With no words exchanged between us, he pulls me against him, and then up against the wall. Soap and the smell of damp cedar fills my nose. The contrast of the civilized and the wild. I drift between those two worlds every day now.
We kiss, roughly, our faces twisting and turning, my heart threatening to leap out of my chest. I don't know what this is. I don't understand it. But every part of me wants it. To feel so strongly desired. To be cared for. To always be the singular focus of his attention. He's brutal, but I am the focus of his obsession. Not forgotten, not second place. It's something I have craved since I was a little girl, to be wanted. Even with Carter, nothing could come before his medical school program. Out here, Night may be my god, but I am his angel.
His body reverberates, like he's holding something back, something fighting to escape as he lifts up one of my legs. This isn't like it was out there, dirty and malicious. This is something else.
He reaches down and slips fingers into me. I moan as they send a rolling wave of pleasure up my belly. He drops to his knees, propping a leg on his shoulder, and eats me out. I swallow water and air as I gasp, little tiny streams fall down my forehead, eyelashes, and nose.
He stands before I can come. His nose pressing against mine. His warm breath huffing against my lips. Our bodies locked in on a single breath. Rhythmic, like a heartbeat.
No words. Just the music of our breaths, and the pitter patter of the water hitting the teak below our feet.
We both slide down to the floor. Still face to face, buckling under the weight of this complicated, fierce thing. I lie on the wet surface and he shields me from the trickling of the water.
I wish I could see him, the faceless man who haunts my dreams and waking hours. If I could, maybe I could understand him better. Maybe I could understand myself.
But he's just a shadow. As real as the fantasies I used to make up to draw me out of the monotony of my relationship. Or to pretend to know what it felt like to be something more than everyone else's rock.
The water runs to a slower trickle, the way the droplets fall from the trees after a heavy rain. He enters me. It doesn't feel like a violation. Or part of a bargain. It's hard to reconcile this was the same man who brutalized me not an hour ago.
But logic has no place in my life any longer.
We break the silence with our moans and groans. He rocks in and out of me as I dig my fingers into his taut back. And it's only a few seconds before I am trembling underneath him, tears mingled with shower water so that I'm not sure if I'm still crying.
He lets out a growl as he comes inside of me. Every time he does, it's like he's injecting me a little more with his sickness, making me a little more like him.
He stays there for a moment, hovering over me. I reach out to touch a tendril of his hair. To prove this really happened, that the man behind the mask exists. He lets me for a beat, but then he comes to his feet, standing over me and under the shower head which is now slowly dripping over him like a leaky faucet.
He walks out and I crawl towards the door on all fours, hoping he'll slip and switch on the light so I can see his face, but he just opens the door. The sound of crickets floods the cabin. A hint of moonbeam sneaks through the doorway so I can make out his movements. He simply grabs the heap of tattered clothes on the floor and his boots, holds them at this side, and walks out into the wild, dripping wet and naked.
Then he latches the door.
It's noon, but the house is dark. All the shades are drawn because mom doesn't want visitors. I'm still in pain. They put new skin over the skin that was stripped from my side and it's still healing. It hurts when I move. Mom, dad, and the doctor explained to me that they had to put me in a coma. I always thought comas were bad. I didn't understand why they would give me one on purpose. But they explained it let my brain rest and heal because it was swollen. I guess I'm glad I slept through a lot of the pain. My cheek was torn open, the skin hanging off my face. Scoot said some of the kids threw up when they caught up with the accident.
The man ran over a cop's kid. He's in big trouble now.
They wouldn't show me my face at the hospital. On the way home, I tried to sneak peeks at my reflection in the car window, but the glare made it hard to see. When I got home, I begged Scoot to bring me a mirror. Mom had covered them all with blankets. He snuck in at night and brought me a hand mirror. It was pretty with vines carved along the handle and up the frame. I saw the reflection. A red, raw scar running from my ear to the corner of my lip. The stitches were still in and it made me look like Frankenstein’s monster.
They tell me it will heal a lot, and by the time I am a grown up, it'll be a line, not red and swollen like it is now. But all I can imagine is what the kids will say when they see me. At least I was normal on the outside before.
There's a knock on the door. Mom comes rushing in and puts her finger up to her lips. She closes my bedroom door so it doesn't make a sound. She crouches as she walks past the window and over to a chair beside my bed. She's pale and sweaty and her eyes are always moving around, searching for something.
When I got home last week, a bunch of people came over with food: cakes, pies, casseroles. I was excited to have all these sweets. But mom kept inspecting them all. She said she found things like bugs, and poison and that she wouldn't let anyone hurt me ever again. That we can't trust our neighbors anymore. They tried to kill me once and she won't let it happen again.
The doorbell rings again and mom jumps in her seat, like someone just set a firecracker off next to her.
“Mom, why d-d-do you think they want to hurt m-me?”
“Because you're going to be someone special when you grow up and they are trying to kill you before that happens,” she whispers, rubbing my hair away from my forehead. “I finally understood. W-w-when I saw you at the hospital…” her voice starts to shake. Sometimes when people cry, they sound the way I always do. “All the tubes and you were so still…” Her tears fall onto my bed sheets. “I understood. The teasing. The way they lured you out there. It was a set up.”
