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“God, you could have waited until my head was out of the way.” I stuck out my hip and folded my arms. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Um, no.” His luminous green eyes shot me a venomous look. “I’m trying to keep that very thing from happening, not an easy feat with you inviting strangers out to dinner like we’re best friends. Do you want him? Is that what this is? Should I get out of your hair so you can bang that fool?”
A crack in the air like a single lightning bolt surprised us both. Staring down at my hand, it trembled. Newbie’s dazed, disbelieving eyes must have mirrored mine. I’d never slapped a person before, never used violence in any way my entire life. He flattened his palm against his cheek.
I slid down the slick polyester pine tree bedding to the floor. My left hand steadied my right with a tight clasp around its wrist. Newbie lowered himself onto the floor opposite me, his back resting against the paneled wall. I leaned my head back onto the foot of Kris’s bed. My gaze lifted to the ceiling.
I contemplated an apology.
“I’m sorry,” he said before I could decide. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
“I shouldn’t have hit you.” It wasn’t an apology, more so a fact. “I’ve never slapped someone before,” I said to the ceiling. I lowered my head to stare into his eyes. I winced at the sight of my handprint, blemishing his smooth skin.
“I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that. I guess we’re even.” He ran his hands through his hair. When he dropped them on his knees with a slap, his hair was sticking up.
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I was trying to be nice to Andy to ease his obvious concern. Can you imagine checking in a girl who’s acting strange, fearful, then seeing that same girl standing with a half-naked man who’s holding an unconscious girl in his arms? If his worry escalated, he could have called the cops. I wasn’t ready for that. Are you?” I asked.
Newbie rolled his head between his shoulders to relieve building tension. A sound, like crinkled foil, was released from his neck. “You’re right. A peaceful night’s sleep is what we need, not a night trekking through the miserable details of Joe and Doris’s mistreatments. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“That’s too bad because I was hoping for an answer to the obsessed boyfriend act you put on for him at the door.”
“That was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”
“Does that mean you don’t have an explanation?”
“Nothing that makes any sense.”
I scoffed. “After weeks with Joe, I can handle senseless.” His fixed, unreadable gaze captured my attention. “Will you please try?” I asked, my mind burning to hear his reasons.
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t,” he confirmed. “It seems an impossible task, putting into words the reasons why you drive me crazy.” His words stung. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“How is that not an insult?”
He tossed his hands up into the air. “This proves my point. Whatever I say will come out wrong. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Slushy.”
His eyes widened in shocked disbelief of my inopportune timing to say our agreed-upon word.
“Now?” His eyebrows furrowed.
“Why not? I think if we’ve learned anything from Joe, it’s that there is no promise of tomorrow. We should take advantage of this moment while we can.”
His expression faded from unreadable to absent. He sat in front of me, but his thoughts were miles away. “I feel as if I’ve known you my entire life,” he began, a veil lifted from his darkened eyes. “Yet I haven’t even known you a week. It’s an odd sensation, one exacerbated by a rising need to protect you. I’m sorry that I upset you earlier with that guy.”
“Andy.”
“Yeah, right, whatever.” The palest shade of red tinted his cheeks.
“Were you jealous?”
“I want to say no. I want to say that makes no sense, that it’s an impossible feeling to have for a stranger.”
“But...?”
“But it seems the only logical explanation, which brings me back to being driven crazy by your presence. Do you remember when we were in the crawl space the night Doris had done...what she’d done to me and I’d mentioned that I knew what he’d put you through? What you allowed him to do in exchange for mine and Kris’s safety?”
I swallowed down the sickening memory of Joe’s possession of my body, of his taste on my tongue. I summoned a single nod in response.
“I can stop if you want?”
“No.” My voice cracked.
“I’m not trying to hurt you further by reawakening this sensitive subject. I don’t know how else to explain what’s going on inside my head.” I rolled my hand in the air urging him to continue.
“After that night, a sense of possessiveness overcame me. When I’d think of you, I wanted nothing more than to protect you. When I’d see him lay a finger on your delicate skin, the sounds of your screams from that night rang in my ears. You got mad at me for not saying I’d kill him if given a chance. You misunderstood my feelings, though. I want him dead but have no intention of letting him off that easily. Death is too good for him. He deserves to live a long miserable life behind bars.
“Hearing you say you’d kill him was shocking for two reasons. I would never have expected that level of violence to come from someone as kind and selfless as you. I also worried I couldn’t protect you if he’d changed you that much. Knowing you felt that way added to my desire to keep you safe. I don’t want you to pay for his sins.”
Sins. I hated that word.
“And the jealousy?”
