Dusk Country Blues: Part II

Chapters III-V

III

Lyla and Chanelle lay in the grey grass pulling it out one at a time and then tossing it into the air where no wind came to blow it away and the grass formed small piles before their faces. Sun was dipping down beneath the factories after its short skip across the horizon. Chanelle said, “That’s how it goes. One day you think you got the best beetle ever and the next day it’s just a dried up husk of nothing. Don’t matter that it took you a whole week to find just the right one with just the right pincers.”

Lyla said, “Everyone always thinks they got the best beetle.”

“Scarlet was a beauty,” said Chanelle, her breath sighing out like to empty her whole lungs. “Had a red streak is why I called her Scarlet.”

“Saw her.”

“Then you know. Thought she’d topple everyone’s beetles. Whole tournament would be us cheering her on.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Fuck off.” Chanelle turned to me. Rolled her whole body away from the earth as if to reveal herself to me. “Where’s your beetle?”

The way her dirty grey shirt clung to her dried my mouth. I shrugged. Found it always difficult to speak around her. “Don’t got a beetle.”

Lyla yawned. “What about Abe?”

“He’s got dozens. Everyone brings him a beetle all the time but he doesn’t train them or compete.”

“I know,” Lyla said. “Everybody knows. Why don’t you take one and use it?”

“They’re his.” I shrugged, feeling stupid and hot and clumsy.

“He’s your twin,” Chanelle said. “Aren’t yall supposed to share everything?”

Abe didn’t share though. Didn’t share Lyla or Chanelle when they came by for a fuck. Maybe he would if I asked but I never asked. Could never imagine being worthy of what was given to him so freely. To ask was to tell everyone, including myself, that I was nothing compared to him.

I said, “You don’t got a twin.” It came out harsher than I meant, like an accusation and an assault.

Lyla sighed and shook her head and pushed up to her feet, wiping the dirt away from her stained clothes. She didn’t say another word, just turned away and left.

Chanelle scooped up the pile of grass she’d plucked from the earth and held it in her fist. She watched Lyla go and said, “You’re lucky, Locke, but you don’t know it.” She bent down and scooped up the pile of grass Lyla had plucked and held it in her other fist. Turning to me, she said, “You ever wonder why you’re the only one with a sibling?”

Couldn’t speak or even think.

“That’s right,” she sneered. “All us all alone but you and you don’t even see that.” She shoved both fistfuls of grass into her mouth and chewed, turned away, followed Lyla.

Her emotions struck me like a blow and I couldn’t catch my breath until I got back home and Abe put his arm around me, asked me what was wrong.

Didn’t say anything. Just held onto him while we watched his beetles crawl over one another.

IV

The river flowed like sludge, its stink almost solid in my lungs. I threw a rock in there and watched it slowly swallowed by the current. It was the third hour of dusk.

Abe was using our room to fuck Harrison, the beetle collector. He had blond hair and a hairlip scar, which made him old enough to have been a child when doctors lived in the dusk country. His ears were pierced by bone and he tattooed his flesh with each new breed of beetle he discovered. Spent most his life out gathering them, discovering new ones or old ones. He even bred them, if you believe the stories he told. Sold his precious babies, as he called them, to anyone willing to trade for a chance to compete in the beetle tournaments.

One year, every single beetle competing had been bought from Harrison.

He smelled like dirt and mud but with a touch of that rotting sweet stink that all our parents had. Like he too was on his way to death.

No one grew old in the dusk country.

I followed the riverbank south, the way that led out of the dusk country. My feet carried me from the broken concrete and crumbling asphalt to places where grass grew like thorns. Brown and prickly against the soles of my feet. Sentinels lined the distance, calling me. The shade of some large creature or structure. Thin at the base and rising high like a pyre before stretching wide with dozens of arms.

When I could make out the brown of their skin, she spoke from the otherside of the river. “Leaving?”

Startled, I gasped audibly and nearly slipped into the black river. She stood, hair tumbling down, antlers rising high, surrounded by fireflies, a huge white shirt draped from her narrow shoulders. If she wore anything else, they were too short to be seen beneath the shirt. One of her shoulders slipped free from the mouth of her shirt and I could trace the hollow of her neck, the curve of her clavicle in the halflight of mid-dusk. Her skin so pale it seemed to glow.

