Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (21 page)

Wardrobe was the tricky part and required trips to women’s, men’s and boys’ clothing to come up with an outfit worthy of emotional confluence. By the time we stood in one of the two excruciatingly long lines, Wendy had begun to act like herself again.

“I can’t believe those bitches closed their lanes on us. Sorry! Break.” She aped the girl’s waddle.

“Oh God and when the other one pointed at me with those curly long fingernails, I felt like one of Gil’s bottles of celebrity plasma. Note the celebrity part.”

“Of course.” Wendy poked at the batting. “Are you sure this’ll work?”

“It’ll do the trick until we can get back to the reapers for a freshening.”

“It’s gonna cost a fortune.” She sighed. “I don’t think I have it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got some copy you can freelance for me.”

“Serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks, sister.”

Like a fucking Hallmark card.

“That’s not too tight is it?” Tad asked. His voice was a bit gravelly, not froggy per se, just scratchy. Clearly the phrase wasn’t one he’d used before.
¹¹³

“It’s fine.” I patted the blindfold and shifted my hips around on the flip-down seat in the truck’s cab. I guess I should have been happy that handcuffs weren’t part of the deal, or worse yet, duct tape. As it was, all I could see was a thin sliver of my new blouse, and only if I strained my eyes. Not that there was anything to look at.

“You comfortable?” the other one asked.

“It’s like a fuckin’ spa day back here. What do you mean, ‘Am I comfortable?’ Of course not!”

“Now, Miss. That’s naughty talk and we don’t naughty talk in this truck.”

I decided not to respond. One, I couldn’t tell what exactly had been “naughty” about what I’d said and two, why bother? Clearly Maha had these guys brain-washed.
¹¹⁴

I already liked her.

My cell phone rang and I had a hell of a time digging it out of my skirt pocket. Why didn’t I just carry my purse? I damned myself to hell for that with every contorted twisting metal-rod-in-the-back movement it took to get the goddamn phone.

It was Marithé.

“That guy keeps callin’.”

“Tell him to fuck off.”

“I don’t think he’ll go for that. Besides I already threatened him with a restraining order. He responded by faxing a copy of an article that was so heinous, there was nothing I could do but tell him you were tending to family issues.”

“Oh my God. You made up a different location, right?”

“Of course.”

I hung up on her. Disgusted.

We drove for close to an hour, on a paved road for most of the way. But in the last fifteen minutes the smooth surface gave way to gravel and potholes, bouncing me around the cramped compartment like change in the bottom of my purse, without the soft buffering of tampons, ’cause really, why would I need those? The old uterus doesn’t really function anymore.

I don’t bleed. If you must force me to spell it out.

And … since you’re on to me.

Yes. I have some tampons.

I know I get on Wendy for her Twix habit, but I can’t give up coffee. How is it even possible to do that? And really, it’s Wendy’s fault for getting me back into it. She’s the one that told me about using Depends to eat whatever we want.

I just took the idea to its next logical step.

Of course, there is the pain to deal with; undead diarrhea is a bitch. But for a quick caffeine fix, an OB Ultra does the trick quite nicely.

Don’t tell.

I’ll only deny it.

“You can take off your blindfold,” Corey said. “We’re almost there.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to see anyhow,” Tad finished.

But there sure as shit had been something to smell. During the entire ride, the driver’s window had remained cracked, flipping my hair into a bramble of knots—a hair don’t, no matter what Vivienne West-wood says—and filling my nose with blatant notes of manure and an acrid hint of smoke.

Montana’s ranch land was proving quite quaint.

I slipped my fingers between the fabric and my cheeks, pushed it up and fashioned it into a cute hair
band—if I was going to meet their messiah I would damn sure be presentable.

As we crested a small hill, the truck came upon a remarkable structure. A glossy black wall rose from the waves of moonlit grasses, high into the night sky. Tad slowed to a stop a few yards away from it and put the car in park.

There didn’t seem to be a gate or door or anything. The dirt road just butted right up to the thing. Nothing interrupted the finish except an occasional etching, which seemed to be written in Sanskrit.

“What does that say?” I pressed myself between the front seats.

“It says, ‘Know thyself and enter, know nothing and perish. The truth is all around you.’” Tad opened his door with a creak that shattered the silence. He stepped out and walked up to the wall, pausing for a moment and then passing into it. The obsidian material became liquid, sliding around his flesh like quicksilver. He spasmed a bit and then disappeared. The wall solidified.

Corey opened his door and left me sitting in the back.

“Wait!” I yelled. “Where the fuck are you going?”

But it was too late. Corey didn’t hesitate at all. He walked straight into the wall, again with the creepy spasm and then he was gone.

With not much room to maneuver, I banged around the cab of the truck until my foot finally caught on the lever for the seat back. I triggered it and it slid forward unexpectedly, leaving me wallowing on the floorboards, searching for purchase to pull myself up. Not since prom night had I been so contorted.

Prom night.

I’d seen the aptly designated Dr. Crooks in my senior year of high school, after being caught shoplifting
high-end cosmetics. Mother made me, I’d have preferred a male therapist—as some of you may know— but the bitch was paying, so …

Meander with me, won’t you?
¹¹⁵

Her post-therapy homework assignment had been helpful and forced Ethel to fork out $200 on a facial, new skin-care regimen and a hairdo to match. It hit the mark, and I managed a prom invite, despite my less-than-sunny disposition.

