Girl Desecrated 1984: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders, page 2
Soothe my soul, man! I silently begged.
“Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
A gloved hand brushed my arm with the light flutter of a dove, drawing me gently from the prayer. I looked down to see Miss Anne, the woman I had been pledged to before Scarlett had arrived on the ship of brides. A warm Southern wind flipped the edge of Anne’s pretty bonnet, revealing her innocent, cornflower blue eyes.
“I am so sorry, William. We ah all weepin’ for your loss,” she whispered, softly.
I gave Anne a tight-lipped smile and looked away from her selfless compassion. Her lady-like fragility should have moved me. It would have once. And I did not feel I deserved her sympathy. I had acted the cad, jilting her, and breaking my wedding promise to her father. I should not be forgiven for that.
Anne slid her hand from my arm, the movement evoking a memory of Scarlett’s nails digging trenches in my shoulders as I drove her deeper into our feather bed. The effect of that vision on my constitution made me suck in a breath so sharply it whistled against my teeth.
Anne ran a concerned glance over my face. And Lord help me, I locked her into my intent stare, which I know burned with inappropriate thoughts. Her lashes fluttered, and her gloved hand crept to her throat as a blush rose from her lace collar to brighten her apple cheeks.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers.
Even dead, Scarlett seemed able to graft my thoughts onto yearnings a gentleman should never ever contemplate. But then again, no gentleman had ever lived a night wrapped in her smooth limbs, savouring such sordid and delightful affections as I had.
Scarlett’s attentions had raised me above God, but so help me, in no time she had thrown me down to the devil. And then, the killings had begun.
The damp air of the afternoon clogged my already constricted lungs. I held back a cough and loosened my grip on my hat before I accidently tore the brim off.
Across the open grave that awaited my love, one of the women raised a black lace hankie to dab at her dry eyes. She gave me a sly look beneath her raised brow.
Oh no, do not… do not lure me.
I turned away from the temptress to study the other women, my eyes darting from a black crepe veil to a shaded face beneath a bonnet, to the disapproving grey hair of my betters. They were unreadable, cloaked as they were, but I was sure none were shedding tears for me or my wife. These ladies had all despised Scarlett, from the very day she had arrived with her strange and foreign ways. They did not hate her because she was an abomination, for they were ignorant of that, and so they would stay. No, they hated her because she had been beautiful and alluring.
Scarlett was not beholden to the laws of communal man. She had followed her own path, and if there was one thing these ladies could not abide, it was a fine-looking outsider who did not follow their rules, and who ensnared their unattached men.
As harsh and unforgiving as the ladies of the Southern Colonies could be, their finer sensibilities and lack of intellect clearly left them unaware of the fact that Scarlett’s coffin would never fit into the bower between the tree’s roots. Any boy with measuring sense could see we would have to pluck her cold body from the coffin and lower her into the earth on her side.
The thought of lifting her from the coffin and holding her in my arms again left me eager as a young boy faced with his first chance at a kiss.
I would be the one. No one would step in and carry her to her bower in the earth. It was my right. Just as I had carried her over the threshold of our home, so I would carry her over the threshold of her final resting place.
Would her skin be cold? Or warm, as warm and pliant as the last time we had loved one another. I decided, then and there, I alone would be present when I moved Scarlett to the cradle of roots awaiting her eternal repose.
It would be hard to convince the others to leave before the task was complete. The men, like me, had coveted her, and feared her. In our secret meetings, they had voted to burn her on a funeral pyre worthy of Homer.
After seeing what she had done to those poor unfortunates, I would have tossed everything she had touched, every horse she had ridden, and even her personal slaves into those all-consuming flames. I would have burned my entire plantation if it would ensure she never hurt another soul. But I couldn’t burn her. I couldn’t defile that smooth, flawless skin with blisters from the overheating of her flesh.
