Kind Nepenthe

by Brockmeyer, Matthew V.

  “That’s pretty hot.”

  “I knew you’d say that. But you can forget about that.”

  “Forget about what?” He kissed her, gently at first, then harder as her mouth opened and their tongues met.

  Then they were all over each other, his hand sliding up her shirt as she fumbled with his belt. He was pulling her skirt up, and she was sliding out of her panties, knocking the wine over as she stepped out of them. His jeans were around his ankles and he had her pressed against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, and he was inside her as she whispered in his ear: “Fuck me. Yeah. Come on. Fuck me,” her glasses slipping down, off her nose and clattering to the floor.

  And she was trembling, digging her nails into his neck with one hand and grasping his short dreadlocks in the other as she orgasmed, her eyes clenched tight, the scent of pot overwhelming in the humid air as she gasped in quick, short breaths. All the while thinking about Sunbeam.

  How soft her lips had been.

  4

  The next day Sunbeam was gone. The blankets she had been using lay folded up in the corner of the living room. Out in the kitchen, her bag of trimmed pot rested beside her tray and scissors, but her usual chair at the table sat empty. Rebecca had been hoping the two of them might share a breakfast glass of wine and a cigarette.

  Tatum, Theo and Boris were all clipping away, heads bent down in concentration.

  “Anybody seen Sunbeam?”

  “No,” Tatum said.

  Theo and Boris shook their heads.

  Maybe she was in the outhouse. Or taking a hike.

  Rebecca cooked Megan breakfast, then took her for a nature hike, half thinking they might run into Sunbeam out in the woods. But they didn’t, and when they got back she was still nowhere to be found.

  Rebecca decided to go to the back cabins and talk to Coyote.

  —

  She knocked on the door to his cabin and stepped inside. He was lying on a ratty sofa listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn, eyes shut, puffing on a huge joint. A string of Christmas lights gleamed above him, tiny bulbs of green and red cutting through the shadows.

  “Have you talked to Sunbeam?”

  “No. Why?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, gone.” Rebecca crossed her arm and glanced about the little shack. It looked disgusting. Empty beer cans everywhere. Molding posters falling off the walls. A table with a game of solitaire laid out, half finished.

  “Huh,” Coyote said, staring at the tip of his burning joint.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” He stubbed out his joint and sat up.

  “Don’t you care that she just disappeared?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. Burped. “Yeah. She should’ve finished the job before she bailed.”

  “How would she even get out?”

  “Probably walked out and started hitchhiking. Wouldn’t be the first. I thought she might cruise. Seemed like that type.”

  “You don’t think it’s weird? You’re not worried at all?”

  “Naw. Probably just missed her girlfriend. She’ll be back.”

  “She will?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I didn’t pay her. She’ll be back to get paid. Trust me. They always come back when they wanna get paid.”

  —

  “Sweetie,” Calendula said when Rebecca told him how upset she was that Sunbeam had just vanished, “you’re always getting yourself all worked up about things. I’m sure she’s fine. It’s like Coyote said, she probably just hitchhiked.”

  “The dirt road is ten miles out. Would she just walk that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the neighbor gave her a ride.”

  “The gun freak with the barking dog? That’s scary right there.”

  “Look, you yourself said she didn’t like it here. That the other trimmers were fucking with her.”

  “I know, but, we were friends. She wouldn’t leave without telling me.”

  “Maybe she was pissed you didn’t reciprocate her, you know.”

  That thought had occurred to Rebecca. But no, she wouldn’t be like that. Would she?

  Calendula put his hands on her shoulders, stared into her eyes. “She’s fine. I promise. It’s like Coyote said, she’ll be back when she wants to get paid. I’m sure she’ll end up helping trim the next harvest. Just relax and forget about it.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Okay?”

  No, it wasn’t okay.

  5

  Coyote threw an armful of weed down on the table, stepped back, and slapped his hands together. “That’s it. The last of it.”

  “Thank God,” Tatum said. “I’m so ready to get out of here.”

  “What?” Coyote belched, his fat belly sticking out from his filthy tie-dye T-shirt. “You didn’t have a good time?”

  Tatum winced and spit out a sigh. Shook her head.

  “I had a great time,” Theo said. “Thank you for having us.”

  “See?” Coyote said to Tatum. “Why can’t you be more like your friends?”

  Theo and Boris grinned and shot each other a quick glance.

  The next morning Coyote was sitting at the kitchen table with a notebook and a pen, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, tapping away at the calculator function of his iPhone.

  “And the winner is, Theo! With thirty-two pounds trimmed.”

  “Yah!” Theo said, holding his arms up in the air like he’d just won a marathon.

  “Bullshit,” Tatum said, grabbing the notebook. “No way he trimmed more than me.”

  “Check out the numbers, sweetheart. You actually came in third. Even Boris trimmed more.”

  The brothers high-fived.

