by Garrett Cook
Leah’s behavior has therefore mostly gone ignored. Ignored of course unto the point of death. He knocks on her door unsteadily, slowly. He doesn’t even really know if he wants to see her. He needs to see her, they need to talk about all that has gone on but he is still not sure that he actually wants to. She doesn’t respond at first. I don’t let her. I reach into him a little and try to tell him to keep on walking but he doesn’t take my suggestion. He doesn’t have to take my suggestion every time, he isn’t mine enough yet.
So I let Leah come to the door and open it.
“What is it?” she asks.
“I need to talk to you about Kaz,” Brian begins.
Leah closes the door and locks it.
“Leah, this is important,” he says, “Leah, something is going on. Something really fucking weird is going on.”
She doesn’t respond. I don’t let her. I want him to think that he’s been locked out and simply could never count on her. I want him to think he is surrounded by hostility. I want him to think about calling the landlord, a call that will drop as he tries to get to him. What in the fuck is what this house? What in the fuck is with these people? I have to get out of here. I can’t get out of here I can’t I can’t…
The Closetsong deserves some credit that’s for sure. It beat this man into a fighter. I didn’t see him for one. Scraggly musician made out of doubt. Sitting in the basement staring at the guitar he’s afraid to play. Fading into the arms of a dead girl and begging for her to stay. He wants her to stay so badly. He wants her not to be there. Because if she’s there, she’s dead and what then? There is a solution to this in acquiescing. It could be easy for him if he surrenders.
He flees from all of this nonsense into the basement. Why does he flee into the basement? Oh, delight. He is fleeing into her phantom arms and he doesn’t know it. He comes down here for respite from this insanity. I can’t spare him. I can’t spare any of them. I don’t even wish that I could. They’re better off belonging to me. I’m better off with them. I don’t care how well off they are. I don’t care about them. I’ll just have them. I have things. He sits down and he stares at the corner and then at the guitar.
“I fucked up,” he says to the guitar, “I should have stayed. We had a good thing going.”
He looks around the room and sees that nobody is there and he keeps talking. At least he doesn’t think there’s a doctor here. It’s okay to talk to yourself if you think nobody is listening. He’s out of beer and doesn’t want to buy anymore. He doesn’t want to buy another dimebag off of Micah. He just wants some peace. He wants to stop feeling like he’s alone. Like he’s not alone. And to know that in both he is right.
“I…I was scared you’d go. And that I’d end up someplace like this. And I’d be sitting in a basement full of gear staring at a guitar. And here I am. I’m sorry. I should have stayed.”
I can see that he had been afraid of something. Contaminating her and spreading the Closetsong. I can understand that. It’s a nuisance and a pestilence. It’s ruining my home. It’s ruining those who are mine. He knew it was in his blood and in his bones and caked on his flesh and if he got too close then he would cover her in it and it would clump together and cluster and ooze and eat her and he would be alone again sitting in some dark basement again, staring at the guitar and not playing it and waiting for something or someone who wouldn’t come or even if they’d come they wouldn’t come.
He prepares to stand up and pick up the guitar and see if maybe he can still play it. She liked it when he played it. Said he had promise with it. Wondered why he never did. Wondered why he didn’t like to sing. He sang to her and played it a lot. And now, here it is in one of the corners of the room, facing the one where Antonia’s cage once was. The basement is a place for neglected things. Brian seems to put himself in this category. From what I’ve seen, it’s altogether justified for him to do so.
Maybe he will give me some gratitude. Maybe he will open himself all the way and listen to what I think is best for him. Maybe he’ll become mine altogether if I give him something he wants. I do it for the others and in spite of his mad inscrutability, he does deserve the same. I can be a courteous god. I can be a loving god. So, I extend him some courtesy and love and remind him what I have for him.
She shimmers into sight as if reality itself were a curtain she hid behind. And she opens the curtain and reveals that she is here. She approaches him at his mixing chair and puts two hands on his shoulders. She sits down. He doesn’t want me in but he’s consented to touch her and doesn’t see the connection because he’s far too short sighted for all of that. She looks him in his beleaguered eyes and she sees the Closetsong and whoever he is pining for in them. And she knows that whoever he is longing for, it’s her.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting today,” she says.
“I’m doing better than you are,” he grumbles, gravel and acid.
“You’re in pain so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
She kisses him on the cheek, rubs his warm face with her cold and lost one. He closes his eyes and lets her because it feels better than where he was and feels a whole shitload better than the rest of this day had. He lets himself go and wraps two hands around her almost nonexistent waist. He seems to know he’s holding onto nothing but he holds it no less tightly. He knows he’s all fucked up like that. They’re quiet like this for awhile.
“You’re not real,” he says, “you’re a dream. Or you’re dead.”
She cups his chin in her hands. She struggles hard against the tethers I have on her. She practically growls at him. She practically bites him. She practically walks away and none of these things would be worse for him than any other. And none of these things would be worse for her than any other. She thinks a moment and sighs. She leans in and she actually does bite him.
“Ow!” he backs away, then doesn’t push her off at all.