Burning her would be turning my hope into ashes. I knew she was dead, but I could only survive that reality by hoping she would rise. Secretly, I yearned for her to return from the dead and be mine, again, and if she did… I wanted her body to be unmarred by flames.
The degraded thought scared the blood from my heart. I wiped a hand down my face and shook my head like a dog, trying to loosen the disgusting threads of grief-filled thinking.
Burying Scarlett would not be enough to clear her from my sick mind. I needed prayer, just like the good pastor said. And I needed punishment.
Tonight, I would seek out my overseer and have him whip the unnatural cravings for Scarlett’s dead flesh out of my own. It had to be done before I could find that man I once was. Before I could begin to live a God-fearing life again.
“Papa?”
Abitha, my golden-haired angel, stood beside me, prim and proper in her little leather boots and white gloves. My daughter was the reason for my courage, the hope for my future. She was a true daughter of the New World, and the only blessing from this entire sordid affair.
Squatting, I placed my arm gently along her delicate back. “Yes, mah dahlin’?”
“Magdalynne Rolfe said ah was go’an to be the lady, now that Momma’s gone.”
Abitha wrinkled her button nose above a shy little grin. I wanted to crush her to me.
“Is it true, Daddy? A’m ah go’an to replace Momma?”
“Yes, honey pie.” I smiled at her, tears of pride filling my eyes. “You’re go’an to be the lady, now.”
Abitha smiled ear-to-ear with a child’s excitement, clutched my hand in hers and pressed it to the velvety flesh of her cheek.
“A’m go’an to make you so happy, Papa, ‘cause A’m go’an to be just like Momma.”
The words twisted a strand of fear around my windpipe. I wanted her to be everything but what her momma was.
As I considered telling her so, her smile slid away from her face like it was wiped by the devil’s broom.
A sense of dread pinched my shoulders, and I wanted to pull my hand away from her sweet face, but this was my darling daughter… my flesh and blood. Surely…
“Just like Momma in every way,” Abitha whispered, with a look in her eyes that was far beyond her years.
Then she turned my hand and nipped the inside of my wrist with her pearly white teeth, and my world went black.
CHAPTER 1: COLONIAL UNREST
~
It was September 12th, 1984, and I, Rachel Cara Anam, was turning eighteen.
Eighteen was a big deal. Like every kid, I had looked forward to becoming an adult for years. I had imagined a wild college party with hundreds of friends surrounding me on my day. My big day! It should have been so exciting. It should have been awesome.
Should have, so sad, too bad.
Who cares.
My eighteenth was a life marker for failure. I was single, still hadn’t found a way to get to college, and I didn’t have the kind of friends who throw birthday parties. My dead-beat dad was perpetually absent, and my mother was locked up for life in the local loony bin.
I learned the hard way that life doesn’t always turn out the way you’d want. The important thing is to keep trying to make it go your way. So, family or not, I was still going to party because this birthday was a victory of sorts. I could have cut out of this shitty life long ago, but I’d stuck it out, and surely that was worth a slice of cake. Or a warm beer.
I had started drinking early in the Albion Hotel, a dark, local dive that squatted in the shadow of the most magnificent church in Guelph. I liked it there because the bar only had two windows, which created the perfect dim atmosphere for guilt-free, day-drinking and best of all, the bartender never checked ID for legal drinking age.
It only took me ‘til six to burn through the last of my birthday budget. I tried not to wallow in self-pity at being out of booze cash, but the disturbing lyrics of Floyd’s, “The Final Cut” pressed out of the neon juke box, feeding my dark thoughts.
I needed a distraction and cast a look around the pub. It was the first time I noticed the people sharing my space since I’d arrived. A few men were perched on time-scarred, wooden stools along the bar, regulars by the look of their defeated posture. Experience had taught me men are cheap and easy, so it wouldn’t take much to get a free beer. Normally.
Problem was, I had made a birthday resolution to not have sex or engage in any physical interactions or altercations with members of the male gender for one week. Sounds a little uptight, but those are the exact words Patrick used before pressuring me to agree.
