I own the rights to none of the characters in this story, even the characters that I created. If Disney wants to film this story and show it every year at Christmas, they have my permission.
Chapter Rated R for language and sexual situations.
Minor grammatical errors corrected in previous chapters. No other changes.
Knight in Shining Armor
Chapter 7
They say that life's a bitch, and then you die.
I was slumped in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, in the dark. On the table in front of me sat the Sony camcorder, the unblinking, accusing eye of its lens staring back at me. An hour earlier, it had started beeping, alerting me that its battery was winding down.
I finally gathered the strength to reach out and pop open the camera and pulled out the tape. The tape had completely played out, and reached the end. Hunh. I had forgotten. Have to push the stop button several times. That meant everything had ended up being recorded, although the lens would have pointed to the ground for most of it. I fingered one edge of the tape cartridge. That little fourteen-dollar piece of plastic contained the end of my innocence. Oh, God, was this what life had been like for Lizzie, the past three months? Groped, fondled, almost certainly raped?
"So, how was your new boyfriend?" I had confronted her after the party last weekend. With the memory of her shock and hurt at my anger came the urge to throw up again. I leaned forward, and rested my head between my knees, but there was nothing left in my stomach to release. With that comment, had I hurt her as badly as any of those other bastards?
The nausea eventually passed, and my eyes refocused on the tape in my hands.
Was it fate? Fate that the nightshot arrived when it did? Fate that I brought it with me to Lizzie's? Fate that it kept recording, even after I tried to stop it? Could something on that tape help me save the day? It would mean watching that lingering kiss that never ended, viewing the hand that slithered into her blouse and kneaded one breast, hearing her muffled sob as Kate ordered her not to defend herself, making out the answer to why he called her Peachy....
Gasping, crying, I slid a fingernail inside the cartridge and ripped out the tape from its track. I yanked out more, and more still. My arm grew weary from the constant motion of pulling, until finally I reached the end of the spool. I tried to snap the tape in two, to prevent anyone from ever witnessing Lizzie's humiliation, but it defied my efforts. Undeterred, I swept up the mound of tape and opened the microwave. My mom had left my dinner in the microwave for me to heat up later. I pulled out the tray, dumped the food in the garbage, tossed the tape in, slammed the door, and nuked it.
Fate was a tempting devil, and it could go to Hell. I didn't believe in fate.
I glanced at the clock on the microwave. Ten o'clock. Miranda would be home from her dinner. In fact, her parents had probably already turned in. I picked up the phone and punched in her number. She answered before the first ring had finished. "Hello?"
"Miranda, I'm coming over."
"Did you talk to Lizzie?"
"I'm coming over."
The first thing she said when she greeted me at her door was, "Gordo, you look awful!"
I entered the house. "Are your parents asleep?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "I don't think so. Watching TV in bed."
I nodded toward the door under the stairway. "In the basement."
When we reached the bottom of the steps, she turned the lights on in the basement, then turned to face me, with her hands on her hips. "Okay, why the secrecy?"
"Because I don't want anyone else to hear what I'm about to tell you." When she didn't respond, I continued. "Miranda, you have to be strong. We both do. Because I don't think I'm strong enough to handle this, by myself." I almost broke down near the end, but managed to get everything under control. "I think about Lizzie...and how strong she's had to be, by herself...."
"Okay," Miranda said, breathing deeply. "You're scaring me."
I nodded. "I'm scared." I took her elbow and guided her to the couch. "We need to sit down."
I didn't have the words to explain to her, other than just to tell her what happened. I saw the tears forming in her eyes when I described Lizzie in Ted's lap, kissing him. "Omigod," she breathed. I think on some level, she knew then how my story would end, but she still gasped in shock when I described how his hands moved over Lizzie's flesh, and the tears were running down her cheeks. Every time I paused, she just repeated the same thing, over and over. "omigod. omigod." I held nothing back--Miranda deserved to know everything I did--and when I got to the degrading comments that the others made about Lizzie, and finished with the cheers coming from inside the house, Miranda was a nervous wreck. She burst from the couch and stumbled to the bathroom in the back.
I left her alone for a few minutes, but when she didn't come back out, I walked across the den to the bathroom, and looked through the door she had left open. She was sitting back on her knees, in front of the toilet, coughing. I went to her, and sat on the floor next to her, and we fell into each other's arms. "Why, Gordo?" she sobbed into my shoulder. "Why Lizzie?"
"I don't know," I told her, holding her tightly and rubbing her back to comfort her.
"Lizzie is so...she's so..." Miranda tried, then gave up. "This isn't supposed to happen to Lizzie," she cried. "Lizzie's supposed to...Lizzie's the princess. She finds Prince Charming in the end." She sighed, then spat, "Kate," and the anger in her voice made her shiver in my arms. She released me, and covered her mouth with her hand, sniffing. "I have to..." she mumbled to herself, then rose from the floor, and as she left the bathroom, I heard her say, "Daddy's study."
I picked myself up from the floor, closed the lid to the toilet and sat, running my hands through my hair. Daddy's study? I burst back into the basement den. Empty. The door at the top of the steps was open. I raced up the steps, then down the hallway to her father's study. Miranda was there, tugging viciously on the top right hand drawer of his desk, where he kept a handgun. "Goddammit!" she moaned in frustration. "Fuck! What's the use of these things, if you can't get to them!" She kicked the desk violently, chipping off one corner of the leg, but doing no damage to the lock. I started toward her, but she backed away. "Stay back! Don't touch me."
I held my arms out to my side. "What are you doing?"
"Solving the problem," she told me emotionlessly.
"No, you're not. You use that gun, and they'll lock you away."
She shrugged. "And Lizzie'll be free."
"I'm not going to get Lizzie back, and lose you at the same time." I approached her, and this time she didn't back away. I took her in my arms again, and she seemed to collapse against me. "I won't allow that."
"But, Gordo, Lizzie's still there, right now, and--"
"Shhhh," I told her. "I know how you--"
She stiffened against me and said, "Stop! Don't say it. Don't tell me you know how I feel, because you can't."
"You're right," I agreed. "I can't."
"Gordo. I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want to give her time. I don't want to express my love and devotion, and then sit in the background while she gets abused and degraded. I want to save Lizzie."
I released her, not for the last time that night, and reached up to cup her face in my hands, using my thumbs to brush the tears--and not the last tears for that night--from the corners of her eyes. Such soulful eyes. Her resolve steeled mine.
"We've been in the dark too long," I told her. "The time has come for us to learn the truth."
To be continued...
Author's note: Please forgive me if there's a longer pause before the next chapter. It's not writer's block; I know where we're going, but the IRS beckons.