Home Is Where the Horror Is

by C. V. Hunt

  Rachel gave a hard look to a woman standing in the water in a swimsuit. The woman was a few feet from a large wooden sign with the words ‘no swimming’ carved into it in large capital letters. Apparently she was thinking the same thing I was. A group of people stood up from a large rock by the water’s edge and took their leave.

  Rachel grabbed my hand and pulled gently. “Come on,” she said.

  Her touch sent a warm rush through my body. I followed her and expected her to drop my hand but she held onto it until we reached the rock. We took a seat facing the waterfall. The crash of the water into the pool created a damp cool breeze at this proximity. And I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not I should take up her hand again. I was never good at reading women and always left it to them to make the first move.

  “Isn’t this nice?” she said. She turned her face up toward the top of the waterfall.

  The cacophony of people talking and children playing mixed with the rush of the waterfall made it difficult to hear her. I moved closer to her to talk without shouting but still left a small distance between us as to not make her feel uncomfortable.

  “It is,” I said. “I should’ve come here before.” I thought, This would be a nice place to hang out in the off season or during the week when it wasn’t overrun with inconsiderate people. I stared at the couple of inches of empty space between her hip and mine before looking up at the waterfall with her. “I’ve been so busy. I haven’t taken any time to explore the park.”

  She turned to me. “Does the photography take up a lot of time?”

  I chuckled and looked at her. I wanted to stare at her all day. I decided to rest my gaze on an empty part of the pool. “No,” I said. “I’ve been working on the cabin. It was my mother’s. I just came out of a breakup and my brother and I decided I could live there rent free in exchange for remodeling it. We’re going to sell it once I’ve found a new place to live.”

  Hesitantly, she said, “Was your mother’s cabin?”

  “Yeah. She passed away.”

  A pained expression passed over her face and she opened her mouth to say something but I stopped her.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

  She shyly asked, “Your dad?”

  “He uh . . .” I took a deep breath. Telling people your father committed suicide was never easy and I’d never quite mastered it. “He killed himself when I was seven.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

  “It’s okay.” I gave a nervous laugh. “I’m pretty certain my life was meant to be a Greek tragedy. I try not to let it get me down too much. If you can’t laugh at yourself and everything that doesn’t go as planned you might as well lock yourself in a closet and scream to the end of eternity. Life will keep happening and there isn’t much you can do to change the luck of the draw. My dad’s death is like living with a tiny open wound. At first it hurts really bad but eventually you get used to it and it doesn’t bother you unless you think about it.”

  She gave me a sympathetic crooked smile. “What happened with your last relationship? Or should I ask?” She laughed.

  “She was using me like a bookmark.” I mimicked inserting a bookmark in a wedge with my hands. “Let me put this here for now until I’m ready to live life how I want.” I placed my hands on the rock behind me and reclined some. “I filled an empty space for her. I was agreeable and inoffensive. But she didn’t want Mr. Right. She wanted Mr. Perfect. I guess she was waiting for someone with the same life goals to come along or something. That’s the guy she really wanted to build her life with. Not me. I think she wanted to be a housewife or something.”

  She nodded her head. “I know a couple of those.”

  “You?” I said.

  She held up her hands. “Being a freak tends to attract freaks.” She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them for a moment. “I’ve kinda put relationships on the backburner. Stag’s not so bad. I meet a lot of interesting people. But for the most part they turn into overeager Chihuahuas once they notice the hands and can’t discuss much of anything else.”

  “People are weird.”

  “Tell me about it. Whenever someone does that I always want to ask them if they’d interrogate someone in a wheelchair about what it’s like living in a wheelchair or ask a blind person how they wipe their ass. It seems rude and ignorant to think the only thing the person wants to talk about is their handicap. I’m not saying I’m handicapped or know a tenth of the plight they struggle with but . . .” She held up her hands. “It’s like the last thing I want to talk about sometimes. I’d like to have a normal conversation about movies or politics or . . . something without being constantly reminded I have this thing that makes me different, therefore, it must be the determining thing that defines me as a person and constructs my personality.”

  “That’s why I never approach people for photos. I let them come to me.”

  “You do really well. You have a level of respect and appreciation that’s apparent in your photos. They don’t come off as exploitative.”

  We stared at the waterfall for a few seconds.

  I said, “Your folks?”

  She smiled weakly. “They’re okay. They moved to Texas after my sister and I were out of the house. They usually fly up for Christmas every year and stay with my sister and her husband for a week.” She wiggled the fingers of her right hand at me. “They’re all normal.”

  A couple of elementary age boys stood in the water up to their knees twenty feet from us. They smacked the water’s surface and splashed one another. Rachel watched them. I watched her for a reaction to them. Her expression was indifferent. She didn’t appear to hate them or adore them. She watched them the way I imagined she would observe leaves rustling across the ground on a windy day. They were there. They were doing their thing. What they were doing didn’t involve her. They would still continue their course of action whether or not she was involved. And there was no connection between the two.

  I broke her reverie and said, “No kids?”

  “Hm?”

  “Do you have kids?”

  She laughed. “No.”

