Vicious (5 page)

Fucker.

They had let my mom’s hair grow out. Someone had pulled a comb through it but it still looked messy. She wasn’t yet forty, but her face was lined li
ke life had carved itself upon her in crow’s feet and frown lines. If once I had the impression of her as an ethereal moon goddess, now she was the deity of a most primitive culture; one that carved her out of clay and wove her hair with straw. Her once fine features had become hidden under a face swollen by medication. It was like she wore a mask, and that mask could now never be removed.

“You see that bitch there?” She nodded toward a nurse. “She stole my husband
.” Her eyes were wide and trained firmly on me as if I might disappear if she blinked. I wished that I could just disappear. Her eyes used to be a clear, unreal green, but now they seemed a dull and sickly color. Maybe it was the medication, or maybe I just never remembered things right.

“No
, she didn’t. You were never married. None of them would ever marry you.” I was long past humoring her. Even though she was more lucid today and speaking in coherent sentences, she still wasn’t my mother and I found it difficult to be kind.

She reared back, her eyes bulging. “You don’t know,” she hissed. “You don’t know.”

I sighed. Everything about her was irritating me like nails on a chalkboard. Especially her hair, I wanted to grab a pair of scissors and hack at that unkempt mane. Maybe her crazy was kept in that mane, like biblical Samson’s strength. Maybe if I cut it off then she would transform back into the mother of my memory. But she’d probably wrestle the scissors from me and try to stab herself, or me, before I had any chance of setting her free.

Her gaze was unsettling;
she was so full of hostility and it seemed directed at me. That served to stir up my own anger that I tried to bury with a shovel full of memories. But I couldn’t this time.
Bitch.
What had I ever done to her? I got to my feet, my sneakers squeaking on the awful linoleum and signalling to everyone that I was a bad daughter about to abandon my crazy mother once more. “Nice seeing you Mom. But I’ve got to take off. You see, you really fucked up my life when you became fucked up and now I have to deal with the consequences. Thanks for nothing.” I didn’t give her a second glance as I turned to leave. She hissed something after me, and I envisioned those words just bouncing off me and hurtling back at her, daggers out and ready to strike.

The mental health nurse gave me a concer
ned look, but I just flashed a smile at her and kept going. The hospital was so depressing that it was no wonder that my Mom had tried to commit suicide a couple of times. This place would make anyone hurt themselves. I didn’t take a deep breath until I escaped from the smell of disinfectant and ugly green linoleum.

There was a bus stop right outside, and other miserable people
waited there. They had probably just been visiting their own hopeless relatives because a lot of them seemed to be sucking in the air just as I had. Or maybe some of them were patients. I questioned the wisdom of having a bus stop right outside a mental health facility. It was perfect for anyone who wanted to escape. My mom did once, right after she was committed and I was placed with my first foster home. She turned up at school, and at first my heart soared to see her. I had a black eye and split lip from Connie and her friend’s welcome wagon party, and all I wanted to do was go home and cry in her arms.

But then she started talking about how we were going to the moon and needed cheese
to get on board the rocket. I wanted her to ask about my eye. I wanted her to speak normally. But she kept going on about the stupid rocket and the stupid cheese. That’s when I first realized that I really hated her. And later, when I punched and kicked Connie as she lay on the ground screaming, I imagined it was my mother. I would never have been able to take Connie otherwise.

On the bus, I blinked back tears and took short, ragged breaths to calm myself. My hatred was turning to guilt the further away from the hospital that I
got. I was a horrible daughter and a horrible person. She was rotting there, and I was doing nothing to help her. She would probably rot down into the linoleum, and no one would notice, and I would go back and there would be nothing but a pile of rags on the floor along with that scraggly, scary hair. I ended up pushing the heel of my palm into my mouth and biting down on it so the pain would distract me. A woman on the bus shot me a worried look, probably thinking that I was an escaped crazy. I narrowed my eyes at her and continued to bite my palm. She flinched and looked away, and then I stopped biting because I was beginning to get scared that I really was going nuts. I made do with feeling the bite marks that I had made and revelling in the pain.

I got the urge to cry under control by the time I got off the bus. It was squashed down tight underneath all my other worries, and I vowed not to let that urge loose again anytime soon. I hugged my bag to my body, kept my head down, and started the trudge back to the Malones’ house. The weather was getting colder, but that was okay. I liked feeling the chill in my bones. It made me feel old and wizened. Like I knew stuff. Important stuff.

Fuck.
I
was
going crazy just like her.

The sound of
a car pulling up beside me made me straighten my back and raise my head. There would be no more acting like a victim for me.

“Hey, Vicious Violet.”
I turned my head to see Damon, his car idling beside me. “Get in.” I paused. I didn’t want to play games right now. I just wanted to clear my head, or forget everything. And somewhere in the back of my mind I kept remembering that he was like one of the assholes that had strung my mother along until she began to break, agonizingly piece by piece until she stepped right off the cliff, or flew to the moon. Whichever it was that came first.

But when he waved a hip flask at me tantalizingly, I could forget all of that.
The silver of the flask glinted in the dying sunlight like it was a sign. To get wasted would be my oblivion. It would be my own version of stepping off a cliff, or flying to the moon. I wasted no time in getting into the car. If he noticed that I looked upset, he didn’t say anything to me. He just passed the flask to me, and I allowed myself to give the prick a small smile of thanks before lifting it to my lips. It tasted horrible, but I drank it anyway, because sometimes you have to endure horrible stuff to get to the good stuff. And I wanted something good. I needed it. I deserved it.

“Where are we going?” I
asked, my throat raspy from the bitter alcohol.

“I tho
ught we could go up to the lookout.” He kept his eyes on the road as we began the winding route that would bring us high over the city.

