Melanie's Awakening

by Michael Cross

  As she was struggling to get back up, I pushed her down again with my foot. She screamed something like, “Why are you doing this?” I sort of blanked out, and in a manner that didn’t seem to require any thought, I jumped on her and pinned her down by placing my left knee firmly in the center of her spine. I could barely speak, trying to catch my breath, but I managed to utter the words, “I am sorry, I am so sorry.” I then grabbed her by the hair, jerked her head back and, in a combined yanking and pulling motion I made a deep incision into her throat from side to side.

  The sudden burst of blood from her carotid artery startled me and I fell back, releasing her hair and causing her head to fly forward into the dirt. She did not give up her life easily and I could hear her struggles to breathe, a horrific gurgling sound as the air mixed with blood in her throat. While her precious essence of life was pulsating onto the ground, and the hair I thought was so beautiful just moments before had turned into a tangled mess…drenched in a mixture of red and black, blood and soil, she was not ready to surrender to death. Even in her desperate and agonizing last moments she managed to raise her head up slightly. She even summoned the strength to grasp the ground in front of her with her hands in an attempt to pull herself forward. I sat there helpless and cried out, “Die, won’t you please just die” and then, actually crying, I started whispering, “Please, die!” over and over again.

  It was at this point I could hear Nicole’s voice “Melanie?” but I did not answer. As she approached from behind she said, “There you are! Oh, wow…messy.” By now the young woman was no longer struggling and I could not hear the gurgling sounds anymore. She was sprawled out, motionless – it seemed her face was buried in the dark black soil and her hair completely mangled and mixed in with her bright red blood. Nicole asked, “Melanie, are you okay?” I just sat there staring at the woman, “Melanie, I came as fast as I could…” I cut her off and in a monotone, barely audible voice replied, “Shut up – just shut your mouth now.”

  She stopped speaking for a moment, but then resumed, “I didn’t mean for you to have to do this you know.” I could only ask, “Really? So what, this was going to be your first innocent victim – so sorry I took that away from you! Maybe we can find someone else up here so you can have your fun!” Nicole tried to touch me but I glared at her with a “Do it and join the girl” sort of look, at least I hope that’s what I looked like because that is how I felt, and she did move back. She started crying and said she had no idea this would happen. I still just sat there, holding my knife in my lap, not even concerned with all the blood that drenched my clothing, my hands and even my face.

  “Look, Melanie, I was not lying, the guy was just about to rape me! I was lucky we were next to that cliff.” I was still extremely angry and sarcastically commented, “How convenient.” Nicole appeared frustrated, as she looked away and kicked down a small, dead, tree shaft but I did not care.

  I began to get up and Nicole yelled, “Stop, don’t stand up! We need to get rid of anything stained in blood – and you only brought one pair of shoes.” She was right – I was kneeling so my shoes had avoided any contact with the woman’s blood which now seemed to be everywhere. The problem was that the rest of my clothing was soaked, ruined! “Melanie, I understand you are upset right now, but we can’t lose our heads here – we have some serious work to do.”

  Nicole asked me to carefully remove my shoes and hand them to her. We would have to walk back to the campsite and get some things before we could hide the bodies. For starters, we needed to protect our shoes from blood that hikers might notice later on. Of course, I had to take it slow since now I was barefoot. It seemed my feet discovered a new object dedicated to causing me pain with every step I took. I could not believe that woman had been able to

  practically sprint barefoot, but maybe she had rarely worn shoes and had adapted to the conditions – as well as her body being filled with adrenaline as she tried to save her life.

  When we got back to their campsite I didn’t see a point in arguing – we had to make sure we made these people disappear. I asked Nicole how isolated the marijuana patch was and she said unless you were looking for it you would never find it. In fact, she thought it was near where the woman’s body was – if she had succeeded in getting over the hill then she would have been really close to the patch. I wondered if she took the direction she did because she was familiar with the area – or was it that she thought maybe her man was still alive and could save her? Perhaps with the drugs in her system she believed she was having a really bad trip, who knows?

