“Grey-girl,” he eventually greeted. “You run all the way from school?”
I straightened, tugging the band out of my hair and re-gathering it, since sweat was beading across the back of my neck and shoulders, and the strands were sticking to my skin. I tied off a messy bun, ignoring his question.
“Trip threatened to burn down your trailer,” I told him. I wasn’t sure why; it was simply the first thing that came to mind.
He arched a brow. “I know. He spilled gasoline everywhere and left me a note beside a lighter. He’s lame like that.”
“Actually, the gasoline was me.”
He pushed himself from the doorframe, where he had been leaning, and stepped down to the landing. His expression had the same glimmering effect that heatwaves made on the horizon. I could see the flickering of emotion there—amusement, annoyance, confusion—but they were buried so deep that I wasn’t sure if I was imagining all the tells. He stepped over to me, stopping when our shoes were only a few inches apart.
“Might want to explain yourself a little better,” he cautioned. “I could start making assumptions.”
The calmness emanating from him was starting to annoy me. “You can make assumptions.”
“I can do anything,” he clarified, one of his hands moving quickly to cup the side of my face. The motion was too erratic, and the spark of satisfaction in his eye too obvious. He had intended to frighten me—to make me flinch. I had barely even blinked. “Anything,” he repeated. “And you’ll let me. Won’t you, Grey-girl?”
“Why won’t you get angry at me?” I rushed out.
“Is that why you did it?” He started laughing, his hand moving to the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair to grip tighter. “Damn, you’re fucked up. I can be mean to you, babe. All you need to do is ask.”
I nodded. It was my only answer, because I knew that it was the only answer he needed. I hadn’t actually decided anything. I hadn’t completely thought about what he had said and what it would mean for me. I only knew that I needed to punish myself. I needed to feel something; preferably something bad.
I was still standing there, thinking about whether I should allow myself to actually think this particular thing through, when Duke began tugging me through the door and into his trailer. When we were standing in the kitchen area, he stopped and released me, his eyes on the hem of my dress. It reminded me of the first time he had kissed me. I had stood in the same spot, in a similar dress, with him looking at me in the same way. The small box television was even playing again, droning at a level too low to really make any sense of the words being spoken. It surprised me that Duke always seemed to be watching a news program, because he really didn’t seem like the sort of person who would care about what was happening to every other person in the world. Not unless it impacted him in some way. Maybe he was waiting for something that would impact him. Waiting for something relevant; something specific.
I focussed, then.
I watched the screen while he undressed me.
The straps slid from my shoulders, and I watched a man standing outside a shop, talking to the camera. The shop had been severely damaged by a fire of some kind. I couldn’t hear his words, but the screen showed pictures as he spoke. Pictures of other, similar stores, all damaged by fire. When the dress caught at my hips, and my bra fell away, I saw the sign for Dunn’s Meats. There was nobody standing outside that particular store in that particular photo. No forlorn owner picking through charred rubble. No family arm-in-arm surveying the disaster. It was an empty ruin captured in a single shot, full of uncomfortable meaning.
He kept my dress on when he pushed me back against the table, but my panties were tugged down my legs as the caption along the bottom of the television screen began to scroll.
Harbourside Wholesale, the fourth in a series of locally-owned establishments destroyed over the last month, has been condemned. Authorities are treating this as a deliberate case of arson, and suspects are being questioned.
My panties were on the ground, and his fingers were around my knees, pulling my legs open. He straightened up and stepped between them, and I closed my eyes against the image of the television screen. I didn’t want to know about what was happening to everyone else in the world.
I didn’t even want to know about what was happening to me.
He was pulling at his belt, jerking it halfway through the loops and then working his pants over his hips. I was pushed further back onto the table. He wasn’t saying anything. We weren’t kissing. I wasn’t sure what this was anymore, but I was under no delusions that it was romantic in any way. His hand was at my throat then, and I felt him between my legs. He was bigger than I had expected, even though I had actually seen him naked before. The hardness of him was oddly threatening. I might have been afraid as he began trying to push into me, but I couldn’t feel anything at all. He grunted, the sound a mixture of pleasure and frustration. If I could have made a sound, I imagine that it would have been one of disgust.
Or perhaps it would have sounded like a cry for help.
I didn’t want this.
What the fuck am I doing?
The question burned through me as he forced himself deeper. His hand grew tighter against my neck at the same time, as though he had forgotten that he had put it there. Sensation rushed back into me, chasing away the numbness. I didn’t want it to feel, but I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I had lost the battle with myself.
I was no longer numb. I had become a receptacle of pain.
It was sharp and sudden enough to scare a sound out of my mouth, and then another as my head collided with one of the cupboards above the dining table. I heard the bang, and felt the collision all the way through my body, rattling something from the darkness of my mind—where things hid—to the brightness of my subconscious.
Bang.
