ernell is watching Catherine chew: slow methodical bites with her lips pressed tightly together, never pursing, her jaw moving up and down, rhythmically, without cracking the seal of lush red. She has very good manners. Her hair is in a taut ponytail, the style often seen by sleek sophisticated patrons of the Money Haven Club on Fifth Avenue and Broadway. All of the loose, defiantly curly, gray hairs Catherine was caught studying in the doublewide bathroom mirror in their oversized master bedroom are missing from view; either plucked or neatly tucked. Her eyes, which weren't visible only a second earlier, are fully open and returning his gaze: deep hazel irises carefully cuddling the black saucers of her pupils, engulfed in milky ponds bordered by black eyeliner, neatly drawn and combed over thick lashes, leaving an authentic impression without foreknowledge that any makeup was applied.
“Are you not hungry?” she asks, clearly noticing the lack of reciprocating motion that comes when two share a meal.
Vernell, a schoolboy caught looking at the curvy legs of the girl next to him, begins to cut apart his beef tenderloin as if Catherine was merely observing a pause in his efforts to consume the fine dish. “It's very good.”
“Yes.”
Before the bite enters his mouth: “Did we give thanks?”
Catherine's expression quickly morphs from placid to uncertainty: eyes squinting slightly, mouth gaping moderately. “I don't think so.”
It is ritual to do so.
Vernell gently sets his fork and knife half onto the subtly decorated china before looking up to the ceiling: the plaster covering the heavens, where the Gods always seem to be listening. Catherine does the same. In unison, they say: “Thank you for dinner.”
That's it. Never the spectacle often found in the rooms of the pious: long drawn breaths of detailed accounts of thanks, followed by begs of forgiveness and promises of behavioral change that they may or may not actually intend on achieving, but often intend. It started long before Catherine arrived, when Vernell was still crying for some reprieve of the loneliness holding his heart captive. Catherine simply learned to adapt to his routine, which worked well considering all of the accommodations made, when asked nicely, and followed with a give of thanks: much different from the times of the Old Testament.
They resume feeding.
Vernell is now acutely aware of the silence surrounding them. Catherine's bites suddenly become industrial sized garbage trucks forking dumpsters with an ear piercing scratch of metal on metal, followed by the hydraulic hissing sound of strain accompanying the lifting and dumping. He asks: “Would you mind some music?”
Catherine almost never denies a request for something other than stark emptiness in her ears, formally preferring conversation but lately desiring filler: anything other than Vernell's voice.
Vernell rises from the table and catches the white cloth napkin sliding from his pants: deep brown dyed silk, cuffed at the ends of each leg. He tosses the napkin to the chair seat. The stereo is in the living room: spacious, three couches formed around a stone fireplace, television on top of the ornately carved mahogany mantle, a large area rug covering half of the rich mahogany floor. Everything is as he had initially decorated the place: however many months, years ago: at least two by this point. They had rearranged over the course of time but eventually settled on how Vernell initially envisioned the room. Catherine hasn't bothered rearranging since.
Vernell's mp3 player is already docked to the stereo. He turns on the receiver and slides the power switch to the mp3 player. His hands work automatically: having done this exercise thousands of times before, a routine now familiar as using a restroom or bedding down for the night. Vernell scrolls through playlists filled with countless songs and stops on one he hasn't touched since the night it all began: the day when he received the painting that seemingly altered his life forever. The playlist became quarantined: avoided at all costs, so much so that it was never deleted, just there inside his mp3 player's memory. It's last song played that day, when he had been irritated at the amount of time it took for his recent lavish purchase to be delivered to his top floor corner office at the Diamond Building his grandfather built over sixty years ago along Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. People this rich shouldn't have to wait, or so Vernell had thought. It seemed money was his birthright just as a common baby's birthright was love from its parents. Money and prestige was guaranteed: infinite amongst the vastness of time. Vernell appreciated neither and used them to their fullest without regard or a single thought as to how life would be without either, for that is how life is when you're on top of the food chain: a lion thinks nothing of his bone crunching power, the razor sharpness of his claws or the viscous points of his knife like teeth. When born with such gifts, it is impossible to fathom not having them.
