Shattergirl: Hyr Testimony
Author: Alex S. Johnson
Date: 2017-02-11 08:00:00+00:00
Description: A suburban housewife is kidnapped from a shopping mall and subject to a harrowing ordeal by a homeless woman, Charlie Morgan, who may or may not be completely, criminally, insane.
Publisher: Independently published

Shattergirl, Hyr Testimony

BY ALEX S. JOHNSON

Nocturnicorn books 2017

“Shatterrgirl: Hyr Testimony” is copyright ©2017 by Alex S. Johnson. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in any form.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places and events may be a product of paranoia. Please seek professional help.

For Karina Sims and Lydia Lunch

I feel the winds of the wings of madness

Baudelaire

Table of Contents

1. The Trash

2. SKULLFUCK OMEGA!!! (STAINS)

3. LENA HARRINGTON

4. Charlie and the Death Train

5. Lucy

6. Husband

7. Bordello of Death

8. Transubstantial

1. The Trash

Spit. Split. Spatter. Splatter. And all that trash.

What do you see when you look at me? Wreckage. Something split, broken, bent. A sorry tale of society’s butt ends, piled up by the roadside. Or huddled under the concrete pillars of highway onramps covered with leaves and dirt—you’d think they were junk if you saw them at all. Or outside shopping malls with a cart they push on squeaky wheels to the end of the sidewalk. These squeaking sounds do not summon the grease, although occasionally, the police show up to protect the wealthy and their lattes from the homeless woman and her predations. The baggage turns around again, doing that Sisyphus shuffle on flat ground in high heels filched from a department store Dumpster. Her center of gravity lies in her stomach which resembles a bowling ball. The wheels stick. She grunts. Hey lady you’re walking funny. My response would be (muy Clint Eastwood): well, at least I’m walking, kid. I’ll hobble if I have to. Hey, can you drive a shopping cart? Anyway.  Sometimes dresses inappropriate to the weather—green Winter coats with red fur collars kind of thing—and definitely for all occasions except homelessness, wrong wrong wrong.

Because, folks, that’s what we have to fucking wear. We’re trash and we own it. And on some days, the clothes are absolutely perfect.

Don’t turn your head. That’s rude. Rudeness will cost a bitch.

I don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for you. You think you’re so free, but your choices are limited. Maybe every once in awhile you get a girl’s night out, but you have to change at your girlfriend’s so you can go to that bar where those hot guys hang. You don’t dare try anything. You’re a voyeur. Very close to a drooler. Your BFF makes fun of you, and while it’s mean and unfair, and you know gawking at the goods and lying to your husband about it is just a single, slippery step away from face down on a mattress at the No Tell Motel while some sleazy stranger slathered in tattoos fucks your ass, you abstain. That doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a coward. And not free.

Just a second, I think I heard something.

Did you hear that? That gurgling sound? Fucking pipes, man. Now I’ll have to get out the tools. They’re not meant for plumbing. I mean, I don’t use them that way. But gurgling over time becomes a vewy vewy vexing sensation.

Could be ghosts, too. Never know. A lot of bad things happened here, besides the fires and the floods and the plague. Most of the ghosts are all right, but some…you’ll probably meet Lucy. Just show no fear. That’s what she feeds on.

You have the right to be scared now, but I’m warning you, after awhile, you will lose that right. There’s nothing more annoying than a grown woman with eyes as big as saucers looking like a puppy you’re drowning. Jesus Wept. You have it all over me and you think you’re the victim? How’d you like to come home to all this clutter? Maybe you can be my maid. Oh for fuck’s sakes, I was joking.

Kinda.

A nice hot PVC maid dusting with a ball-gag…

Ever watch those kinda shows? Yeah, I know you do. Been at your window a bunch of times. Infra-green flashes, see them? You put on a robe and rushed out, but I was already far away. Back to my hidey-hole. Don’t worry. They’re still on my phone. I haven’t gotten around to transferring the jpegs.

Just sit a minute and stop running your mouth. Ok, you can talk now.

What?

Sorry. I can’t HEAR YOU. What’s this mumble mumble shit? Wanna see mah teeyuts, girlie gurl? Ermigard, mah brersts er perping ert! Nah, I didn’t think you went that way. Dommage. We might have had some good fun. Like those paperbacks you hide from your husband. Fifty Shades of De Sade Lite? Didja think I didn’t know about those? And guess who else knows? Hubby. He’s been dying to ask you about a three-way. But the man is no damn good for you. You know it, you’re just too blind to see. Even with those gorgeous hazel eyes.

You don’t think I made choices, good ones? The same as you? Probably better than yours? Yeah. So don’t look at me that way.

It’s nothing. I’ll be all right.

I told you it’s nothing.

I got this jacket from Army-Navy surplus and it don’t fit me but it might fit you. See how that works? I take a theme and expand upon it. Yes, I know that ain’t correct English. So get a spellcheck for chrissake.

I’m a mess a bottomless pit a SHATTERGIRL but what carries me through is my gift. You see, I clone. People, discourse, relationships, the news, littrature, cereal boxes, whatever.

And I’m good.

A very good, very efficient, very scary copycat. When I do clone, and I don’t mean that recombinant DNA shit, but flashclone—glamor—I become invisible. That is why they never see a bitch coming. He didn’t see coming. Or him—the other one. They’ll never be found. And you won’t find me either. NOT that you’ll come looking, because—yeah, the redirect thing. We discussed that. I have these tunnels wired, baby. Booby traps and shit.

They’re all DOWN HERE WITH ME.

So, basically, I can become very, very small. I stuff the SHATTERGIRL inside me like one of those camping jackets, you know, where you can stuff the whole thing inside one pocket, zip that fucker shut? I’m a big fan of that shit. Anything reversible, or inside out. Marsupials can teach us a lot. So, I marsupiate—yep, made that one up—and gestate outta my basic SHATTERSELF to walk among y’all, friendly like.

Why are you walking away? Didn’t your mom ever teach you nothin? Oh yeah, you can’t WALK AWAY except in your head. You and I, we have a whole lot in common that way. I can see your eyes searching, scanning your brain for a hideaway. Don’t you wish your brain could marsupiate like me? But you know it’s not that simple. I don’t have a pouch in there either. What I have are WALLS. Like the nice, sturdy brick walls that keep you down here with me, even if you had some unfortunate notion like escaping. Nothing ventured, nothing gained? Maybe. But I wouldn’t test the WALLS.

Ok, so say I know nothing. I’m open to suggestions.

My mom sure taught me a whole lotta nothin. She taught me to be nothing, believe in nothing, have nothing. Dad was the one who taught me something. With his belt. And his junk.

Dad was all right. I had to, you know, take care of him. Obviously. Wanna know where I got these STAINS?

Ok, I have a question for you. I’ll let you talk. Stop fidgeting. And gimme a godam cigarette already. You don’t smoke? Shit. I think I’ve got one in here.

