Most people already know that most of the smart devices they have in their homes come equipped with cameras which can be remotely accessed in case the user experiences technical difficulties or for routine quality control checks. This is where people like me — technicians — come in. It doesn’t matter which company I work for. What matters is what I saw a few weeks ago.
A guy sitting on his couch blinking. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the scene and as I scanned my monitors it was only by chance that I happened to pause on the image. Caught midway between winning and losing a fierce fight with an abrupt sneeze, I frowned at the screen. Moments later the urge passed but the guy still sat, blinking away like he was possessed. I can’t say exactly why I felt the need to keep watching, except that as a technician I am trained to notice when things are weird.
And this was really fucking weird. The guy didn’t blink at regular intervals. Instead, his blinks were sometimes furious and sometimes languid, shifting between the two at random without him ever moving another muscle. No facial tics, no hand twitches, not even his eyebrows wiggled. At first, I thought he must be having some sort of seizure but after calling up the logs, I saw that this was not the first time he’d had such an episode.
Every weekday for months, I discovered this dude had slumped down in front of his big screen TV with a book in his lap and gone into a fit of blinking. Every day for six hours, nonstop. It creeped me out but I couldn’t look away. At some point each day a lady would walk in and they would immediately become a totally normal couple, talking, laughing, living their suburban lives.
The mystery of why anyone would spend so much time and exert so much effort just to act nuts when nobody else was around ate at me. I let many of my other duties slide as I tuned in to the Blinking Guy show live while at work, hoping there would be some great revelation, an answer to the questions piling up in my mind. I lost sleep over it, I even dreamed about him. Finally, I had to talk to someone about it or risk losing my own mind.
I called up a buddy of mine who does security for the Navy. We had a few beers and I unwound my tale. Predictably, he didn’t believe me at first so I showed him one of the recordings I’d made so I could continue my investigation at home on my days off. A major breach of security, I know, but I was in so deep already that I never thought twice about it. If this guy was just some nut, then no harm done, and if he was some sort of terrorist or serial killer or something, I couldn’t just say nothing even if I bend the rules a bit. It’s all about the greater good, in my view.
Morse fucking code is what my buddy tells me. Can you believe it? This lunatic was blinking in morse code, sort and long, dots and dashes, the real deal. I was floored. I asked my buddy
what he was saying, or blinking or whatever.
I wish I’d never had to sneeze. It would almost be better if Blinking Guy was a serial killer
or a terrorist or some awful thing. The authorities can deal with things like that. I don’t know what else to say, but I’ve transcribed the coded message in full so people don’t think I’m the crazy one. Who knows — maybe someone out there can help?
****
There are probably worse choices for your last meal than Dr. Pepper and jalapeño poppers at a trashy gothic nightclub but I can’t think of any. When I sat down that Thursday night in my usual booth, the end of life as I knew it was the furthest thing from my mind.
I am not a goth by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, I don’t appreciate loud, incoherent music nor do I yearn to be a vampire. Despite my gross deviation from the self-inflicted norms of my fellow patrons, the humid, dimly lit Baal’s Corner embraced me as one of its own children of the night.
A creature of the darkness and shadow, not because I am a criminal or a concealer of secrets but merely by nature’s whim. A genetic quirk left my eyes unusually sensitive to bright light and fueled my aversion to the sun. As the owl lives nocturnally, so too does the nerd who debugs code and monitors web traffic patterns from late afternoon until long into the evening. My evolution, thus, is one of avoidance. I rise, crawl into a hole during the daylight hours and emerge underneath the twilight sky reborn. This lifestyle, rather than any real similarity with the rest of the struggling nightclub’s denizens, led me to the dingy lair behind the unmarked wooden door beside the hookah shop, a cavern to call my very own.
Though it was poetic to think of myself as kin to the dashing rogues and prowling debutantes who truly claim the night as their birthright, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the night was mine because I am a loner living slightly above the top ramen for dinner benchmark of abject poverty in a shabby studio apartment I can barely afford. Nevertheless, once a week I treated myself to a basket of jalapeno poppers, an appetizer I particularly enjoy, without being subjected to the pressure of forced socialization that inevitably follows any foray into a bar. Baal’s Corner was loud and antithetical to small talk, so I went there to observe my ritual feast.
