The Sleep of the Furies

Morinda gazed up at the stars. Pain coursed through her every time Febo thrust himself into her. At first she’d groaned at each assault in a counter-rhythm to the grunts Febo made, but her body grew numbed after a time and the feeling became a steady throbbing ache more than a series of sharp pangs, and her thoughts turned more to the humiliation of being raped than to the physical suffering. The coarse way he’d exposed her breasts and then handled them as though he were buying fruit at the marketplace. The demeaning way he’d talked about their small size as though she had no understanding of the words, as though she were only an animal being judged at a fair. The way he’d stripped her, then mauled her to get her to move her legs apart for his benefit, leaving her with no pride at all when she was forced to aid him in his use of her, reducing her ultimately to something far less than human at the same time he was engaging in the most intimate act possible, touching his skin to hers and putting his flesh inside her, doing it without her permission, against her will, with no care that she not only didn’t want him to do it, but that she hated it, loathed it, and felt so degraded by the experience that nausea welled up like hot lava in the pit of her stomach. As the rape proceeded, a new idea arose: Febo’d no reason to leave her alive when he was finished with her; therefore, she had only a few minutes to live. The realization made her turn icy cold from the inside out. His mind dulled by the continued loss of blood, there was only one conscious thought that went round and round in Flower’s mind like a Buddhist prayer wheel carrying its single message, and certainly it was the only thing that impelled him to force himself onward: “He thinks he killed me. He thinks I’m dead.” Flower gave no consideration to what he was going to do; he was no longer lucid enough to formulate a plan of any kind. After he emerged from the shallow arroyo Febo’d left him in, he used the grunts and pants he heard to guide him. Flower instinctively guessed he had at most another minute during which Febo’d be sufficiently distracted. He knew he was weakening with every passing second, and the physical exertion needed to get him near enough to Febo was causing even more blood loss, but he forced himself to keep going anyway. When he could see Febo’s naked buttocks rising and falling in time with the groans, he roused himself to get his eyes to track, and from then on he used both sight and sound to guide him. Febo cried out, “Uh, uh, uh,” preorgasmically as Flower approached. The nerve endings at the jagged edges of his numerous wounds tortured him with every movement he made, and stomach acid spilled agonizingly into his body cavity whenever his entrails coiled, but he somehow found the strength to alternate his hands and knees in a progressive creep forward. His vigor ebbing steadily, he could only drag himself along, slowly inching ahead the one hand that held the knife, followed by an infinitesimal shift forward of the knee on the same side of his body, then after he’d locked his advance elbow so that it wouldn’t collapse under him, he lurched the opposite hand up another inch or two and planted it before painstakingly hauling up his other knee. All the while, his head wobbled like a jack-in-the-box on his neck. His mind steadily lost clarity, but never its sense of purpose. He concentrated almost solely on Febo’s grunts and the undulations of Febo’s body. The knowledge that the man who’d left him for dead was nearby, and that he was closing in on him, drove Flower on. Flower held the blade of the knife up as he neared Febo from the side. He didn’t deliberately try to sneak up on his prey, to keep the knife from clinking against the ground or a rock as he crawled and thus giving Febo a warning; his bodily reactions were functioning on something like automatic pilot. When he arrived a few feet from where Febo stiffly held his head parallel to the earth with his arms spread out supporting himself above the body of Morinda while he grunted with each thrust of his pelvis, “Uh, uh, uh,” Flower paused so as not to alert the man he was stalking with no conscious thought whatsoever. It was more an intuitive act sprung from sly animal cunning than anything else. Ponderously, with an extreme effort of will, Flower shifted his weight off his hands so that he was kneeling. With great labor, he brought his head and torso erect. He lifted his right arm. It felt rubbery, as though it’d been dosed with Novocain. He found he didn’t have the strength to keep the knife under control with just the one hand, so he brought the other up to lift the blade above his head. He teetered in place, wavering from side to side. Raising his arms stretched the torn ligaments and muscles of his chest and abdomen, and he sucked in his breath as the multiplied pain seared through him. His exertion also caused the wounds in his abdomen to sigh and wheeze, air being forced out of the ruptures in his body cavity. The noises attracted Febo’s attention; his head snapped to the side, and he caught his first glimpse of the danger he was in. “Chingao!” Febo exclaimed. He whipped his left hand through the dirt, scrabbling for the pistol he’d put there to keep it from Morinda’s grasp. Flower’s eyes blinked, widened, then narrowed as they tried to focus. Febo’s sudden movements were just a blur to him. The coyote’s own eyes grew wide with fear, and their whites became visible all around the irises. He desperately slapped at the dirt, seeking the gun. Flower plunged the knife down. Febo shrieked. The hand that’d been groping for the .38 was transfixed, the blade piercing its flesh and the numerous fine bones to hold it in place as the tip buried itself deep in the earth under it. Spent, Flower fell forward and collapsed, his head only a few inches from that of the coyote. His hand found the gun Febo’s’d unsuccessfully sought. Almost languidly, he raised it. He swung its muzzle toward the side of Febo’s head. Flower’s strength continued to drain away. The gun waved loosely back and forth in his grip. Febo stared in agony and wide-eyed wonder at the hilt of the knife that pinned his hand. Flower leaned forward and pressed the pistol’s barrel into Febo’s temple, which brought Febo’s full attention to the weapon. Flower opened his mouth to speak. His tongue moved through blood as thick as gelatin, spitting droplets into the coyote’s face as he attempted to articulate the words, “Die, you shitbag!”