Author note:

If anyone takes offense or is sensitive to the subjects of religion, deviant sex, crime and abuse, violence, or a strung-out father getting the ultimate revenge against his child’s abuser, go ahead and skip this story. For those of you who make it up to Zeke’s apartment after he helps Layla with her groceries, the story goes in a completely opposite direction. This was not a “shock piece” or meant to offend anyone. It’s the story of a father’s redemption, an idea I had that grew limbs and started to haunt me, until I had to write it, so it would get out of my head. In lieu of this challenge, I couldn’t think of anything I had that was more cringe-worthy, or anything I could think to write at the moment, or would want to write at the moment.

__________________________

Into My Arms

He walked up 18th and crossed Everett. Spring was starting to bloom, but the air was cold and the rain was still taking its turn on the city. It had been a particularly brutal winter, one of the worst they’d seen. Zeke made it up the sidewalk with his bag—he’d lived in the building exactly three months, in that apartment. He had the chance to move in to a different unit right away, but went ahead and waited for the place he wanted, the place, the apartment that faced the church. He got to the steps and looked up, then hurried to help Layla. She was a sweet old lady and she loved Zeke, she’d known his family when he’d had one. Over the last few years Layla had come to look more and more like a question mark, bent and losing herself, losing answers, looking for the things dementia was taking away. The manager moved her to the first floor before winter. She was the only one there long enough to keep the old rent, and when Zeke was moving in she looked surprised to see him there. He helped her move from the top floor in back to the second unit inside the front door.

He ran up and set his bag down, “Mornin’, Layla, I got it.”

She looked up and smiled. She noticed his eyes were dark and heavy, not that she could blame him. The demons he was handed came without reason, and they came fast and hard, hard enough to keep him in the bottle, to get him fired from the Boys and Girls Club. She watched him fumble his keys and she smelled the liquor. In his bag she saw a bottle of vodka and a bottle of peroxide, on top of another bag. She watched his hands shaking while he found the keyhole. She glanced across the street and then back to the open door. Zeke heard something from her, but it was fuzzed by his drunk. That old sink in my kitchen’s still hissing, getting one in a week, new. He looked at her face, “I know.”

He didn’t know, but it worked on her. He got her into the front door and set her grocery bag on the counter, and started putting them away for her. She took off her scarf and sat at the table.

“Well, thank you, Ezekiel.”

Zeke, he said to himself. Zeke. His proper name only fed the fire in his skull, it only fed the pain. She watched him set the cans and boxes in their places, and it occurred to her there at the table how abruptly life changes. She would have never imagined Zeke in that building, his wife in the mental ward, their boy in the ground. Nobody else knew the reason for the boy’s suicide. Zeke and Ana didn’t talk about it. Ana lost her mind in the summer. One morning Zeke kissed her before going to work, and when he got home that night she was in the same spot in the living room, standing there in her bed clothes, unblinking, looking at the floor. She was breathing and nothing else. He carried her to the car and made it to Providence, and she’d been a resident since. Besides needing the apartment facing across the street, he waited for the third floor place because the one for immediate move-in was on the fifth, the same floor of the mental ward where Ana lived now. He folded Layla’s bags and wedged them between the fridge and the counter.

“Need anything while I’m up, doll?”

“No thank, you, Ezekiel, but you’re a very sweet man.”

He planted a liquor-soaked kiss on her cheek. He’d been awake for four days. He grabbed his own bag from the doorway and closed the cage door in the elevator. He’d gotten used to it. For the first few weeks it made him leery, the age and size of it, so he took the stairs. Now he didn’t care. If for some reason it broke, he figured he could survive a fall like that, he’d survived a lot worse in the last six months, but all of it started seven years earlier. He hit the button and reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the speed and did a rail. He swallowed the drip and stared at the doors beyond the cage, and he heard his boy’s voice again, little Zeke’s voice, strong in his mind. I feel like it’s my fault, is it my fault? No, buddy, it’s got nothing to do with you. You can’t let some weirdo like that get to you. —But it got to him, it got to little Zeke, ate at him. It got to him in the worst way. Zeke reached down beneath the vodka and pulled up the bottle of whiskey next to the scissors and salt. He opened the bottle but the cart stopped at his floor. He stepped out, walked to his door and put the key in. He listened to the music on his computer, Into My Arms had been on repeat, but it had been on repeat four days, maybe more. His thoughts drifted to Layla, the static from the stoop removed itself and he heard her clearly. Inside he took a drink from the bottle and glanced at what was normal now. Layla’s cracked voice replayed clearly in his mind:

“Poor father Kitchens is still missing. Been almost a week now.”

