The Whip Read Online Free PDF Page A

shadowy slash against pale skin. He vanished into the room, closing the door behind him.
    Charley sat on the bed patting his pockets until he found matches and a cigar. He bit off the end, lit the cigar and took a deep draw. His exhalation became another wrenching cough.
    Anna stood up and made her way to the closed door.
    “Charley? Why won’t you let me help you?” She tried the knob. The door was bolted. “Damn it, you answer me.”
    “We all got to go sometime.” His voice was raspy and winded.
    “This is not a joke. Why do you lock the door?”
    There was no reply.
    “Alright. I don’t care. Even if you don’t like it, I’m going across to the Harmon’s, so George can go and get Dr. Irelan. Just lie down on the bed and rest. I will be back soon, I promise.”
    Still there was no response. Frustrated and helpless, holding back tears, Anna slapped the door with her hand. She grabbed her coat and walked out of the cabin.
    A moment later, when Charley opened the door, he saw that she was gone. He turned back, shutting the bedroom door again. He started to take another pull on the cigar but his lips had no strength. His arm felt heavy holding it. The cigar fell from his fingers to the floor. He stared down at it. He put it out with his boot. A stabbing pain ran down his arm.
    He sat back down on the bed…his breathing still labored, his throat tight. He took from his pocket a small tin. Sliding open the top, he removed several opium tablets from inside. Somehow he managed to swallow them. He bent and pulled off his boots. He felt winded…like he had been kicked in the gut. With great expense to his body, he dropped down to the floor on his knees in front of the bed.
    Reaching well under it, he pulled towards him the little trunk hidden there. He brushed a thick layer of dust off the top and stared at it for a moment as though it were a stranger. He took a little key from his pocket, turned it in its lock and then raised the lid. Reaching in, he pulled out something small and fragile and red. He held it up in his hands. It was a tiny embroidered homespun dress…the dress of a small child.
    Charley lifted the dress to his face, breathing from it as though it might give him life. He put it down on the floor alongside him and reached back into the trunk: a tiny pair of crocheted shoes. With care, he placed them below the little red dress. His shoulders rose and fell. Next, a tattered copy of Emerson’s Essays . And then lastly, a coiled dusty old whip.
    It meant something, Charley thought, that he’d held onto these souvenirs from a life that had long since ceased to be his.
    He pulled himself up from the floor.
    He was feeling ensnared beneath his garments. He felt he might smother within their bindings. He had to remove them and free himself from their grasp. He stripped off his shirt. His back and chest were wrapped round with wide bands of cotton stripping. He began to unwind the coarse cloths that bound him, and they fell in loops onto the floor.
    In a moment he was finished. Fighting against the waves of nausea and vertigo, he bent down to remove his pants and undergarments. His breath was short and strained and made a hollow yellow sound in his chest.
    He was naked now. He felt liberated, weightless, euphoric.
    In the dark glow of the candlelight, he stood in front of a small silver framed mirror perched on his bureau. There he watched himself remove the last bit of cover on his body…the black patch from his left eye, revealing an opaque, sightless orb.
    Next he took the mirror, his hands trembling, and moved it all around his body, every inch that he could see. He put the mirror back in its place.
    He took his hands and moved them to his waist and onto the hair of his groin. His hands touched the softness of his chest and then the roughness of his face.
    Unexpected tears came to his eyes.
    He lay down naked and spent on top of the blanket and looked up into the shadows of the air above.
    In the distance,