by Ezra Blake
Mocha’s head snaps up. She barks once and bolts into the forest.
“Fucking—Mocha!” He shouts. “Mocha!”
If Mocha gets eaten by a coyote, that’s his problem, too—never mind that the dog’s parents are irresponsible druggies. Never mind that they left her in the middle of nowhere with a psychotic killer. It’s on Jake.
As soon as he breaches the tree line, the forest falls silent. Skittering ceases; birds quiet their mating calls. Even the bullfrogs stop croaking. He calls Mocha’s name, but her scuttling paws are also silent. For a few minutes, he fumbles senselessly deeper. It’s pitch black save a few strips of moonlight and the red dots of demon eyes in the branches, watching. No flashlight. No civilization for miles.
He could walk into the forest for the rest of his life.
Shrill barking splits the air. He takes a deep breath, digs his nails into his palms, and jogs to the source. The underbrush parts to clear his path. Mocha is standing on her hind legs, shrieking at the oldest, ugliest tree this side of the city. Its branches hang low. Jake has fond memories of climbing this specific tree as a child, but never in the blue moonlight. Never in the silence.
Ash looks dead, lying on the thickest branch with his head tipped back and his limp arms dangling in the air. Jake stoops down to grab the dog. She’s shivering.
“Ash?” He calls. “You alright?”
Mocha whines into his armpit.
“…Ash?”
“Go away.”
“Hey, don’t jump, okay?”
“Leave me alone!”
In a series of still frames, Ash sits up, tumbles off the branch, and falls with a splat onto his hands and knees. “Oh fuck,” and Jake’s on him, “Oh fuck,” and Ash is pushing him away, slipping and sobbing in the mud, saying, “Don’t help, don’t help, just—”
Jake tastes leaves and dirt. Black mud sprays his jeans and he spits, “Ash, c’mon. Get up.”
“I’m dead,” Ash groans. “Am I dead? Who am I?”
“You’re not dead—” Jake grabs his shoulders and wrenches him to his feet. Ash stumbles straight into his chest and shoves him, splat, and now they’re both in the squelching soil, black tar, Ash curled up and making a demonic, mechanical sound like a malfunctioning vocoder. “You’re not dead,” Jake says. “You’re on drugs, it’ll be over by sunrise. Let’s just—”
He scrambles to his feet and claws at his clothes, his face. He rips his shirt halfway off and flings himself at Jake. “WHO ARE YOU?”
“Off. Get off, calm—”
“KILL ME!”
“Get off, Ash I’m not gonna—”
“MAKE IT STOP!” His voice cracks.
Then Jake’s guts twist and he’s vomiting black sludge, squirming insects—no. No, he’s tripping; it’s punch and chunks of jelly donut. “Motherfucker,” he gasps, “my nuts, what the fuck!” He shoves Ash away and scrambles to his feet.
Kicking Ash’s sandbag body. Wet sucking meat sounds, laughter.
“Is this what you want, huh?”
Crunch.
“You like this?”
Ash is choking on his tongue, writhing. He’s spitting blood, chanting, “More, k-kill, kill—”
Moonlight streams through a break in the cloud cover. Ash’s eyes are black holes in a white mask. His bones are twisting through his skin and he’s melting into the swampy brush; he’s half dead and half mud and split down the middle.
Then it’s clear: Jake is doing this. Jacob Caruso, killer.
You are watching.
Ash is heavier than he looks. Jake slings him, squirming, over his shoulder and stumbles through the chattering forest. He whispers word salad prayers: please open my flesh to the safehouse, oh Suchness, threshold me tightly. You watch this happen from five feet above his body. You guide him out of the forest and into the clearing, and when he trips on the porch steps and dumps his limp charge in the flowerbed, you pick them up and carry them both inside.
Jake peels the clothes off their bodies and turns on the shower. His father’s money couldn’t convince these pipes to spit more than a trickle, but it’s enough to wet a cloth and drag it over Ash’s broken skin. You’re the gentle caress, the grime and blood, the black ink. When Ash stirs and asks, “What’s happening?” You say, “I’m here. Cry if you need to.”
