The Butterfly Tattoo

by M. D. Thomas

  But that fantasy was quashed when the shrew pulled yet another chain from the bag. She locked it to the middle of the ankle chain and then bent Elle’s leg until she could lock the other end to the middle of the wrist chain, leaving Elle’s body contorted. The key to the last lock went in her pants pocket while all the others went back into the hardware bag.

  “Jesus, lady. I’m not a fucking mass murderer.”

  “No, but if I give you any opening, you’ll take advantage of it. You just proved that.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about what happened to your son. I am. It wasn’t fair and the guy deserves to pay for it. But I can’t help you. I don’t know anything else. I swear.”

  The shrew ignored her as she untied the last two knots, freeing her from the bed. She backed away, eyeing Elle warily despite the chains. “Get up.”

  Elle almost refused just to spite the bitch, but her bladder was really barking. Besides, the more I see of the house the better chance I have of getting the hell out of here…

  Elle struggled to a sitting position, her shoulders aching, the chains clinking like she was old Jacob Marley. That almost made her laugh, but her head started throbbing again and her good humor died. She shuffled her legs off the bed and onto the floor, then stood. It felt good to be upright even though she hurt all over.

  The shrew had positioned the chains well. Elle could stand almost straight, but she couldn’t lift her arms above her waist, and she couldn’t get her feet more than a foot and a half apart at best. She might be able to shuffle forward faster than a walk, but if she tried to run she’d be on her face in moments.

  The shrew opened the door and stepped out of the way, gestured toward the hall. “First door on the left.”

  Elle shuffled into the hallway. She glanced left even as she turned right and saw a living room where the hall ended, the furniture and decorations as boring as the stuff in the bedroom. The kitchen was probably out there as well, but she couldn’t see it.

  Framed photos of the family—a few including the husband—were on the walls, and she noticed a large picture of the boy wearing a baseball uniform, his grin easy and natural.

  That’s him. The same damn kid I saw in the park…

  It couldn’t be though.

  “Keep moving,” the shrew said, and Elle felt the woman’s hand in the small of her back, pushing her forward.

  She doesn’t want me looking at him…

  The bathroom door was open, the light already on, and Elle’s bladder urged her onward once the goal was in sight. She clanked like mad over to the toilet and turned around, fumbled awkwardly at her jeans until she was able to slide them to her knees. She almost fell onto the toilet and started peeing immediately.

  The shrew stood in the doorway, looking away. Elle didn’t care if the shrew saw her naked or saw her piss. As good as it felt to go, she wouldn’t have cared if the husband came down the hall for the show.

  Elle glanced around. It was the boy’s bathroom, the shower curtain and towels both sporting the Nationals logo in red and white. The vanity had two sinks and next to one of them was an electric toothbrush shaped like a baseball bat.

  “He really liked baseball, huh?” Elle said as she reached awkwardly for the toilet paper roll and managed to remove a few squares, and then, even more awkwardly, to wipe.

  “He does like it a lot,” the shrew said, still looking away.

  “Look, lady. I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t have any kids but I grew up with brothers and sisters. I know what it means to love someone.”

  The shrew’s face flushed as she looked at Elle. “Don’t you dare try to tell me you know what I feel. You don’t know anything about me or my son or what this has been like.”

  Elle stood, tried to bring her underwear and pants along with her but failed halfway. The shrew glanced away again, angry or not. Elle bent over and managed to get her clothes back in place after a brief struggle, the clinking chains making her want to cry and laugh at the same time. “This is batshit crazy. You realize that, don’t you?”

  The shrew glanced at her sharply, then away again, and Elle thought she might have struck a nerve. But all the shrew said was, “Back to the bedroom.”

  Elle shuffled into the hall once more, her eyes drawn again to the picture of the boy. The shrew drove her past it and back into the bedroom, turned and shoved her roughly onto the bed. Elle, unbalanced in the chains, fell easily.

