Far From Aiaia
There was a pig in the yard. Nosing through the impatiens. Purple, white, and lavender. At first, Donal had not been quite sure what he was seeing. The long pink body, with a brown spot like a coffee stain on the back. He had just returned from a run, and winded, he was pacing about with his hands on his hips when he first caught sight of the pig. The house was set back at the edge of woods that separated Donal’s house from the sea, surrounded by trees and shrubs and flowers at the end of a long paved drive that curved like a field hockey stick, the front edge of property touching the back end of Donal’s. The north shore of Massachusetts. Marblehead, just south of Salem. Donal lived on the corner of the street at the top of a hill, and Callisa lived in the house behind him.
This time of year, mid June, nearly the solstice, you could just barely make out Callisa’s house from the street. Everything about it smothered in green. It was a big house, and it had been built long before Donal moved in, set far back in the woods. It looked something like a castle. A turreted tower in front and a wrap around porch. Balconies off three of the four bedrooms, gables and spires, and an enormous stained glass window in the front that looked like an eye. A Victorian in an era of pholonials rising left and right about their small town, more and more land disappearing.
The house was blue, trimmed all in gray, and Callisa had flowers growing everywhere. Beds along the walkway, and woven between the shrubs beneath the windows. Separate manicured gardens spaced throughout the manicured lawn. And the pig was digging. Soil flying up behind him. A deep hole in one of the flower beds. He was leaving a mess. Donal approached slowly, still overheated and wishing he had something to drink. The pig stopped, snorted, and then scurried off behind the house.
The sun was high and hot above him, the sky a flawless blue, and the house, the whole neighborhood, was silent. Nothing more than the quiet hum from the woods, and the distant sound of waves crashing on the shore. Sounds you could only hear when all else was quiet. Donal stopped again and listened. Nothing. And no movement behind the windows. Nothing. He wondered where the pig had gone.
Callisa had lived out back for less than a year, and from what Donal understood her husband was gone. Her husband had been a large man with a pointed bald head and small ears, and if he waved at all, he did so briefly and dismissively, ending any attempt at conversation before he climbed into his car. But Donal hadn’t seen him now since early spring, and from what he learned from Bob across the street, the marriage was over.
“She gave him the old heave ho,” Bob said, a forced smile and eyes squinting in the sun, “which is okay with me. Gives you more of a license to look at those big titties without feeling self-conscious or guilty. You know what I’m saying?” Bob put his cigar back in his mouth, and crouched down to reinsert a spark plug in his tractor mower. A green and yellow John Deere. Bob liked to drive the tractor about the lawn, cigar in one hand and beer in the other, going top speed. Just over forty with bristly red hair and bushy eyebrows, he, too, had gotten divorced not long before. “She loves having those things on display, but with her husband around, I don’t know, it didn’t feel right. It sometimes made me feel kind of bad. For him, not for her. She’s always loving it.”
And Bob was maybe right, Donal thought, she did seem to enjoy it. He would see her working in her gardens now and then on her hands and knees, tank top and bra-less, skin tight shorts, her hands covered in soil. She would always look in his direction, no matter how far away he might be, and she would always smile.
“If I were you, living as close as you do, dude,” Bob said, “I’d be wandering down there all the time, seeing if she needs a little help…around the house. You see what I’m saying? A single hottie like that always needs a little…help around the house.”
Now, Donal stopped in the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water from the Brita water pitcher. With Annie behind him, working on the bills, he stared out the back window, hoping again to get a glimpse of the pig, but from this angle the house was so hidden, the pig could be anywhere, if in fact it had been there at all. Maybe he was seeing things, he thought. Hot sun, dehydration, electrolytes off. He had felt a little dizzy. And stranger things had happened.
“If you’re going to work in the yard,” Annie said, “could you do me a favor and prune those lilacs? They’re getting out of control.”
“I might wait till it cools off a bit.”
“Yeah, well, October doesn’t help me.”
Donal finished his water. “I meant later in the day.”
“I know.” Annie sighed. “I was being sarcastic. Although with you, later in the day might as well be October.”
