Dear antiIRONY,
Obviously, you have never been raped, nor had someone attempt to rape you before. And yes, it is quite disturbing. That's life, sweetie, and it doesn't always give warnings like I did. I plainly stated that this story was going to be disturbing in the beginning, so that if you didn't want to read something like that, you couldn't say I hadn't told you. It may not make sense to you to have someone sent to a low-security facility for manslaughter, but hey, this world is already so screwy, why not? It honestly wouldn't surprise me. She had spent time in prison for 3 years, until it was proven that she acted out of self-defense. I'm no expert on American laws, but I know that manslaughter is what it is called if it was an accident, self-defense, something like that. Anyhow, I wanted to make sure that I cleared that up (as best as I could, anyway.)
NEXT TOPIC!
This chapter was co-written by Story of the Year. (Not exactly, more like the music helped me with the mood.) I give them credit for the title and parts of the text.
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Chapter 4: The Blackest Tears
They all looked at me with blank faces.
"Um," Magnet stuttered quietly. "So, you're tellin' me that you killed a guy to get here?"
I nodded my head slowly. I knew they wouldn't understand. It's all so complex and long-winded, it frustrates me just to try and sort it out in my head. Better to let them think I'm a cold-blooded killer than to go into the painful details.
"Why?" Squid asked simply.
"Uh..." Did I really want to get into this? I mean, what would it really accomplish?
"It's…um, complicated…"
"Well," said the tall, gangly blond boy sitting across from me, "we've got time. It's not like we're going some place interesting anytime soon."
I looked up at him. He was incredibly tall, even when he was sitting down. I focused on his face. He had a strange look in his eyes that I couldn't really decipher. I wondered what he was thinking.
"What's your name?" I asked him, trying to change the subject.
"Zigzag. Now, no changing the subject, why did you kill somebody?" Wow. He caught on fast.
I sighed. They weren't going to give up now. Why didn't I just keep my big mouth shut…
"Like I said, it's complicated."
I really didn't want to do this.
"He was my teacher," I said.
They gave me expectant looks. Too bad, guys. My lips are sealed.
"And…?" asked Magnet.
I gave him a withering look. I had expected better of him than to pry a girl for information. He sort of shrunk back, but you could tell he was still curious; they all were. I sighed, but offered no more details. You have to earn my trust. Rarely, someone slips past my defenses for unknown reasons. Who knows how, or why. But once they're in, it's hard to get them out.
I looked down at my tray of food. It looked like a smear of barf in many different colors. My appetite disappeared in an instant.
Pushing my tray back, I looked around the mess hall. I seemed to be old news, because no one was gawking at me openly anymore. Thank God for that. I hate being the center of attention. Like I said, someone is liable to get hurt. The guys were eating slowly, still absorbing the minimal info I had provided. Zigzag kept giving me sideways glances, thinking I didn't see. 'Leave me alone, dude,' my brain warned, 'Don't even think about it.'
I stood up and walked towards the door. Before I even reached the next table, I got a weird feeling. I looked around me, trying to shake the chill that had settled on my spine. My eyes stopped on C Tent's table. There he was; the source of my discomfort. It was the guy who had stopped the black guy from beating the crap out of Magnet. He was staring at me, and everything else seemed to disappear.
'What are you doing to me?' I thought.
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I ran out of the mess hall as fast as I could. I had broken out in a cold sweat and was breathing heavily, not to mention scared out of my mind. What just happened back there? He was just staring at me. It felt like my mind was melting away…
Angry tears were streaming down my face as I continued to run. Oh God, I had to get out of here. How dare he invade my head like that! I don't know how he did it, but I hoped he never did it again.
I found myself at the showers. 'Why not?' I thought. I put a shower token that was in my pocket in the slot and stepped fully clothed under the stream of water. My breath left my chest when the water hit my skin. Oh, it felt so good. I could barely breath, it was so cold, but it was bliss.
By now, the only warm thing about my body was the hot tears pouring down my face. I've never felt so vulnerable. Well, that wasn't exactly true…
I've never felt safe, actually. Not when I was a little child, or even as I grew up. How should I put this… Um, my childhood was… painful? Man, that sounded Movie of the Week. The truth was that my mother was basically non-existent. She left my father and me when I was about 2. Because of that, I had very little female influence. Even so, I wasn't really tomboyish because of it.
That wasn't what scarred my body for all eternity, though. No, that was my father's doing. He was all right sometimes, I guess. I mean, he let me do what I wanted to most of the time. But the whole problem was this: he was sick. I don't mean like fever-sick, I mean perverted-sick. He was completely evil. The worst part is, no one knew about it.
He would make me do things; terrible, horrible things. He would touch me like no father should his daughter; say things to me that no man had any right to say to a woman, especially an innocent little girl. He was sick, plain and simple. The things I had to endure…
This train of thought brought a whole new wave of tears, but now I had no water to wash them away. My shower had ended, and I didn't want to use another shower token on my first day. 'God,' I prayed, my eyes closed tightly, 'How could you let this happen?'
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After my shower, I had stood there for a long time. A few hours, actually. My mind couldn't get off the subject that it had painfully brought up. My body felt paralyzed in the stall, and my mouth was numb. I wasn't cold from the water anymore. No, this cold went down deeper, burying itself in my bones. It was unrelenting, and I would just have to endure it until it felt like leaving.
So swallow the knife…
No one had come by while I was there. I had heard distant voices that one could only assume came from the wreck room. I tried to ignore them, but they kept shattering any chance I had at concentrating. When they finally died away, I left the showers. 'Maybe they're all asleep,' I thought hopefully.
Carve the way for your pride…
All was so deadly quiet in the arid desert landscape. It was stifling, even at night. It seemed even too hot for the lizards to exist. How was someone expected to breath, let alone dig, in these conditions?
Now our hands are tied…
Pushing the tent flap aside, I saw that all the tent members were sitting in a circle with some older man I didn't recognize. One word I had promised myself I would never use came to mind that described him perfectly. 'Lame-o.' I shuddered. It was freaky how well it fit.
The problems lie within…
"Well, hello there, Madge. I'm Mr. Pendanski. We were wondering where you'd gotten off to. Thought maybe you'd falling into a hole!" He laughed at his own joke. I just stared at him blankly. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. I kept staring at him. A few of the guys snickered. 'And... what is the point of this?' I asked myself. I'd already had a pretty full day, and this idiot wasn't doing anything I considered important.
So we pray for night…
I walked over to my bed, hair sopping, and fell onto my cot, plunging into sleep.
To start over again…
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End of Fourth Chapter
I'm sorry if it seems I'm making her life too complicated, but it makes perfect sense to me. People's lives are layered so tightly with good and bad things, and that makes them who they are. In this case, she's had a lot more bad than good. She's been messed up, but it doesn't make her a bad person. (Didn't mean for that to come out sounding so Pendanski-like.) Anyway, please continue to review and I'll continue to write. (Even if no one reviews, I'm still going to write it. I'm doing this for myself, no one else.)
(I'm going to start posting information about my stories on my profile. If I do not update for a while, click on my name, and hopefully I'll have written up there what's going on. I'll also state if I'm writing any new stories, or if I'm having any problems with already published ones.)