After a half hour of content people watching, twenty minutes of which was spent in blessed silence as the bands changed. Each clutch of performers presented a glimpse into the grotesquerie that was their lives and my mind found its own bizarre amusement in wondering after the masochistic piercings and quilt work of scars, the obscenely laced tattoos and horrific brandings. What drives a person to go to war with their own body? How close do we all stand to an edge we don’t even realize exists until we drop off of it? How little of a push would it take to send us toppling over the precipice into a whole new world of bleakness and despair?
The new troop of faces dragged their instruments of torture on stage and I sized them up. Three tall, thin, heavily pierced guys wore an array of skulls and demonic faces from shoulder to knuckle and all looked ready to abuse guitars. Their bassist scowled at the audience and slunk off to a position nearly out of sight at the rear, which surprised me because her scant clothing and shaved head both screamed for attention. The drummer appeared intoxicated and oblivious to the world around her. She slumped into place and warmed up, hitting her tartlets as often as not as her greasy dreadlocks obscured her pimpled face. They were all ghostly white, sickeningly thin and dully typical of what I had come to recognize as the purveyors of adolescent angst. I expected they would call themselves something outlandish and use absurd hyperbole to sing about something painfully run of the mill.
“We’re the Ineffable Horror and this song is called ‘Dead Body Puppet Master,”‘ the singer shouted before a wall of noise drowned him out. It was a breakup song. I sighed. The beginning of the eleven o’clock set marked the start of my revivication period, when I let a brisk walk home shake me out of the lethargy Baal’s Comer instilled and escort me back into the real world. I finished my Dr. Pepper — straight up, because I have a bit of a sweet tooth and I hate the sloppy, awkward feeling of intoxication — and look forlornly at my empty appetizer basket.
I contemplated how ineffably horrible it would be if I stayed for the twenty minutes or so it would take to order and eat some more poppers. I tried to wave down a bar serving girl who had extensive facial inkwork, but Starface had her back to me and her hands were fooling around in the pockets of the girl sitting in her lap. I resigned myself to a convenience store burrito and stood up.
As I rose, I heard a squawk and someone walking up behind me plowed into my back. I turned and saw, to my dismay, that I’d managed to spill half a pretty woman’s drink down the front of her forest green sweater. Her huge hazel eyes stared at me in shock as I stammered through an awkward apology, flushing.
“Hey, it’s ok. It’s my fault too — I was watching the band,” Hazel said with a smile. She set her drink down on my table and pulled her long black hair back into a ponytail. She used a handful of napkins to blot the spill. There was something highly sensual about watching her rub her chest and for a moment I fell into a trance. She smirked as she noticed my stare and I kicked myself for the flurry of less than appropriate thoughts that ambushed my brain.
“I need to put some water on this. Do you mind keeping an eye on my drink so no one puts a roofie in it?” she flashed me an endearing smile that I couldn’t help but return.
“You’re not worried that I might?” I teased, feeling emboldened. She gave me a grave, discerning look, then shook her head.
“No, you wouldn’t, and you won’t. I’ll be right back.”
She headed back the way she’d come, towards the restrooms and the kitchen she didn’t look over her shoulder — lucky for me since I found myself transfixed by her well-formed backside. She was so atypical of this place I could hardly believe she wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
The usual girl who haunted Baal’s Comer adhered to a starved, skeletal look which couldn’t even rightly be called slender because it was too extreme. Seeing so many protruding ribs and sharp cheekbones turned me off in a big way. Whatever advertisers in magazines and on TV might be pushing, I found ‘concentration camp chic’ unappealing. Hazel, on the other hand, had to weigh at least two hundred pounds and she was not particularly tall. Glowing with health, ruddy-cheeked and dressed conservatively, she was by far the most beautiful woman I´d made an ass of myself in front of lately. I thought I could stomach the band if I could stay in her company.
Curiosity prickled around the edges of my thoughts. Why was she here? And where had she been coming from? One of the perks of my spot was that nobody could sneak up on me and I knew for certain she hadn’t walked past me earlier. And who was cautious enough to take their drink to the bathroom then left it with a stranger? Weird and weirder, but I felt up to the task of unraveling the mysteries she presented.
