Were All Animals

by Mima

  Excitement built in him, happiness for having a friend nearby, yet nervousness over what he would discover. There was some bitterness in their last conversation and he wondered if she was ready to reveal why she hadn’t spoken to him in months. She indicated in her message that there was something of urgency to deal with, therefore he thought back over the months to once again attempt to understand why their friendship seemed to end after he left Hennessey. Had he said something that perhaps she took the wrong way? Maybe it was good if they finally cleared the air.

  It didn’t happen.

  Arriving at Maggie apartment, he was stunned when the door flew open and he was pulled inside. Completely naked except for a pair of blue panties, Kelsey showed no modesty, as she pulled him close and started to kiss him. Stunned, he could hear his brain screaming no, while his body was quickly aroused as she pressed against him. He immediately felt his breath become labored as her hands briskly moved under his coat and t-shirt, running up his naked skin, one running over his back, while the other reached into his pants, his breath becoming heavier.

  Jumping back and self-consciously covering her breasts, she grabbed her top from earlier and started to pull it on and it took a second for Chase to realize that her reaction had nothing to do with him but that Maggie had just walked in the room. Her face was full of fury, while holding her hand was a masculine looking woman, wearing glasses and a man’s leather jacket.

  Oh, fuck.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The warmth of desire was quickly replaced by the heat of embarrassment as anxiousness ran through his body, his heart racing erratically in exchange for the anticipation of pleasure that had filled him only moments earlier. That split second erased every promise he’d ever made to Maggie to keep away from her younger sister and in fact, it probably indicated that his attempts to comply with her wishes were never true. That fact alone crushed his desire even more than being caught.

  However, any beliefs that Maggie’s fury would be directed at him were soon forgotten. In fact, it was almost as if he weren’t in the room at all and in no way involved in the physical act she had witnessed, as Maggie flew across the room to attack her sister. It happened so fast that it took a few seconds to process what was going on as the two young woman wrestled with one another, Maggie’s tone at an almost unfamiliar high pitch, shrill and almost deafening as Chase quickly jumped in to pull the two women apart. Not that it was easy as Maggie aggressively pushed ahead to take another grab at her half naked sister, who almost appeared to be more stunned than angry.

  “You’re a fucking whore,” Her accusations were sharp, like daggers bludgeoning her sister, as hatred poured out of her eyes, furious tears ran down her cheek. “Why couldn’t you ever be fucking normal?”

  “Says the lesbian,” Kelsey shot back without missing a beat, her eyes snapping in anger but yet it took little to no energy to hold her back from attacking her older sister. Instead, she firmly stood her ground and appeared ready to fight off this attacker, as opposed to provoking another round.

  “Oh, so being a lesbian isn’t normal?” Maggie shot back and pounced forward, only to be pulled back by Chase who was having a moment of deja vu from his days working at the bars. The original tears were now dried up, her reaction turned sour, Maggie’s face seem to pale as she argued. “Of course, you’re like everyone else who can’t accept who I am.”

  “I never said I didn’t accept who you are,” Kelsey firmly corrected her, showing an assertiveness that Chase wouldn’t have expected. “What I meant is that I never believed you were a lesbian, in fact, no one does. It’s an act. It’s an act and you know why.”

  Her sharp comment had a chilling effect on Maggie who finally pulled back, her eyes full of disbelief, she appeared almost frozen, glaring at her sister.

  “There’s a difference between wanting women and hating men,” Kelsey continued and almost as if she saw herself with the upper hand in the conversation, she appeared tranquil, focused, her voice smooth. “Chase was the only man you didn’t hate until you thought he was like the rest of them.”

  As if suddenly remembering Chase was there, Maggie’s attention switched to him, if only briefly, before she looked back at her sister who shrank in front of their eyes. She looked remorseful and Chase racked his brain as to why but wasn’t able to make sense of the situation. It was as if a piece of the puzzle had suddenly appeared but he hadn’t figured out where it belonged.

