by Ren Benton
Hose.
“Ms. Greene, after finding your brother brutally murdered, why would you return to the house alone rather than seek shelter with a neighbor?”
Eyes could be unreliable. There was no murder, no murderer. Murder was final.
Her heart wanted to believe she could save him, so she ran back into the house to call 911.
“Why did you pick up the golf club?”
She was always putting his toys away. She didn’t want him to look like a slob when the paramedics came to put a Band-Aid on his scratch.
Better wind up that hose, too.
It’s not a hose.
Please, god, just let me pretend it’s a hose.
In the kitchen, a hospital bed had replaced the island. Lex was bound to it with hose coming from the black mouth in his abdomen.
She’d ask for two ambulances when she called. He needed a Band-Aid, too.
The handset for the phone was in the living room because Ryan never put anything back where it belonged. She pushed through the connecting door into another kitchen.
Olivia sprawled on the floor, hose arranged around her in overlapping arcs like a rose window.
A last-minute addition, this scene shuddered like handheld footage shot without Steadicam.
It would even out in post.
Three ambulances, then.
She pushed through the door again, and Jeremy Fogle stabbed her.
She thought it was a prop knife, the blade sliding back into the hilt when the tip encountered the resistance of flesh, because she felt no pain, even when he did it again and again and again.
The wetness pouring down her stomach and thighs confused her. She didn’t remember being fitted with a bag of corn syrup mixed with red dye.
She swung the lantern at his head in slow motion. He swatted it out of her hand. Their shadows danced wildly on the walls as it flew through the air.
Expertly choreographed, her empty hand immediately joined the one gripping the golf club. She swung it like a baseball bat, still moving in slow motion.
It wouldn’t do to injure her costar. They’d speed it up in post so it looked like a real fight.
He blocked every swing with his forearm and countered with slashes at her arms. Her grip grew slippery with corn syrup and dye and weak as severed nerves numbed her fingers.
She forgot her lines. Was she supposed to lose this fight?
She lowered — dropped — the club to ask the director for clarification, and Fogle’s blade slashed high, unzipping her throat, silencing screams she hadn’t noticed shrieking from her mouth until their sudden cessation.
The camera panned up to the ceiling painted red.
Red? With this lighting?
Yes, red. So there was no mistaking it for anything but blood. Hers.
Artistic license.
“Please explain to the court how you disarmed Jeremy Fogle, this alleged unstoppable madman, and why, having disarmed him, continued to administer not one but thirty-seven blows to his skull.”
Sorry, prosecutor, but that scene was on the cutting room floor. Had to tone down onscreen violence to get an R rating from the MPAA. Did its absence create a continuity error, or was it surrealism in keeping with the two kitchens and the hose? Was the story meant to remain a mystery?
Where was her script? Where was the director?
This wasn’t her movie. She would never write this. Her character was supposed to save everyone.
The art department did a hell of a job on the crime scene photos for the courtroom scenes. The wound was black, gaping like a monstrous mouth vomiting hose.
The head of a nine iron, wearing Fogle’s scalp like a poorly fit toupee.
Reenactment footage of her, covered in corn syrup and dye, standing over Fogle with hose noosed around her ankles, golf club duct-taped to her hands because her severed nerves required surgical repair after the shoot.
Someone dropped the ball on the Steadicam again. The frame shook so much, the image blurred.
“Come back, Gin.”
The shaking was her. Now it hurt. Everything hurt. Her heart was dead, dead, dead.
“You’re dead,” she croaked.
That must not be the right line because the pain swelled, searching for a weak point from which to burst.
“I’m alive, and so are you.”
She remembered now. Her punishment for not saving Ryan was that she got to live.
A big, warm hand closed around her shaking ones, and arms squeezed her tight, absorbing her violent tremors. “I won’t let you go.”
The way she let him go. She let all of them go — Ry, Lex, Livvy. They were hers, and she let them go.
A sob burst past the blockage in her throat, and she buried her face against the arm serving as her pillow to smother the ones that came after it.
She’d told Lex about the nightmare the first time she scared the hell out of him in the middle of the night. Then, it had been only Ryan’s death, her attack, the murder of Jeremy Fogle, and the trial.
She never told him he’d joined the cast after she admitted to herself how alcohol was affecting his health, and he hadn’t been around after the based-on-a-true-story hospital scene got added to the final cut. He didn’t know the role he played in the dreams that terrorized her.
They usually didn’t affect her this badly, the terror fading soon after waking as real life asserted its priority. Maybe Olivia’s surprise appearance made it worse. More likely, it was Lex’s proximity to her and the nagging fear it put him in the line of fire.
Without electricity, the security alarm was nothing but a blemish on the wall. Without electricity, there was no Wi-Fi and only spotty mobile tower access, so they couldn’t call for help if they needed it. Ethan had taken their only vehicle, stranding them here, in this glass box, miles from the nearest neighbor.
Being in Lex’s arms, protected and comforted, should have settled her. Instead, her nerves jangled like he was under attack — by what, she couldn’t say, but her premonition of onrushing doom cast a cold shadow.
