“I don't think that's such a good idea with me in the car. I don't want any trouble, and if something's going on up in that house, I definitely don't want to be involved,” Alene said, on the verge of panic.
“Don't worry, it's probably nothing. Maybe the latch don't quite catch on the gate, or maybe they was just in a hurry. Like I said, probably nothing.” They drove through the open gate and started on the little drive that led to the house.
The closer they got, the more Alene felt the world closing in on her. “Look, this is obviously police work; none of my business. I think I'll get out here, but thanks for pointing me to town. I'll find my own way back,” she reached for the door handle, but before she could touch it she heard a loud CHUNK as the automatic lock slammed down like the heavy lid of a coffin, sealing her in.
“Get your hands off of my door,” the cop warned her. “Now, you're gonna sit there and keep your mouth shut. And I mean shut. The wrong move, the wrong word in a situation like this could end you, girl. You don't wanna be in it? Too bad, 'cause you're in it up to your tits”
They came to the hedgerow surrounding the garden, and the car followed the drive around it. They stopped at the side of the house, in the driveway, in front of a smaller carriage house that Alene had not noticed before. The cop killed the engine and left the lights on. He reached down and unholstered his gun, bringing the barrel up by his face. Bathed in the green light of the dashboard display, lips pulled back so it glistened against his dark teeth, he pointed the gun at her. The barrel was a long black tunnel staring her in the face. “Get out,” he said.
The cop waited for Alene to open her door and climb out before doing the same. He came up behind her, “Alright, now I want you to just march your pretty little ass over to that door right there and go inside. I'll be right behind you.”
Alene started walking, listening to the absurdly loud crunch of gravel beneath their feet as they made their way to the house.
She came to the side door and stopped.
“Right, don't knock; just turn that knob and walk right on in,” he said from behind her.
Alene hesitated. She felt the barrel of the gun pressing hard into her back. She shut her eyes tight and turned the knob. The door swung open and the cop shoved the gun into her back harder, prodding her into the dark kitchen. She stepped inside and the cop followed her.
“That's it, nice and slow.”
He made her walk through all the empty, dark rooms of the house until they came to the main room on the first floor by the stairs. He marched her to the center of the room and stopped.
“Well, I found her,” the fat cop shouted out in the darkness. “It was just like ya'll said. She was walkin' in the road, goddamned pretty as you please. She's back now and I ain't hurt her either, so if she says I did then she's a -”
The lights snapped on and the room could be seen in all its grime and decay. Alene saw Paulo standing halfway down the staircase, leaning over the railing. The old man came up behind her and the cop, wheeling himself out to the center of the room. He came to Alene and took her hand.
“Thank you, officer. We were getting so worried. She has a tendency toward roaming, but I think we've cured her of that; shown her the limits of her border.” He looked up at Alene, “Where ever did you think you were going, my dear?”
Alene didn't answer, just stood there while the old man patted the back of her hand.
“She was smart enough earlier,” the fat cop said. “Making up stories about chasing wolves and dermabrasion. Fucking dermabrasion. I know what that means. This little girl looks like you swung her through a briar patch, one end t' other and back again. I don't blame you running away, honey, I'd probably do the same if I had some nasty-ass Mexican tryin' to peel me like a tater.”
“Fuck you,” Paulo called down from the stairs. “I'm from Paraguay, you fucking ignorant pig. Par-A-Guay. Maybe I come down there and carve it on your fat fucking gut so you don't forget it next time.”
The fat cop slowly drew his pistol and pointed it at Paulo.
He's going to shoot him, Alene thought. He's going to blow him away right on the staircase. These people are insane; every one of them.
The two men stared into each others eyes, one from above, the other from below, neither of them blinking. The fat cop's hand was steady and he squeezed the trigger. Alene cringed, anticipating the deafening roar of gunshot, but the only sound she heard was the tiny metallic click of the gun dry-firing. Paulo never flinched.
The cop nodded.
He put a hand on the old man's shoulder and looked down at him, “You need anything else, you just give a holler,” His gaze shifted to Alene. “You look like you're gonna have your hands full with this one, boy.” He gave Paulo one last contemptuous glance before grabbing his belt to hitch his pants up and adjusting his hat, “I guess I'll leave y’all to it then,” and turned and showed himself out of the house.
When the cop was gone, the old man said, “I'm sure you've had an exhausting night, I know I've had. Paulo, why don't you show our guest to her room and we'll reconvene in the morning.”
Paulo walked down the rest of the stairs and grabbed Alene by the arm. He took her up the stairs and to her little, empty room and opened the door, “Back in the cage, little birdie,” Paulo said before shoving her in and closing the door behind her.
Alene sat down on the floor in her darkened cell. This whole house is a cage; this house and everything beyond. I'm going to die in here if I don't wise up, try to think of something better than just running off. She stared out of her window, into the black, moonless night, and a plan began to form in her mind- something that could work; something that could get her out of this mess. But it would take time, and she didn't know how long she would last here. As long as it takes, she thought, as long as it takes.
