Where are you going?

Bottles all over the floor, makeup on the couch and pants around the ankles, everyone is dancing to the horrid sound of adolescence and laughing loudly above the noise. Why am I here? Why did I let Mel drag me here? That’s actually not a fair question though, I’m a fifteen year old girl dressed up for a Saturday night, I have about as much will power as a desperately addicted cocaine fiend, except all I get for my trouble is awkward intoxication and unwanted attention. So I find myself here at some guy’s house, sitting alone on a couch pretending to be too drunk to mix with everyone else, slowly stroking my eyes over all of the people here and their not so subtle attempts at adulthood. Mel has a total of two hands up her skirt, belonging to two different guys; I won’t see her for the rest of the night.

All I can see in every direction are millions of reasons why I can’t be here right now. I can see the stupid girls having fake fights with their fake boyfriends, I can see the friend-zoned boys trying desperately to hide their erections and I can see the guys in their early-twenties get the third girl in a row to sit on their laps, oh yes I can see them clearly, Their predatory eyes make me nervous but that fifteen year old part of me is still asking them why.

Why aren’t you talking to me?

This is why I’m here, because I couldn’t stand the thought of not being here. Missing that one opportunity to feel the thrill of chemistry, missing the opportunity to feel the sting of rebellion to be a part of every shift and shake. I may not be as weak minded as Chloe over there, who’s lying on the floor and still letting Chris pour her another drink. I’m worse. I actually know better. I have the voice in my head that sounds like my mum but feels like the wrath of God; a lingering fear that the only bad thing that’s going to happen to me is going to happen because I’m so fucking stupid. One of the older guys is walking over to me, sizing me up and patting me down with his eyes. My heart is fluttering.

Do I look pretty?

This conversation is awful. How are you going?  And what are your interests?  He wants me to tell him that I love his favourite band so that he can fall in love with me for the night and every second Saturday thereafter. He freaks me out, his arms are large and his posture is more towards me than I care to find comfortable. Everything he says, he says into my ear, I can feel the heat and air off his lips tickling me and raising the uneasy feeling in me further. He keeps looking at my lips and then my eyes; he pays more attention to me than anyone I have ever known. I like it and I don’t want him to stop and start on someone else, My heart’s pounding so damn hard I’m sure he can see it leap out of my chest. He’s a predator and he can hear it too, it gives him a thrill. I know that I am the prey but I have no interest in offering my neck to the slaughter. I’m looking around for a friendly face, someone I can signal to come in and interject. The girls I know are either looking at me with a

“That slut!”

Look or they are in the exact same boat as me, there’s Mel over there sitting in the middle of a circle of her admirers like a queen, she’s  looking at me, she sees my eyes and what I need but she’s laughing, I’m only here to listen to her on the way home. She won’t let me stand in the way of what she needs; tonight she needs more than attention, some tactile sensory overload. The only way she knows how to be a woman is to be wanted and the only thing stopping her from being one is that she’s taken, every time. I’ve suddenly realized that I can’t trust anyone here. What are my options? If I stay I may “fifteen” myself into a bad situation, if I leave I will be alone and no one will let me forget how I “piked out”. If I stay then I’m hating myself, if I go then I’ll leave Mel on her own amongst all the beasts.

Fuck her; she already fed me to them when I got here.

So I start walking, staring directly at my feet watching them move like they are walking on a treadmill. Over and over they go and go nowhere. I’m walking along the street with the shitty excuse for a party becoming an echo behind me. It is only just past midnight and everything is black and blurred in all directions. My eyes are going wider as soon as I look up like a scared rat behind the dishwasher. I still feel safer here in the cold quiet of nothing. There could be a thousand people behind me but if I don’t know then I can keep walking. The way I feel right now I could walk all the way to hell but home will do. A bus would be nice, make the trip shorter, the bus driver would know where they were going for one. I could sleep on the bus, let my dreams wash away the stain on my brain that the image of Mel’s spread legs brought. There is a bus stop on the end of the next street, I wonder how long I’ll need to wait before one will come? It will be the bus or the sun that comes first, I wonder which one will smile the widest at my misfortune, probably the sun when it mocks my resolve and laughs at me all the way back to the party house. Better be the bus, better be on time.

The bus stop chair is ahead, under a dimly lit street light that keeps blinking; I don’t think anything could be creepier if it tried. One of those useless bus stops that don’t have a timetable on it, might as well sit here and wait. Wait for a way out or a way back either way the decision isn’t mine. My legs are freezing cold on this shitty wooden chair. It feels damp and old and splintered. Nothing around here is new, they dug it in in the 90s and probably made it two decades before that. Beats the concrete though, beats the ants crawling up my arse, beats standing up and…

There is a bus coming, around the corner I can see the lit up front with the number 248 glowing green in the darkness. Well that was lucky and thoroughly not what I was expecting. Maybe it is my night after all. The doors will open inward and I will meet my saviour. A woman, dressed in the bus depot uniform, heavy set and painfully plain. Long hair in a ponytail and her pants pulled up  way too high. She looks nice enough, kind eyes and a gentle manner. Just the thing for midnight on your own.

“Where are you going baby?”

In a very motherly voice I hear concern. All I want to do is go home, sleep in my bed, wash myself four different ways, count the years that I have been alive and realize how young I am and dig out a teddy bear and squeeze it until morning.

“Home. Just the next block over, how much?”