  Then Coyote was slapping greasy bills down onto the table. “Weigh plus pay means go away,” he said, dishing out a stack to each of them.

  “What about Sunbeam?” Rebecca asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Isn’t she going to get paid?”

  “I don’t see her sitting here.”

  “But all the work she did. That’s not right.”

  “Hey! I’ve got her numbers. She’s covered. Trust me, she’ll be back. Like I said, they always come back when they wanna get paid. And Rebecca?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to pay you until I sell a little weed.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “No, Coyote. No.”

  “Can’t get water from a rock. I’ll be back with cash.”

  “As in when?”

  “Soon.”

  Outside, Tatum strutted up to the van and opened the driver’s side door, turning and giving a nod of her head to Calendula and Rebecca before she swung herself inside, shoulders set stiff and straight, lank white hair churning with her movements. The van started up with a spattering cough and the shriek of black metal. Theo and Boris piled in through the side door with grins and friendly waves, Theo clutching at his preacher’s hat, and they were gone, up the dirt road, disappearing into the hills. A few minutes later, Coyote followed them out, honking the horn and waving as he passed.

  Megan ran around in the front yard, singing her song: “The leaves are all brown. The leaves are all brown.” Rebecc
a felt a pang in her heart. Gnawing on her thumbnail, she wondered if Sunbeam really would have just left like that, without saying goodbye. A raven swept down, its shadow moving swiftly over the earth before it perched in a tree and stared down at them.

  Rebecca realized they were all alone again, and a chill ran down her spine.

  FOUR

  “Whom the Gods would destroy . . . they first drive mad.”

  —Euripides

  “Red rover, red rover,

  Send that one over.”

  —Line from a popular children’s game

  1

  Calendula was eating Rebecca’s pussy, working his tongue through the wet folds, lapping at her juices, her ass gently cradled in his hands, her legs wrapped around his neck, the softness of her inner thigh pressed against his cheek.

  He slipped a finger into her. She moaned and grabbed him by the hair, taking a clump into her fist and rubbing herself against him. He took his free hand from her ass and slid it up over her hip and to her left breast, caressing it, feeling her nipple harden beneath his fingers. She arched her back, one arm bent behind her head, the other gripping his hair tighter in her fingers until it pained him. But the pain was nothing, he was so enthralled by her coming orgasm.

  She smelled of earth and fruit: a salty, slightly sea-tinged taste, and pot. She smelled and tasted a lot like pot. Reeked of it actually. He extended his tongue fully into her, burrowing his face between her thighs, the taste and smell of weed overpowering now as she began to writhe and moan, her legs suddenly tightening around his neck, her grip on his hair like a vice. And now he was fucking her with his tongue, stretching it as far as it would go.

  Then he panicked, for something inside her had clamped onto his tongue with what felt like tiny teeth. Fangs. And it would not let go. It began to tug on his tongue, yanking it painfully. He struggled, pulling backwards as whatever was inside her stretched his tongue out to an impossible length.

  She bucked like a horse, both hands now gripping his hair, his tongue swelling with the trauma. As his mouth filled with blood and he felt his tongue beginning to tear, he opened his eyes and saw it wasn’t Rebecca at all.

  It was something hardly human, though definitely female. A demon of some sort, mewling and cackling, half-woman, half-plant, green with glowing-red eyes, sharp teeth, and great curved horns.

  Branches extended from it, swaying like the tentacles of an octopus, with Venus-fly-trap-like pinchers on the ends, snapping open and closed. He struggled and was just able to crane his head up high enough to see huge, bat-like wings blooming out of her back. Black and leathery, they began to beat, then another vicious tug sent his face slamming against her pubic bone.

  His tongue was ripping now, torn at the edges and affixed only by the thick center muscle. And there was another scent, behind the reek of pot, something putrid and rotten, like garbage or death, and a thick, viscous slime was oozing from her, coating his face and burning his eyes. Her lips went black and expanded into a great maw, chomping, slurping, her cunt growing bigger and bigger, till it swallowed his face, pulling him into her.

  As his tongue was ripped free from his mouth, his head was consumed, her pussy lips gobbling at his neck and working on his shoulders. And he could feel her rising up, sense her great wings flapping and lifting her up airborne as he hung down below, flailing and kicking his feet, screaming tongue-less within her.

  Calendula awoke on the grow room floor, surrounded by plants, the musky, dank miasma of weed coating his mouth and throat. How had he gotten here? The last thing he remembered was going to the back shacks.

  Yeah, he’d been going to the back shacks.

  There was a break in the rain and he’d decided to take a walk, shuffling along the worn path without purpose, meandering slowly, head hazy, pausing to run his fingers over a rusted Harley frame, the metal soft with patches of moss, and then kicking at an old baby-doll head.

  And when he looked up the path, to where he was heading, there was Coyote’s cabin: a claptrap of weathered boards that seemed to be somehow beckoning him.

