THREE
Louis
Long highway. Everything else is black, pulled away into shadow. All that exists is what the headlights reveal – the glowing middle line, the center divider, a pine tree or exit sign as it emerges from darkness and passes back to darkness.
The big trucker is as his shadow suggested: canned-ham hands, shoulders like hunks of granite, a chest like a bunch of barrels strung up together. But he's clean-shaven, with a soft face and kind eyes, hair the color of beach sand.
Probably a rapist, Miriam thinks.
The cab of the truck is clean, too. Almost too clean, not a speck of dust or road grime. A control freak, clean freak, rapist serial killer wear-the-skins-of-women freak, Miriam thinks. The radio and CB sit mounted on a chrome plate. The seats are brown leather. (Probably human leather.) A pair of dice – hollow aluminum, with the dots punched out – hang from the rearview, lazily spinning.
"All of life is a roll of the dice," she says.
Frankenstein looks at Miriam as if he's confused by her.
"Where you headed?" he asks, studying her.
"Nowhere," she answers. "Anywhere."
"You don't care?"
"Not so much. Just get me away from that motel and those two douchebags."
"What if I'm going to another motel?"
"Long as it's not that motel, we're square."
Frankenstein looks pensive. His big hands pull tight around the wheel. His brow furrows. She wonders if maybe he's thinking about the things he's going to do to her. Or maybe what use he might get out of her bleached skull. A candy dish would be nice, she imagines. Or a lamp. She was in Mexico, what, two years ago? During the Day of the Dead celebrations? All those colorful ofrendas – the bananas, the pan de muerto bread, the marigolds, the mangos, the red and yellow ribbons. But what really stays with her are the sugar skulls: hardened meringue memento mori dotted with colored confections, each wide-eyed and grinning, blissful in its delicious demise. Maybe this guy will be cool enough to do something like that with her skull. Lacquer it with sugar. Tasty.
"I'm Louis," Frankenstein says, interrupting her fantasies.
"Dude," she says, "I don't want to be friends. I just want to get away."
That'll shut him up, she thinks. And it does. But he only grows more preoccupied. Frankenstein – Louis – gnaws on a lip. He taps on the wheel. Is he mad? Sad? Ready to rape her early? She can't tell.
"Fine," she blurts. "You want to talk, great. Sure. Yes. Let's talk."
He's surprised. He says nothing.
Miriam decides she's going to have to do all the heavy lifting.
"You want to know about the shiner?" she says.
"The what?"
"The bruise. The black eye. You saw it as soon as I stepped into this truck, don't lie." She clears her throat. "Which is a very nice truck, by the way. So shiny." She thinks, You probably polish it with the hair you scalp from pretty girls like me. Miriam takes a moment to commend herself. Normally, she'd say that sort of thing out loud, which would probably get her kicked out onto the rain-slick highway.
"No," he says. "I mean, yes, I saw it. But you don't need to tell me–"
Miriam opens her bag and starts rooting through it. "You look flummoxed."
"Flummoxed."
"Yes. Flummoxed. That's a good word, isn't it? It sounds like a made-up word, like maybe a word a three-year-old would use in place of another word. You know, like, Mommy, my flummoxed hurts, I think I ated too much pasghetti."
"I… never thought of it like that."
She screws a cigarette between her lips, and starts flicking the lighter.
"You mind if I smoke?"
"I do. You can't smoke in here."
She frowns. She could really use a smoke. Scowling, she puts the lighter away but leaves the cigarette dangling from her lips.
"Whatever. Your truck. Anyway. The black eye, that's what you want to talk about."
"Did one of those boys give it to you? We could call the police."
She snorts. "Does it look like either of those frat-fucks gave me a black eye? Please. I can handle myself. No, this shiner was dutifully applied by my boyfriend."
"Your boyfriend hits you?"
"Not anymore. I'm done with scum like him. That's why I don't want to go back to the motel, see? Because that prick is back there."
"You left him."
"I left the shit out of him. Get this. He's lying there on the bed, all smug and satisfied after popping me in the eye and then popping his cookies – at least he didn't pop his cookies in my eye, am I right? – and the dumb fucker falls asleep. Ooh. Bad move. He starts snoring like a drunken bear with sleep apnea, and I think, it's over. I'm tired of getting pushed around. Tired of the cigarette burns, tired of the belt and the golf cleats and all that shit."
Louis stares dead ahead, like he's not sure what to make of the story. She continues.
"So I grab a pair of handcuffs – sorry for the sordid details, but the jerkoff likes to get kinky and has a real power-trip fetish. I take the handcuffs, and gently, so as not to wake him, I handcuff his one wrist to the bedpost." Miriam pulls out the cigarette, twirls it betwixt thumb and forefinger like a cancer baton. "I take the key, and I go chuck it into the toilet, then I pee on the key for good measure. But that's not all – as they say on TV, wait, there's more."
