House of Cabal Volume One: Eden (15 page)

She leans in, and I might have a heart
attack, and I bounce off the bed.

“I have a fiancé!”

I grab the clothes off the floor, almost
headbutting the wheelchair, and I cover my condom-sheathed dick
with the bunched up clothes and rush back to the bathroom before
the couple has a chance to say anything.

Morals my ass; I’m a chicken shit. That’s why
I don’t sin.

In the bathroom, I peel off the condom—it’s
already wet from seminal fluid—and I have nowhere to throw it.

I pace, my erection bobbing. I could sneak to
a phone and call a cab but I don’t have any money on me. No matter
how embarrassing, I have to face them again.

At least I have clothes to wear. I get
dressed again in Thomas’s clothes.

I know I’m not supposed to throw condoms in
the toilet, and so I shove it into my pants pocket.

They’ll find someone else.

My chastity makes regret swell inside me.
It’s a relief compared to the embarrassment, which floods back
whenever I think of jumping from the bed like some frightened
teenager. I’m sick of this. Why did I run? I wanted her like
nothing I’ve ever wanted before.

Oh, I know. Because it would’ve been a
disaster.

I would have prematurely ejaculated, or
halfway through I would have thought about Thomas watching and lost
my erection, or guilt from cheating on Carrie would have ruined it.
Or maybe Dana would have asked me to do something too kinky,
something I’m not comfortable with, though right now I feel I would
have done whatever she asked. Fantasy is one thing, real sex is
something else.

My shoulder joint hurts. I need time to
recover from everything that has happened to me. I was sexually
assaulted in a back alley, for God’s sake. It’s too soon to have
sex with anyone. My erection still hasn’t gone down.

No matter how I angle it, my rationales for
fleeing are just excuses. I’m a coward. It’s not my apartment or my
girlfriend or my job that makes me feel trapped. It’s me and my
stupid brain. I’m moral because I’m too scared to be anything
else.

My only option is to talk with them and tell
Dana to take me home. I need to make things right with Carrie. By
now, she must be worried sick.

I go to dinner.

Seeing the front room again, it hits me: They
have an upstairs. Thomas can’t use half of the house. He can’t even
locate the silverware drawer. There are no photographs. The
bathroom looks like it has never been used. This is not their
house.

But why?

Dana and Thomas, in the bright kitchen, make
the final preparations for dinner.

The riddle is back with the box on the
dinning table. One of them must have put it there. I sit down.

When Thomas showed me the eternal flame
symbol, he proved they orchestrated all this. But I didn’t have
time to think it over. How did they pull it off? Dana saw me at my
health club working out. That makes sense. That’s why she seemed so
familiar out in the rain. She must’ve overheard me talking to Rod.
That’s how they knew I liked puzzles.

I read over the note again and a part stands
out and gives me a tingling sensation down my neck.

For you are not satisfied with your
betrothed

This is more than overhearing me. Only Carrie
knows about the engagement. We haven’t made a formal announcement,
and even she doesn’t know about my doubts, or more precisely that
I’m settling, even though I’m certain we shouldn’t be together.
Dana and Thomas would’ve had to have been spying on me. Hacked my
email, tapped my phone, maybe even bugged my house.

“Is everything okay?” Thomas says from the
kitchen.

Progress to where your soul will dwell.

Could that be a euphemism for death? This
must be paranoia. There has to be another explanation.

“You guys don’t live here,” I venture.

Dana enters the dining room like a femme
fatale, draped in her red dress and holding the butcher knife, the
one I used to cut the bell pepper.

“Why do you say that?” Thomas wheels in with
a bowl of potatoes on his lap. “I thought this place convincing
enough. It came fully furnished. Didn’t the apple cider make it
feel homey?”

The butcher knife gleams. Dana’s expression
is hard to read, maybe devious enjoyment. If I ask her to put the
knife down, will she thrust it into my chest? Their welcoming
nature now feels like a trap. I know they’re deviants, but how far
that deviation goes, I’m not sure.

Thomas and Dana didn’t use their real
identities when they rented this house. When the police discover my
corpse, the investigation will find a dead end. Not that anyone
will find me in rural nowhere. No one knows I’m here. That’s why
they used the riddle. It hides my tracks to the location of my
murder.

