The House that Jack Built

by Malcolm James

  Foreboding. Pure, untainted, sullen foreboding. I didn’t know why but I sensed something unwelcome and dangerous behind the door. Little did I know it was the future that cautioned me, as I felt the shock of ice-cold brass when I placed my palm on the doorknob. Wincing, I quickly turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  The cabin was swarming with solemn quietness, and I suddenly realized that there was only one car outside. Elizabeth’s.

  She lay under a giant comforter on the couch in the living room. A scorching fire roared in the hearth and she was wide awake, but prone on her side and huddled under the blanket while she stared intently into the flames. She didn’t even react when she heard the door shut behind me, nor did she react when I walked over and crouched down beside her.

  But when I placed my hand on her shoulder, it jolted her out of somber thought. She looked away from the fire and our eyes met briefly. Her blank stare was underscored by red circles under her eyes and her dry red nose explained the pile of crumpled Kleenex on the floor.

  I peered into her beautiful sorrowful face. My look tried to convince her that I knew what she was feeling, but she looked away from me and back at the fire.

  “Where is everyone?” My voice broke through dead silence like a stone through a window. It was a harsh, obscene sound that made me wonder why I had a frog in my throat. She kept staring at the fire like she didn’t know I was there, but briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again they seemed to echo the monotonic apathy of her voice.

  “They’re gone. I didn’t feel like partying anymore.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say and I felt stupid for that. I wanted to reach out and stroke her flushed alabaster cheek. Flushed more from the day’s events and less from the searing heat of the fire. But I didn’t have the balls to do it.

  Instead, I stood up from my crouched position, walked into to the kitchen and rummaged for a beer. Tossing the cap on the kitchen counter, I returned to the living room nursing the guilt that coursed through me. She sat up, rubbed her eyes and yawned. The comforter was still draped over her lap. Never losing sight with her face, I sat in the armchair next to the couch.

  “Why don’t you sit over here?” She attempted a smile and patted the space next to her.

  Should I?

  The thought enthralled and terrified. But in a feat of inner balls, no doubt from years of being trained by the best – Jack – I shrugged and got up. As I sat next to her I held my beer in my crotch. Attempting cavalier, I was more convincing as terse.

  I too stared at the fire, hyper-conscious that we were alone. That she was single, vulnerable. And that within groping distance was a loaded gun. I just didn’t know if I could pull the trigger.

  I lost myself in the wild eclectic dance of the flames. Did she too watch the fire, or was she staring at me? Prescience told me that her eyes burned brighter than the fire and into the left side of my head, but I didn’t know whether to believe it. I struggled. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would sound intelligent, meaningful or even intelligible. So I sipped my beer and lost myself in the spitting fire.

  “Malcolm? You’re awfully quiet.”

  Her words were soft as feather down. The steel heart that still beats for her in this saddened chest melted like candle wax at her lyrical, desperate plea for response. I closed my eyes and relished her delicate tones. A voice that stranded me on a deserted island, years ago, called out to me again.

  But I didn’t know how to respond. All those years on the island stole my ability to speak. I fought back the tidal wave that drowned my mind and found compromise in a gesture of words.

  “Long day. I’m kind of tired.”

  You idiot! The words made a jail-break from my lips before I realized their implication. If she thought I was brushing her off, then this conversation was over before it began. I had to do something. Scale back over that wall and return to my cell.

  Perhaps it seems callous that I jumped on an opportunity that was fresh and painful for her. Had I been good and decent, I’d have given her the customary time that she needed. Besides, what she needed most right now was a friend she could trust, and rely on.

  And Jack, jerk that he could be, was still my buddy. I was contemplating breaking almost every tenet of the Guy Code. Guys stick together, right?

  What the Hell am I thinking?

  It’s Jack. He didn’t care about her. Some days I wondered if he gave a shit about me. What about the shallow way he treated her, today and every day that they were together? He tossed her around like she was a plaything. A pet that gets kicked in the morning and still eagerly greets its owner at the door that night. I hated it.