She spoke through my silence, a wry smile on her face, “I’m Elsa.”

“I know.”

“You don’t look like him.”

I coughed just to make noise. “We’re not that kind of twins.”

She cocked her head to one side, her neck somehow holding all that antler weight. The fireflies followed the tips of the antlers. “What do you think you’ll find out there?” She gestured towards the sentinels.

“I’ve never seen a sentinel before.”

“A tree.”

I scowled, squinting at the sentinels. “Aren’t trees green?”

“How do you know that’s a tree?”

“What?”

“If you’ve never seen one.”

Her nipples were visible through the shirt. Two points in the white. Her legs were shapely, rounded with muscle. Her neck was so thin and long I could have wrapped my fingers round it. “What is it then?”

She started walking away from the trees. “I’ve been walking beside you for almost an hour and you didn’t even notice.”

I followed, the width of the river keeping me from her. Her hips swayed when she walked, pressing tight against the shirt. I could make out the curve of her body, the fabric tight over her ass. I stiffened in my jeans just watching her. “How do you know my brother?”

She turned to face me but walked backwards, heading back into the dusk country. “He didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head.

She raised her face to the blank, black sky. “He found me. I was buried beneath the rubble of one of the collapsing factories. The cars wailed for me. They begged the skies for help to save me and no one came. No one came for so long.” She lowered her face and met my gaze.
And then there was your brother.”

“That true?”

She smiled and I melted in the mocking heat of her regard. “We’re all lost here. Me most of all. He makes me feel found.”

“You didn’t grow up with us in the dusk country.”

“The dusk country.” She raised her face to the blank sky once more as if something could be seen or found there. “I like that.” She closed her eyes and took a breath. When she turned back to me, she said, “How do you know?”

I swallowed, wanted to point to her antlers. “I’d know.”

She cocked her head to the side again. “Want to see me naked?”

My mouth dried, and it hung open, struggling to say something. Anything.

She smiled and grabbed the hem of the shirt. Her lips parted slightly and her eyes hooded, her hips rolled back and forth beneath the shirt. She held it down and tight against her body, revealing the size and firmness of her breasts, the flatness of her stomach. She moved her right hand to her nipples and played with them, her other hand holding the shirt tight. She gyrated erotically, and my erection was painful against the denim. Pulling the neck of the shirt down and pressing her breasts together, her cleavage spilled out and I swallowed, my breath coming heavily.

Night approached as she teased me. The only sound was my breathing, the river flowing, and her theatrical moaning. The fireflies swirling above her, forming shapes like words from the cast off books that people once knew how to read.

Her voice was husky, almost like my mother’s, like that primordial sound reverberating through my whole life, shivering my bones. “Want to fuck me? Right here?” As she spoke she turned around and I could tell she wore nothing beneath the shirt. But the shadows hid her no matter how hard I stared. I was nodding, my eyes locked onto the shadow between her legs.

Her fingers ran over that shadow and she took in a shuddering breath, eyes closed for a moment. When they opened, she bit her lip and continued touching herself.

Desire was a dam bursting and I was so hard that it hurt. I touched the button of my jeans to slip them off.

She laughed and stood up straight. “Not tonight.”

I blinked, my lungs breathing shallow, my body at the edge of ecstasy.

She ran, her hair flowing behind her like a river dreamt clean. Her antlers piercing the night with bright, a thousand fireflies whirling round them.

I dropped my pants and masturbated. Her teasing mockery ringing in my ears, echoing beneath my clamped tight eyelids. It took only a moment and I came. I watched it shoot out of me in globs of black as they arced into the river.

Terrified for a moment, I stared down at my dick hard in my hand as more black oozed out. I screamed and didn’t bother to wipe myself clean, just tucked myself back in my jeans and ran home.

V

Abe was hot against my back. “You awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Getting up?”

“No.”

He shifted, cupped my body with his. His heart beating slow and gentle into my back. “You okay?” He massaged my shoulder. His hand so soft and delicate.

