Fear Itself

by Jeff Gelb

  A few minutes later I pull into Maureen’s driveway. Her house is impressive. It ought to be—I pay enough for it. Contemporary in design, it features arches where one would expect angles, curves where one would expect comers. The lawn is meticulously maintained by the estate grounds crew. Maureen once told me she planned to put in flower beds, but I don’t think she’s done anything about it.

  She opens the door before I can knock. As I enter, she leans outside. She looks right, left, then pulls back inside as if it is all too dark and threatening. She throws a deadbolt home.

  “Evening. “ I put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze for a moment. “How are you?” Even through her blouse I can sense the stiff tension in her neck, shoulders, and back. Is that constantly there? How can she stand it?

  She looks up and smiles, rather unconvincingly. “I’m fine.” What did I expect her to say? “Come on in while I get us some coffee.”

  She goes into the kitchen; I take a right and walk down the hall. At the second door, I knock. A muffled voice invites me in. I step inside as Heather turns away from a drafting table. Maureen and I turned this bedroom into a studio. We bought her everything we thought she could possibly need so that she could keep working on her art, even though she wasn’t attending college anymore. I always arrive hoping to see the cluttered disarray of creativity—but the room is immaculate. Even the paper on the drafting table is marred only by a few lines, lines she could have made after hearing me pull up.

  “Hi honey.” I don’t try to approach her or kiss her. “How are you?”

  “I’m great.” She smiles, but the warmth doesn’t go any further than her lips.

  “Working on a project?” I ask hopefully.

  She shrugs. “Kind of …” She half-turns toward the table. “I’ve got lots of ideas. I just have trouble putting them down on paper.”

  I nod, trying to think of something else to say. I feel a hand at my shoulder and turn to see Maureen standing behind me. Together, we look at our daughter, her elbows on the sketch pad, her head resting on her palms. The open box of artist’s pencils remains undisturbed on the corner of the table.

  “Come on into the kitchen,” Maureen says quietly.

  “Fist.” Corey pointed to my right. “Check it out.”

  Fist looked in the direction the black man was pointing. There lay my mächete, half-hidden by the bedroom door. He went over and picked it up. He turned it over slowly, running his eyes up and down the blade as if it were an objet d’art.

  “What the fuck is this?” He swung the blade through the air, making it whistle. “You were gonna put your shitty little knife up against my Smith and Wesson?” He tossed the mächete into the air like a baton, twirling and catching it. “You thought you were gonna scare me off with this? Oh God, mister, please don’t hack us to death with your mächete?’ “ He smiled at Corey and both of them burst out laughing.

  Fist put the mächete’s tip against my cheek. It rested there so lightly I could barely feel it. “You thought you heard a couple crackheads. Thought we’d come for your TV and VCR.” He drew the blade down my cheek with excruciating slowness. “Thought we needed some shit to pawn off so we could make another dope deal, huh?” The razor-tip came to a halt in the cleft of my chin. Beads of perspiration curled around it. “No fuckin’ way. I don’t give a damn about your crap.”

  He whipped the blade away. He did it so quickly I couldn’t tell whether he had cut me or not. “Man, you sit there in your little asshole corner of suburbia, and you think you done shut the demons out. You think, yeah, I know there’s people on welfare and drive-by shootings and muggings and shit, but it can’t touch me here, I’m safe behind my walls.” He came in close to me. I inhaled his sour, rancid breath. “I’m here to tell you it’s all a crock of shit! There’s nothin’ that can keep me from comin’ in your fuckin’ house and doin’ anything I want!”

  He straightened up and looked at Corey. “What do you think? You think he’s got anything I don’t have yet?”

  Corey shrugged. “Not ‘less his dick is bigger than yours.”

  “This cocksucker? He’s gotta strap on a dildo to do his wife.” He ran the blade of the mächete up through the leg hole of my underpants, past my waist band, and then sliced. He made the same cut on the other side. A cotton flap fell away, leaving me naked. My shrunken genitals lay between my legs like a deformity, something that didn’t belong to me at all.

