by Richard Long
“Whooo’s there?” came a sweet, singsong voice.
Bean almost ran down the stairs, but he somehow managed to stand his ground and utter a barely audible “Uh…” in response.
“Uh…who?”
“Michael Bean,” said Michael Bean, his voice stiff with fear.
“The door’s open, Mr. Uh…Bean.”
It sounded like a dare. The uneasy challenge was compounded by the fact that the man behind the door made no move to open it. Bean reached for the worn brass doorknob. The door didn’t look anything like his, or any other door in the crumbling ruin of a building. It was a huge, teak slab with intricately detailed paneling, an ornately carved cross in the center and a fluted doorknob that looked like it came from another century.
“Welllll…” came the singsong voice again, sweeter than before, though now it seemed laced with something else. A threat? Michael turned toward the stairs, but the voice froze him in place. “You’re the boy from downstairs, aren’t you?” it purred.
Bean’s head snapped forward like a compass needle. How the fuck did he know that? He looked for any sign of a peephole, but all he could see was the cross. He stood and stared and felt his legs tremble below him, until finally he reached out his hand to open the door.
“Come in, come in!” Paul warmly greeted him as Michael crossed the threshold. He was so enthralled with the big blond’s hearty laugh and easy manner that it took awhile for the smell to hit him. Paul nodded empathetically when Michael crinkled his nose in disgust. “Squatter’s rights!” he yelled to the ceiling, then lowered his lips to Michael’s ear and whispered conspiratorially, “But you don’t get the right to decent plumbing, eh?”
He laughed too hard at his own joke and slapped Bean even harder on the back. Michael felt another pinprick of fear as the sound of Paul’s laugh echoed down the tomb-quiet hallway. He felt it again as he measured the strength in the meaty hand still resting on his shoulder, stroking it now, soothing it. Guy’s a fag! Michael thought, panicking with the deeply ingrained homophobia shared by so many post-adolescent, girlishly attractive, self-professed heterosexual males. A great big crazy fag!
Paul gazed into his eyes with the most lifeless stare he had ever seen, savoring every squirm. After a few uncomfortable seconds, he asked, “So what brings you here for a visit?”
Michael shook his head to clear it. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing here, “I heard screaming,” he said dully.
“You heard screaming, did you?” asked Paul with a trace of skepticism, cupping his hand to his ear and scanning the apartment like a radar dish. “Do you hear any now?”
Michael was about to answer when Paul raised his finger to his lips. They listened again together, hard and long. All was silent at first, then as he strained his ears, Bean thought he could hear a low moaning in the distance. “Someone’s hurt,” he said.
“Aye.” Paul nodded. “Someone’s always hurt. That’s the nature of things, the very hard and coarse nature of the world we live in.”
“Someone’s hurt in there!” Michael shouted, pointing down the blackened corridor.
“Where?” Paul asked innocently, his hand snaking behind Michael’s neck. Bean was about to point again, but he had already crumpled to the floor.
Michael was dreaming. He saw a room filled with candles. There was a big wooden table in the middle of the room and something was on it. Something that was moving. He took a few timid steps toward the quivering shape before he realized it was a man. He took a few more steps before he realized he was the man and that his hands and feet were firmly nailed down on an altar. He would have taken a few steps back, but he couldn’t move. He was looking up from the altar now, those long nails holding him down. All he could see was the blurry head of a man leaning over him. The man chuckled softly.
Bean opened his eyes and screamed.
Paul was hovering over him, in the exact position of the blurry shape in his dream. But Michael wasn’t on an altar. He was lying on a dirty couch, staring at a lightbulb that illuminated Paul’s long blond-white hair from behind like a halo.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he shouted, almost in tears.
Paul laughed louder as he saw the look of disorientation flood Michael’s face.
“Where the hell am I?” Bean pleaded. “And who the hell are you?”
“My name is Paul,” he said inside the dead mask. “And this, my son…is home.”
