***
Forever, the only sound my swallowing, bubbling saliva, blood, moaning, the crunch of my head as it kept pressing and lolling on the ground.
At some point, I stopped waiting for the next blow, tried to be quiet, tried to listen but had difficulty making my mind unclench, difficulty hearing anything but the muffled begging in my head.
I got to the sofa, propped myself back, certain Montgomery would swat me down, my eyes shut against this, but no violence came.
I looked around, dizzy. It hurt to let my eyes focus, jarred me like someone had poked a stick, thin and sharp, up my nose. He wasn’t in the room. I looked around and around. He wasn’t in the room. I couldn’t let myself believe that. He could’ve been hiding, though there was no fixture large enough to conceal him.
Behind the kitchen counter?
He could’ve been behind the kitchen counter.
Why?
I started to cry. The question was revolting. I was pathetic, so broken, so wretched, only someone long dead could bother with that question still.
-Montgomery? I managed to say, though no idea if it sounded anything like a name.
Nothing. Nothing.
-Montgomery, again, like I was pleading for him to come in, was ready, needing him, longing.
Nothing.
Through my sobbing, I heard myself over and over and over and over and over and over and over going Sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry but it might as well have been hiccups, sniffles I was wiping at with the side of my wrist.
I laid on the sofa, but on my back it was too uncomfortable. Struggled over on my side. Then on purpose, rolled back to the floor, hoping I’d hurt myself but hardly even remarked the momentum of the fall, there was no jolt, my head a wad of damp grass.
Knocking things from the counter, from a small bookshelf, upsetting a tall lamp in the bedroom, the bulb not going out from the fall, just casting chewed up light straight down into a squat pinch of carpet, I couldn’t find Montgomery anywhere.
I got to the bathroom, bled all over the closed lid of the toilet, tried to plant my hand there to lift myself up, felt it slip, my forehead blunted, gashed open by the sink counter’s corner. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t anything. The cavity, deep, leering out gluts of dark blood, seemed commonplace, gazed at me blankly, the same as either of my two swollen eyes.
***
There was a good amount of alcohol, bottles between one quarter and three quarters full, on top of Montgomery’s refrigerator. A pathetic, whining argument with myself the whole time, I poured a small glassful of vodka, drained it slowly, surprised I could even manage.
Weighing my options, I concluded I was not in any shape to leave the premises, so roamed the four rooms, twice, three times, trying to be systematic about it, but this souring to paranoia. I did my best to convince myself there was no way Montgomery could still be in the apartment, locked the door, bolted it and sluggishly moved a bookshelf in front it, the coffee table with a recliner set on top of it against the bookshelf, slid the sofa up against both. Exhausted, I told myself that not only was all of this unnecessary, but if it wasn’t enough to secure the front door, nothing would be.
I made certain there were no fire escapes at the windows, verified it was the second story, no way up. Even still, I could picture him getting a ladder, climbing it, slipping in some one of the three windows. Suddenly, I doubled over, giggling, laughing like a simpleton, couldn’t get the image of his obese waste of a torso trying to get up a rickety ladder, could not get the cartoon of the ladder splitting in half, his falling on his buffoon ass out of my head. I howled with deep sucks of laughter, hysterical, sat on the floor and found I was hopping on my own ass in imitation of this imagined fall while I let the image wash over and over over and over through all other thoughts.
Sure, he could get a ladder, sure, he might have a trapdoor, might also rent out the next door apartment, have a hole dug in the wall, the closet wall phony, anything anything.
In this brief delirium, I started removing my clothes.
I woke, hours and hours later, the sun of at least ten, eleven in the morning chirping its way through the windows. I was wearing only my underpants, which I’d wet in my sleep, and one sock, my pants kind of draped over my abdomen as though I’d meant them to be a blanket. I stared at the ceiling. When I first opened my mouth, having to force it, so much blood had dried that my upper lip tore the top layer of my lower as they parted.
***
My shower was spent one minute cringing, shivering in pain beneath the fists of hot water, one minute stepping out around to verify the barricade at the front door was in place. Back in the shower. Back out. Again and again until the water was frigid.
Though I clearly was, I didn’t feel cleaner, felt I’d just slathered myself in my own wet breath. My clothes were ruined, impossible to think of leaving in them. There was no washing machine, which I got upset at, a completely unreasonable outburst of profanity and beating the side of face with one hand wrapped up in my socks.
It was difficult to think outside of the direct sensations of my skin. Words were abrasives, had the sting of medication, made me feel finished. But I forced myself to try reasoning things out, even to just go through superficial motions of it. I needed to know the engine of my mind wasn’t seized, gutted. I didn’t even care what I thought about in particular.
I was naked.
There couldn’t be any reason he’d want me to spend my last day and night naked in his apartment.
No reason. None.
Getting this thought out, I sat on the end of his bed mattress, rubbing my face, nodding as I repeated it, verified it.
He’d actively brought me to the apartment.
Had he mentioned Gavin?
This cramped up my ribs, my chest.
Had he?
I suppose I should tell you about Gavin.
He’d said that.