  He passed the generator and stepped up to the door of bolted-together redwood slabs, placed his fingertips against its rough-hewn surface. His heart fluttered quick in his chest like the wings of a baby sparrow. He pressed softly, a rock in his throat, and the door slowly swung open.

  A musty smell permeated the place, but not a bad one necessarily. The sweet, slow rot of a grandparent’s house, a basement, den, or ancient library. Over the windows hung tapestries festooned with paisley and mandalas which gave a crimson tint to the light.

  He glanced around: plywood floor, a single bed in the corner, sofa, a counter with a portable cook stove atop it, small sink, and a table with two chairs on either end, playing cards spread out in an unfinished game of solitaire.

  His eye twitched savagely and he ran his thumb over the rough surface of the wart. On the walls hung old concert posters: Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore 1968: a flying eyeball gripping a skull, a snake-like tail slinking behind it; The Grateful Dead, New Year’s at Winterland with the Blues Brothers, 1978: a blue rose and the sun dawning over snowy mountains.

  Jesus, he thought, these things must be worth a fortune, and here they were, thumbtacked to the wall, no frames, the damp and rot slowly eating away at them, their corners yellowing and curling. He caressed one, running his finger over the psychedelic font that spelled out Grateful Dead. The paper was thick and soft. What a shame. More than a shame, it was a fucking crime to leave these works of art hanging here unprotected like this. His finger went up to one of the tacks that secured it to the wall. He wondered if he should pull it free, when a deep voice bellowed from the corner.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you, Hoss.”

  He turned, his heart leaping, his body going cold all over.

  Had he really heard that?

  His eye twitched, the buzzing in his ears rising a decibel. Nothing. There was nothing there. He was losing his fucking shit, is what it was. This place was driving him fucking mad.

  What the hell was he doing back here anyway? It was spooky as hell, the rot and decay, the trash, the way the forest loomed and it was always dark. He turned to leave, quickly stepping to the door and that voice—a grumbling, scratchy baritone—came again.

  “That’s right, run away. And what type of faggot name is Calendula anyway? What are you, a pretty little flower?”

  And then he was running, fear flowing slippery and cold through his veins. Bolting away from the cabin, down the road. And then . . . and then he was with Rebecca. Kissing her, fondling her breasts, pressing his lips to her belly, her thighs, as she spread her legs and his head fell between them.

  But that hadn’t happened. That was a dream.

  He pushed himself up from the damp floor and stumbled out of the stiflingly hot room, past the plants, iridescent green and trembling slightly in the breeze of the fans. He wandered into the kitchen where Rebecca and Megan sat at the table, a large jigsaw puzzle half put together in front of them.

  “There you are,” Rebecca said. “I thought I saw you out on the trail.”

  “No. I was…in the grow room.”

  “Are you all right? You don’t look so hot. You’re all pale and clammy.”

  “I’m fine. Fine.”

  “Well, we’ve got a problem.”

  “A problem?”

  “Yeah, no water.”

  “No water?”

  “No water.”

  She went to the sink, full of dirty dishes, and turned the knob to demonstrate her point. Nothing came out. He stared at the puzzle on the table, tried to decipher what the picture was, but there were too many
missing pieces.

  “Hello? Calendula?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think you can fix it?”

  “Huh?”

  “The water. Do you think you can figure out what’s wrong and fix the water?”

  “The water. Yeah, I can fix the water. I’m sorry. I fell asleep and just woke up. I, ah, had a nightmare.”

  “Mice again?”

  “No. It was something else. It can’t…I don’t really remember.”

  “Okay.” She seemed wary, dubious, but there was a hint of concern in her voice as well. They’d all been having wicked dreams. Then, playfully, she said, “Well, snap out of it, big fella. All right? We need water.”

  “Sure. Sure. Probably just an air bubble in the line. Or maybe it froze somewhere and burst. I’ll follow it up to the tank.”

  2

  Calendula made his way to the back of the chef house, a foggy drizzle pissing down on him. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and cursed himself for never having bought a decent rain jacket. The yard was flooded and his shoes were squelching water by the time he found where the black polypipe waterline connected to the house and then snaked up the hill to the spring-fed tank: an ancient, five-thousand-gallon beast of a barrel made out of redwood.

  The hillside was banked in by clouds. As he climbed upward, following the waterline along, looking for where it could have sprung a leak or somehow gotten clogged, he found himself swallowed in mist. He found a spot where the line had been repaired, spliced back together with a three-quarter-inch connector. He knelt in the wet leaves and worked the line apart to see if there was any water getting to this point.

  Nothing. Just a thin trickle.

  Could just be air in the lines, he thought, and sucked on the tube, hoping to get some flow going. He got a solitary mouthful of foul-tasting water, but that was it. Whatever was going on, it was further up the hill.