“You looked at yourself in the mirror—” she says, trying to get me to stay on track.
I take another deep breath, close my eyes, take another pull on the beer, and look at her. “All...all my teeth had been pulled out. My mouth was one huge laceration. I spent the next hour curled into a ball on the bathroom floor sobbing like a baby.”
A long pause passes between us. Lacey is speechless for the first time in her life. It is a rare moment. She cannot find a joke in this. I know she wants to. Lacey does not want to be serious all the time. She says it’s not healthy, and I agree. I look at her again.
“I’m going crazy,” I say.
“I think you’re overworked,” she says, opting for logical. “All those books you read, those movies you watch. You spend ten hours a day over there, six days a week. You should close the shop two hours early, and close on Fridays and Saturdays for a while. Maybe you should close the shop down for a week and take a breather. You can spend the week with me.”
She doesn’t believe me. I know she doesn’t believe me, and it kills me a little inside. What am I going to do? Surprising myself, I put my head on the counter and start crying.
“Rayleigh,” Lacey whispers. She reaches out and puts her hand on my arm. “Rayleigh. Hey, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Tell me about it. Okay? Tell me what else is bothering you.”
I raise my head, wipe tears from my eyes, search in my purse for some tissue, find some, and wipe my eyes again. “What’s bothering me,” I say, “is that I think I’m losing my fucking mind! I saw these things, Lace! I saw them! I don’t hallucinate. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“What wasn’t supposed to be like this?”
I shake my head. This is crazy! I can’t do this. I feel so stupid. How can she believe me? Would I believe her if she told me the same story? I don’t think so. I would think my friend had lost her marbles. I would think she’d fallen right off her rocker.
The waitress comes back and asks if everything is all right. I nod, and we get another round as I down the rest of my beer. More drinks arrive and Lacey pays. I close my eyes and see Junky looking over my shoulder at something evil.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “This is hopeless. I shouldn’t have asked you—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ray,” she says. “Why don’t you stay with me tonight? I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I have to open the bookstore tomorrow.”
“Not ’til ten. I’ll drive you home. I’ll go into work a little late.”
She grabs my hand, and I squeeze in return. “Is there anything else you can tell me?” she asks.
My mind goes blank. I don’t realize the comedy is about to come out of me. “Yeah,” I say. “I met a guy, and I think I’m in love.”
Lacey’s eyes go wide. “Waitress?” she calls. “Can we get another round over here, please?”
~
We drink a bit more, but don’t stay too long. As we leave, the brisk chill makes my arms break out in gooseflesh, and I bump into a street bum. I get a whiff of very bad breath and body odor. He’s wearing a long, beige trench coat, which looks as if it’s been used to clean up an oil spill: long black skid marks and patches of black. He’s wearing a brown, filthy knit hat with holes in it, smudged gray sweat pants and work boots without laces. His face is a snarled mask of gray and brown, tangled, matted whiskers. He has dark brown eyes. Something is crawling on his face. It must be lice. I wonder what kind of diseases he has, and I find I’m suddenly terrified!
In the next second, he violently grabs my arm, hurting me, looking me dead in the eye. His grip is fierce and unrelenting. Lacey doesn’t notice right away. She seems more confused, not quite understanding what’s happening.
I get another whiff of alcohol, bad breath, and something decaying.
“You’re a long way from home,” he says, in a raspy voice.
“Let go of her!” Lacey says, furiously. She tries to pull us apart but the man’s grip is too tight.
“She’ll keep coming!” the man shouts.
My eyes grow wide, horrified. He lets go and runs away. Lacey grabs me, clutching me tight. Her eyes, I can see, are wide and unbelieving. She hugs me, and I cry into her chest. My head is spinning. My life is spinning. I am more out of control than I have ever been in my life. People walk by staring at us. Lacey puts her hand on my head, stroking my hair. She’s whispering something, but I can’t tell what it is. I do not remember getting in her car and driving to her house. I don’t remember anything. I think about Pug and Junky. I see blood in the mirror. Am I going to die?
Home again? Everything is so alien to me suddenly. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I am more afraid than I have ever been in my whole stinking life. I am more terrified than I can possibly say.
6.
Living Inside Me
Lacey is looking at me, very concerned. At her apartment, we are sitting at the kitchen counter on barstools. The track lighting is on, providing a warm, healthy grow to the kitchen and dining area. It’s a relief to be here. She is sitting on a barstool in the kitchen, and I am sitting on one in the living room, and we are facing each other across the opening. I have had enough to drink, I know, but because of the episode with the bum, I decide to drink a little more. I am smoking a cigarette, a copper-colored ashtray in front of me. Lacey asks if she can have one, and I oblige. The bum from the street has me trembling. I am still shaking from it even though I’ve had several drinks already.
“What do you think it is?” she asks.
I shake my head. How do I answer? I have no answers because I don’t know what it is. How can I know?
“I have no idea,” I say.
I have already told her about Pug earlier that day. It, too, has her concerned, and we are both worried about him. What is happening to me, I think? What could possibly be reaching up through the dark to destroy me? What did I do?
