13 Views of the Suicide Woods Read online

  I turned and tried lifting my fists to put up a guard. He hit me again in the gut right between my elbows. I dropped my arms to protect my midsection and he whipped around with another bent arm hook into the other side of my face, hitting me in the jaw this time. I spun and staggered away from the bar, both sides of my face numbing and growing tight with swelling. I stumbled into the middle of the bar and stood, trying to shake the haze out of my head. It wouldn’t do any good to get knocked out too fast.

  Blood dribbled out of my mouth and I stuck a finger in to assess the damage to my aching back teeth. Touching my molars caused pain unlike anything I’d felt before. They weren’t loose. They were gone. He’d broken off at least two that I could feel. I tried to blow a kiss at him, but my mouth hurt so bad all I could manage was to let it hang open while blood and saliva drizzled down my chin.

  Once upon a time I took karate, or something the instructor called karate. He’d made up his own style and named it after some piece of kanji he found in a book, the way teenagers pick their first tattoo. He told us it meant something poetic like “lunar eclipse,” and waxed esoteric about appearances versus reality and what real warriors did and didn’t do. I found out later he’d never bothered to ask someone who could actually read the language, and the symbol he’d named his art after was Japanese for “restaurant.” Admittedly, it’s a tough language. But he never double checked. Anyway, that was the guy who taught me how to fight. Against guys who’d also learned how to fight from him, I was good. In the Way of The Restaurant, I was Jim Kelly cool. Against a guy who spent all of his free time in a gym lifting and doing MMA, I was a punching bag; I just couldn’t hit back.

  Most of the time, I skirted around conflict with humor and a fast-talking reason that calmed even the most hotheaded guys down enough to not pummel me. But I really thought I might be able to block at least one of this dick’s hits. Just one, so I felt like I was a participant in the fight. Scott, however, was fast and motivated. I had nothing in my repertoire of three-step slo-mo techniques and pseudo-religious platitudes about honor to counter a whip-fast hook or a rabbit punch. Learning that hurt worse than any of his punches.

  It was hard to breathe. My stomach was cramping. Another slam in the guts and I crumpled. The floor was where I wanted to be, actually. Lying there, I felt none of the uncertainty of being rocked on my feet. Lying on the floor, I knew which way was up, which was down, and where I was. Definitely down, on my side, smearing my blood in the tracked-in dirt and road salt from the previous winter. The other thing being on the floor told me was he would have to change it up from fists to feet.

  “Was . . . it something I . . . said?”

  He kicked me in the back. Scott wasn’t wearing work boots, but they weren’t fluffy bunny slippers on his feet either. It didn’t matter. Legally, almost any “shod foot” is considered a dangerous weapon. I felt the pointed toe of his Rockport against my ribs and heard the snap of bone echo in the shocked silence of the bar. The only other noises I heard were my ragged breathing, his cursing, and Val in the background shouting for him to stop. Bless you, Val, I thought. But let him go. I knew she’d already called the cops.

  I rolled over to protect my back and he gave me a final shot in the face. Right where I wanted it. Where it would count the most. I felt my lips shred around the remains of my front teeth and I choked. I was done. He could stop any time. Please Val, I wished. Make him stop. But he hadn’t exhausted himself yet, and I’d worked what I knew was his rawest nerve. No one treated him like a woman, or even suggested he was one. Calling him what I did was the same as threatening his deepest seated personal identity. And with a few in him, he didn’t respond with anger. It was pure fury I’d tapped.

  That’s what my step-daughter—ex-step-daughter—Cory, told me about him. She’s best friends with his daughter, Ginger. Goes over to his house for sleep-overs sometimes. She’d seen him go nuts at “Ginge” because he thought she called him a pussy. “She said he was ‘being pushy,’ but he wouldn’t listen. He just screamed at her until his face turned all red. I thought he was going to stroke out right there in front of us,” she told me. “He scares me, Abel.”

