I wish to forget, yet it still haunts me as I prepare to take my last breaths. No matter how hard I try to run from it, it still chases me like a bad dream. The grisly acts flash before me, red, bloody, and violent.
Marta’s disheveled blonde curls are turned red from blood. So much blood. Her forehead is split open and little bits of brain matter litter the dirty pavement where she met her death behind the apartment we used to call home. Thanks to Pavel’s disgusting boot and fists, the only person that loved me is gone.
I try to forget as I teeter on the edge between life and death, but her face tantalizes me like the worst kind of nightmare. Why did Pavel hate her so much? He threw her to be eaten alive every single day by ferocious wolves, just as I was. Like mother, like daughter, we met the same kind of fate because we were trapped by the ugly. Gloominess followed us like an ominous cloud; we wouldn’t have been able to leave it even if we tried. There is no escape from what we live, not alive at least. The only way to leave is by death.
Why? A word I choose to not use, because there is never a fair answer.
Marta’s eyes stare at me like a dolly I always wanted. Beautiful, glassy, still, lifeless. Her parted lips seep the same kind of red liquid running from the gaping wound on her head that once supplied her body with a futile life. I watched my mother take it. She wanted to die. She wanted a way out of this hell on earth. She was a lamb that couldn’t survive the famished lions. Her life provided no faith for the better, because people like us do not change. We play the role we are given until we die.
My head aches as images of my mother dash before me again while I watch her receive repeated punches to the gut and smacks to the face. I see her being thrown over a dirty bed by one of Pavel’s drunk men to be fucked in the middle of a room. Yes, memories flood my dying brain. Why do I have to remember these things now? Why?
Madness swims about wildly in my head. I wish my body would make up its mind between life and death. Limbo is the worst place to be as anxiety consumes me, settling in every cell that I have. My mind sees the image of the man with no name sitting in the corner with a smug look on his face, puffing on his cigarette with those lips of his as he watches my mother get fucked up the ass by a Russian piece of shit.
Who is he? Is this a dream? Is everything melting together? I can’t tell the difference between reality, death, and a dream. I want to be free from the confines of this madness. From pain. From hopelessness. I want to leave the life that has molded me into a girl not capable of feeling. Because I felt once when my eyes met his. But I am falling and it is too late.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“You going to make it, girl. Don’t try and speak,” a deep, Polish accent says to me.
I can’t open my eyes. They are far too heavy, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. The flicker of fight is still alive and burning. I am angry as hell for that. Bright lights shine through my eyelids and the buzzing of florescent lights is giving me a headache. I try to open my mouth, but my chapped lips are stuck together and it feels like I have a million dry cotton balls in my mouth. I don’t try to talk, not because I trust the woman, but because I am used to being quiet and not using my words. I am good at following orders.
I try again to move my lips and successfully unclasp them from each other. I swallow, but no saliva is in my mouth. My scratchy voice unknowingly catches in my throat. I feel like I have eaten sand paper and my mouth burns like fire.
Fire.
Panic starts at my toes and slowly works its way to my belly, dancing around with dread then snaking its way and clamping around my heart, making it beat a million miles a minute. My breathing picks up to try to accommodate my increased pulse, but my exhausted body can’t handle it. I want to run, but my feet feel like they are blocks of ice, so cold, hard, and heavy. By instinct, I attempt to bring my hands between my thighs to feel how much damage was done. That is the only way I can live. I am useless without it. If I am fucked up down there, I might as well murder myself. I can’t survive any other way.
My wrists won’t move and my eyes won’t open. The strength that I thought I lost comes back with vigor. I yank on my hands again, realizing that they are restrained at my sides. Confusion overtakes me while the fight or flight response takes over. My crusted-over eyes open, the bright lights shine heavy above. I let myself scream out in pain, in terror, in so many other things.
“Shh, little girl. You fine! Please!” the Polish woman croons to me, stroking my forehead.
