by Karen Runge
He thought of the old bicycle shed. Three walls of cracked concrete, a sheet of chain-link fencing curled over its black mouth, secured, run red with rust. The ground around it a wild nest of weeds and brambles, dry twigs stung with cold, snapping against the icy earth where he stepped. It was a disused space, discarded.
As he was disused, discarded.
In the summer, folks in the compound took their dogs out there to shit, to run in circles, enfeebled mixed-breeds excited by the sudden pseudo-wildness of their surroundings, reminding them of the time when they were wolves. To be ravenous, powerful, free. That was in the summer, but not now in the dead of cold. Now the only sounds coming from there were the yowls and ethereal shrieks of stray cats as they fought, as they mated. Disconcerting, until you put your pillow over your head, or switched on the TV, or turned the music up.
This is what happens in cities, where you pile hundreds of people on top of each other in close quarters. Everyone becomes immune to the sounds of screaming.
He sat up on his elbows, dizzy at the surge of blood pulsing around his skull. He sat up, almost expecting it when his phone on the bedside table buzzed a message. It was from Daniel: Speak to Ada today?
He frowned, typed his reply: No why?
He waited for a few minutes to see if Daniel would answer. When he didn’t, Neven slid his legs over the edge of the bed to stand. He walked to the kitchen, the cold floor numbing the soles of his feet, each step gathering grime. Unlike Ada and Daniel, playing house had never interested him. He didn't care about the marks on the walls or the mould in the bathroom. Hell, it didn’t even bother him that he had to boil his water in a pot on the stove, since he’d never got round to buying a kettle and doubted he ever would. Visiting Daniel and Ada was always a little surreal. Welcome to Adultland! Coffee sets and special hand soap, fresh tablecloths and vacuumed rugs. They’d never been up to his apartment. Which struck him in that moment as odd that it had never happened, not once in the time he’d been close to them. In the beginning he wouldn’t have minded, but now if they did come by he’d be ashamed for them to see it. So pitifully desolate. A functional set of stark white walls. The landlord’s crummy furniture, mismatched and mostly broken, trailed throughout the rooms. It made a statement, this place. I am lonely. And I am alone.
If Ada—or Daniel, but especially Ada—were to see how he lived, it would only make them feel smug about their new lifestyle. Justified. That they had risen above this and on into maturity, responsibility. Savings plans and insurance payments. Decent sleeping hours and healthy eating habits. No more living like footloose twenty-somethings, erratic and disbelieving, choking on those first frantic breaths of adult freedom.
No more drugs.
No more getting drunk.
No more crazy sex with their best friend.
He stood frozen in front of the fridge for a vacant moment, then yanked the door open and took the last of his beers. He’d need to go downstairs to stock up. Maybe he’d even grab a bottle of cheap vodka. Back home he’d stick some music on and drink it in the dark, waiting for the shadows and echoes in his head to build, to close in.
He’d see how far they took him.
– FORTY-TWO –
Ada. Before you and Daniel broke off from me, we had that time. Just you and me. That final time alone.
I remember that day. You lay beside me, bare, your head turned away from me, your hair scattered across Daniel’s pillow in soft curls. The colour changed in the semi-darkness, from auburn to dark brown. You drew the curtains before we undressed, changing the light. Was that for vanity, or paranoia that somehow we were being watched? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t ask.
You lay on Daniel’s side and I lay on yours because you didn’t want me in his territory. As though that could in any way minimise the betrayal of you and me alone in your apartment like that. The close space on the insides of your thighs still glistening, a used condom dropped on the floor beside me like a strangled slug. And I had this sensation of movement on each side of my waist, my nerves still tingling from the silky chafe of your thighs. Because you liked to wrap your legs right around me, and the faster I moved, the more I felt it. And kept on feeling it. I love how you did that.
“We didn’t make love,” you said. “There’s no such thing.”
“We fucked, then?” I asked you.
