She removed her top and unclasped her bra. Her breasts fell and peaked at their darkened nipples. She placed both hands on each of his legs. He trembled in their tightening grip on his skin.
This time, she placed him in her mouth and swallowed him.
The Man interrupts this sequence with sarcasm.
“So you are writing pornography now?” he jabs.
My office is quiet and the lighting is soft at three in the morning. I waited for my wife to fall into a deep sleep before I escaped down here. Or else, she might have thought our recent love-making renaissance cheapened by the departure of her husband to another passion.
“Just because you are getting more of it these days, doesn’t mean it has to spill into the story. You were about to introduce him to the protagonist? And you had to write another sexual scene before that? To what purpose, it baffles me.”
He sits on the leather sofa, below my degrees. His words reveal jealousy tonight, as if he feels cheated himself not to have slept with this woman first.
“Of course I am. Who wouldn’t be jealous of a relationship with no talking and the only means of communication sexual?”
I laugh at his sarcasm and he smirks at me. Sex scenes are very difficult to write and I know he understands the challenge. He is simply growing impatient with the plot of the story.
“You need to get him out of that room now. It is becoming a haven. The sex is fine and I really like Sabal.”
He hums to himself as if to imagine.
“But our protagonist is literally around the corner, a few rooms down, so you have the opportunity to kill two birds with one storyline. Have them meet in body at the hospital. How will you do so without making it appear contrived? Now that you’ve given The Messenger a girlfriend, he will be hard-pressed to find the man who he knows will murder him. This will stall the story, improve his character development, mind you, but practically force you to come up with a miracle to introduce Kashif.”
The Man is right. I know creating a transition between the act of love and the act of death is a difficult one. He is correct to fear the wonky bridge between the two. The Messenger, after his sexual gravitation to Sabal, will be inclined to stall his meeting with Kashif. What The Man and The Messenger don’t realize is that character is not the only driving force behind story. The Messenger is guiding the point of view, yes. However, a story is happening below the surface right next door in the hospital. There, in a similar hospital room, rests the motivation behind every one of Kashif’s present and future actions. His daughter, delicately dying.
So I have Sabal convince The Messenger to stand up one day. He does so on weaker knees. Before long, he is walking strong enough to venture outside their secret love nest. She proudly shows him off to other nurses in the hallway. They smile at him, some suspiciously, like they know.
As The Messenger walks the parade route to the well-lit waiting room at the end of the hall he glances into the neighbouring rooms. He is curious to know if others abide with him on this step down floor. Or did he receive special privileges from the doctor who attempted to murder him before saving him for one more chance at accomplishing his mission.
When he glances into one of the rooms, he sees a golden haired man with an angular jaw. The man is standing directly centered in the doorway with his arms crossed. The Messenger sees a pair of white, narrow feet at the edge of the hospital bed. The feet are delicate and feminine enough to hint at the salvation of a glass slipper.
The golden haired man stares back for an instant before The Messenger shifts his attention to the next room.
He doesn’t know what he expects to see. He doesn’t even know what he wants to see. His curious, former self must be creeping up on him again, he fears. In his private room, his only focus is Sabal and her visits. In the hallway, he feels eyes observing him, some of them blue and evil.
Sabal has two hospital trays facing one another in the emptied waiting room. Her smile is wider and prouder.
She points to the dishes. They don’t resemble the measured portions. And there is no intrinsic metallic or plastic smell to the aroma of the food. He realizes at once this is a homemade meal. She had made him lunch.
“From my garden,” she gestures.
The tomatoes in the salad are blood red paste tomatoes and the softer, goat cheese is ghost white.
“From my heart,” she gestures again.
He notices a slab of reddened meat dripping watery blood into the other contents.
She approaches him closely, her breasts pressing into his bony chest, her hips magnetized to his. She slips her hand down to cup him.
He understands very quickly without her gesturing what she means by the inclusion of real meat in his diet.
The Messenger basks in the bright sun on his back as he eats the homemade meal. Sabal doesn’t eat much. She is watching him eat and enjoying the food more this way. In her blackened eyes, he sees so much relativity, so much inherent understanding, like the actualization of a past life rediscovered. That’s how he feels and can’t express in sign language. Like they already know each other before the invention of words.
In the doorway, the man with golden hair walks by. He eerily surveys the scene from the corner of his lighter eyes. He walks away.
“Who is that?” The Messenger asks when Sabal also notices.
“I don’t know. A new visitor. Never saw him before.”
After they finish lunch, The Messenger feels dizzy at first. He has not eaten this amount of food for quite some time. By the time they return to the room, the blood in the red meat kicks in. He closes the door in behind him, embraces Sabal from behind and then pushes her onto the bed, her face down in his slept-in sheets.
He then rips her pants down and returns the oral stimulation from behind. She doesn’t moan or make a sound. He could feel her trembling on his tongue, dripping onto it.