Before I got excited, I reminded myself there was nothing to get excited about and moreover, his mention of Gavin meant nothing conclusive. Christ, he was jabbering insane, had no motivation beyond this disgusting childishness. There was nothing to figure out. He wasn’t leaving clues, he was just tormenting me.
No.
Again, I was wasting time with thoughts like that.
I sunk low in myself, tired, right back where I’d been.
Why had I mentioned Gavin, earlier?
It meant I had no way of even verifying he wasn’t just parroting me, he might not know anything about Gavin. Even granting that he did know about Gavin, I admitted, if he was this insane there was no real reason to think he wouldn’t be just this insane if he didn’t.
Right back where I’d started.
I wasn’t random. I was.
I had escaped, so to speak, several times, though.
If I hadn’t brought myself to him, earlier, would he have come for me like this? Had I fueled it, as irrelevant as such a thing might be?
I was to blame. I wasn’t.
I closed my hands around my face, awhile, pouting, my body warming to the bruises that marked it, dented it and pinched it into awkward ridges and crevices.
It crossed my mind that something smelled pleasant, a sweet fragrance, made me salivate from the roof of my mouth. When it occurred to me that it was just the smell of the place, of Montgomery’s filthy rooms, was likely the odours of various unwashed towels and wafts of garbage from the bins and the guts of the sink drain, I began to cry, not bothering to wipe my dribbling nose, mucus tinged bloody a string to my left knee.
***
As far as I could tell, he’d not done anything to alter the natural state of his apartment. Unless, of course, the mess was an elaborate put on, a set piece, measured out down to the gram. He could’ve just removed key items, things of importance, though I knew I’d no idea what I meant by t
his.
At his desk, I found stacks of his bills, most of them past due, though not to the point of serious threat from creditors, found bank statements up to the previous week, his balance, combined from three accounts, less than six hundred dollars.
Why not take my money? Extort me? Why not make me do something as simple as work two jobs, sign one check over to him so he could sit in his sorry filth, do nothing, feed himself, masturbate with his greasy hands, have a line of modest subsistence? He was garbage, a boil of some kind, why not just let me keep him damp and feted?
An entire drawer of the large bedroom dresser contained pornography, magazines, two pornographic novels from more than two decades ago, videocassettes. Many of the magazines were quite old, but the majority were current, nothing especially perverse, mainstream except for two or three lesser quality titles, though these, peculiarly, seemed the most handled. Not that that had to do with him. All of it also seemed second hand, a lot of them with the covers torn off, likely rummaged from liquor store dumpsters.
Opening a drawer in the kitchen, not a thought about it until I looked down, I found the pill bottle he’d claimed had his memory medication. It was actually a three years old prescription for some antibiotic. From the jiggle, I doubted any of the pills had been swallowed.
As I grew more unsettled, I began searching underneath of things, in small crevices, looking for some hidden item, finding none, finding nothing but obscure trash that had gotten lodged here or there, cotton swabs, shaving razors, cardboard toilet paper rolls, spoons with dried cookie dough on them, bottle caps, sample sized lotions half empty and uncapped.
I wanted to leave. To dress and leave.
He hadn’t taken my wallet, nor had he added anything into it, which I, in a fit of inspiration, felt he must have.
What could be the point in leaving if I’d found nothing?
He’d let me bury myself in the apartment when he could’ve had me removed at anytime, he could do whatever he wanted, so there must have been something.
Something that could make a difference by this time the following morning? Some further perversion to drag me through?
I took a final glassful of vodka, shaking my head furiously as I swallowed, refusing to play on.
I rummaged through his closet. Nothing remotely my size. Using a necktie to get some pants to stay tight to place, though, the rest hardly mattered. I’d get new clothes from someplace, it was really just an irritation, an insult, not even as sharp as any of the other humiliations he’d clamped on me. Underneath of a buttoned up coat, I hardly even looked bizarre.
***
The flat of the outside air, the sunlight, it gripped excruciating around me. After two blocks, I had to duck inside a fast food restaurant to warm myself. The scents were nauseating, my head felt stapled in over itself, I ached, stomach cramped with thin liquid I worried would just start leaking a stream as I moved my legs to walk.
I was hideous. The day seemed impossible. There was nothing else to do, though.
I imagined the calm soft of any legal proceedings that would be brought against me, the tip tap tip tap tip tap tip tap of them, standing and sitting and wearing clean clothes, speaking, showing remorse if I had any, trying to explain myself, the weeks of it, months of it.
Prison. Kill myself. Rot.
The coffee I’d purchased stayed scalding, far too caustic to drink, but the steam from it to my face made me feel good for a few minutes.
I wondered where Montgomery had gone off to.
The old man’s place?
I didn’t care.
Some other friend? That woman? The cook?
I didn’t care.
I looked out the window, just to verify he wasn’t watching me, then looked over to the toilet door, knew I was afraid to go in because he might be there. It wasn’t the same anymore. The gibbering goblin he’d made himself now was offensive. I was afraid of him. I was more afraid of him than anything. He could be behind that toilet door, just waiting, defecating, patting sour water to the scab of his face, waiting for me. Or he could be just outside, peeking from where I couldn’t see, could have someone giving him signals, waiting for me to go in before entering, showing himself, shrinking me to a crumb with his girth, his rank, the way his teeth seemed too moist.
