Harrowing

by S. E. Amadis

  Brionna only laughed. Coldly. Without mercy. The way she always did.

  Fortunately, one of the teachers rushed to my side at that moment and pulled me to my feet, wrapping his jacket hastily about me and hustling me out of there. The kids continued to jeer and throw balled up papers and spitballs at me. But what really stabbed a knife into the core of my heart was the pitiless, icy mockery in Brionna’s eyes.

  The sister whose love I’d always dreamt of winning one day. The sister I’d longed to endear and win to my side.

  That was why it gave me such smooth, flowing satisfaction the day I was finally able to bash my fist into Brionna’s face.

  After all she’d done to me over the years, making my life a living hell ever since I could remember, I was finally able to pay her back. And I was holding nothing back, I really let her have it. I went at her with no holds barred, pounding against her until her nose bled, pummelling my fists into both her eyes. I slapped her cheeks and ground them against her teeth until blood started pouring from her mouth. I slashed my grubby nails against her lips, rubbing them back and forth until I’d managed to cut them. I seized her head a few times and slammed it against the floor as well, for good measure. By the time I was finished with her, she was out cold.

  I was expelled from school for a month, and my parents grounded me for the same length of time, but it had been worth it.

  During detention, I sat in the classroom and copied out a hundred times, “I will be a good boy” while underneath, on a separate sheet of paper, as soon as the teacher was no longer looking, I scribbled in my messy, little-boy hand: “I will be king of the world one day. People will cow before me.”

  *

  Now, some twenty-five years later, I gloated before my TV. I’d had a good day. A bit rough, maybe, but nonetheless I had to admit, I’d enjoyed myself with that new temp doll. It wasn’t every day I did this sort of thing, of course.

  In fact, as far as I could recall, I hadn’t done this for maybe two or three years. After all, it wasn’t like I got up every morning, waltzed into my office and raped an employee every day – even though I had my office to myself most of the time, held free reign over it and could do pretty much as I pleased in it.

  I lounged about on my sofa with my scotch on ice in the same glass I used to drink orange juice in the mornings. Okay, I admit, I’m not a particularly fine or elegant man. Although some vague great-great-grandparent of mine – I’ll never know which one – claimed the honour of being some sort of high and mighty Parisian snob, none of his finesse, his gentility or savoir-faire had rubbed off on me. In fact, growing up in a nitty gritty North American urban jungle, I was more comfortable rolling around in the grass with my chums than rolling a glass of champagne in my fingers with my pinkie sticking up. Heck, I don’t even wear a suit to work, and I’m the Vice President.

  I raised my glass towards my sporadic partner, Lou-Angela, or Lulu, as I liked to call her. Lulu was lounging around on the chaise longue opposite me wrapped in her trademark scarlet satin dressing gown, ogling at the television. Black mascara coursed down her cheeks after the stressful day she’d had, creating a garish masque filled with harsh concavities. She drank her scotch straight. A grin cracked her face from ear to ear as she imitated my gesture. My office antics with the opposite sex never bothered her, and I did have to give her credit for that.

  “So, lovey, how was your latest conquest?” she spat out in her typical sultry growl. Her rubbery, overpainted lips turned downwards at the edges as she spoke.

  I merely smiled at her. She raised her glass in a toast again, then threw all its contents into the back of her throat in one swig and turned back to her programme. I didn’t know what show it was, but there were a lot of little kids jumping around in hula-hoops.

  I swirled the scotch about in my glass, then swished it around my mouth, savouring the memory of what had happened this morning. Annasuya. I wouldn’t forget that name. An unusual name to match an unusual face. She wasn’t like the others. I wasn’t too sure why. She didn’t look all that different.

  Temp workers came and went in my office. This was the first time they’d sent Annasuya to me. Almost from the start she’d ground on my nerves. First off, she just kept gaping all around my office. I’m a private man. I don’t like strangers snooping about.

