Interlude Stories: Jamie Grefe

MOUTH FULL OF VENOM - JAMIE GREFE

It was becoming hard to focus. The bedroom, a strobe of monochrome and neon. Soupy blood gushed from the fresh gash in my fat gut. I used my left hand to shovel stomach bits back in while Technicolor crimson swirled across my upturned right palm, dripped in stringy strands to the floor. Things were slipping from my grip just like the unhappy marriage and the torrid affair. Phlegm formed in my throat, sat in my mouth. I fondled the lampshade for support.

Salino stood by the bedroom door, eyes locked in a dead stare, mouth wide: a grin of marital vengeance. Bastard had stabbed me. The hunting knife in his hand was wet, gold front tooth sparkled in the street lamp glow from outside the open window like a cheap jewel. Salino: smirking murderer, handsome devil-dog, and better half of Lexa, the fairy that squawked, mistress sublime. I spat that gob of phlegm on the floor, tried to count the watery monochrome chunks.

He tugged at starched sleeves, straightened his jacket in quick twitches, ran a slender hand down the length of his necktie. He strode big steps to stand closer, steps that carried with them an invisible velocity, nudging me back to the bed where I slumped drooling. My head swayed in a slow bounce. Oozing waves of blood made everything prickly with perceptual fuzz. The bed felt springy and warm, my head woozy and flat. Salino approached spinning the knife around, twirled it in his tattooed fist like a bad kung-fu pantomime. The word, “Love” engraved on his fingers wavered up and down, each letter undulating in an ebb of the violence incomplete. Almost.

Open your mouth, he said to me.
You gonna kiss me? I said.
Hardly.

His other hand, the one with “Lexa” inked into it, gripped my chin, tilted my head up to meet his gaze. Cheeks squished, my mouth puckered open in a crusty oval. Bruised eyes looked up, all the way up to the tip-top of his bald head where a skull-sized cobra, tongue flickering fire, had been tattooed in blue ink. The hunting knife eased gently across my cheek. I held gut blood in, kept my insides from spilling out. The cobra’s eyes stared.

I’m gonna cut you up, Salino said, touching the rim of my lips with the tip of the knife. But first, and he paused to reflect before whispering, I’m gonna cut out your teeth, one by fucking one. Just carve ’em out of your gums like a pumpkin. He paused again. I’m gonna wear those teeth around my motherfucking neck just so I can remember this moment forever. Quite sentimental, Salino, I thought. Quite sentimental.

I choked out a cough from the rank fog of his husbandly bad breath. Salino, the serpentine husband, shouldn't have stood so close to a man with nothing to lose. There were things I was still capable of in this, my last stand. I summoned another gob of phlegm to the roof of my mouth and shot it into his face, watched it stick to his lips, drip from his grizzled chin.

Give that one to Lexa, I said. She’ll know who it’s from.

His fist lashed out and rammed my nose back into my head with a whop. I felt a road extending within me as my nose crumpled inward. He ran the knife down the front of my face and touched the blade to the gap between two front teeth. It was perfect timing to catch the snake by the neck and bite its head off.

I raised blood-soaked hands from exposed guts, grabbed hold of both of his sleeved wrists, twisted his arms back toward his face, and rammed that hunting knife right up through the cobra’s head. It was quick. The blade ripped into the skin under Salino’s chin, tore past the mouth and face, up to the peak of his domed head until Salino, her cobra husband, spit out a final diminishing hiss and nearly splintered in two. The blood splattered everywhere in a shower of red venom. I rose in explosions of pain along with the gripped knife, savoring its majesty as if it were divinity itself. I wanted to relish the moment. My stomach applauded in gusts of neon pain. Salino’s head wobbled, two clumsy eyeballs trying to focus, seeing the unseen, perhaps the monochrome, while simultaneously lolling in disbelief, probably at the fact that the head that had joined those eyes together for the entirety of their existence was literally, and oh-so-gracefully, coming undone. His head split apart just like my marriage, just like an orange.

Lexa, do you know what we could have had? I said to the dead Salino.

She was probably outside waiting for him in the Buick. I watched his body, melt and wither with droppings of slobbery goop spurting about the bed, spattering me crimson as he tumbled to the bedroom floor. Perhaps some of the cobra’s guts could be mixed with mine, I thought in a rare moment both lucid and deranged. There’s treasure in those guts. We could mingle. I huffed toward the window, considered carving out Salino’s gold tooth or scraping off the skin of his tattooed fingers. I wanted to demonstrate how evil my love could be. I wanted Lexa. I wanted to be him, the husband. Salino’s Buick was parked under the street lamp. She would be in there.

