The fog lifts. Coming out of a blackout.
He is on his knees. Toilet right in front of him. Violently sick.
Spewing. Not normal puke, though. Deep red liquid splashes across his forearm and hand gripping the lip of the filthy toilet bowl.
His heart leaps in panic. This much blood, he’s a dead man.
The smell of it hits him and he realizes. Red wine. This is nothing, then.
He laughs. Another surge comes up out of him as he does. He laughs and laughs with the red wine puke spewing out of him.
He collapses face down in the toilet bowl. Shoulders heaving. Red wine and stomach acid drooling out his nose. Mingling with tears.
Eventually it is time to move on.
All good things must come to an end.
The bathroom is right out of a nightmare. Old lady decor. Toilet doilies and framed needlepoint. Flowers and kittens and cutesy baby farm animals pushing hokey family positivity.
We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
The potpourri on the toilet is dust.
He drags himself up to the sink. It’s filthy, too.
Rinses his mouth out. Has a drink. The water is cold and good. Washes his face. Then his arms. Raises himself up to look in the mirror.
Mirror is a fright. He doesn’t look much better.
The bathroom counter is clear of biddy spoor. Can of men’s shaving foam. Some disposable razors. Cup with a frizzy toothbrush. Empty tube of toothpaste. Big bottle of no-name ibuprofen. Four antacid bottles: three empty, one halfway there.
He stares at himself in the mirror.
Another blackout. This one’s deep. He feels the gap of time pressing down on him. There are shadows moving around in that mist.
He does not want to meet them.
He doesn’t want to face whatever is on the other side of that door, either. But it is better than waiting here for the shadows to overtake him.
He chews up four ibuprofen. Washes them down with a good slug of antacid. Then heads out into the world.
It’s a bungalow. All biddied up. A real maniac with the needle, this lady.
Idle hands are the Devil’s playground.
It must be true; needlepoint kittens wouldn’t lie about such a thing.
Kitchen is a graveyard of pizza and Chinese take-out boxes. Empty liquor bottles. Jumbo-sized hefty bag full of beer cans sitting on the floor. Smells like Sunday morning.
Whoever inherited this place is his kind of fella.
Living room does not disappoint. Grandma was a proud woman.
The plants are all dead, though.
On the coffee table is the four-liter wine jug. Empty. Next to that is a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill and a gun. Snub-nosed 38. Looks like the one Jezebel got off the biker.
Shadows are playing around in the fog now. Laughing at him. Getting real close.
TV remote on the TV tray next to the lazy boy. The shadows chatter. He looks to the TV. It’s got a bullet hole. Not quite center mass, but not bad, considering that empty jug of wine.
Something more occurs to him. He picks up the revolver and swings the cylinder out.
Four spent rounds. Two left.
He closes the cylinder carefully, making sure to index the two live rounds properly. Sets the gun back down on the table.
Four shots. One into the TV.
The peanut gallery in the fog is going nuts now.
He knows exactly where to go.
Master bedroom. Already knows exactly what he is going to see there.
Dead biker on his back on the floor. Naked from the waist down. Stinking. Starting to bloat. So, pushing two days, then.
One gunshot in the stomach. Two more in the face. Back of the skull blown out onto the carpet. Brain matter and bits of skull and scalp in the congealed pool of blood.
One center mass to put him down. Two more to finish it.
Good work.
He goes back to the living room. Lays down on the sofa and lets himself drift.
Another one on board now.
Drifting in the fog. Letting the shadows play. No sense fighting it. They will have their way with him, one way or another.
The sound of the car pulling up outside wakes him up. In a sudden panic as he thinks Earl is back. He’s gonna be real pissed about that hole in the dash.
Jezebel instead. She’s got a big paper shopping bag. Sets it down on the coffee table and plops herself down in the lazy boy. She picks up the TV remote and points it at the shattered screen. Pushes the channel up button a few times. She’s real exact with it. Her thumb poised over the button like a scorpion’s tail. The manicured, enameled, red nail darting down with metronome timing.
“Shit. Nothing on. As usual,” she sighs, and flips the remote onto the table in a high arc. It lands hard and bounces onto the floor, its batteries popping out.
Jezebel goes into her purse. Gets Betti out, along with two smokes. Lights them both. Tosses him one.
He lets it land on his chest. Picks it up and takes a couple of drags before sitting up.
They both sit there smoking. Staring at the shattered TV screen in silence.
“You know, I hate to nag. But I come home from a hard day at work, bringing home the bacon, expecting to veg out in front of the TV with a glass of wine. And here’s this shit,” she gestures at the scene in front of her.
He snuffs out his cigarette in the overfull standing ashtray next to the sofa. He does a bad job of it and the butt continues to smolder. Stinking.
She sighs and wriggles forward to sit on the edge of the lazy boy. Stretches forward to grab the revolver off the coffee table.
“So, with the TV murdered, there oughta be two left, right?”
She opens the cylinder to check. Nods in satisfaction.
