Mercy

by J L Aarne

  It seemed like a small thing, what he had done to Mercy. It didn’t seem like something that even Mercy would consider to be a big deal. She wasn’t usually the type of person who held a grudge for so long, especially when she had come out on top in it and there hadn’t been any real harm done to her. Billy seemed like a strange choice.

  A girl in the middle of the bleachers tentatively raised her hand. Heads turned toward her and people stared. She looked like she wanted to take her hand down and for everyone to just forget about it, but she didn’t.

  “Yes?” Mercy said, pointing to her. “You have something to say?”

  “Ah… yeah, I think so,” the girl said. “This is supposed to be like a trial, right?”

  Mercy shrugged. “More like a hearing, but yeah. You have something to say about Billy?”

  “I… Yes. Yes I think so,” she said. “I… Um… My name’s Lundy. Lundy Pierce. I… don’t think we ever met or anything. I just… can I—?”

  “Come down here and I’ll give you the microphone so you don’t have to shout,” Mercy said.

  Lundy appeared momentarily terrified by the idea. Then she looked at Billy and her expression hardened, anger flashed in her eyes. She stood up and came down the stairs. Mercy handed her the microphone and Lundy thanked her.

  Billy eyed the girl with contempt and smirked. “Whore,” he said.

  Lundy paled and looked like she wanted to give the microphone back and flee. She didn’t and it passed. “I have something to say,” she said. “About Billy Cullen. He’s a pig.”

  “You’re a slut,” Billy said. “You want me to tell them? You say anything and I’ll fucking tell them what a slut you are. One thing and I swear.”

  “Billy, if you don’t shut up, I’ll have Ezra or Isaac gag you,” Mercy told him. “I swear.”

  At the back of the gym, Isaac smashed another phone. Just one; for emphasis. Ezra laughed and told him to quit it.

  Somewhere behind them in the offices, a phone began to ring. The jangle of an old landline phone. No one went to pick it up. Shit was starting to really get interesting.

  “You have a story to tell us, Lundy?” Mercy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then tell us.”

  Lundy

  London Bridge is Falling Down

  Why Billy decided he wanted her was something Lundy Peirce would never know. She wasn’t the prettiest or most popular girl in school, but she knew she wasn’t ugly and she always had a date readily enough when she wanted one. Still, she and Billy Cullen didn’t have the same friends, they didn’t like the same things, they almost never were in the same room together and even though they lived in a small town, they had probably exchanged less than ten words with each other between Lundy’s first day of kindergarten and her sophomore year. They didn’t notice each other.

  It was Billy who changed that.

  Billy’s idea of seduction and courting more closely resembled a combination of childish pigtail pulling and Chinese water torture. He could have asked her out and been nice to her. She always wondered why he wasn’t.

  With the mean sort of creative genius that inspires such things, a song got started and spread through the student body, making Lundy the butt of a huge, humiliating joke.

  Lundy’s undies are falling down, falling down, falling down…

  Lundy’s undies are falling down…

  To the tune of that old nursery rhyme song.

  It was catchy. It was funny. It was so very clever.

  In the hallways, in the lunchroom, at the bus stop, on her way to English class with her hair still wet from the shower after P.E. she would hear it. Sometimes they’d quit if they saw her, hide their smiles behind their hands, but sometimes they wouldn’t. It was all in fun. It was harmless.

  And it was catchy. Lundy would hear it in her head on a loop all day long until she wanted to scream and thought she would vomit.

  Worse than the song was the simpering look of pity that crept into the eyes of her friends. She was no longer their equal; she became that girl they allowed to tag along. She stopped tagging along as soon as she realized it, but that only left her more vulnerable. It only got worse.

  Whether Billy had started singing about her underwear to the tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down” or it had been someone else, she never knew and she didn’t care. He was the worst of them. He picked it up and ran with it, sang it and got others to join in, made up new verses that were less catchy but more vulgar. He made her life hell.

  It was like being ground down. Down and down and down into dust and grit and nothing until being small and worthless felt safe. Grind, grind, grind every day, all the time; in her head when it wasn’t in her face.

  Sometimes she wondered if it might stop if she gave in and gave him what he wanted. It was only sex and everyone did it eventually. It wasn’t special. It didn’t have to mean anything. If it could make him stop, wouldn’t it even be worth it?

  But then she’d think about it and try to imagine Billy Cullen’s hands on her, his mouth on her, his body on top of her. She imagined the great sense of satisfaction he would get from it and how she would know every time she looked at him that he had won and she had let him use her, that he had brought her down low and debased her, turned her into an object and made her filthy. For two more years she would have to walk the halls and sit in the same classrooms with him knowing and remembering that and she couldn’t do it.

  On Halloween, her friend Sherry invited her to a party at her boyfriend, Stan’s house. Stan was older and his parents were away visiting his aunt or his grandparents or something like that, so he was having a real party, the kind where everyone brought their own bottle of liquor and a bag of candy and they all split it up and made a mess. Lundy remembered Sherry in a sequined sexy devil girl costume opening the door and Stan laughing at her offering of Apple Pucker and tiny Butterfingers. She was dressed up in a black cat costume with tights, a short pleated skirt and felt ears that wouldn’t stay clipped in her hair.

