The girl folded inward, her arms instinctively covering herself. “I’m fine,” she muttered.
“What happened?” Bea took hold of Dakota’s shoulders.
“Nothing. I just…”
Bea pulled Dakota’s arms aside with little resistance, exposing the dirty, frayed ace bandage wound tightly around the girl’s torso.
“Did he touch you again? I’ll fucking kill him.” Bea said.
“No…I just…don’t want to look the way I do. It’s okay, Bea. Don’t be upset. Please.”
Bea stared at her for a long moment before she understood. Dakota had told her some of it, and some of it–the parts she couldn’t say–she wrote out in crooked print on smudged clearance bin notebook paper with faded Care Bear images in the margins. And, at first, Beatrix didn’t believe her… until she found a box of unmarked VHS tapes in the back of her father’s closet.
It was all true.
Dakota was the spitting image of her mother, LuSinda Wylde, the “star,” if you could ever call it that. LuSinda had been a famous porn star in the early ‘80s. Age and a drug problem had driven her to the only kinds of films that would hire her: “bad movies,” Dakota called them, describing the times that her mother would come home bruised and broken and doped senseless. Beatrix had sat, slack-jawed, watching numerous scenes of men doing terrible, humiliating things to the stranger with her best friend’s face, and she felt a shame and a rage that burned her stomach and filled her throat with bile.
“You’re not her, Dakota. You’re nothing like her.”
“I know.” Dakota said, quietly.
Bea remembered unfolding the note. A cartoon bear danced on a cloud near the line where Dakota wrote about the night that the “bad movie people” broke into her home, cameras rolling, and took her mother on the floor in front of her, like a dog. She remembered Dakota’s awkward block letters spelling out the experience of seeing her grandmother beat to death in their kitchen. She remembered the rainbow gracing the corner of the page where Dakota wrote about the men who had raped and beaten her. She had been twelve years old.
Dakota said the movie was still available to buy, if you knew the right people.
“Are you sure you know?” Bea said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Because you don’t act like it. You’re a woman, Dakota, and y’know what? That’s a good thing. It’s not something to be ashamed of, no matter what they did to you. You trust me, right?”
“Yes…”
With a nod, Bea unpinned the bandage and began unwinding it.
“Please…”
* * *
July 19th, 1993
Jesus. She doesn’t even realize how perfect she is. Looking at her, you’d never believe she used to be such a goofy-looking kid. She isn’t the skinny, gawky freak anymore, that’s for sure.
Every now and then, you see an inkling of justice in the universe.
Tonight we went to a party at Kelly Soloman’s place (her parents are off at some friggin’ yoga retreat or something). I gave Dakota one of my old dresses (I can’t wear it now) - a little black number that I knew would look great on her - and boy, was it a great night.
(I had to practically threaten violence to get her to try the damned thing on, but eventually she agreed to.)
All these guys were there… the ones that used to call Dakota a ‘tard or whatever… and, well, they sure changed their tune when they saw her!
God, she would never talk to me again if she knew I wrote this, but I swear she must’ve inherited that body from her mom… I mean, shit. What woman wouldn’t kill to look like her? And she kept everything all wrapped up in bandages and baggy clothes and shit?
Me, on the other hand?
I’m healing.
I finally showed Dakota. She didn’t understand.
Acted like I’d just told her that Santa isn’t real or something. Maybe in a way that’s just what I did.
Y’know what’s funny?
I’m looking at myself in the mirror, and I keep thinking back to that thing my mom tried after her accident. She kept on having pain long after everything was healed up, and the doctors didn’t know what else to try so they gave her that box.
There wasn’t much left of her right arm (getting dragged by a semi will do that, I guess) but she always said it hurt. Like it was all twisted up, she said.
I didn’t understand then how a ghost could hurt.
I think I do now.
Anyway, she would sit there - her arm in one hole and her stump in the other–using a trick with mirrors, trying desperately to convince her brain to just ‘unclench’ that ghost arm. She couldn’t do it. She tried, I know, but she just didn’t succeed.
Couldn’t sleep from the pain, couldn’t eat.
At least not till she ate that .22 shell (haw, haw).
This wasn’t meant to turn into Bea’s pity party, but I just want somebody to understand. I want to understand.
Every day a little more slips away.
Here I am in this mirror. The light looks yellow; it makes my skin look sicker than it is.
