Murder Ballad
I knew where they were before I followed. He - Ben, my Ben - took them back to where it all began. A slap in the face, but I welcome the sting. I am ready now. I've arrived.
He's good; he knows how to look for danger, but I've had time to practice, and I've got time on my side. The cold doesn't bother me anymore, and I've got plenty of supplies. I have time to watch. To watch, to wait, to see what they do down there in the cabin.
That man - the cop - is not the same cop as before. At some point in time, Ben has exchanged his big-nosed Italian detective friend for a scruffy, blond model. I watch this man carefully, but I can't see why Ben would want him. He's scrawny, fidgety, cagey - he brings to mind the Artful Dodger after twenty years of hard time. He's not attractive to me.
He is attractive to Ben, though. I was watching when they made that first move; when the Artful Dodger moved closer and closer and closer until, suddenly, surprisingly, lips met and arms clutched and they haven't gotten out of bed since. I thought Ben would back off, waffle a little, blush, escape, but instead he just grabbed the twitchy speed freak's narrow ass and pulled him closer, tighter.
Their fucking - I'm not calling it lovemaking, although I know Ben does for sure - is as frenzied as one would expect of two healthy males confined to a small cabin in the dead of winter. I can't watch all of it. I can't watch them afterwards, when Ben pulls that spiky-haired interloper close and kisses him so softly; the way I remember him kissing me once. I know what I will have to do. I am hungry for it.
My hunger grows every hour, every day that I follow them through bout after bout of sweaty, athletic, animal sex. The Artful Dodger wannabe - whom Ben calls Ray for some reason, although anyone could see that this is not Ray; maybe I'm witnessing some kind of consensual triangulation - folds over for Ben at the slightest provocation. He pushes his face into the pillow and spreads his long legs like the slut he is, and Ben takes and takes, and I turn away when I see his face. He thinks he loves this man.
I watch them cook together - perfectly connected in the small kitchen, working well together. Well, they have probably worked together professionally. They move with deliberate grace. It's a slow, familiar dance. I don't like seeing the way Ben looks at this new Ray when he's not looking back. Ben's eyes are hungry, but not like my eyes are. He looks at his so-called friend as if that skinny body contained the answer to all and any questions left in the universe.
I start watching the man closer then. What is it that Ben sees? I see only a man who's fast approaching middle age and hasn't realized he's out of his twenties yet. Someone who moves like he's getting a continuous series of small electrical shocks. Someone who grins cheekily and touches Ben without any of the reverence he deserves. He behaves as if Ben's body - that real, strong, perfect body - is his to paw and handle as he pleases.
I begin to hate him. He isn't worthy of such a strong emotion from me, but it's not possible for me to watch him move around - with; over; in - Ben without hating him. I want to hurt him; hurt him enough for it to be possible for me to love him instead. Indifference has become impossible. If I hurt him, what will Ben do? If I rip his little toy to pieces and trample them under my feet, what will Ben do?
I feel the decision make itself. I want to find out.
When I've closed the gate on anything but the road forward, watching gets easier. I have now become completely unaware of the nature and life around me; the only thing that exists is the cabin and it's two inhabitants. Three, if you count the animal, which I don't. Ben's wolf never liked me - it must have been jealous, as I understand canines easily are - but it likes 'Ray', it seems. It nuzzles him and lays its large head in his lap, begging for scratches and pets. 'Ray' obliges almost every time, and I see Ben approving with a smile that makes my hate flare hotter.
I can watch them kiss, and kiss, and kiss. They grow into each other, meld, melt, entwine. It's so damned enthusiastic that I feel a twinge of arousal even through my hate. It's cold, and it's not what I want to do, but I only need to rub a hand lightly between my legs to achieve a quick, functional orgasm. I don't allow it to distract me.
