The Good Fight 4

by Ian Thomas Healy

  She smiled, but still managed a cool expression as she raised an eyebrow. “Maybe, if it’s interesting.”

  “Oh, this is a challenge? All right, then, it all started when I decided to go out tonight and prowl for someone to hook up with.”

  Both eyebrows went up at that, but she kept listening. She only stopped me when I got into telling her how I get around.

  “OK, maybe you’re taking the idea of a challenge too seriously. At least make it believable.”

  I shook my head. “Everything I’ve told you so far has been true. I’m not a good liar; I’d rather just tell you what happened.”

  Her eyebrows rose even higher then, which made me laugh. “So you don’t believe me? All right, go get that guy another beer and come back over here and I’ll give you a demonstration.”

  Surprised that she hadn’t noticed on her own, I watched her hurry over to the other side of the bar. To my great pleasure, I appreciated watching her departing just as much as seeing her come back.

  “All right,” I said as she stood nearby again. “Do you see those chairs in the corner?”

  I pointed to an area past the other end of the bar where someone had stacked extra chairs and a few empty kegs, right next to a door marked exit. She glanced back at me and nodded.

  “OK, touch my arm or something to convince yourself I’m really here. And I’m not trying to do anything funny here, I’ve just had people argue I tricked them with some sort of projection or something. Here, I’ll put my hand on the bar and you can touch the back of it, if you like.”

  She gave me another dubious look, but ran a finger down the back of my hand anyway. I could feel a shiver run down my spine as she did. “All right, it does seem you’re here.”

  “Right. What I’m going to do is appear in the corner by the chairs for a second, and then I’ll come right back here. Give me a minute, so I can check that no one’s looking over here or over there.”

  As soon as I thought I could move more or less unseen, I said, “Going now,” blinked, and appeared over by the chairs. I waited a heartbeat, until the bartender had gotten over her shock at seeing me disappear and looked over to lock eyes with me on the other side of the room. Nodding, I blinked and reappeared where I’d been sitting before.

  “Do you believe me now?” I asked, cracking another smile at her expression of bewilderment.

  “Yes, I’ve never seen anything like that,” she admitted, shaking her head. After a moment where she just stared down at the bar top, she started asking me questions.

  “How can you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I started being able to around the time I turned sixteen, but I’m not sure why it started. No one else in my family can do it, that I know of.”

  “How far can you go?”

  “I don’t know the exact distance, but I can go a lot of places all over the world.”

  “Like to Japan from here?”

  “Sure,” I replied, then laughed at her expression. “What, you need proof of that, too?”

  She started to say something, but I didn’t listen, glancing around to see if anyone seemed to be paying us any attention. When I realized they weren’t, and no one seemed to need a drink, I reached out to grab her forearm. “Let’s go,” I said.

  A split-second later, we stood in an alley in Tokyo. “Come on,” I said, keeping my hold on her forearm as I took her to the mouth of the alley. We both looked up at the lettering on the tops of the skyscrapers overhead as we came out onto the sidewalk and stood a moment, reading out the company names that they spelled, some in English and some in Japanese script, and watching people going about their day. It looked to be about lunchtime on a day where the sun lay hidden by fast blowing clouds. “Do you believe me now?”

  “Take me back,” she said in a tense voice, and so I pulled her back into the alley before I did.

  We’d both reappeared behind the bar, so I moved out and sat back on the bar stool I’d been occupying. “Doesn’t anyone notice that sort of thing?” she asked, glancing around the room before picking up a glass to polish.

  I shrugged. “Sometimes. I think people’s brains will fill in what they expect to see, though. I mean, what would make more sense to someone, that someone just disappeared, or that they didn’t realize they’d gone earlier? Or that someone didn’t appear out of nowhere, you just hadn’t noticed them there?”

  I watched as she digested that idea, her polishing becoming slower and stopping altogether before she reached to put the glass away. After a moment, she looked back up at me, this time with a grin. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “Oh, so maybe this isn’t too boring a story after all?” I asked, answering her grin with one of my own.

  “Maybe,” she replied, with a bigger smile. “Keep going.”

  I did, and I got up to the point where I’d cleared the rapist out and arrived back at his place. “So what did you do then?” she asked, and I wasn’t sure what to think of her expression. “I mean, since she’d already passed out and all . . .”

  The bartender trailed off with a frown, until startled out of it by a man taking a seat in the middle of the bar. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” she said.

  I stared after her for a moment, trying to figure out where she’d been going with what she’d said, and after thinking about it as I watched her pour some whiskey for the new arrival and open a beer, I knew I didn’t like it.

  “Look,” I said as she came back to my end of the bar. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

  She gave me a sour look that pretty much confirmed it, and I sighed as I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m a player, and I’ve never made any secret of that. What can I say, I like to fuck and I’m lousy at relationships, so keeping it light seems to be the best way for me to go. So what out of that makes you think I’m a rapist?”

  I stared at her then, and after a moment, she half-shrugged and looked down at the bar top. “Maybe I should clarify a few things, then. For me, half the fun of finding someone to fuck around with is the reaction I’ll get. If I wanted to fuck a dead body, I’d go to the morgue. I’m interested in making some tough guy moan when I suck him off, or getting a cool, collected woman to scream in pleasure, not forcing myself on someone who can’t fight me off.”

