Kamikaze Heart

by Craze, Chelle C.

  “Mmm,” Olivia purred, and the disgusting slap of naked flesh clapping together forced my hand around the doorknob on its own accord. It also forced me to turn the gold knob clockwise a bit and urged my feet to carry my numbed body into the room.

  My eyes burned with the reality of the situation unveiling before me. Olivia was on top of Roland, and our two hundred count Egyptian cotton sheets she bought for us as an early engagement present were pooled around her ass in a wad.

  At first, neither of them saw me, as they were too invested with the subject at hand. Her head fell backward in pleasure as she ground her hips against my fiancé’s.

  Even though I shouldn’t have needed to, because this monstrosity shouldn’t have been happening, I forged a cough to announce my presence, interrupting their moment of intimacy. Both of their eyes were clamped tightly, and as a million thoughts raced through my head, they were thousands of miles away. The first clear thought I was able to form was the location of the revolver, in our lockbox downstairs. Quickly, I reminded myself neither of them was worth me going to jail over. I knew how little life was held within the walls of a prison’s confinements, and I didn’t want that for my future. Besides, even though this did hurt, it wasn’t the worst pain I had ever endured. I would get through this. It just pushed the dagger a little farther into my open wounds.

  Jolts of betrayal and stupidity of trusting them electrified my body, and I blinked my eyes a few times, making sure I wasn’t hallucinating from the fever Kay said I had. After about the tenth flutter of my eyelids hadn’t change the horrific scene before me, I accepted it. Hate flooded every centimeter of my body, and I gritted my teeth as a result.

  “You. Fucking. Assholes!” I screamed after a moment’s reflection. I picked up one of Olivia’s blue heels and hurled it in the general direction of the bed. It landed in the mid of her back with a thud, and she hunkered over, recoiling with immediate pain. I wasn’t finished by any means, quite the opposite. My rampage had only begun. I would recover, but I wanted to make a point. This was not okay.

  She cried out in agony as the skin reddened where the shoe hit. The fact they were no longer alone in the room was abundantly undisputable now. Our. Room. The one with walls that, until a few moments ago, flourished with the future Roland and I whispered to one another as we made plans together. The promises of sickness and health had been officiated, because we were not able to keep our hands off one another, even though we hadn’t spoken them. But, I cherished the fact our attraction was so strong it was palpable. Evidently, its strength didn’t withstand what radiated between Olivia and him.

  Each flutter of hope that Roland and I had put into motion to brighten the path to our upcoming life as a married couple halted brusquely. They were so still, they died. Apparently, they were only insignificant lies to Roland that would never blossom into something breathtaking, because just as every worm dreamed to be a caterpillar a day away from transitioning into a butterfly, the brutal truth was, sometimes, they were still just that. A slimy, earth-dwelling creature. Despite how long they held still, clinging so ever tightly onto the small chance they might sprout wings, in the end they were just a worm, and would never be anything apart from a disgusting maggot. Maggots did have their purpose in the world, and I would use it as inspiration to give the reprisal burning the skin beneath my engagement ring on my fourth finger a purpose. To rid my life of the dead flesh before me.

  They both froze in place, frightened what my next action might be or as if time stopped ticking to allow them forgiveness. This gave me an open window of vulnerability on their part, and I took advantage of them as they had me. Specifically to feed the metaphor that circled in my body about maggots, I flung Olivia’s second heel with my left hand, and would keep letting my anger surface until my life was ridden of them. With determination, I closed my right eye and aimed for Roland’s forehead, but he ducked, snaking his arm around Olivia lightning fast and rolling their bodies to the far edge of the bed.

  “Fuck, Trinity.” He gasped in shock, and his lips parted. “It isn’t what you think!” Roland spouted the lie as his eyes followed mine, staring at his protective arms holding her body against his. He opened his arms, and Olivia bounced onto the carpet with a thump. She winced and stared at him, but did not speak.

