That’s what I’m going to do now, I think determinedly. I’m going to drive there now and help that dog, I’m going to kill it, I’m going to save it from that which it cannot save itself, from that which I cannot save myself.
I want somebody to do the same for me right now, as a matter of fact…I am, after all, no more than a trembling, dying dog on the side of the road. Somebody, anybody…please end it, because I can’t do it myself.
My hands are still under the faucet, pruned and raw, stingingly red in their cleanness. I withdraw them, leaving the water running, drying my hands on my jeans and then sparing another glance at my watch.
If I hurry, I can make it to the Bad Seed before last call.
The dog will have to wait.
The dog can wait.
Somewhere Between Screaming and Crying
Everything is dead.
Everything.
The rocking chair creaks back and forth as rainwater drips from the flimsy tin awning over the stained white porch. It splashes noisily onto the warped wood, collecting in silvery pools and creeping towards Janice’s bare, bony feet.
She’s tearing the filters off her husband’s Marlboros and smoking them one after another, making her lungs wheeze achingly and her tongue feel fuzzy and foreign, a small wet animal sleeping with tingling restlessness between her clenched jaws. It stirs slightly and she bites it, causing it to whimper and recoil and resume its uneasy slumber.
She peers out through the haze of cigarette smoke at the lawn; the scattered clumps of grass are defiantly brown and so very not blue, despite all those claims made by the songs and stereotypes of which fabled chicken-fried Kentucky is the unfortunate topic. So many contradictions, so many lies passed along by legions of media and subsequent mordant misunderstandings…it strikes Janice as awfully sad, just like everything else.
Because everything else is dead, even the grass, and this in particular is very, very sad.
Not to mention all the blood inside…that’s rather unfortunate, as well. The blood on the floor, on the kitchen counter, spattered across the cutting board, and congealed within the big Vitamix blender. There’s the horribly sad image of the flesh-clogged toilet overflowing with crimson-colored water, and the garbage can stuffed past capacity with the surplus remnants of the recently-committed atrocity. Sadder still is Janice’s husband, slumped against the living room wall, revolver in his pale limp hand and half his head gone, having been reduced to chunks of pink and red meat blown all over the once-white plaster, dripping slowly down to the floor and leaving sticky scarlet streaks in their wake.
Janice leans over and vomits quietly into the purple mop bucket at her side. Once finished, she pushes her sweaty hair back from her forehead and lights another cigarette, puke-smeared tongue growing fuzzier all the while as the smoke surges greedily into her mouth and down her throat like burning, vaporous semen ejaculated from the wispy tip of some unseen apparition’s bulgingly erect cock.
Janice scowls; she never did like giving blowjobs.
She’d always left that type of thing to Crazy Jane, because Crazy Jane is absolutely crazy about doing crazy things like that.
Because Crazy Jane is one crazy bitch.
* * *
It all began, she presumes, with Pabst Blue Ribbon.
That’s how she met Crazy Jane.
That’s how everything started going to shit.
It was at a party a few weeks before high school graduation, and mousy little Janice had felt very uncomfortable.
She was shy and self-conscious, so sure that everyone saw her as she saw herself in the mirror…ugly, too-thin, with unusually large eyes made larger still by thick-rimmed spectacles with lenses like window panes. Her plain brown hair was tied back in a loose ponytail with a pink polka-dotted ribbon that she regretted wearing, but it was too late to take it off…if she did, everyone would notice that she’d suddenly removed it and they would know that she’d felt silly for wearing it and thus would further judge her, not only for her ugliness but also for her tragic absence of even the remotest traces of confidence.
She stood awkwardly in the corner, watching a quartet of burly football players engage in an increasingly sloppy game of beer pong and casting occasional envious glances at the leggy cheerleader making out with the painfully-gorgeous Todd Bingham, after whom she’d lusted since fifth grade. Her friends were doing shots of bourbon and tequila and apple-flavored vodka, cajoling her to join them, to no avail.
