Callie
I wake when two meaty hands lay the vase of flowers on the table. The flowers are thorny and their petals are almost nonexistent, winter petals, dying petals. The hands are Lennie’s hands; in the first moments after sleep, I am sure of it. Lennie has climbed out of Of Mice and Men and he is here, and for some reason he is laying flowers down on the table. The room is dark, pitch-dark but for the blue fluorescent light, and out in the hallway there is little noise except for the occasional footsteps of a passing night nurse. Whoever laid the flowers down goes to the door, fiddles around with it. After a moment, I realize he’s placed the spare chair against it. But the police officer—how did he—
I sit bolt upright, sleep leaving me. Alice is on the bed, sucking on her pacifier, pawing at the air. Sweet thing, she doesn’t even seem to know what she’s been through. She just swipes at the air and makes babbling noises. I make to stand, to rush across the room and scoop her up, but then Ogre paces across the room and points the handgun straight at my face. The handgun looks toy-sized in his hand, but I’ve not doubt of the damage it could do. Perhaps ridiculously, I am less concerned about that than with the possible damage it could do to Alice’s hearing; it would blow out her eardrums.
Gertrude moans in her sleep, but doesn’t wake.
“Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you,” Ogre says, stepping forward and levelling the gun directly at my face, a cyclops gaping barrel of death. In my head, I imagine a yellow flash and then the aftermath, though of course I wouldn’t be here for the aftermath. A chill of fear settles on me. “To love the Lord your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul."
Ogre looks crazier than I’ve ever seen him. Back at the club, he would sometimes make me uncomfortable, like that time in the hallway, but he always seemed like he was doing it out of some sick sense of satisfaction, and not because he had come unhinged. Now, his eyes aren’t lifeless; instead, they are full of manic crazed life, reminding me of a teeming mass of maggots eating away at flesh; his madness is eating away his sense. His lips are smiling and frowning intermittently, a change of expression which would be funny if not for the situation. He wears a dress shirt buttoned all the way to the neck and Hawaiian shorts with chunky black boots. He hasn’t shaved his head in a while, and round the side of his ears there is a black strip. He is quite easily the strangest person I have ever laid my eyes on.
“Hello, whore,” he says cheerfully, but keeping his voice low.
“There is a police officer outside,” I reply, keeping my voice low, too.
I am aware of his madness as though it is an odor in the room. Just by looking at him, I know he would have no qualms aiming that gun at my child. Each time Alice makes a babbling noise is a reminder that I have to remain calm. No tears come now; no panic, no rodent-like need to escape. Just the cool calm of a mother who knows the death or the safety of her child rests on her shoulders.
“Nah-uh.” Ogre reaches into his pocket and takes out a bottle. It reads: CHLOROFORM. He replaces it with a childlike wink. “Healthcare is a funny business, yes ma’am, because people seem to think that there are less ill folks in the nights, and so there are way, way less nurses, at least in this particular establishment, yes ma’am, and so it was not too difficult to overpower that fellow out there. In truth, he was already asleep, and so all it required was a rag and bravery and I had the rag and I’ve always had bravery.” He pauses, rubbing his knee with the hand that isn’t holding the gun. “Stand up, whore. I want the seat.”
I do as he says. He keeps the gun on me as we trade places, and he drops into the seat with the sigh of a man who has worked all day.
“Ah, much better.”
Behind me, Alice makes a sweet cooing noise. It takes all my self-restraint not to turn around and hold her. Where is Damien? Where are the police? But I can’t rely on them, can I? I can only rely on myself, at least for now. I am standing between the gun and Alice. That is something. If he fires, he will hit me. I think about ways to get Alice out of the room. I wish she was older, toddler age, walking age, so that I could leap on Ogre and distract him just long enough for her to get into the hallway. But as it is, there’s nothing but to keep him focused on me.
“Do you like your flowers?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer at once. Placate him. Make him believe I am his friend. Make him believe he is sane. If I learnt one thing in the Movement, it is that the mad do not want to be acknowledged as mad. “I think I recognize them,” I go on, seeing his smile. His smile widens. I pursue it. “Are you playing a trick on me, Ogre? I have seen those flowers before.” My tone of voice is playful, but really I am full of dread. I really do recognize those thorny flowers. I remember the way the stem cut into my scalp back in that horrible room, that burning warehouse.
