Calamity (26 page)

When her breasts came free, Tyler felt a moment of desire but it vanished almost immediately. There was nothing sexy about the way she undressed. It was too mechanical, like an abused child dropping pants to take the nightly punishment. If the school knew, Sasha would be put in a foster home and her mother in a jail, or an asylum. Maybe that wasn’t so bad.

“I’m not doing anything,” Tyler said.

Sasha looked at him with broken eyes that begged for his cooperation.
Don’t leave me alone, please
.

Her mother pointed the blade of the knife at him. He didn’t let his mind reason his way out of this. He started to undress. This was, at least partially, all his fault. He had done something he shouldn’t have and now this was his punishment. He hesitated when he got down to his boxers but Sasha wasn’t gazing expectantly, so he pulled them off too. An inner cold sprouted bumps across his exposed flesh. His balls had knotted themselves as close to his body as possible and his penis stuck out like a plump finger.

“Place all the clothes in the tub and turn on the hot water. We must let them soak.”

Sasha did what her mother said and Tyler watched in panic as water drenched his clothes and his jeans began to float as the tub filled with steaming water.

“I’m so sorry,” Sasha whispered to him as she turned from the tub. /p>rom the

“Face each other.”

They did. He tried to keep his eyes on hers but they drifted to her breasts before he realized it and when he snapped his focus back up to her face her expression was so weak and pathetic that he wanted to hit himself for being so
inappropriate
at this moment.

Inappropriate?
his mind squealed.
What’s inappropriate is her mother forcing you to stand naked in the bathroom while she holds you hostage with a giant knife
.

“Raise your hands palms out to each other and join hands but do not clasp to each other. There must be a connection but it must not be one of force or born out of fear, desperation, or panic.”

Her hot and sweaty palms felt good against his hands which felt like they had been dipped in an ice bath.

“Kiss,” her mother said. “Do not do anything but touch lips to lips. There is no lust here, not now--not yet. This is the joining of life forces already merged in an act of creation.”

Her lips were as warm as her hands and for a few moments he was somewhere else. He was with her, yes, but not naked standing in a bathroom in front of her mother; they were off somewhere dark and private where they could kiss and bask in that warmth without fear of what would happen next.

Sasha broke the kiss and Tyler expected Sasha’s mother to command them to kiss again because their life forces weren’t yet joined or something, but instead the woman stood in the bathroom doorway using a lighter to heat the tip of the knife. She was lost in the small flame flickering around the metal tip. If ever there was a time to run . . .

“What is she doing?” Tyler whispered.

“. . . I don’t know.”

“But she’s done this before?”

“No.”

“I can get past her.”

“No.” She turned to him. “Don’t leave.
Please
.”

She’s as crazy as her mother
, that voice insisted.
Now they’re going to cut off your dick and cauterize the wound. They’ll keep your cock in a jar and use it in their witch rituals. Maybe they’ll even name it. “Bring forth Little Ty,” they’ll say with a giggle.

“Are you really pregnant?

“I’m sorry.”

Her mother snapped from her trance and approached them. “On your knees, hands still together.”

They got to their knees. The tile was cold, though the air had turned warm and humid.

“Kiss again, and this time don’t stop until I tell you.”

Beads of condensation ran down the wall over the tub like blood.

He shut his eyes and they kissed again. The rushing water in the tub might have been a secret waterfall in a cave somewhere, something they could share while they embraced.

The woman grabbed his wrist. Fiery pain melted into his hand and he screeched in Sasha’s face. Her mother kept a firm grip on his wrist while she pressed the glowing tip of the blade against Tyler’s hand. She uttered some phrase over and over again but Tyler couldn’t decipher it from the scorching pain burning through his flesh.

Sasha grabbed him around the neck, forced him to look at her. “
Don’t move
,” she said, ash she s“it’ll be easier if you don’t.”

