The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories Page 11

  “It isn’t about control.”

  She speaks so close that you can’t tell whether her voice is coming from behind you or behind the screen. You flinch, caught leaning forward, yearning toward the flickering image trapped beneath the glass. But even that movement doesn’t bring you any closer to touching. She keeps the space between you careful, full of promise that will never be realized.

  You swallow guilt. But she wants you to watch, otherwise why would she show you these things? And you want her to watch you, watching her, an endless, recursive loop. You want her to know. But at the same time, you want to be alone in the room with the glow, with the screen, safe and dirty and small.

  You shouldn’t want these things. Any of them. But you do.

  And you can’t look away.

  “It isn’t about power. It’s about freedom, absolution, forgiveness. It’s permission to let go.”

  On the screen, she shifts. She’s alone, but the camera catches a sound the way her smile catches your breath. It’s a voice, guttural and so low you can’t possibly have heard it. It has to be in your mind.

  “You want this.”

  Or that’s what you think it says. You don’t dare ask her to verify. She doesn’t volunteer the information.

  You can’t see her face, but you imagine her lips parting. You imagine them bitten, cracked, warmed with hot breath.

  The camera shows her muscles tensing, her shoulders flexing and pressing the sharp edge of her bones against fabric and skin. She pulls against the bonds, but not as though she wants to break free.

  She breathes out, and the breath is a word.

  “Yes.”

  She’s alone in the room. You’re almost sure. She has to be.

  “It’s about safety,” she says.

  You’re dizzy. Her voice disorients, her image lures. The way her skin glows leaves you feeling as though you’re falling, called then and there to be with her, trapped in the past. Or is it the present? The eternal now?

  Time doesn’t work right in that house.

  She told you that, once. Or you think she did.

  Everything is in between. A constant state of grace. Of letting go.

  Her voice—here and now? There? Or only in your head?

  “Once you consent to be bound, you have to accept whatever happens next. You give permission, and receive it at the same time. Your hands are literally tied, and in the instant they are, you’ve already accepted everything that will be done to you. Whatever comes next is beyond your control, and you’re forgiven for it, whatever it might be. It’s already happened, and you can’t change it.”

  The camera watches as she tilts her head back, and you watch, filtered through its eye. Everything that happens is beyond your control. That makes it okay.

  The arch of her throat is revealed, her face showing at last. Her lips part. She swallows hard.

  If you could just see…if the angle of the camera would only show…

  You imagine her nipples are hard.

  She moves her legs, bringing her knees closer to the circle holding her in.

  “I made my body a prison for him,” she says. “I bound him, took things beyond his control. I made it okay. I forgave him.”

  On the screen, she arches her back. The movement lifts her small breasts, presses them hard against the thin fabric of her shirt. It’s enough to show…

  She bites her lip, holds it between white teeth. She squirms, straining against the bonds. But not struggling to get free. Her breath comes faster. There’s a low sound in the room—with her, or coming from her—guttural, trapped, afraid. It is the sound of weeping, if weeping were no longer reserved for humans.

  She lets out a low moan. That sound, you’re certain, is all her, and there’s no mistaking it for anything other than what it is.

  Your breath quickens. You lean forward. You know you shouldn’t, but you do.

  She’s watching you; watching you watching her. If you turned, would you catch her smile?

  You should get up. You should leave the room, go splash water on your face. You don’t. Her presence behind your right shoulder is a physical weight, restraining you, holding you down.

  She makes you watch.

  On the screen, her head snaps forward. The movement is so sudden, so violent, you’re certain it must have broken her neck. Only she’s here beside you, isn’t she? So you know she can’t be dead. She trembles; every bone, every vertebra presses hard against her skin.

  “There is freedom in being bound. It’s permission, because once you’re tied, once you consent, everything that happens after is okay.”

  On screen, her body bucks, her breath catches, and you hear it as sharp and as close as if it’s right next to your ear.

  You know you should look away. But you don’t. You never do.

  She makes you watch as one by one the bruises appear.

  She’s alone in the room.

  It’s an impossible thing, but you’ve seen it with your own eyes a dozen times. Like petals the color of plums, like smoke and ash, or smudges of shadow, they bloom from the white spaces of her flesh.

  Each bruise elicits a sound. A low whimper. A tiny gasp. They are not sounds of pain.

  She trembles, bound and kneeling on the floor. The bruises appear on her shoulders, on her neck, on her thighs. Like marks left by a lover’s teeth. Like fists, beating at her skin from the inside.

  Her breath quickens there and then, here and now. What’s happening on the screen isn’t for you. It never will be. But it doesn’t matter. Your breath matches hers. It’s not for you, but she makes you watch anyway.

  Together.

  You watch her come.

  Video Evidence #2—Date Unknown

  She leads you to the house, but not inside.

  You stand in front of the porch, looking up at the implacable façade. Paint worn, window-eyes blind—the place might have been empty for years.

  You can’t remember how long you’ve known her. When this whole thing began. You should have better case notes, not just scattered pieces of evidence.

