"I don't know."
He looks at me strangely and I tell him I have to go. He asks me again if everything is okay, but I tell him another lie.
Chapter 24
I'm staying in Paul's old house now because it's too dangerous to be at my apartment. I'm sleeping upstairs in their old bedroom, with all the sheets torn off the bed. Last night I woke up and thought there was someone in the house. I kept picturing this deformed little boy scampering around downstairs so I went with one of Paul's golf clubs and put a hole through the living room wall. It turned out to be the back door slamming against the house in the wind; echoes inside my twisted skull - all hollowed out and screaming. Something inside me is leaking. The bruises on my face have turned to a shallow yellow and I can blow my nose again without flinching.
There's something happening inside me for which I cannot quite control nor understand. I feel as if I've done it again. As if I've ruined everything for my family, for myself, for anyone who loves or cares about me. Is this all my fault? I can't help but feel that I alone am to blame. My antics, my refusal to grow up and act like a civilized and normal young man - I used to think it was important to be genuine, but now I'm not so sure.
I'm sitting at the kitchen table and when I reach into my pocket for my cell phone something comes clinking out onto the linoleum floor. I bend over to pick up the locket, the sunlight reflecting sharp off the silver - and I run my fingers along the surface of the bronze, over the nose, the eyes, the mouth - taker' for a spin. And the old lady looks sad now for some reason, like her eyes have fallen a bit. Then I notice something, something I haven't noticed before, a rough patch along the side of the locket - letters - a name: Cindy.
Dark shapes crawling like ants across the dust and grime. Cheers. How could she do this to me? When a person says, you know, they care about you or whatever - and everything swirls and in your chest there's this burning, what does that really mean? Because eventually that burning goes away - it's not that the flame goes out exactly - you just stop noticing it. There's a woman sitting beside me at the bar and she looks really sad, her shadow all crouched down and seeping, and part of me wants to ask her what's wrong; if her husband left, or maybe her kid is on drugs, or booze, or? Warcraft? And I would probably tell her all about my little trifles, my broken heart made out of paper-clich?; blah blah blah.
It's all been said before and whatever this lady's problem is, none of it really matters, because in the end I can't stop myself from wondering whether or not this cougar still shaves. I bet her man hasn't gone down on her in years - in which case a formidable forest would undoubtedly be dwelling in her nether regions; but I'm a lumber-jack by heritage ladies and gentlemen, I'm good with the ol' axe.
Someone taps me on the shoulder and it startles me pretty good so that I jerk around and spill my beer all over the counter. Mr. Tinninger stands there chuckling a moment before pulling up a stool beside me.
"Haven't seen you in class for a while Charles," he says.
"I know Sir. I just haven't been myself lately," I say, wiping my beer soaked hand off on my pants.
"That's not good," he says. "I'm going to have to fail you Charles."
"I don't blame you Mr. T, I really don't. I'm actually kind of glad. I don't have to stress about it anymore?"
"Why's that?" he asks.
And by the way he takes a gulp of his rye, the way he grimaces at the sour taste and his eyes light up with the liquor - it makes me believe that maybe this bastard will understand.
"Well, there's people trapped under rubble in Haiti - our parliament is prorogued right now and the U.S economy is on the same road it was four years ago before this whole shit frenzy got stirred up. 50% of marriages end in divorce, at least 50% - meanwhile, the ice caps are melting and people in the Middle-East are still stoning women for committing adultery, which probably doesn't really matter since we're all going to get annihilated by a comet soon enough, I mean, right?"
Mr. Tinninger nods and takes another sip from his tumbler, and he doesn't say anything for a while so we both just sort of sit there staring at the wall of liquor bottles behind the bar - a venerable candy shop for the wicked - a playhouse for the deranged. Oh, fill me up daddy, please daddy, please. I'm losing my mind. I look to my professor and he notices and looks at me and all I can think to say is 'do you get it?' but the old man sets his empty glass down and says 'no one goes to the bar because children in the Congo are being decapitated with machetes.'
And he's right.