Patrick tricked me into agreeing, really. He knows how much I want to get better and go to college. He felt it would be a helpful part of my therapy to swear off men for a week. He seemed to think drying out the well so to speak, would almost cure me. That seemed a little farfetched, considering my psychiatrist thought I was certifiably crazy, but hope is a valiant chum.
I needed all the help I could get, even if it was from my mother’s male nurse at the Homeward Asylum. Of course, while I was making this pledge, I was wondering if I could bend Patrick’s holier-than-thou attitude and get one last screw in before day one started. It was a useless thought. Patrick never responded to my flirting. He was a stickler for keeping it clean between us.
He did slip me fifty bucks to sweeten the deal, with a promise of another fifty at the end of the seven days. I thought the whole thing was a gas until I drank away my first half of the bribe. It was a stupid thing to do—to give my word. I’m no saint, but I have a few codes I live by and keeping my word is one of them.
Today was day one of my sex-free resolution, which meant the only option left for free booze was to call up my friend, Lene. I slipped my fingers into the front pocket of my skin-tight jeans and touched the dime I always kept there.
Every girl carried the just in case you need to phone home dime, because every mother put it in their pocket. I kept mine in case I wanted to call the asylum.
I left the dime where it was. Better not to use my emergency coin. I’d just wait to see how the night would unfold here at my favourite drinking hole. The old bar generally didn’t provide a solution to my problems. It just provided beer. But that can be enough for this girl.
“Cheers to that,” I said aloud and tipped up my last brewskie, just to make sure it was empty.
Trying to look flush with cash, I held up my hand until the bartender caught my eye and gave me a sullen nod. Then, I grabbed a wrinkled newspaper from a nearby table. Before I had read halfway through an article about Prime Minister Trudeau retiring, a new beer was placed before me. I reached for it, not taking my eyes from the picture of Pierre and his toothy smile.
“Put it on my tab, Chief.”
I tried to sound sure of myself.
“Better to pay up front,” the bartender replied, in his slow-paced, gravelly voice.
I looked up past the paper and smiled sweetly at him. “It’s my birthday…”
The bartender pushed his tobacco wad deeper into his lower lip, which made his Harley moustache jitter like a mouse on his face. His eyes held no empathy, and I figured I was going to lose this one. Then to my amazement, he walked away, leaving the beer on the table.
“Imagine that,” I said in wonder, realizing I didn’t always have to spread my legs to get what I wanted. Things were looking up.
Spurred on by the thought of some better luck, I downed half my beer and then leaned back over the newspaper, flipping the pages in the hopes of finding a job, or a classified ad from a Prince looking to sweep me off my feet. The ink-smudged pages began to blur.
“Nothing… nothing… noth-”
A spasm gripped my hand, twisting the newsprint with a loud crinkle. I dropped the page and shook my wrist out. The paper had settled open at an article on Pope John Paul’s Canadian tour.
“Oh, how Mommy would love that,” I mumbled, while massaging the cramp out of my hand.
My mother’s Protestant hatred of Catholics was almost as rabid as her Satan paranoia. I tried to laugh at her ridiculousness, but horrid childhood memories rivaling scenes from Stephen King’s Carrie choked my tongue.
Yes, I knew how it felt to be dragged by my hair into a cramped, dark closet. I remembered the bite of wooden floors under my knees. I understood only too well what happens to a child’s mind when they are forced to believe they are the reason for the unexplainable, that they are an abomination to God, and to the woman who gave them life...
Whoa! I slammed a mental door shut on the thoughts that threatened to sweep me away. A quick glance at the men across the room quelled my worry they might have noticed I was slipping down to crazy town. They were busy with their booze and man-talk.
