Chapter
2
Angie
December 15:
Over
five hours after Christopher Nowak had arrived and been taken to Unit A, Nurse
Sandra Stewart sat at her desk doing paperwork for another fresh arrival, the
elderly, dementia laden Mrs. Eve Henderson, a horribly advanced case brought in
by her clearly emotionally devastated son, the clinic a possible final
destination of her long though rather dull life. After making sure the poor woman had been
checked in properly on Unit A, Nurse Stewart checked the tech office to see if
Christopher Nowak had left his room. He
hadn’t, which was fine with Nurse Stewart as the young man needed sleep and,
other than medication, sleep was the best thing for the patients. It was also the most common activity in
mental health clinics. Some patients
almost never left their rooms. They
slept like they’d been awake for a year straight and were catching up. With virtually nothing else to do on Unit A,
it was just as well. Some new patients
couldn’t sleep. Some prowled the halls
their first 24 hours, ranting or screaming or tearing at their own bodies until
forced sedation became necessary. She
sensed Christopher would be a relatively easy patient to work with.
Intent on finishing her
paperwork, the mechanized whirr of the double doors irritably broke her
concentration. A police officer she’d
never seen before escorted in a young lady she had definitely seen before. Her name was Angie and she was repeat
business, well known to all at the facility, notorious for her temper and
periodic outbursts. Nurse Stewart
recoiled in horror when she saw the young lady’s arms. Bloody slash marks crisscrossed the white
skin on her right. On her left, she
sported what appeared to be a sleeve tattoo of a snake that she hadn’t had the
last time Nurse Stewart had seen her; an ugly, aggressive thing, it softened
but couldn’t hide more cuts, slashes and smudged blood trails freshly added to
the several thick scars already there.
Juxtaposed with her left, the cuts on her pale right arm gleamed hideously,
the blood smears and trickles a repulsive mess.
Her wounds needed immediate treatment.
“Walk with me,” Nurse
Stewart told the officer as she came out from behind the desk. “Quickly.
Let’s go. Let’s go, Angie.” Nurse Stewart put her hand in the middle of
Angie’s back, which drew an initial flinch, and guided her to the first aid
room with the officer just behind. The
nurse steered the girl to the large wash basin and gently touched Angie’s left
arm; the girl responded by defensively throwing her arm up, deflecting the
nurse’s hand away.
“Stop it, Angie!” Nurse
Stewart snapped. “We can do it the easy
way or the hard way. Your choice.”
The girl paused, then
frowned, then resignedly put her arms in the sink. Nurse Stewart washed her wounds with soap and
water, drawing several exclamations of pain from the unwilling patient. The wet suds turned red when she wrung the
sponge out.
“Angie, Angie,” Nurse
Stewart intoned calmly, trying not to voice any disapproval.
“What happened?” she
continued, over her shoulder to the officer as she worked. Remembering her manners, she asked, “I’m
sorry. We’ve never met. I’m Nurse Stewart.”
“I’m Officer Ward. Nice to meet you. You can call me Bill. She had an altercation with the principal at
her school and ended up cutting herself.
They found her in a dumpster and called us.”
“What did she use?” Nurse
Stewart asked.
“A razor blade. Just a free one. Apparently, she had it in her pocket.”
“I can speak,” Angie
snapped in great aggravation.
“Okay, why did you hurt
yourself?” Nurse Stewart asked. Angie, averting her eyes, didn’t answer.
“I’ve got her,” Nurse
Smith said to the officer. “Thanks,
Bill. Oh, it’s nice meeting you. Are you new?
I haven’t seen you around.”
“I’m new to the area,” he
replied.
“Do you usually work day
or night shifts?” she asked.
“I’ve been working
nights,” Officer Ward replied. “In fact,
my shift ends after I leave here.”
“Good. I’m a bit of both so we’ll probably see each
other in the future.”
“Okay,” he replied as he
walked away. “Take care.”
Yes, she would see him
later. She saw most of them a few times
a month at least.
Turning
her attention back to the young lady, she said: “It’s good seeing you again,
Angie,” with reflexive congeniality, not really meaning it. It’s not that she
didn’t like Angie, personally. She just
hoped, like with every patient, whether realistic or not, to never see her
again in that setting. Both women
understood the empty greeting and the girl ignored her. Nurse Stewart avoided discussing the sleeve
tattoo; she couldn’t be sure but to cover the scars was her immediate guess for
its existence. So much pain and brutal
history in those scars, somewhat hidden by the tattoo from a distance but not
closeup. So much pain only Angie would
ever know. Many observers were horrified
when walking past her. She didn’t care
one bit. In life, she had grown tough,
thick, and calloused like the scars on her arm, a grizzled veteran of pain by
age 17. Any softness of personality had
hardened, too. She’d created around a
dozen future scars on her left arm to add to the collection, but the right arm
looked cut up for what appeared to be the first time. Whatever had sparked such a cutting fit had
been considerable enough to make her attack both arms.
“Let’s get you fixed up,”
Nurse Stewart said as she prepared a large cotton swab with antiseptic. “This will hurt a lot,” she told Angie before
dabbing at one of the cuts on the girl’s right forearm. Angie jerked her arm away reflexively and
shot Nurse Stewart an angry look. The
moment passed, and Angie apologized.
“Sorry,”
she said contritely. “My arms really
hurt.”
Nurse
Stewart smiled. “I can imagine.” She chose not to delve, whether it be to ask
Angie how she was or what she was feeling or what was going on in her life. She chose to keep the conversation basic for
the moment. Angie offered her right arm
again. As Nurse Stewart continued with
the antiseptic and a series of cotton swabs, Angie gritted her teeth then
lapsed into emotional numbness, glancing away disinterestedly at various things
on the wall like the eye chart and blood pressure poster. Salve and gauze followed until Angie’s
forearms were nearly mummified
“Well,” Nurse Stewart said upon
completion. “All done. You look like
Queen Nefertiti.”
Angie frowned.
She wasn’t in the mood for bad jokes.
Though explosive, she was also smart and charismatic.
“I know that you hate
being here but we all care about you,” Nurse Stewart said honestly.
“The
revolving door never stops,” Angie said, not expecting a reply and not
receiving one.
“How
are your arms feeling?”
“Like
some idiot cut them up.” The striking
sense of humor she occasionally flashed burst through her lethargic mood. Nurse Stewart laughed.
“You still have your
sense of humor. That’s great to
hear. Are you tired? Do you think you’ll want to sleep soon?”
“No,
I’m not tired. I’m in pain. I want to stay awake. I don’t have much choice.”
“Okay. Can you come with me to the unit?”
“You
don’t need me to fill out that checklist?”
“We’ve
got your last one on file. Have you had
any changes in symptoms since your last time?”
“No.” It
never changes. It never gets better,
she thought.
“You’re
taking your medication, right?”
“What
if I wasn’t?”
Nurse
Stewart looked at her with disapproval but didn’t speak. Angie smirked. She loved pushing buttons. Anyone’s buttons, anytime. Except for her mother’s…
“Just
jerking you around,” Angie said defensively.
“You people are so touchy about that.
Yes, I’ve been taking my drugs.
My wonderful, lifesaving drugs.
Drugs for life!”
“You
know why we’re touchy,” Nurse Stewart said parentally.
“I
do not want to be crazy. No one wants to
be sane more than I do. If that means
taking medication, I’ll have to do that.
I came to that conclusion awhile back.”
The
comments were music to Nurse Stewart’s ears.
All the veterans at the clinic knew Angie because she had been there in
the recent past, but she had never sounded this mature. They all felt Angie had so much
potential. She had an indescribable “It”
factor. It all came down to if she could
mature. If so, she had a chance to do
something special in the world.
“Are you seeing the same
doctor?” Nurse Stewart asked.
“Yep. He loves me, and I love him. We’re starting a family. There’s a scary thought for you.”
Nurse
Stewart smiled. “I think you’d make a
great mother.”
Angie looked at her in
disbelief. “I think you need some
medication, too.”
“Ready to go on the
unit?” Nurse Stewart asked.
Angie
tensed. “Which side?” she asked,
suspiciously. You could almost see armor
sprout from her pores.
“Which
side?” Nurse Smith replied
confusingly. “Oh. Unit A.”
“No!”
Angie yelled, suddenly panicked.
“No! I’m…No! Not on that side. I’m not going on that side! No way!”
“It’s
just the unit, Angie,” the nurse replied, dispassionately. “You’ve been there before.”