  The shrew pushed her onto her back and lifted Elle’s legs into place on the bed, pushing and shoving her around until she was back in the position she’d woke in. The shrew tied an opposing arm and leg to the bed just as she’d done before, contorting Elle’s leg again, but then she started fussing with the knot that held the free rope by the headboard. Elle watched her, confused, then realized the shrew was adjusting the length of the rope.

  “You can’t leave me in these chains, lady,” she said, her breath coming quicker.

  The shrew tightened the new knot and dropped the free end of the rope on the bed. “Perhaps a few hours of discomfort will help you remember more about your friend in the car.” She took the key out of her pants pocket and used it to open the padlock at the top of the chain that linked Elle’s ankles to her wrists.

  “You can’t do this, you fucking shrew,” Elle said as she jerked her untied arm out of the shrew’s grasp. She lashed out but the chains pulled her up short.

  The shrew’s open hand slammed into Elle’s face and drove her teeth together so hard she felt an incisor chip. Her vision doubled and she blinked against the pain as the shrew raised her arm above her head and tied it off to the adjusted rope.

  Elle tried to clear her head, succeeded in time to watch the shrew tie up her other ankle, leaving her spread eagle on the bed again, chained wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle.

  “I’m gonna—” Elle’s words were cut off when the rag was stuffed back in her mouth.

  The shrew slid the gag into place again, then picked up the bag that held the keys, cocked her head slightly to the side as she examined Elle. “Do you believe I’m capable of hurting you?”

  All Elle could do was look away.

  Twenty-Eight

  HARVEY

  “Your grandfather’s having a great day,” Nonna said with a smile as she ushered Harvey into the house. Her face was radiant. “He’s even been talking a little. He hasn’t done that in weeks.”

  “Really?” Harvey said, the competing worries over Robertson, the kid, and Elle fading into the background for a moment. “What did he say?”

  “He asked about the rain. Can you believe that?” Nonna said, her smile growing even larger. “You remember how much he used to love the rain.”

  She practically pulled him into the kitchen where Nonno sat at the table.

  Harvey could see what she meant instantly. Instead of staring ahead vacantly, Nonno looked up as they entered. He didn’t smile but his eyes found Harvey and sparkled.

  “Go on,” prompted Nonna and Harvey realized he’d frozen in the doorway. Feeling strangely hesitant, Nonna guided him forward by the elbow and Harvey knelt.

  “Nonno,” he said, finding it difficult to speak. “It’s good to see you.”

  Nonno reached out and cupped Harvey’s jaw, his hand rock steady. Harvey felt the roughness of his grandfather’s fingers against his skin, inhaled the familiar metallic tang of the soap Nonna bathed him with, the buttery smell of the gel that held his hair back, the pungent odor of the balm that kept his papery skin moist.

  Harvey smiled.

  The three of them ate beside the large window that looked out on the rainy afternoon. The red sauce Nonna had simmering on the stove filled the room with the aroma of tomatoes, rosemary, and basil, and there was fresh bread on the table next to the antipasto. The kitchen was warm and familiar, filled with contentment instead of dread for the first time in a long while.

  Nonno took every bite his wife offered without hesitation. He even fed himself a few things.

&nb
sp; “You should go for a walk,” Nonna said after they’d finished eating. “There isn’t much he enjoys more than a walk in the rain.”

  “You always made me go with him,” Harvey said with a smile. “You said it was good for me, but I really think you just wanted some time alone. Right, Nonno?”

  “Right,” said Nonno said as he looked down at his plate.

  Nonna beamed and Harvey smiled back at her. Perhaps his grandfather was just parroting what Harvey had said, but Harvey didn’t care.

  “Let’s do it then,” Harvey said.

  It was a production to get Nonno out of the house of course. Good day or not, Nonno couldn’t manage himself. He’d been wearing adult diapers for a while, but he was dry and clean when they took him to the bathroom, and he relieved himself as soon as they’d gotten his pants down and helped him sit. That sort of thing had made Harvey squeamish at first, but he’d watched Nonna do it without flinching and had realized there could be dignity even in undignified situations. After the bathroom they exchanged his house slippers for a pair of galoshes and got him into a lightweight coat.