A familiar tug jiggered the fleshy walls of my intestines. Sometimes, I’d get the strangest sensations deep in my guts whenever I got close to any form of zeal, like a church my mother dragged me into, or a Bible waving threateningly at the end of her arm. My childhood had done a number on my stomach as well as my psyche. So, I tried to keep the memories locked up to avoid whatever ulcer-like reactions kicked in when I thought of Mom or God. The two were so intertwined, I couldn’t be sure which would cause a reaction.
I put pressure on my stomach with my hand, and tried to avoid looking directly at the picture of the white-skinned liaison of God on the table in front of me.
His domed forehead wrinkled under a conical, peaked hat seemed to be pointing at me from the newspaper. According to the article, the Pope was supposed to be a good man, a godly man. I tried to see inside of him, but no matter how I adjusted my head, his benevolent eyes would not meet mine. Still, I was sure I needed to be wary. Why else would my internal alarm be going off at the sight of his black and white image?
If he was a threat, my mind reasoned, having his scent would be useful. I leaned closer to the paper and drew some air in through my flaring nostrils. The bar’s damp-towel reek streaking the table was all I sucked up. So, I pressed my face right to the Pope’s picture to capture his spoor. The newsprint felt cool against the end of my nose, yet sniff as I might, there was no odor of flaked skin to be had. Only the sharp oily scent of fresh printer ink making my eyes water.
“You’re not doing a line of coke, are ya? Cause it’s a little obvious right here in the open.”
A pair of grey, acid-washed jeans were standing beside my table.
Great. Caught doing something socially unacceptable. Again.
Cloaking my sheepish blush behind a hard-lined mouth, I peered suspiciously at the witness to my madness.
A fresh-faced, man-boy looked down at me with a hopeful grin. When I didn’t respond in kind, he stepped closer to my table. The movement startled a cockroach into a mad scuttle across the disfigured hardwood floor. The jukebox had dropped a new 45, and now, “Hotel California” added an eerie complement to the bug’s flight.
The man-boy said, “Don’t worry. No one saw.”
“What do you want?”
He shifted his weight to his other foot. “I just wondered…”
I raised my eyebrows, urging him to finish his sentence.
“I’ve seen you…” he swallowed and started again. “I work at the Homeward. I’m a part-time janitor there.”
My mouth formed a little “O”, but I didn’t say anything. I listened carefully to the Eagles’ lyrics about willing prisoners.
He cast his eyes at the empty chair across from me three times before he built the courage to ask, “Can I sit?”
“No.”
The hand reaching for the chair stopped in mid-air. His other hand held a bundle of sharp instruments sporting multi-coloured feathers. He gripped the darts in his thin fingers, as if hoping they could replace his lack of plumage and win him a mate.
The sharp points and the Eagle’s lyrics melding with my reality.
“Hoping to kill the beast?” I whispered.
“What?”
A confused frown crossed his brow, reminding me of the age-lines waving across the Pope’s forehead. The urge to catch John Paul’s scent tugged away at my self-control.
He rubbed his palm on his thigh and tried again.
“So, like I said, I know your mom.” His voice had dropped with his confidence.
I opened my hands and shook my head as if trying to understand why this was relevant.
Yet, I was worried he might tell me, ‘Your mom howls like a banshee when the moon is full’. Or he might say something like, ‘Your mom whips her food trays at the wall when anyone mentions your name’ or worst of all ‘Your mom thinks you’re the devil’s spawn, and she’d love another chance at killing you.’
Yeah, I didn’t need this crap. “Get bent.”
He moved his head from side to side, slowly. “No, listen, I have a note from your mom.”
“What?” I sat up straighter and looked at him with disbelief.
“Your mom.” He dug in his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it had been used as sandpaper. “She asked me to find you.”
I stared at the paper held in his narrow-tipped trembling fingers and set my teeth on edge.
It was probably a bullshit sermon where she would quote scriptures about Jesus casting demons out of pigs. Hell, what else could it be? It certainly wouldn’t be words of love or a short sentence about regretting not being there for me… no, not from my mother.
“Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
A gloved hand brushed my arm with the light flutter of a dove, drawing me gently from the prayer. I looked down to see Miss Anne, the woman I had been pledged to before Scarlett had arrived on the ship of brides. A warm Southern wind flipped the edge of Anne’s pretty bonnet, revealing her innocent, cornflower blue eyes.
“I am so sorry, William. We ah all weepin’ for your loss,” she whispered, softly.
I gave Anne a tight-lipped smile and looked away from her selfless compassion. Her lady-like fragility should have moved me. It would have once. And I did not feel I deserved her sympathy. I had acted the cad, jilting her, and breaking my wedding promise to her father. I should not be forgiven for that.
Anne slid her hand from my arm, the movement evoking a memory of Scarlett’s nails digging trenches in my shoulders as I drove her deeper into our feather bed. The effect of that vision on my constitution made me suck in a breath so sharply it whistled against my teeth.
Anne ran a concerned glance over my face. And Lord help me, I locked her into my intent stare, which I know burned with inappropriate thoughts. Her lashes fluttered, and her gloved hand crept to her throat as a blush rose from her lace collar to brighten her apple cheeks.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers.
Even dead, Scarlett seemed able to graft my thoughts onto yearnings a gentleman should never ever contemplate. But then again, no gentleman had ever lived a night wrapped in her smooth limbs, savouring such sordid and delightful affections as I had.
Scarlett’s attentions had raised me above God, but so help me, in no time she had thrown me down to the devil. And then, the killings had begun.
The damp air of the afternoon clogged my already constricted lungs. I held back a cough and loosened my grip on my hat before I accidently tore the brim off.
Across the open grave that awaited my love, one of the women raised a black lace hankie to dab at her dry eyes. She gave me a sly look beneath her raised brow.
Oh no, do not… do not lure me.
I turned away from the temptress to study the other women, my eyes darting from a black crepe veil to a shaded face beneath a bonnet, to the disapproving grey hair of my betters. They were unreadable, cloaked as they were, but I was sure none were shedding tears for me or my wife. These ladies had all despised Scarlett, from the very day she had arrived with her strange and foreign ways. They did not hate her because she was an abomination, for they were ignorant of that, and so they would stay. No, they hated her because she had been beautiful and alluring.
Scarlett was not beholden to the laws of communal man. She had followed her own path, and if there was one thing these ladies could not abide, it was a fine-looking outsider who did not follow their rules, and who ensnared their unattached men.
As harsh and unforgiving as the ladies of the Southern Colonies could be, their finer sensibilities and lack of intellect clearly left them unaware of the fact that Scarlett’s coffin would never fit into the bower between the tree’s roots. Any boy with measuring sense could see we would have to pluck her cold body from the coffin and lower her into the earth on her side.
The thought of lifting her from the coffin and holding her in my arms again left me eager as a young boy faced with his first chance at a kiss.
I would be the one. No one would step in and carry her to her bower in the earth. It was my right. Just as I had carried her over the threshold of our home, so I would carry her over the threshold of her final resting place.
Would her skin be cold? Or warm, as warm and pliant as the last time we had loved one another. I decided, then and there, I alone would be present when I moved Scarlett to the cradle of roots awaiting her eternal repose.
It would be hard to convince the others to leave before the task was complete. The men, like me, had coveted her, and feared her. In our secret meetings, they had voted to burn her on a funeral pyre worthy of Homer.
After seeing what she had done to those poor unfortunates, I would have tossed everything she had touched, every horse she had ridden, and even her personal slaves into those all-consuming flames. I would have burned my entire plantation if it would ensure she never hurt another soul. But I couldn’t burn her. I couldn’t defile that smooth, flawless skin with blisters from the overheating of her flesh.
Burning her would be turning my hope into ashes. I knew she was dead, but I could only survive that reality by hoping she would rise. Secretly, I yearned for her to return from the dead and be mine, again, and if she did… I wanted her body to be unmarred by flames.
