Drawing Dead

by JJ DeCeglie

  Not here, but somewhere.

  Our asses were on fire and I wasn’t gonna make the sucker play and be that asshole saying I think something’s burning friend.

  I told Evie to go inside and threw the key over to her. Told her I was gonna take a walk down to the bay and back. She didn’t ask to come and I didn’t want her to. She went into the car and took the vodka bottle with her and it was a good idea she had there so I got one of those warm bottles of white wine for myself. I made sure she went in before I left. She gave me a ‘kiss my ass’ look at the door and I was planning on obliging her soon enough. I moved the money case into the boot and then made my way down to the water. The sun was at its slashing best already. By the time I’d walked the hundred metres smoking and drinking at will I was sweating so as I had to wipe at it with my sleeve. There were rowboats lined up on the shallows moored successively just by a dilapidated jetty. The water itself must have been near a half-kilometre across, and that was just the section I could see.

  On my right it kept on running around a giant crag of rocks further inland and then continued onward about the turn of the bend. To the left the inlet went and went and then hit the Indian Ocean. I took a few genuine gulps from the bottle and killed the cigar. When I had been here with Lexy we hardly left the room, if you get my drift. We had a picnic down by the shoreline once but it just ended up like it always did which was back in bed. With us all over one another. That’s how she was, and how we were and not a day goes by when I don’t miss that girl like I would an organ. I drank some more and thought some more too. My supposed planning was being overrun with reverie and that reverie was leading into the strangling abyss. I was beginning to choke on Lexy’s gushing bright blood. It was in my nose and ears and mouth. Neck deep and on the tips of my slipping toes. Bubbling hot and clogged in my throat with her wrist cut halfway to the damned elbow. I could just swim out and sink and let this whole thing be done. Blackness and hush and the snarling drone of the skull-crushing pressure.

  I drained the bottle and threw it as hard and far as I could. All I could figure was that I’d probably come here to expire in some thrashing wayward finale. There was no way in hell I was going to jail.

  Back in the room Evie was on the bed half-asleep again. I’d placed the gun in the boot with the money. The wine had sparked a partial load in me but I was saving those other bottles for later, darker moments. She had capped the vodka and it lay two-thirds full like a lover on the sheets by her. I sat in a chair situated at the front of the bed and just watched her a minute. Unconsciously took hold of the remote and switched on the television. Like magic there I was looking back at myself. Then whoop-di-whee there was beautiful, glamorous Evie.

  We’d made it people.

  Big stars on the goddamned fucking TV.

  We were murderers we were, cold-blooded killers.

  Fraudsters and marauders.

  The whole gig was up. On the run, armed and dangerous, if you saw our asses you knew who to call. Oh and best of all Evie had shot Tommy Tallegi. That was great. Nephew of Saverio Tallegi. Entrepreneur, family man, crime boss and vengeful fucking psychopath. I’d heard stories of this guy cutting off your fingers and stuffing them in your asshole. Doing the same with people’s teeth. We were fucked.

  Cut and dry.

  Plain and simple.

  Evie.

  She pretended like she didn’t hear me. I was about to punch a hole in the wall.

  Evie!

  What!

  We got ourselves a real fucking problem.

  What?

  You didn’t just hear that?

  I was asleep.

  Bullshit she was.

  You killed Tommy Tallegi. It’s all over the news. Double homicide. Our faces on the TV. Video footage and mug-shots. You didn’t tell me you had a record.

  Nor did you.

  She had a point. And she’d fucking heard.

  We’re done. If not by the cops than by Tallegi, in fact even if the cops get us we’ll get done by Tallegi. They’re the biggest crime family in town. We’ll be dead before we get to jail.

  But this bitch didn’t faze.

  There must be something we can do Jack.

  We’re cooked baby, done. The amount of money he’s gonna put on our heads. Every crooked motherfucker in this country will turn us over. You understand.

  You can think of something Jack, you’ve got us this far.

  If you got a plan up your sleeve let me know, or maybe you’ll pull one out that sweet ass of yours, be sure to fill me in though won’t you, 'cause we’re both as good as fucking dead.

  I literally saw the idea form in her head. Eyes filled with illumination and that faultless expression went from dread to expectation.

  What about that then?

  What the fuck about fucking what?

  If we were already dead. You could kill us, you did it before, you could do it again. Both of us this time.

  I thought about a minute. She got to her knees on the bed and slinked on over.

  It could work Jack.

  Nobody would ever think we’d be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that twice would they.

  I was talking to myself really. What she’d said made sense. There wasn’t an asshole in the world dumb enough to try it.

  You’d have to be fucking crazy to try it on twice. Have to be fucking nuts.

  Me there again. Convincing the unbeliever.

  That’s why it might work.

  I made eyes with her. Blazed a straight up ‘ oh you're in for it now honey' stare. She was still there on her knees. Now on the bed’s edge having crawled all the way over. Ass up and head down with her look submitting to me as best she could, which was better than most. I got up out the chair and stood tall there over her.

