Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions

by John Everson

  That was the beginning.

  But it was a corner turned. Almost every hour afterward, Gerard began testing himself in other ways. His imagination had never lacked for ideas. As he walked down the hallway next to the enticingly bouncing tush of Trish, he brought his hand back…

  You can’t.

  …and connected with a solid slap on that spongy rear.

  She turned to him, wide blue eyes bugged, jaw dropped, red glossed lips hanging open in a wide ‘O’ like the open-mouthed Trish he’d imagined kneeling before him earlier in the bathroom.

  “Wha…”

  “Hey Trish,” he said simply and winked.

  She looked confused for a moment, then laughed. Haltingly.

  Those were the big things. But the little things he challenged himself on, too. His feet were hot, sweating. They kept the office building too warm in his hallway. No windows to suck out the overflow of heat. With the toe of his right foot, he touched his left heel…

  You can’t…

  and kicked off first the left shoe, then…

  what are you doing? This is an office…

  …his right.

  Instead of going outside in the cold to have a smoke…

  You can’t!

  …he lit up in his office with the door closed.

  And then, high on the nicotine and codeine and just plain insanity of it, he slipped his slacks down to the floor, pulled out his penis, and lovingly enjoyed a vision of Trish, breasts pressed to his thighs, mouth pressed to his…

  It felt good.

  In his heart, he knew it was too good to be true. You couldn’t just jack off on everyone and expect to be OK. The ax would fall. Angela would fire him somehow. Then Jenine would leave him, probably go back to sleeping with her boss.

  His mind was awash with conflicting emotions; self-loathing arm-in-arm with a rare appearance from self-love as he walked through the garage entryway into his kitchen. The TV was blaring in the background and Jenine came rushing in from the living room, her kinked black hair frizzed up as if she’d been sleeping on it.

  “Hon, would you go back out and pick up some dinner,” she begged, planting a dry, chaste kiss on his lips. “I didn’t have time…”

  Automatically, Gerard did an about-face, then broke into another fit of coughing that left him bent over, wheezing for air.

  You can’t…

  “No,” he said quietly. Without another word he went up the stairs to change, absently noting that the bedsheets were a mess, something Jenine never put up with. So.

  He stripped naked, walked to the bathroom and swallowed half the bottle of codeine cough syrup. As the hot trickle warmed his throat and spread its flame to his belly, he climbed into those sheets, still musty with the scent of his wife’s sex, and cried himself to sleep.

  She did not join him.

  When he awoke, Jenine’s perfume still hung in the air of the bedroom, but the house was silent. She’d left for work already, without a word. She knew that he knew. And what could she possibly say?

  He coughed himself awake and went through his morning routine. Lather, rinse, gargle, comb. The wheels were now turning faster than ever before. And yet he was so calm. Emotionless, almost.

  At work, Trish paged him to help her with a software glitch, and as he leaned over her shoulder, smelling the flowery musk of her hair, he reached out a…

  You ca…

  …hand and cupped her right breast. It was full, deliciously heavy in his hand. She looked up at him, surprised, but didn’t pull away.

  “I thought…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

  “Wanna do something tonight?” he asked.

  Her eyes dimmed a moment, then met his. She looked afraid. Then nodded.

  Trish’s apartment was purple. Lavender carpet, violet drapes. Her bedroom walls were pink with a bed topped by Princely royal purple sheets and comforter. Her body felt as silky as the sheets, and Gerard entered her without…

  You c…

  …a condom. Her mouth sucked his own inside of her, and for a moment, he remembered the flash of searing ecstasy he’d once felt with his wife as she took him within her. When she was his and only his…

  He bit wildly at her neck and bosom and she raked her hands down his back, first in passion, then with insistence.

  Gerard swam back from the brink of… something… to see her widened eyes and hear her cries of “Gerard, no, no, no!”

  She pushed him from her, red welts already swelling on her skin, tears streaming from her eyes.

