Eighteen Months

by Giulia Napoli

  The next day, I rose early. Megan was coming over after work to be there when I drank the tea, in case there were some unexpected side effects.

  I had to do up the first thing; the need was so strong now. I’d squirreled away enough White Nurse to get me through a month, in case the tea didn’t work and I had to find a plan B. I was well-and-truly hooked.

  The heroin euphoria felt wonderful. The smooth high that followed washed my problems away for an hour or two. I wondered if I could give up this feeling, even if the tea broke my physical addiction.

  At 2:00 I shot up for what I believed would be the last time. Megan came at 6:00. She’d brought Chinese, thinking that would go best with the tea. That was actually pretty funny. I was supposed to drink the tea on a full stomach, so we ate first. By the time I’d carefully made the tea, exactly according to the instructions and cautiously so I wouldn’t spill a drop, I was starting to feel a need for a fix again.

  I drank the tea. It tasted like – tea. Plain old Lipton tea if you must know.

  Half an hour later, the need to do up went away. Completely. And I found that I had no interest in the high anymore. In front of Megan, I emptied and flushed every bag of White Nurse down the toilet.

  Megan stayed over, but we didn’t have sex. My heart wasn’t there. It was still broken. I kissed her goodbye when she left in the morning for work. That’s as close as we got.

  Christmas came a few days later. I prayed for only one Christmas present. I begged and prayed and hoped and prayed.

  But Rina never came, and Rina never called.

  I would gladly have gone through the suffering of heroin withdrawal if that would have brought Rina home to me. I told that to God. I guess God wanted a better deal, because Rina didn’t come.

  Christmas day was awful.

  **********

  I laid around between Christmas and New Year’s, doing little. My eyesight hadn’t changed from the 20/220, and it probably wouldn’t for another few weeks. My glasses allowed me to see pretty well, but my crossed right eye hadn’t improved any and was useless.

  I still did a double-take in the mirror every time I saw myself as I looked now, with my frizzy Afro, my permanently made-up face with thin brows, and my googly eye.

  About the only thing I did was see Melody a couple days before New Year’s, and had her cut my dark brown hair to about an inch and a half long. Now it was curled up tight against my head again. My days of long, soft, flowing locks were gone for good anyway. I had no interest in trying to get Melody to straighten this hair, assuming that would work at all. Very short was easier to manage, even though I could see now.

  Marlene called me and asked me to come to the Jolly Roger to spend New Year’s Eve backstage with them. I told her that I couldn’t return there as long as Roger Junior was around. So I spent the holiday alone. Again.

  Unbeknownst to me, something else was afoot in a shadowy area of the city, which would destroy the tranquility I expected to gain in my newly-revisited career.

  **********

  The large man held the mobile phone in his grimy hand.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I need you to do a job.”

  “What’s up?”

  “A bitch screwed me over and I want satisfaction.”

  “Refuse to fuck you or somethin’? Push you away?”

  “Worse.”

  “What … ignored you?”

  “Fuck you. Do you want the job or not?”

  “Depends. What’s in it for me?”

  “Enough. You should know that by now.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Yeah. You and your half-wit brother.”

  “Fuck you, man. I don’t take that shit from anyone.”

  “You want the job or not, eh? You ain’t the only ditch digger on the block.”

  “Then why call me?”

  “’Cause in spite of your sibling, you follow directions. This one needs to be done exactly right.”

  “How much?”

  “Plenty.” The guy with the grimy hands knew he was good for it.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  Chapter 20 – After Dark

  It was cold and I was tired and my bargain-basement car wouldn’t start. The River’s Edge Biotech parking lot was almost empty. It was Friday night, at the end of my first week there. I lit a cigarette, pulled my mobile phone out of my purse, and called for a taxi. Apparently, at 7:00 on a dark, wintery Friday night, everyone else was calling one too. They said it’d be an hour or more. Since I could walk home in forty minutes or so, I decided to walk. My night vision wasn’t that great yet. But with my glasses it was good enough to drive, so it was good enough to walk.