“I
know I’ve been there before! That’s why
I’m not going back. It’s the Dark
Side! I’m not going on the Dark
Side! No…not…I don’t want
to…no…no…no!” Nurse Stewart had never
seen Angie this afraid. She hadn’t
thought Angie capable of such fear. She
stammered in terror and shook her head rapidly in a small radius, her eyes
closed like a child trying to block something out. Nurse Stewart grabbed her by the
shoulders. Raising her voice, she tried
to be consoling.
“It’s okay, Angie! You’re going to be okay!”
“Put
me on the other side!” Angie wailed.
“Put me on the other side!”
“You’ll
only be there for a few days, I’m sure.”
“No! I’m not going,” Angie said firmly, her fear
turning to silly obstinance. “I’m not
going there. No. No way.”
Nurse
Stewart continued trying to soothe.
“Come on. We have to go.”
“No!”
Angie shouted. “What part of ‘no’ don’t
you understand?”
Nurse
Stewart breathed deeply in frustration.
“Enough of this silliness! You
can go on your own two feet or by escort.
Your choice.”
Angie
forgetfully folded her arms, cursing herself while repressing several sharp
pains beneath her wrappings. Practically
her middle name, ‘defiance’ flared as her best defense mechanism.
“I’ll be ‘escorted’
then.” She said ‘escorted’ with
pretentious contempt. “I don’t care if
they shove me in the back seat and shoot me.”
“That’s
disappointing behavior, Angie,” Nurse Stewart said, shaking her head. “I expect more from you. Have it your way.” Nurse Stewart, attributing this behavior to
fear more than immaturity, cut Angie some slack. After all, the girl was just 17. She’d been through a lot in her brief life but
now she needed to be moved and her stubbornness grated on Sandra Stewart’s
nerves. The nurse left the room and
returned a few minutes later with a large man dressed in a blue nurse’s
uniform. Both professionals looked at
Angie for several seconds, giving her a chance to end her protest without
further action. When she didn’t move,
arms still folded, a “What the fuck are you looking at?” expression on her
face, the male nurse approached, took her by the shoulders and tried to move
her.
“Come on, let’s go,” he
said.
Angie
struggled in his grip, which tightened.
“Angie!” Nurse Stewart
shouted. Angie shimmied and jostled but
the male nurse proved too big and strong.
“No! I’m not going on the Dark Side!!” she
bellowed. “Help me!” she screamed for
all to hear. “Help!”
No
rescue came as the situation became almost comical. The male nurse pulled Angie into the hallway,
followed by Nurse Stewart. Two female nurses and a young woman wearing jeans
and an orange jacket stood frozen in the hallway at the sight of Angie being
hauled towards Unit A. Almost there,
resigned to her fate, she quit resisting.
“I’ll
walk,” she said softly, defeated.
The
male nurse continued to hold on. “I’ll
walk!” Angie roared at him.
Nurse
Stewart nodded to him. He let go and
returned to his regular duties.
“Come on,” Nurse Stewart
said with reassurance, trying to stiffen Angie’s resolve as much as
possible. The two came to the large,
metal door that marked the entrance to Unit A.
Nurse Stewart pushed the button on the wall, the buzzer buzzed, and the
door opened. To Angie, it seemed the
opening of the mouth of an enormous beast, its belly laden with the bile of
awaiting horrors she’d experienced before.
She would be eaten again, broken down again, digested again. The two women crossed over. Angie gazed at the ceiling, walls and floor,
eyes wide, mind awash with old nightmares.
She shook her head sharply. The
two women walked down the hall past the men’s rooms to reach the women’s. Angie’s room remained the same as her last
visit. It was all the same. Same hell...same hell. It sank in in black ooze invading the pores
the armor couldn’t keep out. Angie sat
on the edge of her bed. Her head bowed,
she wrapped her covered arms around her body, ignoring the pains
underneath. Back again. She was back again.
“Get
some rest if you can,” Nurse Stewart said gently. “The techs will help you if you need anything
and Nurse Mathis will see you soon.”
“She’s
still here?” Angie asked softly. The
head RN at the hospital, Nurse Mathis held revered status. Called “The Den Mother” by many for her
dedication and ubiquitous presence; others called her “The Hand of God” for her
powerful manner, highly respected insights and her practically unfailing
treatment choices. Her rocky
relationship with Angie still hovered notoriously at the clinic. Nurse Mathis treated Angie like a caring
though disapproving parent. Angie’s real
mother neither cared nor approved.
Angie hated the latter; the former irritated her.
“Yeah. I suppose she would be,” Angie said, answering
her own question, her voice trailing into disappointment. Of course, Nurse Mathis was there. Of course,
she was. It had to happen that way.
“Try
to get some rest.” Nurse Stewart said as
she left the room. As the door clicked
shut, Angie stood and walked calmly to the room’s bathroom door. She entered, leaned over the toilet and threw
up.
Outside, Nurse Stewart went to
the Unit A tech office and informed the recently arrived head tech, a smiling
woman named Sue Pederson, of Angie’s intake.
On the way back to her desk, she checked her watch and noted the
time: 9:25 AM.
December 14:
The
hotel clock read 1:14 PM as Angie and the man on the bed had sex. The man, 30 years old, large, lean, muscular
and shaved bald, gritted his teeth as the naked young woman on top of him, an
ancient 17, thin to almost bony, long, dark brown hair riddled with sweat,
buried her long, carefully filed, sharp, red coated fingernails into his chest,
the red paint mixing with the man’s blood and seeming to crawl up her left hand
and arm sheathed in a near sleeve tattoo of an enormous diamond back
rattlesnake, the snake dark green, the diamonds and rattle black, like artistic
violence. The snake’s rattle adorned her
outer left shoulder, the body ran down most of her outer arm then coiled inside
at the base of her forearm into her palm where the snake’s hideous head reared
open mouthed, fangs protruding, to bite flesh that touched it, to consume
feelings meant for her heart. She loved
tattoos; she had two and planned on many more, also sporting a sexy female body
wearing a tight bustier, black stockings and high heels with a snarling
Medusa/Gorgon head on her lower back, a symbol of ferocious and violent female
sexual energy. They represented what she
thought she was: A sexy woman with a
venomous viciousness. The Gorgon in
spirt was gorgeous in reality, the self-inflicted lie symptomatic of her
Borderline Personality Disorder, an illness she knew she had but still didn’t
fully understand. It battered her self-image
and self-worth.
The rest of the ink on
her body projected as the sinister though somewhat handsome snake, another
vicious looking creature that, fused with her sexuality, made the idea of being
bitten a strangely erotic experience.
Though it fit her personality, it was largely there for another reason
as it at least somewhat hid the dozens of slash scars she’d inflicted on
herself by a masterfully manipulated razor blade she always kept with her over
the years of her short and unstable life.
Though confident in her body art, she understandably considered the
self-mutilation ugly and preferred a covering of green and black. In her mind, the snake seemed a perfect
idea. She didn’t care about what anyone
else thought yet lived with the dual feeling of not wanting others to see where
she’d hurt herself while at the same time defiantly drawing even more attention
to the arm by the elaborate symbol. Her
sexual energy felt rabid and she loved it.
She was an alpha female who went for what she wanted sexually and always
got it, taking on any man she wanted and never having been rejected. The intoxicating sexual dominance was a happy
place of self-worth and esteem she never felt otherwise. Her Borderline mind beat her up where no one
else could. She was a tigress, a force
of nature. If only she could feel
important and worth the trouble to herself.
She had assets and talent though she usually overlooked them in her unending
searches for proof she was useless.
Small trickles of blood
oozed slowly from the wounds of her bald, heavily muscled sex partner.
Suppressing the pain, he flexed his entire body and thrust his penis up
hard. The young woman on top squeezed
her inner thighs and vagina as hard as she could in reply, clamping down on his
penis like a vice. They had been having
sex for a half hour in a pattern of smooth sliding mixed with moments of
aggressive violence administered by her at his request. His chest, sides, and arms bled from multiple
slashes of her nails. In the moment, he
loved every one of them. He loved the
pain and she loved administering it. As
he reached the point of orgasm, she grabbed him powerfully by the neck and
squeezed as hard as she could. He
ejaculated like a volcano and she took it.
Though she was taking birth control pills, they were not using a condom
because they knew and understood each other.