Donal turned. Annie had her glasses on, reading glasses, and her hair up. He loved the look. Sexy and proper, ready to scold. Hot. His wife was lovely, and she was barren. At least it was beginning to seem that way. He supposed it could be him, but something in his gut, the pit of his belly, told him it was not. They went through conception bursts, sex nightly for a couple weeks at time, centered around her ovulation dates, and then there would be nothing, and then she would get frustrated, and then it would die off. It always died off silently—sometimes for months—and then she rarely brought it up until she was ready to try again. Annie was a headstrong woman, efficient and organized, and he supposed it would not be long before they began consulting doctors. Tests. Samples. Dirty magazines in stark white rooms.
She got up from the table, and went to the closet, the file cabinet and bills. Tight white shorts. She had a remarkable ass. Exquisite, he thought. He loved to watch her when she didn’t know he was watching. Now she opened an envelope, shuffled through the papers, and again took her seat. “$60 on cigars?” she said. “Again? We might as well just remortgage the house to cover the cigars.”
He sipped. “Callisa has a pig.”
Annie didn’t seem interested. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She has a pig. I saw it in the yard when I got back from my run.”
“It was probably a dog. Or a deer or something.”
Donal shook his head. “No. It was a pig.”
Annie took off her glasses. “What the hell would she be doing with a pig?”
“I don’t know. Some of them are pretty smart. You can train them.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s lonely, and wanted a companion.”
“Well, if she wanted a companion, she shouldn’t have thrown her husband out. And if she’s lonely, you better stay the hell away from her. That woman is a slut, I swear to God.”
*
“I’m going to take a stroll down there,” Bob told him the following Saturday. He was threading a new line through his weed whacker. It was sunny again. Hot. The air moving in ripples around them. It seemed like weeks since it had rained, but for some strange reason the landscape around their neighborhood was still quite lush. “Pay her a visit, offer to mow her lawn—the grass is getting a little bit high. Then maybe I’ll have to rinse off in that little outdoor shower she has on the side of the house. Grass, dirt, and sweat. Don’t let women kid you, Donal—they love sweat. And I think the time is about right. It’s right about now that women in her position start getting a little despondent. Start looking for a little comforting. Believe me, after my wife and I got divorced, she started comforting every guy in town. But I’m an understanding guy. I understood that, and I was okay with it. But someone like Callisa…you can’t tell me someone who looks like that has ever gone this long without a man. Those tits have never gone this long without getting sucked—I promise you. And I hate to see them neglected.” He looked up, that one eye shut. “There’s nothing more heartbreaking than a neglected pair of tits.”
“What about Camille?” Donal asked. Camille was Bob’s girlfriend, going on four or five months now. Thin and freckled. Long, pale Irish lips. She was very nice to talk to but a bit of a barbarian, tearing into each meal as if it were her last. Like a dog in her bowl. And then, corn from the cob spread across her cheeks, chin, and forehead. Barbecue sauce.
“Camille is awesome,” said Bob. “Don’t get me wrong. Awesome. Awesome. Great girl. I’m in love with her, I really am. But this isn’t about love. This is about tits. And it is about lust. It’s about fucking, Donal. Good old-fashioned roll up your shirt sleeves and get down on your knees, fucking.” He pointed across the street. “There’s a woman down there who needs my assistance. A damsel in distress. And who am I to deny her that? How could I sleep at night?” He stood, hitched up his pants. Looked again across the street, tucked his cigar in the corner of his mouth. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
*
Annie was in bed that night, reading. An erotic novel. A deviation for her. She usually read mysteries. “Jane from work recommended it highly,” she said. “She said it turned her whole sex life around.”
“In what way?” Donal asked.
“Nightly,” said Annie, opening her mouth wide as if in silent surprise.
Donal looked at her. “Really?”
“Really. I think it’s starting to work,” she said smiling.
She took off her glasses, put the book on the nightstand, and Donal leaned over and kissed her. Annie responded for a second, then her lips went still. Done. She put a hand on her chest, quietly pushing him away.
