Tommyknocker Love
by Gavin Kayner
“Tommyknockers,” Annie said. “You’ve got Tommyknockers.”
They were in bed. For the first time. Steeped in sweat and sex.
“Hear them?”
Nathan did. A distant rapping against the wall beyond their heads.
“They’re like pixies only spelled differently. Wee folk who warn miners in Cornwall of cave-ins.”
“And you believe in mythology.”
“I believe in what I know,” she said, her grin something of the huntress in it.
He kissed her.
She bit him—playfully.
The knocking continued, but their ardency excluded even mythical creatures disguised as tree limbs tapping on the house.
And omens.
Being young and insatiable, only the moment mattered.
And moments of carnality were all that Annie wanted.
“Whatever happens,” she said—later, “never say I love you. It’s a burden I won’t carry.”
They met in English Lit class. When Nathan said Hemingway had lost his charm, she responded, “How can a person lose what they never had?”
“I meant figuratively.”
“Even though he wrote literally,” Annie countered signaling it would be difficult to keep up.
Still, he invited her “to coffee.”
She accepted after pointing out coffee wasn’t a verb.
“Yet,” he said.
The Columbian Urn evoked a cliché: Counterculture media scattered on tattered couches. Earnest students fixating on screens and arcane texts. Various ways to get plugged in and turned on—electronically and otherwise. Lack of irony.
“This is not a date,” Annie proclaimed while sitting and pushing back at that thick tightly curled crown of hair inviting speculation.
“Really? Why?”
“Keeping your expectations in check,” she told him the feral glint in her eyes both promise and threat.
Nathan’s expectations were minimal so he carried on. “Okay, it’s simply coffee with a—beguiling English major.”
“My parents want me to be more marketable. Pharmacy.”
“Drugs.”
“Sounds like an indictment.”
“I have nothing against drugs. Just drug companies.”
“One without the other, anarchist,” Annie said, shrugging, and added. “Social calculus is complexity itself.” Her smile mischievous—sensual. Haunting. They were intimate that afternoon. It sabotaged the arc of Nathan’s life.
Weeks passed. Their intimacy became a narcotic though he chafed against the vocabulary restrictions put on their relationship.
“We’re not dating. We’re not seeing one another. We’re not—lovers,” Annie made clear.
“What are we?” Nathan demanded one night, a cockeyed moon outside his window.
“Definitions are boundaries, Nathan. Boundaries enslave. I won’t be chained by words to you,” she insisted, and left.
Seemingly for good—which Nathan should have accepted.
But withdrawal pains drove him back to her despite the cost of his dependence. Despite his escalating emotional bankruptcy.
Enraptured, he refused to call it lust. And never anything but love. At least to himself.
Annie allowed him renewed access to their sexual gymnastics. His compulsive need. The cost of ecstasy an exhausted surrender. A hunger for more.
In November Nathan paid for his addiction when she announced, “I’m going home for Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nathan offered.
“No.” Declarative.
“I’ll be good company.”
“I don’t need company—good or otherwise.”
“It’s at least a week apart.”
“We need it.”
“We need each other.”
“That’s why.”
“What are you afraid of?” Nathan demanded sitting up.
“Being consumed!”
“But I—"
“Don’t say it, damn you! It’s a four-letter word and means possession. Obsession. I won’t have it!”
“Fuck it, Annie. I love you!” Exclamatory.
The earth shifted. Cracks appeared in the ceiling. Annie’s eyes hooded over.
She backed out of bed. Her body feline. Sleek and dangerous. Something—malevolent.
She went to the kitchen.
Nathan could hear cutlery being sorted through.
And Tommyknockers at the wall behind his head.
Knocking.
Knocking.
Knocking.
Gavin Kayner's prose, poems, and plays have won numerous awards and appeared in a variety of publications. Most recently, Passager published his short story "Right With God" and Ekphrastic Review "Morning Sun" and "Joesph - 1942." You can contact him at nckgwk75@gmail.com.