Hellbound Hearts (17 page)

Daniel was at the door to take me to dinner. As we were leaving, my BlackBerry pinged, telling me I had a message. He gave me a look.

“Yes, I'll turn it off,” I said.

As I did, I checked the message. It was from a collector who'd heard of my reputation and hoped I could help with a puzzle box he'd just acquired. I would, of course. And it would probably turn out to be a mere imitation. Most were. But I never turned down any possibility, however slight, to add another story to my collection.

Richard Christian Matheson

I stare.

Oval water; a tomb.

Fingernails press soft locks that guard throat.

Stomach kneads; surrenders.

I rise to white sink. Rinse acrid taste. Kneel on floor, again.

Lean over, see my reflection. My mouth stretches. I feel the shapes slide out; a struggling gush. I shut eyes.

Hear them; distant, tiny survivors on ugly sea. Diseased murmurs.

I look into undigested broth.

See them. Paddling, furiously. Staring up at me. Malformed; hideous. I flush them. Get closer as they're swallowed into plumbing. Drowning voices hiss, shriek. Swirl into bowl.

The water is clear.

I feel them stirring inside. Impurities. Angry poisons. I can never be perfect with them in me. It is my fault.

I look at my watch.

Minutes
. He's waiting. Drinking coffee. Happy.

My stomach twists. Vicious things gnaw, hold tighter. I shove raw fingers between lips. Force more out. They fight me. Hate me.
Suddenly howl up my throat, lunge from me, into vile water. Ghastly legs splashing. Struggling. Resentful noises bubble. They leer up with despising mouths, swallowing water, unable to breathe.

I'm still not empty.

I bury three fingers into throat; raw, burned reflex. Some refuse spasms; grip harder. Others can't. They shriek through my cracked lips, infuriated; evicted. Spiderlike faces spit up at me as they drop into the septic bowl; thrash in bile, dark nails scratching toilet's side. They cling to one another, choke toxic water, know they are dying. One reaches to escape. I quickly flush them. Listen to them drown.

I force more out; teeth bared over toilet, dress damp.

They plunge from my mouth. Writhing anemones. Some with thorns that scrape my throat. Others covered with countless, repulsive mouths from which more slither. Cruel ones stare, unafraid. Use the dead as rafts, crablike pincers reaching at me, tongues clicking. Others jet from my guts like sticky, black string, nesting on the water; infected islands.

I press harder. Chaotic, colorless ones emerge like blown glass. They try to hide, curl passively; eyes pleading.
Always the last.
The ones I've had forever; since I was little and puzzles crept. When everything went bad. When I couldn't protect myself. Flee mazes of hurt.

They hope I'll reprieve them. They float; confused, bloodred shells shining. The strong ones try to hurt me with their sadisms. The weak ones are scared of them. Traumatized shards. In time, they will all get me.

I hate them. My loathing zoo. I flush them. Watch them suffer.

I am ugly; broken. I deserve this.

I am finally empty. I rinse mouth. Brush teeth. Reapply lipstick. Use a drop of breath freshener. I walk back into the restaurant. Men watch me. Women. They whisper. He hugs me. Tells me he missed me. Tells me I look beautiful. He loves me. I take a bite of dessert he offers. He looks into my worthless eyes. I smile for him.

In the red, dark of me, I feel them stir.

I am filling.

Nancy Holder

Seriously, the man said that's all you have to do. You twist and turn the little panels and you're gone,” Danai told Lindsay.

They lounged like opium smokers on the big beige-tone bed Lindsay shared with Jake in their large and very beige apartment. Danai had made himself a nest of monochromatic pillows, the Grand Odalisque of the Upper East Side, and he shimmied and shook, unfolding his sinewy arms and legs, pantomiming being opened. “Away from Jake. And all
this
.”

Danai, a slender man with a close black buzz cut, flopped onto his side and waved his right arm like a sorcerer revealing his best trick. He was gaunt, Gypsy dark in a boatneck spandex top splotched with dark blue and crimson as if he'd been shot and his blood ran in rainbows. The multiple zippers of his baggy black parachute pants striated his quads like ligaments or scars.

