A long way from home.
They had. They had put something in my drink. The drink they gave me. I lost my balance, sank under the table. The goddamned drink. After that, having been slipped a mickey, I lost track.
They kept me. Drugged. Alla the time.
Always dark. Never daylight. Basement somewhere. Barnet’s house? Gottfried’s? Don’t rightly know. Days. Weeks. Months. No clue. None. Am I? None of it really matters. Not anymore.
‘Just look at her.’ Voices, from the shadows. In the dark. Almost… proud. Proud of what they were doing. What they’d done. ‘Look at the size of her. A magnificent creature, isn’t she?’
‘Big ol’ bastard. A beast.’
‘Don’t you think? You might just be on to something there, Twinkie.’
Scapular, veil. My rosaries. My Bible. They had stripped me of my little all. For sake of decency they let me keep together scraps of my tunic. Any other of my few remaining belongings – change of underwear, the image of our Lord in a locket, a photo of my mother I’d kept – I never saw these things again.
They kept me bound and tied: backed, I assume, around a foundation timber. Whatever it was, wouldn’t budge. Ever. Just as well, I was ready to kill. More than kill. Old, old man, bare scalp. A dome of sun-blisters. Godfrey, it was Godfrey, he would still come worming around. Calling me a seed. His divine “inspiration”. Night or day, they forced a foul egg-smelling liquid down me. Old fairground trick, so Godfrey said, proudly – pound after pound of sugar dissolved into a mayo solution. They wanted me plump. They wanted to keep my weight up!
‘Here, have another twinkie.’
I was force fed those dry sponge sticks filled with… some Godawful thing, forgive me Lord I don’t know what. Nothing found in nature. Kreepy Kremes I called ‘em. Leastways in my mind I did, while I still had one. That teeth-stain oily little wuss, ‘Bernard’ I think his name was, he would delight in cramming them, one after another, after another, into my mouth, ‘til it was clogged to overflowing with that crap. Hare-lip muthafucka giggled the whole time while I heaved.
Not Bernie. Not God grey… Godfrey. Some Other Man started checking in on me, more and more often. Seemed to like thinking himself, thinking of himself, as bein’ in charge. Saying (nudge) this was All His Idea, that I was (wink, wink) his New Pet. Pet project. I don’t… don’t remember zactly who he was, if I ever even knew. The dark, the drugs, the dilute mayo slop, it was, is, hard to think, keep things straight, even from before. Lost any bearings I had. No idea, no clue where I was. Hell, was becoming unsure who I was. A nobody, a nothing. Less than nothing. Bernie, Barney, Barnet – whatever – all but grovelled at this Other Man’s feet. Noticed that much. Godfrey, how he kept his cool. But cool. Clearly slighted. (He’d said that this was His idea. Right? Right.)
This Other Man I forget his name, but not that face. The face I came to know well enough – long, thin, permanent five o’clock shadow – how he forever had it hard-pressed up into mine. And I knew its smell. His smell. Corn syrup. Guy ran… a junk food joint, up at the edge of town. Overheard the gossip. Bitter words. No Bar-B-Q. Just another pizza pit, or something. Other Man began to bring me leftovers, smushed into feed buckets – cold slices: burgers, half-chewed: corn dogs: do-nuts – no fried chicken though. Figures. Tha’s where the huge glass jars of mayo came from too. He’d made a pretty fast buck – told me hisself, business good enough to have built himself A Real Mansion. His “pizza palace” he called it, and then he’d start up. Laughing. He showed it to me one time. When they finally took me stumbling up the stairs and out.
I recall now how he liked the colour purple. No joke.
Halfway to dark it was, on that evening when they took me out. Still bound. Led on a short chain. My knees weak to buckling. Cold air. On the way to winter. Valley in shadow. They followed along back paths, hedgerows hard beside, going some ways away, taking me to some place behind a massive barn. Patch of bare earth, strewn with straw. Stables, I guessed. I could hear nervous animal snorts, saw blacksmith’s instruments – horses. I’d only ever seen them in storybooks. Never saw them now, but I could imagine.
Barnet and Godfrey, Gottfried, God’s fraud, they tied me again to a post. I thought maybe this was it. This was my last night. That I was done. But it was so much worse.
Together, one each side of me, they pulled my head back. Stabbing fingers. Gripping the hair they’d kept clipped short: swearing, gloating – determined. Other Man, Pizza Man, approached me in front. Gag slipped partway from my mouth they forced my jaw down and open. I wanted then, to cry out for help, but my neck was so cricked, my throat so dry, all I could do was hiss. Purple man, purple Pizza Man, he held a long metal file in his hands. Held it up. His sleeves, rolled up. I’d been here before. I feared the worst. Bucking, straining, tried desperately to tear myself free. But that post I was tied to was buried deep, and my bonds too tight. They doubled down on me and weak as I was held me fast.
Back and forth, and back and forth. The awful, rasping sound. That smell, of burning. My teeth, burning. The taste. For a merciful long time I passed out.
