Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (2 page)

Would they really be following him? Maybe we're both just
paranoid, he considered. The bus jostled through rain. Beyond the dotted window, he saw drab gray buildings. A
man in glasses and another man wearing a hard hat both
looked at him at the same time. Yeah, I'm just paranoid, or
maybe she's right. I used the wrong color hair dye and I look like
a horse's ass. Several kids in the back were getting rowdy,
profane even, but he scarcely heard them. Then a black
man sitting in the front stood up, looked directly at him,
and said, "It was me and Lou Rawls. They stuck us in that
cage and didn't give us nothing but milk bottles and
soup." Then the doors popped open and he stepped off the
bus.

He could've laughed. Lots of homeless people in big cities, lots
of schizophrenia It was sad.

At the next stop a blind man got on, tapping his white
cane, eyes clouded over. He sat right next to him.

"Hello," the blind man said, staring straight ahead.

..Hi,

"I ... have psychic powers. Do you believe me?"

"I'm not sure."

"Do you believe that some people do have such powers?"

"I do. I believe that very much."

The blind man chuckled. "I'm a seer who can't see." The
clouded-over eyes turned. "You have a troubled aura." A
pause, a sigh. "My Lord ... it's nearly black."

The man had no response, for he did indeed believe in
such things. How could he not, after a week in that house?

The blind man's hands were trembling. His lower lip quivered. One crabbed hand reached over his head, desperately
feeling for the bell-cord. "I-I have to get off, I have to get off."

The other man just looked back, astonished. "What's
wrong?"

"None of it's your fault, so why are you jeopardizing
yourself?" When the bus lumbered to a halt at the next stop,
the blind man teetered up, cane tapping for balance. He
looked at the other man again with those dead eyes and
said, "You don't have much time."

"For what?"

"To kill the girl." He tapped away toward the open doors.
"Kill her."

Then he got off and the doors closed.

He was never bothered by the prospect of leaving her by
herself in the room for a few hours. She didn't talk about it,
of course, but she seemed to know what might be out there.
How much does she remember? he wondered, walking down
the aisle of a CVS store. Worse questions occurred to him.
What did she go through? What did she feel and see? What did she
open her eyes to and took at?

What looked back?

The man could only pray that her trauma blocked out
the memory.

Damn it ... The pistol in his pocket had worked its way
up, the tip of the handle sticking out. He pulled the side of
his windbreaker over, then shoved the gun all the way back
down. I gotta be more careful. He would never leave the gun
back in the room whenever he had to go somewhere. He
didn't want to leave her there alone with it.

He bought a darker hair dye and a pack of cigarettes. The
steady drizzle had never ceased. When he left the store he
pulled up his hood. Across the street stood an Irish pub. The
man felt locked in place, staring back at it.

Damn it, he thought again.

"Just one," he muttered to himself. "Just one would be so
good..."

"There's no such thing as just one," a voice peeped from
behind him. He turned and looked down.

What he believed was a young woman sat huddled in a
brick tubby beside a fire hydrant. She was drenched, drizzle
pattering on a holey rain jacket, whose traditional bright
yellow had long-since turned brown. The man could barely
see her face as she peered up at him, her open eyes half hidden by the hood. Rotten teeth like corroded pills showed
through her smile.

"One becomes twenty real fast," she said.

"I know"

"But you should go in and have one anyway, to celebrate."

"Celebrate what?"

Dirty hands outspread in the strangest glee. "This beautiful day!"

"Oh, yeah? I'm from Florida so I guess I'm not really able
to appreciate Seattle's brand of beauty."

"It's a beautiful city if you look hard enough."

"I'm sure it is," the man said.

"I used to be beautiful ... "

He could think of nothing to say in response, her plight
obvious. She couldn't be more than thirty, but who could
tell? Cheeks bloated, a splotched pinkness blending over the
yellow of jaundice. Clinical alcoholic, he knew at a glance.
She's turning yellow because her liver's shutting down ...

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"The King Street Shelter. When I can walk."

The man faltered, fumbling in a pocket. "I have some
money I could give you-"

"No. I won't need it. I need a drink. Get me something
to drink."

The man felt wilted. "I ... can't do that. I'm sorry."

"That's okay." The soiled smile still shone upward, her
head craned. "But if you do go into that bar across the
street, and I think you will-"

"I won't," he said.

"But if you do, drink one for me."

Again, the man had nothing to say.

Her expression changed, that exuberance-in-ruin darkened
to something lusterless. "There's someone else inside me."

"What?"

"I'm supposed to tell you something."

The last legs of the chronic drunk. Reduced oxygen to the brain,
blood full of toxins, then psychosis. He humored her. "What are
you supposed to tell me?"

Her voice clicked. "Walk away. Leave her."

The man's teeth came together. "Leave who?"

"Don't kill her."

The man stared.

"Just go away somewhere. If you do that, you'll be rewarded."

The man could say nothing. He simply continued to
stare, rain tapping his hood.

"Leave the rest ... to us."

Then her face changed for the briefest moment, something that was no longer a face at all but just a [rumoring
black hole within the hood.

The man couldn't move.

Her real face returned, the dying snide and eyes with no
life left behind them. "'Bye," she said, and then produced an
old-fashioned straight razor with which she calmly cut her
throat to the bone.

The man turned away as blood poured at his feet. Cars
honked when he stepped off the curb; bloody rainwater splashed up on his jacket. He crossed the street and walked
into the bar.

"Come in here."

The man wobbled in the doorway, rain teeming. Behind
him, cars tore by on the highway, each a long, wet hiss.

Her warm hand grasped his wrist, urged him back into
the motel room, then she shut the door, sealing out the incessant noise of rain and cars.