  I thought about the night of the hockey game. When he talked about her like she was a piece of meat that could be cooked, served up and relished. What was left could be tossed aside like a useless scrap.

  No, NO. She was a delicate rose who should have been handled with the utmost care. She was a sweet breath of life in an otherwise putrid world. The man who won her heart should feel honored, every day, that she only had eyes for him.

  Suddenly, I hated him like I hadn’t hated him before.

  “Sorry. It’s been a long day.” My lame repetitiveness reinforced self-loathing. I needed to say something. When I looked at her she was so fragile, so hurt. And so beautiful. Moon-like brown eyes stared in a way I couldn’t comprehend.

  The flickering fire bathed her face in its incandescent glow. For a moment I imagined that I was looking upon the face of the Madonna. Soft brown hair fell carelessly around her face and for the first time in four years, I looked upon her and accepted the fact that she had always been the object of my intense, unabated desire.

  My incredible powers of getting over her? It was all a lie. While they dated, I quelled my feelings and watched helplessly, watched while Jack misused and abused her. Screw the Guy Code. He already burned that book.

  “Are you okay?” My eyes implored. I hoped they would explain to her that I too was hurt by the gross injustice. I desperately wanted to be an empath. To share her pain and steal it away from her so that I could see her smile again. Her initial response was a shrug.

  “I guess.” She pulled her hair away from her eyes. A seductive gesture, I was sure that it had no such intent. She reached for a glass of red wine on the floor and drew it to her ruby lips. After sipping, she lowered the glass and cupped it in her hands, tracing her fingertip along the rim.

  “Malcolm, I never should have been with Jack.”

  My heart leapt. She finally uttered words that expressed what I knew for so long. It was an unforgettable moment. Liberating, vindicating and hopeful.

  “I know he’s been doing drugs,” I nodded as I sipped beer. I tried to listen but her words were drowned by the victory trumpets that blared in my head.

  “He’s changed so much. He’s not the Jack he was before drugs. He’s different. He’s gotten more…” she struggled for a word.

  “Obsessive?” I smiled sarcastically. I knew exactly what she was trying to say. She nodded.

  “Obsessive. I kept trying to reach him, to get through to him. But it got harder each time I tried. I don’t even know why I tried. He scares me.” She began to sob. I wanted to reach out and console her, but I just sipped beer. I wanted to touch her so badly, but I didn’t have the cojones.

  Even my hand on her shoulder again wouldn’t have been the act of a concerned friend. The first time is a gesture of concern, the second a statement of desire. She wiped her eyes with a Kleenex she’d tucked in the sleeve of her sweater.

  “I guess I try…I guess I kept trying because I don’t take things as lightly as Jack. As a matter of fact, I take them very seriously. Do you understand?” I paused in mid-sip and looked sidelong at her. If by ‘some things’ she meant sex, I wasn’t going there. I prayed she would leave it at that and nodded dumbly. Please, God! I understand! Move on to another topic.

  “I think I should have been with someone else…
” she took another drink of wine and my mind hiccupped. My calm exterior was invaded by an interior ravaged by a four-year war. I wondered if she could hear my heart too, during its painful wait for her to finish the thought.

  “…and that someone has been right there in front of me all the time.” She stopped tracing circles on her glass to look directly at me.

  My mouth was open. The trumpets became a lavish victory feast in my head and my heart thumped like the hard-on it supplied.

  It happened instantly. I was instantly self-conscious of it too, because I was wearing loose pants – dockers, I guess. I tried to angle my crotch out of her direct line of sight, and quickly. So I shifted and lowered my leg to face the fire again. But I turned to look at her as I gulped beer. Yeah, real inconspicuous. I remained speechless. I didn’t know what to do next but she’d taken control of the situation. I just stared and wished that my erection would dwindle.

