Devil You Know

by Max Henry

  He roars with laughter, still pounding away, like a butcher, tenderizing meat. I feel beaten to within half an inch by the time he stills and pulls free.

  Did I miss it? Has he come already? The absence of sticky mess between my legs indicates no. Damn.

  “Suck the rest out of me,” he barks, and flops onto his back.

  Not that. God, not that.

  Last time we tried this, I gagged, and he pushed back so hard I actually vomited. He made me clean it up. After I finished him off, of course.

  “No,” I whimper. The word is as pathetic as I am at that moment. I married this man? I literally signed my name away on a contract to this devil?

  The lamp snaps on, and I blink at the intrusive light. “Now, Jane. Or I’ll fucking start all over again.”

  My lowest point comes somewhere between the moment when I nod at his threat, and the moment when I find myself on all fours, kneeling before him. Tentatively I take his greatest weapon into my mouth, and start to suck.

  Not enough to keep him satisfied, it seems.

  Rough hands force my arms behind my back, and without anything to anchor myself on, I fall face first, mouth open, onto him. His wet head slams into the back of my throat, and I gag violently as I right myself.

  He hisses. Not out of anger, but arousal.

  Then I do something I haven’t done for years. Something I swore never to do again in his presence. I cry.

  Hot, salty tears drip down past my lips, and over his groin. The added moisture assists his glide into my mouth, and he takes both my wrists in one hand to grab a fistful of hair with the other.

  Moans come from above me as he guides himself in, and all I can do is cry harder. Pained groans push past the intrusion in my mouth, and he increases in pace. The sick fuck gets off on my suffering, and as much as I know it, and as much as I don’t want to allow it, I’ve opened a floodgate that’s been sealed shut too long.

  I cry so hard my lips balloon around him with each sob that wracks my body. The sounds mingle: my crying, his moans. The only two stirrings in the night.

  Until Rocco barks.

  My eyes shoot open. No, baby. Not tonight. Not tonight, Rocco. Oddly enough my ESP has no effect on him, and before I know it, my head is wrenched violently backward, and Dylan is cursing at the dog which now has its jaws wrapped around his arm.

  What a sight: a tear-streaked woman, a ferocious dog, and an enraged drunk man, all wrestling, jostling, fighting each other in a strange triangle on the king-sized bed. My head whips around in Dylan’s grasp as he shakes his arm violently from side-to-side, trying to shirk Rocco. His other fist collects me on the way off the bed, and I reel back as he drops my hair. A crack precedes a whimper, and I open my eyes to see Rocco’s tail vanish out the bedroom door, followed by Dylan.

  Now, I don’t have kids, and believe me, I’ve counted my blessings for not having to shield such innocence from a man like him. But if I did have them, I imagine the pain a mother feels when her child is in danger is akin to what I feel at that moment.

  My heart stops, and time comes to a painful halt for a fleeting second before everything seems to pass at triple-speed. My feet hammer down the hallway to find Dylan slouched into the laundry doorway, having obviously lost his balance given his still alcohol-induced bearing on gravity. Rocco cowers at the back door, teeth bared, his eyes saying the worst.

  He knows what will happen if Dylan gets to him first.

  As do I.

  I take a single step over my dearest husband, and come tantalizingly close to securing freedom for the only thing in the world I care about enough to save. Heaven knows that isn’t me.

  Restriction on my ankle halts my progress, and I crash to the floor with my head beside Rocco. In that split-second, we share a moment. I look into those brown eyes, and I see me reflected back. I see what a pathetic mess I have become, and I vow I will be the last soul Dylan destroys. So what if Rocco is ‘only a dog’? He’s my dog, my life, and my sanity.

  He deserves freedom. Freedom that I can’t give myself. Freedom I’ve long ago given up all hope of.

  My entire weight goes into the kick that I deal Dylan, and for a few precious seconds, he lets go of me. I take the rare shift in power as it comes, jump to my feet and make that bitch mine. The moment may have been infinitesimal but I relish every nanosecond I’ve won, and I open the door for Rocco.

