"Hang up the chick habit.
Hang it up, daddy, or you'll never get another fix."
Hang it up, daddy, or you'll never get another fix."
The Vortex by Yesenia Berrios
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He was a safe place
away from the scorched earth and tungsten street lights. I sauntered into his
studio apartment at a quarter to nine. I'd been there dozens of times before. The
furniture was scarce but the floor cozy.
Our conversation was
a stream of consciousness that poured slowly like the Cuba Libres down our
throats. The flirtation burned evenly on both ends, in puffs of smoke from my
joints and his cigarettes.
At two in the morning,
my eyes watered and my stomach cramped from laughing. God damn was that
motherfucker charming. He had a deluded self-confidence that lured me in;
handsome if you love him but unassuming if you don't. I found myself, as I
often did, somewhere in the middle. I had to get home before infatuation
set in.
"Driving is out
of the question," he said.
I nodded in
agreement. How sweet he was for wanting me to stay.
I really had to get
home.
It's a special kind
of desperation when your abuser is someone you could have loved. It feels
unreal, as if looking at the world through the chlorine-filtered aquamarine of
a pool as you drown. It is equal parts beautiful and terrifying. With every
exasperated breath my fear grew stronger. God, this is too far.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I need to get home.”
His
breath wafted onto my neck like hot steam out of a sewer grate. I felt dread tingle
through my limbs and between my legs.
"Will you
fucking STOP?" I moaned, angling my hips away from his and pushing my
palms into his chest until they were white from the pressure.
He smiled sheepishly.
“Oh, please.”
I dug my nails in,
branding his face with crescent moons until he bled. As I pleaded with him, I
felt the bile in my throat and the rum sloshing around in my stomach. He
continued, impervious. Maybe the moans were indistinguishable from anguish. Maybe
the tears turned him on.
Weak from the heat
and lactic acid burning in my muscles, I surrendered. A blurry dot in the
middle of the ceiling widened and enveloped the room. Spinning, confused, and nauseous,
I imagined it didn't happen this way. I went to a cooler place where I wanted
him, begged him, to fuck me. I needed to feel something more, anything more, than
tired. Then I noticed his stare. The words he seemed not to hear flashed across
his brown eyes. He knew. He just didn’t
want to know.
***
A Sunday just before
sunrise. A Miami summer like any other: eighty-four degrees and humid. The fire
has been trapped inside for thirty days. In this city where the heat makes people
crazy, desire runs rampant.
It looks like
something out of a science-fiction film. The sky is an eerie ombré of purple and indigo against the
cityscape. Hearing, let alone seeing, another flesh and blood human feels like
making contact with an extra-terrestrial but I know exactly where to go
nowadays.
I strut past him. I
can spot the creeps and violators with little effort now. Time does a lot to a
girl’s gait. Once a month, I remember that night seven years ago and rescue
that girl. I cradle her against my chest in that golden hour between sleep and
wakefulness.
They only atone when
they’ve been outwitted, when panic swallows their eyes. By then, ego disappears but my palms are already white from the grip.
The first swing is
always the most satisfying. I give it all I've got. I remember that night, when
I first reached for that glimmer of hollow aluminum in my periphery. That
silvery white bat that saved me when I was moments away from being permanently
hollow myself. Nowadays, it feels more like a club.
A faint mist covers
my chest, dampening my skin, luxurious as rose essentielle. If only I could
find a lipstick shade so perfect, unicorn’s blood maybe.
"You're fucking
crazy," he gurgles through the frothy blood bubbling at the corners of his
mouth.
The sky changes
colors like a mood ring on a cold finger.
I’m invigorated by
the heat, lactic acid burns in my muscles, my stomach is warm like the comfort
from a cup of cocoa. Was I
crazy?
I was once intimately
familiar with dread. I recognized it in his brown eyes.
Oh, sweet, sweet boy, this isn’t crazy.
"Please, no lectures,"
I sigh, pressing a finger lovingly over his lips.
I wind up. On the second
swing, his yells are deafening. I watch intently as steam from the sewer
distorts his face.
Every swing
thereafter could be the first. Screaming has made him hoarse and inaudible. The
only sign he still yells are the veins tattooed over his throat, bulging upward
and into his skull. No one is listening. No one who would help anyway.
I part his hair and
my breath on his neck. "You didn't mean to,” I whisper. “You’re sorry."
Respite cutting
through the air, I hear the
warm familiarity of sonic boom as bat connects with skull fragments. I feel the warm familiarity in my
pussy. The heat of which emanates toward my fingertips.
His lecture stops and
plasma oozes like slick garnet out of his ears. Only now do I notice the
pounding in my chest, and feel it in my throat.
For the briefest
window, I thaw. The rage floats to the surface, dissipating across my wet skin.
I bask in the mist of blood and sweat.
I surrender.
The mermaid song
of sirens wails in the distance, faintly chiming in my ears. I knew they
weren't coming for me.
They never did.