SHE POKES AROUND IN HER JACKET LOOKING FOR THE NICOTINE PRODUCT.

(That is an instance, an example of my invisibility. Third person. A lot of authors do that fancy pants shit. I’m not a writer—I do. Vive le difference.

Spit split spatter scatter. Have you ever seen a human nightmare? I mean, they look like people. Oh good people, listen to my sermon. Listen to Jesus. Humble yourself before JIZZUSALL. Drink his damn drink. Smoke his damn smoke. Oh, you do have some TOBACCO CIGARETTES after all. Yes, officer, these are regulation tobacco as provided by the good farmers of Virginia. We wouldn’t want you to think it was something else. The funny baccy.

Oh lord I have to stop fucking around and get down to business. My IQ tests were through the roof. I think that’s why Mom took me out of school when I was 10. Or 12. Daddy was my teacher. And so was JIZZUS. But drinking from that chalice may possibly have dumbed me down. I couldn’t tie my own fucking shoelaces. So they called me names. Slut. Mut. Nut. Squishy BUTT-MUTT.

Spatter split scatter bitch. I named myself SHATTERGIRL after the superheroin of the same name. That is not a typo. You need to go through the gates of DRUG HELL to get to NIRVANA or some shit. You really don’t.

I have to get this down before it makes its own plans dammit.

Ok, whattya want to know? Seriously you CAN ask me anything. I’m a farmer’s daughter a bother to the authorities the witch in the well a ding dong bell a brat a twat…but these are my real teeth. I’ll show you.

I name thee SCUZZ!!! You think when I said my real teeth I meant the ones I was born with? No, man. These got socked out of me by some godamn lesbian in a bar. I wasn’t coming on to her girlfriend or anything. I swear to tell the tooth and nothing but the tooth. No, this is a set of falsies. But they go over some of my actual dentition. I’ll show you that too. Oh, stop whining! I didn’t tie you too tight, did I?

Ever notice how teats and teeth sound alike on that superbad dyslexic heroin shit?

SOME TIME LATER…SAME HELLHOLE

All I want is for someone to listen to me.

You, for example, seemed like a sympathetic type. It’s something about your eyes—no, please don’t look away. I want you to see that I will not hurt or harm you. But I didn’t think you would come willingly. Even though—but never mind. We have more that links us together than sets us apart, but I’m not the one in denial. When I release you, you’ll know I’ve told the tooth.

HA HA. Get it? Because…oh, never mind. For awhile the alleged victim loses their sense of humor entirely.

Sigmund Freud thought the teeth had something to do with the eyes which had something to do with the cunt which had something to do with MEN and their fucking passionate obsessions with their COCKS and what might happen to them under certain ahem conditions. But there’s no Freud for ladies. What with the bits being tucked in and all, MEN assume we have nothing; nothing to see, nothing to be afraid for, just move it along.

That is where they would be WRONG. You know what I’m talking about. You’re a sister. Nod and say thank you and please tell me more. All right, the tape, I know…redneck bondage, right? But that’s not what this is about. Maybe it might have been sometime in the past, which is where I got some of these STAINS.

Hey, I’m trying to lend a little humor to what would be an otherwise deeply unpleasant situation. I don’t think you appreciate the effort I’m putting into this.

What’s the matter, kid? Cat drugged you DUMB?

Ok so.

My name is Charlie Morgan. You can nod. Hi, Charlie, you fucking freak of nature. Could you please untie me so I can go back to my mundane life with the two kids and the husband who beats me but not so people can see, not physically—he’s a nice guy, he’s just got a high-pressure job. Could you please release me back into captivity?

So you see, it’s more than just a case of crazy bitch kidnaps suburban soccer mom with possible lesbian rape in mind. Although that can be arranged—ha ha! Well, it’s already a terror scene, so…and I do have the implements for that task. But I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m taking you out of your comfort zone, beyond your threshold and, unfortunately, muted—think of it as a pause button, because you talk an awful lot of shit.

It’s more than just homeless head case jumps the Queen of the Cheerleaders—go OMEGAS!—and takes her down into some awful bad places so she can torture her to death while filming it for Youtube. Although that too can be easily arranged. But I’m not into that snuff crap either.

This is not a movie, this is not a game, and I’m not some kind of distaff Jigsaw come to test you. I can and will instruct you, though. For example, I want you to look me in the fucking eyes and not with that horrible about-to-die bunny fatalism. Hey, the OMEGAS didn’t always win, right? And you hid your tears so you could be brave for the Captain, Ken Harrington. Captain Ken. OH CAPTOR MY CAPTAIN. Whom you eventually married. And then you hid your tears again for different reasons—to be brave for the kids. Privately you told them that Daddy is just venting; they’ll understand when they’re older; since he was passed up for partner he’s worried when he’ll get a chance again, especially with that new kid. Adults do things that kids do but for different reasons. That’s what you tell Jimmy and Susie Anne. Ok, Billy Bob and little Melissa. And I know it’s not the OMEGAS, fer crissakes, it’s the PIT BULLS or something equally moronic. Do you know what the Omega is? It’s the 24th, and last, letter of the Greek alphabet. It signals the conclusion, the end. Like, for another example, when you had to suck off Big Boy in his truck after the big game, win or lose, the climax tasted like his cum.

Shit, it’s easy to sound like a cliché. Bull dyke, bad domina, some porn snuff hootenanny. But just like your life turned out so well on the outside but feels like rotting death on the inside, mine, well, think of the photo-negative of that. Think of the reverse side of the obverse of the uppermost, to, like, infinity. Think of someone who’s never kept a job for more than two weeks, who has let men into her twat for a dinner and a night at a motel. I rent me slit, luv. Yup, c’est moi. The kind of slob you wouldn’t give a second to if you saw her on the street. Which is ironic, because you saw me on that street every fucking day this year, and kept seeing until you saw right the fuck through me. Yeah, whimper. Whimper good. This is going to be a long night. Hell, if you don’t take it easy, it’s going to be a long indefinite stay. You need to learn some shit.

“Later that night, so the story goes, rent/rewind, return my videos.” Do you know that song? Have you ever heard it? No, I don’t suppose you have. But it’s a great tune. It’s based on the novel and the movie American Psycho. I do love Christian Bale. Did you know—hmm, maybe you do—he based his interpretation of the serial killer protagonist on Tom Cruise? Something about his eyes, there being nothing behind them. Oh ye who knows nothing about the serial killer mind except what she’s seen on TV and in the movies. I challenge you to go beyond your preconceptions and try to understand me as a human being. Ya dig?

But omigod, isn’t it supposed to be, like, the other way around? If you humanize yourself, speak to me, get inside my crazy meth-bomb skull, talk to a sister like she’s got twattage too and your electrical pulse and her wattage intertwine like the finest wine…everything will be ok. That’s when the skill set blinks and the blade sinks into HER brain, not YOUR SHAME. And everything is La de Da Gooey Gumdrops Omega times infinity. But this is the other side. You’ve never seen this side because it can’t be scripted, it can’t be motion-captured delineated morphed spore/shroomed rewound. I want YOU to consider ME as a real human and not some crazy lady who pricked you with a needle and shoved you into a freight elevator and then down a manhole and into your current vida loca.

