by Mark Henwick
A camera, hung from cables above, swoops out of the darkness like a raptor come to catch her. Fay is suddenly ten feet tall on the screens, rocking her hips against Stetson Boy in time to the music.
She sees the image. She laughs, turns around and pushes him away with her butt, trying to get the camera to focus just on her. It works for a second, and then the screens go back to showing the promo. Fay pouts.
It’s all in fun. No talking. No thinking. Living in the moment.
I don’t need to think about what I have to do tomorrow or the day after. That’s a blessing.
After an hour or so, we take a break.
I manage to get a drink of water and then someone thrusts a bottle of beer into my hand. Everyone downs theirs and heads back onto the floor. I follow.
A couple of repeats of that, then, acting on some kind of herd instinct, we decide it’s time for dinner. We pile out of the club and into the nearest Mexican restaurant for salty, spicy food and pitchers of cold beer.
By this time, we’re all flushed and loud and dizzy, but some of the others are drunk.
I’m worried about the drivers. Tanner seems sober, but maybe it’s time to split.
He talks me out of it. A few drift off. Most of us head back to Tanner’s house rather than the club.
Tanner’s house. Wow.
His parents have let him convert the basement to a mini version of the club. Full-on DJ music system, speakers, a wall of plasma screens, disco lights, a bar with drinks.
We dance into the basement and start from where we left off at the club.
Tanner works the music and his choice is different from the club. Not being in the right scene, I’ve never heard of this stuff. Band names like Delirium and Transcending Knights. Heavy on dance beats and light on lyrics.
I don’t know them, but everyone else seems to. There are yells of appreciation for each new number.
It’s smaller than the club, so it’s just as tightly packed, even if some of the people I know from school didn’t make it back here. Others drift away as I dance on.
The promo video stuff is slick and weird at the same time—repetitive clips of scenes that almost seem to make sense before looping back, over and over, until I stop wondering what they mean.
Tanner hands over the music to someone else and he’s dancing with me. Not just next to me. Definitely with me. He’s brought a couple of beers and I swallow mine in a few long pulls.
Is this a date, then? Have I just scored a date to the prom? A boyfriend? Me?
Then there’s a new song and light show, and I stop thinking about anything else.
There’s a crash of thunder, and I half expect it to blend into “Riders on the Storm,” but this one’s a slower start, a half-tune, with two or three chords that sort-of promise a melody before repeating. A quiet, frantic drumming that’s distant, gradually getting closer. A robotic voice cycling through a couple of lines. A swirling video loop that looks as if it’s from a Japanese Sci-Fi cartoon. It’s difficult to get into the dance, but everyone else is excited.
Then there’s a bass beat like a herd of buffalo stampeding down the stairs. It makes my legs shiver and my stomach feel loose. The half-tune comes thundering back, powered like an old steam engine, and the floor erupts, carrying me and Tanner with it.
I feel lightheaded—as if I can dance myself off the floor.
Everyone’s amazing. I love them all.
Too soon, it seems to be fading to an end, but I can feel that the rest of them know better. They dance on to the vanishing beat, hands above their heads. A couple near us have their eyes closed, and they’re frowning as if it’s really important that they don’t lose that rhythm for a second.
The mournful sound of the high plains wind takes over. A single, distant tambourine chinks.
The screens go bright and featureless; then the white-out darkens to reveal two women, naked and motionless in the desert, hands across their chests and facing out into the dance floor. Their eyes are closed. The only thing that moves is their hair in the wind. The light drops and drops until the women are little more than outlines.
A red light begins to pulse right in the middle, between their shadows. Someone shouts. People clap in time to the light. Faster. Looking at the light is like looking into a deep, spooky well. I feel dizzy. I can see something rippling up through the blackness. Someone groans. It’d be funny, but it’s hooked me, too. I’m leaning towards it, willing whatever it is to bring back the beat.
It does. The plasma wall explodes with rainbows. Sound thunders up through our bodies. It all flows together, catches me up. It feels so good. Better than that. Perfect.
Welling up through me. Everything is good, everyone is my friend.
It’s just so right.
Then Fay is on screen. There’s a camera up in one corner of the room. It doesn’t swoop in like at the club, but it still zooms in on her. She’s dancing, and she does it well, drunk or not. When she notices, she laughs and plays to it, strutting and stroking.
Stetson Boy is dancing with her. He’s good, too, matching her lead. He still hasn’t got a shirt, and then suddenly, neither has Fay. She tosses it aside and sends the bra after it.
Even over the music I hear shouts of approval and encouragement.
I don’t know what to think of it. It’s her body. She chose to do that. That means she’s empowered, right? That sounds right and feels wrong. Or is that me?
She is beautiful. And Stetson Boy is handsome. Those are some abs he’s got.
They get all over each other.
Did I see her take a look around? Is she putting on a show for someone in particular?
