House of Cabal Volume One: Eden (10 page)

The card reads, “Lethe runs faster than
you.”

Behind me, the door slams.

I jump for the knob, and a wind gust snatches
the card away. The brass handle feels like ice and doesn’t turn. I
pound the door with my fist. “Carrie, open up. It’s freezing.
Please! Open the door!”

There is a muffled, “Promise me you’re not
going to go meet that slut!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not stupid!”

“Just open the door!”

“Promise me!”

“I promise. Okay? Now please, open the door.
It’s freezing!”

The door opens a crack and the security chain
pulls tight. “Who is she?”

I could say a fake name, or force the door
open—those chains rip out all the time on cop shows.

Before I think of what to do, she says, “Fuck
you!” and slams the door. I hear the clunk of the deadbolt.

"I'm not cheating on you!" I've only ever
slept with her, and she thinks I'm having an affair. How can she
think that? She knows me. I'm honest with her about everything!

Except the lies I tell myself.

I pound the door and yell for entrance. She
doesn’t answer.

“Shit,” I say under my breath. That was my
one chance. It will be forever before she’s willing to talk. If I
break a window to get back in, I would still have to deal with her
accusations and rage.

I fold my arms and hunch my shoulders forward
in an effort to keep warm. How did it come to this?

I don’t want back inside. Not if it means
making up with Carrie. I thought I didn't care about anything. But
I cared the whole time and just didn't admit it to myself.

I chose this life, that’s the thing. No one
forced me into it. I could do anything, be anything. Right now I
could jump from this porch and run through the city and be alive. I
just stand here paralyzed, shivering like a frightened animal.

I gaze out through the rain, and for the
first time since I moved here, the dreary lights of Portland
symbolize promise. Somewhere in that rain waits the answer to a
puzzle. I’ve always loved puzzles.

And then.

As if I waited for this moment my entire
life.

I jump.

I fly into the rain-filled air. Into a
weightless moment. The sidewalk rushes up, and I land hard and fall
forward into a sprint across the street and then down toward the
14
^th
and Pine intersection.

“Holy shit!”

I use the balls of my feet so that the steep
downgrade doesn’t hurt as much. I look up. The downpour falls full
force from the black sky. I look forward. It makes little
difference; rain gets in my eyes and I can hardly see. If I keep
sprinting, maybe I can ignore the bone-chilling cold.

I pass St. Agnes Cathedral, and an angel
statue watches me pass.

God, what am I doing? 7th and Pine. I just
need to get to 7th and Pine. That’s only a little over six blocks.
I can do this.

I could get arrested. Carrie could end up
hating me. This won't solve anything.

Except a puzzle. And maybe that’s enough.

Two business types wait for the crosswalk
signal. As I pass them, they step back, startled. What a rush! I
laugh. I can’t help it!

You Google “St. Agnes.” She is the saint of
chastity and rape victims. Not the best omen to start a
journey.

Even though I’m using the balls of my feet,
the impacts on the pavement jolt up my legs. I cross
12
^th
. Each lamppost illuminates a triangle waterfall of
rain. I dodge more people near the end of the block, the world a
jarring blur, and jump over beer bottle shards as I cross
11
^th
.

Fleeing from my constant sanity, I am sex in
church: profane and free. I can run forever.

Because of the cold and the water suction, I
don’t flop in my underwear anymore, and I notice the cloth is
transparent. My vulnerability only makes me more alive and
courageous. Before I look back up, I slam into a massive bulk and
fall backwards.

The sidewalk knocks the breath out of me. You
see me gasping and sprawled in front of a bar called “The Blue
Stud.” A blue, neon bronco beside the front door adorns a brick
wall.

As I lie there on my back, blinking away the
rain, the man just stands there, towering over me. Overly muscular,
he’s like many of the bodybuilders at my gym, and then I recognize
his face. He ran into me earlier in the locker room. His shirt
clings to his skin, revealing the outline of the nipple ring.

After staring a moment, he offers a hand. I
reach up and grasp it firmly, embarrassed to the extreme, and he
pulls me to my feet.

