Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
Page 18
separated it.
“It felt like it wasn’t me there. Melinda wasn’t the one on Mom and Dad’s bed; Millie, a toy doll with moving doll parts, had taken her place. I’ve never told anyone this… the doll… this thought was the basis for countless nightmares. Over the years I’ve had the dream less and less, but occasionally it’ll come up: a naked doll that mean boys gawk at in a toy store window, and want to take me home to play with. Every mother tells them the same thing: no more playing with dollies until you can learn to play nice! The brats whine and throw a tantrum and the bitch mom caves in and goes in the store and pulls me out of the display case. I can’t talk, but what I’m desperate to scream is Boys shouldn’t play with little naked girl dolls!”
“Melinda, please,” Howard begged. “Please don’t say stuff like that. I, I can’t take it anymore.”
“That’s the plan,” she said inwardly. “Howard, if you could go back in time and walk into Mom and Dad’s bedroom right then, what would you do? God’s honest truth. No saying what you’d like to do, what would you really do?”
“Seriously? You have to ask? What do you think?”
They stared silently at each other. Melinda wasn’t in the mood for assumptions and waited for an answer. “I’d stop them any way I could!” She continued her inquiring stare, unsatisfied. He lowered his voice, in earnest said, “I’d kill them. I’d kill them and not think twice about it.”
Not think twice about it, Melinda thought. Ain’t that the truth, brother.
“The older Cobb snapped at the younger to take the tape off my ankles and take my pants off. Lester gazed slowly over the whole of my bare torso, his hand trailing his gaze. Gliding over my stomach, my boy-like chest, my wet cheeks. Then said something completely unsuspected, confusing. He told me I was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. That didn’t make sense to me at all. If he thought I was pretty, why was he hurting me? Things that I found pretty I wanted to protect, keep them from harm.
“Damien argued his brother’s comment about me being pretty: ‘You’re a fool. She doesn’t even have tits yet. Debra Eaverson, now that chick is a knockout.’
“Lester ignored him. Those protuberant black eyes were full of secrets, and hungry for more. With two fingers he ran the length of the knife wound, still seeping. The blood put him in some kind of trance.”
“I couldn’t stop staring at him. Even as Damien unzipped my pants and worked them past the catch of my hips, I wouldn’t take my eyes off of Lester. He licked a wet fingertip and smacked his tongue and lips, evaluating the taste. I wonder what it tasted like to him, because innocence doesn’t have a flavor. He couldn’t taste a child so sheltered from reality that she had considered that the worst might be behind her, and with a little luck, might go on to live a normal life. A girl whose biggest fault was her naïveté. A virgin to the cruelties that exist in mankind, for the cruelties that exist in mankind.
“He energized from the blood, some of which was on his lips, and finally took a break from ogling the Millie-doll to acknowledge the living girl in his custody by virtue of looking me in the eyes. If it was possible to appeal to his good nature, I tried with my pleading stare. Lester continued gazing in my eyes as he swooped in to kiss me. Since I’d never been kissed, I didn’t understand what he was doing with his tongue. I’d never been more scared of a man than I was at that moment. Weren’t tongues only for tasting and enjoying food? Not understanding left the door open to infinite possibilities, all dark, and it scared me to no end. As much—”
“Stop,” Howard said.
“As much as I hated the two boys, I couldn’t escape the embarrassment of what I did next.” In a voice so small Howard wasn’t sure what she said: “Wearing nothing but a pair of panties, I emptied my bladder.”
“Stop. Please,” Howard repeated more desperately this time.
Melinda’s eyes and cheeks were red and swollen. She’d been crying, much like Howard had been, but there was something about confessing that she emptied her bladder that triggered a new wave of emotion. “Embarrassed, but equally t-terrified, terrified that me peeing would anger them. Lester still had his mouth on mine when Damien started cr-cracking up. Called me a… stupid baby. Something had ch-changed in Lester, and now he wasn’t much for his Millie-doll being laughed at, brothers or not. He told Damien to shut up.