Tanner?
The guy from the MPV is with them too. The one who has a job. Working Guy. Whatever. He reaches around her and cups her breasts in his hands.
They’re laughing, so I guess it’s okay.
Everything is good.
Then she’s kissing them.
I stumble. Lost track I guess. Serves me right.
Tanner catches me. It feels good with his arms around me. It feels very good.
We’re still moving with the music, but we’re off at the edge of the dance floor.
There aren’t any chairs, just a bench where the drinks were stacked. Bare now.
Did we drink all that?
Stupid thing to be thinking of when Tanner kisses me.
I don’t know what to think of that either. He’s everyone’s heartthrob, sure, but if this is a date, it’s our first date.
So what?
He’s good. Not that I’ve had boyfriends to compare him with.
His hand is on my breast.
“Feels good, huh?”
I don’t know what to say.
Yes. Everything is good. Everything is warm and glossy: the touch of his hand, his teeth on my ear.
He groans something and his hand slides from my breast to my belly.
I can’t push him away; if he wasn’t holding me, I think I’d just melt into the table top.
Someone else is yelling something.
“Just sit here. I’ll be right back,” he says.
There’s movement across the room, but my eyes can’t seem to focus.
Some guys are going up the stairs. Cheers. High fives as they go.
Leaving?
It’s not making any more sense than the stuff on the plasma screens and I’m not feeling so good now.
There’s something wrong, but I can’t process it.
Can’t see clearly.
I rub my eyes and look down. Damn. My shirt is hanging open.
Something about the dance crowd. All my new dance friends. There’s something that’s changed.
No girls left in the basement.
Shit. I know this is bad, but I can’t think why. They’re all my new friends, aren’t they?
I need the bathroom.
There’s one off to the side. I make it to the toilet and I lose everything from the whole evening down the bowl.
I drink the water out of the faucet until I vomit again. Again. Again.
There’s noises. Music still playing outside. Hammering on the door.
Put my whole head under the faucet.
I know I have to get home. This is not drunk. This is something else. Home. How?
I open the door and stagger out of the bathroom, knowing there was somewhere I had to go, but the lights are too bright and everything’s so loud.
“Whoa!” Tanner says. I’m sitting on the floor for some reason, and he picks me up.
He’ll take me home.
I have to ask him. I can’t say it.
“Please,” I try to say, but all that comes out is a sort of croak.
“I understand. It’s all fine,” he says. His voice is soothing. “Oh, man, this is going to be so good. This stuff is fantastic.”
He’s putting me down on my back. That’s better. It’s soft and comfortable, but it’s not his car. I’m still in the basement. Why am I still in the basement?
So bright.
Why are the lights so bright?
And I’m cold.
Where are my clothes?
There are guys here. They can all see me. I try to cover myself, but I can’t move my arms or legs. Something’s holding me.
“Oh, yeah,” someone says. “Look at that.”
Tanner. His grinning face is right in front of mine. Sweat on his face. Eyes bright and manic.
Lot of shouting. Close up! Close up!
There’s a huge, shiny eye, like an insect near my face. A camera. A face on the flickering wall behind it—huge, confused, shocked.
“Fuck, yeah,” Tanner yells, and the big face winces.
He licks my cheek.
Then there’s a pain in my groin and I’m trying to scream and the big face on the screens is twisted and twisted and it can’t be me.
It doesn’t stop. I black out. I keep coming to and it’s still happening.
Pain.
And it won’t stop. It’ll go on forever.
I will never be free of this.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“That is your fear speaking.” Speaks-to-Wolves with Martha’s face sits opposite me again, smoke curling around her. “You are free of what happened to you when you choose to be free of it.”
When I choose.
“It is not easy, child, but it is your choice.” Her voice is firm.
I have been free of it.
“You have hidden it inside you. That is not free. That is as wrong as the way you first tried.”
The way I first tried. I could remember that. Yes, I knew that was wrong. Very wrong. Not just for me.
“Good,” she says. “Now, go and live it again. Wear it down, like water dripping on stone. And then you must find the way to turn it all into power. You must find the way forward. Only you.”
The way forward.
There’s a word living in the beat of my heart, pulsing through my veins, but it makes no sense.
Redemption.
Why would I need redemption? This was not my fault. I refuse to accept that.
Redemption. Redemption. Redemption.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
The basement is empty and silent. The sound system has been turned off. The plasma screens are cycling through screensavers.
I roll my aching body off the mattress and dry heave onto the floor.
There’s blood on me. Dry spit. Beer. Scratches.
Used condoms litter the floor.
I heave again.
I know what’s happened, but it’s all blurred and fragmentary. Like the picture a jigsaw would make if you forced the pieces back together the wrong way.
My clothes are tossed to one side. I drag myself over and try to put them on, staggering and falling several times.
