by J. D. Palmer
I watch in horrified fascination, unable to speak. This feels surreal. Death can’t possibly be this casual.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Stuart ignores me, his lips pursing as if I were an errant child begging not to be punished.
“You can let me go. You can let me leave, and I’ll never return. Please. Please!”
He advances towards me. I scramble backwards, pulling my threadbare blanket with me in a feeble shield. I tip my water dish over, coating the floor around me. I toss the bucket at him. He easily avoids it, grimacing at my pitiful efforts.
“This will all be over soon,” he murmurs, as if soothing a wild animal. He steps into my space, my terror making him larger and more implacable than he is. I hold my scraps of blanket in front of me, my eyes never leaving the syringe.
“Stop, please!”
He puts his left hand on the chains.
“Please!”
I slowly put the blankets down on the ground and kneel on them in front of him. A penitent sinner seeking absolution.
“Please, don’t do this,” I manage to whisper, my throat clogged with terror and only opening to let loose small, pathetic sobs.
“Please.”
He enjoys the moment, standing straight and tall above me, chin raised and eyes cold and hard. He savors this scene that transports him from a feeble man to a god deciding the fate of a mortal.
Then he torques the chains and yanks my arm behind me. He leans in and I smell his breath; food and liquor and tooth rot. He hovers at my side, inhaling my fear, relishing his moment of supreme power.
He smiles. “You were not chosen for this world.”
I stare into the eyes of a cracked mind as he brings the syringe up to my neck. He is assured of his purpose, content with murder and rape and torture for he has been set aside by a whimsical god to make a new world. There is no one to judge him.
“Beryl!”
That makes Stuart pause. I think, and I can’t be sure, that he knew her name but chose not to share it with me. He glances back, following my gaze. Beryl is standing, a grim face over a silly dress facing us both. Bruises yellow and purple give her a necklace, the sun from the window behind her giving her dark hair a golden hue.
But it’s her eyes that command attention. They hold a fire, a desperate flame kindled in the dark recesses of her mind and now burning with a savage intensity.
She is holding the controllers for the collars. Stuart lets out a confused gasp. He has a second to look down at his bare feet standing in the puddle of my water before she hits the button.
Chapter 9
I stay kneeling on the blankets, my breath ragged, mouth fractured into half grimace, half smile. Fear cascades out of me in the form of tears.
Beryl doesn’t move. I think part of us never truly believed that a moment like this would come to pass. He had instilled so much fear in us, had mastered both of us body and soul to the point that some small part of us must have believed it.
Move.
He is not dead. Once, as a kid, my sister grabbed the fishbowl and spilled it onto the kitchen floor. The one fish, shiny and silver, laid on the tiles with eyes wide and did its best to breathe. That’s what Stuart looks like now, his eyes unable to focus, chest heaving, one arm touching his chest.
Move.
I grab his foot. Blisters are forming and parts of his filthy feet are blackened. I pull. Dammit I am weak. I heave him closer. Even incapacitated I find myself afraid of him. What if he sits up? What will he do if he catches me?
I take the bundle of keys from his pocket. He groans. My hands are shaking as I fit one key after another into the shackles at my wrists. Is he waking up?
I drop the keys. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I look at Beryl, she has fallen to her knees, her hands clasped together. Her lips are moving, voiceless, snot and tears running over unheeding lips.
I take a deep breath and free myself. I shackle Stuart to my former bonds, every moment that I touch his greasy skin is a moment of revulsion and fear and joy. I triple check the bonds before I free Beryl.
Unfettering her is hard. The sudden proximity is something new, something out of the routine beaten into us. Our minds rebel at this break in the uniformity of our lives.
I cannot find the right key for her and she flinches at my touch on her arm. This man has destroyed her. When the chains fall away she stays on her knees. I stand by her, not knowing what to do. Perhaps she doesn’t know what to do either. If you open a cage for a bird that has known nothing but imprisonment will it fly away?
We stand like that for a long time. Tears and snot ebb and flow as our minds process a freedom we thought impossible. Stuart’s breathing slowing as Beryl’s crying comes to an end.
She stands and we both stare at the man. He groans, a trail of spittle running from his mouth to the floor. Eyes flutter and he opens them, his head lolling. He experiences the jerk of the chains as his arm moves towards his head.
“What?”
Beryl turns away from the scene in front of her, her gaze escaping out the window, a deep breath filling her chest. She exhales haltingly, eyes closing as she gathers herself before slowly walking past me and down the stairs. A light tread on carpet and then the door closing behind her. I am left with this thing, this creature, something that used to be a man. His eyes focus and he looks at me.
“What…?”
I don’t respond. I stare at the monster beneath me. Lying amongst wet blankets soaked and stained with my piss and shit and blood. Quivering with fear.
It’s intoxicating.
Not because I have power over him. Something different. More primal. Maybe because he wanted to be where I was. Because he tried to be where I was. I am proud that I came out on top.
I am scared.
“What…?”
I know, in my heart of hearts, that the world would be a better place if I killed him. I know he is twisted. He is… Evil. No matter what events took place in his life to shape him this way, whatever social or societal rejections, hardships, however his parents might have mistreated him, there is no returning from this. He deserves to die. I look down and pick up the syringe. I stand there, facing him, as the reality of the situation slowly sinks in for him.
