Abducted Chapter Twenty-Three
In which Tabby can't control herself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the gardening center, under the sunlit leaves, surrounded by sprinkler rainbows, you’ve got yourself a little space to face the light. Diffused by the overhead cloudy glass it strikes you with a warm glow over your shut eyes. You’re not doing the MMMMM’s and AAAHH’s like the others because it’s just too much. A little too cheesy. Standing between a heavenly fig and a classic baby pine, you’ve accepted that, if anything else it’s nice to stand in the sun. This realization is only tepid. You’ve gone to every beach in the world and laid in the sand and took in the ultimately dangerous UV radiation in order to give your skin a brownish tone.
You want for your brother’s happiness, joy, and the forever reciprocation of your love. Those hugs that feel like you’re the world and everything else can go away. But now you have to share. Up and down these aisles, with Q at his side, he find his joy, and tells you, you must find your joy for him to be fulfilled. Just this one thing though; the only thing that’s ever brought you joy is Bradford. That and torturing your mother.
Sickly mother, who’s no longer in control of your life, but still you’ve allowed her to install that big black phone in your kitchen. The one that rings so hard it’s like a sledgehammer to the stomach. On the other end, she’s mostly incoherent. But when she’s lucid…
“Next time I see you, you better be pregnant with a boy, or I’ll cut you off,” she’s said a few times. She said, “if anything, because you’re so hideous and unlikable, have one with your brother to keep the money in the family.”
You don’t remind her of the contracts signed, sealed, and delivered. Don’t tell her that your brother is gay and living with a slovenly heathen who makes his money on twitch streaming and minimum wage jobs. She’ll forget anyways so’s you don’t want to be a broken record. There are so few times in life where you’ve gotten to keep a secret from her that this is a reminder of times when you and your baby brother used to slip sedatives in her and dad’s wine so you could position them in the family graveyard hands in the other’s pants so they’d awake disturbed at their long starved coitus interruptus. Those two only touched each other the twice to have the two of you and never since. Dad’s pedophilia notwithstanding, he’d probably spooged in a turkey baster and shoved it in her you’re sure. You laugh a little at the thought of the old pederast having to look at a woman’s vagina, much less an adult one, hair and all.
That sun’s got you chuckling, just a little. Only a little.
Out the vestibule, there are customers lined up at your register with food and sundries. They’re trying to escape the long Sunday lines. Thinking going to the gardening register will hasten their escape from the trap that is Walmart, they’re on their phones complaining about you. You don’t go to the coughs, or shouts, just stand between the sated palms, and figs, and shrubs, and orchids. You try to be one of them. If only, if only you could plant yourself in the earth and live a thousand years with rings to prove it. This first ring is the birth of Christ, this other is Charlamagne, this is Henry the VIII, and this is the Kennedy assassination. All of you, bark and all have withstood the test of time and watched the north star change from Thuban to Polaris.
“AHEM!” A customer shouts, but it’s only a blip on the cosmic scale you’re trying to understand. They couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to convert CO2 and H2O into sugar for energy. Couldn’t know what it’s like to have seen the sea dwellers become land dwellers and sometimes return to the sea again. All of them moving meat, squelching about with their poop tubes inside of them. Can’t help but laugh at their mere millions of years in the gene pool.
“Tabby?”
“MMMMM,” you reply, knowing it’s your manager about to write you up or fire you.
“Tabby,” he asks, “are you okay?”
You’re standing on one foot now like the world’s worst ballerina, arms out all Christ-like trying to take in the heavenly glory. Maybe trying to strike along the evolutionary axis of your genetic memory to see where the relationship between you and the fiddle fig leaf diverge. What selective pressures caused it? What movements of what land masses? Genetic bottlenecks and genetic drift, the complicated specificity that made you who you are. A foolish girl standing in a Walmart garden center looking like a new age hippy just after dropping her first tab of acid.
The manager, Zachary, says, “the time for this is at morning huddle dear, and while I appreciate your enthusiasm, there are customers to attend to.”
“AHHHH,” you exhale like air over a bottle.
Find your joy, both your brother and Q have said like as if it’s as easy as pretending you’re a fucking blade of grass swaying on some savannah. Watching starlight and faking happiness. You couldn’t be farther from your needs than right now. Lightyears away really. There’s no coping with your loss and no amount of MMM’s and AHH’s will bring it back. So’s you’ll just have to find something you want more than what you had. Exchange one sort of peace for another.
Putting his hand on your shoulder, Zachary, gives you a gentle nudge to rouse you from your supposed peace. His hand is scalding hot like a furnace. Not like Q’s hand, a normal sized hand that can use one size fits all gloves. He’s been manager for just over a year and has the typical habits you’d expect. Punctuality, a mildly commanding voice, a midgrade salary, an unwarranted slight distain for the people beneath him, and a belief in the power his position holds.
There’s this one thing though, he stares.
Underneath the mask of managerial propriety there’s a hint of dwelling, brooding over his colleagues and coworkers, male and female. You suspect he’s bisexual, liking the musky flavors of men and dulcet flavors of women too. Caught him watching you flipping your hair. Thought he was inspecting the amber hanging around your neck but the way he traced your outline made you a little uncomfortable the way he tasted your body with his eyes. Also a little…
Over the ahem’s and excuse me’s there’s the energy that comes off two people who’ve been sexless for a while. With your eyes still closed, you put your hand over his and lead it down to your breast.
The hand doesn’t protest or move or jerk away, but he whispers, “this is inappropriate, Tabby.”
Opening your eyes for the first time in ten minutes you see Zachary, clean shaven, boyish, wholly unwarranted authority, half-afraid, half-horny, his almost innocent eyes pleading that the situation both ends and continues. Reaching down you put your hand in his belt and tug him towards you cocking your head behind the racks where almost no one can see. The young man goes wherever his erection leads him. Unthinking, he follows you to the utility closet ignoring the line of protesting coughers and scoffers. Amongst the dusty brooms and dish rag smelling mop heads you’ve shut the door behind him, locked him into a decision he can’t weasel his way out of.
He says, “Tabby, what are we doing?”
Unzipping those rough khaki pants and taking down your panties, you turn and let him know he doesn’t have to do much and to be frank, he doesn’t do much. Other than a few seconds chuffing behind you he’s like a high school sophomore taking less than a minute to unload into you. Disgusting, but there’s a sort of relief that makes you wonder why you don’t do this more often. You didn’t orgasm but it didn’t matter. Having control over someone made you feel less alone. He’s leaned back against the door all out of breath working himself back into his pants.
Panting like a dog, he says, “you can’t tell anyone about this.”
You say, “I won’t.”
All fixing himself up and smoothing his clothes out, he says, “seriously, you can’t.”
You say, “seriously, I won’t.”
All secretive like he opens the closet door to the daylight, says, “please man the register.”