"Keys"
By Robert Bletcher
The portion of Paul’s brain responsible for troglodytic response filled his mouth with spittle, while the portion of his brain responsible for self-loathing and pending regret kept him flaccid...for the moment.
“Come on baby,” she purred. “You know you want to.”
“No I don’t.”
Paul’s hands dangled at his sides in Sasquatch pencil sketch fashion. The fire-haired viper slithered atop his vehicle, evaporating his humanity writhe by writhe.
His intellectual disinterest was being obscured by the black smoke from a fire lit by his pre-Neolithic ancestors. Her crimson lips framed unnaturally white teeth, her green eyes glowed like those of a panther and fire red hair clashed with her blood red fingernails. But she managed to pull it off somehow. Paul stared at her red pumps, up her supple, tan calves, a short black skirt resting against her firm thighs, her breasts pressing against her blouse, the look of desire on her face. His nether regions tingled like lemon juice in a paper cut. It was an airbrushed fantasy bulging three-dimensions from the page of some frat boy’s day dream, but there she teased.
The phantasm of orgasm looked at Paul out of the top of her too large, sensual eyes and unbuttoned the top button of her flimsy white blouse. She licked her lips in a ludicrous stroke flick manner, but his base could be catered to without any fear of condescending reproach.
“Oh God,” Paul whispered. “Please...don’t do this. I don’t even know where we are.”
Prometheus' hotter little sister spread her legs ever so slightly and slid her flimsy undergarment down her muscular thighs. She lifted her legs toward the moon and flung her panties to the asphalt like used toilet paper. It was an utterly ridiculous, utterly compelling performance.
He’d seen this particular film before. It was the one where a too perfect feminine form craved Paul’s five foot six body and his below average looks with such fervor she begged for him to take her on the hood of a car in a nondescript parking lot.
“Where the hell are we?” Paul yelled, exasperated.
“We're almost there baby, you know that.”
The lack of knowledge concerning his location was nearly as compelling to Paul as the beckoning demon. The dark parking lot of something called the Chat N Eat Cafe was erotic for him. The light emitting from the cafe itself was minimal and there was only one dull orange street light on the curb in front of the building.
He was smack in the middle of what appeared to be the unearthed remains of a town long dead. A cluster of wind-blown adobe dwellings, a closed grocery store and this tiny cafe sat at the crossroads of Paul’s life.
The landscape was as stark as an acoustic Springsteen song and the wind was constant. Paul half expected to see a tumbleweed roll through the ghost town. Only the lights of the Chat N Eat, the dark shadow of his own vehicle and the creation of imagination indicated he was probably still alive.
He’d never been in this place before, but he’d been in this moment many times, and he despised himself. Paul turned his eyes back to one of Lucifer’s finest. He felt uneasy as always, but something more was wrong this time. He couldn’t quite place it, but the normal anxiety level which accompanied him on these journeys had been exceeded.
Driving six hours until he was certain he’d arrived at the only place he could had become a habit, the feeling of: where the hell was he, was fearful, and of course, erotic. He was in west Texas, he knew that much. Paul sighed, a bit disappointed he knew that much, but he was still good and lost. His rpms were cranking hard and that was all that mattered he supposed.
“I’m so ready,” she hissed. “You're ready aren’t you Paulie?”
“My wife is going to leave me,” he protested weekly. “We can't do this anymore.”
She smiled the victor’s smile and grabbed her ankles, slowly pulling them toward her face. No panties there, Paul thought, his keys jabbing his liquid filled stones with a most malicious intent. He reached into his pocket and fingered the cold metal of his keys. He walked toward his `88 Oldsmobile. His breathing was measured as he pulled them from his pocket. He gritted his teeth and stared at her with lust and hatred.
“I’m a normal human being, I’m a normal human being,” he repeated as he surveyed his surroundings for the proper repository.
“Do it Paulie. Do it now.”
Paul clicked his molars together, thirty-times, then repeated the action. He hated the teeth chattering stage, but it was unavoidable, uncontrollable and something undoubtedly clinical.
He ran his fingers through his stringy brown hair. It had come to this again.
“I’m a normal human being.”
He walked past his car, past his moist nightmare, toward the Chat N Eat. He stopped on the curb and looked down at the storm drain. He fumbled for his keys, and the familiar serpentine rattle of metal on metal produced nausea and excitement.
“Where the hell am I?” he screamed.
He pulled two shiny keys out of his pocket. God they were shiny. They’d just been made yesterday. He looked at them for a long minute, letting them pleadingly catch the moonlight, then he tossed them into the storm drain. He could hear them clank faintly on a distant surface as they disappeared below street level. The breeze blew cold across the back of his unshaven neck. It had come to this again. He shuttered with excitement.
“That’s it Paulie, that a boy.”
Paul's dull gray eyes were pieces of glass glued to his head now. He was on masturbatory auto pilot. He walked into the Chat N Eat, leaving her in the night.
