“After?”
I just let it hang there. Not wanting to admit that I didn’t know. The entirety of high school I had just told myself to graduate, turn eighteen, and then I’d be free. But that didn’t mean anything, that wasn’t enough.
“Yeah, like college?” I couldn’t explain to her that I was too scared to really think about my future. I couldn’t tell her that the idea of leaving my mother and my house terrified me as much as staying with her, trapped forever. She couldn’t possibly understand that this was a house where dreams died and hope was for other people living other lives.
The silence stretched between. Finally, I just shook my head. My heart felt heavy and the first tingles of anger stirred. I just wanted to have a nice night with a friend. But who I was made it hard to keep things light.
Just then, the song changed to something faster and Sabrina leapt up excitedly and turned up the volume, bopping across the room to shut off the overhead light, leaving only the bedside lamp to light the room. She started dancing and singing to the song, loudly and off-key, without restraint. I took a few heavy gulps of whisky.
Cheeks flushed, she stuck her hand out for me to join, dangling her ringed fingers with their darkly polished nails my way.
Feeling like I was in someone else’s body, I stood. The alcohol was making me braver. My vision had soft edges and there was a distance between my body and my reluctant mind. I also noticed an absence of the fatigue that had been plaguing me for so long now. The subtle throb of an impending migraine that normally resided behind my eyes, as well as the chronic ache in my jaw, were gone.
I was standing, while Sabrina flitted and jumped around me. She reached toward me again and this time I accepted her hand. The skin to skin contact caused my pulse to race, my breath to hitch. The sensation amplified as our fingers intertwined, our bare forearms wrist to elbow pressed together. Waves of energy pulsed through every inch of skin that made contact. She swayed her hips, tossing her pigtails, head thrown back and eyes closed.
Objects in my room shook and clinked together. I tried to mimic her, because I realized I had no idea how to dance, settling on an awkward rocking from foot to foot. Sabrina stopped, breathless, to take a drink, singing and dribbling liquor down her shirt. She’d broken contact to peel off her sweatshirt and I longed for her touch; my dancing stilled as she stepped farther away, a coldness seeping in.
“Don’t you want to dance?” she asked, concerned by my sudden stillness in the middle of the room.
I shook my head no and took the bottle from her, the heat having less and less impact with each sip. A comfortable numbness was spreading all through me. My brain was foggy, strange, my limbs felt limber and well-oiled. I wanted Sabrina to be close to me. I wanted to be able to touch her.
The alcohol allowed me to just want; with each drink the narrative in my skull quieted and simplified to a whispered mantra, over and over, until I said it out loud: “I want . . . I don’t know how to dance,” I said to her.
She laughed and stepped close, swiping the bottle, and moving from foot to foot. “It’s easy, Jane, everyone can dance. You just need to feel the music, and move however your body wants to move. There are no rules.”
The song ended, and the next began. This was a slower number, sad and ballad-y. I’d listened to the album a hundred times, but never truly listened, trying to find a beat that would synch with my body. Sabrina held out her hand, timidly, and I placed my hand in hers and she then placed the other on my waist. The contact nearly made my knees buckle. I pulled her closer, relishing the way our stomachs slid along each other, the press of our breasts. I stood a few inches taller than her, my chin at her ear. She stiffened, and a wave of panic surged in me that I had overstepped, that I was being weird. She pulled back a little, but didn’t break the hold.
“Isn’t this how you slow dance? Or am I doing it wrong?” I asked. It came out as a whisper in her ear, we were still that close.
She craned her neck to look at me and she stuttered a bit, stumbling for words.
“No, this is good, it’s just . . . a little, uh . . . I mean, I’m not . . .”
“Are you uncomfortable? We could stop. I don’t want it to be weird or anything . . .”
I gave her the out. I didn’t want to, because I was terrified she would take it. I loved the way her body felt against mine, the heat she gave off, warmer than the whisky, warmer than I had ever been. Safe. And alive. It made me feel real, made me feel like a person. For once I was not a ghost haunting this old tomb of a house.
“Do you need to check on your mom or anything?” Sabrina asked.
