The Cleaner

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I remember once, when I was a teenager, I’d been playing cricket at school. I was never good at sports, but if you didn’t play them, you got thrust into classes like basic art or sewing for faggots. Cricket wasn’t fun, but it still beat baking and knitting. One day-and this day haunts my memory-a cricket ball was thumped hard in my direction. I was unable to coordinate my hands in time so my crotch fielded the ball, saving four runs. I fell into a blubbering pile of agony and play stopped for more than twenty minutes until they could roll me onto a stretcher and carry me from the field to the jeers and laughter of my schoolmates. My testicles bruised and swelled up. Had it been a cartoon, they would have been glowing as if they had been smashed by Wile E. Coyote’s Acme hammer. I had to take four days off school, and though I couldn’t speak, I could certainly vomit. The laughter directed at me over the following months was constant. The boys were bad, but the girls were worse. They teased me constantly and called me Numb Nuts. The girls never forgot about it. Five more years of school, and they never forgot.

I dealt with it, though. I learned that you can put up with anything. Right now, nearly twenty years later, I would give anything for that pain, because I’m sure it would be less than what I’m about to go through. Every pore in my body has a drop of sweat being pushed through it.

In this little park in the early dawn, all time has stopped. I can hear voices whispering to me what is about to come. Pain is the loudest; the voice of anger is a close second. Trailing those two is the voice of regret. They aren’t the only ones. There’s even the small voice telling me that this is what happens with you not living to work, and that I should have stayed at home and continued reading the files.

Melissa’s toy is a pair of pliers, which force even more tears from my eyes as she positions them around my left testicle. The gun in my mouth means there can be no conversation, no negotiation. I beg with my eyes, but she doesn’t care. I try to sway my body left and right, up and down, but she increases the grip enough to kill that urge. It feels like she’s just strapped a block of ice onto it. I’m paralyzed, as if my spinal cord has just been severed.

She smiles at me.

And closes the pliers.

A guttural scream makes it halfway up my throat and then expands, lodging itself there so I can’t breathe. Don’t want to. She’s just crushed my testicle as easily as someone crushes a grape between their thumb and finger-and, like the grape, the insides spill out. My stomach and thighs cramp up. My lungs swell and refuse to offer me air. My scream forces its way north, escaping into the air. Above me, birds are flying from trees, too damn scared to land. From my groin a throbbing heat replaces the ice-cold feeling of a moment ago, a heat that surely cannot be found in any other place than the very core of hell. It boils up through my body, radiating from the epicenter between the pair of pliers.

I still have my erection.

The explosion of heat uses fingers with claws to reach into my soul and tear it open. It shreds every cell in my body and sucks them dry. I can do nothing but scream and cry and curse every living soul as the claws dig deeper. I try to get away from it, try to separate myself from this entity, but it has me in its grip and won’t let go. All the pain in this crazy, motherfucking universe has bonded with me and it likes what it finds.

I stop screaming because I’m no longer able. I can hear dogs in the distance, howling and barking and crying. My jaw locks up. My throat is sore and I feel like I’ve swallowed a soldering iron. I start to black out, but I can’t make it there, instead coming back on the waves of pain as they crash against my consciousness. My body is paralyzed except for my head, which moves side to side, the silent screaming still burning my throat and eyes.

Then I see her. She kneels there, this devil who calls herself Melissa, this creature from Hades who has done this to me. She readjusts the pliers, not on the opposite testicle, but on the same one. Every movement she makes down there vibrates up my nerves and right into my mind. She grips it across the width and squeezes, as if trying to push it back into shape.

I scream and scream and scream as if my life depends on it, whereas the only thing I want to do is die. I try to clear my head, try to make it go blank. This is hell and I have been brought here. Fire crawls over my lap, my skin sizzles from this heat: it’s blistering, but I can’t see any flames. Melissa pushes the gun further into my mouth. The trigger guard etches my front tooth, but I hardly feel it. I beg her silently to pull the trigger.

She doesn’t.

