Take off your panties, he tells her and Brit later.
He paid the motel clerk in cash taken straight out of the suitcase.
But it’s clear he don’t wanna fuck. He doesn’t even watch them kiss. Like Shane’s tripped out as fuck.
And the worst thing is he gets right down there on his hands and knees and has, like, a real long look at them—Brit, like, giggling, like, What the fuck, Shane—and he’s just like, made of stone, man, like, for real Shane’s maybe lost it.
But then later, the boy asleep on the floor, Shane staring at the television with the sound turned low, and Brit’s clit in her mouth—Nina’s, like, happy, man.
In Brit’s dreams there’s a claw that reaches out from under her. There’s nothing—just blackness all around, and she’s sitting on a stool in one of those schoolgirl skirts Shane likes, you know?—the tartan or whatever—her breath echoing like, the reverb is crazy, yo. And then there’s this three-fingered claw, like it’s the branch of a tree or some shit like reaching out from between her legs, like, she feels her puss open to accommodate its girth, and in the palm of the claw—those long scaly fingers coming up to form a kind of cage—it’s her, Shane, and Nina holding each other.
Morning—where are they now?
She doesn’t know much but she does know that on the Island they have these giant-ass icebergs—Shane talks about it all the time—chunks of glacial ice that break off and drift all the way down south—like total freedom, right? Like just totally independent? Like until the sun fucks them up and they melt into the ocean?
Anyway, that’s them. That’s her and Nina and Shane and the boy. Except, like, a family? And then maybe that claw comes up right from the bottom of the sea? And captures them?
And drags them down into where there’s no light, and given the choice, she’d rather die from fire than ice and darkness, right?
Corvus—like written in the very sky above their heads.
The car they’ve got now has a moonroof and Nina’s looking up. There’s no smog out here in the countryside, just a bunch of trees and rocks and shit and the stars are up there looking down.
Sometimes, the car just ripping along the backroads, you can’t tell a satellite from some heavenly body, know what I mean? Like, legit—there’s the old light of the universe and the new light of the modern world competing for your attention—and Corvus is the giant raven holding an eye in its beak and the eye is either the eye of the devil or the eye of someone who’s always watching you on a bank of monitors in a room underneath a Catholic church, like in Chicago or some shit, and they’re about to serve up skewers of baked shit and goblets of urine and virgin blood and whatnot—the carnival of beastiality about to begin, know what I mean?
She doesn’t like to think this way because it reminds her of Shane.
Shit’s like a virus, yo.
Like herpes, or some shit, and once it’s in you, it’s in you like—no cure.
And Shane says like, You gotta prove to them you’ll do anything for them.
You might have to fuck a donkey or a goat or something.
Like gangbang a bunch of ancient motherfuckers.
Like fucking Egyptians or whatever, you know?
And like their dicks are shaped like pyramids.
And that’s how they get you, right?
Shane ain’t saying where they’re going.
It’s a gravel road and the mud puddles are reflecting the night sky, Nina studied them when they stopped to let her out to piss, but otherwise everything’s dark as shit.
They got the car from a farmer for far too much.
Shane saying, But you gotta be able to trust a farmer. They’re like, of the ground, you know? Like check his fingernails. You know some old dude with dirt under his nails you can trust him straight up.
Unless he’s a grave robber, said Brit. Or a murderer.
But farmer dude wouldn’t take cash, insisting on a trade while eyeing the two girls and Shane thought about just shooting him dead right there in the parking lot of the truck stop or whatever, you know?
In the grim grey light that afternoon, Nina noticed a kind of low-frequency panic in the air. The coolers in the gas station nearly empty of water and juice, the shelves, like, totally ransacked. A rat-faced manager so fat she was busting out of her cashier smock darted her eyes around the place non-stop. Her eyes like a couple of black birds, man, seriously. A couple of sparrows. Everywhere at once.
Like pre-major-storm tension in the air, you know?
