She says. “I’m better-ish.”
She throws the nightstand lamp at Thaddeus’s head, he ducks, and it explodes in the flat screen television. “I bought that.” He rubs the side of his face with his mouth opened.
Bucking up, she insists in his face. “I took off early, because I was worried about you, the world is going crazy....” She runs her fingers through her raven hair. “We have a daughter, this will hurt her too...don’t you care about us or just about getting some ass before the world ends.”
Thaddeus grouses like a petulant child. “She’s not my daughter…I don’t need a family, dealing with oneself is more than enough for a lifetime. You know who I am, don’t act surprised, it makes you look stupid.”
She says. “You cold bastard, go run after your whore before I shoot your dick off.” Her heart begins to beat faster and she cannot catch her breath, so she quickly unbuttons the top two buttons on her shirt and fans her face with both hands. Standing still, her body is shaking as if she’s in the center of a draft. Thaddeus is failing at pretending to listen by nodding to every word with nothing in his eyes.
He says. “Baby, I think you’re hyperventilating. You need to relax, it’s not that serious.” She gives him Medusa eyes that could turn other men to stone. He raises his hands to protect his face, he’s a body length away from her.
She wipes the tears from her eyes; grabs his phone right before he gets it and fusses with the phone, turning the volume to max.
He says, “don’t,” stepping towards her.
On the tiny screen, Thaddeus ogles the woman’s big breasts and waxed vagina, he has a hot cup of coffee and cold water in each hand and tells her. “I want you to drink and keep some in your mouth and alternate between the two as you suck my cock. My wife is a stuck up bitch that’s always stressing me out, that’s why I call you. I need the release.” The woman blows him a kiss, turns around, and drops out of her hip hugging dress. “Maybe she still wants you.” Thaddeus says, “yeah she wants me, wants me dead,” leans forward and puts his face in her tan ass. “I’m starving.”
Thaddeus is speechless.
“Don’t be coy lover boy, fuck boy, did your brain fall out of your asshole?” She throws the phone at him.
“Hey.”
Thaddeus assures her as he withdraws in a circling motion in the opposite direction of her circle strafing. “That’s not me…that’s the…that’s the high version of me doing those things I can’t be accountable for.” He claps his hands once and holds one arm out towards her. “I do drugs because I’m unhappy and I’m unhappy because I do drugs. My issues are your blessing, because you get to help me.”
She decides with a glowered look. “You can believe in secondhand bullshit like a child or the truth like an adult…Friends tried to warn me about you, ‘he’s not a people person unless you’re a person he wants to fuck.’ I should have listened way back when.” She sits on the corner of the bed. “Life is not a endless romantic candy store, if you can’t be committed to anyone at least be committed to being a decent person.”
Thaddeus coolly says over her left shoulder like a tempting little devil. “Don’t throw away what we have together, because of this. I love you.” The last three words come out like a question.
In a tired voice, she says. “I don’t think I ever heard you say I love you before.” She looks at her dresser, contemplating what’s inside and her next move, but simply stomps away, “I need a fucking drink, get your shit and leave before I call the police.” His blatant disingenuousness and self-righteous blabbering is exhausting and is making the devil on her other shoulder that much more tempting with thoughts about getting the gun from the top drawer and giving Thaddeus what he truly deserves.
She exits left.
He says. “Go ahead and take the high road and make me look petty, typical.” Thaddeus runs after her still completely nude.
On the stairs with a pulsating hand gripping the rail, she says. “The cars, the house, the bank accounts are all in my name because I never trusted you. Once you leave this house you’ll be a bum the second you step outside. Go beg for some ass and sing for your supper. Go work the corners like the whore you are.”
Thaddeus looks down from the second floor holding on the ledge, conceding. “I’m sorry, she is a basic bitch, she meant nothing to me.”
“Like me.” She swills from the liquor bottle near the bar, getting just as much on the floor. “Put some clothes on, you’re making me sick.” He runs down the flight of stairs.
