by Schow, Ryan
Lying on the desert floor, I realize I’m not a girl anymore.
I am everything.
Back at Dulce, the memories unfolding, I had turned the gun on him, jammed the barrel through a curtain of his teeth, right down into the depths of his mouth.
“If you move,” I warned, “I’ll shoot.”
The guard gagged, fought his own hand, lost. He remained perfectly still, perfectly terrified. He stood in one spot, one hand holding the gun in his mouth, a hand I controlled. Teeth ruined, gagging on the broken bits of them, his head remained tilted against the force of the gun, eyes wide and locked onto me—the predator, not the prey; the prisoner, no longer the enforcer.
By then Delta was pushing his way up the rabbit hole inside my head, wrestling with a loathsome sneer and a fast, fearsome effort to gain control of the body.
My body.
Sprinting down the hall, I looked for a way to the surface. Wherever I was, I knew it was in the cavernous depths of the earth. I needed up. An elevator. Anything. People walked me by. And just by me being me, I knew they knew something was terribly wrong, that three of them would call security the very second I disappeared from sight.
There was a sudden excitement rippling through the fields of energy. Turmoil. Then Delta was there. He managed to claw his way up to the foot of my brain. Now he sat inside my head, right next to me, breathing in my ear with his wet, fetid breath.
He was me; I was him.
Delta: this horrifying apparition with a penchant for all the things I didn’t want him doing with my body. The very thought of him repulsed me.
“Get down,” he growled. “I’ll take this.”
“No,” my mouth said.
“Yes,” it answered back, as if my defiance were not a stand against him but a silly, wasted effort from a preposterous little girl.
Right then, if anyone had seen me, I swear they would have called me crazy, arguing with myself like that. Would they have been right?
Would they?
2
Now. The present moment. Lying in the dirt, cheek smashed sideways into little rocks and pebbles, I remember how Delta and I became two people in one body. The same mouth having the conversation amongst itself.
“Let me do this,” I told him. “I can do this!”
“No you can’t,” he’d said. “Now get down. Get the hell down!”
We both felt the surge in energy, the change that trundled through us like a psychic shockwave. Neither of us could see the guards coming, but we knew they were on their way, that they were heavily armed. We could feel them. I got scared.
Delta got excited.
“I’m taking over,” the mouth said, “and that’s that.”
“Just don’t get us killed,” the mouth replied back. That was the sound of me relenting. A choice that up until then I’d been unwilling to make.
I suppose it’s true: fear makes cowards of us all.
I let him force me down, not so far that I couldn’t see, just far enough to not be in control. When the next guard appeared, Delta lifted his hand and connected up (Bluetooth connection?) with the guard, who was now aiming his gun at us. As the guard was pulling the trigger, Delta made a fist suspended in the air, then with brute force and might, he gave it a violent twist and I felt it: the guard’s head gave way like squished fruit.
It didn’t explode as much as it just caved in and jerked sideways. Neck broken, gore pushed out the eyes and nose, out of the mouth and ears and the cracked open parts of the skull. The man collapsed.
Dead.
Inside the head, riding bitch to Delta, my soul was rocked with tremors. Of all the times I fought with my conscience, of all the times I went to kill someone but couldn’t, Delta didn’t even hesitate.
“That’s the difference between you and me,” the mouth said.
“But—”
“No buts,” the mouth said. “Hesitation gets us killed.” And with that wielding of truth, I let my conscience sink down, down, down into the mind, into the deep, yawning black, and from there into the darkest corner, where I sat down, pulled my knees to my chest, and ceased to exist.
Now in the desert, awake and alert, I’m having flashbacks of memories that aren’t mine. Heads coming apart, exploding, me being shot multiple times, fists and feet pummeling me, stomping me, legs twisting and breaking, the bones of other people’s feet and hands snapping like branches on withered old trees. And blood. OMFG, in these flashbacks, blood is everywhere! The desolation of flesh, a squished out eyeball or two, the guards’ bodies ripped in half, flung sideways through the air at untenable heights.