  I observed the boys who stopped splashing each other. The taller of the two chased the other. They marched in the slowed manner of running in water and squealed at each other in delight.

  “You have kids?” she asked.

  “No.” I wasn’t going to lie to her. “I don’t want kids. It was one among many reasons I wasn’t Mr. Perfect.”

  When I mentioned I didn’t want any children I noticed a miniscule softening of her posture.

  “Me either,” she said. “There’s no desire there. I don’t think I was born with the nurturing bug. Everyone tells me it kicks in once you have a kid but I don’t think it’s for me. And I’m fine with that. It seems warped for someone to have a child and expect nature to do its job. What if it didn’t? Animals abandon their newborns and leave them for dead all the time.”

  I nodded and we both fell silent again and observed the people around us. Families and couples milled about and took photos with their phones. A woman in a sun dress directed her three small girls to take a photo of them with the waterfall in the background. A teenaged girl took a selfie with a teen boy I assumed was her boyfriend. I peeked back the way we had come and two men stood in the middle of the bridge holding hands. One of the men held his phone at arm’s length to take a photo of the both of them. There were a lot of photos being taken with phones followed by feverish typing on the phone’s screens.

  “You should have brought your camera.” Rachel said.

  She must have been observing the same thing I was.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I never think to bring it to things like this. I always feel like if you’re taking a photo you’re not really experiencing the thing you’re photographing. At least for me. I’m too focused on getting the perfect photo that the image on the screen becomes an abstract and dislocated thing. My mind tunes i
nto the lighting and the angle and the focal point and I lose the pleasure of just being there and committing the experience to memory.”

  “How did you get into photography?”

  “I took a free afterschool program that taught the basics of taking photos and developing thirty-five millimeter film.” I smiled at the memory. “We were so poor we didn’t even own a camera. The instructor lent me an extra Minolta he had laying around. He must’ve felt sorry for me. He told me to keep it once I completed the class.”

  “Is it the camera you used?”

  “No. I hocked it when I was younger to pay some bills. Once I got over the financial hump I bought the digital one I have now.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. I wish I still had it. As a keepsake at least. It was all manual. The way everything always goes it’s probably considered vintage at this point.” I paused briefly. “So what do you do?”

  Her expression became pensive and worried. I knew from her online profile she was a painter and a singer but I didn’t want to mention I’d already pawed through her online information like a stalker. She appeared to be embarrassed to answer and I assumed she was a self-flagellating artist. Which was a good thing. I always believed an artist should constantly be unhappy with their output. If you were unhappy with your work it pushed you to try harder. An artist who thinks their work is a masterpiece is a delusional artist and not one I wanted to talk to about their craft or mine.

  “Well . . .” she drew out. “I like to paint these terrible pictures to line my closets with. And sometimes I do some backup vocals for a friend’s band. But I don’t make a living from either of those things. Like you. You make a living from art and I adore that.”

  I chuckled. “Borderline poverty isn’t quite a living and shouldn’t be revered.”

  She smiled. “It’s better than nothing, right?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  She paused and bit her lip before leaning closer to me and shyly adding, “I do online . . . porn.” Her eyebrows scrunched and she made a pained face as if she were expecting some type of verbal onslaught. She leaned back to her normal spot and looked around to make sure no one nearby heard her. She hurriedly whispered, “I don’t have sex with other people.” She held up her hands to insinuate them and gave me a chagrined smile. “They attract fetishists who want to watch me pleasure myself.” She dropped her hands into her lap and folded them together and began to wring them nervously. “They pay by the minute to interact with me and I don’t have any physical contact with them. I work from the privacy of my own home and I’m not forced to do anything I don’t want. If something is too creepy or weird I can just close the browser.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. It was the first time I’d met anyone who did porn. I didn’t want to come off as a pervert by asking her more about it. And I didn’t want her to think I was some type of prude who disapproved by sitting next to her grasping for the right words when nothing could be further from the truth. I was a porn viewer myself. There was something taboo and titillating about her confession that only made me want to fuck her even more. It wasn’t the weird fantasy men had about women in porn being more experienced or theatrical or better in bed or willing to go a little further than most women. It was her ability to dominate the situation and control the aspects by being her own boss and it was on her own terms and she realized she could trick men into paying for sex with her without actually having sex with her. Like a snake oil salesman.

  My erection suddenly became painful and my balls began to ache with desire. She watched me nervously for a reaction. I had a strong urge to kiss her but thought it wasn’t the most appropriate time.

  “As long as you’re safe,” I said awkwardly. “And no one is forcing you. What does it matter?”

  We stared at each other for a brief moment and I felt the heat of embarrassment rise in my cheeks. We both started laughing and I had to look away.

  “Most guys either get really excited and want to talk about porn for the next two hours or they turn into assholes because they think I’m a slut. I don’t think anyone has responded as nonchalantly as you.”

  “Well, yeah. I mean . . . if people wanted to give me money to watch me masturbate I’d probably be a millionaire by now. I’d feel like I was pulling the wool over their eyes or something. I’m going to jerk off whether they’re watching or not. Might as well make some money from it.” I could feel my face flush even more. “I can’t believe I just said that.” I’d never been so open about my sexual habits with a girl before.

