Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  Then there were Laurel and Gabe. Takers of a more cunning breed, although they gave in return, in their own ways. Laurel her passion, Gabe his adoration, this perverse worship coming from them both, for body and soul respectively. The pedestal syndrome. He no longer felt their equals; they would not let him stay that low.

  It got a bit much at times.

  He would adapt.

  Paul left money on the table, coffee and tip and then some, and drew himself together. Threw it all out the door into the night, stalking sidewalks in search of something, not even he knew what. Peering into window after window, this gauntlet of business so dependent on the local institution of higher learning, feeding on those who quested for knowledge. Selling them shoes and toothpaste, books and beer, music and sweatshirts. Outfitting them like little soldiers of free thought, hah, as if their thoughts were really their own. They had been programmed from cradle on.

  He was seeing remarkably more clearly now than he had at such a tender age. As time’s veteran, he was entitled to despise a lot of what he saw anymore.

  He was, after all, the great white hope of TV ministries. Televangelism’s enfant terrible, infused with the power to cope with a dark new age, behave or I could come down upon you like the wrath of Judgment Day. Psycho-body surgery, cleaving a bladeless incision beneath the ribs, to reach up into the chest cavity like an Aztec priest, enact a little change of heart.

  Laurel had found it interesting last night.

  His frontiers were expanding daily.

  He laughed, and it filled the hollow streets. Now, if only he could just fill hollow hearts.

  On a shady side street, less traveled, Paul stopped before a bookstore, independent, locally owned in defiance of massive chains. He admired that. Pausing, looking through the darkened windows, after hours, a skeleton crew of lights burning, illuminating the new, the different. Books, magazines, compact discs.

  Magazines.

  And what was this, a familiar face, the brand-new weekly edition of People, resting on a table against a display easel. Cover splashed with a recent promo photo of none other than Donny Dawson, local boy makes good. Trademark white suit and sweep of golden-brown hair, TV’S OWN MAN OF MIRACLES? the headline read, and inset into one corner was a grainy shot lifted from the Hurstborn taping. Wow, Donny doing cover billing along with Julia Roberts, and Paul stared for minutes, nose to glass like a child at a pet shop window, That could’ve been me, then he doubled around the block to the alley and found a heavy garbage can and dragged it around front and heaved it through the window. Plate glass imploding, like a bomb blast, a razor crystal shower over books and floor and displays.

  He stepped one foot over the glass-toothed sill, shoe crunching glass, and grabbed the magazine and was gone. Just because no alarm had sounded didn’t mean the local bacon wasn’t on its way.

  Paul zigged a block one way, zagged two another, until he felt the sirens were distant enough to relax and he could do some quick page-flipping. Sitting near a street corner and its towering lamp, beneath the colorshock branches of a sprawling oak, the subtle spice of leaves in dry rot. He felt safe here.

  People magazine, all the latest celebrity flavors of the week, and Paul flipped hard and fast. Found the article beginning on page thirty-eight. Next page, the supreme pinnacle of tackiness, a reproduction of Clarence Hurstborn’s X-rays, before and after. Reprinted by permission, of course, and probably remuneration, the filthy rich bastard was really milking this for all it was worth, another allotment of those Andy Warhol fifteen minutes. Made Paul sorry he’d set hands on the guy in the first place, and there they were all together, page forty-two, caption listing Hurstborn and Donny and “three unidentified Dawson associates.”

  Paul shredded the magazine into tatters he left in his wake, and damn him, Donny Dawson, the greedy son of a bitch. A fucking cover story in People, and all Paul was was an unidentified associate. Just how long was Donny going to let this charade go on, how long would his conscience permit it?

  Hah, what conscience, he thought a moment later.

  Of course, Paul had let Donny set the precedent of taking advantage of him. But he’d been vulnerable then, you’d think things would change now that he’d gotten himself back under control.

