by F. E. Arliss
She supposed this evil little community thought she deserved it for having asked questions and not cowered in the face of an authority figure. Zhara knew no one deserved that and certainly not for having asked intelligent questions or having had the where-with-all to be informed.
That was the problem with tiny towns. Only a certain group got to have respect. If you weren’t part of the “old guard”, then you didn’t get to have even basic human rights. These places were no better than some of the despotic third-world countries she’d lived in with her, now dead, diplomat husband.
Lady Zhara had done what no one in a tiny town should ever do - run afoul of the law.
Thank Heaven Zhara had weathered humiliation and degradation before. She would do so again. Now she was angry. She’d make them pay. She had the means to do so, photographic and physical paper evidence and a great lawyer - nothing could beat the feeling! Zhara would have her revenge, and no, she wasn’t going to turn the other cheek or let it slide or whatever stupid platitudes people came up with in order to do nothing in the face of adversity. It was hard to stand up for one’s rights, that was why letting it slide was so much easier. It just ate you up inside and gave you cancer - or at least that was an idea the therapist had floated to her as she lay on the cold gray leather sofa in a cold gray office in Amsterdam.
Chapter Ten
Idiots All Around
Zhara had once likened her family’s effect on her to the way sea anemones caught their prey. The anemones had a way of looking appealing, all the while waving their graceful tendrils in front of your eyes enticingly. While they were busy distracting your conscious mind, they busily burrowed deep into your skin with their multitude of barb-covered fingers. When you finally realized what was going on, the more you tried to wriggle free, the deeper the hooks embedded.
It took years of therapy and practice to finally pry the multi-fingered, barb-covered hooks of her family’s screwed up values and beliefs out of her head. Often, just when she would think she’d finally removed the poisonous mass of some ridiculous familial belief from her mind, she’d find that while the larger chunk of poisonous thinking had been removed, some part of the belief had broken off and remained buried deep in some hidden fold of the mind. There it would rot and fester until brought to light during some new struggle.
That was how it was with old familial beliefs that didn’t work anymore. The rot had to be exposed to sunlight so that the dark corners could be cleaned and disinfected. Zhara hoped she’d finally gotten rid of the last lingering stench of her family’s warped values. The realization that she’d put all of Carlton’s needs before hers had been a rude awakening a few years before. She supposed the visitation before the burial, now that she’d missed the family meeting by being incarcerated, would be the true test. Having to make nice for an hour would test the limits of her true willingness to forgive and whether or not she’d really let go of her family for good.
Zhara wasn’t sure about forgiveness. She didn’t wish any of them harm anymore - a change from the days when she’d wanted to carve their eyes out with a wooden spoon - but she didn’t want to necessarily be nice to any of them either. Being nice took effort. That had always been the problem for Zhara. Ultimately, whether she was a complete cynic or not, Zhara was kind. Deep down kind. It had always shocked her when people did terrible things. That tendency to think the best of people had taken years to disprove - and she still always wanted to be at least polite to them.
Her family was a horror, but they hadn’t become horrors without the most terrible of circumstances. They were what they were because people had made them that way. Zhara could see that. It caused her to feel hopelessly empathetic to their struggles. The biggest problem was that no one could ever help them. They were far too twisted and unwell to ever be counseled or drugged into being healthier people. It was too late.
And that was the saddest thing of all. That’s what shame and secrets did - they twisted people up. After a while, nothing could straighten them back out. Secrets were a cancer that no one could recover from.
Family’s were an enigma to Zhara. She never believed people who went on and on about how great theirs were. It only meant they were lying overtly, or lying to themselves. Ok, so she was a cynic. She just didn’t believe that there was ever an equal amount of love that went around in families. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there was always a favorite. If one child was more successful than the others, that child got special consideration because “it would be a sin to waste a gift such as that,'' or in the midwest, having a penis counted as a gift too.
On the other hand, if one sibling was better looking, that also got special consideration. Zhara should know, she’d been a stunner, and special consideration had all but ruined her life. Her mother had been so intent on marrying Zhara off to the best looking local athletic hero she could find that none of her needs or wants were ever considered. Her desires were inconsequential. What was important was having a prize beauty with which to snare a man! Zhara had come to detest her mother over this lack of regard for her children’s needs. She’d felt like a champion hog up for breeding prizes at the local county fair.
Of course Zhara had also come to detest most men. Simpletons with a dick. Her early life had been a study in getting whatever she wanted from men just because she was beautiful. Carlton had been stellar in that he had no doubt that any wife of his could do anything she wanted. Whether that was because he had faith in Zhara or because he was sure than anyone he married would be a marvel, was up for grabs.
The flip side of that coin was that no one ever thought she was smart and most women hated her and took their frustrations out on her for no reason except their own unhappy, febrile existences. Once, simply walking down the street in this tiny town, an older woman had turned on her and hissed, “Just who do you think you are?”
