Vein Fire (4 page)

“Then we went to Time-Out and Hannah went into the back with one of the workers and had sex with him.”
Bitch! She doesn’t even know that for sure.
“When she came out of the back with him, I overheard him telling another worker that he had sex with her and she…she…put her mouth on his penis.”

Fuck. I thought she’d left. My dad is squirming. Fuck. Why did I have to be sitting next to him?

“When we went outside to wait for Mrs. Simmons to pick us up, Hannah told me she does that sort of thing all of the time AND she showed me these cuts all over her arms. She said she did it to herself with a knife.”

That bitch! I never told her that. Besides, I use a razor.

The silence was a peculiar soundtrack for a nightmare,
and that’s how Hannah knew she wasn’t dreaming. She kept her eyes focused on the white paper dots on the floor—refugees from the three-hole punch sitting on the desk.

The principal sighed. “Hannah, will you please pull your shirt sleeves up?”

Hannah doubled over. He might as well have punched cramps into her stomach. She inhaled deeply and straightened herself in the seat, but winced because her cunt still hurt.
I should tell them THAT.
Instead, Hannah slid her sleeves up to her elbows, stretched her arms out, and turned them palm up.

Hannah’s mother gasped and Angela nodded at the principal.

Cry. That was the fourth option Hannah hadn’t thought of. It was as good as confirming that everything Angela said was true, but slightly less humiliating. Tears and snot gurgled out of her as Angela and her mother were ushered out of the room. Hannah’s mother pushed tissues into Hannah’s hands and alternated between telling her daughter not to cry and answering the principal’s questions.

Hannah was taken home and met the first of many psychiatrists that week. He was a friendly man with straight gray beard hair that he kept neatly trimmed. Hannah called him The Wizard because he wore green suits and on his wall hung a large painting of hot air balloons. Most importantly, he introduced her to a new friend—Xanax. Sometimes he wrote her excuses so she’d not have to participate in gym class and this pleased her.

The Xanax did make school easier. Hannah would just put her head down on her desk and sleep through class. She knew they weren’t going to fail her; allowing her to graduate only assured they’d be rid of her brand of crazy sooner rather than later.

At home, Hannah’s parents took great care to hide all of the sharp objects in the house and to never again mention what was said in the principal’s office. For the first month, they wouldn’t even allow her to be alone with Lorri, but that ended as soon as they needed a babysitter so they could go to their bowling banquet.

Hairy legs and not having a knife to cut a bagel open was equally annoying. Hannah’s father complained about it almost every morning. Finally, Hannah took her mother into her bedroom and showed her all of the things she could cut herself with…a broken light bulb in the trash, the hinge on her jewelry box, the screws in her walls, and the hooked end on her wire hangers.

“There’s a lot I can do with a wire hanger,” Hannah remarked.

Her mother’s jaw snapped shut and she gave Hannah her razors back. The kitchen once again became a dangerous place for bagels, and not a single person spoke about any of it.

Angela never gossiped about what had occurred, but her snitching landed her a choice volunteer job in the office and this catapulted her popularity to new heights. Suddenly the male students were interested in the girl who could sneak them excuses and there was nothing the female students loved more than a girl who was popular with the guys.

Hannah encountered Angela in the office a few times, but only spoke to her when she had to. Part of Hannah was thankful that Angela taught her two very important lessons: Trust no one, and life is easier when you don’t let anyone in. She smiled when she noticed…
She still has dirt under her fingernails.

CHAPTER  4

Monsters

Matt didn’t look forward to being reunited with
Jared. In their time apart, he contemplated the Danny incident. He was angry at himself for agreeing to follow Jared’s idea. Part of him wanted to exercise the guilt by riveting punches into Jared, but he knew that would only raise suspicion. Since they were both in solitary confinement, he didn’t have to deal with him. He was only on the restricted floor for a week before they allowed him to return to the integrated floor, and even reinstated his job.

Mopping piss
splatters off of the urinals was worth his fifteen minutes with Bubbles every day. She promoted him from hand jobs to full-on sex. They never made the pit-stop for blow jobs, but he figured with her germ phobia, it was a dream that had to die.

