“Here you go!” the man said with a huge smile. I signed the paper in total numbness and I wasn’t even sure if I signed my name because the man’s face fell. He hopped back into his truck without even cleaning up the blood.
I saw Milky and Wilkie’s stick lying beside the truck. It had been in their last moments of merriment and I hoped it would be in my last as well. I took the stick (keep in mind that it was a very thick stick, more like a mini log) and heaved it with all my might into the side of the truck. It left this huge dent which made me feel better.
I saw their blood all over the front of the semi and wherever I saw the blood I would hit the semi. The windshield gave in with three mighty blows of my fury. I hardly cared long enough if the man inside was safe. Glass pierced my skin but I kept on going until the job was done.
When I finished, the car looked like it had been through four major impact hits from all sides. Somewhere between the broken windshield and me the truck driver escaped. I didn’t notice until I was sane again that he was gone. Today I didn’t care what people said about me; my dogs were dead. Even worse, I witnessed everything.
I could go through all of the nightmares I went through and all the suffering I experienced trying to find someone who listened to me. It was just one blow after another and they were all below the belt.
I crawled up my driveway on my hands and knees with the stick in my hands. Somehow I made it to my living room and on the couch. I wanted to grieve my dogs’ deaths but no tears fell. The numbness from before was starting to wear off and the pain settled in. Shards of glass dug into my neck and I could picture my neck swelling and bruising. I decided that when I received some spare energy, I’d use it to grab a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
While I lay on the couch I tried taking my mind off of Milky and Wilkie by doing math equations or naming the fifty states over and over. I didn’t keep that up for long, I couldn’t because it was so boring. Soon after I thought about them and the truck driver. I rather live my life experiencing my death over and over for eternity than watch innocent little animals being crushed to death by a vicious beast.
This made the numb anger consume my body once more and I charged upstairs to my attic, stick in hand. I was thinking about breaking glass and how healing it felt to me. I’d put all of my mirrors up there a while back, if you remember me saying so.
I whacked the first mirror by the door with vengent strokes. The stick came down over and over and the pieces of glass sprayed in every direction. To make it worse, I had bare feet but I was too blind to care.
My eye was nearly taken out when this huge chunk of glass flew by my face. I had to stop briefly and assess the damage. My cheek had a minor cut, even so it leaked as though it were a gash.
I continued my reign of insanity until I collapsed. Fortunately for me, I missed the pile of broken glass by half an inch. There were still more mirrors to crush and half a medicine cabinet. It wasn’t that I had a lot of mirrors in the first place, it was that I only broke three before I ran out of energy.
Too make a long story short, I made it over to my bedroom six hours later and began rummaging through the closet on my hands and knees for something to wear. It was difficult to do considering I barely had the arms to do it.
I tugged on a pair of pants and instead of them falling of the hanger like I had planned, something fell out of them and landed on my lap. It was the film from Angie; she had given it to me so long ago. Somehow it represented her faith, and I was out to prove that there was none left for me. When I got the strength I would get the film developed and prove that having little faith in people saved your heart from the aches that followed.
Five days after I found the film, I felt revived. I’d rested in bed the whole time because I couldn’t move enough to go downstairs or to get something to eat. Nevertheless, my house remained immaculate. I had about six weeks worth of laundry and when I woke up five days later it was all done. Eventually I concluded that Greta, the lady I hire to take care of my house while I’m away, was taking care of me, as well as the house. On her résumé she claimed to be a trained nurse and psychiatrist.
After I concluded that, I began to worry. I hate worrying; I don’t want premature wrinkles. But I worried anyway because I didn’t want to feel violated again. I trusted Greta, but I didn’t trust her enough not to touch me.
So I stayed awake to prove my point. I wanted to doze off, but I didn’t because I was afraid. Many times I saw suspicious shadows dancing upon the walls, but none of them were Greta’s.
At four in the morning if my memory serves me correctly, I fell asleep knowing that she wouldn’t come. The thought pleased me at first, but then I became scared and lonely. Lonely because she hadn’t cared and scared because something did my laundry and I didn’t know what.
I woke up three hours later with a terrible headache and a raging fever. Nightmares about Milky and Wilkie still invaded my sleep and wouldn’t go away. The aspirin was at my bedside; I keep it there just in case. When I was younger I used to get migraines in the middle of the night. They were so bad that I couldn’t get up to get the aspirin and I couldn’t call my mom because the migraine would get worse. From then on I kept a bottle by my bedside.
One time, my mom was afraid that I was taking too much aspirin when she wasn’t looking and she took it away from me. I worried so much about getting a migraine that I got one, the worst one I ever had. Before this, I didn’t want to tell anyone about it because I loved my mom. That was one of the few times I got so mad at her I that I didn’t speak to her. She gave me back my pills, but it took me six days to get over that.
Anyway, I had one of those migraines again but this time it wasn’t my mom’s fault that I couldn’t have any aspirin. The jar was right there and even if I was able to move arm to reach it, I wouldn’t have been able to take off its lid. I kept in mind to buy jars without a child lock.
