WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY SALAMANDER?
Colin O’Sullivan

Here he is now. Driving. Driving them all. They sprawl around the back of the little bus, all four of them, and all of them asleep. The Magician is the loudest to snore but Lex doesn’t mind. He thinks it gives the bus a nice hum as it presses on down the road. Sally snores too; you’d expect that though, given her weight and all. And the brothers, Tim and Tex: Well, not a peep out of them, which is surprising, considering how much gibberish they talk all day every day. Maybe it is the fact they are all tired after travelling for hours already, or maybe because it is their first outing in years and their excitement has been building up for weeks, and now that they are finally, actually on the trip, maybe that’s why they are completely pooped out and sleeping like fat recently fed babies, limbs astray and breathing heavily, hurtling deeper and deeper into satisfied slumber.

Lex, dodging a fawn that has edged out onto the road looking petrified and lost, is delighted when he thinks for a moment that he is like the father of them all, the daddy. Here he is, taking them out, his charges. Look how careful he is. So steady. And responsible! Isn’t that a great feeling, to be looking after the four of them, seeing as they clearly cannot look after themselves?

He can see the fawn in the rear mirror, shaking, its skinny legs hardly holding it up. Has it not got the instinct to go back into the woods?

Lex tries to forget about it. Some creatures will simply have to look after themselves. He drives with his eyes focused straight ahead. Steady. He can’t look after every damn thing. But yes, it is a great feeling, a great feeling to be the daddy, the responsible one. He could sing right now if they’d join in but they are all sleeping, and they don’t go in for song much anyway. Lex likes songs, especially romantic ones. He remembers many of the lines and thinks they will somehow come in useful. But he is the boss today, of that the world can be sure. No time for crooning romantic ballads. He twirls the thick walrus moustache that is way too big for his thin fox-like face and smiles. See! Not everything Lex does is bad. Sure, he’s made mistakes, but he has a good heart, not everything he does turns to mush. Not everything. Who else would have the wherewithal to take this bunch on the road, to give them a breath of fresh air? Give them a break. Give their worthless lives some meaning. Something to look back at when it was all over and say remember the day Captain Lex took us all to the cabin in the mountains. They whooped and hollered with joy when they first heard about it. A day on the road, with Captain Lex at the wheel, all the way to the mountains, to spend a night there in a little place only Lex knows. Lex not only knows all about romance and stuff. He can look after his friends too. Everyone was delighted at the prospect. Now they are all snoozing, the Magician’s raspy breathing giving the bus a steady rhythm as they press on down the road.

~

Laura and Terri have never had a weekend alone in a cabin before. In fact they are hardly ever really alone anymore. Work is always mounting up giving them something to do or family make their urgent interruptions. Urgent. Family business is always marked “urgent”; Laura’s younger sister getting her first period or Terri’s Grandma falling down yet again on her bad hip. It is as if they are conspiring to break them apart, keep them away from each other. But that is just one of their little conspiracy theories; Laura and Terri like to feel they are up against the world, or that someone or something is out to get them, sometimes they just enjoy the feeling of persecution. Many in the town already suspect, they think they know what is going down between these two, you can see it in their faces, knowledgeable nods in clandestine corners. Or is this mere paranoia on behalf of the two? Is this how far they are being pushed? They are sure townsfolk have their hunches. Laura and Terri think it a good word, “hunch”; they see the old ladies of the town stooped over trying to conceal their abhorrence, trying to be discreet in their gossip. Discreet. Another word Laura and Terri use quite a bit. They are discreet in their relationship. At least they try to be. They wouldn’t dare even so much as let their hands brush past each other in public. They don’t live together for a start, which makes it easier to deter gossip, they still return to their own house at the end of the night, well, the end of most nights. The whole thing doesn’t bother them that much.

