Blood & Gristle Read online

Never.

  In happiness, or sadness, or joy, or rage.

  Never

  Even brimming with triumph like on that fateful fall afternoon when Edel finally took custody. A look of complete and total satisfaction brightened her ancient face (old even then), but there was still something strange, something liquid and floaty going on within the old woman’s weathered sockets. Like her insides were only half formed. Like a part of her soul was translucent. Like an absence (of what?) somehow justified her needs. Like she was trying to fill an impossible void.

  No matter what happened, no matter the evil firing in the old woman’s brain, no matter her extreme predilections, there was no denying Edel’s kindness. Paige appreciated the treats and love, and in turn loved her for her care and support. When they hugged, pseudo-mom and pseudo-daughter, there was real emotion charging between them and Paige felt safe (even after the pain, even after the pain).

  Those first, few, good years were worth it. Paige felt brand new. Freed from the group home, given fresh opportunities, a new mom, a new life, the world finally felt…right. No more crying in her pillow after the other unwanted kids fell asleep. No more sharing a bathroom with eight others. But now, thinking back, as horrible as those times seemed, Paige would trade the frustrations of adulthood, of dysfunctional relationships, of feeling hollow and inadequate, for the security and confidence of childhood (at the home or newly adopted with Edel) in a heartbeat. Those years (even the group home years) were nice and sweet, fueled by cards and movies and board games. There were pleasantries and heart-to-hearts and life lessons, and when Edel came into the picture, she played the patient guardian role perfectly.

  Everything since had become a muddled mess and Paige’s emotional centers seemed to manufacture feelings that felt flat, dull, and out of whack. She didn’t know if she was capable of love or understanding or compassion. She hated everyone and everything. She looked forward to new relationships – not for warmth or security or love, those things were nice for a while – but, she looked forward to meeting someone new so she could tear them apart and break them down.

  What happened to the sweet little girl that prayed for a mommy and a home and happily ever after?

  In a word? Time.

  Time changed everything. EVERYTHING. Everything, save for maybe (maybe) the love between her and Edel, save for maybe (maybe) that deep wordless bond. But as frayed by guilt as their connection had become, it was still there, it was still alive and humming as strong and as sure as their thumping hearts thumped in their sharp ribcages.

  After the adoption, Paige was ever obedient, ever complacent, ever there, ever willing to spend her every waking moment with her doting guardian, but time passed, Time, Time, Time, and Edel refused to accept the inevitability of maturation. She refused to let Paige grow up.

  Which worked for a Time, but maturity matures and there was no stopping the adolescent forces of Narcissism and Entitlement. Forbid and forbade were just words. Windows opened quietly in the dead of night.

  Of course, the very thought of crossing Edel made Paige sick to her stomach, not sick enough to keep her grounded in her room, but sick enough to give her pause and squeeze her roiling guts with nervous pressure.

  The first time she snuck out to meet her boyfriend, Bobby Ray, at the abandoned fish hatchery, Paige actually threw up. Bobby Ray rubbed her shoulders and kissed the back of her neck and tried to take things as far as he could, but before they got too far, Paige thought about disappointing the woman who saved her from the child care system and the nausea struck and the vomit gurgled out clear, odorless and colorless, strange, as if it weren’t vomit at all, but a puddle of guilt turned wet and purge-able.

  The puke reminded Paige of Edel’s blue-clear eyes when they flashed angry and waved wild like storming oceans. Shamed, wiping the excess bile from her mouth, she ignored Bobby Ray’s mortified cries for her to, “Come on!” (throw-up killed the mood fast) and stared transfixed at the regret and rage she envisioned floating within the amniotic sea of her cooling vomit.

  The vomit was gross, the guilt hungry, and Bobby Ray anxious, but something inside drove Paige on and her bad behavior continued. And continued. And continued. And continued.

  When she got caught, the punishments were severe.

  Edel’s house was built atop a dank, dark, dungeon-like basement, all mildewed and moist and spider webbed. Growing up, the door to the basement was perpetually closed. Edel never went down, and Paige, poking her head into the impenetrable dark as a curious kid, tried to forget it was even there. They had an exterminator out one time, mice or something, but other than that the basement door stayed shut and Paige was happy to stay away from it.