“You are wrong to think that Damien is a strong man,” Ogre says matter-of-factly. “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly . . . you see? Leaders are to be judged, yes ma’am, and judged harshly, but Damien gets away with all sorts of nonsense.” As he talks, he shifts around. For a second I think he means to pull the trigger and I take a step toward Alice. He tilts his head at me. “If you make a move like that again I am going to shoot your cunt off. Come here, right to my knees, and don’t move, not even your hands, or I will shoot your tits and your cunt off.”
I swallow, fear gripping my heart, but I do not let it show on my face. Before Alice, before Damien, in my days when survival was all that drove me, I would be shaking and trembling, but now, though I feel like that on the inside, outside I am cool. I do not want to panic him; I can’t afford to panic him.
“Where was I?” Ogre says with annoyance. He rubs his eyes, closing them for a moment. I think about using this opportunity to do something, but thinking is the problem. As soon as the thought comes, the opportunity has passed. “Oh, yes.” He lets out a sigh. “It’s been a long day, a long, long day, and now it’s—what? The next day, technically, yes ma’am. Yes, Damien is a bad leader, whore, because he never had the grit to do what needed to be done. He’s a squeamish little shit and he always said no to my very good and very profitable suggestions, like trading in whores like you, but Tinhorn and his men had no such qualms, no ma’am. And so I—”
He tells me how he secretly joined the Specters, how he kidnapped me, drugged me, put the flower in my hair—a flower he got from outside the Death Heads’ clubhouse—and then, finally, how he started a slow-burning fire in the warehouse.
When I ask him why, he looks confused.
“Why what?”
“Why the fire? If you were trading me, why the fire?”
“Oh, it was never about the trading,” he says, shaking his head.
Behind me, Alice makes a ga-ga noise, which I’ve come to associate with hunger. I wonder how long it’s been since this man has fed her, and I also wonder why she is so calm. I have a strong suspicion that he’s used some of that chloroform on her, or maybe some whisky, but it must’ve been a tiny amount otherwise she’d be passed out or worse.
“Then why?”
He shakes his head. “Why, why, why. People are always asking that, why, why, why. Why this, why that. When I was a little boy—and yes I was little once and if you say otherwise I will cut your baby into little pieces and make you eat it—and I found the cat, a stray cat, nobody owned the cat, no way, and I did some experiments because I wanted to see if the cogs which made its legs go around were metal or flesh, Mommy asked me why, why, why. And so I slapped her across the face and told that fucking bitch to never ask me that again. At ten years old, I slapped her and said that. And she never did.”
I am disgusted down to my core, but I force a smile to my face and say: “You’re right, Ogre, the why of it really doesn’t matter. You’re so right.”
“Thank you!” he exclaims, too loudly. But the hallway outside the door is silent. Alice makes a sighing noise at his voice, but does not cry. Yes, whisky or chloroform, something like that. I want to hold her, feed her, let a doctor look at her, but Ogre still has the gun pointed at me. “Finally,” he goes on, lowering his voice, “somebody understands the difficulties of being a man like me, yes ma’am, difficulties. I never had many friends because everyone was stupid and silly and so I stayed in my room and I read the Bible, yes ma’am, the Holy Book, and it taught me a great deal, and then I learnt that I was bigger than everybody and they were scared of me and I knew if I could stay a little bit normal people would let me hurt other people for money. But I am the only good man in America. Did you know that? God talks to me and He told me that Hisself, so I know it’s true.”
“I believe it,” I say, smiling wider, telling myself that I will do whatever it necessary to get that gun out of his hand, or get this man away from my daughter. My mind creates a future in which I am dead and Gertrude is raising Alice, and whilst that is not ideal, it is far better than the alternative. “I believe it with all my heart,” I go on. “Ogre, you are the best man I ever met. You see, Damien bullied me into being with him. I never wanted him!” I laugh as though the idea is absurd: as though the love of my life is absurd. “I always wanted you in secret!”
He studies me for a long time. I keep the smile plastered to my face, forcing my features into mannequin rigidity, and I cannot help but remember how Mom would force her face into a smile every time Master walked by in the Compound. I always wondered then if Master truly believed in that smile, which seemed obviously phony to me. But he did, and so does Ogre; men often see what they want, I think.
