by Sims, Karina
She looks down at her knees than shrugs uncomfortably. “I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“Carl said though, I mean, aren’t you a lesbian?”
“Oh.” I shoot a finger back and forth between us. “Is this what this is about?”
Her face goes red, she swallows hard, stands up and shakes her head. “I just remembered I have to go...” She looks at a watch-less wrist. “Check my messages. Work messages... should call them.”
“Oh, you can use my phone if...”
“No!” She walks to the door, slips on her shoes. “At home, I have some machine stuff...messages to check.”
“Sophie, do you need a ride?” I’m kneeling on my couch, sitting backwards and feeling my heart slip into my guts.
“I’ll just walk through the park, my apartment is... I’ll see you later.”
Before I can say anything else the door slams shut and I can’t bear the weight of standing up, looking out the window and watching her walk away. I just sit there not watching The Simpsons, not watching the News, not watching the faces of the girls I murdered pop up on the screen with a crime hotline number flashing below their pictures. I’m not sure how long I sit there, but when I finally look around the room it’s completely dark except the glow from the television showing some blonde teen pop star prancing around in her bra telling me to buy face cream.
I get up, pull a spoon out of the cupboard and mix in the fine powder and water, cooking it up with a lighter. I shoot half and watch the spiders on my ceiling become living polka dots. My mind connecting them together, reminding me of kindergarten, I try putting them together, making cats and ducks but the spiders keep moving around and I have to stop when all I see is my mother’s face floating in the formation of their tiny bodies. I get up, run a bath and hug my knees until the water turns cool and gives me goose bumps. I trace my finger through those too, scratching tiny symbols between bumps. I keep my eyes closed so I don’t have to look at myself in the mirror as I blow dry my hair.
I think I hear my phone ringing, but every time I turn off the blow dryer I don’t hear anything. My eyes closed, all that heat blowing against my face, the noise tunneling in my ears, I think of nights I couldn’t sleep. I think of lying there in the dark, my fingers caked in dried blood. The body of a girl I kidnapped in the park, lying next to me getting colder and colder. I would pull this hair dryer out of the bathroom and blast hot air all over her body, in her mouth, down her throat, but no matter how much I did it, she never stayed warm for long. Her body would not hold the heat, not even if I set it on High and kept it on at her side. By morning all there was were burn marks.
Downstairs in the root cellar it’s cold like mornings in November. Everything smells like panic, blood and piss, spit and old sweat. I sit in the chair bolted to the floor in the center of the tiny room. I rock back and forth, jump up and down, try and pry it from its screws. It creaks but doesn’t budge. My feet on the stairs, I turn around to make sure the video camera is plugged in, the axe is against the wall, handcuffs dangling on a nail. I walk back upstairs, turn off the light and close the door. On the TV, Billy Idol says that tonight he’s “going to be John Wayne.” I turn that off, too, cap the syringe and tuck it under a couch cushion for later.
The night outside is dark but if I look up I can see the stars like light coming through the fibers of the blankets we hid under when we were young and afraid of the shapes of our closets and shoes. That real panic we had of living nightmares, when the light went off. We saw monsters and demons before we ever fell asleep, our parents and caregivers, they called it childhood and playful imagination, but what if as we got older those feelings never went away? What if those fears became more and more real as we grew into maturity? What if the pills we swallowed to keep us calm as children became the pills that we abused as adults to become more like a child? To make everything OK, to make us feel happy and free again before we had to go back to jobs we hated, fucking the person we married because we didn’t want to be alone. What if no matter what you do, or how old you get, you are still holding that cotton quilt over your eyes for the rest of your life?
They say face your fears, they say put yourself in situations that scare you, they tell you to confront your phobias and conquer your weaknesses. But what if you aren’t strong enough? And what if these attempts at self mastery cause you to shatter and fall apart, what if you are tumbling down the mountain while everybody else is safely roped together and helping one another? What do you do? You panic, you flail and you pull down as many people as you can in your dramatic attempt to gain ground again. It’s scary. You wouldn’t believe what most people will do in order to obtain what they feel is sure footing.
