It was finally time to send Del off to his new life with a hearty fare-thee-well. They gave Del a puff-n-sip wheelchair, somehow forgetting that he could do neither. Luci and Sancho – Del’s good friend – made quite a show of the wheelchair accessible changes made to his home. Everyone was anxiously waiting to leave. No-one felt comfortable with the three of them, but the court made their decisions concerning Del’s care. Luci and Sancho were it.
The gun shot was written off as an accident which entitled Luci, his legal guardian, several thousand dollars a month in government checks and benefits. All of Del’s net worth was joint-owned, technically. Sancho was there to help her liquidate and spend it. They just had to find Del’s investments first. They asked him, but it was clearly a no-go. Del wouldn’t tell them shit. Even if he could speak, Del would have told them fuck-all.
They wheeled Del up the ramp and through the front door. Sancho parked him in a corner of the living room. He made a great show of fussing over Del. The official visitors were impressed. They ignored the warning alarms blaring in their brain pans. Del, they figured, will do just fine. He has a strong support system in place. He has people to care and look out for him. They were anxious to get underway.
As soon as the representatives from the Department of Defense and VA left their home, Sancho’s smile slid away like the promises of an ill-intentioned suitor. He watched as they packed themselves into their government Ford sedans and drove away. They disappeared around the corner and were gone.
Luci sat with a sigh on the couch. She’d thought they were never going to leave.
Sancho then turned with scorn to Del. “So,” he began. He quickly made his way over to the wheelchair-bound Del. He continued, “Tell me, boy, just who is the fucking derelict now, big shot?” Sancho asked. Luci chuckled as she loaded her crack pipe. Sancho looked over to her, then back to Del. He said, “I’m going to make your beautiful wife suck on my dick, you fucking squid.” Sancho leaned into Del’s horrible face. “Right here in front of you. What do you think about that?” Sancho raised his eyebrows, waiting for the response he knew Del could not give. Luci lit the pipe. She said nothing. “I’m going to make you pay for dropping dime on me. Believe that.”
Del did.
SEVEN
Del sat motionless as Sancho removed his breathing tube. He was playing a favorite game of his: see how blue the gimp can get. Luci was sitting on the couch nearby, smoking crack and doing her nails. The television was turned on to the shopping network. Periodically Luci would pick up the house phone and order on Del’s credit cards some more useless and unneeded trinkets and baubles.
Del could feel himself fading. The clouds began to gather on the horizon of his peripheral vision. His oxygen level was dropping out his ass. He wondered if Sancho hated – or was it liked – him enough to let Del die, right here and now. But it was not to be. Sancho hooked him back up to his hose and breathing machine. Del was disgusted at himself for being grateful. Being tortured and humiliated like this was not easy for Del to swallow. It was a long way down from when he was in the West Pac fleet.
* * * * *
Del was a Second Class Petty Officer manning the Fire Control for the Guided Missile Frigate Kokhring. He loved his gig aboard the F.F.G ship. Del suspected any Navy man would. Shit, his Naval Enlisted Classification entitled Del to launch the motherfucking missiles. And it was cool as shit to watch the birds take off. They launched with so much thrust that the after-burn scorched the paint on the ship’s deck all the way down to bare metal. The humps had to paint the deck every time the ship made port.
Del was good at it too. He could launch and park one up a mosquito’s ass if he had to. He was looking at making Chief in a couple of short years. He didn’t even mind the long deployment stints. Other than being away from Luci (and always wondering what the fuck she was up to) for six long months at a time, Del loved being at sea. He’d been to all the classic West Pac ports of call: Japan, Subic Bay, hell, all over. It was great.
Del recalled the times he went with his shipmates to see the Filipino bar girls. The girls put on quite a show. They could pick up pesos with their snatch and, when the sailor would ask for it, give to him the exact change requested. Then all the rest of the squids would put a dent in their pay by getting their lances waxed. Del would never indulge in that way. He would just sit there and get drunk and watch his friends have at it. He was happily detached, being happily married. Stupid, was how he felt now. All the opportunities to get down and dirty Del had let slip on by. Always telling himself, and pretty convincingly, that Luci was also faithful to him. Del was able to convince himself that she was being a good girl.
Luci sure fucked all that up. Del was grateful, and always would be, for the quick transfer to the pistol range the Navy managed to find for him. It was good duty, but it wasn’t sea duty. And without the score of ninety day stars on his Sea Duty Ribbon it would be very difficult for Del to get that Chief’s promotion he coveted so.
It all came crashing down when Sancho sent Del the pictures of Luci. How bad was it that it did not matter one whit to Luci that he’d shortchanged his career for her. How embarrassed Del was that he couldn’t even control his own wife. That he tried to end his own life. And that he failed to even accomplish that.
Sancho was a piece of shit, no doubt about it, but Del understood why the washout hated Del so much.
Sancho used to be assigned to the pistol range with him. Del had witnessed Sancho selling cocaine and whatever those fucking pills were, while he was on duty. The guy was so stupid and brazen. Well, Del couldn’t have that shit going on under his nose and on his watch. So he ducked out and made the call. Shore Patrol got to the pistol range faster than a rabbit gets fucked. That spelled the end of Sancho’s short-lived career in the Navy. Sancho was hauled off, court martialed and booted out. Del had thought that was the end of that.