  He fumed his way along the sidewalks, and did Donny care about the pain he was in, the cramps that would periodically seize him up? Of course not. Let him suffer, all the worse now with this latest discovery of misplaced adulation. Everything inside him cooking, steaming, trembling under the pressure of holding it in. Laurel provided minor relief, giving her those transient tastes of mortality, but he always held back and had to reclaim what he left inside, and quickly. The ills always came back home to roost.

  No fair.

  No fucking fair at all.

  A half-block later, Paul caught sight of movement in bushes, something low, something brown and white. Furry and four-legged. He stopped, and it did not. A moment later it snuffled out to him, friendly tail wagging. A collared dog, some family’s mongrel pet.

  He stared at it for a solid minute while it stood before him like a sacrificial lamb, sniffing experimentally around his knees, its witless way of making acquaintance.

  Relief, blessed release. He needed this dumb beast far more than did any family. The tears of children dried quickly. They would forget soon enough.

  Paul knelt and scratched the dog behind its floppy ears. Attention finally returned, it doubled its affections, lapping at his hand with an eager tongue. While Paul bit his lip in sorrow at the monstrousness within that was leading him to this, to conjure up the foulest malignancies held at bay inside, then hold tight to the dog with splayed hands, then project while that tail wagged incessantly. An accusation of betrayal, and Paul began to sweat again even in the chill night air…

  And it wasn’t working.

  Whichever was greater — his relief or his disappointment — he could not say. Obviously, whatever it was that rode him within differentiated one flesh from another, one soul from another. It wouldn’t accept just any meat and bones delivered to it, only human would suffice. What of ravaging corpses, he wondered briefly. But no; surely, if a living animal wasn’t acceptable, a dead human wouldn’t be either.

  No fucking fairness anywhere in this world.

  Paul found his way to a street walked only once or twice with Laurel, a path less traveled, perhaps less savory to gentler tastes. He liked it just fine. There was a club along here, a place he’d thought looked interesting, but Laurel had turned up her nose. A Bran Central gal all the way. He located it easily enough, just follow the people in black.

  It was built into a regular storefront, glass walled off from the inside except for a narrow crack through which to peek. A hangout for fringe types, artistic nihilists, the unstable and those on their way. The deliberately sloppy lettering painted above the doorway read J.P. SARTRE’S. Nice touch.

  He stepped through into sonic assault, oppressive battery. Reign-of-terror decor from wall to wall, gallons of black paint slapped overhead alone, useless rusty pipes and the choking refuse of an industrial age gone insane. Part opium den, part asylum.

  It spoke to his condition.

  In a former life, his first stop would have been the bar, far in the back and ringed by red neon. Grab a beer and lurk on the edges awhile, wait until he felt at home before venturing closer to the heart. Not tonight, though, tonight he was immediately a cog in the machine.

  The dancing was brutal, no grace, all aggression. Slamdancers collided with neither hate nor mercy, too much energy and not enough outlets. A mosh pit, all sweaty human stew and tangled hair. He threw himself into the savage cotillion, let it buffet him in an improvised choreography of random violence, and he gave as good as he got.

  Once a deejay, always a deejay, that capacity to let the song take over. The music was new, dark, terrifying. Punk gothic, born of rage and disillusion, suckled on paranoia, and smoking with a forlorn whiff of genocide. He reveled in it, vicious
strobing of black light nightmares smeared in his face, blinding his eyes.

  Dancing became a medieval purge to beat the demons out, flogging himself not with bundles of sticks but the bodies of others. So willing. So bony. His ground-glass joints, the scrape of tendons and the rasp of muscle. He could cry if he let himself. No holy martyr had ever bled from deeper within. No accused witch bound to a fiery stake had been more wrongfully condemned.

  He belonged nowhere, neither in earth nor heaven nor hell. Yet he had been conceived in all three.

  He was spread awfully thin these days.

  He whirled. He thudded. Was shoved and shoved back, nothing personal guy, and this was never going to work. He could dance until his body was one vast bruise, and it would never begin to ease those deeper pains.