She didn't leave her room for the next several days, and this time she didn't have the benefit of intermittent consciousness. She felt every second tick away and it drove her insane. There was nothing to do besides lay down on the hardwood floor, letting her eyes follow the little cracks where the wood was joined together, or look out the window at the garden and scratch the itching scabs off of her healing skin. She marveled at her recovery, the new pink flesh beneath the crusts of old wounds. She had a lot of time to appreciate the resiliency of the human body. It was all she had; her body. Brains and tits, and that's what it was going to take to get out of here.
She stayed in her room as long as she could possibly stand it. She didn't want to, she was actually eager to leave, to set things in motion, but she had to make Paulo and the old man think she was afraid. She had to fool them into believing that she had been confined long enough to comprehend the hopelessness of her situation; that she had realized that she had no other option but to acquiesce.
The next time Paulo and the old man saw her, she would be broken, soften and resigned to any fate that they saw fit to oblige. She would submit.
And so when she thought a significant enough time had passed, she emerged from her room, her prison, her chrysalis. What had gone in an intractable worm had emerged as a demure and obedient imago.
She found the old man lecturing Paulo in the garden. “...the persistence of the enemy is incredible. The poison ceases to work on them because enough generations have been able to gestate and they've adapted to it. We simply must find more effective ways to combat them, I fear we're losing ground.”
“Si, Generalissimo,” Paulo said sarcastically.
The old man noticed Alene standing off to the side in her fresh pink skin, head down, hands clasped together awkwardly at her chest. “Hello, my dear, what brings you out of your dank little hole and into the world of light and warmth, eh?”
She kept her head down, deliberately avoiding eye contact. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “I just wanted to apologize.”
Paulo and the old man exchanged curious glances.
“For what do you wish to apologize?” The old man aske
d her.
Alene shook her head. “I don't know. I've been acting like a bitch, I guess. Trying to run away was wrong to do. I realize that now. I don't want to fuck up anymore, and I guess if I just do what you guys tell me to do, then you won't hurt me anymore, right? That's all I want. Just don't hurt me anymore.”
The old man seemed genuinely moved and he reached out and pulled her down to him in an uncomfortable, bent-over hug. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “You must know we'd never hurt you intentionally. It was for your own good. Sometimes the medicine is bitter to taste, but it's always for the best, I promise.”
Alene, leaning over the old man's shoulder, conjured tears. “I just want to be good for you,” she sobbed. “I just want to be good.”
“You will be, my love,” the old man said, rubbing her back with one hand.
Alene opened her eyes and looked behind the old man at Paulo. He was staring at the two of them skeptically. It would take more than a few tears and a new humble attitude to convince him that she had given up so easily, she supposed. She was somewhat surprised by what a soft touch the old man had been, but when she thought about it, about him, soft was one of the first words that came to mind. It didn't matter whether or not Paulo was buying her routine, all that mattered was the old man believed her. Paulo would come later.
And later that afternoon, when Alene was demonstrating just how sorry she was by riding the old man's cock while he lay splayed beneath her, motionless, pinned to the bed like a beetle in a bug collection, Alene saw the bedroom door open just enough for Paulo to peek in on them, and she knew that, soon he'd be another string wrapped around her finger. She arched her back and the banal cadence of milking the old man became a burlesque for her audience of one.
There were no seasons here, Alene noticed as the weeks passed and the pages on the calender changed. It was like a place out of time. The leaves never fell, the temperatures never varied more than a degree or two, and it hardly ever rained. The whole place was like some gigantic tchotchke snow globe, trapped under glass; an unchanging plastic scene that never faded or gathered dust. Nothing was old and nothing was new, it was just painted to look that way.
She kept the old man happy and was always eager to wedge herself into any position that created distance between the old man and Paulo. She served him at dinner, cleaned up after him. She became a confidante to the old man behind closed doors, and when these doors were closed, she was particular about making sure that Paulo wasn't able to witness what went on.
He could be privy to all the ardent sexual acts that he wanted to- in fact, Alene surreptitiously encouraged this by never shutting the door all the way when she was sucking or fucking the old man- but he was never allowed to eavesdrop on, what he could only assume were, meaningful exchanges between the two.
Alene looked for signs that she was grinding away at Paulo's perspective; anything that could indicate that the new bond developing between her and the old man was agitating him. There wasn't much; she saw Paulo as one to hold his cards close to his chest. He seemed to regard Alene's new change in disposition with little more than bemused detachment, but maybe he was trying to over-compensate for his his latent suspicion of her.
But he was there when she needed him; the single white orb of eyeball peering out from the dark vertical sliver of barely-open doorway. And that was what she counted on most.
She had started working with him in the garden. This was just as much to please the old man as it was to get closer to Paulo, try to get him to let his guard down a little.
They would labor under the hot sun together, pulling weeds and pumping insecticides all through the garden, with the old man struggling to keep up, following in his wheelchair, ranting about the unseen enemy. And when they had finished for the day, Alene would take the old man into his room and grind her grimy, sweaty body into his. She knew Paulo was always there, watching just outside the door, pulling on his cock and trying not to breathe heavy. And when Alene would get up and go to the door again, Paulo would be gone, but he was careless and always left behind a shining, wet spatter of come glistening on the door and dripping into the carpet.
