Only a flower that falls is a complete flower, say the Japanese. One is tempted to say as much of a civilization—EM Cioran
When we got to Wagner Canyon the girls and I all stretched our legs. Kimmie stayed close to me while Anna wandered to the edge of the cliff and I wondered if she was going to jump off.
I polished the silencer on my Glock with my shirt and handed it to Kimmie.
"Why don't you shoot Anna?"
Kimmie took the gun and pointed it at my sweet Anna.
Anna heard what I said and turned away from the canyon. She ducks, even though there's nowhere to go, and she's scrambling around in the dirt next to the cliff trying to avoid the shot.
Kimmie holds the Glock with both of her arms straight, one eye closed, and follows Anna around with the barrel.
"You know her, right?" Anna yells at me. "You knew her before and you planted her and now you're going to have her shoot me."
"I didn't know her before. Kimmie, how long have we known each other?"
"Forty-five minutes?" says the girl.
"Then why are you pointing the fucking Glock at me, bitch?"
"Why are you calling me 'bitch?' "
"Why don't you point the gun somewhere else and I'll call you whatever you want!!"
"Ok."
Kimmie lowers the Glock.
Anna looks at me, scrounging in the dirt, pleading with me.
"What the fuck is going on here??!"
"Girls, why don't you come with me to the house. And Anna..I'll explain everything. Kimmie, gimme that."
Kimmie hands me the Glock and I head toward the truck.
Kimmie slides in next to me.
Anna says, "No, I am not riding with you two like that. I sit in the middle. You take the outside."
And Kimmie gets out of the truck like she's following orders.
She lets Anna in.
And I start the truck and we head down to Blythe Road.
I slap Anna on the thigh.
"Are we ready to go home now?" I say.
Anna says: "Is it going to be less of a fun house there?"
"Not necessarily," I smile, and put both hands on the wheel.
We rode in silence, Kimmie looking happily out the window, Anna looking straight ahead. Something was itching me up my nose and I scratched it carefully.
"Are you alright?" Anna said.
"Yeah I just have something up my nose," I said.
When I pulled into the driveway, even before I turned off the truck, I reached under my right leg and pulled out a syringe.
"Take this," I said to Anna.
She did it.
"Now stick it into her arm and pop that plunger down."
Anna looks at me like I'm crazy.
"Don't ask questions," I say.
Anna turns to Kimmie and puts her left hand on the girl's clavicle to stabilize her. She stabs the syringe into Kimmie's left arm and pushes the plunger down with her thumb.
Kimmie screams and I don't even have to tell Anna to brace the girl's head with her right hand and cover her mouth with her left. Anna even clips the girl's nostrils together with her fingers.
"She can't breathe."
"What?!"
"She can't breathe!!"
I lean over and unclip Kimmie's nose.
Kimmie is flailing and slapping the dashboards.
"Kimmie, baby, calm down. You're ok."
Within seconds the new girl is still.
"What did you stick me with?" she asks Anna.
"I don't think here is the best place to discuss this," I say. "Let's all go inside, get something nice to drink, and we'll talk."
Kimmie—perfectly pleasant—gets both her bags while Anna holds open my screen door for her.
When we get inside, there's a Coke with a light blue ribbon tied around it sitting on the coffee table.
Anna whips her head around to me.
She points to her chest and mouths, "Is this for me?"
I nod.
She continues to look at my face and I feel what once felt like embarrassment. I look away and Anna picks up the Coke.
She goes up to Kimmie and takes her suitcases.
"I'll take those. You see that big yellow shipping container back there? Meet me at the door."
Anna sets the suitcases in the living room and I toss her the key to the crate. She lets Kimmie in and she follows, holding the Coke to her chest like a baby holds something she never wants to part with.
For a second I stand in my living room and bask in the illusion of control. But I'm not stupid. I know that control is always an illusion.
I go into the crate and lock us all in.
Anna leans up against the workbench and sets her Coke beside her.
Kimmie stands opposite her and looks at the chair.
She laughs.
"Is this a gynecologist chair?"
"Yeah," I say. "I'm an out of work pussy doctor."
I look at Anna and laugh.
Then I look at Kimmie and say:
"Why don't you take off your clothes?"
She does. Sandals. Glasses. Some kind of India/Thailand-inspired sari pants and a macrame top that lets you see her nipples through the loose knots. That comes off.
She's wearing beach blue no-show briefs that accentuate her pubic mound.
"Those are cute panties!"
"Thank you!"
"Take 'em off."
The new girl bends down, pushing her panties all the way to the floor. She kicks them over near the workbench.