  His furry butt charges outside before he pauses, and looks back at me. I swear if that dog could speak, he would be giving me the ‘I’ll never forget you’ speech. I commit the sight of him to a special part of my memories I keep to myself, free of Dylan, and shut the door.

  “Get out of my fucking way!”

  Stars swirl in a fantastic light show as my head hits the washing machine. I roll to all fours, and brace myself as the back door lands against my hip. The asshole is after him. I can’t let it happen.

  All thoughts of life after Dylan vanish, and I bolt out that door like I should have done so many years ago. All this, the suffering, the abuse, can be attributed back to me in the end, because if I had been strong enough—if I had tried—then I wouldn’t still be here. I wouldn’t have got Rocco to keep me company while my husband was out sleeping around, and I wouldn’t now be trying to save my soul mate in this pathetic moment of absolute desolation.

  Dylan thunders around the backyard, searching behind every bush, under every tree, determined to find him.

  “Run, Rocco!”

  My outburst catches the attention of the hunter and he whirls on me, closing the space between us in ginormous, rage-fuelled strides. His hand lifts, I widen my stance, and we dance the only way we know how—palm to cheek.

  “That fucking mongrel won’t bite me and get away with it.” He spins on his heel, and stalks to the last place I want him to go—the garden shed. Rocco’s hiding place.

  Do I run to stop him? Or would that foil any chance my baby has of escaping? Pots fly aside, followed by the lawnmower as it careens out the narrow door.

  “There you are.”

  Those three words. I’ll forever hear them in my dreams.

  My scream pierces the night, but what for, I don’t know. Dylan won’t stop, and I know by now that none of our neighbors will intervene.

  At least, I thought I knew.

  Dylan’s hands clamp around Rocco’s throat, and he holds my life out before him as he wanders so damn casually over to me—my dog kicking, and clawing for breath. Crazy is a children’s tea party compared to the look in Dylan’s eyes.

  I fall to my knees, and grieve for the loss I know will come. Like a train wreck, I can’t peel my eyes away from. I watch as he draws the last signs of life from my companion—from my one true love.

  Tears flow so fast they blur my peripheral. A large, dark shadow moves at unnatural speed from my left, and draws my attention from the horror that unfolds before me. I literally fall flat on my ass from shock.

  A man has leapt our six-foot fence.

  Dylan is so fixated on his demise of Rocco that he doesn’t see the hit coming. My wails have long since stopped, but the tears still flow at the sight of Dylan’s head snapping to the side, and Rocco falling to the ground. Only now, they’re tears of happiness.

  My dog will live.

  Rocco drags himself towards the shelter of our garden. I scramble to where he lies, gasping, and pull his furry head into my lap while the stranger from next door lays blow after blow into Dylan’s face. The man straddles him, easily half his size again. If I don’t do something to stop it, I’ll have a different death on my hands to explain. And quite frankly, I have no idea how I’ll do that. If the police didn’t believe my husband was abusing me, then they sure as shit won’t take me seriously when I describe a random hulk of a man leaping our fence to save my dog.

  I place Rocco aside carefully, and cross the yard at breakneck speed. Concrete scrapes the flesh from my knees as I slide to a stop beside them, screaming at the stranger to leave Dylan alone. He pauses, hand
pinned over my husband’s throat, and stares at me.

  What I find in his eyes scares the living shit out of me—more than Dylan ever has.

  I see concern.

  He never says a thing, the tall, dark stranger. He simply stands, scoops Rocco off the ground, and strides out our gate as if nothing untoward has gone down.

  Like my husband isn’t passed out on the back path, his blood spattered around his head, and his eye already swollen shut.

  Like I haven’t witnessed a miracle.

  THE CHAIN rattles where the gate has slammed shut. My gaze bounces from the gate, to Dylan, to the gate again. My heart pines for Rocco, to know he’s safe, to check on him after being throttled so violently, but my gut overrides the indecision and reminds me the real trouble is here, in front of me.