  The last thing she remembered before she woke up in the bathtub the next morning was someone offering her a drink in a martini glass with a bright red maraschino cherry floating in it. She remembered the first swallow had an unusual salty flavor.

  The bathtub was cold but dry. Her head was the first thing she noticed because it hurt so bad that it was like something behind her eyes was banging on a gong every time her heart beat. Her mouth and throat were dry and tasted awful. Lundy pulled herself up to sit and winced at the painful cramping in her stomach. She felt bruised like she had been beaten, and confused because all she could remember was the cherry drink. That cherry like a tiny apple bobbing, bobbing…

  Her tights were ripped. Not at the knee like she had fallen down, but around the waistband and down one thigh, exposing her… And her panties were ripped. Her heart started to pound and she had to turn over so she could vomit down the drain. When she was finished and relatively sure that she wasn’t going to do it again, she tried to stand up. She had to catch herself on the edge of the tub and sit on the side to crawl out.

  When she noticed the blood on the edge of the tub, she thought she might vomit again, but after a few deep breaths, the urge passed. She looked down at herself and saw the blood on her thighs and she knew.

  Rape. It was such a nasty word, such a scary word, so overused, but not unexpected. Not really. Not at all. Not for a girl—in America or anywhere. It happened more often than it didn’t happen and she could not remember it, but standing there in the bathroom with her costume in tatters and blood dry and flaking on her thighs, that didn’t make it any less horrifying.

  The bathroom door was open a crack, the full-length mirror angled toward her, and Lundy stared at her reflection hardly recognizing herself. Her clothes were wrinkled and twisted and torn, her hair was a lank, tangled mess and the thick black eye makeup she had so carefully applied the previous evening was smeared and running down her face like eyeliner on a harlequin. She s
tood there staring at herself for a couple of minutes; long enough to make a very hard decision.

  She would never tell anyone.

  She had been drugged, that much she was sure of, and raped if the soreness of her body and blood between her legs were any indication, but she didn’t remember anything. If she reported a rape, she would be expected to give evidence of it and she didn’t have anything. She was sixteen, it had been a party, she’d been drinking, maybe she’d just gotten drunk and done something stupid that she now regretted. Like most girls, she already knew all the possible arguments against her. That wasn’t even why she wouldn’t say anything though, because maybe it wasn’t that unbelievable. Maybe they could run some sort of test to see if she had been drugged or a rape test or maybe they’d just believe her. But she was Lundy. Lundy with her undies falling down. Lundy who had woken up in Stan’s bathroom with her undies ripped and no memory of how it had happened. Wasn’t it funny? Almost like they had fallen down all by themselves.

  Lundy’s undies are falling down, falling down, falling down…

  Lundy’s undies are falling down…

  Because she desperately wanted to survive high school and because she was Lundy of the falling down undies, she couldn’t say anything.

  Lundy took her ruined tights and panties off and put them in the trash under the used toilet paper rolls, Q-tips and cotton balls, cleaned the blood off her thighs and the makeup off her face, straightened her shirt and her skirt, tamed her hair with her fingers and left the bathroom.

  The clock in the hallway said it was 5:09 a.m. The house wasn’t quiet—the stereo was still on and playing Katy Perry way too loud—but no one was dancing or doing that swaying shuffle that substituted for dancing when things were winding down, and no one was laughing or trying to shout over the music. The party was over. There were a few people passed out on the sofa or the floor near the TV, and probably more in the bedrooms, but most of them had left.

  Lundy stepped over Stan, sleeping it off just inside the hallway surrounded by mini candy bar wrappers, a beer can still held loosely in his limp fingers. Sherry was in the kitchen sitting on a barstool at the island counter with her head down on her folded arms. She looked like she was asleep or had passed out that way, but when Lundy stepped into the kitchen, she sat up and took a deep breath like she had been holding it. She blinked against the bright florescent kitchen light then smiled when she recognized Lundy.

  “Hey,” Sherry said. “Where’s Billy?”

  Lundy felt a vile sinking in her stomach. “What?”

  “Billy,” Sherry repeated. “You know. You were with him. Earlier.”

  “What?” Lundy repeated dully.

  Sherry frowned at her. “Um… You hooked up, I guess.”

  “You didn’t try to… I don’t know, do something?” Lundy asked.

  “Like what?” Sherry asked. “He’s hot.” She giggled and got off the stool, almost fell and pushed off the counter toward the fridge. “You want another beer? I think there’s still some in here somewhere. Maybe. Or a wine cooler. Holly brought piña colada ones. They’re awesome.”

  So Sherry didn’t know. Nobody knew.

  “I think I’m gonna go home,” Lundy said. To herself, she sounded far away. It was like listening to someone else speaking with her voice at the end of a long tunnel.

  She thought of walking the five miles from Stan’s house to her own in the dark at 5 a.m. the day after Halloween in a short black skirt with no underwear and tried to make herself care, but she couldn’t. What difference did it make? Who cared? Not her. A girl walking home in the dark with no underwear on under a short skirt was a bad idea. A really bad idea. So? The worst had already happened. It had been done and it couldn’t be undone.

