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I do not know what I am doing here.
It is quiet, chattering with noise and crawling with people.
This kind of mundane shit seems below me, as though I am playing pretend for his sake. I have more important things to do, sacrifices to make, people to punish.
It's blurry and brown and soft inside the cafe. I bury myself in the worn corduroy couch like a denning animal. Black coffee in a cracked mug.
He is late.
I begin to doodle on my napkin. Pens, as it turns out, are absolutely essential to surviving outside the island. A cure for boredom, an inconspicuous weapon, a delicate tool for hurting people in simple ways.
I like disposable fountain pens. They're sharp at the tip.
Upon my napkin, from my pen flows rabbits with broken necks and women with hanging, engorged penises. I draw my brother. I draw long-legged wasps dragging themselves across the paper.
And then he is here.
---
In the bowels of summer, two years before this, a store clerk notices something odd about a customer. Two years before this, the government intervenes, and finds a teenager.
I have been living in custody, one kind or another since.
First an institution, next a halfway house.
Learning how to give them what they, the teeming masses of people who come after, want has been difficult.
There is no escape, no unlocked doors or windows.
I educate myself on drawing, painfully and slowly. Later, I breed flies, watch them spawn in cups, and flock in dark sheets at the top. No animal larger than insects are permitted near me, for a long while
I deflect the blank stares of doctors, case workers, state lawyers.
Counselors, nursing assistants, fellow inmates.
Sometimes, the people in charge of my treatment will use surgery as a carrot on a stick, a motivation to improve.
My father's lie throws me only momentarily.
I know who I am. My deformity hasn't changed.
---
"Sorry about the time. She just goes on, and on, and on you know. Responsibility, integrity, et cetera."
"Yes."
I am moderately unimpressed with Alan. He has taken interest in me only after learning of my deformity.
"Didn't want to miss any time. With you."
Alan looks very polished. Especially compared to me. Dark brown hair, mostly shaved, mostly clean. Little squinty blue eyes and emaciated face. His hospital socks stick out under his jeans.
The orderlies still have to pin me down to clean me, every once in a while.
Alan sits down onto the couch with a resounding thump. He leans all the way into my space, breathing sour.
His side presses into me. The warmth sends my nerves sparking.
"So?" Alan grins widely. His voice is raspy.
"So what?"
"So how about it?"
Alan has been trying to fuck me for weeks. This is usually how our conversations start.
"No. Tell me about your horses."
This gets him off the topic consistently, and yammering on about horse gods or some such shit. It gives me time to draw without having to pay attention to him.
As much as I find Alan pitiful, I respect him enough fundamentally to allow him in my presence. Mr. Waltz calls him my friend.
Alan excitedly begins on about stallions and worship and when they will let him work in a stable again, when he will get out of the low paying job the halfway house has set him up with.
The splint on his hand catches his jacket zipper, when he waves his hand.
I sit up a little straighter. The bruising beneath it is teasing, just barely visible yellow-green. None of the true blues and reds rotting show.
He notices, and sets his wrist down from gesturing.
"Well, what if I…"
"What if you what?"
Somewhere inside, I am pushing needles through Alan's eyes.
"What if I let you do it again?"
"... And?"
Now I'm being purposely obtuse.
"And you?"
I haven't done anything that's made me truly happy since I was moved out of my father's home, into state custody, into hospitals and away from my brother and my island and my wars and weapons and anything worth caring about.
Alan goes on.
"I think it's what He wants. I think He means for this, for us to be joined under his sight. Frank, you know, even if you don't Know, what He asks of us, I see it in you."
He says it softly, like it's difficult to admit to.
The muscles in my side and back seize uncontrollably from him whispering in my ear.
He hates telling people these things and yet it flows from him ceaselessly like rivers of liquid shit whenever you two are in a room together.
Some bitch orderly let it slip why you ended up here while gossiping, most likely.
A warm hand slides around my shoulders and Alan leans further on to me. Smothering me, making my skin crawl.
He breathes in my ear for a few seconds. My fingers clench around my pen.
His spit drips onto me.
There is a tongue inside my ear.
