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Glenda, I’d like to tell you what it was really like being with Arthur. It wasn’t like how I told you.
We had been together since junior high.
Imagine you meet this boy, super young. You meet him again when you’re a bit older, and again when you’re a still little older. Forever you keep meeting him, it seems. He was always there.
It’s why it made so much sense for us to be together.
Believe it or not he was attractive back then. Almost nobody else thought so, but I did. Arthur held himself so that he walked straight up and down, but soft. Nothing imposing about him. Nothing to be scared of. You’d think he’d listen to you, no matter what. He did too, or so it seemed. He always had his eyes on me.
Imagine finding out the person you’re supposed to be with is not only perfect for you, but he does real magic.
He used his abilities with elegance. He made abrasive things, like rocks, move how they should move if they were alive. He made the world seem like how it should be.
Imagine this. You’re a sophomore in high school, listening to people your age and older complain about how they’re not in control of their life. Arthur was actually in control. If anything will make a person stand out, controlling the physical world around him would be it. For a small amount of time, in the beginning, I could visit heaven by standing next to him. You probably can’t understand.
His control turns out to be the problem. There are times when his control is downright miserable.
Let me tell you a story.
One day a good friend of his, Charles, was hitting on me. Charles was always hitting on me. Arthur didn’t know because he didn’t need to know, if you know what I mean. Charles thought of himself as the reason why any girl had a vagina. You know, at first, he flirted like anybody else might. By high school he started getting aggressive, in his own way.
There were times when he’d try to hold my hand, and I was like, you’re Arthur’s friend. Didn’t say anything to Arthur. He’d pinch my ass with Arthur right next to him. I knew Arthur didn’t know because Arthur was soft. He’d get upset if he thought Charles was doing something like that. With his powers, I didn’t know what would happen if he really got upset.
It turned into, Charles, long hair and all, one day grabbing my ass. Really grabbing it. He was playing. I told him to quit it. He took it well. He was like, hey, I took it too far. No hard feelings. I’m sorry. I was like, cool. Moving on.
I swear, the next day he did the same thing near my locker. I always saw him near my locker after second period. I remember slamming it and yelling at him. He didn’t stop walking. Him and Justin just kept going. I figured I had to report it to somebody. I didn’t. Instead, I decided to tell Arthur.
Same day, after school, in my room at my place—Arthur’s dad couldn’t stand me so we couldn’t ever go to his place—we’re talking. I’m like, look, Charles is a piece of work.
He puts down the pen. He liked to lay on my bed and draw. He sucked at it, but he did it anyway.
Arthur said, “Well.”
“Well, what?”
“Girls like him. He’s got all that hair. He’s all buffed out.”
“What’re you saying?” I asked.
“Well. Were you flirting with him?”
I said, “After all this time why would I flirt with him now?”
“Not flirting, but you know when you’re doing something he likes, or might like? If that happens, does he notice?”
“You’re asking me if I’m doing something to allure him without trying?”
“I mean, if you know he likes what you’re doing, and you keep doing it—”
“—Huh. Today he comes up to me and grabs my ass, and just like, grabbed it. Justin was right there. Right there. Does it, you know, matter what led to it? Think about it, if I’m the one trying to get a rise out of him, why wouldn’t he tell you? Why wouldn’t he tell you I’m flirting with him? Why doesn’t he tell you he’s not cool with me flirting with him? Why not say something to you?”
“What makes you think he hasn’t?”
“Did he say something?”
“I don’t think you would try to lead him on. I’m saying he’s been my friend for a long time. I don’t remember him lying to me.”
“Ask Justin what happened. Call him up.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see he’s not going to snitch on Charles. He’ll lie. They lie. Charles is his hero or something. They’ll make me look like a liar.”
Right when I said it, Arthur’s face twisted.
“Don’t be mad,” I said.
“Would you rather be with him or me for your first time?”
I sat next to him and put my hand on his knee.
I looked him directly in the eye. “My first time is going to be with you. Don’t talk about it to Charles. I seriously think he’s trying to have sex with me. The whole wanting a virgin thing.”
“You’re not flirting with him? At all?”
“See that’s weird to me. No, I’m not.”
“Right now,” he whispered. Not one of those sensual whispers. This was a dare. He looked over at the door. “Your dad won’t come in.”
“Um, are you kidding?”
“Not at all. Not. At. All.”
“It feels weird.”
“Right now, come on.”
“No,” I said.
I could tell by his look and his body language he wasn’t taking me seriously. Then I could feel something on me, all over my body, under my clothing and on my skin, like the thinnest ever layer of warm pudding.
“Are you doing that?” I asked him.
“Doing what?”
The next thing I know I’m lying on the floor with my legs open. I went to the floor on my own with the help of an onslaught of thoughts that weren’t mine. What do I mean by thoughts? The thoughts I had, the ones that made me unzip my jeans, had a physical emotion attached. What I mean by physical emotion is, along with the layer, I could feel a wave of him rush through me, just kept pushing through, like a flood of him under my skin. A, um, wave of thoughts in my blood, like the first time nicotine gets to you. I could physically feel it while I wiggled out of my pants. Not my thoughts I was working under. I was only in control of my actions to the extent that the layer of him and imaginary film let me be. That layer of film, that pudding feeling is Arthur.
