Hi I'm a Social Disease: Horror Stories (9 page)

Maya limped slowly to the door, bracing herself on whatever objects she could find along the wall. Elijah didn’t enjoy watching her as much. It had never really been his intention to hurt Maya. When Elijah looked at the man he saw the man with the face like a bruise. Not really, only symbolically. Just as the man with the face like a bruise had somehow taken everyone he had loved away from him before, so this man had come along two years later and done the same. But the man with a face like a bruise was only a spirit, quite possibly a metaphysical hallucination, impossible to destroy. In this man, Maya’s nameless lover, Elijah had a very palpable target for his revenge. Elijah reached out and jabbed the man’s swollen shoulder with the end of the bat, watching the cords in the man’s neck draw tight as he stifled a wince.

They made their way down to the car, Elijah standing outside until he saw that Maya and her lover were in their assigned positions. Still cautious, he slid into the back seat, maintaining a firm grip on the baseball bat. After sitting down, vigilantly leaning forward, there was an awkward pause in the rhythm.

“
Start the car,” he barked at Maya.

“
I don’t know if I can use the gas pedal,” she said.

“
You don’t need your leg to use it, just your foot. Now start the fucking car.”

She did as she was told. Music from the Birthday Party filled the car, Nick Cave’s hooting and barking, along with the churning and screeching of the guitar, matching what Elijah felt in his head. Maya’s hand instinctively reached out to turn the volume down until she thought better of it. Elijah realized he was still in control of the situation.

The storm had now passed completely and the late afternoon was sparkling and humid.

“
Roll down your window!” Elijah shouted over the music.

Maya rolled down the window.

She pulled away from the curb and started down the road, where Main Street turned into the Pike. From there they would hit Keifer and be just about where Elijah needed them to be.

Elijah sat in the back seat, studying them—the tense musculature of their necks, the way their shoulders seemed all drawn up. He basked in it. He basked in what he had planned, never once thinking anything would stop it from going off.

But he didn’t want to end anything without getting some answers first. Eileen and Cynthia had taken the open book with them, leaving Elijah to write up his own conclusions and close the book. It was something he didn’t ever think he would be capable of doing. Of course, with their situation he had no control over it. He had simply decided it was the man with the face like a bruise and had spent the next two years of his life searching that man out. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. He had the man with the face like a bruise right here in front of him and he wasn’t going to let him get away.

Elijah slid the bat in between the two front seats and started ramming the stereo violently until it cracked, splintered, and the music went away.

“
So, Maya, you never properly introduced me to loverboy here. I mean, in a round about way, I guess we were quite intimate but, shucks, I don’t even know his name.”

“
Hunter,” she said.

“
Last name?”

“
Green.”

“
Hunter Green? Sounds like a fucking golf course. So, Maya, how old a man is Hunter?”

“
Twenty-three.”

“
Oh. Robbing the cradle a bit? Well, that’s all fine, I guess I’m pretty much past my prime anyway. By the way, how big is Hunter’s cock, Maya?”

She was silent.

Elijah quickly flicked the barrel of the bat to his right, smacking Hunter on the side of the head, just hard enough to stun him and make a satisfying sound.

“
I never measured.”

“
But surely you have an idea. Erect? What, both hands plus the head? Then some, maybe…”

“
Nine inches.”

“
Hunter, does Maya give good head? I mean, is it up to your standards? I always found it pretty good, except that she could never really go all the way with it. You know, she could never get it all the way in without gagging.”

Hunter stared dazedly ahead. “She’s good,” he said through clenched teeth.

“
That’s pretty vague there, Hunter. I mean, if you’re nine inches then you have something on me so I know she wasn’t able to get it all the way in.”

“
She tried.”

“
Well, sometimes that’s the best you can ask for, I guess. Did you like the taste of her pussy? I ask this because I noticed you kind of feasting on it when I came home today.”

“
Yes.”

“
On a scale of one to ten?”

“
Eight.”

“
Have you tasted a lot of pussy?”

“
A few.”

“
So have you ever tasted a ten?”

“
Yes.”

“
Who was she?”

“
Lorna Brett. My sophomore year.”

“
So you like the young pussy?”

“
I guess.”

“
Maya, did you let him fuck you in the ass? Did you fuck her in the ass, Hunter?”

“
Once.”

“
How was it?”

“
Good.”

“
Not great?”

“
It was good.”

“
She never let me fuck her in the ass. Not that I really tried all that much but variety’s the spice of life, you know. It would have been something different, in between all those affairs with girls from the office. Right, Maya?”

“
I’m sorry.” She was crying, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“
Doesn’t feel good to have your life, your
secret
life all exposed like this, does it? I mean, my secret life, hell, it only involved me but yours was a little, I don’t know, des
truc
tive maybe. Is that the right word for it?”

No one answered Elijah, there were a few seconds of silence, the car flapping along the ill-maintained road.

“
So, did you ever come in her face, Hunter?” Elijah quickly pointed off to his right and said, “You’re about to miss the turn, hon.” Maya whipped the car onto Salton Lane. Elijah lost his balance momentarily but quickly found it again. “Because, you know, I always kind of wanted to but I could never really muster up the courage to ask her. I guess it’s just one of those things you either have to be asked to do or you just gotta do at the spur of the moment. So, what about it, Hunt?”

