Page 19

The Widows Severe (III)

I did not sleep peacefully however. My sleep was filled with tormenting visions, the
most lucid of which involved me standing at the kitchen sink, scraping the remains of a
ham and cheese omelet into the garbage disposal.

I was standing there in bare feet, and I could feel the cool, smooth of the hard-
wood floor beneath my toes. And whenever the fork I used to scrape away the omelet
touched the plate, there was emitted a strange squeak that was something between a
rodent's chittering and fingernails on a blackboard. Everything was just so solid and
clear, and full of sensual textures. I remember wondering what time I had gotten up,
and whether or not I had turned the alarm off.

Then I heard the sound. At first it was like someone exhaling, with their mouth very
close to my ear, but then it got louder and I recognized it as crying. The kind of crying
you hear from newborn infants, and it was being produced by several mouths. It was
like listening to the nursery at the hospital. But the sound had another quality too -- a
surrounded quality (the word 'reverb' came to me from the days when I'd thought for
sure it was my destiny to be a great rock and roll guitarist -- specifically the two days
before I realized that sounding like Eddie Van Halen was going to take a lot of effort
and patience and probably prerequisite talent as well). It sounded to me like those
babies were in a well or a sewer pipe. Where they were dawned on me just fractions
of a second before a tiny, pudgy-fingered hand reached out of the drain in the center of
the sink.

The hand was streaked with red, and bits of the omelet from my plate were clinging
to it as well. I watched, paralyzed by awesome horror, as that hand emerged, bit by
bit; now the wrist was visible... now the forearm... now the elbow...

The hand groped the empty air for a bit, then found hold on the neck of the faucet.
It began to pull itself up. I could see no possible way for the rest of the body to come
up, but it did. It came up slowly, all the while making wet, sucking noises in reverse.
Occasionally I heard crumbly snapping sounds, and I knew that they were produced by
the breaking of tiny bones. At long last, the head came, face first, up the drain, eyes
bulging from the stress of the compression. I thought they might pop, up and out, and
bounce around like marbles in the basin, but they did not. The head came free of the
confines of the drain, bobbing like the blossom of a sunflower on its scrawny neck, and
for a moment it bore striking resemblance to a balloon being inflated: the features
unfolding and expanding and smoothing out. Its skin was covered evenly by a thin red
glaze of blood, and I could now see the terrible gash from which the blood came. It
started just below the chin and ran along the throat and then disappeared, along the line
of the breastbone, down the drain.

It stared at me. Its lips quivered and then parted to reveal a smooth, pink,
toothless mouth, which then proceeded to speak: "Father, why have you betrayed
me?"

I didn't answer.

I didn't say anything. I had suddenly become fascinated by my body, and more
specifically, my hands. I made a tight clenched fist first, and then stretched my fingers
out. I turned my hand around and inspected it from different angles. It was truly a
remarkable mechanism. I watched and marveled as my hand reached out, seemingly
with an intelligence all its own, and flipped a switch on the wall. I heard the garbage
disposal rev to life -- heard its gears and blades begin to chew -- heard the screams.
But I only saw my hand, and continued to be amazed by its amazing flexibility and
versatility.

** *

The next day I became violently ill while at work. I tried valiantly to stick it out, but
after battling against a migraine headache, stomach cramps and diarrhea for three and a
half hours with no sign of respite in sight, I finally conceded to my symptoms and left the
office intent on a return to the warmth and comfort of bed.

Or so I told my secretary.

In truth, aside from general fatigue from lack of sleep, I felt pretty good. Nervous,
but otherwise fine. I felt the way I commonly did whenever I entered a new courtroom
with a new case to debate, new adversaries to face down, and new juries to persuade.
But today, the nature of my confrontation was not legal, and the case I was about to
debate was not on behalf of someone else, and my adversary and audience were the
same one person: Cassie.

When I got home I met her in the kitchen, her schedule apparently free of abortions
that day. I could hear the stereo playing in the living room; a woman singing
breathlessly about everlasting love and romance. It was a familiar tune, but I couldn't
remember the name.

"Home so soon?"

