Babylon Road

by Steph Brochu

Part Fourteen

First page — pdf

As I weighted the gun in my hand, trying to decide what to do with it, I heard Suzie’s voice ring out from inside the cabin. The sound of her voice snapped me out of it, forcing me to take a quick decision. I decided to pocket the gun and not to tell her anything about it.

I reached across the seat and closed the glove compartment. I didn’t looked further in it, not wanting to know what else was in there. I already knew too much about the owner of the car by now, and I wanted to know nothing more about him.

I slid out of the car and closed the door behind me. I reached to lock the car door, and, thinking about it, decided not to lock it. After all, I had the key and we were in the middle of the forest. No one would take the car, and if they did, I would know about it right away. Besides, it wasn’t like it was mine to start off with. If someone wished to steal it, so be it. It would be poetic justice.

I walked into the cabin, conscious of the weight of the gun in my pocket. Suzie was standing at the back of the cabin, looking around. She had found a gas lamp and was exploring, looking for god knows what. Her figure, standing between the lamp and the wall, casted large shadows against the walls, defeating the very purpose of the lamp, forcing Suzy to pick up objects and turn around if she wanted to examine them in more details.

The light let me see what I couldn’t see earlier when I opened the door. The cabin looked like it hadn’t been lived in for a long time, but, apart from the accumulation of dust, seemed in fairly good order. Whomever had lived here before actually took care of the place.

As I looked at the paintings on the walls and the bookshelves crammed with books, I could see and feel Suzie’s presence on the other side of the room. She seemed oblivious of me, even though she had called me when I was in the car. For all intents, she seemed bent on actively ignoring me and making sure that I knew she was doing that. For all that, I wasn’t sure I cared that she ignored me. I wasn’t sure I liked her anymore.

As I got closer to one of the bookcases, I saw that there was a few pictures in frames leaning on the spine of the books, obscuring their titles. I reached out to look at one of the photo, the people in it partially hidden by the shadows and the glare of the light. Photo in hand, I turned towards the door and examined it. It was of a family, a happy looking couple with a small child. The little girl couldn’t have been over 3 years old and her smile matched that of her beaming parents. The picture brought a tear to my eyes, although I didn’t know why.

“What are you looking at?”

I hadn’t heard Suzy creeping closer to me and she startled me. I had been lost in the photo and its promise of a happy family.

I didn’t reply, but simply handed her the photo. I didn’t know what to tell her, how to explain what made me so sad about this family. She took the photo from me and looked at it.

“They look so happy” she said, hugging herself with her left arm. “Do you think we’ll ever find such happiness?”

“I don’t know” I told her, turning to face her. I looked at her, waiting for her to lift her eyes and look at me. When she finally did, our eyes locked and all anger left me. I took the photo gently out of her hand and put it back on the shelf without breaking eye contact.

She opened her arms to me and I walked into them, hugging her to me. She started to cry softly. I could feel her salty tears running down her cheeks, my cheeks as she stood there, pressing her face to mine. I had hoped that our faces would touch tonight, but I would have never guessed that it would have happened this way, that it wouldn’t have been our lips, tongue, touching.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know. So am I.”

“Let’s forget about all this” I said, taking her face in my hands and looking in her eyes. “Let’s make the most of this night.”

“How can I?” she said, fresh tears filling her eyes, bringing her face against mine again, so that I once more tasted the salt of her tears.

“We should forget about it. You know I’ll be gone soon and we might never see each other again.”

“How could you? How could you sign up for service without talking to me about it first? Doesn’t our relationship mean anything to you?” As she said these last words, I could feel the last sob wracking through her body, her tears made more physical, more real.

“Trust me, this is all for the better. You know you can find someone better than me, someone who will take good care of you, someone you can rely on.” Although the words were spilling out of my mouth, I wasn’t really sure what we were talking about. I wondered briefly if she knew what was happening, but before I could voice my incomprehension, she started talking again.

