A Perfect Violation
Lea of Mirkwood
I lay dying
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming
Am I too lost to be saved?
Am I too lost?
- Tourniquet, Evanescence
"I…I can't talk to you right now. I'm scared," mumbled Tricia, biting her lip. "I don't know what to do. I'm…I don't know what to do."
Joe's voice turned even more concerned. "Tricia? What's wrong with you?"
"Mm…my leg hurts."
"Why, honey?" he asked, his voice sounding like a far away world to Tricia. Her resolve slowly weakened, and she longed for something to save her. Anything to save Joe from what he was about to hear.
"Because." She hiccupped, and bit her lip, leaving red marks like blood on the edge of her teeth. "My promotion. It's…it's not mine."
"You lied?" asked Joe, a hurt element entering his tone. A slight feeling, unfamiliar and painful, entered Tricia's chest. It was like a knot, burning in her insides. It took her a minute to realize what it was. Guilt.
"No, I got the promotion," said Tricia hurriedly, brushing hair out of her eyes. "It's just…I did a lot of things to get it…that I shouldn't have."
"What did you do, hon?" Joe's voice was supportive. Gentle. Like his touch, which Tricia suddenly remembered with startling clarity. She coughed.
"Fucked somebody," she replied clearly. "Fucked a lot of somebodies."
Joe didn't breathe. He didn't try to laugh it off. She couldn't even hear the sound of his breath. Then suddenly she heard a choking, dry laugh.
"You're lying," he said hoarsely. "You're lying again, Tricia. When will you stop LYING TO ME?!"
"I'm not lying," said Tricia softly. "I'm sorry. I fucked people, Joe. I went to their offices and took off my panties and let them-"
Click. The call ended and the voice of her nightmares spoke again. "What was that you were saying about panties, Tricia?"
Tricia burst into tears and leaned her head against the wall, bracing her good leg against the ground to keep from collapsing.
"I hate you!" she cried furiously through her tears. "Why did you make me do that?"
"Because. You're inhuman, Tricia. You're a terrible person." There was a hint of a smile in his voice. "And I hate people like that."
Tricia's chest heaved with sobbing and she placed her hand over where her loose silk blouse gapped at the neck, trying to calm her breathing. She heard a gentle sigh over the phone line and a rustling noise, like someone straining to look someplace.
"Don't cover up."
Tricia snatched her hand away from her chest again.
"Fuck you."
She heard a low, throaty chuckle. Like irony.
"Gladly, Tricia."
"How could you do this to me?"
A long, low sigh. "You still don't understand," he said, and then in a voice she barely heard and didn't pay attention to, "You probably will never understand."
Tricia fell silent, her chest slowly rising and falling. She wiped her hand across her face, leaving a smear of dirt across her cheekbone. He didn't speak. Before she could decide what to do, her good leg slid to the side, forcing her other leg to strike the wall. The pain became unbearable. It shot up her thigh and spread to her torso and she couldn't feel her leg below the knee. Sweat beads popped out across her forehead and she gasped loudly in pain, doubling over.
"God, my leg!" moaned Tricia and went to clap her hand over the wound in the instant reaction everyone has when something hurts: touch it. Just before the palm of her hand closed over the source of the pain, she heard a tsking sound from the phone in her hand.
"Don't touch it," he said coldly. "Don't move your hand towards it."
Tricia's head lolled back on her shoulders and it cracked against the concrete wall, making her wince even harder. "Please," she begged. "Please."
"No, I don't think so."
"It hurts!" whimpered Tricia, biting down on her lower lip until it turned white under the gaudy lipstick. "It hurts!"
"Gunshot wounds generally do." He sighed deeply. "If you touch it, I will kill you."
Tricia gripped the edge of the dumpster next to her tightly, until one of her fingernails broke from the pressure. She gritted her teeth as tears slowly slid down her cheeks. A weak wail of pain escaped her throat and found its way out, which made the voice chuckle.
"All right, all right," he said with a voice full of amusement. "On your knees, Tricia."
"What?" gasped the executive weakly, barely keeping her hold on the cell phone in her hands as she struggled not to collapse.
"On your knees," he repeated with a less amused tone.
"But I can't!" moaned Tricia. "It'll hurt!"