  A couple of days later, she sent me a link to his Pick Up Artist blog. He bragged about “railing some chick” in his daughter’s bed because he was “about keeping it fresh (and his wife was napping in their bedroom).” I read through all the entries until I found the one where he “experimented” with his technique on one of his daughter’s friends. Fifteen and almost hot, he’d written, the little bitch acts like she already knows she can make any Beta “Male” do whatever she wants by even hinting at the idea of spreading her legs. She’s probably got all the boys in her school already twisted up with promises and blue balls. But I’m A Man. So that weekend I set out to teach her an early lesson about the truth behind Female Sexual Motive using the techniques of the Alpha Male Plan. I got her AMPed up and when I was done, she was curled up in my lap and purring like a nice little kitten. He added a disclaimer at the end saying he never followed through with his AMPlan because he wasn’t “into felonies.” Adding, She’ll be legal in six months. I can wait. ;p

  The blog post was date-stamped July 19.

  Cory’s birthday is December 21.

  His sentencing is next week on February 15. Aggravated Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon. Arrogant as ever, he spun the wheel on a trial instead of taking a plea and lost. I left my false teeth out when I testified. Fucking up my mouth was a cherry on top since it’s a disfigurement and increases the penalty. He’s looking at fifteen years. The irony is not lost on me.

  I am not a tough guy. I never have been. But I’ll do anything to protect my kid.

  PURE BLOOD AND EVERGREEN

  Pyotr cel Tinar long ago lost the ability to distinguish be-tween falling snow and ash. The memory of sticking out his tongue to catch a cold, white flake only a single winter ago sent shivers of revulsion through his body. He had no desire to taste the crematory snowfall.

  Outside the double fences surrounding the camp, the snow-covered meadow and evergreens beyond beckoned. The clearing and the trees each silently promised in his imagination to both betray his escape and conceal his flight. But the fantasy was pointless; the fences surrounding Block A were topped with concertina wire. The small razor daggers punctuating the elegant, overlapping coils gleamed in the moonlight like silver rose thorns in a fairy tale. In a perverse mockery, the guards had strung garlands of small, red flowers among the barbs.

  Pyotr tried pretending that he was only dreaming the camp, the guards, the razor wire. But it was no dream, no fairy tale. No one would brave the metal brambles to wake him. No savior in a sky blue UN helmet was coming to liberate him or anyone else. He would have to be the author of his own salvation—a story not easily written, since the snipers in the guard towers would stop him in the No Man’s Land between the fences well before he made it to the meadow. Instead, he sat fondling the small religious fetish his grandmother had smuggled with her into the camp. Now that she was gone, it was his. His very last possession—his last empty hope.

  The fences also separated him from the second half of the camp. Block B was the mirror image of his own home in Block A—two prisoner barracks, communal commode, no showers, and a guard tower in opposite corners to watch over them. Between the towers and patrols through No Man’s Land, there was nowhere a person could disappear from sight entirely. The space directly beneath the corner eaves nearest the middle tower was as private a place as there was left in Pyotr’s world. He was in sight of only one tower, but could still keep an eye on both sides of the camp while preserving a clear view of the distant trees. Sometimes, he imagined he could hear their branches rustling in the breeze—when the thought of it didn’t make him despair too badly.

  Standing around the oil drum in the center of the Block A courtyard, the surviving members of his village huddled close to a fire built from the broken remains of empty prisoner bunks. Although it was warm near
the others, they took their chances standing in the light. Time was short; a bored sniper could shorten it further. From where he sat, if a guard began shooting, Pyotr could be inside and hidden before the others could even remember which way to run.

  There was a plan in place for their cleansing, and it was proceeding quickly. It had started with the healthiest men of the village—the army had destroyed the last remnants of the Resistance while they still lived on the Reservation. Then they opened the camps and proceeded to collect the sick and the old—the ones who would be of no use in the New Republic. That was when they still pretended that there might one day be a reintegration. No one believed those lies any more. The last adult led to the medical center took hope with her, leaving only the children and despair behind.

  And when the last of the children are gone, what then? I guess they turn the camp into a museum. Or maybe they’ll raze it and plow it over. Let the evergreens take it back, and leave no trace we ever lived in the Democratic Republic of Srpskepoje.

