People never stay.
I saw her at a parking lot carnival. Even in the obnoxious, eye-punching light of summer, Ruth’s radiant pallor shined. That glow, effused by the photon slurry--the starblood--twinkling through her veins, was refined by vegan viscera then filtered by a graphic tee and flannel and smoke. I built a bomb shelter inside my head to protect the best bits of that moment. Like her laugh scratching its way to her open mouth. Like the metacarpal twitch beneath her skin when she knocked an ash to the pavement or selected another stake for boredom’s heart.
"I’m nervous. Will it be scary?"
I had followed her into line at the Gravitron, fascinated with her in a way that, if demonstrated by others, probably would have led to stalking or trespassing.
"A little bit, maybe. But that’s the appeal, right?" I asked.
"Actually," she said, her tone lifting the cover off a secret, "the outside looks like an alien spaceship. I pretended like I was boarding one. Not a long-term goal, just...I saw the opportunity."
If an ugly person had told me that spaceship thing, I would have maliciously frowned.
"I’m Greg," I said, taking my place beside her on the ride.
"I’m Ruth, and...we’re spinning."
She screamed. Without affectation. Without mimicking a preset Carnival Ride Scream. I again noticed her mouth, so pink and vibrant and...inviting. I could live inside there. Shrink me and let me stay. I wanted to lick her teeth and gums. I fought the urge to bury my nose, my entire face, in her hair. In a whirling, polymorphic light utopia built by nomadic meth-users, it’s easy to lose track of previous inhibitions. Before the contact could register with my brain, I discovered that our hands had met, gotten married, pledged a lifetime in each other’s grasp. I felt something at the union of our palms. She was drawing my life--my essence--through her skin, rinsing it clean then sending it back.
We stopped. We no longer met the requisite RPMs for sustaining a two-person pocket dimension. If I tried for more time, and she rejected me, a beautiful memory would be spoiled. Lamenting what could have happened, however, was probably nothing new.
I gave up her hand, followed her out.
She was a fabulous creature, living grace, just way too good. Standing there all casual, unaware of the separate, Ruth-complementing blue the sky blended for her. Could I change her? Change for her? Drape myself with an intricate reverie until it soaked in, cell by cell, to diagram a new character?
"Um, I don't want to ruin anything. Bye."
"You can't leave me now," she said, grabbing my hand again, "the thing of cotton candy they sell is huge. I have to share it with someone, or my enamel’s going to melt off."
I disbelieved. The Gravitron must have been a vessel to an alternate timeline.
"Listen, Greg. I’m taking you with me, you have no choice..."
She tugged. I complied. I always wanted to comply.
And then one year later, she left. Because of what I said. Or because of the naked-girl preamble to what I said. So, to keep Ruth, I should have let Mateo the Demon Hunter make a heart muscle shish kebab? What was the market value of Cayley’s unnatural quietus? An offering for my happiness should at least be tragic if not grand, I mused. An armored woolly mammoth slain by the shaman-blessed weapons of cavemen who want to make mammoth steaks and mammoth jerky for me, I could accept that.
Sunday night I dreamed about a werewolf. I killed everyone else in the dream, either with my claws or fangs or by stabbing them with a knife via prehensile tail. After dropping the knife, I used the tail to break someone’s neck.
On my way to work Monday morning, I stopped at the gas station to buy food. Browsing the pastry case, doing my best to visually ascertain the heft of each doughnut, I stopped wasting time and got my usual: the fuck-pouch, the jizz-pocket filled by Diabetes’s own cock, the Bavarian Cream. I also grabbed a prepackaged Italian sandwich and two fruit-flavored sodas. And a prepackaged ham sandwich.
Arriving at work, I parked my car then ate and drank instead of getting out. When the people walking by glanced over at me, over at some guy eating away at his sandwiches and guzzling his drinks, I wondered if they could tell that they had witnessed an essential moment, a kind of crux-bearing Ritual of Necessity. Munching the bleached white flour contents of tear-open packages could be the high point or low point of my day, but in either case, if it was happening, that simply meant it had to happen.
"Greg. Hey. Hello," Tammy called out. Her voice, precisely what the inner monologue of vegetable shortening would sound like, pasted my ear flat against my head.
Oh, no. Let me guess. A law has been passed against frying canned corn in butter.
"Yes?"
"If you’re going to fax today, you’ll have to use the machine upstairs. Somebody broke all the buttons off the one in our copy room. The cord got yanked off the coffee maker, too, so you’ll have to--"
"I don’t drink coffee."
She kept standing there, breathing hard, waiting for me to speak further. Waiting for me to fulfill her next moment. Which tempted me to disappoint, possibly ruin. Before I could call down a heaven-sent blade of sarcasm and emotional damage, a command--a cannonball through cobwebs--obliterated the opportunity.
"Tammy, Greg and I need to have a discussion. Greg, come with me."
I followed Amber into her office, staring--surreptitiously, if it were possible--at her legs, contemplating how long it would take for me to escape a clothespin choke that she applied.
