Of course, Steven would never be like one of the rest.
He realized that when, sometime in the early afternoon, the storm only a few minutes away, Elise came walking across the field toward him. Immediately, his plans shifted. She had come to make up. He would stay if she wanted him to. He would do anything for her.
But she seemed to only want one thing.
He stood up when she drew close to him. She wore a short black skirt and a gray sleeveless top. He started to say he was sorry but she spoke first, pressing a thin finger to his lips.
“I want you to take me into that barn and fuck me. I want to get it over with and I want you to be the one to show me. Don’t make love to me. Don’t try and make anything out of it. Just fuck me. And then we’ll both know. Then we’ll both know if it’s worth it or not. We’ll have answers to at least one mystery.”
He gulped and, suddenly, absurdly, didn’t know if he could do what she wanted him to do. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. The wind whipped against his forehead and a spider of lightning scurried along the horizon.
He opened his mouth to ask her if she was sure about this because he didn’t know if he was but she reached her finger back up, pressing it harder against his lips. “We don’t need to talk. Unless you’re going to say something filthy, then don’t say anything.” She took his hand and led him to the barn.
He didn’t know what to think. Wasn’t this what he had dreamt about? There was something about it that made him feel guilty. Like a glutton finally lapping up the dish he craved. He drank in the sight of Elise, a sight he had missed. Her skirt whipped around the tops of her pale legs and he thought, under that skirt was her underwear and he wondered what color they were, and under the underwear was something else, something he had never seen in the flesh, a mystery about ready to unfold in front of him.
Thunder rumbled hungrily from across the meadow. Lightning flashed. The sky continued to darken. The wind was nearly cold, pushing against the barn to emit a creaking chorus as Steven and Elise crossed its threshold.
Twenty-one
Suicide #7: Self- Mutilation
Following Elise into the barn, feeling her small sweating hand in his, Steven thought about the “undoing” a lot. The loss of virginity was, he supposed, a form of undoing. Yet, he felt like the virgin female, especially one as young as Elise, was somehow more of a virgin than he was. Ever since he had turned eleven, ever since he was old enough to know erections felt good and if he played with it enough then stuff came out and the feeling before that stuff came out was the greatest feeling he had ever felt in his life, he had thought about sex constantly. He had seen pornos, he had seen magazines, he had fantasized nearly every day, imagining sex in all its varieties. He had imagined regular sex, fellatio, anal sex, cunnilingus, bondage, sex in public, sex in closets, so many different kinds of sex. None of it very poetic. None of it very romantic. It was simply the product of teenage hormones, culminating in his imagination and manifesting in a way that, in the end, involved only him and his mind. He had imagined other things too. He had imagined waking up next to a beautiful girl every day for the rest of his life. He had imagined laughter, the soft laughter of two people who share the secret of eternal love. And that last thing he thought he had experienced to some extent. But it was hard for him to imagine Elise thinking all the things he had.
Now the time for thinking was over. It was happening and he realized he didn’t have a clue what it would be like. It would turn out to be what it was.
An undoing.
For both of them, an undoing.
What happened to people after they lost their virginity, he wondered? He’d read so many things. Would one of them begin a downward spiral of nymphomania, teen pregnancy paranoia, the fear of disease, the possessive jealousy the prospect of straying can create? Or would they open up, blossom like flowers, experience a mental and physical awakening?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t want to think anymore.
He wanted Elise.
Outside, the thunder boomed louder, the wind screamed between the boards of the barn walls and lightning flickered in the darkness. A giant cumulonimbus cloud sat over everything and Steven felt so protected.
There was a dirty mattress at the far end of the barn. As though it had been thrown there for this very purpose. He knew that was a flippant notion. This was a barn in the middle of nowhere. It was waiting for this sort of thing and that mattress, with its stains and dirtiness, had undoubtedly been used for this sort of thing countless times before. They were part of something bigger. They were part of this teenage ritual.
Elise lay down on the mattress, propping herself up on her elbows.
“I’m yours. You know what you want me for better than I do so go ahead and do it. You have me until the storm ends.”
Another crash of thunder and the sudden spectral swell of lightning.
He lay down beside her, kissed her. She kissed back. Their tongues entered each other’s mouths and he let his hands run down to her breasts, feeling their firmness, the stiffness of the nipples. Was she really going to let him put his hands anywhere? He stiffened against his jeans, rubbed his crotch against her leg. He straddled her, lifted her shirt up over head. She raised her arms, allowing him to do this, looking at him with some unreadable expression. He had to try and stop himself from shaking and he didn’t know if it was nerves or cold. Once her shirt was off, he stared at her. He didn’t think he could tire of drinking her in. He kissed down her neck, her chest, running his tongue along her soft flesh. He bit at her nipples through the thin fabric of her bra and moved his tongue down her stomach. He pulled at the waistband of her skirt, pulling it down her legs. She held her legs together, allowing him to do this. He fought the urge to rip her underwear off and enter her before she could change her mind but he wanted to savor this. He wanted to savor every moment because something in the back of his head told him it would never happen again.
