Bastard Freedom: Chapter 9

 

“Get the fuck out,” his words to the private ringing in his ears. He knew, however, that now, he couldn’t shout it if he tried. He didn’t want to try; he knew that that implicit threat was empty, although he meant it at that time. 

This time, though, no explicit threats would be accepted by his throat for what he saw in the bedroom.

Marie had a deep, bleeding gash across her forehead, as though Peter wanted to be Hannibal Lecter and eat her brain in her sleep. His brain, in the liquid gold of time that passes in split-second assessments, remembered their very first conversation after he interviewed her and bedded her for the first time, a few days later. He was trying to be witty, then. Well, he was witty, so the attempt was as natural and inevitable as a seduction. “Don’t ruin a concert or offend his ear,” he said about Hannibal, and she was so delighted she nearly fell of the bed. (She had the laughter of the gods, he always thought.) Hannibal had always held a soft spot in her heart: the mere fact that he can never be tested either in IQ or in truth spoke volumes to her and went straight to the panties of her brain.

In addition to the gash, a rapidly blooming red was on her jaw and lower cheek, like beautiful, brutal peonies that spoke the way only flowers could. It was the sight of that bruise, and not the gash, that Joseph will remember for months after that: it was what drove him to assess the situation now.

Peter had been fumbling with his belt when Joseph came in, intentions before man, God, and asylum laid bare. He understood, then, that Peter hadn’t raped her yet – Thank God, he thought… Or had it been better if he caught him mid-thrust? The mad fucking the mad in front of the surprised pathologically sane, or the impotent hard-on of the diseased for the wench with a slight chance of redemption: which is worse? Which is better? In the land of the insane, everything, after all, is beyond good and evil. 

Knowing this full well, he knew anger wouldn’t serve him now. Oh, it would, if he utilized it. But he didn’t want to kill the man (for he could): but he didn’t want to just hurt him, either. It is in these situations where the gods playing dice in the lives of men took a dignified breath inward: what would this ape do? 

The world having failed him by making him born a bastard, the universe having failed him by succumbing to politics with legs spread, his own sense of time having failed him by making him thirty minutes late, as in Sisyphus choosing to roll the rock upward again -

Everything happened in the cliché, ultimately, of Hollywood movies: time slowed down, he took three steps forward, and, with the deadly silence of a tailless rattlesnake, elbowed Peter hard in the jaw. It was a beautiful Sok Tad, laying the latter unconscious, hands mid-fumble with his belt (Peter didn’t even try to defend himself, or at least dodge – he saw Joseph, at least, didn’t he?). It took almost no effort.

Having the excess violence the Sok Tad didn’t require, Joseph hauled Peter’s body outside the house and onto the sidewalk, where he dropped him unceremoniously and without looking back. 

He called the police, went to the room, and tended to Marie’s gash. He was afraid of that bruise: the bleeding of the gash, at least, he could stop. The bruise will be a mark no other wound can be, fastidiously showing all the colors of the wavelength as it heals. At least a cut heals quietly. 

Everything happened in less than ten minutes.

It would be an eternity before Marie woke again.