“With the pain thing. I’m sure you think it’s very, oh, what’s the word, transgressive and cooler than the straights, but you don’t really get hurt, and you always know, whoever your playmates are, that you’re not really going to get hurt.”
She thought for a moment, glad not to be facing him.
“Yeah. You have a point. I can’t really compare it to a professional like you.”
“No. But what’s really interesting is that all this time you’ve been with me–“
“Weeks, now, right?” she interrupted.
“At any minute, I could end your life. Game over. And you talk and you joke and you fight, but you do know this. That I could squeeze the life out of you.” He demonstrated a little bit with his hands on her throat, then stopped.
“It will be as Allah wills it,” she intoned, when she got her breath back.
“I don’t think that’s your secret.”
“Oh, my secret! Well, I’ll tell you, by the way,” she sounded a little strange to him right then. “I said they don’t hit as hard as you. I never said how far we go in our little games. Whether there isn’t always that little bit of potential to go too far. Or that threat.”
“And why would that excite you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just all I’ve ever known. I’ve always lived like that. Under that threat.” She stopped and shook her head. “Well, not lately so much, but yes. And all through my childhood. Always some man with the capability and possibly the desire to kill you. Look around the world. That’s practically the definition of father. He’s the guy who can kill you if he chooses. It’s only up to him whether he chooses or not.” Her voice was no longer light. “I mean some fathers don’t do that. Maybe some of them don’t even think it, although that’s hard to imagine, but I’ve seen it. But Jesus Christ, how many fathers do? I’ll bet yours did. I’ll bet that for sure. And lots and lots of people’s. Lording it over us. Making their threats. Talking about their honor. Or what’s good for you. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’ How many acts of, acts of violence did you witness – or be part of – before you stopped being surprised by the next one? How many ugly, rageful – is that a word? – scenes? Before you started expecting, anticipating, counting down to the next one? In my sister’s room.” She pointed. “Over there. The one with the cherry bedroom set and the globe that lights up. Or my brother’s, down the hall with the twin bed and the built-ins. Or mine. The one with the stupid light fixture that was meant for plants and the mismatched furniture because I was an afterthought.” Her voice definitely sounded strange now, thicker than usual. “It was nice of you not to comment on that, by the way. I was always embarrassed by that.”
He turned her head around to face him, but her eyes didn’t focus on him. He left her on the sofa for a moment, as he went into the kitchen and got a large glass of water.
She was on the floor, her cuffed hands in front of her, crawling a bit toward the hallway where the front door was.
“You’re dehydrated,” he said shortly. “Drink this.”
“Your fault,” she sang. “Your fault. I’m fine.”
“Drink it now,” he ordered and pulled her back until she was sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa.
She made a face, but took a drink. Slowly, she finished the water. Sternly, he ordered her to stay put, then refilled the glass, this time with orange juice.
“You haven’t eaten, and the only think you’ve drunk is alcohol. You’re right,” he said. “It’s my fault.”
“Oh, what’s the difference?” she asked. “What is this? Like death row? Gotta make me all better before you kill me?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“You’re so funny.” She finished the o.j. and smacked her lips. “Hah! Gotcha. You admitted that you’re gonna kill me.”
“Congratulations. But I was kidding.”
“Oh.” She tilted her head back. “I’m still a little dizzy.”
“Give it some time. And I’m getting you some more water. Stay!”
She barked and then panted like a dog.
“Good dog,” he said, as he refilled the glass with water and brought it back to her.
“Yuck. I don’t want any more.”
“When have I cared what you want?”
“Good point,” she said and took a few sips. She put the glass down on the floor, and he took it away from her.
“I’ll give it back to you when you’re ready to drink some more,” he explained.
“So where am I?” she asked. “There or here?”
“You’re here,” he said softly.
“Too bad,” she said sadly.
“Why’s that?”
“‘Cause I made it out of there. Here, not so sure.”
He smiled fleetingly.
“You’re going to need to keep drinking for a while. Wait here another second.” He took the glass and went back to the kitchen, keeping an eye on her for as long as he could. Looking in a couple of cabinets, he found what he wanted, a runner’s plastic water container, with lid and straw. He put the glass in the sink and filled the plastic container, then brought it back to her. She’d actually gotten closer to the door this time, near enough to see that it had a shiny, new lock on it that required a key she didn’t have.
He just handed her the water.
“The lock is on the wrong side,” she pointed out.
He nodded and sucked his lips in.
“Keep drinking.”
“I’ll have to pee again,” she warned.
“That will be a good sign. I should have noticed you hadn’t asked for a while.”
“You’re a bad daddy,” she said.
He nodded again.
