Beauty Hurts

by Rowan Hanlon

  Kael was quietly crying. However, she managed to say, “Maybe?”

  Celeste jerked her head and narrowed her eyes at Kael again, who immediately regretted smarting off. “You think it’s all a big joke, don’t you?” Celeste said. “Funny only when it happens to someone else.”

  “No, I don’t!” Kael wailed. “I really, really don’t. Just let me go, Celeste! Let me go!”

  Celeste ignored her pleas and bent down in front of her. “What are you going to do when you’re the butt of the joke? You think all this youth is going to last? Do you think that your future husband won’t ever cheat on you or that maybe you might have trouble conceiving a child? Do you think that when the tables are turned and you’re watching your vanishing youth that some other little bitch like yourself might not try to usurp you? If you think that, you gotta ’nother thing coming.”

  Kael looked into her crazed eyes and felt, for the first time since she had realized what a predicament she was in, hopelessness. Celeste wasn’t going to let her go. She was going to torture her with all her acids and gadgets and torment her with her words, then she was probably going to kill her. And there was no way to get out of it. What could she feasibly do? Why had she come? Why hadn’t she listened to everyone? Was she really that stupid or that egotistical to think that nothing like this could ever happen to her? Especially when she was dealing with someone as crazy as Celeste?

  Celeste straightened up and leaned against the table, then picked up her martini. She took a sip, then poured the remainder over Kael’s head. Kael screamed as the alcohol stung her burn and shook her head, slinging the drink all around the room like a dog who’s just emerged from a small body of water. For some reason, this really got to her and her hopelessness turned to anger. That was uncalled for. That was just humiliation for humiliation’s sake. Kael wasn’t having it. She had too much fight in her for that.

  “You fucking bitch!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “You’re out of your mind! When I get out of here, you are going to pay!”

  Celeste leaned down again and whispered, “Who says you’re getting out?”

  As her words sunk in, Kael felt like she’d had the breath knocked out of her. She was so overcome with fear, she couldn’t speak.

  Celeste continued, “And who says I’m going to pay?” She shrugged her shoulders a little and pursed her lips again. “Everyone knows what trouble we’ve been having and why did you come all the way out here if not to seek revenge? I don’t know, but I think I might be able to spin this in my favor. After all, I made millions of women wear high-waisted jeans when, really, they don’t make that much sense aesthetically.”

  Kael found her voice, “You are a truly evil bitch.”

  “I know,” she said and chucked her under the chin. “But, as they say, it takes one to know one.” She straightened up, an evil smile on her lips and said, “Yeah, you know I loved seeing all those skinny bitches trying to make that look work.”

  Including me, Kael thought bitterly.

  She pulled back and stared at Kael and her eyes looked dazed for a moment, as if she had lost her sense of not knowing who she was, where she was or what was happening. And then Kael noticed, for a split second, it looked as though she felt empathy for Kael because she began to blink heavily and study her as a softer look came over her face. And then, she could tell, she was almost going to stop. She almost came back, almost got her bearings back. But then, she turned and seemed to hear something. Kael heard it, too. It was like a door slamming far off.

  “Anyone home?” a disembodied voice called from far off.

  Celeste straightened up. “Fuck! Clifton!” she hissed. She turned to Kael. “I have to take care of this right now.” She looked around, found a washcloth and stuffed it in Kael’s mouth, then left the room, but not before picking up the gun and slipping it into the pocket of her pants.

  Kael stared after her and felt a slight sense of hope return. There was someone else in the house! They could save her. But then again, Celeste had taken the gun. Kael groaned. She was never getting out of that room and she knew it. Not unless she could do something and do it quickly.

  * * * * *

  As soon as Celeste entered the kitchen, she noticed that Clifton was standing next to the island sipping an iced coffee. Beside him was a bag from Monty’s, Celeste’s favorite local restaurant. He had started to call out to Celeste again when she suddenly entered the room. He was so surprised to see her, he started.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said and smiled at her. “Who were you talking to?”

