THE AFFLICTED -BY FRANCIS SCOTT WEITZ -CHAPT. #1

The Afflicted (a journey through the myths, the mind, and the madness of man)
by Francis Scott Weitz -Chapter 1


“What the…..Damn…..Oh, shhhh…..F#ck!” I wasn’t in the most convivial of moods as I came to through a painful, hazy headache, to discover a variety of aches and pains distributed about the rest of my body, and to find myself with a strange perspective on reality. Upside-down and hogtied seemed to be my new outlook on life. My wrists were uncomfortably bound with rope. My feet were numb from the rope wrapped rather snuggly around my ankles, then looped once over the thick wooden beam above - or, from my dangling vantage point, ‘below’ my throbbing head. As I struggled to clear my vision, I could see that the beam in question had been roughly insinuated into the vaulted ceiling of the room - and added considerably to what one might euphemistically call the rustic décor of the dim little space serving as my personal chamber of horrors.
My socks were still on, and I was glad of that for the meager protection they afforded the tenderizing flesh that constituted my ankles. But, I was somewhat disconcerted, not to mention chilled, by the fact that my pants seemed to have been peeled from my person, and left in an altogether tampered-with state on the begrimed rug beneath me. Or was it above me? I thought, with apparently nothing better to do than hang out here this morning, that I might try to reconstruct what had occurred on the previous evening to land me in such an obvious state of disrepair.
Back in my younger days when alcohol and drugs may have accounted for finding myself in such a bizarre predicament on the morning after, I might be looking forward to a follow-up discipline session from some zealous and abusive pervert wearing nothing but a pair of spiked heels, and crotchless panties. And, I’d probably be praying to the God of all that is kinky that the gender of the pervert in question matched the outfit. But I had pretty much given up dosing myself with large volumes of chemical inspiration since fleeing my home state of Massachusetts to become a relatively responsible adult in Texas, with children and persistent debts to keep me relatively honest. I was fairly sure that kinkiness – on my part anyway – had not played a role in delivering me unto whatever weirdo I was currently hung up on.
I remembered getting a cup of coffee and what passed for a donut from that 24-hour convenience store/gas station in Alto on my way down to Lufkin for my first delivery of the morning. Let’s see, I came out of the store, crossed the street to my truck, checked the temperature on the refer unit, checked to see that some derelict hadn’t pulled the pin on my fifth-wheel, looked under the trailer – craning my neck to see that all the tires appeared to be intact, scanned the trailer lights that I could see from my position at the back of the cab, and POW!, out they went. Next thing I know, I’m playing a side of beef in this ill-conceived meat locker. Yea, that about summed it up. Damn, my head hurt.
[An asterisk before a word indicates that the word is defined @ the end of the chapter.]
“Hey!” I yelled, having nothing particularly meaningful to shout, or, as far as I knew, anyone to appreciate the difficulty a coherent monologue would, at this particular time, have entailed. The modest vocal effort didn’t do a thing to improve my state of being.
I was contemplating the potential value of a truly abiding self-pity when a hard woman of average height, with a lot of curly, dark-brown hair, and liquid brown eyes ablaze with what appeared to be a sort of post-debauchery glow, or some form of concentration beyond my ken, stepped down into the living area from the adjoining hallway.
“You wake the old man with that yelling, and you’ll be as sorry as you look, Frank,” she said pointedly as she walked by, heading for the kitchen.
It registered that my uniform shirt, with my name embroidered on the front, still hung on me. I don’t know how she might have made out the name in the tangle the shirt presented. I guessed she had been here for last night’s lynching and saw the name then. But thinking, even to the degree necessary to figure out this very minor mystery, exacerbated the pain in my head, so I tried to ban the activity from my consciousness.
I said, in what I was absolutely sure was a volume far too low to be heard by anyone but me, “Not much of a hostess, but excellent tits.”
After a short while, she came back into the living room with a cup of coffee in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. She was quite attractive in a rather feral way, standing there in her short shorts and too-tight tee shirt, braless and barefoot.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “I appreciate the comment sweetheart, but it might just mean a little more coming from a guy who wasn’t hung like a hamster.”