Delta.
Inside, deep in the recesses of my brain, he now sleeps. The monster who did this. The one who got me out of there. Delta. My savior; my monster.
My brain won’t stop wondering, what is he, and how the hell did he get inside me?!
Having done time in a box, having my head pried in half with contrasting music and contrasting videos, having been stuffed naked in a cage like a dog, the nature of my world is surreal. Unbelievable. I went in as one damaged person; now there are many inside me. Some more damaged than the others.
“Many,” the mouth says.
Delta?
No.
Then who?
I wait for a reply, a feeling…nothing.
My limbs start me moving. They push and drag me up, haul me out of the dirt. My hands beat the brown desert floor off the borrowed lab coat, and under the filth are countless holes (bullet holes?), each with corresponding brownish stains (dried blood?).
My God, I have been shot.
My fingers probe the holes in my coat, come out clean. The fire ants must’ve healed them. Then again, with my mind, couldn’t I have healed them myself? If I am everything, isn’t that possible?
“Yes,” says the mouth.
“Who is that?” I ask. There’s no reply. To the voices in my head, to all who have fallen silent, I say, “Show yourself!”
But all I am is me. A girl in the desert with a bloody, Swiss cheesed lab coat. My head is not an asylum. There are no voices. “It’s just me,” the mouth says.
Yeah, right.
My feet start walking. I do my best to keep up with them. Where I’m headed is to a town. My eyes haven’t seen the town, but the pull of energy tells me where to go, like a homing beacon. A good two miles of walking barefoot through the dirt takes me to a shack of a home just off a tire-tracked dirt path.
My eyes survey it. Feel two bodies inside there. A woman and a girl. Fifteen and forty-two. Both Caucasian, one with a dim aura (the mother), and one with an aura that is light, but with opaque edges (the girl).
Sitting in front of the house is an old Toyota Celica layered so heavily with dust, its color is impossible to distinguish. My feet take me to the front door of this dilapidated hovel. Out goes my fist…knock, knock.
The girl. She answers the door and gasps. Her aura changes color. “You alright?” she says.
“I need to use a phone.”
The mother. She appears moments later. Her reaction is something I feel before it’s something I see. Her heart aches at the sight of me. The first thing she thinks in looking at me is raped. For her, it’s a red flare shot right through her mind.
“I wasn’t raped,” my mouth says to her. It’s my mouth, I remind myself. Not “the” mouth.
“I wasn’t, I didn’t—” she stammers.
“Your phone,” I say, “I need to use it if you don’t mind.”
Right then my mind is a picture of their home. I search the mental map of the house for a phone. For the phone. My mind finds the home phone on the wall, but there is no connection. Dead line. Bills never paid. No one to call anyway.
“Ain’t got no phone,” the mother says. Her teeth are yellow. The incisor is noticeably chipped. “And if you ain’t raped, whatchu doin’ looking like that, with all them…holes in yer…coat?”
“There’s a cell phone in your daughter’s room,” I say.
The daughter’s name is Macy. Looking at Macy—at her stringy brown hair, her absence of breasts and the start of her mother’s hefty ass—she can’t stifle her surprise, nor can she stop the horror on her face of being caught with a cell phone. I say, “Don’t mean to rat you out, Macy, but it’s important.”
The mother’s hands drop to her boisterous hips and she levels Macy with a disheartened look. Some people have bad genes. For this family, it’s been made worse by their environment. The inside air wafts outward. It reeks of dog piss. Since I’m connected to everything, I know almost everything. Right now I’m the almost useless brains of these two rednecks. My Bluetooth connection with them tells me the dog died two months ago. Pit bull. Yet the stench remains, perhaps to pay homage to the deceased pet, or to keep them company in its absence.
Knowing almost everything, I can say for sure it’s both.
The mother’s skin is as pock marked as an asphalt highway, and just as marred. To her daughter, the mother says, “You got a phone when I told you absolutely not?” Pointing an accusatory finger at me but still looking at Macy, she says, “How you know this girl?!”
