Thirty-Seven

by Peter Stenson

  I sob into her neck.

  “Shh, baby, shh, you’re with me now. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

  45. TWO’S GIFT

  It’s close to five in the morning. We’re in the mountains of Marble. I drive slowly by my former home. I keep going. I drive seven miles and then I pull over and park. Two doesn’t ask where we’re going because she knows or doesn’t care. We bundle in our coats. We don’t have the right kind of boots. The snow swallows our legs. Two bleeds. We hike. I can’t stop picturing Dr. Turner’s head, how flat it became underneath Two’s Honesty. Same with my father. I don’t know why I didn’t killed him. I don’t know why he was incapable of loving me how I needed to be loved.

  The darkness hints at light.

  It’s going to be morning soon. People will climb out of beds and children will pretend to brush their teeth and people will complain about going to work while it’s still dark. People will buy coffee. People will wait to go to the bathroom until they are on the clock. College kids will smile like they’re in control of everything. Old people will walk to their television sets wearing the same thing they slept in. My mother will go to Pilates. She’ll complain about feeling too busy. My father will read The Washington Post and feel smarter than any Republican. And when they are all doing these things, they will be thinking of something else, something they want to do or need to do, dinners that need to be prepared and dry cleaning that needs to be picked up and children that need to be bathed. And when they return home, they’ll pretend to be excited. They’ll feign gratitude at a family of their own choosing. They will masturbate in the shower. They will sneak nips of vodka in the pantry. They will watch their husband of fifty years snore in his chair and be struck with the crippling notion of wanting him dead and never loving someone so much, even her children.

  Day after day.

  Year after year.

  This is what the American dream has always looked like.

  Every single action is a stepping stool to another. Every conversation is one-sided, a mirror reflecting looks and status and wealth. Every person is steeped in want, and this is applauded. It’s aptitude. It’s go-get-’er-ness. It’s hunger. It’s filling themselves with goods and sex and alcohol and validation so they forget about the fact that they all will die. That there’s no heaven. There’s no reincarnation. There’s nothing. Because Gods roam this earth, eight billion of them and counting. We all are God. We all have unlimited power and we all can access Truth through sickness and Honesty and we can see flashes of any past we desire to understand and we can move through the world like shadows.

  I imagine an America in which this Truth is achieved.

  This image fades into flames because Truth is shy and Americans are still Americans, each of us wanting to be a bigger God than our counterparts.

  I wonder if we have enacted change.

  I doubt it.

  We could do the same thing every night for a year and still be cuckolded by denial.

  Why?

  Because the vast majority simply don’t give a fuck about Honesty. They don’t care about Truth. They want certainty. They want to believe the interns at the office are interested rather than nervous. They want their kids to be extensions of themselves. They want their house to be both a manifestation of their inadequate genitalia and a fortress to keep out the scary. They want to believe they are inherently different than everyone else, better.

  I know this because I’ve experienced every single thing that has happened or will happen. I know this because I want a box spring. I know this because I would trade all the Truth in the world for my father to have read me stories instead of pleasuring himself in my doorway.

  But that does not mean what we are doing is any less important. In fact, it’s the opposite. Seekers will seek. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will grow tired of the church and start asking the right questions. Loved ones will die. Wives will cheat. Children will run away. And Two and I will be everyone at once. We will offer forgiveness. We will cause terror. We will force introspection. We will multiply. Sarah, the homeless girl who stole my computer, she’s already turning. She’ll spread our message. She won’t know how or why she’s doing it, but she’ll understand when somebody is ready, and she’ll lower her head, tell him to press his lips to her ear, and she’ll ask about his first love, his favorite memory, and his biggest regret. He’ll tell her. Souls will be exchanged. Self will become nonexistent, if only for a fraction of time. They will both feel it, the One Truth, that they’re Gods, that anything is possible, that there are no accidents, that nothing matters and everything matters, that all anybody has ever wanted was love from a family of his own choosing.

