I lead Daddy to the bathroom. I turn the shower on. I grab some towels off the rack and set them on toilet’s lid.
“There you go,” I say.
“I can’t go in there,” Daddy says, shaking his head. “Not by myself.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds like rain.”
Daddy’s shaking.
God, I just want to hold him. But I am afraid to touch him anymore than I already have. As much as I want to, I just can’t. To do so now would be wrong. He’s in some kind of dissociative mental state. And if something happened between us, I’d always wonder if it was what he really wanted.
“You want to take a bath instead?”
He nods.
I push the diverter down and the water begins to flow from the tub spout. I flip the switch up to close the drain. I grab one of the tiny shampoo bottles, open it, and pour it into the water. Bubbles multiply at an exponential rate as the tubs fills up.
“If you need anything, just holler,” I say. I close the door to give him some privacy.
The water sloshes as he settles in. He shuts the faucet off. I walk back to the bed and sit down on the edge. Now that I have a few minutes to think, the fear sets in.
I’m having sexual fantasies about a complete stranger who is disturbed, at best, and possibly dangerous.
I’ve invited said stranger into my hotel room.
He’s naked and in my tub.
What am I going to do with him when he gets out? Hope that I can take him back down for a bowl of gumbo and send him on his way?
What am I going to do if he doesn’t want to leave?
I should leave, but I can’t. I don’t want to believe that Daddy would actually hurt me; I want to believe that everything’s going to be ok.
I grab some clothes out of my suitcase. Daddy’s taller and thinner than me but I think the t-shirt and shorts will work.
I knock on the door and push it open a couple of inches. “These should fit.” I set the clothes down on the tile floor.
I hear sobs.
“You ok in there?”
Daddy takes a deep breath. The water sloshes around.
“Are you ok?”
A minute passes and my heart beats faster.
He says nothing.
I push the door the rest of the way open.
I pull the curtain back.
Daddy is submerged.
I kneel down. The water is grey. I reach in and pull him back up. The water ripples. A ring of grit clings to the side of the tub.
“Let me go,” Daddy says.
“I can’t.”
“I should’ve died on the banks of the Perfume River. If you give a good goddamn about honor, then push me back under and let me pretend I’m there now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you to die.”
I kiss Daddy and I know that I shouldn’t. There’s a good chance that he’s going to reach up and grab me by the throat. His hair is wet and stringy and it falls on to his face and then mine. His lips are chapped and rough. But he doesn’t break away. I taste whiskey and cigarettes.
A moment passes and I stop. But I don’t apologize.
“I want to help you,” I say.
“I’ve got ghosts in my pockets,” Daddy says. “I’m beyond help.”
“Let me do what I can.”
He closes his eyes and leans back, keeping his head just above the water.
“I’m going to help you get cleaned up.”
I grab the tiny bottle and squeeze what’s left of the shampoo into my palm. I rub my hands together. I can feel the dirt and sand as I work the lather into his hair. I know there’s probably not enough soap in here to truly get Daddy clean. But I do the best I can with what I’ve got.
When I’m done, I say, “I’m going to turn the shower on, so you can rinse off.”
I flip the switch down and the tub starts to drain.
“I don’t want a shower,” Daddy says. He stands up.
I catch a quick glance before looking elsewhere.
I turn the water on and pull the diverter up. The shower sputters before a steady stream of water juts out.
When the water hits Daddy’s flesh, he ducks down to take cover and screams.
I step into the tub behind him, fully clothed. I get down next to him and say, “You’re ok. I’m right here.”
I coax him up; try to get Daddy to rinse his hair. But it becomes apparent that shutting the water off is going to be the only thing that will appease him.
I step out of the tub and drip water all over the floor. I rescue the t-shirt and shorts before they get soaked and throw them on the toilet tank. I hand Daddy the towels and leave him to get dressed in peace.
I strip out of my wet clothes and wrap up in the towel that I’d left on the counter. Goosebumps cover my arms and legs as the cool air-conditioned breeze hits my skin.
Daddy comes out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around his waist. He’s smiling.
“I feel much better now,” he says.
“I’m glad.”
My suitcase is open on the luggage rack next to the bed. I walk over to it, and start rifling through to see what I have left to wear that’s clean. Daddy comes up behind me, and wraps his arms around my waist. He kisses my neck and my shoulder.
“Thank you,” he says.
“I haven’t done anything, really.”
“Not yet.”
I turn to face him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Take the ghosts away.”
I think I know what he means. “I can do that. Okay?”
I guide Daddy to the edge of the bed. “Sit down.”
He complies.
I unwrap his towel and push his knees apart. I kneel down before him. His cock is limp. But I am ready to take those ghosts away. I am ready to thank him for what others couldn’t –for giving up the boy he was in the name of God, country and Corps, for giving me the chance to live free.
I reach up and stroke his inner thighs. He shudders and gasps for breath. I’d like to believe that no one has touched him like this, but the truth is written on his face.
Daddy’s a survivor.