And when they were done fucking, or really she was done fucking him- he wasn't much more to Alene than a semi-flaccid bag of skin- she would shut the door, closing Paulo off from something she hoped would inspire curiosity.
She would climb back into bed with the old man and endure his incoherent ramblings about insects, tapeworms, and his bizarre obsession with an ancient Persian form of torture called scaphism that involved floating the condemned around in a lake for days, strapped to a boat while slowly being driven insane by the pests feeding on them.
It was during one of these leisurely diatribes that Alene finally saw what she had been waiting for; the little blur of shadow under the door that meant Paulo was standing outside,leaning against it, probably with his ear pressed to the door. That was when she knew it was time to move on with her plan.
“I saw you yesterday,” she told Paulo the next day. They were both on their knees, pulling weeds in a bed of hibiscus, Alene wearing some of Paulo's old overalls, her own clothes had been worn to rags long ago. Paulo pretended not to hear her. “I said I saw you yesterday,” she repeated. “You were watching me when I was alone with the old man.”
“I don't know what you're talking about. You must be seeing things,” Paulo said without looking at her.
“From what I understand, you're the one who's seeing things, isn't that right? You've been watching me for a long time. In fact, I know you have. Do you like what you see?”
“Fuck you. You're trying to get me in some trouble with the old man. It's not gonna work.” Paulo made to get up and walk away but Alene moved her hand over his.
“Wait, don't go. I... I like it,” Paulo turned and she looked straight into the swollen, rot-flecked terrain of his abscessed face. “I like you watching me.”
“You do?”
“Well, yeah,” Alene lowered her voice to a sultry whisper and smiled. “If you ever wanna do anything more than just watch...”
Paulo pulled his hand away from her, “Shit, you must think I'm fuckin' retarded.”
“No. I think you've got a big ole Mexican burro about to burst out of the stable, is what I think. Just aching to get out.” She let her gaze drift down to his crotch for a split second before looking into his eyes again. “You've got no idea what it's like, fucking that limp strand of spaghetti every night. I need a real man.”
“You're fucking crazy, you know that?” Paulo said, grinning. “But if you come to my room tonight, after the old man falls asleep, I'll show you a real man. You won't forget it, either.”
“It's a date,” said Alene. They both rose, Paulo slapped at the dirt on his knees and turned to walk away. “Oh, and, Paulo. One more thing.”
He turned back around, “Yeah?”
“Leave the lights out.”
The stairs creaked loudly in the darkness, but Alene didn't pay any attention to it, the old man was a heavy sleeper, and besides, he was mostly deaf anyway; she could have led a marching band up the staircase and he would be none the wiser.
She walked down the grubby hallway and came to Paulo's door. She pushed it open and stepped into the darkness. The smell in the room rushed to meet her, it was fouler than she remembered and when she tried to breathe through her mouth, she found she could taste it deep in the back of her throat. She walked across his room carefully, trying no to think about the jars and jars of insects that surrounded her. She found his bed. He was in it, silently waiting for her. She untied the threadbare robe she had on and let it fall off her shoulders. She drew his covers back and slid into the bed next to him, his body was warm and his cock was rock-hard.
He wasn't gentle, but at least he was quick.
They were both laying back in his bed, Alene couldn't see in the dark but she could guess that he had a self-satisfied smile plastered across his rotting jack-o-lantern face.
“How was t
hat? He asked. “Not fucking any limp noodle dick tonight, huh?”
“You're a machine,” she said dully, rolling her eyes, “couldn't you hear the way you made me scream? I was afraid we were gonna wake up the old man.”
“Nah, you couldn't wake up the old man. He sleeps like the dead,” Paulo laughed. “Probably 'cause he is almost dead.”
“You think so?” Asked Alene.
“What? Is he gonna die soon?” Paulo was silent for a second, contemplating this. “I don't know. He says he can't die as long as his garden is there. But that's crazy, though. Superstition. He don't seem like he's ready to go anywhere, though. That old man's tough; he'll probably outlive us all.”
“What would you do if he did die? Where would you go?”
“Shit,” said Paulo, “I'd be alright.”
“Would you go back to Mexico?”
Alene could hear Paulo shake his head against the pillow. “Nah. Where I'm from, I can't go back. I was supposed to go away. Go to prison. But I ran instead. That's why I'm here.”
“What did you do?”
“I was just a fuckin' kid. I was trying to be a tough guy. I killed a man.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“I don't know. I just did it. I don't know why. He had some money, but I didn't have to kill him.”
Alene got a sense that Paulo didn't want to delve to far into his past, which was fine with her. She was content to lie back and wait for him to ask her that burning question she had been trying so hard to put in his mind.
He asked it.
“You and the old man are getting pretty close, huh?”
“I guess you could say that,” Alene said, coyly.
“Like what kind of stuff do you guys talk about? What does he tell you?”
“Bugs. He talks about bugs almost exclusively.”
“That it?” Paulo asked.
“No. He tells me about himself. Just like you were doing a minute ago. He's told me his entire life story, practically.”
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