I pat my pocket; make sure my camera cord is in there. I have thirty inches of cable in my hoodie; I have to wrap some around my wrist to keep it out of sight. I slip into the trees and grind my teeth as I watch and wait for feet to come beating down the jogging path.
After about twenty minutes I have to pee, so I back up a bit and as I’m squatting some girl stops, drinks from the fountain and then keeps running. I shake my head and sigh. Murphy’s Law is such a bitch.
Another twenty minutes passes, I’m bored and swatting a little tree branch when I hear footsteps. I turn my head to see and I guess I swat the little twig too hard because it comes back and whacks me in the eye so hard I almost scream fuck. The footsteps turn into a person, her hood up, she’s walking slowly down the path, her body steering towards the water fountain. I’m going to wrap the cord around my hands, but my eye really hurts so I decide to just throw an elbow around her throat and drag her into the bushes. The girl bends over the fountain and in two steps I’m behind her, but she turns and screams in my face. I back up and am about to run back into the trees but the girl, she shouts, “You scared the fucking shit out of me! Don’t ever do that again, Amanda!”
My eye is watering so bad I can hardly see anything, I shake my head and look down the path—some guy and his two dogs are coming this way. I back up some more, my feet shuffling the pebbles and dirt. “Who, what?”
I stop blinking, Sophie takes down her hood. The guy with the dogs calls out, “Miss, are you OK?” just as she pulls me into her arms and holds her face in my hair. The guy looks embarrassed, tucks his head and says, “Night,” as he jogs by, the dogs keeping quiet.
“Amanda, I was thinking about you. I couldn’t sleep.”
I pat her back. “Me too.”
She pulls out of my arms, her eyes wet and shining she looks into mine. “Have you been crying?”
“Have you?”
She bows her head then looks up at me again. My heart pounds so hard against my lungs I have to almost stop breathing as I watch her perfect lips admit, “A little. Yes.”
“Why?” I loop my fingers through hers and start walking slowly towards the bridge.
She sighs. “I don’t know. Just a lot of things are going wrong in my life right now. It feels like no matter what I’m doing, I’m doing it wrong.” She laughs and wipes her eyes. “Oh God, here I go. I don’t even know you and here I am spilling my guts like the nuts I work with.”
I squeeze her hand.
We drift in the dark, slow and nowhere. She leans her head against me in the gathering silence as we wander in and out of shadows cupping each other’s hands. In the immure shade of a tree big enough to press her against, she hooks a finger in a belt loop on my pants. I move close enough that our noses cross, our eyelashes brush together and I can feel her heart beating through her breast into mine.
I press my forehead against hers. “Hello, Sophie.”
If ever there was love, something powerful enough to fill the holes in your heart and soul so quickly, so fully without warning or sign, I’ve never known this. But right now, as she presses her lips to mine in a simple gesture I’ve done a thousand times before tonight, it’s like I’ve never been touched in all my life. This feeling it goes straight to my blood, it makes my knees hurt; it make
s it hard to stand up.
Our lips break apart and I move my hands away from her and against the tree, I squeeze the bark. She kisses me and I feel her mouth smiling against mine as she whispers, “Hello, Amanda.”
She kisses my fingertips and I take her back to the house and into my bed. Watching Sophie undress and move on top of me, moan beneath me, sigh beside me, I am completely amazed at my total lack of desire to hurt her. Her hair falling around me, her breath coming in and out as little panting sounds, she makes me feel like a reverse vampire, an opposite stomper. Because, in this moment I can’t help the wanting, the pounding desire to somehow transfer as much of myself, my blood, bones and organs, I don’t want them anymore if they are just mine. I want to put them inside of her.
As she falls asleep, cradled in my arms, I’m overcome with a powerful need to keep her protected and safe. Watching her dream, I’m consumed entirely by how important it is to me that she live, and I’m frightened by the realization that I would do anything to keep her alive.