  Locked into frenzy, spittle flying, leaking from the corner of his mouth, dusty hair soaked with sweat, not all of it his own. He opened his eyes wide, amazed at the new lucidity, showing him true reality peeking through from beneath surface veneers during each flash of black light strobe. The hidden faces of the bad sorts coming out in unwitting display. Gargoyles of a cold harsh world, twisted and gray, and out here he could separate sheep from goats. Knowing he should be terrified, exposed and surrounded by aberrations, but knowing too they could never touch him. Impunity.

  And release.

  Paul set his eyes on the biggest one, the ugliest, the hairiest. He fought his way over and hurled himself into the guy, like colliding with brick and blubber. Its mutant face sneering, the proportions all wrong, distorted by infections of genetics and soul.

  He rushed in again, a boxer’s clinch, slid one hand up beneath a leather vest and felt slick hairy belly, and shoved until fat and organs alike were displaced, and Paul twitched, obscene ecstasy as it came pouring out of him in snarled torrents. All the pressure, all the dark steam, blowout. The world would be a far better place without this wretched creature he was dispatching, and he had mandate to judge.

  Dancing spasmolytics in convulsive beauty, as a thin stringer of blood came spewing from one malformed nostril. Bulging eyes and open mouth, tongue squirming within like a parasite. The guy’s face darkening as he bellowed, a roar lost to the sound system and the music of tribal fervor.

  Paul let him go then, dead on his feet and staggering back toward a wall festooned with rusty metal. Striking moistly, splat, staring with sagging jaw at an arm strewn with weeping boils, and no telling what he looked like on the inside, amen, good riddance, and good night.

  Paul weaved from the dance floor in the opposite direction, and no one had noticed the dead thing yet, hey, it was just that kind of place, one more sick drunk spat back by a crowd he couldn’t hack.

  Paul felt light, flightworthy. Free from the anchors of body, the shackles of spirit. Dizzy relief, and he laughed with joy, no more pain, no more cramps, so let the unworthy fall where they may.

  Then…

  The veil lifting, old awareness returning as if through time and mist, tentative and sluggish, while with it came fractured realizations.

  Dear God forgive me … I just killed someone…

  It had been…

  Well, unique.

  Chapter 36

  Donny decided that he liked doctors, in general. Liked them very much. He’d had little use for them for the past decade-plus-change, these sanctioined healers reminding him of his shortcomings. Medical science often succeeding where his own brand of manufactured faith tended to fail.

  Irv Preston had been different, because Irv did not judge, and became a friend, even a partner of sorts. Gone now, never forgotten, but by necessity he had to be replaced. Donny had hooked up with one of Irv’s colleagues, a younger doctor from Irv’s private practice, a fine fellow who understood the rigors and pressures of running your own empire and who prescribed tranquilizers accordingly.

  You could meet the most interesting people at a funeral.

  Within six hours of Gabe’s hostile takeover, and four hours of bidding public farewell to the earthly remains of Irv Preston, Donny had embarked upon a crash course in the joys of ten-milligram Valium tablets. Five, six times a day. Powder blue wonders, down enough of them and consciousness would slip and slide into a whole new realm of soft focus, slow motion wonder and the sheathing of frayed nerves.

  Watching the world go by.

  What an interesting world it looked to be, too, all kinds of attention directed his way. TV, magazines, newspapers, all clamoring for comments when he had none. Yes, Gabe had seen to that, all right, made sure the secretaries and lower echelon peons steered all seekers away disappointed. A human screen, sifting out whatever might intrude and sully this perfect inner world of complete nothingness in which he now lived.

  One lifeline: Gabe had said he would soon turn it all back over, and be gone.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, by then. Maybe interest would still be there. Maybe he could dust off his mantle of command and step smartly back into place and let the world come to him, and he would receive it graciously. After all, Gabe was still keeping him up on matters, feeding him written reports, his old habits hard to break. And they were richer than ever. Contributions were pouring in, the weekly volume of letters more than doubling. Gabe had brought him a few, all the same. Pray for me. Heal me. Long distance, I know you can do it, I saw you on the TV news and believe you’re a true healer, not like the rest. Here’s some money and I’ll send more when it’s done, if I can, when things are better.

