by Joe Humphrey
"Are you a virgin, Charlie?" he asked in the darkness. The skin on Charlie's back tried to crawl up her spine. She didn't respond. She didn't know how to respond, so she just stayed as still as she could, hoping he would think she was sleeping.
"I know you're awake. I asked you a question," he said. Charlie turned her head. He was looking right at her, not watching the road. Their eyes met.
"I don't think that's any of your business, Chris," she said, trying as hard as she could to hide how creeped out she was. She refused to avert her eyes. Something in her tweaked and she decided right then and there that she wasn't going to let this creep bully her. Fuck him. He wanted to make her uncomfortable, scare her, make her feel small and weak. No. Fuck that. She wasn't going to have it. She stared right back at him and sat up in her seat.
He blinked and shook his head, as though he was trying to wake up. He turned back to the road, that fake smile back on his face.
"I've been thinking about that Manson trial a lot. Listening to the news."
Jesus Christ, he’s back on the Manson Family again.
"Yeah. That's what you said," Charlie muttered.
"It just makes me so fucking angry. Those dirty, filthy hobos broke into that woman's house and just killed her. Killed her and her baby and all of those people. It makes me so angry I feel sick about it! Those goddamned hippies."
"I don't think you can blame all hippies for what the Manson Family did. That's not really fair."
"It's not really fair?! It's not fair that they murdered those people! Is that fair?! She was so beautiful and they just... just fucking KILLED her!"
"Can we not talk about this anymore, please? You're getting really worked up and it’s making me uncomfortable."
When Chris looked at her again, teeth gritted into a crooked snarl, a wildness flashed behind his eyes. It was only there for maybe half a second, but Charlie saw it, and she knew that she'd glimpsed his real face. The face behind that big, dopey grin. Then the grin reappeared and buried that manic, beastly face, but she couldn’t un-see it.
"Of course," Chris said.
Charlie watched him as he drove, trying to figure out where this was going. She knew, deep down in her gut, that it was going to get weirder before it got better. She thought about Francis the knife salesman and how she was able to disconnect from what she was doing. How she retreated into her mind and focused on anything other than what was happening in her mouth. She thought about how easily that had come. How natural it felt to drift away from reality for the five or six minutes she spent with her head under the steering wheel and Francis's knobby, old man's hands tangled in her hair. How even when he climaxed without warning and she’d choked and felt like she was going to vomit, she was able to compartmentalize the experience and tuck it away.
Most of all, she wondered if she was going to be able to get through this ride so easily. She thought about sitting in Todd's Dart and the intense way he looked at her, warning her about the very situation she was in right now. Telling her it was better to give a little than to have them take it all. Charlie didn't know if Chris was planning to take it all, but she certainly believed he was capable of it. Capable of taking far more than Francis had been. Any question she had about whether he was a bad guy blew out the window the moment she saw that crazy glint in his eye. Something bad was going to happen. It was up to her to determine how much of it was going to be in her control. She closed her eyes for a long moment, building her resolve. When she opened them again she asked in a careful, metered tone.
"So what are we going to do?"
He looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant.
"Do about what exactly?"
"About us. This. I know how it works. Guys don't pick up teenage girls and expect to talk about The Monkees all night. So I'd like to just get it over with sooner rather than later."
Charlie stared at him, doing everything in her power to keep her expression as neutral as possible. She didn't want any hint of fear peeking through.
"I'm... still not really clear —”
"Look, do you want me to suck it or what?" Charlie said, growing frustrated with having to dance around. The more he pretended not to know what she was talking about, the more she felt he was taking control from her. She needed to stay in charge of what was about to happen. It was her body and her decision. It wasn't what she wanted to do, but it was the lesser of two possible evils. Perhaps the last couple of days had warped her perspective and twisted her ability to read people. Anyone in her position would have a hard time trusting that the crazy man driving the car didn't want to hurt her.
As it happens, he very badly wanted to hurt her. It had been eating away at his brain like a rat in a bag for the last hour or so since he'd picked her up. What Charlie couldn't have known was that this facade the monster that called itself Chris Hagen was maintaining took every ounce of strength in him.
- 12 -
When she said "do you want me to suck it or what?" some load-bearing beam inside the monster's mind crumbled and the mask slipped. The carefully crafted smile, half playful and half sheepish, practiced for hours in the mirror, shuddered and slid off of his face. The light in his eyes dimmed and his upper lip twitched, revealing wet teeth.
"What?" he asked, forcing himself to not yell and scream and put his fist through her smug little bitch face. How dare she— how dare she talk to him like that?
Sometimes these little cunts were so fucking vulgar it disgusted him. Boiling rage churned in his stomach and threatened to spill out of his mouth like oozing black bile. He needed to get his shit together. He was losing it. This was a test and he was failing it. He knew it already. He'd failed and she was going to have to pay for her part in it. It takes two to tango and it was her fucking fault he was losing his grip. It's not like he would have this problem if she hadn't been on the side of the road, begging for a ride like the garbage she was.