A man hustling his toddlers into the cab of his pick-up, some teenage girl in the flatbed with a rifle over her shoulder.
Carter waved to her. The girl pushed up the brim of her camouflage ball-cap and just looked at him.
Like the levee’s breaking or some shit, that’s what Nina thought.
She leaned into Brit and whispered: Like, something’s up here. Something’s going on.
They drive through the night, Shane saying it’s safer but Nina don’t believe for a second that whoever’s after them don’t need like light or whatever to see shit. I mean, they’ve got drones the size of a thumb tack with night-vision and infrared and fucking x-ray for all she knows—but Shane insisted, and now, the sun barely coming up, Shane pulls off the dirt road they’re on and into a little clearing where they get out and stretch.
Her boy does his pee in the bushes, she watches him.
Doesn’t matter what Shane says, the cult ain’t, like, laying a finger on them.
And now the sun, which is not the sun, but something else—Nina’s eyes on the horizon—she’s thinking about a nuclear holocaust, new beginnings, and like that ESP shit begins to buzz in her brain again—it’s coming up and the bloody red glow is on her face.
Shane, where are we going?
It’s cool, he says, I gotta plan.
Brit is scratching in her notebook, sitting on the hood of the car.
The sky slowly becomes blue and gold, Nina thinks of the royal family, Shane’s dad.
Feel like letting me in on it?
Men and their plans, like, whatever—all those plans. Leo would always say the same shit, up until he got bit and they put him away.
It’s cool, Shane says.
He flicks his cigarette into the ditch, and for the first time in her life, she sees his elaborate posturing. Like that mysterious brooding shit, even now, in the middle of the most serious trouble, like, ever.
She goes over to Brit and puts her arms around her, watches her son stab something near the ground with a stick.
Ever since Brit came along, there’s been something bothering Shane, and what’s bothering Shane is that she has a butterfly tattoo above her right ankle.
He should have seen trouble right away. Something that fucked up and you may as well have like a goat man on there, know what I mean?
It’s like this—a butterfly is like the ultimate symbol of Satan, and even back then when she first appeared in their lives—even with his dick deep into Brit with Nina spread eagle on the bed in front of her—Brit just like totally slurping away like that—like, seriously hot or whatever—a dog with fucking peanut butter—Shane would look down at that butterfly on Brit’s leg and wonder.
To make things even worse, anyone who’s righteous knows that a butterfly is THE symbol for an international child pornography ring.
Like, where did Brit even come from anyway?
Yeah, no shit—transformation—but from what, into what?
Like what they want you to become, that’s what.
He’s in the backseat, pretending to sleep, trying to hear what the girls are talking about as Nina drives the car. The potholes huge in the dirt road. Otherwise, just, like, blackness, G. An abyss outside the car window.
Shane wants to know this: can you trust any fucking bitch or any motherfucker in the world?
Cause check it—only paranoid motherfuckers like me will survive this shit, for real.
But can you escape?
Naw, daw
g, naw.
Just run is all you can do.
Just run for the rest of your life.
Dear Craig,
So one morning you woke up at your mom’s house, and you had had one of your bad dreams, hadn’t you? I remember that morning somehow, like, it’s weird, baby, the way you and I are connected, you know? And something happened in the dream that had to do with your old life—the one you had when you started writing about me and Nina and Shane—the life that doesn’t exist anymore, or at least only exists in the past, right? But anyway, you were sad, weren’t you?
Just another sad forty year old who had finally acquired the legitimate drinking problem you’d only pretended to have before.
In fact, that line I just wrote is a line you’d just written that morning for your next book, wasn’t it?
The book you began writing in Berlin almost accidently one night in that little apartment you and your wife had rented—but she wasn’t really your wife—that’s just what you called her at the time and you guys split up before going through with it anyway.
