Goldilocks
–
When Rosa looks at me, I feel ugly. Hideous, in fact.
I hate it.
I hate her.
Even though she's a pretty picture, I don't waste much time looking at her–I don't waste much time looking at anybody, much less paying attention to them. But she thinks I don't see her forgiving little gaze, like I'm a tiny, furry, wounded animal, an injured kitten learning to walk again. As if she expects some kind of vulnerability deep inside my chest.
Sorry, Rosa. There's no heart there. "What the fuck are you looking at," I snap.
Her eyes get hard and she turns away from me, clutching her bright, sequined dress in her hands and holding it against her body like I haven't seen her naked every day of this burgeoning life that I've been subjected to. "How pathetic you are," her voice is thin as sheet metal and just as metallic.
I stand up to my full height and cross the distance to the foot of the bed. She has to crane her delicate little neck back to meet my eyes, but she's not afraid. I don't know when she stopped being afraid of me. Was she ever? Is this maybe the reason why she's the only one I bring back night after night? I know all the rest of them are terrified of me.
She narrows her eyes defiantly, and I snatch her dress away from her. Her body gets caught in the momentum of my grab, and she's lifted into my hands.
She's cold. She could be dead. Something inside me wilts, and I feel anger at whatever plant inside me was hoping for warmth. My life has no warmth for me, it never has. I don't hope. I shouldn't have any expectancy for it. I sink my fingers deeper into her and she hisses, and we both know it's going to bruise. I smile at her, wide and uncaring, before I spin her around and press her face roughly into the mattress. I don't want her to breathe. I don't want her to look at me.
I could fuck millions of girls–I probably have–and I'd feel nothing. I don't know why I still feel disappointed every time.
–
There's a mirror in the airport bathroom. I haven't seen myself since I became this shell, this empty excuse for a human. I look, but I don't know what to look for. I think beauty standards left me some time between "human morals" and "societal rules."
Not to mention, I have an inability to pay attention to any one thing, really. I can see one eye, and I zone out. When I come back to myself, I notice my ear, forget everything I was thinking about in concern to my eye, and zone out. You can imagine how long it must take for me to look over my entire body. Fortunately, I have a feeling I'll have plenty of time. If I can remember later that examining myself is something I want to do. But I'll likely forget, because this life–or whatever this is, because it doesn't feel like life, not that I really remember what life feels like. I almost wonder if I ever lived or if some higher power set me down in this airport as a rotting body–doesn't allow for remembering. My hippocampus left and set up camp elsewhere when this whole debacle began.
I'm not given that time, though. "Checking… you out," M rumbles. I turn jerkily (that's all I can manage now, there will be no "turning abruptly" in this body, unless I want to throw my neck off), surprised that he would announce his interest and advances on me so openly. He doesn't look like he's checking me out, but our faces don't manage much beyond blank stares anymore.
But then I notice the waifish little figure beside him. I don't know it now, but I'll meet her again and we'll "have kids." But right now, I think she's pretty, though I'm not sure. Her face doesn't look much different from M's, so I don't know how he managed to identify any interest in her expression, but there's a little spark in my brain, not so much a memory of the mind as it is a memory of my muscles. Muscle memory. I must have reacted instinctively to females looking at me in the past. I think I smile, or something.
Probably "or something." She doesn't really smile back. I wonder if I'm one in a million: a zombie capable of smiling.
"Leave… you lovebirds… alone," M grumbles, lumbering out of the bathroom. I wonder if the disgruntled note is imagined. It's just me and her. I don't even know if this is the male or female restroom, although I can't imagine it matters anymore, to zombie or human alike.
She drags herself towards me, looking more as though a force is pulling her in my direction than like she has any control over herself. There is no hunger in her eyes, no depth of feeling or interest whatsoever. But she wraps her rotting fingers around my shoulders anyways.
We bump noses a few times. Nothing beyond that.
I curl my own fingers around her hips, hoping a better grip will lead me to what we both seem to be seeking.
She's cold. Why do I feel disappointed?
–
When Julie looks at me, I recognize the look. Something gentle that infuriated me in my other life.
I always pull her into my lap at these vulnerable little glances, wind my arms around her waist, and stare at her staring at me until she flushes, giggles uncomfortably, and averts her eyes. So I press a finger gently against her chin until she's looking at me again, her bright blues flickering between my gaze and my mouth.
It took me a while in this timeline, a lot of sifting through painful memories that are so sickening they make me nauseous even years after in a lighter, less mired lifetime, to understand that I never hated Rosa. I was afraid of her because she knew me. I wanted something, not specifically from her but something I could have received from her, but that she could never have given me the way I was.
I was pathetic back then. A child caught in a cycle, grasping at straws and throwing temper tantrums when he couldn't get what he wanted. He didn't even know how to begin getting what he wanted, but he was too far down the wrong road already. Rosa knew that, so she looked at me when she thought I wasn't looking.
She looked at me the way Julie looks at me because she always hoped. Always wondered.
I was right to be afraid of her back then.
But Julie's hope comes from a different place. She wonders about our future, or maybe she wonders about the specific part I play in the future of this baby-bird of a world. Rosa wondered if I'd ever fight back my demons, she wondered what I might have been like if things had gone right at least once. When that plane hit the ground and she pulled out the gun, she thought it was too late for me.
She was wrong. I'm glad she was wrong.
The airplane is warm, but Julie is warmer underneath my palms. Warm like the fires I used to set. I float my hands millimeters above her skin, sliding them under her shirt, grazing them against the sides of her breasts. She inhales sharply, shortly, glowering at the cheeky grin on my face.
"What're you looking at?" I ask, voice mild and low. My heart thumps with bravado, this miraculous, fragile muscle parting the bright red waves of blood in a way that even Moses wouldn't have been able to muster. I can feel parts of my anatomy rising out of sheer emotion. Her eyes darken and she pulls her lower lip between her teeth.
She releases her lip and shrugs, meeting my eyes again slowly, almost bashfully. "You."
Something inside me inflates at the feeling of being known. I brush her hair behind her ear and kiss the shell of it, then wander down to her jaw. My next stop is her collarbone, and she's already pulling me out of my jeans. I kiss her just as she slides onto me.
The fit is just right. We meet in one place, but I'm warm all over. We both groan softly.
This is what I've always been looking for, and after several misguided attempts, I've finally found the real thing.
Fin.