Private Midnight

by Kris Saknussemm

  “I don’t see any wings,” I said.

  Best I could do.

  “Oh, you will, Sunny,” she whispered. “You will.”

  She rose and led me upstairs. The house was dead quiet now and seemed like an ordinary shorefront mansion. Whatever crackpot things she said, I could only think about her fragrance. I felt dizzy and torn loose from all my moorings. But seeing her wings—that’s what I’d bought my ticket for—the real dark ride.

  Beyond the haunting of Stacy and the leering haze of El Miedo—and trying to escape them both through Briannon, my whole life of late—too late—had been the disappointment of wives, the scent of second-hand snatch and the rings of truth along a bar—and all the sickness and insecurity that came with chucking that crutch in the fire.

  I’d rolled over bodies. I’d put dickwads in handcuffs. I’d gobbled onion grease burgers behind the wheel of a fat old car, the machine equivalent of a living fossil. I was ready to see some damn wings. Who could’ve been more ready than me?

  We reached a door in the second storey hall that I didn’t remember.

  “I’m going to take you into that bedroom with me,” she said, and her voice seemed to come down a longer hallway than I’d ever investigated.

  “It’s a very special bedroom. Just for you, Sunny.”

  After all the longing and hoping to touch her that way—the fear and frustrations—the “training” she’d put me through—it had all been building up to this. To know her body. To be inside her. The shadow garden.

  “Open the door,” she invited, and when I turned, she’d changed. She wasn’t only blonde now, her face was totally different.

  I’d been with her the whole time—but what did time mean in Eyrie Street? In any case, I recognized too well who she looked like. My jaw dropped like a weight. Even her voice seemed to change so that she sounded just like Stacy … the air conditioned funhouse I slipped into one summer night when El Miedo was closing in. The woman who always called it “making love” and sang to me when me made it. A woman in a dream I couldn’t stop having and yet could never have. A voice more like a fragrance that tortured me. “Only memories remain … the ghosts and the pain …”

  “The face you see is often a face you’ve saved,” she said. “A face you’ve tried to throw away. To forget. Or a face you’ve folded with great care and hidden in a drawer. Does it appeal to you now as much as it did then … once upon a time?”

  I couldn’t answer. The vividness almost made me keel over.

  Genevieve pushed the door in the hallway open, and what met my eyes couldn’t have been real—and yet was there before me in unrelenting detail—right down to the knick-knacks on the nightstands.

  It was our bedroom—the one I’d shared with Polly when I’d been cheating on her with Stacy. Banging fresh pussy and going out of my mind.

  It was all there. The same dreary flocked wallpaper I never got around to taking down. There was even the illusion of the lemon tree that stood outside our window—while here we were now on the second floor of a tall house on a cliff overlooking the harbor.

  The only difference between the marital bedroom and the chamber I faced was the chains bolted into the walls on either side of the bed—with plush ermine grips to encase the whole hands, not merely the wrists.

  “Should I undress?” I asked, and I was surprised at the meekness of my voice.

  “You do not undress! In my presence, you strip—you peel!”

  I was taken aback at the vehemence of her tone and nodded dumbly, too overwhelmed to say or do anything differently. Removing my clothes, my body felt more foreign than it ever had—as if I was made of some kind of plasma, unable to maintain shape.

  She produced from under the bed a strawberry pink nightie, the exact kind Polly often wore.

  “You recognize this?” she asked, stuffing it under my nose.

  I gulped and nodded.

  “Put it on.”

  “What?”

  “Put on your wife’s nightie!”

  My eyesight misted, but when I’d laid down, naked but for the filmy nylon, and she’d secured the restraints to my hands and allowed me to feel how suspended I was, in a crucifixion pose on the bed, I clearly saw her take off her clothes, slowly, ritualistically—tempting and teasing me with each revealed inch of her flesh, her perfect fragrant, haunted flesh.

  When she produced the harness I gasped.

  “Oh, Sunny,” she laughed, coy and girlish again—and then cruel and hard. “I hope you weren’t so arrogant to think that you were going to enter me!”