  There might be a way Evie. I’m sure I can come up with something.

  She didn’t speak but instead pushed her shoulders into the bed further accentuating her ass to the heavens, an offering of sorts to me, her God in this capricious moment. With the sacrificial nature of her backside came the rolling of her eyes back into her head as she looked up at me from oh so far away. I put my hand on her head and pushed it into the mattress. Shoved my thumb in her mouth and then drove her head as far the springs would allow, holding there until she yelped. I lashed off my threads and took the belt from my pants. Man, I wished I had those pull-ties. Had to make do though. I ripped those stocking from her legs. Just tore them off of her. Ah the sound of pinging material, how it rushes with warmth through my dedicated veins. I tied her left wrist to the same ankle and did the same with the other leg and arm. Used clothes for the tying. She was face first and squirming, her ass her highest point and more mercurial than a subsequent sun. I knelt down by her face just to make sure she was wondering what in hell she’d gotten herself into. There it was. That look of lusty regret and impending horror.

  It’s coming baby, don’t you worry it’s coming real soon.

  Jack…be nice.

  Jack’s gonna do whatever in fuck he pleases.

  I put three fingers in her mouth to shut her up. Then with my free hand pulled that dress back to her ribs to expose those silken knickers. I had to take my fingers out her mouth to move to her rear so as to loom there, filling her with brimming dread and some gratuitous expectancy.

  Jack…Jack…please…

  I ran the belt along one cheek of her ass and she whimpered a little. I had it doubled over in my right hand and gave it a shake cracking her across both portions of that splendid spread flesh. She screeched and I’d had enough of it. I looped the belt and instead of noosing it round her neck I let it settle where her mouth was. She tried to resist but I got that maw open and then pulled it tight round her head. She was gagged good, real good. And tied real nice too. I was in a right position of influence over her now. Any disobedience and I just yanked on the leash and her head snapped back like a lid. That said I had her pretty much chin-up most of the time anyhow. You had no choice if you wanted
that proper arch in the back that really gave precedence to the exquisiteness of the ass. With things as there were I had no choice but to tear those knickers off with my bare right hand. Leash tight fisted in the other. Snapping twang of elastic and twine. Music to my genitals and heart. She made my dead veins bleed again. And when I felt for it the weather was perfect. Conditions could not have been better. Oh son, did we had ourselves a time. A right rollick and romp. Her there and me here and the muffled shards of screaming. Transcendence took preference with time. It swallowed us whole over and over and over.

  Exaggerated, enclosed and falling. Filled, stuffed and attractively helpless. Longing nightmares intermingle, idyllic imaginings cough up blood. I stumbled about the chaotic fretting, around this darkened vista, with my head hacked off, with me hunting like a damned madman for it. Yelling insane slogans, beating my loosened skull against rocks. She is my prisoner and I am hers and together we will die slow deaths of alien syndrome. And if she goes first I’ll cut off her breasts and use them for earmuffs. There just isn’t any other way.

  When we were done and I’d let her free she lay with her back to me for about fifteen minutes. I dozed some and awoke with her naked and clinging to my side. We slept some more and then woke when the sun had swung west and was fighting a losing battle. She eased herself up and straddled me, kissing me with her hands holding either side of my face. There was no clear vision to it really, only sensation and feeling. She tasted like sweet water, felt like warm sunlight. She just started up without a word and it all went about as easy as it possibly could. Inside of her was the very mystic effortlessness with which a man could not find or have the words for ever. We made love as the setting sun decanted through the window orange as a Van Gogh wheat-field. Then we did that again. A sprawling, somehow concentrated edition of that lovely just done time. After that there was nothing one could do but come apart as much as was possible. And when done with that, to sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  When I came conscious it was with considerable fucking panic. Abruptly wide awake in a blackened square of alarm sucking in breath hard and fast. It was late evening and Evie wasn’t there beside me. I’m sure I wasn’t actually that fragile and nervous, it was just the place I’d been brutally heaved from.

  I slapped at the mattress beside me with my hand.

  Sat up groggy as shit.

  The stupor left as quick as it struck. I knifed through the miasmic plague. Heard the sound of cooking coming from the kitchen. I rolled off and up from the bed and then pissed with the gummed up sting of an afternoon occupied with sex. Evie was cooking naked. I’d walked out wearing the same line of fashion.

  Jacky Boy…back from the dead.

  Still got some fight left in me baby.

  I shadowboxed under the murky light swum down from a bulb hanging there like a rope from a gallows. The dark shapes danced behind me. Absence of light manically rushing stunted about the room.

  This all looks real nice…

  Want some coffee Jacky Boy?

  Sure Evie.

  How do you take it?

  White and one.

  She had it ready to go, just added what I asked for and bought it on over. Put it on the table and whilst there kissed me long and deep. I grabbed at her where you would expect me to and she just shimmied me off. She was still frying up the eggs and bacon and just as I sat my ass down the toast popped from the fucking machine giving me a fright that an unseen fucking shotgun blast would.