  Nicole suggested putting socks on over our hiking boots and then covering them with empty plastic bags from our packs. That would keep any blood away. My clothes were covered in blood so when the question of moving the body came up I didn’t have to be worried about that – my favorite hiking shorts and top were ruined anyway. For some reason I asked where the man’s body was and Nicole repeated that it was down the cliff. And again I asked if she were certain he was dead and she assured me there was no doubt. Then I suggested, “Why don’t we just throw his friend’s body down the same cliff? I rather doubt anyone will come up and find the bodies before the animals have devoured them, along with any evidence of foul play.” Nicole perked up, probably assuming I was no longer mad at her, and replied, “Sounds good to me!”

  Nicole took off her clothes, except for her boots, and we went back to the body. Fortunately the woman was small and slender, so it did not take much work to move her. Nicole put the knife on top of the body and then lifted her from underneath the arms as I held her by the knees. Together we carried her to the patch. Once arriving we took her to the cliff. We sat her down and Nicole showed me where the man’s body was – and yes, he was still there, but barely noticeable from the ledge. I looked around and spotted a way we could get down to where he was and suggested we hurl the woman’s body as close to his as possible, and then go down and move them completely out of sight. Nicole agreed and we slung the body with such accuracy that she landed right next to him.

  As we climbed down the cliff, we tried not to get cut on the sharp volcanic rocks. When we got to where the couple was the scene resembled something from a violent cartoon – his body was twisted in a contorted position, his neck obviously broken with his chin resting on his backbone. She had bounced down the cliff and landed on her back, with her left hand on her chin, and her right hand resting on her gapping wound. It was as if she was lying there contemplating the hole in her neck.

  Nicole motioned me to help drag the man into an area just a little further down the cliff and into a cluster of trees. First we moved him, and then her, into this little canopy. I noticed that the reason this area was so lush was due to the stream from the waterfall cascading down the cliff. In the mud I saw lots of tracks including what I believed to be bear and cougar. I pointed these out to Nicole and said, “These bodies will be consumed in no time.”

  We climbed back to the marijuana patch and Nicole washed off all the blood from her body in the stream that fed the waterfall. She said I should do likewise but I said I would wait and use the stream by the camp. Then I took the knife and cut down two of the plants – “We will use these to sweep away our tracks and then throw them away. Maybe if by some chance someone does happen across the bodies they will think they were killed over the marijuana.” Nicole said that was a great idea.

  As Nicole led the way back to camp I began to contemplate everything that had happened in the past couple of hours. I had always thought of Nicole as beautiful, and even in the most grotesque of situations very sensuous, but now she seemed quite animalistic as she strutted naked down that trail. Maybe it was my anger that caused me to see her in the most unflattering manner, but I thought of her as some sort of beast at that moment. I felt nothing towards her but hostility, in fact I even contemplated how easy it might be to run up behind her and open her throat up. I wondered what she would think in those last seconds feeling the cold steel penetrate her flesh – tha
t feeling of shock, of helplessness, the feeling the poor hippie woman had felt not too long ago. Of course, I didn’t – I couldn’t – take the step to live out my momentary fantasy.

  When we arrived at the camp we knew we had to make sure the few items of the couple were moved out of sight. We wrapped our hands in whatever we could find to avoid any fingerprints before tossing the goods behind some tall vegetation. When we were almost done I noticed the woman’s bag that she had pulled the necklace and the mushroom out of. I was curious so I opened it up and dumped the contents out. The rest of her mushrooms fell to the ground as did some sparkly quartz crystals and amethyst rocks. I then reached for my chest as I became aware that the necklace she had given me was still around my neck. It seems she only had one that was completed, and she had given it to me. When I took it off to look at it I was surprised that it had absolutely no blood on it. I put it back on and I picked up the rocks and put them in my back pack.