He was her boss at the strip club where she worked, a decent though
morally ambiguous man who had no problem finding work for an underage girl that
really needed it. Besides, Angie was a
female player of epic proportions; the man, named Tony, doubted there was a man
on Earth who could resist or control her, and he wasn’t interested in doing
either. She wasn’t going to let him relax until she had her orgasm, which came
a minute after his as he played with her breasts. She grabbed his shoulders and thrust her head
forward, her dark brown hair flopping onto and covering his sweaty chest. After they each caught their breath, she
rolled off him and immediately went for her cigarettes on the bedside
table. She grabbed her lighter from
beside the pack, lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth, took one huge drag and
exhaled aggressively. Though she smoked
a pack a day, her young looks hadn’t shown any signs of it yet. Rolling back onto her exhausted lover, she
dug her nails into his chest again with a huge, playfully sadistic smile.
“Oww!”
he bellowed, slapping her hands away from his chest. He loved it during sex, but he wanted none of
it now and she knew it. She laughed with
delight as he covered his chest with his hands and winced.
“That
wasn’t hurting a few seconds ago, sport,” Angie joked.
“I
was in a different place a few seconds ago,” Tony replied with a laugh.
“Now
what place are you in?” she asked coyly.
“A
tired one,” he replied. “Can you get off
me?”
“Can
I get off you what?” she asked seductively, biting her bottom lip and narrowing
her eyes playfully.
“Can
you get off me, please?” he asked with a weak chuckle.
“Can
I get off you what?” she repeated seriously, almost angrily, her agitation
coming from a dark place inside her, her narrowed eyes suddenly sharp and
malignant.
“Can
you get off me…Mistress?”
“That’s
better,” she replied. Now satisfied and
smiling, she leaned down, kissed him passionately, sprang off him and rolled
off the bed onto her feet.
“I’m going to get cleaned
up,” she said as she entered the hotel bathroom. “Want to come help?”
“No. I’ll take mine after yours,” he replied. The
wounds on his body began screaming at him as the sexual adrenaline wore
off. He didn’t think he could handle any
more physical contact with this irresistible, vicious creature.
“Very well,” she replied
with catty satisfaction, the satisfaction of knowing she, all she was sexually,
was too much for him. With reservation,
he checked the clock on the table and sighed.
We’ve got to get back to work, he
thought as he sat up on the edge of the bed.
You have to get back to work. He
heard her humming musically as she turned the shower water on.
“Your
job sucks, Tony,” she called from the bathroom facetiously as she entered the
shower. “What kind of scum work in that
club, anyway?”
“Me
scum and you scum, sweetheart,” he replied as he approached the bathroom. “We’re the scum.”
Yes. We’re the scum, she thought. She had no pretentions of
respectability. They worked at a strip
club. It was what it was, and they were
what they were. She didn’t like herself. She never really had. Stripping wasn’t going to change that
view. It was fun, and she did it and
that was life. By the age of 17, she had
already had dozens of painful, traumatic “real world” experiences, many that
the average person would never experience in a lifetime. She was a grizzled old vet of misery and
disillusion. The shower water felt like
hot knives. It refreshed and amused
her.
He
continued. “Don’t you like stripping?”
he asked playfully, knowing her answer.
“I don’t want you to feel like you’ve lowered your reputation.”
She
smiled. “I already have a low
reputation. Stripping is fun. All the fun shit is low reputation. That’s how I feel about it.” She moaned loudly as the hot water penetrated
and soothed her.
He felt helpless. Fuck it,
he thought. I manage the damn place, anyway.
He rose, entered the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain.
“You’re joining me,
then?” she said joyfully, the cat happy that the mouse had chosen further
contact. She loved fucking him, she
loved fucking in general and, though she was aggressive and loved the crossing
the line between pain and pleasure, she wasn’t truly evil or monstrous. It was just how she expressed her sexuality. It was what was there, deep down. It crawled out of her and bit like the snake
head on her palm. Tony knew it, as did
the others she had had sexual encounters with.
She loved the first time, the first attack, because they never knew what
hit them and she LOVED that. Let them
ponder for the rest of their lives what kind of experience they had truly had
with her. Part of the fun was knowing
they’d stepped into the den of a tigress.
After all, it was just sex. It’s
not like it was important.
He stepped into the
shower with her and shut the curtain. A
few seconds later, a loud, masculine roar of pain, followed by a delighted
feminine squeal, rang out.
A
half hour later, Tony pulled the hotel room curtain back and watched pensively
as a light snow fell slowly and softly.
The forecast called for a near blizzard by late evening and he pondered
the safety of his drive home from work.
His belted slacks and socks were already on as he buttoned his white
dress shirt around his massive chest. He
turned towards Angie, who was slipping on the clothes she had left home with
that morning: a basic, long sleeve white T-shirt and jeans, presumably to wear
to the alternative school she was forced to attend, where they forced her to
wear long sleeve shirts to cover as much of her rattlesnake tattoo as
possible. The two had recently developed
a system to accommodate her needs as an underage performer at his club, a situation
that would burn white hot for Tony professionally and Angie personally if
discovered. After taking the bus in the
morning, arriving at school and taking care not to be seen by any school
officials, she headed directly for Tony’s waiting car at the edge of the
parking lot and the two drove to the strip club where they worked. She felt comfortable missing school because
she had an “in” there, an important member of staff who looked out for her
interests, both at school and at home.
She’d go to class occasionally and, with the proper strings pulled,
would do just enough not to flunk out.
It’s not like it really mattered anyway.
College wasn’t going to happen, not because she was dumb, far from it,
but because she didn’t want to go; even if she did, it would be a hard road to
pursue and she wanted none of it.
Desperately rough, her home life made her feel she didn’t have the time
to waste. She needed to work and stay
working. Hopefully, things would work
out at the club and she’d rise through the ranks into management when she
either got too old and wizened or lost the desire to perform. Disconnection and freedom from her mother
flashed as her only current goal, an imperative, mandatory accomplishment. She knew her life depended on it because it did.
She took some lipstick
from her purse and started to apply it.
“You don’t have to bother
with that now. Just do it when we get to
the club,” Tony said.
She felt naked without her makeup and ignored
him. Finishing with the lipstick, she
applied the rest in as sexy a manner as possible for the day’s
performances. Putting on her coat, she
put the makeup away and slung her purse over her shoulder. Having already paid, the two left the room,
got into Tony’s dark red third generation Ford Mustang and drove towards the
Diamond Gentlemen’s Club, a thirty-year-old building oozing from every corner
with booze and lust.
“You’ve been spending a
lot of time at work lately,” he said.
Oddly, though having sex with her, he didn’t feel comfortable being
overly intimate with her in general conversation; he’d also never felt truly
comfortable talking with her over routine work situations, either. He knew her horrific relationship with her
mother drove everything she did, colored every major decision she made. In the past, she’d occasionally spend the
entire day at work and occasionally attend school. Recently, she’d spent nearly every day at
work, skipping school entirely. To give
her mother the illusion she attended school as ordered, Angie would take the
bus there and Tony would pick her up and take them both to work. As she’d pleaded with him to go to the club
instead of attending class, Tony feel relatively little guilt over their
activities. He also felt little guilt
knowing Angie was 17, underage for performing at a strip club and underage for
having sex with him and the others she’d laid in her adventures. Desperate for work, she had lied to him on
her job interview that she was 18. When
he checked, which didn’t take much diligence, she spilled her guts to him about
her situation and that her 18th birthday loomed wonderfully only six
months away. Initially, he told her to
get work somewhere else, as any competent man protecting his business would,
but she pressed and, feeling increasingly sorry for her, he caved, knowing the
terrible risk in employing an underage dancer but too overwhelmed by her
desperation and charisma to say no. She could be a ferocious bitch, but she
could also ferociously stand up for people or what she felt was right. He knew this from experience having witnessed
her slapping a man she had overheard saying disrespectful things to one of the
dancers. She cared for her friends and
he cared for her interests.
She danced in the late
afternoon and evenings. She performed
basic office chores on the mornings she accompanied him and helped the earlier
performing women if they needed anything.
Some of her chores weren’t overly important or necessary but Tony knew
they were important to her and, if cornered by the authorities, he could honestly
say that her employment involved general office work. He felt it doubtful anyone would care much
she performed underage beginning at 17 ½ but the law was the law and he
wouldn’t go out on a limb further than he already had. Fortunately for Angie, her mother didn’t care
about what she did once assured she attended class. Her mother only cared, demanded, that Angie
not embarrass her. Both were more than
happy to avoid each other. Deep down,
Angie’s mother had never cared about anyone but herself and she wouldn’t
tolerate her adventurous, daring daughter doing anything to humiliate her in
the community, anything more than Angie had already done with her rebellious
attitude and all those mental hospital stays…her mother, convinced she was the
victim, wouldn’t tolerate more.
