EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD
By Natalie Swanson
It starts as a feeling.
The feeling that something is off,
Like waking up with a sore throat,
Slightly off.
Drinking cold water,
Hoping the feeling goes away.
But if it doesn’t?
What happens then?
The inevitable.
You walk to school on a particularly sunny morning. The school year is almost over. You hide with a group of other girls behind the gym and smoke cigarettes. It’s a rite of passage for a high schooler, especially if you’re going to be a senior in the fall. You don’t really like the taste of cigarettes, or the burning in your throat. Rebellion isn’t your thing. While your friends push the boundary with the length of their uniform skirts, you religiously check the length of yours to avoid confrontation with your history teacher, Sister Brennan, who is particularly fixated on checking hem lines.
You and the other girls are packed together like sardines into an alcove behind the school building. You all giggle and cough as a cigarette is passed around, while simultaneously fussing with each other’s makeup and hair. You’re engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke and hairspray, as some of the girls tease their hair, attempting to achieve Farrah Fawcett-like volume. It’s important to be fashionable, even while wearing Catholic school uniforms. Despite your protests, your friend Jamie puts a dark red lipstick on you. You try not to blush as she steadies your face with one of her hands and applies the lipstick with the other. You can already hear Sister Brennan scolding you for “putting ideas into the minds of young men,” telling you to wash the lipstick off before coming back to class. As you walk to class, you feel a headache at the base of your skull. You figure it’s just from breathing in hairspray and that it will go away soon, and you navigate through a sea of students into first period.
Buzzing.
A buzzing in the back of your skull.
Insistent, impatient,
Demanding that you pay attention,
Boding something
Insidious.
After school, you meet up with Jamie. Jamie is confident, smart, and objectively beautiful. You try not to be jealous when Jamie tells you about her date over the weekend. Kyle is a senior, one of the popular ones. She details all the things they did in his car, over clothes and under clothes. As you push back a surge of jealousy, Jamie tells you to call her later and skips up to her front door. The front lawn is perfectly manicured, proudly displaying a campaign sign for Reagan’s reelection. You smile at her as she waves back at you, but your smile drops when Jamie turns her back to you to go inside. There is a buzzing in the back of your skull that feels like it is rattling your teeth.
You wake up the next morning feeling unwell. Glancing at the clock, you realize you overslept. On the kitchen counter, Mom left a note. Her slanted cursive says that she got off of work late and had to leave again early to pick up another shift at the hospital. You look around your tiny apartment and see dirty dishes in the sink, a basket of unfolded laundry, and Mom’s unfinished mug of coffee. You brush your teeth and braid your dark, unwieldy hair. Grabbing a tinfoil package of Pop-Tarts, toothpaste still on the corner of your mouth, you run out the door, skipping every other step as you bound down to the sidewalk. Halfway to school you realize you forgot your uniform necktie and curse loudly, sending a flock of birds flying away from their perching spot in a nearby tree.
Near the end of first period, you swing open the classroom door, your black Mary Janes squeaking on the linoleum as you break into a run. Vomit rises in your throat. Bursting into the bathroom, you propel yourself into a stall, your knees slamming down on the cold tile. You stick your head into the opening of the toilet bowl. Vomit comes out of your mouth in torrents as tears blur your vision. You lay your head on the toilet seat, trying to catch your breath. Hair is sticking to the side of your face, and your head is spinning.
Black tar.
Thick and oozy,
Hot, vile, acidic.
It sticks to the collar of your white shirt,
The corners of your mouth.
You swish water between your teeth
To remove the stains.
You struggle to pay attention to your classes as the buzzing headache returns, worse than before. It no longer resides solely at the back of your skull. It creeps sinisterly around the sides of your head, behind your ears, making your cheekbones vibrate. Pressing the heels of your hands into your eye sockets until you see stars, you pray for the feeling to go away. God can’t hear you.
As you walk home with Jamie, you listen to her talk again about making out with Kyle in his car. Her excited voice is piercing, adding to the pain that already resides in your head. Before you can stop yourself, you tell her to shut up already, nobody cares. Jamie stops talking and whips her head around, beaming a glare toward you. She asks you what the hell is wrong with you, and says you’ve been acting like a space cadet all day. You start crying, telling her that you’re sorry, you didn’t mean it. Tears fall on Jamie’s shoulder as she hugs you, dampening her shirt. It’s okay, she tells you. So you believe that it’s okay. She kisses your cheek gently, almost in a motherly fashion. She asks if you want her to come over. Like a dark omen, the buzzing surges behind your eyes.
