Strawberries

by Casey Bartsch

  The grinning man hovered, looking down on her, and raised up his newest discovery for her to see. A dull, rusty box cutter crossed her vision just before she felt its blade poke into her stomach. The man still looked down on her, grinning. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth onto hers, and he smeared it across her face with his finger. She felt a heat traveling across her abdomen, but couldn't tell if it hurt or not.

  “Right now you are hoping this is a dream. I am happy to tell you that it is not.”

  That was the last thing that Elizabeth heard, and as her eyes began to close, she could faintly see the grinning man lick her blood from his fingertips.

  ONE

  Three pills spilled from her purse, spinning in circles on the floor until they stopped near the toilet. One was a light blue Valium, another was a beat up ibuprofen, but the third, a white number, could not be readily identified. When she picked them up, the old pill crumbled in her hand and she wondered just how long it had been in her bottle. She pinched away a few specks of dust and lint, then closed her eyes and popped all three.

  The bathroom was a disgusting affair. It probably had not been cleaned in quite some time, if ever. She shuddered to think of what may have attached itself to her pills, but she tried to cast that thought out of her head.

  Sylvia had become a master of swallowing pills without fluids, yet one of these caught in her throat. She made a sound like a hyena sneeze, and luckily, the pill dropped the correct way. She glanced at the sink, contemplating how the water might taste, but opted to let her throat go dry. She had never really cared for the water found on airplanes, even private jets such as this one.

  She was afraid to touch anything. The fluids. The sickening goop. The indecipherable chunks. All of these prevented her from moving. She opened the bag she was holding and removed a towel and small bottle of all-purpose cleaner, then set herself to work.

  As she scrubbed, the door behind her continued to rattle and throb at the force put on it from the other side. The client was slamming his body into the door, as if he might knock it off its hinges.

  She had decided to call him the Red Baron. Sylvia named all of her clients, and never bothered to remember their given monikers. Most of them gave her fake names anyway.

  The Baron screamed at her to come out at once, and then flung his overweight body against the door again. Sylvia glanced back, but the door was sound, and it was not going to give way just because some horny oaf wanted it to.

  Airplane bathrooms were small, but with the right touches and a little care, could be considered cozy. If not cozy, at least less like a small corner of Hell. Melissa, her friend and mentor, had taught her many valuable lessons as Sylvia learned their trade, but comfort was never something for which she had seen the need. For Melissa, the bathroom was just a place to wait out the assholes, not a place where life happened. Sylvia felt that no matter where you were, you were living, and it might as well be as pleasant as possible.

  That was actually a lie that she had told herself for years. She had pushed her cynicism down into the pit of her womb, and let it pulsate there like a maddening fetus. On the outside, no one would ever know that she was impregnated with a hatred for just about everything. Melissa had gotten a taste, but even she was in the dark on how false Sylvia's sunny disposition was.

  There was a thump at the bottom of the door. The Baron had decided that maybe a foot would succeed where upper body had failed. The two friends who had accompanied him egged him on with their shouts and laughter. They could make as much of a spectacle as they pleased, this bathroom was her home now. She continued to scrub the toilet seat so that she could have a place to relax. It might turn out to be a long flight.

  Melissa would have told her that she should have stuck it out a little longer. She would have enjoyed the Baron's games–or at the very least, could have pretended. Sylvia did not mind when they grabbed her or slapped her ass. She could handle hands on her chest and even the kisses they liked to plant in strange places, but she drew the line when they invaded her.

  The Baron had come up behind her as she was fixing drinks and stuck his hand down her skirt. He then promptly plunged his finger into her ass without asking. This was a breach of contract, not to mention disgusting and slightly painful. She wasn't opposed to such acts, but she wanted the rules and fees laid out beforehand.

  Sylvia had no patience for surprises while on the job.

  Melissa had told her that the world made its living from calling things something they're not, and in a time of rampant political correctness and a paralyzing social fear of being caught in a faux pas, the words to describe what something was or what someone does have become more of a parody than an actual likeness. Thus, Melissa and Sylvia were not prostitutes–they were freelance flight attendants.

  The most important lesson that Melissa had ever taught her was the use of an emergency bag. “You always keep a bag where you can get to it in a pinch,” she had said, “That way, if things don't go how you want them to, or maybe the guy gets rough, you can grab it and head to the shitter.”

  Her bag was her lifeline. It contained everything that she would need in this sort of scenario. Over time, she had added to it, and it had gotten bulkier, but she had learned to sacrifice what she absolutely did not need, and to pack well. Melissa's bag only ever contained bottled water, a book to read, something to snack on, and pepper spray.

  Compared to Melissa, Sylvia's bag was a palace of necessities. She had disinfectant and deodorizing sprays, a blow-up cushion she could sit on during long flights, extra underwear and socks, as well as all of the bare essentials. She had tampons, and though she rarely ever took a job while on her period, they had come in handy once when a client had bloodied her nose. There was a spare pill bottle, some Alka-Seltzer tablets, Kleenex, and a little nozzle that filtered the water from a faucet. She also kept a small notebook and a pen where she recorded her thoughts, along with pertinent information that she had acquired on each of her jobs.