  Celeste replied offhandedly, “Myself.”

  Clifton’s eyes popped a little at her response.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I told you not to come.”

  “I brought you some food,” he said, his eyes really taking her in, then he smiled at her again, as if he was hoping to disarm her, probably in an effort to abate any forthcoming argument.

  Celeste almost rolled her eyes. This was the way he was. He didn’t say anything to her, but she knew that he thought there was something a little off about her, probably from the moment they had met. However, he’d been so blown away by her beauty and prestige, he’d overlooked it for years, just as he’d overlooked her anger and aloofness as well as keeping his distance since they’d made love a few days before. Celeste knew he was a smart man and he knew when to keep out of her hair. Until now, of course. Now he was here and, it was obvious, he wanted to get along, maybe even get a repeat of the other night. Ugh. Men were so predictable. You could set a watch to them.

  “I know how much you like their fries.” He held up the bag of food like a peace offering.

  Celeste eyed the bag, then Clifton. She could read him like a book. It was so obvious what he was doing. He was hoping the mood she’d been in had passed and he just wanted to buy her off. She never ate that much and he knew she was always hungry, had commented on it occasionally and he also knew this was probably one of the reasons why she was always in a bad mood and, quite honestly, it was. The fries were her favorite and she allowed herself to have them whenever they came to the country house. He probably thought they would do instead of confronting her, as he used to do, which never turned out well. He just wanted to buy her off and he could do this with the fries because she wouldn’t be caught dead buying them for herself. They were like her crack, in a way. Her husband wasn’t the kind of man who liked a lot of bitching or arguing and he’d leave the room as quickly as he could whenever there was too much conflict. She knew that he just wanted her to be happy, as in “happy wife, happy life.” It was a motto he lived by, had told her as much. So typical. And, again, so predictable.

  However, he was wrong. Celeste certainly wasn’t the sort of woman to be bought off with a bag of food, no matter how good that food might have been. She stared at the bag and then smelled the wonderful aroma of fried potatoes emitting from them. Oh, if only she had a minute to dig in, but, alas, she didn’t. So, without a word and without any pomp and circumstance, and without any explanation, she pulled the gun out of her pocket and fired at him, at Clifton, at her husband.

  Fortunately for Clifton—and unfortunately for Celeste—the bullet went into his shoulder and not into his head as she had originally intended, taking shreds of skin with it and sending him reeling back. Before he could fall down, she quickly fired again, almost like she was in a Spaghetti Western and was trying to get her rounds off before the other guy could get to his gun. She hit him in the leg this time, then ran out of bullets after wildly shooting into the kitchen cabinets around him. He groaned, doubled over and fell to the floor. To say he was shocked would have been a gross understatement.

  “What the fuck, Celeste?” he moaned and tried to focus on her as the pain seared his body and showed on his face.

  “I’m off carbs,” she said without a trace of irony.

  * * * * *

  Kael heard the shots go off and that sent her into a panic.
She looked around, trying to find something to cut the ropes. Then she spotted the scissors, the ones Celeste had used to cut her hair. Wow. Oh, fucking wow, she thought. But how to get to them? She tried to move the chair, then looked down at it. It was an office chair, on wheels! Seriously? She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed this before and managed to propel the chair—and herself—forward towards the scissors.

  Once there, she leaned over to pick up the scissors but she had forgotten one crucial element: Her mouth was stuffed with a washcloth. Fuck! So, she began to try to dislodge it by moving her mouth around and pushing up against it with her tongue. This took a while but she was finally able to get it out of her mouth.