"I had to."

"What --" she broke off. I was making strong eye contact. I hoped I looked
convincingly somber.

"Cassie," I said -- a look of concern was just then beginning to taint Cassie's face,
and I felt my confidence growing -- "Today I was assigned to an American Securities
case involving probable insurance fraud. The defendant is coming into the courtroom
facing charges of arson and perjury and its my job to make them stick, thereby freeing
the insurance company from responsibility."

Cassie's concern was mixed with confusion now. "I don't get it. Why are you
telling me this? Doesn't this violate those lawyer-client privacy rules?"

"I'm telling you this because the defendant's name is Anthony Nitti. He's several
rungs up on the ladder of an organized crime hierarchy. He's a good family
businessman."

"You mean -- the -- Mob?"

"Exactly. I had a meeting with the Assistant District Attorney this morning. He laid
the whole story on me, just so I would know who I was dealing with. He told me that
my taking part in this case could quite likely put the health and welfare of my family in
jeopardy."

"Oh my God."

I could see it in her eyes: she'd swallowed it all. The whole story slipped right
down neat as a pill.

"I'm going to move you to a hotel."

"What?"

"We have to get ourselves out of this house, Cassie. We're easy game here. We
need to get packed and moved fast."

"What about our home?"

"Its not safe."

"How long will you be working on this case? How long will it be before we can
come back?"

"I don't know. You know these legal proceedings can be stretched out forever. It
might take a couple of months."

"A couple of months?"

"Maybe up to a year."

"Oh God." Cassie chewed nervously at her lower lip. "When are we moving?"

"Now. As soon as we can. Once its known that I'm the one representing the
insurance company's interests in this matter, they're not going to waste any time coming
after me." "They": so vaguely menacing.

"What do you think they'll do?"

"They might start off with threats," I said, letting my voice trail off at the end.

"And?"

"Let's get packed."

** *

We moved that evening, to a hotel downtown. The Carlton Towers. Cassie had
packed four suitcases and two boxes, I brought just one suitcase and an overnight bag.
Only one circumstance that I had not foreseen presented itself: Cassie refused to leave
the house without Sophia. I told her we could leave the animals behind for now and
call a kennel or some similar service and have them picked up and looked after until our
return. A pet hotel, I said, but Cassie wouldn't hear of it. The other two could stay in a
pet hotel, but Sophia had to come with us. I eventually agreed, but reluctantly. It was
just a minor obstacle. Elizabeth and Marrianna were isolated. I could get Sophia later.
It would just require an alternate plan.

Cassie worried her way through that first night away from home. It seemed every
ten seconds she had a new concern and a new question as to how we would manage.
She worried about clothes and laundry, pets and plants, the telephone, the mailbox,
transportation, garbage and groceries. I was patient and cautious through it all. It
occurred to me then, in the process of my fielding Cassie's questions, that I had begun
to think of myself in a third person sort of sense. It was as if instead of living my life, I
was somehow observing it from the outside. Like I was watching a movie in which an
actor was playing the part of me, and as that man on the screen made his way through
each scene, I applauded his actions and the words he spoke. I wondered what would
happen next. It was a strange feeling. Unreality. I allowed myself to briefly fantasize
about my winning the Academy Award for Best Actor 2001; stepping up to the stage
to accept my little gold statuette as it was held out to me by Billy Crystal.

Cassie's voice broke into my daydreaming then: "You'll remember to take care of
Elizabeth and Marrianna tomorrow won't you?"

"Oh yes," I said. And I had to fight to keep my lips from smiling.

** *

I left the office at one o'clock the next day. I explained to my secretary that I had
exhausted myself trying to get too much done so soon after having just got past the
worst of my bout with the flu. She nodded and said she understood how that was,
she'd done the same thing herself, last year, when she'd come down with strep throat.

I stopped at a hardware store on the way home. I bought a flame stick lighter (the
kind used for lighting barbecues), a gallon of kerosene, some roadside emergency flares
and an acetylene torch. Also, surveying the nature of my purchases as I stood in line at
the cash register, I decided to buy a flashlight and a pipe wrench, in an effort to disguise
my pyromaniacal intentions. That was a waste of money.

