Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

DAVID J. SCHOW Why Rudy Can’t Read

Rudy skinned his knuckles on Teresa’s teeth when he backhanded her, but it was only a quick spasm of pain and two dots of blood. Teresa would fix things up later. She always did. If he didn’t fucking kill her this time.

‘Shit! Puta! You bang some fucking guy in our own bed?! You’re so fucking stupid I see condom wrappers in the fucking bathroom?! Bitch, you’re too fucking stupid to live!’

Teresa felt her eye swell shut and tasted her own blood. She registered the blows but did not care about them. Rudy would entertain no protest. He was like that when he got mad, but otherwise he was an okay guy. He stuffed her panties into her mouth and anally raped her. Whenever she twitched or made an unsolicited sound, he chopped her sharply across the back of the neck until her eyes rolled up and she finally swooned into unconsciousness.

She woke up as he dragged her by the hair and dumped her into the shower. ‘Clean yourself up, whore.’

Rudy hit the sack and would sleep for at least twelve straight hours. The advantage — sometimes — of Rudy’s odd talent was that he needed lots of sleep, to recharge.

Slowly, methodically, Teresa began by touching her split lip. The scab there was gelid, half-formed. It withdrew as the swelling receded. She undid the contusion on her eye by stroking it with her index and middle fingers together. The fingers themselves ceased to throb, and healed. She dealt with her torn and damaged rectum, then repaired her womb. She had done it before, when Rudy had got her pregnant. With a touch, she caused sperm and egg to magically separate. There was no wayward tissue to evacuate. In ten minutes, she was whole again, and well enough to bathe.

Lavishing her power on herself had exhausted her reserves. It tired her out, made her no better than Rudy. She, too, would need sleep.

Her toilet completed, she crawled naked into bed next to Rudy, who grunted and draped one arm over her hipbone. She touched his bloody knuckles and they healed right up. He’d be a different man when he woke up, and they’d probably make love.

She couldn’t see any reason to tell him her infidelity had occurred nowhere but inside her own mind.

Sometimes Rudy was happy that he could not actually ‘read’ people’s minds in the mystical sense, that is, inhabit their thoughts, like in pulp stories or movies. What he could do was more akin to skimming the surface of another consciousness — a stowaway, gleaning emotional textures, not a spy, excising deep, dark secrets whole. This made him a great winner at poker, but lousy at the track. He could not tell the future, nor tell you what you were thinking. He perceived tonalities, attitudes, colorations of feeling augmented by the occasional clear snapshot image. It was enough to keep him from working a legit job, or what the flim-flammers would call an honest con. It kept him in snack foods and cable.

It kept Teresa, too, if only by the card logic of two-of-a-kind. With some fast talk, he could keep her convinced that they belonged together for no other reason than they both had special, secret abilities; God-given or accidental or genetic did not matter. Their alignment might achieve, for them, some higher plane or evolutionary plateau… whatever was supposed to come next in this world for all the people who lacked even the distinction of a special power.

Rudy had come home after piggybacking the idiots at a poker-and-pan casino. They thought so much about their meagre hands it was simple for him to scrape intentions away as the thoughts rose towards autonomic function. When bad bluffers tried to stand pat, feelings were enough to suffice. Rudy cleaned them out with a smile and wished them well; average losses combined with his affable manner usually inspired well-banked suckers to belly up for at least one more bloodletting.

The work left little room for Teresa, sometimes.

Rudy hated his victims. His rage was a dull, toxic beast inside him, itching to lash out at anything, living or inert, that gave offence. He ached to murder the imbeciles ahead of him at traffic lights. He itched to kill the motherfuckers in the express lane at the market. He wanted to eviscerate anyone who wore a badge or had the authority to say no to him. Mostly, Rudy’s life was a study of dangerous stress versus thin restraints. Mostly, Rudy held stony, and watched his lip. And mostly, while he raged alone in the private darkness of his own psyche, he was under constant assault by leakage, from the skulls of everyone around him. He sensed the tips and tails of pedestrian feelings… and raged all the more, because he knew that even total strangers wanted to kill him, too.

Except for Teresa.

What restrained him was the innate sense of superiority that came with his power. He obsessed over the reasons for his half-baked ability, this incomplete talent. He wanted a rationale, a ‘why-him’. Linking up with Teresa was a matter of common sense. She might help him two steps closer to whatever the goal of his life might be. Possibilities were practically engraved in granite, amongst his aspirations: He was destined to become stronger, and through refinement would realise his purpose. Or: he’d remain this way, partially advantaged. Or: the power was temporary, and might vanish any time. Maybe the Earth had passed through some kind of cosmic belt, or perhaps he’d been dosed or poisoned, and the unintended ability would peter out. If it did recede, then he’d revert to being just like any other schmuck, and would have to survive by his wits — as he had in his previous life — but with the added lessons learned from sneaking into the heads of strangers.

Finding Teresa was proof that he was on the correct track, almost enough to let him acknowledge a higher power, as strangers had once counselled him to do in an anger management group, long ago.

