by C. V. Hunt
His expression didn’t change. “How am I going to buy food?”
It took a second for his question to sink it. It wasn’t the response I’d expected. “Wow,” I said flatly. “It’s one thing to think someone doesn’t give a shit but it’s another to know it. You don’t give a care that I’m leaving. You only care that you won’t have any money.”
He shrugged.
“Well,” I said, “I was going to tell you I wasn’t going anywhere fast since I don’t have a car and I only have one day’s pay . . .” I pulled the cash from my pocket and tossed it on the table. “Keep it. It’s all you’re worried about anyway. For my own mental health I think it would be better if I move out.”
Brent retrieved the money and counted it, unashamedly.
“I’m moving into The Meditation Temple as soon as I discuss it with Dan.”
He folded the money and stuffed it into this pants pocket. “That weirdo?”
“You’ve never even met him.”
“I’ve seen that scrawny Johnny Cash wannabe motherfucker skulking around down there.”
His ridicule of Dan angered me. “You don’t know the first thing about him.” It came out with more venom than I intended.
Brent scrutinized me for moment. “Are you . . .”—he squinted—“Fucking him?”
Even I didn’t believe the dismissive sound I made. I couldn’t deny it though. And did I really want to deny it? It was a surefire way to make sure Brent and I were over. As much as I’d love to make Brent feel bad by telling him Dan was a better fuck and had a bigger cock I didn’t have it in me to kick him while he was down. I’d just told him it was over. Dan wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with him at the moment and was hoping to avoid the conversation until a later time.
“Don’t bother answering. You’re a terrible liar,” he said.
My face grew hot and I stared at a glass of water sitting next to his laptop. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. It was true. I’d always been a terrible liar and I hated doing it.
He laughed without humor. “Hope he enjoys how frigid you are. And so you know”—he leaned forward as if he were going to divulge something conspiratorial—“you’re a lousy lay and I fucked around on you more than once.” He sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and smirked at me.
I knew he wanted to tear me down and make me feel like shit. I couldn’t blame him. If I were in his situation I’d be petty and hurtful too.
I said, “This is how it’s gonna go, huh?”
He shrugged and continued to smirk. There was something in his eyes that I recognized. He was lying. I wasn’t sure if it was about me being a lousy lay or that he’d fucked other women or both. It didn’t matter either way.
“Okay,” I said. “I think we’re done here. Keep the money. It’ll be the last you see from me.” I couldn’t help but take a jab at him. “Maybe you can finally get a real job and stop pretending to be a writer.”
I stood, turned, and hadn’t taken two steps before something flew past my head, hit the wall, and exploded. Water and broken glass showered me and the kitchen. It took me a couple of seconds to realize Brent had thrown the glass of water at my head. I turned and gave him an incredulous look. There was a gleam of delight and viciousness in his eyes.
“Satisfied?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not really.”
I’d had enough. It was apparent he was going to be childish about the situation. I turned and took a step. A sharp pain erupted behind my big toe. I sucked in air and lifted my foot, knowing I’d stepped on a piece of glass. It was a large chunk too. I pulled it from my foot and blood began to drip onto the floor almost instantly.
“Fucking great,” I hissed. I turned back to him and briefly thought about throwing the bloody chunk of glass at his head but decided that would only escalate the whole thing into more physical violence. I threw the shard at Brent’s laptop. It hit the back of the open screen and bounced to the floor.
Brent shot to his feet and knocked his chair over. “What the fuck?!” he barked. He closed the laptop and inspected it for any damage. “Fucking bitch! If you break my laptop I swear to god I’ll break your face!”
I carefully made my way to the bathroom, avoiding any more broken glass and tracking blood through the house. I wasn’t sure how I was going to bandage the cut. We were out of Band-Aids.
Once in the bathroom I sat on the edge of the tub and turned on the water. I put my foot under the faucet and pried open the cut to rinse it out. It burned like hell but I had to make sure it was clean. I wasn’t sure if it needed stitches but, by the looks of it, I was sure it did. I put the plug in the tub. I figured it might keep it from bleeding so much if I submerged it in water.
I cut the water once it was to my ankle and yelled at Brent, “Bring me the superglue!”
“Get it yourself, you fucking cunt!”
“You fucking did this, asshole! Now bring me the fucking superglue!”
I heard him stomping around and slamming the kitchen drawers. Every place we lived we always designated one of the kitchen drawers as the ‘junk drawer.’ It was our makeshift tool box. It was where we kept the hammer and screwdriver along with random items like superglue and batteries and whatever random things we might need. The sound of crunching glass was followed by heavy footfalls coming toward the bathroom.
I was staring at the pink bath water when a tube of superglue hit the wall above my head and landed in the water.
“Would you stop throwing things?! Ya fuckin’ maniac!” I turned toward the doorway but he was already gone.
A hand towel was on the counter and I grabbed it. I spotted the kitchen knife on the countertop and started having some horrendous thoughts. I shook my head and pulled my foot from the water and pressed the towel against the cut, trying to stanch the blood.
