The Beginning of Autumn
He threw the picture across the room. The frame corner splintered against his oak secretary and shot glass in all directions. August’s eyes burned.
At the bathroom sink he let two drops of Visine fall into each eye. He tried to blink them into absorption but found he could not control his eyelids. The muscles around his eyes strained wrinkles into the skin.
What the fuck?
He followed the drops as they trailed down his cheeks. He watched them stop at his jawline, unwilling and unable to fall further. He knew it was somehow his fault, that once again his deficiency
His deficiency
He pulled his head out of the commode. The water cooled his eyes and he could blink again. He counted back the days to his last tank treatment, to try to reassure himself that he had not done more harm than good. The idea of bleach burned his eyes even as they found relief from the toilet water. He pulled in front of the mirror to examine the screaming red eyes, the face that had aged ten years in the last five months.
August was just beginning.
*
It was a blessedly bullshit assignment. From seven pm to three am, August sat at a computer in a bank check clearinghouse, fingering routing numbers, account numbers, cash numbers in a mindless transfer from scanned image to ten-key number pad. There was virtually no human interaction, no great demands of productivity, only mechanical function.His eyes were still sore, and if he thought too hard, it was still difficult to blink. It got harder as his shift progressed, staring at the screen for twenty minutes
burn
He shut down his computer at 12:40. He felt terrible, he told his supervisor. Feel better, as she noted his early departure with a dry pen on a piece of scrap paper.
There was a girl there, kneeling by the passenger door of his 1990 Audi 500 Quattro. At first he thought she was inspecting the key marks down the side, but when she noticed him, she jumped from the car to reveal a crude slim. His knees locked, only for a moment, and he fell to the asphalt. She came to him.
“Are you okay?”
“What are you doing to my car?”
“Shit. Are you okay?”
He pulled himself into a kneel.
“What are you doing to my car?”
She put her hand on his shoulder, her hand to his forehead. His eyes settled on her
settled on
“This one. With the brick mailbox.”
She pulled into the driveway, stopping inches before the garage door. She swiped her pink hair back into a ponytail and turned to him.
“You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“No hospital. I’m fine.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to have to borrow your car for the night.”
“Fine.” He opened the door and hoisted himself out.
“Hey, you got a name?”
“August.”
“Well, August, I’ll bring your car back tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.” He shuffled to the door, realizing as she pulled away that his house keys were still on the keyring that hung from the ignition of his car.
He walked around to the back of the house and tried the dining room window, careful not to smash the budding irises. The latch on the window was open, but a shoddy paint job stuck the window. He pushed the window open and fell through into
fell into
“Sir, we’ve received a report of a burglar. Can we have a look around?”
“Sure. I mean, it was me. Coming in through the window. I-- I lost my keys.”
“Can you show me some ID? With this address?”
“Here.” He handed him the driver’s license, still shiny and unworn. The second police officer returned from his once-around.
“Looks good.”
“Sir, are you alright? You don’t look healthy. Can we take you to the hospital?”
“I’m fine, I’m just tired. It’s been a long one.”
“Okay. Get some sleep. And find your keys.”
*
The front door opened and the car thief crept inside.
“August?” she whispered. He sat up on the couch.
“In here.” She walked into the living room and put his keys on the coffee table.
“Thanks for the car. Made my day a lot easier.”
“Sure.” She sat on the couch beside him. “I never caught your name.”
“It’ll come to you.” She wrapped her fingers through her ponytail and pulled the hairband out, shaking it off her shoulders.
“I need you,” he started.
“Oh yeah?” She smiled and narrowed her eyes.
He tried to get his words out, to finish his thought. She watched him, choking on his language, shaking his shaggy head while he struggled to remember how to form vowels, consonants, semantics, syntax. He looked to her for some clue, some sign of understanding.
She understood then, and slapped the shit out of him.
