Do you like horror movies?
What if the monsters are real people?
Are monsters understandable, sympathetic in some ways?
Does that make them any less monstrous?
He talked to her first, like they were equals, though they weren’t in two different senses.
She was his captive. He and fellow members of the Unit had kidnapped her and others from the activist group- crashed their meeting on campus, barged right in and seized the area before anyone could protest; barely a peep came from the radicals- and now were holding them on their turf, off campus.
At the same time, she was above him. She was a student at the college while he just worked there, not behind a lectern but in front of an industrial sink in the dining commons where students ate.
It went without saying that they held sharply opposed views of the world. He’d called her over to join him in the living room. She’d risen from her place with the other captives seated on the floor, backs to the wall. She didn’t know why Tom had summoned her, feared the reason. It heartened her momentarily when he bade her to just sit beside him on the couch and talk a bit, talk first.
She tried to reason with him.
“The leader of another country tried to interfere in our democracy, tried to make chaos,” she said, her eyes big on Tom, big with fear and supplication.
“Don’t you see?” she went on. “And he succeeded and is laughing at us. And he’ll do it again if we let him.”
All the while Tom shaking his head, in effect wagging it before her, smiling, he was that sure of his ground. Nothing could shake his certainty.
“That happens all the time all over the world,” Tom said. “You’re naive.”
Chloe bit her lip. His attitude was maddening but at the moment she had larger problems to contend with, like the thing pushing his pants front her way.
“They want to end our way of life,” Tom said, smiled again, indulgently.
“This isn’t rocket science,” he said.
Chloe smiled, because her boyfriend studied science at the college and it was a safe bet Tom hadn’t finished high school.
“Who wants to?” she asked.
“Well, just like you yourself said, the foreigners first of all. Hey, we agree on that part.”
He saw Chloe herself looked pretty foreign. Her taste in clothes wasn’t quite American. The yellow blouse with the blue flowers. That wasn’t something you saw around those parts.
“Not only foreigners,” he said to assure her they weren’t natural enemies, just compatriots with different views on things.
“People here too. Even worse.” We can be friends, his eyes said to Chloe.
She had no desire to be his friend.
He saw her unyielding expression and something stiffened in him. He shook his head, tut-tutted to himself- what a shame- and changed the subject.
“Freddy’s wife made marijuana cookies. You think only people on your side enjoy weed? I had a lot. You know, it’s my habit. If there are cookies, I gobble one after another. But I guess I should be careful in this case because these are loaded with cannabis.” He indicated the tray, now more empty space with crumbs than cookies. A hand reached and took one even as he spoke on. Was that Freddy, Chloe wondered
“They taste pretty good, by the way, like ginger snaps, but they’re soft. That probably means the quantity of weed is high.”
Tom’s light, easy tone of voice really suggested this was an ordinary conversations between friends- acquaintances actually, since he and Chloe had never met before.
But the tension she felt ran through him as well.
“The real question is how the effect will be, how different from smoking, when it’ll come on and how strong.”
“It’s probably gradual,” Chloe volunteered.
She was almost shaking, trying to speak in normal tones.
She didn’t want to be his friend. How could she countenance even friendship with someone who had taken her from a meeting with friends by main force, when she and her group had been planning their peaceful protest at the college.
Tom and thugs with him had come in, broken things, chosen her and four others to leave with them- as hostages? It wasn’t clear then or even now- and all but carried her out over his shoulders. He’d laughed at her reaction, said, “Yeah, I’m strong. And I’ve got a thicker dick than those college pansies. You’ll see how strong.” He’d grunted, lugging her up the stairs from the basement meeting room to the street, the campus from which they’d flee in two vans.
He’d held her around her thighs. She’d felt his hands, warm, clasped at her jeans. It was her efforts to get away that made him really guffaw as he huffed and puffed, carrying her, laughed at her kicking and at the response of her friends not abducted, who were powerless to help, wanted to step forward but could only stand back and watch.
The intruders were armed. “Fucking traitor,” Tom had said about Chloe, and his partners had gotten into the spirit of the event, mayhem, kicking stuff around, laughing, enjoying themselves as now, but dead serious. You don’t kidnap people, knowing the penalties, otherwise.
