Seeing Double

by Karen Runge

  He held me close against him. His hands turned soft, stroking my skin.

  Trauma, this was not. I don’t think so. Do you?

  – ELEVEN –

  Daniel and Neven walked with Ada between them, their arms crossed behind her back, lashed around her waist. Tight. The streetlights spun neon red and bright white, the concrete was ballast-fire under their hard, half-stumbling steps as they veered off into the alley.

  They pretended. Ada leaned her head back on a shoulder, smelling old leather and sweat raw with alcohol. She took some weight off her feet, resting back into their strength.

  Bliss.

  An old local couple sat in the battered lawn chairs scattered outside a noodle shop, trash waltzing around their feet in the wind. They sat hunched over their bowls, their shoulders curved under crumpled skin, their faces haggard against the cast of light and dark. It sallowed their earth-toned skin, turning it a pale lime green. The couple watched them pass with wide eyes.

  “They don’t approve.” Ada said. “We’re outraging the neighbours.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. They’re going to die soon anyway,” Daniel said, and Neven laughed.

  The compound was quiet. The trees that lined the drive shushed overhead, their footsteps echoed behind them.

  Like we’re being followed, Ada thought. And swallowed a flicker of unease.

  The thin sound of a siren, far away, swelled and then faded. The standard city scream.

  “I need a piss,” Neven said.

  “We’re close, very close. You don’t need to burn the flowerbeds.”

  Upstairs they let him go in first, throwing open the steel security door and pointing him to the bathroom.

  In those minutes alone, Daniel bolted the door behind them and turned to Ada, cupping her face and then tapping her cheeks with his open palms.

  “You okay? You still with us?” he whispered down to her.

  She nodded.

  “Not too drunk?”

  She shook her head, smiled.

  He kissed her gently on the mouth. “Go get the stuff.”

  In the kitchen she retrieved the kit from its place behind the vitamin pills. She filled the syringe, her hand trembling, her fingers clawed to catch it should she shake too much. Should it fall. Nausea churned in her belly. Her head throbbed with the heavy pulse of her heart.

  Yes, too much, maybe I’ve had too much to drink. I don’t know. I think I can still think. I think…

  She didn’t see him standing in the doorway. Watching her fumble with the needle, the vial. She walked straight into him as she turned.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said, laughing—laughing?—catching her neatly across the shoulders and spinning her around. The syringe clattered to the floor. Her empty hand grasped at the air. She struggled but he held her tight, fury in his grip despite his laughter. Her back was tense against his chest, nerves and muscles twitching. Her heart pounded under the thick weight of his forearm. Her own hands, grappling. He dragged her out into the short passageway.

  Daniel stood frozen at its mouth. He stared at them.

  “Is this what you want?” Neven yelled, booting the needle away. It skittered across the smooth tile and vanished beneath the TV stand. “Is this the game you play? Huh? You want to drug me and do something to me? Is that it?”

  Daniel didn’t answer. He read the fury in Neven’s eyes. Ada’s breaths, fast and high, filled the silence.

  “Is this what you want?” Neven asked again, softer. His arm still clamped against her throat, he slid his free hand down her waist, tracking the contours of her hips. His hand travelled up to the neckline of her dress and vanished beneath it, crushing her breast in a clenching fist. She winced but made no sound.

  She kept her eyes on Daniel, shutting them only as Neven dropped his head and closed his teeth on her shoulder. A tear slid down her cheek, stained a murky grey from the touch of her mascara.

  “She’s had enough,” Daniel said.

  “But I haven’t,” Neven answered against her skin. “And I’ve got a feeling you haven’t either.”

  – TWELVE –

  I know what this feels like. Something new. Something wrong. Something that excites you, challenges you, scares you. Thrills you. Even as you tell yourself you don’t want to do this, there’s a voice that comes back: Don’t you?

