by Nikki Roman
One of them blows a smoke ring, peering at me through it. I squirm under his bloodshot gaze. However, neither of the men can seem to focus on me for longer than a second at a time. They are overdone; baked like a batch of Mom’s homemade cookies.
“I’ll make them see you,” Cairen says. He cups the back of my head, twisting his fingers in my curls and clipping on. My face snaps to his and he forces his tongue in my mouth, pushing past my teeth and choking me. “Stop resisting!”
I latch onto his hair too, pulling harder than I should dare to, and finally the men are catcalling and hooting. I close my eyes in pain—to the men it will look like they are closed in ecstasy. Biting Cairen’s lip, I draw blood. Roughly, he shoves me off of him.
I lick his blood off my lips and distance myself from him, falling deeper into the party. From afar I hear, “Nice piece of ass you got there!” from one of the druggies.
Holden is leaning against an entertainment center, his droopy eyes looking out at the party in faint interest. I pick up my pace, walking faster and faster, until my face is buried in his bony shoulder, breathing in his cheap cologne. Between the rat droppings and urine buried deep in every piece of furniture here, my stomach is clenching. I just might yack and add to the lovely aroma.
“What a douchebag,” Holden says, scratching the back of my head soothingly.
Not me—Cairen. Douchebag. Damn him, sticking his tongue where it doesn’t belong. I make note to cut it off, the first chance I get.
“I probably just acquired some type of STD from him,” I say.
“He’s clean,” Alana says. I had forgotten she was here, the sound of her voice one more small comfort in the chaos of the party; it warms me, as it did earlier in the Allie. “Surprisingly, he’s STD free.”
“Thank God,” I say.
Alana gives me her hand and I lock arms with Holden, we set out like we’re going to the Emerald City, but all we really want is to find a place to rest that isn’t already inhabited by drug addicts. Holden points to a leather sofa facing the kitchen.
I stretch my legs across his lap and get comfortable. Alana lays her head in the groove made by the end of my rib cage and top of my hip.
I play with her hair. “Go to sleep,” she says, “when we wake up the party will be over and we can go back to the Allie.”
Sleep straight through life, through the hard times—that is how the Allies must do it, I guess.
“If we sleep will you stay awake and keep watch?” I ask Holden.
“Sure, go ahead. I’m not going anywhere,” he says.
Alana is already passed out, her red hair spilled over her face, rising with shallow sleeping breaths. I relax my hand on her head and press my face into the armrest, staring into the open kitchen.
Beside the couch, a tall lamp glows dimly; the light covering only a one foot radius, its lampshade stained a pale, baby-vomit yellow. People come in and out of the kitchen with drinks in their hands. Each time the same person goes in he comes out a little more unstable, swaying a little more to the left or right. And then, taking a sip of their drink, they are brought back to the present. They remember the party; remember where they are—who they are. A smile forms on wet drunk lips, a smile that says: time to get faded, time to get laid, time to get lost in the loud music and dimming lights. Time to ignore the girl who is snoozing through life.
I am cramped and suffocating, but I could be crammed in a shoe box and still doze off, as I do now. The violent hammering of rap music, sloshing alcohol, and puffs of rolled marijuana leaves slot me into a strangely peaceful sleep.
•••
In a half-conscious state, I feel Alana’s head lift from my side. I bring my knees to my chest and turn my body facing the couch, hiding from the party-goers who want a peek of a real-life sleeping beauty. Crack-whore version.
Holden ties and unties my boots. Sometimes he comes to rest on my legs, only to pop up a minute later, forcing himself to stay awake for me. I peel my face off the arm rest, my sweat and the grimy leather having come together like an adhesive. My hands are red and wrinkled from resting my head on them. I stretch, giving my legs back to Holden.
“Good morning, how did you sleep?” he asks.
“Awkwardly,” I say, in a voice thick with sleep. “Where did Alana go?”
