‘We should go get her then,’ Friend says. ‘A road trip to Arizona sounds cool.’
‘We can’t just leave.’
‘Dude, yeah we can. I sell weed to Bret,’ Friend says, at the tail end of an exhale. ‘He owes me a favor. He’ll find someone to cover our shifts. No worries. I’ll tell him it’s a drug run.’
Boy pictures their manager, a bulky man with eyes sunk so far into the back of his head he looks like a clam.
‘Why would you need me to go if it was a drug run?’
‘Makes it faster. Two drivers. Operation Rescue. Bret won’t give a shit, man. He’s pretty cool once you get to know him. He used to follow the Grateful Dead around for like five years. Before that he was a straight up Army Ranger. Believe that shit?’
‘Has he killed anyone?’ Boy asks.
‘Man, I don’t know. Have some respect for the dead!’
Boy thinks about Ghost and Lucy cleaning his house at that very moment. Is employing the dead akin to having respect for them? Everyone needs a job.
‘I have more respect for the dead than you think,’ Boy says.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’ll show you sometime.’
‘Dude, I don’t want to know about you necrophilia, if that’s what you’re referring too,’ Friend says.
Boy laughs. If I can control them, can I have sex with them? Lucy would be cute without her bizarre slit-eyes. Ghost definitely isn’t hot, not even heroin chic. Friend continues on about their boss.
‘Would you have sex with a ghost?’ Boy asks, interrupting him.
‘Are you high?’
‘I’m just saying, if you could, would you have sex with a ghost? Like, if you could see one. Seriously.’
‘You’re high.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘A ghost?’
‘I mean, if there was a hot ghost haunting you, and you were able to touch her, would you have sex with her?’
‘Rape a ghost? How hot is she?’
‘Not rape. Consensual. You would ask her. “Can I have sex with you?” She’d say, “Yes.”’
‘Is she a chunky ghost?’
‘Does it matter?’ Boy asks.
‘A little thick is all good. Too thick is bad.’
‘She’s a six or seven.’
Friend finishes the joint and nods his head at the parking lot. ‘Yeah, I would,’ he finally says. ‘That’s some freaky shit, though. I guess you wouldn’t have to worry about getting a ghost pregnant. So there’s one advantage.’
Boy laughs.
‘Plus you couldn’t get an STD.’
Boy cringes. He can still feel the doctor’s alien gloves on his prick blasting away at his little pink genital warts.
₪₪₪
Boy unlocks his door and enters slowly. He’s thought about trying to have sex with one of the ghosts in his house since his conversation with Friend. Strange how sex took over his thoughts – animal instincts die hard.
He flicks on the light. Everything has been straightened, cleaned, scrubbed and polished. His canvases are stacked neatly in the corner and arranged in order of size. Even the finger rint smudges near the light switch have been rubbed clean. He feels like he cleaned it, even sees himself cleaning it yesterday, but he knows he didn’t. Ghost and Lucy are sitting on the couch, staring absentmindedly at the place where his TV should be (if he had a TV).
Ghost hisses.
‘Hi, Lucy.’
Lucy, with her black slit-eyes, is staring down at her waist. She hiccups without looking up. Boy moves into his bedroom and the two ghosts follow him.
‘…Likely there will be a chance to go…first thing we will need to do is fix the light…old pumpkins in the cellar are starting to smell…Three nights passed like that just the two of us in the cellar…’
‘Go to the living room,’ Boy says to Ghost. He kicks off his shoes, stretches his toes. Feels good to be out of shoes but his socks are wet and now his feet are cold. Ghost stands, hisses, leaves the room. Good riddance.
‘Lucy, come sit next to me,’ he says.
Lucy sits down next to Boy. Her coldness is a black hole and there isn’t a smell he can ascertain from being so close to her. She keeps looking down at her hands.
‘What’s wrong with your hands?’ Boy asks. ‘Can I see them?’
Lucy turns her hands over. Nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Okay, so you just like keeping them in your lap. That’s cool too.’
She hiccups.
‘Lucy, look at me.’