  That voice. It’s always there. Maybe you remember it from childhood. Scaring the tails off of lizards. Pulling the wings off of flies. Maybe something worse. I imagine you did a lot worse. The cruelty phase, they call it. You’re supposed to grow out of it. Maybe nobody does. Maybe it stays beneath the surface of our thoughts, muted by “maturity.” But there. When a man hits a woman, I guess it comes back to him, then. When a woman makes a man cry, I guess it comes back to her, then.

  A delight in viciousness. The power we feel when we destroy.

  When you open yourself to it, a part of you shatters, fragments, breaks free. A broken mirror, turning you into so many separate pieces. You see your reflection in those shards, but if you reach down to pick any of them up, they’ll take your blood instead.

  Pieces of you, of me.

  Making us bleed.

  The first time Daniel and I did it, I broke again. I broke apart like that.

  But what was she? This bitchy little thing laid out on our couch. White-blonde, pale-lipped, dark-lashed. Her eyes half-shut so that when I sat by her and looked into her face I saw the crests of her irises, pale blue, red veins cracking outward in fine, static bolts.

  Earlier, she’d asked me, “What do you do?”

  “I’m an artist,” I’d said.

  And she’d laughed at me. Laughed. “Oh come on, everyone is an artist around here.”

  Winking at Daniel. Trying to make him complicit against me. And he’d smiled, tolerant. Only I knew that smile. Hard-eyed, blood-lit. When she turned her head he met my eyes in a black gaze.

  You know, that look said. You know what I want to do.

  In a way he did it in my own defence. In a way, that’s why I agreed. Or maybe it was me, all me. Maybe it was me who wanted so badly to fuck her up. In some hidden part of my soul.

  Shatter. Bleed.

  “For the next four hours or so,” Daniel said, checking his watch to mark the time, “she’s all ours.”

  But I didn’t know what to do with her. This body on the couch. This person we barely knew, clouding up the atmosphere. The presence of her, so thick in the sudden silence of our living room. This person we’d chosen together—or had she chosen us? She must have. Maybe. The way she smiled at Daniel, laughing in that breathy way with her shoulders back to show him her chest. Standing a little too close to him. Shutting me out. Blonde hair too bright, even under the dim bar lights.

  You want to fuck my boyfriend, I thought but didn’t say. Too bad he wants to fuck you, too.

  And by the way, fuck you.

  “She’s beautiful, huh?”

  I looked at him, my heart stabbing at my ribs. I moaned.

  “No, not like that. Not like a person. She’s not a person right now.” Impatient with me, he shook his head. Forgiving me, he closed his arm around my shoulders. He kissed my forehead. “You’re real. You understand? You’re real, and she’s not. She’s just flesh. Just that.”

  Shatter. Bleed.

  I wrapped my arms around him. Wanting his closeness, his warmth. He pushed me away. “What do you say we take off her clothes? Really. It’s okay.”

  Her skin was pale, milk-white, like her hair. Her breasts were large, her nipples a faded teak, one of them placed off-centre, asymmetrical, so when I looked down at her they didn’t make me think of eyes gazing back.

  “Open her for me,” he said.

  I hesitated.

  He nodded.

  I touched her. Blonde hair, wiry and thick, recently trimmed. She was cold but also wet. Inside, the palest pink.

  Daniel took his clothes off. He was hard as iron. Seldom so hard, even with me. Even right at t
he beginning, when the desperation we felt for each other had held our every nerve on high-alert. Crushing our bodies together at every spare chance. His mouth on my mouth, stealing my breath. This wasn’t like that.

  Nothing like that.

  He climbed onto the couch, settling on his knees. He pulled her legs across his thighs. They were limp, deadweight. A fine trace of varicose veins tracked through the marbled stretch of skin just above her right knee.

  Perfect. She wasn’t perfect. And she wasn’t real. Not real like me.

  She wasn’t like me.

  She was not me.

  “Help me,” he said.

  I held her for him, watching him tease his way into her in slow, careful shoves. I watched his face. I needed to see his face. His expression. Ecstasy giving over to fury as he vanished inside that cold, wet clasp. Then pounding into her so that sweat shone on his forehead and he snarled as he breathed. The couch quaking under the force.