I must get out. Get away.
They mustn’t see me. I mustn’t see them. The knowledge will be in their eyes forever. I can’t stand the thought of them looking at me like that. Whore, they’ll say. Whore. I never knew it had such an ugly sound.
My hands are shaking too much. Shame. Fear. Disgust. It’s stopping me from getting my clothes back on.
So, I must have no shame. No fear. No disgust. As if it never happened.
Thinking that helps. I get my jeans on, fumble with shoelaces.
Have to tie them. I need to run.
No emotion. Nothing. None.
Better. My fingers now manage to tighten the laces.
A deep breath. No fumbling.
I pull on my shirt and jacket.
Dressed, I creep up the basement stairs.
The hall is empty.
I can hear them above, in one of the bedrooms on the second floor.
No emotion. Get out. Get away. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Survive. Nothing else matters.
I open the front door and run away.
Numb. But even after I creep into my house and scrub myself until my skin is raw, I can’t erase the sight of them standing around me, looking at me, pointing and jeering and yelling. Whore. Whore. Whore. It’s like a whip. It’s like being beaten.
Chapter 6
“You never told anyone?”
I blinked. I’d nearly missed the question. I’d slipped back into reliving the last session in my head. It had been twelve days since we’d first visited the basement of the Forsythes’ house, and we’d just done it again. Twelve days of wearing it down every day.
It hadn’t been as bad as the first time, but that was still enough to leave me feeling dazed as well as exhausted.
Bad habit, not concentrating. Gotta break that.
“No,” I answered.
Too brief. Too unresponsive.
I cleared my throat. “Once I buried it, it seemed easier to let it stay buried.”
Diana and Bian sat with me, cross-legged on the floor.
They were careful what they said after a session, but I knew what they were thinking—really bad idea to bottle it up like that.
Well, it was un-bottled now.
Was it any better?
I’d barely thought of Forsythe in ten years, outside of the odd nightmare, quickly suppressed. Now, he was with me all the time, like a phantom at the edges of my sight.
When I stopped and thought of him, the first word was always how? How could he have done that to me? How could he have gone back to school the next day as if nothing had happened? How could he fool everyone into thinking he was such a great, cool guy?
From there it descended. What did he think of me? Did he realize I was a person? Had he been mentally damaged in some way that made him do that?
Was it my fault?
No!
“Enough of the past,” Diana said, interrupting my thoughts.
She waited until my heart rate settled. “This therapy has two distinct stages, though they may overlap. The first is contained in the reliving sessions we’ve been doing.” She paused and waited while we all took several quiet breaths. “Those sessions require helpers: xenagia, the guide, and stirythes, those who walk the paths with you and lend you their strength. We’re needed until those experiences we relive with you no longer have power over you.”
I knew what had to come second.
“Then you have to be alone.”
Despite knowing it was coming, my heart skipped a beat. I’d come to count on the strength of many in facing those memories.
Speaks-to-Wolves: You must find the way forward. Only you.
“Only you can bring this to a conclusion,” Diana unknowingly echoed Speaks-to-Wolves. “Only you will be able to choose exactly how to go forward so that everything that has happened will be a source of strength and not weakness.”
I hadn’t thought of it as ever being a strength. On my own, I’d first tried to disconnect from all my emotions. That had been wrong. Then I’d tried to bury it at the bottom of my mental strongbox. That had worked surprisingly well until Obs decided to use my own strongbox to bury what they’d done to me. All t
hat coming apart had been what had driven me rogue.
As I’d become aware during the last two weeks of therapy, my hope had been to neutralize what had happened to me, make it not matter. To erase it even.
But to turn it around, to make it a strength? What did that need?
Be all Zen and simply let it go? Rip Forsythe’s throat out? Prosecute him in court?
A strength? How?
Diana was watching me closely.
“I don’t know what it needs,” I said.
“We don’t expect you to, right away. Think of it as a discovery you will make.”
“It feels…” I frowned and closed my eyes, tried to capture something elusive that shimmered just beyond reach. “It feels as if it isn’t that simple.”
“It’s natural to be concerned,” Diana said.
That wasn’t it; not exactly. It was as if there were two sides to this question of strength, or two elements to it. As if there was something inside and something outside.
I opened my eyes. Bian leaned forward to speak, but Diana put a restraining hand on her arm.
Diana and Bian didn’t completely agree about my therapy.
I knew that. Bian had asked a question after the first difficult session. I’d been upset by it, but today my mind seemed to slip away from focusing on what that question had been.
I knew why. In the same way I might have been sedated in hospital, back when I was human, Diana had put some light boundaries in my mind to stop me from ruining the progress we’d achieved. A form of compulsion.
I knew all that; in fact, she’d asked my permission first. It seemed sensible, but now I was starting to question it. When did I get rid of it? How could I trust anything I thought I knew while it was there?