Damned (8 page)

One of my Bass Weejuns slips from my foot, falling, tumbling, dropping
to land on the ground beside a tiny figure sporting a bold blue Mohawk. Even at
this distance, I can see it's Archer standing beside the giant's sizable bare
foot. Having removed the oversize safety pin from his cheek, Archer is plunging
the point, repeatedly removing it and plunging it, again and again, into the
arch of the demon's foot.

In the melee which ensues, I feel myself half dropped, half heaved, half
lowered until I land in the soft, scratchy fingernails. The same moment as my
impact, hands grasp me, human hands, Leonard's hands, and pull me to shelter
beneath the slurry of nail parings... but not before I see the same parachute
hand which caught me now catch Archer and lift him—cursing, kicking his boots,
slashing with his pin—to where the teeth snap shut, and in a single bite
guillotine off his vivid blue head.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Before I tell you the following
you must promise, cross your heart and hope to die, that you won't EVER share
this secret with another person. I mean it. You see, I'm well aware that you're
the Prince of Lies, hut I need you to swear. You'll have to guarantee your
confidentiality if we're to have a relationship of any significant depth and
honesty.

Last winter, if you must know, I found myself alone at boarding school
during the holiday break. It goes without saying that I'm recounting an event
from my past life. Christmas occurred to my parents as just another ordinary
day, and the rest of my classmates were leaving for ski vacations or Greek
islands, so, for my part, there was nothing to do except put on a game face and
assure them, girl by girl, that my own family would be along at any moment to
collect me. That final day of autumn term, the residence hall emptied out. The
dining hall shut down. As did the lecture halls. Even the faculty departed the
campus with their packed bags, leaving me in almost complete solitude.

I say "almost" because a night watchman, possibly a team of
them, continued to prowl the school grounds, checking locked doors and turning
down thermostats, their flashlight beams occasionally sweeping the landscape at
night like searchlights in an old prison movie.

A month previous, my parents had adopted Goran, he of the haunted eyes
and heavy Count Dracula accent. Although he was only one year older than me,
Goran's forehead was already etched with wrinkles. His cheeks, hollowed. His
eyebrows grew as wild and tangled as the forested slopes of the Carpathian
Mountains, so matted and bristling that if you looked too closely among the
hairs you'd expect to see marauding packs of wolves, ruined castles, and
stooped Gypsy women gathering firewood. Even at the age of fourteen, Goran's eyes,
his voice pitched deep as a foghorn, it all gave the impression that he'd
witnessed his entire extended family tortured to death as slave labor in the
salt mines of some remote gulag, bloodhounds baying after them across ice
floes, and leather whips cracking at their backs.

Ah... Goran. No Heathcliff nor Rhett Butler was ever so swarthy nor
rudely fashioned. He seemed to exist in his own permanent isolation, insulated
by some terrible history of hardship and deprivation, and I envied him that. I
did so, so long to be tortured.

Next to Goran, even adult men sounded silly and chatty and
insignificant. Even my father. Especially my father.

Lying in bed, alone in a Swiss residence hall built to house three
hundred girls, in temperatures barely warm enough to prevent the pipes from
freezing, I pictured Goran, the way blue veins branched under the transparent
skin of his temples. How his hair grew so thick it wouldn't comb down, the
stand-up kind of hair you'd cultivate while studying Marxist philosophy over tiny
cups of bitter espresso in smoke-filled coffeehouses, awaiting your perfect
opportunity to lob a burning dynamite stick into the open touring car of some
Austrian archduke and ignite a world war.

My mom and dad were doubtless introducing poor Goran to the assembled
media outlets represented at Park City, Utah; or Cannes; or the Venice Film
Festival, while I was hiding out beneath six blankets surviving on hoarded Fig
Newtons and Vichy water—
avec gaz.

No, it's not fair, but I was clearly getting the better part of the
arrangement.

My family assumed I was aboard a yacht, among giggling friends. My mom
and dad assumed I
had
friends. The
school assumed me to be with my parents and Goran. For two glorious weeks all I
had to do was read the Brontes, evade the occasional security guards, and
wander about— naked.

In all my thirteen years I'd never even slept in the nude. Of course,
my parents paraded unclothed constantly, exposing themselves around the house
and on the more exclusive beaches of the French Riviera and the Maldives, but I
perennially felt too flat in some places, too fat in some, too skinny in
others, simultaneously gawky and plump, too old and too young. It was clearly
in violation of the school's rules of deportment, but alone one night, I pulled
off my nightgown and slipped into bed, naked.

My mother had never hesitated to suggest I attend this or that weekend
retreat focusing on genital awareness and mastering control of one's own
pleasure centers, the usual assortment of celebrity mothers and daughters
idling in a remote grotto, squatting over hand mirrors and marveling at the
infinite pink moods of the cervix, but their sort of
workshopped
...
empowerment seemed so clinical. It wasn't a frank, honest workshopping of my
sexuality that I wanted. It was Goran I wanted, someone ruddy and moody.
Pirates and tightly laced bodices. Masked highwaymen and kidnapped wenches.

The second night I slept alone, I awoke needing to pee. The toilets
were down the hall, shared by all the girls on each floor, but I was almost
certainly alone in the residence building. So, despite the sacrosanct rules, I
peered out of my room, naked and barefooted, checking the dark hallway for a
patrolling guard. I ran the cold steps to the bathroom and did my business, all
in the dim moonlight filtering through the windows, my breath steaming in the
cold air. The third night, I visited the bathroom, again naked, but strolled en
route, taking a detour on my return trip to visit the first-floor lounge and
sit unclothed on the chilly leather sofas which faced the blank dark mirror of
the television screen. My nude reflection in the glass, wan as a pudgy ghost.

Ah, those glory days when I still had an earthly reflection...

