Beautiful Victim

by Claire C. Riley

  I need to know that things aren’t just going to disappear on me.

  Not ever again.

  It’s late when I finish, and of course it’s fucking raining again. It never seems to stop raining lately. It’s driving me nuts. I like early autumn best of all because it’s nice to see the leaves change color and fall from the trees. Everything is dying, and yet it all seems so alive. It’s kind of perfect really.

  But spring sucks.

  All it does is fucking rain.

  I head to the bus stop and I sit and I wait. And it’s not too bad at first. I get to think by myself for a little while.

  But then I get cold, and then I think about everyone else—including Charlie—who is probably all sitting at home right now fucking their wives, bathing their kids, or watching their flat-screens while they eat their microwaved food on their TV trays.

  And I can’t help it.

  I start to feel a little resentment toward them all.

  A little resentment and anger that slowly bubbles to the surface.

  Because really, it’s a shitty thing for them to do to leave me to clean up everything. And I guess I’m a little jealous because my life really shouldn’t be like this. It was supposed to be better. So much better. And sometimes, when I get stressed or anxious, I can’t help thinking about how it should have been.

  I know, I know, you shouldn’t ever do the whole shoulda, woulda, coulda thing, but it’s hard sometimes. Right now I’m sick of sitting in this stupid rain at this stupid stop with no shelter. And I’m tired, and it’s dark, and I’m getting pretty hungry too, if I really want to be a pussy about it.

  I hear a whistle and look across the road and see the same businessman I’ve seen for the past couple of days hailing down a bright yellow cab. The cab stands out vividly, illuminating the dull and graying evening.

  He’s not on his own today; he has someone with him, though I can’t see what the other person looks like because of the umbrella shielding them from the driving rain. I’m impressed by the fact that he’s actually holding the umbrella out for them, allowing whoever it is some shelter from the rain.

  What a good guy.

  And it’s funny how people can surprise you just when you think you have them pegged as a fancy asshole who doesn’t give a shit about other people. How you can think you know what they’re all about, when really they’re the sort of person that holds an umbrella above their friends’ heads while it rains.

  The cab pulls up, and he even opens the door for them—another small act of kindness that makes me smile—and I feel the anxiety and simmering anger in my gut ease.

  And maybe the rain isn’t so bad; it helps plants to grow, after all.

  And maybe I should be grateful that the bus even stops here at all.

  And the dark ain’t so bad, really.

  I like people being nice, considerate. We should all try to be that; if we do nothing else with our miserable existences, we should at least be considerate to each other.

  Light spills from the cab doorway, and the man steps back to allow the woman to get into the cab first. I realize it’s a woman with legs that go on for miles, and I want to laugh because now it makes sense why he’s being polite. He wants to fuck her. Ain’t that always the way?

  A man’s never a gent unless he wants to get into a woman’s panties. I’ve learned that over the years too. He climbs in after her, shutting the door behind him and closing the world out.

  I wonder if the woman is his wife. Or maybe she’s his secretary and they’re having an affair. He’s probably taking her to a seedy motel to fuck while his wife looks after their children at home, wondering why her husband is always working late.

  And he’ll tell her that he’s chasing a promotion.

  Trying to earn more money so he can buy her nice things, so he can pay for the new car she wanted, or the pearl necklace he got her for their wedding anniversary.

  And he’ll make her feel bad, feel guilty for even complaining, when all the while he’s sticking his dick into another woman.

  Right now I hate this man, and I hate this woman even more. Because she knows he’s married. She picks out the flowers he sends to his wife and the necklace she received for their anniversary.

  This woman, his secretary, she picked it all out. And she didn’t even get the expensive ones. She picked the shitty ones, because she’s jealous of this asshole’s wife and the life she lives.

  And all the while she fucks her boss and she moves herself into his life, slowly pushing his beautiful wife out of the picture, making her feel bad, making her feel that it’s all her fault.

  And a snarl rises to my lips and I stand up, because I can’t sit still.

  The resentment and hate I feel makes me shiver so hard that all I can think about is walking across the road and dragging them from the car and—

  It’s only been a split second while all of these dark and bloody thoughts run through my mind. Thoughts I try to control, to stop in their tracks. I breathe hard and think of my calming techniques, letting the words play on my lips.

  One African Elephant Walking Very Nicely. Two Australian Coyotes Prowling Through The Night. Three Jungle Cats Slinking Through The Dark. Four Busy Beavers Building Their—

  I start to calm down as the woman’s face turns to the window, and in that split second—right before the light inside the cab blinks out, plunging her beauty back into darkness, and before the cab is swallowed up by the deep ocean of the night—I see her perfect face.

  Carrie.

  My Carrie.

  Ain’t that always the way? I think as the cab pulls away.

  Chapter eight:

  I want to run after the cab, but I know I won’t catch up to it.

  I want to hail my own cab, but I don’t have enough money. Damn me for always bringing the correct change for the fucking bus.

  Each moment that passes, she moves further and further away from me, a bigger divide splitting us up once more.