I run my hands down my sides, feeling them thumpety-thump along the ribs.
My shit-brown eyes stare out from the deep-dark holes they’ve been hiding in. My hair has lost its shine. It looks like fucking hay or something.
I just want to feel something. Anything. Something besides the cold bite of the razor.
(God, what a drama queen.)
I touch the swollen lump of my belly and it doesn’t even make me want to cry anymore.
He doesn’t even come home anymore. If he did I’d tell him. I’d tell him that I don’t blame him for the things he’s done.
He’s still my daddy.
Why doesn’t he love me?
What am I supposed to do? I can’t keep it. But I… can’t…
God
Where’d I put that fukcing razor–
* * *
July 20, 1993
“Why would you do this?” Dakota says, her face a mask of anguish.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Dakota, I promise.” Bea’s voice is hoarse. Dakota leans on the railing of the hospital bed, gently holding her friend’s hand, and looking at the thick bandages covering both of her arms.
“I got carried away, is all,” Bea croaks. She reaches for a Styrofoam cup of water on the table and sips the lukewarm liquid through a straw.
“Why would you do this to yourself at all? I don’t understand…”
Setting the cup down, Bea pats Dakota’s hand and whispers, “I know you don’t, sweetie. It’s just…how I manage. There’s so much of the time that I just can’t feel anything at all…or, if I do, it’s all at once, y’know? Too much. And it’s easier this way…I know it’ll sound sick to you, but when I see the blood… it makes me calm down. When I see the scars…I know that I’ve gotten what I deserve. When I feel the cut, I feel it. Sometimes hurting is better than feeling nothing at all…”
Dakota keeps staring at the bandages.
“I love you, Bea. Please don’t hurt yourself anymore. Please?”
She leans down, head against the railing, and begins to cry softly.
Beatrix strokes the girl’s hair and remains silent.
* * *
September 18, 1993
i wish i was like Dakota.
She’s got every reason to be fucked up. Every reason to hate. i’m just a stupid whiny little spoiled cuntrag, and i fucking deserve what i get. Why am i so incapable of dealing with shit? Why am I so selfish?
Christ.
i should just die.
* * *
September 19, 1993
The box sits upon the dresser. It is an antique. Silver–polished to a reflective surface–and small, smaller by far than the other music boxes of its day. When it is opened, a small china ballerina slowly twirls as the chimes ring out some nameless old standard.
The interior of the box is a rust-colored crushed velvet. Nestled inside are the following items: 1
roll of surgical gauze, a pair of tweezers, 1 book of matches, 3 single-sided razor blades wrapped in plain white paper, 1 spool of thread, 1 packet of sewing needles, and a coiled tube of bacitracin ointment.
Beatrix Carrell is not worried that anyone will find it. Or about the uncomfortable questions that it could generate. She does not worry, because she has attained an almost complete invisibility. The only time her father acknowledges her existence is in the late hours of night, when the bars are closed and whisky has poisoned his mind.
On those occasions, when he falls into her bed–roughly petting her hair and calling her “his sweet Lillian”–she has learned that it’s best to lay very still and let him have what he wants. She thinks about his confusion and loneliness and tries to feel compassion.
Without the box, she feels nothing at all.
* * *
November 28, 1994
Well, Diary, I don’t know what to say. I’m awful sad today. Other people are happy or laughing or joking, but it’s never funny when a person dies. Even if he did bad things sometimes.
I read a lot about him, and I just think it’s horrible. I mean, he said he knew what he was doing was wrong, and it made him sick, but he kept on doing it anyway.
Can you imagine?
He said he felt sick and evil. But what was he supposed to do? You think anybody would’ve listened if he’d told them the stuff in his head? No way. Everybody wants to pretend that everything’s all perfect and pretty, but underneath? Underneath it all I think everybody is sick. After all, we’re just a bunch of walking meat that starts rotting right from the first breath. All that rot on the inside, it’s no wonder folks do what they do. If you could cut the bad meat out before it spread, maybe. Maybe that’s what people mean when they talk about people being possessed by demons. It’s just spoiled old meat.
You know what really struck me, Diary? That first boy he killed, you know why he did it? He said the boy wanted to leave, and he didn’t never want him to leave.
Isn’t that sad?
He must’ve been so lonely.
And now somebody’s killed him.
I don’t believe in no heaven or anything like that, but if there’s anything that happens after you die, god I hope it’s that we get fixed, y’know?
