Reverb (19 page)

White hot stinging prickles through my thighs into my loins, my ball and cock again. Convulsively recoil against the restraints, scream and wake, bolt upright.

Get out of my head. Go away!
“Stop it.” My voice surprises me. I look around and listen carefully. House is still.

I sink back into the couch and stare at the fire. Can’t stop shaking, pull the sleeping bag around me but can’t stop shivering. No more sleep. Not here.
I shouldn’t be here.
Room is sparse, just the fabric couch and pine bookshelves on either side of the fireplace the house came with. It’s dark out the picture window. Can’t see beyond the pines lit in deep forest green with the ambient light from the house. Gusts of wind rattle the windows. Blasts of cold air come in under the back door. I’m going to have to fix that...

Every cell in my body hurts. I can shut it all down.
Tonight.
Just go for a swim...except there’s no way in hell I can get off this couch.

Watch the dancing flames and recall her sitting next to me earlier, her long, oval face, those full lips, the curve of her neck, and swell of her breasts haloed by firelight. She really is strikingly beautiful. Close my eyes to study her picture in my head and consider why I hadn’t noticed before...

Chapter Four

I wake but can’t move, like I’m stuck in REM sleep paralysis. Leather restraints hold me spread naked on the padded floor of the 'rubber' room, an 8 x 10 foot completely padded chamber. Shift and pull against the restraints, just checking, but I’m helpless, and cold. Fucking freezing, prostrate and naked on this floor.

Lay shivering, then hear the sound of sweeping suction as the door opens and closes behind someone coming in. Crane my neck to see behind me, my heart pounding so hard it’s reverberating in my throat. Long, thin legs of a woman in dark, tight slacks, and I watch her move to my side and look down at me. Gaunt face, black hair, cut short, like the woman in
Pulp Fiction
. She wears bright red lipstick, a black pant suit and a white lab coat, and starts pulling gadgets from her big pockets.

I’m fucked. Literally. Figuratively. And every other way. “Please. Don’t.” My voice sounds strange, hoarse, no power.

She kneels beside me and smiles sweetly as she arranges metal fittings and plastic instruments on the padded floor next to me.

“Don’t.” I beg. Struggle, but she ignores me. “You don’t have to do this.
Why are you doing this?!”

She gathers my flaccid cock in her hand and I think she’s going to try and jack me off, but then she ties a red cloth, like a tourniquet around the base of my shaft and my balls.

“NO! Stop! God, don’t!”
Cl
oth bites, like someone pressing fingernails into me. I writhe on the floor, the sharp stinging combines with the biting pain of the restraints around my wrists and ankles rubbing my skin raw, but she’s indifferent to my suffering.

“You should try and relax, sir. You’re really just making it harder.” Her accent is thick, Cockney, and she giggles at her little joke as she retrieves a clear, hard plastic cylinder, maybe three inches wide by ten long, capped on one side. Attached to the side of the capped end is a circle gauge, like a blood pressure dial. Thin black tubing, a foot or so long, extends from the cap and has a squeeze ball on the end.

I can’t catch my breath.
“Let me go.
Please
, let me go!”
Heart slams in my chest. Loins, balls and cock burn, pulse as the tourniquet constricts blood flow. Can barely feel her take hold of my cock again.
“Stop! Don't. Please. Please don’t do this!”
I beg, but she flashes a sweet smile, like I’m talking about the weather.

“Just doing my job, sir. Pardon the intrusion.” She stuffs my dick into the clear plastic cylinder and holds it up against me, and with her free hand lifts the ball at the end of the long black tubing and squeezes. Sharp pressure, then pain, deep in my groin, and I groan as my body lifts off the padding following the pull of my cock up into the hard plastic.

“Oh God.
No
,” I moan, my body dripping and itching with sweat as I fall back on the padded floor, gasping, and struggling against the restraints. “Please...
No
.”

She smiles at me sweetly again, then focuses on the gauge, and I see her fingers squeeze the pump. Searing, tearing pressure of my penis being ripped from my body, my hips lift off the floor convulsively and a scream escapes my lips.

