Guardian Girl (The Chronicles of Staffordshire)

by Simmons, NC

  Lena lifted her head and smiled. “Freaky, Baby... I forgive you so easily because…” She cried. “…Because I love you so much.”

  An ironic note caught the Wild Child’s attention. In her effort to tiptoe Lenore back through her dissociative delirium, Lena created the embodiment of unbreakable love. Lena lifted her head and looked around the bed, at their arms and legs and the giant “X” they formed together.

  “You know what, Freaky Baby? Look at us. Look at the way we’re hooked to each other here, trapped in this bed. We’re not trapped here because we can’t get free. Either one of us could have unhooked and walked away any time we wanted to.

  “We’re trapped here because it feels good to be tied together. You have half the chains. I have half. We’re still here because we want to be here, Lenore. Nobody’s stopping us from breaking free. We’re stopping ourselves. Lying here with you like this… It feels like… Like we’re one body. Like we’re one soul. And it feels… Oh God… It feels…”

  Lena’s happy tingle was back. Millipedes raced up her legs. “Oh my God… What am I feeling? What’s happening to me? Not now! Not in the freaking chains! Ohhh… Wow! WOW! Holy shit!”

  “Lenore… This feels…” Lena closed her eyes and shivered. The horny little critters raced across her ass and up her back. “God, Lenore… Oh my God…” She instinctively rolled her hips and pressed their muffs together. Lenore instinctively pressed back and ground their clits.

  In choosing to be bound to Lenore, Lena finally understood the power of the shackles, why a foolhardy lover might willingly submit to their captivating power. “Lenore… If you ever want to do what we’re doing right now… Splitting a set of shackles between us… I think…”

  “Damn it! Why do I like this feeling? Why do I love this so much? Am I just as sick as Lenore?”

  Lena whispered her confession. “I will do this again with you.” She surged forth. “No, Lenore, I want to do this again with you! I love this, the way we’re tied to each other! In a totally sick way, Freaky Baby, I think… I think…” Lena closed her eyes and cried. She rested her head cheek to cheek with Lenore. “Lenore, this is the most complete I have ever felt in my whole life! I could do this every night for the rest of our lives just to feel the way I feel with you right now.

  “My God, Lenore! You… You’re me! And I’m… I’m you! My God, Lenore! You’re me and I’m you!”

  Lenore clung to Lena’s head with her free arm as the twisted glory of their captivity settled in. Yet again, she attempted to wrap her captive arm and leg around the Wild Child. The freaky attorney uncorked.

  “Lena! I cannot take this anymore! Unhook my chains! I will unhook yours! I must hold you with both of my arms or I will go insane!”

  The women fumbled to release each other from their chains, leaving the cuffs buckled to their wrists and ankles. Once free, they rolled back and forth on the bed together, hugging, kissing, reveling as two women bound to one sloppy soul, messy psychological schisms and all. Soon, they settled their crazed embrace and rested, Lena lying against Lenore’s side as in the old days, the horny, freshman supermodel holding the cuddling, adoring tennis pro nestled in the crook of her arm.

  “Lena… I know I keep saying it, but please… Never leave me.”

  Lena stroked Lenore’s super-erogenous tummy to reconnect with the placid side of Lenore’s turbulent soul. She played “cricket” with their legs. “Just relax, Freaky Baby. It's okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But how can you ever trust me again? I don’t know if I trust myself after what I did to you tonight!”

  “Lenore… The woman who tried to hurt me was trying to punish herself, not me. Somewhere way down inside, something made you use me to punish you. That person was ready to say anything to get me to kill her. But now that we know she’s out there, I think we have Mrs. Hyde under control.”

  For an instant Lenore considered confessing, sharing a childhood trauma too gruesome to relive. She kept the memory safely locked away for more than 10 years, shackled to the walls of her mind’s nightmarish playroom. Through all of their years together, the daily safety of Lena’s arms drove the memory into the shadows. But if it could escape and consume her so easily…?

  “But how can you be so sure, Lena? How do you know I will not lose my mind like that again?”

  “The truth is I can’t be sure, Freaky. I can’t be certain you'll never lose it again. But I can’t be certain I won’t lose it like that again, either. And I know that whatever it is that's hurting you is still inside you. It breaks my heart to know that I can’t fix whatever it is that’s hurting you.