  She didn’t see me—of course she didn’t.

  I’m invisible. I am a ghost.

  Always.

  I’m her ghost, and she is mine.

  I’m forgotten and discarded, and she is very much alive.

  I feel sick. My skin is slimy and wet from the rain, my clothes sticking to me like a second skin that I want to peel off.

  My head hurts. I can’t think. It’s too much.

  Carrie.

  My Carrie.

  Golden hair and pretty lips. Smiles she doesn’t think I see, but I do, I did, I always will. Her smiles are burned on my eyelids, burned into my head.

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

  My bus pulls up and I stand, gasping breath burning in my lungs. I let out my air at the same time the bus’s doors open. They make a whooshing sound, and I panic for a split second, thinking I made that sound.

  “You getting on, kid?” the driver says. “I gotta get goin’ if not.”

  I look up into the light of the bus, from my place in the dark, and I nod.

  The cab has gone and it’s taken Carrie with it.

  But she was here!

  My Carrie was here!

  But she’s gone now.

  Again.

  She’s always going when I need her to stay.

  When I need her the most.

  I climb the steps, my hesitation betraying me, but there’s no point standing around in the rain all night because she isn’t here now.

  My skin feels alive, my mind in a frenzy. Everything is fucked up inside me. I climb the bus’s steps, noting their slipperiness due to the wet weather, and I fumble in my pocket for my money to pay the driver.

  My body feels strange, like I’m in a dream, like I’m in a daze. My limbs aren’t attached, they move on their own. I’m not controlling them. I’m floating above everything, looking down. And the whole time my mind screams for her.

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

/>   Maybe I’m still at the bus stop, and Carrie has seen me. Maybe she’s come over to hug me, and tell me how much she has missed me. She’ll throw her hands around me and hug me, and kiss me, and everything will be okay again.

  Because she is here.

  And we’re together again.

  And this time I’ll never let her go.

  Not ever.

  “Onwards and onwards,” he says as I put my money down.

  And just like that I want to scream at him to shut up. To tell him that it’s a stupid thing to say. I think it every time he says it, every night he says it, but tonight I think I might actually say it to him. The words are lodged in my throat, and my palms are itching.

  Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter…

  The rain is relentless, and I turn around and see the doors are still open.

  “Can’t move until you sit, son,” the driver says, and I can see he’s getting irritated with me now.

  “Sorry,” I reply, my voice not quite my own.

  I sound drunk, my words slurred. I’m drunk on Carrie. I’m drunk on memories of the Carrie I once knew and the one I just saw. She’s both the same and not.

  I take small steps toward the seats, the words I want to say to him still in my throat, on my tongue, wanting to spew from my lips. “Excuse me,” I say to an elderly man who’s resting his shopping bag on the seat I need to sit in.

  The bus is full of watchful people, all wanting to get home. All tired from work. None of them alive like I am right now.

  Because that’s how I feel.

  Alive! I’m fucking alive for the first time in too many years.

  The old guy looks at me with a frown and tuts, as if I’m the asshole blocking the only seat here. He picks up his bag and begins to move it, all the while shaking his head in irritation at me. And I want to shake my head at him. And tut at him. Maybe even ram my fist into his face and break that wrinkled old face of his.

  But I’m not an asshole like him, so I don’t.

  And I’m angry and frantic and excited, and fucking alive because…Carrie!

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

  Carrie.

  But I also feel like my insides might contort, pulling everything forcibly outside myself until I’m wearing my organs like a coat for all of the world to see. I’m a churning, yearning mass of self-destruction. I’m on fire with indecision.

  I sit down, and he’s still tutting, and the driver has started whistling, and the rain is still coming down. And it’s too much. It’s too fucking much.

  I stand back up and head to the front of the bus again, despite the fact that it’s moving now.

  “Need you to sit down, please,” the driver says.

  And at least he said please, I think.

  “I need to get off,” I say, and I tug at the doors to get them open, but the bus is still moving so of course they won’t. “I want to get off.”

  “Have to wait until the next stop then,” he replies. “Now sit down, son, please.”

  “You don’t understand. I need to get off now. I saw someone. I need to find them. I’ve been looking for them. They’ve been looking for me.” I’m panicked now. Because what if she’s gone forever this time. What if that was my final glimpse of her…for real this time.

  I’m angry and panicked.

  And the driver must see the anger and panic in my face, because he looks angry too. “Son, you need to sit down right now, before I call the cops.”

  And I know he means it. And even though I haven’t really done anything wrong, I don’t want him to call the cops. So I go back to my seat, and the fucking old man has put his bag back on the seat again.

  “Can you move your bag?” I ask, and I don’t say please this time, because fuck him, that’s why.

  And that’s bad of me, I know. But he can see what’s just been said, I think, so he should have moved his bag before I got here.

  He mutters under his breath and moves his bag again. And I’m shocked that he could be so rude and I want to tell him so, but I don’t want the driver to be angry at me anymore, so I don’t say anything and I step past the guy because he wants the aisle seat, and I sit down, and then I turn away from him, and I think I’m breathing so hard I might pass out.

