The Gorgeous Slaughter

by Christina Hart

  I’m shaking my head. This isn’t happening. It’s not real.

  “He told you, didn’t he?” he asks. “About the girl at his mother’s wake? The one who hugged him, wouldn’t let go. The one he was sort of, creeped out by?”

  I’m shaking my head, violently. “No, that’s not what he said.”

  “Well, what did he say, exactly?”

  “He felt it, too. The spark.”

  “What spark? The spark you invented?” he asks.

  “I didn’t invent it,” I yell. “I’m not crazy!” I bang my hands against the table and feel a shooting pain go through my right wrist. “I need a doctor.”

  “You need more than one,” he says. And he gets up and leaves the room.

  Fifty-Three

  She sits in a velvet chair across from me, pen and notepad ready. Her gray suit is perfectly ironed, not a wrinkle to spot. Pristine, prim. Hair wound back in a tight bun. Tortoise cat-eye glasses snug on her perfect little nose. She can’t help me, but she’ll try.

  “So, Love, what brings you here today?”

  I could hear the slight smile in her voice. The attempt at professionalism while being kind and welcoming. I knew it all too well.

  “This is a safe space,” she reminds me.

  I sit back in my chair, and fight back a smile. This is unbelievable. Another person, pretending they care, that they want to help me. I look down and remember the blood all over my hands, wish it to go away, then focus my eyes on her. “I guess you could say I have triggers.”

  “What are some of your triggers?” she asks, notepad in hand.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I ask. “Abandonment, for starters. And rejection.”

  “Would you say your self-proclaimed career is based off a lie or that your lies are based off your career?” she asks me, notepad and pen ready to write down whatever I tell her.

  This is a trick question. There is no right answer. Psychiatrists aren’t supposed to trap you. I look at her and try to read her face. I can’t tell if she’s trying to understand me or if she’s trying to measure how guilty I am based off decisions I’ve made. I can’t determine if I should be honest with her or keep all the things inside me, to myself. I choose silence.

  I can almost hear her annoyed sigh though it doesn’t pass her lips. Frustration has made a home of her face and she wants to rip my thoughts from me. This is her job. And unlike me, she has an actual license to practice. She’s worked hard for this. I can see it in her eyes, the way she secretly hates me. The way she despises that I’ve made a living from pretending. What’s that just under the surface, though? I could almost mistake it for admiration; maybe it’s just more loathing. With the way she keeps her face stoic and unmoving. This has taken practice, years of it. Years of learning how to remain unchanging, how to keep your face from conveying any hint of emotion. These things take time to master. She is a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean, whereas I am a glass bottle drifting with the tide. She hates me, and she wants me to sink, too. This is how people drown you.

  She uncrosses her legs, crosses the other one. She puts her notepad down. Changes her position, her stance on things. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do? Help me?” I ask.

  “Whether you want to believe it or not, yes, I am,” she says.

  “I find it hard to believe. Can you blame me?”

  “No,” she says. “But if you prefer your freedom, you should really try here.”

  “You said this was a safe space. It’s not. Do you disagree?”

  “Well,” she starts. She wants to shift, or flinch. She smooths her pants and cracks two of her knuckles. Nervous ticks? “I suppose there is a certain level of uncertainty and risk here. There are no guarantees as to what will come from this. Either way, you’re eventually going to walk out of this room with a recommendation from me. What that recommendation will be for is up to you.”

  “No, it’s up to you. You’re the one with the pen. And the power.”

  “But you’re the one with the answers,” she says. “I merely write them down.”

  “And what if you don’t like the answers?”

  “I don’t have to like them. My professional opinion is unbiased. I don’t get paid to keep people in jail.”

  “You get paid either way,” I remind her.

  “Yes, I do. I’ve sat with many people in this room, and many of them have walked out and returned to their lives. Maybe it wasn’t the same life as before, but it wasn’t a jail cell they returned to.”

  “No, it was a different kind of cell, wasn’t it?”

  She picks the notepad up from her lap and closes it. She’s growing irritated now. Her passion is showing. “Look, I’m not going to force you to cooperate, but I don’t recommend having that on your record. It will only make things worse.”

  I stop to remember the last time I was in a psych ward and wonder which would be worse. Padded walls or steel bars. Medication or meditation just to get through the days. I don’t know what could destroy me more here, talking or not talking. But there is one thing I know for sure. I have a better chance of talking to her than I do with the detectives. Mostly because they only talk, they don’t listen.

  I’m tired. This game of back and forth is wearing me down and making me lose the fight in me. I have nothing to give her, to give any of them. They want me to confess. I’ve been here before. But never for anything like this. Never for a life. Never for something that could take away everything I’ve ever known. She doesn’t know what it’s like, to have to dig deep in her brain to try to find a morsel of a memory, a clue, something. Something that could spare her. She’s never sat in the chair I sit in now. She’s never been the one taking the questions instead of handing them out like bait.

