Dark Duets Part 27

"Why can't I just stay here, like this?" I asked him. "Never leave, never go to the dock, never get on the ferry?"

He shook his head. "We've tried that before. Hundreds of times. The woman in red always comes for you with her hounds and drags you away screaming." His thumb traced circles at the base of my throat. "We've tried resisting, we've tried tricking and outsmarting. We've tried it all so many times that I've lost count. And the end is always the same."

A sad smile played across his lips. "Every morning I beg you to leave me and never look back, but you always do. But please, Emily, please, this once . . . step onto that boat and stare only into the fog. Don't look back. This island is a curse-a h.e.l.l that imprisons both of us. Across the water is paradise-it's love and light and everything you deserve."

"Except for you," I whispered.

He dropped his gaze. "I bring you nothing but misery. That's all I've ever brought you."

I cupped my hand under his chin and raised his head until he met my eyes. "Not now. Now, you are paradise."

His lips found mine, desperate and yearning. He trailed kisses across my jaw, down my neck, across my collarbone. His hands dug into my back, pulling me closer as if he could somehow make us one being.

Around us, the morning light grew stronger, and I heard the trace of a dog's howl in the distance. Owen stilled, his muscles going tense. "I love you," I said, wis.h.i.+ng I'd said it in life. When it might have changed this.

There were tears in his eyes when he pulled away, stood, and helped me to my feet. He thrust my clothes from last night into my hands. "If you truly love me, Emily, please, board the boat and don't look back; it's the only way for you to be happy."

"And what of your happiness?"

"My happiness means nothing if it comes at the cost of yours." He paused, the words catching in his throat. In mine. "I should have seen that in life."

Sadness coursed through me. Regret. Anger.

Fear.

Outside, the hounds gathered.

OWEN WAITED FOR me just outside the front door. Fog lay heavy on the ground, but it wasn't thick enough to block out the glow of the eyes of the hounds standing near the edge of the forest. Their breath turned to cloud in the chill morning air, and I could almost smell their rancid stench from where I stood.

I latched onto Owen's arm, and he slipped his fingers through mine. "They won't bother us. They're here to make sure we go."

True to his word, we followed the path into the tangle of trees without incident. The hounds kept their distance, shadowing us through the damp forest.

I'd remembered the hike to the castle as being long and arduous, but on our return we found the sh.o.r.e too quickly. Already the boat was there, bobbing at the end of the dock. The man I'd seen before-the one with the three Labs-stood to the side and he tipped his hat when I glanced at him. Next to him stood the woman in red. Hounds paced behind her, anxious and ready.

I hesitated, and one of the dogs bristled, taking a step toward us. The woman in red stopped him with a hand on his head, a smile in her cold, black gaze. She was enjoying our torture-the prolonged pain of our endless good-bye. I wanted nothing more than to run at her and gouge her eyes out.

But I knew Owen was right. That would solve nothing. It would merely rob me of these last moments with the man I loved.

Owen faced me, his hand cupping my cheek. In his eyes I could easily see the question: Would I leave him? Would I stop this agonizing cycle?

I couldn't answer. I didn't know.

The pain in him was overwhelming, and my heart ached with it. His anguish was more devastating than anything I had ever experienced-this moment worse than I could endure. But when I stepped onto that boat, it would vanish. I'd forget. I'd heal.

But he wouldn't.

And if I looked back, I was dooming him to another morning of torture. A day of agony. So I could see him again. So I could touch and taste him and feel his hands on my body.

"Leave me." Owen's mouth pressed against my own; his tears salted our lips. "Save yourself from this nightmare. Please . . ."

It was his last request . . . that I leave him here, to this h.e.l.l. To the fog and the gray and the hounds.

I stepped back and took my last look at him, my chest tight, tears stinging my eyes and closing my throat. How could I leave this man? Our love? How could I accept an eternity without him?

What was heaven without him?

I turned and began the long walk down the dock. Charlie waited for me at the other end, his hand held out to bring me aboard.

And this pain was nothing compared to what Owen suffered each day, compounded. His h.e.l.l grew worse every time I arrived.

I was the instrument of his torture.

I had to leave him.

The tears came as I slipped my hand into Charlie's, feeling his strength in opposition to my weak knees, my trembling body. I lifted a foot and placed it onto the boat and I took a deep breath.