Thomas and Dana want to fuck me and then kill
me.

Can they see the fear on my face or am I
successfully neutral?

Get out of here
, you tell me.
Get
out now.

Cassette Tape Seven:

Steak Dinner for Three

Dana sets her butcher knife down on the table
too far away for me to reach and places a hand on my shoulder,
either to connect with me or keep me from standing up. “Where is
this place, and are you going to go?”

My mind races, yet it’s hard to think with
her standing over me. Her other hand is casually spread out on the
table beside my plate, blocking my access to the steak knife.

I’m at the head of the table with Thomas to
my left. My back is straight, my breaths confined to my chest.
Panicking could be the end of me.

I force words through my dry throat. “I like
the puzzle touch.” They nod and don’t say anything. “You guys know
me too well.”

He looks to her, communicating something
unsaid, and then back to me.

I’m acutely aware of my muscles’ readiness to
spring me from my chair. A serving dish, if thrown properly, could
give me time to escape. Dana might get a slice in, but a person can
survive lots of cuts and stab wounds. I could run, at least until I
lost too much blood.

“We didn’t write this,” Thomas says.

“So it was a coincidence that Dana was by the
newspapers?”

“We only wrote the note in the bathroom.”
Dana laughs uncomfortably. “I had met with a sex surrogate. We
didn’t click. I was walking back to my car when I saw you. I
thought things were looking up.”

“You wanted me to open the box.”

“I was curious.” She gives her husband a
worried glance.

“But everything fits with the letter.” They
look at me as if I’m crazy. “The lecherous man and woman.” I pick
up the key and show them. “The key is Thomas’s key to your body but
not to your heart. You wrote that. You signed it.” I hold out the
riddle from the box. “And look, it has your symbol. The eternal
flame.”

“That key isn’t from us,” Dana says.

“The eternal flame isn’t
our
symbol.
We found out about the symbol two days ago. We haven’t even had a
chance to really talk with the gnostics about it.”

Dana blushes. “Maybe it’s about a literal
house. And not my body.”

“I guess that would make more sense, wouldn’t
it?” I deflate. Instead of relief, I feel disappointed, as if I
wanted them to be killers.

“Now that you know it’s not from us, do you
have any other theories? Can I see?” Thomas takes the riddle. “This
whole thing is wild.”

That’s one way to put it.

“It’s a crazy coincidence,” he says. “That
symbol isn’t exactly common. It says to ‘arrive the nineteenth.’
But where?”

“I’m not sure.” I don’t dare tell them I
thought that they were obsessed sex murderers. If Dana hadn’t been
blocking me, I might have grabbed my steak knife and stabbed one of
them.

It was because of my attack. Because I was
almost raped.

Dana puts her hand back on my shoulder to
comfort me. “You jumped to a conclusion. It happens. You okay?”

“Out of curiosity, why are you guys renting
this place? Why pretend to live here?”

“We aren’t pretending,” Thomas says. “We like
Portland. We are always staying in hotels. We were thinking about
buying this place if we found a sex surrogate we liked.”

“So I take it you’re declining our
offer.”

Yeah, that’s why I freaking jumped off your
bed and ran. I feel my face turning crimson.

“Sorry,” she says.

I can’t look at them. “I have a girlfriend. I
wouldn’t feel—”

“No need to explain.” Thomas dishes potatoes
onto his plate and passes the bowl to Dana.

“I can drive you home if you’d like. We would
understand.” She looks up at me through her eyelashes.

“And waste this wonderful dinner? I’m happy
to stay. It just can’t be anything more than dinner is all.”

She takes my flattery with a smile. “You
should tell us more about yourself. Maybe we can figure out who is
behind the riddles. Maybe it is someone you know.”

With the box on the floor at my feet, we fill
our plates. They seem happy to have me here even though sex is off
the table, and their enthusiasm for the simple pleasure of eating a
meal together makes me jealous. They savor every moment and
demonstrate what I’m missing in my own relationship. I don’t love
Carrie and doubt she loves me. I need to tell her it’s over. Other
people think we’re an attractive couple, and so we keep up
pretenses. We’ve forgotten what real love looks like, that it means
to actually enjoy the other person’s company and not just tolerate
it.