  The cave housing the abandoned mine shaft is exactly where I remember it to be. I stand behind Two. I help her when she slips. We’re shivering. Two’s dying. We pull ourselves to a small ledge. Two rests against the granite. I’m crouched down, heading for the back. Only, the cave doesn’t go back but a few feet. I run my hands against the rock. I look down, expecting to be standing over the metal grates covering the fifty-foot hole where we’d dropped the quartered bodies of the DEA agents. But there’s nothing there. It has to be the wrong cave. I could’ve sworn it was where I’d come twice before, but there’s no way.

  “Baby,” Two says.

  I turn around. I walk the few steps to the cave’s mouth. Two’s looking at the rock wall. She runs her fingers over something. She says it’s beautiful. I ask her what she’s talking about.

  “Your name.”

  I peer closer. MASON HUES is scratched into the rock. I don’t remember doing this.

  “10/24/12,” Two says.

  “What?”

  “The date.”

  She points underneath my name. She turns, smiling. Her skin is so pale. I know she is nearly combusted. I can’t go back to cooking rice alone. Her smile fades. She looks at the carving and then back at me. Her eyes are different, hooded.

  “Why’d you put the wrong date?”

  “What? I don’t…”

  “Because it would’ve been February tenth. The eleventh at the latest, right? That’s when you were here, after The Day of Gifts.” I don’t know what to say.

  “But October twenty-fourth? That would’ve been—”

  “The day I ran away,” I say.

  “So you came here first?”

  I’m shaking my head or maybe my whole body is shaking. I step backward. My foot kicks something that rattles. I look down. I’m stepping on a chopping knife. I bend over. I pick it up. The tip is dull, broken. I’d carved my name in the rock with it. That meant I’d brought it with me. And it’d been the day I’d run away from home. I’m thinking about having come here first instead of One’s cabin. And it had to be a different cave than the one we’d dumped the bodies in and I’d later hid in for three days. Maybe I’d gotten confused and led us to the wrong one.

  I hold the knife. I look down at Two. She isn’t present, just a body and a mind. The skin connecting her ear pulls tight. The whites of her eyes are a television screen. And I’m inside of her mind, experiencing her Gift of Understanding, a complete disassociation, her seeing a younger me crawling up to this cliff, so young, so scared, my clothes bloodied, my only possessions fitting in a backpack. She’s seeing me carve my name in the rocks because I want to be remembered. And I want to tell her it’s not like that. That didn’t happen. Her Gift of Understanding is steeped in selfish fear. But I can’t because I am no longer a body or a voice. Her vision keeps going, working backward, me sleeping in my childhood bed, me creeping along the dead spots of the floorboards, me standing at the foot of my parents’ bed, the same knife I’m now holding in my fifteen-year-old hand, tears and screams and the only voice of the powerless being gruesome violence, me enacting change the only way I knew how, my mantra being love me love me leave me alone love me. I want to tell Two to stop. I want to tell her Gifts of Understanding aren’t True. They are intuition, but not Fact. I want to tell
her that even if this did happen, the rest is True, but I am the powerless passenger to her connection to Truth, and then it’s me stumbling along a road, dying of hypothermia, being picked up by the cops, questions being asked, arrests being made, the courts showing grace by naming me John Doe, juvie until I bashed my head into my cell wall and authorities deemed me worthy of CMHIP, a stumbled-upon book, a loose and broad narrative, the anonymous fifteen-year-old, John Doe to Mason Hues to Thirty-Seven, structure and doctrines to build a shattered life from, a loving family of my own choosing, acceptance, Dr. Turner always circling back to acceptance, to violence, to my father, Dr. Turner’s progress destroyed when she pushed for a detail I didn’t know, her asking about the DEA agents’ bodies, and instead of the breakthrough she’d spent years working up to, I told her my name was Thirty-Seven.

  I want to tell Two that what she sees isn’t True. That I’d never lied to her. That I was Thirty-Seven. That I injected myself with three complete rounds of Cytoxan. That I’d pried teeth from severed heads. That I’d led a group because I was special, more dedicated, prized, a prophet.

  I open my mouth. Two shakes her head. I crumple to the cave floor. I stare at the only woman I’ve ever loved. I let my whites be as vulnerable as possible. I strive for Honesty. I’m not sure what she sees. She reaches out her hand. I watch her eyes glass over as she pushes down the Gift of Understanding she’s just experienced. She’s doing everything we’ve worked so hard to eradicate. Her eyes swallow the vision. She will never be the same. She will never live in Honesty. She does this for love.