"You're drenched. You're ... "

The man was nearly insensible, barely able to stand. All he
could do was look back at her with huge, shamed eyes. He
couldn't say anything, but he thought, I'm a disgrace.

"You'll be all right," she assured him.

The television was on, the sound low, stiff-faced CNN
newcasters reporting another U.S. Army helicopter being
shot down by Iraqi partisans. Twenty-one dead.

"Did you ... throw up on yourself?"

The man didn't know She peeled off his jacket, sat him
down on the bed, then began to undress him. She said nothing when she removed the pistol from his pocket. She
laughed. "Didn't you go out for new hair color? Where is it?"

"I-" He pushed wet hair back off his brow "I left it in
the bar." .

"You're such a goof."

His vision was shifting, blurred around the edges. Her
pretty face hovered like a warped bubble before his eyes.
When she pulled off his sneakers, she paused, looking at the
red tint. "Is that ... " but she didn't finish. She peeled off
his socks, his jeans, his t-shirt. "Come on, help me. We've
got to get you in the shower."

"I don't think I can make it."

"Yes you can, yes you can." She stood him up and with out hesitation peeled off his boxer shorts. His brain buzzed;
he was scarcely even aware that he was standing naked in
front of her.

"One step at a time." She held his arm, guiding him to
the bathroom where he stood blinking in harsh white light.
The light hurt his head. Shower water hissed. Steam rose.

Her hands gripped him tight around the waist. "In you
go," she said. "Take your time. Left foot first."

His own hand shot out to brace him against the tiled
wall. Shame continued to seep into him. "I don't think I
can make it."

"Help me! I can't do it by myself!" Her patience finally
lapsed. "You're not an invalid."

He steadied himself, sat down on the edge of the tub, and
carefully lifted each leg over. The water spraying down was
hot, reviving. Jags of reason began to surface. More awareness and more shame.

"Now stand up and wash yourself!"

Careful, careful! he ordered himself. He couldn't have felt
more embarrassed: a pale, naked middle-aged drunk. When he
tried to stand up, he immediately slipped. His butt chunked
the bottom of the tub.

"Oh, Lord ... What am I going to do with you?"

She slipped off her robe and stepped in wearing only bra
and panties. He looked up like a disillusioned child as she
bent over, grunted, and stood him up in the spray. Her hair
fell down at once, to wet black lines. Expansive nipples
darkened when the water drenched the bra. The large milkladen breasts wobbled erotically. The image blared, the great
gravid belly full of life, the breasts, the dark tuft of pubic
hair printing against wet panties. Her fecundity was truly
beautiful yet he was at least happy with himself for feeling nothing erotic of his own. No lust, no desire, not even as
her soft hands soaped him down.

She got him out, dried him off, struggled to help him get
his robe on. Then she walked him out, step by step, and sat
him back down on the bed.

By then the man felt a little bit better than dead.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's all right."

The news continued on the TV Children snatched in
front of a Maryland schoolyard. Federal agents raid an underground fetal brain-tissue lab. A catastrophic-care nurse
admits to murdering a six-year-old retarded girl after making a deal with the girl's father to split the insurance money.
Rwandan soldiers burn down a United Red Cross hospital,
killing sixty.

"There's evil everywhere," the girl said.

"I know"

She turned off the television and sat next to him. "I'm
more afraid than you. Do you understand what I mean?"

Through the fog of alcohol poisoning, the words cut
through like a strong beam of light. "Yes. How could I
not?"

"I don't know what's going to happen."

"Neither do I"

An audible click as she swallowed. "My water's going to
break any day now, maybe any hour."

The man nodded. He didn't have the heart to tell her what
he was already certain of. It will be tomorrow after midnight.

"I want you to kill me. Shoot me with that gun and
leave. I'll forgive you," she said. "So will God."

"I'm not going to kill you," he croaked. "If I was going
to do that, I'd have done it a long time ago."

She turned off the light. "Then let's go to sleep now."

He started to get up, but her hand pulled him back.
"Sleep here in the bed with me. After all this, everything
you've done, don't you think I trust you?" A grim chuckle.
"If you wanted to do something perverted to me, you'd
have done that a long tune ago, too."

He settled back against her, drifting. He still felt awful,
and knew he would for awhile, but lying with her like
that-in perfect trust-gave him a sense of comfort that
seemed priceless to him. She fell asleep quickly, while the
man was still experiencing the twirls, but after a time they
abated. He listened to her breathe, her hand resting on his
chest.

When his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could see
her outline. The breasts settled to one side over the massive
belly.

Before he fell into his own stupor-like sleep, this is what
he thought: No, I won't kill you. But I swear to God on High
that I'm gonna kill uhatevrr cones out of you ...

Nine months prrvious.. .

Faye didn't really know if she dreamed anymore. What
went on in her head most of the time seemed like the most
vivid nightmares, and nightmares were dreams but she never
remembered sleeping. She liked the door locked, though,
and she liked the way the moon sometimes shone in
through the window at night.

Faye, do some more...

If I do anymore IT be wrecked!

We ... want you wrecked. We want you out of your mind. And
you know you like it anyway. You like it all. Let me put it this wary.
Unless you're out of your mind, you're of no use to us.

She sat fat and naked on a red-velvet Edwardian-era
couch that she knew cost more than she made in two years.
Fat and naked, and sadder now in her stimulated exhilaration than when she was sober and alone. Hildreth was right:
this was all she was here for. Groundskeeper? It was a joke;
she knew that now I'm their Pillsbury Dough Giri. She was
there to be laughed at and abused and humiliated. When
they were shooting one of the movies at the house, they
called her "The Fluff Pig."