You laughed. “No. Sex. Just sex. Let’s just call it that.”
“All right then.”
We used a generic term with no complications, no connotations. But it was still you and me alone on Daniel’s bed. No blades, no blood, no drugs. Just the smell of sweat and rubber and secretions. Your wedding ring on the table beside you. The fact of that ring annoyed me—its existence—and though I knew I had no right, I didn’t care that it bothered me. He’d given you that shining thing you had to remove before you would touch me. Licking your finger first to help it slide off. I had to fight to forget about it because I wanted to be with you, savour the minutes I had alone with you.
Even sated, the energy between us hummed. My dick, aching, lay curled against my thigh in a confused, exhausted state. Semi-turgid, not quite resting. I ran my hands all over your body. I wanted to know I’d touched you everywhere, the smooth undersides of your arms, the space between your shoulder blades. The sides of your neck, every angle of your thighs. Your wrists, your knees, the groove of your spine.
You turned onto your back. You angled your legs away from me, and your hip rose. My hand followed the slopes. Your belly. Your breasts. Your scar.
“Tell me how you got this.”
You flinched. “Got what?”
“This scar. This.”
“Oh. That.” Your tone was stiff, dismissive. But I think you were pretending, feigning boredom while your mind raced. “I did that.”
“No you didn’t.”
You turned to face me, your eyebrow raised. “Yes. I did.” Emphatic. “I did it when I was twenty-four. About a year before I came here.”
That scar, it followed the curve beneath your left breast and worked its way up, stopping just below the point where your cleavage met when you wore a tight bra.
“How?” I asked you. “Why?”
You laughed—laughed?—and shook your head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I would. I think I would. Tell me.”
“I wanted to cut my breast off.”
“Why?”
You sighed, an irritated rattle of breath. “Because I thought if I did that I would have to be honest with myself. And other people would have to be honest with me, too. Because when you’re mutilated, people don’t want to look at your body. They have to see your soul. That was the theory, at least.”
“But you didn’t. I mean, you didn’t…cut it off.”
“No. I tried, and I was serious about trying, but it hurt too much.”
“But, Ada…”
I touched that curve. It followed the contours of your breast so exactly. An intense, ragged roadway of thickened tissue. Stopping abruptly at a point that spun in a starburst of scars.
“You gored yourself here,” I said, recognising what it had to—could only—have been. A blade twirled. Ripping on all sides. Making a hole.
“At the last minute, I thought I’d try to stab myself in the heart instead.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I told you. I could barely handle getting through soft tissue, how could I cut through muscle, get past bone? It hurt too much.”
I bent to kiss it. The whole of it. I followed its length with my tongue. Your skin was salty because I’d made you sweat. Your heart was beating staccato because I’d made you talk. Made you tell me this. Made you remember. You let me do it, kiss you like that. You didn’t flinch that time.
“You need to go now,” you said when I raised my head. “I only invited you over today because it was time to change the sheets anyway. And Daniel will be home in an hour or two.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. I still have to run the machine.”
You lay stiff on the bed, your hair dark in the light, your curves and angles obscure in the shadows. For a moment, you looked a little different. For a moment, I wondered if it was really you.
I put my clothes on. You didn’t move. “I’m going now.”
I waited. But you didn’t say goodbye.
– FORTY-THREE –
She’d started the painting. She’d made the initial strokes, the ones that slide off the brush in clumsy strikes, awkward and hard-edged without shading, without context. Free-form painting was a test of commitment, also of memory. That first precious glimpse of the concept flitting through the remote edges of her brain, a cobweb strung between quivering branches. Look at it one minute and it was clear and real, and her passion for it surged. Look at it again, and it shifted to obscurity. Futile, ridiculous. Too vague, too wishful.
Impossible. Sometimes it seems.
But for now she felt good. She stood in the shower with her eyes closed, her fingers clawing soap out of her hair, her head tilted back. The spray hit her forehead in a constant, numbing fall.
