Please Don't Go (30 page)

Not a sound in the house.

While he was asleep on Rattup’s filthy mattress, she had stoked a fresh fire and the kitchen smelled of soup. He tiptoed past the stove to see that she had indeed put a pot of soup on for him.
How sweet of her
, thought Zephyr. Had she a face, he would have launched the pot of canned minestrone into it with a sizzle of triumph. Though he had not eaten in what felt to be weeks, the thought of consuming something she had purposely prepared for him made his tongue go limp and his hunger diminish. Though her previous meal for him had been delicious, he had promised himself not to repeat that flaw in his immobile grudge.

A creak echoed in the den, bouncing from the walls and ceiling, landing in Zephyr’s ear canals. The screeching was followed by the sound of a dull thud, paper on top of paper landing on the wooden floorboards.

The mail.

One universal visitor to most American homes was the postal delivery man or woman, and it sounded like God singing to Zephyr in the guise of an Italian tenor, making viewers weep in the front row of his disheveled mind. He had always assumed that Rattup was the owner of a post office box, but how would he have ever picked the mail up with his monastic lifestyle?

The mail.

The glorious fucking mail!

If he could only get a message to the outside world, that it could fix his situation. It had to. “Hey!” he shouted out. “Hold up!” Zephyr squealed as he dashed through the kitchen, into the adjoining hallway, and into the room that he had first dined with Charles Rattup, in that lost time of peace. He danced along the wooden floorboards with fleeting feet and a racing heart. On his swift journey, he soon realized that he was naked from the waist down, but that shame would not hinder him one bit, were there true salvation beyond that creaking mail slot. “Don’t go!” he added, sliding on his bare knees before the door, pushing open the mail slot to view his visitor.

He had been correct. The mailman was darting away from the door, in quite the hurry, turning over his shoulder at the muffled, distant sound of Zephyr’s voice. There was a tension in the man’s gait that was difficult to hide. “Help! I need help!” Zephyr shouted through the slot, soon realizing that he was an utter moron in his approach. He reached for the door knob, twisted it with a violent jerk, and opened the door with a gust of wind that tunneled through the den. “Don’t run off!” Zephyr called out, pushing through the screen door, feeling the immediate frigid air on his exposed testes. He looked like a madman. As he glanced down at his body, covered only by sweaty socks and a tattered claw-torn tee-shirt, he felt a stiff motion and swirl of air around his ankles.

“
Fucking sociopaths!” Trent shouted as he hopped into his mail truck and peered through the shiny glass window. “Every street’s got one of ‘em!” Zephyr swayed in the wind, in all of his nude glory, hollering for the mailman to stop in his tracks.

Zephyr scampered down the driveway, slowing and grunting in pain as his feet stepped across the sharpened bits of vicious gravel. “Please don’t go!” He hopped and grimaced on the unwelcoming surface, his face contorting with discomfort. “I need a ride!” he yelped between grimacing lips, his mind returning to the hellish ride (from The Vance Pod) he had received the last time. Would it end just as crooked with the mailman? Would he too become possessed and under the will of The Thing? His heart raced as he got further from the house. “STOP THE FUCKING TRUCK!” he growled as Trent yanked backwards in his vehicle, turning his tail to the approaching pant-less crazy.

“
Have a nice day,” Trent mouthed into his rear view mirror as Zephyr closed the gap between him and his evacuating mailman. Trent offered a halfhearted
go-fuck-yourself
wave.

“
Please...” Zephyr huffed, falling to his knees and reaching for the back bumper of the mail truck in vain.

As he laid upon the gravel, panting and evaluating the nasty cuts he had attained on the bottom of his feet, he rolled over on to his back to stare at the late morning sky, mixed with grayish blues and billowing clouds. The chilly air made shrunken bits and pieces snuggle away inside of him, and with that he suddenly felt ridiculous, lost in a maze of his own mind and body like an Alzheimer’s patient. He wished for pants, but hadn’t the energy to even put a pair on. Zephyr’s world was fizzling all around him and he could not prevent the sickening feeling buried in the murky depths of his belly. “Fuck.”