I go back to my shithole apartment and grab the few remaining things I have left; a basketball that I never use, a white dress shirt, and some books. My steel-toed boot is still sticking out of the TV.
I go into the washroom and look at myself in the mirror.
I turn on the faucet and splash my face with cold water.
There's a knock on my door.
I stand still, too nervous to move.
The knock comes again, louder this time.
I snatch up a shard of the broken TV screen and start moving towards the door.
The doorknob starts to rattle, turning as a creak escapes from the rusty hinges.
I lunge at the door.
"Wow!" my landlord cries out.
"Oh my god," I say, dropping the shard of TV screen. "Sorry, I, errr, I'm not feeling too hot."
"Charlie, I've got to evict you," Ron says, looking down at his shoes as he says it.
I nod and the two of us stand still for a moment in the doorway.
"I'm sorry," he says. "There have been a lot of complaints?"
"It's okay," I tell him.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"No," I say. "But I will be."
"I think someone has been breaking into your apartment," he says, "I saw a man coming out of your apartment, and? well, he didn't look like he belonged there."
"Did he have a scar on his face?"
Ron nods his head yes as my stomach starts to spin.
Natasha calls me drunk and crying the next night while I'm on the bus. She says some really nice things which sort of make me love her, but I tell her I have something I need to do first. 'Charles, please - I'm scared' she says. I tell her not to be scared, but she says there's someone outside her house in the bushes.
"It's 3 in the morning and your hammered drunk woman - listen, I will be over there as soon as I can - just let me do this first, okay?"
"Do you still love me?"
"Yes," I tell her.
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because, you're all I've got."
She tells me that she loves me too and we hang up. The bus stops and the driver announces that this is the last stop. His voice sounds all choppy and robotic over the rusty bus speakers, and it's raining outside, falling like sleet across the deserted night sky. It's that sort of half-rain half-snow that comes at the start of every Canadian Spring. The streetlights look like demented fireflies. As I walk down Percy Street, I play with the locket in my pocket and sort of hum to myself.
The street is empty but I can't shake the feeling that someone is watching me from behind a darkened window. Septum's house sits stagnant in front of me three houses down, the torn Canadian flag still draped up over the living room window. I look down at the locket, the elderly woman's face coaxing me still, pushing me forward with her stern gaze, and even though I can't feel my legs I somehow force myself forward, each step seeming like the last one I may ever take. There had to be a reason for all of this.
The front door of his house opens suddenly and I dive behind a pile of garbage that's piled at the end of someone's driveway, watching Septum and the man with the scar on his face get into the blank grey car. I can hear them talking but can't make out what they're saying. I watch Septum light a cigarette in the passenger's seat as the car pulls out and drives off.
I make it to the front door and stand rooted beside it, unsure as to what I should do next. There are sounds coming from behind the door, the muffled volume of a tel
evision playing somewhere inside. A cold wind whistles past and makes me shiver. I reach for the door knob, my hand clasping firm around the cold metal, and push gently while turning the knob. Nothing. The door is locked. I move over to the window and peer inside - the living room is dark and I can't see anyone. There's a sign in the window that says 'Beware of Dog.'
I hear someone cough from behind the door.
I am frozen.
The cough comes again.
'you're fucked,' I think to myself.
Reacting quickly, I stick the locket back in my pocket and kick out at the door with my right foot, propelling the splintered wood forward and into Septum's house.
'what in the hell are you doing, Charlie boy?'
I hear a stifled cry, followed by the distinct thud of a body hitting the floor.
Taking a step inside, I see the same burned out kid from before, and he's lying beneath what's left of the door, looking up at me with bulging eyes.
"Just, chill the fuck out, man..." he gasps, before his head lolls over and I watch his eyes roll back.
Moving quickly past him, I snatch up a long piece of the broken door and clench it tight between both hands, wringing my fingers around the splintered wood like a cold neck. I can hear my heart pounding between my ears, a cold sweat erupting on my lower back. I move further into the noise, into the static, buzzing inside my head, voices I can't quite decipher or verify their existence, because none of that matters anymore. The living room is barren, only the couch and an old television set remain. There are syringes and cigarette butts scattered across the table and spilling onto the floor, empty zip-lock bags and whitish powder coating everything.