  And what can I tell her? There’s nothing that can help, that can save me. Nothing that can pardon me. I dug this hole and now I am in it. I don’t know how to begin clawing my way out and I don’t think it’s even possible. I would get dirty with her if I thought it could help. Roll around in the mud and give her all the answers she wants. But I have none for her. I have none for myself. Sometimes, the shit you do comes back around. Sometimes, there is no escaping it. The karmic punishment can be a real bitch. And you’re left thinking about all the things you’ve done. The things that have led you to the here and now of it all. And the only thing you can do is lie down and take it. Or at least, it feels like that’s the only thing you can do. But I was never a quitter and I wasn’t going to start now. My life has been a testament to what I can endure and what I can get through. I wouldn’t say she’d believe me even if I tried to tell her where this all began. I wouldn’t say that any of that even has anything to do with any of this.

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” I say.

  “What do you want to tell me?” she asks.

  I give in. Defeated. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Fifty-Four

  I start at the beginning. I tell her about Charlie, my first time seeing him. Our conversations. I tell her about Tracy, Troy. My plan to get them together, the way it was working, beautifully. How it was all magic. How Charlie was coming around, seeing that we were meant to be together. She mostly listens, asks questions along the way. Writes things down. I can’t tell if she believes me, but it doesn’t matter if she does, because it’s the truth. I know it’s true.

  “Do you remember the accident?” she asks me, notepad in hand, ready to scribble down whatever it is I tell her.

  I narrow my eyes and tilt my head. “Which one?”

  “You ask that like there have been many,” she says.

  “There have,” I say back quickly. She should know this already. I imagine she has my chart. My records. Every charge. Every record of every accident. A psychiatric map to my life, getting her from point A to point B and where we are now, wherever the hell this is.

  “Okay. Specificall
y, I am asking about the accident with Tracy. Outside Charlie’s home. Do you remember it?” she asks.

  Her patience is growing thin again. Her bones are showing. I think she needs to try to be a little better at her job.

  “What part, specifically?” I ask. I am dragging out the question intentionally. If she wants to be vague, so can I. I have all the time in the world to kill. She doesn’t.

  “Do you remember hitting her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember what happened next?”

  “Of course I do.”

  I describe the events. Waking up, so to speak, outside my car, above Tracy’s body. Blood all over my hands, all over my clothes. The look on Charlie’s face. The disgust, the horror. The shock of it all.

  “I’m not a killer,” I say. “I swear.”

  She nods, writes something down. “You have a history of lying, Love. Would you say that’s true?”

  “No,” I say. I shake my head. “No. I am not a liar.”

  “Do you believe everything you say is true? That they are all facts?” she asks.

  “Everything I say is true.”

  “Would you say your thoughts are grounded in reality?”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t try to make me seem crazy,” I say.

  “I’m not. It’s just a question,” she says.

  “Yes, I would say that my thoughts are grounded in reality. Wouldn’t you say yours are?”

  “This is not about me, it’s about you.” She smiles.

  This is familiar, too familiar. I know what she’s doing. I’ve done this myself. She’s probably crazy herself. She’s turning it around on me, pointing the finger. Labeling me. Deciding which problems are most prevalent here. She is diagnosing me as we speak and I can’t take it. I want to know if she thinks I’m a murderer or a basket case. But I won’t ask, because she won’t tell me. I know how this goes. Everything, such a secret. They only tell you what they think when they’ve come to a conclusion. When they decide what to call you. When they give your problems a name.

  “Did you know there was another car?” I ask her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There was another car, the day Tracy died. Did they tell you that? Did the neighbor see? Or did someone see me hit her?”

  She smiles, it’s gentle. “I’m not sure I can answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because given your sensitive mental state, I don’t know how you will respond to the answer.”

  “Please, just tell me. Why won’t anyone tell me?” Now I’m getting mad. Is this a tactic to coerce me into confessing something I didn’t do? I think about Sarah and wonder where she is. I hate myself for thinking she was crazy, for calling 911 on her. I can’t think about her being locked away, dealing with a situation like this, because of me. “I’m not a murderer. Ask Nikki. She knows me.”

  “And Nikki, that’s your best friend, you said?”

  “Yes. Well, was. She was my best friend. I told her I couldn’t be friends with her anymore.”

  “What’s Nikki’s last name?” she asks me.

  “I don’t know how that’s relevant here,” I say. Why is she so obsessed with Nikki? It doesn’t matter what her last name is.

  “Does she have a last name?” she asks me, with pity in her voice.

  I search my brain, try to figure out her angle here. This is all too much, too invasive. “Look, I don’t want to talk about Nikki. She doesn’t matter anymore. She’s out of my life. For good. And I don’t see why my friendship with her even interests you. I’m not talking about her anymore. Period.”

  She questions me on my past, my mother’s death. My father’s leaving. My previous arrests. The fake ID. I tell her everything she wants to know. I answer almost every question and I answer them honestly. Because unlike what they say, I’m not a liar.