"On your knees and pray," he said coldly. "Pray to God to save you. Pray. Tell him you're sorry. That you deserve hell."
Tricia swallowed convulsively. "You don't believe in God."
"That's not your concern. On your knees."
Tricia took a deep breath and pushed herself away from the metal dumpster until she was wavering on one strong leg and one barely useless one. Slowly, taking ragged breaths, Tricia lowered herself on the knee of her healthy leg. The pain shot up through her veins, aching stabs like boiling oil in her veins. She'd never experienced such pain and Tricia screamed. The sound echoed in the alley and ricocheted against the walls. She wailed and howled with the pain as she forced her wounded leg to bend and she nearly fainted with the pain of putting weight on it. She bent down, still pressing the phone to her ear, reduced to a small, mewling creature with nothing left.
"Prayer time, Tricia," said the caller. "Do you remember your prayers from Sunday school?"
Tricia didn't respond at first but kept whimpering with the burning, aching pain. "God," she began shakily. "God, please."
"Go on, Tricia."
"I should be in hell." Tricia choked. "Oh God, please. If I die-"
"I think that's enough, Tricia. You can do something now."
Tricia's hands immediately flew to press against the bloody hole in her thigh, sticky redness staining her hands almost instantly. After a few moments where she just tried to hold in the blood and the pain, she reached for her purse. She fumbled around inside it with one hand until she located the twisted rope of her ruined pantyhose and pulled it out. As she shook it out to try and make it more usable, the phone cradled in the crook of her neck pressed to her ear laughed at her dryly.
"Ever resourceful, aren't you?"
Tricia ignored him and tried to pass the end of the hose under her leg while the voice continued to taunt her.
"Now why on earth is your pantyhose ruined, Tricia?" he asked. "Have a bit too much fun?"
Tricia groaned with pain as she tried to raise herself up to wrap the sheer nylon around her thigh a second time. "What are you…talking about?" she managed to moan distractedly as she tied a tight knot in the hose and tucked the loose ends under against the wound.
"You like fun, don't you, Tricia?" purred the voice softly. "And you had a lot of fun. Enough fun to ruin those nice hose."
Tricia raised her head slowly to look up at the surrounding windows with a dawning horror.
"How do you know about that?" she whispered in horror. The voice laughed.
"I know, Tricia."
A chilling certainly crept down Tricia's spine as she cowered on the ground. Her breath came in shorter and shorter gasps as the horror of her own actions burned into her consciousness.
"I…"
"Yes, Tricia," he said softly, caressingly. "You know me. You remember me."
"Oh God…"
"You fucked me in that elevator without a thought. If I hadn't come along after you, you'd never even remember me. You almost didn't. You're cold and heartless. You didn't give me a second thought."
A moan slid from Tricia's lips, almost involuntary. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. If I'd known, I'd-"
"You'd have what?" asked her tormentor. "Not fucked me in that elevator? Of course not. But that would have been a pity."
"Why?" moaned Tricia, her fingers digging into the flesh of her thigh.
"Why? I'd have been sad. I wouldn't have been sure of your nature. No, Tricia, I rather enjoyed it. It's been quite a while since I've had a woman of your…caliber. I've watched you for a long time. You're a very beautiful woman, Tricia. I've done things to you in my mind that you'd never believe. You've been a favorite thought of mine. I'm glad I got to have the real thing."
Tricia bowed her head, sobbing convulsively. Her chest heaved, gleaming with the sweat of her horror and her pain.
"But you don't look so nice now, do you, Tricia?" growled the voice in her ear, becoming more agitated and grating. "Do you? I don't think so, dear. No, you look terrible. You look hideous. You look like what you really are, a sick, twisted rat, cowering in a back alley after you've fucked someone as hard as you can. You whore, Tricia. This is your element, isn't it? This is where you belong, now maybe someone will beat you for the little money you have in your pitiful Prada wallet. Wouldn't that be nice?" As Tricia's sobs increased in volume until they became a near keening wail, his mouth relented. "I'm sorry, Tricia. You're a beautiful, wonderful girl and you have gleaming ambitions. Don't cry."
Slowly Tricia's sobs trailed off into brief hiccoughs. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a trail of pale skin in the layer of grime and bloody smears. "Can I go home?" asked Tricia meekly.
