I locked the door, somewhat surprised it even had a lock.
The bed looked reasonably clean. I went to the bathroom to take a piss. The bathtub was covered in a blackened green substance and, while I don’t think it was smoking, there was something in the room making my eyes and lungs burn. When finished, I zipped up and looked for a switch to an exhaust fan. There wasn’t one. Nor was there a window in the bathroom so I grabbed the roll of toilet paper, shut the door, and crammed a bunch of it in the crack.
I checked my phone before lying down.
No messages.
My clothes were still damp but I didn’t even think about taking them off.
I was asleep within seconds.
* * *
I coughed myself awake, rattled by the momentary disorientation of where I was. Once I placed myself at the seedy motel in North Dayton I had a moment of panic I’d slept well past check out time. Not that it really mattered. I hadn’t given the clerk a credit card or any ID so I imagined all they could really do was ask me to leave.
I grabbed my phone from the upturned cardboard box serving as a nightstand and noticed there were a couple of texts with attached images from Dawn. The first was a picture of Barcie’s car in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. The time stamp on that one was 6:52 a.m. It was currently 11:38. The next picture was a photo of the front door of my motel room. The time stamp was 8:30. The two well-dressed men stood to the left of the door, almost like guards.
I went to take a piss and my phone vibrated again.
The bathroom still smelled horrible. I shook myself off and got out of there as quickly as possible.
The message read: “You get one more chance.”
It was from Dawn.
I didn’t know if I wanted one more chance.
I was pretty sure I just wanted to get away.
I could find a bus station and buy a ticket to get as far away as I possibly could.
But what then?
Finding some kind of homeless shelter to check into until I could get a job and save up enough for an apartment? I felt like I’d been through this before. Not to that extreme. I’d be substituting a homeless shelter for my parents’ house. I’d started the cycle when moving out of their house after high school and repeated it every three-to-five years since, usually following the break up of a long term relationship. I took what I needed, usually had no money in my bank account, and moved back in with my parents. Then I found a job, had to save for nearly a year before getting enough money for a deposit, first month’s rent, and deposits for the utilities. Having a job and a place of my own led to me getting into another relationship. Things went well for a while. Then they either exploded or just fizzled out and I was left alone, empty, and sometimes without a place to live. I’d never really moved far away so my parents’ had been the cheapest and most convenient place to go back to. But they weren’t around anymore and I felt like if I left without Dawn’s permission, I probably wouldn’t be able to return to Gethsemane.
But why would I want to return to Gethsemane?
Couldn’t I live in squalor practically anywhere?
At least in some other town in some other state I wouldn’t feel that anxious fear I’d felt since sleeping with Stasia Warner. But, let’s face it, that was just a heightened sense of the anxious fear I’d felt every day before that.
Going back to my rinse and repeat life seemed soul deadening. At least Dawn represented change. Actually, if I looked back at my life, Dawn was the most exciting thing to happen to it since losing my virginity as a teenager. Scary, sure, but avoiding things I was afraid of had gotten me exactly nowhere.
It had kept me alive and out of any trouble that could be considered too serious, but that was about it.
Then again, doing things against my better judgment was what got me into the whole White Power Larry situation and was ultimately why I wanted to get away.
It wasn’t really Dawn’s fault at all. She was just a physical manifestation of my conscience. I could tell myself she was evil but I’d been right there with her the past couple of days. How was she any worse than me?
I didn’t really know what to do, but then again I never really had.
I stepped outside into a hot, humid day.
The two well-dressed men still stood outside the room. Before I could even shut the door, they’d pressed back into it and shut the door behind them.
The man in the chair I’d seen smoking last night was still there.
He wasn’t smoking now.
He may not have even been alive.
His head was craned toward the sky, his face frozen in a kind of twisted terror. A series of vicious cigarette burns and bruises covered his torso and it looked like his left arm had turned to rust.
Part of me felt like screaming.
Part of me felt like calling the police.
I did neither.
Some grim part of my brain looked at that man and thought, This could be you. And I could see it clearly. Twenty more years of desperate scrabbling, shit jobs, loneliness, and self-abuse. What if this motel were not a way station but my final destination?
I shuddered and forced myself to move on.
I walked out to the busy main road, already sweating. I felt like shit. Following through on any of my planned journey seemed absolutely absurd.
Maybe I needed to eat.
I wasn’t particularly hungry but felt like it would supply a bit of clarity.
I saw a sign up ahead for a place announcing itself as AIRPORT BUFFET AND GENTLEMENS CLUB and thought it sounded not only weird but probably too expensive. I wondered how a woman could work there and not feel like food.
A little beyond that was a Denny’s and I made that my destination.
I was nearly there, drenched in sweat, when Dawn’s car pulled up to the curb and crept slowly beside me. It was a busy, four-lane road and cars flew past in either direction so I thought I was safe and just kept walking.
“Hey!” Barcie shouted from the passenger side. “Get in the car.”
I ignored them and kept walking.
