RICH LOGSDON

 

MATCH-STICK MAN
 

 I called him Match-Stick Man,
his body slender as a sapling,
arms and legs thin  iron rods.
When he blinked, lizard-like,
his lids shot back;
eyes nearly popping from their sockets.

A grotesque fixture in the office,
Tom had taught psychology
for seven  breath-taking years
before offering his heart to Dr. Leslie Drubb,
the kindest person on earth.
She  brought him rhubarb pie,
following his lengthy hospitalization,
and black lust invaded Tom’s skull.

Skulking about the office
those blustery fall afternoons
a month after his release,
coughing and muttering to himself,
occasionally blaspheming,
Tom  resembled a ghoul;
most everyone avoided him.
Everyone, that is, except Leslie,
a regular Mother Teresa,
a suffering servant dying daily to self.

"Hell’s fire, I  crave this babe,"
 he rasped weeks later in a whisper
one late afternoon in my office’s
dark,  prayerful privacy,
 "because she is so ordinary.
Besides," he added, smacking thick lips,
" the rhubarb pie was delicious.
and the pie is the heart of the soul"

As I listened, eye on God,
I thought of poor  Leslie:
middle-aged with graying brown hair,
tied in a bun;
at least fifty pounds overweight;
thick, dark-rimmed glasses,
hideous purple dresses.
Dr.  Drubb  walked with a limp.

"It’s your sickness," I spoke,
conscience lit by God:
Leslie had three children
no husband, and a dog.
She read the Bible every night.
"You’ll get over it, Match-Stick Man.
This one is real a bad choice."

But Tom did not get over it,
his black passion growing  like cancer,
and, in front of stunned colleagues,
began flirting with dowdy Dr. Drubb,
stroking her hair,
kissing her hands,
brushing up against her.
After the two had teased each other
over steaming cups of fresh coffee,
For two or three  weeks,
Tom  broke the ice one February afternoon
going down on one knee and
asking Leslie on a date.

I imagine her heart
leaping from its cage,
as she uttered, pathetically, "Oh, my, yes."
Oh, my, yes.

Tom said he would drop by
late afternoon of the next day
and  take her to Las Vegas’
finest casino restaurant,
a slowly rotating thing that
sat atop a building that soard
like a needle
into dusty Vegas air.

"I’ll treat you like a queen,"
I heard him say,
his voice a song.

Only Tom lied.
He didn’t do that.
Instead,
he drove Dr. Drubb fifty miles
to the far  dark shore of Lake Mead,
where witches used to sing.

(The drive, he later told me, was stunning,
the setting desert sun bleeding the sky
with reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows.)
They parked.
Darkness fell like a dead snake
and Drubb found herself alone with
Match-Stick-Man himself,
in his primer gray Ford pickup,
looking over the huge man-made lake.
Strains of Mozart poured  from the radio.

"Where are we?" she asked, infatuated.
They had been discussing religion,
Tom just having confessed that,
while his brother (a defrocked priest)
held faith for both of them,
he believed in nothing at all.

"At the end of the world is where we are,"
he answered, guttural,
already beginning the metamorphosis
which clinical shrinks attributed
to a  flawed DNA code.

"This night," he added,  almost singing,
momentarily manic,
blood ringing in his brain,
"I have a present for you."
Tom’s arms and legs trembled
uncontrollably as he eyed Drubb sideways.

"Oh," she squealed, delighted,
heart hitting the moon.
"What is it? Whatever could it be?"
Drub’s life would not end without
a moment of romance.

Attempting to reconstruct the story
as it was told to me,
I imagine Leslie knew that
Tom understood her passion:
the novels of Jane Austen.
I suspect she  recalled
his having promised her
a collector’s set.

"Step outside with me," Tom growled,
unlocking the doors.

Dying to see the gift,
hoping for a late night embrace,
limping Leslie struggled out of the pickup,
bounding into howling icy air.

