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A VP, Part Six

by Marla

I

Shawna laughed with my lips. “You actually kicked him!” she teased with my voice.
“IT’S NOT FUNNY!” I shrieked.
My voice, the true execution of my rage, echoed down a passage beyond the bars. Bars! I scrambled towards their silhouettes. The cemented bars did not yield to my grasp. Electric lamps beyond the bars illuminated everything except our cell. The tunnel yawned and turned off where I could not see any further. Those lights!
My panic glanced downward. Tully had stopped kissing my feet. He also did not move. My toes nudged him twice. His legs shifted. He was not dead but comatose again.
“Who is this boy?” Shawna asked me.
“Tully,” I answered her, “He’s Cora’s friend.”
“Why did you kick him?”
“He never did that before.” I had bruised the side of his head. His cheeks flushed and his lips bore the ghost of a smile. “Master, where have you been?”
“That’s not important now, Meqara,” Shawna whispered, “you’re below the salon right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes but the hole we fell through!” My gaze darted upward to the impregnable darkness. A cruddy iron barrier rusted where the hole we fell through should have been. The walls curved together at the top like a tube. The salon’s cement foundation topped off the earthen walls. “This is a tunnel! Shawna!”
“Calm yourself, Meqara. Listen, I can arrive at the salon tomorrow.”
“The Brotherhood,” I gasped, “dug this tunnel while Tootsie’s was closed!”
“D’spyu’da! All of them!” roared my master. “My heart bleeds from this affront! They all shall die!”
“Please don’t scream like that,” I hoarsely groaned.
“I promise you, Meqara. I shall hold you again.”
“Oh, someone’s walking towards us right now! I know it!”
“No one is coming now.”
Despair burned my eyes. “Please hurry, master!”
“And mind your emotions!” she ordered. “If you wish that boy to survive, then you must conserve yourself. You must not cry!”
I clenched my lips and breathed briefly. “Yes, master.”
“Take solace until tomorrow. Perhaps your friend could comfort you…” Tully stirred on the ground. “…that is when he comes to.”
Shawna relinquished her grasp from me.

-
II

Tully started coughing.
“My head,” he groaned, “You started yelling. My head hurts.”
“I’m sorry I kicked you,” I muttered.
He rose unsteadily and sentineled his eyes. His straw colored hair twisted all over. “Were you possessed just now?”
“Tully,” I ignored his question, faced him, and mustered my patient voice, “why did you kiss me?”
The infinitesimal light revealed his vicissitude. He wanted control. He requested information with which he could strategize.
Now, his spine stood rigid. His eyes evaded mine. “I-I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”
My countenance hawkened earnestly. “No, I did not want you to do that,” I said, shaking my beak. “I do have some control over you but I did not command you to kiss me. So, either you got confused or you did that on purpose. Which is it?”
The venom of my question trickled from my chin to my heart.
Tully paused after a breath. “I think it’s both,” he answered.
I sighed, too. “It’s okay, Tully. I did not mean to kick you. Shawna… she clouded my judgment.”
“Shawna,” Tully pondered, “that name sounds familiar.”
“She is my master. She should arrive tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know. You… she said ‘take solace until tomorrow.’”
“She reads a lot,” I managed to laugh.
Tully rubbed his arms. “But, when’s tomorrow?” he asked incredulously. “Morning? Tomorrow evening?”
“Tomorrow evening, more likely. She can’t hardly travel in daylight.”
“I can’t stay down here for that long! It’s too cold!”
“The towels!”
“What?”
I rushed to his feet where the splintered cabinet crashed down. “The cleaning towels can keep you warm. Here.”
I handed him towels with which to stuff up his clothes. White puffed out from the edges of his black t-shirt.
“You could sleep on some of these towels.”
He didn’t speak but concentrated on warming himself.
“There’s even a water bottle in here!”
“Then, all we have to do is wait.”
I organized our available materials. No more goodies assembled besides maybe a conversation about some of the ruined furniture. “All we have to do is wait,” I repeated.
-

