by Garrett Cook
“I don’t think we should do this again,” he says, although he obviously wants to in spite of how wrong it feels. And it feels very wrong.
Kaz looks at him, eyes wide but not at all receptive. Someplace very distant.
“Shouldn’t what?”
Brian says nothing, sensing she genuinely means it.
Absent Friends
The girl who left sits with Leah on her bed. They have said nothing to each other. Leah is fairly sure she is seeing things. It is a little late for the onset of schizophrenia, she reasons but that doesn’t mean that it can be ruled out. She has experienced voices and racing thoughts as of late and these are not things that are the product of a sane mind, the crystalline mind of a doctor. She will never be a doctor.
“I think you should go,” she says to her friend, timid but resolute, certain of what she wants.
“I have,” Julie says.
“Then I think you should stay.”
And she does but now there is silence. Leah closes her eyes and counts to ten like she did when she was a child afraid of monsters. Monsters and ghosts are flimsy unreal things and they would surely vanish if she took the time to concentrate and think and count to ten. Julie doesn’t vanish. Julie exists. Contrary to certain things that Leah knows to be facts, Leah counts to ten and yet Julie is still there. In spite of what she knows about the nature of life and death, Julie still persists.
Leah is trying hard not to ask what it was like. It’s the sort of thing that a doctor ought to know if they have the chance to know it and it should be impossible for her to know it so she didn’t think that she would have the chance. But at the same time, it seems like something that simply can’t be asked. It must be terribly rude so she doesn’t. She decides that if her friend is here then her friend is here, even if she isn’t. So she sits with her and she starts to feel a bit better. She starts to feel a lot less lonely too. She could go see Brian in the basement but the households in the house are clearly delineated and privacy is important. Leah is a household. Nobody wants to see Leah.
“How are your studies?” asks Julie. Julie doesn’t find this interesting or particularly pertinent and Leah talked way too much about her studies. This is hard on Julie, who serves as a lesson about leaving and how it mustn’t be done.
“It’s good. It’s tough. It was hard for a few months, since you…” Leah stops herself, mouth agape, she puts a hand over it, stuffing the words down, one of few things she’s stuffed down lately. The fruit, even the fruit starts to rot. None of it is for eating. She doesn’t know just how much it hurts Julie. It’s not as if Julie can think of very much else beyond this.
“I’m doing better again though. I feel better than I did.”
Julie wants to hug her friend but is afraid that would betray her nature. Which it would. I will not permit her to touch and I can’t let her do it for long. And I will not give her this.
“I’m glad you’re doing better.”
The next words, she struggles with, the next words, she’s full of terror about. She refuses. She refuses with all her heart and soul and she simply will not have it since it’s wrong. It is hurtful. It is sick. It is wrong of her to say it. She is adamant about not saying it until I take her back to the oven and the moment of escape. She had thought she had found her way out of life and in fact had only found her way into my hands to become mine forever. And as she is mine, I reveal to her that I will tolerate no signs of insubordination.
“You’re looking good,” says Julie, wracked with pain and guilt and knowledge of that which she’s about to bring on, which is something that to her is unconscionable.
“You’re filling out.”
“Thanks.”
She doesn’t mean it. Time passes and she is naked again in front of the mirror. She is drawing dotted lines around her breasts.
Rival
There is a song that echoes through the closet. It is no skeletal clanking or settling of walls or rumbling of stomachs, no. There is suddenly a song that echoes from the closet specifically addressed to those like Kaz, who feel the squirm of mystery and shame. There is a song that echoes from the closet and it’s asking her “do you know from whence it came?”
There is a song that echoes through the closet that tells her that there is something big inside her. It apprises her of her situation and then it makes a suggestion. And I do not know if I want her to conform to it. It tells her what she needs and she grabs the object in question. She examines the wire hanger and heaves a sigh of relief.
Do I want to let her conform to it? This is a question well worth asking. I do not know if I trust the new noise that has manifested or if she will be better off doing as it tells her. Do I want her to or don’t I? The question is an openended one. I don’t know the answer. I can almost see the feature, just the gears, just the squeaky ones, the ones that need replacing, the one that give the entire machine its meaning. This act could be the one that gets her fully. Am I confused? Overwhelmed? Is something overwhelming me? There is a song that echoes that echoes through the closet, presenting an unmaking or a making.
The Closetsong’s a merry one. I want to comply and have it done. Come on now, whore. Open up the closet. Open it up, whore. Open that door. You’ll have to sooner or later. She’s sitting on the bed, head between her knees. She’s crying and she’s scared and she has nowhere to turn.
“Dr. Hoyt.”
“Clarence,” she calls out, “I wish you were here.”
He does too but he knows this is not the time for him and he’d better comply or he’ll end someplace very very bad.
“Open the door,” the Closetsong hisses, “open the door and fix it, bend it, shape it, wield it as the righteous weapon that it is. You can be free of this. You don’t even know if it’s his…”
“Who is “he”?” she asks the closet.