For a fraction of a second this seemed like a good idea. Do what Sasha says, let her mother finish the ceremony, and then run home. But the pain shattered that logic and he pulled from both Sasha’s and her mother’s grips, and fell back against the tub full of steaming water.

“
Get away from me!
” he screamed, his voice strained and confused. “
You’re crazy, both of you!
”

The back of his hand was bright red where the metal had branded his skin. It was an arrowhead glowing faint orange. The damaged skin was starting to bubble, rising above the rest like some relief map.

Sasha tried to comfort him, but he pushed her back and she tumbled into the front of the toilet.

“We are not finished,” her mother said in that deep, dead voice. “You must both be marked.” The flame flickered beneath the blade again.

The pain in his hand kept intensifying, burning louder and louder throughout his body like a screaming madman let loose in his brain. The flesh puffed like cooking dough and bubbled like melting cheese. If he touched the injury, his skin would rip, maybe even expose the bone.

Sasha held out her hand to her mother, who took it and brought the tip of the knife to her hand. Sasha’s whole body rocked with the initial touch of burning metal against skin, yet she did not pry her hand away. She gritted her teeth and cried profusely but said nothing while her mother repeated the magical phrase again and again. This time, Tyler picked up the words.

“
Great Goddess of Earth, seal the bonds of these lovers
.”

Tyler’s nakedness dawned on him like a hard slap. What the hell had he let them do? His jeans were floating on top of the rising tub water like a deflated life raft. He grabbed them out of the tub and tried to get them on, but he slipped twice on the floor, barely keeping his balance, and had to untangle the bottom of one of the legs before his foot would go through; he got them on and the saturated warmth helped calm him, if only momentarily.

“You can’t leave,” Sasha’s mother said. She let her daughter’s mangled hand drop. Sasha curled against the toilet, crying. “You must both stay here for three days. It is the command of the Earth Goddess.”

The bathroom doorway was clear.

“Fuck you,” he said and ran for the door.

His feet slipped and she stepped in front of him, knife before her but upward instead of out like a sword. He grabbed for her wrist as she tried to claw at him, managed to seize her puffy flesh, and used the momentum of his sprint to spin her. He released her after only a second but she snagged his arm long enough to tumble him into the counter. He grabbed the sink and used the leverage to kick the crazy bitch backwards. His foot hit her knee and she howled, and then fell backwards into the tub water with a whale splash. He didn’t see that, only heard it, because he was already going down the stairs and a second later was out the front door.

* * *

Her neighbor was out on his porch again. As before, the man was sitting in a folding chair, smoking a cigarette. The trees obscured him enough to make him more of a shadow than a man, but there was something about how he did not react to Tyler’s sudden bursting out onto the porch in only a pair of soaking jeans that made Tyler pause. Was this simply a typical night in Trailer Trash Town? Had he seen this before? Better and cheaper than a movie and you can smok tyyou cane, too?

The man puffed his cigarette. What did he know? What secrets might this stranger keep in the dark recesses of his mind?

Tyler pulled his cellphone from his pocket and knew before flipping it open that it wouldn’t work. He’d had friends who had fallen--or been thrown into--pools with their cellphone on them and the phones had never worked again. Some people claimed cellphones could be dried out with a blow dryer but that was no help now.

The phone wouldn’t even turn on.

From inside the house, agonized wails echoed like the cries of a tortured ghost trying to break free. Was that Sasha or her mother? Maybe both.

Tyler hurried down the steps, down the driveway, and headed toward the neighbor. The tree line continued all the way down the driveway, so he had to walk into the street and then turn up the neighbor’s driveway. Small pebbles dug into his feet and a few managed to rip his skin. He ignored the pain (the pulsing in his hand screamed for his full attention) and headed up the driveway toward the smoking neighbor.

The man was sitting in the chair one leg folded over the other, back arched: the ideal position for relaxing on a cool night. The only light came from an upstairs window in an empty house. The light offered just enough for Tyler to make his way up the driveway but darkness masked the man’s face.