10
Gin next woke to the familiar jostle of a minor quake — a ripple of California’s skin in response to an infestation of human pests. Not even violent enough to rattle the bottles on the shelves behind the bar.
That wasn’t right. She didn’t have a bar, she wasn’t in California, and it wasn’t the earth jerking beneath her.
It was Lex.
She shot upright, an old fear blazing through her mind: seizure.
Dingy morning light filtered by frosty glass revealed he was alert. Now that he was free of her weight, he wrapped his good arm around the twitching side. Through clenched teeth, he muttered, “It’s just a muscle spasm. Happens all the time. It’s fine.”
She believed two of those claims. “Do you take anything for it?”
The mutinous set of his lips was answer enough. He didn’t do anything halfway, including sobriety. Even if Simone’s stash had still been around to raid for a muscle relaxer, he’d refuse.
There had to be something she could do. “Will a massage help?”
“Never tried.”
Of course not. The only thing he hated more than letting others see him in pain was being groped by strangers. He was even inching away from her, as though he’d roll under the couch and hide if he could flatten himself enough to fit.
She couldn’t see him hurting and not try to alleviate his suffering. In her softest puppy-coaxing voice, she asked, “Can I try?”
He shot her a glance spiked with distrust.
She sat on her heels, hands on her thighs, making no move to touch him. Letting him dictate the terms of contact.
His chest sank with a defeated sigh. “It’s my back.”
“I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
She ran to the kitchen, where it was notably colder than near the smoldering fire. None of the appliances hummed — not that she’d expected a crew to work all night in the blizzard to restore power, but the furnace woul
d go a long way toward making Lex more comfortable. She grabbed a bottle of olive oil and a dishtowel and hurried back to the living room.
Heat first. “Are you allowed to teach me your Yankee fire arts?”
Terse instructions guided her through rebuilding the fire in the grate.
She got the kindling started and returned the poker to its stand. “If only the space heater had gotten here a day early.”
“Wouldn’t do any good. I had visions of Simone flinging kerosene around like that gas station scene in Zoolander, so I went with electric.”
“Yeah, I’ve had the same vision.” She walked on her knees to the cushion bed where he huddled in misery. “Can you get your shirt off?”
He glared at her like she was the devil incarnate.
Childhood experience with Barbie dolls came in handy for stripping an uncooperative body with rigid limbs. She pulled the back of his shirt over his head first, then peeled the sleeves from his stiff arms. The instant his hands were free, he returned to clutching the twitching half of his torso.
She tossed a pillow in front of him. “Put that under your belly so your spine doesn’t sag.”
By the time he maneuvered into the necessary facedown position, his breath was short and his bare skin damp with sweat. Now exposed and vulnerable, the left side of his back jumped and writhed as if possessed.
His position left no room to move around him, and she didn’t dare ask him to relocate again. The only way to reach the problem area was to straddle his thighs.
Being trapped and at her mercy turned his non-spasming muscles stony with wariness.
She poured a bit of oil into her palm and let it warm while she informed him of her plan. “I’m going to start on the other side to gauge your baseline tolerance.”
“You do this a lot?”
This was her first time doing anything more extensive than a friendly domestic rubbing. She touched a finger to the safe side of his spine to define a boundary and applied her oiled hand to his skin. “Ethan’s boyfriend is a massage therapist. He let me watch him rub naked hockey players one day.”
“I’m sure they didn’t mind a bit.”
The acid taint of jealousy proved how rotten he felt. Lex Perry thought he compared unfavorably to other men only when he felt his worst. “The young one wanted his mommy, and his elders had their tough-guy image to maintain.”
The oil kept his skin from tugging while she pressed her fingers against a muscle, harder than she thought would be comfortable, and kneaded against the pressure with her thumb. Rubbing parts that didn’t hurt acclimated him to this kind of touch and built trust that she didn’t mean him harm, reducing the likelihood he’d guard when she moved to the painful side.
“You dated a hockey player.”
“I did?”
He huffed into the pillow supporting his head. “Well, according to the tabloids.”
She was always the last to know about her fictional love life. “Which team?”
“I forget the details. I was too busy admiring your humanitarianism in mercy dating a toothless goblin.”
“Mm-hm. I felt the same when you were dating the swimsuit model, the lingerie model, and Olivia White-Church.” All of whom he’d been pictured with often enough to assume reports of involvement were legitimate.
“Jealousy makes you sound like a jerk.”
“Does it? Weird. It’s usually super attractive.”
“I’m being a dick.”
“You don’t feel good.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a valid excuse for dickery. At least my shitty behavior gave you and Livvy something to bond over.”
“I hate to minimize your influence, but you were sort-of mentioned only twice before she showed up here.”
“Impossible.”
The slight against his vanity distracted him while her fingers crossed his spine below the level of the spasm. “Once, she caught me listening to some of your early work, and we talked about your music. Carlos was actually mentioned more than you were, since his new album had just come out.”