“Just not tonight,” she said. “I’m a little bit tired”
*
Donal woke in the bed of flowers. The impatiens. Pink, purple, and blue. He stared up at the bright, blue sky. Wisps of cotton. The air clear, clean. Fresh. He could hear water running again, and he sat up, looked about the yard. The shower. And slants of color and shadow moving behind the slits between the boards. Arms going up, down, a leg being raised. Washed or shaved. He stood in his boxers, small pebbles sticking to his skin and loose soil, green leaves, falling to the ground. The petals falling slowly, gently. Donal stepped out of the flower bed, careful not to trample any more, and onto the lawn, the grass and earth soft beneath his toes. He could hear voices now. Callisa’s and one other, coming from the shower. The other barely a whisper. And then the sound of wet lips. Donal then heard grunting, and turned to see the pig he had seen from distance. One brown spot surrounding his eye. Digging a hole. The pig had a bone in his mouth and he stopped and looked at Donal, and then continued digging. Hurriedly.
Donal listened again for the voices. Laughing. Kissing. The door creaked open just a little bit more. He wanted to approach from an angle, so he could see who was inside, without being seen, but no matter where he stood, the figures seemed to recede. He could only see feet. Four feet. Facing each other and then away. He looked to the sky. No planes. No birds. No sounds. Nothing but the water, and the voices. Donal walked to the door now, and swung it open, the water from the shower bouncing off the boards of the floor and hitting his shins. Bob was sitting on the wooden bench inside, his eyes shut and mouth open, with Callisa straddled upon his lap, impaled upon him. Both completely nude, and Bob had flowers in his hair. A woven crown. Callisa slipped her tongue past Bob’s lips, and from the corner of her eye, Callisa looked at Donal and smiled. She rose up a bit, rising, rising, and then she put her hand on her ass. She looked at Donal and flicked her tongue.
Donal sat up in bed, tried to focus, the images from his dream still in the room, with him, but fading. Everything was fading. Furniture, clothes, pictures. Into the shadows of the corners, or the blue gray light angling in from the moon. Annie lay on her side, facing away from him, her night gown—short and sheer—riding up over her bare hip. She was quietly snoring. Donal lay back down and looked at her, running a finger along her hip, thinking, but when she didn’t respond he got up and went outside to the balcony off their bedroom. Dark skies, stars, and crickets quietly singing. From here he couldn’t see Callisa’s house, not in the dark, not through the trees, but he could smell smoke, and see flames rising in the distance in the direction of her yard. A small bonfire. He looked at his watch and it was after two. He wondered what she was doing.
It was the next morning, as he set out for his run, that he saw Bob’s rider mower parked along the winding road that led to Callisa’s. Left as if abandoned, the sun reflecting off the bright green fender. And the grass about it untouched.
*
“You can’t file a missing person’s report on someone you don’t know is missing.” Annie lay on her back, raising her ass off her exercise matt, stretching her toes to the ceiling, watching a woman on the television do the same. Pilates. Annie was always buying new exercise cd’s, equipment, large rubber balls, stair climbers, treadmills, elliptical machines. Always looking for a new thing.
“He hasn’t been home for three days,” Donal said.
“He travels. He’s always talking about traveling on business. He never shuts up. God, he makes my teeth itch. Why don’t you just enjoy the quiet while he’s gone?”
“When he travels, he usually parks his car at the airport. His car is still in the driveway.”
She rolled over onto her stomach, stretching her leg up behind her now. Impossible positions. He wondered how she managed it. “He probably got a ride. Or took the shuttle.”
“His rider mower is gone from Callisa’s driveway, but it isn’t in his garage. I went and peeked. He loves that thing. He wouldn’t just leave it out.”
Annie stopped, looked at him. “Donal, please don’t go looking in people’s windows. People already think you’re weird as it is.”
