The Girl: Chapter Ten
She woke early and alone, on a mattress torn in random places--covered with a sheet that was equally abused. Her skin was clammy and her eyes stung with a burning glaze--from fever or otherwise, she couldn't say.
The girl stared at the side of a case-less pillow, at it's blue stripes and, particularly, the speckled drops of blood. Not her's, fortunately. These were brown and old now--like freckles on the pale fabric. She ran an inventory of pain, found nothing new since yesterday, and permitted herself a slow exhale. She berated herself for actually falling asleep beside him. Falling asleep! There were few things the girl could think of, more stupid and dangerous. She could dance on a plummeting roller coaster, braided a hungry lion's mane, and not have felt the horror she did now. (Incidentally, she had never seen either of these; amusement parks and zoos were not common sights in this city).
It made no difference that her rest had been dreamless, smooth and and calm. So different from those bloody, only half-remembered scenes that had chased themselves across her eyelids when she lay on the couch. It made no difference that the girl knew she was a light sleeper, that she would have felt it if he had touched her. She had known that sort of confidence was dangerous before she'd learned to walk.
But still...still....
He hadn't hurt her, in any way she could identify right now. Not speaking of just this night, but all of the ones that came before. He'd stopped, when she told him to stop. Left her alone, when she'd wanted him to do so. And it was this astonishing, unprecedented fact that had led the girl, shivering, to the doorway of his bedroom. To the side of the mattress and to it's occupant--sprawled with the most intense look of concentration she'd ever seen on a sleeping face. His arm was hairy and warm and harder than concrete, and did not move as the girl filled what little available bed space there was with herself. Her knees, then her hip, then her shoulder, then her cheek came to rest on the slightly-oily cloth.
Staring, transfixed, at the vein in the side of his neck, a wire in an expanse of flesh-toned iron. At his pinkish lips. At the thousands of black stubble on his jaw. Thinking, that she could have a moment--please please please, just a moment--of safety. Comfort. The presence of another without the misery they usually delivered. And if in the next, Logan rolled over and spoiled the illusion, it would be okay. That would be okay, it really would, if she could just--if she could just have--
From the kitchen came the sound of the refrigerator opening. Closing. The girl blinked, sniffled. Turned over and made herself sit up. Standing was always an operation that had to be taken in tip-toe sized steps. Things tugged inside of her, threatened to rip again. How long before everything stopped hurting?
Feet on the floor. Take a breath. Look around the room: dusty and sad. Hurry up; anything could happen if he comes in here. Take another breath. Push up. Don't cry out. Don't focus on that migraine-summoning babble in your head.
Logan was assembling some sort of pancake/bacon/fruit mass on a paper plate (most of it's contents would find itself in the trash, uneaten) when she came in. An undershirt and fresh jeans (where had he changed? In the bathroom? The bedroom, as she slept?), tousled and spiked hair that had no intention of meeting a comb. The girl hovered, took an uncertain seat on the couch. (Bend your legs, don't hiss when certain areas touch the cushion).
The girl's mind was sharper this morning, and she didn't like it. Where was that thought-dulling, anesthetic fog that drifted over her so frequently? It made time speed forward so considerately, like sleep. Usually, even when it refused to come she could pretend it had. Lose herself in a mantra of 'It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter'. But now....why wasn't it working now?
Wordlessly, Logan brought her the plate and--her heart sped up; her throat spasmed--set it on her knees. Her legs jerked, and he growled when a raspberry fell off the Styrofoam edge. She could feel his eyes, silently appraising. Because the girl avoided looking at him directly--last night's close examination being an exception, since he was unconscious--she missed the brief smile he gave her. The girl looked down at the food--none of which she felt like eating--until he moved away.
He left the room, and the girl could hear the splashing of fluid in the toilet bowel. When Logan came out again, he had donned a flannel shirt over the wifebeater, and she had hardly moved. He made a few mild noises in the back of his throat until she put a forkful of pancake in her mouth. But he didn't actually speak until he began to lace up his boots.
"Gotta run a couple errands, Kid. I won't be gone long. An' when I get back, I'll change your bandages and we're gonna talk."
He stood, and this time she saw the smile, the fleeting quirk of his lips before they settled into their usual stern line. Her eyes darted away.
"Eat," Logan told her.