  “I don’t think so,” said Fist.

  “You can’t tell with a limp dick,” sneered Corey. He dragged Maureen’s chair closer to mine. Walking behind my wife, he freed her right hand. “Make ‘im hard,” he commanded. “I know you do it every night before you suck off his little thing.”

  Maureen moaned. “I—I can’t do that in front of you!”

  Corey took a step toward Heather, the flat of his hand raised menacingly. He was so huge I knew he would break Heather’s neck if he ever slapped her.

  “All right!” she shrieked. “Don’t hit her, I’ll do it!”

  It took a long time. I had never felt less like having a hard-on. While Maureen stroked me, Fist unbuckled his pants. He wore nothing underneath. Using his left hand, he began whipping his own penis. His eyes locked on Maureen’s hand, moving steadily up and doWn my shaft. His cock began to rise.

  “Okay, let’s check,” said Corey. He removed Maureen’s hand and tied it once more behind her to the chair. Then he used his hands to gauge how long my erection was. He held up his hands as if demonstrating the size of the fish he had caught that morning. Maintaining the distance between his hands, he moved over to Fist’s erection and placed his hands along the penis. My erection was longer than Fist’s by at least half an inch.

  “Oh man,” said Corey. “Fist, you done been out-cocked. Whitebread here’s got a longer dick than you.”

  Rage transformed Fist’s features. “No way!” He shook his head from side to side. His erection bobbed erratically in synch with his head. “No way he’s gonna have anything better than me!”

  He looked around the bedroom. Against one wall stood a low side table. It held some of Maureen’s expensive imported porcelain figures. Fist shoved them all to the floor, then he swung the table in front of me. He positioned it between my legs so that my penis rested across the tabletop.

  Fist spun the mächete in his hand. “What do you think?” Only at that point did I realize what he intended to do. “Should I take off an inch, or all of it?”

  “Take off as much as you can,” Corey suggested.

  I always feel as if I’ve gone snow-blind in Maureen’s kitchen. Almost everything is white and antiseptically clean. I sit in a chair at the breakfast table. Maureen has already poured black coffee for both of us. She sits across from me and laces her fingers around the mug. The little finger and ring finger of her left hand stick out; she can’t bend them like the others. As she talks she tries to keep her voice steady.

  “Dan, I need some more money.”

  I lick my lips. “Maure, I don’t have any more money to give you, or I would—”

  She waves her hand, cutting me off. “You do whatever you have to do. Practice longer hours. Skip a meal a day. Move to a smaller apartment. I don’t care. But I need more money.”

  I look around the kitchen. “What do you think you need?”

  “Look, I’ve been pricing motion detectors and I’ve found a system I want, but it’s about ten thousand installed, and I—”

  “Motion detectors!” I try, but I can’t keep the scorn out of my voice. “Why in God’s name do you need motion detectors?”

  Maureen looks at me with an expression of disbelief and compassion. “Dan, do you know how I spend my days? Do you? I sit in this house and I try to figure out all the ways someone could get at Heather and me if they wanted to. I know what you’re going to say. It’s crazy, and I agree, but I can’t help it. I try to put myself in their minds, and I think to myself, ‘Now: if I wanted to rape and kill Maureen Poulos and her dau
ghter, how would I get in there … ‘ “

  “This is ridiculous.” I’m trying to keep my voice down so Heather won’t hear us. “You live in the safest environment we could find. There’s a nine-foot wall around this entire development. Ground glass is embedded in the top. A security patrol with attack dogs walks around the perimeter, once an hour. There’s a button upstairs that rings directly in security headquarters …”

  “But Dan,” she interrupts, “what if they broke in downstairs, like they did before, and we didn’t hear them, and they came upstairs and overpowered me before I could reach the alarm … What then, Dan? Would I be any better off than I was before? At that point would it really matter if there were a thousand security guards around the house?”

  “Maureen, no one in their right mind would try to break in this house. There are too many security measures they’d have to get around before they even got to the house.”