  “I don’t hate men,” Maggie finally volunteered, her voice small like that of a child, she shook her head and looked at Chase. “It’s not like that.”

  “It is like that,” Kelsey insisted, continuing to hold her ground. “You can try to talk your way around it or believe whatever you want but you know it’s true and you know why.”

  Suddenly overwhelmed, Maggie broke down in front of them and made a quick dash for her room. Slamming the door behind her, an awkwardness followed as Chase turned to see the young woman that had arrived at the apartment with Maggie, still standing at the door in disbelief. Appearing nervous, it wasn’t clear if she was about to dash out the door or if her feet were nailed to the floor but Chase offered her a quick shrug, unsure of what else to do. He finally turned toward Kelsey.

  “You should go talk to her.”

  “I don’t want to go talk to her.”

  “You’re her sister, you should talk to her.”

  “Look, Chase, she doesn’t want to talk to me,” Kelsey insisted as she picked up her pants and casually pulled them on as if nothing out of the norm had occurred. “You’ve been watching too many girly movies or something because in the real world a scene like this doesn’t end with sisters hugging and expressing their love for one another. It’s messy, it’s dirty and it’s way too heavy.”

  Glancing toward the stranger who still stood at the door, as if waiting for permission to move, Chase decided to address her instead. “Do you…I mean, do you want to try to talk to her?”

  “Oh yeah, you should totally do that,” Kelsey finally addressed the stranger, who appeared to be shrinking back. “You should go in there now when she’s weak and vulnerable, you’ll totally get her naked.”

  “I…I..I just met her and I..” She nervously replied to Kelsey’s suggestion, shaking her head, causing Chase to feel sorry for her. Clearly, she happened along at the wrong time and place and was caught up in a mess.

  “Look it’s fine, you don’t have to go see her or you can, if you want, it’s really up to you.” He spoke evenly, hoping that she would go comfort Maggie but sensing that it wasn’t likely to happen. In a way, it was for selfish reasons since he didn’t want to approach Maggie himself and yet, someone had to since she was clearly very upset. “No one’s judging here.” He shot a warning glance at Kelsey who pursed her lips and said nothing.

  “I think I should go.”

  The stranger barely squeaked out her response and slipped out of the apartment. Kelsey stared into Chases’ eyes. “Come on, let’s just go. Don’t play into her games.”

  “I don’t think she’s playing a game, Kelsey.” He quietly insisted. “What the hell was all that about?”

  “She never told you?”

  “Told me what?” Chase responded with a shrug and glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “She hates men?”

  “Why she hates men?”

  “I didn’t even know she hated men.”

  “She does, except you,” Kelsey insisted and grabbed her bra from the couch, slipping it on underneath her shirt, her pink nipples briefly peeking out from underneath her shirt. “She has for years since that guy.”

  “What guy? Her ex from school? Todd?”

  “No no!” Kelsey shook her head, as she finishing adjusting her top and fixing the pockets of her pants. “Not that loser, I mean the guy from when we were kids.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mom dated s
ome guy when we were kids and he molested us.” She spoke casually as if they were merely were talking about the weather, rather than a serious and traumatic issue from her childhood. “I was really small but Maggie remembers more, I guess.”

  “You were molested?” Chase was stunned by the news, his heart raced in anger and he wracked his brain attempting to think of who Ellen Telips used to date but of course, this was many years ago and he had no idea. There had always been a lot of stories about child molestation in Hennessey but only a few compared to Audrey’s hometown of Mento, where it was said to have happened within more families than it hadn’t. “Oh my God, Kelsey, I can’t. I mean, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” She shrugged casually. “We had counsellng and I’m obviously fine now but Maggie isn’t. I think that’s why she is a lesbian. I don’t think she actually wants women, I think she’s scared and distrustful of men because of what happened. Bi-curious maybe but who isn’t, you know?”

