The first time she lied to Stacy, and told her that she was too busy to meet for something to eat, she attributed the entire thing to exhaustion. However, by the third time she made an excuse to avoid seeing Stacy, she was forced to admit to herself that she would never again feel comfortable around Stacy. Stacy would always be a reminder of her crime. Vera hoped that she would eventually forget, but the memories seemed to be branded on her soul. They popped up and confronted her at all hours of the day and night. They occupied her dreams and daydreams; and, as Stacy had warned her, they were driving her crazy. To soothe her mind, and help her forget, Vera saw more of the detective. Only disappearing into the pleasure of their meetings seemed to give her a respite from her thoughts. She would prolong their sexual sessions until he seemed on the verge of passing out. She too would be exhausted and numb, but she would keep grinding against him, trying to ring one last drop of forgetfulness (not necessarily pleasure) out of his body. She knew it was not healthy, but she could not help herself. It was the same way that the addict knew that the drug was killing him, but could not stop.
Then, one morning, after about two weeks of these strange sufferings, she woke up and realized that she felt great. Her happiness was sudden and powerful, like a drug spreading through her veins, banishing all the pain. She got out of bed and looked around confusedly. She felt refreshed—almost high. She tried to think back—assuming that something had happened the previous day that would explain her mood—but her memories seemed suddenly spotty. Oddly, she could not remember what she had done yesterday. She frowned. Maybe she had been working too hard. Either way, the phone rang at that moment. She got out of bed and went to her cell phone. It was Stacy.
“How are you feeling?” Stacy asked.
“Great!” Vera replied. For whatever reason, she felt excited to be talking to Stacy. A feeling of sisterhood spread throughout her. Before she could think about it, she blurted out, “What are you doing today? Let’s hang out.” The words surprised her, but once they passed her lips, she found herself thinking that they were right: that there was nothing else she could have said.
Stacy chuckled. “Sure. Let’s have lunch.”
“Come over now—we’ll go out to eat.”
“Okay. I’ll be right over.”
When Stacy hung up the phone, Vera stood there wondering what had happened. …But she felt great. Her body had reacted to Stacy the way a flower reacted to the sun. She felt herself opening up; whatever beauty had been trapped inside, she now felt expanding. It did not make sense, but for once she did not want to question things. She wanted to let her beauty out and revel in this newfound sense of freedom.
She went and took a shower. The water was warm and good, and she sang at the top of her lungs, making up her own words to songs. She was still smiling when she came out of the bathroom. The phone rang. She leapt playfully onto her bed and answered it.
It was the detective. “Where have you been!” was the first thing he said. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”
Vera frowned. Her reaction to the detective’s voice was visceral. She felt as though something had crawled up into her and died. She was so stunned that she could not speak.
The detective spoke up again: “Are you there?”
She took a deep breath: “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you for the last two days.”
She paused again. “…The last two days?”
“Yes, nobody had any idea where you were—even at the radio station. I was getting ready to put out a missing person’s report on you.”
She stared into space, lost. “You say I’ve been gone for two days?”
“Yes!” he said, growing annoyed with her confusion. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “You weren’t at the apartment. I checked everywhere. I tried calling your friend Stacy, but all she did was tell me to leave her alone.”
Vera tried to think back. Two days? …What had happened yesterday? What had happened the day before that? A cold, creepy feeling came over her.
“Vera?” the detective called to her again. Somehow, the sound of his voice—the very reality of him—still sickened her. She frowned deeper, totally lost and bewildered. “—Vera?”
“Yes…I’m sorry. This is all so…strange. You say I’ve been missing for two days?”
“Yes,” he said, fighting not to grow annoyed again. However, then, his voice softened. “You have no idea where you were?”
She took another deep breath. “No…I just got up in my bed.”
“You seriously have no idea where you’ve been for the last two days?”
“No.”
There was a long silence. Either he doubted her and was angry, or he was trying to figure things out. She began:
“Jonathan”—as she said it, she realized that it was the first time she had called him by his real name; she wanted to call him Holmes, so that they could be close again, but it seemed too late for that. Somehow, their intimacy was gone—ruined. “…Did we have a fight or something?” she asked him now, wondering about her sudden coldness toward him.