She turns her head slowly. Her strawberry blonde hair is pressed against her porcelain skin like that of a corpse. There are no blemishes. He looks deep into the black slits on her face, hoping to see her pupils. Nothing.
‘Do you even have eyes?’
She hiccups and looks back down at her hands.
‘Lucy, look at me. Can I touch your eyes?’
She turns her head towards him and nods. His hands come out, framing her face. Boy feels the coldness in his palms, a bitter cold that quickly spreads to his wrists. He presses his thumbs into her cheeks and pulls down slightly.
As he presses, the size of her eye-slits increase and grow rectangular. A fleshy black emerges. Still no pupils. Then he sees them, tucked into the top of her eye slits, the outline of two reddened sclera. Her eyes are rolled into the back of her head. He lets go of her face. Lucy turns her head back down to her open palms.
‘Lucy, touch my face.’
She grabs his face the same way he grabbed hers. He veers back as Lucy stands, leveraging her weight against his. Her hands are so cold they burn. Her slit-eyes are looking over his shoulder at the pillow behind him. Her nostrils flare and Boy can see her shoulder muscles tense.
‘Let go!’
She lets go, plopping back down next to him. Boy feels an icy burn on his cheeks where her hands have just been. He rubs his jawline, not sure what he should do next.
₪₪₪
An unbearable coldness. Something beckons him towards a bizarre luminosity. It latches on, lassos him from the center of his chest.
Boy wakes. He’s lying on the side of his bed with his arm around Lucy. Both are completely clothed.
He rolls over, peels his nearly frozen arm off her delicate body. His arm is numb so he shakes it out. Lucy continues lying on her side. Doesn’t stir, doesn’t even flinch. Boy stands and tries to bring his senses together by rubbing his eyes.
‘Lucy?’
She hiccups. The expression on her face is the same blank expression she always carries. Did I tell her to lie down with me or did she do so by her own free will? All he can remember is Lucy touching his face and waking up next to her.
‘Sit up.’
She sits up and places her hands back in her lap.
‘Did I tell you to fall asleep next to me?’
She stares at him silently.
‘Okay, did you lie down next to me because you wanted to?’
Lucy hiccups.
‘Why?’
She remains mute.
‘Lucy, take off your dress.’ Boy can hear Ghost murmuring in the living room and he quickly closes the door.
Lucy stands and unclips her dress from the back. She pulls it over her shoulders, revealing a pair of small breasts that meet in the middle. Her areolas are as white as her breasts so that it’s hard to tell where either begins. She tugs the dress down to her stomach, which is bleach white and muscular.
She is completely hairless.
Lucy bends over slightly, drops the dress around her knees and steps out. All she’s wearing now is a pair of shiny black shoes. She sits back down on the bed next to Boy.
Boy’s phone rings, startling him.
‘Stay there,’ he tells Lucy. ‘Hi, Mom,’ he says into his phone, clearing his throat to cover the awkwardness. ‘Yes, I just woke up. Actually, I was going to call you after I ate something. I need to go to the grocery store but I haven’t had the chance yet.’
As Mom speaks, he traces his eyes over Lucy’s naked body. There isn’t an ounce of fat on her, and the more he looks at her, the more emaciated and skeletal she seems to be.
Boy whispers, ‘Lucy, look at me.’
She glances at him with an empty expression. Mom continues to tell him about the e-mails she’s been sending to Girl, but Boy only half-listens. He reaches one finger out to touch Lucy’s nipple. He feels a gush of coldness against his fingertip as if it were transferred by a paintbrush. A sense of warmth stirs just below his abdomen.
Lucy picks her hand up out of her lap, dropping it onto Boy’s leg.
‘Um, no, I mean, I don’t know. Yes!’ he says into the phone, looking down at Lucy’s cold hand. ‘No, Mom, I’m not busy, I mean, I just got up. Look, don’t worry about her.’
Lucy moves her hand to his crotch.
‘No! I’m fine, just a little distracted. With what? Oh, just painting. I mean, yeah, you’re right, I just got up!’
Lucy squeezes the growing bulge in his pants. He puts his hand on the receiver. ‘Stop,’ he whispers.