I said to him, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Are you sure?”
He asked because I was crying. That’s how bad I felt, how dark and disgusting I felt. But I did it. I did it.
That was my first time with Arthur or anybody.
That’s the kind of control he has.
I’m telling you about the layer first coming to me. I’m telling you, up to this point, it hasn’t completely left. You’ve never met me. You’ve known a version of me. A place holder.
And he doesn’t know what he did. He can’t see it. He’s blind to it.
Like I said, if it comes to it, if I can’t, you need to pull the trigger.
***
Sandra slides the closet door open, hoping Arthur has placed the gun she killed herself with back where he always kept it. She taps around on the shelf in the closet, not tall enough to see up there. Thick dust gathers on the tips of her fingers.
She relaxes, lets her hands drop to her sides. “I don’t think it’s up here.”
Glenda has all the dresser drawers open. “Not in the drawers.”
She’s tossed the clothing on the floor and into piles.
Sandra steps away from the closet. “And not under the bed. What the hell did he do with it?” She says it more to herself than to Glenda.
“Personally, I’d get that thing out of here so fast...”
Sandra slides her feet forward, inches towards Glenda.
“What’s wrong?” Glenda says.
Sandra throws her hands out in front of her, lets them slap her thighs. “I died in here.”
They both take note of dark, crusty, dried blood around the base of the larger dresser. Similar blood marks near the head of the bed.
Sandra cups her mouth. “Everything is wrong.”
“It is wrong.” Glenda starts stuffing the drawers with clothing. “Should we tie him down?”
“He shouldn’t know our intentions. He needs to think we’ve vanished.”
They march to Arthur’s office where his body has curled itself up on the futon in the fetal position.
Sandra twiddles her thumbs. “Did I look like this?”
“He had a blanket over you. He didn’t even want to see you. He slept next to you. This is how Tracy and Shelly will be?”
“I can’t do anything about that.” Sandra sits in the seat in front of the computer monitor. She looks at the icon on the screen, the one with her name on it. She moves the mouse in a circle. After double-clicking on her icon, she sees words aimed at her, talking to her. “What is this?”
Glenda pulls Sandra’s attention away from the words on the screen. “I keep imagining my kids next door by themselves.”
“Raheem is there.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t explain to you how far apart we are right now.”
“When Arthur comes back, he’ll help them. Remember that. You can have faith in that. I told you, he has that kind of control. I didn’t exaggerate, at all.”
“I had the most normal life.”
“No life is normal,” Sandra says. “Some of us have a lot more junk to think about than others.”
Sandra scrolls down to the bottom of the document to see what his last thoughts were that he put to screen.
“It’s so hard to believe this is all going on,” Glenda says.
Arthur’s fingers suddenly extend.
“Goodness,” Glenda mumbles at the sight of it.
Sandra’s back is to Arthur, as she stares at the screen. “You want to know what I was thinking when I killed myself? I was so depressed that I honestly thought a part of me must have been killed by the film I was telling you about. Imagine that. I was emotionally synced up with him, in a way, somehow. You know what my last words were. My last words were, hmpph, I said, ‘fuck you, Arthur,’ then I...” With her hand she imitates having a gun to her head.
Glenda presses back tears. “I can’t imagine.”
“I was dead. There wasn’t any shiny light. I didn’t see my family. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. You want to know what happened when I died?”
“You remember?”
“As a matter of fact... I found myself in the moments right before I killed myself. I kept living that day. But it was nice. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s just that I kept escaping him. The fear of it kept coming over me.” Sandra closes her eyes and remembers the moment right before she put the gun to her head. “Every time I did it, it felt like a kind of freedom. And for a moment—every time—I get there. I want to be free from him. That’s it. If love is a trap, it’s worth all the blood that comes after.
***
It was what people might call a normal day that we were having. During the day we cleaned the house. I took a run. Arthur picked some weeds. That night we sat down to watch a movie, and I gathered all the determination I could, and went to the closet, got that gun, and shot myself in the head. It’s that day that kept repeating. I got a chance to analyze the day over and over, to really think about it. Something in me, something I never acknowledged had been building up, almost like a defense mechanism. Yes, a defense mechanism. By going through the emotions I had in all those moments of that day, I realized it was as if my real self had to pretend it was happy, even to me. It doesn’t make sense now, but it did after numerous times of reliving that day.
Every time I relived that day, I would put the gun to my head, curse at Arthur and then kill myself. But the last time, there’s no other way to put it, he ate me. I knew I had killed myself, but the same thing, on the same day kept happening, until he...swallowed me alive.
You might say, hey, I could have been unconscious.
No.
You might say, well, you could have dreamed it.
I didn’t dream it.
I shouldn’t have to argue I was dead either. You saw me. I’m telling you what happened. Don’t try to take it from me.
Arthur would not stop eating me, pulling pieces of me apart and chewing me up. Each bite was painful in its own way.
After he swallowed me, that’s when I found myself back here, with my dried blood at the bottom of the dresser, on the rug, and on parts of the mattress.
Now he can do all that to me again.