by Ezra Blake
He behaves all week, and when he finally gets a night alone, he takes the stolen bread knife from under his mattress, stretches his cock out with trembling fingers and prays. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than to keep both eyes and be cast into hellfire.
The blade draws a thin white line in the root of his shriveled penis. He bites his wrist. The knife clatters to the ground, and the root of all evil swells in his hand.
Jake’s buzz is dying. He rides it out naked on the bathroom floor, breathing steam and feeling every prick of moisture on his skin. His mind races but his body is catatonic, and even in the blaring overhead light, shadows ooze under the crack in the door.
This changes nothing. So what if your toy is sick? They said you were sick.
He plucks strands of damp hair from his scalp. He’s not ready to face Ash again.
Is our little messiah having second thoughts? Poor thing.
Does he think he has a choice?
“Fine.” He sits up, tests the heart rate in his wrist. Too fast. If he dies now, does Ash continue existing without him?
He stashes the gun and heroin in his box. It’s filling up: mostly pills and the acid he could never sell, mostly unmade money, unfulfilled potential. Ash appears in reality as Jake descends the stairs. He’s dressed. He’s shaking like a leaflet on mental health in the workplace, creased and crumpled, in the fist of a man on the verge of an irreversible breakdown.
He says, “I just need to wipe stuff down and do the kitchen.”
Jake doesn’t answer. He’s walking around the office with rocks in his shoes, crushing potato chips into the toilet and writing white-out haikus on the navy blue stalls.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m…sorry.” He holds the word in his mouth like a gobstopper. “Maybe we oughtta talk about it?”
Jake stumbles toward the couch. “Right now, I just want to smoke some weed.”
“But are you still gonna—”
“Yes, I’m still doing it,” he snaps.
Ash watches him test lighters, searching for one that works, but continues cleaning out the armchair when he catches Jake looking. Spark. Spark. He presses the weak flame to the eyeball pipe and sucks in smoke. Loose associations tighten; choppy surf smooths. Control yourself. Fill your belly with climate-controlled air.
Jake says, “You cut yourself while I was gone.”
“You got like twenty bucks worth of change in this chair.”
“Ash.”
He sets the fistful of change on the table. A few pennies roll off the edge and get lost in the carpet.
“Is this what you want?”
Ash presses his back against the wall and slips downward, an inch at a time, his shirt catching on the plaster. “I don’t know," he says. “It’s all I can think of.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“See, that’s why I don’t tell people anything.” He straightens up. “Staff always wanted to hear about my problems but they’d just turn it around on me. Tell me I ain’t seeing clearly, ain’t praying enough. Nobody actually cares.”
“Nobody knows what’s like in there, right?” Jake taps his temple with one finger. “Nobody even wants to know.”
Ash starts moving, stops himself, and twitches like a puppet on an inexperienced hand. He sits stiffly on the arm of the couch.
“It’s easy to feel stuck,” Jake says.
“Yeah,” Ash says after a moment. “Even when I die, it’ll be me in hell.”
“I try not to think about it.”
He shifts onto a couch cushion. Jake needs to touch him, but he can’t. They both look at the same spot on the wall—the faint stain of gas-station coffee which some Freshman naively brought to one of his parties a few weeks ago.
“Do you wanna smoke with me?”
Ash tenses, turns away, pulls some half-obscured gesture with his hand. “No thank you,” he says.
“The Bible doesn’t say anything about weed.” Jake read that somewhere, probably. “It’s just church moms telling you that shit, but people in biblical times smoked loads of weed. Jesus probably smoked weed.” He smiles. “And besides, it’s indica. It’ll relax you.”
“I dunno,” Ash says, squeaking his knuckle back and forth against the armrest.
“What do you have to lose, you wanna die without ever getting stoned?”
“Dunno,” he repeats.
“Ash,” he says. “I can promise you with 100% certainty that smoking marijuana is not a sin. In fact, I will personally absolve you. If it turns out I’m wrong, I’m the one who gets punished. Not you.”