She pulls him by the hair up and punches him hard on the side. He doesn’t understand this message. She keeps assigning it to him with force, the punches stronger and faster. He looks over to her face. She is biting the sheets now, no sound, no growl. He can hear a rip in the sheet.
He forces himself into her and she snaps her head back. Now she is slapping the mattress. Something is bothering her, disrupting his rhythm. She swings her arms back and they flail into him. Some of the blows nearly wind him. She is insistent and violent in these gestures as he increases his speed. He is breathing heavy and feeling faint again.
Finally, she stops and removes him cold. He is suspended before she leads him to the spot she wants him to re-enter. He nearly hyperventilates but does as he is told and she returns again to biting his bed.
It hurts and there is blood on him now. When he releases himself in her, her neck twists and her face is sinister, almost out of body.
DAY 16
For the next three days, The Messenger searches for Sabal on the hospital floor. She has disappeared or has been reassigned. He takes regular walks now on his own. There is strength in his legs and his feet harden more with every step.
On each of these walks, he notices a different visitor in the neighbouring room. First, it was the golden haired man. The next day, it is a tall, brunette woman. On the third day, another tall woman dressed in a full niqab and hijab. Her neck snaps when she sees him in the hallway. He worries his naked legs have insulted her.
The Messenger grows more curious about the neighbouring patient. He wants to enter her room and see more of her than her pale white feet at the end of the bed. Every time he sees the door open, another visitor is in the place of the last. Staring at her. Praying over her. As silent as his communication is with Sabal.
On the fourth day, The Messenger asks the nurse on the floor if Sabal is scheduled to visit him for a sponge bath.
The nurse, with curly black hair and dramatic red lipstick nods no, before shuffling pap
er into a folder.
“Has she been transferred elsewhere?” The Messenger interrupts her work again.
“No, no, no. She works every floor.”
“Will she return to this floor?”
The nurse at the desk stops her diligence to whisper over the counter.
“Do you think you are the only one?”
The Messenger is too taken aback to answer. He previously assumed he had chased Sabal away after their last sexual interlude. He worried he might have crossed a line.
“Am I not the only one?”
The nurse returns to her paperwork and The Messenger walks to the waiting room. It is not as bright in mid-afternoon as it is in the morning. From the platform of this room, which juts out separately from the building, the surrounding mountains are shadowed white, like eggshells in an overcast sky. He remembers his mission, before returning his focus to Sabal.
He recalls the words of the nurse again and he is humiliated by his belief in them. He needs to find Sabal, so he descends the stairs to other hallways. When he can’t find her, he takes flights with ease and anger, surprising himself with his newfound strength. He reaches a hallway and hears a conglomeration of nurses laughing in a tiny room behind the counter. He can smell the heated fabric of their combined lunches and he gags a little in his mouth.
They talk loudly in a native dialect.
“She calls herself the cure. The audacity.”
An uproar of laughter and hands slapping a hard surface.
“She spreads more disease than she cures, that’s for sure.”
The energy rising, with voices contagious.
“I believe she can talk and hear everything. It is the only way she keeps her job.”
The Messenger feels a chill rise from the floor to spread like a vine on his back. He descends the stairs to his floor. When he passes his neighbour’s room, the patient is finally alone. He sneaks into it. A girl lies on her back on a bed of black hair. It spreads like an oil spill on a white sheet. She wears glasses and her skin is cream white. Her eyes are closed. She appears dead but for the breathing mechanism slithering up the side of her nose. She appears asleep but for the heart beat number on the screen. The room is tranquil, exquisitely clean. No flowers from her visitors. No cards. No soft, pastel personalized gifts. No signs that she belongs to anyone but the room. The Messenger stands in the spot of her visitors. It is no wonder they don’t approach her. There is a glow about the space surrounding her bed, like hallowed ground before a burning bush. Stepping near it may disrupt the sacred vigil. The girl reminds The Messenger of the saint in the grotto, deceased, entombed in a see-through glass coffin for the world to observe the miracle of resisting decomposition.
In the late still night, Sabal enters his room and wakes him. Her face is not the same. She is another woman without the vulnerability of his nakedness, without sunlight in the room. She is not dressed in her hospital garments. She is wearing a jacket and scarf and her face emanates a cool breeze.
Is he dreaming her?
He turns over in the bed to release his hands enough to speak. He stops himself.
“You can hear me. You can speak to me.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Why do you lie to me?”
“To strengthen you, my dear. You were weak and defeated. Now you are strong and angry.”
“Why do you do these things to me? Why?” The Messenger stops himself remembering how he initiated the connection, how his body invited her to engage.
She places her hand on his chest. Her hands are fire and her face is ice. She has come in from the outside, from the cold. She has snuck into his room. She is going away? She is in no rush to leave.
“It is time for you to escape.”
“You want me to leave with you?”