When I hobbled out the front door, I saw Lexa’s concerned face, little lonely sheep eyes, staring out from the passenger seat. I swung open the driver’s side door and threw myself behind the wheel. This is what it feels like to be a real husband, I thought, looking over at her with a blood-drenched gold-toothed grin.

My sticky hands covered her mouth to stifle that hideous shriek. Fragments of skin and letters dangled from my knuckles. A sliced chunk of Salino’s serrated facial skin hung limp, stretched over my real face. The mixture of phlegm, sweat, and blood wasn’t quite doing the trick, holding his face to my own. It was sagging. I could feel the ink of the serpent’s spit seep into my skull, drip down into the abyss of my aching guts. That bastard ink was the elixir of love. Crawl, baby.

It’s just you and me, Lexa, I said, leaning in for a wet kiss, mouth full of venom.

Interlude Stories: Jamie Grefe

SHE’S EVIL - JAMIE GREFE

No more flings. It’s over. I loosen my tie and suck a Lucky through dust-filled lungs; lean in and breathe smoke over her body like a sacramental offering. Mutter a few words and watch her eyes study the ceiling in a limp stare, blood seeping from sliced-up skin. I curse the torn walls of this place, the hideaway, and scream a bit. I pocket the blood-stained scissors.

Sitting by the body, I crumple and swallow the note, let the ink drip down my throat, chasing it with spit. Kathleen, my lovely bird, look at you. My hands shake from this hot summer night. I pry the suitcase from her right hand. Ella will be proud of me.

The cigarette sticks to my lips. Visions of Ella and Kathleen send me shivering to the floor in a guilty lust. I hug the case and watch their two perfect faces blur, congeal, and melt into each other. The images morph from Kathleen’s sultry gaze to Ella's sweet smile. The scissors weigh my pocket down like a rock in a dead man’s mouth. But something is amiss and I know it is amiss, can feel it in the acidic ink. Kathleen’s left palm lies open. I read the message inscribed in blood, “She’s evil.”

Headlights from the driveway hit the wall behind me. Duck and stumble through the living room, fumble to the kitchen. My vision blots in bits of red. I hear the voices of men, men that are looking for me, looking for her. Car doors slam. They can probably smell me in the musky air. They sniff. I crouch and glimpse their large bodies, black suits and ties, firepower. Guns click and crack. Of course, I think, Kathleen’s hired hands. I have seen them in her office. She must have told them. I know this will not end pretty. Staring, I think of Ella waiting alone in the cabin. We are a mile apart from the first day of our new life.

When the front door is blown apart, I hear them holler and I disappear into the woods through the back door. I clutch the suitcase tight. A death-visit. Bullet serenades drill tiny holes into the house churning the wooden innards into a pierced lung. She had sent them to do me in. I did her in instead. It all works out in the end, I think. I run in strangled breath through the thick night. From a small hill hidden by tall trees I watch the fireworks, imagine her body engulfed by all those men, spoiled skin, holes, scissor slices. Kathleen, you set me up, I think. Waves of ‘she never really trusted me’ shoot me in the face. I’ll get over it. There’s too much money in the suitcase.

A muffled cellphone rings. There is a phone tucked in the inside pocket of my suitcoat. It is her phone. Lies. That would explain the lack of tears. Private Number. Connect and listen. Close breathing, empty shells skitter and clink through the speaker. A low drawl whispers in a foreign tongue. I hang up. The woods are still with the smell of death. I stomp the phone to bits even though I know it’ll do no good. They know where I am. They know I’m alive. I empty my pockets and review: map, keys and case.

I unfold and spread the map over the dirt and grass, use a match for fire to trace a way to where Ella waits. Her red-lipped kiss print marks the spot, one tiny star in the center of the lip-mark: our cabin. Yes, Ella will be there. I can still taste Kathleen’s dew on my fingers, in my nostrils. A soft moan like music echoes through the trees. A figure steps from behind a gaunt tree and leans her slender frame up against it. It is Kathleen and I freeze. Her red dress drips blood from the gash in her chest. There is a haze of smoke around her. I rub my eyes, but she is still standing there. A faint light emanates from her chest. The wound pulsates. I clench my teeth, stand and step slowly to her.

She wipes the blood from my face, while her green eyes chew kisses on my cheek. I can’t feel anything. I extend my arms to her. She is gone. I slap my own face. Nothing but the wind, I think. A bubbling pulse shoots through my skin in simmering ripples of pain. It feels like something is pushing out from my insides, something other than me, a part of Kathleen or a lingering trace of desire.