  “Phew,” Kael breathed and then leaned over the scissors again and somehow managed to pick them up with her teeth. She dropped them into her lap then wiggled around until she had them in her hand. And then she started trying to slip the sharp edge under the rope, which was a feat in and of itself. This took a good few minutes and she hoped that whatever or whomever Celeste was attending to would take a good while. She had to get out of there and she needed time. Then she realized she had the scissors in under one of the ropes. She felt like singing, Hallelujah and praise the Lord! She managed to cut it and she was almost out! And it felt so good to have that rope off her hand. But before she could get to the other rope, Celeste entered sipping an iced coffee.

  Kael stopped and became very still, slipping the scissors under her leg and putting her free hand back on the armrest of the chair. Then she wondered who had been in the other room and if that person had been the recipient of the bullets. She shuddered but didn’t dare ask Celeste this. She pushed it to the back of her mind. She couldn’t concentrate on that until she was out of this room. Then she’d see if someone had been hurt and she’d do her best to help them. But she wouldn’t be much help to anyone if Celeste finished her off first.

  “Where were we?” Celeste asked and put the drink down and then snapped her fingers. “Grooming!” She started rummaging around the table.

  “What are looking for?” Kael asked, hoping to stall her for more time.

  “Just a pair of tweezers,” she said.

  Kael watched her, knowing she had to find a way to distract her. The only thing she could think about was getting her to talk about something personal. “Why don’t you tell me about your fertility treatments? Liza said you’ve been on them for a while now.”

  Celeste whirled around and studied Kael. “Well, not much to tell. They’re expensive and they don’t work. Nothing works, like I told you.”

  “Oh,” Kael replied.

  “Yeah, after eighty-thousand dollars worth of in vitro and pills and vitamins and voodoo doctors, do you know what they told me?” She sighed. “You’re too old.”

  “Wow,” Kael mouthed.

  Celeste threw her head back and laughed at the irony, then picked up the coffee, took another sip, then put it back down. “Oh, they said I could use a surrogate but I’m not sure I like that option. I could adopt, perhaps, if they’d overlook my husband who isn’t exactly father-material.” She paused. “Yes, he has his problems with liquor and with prostitutes. And I said prostitutes, plural. And, yes, there is more than one.”

  Kael nodded and started trying to shimmy the scissors up under the other rope as unobtrusively as possible. Celeste didn’t seem to notice as she was off in her own world again.

  Celeste continued, “Perhaps, they’d overlook the glass coffee table too—not very child-friendly—or the narrow staircase.” She paused. “The narrow staircase? What am I saying? We don’t have a second story in the city. Wait, that was in our lake house when I was kid. One that we rented. We didn’t own it. Every summer we’d go there and it was so hot. I hated it. I always wanted to live in New York, that was the dream. I hated the lake.”

  Kael nodded and tried to look empathetic.

  “But, no, I don’t think they’d overlook a lot of these things,” she continued. “And they certainly wouldn’t overlook me. I can be a bit overbearing.”

  Kael nodded with understanding.

  She paused and turned her head towards the ceiling, as if she were really considering something, “They lied to us all. They told us that we could wait to have children, that we could have it all. They only left out one vital piece of information—our eggs get old. That’s biology. Can’t change that and you certainly can’t fight it, no matter what anyone says.”

  Kael nodded at her, as if she were agreeing with everything she said.

  Celeste shook her head in frustration and went back to rummaging around the table. “Did you know that the best age for a woman to have a baby is, like, teens or something? I read that somewhere; I don’t know if it’s a scientific fact or not, but I read it. But that would certainly put a wrench in going to college, not to mention what about getting ahead in business? What about finding the perfect man? What about obtaining material wealth? What about that? A baby would certainly mess all that up.”

  She took a breath and glanced at Kael to see if she was paying attention. She was and this pleased her. “And why have kids anyway? Don’t they all just want a cookie instead of a nutritious meal? Don’t they have a lot of issues like crying for no reason and becoming obsessed with pink or purple dinosaurs that sing? And what happens when the little fella goes off to big kid school? Aren’t you all alone again?”