It was too much to tell. “Don’t know.” Tears clawed at the back of my eyes but I had no words for them all. I was a bottle bursting.

His breath was cold and stale, his cheek pressed on mine. His lilting lisp somewhat grating. “You got to relax, Locke. Life’s not so bad as what’s in your head. We just living. Can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Don’t you want to be happy?”

He exhaled abruptly through his nose. “Think anyone’s ever been happy? Think anyone trapped in their head all day’s ever been happy? Happy’s got nothing to do with how we living.”

His words were like rough stone dragged down the inside of my ear canal, my throat, my stomach. I closed my eyes tight. “What did we do to deserve this?” My words almost inaudible.

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with life, Locke. You say the dusk country’s a dead land. But, shit, we still living. There’s happiness all around you, boy. You just got to reach out and touch it.”

I had nothing to say so I said nothing. Eventually, Abe climbed over me. His footsteps taking him away, his muttered conversation with mother only just reaching me. Drifting in and out of sleep, I rolled over, away from the door.

“You want me to get you anything? Bucky said there’s fish in the river. Bet I could get you one.”

My only answer was curling tighter into a ball. Trying to fit into a womb. A womb that had to exist somewhere. A place of peace, of comfort. A place where life was more than just the moments between waking and sleeping.

I woke later, my head cradled in a warm lap. Skin on skin. A hand gently stroking my hair, my neck, my cheek. Afraid to open my eyes in case it stopped. It had been so long since I’d felt anything but dread, fear. Hopelessness. Embarrassment. Shame.

“He okay?” It was Abe’s voice, tinny in my ears.

“He’s just lost.” A girl’s voice, so close to me. Husky. One I recognized but couldn’t place. Reminding me of a day so long ago when my mother was human, when she held me when I was sick. I almost died, or so Abe told me. And I thought maybe I did die, a long time ago, but only kept on living on accident anyway.

“I’ll be out back. Bucky says he’ll trade fish for a blowjob.” Abe’s barefeet padded out of our collapsing home.

I was in a girl’s lap. So warm and soft. She stroked my ear, and then started humming. Humming a tune I recognized. Something from long ago. My childhood, maybe. Another woman’s voice back then humming me to sleep, to peace. Making me believe life could always be so good. My mother’s lullaby, the one that still echoed and rolled within me, lulling me to sleep on nights that never seemed to end.

Cracking. That’s what it felt like. Like I was cracking to pieces. Something made of glass inside me shattering. My heart, maybe. Shaking first. Just shaking. Then hands gripping me, pulling my face closer. My face buried in her lap while she held me tight. I could smell her. Only a layer of fabric between my hot breath and her lips.

“You’re okay,” her voice said. “You’re okay.” Hands stroking my back.

And then I broke to nothingness. Feeling so much that the bottle I was exploded and left me with nothing. Just an empty vessel, unable to feel anything. And I wept. I cried and cried. Open-mouthed sobs into her crotch, making the fabric wet and hot. Then my arms came up, gripped her lower back, pulling myself in tighter to her.

She held me. She just held me. And that was enough. Enough for a lifetime. Something I had missed so much yet had no name for. It had been so long since anyone but Abe had touched me with kindness, with affection. It overwhelmed me and I disappeared within that flooding emotion. I was lost to myself, to time. The dusk country left far behind. My mother rotting on the couch washed from me.

When I opened my eyes, and pulled myself back to myself, it was Elsa who stared down at me. “It’s all right. You’re gonna be all right.”

And immediately all I felt was shame. I rolled away from her, but she put a hand on mine on the bed. I didn’t look at her but felt her eyes on me. She said, “You had a lot to let go of, huh?”

I sniffed, wiped my face. Nodded. “No one—” I broke off, the words sounding stupid before they even reached my lips.

Her hand squeezed mine. “If you don’t give love, you won’t receive love.”

Taking a deep breath, a sob racked my lungs, vibrating through me. “No one’s ever just held me before. No one but Abe, I mean.”

“That’s really fucking sad.”

I burned with shame. Then Abe was at the door, smiling, holding a black fish without eyes. “Yall hungry?”