A strange noise came from the kitchen and I didn’t pay attention to it as I tried to stop the bleeding. Once the bleeding had slowed I took the opportunity to glue the wound shut. I wasn’t sure if it would hold but I thought there was some electrical tape in the junk drawer. If I could get it to stop bleeding long enough to grab it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Brent for anything else. The sound coming from the kitchen grew louder and what I thought at first was Brent sweeping up the mess was starting to sound like something completely different.
I stopped blowing on the glue, trying to dry it. I called, “What are you doing?”
The sound stopped for a second before resuming at a quicker tempo. Maybe the acoustics were off but it sounded as if he were slurping soup. The closer the sound came to the bathroom the more certain I was that Brent was slurping soup or a drink or something. I figured he was doing it to get on my nerves.
“Would you knock it off?” I said. “Stop acting like a child.”
The sound stopped. The floorboards creaked as he retreated back to the kitchen.
I touched the glue to make sure it was dry and let go of the skin, hoping the wound wouldn’t open back up. I was still afraid to put any weight on it until I’d wrapped it in tape.
The front door closed as I was rinsing the blood out of the tub. Good. I wouldn’t have to deal with him. I could make out the car starting and pulling out of the driveway as I used the bloody hand towel to mop up the blood in the bathroom. When the bathroom was clean I went to take care of the other blood I’d tracked through the house since I knew Brent wouldn’t clean it up. But other than a smear right outside the door there wasn’t any other blood. How could that be? I knew I had to have left a trail. I could see smears and cleanish spots where the blood should’ve been but there wasn’t any blood. Maybe Brent had cleaned it up. In the reflection of the light I spotted what appeared to look like hand prints on either side of one of the spots in question. I squatted down to get a closer look.
My mind must be playing tricks on me again, I thought.
The more I looked at the spots the more it looked like a dog had licked the floor. I felt the hairs on the b
ack of my neck rise and shivered involuntarily. I didn’t care if it was a trick of the light or a trick of my mind. It was time to pack my shit and leave.
TWENTY
DAN LOOKED UP from the book he was reading and gave me a curious look when I walked into his living quarters. I’d stuffed all my clothes and toiletries into two giant boxes, stacked one on top of the other, and carried them down the street to The Meditation Center. I’d had to pull on a hoodie as the wind itself felt cool and I could tell the change in the season was upon us. The boxes had wanted to slip against the fabric of the hoodie covering my arms. Maneuvering down the steps and through the darkened hallway had been a bit of a challenge. I could feel my face flush in embarrassment when I dropped the boxes in the middle of Dan’s living room.
I stammered, “I-I’m real sorry. But I put an end to me and Brent and I don’t have any place to go. I know this is sorta soon but I can sleep on the futon or in the office and work a few days to get some money to find my own place—”
He closed his book and stood. “It’s okay.”
Even though he said it was okay I could detect a touch of reluctance in his expression. Here was this sad woman uprooting her entire life and forcing her way into his house after one day of fucking. I knew if a guy did that to me I would have been extremely hesitant. I would feel like my life was being encroached on. How long had he been living as a bachelor? Maybe he preferred living on his own. Maybe he didn’t want to have a ‘girlfriend.’ I know if I was living on my own, fucked a guy, and the next day he showed up with all his belongings, I would think he was unstable.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want you to think I’m one of those crazy girls who move in on your life and take over. Me and Brent have been done for a long time and he’s been acting strange lately and I didn’t feel safe.”
Dan’s expression became concerned. “Does he know about us?”
“Yes.”
He blanched and I knew exactly where his thoughts headed. He was afraid of what any guy would be afraid of if he fucked a woman in a relationship. Dan was afraid Brent was going to come down here and cause a scene, possibly cause a physical altercation. Neither Dan nor Brent were built for a tumble and the mental image of the two slapping at each other over me almost made me laugh. I’d never known Brent to be violent until recently when he’d taken to throwing things. Still, he’d missed me when he’d thrown the glass and I assumed that was on purpose. He’d never laid a hand on me the entire time we’d been together.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s not going to do anything.”
Dan’s shoulders relaxed. “Good.” He smiled nervously. “Because not only does he know where I live but he’s only a block away. You said he’s been acting strange?”
“Yeah. That’s not the only reason we split though. There are a lot of other things. Like ten years of things.”
“How strange?”
“Very. Like accusing me of poisoning him. Sleepwalking. Eating organ meat. Telling me things I’d seen weren’t real.”
I neglected to tell him I may have either dreamed some of the stuff or I might be a little out of my head at the moment since I was off my medication.
Gravely, he said, “Has he been drinking the water?”
Not this again. Maybe this was a mistake. I didn’t think I could take a spiel about some conspiracy theory but I couldn’t help but answer truthfully.
“Yes.”
He sighed. “It’ll only get worse.”
“The way he’s acting?”
“Yes. The city will never admit to it and the people are too poor to fight it but they know the water is making people sick and they haven’t done a damn thing about it. It screws with some people and makes them paranoid and violent.” He rubbed his chest and even though he had a shirt on I knew he was touching one of the scars. “Makes them hallucinate.”