  It was over so fast. So fast, it may as well not even have happened. Maybe.

  Blood in my mouth. My bitten tongue.

  We cleaned her up. He let me wipe the moisture away from between her legs. Maybe then I felt the first twinge. We put her clothes back on. I straightened her hair. When she started to wake we half-carried her back down the stairs. She was groggy, moaning.

  “Hey, good morning,” Daniel said into her ear. “Hey, we’ve been trying to wake you up. You passed out on our couch. You okay?”

  She tried to talk, couldn’t talk. Saliva sliding down her chin. A helpless heap we dragged in our arms. We took her to the bus stop just out the alley. We settled her down, her eyes flitting against the rising light.

  A local woman carrying a sack of empty bottles came by. Stared. “Crazy foreigners,” she muttered under her breath, not imagining we could understand.

  We waited for her to pass. The girl was moaning, trying to swallow, her belly lurching a little like she was about to be sick.

  “What if she goes to the police?” I asked.

  “She can’t. She won’t remember enough. She won’t remember much about us, and she definitely won’t remember where we live. What could she say? And she doesn’t speak the language anyway. She’ll wake up in a world of pain. She’ll take a shower. She’ll eat something. She’ll probably call her mommy. And then she’ll fly back home.”

  We left her there.

  When we got back to our apartment I locked myself in the bathroom. I got into the shower, turned it on, sat down on the tile. I let the water crash onto my back. I hunched over the drain and threw up. I sobbed. Daniel knew better than to pound on the door, understanding me, knowing that I wouldn’t know how to face it, at first. The images of what we’d done flashing against me every time I shut my eyes. Her skin, her pink, his hands crushing her breasts.

  Her eyes, vacant.

  Her eyes, asymmetrical.

  Staring back.

  When I came out again, wrapped tightly in a towel, he forced me to look at him. His eyes gentle again. Cupping my face with his soft hands. Kissing me, the light touch of his lips.

  “You’re real,” he said. “You. You’re not just flesh. Not that.”

  And he pulled me into his arms. When we separated I saw tears in his eyes. I saw love and gratitude. His gratitude. It was overwhelming. His love. It held us tight. I kissed his tears. Metallic, sweet.

  I know what this feels like, Neven. I know how you felt when you joined with Daniel and did that to me.

  – THIRTEEN –

  They took the train out to the suburbs, their backpacks dropped between their knees, the three of them pressed together in the crush of bodies and staring eyes of the strangers that watched them—the foreigners—as they swept beneath the city and on to the end of the line. At each stop the passengers changed in shifting shades and varying scents. Business suits and high heels gave way to overalls and gaudy dresses; handbags and briefcases were swapped for sacks of corn and plastic carry-bags; perfume and aftershave vanished, dumbfounded, beneath the stink of sweat and dirty hair.

  “Next stop, hillbilly land,” Daniel said.

  People, so many people, why always so many people? Push and crush and rush, standing on my feet, shoving me. Ramming me.

  “She hates these crowds,” Daniel said, putting his arm around Ada’s shoulders, pulling her close to him. “Don’t worry babe, we’re getting there.”

  A farmer with a smart phone snapped a picture of them before the doors opened for him. Even as he stepped off onto the platform he kept glancing over his shoulder at them, gaping at them, his weathered face slack with disbelief.

  “Goddammit, why?” Neven said. When he narrowed his eyes like that it was hard to tell if it was out of anger or interest. His dark eyebrows drawn tight, the crease in his brow deepened, stark. “I feel like a fish in a tank.”

  “Or like a monkey in a cage,” said Daniel.

  “Yeah, fuck you!” Ada yelled just before the doors slid shut.

  Daniel clamped his hand over her mouth. “Be polite, honey,” he said. “The one word you can be sure they all know is ‘fuck.’” Then to Neven, “I told you she hates being stared at by the locals. She really hates it. Sometimes I can’t even get her to leave the apartment.” He took his hand away.

  “It’s just because you’re beautiful.” Neven winked at her.