In the corner of the room I see a large red stain in the carpet, and there is more red splattered against the walls behind it.
I hear someone scream out.
Moving through the living room, down the hallway - there are four doors, all of them closed. Opening the first one to my right, I find a room with no furniture. There are shoes piled in the middle of the floor, dirty soles and undone laces hanging pointlessly, most of them looking quite small, the size of children's feet. Someone has scrawled 'fuck you all' on the wall behind, and the moonlight sheering in through the window reveals a sinister red-silver tinge to the writing.
The next room is simply a bed, a lamp on the floor, and some clothes strewn about. A knife sits idle on the windowsill with a dark crusted tip and the shadowed whispers of horrible deeds seem to waft in powerful waves towards me; echoes of the evil that lives inside.
A dog starts barking from somewhere else in the house.
Whirling around I rush to the next door, pushing my ear against the cold wood, feeling a sudden sense of urgency. I hear sounds of scuffling, the subtle groan of a man and what could be a cry of pain. The dog keeps barking, but not from this room.
Approaching the final door, a greenish-blue glow emitting from beneath, I can hear the dog more clearly now, the sound of a chain being rattled, and there are other sounds coming from the room as well.
Opening the door slowly, peering around the corner - I see a dog chained to the wall, snarling and baring its teeth at me. I don't notice her at first, sitting there on the couch beside the Rottweiler, just out of reach of its barred teeth. There's a camera set up on a stand in the corner of the room, and I can see the red light winking at me.
She looks at me shaking and then back to the TV. I move into the room slowly, watching my step because there are syringes scattered all over the floor. The Rottweiler is barking frantically now, the chain rattling violently against the wall. There is a woman being fucked by three men on the television, gagging and moaning in a very guttural and disturbing way. Every orifice is being penetrated. Cindy sits transfixed by the television, unable to take her eyes off of it.
I move to scoop her up and at first she doesn't really move - she just sits there in front of the TV with the controller wrapped tightly between her skeleton fingers; rigid. Her pupils are like black marbles, rolling around without seeing. There's a syringe and an elastic band sitting on the floor beside her, blood trickling down her skinny arm from all the little holes. She reaches out blindly towards me with a cry and when I catch her she collapses against my shoulder.
"Are you here to take me away?" she asks.
"Yes," I tell her.
"Hurry," she whispers. "He'll be back soon."
I carry her over all the used syringes and back into the hallway. Suddenly, the door across the hall opens, and a middle-aged man with glasses stands there in front of me, staring hungrily at Cindy. His hair is balding and he has yellow-tinged teeth.
"Hello, little girl," he says.
Running now.
Through the living room and out of the house. On our way out I see a pile of wallets and cell phones sitting on a table in the kitchen. There is a foul smell that is following me around, and it takes me a moment to realize that it's Cindy. The dog keeps barking as I fly by the burned out kid carrying Cindy tightly in my arms.
"That's not, cool, man," he says as we move past.
Slush falls from the sky as I walk briskly down Percy Street with little Cindy in my arms, floating through reality like a dream. I stop suddenly when I see two beams of light turn towards us, and as the car moves closer I can feel it in my chest, it's him. I veer with Cindy off into someone's front yard, and duck behind a bush. As the grey car approaches, I feel Cindy's hands tighten around my shoulders. I can hear the wheels slowing down, and the light stops a couple feet in front of the bush. I hear the door open and a man grunt as he pulls himself from the car.
"Run," Cindy whispers in my ear.