Gary Lortner—oddly hot band geek, but not my first foray into the submissive male specimen (Ethel had paraded enough of those through her bed-room)—made the first move of his life in a shaky one-word question outside the girls’ bathroom.

“Pro-o-om?” He studied the industrial tile floor while he asked, kicking the water fountain with a dusty Doc Marten.

I pinched his chin and forced him to look at me. Training puppies is quite similar; eye contact is key. “What was that, Gary? Full sentence, please.”

“Woo-would you go with me to the pro-o-om?”

“Of course, I would and don’t look so shocked. You’re pretty hot and a girl has needs.”

Gary blushed for the rest of the day. Probably analyzing that last sentence through several bathroom pass masturbation sessions. The idea of that made me feel powerful, in a way that a previously disclosed molestation did not.
¹¹⁶
I’m talking about one of Ethel’s boyfriends, not my real dad. He ran when he could
and I certainly don’t hold that against him. He saw his opening and darted. I’d have done the same if I’d been given the latitude. I’m not talking about a rape or anything just some over the panty fumbling. I’ll survive.

Oh … wait.

Anyway.

The prom was magical, and all. But I was looking for the payday, and I don’t mean to reference a peanut-studded candy bar as a phallic image. I was talking about losing my virginity. Some of you want to imagine that every girl’s fantasy is to do it with someone they love, hand the pussy over on some buffed and shiny silver platter, or some shit. Well, it isn’t
every
girl’s fantasy.

If I learned anything from Ethel it was that a woman can want and enjoy sex without love entering into the equation.

So … later.

After Carly Bookman had snagged her crown— duh—I took Gary back out to his ratty old Volkswagen Rabbit and fucked the shit out of him—to put it nicely. For all his bellowing cries to God I was surprised we didn’t get a visit from our Lord and Personal Savior right there, or at least a cum-stained reliquary out of the deal. I bet to this day Gary still has the belt buckle dents in his back as a memento. Maybe one is even shaped like the Virgin Mary.
¹¹⁷

We never spoke again but he lost the stutter in those backseat screams and became quite the ladies man around Barnaby Ridge High. What can I say? I’m like a social worker for all my good deeds.

Hmm. Yet no one was there to help me in my time of need.

The grass slapped around my new sweatshop heels and bare ankles. There didn’t seem to be any alternative but to follow Tad and Corey and step right in. But where to do it? Was one place as good as the next? And what about that ominous Sanskrit message? A little over the top, if you ask me.

I mean “know nothing and perish.” C’mon, what does that even mean? And who reads Sanskrit in Montana? I was pretty sure the ranchers aren’t writing their grocery lists in the ancient language.

I marched up to the wall and touched the surface, expecting mercurial liquid. Instead I was confronted by a cold solid construction. I walked along, trailing my fingers across it.

“The truth is all around me?” I wondered aloud. There was grass all around me, sky, air and one big impossible wall.

Impossible.

Or maybe that was the answer. The wall’s existence was impossible. How did it even get built? The thing was massive. Everyone would know about it if it were real. My eyes followed the swirls of Sanskrit and I bounded forward, head held high and eyes open.

There’s no wall, I told myself. No wall.

But there was.

As my face connected, the material splattered across it like mud. Cold and wet and not at all like the kind that Helga spreads on at the supernatural spa, Riyadh Morte, which is—in a word—delightful. The feeling spread down my body until I was interred inside it. I hesitated for a moment, expecting the spasm to come. When it didn’t, I pushed further in and popped out the other side into a sopping humidity. The temperature was so hot that moisture rose to the surface of my dead flesh.

Around me stood a lush forest of palms and banana trees so dense I was reminded of Vietnam War movies and gangrene and sweat. The scent of night jasmine hung in the air, and orchids grew from creases in the tree trunks. Either it was all an illusion or that wall was a door to a land that hated straight hair. Off to my right a raised wooden boardwalk meandered into the jungle, illuminated by the occasional metal fire pot.

Tad and Corey hadn’t bothered to wait.

I stepped off a slight grassed incline onto the boards and creaked through the jungle, half expecting to encounter a hungry tiger, or some psychotic aging Vietcong to roll out of the greenery in a viney wheelchair, clueless as to the end of the war and the fact that Vietnam was the new Bali. But the most perilous obstacle proved to be a dense clumping Bird of Paradise grown up out of the jungle floor and into the rotting damp boards; spiky flowers pecked at my blouse as I tried to give it a wide berth.

As the jungle thinned, I came upon an arch with a scrolling pagoda roof. A bell hung from its ornately carved post. Beyond this rose a vast complex of Oriental architecture—Thai salas and pointy wats shared space with blue Chinese tiled mansions and many-storied Indian palaces. Wherever I was, it was not Asia, but some sort of recreation, without the massive population and third-world smells. An idealized version, like Epcot or restaurant row near the opera house.

I reached out and grasped the pull in the center of the bell. Debated a moment and then clanged the bronze fish that hung there against the interior bowl. The sound echoed across the plaza toward the massive buildings in the distance.