His legs shake and he bucks his hips as I swallow his ghosts. When I am done, I back up a few inches, and then I feel the dresser’s knobs poking into my skin. I recover for a moment until it becomes uncomfortable. Then I crawl up next to Daddy on the bed.
He’s lying on his side now, eyes closed. The covers of his mouth are turned up just enough to be considered a smile. Perhaps he’s found a moment of peace.
I watch him. After a few minutes, he opens his eyes. Then he says, “There’s something I want to give you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
He gets up, goes back to the bathroom and returns with the ratty pair of blue jeans he’d been wearing. He reaches into the left pocket and something jingles as he pulls it out. He lets the object unfurl and I see the shells of spent bullets and dog tags dangling from a cheap metal ball chain.
“Take it.” He drops the chain into my hand.
“I can’t accept something like this.”
Tears well up in Daddy’s eyes.
“But I know what these tags mean. It’s too…personal.”
“You said that you’d take my ghosts!”
“I misunderstood,” I say.
He sobs violently. “You’d better take them. Before they make me do something I don’t want to do.”
I’m not sure why he’s getting so upset. Better to calm him down than let this escalate. I’ll take the chain now and give it back to him in the morning.
“The tags are your ghosts?”
He nods.
“If that’s what this represents to you, then I will take them.”
“Put it on,” he says.
I slip the chain over my head. It weighs more than I expected it to. There are five shell casings and five tags. I look
at the tags.
Foley, S.R.
Cizek, M.G.
Christensen, B.A.
Hanson, K.E.
Wilson, T.G.
“Which one’s yours?”
Daddy is eerily calm. “If I told you, that would be getting too personal. You’ll know soon enough.”
Daddy yawns. “I need to sleep now. We’ll talk more later. Okay?”
He pulls the blanket back and slips under the covers.
I’m tired all of the sudden.
I curl up next to him.
*
I wake up soaked in sweat. My heart races and the nightmare is fading fast. I’m trying to piece it back together when I realize Daddy’s not in bed with me anymore.
I call out, “You still here?”
No one answers.
The lights on the hotel’s marquee flash. I catch a glimpse of something reflected in the window. A man? More than one?
“This isn’t funny.
I sit up, reach over to the nightstand, and turn the lamp on.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust. No one’s by the window. But the sheets on the bed aren’t soaked in sweat. They’re soaked in blood.
My stomach ties itself up in a knot. I become aware of the weight of Daddy’s chain. The tags and bullets clink together as I scurry off the bed. The carpeting chafes my ass as I scoot around the edge. All I can see are toes poking out from under the comforter that’s piled up on the floor.
There’s a metal wastebasket under the desk. The room is spinning. I grab the can and puke. Nothing makes sense right now.
How could this have happened? Why didn’t I hear anything?
Somehow I manage to pull myself together enough to crawl to the other side of the bed. I pull the blanket back. Daddy slashed his throat and wrists and bled out supine. The words “MA DOI” are crudely carved into his chest. A bloody dog tag is near his right hand.
I pick it up. It says, “Edwards, R. C.”
*
I often dream of Vietnam; I see things I shouldn’t be able to see.
R.C. Edwards, a younger version of Daddy, in a firefight, picking off gooks with his M-40. Five men are with him on the line. They just want to cross the bridge and know that the Perfume River got its name from the scent of the flower orchards to the north instead of what they smell…napalm, burnt flesh, and blood.
I now know why the rain made him scream.
But it doesn’t matter because I’m in a heap of trouble.
Edwards didn’t kill himself; the cops think I did it.
I don’t blame them. I’d probably think the same thing if I were in their shoes. My fingerprints are on his tag. They think I killed him because he couldn’t pay me. I know it sounds less crazy than what I believe to be true: The necklace is a talisman.
“Ma Doi” means “hungry ghosts” in Vietnamese.
Edwards killed a lot of men in Vietnam. Men who never got a proper burial. Until those men are laid to rest with the proper rituals, their spirits seek vengeance.
Carrying the tags of those who died in his unit – men who gave their lives to save his – brought protection that lasted beyond the grave for the same reasons. Edwards was safe until he gave that chain to me.
*
I’ve had other dreams.
I remember riding the 204, the oyster bar, and the feeling that I was being conned.
I know I was meant to be a sacrifice to keep the “Ma Doi” at bay.
I know he gave them other boys.
I loved Daddy in a way that no one else would.
He spared my life, but left me to feed those hungry ghosts.
Their whispers are getting louder.
They’re ravenous.
But I can’t give them what they want. I can’t do that to some other fresh-faced boy toy.
I’d rather be with Daddy again.
I’m praying for that reunion.
When I unfasten the clasp on this chain, I hope his ghosts will take mercy on me.
T wilighter
Martin Rose
Eli woke up in a motel room, like a private detective in a bad pulp novel.
He shivered and shook. Bones made of glass, fiberglass blood, eyeballs rolled in sand and then popped back into the sockets. The last thing he remembered was sucking ramped-up blood at a funeral home with the rake-thin Russian junkie.
