by Nikki Wild
And then I did.
And I almost went full panic mode.
But I settled down as I remembered the events of the previous day – of arriving at the bus station, of Mom picking me up and driving me back here…back where it all began.
A shudder slipped through my shoulders.
Reluctantly, I tossed off the threadbare scrap of a blanket, crawling off of the mattress on the floor. It was stiflingly hot and humid, and I didn’t like it.
Rising up and looking at myself in the cheap mirror that had been pulled out for me, I realized that I looked like a total mess.
Huge bags under my eyes? Check.
Ratty t-shirt and a pair of panties? Check.
Ragged, unwashed hair? Check.
Don’t I just look like a fairy princess.
I could hear scrounging about in the kitchen.
“You finally awake in there?” My mom called out from a few rooms away.
“Yeah, going to take a shower,” I replied back.
“Go on, then!” She shouted.
I stumbled over to the bathroom with a change of clothes, flicking on the shower. As I waited for the water to warm up a little more than arctic blast, I stared myself in the mirror.
This is what life is going to be like, I told myself. At least for a little while. I can always find another way once I’ve got my footing. Maybe I can hitchhike out to the city and find myself a job waiting tables.
I shook my head.
The last time I pulled that stunt, I got lucky. Things could have ended up so bad… Like with those bikers back at the bar…
Can I be lucky a second time? A third?
I doubted it. I’d used up most of my luck living this long.
Once the water was finally just warm enough to climb in, I settled into the shower. She only had a single bar of soap, so I tried to lather off the top layer before rudimentarily scrubbing down my body.
I needed it. The thin layer of oil and grime came off.
I’d only been in the shower less than ten minutes before the water starting turning bone-chillingly cold again. Shrieking and fighting the faucet, I hopped back out and dried off, then dressed myself in my underwear, a graphic tee, and my miniskirt. All I had were some of my old bartending clothes. At least I felt human again…
I wandered into the kitchen, where my mom was watching her soap operas on a small countertop set.
Mom glanced over at me and scowled.
“You look like a hooker.”
“It’s just hot in here,” I told her sadly.
“Yeah, well, the A/C still ain’t fixed. Get used to being hot. Speakin’ of, you used up all my hot water, didn’t’cha?”
“I wasn’t in the shower long, Mom,” I reassured her, moving towards the refrigerator.
“Now how am I gonna shower?”
“I thought you said you didn’t need it?”
“Are you back-talking me?”
Fearfully, I glanced over at her. Mom’s eyes were wide and calculating, and I was afraid that she was going to lash out at me.
“No, Mom. I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again, I swear!”
She glared at me furiously.
Finally, she huffed with a cruel smile.
“See that it doesn’t, baby-child.”
I nodded, and she turned her attention back towards her soap operas. Meanwhile, I scrambled as quietly but quickly as possible. She hadn’t gone to the grocery store or anything, so it was looking like breakfast was going to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Scratch that… Peanut butter sandwich it is.
I toasted a pair of bread slices and waited the two minutes in painful, awkward silence. When they popped out, she jumped slightly, casting me a scowl, and I apologized and slathered one side with peanut butter.
“You gonna just sleep all day?” Mom asked as I was disappearing through the door behind her.
“No, Mom.”
“Good. See that you don’t. I have a friend coming over later. I need your help.”
“Help?”
I turned towards her, and she tilted her head as if to continue talking to me. Her eyes were still glued to the countertop television.
“Yeah. This place is a mess. Maybe you could show your appreciation for the roof over your head by cleaning up a bit. Been hard to keep the house up with my disability...”
“Who’s coming over?”
Mom turned to me.
“Someone like none of your concern.”
I could feel myself trembling. I didn’t know who was coming, but something told me that I wasn’t going to like it.
Mom’s face sweetened with pity.
“Oh Angel…I’m sorry. It’s just…you’ve been gone so long. All those sleepless nights, afraid that you were dead…maybe I’ve forgotten how to be good to you. Come here.”
I set my sandwich down and padded over to her. She threw her arms open, and I bent down to hug her.
Her embrace was strong. Warm. Relaxing.
“There, there…I’m sorry that I’ve been a bit grumpy today. I can’t find my medication. I know it does things to me when I don’t take it…”
“It’s okay, Mom,” I told her.
“That’s right. It’s okay. It’s all okay.”
I nodded, and we separated.
“Now, I’ve got something for you to do. Something to help you pass the time, at least. I won’t be having any more back talk.”
Mom pointed towards the kitchen at the huge stack of filthy dishes overflowing in the sink.
“Clean that up like a good girl, then you can start on the rest of the house. Now, let me catch up on my soaps, and I’ll take you into town later to get you some groceries. That sound good to you?”
I nodded reluctantly.
It was hard to keep from feeling a little uneasy. Something about this place seemed wrong. Wisps of memories flashed in and out of existence, but my time in this house was a dark blur. Fear. Sadness. Hopelessness…
Amidst them all, the one dark memory of this place I could still hang onto… The one I wished I could forget…
The night I ran away.