  The harness was made of some kind of antlers, but the actual attachment looked like it was made of living glass, jeweled with a hieroglyphic pattern that I seemed to recognize. The face I remembered from so many hungover mirrors and remorseful mornings.

  “Spread your legs,” Genevieve—in the body of Stacy—commanded … her full smooth breasts jutting forth, the jagged belt tight around her waist and pelvis, the jeweled projection, pointing accusingly at me.

  “Are you going to …?”

  “Just some simple role reversal, Sunny? Is that what you think?”

  She gave me a smile that chilled my blood.

  “It’s something you’ve fantasized about, isn’t it? But no, Sunny. Bodies, like rooms, change with time and mood. Your body is changing. You’ve felt it, tried to deny it—begged for an explanation. But I think a demonstration is so much more instructive. What I’m about to do now will clarify things for you even as it mortifies and disorients you. Because you see, this apparatus is modeled on your own contribution. The member you remember provided the mold. And I’m going to use it to penetrate you … in a very new way.”

  I tried to leap from the bed, but the restraints wouldn’t let me. Then when her words penetrated my understanding, the restraints were unnecessary, because I fell back onto the bed, limp and bedraggled, shrieking. My body had changed. It was no longer mine at all—it was some new form. Only it didn’t feel like a form. It felt total and deep. I stared down and saw my breasts, small but firm. It felt like a damp chicken breast when I rubbed my thighs together—then a fleshier part—like sashimi.

  I was a woman. I smelled like a woman.

  She gently massaged the crystalline head against me, and my body trembled. I understood now. In the tissue and the organs. I could hear it in the pitch of the screams that came out of my mouth. Then she entered me.

  At first it hurt—but then I began to lubricate around the implement. Only it seemed to warm and pulse with my heat and moisture. My head spun. My arms drew back, the nightie pulled open, my tits jiggling as she thrust, at first slowly, then more deeply.

  Then from out of Stacy, I saw Genevieve’s wings unfurl, like luminous shadows. Neither like an angel’s nor a vulture’s—but something fiercer—more regal and wretched all at once. Armored with pain and light. At last I spied the tattoo gleaming like molten metal. I had to close my eyes to keep them from burning. But I couldn’t keep them closed.

  The jagged bone points in the harness cut into her with each stroke—so that blood spurted. I was covered in blood and mare’s milk—fish paste and zircon beads of sweat.

  Shards of memory and ripped silk music of busted zippers and panting—scratch of distant tango music rising above a broken surf. Visions of naked men on giant microscope slides … scent of lemon leaves coming in the window … exploding glass and soft animal parts … car going over an embankment … bladder bursting sobbing blood and Vaseline smell of bottle rocket cheerleader ozone … now … now is the time to die in colors.

  The flocked wallpaper room returned in a mess of silver entrails and strewn petals.

  I’d been murdered and reborn in one unnatural act.

  When my heart, if my own heart it still was, started beating normally again, I saw that Genevieve had changed again. She was back to the woman I’d met that Molotov cocktail sunset when I first thought she was a high class hooker and that maybe McInnes was doing me a good turn. I, meanwh
ile, had changed further.

  I knew without having to glance at the oval looking glass who I’d become.

  I was beautiful, ruthlessly blonde and fifteen years younger. I was exactly what Stacy looked like that first night I saw her. The clothes Genevieve pulled out from the closet for me to wear were the same as what the temptress had on the summer night I fell for her, right down to the wristwatch and the earrings.

  The next thing I knew I was fully and expertly dressed, looking just like my ghost lover … who could sing the past away … but at a price I could never afford … and was still repaying … all these nights later.

  “Tomorrow, when you return, Sunny, the crisis of your transformative education will have passed. Soon you’ll be seeing yourself and the world in a new light.”

  “I don’t believe this!” I howled, my make-up that I’d never applied running like black tears.

  “Of course you don’t,” she said, nodding. “How could you? That’s as it must be. And you still have so much to learn. Now go home … straight home and have a hot bath. Don’t try to run away from this, as your first instinct used to be. You can’t. It’s not like surgery. It’s far deeper and more complete. Or soon will be. That’s why you must take care. You’re in a transitional state and you must look after yourself to avoid harm.”