I’d completely blocked out that my mother was still here, downstairs in the dark, in the den. No doubt she could hear the music blaring through the floor. I should put her to bed. I should do a lot of things. But the whisky plowed through those thoughts like a wrecking ball.
I should be dancing and having fun. I deserved it.
The darkness and anger deep within me woke then, coiled like a slick black snake, slithered up my spine and into my brain. “I’ll leave her down there all night, in the cold. I deserve a night off to have fun. Fuck Mother. She can rot down there for all I care.” The thought surprised me, but once it was out and floating, actualized, it felt good. It felt wild. The song’s tempo picked up and Sabrina absently moved her hips to the beat. I brazenly leaned into her, my hand still in hers, my other arm bringing her close, with no space in between us.
She stepped back a bit, the fog lifting slightly, surprised.
“I, uh . . . think we’re both pretty drunk.” Sabrina laughed nervously, but my arm was still around her so she couldn’t break away entirely. Did she want to leave? I felt a pang of anxiety. I studied her face: there was doubt and indecision all over it. She was intrigued by this closeness—I could read it in her body language, almost in her scent. It was a strange revelation to realize I could sense her attraction to me, and I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew I didn’t want it to stop.
I took the whisky from the table and took another deep drink. The bottle was now half empty and I handed it back to her, a lopsided smile plastered on my face.
“Yeah, but I’m having fun. You’re amazing, you know. I don’t think I realized how lonely I was. I’m really happy you moved here.”
Her eyes on the floor, she smiled a sweet, grateful smile. I knew how lonely she was, I knew how ashamed she’d been of being betrayed and vulnerable at her old school. Being drunk was changing my personality. I could feel it as if watching from outside myself. Ordinary Jane was passive, she did everything for her mother, she wanted or got very little. Drunk Jane wanted. Drunk Jane wanted Sabrina to stay, urgently. Alcohol was a funny thing. Brain to mouth, brain to body. Sabrina leaned in and embraced me.
“I’m happy I met you too, Jane.”
The hug caused synapses to fire in my brain, the supple skin of Sabrina’s neck and face close to mine. I could smell her soap, the acrid cigarette smoke in her hair. I let my nose run along the soft spot between her neck and shoulder, feeling the quickening pulse there. She felt my face against hers, the intimacy of the contact, and she pulled back, fighting her own curiosity. She was breathless, her inhibitions knocked down by drink, but her fear was trying to override it. She swallowed loudly.
“Are you, uh, hitting on me, Jane? Because I like you as a friend.”
She said this nervously, her normal confidence gone. What I said next would either change our friendship, or kill it. The drunkenness and my desire for her made me brave, made me honest.
“I don’t know how I feel. All I know is I really like being near you. . . .”
Sabrina’s breath caught as I pulled her closer, and without a thought at all, I touched her lips with mine. It was the most intense sensation I had ever felt. The heat of her mouth, combined with the slightest wetness. She stiffened, but didn’t push me off. I leaned forward, desperate to get her mouth back to mine. She gave in, and her body lost all of its tension and melte
d into mine.
I wrapped my arms tightly around her, and she did the same. She opened her mouth and my tongue slid inside, tasting the whisky in her saliva. She sighed as I moved against her, bringing us even closer to each other. Our hips grinding together to the rhythm of the song. I walked her backward to the bed and when the backs of her knees hit the mattress, she froze, breaking the kiss and putting some space between us.
“I’m not . . . I mean, I’m not gay, I’m just wasted.”
I simply stared at her puffy, bee-stung mouth, her disheveled makeup, her indecision. I had done more talking than I had in months today, and I didn’t want to talk anymore. Something inside me, that slick, black snake, was looking out through my eyes and it was a selfish thing.
I want, I want, I want.
“I don’t care what you are. All I know is that this is an evening of firsts. First friend to come over to my house.”
With that I moved closer again, closing the gap between us.
“First time I’ve ever drank.” I inched closer still. “First time I’ve ever danced with someone.” I took her hand, and her eyelids fluttered, drunkenly. “And my first kiss . . .”