  “We’re not exactly talking about people in their right minds, are we? I thought we lived in a safe neighborhood before. I thought burglaries and rapes and murders were things that happened in the inner city—but not where we lived.”

  “What happened could have happened to anybody, anywhere—”

  Maureen slams her mug on the tabletop. Coffee slops out onto the glaringly white surface. “But it happened to us, Dan. To you and me and Heather. I do not want that world to touch me or my daughter. I will never put myself in a position to be … violated that way again.”

  Maureen’s eyes seemed to have come loose in their sockets. “Please don’t do this!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him!” She tried to jerk her chair in front of mine, but she couldn’t move at all.

  Fist brought both hands over his head. “Ready?” He took several deep breaths. “One … two …”I could see him tensing his muscles. My penis was shrinking back up into my groin, but I still had enough of an erection that a swipe with the blade would cut it in half. My sphincter began to spasm—I almost shit all over the chair.

  Don’t beg, I told myself. That’s what they want, and it won’t do any good. Don’t beg …

  But I wanted to, oh, how I wanted to …

  “Three!”

  The mächete flashed over Fist’s head, arcing toward the table. He was going to sever my cock, and I would watch my own penis fly across the room. Blood would spurt from the stump between my legs and I would die tied to a goddamned chair …

  I don’t know how he did it. Fist stopped the swing of the blade just as it touched my flesh. I lost control of my bladder. Hot yellow urine sprayed onto the rug in front of me.

  Fist pointed at me. Corey looked up from my closet, where he was rummaging through my belongings. Both of them started laughing. ‘Oh Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” howled Fist. “You shoulda seen your fuckin’ face! That was great! You were scared shitless!”

  Corey brought my video camera out of the closet. “Shit, I wish we’d been taping it. We coulda shipped that to America’s Funniest Home Videos. We woulda won!”

  “Hell, not too late to start!” Fist held up his dangling cock with his left hand. “I still gotta do something about this!” He turned toward me. “Daddy, you get to decide! Which one is gonna suck me off? Your ravishing wife”—and here he pointed at Maureen with the mächete—”or your about-to-be-ravished daughter?”—and he swung the blade at Heather, curled up embryonically against the wall.

  Bastard, bastard! I wanted to yell, but couldn’t. They were forcing the responsibility of rape onto me, and it felt worse than the gun barrel to my midriff. The eyes of both women were boring in on me, but I couldn’t acknowledge them. I stared at Fist and bit down on my lips until I felt the blood flow.

  “Come on, asshole!” Corey demanded. “Make up your mind, or I’ll put a bullet in the little bitch’s kneecap!”

  I opened my mouth—and I honestly don’t know what I was going to say—when Maureen shouted, “Take me, dammit! Take me!”

  Fist wagged the mächete in front of my eyes, his face lit up with a malicious grin. “Awright, Maureen!” he crowed, but he was looking at me. He pulled her chair away from mine, then straddled her, putting his legs on either side of hers. His groin was at the level of her face.

  “You rollin’, Core?” He reached down and grabbed himself. “Okay, Maureen! Let’s make some movie magic!” He ran the head of his cock across her lips. “Open wide for Papa,” he crooned.

  Maureen looked at me. I don’t know what she saw in my face. Then she closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

  “You gettin’ all this?” Fist’s voice was tense. He pumped his hips against my wife’s face.

  Corey, video camera on his shoulder, came closer to the chair. “Move back a bit. I wanna get that expression on her face.”

  * * *

  “Actually,” I tell her, “I came tonight to ask you something. I would like for you to consider moving back with me.”

  Maureen swivels in her chair. She puts the back of her hand to her mouth. “How can you ask me that? I only just got to the point where I can sleep through the night again!”

  “Maureen … I still love you. I want to be with you. And Heather too, of course. We … don’t need to make love. I’m not looking for that. But I miss your company. Despite all that’s happened, we’re still a family. But it’s like you’re living on some sort of island, cut off from the world.”

  “What world, Dan?” Her crying distorts her words. “Why should we ever leave? We can get everything we need here. I don’t want to go out into that world again. Not when it can … hurt you like that … and there’s nothing you can do about it! There’s no way you can fight back!”

