A. Homes - The End of Alice

For four days I have been the world’s best boy.

It is morning, I am reading, my virtue is high; however, the mind wanders, I daydream. Before my eyes is Philadelphia, her dress pulled up. I see a splash of hair that I didn’t remember until now. It comes off as quite charming, really rather endearing, a furry dot that marks the spot. My thoughts disconcert me. I don’t like hair. I know I don’t like hair.

Read.

I will myself back to the words.

Something dashes by.

Bam! Bam! Bam! I wonder how long that’s been going on. A heavy knock, a pounding at the door. And I notice that I’ve buttoned my shirt wrong. I hurry to do it again. Uncoordinated — it’s been a long time since I worked anything into such small holes.

“Assume the position,” a muffled voice commands me. “Hands behind your back, legs spread, back to the door. Freeze.”

Prison.

A flash like the explosion of a photo cube, the blue dot left in front of the eye. I see a girl. A girl, I blink. Again. The girl is still there. I am being tempted, teased.

Concentrate. The silence of the first few days, the extremity of being alone, is excruciating. All I hear is myself, louder and louder, faster and faster, until I surrender, until I can bear to hear nothing at all. Silence.

A rare memory: my father’s undershirt, white ribbed, sleeveless, rests on the chair. I put it on, it hangs to the floor. My mother laughs. “Your dress,” she says, and we dance around the room. “Your ball gown is sweeping the floor.”

I cannot escape myself.

The lake. I swim in the lake. It is the one place I go where I cannot think, nothing enters my head except the sensation, the pain of the cold water. Forcing myself to swim, I go round and round in circles, praying I do not have a cramp or a heart attack. Although the water is not deep, one could easily drown. I swim naked, buck naked: my nakedness is proof I have nothing to hide.

I wish to thoroughly reveal myself.

A fever. My thoughts are filled with the odd imaginings of a heated head.

My mother’s face changes with her mood, dissolving while she sleeps. She is beautiful in her dreams. Awake, a streak of bright red lipstick splits her mouth, splashes her teeth. She kisses me and I go outside stained, the impression of her mouth everywhere.

There are noises in the woods. Something is out there watching me. They are watching me and I am writing it down. Hidden in my words are confessions. They are closing in. I feel the cold eye of a magnifying glass, a scope. I am writing down the very words I should destroy.

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.

Dinner. Fish. A bit of flounder. String beans almondine, baked potato.

A pinch of marjoram.

Again the heavy knock, pounding at the door. “Follow the instructions. Assume the position,” a muffled voice commands me. Where is the sergeant, my friend? I struggle to stand, to do what they ask.

I think I see something. I will catch them at their game, get them watching me. On the windowpane is the wet press, the mark from where a nose was all too recently laid.

I’m not sure if I’m seeing this or dreaming it; she stares at me. There is war paint on her face.

Hearing something, I call, “Hello, hello, is anybody out there?”

There is no answer.

The fever becomes a summer cold, my head aches, I am sneezing constantly. I take aspirin and Scotch and continue with the routine.

They are up there in the hills, a camouflaged commando with a bullhorn and a bullet. I wait for the sound, the amplified bellow of a human bark. “We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up. The building is surrounded. There is no way out. I repeat, there is no way out. You have until the count of ten.”

One, two, three, what will I do? Will I give up graciously, be led away screaming, or do I attempt an escape?

What excuse could I give, what feeble apology might I offer?

I am what I am.

The day comes and goes.

I keep to my routine. The imagery of my eleven o’clock session is thoroughly depleting.

Promptly at one, I take my towel to the lake, stripping near the water, neatly draping my clothing over the low branch of a tree. I force myself in. It is cold, it is bitter cold, painfully cold, so cold that all one can think of is the cold. I swim in circles until I am numb, until there is nothing left. It is torture. Sheer hell. I love it. Breathless, I walk out of the water, my body shriveled, pulled tight against the bones.

Naked by the lake is how she found me. She is there on the beach, standing between me and my clothing. I turn away, overcome with false modesty. She watches. She wears war paint and carries a quiver filled with white arrows ending in blue suction cups and a bow to match. She giggles and makes a gesture that points to my shriveled self down below.

She finds me amusing.

Her amusement I find humiliating, arousing.

I instantly want to do something — to silence that stupid giggling.

She collapses, beside herself with glee.

I say something sharp like, “Quiet, you little fool.” Followed by this interdiction: “Have you no manners? When you come upon someone in their nakedness, you should pretend you have seen no such thing. You act as if you have come upon someone dressed in white tails. And if you are compelled to comment, you address the person by saying something along the lines of, ‘My, you’re looking well today.’ ”

“You’re my captive, my prisoner,” she says, still half-laughing.

If only she knew how true it was.

She points to a hearty oak tree. “I must tie you up. Will you go easily?”

What choice do I have, she has won my heart instantly. I pretend to play along.

“You mustn’t come so close. Perhaps on my person I have a hidden gun, you might get shot, wounded by my release.”

“And where would you hide such a weapon?”

“You never know.”

“Then that’s the price I pay,” she says, yanking my arms behind my back, exposing me. She produces a coil of rope — the tickling touch of her small, clammy hands causes blood to rush from my head. My knees buckle beneath me.

“Your totem pole rises,” she says, referring to the state of my nakedness. I am thawing from the freeze.

So it does.

She jerks my arms tighter behind my back, showing herself to be surprisingly strong and quite adept, if not practiced, at the art of knot tying. “You’re a trespasser on my land,” she says. “This is my great-grandfather’s forest.”

“But I’ve taken a summer’s rental.” She is bent at my feet, binding my ankles to the tree. “One of your relatives has taken five hundred dollars from me so that I might enjoy myself until Labor Day.”

“I’ve heard nothing about it,” she says, wrapping the length of rope around my ankles.

“Is this the way you win your friends?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I take it you’re a popular girl?”

She looks at me. “Have you any goods you might buy your freedom with?”

I shake my head.

“Ruby, darling, gemstone, littlest one, where are you?” A woman’s voice echoes through the woods.

“I’m hiding,” she calls back.

“Where are you?”

“I’m hiding.”

“I’m driving into town to buy you a little something, do you want to pick it out yourself? Where are you?”

“Coming,” she screams, and quickly rounds up quiver, her bow, her remaining supplies, and takes off up the hill, leaving me tied to the tree. “See you later,” she calls to me.

The ease with which she abandons me is thrilling, as is the seriousness of her game. I am naked in the New Hampshire woods thoroughly tied to a tree. She is not joking. My shoulders are stretched in their sockets, my wrists aching. The rough bark rubs my buttocks raw as I wiggle trying to free myself. I have been bound and tied by a wicked wood nymph. I writhe. My tumescence rises farther still, stimulated by my situation. A breeze stirs the trees, sweeping over, tickling, like tonguing me right there. I sneeze first, then cum, shooting off aimlessly into the afternoon.