When I woke again, in agony, that long Presidential face of his was pressed again close in to mine. Sweating, grinning. He was glad to see that I was still alive. They doused me with cold water from buckets. Caught a good deal of it in my opened mouth. Felt jags of sharp points on my tongue. He’d been filing down my teeth!
‘Glaaahh!’
‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘scream out. Cry all you like, honey. No one can hear you. No one but us. We’re too far out of town.’
Him stood back enough I thrashed about. Could see them all, standing there. Behind Pizza Man, Godfrey. Barnet. New face, a younger man, tall an’ broad. Broad grin too. What was he doing there? No help to me, that’s what.
Pizza Man picked up the file, smaller one now, and made to start in again. ‘Ffff!’ I said, ‘Fffff, ah fih nuh evahl!’ I Fear No Evil. But I did. I did. And he started laughing. Coming in close again. His face, up in my face.
‘That’s right, you bastard,’ he said. ‘Bastardess, I guess? Have no fear! That’s how I want you. How we want you, to be fearless. To be Fear Itself!’
Back and forth and back and forth. Me spitting blood, blood and fury. At his mercy. At His Mercy. ‘Fffff!’
Pizza Man stepped aside, pulling a face even longer. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, ‘I can’t work with that, with that…’ he gestured, limply, ‘…with that. That tongue of hers, flapping in the way.’
‘Fffff…kyaaa!’ I sprayed.
His face. I swore to myself right there and then that if it ever came in reach again, and with those teeth he’d given me? I would chew it clean off. Clean? No, not clean…
High on adrenaline. Eyes rolling back into my head. Blinded by hot sweat and, what? Oil? Was that oil? I recovered my voice, unused in so long.
“Rrrr…Rrrr…Ride…”
He pointed to the forge, at the threshold into the barn’s interior. ‘Heat that up,’ he ordered. ‘Get that thing going.’
“Ride on, k-k-k…”
‘Knife,’ he said. ‘Tongs… and a small, what, chisel? Plus something to staunch with.’ He cast about excited, his blood up. Blood. Splashed with my blood. ‘There!’ he barked. ‘What’s that, what’s that?!”
The younger man hopped to his orders, picking up the object. ‘Mandrel,’ he said.
‘That will do,’ said the Purple Face. ‘Perfect.’
‘Oh God,’ said Barnet.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this…’ Small voice. Someone else that I couldn’t see. ‘And you wanted to do this to my son?’ it said. ‘My son?’
I sang. “Kiiing Jesus…” That was me. Singing! The effort. Huge, but worth it. The veins in my neck pumping. I could feel my spirit rise within me. Indomitable. Even my restraints, giving a little. “Ride on, King Jesusss.” I sang it out, bellowing iron and froth. They stood back in awe of me, the renewed power found in my voice. “No man, can a-hinder thee!”
No man but Purple Man, withdrew from the fire, advancing with pincers glowing hot. An’ still I let my hymn ring out. “Ride on, Ride on, Rid-glaa…”
Sang out my last. ‘Gluh, gah, gurrrgle.’
Sizzling, steam: the skin of my lips, burning crisp.
The knife, the knife in his other hand.
‘Ready with that… that mandrel,’ he said. ‘Here goes!’
‘Ga-aaa-aaa—aaaaaaaa—aaa-aahhaaag!’
At the end they took away my voice, took it away forever. Taking out my tongue. And all I could do was howl bloodily to the heavens.
When I came round again, having passed out, all was still and quiet in the depths of night. Some unseen beast of burden had carried me on a sled further up the trail. We must have been quite high. Even in my daze I could tell. The air was thinner.
Stars blazed overhead. Uncaring.
They checked me over, once, twice. Satisfied that I would survive my trauma. That my wounds would heal.
We stood, with me propped at an angle, and in silence studied the long, etched line of the furthest horizon – the hill after hill, after hill – glowing, red, even though the sun had gone down long since, and would not come again for hours yet. ‘It’s The Fall,’ said Godfrey. Not speaking of the season.
The Fall.
And I had hoped to shout “Glory” when this world was on fire.
‘It’s all right,’ the tall man in purple said. ‘We’re prepared now. We have a strategy.’ And I knew then the secret behind the power they hold over me, to do with me just as they will. That they do not see me as human.
Nonesuch. Is that a word?
There would be much to endure in the coming days. And not just for me. Pain, and loss. The filing of my teeth had only just begun, and by itself was only the beginning. One small part of my gradual, terrible, makeover. I was to be their beast of burden. Their B-Bastard.
Tuhh, taken captive. Penned, starved, and when vvvfed, fed like an animal. My p-personhood, my identity, z’being erased. My, my sanity, sss-tolen away – wuh, wuh, worn down. Nn. Rrr-remade. “The Bastard of the Margin.” Tha’s whod I hear them call mme.
Nnnnenslaved. In chuh, in chains. I am lashed, forced, forced to pile-drive, into the ground, old railway sleepers. I mmmuhmake… fuh, for myself… my, my, my own prison… my pen. They pu’ me. Inna cage.
My spirit… broken. My… mmind, turnd. Iz going. Going… gng.
Gggg
Huhhh, hanh
I can… ffffeel…
I cnt feeeel…
Ut.