HELL YES I HAVE PROBLEMS. And for once, just once, the problems of the woman you’ve ignored, seen through like she’s transparent, are your problems.

Consider these facts.

You are 25 feet underground. Nobody can hear you. If I unbuttoned your sassy lip, you could shout and scream as loud as you wished and STILL nobody would hear. That’s a stubborn fact, Missy.

But things are going to change for you very soon. The wheels have been set in motion. And the Death Train is coming.

Yeah I know. These aren’t those kinds of tunnels. Excuse me, hollow sidewalks. There were never train tracks here. Maybe some carts. Maybe some dollies. The moving and the other kind. Prossies, women of the night, bringers of the sleaze and the disease. The miners came down from the mountains looking for a good time, and first, they found sluts and drink and opium. Then the Death Train came for them.

I can hear it shrieking some nights, through the pipes. And while it’s not a warm, fuzzy feeling, it’s a factual sensation. As in, Memento Mori.

Remember that you die.

I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Although I will try. First I will try logic and persuasion. Then, if necessary—and ONLY if necessary—other tools will be employed. I’ve put you on a sharp learning curve, and if you get cut up, I won’t be able to teach you what you need to learn.

You could think of this is Adult Education for Silly Women.

Don’t think I haven’t tried before.

Practice makes perfect, right?

You may encounter in your travels a failed student. She will tell you some trash about me and how I was mean and cruel to her and all that shit. But she lies, and liars get the Hell they deserve. Mendacity is a sin beyond any reckoning. It pops my mercury up the tube before the glass explodes.

So don’t. Fucking. Lie.

Please.

I have more patience than you would expect. I’m a teacher. I’m not an arbitrary, capricious tyrant. I’m here to help you help yourself. So help me help you.

Listen. If a man invites you to suck him off, and he’s a popular guy, a dude’s dude, a man’s man, a man for all seasonings…it’s not a compliment. I Googled those Youtube videos from the day, from your high school graduation. The tailgate party. Booze, drugs, the sticky, the ice, the vomiting! Oh Lord yes, the pukeapalooza after the spunkstorm. Remember the sick, slick, sour taste of cum down your throat? You wanted so bad to fit in. You squeezed yourself into a little Barbie box for his benefit.

Now look at you. Dirty, disgusting, filthy.

However, I am more than confident that after our sessions are successfully concluded, you will do the right thing. For yourself. For your children. For women.

And, not that it’s personal, but in a way, for me.

2. SKULLFUCK OMEGA!!! (STAINS)

Let me tell you where I got these STAINS.

Number One Stain: It’s complicated.

Number Two Stain: Say what?

Number Three Stain: ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

NUMBER FOUR STAIN HAS NOT ENTERED THE THEATER; THEREFORE, IT CANNOT EXIT; THUS, THE GAPING HOLE IN THE NARRATIVE.

AND SPEAKING OF GAPING HOLES…

Let me tell you about just one.

Actually and swear to God and all that shit, it was me mum.

I was her experiment. Her guinea pig. Pin cushion. She was a dame with a build like a granite bomb shelter; no, she was not noir. Hang on—other phone. Ok, we’re back. Sorry? Yes. Mom.

MOTHER…

Her name was Samantha Goodens. She’d already been married once when she married my dad, Francis Morgan, but she’d gone back to her maiden name. Her stains were innies, not outies. She was always such a good girl, a careful girl, staying clear of the minefields, walking through the dust-storm with a wet handkerchief pasted to her nose and mouth, coloring inside the lines. That was Sam’s protective covering. And yeah, she was more comfortable with Sam than her full girlie name, because the field she wanted to enter, that she did enter with great success, was very much a man’s domain. Not that there weren’t female psychiatrists. Just that mental health is decidedly cast in a patriarchal mold. Did you know the origin of the term “hysteria” is
hyster

which is Greek for womb? Hysterical people are those with crazy wombs. It’s not far from there to the myth of twats with teeth and nothing but cocks to eat. Sam grew up on a farm in Alabama and even now, the culture is different from the rest of the country. Backwoods preachers still dip their flock in JIZZUS and it’s not incest if JIZZUS says it’s ok. You have no idea what I’m going on about. But that is why so many women are hysterical, have scary razor pussies. We’ve internalized the myths about us and our bodies. STOP WIGGLING.

MOTHER became Samantha Morgan. She and Francis met at med school. She looked up to him, even though he was only one year ahead of her. He had a certain way about him, a certain solidity, that she admired. Respected. His broad shoulders. He was all clean lines; she felt shapeless, soft. And in the end that’s what she became.

MUSH.

Mom and Pop moved west. They found jobs in California. Dad was a GP, Mom specialized in troubled youth. She had an office that occupied one entire wing of our ranch style house, which sat at the top of a long driveway and was barricaded against the scary people of different colors. A lot of tall, fat hedges and sycamores in a row dividing the driveway, an electric fence. I think Mom was much less prejudiced than Pop, but going back to her training, she walled off that part of her which rebelled against intolerance. A product of her place and time. And her practice thrived. When she took me out of school, the authorities couldn’t contest it. Not that she needed qualifications to home school me, much less a medical degree. I think they were happy to have me off their hands. Because I had become

trouble
which was located literally right here in River City.

You want to know the really funny part? I was terrified of the bullies at school, but they were benign compared to MOM. I would have undergone any amount of toilet-dunking for the security of Thomas Jefferson Junior High. Seriously. But Mom was clever. More clever than most tyrants you may encounter in your day-to-day.

I had one brother, who came two years after me. He’s off in Alaska now working with the Iñupiat Indians. A noble character, is Broderick. He still has no idea what MOM and DAD and JIZZUS wreaked on me in terms of havoc. He’s never seen SHATTERGIRL. And I for one am glad of it. Our relationship is all the better knowing his ignorance. We sometimes send each other smoke signals.

Mom prepared me to be taken. I use that word deliberately. Taken. I was, what, twelve years old? My moms had this yellow van she would use for her forays into River City, never discussed at home. Was she scouting clients? Possibly. Anyway. Even though normally I would pee my pants if the van showed up without notice—as it had several times before—Mom worked me for a week beforehand. She was extra special nice. And the cookies, my goodness, were extra special yummy. Loaded as they were with drugs that made me very, very drowsy. As I went off to sleep on the sofa, Mom infused my head with vaporous words. Kind words. I was going to be very happy at home, with just her and me. She took a silver comb to my kinky dark locks and working out the tangles with such delicacy, not tugging the knots out by force the way I did. She made me feel loved, even beautiful. Even though my stomach still sent signals that mom was bad, wrong and crazy, she alternated the scary shit with these tranquil moments. We had a compact, she and I, an implicit arrangement. She would shield me from the storm, from the terrible people who used their words like weapons. And let’s face it, I was just a kid, a very disturbed young lady, and Mom was my first point of contact with the world.