“You fucking
bitch
,” I manage, before I see her pump the ball again and succumb to the now dizzying pain and convulsing of my body, forcing my hips into a rhythm as the instrument virtually sucks me off, pulling blood into my balls and penis, stimulating an erection beyond my control. Struggle, cry, beg, pinned to the scratchy fabric floor unable to stop her. “Why?” I say through screams and groans. “Why are you doing this to me?”

She stares at the gauge. “Oh good. We’re almost there. Just a bit more.”

“No.
Please
,” but I have no voice, no strength left to speak.
God, it hurts,
my stomachs rock hard, every muscle taut, cramping, the restraints spreading my limbs wide, my legs and arms feel like they’re tearing off with my resistance. Groin is hot, burning, engorging with blood as my cock hardens, commanding my attention. Bitch is gonna fucking take me. And I can’t stop her. “No,” I groan.

She’s fixed on the gauge, squeezes the ball more slowly now. Try and still my body, my mind, stop fighting, go numb to lose my hard-on. But each burst of suction convulses me, my dick now rock hard and filling the plastic tube, and ultra-sensitive to even the slightest change in pressure. I’m on the verge of orgasm, my mind fighting my body to resist, my brain imploding with cognitive dissonance.

I can’t breathe. It hurts! Make it stop.

“James!”

Let me go! Get me out of here!

“James! James, wake up!”

Open my eyes and Elisabeth is standing over me, holding my shoulders to the couch. “It’s okay, it’s just a dream. You’re okay, you were just dreaming.” Then she disappears. The room is lit in red and orange and glows yellow near the fireplace. Outside it's still night.

I shake uncontrollably, pull my hair out of my face, rub the sleep from my eyes, surprised to feel tears. Boiling hot and freezing cold at the same time. Shadows dance around the room with the firelight. Nearly have a heart attack when I notice her standing before me.

“Here.” She holds medication in one hand and a glass of water in the other.             

I stare at the pills in her hand.

“They’re Tylenol, James. And you need them. Your fever is spiking. Take them.”

I take three pills and a gulp of water. She takes the glass from me and disappears again. I stare at the fire, shivering. Wind blows fierce outside, resonating the doorjamb, like the sound track of a scary movie.

“Come with me.” She holds her hand to me. “My room is much warmer, and I have a down comforter on my bed.”

Take her hand and stand, but resist her pull. “I...I don’t wanna sleep. I don’t feel like sleeping.”

“It’s okay, James.” She talks to me like she’s soothing her son. “No worries. We can just talk—”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay...Then I’ll talk—help you stay awake, but it’s less drafty and much warmer in my room.” She fixes her eyes on mine like she’s looking through me to get inside my head. “You’re safe here. Come.”

Let her lead me into her bedroom. Double bed with a deep green quilted comforter is centered in the room against the back wall. She leads me to the right side near the bay window, pulls back the comforter and gently pushes me onto the bed. I climb in, snuggle under the down, still shivering intractably, but less violently. She goes back out, comes back a moment later with the sleeping bag, unzips it and lays it over me.

“Better?” She crawls into bed next to me.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Warmth spreads through my body, easing my anxiety. Relax my shoulders back into the pillow, once Jack’s, I assume.

She sits cross-legged and stares at me. “It’s going to take a little while for the Tylenol to cool you down. Want to tell me about your nightmare?”

“No. Sorry I woke you though.”

“It’s no big deal. I wasn’t trying to pry. Sometimes it helps me if I talk about my nightmares, you know, put it out there so when I fall back asleep I won’t go right back into the same dream. Sometimes just staying awake awhile helps with that too.”

Painful little prickles shoot through my muscles, into my hands, through my fingers. “You don’t need to stay awake for me. Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“That’s okay. Ever since I gave birth to Cameron I have this compulsion to mother.”

“I’m okay. Really. There’s nothing you can do anyway.”

“I apologize for earlier.” Her voice is soft, her tone tender. “I didn’t mean to get on your case.”

“It’s okay.” It’s so damn
hot
. Throw the blankets back and lay panting. “You don’t need to apologize. A lot of what you said is right.”

She smiles at me. “I know it is. But I’ve never been any good with timing, and my delivery just sucks.”

I laugh at her turn of phrase, acutely aware I’ve spent most of my life there. I'm freezing all of a sudden and pull the blankets back over me and snuggle down under them.

“You never did give me an answer.”

“What was the question?”