He reached into the bag and pulled out his little blue pills. He’d never needed them before, he had no problem with erectile dysfunction, he was only 41. He popped one and downed it with the whiskey, and looked across the living room. The priest was naked below the waist, facing the window that looked dead bang across the street at the large doors of the church. The clean shaven strip up the middle of his ass cheeks, otherwise thick with black hair, was starting to break out. Zeke took another pull from the bottle and stared at the back of his head, “You know what I just took, right?” He tossed the pills onto the floor. The container rolled between the cinder blocks and hit the heater. The priest’s hands were tied to anchors in the ceiling, his mouth taped, one nostril plugged with garlic. He let out a muffled scream. Zeke took another drink and walked over. His laptop was on the kitchen table, and the song was somewhere in the middle. The priest had every second of the song memorized, to the point where he didn’t hear it anymore, yet he did, and it was torture for him. His wrists had stopped burning because his hands were blue now, his feet and legs had gone numb from stabilizing himself on the cinder blocks, and the bottoms of his feet had lost their pain about 36 hours ago, if his body was speaking clearly to his brain. When he started to faint, Zeke was there to stop it, when he started to cry, Zeke was there to stop it. The fear in his mind, a fear he’d never known after the shock of the pain and the penetration gave way to normal pain: the fear that came with regret, the fearful regret of not listening to his instinct, to his self-preservation when he walked out of the church Saturday night, his night of preparing for the next day, being responsible for the salvation of all the people who drove in from the suburbs to hear his hypnotic deliverance of the word, to trust him with their souls. He walked out of the church that night, nearly made it to his car, felt the odd sensation of a grown man’s forearm around his neck, inhaled a breath to scream out, but the chloroform taste sent him to a blackout, and when he came to he was hanging from the ceiling, looking out the window at the church, the large doors, the crowd out front, the clergy talking to the police. He felt the cinder blocks beneath his feet, and the careful measure of his bondage, just high enough to where he needed the blocks, but too high to kick them over. His head was pounding from the chloroform, and his wrists were on fire from the rope and tape. He was a short man, balding and white-haired, a disgusting face, really, a face that once exposed to Zeke would haunt his sleep for two years.

He hung there and looked at the pills on the floor, the container of pills, and screamed out again beneath the tape. He felt Zeke’s fingers reach between his thighs, and slowly rip the tape from the base of his testicles over his prostate and from the wine cork he had up the priest’s ass. He felt the cold plastic of the bucket between his knees and the cork being pulled, his cock being aimed down and back. Zeke slapped his ass, “Shit, cocksucker.” But Kitchens was empty. He pissed a few drops, felt a few hard punches to his kidneys, and he felt the sounds of it, the dull thuds. He coughed and choked for air, the garlic was packed into place to where it wasn’t moving with any force of breath. Zeke walked back to the counter and reached into the bag below the peroxide and vodka. Kitchens heard the water filling, the footsteps growing closer, the tip of the bottle going in, the water filling him from the enema bag. Zeke pressed his ass together, “That’s it, cocksucker, gonna get that ass clean for Big Papa, aren’t we?” The water from the bag burned the tears above and below his asshole. Zeke had a big one, just the way it was. Zeke let up on his ass and the flush sprayed down into the bucket. Today Zeke had to better yesterday, so after he held the speed under Kitchens’ nostril and slapped him across the face until he snorted, he disappeared and came back, showed the priest the knife, and looked into his eyes while he carved into his stomach, just enough to break the skin, to draw blood, to bleed the Catholic pig. Kitchens imagined a cross, the burning of a cross, but it wasn’t. There was no cross. He felt the Z being finished.

Zeke stepped back and eyed the letter. Kitchens burned in pain. Zeke gave him a thoughtful stare, “Right, no, you’re right, too much like Zorro. Here.” He walked over and carved an L that ran from under the right armpit and across his belly button, over to his left side. The pain was unimaginable. The speed had hit his blood and kept the stinging at full level. “Wait,” Zeke said, and brought the blade’s tip down pulled back and jabbed it once below his waist, an exclamation point. Kitchens lurched and jumped in the restraints. The song was almost ending. Zeke went to the bag and pulled out the peroxide, then appeared in front of him, “You make a good point. The knife wasn’t clean. Here.” He criss-crossed the wound until the bottle was empty. The pain was heightened, and it pushed tears down Kitchens’ face. Zeke dropped his pants, sat at the table and spat into his palm. The blue pill was taking effect. He’d raped the priest at least a dozen times in the last four days. It was the least he could do. He stared at the tube of lubrication on the table. He’d only used it when he was feeling too raw at the base. He wanted Kitchens to feel everything. Zeke was as far from gay as a straight man could get, but this was different. He was wired on speed and hard liquor, and he stroked his cock and thought about Ana, her long red hair and smooth skin, or he thought about what she used to be, what life used to be, before Kitchens did what he did to their boy. Now Kitchens hung there burning, he wouldn’t leave the room alive, but Zeke wasn’t so sure he would, either. He stroked his cock and poured a tired sweat.