*
He mentioned it to his neighbor next door. Lars. Tall and chiseled. Broad shoulders. Ice blue eyes and shag of blonde hair. Lars had moved in with his wife Freida not long after Donal and Annie had bought their home. Donal had heard the chain saw going—Lars was in his yard cutting down a tree when Donal approached him; he liked to cut down trees, liked to chop wood, and had cleared out most of the small grove that had once separated their land. Now he was shirtless, small chips of wood sticking to the sweat of his chest and shoulders, goggles on. Chewing on a toothpick. Work boots with gray socks hanging about his ankles, cargo shorts. It was rare that Donal ever saw him relaxing. He was always doing something—raking, mowing, chopping, pruning, digging, painting. And then when he did want to relax he rode his bike one hundred miles or went for a fifteen mile run. Time was finite, and wasting it just was not practical. Everything, for Lars, needed to be viewed through a practical lens. Life, God, and Death. Music, art, and watching sports—playing them was fine for reasons of fitness—were all frivolous and puzzling. Alcohol, a few drinks, was fine if it was after dark, and there was nothing else to do, but that was all. And besides a couple a day was good for the heart, right?
Donal approached him and held out his hand. Donal liked Lars. Lars caught sight of him, and shut off the saw, the teeth sticky with pine sap and pulp. Lars was sweating a little—but despite the heat, it was just a little; it wasn’t practical to sweat in excess. He stood in a field of cut logs and branches. The victim had been an enormous fir.
“You know,” he said to Donal, “I was beginning to get scared it might fall on my house. The thing with pines is that the wood is very soft, and it doesn’t take much to bring them down. One very heavy snowfall will do the trick, but then you can’t control where it lands. I hope you don’t mind my cutting it.”
“That’s fine,” said Donal, “I hate trees.”
Lars looked skeptical. “Really?”
Donal shook his head. “No.”
Lars looked about at what he had hewn. “You know, I actually like them myself, but there is a certain degree of pleasure in bringing them down. Sometimes we must kill the things we love, right?”
Donal folded his arms. “Right. Exactly.”
Frieda came out onto the deck then, a tray with three tall, clear drinks, a wedge of lime upon the rim of each. Frieda was probably at least ten years younger than Lars. Blonde and beautiful with a mischievous smile and remarkable breasts that defied the laws of gravity. Now she wore hair pulled back with a bandana, the knot tied atop of her head, and what might possibly have been the smallest bikini Donal had ever seen.
“I made some gin and tonics!” she called down. “I thought you might like something cold, and then perhaps I could give you a massage before we go for a swim in the pool!”
Lars looked at her, perplexed again, hesitated. “In a little while perhaps,” he called out. “I have another hour or so of work here.” Lars seemed to think on it more a moment. “She has very strange timing, that woman.”
Lars picked up a small hatchet and began chopping at a few branches protrutuding out from one of the logs. “You know, I haven’t seen him, lately,” he said in response when Donal asked about Bob, “which is also very strange because he’s always over here borrowing something or other. Tools, food, Tupperware. Kleenex. Some of the things he borrows are very strange. And he always needs help with something, always has some project going on. Usually I don’t mind, but sometimes if it’s eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night or he’s just looking to make a pass at my wife or something like that, then it can get to be a bit of a pain. Irritating. He travels a lot on business though, so he could be away.”
“I saw his tractor mower parked down in front of Callisa’s,” Donal said. “But then it was gone.”
Lars looked momentarily puzzled. “Callisa’s…? Really? Hmmpf. Well, you know, now that I think of it, that might make sense because she doesn’t have anyone to mow the lawn, and she doesn’t like to do it herself. I heard she made her husband leave. And she came by a couple days ago, asking me if I could help her move some boxes out of her garage and into her attic. She said she can’t carry them up the narrow stairs. She’s cleaning house, I guess. Which reminds me, I still need to go do that, help her with the boxes. She told me it was no hurry, but I would like to get it done before I forget.”
“Do you think she would have had Bob move in?”
Donal asked. Lars chuckled. “Now, that I can’t see. He has Camille, and he likes to play the field too much. He’s always talking about some woman or another. Besides, if that were the case, why would she be asking me to come move boxes? She would have Bob.”