No, actually, sometimes, it does sometimes; it can’t help but get on their wick at times. Laura especially, she sometimes feels the urge to grab a loudspeaker on sports day and tell them all about it. Isn’t this what you want to know? Isn’t this what you have been whispering about for years? All your speculation can end right now! Step right up and I’ll tell you all about it, all about how we get down and dirty, how two women can actually do it. Yep, I can suck on Terri’s large nipples for days on end, isn’t that it boys, isn’t that… But she never does it; she says she would but she never actually does, she just gets on with other things. Laura is a rebel inside only, her rage is kept bottled up.

But Terri is happy to have Laura. That knowledge of that fact alone brings a blush to her freckled cheeks. The possessive verb “have”. They have each other. Sometimes the sickly sentimental things can ring so true. They have each other. Greeting card sagacity.

~

Terri had a sort of boyfriend in the past, but she knew there was something quite wrong with the whole set up. It never felt natural. She went along with it at the beginning because that’s what you do. You go to school, or to college, and you date, because all the other girls do it. You go along with it. And when the guy puts his hand on your breast for the first time, after the initial shock and shudder, you let him leave it there, his stubby tobacco tinged fingers fidgeting with your nipples, squeezing hard and then softly; that hurt sometimes and sometimes didn’t. And you go to bed with the grim understanding that next time it won’t be just your young breast he is after, it will be lower, down there, between your legs. And you fear everything that goes along with it. What if he doesn’t like that smell that you have? The boys on the basketball courts joked about it. They talked about fish, or fishing, or whether you were a man that likes seafood?

So, do you give it up or do you not? Every teenage girl’s dilemma. Of course for Terri that was not the only dilemma, she knew back then that it wasn’t the fact that she didn’t want a hand in her pants, she knew she didn’t want a boy’s hand in there.

But she acquiesced, one dark night in a damp, lonely laneway, his hand slid in and the tremor of the moment filled her with revulsion. That was as far as she would allow. She had done it only to keep the peace. Keep up appearances. The basketball boys would be sure to know all about it. It was hard back then to know if you would be left off the hook or impaled upon it.

You go along with stuff.

And her guy was all swept up with lust the moment he got that sniff on the end of his fingers. He was like a young pup lapping it up. From then on he was all on for marrying her. He was cards and roses and attempting to make dinner and had only a mind for wedding her, hoping it would lead to bedding her, and then he could have that smell on him wherever he went. He might even get his forever twitching cock inside her. Wouldn’t that be something?

The teens, the teens, the stupid stupid teens.

He was all on for marrying her. Still is by all accounts. Hasn’t grown up. Not one bit. Arrested, they say, his development. Still sending letters week after week, pleading with her to walk down the aisle with him so that he can make a real woman of her. So that he can finally ease her suffering. That’s what he had written in the last letter, ease her suffering. Terri laughed out loud when she read it. They are in their late twenties now for God’s sake! Not stupid teenagers anymore. Isn’t it time for him to give it up? Ease her suffering. The cheek! The absurdity! What does that fool know about her, really? Well, obviously he knows who she prefers to be with, he was never oblivious to the rumours, but what does he really know about what it is like to be her? Nothing! He spends all his days with goofballs, loons, crazies. Perhaps he is turning into a real one himself. But she certainly is not suffering. The sheer joy and warmth she experiences with Laura are the total antithesis of suffering, and this weekend in the cabin, just the two of them, would seal it all.

~

Lex knows their files inside and out. He knows every little thing about them. He stops the bus at a picnic area because he knows that Sally will need to go to the toilet any minute. He is right. This is how well he knows his team.

“I do need to go Captain Lex, I do need.”

The Captain smiles. See, how he is relied upon!

Before Sally even gets near the toilet entrance she is already hoisting her skirt up and Lex shouts at her telling her to wait till she gets inside!

“Sorry Captain Lex.”

The rest of them stretch and yawn. Tim pops his head up to look out the window of the bus, looking like a dog, a tired ragged dog that has just woken up. They do not know where they are. They may as well be in a collective coffin, the undead, having their undead sleep, these passengers. They have no idea where they are. They hardly would, having not been outside the grounds in years. But they’re smiling, pleased just to be out, to see nature again, and not just the garden and the spatter of trees and the little murky goldfish pond on the grounds, but real nature, a fawn struggling to cope with nature on a brisk autumn day, lost without a caring mother, not that any of them saw that, they were out for the count in the back of the Lex-Mobile. Only the Captain saw it.

