Borderlands 4 Read online

  I manage to respond.

  She gives me a smile as quick as the movement with which she snatches the photograph, and I don’t like to wonder what the smile means, any more than I care to imagine what other photographs she may have in her bag. In a bid to avoid meeting her eyes I stare through the window across the aisle. The last of the rain is worming its way off the glass, and the people in the window-seats are erasing the communal breath.

  We must be almost at the seaside. Through a patch like a grey hand squelched and dripping down the window I see a row of tall white hotels and then two fish-and-chip shops. “Room Street,” moon-face says, “Fried Bunch,” while his neighbor grabs his own right ear with his left hand and blocks his left ear with his upper arm. Are my fellow passengers a troupe of performers on their way to a seaside engagement?

  Is that why their faces seem familiar? If they’re rehearsing, I wish they would stop. “Flag Holes,” says lunar lineaments, “Stubble

  Humps,” and I feel he is snatching reality away from me and making it his before I can perceive it. What will he do to my sea?

  The coach swings into a layby alongside the golf course and halts with a gasp. “Car Clump,” says selenophysiognomy, but I don’t care.

  When the other coach draws up behind this one I’ll be able to return to my own seat. The driver lets the front door puff open and tramps clanking down the steps, and I turn to watch for my vehicle. Then my neck jerks, and the pain in my skull feels like a pin driven so deep into my spine that I can’t move my head.

  A woman is sitting in the middle of the back row with her feet propped against the seats on either side of the aisle. Her striped pink dress is raised above her waist, and I can see into her. I feel as though the bearded purplish avenue is drawing me in, as though the coach and the passengers and their hubbub have become a tunnel down which I’ll go rushing helplessly unless I can look away. Just in time I glimpse the one sight which is able to distract my attention - the other coach. It races around the bend at the edge of the golf course and flashes its lights, and I succeed in swiveling my head. I grab the head-rest in front of me so as to heave myself to my feet as soon as my coach stops. But the coach races past without slowing and disappears over the slope of the road.

  I clench my fists and my eyes and my mouth in order not to attract attention to myself. I can’t prevent my eyes from twitching open, however, because I have hardly drawn breath when the coach starts to move.

  Surely there hasn’t been time for the driver to climb aboard - and as the coach swerves out of the layby I seem to glimpse a figure running beside the murky windows and waving vainly as it is left behind.

  Now I know what kind of company I’m in. They aren’t actors, but

  I know why I would have seen photographs of them in newspapers.

  Asylums have days out, even asylums where the criminally insane are locked up, though the public aren’t supposed to know they do. It must have been a nurse I gave my name to when I got on this coach. Why didn’t she prevent whoever’s in the driver’s seat from starting the engine?

  She must be afraid to intervene while the vehicle is moving, and

  I can’t do anything, I’m afraid to draw attention to myself. I’ll be able to keep quiet so long as we end up by the sea.

  The woman next to me smiles, and then she smiles, and then she smiles, and I make myself smile at her, and smile, and smile; what harm can there be in a smile? Moon-dial is naming everything we pass —“Bucket Bunches, Toddler Splash, Bloat Boats, Wheel Baldies”— but I can cope with this, because he won’t be able to bother me once

  I’ve left the coach as soon as we get to the beach. The man beside the knitting woman is multiplying syllables again, and I can hear Algernon rhyming and someone else singing “God save our gracious” over and over to any number of tunes as if she can’t progress to the next word until she finds the melody, but I mustn’t let all this oppress me; above all, I mustn’t look back.

  Through the windscreen, far away down the aisle, I see sunlit hotels giving way to dunes ahead, and then water shines beyond the dunes.

  As I take a breath which I mean to hold until my silent wish is granted, the woman beside me smiles and says “Do you mind if I ask you one question?”

  The road curves, and I see the other coach. It’s parked at the edge of the dunes, and the passengers are climbing down the steps. “Not any more,” I say.

  “Who’s looking after your mother while you’re out for the day?”