  While Nicole was finishing with what was left I grabbed the set of clothes I had in the pack; clothes that I had taken off the night before since they were dirty. I slowly walked over to the little stream and sat down. I put the bloodied clothes in a plastic bag, washed off, and got dressed. Nicole came over and noted that we should burn my outfit that evening since bears could be attracted by the blood. I just replied, “Sure, whatever.”

  When we had finished it was if nobody had been there I swept the ground to cover our tracks to the main trail, and then hoped nobody would come by as I was holding two large marijuana plants – it would be hard to avoid attention, that’s for sure. A few minutes after we left the camp we noticed the ideal place to dispose of them – a swampy bog. I pushed them both deep into the mud and plant debris. With all evidence erased it was time to start the hike back since Nicole’s cousin would expect us in just four and a half days.

  I hardly talked to Nicole that afternoon. She seemed to try to start conversations, several times beginning with, “Melanie, I wasn’t lying about what I said. I want you to…” I either told her I wasn’t listening, or I merely ignored any words she might try to express. She finally seemed to give up for a while. What was she trying to do, get me to forgive her?

  I felt angry and used, and I was especially angry that my special trip was ruined. Even my pictures could never be shared since it would prove I was near where the killings had taken place, if the bodies were ever found of course. When we found a place to camp for the night I looked at my pictures and then noticed the last one – the naked forest nymph. I had captured a fantastic image of her as she was dancing. The picture had frozen a moment of her spinning, her hair spreading out like an aura on an angel, and the light making the nearly divine moment even more intense. It was innocence coupled perhaps with a bit of primitive erotica. The picture could have won awards but I could never share it. I almost erased it but decided I might want to look at it again, one more time, before eliminating it. This, of course, only served to intensify my anger towards Nicole.

  That night she had made a meal for me. She came over to where I was sitting and said, “Here!” in an almost childlike voice, one wishing to connect with me. I looked away as she then said, “Melanie, come on, you have to eat. Please?” Those words made me think of my pleading with the woman in her last seconds of life. I looked at her with a blank stare and she sat the food down, apparently hoping I would eat. Of course I would eat later, I was starving, but I did not want to give her any satisfaction at that moment. I instead took the opportunity to put the bag with my stained clothes into the campfire. In a few moments the bundle had been transformed to ash.

  As we got ready to go to bed I moved my blanket and sleeping bag away from hers. I even wondered what she might do to me that night so I slept quite uneasy, holding the knife close to me just in case.

  The next day I awoke, my mind filled with the “what if?” sort of questions: “What if someone finds the bodies?” and “What if someone remembers seeing us on the trail earlier?” These thoughts slowly evaporated as I considered that we had done a thorough job in covering our tracks both literally and figuratively, and we had not seen a soul, even on the main trail, for over two days.

  Breakfast was almost as tense as dinner had been but this time I listened as Nicole again explained what had happened. While I had doubted her the day before I was beginning to believe she might be telling the truth. After we began walking again I thought about how the woman had obviously been trying to interest me in a night of group sex – had the hippie guy done the same with Nicole? I still felt violated but I was actually thinking Nicole might not deserve as much wrath as I was feeling for her. I remained quiet, withdrawn and ignoring Nicole most of the time. I was trying to re-connect to the energies around me but every time I did I remembered the discussion with the woman who seemed to understand the way I felt about nature.

  Soon afterwards, as we were hiking back, I realized that those energies of nature that normally comforted and re-invigorated me, seemed no longer to exist. Furthermore, I felt like an alien to that which only a couple of days earlier had made me feel so special. I now felt like an outsider, or even worse, one who had violated the bond through my actions the day before. I felt anxiety, in fact I could feel a tightening in the center of my chest and my breathing was becoming more difficult. I felt as if I was suffocating, that I needed to escape, to get away! Could I actually endure this for four more days?