“I thought you did,” he mutters. “You were always giving me looks.”
I cannot recall having ever given him a look, suggestive or otherwise. My eyes were always planted on the floor when we passed each other in the hallway. Still, let him believe that.
“So, did you . . .” He smiles, and it is such a revolting caricature of a cheeky smile I almost let my own grin slip. “So did you ever touch yourself over me?”
I nod, even as I swallow acidic vomit. “Yes, all the time.”
“Hmm.” He mutters to himself: “You see, Angel, you little whore.” Then he grins up at me again. “I have a dream, whore—and you won’t mind if I call you whore, because you can be my whore, yes ma’am—I have a dream of me and you starting a life very far away. Maybe somewhere like England or Australia, somewhere they still speak white, yes, white, but where we can hide and be together. I think we fell in love ever since that day I chloroformed you and put that flower in your hair, didn’t we? Yes, I could see it in your face; even in sleep, you wanted me. And then I saved you by setting fire to the warehouse. I saved your life. So you’ve always loved me, huh? That’s good. Okay, so we’ll go somewhere. Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere you want,” I say eagerly, thinking about that gun being in another room in another place, far away from Alice. I can think about getting away from Ogre later, when Alice is safe. “As long as we’re together, I don’t mind.”
“Yes,” Ogre says, nodding. “Yes, I like me the sound of that, oh yes. And do you . . .” Now his smile is more like an imitation of shy schoolboy. “And do you suck dick good?”
Sick burns down my throat once again. “Yes,” I say, hoping to hell that it never comes to that. “Of course.”
“Okay. Take a step back. I’m standing up.”
I step back, and Ogre rises to his feet.
“Let’s get going, but I’ll have to put this gun away because of the nurses. Let me tell you, even if we’re in love I won’t hesitate coming back here and eating the eyes out of your baby’s head if you try anything.”
“I won’t.”
Together, we walk toward the door. Ogre’s leaning down to move the chair out of the way when Gertrude says, “Callie, Callie, is something wrong?” Her voice rises in pitch, filling the room. “Callie?”
“Oh, God, let me have a little peace,” Ogre bemoans, taking the gun from the waistband of his Hawaiian shorts. He paces to the bed and points the gun at Gertrude’s head.
“Ogre!” I gasp, leaping across the room, standing next to the bed.
Gertrude stares up at the ceiling with frozen eyes, fear crippling her.
“She has to die,” Ogre mutters. “She has seen me, and she has seen you, my pretty little lover dick-sucking whore bitch, and so she has to die. You understand.”
“Ogre, she’s blind,” I say. “She can’t see a thing.” And I can barely hear a thing over the reverberations of my heartbeat. “She’s blind as a bat.”
“She is not. Look at those bright eyes. Bright eyes like that ain’t blind, no way. Are you blind, old woman?” He prods her with the gun.
“Y-yes,” Gertrude mumbles. “I have a particular form of blindness called—it is called ocular th-th-thrombosis.”
I am pretty sure thrombosis has something to do with blood clots, but Ogre doesn’t seem to know that. He chews over it for a second, and then says, “Then why when I was at your house was you running around and opening and closing doors all the time? Are you Daredevil, old woman? Is that it?” He chuckles at his own joke, his arm shifting, the barrel scraping against Gertrude’s temple.
“I have l-lived in that house for m-many years.” Gertrude wheezes as she struggles to get the words out. “I have l-l-learnt the l-l-layout.”
“I don’t know if we should risk it,” Ogre says to me in a conversational tone.
I tilt my head, flutter my eyelashes, feeling sick deep in my stomach. “But, Ogre—I’m in the mood right now, and blood really puts me off. If you do that,” and I nod at the gun, “I won’t be able to do that,” and I nod at the crotch of his Hawaiian shorts.
He considers this, and then nods. “Okay, then.” He walks around the bed, and offers me his free hand. “But we have to hold hands, so the world and especially God Almighty knows that we are in true love, okay?”
I would rather plunge my hand deep in sewage water, but I take the hand without hesitation. We walk to the door, and Ogre shifts the chair aside, puts the gun in his Hawaiian shorts, and then opens the door to the hallway. Alice and Gertrude are safe, behind that door.
That is all that matters.
Ogre drags me in the opposite direction of the sleeping police officer.