  I’d walked for about thirty minutes when I paused to light another cigarette. I still wasn’t crazy about the habit, but it was a habit and I was hooked. It was always there, all day, every day. Thanks a million, Rina. It was better than heroin though. Thankfully, that was well in my past. I wished Rina weren’t.

  As I stood there for a moment taking a drag, I noticed two figures coming towards me. Two guys. I was a little nervous, but continued on my way, walking toward them. As they came up to me, the one closest said, “Hi,” in a friendly, not threatening, way and they walked on by me. No big deal.

  Then I heard one of them, the other I thought, say. “Hey! Miss? Don’t I know you? Wait, please.”

  I stopped. I should have gone on, but I stopped. At that moment, under the streetlights and close to home, I didn’t feel threatened. I turned toward them as they backtracked toward me a little. We were about 15 feet apart. That seemed safe to me.

  “Don’t I know you?” He said again.

  I could sort of make him out. I didn’t recognize him.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Didn’t you dance at the Jolly Roger or something?”

  Good grief! How could he recognize me?

  “I think you have me confused with someone else.” I turned to go.

  “No!” He said. “Even without the long wigs, I’d know that hot body anywhere. You were Minx, weren’t ya?”

  I didn’t know what to say or do. I started to walk quickly away. Both of them rushed up to me and grabbed my arms. I started to scream, but suddenly a hand was over my mouth.

  “Oh yeah, one said. You were Minx alright. I thought you were blind? Was that all a fake? No matter … how ‘bout we go to my place for a little fun, just the three of us? It’s the weekend, ya know?”

  The next thing I knew, I was being hustled into a car about a hundred feet down the street in the direction I’d been going. I felt something slam into the back of my head, and I lost consciousness.

  When I awoke, I was naked and on my back, tied spread-eagle, legs and arms fastened to four bedposts. The back of my head hurt. A lot. My glasses were gone and everything was badly blurred. Yeah, my vision was still holding at about 20/220.

  One of the men must have heard me moan and came in from another room. “Hello sleeping beauty,” he said gruffly. “I think I liked you better with that long, red hair. I don’t know about those afro curls. You part black, or what?”

  “Please let me go.” I didn’t know what to say. He wore a multicolored ski mask and goggles so I couldn’t see his face at all. “I couldn’t recognize you even without the mask; my vision is still terrible. Please, I won’t say anything if you let me go.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll let you go. Give us a juicy private dance, after we get to know ya a little better, and you can be on your way. Any funny business though, and you’ll be in a heap o’ trouble with us. Oh … and you can scream all you want; no one can hear ya anyway.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I was scared; I had no idea where I was; I was totally in their control. He’d told me they were going to do anything they wanted to me.

  “I got the short straw, so you get to start with me,” he said. He rearranged the bonds on my hands and feet – but there was no opportunity to try to get away when he did
it. I was now tied facing the mattress, head down on it, with my arms still fastened to the bedposts and my knees and ankles tied so that I had to rest on my knees with my butt in the air.

  He was somewhere behind me and I couldn’t see him. I felt him climb onto the bed.

  “No, no, please don’t.” I begged, as humbly as I could. “Please don’t do that to me. Don’t hurt me.”

  “It’ll be easier if you relax, darlin’.”

  Then he did what he wanted. It seemed to go on forever.

  The other guy came in next. I suspected that he also wore a ski mask, but I didn’t look up. I was so ashamed. If anything, he lasted longer than his companion. When he got up, I wanted to die.

  I’d never done anything in my life to deserve this.

  The other guy came back in with a noose that he put around my neck. I was sure they were going to hang me. I wished they would. Instead, they tied the noose rope to a bedpost, untied my arms and legs, and told me to dance, as one of them turned on a small boom box and started some sensual music.