My testicle is only a fraction away from becoming two-dimensional. I can feel fluid dripping down my thighs, can almost hear it turning to steam. The aching is so intense, the pain so deep, that I can’t believe I’m still alive. Melissa is asking me something, but I can’t understand her words. All I can hear is this constant ringing, a ringing louder and deeper in my skull than that from the music at the club.

Carpe diem.

I still can’t breathe. My blood is cold and my body temperature high. I close my mouth, bite onto the gun, and pray for Melissa to pull the trigger.

I orgasm.

I’m nearly blind now. Dark shapes shift in the edges of the softening morning. The pain surely must fade, because that’s the nature of pain, but at the moment it’s defying nature. I can barely make her out standing above me, the pliers now well away from my genitals, the gun away from my mouth. I can talk, but I have nothing to say. Nothing to plead for.

I close my eyes, hoping for death, but when I open them I only find freedom. Melissa has gone and she has taken her handcuffs with her. I’m a free man who has just been fooled by time, but I can’t move. I suck in a deep breath. My stomach is hot, my chest warm, my legs cold. I close my eyes again, and the world around me starts to fade away.

I don’t know how much time passes before I slowly lift my head and look down my naked body. My penis and thighs are caked in dried blood. My stomach is covered in a mixture of red and white fluids-a cocktail of blood and semen. Vomit has pooled on my neck and chest, and I can feel it crusted over my face and chin. It smells putrid. I can’t even remember throwing up. I guess I’m lucky not to have choked to death-then decide I’m unlucky not to have. I gently lower my hand down to examine the damage. Something that feels like spaghetti is pushing out of something that feels like cardboard.

Oh God, no. Please, please let this be a dream!

My arms are stiff, the muscles tender and sore. I put them behind me and lever myself up. Pieces of sick roll down my body. I nearly black out. The pain is nothing compared with earlier and, judging from the sun, I’m guessing earlier was about three hours ago. It’s somewhere around nine o’clock, and Sunday morning means people are either still in bed having a lazy morning of bondage, or are at church. Either way, they’re being fucked over.

There won’t be anybody coming down to the park for a while yet.

I roll onto my side. A scream rises in my fragile throat. I fight it back, but not hard enough.

I look for my clothes and see them about thirty feet away. As I try to crawl toward them, my testicle sways back and forth, jamming between my legs. It feels like the pliers are still clamped on. I keep thinking that if I can make it home I can survive this. I just don’t know if I can make it home.

It takes two minutes to cover the thirty feet. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon. Sweat drips from my forehead. Blood rolls down my thighs. I shrug into my shirt. My jacket is nowhere to be seen. Same with my gun. And my knife.

My keys are sitting on top of my jeans. Rocking as gently as I can onto my back, I try jamming my legs into the denim. Much harder than it sounds. I stop halfway during the movement to take a small time-out, during which my world grays away. My strength drains with it and the pain seems happy to come back. I have to fight to keep from passing out. I wish I had been wearing jockeys rather than boxers, because then the weight of my swinging mess would get braced. Instead it’s hanging like a rotten tomato, seeping as if infected from too much sun. I pull up a handful of wet grass and wipe my face. Two more handfuls of grass clean most of the vomit off my neck and chest.

I glance at my wrist and am surprised to see my watch still there. It’s only eight o’clock. The last few days I’ve been running late. This morning I’m thinking it’s later than it is. Okay. Time to do this. I make my way to my knees, then onto my feet. All I have to do is get home. Not far. Just one foot in front of the other. Repeat the procedure. Ignore the pain until I collapse onto my bed. One foot forward. This is the first step. I push away from the tree.

The plan is to walk evenly at a slow pace, and I don’t appreciate the irony as I try to step slowly but end up running forward in an attempt to maintain balance. Not only do I move fast, but my legs land heavily, jarring me and sending pulsating blasts of heat up my legs into my groin. A combination of staggering and falling takes me sixty feet before I land on my knees in a crying ball of bloody agony. I want to close my eyes and just lie here for a few more hours, but I know I can’t. Sooner or later others will arrive in the park. From beneath the benches on the fringes and from the cubbyholes in the children’s playground, glue-sniffers will be waking to the morning of another chemical-induced day. They’ll eventually find me, but they won’t help me-only help themselves to what possessions I have left.

