by KUBOA
She would revile me, of course. Absolutely. Questionless.
It was better to have that be her only impression of me. She’d never laid eyes on me, never even casually. She’d never been nearly close enough to note any line of my face. I could bear the thought of her seeing me first and forever as the degenerate who’d murdered some man she’d slept with, been friends with for maybe longer than I knew, maybe had feelings for, missed, but I couldn’t stand a moment the thought of her having seen me beforehand, thought about me, even if not kindly just innocently, devoid, only to have my image warped, disintegrated, unearthed into grime.
I smoked a cigarette outside of a bookstore, peeking in the window, whispering her name.
I wondered if Montgomery did know about her.
If he did, did he know I wouldn’t try to see her a last time, or was that where he’d gone after defiling my rooms?
More directly, I thought, beginning to walk again, leaving on purpose a glaze of handprint on the window glass, would I see her, again? Did I have any control over it? Did it matter if it was what I decided against if it was what Montgomery had decided for? Was it such a risk as that? Was I under his influence, so much to the point that if I became convinced it was what he imagined, I’d do it, find it compulsory, necessary, not able to leave him disappointed?
I was willing to admit all sorts of powers to him, even through my adamant reminders that he’d displayed nothing uncanny. He’d learned one thing, everything else could be off the cuff make-believe.
Was it so impressive to think I’d go back to my apartment to pack a bag? Was it some arcane understanding, something other than the most obvious, commonplace next move?
I smiled, unable to remember any of the list of words he’d penned on that receipt to confuse me. I thought one started with an M, but was so uncertain it made me glad.
Claudia.
I wanted one of the words to be Claudia. One of the ones I couldn’t remember, think it started with an M.
***
I got a cheap haircut, just for the interaction, to feel like a child, mumble through the initial dialogue, no idea how I wanted it cut.
-Just short, I said, I have a new job.
I would’ve stayed in the place, paid to have it dyed, but thought I could dye it myself in some hotel bathroom, any place, then didn’t want to dye it just because I would feel ridiculous being caught with dyed hair. I knew I was going to be apprehended, didn’t want them to think I’d tried to fool them with idiotic antics like making my hair red.
Certainly I had a fever, but didn’t see what could be done about it. It might help me sleep on the bus, dose myself up with medicine and alcohol, pass out, wake either miles away, temporarily safe, or else wake to hands poking me, voices ordering me to stand.
While I walked, my thoughts would turn to various pointless objects I’d been unable to retrieve from my place. I’d squirm from the thoughts, wriggle from them like they were wet garments, couldn’t stand to stir emotion.
I also stopped every block or two to question myself, ask where I was going, genuinely investigating the cross streets, wondering if I was trying to trick myself into ending up anyplace having to do with Claudia.
Claudia Claudia, on my mind like the scabs of a scratched rash.
Where had I first laid eyes on her?
No place. I didn’t want to remember.
Outside of the building next to the downtown library. I didn’t even know what the building was.
Had she seen me, then?
She’d never seen me.
Hadn’t she? How did I have such an image of her face, then? Did I have such an image?
I could hardly recall her.
What was the closest I’d gotten? The distance of a room, the distance of a crosswalk? Had I never let myself be unconcealed?
Never. I hardly even looked her way.
How had Montgomery known about me? When had he first coveted me, decided I’d be his little grub?
I shook my head. Wished the answer could be Never.
Did I still want to pretend it was coincidence? He’d shit in his hand, soaked my door with it, just because I’d followed him after his little threat? He’d mauled me, danced on me, lured me around to play fatuous games because he knew I felt guilty of something, some crime, something I dreaded more than what he could put me through?
No.
When had he first seen Claudia?
I hated the question.
How close had he been to her? Across a table? The seat next to her on a bus?
Closer than me.
Did he know what she sounded like? Smelled like? Had he laughed at something he’d heard her say, something she’d maybe said to him?