Tom’s hand playing at the front of her jeans now just playing, fingertips, the nails tracing the zipper, catching on some places. The zigzagging interconnected aluminum was like a little metal conveyer belt for his fingers or an escalator in miniature, long one, stairway to heaven.
Feeling the cannabis, Tom suggested someone put on music, but no one did. The silence became as dense as a cloud up high.
The way he could do what he wanted and she couldn’t made it seem she wasn’t human but a doll. Yet she was still a person.
“Why didn’t you have any? You could have, you know.”
The marijuana cookies, he meant. He gave that smile again. Chloe wished he wouldn’t. It made him even creepier. His face seemed to become a mask, something made stiff with shellac, glowing.
If he was papier-mâché, as she wished, she could smash him, but he was flesh and blood and strong, though out of shape. She remembered his labored breathing as he conveyed her out of the meeting with her group. How would he be in bed, she couldn’t help wondering dimly, because she knew that was where they were going.
“I was writing,” she answered, keeping her tone pleasant. Holding back would only provoke him. She saw he was quick to anger; it was always brimming at the surface. No wonder he’d joined a paramilitary gang composed of people enraged at the world as it was. Keeping on his good side might offer a chance, however little. Some hope was better than none at all.
She’d been allowed paper and pen, of course no access to a phone, her hands untied.
“How long were you writing?” Tom asked.
“Lay off it!” she wanted to yell, instead spoke softly, as if to a crazy person or a child.
“Well, I spent an hour and twenty minutes on a letter” (that was to her boyfriend Mark, whom she was supposed to be meeting at that moment) “and another hour correcting something else.”
“For a class?”
Chloe nodded. “So it wasn’t really writing.”
“Both of those are really writing,” Tom said, shaking his head differently from earlier, encouraging. He looked almost reasonable for moments at a time. Glimpses of kindness came. They passed quickly.
Tom admired anyone who could write. He himself wasn’t good with words, spelling and the rest.
“That’s almost four hours,” he said, looking at Chloe in a kind of wonder, as at a strange breed of animal. People really wrote and read at length?
It had been a long afternoon of captivity for Chloe and until now had mostly consisted of waiting, for what no one seemed to know, not even her captors.
“You’re a good student, will go far.”
She couldn’t tell whether Tom was mocking. She thought she saw genuine tenderness.
“You have a lot of homework?” The world of college students existed a universe away from his. His reference point was high school, from which he had dropped out midway.
“Writing for classes,” he clarified.
Chloe nodded, alternately welcoming the distraction and loathing his incursions to her private life.
“Do you enjoy it?” His curiosity was genuine. In the bedroom later he’d ask the same question.
Chloe didn’t know what to answer. At times the word play between then struck her as so strange given the context that she felt disoriented, outside her body, as if she were also high. His erratic behavior terrified her. Harsh words might been easier to take than his soft ones were now. Less menacing. If someone is totally unpredictable, you can’t even start thinking about how to defend yourself.
The chaos strategy?
Was he deliberately keeping her off balance? She didn’t credit him with that much intelligence. And she was right. Tom was just being himself, with the help of cannabis sativa, which he didn’t use much. Maw disapproved. That was her sister Beth’s thing. She got into crystal meth. The ravages of her addiction had put his wife off any kind of recreational drugs.
“You want me to gobble them up?” Chloe said with her eyes, too angry and despairing to speak. She looked skeptically at the remaining narcotic desserts.
“Actually, they’re for the guys. Sorry.”
Apologizing to her. Given what he planned to do, it made no sense!
“That’s okay,” Chloe said.
Had he thought she seriously intended to accept the offer, anything he wanted to give her?! He had to know it was all one-sided. Did he imagine she was his girlfriend because he’d kidnapped, brought her there? She felt her face, her eyes burning.
“There’s also weed to smoke,” Tom added, remarking on the world around him. The cookies on the smoothly reflective wide white plate really were almost all gone. “It might make things easier, even fun.”
If she were high too. What a nice guy!
“Fun?” Chloe asked in disbelief (the whole scene still felt unimaginable), imploring with her eyes another time for him to show mercy, let her and her friends go. He wouldn’t, of course. How could he? Too late now. They’d go straight to the police if released. They might say they wouldn’t but in this situation such promises were laughable.
“Come on, baby.” It’s time, he meant, his eyes hardening.
