He listened to his mother’s voice warbling through the red fluids and layers of tissue.
“Come here and hold my hand,” she said. “Please, Elaine. Don’t be afraid.” Her voice was a soothing coo. “Touch.”
And Rudy felt Elaine’s touch on the side of his face through the layers of his mother’s flesh.
“He recognizes you,” his mother said.
“Rudy?” It was Elaine’s voice.
“Yes, dear,” Catherine said. “Isn’t it wonderful? He keeps me young.”
And then Elaine’s hand no longer caressed him. He felt the vibrations in the floorboards as she took a step back. Barely heard her now, as she said, “My God.”
Rudy stuck his thumb in his mouth. Rocked himself slightly back and forth in total bliss for the next twenty minutes until he felt a familiar set of rumblings.
Rebirth.
Both his shoulders dislocated as he emerged to the sounds of both Catherine and Elaine screaming, Catherine in pain, Elaine in terror. He felt a warm slosh of blood all around him as he grabbed at air, feeling as if he tore his mother in two. But this was the way it always was. The way it always would be.
He emerged covered in blood, gasping for air. As he popped his shoulders back in place and wiped the fluid from his eyes, he saw Elaine sitting on the floor, her eyes wide, breathing quick and pained. He spat blood from his mouth. Looked at Catherine. Her eyes were closed to slits, but she still breathed, and as he watched her, a smile enlivened her features. She already looked years younger. She nodded.
Rudy found the scissors somewhere among the blood soaked towels and cut the umbilical cord from his belly, then reached between Catherine’s legs and cut it from her, also. He wadded up a clean towel and placed it at the entry to her womb to stop the still flowing blood.
He turned once again to Elaine.
He expected her to be in shock, expected her to accept this after much contemplation and solitude. But he didn’t expect her to stand up. Didn’t expect the word ‘Monster’ to issue from her lips in a banal scream, and certainly didn’t expect her to grab the scissors from the edge of the bed and plunge them into Catherine’s belly, slicing upwards to the sternum as the fickle vitality quickly left Catherine’s eyes.
All Rudy could do was run screaming and naked and covered with blood out into the cold night air, the blood steaming as it froze into a brittle shell around his body. And when the police finally found him, he told them it was his fault. He’d been the one to carve up his mother. He’d been the one to plunge the scissors into her and open her up like a bag of writhing snakes.
He didn’t want his new son to be without a mother. He didn’t want his new son to miss the total love and closeness he’d experienced.
“So that is why,” Rudy hissed one year later, his belly itching like a son of a bitch as he lay on his back, constrained to the asylum bed.
“That is why,” he grunted between tightly clenched teeth, the doctor with no nametag staring at him, no more sunflower seeds in his hand to chew up and swallow.
“That is why,” he gasped as his navel opened up and gushed forth the nutrients meant for a mother he no longer had.
The sheets covering him turned a dark, sticky crimson with his love.
Shift
1st Gear
He clawed at his neck, unable to get his tie off fast enough, threw it on the passenger seat and struggled with the top two buttons of his shirt. He turned the key, cranked up the air conditioner and pressed on the gas. The rusting brown Corolla responded like a lion prodded out of sleep with a spear.
Come on, Steve-o. Keep it together. Keep it together.
The sky was overcast, dirty gray clouds pregnant with the threat of snow. The passing traffic wouldn’t let up, wouldn’t give him an inch to squeeze into. His breath escaped in quick white bursts. He rolled open the window; let the freezing air spill in. He turned the air conditioner up another notch and sat facing the stream of traffic. No one would let him in. He honked the horn. Pounded the steering wheel. Screamed. Finally there was a break. A small break, but it was enough.
He stepped on the gas, threw the Corolla into first gear, and squealed out into the line of cars. They inched along, all segments of the same worm. His hands squeezed the steering wheel until his fingers turned white.
Keep it together.
He loved his wife. His son. There was nothing more he wanted than for his family to be together again. He knew that now. He knew it.
He felt like a volcano trapped in a piece of Tupperware.
2nd Gear
The videotape had appeared on Steve’s desk sometime between 4:30 and 4:45 PM. That was all the time it took for him to enter the bathroom, sit on the john, look over a stock portfolio and wash his hands. When he came back to his office, there was the video tape, no box, no labels, resting on top of his desk.
He looked at it a moment and smiled. Locked the office door. Turned on the television and stuck the tape in the VCR. He knew what it would be. A nice little peep show from Linda. He’d been thinking about her all day. He walked over to the window shades and pulled them tight. What would it look like to his wife, to his business colleagues for Christ sake, if someone were to snap a picture of him jacking off to a video of Linda Janson doing an erotic strip tease meant only for him?
He sat back in his leather chair. Loosened his tie. Unbuckled his pants. It was good to be the boss. He lifted the remote and pressed play. There was static, and then a fuzzy image.
His affair with Linda Janson started less than a year ago. God, was she wild. The way she’d come to his office on a whim and attack him in his chair, at times not even bothering to lock the door. She’d parade around his desk and coyly lift her skirt displaying the absence of undergarments, then yank his chair out from under his desk and straddle him. Sometimes she’d grind and jerk so hard the chair would jump back on its wheels six inches at a time until it thudded against the large windows overlooking the city streets below. And she’d keep bouncing on him, the chair’s leather knocking firmly against the office window. Steve often imagined a crack forming at the top of the window slowly splintering its way down until it touched the floor. Then more cracks appearing as she continued to bang him into the window, and the sound of the glass giving way and the rush of air pouring in and the feel of nothingness below as they fell twenty-five stories locked together, still humping like mad until they came at the moment of impact.
That was what he liked most about Linda. The danger she brought when she entered the room. The fantasies of youth finally coming true in this tornado of black hair and smooth, taut skin. It was something he couldn’t get anywhere else. Something he couldn’t get at home.
And she’d do things like this. Videotape herself and leave the tape for him at odd places, dangerous places, where a colleague might see the video cassette laying there and ask him what it was.
Passion. Danger. Something he couldn’t get with an eight year old child at home, with a wife who invited women over for gin rummy on Saturday nights.
He watched the static disappear into darkness as the tape played. He heard the breathing of the person operating the camera. A flashlight was turned on, spotlighting a woman sitting in the corner of a dark room, the dull brick walls spotted with black mold. She was tied to a simple wooden chair, the rope tight around her torso, her arms pinned to her sides. A cloth gag circled her head, pulling her lips back to reveal her teeth.