Jamie insists that you veg out together and you cuddle on the old, sagging couch and watch television. You wish it could always be like this, you and Jamie together. The buzzing is more tolerable when your head is on her lap, and she’s running her fingers through the ends of your hair. You turn to smile up at her as she laughs at the show. For a moment, everything feels okay. But then, Jamie asks to use the phone. She calls Kyle and giggles at everything he says. You feel buzzing right between your eyes.
Fingers extend.
Scratch, slap, shove.
Scream like a crazed animal,
and push her
Down.
Startled and on the floor, Jamie asks what the fuck that was for. You look and see the phone dangling from the wall by the wire, almost touching the carpet. When you look at Jamie again, you realize she’s holding her face. Little drops of blood stand out against the porcelain of her skin, coming from fresh scratches. You ask Jamie what happened. She asks if you’re trying to be funny. The buzzing in your head suddenly becomes a whine and you crouch down, holding your head. Jamie says you’re being a freak. She says that she and Kyle are going together now, and you need to deal with it, and it’s not like you were going to be little girls forever. Jamie says that you have to figure your shit out, and that she needs to go home. You cry and tell her to please stay, that you’re scared. She asks you what you’re scared of. You don’t know.
Later, you’re lying on your bed, tears drying on your cheeks. Jamie told you she thinks it would be best if you and her saw each other only at school for a while. You stare at the crack in your bedroom wall, trying not to focus on the buzzing, which has become unignorable. The crack on the wall seems to widen. You blink, thinking that you’re seeing things. The tips of long, crooked fingers emerge from the wall. You stay absolutely still.
A crooked thing,
Skeletal, rotten, inhuman.
Shining eyes peek through,
Gleaming.
It sees you, it smiles with teeth razor sharp,
It’s whispering something.
You’re mine.
The next morning, you hear rain hitting your bedroom window. You jump up to get ready for school but remember that it’s Saturday. As your head hits the pillow again, intense pain washes over you. You scream. Mom runs in, holding half-folded scrubs, asking what’s wrong. She sits down beside you and places the back of her hand on your forehead. You shift your eyes toward her and feel rage bubble up inside you. Why wasn’t Mom here last night? You needed her. You were alone. What if something happened to you? She probably doesn’t want you. She probably wishes she had an abortion years ago instead of marrying her loser boyfriend at eighteen. You’re just a burden.
Head spinning, you grab her hair
And
You
Pull.
You rip it out.
You bitch! You whore!
She will get what she deserves.
She will pay.
Mom takes you to the hospital. You tell her you’re fine, it’s just a bad headache. She looks at you. You try to decipher what she’s feeling and you realize that it’s fear, though she tries to hide it. Then mom starts asking about what music you’ve been listening to at Jamie’s or if you’ve been playing any new games. You respond, confused. She tells you not to lie. You insist that you’re not.
At the hospital, Mom insists they run every test on you. They end up referring Mom to what they call behavioral health services. Mom insists there’s no need. She tells them you’re a normal girl. They explain to her that normal teenagers can have such issues. She tells them no. She knows that is not what this is.
Wasting away
In your bed.
Mom says it’s best to stay here,
To stay away.
You become weaker,
You lose track of time
And you lose track of yourself.
You haven’t been to school in a week. You’re embarrassed and ashamed. You don’t remember hurting Jamie or Mom. Jamie hasn’t called. She is probably forgetting you more and more each day, replacing you with Kyle. Mom won’t touch you anymore and wears a hat to cover up the bald spot on her head. You feel utterly alone. The buzzing is your only companion, your last and constant companion.
In the evening, you hear your mom open the front door, home from a shift at the hospital. You try not to blame her for leaving you on your own, but you can’t help but think to yourself that if it were Jamie that was sick and not you, her mother would never leave her side.
You walk
Toward the kitchen.
Toward Mom.
Pounce, bite, choke.
She is your victim.
She is my victim.
You wake in your bed, unsure of where you are or what day it is. You feel thirsty. When you try to move, you can’t. You open your eyes and see that your arms are tied to the bedposts with strips of cut up sheets. Your feet are free and you kick them, trying to move. You thrash against your bonds, then wince when you feel pain in response. As you study one of your wrists, you see broken skin and dried blood encircling it. You cry out. A scratchy and foreign sound comes from your throat. It’s like the sound of a dying animal.
You hear footsteps coming down the hall. You steel yourself for whatever will emerge through the door frame. You picture that inhuman beast from the wall, thinking that it has killed Mom and is keeping you as its prisoner. When the footsteps reach the end of the hallway, Mom is there. Her dark hair is stringy and unwashed. You see a scab forming where her hair was ripped out. Her eyes are watery and bloodshot, and she wears an apprehensive grimace on her cracked lips.