  Chase attempted to process everything Kelsey was saying and suddenly, so many things started to make sense. He wasn’t so sure that that terrible experience wasn’t still affecting Kelsey but didn’t share his thoughts. As for Maggie, he wasn’t sure if it was true that she hated men or that her choice to be with women was simply her nature inclination but for some reason, it shed some necessary light on things.

  “I have to go talk to her,” he suddenly felt it was necessary and brushed past Kelsey, who appeared unimpressed with his decision but didn’t reply.

  Knocking on the door, he was met by silence. “Maggie, it’s me. Can I come in?”

  A weak ‘yes’, came from the other side of the door and he slowly turned the knock to go inside. Glancing back at Kelsey, he saw her face fall as she sat on the couch, appearing disheartened at best.

  Entering the room, he noted that not a thing was out of place. The only indication that the room was lived in at all was a messy blanket that Maggie lay on top of, her arms hugging a pillow, she didn’t look up at him as he closed the door. He wasn’t sure what to do but his mind flashed back to the time she was rejected by the RCMP; the night he slept with her in his arms, knowing how deeply he was in love with her but not understanding why it wasn’t mutual. He was just a kid then and although some things never changed, their relationship had since that night.

  “Maggie,” he hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Kelsey told me.”

  She sniffed, pushing her face even further into the pillow, waves of misery ran through her body, as she sobbed. The last time he witnessed a woman crying this hard, it was the night Aubrey asked him for a divorce, beaten to the edge of her soul, digging deeper than she ever had in her life, his ex-wife admitted that there was a darkness inside her that had to be removed and he suspected the same of Maggie but he wasn’t sure how or if that was possible. Although his own childhood of abuse consisted of being slapped and yelled at regularly, he couldn’t even begin to understand how someone got over something as deeply disturbing as molestation. Then again, how could the parents stand by and do nothing? If it was his kid, he would kill the person who inflicted such longstanding pain on his child. He wouldn’t even think twice.

  Moving closer, he was hesitant to sit on the edge of her large, queen sized bed. It made his own look pathetic and childlike in comparison and he found himself glancing around the room. It was like something out of an Ikea catalog, even the blanket beneath the hand he leaned on felt smooth and crisp as if it were new. Realizing that this shouldn’t have been his focus, he wasn’t quite sure of what to do or say, so he remained silent.

  She sat up on the bed, continuing to hold onto the pillow, her makeup running down her face in globs of black, her hair disheveled and out of place. She looked in his eyes and nodded. “About what happened when we were kids?”

  Chase nodded and offered a fleeting smile, unsure of how to appropriately respond.

  “I always wanted to tell you but I couldn’t,” Maggie admitted as she glanced toward the nearby window, the blinds covered it with only glimpses of sunlight shining in. She held the pillow back and stared at it as if her words were directed at the object rather than him. He didn’t take offense to this, knowing it wasn’t an easy subject to discuss. “I wanted to the night that I was so upset about the RCMP. It really wasn’t about the RCMP. It was because I wanted to help kids like me, to protect them, to make a difference and when I couldn’t get in as fast as I wanted, I felt like it somehow brought all that back up again. I know it doesn’t make sense but when I was pursuing that goal, it felt like I was fighting back. Like I was getting a part of myself back. That I was going to get out there and make a difference.”

  Chase nodded.

  “I was devastated because it felt like another slap in the face. Almost like the guy who did it was winning,” she pulled the pillow closer and hugged it. “And I was losing.”

  “You weren’t losing, Maggie.” Chase insisted. “You were surviving.”

  “Surviving isn’t enough, though, Chase.” She replied and bit her lower lip. “I want to heal. I want it behind me but where do I start? How do I start? No one really understands it. Not the shrink who writes notes about me, watching my every move, trying to get me to take stupid pills. I can’t make them understand how it feels. How it feels to be powerless and confused because this was a man that my mom let in the house and who bought us things and took us places. He wasn’t some dirty old man on the playground, you know?”