  I refused to dance. One of them tightened the noose while the other beat me with his belt.

  I begged them to stop, though I could barely talk because of the choking, tight rope around my neck.

  “Dance!” One of them yelled.

  I tried to dance. I really did. I wanted it all to stop.

  Finally, after about ten minutes of this torture, one of them said, “I think you danced a hell of a lot better when you were blind. Maybe we can help you out a little there.”

  “What?” I said. I didn’t understand at first, but they threw me on the bed, on my back, and retied my hands and feet spread-eagle again.

  “Wait a minute darlin’ and we’ll fix you up.” One said as he left the room.

  “WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?” I shouted. Then I began to scream.

  Apparently, there was no one to hear me, as they’d said.

  The man who had left for a moment returned to the bedroom. I could barely make out a small bottle of something in one hand and a teaspoon in the other.

  “NO!” I yelled as loud as I could.

  “Relax, little one. I’ll fix you up so you dance good. This here is tetracaine, the real stuff. A few drops of this and your eyes won’t feel a thing when I pop ‘em. Then you can dance your heart out, darlin’.”

  “Oh my God, no! Don’t do this! Please, let me go!”

  “When we’re done, and you dance sexy, you can go. But you get the treatment first.”

  “No, no, no! Don’t touch my eyes! I don’t want to be blind!”

  I struggled with all my might. Then one grabbed my head and held it perfectly still, one arm around my chin, the other over my forehead. He was so strong. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I possibly could.

  I felt fingers on my left eyelid, prying it open. They were gouging into my eye. I opened it for a moment and then the fingers held it and I couldn’t close it.

  “NO!” I screamed. I could see a blurry vision of the masked man looking directly down at me. I could see the rough shape of the one holding my head. Then the spoon was there, right above my eye.

  I couldn’t move. I COULDN’T MOVE! I saw the spoon tilt, then a liquid was poured into my eye.

  It stung for an instant, then I felt nothing. A few seconds later, my right eye was being held open and the liquid fell into that eye. It burned, then went numb.

  I couldn’t move my eyelids. For some reason, they were now stuck open. I couldn’t move my eyes either. My head was still in the vice-like grip of one of the men. Then I saw something move into my field of vision from the left side and someone began to press into both of my eyes. I could feel the pressure but there was no pain. Then there was a sound almost like a pop and my left eye went black. I half-felt, half-heard a second pop.

  After a couple of minutes, I thought I could move my eyelids, and then OH GOD IT HURT! Both of my eyes were on fire. I blinked hard to try to clear them. I felt something running down from my eyes onto my face. Whatever was under my eyelids didn’t feel right. I could see nothing.

  Someone was holding both of my eyes open again. I felt a big splash of water across my face, then another, then a third. Someone was drying my face with a scratchy towel.

  “Now you can dance for us, Minx, and then you can go home,” someone said.

  I don’t remember what happened after that. The next thing I do remember was standing naked in the cold night air, yelling for help as I heard a siren approach. My shoulder bag was draped over my neck like a necklace. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the parking lot across from a hospital emergency room.

  Someone finally heard me and I was suddenly covered with a blanket and carried inside.

  “Help me,” I pleaded. “I can’t see. They blinded me.”

  But in the end, there was no way for them to help.

  **********

  Megan came to the hospital as soon as she heard. Her number was listed as ICE in my phone, which had been turned off but was still in my purse. That’s why they called her. She was there to take me home two days later. There was nothing they could do at the hospital or anywhere else.

  Those monsters had crushed my eyes. There was no possibility of saving them. They were both removed an hour after I arrived at the hospital. The doctors injected me with hyperhealants, inserted orbital implants into the empty sockets, and attached the muscles as best they could. The muscles in my right eye were somewhat damaged.

  Thanks to the hyperhealants, in two days I’d be completely healed and I could get fitted for ocular prostheses. Meanwhile, my eyes would be white orbs. In other words, I’d look like some kind of alien or zombie.