“I want you to remember that I did that and that I can. Don’t you ever tell me I’m not real. I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know how this works.”
“Does anyone?”
There is silence again, filled with the possibility of being thrust back into old damnations and the thundering hungry void that is being alone. There is silence again and the prospect of the Closetsong or the cage or anything like it. But I don’t rip them away from each other. Not yet. I have to see this. I have to know what she does when I don’t pull on those strings. I have to know what she’s learned from watching him and how it’s made her feel about him.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks.
“You’ve done it before,” she says with a shrug.
“Then it happened.”
She winds up to bite him again but stops herself. Antonia is more frustrated than Antonia. She has seen and been through too much and knows too much of love like Julie did. She struggles to straighten up and be a patient person and show him the love he’s called on her to show him. I must admit her treasure her strength. I must admit that some things and people are better to have than others and that this one in particular is terribly precious to me. I hate when I am forced to be sentimental but it is so.
“Yes. It all happened. I am dead but we held each other and we kissed and we made love. And I liked it. I promise.”
He sits and digests her words, words he has known had to be true. He held her. He knows the taste of her skin and her mouth and her body. He knows what it felt like to hold her even as she rotted away. There can be no more deceiving himself. There can be no more attempts to forget. There will be no more forgetting. He sighs. He buries his face in her shoulder.
“Then are you going to disappear again?”
“I’m dead,” she says, “I don’t know what to tell you. Can’t you just enjoy this? Do you have to question? Do you have to be afraid?”
“But you’re dead.”
She kisses him quickly. He wishes she hadn’t. But still, he kisses her. He tells himself that she won�
�t fade. He tells himself that this is real and not going away. He tells himself it doesn’t matter if she does. He lies with all his might. He kisses her and that’s true but everything in his head at the moment is a lie. He kisses her and looks at her expectantly. And again they are quiet and just enjoying their warmth and again they are waiting for pain or disaster to come and wrench them away.
I don’t take her. I don’t tell her I’m going to take her. This is about watching. This is about seeing if they’ll console each other and seeing if she actually wants what she wants. She breaks the silence with another kiss, full of force and fervor made to anchor her to there and then. They keep in the there and then, they keep next to each other, quiet, save the kisses and the sighs, quiet save urgency.
I listen to them swallow. I listen to them waiting for me. I listen to them knowing that they are at my mercy even when he doesn’t know at all what it is that I do and am. They clasp hands in their quiet agony. They stare into each other’s eyes again in their quiet agony. He tries to breathe out words that keep getting choked back, she tries to tell him not to speak, not to touch her, the reason he shouldn’t speak or touch her. The tethers, the tethers feel so thin on her right now.
Is she mine? Will she stay mine? Why is she mine? I am trying to search her for answers but she somehow feels far away. This makes me mad. I hear it in him and through him in her the sound of that pounding on pipe. I know it is in her, the Closetsong because if it is in him, then it’s in her right now. They are sharing this space and this world they’re building between them. I can feel him close enough that I can see he is afraid of her being taken away.
And yet he expects for her to be taken away or for her to go herself. He makes it hard for me to do this to him. Does he think it inevitable that she’ll be torn away? He’s waiting for me to do that. It will be hard to hurt him then.
Do you know that you’re praying? You’ve never prayed before. Do you know that you are on your knees before the sacred icon that is me? Do you know that you are praying? Because you are. In these walls, I am god. And I am worse than god. You are on my knees before me because you long. The sighs and tears that long to escape that long to call for her are calling for me. Do you know that you are on your knees and waiting for my response? Would you ask me to make it rain from the ceiling? Would you ask me to help your crops grow tall? Would you ask me to smite your enemies? Because if you ask me hard enough, I will.
We are not enemies, you and I. You need not be my foe. Nobody needs to be my foe, since all men who cross this threshold are mine in the end. The time you spend opposing me is time spent harming yourself. The time you spend opposing me is time you spend without. Why spend time without when you can have all that you long for? It is fortunate that you only long for one thing and that this thing is mine.
You’re sitting there in this basement on your fifth beer of the night and you’re staring at the corner as if the walls will shift and reveal behind them everything you’ve dreamt of. If that’s something you want then I can do that. They’re my walls after all, this is my temple. You’re sitting in this basement on your fifth beer of the night and you are asking me to bring her as if you have done something for me lately to make me bring her.
But conversely, defiant boy, you are meditating on fingers and meditating on breath, you are listening for whispers of “yes, I’m with you” even though you have to know she isn’t. How could she be with you if you’re not with me? You could break that bottle right now and you could take the shards, yes, just take the shards and carve up. Not horizontal, vertical. Rise up into me, evaporate into the ceilings, evaporate into my heavens, evaporate, so you might rain down again and be part of this.
I can feel you considering it and understanding the incentive I’ve provided. I’ve provided enough incentive. If there was God outside these walls, he hasn’t given you that which I’ve provided. If there was God outside these walls, then you’d be petitioning him instead of me and your heart is petitioning me since you know I’m here and you cannot know if anything or anyone else is here. How do you even know she was ever here? How do you know she isn’t just a silhouette projected on a wall for your amusement?