“She went to find a bathroom, I think,” he says. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I rub my tongue along the insides of my mouth; dry as beef jerky. “Yeah, I’ll come with you,” I say.
I fix my hair and pull down my skirt, which has risen up my thighs while I slept. We duck under the dismantled crown molding of the doorway. Yellow standing work lights make the kitchen navigable; Marijuana plants in black plastic pots and potting soil with little white Styrofoam beads hide the scuffed linoleum flooring.
The kitchen table is being used for beer pong in the living room. Next to the refrigerator is a large, orange cooler; Holden ladles me a cup of pink liquid out of it.
For curiosity’s sake, I open the freezer. If I were a cat, particularly a hungry cat, my curiosity definitely would have killed me. I want to keel over after just seeing the rotted pieces of meat festering with maggots. But because I’m already in this deep, I open the fridge door. Its only contents are a moldy green pepper, lying on its side, and a jar of yellow mayonnaise without a lid. Drawers, once clear plastic, are caked in a brown sludge, like the refrigerator threw up in its own mouth.
Holden makes a gagging sound behind me and hands a drink over my shoulder. “Classic trap house fridge,” he says.
I take a sip of the fruity concoction; I can barely taste the alcohol in it, which I’m sure the fruit is meant to mask. “Trap house?” I ask with uneven eyebrows.
“There’s one way in and one way out.”
Like the Allie. Gee, these gangsters aren’t very keen on multiple escape routes.
“The cops try to bust ‘em and they’re trapped like rats,” he says.
Something hard in my drink hits my lips, and I know it is not an ice cube. I look into my cup and see the offender swimming around with eight hairy little legs.
“I’m not that thirsty anymore,” I say, pouring my drink down the sink and leaving my cup on one of the counters—I can’t find a trashcan; the entire house is a garbage dump.
Holden and I walk back to our couch, but someone has already drunkenly thrown themselves upon it. I am about to push the heavily sedated man off, when a scream rings out from the upstairs.
Every muscle in my body freezes; the chilling scream is a replica of one that erupted from Alana’s mouth as child when she fell from a tree and broke her arm.
Holden doesn’t recognize the high-pitched screech, he looks at me confused. There is no time to explain; I propel myself up the stairs, stepping over Solo cups lined up in an innovative game of beer pong. Holden stumbles far behind.
I hop around people blocking the hallway.
How long had she been left alone? Not long enough for something terrible to happen. But that scream, it could argue with me that she was hurt or in danger.
I go to a room at the end of the hall, Cairen stands in the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He doesn’t acknowledge me. I push past him.
Alana is on the ground, holding a sheet over her head like Mother Mary, huddled in the dark shadows of an empty closet.
There’s a mattress stripped bare on the floor and a naked black man sitting on it. He grabs a blanket off the ground and makes a run for the door. Cairen raises his arm up, letting him run underneath it like they’re playing limbo. I step out of the room and watch his black rear-end fly down the stairs. I catch a glimpse of the panic stricken face belonging to Allegiance, the Apocy leader.
Holden has finally made it upstairs; he makes it through the obstacle of people in the hallway and comes toward me.
I look back in the room. “Are you okay, Alana?”
She looks fine enough, naked and scared but unharm
ed.
“She won’t be,” Cairen cuts in. “Allegiance, really? The rival’s leader! That’s ironic, think he could have taught you a thing or two about being allegiant. Allegiant to your own gang!”
Alana whimpers something.
“I’ll kill ya!” Cairen screams, his hands seizing into claws.
He’s on her fast but I’m on top of him just as quick, my hands fitted around his ripped arms, pulling him off of her. She cries out as his fists make contact with her skin. I keep tugging, my hands slipping over his sweaty biceps.
Where’s Holden? I can’t see anything past my hair and the frenzy of Alana’s screams, Cairen’s jackhammer hands breaking her in.
Taking a step back from them, I search the room for a weapon. Holden tosses me a lamp. I knock Cairen over the head with the base of it, not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to turn his attention off Alana.