I don’t believe her. People lie. Real, good, genuine people don’t exist. People only pretend to be nice when they want something. Then they fuck you and leave you for dead.
My dizzy stare meets hers, but I can’t make anything out clearly. My head is confused and my eyes are those of a drunken person. I can’t focus as I try to release my wrists. I let out another blood-curdling scream, feeling the roughness in the back of my throat puncture and bleed. My eyes water and I cry. I cry out loud for someone that doesn’t exist. Someone that will save me. Someone that will love me. Someone that will understand me.
I don’t even love me.
I hear a Spanish man cursing in the background.
Is it him? Is it my savior? Has he come to save me?
I let silent tears escape my eyes because I do not care anymore. If I were to find death in a second, it would be great by me. The Polish doctor is yelling, but I can’t make out what is happening around me.
Fire. Burn, kisa. Burn, bitch!
Pavel dances around my distorted mind like the devil that I don’t wish to see. I scream out again, thrashing around in insanity and pain, praying for some solace to find me, but alone I lay.
Confused.
Isolated.
Aching.
And broken beyond repair.
“Lettie, calm down,” an unfamiliar man says to me.
I try to make out his face, but the tears in my eyes are thick. I only see a shadow. Part of me wants to believe that he won’t hurt me, but believing only causes pain. Pain causes sorrow. Sorrow causes death. Bring the goodbye. Bring my death.
My tears don’t cease. I am hoping for a reason for the man to strike me. Maybe I will end up like my mother, gashed open and gone. Forgotten. Surviving was the ultimate cruelty. I wanted to let go, but my body wouldn’t let me. I hate myself. I hate myself so much.
“Versed! Now!” the man calls out.
“Lettie, you be okay. You relax a bit, okay?” Why is she calling me Lettie? I’m Svetlana, not Lettie!
“No! No! No!” I yell, shaking my head from side to side, still trying to make out my surroundings. Everything is a jumbled mess. I can’t understand what is happening to me.
The rush of something cool makes its way up my arm and I relax into the softness. Is this a bed I am lying on? Ahh, a bed. They don’t have beds where I come from.
Cool weightlessness fills me. My tears slow, they never stop fully, but slow enough for me calm down and not fear the second before the other. I am lost, that much is true. There are too many things happening around me, but the lady gave me drugs to make me not care.
“Lettie?” the man bites out, calling me by a name I don’t understand.
I open my eyes and see a rugged, familiar man before me. But he isn’t him. He doesn’t even exude the same kind of power and softness that Mr. Dark and Dangerous did. He is different. So very different. He makes me feel unsure, but I have a feeling I don’t have choice in the matter.
Clarity finds me as his black eyes meet mine.
“Doctor, you have been dismissed.”
A sly grin emerges on his stubbled face. He rubs his chin pensively.
“Mateo, she just…”
“Fuck off. Get out.”
The steps echo until they are absent. Mateo starts walking toward me, taking his bottom lip between his teeth. I want haziness to find me again, because something about this seems wrong, so wrong, but something in my belly tells me I would enjoy it.
�
�Lettie,” he whispers.
I lick my lips because words don’t find me often. I blink to make myself stay awake as the faint feeling of sleepiness hangs in the background.
“I will watch over you now,” he says, grabbing his belt buckle and popping it free.
I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry. He continues to walk over to me until his hand reaches the stark white sheet. He slowly peels it away. I try to move my hands up to cover myself, but I remain restrained. His rough hands make their way to the top of my plain gown and he peels it down, leaving me bare breasted before him.
“Oh, fuck. So sweet. So fucking sweet. May I have a taste, Lettie?”
I try to tell him no, but I can’t speak. I feel myself slipping away back into a sleep that I do not wish for. Then he smiles, making my stomach dance to life again, making me understand that I am not broken. Maybe I do want him. No, no, this is wrong. He rubs his pink tongue over his plump lips while grasping his crotch.