Behind me I could feel Owen waiting. Wanting.

He wanted to save me. But he didn't understand that the only time I was saved was in his arms. That he could never save me by pus.h.i.+ng me away.

My heart screamed against my ribs, wind off the sea stinging my face.

I knew I was being selfish. I was dooming him again, as I had every day before.

But I couldn't let him go.

When I turned back, Owen was on his knees. Behind him, the man with the dogs stood next to the woman in red: his face streaked with tears, hers awash in triumph.

But it was Owen I cared about, Owen I needed to see, and in his eyes I saw it all: the agony and the elation. Devastated that I would not leave him, even as he rejoiced that tonight, I would return.

That he would have another chance to beg me to leave. That I would have another night wrapped in his arms.

In our twisted paradise.

Owen's lips moved and even though I couldn't hear him, I knew it was the word he said each morning. Every time. "Farewell."

And then he was drowned by the fog.

I stood alone in the gray, surrounded by cloud. My throat burned and eyes watered as the frigid wind snapped at my face. I'd never felt emptier in my life.

Behind me a voice sounded, all smoke and whiskey. "You're headed for the castle."

I turned, startled. I'd been lost in my thoughts, though what they were I couldn't remember. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

"I'm Charlie." He extended one hand, the size of a tree trunk, and added, "And you're Emily."

HAND JOB.

Chelsea Cain and Lidia Yuknavitch.

One day, her hand began to speak.

It was not the thumb, old opposable standby. One would think perhaps the thumb would have the resolution and guts, being the evolutionary head of things and all, but it was not the thumb. To her astonishment, it was her pinkie finger. That seemingly useless dangler, good for next to nothing but hooking into a grip with the others or carving out an especially stubborn bit of ear wax or applying lip balm.

"Well, this is it," her pinkie said, out of the blue.

She stared at it. Though it made her feel foolish, she spoke, sitting back down on the couch to steady herself. "Excuse me, but this is what?" was all she could think to say.

She placed her nonspeaking hand over the speaking one gently like a woman crossing her hands in her lap.

"Do you mind?" her pinkie said. "I'm trying to talk to you." And so she quickly gave her louder hand air and s.p.a.ce. "That's better," her pinkie said.

They sat for a moment in silence. She didn't want to be rude so she did not stare at her pinkie. Instead, she looked out of her bedroom window at the tall camellia tree with its happy little rosen faces and waxen leaves. She looked at the Restoration bird feeder-so squirrel proof, with its brushed metal and black iron. She looked at the wind chimes-the larger pewter ones with minor-keyed song, and the smaller golden-rodded ones with a major-keyed hymn.

"Oh, for Christ's sake . . . can you stop daydreaming for a second? You call this a life?" her pinkie said, raising up a little with indignation. "This is a slack-minded grotesque cartoon version of a life. An air-freshened glossy magazine prison. Look at all this domesticity s.h.i.+t. What are you, Martha f.u.c.king Stewart? At least Martha had some chutzpah and went to jail. Knitted ponchos with black women. What've you done lately? Run the dishwasher?"

Taken aback, she looked over toward the kitchen, where the dishwasher hummed dully: it was exceedingly efficient.

"Yep, best keep those motherf.u.c.king dishes clean!" her pinkie continued. "I mean, Jesus, woman, what the h.e.l.l has happened to you? Did you honestly think we wouldn't . . . you know, notice?" Silence sat between them the length of her arm.

She coughed up a response: "When you say 'we,' who do you mean, specifically?"

Her pinkie shot out straight away from the other fingers on her hand. "Oh my G.o.d. Have you gone brain dead? h.e.l.lo?" And now her entire hand was in front of her face, her phalanges all waving vigorously like fat flesh-colored worms. "This we, you stupid meat sack!" her pinkie screamed.