  Once that was done Harvey took out the large umbrella that was in the closet. “You coming with us, Nonna?”

  “No,” Nonna said with a smile and a wink. “You two enjoy yourselves.”

  “Suit yourself,” Harvey said. “Come on, Nonno. It’s been too long since we took a walk together.”

  Harvey guided Nonno through the door Nonna held and out onto the porch. The wind had died down but the rain was still steady. Harvey helped Nonno descend the porch steps to the sidewalk, held the umbrella with one hand and Nonno’s upper arm with the other.

  “Left or right?” Harvey asked when they reached the street. When he was a kid Nonno had called out the question at the end of some blocks but not others, always causing Harvey to wonder why he asked when he did. Harvey felt a little weird asking the question instead of answering it, but at the same time it felt right. Nonno didn’t respond so Harvey took them left.

  They didn’t move fast, but Nonno was steady on his feet and they covered ground more quickly than Harvey had expected. His grandfather had always been talkative on their walks, telling Harvey what to expect from the world and how to deal with it, so Harvey filled the rainy silence with talk of the bust-out from the night before.

  After they made the next turn, Harvey realized he wanted to tell Nonno about the kid and what had happened. The temptation was strong, but Harvey quashed it. Nonno was probably incapable of repeating the story to Nonna, but he might understand enough to be upset by it. Harvey didn’t want that, or for Nonna to catch it secondhand.

  “Left or right, Nonno?” Harvey asked when they came to the end of the next block. The rain still fell, but not too hard and they were staying pretty dry beneath the large umbrella.

  “Left,” Nonno said, already turning.

  Surprised, Harvey followed along.

  When he looked up, he saw the kid.

  As big as the moon…

  Harvey jerked to a halt, stopping Nonno at the same time, his fingers digging into his grandfather’s thin arm more than he’d intended. Nonno came to an obedient stop.

  The kid—brother, cousin, whoever he was—stood facing them halfway down the block, a ball darting between his hand and glove. He wore the Pirate’s hat and uniform. Harvey couldn’t tell for sure because of the distance, but he was almost certain the kid had on cleats.

  “Wait here, Nonno,” Harvey said. He offered his grandfather the umbrella and to his surprise, Nonno grasped it. It drooped a bit when Harvey let go, rested against the top of his grandfather’s head, but Nonno held it in place. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  Harvey started forward without waiting for an answer, the rain cool on his face. He felt drawn to the kid, like metal shavings to a magnet, and he had to fight the urge to run. He glanced back once to see Nonno standing motionless on the sidewalk where Harvey had left him, the umbrella still covering him.

  He turned back toward the kid only to see him trotting away down the sidewalk, the ball visible in front of him periodically, arcing above his head before falling into his glove.

  “Hey!” Harvey yelled, speeding up. “We need to talk. Now!” The kid didn’t look back and a moment later he turned a corner and disappeared behind a hedgerow.

  Harvey started to run, his feet splashing through puddles on the sidewalk, soaking the cuffs of his pants. He didn’t notice as he sped onward. He turned the corner as fast as he could and then halted when he saw the kid standing just fifteen or twenty feet away, the rain not yet visible on his white jersey and dark hat.

  The kid wasn’t tossing the ball anymore and he stared calmly at Harvey without moving.

  He’s not frightened at all…

  That made Harvey nervous—most kids would be at least a little scared if an adult was chasing them. Anger wouldn’t have bothered him, but in the face of that peaceful gaze Harvey took an involuntary step backwards, tensing in expectation of another ball thrown at his head.

  “I checked on Lee today,” Harvey heard himself say, as the rain picked up and started to trickle down his face. A slight buzz filled his ears. “What is he? Your brother? Cousin?”

