My nerves bit down. They chewed and chewed until I thought they might spit my skin out. I wanted to cry out and scream, to jump up and down, put my fists through a window elbow up. Anything to break away from that alien sensation.
“Charles,” Leda said.
“What?”
For a while I thought she wasn’t going to speak. My name hung in the air.
“I think we’re just two very lonely people,” she said.
My nerves relinquished their grip. The room snapped back into place and the bed and dresser stopped looking like sick dogs. I tilted my head back and reached up and slipped my fingers into her hair. I kissed her.
When we got back to the room and curled up against each other I fell asleep almost instantly. Leda jolted me awake by grabbing my shoulder when the screaming in the swamp started.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, “that’s just Jolene.”
I went back to sleep.
I wanted to dream of her, warm on my lips. I wanted to dream of slipping off her dress and pressing my mouth between her legs.
Instead I dreamed of Mad Maddy’s gritty, black glass feet dragging across my bedroom floor.
Chapter Three
After that night we started to meet each other in the woods. They were the only quiet times I could remember. We lay together on a blanket for hours, even on the nights when the monsters were slavering awake with the heat and the Apocalypse Brigade marched the streets rallying for God. I sketched everything I could think of but her, she wouldn’t let me sketch her, and while I did so she taught me the name of every flower and tree. She spoke their names like the names of abusive husbands.
We kissed like children, with all our clothes on, backs craned and legs spaced apart. Despite those vicious eyes Leda went shy when I tugged on the hem of her dress, or tried to slip my hands underneath to touch her bare skin. She touched her face and hugged her chest and rolled away from me. I withdrew my hands to my sides.
“I’ve never kissed without having sex first,” I told her.
She laughed with her face pressed into the grass. I didn’t want to tell her I wasn’t joking.
We started to see each other once every fortnight. Then each week. Then a few times each week. Soon we were going out every night, sloughing through poison ivy and breaking abandoned monster holes with our shoes to get to each other. When we saw each other across the clearing we walked with hesitant, lamb steps searching for monsters that might be coming out our limbs. When we reached the center of the clearing we felt the back of each other’s heads for the heat of the wire spider.
“You’re still here,” I whispered, when I felt nothing but her cool scalp.
“Still here,” she said.
In the clearing she taught me how to dance. She pressed my hands against her waist and showed me how to lead, stepping over animal skulls and crumbling moss, as she hummed a song she’d heard once. We’d lost music a long time ago, after Sissy broke our last record player. Except for the timpani music that used to blare out of the speakers of the courthouse and the skinned drums of the Apocalypse Brigade, Leda’s was the only song I could ever remember.
In the middle of our dance I swept her against a tree. I tried to hoist her up into the branches and rest her legs against my shoulders, but over the years I’d gotten too weak. My muscles ached with the weight of her. She slipped down and I leaned into her, my face cooked with sweat. I grasped at the bark her hair, panting.
“You’re getting better at this,” she said, “the dancing, I mean.”
She hummed a few more seconds of the song.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked her.
“The ocean gave it to me,” Leda said, and she smiled.
She leaned her head back, tilted her chin upward. The tree above us quivered with sleeping birds. An owl with the face of a bear opened its eyes and they gleamed fierce. They were Leda’s eyes.
“Let me draw you,” I said to Leda.
“Later,” she said.
We lay down on our blanket together and I waited for later. The months unraveled themselves. We danced until it became muscle memory, until I could take a wolf or a lizard by the waist and waltz across the glade. Leda’s cut hair grew long and thick until it covered her eyes and I could lose the ends of my fingers in it.
We continued like that for a while, humming snippets of song, kissing like we were chaste, eating the forest because the government never gave us enough rations. Comfort motions. Each day I hooked Momma up to the IV and filled her bag full of cold nutrients and peeled Sissy off the locked knife drawer or the medicine cabinet or the upstairs closet full of Daddy’s stuffed animals. Then I’d fix myself breakfast, if there was any left in the refrigerator, and drink weak coffee while God read out the list of plagues for the month, and the various transgressions for which we were being punished. Sometimes the noise became too much and I’d walk around the perimeter of the house and watch the weeds that grew up to the second story windows, wondering where last I’d put those clippers seven years ago. Most of the time I’d just sit upstairs at my desk and draw. And wait. No motion had any color to it, everything I was doing had already been done for an eternity. Every monster that emerged out of the murky swamp was a monster I’d already seen before.
But when night came and Leda got off from the flower shop that she worked at, I’d run into the woods shedding the numb parts of me. My skin seemed to be newly sewn, the older skin left to sink down into the furniture of our house. The moments before I saw Leda I transformed into trembling mucus and raw muscle. I was wet with my brain slipping down my nose, all of my limbs threaded with gold.
Soon we both stopped talking, and for a while I didn't mind. I lay in the nest of her hair. I learned how to handle her softly so that she wouldn’t kick away from me. She walked backwards through the clearing with a blindfold on. I tried to draw shadows, but they turned into people.