But as I turn away from the shadows of my room, as I lower that cotton quilt and peer down at Sophie, I am filled with a sense of peace I have never known. I kiss the crown of her head, squeeze her to my chest and whisper to no one, “I’m keeping this forever.”
XXVI
I wake up with the sun and Sophie in my eyes. She kneels on top of me, milky thighs on either side of my body and kisses my mouth. “Poor baby. You’ve got a shiner.”
“Do I?”
She nods like a puppy. “It’s sexy though. I like my girls to look a little beat up.”
My body snaps forward at the mention of other women, I stroke her hair, running my hands down her back as we kiss. “Me too.”
She laughs and pinches my chin, tracing a finger down each thin scar. “How’d you get this?”
I kiss the crook of her arm and wiggle my face away from her finger, “Cat scratch. When I was a baby.”
“Oh God.”
I rub my chin and lay back down. “Yeah, wasn’t a good thing.”
“Do you have anything for breakfast?”
My mind wanders to the human contents of my fridge. I think there’s a calf in there, and as Sophie presses her legs against me I drag my fingernails down to her knee. I don’t hear her yell “Ouch!” until she slaps me hard and I have to blink a billion sun spots out of my eyes as the rays come in through the window.
“Amanda?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking about you.”
She laughs and kisses my neck. “You want some eggs?”
She bounces off the bed and runs for the fridge. “I’m pretty good at making an omelet, I can show...”
I rip a sheet off the bed and snap it around her as she reaches for the fridge door. I pull her back into my room and push her onto my bed. She looks scared. “Holy shit...”
I pull on a tank top and pair of underwear. She lies there, covering her body with her hands. “How did you do that?”
I scratch my stomach, it turns and rumbles, growling into my ears. I’m hungry, I want to eat the rest of the leg in my fridge. Sophie points at the sheet around her. “You don’t look that strong...”
I smile and crawl on top of her. “You don’t look at tough either.” I wink and pinch her lip. “I want to take you out for breakfast. Get dressed.”
The whole time we’re in the restaurant Sophie talks about her dad. She tells me how as a doctor he worked long hours but they were always poor because he gambled away all their money. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just hard sitting here, having to eat pancakes and drink orange juice, real normal people food and have a real normal conversation with real genuine responses and feedback. When you eat nothing but drugs and people for years on end, pancake syrup will feel like poison, you can literally feel it pooling sticky in your stomach, dripping into your guts and coating your bowels in disfavor. Whipping cream will make you feel like you are dying, and bacon, it tastes like mud and pigs. I’m watching the saggy waitress carry cups of steaming coffee to people with more body fat than muscle. I’m fishing out my ice cubes and clicking them together in unison as that lanky waitress takes wide strides, balancing beverages with her rootless steps. I imagine her bones being broken open on the edges of rocks and tearing the breasts from her chest, pulling her heart right out of a ribless torso, while it pumps in panic in the palm of my hand.
“And I don’t think I could ever be the same.” Sophie looks out the window, sighs and pushes her plate away. She’s barely taken a bite. I feel the clench in my bowels, vomit beginning to rise.
“What?”
She shakes her head, slides one of the ice cubes I am clicking together into her hand and crunches it in her mouth. “I know right?” She swallows the shattered ice and I’m almost driven insane when I see the waitress walk by, knees almost touching. I tap the last cube on the table, but she vanishes from sight. “I mean what the fuck is wrong with me? God...”
XXVII
“Everything happens for a reason,” Marcy speaks, big chunks of green pickle mashing between her teeth. “You have to understand that God has a plan for each of us. Amanda, do you believe in fate?”
I turn off the tap, grab a dry dishtowel and throw it over my shoulder. I stare into the water, the thousands of tiny soap bubbles slowly bursting one by one. “I do and I don’t.”