Kitchens heard Zeke from the table, “Hey, it’s your favorite song.” He cranked up the volume while the first verse came in, and Kitchens felt it again, the length of Zeke being buried up in him, the burn of it, the long time it would take for Zeke to shoot, to blow inside of him. He felt Zeke go in slowly, felt his stubble against his cheek while Zeke gripped his neck and fucked him to the song.

I don't believe in an

interventionist God

But I know, darlin’, that you do

But if I did I would kneel down

and ask Him

Not to intervene when it came

to you

He felt Zeke softly kiss his ear and fuck him like a woman. The meth and fatigue had faded them both, but it only sharpened Zeke’s aim, and the slowness Kitchens took as a sign of Zeke finally dropping, for enough time to give it one hard pull of adrenaline and escape, was only Zeke’s anger growing with the effects of the speed. He went in and out of Kitchens, and he stroked the sides of his hair.

Not to touch a hair on your

head

To leave you as you are

And if He felt He had to direct

you

Then direct you into my arms

It dawned on him hanging there, in every type of pain and fear, that he’d never once prayed to God for control over his own indulgences, for control over his compulsion for boys, and not just any boy, but boys like little Zeke, seven years old, innocent, handsome of eye, full of light and life. Zeke gently backed out almost all the way and put it half way in.

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms

Zeke buried it in and held it there, and then moved in and out of him, and remembered the phone call at work from Ana. Two years to the day from the police station, when Kitchens was released because the other boys were too embarrassed to step forward, and there was no physical evidence because Kitchens hadn’t went that far with little Zeke, not yet, but as Zeke told the school nurse, Kitchens had used his fingers and mouth down there, and made Zeke do the same. It had been going on for years, every Wednesday after school, when he and the other boys would play basketball on the covered courts beside the back of the church, and father Kitchens would pay them to clean the church, to sweep, to wipe the marble, and he would disappear with one of the boys, depending on his mood, for an hour. When little Zeke was ten, he was too embarrassed to tell his parents, namely his father, because like Ana, big Zeke was atheist, despite the name, or in spite of it. Zeke’s parents were in the faith, but by the time Zeke was fifteen, he’d stopped going with them on Sunday, and they let him stay home. Little Zeke didn’t buy the stories either, but he went to the church with his friends until he was ten, and understood what father Kitchens was doing was wrong, and it had occurred to little Zeke all at once, when he got an erection staring at Lisa Fisher in homeroom. It fell, a wall upon him, and after school he told the nurse about it, because he figured she was the one to talk to. She immediately called the police, who sent detectives down to the church, but Kitchens went to the station willingly, and talked his way out of it. He was well respected in their community, and he explained to the cops that little Zeke was angry because he had closed the courts, which he had, as his luck would have it, the weekend before little Zeke went to the nurse. When the cops asked him why he closed the courts, Kitchens said the church had to cut back on their bills and occupancy during the time of non-worship, which was a decision from the main church, but the boys were fine with it. Anyway, they were starting to get too old for Kitchens, and he was starting to get afraid of going to prison, his instinct was sharp, always had been, always served him well. There were other ways for him to feed his sickness, other places, other options. The world provided plenty.

Zeke gave Kitchens a hard pump and stalled there inside of him, reached back to the table and grabbed his baggie, did another line and leaned his head back, eyes closed, and remembered little Zeke’s spiral. The nightmares, the sexual confusion, all of it. The case became a hushed civil compromise, and the church paid them off to keep their mouths shut. The money was enough to get ahead on their bills and put enough away for little Zeke’s college. He leaned back and remembered promising Ana that he wouldn’t hurt Kitchens, and he’d kept that promise until the demons broke him. His thoughts drifted off to little Zeke’s crying face, I feel like it’s my fault, is it my fault? And what ten year-old should have to ask something like that, and what kind of father let the cocksucker who molested his boy walk free? The money, the promise to Ana, and the sudden realization that Ana’s mind wasn’t lost or stolen by Kitchens, it was gone because of her guilt. A smile crossed Zeke’s face, a catharsis, a breakthrough he could take to her whether it would help her or not. He pulled halfway out of Kitchens, the song had played again and was in the exact spot it had been two minutes earlier when he was going half in and half out like a man in love.

