Bitter Angel

by Megan Hand

  I tell myself I’m imagining it. Maybe the hospital blankets feel like my comforter. Sucking in a shaky breath, I give my eyes one more moment of blissful darkness.

  I’m scared. Shit, I’m scared. I know how weird this situation is, but the only thing more certain than my fear is the confidence that what happened to me last night was real.

  Without further torture, my eyelids burst apart. One tiny second explodes into fragments as I absorb my surroundings in slow motion. I see my dorm room’s stamped ceiling, Heather’s Wicked poster on the wall, and Nilah’s multicolored purses hanging on hooks by the door.

  I see it all—everything I hoped I wouldn’t, yet it’s all there.

  In some random desperation, I practically smack the side of my face. No cut. My cheek is perfectly smooth, untouched.

  My stomach plunges to the floor as I stumble from my bed. I make a weird noise deep in my throat that reminds me of vomiting, and I think that maybe I will vomit. My hands catch at my throat. I stagger backward until I hit the wall where I crumple to the floor in a heap. I’m choking on air and can’t catch my breath.

  I killed them. I killed them. I killed them… My mind replays the message like it’s on auto-repeat. Then I’m screaming it out loud, “I killed them! I killed them! I killed them!” I scream it until I see a blurry figure leap toward me and try to pry my hands away from my throat.

  “It’s okay, baby! Calm down. Calm down.”

  Jay’s words do nothing for me. Nothing can calm me down. I grab fistfuls of his T-shirt and shake him as I cry. It’s a deep, wracking sob that comes from the core of my body, the core of who I am as a person. I cry it all out because it doesn’t matter anymore if it’s gone, if my tears melt me into a puddle on the floor. I can never be the same, knowing what I know, having done what I did.

  I stayed behind. I killed them.

  I wasn’t conscious of this when I chose it, but this will still relentlessly haunt me to my end. Others might not blame me for this, but I will. I chose. Me. And I chose selfishly.

  I feel air under me as I’m lifted off the floor and held tight in Jay’s arms. He rocks me back and forth, and I weep and stare at nothing.

  I continue babbling in a low voice over and over, “I killed them.”

  He has no idea and I can’t explain. He tries to shush me as he strokes my hair, but I can’t silence myself.

  Suddenly, I hear a noise and a strange shuffle. Through my tear-stung eyes, I see keys and a white paper bag fall to the floor.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Nilah. Impossible.

  “I don’t know.” Jay’s voice is frantic and helpless. “She was like this when I woke up. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She keeps saying she killed something. Or someone. I don’t know.”

  Then I see Nilah’s face. What a beautiful face, I think. Is she an angel?

  She takes my hands. “Lil? Lillie Doll? Look at me, babe. What’s wrong?”

  Lillie Doll…

  She hasn’t called me that since freshman year in high school when she was obsessed with Jean Harlow during a 1930s kick. She abandoned it only when she realized that the full metamorphosis of the character meant dying her hair blonde. Nilah was far too vain to change her hair. Harlow was history, and I went back to plain ol’ Lil.

  I look at her with a trance-like stare, telling myself she can’t be real. She’s dead. I saw her face in my dreams. I saw her coffin.

  Reaching out, I touch my fingertips to her cheek.

  She captures them, holding them there. “Tell me what’s wrong, Lil. We can’t help until you tell us what it is.”

  “Is Heather an angel, too?” I whisper, mesmerized.

  Nilah looks at me like I’m nuts, which I kind of am because I’m seeing dead people.

  “Lil, Heather’s in class. You know she has her seven-thirty on Fridays.”

  Friday?

  I say it aloud in the smallest voice. “Friday?”

  Nilah shakes her head, annoyed. “Of course it’s Friday. It’s my birthday, and you’re not allowed to be crazy on my birthday.”

  I blink a few times. “Friday?”

  “Yes. It’s Friday,” she confirms.

  I look up at Jay, finally seeing him for the first time. He’s in a T-shirt. Friday night he went to bed shirtless.