Thaddeus stands in front of her; she is on her second swallow of liquor. “Maybe if you sucked a little dick once in a while, I wouldn’t have to sneak around, what about my needs?” He pounds his chest with genuine indignation.
She gives him a quizzical look as if he’s from a different planet, then laughs a little in the face of insanity. “It’s little alright…What are you still in high school with that reverse blame bullshit. I’m embarrassed that I ever married you.”
He moves back near the aquarium as she aggressively moves towards him with the bottle. “A person with grey pubes should know when to shut the fuck up.” Thaddeus walks back into his antique Indian cigar statue, breaking the head off. “Come on.”
She lets go of the empty liquor bottle and leaves him on the floor scrambling. He menacingly runs up, hugs, and lifts her up. “Just listen, I love you and I’ll do whatever it takes…I’m a sex addict because I was bullied once in kindergarten.” She flaps in his arms like a fish gasping for air, “oh poor you, do you even listen to yourself, you’re pathetic. Your thinking is elementary I give you that.” Her bare heels slide back as he carries her across the living room.
She elbows him in the kidney; escapes and observes herself in the mirror across the way, her spirits are reconstituting and she realizes she doesn’t need a gun to deal with the likes of him. “I bet your mom was a whore too, I hear it’s in the blood.” Striking a perfect nerve which is his mommy issues.
In one movement, Thaddeus seizes her by the neck and whacks her forehead alongside the rim of the fish tank. Blood looks like red ink swirling around the agitated tropical fish.
From behind, Thaddeus rests his forearm on the back of her neck, submerging her deeper in the cloudy water and with the other arm he’s pinning her arms to her lower back like a cop inflicting the most pain with minimal effort. Her raised feet pedals over the floor and between his calves, her big toes curl into the arches of her feet.
Her neck is turning purple and she’s jumping on her toes. Thaddeus impassively retracts her face from the splashing water. “Officer my wife was drinking and she slipped while walking around in high heels, she must have hit her head and past out in the fish tank. I was in the shower when she came home because she’s suppose to be at work and I was planning on surprising her on her birthday with dinner and dessert.” The wife pokes her face out of the tank and spits out water, saying. “Fuck you.” He repeats himself, augmenting the story, modulating his voice in an attempt to match the intended sentiment needed to inherit it all.
She pogoes on broken toes into the glass house, shifting it closer to the edge, Thaddeus grabs the back of her head like his woman friend, with a wide grasp and jams her in deeper. “I love you too, sweetie.”
He looks at the little clock hand. “I think you’re done.” He releases her and she plops to the floor with veiny red eyes, pale skin, and fish food in her hair. The barbarity of the act has as much influence on him as flushing a toilet. After a moment, he rests against the wet table and the aquarium explodes on the floor, the loud ruckus scares him.
Falling by the wayside, Thaddeus jabs his chin with his knuckles over and over. “Come on you have to cry. Be a man.” He’s sitting butt ass naked in a puddle of water and lively fish, fatigued from the exertion with a growling stomach. The dead woman is face-planted behind him. Murder wasn’t his first choice, but it was an easy choice.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Thaddeus’s teenage stepdaughter approaches from
an obscured angle and doesn’t see her mother.
He looks up with red puffy eyes. “I-I heard a scream…it’s your mom, she had a accident.”
The girl walks out of the shadows. “Mom.” She runs and slides on her knees to her mother’s side, scraping her legs on the glass. She flips her and tenaciously bangs between her breasts, then positions her mother’s head back, whips her own hair back and is about to give her CPR.
Thaddeus says with his back to her. “Stop. I already tried everything…I need you to bring me the house phone, I think I’m in shock…” She hugs him from behind. “I love you dad, we can help her.”
The girl gets up soaked from the waist down; she massages her forehead and looks at her mother. “Mom get up.”
He points across the way and yells. “She’s gone. The phone.” The girl runs for the phone. Thaddeus puts his head back and exhales, suddenly feeling cold with goosebumps on his pruning naked skin.