They’re lying naked on the undressed mattress, speaking with their hands. Ash’s fingers in Jake’s matted hair: who is this, and Jake’s on the jut of his hip: it’s me, don’t you remember? You’re the firefly spark between them, the impulse, the copper tongues in their mouths.
You’re the breathless ecstasy in Ash’s voice when he says, “You killed me. I’m dead.” Jake grips his bruised torso and marvels at the impossible purpling of hard porcelain, blue pumping spiderwebs, pink spit. Tumescent flesh spreads tight around fingers.
You’re a half-dozen dead deer watching glass-eyed from the rafters, the perfect cry of pain, the penetrating doubt. You’re their soft sighs and soft mouths—and when they lose themselves in each other, you are all they leave behind.
Part II
Judgement and the Stiffness of Death
“If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan.”
~ Terence McKenna
Chapter 13
“Hedonism,” Ivan says, pouring them each two fingers of whiskey.
“The name of the scotch, or your philosophy on life?”
“Both.” He pats the cushion, and Chris joins him on the sofa with only a few seconds’ hesitation. Though he must know the drink is strategic, he never forgoes an excuse to lay himself bare. “It had a run of only six thousand bottles, the youngest of which was twenty years old. This is closer to thirty. I bought it with you in mind.”
Chris gulps it down, offers half a smile, and rests his prosthetic on the thousand-euro coffee table with a dull thud. “Thanks, it’s nice. I always bought the cheap stuff.”
“Once frugal, always frugal.” Ivan takes a minuscule sip of scotch, allows the burning liquid to saturate his palate. “Your father was a fisherman, correct?”
“Does it matter?” He taps his fingernail lazily against the empty tumbler. “Fishing was part of it. He fixed things, too. Furniture, cars. Tried to teach me, but I never got too far.”
“It isn’t too late,” Ivan says. “I can provide the materials.”
Chris nearly catches his meaning: a brief moment of eye contact, a sparkle, silence. Then he’s back in his drink, and Ivan shouldn’t expect better. Despite the scotch, the Schumann, and the spanakopita—Christopher’s favorite—he remains passive but not receptive, alive but never lively. The night’s current meanders through mud, pooling in brackish eddies which settle and evaporate.
“Let’s talk about you for a change,” Chris says. “Something must have happened to you.”
“Of course. I suffered a grave harm in childhood which perfectly explains my perversion today. In understanding the depth of my trauma, you can see me as human and sympathize.”
“It was just a question,” he mumbles.
“A natural and important question. A question anyone with a modicum of empathy or interest in his fellow man should ask, and I do hate to disappoint.”
Chris broods for a moment. “If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me. I’m too drunk for head games.”
“My apologies,” Ivan says. “If you must know, I grew up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Armed soldiers smashed down my parents’ door in the middle of the night.”
He looks up from his drink.
“They were kidnapped under suspicion of IRA involvement. I was in boarding school at the time, but my mother managed to write to me. She told me I might be next if I didn’t flee the country.” Ivan presses his lips together and summons a few tears, which he doesn’t allow to fall. “My father’s assets had been seized, but I found shelter with his business partner, in Berlin. I never saw them again. I learned what happened in those internment camps. They were st
arved, humiliated, forced to stand in stress positions for hours on end…”
“Jesus, Ivan, is that true?”
He bares his teeth. “Would you like it to be true?”
Chris sighs, takes the bottle, and collapses like a rag doll against the arm of the couch. “I don’t like this,” he says. “Let’s talk about something nice.”
“Something nice,” Ivan muses. “You live like a prince, Christopher, but your time is worth nothing.”
“That isn’t nice.”
“I felt the same, once. I thought I’d witnessed every extreme of human experience, that there was nothing left for me in this world…and then I met you.”
Finally, a small smile graces Christopher’s lips. “I guess this could have turned out worse,” he admits. “To tell the truth, I haven’t felt this way about anyone since I…since the crime scene photos. And that was just the idea of a person. You’re real.”
