Seeing Double

by Karen Runge

  “This wasn’t trauma,” he says. Do you?

  – TWENTY-ONE –

  The curtains—heavy fabric, charcoal blue—were kept closed. Their living room was an intimate square space with a couch and a television, a record player. The tiled floor was alive with ornate rugs, Persian patterns and satin tassels. The passage that ran left led to the bathroom and the bedroom, and that was where Daniel went. The passage that ran right led to the kitchen and that was where Neven went. But not before he kissed the girl’s neck and said to her, “Strip.” Winking back at her as he walked off, playful smile and hard eyes, so that she wasn’t sure if he was serious or not.

  The girl looked to Ada, who was bent over the record player. Ada with her own shoulders bare. Ada with her lank indifference. Ada, older than her. Prudish? Maybe. Who the hell played records, anyway? Grandparents. And pretentious people. The girl was sure.

  “We’re collectors,” Ada said, glancing back over her shoulder at the girl. “I know it’s old-fashioned. Daniel and me, we like beautiful things. Old things. Music is beautiful. Vinyl makes it even better.”

  She placed a record onto the turntable, lowered the needle. The speakers crackled and sound followed. Electric guitars singing in a slow seesaw, a woman’s voice climbing up behind them.

  “Did Neven tell you to strip?” she asked. She was lowering the turntable’s cover, brushing at the dust that skirted the glass. She glanced back at the girl again. “Did he?”

  “Yeah.” She was wary of Ada’s tone—Motherly? Patronising? Comforting?—which felt as unreal as Neven’s order had been.

  “Well go ahead, if you want. I don’t mind.”

  The girl’s eyebrow shot up. “In front of you?”

  Ada snorted. “Come on. We’re not like that here.” Something close to judgement spiked her tone.

  Almost to challenge her, the girl yanked her hair over her shoulder and reached behind her neck to untie the knot of her halter neck. “Sure. I don’t care either.”

  She peeled her shirt off. Ada watched.

  “You don’t have any tits,” Ada said after a moment, considering the girl. Her voice was cheerful, but her eyes were flint. So sharp the girl stopped short.

  “Men like them,” she said, cupping her breasts in a way that may have been as much to hide them as to draw attention to them. Something wavering in her eyes, like she wasn’t sure if she’d been wounded or only stung.

  “That’s okay.” Ada smiled. “Daniel says mine are too big.” And she pulled her own top down—that clasp of fabric that had left her shoulders bare all day—to show them to her. “What do you think?”

  The girl swallowed, tried to smile. Ada sat down on the couch and crossed her legs under her, her hands folded in her lap. She stared at the girl, her gaze direct and unabashed.

  “Well?”

  “They’re…very nice.”

  “Yes they are,” Daniel said, returning to the room with a small mirror and the spare stash of cocaine. “She told you I think they’re too big? She always tells people that. I’ve never said any such thing.” He winked at Neven, who was now leaning in the mouth of the hallway. Watching over the girl’s shoulder.

  The girl stared at Ada’s breasts. “How did you…get that scar?”

  Ada looked down at her chest and traced the length of the scar with a fingertip. Soft touch. “I was playing with a knife,” she said. “It’s a long story.”

  “Ada likes to play with knives,” Daniel nodded. “I try to make sure she’s supervised. Not all women can be trusted with long, hard objects.”

  The girl laughed, abrupt and sudden. Nobody joined in. She glanced from Daniel to Ada and back again. She crossed her arms over her chest in a grip that turned her knuckles white. Clenching her shoulders. “I think…I think I…”

  “No you don’t,” Neven said, stepping up behind her to spike her in the soft stretch below her hip. “You don’t think anything.”

  The needle made a popping sound as it broke through her jeans. Before it reached her skin.

  * * *

  They lay her out on the couch, her head in Neven’s lap, her arms tucked underneath her.

  “Not a bad first catch,” Daniel said, propping her feet up on the armrest.

  Neven looked into her slack face, brushing the hair away from her forehead, considering.

  She could’ve been…maybe. But no. She couldn’t be.