“I just can’t figure it out,” I say. “There’s nothing I can think of, nothing I’ve done, anything I’ve seen that would do this. It doesn’t make sense.”
I take another drink. Lacey takes a deep breath. I don’t feel safe, not even here. What can prevent this thing, whatever it is, from coming after me? I would kill to go back to the way things were, empty girl, devoid of life without meaning. What happened to the humor, the laughter? It already seems a lifetime ago. Emotion rises inside me because of the drink. I can’t feel anything but helplessness. How am I supposed to deal with this? If it wants me, what can I do? I think again, I’m going to die. I look up, and Lacey notes the tears in my eyes.
“Oh, Rayleigh,” she says. She stands up, moving out of the kitchen to stand beside me. She puts her arms around me. “Rayleigh. I know this sounds stupid, but it’s going to be all right. We’ll beat this thing. I’ll do whatever I can for you, okay?”
Now, I am sobbing like a baby. I don’t realize how special she is, what a dear and close friend I have. How can I not be thankful for this? She is everything in the world to me, something I cannot live without.
“I love you, Lacey,” I say, my voice thick.
I hold her tight, hoping this will end, that I will get past these tears, and we will be able to laugh and go back to the way things were again, the joy and fun we had.
“I love you, too, Rayleigh. I have always loved you. I will always love you no matter what happens.”
I want to say something like, ‘If I die, I want you to know I love you, too, that you have meant everything in the world to me.’
I start to see my life in the past tense, and I wonder when the end will come.
Don’t ever leave me, Lacey, I think. I could not bear my life without you.
For some reason, Carmilla is strangely quiet.
~
The change I’ve been looking for has found me. Do I want the change? I am not dreaming of knights and princesses. I am not thinking about the world of dating, and how the only problem I find is wondering why I can’t me
et the right man. If the right man is out there, it doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it never did. The magic I want to believe in is not the way I imagine it. Rayleigh, a voice from a long distant corridor whispers. It is not Carmilla; it is not the girl Pug loves, either.
Rayleigh, you are always running from the wolves. I am haunting you; you are haunting me.
Lacey gives me a strong hug and a kiss when she drops me off the next morning. I feel hazy from all the drinking and crying. My head is a wet cinderblock. No life in this body, Dracula tells me. I am submerged, consumed in flame, and drowning at the same time. I have been swallowed by a mighty whale, and it has nothing to do with Jonah. Jonah is no friend of mine. He hurls through space at an un-recordable speed. I am separated from myself. I live and breathe; I walk through time and space in this casement that is my body. It’s moving on gears and motors. Mechanical movement is all that’s left of me. I am a puppet. I see the world around me, but I don’t see it. ‘It is the best of times; it is the worst of times…’
In the basement of the house, I see the floor opening up beneath me. Around the edges are jagged teeth, triangles like a shark’s. A forked tongue lashes out like a whip, encircling my ankle, and pulls me down. I kick and scream, but this girl is helpless.
There is no life in this body, Dracula says to me again.
I see Pug walking hand in hand with a dead girl. The flowers he has given her are also dead, but she puts them to her corpse-like face and breathes in their aroma. Her teeth fall out one by one. Maggots and lice writhe in bloody patches and clumps in her mouth and hair. They fall from her head, and Pug leans in to kiss her. They embrace.
I cut the apple cobbler my neighbor has given me. Blood and roaches bubble up from the center. I am getting faint. I see stars—one by one—blinking on and off in front of me. Lacey has been tied to her bed and disemboweled. Her face has been cut off. I see my father being strangled by one of his own neckties. Mother has been stuffed in the oven somehow even though she’s too big for it. The knob has been turned to Broil.
The bookstore burns down. Junky is being flayed alive. I can hear him screaming. Can cats scream? This one can, and Junky is giving it his all.
The mouth in my room has swallowed me. I am in total darkness, and when I speak, I hear my voice echoing off of stone. I am in solitary confinement, and escape is impossible. I scream, but my voice comes back to me. I am suffocating in the dark because my mouth is filled with blood. I am drowning in it.
Dracula, pleased, takes a bow and smiles. He has told me all I need to know.
~
I’m waiting to die. I don’t know what to do. Am I just going to wait for it to come and get me, whatever it is? If I ignore it, will it go away? Of course, it won’t. Maybe that’s what it wants.
I keep the store closed today. I don’t worry about Junky. He has enough food. I lie on my bed and bury my face in the pillow. I want to sleep some more, but I’m scared of dreaming. Nothing is left inside of me. Nothing has happened, and I feel I’ve already been defeated. If you want me, then come and get me, I think. I am not ready to die, but I will learn. Today is the day I am supposed to meet with the writers group. It’s Tuesday, but they can go to a coffee shop. I’ll tell them a death has occurred in my family, which won’t necessarily be a lie, will it?