  The boy didn’t answer, but he cocked his head to one side as if he were listening intently. There was something wrong about the way the kid looked, something important, but Harvey was too agitated to figure out what.

  “Whatever Lee is to you, he’s in a coma and not going anywhere. I don’t know if you think I’ve got something to do with that or what, but you’re wrong, kid.”

  The wind picked up and the kid started toward him. The gust blasted into Harvey, chilled him, made his damp skin goosebump beneath his wet sleeves. Startled and scared, Harvey stepped aside and the kid went past as if he was carried along by the wind. Part of him wanted to reach out and grab the kid, to shake him and demand that he stop following him. But at the same time, the thought of touching the kid frightened him in a way he hadn’t experienced since he was a child, sure that there was a monster in his closet and torn between a desire to open the door and discover the truth and an inability to bring himself one inch closer to the knob.

  The kid stopped at the corner and turned to face Harvey. Harvey wondered if he’d speak—the thought made his skin scrawl for some reason—but instead the kid placed the ball in his glove and used his free hand to point back down the sidewalk toward where Harvey had originally seen him.

  “What?” Harvey asked, afraid to move closer to the kid even though he still felt that magnetism toward him. “What are you pointing at?”

  Then he remembered.

  Nonno…

  Trying to ignore the panic spreading throughout his body, Harvey ran past the kid and looked down the sidewalk. Besides the rain, the only other thing that shared the block with him was the umbrella, lying upside down in the rain.

  Nonno was gone.

  Twenty-Nine

  JON

  Still in shock, Jon called out sick for the afternoon, spent a half hour trying and failing to forget about the woman tied to their spare bed.

  He sat at the kitchen table and attempted to read a magazine, but that was absurd and futile and he quit after he’d been over the same page at least a dozen times. He couldn’t focus on the words, couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  He tried television next, watched a few minutes of a documentary about Norwegian sled dogs and wondered what jail would be like. How long until Sarah and he would be arrested? The question should’ve disturbed him, the prospect of incarceration should’ve frightened him. It didn’t. What could be worse than the way things already were? His son would never wake from the coma he was in. His wife had left him in almost every sense of the word. And now there was a captive in the bedroom. Their family had begun to disintegrate the night of the accident and abducting the bartender was the final phase of that dissolution. His family, his marriage, his life were gone. What difference if he were in jail or free? None,
except where he spent his time living in the past, regretting what should’ve been.

  He couldn’t stay in the house. He thought of taking a drive, but he was too distracted and might get in an accident in the rain, and where would that leave the woman in the bedroom? He thought of visiting Lee, but that made the guilt inside swell to overwhelming proportions. His son had always been so good, so nice to everyone. Pure. Lee would never understand tying up a woman in the spare bedroom, never comprehend a world where that might be the right thing to do. And that would only make Jon feel worse about what he’d agreed to. So when Sarah had once again circulated to the back of the house, Jon left by the front door.

  The rain still fell, as heavy as before. If the forecasts were to be believed it would continue to fall for at least another day. Flooding, the meteorologists proclaimed, was inevitable.

  Jon left the house without a raincoat, without an umbrella, and the rain drenched his clothes for the second time that day. He wandered the neighborhood streets, hoped clinging clothes and water streaming down his face would drive the woman out of his head, but of course they didn’t. He stopped trying and all his thoughts were the same horrors as before, nothing revelatory, everything as worked over as a mouth sore.

  He walked without direction or forethought, took lefts and rights at random, waded through water flowing down the sides of the streets, didn’t try to avoid the arcs of spray whenever a car passed, and a half-hour later found himself outside the nearest convenience store. He thought of turning around, remembered what he had to go back to, and pushed through the door.

  Thirty

  There were no other customers. Jon went straight to the coolers and picked up the first twelve-pack of cold beer that wasn’t Budweiser, walked to the register, rivulets of water flowing from him onto the floor, his shoes squelching with each step.