  Edel was waiting for her when she snuck back in from one of her dates with Bobby Ray. The old woman raged, told Paige she was on to her, “Wicked ways,” and then grabbed her hair and dragged her down the warped, creaky, wooden basement steps.

  A ferocious flame blazed behind Edel’s eyes.

  An ocean of fire.

  A translucent fire storm.

  It was a horrible thing and had Paige not seen it (hundreds and hundreds of times thereafter) she wouldn’t have thought it possible.

  A sweet old woman like Edel?

  Her savior?

  No way!

  For her first offense, Edel locked Paige up for a full week. Only bread and water and the moldy dark. Paige crawled around the basement and tried to escape, but the door was sealed tight and there was no other way out. After a week of imprisonment, Edel opened the door and went along as if nothing had happened. She smiled as sweet as pie and took Paige shopping and made her favorite dinners for a week straight. They didn’t talk about her punishment. Ever.

  The second time she got caught, meeting Bobby Ray again, even letting him get to second base, Edel stripped Paige of her clothing, forced her into the dreary dungeon and physically chained her to a stone wall. She beat her with her liver spotted hands and then left her dangling for two whole weeks.

  By the time Edel released her bonds (thick, cracked leather straps), Paige was filthy and delirious. The old woman helped her upstairs, tenderly washed her body and then tucked her into bed. Again, there was no talk of the punishment.

  Paige flew right for a solid month, but then something inside snapped. It dared her to push, to see just how far Edel would take it. So she snuck out and lied and stole and cheated and this Time went all the way with Bobby Ray.

  The old woman was beyond furious. She locked Paige up and burnt her with cigarettes (her nipples, her labia, her asshole – never her face or arms). She beat her with a golf club about the chest, back, stomach and buttocks. She cut her stomach with a steak knife and burned the bottoms of her feet with a curling iron.

  “Justice,” Edel rasped, eyes shining, her upper lip glistening with sweat, “is served.” Out of breath, smiling, absorbing the charged basement air, her clear eyes flittered crazy and her brain flared a deep red.

  Paige healed up and then got back it. Sneaking out, lying, cussing. Edel punished her again and again. Paige fought back a few times. She swung her hands wildly, trying to hurt Edel for hurting her, but not really, not seriously, after all, deep inside she knew she deserved what she got, she knew she wanted what Edel was doing to her. Besides, if she really wanted to hurt her, the old beast was made of metal, her aged frailty an elaborate ruse, her bird thin arms strong beyond belief. Even at the end, in the weeks before Paige packed up and left for good, Edel, thrashing and branding and burning and cutting, looking every bit as broke down as any old woman possibly could, rippled with incredible vibrancy and strength amongst the moldering stones of the glib basement.

  Over the years the punishments became less about discipline, less a response to minor or major infractions, and more about necessity. The old woman needed the control. She needed to administer the abuse. Paige saw it in those leaky, see-through eyes. She saw it when they went a few months without descending the basement steps. Without the ritual of blood, swe
at and bruising, Edel withered. She grew absent minded, frail, lost. She left cigarettes burning and slept through Judge Judy. She stopped noticing when Paige snuck out (deliberately and loudly).

  But when Paige roused her and offered up the curling iron or a baseball bat (the old woman had taken to shoving things inside tender orifices) her oceanic eyes sparked and her brain came alive. When Edel raked young skin or bit at supple flesh or shoved and shoved until blood welled, a light, a thrum of electric joy, shone from her non-eyes. Her gray brain flowered pink, and color gave her emaciated cheeks a little faux plump.

  It was amazing to Paige that after all this time, after all of those years of ferocious therapy, the only thing that stood between Edel and eternal sleep was the silently humming current.

  A simple, misplaced step is all it would take.

  An accident.

  A mere twitch.

  But even then Edel wouldn’t kick over. Paige was sure of it. The moment she got her knees and yanked the plug free, the moment she broke the rules, Edel’s primeval eyes would pop open in discomfort and surprise and then Paige, fearful that she might drown, would scurry quickly, heart like a skittish spider crazy in her chest, to plug Edel’s life back into the electrical wall socket.

