Clockwork Redux

Chapter Three

He clears his throat. She cranes her head up, sees his face, blanches, pisses herself.

"Hi!" he chirrups, trying not to look at the mess spreading on the sheets.

Another layer of smell is added to the airless fug of the room

----

"Hey. Hey. Calm down. I'm not gonna touch ya, I promise."

He kneels down beside the bed and fiddles at the cuffs with one of his knives. This one is a Swiss army knife, complete with a skeleton key. It only takes a moment for the lock to give. She snatches her hand to her chest to shield her tits.

"I already saw," he tells her. "I'm not interested." How could he be? Her belly sags where Taylor grew in her and her hair is a lank mess, but that isn't what leaves him cold. It's the purple bear trap-shaped bites on her breasts. It's the way her ribs hunch beneath her skin like the spines of sick parasites.

He does the other set of handcuffs, and then the ankle restraints. She kicks them off when he's done and curls up into herself. He sits on the edge of the mattress and reaches out to pat her, but thinks better of it.

"I, uh, suppose I should explain myself," he mutters. "I heard you were in trouble, so I decided-I thought I-" He clamps his mouth shut and sighs through his nose. "Fuck, this is going nowhere."

"No, I get it. I think." Her voice is tremulous, but it's there. He twists around and they face each other. She sits up against the headboard and lets her limbs slide away from her body. Her nakedness is not a come-on or a threat.

"You got a name?" she asks him.

"Not really. Some people call me Joker. Because of the makeup. It's sort of my thing-does that make sense? One guy called me Scarface, so I punched him. So, ah, don't call me that."

"I can take a punch, kiddo." A dry, rueful snort. "But I'm not gonna be mean. You just pulled me outta one helluva mess." She narrows her brows in suspicion. "You got a reason for doing that?"

"You think I need one? I heard people saying that some guy was keeping a chick as a sex slave, I did something about it." He shrugs. "Nothing personal."

"Oh, don't feed me bullshit and tell me it's a bolognese," she snaps. His heart quivers-it's her, that's what she always used to say to him. It's really her. "You didn't do this outta the kindness of your fuckin' heart."

"How c'n you tell? I might be the kindest sucker you ever met."

"Just tell me what you want."

This throws him: what does he want?

He wants to stand beside her in the third row and sing to the first-graders. He wants to clutch her hand and share a baby-toothed grin. He wants to be four feet tall again, to wear dungarees and a stripy t-shirt and have his mother frustrate herself trying to get him to wear anything else.

He wants to go home.

But home, for him, is nothing more than a stress-battered concept, an abstract noun. He's a grown-up now, and all he has is a glorified cubby that he shares with this punchbag's crazy kid.

....It's her cubby, though. And Taylor's hers too.

"Okay, you got me." He holds his hands up. Put 'em where I can see 'em, son. "I didn't just happen to hear 'bout your, uh, situation. Your brat got talkative, I put two and two together, pop goes the fuckin' weasel and here we are." He flings his arms wide to encompass the stain-stippled bedroom.

She stares at him, her face stretched and numb-looking.

"Taylor?"

"Yeah."