by M R Field
Rolling his hand over and over, Jerry prompts her. “Keep going.”
“I am going to lose the shop.”
“I think you’re missing the main idea, Patricia. Should I do this for you?”
I breathe through another cramp as I stare back at my mother.
“I have a little problem, just something that I wanted help with … and Jerry here was going to help me fix it.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t drop me in it. All I wanted was to get Hazel back to where she belongs. You just gave me more leverage for a way in.” His hands slap down over the edge of the stage and he leans in, waiting for my mother to respond.
“I have no money and now I have to sell the business.”
Jerry scoffs as her spine stiffens.
“But what did you spend the money on?” I ask. She looks away for a moment as Jerry slaps the stage, startling her.
“Tell her,” he commands.
She flinches and looks back over to me. “I spent it on some medicine I needed.”
“Medicine?” My thoughts tumble as I try to remember when I ever saw her taking any pills.
“Well, they aren’t what you might see as medicine, but I did need them,” she hastily adds.
“What are you talking about?” I snap.
“I have a small addiction to pain-killers. It burnt up all my money and that’s why I have to sell the business. There, I said it.” She turns back to Jerry, “Now, are you happy? Can you let us go? I was going to handle it.”
“Well the first step is admitting it,” Jerry sneers. He straightens and folds his arms over his chest. “But you haven’t told her the entire truth. Tell her why you were meeting her here today.”
Her shoulders stiffen as her bottle lip begins to tremble. “Your father wouldn’t help me, so I …” Her eyes clash into mine as she pleads. “It was the only way. I didn’t want to beg him any further, so I thought …” She sighs heavily before continuing. “I knew you’d say no. But you had all that money from Aunt Cynthia; your sisters didn’t. But you, you were so responsible. I knew I could get you to eventually give me some. Even if I used Jerry as bait to get you to loosen up and hand me that money. It was just meant to be a small loan, you know, to tide things over.”
“What? To tide things over? Do you not see where I am, Mother? What your ‘little’ addiction has led to?” I gasp out another painful breath as my stomach tightens. I wish that my hands were untied so I could knock some sense into that stupid woman.
“I’m tied here to a chair because you wanted money!” My teeth clench together and I breathe through another tightening. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
“Don’t you think I wanted too? Don’t you think I wanted to pick up the phone and call you? I couldn’t. My pride wouldn’t allow it. So, I did the next best thing. I contacted Jerry after he begged me to try and convince you to take him back. He sounded so lost without you. I was determined to exhaust all avenues to get you back together. I figured once you were together that he could help me sway you to give me the money and then you would be together. Like it should be.”
“Like it should be? Be miserable, like I was before Robbie? Fat chance, Mother. It would have never happened. I would never leave Robbie for him. Ever.”
“See?” My mother’s eyes plead to Jerry. “You see how hard it is to convince her? I honestly tried. Maybe you aren’t meant to be. This was all a mistake. We can talk about this like reasonable adults, if you just—”
“OF COURSE WE ARE!” Jerry’s eyes turn fierce as he stares back at my mother. “Everything was fine before she left. Everything was good. Petal made me want to be a better person. We were going to get married.”
I flinch at his words, the taste of bile pooling at the back of my throat.
“But …” His cold eyes turn to me. In a menacing tone, his voice lowers, sending chills down my spine. “Everything has changed because you left. It’s all your fault. If you had stayed, that girl would have never been hurt.”
I gasp as I watch his face harden even further.
“What are you saying?” My mother’s voice wavers.
Jerry claps his hands to silence her. His sharp eyes pierce into mine. My skin crawls as I feel bile rise up in my throat. How I ever thought he was attractive is beyond me.
“What are you talking about? You’re meant to be in London. I thought the police warned you to stay away, and that you’d said you were going home.” I gasp, my stomach clenching as I brace myself through it. I’d been having the occasional Braxton Hicks for more than ten weeks, but for them to come now was agonising. Please, baby, wake up. I pleaded. Please, just one little kick to know you’re alright.