And I don't believe in the

existence of angels

But looking at you I wonder if

that's true

But if I did I would summon

them together

And ask them to watch over you

To each burn a candle for you

To make bright and clear your

path

And to walk like Christ in grace

and love

And guide you into my arms

The existence of angels, the thought of them in Zeke’s mind. Was he wrong about the soul? Was little Zeke an angel now? His mind was wired, and the natural LSD his body had been producing since the day before yesterday brought his subconscious to the forefront. When little Zeke hit the water, did his soul rise from his corpse with angel wings? Did he float up to Christ? Was he watching his father now?—raping the priest to his death, feeding him just enough, getting ready to remove the fingernails with the scissors, the fingertips next, then on down the line. He thought of little Zeke’s shoes leaving the edge of the bridge, watching the black and cold water of the river through his eyes, getting closer to him, his little body fighting to understand its end while the surface slapped the life from it, while his little brain received its last signals, while his light was snuffed out. Zeke reached around and masturbated Kitchens until he grew hard from biology, when the sex from behind and the stroking surpassed even the pain of his wounds, the fear of death, changing arousal and torture. Kitchens watched the doors of the church while he remembered his life, while he felt his tissues changing, his chest getting heavy with pain.

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms

Zeke heard Kitchens’ heart beating from behind him, felt it pulsing around his sex. Kitchens started to panic, his breaths short, his skin twitched by failing nerves. Zeke reached up and pulled the clove from his nostril, and Kitchens breathed easily for a moment, but the moment wasn’t enough. Zeke pumped harder and faster, punching Kitchens in the ribs. The feel of Zeke’s knuckles and hips landed in rhythm with the song, while the pain left his body and his flesh tingled by his heart failing.

And I believe in love

And I know that you do, too

And I believe in some kind of

path

That we can walk down, me and

you

So keep your candles burning

And make her journey bright and pure

That she will keep returning

Always and evermore

Zeke went harder, pulling on Kitchens’ cock while he fucked the life out of him, while the last four days of speed and pain and deprivation took its toll, no, exacted its toll. Zeke heard the phone call again at work, Ana’s voice screaming:

“OUR BABY’S DEAD! HE JUMPED OFF THE FREMONT BRIDGE AND FUCKING KILLED HIMSELF! HE FUCKING KILLED HIMSELF!”

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms

There was the body identification, the funeral, the first viewing, the service, the nights of no sleep, the unreality, the gnawing of the son of a bitch who did this to his boy still walking around, breathing the same air little Zeke knew no more. Then the fall, all the things that dropped off and died, the life that would never again return. Zeke felt Kitchens about to go, the screams had gone from muffled cries of pain to muffled high-pitched screams of fear while his heart gave out. The pitch of the screams drove Zeke faster and deeper inside him, even after Kitchens died, after Zeke felt the body’s final excretions running off the sides of his sex, down his legs, the stench of it. Kitchens was limp now, and Zeke pumped until he shot, leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Kitchens’ neck. He rested his head on the corpse’s shoulder and stared at the church, the large doors. The body dripped and the song repeated, and Zeke fell into a deep sleep.

The ocean turned over in beats and bass, and the sand moved in the roll of a tongue beneath her stomach and hips, and the rest of the beach gazed at her there while her headphones blasted Modern English and other post punk ’80s bubblegum resurrections. The smell of Coppertone and Pacific had married above her body and pinned my vision on the horizon behind the top of her perfection. I ran my middle finger down her knuckle and she smiled beneath a shroud of wild hair with sweat at the roots.

Back at the house we made it halfway up the stairs before my tongue was up her ass and she was grabbing my hair. Her palms leaned forward and pressed into the carpet while I held her legs off the ground, the grip of my hands on her hips, and I watched her body bounce off our sex while she bucked and came, her hair in her face, her perfections hard at their tips. I arched my back and shot into her and we were frozen there like statues bleeding sweat, my love for her a poem I could never write.   

Author note:

When Prose. presented the opportunity for me and my dog to go on tour for winter, to find writers and readers with a grassroots, gasoline-fueled literary mission, two words ran across my mind in scrolling neon red letters against a blackboard of subtle space junk: Hell, yes.