“I guess I want to be the only one protecting you.” He shrugged his left shoulder, the expression on his face suggested he was unfamiliar with concerning himself with someone else’s safety.
“That makes sense.”
He squinted, surprised. “Really?”
“No!” I yanked the elastic band from my loose ponytail. “Not really.” A ghost of a frown crossed his forehead. I swept my hair up into a tight knot. “Why would you think that made sense? You’re jealous because you want to protect me. You want to protect me because I’ve been driven to the edge of madness by a man who loved torturing me. And this is all because of that night in the crawl space?” I dug my fingers into my throbbing temples.
“Now you know why I’ve gone mad. What I feel makes no logical sense, I am well aware of that, yet the feelings won’t go away. I want to save you from Joe, from Doris, from that house, from anyone and everyone that ever enters your life. I want to do it without jealousy, but if that guy keeps flirting with you, that may prove a difficult task.” An innocent grin etched itself into his face.
A disbelieving scowl furrowed my brow. “I can assure you he wasn’t flirting. I can only imagine what I look like. Speaking of which, I want to shower,” I said. His face pulled into a tight expression. “Unless there’s more you want to say?”
“There’s plenty I want to say, like how unfortunate it is that you don’t know how beautiful you are. How much it saddens me that you can’t fathom a man flirting with you. I’ll only continue if there’s more you need me to say?”
“I think I got it.” I began ticking off the tasks with my fingers, pretending to have not heard his lies disguised as compliments. “You’re going to protect me though you don’t know why.” One finger. “There’s a good chance you’re going to get jealous doing so.” Two fingers. “You’d rather I not kill Joe because you believe it would be too easy for him.” Three fingers. “And, in performing these functions, you’ll be driven crazy by my presence.” Four fingers. “Did I miss anything?”
He held up his index finger. “You missed one important detail.”
“Oh?”
“I find your hazel eyes very alluring.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed, “Seriously? What is it with you that makes you believe it’s okay to flirt with me at the most inopportune moments? Were you like this before?”
“When would an opportune moment be?” he asked, evading my last question.
“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps after Joe and Doris are captured. Or maybe after Kris has been seen and treated by a doctor. Maybe when we aren’t hiding out in a motel. There is a long list of times when it might be appropriate. Now isn’t one of them.”
“Those reasons are why now is a perfect time. We don’t know what will happen after it’s all said and done, which is why we should live as if this is a dream we may wake from at any moment.”
“Trust me. This isn’t a dream. There is no waking up. There’s only surviving.”
“Surely, you know the world isn’t as bad as they made it.”
“I did believe that, but one experience was enough to jade me. Because of them, I’ll never trust anyone again, especially men. I’ll never open the door without a rush of panic threatening to drown me in a wave of fear. I appreciate your effort to prove me wrong, but I’m afraid your naïveté is shrouding the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Life as we knew it is over. Our bodies may survive, but everything else that made us unique is a bloody, dying mess. Nothing will be the same again.” A whimper came from Kris. I looked over my shoulder. She had turned onto her side. Her soft breaths parted her dry lips. “She’s proof.” I kept my voice low as I spoke to Newbie.
The bed behind me became his focus. I witnessed the change in his body language from relaxed to ridged. His eyes watered though no tears fell. When he returned his attention to me, I saw the awareness that comes when forced to see the truth. What Doris had done to him, what Joe had done to me, was nothing compared to what Kris endured. The time for Newbie to accept that fact was now. There was no more running or burying our heads in the sand.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shower.” I flattened the palms of my hands beside me and dug my heels into the carpeted floors. I pushed myself upright with my hands and rolled on my heels until I was standing straight.
I stared down at Newbie, offering him my hand. He shook his head. “Thank you, but I think I’ll sit here for a while longer.”
“Okay.” I walked to the table and the overnight bag resting on top. I carried it with me into the bathroom. “I’ll be out soon.”
“Take your time.” His eyes were trained on Kris’s still form.
I shut and locked the door behind me, unwilling to commiserate with him over an incident we couldn’t change but only hope to find vengeance for tomorrow when we spoke to the police.
The bathroom wasn’t huge, but it had all of the essentials—tub, toilet, sink, and most importantly, space to myself to do as I wanted. It was incredible how odd it felt to be free.
I turned to face the vanity and almost fell backward into the tub. I wasn’t alone. My mouth was open, Newbie’s name on my tongue. My feet prepared to run like hell, hide under the bed until the stranger was gone. I forced myself to calm down, try to be sane. If I could handle Joe and Doris, surely, I could handle the strange woman occupying my bathroom.
Has she been here the entire time? What does she want? Has Doris sent her?