::::
She wanted to do something nice. For him, for Logan. (Though a solid part of her advised against any change of status quot; she had no way of knowing when or if he would do something that would make her regret any display of courtesy). Not so much a thank you for what the man was doing as for what he wasn't. A way to earn her keep so his mind would not turn to other payment.
She gathered the unclean laundry (hers lay in a small pile near the bathroom door; his lay in small piles...everywhere). Slowly, so slowly; bending hurt. Getting out of the apartment was easy this time, though the girl did not take note of this, nor did she realize the irony of being able to leave the one time she intended to return. The girl was thinking of the shower she would take, once she had clean towels. These days it was the only activity she had any true interest in, looked forward to when her mind was clear enough to think ahead. Cold and dripping did not matter; she'd never known anything different to compare the showers here to. If the girl stood under the water long enough, scraped the soap against her skin with enough force, then for a little while she almost felt clean.
She thought about straightening up the rest of his rooms. Would she have enough energy? Enough time? When would Logan return? Would he be pleased with her, or angry that she had been so...so presumptuous? What would he do? What had he meant, when he said they were going to talk? What did he want?
The girl's musings grew bleaker with every careful step, hefting the load of cloth higher in her arms. These halls seemed twice as awful since she had last walked them. A roach flitted boldly over the slippers Logan had given her (more beautiful, more clean than anything she had ever worn. Pink silk and soft on her sole's lacerations). The smells, the darkness, the threats she had been raised with and had previously considered tolerable. Now she trembled and breathed shallowly, flinched each time somebody else appeared. What a horrible, ridiculous, mind-numbingly stupid idea this was. What had she been thinking?
She told herself that she'd grown spoiled in Logan's rooms. She had to pull herself together, work on building a callous over her fear.
A dark-skinned woman with sleepy eyes and a bloody lip swayed past her, her stomach rounded with a child as hopeless as anyone else here.
Giggling teenager boys, blisters around their nose from huffing whatever was in those plastic bags. They reached for her, but were too high to stand.
A Hispanic man with too much facial hair, screaming at no one in angry Spanish.
An old, drunk blond who offered to "help carry dat shit fo' you, hon-eey", but walked away before she could tell her no.
If her mind had been focused enough, the girl would have turned back. Hurried back to the relatively safe apartment and collapsed. Dug her fingers into the leather of the couch and promised to do anything, absolutely anything he wanted, if she could stay. But that level of cognitive ability was dispersing, flowing away to whatever place control escaped to during a panic attack. And the girl's body continued to move, without any noticeable connection to her mind.
He told her to get on her back and shut the fuck up. He said she was ugly as hell when she cried.
He put a less-filthy sheet on the couch's pull-out bed, relegated her mother to the bedroom with a fifth of tequila and a noseful of cocaine. She could hear her in there, giggling to herself sleepily at some joke nobody else would understand. Soon she'd fall asleep.
He looked at the girl, His face hard but His eyes were bright, so bright. He'd pushed the grimy bills into His back pocket, and then He let them in.
She had fought, and she had screamed. Scratched bloody lines into their shoulders and kicked her way off the makeshift bed--at one point even tried to crawl under it. It didn't make any difference: not to them, not for her. And they swore and laughed and pulled her back out and threatened to call Him back in. The girl would never forget how happy they seemed, to be there. As if this was a baseball game, a concert, a game of poker and they were winning.
One of the two held her wrists above her head; she directed her screams at the tattoo on his arm, at the upside-down face hanging over her, until the other grunted cheerfully, "Naw, Man, I got 'dis."
And she was naked, and the floor--or, specifically, the numerous items embedded in the floor--scratched and stung and cut.
And they didn't care that she was crying, that she was shrieking into their faces.
And she didn't know her legs could open that far.
And his friend needed to help keep her down after all.
And she coughed and spluttered because the pain was too much for her vocal chords. A brutal rip and shards of white-hot pain. Dry flesh, harsh as sandpaper. Scraping over skinless nerves, the edges of a bloody membrane. Over and over again.
And her mother dropped something in the bedroom.
And the girl's head tossed back and forth.
And snot and tears ran down the side of her face.
And his nostrils were red-rimmed.
And his breath stank, like rotting hamburger meat.
And he was everywhere--thrashing, wriggling, thrusting.
And he was sweaty. So sweaty.
And there were things where they shouldn't be, someone else where there should only be her. The squeaky noise of rubber, the slap of her lower body against the floor.
And it wasn't supposed to be like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this. Bodies should never be able to do this to another.