“To get out. I need you to get out.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
At work the numbers flew past his eyes and into his midnight lunch break. He unwrapped an egg salad sandwich from the vending machine and held his cold soda can to the hand imprint on his cheek. It was the quiet moments, the ones in which he spent most of his time, that her face floated before him, not the living face of his wife but the swollen and bloodied face that his brother had left for him to find
bloodied brother
He could not start again. He held his right hand over the 10 key pad, read the numbers on the screen. He tried to rationalize, to work the routing number one digit at a time, but could not put the weight behind his fingers, could not manipulate his fingers. His supervisor spoke over his shoulder.
“August, we need you moving. Are you still feeling bad?”
“Yes.”
“August, go home. I appreciate the effort, but you really shouldn’t have come in. We can’t afford to get everyone sick.”
“Sorry.”
“Clock out, and for God’s sake, don’t come in tomorrow if you can’t work or if you’re contagious.”
“Right.”
He wasn’t at all surprised to see his car thief sitting on the hood of his car.
“Hey,” she said when she saw him.
“What do you want?”
“A lift?”
“Oh. Thanks for not stealing my car. Get in.”
She jumped off the hood and climbed in.
“Where are you going?”
“Your neighborhood, actually. I can get out at your house.”
He opened the sunroof and turned up the radio. As he merged onto the 2, the music ended and he stared at the radio.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
the music ended
She punched him. He pulled the steering wheel hard, and the car dug into the road and returned to the center lane. He pushed in the clutch and cut over to the shoulder, slowing to a stop.
“You should drive.”
“You think?”
“What is your name, goddammit?”
“What the hell is happening to you, August?”
She pulled the car into his driveway and killed the engine.
“I’m coming in with you.”
“Okay.”
She helped him out of the car and walked him to the door. His eyes were no longer focusing, no longer following the directions of his movement. He shuffled with her guidance to the front step, and she opened the door.
He woke the next morning and she stood over him. She touched his forehead, and drew her finger down his cheek.
“Tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Just the basics.”
So he told her. The happy marriage, the brother with no grip on reality, the baby on the way. The afternoon he came home to find the three of them
bloodied brother
fell into
His deficiency
the music ended
He finished his story.
“Heavy.” She stared at him for a minute, then went to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of ouzo and two glasses. She poured the ouzo, put one glass into his hand, and raised her glass. They clinked and threw them back. She refilled them, and again they drank them in one swallow. Then she put her glass down, took his, and climbed on top of him. She kissed him. He started to resist, to push her away, but she wrapped her hands around his head and pulled him closer. She kissed, then bit, then kissed his lip again.
“What is your name?”
“Shut up.”
“I can’t--”
“Shut up. I know what I’m doing.”
She pinned his arms with one hand and removed her belt with the other, then tied his hands to the leg of the sideboard behind the couch.
She fucked him brutally for a half hour, cutting his chest with her fingernails, punching him and using him for her pleasure alone. When she was finished, she poured another ouzo and gulped it.
“Better?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Untie me?” She unbound his wrists and jumped off.
finished
*
He woke exactly where she’d left him. The blood on his chest had dried in stripes across his ribs, the stripes stung as he sat up.
The front door of his house stood open. He looked into the yard. His car was gone.
She returned that afternoon and let herself in again. August lay on the floor of the living room, staring past her with red milky eyes.
“August?”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes and felt the muscles ease as tears ran down into his ears.
“Summer.”
“What?”
“My name. Summer.”
He laughed.
“Funny, right?”
red milky eyes
It was a quiet moment. The faces, the swollen and bloodied faces
The bloody face of Summer
The end of Summer
He saw his work, he saw her body laid out exactly as his wife had been laid out
He tried to gasp, but his breath failed him. He ran his sternum into the corner of the couch, trying to restart his breath, to dislodge whatever obstruction might be in there.
He ran his sternum into the corner
He fell to the floor beside Summer. As his vision darkened, he saw her mouth twitch, then curl up into a smile. And he went black.
finished
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