  “What are you doing here?” I finally ask him, my voice cracking.

  His forehead is creased with worry. He swallows. “I wanted to come early and surprise you, but I got in late last night. You were sound asleep, so I just crawled in with you. I’m sorry.”

  He has nothing to apologize for. I don’t know what has just transpired, and I’m now starting to doubt myself completely.

  I make a feeble attempt to stand. Jay has to help me. I take tentative steps to my desk where I see a pile of unanswered quiz questions waiting to be filled in. My books and spiral notebooks are piled neatly, ready to be taken to class, and my enormous calendar sits underneath it all. Peeking out from the bottom corner of my European history book are the squares for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday for this week is crossed off. Friday isn’t.

  Today is Friday.

  “No,” I barely whisper as my knees buckle.

  Jay catches me under the arms, helping me to the edge of the bed. I begin crying again because I don’t know how this could’ve happened. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten so lucky.

  It only strikes me now that my ankle is not broken, and I stretch it in every direction to prove to myself that it’s fine. My cheek is not cut, my ankle is not broken, and my skin is not scraped or bruised. I’m fine…on the outside.

  Jay sits on one side of me with Nilah on the other. They each have an arm around me, trying to reassure me, but I can tell neither really knows what to say.

  “I’m okay,” I tell them with a face full of tears. “I am, really. I just had…”

  What did I have exactly? A very vivid dream? A hallucination of some sort? An acid trip? I truly have no idea.

  I go with the dream scenario. “… a really bad dream.” I don’t sound very convincing, but they seem to buy it.

  “Okay, babe,” Nilah tells me. “It’ll be okay. Just let it go. Today’s supposed to be a fun day, remember?”

  Of course I remember. I’ll never forget Nilah’s twentieth birthday for as long as I live. “Sure.” I nod. Jay is still rubbing my back. “Just let me…I need a moment.”

  Feet still shaky, I shuffle into the bathroom, turn on the cold water, and brace myself against the sink for a few seconds. It was just a dream. It had to be. What other explanation do I have? The proof is on the calendar and on the faces of my friend and boyfriend. It was a dream.

  With that decided, I cup my hands and throw a handful of water at my face. It’s cool and crisp, and I feel revived, awake. It was a dream. I blow out a breath and grab the hand towel from the bar by the mirror. I pat my face dry and take a good look.

  Then all the color drains from my skin. My dream explanation whooshes right out of me in a swift exhale when I realize what it is I’ve just woken up in.

  Trigger’s designer T-shirt.

  Jay and Nilah hear my screams before they reach my own ears. It’s the same ear-piercing wail from my nightmare when I tried to wipe the blood off my hands and it wouldn’t come off.

  Within seconds, Jay practically shreds the wooden frame, and the door bangs open. He takes me by the shoulders.

  Nilah peers around him. “What is wrong with her?”

  “God, I don’t know!”

  I can see my deranged expression in the reflection of his wide eyes, and I manage to stop screaming. “It was real! It was real!”

  “Get her to the bed,” Nilah orders.

  Jay lifts me again. Carrying me to my bed, he lays me down flat. “Baby.” His hand hovers inches from my face like he’s afraid he might break me. “You need to tell us what’s wrong. Are you in pain? Tell me where it hurts.”

  I stare catatonically at the
ceiling, hearing him, not absorbing, trying to turn the rusty wheels of my brain to figure out what is happening to me. Rather, what has happened to me. Or maybe what will happen to me.

  I begin with a mental checklist. I was in two places at once—check. I was captured by and then escaped from a gang of rapists—check. My escape somehow led police to capture said rapists and free my friends—check. Although, I don’t know for sure if they were all captured. That detail wasn’t explained.

  When I stayed back with Jay, Heather and Nilah were killed by rapists—check. I shudder at that thought. When I woke up this morning, none of the events had yet occurred—check. I woke up in the clothes I escaped in last night—check.