Anna goes: "What. The fuck. Kind of evil is this. Do you two know each other—honestly."
Kimmie and I both say, "No."
"Am I hallucinating? You are the fucking devil!"
"Calm down. You're not hallucinating. I'm not the fucking devil. And I met her the same time you did. Betsy's Diner. An hour ago.
Anna hits the workbench. Then she starts hitting me.
"Fuck! Fuck, man. Now I'm complicit in this shit. What. The fuck. Have you done to me??"
"Are you worried about going to jail?"
"No, I'm worried about my fucking conscience!! I'm partially responsible!"
She points at Kimmie, who is standing leaning up against the chair completely nude, fucking stubbly little pubis screaming out at me to desecrate it.
Anna yells: "Now I'm responsible!"
"No you're not," I say. "Don't worry."
"How can I not worry??"
"Would you just..shut up for a minute?"
I go in my tool chest and get surgical gloves and a pair of tweezers. I reach up each nostril, one after the other, and pull a set of cotton plugs out of my nose. I set them on the workbench next to me and away from Anna.
"Don't touch that," I say.
Anna looks at the cotton plugs.
I set the tweezers down next to them.
"Kimmie, you've got a beautiful pussy."
"Thank you," she says, and runs her hand through that blonde hair.
"Are you gonna be nice and let me play with it later?"
"Of course," she says—total generosity.
"Kimmie I want you to lie in that chair and lock your ankles in with the clamps that are down there by the feet and then lie all the way back and clamp your neck in—you see that clamp on the headrest?—then you'll have your hands free to touch your nipples and your pussy and make yourself feel good while me and Anna talk. Ok?"
"Ok," Kimmie smiles, and she clamps herself in just like I asked her.
I pull Anna so we're facing my workbench and I put my arm around her shoulders.
"You're not complicit. Look at me. You're not complicit. I used Devil's Breath on her."
She's like, "What's Devil's Breath?"
"Scopolamine? You never heard of it?"
Anna shakes her head.
"That's the problem with Americans: you think roofies is the worst thing that can ever happen to you. But the world is full of plants, and chemists, and hustlers of all kinds, and you'll never learn, on a trip to Target, what kind of elements are operating just under your nose without you having a clue about them. Hey hey hey!"
I move Anna's hands away from the cotton plugs.
"Don't touch that! That is not a recreational drug!"
"What kind of drug is it?"
"It's evil shit, Anna. You know me—you know what gets me off, right? Well I think that is evil—like I'm an atheist saying that drug truly is the devil, ok? So just don't touch it."
"What does it do?"
"Tell her to do something."
"Tell her to do what?"
"Tell her to do anything you want."
Anna turns around.
"Kimmie, scratch your nose."
Kimmie does it.
"Now tell her to do something interesting."
Anna looks at me.
I nod.
Anna says: "Bite your tongue until it bleeds."
We see the girl struggling with her lips closed and then a stream of blood comes out from between her lips.
"Now tell her to do something really interesting."
"Rip your fucking nipple off, bitch."
The girl's hands go for her nipple. I rush in and pull them away. I'm inches from Kimmie's face.
"Don't rip your nipple off, ok?"
I turn back to Anna.
She says, "Did you ever use that on me?"
"No. No, I promise. But if you tell her to let me rape her, she'll agree. She'll be perfectly ok with it as if it was her own idea—that's why I said this shit is evil. And when it wears off, she won't remember a thing. Betsy's Diner—that's the last thing she'll remember."
"What is the fucking shit with the cotton up your nose?"
"Something I learned off a South American hooker."
"Were you trying no to kill her?"
"No, she was trying to kill me, actually. That's the way they do it down there. She leans in to smell me..and reflexively..I lean in to smell her. When I do, I breathe in the scopo that's up her nose which she has blocked from her own lungs and nasal passage with the balls of cotton. Remember when I smelled Kimmie in the diner?"
"And she smelled you back."
"Exactly. Ever since about two minutes after that she's been..open to suggestion."
Anna wrings her hands—she's freaking.
"What did I inject her with? Benadryl?"
I shake my head.
"Saline solution. Colored to look like Benadryl. I wanted to see if you would go along with it."
Anna looks at me.
Then her eyes well with tears.
The she starts beating my chest—in a fury, in a rage.
"Look what you did to me! Look what you made me do! You know I'm not your fuckin' student on some island in the south Pacific. I never asked you to be my mentor!!"
"I know," I say, and hold Anna's head in my hands. "I didn't choose mine, either—that's kind of how this works."
Anna grows still.
She cries softly.
Then she crumples up my shirt in her fist.