  She smiled at him, despite herself.

  By the last few stops, the carriages were almost empty. Ada stretched out across the seats with her head in Daniel’s lap, her eyes closed as he stroked her hair. When they arrived, Neven took her backpack for her. Letting her walk free.

  Aboveground the place had changed its face. Away from the claustrophobic heat of the city, the fog and fumes faded to a smudged grey line only visible from higher ground, only visible when looking back. Here the roads were dirt and broken tar, and the mountains rushed up around them—vivid and green, narrow trails stuttering through the brush like broken steps made in Morse code.

  They found the place that rented bicycles, presented their passports to the surly old lady who ran it and rode up into the hills. They followed the remote back roads; battered tar crumbling into wild grass, heat glinting off the handlebars and sweat sliding down their backs. Strands of Ada’s hair stuck to her forehead. The guys kept ahead of her, Neven and Daniel riding abreast and talking like the heat and the sweat and the strain of the hills barely fazed them.

  They threw water down their backs and over their heads, Neven turning once to shatter a spray towards Ada, an arc of flying water that hit her chest and throat, the wind cooling it on her skin, easing back her blood. She shrieked, they laughed, the sound light and high in the stillness of the hills.

  They rode on, they rode up. Legs aching, skin burning.

  “Here?”

  Any higher and they may be seen from further down. And off this road, there were no trails. Just a gentle slope of slim trees curling around a rock face, vanishing. The ground was moist with green shadows. They got off their bikes and pushed them into the brush, laying them down so they wouldn’t be visible to any passers-by, or any thieves. They walked deeper in, away from the road, out of sight. Daniel opened a bottle of warm cola, chugging a third of it down in swift, neat swallows.

  “A woman’s touch,” Ada said, unzipping her backpack and taking out a blanket.

  “And now a heathen’s touch,” Neven said, dropping to his knees to search his bag. He wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. It bore the words Refuse Resist Pursue Persist staggered across his chest in faded print. The silver crucifix he wore around his neck flashed in the sunlight. After a while he pulled the plastic sleeve out—six long-stemmed mushrooms coiled inside, the colour murky brown, the caps small and bulbous.

  Like alien fingers, Ada thought, but took hers anyway. They lay back on the blanket, chewing them down, bitter chemicals vile in their mouths. Ada finished the Coke, trying to get rid of the taste.

  “Let me see your tattoo again,” Neven said a while
later, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at Ada. Her skin was bright under the sunlight, her eyes narrowed against it. Glaring at him?

  No, he decided. Her mouth is too soft. Like she wants to smile. Like she’s thinking about it.

  “Is that code for you want to fuck her?” Daniel smirked.

  Neven glared at him. “No.”

  Ada rolled onto her belly, clawing her shirt up her back, then pulled it off over her head. She unclasped her bra without him asking. The tattoo was of a swan, wings spread, locked in flight. It travelled her shoulders, spine and lower back, shades and shadows eclipsing her skin. It disappeared beneath her jeans, and he knew it went further—much further. Though his memory was unclear on just how much.

  “You’ve got some scars here,” Neven said. He touched her without thinking about it, tracing the thin white lines that interrupted the smooth shades of ink.

  “Courtesy of Daniel,” she said.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, studying them. Stars and nicks and ragged lines. “Jesus.”

  “These are nothing,” Daniel said. “You saw the scar under her breast.”

  “She at least did that to herself,” Neven said. “Didn’t she? But this…”

  Daniel lay a hand over the left wing, blocking Neven’s view. “It’s not that great a tattoo anyway,” he said. “A swan. A fucking swan.”

  “It’s the ugly duckling,” Ada said. She stared straight ahead, as if talking to the shadows in the undergrowth. “Something beautiful born from something hideous.”

  Neven smiled, though she couldn’t see it.

  “I got it when I was eighteen. I designed it myself. I saved up for months to have it done.”

  Daniel snorted. “You were fucking the tattoo artist.”

  “It’s big. I needed a discount.”

  Neven laughed.