Christine Zolendz - Brutally Beautiful

“Samantha, you’re sick, baby.  You should have taken all your medicine,” his monotone voice drolls.

“You’re the one that’s sick…” I spin on him as he’s clamping his heavy hands around my throat, cutting off my words. Thick fingers press into the skin of my neck, crushing my esophagus.  I kick and thrash wildly, frantically clawing my way to break free.   Pure panic rushes through my throat as I gag and gasp for the air he is stealing from me. Lifting me easily off the ground, he slams my back against the bookcase, my head and shoulders landing on the spines of all my books.  Pain explodes across my body; bursts of light blurs my vision.

He’s yanking me by my hair, dragging me along the coarse carpet of the floor, burning my palms and the skin on my knees.  I pull away, digging my heels into the plush rug, but his fists just twist my hair tighter around his hand and my body lifts off the ground.  Swinging my fists out, I fiercely try to connect with his flesh, clawing and punching. 

I stopped loving him. 

When I knew what he did, it was instant.

This, this is him just getting rid of the evidence.

Images of that monster clawed their way into my skull, how could they not?  It was because of him my hands trembled so much.  It was because of him that there was death all around me.  Monster.  A fucking vicious troll; a beast who I once loved, like an evil mythical creature that lied and waited until he thought I was powerless and struck me hard and fast, like the poisonous bite of a cobra.  Deadly.

Me. Unknowing.  Foolish.

My panic turned into hysterics. Tears streaked down my cheeks, raining down on my lap.  I let myself breakdown in the solace of the small closed off room, where no one would be witness to my weakness.  Even strong people needed to break sometimes.

I didn’t cry from fear, or hurt, or pain.

I cried for Samantha Matthews, the woman that they forced me not to be.

For everything I lost.

There are only a few words I have left in my mind for them:

You never should have underestimated me.

The puddle of blood that lies beneath the limp bodies of my friends is quickly spreading thickly across the floor.  There’s a heavy pool of blood in my mouth that spills out over the corner of my lips to mix with the seeping blood bath along the cold slabs of tile.  My breaths are noisy, raspy and there’s no oxygen in the room.  Did someone turn the oxygen off?  Why can’t I breathe?  Why can’t I get enough air?  I want my mum.

My math notebook is lying near my head and pages of my algebra equations are scattered around the room.  All at once, they absorb a swell of thick red blotches that cause the ink to blur and disappear.  The pungent smell of some sort of acrid odor lingers thickly in the air, weighing heavily on my stomach. 

Haunting, mumbled singsong crooning, whispers through the room. “Did you ever think, when a hearse drove by…that you might be the next to die…they’ll cover you with a big white sheet…after I splash through the puddles of life beneath my feet…”

I can hear the clip clop of footsteps.  The squish-squash of two boots squeaking and sliding over the bloodied tiles.  “Pl…ple…ease.  Please, don’t.”  I hear a shaky voice whimper. I can’t tell if it’s a female or a male’s voice, but I know it’s an older voice, so it can’t be one of my classmates. I know it’s not Mrs. Turner’s voice, because Mrs. Turner is lying in front of me with her dead glazed eyes staring at me.  She tried to shield me from what was happening, but I don’t think it made a difference, something still got through.  My body trembles with the coldness that is drifting up through the tiles.  “Please!  NONONO!”  The voice begs as a loud click echoes across the room.  Then POP! POP! POP! POP! Click!  Click!  Click!  Click!

Click!

Click!

Click!

Click!

CLICK!  I jerked against the steering wheel, my pulse pounding against my temple as I pulled up to the parking lot of the bar with heavy anxiety.  Yanking the gearshift into park, I ran my hands over my face to focus back on reality, trying to bury the flashback in my head.  My mind was heavy with thick red images as I tried to rub the blur of them from my eyes.

Focus.

I told my brother I would stop at the bar.

I have to go in.

I hated going there. I hated the long day I’d been through already and I just wanted to be alone, but I promised my brother.  So I stepped out, still dressed in my tuxedo, the one my agent said I had to wear to the prior day’s festivities, and I dragged myself into my brother’s den of hell.

I knew I was being irrational about everything, especially about the awards dinner the night before.  Any normal man would have been rattled with pride receiving the highly coveted Bram Stoker Award, but I was far from normal. I was barely able to sit next to Gary, my editor, and his wife Mable with her glazed over eyes that reminded me of a corpse staring vacantly into the nothingness.  Every time she spoke to me, her whiny voice clawed at my self-control, which I had very little of to begin with. It took just about all my energy not to shove my napkin down her throat, and watch her gasp and flail about for breath.