  He didn’t say anything, just pulled his pants and shirt on. In a second he was out the door, coat in hand. Trish wasn’t the woman he felt this way about. His problems were at home.

  Maybe.

  The house was dark when he got in, but her car was in the garage. He hardly even thought now about what he…

  You…

  …was going to do.

  The rope slipped around her sleeping wrists and ankles with ease. She didn’t even stir until he was lifting her up from the bed.

  “Where…” she asked sleepily.

  “I could say the same,” he said.

  He laid her in the bathtub. Stopper down.

  “I can’t take any more,” he said, as if that explained it all. Her eyes widened as she tested the tightness of her bindings and he leaned over her to tie the gag. Her head shook wildly and he sighed, loudly.

  “Once I could forgive, but twice…” She started arching her back, trying to flop herself out of the tub, and with hardly a…

  You…

  …thought, brought his hand down on her face. With five sharp raps on the tile, she was still.

  Then he went to the garage.

  The chlorine barrels for the pool were heavy to get up the stairs, but he had managed to get them from the store to the trunk before. And so he managed to cart them through the kitchen, up the stairs and into the bathroom.

  Slipping a razor from his Bic, he sliced through the thin cotton of her night shirt, and then her panties, leaving her naked and unconscious on the bottom of the tub. He looked at her then, slack lips parted, hair curled in ringlets up the sides of the tub, where soap and a trickle of blood had pasted it. Soft, full breasts ripe for kissing and a belly that even now brought a throb to his pants.

  Enough. You can do anything. You’ve proven it already. You’ve punished her. You can’t….

  Methodically, he emptied the jugs of chlorine into the tub, watching with a scientific indifference as the yellow fluid crept up between her thighs, soaked her hair and then covered the closely cropped tuft of secret hair below her belly.

  How long would it take for her skin to burn away? he wondered.

  She stirred then, and her eyes opened. They looked foggy, confused. And then, in pain.

  “I’m not buying dinner tonight,” he said coughing. The fumes were stifling now, and Gerard started coughing again. Grabbing his medicine, he left her alone in the bath, closed the door and went down the stairs to the kitchen. His eyes were watering as he poured a tall glass of milk from the fridge. There was a dull pounding sound echoing from upstairs, but he couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t seem to stop coughing; his chest was an agony of phlegmy irritation. Uncapping the bottle of antibiotics, Gerard popped one in his mouth and took a gulp of milk.

  Y…

  The pill went down easy.

  I’ve learned two things about romance. Every heart holds secrets best left unseen. And the tease of the veils of mystery provoke more desire than the most perfect form unmasked. Oh… and one more thing – be careful what you wish for.

  Broken Window

  ou’re a mystery to me,” I complained. “Sure, I can interpret the spark in your eye. I can theorize over the meaning of the mischief in your smile. But I can never really slip past your guard. I can never stare directly into your heart. It’s always veiled. A kernel of you is always hidden.”

  She smirked.

  Not smiled. Katrina never simply smile
d. There was always a twist attached. Which, in fact, was the point of this conversation.

  So she smirked.

  “What would you say if I told you that I am never really guarded with you,” she cooed. “If I told you even though I joke and play with you, that I am always naked to your whims.”

  “I’d say you were deceptively poetic and I wouldn’t believe it,” I snapped.

  I even crossed my arms to underscore my point.

  How masculine.

  How above reproach.

  How foppish.

  She brushed my caged chest with her lips. The shadowed almond shape of her eyes seemed rounder than usual. More doe-like. Another affectation to twist my feelings around her tongue.

  “How could I believe it?” I railed further. “When you want me to buy you something or take you somewhere, don’t you put on a slinky top and your tightest stretch pants – the purple ones with the flowers that I like so much – and tease me? Isn’t that a deception? And when you talk on the phone, don’t you close the door so I can’t hear? And don’t you go shopping with your sister and conveniently never show me what you bought? You get what you want by winks and kisses and hurt looks and you do what you want in secret. How can I know what goes on inside you without a window to your soul?”