  Remembering the photographs from his history texts, Pyotr felt he might have slipped back in time a hundred years. His country had never kept up with the times, however, and the world had turned a blind eye to Pyotr’s little corner of creation. Breakaway independence had given way to a military junta and then to anarchy before being restructured as what? As the camps? What else is there? The movement within the tiny nascent nation to preserve the people of Pure Blood was all Pyotr knew of governments and order—all he knew of humanity and homeland. The ethnic cleansing that had once been a subject in school—an abstraction—was now his reality. School. How long since they burned the school? Pyotr did not know. Time was another luxury that had abandoned him. Now he measured his life in days remaining, not years lived. One less today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe one more after that. He’d taken to staying up as much of the night as he could—lengthening the conscious hours of the day as a way of extending his life. It was a small act of rebellion against a counting clock.

  Pyotr turned away from the evergreens and stared back at Block B. His last living friend, Vlaicu, sat defiantly in No Man’s Land, fingers laced through the links. He wore a haunted, hungry look.

  “Pyotr, come closer. Come sit with me.” The withered young man beckoned him with a skeletal finger. His friend’s appearance grew more frightening with each passing day. More withered. Paler. Whatever grudge the guards held against Pyotr’s tribe paled when compared to the treatment Vlaicu’s received. The leaders of the revolution proclaimed themselves to be people of Pure Blood, but they’d never said what made them superior to any other ethnic group. They only said that they were better than the “ticks and leeches.” Vlaicu would not speak about where his people came from or why he thought they were segregated from Pyotr’s tribe.

  “What do you want, Vlaicu?” he hissed. “You’re not allowed there. If they see you, they’ll shoot you.”

  “They’ll shoot me no matter what. Come here.”

  “If I move they might see me.”

  “They always see you, Pyotr.”

  Pyotr briefly considered staying put and letting his friend call to him from the fence. But Vlaicu was the last person who would still talk to him. He stuffed the fetish in the waistband of his pants, huddled up under his blanket and moved cautiously in a crouch toward the fence. “I was warm over there,” he said.

  “I am starving.”

  “So is everyone. So?”

  “I would not ask, but . . .”

  “But what? I have nothing to share. I can’t afford to give you any more than I already have.”

  “Give me your hand,” Vlaicu said. He wiggled his fingers. The flickering firelight reflected in Vlaicu’s maroon eyes. Pyotr noticed flecks of gray at Vlaicu’s temples. That’s not ash. His hair is turning gray! How old is he? My age? Older? Seventeen?

  Pyotr raised his hand, hesitating before grasping his friend’s skeletal fingers.

  “Please,” Vlaicu begged. “I want to die holding hands.”

  Six months ago, Pyotr would have been shocked by his friend’s statement. But he had learned much about death since then. Death came as a pair of dour men in white lab coats, dragging a sleeping woman from her bunk. It floated down upon them, belched into the sky from the top of smokestacks. No one died with dignity holding on to warm, comforting hands. He reached for Vlaicu’s hands and held on.

  “Why do you think you are here?” Vlaicu asked.

  “Because the Avarkhur hate us. They say we steal babies and drink blood and—”

  “Are these things true?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Would it make a difference if they were?”

  Pyotr shook his head in frustration. “What does it matter? They’re destroying everything but the stories.”

  Vlaicu closed his eyes as he held Pyotr’s fingers. “So warm,” he whispered.

  Pyotr felt something draining out of him. He’d never touched Vlaicu before. It was forbidden. With the double fences and guards always watching, it was impossible. Yet, he realized he needed it. He wanted to feel a connection to something living. Instead, all he felt was the cold biting harder through the layers of tattered clothes he wore, stolen from corpses before they were dragged off by guards in thick woolen coats and heavy boots. Vlaicu’s grip hurt.

  “You’re so cold. You need to build a fire or else you will die.” Vlaicu’s fingers tightened and Pyotr felt his hands draining of the meager warmth they’d stored up while inside his pockets. He tried to pull away.

  Vlaicu’s head dipped forward. “So hungry.”