*
It was the following day that he saw the second pig. This one closer to the tree line. Young saplings that separated his yard from Callisa’s. At one point it had all been a big piece of farmland. Chickens, goats, cows. And pigs. But that had been decades before, before the town had turned from country to suburbia, and since that time the woods had been encroaching its way back in. Encroaching from the sea. Every now and then bones would emerge from the earth, push themselves up and free. Donal had even sworn once that he had dug up a human femur, but before he had a chance to have someone who knew what they were talking about take a look at it, Annie had taken it and thrown it away.
This pig was a different one. He was sure of it. Noisier—he looked towards Donal, grunted loudly, and then started to piss—and he had different coloring. He had a black spot atop of his head, looking like a small shock of hair and he was bigger than the first one Donal had seen. Dirtier.
*
When Annie wasn’t home by ten that evening, Donal figured she had gone to the movies; she did that sometimes by herself if it was something Donal didn’t really want to see or if they were fighting. She liked to have him conjure up images of her sitting alone in the theatre, he thought, done with her crying and eating her popcorn. But the fight hadn’t been that bad—certainly not bad enough for her to pull out the movie guilt. And then by midnight she still wasn’t home, then two, then three. He tried her cell phone several times. No answer. Texted. Nothing. At six a.m. he called the police. It was the Summer Solstice. Already light out for nearly a half hour, and still no car in the driveway, no sign of Annie.
He could hear the officer chewing on the other end of the phone. “How old is she?” the man asked.
Donal hesitated. “Thirty-three.”
“And she’s been missing how long?”
“I haven’t seen her since I left for work yesterday morning. She’s usually home before me, and uh, she wasn’t home when I got here.”
“Yesterday morning?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“And you’re already reporting her missing?”
Donal took a hurried breath. “Well, she is. She’s missing.”
“Not only after twenty-four hours, she’s not. Not a thirty-three year old woman. She can go where she wants Mr. O’Shea.”
“I know that, I realize that, but she doesn’t.”
The cop sighed. “Listen, you didn’t kill her, did you?”
“Kill her? Christ no. I didn’t kill her.”
“Usually if the wife is missing, and hasn’t run off, there’s only one other alternative. Always turns out that way. Especially when the husband calls reporting her missing. Next thing you know you’ll be joining the search parties, and going on T.V. pleading for her return. Were you fighting?”
“Fighting?”
“Yeah, fighting. It happens, you know. You get married, you pay bills, you have kids, you fight. Then sometimes you kill her.”
“We don’t have any kids, and the fight wasn’t about anything big.”
“No. Never is for the one left behind.”
“It was just some nonsense about the woman who lives behind us.”
“The woman who lives behind you?”
“Yes.”
“I think the guy across the street disappeared, too.”
“The guy across the street?”
“Yeah.”
The cop laughed a little. “Gotcha.”
“Gotcha?”
“You guys amaze, me, you really do. Listen give her three days—maybe by then she’ll start to forgive you, or she’ll get tired of him—and if she’s not back by then, give us a call again. In the meantime, let me get your number, a little information…”
When Donal hung up the phone, he sat staring out at the driveway, hoping to see her turning in. Her big black SUV that was terrible on gas. She always looked so tiny behind the wheel. Small. For some silly reason, it always made him want to protect her even more, made her seem more vulnerable. She needed him, they needed each other, he was sure of that. But in the pit of his heart, he knew she wasn’t going to be pulling into the driveway, and his dread began grow.
It was seven thirty in the morning when he noticed the first shoe. A black pump, spiked heel, from a pair that she wore sometimes when she had an important meeting. Wanting to look taller when meeting with male peers. You can’t look small, she had said. They associated small with weak. But Annie had never been weak. And why was her shoe lying in the middle of their back yard? Donal pulled on his shorts and a T-shirt, baseball cap to cover his bed head, and stepped through the sliding glass door, onto the porch. He walked across the lawn and picked up the shoe. Looked at it a moment, smelled it, and then looked up and saw the other, not ten feet away, this one more hidden by the grass. And then a little further down her blouse. Further still, her bra, and then her panties. Her panties. She’s dead, he thought. For chrissakes, someone had raped her and killed her, and now she was dead. But when he looked up again, he realized he was standing just across the property line. Callisa’s yard. The trail of her clothes had lead him to Callisa’s yard.
Annie wasn’t dead.