To ride along, follow the tour's hashtag above.

__________________________

The Devil's Chasing Me.

It began yesterday.

Fully loaded, the Northwest

winter with two days of cold sun

paving the way

we escaped down the 5

going south

blew through Oregon and

peered toward California while

the music shuffled over to

Reverend Horton Heat:

Sunset lights the sky

And there's a shadow over me

Black clouds in the east

And there's a twister underneath

I cranked up the song

reached back scratched

Chico's ear

the Sun was fading to

dark orange

and I glanced around

the sky in the rearview

north and east

it was dark with

fists of rain

red eyes

black teeth

I smiled at the boy's blue eyes

in the mirror:

"Not this year, boy."

We stared ahead and

I felt the old blood again

the old soul

the good feelings

returning

and

repairing damage.

This morning

after a long sleep

in a room

in

Yreka

the streets are wet

but the sunlight

shines south

and the road is

ready with

words.

Friday night

the metal pours out of

the speakers

spills across the keys and desk

the city on the other side of

the door is most likely

pulsing with drunks and

sure things

live music

drink specials

and

possibilities

of every kind.

sitting inside behind the

machine, sitting forward

on the desk

leaning into

3 Inches Of Blood

blasting like a Mars symphony

sitting here in the quiet chaos

of this, in the blood of focus

without fences, without physics,

without laws or definition or

even a basic understanding

of any of it.

a complete and flawless

silence of the unknown

pulses with the

metal, no, the music

and space created by

the words and metal

the scream and vacuum of

colors, the rush of the

lines cutting into

the page

the music and the

escape,

always that,

disappearing

into

the words

and music

and space

never wanting

to

approach

comprehension

never wanting

to

leave

until

it

shuts

you

off

to

keep

you

owned.

On the road.

A truck driver's meth

lost its edge when his body

gave in to fatigue the moment

I was about to pass him going

the other way.

It came fast, the disgusting crunch,

the ejection through glass

my dog destroyed in the back

seat, my arm ripped off

40 feet in front of me

and facing south

I feel the asphalt on the side

of my face, my body lightening,

my heart and lungs accepting

the end,

my blood ending its work

my brain keeping onto the

road in front of me

bright

warm

the sounds of

wind and gravel

and my breaths slowing

to a stop

it makes perfect sense

I think of my feet under the desk

buried into the fur of my dog

while I write until he's had enough

and goes to his spot on the couch

I think of the keys and the words

the sunshine of those moments

my head empty of music while

I change to dead

smiling at my ripped-away

limb and thinking

the tattoo on the back of

my forearm looks

good as a stand-alone piece

then a sadness grips the

acceptance of the end

despite the words

written on those nights when

I thought I'd had enough

I don't want to die.

Gasoline, orange blossoms, sun tan lotion, coffee, the ocean, the paws of my dog, a new book, puppy breath, baby hair, Vicks Inhalers, Captain Black tobacco when passing a person smoking a pipe, the skin of a sexy woman, steaks broiling, the after-smell of a soapy shower, hot laundry, bakeries, good whiskey, citrus candles, new car, sulfur.

morning. Monday.

summer running south

and laughing.

coffee strong,

head fogged with

something I can never explain

listening to Jeff Buckley

and wondering where people like

him would have gone without

their early deaths

wondering where I'd be right

now if I'd made one less right

move

one less

mistake

one less split decision

I could have taken any other

freeway exit as a kid

and wound up with a

completely different future

or without one

or worse, with the fear

of losing

and putting the words

on hold for a

real job

but no need to

think about that

-nearly 44 years of age

my elbows resting on the marble of this

desk, words being written to send

across a page of technology

listening to Jeff Buckley's Grace, a flawless

album

a perfect debut for him

1994

into the world

not yet so fast and

forgetful

sitting here now

absorbing the vocals

the one-breath of the

album, the beauty

sitting here, still, after all

the years and damage

after all the bad and

all the good

and all the waiting,

sitting here, still,

the wind of

the world blowing through

the walls

writing

into

autumn.

the ghosts come sideways

diagonal

vertical

forwards

backwards

and up from the floorboards

angry fellows

one holds a clock

the other a ring

one a set of keys

two are cradling a marble coffin

and one has my face on a pole

my heart wedged in my mouth

that's a new one, I think to myself

normally he just laughs at me

Christ, don't tell me he's running out of

ideas, too.