Please Don't Go (40 page)

I’ve been waiting for you. I’m your new daughter-to-be. I’m in love with your son. You’ll have to face that fact in the next few moments, bitch.

“
Jackie?” Lana gushed, her face shaking with the painful bolts of electricity that were dashing through her battered arm. The pressure upon her hand and wrist increased and Lana howled. A second hand, also invisible, wrapped around the back of her tightened neck, digging claws deep into the flesh. She could feel an immediate river of blood descending her back, staining her new white blouse all the way to the small of her back.

Jackie is no longer a part of this picture. Zephyr has moved on to more mature ventures. That new venture is me, and I love him far more than you ever could. You may have birthed him, but I’ve given him life. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Mother?
Being referred to as “mother”
by Zephyr’s mate (the bitch who Lana had still not made eye contact with, attacking from the rear like a coward) was Lana’s final accomplishment in the remainder of her life, as it ticked away. She had always hoped that her son would emerge from young adulthood with a suitable mate, and that the woman he chose would be respectful to her and her place in Zephyr’s life. Jackie was most certainly not that kind of girl, a bit too much of a free-thinking rebel to have even an ounce of proper etiquette. But this new girl, this soft hoarse whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere at once, she seemed to be even worse than anything Lana could have imagined. Not to mention the fact that it seemed to read her mind:
Oh, yes. I’m a bad one. Your worst nightmare, my dear. You’ll toil for a reason to like me, but I can assure you that this relationship has nothing to do with YOU. There is a bond between Zephyr and myself. There is no room for you at this gala event, my sweet mother.

The claw dug deeper into Lana and she noticed her vision turning to stars.

From behind the door, Lana could hear Zephyr crying out again. He wailed as he clambered up the stairs, banging his fist against the back of the door.

Lana reached behind her, grappling with the claws that had sunk into her like a tent’s stake into soft sand. A long river of spittle fell from her lips and she coughed a nasty bit of yellow phlegm on to the back of her shirt sleeve. She had never quit smoking during her life because she had always claimed she would go out in “some other vicious unexpected way, not by cancer... no how, no way.” Correct, she had been.

Had she the ability to move her vision even an inch to the side, to swivel her bloody neck and look behind her, Lana might have evacuated her irritated bowels at the last moment of her life. The small hatchet came dancing through the stiff air of the kitchen, as if carried by a Native American who had called out an incantation of absolute invisibility. It’s dull, pewter blade was tied to the rough wooden handle by hemp twine, a classical instrument for professional scalping.

A snicker filled Lana’s ears as the hatchet encircled her head in a casual glide, settling at the front edge of her hairline, digging beneath the epidermis to gain purchase to the entirety of her scalp. When Lana burst forth with a harrowing cry of defeat, the blade began its slide towards the back of her head, wiggling like a razor-edged worm in search of muddy soil. The voice returned:
This is how they did things in more civilized times, my dear. Think about me and your son while I tear away the scalp from your skull. Think about me pleasuring him beneath the moonlight, a soiree of groans and pants as I spill his seed on to the blood-soaked earth. You cunt... you should have stayed far, far away from here.

Lana toppled over when the task was complete, her long auburn hair tossed to the ground along with the underlying flesh that the follicles had once poked out from. She let out a gasp as her soul exited her body.

In the final moments of conscious thought, the bits and pieces beneath her hair now exposed to the open air, Lana thought of her boy. He had been her only child, the pride of her life and the perk in her step. They had not always been the closest, which seemed odd to her, considering that he was her one and only child. Her mind drifted into oblivion but she could still picture herself, at his bedside reading him stories of puppies and airplanes and mommies and daddies, of kissing his cheek while he slept, of never judging him during his mid-evening sheet changes because of his uncontrollable bed-wetting. They never spoke of the events to his father, as he would not have approved of the act. She understood her boy’s faults as part of the human experience, that which she would one day miss. That day, it seemed, had come today. The last impulses of life jolted through her hands, through her fingertips, and flitted away forevermore, where she would always hold her baby boy, for all his flaws and all her flaws, and everything in between.

