Dark City

50.

Lacey listened to the background noise of the television set as she tried desperately to fall asleep. This motel had the kind of TV that used to fall over and crush children, and while the thermostat kept shutting itself off, her legs ached too much for her to keep getting up. The broken mechanism was determined to freeze her out. There was knock at the door.

Lacey dragged her bare feet across the filthy carpet, floor creaking beneath her gait. She unlatched the lock and Nathan entered, carrying a plastic bag of supplies. He was leaner than she remembered, his waist emaciated, his hair grown long and ragged.

He stared at the bruises under her eye and on her arms, the dirt dusting her skin and the scabby bite mark on her shoulder. "You look like shit," she said ironically.

"What happened to you?"

"Bar fight." She faltered and he caught her, but as his arms touched her ribcage, she recoiled. She headed into the bathroom and climbed over the edge of the tub with all her clothes on.

"Lacey?"

Her throbbing headache drowned him out. She could taste the Gatorade he was giving her. Her head cleared just seconds after drinking it.

"Did you bring the Tylenol?" she asked. He handed it to her and she swallowed four pills. She twisted out of her shirt, discarding it blindly. Her ribs were mottled with purple and Nathan was staring. After he helped her undress, she twisted the shower handle and felt a wet trickle by her toes. She twisted it further. The water was cold, but she didn't care. Dirt and blood pooled by the drain. As the water began to run clear, a cloud of steam rose up. Nathan reached in and plugged the drain. Gradually, the water rose to Lacey's neck, shrouding her in blissful warmth.

Nathan lathered up a washcloth with a sliver of hotel soap and rubbed suds over Lacey's arms and shoulders. She took over cleaning herself, splashing up water to rinse the soap out of her eyes. Nathan washed her hair with the shower head, lathering and rinsing as if it were made of tissue paper.

"Thanks for paying for the room. I'll get you back," she said.

"Don't worry about it." He shut off the water and hung the shower head back on its hook. He dipped a second washcloth into the tub and ran warm water over her. "So it's a star," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Your tattoo is a star," he clarified. Nathan folded the washcloth into a triangle and placed it on her forehead.

She'd forgotten that she'd never shown him the tattoo over her heart. "It's an inverted pentacle," she explained. "Flesh over soul. The horns of Satan upright, defiant against God. A big fuck you to Christians."

Nathan observed her scar beneath the ink. "Did you have surgery?"

"My dad did that." She leaned forward, revealing two long gashes of fibrous tissue going down her shoulder blades. "But these were self-inflicted."

Now he could see all of it, the whole story of her suffering. She felt a pang in her chest as his eyes softened and he ran a washcloth over her back. He didn't ask about these, so she went ahead and told him, "Body mutilation. It's supposed to look like fallen angel scars."

"What does it mean?"

"Just another fuck you," she said. She couldn't help but chuckle, but she had to stop when her ribcage throbbed in pain.

"I thought you were a pagan."

"Sure. I mean, I thought it was cool for a while. Hedonism and whatnot. But it's all bullshit," she said, dipping her hair back into the pool of water. She ran her fingers through the dark tendrils, combing them out. "I never actually bought into Satanism either. I just wanted people to know right away that I was a bad person."