Really, Satan, please. You have to swear that you won't breathe a word
of this.

By my fifth night alone I'd ventured naked to the chemistry lab, sat
naked in my usual desk in the Romance Languages classroom, and stood naked on
the dais at the head of the dining hall, where the senior faculty normally sat
for their meals.

And, yes, while I admit to being dead and having a poor body image and
a suppressed sense of my own personal value, I am well aware of my risky,
late-night exhibitionism and yen for Goran as symptoms of my budding sexuality.
The night air against my skin... all of my skin and nipples, and the texture of
so many ordinary objects: wooden desks, stairway carpets, tiled
hallways—without the usual intervening layers of silk or nylon—it all felt
glorious. Around any corner seemed to lurk a possible guard, some strange man
wearing a uniform, his boots polished. I imagined each guard with a polished
badge, wearing a gun strapped to his belt. Most likely, it would be somebody's
Swiss father or grandfather with a mustache, but I pictured Goran. Goran,
carrying handcuffs. Goran, his brooding eyes behind dark totalitarian
sunglasses. At any moment, the beam of a flashlight might reveal me, the parts
of myself I had always kept hidden. I'd be reported and expelled. Everyone
would find out.

In my nude ramblings I lingered among the leather-smelling stacks in
the library, perusing the books as I walked barefoot over the chill marble
floors. I swam unclothed in the pool complex. With only the moonlight to see
by, I sneaked into the stainless-steel kitchens and sat cross-legged on the
concrete floor, eating chocolate ice cream until my body shook with the
accumulated cold. As lithe as an animal... a sprite... a savage... I strode
into the chapel and presented my fleshy self to the altar. There, the paintings
and statues of the Virgin Mary were always so heavily robed and veiled, crowned
and burdened with jewelry. Depictions of the Christ seldom wore more than a
thorny halo and a way-tiny loincloth. Sitting on the front pew, I felt the
gentle suction of my bare thighs against the polished wood.

By my second week alone, I was sleeping through the days and wandering
sans apparel all night. I'd been naked in almost every room, wandered all the
hallways and steam tunnels, entered every space with an unlocked door; however,
I had yet to venture outside. Beyond the windows, snow fell, layering over
everything and bouncing the moonlight inside. Now, the buildings themselves
felt like too much clothing. At this point I slept naked. I walked and ate and
read naked so often that the thrill had evaporated. Even while reading
Forever Amber
with my tits out... I'd lost that special
forbidden feeling. The only way to renew it would be to go out-of-doors and
stand unclothed under the stars or masked in the falling snowflakes, leaving my
bare footprints in the drifts.

Other girls I know, they shoplifted to generate this same prepubescent
high. Other girls told lies or cut themselves with razors.

No, it's not fair, but one minute you can be wading through clean snow,
your feet sinking ankle-deep into the perfect wastelands of snowdrifts which
surround a private girls' school near Locarno, and mere days later you can be
slogging through the morass of countless discarded fingernail clippings, cast
forever into fiery Hell.

That Christmas break which I spent alone, as I first stepped out of the
residence hall, entering the snowy night, my skin felt the touch of every
snowflake. The cold air made my hair stand up from the roots the way my nipples
stood erect, every follicle on my arms and legs becoming a tiny clitoris, and
every cell of me awake and alert at rigid attention. Walking, I held my arms
straight out in front of myself, mimicking the way ancient Egyptian mummies
walk when rising from their stony tombs in old horror films. My hands turned
palms-down, my fingers dangled the way Frankenstein's monster shambles when
brought to life in black-and-white Universal movies. This was my fallback
excuse: that I was sleepwalking. My parasomniac defense. So I walked, step by
step, farther into the falling snow, into the darkness as cold as chocolate ice
cream, my arms outstretched in the manner of sleepwalking cartoon characters,
only naked. Pelted with ice crystals and pretending to be asleep, but more
awake than I had ever felt. Every hair and cell of me alert, aching, afraid.
Alive.

All of me felt the thrill of being touched at that same instant. You
see, I wanted to be discovered. I wanted to be seen at the very height of my
prepubescent power, my tits-out, bare-fanny, legally off-limits kiddie-porn
Lolita power.

If a guard found me, I'd merely pretend to be ashamed. By then I had a
long history of feeling mortified and embarrassed. Reverting back to such
feelings would be like second nature. As a guard approached and grabbed my
wrist, or threw a blanket over my shoulders to protect my childhood modesty,
I'd simply pretend hysterics and insist I had no idea where I was or how I'd
come to be there. I'd reject all responsibility for my own actions... play the
innocent victim. Over the past two weeks of solitude, something within me had
changed, but I could still fake being shocked and fragile and demure.

No, this is not how I came to die. As I've mentioned before I died from
smoking an overdose of marijuana. I did not freeze to death.

Nor did a lustful, groping security guard catch me. Darn it.

Arms extended like a somnambulist, I marched around the school grounds,
collecting snowflakes in my hair until my feet felt quite numb. Then, fearing
frostbite and permanent disfigurement, I sprinted back to the door of my
residence hall. As I grasped the steel handle with my damp hands, my fingers
and palms froze to the metal. I pulled, but the doors had automatically locked
the moment they'd first swung shut, leaving me naked, my hands fixed—frozen— to
the handles of a door which wouldn't open, unable to run for help, unable to
return to my safe bed, the deadly night piling up around me, ice crystal by ice
crystal.

And, yes, I might be a dreamy, romantic, preadolescent girl, but I can
recognize a metaphor when one batters me over the head: a young budding lass
perched frozen on the threshold between sheltering girlhood and the frigid
wasteland of her impending sexual maturation, only a sacrificial layer of her
tender, virginal skin holding her captive, blah, blah, blah....