  I guess whatever had gotten stuck on the bar top seemed more interesting than me at that moment, but I kept on going. “In the second place, I couldn’t do that to someone, anyway. For someone like me, do you know what that would be like?”

  I waited until she answered my question with a tiny shake of her head. “It’s like waking up in the middle of the night all alone in your house except for some psycho who’s tied you to a chair. They’re forcing you to watch them make your all-time favorite dish, and even though it doesn’t look or smell much different than it has in the past, it’s turning your stomach now. And then, when they’re done cooking, this person, someone you don’t know and can’t possibly trust, forces this food down your throat. And now your favorite food makes you want to gag every time you smell or see it. And how the fuck is that a good thing?”

  She stood motionless at the bar, but after a moment, she brought her eyes up to meet mine again. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  I snorted, but it sounded hollow even to me. “Yeah, well, what if there is?”

  “I want to hear it,” she said, her eyes boring into mine.

  “You’re not going to like it,” I growled as my stomach started swooping just to think about it. “Just a common tale, one way too many women have.”

  “Tell me anyway,” she challenged me.

  I almost took a sip of my drink as I thought, but then realized I’d left it to go to Japan. “Could you get me another one of these? Just want to make sure some jackass didn’t put anything in it while we went to Tokyo.”

  Taking a deep breath, I thought about it as I waited and watched her make my drink. Aside from my parents, who hadn’t believed me, I’d only
ever told one other person the story, and it still made me feel ill to think about it. But then I remembered how I had felt better when I’d told my friend about it and sighed.

  “All right, but I’m just going to tell it to you, OK? Please, don’t ask any questions while I do, and if you ask any after, I don’t know if I’ll answer.”

  “Fair enough,” she replied, and just looked at me with those big eyes, and I didn’t see an ounce of judgment in them. I took a big breath.

  “While I was growing up, my parents mostly tried to ignore how I was and try to make me into something else. It seemed they could laugh off most of what I did until I hit my teens. Then, they started putting me into these group homes that promised them they could ‘cure’ me of my, what the hell did they call it, ‘nymphomania’ or something. Well, they’d do these crazy things like lock us in our rooms at night and make us wear mittens to bed so we couldn’t masturbate and crap like that, but I’d break out of those places in a few days and hitchhike home.

  “So, they decided to get serious after a few failures like that and had me locked up in the state mental hospital. Unfortunately for me, they’d figured out much better methods of keeping people there, probably because they had a criminal wing, too. I tried for weeks to get out of that place once I figured out how to avoid taking the drugs they wanted to shove us all full of, but no dice.

  “Anyway, so I figured I had to get used to the fucking place, and I did make a few friends, even, but then something weird happened. I mean, even weirder than all the other things that happened there on a regular basis. I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t move. My eyes were just cracked open, so I could see what was going on.

  “This guy I’d seen around, some nighttime orderly who’d come on shift around the time they served us dinner, unlocked my door and came in. I tried to sit up or say something, but of course I couldn’t, so I got a good look at his obese hairy ass as he undressed, talking about how he’d heard what a fucking whore I was, so he’d brought something ‘to protect himself.’

  “By now, of course, I was doing everything I could think of to get my body moving, but it was like one of those nightmares where you can see what’s going on but you can’t do a damned thing about it. So this disgusting asshole starts putting his hands all over me, calling me slut and whore and all kinds of great things before he sticks his putrid little dick in me. I don’t know how long that all lasted, because I kind of only remember parts of it.

  “The next day, of course, I woke up thinking maybe I’d had a nightmare, but of course I hadn’t. Nothing felt right, and then the bruises started showing up.

  “I called my parents, of course, as soon as I could, but they didn’t believe me. They brushed me off, saying that I must have been sleeping with some boy and had a falling out with him or something, and that I should just stop whoring around, or some such shit. So, after I’d hung up the phone (about ten times, so hard that I might have broken the receiver) the orderlies on duty hauled me off, sedated me, and threw me in the solitary room. For days after that, it felt like something grey had fallen over my whole life, and I think I had an inkling for the first time what they meant when they said some of the others on the ward felt depressed.

  “I tried learning the disgusting asshole’s schedule and not eating when he was on duty, but I got thin enough that they force fed me, and guess who they put on the team to do that? It just seemed to go on and on, one nightmare day and night after another, and I can just remember sitting on my bed one day. I could see the pretty day outside the window, bright sun and a breeze knocking red and orange leaves off the trees, and we were even going to be allowed to go out in it, but I felt like I could barely move off of my bed. I think I would have thrown myself out the window if it wasn’t shut and barred, and I just remember wishing for my room at my parents’ house with so much force it felt as if it had settled into my bones. I closed my eyes and thought about my double bed, the stuffed bunny in the corner that my father had gotten me at a fair when I was a kid and he still loved me, the desk I had that I’d outgrown as a teen but that still sat by the window, the view as I looked down at the tiny people on the street below, and just wished.