“I’m sorry I can’t…be of more help. With the
sex thing, I mean. You guys are really great.”

Thomas seems surprised I brought the topic
back up. “Everett, we understand. We thought you might be into the
idea. You’re obviously attracted to my wife.”

“You assumed I was a slut,” I finish for
him.

“You are just so damn pretty! I was thinking
more like ‘sexually liberated.’”

Dana folds her hands on her lap. “Do you
really think so little of us?”

“No, I get it. I was sending mixed signals. I
guess that’s an understatement, huh? It’s not your fault. It’s
just, stuff like this doesn’t happen to me. I’m boring.”

“You don’t seem boring.” He takes another sip
of burgundy. “You actually come across as kind of intense.”

“Intense? Really?”

“You watch me like you’re some kind of
predator. I’m sorry.”

“Wow, that is not how I see myself.”

“I can’t tell if you want to jump me or tell
me to fuck off.”

“I would never tell you that!”

Dana laughs.

“Your neck is all corded up,” Thomas says.
“You haven’t relaxed the whole time you’ve been here.”

I massage the back of my neck,
self-conscious. “I’m just not used to all this. I’m a creature of
habit.” I explain that I’ve been in a rut for years. I have a
boring yet well-paid job. I used to be an artist, creating puzzles,
but quit during college as I turned to more practical pursuits.
“What’s more boring than accounting?”

“Maybe your family set it up?” Dana says.
“Maybe they wanted to help you get out of your rut. Are you
close?”

“My parents wouldn’t do this.” I take a sip
of my water.

“So you’re an only child?”

I pick up my fork. It’s not my fork, it’s the
steak knife, and it slices into my right index finger. “Ow.” The
knife drops to the table. I put my finger to my mouth. My tongue
tests the depth of the cut. It’s surprisingly deep.

Dana gets up from her chair. “You okay?”

“It’s no big deal.” I hold out my finger.
Blood drips onto the white tablecloth in dime sized dots, and I put
my finger back over my plate.

“Oh no. I’ll get you something to put on
that.” She hurries into the kitchen.

Thomas laughs from across the table. “It
looks like even the vegetarian will have blood on his plate
tonight.”

You give me a skeptical look. The way I cut
myself strikes you as a strange. Is it really possible to mistake a
knife for a fork? You mime the action, trying to get a clear mental
picture. It doesn’t make sense. I should have noticed the sharp
edge of the knife before it cut into the skin. That can’t be how it
happened.

In Portland, I haven’t told anyone about my
brother’s death. I clenched my fist when Dana brought up siblings.
I wanted to feel the blade cut into my flesh. It was a split second
impulse. The thing with my brother happened a long time ago, before
college. I don’t want to talk about it.

Dana puts a first-aid kit on the table.

“I’m sorry about this,” I say. “Here you guys
have this nice dinner, and we end up tending to my wounds.”

“It’s okay, Everett. It’s just good talking
with you.” She tends to my finger and doesn’t look up.

“As far as I know, Carrie is the only person
who knows about our engagement. We’ve talked about it in emails.
Maybe my email was hacked.”

Thomas stabs his last piece of steak with his
fork.

“There. That should do it.” Dana snaps the
kit closed. “It’s a clean cut; it should be fine.” She refers back
to what I was saying. “Hacked emails, huh? Maybe it’s an invitation
to a seminar. Maybe on killing.” She is delight by my astonishment.
“Maybe it’s a seminar that teaches you how to become an assassin
for the CIA.”

“Or maybe MI6,” Thomas offers.

“Just think. You could be a hidden hand of
the government. They saw you were good at puzzles. You did well in
college, right?”

“Pretty good.” I got straight As (okay, and
one B, but Professor Daniels was a prick).

“See,” she says. “You would be perfect for
MI6. I’m surprised they haven’t contacted you already.”

“It could be a business proposition,” Thomas
says. “And the note was a test. It probably has some connection
with the Mafia. They like to test people, don’t they?”