Janice was, in fact, plotting her escape when Betty Stilworth, her AP Chemistry lab partner, appeared at her side with a sixteen-ounce can of PBR, holding it out to her and urging her to take it with glassy, adamant eyes, saying, “C’mon, Jan-baby, just drink it. Loosen up a little. You look ridiculous being the only person here who isn’t drinking.”
This pierced Janice’s palpitating heart and made her stomach clench sickeningly. She did look ridiculous, and she knew it…and after all, wasn’t her ultimate goal in life simply to not look ridiculous?
“It’ll make you feel less awkward, I promise,” Betty went on, as if reading Janice’s mind. “Just drink it real fast, because if you sip it like a priss you aren’t going to get the real effect.”
After another moment of hesitant trepidation, Janice tentatively accepted the cold, perspiring can and, as she looked down on it with queasy unease, thought absurdly of Dennis Hopper huffing helium in Blue Velvet.
“Chug, chug, chug,” Betty beseeched drunkenly, swaying slightly in her heels.
Janice jumped at the report that sounded from the can when she pulled back the tab, prompting slurry snickers from Betty. Foam bubbled from the top and seeped over the sides, coating the tips of Janice’s fingers with sticky, fizzing carbonation. She was distinctly aware that her face was screwed up in an expression of terror, but she could do nothing about it other than…
“Fucking drink it,” Betty said, getting annoyed and impatient.
And so she did.
She raised the can to her lips and gulped, ignoring the stale, foul taste and resisting the overwhelming urge to cough and sputter and spit the foul liquid from her mouth. She paused only once for breath when the beer was halfway gone, and then she raised it once more and finished it with a series of large, grimacing swallows.
When it was gone, she took a deep, shuddering breath and handed the empty can back to Betty, who was grinning ear to ear. “Well?” she asked. “How do you feel?”
Janice would have liked to have said that she didn’t feel anything, that this was a stupid and pointless exercise in juvenile delinquency and she wanted no further part in it…but that would have been a lie. She felt something…though subtle, there was a growing warmth in her chest that wasn’t the slightest bit unpleasant, and she felt a slight, intriguing rush shooting up into her head. Before she had time to respond or to even fully assess the unfamiliar sensation, Betty was thrusting another beer into her hand and commanding her to repeat the same process. This time, the moment of hesitation was shorter, and by the time she’d drunk the entirety of the can, she was feeling quite good, indeed.
After that, things started happening very quickly and, one might say, began to edge into the realm of debauched tastelessness that was nevertheless extremely well-received by her peers. The more alcohol she poured down her throat, the more confident she felt. She no longer saw herself as an ugly little geek, but instead as a lively and vibrantly attractive seductress. Somehow she ended up dancing on a table to the musical accompaniment of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, first peeling off her top and then, much to the shouting delight of the males present, unclasping her brassiere and tossing it across the room to Todd Bingham, who had suddenly lost all interest in the cheerleader.
“Goddamn!” one of the guys exclaimed, wolf-whistling and yelling, “Check out the tits on Crazy Jane!”
Janice cupped her breasts in response to this delicious encouragement and jiggled them as the boys drooled and whooped and took pictures with their iPhones. As all of t
his was transpiring, she was thinking to herself, Yes, I am Crazy Jane. Janice has checked out and Crazy Jane has checked in and she is a sexy, smoking-hot hellcat who can do absolutely fucking anything.
And anything is precisely what she did. Or, rather, Todd Bingham is precisely what she did. Still topless, Crazy Jane had taken him by the hand and led him into the master bedroom and gotten on her knees and taken him in her mouth, teasing him to the brink of bursting and then stopping to kiss his neck and bite his earlobe before pushing him onto the bed and mounting him, not really feeling anything but still shrieking out a faux orgasm for his benefit as well as that of the partygoers in the other room. She wanted them all to know just how crazy Crazy Jane really was.
They really couldn’t have had any idea, though.
Neither could she.
Crazy Jane was just getting started…full steam ahead, so to speak…and she had no intentions of slowing down.
Ever.