"No, sweetie," purred her caller. "You have to call Joe again and say you're very, very sorry for cheating on him."
Whimpering, Tricia pressed her hand more firmly against the gaping hole in her thigh covered by a film of wrapped pantyhose, sticky red blood seeping through. "But my leg hurts," she protested. "Can I…can I take some aspirin? It…it…" Tricia's voice rose into a sudden cry of pain. "It hurts!"
"No, you may not. Call Joe, Tricia. Hang up on me, call Joe. It's not difficult."
Tricia hiccoughed one more time and pressed the off button, then called Joe. He answered dully, like he couldn't care again about talking on the phone, or drinking orange juice, or talking to people. It hit Tricia that she'd done this to him. She couldn't excuse it, but she could do something.
"Joe, I'm sorry," whispered Tricia.
"You're sorry?" echoed Joe, letting a heaving gasp escape from his throat. "You…that's just it, you're sorry? After you did all that to me, all you can say is that you're sorry? Fuck you!"
"I'm so sorry, Joe," she said simply, her face gentle in one moment of last tearful humanity. "I never wanted to hurt you, and I did love you. I'm sorry."
Tricia hung up the phone on a weeping, angry Joe and set it in her lap. Covering her face with one hand, she let the tears fall.
The phone rang, and Tricia answered, not saying anything, but there was a different light in her eyes.
"There, there, Tricia," murmured the gentle voice, slowly caressing in its velvet weight. "It's all right. You did well. You can take your aspirin now."
Tricia coughed and opened the clasp on her purse with shaking fingers, somehow managing to remove her lacquered pill box and open it, removing two white pills. She tossed them in her mouth and swallowed quickly, gagging on the bitter, chalky residue it left without a glass of water to chase it down. She swallowed again and again, trying to take the taste from her tongue.
"You're so kind to me," she said softly, tipping her head forward again.
Catch. A pause, as the caller searched for the sarcasm, the lie in her voice. Curveball. He chuckled.
"Don't laugh!" protested Tricia, her brow creasing and tears catching her tone. "You…you've saved me. I…I could have died from the gunshot but you let me take the aspirin and wrap it up. You did that for me. You did."
Her emotions flowed in a pathetically saccharine manner for a few more minutes, but in the mind of the caller they were hardly worth noting and hardly worth paying attention to. There was no point and no end to her mindless babble and he knew what was wrong with her. Quite common, though the thought of it, its very concept, made him want to laugh.
"Don't be stupid, Tricia," he said calmly. "I'm not kind to you. This is only the first, acute stages of Stockholm Syndrome. It's a mental issue, of which I'm sure you'd develop many if I let you continue on acting like such an idiot for much longer."
"No!" cried Tricia brokenly. "No, it's not!"
He laughed.
"Don't laugh at me, please!"
He drew in a breathless, half-laugh. "I'll hang up!" he said teasingly, like a little boy on the playground holding Tricia's diary just out of her hands, dancing, dancing and she begged.
"No!" exclaimed Tricia with a howl. "Please, please, please don't! Stay on the line, stay with me!"
"No, Tricia, you've been naughty. I'll leave you, Tricia. I'll hang up and never, ever come back because you're terrible and cruel. I don't want to talk to you any more, Tricia. I'm hanging up on you. I'll press this little button here…three…two…"
"NO! Please, no! Don't leave me!"
"Just…just this little tiny button with the little red circle on it. I'll push it and you can't call me back. I'll be gone. You'll never know what to do."
"Please, please…"
His voice went on, tormenting and toying with her confused mind until she felt near to collapse. Tricia leaned back against the wall, screwing up her face in a contorted mask of anguish as her golden curls scraped up a good deal of the grime and dust on the brick wall behind her head.
He cocked the gun. He cocked the gun, a smooth, mechanical sliding click that was instantly recognizable as the sound of terror, more potent in Tricia's world than the sight of a dark cloak and a scythe. That sound meant Death, in all its horror and uncertainty, something unfamiliar to Tricia's sheltered mind. It paralyzed the breakdown of her mind and kicked in her adrenaline, but at once froze her in place. She backed up into the corner between Dumpster and wall, wildly looking in all corners and trying to slam herself further backwards, free hand slapping against the wall in her frenzied attempt to make herself small enough to miss, tiny enough to disappear and sink away into Nothing.
