A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames (popular books to read TXT) 📗

what must have been hours, this fantasy, but then I began to itch everywhere, uncontrollably; it was most likely psychological, but maybe I was also having withdrawal from the fentanyl, which I hadn’t had since the night before.

So I started writhing to relieve the itching—tiny movements were all I could manage, wiggling like a worm in the jacket and beneath the straps—and then I started feeling like I was choking on the ball gag; I couldn’t get myself to breathe through my nose, and my tongue was pushing hard against the ball, trying instinctively to get it out of the way, which made things worse and seemed to make my tongue swell, and so it was my own tongue I was choking on.

And the more I choked, the more panicked I became, and I rocked and rocked trying to get some relief, to get away, to break free, to stop the itching, to breathe, anything, until at some point, worn down, I passed out.

When I woke up, it was very dark in the room and it seemed that Ben must have decided not to wake me and had skipped my dinner.

And so I just lay there, but I couldn’t control my mind and the claustrophobia returned, and I began to choke, terrified again of swallowing my own tongue, and so once more I began to shake and thrash, and then I realized that the straitjacket had been loosened.

I couldn’t believe it, but I was able to pull my right arm out! Then I removed the straps across my head and chest, was able to sit up and get the ball gag out. Ben must have freed me! My talking about Monica had gotten through to him after all!

I then pulled out the feed from my neck port, but I didn’t know how to remove the port itself without causing a lot of bleeding, and so I left it in my neck.

Then I undid the other straps, got out of the bed, and ran to the door. I opened it a crack and listened. Nothing. Then I went out into the hall—it was dark—and I trotted quickly, in my bare feet, down to the kitchen. From there, I went cautiously into the living room and one lamp was on, giving some minimal light, but no one was around.

I then went up the stairs as quietly as I could.

To the right of the second-floor landing was an unusually long hallway with a window at the end letting in moonlight.

I could make out several doors along the hallway and behind one of them had to be Monica.

I opened the first door and the room was empty.

I opened the second door and Ben and John were sitting on a bed, smiling at me.

“I just wanted to fuck with you,” said Ben.

I stared at them and then I ran down the hall and hurled myself down the stairs.

“Don’t you fucking run!” screamed Ben after me.

But I had a head start. I got out the front door and the moonlight was strong, and I ran up the driveway in my bare feet and hospital gown.

I looked back, and Ben and John, furious, had just emerged from the front door.

There was no way I could outrun them, and so I went to the cliff’s edge to the right of the driveway and hurled myself down the hillside, my feet ripping, but I had to get away. I had to! Then I’d come back with the police for Monica!

But the hillside was steep and I began to tumble, losing my balance, and then it became a paved embankment, which didn’t seem possible, and I fell and rolled down it, painfully and out of control, until I landed at the concrete bottom, alongside the edge of the Los Angeles River. The water, black and silver, reflecting the night sky and the moon, was high after all the rains and was moving quickly in its concrete riverbed.

Then I looked up the hill and Ben and John were scrambling down it, and I had nowhere to go, so I jumped into the river and it was freezing cold, and it began to take me along, and I was fighting not to drown, but then I got control of my body and was able to swim or at least stay afloat while the current hurled me downriver.

But then, sensing something, I looked behind me, and the water was suddenly rising up like an ocean wave, a tsunami wave, and then it peaked, high above me, an immense dark curtain of water, and I couldn’t get away, I couldn’t move, and then it came slamming down on top of me, pushing me to the bottom, and I looked up and the water was roiling above me and would never let me back to the surface, and I couldn’t breathe, I was going to die, and it was then that I had the double horror of realizing I was dreaming, that there would be no saving Monica, no getting away, and that what I would be waking up to would actually be worse than drowning, and it was then that I came out of the dream, choking beneath the ball gag but still alive.

6.

About an hour later, Ben showed up to give me dinner. I had been wrong about that in my dream.

He put the bed in the sitting position and kept me in the straitjacket.

And I welcomed his presence. I didn’t want to be alone in that room anymore, in the darkness, strapped to the bed. I was already getting Stockholmed and was scared by the idea of him leaving me again.

But I wasn’t completely slavish, not yet.

I had been fooled by him in my nightmare, but I knew—or wanted desperately to believe—that he had some sympathy and feeling for Monica, and so I had to try to exploit this. It was my only gambit.

He swung the tray table in front of me, sat on the edge of the bed, and began