The clerk asked me what I was planning to burn.

"My mother-in-law," I said.

The clerk and the customers behind me in line all laughed. After a second, I
laughed too, but it sounded unnatural and forced.

** *

I parked the Mercedes in the garage. The garage is a very sparsely used space. In
it I store a riding lawn mower, two rakes and an electric hedge trimmer, two garbage
cans, glass and paper recycling bins, and a Betamax video recorder (I still hold on to
the hope that the American consumer will one day realize the Beta format is far superior
to the VHS in terms of picture resolution and sound quality and my favorite VCR will
be saved from total obsolescence). There are no tools there. I have never been a
handy man and I have never had the desire to be one. Of course now I own a pipe
wrench.

Getting out of the car, I noticed both trash cans were empty, and that was a happy
coincidence. I took a stack of newspapers from the 'paper goods' bin, crumbled them
up and filled one of the empty cans half way to the top with them. I poured a generous
amount of kerosene over that, and then checked to make sure my flame stick was in
proper working order. I clicked the little red button on the handle several times to test
it, and each time a small tongue of flame lit up at the end of the wand. Just like magic.

I entered the house via the garage entrance, whistling from a pucker, and feeling
like I had a neon sign mounted on my forehead. But why should they be suspicious? I
had played my hand smoothly enough. They didn't have a clue.

I strolled into the living room, coming from the dining room doorway, and into sight
of my enemies. They were both watching -- Marrianna from her hanging cage,
Elizabeth from the other side of the glass that penned her in -- as I walked over to them
in the corner of the living room set aside for pet residence. I felt the weight of their
scrutiny upon me, like their eyes were radiating beams of hot light, and I was sweating
profusely.

"Off to the pet house with you guys," I said, and instantly regretted it. I worried
that I had blown my cover of ignorance. I had never spoken to any of Cassie's pets
before. They would be on to me for sure now. Silently, I cursed my stupidity as I
knealt down to pick up the saw-dust and wood-chip lined aquarium that was
Elizabeth's home. Black, beady, rodent eyes were intent upon me.

I carried the glass tank back to the garage, closing all the doors behind me,
insulating Marrianna from noise. I took a moment to visualize what I was about to do,
and then dropped Elizabeth's cage into the trash can filled with the kerosene soaked
papers. There was a smashing sound as the glass struck the bottom of the can; an
animal cry of pain. I fumbled, trying to draw the flame stick from my pocket, but
recovered quickly. I touched the end of the rod to the papers and pushed the button.
There was a flash, accompanied by a coughing noise, and then everything in the can
was burning.

I stepped back from the fire.

"Well, that was easy," I whispered. And I realized that I had been holding my
breath. I exhaled in a rush and then slowly filled my lungs back up. " easy, easy,
easy..." I said. My heart was racing. Seconds ticked by and each one was an empty
eternity.

How had it come to this?

I saw visions of my sanity, slipping like sand through my fingers. I saw a crazy man
in a garage, burning an animal, a web of deceit spinning out around him, entangling his
job and his wife. And again I suddenly had that feeling that I was watching myself from
a seat in a theater, and as a member of the audience it was painfully obvious that I was
insane. Here I was, chasing and burning my wife's pets, convinced that they concealed
witches in their furry bodies.

A pitiful moan came from me then. I buried my face in my hands. I was scared. I
was losing my mind. I wondered what would become of me....

When Elizabeth reared up out of the garbage can in human form it was nearly a
relief.

There she was. The witch with the long thin nose and the twin moles sprouting
whiskers. Her hair and her clothes were burning, and her mouth was stretched and
distorted by the anguish of her screams.

She tried to climb out of the can but didn't quite make it. She couldn't raise her
foot over the lip of the rim. The can wobbled radically, seemed about to tip, and then
somehow righted itself. The witch was windmilling her arms but couldn't keep her
balance. She fell backwards and the can fell with her, spilling its contents away from
me. The witch coughed out a moan as she struck the floor, the wind knocked out of
her. Her screams stopped then, and in their stead came a series of hoarse gasps. She
sounded like a shop-vac.