  Chase silently nodded.

  “I don’t know how I get past that and I’ve tried. I’ve tried to push it behind me but it keeps popping back up and I can’t stop it.”

  Silence followed until Chase finally spoke.

  “I don’t know if I ever told you this but when I used to babysit the kids when Audrey was at work, I watched a lot of afternoon television,” he smiled and noticed Maggie do the same. “And I don’t claim to be an expert on anything but I remember someone talking about this once and I paid attention, because I’m a father and my worst nightmare would be if anyone were to ever do anything to the boys. I wanted to understand what to look for, you know, maybe signs that someone is like that…”

  “There aren’t really signs,” Maggie commented, her face slightly brighter.

  “I know but I remember the lady talking about this topic saying that it never went away,” he chose his words carefully. “I remember thinking, how can someone live with this every day? I know I couldn’t. And then she said that it wasn’t about dealing with it and moving on, it was about learning to accept that it happened and that it didn’t make you less of a person, that you weren’t at fault but you weren’t a victim either. She said you can’t let it define you.”

  “I don’t think I”m letting it define me,” Maggie whispered. “Do you?”

  “No, but I think if you’re not telling people close to you then maybe it makes you a bit of a victim. Cause, you know, it’s kind of like you’re a kid again and you feel like you have to hide that guy’s secret,” Chase reasoned. “Does that makes sense? I mean, if you had told me this years ago, at least I would know, right? Maybe, like that night of the RCMP thing, you could’ve told me that part of it and I could’ve helped you more because I just took it you were overly disappointed. Maybe you would’ve felt better if you said it and got it out, rather than holding it in.”

  “Yeah, I don’t tell anyone,” Maggie nodded. “I don’t want people to think I’m damaged or fucked up. Although, maybe I am.”

  “You’re not fucked up,” Chase corrected her and reached out, carefully touching the hand that sat flat on the bed. “But you gotta trust people enough to tell them the truth, so they can help you. So, they can understand.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “It does, to me,” Chase replied. “It would help me make sense of a lot of things.”

  “It’s not why I’m a lesbian, by the way
,” She replied. “Although, I used to have a crush on you but it wasn’t in that kind of way.”

  “I know.” Chase squeezed her hand.

  “That’s why I wanted you to stay away from Kelsey. She thinks she’s okay but she’s not.”

  He nodded.

  “I thought she would’ve told you already. I thought you knew for years and just didn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I was angry that you never brought up something so important.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie squeezed his hand back. “She tells everyone, so I assumed that she had told you too.”

  “No.”

  Everything was still. Truth flowed through the room and everything suddenly felt light.They were 18 again and would never grow old.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  It was a few more days before they realized that Kelsey was gone. Chase assumed she was pissed off when he talked to Maggie after their fight and took off for the afternoon but would return. Maggie assumed that her younger sister took all her stuff and went back to their father’s place or possibly, even to stay with Chase. She had no job, wasn’t in school and therefore, no one else really missed her. After a couple of days, however, alarm bells started to go off.

  Chase was helping Jolene finish setting up at a venue for their event that night when Maggie rushed in, breathlessly, her eyes flooded with worry. Jolene had been mid-sentence when abruptly interrupted, her irritation quickly dissolved upon hearing Maggie’s muffled words, as tears began to flow down her face. If anything, Jolene looked stunned by this reaction.

  “Chase, please tell me you have Kelsey at your place?”

  Frozen on the spot, his heart raced as he quickly assessed the situation and with regret, shook his head no. “I…I assumed that she was at your place.”

  “No, she took her stuff,” Maggie rushed through her words. “Has she text you?”

  Chase shook his head no but grabbed his phone in case something new had developed. “No, she hasn’t. I texted her and she didn’t reply, but she’s ignored my texts for months, so that’s not anything new for her.”