  She smiles. A cold wind chases leaves drained of every color but dead across the porch’s bare wooden boards. They catch in drifts around the base of a dozen—or more?—television sets stacked in a rough pyramid. They’re the old-fashioned kind—bulky backs and convex screens, the images yearning outward, teasing the promise of a connection that will never close.

  “I don’t understand,” you say.

  “Halloween decorations.” She shrugs.

  She picks a fleck of ash from her bottom lip.

  “Watch the screens,” she says, pointing.

  And you do.

  But out of the corner of your eye, you watch her. You know you shouldn’t, but you do.

  Her hands are buried deep into the pockets of her coat. Her collar is turned up against the wind. You can’t be sure, but you suspect that under her coat she’s wearing that white tank top, so thin her nipples must ache with the cold. Even wrapped in fabric, she looks translucent. If she’d only turn, you’d see the sky right through her skin.

  You shove your hands deep in your pockets, too, but it has nothing to do with the cold.

  “I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” you say, focusing on the screens. You try to sound impatient, not nervous, not afraid.

  “It’s the house. The feed is real time.”

  Her voice is flat. You can’t look at her anymore—the set of her shoulders, hunched forward like a vulture, tells you as much, along with the intentness of her stare. She wants you to watch.

  “I live here with Ray.” Not lived, live. This is the first time she’s spoken his name.

  Every screen shows a different room. Each room is empty. You’re almost sure.

  “A closed-circuit television?” you ask.

  “Something like that.”

  Gray light flickers across a dozen convex surfaces. No television is set quite flush with any other. The angles are all cockeyed, unsettling. Ye
t everything is held in perfect balance. Nothing is out of place.

  In the upper left corner, of the upper leftmost screen, something moves.

  “Did you see?” she asks.

  You don’t have the breath left to answer her.

  The image shifts, jumping to the next screen, and your gaze follows. Blood beats too close to the surface of your skin. Your mouth goes dry.

  The house is empty. It has to be.

  The furniture on every screen is old, worn down. Some rooms are completely empty. The floorboards are bare.

  She watches the screens, and you watch her. She leans forward, lip caught between teeth, fighting against the quickness of breath. You know the look. Neither one of you can look away.

  You turn back to the televisions. Movement. A shadow stretching from the corner of the screen, unnaturally thin. Static. Liquid. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It slides from one screen to the next. Jumps. Quick cut.

  Just beside your right shoulder she leans forward, eyes bright.

  A fall of snow. One of the screens goes dark before flickering back to life. You see what you shouldn’t see, what can’t possibly be there. A man—starved thin—stands naked in an empty room. He stretches his arms wide, and grins. His teeth are a razor slash splitting open his face.

  He looks right at you when he smiles.

  Not the camera. You.

  Scars trace his ribs, faint, but still visible. They wrap his arms like pale thread and march down his thighs. No part of his skin remains untouched, unkissed by a blade.

  There is no sound, but his lips move. If you had to guess—and you do—you’d guess he says “Watch this.”

  Or maybe he says, “Want this.”

  It’s over so quickly you can almost pretend you didn’t see anything at all.

  Except you did. He wants you to watch. He wants you to know.

  His hands are empty, then the right holds a blade. The straight razor moves, deep on the left, wavering to the right. The gashed line appears as though by magic, opening his throat like his smile opens his face. Ragged. A dark spray. The scarecrow man bleeds out and the razor falls to the floor.

  The screen flickers. Jumps. A fall of snow.

  It’s over so quickly you couldn’t have seen what you know you saw.

  The room is empty. Or it should be. Shadows pull in to the center, forming a solid mass in the instant before the image goes dark. You can almost pretend it’s only a trick of the light. The shadows don’t, can’t, form the shape of a woman, kneeling before the scarecrow man. Hands bound. Watching. Her shoulders hitching with the force of silent tears.

  Interview #2—Somewhere between November 21 and December 3, 2011

  “He called it a period of grace. He was always talking about it. He said he could come back from anything. Anyone could. It wasn’t just him. Anyone can be forgiven.”

  Tap-tap. Her finger knocks ash into the glass tray. You feel like you’ve seen this all before, an endless loop, an endless repetition, a ghost trapped behind the screen. The camera watches over her left shoulder. She rubs her skin, and in the wake of her hand, a faint smudge appears, like a bruise, just starting to fade.

  Seven days. Or at least you think it’s been seven days. You can’t remember why you waited so long to talk to her again, or why you even called her in. She isn’t a suspect. She never was. You had no cause to hold her. But you can’t leave it alone. No matter how many times you’ve been told you’re not on the case, there is no case, no woman, no house. Forget it and leave it alone.

  You can’t let go.

  She’s alone in the room, you’re sure of it, and this time there’s no crackle of static from the intercom. It’s just the camera, and her body, sitting rigid in the chair. It’s just the press of her bones against her skin, the thinness of her shirt. It’s just her finger on the cigarette, and the specter of her smoke, filling the room.

  It’s just you, alone, leaning forward to catch her words through the video screen.

  “It’s not about forgiveness, it’s about freedom. When you’re bound, you have no more responsibility. Anything that happens after that, you can’t control.”