"Oh, God," she gasped in a small voice, the only thing coming to mind the church services she went to as a child and the way the great crucifix loomed over her little blond head, more cornsilk in her youth. Latin mass echoed in her memory, solemn and worshipful. For a moment she felt free, but then all was gone and she was still in her corner, cowering behind a dumpster in a back alley of New York City, with a gun pointed at her head and no prayer or God that she felt could take her.
"You've ruined lives, Tricia MacNeill. You've gotten your way to your high position by making people miserable and fucking them. You've broken Joe's heart. You might as well have killed him. You used me for a quick fuck in the elevator and didn't give a shit about me. You're useless. You're nothing." The tone of Tricia's call-waiting stopped him from continuing. Answering the unasked question by the confusion on her face, he said simply, "Take it."
Tricia pressed the button and answered with an empty, "Hello?"
"It's Joe," said the other line flatly. "I've packed all you things up. You can come pick them up whenever you want or-" His cold tone took a bitter turn. "-you can have someone from your office do it for you."
"Thank you," murmured Tricia and flashed back over to her primary call.
"Welcome back, Tricia," said the caller wryly. Tricia nodded numbly. "Do you have anything else to say?"
"No," said Tricia in a broken voice that no one would have heard two feet away, but the receiver next to her lips caught. The creaking sound, faint as a sigh, of the rifle lining her up in its sights, traveled across the signal to her ear. She wiped her face across with the back of her hand, removing more grime until she looked almost human once more, pale but there. She shook her head desolately. "I've lost everything," she whispered softly.
"It's our choices, Tricia," said the caller frankly, no games. It was the least he could do. No more games with a condemned woman.
"But what do I do?" she asked, relying to the last.
"Nothing."
Something broke, some dam in her mind and Tricia sat up straight, grinding a fist into her forehead. She screamed, a primal howl of pain and agony, like a wounded animal.
"YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE!" she howled into the phone, clutching it in her dirty fingers like she wanted it to crumble to dust. "I NEVER DID ANYTHING TO YOU!"
"You're inhuman, Tricia," he answered. "You're heartless and you're a whore."
With a last scream of wordless fury, Tricia rose to her feet powerfully, the pain in her leg forgotten in a wave of hot fury, of the heat of her choice. With a resolute growl of finality, she hurled the tiny cell phone at the ground. It shattered, tiny electronic pieces scattering across the alley and skittering on the slimy concrete. Without paying any heed to her purse or the stabbing pain in her leg she started to walk quickly down the alley, away from the hell beside the Dumpster. The light from the street and the sun, obscured by tall buildings in the alley, started to brighten and she felt like a girl in a fairy tale, overcoming evil and leaving the dark haunted woods behind.
She made it halfway to the street before he shot her in the back. It felt like a swift tug, as if someone had her back with a fishhook and pulled it towards the front of her chest, and then the inexpressible pain began. She fell forward, to her knees, then face down on the concrete. With gasps as she fought to drag air into her ripped lungs, Tricia rolled over onto her back. Her leg kicked out, convulsively and she coughed, the sound thick with blood slowly rising in her windpipe. She blinked once and then died, blank blue eyes staring up at the sky in a parody of life. The look on her face was one of innocent surprise, like she had just seen something unexpected and not entirely unwelcome. There was no tricky gleam or calculating smile. She was young and beautiful, the kind of girl you'd look twice at, a child again before her sins and her choices ruined her and left her an empty cold shell. Now there was nothing.
Fin.
I lay dying
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming
Am I too lost to be saved?
Am I too lost?
- Tourniquet, Evanescence
It was actually Kellifer Monkey's review that made me kick my ass into gear and type up what I'd already outlined. Thank you to all who read this and stayed with me through my pathetically sporadic updates. I can't believe anyone is patient enough to tolerate my crap. (Yes, a maggot shot does exist, it was referred to in Young Guns II. Fear my geekness and extensive memory on ANYTHING Kiefer related.)
Thanks again for reading, and please review to tell me what you think of the ending.