I didn’t stop to think of how she knew that. “Now, wait a minute,” I immediately and defensively responded, twisting on my tether to see her face. “I’ve always hung incredibly tight, but I can get up there bigger than the average White guy when it counts.”
Not being, apparently, the *credulous sort, she actually reached up between my legs, and stroked me. “That is absolutely amazing,” she said after a short time, and a long change. “From the miniature mushroom to horrible Heinrich the helmeted in thirty seconds flat.”
I was rather dumbfounded - and then completely so, as the old man walked in. He slowly approached the dangling man and the bold woman. From my thoroughly exposed position, I could make out his dark, receding hair, grown a bit too long for an adult; and I could see that he was clad only in a pair of well-worn dungarees. I thought that if the woman was feral and hung over, then this guy was positively wild, and hung well – metaphorically speaking. His dark blue eyes were on fire and his taught, bunched muscles fairly jumped as he lazily moved toward us. As he moved past, the energy from him was tangible. The thick, black hair was matted upon his arms and chest, as well as on his shoulders.
“Up early today, aren’t we?” he said, an eyebrow raised toward the undershorts housing my now rapidly retreating appendage, in a condescending tone that seemed to encompass both me and the woman. He continued on into the kitchen, allowing the question to remain rhetorical.
I am in serious f#cking trouble I thought – not the first time this thought had crossed my mind recently, but it struck me as a particularly immediate concern now. I was once again the mushroom man as I determined that not an errant whisper would escape my lips. The woman grinned *sardonically, then headed off toward what I assumed was the master bedroom. The sound of a shower beginning to run came from that direction shortly thereafter.
A cup of coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other, the man came back into the living room after a time. He sat in an easy chair, and essentially ignoring me, began to peruse the morning paper.
“I could sure use about four Tylenol tablets and a glass of water,” I said in an offhand way, ignoring my own resolution to remain silent, and beginning to feel like that blithe, little cartoon mouse who flips pussycat the bird in a last act of defiance. I couldn’t really believe that I had much to lose in breaking my *erstwhile vow. I had already lost all feeling in my lower extremities – and I was starting to hope I’d lose feeling in the rest of my body.
But the wild man was committed to *reticence. - And he appeared to be equally as committed to picking apart his paper in the scant light bleeding through the blinds and the drawn, dark curtains concealing the sliding, glass doors to the rear of the house. I was given a further chance to commune with my pain. I did my best to separate myself from it by extending my mind out into the room. A growing cloud of smoke hung above the brown paneling along one wall and crept into the recess created by the vaulted ceiling above me. The stale smell of old cigarettes, and partially consumed mixtures of whiskey and Coke, blended with the scent of pot and patchouli.
At one point, one of the occupants of the house switched on the stereo. I did my best to continue paying little attention to either myself or the people in the house with me. A classic rock station on low volume provided an appropriate background to the atmosphere of retro-biker/ demented hippies. When I once again returned to the nearly living (from my cerebral hiatus), the hairy guy put his paper in an organized heap on an end table next to the chair he was sitting in. He squinted up at me through his left eye.
In a slightly more dedicated drawl than the woman had demonstrated – one I was well acquainted with as a truck driver used to, on a fairly regular basis, getting off the beaten path and into some of the more-rural areas of Texas – he said, “You ain’t made this mornin’s paper, so no one seen me clobber your ass. And, I’d guess there ain’t no one out there missin’ you - or the sorry ass in question - yet.”
I thought his faith in the potential for journalistic speed (An event that occurs at 4am is not likely to make the morning paper – even if the event was witnessed.) was a bit on the unrealistic side, but decided, given my awkward position, not to point out this failing to him. I simply responded, as I began to worry about the repeated references to my barely concealed buttocks, and as I began to wish I had gone with boxers in lieu of briefs on this occasion, “Well, the folks at work will probably just want me fired for not making my deliveries, but the wife and kids are bound to be a bit broken up when I don’t make it home for supper.”