Prison, kill myself, kill him, prison, kill myself, kill him, prison, kill myself kill him, prison, kill myself not even three differentiated ideas, just a progression, one that swallowed itself, neither began on one or ended on one, each permutation the same glop of horror.
***
Some generic department store, nothing in it especially inexpensive, came up after moaning myself along another five or ten blocks.
It was anguish when I realized, already changed to the set of clothes I intended to purchase, that I’d have to remove them, again, slip inside of Montgomery’s misshapen garments, go to the cashier, return to the changing room.
I tore the tags off, briefly relieved. I could just pay for the merchandise, wearing it, just hand over the price tags. Then I felt that the shirt, the coat, the pants, all had tags, magnetic. I began to shake, my head seized down, I teetered, had to force myself to sit, hold one arm with the other to keep from flailing out, losing cohesion, twisting violently, tearing at myself.
The spell passed. I undressed. Montgomery’s clothing swallowed me down, again.
I paid, returned to the fitting room, made myself stay calm. I tiptoed through stripping, regarded my naked figure, touched at wounds on my ribs, my legs, my upper arms. I made myself look over every inch of me, as though to be certain I could still identify it all.
Montgomery’s clothing I left on the floor, scum rinsed from me, feces, regurgitation. It was revolting when I had to go into the pant pockets, the coat pockets for my wallet, my keys.
I limped out of the store, caught a bus, neurotic shivers following me, ghosts of some clerk flagging the bus down, forcing me to carry off the putrid skin I’d tried to shed.
I stepped off of the bus after ten minutes, got my bearings, bought a coffee and stood outside a metro platform, watching myself in a sooty reflection taking sips. The most hurtful sensation passed through me when I realized I no longer looked so bad. My face was not even broken to suggest an altercation at a bar, some drunk leering at a woman gone off, blundering violence. The gash to my forehead looked like I stood up too fast into an open cabinet, my hair almost concealed it, either way. My cheek ached, my nose felt a crust of old shaving foam, but there were no unavoidably apparent wounds.
I hated it, that his water had cleaned me, hated myself, that I’d been molested, forced to swallow up filth, left to stagnate in it but no one would know.
I walked up the block feeling a cripple, a grotesque people would politely ignore, turn eyes away from only to surreptitiously, morbidly regard from behind when I passed. But these eyes I thought would see the growl I’d been reduced to, the maggot humping its own discard, only saw a man, his coffee, slight wince to his lip, someone walking someplace they weren’t.
***
I didn’t particularly hurry back in the direction of my apartment, but I’d made up my mind to collect a few small things, pack a duffle bag of clothes, some necessities, grab some keepsakes, the last little bit of money I had, my marijuana. A ridiculously worthless and impractical list.
Moreover, I wanted to wash in my own shower, wanted to shave, maybe trim my hair.
I had the odd compulsion that I should take a notebook of some kind, though reasoned I could purchase one at any time, easily enough, not even certain there would be a blank one anywhere in my rooms.
It was well in to the afternoon as I approached the building, smoked the final three cigarettes of the open pack I had. I was glad that I was feeling beat, uncaring, it would make this final transition simpler. I’d go see a movie. I’d eat a late meal. I’d have a drink or two. I’d board the earliest bus
I could, for some reason leery of trains, maybe because I felt he could hide himself on a train, get on without my knowing, burble compartment to compartment.
From nearly the end of the corridor I could see that there was something the matter with my doorknob. It was dirty. The paint around it as well. The odour was concentrated, I couldn’t get a hint of it until I was there. It was feces. Someone had covered the doorknob, made a clumsy mash of it around on the door, plops of it on the carpet. The knob was covered, filth, even the keyhole looked specifically filled plump.
I stood silent, anger seething up me, down me, my eyes refusing to close. I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t open the door. Not under any circumstances. Not even covering my hand. I wouldn’t wash it. I’d have nothing to do with it.
I stormed back outside, threw, as playfully as I could make it look, some blank punches around, but I tightened my sides hard, pain nibbling me with each tension.
I could wash it. I had to.
Of course I could, but it was such an obvious joke, such a puerile, malodorous little prank. If I cleaned the knob, I’d open the door and he would have the blinds done up, I’d need light, so he’d have caked the light switch, left mounds of it here and there, left handfuls in the cabinets, in the refrigerator, the ice cube trays.
I didn’t even want to scream after a moment of supposing I was about to, didn’t want to strike anything, didn’t want to check the window, find it was sullied as well. I didn’t want to hear myself think I don’t understand the point of this, didn’t want to admit to myself, though I did admit it, silently, broken, that I most certainly understood it, every tick.
***
I had fifteen minutes of a very, very intense desire to see Claudia one last time.
I could approach her, maybe that night, out at some bar, one of those basement bars she went to, strike up a conversation, flirt, at least have her know my face.
The reverie ended when I realized she’d see me when I was arrested. At some point, she would have to. She’d have no choice but to come across my face.