Page 66 of Exposed

There are no words to speak.

I turn away from you, return my gaze to the world beyond the glass. After a time the silence grows profound, becomes empty, and I know you’ve walked away.

My cigar, at some point set in an ashtray, still smolders. I place it between my teeth, pour a measure of scotch, blow thick plumes of smoke into the rays of sunlight, and swallow burning mouthfuls of scotch in an attempt to drown the screams of self-loathing welling up within me.

I smoke, and I drink, and I listen to you shower.

I remain naked, because clothes cannot cover my shame.

You emerge dressed, hair wet and clean and slicked back, dressed in a tan suit with a pale blue shirt, no tie, baring that sliver of skin. You stare at me, a frown pinching your face, razoring a line into the bridge of your nose.

I want to yell at you. Tell you how much I hate you. Tell you how empty I feel. Tell you that everything is different now,everything is changed. I am changed. If I am addict and you are a drug, the high has soured.

I say nothing, however, because there are no words that can express the weltering chaos within me.

Neither of us speaks, and after a moment, you leave. The elevator doors close together, narrowing my view of you until there is nothing left but the doors.

And I am alone once more.

I give in to the screams, and my voice echoes off the glass in raw, ragged, jagged fragments. I scream until my voice gives out, and then I weep.

I allowed you to use me again. I feel the cancer of it like a film of grease on my soul.

No more.

Never again.

I cease weeping, and I shower you off me.

I step into a long, loose dress, wrap myself in a blanket. While away the hours with a book, bored and alone and drowning in self-loathing and disgust. Eventually, the day fades, and I fall asleep on a couch, because I do not want to be in your bed, even to sleep.

Chapter

Eleven

Rain slices like knives forged from ice. I shiver, but not from cold; I bleed. I taste blood in my mouth, feel it spill warm and wet from my head and my hip, dribble down my cheek and drip off my chin. Darkness. All is dark. A pale rectangle of light from a window illuminates a portion of sidewalk and some of the street, the curb between them.

I hear sirens. They sound like the warbles of prehistoric birds, echoing off cliff faces.

I want only to be warm.

I want to not hurt.

My stomach shudders, and I hear a sound. A sob. A scream.

My throat aches, and I realize the sobs and screams emit from me.

I am alone.

I cannot lift my head.

I can stare sideways at the pale scrap of light and wish I could reach it, crawl to it, lie in its warmth. Anything must be warmer than here, where the rain batters me and the cold cracks open my bones, freezes my marrow.

Why am I here? I don’t remember.

I have an idea of horror, dreamed remnants of terror. Smashing glass, twisting metal. Razors splitting open my skull. Hammers bashing my body. Weightlessness. Darkness.

Blood.