She spins the cylinder and swings the revolver to snap it shut.
He winces at this abuse of a machine.
She smiles at him, registering his distress. Sets the gun back down on the coffee table and spins its handle to face him.
“You wanna play? One for each of us.” She’s calm. Serious.
She leans back into the lazy boy. Gets Betti out again.
Clink. Scrape. Snap
Clink. Scrape. Snap.
Clink. Scrape.
He finally tears his gaze away from the gun. Turns to her.
She is staring at him over Betti’s flame. Her eyes, all black again, bore into him like twin gun barrels.
“Your call, man,” she says, real soft.
He looks away.
Snap.
“No? So, what then? How else does this end?”
She leaves the question hanging. Gets up and goes out the front door. She’s back in a minute, though. Swinging a small plastic bag with a heavy cargo.
“See? I knew these would come in handy,” she says proudly. Unknots the bag and dumps the loose bullets out on the coffee table. “38. Better to be lucky than smart, my grandpa always said.”
“Yeah, and what if you’re neither?” he asks.
She snorts.
“I guess ye wind up like you, huh?” she answers with a smirk.
“So what does that make you, then?”
She gives him a cold look. Opens up the revolver again. Ejects the cylinder’s passengers into her palm. Tosses the four spent casings at him.
He lets them bounce off without so much as a twitch.
She reloads the gun and spins the cylinder again. Swings it shut still spinning. Harder this time. Right in his face.
He looks away.
Standing right over him, she cocks the revolver and points it at his face.
“Look at me,” she says.
He just manages it.
“But you have burdened Me with your sins. You have wearied Me with your iniquities,” she proclaims, voice strong and steady. Like a judge delivering a sentence.
They stare at each other over the gun sights. Finally, keeping the barrel pointed at his face the whole time, she pulls the trigger and slowly lowers the hammer with her thumb.
She sets the revolver back down on the coffee table. Lights two more smokes. Hands him one before she continues:
“From the Bible, that. God to the Israelites, about why they’re enslaved by the Babylonians. And the Israelites are his chosen people, remember. His most beloved. And that’s how he felt about them just then. So you can imagine how I feel dealing with the likes of you right now.”
“So that makes you God, then, does it?”
“Where you’re at, I may as well be.”
He leans back into the sofa and smokes, his eyes closed. She stands over him and smokes. Staring at him.
Eventually, he opens his eyes.
“I’ve burdened you with my sins, huh? This all has been my doing, has it? That guy in the bedroom took his pants off just for me, did he?”
Jezebel breathes smoke over him. Leans past him to snuff her cigarette out in the standing ashtray. Puts hers out on top of his stinker. Snuffs them both. Because of course she does.
“Poor baby. Feeling sorry for yourself? It’s all my fault, is it? You gonna cry?” She laughs. Evil. “It’s your journey, man. Your car. You can leave whenever you want. I’m just along for the ride.”
She does a pretty little pirouette and sits down next to him on the sofa. Pats his back and gives his neck a rub.
“Poor baby,” she says again, this time like she cares. “You’re just about done, aren’t you. There’s not much left of you.”
They sit there in silence, staring at the TV in the cigarette stink. Like an old married couple waiting around to die, playing a game of chicken, seeing who rots out from the inside first.
“Funny that,” she eventually says. “The TV’s murdered, but sitting here staring at it doesn’t feel any different than if it was on. Just like some people I know.”
More silence. A few more cigarettes each.
Finally, a vagary of turbulence brings them a good whiff of the corpse in the bedroom.
“I guess we need to clean up,” he says.
“What? This place? What the fuck are you on? There aint enough bleach and sponges in the world. If you’re gonna worry about that, a couple jerry cans and a road flare is the way to go. But that’s the Bonnie Clyde story, there. You don’t have the engine left. Too much sugar in your tank.”
He can’t disagree.
“Poor, baby,” she murmurs, fiddling with the hair over his ear. “I’ll take care of you.”
She takes him into the bathroom. Gets the shower running. Undresses him while it heats up. Puts him in it. Gathers up his dirty clothes and takes them down to hall to the washing machine.
There’s no shampoo. One crusty bar of soap.
He doesn’t bother with it anyway. Puts his face into his forearms against the wall and lets the hot water beat against his back.
Soon she is naked in the shower with him. Washing him.
The bar of soap is enough.
“I like your scars,” she says, tracing her fingers over them.
Nothing in him rises to this. She’s right: there’s not much of him left.
But it is not just that. At this point, sex with her would feel like masturbation. They are now as two subjective expressions of the same being.
She takes good care of him, though. Washes him. Dries him off. Moving him like he’s a posable action figure.
Pretty much how it’s been since the start.
Swaddled in a granny quilt, waiting for his warm, clean clothes fresh from the dryer.
He is empty.
Finally.
But like the womb, this blessed state of being does not last forever.
Once he is again dressed, she packs up their things. Puts him in the car.
And she drives on, just this once more.
Muse Vassal 