  As we were walking, and I was hoping to avoid a panic attack, I could observe Nicole going into her quiet, reserved, even depressive state. That’s when I decided I had to put some of my psychological training into practice. I thought about the whole notion of schemas and how we interpret the world. Did the hippie guy come onto Nicole the way his friend appeared to be coming onto me? I remembered that Nicole had been abused as a child so perhaps she could have been hyper sensitive and believed she was in danger. In that case, was it fair for me to be angry at Nicole for her reaction?

  And then I thought about what I knew of cognitive therapy, and how one’s thoughts influence their feelings. Change the thought patterns and you can see and interpret another person’s actions differently, and thereby change your reactions to them. Maybe I was putting myself through unhappiness by demonizing Nicole. I mean, she was the only person in my life that had never abandoned me. Was I merely making myself suffer needlessly by punishing her? I still did not feel I could trust her entirely, but I wanted to end this rift between us.

  It was another very warm evening so again we did not set up the tent, but when Nicole put her blanket on the ground and rested on it, I sighed and removed the necklace the girl had given me and packed it into my bag. I then went over to Nicole, snuggled up next to her, and put my arm around her. She looked at me like a puppy worried about what his master is going to do next. I just looked in her eyes, brushed the hair out of her face, smiled, and said, “Nicole, you do know you owe me a new pair of shorts and a shirt, don’t you?” She grabbed me, cried in an intensity I had never experienced before, and held me tight for what seemed like eternity.

  The next few days seemed almost like the first few had been. We enjoyed the nature and even took pictures, although we knew they could only be for us. Sure, I still had my suspicions towards Nicole, and I wondered if I had brushed aside things too fast, but I needed someone in my life and it seemed she was that someone.

  We were really lucky, on the day we arrived at our designated pick-up point the clouds were rolling in. We could hear thunder in the distance but just as we felt rain coming down on us Nicole’s cousin drove up. I was a bit self-conscious about my appearance – the clothes I was wearing had been on for over a week and even the attempts at leaving them on while standing under waterfalls, or jumping into a creek, had done little to make them fresh.

  As we were driving back to his house I asked if the girls would be there. Jacob said they wouldn’t as they were visiting their grandparents. I was disappointed to hear that but I took out the sack I was keeping the rocks i
n. I asked him to make sure they got the rocks I had promised them. Then I reached deep into my pack and took out the crystal necklace and the five crystals I had taken from the woman’s bag. Just to play it safe I pulled the crystal out of the necklace and then told Jacob I had six crystals and asked if he could give the girls two a piece. He said he would.

  On the way back to Portland we were hungry but only dared to use the drive through of a fast food chain. I told Nicole I didn’t care what people might think or say but she didn’t want to go in anywhere looking the way she did.

  When we got home Nicole asked to use the shower first. I just plopped myself down on the couch and started running things through my mind, merely being me of course. Nicole came out in her bathrobe and went into the kitchen. She then called me in – I noticed she had brought out some scissors and asked, “Well, Melanie, still on for the new hairstyle?” I had made up my mind to make the change, if for no other reason than to satisfy her curiosity or her craving for some sort of Freudian gender separation between us. However, I shrugged my shoulders and told her, “Not now Nicole, maybe someday, maybe soon, but not today.” And I excused myself and spent the next thirty minutes relaxing in the shower and returning my appearance to the same old me I was used to, however, as I was reaching for my razor I thought, “Oh why not?” and I put it down. I figured I’d go ahead and strike out into uncharted territory and go with a radical feminist look for a while. Maybe it was my way of taking the first step into a new and permanent transformation of my identity.

  Chapter 12

  The house seemed foreign. You never really notice the smell of the inside of your home when you are there all the time, but when you have been in the outdoors for as long as we had the paint and rug scent combined with odors from the kitchen were quite irritating to me. I sat on the couch to catch my breath and Nicole came over and snuggled up on my lap like a dark-haired tiger. She held me tight, not saying a word, but when my stomach rumbled she turned to look up at me, “You hungry? Why don’t we go out for dinner at that Mexican place over in Lake Oswego near the Mormon temple?”