She stared at me for a moment, desire shining in her face. “I’m just . . . scared, Jane. I don’t know what any of this means . . .”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything. It feels good; it gets us out of our heads. Why does anything have to be more than that?”
We were nearly nose to nose now. She closed her eyes. A voice inside was urging me on. The whisky had awoken a part of me I had never known. A lifetime of being denied had fattened it. The black snake was possessive, controlling; it wanted. Sabrina’s indecision kept me from her, and that made me want to take control.
In a bold move, I slid my arms around her and leaned forward, knocking her onto the bed. She was surprised as I landed on top of her. She didn’t squirm away so I kissed her. My hands snaked underneath her shirt. I luxuriated in the explosive heat of her skin, like a cat in a patch of sunlight. I heard her breathing, loud and jagged as I explored her breasts, first with my hands, then with my mouth. She moaned as I slipped a hand into her pants. It was searing hot inside. And all along I kept thinking: I was not in my body, I was someone else. I did not seduce drunk girls.
And yet I was. Sabrina’s shirt and bra were gone somehow, as if they had just dissolved. Her pants were off too, her body gloriously pale in the soft lamplight. I was naked, our bodies sliding the length of each other, warm and smooth.
My mouth was everywhere. I was kissing her, greedily sucking at her lips. I migrated to her throat where the pulse hammered along my tongue’s path. My mouth dripped with saliva. I licked at her skin, salty on my tongue, and then I bit. She was breathing very fast, and I could feel the beginnings of the spasms deep in her belly. I allowed my teeth to sink deeper into the skin of her throat. It was surreal how easily the flesh parted. My mouth filled with blood, hot and meaty, complex and alive. I was lapping it up as it flowed out of the wound, mindlessly, greedily. She was gasping for breath. I felt powerful and free, and there was nothing else but the fast, birdlike beat of her heart, her panting, hot and moist in my ear, and my throat, swallowing and swallowing.
VI.
I woke in the morning unsure what was real and what had been a dream. My mouth tasted sour and metallic. I was lying on my stomach with one arm over something . . . warm . . . and breathing.
I struggled to sit up. Disorientation at first, but then vague memories slowly returned, the whisky, the dancing, and the kiss. In shock, I looked at Sabrina, who was dead to the world, tangled in my sheets, her face turned away from me. I touched my mouth and looked around my bedroom, confused. The bedside lamp was still on, the radio was still on, my mother . . .
“Fuck!” I jumped up, threw on a T-shirt and sweats, and dashed down the stairs to the frigid den. The fire had gone out in the night and my breath plumed in the chill air. My mother was slumped in the chair, her head on her chest. Her skin was cold, and I felt tendrils of the old horror creeping in. But then she moved, slowly, creakily, and looked up at me with sleep-addled—but otherwise clear—eyes. What she saw there caused her to moan, loudly, and she turned away from me.
“I’m so sorry for leaving you here all night, Mom, you must be freezing.” Guilt like a noose around my neck, I eased her up out of the chair, rubbing her trembling limbs. Upstairs, I changed her and put her in her bed to warm up. Once she was tucked in, I scurried back downstairs to relight the damned stove. I started some coffee and oatmeal, falling into my standard routine. Poor neglected Tommy yowled and hopped on the counter, no doubt angry for closing off my room to him all night. I kissed his head and opened a can of cat food for him.
I couldn’t stop thinking of Sabrina, which inevitably led me back to thinking about last night. It was still foggy, but I remembered the feelings—the joy, the freedom, dreamlike and blurry. I remembered the way her body moved under me. I remembered how I’d enjoyed it. But there were huge gaps, and I was shocked that it had gone down that way in the first place. I had never been a particularly sexual person. I never thought much of marrying, or having kids, or boyfriends, let alone girlfriends. In the pale morning light it was shocking and somewhat shameful to think of myself as the aggressor, as the seducer. Regardless of who I’d been last night and what whisky had woken, I felt fantastic, probably the best I had ever felt. My body felt strong, alert, and alive. Smiling and humming under my breath, I brought a tray of food to my mother and some coffee to my room, eager to see Sabrina.
