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leg, is very heavy, like a ton of wet sand. I can’t move. I don’t
talk. We smoke. They talk. They talk about witchcraft, the
occult, drugs. I don’t follow it. He talks to her. I hear it. He
excludes me but refers to me. He talks only to her. You young
women need my protection. I could come here once or twice a
week, get you young women a real bed, you shouldn’t be
sleeping on this mattress on the floor, so you really both sleep
here do you? and you and I could have some real fun with
her, we can do things of real depth, different things, unusual
things that call on deep energies, there are many things you
and I could do with her. I don’t look at him but I know I am
her. I can’t talk. I can’t move. My brain is some dead slug.
Everything is heavy, like a ton of wet sand. My muscles don’t
move. My legs don’t work. I remember crawling after he
chewed me up, and the pain. We could do many things with
her, he says, and there are mysteries we could discover together,
she is the perfect instrument for us to discover these mysteries,
she is so pliant, there are so many subtleties. He talks about a
big bed, and I think he wants to watch N hurt me: he is saying
they will do it to me, he is saying he will give us regular money
every week, he is talking about a big bed and tying me up, I
can’t feel anything but the pain between my legs hanging somewhere in the center of my dead brain: telling me to run, run: but I can barely move: I concentrate every living ounce of will
and energy on moving, one leg at a time, the other leg, slowly,
to get up. It takes nearly forever. I stand up. My mouth moves.
A sound comes out, loud. No. It sounds like a whisper. I walk,
a ton of wet sand inching along a desert, into the kitchen,
collapsing on the table. N says: you heard her. He says he will
leave the grass and come back some other time. The offer still
holds. N can call him anytime. But he will come back anyway.
She should think about it.
All night we talk about a ring of occultists N has heard
about and all the women they have tortured to death and their
witchcraft rites and the way they use sex and drugs ending in
death. She is sure this is true. We are afraid: we think it is a
paranoid fantasy but we believe it anyway: we know somewhere there are these dead women. We do not move all night.
The smoke has nearly paralyzed us. We fall asleep sitting up.
In the morning N examines the grass to see why we couldn’t
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move. She sniffs it and rubs it between her fingers, scrutinizes
it. There are tiny fragments of glass in the weed: pieces of
glass vials. The grass has been soaked in morphine.
I am scared. So is she, I think. I want to disappear. There is
no money. I am too afraid for the streets. We are running out
of speed. I cower on the mattress. She writes in her notebook.