The degraded thought scared the blood from my heart. I wiped a hand down my face and shook my head like a dog, trying to loosen the disgusting threads of grief-filled thinking.
Burying Scarlett would not be enough to clear her from my sick mind. I needed prayer, just like the good pastor said. And I needed punishment.
Tonight, I would seek out my overseer and have him whip the unnatural cravings for Scarlett’s dead flesh out of my own. It had to be done before I could find that man I once was. Before I could begin to live a God-fearing life again.
“Papa?”
Abitha, my golden-haired angel, stood beside me, prim and proper in her little leather boots and white gloves. My daughter was the reason for my courage, the hope for my future. She was a true daughter of the New World, and the only blessing from this entire sordid affair.
Squatting, I placed my arm gently along her delicate back. “Yes, mah dahlin’?”
“Magdalynne Rolfe said ah was go’an to be the lady, now that Momma’s gone.”
Abitha wrinkled her button nose above a shy little grin. I wanted to crush her to me.
“Is it true, Daddy? A’m ah go’an to replace Momma?”
“Yes, honey pie.” I smiled at her, tears of pride filling my eyes. “You’re go’an to be the lady, now.”
Abitha smiled ear-to-ear with a child’s excitement, clutched my hand in hers and pressed it to the velvety flesh of her cheek.
“A’m go’an to make you so happy, Papa, ‘cause A’m go’an to be just like Momma.”
The words twisted a strand of fear around my windpipe. I wanted her to be everything but what her momma was.
As I considered telling her so, her smile slid away from her face like it was wiped by the devil’s broom.
A sense of dread pinched my shoulders, and I wanted to pull my hand away from her sweet face, but this was my darling daughter… my flesh and blood. Surely…
“Just like Momma in every way,” Abitha whispered, with a look in her eyes that was far beyond her years.
Then she turned my hand and nipped the inside of my wrist with her pearly white teeth, and my world went black.
CHAPTER 1: COLONIAL UNREST
~
It was September 12th, 1984, and I, Rachel Cara Anam, was turning eighteen.
Eighteen was a big deal. Like every kid, I had looked forward to becoming an adult for years. I had imagined a wild college party with hundreds of friends surrounding me on my day. My big day! It should have been so exciting. It should have been awesome.
Should have, so sad, too bad.
Who cares.
My eighteenth was a life marker for failure. I was single, still hadn’t found a way to get to college, and I didn’t have the kind of friends who throw birthday parties. My dead-beat dad was perpetually absent, and my mother was locked up for life in the local loony bin.
I learned the hard way that life doesn’t always turn out the way you’d want. The important thing is to keep trying to make it go your way. So, family or not, I was still going to party because this birthday was a victory of sorts. I could have cut out of this shitty life long ago, but I’d stuck it out, and surely that was worth a slice of cake. Or a warm beer.
I had started drinking early in the Albion Hotel, a dark, local dive that squatted in the shadow of the most magnificent church in Guelph. I liked it there because the bar only had two windows, which created the perfect dim atmosphere for guilt-free, day-drinking and best of all, the bartender never checked ID for legal drinking age.
It only took me ‘til six to burn through the last of my birthday budget. I tried not to wallow in self-pity at being out of booze cash, but the disturbing lyrics of Floyd’s, “The Final Cut” pressed out of the neon juke box, feeding my dark thoughts.
I needed a distraction and cast a look around the pub. It was the first time I noticed the people sharing my space since I’d arrived. A few men were perched on time-scarred, wooden stools along the bar, regulars by the look of their defeated posture. Experience had taught me men are cheap and easy, so it wouldn’t take much to get a free beer. Normally.
Problem was, I had made a birthday resolution to not have sex or engage in any physical interactions or altercations with members of the male gender for one week. Sounds a little uptight, but those are the exact words Patrick used before pressuring me to agree.