  Kael nodded like she was listening but, in fact, her concentration was on the rope and it was now cut. She was free! And she knew she could not hesitate. She knew once she came out of the chair there would be a fight. She only prayed to God that she had the strength to fight Celeste. The woman, in addition to being strong with crazy, had just drunk a whole iced coffee which showed in her jittery movements. She was unpredictable but Kael could rely on the lessons her father had taught her—go for the gut. Most everyone, except boxers, have a weak core. Also, he always told her that the one who starts the fight usually wins. But you can’t hesitate and you have to commit to it. You have to go for it. And once you hit, hit hard, right in the gut. Punch them there, watch them fall. Kael paused for a moment and thanked God for her father, whom she loved more than anything. She promised herself that she would call him as soon as she got out of this mess and tell him she loved him.

  But right then, she had to do what she had to do in order to survive. So, without a word, and without thinking about it too much, as that could lead to self-doubt, she jumped out of the chair and lunged at Celeste with the scissors. She planned on trying to stab her with them, then punching her in the gut. That was the plan. It didn’t go accordingly, mainly because Celeste had been paying attention and was ready for Kael, who only realized this too late.

  As a result, it was no surprise when the wrecked young woman leapt out of her chair like some wounded animal, brandishing the scissors with a weak wrist. Celeste sidestepped her and Kael fell to the floor and, inadvertently, on top of the scissors, which sliced through her arm. She screamed in pain as blood oozed from the open wound and looked behind her at Celeste, who was staring at her with her hands on her hips. She shook her head sadly at Kael, as if she had so disappointed her.

  Kael started sobbing, realizing there was just no way to get away from Celeste. She wanted to scream in frustration but the hopelessness of the situation wouldn’t let her. She cried, “Please, just let me go.”

  “You know, you really are a dumb shit, Kael. You’re not supposed to run with scissors.” She bent down and grabbed Kael by what was left of her hair and pulled her to her. “But you’re spunky, I will give you that. I see now that’s how you get away with everything, isn’t it? No one knows the real you—the deceitful bitch base human you are. Everyone else gets the charm and wit and smiles and the ‘aw shucks.’ But I see you for what you truly are. And you are one ugly bitch.”

  Kael cried even harder, almost losing herself in the tears. She had tried everything and Celeste, simply, won every time. She was lost there and, more th
an likely, she was a goner. All because she wanted to be nice and make amends. No good deed goes unpunished, does it?

  “Yeah, you’re so nice to everyone else but me,” Celeste continued. “Why is that? All I get is you trying to undermine me and trying to stab me with my own scissors. Here I’ll do it myself.”

  She grabbed the scissors and cut her arm through the silk blouse. Blood poured from her arm and colored the pale cream colored material with red, forming this awful color of red and white.

  Kael’s eyes widened and she screamed. But then she realized that Celeste wasn’t coming for her; she was too distracted by the blood oozing from her arm, much like a monkey in a zoo gets distracted occasionally by the people staring at them from behind the glass partition. Kael had a minute. And she took advantage of that minute by getting up and racing as fast as she possibly could out of the room. She didn’t even look back to see if Celeste was coming after her.

  And she ran as fast as she could—which wasn’t too fast, considering her condition—through the house, trying to find the front door. She glanced behind her and, because of this, didn’t see a rug on the floor of the living room which was bunched up a little. She tripped on the rug and fell face-first into it. Before she could scramble up, Celeste came up behind her, grabbed her head and pistol whipped her.

  Kael was knocked out cold.

  I Was Prettier When I Walked in Here

  Kael awoke in what appeared to be the basement. There was only one lone bulb over her head and the light it emitted was very yellow and not too pleasant to look at. Her eyes blinked heavily and once she got them open, a torrent of pain and stiffness overcame her. Her face burned and ached. Her wrists, now free of the ropes, were weak and slightly bloody, as was her arm, which throbbed with pain. Her entire head felt like someone had taken it off and used it as a bowling ball. Her body felt it had just been run over by a truck, then a taxi, then a limo.