Stephen Dixon - Friends - More Will and Magna Stories

“Yes.”

All this time I’m squeezing them just enough to keep plenty of pain coming in and he is in great pain. He’s practically screaming. He probably would be screaming if he let himself make loud sounds. I say “Now turn around on the bed on your stomach and get off the bed backwards and slowly till you’re on your knees in front of me and don’t let me lose my grip on your balls. I’ll be right behind holding on to them and you’re to crawl very slowly to the door. I will kill your balls if you try anything but what I want you to, understand?”

“Yes.”

He turns over on the bed and gets on his knees on the floor in the direction of the front door. I stand bent over behind him and keep squeezing them just so there’s enough pressure to keep him in great pain. “Now move,” I say, “crawl,” and he starts crawling to the door while dragging his pants, all the time making noises how he hurts, “can’t take it, go any more, the pain, oh, stop, please,” hair and face full of sweat, tears coming out too. I don’t say anything and it takes about five minutes to get to the front door.

I say “Now get up in a slight crouching position but with your rear end facing me.” He does. I keep a tight grip on his balls with one hand and with the other unlock the door. “Now down,” I say, “on your knees, rear end up,” and I get on my knees too.

“Now I’m going to open the door by turning the doorknob and when the door’s open enough for you to fit through, you start crawling through. When you’re far enough out of the door I’ll let go of you and slam the door, so bring in your foot or you’ll lose that foot that’s sticking out too.”

“Neighbors.”

“What about them?”

“See me. They. I’m caught.”

“I’ll look out first to see they’re not there. I shouldn’t be so kind to you.”

“Have to. Or else. Else I try get you. Or away. But please, quick, hurry, no talk, to release me.”

“Okay. Get in a crouch again. Rear up.” He does and I stand, hold on to his balls with one hand and open the door. “Come closer to me.” He moves towards me backwards. I can look down the hallway now. “Someone’s coming up the stairs,” and I duck back in and shut the door.

“Christ,” he says. “Someone would. Let go. I won’t run.”

“No. You’re a sonofabitch and I hate your guts and wish I could squeeze these to sawdust now but I can’t because if I did you wouldn’t keep your part of the bargain you’re doing now, right?”

“Shh. They hear. I won’t touch you. Too in pain. I’m. Can’t even stand. Please. Let go. Killing me.”

“Shut up. Step a step backwards.” He does. I open the door, look down the hall. “Don’t stop. Just crawl out slowly.”

He starts crawling into the hallway. When his foot’s just past the threshold I slam the door, lock and latch it and scream “Help, police, rapist, in the hallway, someone call the police, for the fifth floor, everybody call,” when I really had thought I’d give him a few minutes to get away. I can’t call as I want to be right here to snap the lock back if he somehow gets it unlocked or the latch back in or just to keep my shoulder against the door and myself screaming if he tries to get back in.

He doesn’t. I look through the peephole and see him struggling to get his pants on. He’s on the floor, having trouble getting the first trouser leg over the shoe. He’s still crying, face in great pain. He stands with the pants, falls to the floor. He beats the floor with his fist, but lightly, as he doesn’t seem to have the strength for anything more. I want to open the door and with the lamp near me smash him over the head. But he might suddenly revive by then. So I keep screaming and looking at him and his eyes are almost closed as he tries to get the same trouser leg over the shoe. Then he stands, holds his testicles and sort of drags himself with the pants in his hand to the stairs and down them.

Three days later I get a phone call. I’d seen the police here and went to the station and wasn’t able to pick his picture out of the thousands they showed me. The man on the phone says “Remember me?”

“The police have a tap on all my phones.”

“Bullshit. Think they can afford it every time some woman meets a new man? But you remember me.”

“All right. Talk at your own risk. Longer the better I was told.”

“You almost killed me with that hold.”

“I wanted to, so feel lucky I let you go.”

“You let me go because you had to. I wish I’d killed you when I had the chance from the start. I’m all better now. Took a couple of days to recover. You want to try it again?”

“Oh sure.”

“I know your name.”

“Get lost.”

“Of course you don’t and I wouldn’t trust you if you said you did. You’d call the police and they’d be there in a minute. And that nutcracker grip of yours. Where’d you learn it? I want to know if it was in the newspapers before I met you and so how widespread it’s known.”

“Why the call?”

“You were a bastard for shouting like that when I was in the hall. You broke your promise.”

“I didn’t think. It was all my emotion unleashing or something. But you have to expect that when you treat someone as you did me.”

“What did I do to you, Magna? Come on, just what did I do that’s so bad to you?”

“You’re so stupid. Anyway, you got away.”

“You didn’t see any photos of me at the police, did you?”

“No I didn’t.”

“There aren’t any. But I have killed women. Nicer women than you too and I’m going to kill you. That’s why I called. In the next week I’m going to get you on the street, force you into your apartment or a car or just be in your apartment or on the stairs again waiting for you. If you go to your friends I’ll get you there and kill them too. First I’m going to rape you though till you hurt as much as you made me hurt. No more baby oil. I’m going to make you suffer real hard. And no chance of your hands stopping me because they’ll be tied from the start.”

“Finished?”

“No, I got much more to say.”

“Well I don’t.” I hang up.

He calls right back. “I meant everything I said.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I mean and what I swear you made me be. If you ever come here or any place I am or whatever next time you say you’ll try anything with me, I’ll bite or slice but cut both your balls and your penis off — now take your choice, and you’re right, I don’t need any fucking police tap, but take your choice but that’s what’s going to happen to you, now do you hear me good?” There’s silence at the other end and then he hangs up.

Page 221.1 don’t know if I can write it. It’s taken me almost two years to get to this page. I don’t have anything more to say. The novel’s run flat. I don’t want to go on with it. But after 221 pages? 220 I mean. And it’s not true I don’t want to go on with it. I do. I’m sure I can too, but I’m just bogged down. I have him where he’s on a bridge. He has to make a decision about something. This has been the main point of the novel up till now. To have him go through the novel till the moment where he makes a decision that will change his life and also change the direction of the novel. I didn’t know where he was going to make the decision. After the first hundred pages or so, it could have been almost anywhere in his journey through the city the novel takes place in. I didn’t block out the novel from the beginning, just as I haven’t with any of the novels I’ve written. But he should make the decision now. On page 221. There’s no place else for him to go. It’s late at night, he’s alone on that bridge. Looking at the river about fifteen feet below. He knows he has to make the decision. He’s been talking about it on and off through the entire novel. He left his apartment at dawn on page one to make the decision. A decision he knows will change his life. He hasn’t revealed yet what the decision’s about. Really hasn’t revealed anything about the decision: just that he has to make one. What the decision’s about is supposed to be revealed when he makes the decision. The reader’s supposed to follow him around the city right up till the time when he makes the decision. I think I said that. Then he’s supposed to make the decision. If he doesn’t make it now there’s nothing else he can do. He’s done everything else in the novel but make that decision. At least everything else that would apply to his personality and life and actions and whatever other things apply, before he makes that decision. But what’s the decision he has to make? He has to know what he has to decide on if he’s to make the decision, and he has to make it. So make it. I’m telling him to make the decision. Say something out loud or in your head or even write it down if you want that will change your life and also change the direction of this novel. If those devices don’t work, say it some other way. By a gesture or just one word or any way you think to say it, as long as it’s clear to the reader that what you’re doing is making that decision, but make it. If you don’t, this novel’s finished. It was all supposed to come to this. It has come to this. Right now there’s no place else for you to go, nothing else for you to do but make that decision. So make it. I’m telling you to. Ordering you, damnit, I am ordering you to. The decision. Now.