Claudia turned her attention towards the house, and then at Dawn. "Hi sweetie," she greeted with fake kindness. "Where is she?"
Dawn motioned towards the front door. "She's upstairs. Claudia," she gulped. "I'm so afraid. She refuses to go to the hospital for her hand, and she's feverish. Beyond confused..."
Without a word, Claudia placed a supportive hand on Dawn's shoulder, and slipped inside the door.
Elisabeth and Dawn stared at one another, both uneasy. The teacher that Dawn had been so close to besides Mallory leaned against the side of her car, and sighed. "I'm sorry, kjæreste. You must think me a complete bitch for my behavior."
In response, Dawn shrugged and walked over to join Elisabeth. She was surprised that Elisabeth seemed entirely intent on staying outside.
"I don't pretend to know everything, Elisabeth. She tells me so little about your friendship. I had to practically drag anything out of you before, too. You know, about college." She crossed her arms when the stubborn teacher only pressed her lips together more tightly.
"Damn it!" Dawn swore, stomping her foot onto the gravel. She was starting to feel insecure, and that drove her nuts. After all she had been through, Elisabeth refusing to talk now was the last straw. "I'm not a fucking kid anymore! Your friend is inside, completely out of her mind, and sick!"
Elisabeth snorted and rolled her eyes, but didn't comment on the jab. "She always acts like a storlom when she's sick. Mallie will be fine, you'll see."
She sighed, and wiped a palm down her face at Dawn's disbelief. "In order to understand why I am so angry, you would need to know things. Scary things. Private things. There's so many situations in life you've never experienced yet. Even if I told you, you wouldn't get it."
Every ounce of Dawn's skin began to crawl with shame at Elisabeth's appraisal of her shortcomings. She had been through hell and back with Mallory in such a short time. Still, she was being treated like someone that ought better be kept out of some sort of weird circle of trust, all due to her age.
"Try me," Dawn snarked, putting both hands on her hips. She would not be humiliated any longer, just because of some damn number.
Pity grew in Elisabeth's eyes, and she hung her head. "As if you don't already know. Mallie has a strange way about her love, yeah? I always wondered why. Didn't you?"
Dawn's bare toes dug into the gravel, tracing patterns in an attempt to deflect. She certainly had an idea why. "So? Does it bother you?"
"Bother me? No, no..." Elisabeth scoffed. She shook her head, and her mouth settled into a grim line. "Frustrate me, infuriate me? Make me want to rip my hair out? Ja."
_____________________________________
Elisabeth remembered Mallory as she was, before time and a lot of patience had mellowed her out.
"You're all I have, Elisabeth. You're the only one in the entire world who knows I even exist," she had said, all those years ago.
Washington, D.C., United States of America – October 2004
Mallie had been asleep well into the evening. Liquor was her prescription of choice when she was in a blue mood like this, but the store clerks had begun to suspect her fake ID. It often hard to find someone of age in the States to buy it for them, even at twenty years old.
The days when Mallie took pills were the worst, and Elisabeth had half a mind to find whatever doctor was prescribing them, and shove the "medication" right up their arses.
Elisabeth grumbled to herself, and slammed the refrigerator door on the covered plate of another uneaten dinner. She turned to scrub at the kitchen counter furiously. "Kvinnen er utakknemlig og lat. Jeg koker hele dagen, og hva får jeg? En pute kastet på hodet mitt..." Such a lazy, ungrateful woman. I cook all day, and what do I get? A pillow thrown at my head. And crying, always with the crying she was!
Her roommate had seemed like a fun, wild ride at first – a taste at a new life well away from the droll and overly polite culture she'd been raised in. Months ago, Mallie Moore had spotted her tacking up a flier to rent a room in the bar downtown, and made her way over to Elisabeth.
But she didn't make her way straight over – no. Mallie decked a man that touched her bum, splashed him with her drink, and grabbed two beers from a bartender with a wink. Her edgy look and confident mannerisms had Elisabeth head over heels the moment she saw her.
They had spent most of the evening dancing, with little talk. The next afternoon, the eccentric and loud brunette smoked near twenty cigarettes while they hashed out a rental agreement. She was lonely, and needed company; not so much the money.
Elisabeth couldn't believe her luck. There had been something in those green eyes – something that she longed for, or longed to solve. They reminded her of home, too – the color of the hills near the northern fjords of Sweden. It wasn't lost to Elisabeth that they met on what would be considered Midsommar in her home country, with all the promise of drunken shenanigans, and romance.
Four months, two awkward brushes with intimacy that had sent both women hiding in their rooms for days, and a hundred untouched dinners later, they had become this odd pair.
Fast friends and very devoted to each other, it was rare that they did not share a cab to their different universities, even though it meant that one had to wake up earlier than the other. And yet, there were times that Elisabeth wanted to scream to the heavens for the way that Mallie would shriek at night, refusing to unlock her bedroom door.
There were also times when the woman seemed on some sort of strange precipice, ready to jump. This month was the worst for her, she said. October was the month her parents and grandparents died, leaving Mallie alone in the world.