  “Is that all you want?” she asked, strangely calm after my accusations.

  “What?” I said, confused now.

  “A window to my soul? If you want it, I’ll get one. It can be done tomorrow.”

  I didn’t really know what to say. I’d been blustering my way through to win the argument up to this point. In truth, I liked her to coax me into doing things her way with a kiss and a jiggle. It was an unspoken, admittedly sexist but effective agreement we had. And I certainly had had my share of private conversations and excursions which I never spoke of. But I couldn’t back down now.

  “Yes,” I said at last. “Have one put in.”

  She neither smirked nor smiled now. But she nodded her agreement.

  Our bedroom was strangely silent that night.

  When I came home the following day, Katrina was not there to greet me as was her usual routine. I called out her name, but she didn’t reply. Dropping an armload of papers on the kitchen table, I walked through the house looking for her.

  “Katrina?” I called. The dusk shadows were still.

  “Katrina?”

  The house remained silent. Yet, I could feel her presence somewhere.

  “Here,” she answered at last. Her voice sounded weary.

  She stood in front of the bathroom mirror with her shirt off. She was staring at her chest. I joined her.

  She’d had the window installed.

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to lose my nerve.”

  Gently, I turned her to face me. I kissed her mouth, but she was unresponsive.

  I bent to stare into her newly transparent chest. Her once magnificent breasts were gelatinously see-though. Her sternum was crystal clear. You wouldn’t think it, knowing how powerful the erotica of glass sculpture can be, but I found Katrina’s transformed chest suddenly a dead zone. An erotic zero.

  The view itself?

  Strange.

  What else can I say? Can I tell you I saw almost nothing? Or shall I describe the flashes: a wisp of pale blue smoke, a hint of crystalline lattices that wound amid a garden of silken rose, a toothy multi-eyed creature of purest ebony that sweat crimson stains. All these strange visions and more I stared at. I saw a flash of Katrina the child, and even a glimpse of my own face staring back at me for an instant – a far more porkish visage than the one that appeared to me every morn in the mirror.

  Mostly though, I saw emptiness. But at each image that flew fleetly past the window to her soul, I felt what she felt. And as I stared with a completely new and different interest than I’d ever had before at her chest, I can tell you better what I felt than what I saw.

  I felt robbed.

  Violated.

  Empty.

  When at last I looked up from her glass bosom, Katrina and I were both crying.

  In giving me absolute entrance to her soul, Katrina had given up too much, had kept nothing for herself. I tried to hold her tightly, to soothe her pain, but she pushed me back.

  “I’ll break now,” she warned.

  “C’mon,” I said, mustering a grin. “You’re stronger than that. Give me a good smirk.”

  One of those multi-eyed black creatures bit bloodily into my own soul as the expression on Katrina’s face changed.

  She smiled.

  When I was in grade school, I inherited a treasure trove of 1950s science fiction books from a neighbor. I read many of those novels – by Simak and Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein – two or three times. But perhaps my favorite of the bunch was an anthology collection of “Golden Age” short SF fiction called Children of Wonders. Richard Matheson’s classic “Born of Man and Woman” was there, a perfect marriage of horror and SF, as was Theodore Sturgeon’s “Baby is Three,” probably the best “wild talent” story penned about children with “psi power.” When I took creative writing in college, these were the type of stories I wanted to create. “Tomorrow” and “The Last Plague” are among the first stories I ever completed and certainly yearn to capture the same malignant, futuristic cautionary sense of those great 1950s authors.

  Tomorrow

  went to the tree today. I thought very much, about me and Mum, and Dad. The tree helps me think – everything gets cloudy sometimes. Like tears and smoke. The tree stretches branches around me; it protects me. I told this to Mum when I first began going to the tree, and she got mad. That night to Dad she said “Charles, what are we going to do with him? We can’t shield him from the world forever. What will he do when he has to interact with other people? What will he do to us?”