They say you shouldn’t do tarot card readings for yourself too often. If you do it all the time, nothing makes sense anymore. The same can be said for other obsessions. Porn. Hobbies. The website. I spent so much time there. Even more hours clicking through to other related sites, to get a sense of what else was out there and who was the best at doing what they did. Tattoos. Implants. Electrolysis. Other…stuff.
Since I worked at home, it wasn’t a problem. Soon I found myself working less and less, scheduling half as many tarot appointments as usual. Whenever I took a break, I found myself thumbing through the books I’d collected, then doing readings for myself. I’m not sure what I was looking for. Permission? If that was the case, most of my readings were not encouraging. I kept getting the Wheel of Fortune, which implied a change in destiny—good or bad—almost always followed by a trump card. Occasionally, it would be something optimistic, like The Star or The Sun. More often, it was a scary one like Death, The Hanged Man, The Tower. The Moon.
Did you know that the card called The Moon in the tarot deck doesn’t represent the planet? Pisces, the murkiest of zodiac signs ruled by the water, has that dubious honor. The Priestess is the card that actually represents the planet. One day, between quests for tattoo artists I did yet another reading where I got the Wheel, this time followed by The Priestess. As soon as I turned the card over, the doorbell rang.
It was my next appointment. When I opened the door, I knew Fortuna was smiling. She was beautiful, her pale skin glowing like the moon…and covered in tattoos.
“Welcome,” I said, meaning it for the first time in months. “Let’s get started.”
“How did I get here?” Michael asked with a mixture of rage and timidity as unfamiliar as his surroundings. “I was pointing down the hallway and…”
“It’s not important,” Paul said wearily. “You blacked out. You lost some time.”
“How could I have blacked out when I haven’t had anything to…”
Paul glanced down at Michael’s hand and cut off his train of thought like a carving knife.
A tumbler with a finger’s width of brown liquor swirled in Michael’s sweaty grip as he looked down in astonishment. “What the fuck!” he gasped, more to himself than Paul. He sat up on the couch, his head filled with fog and something that made his tongue feel thick and metallic.
“Old Bushmills,” Paul said proudly, as if that explained everything. “Sixteen-year-old, single malt Irish whiskey. If there’s a more satisfying beverage to be found anywhere on this good green earth, I’m certainly not aware of it. Here, have some more.”
This dude is crazy! You have got to go NOW!
“Uh, no thanks,” Michael said as calmly as he could. “I’ve got to get going anyway.”
“So soooon?” Paul asked in that singsong voice again.
Bean stuffed both hands into his baggy trouser pockets, shrugging lamely. “Yeah, you know, I got some stuff I gotta do later.”
“Yeah, I know,” Paul echoed, his thick fingers toying with the strands of his mustache. “But later’s later…right? You should at least stay for supper.”
“Nah, I’m not hungry. I’ve got some friends waitin’ for me in the park.”
“No, you don’t,” Paul said flatly, turning his head to the window, his sudden disinterest drawing Michael back like a magnet. “You don’t have any friends,” he continued in a sad, soft voice, barely above a whisper. “You see the same people every day. The drifters. The squatter scum. But you just nod and grunt ‘What’s happenin?’
because what else would there be to say? You kill time at the comic bookstore looking at the dirty ones. You wish you had the nerve to talk to the waitress in the coffee shop, but you wouldn’t know where to take her even if she wanted to go out. You can’t hold down a job and you only make enough money panhandling to buy a slice of pizza and a beer twice a day. You’re jealous of the junkies. They look so numb and fearless. But you’re afraid to try it yourself because you don’t know where you’d get the money if you liked it half as much as you imagine you would.”
Michael didn’t even bother defending himself. Paul said it with such absolute certainty that there wasn’t any point in arguing.
“But go ahead, shoo little fly,” Paul said, waving Michael away from the couch, his brogue thicker than the Lucky Charms leprechaun. “Don’t let me be keepin’ you. I’m sure there’s a much better world waitin’ for you out there than anything I could offer.”
Michael didn’t move. “Offer?”
“Something to fill your belly with, for starters. And perhaps something besides this glorious whiskey to feed your hungry mind.”