“What? Where?”
He pulled her up by her arm, indicating the bedroom door.
“It’s on.”
That was the first time, and it didn’t go very well. He came too soon, was too turned on. But there would be more. He could save face with her later, really enjoy himself (that was how how she would describe some moments to a friend later: “He really enjoyed himself”). The weed did come on strong, and it really was different, seemed to envelope him from within, as he would her.
“Why did Freddy’s wife make them?” Chloe said, pointing to the remaining marijuana cookies, hoping to buy time, asking about someone named Freddy without knowing who he was. She would soon enough.
She did succeed in confusing, distracting Tom for a moment with her question.
“Why didn’t your mother?”
Buying time.
“My mother?”
Chloe nodded eagerly. Please continue the conversation.
“My mother wouldn’t know where to buy weed.”
“Why not?”
Chloe made her best effort to lighten the moment, to reach Tom, person to person. Isn’t this ridiculous, she asked him to agree. You don’t have to treat me as an enemy or, worse yet, as nonhuman.
Tom stopped to think. “My mother. She’s a- she’s a shut-in.” He had never used that word about her before but now saw it fit. She’d been a nervous wreck since his father’s death- no, from before that, as a result of the whole alcoholic mess. Of course he spared Chloe the long story.
“Oh,” she said, sheepish. She could see Tom’s pain but not understand it.
Before leaving on the mission, Tom had told his mother and his wife Maw that he might be gone a few days. He’d said, “But on the fourteenth we’re going to see ‘Hell Bent Part Four.’ There’s no way you’ll talk your way out of it.”
If Maw came along, his mother might be willing to leave the house for a change.
He had a thing for horror movies, and the newest installment of a favorite was coming out on that date.
Tom looked at Chloe and his eyes half crossed with enjoyment. She looked exotic, Asian (which he liked) and he thought if she was foreign and didn’t understand English how would he explain the concept of “hell bent.”
He was feeling pretty hellbent himself at the moment.
At work in the dining commons he’d seen how the college kids enjoyed themselves and envied the life they had, wished he was part of it rather than an outsider, a worker in their midst, not one of them.
Well, that day he was going to be part of Chloe’s life, enjoy himself with her.
Chloe was- how would he say it?- more elegant than his wife. Maw was only twenty-six but already putting on weight, had a body like a potato. Chloe didn’t.
Chloe knew how to dress. Second nature. Her sense of color stunned even his untrained eyes. Anyone could see that Maw in her pink stretch pants needed a few pointers when it came to style. She wasn’t interested. She had a laugh that boomed. Her friends liked it. So did Tom, yet.. She made a good pal, with her jiggling belly laughs, at least when she wasn’t in a bad mood, nagging him for this and that..
He didn’t complain. He’d felt almost content in the marriage, until..
You know, one thing leads to another. Can you fall in love at first sight with someone you’ve just seen, never actually met?
Well, they’d met today all right.
Gonna get stoned together, rock and roll. He figured she came from the city. Well, he’d show her how they do it country style.
He liked Chloe’s slanted, Asian-style eyes. He had a thing for that- not just her- ever since starting his work at the college. A lot of students from the Far East were there. Cute chicks. Yellow foxes, he- and his friends too- called them. He didn’t think Chloe was really Asian. She spoke English like someone born here, with a slightly flat, Midwestern accent, and she had Western features; her nose, for instance, wasn’t squashed like a lot of those people’s were. Whatever. Maybe she was mixed.
He wanted to undress her.
Chloe. Sometimes they called her Clo. Her real name was Clothilde, which reminded him of clitoris. Not funny. That’s just how it sounded to him.
French, someone said. What did he know about French? He’d figured her for half-Chinese or Vietnamese. And he wasn’t half wrong. Weren’t the French against the fascists in World War Two? Some called the Unit and groups like them fascist now. Well, he wasn’t sure what the word meant, to tell the truth. He just knew, as he’d said to Chloe, that we have to protect our way of life against those who would destroy it. No, he wasn’t a history buff or anything. He’d heard the French were cowards in battle, who’d run for cover at the first volley. And the Viets? Those were some fierce fighters you had to respect even if they looked and talked funny.
