by TJ Park
Doug wasn’t in a mood to cheer, but he expected to hear a whoop from Warlock. He almost craved it, taking satisfaction from having everything squared away. It made it easier to forget bad things had happened when the evidence wasn’t in your face. He scanned for Warlock to see why no applause was forthcoming, but he couldn’t spot him.
Then he saw why. Warlock was in the water, going down with the plane.
***
Naked, Cutter looked a lot like the animal most reckoned him to be. His musculature was not well defined, but certainly solid, something you would learn if you had the misfortune to swing a punch at it. Or be caught lying beneath it.
He was hairy. Coarse black hair shaped like a moth sat on his chest, taking wing over each shoulder and gliding into a thick mat across his upper back. Right now, his chest shone, covered in sweat. He was one of those who luxuriated in the sweat of sport as opposed to work, and wasn’t in a hurry to wipe it off.
Men with excessive body hair rarely indulge in tattoos, but Cutter was a notable exception. Underneath the tangle, he was an illustrated man, if that was the right word to describe the ugly jailhouse scribble that covered his torso. It was a Frankenstein patchwork of poorly drawn images seen through funhouse mirrors, their only purpose to boast or shock. A caricature of Bon Scott – the name scrawled underneath – shrieked from his beefy left pectoral to a black panther with a withered leg prowling the muscle opposite. Elsewhere was a skull crowned in flames and a blood-dripping dagger, a clock face without hands, a spider with huge fangs gulping down an infant, and RIPs for Chasley, Rose, Cecilia, Ferrari and Mum. He sported a couple of creeds from various military corps – only because he liked the look of them. He also boasted several swastikas, one with the arms bent the wrong way. There were many others, new inked over old. Most were in the Polynesian style, or done with prison-built kits powered by slot car motors. Cutter would never acknowledge it, but he enjoyed the bite of the tattooist’s needle more than the pictures themselves.
Where Warlock had designer tats, Cutter was the wall of a public toilet. The only work he’d had done professionally – paying cash instead of bartering ciggies or the loan of his fists – was a naked woman entwined in a snake on his right forearm. She wasn’t some shithouse flash off a wall. He’d paid for an original. At first he was disappointed by it, wanting bigger tits. But eventually, he grew to like how their smallness made her look vulnerable, more helpless. She twitched and struggled in the serpent’s embrace as he flexed his wounded hand; the mitt was definitely in need of a doctor. His ring finger could only curl partway and his fuck finger wouldn’t move at all. He wasn’t too concerned yet. He didn’t have much use for either.
The woman was lying on the bed beside Cutter. They were like most lovers after sex, recovering in their own individual pockets before snuggling again, except the woman looked like she was paralysed, removed from the world.
She was unrecognisable as the woman who had enjoyed a cold beer an hour before. Her breasts, stomach, arms and thighs were smeared with blood. Cutter’s fresh bandage had come undone during their struggle and his handprints marked her body. Some of the blood she had drawn herself, digging into his chest with her nails, leaving the panther drenched and the dead rock singer trying to drink it down. But she had stopped fighting after Cutter bent her hand back and broke a few of her fingers.
In a satisfied, ferociously good mood, Cutter slapped the woman’s thigh with his still-bleeding hand, then drove it in between her legs in a brutal karate chop, rubbing vigorously as if sawing wood. His way of showing affection.
The woman’s body jolted at his touch, beginning to come back from whatever deep, interior world she had inhabited.
Cutter leaned over and inspected the drawers of the bureau beside the bed. In the top drawer he found handkerchiefs, but they were too dainty for his needs.
“You got a scarf somewhere, darl? Ah, this’ll do.”
He pulled out a clean pair of white cotton panties to use in place of a bandage. The elastic in them would help cinch it tight.
The woman’s hands slowly rose to her neck and the silver chain there. Her struggles with Cutter had wound it tightly around her throat and she tugged at it absently, loosening it to bring the pendant around the front again, straightening it. Her fingers picked at it for thin comfort as her eyes took on awareness and darkened with hideous memories of the past half hour.