“Mr. Vernell?” a female voice called out from the phone intercom, which rested on top of his Parnian Furniture Hollywood desk: finely polished, custom designed, high priced and not listed in any retail catalog: you have to call if you want to find that out, a feature Vernell liked more than anything.
“Yes, Charleen,” he said in barely a breath as he began pulling apart the cardboard flaps sealing the package.
“You have a call on line two. It's Carla Pennington.”
“I'll take it.” Vernell wheeled his overstuffed brown leather chair toward the desk and pressed the line two button. “This is Vernell.”
“Well hello there,” a sultry female voice said. “Sorry to be interrupting your busy day.”
Vernell returned to the package and continued undressing its contents one layer at a time, his eyes growing wider with each reveal.
“I just wanted to make sure we were still on for tonight.”
With a forceful tear of brute excitement, the package came free from its packaging garment and revealed a large ornately framed painting: an extremely rare John William Waterhouse piece called Ménagerie, which depicted almost nude Gods holding between them a sphere that resembled Earth but painted in a more dramatic fashion so that it clearly contained a distinguishably nude male and female engulfed within a landscape that resembled Eden. Vernell drank its beauty: fine strokes of rich color, incomparable composition and grand detail that could be mistaken for photorealism to an untrained eye. In a low-excited voice, Vernell said, “Yes.”
“Wonderful. I can't wait to see your lake house.”
He wasn't listening. His attention was completely stolen by the magnificent piece of extravagant artwork, purchased at an undisclosed price with intention of placing it in his lake house. “I can't wait either,” he said with no concern to the woman on the line but out of sheer excitement to complete his fantasized interior design for the living room.
“See you soon,” she said in a sexed up tone just before letting the line go dead.
Vernell leaned the painting up against his wall and admired Waterhouse's flawless technique, much like his masterpiece The Lady Of Shallot, while Ludwig Van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played at full length over the mounted Bose speakers.
The song is playing now. He stands there beside the receiver, the mp3 player, the television on top of the mantle over the stone fireplace just in front of the three encircling sofas; waiting for something, anything, nothing, but hopefully something indicating a change has occurred or possibly a way out of this prison he built and designed in order to fulfill his overbearing need to be rewarded for the successes his ancestors brought him generations ago. Vernell stands there listening to the haunting sound of the piano making its way around the room, competing against the clatter and scraping sound of Catherine's fork and knife on china, his eyes catching the Waterhouse painting on the wall directly across from him, mounted the day he came there: the day he became a prisoner.
Vernell returns to the table and sits down while placing the cloth napkin to its place of business on his lap. Moonlight Sonata continues through the room. Catherine doesn't look up but watches him regardless, either with her ears or other sensors he knows nothing about: a female's way of tracking men without showing normal signs of paying attention. She is sick of him, Vernell is aware of that. He can't blame her. I'm sick of me too, just as he's sick of her. There was a point, however, when he begged for someone to come into his life; someone to share his prison cell with; someone not too different from Catherine. He was right there, at the head of the dinner table, sobbing: a child left in the dark too long without a parent's presence, wishing and wanting someone to either free him of his misery or join the opaque situation, one that he will never leave. It was then that a sound: indication a change was being made, was heard coming from the second floor where the master bedroom is located. Vernell tried to catch who or whatever in the act but was too late in his ascension to the bedroom. Instead, what Vernell found, was a body lying underneath the sheets of his bed, completely void of clothing and recognition: only that it was human and female. Vernell stood frozen in the doorway, afraid to make a noise or to see something that would be considered indecent by the lady in his bed: he didn't want to get off on the wrong foot, or appear to be getting off. The calm ocean of bedsheets rose slowly and fell gently with each breath she took, her breasts were barely covered and hands laid neatly at her sides. Did they hear me? he wondered; they: later being termed the Gods. Was this woman their gift to him? The woman started to stir: her body tilted toward Vernell, her breasts became temporarily exposed, her eyes opened briefly, closed, then opened again.
