t w e n t y – t w o
Can’t drown in the shower. Can’t fucking drown in the shower.
The tiles are dirty. Pink hair in the drain. If Mikaela’s fucked one of her guys in here there’s probably semen on the walls.
Can’t get fucked up. Can’t get anything. Can’t get nothing.
Skin is shaking. They’re holding me down. Needles floating in my blood. Headache. Headache. It’s fucking in me again, it’s back, and I need it out, out, out, and I grab my head but there’s nothing in there, I shake it till my eyes rattle and I can’t hear anything but there’s nothing in there. Maybe it’s somewhere else, but it’s there. In my heart. Right here in my chest. The skin is soft. It hurts when I pick at it. But it’s coming away, it’s slicing off under my nails. IT HURTS.
Flesh. Soft pink flesh. Can’t get through this.
Hot water. It burns.
It’s under the flesh. Under my flesh. I didn’t ask for this flesh. I didn’t ask for anything. Why do I need to be in here? I don’t want this. I don’t want these skin and these bones that are useless and do nothing but pull me down and play bitches to gravity. Fuck you. Just fuck you. Get me out. I want out.
I scream.
I WANT OUT.
It’s a shithole in here.
I could rip it off me. The whole fucking thing. I could dig into it with my nails. I could peel it off, piece by piece, and let this water wash me away and get entangled with the Mikaela’s hair in the drain. I try. I’m fucking trying. And I scream because it hurts.
It hurts.
“It hurts.”
There’s blood under my nails, warm trickles on the cold tile under me.
There’s a pigeon under the sunshade over the bathroom window.
I say pigeon out loud so I know my voice is working. I look at the pigeon. It’s jerking its head around, looking at me inside the bathroom, naked and ugly, my skin in tatters and my head broken, pouring myself out of my mouth and my eyes, beating myself with water. I say pigeon again, but it looks away. It flies off.
There’s sky, and clouds. The window is small and it’s all I can see. It’s dark in here. Dark and wet and cold. I close my eyes and water forces itself between my eyelashes. It throws itself on me and it trickles over my shoulders and on my breasts and it goes between my legs, too close for comfort, and it slithers to every part of me and it’s disgusting and violating and I scream again because I do not want any of this.
There’s a noise. I think it’s me.
Not it’s not. It’s too far away. It’s a banging noise. Shouting. Coming closer, closer, and then there’s a banging right behind me, and there’s a man, right here – right here in the fucking shower –
I scream at him to go away. He’s a huge man, with long limbs like a spider and a ratty t-shirt and it’s –
The man is Dexter.
He’s screaming at me. We’re screaming at each other. I’m in the corner of the shower and the water is still running and he’s getting wet and I’m saying go away go away go away get the fuck out of here and I don’t know what he’s saying but he’s screaming it at me, and now he’s coming right at me, his arms stretched out, and he grabs me, first by the shoulders, then at the waist, and I don’t want him to fucking touch me, and I punch him but it makes no difference, he’s pulling me and I’m on his fucking shoulder and he’s walking out of the room, and I bang my head on the wall because he can’t see, but for a moment things go black and I cannot fight it anymore.
