In answer to his question, I suggested he untie me so there would at least be two of us against whatever.
He couldn’t do that, he said, repeated it several times for emphasis before taking out a pocket knife and chopping at the spidery threads that held me.
Progress was slow — the strands difficult to cut — and I had only one arm free when Woody and Ms. M reappeared.
Woody took charge, suggested that instead of splitting up they all go together to look for Pill. Perhaps, said Ms. M, Pill, who had no sense of direction, had gotten himself lost by going the wrong way.
“What about this one?” Larry asked, meaning me.
I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for or even what my best hopes might be in the present situation.
“It’ll take too long to unravel him,” Woody said, “so I think it best to just leave him here until we get back.”
“Sorry,” he said to me.
When they were gone, I picked up Larry’s knife from the ground where he had dropped it and I used my free arm to saw away at the strands swaddling my legs. It was laborious work and I assumed they would be back before I made sufficient progress.
Hours seemed to pass without their return and I kept at it, though my arm began to ache, looking over my shoulder all the while, a kind of free floating urgency driving me.
Eventually, I was able to stand on one foot. Just as I was beginning to master the problem of remaining upright, I heard something moving in the brush, edging its way toward me.
I resisted panic, held my knife at the ready in case whoever it was intended me harm. And perhaps it was the group of young adventurers returning or at least the ones who had survived temporary disappearance.
To my surprise, a small, familiar, elderly woman appeared, brushing what seemed like spider webs from her clothing. I couldn’t place her exactly, though I was sure we had met before. She resembled Molly more than a little, Molly twenty or so years down the road, a considerably older and cronelike version of my lost muse.
She greeted me with a cackle and an odd, almost benign smile.
“You look familiar,” I said. “Do I know you?”
“Do you think I’m attractive?” she asked.
I could see this was a delicate question and so I worked an answer over in my head, modifying it again and again so as not to seem either dishonest or hurtful. “You have a beguiling manner,” I said at long last.
“I do what I can with what little I have,” she said, the benign smile slipping from one side of the mouth to the other. “Would you like to dance with me?”
“I would,” I said perhaps too quickly, “but I have a broken leg.”
She considered my answer, seemed to chew on it while clearing her throat. “Is that a yes or a no?” she said, holding out her bony arms in my direction. For a fraction of a second, I thought of not taking her hands, though no other alternative offered itself and I could almost hear the sound of dance music coming from some incomprehensible distance away. And the next thing I knew we were whirling about to the distant strains, my bad leg keeping pace.
I put it down to illusion but she seemed to be getting younger as we danced in circles barely touching the earth as if the laws of gravity had taken the evening off. For a moment, I thought she had morphed into Ms. M.
I wondered as we flew in circles if she were responsible for the disappearance of the others. I also wondered if the same fate, whatever it was, was also what awaited me.
I asked her her name.
And then, momentarily, our dance took a horizontal turn and we were on the ground, my hard-on preceding a terrible awareness of desire. I held on to her pillowy ass with both hands as I entered her. “Come to me, masked man,” she whispered.
And so we danced on the ground with my fickle prick between her legs which were wrapped around me like a ribbon. As soon as I came, the dance was over, the music silenced, and she, the unnamed, disappeared the way she came.
57th Night
My hair had turned white after the encounter with the crone who had emerged from the deep woods like an apparition. Insofar as I could tell, I was still alive, though conspicuously diminished.
By using the North Star as a reference point (and perhaps it was another star altogether), I gradually found my way back to the highway. My plan, which was the faded echo of what had got me here in the first place, was to hitch a ride into Maine. That was before I discovered that I was already in Maine having crossed the border in the course of my travels off the beaten track.
I needed to get myself together and with, rest in mind, I stopped off at the first motel that came my way, the Down Home Inn, which was owned and managed by a undernourished ornithologist. When he informed me that Cabin 13 was all he had available — the other quarters were in the process of being updated for a Virtual Reality convention — I knew I was in for a bad time.
I fell into a dreamless sleep on top of my covers (still in my clothes) and lost the world for several hours before being recalled by a series of heavy knocks on the door.
“Open the fucker up,” a voice said, “or I’ll break the fucker down.”
“What do you want?” I found myself calling out, struck almost instantaneously that silence, a total refusal to acknowledge the intrusion, was a better way to go.
“You’re in my room,” the drunken voice called back. “Get your ass out of my room.” He banged on the door with a heavy fist.
I looked around for my watch and couldn’t find it in the dark, as if knowing the time would be a way of getting my bearings. It was at this point I opted for silence, assuming I was dealing with someone either drunk or mad.
“I’ll break you in half, dickface,” he shouted again after a momentary interlude in which I thought he had given up and gone away.
I called the office from my phone on the bed table and got a recording that advised me to keep trying.
My only hope was to outwait him and trust that whatever the door was constructed of would withstand his siege.
There were extended periods without the thumping but it always managed to return just when I thought he had given up and gone away.
Hoping the door was sufficiently well-constructed to withstand his assault, I returned to the bed.
No matter, I couldn’t get back to sleep while the attempt to break down my door persisted.
Finally, I heard footsteps moving into the distance and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
I must have dozed because there was daylight coming through the curtain when I opened my eyes again.
I showered quickly, not wanting to leave myself in a vulnerable state, and dressed with similar dispatch into the alternate set of clothes I had on hand.
I was ready to see what faced me on the other side of the door when the phone rang.
Though I had no good reason to answer, the siren call got the better of me. “Who is it?” I said, avoiding the amenities.
“If I were you,” a woman’s voice said, “I’d get out of there in a magic minute.”
Who am I running from this time I wanted to ask but there didn’t seem any point so I hung up the phone and left the sanctuary of my room.
I stopped briefly to read the message scrawled in blood on the outside of the door. “GIVE IT UP,” it said.
I hadn’t taken two steps from the motel when a burly man well over six feet tall approached. I had noticed him asleep at the wheel of a truck parked near the office.
“I was the guy at your door last night,” he said. “I don’t remember what I said, but I hope you didn’t take it to heart. I’m a notoriously unpleasant drunk.” He held out his hand. “No hard feelings, okay?”