William Vollmann - The Royal Family

There is a certain middle distance at which the island that one is approaching, not having grown larger for a long interval, continues not to grow larger; and yet somehow you can see that it is growing larger. This is how the girl with the octopus mind now felt. She did not rage and tremble; she knew that next time she’d have him. Marshalling her reserves — well-plucked eyebrows, perfect ankles, dimples and fingernails and flashing blitzkrieg shoulders — she streaked on, following his tracks.

But once again he was out of reach of her weapons, having been conquered by another, an innocent girl who won him carelessly, almost unknowingly, simply by appearing before him like beautiful death. While the platoons of other hungry girls scoured the streets lipsticked in their reconnaissance cars, turning corners with rolled-down windows to catch unwary boys with the aching lure of a licked lip, the innocent girl mauled him with a look, holding her right hand in her left, cradling her head in her soft wave of hair, gazing at him with steady brown eyes. His will pleaded to turn away, to fatten on less dangerous prey, but a single lethal toss of her hair strangled him into silence. He could not even ransom himself from her; his best friend could not pull him home; she’d infiltrated his machine-gun nests of coldblooded charm, and a raking salvo of light from her eyebrows shattered them into stutters. Continuously firing gorgeousness upon him from her flared nostrils, she sprawled him down without even a smile. He spun as he tumbled, and his neck snapped back; his mouth gaped in a silent shriek. Then she hacked his heart to pieces.

Thoughts of her visited him all night, thickening like the echoes of her goodbye shouted from the window — her second goodbye, which came after the one by the stairs, when he’d embraced her without kissing her anymore and began to go downstairs and the innocent girl whispered to her cat: Say goodbye to him… — down the long stairs he sank to the door which he shut behind him knowing that she was at the top of the stairs watching him; he closed the door and made it sure, went down the outer stairs to the gate and closed it behind him like an astronaut leaving the airlock forever; and he began to walk into the grim loneliness of that street where a hungry man leaned into darkness watching him approach; he knew before he even passed the man that the man would stalk him for blocks; it was then that she called goodbye to him from the window. Tomorrow morning she was going away. The goodness and desperate impatience of her were being formed into some alloy as yet unknown. — (She’d told him that it was all over.)

In front of his door the girl with the octopus mind was waiting. But she could do nothing to him. He was armored against her with the ultimate armor of obliviousness.

The girl with the octopus mind, beautiful, sat in her empty bedroom with the white white walls emblazoning her shadow of need and sadness, and with all the loneliness of nakedness she knew that she was so far away from the army of other girls now that no one could help her on this last battlefield where the vultures already waited to dip their beaks in her decaying heart, and the octopus (which was really her anguish) glared inside her skull so desperately that her mind burst into throbbing flames and it stretched its suckers just as a child stretches his arms out as he begins to weep; then the child throws back his head to let mouth and tongue gape to the heavens; now he’s prepared; in the same hopeless way, the octopus shot its tendrils out in all directions, locking them into rigid pain like a sea-creature dropped living into formaldehyde; the pale-eyed octopus was dying; the girl it was dying inside sat rocking herself and moaning and dialling to make his phone ring and ring, but nothing could drag him out of remembering one night when the innocent girl was in her pajamas.

Do you think it would be decent for me to go out like this? the innocent girl had said.

I think it would be decent for you to go out any way. You are so beautiful.

She laughed quickly. — Thank you, she said.

She never loved him. Unknowing and uncaring she whipped his heart as if it were a screaming horse. He went home aching. The phone rang, but he didn’t answer it.

After she’d flown clear, he sat overhauling his semi-obsolete love weapons, patching holes in his armor, stacking up cannister after cannister of glittering heartless love-bullets to bombard her with. Knowing he’d likely have time to fire only once, he brooded over what ammunition would be most likely to kill her heart instantly. His best friend shuddered to see him so; he thought to divert him with easier targets, unaware girls to strike and crush, but he remained alone, stricken and bleeding ceaselessly. Throwing up his hands, the best friend went out alone. That was his mistake. He wasn’t in his prime anymore. Laughing, he ploughed the enemy down, spearing and shooting all that he could get, but an adept girl finally slaughtered his heart. — We got the dogs so we wouldn’t have a kid, but we have two kids now, he said, kissing his wife’s face.

But the one who loved the innocent girl felt no more alone when his best friend was killed and stripped. He was already alone. So the girl with the octopus mind won him. She outraced him, then she outwaited him. She got him in the chest, and down he clanged and crashed. She danced over him as he lay there dead. Then she married him.

He never had to cook dinner for himself anymore. His wife did that, busy with her tentacles that were green like an Air King compressed air dispenser. His wife never ate anything that he cooked. If he washed the dishes his wife would go through every plate, until she found some microscopic spot; then she’d wash them all again. So he’d gotten out of the habit of doing the dishes, too. His wife was a professional woman, and when other professional women came over they’d be sure to make some pointed remark to him, such as: Boy, you sure are lucky to have a wife who does everything for you! I would never do all the cooking for my husband! He’d be ashamed if I did.

Had the octopus died after all? On their vacations her oiled knees remained first in firm alertness when she slept in her beach chair. Whenever he made what she considered a mistake, she found it out immediately and began screaming at him. No, the octopus was still there. It didn’t know how to be happy. It tried to bask inside her victorious skull, in exactly the same way that some girls sling their bodies back against locked arms, spread palms when they sun themselves; but then it quickly began to squirm again, greedy and anxious…

Sometimes she shivered with rage at the thought that she’d won a man who was worthless. She preferred his former best friend. (His former best friend had been working for many years as a medical technician when one day he started reading one of those inspirational books that remind you to live each day to the fullest, to remember that today is the first day of the rest of your life, and above all to be sure that you were doing exactly what you wanted to do. Reading this tract, he suddenly yelled aloud: I know what I want! I want to be a used car salesman! — So he did that, and became very happy. When nothing was going on, he’d just say they were jerking off, not really coming; a sale was an orgasm. Now for the encarnadine prize!) But the octopus-minded one knew with all her tentacles that her own husband was no good. Then she’d begin to set him tasks again. One day she decided that it was his job to vacuum. On Monday, he went down to the super’s to borrow the vacuum but the super said that it had been stolen. His wife said: Well then, we’ll have to get a cleaning lady, won’t we?