“Oh, that’s right,” he pauses with a laugh, “You couldn’t tell me no even if you wanted.”
His hand reaches out, tickling the goose-bumps on my breast. I try to moan, but I am becoming paralyzed by the drug that was injected into my vein minutes ago. Clarity grasped for moments, only to be lost once again. Mateo bends his mouth down to my ear, flicking his tongue onto my earlobe.
“Don’t worry, niña. We can play dead dolly. I won’t tell anyone.”
His lips press themselves onto my neck, then down onto my breast until my nipple is in his mouth. His free hand takes my other breast and I am at the mercy of another. What will it take to be delivered to graciousness again? One day of goodness is all that I want, but my body responds. Takes it. Wants it deep down to its fucked up bones.
Then, like a welcome friend, I am consumed by a black void. The impoverished princess who was thrown into the fire was rescued, only to be delivered to evil once more.
Mateo
He danced and he played before pressing the knife to her vein. After her life was taken, he laid next to her knowing she couldn’t be shaken. Death was his friend because it would never leave. He could love the dead ones, too.
“Niño, come!” she giggled, running through the shadowed alleyway. My legs ran as fast as they could, taking me closer to the girl that had my heart.
“Ophelia, wait! Wait!” I screamed to my cousin, older than me by two years.
We wandered the streets aimlessly after drinking a fifth of cheap vodka and snorting low-grade cocaine. Being high was always something I enjoyed, but flying on the edge of contentment with those hips before me was too much. Not to mention my true feelings for her.
Love.
She had the face of an angel and her voice always made me feel safe. I loved her. Not like cousins do, but something more. At sixteen, I had already dropped out of school and was consumed by life of the streets. Her eyes sucked me in with an unavoidable force. My cock strained and peace is all I ever felt. Her hair was as black as night. Not the kind of night you see from the city streets in the Bronx, but the kind that you dream of in the middle of a field, counting the stars.
I looked at Ophelia differently since I realized what she did to my body, and my heart for that matter. Bad people were all that I knew. My mother never really loved me. She only tolerated me enough until I reached the age to get the fuck out and learn the ways of Hunts Point on my own. Sixteen was when that all started. Drugs, bad behavior, fuck school. The usual cycle that niños fall into in this piece of shit neighborhood full of false hopes and broken dreams. Violence and everything illegal is the only kind of life to lead here.
Ophelia was good, so good. Her heart was real and she always paid attention to me. I don’t think anyone before her ever really asked how I was, or realized I was alive unless it benefitted them; like my mother to increase her government assistance for food stamps, housing, and other shit that she didn’t need. When I became too much trouble for her, I was thrown out to deal with my own problems. When I was with Ophelia, it was as easy as breathing. She was the only kind of normal that I remember having. She never questioned me. I just was, well, me.
Until she ran.
Then everything changed.
But I would always love her.
I continued to run down an alleyway off Melrose with a smile on my face. My heart was full, so full, and beating out of my chest from the happiness and cocaine. But that day was the day that changed everything for me. The moments that happened soon after made me understand that I wasn’t chasing her, she was running from me. Maybe that is how it stuck in my already fucked up head, but how someone sees something and what really is are two different things. It doesn’t really matter when you are convinced that people run.
Because they do.
“Ophelia!” I yelled out once again, stopping for a second with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
I looked down and saw a piece of jagged stone. I picked it up and clutched it in my palm, not understanding what in the fuck I was about to do with it.
She was a feisty, fierce beauty. She turned around to face me, laughter still coming from her mouth. But I remember seeing something different on her face. She didn’t want me like I wanted her. Our eyes locked for an instant and she became frightened. She saw how I wanted her. And she ran again. Anger seeped from my innocent heart and bathed every cell, filling me with its fuckery. I would be stained for life. But what’s worse, I would grow to enjoy it, need it, and find myself going crazy without it.