***
With amplified gurgles, the remainder of the plane went under smoothly, thin waves of water surging over the disappearing crest and meeting in the middle with a clap. A cloud of brown suds was all that was left to mark its passing … and Warlock, arms flapping as he splashed wildly nearby.
He had made some headway toward land before he began swimming on the spot, suddenly going no further. Then starting to go under. Doug watched with sour amusement. Warlock was so close to safety that Doug knew he would touch bottom before his head went under, and then he would stop panicking and walk to safety.
What finally made Doug move, and move quickly, was the disconcerting thought that something had hooked onto Warlock’s feet, pulling him down.
The bank fell away steeply – two steps and Doug was in over his waist. The water was surprisingly warm. He reached out, avoiding Warlock’s flailing fingernails. Unable to grab him by the shirt, he hauled him out by his ponytail instead.
Warlock exited the water much faster than Doug did, flailing and falling twice. He did not stop his mad scramble up the bank until he was over the summit, looking back at Doug with huge, staring eyes. It was then Doug realised Warlock was terrified, not of drowning, but because he hadn’t been sure who pulled him out. But who else?
“How the hell did you fall in the water?” Doug asked.
“I was helping! I was pushing the plane!”
Doug rolled his eyes. He might have known.
***
Mick escaped to the porch to avoid witnessing any more of the goings-on inside. If the husband came early there was still plenty of time to hide. Unfortunately, the quiet wasn’t as total as he would have liked. Cutter liked to make his women scream.
Mick took the crate with him. It bitterly reminded him of his age. He was still out of breath five minutes after dragging it onto the porch.
He sorted through it. He tried doing so while sitting on the porch swing, but it became annoying – and unnerving – to drift away from the crate every time he reached out for it. It was too much like some half-arsed omen. He abandoned the swing for the more dependable folding chair.
He played with the bigger uncut opals, rolling the colours back and forth, imagining all the things he would do with his share. He dreamed of being so wealthy that he need never break a promise again.
It had been quiet inside for a while, so he easily heard the vehicle approach.
Not the husband. It was the tractor returning.
***
Cutter was sitting on the side of the bed pulling his grubby overalls up over his legs when he heard the old man’s shout. The woman was perched at the foot of the bed where he could keep an eye on her. He was no fool. He never turned his back on anyone in the sack, whether they were willing to be there or not. One of the RIPs tattooed on his abdomen was for a lay who cut him with a razor she kept under her pillow. He didn’t kill her, or not directly; she committed suicide a few months after what he did to her. The hippy chick looked nothing like the drug-fucked Bris Vegas lap dancer named Ferrari, but he’d checked her pillow and made a quick search under her mattress anyway.
Seemingly independently of her wan, near-catatonic expression, the woman played with the pendant around her neck. It was the only item of dress still on her. She twirled the pendant back and forth, then pulling hard so the chain dug into her skin.
A Saint Christopher’s medal it was not. The pendant was a stern, totemic head. If she didn’t stop jerking it around, Cutter thought he would rip it off her neck and find a place to shove it. He was sick of these little actresses who p
retended they had been abused when the sluts really loved it, acting sulky when the bloke didn’t drop dead at their feet to worship their pussies afterwards.
“Get dressed,” he said, “or don’t. Either’s fine with me.”
As he shrugged into his overalls, he grinned at the idea, thinking it more fun if she did decline, so he could drag her out stark naked for the others to see.
He zipped up, then collected his pistol from the bureau. He glanced at a framed photo lying on its back, a portrait of the happy couple, arms around each other. He hadn’t really looked at it before. Then as he pulled on the first of his boots, something about the picture drew his attention back to it.
