WHAT IT'S LIKE AT THE BOTTOM

BY THOMAS VAN GEMERT

They had a plan once to lure high school girls into the woods but the injured animal sounds they made while crouching in the under brush scared the girls away. Then a few times they’d creep up in their beat up old van alongside a hot number on the sidewalk, dropping a few well prepared lines out an open window. Hey you look like your in a hurry. Maybe we can help get you there faster. But the ego, no matter how deep in a barrel of shit it already is, can only take so much pounding. They only tried this twice, both times the girl crossed her arms and quickened her pace after a forced smile and a “no thanks”.

Their names were Clem and Donald. Up until his accident Clem worked in a hardware store as a clerk. He went in knowing nothing about tools and after three years he’d still give vague, mumbled answers to the customers as to wereabouts. But his father and the owner were decent friends and he was never fired. After closing time, he’d spend a long time sweeping the floor, staring at certain tools and fantasizing what he could do with them to women.

Donald, like Clem, still lives with his parents. He does odd jobs, mostly mowing lawns. On the night of graduation from Chester High he locked himself in the bathroom while his parents were out and, in a drunken stupor, shaved the hair off his entire body. Collecting it all into a box, he then secretly mailed it out the next day to the woman he was stalking at the time. He wore camo a lot in highschool but wasn’t interested in hunting or joining the army. It just went with the knives he collected and hung from his belt and conceiled in secret pockets and strapped to his legs.

Now it is five years after graduation and Clem sits in his wheelchair and stares out over a lake. He is in the middle of woods, a good mile from home. It takes him close to an hour to get over the slopes and through the brambles but he does it often. He stares at the water and lets his eyes go out of focus through tinted glasses, thinking about wheeling himself into the deep center of the lake where no one will ever find him. Everytime he comes here, he brings with him a weight from the abandoned dumbell set in the basement and stashes it under some rocks next to a tree. He has it all planned out, even bought strong chain from the hardware store he used to work at. Last weekend he felt that he was ready. He chained himself to the chair, chained up the weights...150 pounds now, well over his body weight and enough to keep him sitting at the bottom of the lake for centuries. He imagines it’s very peaceful down there, blue and dreamlike, with stalagmites of soft mud reaching for the surface in frozen hazy spatters. But he couldn’t get himself to start wheeling foreward. He wasn’t ready yet. Something didn’t seem quite right. Maybe he needed more weight and after two more minutes of this nervous feeling he knew something was wrong and that he’d have to try again later. So he began unchaining the weights, and one by one stashing them again under the rocks next to the tree.

Today he knows it isn’t the right time either because when he arrived here, he thought about it and got the same uneasy feeling. Now, after stashing the ten pound weight he brought under the rocks, he sits and lets his mind go blank. It is very quiet. It rained this morning and his pant legs and shoes are wet from the journey. Two sparrows fly across the gray sky and Clem watches their reflection...rapid flaps, soar, rapid flaps, soar.

A rustling behind him breaks the silence and he turns his head to see Donald step out of the dark woods. He is dressed in his usual camoflauge jacket and pants. When he spots Clem he straightens his shoulders and tilts his head back a little, a thin smile forms. Clem already knows he is up to something.

“How did you find me here?”

“Your mom says you come here everyday.”

“How the hell does she know where I am?” He feels a tightening in his biceps and chest. Donald shrugs and then steps behind him and grabs the handles. “She said you come to the lake to think about things.”

“But there’s more than one lake.”

“This one’s closest.”

“My mom doesn’t know anything. You shouldn’t listen to anything she says.”

“Secret,” Donald says.

The girl is lying on the mattress on her stomach. She has on a short red skirt, black shirt and black pantyhose. The intricate ropework looks as if a lot of time has been put into it. The hands and feet are connected by a rope that hangs over a rafter directly above, leaving just the right amount of slack for her to lay flat.

Clem asks if she is dead.

“Hell no,” says Donald bending down and grabbing her ass. A moan emits from the tangle of black hair. He slides his hand down to the back of her thigh and says that the pantyhose has to go. Clem looks out of the dirty cracked window, expecting to see police with guns come bustling out from behind the trees. But everything is still outside. The naked tree limbs are just a shade darker than the sky. He can’t see the fallen leaves from where he’s sitting. The only sound comes from Donald’s hand rubbing the length of nylon from the girls thigh to her ankles. Her shoes are on the floor amongst the dust and debris. She moans again and it sounds as if she’s trying to say something.

“That rag isn’t comfortable is it?” Donald says. “You want something softer don’t you.” He rolls the nylon down slow mumbling something about beautiful. Clem looks at the curve of muscle and grips his wheel rings, wet and slippery. Donald turns around and smiles with a closed mouth. He has good teeth but he never smiles with them.

“Want to make ten bucks tommorow? I need you to feed her for me. I’ll have a lot of lawns to mow after all this rain.”

Clem thought about his lake and how it looks with rain. “I’ll have to think about it,” Clem says knowing that Donald wouldn’t like hesitation and realizing in reflection afterward that this is what he would have said after hesitation anyway. Her rear end looked very firm. “What does she eat?”

“I’ll bring a bag of something over tommorow. I’ll lay it in the bushes outside your window.”

Clem looks outside the window and frowns. “It’s going to take a while for me to get here. I’ll do it for fifteen though.”

Donald keeps smiling and nods. He pulls the pantyhose off and they watch her feet start to squirm, the nails are painted a glittery red. Donald pulls the rag out of her mouth and immediately she starts screaming. He spanks her ass and her whole body jolts. There is a pause and then she begins sobbing, her shoulders shaking against the mattress. Clem can’t see her face, just a mess of black hair.

“What do you want for lunch tommorow, precious,” Donald says as his hand slides up underneath her skirt. It takes a good two minutes of asking and rubbing before she stops sobbing and mutters “sandwich”. Donald has his hand down between her legs now and he asks her what she wants on her sandwich and while he is asking this Clem thinks he might have heard something emit from her mouth. Had that really been a moan or was he just imagining he heard that?

Donald finally gets her to mutter peanut butter and then he stuffs the panty hose into her mouth and ties it behind her head over her hair. Then he wheels Clem out of the shack.

“Can you get back home by yourself?” he says. “I’ll give you twenty dollars tommorow. The bag will be under your window in the bushes.”

Clem stares at the trees. Donald is talking to the back of his head, his hands still gripping the bars.

“Put the sock back over her mouth when she’s done. Make sure she eats. And give her water too. I’ll put a bottle of water in the bag.”

“Okay,” Clem says after hesitation. “Okay.” Donald walks around and crouches down in front of him, staring at him. “Take off those damn glasses.”

Clem takes them off probably a little too fast. Donald stares into his eyes and Clem stares back. Donalds eyes are a cold blue and the iris’s search in a frenzy from one of Clem’s eyes to the other while the rest of his body remains completely still. Clem knows he must hold this stare and although he does, he finds his mind searching the fuzzy sides around the center of vision, at Donald’s head, shaved since graduation, and the dark trees behind which are nearly impossible to distinguish. Ofcourse they are hard to distinguish because he is not looking directly at them. If he were looking directly at them, he would be able to make out the rough flakes of bark. As long as he thinks thoughts like these, he is sure his eyes will look satisfactory to Donald. And he is right for Donald is smiling again.

“Alright take it easy, brother,” Donald says and pats him on the shoulder. Clem starts wheeling away through the tall grass towards the thicket which will be difficult to get over. Donald walks back inside the shack and shuts the door.

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