  Somehow, I experienced everything, both nights, and I woke up without the physical consequences…and I’ve been given back this day.

  This did happen—check.

  This was not a dream—check.

  That last check clicks into place in a very final way. This was not a dream. I remember every detail. I can still feel Alpha’s knife at my throat and smell his breath on my face. Yet I remember Jay and I nakedly tangled on my bed last night. This happened. The drinks, the dancing, the horror, the nausea—oh, the nausea. It’s all too real.

  Even though I technically determined that I’m not crazy, I feel no comfort knowing what I went through was real. Who would after being terrorized by a group of bored, horny, foul human beings, waiting to demoralize and debase young women for all their worth? Definitely stripping them of their spirit, but also possibly taking their lives in the process?

  Answer: no one.

  Now I need to figure out why this has happened to me. Why have I been given this second chance by a God I wasn’t entirely sure existed until now? Yet I know it’s God because who else has the capability to rewind time? Honestly.

  This isn’t just a rewind. I think it’s notable to point out that this time around is different because Jay showed up a day early, and I woke up in Trigger’s T-shirt. This is too much for one brain to handle, understand, and grasp in the amount of time I don’t have to grasp it, but I do know I have been given this chance for a reason. I need to do something.

  1. I am no doubt keeping my friends from going anywhere near Knoxville tonight.

  2. …

  I debate number two for a while. If I go to the police without any kind of proof, they’ll have no need to check these guys out. Since I haven’t read a newspaper in, say, nineteen years, eight months and eleven days, I have no idea if the police have come to the conclusion that these rapes are being committed by a group of men and not just one person. I don’t know if these rapes are being reported at all.

  From what I remember, those assholes were pretty quick to skim info from us—where we went to school and the fact that we were from out of town. Maybe all these girls are out-of-towners, and they don’t remember the next morning? If, hopefully, they have a next morning.

  When I realize that I’ve been mutely dazing at the ceiling this whole time while Jay and Nilah hover over me, I snap out of it. Jay is in the middle of asking me again where it hurts, and Nilah is beginning to argue whether it’s a physical pain.

  I interrupt them both. “I need your help,” I tell Jay.

  He eyes me curiously. “With what?”

  “I need to borrow your car.”

  I don’t have a concrete plan yet, but I have an idea. I hope.

  Jay pulls sharply away, surveying me with narrowed eyes. “No way in hell I will let you go anywhere without me until you tell me what just happened. What’s going on, Lil?”

  Poor Jay. I feel awful for putting him through this. Leave it to my near break from sanity for his badass side to come out.

  “I can’t explain. I just need to borrow your car.” I look at Nilah. “Hand me my phone.”

  She offers me my phone from the desk, gazing at me warily.

  I text Heather: 911. Meet outside in 5.

  I rip my drawer apart for some jeans and a new T-shirt. I can’t wear this thing. It might be evidence. Since I’m wearing the T-shirt, I am also strangely wearing the black lacy bra meant for this evening, which further proves my case. Taking no time for privacy, I dress hastily and slip into a pair of sneakers with no socks. I shove my cell in my front pocket, snatch my wallet from the drawer in my nightstand, and tuck Trigger’s shirt under my arm.

  Jay is getting mad and tripping over the legs of his jeans as he shrugs them on. “Lil. Slow down. Tell me what’s going on,” he demands, exasperated. He pulls his head through a scarlet and navy long-sleeve logo tee from his university.

  Just in case, I also snatch a hoodie from a hook by the door. “I’ll tell you in the car. I swear.” I grip Nilah’s arms. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere tonight.”

  Birthday girl indignation rises on her face, and I cut her off before she can say anything.

  “Promise me.”

  She breathes angrily like a bull through her nose. It’s not fair for her to treat me this way. I know I’m freaking her out and asking her to do things I shouldn’t be.

  Since this is Nilah, I shake her to get through to her that I’m serious. “Promise me!”

