Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die

by Charles Runyon

  “Don’t pull out,” said the voice. “Go on …”

  He hated the voice that made him stay. He could feel the sweat running off him, gathering in the small of his back.

  “I can’t remember any more.”

  “You were Debra, you got drunk and your father beat up the boy who took you out, and then … what?”

  “Weird plastic landscapes. I feel strange, a sense of floating, I hear a voice telling me things, telling me to …”

  “Telling you to what?”

  “To … put him out of his misery. Jesus! My father!”

  “It’s Debra’s father too.”

  “It hurts to think about it.”

  “No, don’t wake up. Don’t … wake … up! Let’s keep going back.”

  “No!”

  “Just relax now. I’ll start counting again. Nothing can hurt you. These are only memories. Now you are no longer seventeen. You are sixteen … fifteen … fourteen …”

  “Those willow switches cut like wire.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t kill him, don’t!”

  “Tell me what you see, Danny.”

  He was looking at his own body lying on the ground. Daddy had swung his fist and Danny had fallen, rolled and lay twitching on the grass. Then Daddy turned to me and … THIS ISN’T MY MEMORY! Turned to me and … I don’t want to be hurt, no please, don’t hit me I’ll never do it again, never … She tried to piece together the torn front of her dress, the elastic had broken in her panties. She couldn’t hold them up and Daddy had a strange look in his eyes as he slipped the gallus off his overalls …

  “I don’t see anything. Its all red-and-black, smoky …” “Let’s go further back. You are thirteen … twelve—

  The thing I felt for Colleen was hate. We had been arguing all day, and in the pond that afternoon we started fighting. Colleen was gasping, saying Don’t, don’t. Then she said, Blub! Blub! I held her head under water. She kept jerking under my hands, then she stopped quivering …

  “Tell me what’s happening. Tell me?”

  “Debra …”

  “What about Debra?”

  “Huddled in the closet. I touched her skin, she was cold, clammy. Her dress was wet. I could smell the turtle mud and I knew where she’d been. Debra wouldn’t talk. When I touched her she just quivered. I remember running across the pasture. The grass was dry, we had no rain that summer. The yellow scum stirred as I waded out into the pond, I felt the squishy mud rising around my ankles, my knees. I stepped on … something, someone. I reached down and dragged her out. Her face was a big smear of mud. I wiped it off but she wasn’t breathing, her mouth and nose were full of mud. I looked up and saw Debra standing on the bank, looking at me. I could see the scratches on her arms.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, it was Debra.”

  “The scratches—are you sure they weren’t on your arms?”

  “No. Yes! I’m sure.”

  “All right. We’ll go on counting. Twelve … eleven … ten … nine … eight … eight?”

  Eight. Riding the pony toward the brush thicket, Debra on behind, holding to his belt, laughing in his ear, kicking the pony in the flanks, yelling faster! faster! Danny tried to turn the pony, he saw the snaggly limb coming toward him, ducked, heard Debra shriek as she fell off behind him. He jumped off and ran back, saw Debra lying on the ground with her hand over her eye, blood running out from under it. They thought she’d lose sight of her eye, but she didn’t. The pony was sold, and Danny conld never convince anybody that it had not been his fault …

  He heard a voice saying: “When I count to ten you will wake up. You will be able to remember everything, there will be no confusion. That was the past, this is the present. One … two … three …”

  Ten. He opened his eyes. The sky above was blue, the tree limbs bright with sunlight. He recalled that it had been cloudy when he went to sleep.

  “How do you feel?”

  He groaned and sat up. “Good,” he said with surprise.

  “That’s the post-hypnotic suggestion. You remember it all?”

  “Yes.”

  “No blanks?”

  “There are these fuzzy areas. Every time we got into death I seemed to shift to Debra’s identity. That includes the dog too. I don’t recall who fired the shot. I don’t know, to this day.”

  “Interesting.” Jeff waited until Dan had lit a cigarette, then asked: “You have any contact with Debra now?”

  “I haven’t seen her since the trial.”

  “I meant in a psychic sense.”

  “Oh—I can’t be sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her emanations aren’t … defined. I perceive her, but I don’t know if I’m perceiving her mind, or my own projection of it.”