***
The sky dwindled overcast well before it was properly the evening and the drape of night, the dark so hurried, unneeded, broke the quiet I’d been able to create, the dull babble of questions I’d no intention of investigating.
I’d squandered the chance to learn anything, get some semblance of control, whatever had happened to the moment I realized it would be night before I knew it, that I could wander under this new illusion with no urge to break from it, simply no longer existed. There were not two hands worth of hours before I intended to flee, hardly a curling little grip to get any last thing done.
This train of thought going, I felt violent, the pestering little fantasies of hurting someone, anyone, pointless pointless, of doing some grotesque uncounted on got hold of me. Something Montgomery wouldn’t have expected. He felt invisible, felt I’d been ground underfoot, that he had the firm grip of morality on his side. Even if his behavior the previous few days came out, even if anyone believed me if I called him out, he would have the stern mouth of everyone on his side. People might shake their heads at him, might call him unbalanced, misguided, might even punish him, but only in some offhand, kindergarten way. And this disgusted me.
I wanted him to feel the consequences, to know he’d destroyed something, that he was no better than I was. Uglier. Bloated and repulsive. Selfish. I wanted his hands bloody over the dirt beneath his untrimmed nails, the scrags of hair dead out the tops of his knuckles.
It lost meaning, but not at my hand. It became a void of whatever bile would be shook from me while I bucked like a sick animal against my muzzle, knowing I’d been glutted just to be drained, made ready to be devoured just to be excreted and forgotten.
I walked, halfway jogged, not particularly energetic, waiting for the simpering little grumble to sprout me new legs, hang a new hungry tongue from my throat, one that dragged wet, needing satisfaction, a trail behind me, saliva hot and rank, puddles screwing lines of steam into the thickening dark.
***
Lit cigarette staring at it from my lip as well, I stared up to the tenth floor of the building I’d first taken to be Montgomery’s. I watched it. I waited for it.
The moment a grim emotion stirred, I spun on the heel of my shoe, walking back three blocks to the grocery store I’d passed, wandered the aisles with tight intent until I found the one where there were cooking utensils, just wanting something sharp. Originally, I’d thought to use a broken bottle, but when the reality of the building approaching got over me, I understood that I was not capable of some absolute, unresisted strike to whichever one of them I’d kill. I needed something sharp, final, something seeming inappropriate, the venom of me a single stab.
I wanted to kill the old man, most of all, but in my gut I felt I’d kill the woman.
I bought a set of skewers of various lengths, some writing on the package promising they were sharp, would not ever bend, the points never dull. I paid the almost twenty dollars for the things, briefly grumbling about the price in my mind, wondered if there wasn’t something cheaper. Still grumbling, I was already outside, new cigarette going, the plastic of the bag twined around my left wrist.
The w
oman frightened me, somehow. Because I didn’t understand her, yet. I didn’t know what she had to do with it.
I couldn’t be weak, though. She was just a miserable association with Montgomery. She knew him, was vulgar enough to pretend she didn’t. Even if she didn’t know what he was doing with me, she would know just from the stench he’d been in her rooms. She’d likely just shrunk back, not knowing what to make of me, knowing I was some one of Montgomery’s little toys, she’d distanced herself out of fear.
Maybe.
Maybe she didn’t know anything. All some garbled mess.
But the old man was well aware of it. When I punctured him, he’d know why. And for that moment, I felt he’d hate me less than the slug he let cover his thin, naked bones, he’d understand what was happening, he’d let his ugly little partner bring it down on him and would choke to death on the soured blood up his throat all alone.
***
In the stairwell, my bravado flagged, the deflation bumbling and complete.
I sat on the fourth floor landing, taking my time opening the skewers, my scrotum biting tight to a solid coal. I tapped the sharp of the one I thought best to use, more of a stub, but long enough to stick in one end of him, come out the other, no problem. It was sharp, but when I tried to steel myself, to give my skin a pierce, just to verify things, I couldn’t. I couldn’t give myself a pin prick.
