You can just imagine the depth of my surprise, but it was real for me. At first I was in denial, thinking that Mandy was just making sure that the bed was comfortable enough for her dad. Or, that the rapist was in fact a sixty-eight year old man.
I don’t know how long it took me to figure out that Mandy was actually having an affair with that man or how long I was standing there gawking. They were definitely doing something nasty behind my back, because Mandy was trying to cover herself up. The man just sat there with this confused look on his face, like he was expecting me to kill him or something.
Mandy finally addressed me. “Oh, Nick sweetie,” was the first thing she said to me. She said it with general concern too, like she hadn’t been sleeping with that man. In fact she acted more shocked to see what I looked like than that I had caught her in the act.
She dressed into her underwear behind the bed. The man had his perverted eyes on her the whole time, which pissed me off terribly. My grip on the door’s frame tightened and I glared holes into his bare back. I must have been terribly mad to stare at him for so long, because he was down right ugly. He was shriveled and prune-like and his back had more hair than a fur coat. It was thick, black, long and putrid. I could have sworn that he was part werewolf because the hairs started at his shoulders and ended at his lower back. You could even see varicose veins popping out of his neck and arms. With his pale skin you could see them clearly, along with various moles and splotches. It wasn’t a very pleasant sight.
Mandy came to the door and practically had to pry my fingers off of the door’s frame. I glared at the old guy even as she pulled me away. If this was another situation, I would have stared more at Mandy because I’m only human. But I was so mad at her that I only saw her as a sex-driven chick with wild nights in her mind.
After she sat me down far away from the bedroom, she knelt before me trying to look all sexy. She wasn’t going to get away with it this time though; this was the last straw.
“Nick where have you been? Everyone’s looking for you!” she exclaimed. I knew that was false because I remembered what Jizzy said to me about that. Everyone is looking for me except for my friends. And Mandy of course was too busy screwing around to look for me.
She ran her hand through my hair, which I usually liked. Today it didn’t feel as good as it usually did because I knew that those same hands had gone through the old man’s grey hair. Who knows where else that they had been?
I continued to stare Mandy straight in the eyes and I made sure that my gaze never shifted. She stopped touching my hair and looked at me for a moment. I watched her gaze go up and down but I didn’t care what her problem was. I knew that I looked ugly and sick and she couldn’t depress me more than I already was by just staring. If you ask me, Mandy was even sicker than I was. A sixty-eight-year-old man – can you imagine how desperate she must have been? As I found out later, it wasn’t because of me.
“Nick, speak to me! Are you in pain?” She started to rub my tummy, one of my weakest points. I still had no feeling there and she was starting to become uncomfortable. When she feels uneasy, she starts getting violent. I was prepared for her this time though.
But she didn’t get mad, well at least not yet. She got up like she wanted me to check her out and walked over to the staircase. I saw that much, then I continued looking down at my hands. They were actually more entertaining than Mandy.
She turned around quickly as if she wanted to catch me staring. But I wasn’t staring at her and I could practically feel the room freeze when she frowned. I was still staring at my hands, I just knew that she turned around because she squeaks when she moves. And I knew that she was frowning because the temperature dropped.
“Is that your wheelchair?” I nodded yes, even though I didn’t need to. I started thinking about how stupid she was. Yeah, a wheelchair magically grew by the front door just in case the old man broke his back while doing something naughty.
“What’s wrong Nick? Please tell me, I’m so worried about you.” That was a joke. I almost laughed at that one too, but I had to keep my composition.
“I’m going to call the hospital…”
“No!” I told her firmly and shook my head.
“Then what wrong? Your face…”
“It should have been me Mandy,” I said, my voice breaking. It wasn’t from emotion; it was from being so intensely sore.
“What, what should have been you?”
“You and me Mandy. My Mandy.” We had been in this relationship for years and we hadn’t gone farther than making out. I tried to avoid making out with her because she’s a terrible kisser. She’ll bite your lip the second your lips touch. The longest kiss we ever shared was thirty seconds long, because Mandy kept getting called on her cell phone. She always tells me to turn mine off when I’m around her. I don’t know what the first clue was that she was treating me like garbage, but I had finally got it in the end. She’d pushed me too far.
“Oh, that. I can explain.” She knelt by my ear and began to whisper. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, but the attraction was gone. I guess I hung on to her so long because she was the first steady girlfriend I ever had. I started with the Backstreet Boys so early in my life that I never had time for that kind of stuff. Howie, Brian and AJ always had their girlfriends around and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
“See, he’s the manager of a record company. I need the label so that I can release an album. You obviously couldn’t help me, so I took drastic measures. Anything that goes on between me and him is strictly business.” She was probably whispering because the old guy obviously didn’t know that it was “strictly business.” That’s probably the same thing she said about me to him.
“No Mandy, I can’t except that.”
“Why, just because you weren’t first? Well, this isn’t all about you, you know! Besides I can schedule you for tonight, even though you don’t look like you’re in good enough shape for it.”
