30

Dead meat, said the old, mean voice in me.

You.

You don’t have a chance.

My foot slipped with another squeal, and then the carpet muffled my steps, and even though I willed myself quiet, the carpet clung to me, each step a heavy clump.

The plumbing in the walls, in the ceiling, thrummed, or perhaps that steady, distant rushing sound was the blood in my arteries.

There was a very heavy weight inside me, in my belly. I had to pee.

I wasn’t sneaking across the floor, I was wading, and my guts were growling. All this noise made it impossible to pretend, and by the time I was on the stairs I did not bother to be light-footed. It didn’t matter. They must have heard me by now. The only thing that mattered now was speed.

Each step was loose, a wagging, warped board. Each nail in the stairway made a little shriek. I gave up all attempt at quiet, stormed up the remaining steps, and dived toward the doorway to the bedroom.

I had the exact picture, just then, of where they were. Under the bathroom door down the hall was a sliver of light, and that rushing sound was bath water. And there was only one of them in the bedroom, only one, and it was the woman.

I saw all this, the walls transparent to me. And then I was in the bedroom, in the bright light, every lamp in the room lit, and the woman’s eyes went wide, and her breath caught.

She screamed.

It was her scream that stunned me. I went dumb. I couldn’t think. My hand seized the first thing within reach, acting on its own, both dumb and quick, and her screams pulsed through me.

I was slowing down, wading through the room. My bones would not lift. My feet dragged. I would never make it back to the doorway again.

We stayed like that forever. The woman, one small breast just exposed, a tangle of clothing held up as a shield, did not look human. Her face was too afraid, her lipstick too dark, way too dark, nearly black against the pallor of her skin.

“It’s all right,” I nearly said. I moved my lips. I all but uttered the words. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

But I did not speak. I had no voice. I had my prize, a lump of some sort in my fist, and I reached the doorway and the stairwell just as the man swung naked and wet, a great hairless dripping bear, out of the bathroom.

He didn’t say a word, or make a sound, and that’s what made it worse. His wet feet slapped the floor, slapped a stair, his genitals hidden in a wet mass of black hair, the coursing hair down his belly skimming the big dome of his fat.

I had the sense, as a little boy would, that this large male animal was powerful and ugly but also somehow right. I felt myself slowing down, taking a step a little too slowly, so he could catch me. I wanted him to catch me. I wanted his hand on my neck, because he was right. I was his if he wanted me.

His wet, hairy hands slipped around either side of my face from behind, and the weight of him, the dripping bulk, fell down and over me, a wave of human meat.

I closed my eyes and went down, rolling from step to step, shoulder, hip, ribs shaken with each bounce.

But I was rolling lightly, my body knowing what to do, and he crashed. The struts of the banister broke, and the banister itself reared up in the dim light. One of the man’s joints, a shoulder or a knee, snapped.

He said something I didn’t understand, a word in a foreign language, sliding farther down the stairs as I turned, running now, escaping across the living room.

I was turning back, unable to control my body.

Stay here, my body said. He’s hurt. You can’t run away.

A whipcrack deafened me. My hearing was gone. The sound of my breath, my heartbeat, the thud of my feet—it was all gone. There was nothing.

There was the sight of the woman on the stairs as I turned back. She crouched at the top of the stairs, both hands together. She was taking aim again, and she knew exactly what to do, her feet speared, her hands bringing up the weapon as I turned away, tingling within, my lungs burning, my flesh alive in the places that would soon explode.

I dived through the curtain, through the glass, into the world.