  And when I told her off for this, which I thought was reasonable, instead of apologizing or turning her eyes towards the floor, the way I was accustomed to people responding, she only glanced around and stared at my computer instead. The nerve of her! I started wondering if maybe she wasn’t all she appeared to be. Maybe she was even a corporate spy. Perhaps I should have notified the temp agency and asked them to carry out a background check on this cheeky and suspicious new worker.

  I rested my glass on the coffee table and leaned back in the sofa. Now Annasuya probably thought I was a psychopathic monster, and I’m not. I wished I could have had a chat with her afterwards, explained to her why I did the things that I do. Confided to her that this wasn’t my habitual behaviour. Even let her know that she should have felt privileged, special. After all, this wasn’t something I did with every lady who crossed the threshold of my office.

  No. I had chosen Annasuya because I saw something extraordinary in her that I don’t usually see in other women. I’m not a pig or a chauvinistic bastard. For me, raping a woman is honouring her. Letting her know, in my own way, that she is special to me. She should have felt cherished, adulated. I don’t understand why she bolted from my office the way she did. Most of the women I had maintained this sort of relationship with in the past usually stuck around to listen to my point of view.

  I would usually have them lie down by my side, as I stroked their legs and cheeks, and explained to them, in a perfectly reasonable voice, the rationale behind my actions. I would make it clear that they were special. That this was the way I let them know that I thought they were destined for something extraordinary in life.

  One woman I had claimed for myself, perhaps a decade ago, had gone on to become a famous politician and social activist. Another is today an award-winning educator with several bestselling books out on the market. A third, although not famous, is a wealthy and successful therapist with a thriving business now. I know that because the other day I passed by the suite where her clinic is located. It was in a building renowned for having some of the highest rental rates in the city. A prestigious clinic housed in a prestigious area.

  Yes, women bound for greatness are the ones that catch my eye. It’s like I have an instinct, a sixth sense, almost, to be able to simply sniff out the ones with that fate etched in their DNA. If only she had hung around, I could have explained that to Annasuya. The other women had accepted my explanation without much fuss. They merely nodded and agreed with everything I told them. They didn’t make a big row about it.

  I was nothing but a humble, mortal messenger to these chosen few. Nothing more. When I was promoted to Vice President and granted an office all to myself in the penthouse suite, where few people ever ventured, I saw that as a sign that I was to continue with my appointed mission. The mission of letting these specially selected individuals know about their unparalleled destiny.

  Okay, perhaps it’s true. Perhaps I also took advantage of my special position to play around with these women a bit. But it was all for a good cause. It was simply my way of bringing my divine message across to them.

  If I hadn’t had my wicked way with the current MP Juliette Brault, do you think it would have ever occurred to her to run for parliament under the slogan: “Women, You Are Not Alone”? And Louise Brennan won her much-touted award because of the nation-wide campaign geared towards schoolchildren that she herself had fostered, “For Equality of Rights Within the Household”. Christy Owens specializes in helping trauma victims in her multi-million-dollar counselling business.

  Would any of them be doing the things that they’re doing today if I hadn’t helped them?

  So you can see, of c
ourse I’m justified in doing the things that I do. The women might not like it. But I have my reasons. And I do believe my ends justify my means.

  *

  Annasuya’s face wouldn’t leave my mind. She was the one who had gotten away. I’d failed to get my all-important message across to her.

  I wondered how I could get in touch with her. I had to finish my mission. I had to let her know.

  I couldn’t just ring up the temp agency and ask. I was sure they wouldn’t take too kindly to me anymore. Even if Annasuya hadn’t said a word to them, they didn’t seem too inclined to continuing their professional relationship with me. I hadn’t asked them for another worker to take the place of Annasuya, and they didn’t offer me one.

  Or perhaps Annasuya did tell them what I’d done to her. I rather doubted it. I’m not a woman, but I would imagine that if anyone had attacked me at work, I wouldn’t exactly be rushing off to announce it to the world. But supposing that she did say something to them. I, personally, would have found it hard to swallow. After all, at her age, I doubt that she was a virgin. What proof would she have had?