  The humid air feels thick in my throat as I lean down to inspect Dylan. He lies there, out cold, oblivious to the struggle I now wage over what to do with him. The last time I lifted something heavier than a laundry basket, I was young, much younger. Somehow I don’t think I’ll have much luck at getting 195 pounds of lax man inside on my own.

  He’ll have to wake up.

  A manic giggle passes my lips when the ridiculousness of the situation dawns on me. Here is my asshole of a husband, out cold, at my whim, and I’m still too afraid to slap him awake. I mean, the guy is completely at my mercy, and I can’t bring myself to think of a singular payback.

  I’m still worried about being the dutiful wife.

  Certifiable.

  His lips twitch, and I shoot back to a safe distance. Last thing I need is a wayward fist striking me if he wakes up believing he’s still in the fight. A solid minute of nothing else, and I finally group enough courage together to give him a tap on the cheek with my toe. He stirs, and I repeat the gesture, rocketing back when his eyes shoot open—black as a shark’s.

  “What the fuck, Jane?”

  “You’re hurt, honey.”

  “Well, no kidding,” he drawls. His eyes scan the yard. “Where is your fucking dog?”

  I hold my hands out, pleading with him to stop as he moves to stand. “I need to get you inside so I can tend your injuries.”

  “Not until I find that fucking mongrel.”

  “He’s gone,” I say, instantly regretting the fact I may have given him a clue as to where. “He, um . . . he ran away when that guy started hurting you. I think he was scared. God, baby. I was scared.”

  His hand pats the side of his face, and he winces, blood dripping from the crease of his lips. “Who was that anyway, Jane? Are you fucking the guy?” He groans, and rolls to his side.

  “No!” I cry in panic. Jesus, no. Don’t think that. His level of punishment for that doesn’t bear thinking about.

  “Then who the fuck was he?” Dylan bellows, pushing up to a sitting position.

  I freeze on my haunches, begging him with my eyes. “I don’t know who he was, baby. I love you. Only you.” My shaking hand finds his jawbone, and I run a tentative thumb along his stubble.

  He shakes my hand off, and sneers at my touch. “Love me, huh? Then how about fucking fixing up this mess on my face before I have any permanent damage.”

  “Sure, baby.”

  I stand with him, and he hobbles toward the house before me. We reach the back door, and I damn near slam into his back when he stops, and turns to address me with his arms blocking the doorway.

  “Actually, Jane, given none of this would have happened if you didn’t have that dog, and given we don’t have a dog to sleep outside anymore, how about you stay out there for the night?”

  The laundry door slams in my face, and the deadlock echoes through my skull. He’s locked me out. I know he won’t change his mind, but a part of my dazed stupor forces me to hang there, looking like an idiot, like a dog waiting to be let in.

  I have a key hidden out front—one Dylan doesn’t know about—but using it would only give him reason to ask me how I got in. What would I say then? Tell him I put it there over a year ago, just in case he ever did lock me out? Given that crash I just heard sounded a lot like it could be the vase from our dresser, my guess is it would be better not to give him another reason to punish me.

  My chin quivers at the abysmal predicament, yet I have no more tears. Somewhere in the garden shed there’s an old bush-shirt I can use as a blanket, and luckily we have removable cushions on our outdoor furniture.

  I could do camping. I could make a negative into a positive.

  You’re so optimistic; it’s disgusting.

  Nothingness again coats my stare, and I scuff my way to the garden shed to get the shirt, all the while cringing at each smash, and crash that echoes from within the house. At what stage of my life did I ever think this was an acceptable outcome? When the hell did I stop caring so much about myself, and agree to enslave myself to a man who doesn’t show an ounce of love toward me? A man who thinks it’s perfectly fine to destroy our home because he was taken by surprise?

  The side of me that hopes the world is somehow pure outside our boundary fences runs through the possibility of knocking on the neighbor’s door. But the devil on my shoulder taps the shell of my ear, and whispers his poisoned thoughts. If he’d wanted to help you, he would have stayed. He only wants to help your dog.

  My life, not worth as much as a dog’s.

