The Art of Self-Destruction (2 page)

He breaks away from her eyes and stares
intently at her chest. If looks could fondle...

"See something you like?" she says coyly,
opening her robe a bit more. Her nipple, hard and pointed, slips
over the fabric. It is pink and perfect. He can't stop staring.

"Am I supposed to?" he mutters.

She spreads her legs, the robe parting as
her thighs slowly separate, the darkness between them becoming more
and more realized, washed in the dingy yellow light of the window.
Her hand trails across her exposed nipple, her fingers teasing it,
and she moans slightly as she continues down to her crotch.

She lowers her head slightly, perfectly, and
raises her eyes to his. She connects with him and feels the neurons
snapping in his brain. She feels the blood flow downward and
stiffen in his pelvis. She can see his confusion and
desperation.

"You want me don't you?" she says to him,
pushing down on her crotch.

"Ok, this...this isn't what I paid for." He
starts for the door, fumbling for the wallet in his trousers.
Desperate, not wanting to lose this one chance, she stands from the
bed, sending a cloud of dust and stench into the air, and removes
her robe, tossing it to the floor. The redness of the fabric begins
to dull. "Yes it is. We don't make mistakes."

He reaches for the door handle-tarnished
gold, the signs of multiple wear; spots of pewter show through the
gold leafing, the sign of other hands and other men.

"Look, I didn't pay for this. You're not
supposed to be doing this," he says, turning the handle sharply. It
breaks off in his hand like candied rock. Sharp spikes of gold spit
out from where the knob connected to the door, glittering in the
light.

Dust floats through the empty tube that once
held a long screw connecting the two knobs, one outside, one
inside. He has the inside knob in his hand, along with the broken
screw still attached to it. The knob ends in a sharpened point of
metal, dulled by the light of the room.

She leans herself against the hallway wall,
her arms folded under her breasts, her legs crossed forming a
perfect triangle between her thighs.

She is Venus.

"I told you," she says quietly, "we don't
make mistakes."

He looks to the doorknob in his hand and then
turns his eyes to her body, "Then what's going on?"

She smiles softly, watching his eyes go over
her, connecting to the desire in him, "This is what you paid
for."

His eyes meet hers again. He nervously twists
the knob in his hand, tapping the end of the screw against his leg,
"I said I didn't want sex. I think something is wrong with the
story."

She laughs at this, her voice ringing clear
throughout the room. The sun brightens for a moment, cooking the
lone sock further, sending out putrid signals of decaying
existence. "A story eh? What harm is a story?" she says, unfolding
herself from the wall and walking over to him.

She takes his free hand in hers and places it
on her breast, feeling her nipple grow harder against the pressure
and the uncontrollable impulses of his fingers constricting against
it. "If this is a story, then you have complete control don't
you?"

Matthew doesn't remove his hand. He pushes
her backwards, toward the bed, slowly. His brain has lost control
of his motor functions, electronic signals becoming mixed and
shorted across the nerves. His fingers clench around her erect
nipple, toying with it, making it grow harder. She moans as he
pushes her down on the bed and straddles her.

The fan above the bed begins to spin faster,
catching the minute molecules of sweat and pheromones, spreading
them throughout the room on an invisible breeze. The room begins to
stink of sex and fluid.

He pushes his body on top of hers. She
can feel the hardness in his trousers pressing into her leg, smell
his breath, and see the sparks erupting in his eyes. He presses his
face close to hers, the tips of their noses touching. She arches
her neck, trying to touch his lips, to claim him finally. Her head
is yanked sharply onto a pillow, his free hand wrapped tightly in
her hair.

"Is this what you want baby? You want it this
way?" she thrusts her hips up to meet him, moaning.

He tries to push her body down with his other
hand, the gold from the broken knob rubbing off on her skin. A
patch of light erupts from her hip bone, reflecting, casting a
ghost onto the ripped and yellowing wallpaper of the room.