Drama, however, could twist its own way, and when Rudy had returned home, and looked deeply into Teresa’s eyes, and seen the passing fancy there, and accelerated to the conclusion that she had fucked another man… Rudy lost it one more time. It seemed that whenever he strove hardest for control, his temper always sabotaged him. It wasn’t his fault, it was people — stupid fucking sneaky small petty goddamn people, always screwing up and never suspecting the approach of a man who could read the signposts of their mistakes and guilt the way a poet reads verse. It was all in the interpretation.

Give me more power, he thought as he fell asleep. Or take it away… but please don’t leave me like this, halfway, half-assed half-cocked. It was almost maddening enough to make any other lapsed Catholic pluck up the cross again.

As Teresa neared sleep, whole once more, she thought of the trouble she’d just shared with Rudy. Once she was sure Rudy was asleep, she reflected on what otherwise would have been hazardous thoughts.

Earlier that day, she had watched Señora Espinoza, examining the furrows and lines which bespoke the years of her life. For a moment, she felt as she imagined Rudy must feel, whenever contact was made with another person’s emotions. She read pain and loss and strife in the history of Señora Espinoza; a lifetime of reaching, a paucity of attainment, a guttering faith in a Church that promised rewards too late. Where her aged visage should have evidenced rich experience and fulfilment, Teresa perceived denial and disappointment. Years closer to death, Señora Espinoza’s face showed her more puzzlement than wisdom, more sadness than wholeness. It appeared that things would only get worse, until all the old woman had was the final betrayal of her chosen god.

‘Chocolate?’ Señora Espinoza tended a denty pot that had just begun to bubble. She pronounced the word properly, four syllables. ‘It’s better to have something warm to drink, since I think it’s time we talked of a few things.’

Nailed, thought Teresa, who had wrought the same minor miracles too often for the same set of beneficiaries. There was no chance Señora Espinoza would allow her a graceful escape. Teresa was not Supergirl, and had been denied the timely advantage of flying away once her good deeds were done. Now her talent begged an explanation, a quiz whose score could force her into a secretiveness she did not wish to suffer.

‘A hundred years ago, you would have been sainted,’ said Señora Espinoza. ‘I don’t want to know how you do it, or why. I need to ask something deeper. I hope you do not take offence at my asking.’

Surprised by this trajectory of enquiry, Teresa shook her head. Agreeability was the bane of her life. She never objected to things enough.

‘You are a beautiful child. You have a special gift, so much to offer the world.’ Bluntly, the old woman fixed her with a clear gaze. ‘Why do you stay with that Rudy Paz? He is not a good man. He hits you, he yells, he is — what is the word today? — abusive. I have seen a thousand of his type in my life, and they never come to good ends. No good. He takes. He does not give, as you do. I know these things. I do not have to bear witness to know. So, why? Why you?’

The truth had long sought an outlet in Teresa, and her own small measure of hope coerced a confession of sorts. If she had bothered to know Señora Espinoza past her recurrent crippling arthritis, the truth might have come so easily today. She wrung her healing hands. She was searching for the head of the serpent which coiled all around her life; decanting its ambient venom, long felt yet never specified, and words came hesitantly.

‘Dona, it is a painful thing to explain. The best way I can think of is this: you know the magic I work for you?’

‘You take away the pain.’ Señora Espinoza flexed her hands.

‘Yes. Rudy has such a pain, too, but he carries it in his heart. His soul is ill. The man you perceive is not Rudy Paz’s fault. His family, his upbringing, tragedies. They twisted him into the man you perceive. The hitter, the yeller. And I keep thinking, if I have the power to heal hurt things, I must be able to heal Rudy. To heal him inside, to repair him so he is once again the man with whom I fell in love.’

‘You love him still?’

Teresa nodded. She could not actually force the words out. This was more difficult than she had anticipated. Perhaps she should try telling this to an analyst.

Señora Espinoza was full of surprises. She saw right through Teresa, and Teresa, it seemed, could not read people as well as she thought.

Later that afternoon, at the market, she had briefly returned the casual smile of a handsome man browsing in the produce section. It took all of five seconds to engage a brief sexual fantasy about this stranger, a harmless momentary diversion. As a girlfriend had told her, when you stop looking, you’re dead.

The image was still in her mind when Rudy had come home. The bed, the condoms, the sex had all been components of the fantasy, and he had collected them like books off an easy-to-reach shelf. This raised the unsettling possibility that perhaps Rudy’s perceptions were growing stronger.

His sleeping arm was still in contact with her flesh, and that kept her from finding slumber for a few moments longer.

Sexual arousal fogged Rudy’s ‘read’, a factor of Teresa’s strategy the next day. If he saw her intent, like a Post-It note on the surface of her mind, he might get mad. She circumvented this hazard by waking first.

By the time his eyes opened, she had already taken him in her mouth, deep and slickly. Teresa knew of no more instant and intimate connection with another human than lovemaking, and what had befallen them both last night could not be called that. This time would be different.