Sitting bolt upright, the woman clutching at the sheet covering her nude body, shouted out a terrified cry. Vernell startled backward and nearly fell to the ground. He immediately began to advert his eyes to the stranger in his bed.
“WHERE AM I?” she shouted in a terrified gasp.
Vernell wanted to tell her, but he didn't know for certain, so he lied and said: “In my lake house.” But it wasn't his lake house, he was certain of that. It may have looked like his lake house, and carried all the familiarities of his home away from home, but it was definitely not his lake house. When he woke the fateful morning, much like the stranger in his bed, Vernell found everything he expected to find, accept that all of it was artificial: nothing worked, it was all for show. It was easy for him to remember the shock he felt that morning, and the further shock he felt as he realized that none of the doors or windows could be opened, broken or taken out.
The woman scurried out of bed, still clutching the sheet over her bare body, crying out for help. Vernell held his hands up submissively and apologized profusely. The woman cried out again. It was pointless, however. Vernell tried crying out many times before, banging on the glass windows, kicking the wooden doors, screaming so loud that his throat caught fire and felt as if the flesh lining was torn to shreds. He knew her attempts would render nothing but hoped for a different outcome: that someone would show and kick in the door, that the police would arrive in support of SWAT, news helicopters flying overhead, aiming their cameras down onto the house, the whole world watching with five minutes of lag time. He would be arrested and freed from his lake home prison. That would have been better; he would at least know that the world still existed, something he wasn't sure of anymore.
The woman grabbed a bedside lamp: rod iron base with a heavy cloth shade. She threatened to strike Vernell if he didn't get out of the way. Vernell obliged and stood aside so that the naked woman could flee the bedroom, down the stairs and to the open-less backdoor. She banged on it and shook the handle uncontrollably, sobbing and screaming the entire time. There was nothing Vernell could say. There was no way to comfort this poor creature he summoned into his lavish hell. All he could do was apologize. It was his fault after all. He asked the Gods for Her: someone to be with him. He felt guilty about his curious eyes dancing around her nude body; unable to stop them. She was incredibly tone underneath her golden skin; her dark chocolate hair shimmered underneath the ceiling lights. Surely the Gods wanted him to have filet mignon over fast food’s abomination they called beef. For a second, maybe a minute, while staring down at the screaming victim of his own selfish desire, Vernell felt affection for his captors.
The girl’s attempt at escaping went on for several hours before she was willing to succumb to conversation. Vernell kept a safe distance from her, fearing the repercussions if he drew too close: the bedside lamp still grasped, threatening to wield the lamp with deadly strength. She revealed her name to be Catherine. Vernell was able to learn that she was a soccer player: professional. She was an alternate for the women’s World Cup team, purely by choice, she could have been a starter if she so desired. Vernell’s mouth salivated, to the point of nearly forgetting to ask the Gods for woman’s clothes; she couldn’t stay naked forever. It was another two days before Catherine realized that Vernell was no threat to her despite the surreal situation that couldn’t possibly be happening—but was—somehow. He never dared reveal what wish he made the day she arrived, while sobbing at the dinner table, a rain shower of salty water. She asked once, unsuspectingly one afternoon, while they were watching reruns of Gilligan's Island, the only show the Gods allowed for about a month's time, if it was in fact a month's time since there were no working clocks and the artificial sunlight couldn't be counted on for reliability: the mp3 player proved that so when it said the time was 4pm and yet it was darker than satin cloth outside: if in fact outside is outside, meaning that it could actually be inside somewhere, possibly aboard a spaceship bound for some distant solar system at the far reach of the Universe, just before one returns to where they came from, an infinite cycle that has no end or beginning. It's all speculation, of course. Vernell isn't certain of anything—even Catherine—who could be real (she looked real enough according to Vernell's penis) but could also be part of whatever this place is: certainly not his lake house.