I had backed across the garage, putting as much space as possible between me
and her. My back was against the tool wall, ladder at my left, rakes at my right.

Elizabeth was getting up. By the time she had regained her feet, her breathing had
recovered. Flames still sputtered in her hair and on the sleeves of her ragged, black
robe, but they were dying. She laughed, and it was a cackle, just like I'd always
imagined a witch would laugh.

"The fire," she said, "is my servant. A long time it has been a tool of the darkness.
It listens to my voice." And she waved her hands, and the flames that were left on her
suddenly rolled off like a slack rope and landed at her feet in coils. And then those
burning circles came to life and slithered, an undulating line, a snake, towards me. I
was paralyzed by fear. My mind ran in frantic cycles, but somewhere a switch had
been flipped and my body was unresponsive. The serpent came closer.

"Stupid little man. Your ideas are strong but you are weak." She folded her hands
and kneaded her knuckles. "I will show you strength, little man. I will show you
power. I can hold and manipulate the destinies of lives in my hands. And now I am
holding your life in my hands." She opened her hands then, and held them out to me,
palms up. I saw a white moth with quivering wings there, in her left hand. When the
flames first touched me, and began to wind their way up my leg, the moth burst with a
spark and was instantly ashes. The witch laughed again.

I was burning, and I could feel my skin blistering, could smell my singeing flesh, but
it seemed that my body would go, heedless of pain, into flaming ruin.

But then a drop of sweat ran into my eye. There was a flaring sting, and I blinked,
only then realizing that the witch had had me hypnotized. The trance she had woven
then quickly unraveled; I could move again, and knowing I could move, I knew what I
would do.

I lunged to my right and reached, past the rakes hanging on their pegs, for the
handle of the hedge trimmer. It had an orange casing with a black rubber handle and a
fourteen inch blade, jagged with triangular teeth. I flipped the switch on the casing, and
as the blade started to vibrate, whirled to face my enemy, the hedge trimmer held in
front of me with both hands, a yard-tender's Excalibur.

The witch's eyes went wide with a mixture of what I saw as surprise and fear. She
opened her mouth, about to speak, but before even a syllable came forth, I was on her.
I covered the distance separating us in just two steps. She held up her hands to ward
off the anticipated blows, but her palms were a poor shield. My first strike loosed both
her hands at the wrist and they flew, on jets of spraying blood, like talons without a
hawk. Elizabeth screamed. Her screams were an even poorer shield. I hit her again
and again, driven by rage. I did not stop until all the form of her body had been
obliterated. I chopped and hacked, separating head from shoulders, shoulders from
torso, torso from hips, hips from legs. The flames that had burned on my legs had been
doused by sheets of blood.

For a moment, at the end, as I sat, on my knees, surrounded by gore, I felt the
weight of my accomplishment, a thrill of excitement, but quickly that was over-
shadowed by the knowledge that I had only just won one in a series of battles.

I got to my feet, wincing from the pain in my legs. I had to get Marrianna. I armed
myself, in addition to the hedge trimmer, with the propane torch, which I lit before
reentering the house. Whether or not the torch could be used as a weapon against me
was not one of my considerations; it was, after all, either the torch or nothing.

I stalked through the dining room, steeling myself for the coming raven massacre. I
stepped into the living room, ready to burn and slash, a soldier, grimly prepared to do
my duty.

But the bird cage was empty.

The bird cage was empty...

I searched the rest of the first floor quickly, looking for feathers, an open window
or door, but I saw no sign of the bird or its exit. I knew I had lost the advantage of
surprise. Marrianna was upstairs, waiting for me, and I had no other option but to find
and confront her.

I approached the stairway, cast a cautious glance upward. No life up there. I
climbed up the first three steps. My adrenaline was surging. I could barely feel the
burns on my legs.

I called out, "Come and get me you ugly bitch." The house was quiet.