 When I was finally introduced, I tried to shake off my fury, but the twisted tension that followed me everywhere gripped deep in my muscles and seeped into my bones.  My speech consisted of a wave and a whispered thank you. I wanted to flip my audience the finger, but I held myself back.  I always held myself back, but I was always one bullet shy of self-destruction. The prize was thrown in the bottom of my suitcase awaiting its poor fate of being shoved in the back of the extra closet in my guest bedroom, never to see the light of day again.   I hadn’t even stayed the night in the hotel my assistant booked. I just jumped right back on the next available flight and headed home.  Now I have to pretend to be sane and normal and visit my brother.

I just needed to focus on now.  I’ll have one drink then leave.  Leave society for as many months as I possibly could.  The bloody images of my flashbacks faded from my thoughts slowly as I walked through the door, but they always lingered in the outskirts of my mind, waiting for the most inappropriate times to peek out.

Stepping my foot in, I instantly scanned the room, taking inventory of the number of bodies, exits, lighting, and furniture. Then I watched the patrons in their various states of expression.  It is a subconscious action now, as thought provoking as breathing is to me, but it’s ingrained in me nonetheless.

My brother’s place was packed, of course, it was, and there was a bloody tart gyrating on a glittery pole in the middle of the stage shaking her ass to the sounds of Lady Blah Blah or whatever the hell her name was.  I didn’t see my brother, Dylan, anywhere as I sat myself at the back, farthest away from everyone, back to the wall, nearest table to the exit.  Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven.

I’m staying exactly one minute.

No more than sixty seconds.

Screw it, time’s up.

I was just about to sneak out and hide from my brother and the rest of humanity for the next damn six months, when I glanced up and froze.  A small fluid movement caught my eye.  A flutter of something, someone, who shouldn’t belong, grace and poise, yet strong and vicious.   It pinned me to my seat.

The deep throb in my temple that always accompanied my flashbacks disappeared instantly.

Thirty feet away from my dark corner stood some sort of angel.  Backlit as she stood in front of the illuminated bar, I had a perfect view of her silhouette. Dark black hair tumbled wildly over her creamy white neck, falling to her tiny waist as if it were liquid silk.  Petite, yet voluptuous, with soft curves that had me instantly, thinking about sinking inside deeply and riding her hard.  She was wearing a high collared, tight black long-sleeved t-shirt, which hugged her shape but was covered by a torn up apron that coincided with the idiotic name of the bar.  She was dressed excessively conservative for being inside a strip club; it was as if she didn’t want anyone to see her flesh.  Like she was hiding.  The sounds of the bar seemed to fade into low murmurs and Lady RahBlahGah, whatever, was now quietly whispering that she was born some stupid certain way, as I watched the woman move.

That’s what I’m extremely good at, watching people.  Reading them.  I was always more of a voyeur when it came to social situations.  Notoriously introverted, I have mastered the art of hiding myself and detaching from everything.  I learned an invaluable lesson once. If I stayed silent for long enough, and just watched long enough, people and life would pass by me, as if I were invisible.  Or dead.

Her nails were short, just a bit longer than the pads of her fingers, and were devoid of any colored polish.  She leaned on one of the tables in the middle of the bar and tapped them on the table, waiting for a bunch of drunken guys to make their orders.  She wrote nothing down, wasn’t even holding a pad.  She was listening intently as the men seemed to banter back and forth in their blatant inebriated states.  Her lips smiled at them, full and lush, the kind of lips that when they speak to you all you hear is sex.  Any man could look at those lips and think sex. Hell, her whole mouth would be any man’s fantasy.  I shifted in my seat to ease the pressure those thoughts brought against the zipper of my pants.  It wasn’t even that she was beautiful, though she was in my eyes.  It was the way the features on her face melted together in a delicate balance of strength, intelligence, and sensuality that had me intrigued.  And the fascinating way she tried to disguise it, working in a strip club and looking as plain as if she didn’t think anything about her lack of attention-grabbing appearance.  Yet, she stood confident and hard, like she knew her hidden attributes were better than showing her tits to the patrons.

She wore no wedding band, no jewelry of any kind and not a stitch of make-up.   Then, one of the men placed his hand on her ass and I waited for what always happened in shitholes like this, the worst of humanity.  My lust immediately ceased to exist for the woman.  She’ll move her ass against his hand and flirt with him to try to make a few dollars extra tip from him.  Maybe she’ll give him a lap dance, suck his cock in the back of his pickup truck for twenty bucks or for a line of blow in the bathroom.  I’ve seen it a dozen times here already. I fucking hated visiting my brother.  Although, I must admit, I wouldn’t mind witnessing the sucking cock part, which might be mildly entertaining, especially with those lips.  I slumped back in my seat, already gutted that I wasted time thinking the whore looked like an angel.