  “Malcolm? I have something I need to tell you.” I raised my eyebrows and nodded, but she remained silent. She began tracing circles again. She was nervous, or something. She probably debated whether she should say anything at all. She probably asked herself if she was in the right frame of mind for this discussion. She probably told herself that she was in a perfect position to exact revenge for what Jack had done.

  While she debated, I struggled to speak. But my tongue was as useless as if she’d been sucking on it. I knew I had to respond to her statement, but her silence suggested that the moment had probably passed.

  “What is it?” The sound of my own impotence made me want to retch. I was a useless wimp. Not that it mattered, but I thought about how much I admired Jack’s unwavering ability to get right to the point. No dancing around the subject, no vagueness, no bullshit. Just get to it.

  I had to say something. My member was dead and buried. A limp corpse. My head swam with desperation to maintain, if not my penis, then at least the momentum of the conversation.

  “Look, if there’s something you want to tell me…”

  “I need to tell you. It’s important. I just don’t know where to start.”

  “Then start at the beginning.” Unoriginal, but the first semi-intelligent thing that I said all night. I wanted to command this moment and I wanted to play the role of the male, finally. I wanted her so badly I could taste her.

  “I was raped.”

  Reality’s like a terrorist attack. It happens when it’s least expected, and it’s devastating. That’s all she said. Just said it and traced circles while my mind ran circles around my heart.

  “What?”

  She looked at me but this time tears welled in her beautiful eyes. She sobbed slightly and sighed deeply while she looked at me and wondered if she should have said anything at all.

  “When.” It was supposed to be a question, but clenching teeth got in the way. I didn’t understand the well of rage and emotion, but in a sense I’m glad that I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts and prepare for what came next.

  “Three years ago. I was raped three years ago.” Only the raging fire dared speak. The impact of her repeating words hit with Jack-like force. Nuclear fission. My erection – which found renewed hope and a reason to fight for dear life when she said ‘I need to tell you’ – was declared brain-dead on August 26th, 1995 at 9:48 PM.

  My brain swam amongst ravenous parasites. I didn’t know what the Hell I was hearing. But I did put together the implication.

  “But you were with Jack…” I stopped when she softly sobbed. Her body shook as her hair fell over her lovely, lonely face.

  Fucking prick!

  My eyes were wide with disbelief and chilling understanding. Not knowing what else to do, I reached over and gently touched her arm. She cried for a minute and suddenly stopped and took my hand.

  Oh God! Her touch. She was rejecting it. Like my penis, my heart lost its erection. Shriveled into nothing. I treasured her pure softness on my crude roughness, but only for a moment while she placed my hand back on my lap. My soul became the antithesis of what it was minutes before. Her eyes were red and full of tears as she smiled wryly.

  “Right. I was with Jack.”

  Elizabeth and I finally fucked.

  Of all the virgins I’ve had, she was the worst. I thought she was yanking my chain about that. Guess I have to believe her now, huh?

  She wrinkled her nose in a comical attempt. But she had been carrying this with her for a long time and the pain was visible.

  “Tenth Grade. We were going out together for a year. I, uh…oh God, Malcolm. I was so in love with him…or I thought I was.” She took another drink of wine and smiled through her tears. “You know, I always knew I would save myself for the right man. That I’d be a virgin until I got married. It was just a decision I’d made. But I loved him so much.

  “I told him I wanted to wait until we were married. He just laughed. Said that I’d be waiting a long time, and that he didn’t want to wait. I mean, we fooled around, you know, third base and all that stuff.”

  Oh God. Too much information. I needed her to stop. My mind spun with implications. I saw them having sex in the bathroom and I grasped the beer bottle so tightly that my knuckles looked like a dead man’s. Even if I hated the idea of the two of them together, I tried to find comfort knowing that they were ‘happy’ together. So this was hitting me like a fist. Everything I thought I knew buckled under the sheer force of her sad words.

  “But there was this one night, and we were fooling around. He didn’t want to stop. I told him no, but he just kept going and then he tore my panties off…” She sobbed again. Impotent rage poked millions of tiny holes in my chest.