Mom says your name. Her voice is a whisper, but she keeps her distance. You begin to sob, asking why she’s doing this to you, apologizing aimlessly. Mom still won’t come near you. She takes a deep breath and starts talking about how you’re unwell, but the doctor can’t help you. She grabs something from your bookshelf, a music magazine that Jamie gave you. She asks why you’re reading this filth. She doesn’t let you answer. She tells you she’s been giving you medicine that she got from her work to keep you asleep. You notice marks in your arms where Mom has been injecting the sedative drugs.
Thrashing, growling,
Bed shaking.
You try to jump at her,
To make her pay.
You spit fury at her,
Telling her she’s
A piece of shit,
A bad mother.
You watch Mom’s hand move up to her throat, where you see a little golden cross hanging from a necklace. You’ve never seen her wear this necklace before. She grasps it as she begins to talk to you about Father Ramsey, about him coming to see you since you’re so sick. You look to your left and realize that your wrist is covered in fresh blood, and it drips down your arm.
The skeletal creature emerges from the wall
Under the dark shroud of night.
Its eyes glisten as they bore through you.
It approaches you, less crooked than before,
Stronger.
It looms over you.
Soon.
When you fall asleep again you dream about Dad’s visit two Christmases ago, when he gave you a candy bar and a car air freshener as a gift. You didn’t even have a driver’s license at the time, but he didn’t remember how old you were. Mom didn’t let Dad into the apartment, so you sat awkwardly with him on the steps outside knowing that he was only visiting to save his own conscience, so he could tell himself that he tried to have a relationship with his daughter. He needed to find a way to justify all the shit he’s done. You don’t remember when things were good. You were too small at the time. But you do remember screaming, fights in the middle of the night, and Dad leaving for the last time. When you wake up, you feel a tear roll down the side of your face.
Father Ramsey hesitantly walks into your room. He winces when he sees you. He can’t seem to help it. He then puts on his holy father smile and asks you how you are feeling. You try to speak but only a gasp escapes. Father Ramsey asks if you’d like a drink of water. You nod. He walks away to go into the kitchen to get you some water. You hear him talking to Mom in the kitchen, and you hear the phrase “demonic influence” in their conversation. They must be talking about a recent homily he gave. You think about the last time you talked to Father Ramsey.
Generally, you didn’t go to confession by choice, but you needed someone to talk to about what happened. Jamie had dragged you to a party at Kyle’s house, back before they were official. You were walking upstairs to the bathroom when you felt a hand go up your skirt. It was Kyle’s friend Jason. Despite being drunk, the sadistic grin on Jason’s face showed that he knew exactly what he was doing when he then pushed you into a corner at the top of the stairs, pinning your small frame against the wall. You froze, unable to act. You should have punched him in the mouth, anything to make him stop. You kept the secret of what Jason did hidden for weeks. You didn’t dare tell Jamie, especially since she started dating Kyle officially a couple days after the party.
When you felt like you couldn’t keep the secret anymore, you decided to tell Father Ramsey. You couldn’t bear to tell your mom. You went to the confessional specifically because you knew you couldn’t look him in the eyes when you said it. After you told Father Ramsey what happened, he started asking you questions. He asked for a detailed description of what Jason did to you. You told him, holding back tears. He asked if you screamed. You didn’t. He asked if you told the police or your mom. You didn’t. He asked if your skirt was too short. It wasn’t. After he questioned you, Father Ramsey started telling you that God asks us all to forgive and that he was sure Jason was really sorry. You then told Father Ramsey about how Jason and Kyle whisper about you in chemistry class. Father Ramsey sighed and explained to you that sometimes boys are foolish, that Jason will learn his lesson. You asked Father Ramsey what he was going to do to help you. He told you he’d pray for you.
Father Ramsey comes back into your room with a glass of water. You instinctively try to reach for it but you’re still tethered to the bed. Father Ramsey hesitates before he sets the glass down on your nightstand and undoes the restraint holding your left wrist. Your swollen wrist stings as you rotate it to release the stiffness. Father Ramsey picks the glass up again and hands it to you. When you take it from him, it slips from your grasp and bounces off of the teal-colored carpet, a dark wet spot spilling from it. Father Ramsey exclaims in surprise and walks toward you to get the glass off of the ground. As you watch him, you remember how he wouldn’t help you. How he knows what Jason did and still did nothing except promise to pray for you. You bet he forgot to do even that.
As he bends down,
You snatch the cross around his neck
And yank down swiftly.
His head slams the nightstand,
The skin on his forehead splitting.
Fresh blood seeps out
From the jagged wound.
Now the bastard feels pain too.