Hazel returned ten minutes later wearing an ash gray T-shirt that read ‘Magical Doorway’ with her sweater rolled up under her arm. Her face was almost devoid of makeup, another point in her favor, and her bushy eyebrows waggled as she came close enough to talk above the music.
“I had to scrub the whole front of it and I think I just made things worse. I thought wearing half a wet top would send the wrong message, so,” she sighed plopping her weather down on the seat and sliding into the booth beside me.
“What’s the ‘Magical Doorway?” I wondered.
She frowned, then looked down and laughed. “I forgot I was even wearing this relic! It’s just a little shop not too far from here. They sell all sorts of things — herbs, books, stones, jewelry and the like. You know, witchy stuff. I worked there for a while.”
I nodded. “So, are you a witch?”
Hazel gave me another long, serious look and one of those expressive eyebrows rose curiously. “Do you want me to be a witch? I could enchant you, if you ask me.”
I opened my mouth but didn’t know how to respond. Then she punched me playfully in the arm, laughing until she snorted.
“Oh god, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Don’t think I’m a freak,” she chuckled, toying with her drink but not taking a sip. “Really, I’m not. I just don’t get out much. I’m a joker, not a sorceress. In my head I was thinking of that silly old song. You know, the one that goes, ‘I put a spell on you,’. Dumb, huh?”
“I like that song,” I admitted.
“Me too, actually.”
I relaxed, warming to Hazel as we talked. My initial anxiety melted away and soon it felt almost like we were old friends. I told her about my life, or lack of it, and she confided that her reason for being in Baal’s Comer was as mundane as mine. Dreadlocks, the drummer, was her younger sister and Hazel had the dubious privilege of chauffeuring the band around since they were routinely too drunk to drive and too high to know any better.
“I call it my charity work, though spending my nights in dreary pits like this sure makes me wish she’d taken up classical piano, folk singing, something a little less like going to hell. At least this time I have good company, right?”
I was thinking the same thing,” I told her. I grimaced at the melted ice cubes in my glass. Starface still wasn’t paying attention and all this talking was making me thirsty. Damn. I didn’t want to get up and interrupt whatever fragile thing was occurring here between us.
She followed my gaze, then gave me a mischievous grin. “Hey, do you like Coke?
For a moment I stared at her like she’d lost her mind, then I managed to fit my entire foot in my mouth.
“I don’t do drugs.”
Her eyes bugged, then she burst out laughing again. “Oh my god. I meant Coca-Cola, you lunatic. Your glass is empty.”
“Oh,” I blushed. “Yeah, I do.”
Hazel poured her drink into my glass. “I don’t mean to be forward; I just don’t want it to go to waste. I’m not really in the mood for any more caffeine. I’ll probably be up all night as it is,” she winked.
“Thanks. The waitress has been preoccupied all night,” I told her, taking a sip. She had been
drinking plain soda too, much to my relief.
“Hard to remember the world around you when you stumble into something so cute,” Hazel said as she looked from Starface and her conquest back to me. “So, what are you doing later?”
I woke up in a strange bed not wearing any of my clothes. I wasn’t naked, but the T-shirt, shorts, and boxers I found myself in as I slowly regained a few of my senses were not mine. Neither was the bed I lay in. What the hell?
My head felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds and had been packed full of crushed glass. Despite the plush pillows and soft comforter, I felt like six different kinds of shit. And thirsty, my god, I’d never been so desperate for a drink! My tongue was a shriveled piece of jerky stuck to my teeth. I was so dehydrated that I was even having trouble blinking.
With herculean effort I turned my head to the side and saw a bedside clock which read, 1:43 the sun was shining brightly in my face, amplifying my misery, so I intuited that this meant it was in the afternoon. That only added to my confusion. I’d slept half of a whole day? Where in the world was I?
A tall glass of water stood next to the clock and I reached for it only to discover my fine motor control was still deep in hibernation. My slab-like arm flopped forward and the brick on the end of it sent the elixir of life flying. The glass thumped wetly on the carpet and I felt as empty as it now was.