Patrick tricked me into agreeing, really. He knows how much I want to get better and go to college. He felt it would be a helpful part of my therapy to swear off men for a week. He seemed to think drying out the well so to speak, would almost cure me. That seemed a little farfetched, considering my psychiatrist thought I was certifiably crazy, but hope is a valiant chum.
I needed all the help I could get, even if it was from my mother’s male nurse at the Homeward Asylum. Of course, while I was making this pledge, I was wondering if I could bend Patrick’s holier-than-thou attitude and get one last screw in before day one started. It was a useless thought. Patrick never responded to my flirting. He was a stickler for keeping it clean between us.
He did slip me fifty bucks to sweeten the deal, with a promise of another fifty at the end of the seven days. I thought the whole thing was a gas until I drank away my first half of the bribe. It was a stupid thing to do—to give my word. I’m no saint, but I have a few codes I live by and keeping my word is one of them.
Today was day one of my sex-free resolution, which meant the only option left for free booze was to call up my friend, Lene. I slipped my fingers into the front pocket of my skin-tight jeans and touched the dime I always kept there.
Every girl carried the just in case you need to phone home dime, because every mother put it in their pocket. I kept mine in case I wanted to call the asylum.
I left the dime where it was. Better not to use my emergency coin. I’d just wait to see how the night would unfold here at my favourite drinking hole. The old bar generally didn’t provide a solution to my problems. It just provided beer. But that can be enough for this girl.
“Cheers to that,” I said aloud and tipped up my last brewskie, just to make sure it was empty.
Trying to look flush with cash, I held up my hand until the bartender caught my eye and gave me a sullen nod. Then, I grabbed a wrinkled newspaper from a nearby table. Before I had read halfway through an article about Prime Minister Trudeau retiring, a new beer was placed before me. I reached for it, not taking my eyes from the picture of Pierre and his toothy smile.
“Put it on my tab, Chief.”
I tried to sound sure of myself.
“Better to pay up front,” the bartender replied, in his slow-paced, gravelly voice.
I looked up past the paper and smiled sweetly at him. “It’s my birthday…”
The bartender pushed his tobacco wad deeper into his lower lip, which made his Harley moustache jitter like a mouse on his face. His eyes held no empathy, and I figured I was going to lose this one. Then to my amazement, he walked away, leaving the beer on the table.
“Imagine that,” I said in wonder, realizing I didn’t always have to spread my legs to get what I wanted. Things were looking up.
Spurred on by the thought of some better luck, I downed half my beer and then leaned back over the newspaper, flipping the pages in the hopes of finding a job, or a classified ad from a Prince looking to sweep me off my feet. The ink-smudged pages began to blur.
“Nothing… nothing… noth-”
A spasm gripped my hand, twisting the newsprint with a loud crinkle. I dropped the page and shook my wrist out. The paper had settled open at an article on Pope John Paul’s Canadian tour.
“Oh, how Mommy would love that,” I mumbled, while massaging the cramp out of my hand.
My mother’s Protestant hatred of Catholics was almost as rabid as her Satan paranoia. I tried to laugh at her ridiculousness, but horrid childhood memories rivaling scenes from Stephen King’s Carrie choked my tongue.
Yes, I knew how it felt to be dragged by my hair into a cramped, dark closet. I remembered the bite of wooden floors under my knees. I understood only too well what happens to a child’s mind when they are forced to believe they are the reason for the unexplainable, that they are an abomination to God, and to the woman who gave them life...
Whoa! I slammed a mental door shut on the thoughts that threatened to sweep me away. A quick glance at the men across the room quelled my worry they might have noticed I was slipping down to crazy town. They were busy with their booze and man-talk.