I heard a familiar sound I couldn’t immediately place and then felt a sharp painful sting in my hand.
I heard the sound again and now recognized it.
Barcie was pumping a BB gun.
I felt another sting on my neck, loud derisive laughter accompanying the pumping of the gun.
The next BB hit me in the middle of the back, my shirt taking a lot of the sting out of it.
If I just ignored them, maybe somebody would stop it. Hell, we weren’t in Gethsemane anymore. I could probably just call the cops.
Or at least threaten to.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“Who you callin?” Barcie mocked.
I stopped. “I’m calling the cops, okay? Two psychopaths are in a car shooting me with a BB gun.”
I glanced at my screen just in time to see the BB strike it and spread a crack through it. The left side went black.
“Dawn says you don’t wanna do that.”
“Why the fuck not?” I wasn’t sure I could do it if I wanted to.
“She says White Power Larry could be here in about fifteen minutes and that we’ll keep tabs on you for him. She also says to make sure you tell em about stealin two hundred dollars and my car from me.”
I put my phone back in my pocket and approached the car. I bent down and looked across Barcie, at Dawn.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to get in the car.”
“Look, I just want to get away, okay? I don’t want to get mixed up in anything else.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before.”
“So . . . what? White Power Larry’s going to beat me up? Kill me? Maybe that would be better than living like this.”
“Just get in the car. We’ll take you home. You’re being ridiculous.”
Was I, though?
I didn’t really know but just her sa
ying that made me feel like I was being a little ridiculous.
“I just need some time to clear my head, okay? That’s all I want.”
“You can probably do that in your apartment just as well as you can . . . Where were you going anyway? The strip bar buffet?”
“I wasn’t going to the strip bar buffet.”
“I bet you were. Come on. Get in the car. Barcie’ll suck your cock for you.”
“I don’t . . .”
Barcie shot me in the forehead. I think the range was so close it actually broke skin.
“Get the fuck in the car,” Dawn said.
I sighed and opened the back door, throwing myself in and pouting like a bratty child.
“How can I get out of this?” I asked.
“Maybe you don’t want out of it.”
She pulled back into traffic.
“I definitely do.”
“Why? Izzum scared?” Dawn said with a mocking baby voice.
“A little, maybe.”
“Aren’t you tired of being poor? Of being powerless?”
Of course I was. Who liked being poor and powerless? But I definitely didn’t want to tell her that.
“It suits me,” I said.
“That sounds defeatist.”
“Then . . .” I threw my hands up in the air. “Tell me how I can stop being poor.”
“The real question is not how you can stop being poor, it’s how you can start making money. You gotta think positive.”
“Okay, whatever, I’m listening.”
“You should go home and rest first.”
The trip back to my apartment was mercifully silent.
Billups’ Interior and Exterior Landscaping
Dawn didn’t contact me for nearly a week.
After my brief escape I’d gone home and slept for nearly twenty-four hours. I awoke the next afternoon. I hadn’t received any texts or calls. My phone was fucked but functional. Except for the itching, my back felt a lot better but there was a large knot on my forehead from where Barcie had shot me with the BB gun. I ate some old chips and made some coffee. I needed to try and get a handle on what I was going to do. I felt like I was ultimately going to take part in whatever Dawn wanted me to take part in. At least for a while.
The good thing about doing the type of work I did was that it provided ample time to think, which I needed. I finished my coffee and called Billups.
“This better be good,” he said.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday.”
“And you didn’t do the Dinsmores’ like you said you was the day before. He called me again this morning to complain about all the trash. Said his wife’s bad sick and the trash is really depressing him. Pretty sure he was cryin.”
“This is embarrassing . . . My truck still isn’t fixed. I took it in to get the estimate and thought I’d have enough but then my rent was due and I had to pay utilities and . . . anyway the guy at the car place had it towed back to my apartment and told me to stop wasting their time so . . . I guess what I’m asking is do you think you’d be able to send somebody to pick me up?”
He paused and gave a sarcastic little laugh that was really more of an exhalation. “I guess I don’t got much of a choice, do I? Donnie was the only one who came in this morning and he says he thinks he’s concussed.”
“Concussed?”
“Yeah, he hit his head real hard yesterday.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. Probably somethin stupid. You know Donnie ain’t right.”
More and more, it didn’t seem like anybody was right.
“So . . .”
“Yeah, I’ll be there in about ten minutes. I’ll need to get back.”
“Thanks, Mr. Billups.”
“Be ready when I get there.”
I dug out my laptop to look at my bank account and try to do some more research on Dawn.
I pulled up the account for my apartment on the realtor’s website. Even with the money I’d stolen from Barcie, I still wouldn’t have enough to cover the rent but I felt like it would be good to know how short I was. I could have researched tenants’ rights, eviction, and all that, but figured I could count on at least one free month, although it may consist of avoiding a lot of calls from the landlord.
The rent for July would be due by the first.
Surprisingly, it had already been paid.