His focus is on me now.
•••
Grabbing a fistful of my hair, Cairen walks forward and I walk backward, until I am pushed into a corner of the room with nowhere to run. “Ah!” I grimace.
“I tried to be nice to you, Indigo, but maybe I made a mistake by letting you think that we were friends, that you were equal to me. It happens sometimes,” he says. “I cross over into nice guy territory. Rarely, but occasionally, and forget that I’m a monster, a snake, and you’re my rat. My dinner.”
Yanking me out of the corner, my hair wrapped up in his claws, he forces my head into the corner of a wooden dresser as easily as if he were pulling down a lever on a casino slot machine.
Pain grips me and I am momentarily blinded by red. I blink furiously to gain back my vision. Cairen’s ugly face multiplies it waves back and forth like a finger ‘tsking’ at me. I lash out at one of his many faces, nails barred.
My vision straightens. Red, puffy lines streak Cairen’s cheeks but the pain doesn’t touch him. Below the surface he is a beast of snarling fangs and bulging muscles, struggling against shackles. I have only managed to further agitate the beast within.
“Stop fighting back!” the beast bellows. “I could kill you with my bare hands! Do you hear me?”
Do I hear you? Above the party, above Alana’s cries and Holden’s loud, loud breathing? I don’t hear you. I don’t hear any of it.
But Indigo does.
I push Cairen back with all my might—with all Indigo’s might—and he falls against the dresser. “I hear you loud and clear, BASTARD!”
“Stupid bitch!” he limps away from the dresser, holding his back, and then shuffles out of the room in a Quasimodo fashion. How I managed to hurt him, I’ll never know.
I barge down the hall after him, punching walls as I go along, the obstacle of the crowd parting for me.
I turn into the bathroom and lock the door. My hand inches along the wall, fumbling for a light switch. I find one and flip it on; a single bulb hardly lights the tiny room.
I walk backward from the bathroom mirror and hit my back against the wall; my reflection startling me. Blood from a tiny gash on my forehead courses over my eyebrow and the bridge of my nose. I wonder how bad off Alana is if I look this scary.
Someone knocks on the door.
“It’s occupied!” I yell.
They knock again. I punch the door to scare them away.
“We have to go!” Holden says his voice muffled.
“Then go!”
“No, not without you. We have to get back to the Allie. Cairen’s really pissed!”
“I know he’s pissed!” I shriek, frustrated. “I figured that out after the first punch. Holden, you did nothing to stop him. You didn’t even blink an eye!”
“Well, it’s not like Alana was any help either…”
“Oh, that’s so mature, taking Alana down with you. What could she have done? She’s half the size of me! But you, you definitely could have made him stop.”
“It’s not like that, Bailey. That’s not how the Allie works.”
“You and Cairen keep saying that,” I say, “but I get the inner workings of the Allie as well as the both of you. I fully understand how it works. I just fail to accept it. And I never will, because it’s wrong, unjust, and sick!”
“Look, I don’t give a shit what you think about the Allie, I’m trying to save your ass and if you don’t come out of that bathroom this very second, you may not have an ass left to save!”
I unlock the door. Holden pushes it open and grabs my arm, he drags me down the stairs, and out of the house so quick that all the graffiti on the walls blur into one distinctive, grungy grey.
“Calm down!” I say. He throws me in the van and I bounce against the mattress.
“This is not a calm situation!” he says, pushing the door shut.
“What about Alana? We can’t just leave her!”
He swings open the driver’s side door and gets behind the wheel. “Cairen’s got her. Press something against your head to stop the bleeding. You’re going to bleed to death.”
I ball up the end of a sheet and press it against my gash. Blood soaks through the thin material quickly, and I have to layer a shirt on top of it too.
“Cairen’s going to kill her!” I cry. “What will we do?”
“Nothing, we are going to do nothing. And you’re going to be quiet, so I can think.”
“But what if he makes us jump her?”
“That won’t happen,” he says, sure of himself.