The closet doesn’t reply, except with a strange shaking. The engine I’ve built has grown so perfect that it is moving now of its own accord. How delightful. No, I am not frightened. Don’t suggest it. I am ambivalent perhaps. I am unsure whether I like this outburst of autonomy if that is what this is. I have a complicated relationship with autonomy.
“Get rid of it,” says the Closetsong, “open the door, pull out the hanger, fold it over and get rid of it!”
She leaves the house. She flees the house actually. I don’t know where she goes yet. She is gone for hours and it makes me furious. I am not sure if the Closetsong and I are at cross purposes but it is quite possible we are and that maybe it is not that I have made something so perfect that is acting autonomously but that something entered my abode without my notice.
I reach out to the Closetsong to ask what it is and what it has done. But there is no response. It’s as if, like Kaz, I have been hallucinating. My comprehension is infallible. All things in these walls or in the minds of those that live between them can be touched by me. It simply is.
“Make yourself known,” I say to the closet and the closet says nothing. I wish I had hands that were my hands and my hands alone that could know the sensation of wood that buckles or splinters when I strike it. I would smash it with all the force behind those hands that were just my hands. I could grab a pair of hands to do it for me but I would want to know for myself just how it feels. I need some satisfaction. I could make Cytherea jealous or encourage Leah to throw up but I want a tantrum, something fierce and juvenile.
I don’t get the opportunity so the Closetsong is making me very mad and I can’t stand it. What do I do when I can’t stand things? It’s a difficult question for one that always gets what they want eventually. I experience something cold and empty. I don’t feel it but I experience it. I am beastly still, looking at the posters on Kaz’s walls that mean very little to me even with what I have soaked up from her. I experience her experience of Amanda Palmer or whatever an Amanda Palmer is.
“Whatever you are,” I say to the Closetsong, “I will conquer you and in my hands you will hurt. You don’t
belong here. You intrude in my house.”
And of course it gives no answer. I wander into Micah, who is working a punching bag. This is nice, the feel of fist, the crunch, the anticipation of greater power, a closeness to the strength of oaks and the unbridled ferocity of Pan. He’s thinking of a woman at the gym. Her skin is a chocolate brown and on her bare shoulder is a tattoo of a Gua from the I Ching. He couldn’t remember what it meant so of course he looked it up so that tomorrow he can tell her and compliment her on it.
The boundaries of exuberance and violence get so thin. He is always the brute exaltant. I am spending time getting to know the limbs of the brute exaltant. He seldom thinks of Cytherea, though when he does, she explodes inside his mind to the size of the sun. Seems about right. He imagines life without her and it changes how he works the bag. I’ve prodded him with the suggestion, a prick to see if he bleeds.
He gushes. His punches become less and less focused. His heart races. He takes a big swig of water and he thinks of stopping altogether but he doesn’t. Full of inarticulate fear and a creeping not alone, he pounds on the bag. The punches and the passions of desperate men feel different. This is good. I caution myself against desperation. I am angry to be drawn into such pettiness. I feel suddenly as if they have done wrong introducing this suggestion and I might have sabotaged an experience I need. I am again experiencing frustration, I am again experiencing stupid and numbness.
I break away. I float. Simply me. Simply my doings. I float. And I wait. I have eternity but each moment that I have to wait for what I want something stings me. This could maybe lead to building imperfect structures and imperfect engines. This might have been how the Closetsong got in or even what the Closetsong is.
I go back to Micah taking Cytherea with the bottle, Julie encouraging Leah not to eat. Then Kaz is suddenly taking out the hanger to free herself from the thing that grows in her. Micah is standing over his girlfriend dead from anal bleeding and in a moment of weakness, I whisper, in this moment of weakness I broke it and Kaz is dead and Leah is dead too soon, too soon and gone from here, not mine not mine at all and…I see. Presumptuous thing. I don’t know what you are trying to deceive me like this and pull me away but you are my rival and I will punish you.
Kaz gets home alongside a man, in a battered coat, stained shirt, backwards ballcap, his mouth missing a great many teeth. There is a none too subtle reek of slumlife on him. This man is scum. I don’t know why she brought him. I didn’t ask her to. She leads him up to her room and they’re both laughing. Brian has opened his door a crack and looks out. He’s disappointed. Their days together must have left a mark but she doesn’t even remember it.
His anguish makes me very, very happy. I’m perking up in spite of the random elements and the sudden appearance of this bizarre intruder. I feel perhaps that these random elements might not make me mad for once. I follow her up into her room so that I can see what is being done.
She sits down on her bed and motions him over. She need not ask him twice. She looks like she does after all.
“Come closer,” she whispers, getting up on her hands and knees. He must come closer. There can be no other choice. For some reason, I grasp Antonia, grasp her tight, pull her spirit out from waiting, draw it close to me. I trap her in the moment and I look her over. I am feeling almost nostalgic. I am feeling happy to have every inch of her, wanting her almost as the man with the missing teeth wants Kaz. She is mine but I have to see it. She is mine but I have to actively take her from the toy box, make her dance before my eyes as the seduction continues. This sentimentality is going to make me weak. It is base and I resent it.