“No,” he said in bewilderment, “—everything was great. …You just disappeared. We were making plans to go away for a few days, but then you just disappeared.”
The intercom buzzed. Vera knew that it was Stacy. “I have to go,” she said to the detective. He started to say something, but she disconnected the call. She walked over to the intercom and pressed the button to talk.
“Stacy?” she said.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Stacy said in a chipper voice. To Vera’s amazement, the same joyous feeling came over her as when she had heard Stacy’s voice over the phone. Despite that, she frowned. She knew it was not right. She pressed the button to let Stacy in. Something was wrong. She left the front door ajar for Stacy, then she went to the couch and waited. Her thoughts moved through her mind sluggishly, but there was only one logical explanation for what had happened to her.
By now, a couple minutes had passed. Stacy poked her head through the doorway, a playful smile on her face. Vera stared at her, trying to resist the joyous feeling that took possession of her and made her want to run to Stacy and hug her. She forced herself to remain seated, and to look away. Stacy noticed her reaction. She stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind her. She walked up to Vera and stood about a yard from her.
“What’s wrong?”
Vera opened her eyes and looked up at Stacy’s beautiful face. She took a deep breath. “You did it to me, didn’t you? You killed me and made me forget.” She was winded after she said the words. She had blurted them out, as if fearful that they would not come.
Stacy stared down at her. She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it, unsure. She looked off into the distance, a worried, tearful expression coming over her face. “It was the only way.”
Vera got up abruptly and took a step away from Stacy. She fled. “What do you mean it was the only way?”
Stacy followed her, putting out her hands plaintively. “I had to do it—you were falling apart. You kept thinking about my boyfriend.”
“You killed me!” Vera screamed, still backing away.
“You were suffering. I did it for you.”
“You did it for yourself!”
“No,” Stacy cried, her first tears running down her cheek.
“Yes, you did! You did it so that I would like you again.”
“No,” she said, flustered. “I just wanted to make it the way it was.”
“You can’t live in the past, Stacy. You can’t go around changing other people’s memories.”
“I just wanted to make things as they were,” Stacy said again. She stood there with her head bowed for a moment, looking sorrowful. “…That’s all I wanted.” And then, as if she had come to some internal conclusion, she nodded her head and reached into her purse. She pulled out a new ice pick.
Vera gasped when she saw it, and backed away, inadv
ertently knocking over the floor lamp. “What are you doing, Stacy?” Vera screamed.
“You’ll see,” she started calmly, wiping away her tears, “we can make things just the way they used to be.”
“Stacy, please listen to me!”
“You won’t remember anything, Vera. You’ll see. It’ll be just as it was in the beginning.”
“No, Stacy!”
Stacy lunged at her with the ice pick. Vera barely managed to get out of the way. She ran for her life, but Stacy was faster. Vera managed to jump over the couch before Stacy lunged at her again. She grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and flung it at Stacy. That bought her a few seconds. She had to get out of the apartment. She headed for the door. However, Stacy was too quick. Stacy grabbed her by the back of her robe, then pushed her, so that she banged against the door. Vera swung around in horror. Stacy was right there; the ice pick was still in her hand.
“It won’t hurt too much, Vera,” Stacy said, breathing deeply. “I know how to do it so that it doesn’t hurt—”
“Please, Stacy!”
“It won’t hurt, and then things can go back to how they were.” Stacy had a strange, hopeful smile on her face now, as if she were already seeing the wondrous times that they would have once Vera was reborn.
“Stacy!” Vera tried to plead with her, “you’re unstable again, from when you killed me the last time…and don’t forget the old couples. You get unstable every time you kill someone, remember? Don’t do it!”