Zhara had simply stopped and said, dumbfounded, “What?” The woman had hurried off.
Zhara had been wearing a sedate knee-length skirt with a sleeveless blouse tucked in. None of it was too tight or inappropriate. She’d had on a grey pair of Gloria Vanderbilt pumps and had just come down the block to get a Coke on her break from work at the local bank. Nothing she was doing was in the least bit untoward. What she had been, was simply pretty. That had been enough for the woman’s venom to be spat at her.
Less than a dozen years later, her aunt would do the exact same thing to her. Gertrude had come on the train to attend her pervert grandfather’s funeral. She’d brought a long black wool skirt and topped it with a grey portrait-necked wool sweater and flat black riding boots. The outfit had been the farthest thing from revealing. What it had done was show her rather elegant collar bones and beautiful neck.
The aunt had gone and gone on and on about what a slut she was wearing that ridiculous outfit to a funeral. Zhara had been completely wounded. It was just envy again. From her own family. With family like this, who needed enemies.
Over the years Zhara had chided herself for any ill-feeling towards her mother or aunts. They were, afterall, the products of years of incest abuse by their father. There was nothing in the world more powerfully corrupting and soul-destroying than incest. It ruined lives more thoroughly than any disease ever could. Incest twisted the mind and the soul, and nothing could undo the damage.
Counseling might help, but it never erased all the damage. On the other hand, the twisted behaviors that it produced were much easier to deal with from afar, rather than near, so it was best for all of them if she stayed clear of the manipulations of their damaged psyches. That way, she could have a small, yet remote, tiny modicum of kind regard for them.
In Zhara’s experience, staying close to someone who’d been abused for years almost always lead a healthy person to receive multiple damning wounds. In the end, it almost always lead to a rift. That rift was most often only allowed to heal with physical distance.
Therapy manuals said that was “running away”. Zhara had found it necessary
in order to heal and felt the popular mantra of constantly facing one's demons was highly overrated. Mostly, just getting on with life allowed for healing. Constantly talking about wounds and the wounding people, only lead to prolonged turmoil and emotional upheaval.
It turned out marrying Carlton was a boon to her confidence in the intelligence realm. Zhara was supposed to be the pretty one, not the smart one. After being married to Carlton, the CIA tested her intelligence just to see what they had their hooks into. A whopping 168 IQ score came out the other end of that foray into measuring her worth. And, BINGO once again she was in another’s sights for being used.
From that point on Zhara got all her foreign language lessons paid for. She got special privileges that other wives of Embassy employees didn’t. She was once again, special. Not that Zhara really minded. She liked learning different languages and her headstrong personality kept her out and about in foreign diplomatic communities while other wives stayed home in fear.
Frequently, she was able to give names and contact details about people she’d met that the intelligence service might be interested in. Zhara was worth every penny they spent on her. It didn’t change the fact that they used her. Usually without her permission.
Since she’d gotten a master’s degree in psychology while trying to figure out her decidedly screwed up family dynamics, Zhara was also good at categorizing people at cocktail parties. It was easy for her to see what motivated people and what they really wanted. It was also easy for her to see the crazy side of people - after all, there are only two types of people who go into foreign service to their country, no matter what agency they work for - there are the good, who want to do good, and there are the power hungry. End of description. Sometimes the good turn into those who want power. Power corrupts completely.
Zhara could attest to this. Once she’d had a taste of the power that came with controlling her own destiny, she was never going back.
Beatriz had laid out a very sedate but powerful outfit for Zhara to wear today to the visitation and after-visitation soiree. They were doing a little get together afterwards, Zhara was sure, less to talk about her mother, than to get the low down on what had happened at the police station.
The outfit had to be especially fabulous as she’d need the extra armor to laughingly let everyone know she had filed charges of false imprisonment and cruel and unusual punishment on the local authorities, all while acting like it was something she simply did everyday. Nor was she covering up the bruises and cuts caused by the manacles.
When they’d chosen the black and pink suit she was wearing today, Zhara had Beatriz tailor the cuffs of the jacket so that it was now a three-quarter sleeve. She wanted to make sure the whole community saw the marks. Some would have covered those marks up in shame. She’d decided never to be shamed again. It didn’t suit Zhara’s agenda. Let them see. Let them worry. Let them know what was coming. She would eviscerate the power base in this piss-ant community. When she’d said that to Beatriz, the maid had wrinkled her brow and asked, “What is a piss-ant, madam?”
Most people thought piss-ants didn’t exist. Well they do. And they live in rural Illinois, among other places. Scientifically they’re referred to as pissants - because they bite and their venom stings. When madam had shared that little bit of science with Beatriz, she became even more sure that this place rivaled the Amazon for vicious creatures.