The Captain is in control of everything. They have absolutely nothing to worry about. They have all been given their orders. They are prepared.

When Sally comes back out from the toilet her skirt is hoisted up yet again and she struggles to fix herself up. Lex looks at her hairy legs supposing that it’s been years since the thick trunks have been shaved, the hefty hair matted like chunky brown bark. Perhaps they never were shaved, ever. Well, why would they? She wouldn’t be allowed to do it herself, and anyway, for whose benefit? Who would it be for? Nobody knew her. Except for Lex and the others in the bus. They didn’t really care what she looked like. None of them would even notice if she had hair on her legs or not. Only Lex would notice. Because Lex is clear-thinking. He thinks it funny that men expect hairless legs. Why should that be so? Whose idea was that in the first place? He read somewhere that lesbians don’t bother to shave their legs or their armpits and this did disgust him.

“Are you ready Sally?”

“I am Captain Lex. I’m ready now. Just had to fix myself up a bit.”

The Magician snores again as soon as the bus takes off, dreaming, maybe, of a time when things didn’t go wrong.

~

Terri and Laura unpack. They are excited that there are no nosey neighbours around, or no nosey neighbours’ nosey pervey kids intent on crawling up to one of their windows to see what the women might be at. And that happens in a small town, the Jones’ fifteen year old is forever trying to peep in, just what is it that he thinks he will see? In a bar once, as Terri drank beer with a male workmate, she had been approached by some drunk. And she knew him, she knew this guy, had seen him drinking in the bar before, his fat paunch leaning over the pool table, his goatee beard dotted with specks of grease from chicken wings. But what does he ask her, as soon as he sees Terri’s friend rise and leave the table? What is his request? Get this. He says:

“Would it be ok if I like, watched. You know, the two of you, you and your girlfriend. I won’t take part or nuthin’, just watch, no video camera or nuthin’.”

Terri nearly fell out of her seat with the sheer fright. Not because it was so insulting which it was—it was downright insulting, but the sheer shock of it, the sheer unexpectedness of it. The warped effrontery! Because you are of a different sexual persuasion it also means that you are lewd, prurient, a sexual deviant who has no problem letting others watch you have sexual relations with your lover. This is the logic. She had a hard time letting it go. Her workmate had been in the toilet when the strange request came and found it hard to believe when she recounted the guy’s very words: No video camera or nuthin’. Laura burst into horrified laughter when she heard all about it and said that Terri should have taken him up on the offer, taken him home and put on a display; make the fool pay a fortune. The poor guy probably would have. He didn’t seem to have anything else going on in his life, eight ball and chicken wings the highlights. But Laura just says things like that. She really wouldn’t have done it if it came down to it.

They laugh about it now. They laugh as they unpack their stuff for the weekend. When they were younger living separate lives they would go off with fathers or uncles or brothers to go camping in the woods or on hiking treks up the mountains. Now it feels like that all over again. They feel giddy, like two children off on an adventure. It is no way for adults to behave but how can they help themselves? They know they can do whatever the hell they want to do because there is no one to hear them. That’s the beauty of being in a cabin in the woods. Terri jokes about it: In a cabin in the woods no one can hear you scream!