She sighs, shakes her head but with a hint of a smile, then her expression turns dark again. She looks down at her hands in her lap. “Ya know, I’ve seen and photographed atrocities from China to the Middle East, torture and cruelty beyond any semblance of sanity. And to the bitter end, most victims fight for life. How is it that you got so far from feeling, from caring, that you’d attempt suicide?”

I stare at the ceiling.
Good question.
Take a deep breath, feel the weight of it in my chest and release it slowly. “My decision to take my life was based on extreme, extenuating circumstances. What that experience has left with me is an acute awareness of the ugliness in all of us. And I’m not quite sure how to live with that.”

“Welcome to the human race. We’re all ugly sometimes, James.” Tenderness is gone. She lies next to me. Time passes in silence. Think perhaps she’s fallen asleep, but then I hear her draw a breath. “I try and picture Cameron grown, you know, what kind of man he’ll be. I want so much for my child to love life and really
live
it. I don’t ever want him to be in a place where he would consider taking his own life. It crushes the very heart of me to even think about it.”

I stare at the textured ceiling. “My parents died a long time ago. Well, my mom and step-father anyway. I doubt my real father even knows what I did. I am absolutely sure he wouldn’t care.” I close my eyes, rest them a moment, my body heavy with warmth.

“I’m sorry,” is the last thing I hear her say...

Someone’s crying. A child. There are no children here. Where? Where am I?

I'm afraid to open my eyes. Again. Still.

Open your goddamn eyes.

I’m in a bed. Alone. Under a deep green comforter. Outside the bay window it’s night. Don’t know where I am or how I got here, but I’m fully clothed, untethered, able to get up and leave if I choose to.

The crying stops.

I breathe.

“Mama’s here, baby. Good morning, sweetie pea.” I hear Elisabeth through the wall.

Elisabeth. She’s talking to her son, Cameron. I’m at her house, in her bedroom.

Listen to her footsteps as she leaves Cameron’s room. Feel scared again. Scared she’ll come in. See me scared. Hear the back screen door slam, and relax, exhaustion sweeps through me and I have to rest my eyes for a moment...

Someone is bouncing on the bed. Open my eyes. Cameron is in my face with this unfettered expression of joy. I smile back at him. He laughs.

“Ooo, you little devil.” Elisabeth comes in and grabs him off the bed. “I told you to leave him alone.” She looks at me. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

“As long as you’re up, come in the kitchen. I’m making lunch.”

“What time is it?” I look out the bay window at the gray day, dark clouds coming out of the west at a surreal pace across the sea towards the island.

“Close to one. Come on.”

The house creeks with the heavy wind, the windows vibrate in their wood frames. I’ll have to seal them. Move my feet to the floor, but have to sit there for a minute before standing.

“You okay?” She stares at me from the bedroom threshold.

“Yeah.” Sit here shivering, trying to come up with a plan for standing.

“You may still have a fever. I’ll get you some more Tylenol. Come on.” She leaves the room with Cameron on her hip.

I stand. Ground feels like it’s falling away. I look at my feet.

Walk... Good.

“I’m making omelets. What do you want in yours?” She stands at the stove holding a metal bowl whipping eggs with a fork. Cameron’s in his high chair. Cheerios and blueberries fill his tray. He smashes the blueberries with one hand and with the other he stuffs Cheerios in his mouth.

Sit in the same chair as before, across the table from Cameron and watch him. He squishes a blueberry between his small fingers, licks the juice that streams down his hand. It’s disgusting, but somehow the mess he’s making seems...satisfying.

“I can keep it simple, just scramble them if you’d like.” She puts an iron skillet on the stove, lights it, gets butter from the fridge and holds the stick to the pan.

“Scrambled is good. Thanks.”

She moves the stick of butter slowly across the skillet surface. It sizzles. She looks at me, smiles. “How do you feel?”

“Better.”
Like shit. Weak. Stupid. Pathetic.

“Good. You look better. You’re eyes aren’t as black.” Eggs sizzle as they hit the pan. “You want toast with these?”

“No.” I don’t want those, but I’m not up for an argument, and I know I should eat. She finishes scrambling the eggs, puts them on a plate and places it in front of me. I stare down at the steaming, fluffy yellow pile.

“Eat.” She hands me a fork.             

“EAT!” Cameron mimics perfectly.