  “But because I know that woman is hiding inside you, I’m never going to give her a chance to peek her ugly head around the corner. I can’t get rid of her for you, but I sure can smother the hell out of her with love. I’m going to double up on every opportunity I get to fill that beautiful heart of yours with love. Together we’re going to push that crazy bitch straight out the door.

  “Besides, Freaky… My new racket is out of the bag and I’m ready to swing if that sick bitch gets out of line again!”

  Lena’s gallows humor lightened Lenore’s mood. She smiled. “Lena, I still do not understand why you love me. I feel so evil sometimes. I feel like I have burdened you so many times with my childish outbursts. With Rory… With you… Why do you still love me after so many incidents?”

  Lena snuggled her face against Lenore’s breast, kissing her delicately on the nipple. “Because, Lenore, even when I think about all your ‘incidents,’ for eight years you’ve wrapped me up in your arms every night and taken away every one of my pains as if they were your own. That 'monster’ heart of yours sponged up every one of my tears every time I came home crying after I blew a tournament or bombed a test or lost a case. You never asked for anything in return from me, Lenore. Never.

  “Wellll…” With her free hand Lena tapped her cheek and rubbed her chin. “There was that one time when you seduced the shit out of me at Harvard...”

  Lena lifted her head and growled at Lenore. Lenore grimaced and offered an embarrassed giggle.

  “So for all the meltdowns I’ve had in all our years together, and all the times you stayed up with me until all hours of the morning after my pathetic, fucking forehand failed me yet again…”

  Another sound fragment exploded in Lenore’s ears. Lenore had done the unthinkable. She had used Lena’s own, confidential words against her. She insulted Lena’s game.

  “Oh God, Lena! Did I say that to you? I am SO sorry! I did not mean it! Your forehand is fantastic!”

  With icy cool composure, Lena defused Lenore’s hysteria. “Shut it, Lenore. Really. Just shut up and listen. It’s okay, sweetie. I was trying to break the ice a little and give you a huge compliment. I was just trying to say… I mean, I know I fucked it up… But I was trying to say, ‘I love you, Freaky Baby.’ So just shut up and accept it, okay? I’m insanely in love with you, Lenore. I think I’ve been in love with you since before I was born. I’ll be in love with you forever, Freaky.”

  With another kiss, Lena took a turn at healing her cratered heart. “But you know what, Freaky? After everything you said earlier, I feel like… Like I need to get a few things off my chest. My head’s exploding after everything that just happened here and… I can’t talk to anyone else about this shit. Do you think you can handle that? Can you hold it together while I do a little therapy with myself? And I promise I won’t call you a ‘has-been’ or… GASP!… A ‘hag’.”

  Lenore laughed at Lena’s invocation of Rory’s favorite “naughty time” trigger. “I think I am ready, Wild Child.”

  “Good. Now here’s the thing, Lenore… Mrs. Hyde said all that stuff to make me angry, but I’ve said it to you a thousand times after I blew a quarter or a semi. I’m really not ashamed to say my forehand is shot. I used to pretend it was good enough to get the job done, but I can’t anymore. I’ve been compensating for my shitty forehand since… Well… Since I wa
s a kid. If it weren’t for my killer backhand and my awesome tits and my sweet, sexy ass I never would have won a single major or showed up on a single magazine cover or had millions of teenage boys masturbating to a poster of my smokin’ butt in a string bikini.”

  Lena heard a hearty laugh come from the freaky supermodel. “And I masturbate to that poster, too, Wild Child!”

  “Sweetie, you’re so horny you’d masturbate to a poster of Colonel Sanders.”

  “Colonel who…?”

  “Never mind. Let’s stay focused on me for a few minutes, okay Freaky? Look… Mrs. Hyde was right. The fucking Czech’s coach did say I can’t return service from the right. So all of that is true. It hurts to think about it because I’m such a frigging perfectionist, but it’s really nothing new. I mean, I’m still out there swinging… And it still feels good to have a ranking, even if I’m one notch above a black hole.