~

Tim and Tex

are like the same person Lex will tell you. They are brothers and boy don’t you know it to look at them. They are not twins though. People have made that mistake in the past. They look alike and act alike and even say the same demented things usually at the same time, but they are not twins. They have suffered immeasurably but it’s not worth getting into all that. Lex has heard all about that wicked stuff and is casting blame on no one now. Tim and Tex simply are the way they are now and need care and attention and they sure get plenty of that back on the grounds. Lex is used to their outbursts. The obscenities. The strange attempts at unfolding some truth or wisdom that mostly sound like the ranting of madmen. Which they are not. Lex will assure you. The Captain is noble enough to leave words like that out of it. Those words are for people who do not know any better. Townsfolk would say crazy, and loon, and madman, and psychopath and all the rest of it, but Lex would always give them short shrift. No need for those derogatory terms. These guys are people too. And they have many good qualities, though Lex is often slow to think what they might be. It is easy to ignore Tim and Tex, ignore their lost gazes, the vacant eyes, the strange outpourings that erupt from their mouths, often in unison, and bizarrely so. But the Captain looks after his foot soldiers and feels a sense of joy, with them snoozing in the back, looking like they are his overgrown children.

~

In the cabin the first bottle is about to be opened. Terri hands it to Laura saying that she might do it better. Terri says she is afraid of corking it.

“Corking it?”

“Yeah, it means when the cork gets broken and you cannot take it out properly without getting some of it in the wine.”

“Really? Where did you hear that?”

“Dunno. Just did.”

Terri feels proud; she got the impressive phrase right and she is happy to see her partner open the bottle with a triumphant pop. She gets a hug from her young lover too and Laura says that she will kiss every freckle on her cute little cheeks and all in all the weekend is starting to go really well.

~

Sally

had a turtle when she was young but she said it was a salamander. No one knows why she thought it was a salamander, perhaps no one ever told her that it wasn’t, never taught her the rules, and the only thing we know now is that her drunken father had taken a hammer to the shell of the creature and started hammering it to bits in front of her eyes and she didn’t even scream then she thinks but has nightmares ever since and asks everybody she meets if they have perhaps seen her pet on the way to heaven and if they haven’t seen it then what did they actually do with it. Sally’s mother is never mentioned, or whether she ever even had one or knew of one, but the pet, the turtle that is a salamander, is mentioned quite a bit, maybe because salamander is a prettier name to use and the only thing she ever really inquires about.

~

Routine saves a lot of these people. Lex insists that they are only a few minutes from the cabin but Sally tells him that she needs to go again. So the same kafuffle ensues. Lex pulls over the white mini-bus but this time she has to do it by the side of the road. And Lex can’t help but watch as she hoists up her skirt and unashamedly pees her yellow liquid onto the dry grass and twigs. The others somehow sensing that they grow close to their destination are suddenly awake and very alive.

“Pull up your dirty panties Sally,” shouts Tim.

“Pull up your dirty panties Sally,” shouts Tex.

“You fuckin’ whore!” shouts Tim.

“You fuckin’ whore!” shouts Tex.

And then the two take turns using every other foul word they can think of and Sally comes back on to the little bus and is looking for something to wipe her hands on and the Magician gives her a stern look as if to say don’t you dare touch my cape!

~

There are no sports on the TV. Things are looking up. Terri glances through a TV guide and sees that there are quite lot of comedies showing. Perfect. She says that she could do with a laugh. Laura asks her if she is not laugh enough for her, if she is not a bundle of hilarity and Terri says she didn’t mean it like that, it’s just that it is good to get away from it all and not have a phone in the place and not have to think about anyone or anything else and:

“Sure you are a laugh. Jesus. Sure!”

These things come out of nothing. Sentences misconstrued, glances misunder-stood. Minefield. Terri is experienced enough to deal with these things and knows how to smooth out the gathering wrinkles. She puts her hand to Laura’s face, gently holding her soft skin between the thumb and curve of her index finger, it’s as if a mother is going to whisper there there, but she doesn’t, instead she fixes a wing of crow black hair leaving Laura’s ear exposed and then first on the lobe, then the crater, places her lips and tongue firmly, firmly there.

