Drawing Dead (19 page)
Authors: JJ DeCeglie
When I came conscious it was with considerable fucking panic. Abruptly wide awake in a blackened square of alarm sucking in breath hard and fast. It was late evening and Evie wasn’t there beside me. I’m sure I wasn’t actually that fragile and nervous, it was just the place I’d been brutally heaved from.
I slapped at the mattress beside me with my hand.
Sat up groggy as shit.
The stupor left as quick as it struck. I knifed through the miasmic plague. Heard the sound of cooking coming from the kitchen. I rolled off and up from the bed and then pissed with the gummed up sting of an afternoon occupied with sex. Evie was cooking naked. I’d walked out wearing the same line of fashion.
Jacky Boy…back from the dead.
Still got some fight left in me baby.
I shadowboxed under the murky light swum down from a bulb hanging there like a rope from a gallows. The dark shapes danced behind me. Absence of light manically rushing stunted about the room.
This all looks real nice…
Want some coffee Jacky Boy?
Sure Evie.
How do you take it?
White and one.
She had it ready to go, just added what I asked for and bought it on over. Put it on the table and whilst there kissed me long and deep. I grabbed at her where you would expect me to and she just shimmied me off. She was still frying up the eggs and bacon and just as I sat my ass down the toast popped from the fucking machine giving me a fright that an unseen fucking shotgun blast would.
I was about as jumpy as shit.
She finished up and trotted over with the grub and I ate it up with the equal voracity I had done her earlier. Didn’t taste quite as good, but the way things were and as hungry as I was I woulda eaten my own ass with a spoon.
Eat up baby, you’re gonna need your strength.
Not sure if she meant for future ventures or for bed later on, either way she was smiling when she said it, a real flower blossoming before your eyes type number. She could have meant so as for me to try to attempt sucking my own cock for a few hours straight, I still woulda taken it on and then asked for more.
I spoke in between large mouthfuls. With the coffee the food went down as well as it could. I told her to keep that brew coming. Yeah I wanted additional cupfuls, but add to that the more times she got up the more occasions I got watch as she waggled that impeccable tail to and fucking fro. Everything about this broad was electric. Right down to the fingernails she chewed off and spat out. Not a single detail of her was astray. There musta only been a few like her. Even fewer got to lay down with’em. I’d say even less left belt and bite weals on their creamy thighs and the unblemished globes of their faultless asses. Yet there I was. A bona fide son of a mother. And there you are, wishing you had balls enough to be me. I’m off track though. I laid the whole fucking thing on her as I ate. Well what I had of it anyhow. It was a plan hatched in quick succession and haste, with obvious streaks of genius and equal smatterings of plain fucking stupidity.
The plan’s gonna play out like this Evie. Listen and ask questions if you want. I encourage it, will keep me on my toes and make sure we don’t fuck anything the hell up. I need a map to work it out to the letter, I’ll get one in the morning don’t worry about that, but I’m gonna give you the rundown as best I can right now. We’re gonna take a little old rowboat from down by the shore. We’re gonna row that sucker out and around that big jutting bend. You should see that thing, just blocks out vision from a mile back. That way no one can spy on us, but really it don’t matter much anyway 'cause there isn’t any ass around. So yeah we’re gonna row out a little too far, where it’s a little too rough. Where the inlet is deepest and where the current out to sea will be strongest. The fucking thing is almost a half kilometre across at most parts, so they’ll know we got in over our heads. We weren’t smart enough to ask for life-jackets from reception. We’d been drinking too. They’ll be empties floating near the oars…tell me if I’m going too fast for ya. We‘re gonna sink the thing. They’ll search for weeks and never find a trace of us. We got sucked out to sea and were ripped to pieces by the sharks. Something along that line. Whatever the fuck ever. We’ll swim to the other side, probably about two hundred metres, we’ll keep really low, outta sight, do much of it underwater, climb up an untouched face of scrub and rock and hardship. Then we’re gonna hike five kilometres to where I’ve buried the money and some supplies. From there I figure it to be about a twenty to twenty-five kilometre hike to the next town. We buy a car when we get there. Then we drive, to a way out spot, we hunker down for two to three months. Maybe more, maybe less. Lay as low as we possibly can. Let the heat cool off. Then we drive east. Hard and fast. Buy me some documents. Get the cash unloaded offshore. Then take a plane to someplace the Australian government can’t touch our asses. Just me and you and the foreign sun shining down upon us Evie, beaches and booze and a life we’ve not yet ever known…what you think about that?