  This is what I hate about people like this. They think they know you, act as though they do. Like they see right through you, like they know you better than you know yourself. I don’t need her to know me, or act like she does. I just need her to write down whatever it is she has to in order to get me the hell out of here.

  “Did you plan the murder of Tracy Ellis?” she asks me.

  “Are you suggesting that I’m the one who killed her?” I ask.

  “Are you implying that you didn’t?”

  I don’t know what she wants to hear, so I say the only thing that makes sense to me. The truth. “If I did, I didn’t mean to. And that’s the truth.”

  Fifty-Five

  I had a dream a few days before the accident, before I was arrested, that there was a white rose growing out of the middle of the Hudson River. Just a single rose, growing out there in the middle of the water, defying all odds. Living and blooming despite all the reasons it had to give up and die. I should have taken it as a sign then. I didn’t, but I do now.

  Maybe I’m not meant to know if anyone saw me hit her. Maybe my heart wouldn’t be able to take it if I knew for sure that I killed her. Maybe I was the only one there, but I know I wasn’t. I saw the other car. I saw it with my own eyes. It was stopped, behind her. Everyone dodges the question, gets out of the way. Sometimes I think if they tell me I was the only one around, they believe I’ll break for good. They believe I’ll believe them. Sometimes I think if they say no one knows, they’ll have a better chance at me confessing.

  Confessing.

  It is always when I am left alone that I go back to these things. The things that haunt me, as my one therapist said a few years ago. She said I should write them down. Let them out. The memories. The shit I try to bury every day. But where does one begin? With their earliest memory? How far back can you go? Would you even want to? I called them the hauntings when I wrote them down.

  The detective tried to get me to confess, in a different way. He wanted so badly for me to admit to something I don’t believe I did. He wanted so desperately for me to be a vicious murderer. A stalker who had this all planned from the start. I may have run her over, it’s possible. But the plan to kill her? That was never there. It was never a thought in my head. I may have hated her for having Charlie, but I didn’t hate her enough to want her to die.

  So was there motive? Technically, sure. But a real plot? A sick and twisted plan to hunt her down and take her life? Never. I will never believe that and I will never confess to something that just never happened. He even tried to use Charlie against me. He played a tape recording for me, of Charlie’s interview.

  “Do you think Love planned this?” the detective asked him.

  “Yes,” Charlie said.

  “Do you think she wanted Tracy dead from the start?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you have any proof of that?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Did you ever have any plans of being with Love, or leaving Tracy for her?” the detective asked.

  “No, of course not. I loved Tracy.”

  “Did you even like her?” the detective asked.

  “Who, Love?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know it was her. I never knew her. I thought I was talking to a stranger. But did I like that person? Yeah. It’s weird. Love is a villain that you like. You trust her even though you have no reason to. You just want to believe that she’s here to make your life better, not worse. And you don’t even know she’s evil until it’s too late.”

  The detective stopped the tape after that.

  Charlie is a traitor. He never cared about me. He’d throw me in prison himself if he could.

  I hear my mother’s words.

  Sometimes things are bad to hold on to. Sometimes things are bad to keep to yourself.

  She was right. Some things are bad to hold on to. Some things are very bad to keep to yourself, so bad that you just might end up doing something you can’t take back. Sometimes wanting something so strongly can cloud your mind, your judgment. It can turn you into something you’re not. It can make you someone yo
u’ve never met. Someday, if you’re anything like me, you might fall in love with the wrong person. The wrong people, even. You might think you have to do things to impress them, to have them.

  Don’t.

  Whatever the prison shrink recommended for me, worked. Because eventually, they made a decision and found me incompetent to stand trial. They didn’t think I could defend myself. I think it’s because they didn’t have a real case. There was reasonable doubt. And if I was the only car on that road, or if anyone actually saw my car make contact with her, I would have been tried, found guilty. They wouldn’t have asked if I did it. That much I know. That much gets me through the day.

  I think about Tracy sometimes. Her golden, sun-kissed hair. Her smile that captured everyone around her. I wish, for both our sakes, that we never met Charlie. That we never fell in love with the foster boy from D Street with the big eyes and shy smile.

  I’m waiting for a bed to open up, before they move me out of here. I stare at the prison bars and sit in the cot and hug my knees to my chest and rock.

  There’s a difference between hope and delusion.

  The itchy blanket is still not warm, not cozy. The toilet on the other side of this small cell is still not shiny porcelain, still not clean. I hear Charlie’s voice in my head and imagine how beautiful this all could have been had he not been a liar. I shake away the thought and imagine what a wonderful life Tracy could have lived had he just let her go. And in this moment I am at least blessed with a small ounce of peace. That I did not have Charlie, not because I wasn’t good enough for him, but because he was not good enough for me.

  The deer lived, by the way. The one I hit. The person who called to report the accident said I clipped it, and the deer ran back off into the woods. I know this because at one point, I refused to answer any more questions until they would at least tell me that. It wasn’t fair that they were the only ones getting answers.