Читать книгу BASEMENT COMMANDMENT - Bahram Zaimi - Страница 7

The weather got colder; mist was gradually taking over the parking lot. She could hear the sound of the pickup truck’s engine but could not see it through the mist. She thought the pickup managed to overcome the dirt mound and passed it. As she was walking across the parking lot she raised her head to the sky and could still see the shape of the moon through the mist, thick clouds covering it.

The dirt mounds appeared to her as she was approaching the end of the parking lot, there was something blue at the back. Getting closer, she saw it was the roof of the pickup truck, the cabin. She got worried and looked back. Still the shop was lit, but she continued her approach, slower. She started to talk to herself, “Don’t be afraid; remember what the psychoanalyst was telling you, you belong in the wild. The forgotten scenes come into light through the flashbulb of your fears. The frightful circumstance gives rise to a new association with the primitive one, though temporarily, ultimately the earliest always reassert themselves.”

The running shadow behind the aisle, what if it is too much; the dread of an unknown is very different from the fear of an empty room when the one who closes the door is the one you can trust. My house, another empty room. Why am I so desperate to reach the lousy apartment again, passing through the long corridor of humiliation? Even the old man found his course of action. Who might ever want a smelly woman? I am not that ten-year-old girl; the poor little girl, still her heart is beating hard like a sparrow.

She climbed up the mound, passing the low-level mist. The thick cloud in the sky was attempting to swallow the whole of the full moon, not successful yet. She stood with her bare feet on the top, looking at the end of the dirt road. The blue pickup with its cabin back door wide open was there and nobody around.

There it was, the reality that one had anticipated but was hoping to evade, at last, was concrete and visible. She turned her body; still, the botanist was there. She could run toward the store, the entrance door would open; she would run to the end of the aisle, pass through the narrow gap and hide in the darkness.

She climbed down the mound and start walking fast, back to the store. She was halfway through the mist to the store when her nose caught the smell of fertilizer. She looked to her hands, they were empty. She must have dropped the bags somewhere. The intensity of the fertilizer smell was getting stronger, and at the same time she was catching another type of scent, something unfamiliar with a sweet taste. She turned around. A shadow was moving toward her fast; before she had time to react, a man pressed a piece of cloth to her nose, took her neck, and turned around her, standing at her back pushing the cloth hard to her mouth.

While pressing the cloth to her nose, he slid and wrapped his arm around her neck, gripping her neck into his elbow, locked by his forearm. Her sudden involuntary deep breath of the wet material from the cloth made her dizzy. The peculiar and intense scent was burning her windpipe as it went down, filling her lungs. He pressed his body to the back of her, bending her backward. His hands had the extra gravity of his weight to push her nose to the brink of breaking. She was going to yield to the situation, as a prey trapped in the claws of a determined hunter.

The confusion owing to the sedative, stronger than opium, blocked the conservative control of logic, and in return the blockage on savage emotions was removed; the survival force of nature took over. The powerful emotion of revenge rose, filled her with a desire for vengeance, and anger flowed into her veins, amplifying her heartbeat; she felt strength in her hands and fingers. She held the second inhale and raised her right hand which had been engaged in a vain attempt to free her neck, grabbed his hand with the cloth, clutched his fingers and twisted them with an impetuous force of her nature.

The prey transformed into a predator. Three snapping sounds and then a shout of pain broke the tension. As the piece of cloth dropped off his broken fingers, her nose refilled her lungs with fresh air. She did not waste time dealing with his arm around her neck; there was enough room for breathing through her narrowed windpipe. She drove out her left elbow, filled it with power, bent down her body down to get extra pressure from the ground, and then with a sudden move, struck her elbow into his ribs; there was a muffled sounds of snaps. The man backed up a few steps; she was free.

The fast circulation of her blood had consequences; it spread the malicious inhaled chemical deeper into her brain. With a malfunction in the gyroscopes of her ears, she lost her sense of orientation resulting in a free fall to the ground. First, her knees hit, the numbness of the drug made her brain overlook the pain reports of the nerves, then her hands hit the ground, then her head was down, and her eyes blurred.

All she needed was two solid inhales of the fresh air. She could detect the man’s shadowy figure standing a few feet back; at the same time, a figure from another world was emerging in parallel into her mind. Something that had been suppressed was coming due to survival urgency. The man’s shadow faded into a specter approaching her from a white mountain, the snow had covered the ground white. She called for help in a strange language not familiar to humans. The disorientation in location overwhelmed with perplexity in time. She was sinking in the sweet ocean of illusions where she had belonged before among the circle of intimates.

The delay was too much, the man was vigilant, and he was not going to leave without his precious prey. He prepared himself for the second attack; his physical pain was in no way comparable to the pain of losing a battle. He revised assessment of the kill. He went one-step sideways, stood right at the back of the crouching woman, minding her fatal claws and cautious of her long legs for kicking.