Losing his virginity was epic. He had Bubbles practically folded in half, pinned against the wall in the bathroom stall, her toes kicking up over the top of the metal barrier, as he slammed angry thrusts into her. She looked terrified. He didn’t care. Since she came back the next day, he knew he must have done something right. From then on, he only called her Marilyn. His fifteen minutes with her was the best part of his day, and if you pushed the moments together like slices of bread, it still didn’t amount to a loaf of time.

Nothing filled the days. The patients attended a school of sorts—one room with one teacher who struggled to teach several different grades at the same time. Homework was nonexistent and no one could be trusted with a pencil. Marilyn would take the markers and color her fingernails during class. Matt watched her out of boredom as she avoided the cuticles and would color the little white half-moons with a different marker.

Almost as bad as school, group therapy was the second biggest waste of their t
ime. Junior therapists who didn’t know how to handle the diversity of the group directed the sessions. One day, when the people gathered in their seats, he was surprised to see Marilyn among them. She usually had group therapy in the mornings, but they must have switched her to the afternoons.

She twitched. Two more people and it would be her turn. Matt didn’t take his eyes off of her. In the bathroom, standing so
close, she looked much taller. She was small, and from the other side of the therapy circle, she looked like a fairy, despite her oversized tits.

“Marilyn?”

“Huh?”

“It’s your turn.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she paused.

“The beginning? We’re talking about your first action in the series of things that necessitated your hospitalization.” The therapist rolled her eyes. She was a cunt.

Marilyn looked off into nothing as she tried to recall what it was.

“Marilyn?”

“Um, Squiggles, our guinea pig.”

“Your guinea pig?”

“Yeah, she caught ringworm and her fur fell out. We weren’t allowed to touch her.”

“And did you—touch her?”

“She squealed a lot at night. I guess they don’t sleep much then…nocturnal or whatever they’re called. She kept me awake and she was squealing like she was in pain.”

“So what did you do?”

“I put my mother’s rubber gloves on—the yellow ones she used to wash dishes with—and I took Squiggles out of her cage.”

Marilyn stopped and swallowed, clearly uncomfortable with sharing her story. Matt wondered if it was because he was in the group.

“Continue, please—what did you do with Squiggles?”

“I—I was going to set her loose in the woods, but it was so cold; I thought I was doing her a favor. I—I just took her outside to our goldfish pond. I had to break the ice to make a big enough hole to fit Squiggles. My fingers nearly froze and the goldfish swam around her like green ghosts. I held her under the water until she stopped moving.”

“So, what do you feel was your pivotal decision point?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, when did you decide to kill Squiggles?”

“When I was laying in bed, listening to her squeal.”

“Would you identify this as your pivotal decision point?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“What do you think some alternative actions would have been?”

“I dunno. Maybe wearing leather gloves instead of rubber gloves so she couldn’t bite me.”

“Do you feel that being bitten was the worst consequence of your actions?”

“I guess not.”

“What was, then?”

“Winding up here?”

“If you back up, at what point did someone else in your family do something different than what you did that night?”

“They stayed in bed?”

“Correct. Having the thoughts of killing the guinea pig—Squiggles—wasn’t the critical point until you acted upon those urges.”

“But if I hadn’t worn the rubber gloves, I wouldn’t have tried to set them on fire. The fire was the consequence.”

“No, Marilyn, the fire came after you killed Squiggles. Killing Squiggles was your first consequence.”

“Well then, I’m glad she’s dead.”

Everyone in the group laughed quietly. Marilyn looked up at them and then quickly lowered her eyes.

“Okay, Paul—
you’re next.”

Paul droned on about his pivotal point—something about being caught masturbating in his sister’s room. Matt ignored him. He stared at Marilyn, who looked too embarrassed to meet his gaze as he contemplated what she had heard. Matt thought,
Humph. Who knew? I lost my virginity to a guinea pig killer. And those fucking rubber gloves…I’m not surprised she wore them long before she came here. And what’s with the fire? I wonder if she’ll tell me if I ask. Freaky. Oh well.

“Matt?” the therapist said.

“What? Oh, yeah, my turn.”

The bitch rolled her eyes again.

