by Dan O'Shea
But a second later, she saw the dog ahead of him. A muscled-up hound from hell with a slick coat, his jaw hanging open, teeth bared, pink tongue wagging in the wind just like the man’s penis. It was making a bee-line straight for her little teacup Yorkshire Terrier, Cocoa, that she was walking on a leash. Perhaps they were both going to be raped. Gang raped and then possibly murdered. What else could this be?
Tanya didn’t remember much after the moment the snarling beast latched its massive jaws onto Cocoa’s tiny body, lifting it up in the air and shaking the screeching Terrier. She only remembered standing there screaming as chaos surrounded her, and the sensation as if the earth had opened up underneath her feet. When it was over, her little pooch lay at the curb under a flaming summer sun, not moving.
The man dragged the black dog away by its collar, holding his robe closed with the other hand. He muttered some words Tanya didn’t quite hear, perhaps it was an apology. But he didn’t meet her eyes. He just hurried back across the road with his dog, up the steps of a house and went inside, closing the door behind him. For a moment she stood there gaping with her hands pressed to the sides of her head, unable to move as cars sailed past on the road, nobody taking any notice of her standing there in distress.
With trembling hands she pushed her long hair fallen lose from her ponytail, back behind her ears and scooped up her little pet. On shaking legs she ran down the block to her house, tears cold on her face.
Her mother met her at the door as she struggled to put the key in the lock.
“The dog on the street and the man, he came running at us and his dog, he---he--he got Cocoa, he attacked her and she’s not moving!” Tanya blurted out in a rush of tear-choked words until she was out of breath. “She’s n--not breathing, mom! She’s not breathing!”
“Shit,” she said, looking down at the limp dog, and then, “What man? Where?” Her mother grabbed her shoulders, squeezing a little too hard, and stepped out onto the porch to look out at the street.
“He--he went into that--that big house at the corner,” she said, panting and clutching her dog to her chest. She pointed at the house. “He has a big black dog. They both just came out of nowhere and ran at us and then he just grabbed Cocoa and I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know what to do!”
Tanya watched a muscle clench in her mother’s jaw, how her eyes darkened as she looked up the street. And with a horrifying clarity Tanya realized her mistake. She knew the beasts that lived in her mother’s heart had risen up and were circling. Without another word, her mother turned and went back inside. Tanya stood in the foyer with the door still open, fear lashing her in place, watching as her mother sprinted up the stairs two at a time.
Finally she moved into the house, laid her little dog’s broken body on the sofa, and buried her face in its coat, sobbing. When her mother came down the stairs seconds later, she had a knife in her hand.
“Mom, what are you going to do?” Tanya ran toward her.
“Teach that fucker a lesson, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Mom, we should call the cops,” Tanya said, grabbing her shirt, knowing she wasn’t listening to a damn thing she was saying. Not when she got like this. Not when the demons inside of her clawed at her flesh, launching her into a rage. She was completely unreasonable at that point. All the anger management classes in the world couldn’t help her, not that she’d ever gone to the classes that judge had ordered her to after one of her customer’s filed charges. But those charges were bogus, even Tanya knew that, done out of spite.
Tanya had watched from the top of the stairs that night, spying on her mother and Stanley, one of her regulars, when she was suppose to be in bed sleeping. Stanley had lain on his side, naked on the kitchen floor, hog-tied with dental floss. A scrawny pasty man with a farmer’s tan and thinning grey hair that grew past his shoulders. He was begging stupidly while her mother stepped on him with her stiletto heeled lace-up boots, instructing him to keep quiet.
“Kick me,” he said, breathlessly. “In the face,”
She smirked at him, crossed her penciled-on eyebrows. “Shut up.”
“Please Mistress. Kick me in the face. Just once—”
“I said shut up.”
“—in the face. Hard as you can.”
His demands for punishment had escalated in recent weeks, Tanya had noticed. Their session that night had left her with an ugly feeling that took a long time to shake. And she was regretting spying on their role-playing; this scene that infected her heart and mind like an incurable sickness, penetrating and poisoning every cell in her being, making her long to douse herself in bleach. Scrub it from her brain.
She was beginning to think there was something psychologically wrong with Stanley. Wiring in his brain that was crossed. But, her mother had obliged him, giving him a powerful front kick that sent him careening backward, cracking his head on the floor, blood flying out his nose.
When his half hour was up, and she ordered him to clean up his blood from the floor, get dressed and get the hell out, he started to cry. Bawling great heart wrenching sobs like a child.
“Please just fifteen more minutes.” He was on his knees, naked except for the shirt he’d hastily put on. His genitals dangled ineptly between his thighs like soft over-ripened produce forgotten in the bottom of the fridge. There was blood congealing in his nostrils. His nose was enlarged at the bridge between his eyes, the shadow of a bruise underneath.
Her mother turned away from him, running acrylic-tipped fingernails through her mass of bleached hair, and said, “Tomorrow’s a school day and you’re out of time. Now get dressed.”
“Let me be your house-boy. I’ll do your dishes. I’ll massage your feet. Please.”