He stared at me, unmoved. Then he opened a draw on the aforementioned end table, and pulled out a large, glass syringe. He came toward me, brandishing the weapon. Continuing to speak in his *insouciant manner, he said, “We’ve all got our crosses to bear friend.” Then, raising the needle - a demented gleam in his eyes - added, “This is mine.”
With a sneer, he pointed the needle at my face, bringing it close enough to make me wince slightly. “Now you either keep real still, and let me get a good draw on the vein in the crook of your leg, or I’ll just open it up with a knife and get me a bucket full.”
I kept real still as he plunged the needle into the flesh behind my knee, found the range with the deftness of a junkie, then drew out enough blood to fill the large, glass tube attached to the large, silver needle. “Cheers,” he said, through the twisted, little smile on his warped, little face. He shot a dark-red stream from the needle - straight into his mouth - before greedily gulping down the goo. He gritted his teeth and emitted a growling sound, getting off on the rush the crimson cocktail obviously supplied.
I must have made a face to show my distaste because he laughed gutturally before showing me his blood-stained smile. He walked to the wall next to the entertainment center, and pulled a large machete-style knife from a scabbard attached to the paneling. He moved at me deliberately, raising the blade. “Let’s play,” he uttered from between his teeth. He launched himself from a standstill, achieving an incredible height - for a White man (or a mountain lion!). He then came down at me, in an arched blur, with the knife held high in one terrible fist.
I closed my eyes reflexively, heard the thud of sharpened metal on hemp and wood as the rope suspending me was severed. Suddenly, I was dead weight. I plummeted for the floor, balling up as best I could, pulling my shoulders flat to lessen the blow I was about to suffer. My knees, below my now unbound feet, I pulled in to meet my yet-bound hands. I managed to just avoid the coffee table under me, and even though I did hit the rug under it and on top of the wall-to-wall carpet, the quick, hard impact the floor made with the muscles above my kidneys drove the air from me. I grimaced and flexed, attempting to recover from the fall. My feet were numb, my ankles abraded and swollen, my muscles week with exhaustion - and my head split with a terrific ache.
I looked up through watering eyes to see the man waiting impatiently for me to recover. He looked at me with irritation, then looked down, noticing the knife which he still held in one hand. He glared at me with angry scorn before he threw it to the corner that the couch to his right made with the wall. The challenge had been issued. My body didn’t feel up to a good, or even a poor, challenge, but a new level of fear had begun to awaken my over-taxed endocrine system; and, I was, of course, hardly in a position to dictate the terms of engagement, or to pass up the proffered opportunity. I rolled up to my knees and steeled myself for action. I sprang to my feet, willing myself to ignore the pain.
I ran at the psychopathic sucker, and threw my feet out in front of me directly at his chest. I hit nothing but air - and then hit the floor. I lifted my head and turned to see him ten feet behind me. Immediately, I tried the same attack again – this time with my eyes open so I might actually hit the target. Three or four times, I was myself inexplicably hit by something that felt far more solid than flesh as I sailed past - where the man had been - on my way back to the floor. I’d seen a blur at best. I opened my eyes wide, and, jumping back up to my feet, flew at the man who had somehow materialized - again - ten feet behind me. Summoning an even greater rage, and trying very hard to ignore the spray of blood I’d just exhaled from my mouth and nose, as well as the sense that I just might be overmatched here, I tried to club Mercury, or Hermes, or Hercules, or *Mesmer, or whoever or whatever this f#cking scumbag was, as savagely as I possibly could with my tied hands.
I saw (or nearly saw) this time what I had missed altogether the two times I’d tried to kick his tits out through his backbone. In an inhuman flash, he utterly avoided my attack, instantaneously positioned himself ninety degrees to my left, and very quickly inflicted a series of sharp crushing rights and lefts to the same side of my face and nose that the other blows had already begun to seriously injure. He must have been at a bad angle, rendering him unable to get his full power into the first few shots he had thrown at me, because this second series of punches was, by comparison (and quite incredibly, I mused), considerably worse. Simultaneously, it seemed, he loosened a couple of my upper teeth, split my upper lip open, moved the upper portion of my nose a good half inch to the right of where it had previously rested - and knocked me unconscious in the process.
