Stories From the Plague Years (15 page)

Torture.

That’s the issue, isn’t it?

I tortured him, and this is his payback. His trick, as the dispossessed child of a dispossessed child. But he’s unfair. I’d let him go. I’d freed him long ago, and he won’t let me out of this place, won’t give me the peace of death.

When I’d come out from under Richard’s needle, I tried to cut my way out of here, a way cut out through myself. The one legacy from my father: the easy way out.

It was dark, and I was chained with my arms crossed when I came to. But it was simple enough to slide the links down to expose my wrists. I should inflict upon myself a Gothic end, poetic. What else should be expected of me, who, invoking the poetry of fiction, inflicted Gothic ends on others? I thought of Filippo Argenti, Dante’s enemy who, in Hell, went mad with anger and turned his teeth against himself.

I followed his example, and felt hot blood bubble into my mouth.

I spat out the skin of my wrists and sat on the bed and bled onto my blankets, so the sound of blood streaming on the floor wouldn’t bring the attendants.

Minutes later I heard a crash against the bars of Tuttle’s cell. (Could the little monster get through the bars of my cell?) Tuttle woke and started screaming again, blanket thrown over his face. Could Tuttle see it because he was a Fool? A Child? A Monster? Did all three masks he wore give him such Sight?

I was too weak to move when the attendants came into the hallway to check on Tuttle. Despite their coming, I knew I had a good chance of dying. But before they could return with the med kit, I felt pressure on my forearms, a small hand on each choking off the blood-flow to my chewed wrists.

The attendants saved my life. God damn them.

My aching wrists were then separated from the reach of my mouth by the thick canvass of a straitjacket. Undaunted, upon my return from the infirmary, I took another lesson from my poetic mentor, whose myths defined the killers’ myths I have used to define me. Dante wrote of Perdella Vigne, who, after a running start, smashed in his own head against the walls of his prison.

When I tried, a soft body placed itself between the wall and my head, clinging, perhaps, like a spider.

I’m sure my little victim didn’t mind the impact. He’s suffered worse under my rage.

I fell backward to the floor, as if pushed by a schoolyard bully.

My second attempt made quite a racket. The attendants came and bound me to the cot with restraints that look like seat belts. They took no chances, and left me in the canvass jacket.

And so tonight, I swallowed my tongue.

My victim opened my mouth and pulled my tongue from my throat. I tried biting the fingers, but my teeth passed through them as if they were clay.

My only hope is the cancer.

But that’s a vain hope.

Because I think my little victim is my cancer, displaced in some ethereal way outside my body.

My miserable life when I was young gave birth to Piggy. Later, my miserable life gave birth to my cancer. They’re the same thing, products of my mind under like circumstances. And when I faced death born of my own pent-up rage, I created a third set of circumstances. He prompted me to seek the catharsis that would free him with a single whispered word:
Why?

As I have been taking my life back by taking lives, Piggy has been taking back the lives I have stolen from him. Maybe that’s how he got a life of his own.

And a will of his own.

Oh, my. I’ve been using his Name, haven’t I?

I couldn’t not use it forever, could I?

So this is Piggy’s revenge, as all Tricksters have their revenge. Or his Justice, perhaps. His hunger for the Justice of seeing me imprisoned and broken, as I had kept him imprisoned and broken in my mind.

At least I hope he’s done this out of Justice, or revenge, or rage.

I hear him now, my exiled twin, the click of his feet on the hallway floor. He passes through the bars like a whisper. He runs a few steps and jumps atop my chest, where my raw and aching wrists press over each other in their canvas sleeves.

I can see him, this twisted little creature taken from my mirror image. His ugly goblin’s face is like my own when I was a child, and like a child, I cry when I see him.

Because I
am
a child again. I have no freedom, I waste here in neglect. The strait-jacket is so much like the restricting snow-suit from so long ago, an embodiment of my prison I wear as a garment.

Just like old times.

I am a child again, and Piggy is smiling warmly at me, like an old friend. And grinding my stitched wrists as he does so, he rocks back and forth, as a toddler would, expecting to hear again a much-loved story.

I hope he has done this to me out of rage or revenge.

Because I couldn’t bear to think he has done this to me out of Love.

Mother found me in the sun today and “
woosh!
” out she came on her fast legs when there were clouds and took me inside.

She wasn’t mad, but she held me against her fur and her tears fell,
drip! drip!
, on me and I started crying too because I was bad and didn’t want to make her cry. When she saw me cry too she kissed me and rocked me back and forth and she said my name, “Little Round Head! Little Round Head! What am I to do with my Little Round Head?” And then she sang me one of the songs I like so much and cleaned off the tears with her tongue. Later, Father came with food from down deep and he and Mother and me cleaned each other before we ate and I slept between them and felt safe.

I didn’t want to be bad.

Father and Mother played a game with me with sticks and bones. It was fun and there were songs to sing with the game and Mother and Father said the game was very old and the songs were from the Old Times. One of the bones was a head bone, and it was round and funny looking like my head and I picked it up and kissed it like Mother and Father kiss my head and called the bone “Little Round Head” like how they call me and I held it close like it was my baby.