While I knew this would come with dire consequences, I felt a momentary sense of relief.
It had to have been Dawn who’d paid it.
I typed the name ‘Dawn Bando’ into Google and it brought up the same links it had before.
I noticed again that she was in the graduating class of 2017. There was a link to buy the digital yearbook for five dollars. So that was a thing. I supposed it was for people who’d lost theirs to relive the memories but there was a part of me that felt like the only people who would use it would be pedophiles.
I waited for it to download and scrolled through the senior class until I got to the ‘B’s. There she was. She looked pretty, a broad smile with a devious glint in her eyes. She didn’t seem to be a member of anything.
I paid for the yearbook from the previous year. I told myself it was for research. I didn’t want to think it might have been to see another picture of Dawn. The memory of me down on my knees, licking her cunt, came back to me and I was suddenly hard. She had filmed that. I wondered if she’d send it to me if I asked. I wondered if she’d ever let me do it again. I nearly salivated at the thought.
I found the ‘B’s in that year’s junior class and scrolled down.
She wasn’t there.
The classes of Get High were pretty small. A little larger than when I’d graduated nearly two decades ago, but not by much. Fewer than a hundred students per class.
I continued scrolling through the images until I eventually found her again.
Under the ‘R’s.
Dawn Rosen.
Oh fuck.
My erection wilted and my sense of panic came back with a vengeance.
I went to the tab with the Google search still open.
I continued scrolling down, finding nothing of real interest.
I clicked to the second page of search results and found what I was afraid of.
The marriage announcement of Sheriff Charles “Chuck” Bando and Dawn Rosen.
Not his daughter.
His fucking wife.
I now wished the video of me eating Dawn’s pussy was nowhere in existence.
Dread and worry.
I really really needed to get the fuck out of Gethsemane. I immediately regretted getting in the car with Dawn and Barcie. I should have just kept running. Why did I ever think something good could come from this?
I began adding up the value of everything in my apartment and realized I was worth nothing. Even the laptop I was using was five years old and had a number of keys that had to be struck repeatedly to work.
What I would be able to come up with, along with what I already had, would maybe afford me a cab ride to a train station and a train ride to some place not super far away like Chicago. But I couldn’t do that only to show up with nothing. I was tired of starting from scratch. I’d rather just stick around and deal with the fear and humiliation than do that again.
As something of a last resort, I went to Career Giant and uploaded a resume that permanently sat on my desktop. It was seventy-five percent made up so there was never any need to update it. I didn’t put in a specific location. I wasn’t particularly qualified to do anything. I would entertain offers from anywhere. The farther away, the better.
I moved over to the window of my apartment and looked out, my sense of dread mingling with the thought of Dawn’s pussy.
I was super fucked.
At least if White Power Larry came after me, I could fool myself into thinking the law would provide some level of protection. But Sheriff Bando was the law, and a recording existed of me going down on his bea
utiful teenage bride.
I was an idiot.
I saw Billups pull in front of my building and headed down.
There was another flyer for a missing dog taped beside the bank of mailboxes, most of which were open, like the mail person was too exhausted to shut them.
* * *
A sweaty Mr. Dinsmore answered the door.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” He stepped away from the door and motioned me inside.
It was easy to figure out why he was so sweaty. The house was stifling.
“As you can see,” he said, “all the flowerpots are filled with trash.”
“That’s what I’m here to take care of.”
“Good. Real good.”
He patted me on the shoulder and smiled. His eyes were glazed over like he had been crying or was super stoned.
I went to the large areca palm by the TV. I pulled a trash bag from my pocket and set about removing the trash from the container. I quickly broke out in a sweat. The pot contained common trash—things like snack wrappers and soda cans—and I didn’t know why they didn’t just throw it in a trashcan. Maybe it was too far away or full and they were just too lazy to take it out. The way the house smelled it was easy to imagine the trash hadn’t been removed in a very long time. I also wasn’t sure why they paid a hefty amount to have people take care of their landscaping and houseplants when the money could have gone for a maid. Maybe they did have a maid and they were just able to trash the place that quickly. It was like they wanted nice things—could certainly afford nice things—but were repeatedly transformed into some wild animal lurking inside of them.
I moved away from the plant and Dinsmore scampered over to peer into the container.
“Yeah.” He beamed. “That looks real good.”
I moved into the kitchen. A large pothos climbed a stake in an 18-inch pot. This one was also filled with trash. Some of this looked grosser, more like kitchen trash, and I wished I’d brought my gloves.
Mr. Dinsmore stood over me while I crouched down to get to work.
“This one’s real bad,” he said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Oh, I know you will. I know you will. I was just saying . . . it’s pretty bad.”
I plucked out all the dry paper trash and put it in the bag. That left three hot dogs, some moldy bread, a perfectly preserved fast food hamburger, and a spent condom. Since the rest of the house was covered in trash too, I picked up an empty chip bag from the floor to use it in lieu of gloves.
This Town Needs a Monster Page 10