When I sleep, I see them move behind my eyelids, gliding over each other, slick skin and sweat, damp hair and twining legs and hands everywhere. I see their sweat turn to blood, seeping into the sheets, flowing in rivers from gaping wounds. I see them long dead, lazy flies creeping over swollen faces, bulging eyeballs, turgid, protruding tongues. I see my own hand reach out to cut their throats. I know I will never touch Ben again; not to harm, not to heal. I will touch him like God touches him; indirectly, through an intermediary. I will tear his world apart.
They stand close together for a long while, Ray's arms twining like vines around Ben's neck. Ben kisses him, much like a father would kiss him son goodbye. He leaves with the wolf, and the man who is called Ray but isn't really him is left alone in the cabin. Ben took his rifle; he has gone hunting.
I move closer, keeping my line of sight through the window; Ray is humming tunelessly under his breath, and suddenly, he swings around, raises his hands, dances sweeping steps across the bare floor. He moves fluidly, effortlessly, and for a second, I take pause, because there I see one reason to love this man. The moment passes, and he's just a thief again. I will know what he looks like turned inside out.
The remaining dogs howl and bark when I walk up, but I know Ray isn't as attuned to their voices as is Ben. He won't know what's coming. I have a sturdy branch formed like a slender, hard club. I am strong enough.
He's still humming softly when I enter. The door creaks, and he looks up from his shuffling dance. A question forms on his lips, but I clip it short with my stick. I catch him on the temple, hard, and he falls gracelessly, bonelessly. A small trickle of blood stains the soft, blond hairs over his ear. His eyes are open but unfocused.
I have prepared fastidiously. I lay him out on the sturdy pinewood bed like the sacrifice he is. He seems to come out of his daze when I fasten the shackles on his wrists, and he whimpers and struggles a little feebly with the restraints. He's not going to break loose. I take the knife I've brought and get to work.
He's wearing several layers of clothes, and I cut them off him very carefully. He has found his voice now, and his questioning, accusing, angry litany washes over me, over me and right off me. I can't hear the words through my concentration. He bucks and thrashes, but only manages to slice himself on my knife, so he stops after a while. I hear Ben's name in the cascade of nonsense, and have to stop to strike the name out of him with my fist. His cheekbone hurts my knuckles.
My knife works as if it were controlled by something greater than I; I hardly have to think about the cuts. I enjoy the man's hoarse cries, the way he swears and threatens and finally pleads. His muscles bunch and twitch under his skin, and I choose a place on his chest, right over the right pectoral, and peel a flap of skin back so I can see the muscle work without the cover. He's crying now; small, hitching sobs - like a little girl lost in the woods. I push my hands inside him and tear something loose, and the sobbing becomes screaming again.
I touch his sweat-slick skin like Ben has so many times, and he squirms and pants just like Ben made him do, but this will be the last climax, the one that will take you straight into oblivion, 'Ray'. What is your real name? I think about asking, but just then he screams again, and his voice cracks painfully, and I don't really care, because I have reduced this man to nothing but a nameless vessel for pain, pain that I can bring down again and again with a flick of my wrist.
It is remarkable how long a man can live without - I look down at my handiwork - his liver, his stomach and most of his small intestine.
He's trying to speak now, again, struggling to force the syllables over torn and bleeding lips. He's bitten them to shreds in his thrashing, convulsing terror, his lips and his tongue, too, but still he tries. I can see the word forming on that raw, strangely beautiful mouth. One syllable. A name.
"No!" I cry, and bring the knife done to cut Ben's name from this unworthy throat, and the whispered name turns to a gargle that tries to be a cry and finally succeeds and rises and rises and soars into a howl. He doesn't sound like a man anymore. He's a frightened, dying animal crying out its last strength, and the dogs outside answer in ululating sympathy. It's beautiful.
He doesn't try to speak again; doesn't even scream. His voice is gone, anyway, and I think he has his work cut out for him, just lying there staring and breathing and bleeding. There is still a smidgen of raw anger in his expression, like a thin plaster over the tiles of agony. He can still bear more. Reluctantly, I cede a touch of respect to him.