  Algernon has opened a window, and I can hear the waves. They sound exactly like my mother’s breathing, which I thought I’d never hear again. Once I lay my head in a hollow between two dunes I shall feel safe. I’m resisting the urge to run along the aisle so as to be first off the coach when the man in the driver’s seat honks the horn and passes the parked vehicle without even slowing. “We haven’t stopped,” I cry.

  “We have to stop.”

  “Sand Bumps,” says satellite-features. “Screech Air.” The woman smiles at me and then smiles at me. The rhyming and the prayers and the syllabic babble and “God save our gracious” and all the other tangled sounds are conspiring to steal my breath and weigh me down in my seat. “Stop,” I scream and clawing myself out of the seat, lurch towards the front of the coach.

  I’ve drawn attention to myself. There’s no turning back now. I grab the knitting woman’s needles, cracking her hands and cutting off her prayer of thanks, and poke at anyone who looks as if they might try to catch hold of me. The driver brakes and glances at me as I reach him.

  Now he looks like the proper driver, but how do I know that isn’t a trick?

  “Knit, knit,” I cry—I used to shout that at my mother whenever I was afraid she was about to stop moving—and jab his face. “Snail,” I announce, because that’s what he looks like with the needles in his face.

  As he waves his hands frantically at them I heave him out of the seat and grab the wheel. The coach ploughs through the dunes, and I suffer a pang of regret until I understand that the beach and the sea are so much bigger than I am, too big for me to harm. They’re waiting for me.

  They will take me back where I was safe.

  Painted Faces

  By Gerard Daniel Houarner

  We get a lot of stories from the steaming-organs-school-of-writing; stuff that is a celebration of gore for gore’s sake, and little or no story substance. This, however, does not mean, we are opposed to graphic or even overly violent material. There really are no taboos here, as the story by New York writer Gerard Houarner will demonstrate.

  At eleven in the morning, he rang a number he always called when the father in his nightmares made him scream.

  “Hello,” he said quietly. “This is Gene. Are you available today?”

  She answered, “Twelve-thirty,” and hung up.

  He left his house at eleven-thirty to make sure he arrived on time.

  His daughter Diane (“Dad needs a shave,” she says that morning) and son Art (“Dad’s playing hooky,” he adds with a grin) were at school.

  Kim (“You’ll finish the breakfast dishes? Some of us have to go to work this morning,” his wife says as she runs out) was at the office.

  She had already made her morning check-in call. He had the rest of the day free.

  Her name was Evelyn, but she preferred Mistress Eve. She opened the door to her house wearing a leather teddy and high-heels. Her long blonde hair fell past her shoulders in what he always thought of as a shower of gold. She appeared to be what he paid her so well to be: dangerous, like his nightmare father. Different from the wonderful memories of his father that needed reviving before the nightmares destroyed them.

  She motioned for him to enter with a riding crop.

  He stripped in the entry hall while she strutted around him ridiculing his flabby body, graying hair, and the whimpering sound he made whenever she prodded him with the crop. When he was naked she removed his glasses and traced the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth with
a fingernail. Then she put the spiked leather dog collar around his neck and led him down into the basement by the leash.

  They passed the hanging cage and the rack and the suspension harness. The wooden dog house and aluminum food dish held his glance for a moment (“Think about getting a dog?” his wife says as she leaves for work that morning. “I think the kid’ll get over Shamus quicker if we get another one soon”). When he has nine years old his father had brought home a dog, mostly collie. Gene named him Shamus because he liked detectives. His father always found the name very funny. The dog was gone after a couple of years. Thirty-four years later and Gene still couldn’t hang on to an animal.

  In a corner was Mistress Eve’s latest toy: a coffin sitting a foot off of the floor on concrete blocks.

  Gene’s heart began to race. Eve glanced over her shoulder at him, flicking golden hair out of her eyes, and smiled. “I see we approve.”