You should be in bed. Go have your soup and back to bed with you.

“
Just let me be,” he said with an intolerance to his voice, now aware that she had been there all along, peering over his shoulder. Perhaps she had foreseen the outcome of his dash for the mailman’s assistance. Perhaps she was a psychic, existing in all places and times at once. In that, she would already know his fate, and that of Rattup’s as well. Or perhaps the more viable solution was that she knew the mail delivery man from past experiences and was rest assured that he would not offer Zephyr any real assistance to his plight, pre-warned of the evils that lay behind the doors of the Rattup abode.

Don’t make me drag you inside. Your soup is getting cold.

“
Get away from me. Let me just lay here,” he snapped, his breathing slowing to the point where he felt as if he could tussle with her anew.

You need to rest for me. There’s more to come, like last night. I have an unlimited supply of energy, but you do not possess such boundless qualities. That’s why you’ll eat my soup. And you’ll take a nap, you little shit.

“
You’ll just have to drag me, if that’s what you want,” said Zephyr.

And with that, she dragged him.

The boundaries he dared her to cross were non-existent beyond the scope of his own lethargic brain. Without fail, she rose to his hostile reactions. As he bounced across the gravel surface of the driveway, he clutched his genital region, protecting his most sensitive areas from the unforgiving roughness that would end any possibility of him conceiving children with Jackie. His face scraped along the little gray stones, digging beneath his gums and casting debris into his eyes.

Calling out for release, he found that she would obey his request to drag him inside, and to its fullest extent. This was not a bluff, but a promise to follow through on her intentions.
Everything in life is a lesson, and you’re learning them by the handful. I’ll drag you every single time—don’t you fucking doubt it, lover. I’ll drag you through the yard, into the house, and right up to the gates of Hell if so called upon. Don’t test me.
He sputtered along the surface for the last few feet, swearing he could smell traces of Kiki’s leaking motor oil clinging to the membranes inside of his nostrils. When he crossed over on the grass of Rattup’s lawn, he was gracious for the change in surface, but when he next found the larger stones that formed a direct walking path to the doorway, he was reminded that the calm always came before a storm.

Dots of blood and torn epidermis coated his face. He could detect that swelling had already taken over the general shape of his former softened facial features. Leaving a splay of blood on the ground that Jackson Pollock would have been proud of, the journey ended with him being slung against the bottom edge of the house, the threshold of the doorway digging into the small of his back. Hacking uncontrollably, he whispered a question of further boundary-testing, “Is that it? Thanks for the piggy-back ride.” Through swollen eyes and lips, he feigned a grin in the cold layer of air that was standing before him. There was little more harm she could do to him on this day, and so he continued to challenge her extremities.

That’s not the end of it. That’s never the end of it. Not unless you break in half for me.

“
Try it,” Zephyr sneered, his face feeling like that of a battered drunk.

***

Once she had him through the door, he was next propped into the rocking chair, which teetered back and forth. “What about my soup?” he asked, knowing that it was unwise to goad her further. What more could she do to him? As he thought on this, incorporating the events of the previous night’s worth of brutal rapist activities, he considered that maybe there
was
more that she could bring down upon his wretched soul.

He fought back against the nylon-rope restraints she had tied to his wrists and ankles. For a ghost, she had a certain dose of Boy Scout skills that he admired. The gust of her blustery air was all over his body, tingling the electric surface of his skin as often happened during the winter’s first snowfall. It swirled and left the room, the warmth of the regular ambient air washing over him now. She had, as far as he could tell, left him alone.

Here is your soup.

The pot came dancing into the room, on its own, floating through the air in such a strange moment of visual obscurity that Zephyr could not help but laugh out loud, though it pained his bleeding, gritty gums to do so. “Oh, now... that’s priceless,” he mumbled through his swollen broken lips.