He had to look twice. “Well, fuck me dead …”
He saw her coming out of the corner of his eye, but because he was distracted, raised his arm too late to block the blow. She thumped the side of his neck with her fist. It barely hurt and he batted her arm away easily as he grunted out a noise between a growl and a laugh. It was her one and only attempt at aggression. She went deathly still straight after, looking at him in wonder, trying to understand something.
Cutter became aware of two things at once: where she had punched him started to feel curiously intense, burning … and the pendant dangling from her neck had become much, much shorter.
He stood, reached up and touched something small and hard jutting out from the side of his neck. He tried to brush it off and experienced a searing pain that went all the way around his neck, tightening like a noose. He took hold of the alien object and pulled it free. What he found in his hand was a child’s toy dagger: the blade was barely two centimetres long, double-edged, and tapered to a point. He had to look back and forth from the dagger to the woman’s pendant several times to understand. The dagger’s handle was the pendant’s downturned mouth. The stern eyes of the dagger’s sheath still watched him from the end of the chain. No harm done. The blade of the dagger resting in his hand was bright and spotless: a clean stab wiped clean in the removal?
But he felt odd, funky. He stared wonderingly at the woman, feeling warm rain on his shoulder. He had broken a couple of her fingers when she scratched him earlier. He should have broken all of them.
He staggered on the spot, dismayed to find the strength running out of him for real this time. A hose had been turned on at his neck; he could feel its warm stream flowing down inside his overalls. His shoulder was soaked through in an instant by the hose’s spray. He turned his head to try and look at it. That only made the hose jet out over his back. It wasn’t right, what she’d done, and him not having both boots on.
He clapped his hand over the breach. No good … the blood leaked through the bullet hole in his palm, pumping out with every jagged thudding heartbeat.
The woman remained crouched on the foot of the bed, watching him, waiting.
He backhanded her, the gun he held putting extra weight into the blow. She fell back on the bed, striking it so hard she almost bounced off.
“You numb nuts cunt,” he said as he turned the gun on her.
***
Doug turned into the yard, saw Mick alone on the porch and his heart sank. He shut off the tractor’s engine in time to hear two tinny reports come from inside the house. To a novice, the noises would have sounded like cooking pans banged together. Doug knew better. He jumped down with his gun drawn and sprinted for the house. Warlock stayed on the tractor, not keen to follow.
Mick stood up uncertainly from the folding chair, adding twenty years just in the act of rising to his feet. As Doug reached the porch the old man tottered toward him, holding out one of the drawstring bags as if to remind his mate what it was all for – what would sustain them through their terrible misfortune.
“Doug, don’t,” he said, trying to reach the front door first. “I’ll handle it.”
Doug shoved him aside and ran in.
The living room was empty. Without a second thought, Doug charged into the bedroom. He burst through the door and his feet nearly slid out from under him. Dark ripples travelled away, widening out across the floor. It was like dipping his toes into a smooth, black pool … or the killing floor of a slaughterhouse.
Cutter was slumped against the far wall, glossy red-gloved hand clamped to the side of his neck. At first glance, Doug thought the injury to his hand must have opened again, but the blood pulsed out too strongly to be from anywhere else but his neck. Cutter’s other hand sat limply on the floor between his splayed legs, the pistol pressing down on it like a paperweight.
The woman, Selena, was sprawled on the bed, slowly sliding from it headfirst. Doug lunged forward, not in time to stop her head from hitting the floor, but before she could fold up in a boneless heap. He hauled her back onto the bed.
He was fooled at first. He thought she had clothes on, but she was only dressed in blood. All of it blood.
“Ah, oh, Christ,” he heard behind him and knew Mick had arrived.
She was still alive, but Doug couldn’t see her staying that way much longer. Blood and gore pooled rapidly in her chest. Her eyes were open, but unseeing. Her mouth worked silently, horribly.
Warlock entered, going bug-eyed in his effort to take everything in at once.
The woman’s breath quickened, adding sound to her mouthings. Doug was sure she was speaking lucidly, but that was as much as he could figure out.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” He turned on Warlock. “Find something to cover her with!”