Stacy shook her head. “It has to be done, so that things can go back.” As she said these last words, she lunged at Vera again. Somehow, Vera managed to grasp Stacy’s ice-pick-wielding hand. Now, they were fighting like two animals—pushing and pulling, grunting and screaming with their teeth bared. With the adrenaline flowing through Vera’s veins, she screamed out, lowered her center of gravity by bending her knees, and head-butted Stacy. Stacy stumbled backwards, her nose already bleeding. She tripped and fell to the ground. Vera screamed out again, driven either by blind rage or the unassailable will to live. Stacy had dropped the ice pick when Vera head-butted her; now, somehow, the ice pick was in Vera’s hand. Within seconds, Vera was straddling Stacy. In her head, she again heard the screaming, numbing voice; and then, before she knew what was happening, she plunged the ice pick into Stacy’s chest. Stacy’s body convulsed. When Vera realized what she had done, she screamed. Vera went to scurry away—to flee like she had fled from the boyfriend; but to her amazement, Stacy smiled then: a beautiful, serene smile.
“God!” Vera cried. Tears were already streaming down her face.
Stacy continued to smile. Her words came out low and raspy: “…Thank you, Vera,” she whispered. “You saved me.” That was how she died. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she was dead.
Vera again went to scream, but it got caught in her throat. She went to scurry away from the body, but somehow time seemed to stand still. …And then everything went black, and she had the feeling that she was disintegrating in the darkness. She felt all her memories and thoughts unraveling, disappearing into the darkness. For an instant, she tried to fight it, but it was no use. Everything that she was, was disappearing. After a while, she did not even feel as though she had a body anymore. All that she had was her disintegrating consciousness. …And then it was all gone.
An interval passed. It could either have been a millisecond or an eternity. Somehow, she had a soul again—a consciousness. The parts of her that had before disappeared into the darkness were reconstituting themselves. As she felt the different parts of her coming back together, it was as if she had been purified. It was as if her body had rid itself of a cancer, because everything suddenly seemed so clear.
And then, she found herself reliving the thing that she had spent the last twenty-three years of her life trying to remember. …It all made sense to her now. In that perfect moment, all the connections were made, and she saw the full picture.
Somehow, everything had been set in motion during the road trip to Georgia. After her family had the car accident, they had had to stay in that hunting lodge and wait for the car parts to arrive.
The second day, overcome by boredom, the twelve-year-old Vera set off down the dirt road. It forked off into a narrower road, which was nothing but two tire groves in a sea of weeds, bushes and trees. It was dark, but peaceful. When she reached another fork, she noticed a girl her age skipping down the lane, humming a tune. The girl was more sexually developed than Vera. She had the body of a woman; her hair was long and beautiful—the kind of hair that Vera always wished she had. Vera wished her breasts were full and luscious like the girl’s. However, the girl’s skipping suddenly struck Vera as childish. As Vera’s mother had been reminding her lately, now that she was becoming a woman, she had to put childish things behind her. A side of her wanted to laugh at the oncoming girl and tell her that she was being childish, but the girl was having so much fun that Vera somehow found herself envying her for her freedom. Vera looked at the girl almost nostalgically—as if she were watching something that were already lost to her.
The girl noticed her when she was about twenty yards away. She stopped skipping and walked up to Vera, her eyes intent, yet relaxed.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked when she was close.
“Vera.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Alexander.”
“I’m Michelle Valentine,” the girl said.
Vera noticed the girl’s birthmark: a heart with a jagged line through it. Vera smiled unconsciously, at the contradiction of the girl’s last name and her birthmark. However, before she could say, “Nice to meet you, Michelle Valentine,” like a proper young lady was supposed to do, the girl went on:
“Where you from, up north?”
“Yeah.”
“You one of those people who got into that car accident?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to be friends?”
“Yeah,” Vera said, taken aback by the abruptness, yet relieved as well.
“Come on then,” the girl said as she resumed skipping down the lane. She looked back at Vera and smiled for the first time, and Vera found herself amazed by Michelle’s beauty. She had a bewitching, inviting smile. After a moment’s hesitation, Vera began to skip with the girl. Somehow, it was wondrous. She found herself giggling, joining in the strange tune that her new friend went back to humming—
A deer bounded across the lane—about fifteen yards from where they were skipping—and disappeared into the brush. They froze. Michelle took Vera’s hand, and they tiptoed up to the spot where the deer had disappeared. It was a doe. They looked through the bushes to see it eating the tall, sweet grass Vera had discovered inadvertently, after seeing some of the local yokels chewing on it. She and Michelle crouched there and smiled at one another. Only moments later, they both jumped as there was a gun blast; when they looked back at the deer, they saw it stagger before dropping heavily (and lifelessly) to the ground. Vera screamed. Michelle leapt up and ran over to the doe. Vera followed her more slowly, already knowing that the thing was dead. Michelle bent over the creature and began to cry. Vera crouched at her side and held her.
