Mark Doten - The Infernal

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wife and I frozen, cheek-to-cheek.

Now, I had no recollection of searching for that. None. But say I did. Sure, you’re on the Internet, you’ve got some time, you search all sorts of things. I’ll concede there’s only one conclusion: I must have been the one who’d typed in GAY RAPE. What are the options? Cat burglar did it? My wife? So, say it was me. I do not apologize for it, I do not excuse it, what the hell. You’re on the Internet, you’ve got time, you search for this and that.

“Your dress,” I said. “Man, do I love that dress.”

The question was, do I make a joke out of it? It was like I’d been blown to bits, but now all the pieces were reassembling back in my own head, more or less, and I could see the options: pretend it had never happened, tacitly acknowledge it, or just go ahead and discuss it, either jokingly or in all seriousness.

“My anniversary dress, babe,” she said.

And I felt a moment opening when we could go in any direction — when we could say just about anything, and it would be OK.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “You call up the sitter. Give Jenny a call. See if she can get here in an hour or so. I’m going to get us reservations. Not necessarily the Gallant Arms. I’ll try, but the important thing is you and me. And now I am getting hungry.”

The monitor crackled.

“Is that Charlie?” she said. “My baby,” she said. And disappeared up the stairs.

I didn’t mess around. Found the phone number, picked up the phone, and dialed.

“Table for two,” I said. “About ninety minutes from now. Say two hours.”

Laughter wheezed out over the line.

“Now just a minute here,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sir. I thought you were joking. No, I regret to inform you that a table tonight would be impossible.”

I didn’t understand what he meant — them not having a table tonight, on my anniversary. I said, “Look here, we’re not just showing up to split a couple appetizers. You’re talking about three hundred bucks, minimum. Tax and tip we might go nearly to four hundred dollars. And you’re telling me that you can’t accommodate—”

“But sir, it’s Valentine’s Day.”

“No,” I said, “it’s my anniversary.”

“I hate to correct you, sir, but it’s Valentine’s Day.”

I thought about this.

“Yes,” I said, “of course it’s Valentine’s Day.” I said, “Our anniversary’s on Valentine’s Day.

“I’m sorry indeed that we can’t accommodate you tonight.”

“My wife — she insisted. She said she wanted to get married on the most romantic day possible.”

“Very endearing, sir.”

“When she first mentioned it, I wondered if it was some sort of black-people thing. My wife is black. And I’d never heard of anyone getting married on Valentine’s Day. To this day, I have no idea if it’s a black-people thing. It’s not the kind of thing you can ask your black wife when you’re not black, right?”

“Possibly wise, sir.”

“Sleeping dogs.”

“Aptly put, sir.”

“You just think of all the differences — the cultural ones. I mean, LI#DR R 3 GBCT4AF207

always learning stuff. Which is great! But there’s also the … the sleeping dogs? Oh my god, the sleeping dogs.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir.”

“For instance, how she can use the n-word, and I can’t. Makes sense! I’m not complaining. It’s just interesting how it plays out — how and when she uses it, I always sort of file it away, because I find it interesting.”

I kept with that subject for a while. I was starting to get somewhere — pushing into new territory and really figuring it all out Y 1X 660#6TQK 6 OXYR P6QC 1AT=0P5I6ZX4

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stopped me. He said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I’m having a dreadful time trying to make out what you’re saying. I hope you’ll excuse me for putting it to you so directly, but are you perhaps speaking with a mouthful of maggots?”

I tried to force a response, but no go. I mean, I couldn’t get a word out. It was like my whole throat was jammed, and I felt my face going red, I was trying to cough but my windpipe was full, mouth full, head and neck stuffed full. I slammed down the phone and ran to the bathroom. I locked the door and turned on the vanity light — two bulbs were out, I made a mental note to change them, to buy bulbs later, if we needed them — and opened wide.

Sure enough, a mass of pale maggots was churning behind my lips and teeth. I could feel them packed under my tongue, maggots butting their heads against molars, pulling themselves over the teeth and working their way between jawbone and cheeks.

A solid, churning mass, all the way back past my gag reflex — all the way into my throat.

I couldn’t shut my mouth once I’d opened it, I was just too stuffed full of maggots. I dropped my head to the toilet and vomited the load out of my throat and oral cavity, I spat and with my index finger scooped them from my stuffed mouth. The front of my face, my jaw and nostrils, I kept below the level of the bowl’s rim, so I didn’t risk landing any outside the toilet. Hundreds of maggots, big fat ones. They wriggled and spun, then sank, a tankful of maggots curling in on themselves or stretching again to full length, tiny feet groping for something to hold on to they no longer had.

I don’t know how long I knelt there, maggots pouring from my mouth. Toilet water spattered, dripping off my eyes and nose and mouth. The water rose several inches as I worked, until it was almost to my face. I wanted to close both eyes, but I couldn’t, I had to keep watching the maggots, a twisting mass that seemed on the verge of coalescing only to break apart again, long plump maggots tumbling by the dozen from my mouth. I screwed one eye open. Had to be sure none of them escaped, maggots drawing into a brain-like mass and drifting apart, an intake and an exhalation, water spattering.

At last my mouth felt cleaned out. I flushed, then JFCP EB0YBS RQGVF

one lightbulb was enough, no matter that two were burned out. Gray fuzzed their upper halves — I wished my wife would be more attentive to the dusting. But it was my job to buy the bulbs and replace them, so we were about even.

I craned my neck, peering one way then another into the mouth cavity.

I plucked the last few maggots and tossed them in the bowl. The last few loose ones, I mean. Then I went to work on five or six at the root of my tongue, half-buried in the pink tissue, flailing fat bodies that I sheared off with my right thumbnail. The other halves stayed buried, creamy white circles staring up from under my tongue like a row of eyes.

Hard to know.

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I mean, sometimes I wonder. For instance, about my wife. She’s a dental technician, and one thing I do worry about is AIDS. I’m sure if I brought up my concerns, she’d just come back with a bunch of statistics. You hear stories, though. Maybe more in the past than now.

Facts, though. What can be verified? Because the maggots were part of our problem. I mean, even if my wife didn’t know about them — I hoped she didn’t— I knew about them, and me not saying anything was what I’d seen referred to in a magazine as emotional infidelity.

So lets talk facts. Say for instance I didn’t have the maggots before I went to Iraq.