When he opened his mouth to speak he had to pause and breathe. He felt like he was going to vomit. Hot breath steamed in and out of his nose. His teeth were vibrating in his skull. She was looking at him, willfully staring at him. He wanted to bite her fucking nose off. That would show her. Show everyone who had the displeasure of gazing at her face. She would have to walk around with a gaping hole where her nose used to be. Not so cute after that.
Do you want me to suck it? What kind of fucking world do we live in where a little girl says something like that? This awful, sick world. A world full of poisonous, trashy people who don't deserve the life they've been given.
He slammed his fist against the dashboard. Charlie let out a little scream.
"Why would you say something like that to me?" the monster said, trying not to yell and failing. He pressed the first knuckle of his balled-up fist against his mouth and stared at her. He was shaking.
"I'm sorry!" Charlie stammered out, nearly hysterical.
"What kind of fucking person says a thing like that?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
He shook his head and leaned forward, resting his chin on the top of the steering wheel.
"I don't understand people like you," he muttered.
After a long moment, Charlie spoke.
"People like me."
"Yes. People like you. Is it so unfathomable that I could give a stranger a ride and not expect anything in return but their company? That I can't extend a friendly hand without some sort of disgusting expectation attached to it?"
He kept shaking his head.
- 13 -
"I'm sorry," Charlie said again, tears biting at the corners of her eyes.
"Do not fucking apologize! You are what you are, and I am what I am, and that's just how it has to be."
"What is it that you think I am?" Charlie asked. She was crying. It was all too much. This... thing... was talking to her like a piece of trash. Her time on the road wore her down and she couldn't handle one more person thinking she was some kind of object to be used and abused. This prick was sitting
there judging her. She'd had enough.
Just as abruptly as she’d started, Charlie stopped crying. She felt embarrassed for herself.
Give a little so they don’t take it all.
Fuck that.
Charlie was done giving herself away. That was bullshit and she was done with it. Let him try and take from her and see what happens. Maybe he’ll hurt her, but not before she bites or scratches his fucking face off. Maybe he was an adult, but he was hardly a big man. Charlie was certain that, if push came to shove, she could put a hurt on him. She was little but she was fast and bike riding and roller-skating had toned her legs into little pistons. Besides, what was he going to do? Attack her while he was driving? If they pulled over, she’d get out of the car and run. There was no reason to be afraid of this weirdo and his Howdy Doody grin.
"No, really. What is it you think I am? A whore? Is that what you're calling me Chris?"
"NO!" he roared, sending her shrinking back down into her seat. "You're a fucking child! A baby girl and you're saying disgusting, awful things!”
He closed his eyes for a long time. Charlie gripped the dashboard in front of her, terrified that they were going to drive off the road into the desert, but then he opened his eyes again. She hoped she would find the mask back, the creepy but calm stillness, but his eyes were just as wild as ever and wet with tears.
“I tried. I really tried! I did a kindness and this is what it turned into! Jesus Christ! I tried to be good and you wouldn't let me. You ruined it!"
He was crying and this was somehow infinitely worse than when he was yelling. He slammed on the brakes, sending Charlie flying forward. She braced herself against the dashboard and was barely able to keep from smashing her face. He pulled the car over to the side of the road.
"What are you doing?" Charlie asked, terrified. He responded without looking at her.
"Get your stuff. I don't want you in my car anymore."
Panic rose in Charlie's chest. The alternative to riding in the car with this nutcase was the complete and utter blackness of the moonless desert night. How was that better?
"You can't be serious! It's pitch black out! We haven't seen another car in forever!"
"I don't care. I've made up my mind. We're done here. This is happening."
He put his hand over his mouth, and he reminded her of Norman Bates looking at Marion Crane’s body on the bathroom floor, shocked at his own horrific actions. She began hyperventilating.
"Please don't leave me out here in the middle of nowhere! Please, Chris! I'll be quiet! I'll be good! Please don't!"
He refused to look at her. She reached to pull on his shirt sleeve and he screamed.
"DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!"
Charlie cowered.
"Get out," he whispered.
Crying, Charlie picked her knapsack up from the floor and turned to open her car door.
"I'm sorry," she said again as she opened the door.
"Me too," the monster said, watching as she turned to step out. He held a solid steel pipe in his left hand. It had been concealed along the side of his seat.
- 14 -
Once, when Charlie was nine, she'd been given a pair of roller skates for her birthday. It was a really big deal because she hadn't expected to actually get them, though she wanted a pair more than anything in the world. Valleri, the girl who lived next door to Charlie, and who was seven months older than she was, had received a pair of skates for Christmas. Charlie used to watch her skate up and down the street and was amazed at how quickly she learned to skate backward and in and out between her miniature orange traffic cones. She begged her mother for months for a pair, but Rose had always said they were too expensive for a birthday gift.
Rose planned on getting her skates all along but reveled in the game of teasing her.