She was inside with Callisa.
The entire woods was suddenly quiet. No birds, no squirrels leaping through the trees. Nothing except for the sounds coming from the garage. Music. A woman’s voice, softly singing. Words and a tune he had heard before. Heard them at night while standing on his balcony. And now there was something else accompanying the voice. Strings. Something that sounded very much like a harp. Donal found himself drawn towards the garage, the colors of the yard, the sky, now all impossibly bright around him. Greens, blues, purples, yellow, and blood orange. White. Daisies. An impossible number of daisies. The sun was already high and bright in the sky. Ripples of heat in the air. There was a small door just to the side of the garage doors. It was a two car garage. Callisa and her husband. Her husband, Donal thought again, and then he knocked lightly on the small door. Still the singing, but no answer. Soft, distant. He couldn’t think clearly. And what was he going to ask her? I noticed my wife left a trail of clothing leading up to your yard. I don’t suppose you may perhaps have seen her. He knocked again, and then he tried the knob. Turned it once, and then let go. The door creaked open, just a few inches. And then the music stopped, everything silent again. Donal couldn’t see inside, but he could hear something. Moving. He pushed the door and took a step back.
The pigs were inside. Three of them now. And the concrete floor covered in mud and in straw. One of the pigs was snapping at fleas, one was slopping in their trough, and one was lying on his back, feet in the air as if he were dead. But he wasn’t dead. His head turned to the side, and he rolled over and scurried across the room, squealing. Donal stepped inside and as soon as he did, the door swung shut behind him. Donal spun around, tried the knob, but now it was locked, and it was when he turned again that he noticed Bob’s tractor mower, the cable man’s van, and on the floor in front of him, Lars’s boots. He took a step forward. He could smell something. Flowers, or perfume. And then the singing again, accompanied now by whispering. The voice of his wife. Annie. Quiet, hushed words, commenting on him. Observing. And then licking his ears with dirty words, suggestions. Tickling and wonderful. Donal turned to look for her, find her, but there was no one in sight. And then came the smell of flowers again, and his head began to feel faint.
*
When he woke, he was looking into a pair of small dark eyes staring straight at him, inches away. Hairy snout, and feet pressing into his knees. The pig grunted, drooled a bit, and then jumped off his lap, and moved on. A quick little trot. Donal tried to move, he couldn’t move. He was sitting up in a chair, but he couldn’t move. Still disoriented, he tried to focus. Remember. The morning. The pig. The garage. Annie. Missing. Her clothes. And…Callisa.
Callisa was standing on the far side of the garage. Dressed in a short, white tunic, cut high around her hips, open in a long, narrow V down the middle. Exposing the sides of her breasts. Those breasts…. The tunic was cinched with a black belt with a gold buckle, and her head was wreathed with flowers. Long blonde hair, parted in the middle, and in slight disarray. Beside her, bound to an elaborate chair that looked like a throne, and dressed much in the same manner as Callisa, sat Annie. Eyes shut, and looking unconscious. But her tunic was wide open down the front.
“I wore her out,” Callisa said, but her lips didn’t move; Donal heard the words in his head. She was just smiling, eyes wide, wild, and alive. Donal went to jump up, to stand, to move. But he still couldn’t move. He, too, was bound to a chair.
One of the pigs, the one with the black spot on top of his head, scurried by, went to the door, climbing up, his feet scraping hurriedly, and squealing a little.
“I take very good care of them,” Callisa said, “but at times they get…homesick. Robert in particular can sometimes be a problem.”
Donal was still waiting to wake up. In his bed, on his porch, lying on the lawn. Anywhere. But then Callisa moved a step closer to Annie, ran a finger lightly up along her cheek, and he was suddenly quite sure he was awake. “Sh e enjoys being bound,” Callisa said. “I could see that the moment I looked into her eyes, she into mine. There are so many things that men cannot see that women can, that women wish men could.” She looked back at Donal. “It’s what separates us from you, I think. One of many things, I suspect. Dirty, awful men.” On a table beside Annie, sat a bottle of white wine in a gold bucket of ice, beaded with sweat. Callisa stepped over and pulled out a long narrow ice cube, sucked on the tip of it, and then reached out and touched it to Annie’s right nipple. Annie, her eyes still closed, shuddered.