  “Oh, it wasn’t? She wasn’t just riding your dick like she was your fiancée!” I seethed rhetorically in a shout, hoping he wasn’t stupid enough to answer me. The last word got me, and tears of pain crept up my throat, burning my lower eyelids.

  “Get. The. Fuck. Out! Both of you!” I screamed, no longer able to endure the sight of them, and ground my teeth, refusing to shed tears. I would not let them see me cry. They would not get that satisfaction, along with knowing I stupidly gave them my trust.

  I was too blind by the love I held for both of them to see why they were spending so much time together. Like an idiot, I thought they were planning some huge surprise for my upcoming birthday, even though it was a few months away from now. It was a thought that came so naturally to me that I never second-guessed their motives.

  Neither of them moved, as if they thought I would cool down and change my mind. I wouldn’t. Both sets of eyes staring at me stretched with sorrow, and Olivia opened her mouth to speak, probably to give me some frail excuse of how this wasn’t her fault.

  “Now!” I yelled with such vigor my body shook as I held the word out until my lungs gave out. To further prove my point, I grabbed the first thing within my reach. My fingertips wrapped around the vase, filled with freshly clipped roses from the rosebush I just vomited into, and it was rapidly airborne.

  As the vase exploded, shards of glass flew around Roland’s unsuspecting head, and one large piece flung onto his bare crotch. I almost wished it would have cut him, but again, I didn’t want to end up at a precinct tonight, so I was thankful it missed.

  “Fuck! Okay. Liv, let’s give her time to cool off,” Roland warned Olivia, and his pet name for her sickened me. I hated him. I fucking hated her. I was successful in my venture to hate, because they were now both dead to me.

  My body stiffened, and I reminded myself to breathe. Small, shallow breaths shook up from my sides and out of my mouth. My head spun with pain, a reminder that all I wanted was something to make me feel better. This horrendous chain of events definitely did not define that by any means.

  They both scattered like cockroaches when a light was turned on, grabbing the nearest clothing, and Olivia ran past me and out the bedroom door.

  Roland paused to say something, no doubt to argue, and I simply held my hand in front of his face. I. Was. Done. Nothing he could say would temper this situation in any way. “Don’t, Roland. Just leave,” I managed to stutter in between the moments I wasn’t hating him. He exhaled, but no words left his mouth, and I was thankful. I had been pushed to the maximum tonight, and I didn’t need any amount of medical experience to know this was my breaking point. One more word from him, and I would lose the last bit of restraint I had. I’d already lost a fiancé and the future I thought would bring so much happiness to both of us, so handcuffs and a rap sheet weren’t looking so bad anymore.

  A wicked smile concreted onto my lips, and just as the courage to reopen my mouth surfaced so did the rest of my stomach contents all over various parts of Roland’s body.

  “Trin, babe, are you okay?” he questioned in a concerned tone, reaching for my shoulder.

  The moment he proposed, there was a moment of hesitation that stole my voice. At the time, I chalked it up to being nervous and surprised. I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I sat in silence pondering for some time. In the back of my mind, there was always a little piece of me that questioned if he was my soulmate. There were parts of me I kept from him, the important ones, but I did not think it was intentional. At least at first. I wanted to live up to the perfect picture he had painted of me. Perhaps I’d always known this day would come, the breakup, but just didn’t know how it would happen or that it woul
d hurt so much.

  Not caring what I looked like in front of him anymore, I wiped my mouth on the back of my forearm, and my tongue bitterly smacked against the roof of my mouth. “Not even a little,” I said in a weak voice. “But, after a day or two, I’ll be completely fine. You know how bullshit is. You let it run its course, and then you move on,” I spat out, no doubt erasing his perfect image of me, and my voice gained strength with each word of my statement. His eyes drew downward in reaction to the double meaning. He was in pain. I wanted my words to do the vengeance I could not put into actions. I wanted him to hurt as much as I was right now.

  It was ironic. Yesterday, I would have done everything within my power to extinguish hellfire and brimstone for either of them, even if it meant meeting my death in the process. Today, if a fire pit had been remotely near, I would have shoved both of their bodies to their death. Thank God none were close.