I came to in a moment, my eyes well watered as I struggled to my knees. As I attempted once again to attain the implausible goal of standing on my own two feet, where I might try to actually land a punch before my inevitable death, the being (currently taking the form of my hairy, little tormentor) materialized before me. He anchored me in my posture of *genuflection before him with an iron hand upon my shoulder. Then, holding my forehead in his vice-like left hand, he sharply repositioned, with his unforgiving right, my nose. He managed to wrench it back to somewhere approaching its traditional place on my – now abused - face.
I screeched through gritted teeth – those that remained – and raised my hands to my tortured visage. My tear ducts poured forth a shower of salty liquid. Not quite daring to touch any large sections of the face, I merely cupped the air in front of what had been a serviceable nasal appendage, and sought the few undamaged portions of cranium on which to rest my fingertips. Maybe I was trying to lend the poor nose a little emotional support in the absence of any that might actually be useful. Maybe I was praying to the Olympian lunatic before me to accept the blood already spilled, in lieu of the human sacrifice he appeared to crave. Maybe, I thought again, if I refuse to let an impious word pass the barrier of my teeth, I’ll be allowed to keep a few of those teeth in my heretical head.
“Sit down,” came a harsh commandment. Had my prayer been answered? Was the answer ‘maybe’?
I rocked back onto my bottom. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I hadn’t soiled myself. Through my clouded and closing eyes, I looked up as best I could at the distorted and watery wacko. The Earth shaker grabbed me by the knot of hands in front of me and swung me abruptly to the couch, as if supplying me with one more feet of outrageous strength, and adding one more injury to the insult - lest I forget who was so completely in charge here amid the waves of pain washing over my battered body.
He placed one hand on the tangle of rope still holding me fast. With the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, he pinched one loop of the rope, then quickly snapped it in two, freeing my hands. I unwound the broken rope, making no attempt to otherwise move, and incur some further wrath on the part of the little colossus. I’m a fairly large and strong man, and I’m not a total stranger to very aggressively protecting myself – but I’m smart enough to know the difference between aggression and suicide. I’ve come across a few inordinately powerful people in my life, but this character took all their cakes – and ate them too. I pondered, in the roiling depths of my mind, the ill fate that had, with such a dark and cold lack of premeditation, put me in the path of the little behemoth. The lunatic in question pondered whatever lunatics ponder.
[The thought occurred to me that maybe, in actuality, I had crashed my truck; and I was, like Tim Robbins’s character, after being gunned down in a strange and foreign land, constructing Jacob’s Ladder, out of the dream-like convulsions of my mind, in order that I may complete a truly horrifying odyssey – thus making my death meaningful. Robbins was I believe, in that movie, attempting to find peace (on his bizarre, cerebral journey) with his maker.
I could believe, even now, that death was merely death, the final step in a mortal’s life, and not the *penultimate step an immortal creature (far too important to simply cease existing) takes before achieving a metaphysical transformation from a rotting corpse to a winged angel dancing on the head of a gold-plated pin.‘Jesus, I really was f#cked up.’ But, why had I used the term ‘odyssey’ in my musings? Ah, because I’d recently read The Odyssey again so that I may, with a memory refreshed, complete the writing of ‘The Lament of Odysseus’, a long, free-verse poem based on that book. Would the convulsions of my dieing mind see me cross the itinerant path of Odysseus – or one of his several tormentors? Could I, as had the man of twists and turns, find my way home?
Damn, I’d tried, not long ago, to read Ulysses by James Joyce again. (Well, I’d tried to actually get through a good portion of it - for the first time - as listening to it being read hadn’t enabled me to get much out of it. Reading it hadn’t been any better.) I hoped now that I wouldn’t, as I climbed the metaphorical ladder to that place allegorical (the afterlife), start living in the pages of that damned book. I’d surely die confused before I got half way through my dream. I like allusions, metaphors and complexity as much as the next poet - but one day that lasts for 265,000 words is too much for even me. On the bright side, if I were to come across a tin of Plumtree’s Potted Meat in the pantry of the house I currently shared with the he and she-devils, I’d know for sure that my current trials were indeed all a figment of my warped imagination.