“More problems with your
mother?” Tony continued. “Pardon me for
asking. You don’t have to answer if you
don’t want to.” He only ever asked about
her mother. He didn’t know how she
covered for her school truancy, that she had an “in” protecting her, but he
concluded she had the situation handled.
He knew her father wasn’t in her life, but he never asked why for fear
it would trigger that “something” just below her surface that percolated, that
ferocious, rabid attitude that came out when they were having sex, that made
those around her, no matter how big and bad, male or female, fear her. People felt her vibe and didn’t cross her,
not because of what they thought she’d do but because of what they felt she
could do.
“You’re such a sweet guy,
Tony,” she said playfully. “You don’t
have to walk on eggshells around me. I
won’t bite.” She burst out laughing at her
last comment. She turned 18 in two weeks
and her mood soared light as a feather.
18 meant legal age; she could work legally at the club and move out on
her own for good. No more mother, no
more problems, no more pain. Though she
could ostensibly move out on her own financially, she remained nervous that,
not being legally allowed to work her job, she might get found out and
fired. Her mother would take great
relish in ruining her career and her life, not out of parental concern for
being a sex worker but because of the ruination, itself. Compared to her mother, Angie’s Borderline
embodied all things sweetness and light.
Angie could be a witch if she wanted, or felt like she needed to be, but
her mother manifested witchery full time, a malignant borderline personality
without any kind of treatment or self-revelation like Angie had, whether
through forced experiences or not.
Whatever decency may have been there had long shriveled into powder and
blown away like the snow in dozens of cold winters. Angie’s mother ruined lives, ruined lives and
loved it and Angie knew hers would be next.
If she left too soon, her mother would relentlessly root around until
she exposed Angie completely and, if she lost her job, she’d have no one else
to turn to and would have no money of her own.
She’d be trapped. For her own
survival, she’d then have to go grovel to her mother to take her back in and
that wasn’t going to happen. She had
done that before and never would again.
She’d kill herself first, an accomplishment she’d already tried several
times in her teen years. No, she’d
chosen to keep her enemy close and hold out until her 18th came when
she would have nothing to fear occupationally.
So long as her mother believed all was well at school, she would be
given a wide berth.
“You may ask, and I will
answer,” she continued. “No, I’m not
having problems with The Witch more so than usual. I’m just trying to avoid her completely
now. Just two more weeks until I’m
18. I suppose I’m kind of jumping a
little early for that rope that will pull me up away from her forever. We’d have a war if she knew I was skipping
school but I’m willing to risk it. Just
two more weeks. Please, never fire
me. I’ll do anything you ask. Just let me keep working.”
He smiled inside because
he knew what she meant. She wasn’t
offering sexual services against her will.
She desperately needed to leave her mother forever and that would
collapse if she lost her job. Well, that
would never happen so long as he managed the club. As sexy as her toughness could be, her moments
of vulnerability made you love her endlessly.
“I’ll never fire you,” he
assured her. “Unless you sever a blood
vessel during sex and I bleed to death.
Then consider yourself fired.”
She exploded in one great
laugh and patted him hard on the leg like a friend.
“You wouldn’t know what
the hell happened. I’d just go back to
the club and say you’d jumped off a cliff and left the whole thing to me.”
They arrived at the club
and entered via the employee’s entrance.
In the relatively brief time she had worked there, she had become his
most popular dancer. Her youth a major
plus, the men swarmed three deep around the stage when she performed. Those men ordered drinks and were repeat
business. That was great for the club. She received plenty of tips, plenty of date
offers and the occasional drunken marriage proposal. That was great for her, though she never
seemed to enjoy that kind of attention.
She lived in the moment and for the moment. Other than monetary necessity, the rest was
meaningless.
She loved her job because
it gave her power. The poor, sex starved
fools watching thought they had the power, but they didn’t; she did. She danced to entice them but not for purely
sexual reasons. She loved reading their
minds, of what they’d do to her if she laid with them, and it made her feel
intense pleasure knowing they would never have her. All that lust, all the aching she caused, and
they couldn’t look away. She pulled the
strings as puppet master. She danced
from them, but they danced for her, too.
When they were in her thrall, she could make them do anything; leave
their wives, leave their children, give all their money to her if she
chose. She had total control. That’s what made her performances
irresistible.
In those moments, she
juggled the delight of being the object most desired with her usual feelings of
complete worthlessness, a major symptom of her Borderline Personality Disorder
she increasingly tried to understand. In
her mind, she was a dirt bag, a useless nothing, a person not worth the effort. However, she found strength and solace owning
that she was her own dirt bag and she could spread it around anywhere and
anyhow she wanted. Such coping
mechanisms were how she handled her illness.
To that point in her life, she couldn’t beat it, so she had to live with
it. She had to try to make sense of senselessness.
Though her performances
ended well before midnight, she seldom wanted to go home afterwards, usually
bumming a ride with either Tony or another member of management or one of the
other performers around that time. Though
her true purpose was avoiding potential contact with her mother, she also
enjoyed the club’s climate, specifically the thick cigarette smoke, and often
sat at one of the tables hugging the wall.
She reveled in the atmosphere but hated the clientele when she wasn’t
performing. She embraced them, ensnared
them, when on stage but saw them for who they really were after she
finished. Her personal intoxication
faded and, like a drunk the next day, the realities of the world returned like
rocks clanking against her head. The bored,
sex starved husbands, the immature frat boys and the not-so-closeted sickos
reinforced what she already believed.
Men were trash. It started with
her father. He left her mother when her
mother was pregnant with Angie. She had
never met him and knew nothing about him.
She just assumed he was trash and didn’t give a shit whether he was
living or dead trash. Any man that would
run out on his family had to be trash.
He didn’t even try. He ran before
she was even born. Then again, he was
involved with her mother. He may be
trash but he was wise trash. She would
have run, too. She wouldn’t have spent
ten seconds near a woman like her mother if she had a choice. Angie never mentioned her father if she
didn’t have to. That meant she never
mentioned him.
A relaxed evening in the
club followed a rewarding day as midnight came and it was time to go home. Seeing her still around, Tony offered her the
ride she expected and accepted. It
hadn’t stopped snowing since they’d left the hotel room earlier that day and
had become the near blizzard forecasted.
Though sporting chains on his tires, Tony drove cautiously as he
struggled to see the road behind the flake assaulted windshield while
uncomfortably attempting small talk along the way. As Angie dreaded the thought of her mother
seeing her being driven home by a big bald guy in a Ford Mustang, she
instructed Tony to stop the quarter mile from her house where they usually
stopped when he drove her home, so she could walk the remaining distance without
her mother knowing how she got there.
The car slid to a stop by the side of the nearly empty road.
“Thanks,” she told Tony as she
exited the car without shutting the door.
“What
do you want to do tomorrow?” he asked.
“Same
thing. I want an all day. Can you pick me up same time at school
again?” The question was largely
rhetorical. They both knew he would.
“Of
course. I’ll see tomorrow.”
“Okay,”
she said. “Wait. I keep forgetting to
ask for your cell phone number. I may
need it. Let me have it.”
He handed her his
personal business card with his work number, instead. She pitched it to the ground in disgust.
“That’s not your
personal,” she said with irritation. “I
want your personal cell phone number.”
Considering the request slightly
odd and unwilling to give his personal cell phone number to a girl that worked
underage at his club, he shook his head.
“That’s not something we
need to do right now,” he said, sternly.
“I’ll let you have it in two weeks.”
Gripped by irritation and
the driving snow that lashed at her face, she bared her teeth and snarled at
him. She had wanted the number to help
aid her comfort, a safe number to call if she needed him. Like the other men in her life, he failed
her.
“Fine,” she said nonchalantly. “You’re fine with fucking me but nothing
else, huh? Fucking asshole.”
Considering her
situation, he tolerated her occasional mood swings.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,”
he said with a smile. Her agitation
usually unnerved him but, now, he found it irresistible.
“Sure,” she dully replied
in affirmation. Noticing his expression,
she bellowed, “Don’t smile at me, asshole!” while slamming the door.
Battling the pounding
snow, she trudged slowly towards her house.