He looked rumpled, worn; his suit in wrinkles, his tie undone. His hair stuck up at odd angles, somewhere between too long to be corporate and too short to be rock star.
Wire around his wrists, his hands bound behind a hard-backed chair. The stained wood was unforgiving beneath his bony ass. Twilighters were the new heroin chic; ridiculously thin. A human on heroin could only be so thin before the body gave out. As a vampire, the only limit to weight loss stops at bare bones.
Eli had been well on his way before Grant showed up.
*
High school.
Even if you didn't graduate, you remember it. Everybody tells the same story. Loner kid, popular kid, in-between kid. Hearts broken or set on fire, everyone leaves a piece of themselves half-finished in high school, and Grant was another face from the locker-filled hallways.
Back then, Grant been a quiet, bookish straight-A student, while Eli chose the art student route – until he realized there was no money and less talent. Then, he became a vampire, and worse yet, a corporate faker. The vampirism he could live with. The 9 to 5 presented different problems; problems twilight blood mitigated to pleasurable effect.
Back when Eli had been alive, with a heartbeat and a pulse, a college degree and a nice, white, genteel background, drugs had been his thing then, too. A dirty bong filled with resin, pipes and the whole hippie paraphernalia. Black lights and empty candy wrappers. He spent half his adolescence stoned. Until he took his first job with the medical insurance company.
Vampirism came with the job. Water coolers with a half-blood spring water mix, paper cups stained pink like snow cones. They forced him to the water cooler in their crisp, ironed shirts and suits and bowed his head beneath the faucet, like a fraternity party hazing the new members. After that, it was easy to deny insurance claims with blood lining your gums and a wolf smile on the other end of the line.
First, it was drinking blood from a wine glass, as though he were a high-level exec instead of a pig on the lower rungs, with blood on his lips and double digit zeros in his bank balance. He sank his life savings into it.
He disappeared and stayed up all through the sunlight hours, hidden behind black-out curtains in dirty motel rooms. Questionable people with ulterior motives drifted in and drifted out. Some sold blood from tweakers or meth heads looking to make extra money by the pint; tweaker blood was big, but twilight blood was better.
He started to inject, tapping cold veins with a hot needle. Plunging the syringe took on erotic overtones, and most nights he could not remember what he had done to get the drugs he needed. All he had were dirty sheets and dirtier guesses.
He rode the downward spiral. He wore the same clothes, night after night. He stole from his sister, pawning her wedding ring and buying more twilight blood from a dealer missing his front teeth. A few calls, a few friends of convenience to stave off the emptiness inside, to close the gap he filled with the needle.
Then Grant showed up.
*
He wished he could say the reason he awoke from his twilight daze was on account of being well-rested, but far from it. His head pounded with thin, malnourished blood, hemoglobin fractured like shattered glass. Blood scraped through his veins.
He needed a hit.
A hit would make the pain go away.
Blood from patients under ether: Twilight blood. Sweet red juice from twilight babies. Rumors circulated of people who went in for operations – a kidney transplant, a boob job – and instead slept in twilight time forever. The providers for the twilight drug trade were "Sandmen," doctors looking to supplement their income since the days the medical establi
shment had lost funding. Instead of waking up their patients and sending them on their way, they milk them for days, even months, before bringing them out from "twilight anesthesia" and sending them packing.
From time to time, Eli heard stories of twilight babies who never woke up. They stayed asleep, forever. Urban myths.
His addiction, however, was not mythological; he needed a hit.
*
Which brought him back to this nightmarish setting, this ugly motel room.
He worked his hands, slow at first, then in frustrated clenching, until blood dripped from the lacerated flesh. The wire held. His tongue worked loose from his mouth and ran the length of his lower lip like a snake scenting the wind. He tasted sweat, his nerve endings ajangle. His body become a flame that ate and ate until all that remained was ash and cinder.
A hit. Twilight blood.
Whoever put him in the chair knew better than to use rope. He could have snapped rope like thread and been out the door and back to the rake-thin Russian junkie. She always had some twilight blood on her; she smuggled bags in through the funeral home with the corpses, and sometimes she let him have his way, when he wanted it. An extra benefit.
Eli groaned, and then the door opened.
Grant strode through.
He looked taller now than he had in high school, in a long trench coat that whirled past his legs in the cold wind from the door. More menacing. Angry. Grant wasn't a scruffy boy anymore. He'd filled out, grown up.
Eli studied him, pushing his discomfort to the background. Last night, he'd been too high and too drunk to see it in Grant, but the skinny boy from high school was gone. Someone else replaced him. Someone harder, with long hollows beneath his eyes. The straight-A had vanished like a wisp of smoke, replaced with a thin, haunted man.
Eli's words died on his lips, but the nervous tics returned full force. His foot tapped frenetic beats, and as he watched, Grant arranged items on the motel room kitchenette: wire, bottled water, garlic, syringes.
Grant pulled out a blood bag.
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