Come to think of it, the last thing I had been listening to was Richard Bachman’s The Regulators. So, maybe I’m in a nightmare powered, at least in part, by the King of horror. Might I direct the storyline of my delusion as one can sometimes, to some extent, direct a dream experienced while half awake? Maybe I could weave a tale in which Dr. Jekyll meets the son of pain (Odysseus), and metamorphoses into the horrific Hyde in the presence of a terrifyingly literate Irishman run amok in a very peculiar, entirely imaginary, and truly desperate Midwestern town? Hell, maybe I’ll have Hunter Thompson show up with his debauched attorney and a set of Mormon missionaries whom the *profligate pair have kidnapped, pumped full of blotter acid and observations from The Beagle (read, Darwin), then secreted out of Nevada in order that the deviated duo may seek - in the company of men no sane God would see harmed by the collateral damage likely to occur in the event of divine intervention – true enlightenment, and previously undefiled, young prostitutes in the truck stops of an unedited America. Hell, “If that line don’t fetch ‘em, I don’t know Arkansas.” (read Huckleberry Finn)
Add in Janet Evanovich (portraying Carlotta Carlisle) on a quest to besmirch the reputation of Linda Barnes for annexing – too damn well – her characterization of the consummate modern woman (tough - yet vulnerable, smart - yet ditzy, politically correct – yet horny) [I personally adore both authors]; and do a side story on Hemingway - who’s been sentenced, for his ill treatment of that Jewish guy in The Sun Also Rises – by, of course, the God of the chosen - to accompany Moses (who turns out to be entirely Jewish himself, and is, like any man of vision, in possession of a healthy quantity of the old burning bush – i.e., a plant one transforms into smoke so that he may, amid the ashes and that smoke rising, attain heavenly inspiration) on his reconstruction of Jack Kerouac’s ‘trip’ (A wink’s as good as a nod to a blind *Hellene.) across the land of the once beatifically free – now governed by men who have, recently, loosed the CIA upon its citizens (for our own damn good).
[I pray the FBI may retain a healthy portion of its traditional enmity toward the secretly bloated agency that’s made a tradition of tampering with American credibility throughout the world. I pray the FBI may keep us beatifically free from that Machiavellian menace now.] (read The Second Oldest Profession) Finally, there will be, for this tale in which darkness is illuminated and shadow made substance, nothing left but to seek the corporate sponsorship of Motel 6…66 - in cooperation with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers Without …Seatbelts and the All-American All-Anti-Tolerance League (formerly, Lobbyists Without Teenagers of Their Own – or Hypocrites With the Most Righteous Damned Lawyers Money Can Buy) – so that true mediocrity, the last rung on that ladder toward a death which is commercially viable, may be maintained, (after, of course, all the controversial bits are edited out). - Now there’s a book I could get disturbed over.]
As you might imagine, thinking had begun to hurt my head even more than it had previously hurt. My life may be an open book – but a peep show (even obscured by metaphor, and made meaningful by the lack of a formulaic appeal to convention) - it must not become! The pain between my ears had actually surpassed the pain below them. People, I was feeling seriously down. And, I was somewhat disconcerted by the notion, taking shape in a darkened corner of my greatly disturbed mind, that my delusions had become disproportionately Liberal.
Living among the fairly conservative population of Texas, I’m, of course, proud to nurture some fairly liberal notions; but, I am far too intelligent to be unbalanced – in, mind you, respect to philosophical dispositions. I’m not an all-out liberal - as I was neither born terribly wealthy (which may have afforded me the opportunity to feel, first, guilty and, then, gracious), nor have I attained the terribly visible status of either an actor or a musician (and, thus, felt obliged to nurture opinions which wouldn’t have to be defended with anything beyond the most obvious responses). More significantly, I am no longer young. And, although I grew up in the north-eastern segment of America, and retain a Yiddish surname, I’ve traveled around the country, interacted with people from foreign nations, was raised as a Christian, and am almost entirely unable to tan. I’m far too jaded – and, honestly, too complex - to be, any longer, a true liberal.
