Joe Hill: Heart-Shaped Box

“No. I mean . . . look at me. Do I look all right?” Asking because he had to be sure.

She slowly turned her head toward him again and peered at him from under her eyelashes. She had on last night’s mascara, a little smudged. Glenna had a smooth, pleasantly round face, and a smooth, pleasantly curvy body. She could’ve almost been a model, if the job was modeling plus sizes. She outweighed Ig by fifty pounds. It wasn’t that she was grotesquely fat, but that he was absurdly skinny. She liked to fuck him from on top, and when she put her elbows on his chest, she could push all the air out of him, a thoughtless act of erotic asphyxiation. Ig, who so often struggled for breath, knew every famous person who had ever died of erotic asphyxiation. It was a surprisingly common end for musicians. Kevin Gilbert. Hideto Matsumoto, probably. Michael Hutchence, of course, not someone he wanted to be thinking about in this particular moment. The devil inside. Every single one of us.

“Are you still drunk?” she asked.

When he didn’t reply, she shook her head and looked back at the television.

That was it then. If she had seen them she would’ve come screaming to her feet. But she couldn’t see them because they weren’t there. They only existed in Ig’s mind. Probably if he looked at himself now in a mirror, he wouldn’t see them either. Only then Ig spotted a reflection of himself in the window, and the horns were still there. In the window he was a glassy, transparent figure, a demonic ghost.

“I think I need to go to the doctor,” he said.

“You know what I need?” she asked.

“What?”

“Another donut,” she said, leaning forward to look into the open box. “You think another donut would be okay?”

He replied in a flat voice he hardly recognized. “What’s stopping you?”

“I already had one and I’m not even hungry anymore. I just want to eat it.” She turned her head and peered up at him, her eyes glittering in a way that suddenly seemed both scared and pleading. “I’d like to eat the whole box.”

“The whole box,” he repeated.

“I don’t even want to use my hands. I just want to stick my face in and start eating. I know that’s gross.” She moved her finger from donut to donut, counting. “Six. Do you think it would be okay if I ate six more donuts?”

It was hard to think past his alarm and the feeling of pressure and weight at his temples. What she had just said made no sense, was another part of the whole unnatural bad dream morning.

“If you’re screwing with me I wish you wouldn’t. I told you I don’t feel good.”

“I want another donut,” she said.

“Go ahead. I don’t care.”

“Well. Okay. If you think it’s all right,” she said and she took a donut, pulled it into three pieces, and began to eat, shoving in one chunk after another without swallowing.

Soon the whole donut was in her mouth, filling her cheeks. She gagged, softly, then inhaled deeply through her nostrils, and began to swallow.

Iggy watched, repelled. He had never seen her do anything like it, hadn’t seen anything like it since junior high, kids grossing other kids out in the cafeteria. When she was done, she took a few panting, uneven breaths, then looked over her shoulder, eyeing him anxiously.

“I didn’t even like it. My stomach hurts,” she said. “Do you think I should have another one?”

“Why would you eat another one if your stomach hurts?”

“ ’Cause I want to get really fat. Not fat like I am now. Fat enough so you won’t want to have anything to do with me.” Her tongue came out and the tip touched her upper lip, a thoughtful, considering gesture. “I did something disgusting last night. I want to tell you about it.”

The thought occurred again that none of it was really happening. If he was having some sort of fever-dream, though, it was a persistent one, convincing in its fine details. A fly crawled across the TV screen. A car shushed past out on the road. One moment naturally followed the next, in a way that seemed to add up to reality. Ig was a natural at addition. Math had been his best subject in school, after Ethics, which he didn’t count as a real subject.

“I don’t think I want to know what you did last night,” he said.

“That’s why I want to tell you. To make you sick. To give you a reason to go away. I feel so bad about what you’ve been through, and what people say about you, but I can’t stand waking up next to you anymore. I just want you to go and if I told you what I did, this disgusting thing, then you’d leave and I’d be free again.”

“What do people say about me?” he asked. It was a silly question. He already knew.

She shrugged. “Things about what you did to Merrin. How you’re like a sick sex pervert and stuff.”

Ig stared at her, transfixed. It fascinated him, the way each thing she said was worse than the one before, and how at ease she seemed to be with saying them. Without shame or awkwardness.

“So what did you want to tell me?”

“I ran into Lee Tourneau last night after you disappeared on me. You remember Lee and I used to have a thing going, back in high school?”

“I remember,” Ig said. Lee and Ig had been friends in another life, but all that was behind Ig now, had died with Merrin. It was difficult to maintain close friendships when you were under suspicion of being a sex-murderer.

“Last night, at the Station House, he was sitting in a booth in back and after you disappeared he bought me a drink. I haven’t talked to Lee in forever. I forgot how easy he is to talk to. You know Lee, he doesn’t look down on anyone. He was real nice to me. When you didn’t come back after a while, he said we ought to look for you in the parking lot, and if you were gone, he’d drive me home. But then when we were outside, we got kissing kind of hot, like old times, like when we were together—and I got carried away and went down on him, right there with a couple guys watching and everything. I haven’t done anything that crazy since I was nineteen and on speed.”

Ig needed help. He needed to get out of the apartment. The air was too close, and his lungs felt tight and pinched.

She was leaning over the box of donuts again, her expression placid, as if she had just told him a fact of no particular consequence: that they were out of milk, or had lost the hot water again.

“You think it would be all right to eat one more?” she asked. “My stomach feels better.”

“Do what you want.”

She turned her head and stared at him, her pale eyes glittering with an unnatural excitement. “You mean it?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he said. “Pig out.”

She smiled, cheeks dimpling, then bent over the table, taking the box in one hand. She held it in place, shoved her face into it, and began to eat. She made noises while she chewed, smacking her lips and breathing strangely. She gagged again, her shoulders hitching, but kept eating, using her free hand to push more donut into her mouth, even though her cheeks were already swollen and full. A fly buzzed around her head, agitated.

Ig edged past the couch, toward the door. She sat up a little, gasping for breath, and rolled her eyes toward him. Her gaze was panicky and her cheeks and wet mouth were gritted with sugar.

“ Mm ,” she moaned. “ Mmm .” Whether she moaned in pleasure or misery, he didn’t know.

The fly landed at the corner of her mouth. He saw it there for a moment—then Glenna’s tongue darted out and she trapped it with her hand at the same time. When she lowered her hand, the fly was gone. Her jaw worked up and down, grinding everything in her mouth into paste.

Ig opened the door and slid himself out. As he closed the door behind him, she was lowering her face to the box again . . . a diver who had filled her lungs with air and was plunging once more into the depths.