“Like…?” Michael asked, settling back on the couch without even thinking about it.
“What if…” Paul began, relishing the performance as much as the effect it had on his audience. “What if I knew what you wanted more than anything else in the world?”
Michael said nothing. But his whole body answered, I’m listening.
“Well, it’s very simple, really,” Paul said, waving grandly. “What you want more than anything else in the world…is to be a tough guy.”
Michael’s face flushed instantly. How could this guy know so much about him?
“It’s not a bad thing, Michael,” Paul said reassuringly. “There’s no shame in it.”
Michael nodded. Then why did he feel so embarrassed?
“Most people live their whole lives in fear and never do a thing about it. In fact, just about every man you you’ve ever met, some of them acting like great big, tough guys…are just as frightened as you. Maybe even more. Most of those so-called tough guys don’t even have the courage to admit they’re afraid.”
“What about you?” Bean asked, feeling slightly better. “You don’t seem afraid.”
“That is correct,” Paul said, without a trace of arrogance. “When I was your age, I wanted the same thing as you. To be strong. Unafraid. Invulnerable. What young man doesn’t? It’s just the way we’re built. The trouble is, hardly anyone knows how to be tough, not just act like it. But some people…some people do.”
Michael Bean looked at the hallway. Then he slowly turned to Paul, his eyes wide and hopeful. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“Let’s have another drink before supper and I’ll fill you in on the basics,” Paul said, grinning slyly as he lifted the whiskey bottle. “Then there’s someone I want you to meet. One look at him and you’ll understand the power and freedom that could be yours.”
Michael felt a cloud of jealousy pass over his head. “Who is he?”
“His name is Martin,” Paul replied, savoring his envy, “and he’ll be joining us soon.”
Martin counted to ten, breathing as deeply as he could. Inhale. Exhale. He could still see Momma’s empty eyes, the tiny dot of red on her forehead, but he was back in the room, staring at the bare lightbulb overhead, his heart pounding like a sledgehammer.
There were voices in the distance. Paul. Someone else. He slowly rose from the chair, then gently lowered himself back down. Shit, this is rough.
Shock. The medical condition, not the reaction. Martin had trained his whole life to conquer almost unimaginable levels of pain and suffering. Yet even though he had managed to disconnect his mind from the most torturous physical sensations and emotional trauma possible, his body still betrayed him by going into shock. Damn. He sat and waited it out, having been through this many times before. In the years after Paul took him away, Martin had been shot three times, stabbed twice, slashed once with a box cutter and had broken twelve bones (three of them twice). Always handy with the gauze, splints and sutures, Paul would merely shrug and say the same thing: “It goes with the job.”
But he was “retired” now. “Resting on my laurels,” as Paul put it. Then why had he set foot in here again? Oh, yeah, he thought, staring at his bandaged hand. Rose. Martin took another deep breath and tried to relax, nodding slowly in time with the beat of his heart. Looking back over the continuous mayhem that had accompanied his travels with Paul, he did a quick mental calculation, comparing his current level of shock with the trauma from previous injuries.
On a scale of ten, I’d give it a six. He sat and waited, counting down the time it would take to resume full mobility. He sniffed the air again, trying to isolate the food odors from the cacophony of stench surrounding them. “Lamb or ham?”
Whump. Whump. Whump.
“Almost forgot about you,” Martin said, his body relaxed and motionless. He craned his neck only slightly in the direction of the thumping noises in the shadows behind him. He had no intention of squandering even a single calorie of energy on behalf of whoever so frantically craved his attention. “Two minutes and eight seconds,” he calculated, focusing instead on his internal post-trauma recovery clock.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Martin peered deeper into the shadows and willed his irises to open to their maximum capacity, a self-taught biofeedback exercise he’d perfected over the years. Paul would have been proud. Martin guessed that the increased aperture allowed in additional light waves that were roughly equivalent to one-fifth of the average house cat’s night-vision capability. On the whole, it would have to do. It was certainly sufficient to make out the thumping burlap bag in the corner of the room.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Martin guessed from the bag’s size, shape and movement that the occupant was male, late-thirties, gagged, hogtied and in the early stages of starvation. “One minute and twenty-two seconds,” he recalculated, ping-ponging back and forth between the analysis of his mystery companion and the far more important business of his own physical recovery.