  “Harm?” I squalled. “You’ve done something to me—!”

  “You’re absolutely right, Sunny,” she agreed. “I have done something to you. You’ve been infected with a gift. Cursed with what you wanted from the moment you glimpsed this house. Something beyond your imagination. Go home now and nurse yourself. A new life is beginning. Retreat back to your old life tonight and turn the lights down low. Come the morning, you’ll feel refreshed and ready for the final stage.”

  My make-up kept running as she led me down the stairs and out the front door, the house still quiet, no one around. I probably looked like hell. I wanted to look good, to look sexy, desirable. They weren’t some empty wishes—I suddenly felt them. I could sense a subtle but pervasive shift in my perceptions. My walk like my voice had changed. I didn’t have to think how to act.

  Another part of me wanted to slap her down right there. Stomp her to a pulp. But I couldn’t. I clicked away on my heels. Like a girl.

  My first thought was to drive as fast as I could back to the apartment—snuggle on the bed with Pico and eat the other box of Dilley’s Chocolates that I’d stowed in the pantry. I wanted to cry my eyes out, to try to get straight. To think of a way out. A way ahead. But Genevieve had advised me to go home and I wasn’t in the mood to follow her advice. Her words had led only to impossibility and mystification. Another world? Fuck, another form of life. I needed to strike out on my own.

  When I got behind the wheel—and the old car seemed so wrong for me—I found myself driving down the street and around to the empty parking lot of Funland.

  I was suddenly gripped with the notion that there had always been a Haunted House there. I’d just forgotten it. Or had wanted to forget it. It didn’t take away from the razzle dazzle she’d been able to pull off, but it would’ve made it easier to explain. I had to see if the Foto Booth was there. I don’t know why. What could it possibly matter now? Nothing made sense. Nothing! I slipped inside. But not before I glanced at my Lady’s Rolex. It was much later than I thought—maybe in every way. 2 AM. I’d been in Eyrie Street far longer than I’d realized. I’d been way too long at the fair. And now I was part of the freak show.

  A near full moon was riding high and the wind was coming off the water, not cold but noisy, clanking in the torn metal and the vacant buildings like a restless dream the park was having. Gulls and pigeons slanted through the faint fluorescent light in the parking area, disappearing and reappearing as they crossed over into the dark of the dead rides.

  I had to know, in the only way I could think to find out, if what had happened on my last visit was an hallucination or something real and solid that I could touch. Maybe I was hallucinating now. God help me.

  Frayed wires pinged against steel. This was a place to dump a body. A place to hide out—and wait for something to trip the web. Intruder. Fresh game. Woman on deck. But I had to see for myself. I had to verify.

  When I made it to the other side of the Midway, I did. There was nothing there. Where the Haunted House had been the other night was like a hole in a mouth where a knocked-out tooth used to be. I wondered if I’d even been in Funland, or if I’d just been glazed out in Eyrie Street. For all I really knew, I might still be sitting on that sofa in the front room with a silk scarf over my eyes. Dreaming awake.

  But if I was dreaming, than I dreamed I heard a bottle smash. It brought instantly to mind the makeshift hovels I’d seen during my day visit. Suddenly I realized I was no longer a big, meaty detective with a police shield and a registered handgun. That was the first dread rush of a new truth—and I’d say my balls sucked in—but I’d be lying. And crying.

  It was too late too quickly. Some insect alertness in the hive mind of Liquid Crystal had tipped them off. Four of them, all lit up with the drug. Shadows converged, hands grabbed. Then I was flat on my back.

  I felt them tear at me. Their faces loomed up before mine, more odious and misshapen than any masks in Eyrie Street. Primal. Bestial. Day blind things that lived by scent and vibration. One was an albino.

  “Do her man, do her!” he gurgled.

  “Give me that bottle! Yoo gonna bleed baby! Up your fuckin’ ass!”