~
I close my eyes and I think of the coming spring, the warmth, and wonder why she didn’t wait until winter. Maybe that option is still open. She is going to drive me mad, and then I’ll be consumed in flame on the coldest day of the year. I want to believe I have the strength for this, that I can overcome it, but I am too weak. This has happened too fast, this change in my life, and I wonder if I’ll survive and look back on it, wondering what became of me. I want to love again. I want to be me. I can live and love, learn and grow, become a part of something extraordinary again. I can be at peace and die. And fuck you, Dracula, there is life in this body, and this girl will survive.
~
The sun is out when I wake up on Wednesday. I spent Tuesday lost in some crazy limbo, not knowing how I made it through the day. Drinking at least will numb me and allow me to forget for a while. It’s the only way I can sleep now.
“I have to open the store today,” I say, aloud. “I can’t afford to do this to myself anymore.”
There is time enough for all that later, Carmilla tells me. Lacey’s right. You need a vacation. Maybe you’re just imagining all this.
“And maybe I’m the Queen of England,” I say.
I get ready, take a shower, make some coffee, and have a light breakfast. The day is beautiful; the blue looks brand new, like a present. The sky is cloudless. I can already tell the morning mist and dew is drying on the grass. It is going to be a warm day. I open the windows, letting in the fresh air, and it smells crisp and clean, as if the city has been remade. My eyes adjust, and I come out of the haze of grogginess and sleep, anxious for the rest of my life to begin. I will wait, I tell myself. I will see what happens next, and I will act accordingly. I will do whatever is necessary in the coming days, be a woman again with beautiful thoughts and feelings, because I am not as dark as I have made myself out to be. I am light, and when I go away, I might go into the darkness, but I will end up in the light. I will put on my best face and pretend nothing has changed. I will smile and nod in all the right places. No one will know I’m on the verge of losing my mind.
I put on my new face like a pair of shoes. It’s that easy. I’m going to love again. I am not scatterbrained. I am insatiable and full of desire.
But I know something strange. Something that makes no sense to me because I have no answers.
I know I must go home again.
~
I do need another job, I think. All the time, I sit behind the counter and stare at books. I’m too lazy to organize, but I figure I should do something, so I force myself to the science fiction section. Maybe I should start exercising. It couldn’t hurt. Junky is on the counter, curled into a black ball watching me shelve the science fiction books. Kids come in and put stuff where it doesn’t belong, so I have to go back and find the misplaced books, and put them back in their proper place. I am trying to put the events of the last few days behind me. For a while, it actually works.
Behind me, I hear the bell sound. Someone has walked in. I stand, leaving the stack of books where they are on the floor and walk around the shelf.
I can’t believe it! It’s Lewis. I didn’t think he’d want to see me again. I thought his teaching Bartok was a fib to get me out of his hair. He is wearing a black button-up shirt and jeans with tennis shoes. His cute smile is welcoming. He has flowers in his hands, a bouquet of various kinds. “Hi, Rayleigh,” he says. “Do boys still buy girls flowers these days?”
I can’t help but smile. He’s blushing, and I can tell he’s wondering if this was a good idea…buying the flowers.
“Yes,” I say. “And girls still love it, no matter how old they are. And you shouldn’t feel embarrassed.”
He hands me the flowers, and I take a deep whiff of their perfumed fragrance. I find a jar in the back room, fill it with water, and put them on the counter. The Broken Spine is suddenly brighter with their presence.
“I wanted to say thank you for the other night, despite how awkward it might’ve been,” he says. “I really had a good time.”
“Me, too,” I say, feeling that same awkwardness. A strange silence fills the space between us. Lacey calls it the seven-minute lull. I find the perfect thing to say to break the silence:
“I was hoping I’d see you again.”
His smile brightens, the blush returning to his cheeks, and I see he has dimples. Suddenly, he is cuter to me then I remember. He looks good in black. I wonder if he’s had a date since his wife was killed. Did he tell me that already? For some reason, I can’t remember. How can I, with everything that’s happened? He’ll forgive me for that, won’t he?
“Ah, shucks,” he says, surprised. “Really?”
“Really,” I say.
He nods, bites his lower lip, and seems pleased. He is more relaxed. “Go figure,” he says.
I smile. Suddenly, I can’t see anything but him and the beautiful day outside. I ignore the traffic, the people walking by. I like Lewis, and this is a new thought, one that shouldn’t feel new but does. He’s not pushy or a show-off. He doesn’t try too hard; he is simply himself, and I like that about him. I also like those full red lips, and find myself staring at them.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Well,” he says. “When I got the flowers, I thought, if she’s not interested, I’ll know right away. I will have made myself look like a damn idiot and will have to walk out of her store with my head down and my tail between my legs, but at least I’ll know. Show’s over. Better luck next time.”
I laugh. Yes, I like him.
“Show’s just started,” I say. “I love the flowers, and I’m glad you’re here. I actually thought you teaching Bartok was an excuse to get out of my sight.”
“No,” he said. “That was the real deal. Jane’s got to polish up on some measures; she’s a little tardy at times and can’t keep up. But she’s passionate and determined. It went pretty well. For Bartok. Do you like Bartok?”
I shrug, thinking the only thing I ever heard from Bartok was an angry, flighty piece that didn’t seem to have any flow or rhythm. All it did was give me a headache.
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