One night I opened the front door, ready to run off into the woods, and I found two members of the Apocalypse Brigade standing out on my porch.
I took a step back and my heel touched the threshold. I groped behind me with one hand, as if searching for the old skin I'd ripped off before opening the door.
The two Apocalypse Brigadiers turned to face me. One was a short, chubby girl wearing a cape and a snarling wolf mask. The other was a lean man holding a knobby cane and carrying his rickets skeleton body behind his head like a traveling case. He leaned against my porch banister and closed his eyes, slowly, pus leaking out of the corners.
“What's going on?” I asked.
“We're taking a survey,” the girl said, “your name is Charles, isn't it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How old are you, Charles?”
The girl spoke with a lilt, tilted her head to one side every time she spoke. Sideways, the snarling wolf seemed to smile. Even with the wolf mask on, the girl seemed decidedly familiar. I squinted for a few moments, trying to place her.
“Missy Freeling?” I asked, “from sixth grade science class?”
The girl clenched her fists as if she was going to throw a punch at me, and the lean man lifted his atrophied hand and placed it on the girl's shoulders. The wolf snarled.
“Her name is not important,” he said, “only the questions.”
The girl relaxed her fists, but the muscles in her neck bulged.
“Continue, darling,” the old man said, “it’s all right.”
“Over the course of the last three years,” the girl said, a small quaver in the undercurrent of her voice, “how many Apocalypse Brigade meetings have you attended?”
I hesitated.
“Answer the question, sir,” the man said. Coughed.
“None,” I said.
“How many times have you attended a public execution?” she asked.
“I don't know,” I said, “about one every month or so.”
“Interesting,” the girl said
.
“Did you want to write any of this down?” I asked, “you did say it was a survey.”
“No, that won't be necessary,” the man said, “Missy, continue.”
“Over the course of the last three years, how many times have you blasphemed against God, the creator of the universe and your immortal, all powerful savior?”
“None,” I said.
The man coughed again, but it almost sounded like a hacking laugh.
“That's impossible, sir,” the girl said, “everyone blasphemes against God. We are dirty sinners, after all.”
“Are you sure that's quantifiable then?” I asked.
“This is not a joke, sir,” the man said.
For a moment I couldn't speak. They'd caught me in the middle of my ecdysis, in the in between place between daylight and night. I felt as if I stood before them naked, busted at the seams.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Who is that?” Momma called from inside the house, “tell him to come inside for tea.”
“Give me a minute, Momma!” I called back.
“Who is that?” the girl asked.
“We were told nobody else lived in this house,” the man said.
The man and the girl crowded together on the porch. Though the man wore no mask, he looked more and more like a wolf every time I glanced in his direction.
“My mother and my sister,” I said, “they're deadheads.”
“But other than that, it's just you?” the girl asked. Her voice changed direction once more. Her quaver solidified, and she now spoke like a block of ice.
“Yes,” I said, “there's only me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn't I be?” I asked.
They’d trapped me, and they knew it. It was as if I could feel the tips of the needles in my back. Daddy once told me it was better to kill yourself than let a monster get you. They ate you while you were still alive, you see, pinned your head into the ground with one paw and chewed and chewed.
“You seem nervous,” the girl said.
I didn’t respond.
“If you’re telling the truth, then you wouldn’t mind if we searched your house” she said.
“No,” I said, “you’re not allowed in.”
“Are you sure about that? You may be making a very dangerous mistake.”
I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw popped.
“Missy,” I said, “go away.”
“I think we're finished here,” the man said before I could speak again.
The man pulled himself upright and struck his cane against the porch steps. Missy struck her heels into the porch as if she to bolt herself there, but a sharp look from the old man made her relent and follow him down the steps.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back,” the girl said over her shoulder, “Oh, and Charles? Don’t go outside tonight.”
As if in response, the plague machines in the distance groaned.
That night I sat at my desk underneath a broken halogen bulb, holed up while torrents of ice battered the shutters and the sides of the house. My room rocked from side to side. The paper in front of me remained blank. Mixed in with the sound of the ice storm was the shouting of the Apocalypse Brigade on the television. I couldn't make out any individual words. It was all a muted stream, except for “End of the world,” and “God,” and “Repent.”
It was so loud I almost didn't hear the knock on the door.
When I opened the door I found Leda standing there, shivering, ice stuck to her skin and eyes pink with blood. She crossed her arms in front of her dress for warmth, and her hair was lashed to her fingers.
She opened her mouth to speak but her tongue was laced down with the cold.
I took her by the shoulder and pulled her inside, then shut the door behind us. I embraced her, rubbed her shoulders, touched the back of her head.
“Charles,” she whispered.
“What is it?” I asked
“Did you know there’s a storm outside?” she said.
I pulled away so that I could look at her face, with its cracked blue lips and tree skin. She smiled. I laughed and pulled her close again.
“Come here,” I said, “come upstairs.”