Fuck her. Fuck her hard.
No. That was the voice of memory. That was the voice of shadow and darkness. That was not his voice. That was the voice of the sickness inside him, the nightmares, the insanity, wanting to come out of his head.
He stood up beside the bed and took off his own clothes. All of them at once so he stood before her, amidst the lightning, completely naked. Her eyes traced his body and his traced hers. She looked so young lying there on the mattress that, for a moment, he regretted what he was going to do to her, knowing he was going to do it anyway. He was going to do it because she had said it was okay and he wanted to do it so desperately. But there was something unnerving in her near stillness. Almost like she didn’t really want it at all. Almost like she really was just doing it to get it over with.
He got back on the mattress, the musty odor of it wafting up at him. He ran his hands through her soft hair, pulling her head toward him to kiss her while he undid her black bra. He pulled it from her arms and moved his head back down her neck to her breasts. He held them in his hands. They felt so much warmer than the rest of her. He slid his tongue over her nipples, sucking at them, tasting them. His cock pressed against her sex and he could feel her heat there too. He continued to kiss her, sucking at her pale skin until it reddened, reaching the waistline of her underwear. He pulled her underwear down her legs, staring at her sex, hidden within a fold of skin. He kissed the inside of her leg, moving his tongue toward her. He ran his hands over her cunt. It felt almost alien to him, damp and warm, almost hot. He lingered there, smelling her sweet aroma.
Then he couldn’t help it. He wanted as much of her as possible. He wanted her to know that. He buried his mouth in her sex. She jerked with the sudden sensation of it, his coarse stubble against her most delicate area. His tongue snaked into her opening, working up and down the labia. Then he was on his knees before her open legs, gripping his penis with his hand, guiding it in between the wet folds of her sex.
Rain nailed the barn. It was so loud he thoug
ht it might be hail. He worked his length slowly into her. She groaned, drew in air between clenched teeth. He slid in and out of her, lubricating himself with her blood and come. Her fingertips dug into his arms. He moved slowly like this, trying not to come immediately, feeling her tightness around him.
“Does this feel okay?” he asked.
She only looked at him with an unreadable stare that may have been something like indifference. There was something about her stare that made him angry. It was almost like she wasn’t feeling it. They locked eyes and he felt himself become angry at that dead expression but even more aroused. He thrust deeper into her, as deep as he could possibly go, and dropped his weight onto her, her breasts against his lower chest, his hips grinding into hers. He grabbed her shoulders from behind and moved his hips faster and faster, sinking himself deeper and deeper into her. The orgasm came on and he knew he couldn’t do this inside of her. He didn’t have a particular desire to be a parent. So he pulled out at the last minute and stroked himself, shooting his come onto her stomach and then lying back down on top of her.
But she didn’t want that.
Elise pushed him from her. He rolled over beside her on the mattress and reached down, trying to grab her hand.
She moved off the mattress and onto the floor of the barn, onto her knees.
Then she vomited.
He scooted to the edge of the mattress and ran a hand along her back, ignoring the stink coming up from her. He looked at her, seeing everything differently now. The gentle slope of her back became her buttocks and he could see blood there, trickling down the inside of her leg. He looked down at his shrunken dick, now crusted with a thin coating of blood, and hated himself for being a man. He continued to rub the middle of her back as she retched again. His fingertip wound must have broken open sometime during their act and he had inadvertently wiped some blood in a scraggly line down her spine.
She retched again and he felt something strange. He felt her spine move . . . or bulge . . . or something.
She swiped his hand away and stood up, wandering dazedly into a darkened corner of the barn.
The rain had stopped.
The thunder had stopped.
The lightning had stopped.
“The storm’s over,” she mumbled to the darkness in front of her. “I’m not yours anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned around and it was his turn to feel sick.
Her sex looked like it had been mutilated. A giant blossom of red, blood flowing freely.
He didn’t believe what he was seeing. For the first time he realized this was not Elise. Her body was doing something strange. It was quivering but, more than that, it seemed to be growing smaller and larger, a kind of strange vibration.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“You really don’t know, do you?” she said but the voice was not hers. He thought he knew who that voice belonged to. “Boy, you sure did fuck me hard.”
Her body grew thinner and taller. Her hair fell away from her scalp in clumps. Her eyes rolled down her cheeks and landed with a wet plop on the floor of the barn.
“You had every warning sign you could have and you still fell into it.”
In front of him stood the Jackthief. Steven knew it was the Jackthief. And this wasn’t his mother’s old boyfriend at all. This was something far more hideous. This was not a person but some construct of his mind. Only . . . it seemed too real to be just a construct. And Steven didn’t think he was dreaming. He didn’t see how he could be dreaming. His dreams were never this real.