Carrying a package with a bulky item,
Tom jumped out his side,
bounced around the front of the pickup
and joined the woman
his black heart desired.

Glancing at the full moon,
he spoke, voice like iron:
"Walk with me a bit, Leslie."
Taking her fat hand in his thin bony one,
he led the limping woman towards the water
gently lapping the shore line.

There, as she stood  in front of him
marveling at the moon and clouds
reflecting off dark, glassy  water,
he reached into the package
and withdrew a huge,
    glistening,
        serrated
            hunting knife.

The knife, he claimed,
sang to him.

Stepping forward, quick as a lizard,
he seized Leslie around the head
and, shrieking,
at whispering light-speed,
in the grand tradition of our father,
slit her throat slick as a whistle.

"Not exactly Jane Austen,"
he muttered tenderly, holding the bloodied Drubb.
She reminded him of the sacks of oatmeal
he used to carry on her father’s farm.

It was the cleanest and deepest cut ever made,
Tom confessed to me afterwards,
blood spurting like a geyser from her wound.
"This one should make the record books,"
he crowed, sure that he was called to be an assassin.

Leslie expired steadily as he set her
gently on the ground,
    removed her clothes,
         kissed her nipples,
            inserted the knife just above  the sternum,
                and slit downward.
Leslie’s body heaved into the air,
no doubt from the knifes’ sharpness.

Then, joined to  ritual,
he set the knife aside and
took off his own clothes.

The next part was crucial to survival and sanity.

Reverentially, Tom knelt next to the body,
reached forth with  match-stick hands,
grabbed  fleshy sides of the cavity,
and yanked the wound apart.
Steam gloriously rising
(signifying rebirth)
from  flesh and organs,
he paused, licking  blood from his hands
then glanced towards Leslie,
her eyes barely open.

"Better than rhubarb," he uttered,
certain she would like the compliment.

"You fucking freak," she burbled,
blood bubbling from her mouth.
"I’m at the end of my fuckin’ roap,
all because of a man who resembles a praying mantis. "

Tom had never heard a foul word
from the mouth of  Drubb the saint,
and he was stunned and hurt.
It was as if Hell’s portal
had nearly swallowed him.

Prayerfully,
he silently composed himself.

Then,  Drubb’s life nearly expired,
he reached into the cavity,
grabbed her still-beating heart,
and yanked it forth.

Next, taking up the knife,
he  severed arteries and veins.
Putting the still warm heart to his lips,
Tom opened his mouth,
said softly "I love you, Leslie,"
and bit and bit and bit.
The heart squirted and squirted and squirted. The sensation
of his mouth's filling with  warm liquid,
of  bathing face and hands and body in warm blood
offset chilling winter cold and a bad cough.

Thrilled beyond words
(A chorus of angels gathering around him)
Tom felt himself on the edge of flight.
Weeping, he saw  his soul  leap from his body,
soaring  over the majestic lake
in large angelic spirals.

The desert wind beat against his soul,
as it flew like a great black bat
toward the moon, and
as it  descended and entered his  body,
he howled and howled and howled,
knowing he had touched God
to live boldly and grandly
until I found him another victim.

Naked, caked in blood,
Tom inserted his Pachelbel CD and,
speeding along the  dirt road
toward the dark highway,
thrilled to the masterful  concerto that,
three centuries before,
had set Europe on fire.
He felt himself on fire.

Once on  the black patch of highway,
Tom gunned the accelerator,
still tasting the blood of the kill.
A wayward mind, he was eager to call me,
explain what had happened,
tell me how he had poured lighter fluid
on the body and then,
using match sticks,
had  set the corpse on fire.

"I danced around the fiery corpse,"
he boasted, as Leslie(he said)
snapped, crackled, and popped
like a bowl of Rice Krispies.

A defrocked priest
masquerading as a professor of psychology,
I did confess and forgive Match-Stick Man,
as I had  done for years.
God be praised,
He's my brother.
 
 
 

logsdon@earthlink.net




1