A wind picks up and I hold the map down with two stones. Light another match. Light another Lucky. I find the cabin on the map. It is a crude square amidst squiggles and trace my finger from the house to the wooden fence just over the hill that will lead me to the cabin with the kiss-marked lips. The phone rings again, a slur of voices are carried in by the tides of night and I think of the smell of her dress. Footsteps rustle in the distance. Too many ghosts out tonight, I think.

I fold the map and cram it into the suitcase, latch the case and run. There must be thousands in there all staring at me. Branches flick my face. For every wound, I think of Ella, I think of Kathleen. I hallucinate their bodies piercing the black woods around me. Kathleen runs through the field. She spreads herself in the grass. Solitary, Ella points to the fence, vanishes in the dark. Wild dogs with female voices sing from the horizon and I feel I blur into the blackened hallucinations of the night until I find the wooden fence that leads to the cabin. Thank you, ladies.

When I enter the cabin, fingers clutch my throat, maul my eyes and nose. The hands reek of gasoline. Someone is prodding my mouth with the muzzle of a cold gun, damp disinfected cloth, duct tape. Tied to the chair and through the puffed eyes of bruises, I think I see her in front of me - Ella, my glamorous angel and wife. Rough men surround me. Their faces are blurred phantoms in the low-light of the lamps and in the glaze of these fresh wounds. The head of a dead deer hangs above the fireplace. I shot, stuffed and mounted it two years ago. Now, it stares in revenge. The chair I am tied to is made of wood, bolted to the floor with nails. Ella, my angel wife, grins and pulls a Lucky from my shirt pocket.

The case is now handcuffed to a rough man’s thick wrist. Ella is talking with him, but I can’t understand what they are talking about. Other men pour gasoline over my head and body, douse the floor around the chair. The ceremony, I mumble through broken teeth, will begin shortly. The words just kinda pour out. Headlights flash white against the wall behind me for a second time this evening. Doors shut and I flinch, seal my eyes, blank out the world. Everything sounds too close.

Ella moves close and sits on my lap, wrapping her long scented legs around me. A touch of death from the poisoned ink wells up from within and I choke it back down. Innards constrict. She pecks my dirty skin with soft lips and I cough up wads of black saliva and blood. She whispers a litany of gorgeous sentiments and final words like revelations or bullets. The gears of my brain are growing rusty.

She says I never should have cheated in the first place and that this is where cheaters end up. She says that cheaters and liars don't gel, don’t mix. She says that Kathleen should have seen it coming, but the only thing Kathleen could say was how lovely it was that I could be a shared man. And then, the money. Ella and I had it all worked out, I think. She had placed the scissors in the hideaway’s kitchen cupboard. That part was a cinch. It was this part that throws me for a loop. There is another man, she says. A man with a scar the size of Texas steps from the shadows. He looks broken, but I think it is me who is broken. We have made plans, she says. Plans, I say. Plans, the Texan scar says.

Spatters of red, orange and green swirl around the periphery while spiraling images of what could have been sizzle in my mouth and I sigh out word after meaningless word. Ella’s face sits in the center of those spatters; the facade of my angel melts into a tangled, messy clump of deception.

She stands and Texas passes her a pair of blood-stained scissors, the pair they must have pulled from my pocket. I grunt and listen to the scissors snipping. I hear a car engine start up outside and the men are moving from the inside of the cabin to the outside. I see them through the picture window with its curtains of red. A trunk closes. A horn honks. I taste blue jazz and smoky blood, suck the dripping blood back up into my nose and deep into gasoline-soaked lungs.

Ella kneels before me. It happens slower than I would have liked, but then again, I don’t like any of this. A kind of dull pain compliments the whole process. My screams dissolve into the mist wafting from the river of blood that gushes from the sliced skin and bone of my gnarled legs.

I faint and awake to the silence and emptiness of the silent cabin and the mocking deer head fading in and out of clarity. I shot that thing, I think. By this time, the forgotten words of the poisoned note, that final and absolute adieu, have eaten through my insides and left me just another bloated and bloody veil on the face of the only woman that I ever truly loved. The blood surrounds me, a river of red like love. Ella, from the door, walks atop the red water like I always knew she could. She lights a lovely match. The flame is radiant.

BIO: Jamie Grefe lives and works in Beijing, China where he writes and teaches. His work is up at Mud Luscious, Pure Francis, Wonderfort, Danse Macabre and elsewhere.