He extended his gnarled, bare foot toward the ceiling and held out the box in his open palm à la abracadabra toward Lindsay, her one true serpent in the garden. Danai loved her so much. He pitied her. He understood how terribly unhappy she was. Or thought he did. She wasn't that unhappy. She wasn't.

“It takes you someplace,” he whispered. “It's like drugs, or hypnosis. It's virtual reality at its best. Or so he promised.”

“He” being some street vendor. She was shaking. Her therapist had told her to stay away from Danai, but here he was, and she could feel herself beginning to melt down.

“Then why don't
you
twist and turn the little panels?” she asked him, trying to sound snarky, hearing the anxiety building in her voice. Danai wouldn't understand; he never would. He was everything she had run away from.

All her life.

“I tried,” he confessed, crossing his eyes, mugging stupidity. “I couldn't get it to work. Besides, you were always better at twisting and turning.” He smirked, and then he sighed. “And you need an alternate reality worse than I do.”

“I don't.” Her stomach clenched. “I'm very happy here. With Jake. This is me.” With the help of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. Evened out. Safe.

“Well, anyway, I got mixed up. I thought it was your birthday, so here's your present.”

He held it out to her. In her sedately lit, inoffensive bedroom, it shone like a black-hearted Rubik's Cube limned in damascene. Symbols and scrollwork glittered like molten promises. Danai had made promises—never to leave her, and to bust her out if she ever gave the word. But she had made her choice. The right choice.

Then
why
was Dr. Everson increasing her dosage? Why couldn't she sleep? Or clean the house or make dinner?

She touched the box. There was a spark—static electricity—and Danai raised a beautifully plucked brow in surprise. Languidly, he lay back on his elbow, leaving the object in Lindsay's grasp. Then he sank to the mattress and clasped his hands across his tight, flat stomach.

“See? It loves you best.”

“Pretty,” she said, but it wasn't. It was frightening. Shocking, in a way she couldn't describe—or could no longer describe. She had lost all the passionate words, the ones Danai wrapped himself in,
layer upon layer, until even the most prosaic events in his life sparkled like Excalibur. Jake said Danai was a drama queen. Danai said Jake was a pompous ass. Dr. Everson told her to stay away from Danai and listen to the pompous ass. After all, he was the one she was married to.

She used to be like Danai. A dancer, a Broadway gypsy, looking for signs in Chinese fortune cookies and tea leaves that it would be worth it. Buffeted by the winds of artistic yearnings. When she danced, she was fully alive. But between gigs, there was cutting, and a couple of suicide attempts. Jake didn't know about those. No one knew. She hadn't even told Dr. Everson all of it. Maybe he was increasing her meds in retaliation.

“You don't really believe it would work, though,” she said, moving her gaze from it to him with extreme difficulty. It was mesmerizing. Maybe she should press on that panel. Or tap
that
panel . . .

. . . No.

“Of course I don't.” He raised his chin. “But if you twist it, I'll know you're ready to start packing. You can move in with me again. We'll have fun.”

Into his rat-infested walk-up hall of dreams. Danai didn't view anything in his life as a failure, but as myriad possibilities yet to be realized. He snuggled his toes beneath her right thigh. “The man I bought it from said I would know the right person to give it to. As soon as I handed him a twenty, I saw your face in my mind.”

No, no, don't think of me. I can't handle it.

The front door opened. Jake was home. She sagged with relief. She wanted to start crying and she didn't even know why.

“Hello?” he called.

“Fun's over.” Danai slid off the bed like a snake and got to his feet. He adjusted his top as if to regain his modesty and shook his head as he helped her up. “This is so pathetic. This is not how you were supposed to grow up.”

“I'm fine,” she said briskly.

“You're pudgy,” he said, shuddering. “And you're wearing pastels.”

The two filed out of the bedroom. “Hi, Jake,” she sang out. Did he hear the tremor in her voice?

There he stood, a little rounder, more wrinkled. Tireder. The quintessential man in the gray flannel suit. He was almost thirty-eight. She was twenty-six, three years older than Danai. And she felt . . . disappointed. She had been waiting to see him all day, trying to last long enough, but now that he was here, she didn't feel the relief she had been hoping for.