“You see, Hazel.” He leans forward across the stage, and I can see him better. His eyes are cold and ominous. “I charmed those officers. How did you think I got into acting? I was fucking good at it. They never suspected that I would remain. I was here on a mission to get you back. I loved you, Hazel. I wanted to test you. To see if you loved me just as much. But you never did. The beautiful Hazel—so impenetrable. Not even when I screwed that class friend of yours did it get your attention and make you try to work on us being better. You still left me.” He runs his tongue along his bottom lip as he stares down at my tied up body. “So, I got lonely after you left. The only thing keeping me in that theatre were the understudies that I could get under me.” He laughs at his own pathetic joke. “Especially the blonde ones. But one was a bit of trouble. She followed me around like a lovesick puppy and for a while it was okay, but she wasn’t you. She teased me. She made me want to forget you. Seems that cock teasing for a semester is all she wanted to do. Wearing short skirts, flirting with me, brushing her chest against my arm—all a fucking wind-up. When I tried anything, she would turn me away, saying she wasn’t like the other girls. She wanted to know me first.” He pushes his hands back onto the stage and stands before me. “No one tells me no. NO ONE. So, I kindly took away her choice to refuse me anymore,” he chuckled. “Lucretia told me to go over to her dorm one night to help her with her monologue. By then, I was so fed up with her teasing and her touching that once she opened the door, I took matters into my own hands.”
“What did you do?” I whisper through a hiss. I shift in my seat but still feel no movement.
“I took what she had been offering me all along, and I loved every minute of it.” He grins, rubbing his chin with his hand. “Even with her fighting me off. That was the best part of it. I love when they play hard to get.”
“You monster!” I yell. “How could you?”
“Very fucking easily, actually. I needed to have that release, Hazel. But she didn’t. So I fucked her. I fucked her over and over again. I told Lucretia that if she told a soul, I’d cut her tongue out.” A sinister chuckle leaves his lips. “Fancy that—committing the ‘rape of Lucretia’. I wonder if I was better than the legend?”
“You’re disgusting,” I sneer. “She was innocent.”
“She fucking deserved it. I did what I had to do. But my craving for you didn’t end. I couldn’t get over you. How could you suddenly not love me anymore? So, I started packing and found my passport next to a photo of you in my drawer. I knew I had to come here and find you.” His eyes shoot over to my mother and then back to me. “That’s when I realised that if you had never left, you would have warmed my bed. Kept me away from that girl—kept me from taking things. So, I thought to come and visit you, and woo you back.” His eyes then narrow down at me.
“To cover for raping that girl?” I shriek.
“I FUCKING LOVED YOU! It’s your fault it happened! She was a COCK TEASE!” he bellows, spittle covering my cheek. “She fucking asked for it. You sit there and judge me when you should be the one blaming yourself for it happening. You”—he points at my face—“were supposed to take me back; you were supposed to love me. But you didn’t. You fucking moved on and left me alone.”
“We broke up!” I grit through another searing cramp. “The
re was no ‘us’. There never was! You were screwing someone else.”
He rolls his eyes as if my words mean nothing. “Only to get you to love me again!”
“What? How’s that even a reason to get someone to love them? It was over before you cheated. Wasn’t moving across the world a big enough hint? You’re ridiculous,” I shout.
He ignores me as his eyes focus on my belly.
“Now, you’ve fucked it all up.” He gestures to my stomach. “I thought you were going to lose it that night in your whore club; in fact, I was hoping for it. That bastard spawn has ruined my plans.”
He turns and bends down to the floor and lifts up something. “If I can’t have you, nobody will. My life is ruined because of your selfishness, Hazel. So selfish that your mother had to trick you to come here. She was going to get you to sign over your inheritance to her. Before today, she even offered me half so I would ‘seal the deal’.” He laughs bitterly. “Fancy your own mother, not being able to talk to her own daughter about things. Her not being able to ask you for anything as she spent your lifetime keeping you at a distance and then thinking her daughter’s ex could help.” He laughs, while shaking his head.