The memory assaulted me with the same force as the actual thud against the back of my head, and I toyed with the idea of fighting it off. I didn’t want to welcome any of the darkness into me. I wanted it to stay locked up tightly, where nobody could touch it—especially not me. I wanted to light a match, set it on fire, and reduce it to a photograph on a news program, until my memories were only still pictures that might have told a story, if you knew to ask the right people. I wanted to be that empty possibility of something that once was, and I wanted it desperately.
Unfortunately, I wanted even more desperately to be as far away as possible from Duke and the solid length pushing in and out of me. It didn’t occur to me to shove him back and run away. It didn’t occur to me to ask him to stop. It seemed that I had only two directions to dive in, from where I was. I could dive into the moment, or I could dive into the darkness waiting inside my mind. I didn’t want to be with Duke, so I chose the darkness.
“Mika!” My mother was screaming again.
I didn’t need her to scream anymore. I was right there. Standing only a few feet away, the scene spread out in front of me like some kind of complicated game of strategy—except that I didn’t have all the pieces. I had a King, and I had a Queen.
What did that make me?
The chess-master or the pawn? The orchestrator or the sacrifice?
Bang.
The bottle smashed into the side of my head, raining glass down over my shoulder. I watched the pieces fall, though I quickly pressed my hand to the part that hurt the most, to see if it had cut me. It had, but it wasn’t serious, and it wasn’t the first time.
Bang.
A box this time: small, ornamental. A wedding present for my parents, from my uncle. I looked up, then back to the game.
“Mika, do something!” My mother was screaming again, but I looked away from her. I looked to my father.
He was trying to appear calm. Trying to keep himself under control. Trying not to make me panic.
“Mika …” He lowered his voice, but it still trembled on the last syllable. “I need you to get the gun.”
Get the gun.
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The gun.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
It was my head against the cupboard, colliding repeatedly with the small indent in the cheap wooden surface. Duke was grunting—I didn’t think he actually noticed. I could see it all, then. I could see how far I had fallen, and it was surreal in a way: as though I had zoomed all the way out of my body, out of my life, and was dispassionately examining the graph of my human experience, following the line of my progress going down, down, down. At each sudden drop, I could feel a bang, until I came to the place where I was. The table in Duke’s trailer, my thighs aching and a fire between my legs that had tears streaming down my cheeks. I was crying and he didn’t seem to care.
No.
He cared.
He was moving faster, groaning deeper.
He liked it.
“No.” The word trembled out of me, fierce and wobbly all at once. There was something sharp and overwhelming building up inside me, pushing against the cage of my ribs and the boundaries of my mind.
Emotion.
Dark, heavy, snow-balling emotion.
“No,” I repeated, louder this time, my voice full of hysteria. I shoved against him, and he tried to push me back again but I pulled my legs up and kicked him as hard as I could.
He was propelled back against the kitchen counter with so much force that the television teetered, almost pitching forward. I slid off the table as he stared at me, his dick still standing up straight out of his pants. I didn’t want to look at it. I was disgusted, repelled, sick to my stomach. Awake. Alive.
There was blood on it.
“Fuck you,” I muttered, grabbing my bag and moving toward the door. I had other things to say, too.
You’re sick.
You’re twisted.
You need help.
The words wouldn’t rise to my tongue, though. They slid back in a cowardly retreat as I started running away from his trailer. I knew exactly why I didn’t want to say those things to him, but I couldn’t admit the reason to myself until I heard his voice shouting out after me.
“You’re sick, Grey! Don’t even pretend like you didn’t want that! You were practically begging for it! You fucking wanted it, you twisted fuck!”
I shook my head, fighting off the oncoming numbness. It wanted to break through and comfort me, to wrap me up in a protective embrace and force all the emotions into a neat little cave where they wouldn’t hurt me … but I couldn’t do that anymore. I needed the emotion. I needed to start thinking. To start saving myself.
I ran to the road and pulled my phone out of my bag, searching for Alicia’s name. I hit her number and pulled the phone up to my ear, the sound of each ring seeming to ricochet through my brain.
“Grey?” she answered, sounding concerned.
I shoved a metaphorical fist behind my words and punched them out, afraid that they would cower in my throat forever. “Can you please come and pick me up? I’m really sorry. I’m stuck.”
“Of course, honey.” The concern melted away, but it was replaced with something else. Some kind of grim realisation. A terrible expectation. “Where are you?”
“Outside Summer Estate.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay? Can you hold on that long?”
“I’ll wait. Thank you.”
“Thank you for calling me, Grey. Hold tight.”
She hung up and I stared at my phone, turning it over in my hand as though it had a secret of some kind to reveal to me. The screen eventually turned off, and I could see the reflection of my face staring back at me, the sun lowering behind my head. I didn’t even look the same—the past months had changed me so completely. I didn’t recognise that person. I was afraid of that person.
I needed help.