He didn’t know exactly what he should do. Part of him wanted to grab his clothes and put them on but another part of him felt like he was in great danger and knew he had to get away. So he compromised. He grabbed his clothes up from the floor and ran to his left, toward the hanging door of the barn that flapped weirdly in the dying breeze. But before he could get to the door, the Jackthief was there, blocking his way.
“You’re not getting out,” the Jackthief said. “You have your father to thank for this.”
“What do you mean by that? My father didn’t do anything.”
The thing in front of Steven was now fully clothed in something resembling black rags. He moved toward Steven, hypnotically slow, but there was a quickness there as well.
“Come with me, Steven. What do you have to live for?”
“I have a lot to live for.”
“Name one thing.”
“Elise.”
“You just saw her change before your very eyes. She never was. Elise never was. There has only been me. I can tell you about the things you told her and I can tell you about the clouds and the water tower. I can tell you about everything. Want to hear about the undoing? Want to hear the name of suicide number seven?”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Hot anger flashed within him. This thing in front of him was what had been driving him mad these past months. It was fear and it was fear given the name of the Jackthief. A thief of life, come to take him away. Yes, he was angry. If he could kill the Jackthief then he knew the suicides would stop. He knew the fear would go away. He charged at the skeletal man, thinking he wouldn’t be that hard to take down.
But the Jackthief moved quickly out of the way and seemed to disappear.
Steven turned around, looking for him in the gloom of the barn. He knew he wasn’t going to leave until the Jackthief was dead. This was the confrontation . . . this was the something he had wanted. And it was packaged up so nicely for him. Somewhere in this barn. He quickly pulled on his pants and his shirt, foregoing his underwear and remembering his shoes and socks had been left out in the rain.
“I’m up here,” the Jackthief said and Steven looked up to the second level of the barn, the hayloft, and saw the man looking down at him. “If you’re going to run, you should probably do it.”
“I’m not going to run.”
“Then you’re going to die.”
Steven stalked over to the wooden ladder propped against the hay loft, wondering what he was doing. He had no weapon of any kind. Whatever this thing was, it was more monster than human. God only knew what it would be capable of doing to him.
The farmer’s implements were lined neatly along the board the ladder was propped against, leather thongs holding them onto wooden pegs. Near the top of the ladder, Steven reached out and grabbed a sickle. It had a large rusted blade but a short well-worn wooden handle.
He pulled himself up to the hayloft and stared at the Jackthief.
“Are you sure you want to use that?” he said.
“I’m going to get you out of my head forever.”
“If you do that, then Elise dies.”
“You just told me Elise doesn’t exist.”
“That was a lie. See for yourself.” The Jackthief nodded to his right and Steven saw Elise.
She stood at the end of a board, dangling out over the rest of the barn, a noose around her neck. The Jackthief stood at the far end of the board. If he moved from the board, Elise would drop. There was a moment when Steven thought it might actually be Elise. Insanity kept him second guessing himself. He had just seen this thing in front of him transform from Elise into its current state so he thought it was just as plausible Elise had been here the entire time and he hadn’t noticed or the Jackthief had somehow conjured Elise to be here at this exact moment. Steven wondered how long it had been since he had had a thought that wasn’t crazy.
“No,” he said. “That’s not really her. If that’s really her . . . If you have somehow managed to bring her here then you can kill me without any problem at all. So if she dies and I die trying to save her, I think I’ll be better off than walking away from you.”
“Well,” the Jackthief said. “Then I should probably just kill her now.” And he stepped from the board, Elise dropping into murk.
Steven took this moment of hesitation to lurch forward, swinging the sickle in a large roundhouse, aiming at the Jack
thief’s neck. The Jackthief reached out a thin arm and grabbed the sickle, pulling Steven close to him so he could smell the scent of burning wax and dead leaves. The Jackthief reached a hand around the back of his neck and shoved him over to the edge of the loft so he was looking down at Elise.
“I don’t think I did it right,” the Jackthief said. “She’s not quite dead yet but soon . . . soon.”
Steven bucked against him but the Jackthief picked him up and slammed him down on the wooden floor, standing over top of him with the sickle. Steven heard Elise’s choked breaths from below and looked up into the crazy no-eyes of the Jackthief as he brought the sickle down into his chest. Steven heard the sick wet pop of the blade penetrating his breastbone and found it difficult to breathe.
“You wanted me here,” the Jackthief said as he swung the sickle again, point down. “Just remember that. You wanted this. Of all the people I’ve done this to, no one has wanted it as much as you.”
Steven tried to sit up but the sickle came down again, taking him through the heart. There was a fresh explosion of pain and everything went black.
PART
THREE
Twenty-two
Secrets
On the day of Steven’s suicide, Elise walked out the back door of her house, down the sloping backyard until she reached the woods. At the edge of the woods, she had constructed a sort of hut out of old branches she had twined together. It was a low structure, built with its back to the house. She liked to come out here when her father and stepmother were fighting. She called this hut the Obscura.
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