Had almost convinced my fucking self it had been that good a speech…I did say almost.
We have to walk twenty-five kilometres?
I shoulda punched her in the face for saying it.
You’ll make it. This is the only shot we got. What were you expecting…I was gonna steal a plane and fly your ass outta here. Howard fucking Hughes over here. Things are gonna get ugly Evie. Ugly and dirty and mean, you get that part right? I don’t know if I’ve made this clear enough for you, even if the cops get us first we’re still as good as dead. Tallegi’s reach in this town is unlimited. This is all we fucking got now. This and each other.
You mean that Jack?
Yeah, I do, things are gonna get pretty fucking bleak. We’re outlaws now, we're gonna have to take whatever the fuck we can get. The fuck if we don’t, beggars cannot be choosers sweetheart.
Not that, the other part.
I was stumped…yeah we were probably gonna die, and it was gonna hurt like a slut too.
What other part?
About us only having each other.
Was I buying it? Not sure really. She sold that stuff better than just about any broad I’d met. If she told me to cut my arm off and beat my own ass in with it I would have at least considered it. This was about as defenseless as we were ever gonna get though. I said some things. I can’t be sure if I meant them and I countered them pretty quickly.
You give me something Evie, you know that. Maybe we could find a place, you never know right? Me and you, we play this section out and then move, and keep moving, then we find that place and we live it right. Just me and you, it could be like right now for a long time.
You really feel that way about me Jack?
Part of me does. Right here and now. In this room, this light. This afternoon gone by…but the other half of me thinks you’re a self-centred, back-stabbing bitch. I’d like to trust you Evie. Things just might turn out real nice for us.
She only heard what she wanted to. Or wanted me to think that she had, biting that swollen bottom lip, messing her hair about with one hand and taking mine across the table in the other. She rose up like the full moon and then came at me like a shot. Sitting back into me languidly, as if I were her favourite chair. Her back rested against my chest, the stubble from my chin getting caught in her shortened perfumed curls. I couldn’t fit her breasts in my hands entirely, there was just too much of’em.
I think you got pretty much all I had in me this afternoon baby.
And I was, it had been a torrid, exhausting affair, what one would call an epic. She just nuzzled her warm ass into me like a mother duck would do her cache of precious eggs. There cannot be many things better than this.
I’m sure we can find some more.
Be my guest honey.
She did. She created a way, found some spare; she was just that kinda girl. She took pride in the matter. And together we once more invented a translation of torture and delight, a postponement to opinions about death, a rearrangement of senses and stresses. I had next to nothing left when we were done. Only flesh and apprehension.
We went to bed together but I couldn’t find sleep and when she’d drifted I got up again. Threw on some trousers, said fuck you to shoes and went out to the car and got one of the remaining bottles of wine. While I was out there I wandered over to the Visitor’s Centre and snatched the most detailed map I could find. Got back inside. I took mouthfuls of the dreadful stuff and looked the thing over thorough. My half-assed plot could work. Pigs could also fly. Navigation could be a problem; I figured I’d pick up a compass when I went for supplies in the morning. I joked to myself that if we got lost in the desert and food ran out I’d just eat Evie. Her succulent ass alone had enough meat on it to keep a man fed for days.
So yeah I couldn’t sleep. That afternoon siesta had fucked with me. Instead I drank and had a meaningful exchange with myself. Went like this.
Real nice plan shit for brains, got about as much chance of working out as I do becoming fucking Prime Minister.
You gotta better one do you asshole?
Yeah, go get the gun out the car and kill yourself right now.
I just might, wouldn’t have to listen to your complaining ass no longer.
I don’t complain, I assess, there’s a vast and defined difference; it’s just that in your damned case you forever fuck everything up and are constantly turning out a loser. Hence praise is rarely required with you, more so it’s the constant need for you to be called an asswipe that persistently comes to the fore.
You really are one hell of a cocksucker you know that?
Call’em as I see’em is all.
I fucked her pretty good though huh
That sir, I must say, without a doubt now, you did do. Better than good. That was sublime. It was excellent and then a little bit more.
Wasn’t it though.
Won’t do you any good now.
I’m gonna bask in fucking glory of it anyhow.
You would.
Fuck. You.
You think she’s up for this?
Am I?