I didn’t trust her, but I trusted her. You know? I’ve met so many people since then, so many people from different walks of life, yet that ambiguity she sowed in my heart has never stopped seeding.

I think only people who’ve been through this kind of ordeal truly understand what it’s like.

I used to send smoke signals to my future self. You’re going to be all right. You are strong, powerful. Everything that seems to affect you so strongly now will become part of your armor. Your shield against the fools and fuckholes that malign you. And in a way, I did receive those smoke signals. But they were blurred by time, and when I got them, they looked like sigils of death.

So. Lena.

You may tell me about yourself. How did you and your mom get along?

That well?

JIZZUS.

Do you want to know how I got these CUM STAINS?

Okey doke.

Daddy was my favorite person for a long time, mainly because he was never around. He had a small practice and was popular with old people. They liked his style. There was one patient, Mrs. Saunderson, who really liked him. She used to tell him about her faith. Reminded him of what he’d left behind. And that was when things started to change for me. The changes were gradual until they were sudden.

Dr. Morgan began to take breaks from his practice. He wanted to see how his daughter was growing up. He had no idea what Mom was doing to me, meanwhile.

Let me show you something.

Charlie Morgan, epic crazy lady and pure nucking futzball, undoes her studded belt and peels down her tight-fitting black denim jeans that hug her curves so well, showing Lena the wide patch of scar tissue right over her ass cheeks. Lena doesn’t want to look. Charlie insists. There’s a struggle. Finally Charlie is forced to use severe measures. Administers megadose of meth and pins open Lena’s eyelids Argento-style. Wets eyeballs with dropper. Keep a bitch moist and she’ll always cum back for more.

Those are burn scars, lady. Created by my loving Daddy in the name of JIZZUS.

You know, it’s funny, but I think my parents had some kind of weird rivalry over their methods of control. A pact of silence and denial between them. Mommy by day, Daddy by night, they took turns. Mommy never really bought the whole JIZZUS mythology, but Daddy was sold. I think it was the pain and torture aspect he really dug special.

I didn’t understand the allure at the time, but I’ve changed.

Daddy loved my compliance. My obedience. He didn’t know I was waiting.

Patience, Lena. It’s golden.

Please work with me.

Ok, so I obviously don’t have CUM STAINS. Except the ones that were burnt into my skin with an iron. Except the ones that were spliced with my heartstrings. Except the ones that made me a little, well…

MAD.

Do you remember what the Cheshire Cat told Alice?

Same rules.

Jesus was up there in the vapor somewheres. He was all right with me. I used to read the red letter parts after Daddy’s quality times with daughter and I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized that Jesus was even more helpless than I was. I understood that HIS Daddy sacrificed him for crazy. For control. For reasons we will never understand, because his are mysterious. I saw it wasn’t Jesus in whose name Daddy was acting. It couldn’t be. Real Jesus was all about the love and peace and tolerance.

I thought about the sound of the name. Jesus. And then what Daddy was doing to us both. Me and mom. He would

JIZZ US.

Oh come on, it’s kind of funny.

Humorless much?

Whether you get the memo or not, I am the best friend you’ll ever have.

Let me make this really, really simple for you to grasp.

Ken has got to go.

It’s not my call. It’s yours. You must decide whether you want to live with his bullshit, his affairs, his lies…and be his DEAD FUCK.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let me tell you about this neighborhood bar. It’s kind of a dive. For some it’s more comfortable than a gentlemen’s club. The girls aren’t as attractive. They’ve got issues. They’re drunks and addicts in various states of recovery. Bikers and blue collar workers like Murphy’s. You’d be surprised how witty and intelligent the conversations get there. Working people ain’t stupid. So in walk some dudes. They’re professionals, slumming it.

A guy named Ken. He’s an attorney. Ken and his buddies belly up to the bar and order drinks. They get dirty looks from some of the regulars. The rest ignore the Yuppie invasion. It happens every once in awhile. Ken & Pals have no idea how close they have come to having their throats slashed in the men’s room, as one of the patrons recognizes the guy who put him away for 18 months for having a few ounces of weed. The coke is what they nabbed him on, but wonder of wonders, he was sentenced and convicted for the MJ. He mutters blackly to his friends. They tell him it’s not worth it. They buy him some more drinks. He’s glowering at Ken, who doesn’t notice because he’s too busy regaling his pals with a story about his wife.

You.

Meanwhile you were baking cookies for the PTA meeting and had absolutely zero knowledge. How would you ever know what your husband actually thought of you? And how do I know all this?

I was there.

I told you, I clone like a motherfucker. So well. I was sitting at the end of the bar, quiet-like, working on my vodka rocks. Just another piece of white trash ass. Buy a lady a drink? Yes, maybe, after enough rounds. And this is what I heard, verbatim:

“How’s my marriage? Well, shit. Yeah, she’s hot, but sometimes I think I’d be better off with a quickie at the morgue downtown. You know? At least those girls are verified dead. My wife, she walks around, she babbles about her projects and the greeting card business she runs—there’s no profit in it, by the way, I think  she has, like, a hundred customers and she makes in a month what I do in an hour. So I want to support her, for the kids’ sake, and I do what I can. But it’s tough. When we’re together, she’s somewhere else. I wish she’d just tell me what she wants. What she really wants. But she’s locked herself away.” Yes, Ken is capable of reflection. He’s a deep guy, as you know. Beneath that Superwhiteman exterior is a thinker. And Ken wants to keep the marriage alive, I know he does, but like the man says, it’s not easy when his wife is a

DEAD FUCK.

His words, not mine.

Now maybe you’re starting to grasp the gravity of the situation.

I’m going to leave you alone now. Your next feeding is in an hour. Use your time wisely. Make it count.

3. LENA HARRINGTON

Oh fuck my life.

God, please help me. I’ve never asked you for anything before. I know I’ve been bad. Or whatever. Jesus. Please.

This woman isn’t just crazy. I think I could handle crazy. But it’s worse. She’s like a worm, pushing her way through my skull. And if this keeps up any longer, I’ll be crazy like her.

She’s right. I’m not strong. But I never needed to be. DAMN IT. Strength was never a requirement. Obedience was.

The right schools, check. The right wardrobe, check. The right friends, check. Check check check. Everything lined up on ledger paper, the appropriate boxes checked. And beyond the boxes? More boxes. More sheets of ledger paper.

So here I am, divided from the streets of River City by concrete and steel and crumbling red brick, locked up in a tiny cell—I think maybe this used to be a jail, back in the Gold Rush times—and all I have to keep me going is the paper. The boxes. Which does fuck all to help in this specific test situation.

