Stacking in Rivertown by Barbara Bell

Who was it? Who the fuck did it?
    I force myself up on my knees. He shakes me. You’re not making any sense.
    Ben hits me in the face again and I take the floor hard, lying there woozy. He grabs my ankles and drags me through the door into a room with carpeting.
    Violet, I say, tasting the blood running out my nose. Who cut her so bad? You know, don’t you?
    He’s fiddling with something. You’re a crazy bitch, he says. Maybe this will teach you not to lie to me.
    I hear a padlock open. He pulls a door back, then he drags me over and sits me inside. It’s a very snug fit. My knees are up to my chest, my feet against the back of my thighs.
    The door slams shut. He clicks the padlock together. I piss all over the floor of the box, and I sit in it, thinking about Dumpsters and stacks of the dead.

4
    Brooklyn Bridge
    Ben had a simple setup that he called the rail. He had several rails spread throughout the warehouse. You were tied with your hands above your head, so that you leaned just a bit forward, the rail hitting at the hips. It was Ben’s form of a whipping post.
    There was only one box. Ben kept it in the middle of our living space upstairs. The box was narrow, just wide enough for shoulders and hips. To fit into it, the boys had to bend their heads down. I doubt Ben could have packed himself into the thing.
    One side had hinges on the bottom and a hasp at the top with a padlock. He would leave the key on the top of the box as a reminder. We weren’t allowed to touch it no matter how much the person locked inside screamed.
    I sit in a puddle of piss, the muscles in my back and thighs cramping. Panic hits like a Mack truck. I try to stay calm. I try to breathe slow, but I’m losing ground.
    Hours pass. At first I hear muffled voices and a TV. Then silence surrounds like a solid, pressing thing. Through my thighs and the bottoms of my feet, I sense the trains roving underground like flies buzzing the river. And the hum of the city is the river’s thunder, pounding against banks saturated by rain.
    The ghosts are near, but I fight them off, drowsing at times, losing track. My thighs have cramped for so long that I don’t feel the pain anymore. A deadness has crept from my ass as far as my waist. My hands and arms went numb a long time ago.
    I think that I piss again, but I can’t tell for sure.
    I keep telling myself to wait, to breathe, but I’m getting flashes of light so bright that they bite my eyes, turned in, filled with their own form of death.
    Violet comes to me. She strokes my head. She kisses the lumps Ben left on me and wipes the blood off my lip. We kiss and kiss. I’ve forgotten how sweet, how like food and water she is to me, her beaten face strange and wonderful to my eyes.
    You are lovely, I whisper. Lovely.
    When you hear the person in the box whispering, you know pretty soon, they’re going to be screaming.
    Violet raises my face, kissing me long and with care. Sigh no more, she says. Then I see her falling away, disappearing.
    Blackness rises up beneath and engulfs. I remember this blackness from before and am ready to go. Wipe memory clean, I plead. Wipe it away.
    I don’t know why I start screaming. I just do.
    Silence drops again. I wait. Someone starts to cry.

    Kat comes to me. I’ve been lying on a floor, drenched in blood. Her face is older than I remember, but she’s still so beautiful. Others come and carry me out. Then I’m wrapped in a blanket and riding in the backseat of a car. I see a soaking wet spot at my side.
    Faces look down at me. Hands lift me out of the car and onto a gurney. I’m not strapped down, but I can’t move. My body is sticky all over.
    Kat stays in place, but I am gliding away.
    Rivertown comes, high on the rise. I see the live oak arching, the mimosa spreading out to cover. And my people wait, shining, the blue sky behind.

    *      *      *

    I feel them lifting me out of the box. They lie me on my side and let loose my hands. The blindfold