EDVARD TUSK: without his face

A Novel by Pablo D’Stair

[Part 9]

Room two twenty-four smelled of pepper, stale smokes, and the apricot deodorant a teenage girl would spray under her arms. From the open door, where I leaned, wincing from the damage the five minutes of cold had done to my eyes, I gave it a scan—lit by the sitcom playing mute from the television and the high orange parking lot lights squirming in through the portion of blinds not shut fast, it had an energy like people were milling, a tone of recent lively conversation, but at the same time a stillness, as though a stage set left overnight to be struck come morning.

I slouched in, letting the door stay to my shoulders until the very end, shutting it quietly (I set the latch chain without looking, turned the bolt with a reach behind) then moved right away to the packet of cigarettes I’d noted on the television top—two left, a proper variety, causing me to let a giddy giggle after the rotten nonsense I’d had access to just half hour before—lit one immediately with one of the remaining matches in the rough used book there, and inhaled to the point of pain, my focus changing as my lungs clamped greedily, the dull drone that had been lumbering in my ears dissolving into the crisp timbre of quiet as I let the smoke snake out my nose slowly and in flits through my just razor-thin parted lips, the pale blue grey of it jerking this way, that, cloud of it filling the air in front of me, an environment I felt I could more natural move through, fish poured from dirty bowl into wide river.

Bliss

On the bed—the furthest of the two twins from the door—I saw the garrote wire and the squat flask, but wanting to enjoy the balm of the room a bit, indulge myself, I sat to the first bed, ate two of the pizza crusts from the flapped open box, chewing luxuriantly through the day-old texture of it, the ache of moving my jaw, the harsh, thick swallow, and the cough of getting my breath back the equivalent of having a physical ailment immediately cured by a mad doctor’s needle through the eye (it felt like this was the appropriate food for me, the only nourishment I’d had in a week).

There was a distinct, belonging bliss over me: this was like being in the room of a woman I had loved, come to despise, then grown to respect with an puerile devotion beyond reason or reciprocation—I lay down, covered my eyes with one hand, feeling the heat of the cigarette, now burnt down almost to nothing, on my lip pucker, the other arm I spread out to the side, swished up, down, up, down over the unused bedcovers, the broken wing of a lovebird.

The garrote, weightless, had two grips of red leather—I knew this—but these grips were no visible as sometime between when I had last seen the implement and now they had been covered in crumples of torn paper, these fastened to place with ordinary scotch tape, lengths and lengths of it, so that coiling my hands around them, tugging the piano wire of it taut, my hand felt scratched (though there was a smoothness from use and palm sweat to even the scabs of the tape) tingles of the sensations of making childhood crafts with a friend rising, a roil in the air of belonging, ownership, home.

Whoever had made this addition I wanted to thank—gave an appreciative bow in the direction of the television (now a commercial for some medication to help with incontinence flickering, a doctor smiling, a woman smiling, a family hugging) a gracious flash of smiling teeth, then moved to the television to retrieve the final cigarette.

Cheap quality

Puffing casually, stealing a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink, I regretted the shabbiness of these clothes I was tuck with all the more, felt play-pretend, their cheap quality the only element out of place in the world—I didn’t want to tuck the elegance of the wire, its grips, down into the plebian pockets, but did, just because there was nothing else for it (and it raised my desire to get to the task at hand, hoping that this time the victim would be a man my size, dressed well, whose corpse I could pick clean, leaves these rag on it as a kind of vulgar insult—hoped this time, indeed, the victim would be a man).

Unscrewing the flask top, I gave a wiff to the contents—minerals, pennies, musk, still-swamp—immediately tilting it to my mouth and giving a strut across to the mirror where I leaned my shoulders around in a fatuous dance, letting myself feel menacing, aroused, serpentine.

I spit a small amount of the liquid into the sink basin, just because I could not tell as I swished it around over my tongue and side-to-side (protruding left check to strain, right cheek to strain) how much ink had been added to the blood (it was so lethargic tasting, so gluey I’d have thought it nothing but blood) delighted to see, in fact, that the splash against the white porcelain showed clear traces of both slick green and spectral blue, thin ink, more like diluted watercolour paint cleaned from a brush.

I swallowed and took another draught immediately, sucking it down—too hurriedly, it turned out, as I swallowed wrong, tried to stifle a cough, an amount of it blatting from my left nostril and worming over my top lip (a speckled spray covering the neck and face of reflection, as well).

Burst of energy

A burst of energy, I stomped, growled, spun in place, then fell back on the second bed in a fit of giggles, tugging unsuccessfully at the bed covers to coil myself in them, sweating from the exertion, songs playing in my head (ones I vaguely sang along to) as though the room had become a thunderous, slobbering maw of noise, chewing me, readying me.

Then quiet.

Quiet.

My breathing returned to normal as I propped myself up, finishing the liquid in the flask, content, glutted, serene.

I listened—though knew it has nothing to do with me—to one side of a telephone conversation, taking place just outside my door—I’d heard the door to the room next door open, shut, this young man striking his cigarette lighter as he pled his obviously false case to (I assumed) his girlfriend, stating he was some place he certainly was not and that she had no reason to suspect him of anything, that he thought he had demonstrated of late how much he loved her and was well through with whatever past indiscretions he mentioned (too in-referenced to decipher).

I heard that room door open and close, again the conversation continuing at a rumble through the wall behind me, but not enough to be properly made out, so I turned up the television, watched to the conclusion of a program.

I stared at the room corner, no sooner starting to daydream a scenario of murder to fill the time than the room phone rang, causing me to bolt immediately up, grab the receiver (I had literally be salivating I discovered) not giving any verbal greeting, just sniffling, gruffly breathing out.

“Edvard,” a woman’s voice said and I nodded, nodded, the sound of air in my ears as though being propelled within a subway tunnel, “Edvard,” she repeated until I final croaked out a “Yes yes yes!”

But the connection was severed. Was it? I waited, listened. Frowning, I hung up and roughed at my hair, feeling my throat constrict, chin begin to tremble. Why had I spoken? Why I not just sat, silent—“Shut up! Shut up!” I bellowed, now beginning to cry in earnest, nose running, snot I wiped at with coat sleeve like some toddler smacked for mouthing off a time too far—why had I let this pathetic, fatigued, shabby-dressed body get the best of me and ruin it all?

I choked myself a moment, but not hard, as though in jest, this ineffectual display tugging rage from me so that I balled a fist and belted myself in the nose once, twice—five times, eight—as hard as I could, the underwater dullness of my head from the assault growing, me on the floor, writhing from the actual damage (broken nose, certainly, and the ring I wore had gashed the skin below my eye) until the phone rang again and I, still blubbering, snatched it up and, bent over the bed, still to my knees, just let the other person on the line hear me, undone and waiting. “Edvard,” the same voice said, and I waited excruciatingly while it said it nine more times, pauses of five to twenty seconds between each, more intimate for each repetition, until finally it went on “Edvard…the man who is coming. The man who will knock on the door. Kill him.”