  It sums how pointless I feel perfectly.

  If I had more guts, I might have thought about using something sharp in the garden shed to end my life.

  But therein lies the problem. I don’t have enough guts. Otherwise I would have left this prison a long time back.

  And once again, the depressing thoughts come full circle.

  At the end of the day, it’s all my fault.

  • • • • •

  I AWAKE with a whimper a little while after dawn. At some stage in my short and unsatisfying nap, I’d rolled off the cushions I’d pilfered from the patio setting, and ended up on the concrete. Cramps congregate in the old injuries I sport, sending pain searing through my back, and knees.

  Like the good bitch I am, I tidy the cushions, and put the bush-shirt away before making my way to the back door where I stand now. The hum of the air-conditioning is the only perceptible sound as I strain my ears to locate Dylan before I enter. One of the first survival skills I taught myself was the need for a plan. No matter how in charge he thinks he is, I always know where he is, and before he thinks to raise his hand to me I’ve mapped out five different outcomes for the situation we enter into.

  Preparation is the key to survival. And this Girl Scout always goes in prepared.

  The silence lasts too long, and given the man hasn’t slept in for the last ten years, I know something is off. A strange excitement amps my heart as I think through the slim possibility that he’s passed out, and choked on his vomit. But that damn voice of reason reminds me that never once, in his years of drinking to the point of being comatose, has he ever vomited. My shoulders fall as the balloon of hope bursts with a resounding pop in my head.

  The answer is so predictable that the local bookies wouldn’t have taken bets on it, but I try the handle all the same. No movement. Plan B, then. I slip around the side of the house, and peek out from behind a Camellia shrub at the front corner. The driveway sits empty.

  The fucker has gone out without letting me in.

  A smug smile takes residence as I saunter up to the Aloe Vera plant that grows beside the front steps. I look far too happy for a woman creeping about the front of her home in her nightie, but what do I care? For once I’ve outsmarted him.

  After a cursory glance to check for spiders, I dive my hand in between the two thick leaves I hide the key in. My fingers fish the crease at the bottom of the plant, but nothing metallic resides there. Confused, I draw my hand out, and look again.

  Definitely not there.

  That asshole has found it. And the asshole has taken it.

  My cheeks flare in shame at what a fool I am to gloat, when as usual,
it’s him who’s outsmarted me.

  I could sit and wait until he comes home, but for all I know that could be in an hour, or two days. Besides, I have a dog I desperately want to check up on. I simply hadn’t wanted to do it in my nightie.

  The lights next door glow pale yellow against the thin curtains on my side of his house. At least the guy is awake. I’m not sure I can handle pissing off two men in the space of twenty-four hours.

  Ten minutes is what it takes me to drum up the courage to walk to the end of the driveway. My paranoia works overtime on what could happen if any of the other neighbors see me. What if they tell Dylan where I’m going? What if Dylan thinks that the guy is my lover? Fuck. I don’t want to live that day.

  Lucky for me then, the street is its normal, quiet self; not a mower to be heard, not a moving car to be seen. No children laugh as they play, and there isn’t even a postie riding past with the mail. Regular ghost town around here; five points for guessing why Dylan wanted to buy a house in these parts.

  My steps falter as I round our paved driveway, and start up his gravel one. The stones are sharp, and I can see a few of them embedded in the tires of his truck. Sucking my bottom lip between my teeth, I make the journey to the front door, and climb the steps to the landing. My feet burn, and I take a moment to let the skin shirk the imprints of that damn gravel.

  The devil on my shoulder gets to work the instant I stand idle. Should I be doing this? What if he won’t give me Rocco back? What if he holds me captive until Dylan gets home? I know the last thought is ridiculous, given that the man jumped our fence to beat Dylan within an inch of his life. But still, that’s how my paranoia works when it comes to men.

  Hell, anyone for that matter.

  My ministrations are cut short as the front door whips open, and my midnight savior stands in the opening, his arms crossed and an amused smirk on his face.

  “Are you coming in, or are you going to hang out front like a zombie all day?”