I take the pressure off my head and move to the front of the van. In the rearview mirror I can make out my eyes-and that’s it. The rest of my features are covered in a thick mask of congealing blood.
“You’re scary looking,” Holden says, pushing my head back. “Go lie down. He beat you good this time.”
“He raped her?” I say in both a statement and a question.
“He didn’t rape her,” he says. The van swerves, his hands too tense on the steering wheel. I can see the veins that go from his palm to his wrist.
“But she screamed,” I say.
“Because Cairen caught her in the act.”
“Holden, what act?”
“The act of consensual sex with the rival’s leader!”
“She wouldn’t! She isn’t that way!”
“Maybe she was drunk or drugged, I don’t know. Bailey, she’s in trouble. Sit back now and let me think. Be quiet.”
I fall back on the mattress. We drive a little way, but eventually the silence gets to Holden and he starts to talk again. “You’re pumping with adrenaline right now and that’s why you don’t feel any pain. But when that stops, you’re going to be a wreck.”
“The adrenaline’s gone,” I say in a hollow voice.
“We’ll be at the Allie soon. I have medicine for you.”
I think about Alana, naked and tiny under her sheet. Think about how much she reminded me of a little kid dressed as a ghost, trick or treating on Halloween. Cut out black holes for eyes…but I had never seen them so green, so bright, and sparked with terror. I try to remember if she’s a virgin, or had been before tonight. But I can’t recall a time that we ever spoke of it. Sex was the one subject we never touched upon in our late-night, sleepover conversations. What had we talked about?
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you,” Holden says, “but you shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“I didn’t think you would step in… but I hoped you would. You’re just as emotionless as Cairen.”
“I’m not emotionless!” he says. “I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t.”
“You were fully capable.”
“Of what? You’re so quick to pass judgment. I was scared, why can’t anyone but you be scared?”
There’s not enough fear to go around the Allie.
“Holden, do you know what he’s going to do with her?”
He twists his lips up and shakes his head no.
“What can we do?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
•••
I scrape dry
blood of my cheeks; it falls in red flakes on my chest and shoulders. Holden keeps driving, grows used to the silence and the sound of my labored breathing. I try to untie the corset but the knot would take a fork or a bobby pin to undo. I lie on my back and expel oxygen like a tree, unmoving, yet living.
Before long, we are at the Allie. It’s around four in the morning, but Holden is happy we’re the first ones back. I know it only means that Alana is alone with Cairen longer.
Holden tells me to stay by the fence as he goes inside the warehouse to get medicine for my head. I try to stay awake, even though my head is laughing at me. The mounting pain in my chest is laughing at me. And pretty soon, it seems like even the empty refrigerator, dumpster, and the tires are laughing at me. If I hadn’t hit my head, I’d be alarmed by the hallucinations.
What feels like hours later, Holden drops back over the fence with his hands empty. He is shaking in the moonlight, tears shining on his cheeks. He pulls his right arm back and balls his hand into a fist. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice tremoring, “but its best you not see what’s about to happen.” He slams his fist into my temple, grunting from exertion.
A sharp pain rips through my skull. Psychedelic fractals spin before my eyes. Something is expanding in my chest, something heavy with sharp edges, it cuts my lungs and takes away my breath. I am lifted from the ground; I cry out but don’t hear it. There’s a rushing in my ears like the sound of rapids.
I am laid down on something firm but soft—a mattress.
Go to sleep now go to sleep now go to sleep now- I have heard this sentence before, from someone else—Trenton, when he was drowning me in the retention pond outside school.
I drown now, in a black ocean of pain. Bobbing at first, flapping my arms above my head, the universal sign for ‘help I’m drowning!’ And then, I sink to bottom.
I wonder, am I really at the bottom, or am I on top? Am I really drowning, or am I floating? Floating on my back, hands treading water, a silky curtain caressing the outline of my body.
And, I drift… to nowhere.
Chapter 35