  You can’t see her face, but you imagine she smiles. You lean forward, wanting so badly to believe in her words. You almost touch the screen, even knowing she’s beyond your reach, knowing you can’t change what happens, only watch it unfold.

  A jacket hangs from the back of her chair. She reaches into the pocket, tap-tapping the cigarette with her other hand, and lays something on the table. The camera, angled over her shoulder, shows a silver disc in a plastic sleeve. There’s a word written in black marker on the sleeve, and she positions it just so, knowing the camera is watching. She wants you to see.

  The word is Restraint.

  “It’s permission to accept what happens next, and be forgiven.”

  Tap-tap. She crushes the cigarette, and turns to face the camera. Her eyes are black-black, and she does not smile.

  “It’s already happened. You can only watch. You’re helpless, but you’re free. And that makes it okay.”

  Video Evidence #3—Restraint—October 17, 2011

  She left the disc for you on the table in the interrogation room. She wanted you to watch. And you do.

  A time stamp in the bottom corner marks the date, and the time counts down, or counts up. Counts towards something, always falling from here to there and forever caught in-between. If you can believe anything she says the video was shot before Ray died. If Ray exists. If any of this is real.

  You haven’t seen her in days. But you imagine her standing just beyond your shoulder, not touching your skin, her breath almost stirring the tiny hairs of your ear. Watching as you watch her on the screen.

  The image is black and white. The camera is set high, somewhere above her left shoulder. She’s tied to a bed, both wrists bound to brass rails with black silken cord.

  The camera shows the taut line of her belly, the space where her white tank top rides up and the fabric doesn’t quite meet the black silk of her underwear. You can’t see her face, but you’re certain it’s her.

  Her nipples press against the thinness of her shirt, just like you knew they would.

  She moves her legs, rubbing one foot against the other, impatient. She pulls against the bonds.

  She isn’t alone in the room.

  At the foot of the bed, where the camera is focused, there are shadows. They crowd, obscuring, so you can’t see what you think you see, and you can’t be sure. Someone is sitting on a chair, watching her, knees apart, hands dangling loose between them. One hand holds something bright.

  She makes a low sound, not fear, not pleasure, not pain, not anything you can define. She strains against her bonds, and finally, she speaks a single word.

  “Please.”

  “Not yet.” The voice is so low it might not be there at all. “I want you to watch.”

  “Please.” The word again. “Let me…”

  “No.” The voice almost isn’t there; it cuts her off so you’ll never know what she might have said next.

  She doesn’t want you to know.

  The sound again, low in the back of her throat. Frustration. It’s barely human, an animal whine full of need. The shadows at the end of the bed shift, and you can only imagine what she sees—bound and unable to act.

  Her legs move, restless, impatient. You can only imagine what she wants to do, the reason for the sound. But you don’t know. You lean forward, breath quick, watching skin strain against rope.

  No one is forcing you this time, but you can’t stop watching. You know you shouldn’t. But she’s given you permission.

  Everything that happens from here on out isn’t your fault. It’s already happened. You can’t change it. And that makes it okay.

  The shadows at the end of the bed shift. She whines again. But she can only watch. And watch. Watch her watching him, an endless loop, an endless regression, all trapped together in the spaces in-between.


  It’s dark, and you can’t be sure what you see, but you watch as the shadows at the end of the bed seem to raise an arm, and something bright glints against the darkness, cutting deep.

  Video Evidence #4—Want—January 21, 2012

  There’s one more video. She must have left it. For you. It has to be for you.

  You went back to the house, one last time, alone. The disc was on the porch where the televisions used to be. The word on the envelope in black permanent marker is Want. You’ve watched it a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times. And you swear it’s different every time.

  The camera is close in. You can’t see her face, but it’s her. It has to be her. The white tank top is the same—so thin you can almost see her skin. She’s wearing the same black panties. Her nipples press hard against her shirt. The camera, fixed, shows her body between neck and mid-thigh, but not her face, so you’ll never know for sure. But you’d know her voice anywhere, spoken close, as if against your ear. Raising hairs, prickling skin—so breath-hot it has to be there, has to be real.

  You press play for the dozenth-hundredth time.

  The light is wrong—cast by the static-glow of too many television screens, all stacked one atop the other, all showing empty rooms.

  At first, there is only breath. Her breath, raising goose-bumps on your skin. It has to be her, because those are her blunt, ragged nails tracing the fabric of her shirt, lifting it, stopping just short of the curve of her small breasts.

  She speaks—a calling, a binding. It isn’t for you. But you want it to be.

  “I want you,” she says, though you can’t see her face. “I want you so badly I can feel it in my bones, in my blood, in every part of me. And I want you to want me, too. I want you to want me so bad you can’t think of anything else. I want to become your entire world.”

  Her hands lift her shirt higher, teasing. Her words don’t make any sense; they’re not for you. But you don’t care. An eternity passes before she catches the edges of the fabric, pulling the shirt over a head the camera doesn’t see, revealing small breasts, nipples puckered hard in the wrong-colored, staticky light.

  “I know you like to watch. So watch me. Watch me, and know how much I want you. Even though you can’t touch me. Not yet.”