Doomsdays by Thomas Jeffrey

Author:Thomas, Jeffrey [Thomas, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dark Regions Press
Published: 2010-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

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The next morning Rubina felt more feverish, and called in to work sick again. She hoped the rest would allow her to avoid a third absence, or she’d require a doctor’s note. She knew that companies resorted to this measure not out of mistrust, but simply to make extended absences a pain in the ass.

She visited her mother in the second floor apartment, sat over tea with her at the small kitchen table, both looking out at the snow that was still falling, still accumulating. Art had been out shoveling last night for over an hour. He had shooed back inside Rubina’s father, who had had a heart attack last year.

“Mom,” she asked in a distracted tone, “did you like Aunt Helen’s husband at all?” She found even the taste of his name on her tongue repugnant, since finding that box. The box she hadn’t told her mother about, for fear of what it might suggest about Aunt Helen’s complex feelings.

“He could be funny, and charming, when he wanted to be. Why?”

“I was just thinking of Aunt Helen last night. So I thought of him.” After sipping her tea, Rubina asked, “Do you know if he ever hurt her?”

Her mother looked surprisingly wary. “What do you mean, hurt her?” She knew about the bondage, Rubina realized then. Maybe she had even seen those Polaroids, at one time or another.

“I meant, did he ever abuse her?”

Rubina’s mother dropped her eyes to the spoon she stirred slowly in her tea, as if trying to view the past—or peek at the future—there. “I don’t know. They had their secrets. It was a love/hate thing. But I thought it was…more healthy for Helen to leave him.”

Would he ever have hurt her badly? Rubina wanted to ask. Would he ever be so jealous—or even so much in love with her—that he might actually take her life?

But she didn’t give voice to these thoughts. Her unease was illogical, absurd, even to her.

Later, Rubina dozed off on the sofa while watching TV with the sound turned low. The empty box for IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES still rested on top of the VCR. The tape still waited inside the machine, not fully uncoiled, coitus interruptus. She was tempted to watch the climax. She was tempted to bring the movie downstairs and return it to the mildewed box she’d taken it from.

She rose up from the pool of sleep from deep below its surface. Hands were pulling her up, as if rescuing her from drowning. The hands had hold of her dark hair, which billowed around her like squid’s ink, obscuring her view of the murky silvery depths. But the higher she rose, holding her breath so she wouldn’t drown—holding her breath until her lungs seemed like spent condoms and her face bloated with blood like a man’s engorged glans—the tighter and more painful seemed the grip on her hair. And now, cords of her hair had gotten snagged around her neck. As the hands dragged her to the surface, the noose of hair tightened around her throat.

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