That was when a man came strolling up: middle-aged, overweight, with a sweat-stained baseball cap that was now a brownish green color. He had a huge backpack, from which gear, like a water bottle and a small shovel, dangled. His face was pockmarked and covered by a few days’ worth of beard stubble. “What y’all crying for?” he drawled.
Michelle stood up angrily, knocking Vera to the ground in the process. She bawled, “You kilt her!”
“Don’t cry, little ladies,” he said with a sickening smile, so that some of his chewing tobacco dropped from his lower lip. And then, while Vera sniffled, and Michelle looked at him with defiant tears, he proposed, “If I take it back, will y’all stop crying?”
“You can’t take it back,” Michelle screamed, “—you kilt her!”
He
walked over calmly, smiling almost serenely. He smelled of stale sweat and some kind of unidentifiable decay. Vera and Michelle backed away as he came up to the deer. He smiled widely again when he reached it. “Anything can be took back, little ladies,” he announced. “Just look here.” As he said these last words, he crouched down and put his hand over the doe’s wound. He massaged the bloody fur for a few seconds. Miraculously, the doe began to stir. Vera and Michelle stopped crying, too stunned to move. As they looked on, the doe began to breathe again. Its chest rose and fell. Then, all at once, it bounded to its feet and scampered off, through some more bushes.
“How’s that for gratitude?” the man joked. Vera and Michelle were holding one another now, trembling. That’s when the man rose to his feet, his sickening tobacco grin widening further. “See there, little ladies? Anything can be took back.” Now, he began to walk toward the two trembling girls. When he was close enough, he reached his hand out—the hand that had massaged the bloody fur. It seemed impossibly huge; with the bloody gore from the deer’s wound, it seemed like something from a nightmare. Michelle knew to run, but Vera was still frozen in place. For a middle-aged, overweight man, he moved quickly. He only needed to give Vera one blow to the side of the head in order to send her to the ground. She lay there, unconscious—or maybe semi-conscious, because, moments later, she heard all the horrible screams as the man grabbed and held down Michelle. He threw off his backpack, and then tore away her clothes. And then there were the interminable minutes of screaming and pleading and the man’s laughter as he violated Vera’s new friend….
Get up, Vera! Get up and help your friend! That’s what she told herself while all that was going on. Get up, Vera! She opened her eyes after minutes of struggle. Things were blurry. She tried to move, but the pain immobilized her. She gnashed her teeth, took a deep breath, and tried again. …She moved, but things were still blurry. The man was moaning now, reaching his climax. His moans drowned out Michelle’s now-hoarse screams. Vera’s vision cleared up a little. Everything came into focus for a second, before returning to a fuzzy mess. She got an image of the sickening scene. She almost threw up, but noticed a rock lying nearby—one that was big enough to knock out a man yet small enough for her to lift. She got to her feet. The man’s back was to her. A force propelled her forward, giving her strength. She could not really see where she was going—everything was still a blur—but she could operate on her recollection of where everything was. Soon, the rock was in her hands—she used both hands. She lifted the rock high and stumbled over to the man, who was now groaning in ecstasy. When she was close enough, she brought the stone down upon the blurred image of the man’s head with all her strength. There was a sickening thud; the momentum of the dropping rock made her lose her balance, so that she landed on top of the man. Some seconds passed. She was breathing hard. Michelle was still sobbing. Vera’s vision suddenly cleared up. She rose from the man’s body and looked down at the new sickening scene. The back of the man’s head was flattened. He was dead, but his corpse still had Michelle pinned to the ground. In fact, his weight now seemed to be crushing her. Coming to her senses, Vera pushed the man off her friend. Michelle closed her legs and crawled into the fetal position. All Vera could think to do was lie down next to her and hug her. They both cried.
How to Kill Your Boyfriend (in 10 Easy Steps) Page 26