Not a question, an assault.
“I done know her, momma. Swear on stacks a bibles!”
“You got a phone like she says?” she hollers.
“Excuse me,” I say, and breeze past them. I head inside to the back room with them yelling at me to stop, to get out, that I ain’t got no business in here. Inside the third drawer, under two stacks of ugly big-girl underwear sits a foil packaged condom, a loosely rolled joint, and her cell phone. A blue cased Samsung.
Macy’s mind works slowly. So when I feel her getting ready to grab me, my mind automatically stops her. Behind me, the mother gasps. Susan is her name.
“Susan,” I say, “you have bigger problems than me. The boys Macy is running around with have been taking turns with her,”—I work to recall Gerhard’s number—“but only after they get her high. She likes it better that way.”
Turning around, Macy is pinned to the wall, her feet a good two feet off the floor. I really should let her down, but I don’t. Part of me wants to push her onto the ceiling for effect.
“If you ask her,” I say, “if she’s honest, she’ll say she loves them both. But if you investigate it further, she’ll say she’s still a virgin because she made them put their dicks in her butt so she could save herself for marriage. What do you call it, Macy?”
Crying quietly, embarrassed and terrified, she whispers, “Poophole loophole.”
“The poophole loophole,” I repeat. “It’s a win-win really. Her boys satisfy their needs, and she keeps her virtue in tact. Problem solved. Except it isn’t. One of those boys, Milo Cummings, he’s not only putting it in your butt, he’s putting it in his friend’s butt, too. A guy whose butthole is this town’s Grand Central Station to the gay crowd.”
Susan’s brain is collapsing, denying, desperately not wanting to see her daughter pinned up on the wall by some unseen force, and not wanting to hear of her daughter’s transgressions by a gorgeous un-raped stranger robbing them to use a phone her daughter shouldn’t have.
“This true?” Susan demands.
“How you holdin’ me up here you lyin’ bitch?” Macy screams at me. “How you holdin’ me?!”
I punch in a number, hit the green handset button for DIAL. The line on the other end of the cell phone is ringing. Three times? Four? About Gerhard, I’m thinking, answer the gosh damn phone, you freaking turd!
“Tell your mother the truth, Macy. Just admit it. She already knows it’s true because she is now putting two and two together and coming up with the same thing.”
“Is it true?” Susan asks again, sorrow infecting her every feature.
“Get me down from here!” Macy screams.
I turn and level her with precarious eyes. She stifles. With my mind, I locate her heart, connect with the paralayers of it. Invisible hands grasp the organ, feel it beat-beat-beating, feel it keeping Macy alive. I squeeze the meaty nub the way you’d squeeze a water balloon. It fights to press on, to do its job despite the strain leveled upon it.
“If the next words that come from that dick sucking mouth of yours are anything other than the God’s honest truth, I swear, I’ll end you both.”
Who is that talking through me? I wonder. Is it me? Can’t be, but is it?
Macy’s eyes flash wide, not from the threat, but from the interruption of her heart. She’s looking down at her chest, then looking back up at me in perfect disbelief. Panic overwhelms her, sends her into a hyperventilating fit. So I release her heart, give her the chance to come clean.
“Yes,” Macy cries. “Yes!”
“Yes, what?” Susan asks.
“To both,” she says, gasping. “The phone…and the boys.”
Susan is breaking down about the time I’m leaving the room. I untether my mind from Macy’s mind and that’s when the soft thud of her falling to the floor releases me from her. The living room isn’t much nicer, but at least it’s not so cramped.
“Hello?” Gerhard says, hesitant.
“How hard is it to answer your phone?” I ask.
“I turned off the answering machine listening to another message. One from Dr. Delgado, in fact.”
“Wherever the hell I am, come and get me.”
“Abby, darling—”
“Now, Gerhard! I won’t ask again.”
“I’ll be on a plane first thing in the morning. Do you know where the airport is?” he asks.