Next door, as Charlie informs me, the girls of Madame Soska’s plied their trade. How many dudes got all liquored up and sailed on a rum boat from the hoosegow to the boudoir and back?

I reach out and touch the walls of my cell, and retrieve a palm full of dust. Red dust, like rust, like an old blood stain.

It makes me think. I think about all the lost lives and lost souls buried here. Like so many layers of strata. To raise the city, they jacked up the buildings and brought in mountains of dirt, packed the spaces between the new sidewalk and the old ground floors, and created these pockets. That much I knew, but it never occurred to me once that shopping at the mall would bring me down here, in direct contact with…whatever lies beneath. In the intermittent darkness I have too much time to think, and seeing her face—that oddly beautiful face, like a mask, like a Chinese mask, with eyes like pinwheels buried in earth—is always a relief before it’s a menace to my sanity. I’m starting to understand how people become brainwashed. How prisoners lose their sense of identity, of what makes them unique. How they might begin to lose heart. How this anguish grows—dark, burning, malevolent, unkind—and the anger builds.

God I hate this Charlie bitch.

It’s a violation at so many levels. And I need to be angry, for my husband, for my children. She gets their names wrong on purpose. She goes on and on and on, ranting and raving. She reminds me of some of the coffee house poets I used to go see during my short-lived Bohemian period. Only they went through my ears the way the latte went out with my pee. Charlie is different. I don’t know if it’s because I’m stuck here with her and she’s the only voice, besides my own, that I hear…but she makes more sense than those hipsters in their black turtlenecks working in record stores going for their MFA’s which will qualify them to do…nothing. BUT when I’ve listened to her for a while…before my brain just shuts down…she knows when this happens…I start to wonder, in this void. I start to wonder, not whether she’s right…ok, that too, but it’s more complicated. I need to make my peace, I think, first. God, how do you do it? I’m so sorry, I never…well, it’s not like I didn’t believe in you. I believed in something. It was so easy. It’s always been easy. I was smart, hot, popular. People liked me. I was a killer athlete. I sailed through my studies and when graduation came, it didn’t matter I was already pregnant. I thought I could go back to school after the baby was grown. But then came another. And I love them. I love them. Nobody has the right to take that away from me.

Nobody has the right to separate me from my family!

But then, what’s a right?

Sometimes I think a right is something you are allowed to exercise by people who are more powerful than you. Even temporarily. Here, it’s the power of your mind, your will, your spirit that counts. Just that I’m not Nelson Mandela. I’m a soccer mom. A proud mother and wife and friend. I could have done anything with my life, but I chose to marry Ken and settle down. I wanted his pink, ugly, beautiful babies. Man, I would go through teething and potty training again if that’s what it took—if I had to, to see them again, to hold them. Hear those weird gurgling noises when words are just sounds and the baby world is the entire universe. A world where I am a goddess and the earth and they are my creation. Ken and I make the arc of the known world over them. An arch, like the entrances to these storefronts—mostly filled in, but the tunnels go on and on. The hollow sidewalks. And the meat inside.

I have fantasies about a SWAT team coming down here and just shooting the fuck out of this woman. I’d like to see the red dot on her chest. I’d like to see her head explode like an over ripe watermelon thrown from a tall building.

When I dream, I dream about Ken, my husband. His strong arms. His protection. He would know what to do. But how can I reach him? I don’t even know how far these tunnels go. And even if Charlie took off the chains, I’d be scared to investigate.

I cannot allow this to happen.

As long as I have breath, as long as my lungs pull in oxygen, I’ll fight. There was no way to prepare myself. I don’t think anybody would be prepared for this. You never expect the Spanish Inquisition, right?

Be anger. Be FUCKING MAD.

Lena. Damn you.

No. Damn her.

Ok, to priorities.

First, keep self alive.

Contiguous with second, look for escape routes.

She blindfolded me on the freight elevator, so for however many days have passed…two, three? I’ve only known these four walls. Although I sometimes think I hear voices next door.

Shit.

Be MORE FUCKING MAD. Don’t go to sleep in the snow. Fight it.

Fight for your children. Fight for your man. Don’t let crazy bitch win this.

I miss his smell, his scent. Like musty mint plucked fresh from the earth. Burrowing up under the covers after making love. I miss crawling out of bed after a sleep-in Saturday and realizing the kids either made their own breakfast or are playing video games, reading, watching TV or a movie. Or both. Checking in with them and seeing the mess they’ve made in the kitchen, the spilled milk and cereal. I love spilled milk.

I will not let her see me cry.

It’s hard to keep track of time in here.

What she says about Ken is NOT TRUE. She’s trying to fuck with my mind. He would never in a million years say what Charlie tells me he said. She’s a liar, a compulsive liar, a well of pure poison. He wouldn’t say those things. He would never call me a DEAD FUCK. That hurts so bad. He’s not what she says he is.

Not even close.

Now I am officially too frightened to think.

The hand that rocks the cradle is

Rock and roll ain’t

Noise

Pollution.

I’m going to have to split my mind into several compartments, much like these walls make. I have to consider what qualities I possess that Charlie doesn’t. She may be brilliant, but it’s her splitting that wounds her. Shit, what am I saying? IN order to fight her, I need to lose the one advantage I have against her, and be like Charlie?

Be like Charlie. Charlie is an insane woman. Don’t be like Charlie; you can’t, because she is insane.

We may have to go into the nonbinary logic here.

She talks about the walls. It’s one of the first things I remember her telling me about. The walls in her head that began the moment she came to grips with her mother’s mental illness; and, afterward, her father’s abuse. She says it was after her Dad’s being born again that the truly horrific things started to happen. I don’t have her fortitude…the only reason I’m mentioning these things is because she put them in MY head, and I can’t stop them whirling around in there. It’s not fair. But what about this situation is fair? Suffice to say. Rock and roll.

Once again, I am making myself, forcing myself to be angry. Not on my account so much, but on behalf of my family. I feel so helpless. There’s nothing I can do to reach them. And I’m afraid Charlie will do something very, very bad to them. I can’t. I just. Can’t.

Rock and roll. Give me that old time. Soothes my soul. Old fashioned.

I may have to kid myself I can handle this, when I really cannot begin. Part of me really fell away when I woke up in the cell. But it’s still floating around there. It’s like one of those soft focus bubbles in a sit-com or something, just above a character’s head, where fantasies happen. It’s a nice place to visit until I feel my stomach churn and then it feels like poison. I have to keep hope somehow, but push it down.

Push it down.

She’s been muttering again about Ken.

I don’t understand her obsession. It’s my life, my husband. How in fuck’s name does she think she’s involved? How is she entitled to pass judgment on my family?

Ken and I had been talking recently, about his job stresses, about the case he’s working on, which isn’t very much different from the last dozen or so cases he’s litigated. Ken thrives on stress; I can’t deal. Being a mother is sufficient. And I do have that home business, the greeting cards. I chose. I love my choices.