I’d written off his prior accusations about the water to him being a conspiracy nut. I thought he might be one of those people who would list off some statistics about how many bacteria and chemicals were in city water as if they’d picked up their information from some bottled water company. It was all bullshit and meant to be used as a scare tactic to get people to buy water. How far were we from purchasing luxury canned air? Artisanal air? Artisanal hose water was exactly what bottled water was. Hell, Ice Mountain was drawn right here in Michigan. So wouldn’t that make everyone crazy? I guess reverse osmosis filtered out the crazy. Maybe I needed to be hooked up to a filtration system.
“I know,” he said. “You think I’m looney. But I have the scars to prove it.” He fingered another scar through his shirt. “Have you drank the tap water?”
I wanted to ask him how he’d gotten the scars but I was reluctant to press the issue. Actually, I was afraid the story he’d tell me might be so fantastical I might question whether moving in with him was a good idea and I figured he’d tell me in his own time.
I finally answered him. “Yes.”
“Please don’t drink it anymore. I keep plenty of bottled water in the fridge.”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I would humor him and drink the damn bottled water and hoped it wasn’t going to be something he brought up constantly.
He closed the gap between us and wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. The subject was dropped as we consummated my new home.
TWENTY-ONE
MY NERVES WERE put at ease over the next few days. Even though I didn’t believe Brent would come to The Mediation Center and cause a scene I kept expecting him to show up and be irate since he’d been acting so weird. But I saw no sign of him other than spotting his car in the driveway of the murder house when I rode with Dan to the store the day after I moved in. I made it a point not to acknowledge the house when we drove by. I didn’t know what Brent was up to and I didn’t care.
At the store I purchased a small flashlight with a clasp so I could clip it onto my belt loop. Dan had divulged the reason there weren’t any lights in the basement and it was going to take me a while to get familiar with the hallway. Apparently, the facility hadn’t originally been built with a basement. Since there wasn’t much property the church decided the best way to add a few Sunday School classrooms was to take the church donations and put in a basement with a few rooms. The construction company accidentally dug too far and hit an underground tunnel system originally used for utilities that had since been abandoned by the city. By the time the company requested more money to fix the error the funds were depleted. Church attendance plummeted shortly after and within a few years the establishment had gone belly up, leaving a gaping hole at the end of the hallway. Dan found it unsightly and the construction company had failed to install any lighting in the hallway before they’d packed up and left the whole mess for someone else to deal with.
When we’d arrived back from the store and I had a flashlight in hand Dan and I inspected the opening. The end of the hallway was exposed earth and completely unfinished. The floor leading up to it was concrete but you could see where rings of dirt had spread across it, creeping up the hallway. I attributed the musty smell of the hallway to the raw earth.
Dan pointed to the dirt rings on the floor. “When we get heavy rains and the ground gets really saturated it leaks into the basement. Luckily it’s never flooded or made it into my place. Just creates a pool of muddy soup on the ground around it, thankfully.”
The actual hole was irregular and about four foot in diameter. I shone the light in the hole. The construction company had knocked in the wall of a red brick tunnel. It didn’t appear the tunnel had been built for someone to stand fully erect in. An old gas lamp was mounted on the wall about ten feet from the opening.
I said, “There was a hole in the wall of the house’s basement. It wasn’t open to a tunnel like this though. There was a large pipe but it only looked big enough for someone to crawl through.”
“There are a lot of abandoned subways and underground tunnels in cities all over t
he world. Most of the time the upkeep becomes too expensive and they’re deserted.”
I shone the light around and inspected the tunnel. “Kinda creepy.”
“Really unsightly. Now you know why I never bothered putting any lighting down here.”
It was alarming anytime I would descend the stairs once I had the light and it illuminated the opening. It looked ominous and made my skin crawl. I completely understood why Dan had chosen to forgo any lights in the hallway. I was hoping it wouldn’t take me long to get used to maneuvering the hallway without a light but I thought knowing the hole was there and not being able to see it might actually be worse. We jokingly dubbed the hole as a gate to hell.
Cohabitation with Dan came naturally. Obviously the first couple of days were filled with fucking way too much, getting high, and not getting a whole lot of anything else done. Our fucking had cured my depression as far as I was concerned. My foggy-headedness lifted. I didn’t want to sleep for fourteen hours anymore. And I had a general feeling of contentment I hadn’t felt in years.
Everything was going well so I knew—no matter how much I tried to not think about it—that it would all come crashing down sometime or another. I didn’t think it would only take a a couple of weeks.
TWENTY-TWO
CONFUSION.
The bed jostled rapidly and Dan cried out. My back was to him and I assumed he was having a bad dream. The sleep was difficult to clear from my brain since we’d gotten high before fucking and turning in for the night. The bed kept bouncing and Dan flailed beside me. He hit me in the back and gripped at my bare skin. We’d both gone to sleep in the nude, as waking up in the middle of the night to have a quickie was pretty common with us. There was a wet smacking sound. Something warm and wet was growing beneath me. Dan’s grip loosened.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
“What’s going on?” I grumbled as I rolled over.