  Roland hung his head in defeat and tossed his now vomit-covered clothes into the hallway trashcan, stopping in the bathroom long enough to grab a robe and wrapping it around his naked body. He silently walked around me and into our bedroom, and I followed him. I did not trust him now.

  He grabbed a nearby towel from the floor, one he had probably left there for me to pick up, and did his best to wipe the vomit off him and then the floor, leaving the towel in place. Opening the closet, he grabbed his duffel bag, filling it with an arm full of clothes he pulled off the rod, leaving empty hangers on his side of our shared walk-in.

  It wasn’t until this moment, staring at the bare plastic blue hangers that I questioned telling him to leave. It was the right thing to do, I knew that, but it didn’t make the decision easier or make me feel even a flicker of relief. Typically, no breakups were easy, but it was the ones holding abruptness that gutted you, in my opinion. The ones that were capable of grabbing your entire universe and contorting it into something unrecognizable in a matter of minutes. Those blindsiding moments were ones to kill your insides that used to hold all the vital emotions like love and hope. Afterward, a numbness filled the void left in your body because you didn’t ever want to feel again. Being numb meant you couldn’t hurt anymore. I wished for the numbness that would never come. Even if I was able to push today’s events from my mind, there were even more painful ones that waited in their shadow.

  Roland didn’t bother to zip up his bag as he dropped it onto the floor. He quietly stripped the sheets and rolled the towel into the nasty mess of sheets, disappearing for a second and then returning with a trash bag. Pushing the fabric ball he had formed into the bag, he pulled the yellow strings to tighten the bag and slung it over his left shoulder. He bent to fetch his duffel, tossing it over his right, without so much as a whisper of a word for the past twenty minutes.

  “I really am sorry, Trinity.” He wiped his eyes, and they roamed my face with anticipation. Maybe they were searching for the forgiveness they would never find. I didn’t have any in me for him, or Olivia for that matter.

  I nodded in acknowledgement, closing my eyes as my head pounded in protest of everything. At that point, I could not even begin to differentiate if the events of the evening were to blame or if it was the sickness. Honestly, I didn’t care to.

  I walked behind Roland to make sure he actually left the house and locked the deadbolt behind him. He lost his key to it, so this was my insurance he couldn’t get back into this house…or my life.

  Closing my eyes, I released a deep breath and searched for the one thing that would bring relief. Medicine. My fingers spun the lid off the anti-nausea bottle, and it clattered to the tile floor.

  “Eh.” I dismissed it, not caring if it stayed there for the an eternity, and shrugged my shoulders, chugging a little bit of the liquid. After carefully putting the bottle onto the coffee table, I curled into a ball on the couch. A confused ball of hurt. My closing eyelids seared with wetness, and I lost my honor, letting the tears slide down my cheeks and onto the fabric of the couch. Silent sobs stormed out of my mouth, and I pulled the throw pillow from beneath my head, clutching it within my tense fingertips to catch my heartbreak.

  3

  Trinity

  The next morning the events of last night raced into the first coherent thoughts my brain formed. I moved at the speed of a snail, afraid the sickness was still with me, and sat up slowly to test out my theory. So far so good. I opened one eye and then the other as if opening them in unison would somehow prevent whether the sickness still clung to me.

  On the way to the bathroom, I passed the open door of Roland’s study. Everything was in its exact prestigious place where he left it. It was perfect, just like the future we had planned together. It shouldn’t be. It needed to be as wrecked as I was. However, when I entered it, it was already stagnant. The lustrous lie of precision that glistened moments ago was gone.

  My eyes zeroed in on the globe sitting on the desk, and my fingers traced the various continents and cities with stars over them. The ones he and I had put there when dreaming of all the places we would eventually travel together. The heart over our home state burnt beneath my touch, and the pain throbbed up my arm and clasped my heart so unbearably tight. He was supposed to be my new beginning. The do-over in life I so desperately needed. Only he wasn’t my second chance to do right by life; he was my second time to fail.