He lowers his head, his hair brushing against
her face and her breasts. She attempts to thrust her body into his,
but he continues to hold her down. "Please? Please? Just once, just
once I'd like to...just this once, please? I'm sick of everything
else of one thing all the time of being me of the thing I am and
what is to become and..." she gibbers in his ear, her hips
thrusting upwards with each syllable, stuck in an infinite
loop.

The fan above them begins to creak louder,
the blades shuttering in the stagnant air. His eyes turn to the fan
and its manic gyrations. She sees him as a frightened boy, his eyes
wide and hair tussled. "This is not what I paid for," he
mumbles.

Her head jerks to the right and pauses for a
moment, her eyes open wide, her body stiff. She becomes a
mannequin, a harlequin, painted whore/Madonna frozen in time; wax
or porphyry. Then the blood returns, her body softening, head
moving naturally to position her eyes upwards at him. A crooked
smile breaks her perfectly smooth face as she lifts her hands and
runs them slowly through his hair, "Yes it is baby. It's exactly
what you paid for," she says. "You paid for me, for this, this is
what you want right?"

His head snaps down, his eyes meeting hers.
The connection between neuron and serotonin reestablished, she no
longer reads him. He is empty. "This is perverted. I don't do this
shit. I said no sex." His voice grows in intensity, the adolescent
squeak banished.

She laughs-a guttural laugh, deep inside, her
body becoming an acoustical resonator, a sound board. Wrapping her
arms around him and bringing his body closer to hers, stroking his
back with her hands, she whispers in his ear "What do you mean
perverted? Sex isn't perverted."

To prove her point she slowly reaches a hand
up to caress his neck hairs. She can see him shudder as the nerves
send impulses to his brain. She starts to slowly pull her
fingernails across his skin, saturating his brain with pleasure.
Then she slightly scratches the skin, just a little, to add pain to
the pleasure.

He shakes his head, trying to remove her
hand. In the process, a fingernail is dragged roughly across his
neck, breaking the skin. Blood starts to slowly trickle from the
wound. She can see him flinch in pain. His eyes are angry. "This
kind is." Matthew continues to struggle.

"Since when have there been multiple types of
sex?" she asks, smiling warmly, "I thought there was just sex."

He tries to push away from her, but she
tightens her hold on him, pulling her body closer to his, her
breasts pushing against his chest. She can feel his erection on her
thigh. She tries to maneuver her hips so that they are aligned with
his. His struggling only causes him to get harder.

"I don't need to pay for this. I didn't come
here for sex."

She raises an eyebrow, "Are you suggesting
that I'm a prostitute?"

"Yes. Yes, you're a whore. I got the wrong
story. This isn't the one I wanted. I didn't want you, I wanted
someone else. This is wrong. Let me go!" His muscles tense as he
tries to push off of her. She won't let him. She laughs in his ear
as he grunts with exertion, lifting her legs and wrapping them
around his waist, locking him in place.

"Oh God, just this once?" she pleads. He
begins to thrash, trying to loosen her grip. Her legs tighten
around him as she unravels her arms and slips a hand between their
bodies. She begins to murmur, a low sound, repeated over and over,
"Please, just once; please, just once before...; please..."

Her fingers search out his belt. She begins
to unfasten it. "Just once just once, please, please I'm so tired
of existing as this as, just once please, this place these I want
and just once is it nice? is it nice? is it nice? I'm so tired and
you I know you I know you I know you I know..."

The click of the metal flange connecting with
the rectangular buckle seems to echo loudly in the room; he grips
her shoulders suddenly and fiercely, forcing her down onto the bed,
pinning her arms with his elbows. Then, with her legs squeezing
tighter, her nails scraping harder across his back, and her manic
babblings, Matthew manages to choke out the word "end."

The room ripples, waves of heat refracting the sepia tone, blurring
her vision and sending her into vertigo. A screeching comes from
the window, someone pulling fingernails across a slate board. The
sound increases exponentially, becoming louder with each second.
Still hovering over her, painfully holding her arms down with his
elbows, he begins to shudder violently, his body gripped in a manic
palsy.

His image doubles, triples, her eyes unable
to focus on the singular form in front of her. Instead, he exists
in Doppler, blurred images of his body shuddering back and forth.
His mouth is open in a silent scream and his eyes are rolled up
into the back of his head, the whites exposed.