  She extends her hand. She pulls me toward her. I tilt my head. She tells me she doesn’t want to press foreheads. She pulls my head to her chest. I tell her everything happens for a reason. She says don’t. I tell her it’s not true. She pets my bald head. I tell her I’m so fucking sorry. She says she knows I am. I tell her it’s not over, we can drive north, cross a completely unmanned boarder in the middle of Montana, start our lives over again, reinvent ourselves, live simply and Honestly, become anonymous. She tells me she’d like that. She presses her lips to my head. She says it again. “I’d like that.” I don’t look up because I know her eyes tell a different Truth.

  46. THE DAY OF GIFTS1

  The Andersons are new to Scottsdale. They’ve relocated from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Davis has a new job as a shift manager at Home Depot. Kristin has a new job working part-time at Talbots. Jenny is a sophomore and she’s made varsity softball. Derek is in eighth grade. He wants to be a football player, but his fallback is being the CEO of Apple. They are amazed at the sun and the space and the highways five lanes wide. They live in a new development, originally planned for the upper middle-class, but after the recession, a half-finished home has become affordable. They are adjusting to a new climate and to new people, but they are doing it well, happy, together, family meals more often than not. They grill steaks on February tenth. They have a salad. Even though it’s chilly by Arizona standards, they eat outside. The sun slips behind Camelback. They are content. They go to bed. They are butchered in their sleep. Everyone but thirteen-year-old Derek. He’s held by the throat. He’s forced to watch as a woman with no hair repeatedly plunges a knife into his mother and father’s throat. He is instructed to lie by his sister as she bleeds out from a puncture wound in her vagina. Young Derek is told this is the greatest gift he will ever receive.

  A man known by his followers as One slips into a home in Oklahoma City. He doesn’t worry about fingerprints. He’s not concerned about making noise. He holds a nine iron retrieved from the garage. He whistles. Amanda Bayle, seven years old, will later take to whistling this same tune a year later. She won’t stop. Her new family, her aunt and uncle in Cleveland, will eventually identify the song as Elvis’s “Blue Moon.” But at that moment, she isn’t sure if she’s really hearing it or not. But she knows she hears screams. She hears the pleas for help. She hears her door open. A monster stands in her doorway. He is covered in blood. She screams. He extends his hands. He tells her it’s okay. He tells her it was for her own good. She is too terrified to move. He holds her. Her family’s blood drips from his chin to her face. He rocks her and calls her Zoe.

  Andrew MacArthur awakes to a breaking of glass. He sits upright. His wife, Patricia, wakes as well, her first reaction checking the baby monitor where their newborn daughter sleeps. Andrew hears their kitchen door open. He reaches to his bedside table. His Colt .45 sits amidst change and condoms and an instructional manual to their new 3D television. He takes the pistol and climbs out of bed. He can hear someone at the end of their ranch-style home. He debates if he should call out to the intruder. He opts to stay silent. But then he hears the wails of his two-month-old baby. He runs. He bursts through the nursery door. He sees a woman cradling his baby. She looks possessed, not of this world, bald and dressed in black, a knife in her hand. The woman stares at Andrew as she slides the knife across his daughter’s throat. Andrew screams and he fires his gun and bodies drop. His daughter is silent. His daughter will never cry again.

  The Mendez family living in Springfield, Illinois, goes from six members to one in the span of seven minutes. The sole survivor, Andra Gabriella, mother of three, wife and daughter, watches as a man lines up her family in the living room. He makes them kneel. He holds an ax. Andra watches as he swings the blade into the heads of each person, oldest to youngest. Blood splatters against the painting of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall. Andra Gabriella Mendez takes her life two days later.

  Dennis Packer watches on as a man saws through the bones of his younger sister. She is still alive.

  Reba Landry screams for help as she’s dragged out from underneath her bed. A woman who looks like a ghost squats on her chest. The woman says, “I have killed everyone who would eventually betray you. I have done you a favor. I have given you a gift.”

