by James Wymore
Walter took a deep breath, his arms folded across his chest. “I saw a woman do herself in at a restaurant. She was one of the servers and a fella at the bar grabbed her hips and pulled her over to sit on his lap. She squirmed real cute and he asked her for a kiss. We were all laughin’ cuz he was kinda drunk. Next thing we know, she’s got a gun an’ we all thought she was gonna kill him. Instead, she put it up under her chin and boom!” He mimed the gesture.
Sherman nodded. “We were regulars there too. She was a spitfire. I called her Hot Lips because she always wore bright red lipstick. We went back there the next day, thinkin’ she’d be there but she wasn’t. She ain’t never showed up since.”
Mitchell watched as an ambulance turned the corner, siren blaring, and noticed a hobo come around the corner and look down the street. He watched the ambulance stop, then cast his gaze upon Mitchell and his neighbors. The man had worn eyes saddled with too much insight. Mitchell looked back across the street, then realized he didn’t want to see the woman’s remains get wheeled out. He saw two paramedics, male, get out of the ambulance, and he wondered why anyone would choose to stay in that profession if they could leave it. This was Hell, the Afterlife. There was no way cop or paramedic or fire fighter was a job you’d stay with. It’s not like people called those for happy reasons. Then again, maybe those men felt they were supposed to be punished, and this was punishment.
Maybe they were about ready to give their explanation of the problem to a woman, and this was part of the final step. He wondered if he could give his explanation to a woman who was dead, or did they need to be able to validate it? Regardless, he didn’t want to see a bloody sheet first thing this morning. He nodded his goodbyes to his neighbors and went back inside.
This Hell is based a problem plaguing men and women.
Mitchell pulled up Google search and typed in problems facing men and women.
No results matched your search. Did you mean problems facing men or women?
Mitchell frowned. He typed in problems facing women.
No results matched your search.
Case sensitive? Mitchell typed in mortality of women .
No results matched your search.
He took a deep breath, folding his hands on his desk blotter. He looked at the reflection in his monitor of the billboards outside, the focused upon the screen.
Rape and murder of women.
Still no results.
Women’s rights.
No results.
Women voting.
No results.
Mitchell ran his fingers through his hair. How could there be nothing about women on the Internet?
He typed Women sex, then deleted it. He knew what that would produce and it would be unhelpful. He sat back, tapping his fingers on his lips. Something we deal with every day.
He typed in men and women.
About 36,300,000 results (0.52 seconds).
That’s more like it. Mitchell looked at the entries.
This is not specific to any gender.
Well done. You have identified a problem that had been identified a million times. Now what is your solution?
Why are you whining about this when there are more important things in the world?
I don’t know if these people can ever be changed.
If any man tries to grope me, they’ll get a foot slammed somewhere they really don’t want it to be.
We can all say, “Men should not do that in the first place,” but this is the same as me leaving my car door open with keys in it and saying, “People should not rob.”
What about cleaning adverts portraying men as clueless idiots? Do women really believe no man has ever been propositioned or felt up at work?
I don’t know anyone in my office who behaves that way… I just can’t believe that happens regularly… I’ve never worked anywhere where these attitudes would be tolerated.
I don’t think demonizing all men is going to help.
This is just another example of the conspiracy.
Mitchell frowned. These were all things he believed personally. He didn’t see how this was Hell, yet again. What was the lesson he was supposed to learn? He read through several results, even venturing onto the mythical page two of a Google search. The names were different on the commenters so they weren’t the same results. Gary5x5. LeonardtheLeopard5329. Prettyface2. Lipsandhips4. TheDoctorIsIn. John316. John319. Tons of Johns. Pretty much, there were hundreds of people saying the same things.
“The Hell here must be in trying to figure out why this is Hell.”
He pushed back from his desk and poured himself another cup of coffee. He marveled at how he kept thinking he smelled cat poop, then realized it was just his coffee brewing. Then he would get up, go to this cat-poop-smell producing machine, pour this liquid into a mug heralding his job here at the Boise State University Security Office, add creamer and sweetener to this rancid fluid in order to put it to his lips and into his body. On purpose. A lot. He even went to other places to get this concoction made by other people and paid one-thirtieth of his annual salary to do so. And still , that was not considered the Hell he dwelt in at the moment.
A knock on the door brought his head up too fast and he spilled hot coffee onto his jacket. “Ugh. Great.”
Alan stepped in, concerned. “You okay, chief?”
Mitchell grabbed a napkin and blotted the dampness from his jacket. “Yeah, just overthinking stuff.” He looked at Alan. “What’s up?”
Alan raised a hand carrying three new manila folders. “Reports from Campus last night.”
“Anything new?”
“Three suicides, three rapes.” Alan set the folders on the desk.
“Geesh, hasn’t anyone ever heard of robbing a convenience store?”
Alan laughed. “I guess not.”
Mitchell looked at the pictures of the crime scenes. “Has BPD been called?”
“Yeah. These are our copies. Investigations are already closed on the suicides.”