“But you being pregnant with that bastard will never work for me. You making that choice was enough to show me that you aren’t good enough for me, and you never will be.”
My chest tightens. A determined look casts over his face as he moves back to the side of the stage, and into my vision and as clear as day, I see the large petrol tin that he’s holding.
“You see, dear Hazel,” he coos as he holds the tin to his chest. “This could have all been avoided if you simply loved me. That’s all. I had even convinced your father, the one man in your life that you wanted to notice you, to finally take interest, as I was a means to getting your mother to stop nagging him. He gave me the key to your place, for fuck’s sake. But no, you wouldn’t listen. Now, you’ve got yourself in a bind just like your mother.”
I turn from his condescending gaze and look over to my mother, who shifts her face immediately so I cannot see her facial expression.
“Turns out her town already knew what a pathetic sap she was. So much so, she was going to sell her daughter’s inheritance out to feed her addiction and pay off her debts.”
“Why couldn’t you have just asked me earlier? Did Father think so little of me that he would allow this to happen?” I cringe, my legs bending slightly towards my tight stomach.
“He doesn’t know that I am trying to do this. That bastard ruined my reputation when he left me. He refuses to give me a cent. The pain is unbearable. Your father did this to me! He should be tied to this chair. Not me! Now, I’m caught here. A mother, asking her own daughter for money? The idea was ridiculous. I thought that if you were back with Jerry he could help you make the right decision. When he told me you were ignoring his gifts and messages, I realised we needed to be forceful. Face to face with me. You would have said no, otherwise,” she mumbles, but I hear her clearly.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know me at all.” Turning back to Jerry, I narrow my eyes at him. “So, now what? You want my money too? Become the rapist on the run? The title suits you,” I snigger. The tin tightens in his grip as his other hand reaches up and begins to unfasten the lid on top.
“No, all I wanted was you. We would get married and be happy together. I was using your mother as a way to get to you, but it didn’t work. Now, I want to destroy you. If I can’t have you, no one will. What better place to do this than where you headed when you left me? But, your mother wanted to come here anyway. She thought she could show you that you didn’t need your money now that you had Robbie.” He throws the lid out onto the floor and begins to tip the tin. “I realised she never cared for getting you and I together. Just her stupid fucking money.”
Amber liquid begins to pour freely on the floor by my feet and the unmistakeable fumes of petrol permeate the air.
“What are you doing?” I screech. “If you want the money, you can have it; you don’t have to do this!”
He stops pouring for a moment and the fumes sting my eyes as droplets land on my
legs and feet. I struggle to move from my chair and shuffle up and down, fighting against the cramps, caught in the ropes that bind me. “She thought I was doing it for her. I wasn’t … I was doing it for us. I’d keep wooing you, get you to love me again … and we’d be together.” He continues to pour the liquid behind my mother until it reaches out the front of her. “But it didn’t work. Now, you’re tied to the chair, carrying the spawn that tore us apart.”
“This is ridiculous!” Another cramp clenches painfully, lingering longer in my abdomen and I struggle to move in my seat.
By now, Jerry has the tin in front of me and has poured a circle of fuel around us. My heart beats erratically, my breaths now shorter and quicker. Please, please somebody come. My thoughts fly to Robbie, causing a pang of guilt to slice my chest. I should have listened to him and not come. Now, I’ve put myself, our baby and my mother in danger.
I look towards her. “Yeah, now look where that got you,” I spit back. “There you were, telling me, me!” My voice hardens. “That I was a whore for doing a cabaret act. All the while, you were no better than my sisters. No wonder they are addicts; they take after your blood.”
“You know nothing!” my mother shrieks. “I have suffered for decades. I needed those pills.”
“More than your daughter’s life? Your grandchild’s?” Her eyes lower to my stomach, and I watch her visibly swallow. Oh, now she gets it. “I was building a life with Robbie,” I sob, the lack of movement within my womb, splintering my heart. “We were going to be a family—a family you never were a part of. Not you, not Dad or Chantal or Calista.”