And her heels kept striking the ground, and one of them hit something hard and sharp. And there was wetness but no pain that she could separate from the rest.
And there was a water stain on the ceiling, a new one that she hadn't noticed before.
And there was hair between his eyebrows.
And there were spiders on the wall to the right. One, two, three.
And there were her clothes, so close by. Dropped and forgotten after He had taken them off of her. She could see the button of her jeans, the glint of even the dullest metal seeming to wink at her.
And there was a hand, squeezing her breasts. Tugging too hard on the dun-colored nipple. Laughter.
And it hurt. Everything, everything hurt. Burning stabs everywhere. A surge of flesh and a flood of acid.
And the face above her was red--and then purple. Bulging and splotched. A monster, with distorted features.
And there was another rush of something. Something filling her mind, her self, and pushing everything else out of the way in an echo of what his body was doing. Noise louder than a train, a hundred thousand buzzing voices that all sounded alike.
And the girl lost herself. She could not have differentiated between the invasions, could not have said if one was abnormal. How could she have known?
The world was swirling around her, in her. Voices that weren't speaking out loud and images the girl had never seen, the scents of places she had never been, spinning through her mind. Gasping and red spots in her vision. Wet blurring. Light too bright and then too dark.
Crushing weight. No air in the girl's lungs and no particular desire to breathe.
A whine, childish with impatience. "Shit. Gedoff a'ready. 'Smy turn."
The heavy form above her was pushed off, rolled over. It landed beside her and remained there: an unmoving, stinking presence, and the other man took his place.
She couldn't see anything but inky-black outlines now, couldn't feel anything beyond agony. Throbbing, relentless agony blotting out even that electric tingling that had been alit in her nerves, her skin.
The girl jerked up wildly, pressed her fingernails into something soft and obviously sensitive because he emitted a shrill noise. A hand found her jaw and shoved her back with a furious force. The metal frame of the pull-out bed and a crack that she heard, rather than felt. Warm liquid and a cold sensation flowing through her limbs. Gritty fingers separating her. Nausea.
A time without thoughts, without desire for thoughts. Pain so great that her brain had canceled it, numbed her. Chilly gray mist.
Heat.
Heaviness.
"Jesus fuckin' Christ,. You gonna lay there forever, Mac? Look like you in a fuckin' coma. C'mon--fine, fine. You go on an' lay there. Have seconds if you can geddit up again. Pussy. I'll meet up witchoo later."
The unblinking eye of the man still laying beside her. Inches away. Looking into and past her.
Her fingers fumbling with her clothes.
The girl didn't make it to the laundry room (though her stupidly brilliant subconscious tried; her legs carried her even when her mind was in a place two weeks prior.
Later, Logan would hurriedly retrieve all of the clothes that were strewn over the hall's floor. It was a miracle they weren't stolen as they lay there, unguarded--though perhaps the body had distracted potential thieves.
Her more rational self had not been worried about seeing Him. When was He ever up at this time of day? Why would He be on the third floor? Yes, there were many services to be found up here--from highly illegal guns to Tanya, nine years old and forty dollars an hour, to the Benditto twins who would, for a small fee, serve as a look out for any venture. But her father usually preferred the prices in the building next door.
He was still drunk, and perhaps this was why He missed the exit off the second-floor stairwell. It had happened before; months ago He'd mistaken another apartment for his own, and had earned the beating of His life by the real owner after drinking the man's beer and squeezing his girlfriend's ass (more for the former than the latter).
He was fast for such a large, inebriated man. His fingers twined in her hair, jerked her backwards. She stumbled, almost fell. Her vision turned scarlet as pieces of gauze and her scalp came away.
The girl's shoulder blades hit the wall with a dull thwack. His fists gripped her shoulders, sank into them like putty. His lips moves in an enraged babble that terror kept her from understanding. Her palms pushing ineffectually at his arms, his chest, his neck. She found her gaze caught on a vein throbbing in His throat, pulsing rapidly--and then bulging.
That rush.
:::::::::
She was still screaming when Logan found her, found them. Louder sounds than he had ever heard her make. Her hands covered her mouth, horrified, but that did not muffle the noise. She recoiled frantically when he reached for her, wrapped her arms around her chest. Yelled hysterical things about touching.
There was a man on the ground. A familiar tint of hair, a distinct bite to his blood that was echoed in her's.