~

When Lex tells them to get out of the bus and that they have finally arrived and that they are to follow his orders, they all salute. He tells them that it is a bit of climb up to the cabin, that the bus would not drive all the way but that it shouldn’t take long if they take long soldier strides. He tells them to put their hands down. At ease. They know the drill, been over this before. Lex has gone over and over everything with them in detail and nothing is to go wrong and they are all sick and tired of hearing it. Tim and Tex don’t dare curse about it though; they wouldn’t dream of upsetting the Captain. They have little bags and everything they need is in these little bags. Sally says that she could pee she is so excited about it all and Tex whispers that she is a dirty bitch. Needless to say Tim whispers this too.

~

The Magician

no longer does tricks. He cut his wife in half after inviting all his neighbours to watch the spectacle. He told all in the neighbourhood that he had been studying for years and was finally ready to perform in public. Of course he had never opened a magic book in his life. He had sent away for the special boxes and that was it. And the saws too, they weren’t your average hardware store saws, they were special ones recommended by the Magicians’ Circle. Anyway, he stuck his wife in the box as the neighbours were making the most of the free beer and the kids were running around hyped up on too much cola and you could hear the screams for miles they say as he plunged the saws into the box and blood splattered everywhere. His wife had agreed to do it all of course as she had been so far gone on alcohol, amphetamines and anything else that would go down her throat and stay long enough not to be puked back up again. He thought she wouldn’t be able to feel a thing. Maybe she thought that too. But her screams were real enough. He hadn’t accounted for that. And the neighbours, their screams were loud enough as well, so loud that the Magician had to cover his ears. When they came to take him away he told them that he would get the accompanying book next time.

~

The embrace is interrupted. There is a loud banging on the door. Glasses of wine are spilled the shock is so much. Things are not going as well as had been planned. On the other hand, for Lex, things are going exactly right, the door opens, and he didn’t even have to break it down. It opens and Terri screams with horror when she sees him. All this is wonderful for Lex’s team, his army. Lex’s promises never fail, and the women hollering sets off Tim and Tex who proclaim in unison that they are dirty sluts, dirty sluts, and the Magician wonders if it is yet time to open his bag of tricks.

“Jesus Christ Lawrence what are you doing here, you know you are not supposed to come near me! There is a restraining order you are not to…”

But Lex knows all this stuff because she replied to one of his letters and told him all this and he knows the ins and outs and she knows that he is not stupid and that he can understand plain English. She doesn’t know however that he is not actually a hospital porter and other stuff, and that he shouldn’t be out either, but all that can wait. A wedding is to take place and Lex orders them to open the bags. Sally fumbles with hers and says that she can’t wait to throw the rice and is so excited about it the hair on her legs becomes wet with tiny streams of piss and when Laura screams for the third or fourth time Terri eyes her disappointingly, wondering why it is that she never acts the way she should, why her rage never really flies, and Sally turns to Laura and asks her quite plainly if by any chance she had anything to do with the disappearance of her salamander.

~

When the police finally arrived after getting wind of the breakout the bloodbath was stomach turning. The officers that were present still have trouble speaking clearly about the atrocities. One young woman was seemingly cut through the stomach with a saw, the whole floor a pool of red. The other lady dressed in a white wedding dress had a hammer actually stuck into her temple and medical examiners had to cut through the skull to wrench it out. The five live bodies that were completely covered in blood were still at the scene and were said to be quite calm on being asked to leave handcuffed with the officers, though later, back on the grounds four of them said that they would only take real orders from the Captain.

~

Chained, on the way from the cabin, in police custody, Sally snores but that is not surprising what with her weight and all, but the rest of them look out the windows as they press on down the night road, Lex telling them that they should look out for a fawn, though the fawn is probably safe and sound by now.

~

The Captain on being interviewed days later said that some things went by names that were not suitable for the thing and that some things should be another way entirely and that he was the responsible one for the organisation of the wedding day and that his next letter to Terri would explain it all.

© Colin O’Sullivan

Colin O’Sullivan (osullivancolin@hotmail.com) is an Irish writer living and working in Japan. His poems have been published in numerous magazines in Ireland, England and Scotland and his short stories have appeared in Staple, New Writing, Carve, The Taj Mahal Review, Prose Toad and Ludlow Press.

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