  Thusly she was convinced, Edel, like cockroaches and disease and unpleasant metal chairs, Edel, like crying boyfriends and blistering hot irons and crazy love, would live on and on, forever and ever, into the ether, on and on, into the very seeds of Time and Space themselves.

  BRIMMING NOBILITY

  Recognize – Jimmy Segona IS a bastard. Not like Jesus or fatherless children, not in the literal sense of the word, but ethically so. Had someone had the balls to point this out to him a week ago, Jimmy would have no problem breaking them, him or her, into tiny, little nothing pieces. Recognize – Jimmy would have zero problem destroying them, him or her, and pissing on whatever remained of their fool face.

  But hold up - actions spoke volumes, clarity was a bitch, self-realization a motherfucker, a bastard, a real, slimy bastard, and Jimmy, try as he may, was hard pressed to refute what was what. The ugly truth dawned and curdled something inside. The machismo that carried him cocksure and confident had withered some.

  Tonight was the worst night of his life.

  Recognize – tonight, Jimmy Segona saw who he really was. It was a sobering experience to say the least.

  Cowering (coward, cowardice, chickenshit) from external forces, he holed up in a grimy, downtown bathroom and took his place before one of the muck encrusted mirrors that lined the wall. The filthy, safety glass reflected back misshapen and warped. He looked skinner, skeletal, weak, lost, inhuman, subhuman.

  He narrowed his focus to a fine point, stared beyond the grime into his own dark eyes, and tried to catch a swirl of thought.

  Nothing.

  Jimmy refocused and looked himself over.

  Too much bad living. Too tired. Too young to be so old. His good eye, the one that kept its alignment and functioned true, winced in disgust as it examined the huge, porous pores adolescent acne had left his skin to reconcile with. His other eye, freshly gouged, freshly crippled, freshly bloodied, wavered useless and stared off milky into the unknown.

  Tears welled in both.

  He thought he knew who he was.

  He thought he knew what he was all about.

  He understood that he was worthless.

  He totally got that he was a first rate scoundrel, resigned to thievery, lying, conning, cheating, jerking (bastarding).

  He got it.

  He dug it.

  He embodied that shit.

  But, despite that tickling disdained for authority, despite the fire in his heart that disallowed settling, despite the ill will that formed a second, callused skin over his brain, he knew that he was Strong and Courageous and Loyal.

  So, so what if he was a bastard?

  He didn’t want to hear it from you.

  Jimmy knew what he was and he was okay with it. He was happy. He looked forward to telling you to fuck off, or to stealing your car, or to selling your son some crack. He thrived on as much, and so long as he possessed Strength and Courage and Loyalty he could live with himself. As long as he has some redeeming qualities, especially big fuckers like Strength, Courage and Loyalty, he could take the bad with the good. Yeah, he was a rat bastard motherfucker, but that solitary sliver of upstanding characters lent him definition. It imbued him with a glimmer of honor. It was his saving grace.

  Strong and Courageous and Loyal.

  Or so he thought (cowering, cocksmoking, coward).

  In his twitching, trembling hands he gripped a round leather pouch. His namesake, Jimmy, had been stitched across its surface in red, loopy cursive. Unzipping it, he shook out a Magic Eight Ball: novelty soothsayer, security orb.

  Jimmy dropped the pouch and let it fall flatly to the waste stained tile. He held his breath and closed his good eye.

  Concentration then. Long, hard concentration. Long, hard, rigorous concentration. After a moment a question took shape beneath the quagmire of fear and disappointment clogging his brain’s center.

  He shook the Eight Ball vigorously, turned it window side up, opened his eye and noticed slimy clumps of dried blood circumventing the sphere’s surface. Jimmy wiped the gunk on his sleeve and started the ritual over. He shut his good eye and searched his brain for that all-important question and got to it. Mid-shake, a small clicking sound emanated ominously from somewhere outside the public restroom. He opened his good eye and froze. Nausea rose. His bad eye throbbed and his train of thought derailed.

  The little triangle in the Eight Ball’s window bobbed. It came up, Not Likely.