  “Opening up my eyes felt painful, and I didn’t even want to, but I did after several long moments, wiping away tears and feeling like a fool. When I blinked the rest of the world into existence, though, I could see my bunny and my kid-sized desk, and when I put my hands onto the comforter underneath me, I felt the satin one I’d picked out, much to my mother’s displeasure. It freaked me out, of course, since it was the first time I’d been able to do anything like that, and I spent a few seconds just looking around, but when I stood up after a minute and looked out the window, my breath caught as I saw all of the familiar sights that had become as natural to me as anything else in my home.”

  I stopped for a moment then to take a sip from the new drink the bartender had brought me, and to study her expression. She still watched me with intent eyes, although her expression had softened, and I looked away, not wanting to see pity there.

  “I wanted to make sure I was really there, and not just lost in my mind somewhere, so I went to the kitchen and made a sandwich, and I had to swallow back tears again when I saw that rye bread that my mother always insisted on having, and when I tasted it, I felt sure. Once I finished, I went back to my room to think about what to do next.

  “Of course, I just wanted to stay there and never go back to that fucking hospital ever again, but then I started thinking of the few friends that I’d made there and my goddamned stomach fell through the floor. So, I started thinking about it, after I took off my awful hospital clothes and put on my favorite slinky dress instead and lay on my bed, looking up at the posters on the ceiling.

  “Once I figured it out, I put my crappy hospital clothes back on and concentrated until I showed back up in my fucking torture room in the crazy house. I felt weird as I looked out into the hallway, glancing up and down to see if anyone missed me, but after a few minutes, I just joined the crowd going to the dining hall. Sure enough, I saw the bastard out of the corner of my eye and made a big show of eating, only to spit it all out in my napkin or shit like that.

  “I lay in wait for him that night, after having lumped up my covers. Crouching in the corner, the only dark spot in the room, since the moon shone almost full and I’d left my blinds open, I watched the door, trying not to shake with fear and anticipation. After what seemed like five lifetimes of an eternity, I heard the key at my door and stood up, my muscles already seeming to leap at the movement. I tried to breathe as quietly as possible, even holding my breath as he came in and approached the bed, his usual litany of dirty insults spewing out of his lips.

  “As he reached for the heap of covers, however, I blinked and appeared behind him, and concentrated as I reached out to grab his shoulder. To my eternal gratitude, we reappeared on the roof, just where I’d wanted to, and when I let go of him, I moved farther from where he stood in the moonlight, reappearing beside one of the metal boxes on the roof, standing in its shadow.”

  Thankfully, the ache and swoop of my stomach had cleared away for the most part, and I felt the relief of coming to a better part of the story. My glance over at the bartender told me that I had all of her attention now, and I couldn’t help but give her a pirate’s grin as I continued.

  “‘Hey, fucker,’ I yelled at the fatass, and of course he looked all over the roof and couldn’t see me since the moonlight must have blinded him. ‘Don’t you know it’s illegal to rape people you’re supposed to be caring for? Especially goddamned teenagers when you’re some kind of geriatric sick fuck?’

  “He started then, looking in the direction I’d ended up, so I looked to one of the units on the opposite side of the roof, found a good shadow, and sent myself over there.

  “‘I hope you like the great outdoors, you rotten bastard, because you’re going to be in it. I don’t think they’ll be able to hear your screams over anyth
ing else this far up, and since you work here, you fucking asshole, you probably know how often they open the roof access up.’

  “The bastard turned then, but didn’t seem to know if he should look over to where my voice had been coming from, or the new location. ‘P-please, don’t,’ he said in a pathetic moan, and I fought my muscles since I itched to step out and belt him across the face until he saw stars, but I stayed where I stood and clenched my fingernails into my palms instead.

  “‘You’re going to ask me to have pity on you or something?’ I asked, and my voice edging into screaming territory. ‘You didn’t have one ounce of it for me, you fat fuck! Look on the bright side, fucker, you have enough lard on you to last until at least Christmas!’

  “I left then, and spent a blissful night in my own room at my parent’s house, at least until I confronted them the next day.”

  I paused then, taking another sip of my drink, and I could see the bartender looking down, her eyebrows drawn together with a slight frown. Raising my own eyebrows, I added, “The last I heard about it, he got stuck up there for five days, as long as anyone could tell. I’m sure they weren’t comfortable days, either, because the temperatures in fall in upstate New York can get quite cold. In fact, I heard from one of my friends who chose to stay there that he ended up committed for a while once they did find him.”

  I could feel the smile pulling at my lips as I said that, and I couldn’t help but take a moment to savor it. Nothing had come of any accusations, of course, since no one seems to care much about some old fuck using his position to rape some mental patients, but I took care to find out where he lived in the future, and I showed up at random times to badger him (late at night, usually) until he ended up in a mental institution for the rest of his sorry ass life. I’m not sure if it ever did him any good, though. Can you rehabilitate a fucking serial rapist? I don’t know.”

  At any rate, by the time I turned my attention back to the bartender, she met my eyes. I couldn’t quite tell her thoughts on the story, so I shrugged. “Maybe you think I should have turned the other cheek, so to speak,” I said, watching her expression to see if I could figure her out.