I took two more steps, bringing my eyes level with the floor of the upstairs hall.
Five closed doors, two on the left, two on the right, one at the end. I knew waiting
would accomplish nothing. I had just set my resolve to march up the remaining steps
and fling open the first door on the left, the door to the room that served as my library,
when I felt an explosion of pain.

It hit me in the left tricep. The pain was so intense that at first I thought I had been
shot or stabbed, not being able to imagine anything else capable of causing such a hurt.

I looked at my arm, expecting to see blood and shreds of flesh, but there was no
visible wound. Then right before my disbelieving eyes, I watched as my wrist began to
turn, suddenly independent of the rest of my body. The wrist turned into a terrible,
unnatural angle, and pain shot up like a flare. My whole arm was then violently
wrenched behind my back. Inevitably I lost my grip on the blowtorch. It slipped from
my numbed fingers, hit the stairs and bounced down to a final resting place at the foot
of the banister. The nozzle was pointed at the floor; I had turned my head to follow its
progress down the stairway, and now I saw a small patch of carpet begin to blacken
and smoke under the cone of blue flame.

I would've jumped down to retrieve it, but I couldn't. My feet wouldn't react. I
just stood, flat-footed on the steps, unable to do anything. I knew what had happened.
My will was not my own. I had been claimed a puppet by some black magic.

And then the puppet-master began to pull on the strings, and my body began to
stiffly move. Step, step, up to the top of the stairs. Step, step, step, down the hall to
the second door on the left; the bathroom. I watched my right hand open, drop the
hedge trimmer, and reach for the door knob. Against my will, I opened the door and
pushed it back on its hinges.

Marrianna was there waiting for me. She, of course, was the witch who wore the
headband and garland of black feathers, and had the long claw-like hands that looked
like bird feet. In one of those hands she held a doll, a likeness of me. It had a lock of
my hair taped to the top of its head, and it was wearing a three-piece suit and carrying
a brief case. One arm was twisted behind its back. In her other hand she held a glass
jar from which all the lemon-shaped soaps had been removed. They had been dumped
into the sink.

Marrianna handed me the jar and my right hand took it. She began to manipulate
the doll. My left hand came from behind my back. It fumbled briefly with the buckle of
my belt and then lowered my pants. Resisting was futile; vain.

"You. Will. Give. Us a. Daughter. Yet," Marrianna said, agonizing over each word.
She began to methodically move the doll. She had me masturbate, and toss off into the
jar. She had me do it, and do it, and do it. By my seventh ejaculation I had abraded
myself and begun to bleed. The jar was a quarter of the way full. I was in pain. In
torment. My head was pounding as though from someone driving nails into my skull. I
could feel my pulse throbbing behind my eyes (maybe I would go blind). My knees
were shaking. My stomach was twitching and groaning. I was going to jerk myself to
death. Marrianna, the whole time, had a hideous charicature of glee drawn on her face;
an evil, crooked smile on her lipless mouth.

Then a thought hit me. From nowhere. First I was thinking of Groundhog Day.
Then I was thinking about how I'd never gotten around to replacing the batteries in the
smoke detector. You're supposed to do that on Groundhog Day. Then I heard the
sirens, way off and quieted by distance.

I really do believe it was an act of God that saved me. I can think of no other
reasonable explanation. Somehow, Marrianna never felt the heat or smelled the
smoke. Somehow, she never had a clue until the sirens were right on top of us -- and
by then it was too late. Just when the first shade of curious concern began to show on
her, the floor at her feet collapsed and she fell into the inferno below. The torch I had
dropped down the steps was burning the house down. Of course burning by itself
would not have killed the witch. It was another seeming fluke that wound up killing her.
The room she fell into was the dining room, and more specifically, the area she fell into
was that of the dining table, and the centerpiece of the table is a black, wrought iron
candelabra with five upright holders for placing candles in. Marrianna landed not only
on the table, but on the candelabra, and the middlemost holder, the tallest of the five,
had impaled her, like the tine of a pitchfork, right through the heart.

