Corbin Harrows Moroccan Rug by Reese Alexander

I am bleeding out on Corbin Harrow’s million-dollar, Moroccan, cream-colored rug because he raped a child in 1983. The blood rushing out of the hole just above my right hip-bone runs down my leg and pools at the rug’s edge. The spirit of my mother suddenly possesses me then, and I turn my head to Corbin, frozen only feet from me—still holding the fire poker he’s just pulled out of my side—to tell him that if he acts now, he can still get the stain out. After all, it’s only on one corner.

Then I collapse onto the center of the rug, a liter of my blood spraying across every inch of its glorious, hand-woven expanse.

For a second, since I only know Corbin from his movies, I expect him to start wringing his hands together, and come up with a witty but playfully self-deprecating line about the bourgeois guilt of asking his maid to clean this up. He does not, but instead takes a single step forward, and allows the fire poker to slide weakly through his hands. Its sharp point makes a dull thud against the carpet.

The room is dim, the only light emanates from the fireplace behind him. The flames deepen the wrinkles on Corbin’s face; their flickering shadows burrowing into the lines across his forehead and down his neck, as if to nestle there for warmth in the cool room. Is the room cold? Though I’m lying almost with my feet in the fire, I can feel the chills working their way down my numb body. When I go to move my legs, only my right foot weakly kicks out. Corbin notices this twitch, and clenches the poker tightly once more.

I look at him harder then. Not only at his face, as I’d been doing before, but the rest of him as well. He wears blue sweatpants, house shoes, and a hoodie advertising a beach on Long Island I’ve never been to. His silver hair is thin, but neatly combed, and parted to one side. Directly behind him, photographs of his family crowd the mantle above the fireplace. Smiling children erupt from both sides of his head. Two photos of his wife. One close-up shot of an old beagle.

“I have a dog, too,” I say, because it is what I often say when presented with photos of other people’s pets. Though usually this is because they are showing me a picture of their new rescue over brunch, not because I have snorted three lines of coke (hopefully coke) and broken into their Upper East Side townhouse.

“What kind?” He asks, and for some reason his asking does not surprise me. He wants to know this.

“American spitz.”

“Hm.” He looks hard at the stain blooming across his carpet then, and I feel a bit embarrassed.

“You could maybe get the stain out. If you acted right away.”

“Maybe.” Corbin looks through me, like he’s mesmerized by the pattern my blood has left in the rug. He takes a step forward, reclaiming his lost ground, and then another. His house shoes come to a stop at the edge of the blood, and I suddenly get the feeling he’s going to dip a toe in, like a cartoon rabbit testing the water for a dive. He does not, but instead sits down just outside the blood’s reach. He seems to be looking at his own face in its reflection. He does not look afraid, or satisfied, or even bored. His face looks blank, like an empty piece of parchment paper waiting at the center of a desk.

I want to see what he sees in these pieces of me, but when I look down, all I see is red. I turn back to Corbin, and find him dipping his fingers into the river of blood flowing out of my side. I watch mesmerized as their tips disappear below the surface. When they reappear, my blood is clinging to his wrinkled skin.

I watch unmoving as Corbin traces the patterns of the rug, repainting them from white to red. When the trail of blood from his finger tapers out like a drying marker, he redips it into a fresh puddle closer to my wound, and begins to fingerpaint again.

“Why are you here?” He doesn’t look up when he asks this.

When I begin, I hear my own words as if from down a hall, like a child listening in from the top of the stairs long after midnight. “In 1983, Gillian Hayes said you raped her. Her mother worked on set with you. She said you locked her in your dressing room, fed her three pills, and raped her while she cried.”

Still, Corbin does not look up, but I feel the picture frames on the wall turn inward slightly, listening.

“Are you asking me if I did it?”

“No. No, I know you did it. You obviously did it. I–I just want to know why.”

“No, you don’t.” He looks at me now. His stare is unflinching, but not cruel. Just the same blankness. “You want me to tell you if you can still watch my movies.”

His fingers work furiously now. Unsatisfied with his picture, this time he goes to the source. Corbin slides on his knees through my blood serenely as a snail through a garden. When he reaches me, he places two fingers into the hole carved into the side of my stomach. I can feel their tips wriggle inside me, searching for new colors. When I am on the verge of throwing up, Corbin withdraws his fingers, now coated in fresh blood, and goes back to work.

This time when my eyes wander above his head, it’s as if all the children are looking at me specifically. Their stares make me feel colder, and soon I realize I can no longer see out of my left eye. I focus my right on Corbin, and for the next few minutes struggle to stay awake as he puts the finishing touches on his piece.

Slowly pulling his fingers away from the rug, he finally looks up at me. “Do you like it?” He crawls nearer to me then, and cups my face in his hands. Then, with more strength than an old man should have, he clamps his hand around the back of my neck and forces my head downward.

I look into the carpet. Black dots have settled themselves into the field of my vision, but I can still see the genius in the work. “It’s perfect,” I tell him before my arms give out, and I find myself flat on my back with Corbin peering down at me. He smiles, and I see my own face reflected in his twinkling eyes.

Reese Alexander

Image: = Cream Moroccan Rug with fringes and the corner turned up – Google images.