  Her mouth was soft, open, wet. He slid his hands to her throat and pressed his fingertips to her neck, feeling her pulse. A steady, slow throb, blood moving just beneath his touch. His blood and her blood, separated by my mere millimetres of skin. A living sheath. That, and nothing else.

  Ada walked to them, bent, and touched the girl’s chin. “Hey, little bitch,” she said, her voice low and sweet with malice.

  Neven closed a hand over one of the girl’s breasts. Her nipples were a light tan, larger than he might’ve expected. Swallowing the space. Ada placed her hand over his.

  “I know what you want,” Daniel spoke across to Ada, his voice low and gentle.

  Ada glanced back at him, her eyes as honed now as her smile had been, and Neven felt a chill. Something surreal, slicing through his nerves. He struggled with it until her gaze shifted to him. Her eyes warm and gentle again. Her smile, returned. For him.

  “Neven gets her first,” she said. “He did the work. Besides,” and she rose, rolling her shoulders and shaking the tension out of her arms, “he’s been thinking about it all night.”

  – TWENTY-TWO –

  You don’t have to like it to love it. That sickening in your stomach, the sweet-metal taint to your saliva when adrenaline floods your body. Thick. Your nerves searing in a quick, molten sting so powerful and so painful you don’t know if you should scream and rave it out, or instead stand perfectly still and wait for it to pass. You find the proof here that some things cannot be unseen—that nothing, ever, can be undone. And if you’re really lucky, as we have always been, in it you find a new form of ecstasy. Bliss.

  But I think you knew all that. I think you were waiting for it. Something inside of you was desperate to make something bleed—to see your own power manifest, to witness the irrefutable evidence of your strength. The proof of your own superiority.

  You surprised me. Daniel, too. Not content with the idea of just fucking her, you had to wreck her, too. Your head between her legs, wetting her frail, dry interior with your saliva, your tongue. A fury in the flash of your teeth. Making me flinch.

  Even me.

  You stopped as suddenly as you’d started.

  Daniel asked you, “How does she taste?”

  “Bad,” you said. “I think she was menstruating recently,” you said.

  Disgust in your voice. Also, anger. The residue on your chin was a murky brown, almost clean but not quite. Not enough. Daniel handed you a glass of wine. I handed you a tissue. You spat into the tissue. You drank the wine. That fragile crystal glass incongruous in your heavy hand.

  “Fuck her for that,” you said.

  And we knew by your tone you didn’t mean the standard kind of fuck. You set the glass down. I stared at it, innocent on the coffee table. Shining. Stem chipped. Your residue on its rim. Your saliva, tainted by her. Daniel followed my gaze. He moved over to me, wrapping his arms around me, his hands travelling my hips as he kissed my neck.

  “You remember?” he asked me. “You remember that night? You remember stealing those?”

  I turned into his kiss.

  When you came back there was a knife in your hand. Taken from our kitchen drawer. Daniel saw it and laughed.

  “Don’t get blood on the couch,” he said.

  You dragged the coffee table back to clear the space. You grabbed the girl by the legs and pulled her into a slouch, her ass just off the floor. You knelt between her knees.

  I know exactly how it went, even now, because I’ve replayed this in my mind many times, where it catches me somewhere between dread and arousal. Revulsion dre
ssed in thrills. It has never lost its surreal quality.

  Neven, you did this. You. With your bloodless smile, your mouth that had kissed mine, your body that had moved with mine. Rough trying to be gentle, frenzied trying to be restrained. With me. I didn’t know you were capable of much else, until we saw you do this. Did this for yourself, and for Daniel and me. Watching. Captivating us with your own idea of blood sport extremes.

  Entertaining us.

  Outdoing us.

  You slid the knife against her, goring at her clitoris. Sawing on either side of it in swift, dogged motions. And I remembered the guy at the street stand earlier that day, the fan in his hand, flicking at the smoke. You flicked through her flesh just like that. Deft, indifferent, your wrist working as her blood pattered onto the tile.