Jesus, was I wrong.
A hard slap from Sancho woke Del up.
“Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead,” he ordered. Sancho eyed Del closely. “You got pretty blue that time, almost purple.”
Del’s head was screaming pain at him from the hypoxia.
That fucking piece of shit, Sancho. God how I hate him. Anything. I would give anything for this to stop.
Del heard Sancho laugh. Luci was coming down now and getting a little woozy. She was staring glassy-eyed at the TV, sitting on the couch with a bong in her lap. She didn’t seem to notice what Sancho was doing to Del.
Why, baby? Why do you let this derelict do this to me? You’re my wife! Don’t you care at all? Don’t I mean anything to you?
“Hey, baby?” Luci slurred.
Yes, honey?
“What?” from Sancho. He disconnected Del again.
You’re sorry? You’re going to make him stop? Can’t you see that I am suffering?
“I want a party,” Luci replied instead.
A party, you ditzy cunt?!
“What kind of party?”
A fucking party?!
“A big one,” said Luci, emphatically. “With lots of people I don’t know. I wanna meet some new people. I want you to show me off. You should invite all your friends, Papi.”
Papi? So it’s Papi now? Daddy, oh Daddy wasn’t enough while you were getting your doughnut punched by him. Now, it’s Papi, too.
“Sure, baby,” Sancho replied, removing Del’s circuit again. “We’ll have ourselves a real blowout.” Sancho smiled at Del as he struggled for the breath he couldn’t get. “Don’t feel bad, son, you’ll be invited, too,” promised Sancho. “It’ll be a big hoot.” He started laughing at the thought of Del the gimp at a party, any party. “Just wait ‘til they get a load of you.”
I’m dying and you don’t even care…
Del passed out. Sancho’s laughter followed him far down into the inky forbidden darkness:
* * * * *
Del hit the hard-packed dirt floor, landing unceremoniously on his rump. It was both dark as sin and hot as hell
down there. The sound of water hissing steam was everywhere. His wheelchair was gone. Del touched his face lightly and he felt real flesh, not plastic. He was standing there, in the dark, but under his own power. He was breathing on his own. The hole in his throat was gone. The hole in his belly was gone. The IVs and catheters too. He could see nothing but darkness all around him. Del was surprised that he was not afraid. He could see, there was some light, but it only surrounded him in his immediate vicinity. He was trapped in a moveable bubble. Not knowing what else to do, Del began walking straight ahead.
As his eyes adjusted to the intense darkness binding him, the outlines of huge marble columns emerged. Del came to and walked through the entrance of a Roman bath house. The bath was further heated by an underground fire, stoked with bits of bark, wood chips and small pieces of kindling. The fire rose ever higher like the prayers of true believers.
Veiled human forms feebly emerged as Del made his way down the stone-footed passageways. Each of the bleak tubes of marble and pebble forked off into different directions of the unknown.
As he ventured deeper into the catacombs, Del noted varying gradients of temperature and humidity. There was no sure way he could, of course, but Del seemed to know the path he was supposed to tread. He pushed stubbornly onward.
Specters in tattered grave-cloth floated ever so subtly above the dust tracked floor, weaving their merry way. These doomed souls went about their labors, carried out as they were, deeper and deeper, into the unseen destinations of murk. They paid Del no mind. Their journey seemed pointless and dreary to Del.
A half-naked half-goat Halfling put more fuel on the fire, stoking it with a long, blackened human femur. Sparks flew up, lighting the coal black eyes of the horrid creature. It noticed Del staring. He appeared to be unsure as to where to go. The goatish Halfling briefly stopped his unending labors to point the way.
Del continued on. He traveled until he spied a long, low stone bench, large enough for a grown man. It was covered in layers and layers of filmy, filthy shroud. Yellowed and tattered, it reeked of sins done and those yet to be.
Standing next to the bench was a divine young female. She was barely dressed. Her breasts were new and perky and pointing at Del. Sweat drops dripped in steady thin streams from her dirty, dreaded hair, down her chest where they pooled at the slight upturn of her slopes.
The thickly scented perspiration then fell in pregnant raindrops to the floor where it sizzled and seethed with an almost cloying bouquet of incense. She held an ornate snuff box of priceless and ageless jewels, culled from the Dragon’s belly. The lid was unclasped. Her button nose flared again and again as she spooned finely ground nose powder in rapid sequence.
Her eyes were blood red and, oh, how they blazed at Del. He was enraptured, entranced by the image of her. She held him tight with no more effort than being. She paused a moment from her spooning.
“Lie down on your belly,” she told Del, “On the bench.” He did. “Cover thyself with that which has been passed down from generation to generation.”
