Headlights(95)

To make myself forget with her.

I take another piece of the steak, and the vibrations and pressure and cold and sound push in, but I don’t care. I don’t care at all as she opens her mouth again to receive more. As I give it to her. And as she chews, as I’m hit with another ten memories of hers, of mine, a thousand moments of a life, I do drop down. On my knees, before her, her hands still on my shoulders, more of that juice dripping down her chin. The blood coming down the shower making the room thick, metallic. Warming it up from the cold. I lift the bottom of her sweater and run my lips and my tongue along the skin above her jeans.

A thought presses in, something I feel I should know or see, or—

Animal meat. Human meat. Cows, humans. Animals. Ecosystems. Symbiotic relationships, aspen trees. Wolves. Something I’m supposed to …

But Hannah’s skin. Her stomach. Here. Right here.

I run my hands up from her hips to her waist. Lick up her stomach to her ribs. Slide my good hand up, and with one thumb, I brush the bottom of her breast. She whimpers, and I do it again. Slowly, I let it glide up to her nipple, just the edge of it. She whimpers again, and I drop my forehead to her stomach, try to collect myself. It’s so much. Too much. It’s pain and it’s fear and it’s grief and it’s heartbreak, and I have never felt this, this much want.

The floor is wet. I blink, my forehead against Hannah’s stomach. I look down at it. Try to understand. The floor, wet, beneath my knees. Dark.

I look back up to the shower. I stop, my hands on her waist, my knees in the liquid on the floor.

Blood filling the bottom of the shower, spilling out over onto the floor. Hannah’s socks are soaked with it. My knees, my shins. It can’t be real. I thought …

I reach down with one hand, touch the warm thick liquid. Hold up my hand to inspect it.

It’s blood. It’s actually—

Mom.

Shit.

Dad, grabbing her by the hair.

MOM!

Dad

“Daniel—”

Slamming her head into the sink.

MOM!

Whirring, vibrating, everything too loud. The music, pressure. Room spinning. Pressure. Blood on my hands.

My mom’s blood. It’s my mom’s blood.

She isn’t moving.

MOM! Mom, please!

“Daniel, come back.” Hands on my shoulders.

Hands pulling me out of the bathroom, they’re taking me away, taking me away from my mom, and she still isn’t moving, why won’t she answer me?

Mom, please—

“Daniel. Listen to me, you’re here, you’re not there anymore.”

Mom, please wake up! Please!

Hands, shaking my shoulders.

MOM!

Shaking me.

A face in front of me.

Hannah. I suck in a breath, can’t quite—

Motel “Daniel,” she says, Hannah says, through the music and the dizzying sound and the cold. “Shit,” she says. She turns, tries the door again, but it’s still locked. She pounds on it, yells something. I am here and not here.

I am watching them take her away, and she’s not moving. Why isn’t she moving? Please, Mom— “Come back to me. Please, Daniel. Come back.”

Hands, over my neck, my chest. The sides of my face. Down, back down my chest and my stomach and the top of my jeans. “Come back,” she says. That other-Hannah in the other-space calling me too. Two places. I’m in two places. Three.

The motel—

Hannah. Words.

“Shh, Daniel, you’re here. It’s okay.”

Hands on my chest and stomach.

Mom, please.

“Daniel, you’re not there. I’ve got you. I’m with you.”

I’m with you.

Those words. The voice … saying them.

Hannah.

I’m not there. I’m not at the Happy Inn. I’m at the Stanley Hotel, and Hannah Lawrence is in front of me, and …

I’m not there. I’m not back there.

She brought me back. Hannah did. I’m here.

Hannah, kneeling with me in this blood. She shouldn’t be here. I don’t want her in this. I push through the dizziness and stand, pull her up with me. The blood, hot, an inch thick on the ground now. I grab her waist and lift her up onto the counter.

I go to the shower, try to turn it off. It won’t stop. The blood keeps coming. I try the door again, and it’s still locked. I don’t know what to do. I look around, for a window, for anything to try and stop this. We shouldn’t have called this thing here, shouldn’t have invited it in.

These songs. This fucking music is going to make me insane, is going to— “Daniel,” Hannah says behind me, through the pressure, the sound. I turn, and she wears that anguished resigned look I’ve seen before. “I think we have to play it out,” she says. “To make it stop.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come here,” she says. And even as she says it, she steels herself again. To be close to me. To be close to anyone. In that other-space I can feel how excruciating it is for her, how much it ignites that paralyzing want. Every feeling.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

She reaches out, and I take a step forward.

She pulls me in between her knees, my thighs against the counter. Boots on bloody floor.