After I spent some time flexing my arms and legs and endured the excruciating pins and needles sensations as my brain re-engaged with the rest of my body after its long sleep, I sat up. When I yawned, I felt something large and restrictive clinging to my face, just above my right eyebrow. Gingerly exploring with my fingers, I traced the outline of a square bandage covering nearly a third of my forehead. Mysteries up on mysteries, I thought, wondering if my brain had been removed, used as a punching bag, then thrown back in my skull hard enough to turn it to muck.
Unable to dredge up anything even remotely useful in my memories, I tried to make sense of my surroundings. The bedroom I was in may as well have been on an alien spaceship. It was so utterly foreign to me that I couldn’t even guess who it might belong to. Immaculately white — brutally white, really — from top to bottom. White walls, white sheets, white door, white furniture, even a white carpet with a big wet spot where I’d spilled the water. My shoes and clothes were nowhere in evidence, but I spied a pair of slippers just like the ones I had at home so I slid them on.
My left foot squished, full of water. I sighed, kicking them off and wondering who’s clothes I was wearing. The sunlight was burning my eyes and I struggled to close the blinds, making a horrible racket as my sluggish hands flailed ineffectually at the cords. Behind me, I heard giggling.
Hazel stood in the doorway, her hair up, wearing a blue T-shirt with a wolf howling at a full moon stretched across her broad stomach and untethered breasts. She also sported a modest pair of crimson shorts and bare feet, the epitome of relaxed. I stared at her, utterly unable to recall a single moment between meeting her at Baal’s Corner and waking up here.
“Oh, good, you’re finally up. You sure slept like a log! How are you feeling, sweetie?”
I shook my head. “Wh-what happened,” I croaked, trying to unstick my tongue.
“Aww!” she said, spying my fallen glass and scooting off to the adjacent bathroom to refill it. I heard a sink running, then Hazel came back and perched on the bed. I sat beside her and gulped the water down greedily. As I did, she ran her fingers through my hair and looked at my injury.
A partial memory swam up from the murk. I see myself sitting on the closed lid of a toilet while hands blot my bloody forehead with a pure white washcloth. The wound is not small and my eyes are half closed in a stupor. After bandaging me up, my tunnel of vision sees those same hands slowly combing my hair just like they were now, methodically working at the tangles and knots.
Looking up at this stranger taking care of me, I felt overwhelmed and closed my eyes. She pulled my head down against her warm chest and gave me a comforting hug. She then peered into my eyes, searching me.
“You really don’t remember anything that happened last night?” her voice carried a slight note of disappointment but there was something else buried beneath. Satisfaction? But that didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry. Were…did we drink? I don’t normally. It leaves me really fuzzy… ” I tried to unravel the hurt look marring her face and again I thought that while that was the overall expression, there was something else too. She seemed almost smug.
“After the band finished their set, we went out. You came with us. They’re a pretty wild bunch and you must have gotten caught up in their antics. I didn’t think you’d had so much but it seemed to hit you pretty hard. You passed out in the front seat and when we stopped for gas on the way home, you didn’t even wake up. It was cute, though.”
Cute. But not entirely true, I thought as another blob of memory oozed up from the depths.
— I’m inside a van, a very smelly van filled with smoke and reeking of old sweat. It’s loud and a tequila bottle is making its rounds. Did I drink? I hate tequila and there’s no way I would have been drinking that, not even while half stupid over this woman. But something had happened. I pushed the blurry image harder, reaching for something definitive.
— Some interminable amount of time later, we’re at a Thrift Quick but I can’t even move. Everyone piled out of the van, leaving me by myself in the front seat. All my mind can wrap itself around is that the gas station men’s room is a billion light years away and I need to take a leak in the worst way. Sluggish and clumsy, I see myself rooting around in the ocean of garbage on the floor until I find a half empty two liter of Pepsi. After checking to make sure nobody’s around, I roll to one side and let loose, then screw the cap on tightly and kick it under the seat. My eyes fall closed…
— Someone is poking me and I pry them back open with heroic effort. Rank breath rains over my face, cigarettes and tequila, barely masking the fragrance of a set of teeth like half-rotten piling sinking into a swamp. Dreadlocks, the drummer sister, is grinning and poking me, saying something. She’s slurring badly, obviously as messed up as I am.