  “Stop. You’re hurting me. Please stop squeezing.” Pyotr’s hands were so cold that he barely felt his friend bite into his middle finger. Blood leaked from between Vlaicu’s ragged, yellow teeth and dribbled down his chin dripping down onto the ground. “Stop! Vlaicu, STOP!”

  A spotlight zeroed in on them. The shaded side of Vlaicu’s head flew apart, spraying black patterns in the white snow. A rifle crack resounded in Pyotr’s ear a half-second later. Vlaicu’s limp hands slipped away from the fence as he fell back into the snow. Rolling out of the boy’s slack mouth, the mangled remains of Pyotr’s severed finger came to rest near the far fence—too far for rescue.

  A siren wailed in the yard. Underneath its plaintive howl he heard the other children from his village running for the shelter of the barracks. He lay on his back clutching his hand, stifling his screams. Pain shot down the inside of his arm. Blood trickled from the wound and dripped warmly on his neck. Sitting up, he caught a glimpse of the other members of Vlaicu’s tribe huddled together, scraping at the snow and dirt with talon-like fingers to get under the barrier to get to his dead body. A boy stuck his spindly fingers through the links and teased Pyotr’s severed digit closer. He eased it through the fence and studied it for a moment, red eyes reflecting in the spotlight. The boy leered with a maw full of black teeth as he popped it in his mouth like a candy. More gunshots. They scattered. A couple of Vlaicu’s tribe fell down dead and the survivors dragged their bodies off, biting and tearing.

  Pyotr’s reverie broke and he pushed backward with his heels and an elbow through the sloppy, half-frozen mud and slush. From under the eaves of his barracks, he watched the guards in ripstop hazmat suits quell the chaos in Block B, snatching pieces of bodies from the hungry mouths of children. How could they do that to their own? In his fist, Pyotr gripped the leaking stump of his middle finger, trying to staunch the bleeding. He thought it should have hurt more, but mostly his hand just throbbed in time with his racing heart. Pulling his legs up he tried to become as small as possible. The bare bulb above the barracks door and the fire from the oil drum threatened to expose him. He needed to find a place to hide until the camp calmed down. Hide and not freeze.

  As heavily armed guards cajoled the villagers back into their barracks, men in clean-suits appeared and started to sanitize the area where Vlaicu’s remains had fallen, packing the bloody snow into barrels, laying down sawdust and salt. Is that it?
Is everyone in Block B infected with something? Did Vlaicu have it? He looked at his bleeding hand. Do I?

  He was starting to feel sick. His stomach cramped and the muscles in his neck tightened, sending pain creeping up the back of his skull. He squinted as the night grew brighter. Light infected everything, making his head throb. Each flake of falling ash glowed as though it was a tiny floating ember. Closing his eyes, Pyotr imagined himself back in his village, safely nestled between his father and mother, his grandmother in the front pew of their ancient church wearing a blank mask and saying her prayers.

  “It’s through the barrier! There’s one on the other side,” one of the cleanup men shouted, his voice amplified by the speaker in his plastic facemask. The spotlight circles began tracking along the ground again, meeting, merging, and moving on, searching for someone to burn. Searching for him. “Contain it! Contain it now!” Men with machine guns ran for the gates separating the patrol zones from Block A.

  Pyotr pushed himself harder against the building, trying to melt into the shadows, to slip into the liminal gap between the camp and black oblivion. A loose board behind him shifted and creaked as he pushed backwards. Turning around, he stuck his remaining fingers through a hole and pulled, ignoring the pain. His knuckles scraped across the rough wood; splinters jabbed into the backs of his hands. He pulled the board away from the building a few inches, wide enough for him to wriggle his emaciated body through and into the crawlspace beneath the barracks. He shoved the board back into place, sacrificing what was left of his ruined hands. Guards ran past barking at each other. He held on to hope that it was too dark to see the blood he’d spilled in the snow. He knew, of course, that hope could only last until the dawn or until they let loose the dogs. The inevitability of his capture moved a step closer with every throb of his pulse.