You’ll learn respect.

She tossed the bubbling frothy soup into his face and he writhed with excruciating pain, shaking his head to rid himself of the scorches and red patches that had blossomed, in an instant, on his face. “You fucking bitch,” he stammered through cries of pain and gasps for air. She reached towards him after tossing the pot to the ground with a metallic ding, grappling at his chin and kissing his cheek. With a loud grunt, he jerked his neck forward, attempting a sloppy, loose headbutt towards his soup-tossing captor. It was useless, as much so as the villain throwing his gun at Superman when he had no more bullets. “You’ve got more than that,” he cried out in a dull whimper.
What was he doing?
He could not help himself, challenging her to dismantle him at the seams.
Had he become suicidal?
It felt to Zephyr that there was a hidden disconnect between his self-preservation and his rambling tongue. “Just another little taste.” One half of Zephyr’s psyche kicked the other half in the face.

Stay right here and finish your soup.

He had to admit, she had a sick sense of humor—delightful, even.

Steps plodded down the basement stairs, to that place that Zephyr had not yet dared to venture since his acquaintance with Rattup had first begun. The shuffle and clang of objects being tossed about was soon followed by a second repetitive thud of feet upon the wooden steps. Into the room came another dancing object, this one a bit worse than the pot of boiled soup.

The manual drill was a dull metallic blue, with the brand name emblazoned upon the side of its handle, “The Hole Job” (as in, this device can handle
the whole job
). The corkscrew end of the old fashioned drill spun and Zephyr couldn’t help but think of Depression era bank robbers, using such a simple device to bust into safes at unprotected banks.
They would break into the vault and make a fast getaway, eluding the coppers at every juncture. In the end, the crooks would always turn on each other and nobody would enjoy the spoils of their riches.

I’ve always got more, lover. I’ve always got more.

As it twisted into the sinews of muscle and flesh of his forearm, he could not help but wish that he had put on pants in his groggy pursuit of the postman. The blood vessels in his arm burst into a small spray across his naked lap as the cruel twist of the drill sunk and retracted, sunk and retracted, delving into his soft flesh, removed from any vital spot that would cause him to bleed out and die. She let loose a giddy laugh in his ear as his screams wafted in and out of his brain, blinking away unconsciousness.
Not this time
, he thought, grasping to his wakeful presence, desiring to stay awake to fend her off. Were he asleep, he could not imagine what she would consider doing to him with the violent thing in her translucent hands. She twisted hard again, pausing to bathe in his raspy yelps, taking a very real joy in his begging that she would stop this unreasonable treatment. When Zephyr begged her, “Just kill me. Just fucking kill me!,” she stopped. The drill fell to the floor and she caressed his tear-soaked cheeks.

That would be too easy, my lover. Then what would I do with myself? Enjoy the pain. It’s the only feeling you’ll know until you find feelings for me. Maybe one more turn of the screw?

She picked up the drill.

6.

In the morning that followed, Zephyr plodded about the house in a dreary sense of hopelessness, touching his tender arm wound every now and then to remind himself that he was still alive, though in an ever-increasingly detestable state. He had replaced the bandage several times during the evening, glad that the process of scabbing had already kicked into gear. The pain was manageable. She had practiced control. For now. If he kept the wound clean (Rattup had not surprisingly retained an ample supply of hydrogen peroxide, ointments, and bandages), then there was a good chance that he could stave off infection. In the same thought, he considered infection a suitable form of escape. If he was brought to his death bed, she would have to release him.

Or so he hoped.

He feigned a hum to himself, but found that it was pointless and did not cheer him up a single lick. He could only return to the thoughts of the drill, the forceful sexual acts, and the deserting mail man. It was Sunday, and so he would not return again until the following morning. When he did, Zephyr promised himself, he would pounce upon the mailman, demanding of him a ride, though even that seemed infeasible, given the Vance incident. She had every angle on him covered, like a jealous lover, as evidenced by her long stint with Rattup.