Right then I was sitting with my legs crossed and Mandy was sitting right in front of me. I was getting madder by the minute and a thought crossed my mind. I thought about all the times Mandy hit me and how much I thought that she deserved a good smack. So I lifted one of my limp arms and smacked Mandy across the face as hard as I could. I forgot that my hands were bandaged and possibly harder than normal, but I didn’t care.
She was hit so hard that she fell sideways. At first she was in shock, and then she started to cry. I started worrying about her saying things; like that I abuse her. What was done, was done and I could easily show them the scars I had gotten from Mandy. Brian was hit once or twice by her too, but I wasn’t so sure if he’d stick up for me now.
The old man came running out of the bedroom wearing pants – thank God. He tried to hug Mandy but she pushed him away, just like she had done to me dozens of times before.
“I told you that you should’ve gotten rid of him a long time ago. Who cares if he’s psycho, just tell him to get lost, you’ve got someone else now.” Those words hit me like a thousand bricks. I was hardly psycho, if she wanted to get rid of me she could have just told me. Personally, I would have been glad. But I don’t think she wanted to do that. She wanted to lead two guys on at once.
“Oh Nick, you ruined everything!” Mandy shouted at me and I just turned my head tiredly in her direction. She ran off to the bathroom and slammed the door.
Meanwhile the world’s ugliest old man was giving me a lecture about leaving Mandy alone. I was getting really tired of this guy, especially since he had no idea that Mandy still was my girlfriend and that she was cheating on me for him.
When the old man finished, I sighed and rolled my eyes. He told me to stop being ignorant and went on and on about it. Eventually I got fed up and I punched him as hard as I could in the stomach. He tittered around a bit, then gasped loudly and fell to the floor. I felt bad about doing that too, but only because my hand was getting sore.
Mandy came out of the bathroom with her make-up all runny and a cell phone in her hand. She had stopped crying and she had a smirk on her face.
“George, come here.” He came limping over but Mandy didn’t seem to care that I had hit him. That was so typical of her.
“I’m calling the hospital Nick. Right now. See how I’m dialing the numbers? Yes, hello, I’d like you to come to my apartment right now. Remember Nick Carter? He’s here and he needs your help right now. Five minutes? Sounds good, see you then.”
I started to panic at the thought of hospitals and I tried to get away. She didn’t even dial, she was just faking but I couldn’t tell because of my fear. I could hear her laughter as I struggled to get up from the floor. My breathing became uncontrolled and shaky from my panic.
“They’re coming Nick, they’re coming,” Mandy and George said in unison. I half screamed and half gasped and made a mad dash for the stairs. By that time I had gone crazy with fear so badly that I couldn’t think properly. I could hear Mandy and George chanting behind me.
“Hmm, I think I’ll call Brian now. Hello Brian? I…” She was cut off because started screaming at her stop. I pressed my bandaged hands against my ears as hard as I could while I screamed for mercy. One lonely tear crept down my face, and then a whole flood preceded it.
Mandy just kept on torturing me though. “Nick said that you’re a horrible singer Brian, you’d better come here and beat him up.” That threw me off the edge. I tried to scramble down the staircase on my hands and knees, but I missed the first step and fell all the way down.
It hurt like hell, I can tell you that. I hit my head several times and landed at the bottom face down. My body felt limp, but I could feel every impact that had been made on it. I started crying again, because I was still afraid, not because of the pain. It took all of my will power, but I used my arms only and dragged myself to the door. It’s amazing what people can do when they panic.
When I got to the door I pawed at it helplessly because I couldn’t reach the knob. My fingernails were starting to bleed from the splinters that I was getting, but I was determined to get out.
When I finally reached enough to grab the knob, I found out that it was locked. My grip loosened and I fell into a heap on the floor. I was still screaming and I had just enough energy to press my hands to my ears.
“Brian’s coming Brian’s coming,” Mandy laughed from the top of the stairs. I screamed louder every time she mentioned his name. Truly, I was afraid he would do something horrible to me, even though I knew that he was a nice person.
Eventually I had to stop because of my throat. I was screaming blood to a point that I was choking on it. The last of my energy was drained and my hands fell from their position on my ears. I shut out my surrounds by closing my eyes and just lying there.
Apparently I alarmed old man George and he came running down the stairs. I felt myself being turned over and the soft flesh on my neck being squeezed by two very wrinkly fingers. He was taking my pulse, the smart-ass. I kept my eyes shut the whole time because it was just more comfortable that way.
Mandy was still shouting things from the top of the stairs. “That’s enough Mandy,” old man George told her and she stopped right away.
“Well I hope he learned his lesson,” she said, coming down the stairs. I could hear her coming because the stairs always make funny noises when she goes down them.
“I think we should bring him to the hospital.” At that suggestion I screamed in George’s ear and tried to wriggle away from him. There was no way I’d go there alone again.
“No, he doesn’t want that. I guess he can stay here,” Mandy sighed.
Chapter 23
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