“Hello,” Tyler said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but--”

The man stood, sucked on his cigarette, and then flicked it onto his patch of front lawn.

“Can I use your phone?”

The man turned and entered his house. The door shut behind him and, Tyler was sure, the deadbolt slid into place. Tyler stopped. The cool night was beginning to take its first licks on Tyler’s exposed skin. He wished he had Paul’s Carhart. He crossed his arms over his chest and almost wanted to cry, but anger stymied any tears. This wasn’t his fault. Sure, he had fucked up, but was this his just punishment?

You could always go to jail
, his mind offered.

He didn’t really believe it but he told himself that jail might be preferable. At the very least he wouldn’t have to worry about Sasha’s pregnancy. Christ, what the hell was going to happen when she started showing? Everyone at school would know. He couldn’t be a father. Hell, what would Dad even say about it? In his current state, Dad probably wouldn’t even notice. Tyler couldn’t care for a kid. Sasha couldn’t and her mother definitely couldn’t.

That left only one option, of course.

If he really wanted to go to jail, he could walk right back into that house, grab the knife, and take care of the problem. That almost sounded possible, though sickening and very, very far from plausible. He couldn’t do anything like that. Wouldn’t want to.

Still . . .

Movement, or maybe it was some noise, pulled his attention to the only lit room in the neighbor’s house. The man was in that room, standing at the window. Completely back lit, he was only the dark shadow of a man. He was watching Tyler. Had he called the cops? Was he afraid the crazy witch lady was going to come outside too? Who was this guy?

Tyler started to walk toward the man’s front door--what was another confrontation on a night filled with madness?--but a car was speeding down the road, its howling engine echoing like a hungry beast in the woods. Tyler turned toward the road and waited, hoping.

“Fuck happened to you?”

“Get in,” Tyler said. “I’m driving.”

5

Anthony stepped into the garage, shut the door against the echo of Chloe’s gargled, drug-saturated cries, and went to his mangled car. He touched the hood, ran his hand along the roof. He didn’t really
see
the destroyed windshield or the places where the frame had crumpled.

Delaney had died in this car and he had kept it as some kind of demented memorabilia. It could go in the Museum of Grief:
and next on our tour of Where They Died, we have a totaled 2001 Audi S4 in which a beautiful young woman took a bowling ball to the face when it was dropped off a highway overpass. Notice how not only is the windshield destroyed but the front is as well; the poor girl drove into a tree after the ball mangled into her skull.
Anthony could hear the
oohhing
and
ahhing
of the fascinated observers.

He stared at the radio and its dead face stared back. Had it even played that instrumental yesterday night or was that all in his head?
That’s for you, Dad
. Had he truly encountered God or was he so wracked with grief that he imagined the whole encounter? He needed help--he knew that--and turning to Ellis and his Giant Jesus offered hope, but did that mean it actually would help? Had he just referred to what happened (or maybe didn’t) last night as an
encounter
?

Tears threatened. “I miss you so much,” he whispered.

Why?

That was the eternal question of course. Why did this happen? Why to Delaney? Why were any of us even here if it all boiled down to misery and death? Why?
Why? WHY?

He smacked the top of the car but with barely any force; his muscles had lost their strength. He could slump to the floor and fall asleep. Stay down here for days, maybe let himself waste away to nothing.

“I didn’t imagine it.”

Chloe’s car waited in the adjacent spot. It was practically new, had still smelled new when he drove it off the highway as their baby died. He should have let Delaney take it. Maybe she wouldn’t be dead now. A simple change of events so slight as taking a different car might have altered everything. But he hadn’t wanted her to take it because of the cries.

“I didn’t imagine it,” he said again.

The keys were in the car. Anthony got in Chloe’s car and hit the road.

* * *

His heart was racing by the time he took the on-ramp for the highway. The radio was off and all the windows were up. The road
swooshed
by beneath him, tires humming. He hit the gas hard and the car, eager after so long being dormant, revved high and easy and for a few moments Anthony felt he was flying.