  We both laughed. When our laughter died away she unexpectedly leaned in and kissed me. The abruptness didn’t give me time to close my eyes and I stared at her long eyelashes as her warm and sweet tongue darted into my mouth. I found myself desperately trying to match the dance and rhythm of her tongue. My heart quickened and I raised my hand to touch her hair as she withdrew from the kiss as quickly as she initiated it.

  She looked embarrassed and wouldn’t look at me. “Sorry,” she said.

  My hand still hung in the air about to grasp her hair. “Let’s try that again,” I said.

  She looked at me and I ran my hand into her hair and pulled her into a kiss. I was prepared this time and our tongues found the brand new rhythm of a new lover. The temperature of the breeze dropped drastically, the red darkness of my closed eyes against the sunlight grew gray, and I knew without opening my eyes a cloud had passed over the sun. Goosebumps rose on my arms. She placed a hand high on my thigh close to my hard cock and I let out an involuntary moan. We mutually retreated from the kiss and she removed her hand from my lap.

  I pulled my hand from her hair and said, “Now I get to be sorry.”

  The area steadily grew darker and the wind picked up. A few people had begun to take their leave. The small patch of sky above the tree tops was filled with gray clouds. The other people at the waterfall sensed the coming rain and the families with small children and elderly people were quickly retreating across the bridge and up the stairs.

  I said, “It looks like it’s going to rain.”

  Rachel looked up at the sky with me. The dark clouds moved rapidly and one in particular flickered with lightning. A few seconds later a clap of thunder was barely audible over the din of the waterfall.

  She said, “I didn’t think it was supposed to rain today.”

  “It’s the valley,” I said. “The weather is unpredictable. They can call for a high of eighty-five and sunny in the morning and by the end of the day the warmest it got was sixty and it rained all day.”

  “We should head back to the car.”

  I agreed and we followed the steady stream of people up the stairs. Halfway to the top the sound of the rustling leaves was replaced with the pat pat pat of the first fat raindrops hitting them. A few darkened drops appeared on the dirt stairs and Rachel groaned we were going to get soaked before making it to the car. The line was slow moving as the smallest children and the assisted elderly struggled to climb them. By the time we reached the parking lot it was a downright deluge. Rachel squealed with delight as we ran through the grass surrounding the parking lot. We spotted a woman near the road holding an umbrella over herself and a boy who appeared to be no older than six or seven. The boy vomited whatever brightly colored and sugar laden candy and drink he’d recently consumed. Rachel dug in her pocket for her keys as she approached the car. Her hair and clothing, along with mine, were completely soaked. Her black bra was a dark contrast and now completely visible through her wet white shirt.

  We entered her car and used some fast food napkins she had stored in her glove compartment to dry our faces and hands. She started the car and carefully maneuvered through the fleeing traffic and rain toward my house. The rain was falling so hard her windshield wipers worked double time and still were almost unable to keep up. She drove cautiously and at half the speed limit.

  I pointed out the driveway as we approached it and I said, “If you drive down there I don’t
know if you’ll be able to get out today. The rain makes the driveway hard to drive up. You can pull over and drop me off. I’m already soaked.”

  “That’s okay,” she said with a devilish grin. “I don’t mind staying for a while. If you don’t mind.”

  My heartrate went into overdrive. This was happening. This beautiful girl might actually want to have sex with me. Or at the very least make me feel like an uncontrollable beast who can’t keep from thinking with his pecker for a couple of hours. No, I told myself. She doesn’t want to have sex with you after meeting you twice. She probably doesn’t want to drive around an area she isn’t familiar with in terrible weather and sit in a lonely hotel room. She just wants to hang out and talk more instead of watching awful hotel cable shows. You might as well set yourself up for a night of blue balls. I told her to be careful descending the path, held the handle of the car door, and prepared to luge into the ravine.

  The trees sheltered us from the brunt of the rain. My stomach sank when we rounded the corner in the drive and a figure could be seen standing on the porch of Lloyd’s cabin. Rachel either didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care as she pulled into the parking spot by my car. She killed the engine and tried to peer up at the sky through her windshield.

  She said, “I don’t think it’s going to let up. We’re gonna have to make a run for it.”

  I tried not to let the guilt and the presence of Tryphena bother me. I couldn’t let it bother me. It was done. It was over. It was a mistake. It was never happening again. I had a chance to start anew with Rachel and I was damned if I was going to let some bratty psychopath ruin it or the mood of the day.

  “Be careful on the stairs,” I said. “They get slick when they’re wet.” I grabbed the door handle. “On three. One. Two.”

  Rachel opened her door and squealed as the pouring rain hit her. I followed her lead. I kept my eyes on her and purposely avoided the burning stare of Tryphena. It was as if her gaze was a physical blow I could feel on my skin. Rachel held the rail and carefully descended the stairs. Thunder rumbled lazily in the distance. Rachel’s wet shirt clung to her skin and I focused on the curve in the small of her back. Once at the door and sheltered by the roof she gathered her hair and tried to wring the water from it. I unlocked the door and let her enter first.