Martin sniffed the air more deeply, trying to isolate the food scents from those of his newfound roommate. He still couldn’t make out what kind of meat was cooking but he felt fairly certain that the man in the bag had been stewing in his own piss and shit for a while.
Whump. The bagman started losing steam about the same time Martin’s inner clock ticked its way to blastoff. He stood in a single motion. If someone had been watching, they would have been awed at his acrobatic grace. The bagman, sensing Martin’s movement, redoubled his efforts. Whump. Whump. Whump.
Martin looked at the bag and listened for sounds in the hallway. He only heard a trace of mumbling from a distance that seemed too far away. He sniffed again and cataloged the scent against all the game he had ever cooked or eaten and came to a not so surprising conclusion, given his whereabouts. “Oh, well” he shrugged, “food’s food.”
He was about to track down the source of the aroma when his curiosity got the best of him. He walked slowly into the corner and stooped to untie the writhing sack at his feet. “Yep, late-thirties,” Martin said with a trace of pride, looking past the terror-soaked face that greeted him to the slight shadow of crow’s feet braiding his sunken, hollow eyes.
“Mmmpph, mmmpph,” came the duct tape muffled plea. Martin pulled the tape off against his better judgment, unwilling to postpone his quest for nourishment for more than a few seconds. “Ih…ih…afe?” the crazy- eyed man gurgled wildly, his eyes darting back and forth from Martin to the hope of freedom offered by the open doorway and Paul’s absence.
Martin noted his physical condition. What was left of it, anyway. He was clearly a goner. Then he looked deeper into those desperate orbs and felt his heart tighten with recognition. “I thought you were dead,” Martin said with even less passion than he felt.
“Uh ill ih ooo ont…”
It was really impossible to shout, “He
lp me!” without a tongue, so the bagman started whumping again, begging for Martin’s assistance as best he could.
Martin was lost in thought, wondering why Paul had deposited his old adversary so derisively in his presence. Was it a message? An insult? Another invitation like the one he’d extended earlier today in the park? “Come back…come back…”
Were there more “loose ends” Paul intended to tie up from their blood-drenched past? Why did he bother with the duct tape after he cut out his tongue? To keep him from grunting out something, obviously…but what? Martin pondered that and many other things, like how the bagman had survived the wounds Martin had inflicted on him so many years ago, and how he had the balls to beg for mercy after trying to slit his throat with more eagerness than he was expressing his desire to escape. Martin would have stayed to try and answer some of those puzzling questions, if he weren’t so hungry, if the man’s tongue weren’t missing, if he didn’t already know from the other absent body parts and blood loss that he had only a short while left to live. Even so, Martin was still thinking about his first garbled question as he put the duct tape back on his mouth and walked into the dark hallway.
“It’s never safe,” he answered.
“Men never talk much about being men. I think that’s a shame,” Paul intoned, clinking his glass against Michael’s. “And I don’t mean that crap where some businessmen go off on a weekend retreat, beating drums by the fire in their undies.”
Michael tried to chuckle but gulped when Paul elbowed him in the ribs. He was having a hard time maintaining eye contact, glancing between the whiskey he was bravely trying to sip without coughing and the waving arms of the crazy man next to him.
“It should have been your father’s job to guide you through the rigors of manhood, but if you’re like most boys, he probably wasn’t much help at all,” Paul said sadly.
Michael nodded with a wince, grappling with unwanted flashbacks to his single-mom parenting. His mother’s name was Sarah, which she made him call her instead of “Mom.” She worked all the time, trying to “keep a roof over our heads,” as she said every time he complained about being carted off to a well-meaning neighbor while she worked another double shift. Neighbors, daycare, then school, after-school…and finally the latchkey. He had a lot of time to think about that roof over his head. To stare at it, alone.