The girl says. “Mom?” It makes Thaddeus turns his head left to see his step-daughter with the phone as his wife comes from the right side under his armpit and bites his shrivel penis off. “Aaaaaaahhhhhhh.”
7
Delilah says. “Say something nice to me.”
David says. “You have pretty ear lobes.”
Delilah stops walking and half turns. “What? You could of said pretty brain and at least pretended to be deep.”
David says. “Everything is about tits and ass.”
Delilah walks backwards. “And you’re above all that?” Her mouth goes to the side.
David walks backwards, overly mimicking her. “I’m trying to be.”
“It’s a quirk of mine…”
David bumps into a tree. “We are nonsexual soul mates.”
Delilah opens her eyes wide. “You mean friends, that word cheapens what we have.” She smiles. “Soul mates don’t exist only hump mates.”
David sits down. “You said it…I thought only men could objectify women, not the other way around.” He says it in a way that let’s her know he thinks this idea is stupid.
Delilah walks up and bumps her groin in his face. “Men are better at it, but women do it just as much.”
David smiles and says. “Even when we win, we lose.”
“You asked.”
They sit back-to-back with the tree in the center of them. Comfortable silence happens again and again during their break. She pulls the drawstring to close her backpack and pulls the trigger on his empty gun, testing it. They start walking again, alternating the lead.
Delilah pouts her lips and taps on her face. “You say some crazy things in your sleep.”
David thinks ahead of where he thinks this conversation is leading to. “I’m sorry for holding you down on that mattress.”
Delilah says. “Don’t be, it was a nice birthday present.”
His contrite face switches for disbelief. “Nuh-uh.”
Delilah closes her eyes, smiling, shaking her head yes.
David says. “I don’t believe you.” He holds branches back like a gentleman for her to cross underneath. “If I live to be thirty it’ll be a miracle.” May is a few months away, then I have to survive one more year.
Delilah looks back and makes a mock sad face, rubbing her eyes. He doesn’t know what to say, so unevenly smiles.
It’s a misty morning with a hanging fog kissing the earth, smelling like fresh cut grass. David treads in loops looking at the forest-bed chockfull of critters and fallen foliage. He’s back at the initial campsite before departing for Concrete Colony. A butterfly lands on Delilah’s shoulder, stretches its wings, and flies up. Delilah points at the sky like Babe Ruth. Black smoke is in the distance. “Maybe it’s some kind of signal.”
David upsprings to the tree bark and rocks back and forth, gripping it. “I thought they would come back after a few days…I’ll run to see what it is, you stay and watch the horses, it’s not that far.”
Delilah says. “I think I’ll come.”
“Why do I bother?”
After a mile of running, the smoke is farther away than previously thought by the pair, they stop with their mouths wide open and Delilah’s holds her ribs. She says. “Can we walk for a bit?” David takes off walking after he hears the word walk. “One of them is burning a tire, I bet.”
Later, David slows his pace and tells Delilah. “After all of this, I plan to travel and see the world. Whatever happens, happens.”
Delilah says. “Send me a post card.” She emphasizes each word as she stares above her at a floating boat cradled in thick branches, like a little boy’s tree house. She’s has a look of amazement as if she just found the SS Baychimo encased in ice.
David spins around the tree, imagining it’s its mast. “I might just come back and take that boat, always wanted one.”
David and Delilah past beneath the highly suspended boat and hear. “You ain’t taking shit.” The old man hermit aims a hunting rifle at the two of them, David slowly steps back guiding Delilah to get behind him. The old man’s eyelashes repeatedly sweep against the added scoped lens.
David says. “No one has to die over a joke.”
The old man says. “Huh? What?”
David says. “Put the gun down.”
The old man says. “Or else what?”