“I don’t…can you do that?”
“Of course,” Jake says. Sin is a crock of bullshit and he can absolve whoever he wants.
The last time Ash felt truly relaxed, he couldn’t pronounce the word “blasphemy.” He curled up in his mom’s twin bed and listened to her read choose-your-own adventure books, with a pause every now and then for Ash to choose his adventure. A lot of them ended with him dead, but that was part of the appeal: he could always turn the page back and make a different choice.
“You good?” Jake asks.
The words and thoughts usually jumbled in the back of his throat untangle themselves and slither into his mouth. He’s melting into the couch, or…never mind, that’s Jake’s leg.
Ash blinks several times, trying to lubricate his eyeballs. “No, yeah. I’m. Heh. Yeah.”
“Cool. Sorry if I—I mean, I wasn’t trying to pressure you. I just like talking to you and it’s easier when we’re…you know, like the stakes are lower when we’re both…” Ash nods. Yeah, he says.
“It’s easier to get in there, or get close at least, when we’re both on the same…the same wavelength?” Yeah, Ash says.
“What are you thinking right now?” Jake asks. “Like, right this second?”
Kiss me. I’ll scream. I can’t do it myself. Hail…whatever.
“I dunno,” Ash says. “That your knee is touching my knee.”
“Shit, sorry.” Jake launches his butt across the couch and adheres to the opposite armrest. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re fine, ’s okay.”
He chuckles a little. “You’re weird,” he says, and swabs the soot from the…weed compartment, or whatever, in his eyeball pipe. “I kinda wish you could stick around.”
Ash’s chest implodes like a collapsing neutron star. He must take too long to answer, because Jake flips on the TV, even though the FBI is apparently intercepting his signal. A cartoon dodo bird advertises an airline: I can’t fly, but you can, with transatlantic deals until the end of the year!
“You ain’t gonna do it,” Ash says.
Jake shakes his head. “I didn’t say that. I’m just thinking maybe we could wait a little while. Things are moving too fast, and what I had planned was like…disrespectful? I was gonna do it at the party.”
Ash blinks at him. “So you…hang on.” He keeps getting distracted by the way the couch cushion sticks to the base of his neck. “Why do we gotta wait? It’s a good idea.”
It’s a terrible, crazy idea, but Ash likes it.
“I thought you’d freak out when I told you. You want to die in front of people?” Jake flips to another channel. The pretty news anchor is solemnly reporting outside a squat brown building. “That’s fucked up.”
“I just wanna get it over with,” Ash says. “Once I’m in hell, I don’t gotta worry about—”
“Wait, sorry. Hold that thought.” Jake turns up the volume on the TV.
“—Went on to speculate that Dour led a double life, committing murder in cold blood and reliving the thrill as an autopsy technician in his own investigation.” Cut to a stock image of an empty morgue. “Evil? Most definitely. Genius? The verdict is still out. Join us at ten when we talk to Dour’s former neighbors. Stay tuned.” The channel cuts to a commercial, and Jake hits the power button
.
“Shit,” he says. “We missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“It’s a sign. We were talking about camp, and now here’s this news report on the guy who made murder into modern art—that settles it. We have to do it tomorrow.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The Providence Butcher,” Jake says. “You seriously haven’t heard of him?”
Ash shrugs. “I don’t watch the news.”
“He wasn’t just stabbing hookers, I mean, he kidnapped all kinds of people and mutilated them, I’m talking, like, neckties made of skin kinda shit. For a few months, seemed like they had every psychologist in the country analyzing this guy on TV.” He glances wistfully to the front door. “Guess he’s dead, though.”
“I wish I could be like that.”
Jake’s eyebrows creep toward his hairline. “A serial killer?”
“No. I just mean how he ain’t guilty about it. He’s in hell now but at least he got to enjoy his life here first.”