“As far as I’m aware, yes.” He takes a slow sip of scotch. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you stop masturbating to crime scenes?”
Chris stares him down. “I stopped getting new photos.”
“Did you ever—”
“Yes, Ivan, I jerked it to yours. Get over yourself.”
He presses a hand to his heart. “I’m flattered,” he says. “That was the artist’s precise intention.”
“No, it’s wasn’t.”
Ivan settles against the armrest and scans him from top to bottom. “I find it interesting that you follow my disclosure of affection with your own socially unacceptable fantasy,” he says. “Have you heard of social penetration theory, darling?”
Chris rolls his eyes. “If we’re playing dirty Intro to Psych, I can bring up misattribution of arousal. Because I think there’s a lot of that going on here.” He puts on a high, breathy falsetto. “Oh, Ivan’s waterboarding me and my heart is going really fast and my tummy feels weird; it must be because I’m in love with him.”
Ivan grins, springs forward, and pins him to the couch by his throat before Chris can even blink. “Pointing it out doesn’t change the rules,” he hisses. “I can feel your heartbeat. Are you misattributing now?”
Christopher’s hands shoot to his wrist, but he’s not strong enough to wrench it away, and he can’t stop Ivan from sinking vicious teeth deep into his trapezius muscle. He shrieks and kicks.
Before the bite does any real damage, Ivan drags Chris to his feet and slams him against one of the pillars separating them from the dining room. He twists away.
Ivan smacks him hard across the face. “Are you in love with me now?”
Chris grins deliriously and shakes his head.
He smacks him again, catches the recoil, and squeezes Christopher’s cheeks as they kiss. He kneels, forcing Chris down with him. He’s rubbing against Ivan’s leg, scrabbling with his zipper. He’s exquisite—the whiskey flush creeping down his neck, the skin stretched taut between his prominent hip bones. Then he speaks.
“Doctor Skinner, please stop!”
Ivan stills, shifts carefully onto his heels. Stands. He straightens his collar and tucks his shirttails back into his trousers; he returns to the sofa and takes a few deep breaths. Chris props himself up on his elbows.
“Ivan?”
Seconds tick by on the grandfather clock. Chris reluctantly buttons his pants, turns over, and sits cross-legged, like a child.
“Hey, I was just—”
“Acting,” Ivan says. “Not your best performance.”
Chris fixes his gaze on the crushed velvet drapes.
“I gave you something true,” Ivan says. “I gave you myself without reservation.”
“I know that, hey. I know that.”
Ivan seals his lips for a long moment, staring into the mirror above the fireplace. He looks old. His hair is dull and his laugh lines grow deeper by the day. No quantity of retinol cream will reverse that. Another hyaluronic peel will not stop his biological clock.
“Doctor?”
When he doesn’t answer, Chris approaches the sofa. He eyes the empty cushion and projects his intentions with every movement, giving Ivan time to issue an order, but Ivan doesn’t. Christopher sits.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Ivan examines the sunken blue veins on the back of his hand.
“I’m not trying to…fetishize you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He chews his lip for a moment. “I’m just afraid of domesticity. The psychopath thing felt a lot simpler.”
He brings the hand to his face and spreads his fingers. Light shines through the thin skin between them, turning the flesh translucent orange, highlighting tiny capillaries.
“Kindness doesn’t feel like love to me,” Chris says. “I’ve been thinking about this. It’s because I had this girlfriend in college, María, and I thought everything was going well until she broke up with me out of nowhere, she said I was too nice and gentle, and and now whenever someone treats me well I wonder—”
“Don’t insult me."
His mouth snaps shut.
“You are not a container for abuse. If that was what I wanted, I would have bought a punching bag.”
It’s Christopher’s turn to stare at his hands. They’re smooth and white, unblemished save the pock marks where the needles protruded, just beneath each cuticle.
“Why do you think you’re still alive, darling?”
“Because I’m interesting.”
“You’re my sunk-cost fallacy,” Ivan says. “You’re here because it seems a shame to waste so much hard work. You’re a perfect victim; congratulations. Now what?”