Twenty-Nine
Trent
“You’re Angel’s grandfather?” I asked, thoroughly surprised. “She never said anything like that to me.”
Old Greg muttered under his breath as he popped off the cap and handed me a beer. With a deft maneuver, he effortlessly burst off the top to his own against the bar table.
“Ever since the accident, that’s one of those scraps of information she can’t seem to hold onto,” he grumbled. “Probably for the better.”
“She told me that she trusted you,” I commented.
For a moment, it looked like he might smile.
We sat in silence as Old Greg took a long drink. Over his shoulder, I saw something pinned up on the wall – a sheet of paper, heavily crumpled, and filled with the scratchings of a marker. It looked like a hasty note that had been squashed into a ball, then unfolded on second thoughts.
He followed my gaze.
“She left me a piss-poor excuse of a letter. I didn’t believe it at first, but when she wasn’t back the next morning, I knew it was true.”
“Why the next morning?”
His old chest sighed. “She’s walked out of here half a dozen times, but she always comes back.”
Old Greg glared at me for a moment.
“It’s hard to have your granddaughter almost taken from you. To watch her lay there, lifelessly in some hospital bed, barely clinging to life. You think there’s nothing worse in the world. Nothing besides death, at any rate… But then I got her back. She’s healthy as ever, getting better every day. Problem is, somehow, I’ve still lost her. She’ll never remember the times we’ve had together.”
He swigged from his beer, still glowering at me.
“And I’m a coward. I couldn’t tell her.”
“You didn’t tell Angel you’re her grandfather? What the hell is wr
ong with you?” I said.
“Some things are better left forgotten. That girl, she’s been through hell. Don’t want to go dredging up bad memories. That accident was a blessing in disguise. She was safe here, and now you’ve gone and lost her.”
“I’ll find her.”
“If I had keeled over these last few days you’d be fucked, and you know it,” he growled, pointing towards me with his beer hand. “Only reason you’re here is because you have no idea where else to turn.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, “and I know I’ve fucked up. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out, and I’ll keep it from happening again. But I’ll fight through hell and never stop searching until I find her.”
“And why the fuck is that?”
“Because I love her.”
Old Greg laughed heartily. It was a sarcastic, holier-than-thou laugh, and it gradually contorted into a horrendous coughing fit.
I jumped up to help, but he waved me away and drowned it out with the beer.
“You think you love her. What a fucking joke. You’re even more hopeless than I thought, dick-bag.”
“You don’t know me,” I reminded him tersely.
“Oh, I know you,” Old Greg chuckled, his breath rattling in his chest. “I know your type. You think you’re the hero in some bullshit romance, right? Just gonna swoop in and save the distressed damsel? Please.”
The old geezer was starting to seriously test my patience.
“If you’re not going to help, then just say so,” I demanded, crossing my arms. “But if you are, then we need to cut the shit now.”
He stood up, walking over to me.
“You saved her before, I recall. Bunch of drunken, horny bikers wanted to rape her. Tell me, fuckface, why haven’t you brought that up yet? Why not twist my arm with that? You know it would work, and you’re just wasting time…”
I stared this angry, sly bastard straight in his fiery, ancient eyes.
“Because if you are her grandfather, then you’ll never forget that. And I’m not going to resort to some cheap trick to convince you.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Look me in the eyes,” I told him, “and tell me to my face that I wouldn’t tear the world apart for her. Go on.”
Old Greg searched deep into my gaze.
The silence of the room was deafening.
Finally, his shoulders sagged.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Trent Masters. Of Trent Masters and–”
“I’ll tell you who you are,” he cut me off indignantly. “You’re a cocky scrap of shit. You’re a fucking arrogant piece of work who thinks you can walk into a broken girl’s life and just save her. As if it’s that fucking simple. This is my granddaughter. I’m not talking about some street urchin – this is my flesh and blood, and you…you’re used to getting your way. You don’t accept ‘no’. You can’t accept ‘no.’ You’re just some misguided force of nature who sweeps people up and leaves them broken in the dark, only this girl… She’s already broken.”
“That’s not who I am at all,” I told him confidently.
“Oh yeah? How many?”
“How many what.”
Old Gregg smiled evilly. “Don’t play stupid with me. I can smell the filth on you, boy. Before you met my granddaughter, how many girls did you chew up and spit out? How many girls did you leave when you were finished with them, cast aside in your wake?”
For the first time since coming to terms with my world and my place in it, my unshakeable core was suddenly rattled. It was only a second, but it happened.
And the motherfucker saw it.
“Yes…yes, I thought so,” he answered. “You thought you could just come to this place, drag her back down into the muck with you, and set her up for even more pain? You think I didn’t pin you for a sorry sack of shit from the start?”
“It’s not like that, old man,” I tried to argue.
“Sure it is.”
“It’s not!” I threw my beer with all my force, shattering it against the wall.
Old Greg didn’t flinch.