Tony, his smile now an enormously amused grin, waited until she
disappeared into the darkness then worked his Mustang into proper position and
drove away.
She headed home like a
prisoner headed for the execution chamber, made worse by her hopeless failure
to light a cigarette from her purse in the stiff wind and driving snow. Throwing the wet cigarette away in disgust,
she ran her hands through her freshly snow flecked hair, wiped her face with
her damp hands then her jacket wrist and coughed. Her nerves piqued in increasing defensiveness
as she came closer to the Black Hole, where all life dwindled to
extinction. The modest, one story house radiated deadness, as if emotion had long
since faded from the walls giving way to an emptiness that crept into the
structure and remained as a barricade against warmth and love. She noticed her mother’s car buried in snow
in the driveway and all lights off. That
meant her mother had gone to sleep and, hopefully, the tiger would stay in its
cage. Angie opened a side door with her
key, entered and, despite the darkness, crept silently to her room like she
would be pounced on at any moment.
Safely
locked inside, she dug into her purse, yanked out her cigarette carton and
lighter and threw the bag on her bed.
Irritable and exhausted, she lit the cigarette and began smoking,
pondering how half her life seemed to be spent in the motion of putting a
cigarette in her mouth, lighting it, taking a drag, exhaling and lifting her
eyes upwards. What she saw when she lifted those eyes were dirty ceilings
crushing down on her, snow and night and cold pounding and pounding and
pounding, thunder and lightning, angry, wrathful faces, fluffy clouds fading
into the distance leaving her alone with clouds of smoke as her only companion,
her only trusted friend, the emptiness, the emptiness that shut her in a coffin
when she closed her eyes. Did all of
life suck or just her life? She shook
her head, stuck out her arm and tapped off a small piece of ash on the floor
joining dozens of other stains on a carpet neither she nor her mother gave a
shit about cleaning. She grabbed her bag
and tiptoed to the bathroom, her mother’s shut door directly across from where
she walked. She just wanted to take her
medication and die in the eyes of the world and anything that might exist
beyond it. After entering and locking
the bathroom door, she ran a small stream of water in the sink and put her
still burning, half smoked cigarette in one of the notches in a blackened ash
tray. With a deep breath, she pulled a
small, plastic case out of her purse, opened it and spilled one large, round
white pill, two smaller round blue pills, two small, cylindrical, yellow pills
and one large, cylindrical, yellow pill into her right hand. The white pill was her benzodiazepine; the
blue pills were her mood stabilizer; the two small, yellow, cylindrical ones
were her anti-depressant and the large, yellow, cylindrical one was her
anti-psychotic. She stuck her head under
the spigot, took an ample supply of water in her mouth and tried to swallow all
her pills at once. The three yellow
pills went down smoothly and the white one went down with a bit of trouble but
the two blue ones, consisting of the bitterest tasting substance she’d ever put
in her mouth, disintegrated and got stuck in the back of her throat. Resisting the urge to smack the countertop,
she quickly got more water in her mouth, swallowed the remaining sediment,
shivered at the sensation and did the best she could to repress her disgust
without shouting it to the heavens. This
occurred every night and it would be every night for the rest of her life. Thousands and thousands of times. She often felt that reality like a
sledgehammer blow, looking ahead and imagining those thousands of doses and the
hundreds of doctor visits that would go along with them. Thousands of pills and their bitter tastes
and the thousands of side effects that would devastate her every day and
night. Dry mouth, nausea, sedation,
decreased motor function and the reviled weight gain she did everything she
could to stop dead. Every miserable
fucking day and night. She didn’t want
it, didn’t want to endure the pain of illness and the pain of treatment. Life wasn’t that important to her. She cursed herself for her failures to kill
herself, though not from lack of trying.
Her failure trapped her with her misery.
Even if she weren’t fated to be beaten outside she’d always be beaten
inside. As tough as she had become, she
couldn’t beat incurable illness. The
only focus of happiness left lay in her appetites. She had hated food her entire life and that
left sex and cigarettes to occupy her mind and body. Like all coping strategies, they had a
starting line and a finish line, the finish line being death. She knew it but it she chose it anyway. If she couldn’t be happy just existing, she
would force existence to make her happy.
The
heavy sedative quality of the large, yellow, anti-psychotic hit her hard as
always. Putting her cigarette back into
her mouth, she trudged back to her room and flopped down onto the bed. As she continued smoking, she stared up
through the fog and haze at the dirty ceiling slowly creeping down on her,
threatening to smother or crush her.
Moments before fading to sleep, she managed to put her cigarette out in
the ash tray beside her bed, a feat she couldn’t always achieve, more than once
falling asleep with a lit cigarette that fell from her lips and shocked her
awake by burning into her chest. Her
meds and her exhaustion made her sleep more deeply than usual. She dreamed of an infinite freedom kept distant
by a nameless hold on her ankles.
At
7 AM, the phone rang in her mother’s room.
Dead to the world, Angie didn’t hear it.
Her mother did. Pure dynamite,
the phone call would push Angie to the dreaded reckoning she’d most
feared. Just two weeks from her
birthday, from her infinite freedom, it threw everything into chaos.
Angie’s
alarm clock exploded near her ear at 7:25 AM.
Having it at full volume and practically lying in bed with her was the
only way possible to snap her out of her coma short of her mother coming in and
shooting her, which Angie always thought a distinct possibility some
morning. She rose with great effort, as
if a concrete block were strapped to her back.
As often happened, a
throbbing headache told her she had, once again, not had a refreshing sleep,
her sleep always seeming to make her feel worse instead of better. She believed she must be the most backwards
sleeper on Earth Grabbing her head with
both hands, she shook it hard then ran her hands down her face. If she looked as bad as she felt, she’d make
every mirror regret being made of glass.
Not bothering to check her appearance, she organized and put on a fresh
pair of panties, short white socks, a long sleeved pink T-shirt and a pair of
jeans to give the illusion she’d spend the day at school. She changed for her performances at work and
would be showering there as well, her day’s only major concern being catching
the bus that would arrive around 7:40 AM because it involved making it past the
Gatekeeper of Hell, also known as her mother, who would be sitting on the
couch, as always, making sure Angie did, indeed, get on the bus to school. Saying a quick prayer that she didn’t believe
for a moment, Angie entered the living room.
Her mother sat on the couch as usual, arms folded as usual, legs crossed
as usual. The look on her face was not
usual. Instead of the stern, stoic expression of a prison guard, her Mom’s face
twisted in disgusted contortion, her ferocious yet hollow eyes radiating the
kind of look that turned men to stone and daughters to dust.
For a few seconds, Angie felt
in a trap, the trap she had avoided last night.
She had learned to read her mother’s moods as a child and could still
pick them up now, yet another reason why she never wanted to see her mother. As tough as Angie had become, a bad mood from
her mother instinctively stopped her dead, flooded her with anxiety, terrified
her down to her toes. As part of their
routine, her mother never had a manner other than dull and official, a jailer
making sure a prisoner did what they were supposed to do without speaking so
they could both get on with their lives.
Now, face to face with the most ferocious predator she’d ever known,
Angie could feel the rage, could practically see her mother’s ravenous fangs
bared and drooling, biting into the traumatized memories of vulnerability Angie
both feared and resented. Something big
had clearly happened. The two locked in
a bizarre staring contest, Angie waiting for her mother to make a move, her
mother greatly desirous to feel Angie’s fear and discomfort. Several moments passed. Angie blinked. Her mother smiled. Unnerved and almost shaking, Angie made for
the front door.
“STOP!”
Her mother’s voice flashed like lightning and bellowed like thunder. Startled, Angie froze, shocked by the
lightning bolt and shaken from the thunder with the force of someone cultivated
for such devastation at an early age. As
she matured, her vulnerability learned to shift into near instant, intense
hate. Fire fought fire. Hate dueled with hate. Now she wanted to fight but, knowing her
mother wanted that so it could be used against her, she turned contemptuously
and robotically towards the woman on the couch, pursing her lips while
disrespectfully tilting her head to the right.
Her mother continued her death stare for a few moments before speaking.
“Guess what I got?” she
asked, her tone radiating contempt. “A
call a half hour ago from your principal’s office. You weren’t at school yesterday.”
Stunned,
Angie almost collapsed. Her contact, her
“in” at school, had failed her?
Horrified, her jaw dropped.
Oh, no, she thought. He talked.
He talked! How could he have
talked?!