He snorted like he was making a mighty effort not to care. The insult was more than vanity where Gone & Forgotten’s original drummer was concerned.
“And the other time, I was wearing a G&F tee, and Liv wanted to know how I cut it to make a boxy men’s crewneck look like wardrobe from a smutty photo shoot.” She leaned toward his ear to confide, “Your name wasn’t mentioned.”
“I’m simultaneously offended and relieved.”
The offense she understood, but there was nothing to be relieved from. “We’re both very fond of you. Hair would have been pulled if either of us said a word against you.”
“I wish I’d known that.”
He held his breath when she touched the bottom edge of the problem area. She left her fingers there, waiting for him to relax. “Visions of catfights dancing in your head?”
He took a deep breath, then another, and shifted beneath her. The adjustment returned him almost to his previous level of trust for her hands. “I spent five years sure you hated me, afraid to move in your orbit and risk confirming it.”
It was her turn to catch her breath. “I never hated you, not for a second.”
It wasn’t hate that made her leave. Selfishness stopped her from letting him go sooner.
She left him because she loved him too much to let him keep poisoning himself to get away from her.
She blinked the regret out of her eyes. Even if he’d gotten the wrong idea about her feelings, he’d been thriving without her, proof she did the right thing. “Is that why you never came back to L.A.?”
He’d abandoned his belongings at her house — clothes, guitars, vinyl albums, electronics, things she was sure he’d miss. She packed in anticipation he’d send someone to retrieve them. By the time his exit from rehab made the news, it was clear he wasn’t coming back, even by proxy, so she shipped the boxes to his mother.
He grumbled into the pillow. “I hate L.A. It’s the last place someone trying not to party to death needs to be. I was only there for you.”
Her guilt adeptly shifted from driving him away from home to keeping him too long where he hadn’t wanted to be. Yes, he was there recording an album when they met, and they’d spent a lot of time elsewhere thanks to touring and shooting on location, so it wasn’t like she’d held him prisoner there. But every time he returned to a city he hated, it was because of her.
He swore and bent to the side when she touched a sensitive spot.
She smothered her instinct to leave it alone. The spasm hadn’t improved at all while she circled around it and obviously needed direct attention. She kept the pressure on the muscle steady and firm and waited for him to either accept his fate or tell her to stop. “What’s the story behind this?”
He straightened the angle of his spine one degree at a time. “If I’m tired or stressed or sick or not eating right or getting enough exercise, my central nervous system draws straws to decide which part will freak out in protest.”
Some might consider ending a relationship, driving across the country, committing to a rush job on essentially an entire album, and being on hand for a friend’s suicide attempt before dashing back across the country at the last minute to embark on a North American tour overkill in the stress department. “You’ve given it a smorgasbord of offenses to picket.”
“I thought I was coping.”
“Lex, neurological damage isn’t something you can cope away.” She pressed her fingertips into another twitching muscle. It stilled, as if straining to hear a message from her. “Whatever nerve this is doesn’t know or care how it got damaged in the past or what’s irritating it today. It received the same electrochemical telegram as its neighbor, read it wrong, and responded violently. Mindful meditation is not going to solve this nerve’s reading comprehension problem. Sometimes your body is going to tell your mind to go fuck itself.”
“That’s fair. My mind has some strong words for my body right n
ow.”
She’d just bet. “You can’t reason with the unreasonable. You can only get what’s happening in the moment under control.” The muscle spasms cooperated by calming under her gentle, focused ministrations. “And then you address the cause so it doesn’t recur right away.”
More food, more sleep, and less stress, to start. He’d been spending too much time cooped up in the dungeon. He could use some daylight and fresh air. Fortunately, nature had provided a snow day to enforce playing hooky.
She only wished she had a better angle for the massage. Chris had done most of his work from the other end of his hockey players. “I should be kneeling by your head.”
“If my head was between your legs, this would go in a different direction.”
“Mighty big talk for a man in your condition.”
“Yeah, please don’t call my bluff.” An attempt to move his arm set off another series of spasms and a renewed spate of cursing. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m afraid this will happen on stage. I’ve never written a song that will let me just get a death grip on my guitar and play one chord.”
That fear was probably one of his unspeakable things. Thousands of witnesses saw his collapse live. Millions viewed it after the fact. His weakness had been on display on a global scale, but he’d clawed his way back into the spotlight.
A second fall would devastate him.
Too bad the conditions he’d named for setting up another episode like this could have been lifted straight from a documentary about touring musicians. Sporadic sleep. Germy strangers. A grab bag of restaurant food. Too busy shuttling from one obligation to the next to find the time or space for daily cardio. Homesick, lonely, and plotting to smother one’s traveling companions with a pillow. If tired, stressed, sick, not eating right, and not getting enough exercise were triggers, it was only a matter of time until his fear came to pass.
She couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t undo the physical or emotional damage. She couldn’t even come up with a lie good enough to comfort him.
She lowered herself over his back, rested her cheek upon one of the wings inked across his shoulders, and pressed her arms tight against his sides — as close to a hug as she could manage without jostling him.
