The Cabin at the End of the World(56)
Mask in hand and knees wading deeper into her blood, Leonard crawls until his face is directly above Adriane’s. Her throat is a mess of ruined anatomy, still leaking blood and fizzing air bubbles and a coppery odor tinged with the acidity of bile. He does not want to linger on the ragged skin and exposed tissue of the wound, but seeing her turned-to-stone face is worse. Her lips are parted, a door thoughtlessly left open. Her squinty brown eyes are obscured by sagging upper eyelids, one hanging lower than the other. This malfunction of her smallest muscles and the resulting asymmetry is a final indignity, and he already has difficulty recalling what she looked like when she was alive.
Leonard does not want to disturb her head or body. He fears the mask erases who you were, but he must put it on her. The mask is part of the mysterious, seemingly random ritual he doesn’t understand, that was never fully explained beyond vague, dire consequences of incompletion; the ritual must be followed bureaucratically; otherwise, Wen’s and Adriane’s deaths would be wasted. If they die for naught, what would be the point? At this thought he remembers the cabin’s TV hanging on the back wall, that eerie portal to the wider world, and he feels its black screen, that single unwavering eye leering at him. He is afraid to turn on the TV and witness its judgment, but he will have to soon.
He stretches the mask open and slides it over the crown of Adriane’s head. There is no maybe about it; he is erasing her with this mask, and it is a blessing, one he hopes he is worthy to receive. Leonard only wants this to be done and then to be taken away from this cabin and never be made to remember the promise he broke. He is careful to not jostle or displace Adriane’s head, but his hands were not made for this task and he is rough and clumsy. It takes two attempts to get the mesh over the back of her skull and all that blood-soaked hair. When he finally coaxes it onto her, the mask hugs her face and features, a new simplified skin. Given how much blood is on his hands, the mesh is remarkably white. He has the defiant urge to protest what has happened and all the shitty things he’s been made to do and smear a red slash over her mouth and dots over her eyes.
Andrew is now standing next to Leonard and pointing the gun. He shouts, “Fucking get up!” His eyes are glowing coals. His teeth are bared and his cheeks are blotchy red; the blood underneath is eager to come out and be free.
Leonard does not fear the gun. He does not fear for his own safety. That will never again be his concern. Whatever happens to him, he deserves. He says, “I promised Wen she would be okay and I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—” This is not the right thing to say and he knows this confession will only torment both Andrew and Eric, but he has to say it; he selfishly has to have it on record. For all the blood already spilled and for all the blood to come, he still meant to keep that promise to Wen for as long as he was standing, until the end of everything.
Andrew pistol-whips the side of Leonard’s face, just below the temple. A bright light goes supernova, washing out his view of the room. A stabbing pain quickly morphs into the simmering sting of an open cut and the dull ache of swollen tissue. Leonard falls off his knees and returns to all fours, a reversal of the evolutionary ascent-of-humans pictograph. His hands are again baptized in Adriane’s blood. There’s a high-pitched tuning fork ring in one ear, and he is gazing into Adriane’s masked face when Andrew kicks him in the ribs. Leonard remains prostrate, penitent, and ready to accept more. He deserves this.
Andrew shouts at Leonard to stand up. His shouts degrade into incoherent, larynx-shredding growls. He presses the gun’s barrel against Leonard’s face in the same spot where he hit him.
Leonard stands up slowly, an electric current of agony splintering through his head. Over Andrew’s shoulder he sees Wen’s body on the floor and the red on her face and he looks away. He says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”
Tears, spit, and snot stream from Andrew’s face. His arm shakes; his whole body is shaking. He hits Leonard with the gun again, smashing his jaw, spinning his head, and redlining the volume of the whine in his ear.
Leonard looks at Wen’s body again because he can’t help it. He prays for her to get up, yet another prayer of his that won’t be answered.
Eric lumbers up from his crouched position by his daughter’s side. After two foal-like steps, he stumbles and falls to the floor, blocking Leonard’s view of Wen. Eric throws up and he sways and swoons into a sitting position, a line of vomit hanging from his open mouth.
Leonard says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”
Andrew limps backward, never taking the gun off Leonard, and grabs the chair Eric was tied to. He drags it across the short distance and it tumbles into Adriane’s legs. “Sit in that chair. And don’t fucking move.” He asks Eric, “Are you all right?”
Eric rocks back and forth. His eyes are closed and his head is lost in his hands. He says, “No.” His voice is a sigh, as heavy and lonely as a name whispered into an empty room.
Leonard says sorry again and again. He’ll be doomed to say sorry for eternity and no one will listen and no one will believe him. He picks up the chair and takes two small steps toward the kitchen so he is not sitting in Adriane’s blood. Before placing the chair upright on the floor, he kicks aside a coil of rope with which he tied up Andrew. The rope careens into the end table and wobbles its little yellow-shaded lamp, which spins in two slow, drunken circles, waiting until he places the chair on the floor before going still. He sits, ending the concatenation. He will follow Andrew’s instructions. He will not move. He will sit there and he will wait for Andrew to do whatever it is he’s going to do.