III

Tully dozed in slumberous exile in the corner of our cell. I kept my colder body away from his. I envied his radiant heat. My muscles tensed up from thoughts of such warmth, from the blood flowing through his heart, from his blood oozing from my lips.
“Meqara,” whispered the darkness.
I persisted my pensive seat. “Master.”
“Will you tell him?”
“…I don’t want to. He would worry.”
“When did you feed last?”
“Last night.”
Tully rolled over. He must have heard us.
“You have some time, then.”
“I know.”
“I’ve landed on Laxxape shore. Another twelve hours and I’ll arrive in Jiamorna.”
My thoughts settled heavily. “I promised Cora that I would keep him safe. He’s more important to her than the salon,” I tensed up tighter, “I’m afraid that I may not protect him from myself.”
“You fear one outcome when many are possible.”
“I fear the worst.”
“If anything happens to him, it would be the Brotherhood’s fault, not yours.”
“The Brotherhood would not have attacked had I not provoked them.”
“Then, vilify them! Despise them. Dehumanize them. Then, when they emerge, you can seize your revenge! They deserve nothing more than obliteration!”
A tear of blood dripped down. “I hate them severely.”
“Let that hatred be your power. Hate them so that you may resist them. Delight yourself with the thoughts of shredding them, dashing them to pieces, plucking off their heads, usurping their energies, empowering yourself to annihilate them! Think of nothing except what you would do if they entered this cell! Imagine the splendors of trapping them, squeezing their pathetic bodies into pulp, listening to their agonized screams, their pleas for mercy, standing over their corpses, and crushing their skulls underfoot! I know that when I arrive, they will not know the power I wield. They will learn how foolishly they have trifled with us!”
Tully stirred once again.
“Ugh, does that boy always pretend to be asleep?”
I laughed. “It seems so.”
“Opportunistic little bug.”
“He’s very ticklish.”
“Mmm, hm, hm, hm, so he welcomes an inform-ed touch. He would squirm within my grasp.”
My smile glowed across my cheeks. “He would love you, master.”
“I would love him as well but not before I have punished him. His impetuosity itches me!”
“Then, make him scratch.”
“I would until my feet have been satisfied. Then, in return for protecting you, his waking eyes may languish in tantalizing proximity to my new pedicure! How invigorating the longing in his eyes! How desperate the need for contact!”
Arousal warmed my bosom. “Shawna…” I trailed off in pleasant reverie.
“Meqara,” she returned in delectable whisper, “were it within my power to do so, you would be freed immediately. I would not hesitate to hold you, squeeze you, kiss you, smother you with my affection. If I can do nothing else now but ensconce your spirit with my love, then I shall until I can no longer, until strangers gape at me with incredulity, until the straightjackets cart me away while I talk to myself, until I must extricate myself from their censors. I shall nibble at your ear in the dark.”
And sorrow peeled back. I already had curled up against my master’s bosom. Her watchful breaths washed over me. Nothing to do but rest, sleep, let the waves of the world crash down around us, froth up, and bubble away. Tully was safe. I had protected him. In return, I claimed the satisfaction of fulfilling my promise to Cora. I could do it again, too. And a hundred times over. Ten years. Twenty. Fifty years, he could be my ward. We could guard him if we must. This trifle was nothing. A drop in the ocean. An ocean of the blood of my enemies! Yes. A feast of souls! A peak of corpses! Standing over, watching the morning sun tremble! And their destruction! The sun! My eternal enemy!
“ACH! THE SUN!”

-
IV

Blinding star! I reflexively evaded the beam of light, and landed on Tully. His statue of a frame hardly budged from my impact.
“Ow,” he coughed.
Heart already a-beat, I panted from fear, pain, and suddenness of them all. How dreadfully unfair that light could penetrate such a dungeon as this!
“What happened?” Tully dozily inquired.
“There!” I pointed at the wall. A ball of faded, morning light emblazoned the wall opposite the bars.
He sat up and observed the wall and the space beyond the bars. “Sunlight?”
My forehead stung. “Yes. Sunlight.”
Tully squinted out of the cell. “There’s a mirror down the tunnel. Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.” The burn-mark felt dry and inelastic. I fled to the opposite corner of the light.
“It looks like it’s just the one mirror,” said Tully.
“One is enough,” I exhaled. “I didn’t mean to jump on you.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t feel like sleeping anymore anyway.”
We both managed to laugh. Then, silence deadened the air. The light on the wall shone ominously.
Tully looked up at the hole in the foundation above us. “I wonder if the others know what happened.”
I looked up, too. “They probably do. We didn’t land quietly.”
“Looks like they haven’t attempted a rescue.”
“No, that foundation is pretty thick. They would have to dig through that and around that metal barrier to reach us.” I paused pensively. “They would have to enter this tunnel where it opens up to the world.”
“Mm,” concurred Tully.
“There’s still time.”
“Until what? We starve?”
I winced at my own omen. “We may not be alone.”
Tully sighed exasperatedly. “What are they waiting for? They trapped us here. They dug this tunnel. They already tried to kill us. I don’t recall any hesitation to put a bullet between my eyes last fall. Now, they’re content to pull a string, drop the box, and politely wait for the slow decay of time to waste us!” He threw his hands up into the air. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
He wallowed in confusion while the truth begged to emerge from behind my teeth. “This may be the worst punishment they could deliver. That is until Shawna comes and rescues us.”
“Yeah? What if they’re counting on that too? Matter of fact, they’re probably listening to us talk about our escape right now! What’s stopping them from changing their minds and killing us immediately?”
I sincerely wanted to end this conversation. “They haven’t yet. That’s all that matters.”

