Latch
I must have been
asleep for a long time because when I woke my body was tangled high
in the branches of a tree. My eyes, unused to the light, were
narrowed to slits and the lashes blurred all I could see. I shivered.
A few tattered rags aside, I was naked, cold. My penis had shrivelled
to a small bluish-pink ball that, because of my bonds, I was unable
to cover. I thought about urinating and, in thinking, developed an
urge to do so. I strained. The first squirts ran onto my legs and
then my penis unfurled and I was able to propel the piss away from my
body. It stung then warmed my cock. The sound of it splattering
against the ground and the pungent whiff of it, pricking up against
my nostrils, pleased me with their familiarity. This went on for some
considerable time then the piss petered out and ran onto my legs once
more. I grunted and squeezed to get the last dribbles out, but then,
worried I might shit, eased off; to drip dry was fine in the
circumstances. I looked around. Things were getting clearer: a walled
garden, a house; down below a woman with a dog watched me.
‘I didn’t think
you’d ever wake up,’ she called, an attempt to smile jerked from
her face as her dog tried to go elsewhere. She hissed at it through
clenched teeth and gave a sharp tug on the leash, jolting the animal
around to face her. It yelped and collapsed miserably onto the grass.
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ A muscular
man, grinning stupidly, bounded from the house and put his arms
around the woman. He went to kiss her but she recoiled and raised her
eyebrows in gesture at me.
The man glanced up then back at
her. ‘He can’t stay,’ he muttered.
A sudden realisation occurred to
me. I opened my mouth to speak but coughed as I made to do so,
getting the attention of them both. My mouth felt dry. I ran my
tongue over my teeth and gums, stirring up all the saliva I could
muster, sloshed it around by way of lubrication then swallowed. They
kept their eyes on me, waiting patiently as if I were about to give a
sermon. ‘Get your hands off my wife,’ I croaked, twisting my
hand, bound at the wrist,
to wag a finger at
the man in the jog-suit.
He looked at my wife, who nodded
and gently pushed him away. ‘You go ahead,’ she said, holding out
the leash handle.
Mumbling huffily, the man
dragged the dog, whose head was turned in the direction of my wife,
to the end of the garden then glowered at her. Upon leaving he
slammed the gate so hard it hit the frame and rattled back open.
My wife hugged her arms around
her body. ‘You must be freezing,’ she simpered.
I tried to shrug but to little
effect.
‘You were asleep for a long
time.’
‘Hih.’
‘You were!’ She snapped then
glanced sheepishly around. ‘You were’, she repeated in a sharp
whisper.
I nodded to the side. ‘Who’s
he?’
‘Darren.’
‘You
don’t waste time.’
Her
head bowed and she began teasing a loose clump of earth with her
foot. After several moments her shoulders gave a shudder.
‘You’re not crying?’
‘No,
I’m not,’ she said in a cracked voice.
‘Christ.’
She
sniffled and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m not.’
‘Well
you obviously are.’
‘I’m not!’ She shot me a
defiant stare. ‘But so what if I am! What’s it to you anyway. You
useless…’ She snorted and waved a hand dismissively at me. ‘And
you expect me to wait! Christ I hate you. Why did you have to go and
wake-up? You always spoil things for me.’
I sneered. ‘I swear if I could
uproot I’d…’
‘You’d what! You’d wither
and die, starved of water. You’d topple over. Or maybe you’d just
get lodged in a bigger tree.’
‘Oh, ha ha. Very droll.’
She drew a deep breath then
exhaled deliberately and cupped her hands like a beggar. ‘Look, I
don’t want to argue. If this is going to work out we have to be
able to get on. You, me and
Darren… otherwise.’
‘Otherwise what?’
She shook her head and made to
leave. ‘I have to go.’
‘Otherwise what Rachael?’ I
shouted, the effort grating my throat. ‘Otherwise fucking what?’
Gripping the gate handle, ready
to pull it to, she turned to face me. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to
cut you down.’
‘Cut me… What, did you think
you could leave me here?’
She said nothing, the corners of
her mouth turned down slightly. Then I realised; the branches had
grown into as well as around me. Up my arse, into my pores, even
burrowing new holes where once there were none. I bit into my lip,
scrunched my eyes tight shut. After several moments I opened them and
writhed violently in all directions then exhausted by the effort,
slumped back, panting, into my predicament.
Rachael raised her eyebrows at
me. ‘Finished?’
‘I suppose you think this is
my fault,’ I said.
‘No, it’s not like that.’
‘Well what is it like then?’
‘It’s nobody’s fault.’ A
trace of a smile rose on her face. ‘It’s just how things turned
out.’
‘Him in my bed and me a tree!’
I shot forward, hitting my neck against one branch and conscious of a
tugging at the nape. ‘You think this is how things turn out?’
I waited for an answer. There
was a minute or two of silence and then a rattling sound started up.
She was tapping the latch with her thumb. I thought of men whose
wife’s stand by them through thick and thin; soldiers, convicts,
men in comas, with debilitating diseases, paralytics, alcoholics.
They overcame their obstacles, used them to strengthen their
relationships.
Not us.
‘I’ll kill you,’ I said.
She sighed and took a step
towards the back lane. ‘We’ll talk later,’ she said. ‘This
isn’t getting us anywhere.’ Then she left, closing the gate,
making sure the latch dropped into place.