And it wasn’t very late in the day, but you’d already opened the flask of rye and you poured up a drink and stood for a while looking at the drain in the sink—how something about the shape of the drain reminded you of the shape of a flower—like a daffodil or something—but it also reminded you of pretty unimaginative things like an eye or a mouth or some shit like that—and also like a sun painted black, or like a black hole—which is what the drain is, if you know what I mean.
You stood there for a long time. You were thinking about your best friend’s dad who had died the year before—you’d go see him in the hospital and play crib with him and you pinned a photo of your daughter on the corkboard next to his bed so he could see it whenever he wanted.
When you were a kid, like a little older than me, your friend’s dad nicknamed you Scoobie Doo, remember that? He called you Scoobie Doo, but really he was referring to Shaggy, because you kinda looked like Shaggy when you were that age—all skinny and scruffy—but he didn’t call you Shaggy—you were Scooby Doo.
And as you were standing there at the sink, looking at the drain, you remembered one of the last times you saw him—he was getting worse, and couldn’t even play crib with anyone anymore—he was looking at you and saying, Life is a struggle, Scoobie. Life is just a struggle.
Given where I am right now, I can’t say he was totally wrong, can you?
And then you thought some other bad things about when you were a kid and shit like that, like bad things that happened to you and some other bad things you did to people and I guess you’d pretty much gone to the dark place, hadn’t you?
You were full on in the dark place that morning.
But then you went outside onto your mom’s balcony that looks out onto the cemetery. And you turned around—you were looking for a light—and over on the neighbour’s balcony was the neighbour, Suze—and she was holding her little newborn granddaughter in her arms in the sunshine and Suze is like smiling at you and she says to you just then, Oh, I loves er so much—and you’re smiling back at Suze and it’s a beautiful day today and you don’t say anything back—and you find your lighter and sit down and put a cigarette in your mouth and you’re like, Man, I’m dumb because what just happened is so cliché, but it’s better than death I guess.
And baby, your friend’s dad was right, okay?
But you were right too.
I love you, C.
I’m yours and you’re mine, okay?
Love
Brit
At first he thought Brit was just a one-time thing. Then he saw how close her and Nina were. Like, how they looked at each other sometimes. It bugged him. Like women were basically evil. All you had to do was read the Bible for that shit. All that blood and all the spinning of the universe, right? Like, the full moon and the rising tide and their cycles lining up and all that synchronicity shit going on. Now how does a uterus know anything about time?
His dad always told him—Never trust em. Ha ha, like if it bleeds for three days and doesn’t die blah blah—and his dad would laugh.
According to Dad, women were either like totally beastly or like angels, but you never knew which at any given moment. And there were evil angels too, so there was that problem, know what I mean?
And you know what else? Butterflies taste things through their feet so, like, what could be more fucked up and satanic than that?
If Brit’s name was Lucy, as in Lucifer, then that would be a big-ass clue as to what was going on, but Shane didn’t think for a second that Satan would be so obvious and dumb as that.
No writing, no peace—that’s his problem—weeks since he’d spit mad ryhmes or checked himself in a mirror.
Guess that’s why he’s so paranoid and pissed off.
But not really.
Really, he’s not an artist.
Really, he’s just another rich boy with a mental illness and a drug problem, but whatevs.
He feels for the gat beside him on the car seat. The cool shape of the barrel reminding him of the tubing in his dad’s workshop. All those skin jobs, like, frozen in time. Dead bodies, bullet holes, fangs and talons—bullets. Like, straight-up bullets.
What was it he loved so much about that taxidermy shit?
Shane looks at the two women in the front seats.
He hasn’t the slightest idea what they talk about.
He thinks of the fucked-up Pine Marten in the trunk of the car.
Wrapped in cheesecloth and tinfoil as his father instructed.
He imagines that Pine Marten and wonders if there’s enough light in the trunk for its one black eye to gleam, cause that’s how he pictures it.
He glances down at the pistol next to him, sees Nina’s sleeping boy in dim light.
One thing he’s sure of—he’ll do like anything, yo.