As usual, thinking about her bid the woman in a silent call, and Mallie appeared down the stairs. Attired in a black dress that barely came below her rear, ripped fishnet stockings, and low slung boots, she turned her tear-stained eyes on Elisabeth. Mallie had rimmed them in eyeliner thicker than ever before, perhaps an effort to hide the red puffiness.
Elisabeth took in the sight, and gawped. "Where are you going dressed like that?"
"Out," Mallie responded curtly, grabbing a money clip to slide along the edge of her bra.
"You didn't even go to class today. No dinner, again. You haven't even started that paper for your Adolescent Psychology course, and you said it's due in five days. Gud, woman," Elisabeth threw her hands up. "And now you go out."
A sly grin lit up Mallie's red lips like a siren's call. Clearing her throat, she spoke like a posh professor, and made with a flourish of her hand. "Teenagers are fucked in the head. The end."
"Ohh, I see," Elisabeth nodded sarcastically. "And how do you know this? Is there a reference to 'Teenagers, Fucked Up' in your assigned class reading?"
"No, I just know," Mallory shrugged as she dug through a purse for a well-worn bar flier. She scribbled the address down on a smaller piece of paper, ripped from a notebook.
The gesture didn't seem particularly off. Elisabeth knew that Mallie had to remind herself often of landmarks and addresses.
"Bad memory," Mallie chuckled, tapping her temple with an index finger.”Come on! Let's dance!”
Elisabeth shook her head from the reverie. "You were a kid once, ja? Why even be a teacher, if you hate children so much?"
The light and tinkling laugh that came from Mallie was so obviously fake, she grinned sheepishly as an afterthought. "Don't be ridiculous, Elisabeth. I was never a child.”
Turning to step out their front door before Elisabeth could respond, Mallie called over her shoulder. "I'll be late - don't wait up for me!"
~~~
No matter how many times Mallie said “I'll be late, don't wait up,” Elisabeth did anyway. Washington D.C. was a big city, and some neighborhoods were bad news.
When 2:00AM came and went without Mallie returning home, or even a phone call, Elisabeth began to pace. She took the tub of their Death by Chocolate ice cream out of the freezer and began to eat it straight from the carton with a spoon.
Nearly a pint
of ice cream and two infomercials later, the clock glared 3:00AM. Still, nothing. "Faen," she swore, shoving the ice cream back into the refrigerator before tugging on her boots and throwing on a leather jacket. It was getting chilly outside, now autumn in this part of the United States.
Grabbing the plain looking white flier with black writing on it, Elisabeth searched for the address. 'The Crux' was located only a few blocks off the Red Line, but she would have to be quick in getting there. The last train to that part of town was in fifteen minutes.
She ran to the train station a block from their apartment, and slid between the transport's door just before they closed. It launched towards M Street.
'The Crux' wasn't in the best part of town, but it wasn't a slum either. That placated Elisabeth, but only slightly.
Especially when she arrived at the... club.
A female bouncer clad from head to toe in shiny vinyl took an indecent amount of money when Elisabeth's fake ID had raised an eyebrow at this members-only, 21+ establishment. She beckoned her inside with a salacious grin, and a promise that Elisabeth would have “lots of fun.”
As she entered into the warehouse type club, a sea of teeming, writhing bodies on the dance floor met her, even though the bar had stopped pouring nearly an hour ago. That wasn't as strange as the patrons' clothing, or lack thereof.
Squinting in the dim light, Elisabeth's eyes adjusted, and her mouth fell open. "Oh. Oh, Gud," she whispered, completely mortified.
Everywhere Elisabeth looked, there was some sort of sexual display going on – whether on the dance floor, or in the shadows. Her stomach flip-flopped at the groups of people that she shrugged past; at the scenes of what she considered degradation. The only thing that stopped her from running screaming from the establishment was the fact that Mallie was here.
The question was – where? Elisabeth wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know where.
She stood in one spot and spun around slowly, though she would rather the floor open up to swallow her whole.
As she searched the immediate area, a hand came up to tap her on the shoulder. Elisabeth turned around with a gasp. "W-what? No, no..." she prattled on, scandalized and afraid. "I'm just looking for a friend."
"Who?" a peroxide blonde dressed in little more than a thong and a top hat purred into her ear.
"Um, Mallie. Her name is Mallie, and uh..." Elisabeth stuttered.
The woman grinned and nodded, motioning in a come hither way with her fingers while sashaying towards a back room. "I wondered why she didn't want to play," the vixen pouted as she shouted over the pounding music. "Didn't know she had a girlfriend!"
"Friend! I'm just a friend!" Elisabeth protested, and waved the woman on. The sooner she could find said friend, the sooner they could leave.
As they walked through to the next room, it took all of Elisabeth's intestinal fortitude not to turn around and march back out. People lined the walls, watching a demonstration of knotwork on a woman in the center, her arms wrenched up and behind her head in a painful manner. The blonde vixen tugged on Elisabeth's arm, depositing her against the far wall before walking away.