“But you’re used to that,” he said.
She nodded.
“Was your husband a bad daddy?”
“No,” she said, with conviction. “He was a very good daddy. I think it helps if you can get out your aggressions somewhere else. You might make the best daddy in the universe,” she suggested. Then she corrected herself. “No, sorry, but you wouldn’t. Some people are just bad daddies in every single way. No offense, but that would be you. Because you’re all about the power.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So, I would suggest that you not have children,” she said nodding at her own wisdom.
“I’ll take it under advisement. Keep sipping.”
“Blaaah.”
“Keep sipping.”
“You do realize this is ridiculous, right?”
“What?”
“You’re taking care of me,” she said.
“That’s because I love you.”
“Funny. Always funny.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“You could say that.” She sipped some more.
“Having you lose your mind this way is a cheat. Not a victory. And very short-lived. Just works until you pass out.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Now come back to the sofa.” He helped her up and steered her over. “And sit down. And we’ll behave in a civilized fashion for a little while.”
“Just for a little while,” she agreed. “Until I’m in shape for you to fuck the stuffings out of me again.”
“Exactly.”
She let her head hang forward lifelessly. “Can’t we just call it a draw? I mean, Jesus, this will never end. You’ll never deliver the knockout blow, and I’ll never persuade you to do anything different.”
“I’ve got nothing better to do,” he said. And shrugged. “So what do you want to do while we wait for your tissues to become re-hydrated? Another movie or we could play a game?”
She started to laugh, with an edge of hysteria.
“A board game,” he clarified. “One of those over there.” He pointed toward a shelf in a corner.
“Most of those games are no good for two,” she said. “How about another flick?”
“Ok. You choose this time.”
She smiled to herself. “Ever seen a movie called
Seven Beauties
?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let’s watch that.” She said it with a broad grin that made him curious. “It’s in the cabinet.”
“Alphabetical. I figured that out.”
He found it and stuck it in the player. And they watched, his arm around her shoulder, her cuffed hands holding the water cup as she sipped.
And so it begins, she thought, after that strange, brief truce. The endgame.
Make him reject any notion he might have had of kindness. That would only slow things down. Push him to hurt her more. Then laugh at him. Blow his mind. It seemed to be working.
And then things got fuzzy. She could swear she was in her childhood home; she could see the room. How did he do that, she wondered. Because he was there, too. But nobody else. She realized that she could escape through the doors of the old house; they wouldn’t be locked. But he kept getting in the way. Forcing her to drink something. He’d done that with the whisky. She didn’t want to drink anything. She just wanted to go out the door. She was almost there. But when she finally reached it, it wasn’t the old door at all, the one that was still in so many of her dreams, the one she was always trying to close against the wolf or the vampire or the monster or the bad man, with its loose, barely functioning locks. No, this was her door, and it had a shiny, new lock on it. She was in a different place, her place. No. His place, now.
Gradually she came back to herself. While he watched the movie she had chosen, she thought about her little lapse.
Was that how it felt? Was that what being crazy was like? It didn’t feel like what being crazy would be like. It was more just being confused. Was confused crazy or was crazy confused? Maybe.
Sanity was an interesting concept. In books and in movies, and especially in comic books, sanity was such a tenuous thing. People were always so close to losing their minds or splitting off into two parts. Something incredibly awful would happen, and their minds would snap. Except what did that really mean?
Schizophrenia was one thing, but it hit typically at a certain age and had a set of symptoms that could almost be understood by the outside world: imaginary voices, hallucinations, not knowing what was reality. But that wasn’t what people meant when they talked about being driven crazy. So what was it? What happened? Something terrible happened and ... and ... the mind just refused to accept it? Or sought refuge in another time or another place or another personality? Was that it? But why in some people and not in others?
What did breaking really mean? What exactly broke? She knew it happened. She’d heard of it, read of it, but what exactly was it? Was it the same as losing your mind?
Or was breaking losing your will? Really, truly giving up? Giving up forever? She had always heard that everybody breaks, eventually. From torture, that is. But she didn’t, couldn’t quite grasp what that really meant. Was it just a function of how terrible things had to be, that different people could withstand different levels of terrible? And when she hit hers, she would give up, too?
Yet it seemed to her that she had always viewed life as a series of terrible things, interspersed with waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. She had thought that for as long as she could remember and had never yet been disappointed. So what you did was, you tried to do your living in those spaces in between. Tried to get as much in as you could before the next cancer, or car accident, or mugging, or tornado. That was the natural state of things. But sustained terrible, intensive terrible, that’s what this man specialized in. Apparently, it was very effective. And there would be no escape until either she did ultimately break or she found a way to take him down.