The bed begins to shake with his movements,
the springs squeaking and the headboard hitting the wall. Sounds
engulf her, the screeching, the bed, the creaking fan, the sizzling
sock; his elbows grind into her arms leaving painful white tattoos
in her flesh.

She fails to notice the burning in her neck
until her blood stains the sheet.

Then it is over, the rippling, the
screeching, his manic shuddering. The room has returned to its
original color, the fan creaking slowly above.

She feels an immense lightness take over her,
a glimpse of memory and nostalgia. End, the single syllable erupts
in her head. End, over and over. Above, in her blurred vision, she
can see pulsating red lights; dark red, watching her, never
wavering or moving. Right above her.

She has been here before, done this before,
countless times. Only there was never a sock baking in sunlight,
never the smell of sweat and dirt. This is new.

She can see a figure hovering at the side of
the bed, her peripheral vision exposing a dark mass blocking the
light. He is standing over her, his body a silhouette, looking at
her as she lies prone, naked, open to him.

Then she feels the stickiness on her
shoulder. She tries to turn her head but finds that it is rooted
solidly in one position, unable to turn or lift. Her body becomes
something separate than herself, a shell of empty importance.

However, her eyes are still functioning, her
brain still computing the immense visual information it is
currently receiving. And she sees red, a great pool of red. Red
lights, red fluid, red anger pulsating, hatred, emotions that have
seeped into her through the ages.

She wraps herself around the color, finding
comfort in it, a familiar friend that is always there at the end,
always watching over her.

The sheets have become saturated in red, the
tiny fibers and threads absorbing all that is possible, forcing the
excess color to pool and flow. She becomes aware of the pumping in
her neck, the steady and continual spurts of arterial motion. And
it comes to her in a moment of clarity that although she is,
indeed, bleeding heavily from the neck, she feels no pain. She
can't see the cause of her injury, the screw embedded deeply in her
flesh, but she can sense the door handle-its tarnished gold knob
refracting the faded light from the window, casting wavering ghosts
on the wall. Her blood spurts across metal, dripping like syrup
from the cylinder, greasing the threads.

And he is watching all of this, standing
right next to her, blocking the light. A bubble of blood erupts
from her mouth as she parts her lips, oily like soap, popping
suddenly and splashing her face with drops of red.

"See," she gurgles deeply,
"no...mistakes."

"I guess you're right," he mutters, shifting
back and forth in front of the window, the light eclipsed. She is
engulfed in a wave of his sadness, despair and hopelessness so
strong that she would have fallen to the ground shuddering if she
could move.

She tries to speak, to tell him to stop the
fluid movement of his body, but is unable to move her tongue. The
pumping from her neck slows, her pupils constrict, and the room
begins to grow dark. She watches him move from the side of the bed,
across the slash of light from the window, walking across her field
of vision and disappearing into the hallway.

She hears the door creak open slowly-somehow
without a door knob-and then click shut. Her periphery is gray,
melding together into the absence of color. However, right above
her, staring down like burning stars are two red lights, constant
and glaring. Watching her and waiting.

The room folds into a singularity. She is
awash in electrons, fading into the binary, machine language
invading her mind. And she is no longer on the bed. No more blood
and soaked Egyptian cotton, flowing through the pure numbers and
contradictions of code, coursing through circuits that eventually
are broken, stored in memory, silent and cold.

#

Everything dissolves and blends into the
darkness of the small room. Before him is a scratched metal door
glowing sickly brown from the single halogen hovering over it, the
only source of light. Whispers and moans careen outward from the
black perimeter echoing across riveted aluminum siding. Charcoal
darkness.

Points of red splatter outwards, pinpoints of
color punched into black. Colored eyes leering or instrument
panels; either is a bit sinister. Matthew rests his hand on the
cold metal of the door in front of him, scanning his lower body
with his eyes, looking for any signs of blood or secretions. There
will be none, of course, all fluids disappearing into an electronic
net hidden in silicon. But he cares.