She glanced a bit too hopefully at her other hand. It just sat there, pa.s.sive and limp. Typical, she thought. What was all this about? A pinkie rebellion? What did she even use her pinkie for that mattered? Briefly she got an image of herself in her mind's eye, doing that thing she did every morning on her monotonous commute to work, letting the freeway sort of take control, hooking her pinkies only around the base of the steering wheel. Almost not driving. Just gliding along a path already laid out for her-her whole life . . . Right about the time she gathered the courage to make a fist out of her speaking hand-I mean, really, this was nonsense, she could simply make a fist and curl that little mouthy b.i.t.c.h up and under if she wanted to, or even better, run to the closet where the winter clothes sat neatly in a box and slip on a mitten-her pinkie launched itself at her face. She panicked and slapped at it with her free hand, like she was fending off an attacking bat. Then there was a sound, a blade slicing through ham, the pop of the skin and then the soft give of the meat. Her nose felt like it was full of cold water, and pain seared between her eyes. Then she heard something hit the floor, a little thud, just before she managed to grab her offending hand by the wrist and wrestle it to her thigh.

She tasted blood, all acrid tin warmth. It filled her mouth and snaked around her lips.

A triangle of b.l.o.o.d.y flesh was on the floor, there on the Persian rug, under the coffee table. It looked like something a cat might vomit up, a chunk of a hairless baby bird scarfed down and then violently regurgitated. She let go of her wrist and reached her good hand toward her nose, only to find a slippery bony hole where her nose had been.

She would not have thought it possible. She looked at her pinkie in horror. It had blood on its knuckle.

"It wasn't me," her pinkie protested. "I'm innocent."

She rushed to the bathroom while blood spurted from the center of her face. She instinctively grabbed the white of the toilet paper and pulled it into great swirls and crammed the three-ply paper into her naked nasal aperture. She frantically searched with her free hand for the first aid kit. Her eyes so filled with tears it was like searching for something underwater. Her head throbbed. She felt dizzy and fevered-was she having a stroke? She managed to locate gauze patches in the first aid kit and added to the drenched toilet paper with gauze pads-she shoved them in, wincing, and thought about how boneless noses were . . . how vulnerable and defenseless. She sat on the toilet with a thunk, her middle-aged a.s.s bigger than the seat. With her good hand, her gentle, compa.s.sionate hand, she held the gauze and paper in her nose hole. She eyed what was left of the toilet paper roll. She closed her eyes. Tried to regulate her breathing. Was she going into shock? Would she keel over off the toilet and hit her skull on the bathtub rim and crack it open and die? But wait, was the bathtub clean?

After a time, her pinkie spoke. "OK. Fine. I'll admit it. This looks bad. But I've been set up, hoodwinked, framed. I don't even have a weapon."

"Your fingerprints are all over that nose," she said.

"I've held my tongue for fifty years. I've watched you do this mind-bogglingly stupid thing with your life little by little, year after year, and I kept to myself. Minded my own hand business. But there comes a time in the life of every finger when enough is enough. Do you realize how many times I've had to do things against my morals? Do you have any idea what my life is like connected to your body? I could have belonged to a concert pianist. A cellist. A star quarterback. A surgeon. A painter! But with you? Noooooooo. For Christ's sake, I can't even hold a decent martini."

She thought she heard her pinkie weeping. It drooped a bit and shook, almost as if it had shoulders that were heaving. Briefly she considered petting it with her calm hand. Like a mother would. Or a wife.

But then she snapped out of it: "You sliced off my f.u.c.king nose!" she said, in a fit of rage, spitting the words down at her hand. Didn't we all have an edge, a place in our bodies where we could go hard like steel?

"Well, all right!" her finger shot back. "Yes! OK? I did it! I confess. I can't undo it! But losing your nose is nothing compared to what you've done with your life! It's a wake-up call, I'm telling you, like a message from G.o.d! Well, except for the fact that I'm an atheist . . . but those other ludicrous fingers, they believe in G.o.d! I hear their incipient whispering at night. Losers. So you can think of me as . . . I'm like a . . . like a commandment! Got it? I'm the motherf.u.c.king Moses finger of this bunch!"

"What do you want from me?" she sobbed. "What on earth have I done? What are you talking about?" she screeched. The mirror shuddered. The shower curtain wavered. She caught a glimpse of mold. There should be more bleach, she thought. Why is there never enough bleach? She pictured her nose, alone, cold, probably blue out there on the rug. Dust bunnies gathering around it. Could it still smell?

"Look," her pinkie said, "it's actually quite difficult for me to control myself just now. I mean, I've really had it. I can't take it anymore. I'm a finger on the edge, I tell you, and I could use a drink. Do you think you could get us a stiff scotch before we continue this conversation? Just dunk me in it."