"Please, sit."
I sat in the provided non-desk chair, my back and sternum (and heart and lungs) simultaneously compressed by the design. Amber stood behind her desk, looking out her office window like a dystopian despot surveying the acres of peasantry below.
"Nadine said that you never brought the files to her last week."
Typically, such an accusation from the Chic Embodiment of Terseness would have caused me to fumble my reply. Remembering what Adam had explained to me, however, granted a stabilizing effect. "I was informed that she could review scans of those documents, and that the original hard copies ought to be purged."
Amber turned to me, personalizing her disdain for rabble with a barely perceptible squint. "Why would Nadine request paper files if she could magic-up the images on her computer?"
The condescension beamed from a satellite, burning whatever dignity I had stored beneath my skin. The surprising, quite real heat was going to melt my face.
"I don’t know."
"Fortunately, someone from a different team saw which bin you put those files in, and we recovered them. Unfortunately, I’ve been instructed to re-educate staff on how to pull files. Other projects will suffer now due to lost time, I hope you understand this."
The scab below my shoulder pulsed, begging to be split open by the edge of a 3 x 5 index card.
"Yeah, I understand--"
"Also, I’m not comfortable with you resuming document control, so please report to the mail room...immediately."
Normally, I would have said "okay" then waited for Amber to excuse me from the conversation.
Normally, I would have experienced intrusive, interminable staircase wit for days...many days...after.
Normally, I would have screamed about that fucking bitch on the drive home.
"That’s not fair. I dumped the files because--"
"Greg, everything has been explained to you already. No one else on the team has a problem accepting responsibility for a non-conformance of operations. Your reaction is very disappointing, to be truthful, and I know the mail room staff won’t appreciate you bringing in such a negative attitude. Door shut, please, on your way out."
I fled, as quickly as a moderate walking pace allowed, to the men’s room. After picking an empty stall then lowering a lid for seat use, I was greeted by the squeal of a bicycle horn stuffed with butter. A fusillade of farts and a glockenspiel--liquid piercing other liquid--confirmed my suspicion. The brazen bathroom shitter sat next to me.
"Greg, is that you?"
The voice shocked with familiarity. Adam, that was you? I wanted to ask. "Yeah," I answered instead, "how could you tell?"
"When you’re crying, it still sounds like you."
I sniffed. "Really?"
"Yep," he said, "plus I recognized your shoes. Are you okay?"
"No, and the way I talk about things has never helped."
I heard him gather a length of toilet paper.
"Alright. That’s--I actually want to apologize about those files from last week. None of them were supposed to be shredded, but I rescued everything from the bin this morning. Your boss seemed fine with the situation when I updated her."
"Oh. That. Yeah, that matters. Especially now."
"When I feel angry or like the world is attacking me," Adam said, straining a bit, "I remember that every day I’m sparing other people. When I choose to be nice. When I choose to be cooperative. My restraint actively contributes to the number of good moments experienced by humanity. Focusing on that, on the power I have, makes me feel better."
Unruled by the clamp of diffident diffusion, Adam sent thunder and hail and rain onto calm water as I walked out. I imagined stepping over the lifeless mounds of a sylph gas chamber massacre.
"So, he wasn’t raping you."
"No, Greg, he was not raping me."
"You screamed for help. ‘Oh god, stop, stop, stop.’ I heard it."
#
Felt it. As I approached the door to Ruth’s house, an artless, trapped-animal shriek leaped through the glass, scrambling over my face and scalp then down the back of my neck. Behind it, chasing it in a predator/prey microcosm of what transpired inside, was a moan. A male-voice moan. A noise that I would cancel by opening a jugular notch. Visions of a wolf hijacked my limbs and reflexes; I rushed into the house.
"Ruth?" I called out.
Continued shrieks targeted my ears like homing missiles. A snarling, a champing of fangs sounded with every movement as I charged up the stairs to make victims of the victim-makers--their number was no object. I would sacrifice the bones in my hands. I would subscribe to soul-belief long enough to tear in half any ethereal tchotchke housed by assailant flesh. I was the Jack-in-Irons venturing off the road. I was a cyclical force, annihilator of first-born sons, enemy ancestors, and island colonies. I was going to save her, and she was going to reward me with a relationship (and potentially sex, depending on her level of trauma).
I entered--set upon--the bedroom, reality flinching as the jags of hatred swirling about me scarred empty space. A drawn curtain dimmed so I turned on the light, which caused my eyes to gag.
Thrusting halted. Bodies once connected to each other pushed apart like feuding, north-to-north magnets. Ruth--completely, starkly bare--remained on all fours to crawl off the bed (safe because of my initiative). Which left the guy, the one who had knelt behind her. I focused on his round gut, that glistening bulge at rest, a crease folding a satisfied sneer along its width like it had just eaten a secret.
I vowed to rip that thing open.