Warlock reached for the bed sheets trailing the floor.
“Something dry, idiot!”
Warlock bolted from the room.
Doug leaned closer to the dying woman. He made himself do it, though he was afraid of being struck down, too. God knows how she did it, but she got Cutter.
***
Warlock ran around the lounge room, spied a folded blanket in a basket and snatched it up. The blanket opened, and Warlock – the high priest who had once cut the head off a black rooster and smeared himself in its blood while the wings still flapped – cried out in revulsion as a mix of cat hair and furry dust bloomed in his face. It clogged his nose and watered his eyes. He could taste it in his mouth. Pah.
Holding his breath, he threw down the blanket, kicking it away for good measure. No way was he going to offer Doug that. The woman was likely past caring, but he was afraid he’d be the one ordered to spread the horrid, fusty thing over her.
He looked around hurriedly for an alternative. Then he saw the tapestry-like rugs hanging on the walls … really saw them. Find a blanket? He was surrounded by the fucking things. Shit, they were probably hanging in the bedroom, too, but he wasn’t going back in there without bringing what Doug wanted.
He grasped the bottom of the nearest rug and pulled. Tacks went flying, the rug came away easily, most of it slithering into his arms. He gathered up the straggling ends, off to deliver as ordered … and froze.
He gaped at the wall, now anything but bare. He backed up a few steps to take it in. Though he had some idea what it might be, he still found it difficult to absorb. He was trying to figure out what it meant, being here, in this place. It gave him the chills to look at it. The chills didn’t stop at one surge, either. They continued trekking up his spine in waves the longer he contemplated what he saw.
He began to wish he had chosen the cat blanket.
***
The woman repeated the same words over and over. A foreign language of some sort. She had no accent Doug could discern, but perhaps her parents were immigrants, using their mother tongue around their children.
Despite his reservations, he leaned in closer. Perhaps if he could respond to what she was saying, she would stop. Her close, burning breath fluttered in his ear.
“I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”
“Leave her alone, Doug,” Mick said. “You’re not doing her any fav–”
“It’s Latin.”
Warlock stood in the doorway, a rug across his arms, staring at the woman.
His face was slack, mesmerised.
Doug held out a hand for the rug. “Give that here.”
Warlock snapped out of his trance. He was slow in reaching Doug though, hopping from foot to foot as if busting for a pee.
“Hurry it up!”
Warlock skirted the bed, tiptoeing so not to get his shoes immersed in what covered the floor. He passed the rug and Doug spread it over the woman, tucking it in up to her chin. She seemed unaware of its presence, her mouth still running on its own, her eyes fixed on some faraway point. Even when Doug moved his face directly into her line of sight she did not see him.
He looked at Warlock, who was busy trying to flee the room on tiptoe again.
“Wait. Do you know what she’s saying?”
Warlock balanced on one foot. “I don’t know.”
“Do you recognise any of the words?”
“I never learned it! I just know what it sounds like. I don’t know what it means!”
Mick came over and tried to fetch Doug away from the bed.
“What does it matter, Doug? Leave it alone. Don’t rub your face in it.”
Doug wasn’t moving. He was set on Warlock.
“Do you have any idea at all what she’s saying?”
“No,” Warlock replied. His eyes darted to the fringes of Doug’s face, never looking at him directly. One of his bony hands scratched at a tattoo like he was attempting to erase it. He was lying, but Doug had to leave it alone for the moment. The woman began to have convulsions. Her head and heels lifted from the bed and dumped down again in unison.
Her convulsions escalated, but Doug resisted holding her still. He remembered how she didn’t like him to touch her. In the end, she grabbed hold of him. Her arm whipped from under the rug and caught the front of his shirt. She tried to bring them closer together, but she didn’t have the strength to rise and he resisted being pulled down. Her eyes were attentive, as shocking as a slap when they locked onto his.