“Who are you to tell me what’s good for me? I know what’s good for me and it’s leaving me,” she screamed at me, hitting my chest with her fists. It was strange looking in her eyes at that moment, with her face distorted with rage and her eyes completely confused. I understood that she had no idea what was going on either, that she didn’t understand where the words coming out of her mouth came from.

“What I need is to be with the man who loves me, the man I love” she yelled.

I decided to let the moment take control of me, to let everything just unfold and see what would happen.

“Look, you know I’m not good for you. You’ve seen my parents. You know that we’ll just end up in the same place.”

“No, we can fight this, we can make it work out.”

“No! I don’t want to hurt you like my dad hurts my mom. I don’t want to hit you.” With that, I took her into my arms. I could feel her shaking, the sobs making her whole body tremble.

“If you leave, I… there won’t be a reason for me to… I…”

I looked at her face, trying to understand, trying to see what she was saying. I understood, but at the same time, I didn’t want to understand.

“Don’t. You’ll be much better without me. You have so much to live for, so much to see,” I said in her ear, pressing her face against mine.

Throughout the conversation, I noticed that my voice kept the same level, the same deadness while her voice rose and changed, flowing with the emotions she was expressing, if not feeling. I, on the other hand, felt nothing. My eyes were dry and I felt oddly distant, although why this was surprising I didn’t know. The whole thing felt like we were replaying some event that took place here a long time ago, like we were puppets controlled by ghosts.

“No! You are everything to me. If you leave, I’ll have nothing…”

“I…”

“Don’t go. Or… or… bring me with you” she said, pulling her face away from my chest, looking me directly in the eyes.

“I can’t. I…”

“You bastard!” she yelled. It was all I could do to catch her arm in time, before she hit me across the face. We stared at each other, not sure what was going on but getting caught up in the psychodrama that was taking place inside our bodies.

“Stop! Shut the fuck up! You know I can’t! You know this is better. If there was a better way, I would do it. But there isn’t!” I was yelling. I could feel my neck muscle tense up as I screamed the words, spittle flying from my wide open mouth.

She just looked at me, her face crumbling, her eyes filling with tears. She lowered her head and gently rammed me in the chest with her head, her arms circling my chest, trapping me in her warmth.

“I… I know… I… I love you too. I don’t want to… I… maybe…” She was no longer speaking, but simply crying, making my shirt wet with her tears. I stroked the back of her head, speaking gently once more.

“Maybe we should get married. You’re right. We can make this work out.” As the words left my mouth, I could feel my body falling back under my control. Thing is, I didn’t let her go, choosing instead to pretend to still be under the control of whatever force was doing this thing to us, simply to hold her against me for a little while longer.

She let out one more sob and stopped. She stiffened in my arms, her whole body going rigid. She pushed away gently from me and looked me in the eyes once more. Her eyes were rimmed in red, tears gently streaking her face in line of shinning light.

“What? What did you say?” she said, a strange look crossing her face.

“I… I dunno. I guess I said something about getting married” I told her, unsure what was happening now that the force had left me. I could not help but feel like a puppet who’s strings have been cut.

“Look, I know this evening was supposed to be magical and all, and it’s gone to strange places, but if you just want to get into my pants, say so. No need to be so dramatic about the whole thing.” She wiped at the streaks absentmindedly with the back of her hand. She seemed to not be aware of the exchange we just had. Did I just dream the whole thing or did it really happen? Bottom line was that I was currently holding her in my arms, feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside. And yes, some other part of my body had responded quite favorably to her warmness in my arms and she knew it.

Not really sure what to do, I bent my head to her once more and kissed her on the lips. She gave in easily, her soft hungry lips opening to let my tongue into her mouth, hers into mine. We stood there, kissing, for what felt like hours. We broke the kiss eventually, she pulling her head away, looking at me askance.

“You’re a pretty good kisser for a weirdo” she teased.

“Well, you ain’t so bad for a pushy chick” I shot back, a twinkle in my eye. Maybe this evening would be ok after all.