What did the old man have to do with it?
Nothing.
But, the point wasn’t that he did. I didn’t want revenge on him, I wanted him hurt to hurt Montgomery. That was all.
I couldn’t stand up.
The woman might not matter, at all.
Didn’t I think he’d just stolen her key at some point?
Even if they’d been lovers once, it made sense she wouldn’t have wanted to say she still knew him, some stranger asking about him, obviously not being forthcoming about his intentions. She might have ended things with him bitterly, just didn’t want to think another moment about him.
Had she been some kind of victim of his, too? He’d learned something about her, forced her through sick positions, made her think she could humiliate herself enough that he’d not turn her in as he promised?
It was perfectly plausible, I didn’t know why I’d not thought of it, before.
But not the old man.
Why not the old man? Why was he so much more sinister? Why was he a weakness, some raw spot for Montgomery? What made me think it wouldn’t thrill the maggot to death, pushing me to profanity, using me like a starved dog, unthinking, capable of anything?
-Break me down, I mumbled, looking at the skewer. Break me down, know I’d pop, have his long laugh, then pack me away like a childhood toy in a dank attic corner.
Why did I believe so firmly he wanted a specific consequence, wanted me to do any one thing over the other?
I was entertaining enough just sitting on the stairs, whining, looking at a twenty dollar generic brand cooking skewer.
If I killed no one, would he be less disappointed?
I thought Yes, because he’d spent days stoking me, needling me, not letting me alone if I for one moment let myself alone. I thought No, because he’d given me closure in advance, let me know that however grueling it was, I not only knew it would end, I could bring the ending about more quickly if I wanted, if I turned myself in. He just wanted to see if I was a cockroach who froze when the lights came on or a cockroach who scrambled for the grease of a stove corner.
***
The chirp of my knocks was wrong to me, sounded like I’d struck my teeth on the lip of a cup I’d raised too quickly.
I didn’t bother to conceal the skewer. Deflated as my resolve was, I knew that were the pricker hidden, I’d never pull it out. I had one motion left in me, elbows relaxing tensing relaxing tensing just the hiss, the formless, stupid motion of the stab to the throat of whoever opened the door.
No one did.
I knocked three more times, waited three more times. Nobody.
A stir of dead grass over stiff pavement, I drifted from the old man’s door to the woman’s.
Had my knocks alerted her? Signals, scents spread from point A to point B like insects might? Were the rooms actually vacant, Montgomery telling his children Time to go home, knowing I’d come to stab at empty corridor air? Or were they in their rooms, the old man, Montgomery, the woman, sitting there, listening to my knocks, knowing just what I was up to?
I stared at the peephole, mouthed the word Knock to each of the last five knocks I gave.
I tried both doorknobs, a blip of curiosity, had they been left open for me, some last place of rest, my last hours to be spent in the room of one of my potential victims?
When they were locked fast, stiff so much they didn’t even jiggle, I was almost despondent.
Were my little fantasies, my cobbled together inventions of what might be going on so off base? Was I wandering around in the ether, detached from reality so far that my guesses had to be so utterly scoffed at? Why couldn’t it make perfect sense, be a clean symbolic line, move me here and there, make me sleep in his room, make my own room repugnant, lead me to the brink of murder, make me sleep a last few hours in my living victim’s bed before I was clumsily flicked off into nothingness?
Down the stairs. Numb again, not even allowed this amateurish beauty, this unimaginative cleanness.
I was still holding the skewer when I went for a cigarette. I looked at it, at my hand, gritted my jaw, held my breath to store the resolve to stab myself in the thigh, but eventually my lungs collapsed air out of me, I set the skewer down gently on an upcrop of brick, mulch and the temporarily dead bushes casting cloth deep shadows over it due to the hum of the almost green of the outer door light.