  “That isn’t too clear.”

  “Like she’s part of my eye. Can you see your own eye?”

  “Sure, in a mirror.”

  “But that’s only a reflection of your eye. How do you know you’re seeing it straight?”

  “Never doubt your own vision, Danny. That’s the beginning of the end.” Jeff stood up abruptly, zipped up his leather valise. “I think I’ll move you back to the crisis ward. The law requires that we keep you in a segregated room, under guard—but you’ll be able to eat in company, participate in group therapy. Would you like that?”

  Danny shrugged. “When’s Elizabeth coming back?”

  “Oh, in a week or so. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see how much you’ve progressed.”

  Thirteen

  Elizabeth sat on the edge of the back seat staring ahead. That morning frost had clouded the windshield; since then they had descended off the plateau and were now scooting across the sunbaked plains north of Monclova. Their speed was eighty-five, the temperature ninety-two; the windblast which whipped through the open window did nothing to cool her skin, but only dried the sweat, leaving her flesh parched and gritty. The plain stretched away in all directions, broken by a few purple buttes. Here and there she saw dust-devils spiraling.

  She wished, for the hundredth time, that she had taken a plane. But first she’d had to get out of the coastal jungle. To this end she had used Bobby, and she had a feeling she was yet to pay the full penalty. She had wanted to know, first of all, if the Learned Doctor had told Bobby to steal her wallet and carry her, captive, to the frontier. “Ah no,” said the Secret Service man. “Only to see you safe.” “Then give back my billfold and I’ll take a bus.” To her surprise Bobby handed over her grained cowhide wallet. He took her outside the hut and pointed to a black Buick of 1955 vintage, with scarred chrome and wrinkled fenders, sagging almost to the ground on the left rear. “My fren’ take you all way to frontera. One hundred dollar. Much more better than the bus. Two days.” He held up two fingers and smiled. “Okay?” She shook her head. “I think I still prefer the bus.” Bobby’s face settled into a truculent meanness. “I am, as you say, the local nark. Whoever I say stay, they stay, whoever I say go, they go.” He leveled his finger at her nose. “I say, you go.”

  She decided to postpone the struggle until she got out of the jungle. But every time they neared a town, the driver took a route which detoured bus stations and business districts. He was a sallow man of about forty, with hollow, stubbled cheeks and frayed shirtsleeves. He slept in his car. The other occupant of the front seat was a large, flat-faced Indian who wore a tight olive-drab uniform and carried a revolver in a buttoned-down holster on his belt. Flat tires, missed turn-offs and other delays kept them from reaching Guadalajara until the end of the second day. There Bobby announced that a mysterious malfunction of the car would make it necessary to spend the night; she was expected to pay for their room and meals and also to contribute fifty dollars in advance for repairs. She didn’t know enough about engines to be sure it was a ripoff, but when she stated her determination to take the plane from there, the car miraculously repaired itself, and the journey continued.

  Now they were ente
ring a village she couldn’t find on the map: a dusty unpaved square bordered with unplas-tered adobe structures. The car stopped outside a doorway with the words MI Ranchito crudely lettered above it in black paint. The Indian turned and grinned, jabbing his fingers toward his mouth. “Eat. Comer:”‘

  The three men got out and went inside. She stepped into the doorway and stirred a cloud of flies. A large mud-colored dog crawled from under a table and slumk out past her. Liza felt her stomach lurch. The men called for cerveza, the beaded brown bottles were drawn out of the cooler, set before them.

  She knew what would happen. The men would eat, then sink into that midday coma known as siesta. There seemed to be no cure for this disease; even the buses pulled off the road and stopped, and passengers fidgeted while the driver crawled under his vehicle and slept. Liza went outside and watched an old woman draw water from the well in the center of the square. Four days since the Learned Doctor had left her alone in the hut. She hadn’t forgiven him, she didn’t believe he had gone off in search of a new wave. She felt a vague disquiet …

  Across the square, where the asphalt road arrowed north across the trackless prairie, stood a Pemex station, with a battered blue Ford parked in the drive. She strolled over and conversed briefly with a pair of tire-soled huaraches protruding from under the rear bumper. Yes. he could take her to Piedras Negras. The price would be thirty dollars, with five dollars in advance to buy gas.