‘My shisher really likesh you!” she giggles. I stare up at her feeling like I’m in a fish bowl. I try to tell her to take me home but only succeed in drooling on myself. Blackness.
— A dirty tongue is pressing against mine. I fight and barely win a monumental struggle against my stomach and don’t puke. Why is Dreadlocks —
“Do it like that. She really likesh you.”
I blinked and came back to reality. Hazel was looking at me, worried.
“Are you alright, sweetie? You zoned out on me for a minute.”
I had so many questions I could hardly choose which stone to look under first.
“How did I get hurt?”
Hazel brushed my hair back again. “After I dropped off the delinquents, I decided I ought to give you a lift home too. You were really in no condition to do, well, anything. But you couldn’t tell me your address, so I brought you here to my place instead. I figured a cup of coffee might bring you back to life but you tripped coming up y steps and gashed your head something awful on my railing while I was unlocking my door. So, I got to be your nurse.
Then we went to sleep — more or less,” she said coyly, clearly studying my face for a reaction. Something was buried beneath her words. What was she leaving out?
She really likesh you.
“Whose clothes are these?”
Hazel patted my arm. “Those are actually mine. I know it isn’t very ladylike but I do have a bunch of boy clothes for lounging around in. Even the boxers, but I just wear them like shorts. They’re comfy!”
I had plenty of pieces but I could not seem to fit them together into anything meaningful. “But where are my clothes?”
“They’re in the washing machine, sweetie.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why?”
Her forehead crinkled and those bushy brows rose and fell. “Wow, you really were out of it. There’s no need to be embarrassed, but you had a bit of an accident. I gave you some fresh clothes and threw yours in the wash. It’s no big deal.”
“Oh,” I said again. Distant alarm bells were ringing in my head. I recalled quite clearly how heavily I watered down that Pepsi and coupled with how insanely thirsty I had been when I woke up and how incapacitated I was being told I was, I found it highly unlikely that I’d managed to drink enough of anything to turn around and piss my pants. I also seriously doubted I’d slept with her, though she kept hinting at it. How could I have, if I’d been unable to even move?
“You know what would feel so good right now,” Hazel cooed, peeling away the bandage and examining my wound. “A nice, warm bubble bath.”
“A bath? Maybe a shower. I think I stink. And my mouth tastes pretty horrible too.”
She laughed. “It’s cute! But no, my shower isn’t working, The water pressure’s all screwy or some damn thing. What do you say, let’s take a bath.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. Honestly, I just wanted to go home. I decided I didn’t want to know what happened last night. This tentative investigation only foretold more frustration and whatever goodness might have become of it was rapidly being spoiled by knowing even a little of the truth. “Maybe I should just go.”
Her smile broke like a pane of glass on the pavement and beneath was only vivid pain. Then she blinked and it was gone. Those caterpillar brows furrowed. “You’re going to be shy now? After last night, and everything we did? Wow — I thought… well,” Hazel said softly. Her bottom lip twitched and her face flushed. Tears welled up, a dam threatening to rupture at any moment.
“No, it’s fine. You want to go. I’m not going to stop you. It’s fine. I get it. Don’t even worry about me. I’m fine. It’s fine,” she said, not looking at me. Every fine was like a knife slashing at me and I felt like the world’s biggest stain. I was the villain, the bad guy in all those chick flicks who steps all over the girl with the heart of gold. A bastard, people watching would call me.
The worst part was, I still thought she was very pretty. If I’d really had a wild night with her, I was doubly annoyed that I couldn’t remember any of it. But how could I explain that I wanted to leave because I had a creepy feeling I’d fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Something was hugely wrong with this whole scenario, but maybe it had nothing to do with Hazel. Maybe her sewer-mouthed sister had drugged me.
She really likesh you.
“Listen, I’m sorry. I’m just not myself. I’ve never blacked out before. I’m really embarrassed. But I do want to take a bath with you. Please?”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I mean it. I’m being a jerk and I’m sorry. I really want to.”
She gave me a stem look and chewed her lip. Finally, she relented and her smile returned. “Okay, good. It’ll just be a minute. I’ll go run the water and you just make yourself at home.”