  At least I’d never see me that way. I’d never see anything again. I didn’t have eyes anymore.

  Why would anyone do that to another person?

  At least the prosthetics would look like eyes, when I got them in a week or two.

  What was I going to do? My short-lived career as a lab technician was over for good this time.

  That first day, I sat at home, smoking a never-ending chain of cigarettes and crying. I couldn’t cry my eyes out, because I didn’t have eyes anymore. In their place, I had hard, featureless orbs that filled the holes.

  The next day, wanting to do something else, anything else rather than sit there in the nothingness, I called Roger Junior and asked for my job back. He told me to come in and we’d talk about it.

  I found my old cane and made my way to the bus stop. I took the bus to the stop closest to the Jolly Roger, then caned my way the last few blocks. I’d done it blind enough times over the past eighteen months that it actually seemed almost normal to be doing it again.

  I went in and tapped my way to Roger Junior’s office. The door was shut and I knocked. I heard him say, “Come in, and close the door.” I did, found a chair, sat down and removed the dark glasses I’d worn.

  “MOTHER FUCK!” I heard him jump backward in his chair. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU?” He asked then, almost with real concern in his voice. I could hear him leap up. It sounded like he was standing there.

  “I was attacked by two apparently former patrons of the Jolly Roger. They assaulted me and made me dance for them. According to them, they didn’t like how I danced with my vision partially restored so they crushed my eyes and blinded me again. Permanently.” I broke down and cried.

  “Jesus Christ, Minx!” Roger said.

  I felt Roger’s hand rubbing my back. The jerk was actually trying to comfort me. I lit a cigarette and heard him slide an ashtray across his desk. I felt for it and tried to calm myself with nicotine. When I regained control, he sat back down across from me.

  “Now I understand why you want your job back. You obviously can’t work in that fucking lab anymore, can you?”

  “No, Roger.”

  “I treated you well when you worked here. You made good money, really good money. Then, you got some of your sight back and left me high and dry. With no Minx to please the c
ustomers, a good portion of them went elsewhere, including to the Four Horsemen’s. Your selfishness cost me and it’s still costing me.”

  “I’m sorry, Roger, but I had a chance to go back to my training, to my long-standing dream of working in a lab.” My voice sounded pleading. I was pleading for him to understand, to put his anger aside.

  “So you conveniently tossed me away and fucked up my business.”

  “I bought out the contract as per the agreement with your father!” I didn’t know what else to say. “Please let me come back. I need to work. I need a source of income. I don’t know anything else.”

  “Oh, I’ll take you back, Alie. At your old salary. But a few things are going to change.”

  “Whatever you want, Roger.” I supposed he’d want me to dance every night of the week for a while, to rebuild his business.

  “Instead of 20% of your tips, I’m takin’ 40%.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “I don’t care, take it or leave it. I intend to get my lost money back.”

  I didn’t have any choice. “Alright, 40%, but only for a year, then you go back to 20%.”

  “Only if you sign a three-year contract.”

  “Okay.” What else was I going to do anyway?

  “Finally, you become available for ‘extracurricular activities.’”

  “NO! I’M NOT A WHORE!” I would not turn into a prostitute!

  “You get 60% of the take on any tricks you turn. And I’ll cover all your medical expenses, including getting you a birth control implant and monthly check-ups.”

  “NO! SEX IS OUT OF THE QUESTION!”

  “Then I guess we’re done here. See ya ‘round, Alie. Don’t let the door hit ya on your way out.”

  “Please, Roger.”

  “You have my terms. There’s no more negotiatin’. You turn tricks or I turn you away.”

  “I can’t do that, I’m not a whore.”

  “Think of it as extra income – which it is. Probably a lot. I know a slew of guys who’d get off banging a blind dancer as sexy as you.”

  “No, Roger!” I started crying again.