-
V

The more time I spent with this man, the more aware I became of his idiosyncrasies. As though his objective observations weren’t tiresome enough, he seemed disinterested in everything outside of his own head. He would remain silent for periods. Then, he would observe something as plain as the sun on the wall. Otherwise, no stimulation emerged from this scarecrow. I withheld my frustrations because he was not in a good place. Neither was I. I hugged my own shoulders for comfort. I replayed old songs in my head, the Pathetique, Moonlight sonata, piano concertos, the Barenboim, Mazurkas, Badineries, suites, operas, dances, any resonant candies that incessant repetitions had impressed upon my cortex. But I couldn’t sing. Caged birds could sing. This bird was mute, beak banded shut, eyes darting to every blue, and no room to unfurl its wings.
My pedicure also waned before my sight. It almost pained me to watch because Tully really had worked hard on it. But now only he and I could acknowledge it, compliment it, adore it, or otherwise qualify its existence. The air tasted stale. I wanted Shawna to see how hard Tully worked on it. I smiled. Shawna would have Tully do for her a thousand times over what he had done for me. His little hands would hold a paintbrush over toenails the size of television screens. Then, the squeezing. He would endure it. We would not have it any other way.
Shawna had been gone and I had pined for her return. Now, that warm gooey center of my life emulsified. If she did not return before my current predicament, Tully and I already could have died. Both her presence and my promise to Cora sustained me, sustained Tully from…
No! I couldn’t think that! This moment of silence had proven insufferable!
“How was your winter?” I asked him. Come to think of it, we knew very little about each other.
“Not much to speak of,” spoke he without gladness. “You?”
“It got easier once I recovered. Then, I spent most of it helping plan out today.”
He suddenly snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah, when we were slammed with thralls, which ones did you send me?”
“None of them.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Did you send any thralls at all?”
“Nope.”
“How come?”
“I slept all day,” I grinned.
“Oh.”
“I didn’t sleep much the night before.”
“But you said you needed to coordinate them.”
“I needed an excuse for Cora to bring me in the first place. She would’ve left me behind otherwise.”
He laughed. “I know what you mean.”
That was a complete conversation.

-
VI

I mosied my feet forwards to lean. The earth beneath my soles failed to cushion. Sigh. How much comfort can one bargain from the cold?
Tully’s invigorated pulse answered. He spotted my feet! Finally, we had successfully achieved stimulation! Look now upon the fruits of your labors, the dewy cherries hanging low! I surreptitiously posed them for his admiration, for any single sentient approbation!
Ah, the vibrations, the pup, pup, pup of love! How could I have punished such sincere desire? He trespassed, yes. He was an opportunistic fly on the wall. I hated uninvited buzzing. No creature, whether insect or colossus, ever should touch me unless I wanted that touch. I needed that touch then and there just to breathe!
“I’m sorry I hit you, Tully,” I repeated.
“Don’t be,” he muttered. I looked up. He continued to explain himself to the floor: “I’m a creep. Why do you think I took this job in the first place? Why do you think I left school? I got kicked out.”
I blinked. He droned on as though he had prepared first. “Rather, I kicked myself out. I asked a girl on campus if I could touch her feet. She said no but I grabbed her foot then and there because that’s where it was, right in front of me, where I knew I would not have another chance. She resisted and told disciplinary about what I did. They didn’t kick me out but I left voluntarily because I couldn’t piece together that I knew what I did was wrong but I didn’t apologize. I loved what I did because it brought me closer to what I love. Then, while we were collapsed down here, I think that old habit had reared its head. For that, I’m sorry.”
My heart dubiously paused. “Accepted.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about that this whole time. This fucking cell has me thinking nothing but.”
“You’re a young man who needs a lesson in personal space, yes,” I replied earnestly, “but that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“Even though I was looking at your feet just now?”
“You were looking at my feet just now because, like you said, that’s what you love. Nobody can help what they love. I just wish you had more appropriate outlets than stalking the university shoe store.”
“Or the nail salon?”
“Or wherever. I accept your apology, Tully, because you acknowledge your own creepiness.”
He finally smiled. “Thank you.”
“Besides,” I loosened my shoulders, “there are worse people out there than creeps.”
Tully gave me a severe look, more severe to me than worse people. I thought that he thought about when the Brotherhood attacked the salon. He disclosed to me. I wanted to disclose to him. “You and Cora left me with one of the Brotherhood soldiers after they attacked the salon (he persisted his silent gaze). That was Eugene beneath the mask (he looked away with morbid understanding). But, he was under control. He didn’t speak. I suspected that someone within the Brotherhood had possessed him, whether by Eugene’s whim or no.”
“And you killed him?” Tully asked me.
“I had to punish him, so yes.”
He must had known how dire our situation was. I remembered the pulsing, murderous venom in my veins; the murky vision, as though glimpsing life through the placenta of rebirth; the distortion of distinction between friend from foe; the faint compassion for those who I loved; the catharsis of identifying my enemy; and, the final quenching. My eyes felt hot within the cell.
I did not need to comfort Tully from this danger. I needed to comfort myself.