“My pivotal point was when I picked up the cinder block and smashed it on Hannah’s legs.”

“Okay, very good. But, did you think about it, or plan it?”

“Nope, she was passed out; I saw the cinder block, and it came to me.”

“So your arc of action was short and without a period of planning, correct?”

“Yeah, I just thought about it and did it.”

“Okay, now what were your other options?”

“I could have killed her.”

“Yes, you could have, but that’s a
negative
option. Can you give me a positive alternative?”

“Um, I could have just gone home.”

“Very good. Identifying these critical points will help you recognize them in the future. Okay, Chad, you’re next.”

Marilyn’s eyes darted to meet Matt’s and then back again. Matt wasn’t able to guess what she was thinking, but he was also sure he didn’t care.

The next day, in the bathroom with Marilyn, he found out.

“So who’s this Hannah girl you were talking about in therapy circle? Was she your girlfriend?”

“Are you kidding me? No, she wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“Well, who was she?”

“Just some girl from the neighborhood.”

“Did you like her?”

“She was okay for a while, but no, I didn’t like her.”

“Then why did you do that to her legs—with the cinder block?”

“She pissed me off. Listen, can we drop it? It’s bad enough I gotta go over this shit in therapy, can we just spend time together?”

Marilyn wasn’t satisfied. She refused to fuck Matt and gave him a half-assed hand job while she wore those fucking food service gloves. He had already made a mental note to not eat any of the sandwiches after their first encounter.

Marilyn would bring Hannah up occasionally. Matt realized she was jealous of Hannah, but it was another thing he didn’t care about. He liked Marilyn, but was more interested in her willingness to get him off than her jealousy trips.

He was right—Marilyn’s hesitation in group therapy was because she was uncomfortable speaking in front of him. After several weeks, the real reason she was in the facility erupted from her—literally. Marilyn had the stomach flu. She was a mess of snot and tears, with both fluids glistening in stray hair strands. As she sat in the recreation room with a bucket between her legs, she contracted the sharing disease. Matt sat across the room from her as she explained how she set the yellow rubber gloves on fire in her basement the night she drowned Squiggles. She drew designs with the lighter fluid, and didn’t bother to tell anyone when the house was on fire. Her little sister died, and Marilyn seemed detached from the incident. Matt knew he had issues, but he was not a monster like Marilyn.

*

Two and a half years after Matt was admitted to the state hospital, Marilyn told him she was pregnant. They stood crammed into the last stall in the bathroom; the smell of disinfectant stained his tongue. Marilyn was a slobbering mess of blubbery and drool. Matt didn’t experience the elated anticipation of becoming a father. He didn’t feel anything.

The next blow Marilyn dealt was confessing Matt might not be the father of the baby. She fucked one of the orderlies—Ronald. Matt would have taken this harder if she wasn’t pregnant. Not knowing if he was the father or not was a relief.

“What do you want to do about it?”

“Ronald says…”

Ronald says?
echoed in Matt’s head.

“…he says I should tell them I’m pregnant, but say I don’t know who the father is. I’m—I’m going to get an abortion.”

Matt didn’t hesitate, “I think that’s a great idea.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.”

Marilyn was a trouper. She aborted the baby and only missed three days of hand jobs. After two weeks, she was freshly medicated with birth control and back to fucking Matt in the bathroom.

“So what’s with this Ronald? He’s an orderly on the female ward?”

“Yeah.”

“And how often do you sleep with him?”

“Just once or twice.”

“Once or twice a week, a month, or what?”

“Just once or twice a month. He caught me sneaking off to meet you and that’s how I keep him quiet. Why, are you jealous?”

“No, should I be?”

Marilyn had a disappointed pout on her face. “You still love that Hannah girl, don’t you?”

Matt sighed. “Why would you think that?”

“You crushed her legs. You must feel something for her.”

“Well, it wasn’t love.”

“She has your scars though. I’ve been fucking you for a year and I don’t have that.”

“Hey—didn’t you have my baby cut out of you?”

“Yeah.” Marilyn looked down.

“Look at me.” Matt lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Those scars are more beautiful than anything I could have done with a cinder block.”

Marilyn smiled at Matt and kissed him
.