  “But it's a damn good thing I have a real career to fall back on or I’d be in deep shit. The younger players are just too strong and too fast for me. I mean… I knew it was going to happen someday, but not this young! Hell, that freaking Yugoslavian kid took me apart last month and she just turned 16! I was never that good when I was 16! God, I hate that kid so much! She’s so fucking cute and so fucking sweet and… She just makes me want to puke! You watch, Freaky… That beautiful kid is going to win a couple of Grand Slams before she…”

  Lenore yawned. Lena refocused.

  “Anyhoo… I just don’t have the hunger anymore. I haven’t put in a solid, uninterrupted practice session in three weeks. I haven’t aced a single game or taken straight sets in over a year. I'm living off my rep and you know me, Freaky… That’s not how I roll.

  “So I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to be a hot-shit attorney. I’m ready to find a man of my own who’ll fill my pussy with a big, fat cock and load up my sexy oven with a baby…”

  Lenore indulged Lena’s need to purge. The Wild Child needed closure. Her wounds needed binding. Lenore brought Lena’s palm to her face and kissed it, saying everything she needed to with her touch. The Wild Child drew a long, cleansing breath and released a soothed exhale.

  “The truth is I had a pretty good run with the racket, Freaky. I hit my stride when I was 15, I had my sweet ass up on 7 million walls by the time I turned 19, and I got as high as number four in the entire world before I became a mere mortal. And I made it through Paulson and Harvard with honors, even IF my fucking idiot supermodel roommate THREW HER FUCKING GPA!”

  Lena propped up on her elbow, got right in Lenore’s face, and growled again. An embarrassed grin, then a peck on the lips, greeted Lena’s playful irritation. She settled her head back to Lenore’s chest. With a broad smile and lick of Lenore’s left nipple, Lena delivered a gleefully condescending jab.

  “And the last time I checked our portfolios, I’m STILL worth $4million more than you, ya frigging hip-wiggler! So SUCK IT, Freaky!”

  Lena got another giggle from her badly bent babe.

  Lenore slipped her fingers between Lena’s shoulders and ran them up through the Wild Child’s long, dark strands. Lenore stroked Lena’s hair and laid kisses on her forehead. Smiling contentedly in the freaky supermodel’s arms, Lena sighed and closed her eyes, remembering the way her oh-so-Italian, teddy bear father sent her off to sleep each night. A kiss to her forehead, a few strokes of her hair, and a quiet chorus of, “Volare.”

  Lena smiled as she relived the magical aromas of her father’s bake shop located just a couple of blocks down from the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore. She loved the way he always brought home the store’s sweet scents on his clothes each night. A freshly stuffed cannoli awaited Lena at the front door every night after four, exhausting hours of tennis practice. Her father always had a hand-made, chocolate iced, double-dutch chocolate mini-cake ready for her just in case she racked up a magical, twenty-ace streak during service practice. She usually got the present anyway, even if her service practice was only average.

  Lena drooled a little on Lenore’s chest. “Mmmmm… Daddy still makes a damned fine cannoli, Freaky. We have to take Rory down to the shop sometime. Daddy would totally freak out if Rory St. Cloud walked in and ordered a case of Sardi’s cannoli’s to go…”

  Lenore smiled and shook her head. “You were saying something about becoming a mortal, dear?”

  “Sorry. Anyhoo… I guess what I was trying to say is this… For a baker’s daughter from Ball-mer I’ve had a pretty nice life. I really can’t complain, even if I’ll never, ever be on the cover of SI again. So I guess what I’m really trying to say is this… Mrs. Hyde really didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. She just made me feel like shit when she said it.”

  Lenore laughed nervously, not recalling every word of her mind-bending trip, but getting Lena’s point. Lena loved her. For reasons Lenore would never understand, Lena forgave her. The Wild Child would never abandon her, no matter how crystalline her psyche.

  “Lena, I promise you… Somehow… Someday… I will kill Mrs. Hyde.”

  “As long as you don’t kill my gorgeous Freaky Baby in the process, I am totally fine with that, Lenore.”

  “Thank you, Lena. Thank you for staying with me when I go mad. I still do not know why you do it. I do not know why you stay with me when I am such a sick woman. If I were you… I would…” Lenore sniffed. “I would leave me.”