Del complied in an instant, breathing in deeply the sins of the fathers. He buried his nose in the dirt and dust of ages. Lying face down, Del turned his head. Off to the side a man shouted out a warning. He slung boiling water onto the ground, spilling in a crackling wave toward the two of them. It burned everything in its path. Del’s girl had her feet bare and exposed. She did not move. She smiled at Del as he looked over to her and saw how the boiling water melted the skin away. It left naught but a gray-green leathery clawed foot in its place. The herald then began to use the wet floor to strop his razor. When the straight-razor was sharp enough to slice through tin, he shaved himself complete. From top to bottom, he scraped deep and harsh. His skin tore and he hummed with pleasure as he removed his flesh, layer by layer. The shaver stuffed the torn flesh into his mouth. He shoved, chewed, tore and swallowed the soft tissue returning from whence it came. The bloody humming man seemed happy. Hearing her sniffing again, Del returned his attention to the girl. He looked at her feet.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Del. He couldn’t help it. Del felt protective of her.
“Of course it does,” the young dreadlocked girl with the melted flesh feet replied. “But pain is a form of pleasure, a precursor of it. After a time.”
Del did not know how to answer that, so he said nothing. Again, he placed his face deep in the cloth. She began to massage the clenched and knotted muscles in his back. Her claws came out. Del could feel them. Her claws grew longer and sharp. They kneaded and pinched his muscles, piercing the skin, exposing the fascia, oozing and sodden.
“What are you doing to me? Del asked.
“I am helping you,” she told him. “I can help you heal, Del. I can take the bad away. If you let me, that is.”
“How can I do that?”
“By letting me in,” she told him.
The girl rolled Del roughly over onto his back. She began to kiss him. Her ardor was filled with more hunger than passion. The girl probed Del’s mouth with her tongue before shoving it, growing, down his throat. Her face followed. And then, with Del choking on her, she slid the rest of the way inside of him. Del felt whole for the first time since he shot himself. He felt great, wonderful, and he lay there for a long while. He reveled in his vigor and health. Still, he missed the girl with an ache that surprised him.
“Let me in, Del.”
“Yes,” he told her, “I need you.” Then he awoke.
It was at that moment, when he longed for her, craving her attentions, Del awoke to what was real.
Shitballs.
Oh, good fuck, he thought as he opened up his eyes. Everything was exactly the same.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Just when things were finally looking up, Del had to go and regain consciousness. Damn.
EIGHT
It was the night of Luci and Sancho’s big party at Del’s house and there was a nice brisk snap to the air. The night was cloudless and filled with bright stars. The new moon slivered overhead and the sounds of merrymaking filled the sky. The music was loud, the drink was plentiful and dope was everywhere. The neighbors had already been informed, warned and threatened, depending on the individual neighbor and their asshole quotient. Del, himself, was loathed to discover that he was to be an integral part of the evening’s entertainment.
There must have been close to fifty people at the gathering, all crammed together, all of them ripped out of their gourds. Del realized Sancho meant him to be there for everyone’s amusement. He had rigged Del’s wheelchair to go in an endless oval loop in the backyard. Del was perched in the mechanized wheelchair and strapped to the seat. Like targeting decoys in a booth at the county fair, the stoned and drunk guests were barking insults while taking turns shooting at Del with paint guns at fairly close range. Not one to limit the humiliation with Del, Sancho also had a video tape recorder set up on a tripod. It captured in glorious color Luci, coked out of her skull, blowing dude after dude in a corner of the living room. The guests would go in groups from one carnival side show attraction to the other. Sancho followed the groups, eliciting donations from whomever he could, whenever he remembered. He stuck the cash in his pocket, getting himself a nice roll. Fucked-up as he was, Sancho inevitably missed some partygoers, Those lucky bastards got to shoot the gimp or drop a nut on Luci for free. She still hadn’t figured out that Sancho was using and selling her.
He didn’t really know. But Sancho did, that’s for sure. Sancho knew exactly what he was doing. Even if some freebies got past him.
Red paint struck Del full in the chest. A huge biker bellowed at the top of his voice, “Direct hit, Baby!!” He whooped and carried on, drawing to himself a crowd. When he realized all the attention he was getting, the biker strode over to Del and his endless loop. Laughing and red in the face, the biker waited until Del looped around and was coming toward him. He put his foot down in front of the wheelchair, halting its progress. “You’re looking thi
rsty,” the biker told Del. He refreshed the chair bound man by pulling out his pecker and giving Del’s emaciated body a good golden shower. The big biker zipped his shit back up. Laughing hysterically, he made his way back to his buddies. High fives and pounded fists were shared, their good cheer spreading through the party crowd. No longer impeded, Del’s wheelchair resumed its lonely loop.
Sancho carried a big tray everywhere he went, collecting more donations before offering the long lines of coke. It was a ‘pay party’ and everyone was cool with it. None of Del’s old Navy buddies were invited, for obvious reasons. Del didn’t think they’d be amused.
Another pellet exploded the shins of his useless legs and more strangers were yelping their pleasure and delight in Del’s suffering. Everyone was having a good time.
Except for me.
“Look, the gimp’s crying!” someone shouted and it was true.
Del tried his best to maintain some semblance of dignity, but the paint splashed his face and got into his eyes. The tears flowed. It was not just from the sting of the paint. It was the degradation, of course, the shame of the entire spectacle. He wanted to kill or die. Either one was fine with him.
The Place in Between Page 6