“More vodka, Moros.”
In the kitchen Colesceau poured his mother fresh vodka. He’d heard her nostalgic blubbering before. Another drink or two and she’d tell him about her beautiful lover from Matamoros, Mexico, a slender Mexican idealist, poet and photographer who had seduced her as a young woman. Colesceau’s namesake. The whole story sickened him.
After putting a handful of ice into her glass, he popped the roll of paper towels off its holder and tilted out the ice pick. Cold. He put it in his right front trouser pocket, tip up.
Back in the living room he gave Helena the glass, looking at her through the periphery of his vision because it was too much to look directly at her. He felt the bile rise in his guts. He sat down and saw Merci Rayborn still on the TV.
...he’s an animal and a coward, picking on unarmed, defenseless, unsuspecting women...
She looks better on TV than in person, thought Colesceau. Just a little heavier. Softer in the eyes and face. His penis felt like it was crawling.
“I miss Voronet,” said Helena. “The outdoor frescoes. You know, Moros, the ones they painted on the outside walls of the churches, because the poor people were considered too unclean to enter the church. It was like TV for the poor, although the pictures didn’t move.”
“I remember the frescoes. They’re one of the few things about Romania I liked.”
“Moros, remember ‘Soul Taking’ at the Moldovita church? What an unforgettable thing, to see that fresco, to actually feel what the artist felt. People were closer to God in those days. There is no doubt about this.”
He glanced at her. He’d seen the fresco “Soul Taking” that she talked about. It was a bunch of gray demons with claws, wings, and tails who tore the souls from both the living and the dead. It was a grotesque carnival of pain and torment that had always made Colesceau giggle, even as a child. He thought his mother was psychologically misshapen, to get passion out of something that frightful and comedic.
...the rules of common sense. Always lock your car. Always park in a well-lit place. Always check your car before getting in — especially the backseat...
He looked at Merci Rayborn’s mouth as she spoke, then at Helena’s. He liked to compare his mother’s features with the features of women he might possess someday. Merci Rayborn had even white teeth. Helena had tusks. He pressed down with his forearm just a little, but the resistance was gone. For the millionth time in the last three years it simply evaporated, like a drop of spring rain on a warm sidewalk. It was the single most infuriating feeling he had ever known.
... why will we get him? Because creeps like this aren’t usually too bright, that’s why we’ll get him...
CNB went back to “Rape Watch: Irvine” and Trudy appeared on the screen. Helena grabbed the remote and turned down the sound.
“It is time to put your mother to bed, Moros.”
“Of course.”
He tucked his mother into his own bed. It flattered her to get his bed — though she also seemed to feel entitled to it — and he favored the arrangement for other reasons. He felt the tip of the ice pick in the darkness to make sure it was there.
He took off her babushka and stroked her hair, which was wispy white with brown on top, like meringue. He listened to her ramble. He knew she’d be stubbornly unconscious in a matter of minutes. He pulled up the covers so they were just covering her breasts, tucking them in nice and snug around her, just as she liked it, just as she’d taught him to do.
“You are the good son, Moros.”
“You are the good mother.”
Her mouth approximated a smile and he bent to kiss her. He felt the tip of the pick against his hip and he knew this was the time. His arms were trembling like he’d just lifted a car off the ground.
He thought so often about it. Not so much the beneficial results, but the pleasure the act would give him. But he could never do it. He had had a thousand chances in two different countries on two different continents over two decades, and he had still never been able to do it. He hated himself for this failure. The hatred of himself was his bedrock, the foundation on which everything else inside him was built. There was no escaping it when she was near him.
And now she was threatening to move in.
Helpless to stop her. Helpless to end her. The hatred made thin, red outlines like halos around everything he looked at.
... because creeps like this aren’t usually too bright, that’s why we’ll get him...
Colesceau shut the door on his already snoring mother, went downstairs and poured a giant cocktail of pure vodka. Then he went back upstairs and into the spare bedroom, locking the door behind him. He was weeping though he wasn’t sad, and he could feel the cool tears on his cheeks.
It had been like this for three years. His body did one thing, and his mind did another. No connection. No unity. It was strange to feel rage and anger, but to have no erection; to feel furious and frustrated, but to have tears running down his face.
He stripped down to his underwear and stood in front of the mirrored wall. He set the tumbler on the floor beside him. He wanted to see himself now that the hormone treatments were stopped. He unbuttoned the shirt, realizing with a sense of dread that this was the worst he would look, that the effects were as bad now as they would get.
This is what they have made of me. Manhood shot through with womanhood and the result is neither.
So he dropped the shirt, pulled off his underwear and looked at himself in the glass. He saw that his general shape was suggestive of the human female rather than the human male. He saw the deep pocks the dog teeth had left, and the jagged suture scars guaranteed by disinterested government doctors. Before the police dogs his skin had been pale and clear and taut. He saw his flabby midsection, the valiant little breasts trying so hard not to become what they were not intended to be. Before the hormone treatments they had been flat, efficient ministers of strength. He saw the loose nest of hair and skin between his legs. Before all of this they had been his precious cock and balls, they had always been there for him, they had been him when he needed them to be — his expression of hate, desire, rage. Now they were an image of pure defeat. And no matter what he imagined, he couldn’t get even the faintest stirring of desire to register down there. For now, as it was so often in the last three years, his organ was nothing more than a phantom.
He stooped and got his vodka, draining it down to the last cold drop.
Then everything hit him. The hatred and rage, the desire and impotence, the frustration and weakness. All of it stewed in the vodka and progesterone, all of it mixed together into a toxic blend.
Colesceau opened his mouth and bared his teeth. He trapped the scream far down in his throat and didn’t let it out His head rang with pain. He could feel his own hot damp breath all around his face and see the steam it formed in the air-conditioned room. Like he was breathing smoke.
He looked at himself again and saw the thing he had become. He drew another breath and choked down another soundless scream. The glass broke in his hand and he felt the ice landing around his toes.
And he had the vision — while his head roared with a silent bellow of despair — of what he would do next.
To establish himself again. To better himself.
To show his mother and the miserable world that he could rise above what they had made of him.
He thought it through and he thought it through again. He watched his face, still a grimace of tears and a frozen scream. So much to do now, and so little time.
Trudy’s number was still in the Bible in his living room, and he’d need to leave a little something for his mother.