by J. Thorn
The phone in the kitchen came alive with its shrill ring. Molly’s moans lessened, but continued. Drew lost his erection, the phone making him furious. After the third ring, he turned and pulled the door back to the position it had been in before he arrived. He walked down the steps until he stood in front of the phone. With one motion, he ripped the handset from the wall and left a dangling cord swaying in the air. Drew walked into the bathroom and slammed the door as hard as he could. The creaking bed upstairs stopped.
***
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” Drew mimicked.
Molly faced Drew, her hair tousled and a terry-cloth robe wrapped around her waist. She shook her head and flipped the switch on the coffeemaker. The electric coil came to life followed by the short, dark drips of the store-bought dirt she called coffee.
“How can you drink that shit?” Drew asked.
“Fuck off, Drew. I’m not a coffee snob like you.”
He sat at the kitchen table with his hands folded and head lowered to his chest. “I felt like shit, so I came home. I do still live here, don’t I? I can still come through that door whenever I want to, right?”
Molly let her mouth fall open with a short gasp. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought someone was in the house.”
“Was there?” Drew asked.
She slammed a mug on the counter and turned her back on him, the mug swaying back and forth next to the filling coffee pot. “What the hell are you talking about, Drew?”
Drew balled his fists and clenched his teeth. “I heard you two. I could smell you.”
She slammed the kitchen cabinets looking for a sugar packet. Unsuccessful in the search, Molly tied her hair back and walked over to Drew until she was inches from his face. “I was masturbating, you asshole.”
“Your coffee is done,” he replied.
Molly grabbed the handle of the coffee pot. The liquid swirled back and forth as her shaking hand filled the mug. Molly turned her back on Drew and walked upstairs. He heard the bedroom door slam shut followed by the metallic ring of the bar bolt sliding into place.
He walked to the counter and turned off the coffee machine. Drew grabbed the pot by the handle and poured the rest of it down the drain. He smiled like a child watching a firefly die in a jar.
***
Drew pulled into the driveway at a quarter to eleven. A single lamp shone through the living-room window, but the rest of the house was dark. He struggled to pull the key out of the ignition. The alcohol created three ignitions, and remembering the old joke, he aimed for the middle one.
The kids’ toys lay scattered on the floor. A plate covered in aluminum foil sat on the kitchen counter like a miniature, alien spacecraft. He peeled the corner up and saw the yellowed noodles of a macaroni-and-cheese dinner. Drew picked it up and slid the contents into the garbage can. He dropped the plate in the sink and tossed his keys on the counter, along with his phone and wallet. He grabbed a pillow from the floor and a blanket that served as the roof on a couch-cushion fort. Drew curled up on the floor next to the register blowing hot, dry heat. The warmth and the alcohol lulled him to sleep within moments.
Drew opened his eyes within the dream. He stood in the middle of a concrete room. There were no windows and a single-file line of fluorescent shop lights stretched the length of the room. Pipes and ductwork wove across the ceiling, occasionally spiraling down a wall and disappearing through a hole cut in the cinder block. Puddles on the floor reflected the light in shimmering waves. The air felt moist and cold, like that in the most sinister of caves. A single bulb dangled on the left wall over a folding chair. Chains lay coiled like snakes underneath it. A metallic taste touched his tongue, carried on a stale breeze pulled through the room by a spinning exhaust fan at the end. Drew heard a faint rumble that shook the puddles on the floor for several seconds before fading out again.
“Eater.”
Drew turned to his right. A voice came from the dark corner where the light from the fluorescents overhead would not extend.
“What?” he asked.
“Eater. You’re now an eater.”
Drew shook his head, disgusted at the words and the slithering voice that spoke them. “I’m dreaming.” A gargled cough. “This is a nightmare.”
The creature stepped from the darkness far enough for Drew to see its profile. The smell made him gag, reminding him of the pungent stench that floated across Highway 286 from the water-treatment plant. That foul odor forced folks to roll up their windows for two or three miles until it passed. Drew often wondered how the people that lived in that town could do it.