After she slipped out, I got up slowly and found the worst of my disorientation was gone. I looked across the hall and experienced a brief moment of déjà vu. Hazel had a framed painting of a solar eclipse done in tons of silver and gray hanging on her wall. I had one just like it in my apartment. I’d bought mine from a street artist down in Venice Beach years ago. I wondered if that’s where she’d gotten her copy.
Continuing down the hall, I noticed a well-stocked library in her den and smiled. I’d always like books and I believed reading was a much grander endeavor than watching TV. I hadn’t seen a television in the bedroom and there wasn’t one in here either. She had an array of woodcut art hung on the walls where most people would have put a flat screen. The woodcuts showed archaic medieval scenes, villages and trees, a river with people praying. They looked old and authentic, not like cheap reproductions. A serious collector, then.
As I looked at the spines of her books, I chuckled, recognizing a number of serious medical and biology texts as well as a whole slew of books on the occult, magic, and witchcraft. Taking her work home with her? I scanned one at random but it appeared to be far beyond anything a layperson could grasp. I saw complicated astrological diagrams and seasonal calendars, then flipped pages, perusing recipes for who knows what, I found lists of ingredients with dozens of plants and herbs of which I’d never heard. Putting it back, I saw with amusement that she had several books by some of my favorite authors, sword and sorcery fantasy and science fiction and some horror stuff. At least we’d have that in common. What a weird collection.
I hadn’t heard her come in so I jumped when she put her arms around me. She giggled.
“Oh, you’re so cute. I don’t mind you looking at my things, don’t be nervous. It’s okay as long as you promise not to run off on me.”
“I won’t,” I assured her.
“Are you hungry? I made some snacks.” Hazel pointed to a small bowl she’d set on the nearby table. Homemade cookies, I thought as I picked one up, but sprinkled with herbs.
“What are they?” I asked, taking a bite. It wasn’t sweet. It tasted more like a doughy cracker, the consistency of pizza crust. I couldn’t put my finger on the blend of exotic spices but they were delicious. I was starving, so I ate a whole bunch of them.
“They’re just something I whipped up,” she said as she watched me with a grin. “They don’t have a name yet. I like them because they give me a boost of energy and they’re very healthy
— no sugar at all. As you can tell, I need to lose some weight.”
“No, you don’t,” I said as I finished the last one. “You’re great just the way you are.”
Hazel broke into a huge smile. “Oh, I just knew you were the perfect one! Come on, the bath’s all ready.”
She took me by the hand and led me down the hall to the bathroom. As we walked by a half open closet, I was the washing machine. It wasn’t running and the clothes that I’d been wearing last night were piled in a basket with other laundry. That was odd, but not nearly as odd as the familiar T-shirts hanging up above the ironing board. Had we gone to my place after all?
I felt a hundred times better than I had when I’d awoken, whether from the pizza cookies or time or the notion of intimacy. I allowed the shirt’s presence to take a backseat with the other million questions I had. The truth was, I didn’t really care if I was mixed up or if she’d told a little white lie, or why. I might have been socially awkward but I wasn’t an idiot. I had no intention of messing up what was just about to be a very good thing.
In the bathroom, heady incense burned along with frothy bubbles and smelling of vanilla and exotic flowers I couldn’t even begin to name. She ushered me inside and closed the door behind us, dimming the lights almost but not quite quick enough for me to miss a small black bag near the sink that looked suspiciously like my shaving kit and a familiar blue toothbrush. Well, if she’d somehow moved me in, I was definitely going to make myself at home, I thought wryly.
Instead of ruining the sensual mood she’d created, I only looked at her eagerly. In the candlelight, Hazel’s moon face beamed and she whispered, “I like it better in the dark.”
“Me too.”
She disrobed me slowly and I felt all the confusion and disorientation of the day peeking away with my clothes. She guided me into the tub and I sank into suds so deep I was almost buried. The water was piping hot and it soothed out my last aches and pains. I sighed, content to finally put the ordeal I’d been through behind me and move on into whatever this was.
“I thought you were going to join me,” I said, yawning. I felt almost too relaxed, the incense making me a bit lightheaded.
“We’ll be together soon,” she promised. Hazel stepped over to the sink and busied herself with something she removed from a drawer. My skin tingled and I felt an electric sensation slowly spreading through me as my anticipation heightened and I surrendered myself into the moment. With her back to me, all I could see over her shoulder in the mirror was a look of intense concentration. I closed my eyes and drifted a bit.