You think that I can’t talk and walk and smell like a girl? You think that I can’t make skeletons dance on puppet strings projected from the heavens? Do you really think I can’t? You know better and that is why you’re praying because I am the only one who can give you back what you want. What you want is so simple and so much mine. Come on out and ask me. Verbalize it. I WANT TO HEAR YOU ASK ME.
You’re hesitant. Why? Because you don’t trust me? Because you think I’ll drag her away again like everything life presents you, steaming banquet that turns to dust on your tongue? That is the nature of having and the nature of want. I want you. I am going to get you. I am going to make you tell me you want to do whatever pleases me. You will cut the throats of everyone around you, as if it was necessary. You will drink their blood and call for me for whatever name I tell you is mine.
And that name will be a lie because I don’t owe you the truth and you’ll never get it. That’s what you should know by now. You think you have a grasp on this and your ghost stories will serve you well. You think I’m just a cadaver like all the puppets. Come dig at the foundation deep as you can, deep as magma, deep as dinosaurs, dig down to the center of the Earth and you will not find my cadaver. It’s not so easy. You will not pour holy water on my head and anoint me. I will be the one anointing you.
Brian has made me angry. This is what I’m telling him but he cannot quite hear it because he is not mine enough and I must tell him this because he is not mine enough. I do not like being mad. It gives them ground and it is giving ground to the Closetsong and the Closetsong’s agenda. The Closetsong, the intruder, the other set of eyes on them takes pleasure in my anger. A Heap that rises up and engulfs the hearts around it, the Closetsong would have me engulfed in it too. But no more. At least he is praying. The Closetsong can’t make him pray. I showed him something dear enough to pray for.
He does it. He says it aloud.
“Come back. Please, come back. I need you.”
He needs those hands and smells and breath and words. He needs that body pressed to him to remind him that his still works and his heart still beats even though hers has not for so many years. I can give him her heartbeat and give her heartbeat. He’s praying for it but I’m waiting. He needs to make this mistake. He needs to see just who he is dealing with.
“Come back, Antonia.”
Antonia begs for me to let her come back. She tells me it’s not fair to do this to her. I am inclined to toss her through time again, back to the moment of death and back to the cage and back to the time she spent in it. She knows how to pray and knows I can answer her prayers but I’m not at all happy that she would dare call me unfair. There is nobody as fair as me. The exchange is even. I have them and they have what they want, though most of what they want is dictated by me. The exchange might be uneven but it’s fair because it’s fair to me.
I send him her shadow on the wall. It flickers into being. He can see the curves and know that something casts it. He can see just what’s not there to cast that shadow, just who’s not there. He reaches out for it but stops himself, knowing its just a projection and she isn’t solid. The Closetsong reminds her that she’s dead and that he’s strong enough for loss and that he’s already lost so much. It tells him he should just succumb to it, go back to the moments he spent inside the closet, go back to the hell he knew instead of the one he doesn’t.
“No.”
The world seems to tremble with the weight of this word. There is so much potential in the weight of this single word. He’s telling me I’m winning and that he’d rather choose to suffer something new. Very well. I would call that a prayer. It’s not a bad one. I let the shadow reach out a hand and stroke his cheek. He knows it’s just a shadow and that it’s cold but he welcomes her touch because he knows that it belongs to her.
“Come back here, please, I need you. I don’t know who took you away but you need to fight it.”
She tries to mouth the words “I can’t” but she is just a shadow and she belongs to me too much to slip away again. I’m not going to let her slip away again. The things I own are precious because I own them and I am committed to having. The playthings of gods are precious and make the toybox precious. And this one is more precious than the others. It’s alright that I admit that. This one is precious and she belongs to me.
“Come back here!” he shouts. He looks like he feels like winding up and slapping her. She’d probably like it. She’s been taught to like it. I’m tempted to give him her face for just a moment so he can feel his backhand making that fatal mistake. But something shakes me. Something makes me suddenly ill at ease. She is yanking on the strings, punishment or none, she is yanking on the strings, she’s terribly solid. She reaches out beyond me and she does something I don’t let her.
The shadow wraps its arms around him, makes itself flesh if only for a second, a second that I will punish her with decades for. I am surprised. She is so solid during this moment, ablaze with impertinence, fiercely his but beyond that, even worse than that, the worst thing that anyone can be in my sanctum, in my temple—she is fiercely and utterly hers. I cannot pull her away to punish her, something is stopping me, not just the Closetsong but the sudden, ferocious force of will that she is exhibiting.
“Come back to me!” I snarl at her.
“Let her stay,” he says under his breath.
The Closetsong is shuddering. The Heap is getting small. It knows what’s just happened. Antonia knows what’s just happened and she gives her all to cling to that flesh and claim another moment just as he clings to the idea of her possessing that precious flesh and possessing herself. He has prayed to me now. He has called out to me specifically. So this time, I oblige him completely. I let him keep her in his lap because he asked me to. I let her keep his flesh because he asked me to. I let myself creep into his mind and spirit because he asked me to.