Fiction | Headless Statues Eat for Free

“I’m going to kill you.”

We were in a motel, the kind that smells of cigarettes and has beds you can put money into to make them more fun. We’d dropped a quarter in a minute ago; the whole thing was shaking like an earthquake. It shook so much that it knocked my favorite hand mirror to the floor and broke it into big ugly pieces, but I didn’t mind none. I was too wrapped up in other things.

“I’m going to strangle you raw.”

He laughed and I laughed and he put his hands around my throat and started squeezing, gently at first and then real tight, so tight that I couldn’t breathe hardly and I started making funny noises I never made before. The bed bounced.

We’d been a thing for almost two months, which felt like twenty years the way we were locked up together. I met him when I went to get my ears pierced for the first time. He was the one to poke them, and I was in love at once, or at least something like it. I think it was the way that he touched me, fingers gripping my ear firm. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation or a hint of gentleness. He just walked right up and pulled and twisted and stretched on them, face right up close to mine without ever looking me in the eye. All he cared about was what was on the sides of my head.

He had the most beautiful piercings, by the way—holes going all the way up the lobe, studs and gauges and dangling jewels making a pattern so wonderful and hypnotic. I remember thinking I’d love to have something like that. I told him as much, too. When I did, thumb still rubbing my ear, he smiled and looked at me proper for the first time.

“It’ll hurt,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said.

And it did and it was. My ear bled tons, little pools bubbling up around fake diamonds without any hint of stopping. I went knocking on his shop door that night to show him all the blood. He told me he knew how to fix it, and he let me in and bit and sucked and licked it up until morning. All the while, he told me he loved me, whispered quiet and close.

*

He let go of my throat before things got too bad, but the shadows of his hands remained, and they would for a long time. It was always like that. I had to wear turtlenecks, or scarves, or jackets zipped all the way up if I didn’t want the world to see. Sometimes you do want them to see though, in which case any old thing did fine. The bed was still bouncing. How long did it go on for? I sputtered and spat and tried to choke him back, but I was too weak to do anything, so he played along and laughed and laughed, head hanging upside down off the side, eyes reflected three times back in funny angles by the mirror pieces lying around.

This was all a few weeks after we started motel hopping. When things were only starting, we stayed in his shop all day instead. I’d turn up whenever it suited me, and he’d smile and let me in and flip the open sign to closed. Turns out he had a wife though, and when she found out she was none too pleased. “How could you,” she said. “You bastard,” she yelled. “With that?” She cried and cried and kicked him out of their home and locked the doors. From then on, we both started living in his shop. We didn’t have much of a choice otherwise. “She’s the one with the money,” he said. “I’m just there for it.”

She called a bunch, of course. Damn near blew up his phone with all the ringing and buzzing. Day, night, it didn’t matter. At first, he was kind enough to answer, to let her yell, but that fell apart when one morning some men came knocking. “We’re closed,” he told them. They answered by showing him a piece of paper and a policeman waiting at the end of the street. Even the shop was under her name, and we weren’t welcome anymore.

When we hit the road, he dug his phone out from his pocket, called her, and said, calm as I’ve ever heard him, “Little girl, I’ve just about had enough of you. I swear to God—and you know how serious I am when I swear to him—if you don’t let us alone, you’ll be dead on the street sooner than you know. I’ll run you right over and let the tire spin your guts out like a roadkill squirrel. You’ll be nothing more than a spilled plate of spaghetti and nobody in the world will care because at least then you’ll be quiet.” He hung up without waiting for an answer and threw his phone out the window. I watched it crack and shatter in the rearview.

He was quiet for a bit, then laughed and called her crazy while rubbing my ear until the bleeding started again. That night we checked into our first motel. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I felt like an angel.

*

We only left a motel when they made us, usually because of the noise, sometimes because of the mess, and once from the smell. I suppose I can’t blame them too much. We would lock ourselves up for days on end, never taking a single step outside or even opening a window. We didn’t have any reason to. All we needed was a bed and our bodies. Day after day, night after night, nothing but him and nothing but me, hands around necks, fingers on ears.

Wasn’t long before cash started getting tight. Motels aren’t free—we both knew we couldn’t last much longer in them what with both of us being out of a job—but there was the issue of my piercings too. Maybe he made a mistake, or I did, or it was because he couldn’t help playing with them, but the bleeding kept coming back. He talked sometimes about finding new work so I could afford to go to the doctor. I didn’t let him though. Everything was fine, I said. There’s no need to worry. Things would work out somehow. I just knew they would.

And then last week a miracle happened. God looked down at us and grinned. We saw it on the news, played out on a TV so old it was still thick in the back. An accident, a car crash, a body tangled up nice and messy on the freeway. Her name in the headline.

He had to leave me for three days to take care of things after that. I didn’t go with him; it didn’t feel right somehow. It was the worst time of my life. I barely even managed to eat a thing. Once or twice, I tried strangling myself in his place, first with my own hands, then with the cord for the shower head, but it didn’t go anywhere. My heart wasn’t in it. And besides, touching my neck meant touching the shadows he left, which stung fierce, skin tender like he was reminding me that only he had the right.

When he came back, he came back with money she’d had that was now his, and lots of it, too. So much of it that we could live in as many motels as we wanted for at least a year without a worry in the world. We hugged and we kissed and he asked if I’d been lonely and I said yes because I had and we sat on the bed and popped in a quarter and talked about all the motels we might stay at while the whole world shook like it was ending. His hands and their shadows met on my neck, and I smiled a smile so big that tears welled up and rolled to meet his fingers. I could feel the piercings start to bleed again. Things were going to be all right. Heaven had finally found its way to me.

So you see, that’s why I love him. That’s why he’s the man for me. When he says he’s going to kill me, I don’t doubt it for a second.