My house is only five blocks away, but the snowstorm makes my destination feel impossibly distant. I trudge east on Harrison Street, sucking in chilled air while tumbling, puffy snowflakes act as a million tiny sound dampeners, rendering my world as silent as the inside of a snow globe. Or coffin.
I pass a house fully prepared for Halloween. Bony arms reach out of the snow-covered lawn. One of the hands grips a bloody, plastic butcher’s knife, a jarring departure from the smiling bats and googly-eyed witches along the front porch.
I bury my hands deeper in my pockets and keep moving. I imagine faces in windows, watching me pass. Gazes tracking my direction, hands scribbling down what I’m wearing. What direction I’m headed. The mood on my face. Reporting back to their coven what has become of Alice today. And I can’t argue with the fascination. Who wouldn’t want to know what became of that girl nearly stabbed to death by her own friends, the little twins who were convinced a comic-book character was controlling their minds? Throw in a brother with some kind of wasting disease and a mother addicted to martyrdom, and you have a fully fleshed-out television serial.
I finally reach my house. Richard’s car is here, but he’s probably sleeping after working the night shift. I’m not in the mood to go up to the Perch, wake him, and ask if he remembers someone standing in my yard taking a picture of the house months ago. So I head inside. Turn off my alarm and go room to room, opening each closet door. No monsters. I also look under my bed, finding nothing but a thin layer of dust coating the hardwood floor.
The tingling begins. Incoming panic attack.
God, please no.
I can’t do this.
I’m not strong enough.
I can’t spend another night in a sweaty ball on my floor, wondering if each struggle for breath will be my last.
If I do nothing, the attack will come. In fact, it’s already started. On rare occasions, I’ve been able to stave off the attacks, but that window’s closing fast. I run down the stairs and grab my car keys and the gym bag I always have packed and at the ready. Out the door, into my car, and I wrestle through snow-packed streets to the gym, which is only a half mile away. Sliding. Floating. I don’t even bother with the seat belt, because, at this point, it seems laughable I should care about plunging through the windshield.
I make it.
Run my membership card through the digital reader with barely a hello to Tim. Race to the locker room, where I set a record time in changing. The tingling is strong now and moving up my fingertips to my hands, my chest tightening. Focus, Alice. I take the hand wraps from my bag and unravel them to the floor, black snakes. With a precision and speed borne from years of practice, I bind my hands and wrists into tight, powerful rocks.
Hair pulled back into a whip. Shoes and socks off. Grab my water bottle, stow the bag in an empty locker, and run to the back corner of the gym, the hundred-square-foot stamp where the boxing equipment stands.
No one is using this area, and if they were, I would have fought them for it. Fought and won.
I start with the heavy bag, working combinations in a smooth, steady rhythm, focusing only on what’s directly in front of me, pushing against the creeping madness edging into my mind.
Jab, cross, hook, kick.
Jab, cross, hook, kick.
I set the round clock. Three minutes on, thirty seconds off. In moments, sweat slicks my face, my arms, my thighs. It’s a good sweat, leaching the toxins from my body. I switch moves.
Jab, jab, left hook, uppercut, knee.
Keep going. Ignore all other thoughts.
I slip into a trance, transport into another world, one in which I’m in complete control. The bag resists me, but I hit it harder, cause it pain, defeat it one blow at a time. This bag is everyone who watches me. This bag is telling me I owe it fifteen thousand dollars. This bag is posting my real name and address to the world. This bag is a junkie ex-boyfriend.
Jab, cross, elbow, punch high, then low.
One round. The thirty-second rest is an eye blink. Begin again.
Sweat flies from my body and rains onto the heavy bag with every punch and kick. Round after round. I go until my muscles beg me to stop, then I go longer. I don’t care. If I die doing this, I’d be proud. Finally, I turn to the speed bag, then start hitting it one hand after the other, first using the backs of my hands and then the sides. I’m sloppy at first, and my exhaustion keeps me from establishing a smooth rhythm, but I find it. It’s here I finally feel the panic attack retreating, taking shelter against the force of my will, waiting to come out again when I’m more vulnerable.
Not today. You won’t get me today.
Over and over, two hits right hand, two hits left, repeat, repeat, repeat. The bag slams against the wooden drum with a hypnotic percussion, and soon, I’m locked in with it, unable to do anything else but lock in and keep going.
Thucka, thucka, thucka, thucka.
War drums. Those words flash in my mind, and then I see imagery. Armies on the horizon, moving toward each other in a slow, machinelike march. Suddenly, all I can think of is death. I can see it, even smell it. Crisped, rotten meat. Ripped, exposed bowels. Burned hair.
There are no guns in this battle—only weapons that cut. Broadswords, daggers, bayonets, hatchets.
I don’t stop hitting. I want to pound this bag until the seams burst apart.
Harder, harder, faster, faster.
They can’t get you, Alice.
They will get you, Alice.
They can’t hurt you anymore.
They’ve never stopped hurting you.
They are ghosts.
They are everywhere.
I’m screaming. Not in my mind, but in the gym, above the sound of my fists and my rage, I am screaming. Screaming at everything that has ever done anything to me, because all I want is to be left alone.
I close my mouth. As I let my swollen hands drop to my sides, and as the last trail of my voice fades to silent, the bag wobbles and then rests still. It’s in the same condition as when I started. I haven’t hurt it. I haven’t seemed to change it in any way.
Tim stands across the room. He stares at me with hesitation and concern, as if I’m an escaped animal who needs to be very carefully lured back into its cage.
“Alice,” he says. “Are you okay?”
My chest heaves with exhaustion. Sweat runs into my eyes, turning my world into a glassy haze. The tingling sensation is gone.
“For now,” I say.