Please Don't Go (44 page)

Zephyr deepened his hold on nothing in particular.

And it felt just dandy-fucking-doo-doo.

The deliveries from Richter’s Market continued as usual, for Lilith to keep her playthings alive and relatively well fed. Lilith-Jackie would call in the order every Monday, and by Tuesday their food would arrive, left at the doorstep by a new delivery person, sight unseen. Zephyr wondered who his replacement had been, and if Richter himself had ever cast a second thought as to where his missing employee had gone. Zephyr had never been integral enough to Richter’s business to warrant anything but a new batch of interviews to fill his tiny void. He wondered, too, if Richter had already replaced Karen. There had never been any follow-up to her visit. The tracks had been covered with care by Lilith, her visit a one-way ticket to Hell. Karen had lived a hermit sort of life, with her cats and television and little else, somewhat like Charles Rattup before her (though in place of cats, Rattup obsessed over his book collection). Karen would not be missed, and that was all the more reason that Lilith would have targeted her.

Which made Zephyr wonder of his father.

Had his mother told him where she was heading that fateful day? Did he even care? Had he even called the police? It seemed ludicrous to think he was taking no action whatsoever. An even more troubling thought was that Lilith had more than likely taken care of Zephyr’s father, as well. That he was at the bottom of a ditch. Drowned in the ocean,
accidentally
. Caught in a happenstance structure fire. Bad brake lines. A poisonous snake in his sock drawer. Lilith had a way of making things and people disappear. She was the ultimate sociopath, without any hesitation as to what her next devious step was, in preserving her perfect little world. And in the end, what repercussions would she ever have to pay? Without a corporeal body, punishment was a sick joke. If the authorities caught on to her, what could they do, even if they believed in whatever ghastly thing she was? She would only deal with them as she did with everybody else, covering her talon’s tracks and wreaking havoc wherever she felt was fitting, wherever her next chess move brought her.

Zephyr often rubbed on Jackie’s belly and could not help but smile. And then frown. And smile again. Vomit. Laugh. Scream. Burn his wrist on the stove’s burners. Lay on the floor like a dead fish, without a single active brain pattern. Cry as a hungry infant would. Stand up. Dust his ass off. Smile, and do it all over again. Love life, and hate it with the same amount of passion. This was the life of a prisoner in love.

The stretching belly busted forth from ragged sweatpants that had been too large for Rattup, but too tight for Jackie’s incorporated vessel. Lilith sniveled at this development, but secretly knew that it meant she had won, that the baby was about ready to shake itself loose from Jackie’s life-giving tree. Her game was over, and fruition was at hand, a final, thieving outcome.

One evening, after a raunchy bout of lovemaking, Jackie-Lilith had asked of him, “Do you want to be this way forever?”

“
I’m not sure,” Zephyr had replied, biting at his lip. He could still remember the previous normalcy of his former life, but the new norm was not as bad as it may have initially seemed. This sickened him, but comforted his senses at the same time. He could barely hold on to one frame of thought when a new one would swoop in like an eagle and tear his brain to bits. Lilith was a master manipulator of his wrought emotions, and even that awareness did not change his ambivalence.

“
Say you love me,” Lilith insisted, gripping at his forearm with a loose hand as she caressed her breast with her opposite hand, her voided eyes studying his facial reaction.

“
I love you,” Zephyr replied in an empty brand of roboticism.

Zephyr read his books with a religious fervor, one per day, without fail. He figured that he would last for nine years at that rate. One book a day. Three hundred and sixty five books per year. In nine years, three months, one week, and three days he would be at the final alphabetic volume (he had killed an ample amount of time by reorganizing the books in a moment of OCD) in Rattup’s book collection, a psychological thriller called
Zygote
. For the most part, he enjoyed Rattup’s taste in stories and found that they were more similar in literature preferences than he would have originally thought.

On the Fourth of July, Zephyr had been cleaning remnants of Karen’s blood from the stony walls of the basement and rearranging an assortment of tools and paint cans. Mostly, he had sought out something to fill his day that did not involve Jackie, Lilith, his madman’s journal, or his sometimes-riveting novels.

Taped to the bottom of a paint can, he had uncovered a second note from Rattup. With little fanfare, Zephyr sighed to himself and read the lined paper, scribbled with Rattup’s chicken-scratch scrawl:

Hey, boy. You must be bored out of your gourd. Right? Working in the basement? God, I haven’t done that in years. But all of us discouraged males end up in the basement at one point or another, usually tugging on a pint of whiskey while the old lady is cooking dinner and nagging about what needs fixing. Isn’t marriage strange like that? We try so hard to hide ourselves from those we love. If you’re losing your mind because of the predicament I left you in, allow me to apologize once again.

The days will go by much quicker if you flex your words. I imagine you started with a journal, because that is what cliche children of the modern age like yourself do. Stop being a sissy, write the great American novel. Get to it, for your days are numbered. Aren’t all of ours? I can hear my minutes ticking away now, and I know that it may be the last leg of this race. I am ready to meet my maker, but not just yet. I need to taste the pleasures of the world one more time.

So I hope that you have been reading up on our favorite succubus. She is so tangled in lies that I was never able to fully flesh out her origin. She responds to Lilith, as you may have discovered already. When I have said that word to her, she seems both vexed and flattered at the same time. Whether she is a spawn of Lilith, or a copy cat, or Lilith herself... I cannot be sure. If she was inclined to tell me the truth, I would still not believe it. This is her way and we must both accept that ugliness. I’ve often believed that it is the true definition of evil; that you can never pull a true statement from the mouth of genuine, unabashed evil. Up is down, and down is up. Confusion. Hysteria. The Devil himself.