“In
fact, you’ve been skipping school a lot, haven’t you?” her mother continued,
her seriousness shifting to smiling, laughing, sarcastic contempt. “Truant
almost every day the last month.”
She paused, letting Angie
feel her exposure to maximum effect.
“You must think I’m really stupid.
All the sacrifices I make, all the latitude I give you to do whatever
garbage you do, and you can’t perform the simplest things required to at least
make it look like you’re a normal human being in this world. Do you do it on purpose? Do you?
All the shit you do? You’re
disgusting.” She laughed and shook her
head. “You’re just really
disgusting.”
Angie
seethed. Her mother’s fake smiling,
laughing and head shaking incensed her the most, like the world considered it
common knowledge her mother was this bright, offended woman and Angie her evil,
pathetic daughter. She wanted to knock
that smile off her face so badly.
“You only want me to do those
things because it makes you look good!” Angie spat back. “You don’t give a shit about how I do! You never have!” Already the two women had spoken to each
other more than they had in a month.
Angie’s
mother snapped to her feet. “I demand
you do those things because you’re too stupid to make decisions on your own!”
her mother bellowed viciously. “You are
obligated!”
“I’m obligated to do whatever the hell I
want!” Angie roared. Two more
weeks. Just two more weeks. Oh God, why was this happening now? How could he have talked?! Why did he break his promise to her?! How could he?
Why?
“You little cunt!” her mother shouted, moving
closer. “How dare you talk to me like
that! How
dare you! You
deserve whatever I choose for you for all the trouble you’ve caused me. You’re lucky I’m here at all to clean up your
crap! I’d be better off with you
dead. All the things I’ve done for
you…”
“All
the things you’ve done for me?!” Angie
yelled, her voice almost cracking. “All
you’ve done is cut me down my whole fucking life!”
“Shut up!” her mother hollered. “The only thing you respond to is punishment and I’ve been lax making you pay for the shit you do! Well, no longer! Things are going to change around here! I’m tired of being victimized. From now on, you owe me. You owe me everything.”
“Shut up!” her mother hollered. “The only thing you respond to is punishment and I’ve been lax making you pay for the shit you do! Well, no longer! Things are going to change around here! I’m tired of being victimized. From now on, you owe me. You owe me everything.”
“I
owe you nothing.”
“You
owe me your life!”
Angie
flexed her fists and took a step towards her mother. “What are you going to do?” she said, baring
her teeth. The two women stood almost
nose to nose. “All that’s left is for
you to do is kill me.” You don’t scare
me anymore.”
Her
mother smiled devilishly, knowing she had the one trump card that would always
break her daughter, terrify her into submission. She spoke slowly, almost in a whisper: “I
don’t scare you anymore, huh? I can have
you back in that mental hospital. I can
have you back any time I want.”
Angie
stiffened. Her mother didn’t scare her
anymore. What her mother could do
terrified her. She knew Angie’s weak
spot and went right for it. Angie
quickly relived the nightmares of mental health stays in her recent past, stays
that often paralyzed her in her dreams.
The voices, the screams, the urine smells all mixed with her own
demons. The Dark Side…she told herself
every day she would never go back. She would do almost anything to stay out of
there. Her mother held her soul
hostage.
Angie’s mouth closed, her
fists softened. Her mother took a step
closer. Angie stepped an inch back. Her mother began to creatively brainstorm her
attack.
“What
if I told them you punched me in the face?
No. That you tried to cut my
throat? That’s much better! You’ve always wanted to, haven’t you? Let’s tell them you finally went for
it.”
“They’d
never believe you,” Angie said, trying to regain traction. Her boast rang hollow. They would believe her mother and they both
knew it.
Her
mother laughed. “Of course, they
would! They always have.” Confident of victory, she smiled devilishly
again. “Ready to do as you’re told?”
Angie
looked at the floor, defeated. She’d
always felt no one really believed her in anything. In the eyes of the world, she’d always be a
screw up. She trusted no one recently
until her “in,” the person at her school she believed she could trust. That person had betrayed her with a phone
call. She felt hollow; her strength
ebbed.
“Fine,”
she whispered.
Her mother heard but
asked anyway: “Excuse me?”
“Fine!” Angie
shouted. Just two more weeks. If she had to kowtow for that long, she would
do it. Anything for just two more
weeks.
Glowing
with sick satisfaction, her mother issued her orders. “I will allow you some food. After you get some food, I will drive you to
school. I have spoken with the faculty
to inform me if you miss even one class.
I will pick you up from school then you will go to your room, where you
will stay for the rest of the day and the night unless I say otherwise. I will bring you whatever food I feel you
deserve whenever I feel you deserve it.
You will surrender your cell phone and will contact no one unless I
allow it. This will be our pattern the
rest of the school year.”
Angie’s
nearly choked from shear panic. She
wouldn’t be able to go to work, probably wouldn’t even be able to contact
Tony. She’d lose her job. She’d lose everything!
“I can’t do that,” Angie
said timidly. “I just can’t.”
Her mother sensed
something important to her daughter would be lost. She loved it.
“You will or I’ll call
your doctor and tell him how you attacked me.”
She tilted her head back and stroked her throat with her left hand. “Maybe a small slit right here. Should be easy for me to do. What’s a little pain for some progress, huh?”
“You’re evil,” Angie
whispered inaudibly.
More morose by the
moment, she watched as her mother went over to the couch, picked up her purse
from where it rested and pulled out a piece of paper. Holding the paper high in triumph like a
damning piece of evidence being brought into the packed courtroom on an old TV
legal drama, she stuck it in Angie’s face.
“I wrote this note this
morning after learning of your transgressions.
You will recite it word for word to your principal or you’ll pay the
price.”
The note seared with
subjugated humiliation. Angie took it
and read it to herself.
“I, Angie Williams, am
deeply sorry for all of the trouble I have caused as pertains to my truancy, my
poor grades, and my general disruptiveness.
It is not any indication on my mother, who attempts exhaustively to
teach me obedient and respectful behavior.
Shamefully, the only reward she receives for her efforts is the
unprovoked, insolent, rebellious abuse that I have inflicted upon her. I am sorry that I am such a bad person and
that I subject the wonderful people in my life to my evils. I will try to do better in the future and I
accept whatever punishment the school deems is necessary to teach me a lesson.”
Respectfully, Angie Williams
PS – These are my true feelings and I have had no help
in writing it.
Tickled
into near hysteria as she finished, Angie burst out laughing.
“Do you seriously
expect…?!” Angie stopped due to
uncontrollable guffaws. …me to read
this?!” she finished before curling the paper up into a ball and throwing it
towards her mother’s purse on the couch.
In the ludicrousness of the moment, her fear had faded.
“You
will read this to your principal on one knee if I tell you to!” her mother
thundered. “Now pick up that note! You’re going to be contrite if it kills you.”
Angie, so certain of
herself and her own path in life that apologies were near impossible, whether
she meant them or not, couldn’t possibly do what her mother demanded. Her Principal, Mr. Page, just happened to be
her “in,” the man she had bonded with, the man who had sworn to protect her
from her mother no matter the cost. He
had betrayed her. There could be no
apology. There would be no apology. She decided to make him pay for his
betrayal. She didn’t know how yet but
she would. Sick of it all, Angie ignored
her mother’s order and turned towards the kitchen, not sure what to do
next. Her mother bellowed:
“You will do as I say!” She stomped aggressively towards Angie, her
jaw clenched close to spasming, grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around
face to face and slapped her daughter hard in her left cheek with a vicious
open right hand. When little, Angie’s
mother had hit her, but she hadn’t had the guts to try it since Angie had
become big enough to defend herself. The
slap stopped Angie’s mind whirling and she didn’t hesitate. With all her energy, she crashed her right
fist into her mother’s nose, knocking the woman backwards, her head slamming
into the base of the couch on the way to the floor. Grabbing her now bloody nose with her left hand
and the back of her head with her right, her mother rolled over and began to
scream, a shrieking screech that pierced Angie’s ears like an icepick to the
brain. Stuck between fight and flight,
Angie froze for several moments listening to her mother’s hideous wailing, her
body bristling with kinetic energy, her mind racing, not sure what to do. For several moments, she felt the desire to
pounce and kill her mother. The two weeks
to freedom now felt like two unattainable centuries. She had to do something now, a new plan. She had to kill her mother, or she’d end up
back in that place. That place… No. Never again.
She could blame it on a robber.