I took her hand in mine and pulled away from her. I started to walk towards the door and the car, pulling her gently behind me, but then thought better of it. I looked around the room to see if there was a couch or a bed of some sort, where we could make ourselves more comfortable.

There was indeed a bed in the room, squeezed between a kitchen table and a back door. I didn’t understand why such a tiny cabin would need a back door, but right now, there was other things on my mind.

I pulled Suzy gently behind me as I made my way to the bed. We settled on the bed and made ourselves comfortable indeed. We started to fool around, the tension between us melting as snaps and buttons came undone.

The pale expense of her skin opened up before my hungry hands, my hungry mouth. She, on the other hand, saw things that only my mother and some of the guys in gym class had seen before, but unlike the guys, she didn’t find them funny, but rather enjoyed their sight.

As my hands were finding new places to hide and keep warm, I heard a noise. Raging teenage hormones being what they are, I tried ignoring the sound at first, concentrating harder on Suzy’s body and pleasure, but the noise persisted. If it was only up to me, I would have completely ignored it, but seeing as someone else was with me, we stopped. Suzy’s sense of responsibility, and her huge curiosity, got the better of our fooling around.

I got up, pulled my pants back on and tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. It was like a low pitch hum, like someone, or something, was humming or singing to themselves. As I looked around, I came to realize that the sound was coming from the back door, the door that was right besides the bed we had been lying on a few moments before.

“Ok, what’s that noise?” Suzy’s face had gone an angry shade of pale as she asked me that question. “Do things always get this weird when you’re on a date?”

“Never happened to me before,” I said, trying hard not to let her know that she was the first one. I have to admit that things were getting weirder and weirder. As far as coming of age was concerned, this took the cake and ran with it.

“Well, what now brown cow? Do we simply ignore it or should we just lock ourself in the car and pray for morning?” she said, trying to diffuse the tension with some bad humor.

I wasn’t sure what to tell her. On one hand, I was as scared as her and wanted nothing more than run away from this place. Problem was, I wasn’t sure where this place was at all and even less on how to get back home. On the other hand, I did have that little equalizer in my pocket, even thought it only had one bullet in it.

“I say we check it out,” I told her as I pulled the gun from my pocket.

“Have you gone completely crazy?” she yelled at me, eying the gun. “Where did you get that thing from? Do you even know how to use it?”

“It was in the glove compartment. It’s not like I’m actually gonna use it, just show it to whatever makes that noise and get it to shut up.” I don’t know where that sudden bravado came from, but it did have some effect on Suzy. She got real quiet and looked at me in a different way. I don’t know if it was because she changed her mind and respected me, but that’s what I wanted real hard to believe.

I went to the door and pressed my ear against it, trying to find out if the noise did indeed come from the other side. I could make out the sound a little clearer now but still couldn’t tell if it was the whimpering of a hurt animal or the mewling of an infant in want of a feeding.

I took a step back from the door, opened the gun’s chamber and made sure that the only bullet was sitting in the top chamber, so that if the need came up, it would be ready to do its thing.

“Well,” I said to Suzy, looking her right in the eyes, “are you ready to do this thing?”

She didn’t answer, but simply looked at me, her eyes reflecting my own fears back at me. For all the airs I gave myself, I was scared deep down. I had no idea what awaited us on the other side of that door, but somehow, I knew I had to do it.

Without waiting for an answer, I reached out to the doorknob and grabbed it. I turned it, feeling slightly surprised when it turned freely in my hand. I gave the door a push and it opened easily, without a sound.

I could make the top of stairs, but nothing else beyond that. I looked at Suzy and indicated the gas lamp with my chin, telling her to get the lamp and come back. She did just that, handing me the lamp. I looked at Suzy one more time, trying to assess whether she would follow me down the steps or not. She simply gave me a weak, lop-sided smile.

I turned to the stairs, gun in one hand, the lamp in the other and went in. I had no idea what was awaiting us at the bottom of these stairs and did not care one bit that it was indeed odd for such a small house to have a basement, never mind one that seemed finished and not just made out of packed dirt.

Posted: 2/28/2005