“No, I want you to leave without me. You are strong now. If you stay any longer, you will weaken again. I know you have a mission.”
“What mission?”
She searches for someone else in the room who doesn’t exist to lend credibility to her instruction.
“You will not find who you are looking for unless you leave. You need to leave now before anyone else sees you.”
“Who told you about my mission?”
“A man, a very horrible man.”
I stop writing. And then I start looking for him. The Man. Nowhere in my research notes did I intend to reintroduce him at this stage in the story as a mysterious character. As I often do when I am writing in a zone, I try my best to write instinctively, subconsciously. To me, this is the most sincere part of the process. Listening to my characters or letting the story come to me instead of imposing upon it with an outline. The Man must have seen this opening to intrude himself upon the story. I realize he is outsmarting me. He has found a way to access the story outside my ability to create it with words. I sensed his attraction to Sabal and I realize how invested he is in the story. How did he manage to reach Sabal without me writing it down first? With only one way of knowing, I resume my writing. A character always manages to reveal motivation at some point or another so perhaps I can find it in between the lines or better yet, find him in between my lines.
“What did this man sound like, Sabal?” The Messenger insists.
“Very calm. He came to me in my sleep. I felt him inside of me as real.”
“Did he take you?”
“Yes, I dreamt of him. At first I felt him as I did you, the night before. Then I realized the man behind me, the man inside of me, was someone else. His voice frightens me.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“Because words scare me. Soft words, love words, words that know me. All of them scare me. I can trust actions. I can trust eyes. I can trust scent and skin. I can never trust words. When I saw you could speak with your hands, I realized I could have a real friend.”
“Then why do you whore yourself to the hospital?”
“Because I am a whore by nature. I came here as a whore, left for dead by a group of men who recognized me as such. I healed as a whore. I was given a job because I am a whore. I can’t change who I am. Only words can change me and I’ve given up on them. I don’t want to change. I want to sink into myself, lose who I am in silence and feel pleasure like a whore.”
“What did he say to you, this man?”
“He said to leave you alone. To not see you or else he would silence me for good.”
“Does he know you are here?”
“I don’t know. You have to leave.”
“Are you leaving?”
“I will not be the same after I leave this room. Remember me as I am now.”
Sabal kisses him softly on the cheek and runs out of the room. When The Messenger follows her into the hallway, she is darker than the vacuous air swallowing the red emergency exit lights. It is late at night and the nurse on duty is absent or asleep at the table where she eats her nighttime lunch. The Messenger sees that the door is open in the next room. The man standing in the space before the bed has blackened skin. His eyeballs are very white. He walks over to The Messenger.
“Come with me.”
The man’s face is deeper black upon approach and oily. His eyeballs are bone white. He is wearing the garment of a priest, with a bleached collar.
“Where?”
“To the place where you will tell me your message.”
The Messenger is stronger now. He finds it difficult to understand why he is empowered, even after hearing that Sabal cheated him in some way. Is it the fulfilment of his mission or is it Sabal’s betrayal and escape from his fated life?
“Is there a cliff where you live?” The Messenger asks.
“Yes.”
“Then I will follow you there.”
The Messenger never imagined finding the black priest in his neighbour’s room. He follows him towards t
he Exit sign at the end of the hallway and wonders how far Sabal has gone from the hospital.
DAY 17
The Man, like Sabal in the story, mysteriously disappears from my life. He doesn’t visit me while I shore up my research for the second half of the novel and he doesn’t interrupt my daily routine to remind me not to take too much time away from the novel. Momentum is very important in the first draft of a novel. One day’s work seeps into the next day’s appetite to create. When I completed my M.A. in English literature and Creative Writing, my poet professor once said that the most difficult aspect of writing is self-discipline and motivation. Similarly, Stephen King notes in his memoir that it is better to write the entire first draft from day to day, to its very end, or else you may disrupt the energy that compels you to write in the first place.
I suppose it is a matter of suspension of disbelief. In order for a reader to want to continue reading he or she must suspend disbelief that the story is fictional. In turn, while the writer is writing, he or she must also suspend disbelief that the story is worth writing.
Although I expect The Man to reappear when I least suspect or want him to, I appreciate the time to relearn what I previously researched for the story. I find some fascinating material, which may or may not find itself in this novel. Like the Al-Qaeda notebooks unearthed after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They detail and depict with drawings various torture techniques used to extract information from foreign captives. From using a hot flat iron to tying a prisoner to chains attached to a truck, to stretching arms backwards over a door, the journals themselves present a history of resistance from the other side not documented by biased CNN reports on terrorism, or hidden C.I.A. files on prisoner treatment in Guantanamo Bay.
The specifics of the research invigorate me, I suppose. But in this case, my fascination with the darker details is much more involved. These forbidden details, often flagged by librarians or federal agents scavenging email correspondences or social media threats, are opening up hidden avenues to empathize with my protagonist.
Chameleon (Days) Page 9