Читать книгу Promiscuous Unbound - Bex Brian - Страница 15

There’s no escaping the fact that I was haunted last night by the pre-dead. She stole in, stole my sleep and stole my forgetfulness. Father. Father who used to insist that I watch as animals die. Which they did in droves because we had chased them to the point of exhaustion, or trapped them under hot lights in a studiorigged wilderness. It took only a few minutes for those burrowing moles, scavenging mice, or head-swiveling prairie dogs to wilt, grow confused, and list toward death. “Watch,” he’d say in a whisper. “There. Ping! You’d expect rather more, wouldn’t you? But you’ll never get it.”

But I was pre-haunted by the pre-dead. So maybe it’s not quite as simple as Ping!

She hung herself.

It was Dr. Luc’s girlfriend who discovered the body, and then huddled in some corner for hours getting all the attention, even Dr. Luc’s.

“But she was my friend,” Sonia cried into my neck, when she figured out that she would get no attention at all. “I talked to her first. All she did was walk in, see her feet in the air, and run out screaming. Marcel had to cut her down. I was there for that, not her.”

“You can say as much to Dr. Luc tonight.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she sobbed. “He’ll leave and never come back if I say anything.”

She had a point. The cool presumption that brought him to Sonia’s bed in the first place makes him a man unlikely to truck any demands on his finite sympathies. So I held her and told her to describe exactly what she saw. That way she wouldn’t be alone with the memory.

“Her feet were white, her face was blue, and her hands were swollen out like black mittens.”

“And her eyes?”

“I didn’t see them,” she said, lifting her head. “She was falling over Marcel’s shoulder when I got there.”

“Then you are lucky,” I said.

“I don’t feel lucky,” she said.

My neck is still damp now, and I can feel a rash of hot hives starting to heave up. I am allergic to tears but that doesn’t seem to stop my own. I cry. I cried for every one of those damn animals dying in their fake field, dying—and in my childish mind I perceived this to be the greatest horror of all—alone.

“Your tears won’t help, my dear. Everyone dies alone.”

How many times I heard my father say that. Still, I am certain I was haunted by the pre-dead. She stuck her toe in and tested the waters to see where the sea of nighttime might carry her. It brought her to me. Why? I never even met the woman. But I am forgetting something. A feel. A wish for recognition. It was my dream she came for. What was it last night? A dick, a tongue, teasing, teasing, and I couldn’t move. Not much of a stretch. But I woke from the moment into fear, leaving behind my low, strong rumble of an orgasm.