Screaming, I hurtled toward him like a beast escaped from a nightmare. The chieftains would think a million hymens got pierced on the sheets. He was rice paper. He was hamburger. He was nude--
Pushing out my hands to no effect, I clashed with him, his tube of rape, like a rhinoceros horn, lifting my shirt bottom as we tumbled to the floor. I ignored the slime, the blend of precum and female wetness, that spit curled my belly hair.
"What are you doing here?"
I went to stand up, but after a cock swiped across my cheekbone (perhaps marking me again with moisture), shrank to sitting. Receiving a bite from knuckles on the back of my head, I crawled forward--ramming my own eye onto the club-like wang opposing me--then fell backward, waving my arms to clear the air of penises. A foot stomped on my neck. An elbow cut my forehead. I saw pubic hair that could hide a janitor’s key set.
"Leave him alone!"
I balled up, doing my best to regroup while a man drenched in rape-sweat rained down punches from naked hands. Pain spread like capillary waves from multiple points of contact. You dabble in heroics now, Greg?
"Please, I said leave him alone."
The beating stopped.
"Aren’t you supposed to be at work?"
#
Pulling my head from the decorative shambles of a mirror to assert myself upright, I scooted to prop my body in a corner, tired of life as a talking puddle."Let me get you some paper towels," Ruth said.
"No, I got it."
"Greg, that’s my shirt."
I blew my nose. "So, hypocrite, what the fuck was that?"
"I’ll explain. I just need to put some clothes on."
She got off the floor then walked to the closet. As I watched, I wanted to grab her by the neck, slam her head through...everything. I wish it had been rape, I would say. But then, even during a fantasy, touching her skin repulsed like a forcefully expanding cloud of bug parts. I put my hands in my pockets.
She reached for a sweater that I had bought her.
"You’re not going to wear that, are you?" I asked.
She withdrew her hand. "I guess not. Sorry."
The apology seemed inappropriate. She should have argued with me, not just wordlessly picked a different top.
"Can you hurry? I can’t handle you like this."
"Like what, Greg?"
"All...naked."
The word flash-decomposed in my mouth. I wanted to gargle acid. Ruth put on whatever random clothing then sat on the floor, but she couldn’t fool me. Under the t-shirt and sweatpants, she was still naked.
She talked, but I failed to fully comprehend. The fury-quickened operation of malleus-on-incus bashed every other word into unmeaning paste. Because of this, I tried reconstructing, at a minimum, the tenor of what she said.
"I’m a piece of shit...safe word...every time I look at you, I laugh on the inside...simulation...I did this only to hurt you, and to laugh about hurting you...no objects...you’re such a loser and a joke that me fucking other men was inevitable...didn’t want you involved."
"Wait, wait, wait. You pretend to get raped as a hobby, and I’m not good enough to involve? You never once thought, maybe Greg would love pissing and shitting all over the pain of true victims? Oh please, Ruth. Please. Let me participate--"
"With your temper? With your emotional dysregulation?"
From all the tones available to me, I chose "sardonic," because it felt like a trusty weapon returning to the old master’s hand. "Yes, because I’d actually rape you, or choke you, or start pushing on one of your teeth until the roots rip out, I love doing that shit. You made an excuse for cheating, and time itself will unravel before you admit it."
Ruth punched the floor, slapped her own thighs. "You cheated on me! With that...party girl. Ooh, goes to parties."
"We never had sex. Never kissed."
"You brought her to your bedroom and let her spend the night. You cooked a meal for her. You. Saved. Her."
Ruth glared at me with a transcendence. If one of her eyeball hexes had kicked open my chest from the inside, sprayed aerosolized offal onto her face, into her mouth, she wouldn't have blinked.
"I caught you getting fucked by that guy. You have no right to be mad. I’m the one who’s bleeding. Everything is automatically worse for me."
"So all that cutting on your chest, how could Emilio--"
"Goddamn it. No names, goddamn it."
"Sure, Greg. Whatever you say. You’re impossible to talk to. And you suck at fighting." She looked over at a section of carpet a few feet away as though it agreed with her. As though it gave her an epiphany. "I can’t be with you anymore. I can’t see you anymore. Please respect my decision."
A Gordian Knot made from ten miles of barbed wire surrounded the logic in what she said.
"You’re breaking up with me? After what you did, don’t you think it’s a given that we wouldn’t be together, like maybe mandated by the circumstances or the fact that I may care to exercise a modicum of dignity?"
"Sure, Greg. Okay," Ruth said.
I couldn’t yell, there was no desire to yell. Talking, audible breathing, scratching my leg through my jeans, none felt permissible. And so, a minute of quiet time marked our end.
I crab-walked out of the corner, standing to leave. Her phone rang.
"Hello? Oh, hey. I can’t really...yeah, I can ask him, he’s right here. Okay. Yep. Later."
"Who was that?" I asked, feeling entitled to the answer.
"Did you bite the heads off the bird soaps in Fran’s bathroom?"
I gave her a look as though the question was absurd, although we both knew it really wasn’t.