Zephyr yelled for his mother from the other side of the door.

Lana could not see Lilith undo the bolt and step away to allow her lover his proper grieving.

17.

Zephyr could not control the gush of loss that he felt spilling out on to the dirty linoleum floor of the kitchen, gripping at his mother’s body with both hands, shaking her as if to awaken her from the temporary slumber she had fallen into, a matronly Snow White. It was just a fleeting moment, Zephyr informed himself—one without her hair or scalp attached to her head. When her eyes fluttered again and she regained consciousness, she would lean over, shaking away the sleepiness from her eyes, and reapply the mane to the top of her skull. She would kiss Zephyr on the cheek, saying, “There, there. We won’t tell Daddy about your wet bed. I promise you, sweetie.”

He could smell her blood, coating the floor in a greasy slick, still dribbling from the gaping pink wound that Lilith had created with the hatchet. He glanced at the floor, his vision blurry through the torrent of tears, and examined the hatchet that had been dropped to the ground next to her body, left for examination so that Zephyr could properly imagine the violent act that had been perpetrated upon the opinionated hippie-turned-conservative woman who had given him life.

The vomit came blasting from the depths of his stomach, the third time in less than an hour. He found himself glaring through the stream of gory bile, mildly curious as to how much he actually had left in him. Without a doubt, he was empty by now.

You grieve for her.

“
Go to hell, whore.”

I can smell your grief. Your mother would have only stood in our way, lover. Can’t you see that the world is ours now? Can’t you see that I care so deeply for you? Not since I was born have I found a man like you. You may think that I say that to all the men I have had for my own, but be rest assured that is not true. You are my greatest lover, and so I’ve exacted measures to hold you here because it is in your best interest.

Zephyr bit back another wave of vomit.

He thought of his father, coming home to an empty house. Expecting his mother, brooding at the kitchen table, sipping at a glass of gin or a cup of coffee, watching the clock. Though his parents hadn’t been close (in several senses) in decades, there was still a routine that they adhered to with gracious ease. When either of the pair strayed from their clockwork, their collective world was thrown on top of its head, befuddled and lost in a sea of broken schedules. Zephyr was sure that they still loved each other, but hadn’t said a word on the matter in ages.

Zephyr’s father would tomorrow sit at the dinner table, curious as to the absence of his breakfast, unaware that his wife was missing a chunk of her head, splashed about the kitchen floor of a stranger, a retired writer currently on the lam.

Try not to think about her death. Think about her life.

Lilith, Zephyr decided through the screaming spasms at the base of his skull, was reveling in his obvious emotional turmoil. She had undoubtedly enjoyed the pains of his mother’s demise, as well.

Things will be so much easier when our guests have finished their journey. First the ugly red head, then your momma, and one more guest. I think tonight is one for the ages. Our evening has only just begun, and I feel that things are starting to look so optimistic for us all.

Zephyr’s mind raced between bouts of fury about his mother’s murder. “What do you mean?”

Put these on the coffee table, wouldn’t you lover? We’ll be having a guest this evening.

Between Zephyr’s trembling knees, in a pool of his mother’s lost blood, Lilith placed a crystal bowl, filled to the brim with black mission figs.

We must not let her become hungry, sweet boy. She’s eating for two now.

***

Intermission: The Rat in His Hole

Rattup was splayed upon his aching back, toes pointed at the ceiling, enjoying the warm embrace of a glass of brandy. The clock on the bedside table ticked and tocked through his half-drunk head, reminding him of the excruciating moments lost during his extended entrapment at his former lover’s hands. The bed jiggled due to the quarters he had deposited into the slot, directly next to the sign that warned guests to “Clean Up Your Mess!” Though he had not been sure what the sign meant, Rattup was enjoying the maximum comforts of the frenetic bed.

Marvelous!