Jake bent slightly so Lindsay could kiss his cheek and peered at her. She smiled harder. He sighed.

“Hello, Dan,” he said.

“Hello,
Jacob
,” Danai said, and if Jake heard the mocking in his voice, he ignored it.

“So . . .” Jake said, looking from her to Danai and back again. Lindsay felt a rush of intense guilt, as if Dr. Everson were standing next to Jake and both of them now saw how clearly she did not want to get well.

“I'm afraid I talked her into something crazy,” Danai went on. Jake pulled his chin in, bracing himself.

“We made borscht,” she said in a rush.

Jake considered. “Borscht's not so crazy.”

She was flattened. Jake was right. Borscht was not crazy. But all afternoon, as she and Danai chopped beets and cabbage, her heart had fluttered. It felt like something new. Like an adventure. But it was just beet soup.

She felt her being gravitating toward Jake, seeing herself as someone Jake could be seen with. Solid, steady, understated. Danai's apartment bulged with tacky junk. He wasn't dreaming; he was fooling himself. Jake was her answer. Not that Danai was even an alternative prospect as a lover. He was gay.

Her eyes welled. Something inside her made her return to the bedroom and pluck up the box. It had built up another static charge and it zapped her, hard.

“What's that?” Jake asked.

She lifted it up, showing him. “It's a puzzle box. Danai gave it to me.”

A frown flickered over Danai's features, and she felt a rush of shame for sharing any part of their afternoon with Jake.
He's my husband
, she wanted to remind Danai. But then he would probably tell her that traditional heterosexual marriage was on the way out—and good thing, too, because it ruined people.

“Oh,” Jake said, not interested.

She put it back in the bedroom.

At dinner they ate the borscht and Jake asked if there was something else to eat, something more substantial, like a brisket. Lindsay felt that strange, horrible pull she often experienced when in the presence of two strong personalities: Danai's wacky, magical artiness; Jake's linear, stolid serenity. Jake believed in hard work and good habits, and they had the financial security to show for it.

Danai had once begged them to take Desdemona, a floppy-eared puppy he had impulsively purchased at a pet store. Because of his unpredictable schedule, the poor thing was cooped up for hours. Desdemona scratched the door of his walk-up and he needed money to get that fixed, too, before his landlord saw her. Then she started having seizures. Lindsay wanted to take her; Jake said no way. There was something wrong with her and she would be expensive to take care of. Then Desdemona was gone. Lindsay didn't know what had happened to her, but there was a part of her that always wondered and fretted about her. She would have taken Desdemona on. Jake had stood between them.

I could have insisted. I'm not his slave
, she thought, not for the first time. He was just . . . firmer in his answers.

Lindsay knew how many strikes she had against her: her alcoholic parents were dead; her father when she was nine, her mother just before she turned sixteen. She had lived with an aunt and an uncle who didn't want her. She had moved out when she was eighteen and got raped. It had gotten worse, for a long time.

“Jake is exactly what you need,” Dr. Everson had informed her. Over and over. But she was miserable. Lonely.

“You've got this list,” Jake told her once. “It's a hundred miles long. And it's all the things that have to be okay before
you're
okay. You are incapable of being happy.”

He had apologized. Even Dr. Everson said it was a mean thing to say, unlike Jake himself, who was patient and uncomplaining. As she should be. But their life was so vanilla, so boring.

It's a cage
, she thought, as she served the borscht. Danai was barefoot. Jake was disapproving. She was trying very hard not to cry.

Dinner was strained. Danai seemed to enjoy the tension. Jake was quiet; Lindsay wondered if something had happened at work or if he was just really angry at her for letting Danai come over. She wasn't supposed to.

The meal was over quickly, since all there was, was purple soup. Chairs pushed back, the three went to the door, where Danai defiantly kissed her forehead. It was raining and he had no coat, no umbrella. He refused to borrow anything.

“You'll catch pneumonia,” Lindsay argued.

Danai flung his hands over his head, two lightning rods. “It would be worth it.”

When the door shut behind him, Jake snorted and tsk-tsked. “Lindsay,” he began.

“I'm sorry,” she said, but she wasn't sure she was. She didn't know what she was feeling. “It's just . . . he . . .”