"When you handed me the syringe..in the truck..I wanted to give her the shot."
I brush her hair out of her eyes.
"Don't worry," I say. "You'll get your chance."
Anna looks over her shoulder and sees Kimmie lying there, playing with herself, happy as a cow in grass.
"Is that shit real?"
"Yes."
"There's really a drug that does that?"
"Yes. It's a plant. It grows in Columbia. Very beautiful flower."
"Oh yes I'm sure it has a very beautiful flower."
"You were sarcastic to me once before. Do you remember what happened?"
"Ok, so it has a very beautiful flower."
"It does. I'll show you pictures later."
"I don't want to see pictures."
Now we're both facing Kimmie, watching her finger her beautiful twat.
I'm thinking of the scopolamine, and the pictures I took of its flower when I was down in Columbia, and how disappointed I am Anna doesn't want to see them.
"Too bad 'cause the flower is very beautiful," I say.
And she says, "Yeah, you mentioned that."
"Well, it's your loss," I say.
"So what were you doing in Columbia?"
"Educating myself about Devil's Breath."
"Wanna educate me?"
"Sure. It takes two to three minutes to take effect. It can be administered orally, subcutaneously, via transdermal patch, but most often in criminal circles is administered via rubbing on the skin like with a piece of paper or through the respiratory system like I did little Kimmie there. It's colorless, odorless..someone can blow it at you as you pass them on the street and you'd never even know you breathed it in. Then they follow you down the street, introduce themselves three minutes later and the fun begins."
Anna gives me a nasty look but she asked me to educate her so I continue.
"In extremely small doses it's used to treat nausea. In slightly higher doses it has other medical uses like treating Parkinson's symptoms—muscle spasms and shit. The zombie dose is four to eight milligrams."
"How much did you give her?"
"Three. She's small. I didn't want to kill her."
"How did you know she was going to be small?"
I glare at Anna.
"Good guess," I say.
"How much would it take to kill her?"
"About three times the zombie dose."
"What happens if you overdose?"
"You have a heart attack. Don't you want to talk about something else?"
"No, I like this. You're like an encyclopedia of drugs."
"Well. I read a lot. And travel."
"But you don't do drugs yourself."
"I used to."
"And? What happened?"
"I got bored. Look, the best drug in the world—well the best drug in the world is an orgasm—but the second best drug in the world? It's the high you get after a run. Any kind of cardiovascular. That's good enough for me."
"Like fucking?"
"A good enough girl, yeah."
"Like that Columbian hooker?"
"I didn't fuck her."
"What did you do to her?"
"I'd rather not say."
Anna's demeanor changes.
"You never zombied me?"
"No. I promise. I didn't. Anyway it causes long-term memory damage and I wouldn't want to do that to you."
"But you don't mind doing it to Kimmie?"
"Kimmie is a stupid ho. You are not a stupid ho. Do you want me to continue this line of explanation?"
"No. Thank you, by the way."
She pops the tab on her Coke and lets her arms rest on the work table. When she drinks, she owns the room, she owns Kimmie, and she owns a little piece of me.
"I said thank you."
"You're welcome, Anna—don't think of it."
She sips her Coke.
Kimmie is completely aware that Anna and I are standing in the room, and she has no reservation about getting herself off in front of us.
"Honestly I have trouble wrapping my mind around it."
"I know. Me too," I say.
"So this has no recreational value."
"Absolutely none. Columbian mafia uses it. They give it to a guy and three minutes later they say, Hey, dude, why don't we go to your apartment and empty out all your valuables into my truck. So the dude goes and he helps them rob himself. Wakes up eight hours later in an empty apartment with absolutely no memory of what happened. Least interesting application I can think of, honestly."
"Yeah, you would use it to rape people."
"What can I say? Psychological power is more interesting to me than monetary gain."
"If you did use that shit on me, I'd never even know it, would I?"
"No, no—you would know."
"How?"
"Because you'd wake up not remembering what just happened to you. Did that ever happen to you when you were with me?"
"No."
"Then you know. If I used this shit on you, you'd be missing time. Like you'd come to and your last memory would be eight hours ago. Shit like that."
"What about the first Benadryl shot? I lost time then."
"But you remember getting drowsy. With Devil's Breath you wouldn't remember shit. I promise. I never used this shit on you."
Then Kimmie writhed in the gyno chair and I threw away my cotton ball plugs in the biohazard trash can with latex gloves and Anna drank her Coke and Kimmie finally got off and looked at me and Anna looking at her and her whole body was drenched with so much satisfaction I just wanted to keep her in that state and make her cum for an entire month until I cut her pretty head off.