  Tony Parker, only child, fourteen, bright but underachieving, plays World of Warcraft, when he hears screams coming from his parents’ room. He takes off his earphones. He watches monsters on his screen kill one another. The screams intensify, both his mother and father, then his mother’s become primal and his father’s stop. Tony opens his window. He jumps ten feet to the backyard. He runs as fast as he can. Everything about the Chicago suburb appears foreign.

  Four of the Smiths from Buckhead. Two Millers from Minneapolis. Three Brannons from Fresno. One Charles from Akron. Three Lanes from El Paso. Five Hendricksons from Fargo. Two Marshals from Olympia. Two Steins from St. Petersburg. Six Kellers from Lincoln. One Debauch from Bend. Three Rosenbergs from Charleston. Two Mastersons from Denver. Five Yangs from Gary. A single St. Michael from Tacoma. All dead. All butchered in various forms of sleep. All leaving a single surviving family member. Most of these survivors are told they were being given a gift.

  A boy of fifteen makes a phone call. He’s cold, sick from months of undergoing chemotherapy. He stands at a bus station in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He calls 911.

  “911, what’s your emergency?”

  “People are going to die.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dr. James Shepard is behind it.”

  “Sir, are you in danger?”

  “We’re all in danger.”

  “What is your current location?”

  “Truth.”

  “Sir, I need your name.”

  “Thirty-Seven.”

  “Your address? Thirty-seven what?”

  “Gifts.”13

  1 Reprinted in its entirety from O’Connor’s Dr. Sick: The Survivors and The Day of Gifts

  13 I’m beyond fucked up reading this chapter. I’m sitting in Two’s car. We’re at a rest stop. She’s unconscious. We got her a bottle of gin because her pain was so severe. She drank and she drank and she drank. I know it wasn’t to actually stop the pain, but to stop Truth. She’s unconscious and she’s dying. And I don’t know what the fuck to do. Where the fuck to go. What the fuck is True. Her hand is swollen and red and it’s not bleeding anymore, but pussing
, yellow and white, some of it viscous, some like olive oil. She bleeds from the three dog bites. She shakes in her sleep. I’m thinking about family members curled in the same position and I’m thinking it’s all bullshit and I’m thinking about Dr. Turner’s words the previous night—you’re not Thirty-Seven—and I’m picturing my father’s three-year-old scars and I’m replaying Henry O’Connor’s accusation and I’m thinking about talking to the Feds, telling them stories, telling them exactly what’s included in Dr. Sick, how this is beyond a coincidence, and I’m thinking about my Reprieves with Two, how they were different, stronger, darker than I’d experienced around a fire, almost like it was new, DMT, all brand new. I’m sitting in Dr. Turner’s office. I’m holding Dr. Sick. I’m telling her it hadn’t meant to turn out that way. She’s asking what wasn’t supposed to turn out that way. Violence. Death. Murder. She’s asking me why I’m crying. I tell her there are no accidents. She’s asking me what happened that night. I tell her I called the police. No, Mason, the night you ran away. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do what? Kill anyone.

  I’m granted a Gift of Understanding sitting at the rest stop.

  It’s our future, mine and Two’s.

  It’s us in Canada. We’ve grown hair. We’re older, early thirties. We live in the country and we grow organic vegetables and we share an old Chevy and we have learned how to yield sustainability from the earth and we are tan. We are content. We sit around in front of our cabin. I hear laughing. I look down and it’s our son and he looks like me and he’s the second person in my life who has my own blood in his veins. He jumps into my arms. Autumn is coming. Leaves are blushing. Two—Talley—walks out of the house. She sees her two boys and she smiles and she is beautiful and she is mine or I am hers or we are everyone’s. She steps down the single step. Our son tells her she’s getting fat. I laugh, looking at Talley’s belly. She is. There’s another child in there. I say, “Radiant.” Talley says, “Bloated as hell.” Our son says, “Hell.” I roll my eyes. Talley smiles. She wraps her arms around us and we watch the sun set. We’re anonymous. We’re content. We’re happy. We don’t care about sickness or Honesty or Truth.