It’s going to be okay. It is. It will.
She wasn’t sure what time Daniel would be home. Soon, she hoped. After her shower, she’d put on one of those roomy, cosy floor dresses she’d bought in Cambodia. She’d put on a hint of lipstick, a stroke or two of mascara. Dinner was a casserole she’d thrown together, and it was ready to go in the oven at a moment’s notice. There was a case of Lite beer in the fridge for him, soda water and grape juice for her. She wouldn’t ask him for a sip. She’d smile at him and kiss him and keep her hands from twisting in her lap.
Just because things are changing doesn’t mean I’m no longer me, she’d assured him, herself, again and again.
That had to be true, especially now that it was too late to turn back.
She slid her hands down past her breasts and paused at her abdomen, pressing. A protective V, thumb to thumb, palms to skin, hot water shushing around her, over her in a smooth, warm pulse.
– FORTY-FOUR –
It doesn’t help to think of the good times. Good times? I want to talk about the dark times. Insanity, depravity. Even now I look back on it, this journey that we shared not so long ago, and I can’t believe the things we did. The things that happened. That we made happen. The three of us. Not those other times, when it was just you and me alone. Because it’s like we were different people then. Like we weren’t who we are. Or maybe we were who we are? Which versions are real? I don’t know the difference myself just yet. I only know that at some point, yes, something split.
You want to talk about cutting. You want to talk about wounds. You want to talk about Daniel fucking a hole he put in some girl’s breast. You want to talk about it like you’re a victim too, like you and I had nothing to do with it. But I felt you. How wet you were. You were fucking me at the time, remember? Sitting on my lap. And I know you liked it, watching Daniel gore that hole. I know. I felt you. I was there.
You want to talk about damage. Maybe the first time away from Daniel was a kind of rape. Maybe. But you want to talk to me about these things like you hate me, when we both know that isn’t true. Or if it is, it’s neatly entwined with hatred’s twin. Siamese style, grotesque. Honest.
Because I’m pretty sure you love me.
Still. None of that matters. Drugging strangers and marking them up was Daniel’s thing. He liked cutting you; he liked cutting me. You let him fuck up that beautiful tattoo of yours with his little razor blades, his heated needles. I’ve got scars of my own from him, in case you forget. The one on the back of my neck. I can’t see it, of course, but I feel it with the tips of my fingers. A small line where the skin is a little thinner, where the scar healed too wide.
I touch it sometimes when I want to remember that night.
That night. You lay back on the couch and lifted your skirt, but it was Daniel who stripped you. Opened your legs. He raised his eyebrow at me with that drunken leer. That madman-shocked-sane expression he sometimes has. His hair was wild. He looked ridiculous.
“Ours, yes?” he asked.
“A scar should have a good story.” You slurred that at me, your eyelids heavy. Lying complicit with a bellyful of Campari and a straight-razor in your hand. For a moment I thought you wanted to slit my throat. I was never really sure with you on those nights. But then Daniel stepped away and you called me over. I stood over you, staring down at you. Knowing I would fall. High on coke, which I still wasn’t really used to. Stripping off my clothes. Collapsing onto you. Kissing you. You tasted bitter from the drugs, sweet from the Campari. You pulled back and closed your mouth on my chin, catching my stubble against your teeth. Letting me breathe. Knowing I needed to breathe.
I found my way between your legs. You crossed your legs behind my back. A total embrace. I felt like I was out of my own body, out of my own mind. And while part of me stayed present with you, some other parts of me were falling into something else. Fucking you was always like that. Like being in two worlds at once.
I didn’t see you pass the razor to Daniel. But I knew something was up when you closed your arms around my back. So tight. Too tight. Planning to—wanting to—hold me in place. As if you’d have the strength. You arched up against me, pressing your breasts tighter to my chest. Trying to distract me.