Anything to save the world.
Like, whatever it takes.
Nina says, I’m scared, and Brit says, Me too.
I don’t even know, like, what’s happening or where we’re going.
It’s bullshit, but maybe not, right?
Like, this isn’t good for the kid.
I think he’s crazy. Sorry, but I do.
I know. Look—in a way it’s good this happened. We couldn’t have gone on like we were.
I didn’t like the apartment anymore. Except you. You were a good thing about it, but it got, like, weird, right? And anyway, you’re, like, my sister?
For sure.
Like what’s at the end of this road? Like living with Shane’s dad? Forever?
It’s security. I guess.
I guess, but it still makes no fucking sense to me.
But there’s something true about it, you know, says Brit. Like, there’s some kind of truth to what he’s saying. I can feel it. And anyway, whatever happened to Shane’s mom? Is she like dead or whatever?
It’s like when I knew I was first pregnant. There weren’t any signs, I just knew. I don’t know if anyone’s even after us, but it feels right when Shane talks about the system and how it works against you.
I’d like to have a baby someday, but I’m scared.
It’s like there’s a monster inside you. Like there’s this hungry little ball of flesh in your guts.
Nina’s like, Look, it’s been two weeks since we bailed on the apartment, and this whole time it feels like we’ve been driving in circles.
We got to the border security between Upper and Lower Canada yesterday, but before that Shane had to go over the car for bugs or whatever and we were all basically scared shitless. Shit’s meant to explode when you find it unless you got the right gear. Except Shane wasn’t scared, of course, Shane was like, Just be cool, see, be cool.
Like, whatever, man. That shit is getting old, fast.
And so there we were in the fucking line-up of cars at like three o’clock in the afternoon.
Shane had been like, Yo, let’s go like super late at night, know what I mea
n? Less heat.
And I said, What? Why? They got you, they got you—same difference. Doesn’t matter what time.
And Brit was like, It’s way more suspicious to go late. Whatever they want you for, they’ll think you’ll try at night, like, ninja-style, I guess.
And so we settled on the daytime, and anyway the fucking cops don’t make a peep at us. We just pull up and I say to the officer or Agent or whatever like, Yo, we’re taking my boy on a road trip like a vacation or whatever and he just waves us through like it’s nothing.
So I guess we’re having doubts about this whole thing, but it reminds me of back in the day, know what I’m saying? Like, we’re total refugees yo. Like my grammy and poppy were when the rockets started falling and the embargo and the sea lanes were cut off, right? And basically Beirut was, like, a moon crater or whatever, you know? And then there was Palestine.
So now we’re through the border and back on the road.
What I want to know is how does a single motherfucker in this world keep going? Like legit, man—you see this soil?—like I’m talking about right now roadside we’re just cruising along through rural Lower Canada and my eyes keep drifting over to the ditch and all that wilderness and I keep thinking about the soil, you know? Like, there’s a million Indians and Frenchies they murdered out there in that wilderness—you ever wonder how the soil has so much life in it? It’s cause of death, yo, like for really real—your eye falls on something, like some beautiful thing—like the hills and the trees or whatever—like some really cool shit—like a meteor shower or like city lights from a distance, you know?—and your heart swells up cause what you’re seeing is not some cool shit, but like aftermath, know what I mean?—you’re seeing death and you’re also seeing like everything—like the earth’s bounty or whatever—at the same fucking time.
That’s what I think about, driving like this. Like somewhere far off to the west I’ll see this town or some shit, but what I’m seeing isn’t the town, what I’m seeing is like the bones of the people upon which cities are built, you know? But it’s still, like, beautiful, you know? You have this total annihilation that essentially happened yesterday—and then you have like today, and like people walking around—like going to the mall or whatever, like running from the NWO like we are or some shit, like whatever or whatever—doing whatever it is they do—and all this beauty is built on like total fucking murder, right? And like that’s us, know what I mean?
Skeet Love Page 5