It's easy to believe what she's telling me. That they don't want me because I am better than them. That I will be famous one day. That this was a way to take me down, the way that The Joker is always trying to take down Batman.
“I'm going to protect you. I won't leave your side again. No more trips to the hospital for me. They know I know. And they are trying to make me forget so that I won't protect you.”
The knocking and ringing stops. She turns to the window and peeps through the shades.
“See? Someone left something at the door. I'm going to get it and inspect it. They keep trying to sneak in poisons.”
“But ma. D-d-dad is a cop. He arrr-ested the man who r-ran me over.”
She smiles sweetly, grabbing my hand in hers. “Oh my little Samuel. That's just his job. Your daddy is one of them too.”
I don't startle anymore when I wake up and find Night sitting in the corner of the room, watching me in silence. This time, it's late, the skylight above still black from the night sky. Usually I sleep through his entrance. He can be silent when he wants, but tonight, I am restless. Once I see his silhouette, watching me, I can't even entertain going back to sleep.
It's been weeks since he chased me through the black woods, tackled me to the mud, and attacked me. Weeks since he tenderly carried me back to the cabin, showered me, and then made the pain he caused go away on the wet shower floor. That hasn't happened again. No, the sex has been rough, as if he's trying to erase that night from my memory. As usual, my compliance is rewarded—with orgasms, food, clean clothes, fresh water. I never quite know what is coming my way…a knife held against my throat, being bound or blindfolded, gagged, or sometimes it's just raw. He comes in and he takes, he gives, and he leaves.
If you had asked me months ago, would I be used to anything like this, I would have laughed at the notion. Or maybe even recoiled in horror. But no, this is my life. I have come to terms with it.
> You will like this he once said to me. Like isn't a word for this. This is not buttered toast or a cup of tea. You don't like this, you breathe it. It lives and grows in you. You hate it or you pine for it so strongly that, without it, you find yourself wanting to pull out each and every hair at the root, one by one.
When he misses a day or two, I get anxious. So anxious I find it hard to breathe, and I worry that he won't come back or that I have done something to upset him and awaken the rage he showed me that night. He is my only person now. So I cling to his presence desperately, even if I know the second the opportunity arises, I will unlock the old Vesper out of her dungeon and I will run.
He still hasn't shown me his face. I find it insulting, that after all I have given him, he can't show me that respect.
Night knows I am awake, but he does nothing. He doesn't move or utter a sound. I wonder if I've disrupted this routine of his. If he wanted me awake he would have awoken me. So I decide, at my own peril, that if he is going to intrude on my sleep, I will intrude on his Vesper-watching time.
“Why do you do that? Watch me?” I ask, still on my back, gazing up at the skylight. “Oh, that's right, you don't talk to me. Well, you do, but only when you want to fuck or boss me around,” I snipe cavalierly.
“Well, I like to talk. I miss having conversations, you know. Maybe one day we could have one?” Thanks to that night, in the shower, I know there is a mote of humanity in him I must tap into. It's rare I get him like this. Still and quiet. So I must take the leap.
“Okay, I'll take that as a not tonight, Vesp.” I imitate his rough voice. I chuckle to myself and I just know deep down inside he wants to, too.
“Sometimes, I can see the moon through the skylight. Thank you for that by the way…the skylight. I miss feeling the sun on my skin. It's the closest thing I have to that.” I pause, unexpectedly finding myself choking up. The wooden chair creaks as he shifts his weight in it.
“Anyway, do you know what my name means?”
I wait for a response, like I could trick him into speaking with me.
“Well, I'll tell ya. It's Evening Prayer.” I pause politely giving him a chance to respond as if this were a two-way conversation. “My mom and I aren't close. I grew up for about the first thirteen years of my life on a commune. She was always more concerned about herself. I was just a product of her exploration.” I add air quotes to that final word. “She had so many partners, she wasn't even sure who my dad was. Not surprisingly, no one stepped up to the plate. Years later, she got pregnant with my brother. She gave birth to him with one of the women at the commune—they referred to themselves as goddesses—assisting her, and there were so many complications. That's when she realized she had to leave. His condition was one that required more modern interventions.”
I'm not used to one-sided conversations. It feels like I'm rambling. But as he sits there silently, I'd like to think he's listening, maybe even intrigued.
“She moved us down to Sacramento, and within a year she was married to my step-dad. She has that way about her. She's so fucking selfish and yet she gets who or what she wants. Maybe it's because she makes no apologies or has no shame. Me, I'm full of those…” I sigh, wondering if this is too much. Maybe there are parts of myself I should shield from Night. I can't tell anymore if this is the new me, the one who has adapted to survival, who has accepted her current station, or the old me, a wounded girl, just wanting everyone's love and approval.