  I force myself to remain calm. “Maureen, you never leave this house. You have your groceries delivered. Heather has a visiting psychiatrist. You’ve made yourselves prisoners!”

  She nods vigorously. “I know! And you know what, I don’t mind! I like being a prisoner! And if I never have to hear about the economy or traffic jams or crime statistics again, it’ll be fine with me!”

  I reach for her hand; she pulls away. “You’ve put a wall between yourself and the world,” I say. “There is so much else other than pain and hurt. Your family misses you. And all your old friends. And there are concerts and museums and walks in the park …”

  She looks out the kitchen window into the night. I know that for her, it conceals countless threats: fists, knives, guns, and worse …

  “Can’t you see it coming, Dan? It won’t be very long. It’ll probably happen before we die. The countryside will be filled with bands of maniacs, murderous nomads, and they won’t obey any laws or rules. Oh sure, the government will try to crack down on them, but there’ll be too many, and not enough prison space, and no chance of rehabilitating them. And anyone who cares about decency … who cares about love or morality or their family … will live in small, guarded communities like Redfern … fortresses to keep us safe.”

  For a moment I envision what she says—tiny pockets of humanity surrounded by hundreds, thousands, of Fists and Coreys, shifting uneasily from side to side as they scent prey, hoping to find the smallest ones unprotected, to play with for a while and then kill …

  “Dan, you talk about my friends and family, museums and art galleries … well, if it can’t come here, inside my house … I don’t want it.”

  “Aaahh! Aaahh!” Fist’s hips were bucking faster, slapping Maureen’s cheeks. “I … ah! … I want you to watch me puttin’ it to your ?l’ lady, Danny-boy!” He whistled between his teeth. “Makes you wanna hurt me, doesn’t it? Makes you wanna gouge my eyes out with your thumbs … And … ah, Christ! … you’re sittin’ there and can’t do a fuckin’ thing about it! Just think … oh, yeah … when I’m done, it’s gonna be Heather’s turn to give Corey a blow job! An’ he can choke a cow with his rod! How’s that sound? Oooohh, Maureen, I’m about there, baby …”

  And I hated him, I loathed him, I wasn’t even able to look at him and see a human being. The realization that I could do noth
ing almost killed me. I wanted to save us, I swear I wanted to. Not right then, but later, I would see my hands slick with my own blood, running from open wounds where I’d abraded my wrists against the twine. But it was no use. Everything I had worked for in my life—my education, my business, my home, my good reputation—counted for nothing. None of it did me the slightest bit of good protecting my family.

  “Ah, shit, yeah, it’s coming, it’s coming …” Fist’s buttocks clenched and unclenched.

  Choking, gasping, Maureen jerked her head back, spitting his semen out of her mouth.

  “No! Fuckin’ whore! Don’t you pull away from me!” He slapped her across the face. “Bitch!” He backhanded her across the other cheek. “Don’t act like my come ain’t good enough for you! I know you swallow every bit of what hubby here shoots, so don’t act too high and mighty for me!” He slapped her a third time, and Corey put his hand on Fist’s shoulder.

  “I think she needs a lesson,” said the imposing black figure.

  “Yeah, I think so too.” He stooped and retrieved the mächete. He ran the blade under the strap of her nightgown and flicked up, then he sliced the strap on the other side. The shimmery green fabric fell to her lap. With her arms pulled back, her breasts were full and high. Maureen had always been proud of her breasts; they hadn’t started to sag yet, and I know her female friends often complimented her on their size and shape.

  Fist knelt down in front of her. It almost seemed as if he hadn’t seen breasts before. He held the mächete in his left hand. He put the gun down on the floor beside him. Then he reached up and cupped Maureen’s right breast with his free hand. She turned her head and closed her eyes. Noticing her response, Fist clenched his fingers suddenly, pinching her flesh. “You watch! Don’t you turn your head away from me, you slut!” He moved his fingers to her nipple and began to roll it around between his fingers.