Chris looks wounded, but it’s always by choice. He doesn’t know who he is when he isn’t suffering.
“I thought that was what you wanted.”
“I want you as you are. Cultivated. Charming. Decisive. Frankly, I’m offended that you would use me as a pawn in your psychodrama.”
Their eyes lock. “You think I’m...” Chris sits back and frowns at his lap. “So do you want me to—”
“Stop worrying about me. What do you want?”
He hesitates for a long moment, fists trembling at his sides, biting his lip bloodless. Then the rope snaps; the ship comes unmoored and drifts out to sea. Chris falls to his knees in front of him and shoves his face desperately between his legs.
Chapter 14
Jake shot a fawn on his final hunting trip before the hospital. Practically a newborn. It was a freak accident—he didn’t even see it in the brush—but it was still illegal, even in doe season, so he and his father still disposed of every part of it. They butchered it together and never spoke of it again.
Ash looks the same, lying naked on the rumpled sheets, downy and splayed wide. The fog of shame is just as thick, but this time, nobody can help him bury the carcass.
He clears the grass of beer cans and plastic cups. Mocha is under the porch, wet and shivering, another cruel evasion of his moral duty. She shakes the dew from her coat, slaps her tail like a rudder in the mud, and slams her shivering body against Jake’s legs, oblivious to his betrayal.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs, cradling her against his shoulder. He blinks and blinks but his eyes are still hot.
Mocha hates the shower. She fights him every step of the way, clawing up his wrists, cowering, leaping around the stall and once escaping it entirely, only to be foiled by the sliding door. It takes twenty minutes to get her clean and dry, and by that point, Ash is stirring. If he’s going to fix this, he needs to move fast.
He ties her to a short line on the back deck, where the wood is soaked clean and bloated. He gives her blankets and water and half a ham sandwich from the fridge, ripped into tiny pieces and piled in a hand-painted ceramic bowl sporting the Caruso coat of arms and, inexplicably, two trout on the outer rim. She scarfs down the food and then flips the bowl down the steps in her enthusiasm.
Ash is still inside, still sleeping, if fitful. It’s impossible to unroll tarps quietly, but he does his best. He sniffs
two pills and tries to remember the last time sniffing anything felt fun.
“Wake up,” he says, nudging Ash’s bony ribcage. “Up. Don’t think too hard.”
Ash blinks. His pupils are immense, but he looks like that all the time; there’s no way he’s still tripping. He sucks in a deep breath through his teeth, groans, and twists himself halfway off the bed in full-body stretch. Jake can pinpoint the moment he remembers. His limbs freeze in their pretzeled posture and the faint smile slips off his face like rotten skin off hot roadkill.
“Crap,” he whispers.
“No. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry. We’re going to do it.”
“Oh God. Ohhh God, we didn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Jake says, yanking him upright. “I’ll fix it, come here. Don’t bother getting dressed.”
He has everything arranged: the blue tarp, the gun, the plastic sheets hanging ghostlike from the rafters. His father’s gut hook and bone saw lie gleaming and hungry at the foot of the bed. He is prepared. He’s indestructible.
“I know I fucked up big time,” he says. “I hope this is closer to what you expected.”
Ash places one bare foot on the floor, tests it for temperature, and then stands. He takes a tentative step forward and picks up the pistol, holding it the same way Jake’s mother held the tiny revolver she kept in her purse and never, ever shot. He cradles it. He worships it, and then he tightens his grip and takes aim at the floor.
“Did you buy a silencer?”
Jake blinks.
“Uh, I don’t think he had any.”
Ash nods. “Okay.” His voice is still tired and edged with last night’s unreality. “Stick to one shot, then. It’ll be fine.” He pops out the magazine. “What’s the date on the ammo?”
“What?” Jake asks.
“I thought you were a hunter.”
“My dad’s a hunter,” he says. “It’s uh…one second. It’s next year.”
“Good.” He pauses before passing the gun to Jake. “Don’t put your finger on the trigger ’til you’re ready to shoot.”