“No!” I shirked away until my shoulder hit the bed railing.
“Why are you moving away? I’m not going to do anything.” He held his hands up revealing that they were empty, before leaning toward me.
“Don’t. Please.” I closed my eyes. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t touch you?” His words were hostile.
“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” Suddenly I was back there. I was in his bed. The bed he shared with my mother. The bed that had become home. The bed where I cried. Where I came. Where I snorted coke off Taylor’s hand. Where I begged him to save me. Where I spoke words of love that I didn’t mean. Where he held the knife. The shiny switchblade that glittered in the light until it didn’t anymore. Until it was red. Soaked. Covered in the little pieces of me he sliced away. “Not again.”
I heard myself speak the words. As if I was someone else. Just a third party. Just a girl looking in. Looking on that sad girl. The one she saw in the mirror. The one who wanted to die, but couldn’t even get that right. I watched her. The poisonous one. I watched as she opened her eyes. She looked up at him. At the man who whittled away at her until there was nothing left.
That girl ripped the bandage off her arm. She didn’t even look down at the newly stitched wound. The wound that was deep enough to nearly kill her. She dug her dirty fingernails into the precisely sewn threads and ripped at her skin until they tore free. It hurt her. I saw her wince. The girl. But he didn’t see. He tried to stop her. But he couldn’t. The wound was torn open, the blood was everywhere all at once. And she was jerking out her IV, yanking the line free of her arm.
And the entire time her lips moved. Over and over she said the words. “Never again.”
THREE
I woke up, my head, my limbs aching. It actually was strange that I noticed. No one actually thinks about waking up. But I did. Today I thought about it. I didn’t wake up in that gray room to Taylor standing over me.
I woke up alone. The little room had yellow walls, a wooden desk, a chair, a brown door with a window, but from my position in bed I couldn’t see what the window revealed. Plain and empty. That’s what it was. I tried to push my hair out of my face, but I couldn’t. My hands were bound to the sides of the bed by some sort of material. I blinked at it. At the bandage on my arm. What happened didn’t come rushing back to me all of the sudden. Not this time. It was already there. In my mind. I knew why I was tied up. It was to keep me from trying to do it again. From trying to kill myself. I had tried again. Again I had failed.
The door opened.
I sucked in a breath when Rhett was revealed in the doorway. He stood there looking every bit as normal as I last saw him. A little scruff on his face. Jeans on his legs. A tight shirt clinging to his muscles. He was beautiful. Normal. Maybe I finally made it to heaven?
“You’re awake.” He closed the door behind him and pulled the chair up to the bed.
“I am.” I reached to move my hair so I could see him better, but again the material straps hindered me.
“I got it.” He smoothed the strands behind my ear.
“Is he here?” I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to talk about him. But I had to know.
“Who?” He frowned.
I swallowed. “Taylor.”
“No…” He eyed me with concern. “I wouldn’t let him come. The doctors suggested he should stay away.”
A sense of calm settled over me and I relaxed into the pillows at my back.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you want him here? Why did you do this, again? Why…” He pressed his fist against his mouth as if he was forcing himself to shut up. “You don’t have to answer that. They told me I couldn’t ask questions about it. They said it would upset you. They didn’t even want me to come.” He spoke quickly. “They weren’t going to let me. They said I couldn’t. That it was best for you to be alone. But fuck that. I couldn’t let you just wake up in here by yourself.”
“Where is here?”
Rhett let out a deep breath. “This is Landview Psychiatric Hospital.”
“A place for crazy people?” I couldn’t help but giggle. It made sense that I would be here. A crazy house. I was crazy wasn’t I? Psychotic. That must be what I was. It was the only conclusion. The only answer.
“You’re not crazy. It’s just until you get better. Until your head gets straight. They’re going to put you on medicine soon. Medicine to help with the withdrawals. They’re going to help you get clean and better.”
“Clean?” The ache under my skin was nothing new, but it was there. Apparent and glaring at me. “I can’t get clean, Rhett. I need it. I need the coke.” Panic flared again.
“That’s just what you think. They’re going to help you get over that and get through this.”
“No, Rhett. You don’t understand. You don’t get how much it hurts.” As if on cue the pounding in my head seemed to worsen. “I can’t stay here. Not without the drugs. I need them,” I said frantically pulling at my wrists.
“He said you would do this. That you would beg for it.” He rubbed his temples. “I just wasn’t prepared for it.”
“Who? Who said that?”
“Dad.” He glanced up at me and there was real sadness in his eyes. “How did it get this bad, Faye? How did I not see it? How did I let you get so far gone that you wanted to die?”
This was it. My chance. My opportunity to tell the truth. I could tell him how it got so bad. How I turned to fucking strangers and doing drugs to replace the feel of Taylor’s hands on me. How I did it all to dull the pain of the past. Of losing my baby. Of the torture.