“Man, you don’t have to feel guilty about whatever you think you did. You’re choosing to feel guilty.”
“Great, thanks,” Ash says, crossing his arms. “Never thought of that.”
Jake stares at the blank screen for a few moments. Predictably, Ash feels guilty.
“I guess…you have to be complicated to do what he did,” Jake says. “Everybody gets angry and everybody has thought of killing someone once or twice, but—”
“I haven’t.”
“Most people,” he amends. “But he didn’t commit crimes of passion. He planned them. He picked someone out, stalked them, and organized this obscure personal ritual around every murder, and everyone was so desperate to understand what he was thinking but now we’ll never know.”
Ash’s lips are always chapped because he’s always peeling the skin off with his teeth. Only when he tastes blood does he realize he’s been doing it for the past fifteen minutes. He presses them together and relishes the sting of salt in his wound.
“Jake,” he says.
“Hm?”
“I care what you’re thinking.”
Chapter 8
Some parts of the human body are not intended for habitation. In Elliot’s case, that’s everything except the skull. When he becomes too aware of his thighs (brown and jiggly) or his hands (too small) or his lungs (effective, until he notices himself breathing) he panics.
Even people who feel safe in their legs and hands and lungs shy away from certain internal organs. The heart can’t and shouldn’t feel pain; its pain is referred to the arm, shoulder, neck, or jaw. Kidneys only exist when they’re riddled with stones. Above all: nobody wants to experience their urethra.
When he wakes up, he is entirely urethra.
He’s pissing through a tube, which is taped to a leg. The word for that tube drifts through his awareness, but urethras can’t comprehend language, so Elliot can’t catch it.
He blinks. Light. Too much light. He turns away, but:
“Don’t move, please. Stay still.”
Who is that? Where is he? Is he pissing right now?
“Ugh,” he croaks. His throat is parched. “Catheter.”
“Yes, you’re catheterized.”
The presence draws nearer, and Elliot’s being expands to include his eyes and face and tongue. His bed sits up, taking him with it. He blinks and blinks until the lab coat in front of him becomes a person, and then he squeezes his eyes shut and groans.
“I thought you’d be pleased to see me,” Frost says.
He smacks his dry lips. The motion causes them to reattach themselves to his jaw, and his body map flashes back online like consecutive fluorescent lights down a long hallway: head, chest, thighs, calves, feet. The catheter is taped to his leg. Most of his midsection is still missing.
“What…how’d I get here?”
“By ambulance. You don’t remember?”
The words strobe before his eyes. They’re scribbled on the back of a Walmart receipt taped to Elliot’s naked, hairy belly: Dial 911. I’m sorry.
He cranes his neck to get a better look at his chest. It’s exactly how he left it.
“Fuck,” Elliot croaks. “What did they—”
“I know what happened, and frankly, I’d expect a future doctor to have some modicum of common sense,” Frost says. “What do you think they took?”
He lies back and swims through the chemical haze.
Elliot has plenty of time to lament, confined as he is to his bed. Mostly he sleeps. On the third day, his head is clear enough to allow a little lamentation. The kidney is one thing, but if Vic were a decent human being, she would have cut his tits off first. Instead he’s broke, trapped, unborn; he’s still chained to this blob of meat and organs everyone calls “Elliot,” and now it can’t process fluid waste very well.
Aside from Frost, nobody stops by. He spends countless hours on the phone with his mother, apologizing and talking about nothing. She’s upset that the receptionist wouldn’t give her details—HIPAA privacy standards, and all that—but it’s for the best. He tells her his kidney failed due to dehydration. He can’t explain. Lying to her feels like treason.
It’s a miraculous recovery, all things considered, even though he feels like wine turned back into water. His almighty attending physician stops by exactly once after his initial visit, to inform Elliot that his operation and hospital stay will be free of charge.
“What do you mean, free?” Elliot asks.
“It means that you and your family do not owe the hospital money. Someone paid your bill in full.”