My good mood deflated as soon as I entered the bedroom. I hadn’t noticed when I woke earlier, but now I could see the stains on the pillowcases, and the sheets: brownish red smears everywhere. Sabrina was standing to the side, hunched over and watching me, sunken eyes wreathed in smeared black makeup, face pale. She recoiled as I came in, wrapping her arms around herself.
I raised the coffee and forced a smile. “I brought you some coffee and aspirin. Sure glad it’s Saturday. Can you believe I was drunk enough to forget my mother downstairs in the parlor last night?” I chuckled as I walked toward her. Sabrina glared at me and scrambled away as I came near. I put a cup on the desk where she could reach and stepped back. She was unsteady on her feet and she eased into my desk chair, putting her shoes on with trembling hands.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked when I could take her silence no longer.
I liked her warmth and her chatter. This pallid, somber Sabrina made me uncomfortable.
“No, I am not okay.” Her pale hazel eyes brimmed with tears.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Where to start?! First you . . . take advantage of me . . .”
“What?”
“Then you fucking bite me!”
“Bite you? What are you talking about?”
“My blood is all over this bed! Look at my neck!” Angrily she pulled down the neck of her shirt, revealing her bruised and ravaged throat. It was an angry wound, each tooth represented in a neat circular mark. I staggered back from her, nearly missing the bed as I sat down. She was crying, shoulders shaking silently, fat tears that streaked her makeup even more. She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve and continued gathering her things.
“I don’t know how you could gnaw on my neck like that without me even noticing. I must have been fucking wasted, or else maybe you slipped me something. I guess I know why everyone is terrified of you. I learned my lesson.”
“Wait, Sabrina . . .” I croaked, feeling scooped out and hollow.
Her hand was on the doorknob, her back to me. Her head was down.
She craned her neck back toward me, no longer the bubbly, smiling girl from yesterday. On her face was the cold, fearful stare that everyone else in the world gave me. I had to hold in my breath so I wouldn’t let out a sob.
“Have you even looked in a mirror this morning?” She hissed this as she yanked the door open. I stood and glanced in my vanity, and froze. My mouth was outlined i
n crusted brown. I scratched at it and it flaked away. With dawning horror, I realized it was Sabrina’s blood all over my face. Which meant she was right, and I had bitten her. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I remember? I turned to her beseechingly. But she was gone. A minute later I heard an engine start, followed by the sound of her tires peeling out of my driveway.
My chest ached as if it had been pierced. I slid onto the floor, bundled myself into a ball, and did not move for hours.
VII.
It was midafternoon before I was able to rouse myself. I checked on mother, bringing her up some lunch and her medicine in bed. She watched me and I did my best to ignore her.
Later, in the bathroom, it took all my willpower not to smash the mirror. The face that looked back at me belonged to a stranger. What the hell had happened? Was I losing my mind? I hated to admit that while my heart ached at the loss of Sabrina, my body still felt good. Strong, even. The physical renewal didn’t overcome the dread or the confusion about last night. If anything, it complicated things. My stomach flip-flopped. Why would I hurt her? Why did I want to? Obviously something was wrong with me, and for the first time in my life, I felt dangerous.
I turned the shower on blisteringly hot and stepped in, gasping in shock and pain. Good, I thought to myself, as my skin flared pink from the heat. When I could take no more, I turned the temperature to a more comfortable setting and scrubbed myself vigorously. Once clean, I sat in the tub, letting the water pelt me. I replayed the evening in my head, trying to focus on the fuzzy stuff. Round and around I went, seeing her at the store, getting in her car, letting her in. Taking a drink. I’d wanted to touch her, craved it as if starved. But as soon as I could get close, I’d bit.
And I’d known what I was doing, maybe not consciously, but I’d known I was seducing her. The guilt blossomed. The guilt and the horror. Was my mother right? Was there something so horrible and wrong with me that I spoiled everything? Was I so deviant that I was incapable of loving or being loved? There were so many questions. The worst and most problematic: why didn’t I regret it?
Parasite Life Page 5