And I hope somewhere out there that there’s some peace for you, Mr. Dahmer.
* * *
The woman checks the IV bag, and injects antibiotics into the port.
The Thing in the box sleeps. At least she thinks it is asleep; it’s hard to tell what the lidless eyes are doing.
She cleans her instruments, washes her hands, and pulls her golden hair up into a ponytail.
Looking back at The Thing–it does not resemble a human, and has not for at least a year–she feels a twinge of sorrow. Every time she cuts it, she feels herself die a little more. It had to be this way, though, she knows. The Thing told her.
She told herself.
In the end, everything would be okay.
They knew.
* * *
October 31st, 1995
Well, Diary, let’s see how this goes…
I’m taking my time, but let me know if I screw up, okay?
Bea saw you because I’d left you on the nightstand and she said I shouldn’t write like that anymore. She’s right, I suppose. She says that it’s not worth all the work with Mrs. Anderson if I’m going to write like I used to. I told her that it’s just easier to organize my thoughts the old way, but she said that was…well, she said that was a bad word that means poop from a boy cow.
So…do you like the new me, Diary? Pretty snazzy, huh? Do you think I’m smart? I got an A on my biology test, and it looks like I will graduate in the spring after all!
Oh! And check this out, Diary - I start my new job Monday. Yep, I’ll be an official Candy Striper…though they don’t call them that anymore. I can’t wait.
I’ve decided that maybe being a nurse would be cool. Maybe in the fall I can go to college (Me! In college!) with Bea and maybe we can room together and stuff. Maybe we’ll even work in the same hospital!
I worry about her sometimes, Diary. I thought maybe I could help her, but she’s getting worse again. She says I’m the only thing that makes her happy, but I don’t know. When I tell her things, like about my test, something funny happens to her and she just seems to go further away.
Tonight I’m gonna stay at her house for Halloween. We’re gonna make popcorn balls and eat lots of candy and watch Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer and giggle and get fat!
I can’t wait.
I’ve missed her since she graduated, and I know she’s missed me too.
And wait till she sees my costume, Diary, just wait!
* * *
November 1st 1995
I’m so confused. It’s all so unreal.
He’s gone, really gone. And I don’t know how to feel about that. I lost it when I saw him there, at the bottom of the steps, eyes empty, mouth bloody… dead. I started screaming and screaming and the screams became laughter and the tears flowed and…
Well, I’m fucked up.
Found daddy’s flask.
Dakota was so calm and still there at the top of the stairs, head cocked (almost like the way daddy’s head was), watching.
She told me what happened and I believe her. We were sleeping together, she and I, two twins, but I had gotten up to take my little music box into the bathroom. He came into my room, she said. I believe because I never told her. I believe because I have to.
He saw her there in the darkness. Her blonde hair.
(I don’t even know what to say about that Halloween costume… Dakota, dressed in my clothes, hair dyed to match mine… god we look alike… I never realized how much)
She didn’t say what he did, but I know. I know because it’s always the same - that stinking breath on my neck, the clumsy hand pulling at my panties.
Did he notice the smell of the dye?
Did he wonder where I’d gotten such nice tits?
What were the thoughts rattling around in there before she woke up?
There’s something inside of Dakota, from back when she had her ‘accident.’ Something like an animal…
I heard him scream.
I heard her growl.
The crashing, the falling, the final, fatal thump.
What could she have done to send him screaming from the room like that? To make him fall down the stairs?
I don’t feel the sadness. When it finally comes, it hits like a tidal wave and I have to take my box and go to the bathroom
(no need anymore. Who’ll know?)
Right. Old habits die hard.
I’m sucha stupid ugly bitch. Wah, wah, wah - I don’t feel anything. Wah, wah, wah - I feel too much.
Christ. Get a goddamn grip, kid.
And Dakota.
She was so afraid. Like I would kick her out or something. Like we’re not the same. I see it now… Clearly. The only thing I see so clear.
If I really shine my box, I can see my reflection in it. But it’s not me I see.
So long spent helping her, teaching her…only to learn that I was never even real to begin with.
I am the phantom limb, and I cannot unclench.
I know what we have to do. If I could feel, I might be scared.
But i cant’ and so i am not, Diary.
* * *
January 1st, 1996
She asked me to do her a favor today. I told her - anything. I told her I love her so much…of course I would do anything at all for her.
She made me promise.
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 37