  Her favorite item in the bag was a small snow globe that her father had given her when she was ten years old. There was a tiny plastic Empire State building inside. The snow was actually glitter, and the bright blue water that once filled it to the top was now a third of the way gone. She set it down on the counter by the sink as she sat on the toilet–seat cushion in place. The snow globe was her connection to a life that she had left a long time ago, and it was her most prized possession.

  Bang!

  Something crashed against the door so hard that Sylvia could actually see it buckle just a bit. The Baron yelled, and in a language unknown to the common American girl. It wasn't always German. She did not speak German herself, but she knew it when she heard it. She didn't know what he had thrown at the door, but judging by the sound, she guessed it to be a barstool.

  German men, in Sylvia's experience, were generally very well mannered. They nearly always pulled out her chair and rarely massacred entire races of people. The Baron had never once touched her chair, and that was her first clue that he was not going to be a polite sort of man. The second came when the inflight cook was forced to prepare three different meals; each of them returned with a dissatisfaction that grew each time, until finally, it escalated to the point where the Baron slapped the cook in the face with a frying pan. The bleeding cook said something that Sylvia could not understand, and then was escorted to another part of the plane; never to be seen again.

  She had very little time to consider the cook's condition, as it was that very moment that the Baron violated her with the aforementioned finger. This caused his friends to laugh and praise him for obvious male prowess. Sylvia stood quite still for a few moments, in shock. His digit a wiggling affront to her. When she snapped back to reality, Sylvia spun around hard and slapped the Red Baron across the jaw. She grabbed her bag from a small cupboard near the bathroom, and bolted inside.

  Before long, the noise behind the door died down. The German invader quieted himself and ceased his as
sault. Sylvia slowly allowed herself to relax, and when she felt that the tempest had passed completely, she pulled a paperback from her bag. It was a suspense thriller that she had picked up at a gift shop in some airport along the way. It was packed with murder and mayhem, but more importantly, it was mindless.

  She would just shut down her brain, and let the words creep in until they landed.

  TWO

  The jarring of the plane as the wheels hit the tarmac woke Sylvia from her dreams. She had turned her inflatable cushion into a makeshift pillow on the counter. As she raised her head, her hair stayed matted to the cushion by the saliva that had been seeping from the corner of her mouth. It took her only a moment to remember her situation. The Red Baron and his band of merry men had made a few more half-hearted attempts to get her attention, but as the clients always did, they simmered down and let her be. She had read at least a hundred pages of her book before dozing off, yet she could not remember a single protagonist or plot point. The book now lay splayed on the bathroom floor.

  She thought of her mother, who read at least five books a week on the low end, and wondered how much she could recall of any of them. She wondered how many times her mom had reread the same mystery or romance novel without ever realizing it.

  Sylvia picked up her things and repacked them carefully into her bag. It all had to go in just right or the bag would never close. When she was finally able to force the zipper shut, she sat back down on the toilet seat and waited; eyes affixed on the door and ears tuned in. This was the worst part of the job–the waiting. When a flight went wrong, as this one had, and she was forced to spurn the gentleman that employed her, they never stuck around on the plane for long after landing. They would leave her in the bathroom and escape to wherever men like them go. These were men of means, and none of them had any interest in drawing attention to what went on in their private jets. Sylvia simply had to wait for everyone else to leave before making her own exit, but she hated the wait. The moments felt like minutes, and every minute an hour.

  She would wait on the toilet for two full hours. She had once made the mistake of leaving too early, and a client had remained on the plane for longer than she expected. He had a bit of an anger issue, and he wanted to go to therapy on her face. Half a can of pepper spray later, he realized his mistake and she realized hers. From then on, the wait was at least two hours every time.

  The next item of business would be to figure out just where she had landed. The destination of these flights was rarely revealed to Sylvia in advance, and when she was given one, more often than not, it turned out to be false information. Her clients were not usually the type that wanted everyone to know where they were going and what they were up to. She suspected that, most of the time, they were not even doing anything exciting or important, but instead got off on the power they enjoyed from being mysterious. But she knew them for what they were. Everything about a man can be discerned from the sex they enjoy, and the moment just after they come.

  As the second hour drew near, she took out her little notebook. In the back, she had taken notes on all of the places that she had ever been, and all of the ways that she had made her way back home. She didn't just take notes on flights that went bad, she also kept names, phone numbers, and important locations. She would make a point to get to know any person that had helped her along the way. She never knew when she might need to call on that person again, and her notes had saved her a lot of trouble in the past.

  She was nothing if not prepared.

  Sylvia intertwined her fingers together as she sat on the toilet seat. She would not want to give the impression that she didn't enjoy her work, or that it was always so unpleasant. On the contrary, the majority of the time she felt like she had the world by the balls. She got to travel to all corners of the globe and see things that most only see on cable while they shove cheese balls into their mouths and dribble soda on their shirts. She made enough money that she could stay wherever she wanted when the job was done.