  No. If I had been her boss, I would have just dismissed her. Hysterics. Histrionics. Women are all the same. If you kiss them on the cheek in greeting, they’re off to the police to claim sexual assault. If you brush their hand as you walk past they say you mugged them. If you start rummaging through their desk trying to find a pen, they accuse you of trying to steal their wallet.

  Even so, I doubted the agency would release any personal information about Annasuya to me. I tried looking through the White Pages but there were only about fifty people named A. Adler in the phone book. Of course there was no one called Annasuya Adler listed.

  I had to find her. There had to be a way.

  Chapter 5

  One Saturday we decided to take Romeo downtown to ride on the Queen Street streetcars. I saw them virtually every day when I had work, but Romeo rarely got the chance to go down there. And he loved the streetcars. He loved to hear the hum (or rather, the unpleasant squeal) of the wheels as they ground against the rails. I rather thought they sounded more like a pig being decapitated, especially when the vehicle made a sharp turn. But be that as it may, Romeo loved it.

  He was crazy about the dinging bell. He got a kick out of watching cars and pedestrians scramble out of the way of the heavy tram with its fixed tracks and ungainly momentum that gave it priority on the roadways. It was a gorgeous spring morning and an unseasonably delicious breeze announced the imminent arrival of better times to our arctic world.

  “Don’t you hate living in a land where it snows seven months of the year?” Calvin asked as we bumped about on the crowded subway headed for the centre. “Makes me kinda glad my parents didn’t decide to move to Russia.”

  Calvin was from Jamaica. Even though he had left as a young boy, he still remembered sugar canes waving in the heat and balmy waves washing up on paradisiacal beaches.

  “Well, Calv, it’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?” I shrugged. “Where else would I live? I was born here.”

  We met up with my best friend, Lindsay, outside the Eaton Centre on the corner of Yonge and Queen. It had been weeks since we’d seen each other, and we couldn’t wait to get caught up. Lindsay greeted me with a hug. I thought she looked eclectic with a lime-green trench coat that swept down below her knees and a hairband covered with plastic daisies decorating her wispy, Meg Ryan curls. The one thing I could definitely mention about her was her unpredictability in style.

  “So where’d you get that coat?” I cried as we melted together.

  Her eyes gleamed as she glanced down at her new acquisition. She flounced the skirt playfully.

  “Can you believe it only cost me a dollar at my neighbourhood flea market?” she exclaimed gleefully. “You should come one day. It’s nothing like that staid old Forest Hill affair you’ve got up. The East End is so trendy and chic.”

  We studied each other over, then burst out laughing at the same time.

  “I’ve missed you,” said Lindsay. “We’ve got to get together more often.”

  We started strolling down the sidewalk.

  “How’s Miss Pussy?” I said.

  Lindsay grimaced.

  “Weeell. Don’t get mad, Annie, but... I had to change her name.”

  I gaped at her.

  “What did you say?”

  Lindsay held her ground.

  “I said I changed her name.” She waved her hands in the air. “Miss Pussy just didn’t rock my style. Sheesh, couldn’t you think of something more original?”

  I counted to three. There was no way I would have made it to ten.

  “Okay. So what do you call her now?”

  Lindsay giggled.

  “Chocolate Cake.”

  I nearly had a heart attack.

  “What?” I shrieked. “She’s white, for fuck’s sake. Well, black and white. She’s certainly not brown.”

  Lindsay grinned sheepishly.

  “Well, I couldn’t help calling her gato all the time,” she explained in a squeaky voice.

  “What’s that?”

  “Gato. You know I’m learning French, Spanish and Arabic at the local community centre. And gato was the word of the week when you gave her to me.”

  “And what’s gato?”

  “A cat,” Lindsay clarified helpfully.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “So. Why didn’t you just stick to gato? How did it go from gato to Chocolate Cake?”

  Lindsay shrugged.

  “The next week the word of the week in French class was gâteau. So I couldn’t help getting them mixed up.”