Mother and Father thought that was funny and laughed, “Ha-Ha!” They held me close and ran their hands over my skin that doesn’t have fur like theirs to pick off bugs.

It is nice to be loved.

Father brought home a paper box with milk in it. When he comes home down the big pipe he shakes the paper box “
wusha-wusha
” so I can hear that there’s milk inside that he is bringing. He makes sound because I can’t see down the big pipes like he and Mother do.

Sometimes the paper box is covered with the sticky red food Mother and Father like, and they lick it off and I drink the milk inside and we pass the milk box in a circle so we can all have a treat.

Mother and Father eat the box when it is empty, “
crunch-crunch
,” because it makes them happy and I am happy when they are. I tried to eat the paper box once, but it tasted bad and Mother and Father laughed and said maybe when I am older I can eat the grown-up food they eat.

Father was about to eat the paper box when his eyes got big and he showed it to Mother and she said a whispery thing “
pishha-pishha-pishha
” and they folded the box and put it between them.

I asked what was wrong . . . maybe the milk was rotten and would make them sick. But they said, “No, No. Nothing is wrong, Little Round Head. You go to sleep now, and we will come sing you songs.”

I went because I wanted to be good. I heard them tearing up the paper box and I was worried that they would be sick and I would be all alone.

When I went to sleep I dreamed about the Bad Mother and the Bad Father. They are ugly mean things like giant babies, without soft grey fur on them like Mother and Father have, without the fur that I will grow when I’m big. The Bad Mother and the Bad Father yell at me and keep me in an ugly thing like a cage with wood bars. The Bad Mother and Bad Father burn me with little white sticks that they put in their mouths and make on fire before they burn me with the orange parts.

I start crying because I am so sad and hurt so much. But Mother and Father kill the Bad Mother and the Bad Father and take me away home.

When I woke up I was still crying, and my real Mother and Father came and held me close and said, “Shh! Shh! It’s only a bad dream, Little Round Head! It’s only a bad dream!”

They let me sleep between them and they sang to me and I had dreams about a dark place with shiny black stone steps going down and down to a place where I could play all the time and get my own food like Father does from the hunts.

It is a nice dream, and the Bad Mother and the Bad Father are far, far away.

Today Mother and Father had to leave me all alone, and I tried to show them I was brave. They saw I was scared, and before they left they gave me the head bone that I had kissed and they told me I had to be brave and protect it. They made a little body for the head bone out of straw and skin scraps so it was a doll now, and they gave it to me as a present. I was happy and I held the doll close so it wouldn’t be afraid and Mother and Father kissed and hugged me before they left.

I sang to my doll. I can’t sing like Mother and Father. Sometimes the words come out right, but most times they don’t.

When Mother and Father came back, they had cloth things that I wear with them. They tell me I’m getting big, and the cloth things that keep me warm are getting too small.

I say I want to have fur like them, and Mother and Father laugh and stroke the top of my head where I have the most fur and they say, “Little Round Head! You will be big enough soon!”

The cloth things are covered with the red wet food. Mother and Father put them in their mouths and suck out the red food, “
shluck! shluck! shluck!
” like how they sometimes suck food from the insides of bones. I take my old cloth things off and use parts to keep my doll warm. My doll is all bundled up to its little head bone.

When they are dry the new cloth things smell like Mother and Father’s mouths, and when I wear them, it smells like I am being kissed and loved.

That is the warmest feeling of all.

Father said I could go with him for food, that I was big enough and brave enough to come.

He made me hang on tight to his back, where there is lots of hair and skin, and he carried me through the tunnels. Sometimes there was water and Father splashed through it and I got wet.

Father caught two rats and “
rutch! rutch!
” he bit off their heads so we could eat them. But first he poured out the red food from where the rats’ heads were onto his tongue, because he knows I don’t like the red food yet. I tried once to bite off the head of a rat, but it bit me first and I cried and Mother grabbed the rat fast and smashed it against a wall and said words I didn’t know at it and it burned.

So until I am bigger Mother and Father will bite off the heads.

Father carried me to a place with a wall and he shoved against it, “
thud! thud!
” and it was a door that opened and there was air like outside. Then I saw an outside place that was dark and the ground was wet and had big stones in rows like teeth coming out of it.

I stayed close to Father, because I was scared of the new place.

Father crawled behind the stone teeth things and I crawled behind him. Then he stopped and smelled, “
sniff! sniff!
” and we crawled to one of the stone teeth that looked bright and new and in front of the stone tooth was a long mound of dirt that smelled fresh and different from the rest of the ground.

Father shoved his arm into the dirt and made a hole. He put his nose in the hole and wriggled into the dirt and dirt got shoved up as Father dug in and I heard noises like wood breaking and then Father came up with food and he jumped and stepped on the mound to make it like it was before.

He gave me food to carry. We went a little way, then I looked back because I wanted to see how Father had made the mound like it was before and I saw that the ground with the stone teeth ended with a big metal gate with spikes on top and past that was lights and buildings and houses. I remembered being able to see a place like that through a square hole in the wall of the dream place where the Bad Mother and Bad Father live.