  It wasn't the sex that she was being paid for, and that was a common misconception of girls in her line of work. The sex was such a tiny part of the experience for which she was hired. A better assessment of her job was that she was paid to convince men that she wanted to have sex with them.

  She would choose sex and travel over any of those other nine-to-five, cheese ball slob jobs every time.

  She watched the bathroom door as if it were some kind of play. Memories turned to visions that played out on the flat white surface in front of her. The pills that she had taken earlier had given her a nice euphoria, and a serenity washed through her mind. She reached over to her bag and dug out her pill bottle, shook out a couple more from her cocktail pharmacy, and swallowed them quickly. She didn't bother paying attention to what they were. Sylvia valued order in her life, and needed things to be just as she needed them, yet at the same time, she had developed a habit of taking a constant stream of medication that caused her mind to flop around like a wet noodle. She enjoyed taking the pills randomly because she liked not knowing exactly how she was going to be feeling from one hour to the next. This gave her world of order a blanket of chaos. She needed the chaos just as much as she needed her schedule and her notes. She wondered if a doctor would have a specific term for her behavior as her vision zoned back into the bathroom door.

  When the time finally came, Sylvia picked herself up, feeling a bit heavier than she should. Her eyesight threatened to spin briefly, but she got it back in line quick enough. She grabbed her bag and put her ear against the door. After a few moments, when she was sure she couldn't hear any commotion on the other side, she unlocked the door and ventured back out into the wilderness of the private jet. The Baron had skedaddled; his misfits close behind. They had been kind enough to leave her overnight bag–the other necessity in her line of work–in the kitchen cupboard right where she left it. They were such nice boys.

  The hatch of the plane was still open, and the steps invited her to make a hasty exit. When she stepped onto the cement, she found that she was in a semi-private hanger. Hers was the only plane currently inside, but there was space enough for three. Through a window in a small office at the back of the hanger, she could see a man sitting at a desk and talking on the telephone, but he didn't notice her. There were no other people around, so she made her escape. When she walked through the hanger door, the sunlight struck her eyes violently. She closed them tight and could see her own colorful blood vessels frolicking on the inside of her eyelids. They swirled in geometric shapes along the outer rim of her lids and she paused to admire their beauty for a few moments so that her vision could adjust to the brightness of the world.

  When she was able to crack her eyes open to let in a bit of light, what she saw made her smile. To her left, just outside the hangar lot, was a path lined with a thick smattering of trees. Beyond that, was the Santos Dumont airport. She was in Rio de Janeiro. She knew it well. It was a favorite haunt for the sleazebags of the world, and she had been here many times. The hangar she was at, and several others next to it, were located on a long single lane runway. Above her–so close that Sylvia felt she could reach up and graze her fingers across its belly–a plane came roaring in for a landing, and as its wheels screeched down onto the runway, the ground beneath her quaked.

  The path to her left wound up a hill and went all the way to the main airport parking lot. If she was an actual honored guest of the Dumont, she could easily get a ride, but instead, she had a walk ahead of her. As close as the airport looked, Sylvia knew that it was going to take her at least a half hour to get there. She looked down at her feet and took note of the smooth red heels that she was wearing. They were fashionable, they were expensive, and they were seriously going to fuck her over.

  Before starting her trek, she took her notebook out and jotted down a reminder. From now on, she would always pack a pair of sneakers in her overnight bag.

  THREE

  The American motel is a prime example of the nati
on's priorities in shambles. No other place could you find a better representation of people willing to sacrifice any sort of quality for convenience and low price.

  Harry Bland had been in this room for almost a week–just a few days after he was handed the case. He had been in countless motel rooms in his lifetime, all of them nearly identical. The color schemes were always in earth tones, the bedding often seemed like Bed, Bath and Beyond rejects, and he swore that he had seen that exact lamp a hundred times. The televisions had gotten a little better, depending on what part of the country he found himself in, though this room's TV was still a monstrosity of early 80s engineering. The set still had dials that clicked unduly as he turned them, and there was no remote control to be found. The picture took an eternity to actually appear, and when it did, it had a greenish tint that could not be removed.

  Harry loved this television.

  The jewel of this particular room, however, was the old rotary phone on the table by the bed. Harry had not seen such a device in years, and this one was glorious. The original color was probably off white, but now it was a light brown from all of the oils and dirt it had accumulated.

  Harry was the kind of man that had a phone with no screen that didn't flip. He liked to write things down with an ink pen on actual paper. At fifty-two, his knees were virtually nonexistent, most of his teeth had been replaced (though not because of poor dental hygiene), yet he had all of his hair–graying as it was.

  Harry had joined law enforcement when he was only nineteen years old. He had walked the beat for years, then made detective when he turned thirty. He was great at his job and closed cases almost faster than they were assigned to him. At the urging of his peers, he entered the academy, and eventually became an agent for the FBI; a job he was still working today.