‘No, I’m not going to drive there. I can’t get off,’ Boy lies. ‘I tried.’
He thought about Friend’s suggestion on the way home. It wouldn’t work, Girl wouldn’t come and it would be a giant waste of everyone’s time and resources to try and rescue her. Boy listens to Mom bitch about her ungrateful and unhelpful children for the next five minutes. She hangs up the phone without saying goodbye.
‘Put your clothes back on.’
Lucy steps back into her dress. Boy watches her bend over, watches the bones jut out of her spine like an arthropod.
₪₪₪
Boy can’t wait to get home from work. He plans to have sex with Lucy this time, plans to Neil Armstrong it. On the drive over, he gets turned on just thinking about all the ways it could happen. Then he feels ashamed for thinking such things and tries to sing along with the radio instead. ‘Reeling in the Years’ by Steely Dan puts things into some sort of perspective for him.
₪₪₪
Three A.M. joint and the Plentiful Prints parking lot is the same as it has ever been, aside from an overturned trashcan.
‘Probably a raccoon,’ Friend is saying. ‘Little fuckers live in the woods over there.’ He takes a long drag of the joint and closes his eyes on the exhale. He blows the sweet smoke out and continues telling Boy about some party happening at the 21st Street Co-op tomorrow night.
‘Their last party was super sick. There were people hanging from trees and blowing fire. There’s this swimming pool, and all these naked girls were jumping in. So many UT honeys. You would think that school would run out but nope, more come every year.’
‘Sounds like a cool party.’ The marijuana has – again – left Boy in a dreary submissive state. He wants to think about what he’s going to do to Lucy later, but is trying not to over-anticipate it. Keep your cool.
‘There’ll be art exhibits too. I thought you might like that.’
Friend didn’t quite know the extent of Boy’s art, but he had caught him doodling on scrap paper from time to time.
‘Let’s do it.’
‘Cool,’ Friend says. ‘Also, I know this chick who is a bartender at the Trudy’s near campus. She’ll hook us up with some Mexican martinis.’
‘Free?’
‘No, not free, but considering you’re under 21, free enough.’
‘Cool.’
‘So, I’ll pick you up early, like around six. We’ll feast, get our drank on, then go to the party.’
‘And Bret is cool with it?’
‘I told you before, I hook him up. We’re über bueno. He’s going to get this guy Dale to cover our shift.’
Friend hands him the joint and Boy looks down at the burning embers. There’s something beautiful about it, something beautiful about watching things burn away. He wants to talk to Friend about Lucy but has no idea how to bring it up. I see dead people. Boy takes a puff of the joint, coughs, laughs to himself, and hands the dying roach back to Friend. The French have some saying about life, but he can’t remember it at that particular moment.
₪₪₪
Boy pulls into his assigned parking space. He unlocks the door to his apartment to find Ghost and Lucy sitting on the couch. Lucy has her hands in her lap and Ghost is blathering as usual.
‘…Wasn’t too hard to lift her up there…through it over his shoulder and Old Tom was laughing…the buttons on his overalls had snapped…didn’t notice and we didn’t care…’
‘You two never change, do you?’ Boy says.
Ghost hisses.
‘Go to hell.’
He shuts the door behind him, hoping the neighbors didn’t hear.
‘Lucy, come with me. Ghost, stay here.’
Upon entering his bedroom, he turns to Lucy, ‘Take off your clothes.’
She hiccups.
Boy hustles into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of orange juice, just for a little energy boost. The kitchen has been scrubbed clean. It sparkles under the shoddy fluorescent light with the dead bugs inside. As with the other parts of the apartment, he feels like he’s the one who cleaned it, but can’t think of when he would’ve found the time with all the sleeping he’s been doing lately.
Turning into his living room, he sees Ghost standing near his bedroom door, about to go inside. ‘I told you to sit,’ he says, reaching out for her hand. So cold. She turns slowly to him with an irritable look on her face.
‘Don’t do it,’ he commands her. ‘I’m serious.’