I hear the buzz of the neon and notice the
bronco. It’s the gay bar.

If I were gay this would be the meet cute of
a gay romantic comedy. With my hand in his, I have an odd impulse
to talk to him, to explain to him that I'm in the middle of solving
a riddle. He could help me. I resist the unsettling impulse to
connect with him and turn to go.

He doesn’t release my hand.

“Don’t you want to apologize again?” His gaze
lowers to my groin.

This musclehead doesn’t intimidate me. I’m a
big enough guy; I can defend myself if I have to. “Hey fag, let
go!” I try to get my hand free from his vice-like grip. “I’m
straight!”

He glances over his shoulder to a dark alley
to the side of the bar. “I think you need to give a better apology
than that.”

"Fuck off."

He twists my arm back. The move is precise,
as if practiced, and I'm not expecting it.

I let out a cry of pain. “Ow-ow-ow. Let go!”
My arm socket feels like it is about to pop apart.

Before I have a chance to fight back, he has
both my arms wrenched behind me and drags me toward the alley. I
try to find purchase on the pavement and only accomplish to rip
skin from my soles.

This isn’t happening. It can’t be.

I'm displaced. This must be someone else's
life.

This can’t be happening.

“Stop! Ow. You’re hurting me. Let me go!
Help!”

Cassette Tape Four:

Street of Rain

People on the other side of the street from
the alley turn away, and it hits me that it might be more than a
beating, this guy could kill me. This could mean my life.

Some random queer will kill me in some back
alley behind a dumpster.

“Help! Please help me!” Each help is louder
than the last. Tears well up in my eyes. The people keep walking.
“Please!” My yells tear at my throat.

You hear one pedestrian whisper to the other.
“Perverts.”

I thrash, and my right shoulder dislocates,
and pain shoots down my arm, across my shoulder, and up through my
ear. I howl and do my best to cooperate. My arm is now crippled and
I just want the pain to stop.

In the darkness, I discern someone standing
near a side door into the bar, a person my attacker hasn’t noticed.
My heart sinks. It’s just you there, ready to bear witness.

He pins me against the brick wall back behind
the dumpster, under an awning that shelters us from the rain, and I
yell that I’m sorry as snot runs from my nose into my mouth. He
relaxes the pressure on my arms. My shoulder still hurts, but the
searing pain quiets down as my arm settles back into its
socket.

He now has both my arms with one of his. I
struggle, and once again the pain in my shoulder shoots through me
like an electric shock.

He grunts with exertion as he makes sure I
can’t move. I whimper and stop fighting. His body presses me into
the wall, and I smell the sour beer on his breath. I feel the
tension in his muscles, his chest pressed against my back. I'm
holding my pelvis away from the wall so my dick doesn't smash
against the brick, and his erection presses against the cleft of my
ass.

The immobility of my arms causes my
claustrophobia to rise. "Please! Let me go!"

“You fuck! You think you’re so much better
than me? Huh? Huh! Well, you’re going to do more than say you’re
sorry, you’re going to give me a piece of that tight ass of yours.”
He grabs my dick. “And you’re going to like it.”

I push my butt out to get away from his hand.
And he rubs against me.

"Stop. Please!" My whimpers come directly
from my stomach. I can’t breathe except to get more air to sob.
"Stop."

Your eyes water from my distress, from my
helpless pleading, and you retreat further into the darkness. You
try to swallow. Your throat is so tight that you can’t. You are
just a witness, you tell yourself. This has already happened. You
can’t help me.

I cry even harder, and my sobs are like stabs
to your gut. You think,
This is too much. It’s too real. Please,
get out of this. This isn’t fair.

He pulls down on the elastic band of my
underwear and presses me harder against the wall so I can’t move
and I can barely breathe. The tip of my erection hits the wall, and
I jerk my pelvis back from the pain.

I tell you in my head that I’m so sorry; I’m
trying. I can’t free myself. You listened to my trivial problems
and now I’m doing
this
to you.

Your legs almost give out at my
misunderstanding. You yell that it’s not my fault, that you’re here
for me. The darkness swallows the sound. My whole experience is my
attacker, pressing in on all sides, smothering my sanity.