He comes closer, he leans in to kiss her and she smashes her forehead against his not hard but just hard enough to surprise him and confuse him. She leans in, kisses him on the cheek and giggles. She licks him on the nose, then playfully bites his cheek and then again, but this time, she does it in a manner that is not at all playful.
“Ow!” he says, recoiling, holding his cheek, “what did you do that for?”
“Why did I do what?” she asks.
“You bit me.”
She lies on her back and puts her legs up in the air, still giggling. She rubs the side of his face with her foot, then gives him a light kick and begins to laugh, louder still. He should be scared of her but her beauty keeps his where he is, makes him linger. This is why I find it best to control and appropriate beauty when I encounter it.
He should flee but instead he chooses to stay and pay the price. Do I want him to stay and pay the price? Do I want him at all? I don’t know if I’d have anything more than an empty shell like the First Girl if he did. I need surrender and murder isn’t quite surrender. I want him though he has very little value. He is still something inside my home. I have no choice but to have him. I am sick sick sick.
“Why did you do that?” he asks her again and the house almost trembles with my laughter.
She looks up at him again, confused.
“Why did I do what?” she asks, “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
“You bit me.”
Her finger touches her lip and she squints hard. She is looking for the moment but does not find it though she is cognizant that the moment has fled from her.
“Yes,” she decides after finally deliberating, “that sounds like something I would do.”
The man starts to back away but he makes no motion to get up and leave. There is no way that he could. Kaz takes her shirt off and his eyes and his cock couldn’t find the door if they tried. She looks at him, bare-chested, sincere.
“You came here to fuck me, didn’t you? I hope you came here to fuck me.”
He nods and crawls closer. She puts her hand behind his head and feeds him a breast, which he takes in with the eagerness one would expect from his position. Her hand returns to his cock as he sucks on her. She pumps it up and down until it’s full and confident and while he wants to back off her breast and gets down to business, she shakes her head “no.”
“Not yet. You haven’t had enough, baby.”
She slows down her masturbating so he can enjoy the breast in his mouth and so she can enjoy him enjoying it. His mouth and attention become completely absorbed in the object, the beautiful perfect nurturing object he’s devouring. She kisses him gently on the head where she had bumped it, strokes his hair, loosening her grip. The fear in him is just the tiny adrenal surge, the sensation of feelings you can’t back away from or don’t desire to and he is right to have this feeling of no escape. I am listening to the closet for its insights or its rebuttals but it has none. Is it just sleeping or is it trying to piss me off? I cannot suspect that it would do something as innocuous as sleeping.
She pulls her breast away and playfully slaps him again.
“So did you come here to fuck? Huh?”
He says nothing but his eyes make it clear that he did. She lies down and spreads herself open, expectant. He is hesitant, unsure if this is a trick or if she’ll hurt him again. But that doesn’t stop him for long. He gets on top of her and starts pounding away like the eager dog he is. She stops him, locking eyes.
“Slow down,” she says, “we have all night.”
He is surprised by this, as are she and I. He moves away from desperation and into pleasure. Into intent. Their lovemaking becomes different. Slow and tender and probably wrong for strangers. But they take pleasure, smile, moan and feel genuinely connected. This connection is way more desperate than maniacal fucking and the overcompensatory violence aimed at loneliness itself. I even start to pity them. She’ll be better off completely mine, away from behaviors like this and the needs that spark them.
But they are happy. It is madness. It is stupid and wrong but they are happy. Why do you do this closet? I must splinter your doors and look inside and move among the dresses. I will find you and I will make you silent. Not silent like they are, not shuddering and delighted.
I search through Antonia and Doctorpuppet, opening up their soulg
uts to see if there is something amidst the entrails of their memories that can more deeply divine the meaning of this moment and what this thing that thinks I learn would possibly want to teach me. They experience this and each other until it ends, like every connection between two people ends. They finish. And it’s abrupt and cruel when they finish.
She begins to cry. He moves to her, puts his hand on her shoulder. She recoils, wrapping her arms around her knees, hiding her face.
“Why did you do it?”
He looks up, dumbfounded of course. As well he should be. They had been having a nice time. Her makeup is running, her eyes are red as she glares at him, pure brimstone.
“Why did you put it in me? How could you have done this? I trusted you.”
He didn’t know her from Eve not three hours ago. He has no idea at all what she’s talking about. I like this. Another pleasant surprise.
She pounces on him, grabbing his throat. She snarls. I thought I had her and knew her so well inside and this should be disconcerting but is instead exhilarating. He struggles, surprised by her strength, surprised by the teeth she is sinking into his face.
Maddy flickers into view at the foot of the bed watching, this man, teeth ripping his face, hands on his throat, sees her, dead, naked and working the glass into herself. He tries to scream.
It occurs to me that I don’t want him and that I didn’t plan this. It occurs to me this is insubordination and I cannot tolerate that. I struggle my way past the hot, scarlet veil in front of Kaz’s eyes. And again, I reach her. She lets go, teeth and hands, horror on her smudged face.
The man runs, out the door and probably down the street, frightened enough that there is probably no way that he will consult the police, even while there was a strip of flesh missing from his face. He will run home, to the solace of his drugs and tell himself that what happened hadn’t happened at all.