  Tap-tap.

  You dropped the knife and ripped that pearl of tissue free with your fingers—pinching the tiny rag of flesh, pulling, until it snapped. A small spray of blood arced through the air, catching you across the mouth. You licked your lips. You glanced back at us where we stood watching. Dumbstruck. You didn’t smile.

  “Here. You want it?”

  You offered the ball of flesh to Daniel, who took it, who straightened it out in his palm. It was so insubstantial in its tattered wrappings. Her blood was almost black, spreading between his fingers. I looked back at the girl who had given it to us. Unconscious. She lay still except for her hands. They twitched in fine trembles. I don’t know how much she felt—if she felt anything.

  Tap-tap.

  She kept bleeding. She bled a lot.

  You stood, straightened up. You panted out a bolt of laughter. You were trembling. You couldn’t catch your breath. I met your eyes. You stared back at me, pale-faced. You still had some of her blood on her chin.

  “You’re going to be sick,” I told you.

  “I—” you started, stopped. “I think—”

  You stepped off, into the bathroom. You locked the door behind you.

  Alone, Daniel and I stood in silence for a moment. My throat was tight. My eyes stung. My hands shook with the flood of adrenaline.

  “Did that just happen?” Daniel asked me. Awe in his voice.

  “Apparently.”

  He poked at the thing in his palm.

  “Give it to me,” I said.

  “Yes. Okay. Get rid of it.”

  He cupped his hand over my mine. It fell against my skin. Cold. Wet.

  I took it into the kitchen, for a moment not sure what to do. But of course I knew what to do. I stood at the sink, ready to drop it down the drain.

  “Farewell, fragile,” I said.

  It disappeared down that black hole. I ran the water, splashed some on my face. Goosebumps rose on my arms.

  For a moment, I felt sick. Nausea quelled by the smell of blood. Metallic, sweet.

  When I came back, the toilet flushed. And when you opened the door, it was me you went to. I barely glimpsed your face before you closed your arms around me, crushing me against you. I barely got to see your eyes, red like you’d been fighting tears. Like maybe you had actually cried. There was something broken in your face. But beyond it, I saw your own exhilaration masked by disbelief. You bowed your head against my neck. I felt you quivering under your shirt. I felt the need in your grip, your clenching hands. The halting jerks that shuddered through you as you breathed. I felt it. The need you had for me then, in that moment.

  And I said, “Shhh.”

  Later we sat on the floor, on cushions we placed round the coffee table—that table you’d displaced—and did the last of the cocaine. Needing it, each of us, but giving you the most. Just the same.

  On the couch behind you, the girl’s blood slowed, clotted. Stopped.

  “You don’t have to like it to love it,” Daniel said. “But you don’t do it because you love it. You do it because it reminds you of something. Don’t you?”

  “Rabbits,” you said. You wouldn’t meet his eyes. “She looked a little like a rabbit. Don’t you think?”

  You spoke about her in the past tense. I didn’t understand that, then. You held my hand. I felt it in your grip—how much you didn’t want to let go. Rubbing your thumb across my knuckles in soft circles. I wanted to be alone with you in that moment. I caught myself wishing Daniel wasn’t there. Maybe because I knew that this moment was important. That you’d just split yourself, cleaved yourself into a separate identity. The man who can hold a woman’s hand, the man who can mutilate.

  It was my hand you held. Your hand with blood under the fingernails, a tremble in your grip. Caressing my knuckles with your thumb.

  Daniel was right, of course. And I understood it better when I looked at you that night. The things you love the most, you often don’t like at all.

  – TWENTY-THREE –

  And then it happened again.

  Neven drove his scooter through the maze of back alleys, smiling into the wind that washed his cheeks in smooth air and warm sunlight. He was getting to know the place now, learning the tread of its angles, the flippancy of its aspects. He was discovering the dead ends, making sense of the zigzags.

  I live here now.