Marcy fishes a big pickle out of the jar between her legs. “How’s that?” She crunches hard into it, juice spilling all down her wrist to the elbow; her home manicure wrapped around what looks like the big warty frog dick.
I fish a fork out of the bottom of the sink and slowly rub it with a wash cloth. “I think, yeah we are put here but it isn’t due to any divine fore-planning. I think we are sort of just chaos. I think we are born because it is our nature as a species to breed. We are raised by people who are also here due to circumstance, but it’s silly and self centered to think that our actions have a greater meaning and purpose. I think all people are born the way they are and that can’t nor should be changed. We try to, that’s the whole purpose of pharmaceuticals isn’t it? To change things about ourselves that others or ourselves don’t like. Depending on the results, we change for, what we perceive, as the better. I think this is why there are so many problems. People get to thinking too much; too much vanity in the world, and now we are bred into narcissism. I think this is destroying us. I think us just being us is fate. Our actions are just a reflection of what we are meant to be, but our actions and behaviors in themselves, that isn’t fate at all, that’s just us.”
She takes another bite of her pickle. “Have you lost your mind?”
I press the fork into my thumb hard enough to leave a deep impression, then I drop it on the towel next to the sink. “I think we’ve all lost our minds.”
“Well,” She turns her wheel chair towards the Last Supper, a fresh one. She’s started over. “I believe everything happens for a reason and that God is up there watching us and watching over us. Keeping us safe and away from the evil in this city.” She points a paint brush towards the TV. “You tell me you aren’t blessed, your mother whispering in God’s ear keeping you safe in such an awful place as this. So close to that dreadful park full of ungodly people and human monsters.” She points at the TV again. “Seen the news lately?”
“Well... sort of.”
“Women are going missing left right and center. Police narrowed the search to right over there.” Her paint brush aims out the window towards the park. “Right over there in the park. Joggers. Some ugly man is snatching women.”
I squeeze two underwater handfuls of cutlery. “Have they found any bodies?”
She fishes around in the jar between her legs, pulls out a giant toad cock and chews away half. “Nope. Not one.”
“No bones or anything?”
She keeps chewing. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Then how do they know the girls are even dead?”
“Dead? Who said anything about dead? If you ask me, it’s the Mex
icans. I think they’re coming in over the border at night time and stealing white women and selling them into the sex trade. I’m not sure, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling about it.” Toad dick grinding in her teeth she hisses in a whisper, “Sometimes, Francis comes to me at night. Sometimes, I can hear her tell me things. And I do—I listen, and Amanda, she is proud of you. She says there’s a man in your life who will change everything. She told me this. You’ll see.” She winks and bites off another mouthful of frog sausage.
XXVIII
If I squint hard enough, the light doesn’t seem so orange. It turns almost completely yellow. If I close my eyes completely, there’s only red, my eye lids burning bright in front of my eyes. Looking at all this light, all this flame and being so close to it, it feels like thousands of thin syringes poking into my face and drawing out every trace of oxygen and moisture. Standing here right now, I can literally feel the air being sucked out from between my teeth. My mouth a dry hole, an entrance for black smoke to come tunneling in and burn all the way down my throat, filling my lungs with the same kind of feeling you get when you’re angry but too much of a coward to fight back and say what you really want to. I’d swallow but my mouth, the dry hole in my face, it’s just cobwebbed with strings of dry spit sticking to the back of my tongue, the roof of my mouth. My teeth don’t taste like anything except bone and old metal fillings. So I keep closing and opening my eyes trying to get that boiled egg feeling out of them. I look down at my feet, the toe of my sneaker. I look down at an entire class of nine year old girls clustered together grinning under a ‘school for ballet’ banner, their curled tutus and pink shoes evaporate instantly, as the banner bubbles into purple then white, nobody says anything, they just stare up at me, nervous and blushing, feeling awkward and pretty in all that stage makeup caked onto their tiny faces. I close my eyes for just a second, stare into the red, when I open them again the little ballerinas are gone, and they’re just a crisp piece of black paper already breaking apart.