Eventually she succumbed to sex with him. It wasn't a hard decision: for as much as they knew, they were the last humans alive, if they were in fact alive. Vernell is a good looking man who has done well with keeping his body in tip-top shape; two attractive people will come together, eventually, no matter the situation, without question, leaving that for safe sex or not, which couldn't truly be a decision since there were no condoms available. Either way, Catherine never became impregnated, as they silently hoped for and against, selfishly wanting another to join their hell (or heaven, pending on the day). Sometimes Vernell thinks that's what the Gods are waiting for—another.
Catherine drinks her wine—her third glass—and soon she will be drunk. Vernell knows what comes next: clumsy kissing, used alcohol breath, demands for qualifications on attractiveness, questions of love, hate, and spite: for lack of offspring that they've already agreed to not have; and eventually sex, maybe. Vernell can't decide whether to play sick or go through with it. The decision used to be easy: yes, of course yes, but time and constant companionship has altered those results: when wine tastes like water and the buzz become harder to find.
There is a thumping noise coming from the second floor, followed by three knocks and a deep grumble of something moving, before stillness, aside from Moonlight Sonata.
Catherine hardly notices.
Vernell looks to the heavens. It's an opportunity for escape. “I think something changed upstairs,” he says before rising.
Catherine's eyes close as she tilts her head back, stretching her neck, a hand caressing the base of her throat. “Go see what it is.”
Vernell was already out of the room. He glided to the stairs, eager for something new, different, additional, something to talk about, ponder, debate, see, hold, sit on, wear, or consume; who knows? At the top of the stairs, he sees into the master bedroom: everything is as always. He walks inside, carefully, not wanting to miss anything: nothing—which is what he finds new. A short sigh of disappointment gushes and he begins to search now, a man frustrated by his lost keys that have to be inside this room. He begins under the bed and then into the large his and her armoires before finally settling on the closet, the only place left beside the bathroom, which is the least exciting place to find something new. It is there that he finds the addition, or better explained, replacement. His clothes have been updated. Vernell slides each outfit aside, inspecting, measuring, before accepting that his hope behind playing Moonlight Sonata is extinguished. Sighing again, Vernell steps back into the main room and hears Catherine calling: “What did you find?”
Nothing: is what he wanted to shout, but the words never escaped. Vernell's eyes transfixed inside the closet and onto a crack: not just in the plaster or in the wall, but in the house. The crack runs from floor to ceiling and spreads horizontally to the opposite corner to where it disappears. There is a light glow faintly pouring through, enough to establish a seam but not enough to initially notice. Vernell wonders how long it has been there or if it is new. He's been in that closet a thousand times: it can't be new.
Catherine's voice again: “Vernell? What did you find?”
He doesn't know how to respond, if there is anything to respond to, besides the clothes. It needs to be investigated further. Vernell walks deep into the closet and runs his index finger along the crack, feeling cool air pushing through, crisp air that indicates outdoors. His eyes trace the seam while both hands slide palm facing onto the wall. A slight shove proved all that was needed. The crack grows as does the glow—bright light—artificial sun.
Catherine's voice again: “Is everything all right?”
Is she joking? Nothing is all right and yet everything is all right, pending on which perspective she wanted to take. Vernell doesn't know how to answer. He pushes harder and the crack grows into an opening and the world beyond: A vast space filled with homes like his own, but nothing like home.
Catherine's voice again: “Vernell? Is everything all right? Are you okay? Do you need me to come up? Are you okay?” She can feel the uncertainty, the change that is occurring, and she fears it. Vernell marvels at the unleashed possibilities: escape, life, knowing, unknowing, others, distance, position. But like Catherine, he is afraid: a man contemplating which course to take in the vast ocean of endless possibilities while being seduced by familiarity, which is an easy decision to make, to step backward within the confines of hell just for the sake of feeling in control. Only one option has a predictable outcome while all others lead to the pitch-blackness of unpredictability. Vernell is at the threshold of change and everything that accompanies it.
He calls back to Catherine: “I'm all right. Everything's okay,” and he takes his first step into eternity.