  Elizabeth and I finally fucked.

  Mind-numbing disbelief choked me. As unsavory as it was to hear him tell me about it, now that I knew the circumstances, that night in the locker room had new meaning.

  “But why did you stay with him?” My words whispered because they couldn’t believe that they had to say them. She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

  “I kept asking myself that. I don’t know. I suppose I suppressed it for a long time. Told myself that it wasn’t rape, that I was being silly and that I really wanted it. That I was a prude for waiting. I felt guilty. He entranced me. He charmed me. He does that.”

  I had no problem agreeing with her.

  The long pause that followed was adorned by the leering fire. She had nothing else to say and I couldn’t say squat. Fortunately, instinct took over, and I reached over and softly stroked her hair. She looked at me and in that instant something returned to her eyes. Something I’d seen earlier but couldn’t compute.

  She quickly leaned over and kissed me.

  A long, lingering, passionate, sublime kiss.

  My entire world erupted with fire that had been contained for four long years. As my virginal passion unleashed with the force of a Big Block Chevy, my heart came with multiple orgasms and my midsection grew unprecedented determination.

  I leaned into her. The honey-taste of her lips, even tainted by red wine, was the most amazing meal I ever devoured. While I caressed her soft, firm breasts and unzipped her jeans, I silently thanked Jack for being such an asshole.

  Chapter 8

  The morning sun blazed into my eyes like a halogen lamp in a Police interrogation room.

  I shook restless sleep out of my mind. I had been dreaming of Icarus. Lathered in a sweat from head to toe, I had to peel the down comforter off of my naked skin.

  My mind was hazy from the prior night’s events. I looked around the room. Colonial and colloquial in a log-cabin sort of way, it had the smell of stale dry wood and a hundred years of must from being sealed for five months at a time.

  From the bed I saw the lake. It sparkled and shimmered with an early morning stillness that looked like glass. The cessation of the night’s chill and the relentless pounding of the sun’s new rays created a heavy mist that gently wafted over its surface.

  As I propped myself up, I gazed at her.
My beautiful Goddess snored ever so slightly. The morning light gave her an angelic hue, but I smiled as I remembered the night before. There was nothing angelic about her then. Realization doused me like a ten-gallon barrel of icy spring water.

  Ohmigod! It wasn’t a dream!

  I put my hands behind my head, laid back on the pillow and smiled. Battled the urge to scream in jubilation. I sat up and looked at her again. The comforter had slipped down over her left breast, revealing the soft pink nipple that I tenderly caressed with my tongue only hours before.

  I fought another urge: to reach out and stroke her soft, well-shaped breast. Instead I reached over and restored her dignity. But insatiate desire won, and I gingerly lifted the covers to reveal her nude body.

  I looked down the length of the bed as my eyes caressed every subtle curve. She must have kicked off the covers as she slept, for one foot sat on top of the comforter. I gazed at her tiny white toes and soft-pink painted toenails. I sighed and stared at her for ten minutes.

  Finally, I had to piss like a race horse, so I slipped out of bed. I was thrilled at my own nudity. Nudity with meaning. For my nudity was getting out of a bed with Elizabeth. Unclothed. Nude. In the buff. Naked as the day she was born. I tried to think of other synonyms but finally shrugged my shoulders. It didn’t matter. She was in the raw.

  As I floated to the bathroom I hoped that she was secretly awake and leering at my ass. I beamed like the canary that ate the pussy when I stood over the toilet, holding myself and watching light-yellow stream trickle into the commode. I gave it a two shakes before I walked to the sink. More than three shakes and I was playing with it. I didn’t need to play with it anymore.

  I had someone to do that for me.

  No. Not someone. The only one. Elizabeth.

  I looked suspiciously at the tap and then at my hands. Lifting my fingers to my nose I took a deep whiff. She was on me. Musky sweetness that was hers and hers alone. It tried to remind me of the same smell I sensed that day in Jack’s bathroom, but I wasn’t to be robbed of this triumph.