“My little brother, Johnny, sometimes I hate her for how he is. I can't help but think if they had just gone to the hospital sooner, things could have been different for him.” Tears glide down the sides of my face. I haven't really thought of him since the first few weeks. It just caused too much pain. But I've decided tonight will be the night when I'll let myself feel a little self-pity. “She's no better about him than she was with me. So I try so hard for him to see that he's loved and he's not a burden. And now he doesn't have me—”
The chair creaks again. I think I'm pushing a button so I stop. I wipe the tears from my eyes and smile. “Oh yeah, this was about the moon. Wow, I really went off on a tangent there. So my grandmother, she was so different from my mother. And she lived by Sacramento, so she couldn't see me too often. But when she could, she would take me away for a weekend here and there. She was so warm and kind. She's the person I try to be like most, especially with Johnny. She died not too long after we moved off the commune. I've never felt pain like that. Just a hollowness. A loss that just sits there. She used to tell me that whenever she saw the moon, she'd think of me, because of my name. And she'd say a little prayer for me.”
I sigh, sitting up in my bed.
“Then she gave me this necklace. It was this pretty gold pendant of a moon. It was her way of always being with me. So when I was feeling sad, I would hold it and close my eyes to feel like she was still here. But I don't have that anymore. Now it's gone. Now I'm truly alone.”
The words flowed out of me from a place of honesty. I lost myself. And only then do I realize the massive risk I have taken in sharing that story. That I am accusing him of not just stealing a necklace, but of trying to replace something with his presence that is irreplaceable.
The wooden chair grinds across the floor as his shadow grows tall.
I hold my breath, wondering if I've set him off. If he's sees my words as a manipulation and not just a desperate woman just being human in the face of insurmountable circumstances.
This time, he's not silent as his boots stomp heavily against the creaky floors and he slams the door and latches it behind him.
I wanted to say something.
So badly that my lips trembled and I could barely sit still.
I'm not sure what I wanted to say, but as she went on about her life, told me things that no amount of peering through windows could ever reveal, I wanted to speak to her.
I head back to the main house and upstairs into my bedroom where I remove a plank from the floor underneath my bed. In it is a box full of all the tokens I have collected from all the houses I ever entered wearing a mask. Each one jogs a memory of that particular home, family, and story I had concocted for them based on the clues lying around their house and what I saw through their windows.
When you are as prolific as I am, it can all become a blur, but these souvenirs help me remember. But now, as I hold up a small jade statue of an elephant, I realize that there are things—no matter how much I watch, no matter how many times I scour these people's homes, no matter how invasively I insert myself into their lives—that I will never know. That even for those moments when I am in their home, pretending to be in their skin, it's always bullshit. It's why I can't stop, because I never fucking get what I want. I keep striving for perfection: that perfect prowl where everything runs seamlessly, but it's never perfect because when it's over, I'm still back here, a man hiding behind a mask with a box of shallow tokens.
The realization angers me. Counterintuitively, it motivates me to go back out there and take my anger out on these people. But the actual desire to do it—to peer through windows and coordinate break-ins—has simply vanished with Vesper's arrival. This whole thing—this supposed fuck up I didn't plan for—might be becoming the thing I have been tearing houses and families apart searching for.
I didn't ask questions.
I didn't force her.
And yet she revealed herself to me.
I hold up the necklace she spoke of. Understanding the story behind it gives me a sudden rush that I am holding something more than just gold, something priceless in her eyes. Of all the things I could have taken, I grabbed the most perfect thing.
I didn't like the way the story made me feel. It was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. That's why I wanted to say something. But unlike the other times, I didn't feel a surge of rage so distracting and singularly focused that my mouth would just spew out verbal darts—precise, directed, piercing.
No, my mouth trembled, my tongue felt heavy, and I knew tha
t if I spoke, she would hear my weakness.
She's a liar, they all are.
I almost let her get in my head a few weeks ago, when we showered together. I started it as another way to toy with her, but as we wilted to the floor, I wasn't sure anymore what was real and what wasn't. I wasn't even sure who was playing who.
I drop the necklace back in the wood box, and look down at the open floorboard. It's always felt like a suitable hiding place, but now it feels exposed. It never really belonged here, anyway. There's only one room in this house where this box truly belonged, and for the past year, I was too much of a fucking mess to go into it. I hold the box under my arm and run down the stairs and outside to my truck. I rifle through my tools until I come upon a claw hammer.
I take it up to my mother's room, pull away one of her many bright, complicated tapestries and pull out a plank from the wall. This will be the new home for my box of stolen memories.
Vesp's not getting the necklace back. I won't allow her to know her words carry meaning with me. As far as I am concerned, that necklace is a talisman, and I'm the only one who can hold its power.
There's noise outside my window this morning. I look at my clock and see it's early, only just after seven. I get up from bed and see a moving truck outside through the transparent curtain. There's a couple of men carrying boxes as an old lady directs them. I pull aside the curtain so I can peer at my new neighbor, watching suspiciously, just like my mother does. Were these people sent to kill me? At first I didn't believe her. But then she showed me a razor she found in a pie. So now I'm a little scared that the man who hit me will escape jail and come find me.
Dad said the man won't get out for a long time. I don't press him because mom says I can't tell dad about what she's been saying. Some days she trusts him, and other days she thinks he knows things he's not telling her. She says I should always love and respect him, but that he may have been hypnotized or something. So for now, it's our secret.
Take Me With You Page 14