  Donny burned the letters in his fireplace. Supposing the checks had already been deposited.

  He visited the mailroom a couple of times. Ordinarily, he found it a depressing place. Few of its staff aspiring to much more than minimum wage, hired on for hustle rather than religious convictions. Naive visitors were often surprised to find the place reeking of Marlboro clouds and resounding with off-color jokes, racial slurs. But lately, visiting had cheered him up better than a surprise party, all those bulging postal sacks. People out there loved him, they really loved him.

  God bless Valium.

  It even made the trips upstairs to visit Amanda go down smoother. Fewer and further between anymore, such a chore trudging up the stairs to the third floor, his legs heavier every day.

  Today he had made the effort, though he wondered why he’d bothered. Sitting in her bedroom with her, rested up from therapy but her cheeks still flushed. Lots of silence between the spurts of words, and while he supposed this was better than her first tart-tongued week of consciousness, he wasn’t quite sure. Have to think on that.

  “Donny, you look awful,” she told him.

  What a thing to say. Across the room in her sweatsuit, lips curled inward, pressed together, as she bit down on them with shiny eyes.

  “You’re taking something, aren’t you?”

  “It’s just to help me relax. I need it. I’m entitled. It’s been a long time since we had a vacation, and I just think I’d rather take one here as anywhere in the world.”

  “The past five years have been a vacation. We haven’t done any work. We’ve just been playing games.” Her hands took in the room. “Up here? This is the hardest work I’ve ever done.”

  She really was making progress, could now ambulate around with minimal assistance. She still needed a cane, but had weaned herself down from a hemi-cane to a large-base quad, then a small-base quad, and would switch to a single-point before long. He knew that her nurses’ hours had been cut even more. The return of normal body functioning had been radiating outward, from trunk to shoulders and hips, then out along her limbs. Just amazing.

  “This therapy? It’s the first time I’ve felt really good about myself in—” Breaking off, shaking her head, knocking a fist down against the chair arm. “And do you know why?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Because it’s mine. Mine alone. It’s something you can’t touch and make yours.” Mandy angrily swiped at her nose, starting to sound stuffy. “I shouldn’t feel that way about things, about you.
But I do. And I won’t keep it down inside me anymore, not for you, not for anybody.”

  Valium walls, doing their duty. He could not believe she meant this. “You’re just having a bad day, hon, it’ll look better.”

  “A bad day,” and she barked a laugh, tossed her head back with a flip of hair. Settling then into the saddest little smile on her dear face that he had ever seen. “A bad day. I remember when all a bad day meant was running short on gas money to get from one church to the next.” Looking up then, watery eyed. Shaky voiced. “I think … we have reached a stage … where we have very different ideas about what makes a bad day.”

  Donny gave this some thought, and it prickled. Well, maybe they didn’t see things with identical eyes lately, but he could certainly give her a lesson or two about bad days. Blackmailed by a murderous pervert with dirty pictures, forced to hand over the keys to the kingdom — now there was a real stinker of a day, wasn’t there?

  But he had told her nothing, would continue to tell her nothing. Amanda did not need it heaped onto her shoulders; they were already carrying burdens enough as it was.

  Such an ache, keeping that one inside, balled into a cold hard knot. Even Valium couldn’t warm-and-fuzzy that one up.

  “A bad day,” he finally said, stirring dregs of memory for some of the free-form eloquence he’d once used to such great effect from the stage, “is missing you. Waking up and seeing you’re not there in the same bed. Going into my office, and knowing … you won’t be coming by. That’s a bad day.”

  “You don’t miss me,” she said.

  Donny felt his face droop, his eyes burn. “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling.”

  “I’M HERE!” she screamed through clenched teeth, rearing forward in the chair. Then back down. “I’m here. I’ve been here all along, you saw to that, and it’s not me you miss. It’s the memory of what we both thought I was. But you know what?”

  “No,” he croaked, groping for an argument for this and coming up without weapons. “What?”