People do that stuff from time to time and get away with it, right? It would be a just thing to do. Her evil mother had gotten away with
molesting her dozens of times. Molesting
her trust, molesting her feelings, molesting her hopes, molesting her
chances. Wasn’t taking her out
justice? Hadn’t Angie, the true
sufferer, suffered enough?
Please let this be the
right thing to do, she
pleaded but couldn’t convince herself.
It wasn’t the right thing to do. Of course, it wasn’t.
She wasn’t a killer. She had a
conscience. She wasn’t always sure, but
she did. She couldn’t kill, and the
pacifism repulsed her. So-called “good
people” kill all the time and are lauded as heroes. Why wasn’t she allowed? Why was she doomed to suffer what she didn’t
deserve? Why wasn’t she allowed to be
free? Murder.
Just do it.
Save yourself. Be free… She shook her
head rapidly back and forth. Think!
Think! Murder would destroy everything.
You’d lose, and she’d win. She’d
win forever…
She closed her eyes and
regained her composure in the darkness.
Run.
The word, the order, felt disembodied, as if someone
on high had flashed it into her brain and sent it shooting through her
body. Making sure not to touch the
screaming woman, who still rolled on the floor grabbing her nose and head,
Angie snatched her mother’s purse, dug inside, grabbed her mother’s car keys,
threw the front door open, and exploded into the yard and onto the slick
driveway.
Inside, aware that her
daughter had gone, Angie’s mother stopped screaming, quit holding her head and
bloody nose and distorted her face in a Cheshire smile. Sitting back on the couch, she relished her
triumph. She took a punch in the nose,
possibly broken, but it was worth it, worth it because she’d suckered that
little cunt into hanging herself and had the damage on her face to prove
it. A perfect morning. The little cunt was going back to the place
she dreaded and her mother, if she had a say, would help keep her there
forever.
Angie reached her
mother’s car, ordinarily strictly off limits to her, still covered in snow from
the previous night’s icy blizzard.
Using her bare arms, she furiously worked around the car wiping the snow
off the front and back windshields along with the driver’s side window. Not having the time to defrost, she attacked
the moderately thick layer of ice covering the front windshield with her
fingernails, clawing at the ice repeatedly, chipping three nails in the
process, until enough was broken up to make visibility barely possible. She tried to cram the door key in the
driver’s side lock but, blocked by a thin crust of ice, it wouldn’t go in. Panicked, she stabbed at it until the crust
gave way and the key went in. Unlocking
it with difficulty, she plopped behind the wheel in an instant, ignoring the
ice that covered the back windshield as unimportant. Fumbling with the key, she finally secured
it, turned on the ignition and revved the engine, her muscles clenched and
shaking, her breath spewing icy fog, her brain blazing and roiling with dark,
unrestrained emotion. Hands wrenching
the wheel in a death grip, she floored the accelerator until it lurched forward
then slid 180 degrees on the icy driveway, the tires cutting an ugly, dirty,
dark swath in the snow, spitting up powder in the air like vomit. She violently yanked the steering wheel until
the car righted and drove out onto the suburban street, the car sliding to and
fro like a wriggling snake. Exiting her
subdivision, she reached the connecting street and, ambivalent to the
possibility of traffic or pedestrians, turned onto it blindly. In her mind, if a car came, she would jump out,
pick it up and literally throw it off the road.
She floored the accelerator again, the car wriggled again, she evened it
out again. The car caught enough of
freshly laid traction salt from the snow plows to allow travel at a speed
recklessly dangerous given the conditions.
The speed limit read “30.” She
passed twenty, then thirty, then forty, then fifty. A deadly weapon flew down the road with a
deadly weapon driving it. Part of her
didn’t care if she stayed on the road or not.
Her instincts told her to go as far away from that house containing the
evil woman, wounded or not, as possible.
Her head pounded, and she thumped her left fist against the steering
wheel in frustration, the intensity in her mind making it impossible to think
reasonably. She couldn’t go on
forever. She couldn’t drive away
forever. She was stuck. This was all her mother’s fault. This was all his fault, too. His fault?
Yes, it was HIS FAULT! Her “in”
at school that had betrayed her. The
mother fucker that had ratted on her, the mother fucker that had started all
this, the mother fucker that was going to PAY.
That MOTHER FUCKER! MOTHER FUCKER! MOTHER FUCKER!
Her pierced and bleeding
heart told her where to go. School. She hated school, including the God damn building
but, this instant, she hated him much, much more. She would kill him then kill herself. She couldn’t run, she couldn’t cope, she
couldn’t go home, and she couldn’t go back to that horrible clinic again. It was all over. She gritted her teeth until her right cheek
cramped. In that moment, she hated him
more than anything she’d hated before:
Her dead-beat father, her life, herself, even her mother, because she
had trusted him. Hadn’t he started it
all?
Reaching the correct
intersection, she turned, slid, righted, slid, righted, then sped straight
towards her target. Speed limit 40. Her speed over 65. Her car, like the storybook hare, shot past
cars moving as slow as turtles, drawing disgusted looks from those she passed
and those on the other side of the road.
“Reckless idiot,” or some variation flashed in their minds; “Get the
fuck out of my way!” flared in hers. The
school came into view, growing larger and larger, more and more oppressive,
more and more hostile, more and more villainous, more and more evil. She was going to kill it, too, if she had to
shatter every brick with her fists and bite away every piece of wood with her
teeth. She would make her “in” listen to
her before she killed him. He was going
to HEAR her like he had never heard anyone and then the whole world would
explode into emptiness and the jet-black blood of humanity would explode with
it and she would laugh just as her time came.
She reached her destination, Burchell High, alternative school for
“misguided and behaviorally challenged” juveniles. The car shot into the
fortuitously blessed empty parking lot.
Angie slammed on the brakes just before the school’s main entrance,
barely avoiding blasting a hole through the double glass doors. Immolating in the blazing hot crucible of the
rage and violence triggered within her, she closed her eyes, focused her rage
into one bloated ball of everything in her life, including her own
self-loathing, and opened them again.
Deadly venom burning in hellfire blocked sanity. Revved to action, she left the car with the
door open, keys still in the ignition, and stormed through the main entrance
like a hurricane, tornado, and monsoon combined.
The policeman permanently
stationed at the main entrance, active more than he would like with the
alternative school’s clientele, had been called away on a problem in one of the
classrooms. He would have stopped the
revved-up Angie if he’d been there.
She’d put a fight, but she’d lose. Unfortunately for all involved,
meeting no resistance, first classes of the day now in session and the halls
nearly empty, she marched straight for the principal’s office. One of the hall’s unfortunate souls, a
troubled 15-year-old girl new to the school and guilty only of bad timing, read
Angie’s body language perfectly, hugging the wall nervously as Angie passed by
like a malignant reaper. A male
acquaintance approached with the intention of engaging her; words stuck in his
throat as he stepped aside perplexedly when he saw the burning fire in her
normally indifferent eyes. Angie took no
notice of either of them.
The principal’s office,
the last room on the right before the hallway turned 90 degrees to the left,
beckoned. Angie’s fists clenched. She stalked to within inches of the door when
it suddenly opened as if inviting in all the evils of Pandora. Out stepped the recently hired Assistant
Principal, Miss Nelson, a woman Angie had met only once. Ignorant to what bore down on her, Miss
Nelson started.
“Jesus!” she snapped,
holding her hand to her heart. As she
began to speak, Angie shoved her aggressively aside with her left arm, pushing
Miss Nelson’s back against the door, sticking her to it like she’d been glued
there. As the assistant principal’s eyes
flared wide, Angie’s eyes invaded them with the magma of human Hell. Time seemed to stop for an instant. Angie strode into the office and stepped
right to her seated “in,” the man who had sworn to protect her, the man who’d
failed her and the man who would pay, the Principal of Burchell Alternative
High School, Jonathan Page.
Gnarling her hands like
claws, she slammed her palms on the edge of his desk, scraping her fingernails
over the polished wood, and leaned towards him; instinctively, he pushed his
chair back to the wall until it struck the heater. She shoved the desk towards him until it
struck just below his chest, trapping him between the desk and the heater, his
arms pinned underneath. Her enraged face
closed to within an inch of his, practically spitting on him. The heater, blazing at full speed on the
freezing cold day, poured hot air onto the back of his neck until it began to
sweat.