Just as my migraine had begun to subside, I heard a noise coming from the staircase. I forgot about my headache and concentrated on pin-pointing the source of the noise. It had stopped, however, so I stopped listening and tried to figure out other things to think about while I waited for my headache to subside.
The headache was even more painful after that and nothing I thought of helped to make it go away. It was like it was making up for lost time. But no matter how painful it was, I didn’t shed a single tear. My eyes were wide open for most of the time because it too painful to blink. I couldn’t change my position to make myself more comfortable either. The sleep that I’d had over the last few days had paid off for a while, but I had no energy for my muscles.
During that period in time, I felt a presence in the room, but I was in too much pain to deal with it. The room was spinning and my eyes were starting to water from being exposed to the air for too long.
My strange visitor came to me and hovered over my bedside. “What’s wrong?” I heard a liquidy voice say. I could tell it was Greta though the echo of her voice in my brain shunned all other pain I’ve felt.
Even though I didn’t answer, she was kind enough to give me a couple of pills from my night table. She felt my forehead and although I felt violated I didn’t resist in the least. It’s kind of nice to have someone around to help you; even so you’re being violated. This story is a violation. It’s a violation of my soul and it does more damage than any cut can do. But I have to go through with it because I want to be true to myself and mostly I don’t want to spend my life in purgatory.
For the first time I noticed that my arms were bandaged. I couldn’t feel them, but I saw them as Greta unraveled them. She was changing my bandages for me; even so they weren’t soaked through. Greta must have removed the pieces of glass and placed a lot disinfectant on my arms while I was sleeping. The thought of someone touching me without me knowing irked me, but since Greta was a trained nurse, I didn’t mind so much.
Her gentle touch was soothing and I could hear her say things to me. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were yet, but they were followed by her caress. She rubbed her hands on my tummy until I fell asleep, just like Denise had. Somehow these women knew my weak spot.
When I woke up, Greta had made soup for me. She propped me up against my pillows, some of which were taken from my living room. I didn’t mind because at the moment, my house was her house.
The only reason why I could finish the soup was because Greta had put so much effort into making it that I felt obliged to eat it all. Greta watched me eat it with a huge smile on her face. She said something to me again, and again I didn’t understand it. I just smiled and dug myself deeper into the sheets. Soon after, the effects of the soup settled upon me and I fell into a deep and prosperous sleep.
When I woke up, which must have been hours later and deep into the night, I caught Greta roaming around my room in her pajamas. I supposed at the time that she must have thought that I was so sick that I needed careful attention. She could have slept in the guestroom, I assumed, because there were five separate beds for all of the guys. I hate to admit it, but my house is huge, too big for one person alone. Sometimes I begged Mandy to stay with me there because I felt so alone. I even offered that she didn’t have to sleep with me, she could go in the guestroom. But she never came. I wanted to have a girlfriend that would live with me for little, especially since I hardly would get to see her.
Greta paced back and forth for a while, then began examining things in my room. My room isn’t very private; I’m not embarrassed of anything in it. The only thing in my room that holds particular value to me is my cross. It’s not as big as Brian’s is and far less expensive, but it served its purpose. Rok helped me pick it out; it’s supposed to protect me from evil. I wished I could take it wherever I wanted to, but I can’t because I’m afraid it’ll be ripped off of my neck.
I think I should tell you a bit more about Greta. Greta is considerably older than I am; she has grey hair that she dyes blonde. She looks like she’s sixty but acts like she’s a teenager. Brian once said that she reminded him of his grandmother when he met her at one of my parties. I don’t have very many parties because we usually go to Kevin’s place for the food. He had to give up his place because people found out where he lives, but it was a really great place. He’s great with the barbecue too, especially with steaks and stuff.
Anyway, I trusted Greta like I trusted my grandmother, but I watched her just in case. There wasn’t much I could do if she stole something because I was disabled.
She didn’t take anything though. In fact, she didn’t even touch anything; she was just looking around. Once she glanced at my cross, but that was hardly any cause for alarm. I made the mistake of trusting her more from then on.
Greta left the room moments later and I shut my eyes. She was probably going back to bed, I thought. Sleep consumed me once more and I had a Milky and Wilkie dream again. Mentally, I wasn’t recovering very well from that.
The dream always woke me up with a jerk, and I felt sweaty and sticky afterwards. I needed a bath terribly, but I couldn’t move and I was too shy to ask Greta to help me. Actually I’m glad that I was shy about my body, it saved me a lot of trouble.
See, when I woke up from the dream this time, not only did I feel sweaty, but I felt a weight on my entire left side. It was hard to explain but the weight was actually real, it wasn’t in my imagination.
Greta was sleeping beside me, I felt her hot, stinky breath on my neck. Her left leg was weighing down mine, her left arm was across my stomach and her face was buried in my neck.
I found the courage not to scream because she was still sleeping and I could get away. Slowly and carefully, I removed her body parts from mine and rolled off the bed. No words I express now can say how deeply grossed out I was.
I was wearing only my boxer shorts, and when I saw this I began to hyperventilate. Tons of “what if?” questions roamed through my brain. I struggled to put on my pants, and in my haste, I saw a deep scar on my upper thigh. Immediately I assumed Greta had done it and began to scream.
Chapter 17
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