Your hand, it’s
Burning.
Palm towards you, you see it.
There is the mark of the cross
Burned into your pale skin.
You blink,
And it’s gone.
The morning sun shines through your window. You watch the light crawl up the wall as the time slowly passes. Drifting in and out of consciousness, you notice a small black speck on the wall. You squint, and the speck moves. It crawls down the wall and onto the mattress. You lie still as it moves onto your arm. It’s a spider, but you don’t flinch. The spider seems to stare at you with its reflective eyes. You suddenly turn your head as you hear a car drive by, blasting Madonna from its speakers. An image flashes in your mind. Jamie, in her Halloween costume.
She looked unbelievably stunning, just like Madonna. You were wearing your ill-fitting Minnie Mouse costume from the Halloween before. Jamie insisted on doing your hair and makeup, even though you didn’t see the point. You were sitting together on the floor of Jamie’s bedroom, knees touching, faces inches away from each other. As Jamie put the finishing touches on your makeup, she told you how pretty you looked. Before you knew what you were doing, you leaned forward and kissed her. Jamie reciprocated for a few moments then pulled back, moving away and standing up. With her back turned to you, Jamie faintly whispered something that sounded like “I can’t” and cleared her throat. From then on, she acted like nothing happened, and you never talked about it, with her or anyone else. Tears fill your eyes as you remember. Stupid. You never should have done that. It was months ago, and you tried to convince yourself Jamie forgot about it. Even though you worried she’d cast you out and never speak to you again. She could have told the whole school what you did, but she didn’t.
Out of the sun on the wall,
A figure appears.
It is bright,
Angelic.
Its peaceful countenance
Comforts you until it distorts,
Becoming disfigured and crooked.
I’m still here.
The next day, in the corner of your room, Mom and Father Ramsey whisper about you. In their hushed tones, you hear words that you’ve only heard in Bible study. The two of them keep looking over at you. You hear your mom ask Father Ramsey if he’s sure. He nods, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He tells her it’s what’s best for everyone. You hear a knock at the door. Your mom walks out of your room to go and get it. You whimper, trying to get Father Ramsey’s attention. He turns his head and you swear you see a flash of red eyes, a sinister smile. You blink the image away.
Mom walks in with another man. He’s tall, and his face is obscured in shadow. He talks to you in a deep voice, telling you it will be over soon. He’s holding something in his hand but you can’t see what it is. His dark robes make a deep swishing sound as he walks closer. You struggle against your bindings. You think that he must be here to kill you. What does the Church do with people like you? You try to think of which sins you committed to deserve this, why they are doing this to you. Father Ramsey might have told Mom about Jason, how it was actually your fault. Maybe Jamie told Mom about how you kissed her. You hear the accusations: temptress, homosexual. The sins you hear about at church, in school. You plead for the tall man to leave you alone. Your mom avoids eye contact with you as she presses your shoulders into the mattress at the tall man’s request. He touches your forehead and you scream.
Desperate to survive,
You throw your weight forward.
Close to the tall man,
You smell his sweat.
Teeth find flesh
And hold on.
You feel your head slam hard against the metal headboard and you momentarily think you’re back at the party, trapped by Jason. But you taste iron in your mouth. Through blurred vision, you see the tall man clutching his face, blood oozing from between his fat fingers. He is yelling at Father Ramsey and Mom now, saying that they have to finish this before your soul is lost. The tall man asks Mom for a first aid kit and the two of them go into the kitchen. It’s only you and Father Ramsey now. He won’t look at you. You pull at the restraint on your right wrist and realize that it has loosened. You realize that one hard pull could free you. You have to escape. You can’t die here in this apartment, tied to your bed. You have to see Jamie again, even if it’s just one last time.
Pulling with all your strength,
Your right arm is free.
Screaming to keep them away,
You untie your left arm.
You’re a cornered animal:
Feral,
Desperate.
The tall man, Father Ramsey, and Mom all try to block the bedroom door. You run as fast as you can and dive through a spot between their legs. You stumble down the hallway and out the front door of the apartment. As your bare feet hit the metal stairs outside one by one, you think of where you can go. Your legs are weak and your clothing is dirty and bloodied. It’s dark outside and you can see the glow of the liquor store sign across the street. Maybe someone there could call the police and you could explain everything to them, how Father Ramsey and your mom are trying to destroy you. You start to run toward the street and you hear your mom’s desperate cries. As your bare feet hit the road, you hear a screeching noise. You turn your head.
Crushing impact launches you
Into the air.
Your body slams the pavement,
Bones snapping,
Flesh grating off,
Blood spilling beneath you.
You lie there, feeling everything.
Then you feel nothing.