  She went back to the restaurant. A woman straightened from the charcoal brazier and brushed the coarse black hair from her eyes. “Se fue,” she said. “A la cantina.”

  Liza went next door and pushed open the bat-wig doors. Silence fell in the long smoke-dimmed room. Several men in rough gray working clothes turned from the bar to stare at her. Bobby and his two companions sat at a round table, huddled over a squat brandy bottle. She walked up to Bobby. “Let me have my pack from the trunk. I’m taking a taxi.” Bobby rocked his head back and looked up through bleared eyes. “Cual taxi?” “That one there.” Liza turned and pointed to the door. The Ford had just rolled to a stop outside. Bobby lurched to his feet and hitched up his belt. “We go now.”

  The road was smooth and straight as an arrow; the problem was that the driver kept nodding out. Each time the tires rumbled on the rough shoulder, he would lurch awake, seize the wheel, and jerk the car back onto the road. She felt each lurch with a twinge of nausea in her stomach. The Indian had fallen asleep; his large head rolled when the car lurched, but his open-mouthed snores went on without interruption. Bobby didn’t sleep. She would have felt more relaxed if he had. He smiled every time she glanced in his direction, a sleepy, heavy-lidded smile which did nothing to calm her nerves.

  She jumped when his fingertips touched the back of her hand. Without turning her head she observed that he was unzipping his fly, his slitted eyes fixed on her breasts. She had pulled out the shirttails and tied them in front to leave her midriff bare. That, she perceived, had been a mistake …

  She leaned forward and jabbed the driver’s shoulder. “Stop, please.”

  The man’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror; he hit the brakes and the tires shrieked; the car careened sideways, churned up a cloud of gray dust, and stopped with a protesting creak of metal. She flung the door open before the dust settled; Bobby seized her left wrist in a harsh grip and yanked her back. “You no wish to be fren; eh? Come!” She felt her hair seized, twisted, nearly pulled out by the roots. Her head was forced down, a soft-hard pulpy mushroom shape rammed against her cheek. Setting her teeth, she thrust out her hands and touched the butt of the pistol. Without thinking, she jerked it from the holster and rammed the barrel into his side. Bobby stiffened, vibrating like a coiled spring.

  “T-ten cuidado. The gun have no safety. Cuidador”

  “You’d better let me out, before it goes off by accident.”

  “Si, senora. Momentita—”

  A blurred shadow loomed up from the front seat. She ducked to avoid the hand which held the gun, but her thoughts exploded in a white flash of fire …

  Later, as her mind struggled to free itself of the sticky goo of nonawareness, she tried to recall the errors of judgment which had led to her present condition. She should have concentrated on Bobby’s eyes, knowing how hard it was for someone to offer violence while in eye contact. Ah—but Elizabeth, that was in the hospital, and behind you lay the power of the state, and peer disapproval, and the threat of increased medicine and electroconvulsive therapy. Here it was only you and he, man and woman on a primal level, and when you saw his eyes drop to your breasts you should have teased him along, you could have set them at each other’s throats …

  Well, it was done. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Gradually she determined exactly what had been done. A pulpy swelling above her left ear still oozed a watery fluid. The flow of blood had stopped, though it matted her hair and clung to her scalp like melted chocolate. Her denim shirt had been pushed up into tight wrinkles under her armpits. Her denim trousers, turned inside out, lay in the dust beside her. They hadn’t bothered to take off her panties, but had merely ripped out the crotch. She wondered if the smiling Aztec had taken part in the rape, then realized it was a pointless speculation. What did it matter, whether there had been two or three?