Callisa hesitated, and then she opened Annie’s tunic fully in the front, both breasts exposed. She touched the ice cube to the left nipple, and Annie shuddered again. She opened her mouth, like a baby bird awaiting its worm, and Callisa ran the ice cube along her lips. First the lower, then the upper.
“She gets so thirsty,” Callisa said. She reached for the wine, dribbling it over Annie’s lips, down her neck, and over her chest. Callisa ran a finger up through the small river, slowly, and then placed her finger between Annie’s lips. Annie sucked on the finger, and then Callisa leaned forward and kissed her.
Donal watched them kiss a moment, stunned. He had never seen his wife kiss a woman before, never seen her kiss anyone else period—not like that—and he felt himself filling with both fury and desire. But he needed to keep his head clear of desire. Looking at the pigs scurrying about the room—one was testing the door again, trying to get out, Lars?—he was certain it was so. Desire, giving in, would be it. The end of him.
Four legs and a snout.
Callisa shrugged her shoulders a little, and slipped out of her tunic. It dropped to the floor, pooled about her feet, and she slowly stepped out, completely naked except for the flowers in her hair, and choker of diamonds tight about the base of her throat. Her body was magnificent. Breasts perfectly round. And the hips… Donal could hear music playing again, the flute, and he wondered where it was coming from, piped in from somewhere. She loosened Annie’s belt, and the lower half of the tunic now fell open as Callisa lowered herself to her knees before her. The three pigs had all turned now, facing Callisa and Annie, and listening to the music, completely still. They all lay down, heads resting upon their front hooves.
Donal couldn’t watch. If nothing else, he knew he couldn’t watch. He shut his eyes, and as he did, he could see a clearing in the woods. Bright green grass, surrounded by thick growth of maples and oaks and vines. Everything green, and the sun bright above. His camera eyes turned a corner, and he could see the remains of what appeared to be an ancient, abandoned road. The bricks now all covered in moss and grass. And columns in the distance. White marble. The effigies of Gods with crowns of woven leaves carved upon the front of each. The ruins of what might have been a hall. A temple? It reminded him of a spot in the woods in Europe that he and Annie had visited on their honeymoon, walking back from visiting Chateau de Chenonceau. Slightly drunk on wine and stopping in the clearing to act a little silly and dance before the Gods.
But now, here, the music grew louder, the sun brighter, and a man appeared, balancing on one foot. A real man, more than just a marble column. Curly hair, and a Roman nose. Furrowed brow and busy eyebrows. Horns. And hooves.
He was playing a flute.
Donal heard Annie cry out, and then she began to moan. A low, gasping sound unlike he had ever heard her make before. All their years of marriage, all their nights together. Too few for too long. He wanted to look, to watch, to give in, and yet he knew he couldn’t. If he did…. What? He knew what, but it didn’t make any sense. He heard scraping on the concrete floor. Smelled the hay. And one of the pigs squealed. She wanted him—wanted him with them. It was suddenly completely clear, completely real. All he had to do was give in, watch, and he would be with them. The music was louder, and the hoofed man had begun to dance. An obscene dance, enormous phallus swaying. And then both Callisa and Annie were with him. Donal’s eyes were still shut, but he could see it. Callisa taking the fawn in past her lips, straddling the head of the naked Annie beneath her. And a voice in his ear.
Please.
Just once.
Look. You can’t not look. You have to look.
Your wife.
Donal.
So lovely.
And…sweet.
Donal swallowed his breath, struggling to clear his head. Empty thoughts. Sterile. Kitchen cleaning products lined up in a row. Clear water. A sparkling, polished floor. Nothing sexual. A baseball diamond. Field of green. Bleachers. Empty. Anything. Anything but sex.
The fawn was atop of the Annie now, thrusting, and she tossed her head back and forth, eyes shut, as if trying to awake from a dream. She cried out once more, either in agony or delight, and the creature held her down, pinning her shoulders.