I could not be completely conservative either because I haven’t either amassed a fortune, or bought into the idea that I might be posthumously forgiven (for doing wrong) simply by belonging to the right organization.
[If I’ve offended anyone out there by my refusal to think along the strict lines that television shows, and the well-meaning minions of media moguls - or the radio shows of the religious right - teach us are acceptable, don’t take it personally. I will, before I’m through, offend everyone (as I - an opinionated moderate, a moderately strong proponent of the golden mean, and a sometimes seemingly suicidal man living in a glass house with many congested closets – should).]
I decided that I’d have to try to work Mary Shelley into my head-trip regarding the metaphorical manipulation of meaning in this book if indeed it turns out to have metaphorical meaning - and/or there’s anything I can do to impose my conscious will on what may be a subconscious component of the creation. If she turns out to be half as kinky as her husband Percy is purported to have been, then she might be fun to have around. Should I include Dr. Frankenstein, and his resurrected monster, to increase the likelihood that things may get truly twisted? - Resurrect Percy to add a poetic touch, and to have available someone who might take the monster in hand in case it gets excited?
[I thought an individual wasn’t supposed to feel pain in a dream. If that’s true, then this is something other than a dream.]
Damn, I was quite honestly in a considerable amount of pain. I sent my mind, again, out of my bewildered person, and my beleaguered cerebrum to explore my new environment. A weight bench to my right stood in front of the small fireplace in one corner of the room. Above the bench, the obligatory rebel flag was tacked to the wall with oversized pushpins. Beside the bench, a metal weight-lifter’s bar was dramatically loaded to capacity with large metal discs. To the left of the cabinet housing the TV, stereo and DVD player – which was itself to the right of the bench - was a thickly sliced cross section of a tree hung suspended from the wall. Two throwing knifes were buried deep in its lacquered rings. Beside that, was the hook from which he had taken down the machete.
To the right of the cabinet, a gun rack held a Remington shotgun, an ammo belt full of twelve-gauge shells, a baseball bat, and a couple of caps, one emblazoned with the crooked eight of Dale Earnhardt Jr., the other with a flaming Harley-Davidson logo. I noted that the gun was not equipped with a trigger lock. I *opined that hitting this guy with the bat would probably just piss him off, and that attacking him with a knife would, in all likelihood, result in serious bodily damage – to me. I refused to seriously ponder the potential results of going for the gun.
Long, vertical, wooden-framed mirrors faced each other across the middle of the room; and a framed Salvador Dali print strangely occupied the space between the couch and the mirror opposite the entertainment center. A couple of utilitarian rugs almost covered bald spots on the wall-to-wall carpet. A few plants by the large windows of the kitchen, throws bearing almost-feminine prints, as well as some other small touches and attention to details, evidenced the fact that the obviously masculine space was not devoid of a female presence. A Harley banner depicting a bike of an older vintage hung on the far wall across from the sliding doors and to the rear of a lamp stand and couch which was set perpendicular to the coffee table and the larger couch.
But enough of the interior decorating preferences of the pathologically gifted and pugilistically adept. I eyed the man who now patiently - or what appeared to pass as patiently in such a creature - stood before me. He seemed to be assessing whether the further brutalization of yours truly, or the smoking of another cigarette, might be the most entertaining way to pass the next few minutes of his morning. The woman moved once again through the room toward the kitchen, pausing briefly to chastise her significant other, after quickly surveying the caked blood and snot that started with my face, moved to my shirt and hands, and spread out like a morbid mosaic across the rug, coffee table, couch and wall in my vicinity.
“Anthony, I done told you to stop playin’ with your food. I’m the one who always has to clean up afterward.”
He looked after her dully, the picture of middle-American domestic malaise, then actually looked back to me as if I might offer some *polemic against, or sympathy for, this absurd affront to his mundane needs. I had worked one of my loosened teeth all the way out with my tongue, and I spit it, along with a wad of blood and mucus, into my fist. Oddly, I didn’t now know what now to do with it. I did know that I felt exactly no sympathy for Anthony, or concern regarding his relational dilemma.