  And I would’ve bled—all over the littered, abandoned Midway where they used to sell Sno-Cones. I’d have spat acid at them if I could’ve. But I didn’t need to—because in one instant a meteoric light did to their eyes what they wanted to do to my private parts. I only caught a blinking hint because I was on the ground. For a heartbeat I thought Genevieve had set the park on fire—or the Special Tactical Unit from the old days had come to rescue me and set off a phosphorous grenade. Maybe I was just having a brain bubble.

  But no, the explosion of light was real and directed. It sliced into the faces of my tormentors like a laser. Then came sounds I knew—the hiss and whoosh of a fire extinguisher and the thud of metal on skull. There was an alacrity to it—a kind of artistry. Measured. Restrained. I’d never learned that as a cop. It was always a partner who got squeamish that had pulled me off before I did too much permanent damage.

  “S is for Security,” I heard a voice out of the nova say—then a leather heel planted hard in a trachea. Suddenly, I was being raised up off the pavement and brushed off, like a princess who’d fallen off her steed.

  It was the Blue Knight. Despite his diminished eyesight, he clearly knew exactly what he was up against, and as someone who’d had more than his share of parking lot brawls and streetfights, I have to say, he handled himself in a way that made me glad I’d never locked horns with him. Back when I had horns. They all lay before him blanketed by a layer of dry-chem foam.

  “N is for Night. Night’s not good. You OK?”

  “OK,” I replied. “Thanks to you.”

  “OK thanks to me,” he repeated, as if this were a large new thought.

  “Do you know them?” I asked, pointing to the four ferals he’d laid out.

  “N is for Night. T is for trouble. They’re T. But no more trouble tonight.”

  “No,” I almost smiled. “Thanks to you. T is for Thanks.”

  “T is also for tea,” and he made a childlike gesture of raising a cup. “You need some.”

  I was in tatters and ajar. My whole world had been turned on its head and I was still getting my heartbeat back down below the redline—but I knew what he meant. He was inviting me back to his ratty, lonely refuge. His home.

  That place was appropriately the old infirmary, fortified now with accordioned metal and nailed slats. Inside, a large Coleman lantern was burning—and as many as fifty scavenged candles, lending the space a soft religious aura. I stared around as respectfully as I could.

  He’d harvested the clown
heads, the tin ducks and figurines from the Shooting Gallery, as well as several hundred stuffed animals. They were mounted on the walls or set up on cardboard boxes, plastic milk crates and rusted oil drums. Others hung down from a section of exposed pipe on strands of fishing line. They shared the space with more fire extinguishers than I’d ever seen. All four types in all sizes, arranged in squads, platoons, battalions, regiments, divisions and corps.

  Once I got past this assemblage, my cop trained eyes took in a hotplate, a rotting futon, and a piece of art I think he’d made himself—a montage of faded tickets for the rides arranged around the face of a child he’d either been or had lost custody of.

  He had a couple of fisherman’s stools to sit on, one of the old booths from the Merry-Go-Round as a lounge chair—and a dented silver corn dog wagon as a shelf unit, upon which sat several boxes of Crispy Critters.

  I sat down on one of the stools.

  “You’re authorized,” he said, reaching for a big tartan thermos. “But your pass has expired. I told you D is for Day.”

  “You … remember me?” I blurted and almost fell off the rickety stool.

  “Y is for Yes,” he said curtly, unscrewing the cap. Then more gently, “And for You. I remember You.”

  Did he see through me? Maybe I was still myself! Whoever that was …

  “You remember me—from when?” I asked, accepting a mug of steaming herbal tea.

  “F is for Fun and for Flashlight—but sometimes for Foto,” he said and took a seat in the cup of Naugahyde he’d pirated from the carousel.

  “But I’m different!” I gasped.

  “Everyone’s different. Every time. I had to radio for instructions.”

  Jesus! Don’t we all want to radio for instructions. I resisted the urge to ask him where he got his. I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was more magic—if that’s what I was involved in. But of a very different kind. I hadn’t allowed for any kind up to my first visit to Eyrie Street. Except El Miedo.