  I’m shocked that the driver wouldn’t let me off.

  I’m shocked at the prick next to me.

  And I’m shocked that I just saw Carrie. After all these years.

  I think of all the perhapses of today. And yes, I know that’s not a real word, but the realness of words doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is Carrie and the fact that she is here and she’s alive. All that matters is that I have found her when I thought she was lost to me forever.

  I shake my head in wonder, thinking through my day one caption at a time, like a snapshot of my life, and how it’s all played out.

  Perhaps if I hadn’t agreed to lock up for Charlie.

  And perhaps if he’d won instead of lost.

  And perhaps if I wouldn’t have stayed so late cleaning and I would have clocked out at five like everyone else.

  And then, the biggest perhaps of all. The most important one, if you will.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t have seen Carrie again if all the other perhapses hadn’t have ever happened.

  I turn to look out the window, smudging a steamy square away so I can see out. The streets are dark, barring the lights on the sidewalk. The rain is still thundering down. But I smile, despite the gloom of it all.

  I choose to see the good in today. In tonight. The happy perhaps of my day. The glass is half full, because Carrie is here.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and I think of her face. The soft curve of her jawline. The quirk of her smile as she’d turned to him, Mister Fancy Asshole with his too-good-to-get-wet hairstyle and his expensive suit.

  Her hair was like I remembered: golden. I wonder if she’ll let me touch it, now that we’re fully grown and her head lice are gone. I bet her hair feels like silk, like I always imagined it would.

  It will run through my hands like dry sand.

  Like water.

  Like air passing over my fingers.

  I wonder how much different her body will be. She was a girl back then—a young woman, she had said. But she wasn’t fully grown. Her breasts were small and pert, pink rosebuds blushing at the tip of each peak. Her hips not fully developed, even at sixteen. The curve of her ass fitted neatly into the palm of my hand.

  I wonder if it still will.

  My body tingles with hope and anticipation. With delirious excitement at seeing her again. At the perhaps of touching her once again.

  I think of how happy she’ll be to see me again. Despite the fact that she ran away and hid herself.

  From me?

  I still wonder.

  Did she run from me?

  Or did she run from the memories?

  Chapter nine:

  I’m home and the woman upstairs is being banged by some new john. The thump, thump, thump of the bed against the floorboards makes me agitated tonight. Normally it doesn’t bother me so much. It even provides some small semblance of comfort most nights. It’s one of my constants, something I can rely on. The world and its people continue to fuck no matter what’s happening. We could all go down in a burning mass and people would still be fucking their lives away while the earth crumbled beneath their trembling knees.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight it grinds on my every nerve.

  I think about Carrie, and what she’ll think when I bring her here and show her my home—her new home. She never cared about things like that before. Her house was the shittiest on the street.

  Her porch paint was always peeling.

  Her lawn always overgrown.

  Her windows forever dirty.

  But perhaps she’ll care now.

  Perhaps she likes the things that Mister Fancy Asshole gives her—things that I can’t afford to buy her, not on my minimum-wage job. Perhaps he
takes her to nice places and buys her nice things—things that he should be buying for his loving wife.

  Oh Carrie, what are you doing?

  First things first, I’ll need to get a better job. But who’s going to employ someone like me? Someone with my history? The thought makes me angry again.

  She’s done so much with her life, I can see that with her fancy coat and shiny hair. And all the while I’ve done nothing with mine. She’ll see that too. She’s moved forward and I’ve stayed still.

  Of course, it’s not all my fault. I wasn’t always free, not like her.

  She escaped.

  She got out.

  Ran away.

  I pace my apartment, going from one room to the next, thinking of ways to make it nicer for her. Better for her. It’s clean, of course it is, but it’s not good enough for her. She deserves better. Much better.

  A lamp here. A rug there. A picture hung to cover up the cracks. But it will never be perfect, not like she deserves. But then that was what we were about. We were the imperfect ones. The ones that didn’t fit in.

  Her, with her lice-riddled hair and abusive father.

  Me, with my overbearing mother, hard-working father, and my own obsessive nature.

  We were perfect in our imperfectness.

  My stomach rumbles in hunger but I can’t eat. It’s not food I’m hungry for anyways. I stand at my spot by the window and I think of her. One hand down my pants, tugging on myself.

  And it’s like she’s here with me.

  Her hand on my cock.

  Fingers wrapped tightly around it, pulling it up and down.

  Her mouth kissing my neck.

  Stroking me.

  Sucking on my earlobe, and God, I can’t take it…

  I make myself cum. And it’s the best fucking orgasm I’ve ever had, barring the one I had with her. And I’m whispering her name and thanking her, like I always do. And I can’t wait for us to be together again.

  Like we always used to be.

  Before she disappeared and they told me she was dead.

  Long before the blood that climbed the walls and soaked into our clothes.

  I can explain to her, and she’ll understand. I know she will.