A truck driver dripping red plaid occupied a vinyl covered stool, and he looked at Paul and smiled knowingly.
“Gotta unload hey fella?”
Paul ignored the disturbingly perceptive Philistine and nodded to the middle-aged counter maid with the hopelessly out of date quaff. He quickened his pace, scurrying towards the bathroom like a mouse in a corn crib. He burst into a stall, sweating like a three-hundred pound shot putter as he fumbled with the dead bolts on his corduroys. He sat on the filthy toilet and began pulling on himself like he was the most ferocious milk producer west Texas had ever seen.
“Dammit,” Paul gasped, as Vesuvius fell dormant.
It never lasted long. He hit the floor of the filthy bathroom. He wretched and vomited hard into the toilet, a distant gas station burrito burning his esophagus on the way out.
Exhausted and gaunt, Paul emerged from the bathroom a disheveled caricature of even someone as strange as himself. He struggled hard to focus on his surroundings. Coming down is the hardest thing.
“Where am I?” Paul said to the counter woman. “How the hell am I going to get home?”
The counter woman chomped her gum like a Texas Holstein and looked Paul up and down. He was perspiring lightly, still struggling to catch his breath. Smoothing his own lumber was the only exercise he regularly undertook.
“What in the Sam-hell do ya'll think you were doing in there?” she piped, in one of those squeaky casting call drawls. “What the hell were all those noises?”
“I...I don’t feel well. Where am I?”
“Sounded like you felt pretty well to me mister.”
Her disdain was clear, but there was also some fear in her tone. Paul kind of liked that, finding her trepidation oddly arousing.
“You gonna order anything mister?”
“Please, I don't know where I am,” Paul said, inexplicably hoarse.
“You're at the end of the line,” the truck driver sang out. “You're in Valentine.”
The trucker laughed at his rhyme, then took a final sip of his coffee before standing.
“Well, I got a load to deliver. Guess you beat me to that hey buddy?”
He slapped Paul on the back and laughed a wheezy, smokers laugh.
“I’ll see you Cindy,” he said to the counter woman. “I’m due deep inside Angela by 5 a.m.”
“What the hell did you say?” Paul squealed, as he whirled toward the trucker.
“I’m due in San Angelo by 5 a.m. You got a problem pal?” the trucker repeated with a wild gleam in his eye.
“No,” Paul whispered, unnerved by this man for some reason.
Angela was his wife’s name. It sure sounded like the trucker had said something else, and with a certain tone to boot. The trucker looked over his shoulder and smiled at Paul as he disappeared into the wind blown black.
Paul sighed and turned his attention back to his situation. He’d made it all the way to Valentine. Jesus was Angela gonna be pissed. He’d never lost the keys any further west than Alpine before.
“You got a pay phone?” Paul asked the counter woman.
“Ain’t you got a cell phone?”
“It has to be a pay phone Do you have a fucking pay phone or not?”
The fat woman pointed in the direction of the street. Paul looked outside and saw the shiny silver of a phone clinging to the lone parking light pole.
“Asshole,” the counter lady whispered as Paul stumbled outside.
Bits of earth peppered Paul's face.
“Was it good for you Paulie?” she breathed.
“Shut up,” Paul yelled at his car, walking briskly toward the pay phone. “This is all your fault.”
Paul angrily punched in his calling card number and his home phone number. His wife had said she wasn’t coming to pick him up anymore. She’d been understanding at first, thought Paul had some kind of compulsion, something clinical. She’d even tried to get him to go see someone, but he wouldn’t go. He hadn’t wanted to stop, but now he thought maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to drop in on doctor what’s his name. He was tired of getting keys made.
The phone rang two times, then three. There was no good way to leave the message. Then four..., then the machine.
“Hello. Thank you for calling the Hermans. We can’t come to the phone right now. We are in Valentine, Texas, but will be home by 5 a.m.,” his wife’s voice said.
The sound of keys rattling followed the recording, then the cold, impersonal beep. Paul turned around, the phone still in his hand, the chord drawn tight. He heard a woman’s voice laughing maniacally as a semi-truck appeared from nothing and rumbled to life.
The headlights flipped on as the truck went from sitting invisible to a thousand miles an hour in a second. The headlights looked like a pair of green eyes and Paul was helpless to resist.
“Are you ready Paulie?” a familiar breathy voice whispered from the depths of hell.
Paul’s groin tingled a bit as the truck bore down. He peered inside the cab and saw the man who'd been in the cafe behind the wheel, looking as though he were on a routine Midland to Houston vegetable run. On the passenger side, a red-haired woman jingled a set of keys like castanets in a Jaurez night spot.
“Looking for these Paulie?”
Then the phone booth exploded in a hail of glass and fire. Paul saw himself lying on the ground, his body burning abnormally hot, feeding on its own fat. Just to the right of the carnage, a few scattered pieces of unmangled metal appeared florescent in the night.
His keys did him no good now.
|