He put the snifter of brandy to his vibrating lips, moaning in joy as his vertebrae snuggled themselves back into perfect harmony along his spinal cord. Though his motel room (room 17 of the Magical Motel on exit 138 of Route 95) smelled of dead babies and stale muffins, he could not imagine a more pleasurable temporary domicile for a man of his particular lifeline to be. If there was a rainbow of destiny, then the pot of gold was nestled away somewhere beneath the vibrating beds of the Magical Motel.

“
Ohhhhhhh my, oh my,” he mumbled to himself, glad to be in the land of the living once again.

Since his escape, he had surrounded himself, and on a permanent basis, with books and brandy. Television and fast food. Films at the local theater, equipped with a deep bucket of buttery popcorn and 3D glasses. Liquor from the bottle, like a baby at his mother’s tit. He had even purchased a new wardrobe—long and short sleeved shirts, bathing suits, jackets, hats, gloves, ties, and khakis. A new arsenal of personal style for an era that had come into being without his direct awareness. A toothy middle-aged woman at the department store had advised him on what would best fit his teeming personality. She was sweet enough to come back to his motel room that same evening, and they had made love atop a pile of those very same clothes, tags still affixed. He was twenty years her elder, but there was something mysterious in that difference, and it had worked to his advantage. He could have even gone for a twenty year old. Yes, that sounded delightful to Charles.

Modern human beings were not like the ones he had left behind in the seventies.

They were as mad as hatters.

Absolutely deranged, and obsessed with the strangeness of The Strange.

Mr. Charles Rattup had only needed a single day free of his mistress to see that the Brave New World that surrounded him was an island of miscreants and whores. He had always taken the high road, but that optimism was deadened by the years he had spent with his charming but hateful mate, the invisible succubus that had forcefully tainted his past, present, and future.

And now he was a man on the loose.

A cat on the prowl.

A dog without his leash.

Freedom on the march. All of those things, and more.

The television blared the laurels of a cleaning tool called the Mop Master, that which they claimed could even mop up broken egg shells. In the slow motion instant replay, it had become quite obvious to Rattup- after more than a dozen viewings- that they were not so much cleaning up the eggshells with the mop as they were displacing it from the line of sight of the camera. He had laughed at the ploy, committing it to memory. The deception was brilliant in its own maddened way, and it tugged at Rattup’s conscience, reminding him again of the snapping steel jaws that he had triggered around Zephyr’s soft unfettered neck. “The unknowing fool is his own worst enemy,” mumbled Rattup in a slur, tugging at his brandy once again, spilling a dribble on to his new bright white t-shirt, shaken by the hands of the agitated quarter-swallowing bed.

The bed stopped cold and Rattup moaned, for he had used the last of his quarters.

“
Blast it all!” he griped, sitting up straight and readjusting his stark white boxer shorts at the jumbled state of his man bits.

He began to wonder if his department store mistress was on duty again tonight. Were he to take her a second time, would it be even better than the first? Charles Rattup liked to believe that all physical romance bloomed with proper treatment and regular observance. Though he could barely remember her name (Tonya or Helena were his most reasonable guesses), he knew the scent of her. She had the scent of a real woman, like “Aleesha” had been all those years earlier in Ireland, when youth was still upon him, before he had turned into a diseased crankshaft of flesh and bone.

As if called upon by fate itself, the woman rapped upon his door.

“
Is that
you
?” Rattup called out across his room, careful not to specify her name, for his embarrassing ignorance of it. “Is that you, sweetie cakes?” He rubbed his hands together in greed, eying the doorway and feeling his boxers growing tight. It had been years since he had been so readily available, called to arms by the embrace or thought of a
real
woman.
She
had spoiled him for all eternity, or so he would have thought before his escape. There was still some life in the old vein-ridden bugger downstairs, though it had laid dormant for decades. Sure, it had gone into an active state when called upon by his bitchy succubus demon, but that was simply to satiate her urges and protect his own life. Were he to ever fail her, she would have destroyed him. Perhaps, Rattup often thought, it was the primary reason behind her being so open to the
switcheroo
they had pulled with he and Zephyr. She saw the end of her gratification coming on fast and had decided to upgrade her object of tumultuous passion.