  She saw her pack, lying beside the shoulder of the road. In her bitter mood she saw it as a gesture of supreme contempt. They didn’t care if she reached the border and reported them to the authorities. Why should they? They were the authorities. She got up and took two lurching steps toward the pack before the pain clamped her skull. She went slowly the rest of the way, holding her hand against her head, moving her feet like a skater testing the ice. She looked in her compact mirror and saw a bedraggled hag with peeling skin, hair plastered against her forehead. Tears leaked from her swollen eyes and carved cracks down her dusty cheeks. Ah, Boh-bee, if you were here now, I wouldn’t kill you, no. I would slice your flesh with razor blades, and savor every oozing drop of your blood …

  She found a clean shirt and slacks in her pack, put them on, and walked to the edge of the highway. The sun was a glowing red orb low in the west, the heat had diminished to a pleasant warmth. The strip of asphalt seemed never to have been inhabited; it lay across the northern hills like a black ribbon thrown down from the sky. She had visions of spending the night alone on the desert. Then a VW bus loomed over a rise, approaching at a high rate of speed. She stuck out her thumb, pushed the hair away from her face, and tried to look pleasant. The bus was nearly abreast when the brakes squealed; the rear end fishtailed and rubber bounced on pavement. The door was thrown open by a young man who wore his blond hair clamped back in a ponytail. “Hey, what happened to you?”

  “Too much to tell,” she said, swinging her pack inside. A hand reached up and dragged it back. The bus was filled with people; she could hardly see the rear end through the acrid haze of marijuana smoke. Ah well, she thought, you had to take one or the other …

  Dan got up from his cot and walked to the window, looking out through the bars. He watched the shadows lengthen on the yellow patch of turf where the closed wards met in an “L”. He wondered what it would be like to spend his entire life in the Quiet Room. He could handle it, he thought, if he had a little boo to chase away the visions …

  Now this one was of Patricia, the gamy hunters from Texas. She lay on her stomach, panting. He could see the scratches on her legs; she wore nothing but a plaid woolen shirt. Somewhere she had left her pants. They had been light gray corduroy, and he had peeled them down gently, noticing the blue-green pattern of veins in her thighs. They started making love … suddenly she was running and he was chasing—

  1 don’t remember doing that …

  Now she was sprawled out, her legs frozen in a running posture. And he was killing her with rocks, heavy chunks of quartz that cut like broken glass. Apparently he had already scored a good hit behind her right ear. The scalp had split open, bright scarlet oozed down her fr
eckled neck. She was breathing hard, clutching at the dead leaves. He lifted another rock and brought it down … Ugh!

  THAT ISN’T MY MEMORY!

  Her legs shot out straight, rigid and trembling. He bent over and twisted his fingers in her hair, drew back her head, found the pulsing carotid artery with his fingers. He took out his knife … How the hell do you shut it off, Doctor Kossuth, sir?

  Three sharp raps on the door: “Bollinger. Chow!”

  He turned. Harold’s soft bulk filled the doorway. Not a bad dude, but very jumpy around him. He reminded Dan of himself guarding prisoners in the army; sympathetic, but careful to stay out of reach, knowing he’d be reamed if they got loose. Dan walked into the hall, nodded at Rusty, who blocked the corridor between himself and the front door. Dan turned left, walked into the long ward which had once been his home, nodded at the patients who were bunched up at the back door, waiting to go to the dining hall: Darby, Stephen, Chauncey, Gentleman Jack. They recognized him with furtive nods, then slid their eyes away.

  Dan marched to the dining room at the rear of the procession, with Harold and Rusty on either side, laughing and chatting like three very close friends. It was part of the pretense that patients were people, like the smile of the staff psychiatrist …

  Sorry about that, Liza. Not your fault.

  Still, you could have sent a picture postcard.

  Entering the dining room, he scanned the walls for gobbets of mashed potatoes which would indicate that the patients had entertained themselves with a food fight. The canary-yellow walls were clean. A quiet day at the old funny farm.

  He sat at his table and gazed at the screen of muslin which separated the women from the men. He could barely make out the shadowy forms of seated figures. What is the purpose of this? he wondered. To test our digestion under sexual deprivation? Ah, there was Ramona, peeking over the curtain, smiling at him through a smear of crimson lipstick. Ramona was a high-level moron. She had, apparently, fallen in love with him. What the hell did I do to deserve this? he wondered. The love of a fair maiden. Now she sat in front of a gap in the curtain and revealed her love for him, he supposed, in the only way she knew how, which was to spread her legs and display her black bushy oyster-lipped crack. Or was it another test? He wished he could respond; it merely seemed like an unnecessarily large gap in her fundament leading up into the region of her intestines …