Ghost’s lips curl and the flesh under her eyes flattens into a thin line. A hiss escapes her mouth like air from the end of a balloon. Boy’s eyes fill with anger. ‘Stay here!’ he says, dragging her over to the couch and ignoring the coldness of her skin.
₪₪₪
Boy closes his bedroom door to find Lucy standing completely naked apart from her shoes. His shirt comes off and his watch too. It’s happening!
‘Sit,’ he tells her. ‘Please,’ he adds. She sits on the corner of his bed.
Arriving at his dresser, he retrieves a pair of burgundy gloves that have been bundled together like socks. He puts one of the gloves on and plops down next to Lucy. His hand comes out and he touches her with his gloved hand. Damn, still cold. He yanks the glove off and chucks it to the floor. Useless. Well, worth a shot.
‘Lucy, look at me.’
She turns her black slit-eyes at him. One of her hands drops into his lap; her facial expression remains blank, soulless.
Boy figures he might as well just come right out with his next question. Besides, she’s sitting next to him naked with tiny erect nipples, and while he may be closer to a virgin than he’d like to admit, he isn’t stupid. Once boys and girls become old enough, there is only one game they ever want to play.
‘Lucy, c-c-can we have sex?’ Boy asks.
She hiccups.
‘Seriously?’ he asks, feeling her grip harden around his member. ‘So, we can have sex? A hiccup means yes?’
She hiccups again.
Too many questions flood his mind: Should I kiss her? Will I die if I have sex with a ghost? Is her name really Lucy? Will it hurt? Is she old enough? Does it matter? Can she get pregnant? An STD? Am I losing my damn mind? Does a hiccup really mean “yes”?
Lucy moves closer to him and unzips his pants. He pops out of the zipper hole, his dick enshrined in a pair of old SpongeBob boxers. Kissing her shoulder is like kissing the end of a running vacuum cleaner, and he quickly jerks his head away.
‘Okay, so we shouldn’t kiss,’ he says.
With one arm, Boy pulls her on top of his lap. She is now straddling him; the coldness of her body like an open refrigerator resting on his lap. Her thighs tighten. Icy claws grip his torso.
She moves her hips slowly, left, right, and finally in a smooth circle. Her arms are down by her side. Limp dying flowers. Boy puts both hands on her hip bones and presses them with his thumbs. Her belly bu
tton moves towards him, away, and he’s temporarily mesmerized by this.
Fucking a ghost soon. The coldness of her body seeps into his pants but his prick remains hard, hard as it’s ever been.
He slides his hands up to her breasts and cups them. His eyes come to her face – she’s biting the lower half of her lip, her pupil still hidden in her eye sockets. Cupping her left breast, he reaches down to see if she’s wet. ‘That’s going to be a problem. A big problem.’
He thinks about his visit to the STD clinic. Should he just use some lotion or a lubricated condom? Well, a ghost can’t really get a vaginal infection, so some lotion should work. And most importantly, he can’t get an STD from a ghost. At least he doesn’t think he can.
Boy points at a bottle of lotion on his dresser. ‘Lucy, give me that,’ he says.
She shifts off him, drops the lotion on the bed next to his head. Scooting backwards onto Boy’s angled knees, she reaches into the opening on the front of his boxers.
The coldness is so hot it burns. Boy squirts the lotion onto his hand and ignores the embarrassing sound it makes. He slathers his prick in it, squirts more, slathers again, and tugs Lucy by her waist closer to him.
She continues gyrating, sliding up and down on the tip of his cock. Boy enters her and his legs go numb. It feels like the wart removing gun at the clinic, cold at first then hot. She begins to glide up and down, silently, still biting her bottom lip. His prick begins to shrink. No! No!
He concentrates – stay hard, stay hard – but she’s too icy, and he’s losing steam. He flips her around and stands.
Reaching into the bottom drawer near his bed, he pulls out a lubricated condom, thinking it might help keep some of the blood trapped in the head of his proof of manhood. He starts jerking at himself, hoping to get hard again. Lucy is bent forward with her knees tucked under her body. Just looking at her heart-shaped ass gets his blood boiling. He rips open the condom pack with his teeth, rolls the condom down his sticky penis, and plunges back inside her.
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 4