I stared into his eyes. They were so green. That kind of green that gets lighter toward the middle with little hints of honey color right around the pupil. They were a dreamer’s eyes. He’d had dreams once. Of doing things different. Of swimming in the ocean with manatees and sharks. Of studying them as his life’s work. That sparkle was still there, that hope of different world, a different outcome, a better tomorrow. I wondered if I had ever had that sparkle, or if I had always been this beaten down pulp of a person.
“I don’t know.” The words were out before I could reconsider them. They were hanging there between us and I realized my chance was gone. The chance to tell the truth. I’d replaced it with words that meant nothing.
He glanced away and I could see it. The disappointment. It was painted all over his features. But it couldn’t begin to rival the disappointment I had in myself. I just couldn’t form the words. I couldn’t say them. If I did, what would I even say? I didn’t know. Just the thought of saying them out loud felt like a lie. The look on Taylor’s face made them a lie. His smooth voice. He would always win. He didn’t even have to be here to get his way.
Tears pressed at the backs of my eyes. “How long will I be here?” I choked out.
“I don’t know yet. You just have to take your time getting better, healing. And when you are, I will be waiting for you.”
I considered his words. “Will they really help me get better?” The pounding in my head only seemed to get worse by the minute.
“Yes, they will. Before I leave the doctor is going to come in and introduce himself along with some of the other people who will be working with you. There is a whole team of people that are dedicated to helping you get better.”
“And you?” My bottom lip trembled when I whispered the words.
The look he gave me told me everything I needed to know. It was as if his heart was breaking right there. “I won’t be able to see you until you’re out. This experience is for you. So you can get better and not be burdened with the past. You don’t have to worry about anyone but yourself.”
“I want it to be you.”
He frowned. “But I—”
“That picks me up. I don’t want Taylor to come.”
He nodded his head slowly, keeping his eyes on my face. “Did something happen, Faye? With Dad?”
“I’m actually kind of surprised. I figured you would want it to be him.”
Alarm skittered across my skin. “Why would you think that?”
He smiled sheepishly. “It’s a good sign, really. It’s proof you will get better.”
The alarm went away. “Why do you say that?”
“Since he gave you some of the drugs over the last month. It would make sense that you would ask for him in hopes of that.”
“No.” I wanted them. I wanted some coke more than anything, but not at the price Taylor would make me pay. Before I would have given anything for that bump, but not now. Not since Taylor knew the truth about my prostitution. Not since I tried to kill myself twice to get away from him. The torture he had in store for me would be horrifying—worse than death. Just thinking about it made me flex my wrists at my side, welcoming the pain that shot up the arm I had butchered. I would gladly rip it open again before I went anywhere near Taylor. “Just you.”
He eyed me with uncertainty, but nodded slowly. “You can come back from this. You can get better.” His voice cracked at the end, as if he was scared that he was wrong. As if he didn’t believe the words, not really. He was just saying them to make me feel better or maybe to make himself feel better.
“You don’t have to say that,” I said quietly. He fidgeted with his hands in his lap swiping one thumb against the other.
“You have to get better.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Yes, you are. You’re addicted to drugs.”
“That doesn’t make me sick.”
“It makes you lost.”
I bit my lip. He was right. Lost was the only thing I had been my whole life. The wandering girl who fucked her daddy and lusted after her brother. That was me.
“But anyone can be found.” His words were stronger now, more certain. But his eyes were glassy as if tears were hiding just behind them.
“I can’t be fixed, Rhett.” It was the first truth I had spoken since he’d walked in.
“Anything broken can be fixed.”
I shook my head and I felt them, the tears, my own threatening to spill over. Taylor flashed into my head. Standing over me. The knife in his hand, a sinister smile tilting his lips. “It’s not that simple,” I whispered.
Rhett reached out and touched the bandage on my arm. The wound ached now beneath it’s fancy wrapping. His fingers skimmed over the white material, making his skin seem so tan against the pale white color. A dusting of gold hair covered the back of his arm. I wanted to clasp his hand in mine and hold it tightly. I wanted to hold on to this moment forever. It seemed silly. There was nothing about this time that made it significant. I was just a cocaine addict, strapped to a bed in a crazy hospital, the wounds of my attempted suicides fresh and throbbing.
But it was Rhett that made all that disappear. His gentle hand on my bandage. I couldn’t feel his touch, but it was there and for those few moments his fingers glided back and forth I was at peace.
And for the first time in years I felt it. The slightest glimmer of hope. It fluttered somewhere deep inside me as his strong fingers moved back in forth. Maybe things could get better. Even if it was just for now. Just for a few stolen moments.
I could pretend I was different and that things really would be okay. That I wasn’t poison. That the filth of my sins didn’t ruin everything I loved.
It was just a few moments, but they changed everything.
FOUR
Three months later
I wanted to say I was a whole new person. That the last three months had changed me completely. But they hadn’t. I hadn’t had a single whiff of cocaine in that time. I was still there, at the psychiatric hospital getting treatment. I felt better, that was the truth. I wasn’t exhausted or tired anymore. The lethargic miserable spells passed eventually, but when they did I was left with something else. Clarity.