A familiar tug jiggered the fleshy walls of my intestines. Sometimes, I’d get the strangest sensations deep in my guts whenever I got close to any form of zeal, like a church my mother dragged me into, or a Bible waving threateningly at the end of her arm. My childhood had done a number on my stomach as well as my psyche. So, I tried to keep the memories locked up to avoid whatever ulcer-like reactions kicked in when I thought of Mom or God. The two were so intertwined, I couldn’t be sure which would cause a reaction.
I put pressure on my stomach with my hand, and tried to avoid looking directly at the picture of the white-skinned liaison of God on the table in front of me.
His domed forehead wrinkled under a conical, peaked hat seemed to be pointing at me from the newspaper. According to the article, the Pope was supposed to be a good man, a godly man. I tried to see inside of him, but no matter how I adjusted my head, his benevolent eyes would not meet mine. Still, I was sure I needed to be wary. Why else would my internal alarm be going off at the sight of his black and white image?
If he was a threat, my mind reasoned, having his scent would be useful. I leaned closer to the paper and drew some air in through my flaring nostrils. The bar’s damp-towel reek streaking the table was all I sucked up. So, I pressed my face right to the Pope’s picture to capture his spoor. The newsprint felt cool against the end of my nose, yet sniff as I might, there was no odor of flaked skin to be had. Only the sharp oily scent of fresh printer ink making my eyes water.
“You’re not doing a line of coke, are ya? Cause it’s a little obvious right here in the open.”
A pair of grey, acid-washed jeans were standing beside my table.
Great. Caught doing something socially unacceptable. Again.
Cloaking my sheepish blush behind a hard-lined mouth, I peered suspiciously at the witness to my madness.
A fresh-faced, man-boy looked down at me with a hopeful grin. When I didn’t respond in kind, he stepped closer to my table. The movement startled a cockroach into a mad scuttle across the disfigured hardwood floor. The jukebox had dropped a new 45, and now, “Hotel California” added an eerie complement to the bug’s flight.
The man-boy said, “Don’t worry. No one saw.”
“What do you want?”
He shifted his weight to his other foot. “I just wondered…”
I raised my eyebrows, urging him to finish his sentence.
“I’ve seen you…” he swallowed and started again. “I work at the Homeward. I’m a part-time janitor there.”
My mouth formed a little “O”, but I didn’t say anything. I listened carefully to the Eagles’ lyrics about willing prisoners.
He cast his eyes at the empty chair across from me three times before he built the courage to ask, “Can I sit?”
“No.”
The hand reaching for the chair stopped in mid-air. His other hand held a bundle of sharp instruments sporting multi-coloured feathers. He gripped the darts in his thin fingers, as if hoping they could replace his lack of plumage and win him a mate.
The sharp points and the Eagle’s lyrics melding with my reality.
“Hoping to kill the beast?” I whispered.
“What?”
A confused frown crossed his brow, reminding me of the age-lines waving across the Pope’s forehead. The urge to catch John Paul’s scent tugged away at my self-control.
He rubbed his palm on his thigh and tried again.
“So, like I said, I know your mom.” His voice had dropped with his confidence.
I opened my hands and shook my head as if trying to understand why this was relevant.
Yet, I was worried he might tell me, ‘Your mom howls like a banshee when the moon is full’. Or he might say something like, ‘Your mom whips her food trays at the wall when anyone mentions your name’ or worst of all ‘Your mom thinks you’re the devil’s spawn, and she’d love another chance at killing you.’
Yeah, I didn’t need this crap. “Get bent.”
He moved his head from side to side, slowly. “No, listen, I have a note from your mom.”
“What?” I sat up straighter and looked at him with disbelief.
“Your mom.” He dug in his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it had been used as sandpaper. “She asked me to find you.”
I stared at the paper held in his narrow-tipped trembling fingers and set my teeth on edge.
It was probably a bullshit sermon where she would quote scriptures about Jesus casting demons out of pigs. Hell, what else could it be? It certainly wouldn’t be words of love or a short sentence about regretting not being there for me… no, not from my mother.
