me,” he said. Her hips made him wild, the golden tuft of private hair springing up like honey spun for his lips.
Nona laughed. “Right.” She strutted her perfection into the bathroom, closed the sliding door behind her. He heard the water splash like rain into the stall. She’d be standing outside it, testing the temperature with one in-thrust hand. His head pounded with desire. Funny to feel this turned on and still be limp as linguine below; in his brain, he felt like he ought to be as stiff and hard as a baseball bat.
Jimmy waited for the shower door to slide open, thud shut, the splash of water dispersed as Nona stepped under it. Then he got up and tore off his clothes, tossing his shirt and socks and underwear into his closet, inverting and hanging up his pants. His fingers fumbled. He was as nervous as a high school kid fixing to lose his virginity with some good-time sally.
He slid his closet door closed and examined himself in its full-length mirror. Fucking pot belly crept up on you, day by day, one taut micro-inch defeated each day so you never noticed it, never cared. Scrawny chest, Jesus it was a wonder Nona had taken to him at all. But women, so they said, cared less about how their men looked than how t
hey treated their ladies. Were they kind, considerate, caring? Fuck, he was all of those to Nona. Didn’t make the greatest of livings, but they got by.
Reaching down, he lifted the long dangle of his dick in his left hand, cupped his balls in his right, feeling for the pump. It had cost a shitload of money, but he was glad he’d done it. Glad, too, he’d mentioned his potency problem to Anson Coombs, his back doctor, who’d suspected nerve damage and referred him to Randolph “Randy” Briggs, a urologist with an office in the same complex.
Spanking young smart-ass was Doctor Briggs, but the snooty fuck knew what he was doing. Shoved a damned tube up Jimmy’s rod to check out his bladder and the nerves in charge of hard-ons. Then took out some sort of vibrating thing to test how sensitive his dick was (“Hey doc,” he’d joked, “it’s so sensitive it cries at weddings.”). Nerve damage from his accumulated history of back problems, the doc had said, was keeping his dingle down.
Over and done with now. Time to end his and Nona’s months of deprivation. Jimmy squeezed the pump again and again like Briggs had taught him, watched his penis grow and harden as the fluid in the reservoir just in front of his bladder flooded the cylinders implanted in his corpora cavernosa like flames whooshing hot air into the uprising, burgeoning folds of a hot-air balloon. Hell, he’d seen a specialty balloon a few years back rise last of all into the Rocklin skies, a champagne bottle in a silver bucket, the crowds applauding and laughing as its flat black top unlimped at last, achieving erection and finally liftoff. He felt like that crowd now. After a year and a half of sexual humiliation, his outsized manflesh at last hefted thick and tall in his hand, a fitting match once more to the excitement brewing in his head. God bless technology, he thought, and God bless the child that’s got his own.
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