The paper-towels were abandoned, her nose was now running unchecked, and Howard was furious. Incensed. And seeing red.
“Just inches from my head was the kn-nife that Lester had used to cut my shirt, and I wondered if it was about to be put to use again. I should have been reaching for it to stick in them. Lester wedged a fingertip just under my waistband and ran it side to side.”
“Fucking stop it!” Howard cried.
“Then ran his finger up my to my neck and looked up at me. My expression surprised him. I don’t know what he expected to find, but I sure as hell wasn’t smiling. He saw the face of a little girl so full of terror; a child learning things unimaginable.”
“Would you shut up already!”
“The entirety of my innocence teetered on the edge, just waiting to be pushed off the cliff. It came down to me begging please. And beg I did. Lester pushed me off the cliff.”
Howard sprung off the couch. “You fucking lied to me!” He needed to be anywhere but in that room. He headed for the stairs.
Melinda said wait but it didn’t come out loud enough for him to hear. She tried again. “Wait!”
Howard stopped, looked over his shoulder, shook his head and continued on.
“Howard, that’s when you came in!”
“Bullshit! You’re a fucking liar!”
“No, Howard. Don’t you remember? Please remember. Think!”
Howard stood in the den’s archway and shouted, “You’re going to tell me this right now! Did I kill them and did I kill them before it was too late? Don’t you fucking lie to me, either!”
“You did. I’m not lying to you.” She pulled the blanket up to her eyes. Her already soft voice became muffled. “With a bat. Sounded like… an egg cracking.”
“Good. Good! I hope they suffered first!”
“Howard, you mostly just killed one. I’m responsible for Lester dying.”
Howard returned to the couch and knelt beside Melinda, cupped the back of her head. “I hope you don’t feel bad for doing it. Because you telling me that I killed one of them is the best news I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m glad it is.” She lowered the blanket. Her face was a battlefield of emotion. “I was hoping you’d feel that way. Killing someone haunts you forever, so I needed to put it in context before you knew. Before you remembered.”
“I still don’t remember. How did you kill Lester? Sorry to probe, but I need to know. I need to know every gruesome detail of how that maggot piece of shit died.”
“After you hit Damien over the head, Lester jumped on you. You two were grappling each other, so I picked up the knife on the bed and stuck it in his side. Twice.”
“And that was that? Damien died from the bat to the head and Lester died from two stab wounds?”
She nodded, retreated back under the blanket where Howard listened to her sobbing.
Howard hugged her through the blanket. “Thank you for telling me, for being honest with me. I’m sorry for getting angry.”
As she sobbed under the blanket, Howard did some thinking. “Any idea why they did what they did? Why us? Granted the Cobb brothers were insane, but was it random that they chose us?”
“I guess. Margo later told me they had a reputation for being weird. Said they got that way after some family tragedy. But I think we were just unlucky. In the wrong place at the wrong time. And Howard, you did make it to me on time. It’s a weird thing to tell my brother, but so you know, I lost my virginity at twenty. Not nine.”
Twenty? Gees, Howard thought, who’d have guessed that someone on drugs would hold out until they were twenty? Talk about selective morals!
* * *
&n
bsp; After drinking two dusty bottles of wine from Cindy’s wine cellar, it was inevitable that the subject would resurface. It was the only thing on their minds. Howard was perplexed at Melinda’s anguish over the assholes’ much-deserved deaths. She said it was more than that. It wasn’t their deaths that she pained over. “The Cobb brothers died; we survived. But if we weren’t dead, what were we?—because we certainly weren’t living. Wouldn’t you agree? Were our lives not taken seventeen years ago? Howard and Melinda’s lives? You and I aren’t those two people anymore. We don’t belong inside them. I don’t know who you really are any more than I know who I am. I have to say, Howard, four kids died that day. It was the dawn of New Melinda; the beginning of New Howard.”
“That name, Cobb,” Howard mused, “there’s something about it. I can’t put my finger on it.”