Something glass clinked on the rim of the tub behind my head and I looked up to see her standing over me with a sponge. I raised an eyebrow.
“Your nurse thinks you ought to have a sponge bath,” Hazel grinned and she soaped it up. Strange as it was, I couldn’t deny how nice it felt as she massaged and scrubbed my neck and shoulders, humming a little tune I couldn’t quite place. It was maddeningly familiar but it skittered out of my grasp and I let it go. I let everything go and I’d rarely felt better.
“I’m really glad I found you,” she said after a while.
“Me too.”
She sighed softly, still humming her little song then, “will you stay with me, I wonder? I mean, really stay.”
“Yes.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise,” I told her. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She chuckled. “Oh, my. I’m glad, sweetie. I can’t bear the thought of being alone. Being abandoned. It’s the most horrible, horrible thing.”
“I won’t abandon you. I know what it’s like to be alone.”
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose you do. Well, if you mean it — if you really mean it — then swear. If you swear by all the blood in your veins and your heart so long as it beats, then I’ll know you’re really serious and not just trying to make a good girl cry tomorrow,” she said solemnly as her hand came to rest on the left side of my chest. She looked at me expectantly and those expressive caterpillars rose, seeming to wait with bated breath.
Feeling a bit silly, I repeated her weird oath and she smiled. “Oh, that’s the best thing!” Hazel leaned in and pressed her lips to mine, the furthest thing from a chaste kiss, filled with intense hunger. She tasted like lemons and honey, a bit of sour and a bit of sweet.
Distantly I registered the glass clinking sound again but before I could ask what it was I felt a sharp prick at the back of my neck. Intense pressure flooded my limbs and my body, gradually resolving to a slow spreading numbness. As she sat back, she stared at me intently and I gaped at the empty hypodermic needle in her hand. I tried to speak but my tongue lay like a dead slug in my mouth. I couldn’t raise my arms or turn my head, though I still felt the water’s heat. Aside from moving my eyes and breathing, I was paralyzed completely. What the fuck was in the syringe, I wondered in a panic.
“Sorry,” Hazel said sheepishly, patting my cheek. “I didn’t want you to say anything else and mess things up. You just said it so perfectly that I know it was the right time.”
I stared at her mutely, incredulous. It was all I could do. She rose and made a face.
“Oh, come on now, don’t look at me like that! You promised you’d stay. Now you will,” she winked, humming as she tidied up the bathroom, blowing out the candles and turning the lights back on. I finally recognized the song, to my growing horror. She even mouthed the words as she came back to my side. I put a spell on you…
“Don’t worry, you aren’t paralyzed. You can move just fine. Go ahead, try.”
I strained to lift my arms but not so much as a muscle twitched. She giggled. “I should say, you can move just fine if I help you. Lift your arm up sweetie.”
My right arm jerked up out of the water and hung suspended above the water, foam dripping from it. Hazel squealed in delight. “Yes! Ok, raise your other arm.”
Not of my own volition, I did so.
“Clap!” I clapped.
“Touch your face.” my hand rocked into my cheek as I clouted myself a good one.
“Oh darn. I’m sorry about that, sweetie. I’ll get better with practice. It’s all about fine muscle control, see. Hey, you’re starting to prune up. Let me get you a towel.”
The moment she left I tried so hard to stand up that I nearly gave myself a hernia. I couldn’t so much as wiggle a toe. God, how long would whatever she stuck me with take to wear off? And how did she make me move like that? I didn’t know much about mentalism or hypnotic suggestions. Could it be that? Or voodoo? Didn’t those witch doctors have some way of making people into zombies? Whatever it was, I was terrified. The thought that kept racing through my head was, what is this madwoman going to do with me?
She really likesh you.
The most horrible, horrible thing.
Hazel returned and at her command I rose unsteadily and dried myself off in a series of jerky movements. Once I was finished, I stood stuck still facing her.
“It won’t do for you to go around indecently exposed, much as I might enjoy that,” she teased. “So, let’s get you dressed.
