Chapter Four: "The Box"
You can't know what nothingness is. You can't comprehend it because your world is thick with sensation. But Anne can understand it. Anne doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know how she came here. She doesn't know what "here" is. There's no texture, no figure, no light, no sound, nothing to break the nothingness. Black. Silent. She was somewhere and now she's not anywhere at all. She's twisted like a pretzel. She can't understand. She's trying to think but there's no sensation to wrap a thought around. Yes, now there's something. There's an ache in her shoulders, a dull little thing that soon blossoms to fill the void. Nature abhors a vacuum, don't you know, so the ache throbs throughout hers, expanding, filling, taking over all the space in her universe. Finally the pain gives her an anchor and she knows. Somehow she's at the bottom of a coal mine, trapped under a mile of rubble. How did it happen? She can't remember. She's dying alone. She tries to call for help but there's no air.
* * * * *
Wake up, Geoff!
If you sleep you'll crash, and who will rescue Anne? Stay awake. Find some radio station. Watch the half-moon skimming along the horizon, the same moon you saw last night. It's still there. It'll keep you going. It's your destination anyway. The silver apples of the moon. Follow them to your glimmering girl, with apple blossom in her hair.
Why that poem? You don't even like Yeats. Yeah, but it's how she got me. She came up to me at a party at the Dean's house where I was being shy. She asked me what I taught and I said poetry, then she recited the whole thing and I was hooked.
Hooked like a little silver trout? Yes, caught with a berry and a thread. Just like that. But stop. I don't want to think of that poem, especially not that poem, not tonight. You know how it goes, don't you? She called me by my name and ran, and faded through the brightening air. Don't fade away, Anne. I'm coming tonight, before the air brightens.
The lights of Roanoke pass on the right, leading down toward the Shenandoah Valley. For a short way there are street lights along the interstate, but then Geoffrey leaves them behind and the road gets dark again. Not as dark as for Anne. No, Geoffrey sees light everywhere. Under the moon the countryside is luscious, almost as beautiful as during the day, dotted with little lit-up homes that probably have people who are watching TV, secure and happy, maybe grumpy, maybe teasing each other, maybe running fingers around penis and vulva and embarrassed to be doing it with all the lights on. Anne would be amazed at so much light. It would blind her.
Wake up, Geoff!
What's Satan doing to her? Is he hurting her again, and taping it for his audience? Or is he forcing pleasure on her, standing there feeling his power, knowing however much he punishes her she can't resist him? He'll be taping that too, of course.
Or maybe she's dead. No! Maybe she died. Stop it! Maybe she is. Maybe he's skinned her and has hung her carcass like a side of beef and is letting her age, so she'll be more tender when he eats her. No!
Once the idea creeps in it doesn't want to leave.
Think! She was alive last night. I saw her! But maybe she died. No! It wasn't even a full day ago. Hah! You can die in an instant. He could kill her without even trying. Do you see her body? Do you see it hanging by the ankles, meat hooks through the ankles? She's alive! Really? Then maybe he's killing her right now.
Make the image go away! Try a poem again, a different poem. How's this one? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace... Stop it! Wake up! I have to keep awake! Then what about this? I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paperweight. Shit, oh shit. May as well go back to Yeats. Can't I remember any poems that end well? Maybe Dr. Seuss. Did I ever tell you how lucky you are? Oh fuck off!
Now other things push out the death thoughts, mainly sights from Satan's Web site, visuals of Anne being broken and feeling more ecstasy than Geoff could ever hope to give her.
There's one video in particular. They all share the essentials, but this one.... Geoff forgets the moon and forgets the road. He almost forgets what he's doing because of what's in his mind. Anne coming and coming, Satan having worked her well with sorcery. She's coming, and while she does Satan opens her labia to show off her inner lips and mouth to the camera. The mouth is opening and closing, like that of a fish, or a monster, something alien. It's a flower, pink and muscular like a closed-up rose or tulip, but it's trying to find a penis to feed on. The petals open and close. Geoff has never seen anything like it. He can't get it out of his mind.
He also can't forget the aftermath. Breathless words. "Thank you, Victor. Thank you. Thank you. Oh God."
* * * * *
Anne floats at the bottom of the world, packed neatly in her pencil box. She can hear her breathing, and her moaning when she has air for moaning, if she is conscious enough to pay attention, but even then she doesn't always know she's the source. What can she feel? She can feel her shoulders ease from their sockets. She has nothing else, no sound, no sight, no smell, no movement, no sense of anything outside her skin. She is as alone as anyone has ever been, given forever to contemplate her insignificance.
When she's less conscious she sometimes has brilliant visions and she takes deep breaths and smells the world and runs and flails her arms. When she's more conscious she struggles to breathe and remembers she has orders to think of her husband, though it makes her tremble to do it. What is she to think about? About discipline. When he put her in here he told her to think of a punishment severe enough to atone for disobedience. What did she do? She said something bad. Now she has to think of something harsh, and maybe when she does he'll come back.