Unpleasant thoughts. His grand uncle smiling—broken yellow teeth. Trash beneath the bridge, dumpsters on Rte. 1. The old Chinese lady who hemmed his pants. The computer screen on a Monday morning. Anything.
And then Donal felt warm breath in his ear. The flick of a tongue. A hand moving lower, and breasts pressed against his shoulder. Round, firm.
Lovely, the voice said again. Callisa’s. Deep in his head.
He felt himself starting to respond again. Repressed it.
Ice, he thought. Glaciers, moving across the land, tearing up the soil. Then his nine grade English class. Talk of Silas Marner. It went on for months. Mr. Robinson. Looked like Darren on Bewitched. A voice dull enough to split your head in two. Day in, day out. Silas.
Please, Callisa whispered again. You can have both of us. Both of us. Please…
There was a whisper again. A cry on the wind, the sea. The voices of the women, and a rush of hoofed feet. And then his head exploded.
When he opened his eyes, his hands were no longer bound. But he was still sitting upon the chair. In the middle of an open field. The breeze picked up, and a page of newspaper blew by. The house was gone, as was Callisa. The pigs. Annie? Donal looked through the trees, the broken puzzle of his own house, visible in between. And above him, the sky deep and blue. He watched the windows to see if he could see movement, Annie, but this time of day, from this far away it was impossible to tell. Everything suddenly seemed impossible. Callisa, her home, set back here in the middle of the woods, high above the sea.
The sea.
Donal walked across the field. No traces of brick, wood, masonry nothing. But the house had been here. He was sure of it. And houses didn’t just disappear, not unless consumed by disaster. Fire. Water. Wind. And even then they left a trace. There was no trace, except for the chair. When he reached the far end of field, he cut down the path through the woods, the waves louder now, crashing. Birds, squirrels, moved in the trees above him. Calling out. And then closer to the water, the air was wet. Mist. Rising from the waves, the sky overcast above, and a fog shrouding the coast. A chill for June.
Loose, dark soil, beneath his feet. He reached a small pine grove, the earth blanketed with needles, the bottom limbs of the trees still high above him. He scrambled up a small hill, and onto the rocks, to cliffs over-looking the water. The Atlantic. Gray and cold, even in June. The beach was deserted, and the waves breaking on the rocks below, and snapping up, biting the air.
And three small figures, trying to make their way out past the rocks, trying to swim.
The pigs.
The one with brown spots was in the lead, doing the dog paddle, head bobbing in the surf, snout raised to the sky. Struggling. A wave crashed over him, and then he was gone, only to appear moments later further down the beach. Donal believed he could hear one of them squeal, but he was very high up, the wind and surf loud, and it could have been a gull. He looked out upon the water, the fog racing above, and saw what he believed to be a ship, high masts and sails, now very far out. There for a minute, then gone, swallowed by the fog. He glanced down at the water, and now the pigs were gone, too. Just the high surf, the tide coming in, smothering the shore.
He stopped for a moment in his back yard. The day was completely still around him. And then a hummingbird flew out of the lilac bushes, hovered in front of him for a moment, and then moved on. A car passed on the street, and then the mailman, red face and rheumy yellow eyes, pulling up in his small white truck to the mailbox. Everything the same. Donal looked up to see the clouds beginning to break, a pinch of sun.
He climbed the back porch, stepped inside and listened. The breeze blew in the curtains, and then it stopped and everything was once again still. But he could hear voices upstairs, quiet and pained, agonized. The television going. A day time soap opera. When he got to the top of the stairs, he hesitated a moment, and pushed open the door.
Annie was lying on the bed, the ceiling fan spinning above her. Barefoot, wearing a blue sundress with small white spots. She was propped up with pillows, watching the T.V., and her hands were folded upon her belly.
Her belly.
Round and large.
Looking ready to burst. She looked at him and smiled. “Could you do me a favor and get me a glass of water when you go downstairs, honey?” She sat forward a little, adjusting herself on the bed. “My back is killing me,” she said. “It’s impossible to get comfortable. I just keep telling myself—six more weeks.” She sighed. “Six more weeks.”