But Marrianna's sudden, unforeseen destruction, in itself, was not that miraculous,
for I still had no control of myself. I was still held in the vice of her vile magic. I was
still mercilessly, thoughtlessly pumping myself, even after she had fallen to her doom.
The miracle happened just as she was falling. She flailed her arms... and struck the
knuckles of the hand that held the likeness of me on the rim of the toilet... and the doll...
fell in.

It went splash, and sank down to the bottom, and I was finally allowed to quit
abusing myself, but I was still unable to move. Surely I would have perished in the heat
and flames and smoke -- it did get hot enough to shatter the glass jar I held -- but the
firemen were able to contain the blaze and put the fire out before the whole house was
consumed, and somehow I was saved.

The fireman who discovered me, in my burned out bathroom with my pants down
around my ankles, let out a surprised yell, "Holy hell, man!"

Still, I could not move until he shook me by the shoulders and broke the trance's
shackles. "Good God! " The fireman said. "What did you do? Piss the flames away?
You must've drunk a lot of coffee, hey guy?"

I didn't know what to do or say. I pulled my pants up. They were damp. In fact,
my whole suit was wet. I suddenly understood. My life had been saved by the doll in
the toilet. The water there had protected me from burning.

"You must have an angel on your shoulder, pal."

"Yes," I said. I reached out to push the lever on the toilet and somehow it still
worked. I waited till the flush was complete before adding, "And I have an effigy in the
sewer."

The fireman didn't understand, and no amount of explaining would've helped him to.

My house was a wreckage -- a ruin. Everything was charred black and sodden
with water. The scent of burn and coal and smoke was thick in the air and stinging in
my eyes and nostrils. I made my way cautiously through the hall and down the stairs.
Most steps I could feel, sagging beneath my feet as though the beams and planks were
going to give under my weight. I was dimly aware of the fireman who had discovered
me, picking his way carefully through the remains a short distance behind me, but he
made no further attempt to speak to me, and I had nothing to say for myself, so we
went in silence.

The upstairs master bedroom had fallen into the living room and the area now had a
rather cavernous aspect about it; dark, with the higher ceiling of the rooms above, and
the jutting rafters and beams like stalagmites and stalactites. Somehow, the night stand
from my bedside had gone through the picture window overlooking the back yard, and
the frame of glass shards remaining from the pane reminded me of a crystalline cave
structure too.

It was strange, how far removed I felt from my house just then. Why, just four
days ago it had been a pride and joy, and now, I felt like I was walking through one of
the disputed properties in one of my insurance fraud cases. It was as though the house
was somebody else's. Somebody else's life. Somebody else's problem. Maybe it was
a denial phase I was going through; something my subconscious mind had constructed
to save me from pain. I mean, heaven knew my life would never wind up like this. This
kind of thing could never happen to me.

I went to the garage. The roof there was still intact, and the car, aside from having
smoke-darkened paint, still appeared to be sound. I pushed the button for the
automatic garage door opener and that still worked. There was a grinding sound as the
chains hoisted at the door panels and pulled them up to the ceiling. I climbed into my
car and started it. The engine ran smooth and easy, preserved from the holocaust. I
drove.

Firemen and police officers made to block off the driveway and hinder my escape
when they saw me backing out. Undoubtedly they had questions. I knew that I didn't
have any answers, and that made it easier for me to justify running away. I drove
through my neighbor's yard, knocking over a bird bath and a lawn jockey holding a
lantern, but for some reason didn't care. Material concerns, property and possessions,
for the first time, in perhaps my whole life, meant nothing to me.

I expected someone to follow me, but no one did. I know they must've called in
with my car description and license plate number; told other cars to be on the watch for
me, but no one came after me right off. To be truthful, I don't know what I would've
done if there had been an immediate pursuit. I suppose I would've just pulled over and
let them take me downtown for questioning. And I really couldn't afford to have that
happen. My instincts were telling me time had become of the utmost importance. I had
to act quickly and decisively, and finish off what I had started.

Sophia would be the strongest of them. She was their leader. The first Severe
Widow. And something told me she knew what had just transpired between me and
her daughters. She was aware of me and knew what I had done, and she would have
time to prepare for me.

I was thinking I was probably doomed.

But I had nowhere to go but forward.