  I was about as jumpy as shit.

  She finished up and trotted over with the grub and I ate it up with the equal voracity I had done her earlier. Didn’t taste quite as good, but the way things were and as hungry as I was I woulda eaten my own ass with a spoon.

  Eat up baby, you’re gonna need your strength.

  Not sure if she meant for future ventures or for bed later on, either way she was smiling when she said it, a real flower blossoming before your eyes type number. She could have meant so as for me to try to attempt sucking my own cock for a few hours straight, I still woulda taken it on and then asked for more.

  I spoke in between large mouthfuls. With the coffee the food went down as well as it could. I told her to keep that brew coming. Yeah I wanted additional cupfuls, but add to that the more times she got up the more occasions I got watch as she waggled that impeccable tail to and fucking fro. Everything about this broad was electric. Right down to the fingernails she chewed off and spat out. Not a single detail of her was astray. There musta only been a few like her. Even fewer got to lay down with’em. I’d say even less left belt and bite weals on their creamy thighs and the unblemished globes of their faultless asses. Yet there I was. A bona fide son of a mother. And there you are, wishing you had balls enough to be me. I’m off track though. I laid the whole fucking thing on her as I ate. Well what I had of it anyhow. It was a plan hatched in quick succession and haste, with obvious streaks of genius and equal smatterings of plain fucking stupidity.

  The plan’s gonna play out like this Evie. Listen and ask questions if you want. I encourage it, will keep me on my toes and make sure we don’t fuck anything the hell up. I need a map to work it out to the letter, I’ll get one in the morning don’t worry about that, but I’m gonna give you the rundown as best I can right now. We’re gonna take a little old rowboat from down by the shore. We’re gonna row that sucker out and around that big jutting bend. You should see that thing, just blocks out vision from a mile back. That way no one can spy on us, but really it don’t matter much anyway 'cause there isn’t any ass around. So yeah we’re gonna row out a little too far, where it’s a little too rough. Where the inlet is deepest and where the current out to sea will be strongest. The fucking thing is almost a half kilometre across at most parts, so they’ll know we got in over our heads. We weren’t smart enough to ask for life-jackets from reception. We’d been drinking too. They’ll be empties floating near the oars…tell me if I’m going too fast for ya. We‘re gonna sink the thing. They’ll search for weeks and never find a trace of us. We got sucked out to sea and were ripped to pieces by the sharks. Something along that line. Whatever the fuck ever. We’ll swim to the other side, probably about two hundred metres, we’ll keep really low, outta sight, do much of it underwater, climb up an untouched face of scrub and rock and hardship. Then we’re gonna hike five kilometres to where I’ve buried the money and some supplies. From there I figure it to be about a twenty to twenty-five kilometre hike to the next town. We buy a car when we get there. Then we drive, to a way out spot, we hunker down for two to three months. Maybe more, maybe less. Lay as low as we possibly can. Let the heat cool off. Then we drive east. Hard and fast. Buy me some documents. Get the cash unloaded offshore. Then take a plane to someplace the Australian government can’t touch our asses. Just me and you and the foreign sun shining down upon us Evie, beaches and booze and a life we’ve not yet ever known…what you think about that?

  Had almost convinced my fucking self it had been that good a speech…I did say almost.

  We have to walk twenty-five kilometres?

  I shoulda punched her in the face for saying it.

  You’ll make it. This is the only shot we got. What were you expecting…I was gonna steal a plane and fly your ass outta here. Howard fucking Hughes over here. Things are gonna get ugly Evie. Ugly and dirty and mean, you get that part right? I don’t know if I’ve made this clear enough for you, even if the cops get us first we’re still as good as dead. Tallegi’s reach in this town is unlimited. This is all we fucking got now. This and each other.

  You mean that Jack?

  Yeah, I do, things are gonna get pretty fucking bleak. We’re outlaws now, we're gonna have to take whatever the fuck we can get. The fuck if we don’t, beggars cannot be choosers sweetheart.

  Not that, the other part.

  I was stumped…yeah we were probably gonna die, and it was gonna hurt like a slut too.

  What other part?

  About us only having each other.
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  Was I buying it? Not sure really. She sold that stuff better than just about any broad I’d met. If she told me to cut my arm off and beat my own ass in with it I would have at least considered it. This was about as defenseless as we were ever gonna get though. I said some things. I can’t be sure if I meant them and I countered them pretty quickly.

  You give me something Evie, you know that. Maybe we could find a place, you never know right? Me and you, we play this section out and then move, and keep moving, then we find that place and we live it right. Just me and you, it could be like right now for a long time.

  You really feel that way about me Jack?

  Part of me does. Right here and now. In this room, this light. This afternoon gone by…but the other half of me thinks you’re a self-centred, back-stabbing bitch. I’d like to trust you Evie. Things just might turn out real nice for us.