by Rager, Bob
His head swam against a current that imbalanced his thoughts. A dark, warm, wet spread across his bare arm. He wondered what was in the basement. There were others, there had to have been others, over and over again as the John tried out by trial and error, victims, and instruments, and ritual behaviors that combined together worked to quench whatever demon raged inside him.
All his life, he struggled to escape the fate of these victims, to forget, to leave it all behind, and now…
Now the monster was back again slowly sitting across his ribs, thighs, pressing his arms to his side. The room slowly tilted to one side and then someone had turned off the lights.
‘Daddy, daddy,’ he thought. He thought he heard an explosion or maybe not. Someone grabbed and released the pressure across his chest. A heavy weight fell across his chest and face.
He struggled to open his eyes. He was very sleepy now, but he felt the stubble of a beard digging into his mouth. His eye lids, heavy with fatigue snapped open, suddenly awake. He was looking into the man’s eyes as empty and still as they had been when the John was alive.
He let go of the fight. Why had he been fighting so long anyways? Had it been worth it, all of it all, only to end like this? He was tired of all this thinking anyways, but wait, he wondered what he would say to his father when they met again.
He swam effortlessly in a gentle stream. Above soft, gray clouds here and there, pierced by a shaft of pure light like a painting in the mellow building, a landscape by Van someone or another. He floated along the warm current, watching the clouds pass, the banks of green broken here and there by masses of purple and orange flowers. Everything was silent, yet he sensed a melody, a humming, or the…
“Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus!” Someone said, “Here, help roll him off. Yeah, he’s dead. There’s one…Jeeeesus! He’s still alive! Hey! Hey! Hang on! Don’t go to sleep!”
He felt and heard a slap as someone struck his face again. He plunged back into the world, gasping for a breath again, the salty wet again in his mouth. His eyes, wild and huge, cast around the room now thronged throbbing with men, policemen, the air thick with the radio calls and streams.
He rolled to one side, his eyes face to face with the John, looking into the frozen eyes already clouded over, more opaque with each second.
He thrashed wildly, hoping to push him away.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay. We gotcha,”
He looked up and thought with disappointment that he had indeed died and was now looking at this apparition of another world, a carnival fair version of an angel, bat like eyebrows, lips like sections of pink grapefruit, a corona of red waves, a tight purple dress and green stiletto heels.
He smiled at fate’s little whimsy. The creature’s gun and holster were the final joke on him, and just before he fell into a heavy, untroubled sleep, he recognized Madame X.
About the Author
Bob Rager lives in Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Drive is his third novel.
Bob Rager was born in 1948 on the grounds of the French Embassy in Manila. He was born a US Army brat. He lived his childhood on US military bases in the US and Germany.
He graduated from an American Overseas Dependents School and studied Creative Writing at Columbia University, New York City, New York. He presently resides in Old Town Alexandria, VA, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.
He is also the author of the novel Broken Rainbows.