“
No.”

“
Same reasons? I mean, you wanted to, right? When she’s having an orgasm, you can’t look at those perfect little lips and not have the thought of coming onto them cross your mind.”

“
Yes, I wanted to.”

“
Okay, slow down a little bit. Stop at this bend.”

But she didn’t stop at the bend. She didn’t even make it to the bend. Just before the road broke swiftly to the left, Maya cut the wheel to her right and the car rolled off the road and into a ditch. She wasn’t going very fast and there wasn’t really any damage, but everyone in the car was thrown around.

Elijah could tell what her intention was. Her intention was to wreck the car in such a way that he would not be able to open his door. Instead, all the doors were free to be opened. The front of the car had merely run into some small trees at the edge of the woods. Before Elijah could get his bearings, Maya had already opened her door and took off limping into the woods on the other side of the road. But Maya wasn’t really his main concern. Elijah’s main concern was the man in the front seat struggling with his door, trying to assemble some kind of propulsive rhythm with the one side of his body that worked.

Elijah beat him out of the car, baseball bat in hand.

Hunter opened his door, oblivious to Elijah standing outside of the car, and slid his legs out until they found the ground. Elijah, looking at Hunter’s stretched out legs, swung the heavy bat across the man’s knees. He was pretty sure at least one of them shattered. Elijah swung the bat three more times, the sound of connection becoming a little pulpier with each swing. Once he was certain Hunter was no longer mobile, he grabbed him and dragged him outside of the car.

Elijah was pleased to see Hunter was now suffering from hysterics. With his good arm, the man groped for Elijah’s pants leg.

“
Please,” he sobbed. “I’ll do anything you want me to do. Just let me go. Please.”

Elijah squatted down next to Hunter.

“
There is something you could do for me.”

“
Anything.” Tears streamed down Hunter’s straining face.

“
Okay. I want you to look at that big sycamore. You can see how large it is. How it sticks up a little bit higher than the rest of the trees. Do you see it over there?”

Hunter nodded his head.

“
Two years ago. Two years ago today, actually, my wife was driving a car that smashed into that tree. My daughter was also in the car. Did you know that sometimes God kills people?”

Hunter nodded his head again.

“
Have you ever lost somebody that you loved more than anything?”

“
My mother,” Hunter blurted out, sticky spit stretching between his lips as he spoke.

“
I’m sorry to hear that,” Elijah said. “So what did she die of?”

“
Cancer.”

“
Oh, so you knew she was going to die?”

Hunter nodded.

“
Do you know what it’s like to lose someone suddenly? You wake up one morning and you’re this person and before you go to sleep that night, supposing you
can
actually go to sleep, you find out you’re someone else entirely. And sometimes, you find you don’t really like the person you’ve become.”

Elijah paused, looking at the sycamore, how it seemed to stretch toward the road, looking for victims. Below him, Hunter continued to whimper.

“
Do you believe in God?” Elijah asked him.

“
Yes,” Hunter said without delay.

“
That’s good,” Elijah said. “Now I’m going to give you a reason why you really shouldn’t.”

Elijah stood back up and stooped into the car, leaning across the front seats to pluck the keys from the ignition. He walked up the small but steep slope of the ditch until he got to the trunk of the car. He put the key into the lock and pulled the trunk up. Looking at the assorted contents of the trunk, Elijah crazily thought all trunks must look like they belonged to a serial killer—ropes, tarps, a flashlight, the tire iron, the jack and other random debris, all of which could be construed as sinister.

He grabbed a few of the bungee ropes, with each end being a steel s-shaped hook, a pair of pliers and a length of chain. He didn’t even know why the chain was in there.

He carefully but quickly descended the slope until he reached Hunter.

“
I thought you said you were going to let me go!” Hunter screamed.

Elijah furiously kicked at the man’s head. “I never said any such thing.”

As he went to Hunter’s feet, the man thrashed around, screaming frantically, but it did no use. His legs were shattered and immovable from the knees down. Elijah took the bungee cords and wrapped them tightly around his legs, just below his swollen knees, taking the rope around and then through the circle created by doing that. He took the pliers and squeezed each of the s-hooks shut so they couldn’t dislodge themselves from one another, leaving one of them open.

With the chain slung over his shoulder, he grabbed the cords like a handle and pulled Hunter behind him. Going up the slope was the roughest part and Hunter screamed exceptionally loud as the asphalt scraped at his back when they reached the road.

Elijah remembered what the length of chain was from. It was from the dog he and Eileen and Cynthia had had. Before he sold the house and got rid of it. The dog’s name was Night. The chain was used in the backyard, part of the dog’s runner that gave him free range of the yard while still being restrained.

Hunter fingered the clamp at the end of the chain, opening it and closing it around the end link of the chain so that it made a giant loop. He was oblivious to Hunter’s panicked screams. Or maybe the screams were fuel.

He eyed one of the sycamore’s thick branches hanging low over the road. Elijah threw one half of the looped chain over the branch, bringing it down and through the other half he held in his hand. Releasing that end, he pulled on the other side until the chain was secure around the branch. The ellipse of the chain now dangled just above his head.