  The anger melts and is instantly replaced with a meek uncertainty. “I promise.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  At the last second, I take two giant steps toward the shelf beneath my desk drawer and snatch up the small digital point-and-shoot camera Jay got me for my birthday last year. I power it up. Battery bar says full. I snap open the memory card dock to see it occupied. I hope I don’t need this. I mean, I loved Nancy Drew and all, but I never wanted to be her. I can’t count on anything right now. Nothing is solid.

  Then I’m gone, jog-walking across campus with Jay at my side. He takes my hand and doesn’t bother asking any more questions—for now—which makes me want to stop and hug him. If I do, I know I’ll break down, and I can’t afford that right now. For the moment, I just appreciate how well he knows me and how much I love him.

  In anticipation of seeing Heather, imagining her eyes open with that healthy, youthful glow to her face, I speed up. We’re almost to Tuller Hall, where her Friday 7:30 a.m. class is, and I spy her blonde hair up ahead. It’s crimped for today’s special occasion. Just the sight of her—standing, breathing, not passed out—brings tears to my eyes.

  When she spots me, she holds up her hands. We’re within earshot now.

  “What on earth? We were in the middle of test prep.” She gives me her most withering look. “This better be good.”

  I want to squeeze her to me, but I’ll save that for later. “It is.”

  Realizing I’m panting, I take a second and double over to catch my breath. It reminds me too realistically of last night, and I straighten up like a pin. “Jay and I need to do something, and I know it’s Neels’s birthday, but you need to promise me you guys will stay here tonight.”

  She tilts her head, questioning. “Why? Where are you going?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t explain. Just please promise me. Please.” I take her hand and squeeze it, my sign to her that I’m sincere. “Please,” I whisper.

  Her hesitant expression mimics Nilah’s, but she complies. “Okay. When are you guys coming back?”

  I breathe in and blow it out through my nose as I think about it. “I don’t know.” It’s the only answer I can give her right now. As long as my friends are safe, I don’t care. “One more thing. Do you still have the number of that guy you dated last semester? The one that went to UT.”

  She nods.

  “Call him and ask him if he has any idea which building the pharmacology majors bunk in.”

  “Okay,” she replies, suspicious.

  I’m beginning to regret not taking a few minutes to come up with a better explanation than I can’t explain.

  “Great!” I drag Jay away before she has time to change her mind. I shout behind me, “Call me when you hear from him.”

  “I will!” she
yells back.

  I hold onto that tiny promise because the alternative is not an option.

  Jay doesn’t speak to me until we’re nearly a half hour into the trip. He’s been driving dutifully, hands on the ten and two, watching the road while I stew in silence. I’m terrified to talk because I don’t know how I’ll answer his questions—or my own. He’s calm, eerily so, and it’s starting to scare me.

  “When you’re ready to talk…” He lets the sentence hang.

  Okay, I mentally prep myself. You can do this. Just tell him…what exactly?

  I clear my throat thoroughly and take a long glance at him from my periphery. I peel his right hand off the wheel and hold it for comfort. “I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound really, really insane, but I need you to trust me.”

  His profile hardens.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Honestly?” He takes his eyes off the road for a moment, making me feel the impact of his aggravation. “I don’t know. You wake up this morning, freaking, thinking you killed someone. I think you’re okay, but you scream bloody murder like you saw a dead body in the bathroom. You stare at the ceiling for ten minutes, and then you jump off the bed and want to drive to over an hour away to UT! How is any of that normal, Lil?”

  I swallow. My voice is quiet, humble. “It’s not, but I’m asking for your trust here, Jay. Have I ever done anything like this in the past to make you question me?”

  He chews on that for a minute. “No.”

  “I need you to trust me now. Something happened to me last night, and the best way I can explain it is that I had some sort of psychic dream or something.” I let him digest that. He waits for me to continue. “I woke up this morning believing that I had already lived Friday. It was so real, I feel like I actually did live it.” I could elaborate on how I think I did live it, but I don’t want to push it. Better to just leave at the dream scenario.

  He looks at me again with less aggravation and more guarded curiosity.