“Is there a party there tonight?” I passed him back the flask which he balanced against the steering wheel as he took the sharp turns with skill. I should have been a little apprehensive because there were no barriers to stop us going over the
edge if he made a bad call. But I didn’t care. Right at that second, nothing really mattered.

He shrugged in response to my question. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I don’t feel like partying with those losers tonight.”

I watched him, his jaw was tight. “You seem upset.”

His eyes flicked quickly to me. “
So do you.”

“Yeah.
But what I feel doesn’t matter because I’m not the one that’s driving. You’re not going to drive us over the edge are you?”

Something that may have been a smile tugged at his lips.
“Nah. I love my car too much. How about you? You’re not going to throw yourself over the edge are you?”

I took the hip flask back and took a sip. The more I drank, the less awful it tasted. “Don’t worry. If I do, I won’t take you with me.”

I clutched onto the dashboard as he suddenly did a handbrake slide, sending dirt and dust up around us as the car skidded toward the edge of the lookout. I bit back a scream as the car skidded to a halt. Damon looked over at me, white teeth on display as a full on grin lit his face. “You should’ve seen your face!”

“You’re a dick.” I got out of the car still feeling jittery, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.
I walked over to the edge. Giant rocks had been placed around it to stop drunken teenagers from driving off it. I climbed on one of these and hugged my knees to my chest. The whole city was spread out before me; darkness had come in quickly and lights twinkled prettily now. But it wasn’t an uplifting sight. I thought about all the misery which existed in each of the houses that those lights lit up. Maybe they were filled with crazy mothers and desperate daughters.

Damon hauled himself up beside me, lighting a cigarette. He offered on
e to me, but I shook my head.

“Health conscious?” he asked.

“Looks conscious. Those things dry the skin and make you look like a hag. Have you met Diana Malone? They should put her on quit smoking billboards. She’d scare anyone.”

He laughed softly.
It was a nice sound, and then I frowned at myself for thinking that because I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to like him. I knew his type. But still, tonight was a night not to care about anything. Taking the hip flask, I stretched my head back and drank deeply. I was getting drunk, and it was a good feeling.

“Why
do you live with the Malones,” he asked, taking the flask from me.

I giggled. “I fucked up with the last people I was with.”

“How so?”

I felt like laughing like a maniac. But I kept myself under control. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure.” He passed the flask back to me.

“I seduced my foster father and when everyone found out, he hung himself.” I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. I could feel Damon’s eyes on me. “Everyone blamed me.”

A few moments of silence passed before he said, “That sucks. Is that why you were upset?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m pissed at myself because I was such a bitch to my crazy mother. I know it’s not her fault that she’s how she is, but I’m still angry at—
“ I stopped short. Why the fuck was I pouring my heart out to this stranger? “You know what? Let’s make a pact never to talk about feelings or any girly shit like that.” I grabbed the flask out of his hand.

“You don’t want to know why I’m pissed?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to tell you anyway.”

We sat there passing the flask back and forth between us as the night grew darker and full moon became brighter. I tried to tell myself that she was shining just for me, that she had come out just because I had had a shitty day. Automatically I felt the injection and swirl of that power in my blood, and the unravelling within me stopped. It would be temporary, just like it always was, but it would do for now.

I took Damon
by surprise when I straddled him, my hands on either side of him on the cold, hard rock. “Let’s fuck,” I whispered. “You’re on the bottom.”

I didn’t have to take off all my clothes, but I wanted to. I slowly took them off, welcoming the biting chill on my bare skin.
It was too dark for him to see much of me, but I imagined what he saw. A ghostly white figure lit only by moonlight, and I wondered if he saw me as beautiful. His hand reached up to cup my breast, slowly dragging his thumb across my skin to caress my nipple which was already hard with cold. He didn’t have to do anything, I did it all with slow seductive movements. Slipping him inside me as I rocked down on him in a rhythm that felt good for me, and what I hoped was agonizingly torturous for him. I kept my eyes glued to his face. I had to keep my eyes open, because every time I closed them, I saw David hanging in the garage and his wife screaming.

After I had finished with him, I got down from the rock. My knees were grazed and stinging from the rock’s vicious surface, but I didn’t care. I stood on the edge, naked and pale, overlooking the place that was my home for now. I wondered what would happen if I fell. If I would tumble and summersault all the way down, and in the morning, a naked, dead girl would be found, empty eyes open and staring at nothing.

A grip on my upper arm pulled me back
. “Here.” Damon pushed my clothes at me. He was already dressed. I put my clothes on slowly, pulling the last item over my head just as pairs of headlights swerved into view.

Damon cursed, and we started to climb back to where the cars were.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.” The guy that greeted Damon was called Lane. Several other guys piled out of his car and the other one. Then Lane spotted me, and he grinned. “Okay, that explains everything.”

Other cars came into view. The party was obviously here. My mouth twisted in distaste as Ewan got out of one of the cars. I turned away,
not wanting to make any eye contact with him.

“You want a beer?” Damon asked me.

“Sure.” He signalled to someone, and a beer was pushed into my hand. It was icy cold, and my hand froze. But when I lifted it to my mouth, it tasted like heaven, as if the cold were waking me up from the depressive haze I had been under all afternoon. We leaned against Damon’s car, and everyone seemed to want a piece of him. I was more or less ignored, which was how I liked it. I felt the eyes of a few of the girls on me. Someone of them I knew slightly at school, and they said hi to me, but I felt like they were judging me. I tried to act like I didn’t care. But I had to admit, that as the evening grew colder, and Damon’s arm snaked around me to pull me to his side and be enveloped by his warmth, I did feel smug. I felt their jealousy like it was Damon’s cum that remained on my thigh. No one had ever been jealous of me before, maybe David’s wife when we started to get close perhaps, but that was the only time.