Mitchell flipped to the third folder. “And the rapes?”
“Same ole, same ole. Doesn’t remember anything, it was dark, got knocked out.”
Mitchell shook his head, frustrated. “What’s wrong with these girls? Why are they going to these places?” He looked at Alan. “Don’t they know by now? Don’t they talk to one another? They need to take steps to protect themselves, yet they keep going into these situations like they think they’ll be okay. Travel in packs, hold their keys in their fists, avoid dark streets. Something. Anything. ”
Alan shrugged.
Mitchell exhaled, trying to calm down, then opened the fourth folder and stopped. “Hey, I know her.”
Alan cocked his head to look at the picture more right-side up. “Oh yeah. The barista. Hit when she was jogging and came to as the guy mounted her. Guy wore a ski mask. Why wouldn’t she see something like that, right?” Alan gestured to the beautiful day outside. “A ski mask, in this weather?”
Mitchell glanced at the details of the incident and the description of the attacker. “I just saw her yesterday. She made my coffee.”
“Speaking of which, do you mind? We’re out in the break room.”
Mitchell scowled at the folder. “Huh? Oh yeah, be my guest. I need to cut back anyway.”
The victim was left bleeding and said she feared moving due to the amount of blood on the ground around her head.
Alan poured a cup. “Yeah, she was found passed out in a puddle of her own blood. The guys who found her took pictures of the scene before they touched her.”
Mitchell looked up. “Pictures?”
“They said they thought she might be dead and heard you needed to take pictures. Idiots uploaded them to their Facebook pages before calling the cops.”
Anything that goes on the Internet is there forever.
Mitchell turned in his chair, looking again at the billboards. Those pictures of Cutie would be on the Internet, swapped around internationally. Mitchell shook
his head.
“This is more like Hell for them, and we’re their tormentors.”
Alan stepped over to look at the view. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Mitchell looked at his coworker.
Alan returned the look. “I have that same thought every day now.”
He went to the student center to get coffee every day, but it was a week before she showed up. If she had been in the hospital, he figured she would need time to heal and he hoped her boss wasn’t a total jerk and let her have it. He was glad to see her behind the counter when he got in line. She wasn’t working the cash register this time, but was making the orders. She wore a BSU baseball cap, probably to hide the stitches.
He stepped up to the counter.
“Hi, Mr. Freeman. What can I get for you today?”
“Tall vanilla latte, please.”
“That will be $5.95.”
He handed her seven dollars, waving off the change. Cutie glanced at the cup with his order written on it while she finished steaming the milk for a different order. Her look was fixed upon the task, like she was drowning out all other sounds. He bent to get into her peripheral vision.
“Hey, Cutie.”
She glanced up, startled. “Oh! Sorry. I was… focused…” Her brow furrowed, then cleared as she forced a smile. “How are you today, Mitchell?”
“Fine. How are you doing? I heard what happened. I just wanted to come by and check on you.”
She swallowed, glancing around. Her eyes flicked from face to face around her, like a gazelle surveying a grassy plain. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Are the police doing anything?”
She shrugged. “They said there isn’t enough to go on. There were no witnesses.”
“Oh.”
She picked up a white towel with a pale blue stripe down the middle and wiped off the chrome nozzle where the steam came out. “It’s fine. Happens to everyone.”
He watched her a moment, noting how haggard she looked. She had aged overnight. She finished up the order she was on. “Hank.”
A young man in a green and yellow Packers windbreaker came up to the counter. He reached out for the cup without looking up from his phone and Cutie flinched away. Hank didn’t even notice. Cutie went back to her orders and a minute later, lifted Mitchell’s cup onto the counter. He reached out for it and held out his card.
“Here. In case you need to talk or you need help. Okay? It has my cell number on it, too. Call anytime.”
She took the card and nodded, reading it. She pocketed it and smiled a little more genuinely this time. “Thank you.”
Mitchell patted the counter, smiling, and went to work.
The ringer was as insistent as an alarm clock and he picked it up, not recognizing the number. That didn’t surprise him since he was, you know, in Hell and all. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pressed the green button.
“This is Mitchell.”
“You said to call if I needed to talk.”
He sat up, turning on the light. “I did. What do you need?”
Cutie sighed. “I… I don’t know what I need…”
He nodded, keeping his tone reassuring. “We can figure that out. Do you want to meet for coffee?”
“I don’t actually drink coffee.” She snorted. “Isn’t that funny? I’m a barista and I have no idea what the stuff tastes like.”
“You’re not missing anything.” He leaned forward, listening to the background. In his room, he could hear a clock ticking, but through the phone, it sounded like she might be outdoors. He could hear cars driving by and the thumping of techno through carpeted walls and cinderblock. A young man’s voice shouted something but all he could hear was “slut” before it Dopplered away.
She sniffed, a mucus-clogged snuffle that betrayed her tears and mental state.
He wanted to say something to reassure her, but he kept drawing a blank. He had no real idea what she was going through. “Where are you?”