Who IS Charlie Morgan?

She says a lot of crazy, but now I think maybe I have seen her before.

Outside my childrens’ school.

Sitting on the bus bench across the street from Ken’s office when I took him out for his birthday.

Christ maybe even online, on the social media.

Those eyes.

Those dark, burning eyes.

I’d recognize them anywhere now.

Their names are Thomas and Rhiannon. Thomas is four. Rhiannon is five. And they’re the best of friends. I believe it’s crucial my children respect one another, despite their differences. And they are different. They showed it very early. First, physically. Thomas is like me—blonde, slight, a little bit birdlike. He and I get along better than him and his dad. I wish that were different, but Ken keeps such long hours. Rhiannon is Ken as a girl. It’s remarkable how alike they are. From the dark curly brown hair to that winner-take-all attitude. Rhiannon always has to be the best—at school, at sports, at anything she touches. I wish some of her and Ken would rub off on Thomas. But I have to be fair to them. I must be fair.

God help me, the only reason Charlie is still breathing…why is she? I know more about her than I do some of my closest friends.

I need to get out, get help.

Form a plan.

Please Jesus help me make a plan.

4. Charlie and the Death Train

I am a softie. You probably don’t expect that, considering the big ass-kicking boots and the leather jacket and the attitude. But deep down inside, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, transients and looky-loos, I am a kind and slush-soft human. Not a death machine.

Well, maybe kinda sorta.

And speaking of Death Machines…

You may have noticed I’m scattered. All over the place. This is not my fault. I told you I am a

SHATTER

GIRL.

Ever follow serial killers?

Oh c’mon. Surely you know Ed Gein. Wore vag on his face before it was popular in some recherché circles. Bad Oedipus deal with his dead mom. Seemed like a nice guy, everybody knew old Ed.

They made a movie based on him. It was called Psycho. They made some other movies about him. They were called Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Pretty sweet, pretty sweet.

If you asked me for my all-time fave, I’d have to say H.H. Holmes, hands down. Ah yes, that reminds me why I brought up Death Machines.

This guy, I mean, what a fellow! He was a med student at the University of Chicago. Low on funds. So he came up with a plan. I’m sure you can relate. How long am I going to be stuck down here with the Morgan? Can I contrive some kinda crude weapon from available materials? Well, those are questions you must answer yourself. Obviously I’m not going to advise you on what to do. But teach a man to fish…anyway. Holmes.

Med schools need cadavers. And in those days, they weren’t so picky about provenance, if you get my meaning.

Which is actually a term from the art world, but seemed appropriate in this instance.

Capitalism turns on supply and demand. So does war. And medicine. The U of C demanded skeletons. Well, where would you find such in plentiful supply?

And for $500 and a chance at the grand prize…DING DING DING…

That’s RIGHT! The answer is GRAVEYARDS.

I wonder what Holmes and Gein would have talked about if they’d lived in the same time. Holmes: do you ever… Gein: stuff little girls in a cooler box, or wish you could? Albert Fish: I did not fuck her. Holmes and Gein: Who are you and why are you narrative-bombing us?

They were the originals, baby. Me, I’m just a cloner. With a mental boner. Your predecessor? I own her. Body and soul.

Was that a cartoon lightbulb that just went over your head, or am I completely insane?

Just messing with you. I am completely insane. Just not…watch it with the escape attempts there pilgrim…stupid.

You think YOU’RE scared.

You know what I dream about?

The Death Train, honey.

It ain’t your Grandma’s choo-choo. It’s a monster. A demon. Roaring down the tracks that glow. A flicker and whisper in the night. Voices from the heart of the roiling clouds of steam.

Sparks that streak across the darkness.

The smokebox begins as a face, with a mighty eye planted in its forehead. Rods of bone tug wheels of burning, blackened flesh. The tunnel swallows its own perspective. It’s just you and the face now.

Me Vs. Death Train.

Ya know, I’m a pretty strong bitch. I’ve had the travails that give a girl muscle. I can handle extremes. But the things in my mind? They just won’t stop.

The skin is peeling. Charcoal flakes. Ashes. They swirl like leaves in the tunnel. A gathering storm.

Can you hear it?

Drip

Drop

Splot

Splish

Plop

Plish

I got them Death Train blues. And I got them pretty bad.

Steam screams. CHU CHU CHU CHU thooky thooky thooky. The smokebox, like horror, has a face. But all that is soon to change.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the INCREDIBLE SKULL-FACED DEATH TRAIN!

Focus pull. The tracks eat themselves. The flakes like the skin of accident victims in a windstorm blow down past the cars, sucked into the tunnels, becoming the chattering language of the hollow sidewalks, with their ghouls and ghosts and GOBELLINS. Beneath the face in true splatter/shatter form, a marshmallow sludge. But wait there’s more!

5. Hide and Go Seek and Destroy

I’m letting you out now. I lied about the Jigsaw thing. Some of those movies are fun, fun, fun! We are indeed going to play a little game. A real old-fashioned rock and roll kind of game.

Have you noticed how swiftly my thoughts have grafted on to yours? Where you sorta kinda can’t tell us apart? Psycho sisters, under the skin. I mean psychic. Well. You do go a little crazy sometimes, don’t you. Down here with me.

I know it’s hard and damp and cold and uncomfortable in that cube of yours. You’re right, it was probably a jail of some kind. Or a bank vault. Who knows? Most of these tunnels haven’t been explored. Why? Reasons. Safety measure. The kind of thing.

You remember hide and go seek, right? It’s very simple. I close my eyes and count to ten. You hide, then I open my eyes and try to find you. You might get lucky. You might hide yourself so well I never find you. You might even discover the passageway that leads to the manhole…

I don’t think you realize how much I want you to succeed. These ordeals I’m putting you through, yes, I know how difficult they are. As you say yourself, you’ve never had to be strong—this way.

Oh honey, don’t look at me like that. Please. It breaks my heart. And I do have one.

So I’m going to count it down. Ready?

I’m shutting my eyes. Go, go, go!

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2
and ready or not, here I come!!!

Charlie’s given her a flashlight, which she splashes at the wood paneling, the dirt. The red brick streaks by as she moves as fast as she can, given she has no idea where in the uncharted network of tunnels she might be. She tells herself there’s no reason to panic. If Charlie catches her, it won’t be any worse for her than it was before. There is a slim, zero point one percent chance that by the grace of God she’ll find the manhole. If there really is a manhole. She racks her brain. Lena thinks she remembers something on the CBS affiliate, a special they had about five years ago where they talked about the tunnels. The only reason the segment caught her eye was one of her friends worked at the restaurant on the block with the…tinted purple balls inset in the sidewalk. The skylights. She’d made a mental note to park in the parking garage across the street from the restaurant to the east instead of coming in the other way she usually did and using the meter. She sometimes took Shirley out for her lunch break, to the park and back.