I tapped my phone’s screen to light it up again and found myself typing his name. Nicholai Fell. I found a listing for the clinic that he worked at on Thursdays and Fridays—the clinic with the yellow couches and the odd little waiting room. I hit their contact button.
“Hello?” I murmured, when the receptionist picked up. “I need to make an appointment with Doctor Fell.”
“When would you like the appointment?” She was a brisk sort of woman, but there was an underlying understanding to her voice.
She understood that she was required to sound somewhat considerate, since she was the receptionist at a mental healthcare clinic. She seemed to understand that it was essential, but she also didn’t exactly seem to possess the innate ability or need to actually care about any of the people who spoke to her.
“Do you have anything available tomorrow?” I asked.
“Doctor Fell had a cancellation at 2pm on Friday—are you already a patient of his?”
“I’m a new patient.”
“I’ll need you to book through our website if this is your first consultation: it saves you filling out all the forms when you’re in the waiting room. There should be an option for a 2pm appointment.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up after she forced out a considerate goodbye, and filled out the booking request on their website. It didn’t take long to answer their questions.
No, I didn’t have any history of mental illness.
No, I wasn’t on any medications.
No, I hadn’t had any thoughts of self-harm.
Yes, I had harmed myself in the last twenty-four hours. Without thought.
Yes, this was an emergency.
Yes, I understood that I should visit the hospital in the case of any emergencies.
Yes, I still wanted to make the booking.
I clicked the submit button and then turned my face up to the sky. That’s what I was doing: submitting. I was handing myself over to the people who told me that they knew better. I was giving up, giving in, giving it all away.
15
Arrows
By the time Alicia pulled up to the curb, I had convinced myself that I was under control. I climbed into the passenger seat, set my bag at my feet, and shut the door behind me. She glanced at me, then through the window, quickly taking stock of where I had been waiting.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” she asked me.
I glanced down at my legs, as though it might have been written there—what I had done. Instead, all I saw was the network of bruises that I had given to myself the night before. I quickly pushed my skirt back down and shook my head, and that was all it took for me to lose the composure that I had fought for at the roadside.
I cracked apart in the passenger seat, glad that all of the doors and windows were sealed, so that I wouldn’t lose any of the pieces of me that were suddenly crumbling away.
Alicia didn’t gather me into her arms like an overbearing mother; she didn’t smother me against her chest and stroke my hair. She didn’t demand to know anything. She didn’t touch me at all. She pulled away from the curb as I fell apart, driving over to the next block and pulling into the parking lot of a small café. She reached over me to the glove compartment and pulled out a small packet of tissues, extracting one of them and pressing it into my shaking hands.
I should have known what to do with it, but it suddenly seemed like a useless and unfamiliar object. What the hell did people use tissues for?
Crying. The answer came to me easily, but the tissue wasn’t going to help me stop. Instead, I started tearing it to pieces. It was methodical, careful. A deliberate task. When I was finished, Alicia handed me another. I tore each strip with care, trying to keep them all the same width. That was important to me—them all remaining the same. No piece of tissue bigger or better or more significant than any of the others. Once they were ripped, I laid them over my thigh. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but I knew with a single-minded determinedness that it needed to be done. It was the kind of certainty that came with a temporary loss of sanity. The why of the action wasn’t important, only the action itself.
I set out the first line of tissue-pie
ces horizontally, starting a few inches below the hemline of my dress and rising to a few inches above it. With the second set of tissue-pieces, I laid out vertical lines over the top of the first set. A criss-cross blanket to cover up the evidence of what I had done to myself, even though it was already covered. Alicia handed me another tissue, but I didn’t touch it. I stared at the packet until she took another out and tried to hand me two. Those, I took. I needed two. One more horizontal line, one more vertical line. It was important for things to be even. I couldn’t have more vertical lines than horizontal lines. If I did, everything would unravel.
Alicia had yet to say a word.
Six tissues later, the packet was empty and I needed to blow my nose. I said so, and Alicia fetched another little packet of tissues from her handbag, handing me one. I blew my nose, crumpled up the tissue and placed it directly in the middle of my criss-cross blanket.
“I lost my virginity.” I spoke to the faint reflection of my own face in the window, before changing my mind and turning to Alicia. I wasn’t sure what emotion was in the eyes of my reflection, but it felt judgemental—I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.
Alicia remained silent. Processing. “Is that how you got those bruises?” she finally asked. “They don’t look fresh.”
“What bruises?”
“On your leg.” She pointed to my careful network of tissue pieces.
“No.” I glanced back to my reflection. Disapproval glared back at me. Or maybe it was fear. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Okay.”
“I lost my virginity,” I repeated.
“Did you want to?”
“I asked for it.” You were practically begging for it. You fucking wanted it, you twisted fuck … “I guess.”
“Did you want him to stop?”
“Eventually, yes. It hurt. It reminded me of things I didn’t want to think about it, and then I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
I Am Grey Page 14
