Burning Time

his own power used to be.

What the soldiers did in Kuwait got him thinking about things he hadn’t wanted to do for years. But they just raped. He liked adding his mark afterwards. Long ago he got in trouble doing it to whores in Mexico, and had to stop. He had put the urge away in a drawer, along with the colored pencils and the old drawings. He had been good a long time, and then the war came. His very own missiles started killing people, started talking to him like they knew him. And he found out he could get away with it now. But right now he felt bad, and was pretty sure the movie had put a curse on him. But he wasn’t sure exactly why.

At work he started thinking about it again. It was so boring. At first it was just people talking about sex and their “feelings.” It was so bad he almost walked out. But then the girl suddenly was naked, and he decided to stay.

All at once he felt a flicker of something unpleasant about her. Then that was quickly overridden by the excitement he had thinking that the other actor resembled, and might in fact be, him. He was aroused. He folded his leather jacket across his lap.

The guy in the film was fucking the girl with his leather jacket on and nothing else. This was also like him and turned him on. He looked quickly around, then burrowed his hand under his jacket. The bulge was enormous, too large for his pants. He rubbed back and forth with the palm of his hand. Except for the woman’s nudity and the man in the leather jacket, this was not very exciting sex. He switched his thoughts to the jogger who never had a name when he imagined fucking her.

He called her the jogger and thought about grabbing her before she got to the street. Just taking her by the arm. He unzipped his pants and untangled his dick. The softness of his skin around the hard core always surprised him. It was a tool, a defier of gravity like the cruise missile. It could seek and destroy. He thought of shoving it into the jogger and watching that stuck-up, satisfied face fill with fear. He liked the idea of scaring her—no, filling her with fear so big there was nothing left of her but cunt and pure terror.

The fuss they made in the paper all the time made him mad. Don’t make such a big deal of it! Real men always did it, always would. Rape wasn’t so bad. It was a natural thing, happened every day. Soldiers did it. He touched himself, thinking of the Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait. Things they did to the girls with their fathers watching. Shot the brothers in the street. No mercy. In the ass and everything. Probably did it with their clothes on, too. Grabbed women in their own houses and slammed them against the wall. Even made the children watch. Well, he’d seen his father do it.

He stared at the screen, but didn’t see it. It was natural to conquer. He thought of pushing the jogger to the ground, getting on top of her and shoving his dick into her, of making her kneel in front of him and suck him off. Put her lips around him hard, and move her tongue just right.

You could kill someone that way. Shove too hard and just keep going down their throat. It was good to force his way into places he wasn’t wanted. They were just cunts. Places to put sperm. They had no right to get their noses out of joint. Drops of semen oozed out onto his hand, lubricating his dick. It felt good.

The Kama-sutra advised murdering the husband, father, brothers—anybody attached to a woman who resisted a man she didn’t want. That’s what the famous book said: When every attempt to get her failed, they had the right to kill her protectors and then rape her. Take her off and do whatever they wanted with her. The pressure intensified.

He didn’t know why he thought of the Kama-sutra now. It was a book he read years ago. He used to masturbate while studying the chapters on the special marks you could make biting and scratching and slapping. Scraping the skin and biting so hard the skin broke or went black and blue. In India, no one was ashamed of walking around with bite or scratch marks. They were considered signs of mastery. It was only the West that was behind.

The scene changed. Troland’s eyes flickered. They had their clothes on again, were talking. There was something familiar about the girl on the screen. Now she was walking down the street with her back to the camera. It was a familiar walk. It irritated him that the actress seemed to be someone he knew. He couldn’t be interested if he thought he knew her. His dick became soft in his hand. Who was it?

It was impossible that he knew her. He couldn’t know her. The film was somewhere else, in a city. Looked like New York. He’d been there once. It wasn’t here. Was it a bimbo he knew from the beach? No, he didn’t know anybody who looked like that. Her skin was really white. He tried to relax. There was no way he could know her. But he couldn’t get excited again. He began feeling bad. What was the matter with this stupid movie? It wasn’t even right. He felt angry.

It was somebody he knew. Couldn’t be. He looked around. The few people who were here were now looking bored. People who came to movies like this didn’t want to see talking and walking. His hand was sticky. He had gotten dirty and was no longer excited. He began to feel irritated and angry. Something was making him feel powerfully uneasy. But what?

Somebody got up and left. That was the right idea. He shook his head, unnerved. That girl. That hair. The voice, now that he listened to it. How could it be? Under the leather jacket he put his limp dick back in his pants. Small and pitiful as a sparrow. Zipped up and went out into the California night. He couldn’t forget it.

He left the plant at five-thirty. It was still blisteringly hot in San Diego, even though the sun had begun its descent into the ocean. He rode over to the beach to watch the simmering red disc go down. He often went there after work. It cooled the panic. He liked to stand there for an hour or so, leaning against his Harley, with his leather jacket strapped over a six-pack of beer on the back. He knew from the way the girls studied him from the sides of their eyes that he still looked good having a couple of beers and watching them on the sand in their thong bathing suits. He hated them all.

He couldn’t believe it was her. Emma wouldn’t do that. She just wouldn’t. She was good. She wouldn’t do that. He thought he was wrong and just saw a resemblance. He wandered around thinking about it, how much he liked her, more than liked her. He hadn’t ever really liked anybody that way since. He remembered how perfect she was, really smart and nice. He had watched her carefully that whole year and knew she wasn’t just empty nice. She was really nice. Like all the way through. He knew she didn’t do anything bad like the rest of them. Wasn’t a liar. He loved her and saved her so she could go away to college. How could she betray him and turn out to be a whore?

“You’ve been by here twenty times. You want to buy a ticket?”

Troland turned around abruptly. “What?” He was back at the theater, didn’t know how he had gotten there, and was pacing back and forth in front of it without realizing what he was doing.

“You all right?” The kid behind the window frowned.

“What’re you looking at?” Troland snapped. He had a motorcycle chain over his shoulder.

The boy behind the window held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, what are you so ticked off about? Film doesn’t start for a half an hour, but it’s not full. You can go in any time.”

Troland looked through him. “I’ll wait for the beginning,” he said furiously. The guy was crazy. He wasn’t ticked off.

“Suit yourself.” He tried again when Troland didn’t move away. “You want to buy your ticket now?”

“You deaf or something? I said I’d wait for the beginning.” Troland looked at the teenager. His hair was combed straight back. He was wearing a white polo shirt and looked puzzled. Troland shot him between his puzzled eyes and watched him slump forward in his chair. No, better to stab him in the chest. Yes, that was better. The heart kept going for a while pumping the blood out so it drenched the white shirt and splattered the walls and counter. He walked away. He wasn’t mad.

He thought about it as the movie started. Maybe he was mad. Yeah, he felt a cold rage. Really cold. He sat by himself way at the back. It was in his stomach like a big rock he couldn’t digest. Cold and then hot.

Fuck you. How could anyone act in a movie like this? How could she? He watched it more intensely this time. It was her. Now it was more her. And more shocking, the guy was him. How could he do that to her?

He was appalled by the look on her face. She liked it. He hated her. Why was she letting him do that? This was no movie. She was really letting him do that. Him, Troland Grebs. That was him. He was confused. But they were in New York, and he was here in San Diego. He was aroused again, just as he had been the day before. No, he wouldn’t give in to it.

He looked at the people in front of him. No one could see him. He was in the back, the leather jacket on his lap. He was fascinated. He couldn’t look away from the screen. His dick was in his hand, both hands now. It