“Hazel,” my mother cries.
“No!” I stomp my foot onto the ground. “Don’t talk to me, you lying, thieving excuse of a woman. Do not talk to me. I should’ve known this was all a way to use me. What mother doesn’t wish her child a happy birthday?” I look down at my stomach as a sob tears through my throat. Now my baby, my sweet innocent baby, could be gone. All for lies.
“Oh, isn’t this sweet?” Jerry laughs as he puts the tin down and grabs a bottle of vodka from the table. He holds it to his lips and takes a few swigs. His eyes clench shut as he hisses. He lowers the bottle to the table with a loud clang, and stumbles slightly. The lightweight that he is has never been able to withstand hard liquor. “Family reunions are such fun!”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of matches. “You see, Hazel, you will again miss out on having a family.” His eyes dart down to the box of matches as he slides the bottom tray out. “You think I didn’t notice how they neglected you? Not even your father cared enough to protect you. He simply handed your apartment key over in order to keep ignoring you. And look, here we are. Where are they? It’s a good thing that Robbie isn’t here to see this, as it would be—awkward.”
“I hate you. I never loved you.” I seethe, clenching my teeth as my insides curl in pain.
“I can’t wait to watch you burn,” he jeers.
“From one hate crime to another.” I stare at him, refusing to show my fear. I will not die begging; we are long past that. But I will die knowing that I fought until my last breath. I begin to wiggle more in my chair, my hands raw from the rope. “Funny, how your favourite play was mirrored from mine. Look at you now, just like those arseholes in The Laramie Project—you are committing a hate crime also. But you won’t be written about; society won’t need to be educated about the likes of you. Especially pathetic, idiotic rapists. You’ll be forgotten amongst the flames.” I catch a sign of movement over his shoulder and my heart catches. Stall him. “You will be forgotten, as you deserve to be.”
“You’re forgetting that while you’re melting, I’ll be walking away before anyone even knows that you’re in trouble. Your lover won’t even be here to stop it. You could have played along with me for a while, but y
ou chose him. That was your risk and this is your punishment. Prepare to writhe, petal.”
“I’d risk it all a thousand times again to be with him. He was worth every second. You won’t get away with this, you megalomaniac,” I taunt.
“Oh, really?” He holds a match up for me to see. “How are you going to try and stop me? Seems like I’m about to get my way after all.” He strikes the match to light it.
“Smile at the camera, Jerry.” I smile sardonically, looking up into the security camera. “You sick piece of shit. Even if we die, know that every word you said has been captured.” I am lying about the sound, but I hope like crazy that the cameras above my head are capturing this and someone can lip-read. Especially as the only way to turn them off is manually, using a special code in Robbie’s office.
Jerry flicks his head to the side and spots a camera and his jaw clenches.
“You bitch!” he shouts, his arms jolting as the match fumbles in his fingers. The flame burns him slightly and he hisses. “Fuck it! You both deserve to die! Happy fucking birthday!”
He turns slightly and spots Robbie, and he smiles at him, letting the match fall from his fingertips. His hand shifts back as Robbie roars towards us, and I scream as I watch the lit match float slowly down. My mother begins to scream frantically beside me. Jerry throws back his head and laughs dramatically at our peril, yet his moment is short-lived as his footing unbalances, causing him to step directly into the flames. The nylon fabric ignites instantly and I watch, stunned, as an agonising scream unfurls from Jerry’s mouth and the fire rapidly shoots up his legs to begin burning his body.
Like a phoenix rising through the fire, my Robbie, my Tesoro rises forward, and I hope and pray that he can take him out. But the adrenaline that courses through my body has piqued. My heart is too broken from not feeling our child and the weight of it all, begins to drag me under. Under the stillness, the emptiness where the pain in my abdomen now resides, my child lays unmoving. It continues to pull me until the darkness moves closer to me, evaporating my tears, and the flames lick at my feet.