I guided her up the stairs with the storm pummeling our ears and when we got to my room I set her down on the bed and gathered a blanket over her shoulders. Some of the color returned to her face, but she continued to shiver.
“Hold on,” I said, “I'll be right back.”
I went downstairs, tiptoed past Momma and Sissy, and entered the kitchen. The lights were out because of the storm, but I felt my way around in the dark until I reached Daddy's liquor cabinet. From inside I retrieved his bottle of whiskey and took it back upstairs.
“Whiskey?” Leda asked when she saw it.
“It'll make you warm,” I said, and handed the bottle to her. “Here. Drink.”
She unscrewed the bottle and tipped it to her mouth. Swallowed. Grimaced. She lowered the bottle between her knees and scratched away at its gold label.
“Something's after me,” she said.
“You too?” I said.
Leda took another drink of whiskey.
“Two members of the Apocalypse Brigade came over tonight,” I said, “I think they're onto me.”
“Why? What did you do?” Leda asked.
“I don't know,” I said, “I'm sure I've done something.”
Leda grew quiet. The blue left her face, and the blood spilled back. She stopped shivering, but drew the blanket tighter around her.
“What about you?” I said, “what's after you?”
Leda said nothing. She scratched at the gold label with her cold swollen hands. I sat down at my desk. My head felt like a dense cloud.
“Leda,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“How come I don't know anything about you?”
Leda took another sip of whiskey.
“And I mean that. I don't know anything,” I said, “I don't know where you came from, or how you got here. I don't know who you are.”
“You don't want to know,” she said.
On an impulse I crossed the room toward her. She flinched at my sudden movement, spilling some of the whiskey on the front of her dress. I knelt in front of her, and rested my palms against her knees.
“I think I could love you, but not like this,” I said, “What do we do? We lay together, we dance. Sometimes we kiss, as long as I'm careful to not touch you too much. None of that means a damn thing. We're just biding our time. So, yes, I want to know.”
Leda raised the whiskey bottle to her lips, and let it hover there for a few moments. The whiskey shone in her eyes like a soft film. She took a sip and lowered the bottle back between her knees.
“Fine,” I said.
I rose and headed for the door.
“The ocean,” Leda said.
I stopped.
“What?”
“I grew up by the ocean,” she said.
I turned back around to face her. Suddenly, I felt very tired. The cold from the ice storm seeped in through the walls, straight through my head.
“Go on,” I said.
“What do you want from me? A list of my tragedies?” Leda asked.
“That'd be a start,” I said.
“My mother was a florist, my father worked for the mayor.”
She paused.
“Don't be scared,” I said, “not around me.”
“Why does this matter to you?”
“Because I want to know you,” I said.
She sighed.
“I spent my childhood learning how to make flower arrangements and dress the way a girl should dress if her father works for the government,” Leda continued.
“Your father worked for the government?”
“Small time official, not like a prophet or anything,” she said.
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
“They put the fear of God in me an
d I learned all the right words, the proper way to dance and talk to boys.”
She started to talk faster. It seemed as if the words had been bubbling underneath her skin for years, and at this moment she'd rupture if she didn't let them escape.
“My mother got taken by the hell shuttles when I was about fourteen. After that, well, I had this best friend, I called her Cat. Her father worked for the government too. We'd go to dances together. I remember being extremely jealous of her. She had this allure that I felt I could never have. If we were together the boys would always gravitate to her, and why not? She was gorgeous. Even as a teenager, she had this slim waist, hips that hit you like bullets. Pale blue eyes, blond curly hair. Pouty mouth, that sort of thing.”
I sat down beside Leda on the bed, though I was almost afraid that any sudden movement would catch her off guard and she'd grow quiet again.
“We were both sixteen when she was raped. The boy was named Wilco, someone we knew at school. Her father tried to cover up the scandal, but she became pregnant. The hell shuttles took her and her father soon enough. I never understood why. I still saw Wilco in school every day, untouched, unpunished. I watched him in class with his button straight back and perpetual smirk and I kept thinking, any day now. Any day they'll take him. But they never did.
“I don't know why I started talking to him during school. I became curious, I suppose. He seemed disinterested, but I was sick with it.”
“Sick with what?” I asked.
“That wanting to know. Like I had to know. Why did he do that to Cat? And what was it about her that caused him to do such a terrible thing?. We talked about everything except Cat, everything except what I wanted to ask him. The weather, our homework, when he thought the next plague would hit.”
Leda sighed.
“I got impatient. One night after a party I followed him out into the back while he was taking a smoke break. I still remember what I was wearing, one of those silver dresses that look like they're liquid, you know, and flared out at the bottom. Cherry lipstick. Smoky eyes. While he was taking out his lighter I asked him how he felt about Cat.
“He laughed. His cigarette drooped in the corner of his mouth. I had to ask him again. How did he feel about Cat? He seemed to regain his composure, and he lit his cigarette and put his lighter back in his pocket. He told me that she used to be a good friend. Then he smirked, his signature expression.”
The Crooked God Machine Page 9