Apeshit (11 page)

have just seen her vaginal teeth. She is worried that she

might tell everyone. She is worried that everyone will think

she’s a freak.

Desdemona waits outside the door for a while. She

did not see anything out of the ordinary. She just saw a girl

with her pants down to her knees with some kind of object

sticking out of her vagina. She didn’t even realize it was a

toothbrush. After thinking it over, Des decides to go back to

her room to rejoin the sex…even if she just has to mastur-

bate next to the guys.

When Desdemona returns to the bedroom, both of

the guys are done having sex. The light is off. They are

curled up together and drifting into sleep.

“Bitches!” she mutters to herself.

They didn’t save any room for her under the covers,

but she forces herself in anyway, behind Kevin. Kevin is

breathing heavily and covered in sweat, as she wraps her

arm around him. She feels Rick’s ribs against the back of

her hand and gently grinds her knuckles into them until he

moves. Then she’s able to slide her hand between the two

of them, all the way around Kevin’s body. She can probably

pull Kevin on top of her and have him finish her off, but she

decides to let it go. The sexual energy she had been feel-

ing all day has vanished. She closes her eyes and tries to

sleep. She tries to push the anger and dissatisfaction out of

her mind.

They’ve got a rule that nobody goes to bed until ev-

erybody has an orgasm. This is the first time that rule has

been broken. Since Desdemona left the room in a huff, she’ll

forgive them for it this time. But in the morning, she’ll have

her boyfriends make it up to her. Maybe she’ll even give

Rick oral sex and show him how it’s supposed to be done.

Stephanie’s room is on the ground floor. She doesn’t

want to be on the ground floor, because that’s where all the

big creepy bugs like to roam. She can’t handle bugs. She

decides to sleep on the living room couch in her sleeping

bag, instead of on the floor in the room she was given. She

would rather not sleep on the floor.

But she’s not able to sleep anywhere. Too many

thoughts are racing through her mind. She just reclines on

the couch and stares at the ceiling.

A window shatters in the next room.

She leaps off of the couch and looks around. The

noise came from the bedroom, the room she was supposed

to be sleeping in. Jason’s revolver is on the coffee table.

Stephanie picks it up. It’s not loaded. She searches the room

for the box of bullets.

Nobody else seems to have heard the shattering

sound. She wonders why they haven’t heard it. She won-

ders if they were the ones who caused the noise. The bullets

are on the kitchen counter. She frantically loads the revolver

with three bullets and drops the other three.
Three’s plenty,

she thinks, and leaves the other bullets on the floor.

The gun is pointed out in front of her as she enters

the bedroom and turns on the light. The room is empty. The

window is intact. She looks out of the window. In the moon-

light, she can see all the way across the clearing. Nobody is

out there. She lowers the gun and leaves the room.

She doesn’t notice that the outside lamp has been

smashed with a rock.

After that, Stephanie realizes that she’s not going to

get any sleep. Her toothbrush is dirty now, so she can’t use it

to brush her teeth, even though she’s incredibly anxious. Nor-

mally, she keeps a toothbrush on her at all times for brushing,

and another hidden in her room for masturbating. She wishes

she would have brought that toothbrush with her.

Sitting on the couch with the gun in her lap, she sighs

and stares blankly at the Theremin centering the room. Then

she begins to cry.

She looks down at the gun in her lap and wonders

if she has the guts to use it on herself. She’s contemplated

suicide before, dozens of times, but she’s never been able

to go through with it. She often tells her mother that she’s

contemplating suicide, as a way of asking for help. But her

mother always smacks her across the face and says,
suicide

is a one-way ticket to hell
. And that’s always the end of that

discussion.

Unfortunately, the only cure for her problems that

she can think of at the moment is suicide. She doesn’t want

to kill herself but she feels trapped against a brick wall and

doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t want to have the

baby. It’s her brother’s. Stephanie’s brother never used con-

doms when he forced her to have sex with him. He liked to

ride bareback
, as he called it. It was only a matter of time

before she got knocked up.

She doesn’t want to be a mother at her age, let alone

the mother of an incest baby. As soon as she discovered she

was pregnant, she decided to get an abortion. Unfortunately,

since she isn’t yet eighteen, the state-law says that she needs

to get her mother’s permission. But she didn’t want to tell

her mother about this. She didn’t even dare tell her brother.

Telling her mother about the pregnancy was the

worst thing she ever could have done. Stephanie’s mom is

a devout evangelical Christian and is completely opposed to

abortion.

Her mother said,
this child doesn’t belong to you, it

belongs to God. If you have an abortion you aren’t just mur-

dering your child, you are murdering God’s child.

Not only is her mother forcing her to have the child,

she is forcing her to raise the child with her brother as moth-

er and father.
It’s your responsibility
, her mother says. And

she told Stephanie that if she does anything to stop this baby

from being born that she would cut the uterus out of her so

that she could never have another child ever again.

God’s retribution
, her mother calls it.

Stephanie’s brother smiled when he found out that

he had impregnated his sister. He seemed to like the idea

of having that kind of control over her. He had no plans to

actually help raise the kid, but he thought it was funny that

his sister was going to be forced to have his baby.

You deserve it, he told her.

Her mother didn’t care when she found out that

Stephanie’s brother was forcing her to have sex with him.

She looked at Stephanie as if she didn’t even hear what she

had said. It didn’t even seem to bother her. All that mat-

ters to Stephanie’s mother is that the baby is born and not

aborted. She will do everything in her power to make sure

this comes true.

Stephanie caresses the barrel of the gun. She loves

thinking about how her mother will react when she finds

out that Stephanie has killed herself. There’s nothing her

mother can do to her then. Her mother will lose. Stephanie

will win.

If only she had the guts to do it . . .

Jason awakes to a loud bang. He lifts his head from

his pillow and listens carefully, wondering where the noise

came from. Everything is silent. He decides it was just

something he heard in his dream and lays his head back

down. He looks over at Crystal. She is dead asleep. She is

lying on her side, near the edge of the bed, as far away from

Jason as possible. She says she can’t sleep if she can feel his

body heat near her, so she always sleeps as far away from

him as possible.

A hangover is already growing inside of Jason’s head.

He needs some aspirin and some water. He’s not willing to

leave the bed to get them. Memories flow into his mind and

he smacks his forehead. He remembers the way he treated

Stephanie when she was playing the Theremin. It’s not that

he feels bad for treating Stephanie in such a cruel manner,

it’s that he is worried that his friends will like him less for

doing it. He could care less about Stephanie. He thinks she

doesn’t belong in their circle of friends and should be cast

out. If he made her feel like she doesn’t belong then that’s

great news for him. But if he ostracized himself in doing that

then he’s going to have to save his reputation somehow.

The Theremin made him a little emotional. It re-

minded him of how he lost his brother, all those years ago.

Then that made him think about how he lost his mother in

the car crash and how he lost his grandfather last year. Most

of all, it made him realize that he’s going to be all alone

soon. His dad was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. He

isn’t sure how long he has to live, but the doctor says up

to three years. Jason doesn’t want to join the military next

year, but his dad is making him. He’s worried that his dad

will die while he’s away. He’s worried that he won’t have

much time left with him.

You need to be a man
, Jason’s dad always says.
You

don’t need anybody in this life but yourself.

Jason jumps out of the bed to the noise of a woman

screaming.

“What’s going on?” Crystal says as the screams drag

her out of sleep.

Jason runs into the hallway wearing just his socks

and his whitey-tighties. Crystal follows him in her pajamas.