  She let the leash drop and pulled him by his erect penis to the foot of the coffin. She ordered him to stand on one of the blocks. After removing the leash, Evelyn took a handle with a roll of plastic shipping wrap and, starting with his ankles, bound him tightly in a cocoon of clear plastic. She asked him to beg for what she was going to give him. In a small, tremulous voice he did until she stuffed plastic in his mouth and sealed off his face, leaving only slits for his eyes and nose. When she finished he couldn’t move except to sway precariously back and forth on the cinder block. She pulled his stiff penis through a hole she made in the plastic over his crotch. Her laughter punctuated his vulnerability.

  Sweat made his skin itch. He wondered if this was how all those bodies had felt when they were alive.

  He moaned, almost lost his balance, then tried to tell her how good it felt to be with her. He tried to tell her about the dreams haunting him.

  Soft moans and sobs were all that emerged. He did not pay her to hear his confession.

  “You’re in my power, now, baby Gene,” she said close to his ear.

  “Your life, your death, even your life after death are all mine. Yes?

  Squirm for me if you think I’m right.”

  He shook his hips and shoulders gingerly and leaned against her grip. After he steadied himself she stroked his penis for a minute, then climbed atop the block with him and squeezed his erection between her thighs while stroking his buttock cheeks with the riding crop. He could feel the stiff leather through the plastic wrap, and he arched his back to savor and sustain the thrill of goose bumps shooting up along his spine. Her thigh muscles flexed until he was ready to come.

  His gaze fixed on the dog house. Its musty, animal smell hit like an electric shock. (“Maybe Shamus’ll come back,” he says to his mother years ago. “With Dad.”

  “No,” his mother says. “The dog is gone.”

  “Maybe Shamus’ll come back,” he says to Kim just a few hours ago.

  “None of the other dogs that have been disappearing around here ever come back,” his wife replies.)

  Suddenly Mistress Eve backed away.

  “Not yet, mummy Gene.” She poked him in the chest with the crop until he lost his balance. He fell backwards into the cushioned coffin, hitting the back of his head against the pillowed rim. He laid stunned, pain shooting through his legs and along his back.

  She climbed in after him and straddled his stomach. He gasped noisily for air as he writhed under her.

  “Oh, I know you’re not begging for mercy,” she said, playfully holding his nose for a moment, then letting him breathe. “You know I have none, and I know you don’t want any. I know what you want, don’t I?” She caressed and tousled his hair. Then she reached over the side of the coffin and picked up a make-up kit. She pulled her hair back and then took lip-stick, a deep shade of blue followed by shimmering green and the obligatory crimson, and slashed thick lines across her forehead, down her cheeks, nose and chin. With mascara she drew thick circles around her eyes that trailed off in opposing concentric circles across her face. Various hues of shading cream filled in the blank spots. Facial paint from Halloween make-up kits would have been easier and more dramatic, but that was not the way it had been done long ago.

  The wrap prevented him from turning away from her. His erection throbbed and he arched his back to bring his hips closer to her.

  “Getting restless, are we?” Eve shifted down and teased him with her moist sex. “Anxious for life? You know you have to die a little, first.” She got out of the coffin and placed blinders with ear plugs over his eyes. Her hair brushed across his nose, then he felt thump of the lid when it closed over him.

  Blood pounded past his ear drums. Suffocating darkness closed him in.

  They never come back, he thought, fighting his panic. Not the dogs, not anything else. But sometimes, if you looked deep enough you could see that the things you missed had never really left. Like corpses and treasures, they lay buried underground. The corpses came out in the dark right before sleep, or in nightmares. Whenever he saw old Shamus, his mother, his father, or all those others in the dark, his heart raced and he wept so hard Kim woke up and had to comfort him. In the nightmares, the dead acted differently. His father—he didn’t want to remember the nightmares.

  He had to go deeper. Beyond the day the old Shamus left, along with his father. He had to stand on death’s border to find the treasures.

  Her painted face, like a blasting cap, uncovered the bright, shiny coins of his childhood.