Once Zhara had come to realize how powerless people with no money and only local contacts were in this tiny town, she’d always dreamed of taking the hurt to the establishment. Now she was going to do just that and she was going to be relentlessly ruthless about it. What was coming was a lawsuit that would break this shitty little town’s bank. She hoped the place rotted and fell apart. If at all possible she’d get every one who touched her case fired. Hopefully, without a pension.
A decade and a half earlier, when she’d been in need of a handyman for her mother’s apartment building, she’d hired a local man who, while not entirely the brightest bulb in the box, worked hard, was polite on the job, and didn’t steal from her.
Later that year, he’d fallen down unconscious in the local Dominos pizza shop after a long day of working putting on a roof in the broiling midwestern sun. He’d just been paid his thousand dollar paycheck for two week’s work and had hurried in to get a pizza and a drink. He was tired, starving and thirsty. While waiting in line for the order, he’d been overcome by heat fatigue and fainted dead away.
When he came to, he could sense someone hovering over him and rifling through his pockets. Desperate to keep the hard earned money, he’d come up flailing in panic. The city police officers who were searching him, promptly beat him into a corner.
Terrified, with his sweatshirt pulled backwards over his head where it had ended up when they’d roughly hauled him to his feet, he hovered in a corner and immediately started talking trash, the only defense the uneducated, uninformed, scared-witless young man, had. He cussed and postured, still dazed and blinded by the sweatshirt, but made no move towards them.
The entire episode was handled so poorly that the local state university’s criminal science department now used the video, uploaded onto youtube by some shocked observer, to teach new officers what not to do.
In the end, three officers converged on him and one wrestled him out the door. No effort was made to take the sweatshirt off his head - can you imagine the disorientation he must have felt - heat-stroked and just recovering from fainting? They then took him outside and beat him more savagely.
In the end, they’d thrown him in jail without any medical care and refused to let him see a doctor. Now, years later, he clearly had brain damage from the episode and while surviving, struggled constantly with bad decision making and an inability to plan. No one did a thing to the police for their part in this. By the way, his thousand dollar cash paycheck was not recovered among his belongings when he left the jail.
Zhara had never looked at a police officer the same after that. Yes, he’d talked trash. He’d been blinded, woozy and terrified. Who wouldn’t? Especially someone so uneducated and without any means by which to defend himself with the tools more intellectual and informed types take for granted.
If they’d simply handcuffed him and taken him to jail that would have been the end of it. After they handcuffed him they took him outside and beat the crap out of him. That was the difference. Then they denied him medical care.
When he finally got to the hospital several days later, it was all too late for proper care. The concussion had been allowed to sit unattended. He had brain damage.
All he’d really been guilty of was fainting in a public space and then talking a lot of totally stupid trash.
It was pitiful and tragic. What made the story even more heartbreaking was that the police just kept arresting him after that. Ruining any chance he might have had for a decent life.
Once, he’d been arrested because his dog, a female pitbull rescue had gotten loose. She’d been fine until the police wouldn’t let him go to her and chain her up and they’d pushed him back against a car. That had scared her and she’d started to growl. They promptly shot off two of her toes. Bad shots and bad cops.
Within a year they’d ordered her put to sleep. Just one atrocity heaped on top of another. They’d managed to put down his only companion and the only person he had to love or be loved by. This is a sin of proportions greater than pure law. In the ten years since that original beating, he’d been arrested repeatedly for inconsequential things like trash in his yard. If they could, they always twisted it into a felony. With the dog incident, they said she was a lethal weapon, and turned that into a felony as well.
To say Zhara hated the local police force with a passion, would not have been an understatement. That was something that she didn’t even bother to work on. She despised them. They deserved nothing but contempt. Too many cops in too small of a town, making up charges to bilk their citizens out of money just so they can keep their fancy Dodge C
harger police cars and have their pensions on the backs of their constituency. Idiots all around.
Beatriz made Zhara take half an alprazolam tablet before the visitation. By this time she could see the error of her ways in thinking they should have come back for this funeral. The sooner they got out of there the better. God help them, this place was worse than she’d ever imagined.
The visitation went off without a hitch. Thank Heaven! They had to attend a get-together afterwards at the local old folks home, so that was still to come. Hopefully, they could leave shortly after the funeral tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
Assisted Living Crime Watch
“We need to get the low down on who could have killed Sue Darla,” Zhara muttered as soon as she got back in the car after the visitation. “Lord knows I’d have liked to murder her a few times. Still, we shouldn’t let them get away with such a cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder,” she added, internally thinking that she’d killed Carlton in a fit of righteous passion, not some planned out scenario that took such vicious intent.
“These cops will never catch the person, especially if it’s anyone with any connections in the community. It’s all so crooked here,” she added wearily.