His movements still dopey, his vision unfocused, Rudy exhaled his dreams and drew in air from the new day. His hands found her body with tropistic familiarity and engaged her skin with the warmth of need. She had removed more than his physical hurts, after her own, and now, refuelled by sleep, his touch was nothing but loving, as electric as ever.

Her goal ran further than the temporary removal of the pain, the anger. She knew a Band-Aid fix would only yield more pain for both of them. She had to exert control and not lose her head to lust, not tip over so far that Rudy might glimpse her intent.

She swung her leg over and gave him a splendid view of her ass as she backed onto him, engulfing his cock to the bone. Rudy ground his teeth and alternated between massaging her butt and clenching the borders of the mattress. He was awake now, damned sure.

It was essentially the same position used for rape less than a day ago — rotated ninety degrees, and divested of harm.

Teresa turned again on well-stretched muscles, keeping Rudy inside her, now meeting his gaze and commencing a quick, scooping thrust that shallowed his breath. With Rudy, there was a heartbeat before orgasm during which his entire body would tighten up, as if on the brink of falling off a very high cliff, a sort of diver’s tension Teresa knew well. She had to be alert for it. Her own first climax was a teasing little curl of sensation that was busy racing along on its own timetable, and she could not permit it to distract her, just this once.

She felt him tighten up, and broke rhythm precisely on the beat, rising up so he was almost entirely outside her… then surging definitively down, gorging him as she clasped his head in both hands and, with her mind, pulled as hard as she could.

The delirious abrasion and tactile immediacy of Rudy’s ejaculation sped her up and, unexpectedly, tipped her over, flooding her nerves with hot electricity. They rarely came simultaneously; that was an unrealistic cliché, a sort of porno movie gag they both mocked. But sometimes it actually happened that way, and this time it was happening exactly that way, as she felt his whole body, flexed hard as a fist, giving her everything he had as one of those little-death cries escaped him.

It was like getting hit by a wave and swept down by the undertow. Teresa grabbed him hard enough to leave bruises, and bit her lower lip, freeing blood, and hung on, and cried out herself.

He brought her a towel and a drink and a warm washcloth, and they stayed lazily tangled up for a while, as though the rest of the day did not matter.

She collected her wits and then, purposefully, replayed their love-making in her mind, superimposing the face of that anonymous guy in the market over Rudy’s. That man who hadn’t even been a flirtation, and who had, in total innocence, got her battered.

Rudy just smiled at her, stroking her hair. When he returned her fulsome gaze she felt sure he could see her trick, would plunge quickly towards a different kind of heat. He just kept looking at her, frankly, the way he’d stare if they were strangers and this was love at first sight. The conceit was nice but Teresa knew that love was a process of learning another person, and that took time, which was why she had stuck by Rudy even through the bitter times, the harsh and hitting times. You needed time, and caution, and tolerance, and if you did it right, you earned love. Surely Rudy understood that, but he just kept looking at her, and it was beginning to irritate her.

‘What?’ she said, suddenly self-conscious.

‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘Yesterday I was drowning in anger, I was like a lit fuse, and I wished as hard as I could for things to change… and I think I got my wish, because I’m trying to read you right now and I can’t get a thing.’

‘Really?’

He swallowed and nodded. ‘For real. You know something else? It doesn’t matter. As long as I’ve got you, the rest doesn’t matter.’

Abruptly, she realised the rage had been successfully drained from him. It was like watching a film projected on glass, through which she could perceive Rudy’s face. She was reading two inputs. She knew her own expression must be absurdly blank. Not wanting to give herself away, she covered quickly by answering him with a kiss, and retreating to the bathroom.

Her lip still stung from her passion-chomp, and ministering to it would be a light task. She watched her mirror reflection touch healing finger to mouth. Nothing happened.

She tried again, concentrating. More nothing.

What she experienced instead was Rudy’s final thought as he dozed off, as clear, to her, as an announcement on a PA speaker. He would never hit her again. He no longer had it in him. He was penitent, and hopeful.

Which kind of pissed Teresa off. Rudy’s new attitude did not excuse what he’d done to her, last night and all occasions prior. He had loosened her teeth, blackened an eye, then rammed her until her asshole was bleeding. The big crybaby tragedy of Teresa’s life was that she never objected enough when shit was pulled on her, and Rudy had pulled a shitload. How dare that motherfucker beat her up, rape her, and then give her born-again doe eyes as an excuse the very next fucking morning?

Eyes narrowed, she cracked the door and peered out. The asshole was already asleep. Teresa noticed the baseball bat cocked against the jamb, Rudy’s idea of budget security. He’d never used it on her. With Rudy it was fists, kicks, backhands, choking. Manual labour.

He’d fallen asleep thinking he would never touch her in anger again.

‘That’s for goddamn sure,’ she muttered.

Rudy’s eyes fluttered open just in time to register the fat end of the bat, splitting his forehead. He could fix things up later. If he lived.