Hur Hur. He laughs that fucking laugh. “I wasn’t going to kill you, you know. That’s iodine. Just iodine.” He laughs again, slowly pushing himself to his feet. “I just needed to scare you, make sure you knew the rules. I wasn’t going to kill you.”
Kill him. Kill him.
I have dreamt of this moment. Fantasized about it. Now that it’s here before me I can’t proceed. I don’t know how. I’ve become acquainted with death since the world ended. I have not met killing. Is this my decision?
Of course it is.
What if it changes me? What if I turn into a broken soul, just like him? A creature filled with abject terror, crazed and twisted and ultimately distorted by the events that I have witnessed. What if…
“Put that away. Please. Perhaps my wife, perhaps you like her?”
I am repulsed. I want to hit this man. Beat him. I want to make him suffer.
He needs to die.
I step forward with the syringe and he cowers. I will take his death upon myself. I will take another man’s life and if I am wrong to do so then I will take the judgment passed from whatever god I end up meeting. I take another step forward.
“I am chosen. I am the chosen one. You cannot harm me.” He does his best to be stern. To look down at me like the insignificant mortal I am. Glazed over eyes look into mine, seeking to find the creature that he broke to his will.
I raise the syringe and move another pace closer.
The door opens and I hear slow steps coming up the stairs. Stuart and I are frozen, a tableau of murder paused. Beryl comes around the corner and assesses the scene. She walks to me and slowly, tentatively, takes the syringe from my hand. A profound sense of relief washes over me and I don’t know why.
&
nbsp; He needs to die.
Then I see the knife. Beryl turns and approaches Stuart, a small tremble to her steps. He doesn’t move. Even now he looks at her with a small smile, his eyes filled with the distorted, grotesque, but no less real love he has for her.
She stabs him in the groin, the blade plunging deep, only a small gasp from Stuart before she rips it out to stab him once more. In the groin. In the abdomen. She stabs him again. And again. He crumples to the ground, bending over the wounds, moaning with pain. She stands above him, completely still, blood coating her arm, her face, a spray staining the little white bows on her dress.
She stares down at the man, the monster who tore her apart inside and out. She gives a ruthless smile before tossing the knife onto her bed. I lead her away, down the stairs and out of the door of that horrid prison and out into the street as Stuart begins to wail behind us. We walk quickly, steps fast and light as we turn the corner. She sees the ocean and she weeps and smiles and she wraps thin arms around herself and I don’t say a word.
Behind us the screaming slowly fades and I know we will never see that room again.
How reliant we are on other people to help us understand our actions. Our morals shaped by books and movies and lessons taught to us on the playground or by our parents. We are told what is right and what is wrong. What is justice. Sculpted by society to fear doing something reprehensible.
Perhaps it would be more humane to have killed him. Standing here, listening to waves crash and birds call, salt in the air and the breeze whipping the tears on Beryl’s face up and back so they streak through her hair… Standing here experiencing a freedom I never thought to see again, I could care less about being humane. We left a man to suffer and die in pain. Alone.
I won’t lose any sleep over it.
Chapter 10
I lead her to a house that I remember. A house with no dead, no food, but it had closets full of clothes. There is no need to communicate. We need to shed the raiments of our past. Not much is left of mine and Beryl is already rifling through dresser drawers before I leave the room.
There is men’s clothing in the room down the hall. He was short and must have outweighed me by quite a bit. I don’t care. I find a tank top and a pair of gym shorts that fit. I bid farewell to my cowboy boots, slipping my feet into sneakers only slightly too big. I almost feel guilty for not keeping the boots, or at least a part of them. They are my only physical connection to Jessica. But no. They have been tainted too much, she would be the first to tell me to get rid of them.
I go to the living room to wait for Beryl. I feel better, but jittery. Like I broke out of prison but it’s only a matter of time before someone starts looking for me. I pace the room, one hand cupping the fevered wound on my neck, and wonder what’s taking her so long. I don’t want to be insensitive. But my heart is pounding faster than it should. I feel like I drank too much coffee and I can’t remember the last time I had any.
I check out the CD collection in a nice neat rack on the wall as I concentrate on taking slow, deep breaths. I try to relax the tension in my shoulders. Where is she?
I find her in the master bedroom. There is a bag loaded with clothing lying on the floor at her feet. She is sitting on the bed, the same hunched posture I saw every day. Her eyes are glossed over, one hand washing imaginary filth from her shoulder.
“Beryl?”
She slowly comes back to herself.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I have faith in my words this time. She looks up at me, eyes bright. “We are going to be okay.”
I don’t touch her. I don’t go sit by her and hug her or any of that shit. That’s not what she needs. I was never good at it anyways. I remember trying to comfort my sister after a boyfriend broke up with her in school. I tried to be a shoulder to cry on. I know I made it worse, the only good thing was that her sadness was for a short time directed at me. I couldn’t understand it. But it’s hard to stop doing what you think people need, to do the stuff you see other people do effortlessly. Be comforting. Say the right thing. And every time I pretended, when I did what they did in movies, I was grotesquely fake. And people feel it. They don’t know it, but they feel it.