For a while, Janice and Crazy Jane got along famously. They attended parties of varying degrees of intensity and unruliness, and Jane was always the center of attention, breathing explosive vitality into every event at which she was present. The party started when she arrived and it ended when she left. She drank everyone under the table until she puked (usually on a cheerleader, much to Janice’s delight), and then she drank some more. She fucked boys and made out with girls and danced naked on rooftops. She smoked pot and took Ecstasy and even snorted coke on a number of occasions. Jane, for all intents and purposes, filled in all of the vacuous blanks in Janice’s life.
Until she got greedy.
In the beginning, Janice had control over Jane, summoning her at her will and using her as a social lubricant whenever the need arose. She knew just how many drinks were required to get Crazy Jane to take over the reins, and she (for the most part, anyway) was able to anticipate just how crazy things would get on any given night. But after about a year, things started to change. Jane became less and less predictable, sometimes requiring Janice to drink higher amounts of alcohol in order to trigger the transformation, while other times she would unexpectedly assume complete control after a mere few beers or a couple of shots. She was no longer always fun and well-liked, either, because she began to get sloppy and abrasive and occasionally even belligerent.
Then, at the height of this unexpected unpleasantness, the blackouts started. At first few and far between, they began to rapidly increase in frequency and duration, landing her in strange places and strange beds with strange people (men and women alike) and, a handful of times, police cruisers and jail cells. All of this eventually culminated in an unplanned pregnancy courtesy of a young, mild-mannered gas station attendant who persistently insisted on “doing the right thing”, until finally he was successful in persuading her to enter the terrifying realm of wedlock.
Crazy Jane had, naturally, been viciously opposed to this idea, especially given the boy’s meek and overly docile nature. She’d begged Janice to abort the child and continue the party girl lifestyle, ever enticing despite the mounting consequences, but in the end Janice’s moralistic Catholic upbringing won out over Jane’s nagging pleas.
And thus began her tragic spiral into bloody oblivion.
In this sole particular instance, she really should have listened to Jane.
Roughly two months into the pregnancy, and less than twenty-four hours after the discovery of such, Janice awoke with a gasping start, skin glazed with cold, sticky sweat and her body wracked with aching tremors.
Upon finding that she was with child, Janice had resolutely sworn off drinking, much to Jane’s wailing dismay. If she were to have this baby, Janice decided, she would carry it to term properly and without engaging in behavior that could compromise its health or development. Nine months was not so long, after all.
But it is, Jane had hissed. You need me.
Holding the pregnancy test in her hand, the little plus-sign staring up at her, Janice had dismissed Jane’s contemptuous utterances and told herself that she truly did not need her, and that she could wait until after the completion of the pregnancy.
But that night, sitting sweating and shaking with mouth dry and eyes burning, she thought she might have been very wrong about that.
Just one, Jane said soothingly. That’s all, just one. You’ve still got about fifteen or sixteen left in that case in the fridge, and you can throw out the rest afterward. Just one, really. Just to calm our nerves. Cold turkey is dangerous for the baby…it’s not like we’ve got a problem, or anything, but we do drink a lot, so you’re experiencing some minor withdrawals, that’s all. It’s totally normal. But stopping altogether without giving yourself a little taste to ease the DTs is going to be a major shock to your system, and that could potentially result in a miscarriage. You don’t want that, do you?
If it was strange that Jane, who had been so adamantly against the pregnancy just a day prior, was now advising in the apparent interest of the baby’s health, Janice didn’t notice. She was already hurrying down the stairs, taking them two at a time and stumbling into the kitchen, throwing open the refrigerator and cracking open a fizzing can of PBR, sucking down its contents while Jane sighed contentedly from within her.
When Janice awoke the next morning, lathered in puke and surrounded by almost an entire case of empty beer cans, she swore to herself that that was it, she was done for the remainder of her pregnancy.
And she kept her promise.
More or less.
Jane, whom Janice now considered more of a separate entity than a mere extension of herself, was not always respectful of Janice’s good-intentioned wishes.