Racing through an alley and around into someone's backyard, I pump my legs as fast as I they will go. I come to a fence and basically toss Cindy over the four foot wire, she lands in the wet mud and I see her scamper up as I'm hopping over the cold steel. I take her hand and we both move swiftly through another backyard and out into a field. I can barely see my hand in front of my face it's so black, and Cindy says 'i'm scared'. The two of us duck down into the mud and snow beneath an overpass that leads to the Highway. We sort of sink into the mud a bit while we watch the figure move out into the field. He stands still for a while, surveying the scene and trying to find our footprints. I can hear him talking on his cell phone, and it's pretty hard to miss that raspy voice. 'I just saw them? Yea, I'm sure? well I can't?. Fuck.' He leaves after a while but Cindy and I remain in the mud on our bellies, listening to the sound of cars drive by ambivalently overhead. The black stretches on inside my frivolous heart - lying here cold on the soggy ground. Eventually, I feel something crawling on me so I scamper to my feet and scoop Cindy up from the mud. We make it onto Bank Street and even though none of the stores are open yet, there are enough cars driving around that we should be safe. I pick Cindy up again and tell her things are going to be okay, cradling her depleted little body in my arms, and she looks at me with enlarged eyes before she says 'are you sure?'
Instead of taking Cindy with me to the police station, or the hospital, or the moon, she asks me to take her home, and since I'm in no position to deny her anything, what the hell else can I do but nod my head yes. In the past ten minutes she's started coming down off whatever those bastards were injecting her with, so there's a bit of white foam that keeps frothing up at the corners of her tiny pink lips, like soap suds, and her entire little body keeps twitching. I can feel the shiver moving its way through her spine. After a while I feel her back get damp with sweat, and she lies all splayed out and soaking in my extended arms. She looks at me and says 'are you the voice?' and I ask her what she means and she says 'the voice, from the phone - you're the one, aren't you?' and for some reason this makes me cry. She smiles and brushes away my tears with her tiny fingers.
I reach into my pocket for the locket and give it to her. She fumbles with it in her tiny hands and stays fixated on the emblem of the old lady for a while, then she looks up at me and asks 'are you an angel?'
which makes me inadvertently burst out laughing. She tells me where she lives, on Bank and Gladstone, about six blocks away. I set her down and she starts trotting beside me. After a while the sun starts to come up, winking its golden eye above the concrete horizon; everything all shallow inside my heart. The cell phone starts to ring from my pocket which makes Cindy stop dead and start to cry, so I throw the goddamn thing down and smash it on the pavement, scooping up the little crying girl who clutches at my stretched and torn shirt. My heart is racing up in my throat as cars are start driving by with that crisp feeling of morning, birds chirping, eggs frying and pigeons dying.
Cindy tells me that the locket was her grandmother's. She tells me that she lost it on the day the bad man picked her up. She tells me there was another boy there too. She says he was just as scared as she was and they made him do more things - scary things that made him cry out in the night while she sat there trembling and hunched over in that room with the TV. 'they always wanted me to be watching it' she says 'if I stopped they always poked me again, with the needles, and then I would have to watch'. With the morning glow reflecting off her pale skin she looked like a ghost. Her hair was starting to fall out. I rub at the smooth scalp with my fingers and she tells me that she pulled her hair out because she felt so strange. She was going through withdrawal as the ambivalent horizon beckoned us forward.
A grey car drives by and I see it slow down a bit but it keeps going because the sun is up now and there's people scattered about, many of them taking notice of the spectacle moving past, Cindy all wrapped up in my muddy arms and leaning against my chest. A couple people point because they probably recognize the little girl from the news, but I can see Gladstone up ahead, we're almost there, so I keep on moving past all the gaping fools.
"We're almost there now Cindy," I say.
But she's pretty much asleep in my arms, her little body riddled with chemicals and evil. There's a bird chirping in a tree and the snow is melting while the sun winks above the tree-speckled horizon, everything placid and nice while in my arms something else melts. Will anyone ever love this girl like she needs it? Like she so clearly fucking deserves? but no. Some asshole, some depraved lunatic with nothing to lose and nothing to gain will get her drunk, say sweet things to her and make her feel special, fuck her and chuck her just like the last one - and when everyone is a commodity it's easy to forget about morals. What is equality? Does that make anything better? Maybe none of that really matters. Maybe the only thing that matters is now, right here in the vortex of time, forever and never, always and again and again, but she's safe, for now. I try and hang on to that notion as I make my way up the stone pathway to Cindy's house. Where do all these wasted promises end up? I knock on the door with numb fingers while Cindy stirs and says 'We're home'.