  Dad told her not to worry, I just needed love, that was all. Then she started crying like always and asked how she could love a freak. Dad told her I was her child, not a freak, and that made her cry louder. She wanted to send me away, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said I was just…different. But he was afraid. I was learning fast.

  I think at first they were proud of me. “Prodigy,” they said. “Talked when he was two. Crawled at three.” The doctors said no operation could make me walk, so I got extra brains. I heard them tell Dad not to have more children. Chromosomes. Radiation. Even then, I think Mum had trouble loving me. She cringed sometimes when I hugged her; she always turned me over to Dad when he got home. Sometimes she’d lock me in my room, and let me scream for hours. She smelled bitter – like the tree when you rip the bark away. She tried to look the other way as she fed me, but I stared straight at her. When her eyes glanced at mine, her lower lip trembled. Her teeth clenched together. Her hand shook, but the spoon forced its way into my mouth. Sometimes I spit it back in her face and laughed. It was a little revenge. My mother hated me, and I knew it.

  That was when I started doing things. Little things. Like spilling grape juice on her favorite blouse, or hiding her keys in the toilet, or crying in the middle of the night and then stopping just when she entered my room. Harmless, but effective.

  I would lie awake at night, and listen to them talk. Mum would cry a lot and call me a monster. She told Dad my little pranks, and he told her she was exaggerating. “In fact,” he would say, “it shows he is developing like every other boy. A little mischief is good. He’s been withdrawing too much lately. This fall he’s going to have to go to school.”

  “But Charles, these… these things he does… They’re malignant. It’s just not normal. The way he looks at me…”

  I had to try hard not to laugh out loud and give myself away.

  Then came the Day. It was mid-summer, nothing to do. I was really bored. We had a cat named Spider, because she tiptoed around everything. I got some yarn, a coat hanger, and a steel brush and built my very own custom Spider trap. When it sprung, there was a howl like you wouldn’t believe. I
was laughing and rolling on the floor.

  Mum went running into the utility room and found the cat shrieking in its litter box. Every time Spider tried to get out of the yarn strands holding her in the box, the steel brush swatted her like a fly. There was kitty litter everywhere. Mum lost her temper, and came after me with the brush. She hit me over and over, and screamed when she saw the blood on my shriveled legs. I was red inside, and I turned over to see her raising her arm again. I hated. I felt fire in my head and I wished it at her. And she stopped. She froze in mid-motion and the brush fell from her hand. A sound came from deep in her throat. An ugly sound. Like a grating door. Or that sound you make just before the vomit comes up. I looked away, because her face wasn’t pretty anymore, and I hurt. I heard a dull thud behind me as she fell to the floor. Later, when she began breathing slower, she got up quietly, slipped out the back door, and ran from the house.

  When she came home again, Dad was with her. His face was all wrinkly. He was scared. Not scared like they show people scared in horror movies, but I could tell. I was watching TV and I smiled as they came into the room. “Hi, Daddy,” I said. “Mummy spanked me today. See what she did.” I rolled over to show my scabbing backside.

  His wrinkles dropped to a frown. I knew I’d won, and they went in the bedroom to fight. “Don’t be ridiculous,” and “He’s just a kid,” I heard. And from Mum: “He’s a devil. He tried to kill me!”

  We moved after that, and nobody talked about me going to school anymore. Our new house was in the country. Dad thought it would soothe everyone’s nerves and bring us closer. He started teaching me himself. That was when he started to understand. By the time I was nine, I was mastering physics. I had discovered the tree in the back of our yard and often took my books and struggled through chemistry and mathematics there. When a problem got too hard I pulled myself close to the tree and felt the cool bark against my skin. The tree supported me, and I felt its strength. Then the problems were easy, and the smoky webs in my head went away. I just wanted love, and the tree loved me. I could feel it.