The first night it happened was well into her second trimester, just a few weeks before her wedding, and the first time that Janice realized Jane might really be a problem that she would need to monitor closely. She had woken up from an already-unremembered nightmare, and she’d immediately known that something was…off. This feeling was quickly followed by the sound of slight commotion from downstairs, and Janice’s immediate thought was that her house was being burglarized. So, fumbling for her glasses and then taking up an aluminum baseball bat she kept under the bed in preparation for the potentiality of such an occurrence, she tiptoed downstairs and found the kitchen light on and the cupboard doors above the sink thrown ajar. No burglar, though…just Jane, looking awful, sitting propped against the wall with a near-empty bottle of Jim Beam between her legs, head lolling and a sloppy, contented smile painted on her pale, gaunt face. She was entirely naked, breasts sagging like an old woman’s, and ribs showing prominently through her taut gray skin. Her hair, once luscious and shining, was now greasy and scraggly and tangled. Her eyes burned from hollow sockets with a crazed, drunken fervor in stark contrast to her debilitated body.
“Come have a drink, baby,” she slurred, holding the bottle up in royal invitation to Janice, beckoning her to sink down to blessed oblivion. “You practically already have, anyway.” A low cackle like the hissing of diseased rats escaped from her chapped lips and sent an icy chill down Janice’s spine.
“I am not you,” Janice whispered with shaky defiance.
Jane laughed again, louder this time, and said, “Aren’t you, though? Aren’t we both?”
And then she was gone, leaving Janice alone with the bottle, which still called silently to her even without the aid of its shriveled master. Resolute in her decision, however, Janice confidently strode over, picked it up, and dumped its remaining contents down the drain.
But as she did, her head buzzed pleasantly with drink and she wobbled tipsily on her feet.
It wasn’t me, though, she assured herself. It wasn’t me.
It happened again about a month after the wedding. Janice was torn from restless sleep by a nagging, persistent voice within her (not her own, but not Crazy Jane’s, either) that urged her out of bed and to the window overlooking the back yard. Shakily putting on her glasses, she squinted out at the night and almost immediately took a sudden, frightf
ul intake of breath.
Something was out there.
It was too dark to see much, but the pale light of the dimly glowing half-moon allowed her to catch a glimpse of movement at the edge of the forest, too big to be an animal, though whatever it was appeared to be scrambling about on all fours.
She glanced back at Dave, her husband, who was lying sprawled out in bed, his boyish face beset with a serene expression indicative of deep, contented slumber. She envied him that, for she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep ever since the night she’d found Jane in the kitchen…this was in part due to fear of what damage may have been inflicted upon the baby as a result of this episode, but more so it was because she couldn’t stop obsessing over Jane’s absence. As time wore on, she longed more and more for Jane’s comforting words and reassuring presence, making her feel confident, and secure, and telling her everything would be all right. Her husband shared in this suffering, as Janice expressed her harried, frustrated inner loneliness by cruelly lashing out at her wholly innocent and wholesome spouse, who merely bore it resiliently and just assumed her hostility was caused by hormonal imbalances (the hormones did factor into the equation, but their role was far outweighed by Janice’s bitter resentment at the fact that she seemed to have lost her closest friend, even if it was only for the span of nine months…the word “only” used in a very loose sense, for only nine months seemed to Janice a very irrational way of describing the torturous length of her separation from Jane).
Looking once more out the window, she again saw a white flash of some gangly creature loping along in the darkness.
She could, she figured, do the sensible thing and just go back to sleep, or at the very least wake Dave and make him go outside and investigate, but she had no intention of doing either of those things. It had, after all, been she who was jolted awake and compelled to get out of bed and look out the window, so she should be the one to go confront it. So instead of doing anything “sensible”, she gathered her trusty softball bat from beneath the bed and once again found herself tiptoeing down the stairs late at night with a blunt weapon in hand, ready to attack some would-be burglar (although, deep inside, she knew that what was outside was no burglar), but now the hand not holding the bat was subconsciously placed protectively over the swell of her pregnant belly.
Just to See Hell Page 7