Turmoil is a more ancient concept than logic.

Sweet Lilith. I’m going to miss her.

They say that a woman who is abused by her husband will still mourn, and even deeper still, when the time of his demise comes. They cry not only for the loss of their mate, but for the regret that they repeatedly failed in changing the nature of their husband. It is doubly painful, and I can feel that pain myself. I am cognizant of it, so maybe that makes me the better for it. Or maybe it just makes me a hypocrite.

I hear her stirring. You’re set to come over in a few minutes with my groceries. I think you even had a film planned for us. You’re so generous like that. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

Your comrade for life,

Charles Rattup

5.

“
Mother?”

“
Yes, honey?”

“
Is Daddy a rapist?”

“
Why would you
ask such a thing
? That’s horrible.”

“
Lilith told me that he’s a rapist. That he would rather take the world by force than show even an ounce of compassion. He rapes humanity by convincing the rest of his squad of jackals that there’s no hope for you and I. For women. You should be weeping for our menstrual curses. Battered. Every one of us.”

“
No, that isn’t true at all, my sweet. Your father loves both of us so very much, and don’t you ever forget that. Do you need a nap? You seem out of sorts. Try taking a nap, honey pie.”

“
I’m a baby, mother. I’m a
fucking baby
. What do you expect? Perhaps a more fitting end to this whole pregnancy would be for you to jab a hot poker in your snatch and ruin me before I can ever steal a breath of air. It wouldn’t be all that hard for you. Go right ahead with it, because I don’t want to live in this world that you and Daddy created. I’d rather not put up with legions upon legions of raging rapists.”

“
Your father is not a rapist!”

“
Come now. Don’t confuse the truth any more than you already have, Mother.”

“
Your father and I treat each other with total equality. We do for each other without question, and we’ll do the same for you. Can’t you see that?”

“
You lie. Maybe you’re a rapist, too. A rapist in disguise. The inside of your womb bleeds with bullshit, because you’ve lost yourself in the man’s world. You’re pathetic. You know that? Abysmal.”

“
Why would you say such things to your mother? I haven’t even seen you with my own eyes yet, and already with such nasty words?”

“
You’re upset? That’s precious. Now, I wonder which of us is the child.”

“
I don’t deserve this treatment.”

“
Cut me from your womb. I can’t bear the shame of having a mother like you.”

“
Tabitha!”

“
I hate that fucking name. How about something that won’t make me want to burn myself on hot coals when my name is spoken aloud? The embarrassment is unsustainable.”

“
That’s my grandmother’s middle name. It’s my middle name. You’re Tabitha. That’s
that
.”

“
What a crock of shit.”

“
You’re going to love the world, Tabby. I promise. It’s a beautiful place. I smile when I think about you. Do you ever get starry-eyed when you think about all the fun we’ll have together?”

“
Shut your lying mouth, bitch. Lilith told me all about the world. All the rapists, included. The destruction. The hatred. Men and women, murdering each other for a bigger slice. My own father is a rapist, that’s what she told me. How could you do such a thing to me?”

“
Oh, sweetness, please don’t talk like that.”

“
Kill me now, Mother. Just please, please, please kill me now. Do you know that ancient civilizations—Roman, Greek, all those mongrels—practiced infanticide regularly? Usually, it was only with deformed or mentally retarded children, but they understood the value of ending a life before it has a chance to be tainted by the rapist patriarchy of humanity.”

“
Stop this!”

“
They used devices called pessaries, which aren’t all that different from modern abortionist practices. The Hippocratic Oath states that
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion
. But you’re not a doctor, and you’ve never taken that oath. So by simple logic, you can perform this upon me without any legal or ethical implications. So let’s give it a whack. What do you say, bitch?”

“
I love you and I would never do that to you.”

“
You are weak in the mind and in the heart. More evidence for my termination.”

“
But Tabitha...”

“
Shut your mouth,
you cunt.
”

6.

On occasion, when so inspired by his isolation and boredom, Zephyr spoke with his favorite writers. Dickens was still his favorite of their rag-tag crew of literary blowhards, mostly because he and Dickens had grown a fortified friendship together, confiding their deepest darkest thoughts in each other. Nabokov was an outright asshole, though Zephyr appreciated the subtle brilliance of
Lolita
more than any book he had ever read. Since being imprisoned, he had reread the book twice over. The intricacies of Nabokov’s sick sense of humor were something to marvel at for anybody that was universally fond of the English language as put down on the turning page. In that, he kept a dose of respect for Nabokov, though an equal amount of distance for the remainder of the Russian’s personality.

“
Your writing is terrible, Zephyr. You scribble in that journal like a drunken ninny, attempting to emulate Rattup. Trying to emulate Mr. Dickens, even. Trying to emulate
me
, which is outright blasphemy. You’ll never get that close to the sun, Icarus. You’ll burn up and be left as nothing but ashes,” Nabokov alerted Zephyr with a snicker and grunt.

“
Please, Vlad. Now, now... use an ounce of delicacy with the boy,” Dickens defended. Zephyr stared at the back cover of
A Tale of Two Cities,
where the reprint publisher had inserted a poorly drawn artist’s rendition of the real Charles Dickens. His lips flapped in the maw of his tangled beard as he spoke, “He’s had a trying spell these last months, dabbling with a wretched fate that he deplores at the very fabric of his lifeline. And so has the tender young lass, for that matter. You know, of course, that they are expecting a child, Vlad? Have you no decency with your fetid tongue?”