David says. “Or else, I’m going to shit my pants.” The gun pointing directing at David’s head is a Purdey shotgun, a big game hunting rifle and the shooter is an albino dwarf with thick glasses that’s magnifying the size of his eyes by a 100%. His eyes vibrate like a bee’s wings, David tries not to stare.
Delilah spies a fishing line connected to a squirrel trap embedded in a heap of leaves and a bundle of rope cradled like a snake at the foot of the tree.
The man is silent for a moment then starts laughing, and then finally says. “Leave, get the fuck off my land.” The old man puts the rifle down. “But leave the pretty lady.”
Delilah says. “My ass.” The dwarf bows his baseball cap towards her like a gentleman.
The Dwarf tells Delilah. “I’m immune, we can have kids, even diseases are prejudice. Love is once again a luxury. We can help each other out. I can give you a good life. Security. With your looks and my brains nothing can stop us.” As far as elevator sales pitches go, David appreciates the man’s confidence.
David moves to the side a little to give her room to answer. She looks him up and down, wanting and expecting him to say something. David tells her. “Do what your heart tells you.” He looks at the albino and the shotgun. “Women, right?”
Delilah hugs David from behind, takes his gun from his hip, and points it at the man. David is her shield, he says. “Everybody calm down, no one is taking anyone.”
He has his arms outstretched to the side, and she aims his gun under his bicep.
In order to convince the man that this is one big misunderstanding, David smiles in the Dwarf’s face and still he leans the big rifle off the boat once again like a tarpon gun.
David says. “Of the million ways out here to die, this was never on my kick-the-bucket, list.”
The Dwarf says. “I feel compelled to help you meet your maker, pretty boy.”
David says. “If you shoot that canon, you will kill us all including yourself, little boy.” Big talk from the runt of the litter, you overcompensating court jester. I ought to shot you in your fucking zany eyeballs. I don’t discriminate when it comes to assholes threatening my life.
Delilah says. “David.”
The Dwarf says. “This is how serious I am about my land and my future.”
David says. “I believe you, one second please.” He raises one finger and the shotgun barrels bounce ok.
Delilah whispers in David’s ear. “What are you doing?”
David brings his hands to his head, but stops midway, takes his gun back with one arm and pushes Delilah to the ground with the other. He says pointing the gun downwards at her. “Don’t ever play with my life.” He looks at the Dwarf, premiating
her life to him and walks away.
8
Licking his lips, the Dwarf now has a handgun in one hand and handcuffs in the other. Delilah moves to the right, looking in the remoteness with faraway eyes. He shots near her hand, the echo freezes her. “I’m surgical with this peashooter.”
He tosses down the cuffs between her legs and lowers the rope ladder to the ground to get his trophy wife. “You’re going to love it here.”
Gunshots hit the hull of the boat as a little leg swings over the edge; sand and dirt from the holes, waterfall through the branches. The old-timer fires in random directions. “You sack of shit.” He swings his stunted arm at Delilah’s spot and fires the rest of his bullets. She’s running in the forest and with each gunshot that goes off she flinches and tries to make herself small.
Eventually, she finds David resting up against the only tree in the open area, drawing a square in the dirt, and talking to himself. “If we do this, here, here, and here.” Unafraid of the potentiality of a dwarf chasing him down. David was aiming to kill the little bastard for having the gall to even threaten him.
He looks up at the sound of her panting and breaks the stick in half. “What took you so long?”
Delilah moves away when David tries to grab her hand. “Is the honeymoon over already?” He decides to head for the black smoke and not endorse petty drama. She’s a big girl she knows the way home.
She remains quiet and hurries his way as if both were lost at sea, cutting his path off and expecting a good explanation.
He says. “Don’t ever use me as a shield.” His callous tone stops her dead in her tracks. “Get over the ruse. I wasn’t going to allow that thing to keep you like a thing. Get over your hurt feelings or head back to lover boy.”
She nods ok, then swings for the fences and his face; he ducks under two hooks and puts his hand between her chest, saying. “Stop this, before I leave you for real this time.”
Genesis Virus Page 37