Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

He was then nearly as large as he was now, with long curly hair, Neanderthal eyebrows grown together and a round face that paradoxically seemed kind as long as he didn’t smile or laugh. When he did, his expression-in fact usually one of bewilderment-appeared to be pure malice. He had no friends.

Michael was therefore surprised, one gray March Sunday, to hear a knock on his door. He hadn’t showered for several weeks and had been wearing the same jeans and shirt for nearly a month. No one could remember, he least of all, when he had last cleaned the room. His roommate had long ago escaped to a girlfriend’s apartment, a desertion that delighted Michael, who was certain that the student had been taking pictures of him while he slept. On this Sunday he’d spent two hours hunched over his desk, repeatedly reading T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He found this task was like trying to read a block of wood.

“Yo, Mike.”

“Who is it?”

The visitors were two students-juniors who lived in the dorm. Michael stood in the open door, gazing at them suspiciously. They smiled their clean-cut smiles and asked how he was doing. Michael stared at them and said nothing.

“Mikey, you’re working too hard. Come on. We got a party in the rec room.”

“Have something to eat, come on.”

“I have to study !” he whined.

“Naw, naw, come on… Let’s party. You’re working too totally hard, man. Have something to eat.”

Well, Michael did like to eat. He ate three big meals a day and snacked constantly. He also tended to acquiesce to people’s requests; if he didn’t-if he refused to do what they wanted-his gut erupted with fiery bursts of worry. What would they think about him? What would they say ?

“Maybe.”

“Hey, excellent. Party down!”

So Michael reluctantly followed the two young men down the hall toward the dorm’s common room, where a loud party was in progress. As they passed a darkened bedroom the juniors paused to let Michael precede them. They suddenly swiveled and pushed him into the room, slamming the door shut and tying it closed.

Michael howled in panic, tugging furiously at the knob. He stumbled, looking unsuccessfully for a light. He stormed to the window, ripped down the shade and was about to break the glass and jump forty feet to the grass lawn when he noticed the room’s other occupant. He’d seen her at one or two parties. She was an overweight freshman with a round face and curly hair cut very short. She had thick ankles and wore a dozen bracelets around her pudgy wrists. The girl was passed-out drunk, lying on the bed, skirt up to her waist. She wore no panties. Her hand held a glass that contained the dregs of orange juice and vodka. She had apparently regained consciousness long enough to vomit then passed out again.

Michael leaned close and studied her. Instantly, the sight of her genitals (his first glimpse of female private anatomy) and the smell of liquor and puke sent him into paroxysms of fear. He screamed at the insensible girl, “What are you doing to me?” Then he flung himself into the door again and again, the huge noise resounding throughout the dormitory. In the hallway outside, laughter pealed. Michael fell back onto the bed, hyperventilating. Claustrophobia clutched him and sweat flowed from every pore. A moment later his mind mercifully shut down and his vision went black. The next thing he remembered was the cruel grip of two security guards, brutally pulling him to his feet. The now-conscious girl, tugging down her skirt, was screaming. Michael’s pants were undone and his limp penis hung out, cut and bloodied by the zipper of his trousers.

Michael recalled nothing of what had happened. The girl claimed she had just gone to bed, having caught the flu. She’d opened her eyes and found Michael spreading her legs and penetrating her violently, despite her desperate protests. Police were called, parents notified. Michael spent the night in jail, under the cautious eye of two very uncomfortable deputies, unprepared for a prisoner who glared at them and threatened to make them “dead fuckers” if they didn’t bring him a history book from his room.

The evidence was in conflict. Although there were traces of three different condom lubricants found in and around the girl’s vagina, Michael wasn’t wearing a condom when the guards captured him nor were any located in the room. The defense lawyer’s tack was that the girl herself had lifted Michael’s penis from his jeans and alleged rape, rather than admit that she’d taken on a succession of students after drinking herself semiconscious-a theory that, while politically incorrect, might very well have appealed to the jury.

On the other hand there were several purported witnesses to the crime, including the girl herself. Then too Michael had threatened or glared at half the campus at one time or another-particularly women.

But the most damning evidence of all: Michael Hrubek himself-a big, scary boy, more than twice the girl’s size, who’d been caught, the prosecutor was only too pleased to point out, with his pants down. Nailing shut his own coffin, Michael grew incoherent after the incident and began to mutter violent epithets. Taking the stand in court would have been a disaster. The lawyer pled him down to one count of sexual assault and he was given probation on condition that he withdraw from school and voluntarily commit himself to a state hospital near his home, where he’d undergo a treatment program for violent sex offenders.

After six months he was discharged from the hospital and returned to his parents’ home.

Once he was back in Westbury, reason and madness rapidly began to merge. One day, the autumn after the rape, Michael announced to his mother that he wanted to return to college. He added, “I’m only going to take history. They better let me do that. Oh, and I want to become a priest. I’m not going to study anything else. No math, no English, no al-ge- bra ! Just fucking forget about it! I’m only going to study history. ”

His bleary-eyed mother, lolling in her unmade bed, her blond hair stiff as straw, laughed in astonishment at his demands. “Go back to college? Are you serious? Look what you did! Do you know what you did to that girl?”

No, Michael didn’t know what he’d done. He had no idea. All he remembered was some girl lying about him and because of that he’d been forced to abandon his precious history classes. “She’s a fucker! She lied! Why can’t I go back? Aren’t I fashionable enough to go to school? Well, aren’t I? Priests are very fashionable. Someday I’ll write a his -tory about them. They often fuck little boys, you know.”

“Go to your room!” his mother tearfully shouted, and he-a man in his twenties, a man twice her size-scurried off like a whipped dog.

Often he’d whine, “Please? I want to go back to school !” He promised to study hard and become one fucker of a priest to make her happy. He said he’d wear a crown of thorns on his bloody head and make people rise from their graves.

“Jesus wore thorns because He rose from the dead,” he explained one day to her. “That’s why roses have thorns.”

“I’m going out, Michael,” she would cry.

“Are you go -ing to run away from me? Where are you go -ing? To al-ge- bra class? Are you going to wear a bra while a priest fucks you?”

His mother left the house. She no longer called him her little soldier boy. She no longer had nails as red as burning cigarette embers, and the masks of her eyes often ran in streaks down the matte skin of her cheeks.

Oh, Mama, what are you wearing? Take that hat off your head. Take off that crown. All those bloody thorns! I don’t like that, not one bit. Please! I’m sorry for what I said about you and the soldiers. Please, please, please, take that off!