Author's Introduction:
Every day, I write a new, small CSI vignette. But it's hard to find the time to type and post them. Meanwhile, they make my hands itch.
Every night, Grissom and I sit down with some wine and work on our two large experiments—the original chaptered fic and a new AU project that I try on for him like a new outfit.
In the meantime, these vignettes pile up on my bureau, my shelves, anywhere there is room.
Monster
The fics come back to Vegas…
Blood was smeared like garish lipstick across the little girl's face. Her closed eyes were dark smudges in a bleached face, hair in messy pigtails, trailing down to a neck spattered red. She slumped in the chair, a broken doll. The sight was ghastly, and Catherine Willows looked at her only daughter with blood that had turned to rain. Swallowing the bile in her throat, Catherine said to the murdered child,
"Okay, you're ready."
Lindsey's blackened eyes snapped open and the bloody mouth grinned. "Do I look scary?"
Catherine could answer that one truthfully. "You sure do, Linds. I'm going to have nightmares tonight."
"I bet I win best costume," Lindsey cackled gleefully, hopping out of the chair, black skirt fluttering around her ankles. "It's gonna be so cool."
Catherine struggled to control her breathing. She was a mother. She could handle this. Being a mother meant you cut the crusts off sandwiches and stuck Band-Aids on tiny hurts. It meant you held Kleenex in front of runny noses and cleaned vomit off the carpet. It meant you went to dance recitals and school plays.
And sometimes it meant you dressed your little girl up like a corpse.
Catherine's stomach had lurched when Lindsey first came home from school waving a printed invitation to a Halloween party, excited about her "wicked cool" costume idea—that she was going to need her mother's help to create. Reluctantly, Catherine had hauled out her makeup kit—which was just as well-stocked as her field kit—and smeared mauve and violet eyeshadow over her daughter's closed eyes, blending it with black powder to create that perfect bruised color. Corn-syrup "blood" was spattered over Lindsey's face, neck and arms, exactly the way it would if she had staggered forward after her wound, reaching for help.
Yes, Catherine knew the colors of death.
Every swipe of the sponge, every stroke of the brush made the feeling worse. And finally, when she was finished, she saw what her baby would look like if she were the victim of a brutal homicide. She'd turned her lovely daughter into a monster.
And Lindsey had giggled and bounced and thrown warm little arms around her mother's neck, dropping thank-yous into her ears.
Catherine had walked her daughter to the door on unsteady legs, watched her get into her best friend's mother's station wagon, blinked the tears away. Waving a hand that was made of gingerbread, she called out, "Have fun, Lindsey. I love you."
The door closed, and Catherine knew she would not open it again until Lindsey came home. The bell would ring often enough, but Catherine would not answer. No candy today.
Like the door, her eyes were closed, but there was no dead bolt for the sight of that bruised face, for the memory of her own hands creating something so…
…scary.
I'm going to have nightmares tonight.
Catherine knew the colors of death, had shot people and watched the light fade from their eyes, counted time by vaginal clocks and didn't put Band-Aids over defensive wounds. Then she rushed home, every day, to open her arms to her daughter and her ears to the name she loved to hear.
Mommy, Mommy.
Catching a glimpse of herself in the window as she pulled the drapes, Catherine knew the nightmares wouldn't wait. They were already here.
Do I look scary?
She threw up once, long before Lindsey came home from the party, retching quietly with the bathroom door closed and the faucet running to keep the act a secret from the empty house. Beyond the sound, the doorbell pealed faintly.
The next night, Catherine woke and went to work around ten PM. It was no longer Halloween, but she never felt any difference.
Author's Notes:
Being more of a Sara in both looks and personality, I admire and envy the Catherines of the world—I shop with them, I drink with them, and love them for who they are even as they make me happy to be me. Catherine is the mother I want to be someday, if I ever figure out how to marry a man like Grissom.