“Name one,” he finally spoke.
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t stutter, boy. If you ever gave a shit about any of the girls who came before her, why don’t you name one. Name one of your conquests. And don’t make up a name – I’ll know if you’re lying to me.”
I sat there, seething with anger.
Holy fuck.
He’s right.
Old Greg’s face slowly, surely contorted into a wide grin. “You can’t. You can’t name one fucking girl that you’ve coerced into that viper pit of a bed, can you?”
No. He can’t be right.
“You fuck and forget. My granddaughter wasn’t the first. There have been so many. And you think she’s the one with a goddamn memory problem?”
A parade of faces flew through my head.
Featureless husks.
I couldn’t remember their details.
Dozens of them.
No… It was more than that.
Old Greg stood up from his chair, confident in his complete victory over me. He coughed for a second, and then slid his beer – nothing but dregs now – over to me.
“This is what you are, punk. You’re the filth at the bottom of the bottle. You take what you believe belongs to you, and you distort it. You make it lesser. I can see it plain as day across your face. That is your legacy. You think I want my granddaughter to remember a sack of shit like you? You don’t even know her name.”
“Her name is Angel.”
“Oh yeah?” Old Greg toothily snarled. “Angel Who?”
I stared deep into the next table over. I knew her name… It was Angel… Angel………. Fuck.
He’s right, I repeated to myself.
This is who I am.
I’m going to hurt her no matter what I do.
Old Greg brushed up the shattered beer, dropping it into the garbage. He poured himself a glass of water, gulping it down thirstily before finally turning back to me.
“215 Wilde Grove Drive. Beaten up old house, green, tucked away behind the trees. Dirt driveway. If you pass the tree with the old tire swing, you’ve gone too far.”
I looked at him incoherently.
“She ain’t here, which means she’s there. It’s the only other place she knows.”
“Why are you…why are you helping me?”
Old Greg leered close to me, his rotting breath invading my nostrils.
“Because I’m a dying old man, you sack of shit. Because sometimes – just sometimes – people change. You’ve already gone down swinging for her sake, so I think you have the capacity for that. If you do…then you’re my best chance at keeping that girl happy and safe.”
I stood up from the table, coming to terms with the insights that this arrogant geezer had given me.
I hated them.
I hated him.
But as much as I hated to admit it, the old decrepit fucker in this ramshackle little bar was right.
“But that ain’t the whole reason.”
I turned to him, catching his cold and calculating eyes.
“If she’s there…Angel is in danger.”
Thirty
Angel
I’m not sure how long my stepfather had been abusing me. The time prior to the accident was a complete blur, and probably always would be. When I first saw Roger in my hospital room afterwards, I didn’t know who he was…
…But I knew that I was very afraid.
I was high on morphine the first night he came to my bedside, my mind firmly half in and half out of this world. It would be weeks before I could talk, and months before I’d take my first walk across the hospital room. Maybe he thought I was damaged forever… Maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember, or that I didn’t realize what was happening to me. The sick fuck thought he could get away with it.
The bastard did what evil men always do.
; He took advantage.
Thank god that I was in a moderately monitored hospital room. Nurses were in and out, keeping a lazy eye on me but never around enough to rattle his confidence. Still, I knew that if I’d gone into outpatient care at home, he probably would have been far more dangerous.
But that still didn’t stop him from doing what he could get away with. He saw me. He sometimes took pictures of me. He touched me, splintering my fragile, drugged mind into shattered, dirty pieces.
My memories didn’t ever really come back, and I know it’s because of him. My bastard stepfather descended upon me while my brain was trying to put everything back together. If I hadn’t been so focused on forgetting what he was doing to me, maybe I would have pulled my former life back... but while the memories were gone, so too were most of the nights that he came to visit me, his mind sick with desire.
He didn’t leave marks. No tell-tale hickies pocked my skin, and no scratches or obvious signs of abuse were left for the right nurse to discover.
I kept quiet. I was too weak. When I started to show signs of life, he made one thing very clear. If I told anyone about our relationship, he’d kill me.
The safety of the hospital couldn’t last forever. Roger made it crystal clear how much my medical bills cost this family, and how I was going to repay the debt…
However, I got a lucky break.
At the time, Roger worked as a roundabout on a freighter. The life was rough, paid very well, and took him away for small stretches: three weeks on, one week off. It just so happened that my first night back coincided with an off-season shift too lucrative for him to pass up, and so he couldn’t bring his sexual tension with me to its inevitable conclusion.
Mom kept me on my anxiety medication. She told me that I babbled “nonsense” about abuse while I was under, but I couldn’t blame her for not taking me seriously. After all, people say crazy stuff under medication… even if sometimes it’s dangerously true.
From the beginning, I started fighting the effects the drugs had on me. In brief moments of clarity, I knew that the clock was ticking, and I’d have no strength to fight him when he finally came back for me. By the time his last week was almost over, my strength was enough that I could concentrate… and I knew what I had to do.