The restaurant, Fat’s, was about a mile south from the park. Broadway crossed K Street, then L street…Lena flashes on a map of River City. She calculates, recalling as best she could through the shroud of unhappy days and nights how long it had taken Charlie and her to get to the space where she was held.

If she’s not mistaken, the skylights would be…no.

Shit.

Wait…

That manhole. Wasn’t there a manhole on that block? But what if it’s a trap?

Her nerves are screaming. Her brain is set to reptile mode. She must keep going, keep the beam before her. The buttresses every five feet remind her of crypts. She sends that vision packing. Breathes in and out, steadily. When she hears the footsteps behind her.

Charlie’s boots. That chilling CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP of her kickass biker boots.

Charlie’s got a lot of tread for a crazy chick. She knows what she’s doing. Lena Harrington thinks of her family. She must keep it together, for their sake.

“Hide and go seek and destroy, bitch!”

A surge of white-hot anger propels Lena forward. The Maglite’s beam illuminates the interior of a storefront that hasn’t been bricked up. Playing the flashlight along the floor, she sees chunks of brick, glass, a shattered windowframe. She picks up a piece of glass. God help her, she will slash a cunt.

Lena’s brain blossoms with visions of arterial spray, when her next step takes her to a piece of rotten flooring. She scrambles for balance, but the floor caves in beneath her weight, and now she is

FALLING

Down the

Rabbit Hole

But Alice doesn’t live here any more.

5. Lucy

Lana rose. Her body was bruised and her shoulder sprained, but no bones were broken. She found herself in a small rectangular room. Amazingly, the Maglite still worked. Small favors, because, Heaven. She realizes she must conserve her energy and focus on the immediate situation.

When she hears a scratching noise on the opposite side of the wall.

She puts her ear to the damp brick and listens. Her hearing feels keen, sharper than before. The small scratching noise grows.

A mouse? A rat? She shivers. Not that her fear of rodents makes more or less sense than the present ordeal, waiting for Charlie, wondering what will happen next.

There’s somebody in the next room. Another captive? It can’t be rats, because rats don’t mutter to themselves. They don’t cry. They don’t scream out in the night.

She—if it is a she—might be a friend.

I have to contact her.

I decide to knock at the wall. A few light taps. Then harder. I listen with my heart thundering in my throat. Who is it? Charlie mentioned one other, before me. The one she called “a failure.” But how a failure?

“Hello?”

The voice is small, timid. She sounds very young.

“Hello? Who are you? My name is Lena.”

“I’m Lucy.”

“Thank God. Thank God. I thought I was completely alone. Are you…”

“I’m a prisoner. Please, can you help me? I haven’t eaten in I don’t know how long. I’m so scared.”

“Lucy…what can you tell me about Charlie?”

“Charlie?”

“The woman who took you prisoner.”

“I don’t know a Charlie.”

“What?”

“Her name is Rhonda. She’s…she’s crazy. She put me through hell. I thought I’d escaped her, but…”

“Hide and Go Seek and Destroy?”

“Yes. And other things. She made me watch…she ate…”

“She ate what?”

“Some people. She made me watch. She made me eat them too. I didn’t know.”

Lena sinks to the floor. She doesn’t even flinch when she sees a rat scutter across the beam of the Maglite which lies by her side.

Charlie Morgan isn’t Charlie Morgan. Of course she isn’t. But she can’t be Rhonda either. Unless Rhonda is one of her…splits? Splitters? Personalities behind her crazy walls?

“Hello?”

“Yes…I’m sorry, I’m just so fucking frightened. I can’t deal with the…cannibalism or whatever. Overload. But the important thing is we’re not alone. We have each other. We can help each other. Two brains are better than one.”

“Brains. She served up my boyfriend’s brains. She said they were scrambled eggs. I had to watch. Her. Eat him. Afterwards.”

“Jesus.”

“JIZZUS?”

What the actual fuck? Lucy sounds even crazier than Charlie/Rhonda/whatever her name is. But at least she’s…we’re…on the same side. Now I need to get through to her physically. There’s a loose section of brick I found by tapping the walls. I look around for something heavy. A sledgehammer. How convenient. Almost as if it was placed there just for such an occasion. But action speaks louder, and drowns out the fear. Even if it’s all a setup.

I’m so weak, and the sledgehammer is heavy. But you’ve heard the stories about mothers who lift cars to save their children. I’m going to try to pick up the hammer. I have to.

Lucy is pleading with me. I balance myself, bend my knees and focus on my center of gravity. On the first try, the hammer slams down to the floor and nearly hits my feet. Now I just want Lucy to shut the fuck up. This next hammer blow is for you, lady.

On the second try, I manage to get the thing lined up with my bad shoulder. I’m in so much pain the tears are streaming down my cheeks. I force myself to swing the hammer at the wall. Nothing. A cloud of red dust. Then…

There’s light.

Light?

Purple light.

Have you ever noticed that it’s only after you’ve lost all hope that life replaces the lemons with chocolate cake?

Purple lights mean skylights which mean that somehow I’ve traveled laterally, not down. Which doesn’t make any sense. Because I know I fell, and fell hard. But the light is undeniably the color of skylights on K Street, which means sky, which means manhole, which means escape.

The only other explanation is that I’ve fallen SIDEWAYS.

Unless…

It’s too much crazy to deal with right now. The important thing is to get to Lucy.

I push the tiny hole I’ve made in the wall and rubble rains down. I step back from the falling brick shards. There’s a young girl sitting in the center of the room, in a pool of purple. She can’t be older than 18.

I’ve made my peace with the fact that

Lucy is

Dead and

I’ve been speaking with her

Ghost.

6. Husband

“I see you’ve met Lucy.”

It’s Charlie/Rhonda. She’s smiling like the cat that ate the boyfriend’s brains, and she’s got someone with her.

She’s got Ken.

My husband, the father of my children, looks haggard. His dark curly locks are sticking up in spikes. He’s wearing his business suit and the pinstripe shirt is torn at the collar and the sleeves. His black tie is scrambled.

Charlie’s got him. She’s got him. She has no right.

Ignore the dead girl and focus on the husband.

He’s not restrained. He’s compliant. That’s not my husband. It’s a clone.

I must stop thinking crazy. You’ll understand though if crazy is becoming my default mode.

“Oh Lena! I’ve brought somebody to see you. Ken, say hi to your wife. The dead fuck.”

Ken freezes visibly.

“Oh come on, it’s okay. I was there, remember? I told you. I was the white trash slut at the end of the bar. I heard everything you told your buddies. You are aware you got off easy. Rodriguez was within an inch of slashing your throat and spraying it across the men’s room walls. Splashing that shit on the cunting cover girls. Women who love hard cock. Well, is it true or not? Your wife is waiting for your response. We don’t have all day.”

“Please, Ken,” Lena begs. “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t care what you said, even if it’s true. I love you. I miss you.”

“How very touching.” Charlie spits. The glob falls down the hole in the floor and lands beside Lena. She stands up.