  Lena gave Lenore a quick kiss to a tit and patted her on the shoulder. “Stay here for a minute, Freaky. Don’t move.”

  Lena climbed off the bed and moved around the apartment, turning off lights, checking locks, and closing doors. She returned to the bed, switched off the light on the nightstand, and cuddled into Lenore’s side. Lena grabbed Lenore’s wrist and kissed the still-attached cuff. She turned her head and craned her neck to kiss Lenore’s cheek, pulling up the covers and closing her eyes for the night. Sighing contentedly, Lena reassured Lenore of her worth in the world.

  “Do you really want to know why I stay with you, Lenore?”

  Lenore’s eyes filled. “Yes, Lena… I need to know. I meant what I said. I would… I would leave me.”

  “I stay with you, Lenore, because I know I will never meet another person who loves me as completely and unconditionally as you do. When I’m in your arms I feel like a superhero. When I’m not in your arms, I feel like a zero. And besides… You may be a sicko, but after how I behaved tonight that makes two of us. So let’s be sickos together for eternity squared, okay?”

  “Eternity squared…” Lenore mulled. The math geek smiled. “I like that.”

  “I thought you would, ya fucking GPA-thrower.”

  “Lena…”

  “Yes, Freaky Baby?”

  “I love you so much.”

  “I love you so much, too, Lenore.”

  Lena did a quick glance at their cuffed wrists and ankles and shook her head.

  “Ya know what, Freaky…?”

  “What, Wild Child?”

  “Just keep the goddamned cuffs out on the nightstand. We’re staying shackled together for life.”

  Thirty Six

  April 4, 1988

  Dear Diary,

  Get ready for some rambling, ‘coz I’m a mess again.

  Yes, I said, ‘again.’ Stop snickering, you pulpy pain in the patookis.

  You say you want to know when I’m NOT a mess, eh? Ha, ha. VERY FUNNY, Diary! Don’t quit your day job.

  I tried to write everything down and make some kind of sense out of my totally fucked up life, but I tore it up and threw it away. I sounded like a bad imitation of Edgar Allen Poe after a cocaine bender.

  “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

  “Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten beatings of beauteous Lenore,

  “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a slapping,

  “As of someone hatefully punching, pounding at Lenore’s asshole door.

  “’Tis some Psychotic Tennis Pro,’ I muttered
, ‘pounding at Lenore’s asshole door —

  “Not only this, and plenty fucking more.”

  So here I go again. Let’s see how long I can hold out before going Victorian on you.

  I know I’ve called myself a ‘major mess,’ a ‘horrific mess,’ a ‘hot mess,’ and a ‘messity-mess-mess-mess’ before, Diary. This time is different. This time I’m so messed up I feel like a sexaholic Humpty Dumpty. I have no idea how to put my sweet, little, nymphomaniac head back together again. I can't even keep a simple thought straight most days. The other day I objected in open court and opposing counsel hadn’t even opened his sweet, sexy mouth.

  (Note to self. Jack Flannery is seriously hot and seriously single. Gotta line up some kissy-face time with Barrister Studly. Have Trina schedule drinks at McGaffigan’s. Make it happen.)

  For the first time in my life I’m seeing an honest-to-God therapist, not just the sports shrink. I didn’t tell the doc about everything I did to Lenore. Not specifically, anyway. And I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I whacked around my female lover. If I told him I beat my international supermodel roommate half way to death he’d probably have to report it to someone. Then Lenore and I would be kaput. Over. Goners. Our careers and our life together would be over. And forget about telling him all about my “Psycho 16.” I haven't even told Lenore about that one. Psycho 16 would earn me a lifetime subscription to the ‘Shrink of the Month Club.’

  But I had to at least tell him I lost my temper with someone I love. I kept it vague and fluffy. So now he’s working on helping me with anger management issues.

  Now THAT is funny! Trying to make “Tantrum Girl” all sweet and cuddly! HA! Good luck, buddy! You’d have a better chance at making Reagan and Gorby snuggle buddies.

  So it looks like I’ll need to self-diagnose some of this stuff. It looks like you’re going to be my therapist, Diary. How’s that for fun, eh? A sicko giving herself therapy through the pages of her diary?