She gathered up his clothing—his shoes, car keys—thrust them into his arms and opened the door.
“Go home.” She slammed the door on him and when he stood outside knocking and pleading through the door, she yanked it open and clobbered him.
When the man’s wife saw his injuries, she forced him to file assault charges and as a result her mother had gotten a year probation and ordered into anger management classes. The judge clearly didn’t understand the nature of her business. Tanya could see this, even at the age of fourteen, could see how it worked.
Still, it was true that her mother had anger issues that medication only seemed to worsen. Perhaps that’s what had attracted her to her profession in the first place. It was an outlet for all her rage. Rage from all that shes suffered as a girl at the hands of men. Rage she embraced like a demon lover, like a coconspirator. Rage she could never disentangle herself from. It directed every decision she’d made from her profession to her two nasty divorces. It defined her. It bound and enslaved her, solid as chains around her bones.
Tanya stood in the foyer with all the muscles in her body rigid, knowing everything was about to get completely out of control and go in a very bad direction. She watched that familiar eerie blank look enter her mother’s eyes. Watched her tuck the knife into the waistband of her jeans at the back, and open the door.
“Mother? Mother!” Tanya followed as she ran down the steps. She caught up with her, pleading for her to stop what she was doing and call the police. But her mother just continued to march down the sidewalk, then cross the street, and continue on up the opposite sidewalk, speaking not a word
“You can’t do this, Mom. It’s not right. They’ll lock you up, They’ll arrest you,” she pleaded, latching onto her arm with both hands, trying to drag her backward as she stomped up the porch steps of the house on the corner.
“Think for a minute. Just think what you’re doing! What will happen to me, Mom?”
Her mother banged her fist on the door.
In a panting whisper Tanya said, “If you go to jail Mom, they’ll take me away. They’ll put me in foster care, like they did you. Remember what happened to you in foster care?”
Her mother turned to look at her for the first time, and Tanya saw the insan
ity in her eyes. And then something abating, a hint of tenderness returning.
“Let’s go home, Mom. We’ll let the police deal with this. It’s what we need to do.”
Her mother let out a breath, the rage disengaging. She swiped a hand over her face and nodded. Tanya pulled her gently, coaxing her down the steps, leading her like a spooked horse. They would go home and call the police. It was the right thing to do. Everything would be okay.
Then the door of the house swung open and the man in the bathrobe, cigarette hanging out between his lips, stood in the doorway. Tanya noticed his bald head for the first time, the white scar slicing an eyebrow in half, the dead look in his eyes.
“What are youse doing on my god damn property?” he barked, and sneered at them, actually sneered. After what he’d done? The man had church bell sized balls if he actually thought there would be no repercussions from what had just happened. Her little dog Cocoa was dead because of his rabid mongrel and he was acting like they were there to sell him aluminum siding and talk to him about Jesus.
Tanya and her mother stood there speechless for a second.
Then Tanya swallowed, cleared her throat and said, “Nothing, never mind. We’re leaving.”
Together they turned and took a step and Tanya felt a sigh of relief come over her, thinking what a close call this all was, how bad things could have gone had she not managed to talk her mother down. She was also thinking, all in the few seconds that followed, that she needed to talk to somebody about getting her mother some help, maybe a different medication. Or perhaps they could take a yoga class, learn meditation that would help her mother get in touch with her inner demons and make peace with them. She’d heard about some mountain retreat in B.C, all about healing and finding your Zen. Her art teacher had gone last summer and raved about it in class. She could ask her for information. They could go together, do some mother and daughter bonding, maybe smoke some of that west coast pot she’d heard about. That would certainly mellow her mother out.
The sound of the man belching was like the bark of a dog. It was followed by a cackling laugh, the effect a ring of a boxing match bell.
Without warning, her mother pulled away, and in one swift motion swung around, reaching into the back of her waistband and pulling out the knife. A powerful scream issued from Tanya’s lungs slicing the air as she watched her mother stick the knife deep into the man’s big belly. Again and again and again and again.
CUT. COPY. PASTE. DELETE.
Peter Farris
New Haven, CT
Friday, January 11, 2001
11:32 p.m.
I figured I’d arrive with a bolt of lightning, you know? Like in the movies? High voltage arcs and sparks and then when the electricity was really cooking…POOF! Here I’d be.
Isn’t like that at all.
I just sort of appear. In a dorm room. With a gun in my hand.
Staring at myself at twenty years old.
But I haven’t come to warn myself.
I’ve come to kill myself.
He’s exactly where I expected him to be on this night. At this desk. Hunched over his laptop computer. Squinting because he has a stigmatism but it’ll be a few more years before he gets his eyes checked. But not if I can help it.
He’s tapping away at the keyboard. Writing something. A story. He’s writing a story. But I can’t remember what it’s about. Something awful no doubt.
Twenty-year-old me turns slowly in his office chair.
God Almighty I remember that face. Those clothes. Jesus and that thick patch of chin hair. Who’d I think I fucking was, Allen Ginsberg? I can’t believe I used to look like that.
Twenty-year-old me notices the gun pretty quick. We lock eyes. He cocks his head. They told me this would happen.