“I’m going to throw you down a ladder,” says Charlie. “If you want, you can bring the failure. In fact, I insist you do.”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb. The dead girl, Lucy. She doesn’t weigh much. Sling her across your shoulders. You can do it.”

“I’m not doing shit for you.”

“That would be a poor choice.” Charlie pulls out a .357 from her black leather jacket. She loads the chamber. She places the barrel against Ken’s temple. “Pretty please, with cherries on top.”

7. Bordello of Death

There are many rooms in the house of death, and one, not the least, is a bawdy house. Also known as a sporting house. A brothel. A bordello. A whorehouse. A cathouse.

Now the cat has sprung, and a ceremony of evil has begun.

The career proper of Ms. Charlie Morgan as proprietor of the first whorehouse for lovers of the stiff began January 18th of the year __________ and ended with a powerful load of JIZZ pumped into the pitiful creature known as Ms. First Trial.

Charlie walks us back to the cell I came from. She makes us carry Lucy between us. Ken says nothing. I try to tell him with my eyes that I love him. But he’s avoiding mine. I don’t understand. I don’t want to believe Charlie is right. I love him.

I love him when Charlie takes us next door, to the bordello. I love him when our cheeks brush the beaded curtain, and in the dank, reeking interior, we see the blackened skeletons of the Gold Rush whores propped up before their vanities. A perfume that smells like opium pervades the room on top of the rot. The skeletons are dressed in their turn of the century finery, red stockings, merry widows, silk and lace. Somehow Charlie has articulated them like mannequins. This makes them look even more dead, if that was humanly possible.

Charlie brushes aside the crumbled remnant of a harlot and ushers us into a bedchamber. She tells us to lay Lucy on the moldy mattress. Then she tells me to place Lucy on top of me, her legs spread out around mine. Strangely, Lucy has no smell. Not that I’m familiar with bodies that have been sitting around for a while. Even more strange, there’s no sign of decay.

How the hell did Charlie do that?

She gives Ken a handful of blue pills. When he starts to resist, she crams them in his mouth and puts the gun to his head again. He has to swallow. He gulps them down. She gives him a paper cup with water, the way a nurse would. His hands shake so badly he spills half the water, but gets the rest down his throat. Charlie smiles.

“Now cums the hard part. Pun fully intended.”

Charlie won’t let me shut my eyes as she tells Ken to fuck me. The cadaver’s hair is in my face, stifling me, suffocating me. Charlie tells me to move the head aside so I can see how badly Ken wants his wife. His dead fuck. His concubinal corpse.

“Please don’t…please don’t.” Tears stream down Lena’s face. She can see the pain and anguish in Ken’s. This is a horror beyond measure.

She’s shocked at how swiftly he enters her, face to face with Lucy, pushing Lena’s thighs further apart. His eyes have gone up into the whites. He’s really enjoying this. It’s not coercion. It’s not an act.

There are only so many things she can shut out from her mind, and Ken’s enthusiasm in this instance is not one of them.

He shudders into her. Moaning. Biting his lip till it bleeds. Licking his lips.

He cums again.

Ohgodohgodohgod

And then there is the rain again. The drops don’t splash and plash. They hit like bullets now. Streams of water descend down the walls.

BANG BANG BANG

The water begins to rise on the floor.

And, unbelievably, just like that, Charlie levels the surprise part.

“You can go now.”

We can go?

I look at Ken. Ken doesn’t look back. He’s wiping himself off now with his shirt.

I push Lucy’s corpse off me. I’m horribly sick. My vomit gushes out of me. Now it’s a series of blanks, single frames from some demented movie.

“Ken?”

We can deal with all of this later. The main thing is to get to safety and get a SWAT team down here.

The trouble is, I’m not sure now whose head I want to see spattered across these walls.

8. Transubstantial

“Ken?”

“Yeah, honey.” He sounds like a zombie. Lena makes herself hug him. But her fingers feel like daggers. She thinks of the children. Their names are Thomas and Rhiannon. They are innocent. They have never hurt or harmed anyone.

“We need to get the fuck out of here, or we’re going to drown.”

“Drown.”

She slaps him across the cheek. Harder than she anticipated. She just wants to wake him up. He’s got that postorgasmic dose thing going on.

We can deal with all of this later.

Rock and roll ain’t

We have to

Rock and roll. Lock and load.

Charlie just stands there, laughing like the maniac she is. Anger forces me to move, for completely different reasons now. We’ll have to get a separation. We’ll need to…move now, before it’s too late. My brain is going a million miles an hour. I grab Ken’s hand and yank his arm hard. The rain is really coming down now. I ignore the trillions of aftermath flashes splitting my brain. And then, suddenly, I’m calm.

I realize that when I thought I was going down the hole in the floor, my eyes were closed. The room with the dead girl wasn’t SIDEWAYS. I’d actually gone around in a circle. Or had I? It doesn’t matter. Fucking M.C. Escher.

We’re slushing through three inches of water. Soon it’s a foot. I cut the knot in my mind, the map I’d made erased. Going by instinct, I pull Ken along until we’ve gotten to the stretch of tunnel with the skylights. He blinks. I order him to get it together. Charlie and I have something in common now.

We’re sisters.

Maybe not biologically, but…you don’t always get to choose your real family.

And then the shrieking begins.

I look back. Not that there’s time for any fresh hells. But I can’t help it. I need to know. Maybe it’s me. Charlie is still standing there. Her mouth is wide open, and Lucy’s voice is coming from it.

She’s struggling to stay upright. Some force is dragging her down into the water.

“FUCK YOU, BITCH!”

Charlie’s on her knees.

Then she’s face down in the water.

Her shoulders shake. Lucy’s ghost holds her down. From within. Her arms rise and fall, like some bizarre attempt to dog paddle.

I understand that drowning is one of the hardest deaths. For the first time…or maybe not the first…I feel sympathy for Charlie. For the SHATTERGIRL. For everything she’s endured. For everything she’s suffered. For the pain DADDY and JIZZUS put her through.

There’s a steel ladder inset in the wall in the first room off the main corridor. It leads to the manhole. I tell Ken to go first.

Bubbles break the surface. Charlie’s back undulates like a python. She’s fighting with every last ounce of strength in her body. She doesn’t want to go.

I can’t help it. “I’m so sorry!” I scream.

Suddenly Charlie is back on her feet again. She vomits forth blood and water. Lucy’s voice mocks mine.

“I’m so sorry so sorry so very SORRY…”

Charlie sinks back into the water.

As I look at Ken’s back, I wish I still had that shard of glass. I want to see it make a thin hole in his throat. I want to see him cry and beg me for forgiveness. He pushes the manhole aside and crawls out. I follow. The rain is coming down in torrents. The sky looks angry. It looks red. It looks like

BLOOD like

Anger like

My heart. Shattered. Split. Splattered.

Still, there is the matter of the children…