"I'm not getting you a scotch to dunk in!" she screamed, and then turned to the mirror and caught a glimpse of herself, bloodied and frantic, yelling at her own hand. What if the neighbors could hear her? Shouldn't she call 911? Was her blood loss nearing a dangerous place? What the h.e.l.l would she say when they got there? Should she put her nose in a Tupperware container and bring with? Her thoughts tumbled in her skull like drunk dice.

"Oh no? NO? No scotch? FINE." And then her hand swept up like a terrorist pledge of allegiance and lopped off one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s right through her blouse. It splatted on the ceramic tile floor and jiggled like a jellyfish for a second-blood and corpuscle and vein guts and fatty tissue glistening in the halogen light. Her chest poured blood. There wasn't enough toilet paper in the world for the wound where a breast should be. With the one hand she could trust she grabbed at a towel before falling to the floor, breathing "My G.o.d, my G.o.d . . ." Her breathing became like feathers. Her sight went all television snow. She had trouble forming word thoughts. The ceramic tiles were cool. Her chest exploded. Pain locked her jaw and dismantled her spine. This must be what soldiers feel when a grenade explodes, she was almost able to think. But really it was just a retinal flash from a scene in Apocalypse Now. Blood pooled before her there on the bathroom floor.

"Yeah, well, G.o.d's not here. I am," her hand said quietly. "So here it is, straight no chaser." Her speaking hand inched up near her face. She did not open her eyes, but she thought she could feel its breath on her face.

"I've been offered a job," her pinkie said. "By the government."

"A job?"

"They want me overseas immediately. I can't be lugging around your sorry a.s.s. It's nothing personal."

She opened her eyes. Her finger was mad, deranged, half cracked. "You'll die without me," she mumbled. It would, wouldn't it? It couldn't drive certainly, not without a thumb. How far could it get?

"Ha!" cackled her finger. "That's just like you, always the center of the universe, always making decisions for the rest of us. Newsflash, sister. I don't need you, I never did."

How had she not seen this coming? The nail on that finger was always breaking. It had always had a mind of its own.

Her life played out in front of her as blood spread on the floor. When had this phalangeal resentment started? Was it when she slammed that finger in the car door when she was ten? Was it when it got rolled over by another skater at the roller rink? Had she used it too often to feel around for hemorrhoids? Had her rings been too tight? It was true. She had been hard on that finger. This was her fault. She had to stop it.

"Like, I don't know what you are thinking. Would you just stop for a second and really think? Remember in college at the job fair when the government folks came and you interviewed with them? Remember how that one guy said to you, 'You know, you have covert ops potential. Here's how to access applications to the CIA'? Remember how excited you were?"

Clutching her bleeding chest with her nontalking hand, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. It hurt to breathe. But she forced herself up onto her knees and started to crawl. Her leg nudged the raw meat of her dismembered breast and it skidded in the blood on the floor and came to a rest against the toilet.

Her pinkie tried to slow her down. It clawed at the wall, at the pedestal of the sink, but she pressed on, across the hall, through her open bedroom door. The bedside table was painted purple, the color of a bruise. The drawer was already open an inch.

Undaunted, her pinkie ranted, "Remember when you met that James Deanlooking dude your senior year and he said 'Let's go to Joshua Tree' and you jumped on his motorcycle and hugged his a.s.s with your thighs and held on for dear life, laughing your a.s.s off like a banshee?"

But then, with a shudder, her finger seemed to grok what was happening. How many times had that hand been in that drawer, rooting around for sleeping pills, a hair band, her mouth guard? It had seen the gun.

The finger struck her on the side of the face, and she heard the sound of skin ripping and felt a flash of cold air and pain.

"This is your last chance! This is it, woman!"

"f.u.c.k!" she cried. Her ear hung by a bit of skin at the lobe. Her skull was wet with blood. The ear flapped against her neck as she lunged toward the drawer and plunged her good hand inside. This was really the last straw. Her fingers found the grip of the Glock and she pulled it from the bedside table and leveled it at her pinkie.

The pinkie made a run for it, and her arm went straight as a board as the little digit strained and fluttered at the end of her hand, an arm's length away.

"Stop or I'll shoot," she cried.

Her pinkie turned back, defiant. It wagged itself at her, the c.o.c.ky motherf.u.c.ker. "You can't shoot me," her pinkie said. "You don't have the hand-eye coordination. You can't even find the B on a keyboard."