With each passing step Ophelia took, she got closer to the edge of the desolate alleyway. I had reached my last chance to not let her run. My arm reached itself back behind my head as I gritted my teeth and clenched my jaw. How easy it was for me to go from love to hatred would never be understood. It never once made sense since, I only kept on with my cravings.
My eyes zeroed in on the back of Ophelia’s head, so perfectly round. Under her thick skull held her brain, full of secrets and fears. I would never know what those were. Her soft, black strands swept from side to side as she ran. I released my arm from behind my head, blinking back worry after the rough, jagged rock left my hand. Time stopped as everything went into slow motion. The gravel floated around in the air like a feather until it reached the back of Ophelia’s strikingly curved head.
I stood still, watching as her head cracked open. No screams came from her once giggling lungs. The only noise that filled the air was the usual buzzing of taxi cabs on the streets of Melrose and pedestrians going about their lives. Yet, we remained unnoticed. I can’t remember exactly how long I stayed there like that, I only know that I watched her fall and melt down gracefully.
Her body slumped over and a luscious red river started from the gash in the back of her head. When the blood finally met the tips of my used-to-be white sneakers, I walked over to the girl that I loved. The girl who cared about me when no one else did. But she didn’t care enough, because she ran. She wouldn’t stay. She would end up leaving like the rest of them. I didn’t plan on ending it like this. Many nights while I laid in bed, I thought about her warm body next to mine and how her tits would feel inside my hands. Then when I understood that I had killed her, that my Ophelia was dead and gone, she was more appealing to me than when she was alive.
Because she could never leave me.
I looked around to make sure no one was watching me. Fuck, I don’t think I would have cared if they were. It’s like an angel had fallen, hit her head, and laid herself to be mine at my feet. I bent down and turned her around to her back. Her skin had already started to cool beneath my hands and I remember how much I enjoyed that. Her once grinning face was in a permanent frown as her plump, pale lips begged to be kissed. Her black eyes stared at me in the face and started to turn glassy. She reminded me of the dolls I used to play with of my sister’s when I was little.
I didn’t even try to make sense of my thoughts. I only acted and it felt right. I leaned my head down to hers, my warm lips pushing against her co
oling ones. My cock hardened more than it was before and I took her cheeks into my hands, opening her flaccid mouth with my hungry tongue. I parted my lips from hers, breathless, making my way to her ear, “You can’t leave me now, Ophelia.”
My hands pulled down her tank top. I was pleased to find her bare under her shirt. I wasted no time and took her cooling nipple into my mouth, nursing it like she would have enjoyed. I continued to whisper Spanish endearments to her, ones that I know she would have cherished if she were still alive. But she wasn’t. She was dead and nothing else in my life seemed more right because she couldn’t run from me.
My hand made its way down to her cotton shorts. I snaked them inside to her pussy. She was dry, so I took my fingers out and sucked on them a while to wet them. Again, I fingered her pussy and she was colder than what she was before. It got harder to withhold my urge to fuck her.
I peeled her shorts away from her legs and opened them up. She looked too delicious not to taste. My watering mouth made its way to her pussy lips. I flicked and licked her clit like I knew she would enjoy. Then, it was about her, not me. Soon enough, I would take her and make her mine.
Completely.
I freed my cock and climbed up her body. I needed to see her eyes again, the ones that reminded me so much of the dollies that I used to play with when I was little. So still, calm, and gone. I had control. She was mine and no one could take her away from me. Then, I could make her love me. No more running.
I guided my hot, throbbing dick into her dead pussy. The feeling was too much and one that would never be lived up to again.
“I love you, always you, Ophelia. Now you can’t leave me. Now you cannot run.”
I rocked my hips deep inside of her, understanding that the kind of love that I found, the type that I needed couldn’t be found in normal places. No. Because I was fucked up. I was not a normal kind of boy.
The Goodbye Man (Red Market #1) Page 8