  It beat me what relationship there could possibly be between gato, gâteau and Chocolate Cake.

  “Well, you know gâteau is a cake,” Lindsay cut in even more defensively than before.

  “Yeah, okay, Linds. But, chocolate?”

  Lindsay giggled.

  “My favourite kind of cake.”

  I thought about it for a minute.

  “Okay. So what was the word of the week in Arabic class that week? Why didn’t you call my lovely cat that instead?”

  “The word of the week that week was arba. And I wasn’t going to walk around calling my new cat ‘four’.” She chuckled.

  I examined my fingernails. The garish, tinny black polish I had treated them to this week grated on my nerves.

  “Well, she’s got four paws. You could’ve called her Four Paws or something. Better than Chocolate Cake. Now you’ll probably want to eat her every time you see her.”

  Lindsay shook her head emphatically.

  “I do not want to eat my cat. She’s black-and-white. Not chocolate brown.”

  Romeo tugged at my arm as he gaped at a streetcar passing us for about the umpteenth time.

  “Mimi. Mimi. Do you know how many streetcars we’ve missed?” he cried in alarm.

  “Don’t worry, hon. They go by the whole day long.” I stroked his hair.

  Romeo squinted at the sky.

  “Well the day’s passing by real fast, Mimi. If we don’t get on one real soon they’re going to be all closed up.”

  I pulled my mobile out of my purse and glanced at the hour.

  “It’s not even noon yet,” I said.

  Lindsay made a face.

  “Well, Chocolate Cake’s not any worse than your son calling you Mimi all the time,” she goaded at me. “How did that get started anyways?”

  At our side, Calvin burst out laughing.

  “Mimi? Yeah, I wondered about that too.”

  I hugged Romeo’s wiggling form.

  “He used to call me Mami all the time when he was a baby. Not Mama or Momma. It had to be Mami. So I used to tease him and say Mimi Mami Momi Moo, or something silly like that. And for some reason, it was the Mimi that stuck.”

  Calvin stopped at a streetcar sign and planted his feet on the sidewalk there.

  “This looks like as good a place as any to get on,” he said.


  “Yeah! Yeah! And we’ll ride all the way to the end, then get back on and ride all the way to the other end.” Romeo started jumping up and down.

  “Let’s make it fast,” Lindsay said. “I’m starved.”

  I ground my foot against the floor.

  “Well, hang on, Linds. You won’t get to see any food for over an hour.”

  “Hey, girls. There’s an Indian down at the East End...” Calvin began while Lindsay started rocking her head about from side to side.

  “Not in my neighbourhood,” she said. “I want something downtown and cosmopolitan. Something that’s not so in my face every day. That Indian place is just around the corner from mine. How about—”

  At that instant I saw him.

  I started shaking hard. I nearly lost it. My whole being was just screaming at me to run from there as fast as my legs would take me.

  “What’s wrong, Annie?”

  Lindsay’s voice seemed to drift over me from a thousand miles away. Calvin studied me and followed my gaze towards the towering man dressed in khaki greens, carrying a styrofoam cup of coffee and idling along down Queen Street as happy as you pleased, as if he owned the world. He even dared to whistle.

  “The son-of-a-bitch. And he’s whistling! I bet nothing ever rocks his pleasant little fucking world. What I wouldn’t do...”

  I didn’t realize that I’d clenched my hands into fists by my side. Romeo only ogled at me. Calvin took off in a rush.

  “What are you doing, Calv?” I cried out, remembering what he’d said he would do if he ever met Bruno.

  Bruno, all unawares, disappeared calmly into the Queen Street subway station. Calvin tackled him as he walked through the door, spilling coffee and the contents of Bruno’s man-purse all over Bruno’s camo outfit. With an obviously fake smile, Calvin bent down and helped Bruno retrieve his personal effects from the floor. He returned humming with a smug grin.

  “So. His name’s Bruno Jarvas, is it? And he works at the Herbert and Mons Clothing Company on Bay Street. Some sorta Vice President? How many heads did he wrangle off to get that position?”