I reckon you are, you have been so far, and the rest of your existence says nothing but yes to me.
Atta boy, keep the compliments coming…could get used to this!
Quit fucking around, she’s a snake and you know it.
I don’t know shit. I don’t even know why I’m here. What this is? How I got to it? What you are? Who I am? Where I’m from or going. I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know nothing. That I never have or will. It was shit before we started, ain’t nothing turned to it, it already was and is.
Just an excuse to keep her pretty ass around and on your dick a few more days I believe.
Put it whichever way you like motherfucker. Say what you damned will.
Ok. You’re an asshole of the highest order. Not to mention a degenerate gambler, alcoholic and sex fiend. A real true to life piece of fucking work.
Word it at will amigo, it don’t matter a lick to me. We’re gonna play this thing out to the end me and her, to the romantic or murderous crescendo.
You’ve fucking flipped kid. Unhinged. No coming back from where you’ve gone. Only direction is downward and to hell.
Sit back and enjoy the ride.
As soon as the sky commenced from black to blue I determined to get going. I’d only drunk the one jug and had spent the rest of the night smoking the two small cigars I had left and was waiting for daylight to get happening. My top had buzzed internal throughout and I was sick of sitting and just had to get the fucking day moving. I went inside and sat by Evie. She moved about some but didn’t stir from her slumber. Slept naked too. Like I needed that. I had to tell her what I was gonna do. Didn’t want her to go into a panic when she woke and me, the car and money were gone. I knew she wouldn’t like it. That she’d kick up a fucking stink. But I’d decided that this way was best, and the fuck if she didn’t think so.
I put my hand gently onto the hair she’d cut and coloured. Kinda took her entire skull in my hand and gently squeezed. I ran my other hand, well the back of it along her fine left cheekbone and chin. Her eyes flicked open as if a switch had been hit.
Hey there baby…I’m gonna go and get the supplies and then go on some more and bury them and the money…you dig?
She just looked at me, now and then blinking in a pleading, saddened manner, like what I had said to her was completely unknowable. I repeated myself; now she got it, I think the first time she may have thought she was dreaming.
Ok, just give me a minute.
Here we go.
I’m gonna go alone Evie.
What? Why?
Told your asses didn’t I.
They’ll be looking for two of us. And I’ve got plenty of experience doing this kinda thing. It’s part of my job to travel incognito. It’ll be safer and quicker, and if I get caught you can still do like I told you and maybe get outta the country.
It sounded like a bunch of bullshit even to me. She kept at it.
But you said it was me and you, you said we only had each other.
We do, but you gotta trust me Evie.
I’m frightened.
Of what?
That you won’t come back.
Don’t think the consideration hadn’t frequently crossed and crowded my mentality.
I’ll be about three hours, four tops. Trust me Evie. Trust me.
She made an attempt to draw me down into the precious snare that was her blanket warm bonfire of a body. Entrap me with her fleshy construct. I shook her off like a man coming out a lake would a leech. She gave me eyes meant to injure. I took the vodka bottle from the bedside table. I’m pretty certain that as I went out the door she swore under her breath a robust line of resentment. I won’t repeat the word, but only say that she had one, and that I’d spent most my days since I was about thirteen seeking them out.
I switched license plates with what must have been the old man’s car. Took all of five minutes with the spanner I’d whipped out from under the case full of money in the boot of my own. Things would have been much easier had we dumped my vehicle and stolen or bought a new one on the way here but this was how it was and I just had to live with it.
As I drove the sun started burning lemon and peach over the eastern perspective in sliding shafts of thaw. You could smell the dew aflame and dissolving off all things and it gave that earthen fresh trace to the air. I followed the map and knew it was about a seven click motor over to the roadhouse. I eased it in. Rolled through the stretching shadows of the scrubland. Watched the light go from fluid to clear, the sky from a fading cobalt stain to an overflowing azure hue. When I got there I went to it. There were trucks and their drivers about the place. Pacing the cement and smoking their asses off. Neon orange dots in the waning dim. I put my cap on and pulled that mother down as low and protective as I could. Parked as far out back and out of sight as the place would allow. Inside I brought up plenty of food and plenty of water. Some medical and comfort supplies. A compass. A newspaper. Some tourist type shirts and hats for our asses to change into. Heavy duty canvas bags. Two of. At the counter and this country bumpkin motherfucker wants to converse a little. And I had to play the game like I meant it.