As I opened my mouth to speak, she did as well. My mouth snapped shut. If Doris had sent her, she was preparing to make demands, perhaps tell me how long I could shower or that I couldn’t shower at all. It was discouraging that I was being held captive so soon after having been set free.
I took a step back. My fingers fumbled to find the doorknob as fear spiraled in the pit of my stomach. She stepped with me. With every movement I made, she made the same. She was taunting me, making me feel stupid for trying to flee a small motel bathroom.
I stifled an aggravated scream.
She did the same.
That’s when reality hit.
My fist hit the door, rattling the knob. I’d been afraid of my own damn reflection. My appearance had changed me into an outsider residing in a familiar but distorted former self. The altered girl in the mirror blurred behind welling tears.
When trapped with Joe and Doris, I’d refused to cry until I was free. Though I didn’t feel as if my nightmare was over, I could no longer hold back my pain.
“Are you okay?” Newbie asked from the other side of the bathroom door.
“I’m fine.” I choked back a sob.
I checked that the door was locked then turned the shower faucet hard to the left. Steam wrapped my body in its warm hug within seconds.
Before steam coated the mirror, I saw what had become of me. My eyes, shadowed with bluish circles, were sunken in their sockets like placeholders for when my real eyes returned—if they returned. My skin was paler than a ghost’s, though I wasn’t fortunate enough to be dead.
I tugged my hair from the elastic band. It fell around my face in oily tendrils. My bony and fragile fingers were missing three fingernails, one from the left hand, two from my right. After I’d been locked back in the crawl space the night Doris hit me with a mallet, I’d clawed with my nails and banged my head against the door. With little food or water, my body lacked the nutrients necessary to keep me healthy, including my nails, which peeled off with minimal effort.
My once fitted jeans unbuttoned and slid down my legs without resistance. I stepped out of them, discarding them on the floor like garbage, like waste from a landfill. My shirt, underwear, and bra joined the pile. I wished I’d had a match. I’d light them on fire and watch them burn.
I turned away from the mirror that reflected a foreigner just as fog erased the last of my image.
Without needing to open the bag Doris packed, I found an inexpensive, pink Bic razor in an outside, zippered compartment—washing my skin wasn’t going to be enough, I had to shave away every hair that had been touched by his hands. Tears fell onto my hand, which held the handle in a tight grasp. Nothing I ever asked or hoped for came to pass in that house. Tonight, though it was a small instance, it did.
I climbed over the side of the white tub, discolored from years of use and bleach cleaners. The shower curtain rings slid with little ease along the worn metal rod. When the scalding hot water pelted my sensitive skin, I held tight to the grab bar, anchored into the wall, for support. Water droplets lashed against my back like a flog used by a religious zealot in the act of atonement. With every whip, another tear fell. I dropped to my bare knees and prayed for forgiveness. Joe was to blame for most, but it was me who allowed him to continue. If I’d have fought earlier on, if I’d have ripped apart his flesh with my teeth when he laid naked beside me, I may have made it out of the front door toward freedom. Instead, I did nothing but cower before him, and two people suffered for my cowardice.
The razor’s handle dug further into the palm of my hand. I stared at it with awe. How easy it would be to slice open the veins in my wrists. The water on my head cooled as if an unseen force was speaking to me, telling me not to give up after I’d come that far. It was right.
I cut into my thighs instead.
And again.
And again.
It was cathartic, marring my flesh by choice, not by force. I fell back onto my calves. Blood swirled around me. My toes were blocking the opened drain stopper, causing the bloody water to pool around me, higher, higher. I splashed my hands in the blood-red water. My thighs continued to bleed, darkening the tidal waves rising and falling around me, threatening to swallow me under if I refused to resist.
A light tap on the door startled me. I curled my toes, clamped my thighs together, squeezed my eyes shut, dug my remaining nails into my palms, and waited.
“Erin, are you okay?” It was Newbie. I opened my eyes. The blood in my veins had frozen, slowing my heart, and stilling my body. It wasn’t Joe. It wasn’t Doris.
“Yes.” My voice broke on that single word.
“Are you sure? I thought I heard you flailing in the tub. I worried you’d fallen.”
“I’m...fine.” I fought the invisible hand pushing into my windpipe, stealing my breaths.
“Okay...” he said unconvinced. “Call me if you need me.”
“Uh-huh.”
The water around me had drained while Newbie distracted me. The cuts to my thighs were barely bleeding as fear and cooling water began to close the wounds, which were barely deeper than a paper cut. The grab bar supported me as I rose to my feet and continued to when my numb legs shook beneath me. I turned toward the showerhead. As if I’d imagined it turning cold, the water was once again scalding hot.