“Redux.”
Drew shook his head, unsure if the word was a comment or a question. Before he could reply, the thing came completely into view.
The gray skin of the creature appeared thin, almost translucent. He saw bones and ribs protruding like a finger pushed through a child’s balloon. Its skull sat like a chiseled rock atop a dead tree trunk, limbs like leafless branches. It was the monster’s face that made Drew shiver. Its eyes sat deep in the skull, two black points of eternal nothingness. A black slit sat below what might be considered a nose. Its tongue slithered, thin and serpentine. Drew knew the source of the stench when he saw the brown smears on its face and the dripping, steaming piles of feces in its hands. The creature lifted a hand and shoved it toward the slit. Sludge squirted from between the thin fingers and across its sallow cheeks. The creature moaned; the harder it pushed the less of the fetid substance made it inside. Drew watched it stamp and holler with the sound of a wild animal.
“Gaki.”
The creature stopped and dropped its hands to its sides. “You know me.”
Drew nodded. It was as if the creature had always existed in his head, but naming it gave the monster incredible power.
“Need to show you,” it gargled.
“Show me what?” Drew asked, fearful of the answer.
“What eaters do. The consumption. Your consumption.”
Drew shook his head in the dream, his actual head shaking on the pillow in perfect synchronicity. “I don’t want to see what you have to show me.”
The creature laughed. The wet, gurgling sound pushed a new wave of stench into the air, and it made Drew vomit. He wiped a swinging strand of saliva from the corner of his mouth.
“You must. You Gaki now.”
“I am not, you fucking piece of walking garbage. I am not Gaki.”
The creature shook its head, all the while trying to wrangle more feces into its mouth. “Spirit released. He gave it to you.”
He felt the creature’s words becoming more human, evolving beyond the guttural sounds it made from the dark corner.
“I don’t want it.”
It laughed again. “Not your choice. Nobody chooses hunger. Feel changes inside you? Feel greed and consuming fire?”
Drew shivered. He shook his head, hoping the motion would wake him from the nightmare. He realized the hopelessness of his captivity and began to cry.
“Hunger knows no mercy.”
A long finger reached out and turned Drew’s chin toward the left wall. He saw the single, dangling lightbulb and the folding chair. However, a figure occupied the chair, one that had not been there when he first entered the subterranean hell of the dream. Drew saw the naked flesh and head of dark hair hanging low and realized the totality of the vision.
“No!” he cried.
Gaki laughed. A profane melody escaped the thin mouth and filled the chamber with a song that pulled at the hairs on Drew’s neck.
“Vivian?” Drew asked, directing the question at the figure on the chair.
At the sound of her name, Vivian raised her head. One eye looked at Drew, the other swollen shut in a mass of black, bruised flesh. Her nose pointed left at an unnatural angle and a swollen tongue poked through the gaps vacated by four teeth.
Drew closed his eyes, squeezing the lids in hopes of releasing Vivian from the suffering.
>
“Drew, stop. Please stop.”
Sobs shook her entire body, the ropes burning deeper into her wrists and ankles. Drew thrashed about in a vain attempt at flailing from the dream by incurring pain in the real world.
“Stop it. Stop showing this to me. She’s already dead.”
Gaki tilted a finger back and forth, taunting Drew and ignoring his plea. “You must see. Feed on her fear.”
Vivian moaned and yanked her right arm tight against the hemp shackles. Dried blood stained her breasts and the tops of her thighs.
“Please kill me, Drew. I can’t take it anymore.”
He took a step toward her and for the first time caught her scent, a wounded animal at death’s door. He placed a hand on her shoulder, which transported Drew into a memory, a vision within a dream.
***
He saw the memory through his own eyes, heard the words spoken by his own mouth. It took Drew only seconds before realizing where Vivian’s touch had taken him.
Another college kid sat across the table, a clear, plastic pitcher of the cheapest beer between them. A Soundgarden video played on the television at the end of the bar. Drew remembered that night in 1992 as it replayed. Tommy sat next to Joe across the table, and Vivian sat to Drew’s left. They spoke about music, and midterms, and whether Pearl Jam could top Ten. They called CDs “albums” as if yearning for a more pure time in rock history.