  Sometimes, they never left …

  On the first day of school Gene is crying. He blubbers, then screams at his mother and father for throwing him out of the house, forcing him to stay with strangers. He misses his mother. His father comes to the classroom and watches over him through a window in the door. The smell of chalk and crayon makes Gene want to vomit. The other children running and screaming and pushing scare him. But he stays because his father is close by, watching over him. And later, when his mother comes to pick him up, father sends her away with the car and walks Gene home. Their first man to man talk is exchanged during that long walk. Gene’s tears dry up and his fear evaporates when he looks up at the big man next to him, feels the big man’s hand holding his, feels the strength seeping through the fingers into his small body. He wants to be just like his father.

  The air in the coffin was hot and stuffy. Gene suddenly wanted someone to rescue him. He wanted to move his arms, kick his legs. He wanted to see. But Mistress Eve did not come. He had not yet given her the right signal.

  His raspy breathing cut through his thoughts like a saw. He thought about the way he sometimes saw his father in the dark. In his nightmares.

  (Little boy Gene watches Dad come home from his part-time banquet waiter job. The big bag carrying his uniform and other things gets tossed into the basement. Dad goes upstairs to wash his hands. Gene is in the bathroom as Dad dries his hands. He keeps rubbing them with the towel. Want to hear a story, Dad asks. Sitting on Gene’s bed, Dad talks. His words become a little girl stealing a rose from a beast’s garden; a boy running after someone along a road that turns into a cave that winds down into the earth; a man changing into something wild to hunt for food. Then little boy Gene’s back in bed. Dad tucks in the sheets. Watches over him as he says his prayers. But then, Gene knows.

  He knows what’s in the bag. He knows what Dad likes to do. His father’s dark eyes watch him. Big, strong, gentle hands sink slowly towards the bed like pale, weighted corpses through water. His father paints a face on him. And before anything else happens, Gene wakes up screaming.)

  Gene screamed. The sound squeaked past the plastic in his mouth and filled the coffin. He wept; tears pooled along creases in the plastic wrapping and spilled back into his eyes when he tried to shake his head back and forth in denial of the dream. His eyes burned.

  What would his father have done if there had been an accident, if he had found Gene broken, bleeding, bone and guts showing through shredded flesh.

  What if, instead of a boy, his mother had had a girl
? What if a sister had come before or after Gene? What did he dream of doing to

  Gene’s mother? To the aunts and grandmothers and cousins in the family? To the old lady living by herself in the corner house? To the teenage girl who looked after Gene when his parents went out?

  Would he have asked Gene to help.

  And would Gene have done it.

  Bad memories. Terrible thoughts. Dead bodies mixed in with gold coins. He took deep, steady breaths and shut his eyes against the insanity.

  His heart slowed. He relaxed in the plastic’s grip, in the power of

  Mistress Eve’s coffin. He did not want to be gone like his father, Shamus, the bodies. No, and he did not want the nightmare father, with his bag and his hands and his long, dark gaze, to paint his face and do things to him. Or worse, ask him to do things to others. He wanted the other father, the one always home for dinner with some time to spare for his son.

  He suits up for his first little league game while his father instructs him on how to hold the bat, keep his eyes on the ball, move his hips and shoulders. They play catch in the backyard, touch their toes a few times, jog between the fence and back door a few times. After the warm-up,

  Dad drives him to the league field. They don’t talk. Gene thinks about some of the other kids, even girls, who can hit and catch much better than him. He worries about disappointing his father. Maybe his father will be ashamed. Maybe he’ll want to trade him for another kid. At the field Gene looks at all the parents looming over him, talking and laughing about the game being played. Gene strikes out and hits himself with the bat at his first time up, then falls on his face when he trips trying to field a ball. The ball bounces off of his head and trickles away. While other parents and kids laugh, his father watches with a quiet smile and nods his head as if to say everything is all right. He claps and yells the loudest when Gene’s bat finally makes contact with the ball and when he assists in a put out.

  Memories flowed, golden bright. The nightmare father receded, the bodies sank back into shadow. The father he had known in his childhood was back. Until the bodies crept out of the darkness; until his constant fear, the terrible thoughts, fed the nightmare father long enough for him to command his dreams. And then he’d have to take another day off and visit Mistress Eve again.