His purple, lumpy tongue hung out of his mouth in some parody of a sleeping dog.
Voices behind the doors in the corridor, but nobody stepped out. You could always rely on the neighbor's respect for privacy when it might endanger them.
Logan blinking rapidly, trying to comprehend the scene before him in an instant. A thousand questions and the obvious need to act, take charge--a responsibility that had fallen on him too many times to count. Settling for what minimal answers his instincts could give him.
He stepped towards the girl, held his palms upward to her, nonthreatening. Refrained from grabbing her when attempting to do so caused her to come unglued, made his eardrums throb with pain. Logan made shushing sounds, assurances of safety. And when those failed him he used the tone that hundreds of Xavier's students had learned to fear, sent them tripping over themselves to comply with whatever order he'd issued. It was enough to get the girl stumbling back, in the direction of his room.
Logan looked down at the man, baffled by what had started out to be a good day. His lips twitched around the lolling tongue: still alive.
With an almost pensive expression on his face, he released his claws. Drew them through the beefy neck in a soft, clean swipe. And when the blood stop spurting he stood, hurried to catch up with the girl.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hi! So this might be a tad later than I promised. (Early-morning-six o'clock in the evening: tomato-potato). Please forgive me. I spent a shameful amount of time rewriting a scene that wasn't quite right, and altering the ending (still not quite comfortable with it, but when am I ever?) And I had a dentist's appointment (the reason I had the time today to sit at this computer: called in sick). I swear: I wish I could had been finishing up this chapter instead of laying on that weird chair, counting the specks in the ceiling tile while the burly doctor played pin-the-drill-on-the-cavity.
But here it is, at last. Thank you for your patience, your indescribably wonderful feedback, and that I can never get enough of, and the support you have offered in other matters. I think the greatest people in the world are members of this site. Please enjoy.
*WARNING*: The following contains graphic scenes that might upset some readers. Continue at your own risk, and please forgive me for any disturbing material.
But here it is, at last. Thank you for your patience, your indescribably wonderful feedback, and that I can never get enough of, and the support you have offered in other matters. I think the greatest people in the world are members of this site. Please enjoy.
*WARNING*: The following contains graphic scenes that might upset some readers. Continue at your own risk, and please forgive me for any disturbing material.
Chapter End Notes:
I really, really hope you all enjoyed this chapter. You can be assured that Codependent me will be stressing over this hope, so please review and end my misery!
There's something that's been bugging me for awhile now, and I'm curious about you guys opinion on the matter. You know when some small detail gets stuck in your head and keeps nagging at you nonstop until you address it?...Like how Hello Kitty doesn't have a mouth and when people say 'we' instead of 'you' (ex: "How are we feeling today?"--*I* was feeling just peachy till you came along and ruined my friggin' sense of self you overly perky Ho-bag.)?
...Anyway...I am accustomed to rounding up my stories before they reach ten chapters. Now, here we are, and only halfway through this fic. I am considering turning this into a two-part series (not affecting the story in any way), to avoid the appearance of one twenty-chapter monster to new readers (or, god forbid, the diminished interest of those reading now). What are you thoughts? Does a story with a large number of chapters make you hesitate to click on it? I do not mean to insult long stories or their writers in any way, nor imply anything about the reader's attention span. I'm just indulging my over-obsessive side, worrying about asking anyone to stare at their monitor that long.
Feel free to cast your vote: One large story, or an end here and a sequel?
There's something that's been bugging me for awhile now, and I'm curious about you guys opinion on the matter. You know when some small detail gets stuck in your head and keeps nagging at you nonstop until you address it?...Like how Hello Kitty doesn't have a mouth and when people say 'we' instead of 'you' (ex: "How are we feeling today?"--*I* was feeling just peachy till you came along and ruined my friggin' sense of self you overly perky Ho-bag.)?
...Anyway...I am accustomed to rounding up my stories before they reach ten chapters. Now, here we are, and only halfway through this fic. I am considering turning this into a two-part series (not affecting the story in any way), to avoid the appearance of one twenty-chapter monster to new readers (or, god forbid, the diminished interest of those reading now). What are you thoughts? Does a story with a large number of chapters make you hesitate to click on it? I do not mean to insult long stories or their writers in any way, nor imply anything about the reader's attention span. I'm just indulging my over-obsessive side, worrying about asking anyone to stare at their monitor that long.
Feel free to cast your vote: One large story, or an end here and a sequel?