“Cornell is hot,” Vivian said, smiling into Drew’s eyes with the devilish look of a college junior.
“Not like me,” said Tommy, eliciting a laugh from the entire table.
A few members of the basketball team threw plastic darts in the corner. The machine buzzed and flashed.
“It’s the sum of the band,” said Drew. “Cornell is a great vocalist, but only because he plays so well off of Kim’s riffs. And man, that rhythm section is incredible.”
The other three college students at the table nodded. Joe grabbed the pitcher and topped off the plastic cups before pointing toward the bar.
“Who’s up? C’mon, you cheap assholes, who’s up? It’s fucking four-dollar pitchers.”
Tommy looked at Vivian, who was gazing bright eyed at Drew.
“Let’s get this round. Help me out, douchebag.” Tommy winked at Drew while grabbing Joe by the arm. “We’ll get a few more pitchers and some wings. Hot, medium, mild?”
“Hot,” said Vivian.
After Joe and Tommy slid from the booth, Drew felt the heat of Vivian’s leg on his. He could smell the strawberry conditioner in her hair and the electric touch of her finger on his knee.
“I’m having a lot of fun.” She tilted her head at Drew, let it rest on his shoulder for a moment, and then raised it again.
“Yeah, me too. This is the place to be on Thursday nights.”
“That’s not what I’m enjoying.”
“I know.”
Vivian used the tip of her index finger to draw a swirl on Drew’s thigh. She pulled the phantom trail from his kneecap to the bottom of the front pockets on his jeans. He gave up trying to conceal the excitement behind his zipper.
“Viv, you know I belong to Molly.”
She lifted her finger from his leg and turned Drew’s chin to face hers.
“She left, Drew. God knows who she’s out with right now.”
“I’m leaving. In May. You know this. I’m trying to be honest here.”
Vivian raised her plastic cup and drained the remainder of the beer in it. She slid closer, pushing the side of her breast against Drew’s arm.
“I’m here now.”
Before Drew could reply, Tommy and Joe returned with three pitchers and a basket of deep-fried wings dripping in bombastic, red fury.
“Wings!” Joe tossed a handful of sanitary wipes on the table along with napkins and plastic forks.
“What the fuck are those for?” Drew asked, looking to Vivian and then to Tommy.
“I don’t know. I grabbed a bunch of shit from the counter. If you’re going to be a dick about it, then . . .” Joe grabbed the chicken-wing basket and gave it a fake heave toward the garbage can at the end of the bar.
Drew chuckled as the two guys sat down in the booth across the table. Vivian rested a hand on Drew’s knee. Without looking down, he placed his palm on her leg. Vivian’s heat pulsed through the black, sheer stockings. He slid his hand from her knee toward her inner thigh at a slow, even pace. Drew felt Vivian shiver. She placed her hand on top of his, giving him full, nonverbal permission to continue the exploration. Drew circled back around, creating a figure eight from Vivian’s knee to her inner thigh, a laced edge from her panties. As the conversation floated back to Soundgarden and then on to Alice in Chains, Drew caressed Vivian’s skin.
***
“Kill me.”
The request, spoken through a broken mouth and swollen lips, burst through 1992 and yanked Drew back into the subterranean chamber where Vivian sat before him, bloodied and ready to die. Gaki now stood behind her, thrusting.
“He rapes me for hours until I’m bleeding and I pass out from the pain. When I wake up he’s still going.”
Drew tried not to look. He tried to avoid the grin on Gaki’s face where the corners sat caked with drying feces.
“It’s just a dream,” said Drew.
“Smell her pussy,” replied Gaki.
Drew shook and stepped back. Vivian’s breasts swayed with every thrust of Gaki. She moaned from the pain rather than pleasure.
“Please, Drew. Kill me.”
“Satiate your hunger,” Gaki said to Drew. “Do her.”