On the morning of Charlie's birthday, she screamed when she ripped open the wrapping paper and saw the shiny red skates in their box. She immediately put them on and sailed down the hallway, her mother yelling after her "Not in the house!"
Charlie wanted to see Valleri and, more importantly, for Valleri to see her. Because you see, Valleri's skates were the all-metal kind that clamped onto the bottom of your shoe and tightened with a key, and Charlie's shiny new red skates were the full boot, real deal skates. The kind they wore on dance shows on TV. They were two sizes too big (Rose didn't want her growing out of them in a month after all) but they were real skates.
Charlie carefully traversed the two steps from the front door to the walk, then eased her way towards the sidewalk. Valleri was sitting on the slide at the park they shared. The same park where, six years later, a dopey teenage boy would fail to impress a slightly older Charlie with his boob handling skills.
"Hey, Valleri! Come see!" Charlie called out to the park.
Valleri looked up just in time to see Charlie take her first real stride in the skates. They immediately went out from under her. She was briefly aware of the odd feeling of being suspended in the air for a second before the back of her head made contact with the cement.
There was a feeling that somehow the oddly shaped bones that collectively made up her skull had twisted slightly within the bag of skin and hair and cartilage that wrapped her head. It felt like those bones were shifted just a little off their axis and were vibrating like a church bell.
Immediately following that sensation was the feeling and sound of the impact itself. She experienced these sensations out of order. First the reverberation of the hit ringing through her head, then she heard the heavy, hollow, surprisingly meaty sound of her head making contact with the sidewalk. White light flashed behind her eyes and blinded her. Her eyeballs throbbed in their sockets and felt loose, like baby teeth, as though they would fall out if she rolled over. She wasn't going to roll over. She wasn't going to move at all. She couldn't even breathe. All of the air had been shoved out of her lungs like the bellows in a fireplace.
The white light faded away to deep, pulsating purple and she could hear her mother screaming in the distance. After a moment, she could hear someone else screaming as well, and she thought she recognized the voice but couldn't quite place it. It wouldn't be until much later, in the hospital, that she realized that the second voice was her own.
It was the sound and feeling of that connection her head made with the sidewalk was the same feeling Charlie experienced when The Monster swung his steel bar and it struck the back of her head, sending her face-first into the metal panel of the Bug's passenger side door. The same series of physical sensations and sounds. The feeling of her skull twisting, the flash of blinding light, the throbbing in her eyes, the sickening sound of her skull meeting a hard, unforgiving surface. The distant sound of her own screaming.
Thankfully for Charlie, she also experienced the transition from white light to darkness. The last thing she saw before she passed out was The Monster's face as he ripped her shirt open, a long line of slobber hanging from his lip, his eyes pools of distant black hatred.
- 15 -
A weird sense of déjà vu washed over her. She was only barely bumping against the surface of consciousness and she gradually became aware of the oddly familiar feeling of someone licking her hand. In her mind's eye, she could see an attractive, nicely dressed blonde woman kneeling on the floor beside her bed, sucking and licking at her fingers for god knows what reason. She wanted her to stop. Her eyes were still sealed shut, but this was the image that her mind conjured to accompany the sensation she felt on her fingers. The feeling of a mouth and tongue licking and sniffing and tugging with hungry teeth.
A breeze rolled across her back. As she became aware of her environment, she realized she wasn't in her bedroom at all, but outside, on the ground. She could feel sand and rocks biting into her face, her bare chest, her legs. She could taste blood in her mouth and feel something hard and jagged poking into the side of her tongue.
It wasn't until she tried to open her eyes that she understood how much pain she was in. Her eyes
refused to open beyond slits that let in only enough light to let her know it was day time.
She could hear breathing and snorting and sniffing. Whatever was licking her hand had moved to her face. Hot breath bathed her cheek and a rough tongue licked at her forehead and hair. A low, guttural scream started to build inside her. It was involuntary. Everything she did at that moment was involuntary. Her body had gone into emergency override. Right then it was insisting that she scream.
When she did so, the coyote that was licking the blood from her naked body scampered sideways and back, not sure what to make of the dying animal that smelled like people he'd found and had planned on ripping a piece off of. The coyote changed its mind and ran away into the desert.
Charlie's shaking hands reached for her head. It was the loudest voice of pain she heard, though it all mostly blended into a buzz of unidentifiable silver noise. Her body managed to prop itself up on her elbows and she screamed again. The jagged thing that had been poking the side of her tongue fell out of her mouth and onto the desert floor in a pool of dark, congealed blood. It was half of a molar that had, until a few hours ago, lived in her jaw. It belonged to the desert now. Charlie pulled herself along the rough sand with one bloodied elbow, blind and unsure if she was crawling towards or away from the road, or even how far into the desert she was. She screamed again.
She had no memory of what happened to her. Not at the moment anyway. Her memory blurred into fog roughly around when she stepped out of the 7-11 with her knapsack full of candy and soda and comics. A flash of a white Cadillac and the scent of vanilla, but nothing of her time in the Bug with the monster that called himself Chris. That was probably for the best.