Turning her gaze away from the center of the room, Elisabeth's gaze fell onto a mess of mahogany hair and empty green eyes. Mallie was leaned up against the opposite wall.
Recognition hit, and a shiver passed over Mallie's skin. She was soaked in a cold sweat, half dressed, a coil of rope still dangling from one wrist.
Sliding along the wall to her friend, Elisabeth's hand found Mallie's, and she squeezed it.
"What the hell!"
Mallie didn't respond, turning her face towards the display once more. She didn't react much to that much either, but she smiled. It was so different than Elisabeth was used to.
Mallie's movements were slow, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The rope on her wrist completed the mental costume.
“Oh, no. No, no, no. What's wrong with you?" Elisabeth cried, tugging on her friend's hand again.
That elicited a lazy shrug. "Fuck you... and your high horse... Els'b'th," Mallie slurred.
Grabbing Mallie around the waist, Elisabeth pulled the stumbling woman from the room with a ferocity she hadn't known before. "No, fuck you! We're going home, now!"
~~~
They argued the entire cab ride home, Elisabeth's sober wit matching Mallie's dark curses back and forth. It continued into the apartment, both kicking off their shoes to take their bickering into the living room.
"All this time, I thought you were just uncomfortable with sex!" Elisabeth shouted. "You say you're lonely. You want love, ja? That's not love, Mallie!"
Stomping her way upstairs, Mallie yelled right back. "I know that, because love doesn't fucking exist!"
The statement stunned Elisabeth into pausing on the stairs. Mallie took the opportunity to snarl, and slam her bedroom door shut.
"That's it!" Elisabeth screeched, walking into her room. Tossing a duffel onto her bed, she stuffed a few changes of clothes and her toiletries inside. She had to escape this craziness before it ate her alive. Resolving to come back for the rest later, she jogged down the stairs and into the kitchen where their keys hung. She reached for her pair while tossing the bag towards the front door.
The gleam of the liquor bottles on the counter taunted her.
Slamming her keys back down, Elisabeth walked to the sink. Unscrewing every single bottle she found, she poured it all down the drain. It was swiftly followed by entire bottles of Mallie's pills, and the rush of hot water.
In her anger, Elisabeth even made sure to flip the switch on the garbage disposal. A glimmer of pleasure passed through her icy blue eyes as the sink made horrible grinding noises. If her friend insisted on killing her own soul, Elisabeth wanted to make sure the tools of the trade were long gone before she left.
Unfortunately, the loud grinding also drew the attention of the woman upstairs.
Mallie ran down, her chest heaving in shock. "What did you do... No, no, no!" she cried, seeing the empty prescription and liquor bottles that littered the counter space.
After scrambling towards the sink and turning off the disposal, Mallie's hands laid flat as if in silent mourning. She didn't even look up from the counter top, her eyes screwed shut.
Elisabeth slunk towards the door, her hand reaching for the duffel that laid on the carpet.
"God damn it, I said no!" Mallie shouted at the top of her lungs, and leapt into action. She hurled the bag away from Elisabeth, and back into the living room.
Elisabeth noticed that her red lipstick had smeared sometime in the past ten minutes, like Mallie had meant to remove it but gave up halfway through. Underneath that, her lips trembled and sucked in a quick jolt of air.
"I said no," she said again, eerily quiet. A single tear fell over her sharp cheekbones.
The sight very nearly broke Elisabeth's heart. "I can't keep living like this, Mallie. I can't stand here and just watch you die a little bit more every day."
Mallie clasped her hands together in obeisance, and actually got on her knees. "Please stay. Please? I'll do whatever you need. I can't be alone anymore, not now. Especially not now," she begged.
"You're all I have, Elisabeth. You're the only one in the entire world who knows I even exist."
The begging crumbled what was left of Elisabeth's resolve. "I'll stay..." she began slowly, and Mallie began to relax. "I'll stay if you go to class..."
"Done."
"Stop interrupting me. You have to eat, damn it. No more drinking. No more drugs. No more... whatever that was," Elisabeth set her guidelines.
Nodding her assent, Mallie sagged even more, hugging herself around her waist. She looked like a small child, curling up to dodge a blow.
'Come off the edge. You don't want to jump. Not today,' Elisabeth thought silently. Reaching down to pull her friend into a hug, she embraced the woman even more firmly when she felt her shaking.
"I hate you so much right now," Mallie mumbled into her shou
lder.
"I love you, too," Elisabeth mumbled back, squeezing her arms once more for good measure.
Chapter 17: Omnes Enim Vos (All For You)
"...and that was the first time I tried to move out," Elisabeth exhaled in a rush, the sadness in her voice belying the fact that she wasn't truly sorry.
Dawn knew that. If Elisabeth Sørensen were sorry for anything, she would be inside helping Claudia. She would have answered Mallory's calls. She would do something.
It wasn't like she expected Elisabeth to ignore the sense of betrayal after learning about Mallory's past, but the woman's description of her girlfriend circa 2004 was just... awful.
Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1) Page 24