“Outside the China Blue. I didn’t want to sit in my apartment.”
China Blue was a college bar downtown, a real meat market. It didn’t sound to Mitchell like a particularly safe place to be. “Do you want me to come down there?”
Silence, then, “Yeah. Would you mind?”
“I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. You stay outside and don’t move.”
He got pants pulled on over his boxer briefs and slipped on socks and shoes in less than a minute. He grabbed a jacket and his keys and bolted out the door. The lights were in his favor and he got around China Blue right about when he said he would. At first, he didn’t see her, then she caught a glimpse of the BSU cap against a wall. Four guys surrounded her, talking to her. They were too close and he stopped the car, throwing it into park. He opened the door and stood up.
“Hey, step away from her.”
The boys turned, backing away and giving her an opening to run through. One of them grabbed her arm and she slipped out of her jacket like it was a second skin and bolted for the car. The boy held up the hoodie and shouted something, but he was drunk, and Mitchell didn’t understand him. He got in the car and engaged the transmission. The boy looked at her and raised the hoodie to his face, breathing in her scent. She shuddered and Mitchell drove off.
“Do you need to go to the cops? Report that jacket stolen?”
She shook her head. “They’d say I took it off and gave it to them.”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it. Where do you want to go? Home?”
She shook her head. “Definitely not. My roommate had a guy drop by to visit and I just couldn’t be in the room with him.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t really know. I just felt…”
He nodded. “It’s okay. We’ll go to my office. There’ll be some officers there and we’ll have one of them sit with you until you feel like heading home.”
“Thank you.”
He pulled into the office parking lot and they entered. A few officers, larger men that worked out, were filling out paperwork while Bennie fielded the dispatch desk. He looked up as Mitchell came in.
“Chief? What are you doing here at this hour?”
“This young woman needs a place to crash, so I’m gonna put her up in my office.”
Everyone stared at her, but she shied away from most of them. Mitchell walked her down the hall. The small, two-person couch in the room looked big enough to take care of this girl. She didn’t take up much space as it was and seemed to become even smaller as the night wore on and she shrank away from people. He got a blanket and pillow from a closet near the break room.
“We have these for folks in just this sort of situation.” He shook out the blanket and draped it on her shoulders. She flinched as he touched her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I know. It’s just, I can’t stop it, you know?”
He nodded. He had seen it before. PTSD. It was common enough for him to know he shouldn’t say it was PTSD to her. People always associated the condition with warfare and reacted poorly when you treated them like they had a known mental condition, even if they had seen combat.
“It will get better.”
She looked at him. “Will it?”
He motioned to the couch for her, then pulled over a chair from the desk. “Can I ask, how long have you been here?”
She glanced at the floor. “All my life. I was born here.”
“No, I mean,” he pointed to the window and the glaring, well-lit billboards, “here. ”
“At BSU?”
He pointed to the billboards. “Hell.”
Her frown returned, touched with wary confusion. “Hell?”
Mitchell blinked. “Yes. This is Hell.”
She looked out the window, scanning the horizon. “I… don’t understand…”
He glanced outside, then back at her. “Can you see those billboards out there?”
“I can see one.” She pointed to a small one with the
current football coach encouraging fans to Get in the Game!
“You can’t see those?” Mitchell waved at the Rules.
She stood. “I think maybe I’ll head home now.”
He stood, putting his hands on her shoulders. “No, I’m sorry. I’ll go and let you sleep.”
She shuddered at the touch and he withdrew his hands with a snap, which she also flinched from. She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help.”
He ran his hands through his hair, then down his face. “Yeah. I just suck at it tonight. There’s coffee over there if you need it.”
“I don’t…” She sighed, sitting down. “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to close the blinds for you?”
She shook her head. “No. I want to be able to see my surroundings if I wake up.”
He nodded and left. He got out to the front desk and turned to Bennie. “How has it been tonight?”
“Relatively quiet. Only two rapes, one suicide.”
Mitchell looked at the clock on the wall. 1:38 a.m. It was still early.
He walked out to the parking lot and looked at the billboards. It was like looking at Vegas. They couldn’t be missed. Maybe we are the only people here, the only souls. That seemed unlikely, but if she couldn’t see it, maybe not. He’d give it more thought tomorrow. Right then, he was too tired to actually think.
The next day, he decided to head over and the see the barista. This time, she was behind the counter with the other girl and a man in a manager’s uniform. The nametag on his shirt said Edward Roosevelt.
“What can I get for you, sir?”
Mitchell looked over at Cutie, who was working the espresso machine while the other girl did the whipped cream, sprinkles, and handed out orders. It was busier than usual, and the barista was getting flustered, which confused Mitchell because he’d seen her get coffees out at record speed before. The girl beside her gently took one of the cups from the line-up of orders and started helping on the line.
Cutie reached onto a stack and popped a lid on an order. “Albert.” As the order was taken, she looked at the other girl. “We’re almost out of lids. I’ll be right back.”