I’m not going to be fake with her.
“Beryl. We are fucking free.”
She smiles.
There is a good chance we will die soon. Perhaps humans were meant to perish and we are the persistent fleas that have simply survived the first purging. But if that day comes we won’t be cowering in shadows, filth and fear and confusion clouding our minds and hearts. We will die free. We have been forced to reckon with unseen corners of our souls, and we found the strength to smile. She gets up and grabs my hand, tentative fingers that flinch at the first touch but return to find their grip. Hand in hand we go to the ocean.
I make us walk north along the beach for a ways before we stop to clean ourselves. I don’t want to wade into my usual spot. The place is tainted, I’d be looking over my shoulder for the specter of Stuart the entire time. Beryl doesn’t ask why we walk so far. Just as there were horrors she suffered alone she understands that our forays outside were nightmares for me as well.
The quay stretches out ahead of us, a long jetty reaching out into the ocean before forming a T to block the waves from crashing through to the marina. Some boats anchor just off the beach, bobbing serenely in the waves. A couple have detached from their anchors and have washed up on shore. The sand has already started to swallow them. Seagulls have gathered around one in particular, though how there are still bodies to pick over after a month is a mystery to me.
Has it been a month? Longer?
We walk down to the edge of the waves, pausing to let tentative ankles get soaked in the cold water. The waves break on the large rocks and are gentler here. I tell Beryl to go first, that I will keep an eye out. I’m not taking any chances. I hunker down in the sand and watch the homes, scanning the windows for any signs of life. Beryl leaves her clothes in a neat pile out of the reach of the water before stripping off her bloody dress and marching into the foamy spray.
After twenty minutes or so she walks up to sit by me. She is dressed in her new clothes; long jeans with black boots, a tank top hidden by a large black sweatshirt. Her wet hair hangs loose. She looks completely different to me. Not just because she isn’t wearing children’s dresses anymore. Her shoulders are less hunched. And there is life in her eyes.
She nods to me, letting me know it is my turn in the water. I look down at her small hand. She clutches a knife. Must have taken it from the house in which we scavenged. She no longer has a voice but she has found a new way to speak.
“Stay down. Come and get me if you see anything. Anything.”
I trudge down the short sandy slope and into the water. I take my stained and soiled pants off and leave them on the beach. My shirt doesn’t rip so much as it sloughs off my back. Then I’m in the water, free of fear. I ignore the burn of salt on wounds innumerable as I am finally able to relish the cold, able to lose myself in the heartbeat of the world as the waves rock me back and forth.
I can’t tell if I’m happy or simply far less miserable.
I try to wash my matted hair, broken fingernails working to undo snarls I had no idea existed. My hair is so long now. I wonder if Beryl can help me cut it. My neck is too tender to do much, I grit my teeth and hope the salt water cleans out the burns. My back and legs are a mess of scabs and sores and zits. I scrub with sand, eager to unearth the filth that has made a home in my pores.
I dress in the strange, clean-smelling and thick clothing and flop down by Beryl. I’m suddenly very tired. The elation of the escape is gone and now I feel just how run down I am. How crushed. I am tired, and hungry, and I cannot think beyond these things. Have I been a dog too long?
My mind goes to Jessica. If our positions were switched she would already be heading back to Montana. The task seems insurmountable to me.
God I’m tired.
We sit and watch the
sun slowly start to go down. Both of us lost in our own worlds. This is the first time that Beryl has seen the dead world. I wonder if she had family. Or friends.
It does not matter. At least at the moment. We will take this hour to fully comprehend our newfound liberty. A moment to let our minds and bodies and souls catch up. We can tackle more heartache later.
We walk down a street lined with boutique beach shops and bars. The door to Mo’s Place stands open. A dog trailing a leash slinks around the corner as we walk by. Glass crunches beneath our feet. The window to a liquor store has been smashed.
The sun is going down and no streetlights turn on. No lights from apartments or shops. The breeze moves through trees and bushes, they creak and hiss and leaves whisper unintelligible secrets. Our footsteps are so loud. I can hear our breathing. A sudden yipping of coyotes in the distance make both of us stop.
I sneak a glance up the hill to our right. Our prison is up there somewhere. Stuart is dead or dying up there. It looms large and ugly, the shadows deeper and darker as if it too is possessed of a dark and malevolent spirit.
We keep walking. I wonder if Beryl thought about what we would do after we got out of there. I didn’t. Getting free and then getting home dominated my mind. The in-between part didn’t exist until now. She grabs my hand as we walk. It’s almost like being enveloped in a hug, it means so much. There is nothing romantic about it. It is about not being alone. It is about sharing the weight of all that has happened.
I marvel that she can touch anyone at all.
We pass a last row of apartments and cross the street to avoid a leathery bundle of bones and desiccated skin. A stretch of wetlands sits in front of us. Beyond, the sinking sun reflects off the buildings of Hollywood.
I trip on a cracked piece of sidewalk uprooted by tree roots. I almost fall over.