A. Homes - The End of Alice

I turn to Frazier, rattle my chains, and say, “She left a butterfly outside my door. Hoary Elfin is its name.”

A gold report divides the sky.

High, so high. I am the sky, the jet-black night. It is me turned inside out. I am taking this great salute as a tribute to my years, my fine accomplishments. It is so. It is such. Thank you. Thank you so much. Free. Free within myself, unbound, time to spread the word around. Soon I will be out there further still, tap, tapping on your windowsill. It is time for me to take my leave. Here, there is nothing left for me.

That this seems so much like an end is an error, a great mistake. I am at the beginning and about to start again. I resolve to meet her soon.

And where is she on this great night?

Oh, I know all too well she’s with him. She spends this liberation day with the boy, the toy, on a pseudodate. He has taken her, or she has taken him — the logistics are no matter, they’re both guilty as sin. Fucking in the sand trap at their fathers’ country club, while overhead similar pyrotechnics do parade. They are not alone, but with his friends. She fucks him first, their own sideshow, and then she fucks all three, the lardy boy from before and the big one with the beakish nose. She fucks them once, twice, three, and more, and you cringe when I call her a whore. For now I am trapped behind these walls, but she is making do — three scrawny cocks, thirty dirty fingers, sticking something in every orifice, lucky little dicks. God, I hate these chains about my legs.

A manganese of white light explodes against the night.

Mama is dead. The telephone rings. My grandmother answers it, listens, then hangs up, turns to me, and says, “Gone. She went over, off the road at the Panoramic View, near the steak house. Dead.” Mama is gone. She has left me with a woman who only keeps me because it would be more embarrassing not to. My fault. All my fault. You can’t convince me differently. The howling begins. A wail. A siren that never goes off, only grows more distant and more near, a constant warble in my ears. Without trying, without even knowing, without an effort, with only a plea, no, a kind of pathetic begging, no, with nothing but my presence, my person, my love for her, I was drawn in, implicated, involved. And despite my will, the will to remain who I was, as I was, there was confusion, uncertainty, the weakness of my person and then an unknowing of my will. Yes, it did happen, all of it happened. Desire confused itself, and while I once was sure that I had not, I became equally sure that I had — one often gets what one wants. I am her murderer. Believe me.

I try to stand but am pulled down; my steel jewelry prevents me from walking around. Out. I want only to be released, or if nothing else, to be taken back inside. I need to think, to pace. These thick restraints on my arms and legs cripple me, and suddenly I am sure I will spend my life in chains — that is their plan for me. Little do they know, I think differently.

Black-powder bang. Floral fireballs, flowers bloom in the sky.

Fury and frustration. Tremble. Shake. Stomach rises with bile, with the bilge of it all. There is pain.

I know who I am. I dance around it, use my words, my refraction, to obscure what is excruciatingly clear. Were I not to hide, to cloak and clothe myself, it would be unbearable for all — and I include you in this. The reptilian repulsive; even I don’t like the look of me.

Where is she when I need her most? Sick, just sick, I am turning on myself.

Something spins in my gut, I don’t know what. “Guard, guard,” I call, but there is no response, save the repetitious report, the final barrage, a billion blasts, a thousand rounds. The sky is bleached pale white. The concussion ricochets off the walls.

Grand finale. I lean forward and vomit into the dirt.

On either side of me, Frazier and Kleinman pull away, tugging at my tired chains, forgetting we are joined. They are stretching me as if to split me. Vivisection. My vomit steams, yellow, red, and green.

There is a great round of applause.

The lights go on. The night disappears. “It was your goop the other day,” Frazier says as we’re getting up.

I shake my head. “No, not then, just now.”

Going back inside, the chink-a-chink-a walk, shimmying shake, shiver of our synchronicity, becomes a raucous rattle, a rowdy rumble that makes my head ache.

On the wall someone has taped a handmade sign: “While you were out, your unit was sprayed with an insecticide which kills roaches, fleas, ants, and flies. However, it is not harmful to human beings.”

Extermination. We have been sprayed with a killer cologne, another in their series of experiments. During the night, those of us not quite right will start to twitch and writhe. Chemical warfare. I didn’t think it could happen here. Bells ring — a clever death knell.

We cough, choke, and gag.

In ever corner of every room, there’s a puddle of the stuff. A squirt of it like someone pissed foul. Again, I vomit.

“Are you okay?” Clayton asks. I have no answers for such stupid questions. “Did you eat the Cracker Jacks? You could sue for that.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Quite fine, better than before.” Clayton takes me down the hall to the showers and splashes cold water on my face. I rinse out my mouth, sputter, and speak as if I’ve been drowned. The Declaration she sent still spins in my head:

“Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity…. The History of the present King… a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over… thee.”

Clayton throws me against the wall, my face flush to the battleship gray, the texture of the cinder block embossing my cheek.

“I want to fuck you here and now,” he says, pulling at my pants. “Are you sick enough for that?”

I am spread against the wall as if to be frisked, my legs kicked apart, the pants down. Men walk in and out. From the corner of my eye, I see a few watching. One begins to touch himself.

I am sure this pleases Clayton, reenacts the highlights of his early career. He fucks me. Pummeled, torn from inside out, when he is done, I feel as though a rake has scraped through me. Surely I am bleeding, having a period of my own, oozing from the ass, soon to stain the seams of my shorts a deep and muddy red. It’s an inside job.

I don’t know whom to hate more, him for doing this to me or me for having let it go on for so long.

“We must, therefore, acquiesce… and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.” He fucks me and then drops to his knees, buries his head in my ass, and starts to suck my blood/his cum. Again. He’s doing it again, rimming me. Last time, I swore that if he tried it once more, I’d kill him. Wasn’t this the very act that, although enjoyed, I railed against? Too much, too good. I don’t know why, but I get hard.

Flame. I am the flame. I am the fire, the start, the burst of light, that surprising thing.

I wheel around and with strength I didn’t know I had, I bang his head against the wall, cracking it on the cinder blocks. He falls. I stun him first and then switch my role, kicking him in the gut. He is down on his hands and knees. I am behind him, stripping him. Force. I force myself against his flesh, until finally it gives way.

“Relax,” I shout into his ear.

I fuck him fiercely up the ass, fuck him like I’ve never fucked before, with everything I’ve held for years. I’ll not be the pussy anymore. A man, a man again, reclaimed. I have the power. I fuck him, fuck him and a crowd does gather. This is my chance to show them who I really am, the goods I’ve got. I do it well, do it good, do it like I didn’t know I could. I am hard and large. In and out. My loins banging against his bumper. Beneath me now, Clayton is crying. To drown him out I start to sing — it has been that kind of a day. “What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming…”