You said in my ear, “Shhh.”
You strengthened your grip. I think you locked your hands behind me. And then I felt the blade’s edge at the nape of my neck. Pressing, biting. I almost thrashed. For an instant I wanted to fight free, but I knew what that thing was. The damage it could do if I moved.
And I did it for you. I let it happen. For you.
I hissed through my teeth when he cut me. A long, slow slide of pain, the blade sinking past my skin.
A man’s mouth is rough on wounds. I preferred the smooth brush of your cheeks, your chin, your tongue moving across my skin in careful licks.
“Relax,” you said. “Find that place in yourself. Just enjoy it.”
You were high, you were drunk. But we all were. Later, when my blood had stopped, we went to the bedroom and you lay between us. Daniel rolled you onto your belly. He cut you, too. You shrieked in pain, in laughter. Mutilating the image you had sold your body to have inked into your flesh.
Don’t say you didn’t like it. I saw your face. I was there too. I kissed the blood off your skin just the same as Daniel did. I know your taste. I still taste you. Metallic, sweet.
When we were done with you, you skipped to the bathroom with your hands covering your breasts. Prudish, ecstatic as a tween caught topless in a lake. The lines of blood, smeared and dried, added new dimensions to your tattoo.
Maybe I understood then why Daniel hated that swan so much.
“All the great love stories involve at least a little blood,” Daniel said to me while you were gone. Rolling back, satisfied. The pretentious fuck.
The thing is, Ada, I’ve had a lot of girls in my life. Sometimes they wanted me and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they bit and scratched like you bit, like you scratched. Sometimes I made them bleed and sometimes they got blood from me. But this intimacy we had, the two of us—no, the three of us—I never knew anything like it. And I know you felt it, too.
But more than that, more than any of that, remember this, Ada: you came to me.
– FORTY-FIVE –
“Where did you go today?”
“Nowhere.”
“I saw you at the subway station. What were you doing there?”
“I wasn’t there. I was here all day. I didn’t leave.”
“I saw you.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Yes it was.” Pacing, fidgeting. “I saw you.” Clawing his hands through his hair. “It was you. Why are you lying to me? I saw you. It was you.”
– FORTY-SIX –
For the third night in a row, Neven woke on the floor beside his bed, face
pressed against the soiled tile, hands dead under the weight of his hips. Numb fingers groping at his crotch.
He heard her voice in echo. You poor thing.
Behind him, above him. Or from somewhere in his head. Ada had said this to him once when she woke him on her and Daniel’s living room floor. He’d been lying in a pose much like this, and she said it mocking, teasing, stooping to help lift him to his feet.
You poor thing.
Helping him up because he was too drunk or too high or too much of both and she was playing mommy. Playing like she cared about him, this thing she and Daniel bled.
Now he freed his hands and grabbed the edge of the bed, pulling himself up. The shades weren’t drawn and the city skyline hovered beyond the glass. Square blocks solid against the smog, a few lights glowing in the pre-dawn darkness. Night owls, or discrete sleepers who preferred to dream in daylight. Or insomniacs pacing empty rooms.
Ada grew up in the country, in a place far from here. He remembered her telling him once that it still surprised her, how a city crammed with so many people actually slept. Empty streets and silent buildings. The stillness of night astonished her.
He walked to the window, his steps dragging, his hands prickling as blood returned and nerves woke. Like ants biting just beneath the skin. His head throbbed. His tongue felt like it had been wrapped in a strip of old tape, soiled with fluff, held thick in his mouth. He pressed his forehead against the window and gazed down. From where he stood he could just make out the edge of the shed far below. The roof sheathed with a fresh layer of ice, the ragged ends of tangled trash flicking around in the low breeze. He tapped the window with a burning finger. Steady beats. He stayed like that, fixed in place, until the moon had vanished, a glow kissed the sky and the cold glass had turned his forehead numb.
– FORTY-SEVEN –