It was almost the end, I thought trying to sound poetic to myself. I thought There’s almost nothing anymore, not even knowing if the sentence particularly meant anything.
***
It turned out to be an hour earlier than I thought it would be at the earliest, a few minutes shy of eleven o’clock. I checked my account balance at a bank machine, based on the sudden paranoia that perhaps Montgomery had gotten his hands on one of my unused checkbooks, made some purchase that would drain me, but my funds were intact.
The little fright depressed me though, because I knew not only was it a possibility, but if I could come up with it, Montgomery could come up with ten million far more ruinous things to do, execute them at anytime.
Would he let me have my last hiccup of currency, my last tool to make a run for it? Would he denude me entirely before I was forced out, left an unfed animal?
I’d no doubt he would do something, just because the way he’d said he’d turn me over seemed to suggest I’d be in custody no sooner than the word was given. He didn’t seem interested in my roaming around, desperate, vagabond, things like that had nothing to do with his plan. I’d only let that occur to me earlier because he’d given me three days.
He hadn’t really given me the three days, though, it was just another thing he’d said, just another form of control. If I’d scurried back to my apartment, grabbed a bag, made for the train station, he would’ve intervened, closed everything off right then and there. Or even if not finish it off, somehow make it so I couldn’t run. He hadn’t needed to bother, though, because I was so weakling, broken before he’d broken me, I’d just served him up his ideal. He’d said three days, yes. But I’d given him Three Days, not the other way around.
I’d staggered back and forth, finding things to do, just because I’d accepted his pronouncement as though it’d been stitched in the walls of my atomic structure. I would give him until his early afternoon, early afternoon. I’d play a few more hands out, see how clever he was, morbidly fascinated at how he would create something elaborate, nuanced from any halfwit scrap I gave him.
I knew it was idiocy, knew I was in my las
t idiot little writhes, but I needed to feel I wasn’t myself, that I was some creation, some meaning, Montgomery artist, me his art.
***
I stopped in to a liquor store, bought two bottles of wine and some bourbon, cavalier about the waste of money, knew I’d never drink the stuff, bought three cheap things that would have been the same price as one decent thing. But, immediately, having probably bought a screw cap on purpose, I opened a wine bottle and drained it as fast as I could.
I was drool, I thought, couldn’t get the phrase out of my head.
I started to walk toward my apartment, the drunk washing over me suddenly, no negative effect, no positive, the brief spot of time I had left just melting into glop, making me peaceful even in my knowledge that it would harden back up, jagged paste, crumbling cement.
I was proud of myself when I examined the window of my apartment, found it had been dirtied with Montgomery’s feces. I opened my second bottle of wine to toast my first right answer, giggling when I swallowed, hoping to Christ I wasn’t right about the interior state of the rooms.
This stalled me up.
I honestly hoped I was wrong about it.
I drank another few swallows, reasoning it through, silly thoughts, little boyhood teases at myself, old nicknames thrown in. I’d thought he’d ruined the interior rooms when I was in a stale anxiety, miserable past death. It actually made no sense he would have, so I knew he didn’t.
This is what I said to myself.
He hadn’t even necessarily done this to my window and door to keep me out, just to let me know he’d been there. He likely thought, and fair enough, that I might sneak in the window, so never notice his mess on the door knob.
Why had he come to the room at all? Why did he want me to know, if not to keep me out?
There was no reason.
The same no reason.
I left the wine bottle on the top of the trashcan by the entrance door, walked down the corridor, fished my key from my pocket, stared at the crusted dead on the knob.
Another idiot giggle, I got the bottle of cheap bourbon out, had difficulty getting the cap off, swallowed a half mouthful and went to my knees. I removed my shirt, soaking it quite thoroughly, used it as a rag, the angry fragrance of the waste mixed with the alcohol shuddering everyplace. Once clean, I doused the metal of the knob, discarded my shirt off to the side, inserted my key, having to dig a bit of the crust from the hole but not so much caring.