We are buried in a dark corner of the cafe. A woman behind the counter is staring. Her eyes bug out when Alan grabs my belt loop to kiss behind my ear.
Like a snake, my pen punctures Alan's hand before he can withdraw.
He screams, angry, feral.
Hand pulls on the neckline of my shirt.
Somebody drops something ceramic across the room.
There is an entire room of eyes on me. I hate every single pair. Unworthy. Filthy. Their mouths hang slackly open like gasping fish.
I drag Alan up with my body and pull his whimpering corpus out the door.
The bell rings cheerfully behind us.
---
Wheezing, half-stopped moans are still coming from behind me as I drag Alan by his bloody hand. I tighten my grip to feel his bones crackle, he creaks in protest.
We stop outside of a beige brick strip mall. I locate the bathroom, kick open the door and lock us both inside of an empty stall.
"Alan, I think we have an agreement."
"Agreement? You stabbed me without warning, what agreement?"
"Yes."
Alan's demeanor sloughs away like so much dead skin.
His eyebrows raise slowly.
"Really? And you're not going to rip out my guts with your teeth, or anything?"
"Yes. Under the circumstances I get your substances afterwards."
"Which substances, specifically?" He looks squeamish. Alan is a wretched coward for all the accomplishments he's managed anyways.
"Semen and blood."
"Fair enough."
A short silence.
"So, now, or…?"
"Now is fine."
He grips my hair with the uninjured hand. I am stock still.
What are you supposed to do during sex? Women are weak, flimsy creatures, and I have put only a cursory effort into imagining having sex with them. My condition makes it extremely impractical, anyways.
Alan paws at my sweatpants while I stare abysmally through the crack in the door, and ponder what my offering will bring this time around.
Sometimes aloneness, sometimes rats. Sometimes food, distinct from the inedible shit pandered as meals in the home.
The shock of my bare waist being touched is nearly overwhelming.
No one has touched my body there for a very long time.
Alan’s hands are calloused and thin against my hips. He starts to murmur.
Inaudible chunks about Equus and will and gods. Something about holy bonds.
I have a lidded plastic cup I carry with me, when I am allowed to leave. This is where my offering will go.
He presses into my space, and I can feel his arousal through his jeans.
Alan’s uninjured hand thrust downward, groping my stomach. Then abdomen.
Then, the remaining lump of my genitalia.
My eyes close.
I wish for it to be over. I wish to be the kind of person capable of enjoying this, that I could wrench some satisfaction or joy or grindingly depressing pleasure from this. I can’t. I don’t.
His fingers search inexpertly for an opening, and curl inside me.
Nails catch on my hair. They slice my insides.
This part of myself goes untouched. I don’t need to think about it, I do not acknowledge it.
There is a mouth at my temple. Wet lips touching my face.
After some inane fumbling, he disentangles his limbs from between my legs.
He grabs my waist with damp fingers and my body is manipulated over the toilet, face to the seat.
Arms holding my body up, legs on the floor, out behind me.
Something enters my body.
Alan buries his nose in my hair, and inhales deeply. I am happy with the state of my hygiene, but am well aware that most find it vile.
I wonder what he enjoys about it. Sticky, acrid gasoline smell of unwashed hair.
His body wiggles against me. It sends shivers up my spine.
His limbs kick like twitching, nearly dead animals, reflexively clenching around me.
The harsh movement begins burning in my guts.
A pull. A warm, soft hurt at the base of my spine.
My jaw flexes. Alan fucks the dead flesh of my body with wild abandon. The door is locked, I suppose. The noise is alienating, the hitting echoing on tile.
Alan moans loudly, like he has no control of his throat. I chew on my tongue to remain silent.
The racing nerves in between my thighs convulse.
Sweat sticking my hair to my face.
He reaches around, to where my dick would be. The pads of his fingers press up, in tandem with his jerky movement.
The heat spikes.
My legs seize. My brain goes completely blank.
The endorphin rush feels like someone has thrown hot acid over my back, my thighs, my genitals.
Alan finishes later, I collect my payment.
The rest is a blur.