Miriam, it must be said, loves to lie. She's very good at it.
"I took one of those little plastic bears, the ones filled with honey? Again, I know, kinky details, but the guy liked foodplay. Whipped cream on my tits, a lollipop in my mouth, a hunk of broccoli up his ass, whatever. So I take the honey bear, and I drizzle the sticky golden goo all over his–"
She makes a swirly motion over her crotch region with her index finger. For added emphasis, she whistles.
"Christ," Louis says.
"Not done yet. When I blew out of there, I left the door wide open. Windows, too. I figure whatever kind of animal wants to come in and snack on his Honey Nut Cheerios, so be it. Flies, bees, a stray dog."
"Christ," Louis says again, his jaw set firm.
"Made some Pooh Bear very happy, I hope." She clears her throat, then sticks the cigarette back between her lips. "Or some homeless guy."
For the first minute, Louis doesn't say anything. The trucker just sits, stewing. His shoulders tense. He looks pissed. Does he know that she just lied? Is this when he slams on the brakes, puts her through the windshield because she's not wearing her seatbelt, then rapes her broken body on the soaked macadam?
Bam. He pounds his hand against the steering wheel.
Miriam doesn't have anything smartass to say. A slow realization creeps up on her: I can't take this guy. He'll crush me like a bug.
"Goddamn assholes," he says.
She narrows her eyes. "What? Who?"
"Men."
"You're gay?" It's the way he says it.
He pivots his head, levels his gaze at her. "Gay? What? No."
"I just thought–"
"Men don't know how good they have it. Men are basically… children. Pigs."
"Pig children," Miriam offers, a quiet addendum.
"We never see what's in front of us. The women that are kind enough to be in our lives, we just treat them like garbage. It's nonsense. Plain nonsense. And men who hit women? Who take advantage of them? Who don't just fail to appreciate what they have but they outright… abuse what's been given to them? My wife – when she left me… I didn't fully appreciate…"
He hits the steering wheel again.
That's when Miriam decides she likes this man.
It's the first time she's felt even the tiniest bit inclined toward anyone in… years. Something about him: sweet, sad, damaged. She knows who he reminds her of (Ben, he reminds you of Ben), but she doesn't want to go there, and she shoves that thought back into the darkest corners of her brain.
And then, she can't help it. She has to know. She has to see. It's a compulsion. An addiction. She offers her hand.
"My name's Miriam."
But he's still fuming. He doesn't take the proffered hand.
Shit, she thinks. C'mon. Grab it. Shake it. I need to see.
"Miriam's a pretty name," he says.
Hesitantly, she withdraws her hand. "Nice to meet you, Lou."
"Louis, not Lou."
She shrugs. "Your truck, your name."
"I'm sorry," he offers. "I don't mean to get pissy. It's just…" He waves it off. "Been a long couple weeks. Just coming down off a backslide from Cincinnati, and have to head down to Charlotte to pick up another load."
He takes a deep breath through his nose, like he's trying to ratchet up his courage.
"Thing is, I've got a few days down there before I grab the next haul. I don't get too many days off, I usually go straight through, but… I was thinking. Maybe you'll be down in that area. It's only an hour south of here. And maybe, if you are in that area, and you have a spare night, well. We could do dinner. A movie."
She puts out her hand. "It's a deal."
He doesn't grab it, and Miriam wonders how bold she'll have to be. Reach up and tweak his ear? She only needs skin to skin to see…
But then he smiles and takes her hand in his own, and –
The lantern room is encased in glass. One window pane is broken out, and the wind howls madly through the gap. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Gray light filters in through the dirty windows and illuminates Louis's face, a face encrusted in dried blood.
Somewhere, the sound of the ocean.
Louis is bound to a wooden chair next to the lighthouse lantern. A dizzying array of optics sits above his head. Brown extension cords affix his wrists to the chair arms, and another pair holds his feet to the chair legs. His head is held fast by black electrical tape wrapped around his forehead, fastening his skull to base of the lighthouse's pedestal clockworks.
A tall, thin man approaches. He is entirely hairless. No eyebrows. No eyelashes, even.
In one of his smooth, spidery hands he holds a long fillet knife.
The man admires the blade for a moment, though it is pocked with rust and smells not-too-faintly of fish guts.
"Get away from me," Louis stammers. "Who are you? Who are you people? I don't have what you want!"
"That no longer matters," the man says. He has an accent. Nebulous. European.
The man moves preternaturally fast. He stabs Louis in the left eye with the knife. It does not go to the brain, and only ruins the eye: a choice the hairless man has made. Louis screams. The attacker withdraws the knife. It makes a sucking sound as he extracts it.
His thin lips form a mirthless smile.
He pauses. He admires.
Louis's good eye darts to somewhere over the man's shoulder.
"Miriam?" Louis asks, but it's too late. The man stabs him again, this time through the right eye, and this time, all the way to the hilt. All the way to the brain.