When the time comes, when he breathes his last, he does so peacefully, finally. He has hovered on the brink of the abyss for a while, and his eyes have achieved a serenity I didn't know he could muster. I can see him welcoming the darkness. Just a little touch of regret shines there, and he opens his mouth for that last breath, and I bend down to steal my lover's name from his lips. I taste blood and bile and pain, and for a second, I am dizzy with the power it brings.
I step back and take my time looking at him. It has been hours, and Ben will be back soon. The bed is an abattoir, bright crimson, and the dead animal reek lies heavy in the small room. It smells sweet to me; the insides of a man, same as the insides of any dumb animal. The crumpled, broken body on the soaked sheets, still hanging limply from the handcuffs, looks like an inkblot in obscene red. I have left his face intact, because I wanted to see his eyes - those mocking, pale eyes - fill with awareness of what is coming. And he performed beautifully. His body, wiry and unattractive in life, has achieved a strange, compelling beauty in death. I run my hand over the exposed flesh, dip into the gaping cavity where his innards lay arranged in a tangled mess that bears no resemblance to the neat, labeled order of anatomical drawings. There's still heat in there, although his skin has cooled and paled with the loss of blood. The skin is already turning yellow. His face is the face of a wax puppet. I touch his forehead; paint a simple pictogram in his own blood there.
I had hoped to feel his tortured soul hover in the room with me, but I can only sense emptiness. Whoever he was, he is gone now. The howling of the dogs sounds muted, as if they know and mourn his passing. Mindless beasts.
Rapid footsteps on the snow, urgent barking, a concerned voice calling out a name that belongs to someone who isn't here, in any form. Ben bursts into the cabin, and I can see his face pale as if someone turned a dial and rendered him monochrome.
His mouth is open and his throat is working, but I can't hear that hated name from him. He can't say it. I smile at him.
His face is contorting, twisting as if the pain is a living thing trying to break its way through the stark white mask of his features. My Ben in usually such a stoic, and I feel a strange reverence to be witnessing this intense emotion. It's not grief - not yet - but he shows more pain than his so-called friend and lover did even at the peak of agony. I love him with a fire I didn't know I could contain - my love seems to have grown and swallowed me during these hours; in this final act. I have sacrificed this thing - this mangled, empty thing that Ben claimed to love - on his altar: to him, for him, in his name.
I say it, his name, and, his face still twisted with emotion he can't purge, he raises the rifle he's carrying and pulls the trigger.
The world tilts and turns and starts to fade at the edges almost immediately. I can still hear him, his harsh, choking breaths that aren't quite sobs, because how could tears be enough to expunge the memory of what I have done, when the evidence still lies in tatters on the bed? He shuffles past me without a downward glance, and approaches the bed and the pile of waste I have left there. I hear him try again to speak the name, but I can't make it out. Outside, I hear the wolf scratching at the door, scratching and whining, and it seems to bring Ben back to himself. He turns and walks out without looking at me. He doesn't have to - I will always be with him now.
My limbs are settling into a numb paralysis, but my senses soar. Through the rush of oncoming death, I hear the rifle crack again and again. Ben, my Ben who always finishes what he's started, is shooting his dogs. I wonder if he's leaving the one he calls Dief - his very wolf familiar - last, or whether he has spared the animal the pain of seeing its brothers die.
I know, even as it echoes through the fractured, fragile silence, when the last shot comes. Contentment seeps through my motionless, fading awareness.
The floor is rough under my back. I can feel it; just as I can feel my blood flowing sluggishly from the wound he opened in me and onto the boards. The smell of it mingles sweetly with the slaughterhouse smell already present in the air. Everything is beautiful, and nothing hurts. I feel every inch of my own skin tingling with anticipation, and the smell of cooling blood is everywhere around me and I know it's coming and I am not afraid. Ben is already waiting somewhere and I know I sent Ray ahead but he won't come between us anymore. Everything is beautiful, and nothing-- |