  “Aww, don’t do that,” Sherry said. She was holding herself up with the open refrigerator door. “Hey, you can stay. Stan won’t care.” She frowned and looked around like Stan was a drink she had misplaced. “Where is he?”

  “On the floor,” Lundy said.

  She left. Sherry called after her, but she didn’t stop or listen. She walked home, trudged all the way in her black four inch heels with the chill air of the early November morning teasing the hem of her skirt with icy fingers, her mind on autopilot. When she got home, she fell into bed and lay there for a long time trying to sleep so she could escape. Finally, she did.

  It was only much later after the shock wore off that she got angry about it. Once she did though, the anger grew and grew, festered like an abscess and turned her bitter. Billy Cullen was exactly the same to her as he had ever been; slightly worse because he now had something real to smirk about. The grinding went on, but now it was making her hard and sharp as a spear. She wasn’t small and safe anymore; she was becoming cunning and dangerous. Lundy began to hate him and the hate inspired her to begin planning ways to kill him and get away with it.

  She had almost decided to do it, and then Mercy, Corey and the Banks boys walked into the school Monday morning with guns. It didn’t change her mind, but it made her reevaluate her options.

  Mercy

  The Hammer Fall

  Lundy finished speaking and stood looking at Mercy with her chin tipped up, an expression of mulish defiance on her face. She expected to either be disbelieved or dismissed. For her, what Billy Cullen had done was huge, but she knew that it wouldn’t be to a lot of people. To a techno-bred generation raised on Law & Order: SVU and first person shooter video games, able to download images of a thousand different horrors a day from every corner of the world straight to their phones, in a time when violence toward women was so common it was an old joke, maybe what had happened to her wasn’t such a big deal. It wasn’t something that could kill you. You washed yourself off, picked yourself up and you were still alive, still the same person.

  Mercy glanced at Billy in the chair, now sitting there with his head down, his cheeks flushed and bright as little apples, shaking very slightly.

  “Billy?” Mercy said. “You have anything to say?”

  “You can’t prove shit,” Billy said. He lifted his head to glare at them and then glared around at everyone looming over him from the bleachers. “She doesn’t even remember what happened. She just fucking said it herself. Coulda been anybody. Coulda been nothing. Coulda been she got all fucked up and finger-banged herself bloody. How should I know?”

  “You know what I think?” Mercy said. “I think you slipped a little something in her drink. Maybe even the one with the cherry in it. And I think a piece of work like you, Billy, well… you wouldn’t be able to shut up about something like that. You know what else?”

  “I don’t give a shit, you crazy bitch,” Billy said.

  Mercy clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth, scolding him. That was the wrong answer. “Now, that’s not smart, is it?” She took out her gun and passed it casually from hand to hand like she was juggling a toy. “If you’re going to care what anyone thinks right now, it should be me… because I’m the crazy bitch with her finger on the big red button, so you want to pay attention!”

  Billy started to lurch to his feet, but froze when Mercy palmed the gun into her right hand and pointed it between his eyes.

  “I’m not done with you, so you’ll be sitting back down,” she said. “Now.”

  Corey grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him down into the chair.

  The phone started to ring again, the sound of it echoing in the near silence. It sounded like it was coming from Coach Kapinski’s office. Isaac flicked the butt of his cigarette away to smolder out on the gym floor and got up.

  “You think we should answer it?” he asked.

  “In a minute,” Mercy said.

  Isaac sighed and leaned against the wall beside the stairs. He found such sounds—ringing phones, ticking clocks, dripping faucets—to be particularly upsetting, but he was still able to ignore it for a while.

  “Okay, back to Billy here,” Mercy said.

  Everyone looked at Billy. A coupl
e of the teachers looked like they wanted to say something or do something, but like most everyone else they looked like they all hoped someone else would say something or do something first. Miss Tolstad had her face in her hands, her glasses in her lap, and was weeping as she hid behind her fingers.

  “You can’t do this!” a girl shouted.

  Mercy didn’t bother to seek her out in the crowd and did not acknowledge her with a reply. Of course they could do this; they were doing this.

  “Does anyone else have anything to say about Billy?” Mercy asked.

  No one said anything for a few minutes.

  “This is monstrous,” Mr. Stills said. It was an observation, not the beginning of an argument though.

  “Yes, it is,” Mercy said, surprising him. She held his gaze for a moment before shifting her attention away from him. “Anyone else? You won’t be shot for speaking up, you have my word.”

  A boy stood up suddenly in the back. He was big like Billy, with a dark complexion, wearing a basketball jersey style shirt. He looked nervous, sweaty and frightened, but he also looked determined. It was very brave of him, Mercy thought. His name was Eddie Baker and he was Billy’s friend.

  “Please don’t, man,” he said. “I known Billy since forever and he’s a good guy. He just acts like… like that, you know, around. It’s a front, but he ain’t a bad dude.”

  Lundy surprised Mercy by stepping up to the bleachers and glaring at Eddie. “You’re not a girl he wants to do things to though, are you?” she said. “You’re his friend. You’re one of the guys he brags about it to later.”