Heather Lewis: Notice

My breaths were halting and turning into sobs and I didn’t want her to see this. I didn’t want her to know this about me except she already did. She knew more what I’d needed always than I did.

I didn’t try to stop any of it any longer. Instead I let myself wail and bawl and, when I tried to curl up, she put her weight on me. Kept me still so I couldn’t. Brought me off in that way I couldn’t distinguish from the rest of it. That way that was part of the rest of it. Or only that, that howling massive mess.

And then she’d put her hand so deep in me, drew the rest of her body up next to me, close to me, and I felt my hands holding her hand in me. Felt my legs fall open while I held her hand inside me, and she just kept saying, “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right now.”

She said this again and again until I believed it. Then I let go of her hand and grabbed hold of her, pulled her to me. I wrapped my legs around her and this put me back to that howling place, but she kept talking to me, and I could hear her. I could hear her there with me.

She kept telling me it was all right. She said this with such unmistakable love, and I loved her, too. I loved her so much in that moment, it seemed nothing, no one, could hurt me again. Like this feeling for her bathed that hulking place that’d been so sore, sore from my very beginnings.

The trouble was how to ever get up from this. It seemed Beth would stay with me as long as I needed, and longer. That I’d have to be the one to end this.

As it grew light out I worried the things I thought ought to worry her, like what if the other people who worked here began coming in to start on the day.

But this didn’t trouble her and so I realized I’d lost all sense of days and weeks. Understood it must be a weekend. I couldn’t otherwise account for her ease.

I dipped in and out of sleep, but each time I woke she was still there awake and with her arms around me – us curled up together and her sometimes stroking my hair.

All this endless patience in her tested mine. Asked, did I want to stay or go? And it left me trying to determine what else I could possibly want from her because it seemed there was something else. Some way even this wasn’t enough and never could be.

I sank back into her arms, back into sleep because I thought that there maybe I wouldn’t have to know this anymore. Wouldn’t have to know that everything left me still wanting. And that this want seemed to stretch on for ever and roll backwards too. It mingled with a need that came before and ahead of everything else and would keep on with me, endless and relentless and never served.

I did sleep, but it wasn’t the deep kind. Not the black, empty kind I wanted. I kept waking and then dozing. Pretended sleep when I could no longer achieve it for real. And by then what I hoped for was her sleep. That she’d drop off and let me steal away.

She didn’t do this, though. And she showed no sign that she would. Instead she kept steady, kept watch over me in this same tender way until restlessness took hold in my limbs.

I wondered if loving her would accomplish what I needed, so I began this in a halfhearted way. Turned into her because she’d settled behind me. I began to kiss her softly but she took this easy. Took it the way she’d taken everything for so many hours.

She quieted me. She said, “Sweetheart, just rest.” And the words changed me from restless to sad; not huge and crazed now, but quiet and ageless. Her ease took me over, and my tears in her shirt – all of her wrapped around me. I cried easily this time, hushed and tranquil and endless.

When I did finally leave, she didn’t drive me. I went by myself. And walking home in that late afternoon, I felt changed. Even knowing it wouldn’t last. That I could barely keep hold of it now. That with each step I took, it went further from me. Or stayed with her. Still, I believed some small piece would remain, maybe show me the way out.

At the same time I knew this was far off for me and I might never get there. Might not get through the things coming before. I could see it but was nowhere close to it.

I went into my apartment this way. Took a bath, went to bed and slept. Slept that black way I craved. And I woke the next day, which was Sunday, still some small way different. It wasn’t the presence of something so much as the absence. The things pressing me so hard had given way just a little.

I stayed in bed. I lounged there half sleeping. And when I heard a knock at the door, I went to answer it in just my T-shirt and underwear – that’s how certain I was I’d find Beth.

They came in all together in a rush. Jeremy grabbed hold of me. For a moment my body stayed heavy – deadweight in his arms before I began struggling. I heard his soft laugh in my ear, and his arms grew tighter and stronger, and then he had me face down on the bed.

I didn’t raise my head. I didn’t want to see anything. But he’d grabbed me by the hair, lifted my head this way until I had to lift it myself or feel more of this prickly kind of hurt.

Burt stood in front of me. He had that same gun in his hand and a smile on his face. He said, “You want something to suck on? You look like you could use something to suck on.”

He put the gun far into my mouth until it scraped the back of my throat. My head grew groggy and heavy and so Jeremy was holding it up and the stinging from this worked to keep me awake. But I didn’t want to be awake.

I felt Jeremy shift. He tucked his arm underneath me. Lifted me to my knees and I wobbled on the too soft surface of the bed. His weight was behind me, pressing against me and I leaned back into him to get my balance.

This made the gun slip a little and so Burt grabbed my hair. A big handful of it that started a duller pain, but it let Jeremy stop pulling on it.

Burt said, “Come on, sweetheart. Show me something. Show me what you do best.

I tried to. But it seemed I couldn’t control my body well, any part of it. My mouth had gone all slack around the gun. I didn’t like the taste of metal and the scraping. I kept trying to get away from these two things. Tried without trying. My mouth wouldn’t hold on to it the way he wanted.

I had this want to explain. Tell him I would do what he said if only I was able. But I wasn’t able to talk either.

He said, “Suck it, now, or I’ll blow you.”

What let me do this was Jeremy. He’d put his extra hand into my underwear, was playing with me and it gave me a strange safety. Something to feel besides already dead.

I found myself moving my hips back and forth against him. And then with him. I tunneled into this and sucked the gun. Moved my head back and forth with Burt helping me, him sliding the gun in and out of my mouth. Still lifting my head for me.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s it.” And his voice sounded gentle now and the comfort I felt from this seemed wrong but no less soothing for it. And so that’s how I felt – soothed but sickened, sickened at the way these two things so often arrived together.

This kept on and on. I’d closed my eyes because it made it easier to feel what Jeremy was doing. Let me keep what I was doing for Burt a little away. But, like he knew he didn’t have my attention, Burt jammed the gun hard until it’d ripped all of my mouth. And then he yanked my hair so I was looking right up into his eyes.

He pulled the gun out and slid it along my cheek, then across my lips. Did this before he handed it back to Jeremy. My body went all soft again without Jeremy’s hand and my arms ached suddenly and fiercely. I began sinking forward until Burt yanked me up again.

He’d undone his pants. “Come on now, sweetheart,” he said, putting his dick in my mouth. It felt soft and small, like it couldn’t hurt me the way the gun had. And Jeremy having the gun felt better until he began to slide it back and forth between my legs.