It was easy to pretend that my past wasn’t real when I was on the drugs. I was able to pass through life in a haze. Each scene playing through with a thick greasy film covering the moments, making them far away and surreal. Just a fuzzy reality that I didn’t care about it.
But now the fuzziness was gone. Wiped away like it had never been. I didn’t like the clarity. The emotions that came with it were almost unbearable.
“Tell me another story, Faye.”
I glanced up at the middle-aged man sitting across from me. Three months ago he had been a stranger. But not now. He was George Petrony, my counselor. The nurses all called him Dr. Petrony, but he let me call him George in our sessions. I hadn’t wanted to talk to him. Not at first. What was there to say? Nothing and everything all at once. But each day had become a little different. Each day I started to share a little more. I didn’t want to. Not really. But then it just started coming out. But the stories I told him weren’t mine. At least I told him they weren’t. They were about a girl I knew. A stranger.
“I don’t think I have any more.” I fidgeted with the ends of my hair. The dark locks in wavy disarray around my shoulders.
“Oh, you say that every day. But you always find one.”
He held a small computer in his hand and I knew he used it to record the stories I told him about Stranger. I had come to like sharing with him. He didn’t seem to mind listening and he didn’t accuse me of lying. Of course, why would he? They were just stories. Just tales about a stranger.
“I guess I do have one.” There were so many, dancing around in my head. The utter precision of them, gut-wrenching.
A tight smile spread across George’s lips. I suspected he had once been a nice looking man, but he was overweight now, his wedding ring barely fitting on one of his chubby fingers. His hair was thinning and a little gray.
“Is this one about Stranger again?” he asked.
I nodded and swallowed, letting go of my hair to rub my hands back and forth on the smooth material of the chair I sat in. “About Stranger and Lover.” I called Taylor Lover, because that’s the first word that came to mind when I thought of him. He loved me too hard. To the point where it destroyed us both.
George sat a few feet away in a chair similar to mine. The yellow walls of his office surrounded us.
“She’d never really been afraid of Lover. Not until Lover’s son left that summer. You know, the one I told you about last time.”
He nodded.
“When Son left she was sad because she expected him to stay…” And then I was back there. I was alone in my bedroom staring at the blue digital clock on my nightstand. I’d been crying ever since I came up for bed. Rhett had left earlier in the day. He hadn’t even stayed twenty-four hours after I propositioned him, after I’d all but begged him to have sex with me. He’d declined my offer and stormed out of the living room. He hadn’t spoken to me, or so much as looked at me. Not even to say goodbye when he left.
Embarrassment threatened to suffocate me. Did he leave because of me? Am I that repulsive? The questions only made me cry harder.
Daddy hadn’t been up to see me either. Not since Rhett came home. It was the first time in years that I had gone more than three days without his dick inside me. I’d enjoyed it, the time away from him. It was space I never remembered having. But now that Rhett was gone it made me question everything. Had Daddy stayed away because he didn’t want me anymore either? Just the thought of that made something like panic well up inside me. What happened? What’s wrong with me?
But then I heard it. The creak of my door. The familiar footsteps Daddy always made. Now that he was here I wished he wasn’t. My panic of being unwanted was replaced with something else, something I hadn’t felt with him before. Dread. Not when my rejection from Rhett was still so fresh and raw.
I tried to mellow out my breathing. Maybe if he thought I was asleep he would just go.
“I know you�
��re awake. I could hear your pathetic crying down the hall.”
I sucked in a deep breath and rolled over to face him. Who was I kidding? I knew he wouldn’t just go. He didn’t have any qualms about waking me up. He got what he wanted regardless of when and where.
He’d taken me shopping just before our trip to Cancún a few months ago. We’d been looking for new bathing suits for me to wear. By the time I’d tried on my third one he’d had me bent over in the changing room pounding into me from behind. I hadn’t wanted to do it there. Someone could catch us…and then what would happen? I knew by then that our relationship was twisted and wrong. I wasn’t even fifteen yet, my birthday at the time had still been about a month away. But I didn’t tell him no. Telling him no would make him angry and I didn’t want that either. So I let him fuck me there in that changing room. The bikini top dangling loosely from my neck. His hands on my chest while he pumped into me.
Even though I didn’t want it like that, I still came. There was something about Daddy that made things different. It didn’t matter how he touched me or where. He always made me tremble with ecstasy, even if it was unwanted. He’d clamped his hand over my mouth while I convulsed against him. But it left me feeling dirty. Dirtier than I was used to.
“Why are you crying?” I jerked my eyes up to meet his. It was dark in my room, so I could barely see his eyes.
“I’m just tired.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He moved quickly his body caging mine against the bed.
“I’m not lying,” I whispered.
“Did he fuck you?”
I sucked in a breath as panic flooded my stomach. “What? Who?”
The sting of his palm against my cheek took my breath away. Daddy had never hit me before.
“Did he fuck you?” he shouted.
I shook my head back and forth frantically, gasping for air.
“You little bitch. Don’t lie to me.” He stood and started undoing his belt.
Filthy 4 (Filthy #4) Page 2