I get back onto my knees. Onto my feet. Start forward.

It’s easier this time. I hold my arms out to my sides, balancing myself as I zigzag forward. I keep my eyes focused on the edge of the park. Don’t look down. Don’t look around. Just keep walking. Just keep walking and I’ll be fine. . Twenty yards go by, thirty. Then, in a few minutes, I’ve covered a hundred yards. A few minutes after that and I’m back on my knees fighting to contain a scream. This time I win.

I watch the sun as it crawls up into the sky. I wonder what the weather will be like today. Sunny, warm, with lots of pain scheduled for brief but strong periods over the day. And for the remaining week. Perhaps the whole Goddamn year.

I manage to get back onto my feet. I walk slowly, with my legs spread. I cup my balls in one hand: it hurts like hell, but the walking becomes easier. I stumble a few hundred yards, pause to vomit, then stumble a few hundred more. I even pause to urinate; the sensation is painful yet simple since I just keep my dick in my pants and go. Urine drips down my legs and onto my leather shoes. It is warm, uncomfortable, and it stings.

The journey home takes me more than an hour, by which time the front of my jeans are soaked in piss and blood. Not once do I pass out, but on several occasions the world sways and darkens. I pass a few people on the way; some see me, some don’t. Those who do stare at me and say nothing. Nobody offers to help. It’s not the kind of neighborhood where people care. I consider it a miracle just to get home still in possession of my empty wallet and watch. When I reach my building, it no longer looks like it was meshed together by a junk sculptor. Instead it looks like a palace. I wish the architect had designed an elevator for it.

I make my way up the stairs by sitting backward and slowly lifting my ass stair by stair, taking most of the weight on my arms. I only have to make three flights, but it becomes an epic journey, like scaling the outside of the Empire State Building-only naked with my balls rasping against the walls and getting caught beneath all the window frames. I keep telling myself I’m almost there, but I know when I reach the top I’m still looking down the road of a thousand problems.

When I get to my door, I dig into my pocket. My jeans tighten across my crotch. I wince as I take hold of my keys. Fumble with the lock. Thirty seconds. And I’m not picking this one.

I close the door behind me, drop my keys on the floor, and stagger toward bed. My entire body is shaking. Is this the next step? Lie down forever?

No. Although I want to do nothing more than rest, I know I need to take care of the injury. Best to do it while I still have the balls. .

Huh!

. . to go ahead with such an operation.

I find a towel and toss it onto the floor, then make my way out of my jeans. Don’t know if I’ll ever be able to wear them again. From my experience blood, unfortunately, stains. I spend fifteen minutes undressing myself, then another five finding a bucket and filling it with warm water. My fish watch me with odd looks on their small faces. I say nothing to reassure them. I want to feed them, but can’t.

I grab more supplies, then lie down on the towel on the floor with my ass on a cushion, elevating my hips. The following hour is spent in three ways. The first involves drinking enough wine to have the room spinning. The second has me biting down extremely hard on a broom handle, stifling screams. The third has a disinfectant-soaked rag in my hand, dabbing at what should never be dabbed with disinfectant. I don’t know if it will become infected. Thoughts of my testicle becoming gangrenous are so horrifying that the mere possibility keeps me dabbing. When I’m done, I wash down my stomach and see that the long cut Melissa gave me is shallow enough to ignore-not that it matters. I mean, Jesus, my stomach lining could be poking through and it would be nothing in comparison with my testicle.

I don’t know if I will ever have sex again. Ever walk properly. Ever talk. All I know is that I need this day to end. This Sunday. . No, hang on a moment. Saturday?

Jesus, this is Saturday! This means my internal clock is far more damaged than I thought, but also means I have another day before the weekend’s over. A whole day to heal.

I am starting to slip into a total-body shutdown. I head over to my bed and lie down. My mind is setting the pain aside and storing it in my memory bank on the chance I can fall asleep, and on the slimmer chance I might manage to wake up again. I wish a blurred good night to my fish. It could be night. Could still be morning.

My head swirling with thoughts of revenge, sluggish from the alcohol, I close my eyes and look for an escape.