9

 

 

As she drifted into sleep that night, Dierdre quieted her fears. It did not matter what he had learned about her, if it was anything he could accept as true; he wouldn’t live long enough to use it against her.

She entered the basement cell the next day, dropped her robe and lowered herself onto him. She felt him rise slowly between her thighs, as he struggled to restrain himself, shouting that it was a hallucination. The fool.

She laughed suddenly as he slipped out. “Sorry about that. We won’t get anywhere that way.”

She slipped him back inside her, watching the look of resignation on his face as he closed his eyes and pulled impotently at his shackles. A man is vain about his entrance, and cherishes the illusion of penetration. It made her happy to have denied him that, she realized as she began to move. A man is specialized, entering discretely, specifically; a woman embraces with her whole body, too often with her entire self and surrenders too much. A man penetrates; a woman should engulf.

As she hunted her orgasm, strength filled her, and she felt the impulse to core him at completion; but she had to be sure of pregnancy before disposing of him. She cried out and saw him grimace as if in pain, then sat on him quietly as he went limp inside her.

He opened his eyes and said, “Your imaginary child may be a threat to you one day,” and laughed. “There won’t be room for two of you. That is, if you can even have a child.”

She got up and put on her robe, irritated by his words, and felt emptiness, then turned away so he wouldn’t see her anger. “But you do think my child can inherit my strength,” she said without looking at him.

“Why not,” he answered, “but I’ve been thinking about you. What good are you? I mean what good is this ability of yours, unless you let professionals study it. At least they might find out something important.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Something new—who knows. It’s a waste to have you… go on doing what you’ve been doing, if you’re doing it.”

She turned and glared at him. “You think I’m a fool? They’d only lock me up for murder and then study me like an animal,” she said.

“But what can you do with it?” he asked, sounding almost sympathetic, but she knew he’d say anything to get free, or just to annoy her. He was brave, or reckless. “Besides passing it on,” he added. “You know, there may be others, and unlike a child you’d raise to obey you, they’d be a threat.”

“There are no others. You’re just supposing.”

“No,” he said. “A story in the paper reported a brain found on the street. Did you do that?”

She did not answer, but she felt uneasy, wondering what he believed.

“Then you didn’t see the story,” he said, recalling Gibney’s note.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, “and you’re lying to annoy me.”

“I’m not,” he said softly. “Tell me,” he continued, “can you move inanimate objects?”

“Of course,” she replied, remembering how she had tried and failed. A living will had to grasp another living will, it seemed. She felt threatened by his doubts. His face was composed, gazing at her coldly. She knelt down and checked each of his four shackles.

“How much interest has there been?” she asked, standing up. “Were there any autopsies?”

He was silent.

“Tell me!” she shouted.

“The wino,” he said. “I don’t know about the priest yet.”

“Who did it?” she asked. “Where?”

He refused to answer.

“His name!” she shrieked.

He looked up at her and tried to appear calm. “I don’t have the report in front of me. Someone in the city morgue. It could be anyone there.”

“In one second your brains will steam on this stone floor!” she shouted, watching as he tried to keep from shaking. “Tell me!”

He was silent, but she saw his fear as he began to sweat.

“What’s his name!” she cried, shaking a fist at him. “You saw what I did to the priest, didn’t you?”

“Frank Gibney,” he said, closing his eyes and turning his head away in shame. “But he doesn’t know anything, and wouldn’t know where to start. All he knows is the wino he’s seen—and he doesn’t think it means anything.”

“Does he have assistants or colleagues?”

“Yes, but they do what he says.”

“Would he come looking for you?”

“No. Why should he?”

“But the precinct must be looking for you by now. You questioned me, so they’ll come here.”

“I made no report of questioning you.”

“Liar. But it doesn’t matter. Let them come. What can they suspect? They’ll never find this room.” She backed away and left, turning the light off and locking the door behind her, because she remembered how much she had hated darkness. A small mercy would have cost her nothing, she told herself with some surprise; but he had made her doubt herself and deserved to wait in the dark.

 

When she did not turn his sexuality against him, she was in the next chamber, digging and scraping. He was hot and cold as the heater went on and off. He was here, he told himself. That much seemed certain, unless he was completely out of his mind and yet still able to consider madness. A special kind of madness, with too much sanity in it, enough to protect him from complete chaos…

And when he was alone, his imagination tormented him with what she could do to him, if not with the power she claimed to have demonstrated then with an axe, a saw, an ice cream scoop. Everything that he was sat in his skull, and would be ripped out, all the blood vessels torn, and his personality would die in his eyes. Nothing of him would remain to look out or inward again, all past gone, all present empty and unable to father a future…

How had he come to this, how could he have done so unless it was a delusion?

He pulled at his handcuffs and insisted that he was asleep at home, and was startled by the involuntary quivering sounds of dismay struggling in his throat.

“Wake up!” he shouted to his sleeping body, imagining that he had suffered a stroke and was dying in this strange dream-coma, with no one to save him.

“Carla!” he shouted to his neighbor.

They would break down his door and find him dead, but he would still be here in this basement room.

 

She turned on all the lights in her living room, feeling feverish and full of hope as she reclined on her sofa. There was a lot she could do with her power, she told herself. Even a limited chess piece has a moment when the entire game hangs in the balance. She could threaten powerful people into doing what she wanted. True, that would take time and planning, careful intimidation and disciplined demonstration. She would build a cell structure, first one, then another, of people who would do her bidding. She would accumulate money by simple extortion until it became as powerful as her ability. No one would be able to resist her. She would raise a daughter, maybe two, and they would rule the world…

But her wild hopes faltered as she tried to imagine the exact steps it would take to do what she wanted with her power. Her fatigue seemed to stay longer with her…

She closed her eyes and drifted into the gallery of the Senate. Below, the blowhards were making speeches. One by one she emptied several figures seated at their desks, bloodying the surfaces, until the President pro-tem stood up and cries of panic filled the chamber. She felt no fatigue as her mind twitched and took aim again, still without tiring, and his world was torn from his head…

She came awake with a start and knew that the man Gibney had to die as soon as possible, and Benek too, as soon as she was pregnant. Revealing herself to him with the rat had been an accident; but his knowing would be a threat for as long as she held him alive, even if he doubted. Suddenly she knew that no one who might have the slightest suspicion that she existed could be left alive.