Water rained down on my slumped shoulders and low hanging head. I watched as blood, too stubborn to wash away, circled the drain. How easy it would be to end it all, to dump the rot and decay pumping through my heart and veins into the tub, stained red.
I tilted my head back. Water and tears poured down my cheeks. I’d come too far to give up.
Just a little while longer.
A paper-wrapped bar of soap nestled in the grooved cubby hole underneath the showerhead slipped out with ease despite my quivering hands. I turned the bar over and over in the washcloth. The soap had shrunk in size before I freed it from my grasp. Water pelted it by my feet until it gave up and slid toward the drain.
I began with my shoulders, kneading the lathered cloth into the knots wound tight below my skin. I scrubbed my remaining fingernails, my toenails, behind my ears. I washed every inch of my skin, leaving my thighs till last. I wrung what soap remained over the cuts, kept partially open from the heat though barely bleeding. It stung. I didn’t flinch. Compared to the bigger picture, that pain was nothing more than a pinprick.
I finished with my hair. I washed it until the tiny bottle of motel shampoo was empty. When I turned the shower off, I felt cleaner but not even close to thoroughly clean. After Joe, I doubted a day would ever come when his fingertips no longer tattooed my skin.
I tugged a white towel off the bar hung near the shower and wrapped it around my body. The two ends barely met. The hem rubbed against the razor blade marks on my upper thighs. The mystery of why motels buy towels too small for adults to use may never be solved. I released the towel, and it puddled on the floor at my feet. Modesty was one of many things Joe and Doris stole from me. I no longer cared if a stranger saw me naked. Joe’s stare and brazen belief my body was his to touch on a whim left me exposed even with clothes on.
I sat the unopened bag on top of the toilet seat. The zipper opened halfway but wouldn’t travel any further. I snuck my hand inside. A sock had gotten caught up in the teeth of the zipper. I parted the flaps of the bag, thankful to see a clean stack of clothes.
I piled a pair of black leggings, bra, panties, and a loose, long-sleeved pullover top—deep blue with beaded leaves embroidered on the chest—on top of the vanity. The shirt wasn’t mine, but it looked like something I might have worn. I wondered if Doris bought it the day that she’d gone grocery shopping, the day she’d left Kris alone with Joe. I put on the panties and bra then stepped into the pants. Lastly, I slipped the shirt over my head.
In the outside compartment, I discovered a hairbrush, toothpaste, and three toothbrushes. I pushed the new toothbrush out of its plastic and cardboard packaging. I squeezed on more toothpaste then was necessary, but the taste of mint, as opposed to cottonmouth and Joe, was favorable. I brushed with fervor until I was foaming like a rabid dog. I rinsed the brush, tucked it back in its package, and left it by the sink faucet.
Next, with a dry towel, I wrung the water out from my hair. I brushed in short, painful strokes. My hair, longer now and twice as heavy, was a mangled mess of knots. I blinked back tears that stung the back of my eyes. I’d cried enough in the shower. I refused to let anymore fall. Once done, there was a large clump of hair trapped in the plastic bristles of the metal brush. The metal clanked against the vanity countertop—knots and split ends were left behind for the next person to deal with. Though my hair was heavy, I let the wet strands hang down the center of my back, dampening my shirt in the process. It was different then the constant ponytail I’d worn since Joe arrived.
Different was good.
Steam coated the bathroom mirror as I opened the door. I hadn’t wiped it away. I hadn’t inspected myself after the shower, after I’d dressed, brushed my teeth, or brushed my hair. What the girl in the mirror looked like was irrelevant—she wasn’t me.
Newbie sat on a chair by the table. He was staring at a blank TV screen so lost in thought he didn’t notice me until I hunched over a sleeping Kris.
“Do you feel better?” he asked in a whisper.
I nodded once without looking in his direction. I tucked soft sheets around a sleeping Kris. A tear pooled in the corner of her eye but never fell. My heart broke a little more each time I looked at her. I sat facing her on the opposite bed. I stared until I couldn’t stand the sight of her any longer. I laid on my back, stuffed a pillow under my head, and closed my eyes, loathing myself for being too weak to bear her pain.
Within moments, I hovered somewhere near unconsciousness. I felt my legs move and soft sheets cover me. My pillow became wet then cold against my cheek, then the other side of the bed dipped down. My arm lifted then lowered onto a flat, warm stomach peppered with knife marks. I fell asleep stroking Newbie’s soft skin with my thumb like I’d stroked the leather suitcase strap earlier. Newbie wasn’t my good luck charm, but he was comforting. At that moment, that was what I needed most.