After a grueling ten minutes in which I toppled repeatedly, unable to even attempt to throw an arm out to break my fall, I stood like a statue with my clothes back on. She guided me to the mirror. After a number of frustrating attempts, Hazel took the initiative and combed my hair for me, then brushed my teeth. There was a panicked moment where I thought I might choke to death since my body’s automatic reflexes seemed to no longer be under my control. Without being able to cough, I felt a slow suffocation as the toothpaste foam slid down my throat. I blinked furiously and got her attention.
“Spit, spit!” she yelled and I explosively followed her commands, feeling a sense of self-satisfaction as I spit all over her immaculately clean bathroom mirrors. It was the best revenge I could muster and I smirked, if only in my mind.
Later that afternoon, after an exhaustive session of practice in which she slowly began to master making her marionette more like a real boy, we sat on the couch with her ankles crossed in my lap. Hazel grinned.
“So, I’ve been waiting all day. I think you have something to tell me, don’t you?” I blinked, not sure what she meant.
“Come on — speak!”
My mouth opened and I heard my own voice, eerily disembodied like it was coming from an answering machine, croak out three words.
“I… love… you.”
Hazel clapped in delight. “Yes! Did you see? I didn’t even have to say it. That’s perfect. Let me see what else I can do just by thinking about it.”
She concentrated for a moment and my hands rose. I took her socks off and started to massage her feet. She giggled.
“You’re going to make me so happy, sweetie. Oh, and of course, I love you too! Forever and always.”
Locked inside my puppetine nightmare, days passed. Hazel quickly learned how to control my every movement without even being in the room, though not being able to see me limited what she could safely have me do from afar. She also constructed a series of commands that made the programmer in me laugh at the irony, setting me to routines which involved house cleaning and cooking and preparing little romantic surprises for her to come home to. She had, by whatever means, gifted herself an obedient little robot man. I felt a stab of sympathy for all the Roombas and Alexas and so on out there, just hanging around the house until called upon to serve the master.
The most unnerving aspect of the possession she’d delivered me into was that there seemed to be no time limit. Had she permanently assumed control of my motor functions? Respiration, digestion, and eye blinking were still mine but precious little else. In a darker moment one night she confided that she could stop my heart if she wanted, but having it always beating in her mind reminded her of promises I’d made and kept her company while she was at work. She left me alone for long hours but she’d allow me to watch TV — a big new travesty she’d just ordered to spare me from staring at the wall all day. I wished I could scream. I’d have been much happier with a book.
As we spent time together, she gloated about the wiles by which she’d made me hers. Good old Starface, the Baal’s Corner bartender, had noticed Jalapeno Popper Guy, a loner if ever there was one, and whispered into Hazel’s ear. She’d gotten her sister’s terrible band a spot on the stage and settled in to wait. Once she’d seen me, she made her move. Hazel had been all giggles as she told me this, like any movie villain. Do you like coke?
She’d drugged me. I would have kicked myself if I could’ve moved one of my feet. After she’d incapacitated me, the rest was a snap. She’d seen how I’d looked at her and if men were not such fools for pretty women, I might have stood a chance. But alas, even with two brains I’d never thought.
I continued to hold out hope of a rescue or that the spell might be broken until the day she settled my affairs. Hazel had retrieved a few things from my apartment, including all my personal information. During the macabre endeavor that followed, I placed a series of phone calls. I terminated my lease, I closed my bank account, and canceled my credit cards. I heard myself explaining to my boss that I’d come into an unexpected windfall and would never want for anything again. I changed my address with the post office, though I got so little mail that nobody would have noticed I had almost no social life, the few friends and family members I claimed were scattered and far away. Hazel assured me that we could burn those bridges if we came to them, and thus I became hers alone.
On the plus side, I’m now well fed and my every need is provided for — clothes, bedding, creature comforts, sex and leisure activities all properly scheduled and attended to by my dear Hazel. I even have a doting lover to remind me every day how special and wonderful I am and to keep me warm at night as I lay in the dark willing myself to die. One of the few things she can’t force me to do is sleep, and the horror of the situation often keeps me up long nights like an itch I can’t scratch. Itching, ironically, is another stepping stone towards losing my mind. It won’t be much longer now. But hey, she really likes me.
No Comments