I spoke - coincidentally helping him to change the subject - giving voice to the question I had on my mind, given our recent interaction. Sincerely, I questioned him, through the facial fracture that was my mouth, “What the hell are you?”
He responded, pleased, I perceived, to be diverted from the impending argument with the woman, but showing no obvious outward sign of feeling, “I’m a vampire.”
I looked at him blankly, brow furrowed, waiting for the punch line.
He continued, *phlegmatically, “A werewolf…a ghoul…the undead…one of The Afflicted.” “What I am…What we are…” he looked to the woman, to include her in the description, “has been called many things, by many people, for many years.”
He looked down at me; the cat addressing that defiant and doomed little mouse. “What I’ve got is a disease. And what you’ve got is a one-in-a-thousand chance – after we pass it on to you – of livin’ through it. That is, if I even decide to let you live – should you have the ability. Most like, you’ll be spendin’ your last few pain-filled days, here on planet Earth, to fill a need - my need. It’s one that I can’t stop, and,” he said, punctuating the point with a very firm finger to my chest, “you can’t stop.”
He turned to the woman, who was still in the kitchen, where she was getting some cleaning products assembled. He said, to her, while motioning toward me, “Cali, clean this up. And feed it.” “Feed yourself if you need to. Then put it away.” “I’m takin’ a shower, then I’m goin’ to work. I told Tommy I’d help him with that railroad-tie wall he’s fixin’ to build over in Rusk.”
He retired to the bedroom. I leaned back on the couch, and closed my eyes. I rested my poor, abused head against the vertical cushion behind me. Mumbling her *remonstrations, Cali came into the living room to clean up after Anthony’s play time. “Feet,” she said curtly, attacking the blood beneath my feet with a soapy towel.
I immediately lifted my feet off the floor as she tried to clean around me.
“Go sit over there,” she said, pointing to the far end of the other couch.
I dragged myself in that direction, *surreptitiously wiping the gore from my hand onto my already gory shirt front, as I went. She looked at me as if looking at a recalcitrant child, honestly quite upset with me for the part – of punching bag – I played in messing up her house. I gave a look, in return, which I intended to convey something between bemusement, contrition, and the mere expression of pain, but which may have been translated, by my battered features, into anything Cali may have cared to translate it as.
I stretched out, *supine, trying to give my body a rest, and to, at the same time, avoid soiling further, with the filthier portions – concentrated on the front – of my clothes and body, the couch I now lay on. I thought it absolutely ludicrous that I actually began to stiffen when Cali bent over to wash my blood from the couch opposite, and revealed a little more cheek than I was able to disregard. I closed my eyes - and tried to clear my head of lust, fear, despair, or any thought beyond continuing to breathe.
Shortly, Anthony reemerged from the other room. Despite my sincere desire to ignore him entirely, and trust that he wouldn’t attempt to amuse himself by dropping something heavy on my more tender parts (which, just now, were far more numerous than merely the two one might ordinarily think of), I watched him peripherally as he took a leather jacket out of the closet by the front door, collected some form of bagged lunch from the kitchen, gave Cali a pat on her incredible backside, and headed out through the garage.
I was pleased to see that the woman was somewhat irritated by the patting of her aforementioned posterior – the really nice one. Then, the sound of a garage door beginning to automatically open was obscured by the tell-tale rumbling of a Harley… and my #sshole unpuckered as the #sshole named Anthony rode off to work.

*credulous – a true believer.
*sardonic – scornful.
*erstwhile – former.
*reticent – reluctant to speak.
*insouciant – free of care.
*Mesmer (Franz Anton) – an Austrian physician and hypnotist.
*genuflect – kneel.
*penultimate – next to last.
*profligate – immoral; recklessly wasteful.
*Hellene – a Greek.
*opine – to hold, or state, as opinion.
*polemic – argument.
*phlegmatic – without emotion.
*remonstration – reproof.
*surreptitiously – secretly.
*supine – upon one’s back.