  Each second that passed felt like my feet were being cemented into nothingness. I couldn’t be here anymore. I was wrong. I thought without Roland here I would no longer want him, and it was a half-truth of sorts. My body and mind were on the same page, but my bruised heart was behind about two hundred pages or so. As if every other beat was a little weak from the pressure of his absence. I hated that my heart depended on him so much to feel whole. He had been the one that helped life seem livable when I couldn’t foresee a future. He drove the stake through our love, and now I was left to gather the pieces that remained without him.

  My eyes closed. Placing one hand on the base, I spun the globe with all the strength I held within my fingertips. Silently, I prayed my finger wouldn’t land on one of those wretched stars of our love. If it did, I wasn’t sure the smallest remainder of resolve I had wouldn’t fall to shambles. I tried to count the rotations simply by sound, but really, I didn’t know how many times it turned.

  “Now,” I whispered, and my eyes darted open. While my finger abruptly landed on a spot, the globe teetered a little beneath my skin. “Louisiana,” I announced, lifting my finger and reading the destination out loud to myself. I knew extraordinarily little about the state, but it seemed like it was as good of a place for my last time to start over as any. This would be the last time I would let myself try. Everything within me screamed to give up, but Armon’s voice echoed in my head, “Mommy, it will be okay. You’ll be okay.” I needed to honor him with what I did with my life, and somehow wasting my time with Roland was as if I had betrayed him. It was absurd to think in this manner, but that didn’t ease the thoughts of guilt trampling my willpower.

  Stomping my foot down, determination blasting through my body, I sat down at Roland’s desk and told myself I was not giving up. My palm shook as I picked up the black phone and dialed the number to Central. They would transfer the call to the Medical Unit. I should have called the direct line, but I didn’t think of it until after someone answered.

  “Helen Ackers, please…” My voice trailed off, and I wasn’t sure the officer had heard me until the first ring came through the line.

  The phone rang a second time, and my index finger inched onto the rectangle button that would end the call. Just as my finger dropped a fraction, someone spoke, “Thank you for calling Redwood Correctional Complex Medical Unit. This is Troy. How may I direct your call?”

  “Helen Ackers’ office, please,” I croaked out my request, not able to give him anything more than what I had.

  “One moment.”

  “This is Helen,” she declared in my ear, and I forced the lump growing in my throat to swallow down. This was the righ
t thing to do. I couldn’t stay here with Roland. I meant so little to him that directly following our engagement, he was in bed with my best friend.

  “Hey, Helen. It’s Trinity,” I nervously reported, twirling the phone cord around my fingers.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?”

  “Umm…I’ve been better.” I tried to sound nonchalant, keeping my voice calm, fully aware I was about to not only ruin her day, but for the course of at least two weeks, if not more. I hated doing this to her, but when it came to avoiding self-destruction or sparing someone’s feelings, I would choose the first.

  “I bet. What can I do for you?”

  “Well. You see. I am thankful for the job I have there, and please know this was a difficult decision. I will drop my IDs in the mail. I’m sorry if this puts anyone out, but this has to be my two weeks’ notice.” I finally pushed the words out and reminded myself this wouldn’t be something I regretted. It was for the best.

  “You what?”

  “I-I quit. My last day will be the last day of my vacation,” I stammered, flicking my fingertips, trying to untangle them from the wound-up cord.

  “Excuse me?” Her voice rose at least two octaves, and without seeing her, I imagined her removing her glasses just before standing from her chair.

  “I’m sorry, Helen. It’s personal. It has nothing to do with my job or the people there. I just can’t be here anymore,” I explained as little as possible, not wanting to get into any details. If I was going to leave, I was cutting all ties as clean as possible. It was what I did before, and this time would not be different. I didn’t want any reason for anyone to be able to reach me or have a need to do so.

  “Are you sure? I’m sure we could arrange—”