  In this astounding place of filth and beauty. It was hard to believe. But more and more every day it was working its way into him, digging into his heart. The air seemed brighter, all the colours jumping in livid luminosity. He was aware of every inch of his body. His feet in their socks, his hands on the handlebars. The sweat on the back of his neck, the slippery grooves of his armpits. The hair on his legs, tickling against his jeans. All of him aware, sensing, attuned. All of him welcomed, empowered—allowed to join and be part of this world.

  He took an obscure turn and found himself rounding toward the coffee shop where he’d once met Ada, the place seeming quaint today with its ornate eaves and dusty windows. He’d approached it with such hope and dread, on that day—the thick, smoke-sweet fragrance of incense tickling the back of his throat as he breathed, those breaths tight with anticipation. That smell like insidious poison. Spiritual contagion. It had seemed like that, on that day when he went to meet her, unsure of which version of her waited for him. He remembered her eyes, wide and desperate. A fragility in them he hadn’t been sure how to interpret. Was it for him? This married woman he’d fucked while her husband watched. This woman who’d closed her arms around him, her legs, and he’d felt a world inside of her that went so much deeper than just that hole in her flesh.

  Best not to think about it now. In a way, the lines between them had already been drawn. In his silence, in her sacrifice. Resignation like a dull film coating the surface of her eyes, desperation churning beneath. A desperation, he was beginning to think, that not even Daniel really saw.

  He rode by the coffee shop now with a sense of freedom in its familiarity, greeting it as an old friend. Nodding to it as he passed, as if it could see. Its dusty eyes winked back.

  He’d slept badly the night before. His dreams had been monstrous, unforgiving. Their viciousness a kind of purging—so that when he woke that morning on his rattletrap bed, his eyes had stung against the light and his head had throbbed, but a joy had sung through him nonetheless. His morning erection rose in triumph, hard as granite and pulsing with enthusiasm. His penis, at least, remained the stalwart optimist. Unperturbed, it encouraged him to follow its cue.

  He’d stood at the bathroom sink and masturbated to thoughts of Ada—or the blue girl?—his knees trembling as his hand moved. Calling up images of mouths, full and soft and painted red. Sharp eyes fixed on his. Sharp eyes closed. He recalled the swell of her breasts, the feel of them in his mouth, tightening under his teeth. He didn’t think of scars, or about the oily lubricant of blood between his fingertips. He blocked out the memory of plucking something that had stretched in long sinews before it snapped free, something that had almost escaped the pinch of his fingers, resisting the angles of the knife. He saw the colour red flash before his eyes, and then his semen rolled up in an electric surge. It hit the
sink and he gripped the cold ceramic edge with his free hand, squeezing out the last of his cum, breathing hard, his head swimming. A smile twitching at the edges of his mouth.

  A little clearer in the aftermath he now thought of Ada and the sensation he recalled was of her heat. That vital lick of energy, searing when they touched—did it come from her or from him? Or the two of them together? Like they were made of sulphur and accelerant. Like they could ignite at any moment. Her mouth on his neck, her breath in his ear. Just visualising this was enough—a maddening pulse tripped over his mind and seized his thoughts.

  Dangerous…dangerous…he thought, knowing that no warnings could save him. Not anymore.

  He reached the end of the alley, slowing to wind his way around the pedestrians that converged here. And he saw him. Crossing the main street ahead of him, his head down, his hands deep in his pockets. Daniel—his black coat surely too heavy for this heat—walking swift-stepped, sunshine beating the back of his neck.

  Neven, who’d slowed at the sight of him, now sped up—the bike vibrating beneath him. Wanting to call out, Hey! Wanting to say, Hey, Daniel!

  They’d go for a drink together. They’d talk. Maybe Ada would join them. It would be the three of them again, together, close. Alone.

  But he was too far away, and when he reached the intersection Daniel was nowhere in sight. Neven stopped the bike and put his feet down, blinking against the glare, searching for the man in the black coat who walked with his head bowed against the sun, who kept his hands in his pockets, crushing the things he carried there. The crowd thickened, thinned, moved, thickened again. A bus tore by, a taxi blared its horn. The stillness was shattered, and Daniel was gone.