-
VII

“I love my new pedicure now, Tully,” I murmured pleasantly.
He smiled warmly. “I did my best.”
My mission became simple, more specific. I rose from the ground. The beam of light that illuminated the wall circumnavigated and waned from afternoon exhaustion. It fettered no longer.
Pit-pat. Pit-pat.
I stopped walking once to fold my hands around my belly. Tully convalesced dozily and failed to notice me. My anticipation groaned behind my gaze. I cleared my throat.
Tully looked up and gasped at my closeness. I detected his warmth.
Pit. Pat. Pit. Pat.
I planted my foot on the ground in front of his lap.
“Meqara, your eyes are red.”

-
VIII

I lost track of who said that.
Tully’s raw eyes split gazes between my foot and I.
“Kiss it,” I ordered.
He actually hesitated!
“Now. I want this more than you do,” I said.
A familiar fury pulsed through me. His reluctance exacerbated my impatience! But, I could see his dilemma. I punished him for kissing me. He simply refused to provoke the punishment.
“Tully,” I said cooly, “I did not want you to kiss me before. That’s why I kicked you.”
Tully stared back at me.
I elucidated: “If you kiss me now, I won’t kick you again. I want your lips to never leave my foot. To break contact between them now would be to die! Now, kiss it.”
Pup, pup, pup, the cathartic thump! Come to me now, sweet flesh! He submitted his crown of straw to my leg. My breaths heaved.
Warmth kissed my foot with a pep. I couldn’t stand still anymore! I crossed my other leg underneath me and descended to Tully’s level. He kissed repeatedly just above my toes.
I needed those kisses. Fury curled my toes and itched to seize his nose, to capture its prey!
“With all your powers,” I crowed, “your human fear of the blood on my nails, worship my foot. Sniff my toes. Kiss my instep. But do not retire too quickly! Slowly,” I wrapped my fingers around his head, “satisfy and obey me. No, obey my foot!”
I withdrew and planted my earthy sole onto his lips.
“This is your love reciprocated! Will you acquiesce?”
What slathering ensued! Such desperate passes against my heel, my arch! My cheeks flushed from this creature’s spit! I engulfed my fellow monster, wrapping myself around him. The coldness departed, even as he shivered.
The sun had gone. Time ceased its relevance. The surrounding gloom splintered. The walls retreated from our love, the bane of our imprisonment.
Still, anxiety prickled. Hunger growled. A foe! No! Nothing shall interrupt us! Not now!
“I must,” I groaned. I removed my foot and brought it to my lips. The smell of blood! My release! I voraciously wetted and sucked it away. Each toe sacrificed its polish. Perhaps, Tully understood. He said nothing, and I permitted him to witness my desperation.
My hunger tapered off. It lost its bite. My toes lost Tully’s laborious VP.
“Here,” I gave him my foot again, “all the polish is gone.”
And he capitalized on its absence! I began laughing, laughing finally! Every squirm in my toes elicited delight!
Tully did not speak but he exemplified his love. Once again, his pleasure seemed to depend on my own. And how salubriously pleasure passed my lips!
How ardently his blood passed through his heart.