God he liked how Chloe looked. She was no skin and bones Asian babe. She had a bod. Really hard to tell about her. You know? He wanted to find out, smell her, taste her. She was no flat chested, board-chest slant-eye. She had tits he’d want to get his mouth around. He could see that without seeing them yet, feel them before he’d touched. That fine skin, velvety.
He’d learned her name and not much more about her from a background check the unit had done on the activist, radical group of which she was a member. One guy, Jake, had connections in law enforcement or claimed to. If you want something to laugh at, consider the fact that it was now the Unit themselves who were supposedly the criminals. No, the cops weren’t about to come busting down the door, not any time soon. They’d give them a chance to have some fun first and then get out of Dodge. Of course if the fun went on too long, even cops finally, ones on their side, would have no choice but to pick them up.
Marijuana slowed your sense of time, especially when you were having as much fun as Tom and the others meant to. Not everyone in the Unit was there, by the way. The rest didn’t know what they were missing.
He wanted to fuck her Asian-like ass. She had great skin. He could see that. And Chloe could see in his crossed eyes staring at her the fierceness of his desire and on instinct began to brace herself.
She hoped the police would come first, that somehow they’d learned of the crime in progress, been tipped off about the militia’s whereabouts, the sunken apartment they used as their hideout, meeting place, “safe house” she heard one call it, though the modest accommodations seemed unequal to the name. Under different circumstances, she’d have laughed- or maybe not, sparing the men humiliation over their silliness. Those rooms so badly in need of a paint job and a cleaning were just a crash pad. The guys were playing soldier, superheroes, she knew. They were all sad sacks with only dreams of glory, few prospects in their real lives. Most were that way, at least. The guy identified as Freddy would prove to be different, brighter than the rest.
For the moment, none of that mattered. They were playing for real. The one named Tom was, at least. And the police weren’t coming.
He saw she wore one earring and liked that, liker her flair. A slender silver ring, half circle or crescent moon. He was glad she didn’t wear a nose ring as he’d seen some of the college kids did. If she had, he’d have had her remove it before going with her.
What if she had a tongue stud? (He hadn’t looked for one, the thought just came to him). He doubted she did. She didn’t look that wild. But you never know. He’d definitely find out.
Were those aliases? Clo. Chloe. Clothilde. He doubted it, didn’t think she had that in her. She wasn’t a hard case revolutionary, not a criminal type but a student with a future, studying art, only an activist part-time. She didn’t have the self-annihilating streak you saw in some of those characters who wanted to take everything down and were ready to go down with it. She was learning about life. He was happy to teach her, what little he could.
He’d dreamed about her before, had a thing for her from watching her with friends walking in and out of the dining commons through the daylit corridor near the bright glass entrance, past his work station where they’d drop off their dishes for him and his team to wash. It had a good view out but hardly any in, just the slot through which people passed the trays they’d finished with. At home after his shift he liked to think of how wet she’d get, her own oil glinting on the skin of her taut, curved inner thigh, where it would evaporate quickly only to take on a new slick, and of her bush his cock would plunge through to her soaked pussy gripping him like a sponge.
He looked forward to seeing that earring bobbing as she went down on him. Maybe she gave really good head. He’d definitely find out.
Hell bent.
He’d seen her in town off campus in a department store, the only one in town, part of the mall off Route Six. She looked good. Shopping. He would have liked to follow her into the dressing room but saw she was with her boyfriend. He probably wouldn’t have anyway but he sure wanted to.
From there, inspired, he’d gone to the bookstore on the mall’s ground floor. He never went there except to buy the occasional greeting card. Her never bought books. He didn’t read except postings online. But he remembered a book a guy in the Unit had brought to their attention about an Army Ranger leader’s experience in a recent war, the insight he’d gained. The book offered useful lessons, Tom’s comrade in arms claimed.
“Not the fucking Marines, though they’re okay too, but the Rangers. Really elite.” Some of the guys in the Unit had spent time in the military, but none had risen in the ranks.
That was Freddy, Tom remembered. The reader in the Unit. Maybe the only one. Not that it mattered. What did they need with book learning anyway? Freddy said- Tom recalled the conversation through the marijuana haze descending on him- the author, the Ranger squad leader, talked about the U.S. budget while fighting. “It’s important to keep that in mind,” Freddy said, and Tom guessed he agreed but didn’t really know.