“Don’t you worry about that baby, just climb on in and we’ll get you where you need to be”

Such softness in her voice, finally I can relax . I normally go straight to the back of the bus, it’s engrained into us physiologically but I think I’ll stay close to the front this time. In fifteen minutes it will all be over, thank god for bus drivers. I’m looking out the window on my right hand side, with my fist propped up under my chin, watching the trees go by like grey and green blurs. They are going faster and faster and are beginning to blur more than they should. Am I tired or are we just going really frikkin fast? There is no point going so fast when we are so close, my eyelids are feeling heavy, if I fall asleep I will miss my stop but at the moment I really do not care. Okay I can go through this pain for a little bit longer, almost there,

open your eyes up wide! Sit up straight! Look at something else that won’t hypnotize you so successfully.

I find it strange that the driver isn’t talking to me. She seemed to be so familiar with me when she was speaking to me before, there isn’t anyone else here. Maybe she is just trying to concentrate on the road. I could help her stay awake, maybe I should say hello. All I have been listening to is the steady hum of the bus engine. I’m trying to hear it now and it seems to be interrupted by something, a sound not unlike heavy breathing. In and out, slowly and harshly, where the hell is it coming from? It’s getting louder. Is it behind me? Is there someone on this bus snoring? I am on the floor of the bus and I can’t see a god damn thing. It’s starting to seem perverse and disturbing. I’m trying to look out of the corner of my eye at the driver just in case, her back is moving up and down, puffing in and out like a cartoon wolf trying to blow down a house.  The sound is getting louder and faster and her movements are becoming more exaggerated. I don’t like this. The air suddenly feels humid, sticky. I’m looking out of the window at what was once a blur and now it doesn’t seem moving at all. The figures outside are writhing and dancing around with their mocking movements just out of focus. I hope my sudden dizziness is a side effect of someone spiking my drink, I would rather that than my world spirally into some kind of nightmare, hurtling down the street in a metal cage..

Little birdie, oh li-ttle biiirdie, rattling in her cage. I smelt you three blocks away, your bright white legs cutting through the moonlight like a star, always too far for me to reach. I wasn’t yet tormented by the sweetness of your taste…

Her voice is piercing my ears, is she saying what she is saying or is it a part of my delirium?, I can’t see her  face, could it be the radio?

.. not tormented yet by your texture,

Her chair is creaking backward, the gate to her enclosure is about to swing open and all I want to see is her gentle face to save me from my insanity.

Until you sat on my face.

Oh god her eyes, her deep sunken eyes are imbedded in me. My whole existence is folded over its self over and over again. The waves crashing over me and I can’t breathe. A pulsing sound of bass is residing through my head. Is this fear? Is it the depth of all the hell I will ever witness? Questions are all I can use to block the sound of the scream I can’t control, falling from my lips. The image is there, burnt and scorching through..

Black eyes searching my body

Scaled hands reaching my legs

A soiled tongue tasting the anticipation

A violent breathe filling the air.

The floor is wet with sweat and terror, I have nothing to grab hold of, save my finger nails imbedded in the vinyl floor, They are giving way as my leg is being pulled back by something long and slimy. An arm perhaps, a tentacle probably, a part of the vision of pure madness reflected in my eyes as I look back.

I have waited so long for such easy prey, so weak and afraid, so pure and untouched. There will be no pain child, let go to the inevitable, where are you going anyway?

Sudden anger fills my mind like an explosion, spilling into every corner and pouring out of my eyes like acid all I can do is laugh to hide the pain of her fingers burning her way under my skin. Memories of the victim I never was fighting a battle behind my gritted teeth. They are yelling at me, “She is afraid of you, she must destroy you” A meaningless bout of strength returns to my legs and I boot her in the face, she’s laughing and biting my knee cap at the same time. The ceiling to this bus looks so far away when I’m on my back on the floor, I’m not noticing anything that is happening to me right now; stars appear on the roof that shift and shape another existence. So insignificant we are..

Just another girl alone at a party, another girl alone on the street, another girl who didn’t like her situation that sacrificed herself to another one. A figure straddling the moonlight watches and lures in on her prey, the perfect supper for the beast. I didn’t leave out of fear or intimidation; I left because I was not on the menu, not tonight, not ever. Regardless of whatever hell that spawned you, whatever whispers from the universe that lead you to my scent, they were wrong, I’m not what makes you hungry,

It’s not me

Our eyes have met, she has a mouthful of some part of me, but she has stopped she can see the star in my eye, shining in the dark. No god, no power and no saviour; just me and my will alone. The strength I never had returns to my hands, they are above my head

They are brought down upon..

Her legs so she can’t escape, I break them with my elbow and take the bone

Her arms so she can’t pull; I stab with a part of her that I stole

And her eyes..

With my knee on her throat, and her gasping in disbelief a breath that was never meant to exist, she cries out to the night that has forsaken her. I’m not really noticing the smell now that I’m right next to her ear.

“Not me”

Her eyes, I take them and as they leave her useless body the doors to my tomb open. On the street where it took me it will leave me. The doors swing inwards and the rays of the moon are lighting the path outward. I’m walking through the putrid mess on the floor that is still gurgling, head to toe I look much the same. Hot and sticky wet, the blood caked on me is steaming. My foot has just hit the pavement and I have stepped out from nothingness onto the tangible earth again. Nothing makes sense and will never again, all I can do is walk, walk home. The dark streets offering no solace to the madness that is dripping off me. My sanity is falling from the tips of my fingers and into puddles on the concrete. The fourth car has gone past and not noticed a blood red fifteen year old girl limping along with two toes missing on her right foot. The fifth car has just driven in a puddle on the side of the road and covered me head to toe with water and mud. The hot, wet stickiness of her blood has left me but her stain remains.

The sixth car stops, filled with boys and soaking with testosterone, I can smell it. It reeks of the violent intentions of avoiding another night of being alone. It has stopped beside me, each figure a smiling promise of the dark. The pack leader winds his window down and takes in all that he can see of me and any opportunity he can muster in his imagination. Leaning toward me he smirks..

Where are you going baby?

Tiffany Douglas March 2014