Drew closed his dream eyes. Vivian lay facedown on the stone floor. Iron hoops sat between the stones, fastening her wrists and ankles. The blood and grime that covered her skin was gone. Vivian’s dark hair spread out over her back, complete with a healthy shine.
“Take her,” said Gaki. The creature’s voice floated through the air and hung like an early morning mist.
Drew looked down and saw he was now naked. He was also aroused. Vivian turned and looked over one shoulder with inviting eyes.
“Put it where you want, hon,” she said to him.
He dropped to his knees and used them to nudge her legs apart. Drew caught a whiff of her excitement and the earthy, pungent fragrance of desire. He grabbed himself with one hand and placed the other on the small of her back.
“Fuck me, Drew.”
Drew heard Gaki laugh and felt his heart racing. As he was about to penetrate Vivian, she looked over her shoulder again. This time, he saw death. Her face morphed back into the misshapen, swollen mess it had been when he first entered the dream world. Dried blood caked her cheeks, and her words whispered through holes where her teeth had once been.
“Please, kill me.”
Drew shuddered. He looked at Vivian’s shackled hands. Her left held a dagger. She curled her fingers, angling the handle up in the air as far as she could.
“Take her!” screamed Gaki. He materialized from the darkness and reached for the knife.
Before he made it to Vivian’s hand, Drew grabbed the handle. He took the weapon and drove the blade into Vivian’s neck at the base of her spine. He heard the air escape from her lungs as her tense body relaxed and collapsed on the stone. A dark-red line of blood ran from the wound and puddled in the small of her back, where moments earlier Drew’s face had been. She sniffled and gasped one last time before her body ceased to move.
“Consume her!” screamed Gaki. The intensity of the words bored to the center of Drew’s brain. He threw his hands to his ears in hopes of defending his ears from the horrid yell. Gaki thrashed about, slamming his fists into Vivian’s lifeless body. Drew knelt between the legs of the woman’s remains, one that had been starved, abused, raped, tortured, and finally stabbed.
Gaki grabbed Drew by the shoulders, putting his face within inches of Drew’s mouth. The fetid stench brought Drew to the edge of unconsciousness inside the dream. The creature hissed and shook Drew’s chin to keep hi
m from passing out.
“Your salvation is through their pain.”
Drew felt the words strike deep in his soul before he awoke on the living-room floor, covered in sweat.
Chapter 10
“Corner.”
“Bullshit. You’ll kiss the five and scratch.”
Drew smiled while chalking the tip. He knocked the blue dust from the end by tapping the cue on the edge of the table. He mocked a childish good-bye wave at Brian while putting his finger on the twenty-dollar bill.
“Corner.”
Brian shook his head and stood back. He set his stick on the rack and picked up his beer, fumbling through his pocket for quarters with the other hand.
Drew hovered over the cue ball and closed his left eye. The talc powder helped to ease the stick between his fingers. He drew it back once, twice, and then a third time in order to make sure he hit the cue ball in the proper place. A millimeter could cost him the shot, the game, and the bet. Brian coughed, pushing the staged act as far as he could.
The cue ball launched from the end of Drew’s stick. It slid effortlessly and without sound across the green felt until slamming into the shiny, black eight ball. The cue ball stopped moving and the eight ball rocketed into the corner pocket, where it rattled and then dropped into the chute beneath the table. “Fuck!” yelled Brian as Drew rolled his stick across the table with a victor’s touch. He scooped the twenty-dollar bill from the edge.
“C’mon, punk. Next round’s on me.”
Drew tossed an arm around Brian’s head and pulled him close into a faux headlock. They shuffled to the bar, where Drew slapped the money down and raised one finger toward the bartender at the other end. She pushed the head of the tap back on the beer she was pouring and winked at Drew, acknowledging his round would be next.
“Why do I continue to let you hustle me?” Brian asked.
“Oh, you let me?” Drew replied.
The bartender served two rum and cokes complete with a bright, plastic stir. They walked to the booth behind the pool table and sat while the next group of players stepped up with a handful of quarters.
“We haven’t been here in a long time.”