  Jimmy stared at it dumbly, an empty answer to a nothing question.

  The clicking sound got progressively louder.

  He freaked the fuck out. A high pitched little girly scream scraped through his throat. His good eye went so wide the musty, stale bathroom air chilled the wet gray of his panicked brain. Waffling for a second, he spun his feet in a cartoon spin and then bolted for the temporal sanctity of an enclosed stall.

  Locking the door behind him, Jimmy paced the length of the puke green handicapped enclosure (two steps forward, two steps back) and then pressed his coarse skin to the cool surface of the stall wall.

  He worked at blocking out the pungent odors, the fearful sounds, the fearful thoughts.

  He closed his eyes hard and then harder still until he saw flitters of light firing behind his eyeballs.

  Mind-state. Mind-state. Mind-state. Recognize – mind-state dictated everything. Jimmy learned this early on. Escape was only a few contrasting thoughts away. The key was to latch on to one and stick with it. So, he sat down on the toilet bowl with a sorrowful grimace and contemplated, among other things, his tarnished self worth.

  Screams nullified the graceful quiet of night. Jimmy, hot, animal Jimmy, labored. Sweat beaded, pooled and dripped from his brow. His body was slick fire, smooth ice, hot, hot, then, cool, cool, an everlasting, bucking machine.

  Salty droplets splashed and exploded, cooling and stinging Serena’s smoldering skin. She thrashed beneath him all lips and moans. Jimmy grunted and talked dirty. “Like that, bitch! Like it! Say, ‘Harder, Jimmy!’“

  The sex-dumb blonde beneath him screamed, “Fuck me harder, Jimmy! Harder!”

  “Again!”

  “Harder!”

  “Louder!”

  “Harder!!!!”

  He scowled and humped, smiling inwardly while her body clung to his, pulsing in time with his violent thrusts.

  Power, pulsating, pushing power.

  The internal smile broadened and threatened to turn his external lips upward, but he fought it and furrowed his brow and thrust with angry abandon.

  The world spun a million miles an hour until…

  Release.

  Serena begged for more, but Jimmy ignored her and rolled away. He got his and that was all that mattered. She slapped his arm and whined. J
immy rolled to the edge of the bed and feigned sleep, mock snoring until she gave up and fell into better-than-nothing slumber. He waited, listened for a steady breath rate and then crawled out of bed.

  Quiet, ninja-like, he dressed and then dug through Serena’s dresser. Jimmy was a finicky fuck, always had been, he disregarded jewelry and other pawnable valuables and focused on the instant gratifiers: cash ($230.75), weed (a quarter) and blow (yuppie drugs = huge trade value = loads of crack). He pocketed the goods, grabbed his leather pouch and tip toed out into the night.

  It was late and he was dead tired, but he still had one more run to make, so he retrieved his trusty Eight Ball and consulted its infinite wisdom.

  “Home or duty?” He muttered

  The ball waited.

  He shook it like a hyperactive child, paused a moment, and then turned it window side up. The die bobbed and then rolled up, Ask Again Later.

  And so it was, the anti-definitive answer sent Jimmy into the night.

  Before he made his run, he stopped by Sir Crackalot’s to do a little pre-business and trade Serena’s powder for some rock. Crackalot was Jimmy’s only friend. They’d met in junior high school when Crackalot was still called Sean Scott and they hit it off immediately. While everybody else went to class and bent to the whims of the system, they ditched and stole beer from liquor stores. They had a three year falling out after Jimmy, eager to lose his virginity, stuck it to Crackalot’s sister, Chloe. Fists flew and they stopped hanging, but then Fate brought them back together after Jimmy dropped out of high school (too many scams, too many burned bridges) and decided to find work dealing drugs.

  There weren’t too many career opportunities for a pair of restless, dropout, fuckups like themselves, so they hooked up with the wrong people and both started slinging rocks.

  That was a little over two years ago.

  During the interim they had done pretty well for themselves. The dealing paid the bills and then some. The only substantial drawback was the crack addiction. Jimmy kicked and then returned, kicked and returned, and on and on. Crackalot had a tougher time. For him, kicking wasn’t ever an option.