“Someone…?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he says, and leaves soon after.
They let him take the bus home after much cajoling. He allows himself a little self-pity then, too, watching the rain wash garbage into the sewer grates. He would have gotten a real mastectomy if he had the option. It’s not his fault they’re broke.
It’s his dad’s fault, if he has to blame someone—for telling his mom that leg spasms were probably normal, for ditching them when he couldn’t live with his mistake. It’s his brother’s fault for getting arrested when his family needed him. It’s evolution’s fault for giving Elliot tits in the first place, and it’s okay to shift the responsibility. He already has enough of that on his plate.
When he returns, his mother is still in bed. This is what happens when he isn’t here for her. She hasn’t bathed. She looks and smells like shit, but he crawls under the covers and breathes her scent regardless. They spend twenty minutes in an awkward side-hug. Relief lives in her hands, clutching the back of his shirt; guilt hides in the tight line of Elliot’s lips.
“I’m okay and it was free, Mom. Everything’s fine.”
She’s sobbing, but they both pretend she isn’t. “Dehydration, Eli? Why aren’t you drinking water?”
Elliot shrugs one shoulder. “I am now,” he says. “I just…lost track of myself. I was so focused on school, I didn’t notice anything was wrong.”
“I told you to stop pushing yourself so hard.”
“You never said—”
“I’ve said those exact words forty-six times since classes started. ‘Stop pushing yourself so hard.’ Do you need dates, or are you going to listen to me?” She wipes her eyes. Her fingers jitter around her face for a moment before settling on one of her braids, which she begins picking to pieces. “Be kind to yourself,” she says, voice wavering. “I think you should take the semester off.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe next semester.”
“You’d better not be going to school tomorrow.”
Elliot’s throat feels like one of those braided cables that support suspension bridges, all thick and taut. They move, or so he’s heard. They have just enough bend to allow the bridge to sway in the breeze—otherwise, the supports would splinter, and the whole behemoth of steel and concrete would crumble into the Delaware river.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’ll ta
ke it easy this week.”
She closes her eyes, lash extensions brushing the tops of her cheeks. Elliot keeps waiting for her to open them, to smile, to say something irritatingly insightful, but she doesn’t.
“We should probably get you in the bath,” he says.
“I’ll use the chair.”
“Let me wash you, at least.”
“Guess I won’t convince you to lie down, hm?”
“I’ve been in bed for days,” he says. “Exercise helps you heal.”
She can’t use the chair alone, anyway, and though he’s in no position to support her weight, he lifts her out of bed and onto the cracked leather seat. His stitches protest. It hurts, but he isn’t planning to pick up his painkiller prescription. He’s seen too many people start pills for a toothache and end up begging for Oxy to slam in the parking lot.
He’s bathed her a thousand times yet he struggles with clinical distance. He needs to stay distant and he needs to listen, but they’re mutually exclusive.
She lifts her hips so he can scrub her soft, loose thighs. “We got a bill today,” she says.
“Get your hair wet.”
She dips the back of her head in the water. “It was from your school, for ‘activities fees’ and ‘administrative fees.’ I tried to pay it, but we don’t have nearly as much money as I…”
Elliot is elsewhere. Red and blue spotlights coalesce into unholy violet. Thrumming pain, dripping water. It must be the inside of his skull, the space where he lives when he isn’t really living.
“Ouch! Careful!”
“Sorry,” he says, releasing his grip on her hair. “Shit, sorry. I’m tired.”
“It’s alright. We don’t need to talk about it now, anyway.” She bites her lip. “But since you’re home, why don’t you call Cathy?”
Elliot sighs. Cathy is their social worker, and her definition of help involves prying so far into their private affairs that she could probably write Elliot’s memoir. “I’ll work on it,” he says.
It’s dark by the time she’s settled in front of the TV. There’s not much for dinner, but their SNAP card should be refilled any day now. He’ll check. He plugs his phone into the power strip and sits on his bedroom floor.