He undoes his belt with his free hand, and
his grin is grotesquely wide. You’ve never felt more helpless.

He undoes his pants, popping off a
button.

This isn’t like an interview. This is real
life. You see his large, obscene erection, and all you can do is
close your eyes. Your eyelids are clenched so tight they hurt.

“I can’t breathe!” My mind roars as if in a
wind tunnel. “Please, I can’t breathe!”

You hear him laugh, and you see him laughing
in your imagination as if your eyes are open. For me, I can’t hear
a thing. I’m roaring oblivion. His bulk suffocates me, and I’m
going to die.

Night air replaces his heat as he pulls away,
and I violently suck in air as if surfacing from my parents’ pool.
He must have realized the severity of my claustrophobia. I tell him
how thankful I am, saying thank you over and over again into the
brick wall.

I turn.

I can’t make out what I’m seeing.

As I grope for understanding, violent noise
brings the scene into focus. “Don’t punch him in the face!” yells a
black man who looks more like a butch lesbian. “He might have
AIDS!” He gives my attacker a knee to the groin, and my attacker’s
face twists with agony.

He drops to the ground in a heap, his
beautiful head smacking against the pavement. He was an attractive
man. Why would he need to rape someone?

Three other men kick him in the gut. Blood
spurts from his mouth. They keep kicking. It’s like a movie, the
violence unaffecting.

As I pull up my boxers, I stagger out of the
alley onto the sidewalk and stop and look up into the sky. The
rain, tinted blue from the neon bar sign, appears out of nowhere
and explodes against my face. There are tears, but the rain washes
them away.

I run.

The endless rain falls as if the ocean is
falling, and it soaks through me as I run, through my skin, through
my muscles, through my bones. Nothing can stop it, my baptism, and
I gape and squint into the falling redemption.

I pass by shops, restaurants, strip clubs,
and bars, and more people congest the sidewalk. I cross
10
^th
just as the blue line metro car passes behind me.
Three more blocks. Between 10
^th
and 9
^th
,
suddenly it’s as if someone hit me in the gut. I stumble and almost
fall to the ground.

I retch. Nothing comes up.

With rage, or confusion, or just plain
emotion, I yell at the top of my lungs between breaths. People turn
to look at me. Getting arrested for indecency would suck, and I
duck my head back down and continue forward.

Heavy traffic at 9
^th
forces me to
stop. Five other people wait for the crosswalk signal to change.
It’s damn cold. I stand as straight as I can, with my hands at my
sides. My chest and abs stretch and contract as I try to catch my
breath. Black exhaust assaults me as a decrepit truck pulls
away.

A man asks what the hell I’m doing. From
across the street on the other side of the crosswalk, you watch me
like a concerned parent. A fat lady covers the eyes of a daughter
dressed in a bright yellow slicker. I roll my shoulder and trigger
a sharp pain in the joint. Why does my shoulder hurt so bad?

There is a break in the traffic, and I
run.

As I cross 9
^th
, a woman in the
crowd yells, “Nice ass!” I glance behind me and almost collide with
a lamp post. Damn. I should watch where I’m going.

My feet are numb as they pound the pavement.
I hope they’re okay. I cross 8
^th
.

Almost there.

People block my way to the newspaper box. I
can’t touch them and don’t want them to touch me. They’re diseased,
as if I’ve gained some new phobia. You stand on the newspaper box
for a better view.

“Excuse me.”

The people move.

I don’t have money. There can’t be much time
left, if any time at all. The key to the rest of my life is out of
reach because of a damn dime and a fucking quarter.

Rape. I was almost raped. His hardness still
presses against me. His hand was around my dick. I have to deal.
And I will, but not right now.

“Please,” I say to anyone who will listen, “I
need a paper.”

My desperation makes breathing difficult.
Tears once again blur my vision as a woman who has been looking me
up and down gives me the money. I hope the rain hides my tears.
They do, you reassure me.

I thank her with a grumble, trying not to
seem too grateful, and put the coins into the slots and open the
door.