My mind is officially clear. Tapping into the energy of this town, the word leaves my mouth: “Dulce, New Mexico.”
“Indeed.”
“I know where the airport is,” I tell him. “I’ll meet you there tomorrow.”
“I’ll call with the flight information,” he says. “Should I use this number?”
“Don’t bother,” I say. “The minute you know it, I’ll know it.”
“Oh, and how’s that?”
“I’ll know it the same way I know you spent the night hacking up and dismembering those girls; the same way I know you have a blonde woman on your mind—your new lab assistant; the same way I know you are desperate to kill the black girl who came with the blonde, but in a very different manner.”
“H-how do you—”
“I know everything, you Nazi prick. Everything.” That said, I stab the END button, levitate the phone two feet in the air and then mentally hurl it at the wall. Pieces of the shattered phone rain down on the green, shag carpet.
Heading back into the bedroom, both mother and daughter are holding each other, crying. The aura of sadness is nearly inescapable.
To Macy, I say: “I didn’t tell your mother these things to be cruel. What you’re doing is going to spoil you. Not only your reputation at school, but your body as well. Consider this a gift.”
“We s’posed to thank you?” Susan says. She’s sitting on the floor by her daughter, her dog-ugly face torn with a mixture of fear and hatred and despair. They won’t let go of each other because Susan’s terrified she’s lost her daughter. More than anything, however, Macy needs that hug.
“Your daughter needs only your love right now, not your judgment. And not your contempt.”
“How you know what’s in my head?” Susan asks. “You ain’t human, are you? Yer one of them, yer something from that Dulce base, ain’tchu?”
“I’m not from that horrible place, no. I’m from California.”
“Same difference,” Macy says.
“I’m staying the night. We can do this in a civilized manner, or I can put you both on the wall for the duration. Which do you prefer?”
“Not the wall,” Macy says, fresh tears gathering in her eyes.
“You won’t hurt us?” Susan asks.
“Absolutely not,” I say. “Not unless you force my hand.”
Susan looks at Macy, and then to me she says, “We’ll be just fine.”
“Good,” I say. “What’s for dinner? I’m pre
tty sure I’m starving.”
Breaking Bread with the Fake Family
1
When she went home that night and told Christian she met a gorgeous, emotionally unstable friend of his, Abby’s fake father said, “You mean Orianna Crawford?”
“Yep, that’s the one.”
Christian was sitting on the couch, reading a book. It was by Chuck Palahniuk. The title was Lullaby which apparently was about a guy who discovered a secret poem you can recite to kill people with. Anyway, she had just gotten home from her day in San Francisco. And the drive home? She’d shaved about fifteen minutes off it pushing the limits of her Audi S5. Talk about a kick ass ride! Her heart was still pounding away in her chest from what was easily a Gran-Turismo-style drive home.
“She said she ran into you and Netty at Union Square.”
Oh, crap, Abby thought. Looking at Christian’s expression, she wondered if Orianna told him everything. She prayed she hadn’t been ratted out for saying her mother was a bitch. Or all the other stuff she said.
Her heart racing for an entirely different reason now, she said, “I’m gonna change, then what? Are we having dinner here, or going out?”
He went back to reading, saying, “I’m making dinner. Plus I made a banana cream pie, which I know you like.”
“Mmmmm, I do.”
By the look of things, she hadn’t been ratted out. She let herself smile again. Not because of the wicked drive home, or her most excellent day in San Francisco, but because she was finally acclimating to this new life of hers.
Before her step-father, who was pretty cool, her real father supposedly ran off with the girl who used to babysit her when she was a kid. When she was eleven, her mother spilled the beans about that cheating piece of—
“Go wash up,” Christian said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Heading back to the bathroom as we speak.”
Her real father, not her stand-in father, Christian, he never made dinner. Didn’t do shit but make no impact on hers and her mother’s lives since about the beginning of ever. He was always “tired.” Too tired to lift a finger around the house to help keep it clean.