“W-who are you? H-how did you get in here?”
“I’m you, kid,” I tell him.
• • • •
Me? I’m seventy years old now. Just a wheezy, gimpy old man living in a slum. I was the first to sign up actually, soon as I saw the advertisements. Sold a family heirloom to pay for the trip.
But my God is it worth it.
This technology is out there. And by that I don’t mean available. I mean it is wacked out. Never would a thought you could do such a thing, especially back when I was a college boy.
This travel agency, they are a bunch of nihilistic motherfuckers.
See…most people wish they could go back in time, right? Do this or that a little different. Anyone tells you otherwise and I promise they’re getting a blow job from a pair of solid gold lips.
It’s always the stuff that comes to you right before you fall asleep, too. Or sometimes just before you wake up. That gloaming in your mind, always ripe for the most embarrassing memories to surface. Moments when you showed your ass or didn’t stick up for yourself. The big resentments and what ifs? Followed by the guilt and shame when you think how poorly you’ve managed your life.
Happens right after you set the clock and right before it goes off.
Trust me. I know.
See twenty-year-old me over there wants to be an author. Wants to tell stories. Wants to write novels. Twenty-year-old me wants to walk into a bookstore and see a row of hardcovers with his name along the spine.
Twenty-year-old me actually wants to make a living writing. Can you believe that shit?
I hate to break his heart but it ain’t gonna happen.
An hour ago I was standing in line at the travel agency with directors, actors, musicians…fucking writers.
Lot of disappointed people.
Now there was a time when I thought I had some talent. Got some stories published here and there, a magazine, an anthology, even got me a fancy agent in New York who shopped my manuscripts around. Meanwhile I kept reading and writing. Trying to get better at my “craft” as they called it. Most my friends went to grad school, got jobs, raised families. Me? I kept the faith. Kept telling myself I was gonna make it. I was gonna be a bestseller.
The years went by. The rejections rolled in. My agent stopped calling.
I became a parasite to my family.
I started to hate everything and everyone. I drank and used drugs. My wife left me. Thank God we didn’t have any kids.
Pretty soon I never left the house…until the sheriff’s deputies made me leave.
I kept writing but no one cared. The hard drive on my computer became a homeless shelter.
Nobody wants to read you unless your name’s on a book cover anyway. And there are fancy quotes below it. Singing your praises.
Trust me.
Everyone else moved on with their lives. Me? I was cursed with an impractical ambition. Even talent and perseverance and hard work can get you right to the middle of fucking nowhere.
Destitute. Cirrhotic. Alone.
Now this travel agency says you can’t change things.
You can only end things.
It’s a fetish thing. A fancy form of suicide. No Butterfly Effect or nothin’. Just annihilation. And the relief, they told me. Relief like you wouldn’t believe.
I didn’t argue with ‘em.
I just asked what caliber was the gun.
• • • •
“Can you speak?” twenty-year-old me says.
“Yeah, I can speak.”
“Jesus, you’re me, aren’t you?”
I’m sharp like that. This is going better than expected.
“That’s right. I’m you. You’re me.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
“It’s for you. For us.”
“Where did you come from?”
“The future, kid. The future.”
He considers this for a moment.
“How old are you?”
“I’m seventy. Seventy years old. This is what you’ll get when you look in the mirror.”
“Jesus, you look like shit.”
“Yes, we do,” I tell him.
“So you traveled back in time to k-kil
l me?”
“I did, kid. I did.”
“Why?”
“Because you made up your mind a long time ago to be a writer. Sometime tonight…am I right?”
Twenty-year-old me just nods.
“Well, it didn’t work out. You fail. Fail bad.”
“There’s no way,” twenty-year-old me says in protest. “I got my whole life ahead of me.”
“You did, kid. But your fancy college degree and unbreakable faith ain’t enough. Hope ain’t enough. I hate to tell you, but it’s the truth.”
“What happens to me?”
“Me. That’s what happens.”
He looks me up and down. From my scuffed shoes to my smoke-stained shirt. The yellow teeth and liver spots.
“I can do anything,” he says. “Anything I want.”
“I know, kid. That’s what they tell you. They tell you that and it’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Because it ain’t true. It’s a lie. You can’t do anything you want. Because of your choices. Other times it’s just simply out of your hands. Most times it’s a little bit of the two. And luck. You need some fucking luck.”
“And I don’t have any?”
“Do I look lucky to you?”
“Can’t this just be a warning?”
“A what?” I say. Zapped to the past and I still can’t hear worth a shit.
“A warning,” he says. “For me to change?”
“Don’t work that way. That screws everything up,” I say, looking at the watch they gave me. There’s not much time left.
“Why not? Why does it have to be like this?” twenty-year-old me says.
“It just does, kid. The future is a fucked-up place. More fucked up than anyone could’ve imagined. And it don’t need you. Trust me. Actually, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
I raise my hand and pull the trigger. A loud BANG and then it’s over. Twenty-year-old me screams, looks down at his chest, then his eyes roll over white. Arms go limp. Blood blooms across his torso.