“WHY DID YOU DO IT! WHY DID YOU CALL HER!” she bellowed. Caught completely off guard, he stammered,
uncertain as to why she was there, why she was screaming in his face. Assistant Principal Nelson took a step
towards the action. Sensing it, Angie
snapped sharply towards her and roared:
“DON’T MOVE!” The woman immediately froze. Angie turned back slowly and menacingly to
Principal Page, learning forward again to within an inch of his face.
“YOU
SAID YOU’D PROTECT ME! WHY DID YOU CALL
HER?! WHY?! ANSWER ME!”
Confused
and badly shaken, words stuck in Principal Page’s throat.
“ANSWER ME!!” she
repeated.
Almost in a whisper, he said
“I didn’t call her.”
“Do
you know where I’m going now?!” she said, her softening voice trailing. “Do you know where I’m going now?”
The fire alarm began to
blare. Hearing Angie’s first yell, a
passing student had ducked her head into the Principal’s office and, upon
seeing the spectacle, drew back, looked for help and, seeing none in the empty
hallway, panicked and pulled the fire alarm.
Startled, Angie froze for a moment, then moved quickly for the
door. She gave Assistant Principal
Nelson a forearm, this time with her right arm, to the chest on the way out,
knocking the woman off balance who, like Angie’s mother, went down in a heap.
The
voice came to Angie again:
Run.
Heeding it, she sprinted
out of the room and down the hall from where she’d come.
Principal Page, having pushed the desk away, quickly
went to the fallen woman and helped her up.
Miss Nelson waited for the Principal to do something. When he didn’t move, she fast walked to his
desk with a scowl, pulled out one of the drawers and produced a
walkie-talkie. Moving quickly into the
hall, she caught a glimpse of Angie as the girl sprinted furiously towards the
main entrance, nearly there, dodging and brushing aside people who’d entered
the hall from the fire alarm as she went.
The assistant principal activated the walkie-talkie and contacted the
officer at the door, now back in position, and loudly told him to stop and
restrain the girl running towards him.
Principal Page walked purposefully towards
Miss Nelson and grabbed her by the arm in full view of the students and
teachers now filling the hallway outside the door. Ignoring them, he charged:
“Did you phone Angie’s
mother?”
“Yes,”
she replied defiantly, surprised he even asked the question. “She’s been truant pretty much the whole
month, so I called her mother this morning.
I had to. You never do it.”
“I
told you I’d handle Angie’s truancy!” he responded irritably. In this case, “handled” meant avoiding
calling Angie’s mother.
“Don’t
yell at me!” Miss Nelson shouted, angrily.
“I did what I was hired to do. We
need to take control of this situation.
Do you mind?” she asked sarcastically.
Principal
Page cursed to himself. He hadn’t
betrayed her. Knowing her home situation
and, beyond his better judgment, he had promised to “protect” her from her
mother by handling any problems pertaining to her, himself. He chose to play Guardian Angel. From the talks the two had had, almost
inadvertently to begin with, he felt it best.
Angie trusted him, and he hadn’t failed her. Now, due to a twist of fate, that trust was
shattered.
Miss
Nelson addressed the rubbernecking students in the hallway:
“Go back to your
business. This is a fire drill,” she
said, covering for the situation in a monotone voice. No strangers to disruptive behavior at the
school, the students took it in stride and dispersed, the hall becoming as
sparse as it had been when Angie first arrived.
Miss Nelson lifted her eyebrows and looked tight mouthed at Principal
Page. Embarrassed, he stood stupidly
near his desk, shifting his glance from her to the hallway. In passing, a student was sure she saw tears
forming in his eyes.
Angie reached the main
entrance area at full speed and stopped as she locked eyes with the officer, a
moment removed from the walkie-talkie message from Miss Nelson. Reacting quickly, Angie took a sharp right
into the moderately sized cafeteria and sprinted for the room’s exit at the far
end. In her eyes, her life was
over. Now all that mattered was
running. Bursting through that exit to
the hallway outside, she drew puzzled looks from lined up students heeding the
fire drill on their way out of the building via another exit to her left. To her right, the short hallway doglegged to
the left into the gym. In an instant,
she made the choice to try and fool the officer by making for the gym instead
of charging by the group of students and out that exit. Knowing she had to clear the dogleg before
the officer exited the cafeteria, she tore for the corner, making it just as
the officer entered the hallway. He
hadn’t seen her and his entreaties to the students for information drew stone
faced silence. He jogged lightly towards
the building exit she had rebuffed, grimacing in frustration as he looked for
his quarry. He left the building with
the students to continue his search outside.
Angie hadn’t stopped
running as she entered the empty gym.
Now winded, she jogged as quickly as she could across the basketball
court, burst through double doors and out into the plowed parking lot, bits of
ice, snow and salt crunching under her feet as her pace lagged further. She ran somewhere and nowhere, dying and surviving,
evaporating and reforming, hanging and falling.
She blocked the world out of her mind.
It didn’t exist. All that existed
in front of her were the trees of the woods behind the school, naked, dead
branches visible with thin layers of snow and ice adorning like frosting on a
cake. She could live in the woods, she
told herself irrationally. She could be
a little nymph and flit about on fairy wings and live in the trees. Everything would be different, just like in a
movie. She would just fly away to heaven
forever. It was possible, she told
herself, if only she wanted it to be, if only she wished hard enough. A slight left ankle turn on a chunk of ice
brought her back to painful reality. She
sensed it all again, the freezing cold weather invading her clothes, the filthy
parking lot, filthy with gray sludge and wet blacktop, making her want to
crumble to the ground in hopelessness.
She took a moment, shook her body in exasperation, and continued what had
become a light jog towards the woods, nearing the end of the parking lot rimmed
with two blue garbage dumpsters, one bigger than the other, and the school’s
small snow plow parked until the next cleanup.
At the moment of freedom, the moment of victory, the moment where
everything would change, and life would lift her onto a cloud to another world,
she slipped, falling to both knees, her hands scraping onto the blacktop
reflexively to prevent her falling on her face.
She slammed her fists down onto the blacktop several times then stopped,
exhausted. It was over, completely
hopeless. She couldn’t run, at least not
to safety or happiness. It was all just so stupid. She could run but only to nowhere. Someone would always find her. Someone would always let her down. Someone would always attack her. Someone would always hurt her. Always.
She rested on her knees
for a moment, gasping heavily, stood, walked a few feet and slammed her right
fist into the side of the smaller blue dumpster. A thudding pain shot through her hand,
meaningless pain she ignored. She opened
both the small dumpster’s heavy plastic flaps and, snarling like a rabid wolf,
hauled her stomach up over the dumpster’s edge and swung herself in, landing on
her feet in a pile of five black garbage bags which she shoved aside to the
opposite side of the dumpster. The cold weather had chilled the garbage enough
to neutralize any odors into tolerability, not that it would have mattered
either way. She plopped down in the
corner, lifted her butt and reached into her right back pocket, pulling out a
large razor blade she kept with her for her own kind of relaxation in the most
stressful moments. Operating like a drug
addict, she smoothly scraped at her left arm on the rattlesnake tattoo to test
its sensitivity, then slowly cut a deep gash on the outside of her bicep. The fresh blood and sharp pain felt like a
warm oasis in a frozen desert. It
redirected her mind, waves of relaxation following the initial pain; it flooded
her body and calmed her though only for a moment. Blood oozed and creeped from the slash, tiny
droplets dripping onto the dumpster’s rusty floor. She scanned her right arm. For every life situation she’d encountered,
slashing her left arm had always been enough.
Not this time. It wasn’t
enough. Not nearly enough. Her right stood in sharp contrast to her
left: One sullied, hardened, darkened
with tattoos, slashed and burned; the other clean, soft, unscarred, virginal. Black and white, the strange “balance” that
wasn’t really balance at all but a stasis which kept her from going off the
rails by her own perception. She checked
to avoid arteries, arteries she’d later regret not cutting. Taking the blade in her left hand, she wildly
slashed and ripped at her right arm until it became so ravaged with small, deep
cuts from forearm to bicep she didn’t think she could survive another. Even then, it wasn’t enough. She could cut off both arms and it wouldn’t
be enough. She knew where she was
going. It was destiny; she was going
there, a place she’d sworn never to see again.
Hearing a voice in the distance, she closed her eyes and contemplated
the now spoiled expanse of her right arm.
Spoiled purity, the only purity she had left; spoiled life, the life she
would soon lose. Sadness quickly gave
way to laughter. She convinced herself
it was funny, so very funny. Maybe it
had always been funny…
A voice close by shouted:
“You head towards the
woods! I’m going to look in the
dumpsters!”
